THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE COMPLETE WORKS

THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE COMPLETE WORKS

Edited by Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan
Consultant Editor Harold Jenkins

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Illustrations have been removed for copyright reasons, though some references to them may still exist.

General Editors’ Preface

The texts in this volume were edited for the second and third series of the Arden Shakespeare. The second series (Arden 2; General Editors: Una Ellis-Fermor, Harold F. Brooks, Harold Jenkins and Brian Morris) was published in thirty-eight volumes between 1951 and 1982. The third series (Arden 3; General Editors: Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan) began publication in 1995. We decided to include both Arden 2 and Arden 3 texts in this volume, despite some changes in editorial convention and the minor inconsistencies resulting from them. The other possible courses, to reissue Arden 2 texts which had been replaced, or to wait many years for completion of Arden 3, had less to recommend them.

The first edition of this volume included the seven Arden 3 texts published to date, five of which replaced early Arden 2 editions: Antony and Cleopatra, King Henry V, King Lear, Othello and Titus Andronicus; together with two, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which Arden 2 did not include. This revised edition includes a further eight Arden 3 texts: Julius Caesar, King Henry VI, Part 1, King Henry VI, Part 2, King Henry VIII, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Tempest and Troilus and Cressida.

Some conventions of presentation and layout newly introduced for Arden 3 have been adopted throughout this volume. These include: the use of arabic numerals for act and scene numbers and the reduced prominence of those numbers on the page; the adoption of unabbreviated names for use as speech prefixes; removal of all editorial notes of location of action (most of which were the inventions of eighteenth-century editors and relate to the theatre of that period); substitution of ‘List of Roles’ for ‘Dramatis Personae’; and translation of Latin stage directions with the exception of the familiar Exit. ([s]he goes out) and Exeunt. (they go out). Where conventional scene divisions have been altered, the rejected scene and line numbers are recorded in square brackets for purposes of reference.

Minor inconsistency will be found in the Arden 3 texts in respect of (a) treatment of elided syllables; (b) spelling; (c) forms of stage directions.

(a) No elisions are marked in Arden 3 texts unless they indicate pronunciation differing from late twentieth-century English usage. For metrical reasons, the ‘-ed’ ending of past participles was sometimes sounded in verse passages, contrary to normal pronunciation. After his earliest plays Shakespeare made sparing use of this licence, and Arden 3, accordingly, does not adopt the familiar practice of drawing attention to such usage in the text. The convention used by Arden 2 was to print non-syllabic ‘-ed’ as ‘-’d’, which usually indicates normal modern pronunciation by use of an obsolete spelling form.

(b) Arden 2 editors were encouraged to retain obsolete spellings from the early editions if they believed that they might indicate the Elizabethan pronunciation of a word. Arden 3 adopts the practice of thorough modernization, on the grounds that the relation of spelling to pronunciation is imperfectly understood and was certainly variable and erratic. What has been clearly demonstrated is that, in the period before modern English spelling was stabilized, printers were already understood to be responsible for the spelling of books they printed – and also for punctuation (as they still are today). Consequently, few authorial spellings are likely to be present in the early editions, and those few are impossible to identify, in the absence of surviving manuscripts in Shakespeare’s hand which might identify them. Variations in spelling are included in the glossary where they might otherwise cause confusion.

(c) Where stage directions have been added by editors (as very many have), Arden 3 prefers active verbs to present participles: e.g. [Reads.], not [reading]. The exact wording of stage directions throughout should be regarded as editorial, though in substance they most frequently derive from the source texts.

More radical differences of convention relate to King Lear. Instead of following the recent practice of presenting the 1608 Quarto and 1623 First Folio texts as two separate plays, the Arden 3 editor presents a single edited text, based on the First Folio, which incorporates all further words and passages present only in the Quarto. The conventions used to signal the differences between the two texts are explained in the note on the text on p. 631. Similar conventions are used for three passages in Titus Andronicus (see p. 1123) which are taken from sources other than the First Quarto of 1594. The Arden 3 editors of Henry V and Othello have chosen the more conventional course of not indicating readings and passages unique to the earlier Quartos incorporated into their Folio-based edited texts of those plays.

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1 Title-page, with a portrait of Shakespeare engraved by Droeshout, from the First Folio, printed by Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623.

Introduction

WHY SHAKESPEARE?

What is ‘Shakespeare’? A worldwide cultural phenomenon, a brand-name, a logo, an image that appears on T-shirts and credit cards, a mainstay of theatre, film and video production, a compulsory component of education, a label that sells thousands of books, a household name. Also an individual human being, born in a small English country town in 1564, a man who went to London and had a successful career as an actor, playwright and shareholder in the theatre. By all accounts an agreeable and modest man who did not seek to draw attention to himself, even by publishing his plays, though he does seem to have hoped that the fame of his Sonnets would outlive him. His surname has nevertheless become so familiar that his first name, William, does not need to be mentioned – is not indeed mentioned on the covers or title-pages of his works as published in ‘The Arden Shakespeare’: a person from another planet might work carefully through an entire volume in our series without discovering the first name of the author, but on our planet ‘everyone’ knows who he is. It has even become a kind of perverse tribute to him that periodically people attempt to prove that he didn’t write anything after all, that the works ascribed to him were in fact written by somebody else entirely.

The names of some of this man’s works have become so familiar themselves that we can even drop ‘Shakespeare’ without fear of being misunderstood when we talk of ‘Orson Welles’s Othello’ or ‘Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V’. Certain images have become instantly recognizable: a man dressed in black holding a skull ‘means’ Hamlet, a man talking to a woman above him on a moonlit balcony ‘means’ Romeo and Juliet. We quote Shakespeare all the time, sometimes unconsciously, using phrases that have dropped into common usage: ‘to have one’s pound of flesh’ (Merchant of Venice 1.3.148-9 and subsequently); ‘to the manner born’ (Hamlet 1.4.15); ‘more honoured in the breach than the observance’ Hamlet (1.4.16); ‘at one fell swoop’ (Macbeth 4.3.219). Compilers of crossword puzzles and quiz games routinely rely on Shakespearean quotations and references.

Words and phrases from the plays and poems have provided the titles of hundreds of novels, plays and films: one might cite Edith Wharton’s The Glimpses of the Moon (Hamlet 1.4.53), William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury Macbeth (5.5.27), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (The Tempest 5.1.183), Margaret Millar’s How Like an Angel (Hamlet 2.2.307–8), Agatha Christie’s By the Pricking of My Thumbs– Ray Bradbury completed the rhyme with his Something Wicked This Way Comes (Macbeth 4.1.44-5) – and H.E. Bates’s The Darling Buds of May (Sonnet 18, 3). The plays are still being performed live all over the world, and film and video versions have made them accessible to millions of people who never go to the theatre. They continue to inspire adaptations and spin-offs such as Peter Greenaway’s film Prospero’s Books (1991), Gus Van Sant’s film My Own Private Idaho (1992) and Alan Isler’s novel The Prince of West End Avenue (1994), all of which assume a prior knowledge of a Shakespeare text on the part of their viewers or readers.

How and why has this happened? Four hundred years after the heyday of Shakespeare’s own dramatic career we find ourselves arguing about whether his extraordinary fame and influence were somehow inevitable, a direct result of the intrinsic qualities of his works themselves, or a piece of sustained hype, the manipulation of a myth by those with a personal stake in its perpetuation – performers, teachers, publishers, Stratford-upon-Avon hoteliers – and by those with a more general interest in promoting British ‘high’ culture: Shakespeare has become ‘the Bard of Avon’, the ultimate canonical figure who is taken to represent the genius and values of an entire nation.

Shakespeare did do well during his lifetime out of what was the nearest thing Elizabethan and Jacobean London had to a mass entertainment industry. Unlike other dramatists of the time, he did most of his work for a single theatrical company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, under Elizabeth I, who became the King’s Men under James I. This stability in itself probably provided him with reasonably good working conditions and the opportunity to develop his work with known performers and business associates; it made it relatively easy for his complete works to be collected and published after he died. Other dramatists such as Thomas Middleton, who produced work for a number of different companies, had a less stable working environment and less chance of having their work collected or even identified.

The First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays was published in 1623, seven years after his death, and reprinted in 1632, but in 1642 the theatres were closed, and were to remain closed for nearly twenty years during the Civil War and Commonwealth period, potentially jeopardizing the chances of Shakespeare or any other dramatist achieving lasting fame. With the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, however, the theatres reopened and Shakespeare’s plays came back into the repertory, albeit in truncated and altered versions. During the eighteenth century his reputation was consolidated by the publication of a number of scholarly editions and monographs, the erection of a monument in Westminster Abbey (1741) and the promotion of Stratford-upon-Avon as his birthplace and the site of David Garrick’s festival or ‘Jubilee’ (1769). While the plays were often rewritten wholesale for the contemporary stage, their texts were simultaneously being ‘restored’ with great care (and even more ingenuity) by editors who contributed largely to the ‘canonization’ of the author. This has essentially been the story of Shakespeare’s reception and cultural survival ever since: we still (in the total absence of manuscripts) pursue the chimaera of ‘what Shakespeare really wrote’, while on the other hand treating his texts as endlessly adaptable, available for rewriting, rereading and reinterpreting by each generation.

The plays have turned out to be equally suitable for export, and Shakespeare has been enthusiastically appropriated by many countries around the world. In Germany, for example, Ferdinand Freiligrath’s 1844 poem beginning ‘Deutschland ist Hamlet’ (‘Germany is Hamlet’) spelt out a long-lasting identification of the character of Hamlet with the German Romantic self-image of a people capable of profound reflection but incapable of action. In the United States, on the other hand, Shakespeare became a kind of symbol of racial and cultural integration and democracy, perhaps especially during the period when silent films made his work accessible to people who did not know English. In Japan, which imported Shakespeare relatively late in the nineteenth century, he quickly came to represent the essence of westernization and modernization. All these countries now have thriving Shakespeare industries of their own.

The globalization of Shakespeare was of course assisted by the political and economic spread of the British Empire in the nineteenth century and by the continuing dominance of English as a worldwide language after the decline of that Empire. What remains remarkable is that Shakespeare is actually quite a difficult writer linguistically – much harder to read today than most of his contemporaries such as Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton or John Fletcher. His syntax is often complex, his figures of speech elaborate and his ideas hard to grasp. Some of this may be offset by the larger patterns of satisfaction we find in his plots and characters, and indeed it could be said that the difficulty itself leaves room for our explanations and interpretations. Shakespeare still ‘works’ in the theatre, but at school we have to be taught to ‘appreciate’ Shakespeare: is this indoctrination or something more benign – an educational process involving the ‘recognition’ of intrinsic merit?

In his essay Of the Standard of Taste, written in 1742, the philosopher David Hume argued that there is such a thing as intrinsic excellence in literature and that it is the continuity of a work’s reputation that proves it. What he calls ‘catholic and universal beauty’ in various art forms is demonstrated by ‘the durable admiration which attends those works that have survived all the caprices of mode and fashion, all the mistakes of ignorance and envy’. To support this he claims that ‘The same Homer who pleased at Athens two thousand years ago, is still admired at Paris and London’. Shakespeare can be said to have passed the survival test, but perhaps it is not ‘the same Shakespeare’ now as four hundred years ago, and not ‘the same Shakespeare’ in Berlin, New York or Tokyo as in London or Stratford-upon-Avon. One of the secrets of Shakespeare’s success may be his changeability, the openness of his works to take on new meanings in contexts he cannot have anticipated.

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2 Shakespeare as twentieth-century cultural icon, selling lager

SHAKESPEARE: THE LIFE

William Shakespeare was a successful man of the emerging entertainment industry of Elizabethan England. He was an actor, a ‘sharer’ in the acting company (that is, no mere hireling but a partner entitled to share in its profits) and, of course, a leading playwright.

He began, however, more humbly. We know a remarkable amount, for this period, about Shakespeare and his family. He was born late in April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. The parish church records his baptism on 26 April; his unrecorded birthdate is conventionally set three days earlier on 23 April, St George’s Day (and also, apparently, the date of Shakespeare’s death). His father was John Shakespeare, a glover and later a wool merchant, and his mother was Mary Arden, daughter of a well-established farmer in the nearby village of Wilmcote. Though the records have not survived, we can safely assume that he attended the King’s New School, the Stratford grammar school with its strenuous classically based curriculum, but we know for certain that at the age of eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, also of Stratford, and that a daughter, Susanna, was born to them, as the parish records note, on 26 May 1583. On 2 February 1585 the register records the birth of twins, Hamnet and Judith.

Shakespeare was well established in London by the early 1590s as an actor and as a playwright. In 1592 a book appeared in which Robert Greene criticized an unnamed actor, ‘an upstart Crow’, for his presumption in writing plays, supposing himself ‘as well able to bombast out a blank verse’ as any and imagining himself ‘the only Shake-scene in a country’. Since Greene’s attack contains a parody of a line from 3 Henry VI, it seems certain that it is Shakespeare that he aims at. By 1592, then, Shakespeare had already established himself in the theatre and drawn the ire of a jealous rival. In 1594, Court records indicate payments to Shakespeare and two other sharers in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men for ‘two several comedies or interludes showed by them before her Majesty in Christmas time last’. References to Shakespeare’s activity in the theatre abound, and in 1598 Francis Meres claimed that Shakespeare could be compared with Seneca for the writing of tragedy and with Plautus for comedy, indeed that among English writers he was ‘the best of both kinds for the stage’. But he wrote non-dramatic poetry as well. When a severe outbreak of plague beginning in the summer of 1592 forced the closing of the theatres until the spring of 1594, Shakespeare wrote two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, both dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton, and printed by a former fellow-resident of Stratford, Richard Field, in 1593 and 1594 respectively; and an edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets was published by Thomas Thorpe in 1609.

But Shakespeare’s primary work was in the theatre, and it was the theatre that made him a wealthy man. His money, however, came neither from commissions nor from royalties for his plays but from his position as a sharer in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (who, with the accession of James to the throne in 1603, became the King’s Men), by which he was entitled to one-tenth of the company’s profits, a share handsome enough to permit him considerable investment in real estate. In 1597 he bought for £60 the substantial freehold house in Stratford known as New Place, the second largest dwelling in the town; in 1602, he purchased 107 acres of land in the manorial fields to the north of Stratford for £320, and later that year a cottage in Stratford on Chapel Lane; in 1605 he bought a half-interest in a Stratford tithe farm for an additional £440; and in 1613, with three other investors, he acquired a ‘tenement’ in Blackfriars for £140.

If Shakespeare’s business dealings can be traced in the Court Rolls, his family’s lives and deaths can be traced in the Stratford parish register. His son Hamnet died at the age of eleven and was buried on 11 August 1596. Shakespeare’s father died in September 1601, his mother in 1608. Shakespeare’s elder daughter, Susanna, married John Hall, a well-respected Stratford physician, in Holy Trinity church on 5 June 1607. His younger daughter, Judith, married Thomas Quiney on 10 February 1616. Shakespeare’s wife died on 6 August 1623; she had lived to see a monument to her husband installed in Holy Trinity, but passed away just before the publication of the First Folio of his plays, the more lasting monument to his memory.

Shakespeare himself had died in late April of 1616, and was buried on the north side of the chancel of Holy Trinity, having left a will written that January. He left ten pounds for ‘the poor of Stratford’, remembered local friends and his extended family, and allotted 16s. 8d. each for memorial rings for his theatrical colleagues, Richard Burbage, John Heminges and Henry Condell. He left £150 to his daughter Judith, and another £150 to be paid if ‘she or any issue of her body be living’ three years from the execution of the will, but the bulk of the estate was left to Susanna. His wife is mentioned only once, in an apparent afterthought to the document: ‘Item, I give unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture.’ The bequest of the bed and bedding has led many to speculate that this was a deliberate slight, but English customary law provided the widow with a third of the estate, and the ‘second best bed’ was almost certainly their own, the best being saved for guests.

Yet in spite of the detailed records that remain, allowing us to trace major and minor events in the lives of Shakespeare and his family, as well as to see his vital presence in the life of the London stage, some critics have passionately held that the author of the plays was someone other than ‘the man from Stratford’. It was not until the eighteenth century that anyone questioned Shakespeare’s authorship, but since then many, including Mark Twain, Henry James and Sigmund Freud, have been attracted to the anti-Stratfordian heresy. Various candidates have been proposed. Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Queen Elizabeth, even Daniel Defoe (who was not born until 1661) have all been suggested as the ‘real’ author of ‘Shakespeare’s’ plays and poems. The controversy, however, has little to recommend it except its unintended humour; anti-Stratfordian champions have sometimes had unfortunate names, including Looney, Battey and Silliman. Although usually energetically asserted, the belief that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the plays seemingly derives from simple, if unattractive, social snobbery: a certainty that only someone educated at university or at court would be capable of such artistry. The desire to give the plays a more socially distinguished patrimony than they in fact had at least attests to the importance they have come to assume in our culture. All in all, however, there seems little doubt that William Shakespeare, the glover’s son from Stratford, wrote the plays that bear his name, though their greatness can hardly be illuminated or intensified by the evidence of the life of their author.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE THEATRE

At an unknown date between 1585 and 1591, William Shakespeare left Stratford-upon-Avon and became an actor and playwright. Early tradition holds that he was for a few years before this a country schoolmaster (which might help to explain his close knowledge of some Latin texts, including plays by Plautus and Seneca). In 1587 the Queen’s Men visited Stratford shortly after they lost a leading actor, William Knell, killed in a duel at Thame in Oxfordshire. Whether or not this may be imagined as Shakespeare’s opportunity to join the players, plays from the Queen’s Men’s repertoire were, on the evidence of later allusions in his plays, well known to him. His name is, however, more often associated with two other companies, Lord Strange’s (Derby’s) Men and its offshoot the Earl of Pembroke’s Men, which collapsed in the summer of 1593. A new play, called ‘harey the vj’ and usually identified as King Henry VI, Part 1, was performed by Strange’s Men at the Rose playhouse on 3 March 1592 and thereafter. Titus Andronicus, played by the Earl of Sussex’s Men, followed on 23 January 1594: in June two more performances of it were given by the Lord Admiral’s Men and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. By June 1594 Shakespeare had become a leading member of a newly-formed company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. He would remain with them for the rest of his career. Of his repertoire as an actor we know almost nothing. His name heads the list of ‘principal actors in all these plays’ prefaced to the First Folio in 1623. It had earlier appeared in the similar lists for Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus, His Fall (1603), printed in the Jonson Folio of 1616. Beyond this, we have only late seventeenth-century traditions that he played Adam in As You Like It and the Ghost in Hamlet.

1594 saw the stabilization in London of the leading playing companies. The Admiral’s Men, led by Edward Alleyn, under the management of Philip Henslowe, were at Henslowe’s theatre, the Rose, on Bankside in Southwark (whose foundations were partially revealed by archaeologists in the spring of 1989, before being covered once more for the construction above them of an office block). The Chamberlain’s Men, led by Richard Burbage and managed by his father, James, acted at the Theatre, north of the Thames, in Finsbury (not far from the modern Barbican Centre). The Theatre, built in 1576 for James Burbage, was the first building to be erected in the suburbs of London expressly for the presentation of plays. Henslowe’s Rose followed in 1587; after it came the Swan (1595); the Globe (1599), replacing the Theatre and built with its structural timbers, bodily removed through London and across the River Thames from Finsbury to Southwark; the Fortune (1600), built in north London to replace the Rose; the Red Bull (1605); and the Hope (1614). The building of the Globe was an important event for Shakespeare, and we can see in the first plays he wrote for it, perhaps As You Like It and King Henry V, more surely Julius Caesar and Hamlet, a renewed awareness of the propositions that ‘all the world’s a stage’ and that every man and woman is a performer in the wider theatre of the world. Not for nothing was it called the Globe.

Before 1576 plays had been performed, as they continued to be throughout the lifetime of Shakespeare, in a wide variety of locations, indoors and out. In London, the yards of coaching inns were used as theatres (and sometimes adapted for the purpose at considerable expense). Throughout the country the halls of schools, towns, colleges and noble houses were used for occasional performances by visiting players. Models for the public playhouses in London included inn yards as well as the baiting rings on the south bank used for bull- and bear-baiting. A large auditorium (with 20 sides and a diameter of 100 feet in the case of the Globe) had seats arranged in three galleries, and contained within it the separate structure of a stage and backstage building. The stage was covered by a canopy, or ‘heavens’, which could house winding-gear for lowering large properties or descending gods, and it was accessible from below through a trapdoor. At the back of the stage, behind a wall with two or three large doors in it, lay the ‘tiring-house’ (dressing rooms and wings combined), above which was a gallery, reached by a stair and divided into a number of ‘rooms’ or boxes, where the most important members of the audience could sit to see and to be seen. When necessary, one or more of these boxes could be used to represent a window, or walls, if required by action ‘above’ or ‘aloft’, and they may also have housed the musicians.

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3 Portrait of Richard Burbage, leading actor of the Chamberlain’s Men

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4 The Globe Theatre, as recreated in the 1990s on London’s Bankside

Indoor acting continued throughout the period at smaller ‘private’ playhouses, of which the earliest were set up in the halls of former monastic buildings within the city of London. Holding an audience of some 600 or 700 (against the 2,500-3,000 capacity attributed to the public playhouses) these theatres were used for plays appealing to a more restricted and wealthier audience. While you could stand in the yard at the Globe for a penny, the cheapest seat at the Blackfriars or St Paul’s theatre would cost sixpence. The indoor playhouses were associated with companies of boy players, composed of choristers of the Chapel Royal and of St Paul’s Cathedral. The playhouses Shakespeare wrote for were the Theatre (and its substitute the Curtain), the Globe and, after 1608 or 1609, the Blackfriars private theatre.

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5 Detail from Wenzel Hollar’s engraving A Long Bird’s-Eye View of London, 1647, showing the rebuilt Globe

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6 The principal actors in the King’s Men, as listed in the First Folio of 1623

During the lifetime of Shakespeare adult playing companies grew to a size and achieved a stability which justified the expense of building permanent theatres around London. Such companies consisted of some dozen to fifteen men and three to five boys, who trained as the apprentices of leading members and played female and juvenile roles. Earlier in the century, companies were much smaller – sometimes as small as three men and a boy – and playwrights had developed writing techniques to allow a cast of five to double in up to seventeen roles. Survival of such techniques accounts for the very large number of roles for Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies, where most actors would have played two or more parts, some of them appearing for no more than a scene or two.

In sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe the prohibition of public acting by women and the convention of all-male casting were peculiar to England. Though easily accepted by audiences, the playing of female roles by boys led writers to emphasize the femininity of the women in their plays to an extent that the use of female performers would have rendered unnecessary. Shakespeare had much to do with the popularity of female roles in which a girl spends much of the action in male disguise. While this may have been an easier convention to accept when the role was played by a boy, it also meant that the performer’s skill was required, not to impersonate a young man, but to keep the audience aware that ‘he’ was ‘really’ a girl under the male costume. In the early Jacobean years the King’s Men evidently had a boy or young man of exceptional talent, if we assume that the roles of Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra and Volumnia in Coriolanus may have been written for the same actor; the same must be true of such roles as Queen Margaret in the King Henry VI plays and Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew in the early 1590s, and of the comic heroines of Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and Twelfth Night around the turn of the century.

As the plays indicate, the skills demanded of an actor included singing, dancing and sword-fighting as well as the rhetorician’s arts of speech and significant gesture. We know little, however, about acting styles in the period; nevertheless, it is not fanciful to suppose that the changing style of the plays written between 1590 and 1620 reflects a change by actors from a broad style, dependent on resonant vocal delivery and confident use of expansive gesture, such as suited open-air playhouses, to a subtler and more intimate manner, less dependent on emphatic speech and allowing a wider range of gesture and even facial expression, which could register with most of the audience in the smaller space of a private playhouse. The contrast is clear if The Tempest is compared with the King Henry VI plays or Titus Andronicus.

It is likely that Shakespeare’s own plays were instrumental in changing styles of acting between 1590 and 1614. He had the unparalleled good fortune to work in the same company for some twenty years, as actor and as principal dramatist. He wrote for actors who were also his business partners and co-owners of the playhouses they played in. We must presume that he had some say in how the plays he wrote for them were presented. The strength of the company is reflected in the demands his plays make on actors. The Jacobean plays, in particular, regularly require strong performances in ten or a dozen significant roles – a hard requirement for any company to fulfil. The identification of actor with role – the building of a ‘character’ – is a commonplace of modern theatre. In Shakespeare’s time it seems to have been something of an innovation: indeed a ‘character’ would have been understood to mean a stock or stereotyped stage figure such as the old man, the melancholy lover or the country clown. Richard Burbage, Shakespeare’s leading actor, attracted comment for (exceptionally) remaining in character when he came off-stage during a performance. Not the least of Shakespeare’s achievements was the writing of dramatic roles a few hundred lines in length which can reward close and subtle verbal, moral or psychological analysis, three-dimensional fictions which create the illusion of the authentically recognizable inconsistency of human individuals.

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7 The earliest illustration of a work by Shakespeare; a scene from Titus Andronicus, attributed to Henry Peacham, c. 1595, 1605 or 1615

Career and chronology

We do not know the dates of composition of all of Shakespeare’s plays. Such evidence as there is is circumstantial: dates when they (or works on which they are certainly based) were published, or dated references to, and comments on, early performances can narrow the limits for many of them, while a very few allude to datable events of the time. On such evidence, supported by internal features of style, metre and subject, the plays can be arranged, with varying degrees of certainty, in groups relating to five phases of his theatrical career.

First come the plays Shakespeare had probably already written before the forming of the Chamberlain’s Men in the summer of 1594. These are The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew and possibly The Comedy of Errors, the three parts of King Henry VI, King Richard III and Titus Andronicus. Plays written for the new company at the Theatre in the five years from 1594 until the opening of the Globe in the autumn of 1599, in possible sequence of composition, are Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Richard II, King John, The Merchant of Venice, the two parts of King Henry IV, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor and (at some date before summer 1598) the lost Love’s Labour’s Won. As You Like It and King Henry V may belong in this group, though both show signs of having been written with the Globe in mind.

Plays for the Globe from 1599 until the death of Queen Elizabeth I in the spring of 1603 are Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Othello and possibly All’s Well That Ends Well. As a leading member of the King’s Men, Shakespeare seems to have reduced his output from the previous average of two plays per year. His new plays from 1603 to 1608 were: Measure for Measure, Timon of Athens, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Pericles and Coriolanus. The final period, from the company’s recovery of the indoor Blackfriars Theatre for winter use in 1608–9 to 1613–14, saw composition of The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest and of three plays written in collaboration with John Fletcher, King Henry VIII, the lost Cardenio and The Two Noble Kinsmen.

SHAKESPEARE IN PRINT

Shakespeare’s literary career in his own lifetime strikingly resists the very notions of artistic autonomy and authority that his name has come triumphantly to represent. He had no specific literary and little direct financial interest in his plays. He wrote scripts to be performed, scripts that once they were turned over to the acting company no longer belonged to him in any legal sense and immediately escaped his artistic control, as staging requirements and actors’ temperaments inevitably enforced their changes upon them. He involved himself with the printing and publication of none of them, and held no copyright. In the absence of anything like modern copyright law, which dates in Britain only from 1709, the scripts belonged to the acting company (and as they remained in the repertory they would be subject to continued revision as the actors sought to keep their property current).

Except that, as an experienced actor and sharer in his company, he could no doubt exert influence over production as an independent playwright could not, Shakespeare’s relation to the plays he wrote was in no way unusual. Like all playwrights, he wrote so that his plays could be acted; his words were intended to be heard, not read. In spite of Ben Jonson’s efforts to establish his own plays as a form of high culture, plays remained sub-literary, the piece-work of an emerging entertainment industry. ‘Riffe-raffe’, Thomas Bodley called them in 1612, and ordered his librarian not to collect such ‘idle books’ in order to protect his Oxford library against the ‘scandal’ that would be caused by their presence.

A play was generally written on demand for an acting company, and the completed script then belonged to the company that had commissioned it. Under certain circumstances, and with no necessary regard for the author’s wishes or interests, the companies would sell their rights in a play to a publisher, who would have it printed in an edition of about 800 copies, usually in a quarto format and selling for sixpence. The author would receive no money from the sale of the manuscript or from any subsequent sale of books. Neither were the literary ambitions of the playwrights usually a factor in publication. Ben Jonson’s aggressive effort to create himself as a literary figure is, of course, the exception that proves the rule, his 1616 Folio’s characteristic ‘The Author, B.I.’ on the individual title-pages revealingly anomalous; indeed Jonson is the only playwright in the period ever identified as an ‘author’ on a title-page.

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8 Title-page of the First Quarto of Love’s Labour’s Lost, 1598

Shakespeare displayed no similarly proprietary artistic impulses. At the time of his death, eighteen plays had reached print (many in more than one edition), but he had prepared none of the texts for publication and had overseen none through the press. The eighteen play-texts each appeared in a hastily-printed quarto volume; none has a dedication or an epistle from the author; none displays any sign of Shakespeare’s interest or involvement in its printing. On the other hand, his two long poems, Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594), printed by fellow-Stratfordian Richard Field, are obviously produced with care, and each is issued with a signed dedication to the Earl of Southampton. The texts of the plays show nothing comparable.

In the course of Shakespeare’s lifetime twenty different publishers brought forth editions of individual plays, but not one took any unusual care to ensure that the text was authoritative or the printing exact. The texts are of varied quality and provenance, some seemingly printed from manuscripts that appear authorial, others apparently from copy showing the inevitable cuts and interpolations of the theatre, still others printed from transcripts, as fellow-playwright Thomas Heywood claims, ‘Corrupt and mangled (coppied by the eare)’, reported texts reconstructing performances witnessed or acted. In any case no manuscript of a Shakespeare play survives (unless it be the so-called ‘Hand D’ in the manuscript of The Booke of Sir Thomas More which, if indeed Shakespeare’s own, bears witness to Shakespeare as collaborator, merely one of five playwrights who collaborated in writing the play).

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9 Title-page of the First Quarto of King Lear, 1608

Though today Shakespeare’s literary pre-eminence has made the publication of his plays a thriving cultural industry, his earliest publishers did not seem much to care about his authorship. The 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus omits Shakespeare’s name from the title-page, giving information rather about the printer and where the play could be bought. The play is advertised – and title-pages were explicitly forms of advertising, hung up as posters on bookstalls – not as by William Shakespeare but by the acting company that performed it: ‘As it was Plaide by the Right Honourable the Earle of Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke, and Earle of Sussex their seruants.’ And when it was reprinted, first in 1600 and then in 1611, neither bibliographic scruple nor thought of commercial advantage led the publisher to add Shakespeare’s name to the title-page.

Indeed, until 1598 none of Shakespeare’s plays that appeared in print identifies Shakespeare as its author. Not merely Titus or the early Quartos of King Henry VI, Parts 1 and 2 which could be thought immature efforts of a young playwright whose achievement did not yet merit nor permit a publisher to capitalize on his name on the title-page, but even his later and more successful plays refuse to acknowledge or exploit Shakespeare’s authorship. Romeo and Juliet appeared in 1597, identified only ‘As it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely, by the right Honourable L. of Hunsdon his seruants’; and its next two printings, in 1599 and 1609, while claiming that the text has now been ‘Newly corrected, augmented, and amended’, still make no mention of its author (or corrector), again only identifying the acting company that performed it as the source of its authority. Richard II and King Henry IV, Part 1 similarly first appear with no mention of Shakespeare on the title-page, or anywhere else for that matter.

In fact seven plays appeared before one was issued with Shakespeare’s name. In 1598 Cuthbert Burby published Love’s Labour’s Lost with the title-page identifying the play in small type as ‘Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere’. Whatever this assertion is, it is certainly no ardent proclamation of Shakespeare’s authorship. The unequivocal evidence of the early Quartos is, then, that Shakespeare had no interest in their publication and what is perhaps more surprising, that his publishers had as little interest in him.

At least the latter would soon change. The 1608 ‘Pide Bull’ Quarto (so called after the name of the shop where it was sold) of King Lear does indeed proudly assert Shakespeare’s authorship, emblazoning his name across the title-page in a typeface substantially larger than any other. But the text, it must be said, shows no sign of Shakespeare’s involvement in its publication. It is poorly printed. (It was the first play that its printer had attempted, and noticeably so.) An author overseeing the printing would have insisted on changes, but nonetheless the publisher, Nathaniel Butter, spectacularly identifies the printed play as Shakespeare’s.

What has happened is not that Shakespeare’s rights as an author had suddenly been recognized and were here being celebrated but that Shakespeare’s name was now of value to the publisher. For Butter, identifying his King Lear as ‘M. William Shak-speare: / HIS/ True Chronicle Historie of the life and / death of King LEAR’ served to differentiate his property from another play about King Lear (The True Chronicle Historie of King Leir) that had been published in 1605 and was available in the bookstalls. Shakespeare’s name functioned on the title-page at least as much to identify the play book as the play wright, though already it was becoming evident that Shakespeare’s name could sell books. As the publisher of Othello in 1622 later asserted: ‘the Authors name is sufficient to vent his worke’.

But in truth it is only in 1623 with the publication of the First Folio edition of his plays that Shakespeare truly enters English literature as an author, though this, of course, was neither his own idea nor of any direct benefit to him. He had died in 1616, seven years before the Folio appeared, and to the end showed no sign of any literary ambition for his plays. But the Folio assumes that Shakespeare is indeed an author to be read and not merely the provider of scripts to be acted. The play-texts in the Folio are stripped of their theatrical association. Unlike the early Quartos, there is no mention in the Folio that any text is ‘as it was played’, indeed, though ‘The Names of the Principall Actors in all these Playes’ are listed, Shakespeare’s own at the head of them, no acting company is ever mentioned by name; rather the texts are described, no doubt too confidently, as perfect and purely authorial, presented here exactly ‘as he conceiued them’.

It is not clear whose idea the collected volume was or even what was the precise motivation for it (beyond a general hope of making some money). The volume’s two principal publishers, Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard, apparently negotiated with two of Shakespeare’s old friends and fellow-actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, for the rights to the plays that had not yet been printed, and they then worked to secure the publishing rights to those that had. Eventually they acquired them all (except for Pericles, which had been published in a Quarto in 1609 as the work of Shakespeare, and The Two Noble Kinsmen, not published until 1634 but identified then as the work of Shakespeare and John Fletcher), and the Folio was published in 1623. It includes thirty-six plays, eighteen of which had never before appeared in print, a dedication and an epistle, prefatory verses, and an engraved title-page with a three-quarter-page portrait of Shakespeare and a facing poem.

Printing had begun early in 1622 and took about twenty-one months to complete. The volume sold for £1 with a plain calf binding, for somewhat less when more cheaply bound; and unbound, as many books were sold, it could be bought for 15s. Its very appearance in folio, a format usually reserved for theological or historical works or for collected editions of canonical authors, itself marks a major shift in the cultural positioning of Shakespeare, a shift confirmed within a few months of publication when Thomas Bodley, who, as we have seen, in 1612 forbade the collection of play-texts, accepted a copy for his library and had it bound in fine leather and stamped with the Oxford University seal.

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10 The catalogue of 35 of Shakespeare’s plays as listed in the First Folio, 1623:Troilus and Cressida is not listed

Today it seems obvious that the Folio published by Blount and Jaggard was a necessary and appropriate memorial to England’s greatest playwright, but at the time all that was clear to the publishers was that they had undertaken a complex and expensive project with no guarantee of recovering their considerable investment. In the event, of course, they did. The book sold well, and a second edition appeared only nine years later, remarkable evidence of its popularity. For later generations, with no financial stake, the book is of even greater value. Without the Folio the eighteen plays that first appeared in it might well have been lost; and without the Folio, Shakespeare might never have emerged as the singular figure of English literature he has become, for it is that book that first established Shakespeare as the author he never aspired to be.

The second Epistle to the First Folio

By the autumn of 1623 John Heminges and Henry Condell were the senior surviving members of the King’s Men. In April 1616 they and their colleague, Richard Burbage, who died in 1619, had been left small bequests in the will of William Shakespeare to buy memorial rings. The publication of the First Folio was a different kind of memorial to ‘so worthy a friend and fellow … as … our Shakespeare’, as the dead dramatist is described in the first of two epistles prefaced to the volume and signed with the names of Heminges and Condell. That epistle dedicates the book to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Lord Chamberlain, and his brother Philip, Earl of Montgomery, and calls on them to act as guardians to Shakespeare’s orphaned plays. The second epistle (reproduced here in facsimile) urges ‘the great variety of readers’ to buy ‘these plays’, which ‘have had their trial already, and stood out all appeals’ in the theatre.

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11 The second epistle ‘To the great variety of readers’, prefacing the First Folio, 1623, and signed by John Heminges and Henry Condell

The second paragraph makes several claims which have important implications for actors, readers and editors of Shakespeare. Heminges and Condell claim to have done the best they could, in the absence of their dead friend, to collect and verify the texts of his plays for publication. Three of their claims have been the source of dispute and controversy, and need some qualification. The mention of adding ‘all the rest’ to the plays already in print leads readers to expect the Folio to contain the complete plays of Shakespeare. It does not. Not only are two collaborative late plays, Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen, omitted, but the volume initially went on sale without Troilus and Cressida (as its absence from the ‘catalogue’, or table of contents, testifies). Troilus was soon added to the volume – though not to the catalogue: its late arrival is best explained as the result of difficulties experienced by Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, the principal publishers, in obtaining permission to reprint it from the copyright holder, Henry Walley. Exclusion from the Folio is accordingly not conclusive evidence that a play may not have had Shakespeare’s hand in it.

More teasing is the warning to readers against previous editions of the plays (half of which were already in print in quarto). What Heminges and Condell meant by ‘diverse stolen and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious imposters that exposed them’ has been much debated. They were clearly aware that some earlier quarto editions of plays by Shakespeare differed radically from the texts they were printing. Among those, a handful are conspicuous by the extent to which they differ from the texts printed in the Folio in length, wording, names and natures of characters, and even scenic sequence or particulars of action. They are The Taming of a Shrew (1594), The First Part of the Contention (i.e. King Henry VI, Part 2) (1594), The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York (i.e. King Henry VI, Part 3) (1595), Romeo and Juliet (1597), King Henry V (1600), Sir John Falstaff (i.e. The Merry Wives of Windsor) (1602) and Hamlet (1603). Modern scholarship (unhappily) has dubbed these the ‘bad’ Quartos. They do seem, however, to merit the description ‘maimed and deformed’, at least in relation to their Folio counterparts (or to later ‘good’ Quartos in the cases of Romeo and Hamlet).

Variation in a further group of Quartos is less radical, though often pervasive. These are King Richard III (1597), King Henry IV, Part 2 (1600), Hamlet (1604/5), King Lear (1608), Troilus and Cressida (1609) and Othello (1622). Where the seven ‘bad’ Quartos seem to demand exceptional circumstances of textual transmission, such as someone’s attempt to reconstruct them from memory, to account for their very approximate resemblance to the equivalent ‘good’ texts, the other six may be adequately accounted for as products of various usual processes of stage abridgement or adaptation, or of authorial revision, to which they may have been subjected.

What is clear is that Heminges and Condell cannot have intended a blanket condemnation of all earlier published versions, but that their focus must have been on the ‘bad’ texts and, to a lesser degree, on those plays which they could offer in texts reflecting a later stage in their evolution than that represented by the Quartos. They had no qualms about simply reprinting Quartos they found reliable, like The Merchant of Venice or Much Ado About Nothing, with the minimum of editorial intervention.

The myth of Shakespeare’s fluency in composition originates in the Folio Epistle. Where Heminges and Condell saw that fluency as a virtue, others, and especially Ben Jonson, demurred. Jonson was later to respond to the claim that Shakespeare rarely ‘blotted’ a line – that is, deleted and revised it – with the wish that he ‘had blotted a thousand’. In his own contribution to the preliminary matter of the Folio, his verses ‘To the memory of my beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare: and what he hath left us’, Jonson took pains to offer an alternative view of Shakespeare as a conscious and painstaking poetic craftsman, ready to:

                                strike the second heat

Upon the Muses’ anvil: turn the same,

      (And himself with it) that he thinks to frame;

Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn;

      For a good Poet’s made, as well as born:

And such wert thou.

Although nearly half of his plays had been printed in his lifetime, Shakespeare only became an author to be read as well as a dramatist to be performed seven years after his death, with the publication of his histories, comedies and tragedies in the First Folio of 1623. During the eighteen-year period between the closure of the theatres in 1642 and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, his plays could only be read. The first published criticism of him, in Margaret Cavendish’s Sociable Letters (1664), reflects this shift, claiming that ‘those that could Read his Playes, could not be so Foolish as to Condemn them’. The shift was radical and irreversible. By 1660, the theatrical company Shakespeare wrote for was long dispersed, though survivors would act again and some had distant or secondhand memories of him. The split between progressive revision and adaptation of the plays for theatres with new facilities and constantly changing audiences, and an increasingly conservative scholarly concern to preserve or restore the plays as reading texts had begun. Shakespeare the book and Shakespeare the dramatist were set on their divergent paths.

SHAKESPEARE’S READING AND READING SHAKESPEARE

Elizabethan playwrights worked in a repertory system which constantly demanded new plays. Their natural expedient, encouraged by a literary climate which set store by creative imitation of existing models, was to base many, even most, of their plays on familiar stories. Shakespeare was no exception, other than in the range of subjects he dramatized. Almost all his plays can be shown to follow, broadly or closely, what scholars have designated as his ‘sources’ – that is, earlier texts he had read or otherwise knew of. Often he combined material from two or more sources into a single play, particularly in his comedies. His reading was wide and multifarious: history – Greek, Roman and English; prose fiction (chiefly translated into English from continental originals); earlier plays, ancient and modern, in Latin, Italian and English; pamphlets and other ephemera – all were grist to his mill. He had favourite authors, such as Chaucer, Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney among English writers, or Montaigne, whose essays he seems to have known by the time he wrote Hamlet (about 1600). His Latin favourites were Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the comedies of Plautus, but he also knew Virgil, Seneca and Horace, and Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, written originally in Greek, were well known to him in Thomas North’s English translation. Playwrights of his own and the previous generation, notably John Lyly, Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene and Christopher Marlowe, had much to offer him by way of example, and he must also have learned from his interaction with such rivals as Ben Jonson and from his collaborators, John Fletcher and (less certainly) Thomas Middleton. In addition he was, as an actor, deeply immersed in the repertoires of his successive companies.

Reading Shakespeare four hundred years later, we encounter the English language of a period now described as Early Modern, before any notion of correctness of usage, whether of grammar, syntax, spelling or punctuation, had acquired wide currency, let alone authority. The primary language of education, both in schools and universities, was still Latin, a language which required the formal understanding of its rules and structures. Shakespeare had his own schooling in Latin, a schooling which included the standard subjects of grammar, logic and (most important of the three for an aspiring poet) rhetoric, the art of appropriate use of language for all practical and literary purposes. The fluidity of English in the late sixteenth century was a gift to a linguistically inventive generation of writers. Shakespeare did as much as any to exploit and extend the wide range of literary styles and linguistic registers available to him. His characters speak in all styles, from the artificial rhyming verse of Love’s Labour’s Lost or Romeo and Juliet to the uneducated prose of Dogberry or the regional dialect of Fluellen. It was to his plays that Samuel Johnson turned, while compiling his great Dictionary (1755), for illustrations of ‘the diction of common life’.

Blank verse, already the norm of dramatic language in the 1580s, was adopted by Shakespeare and developed into the flexible and versatile medium of his Jacobean plays. The forging of a dramatic prose which could range from low comedy to Hamlet’s philosophical musings or the inexhaustible improvisations of Falstaff was among his major stylistic achievements. The conciseness which is so marked a feature of his dramatic writing was learned, in part, from the experience of writing sonnets.

Readers of Shakespeare have long needed the assistance of a glossary to help with the unfamiliar vocabulary or idiom and the semantic changes which constitute one initial obstacle to full enjoyment and understanding. The glossary in this volume is based on the commentaries in the Arden editions whose texts are reprinted in it. It aims at giving answers to readers’ most likely questions but makes no attempt at full explanation of the sources of difficulty. Readers should always remember that Shakespeare’s plays were written to be heard, not read – least of all silently read. The attempt at full understanding of linguistic detail and subtlety (if such an aim were attainable) should always be seen as secondary to the experience of the play as a whole. Fuller comprehension of detail will follow with subsequent rereadings.

AFTERLIFE

While ‘Shakespeare’ has been a stable element in English culture for four hundred years, and has been successfully exported to numerous other cultures, there is considerable variation in the reputation and influence of individual works. Each generation seems able to find something (its own image?) in ‘Shakespeare’, but it has always been possible to choose a different text or a different interpretation. Some plays, such as Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew, have an almost continuous history of performance and appear regularly on school and college syllabuses; others, such as Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida and Pericles, are rarely either performed or set for study; others again, such as Cymbeline, King John and King Henry VIII, were far more popular in the past than they are today. During his lifetime it would seem that Shakespeare’s most highly esteemed tragedy was Titus Andronicus; for the next 350 years it was Hamlet; since about 1960 it has been King Lear. There is a similar degree of variation in the extent to which works have been adapted, translated and filmed. Broadly speaking, the ‘afterlife’ of the plays and poems has depended on and can be measured by four things: publication, performance, criticism, and adaptation and creative influence.

Publication

Publication is taken first as even performers need to read plays before they stage them. About half of Shakespeare’s plays were published during his lifetime as single pocketsize paperback volumes known from their method of printing and small size as Quartos. All the plays in the present volume apart from Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen were printed (or reprinted) after his death in the large-format 1623 First Folio. Until 1709 two separate traditions of publication continued independently of each other: the First Folio was followed by the Second (1632), Third (1663) and Fourth (1685) Folios – ‘literary’ collections of the almost-complete works which found their way into the libraries of individuals and institutions – while many of the Quartos were reprinted as play-texts, used by actors and bought by playgoers.

In 1709 Nicholas Rowe published The Works of Mr William Shakespear, Revised and Corrected in eight volumes, the first of a line of eighteenth-century edited texts. He based his text on the Folio but also began the tradition of including passages which had previously appeared only in the Quartos. He and later eighteenth-century editors also provided commentaries in which they often disagreed with each other over variant readings, emendations and interpretations. These editions were usually published by subscription and were relatively expensive, but cheap acting editions continued to be available, for example the rival sets published in the 1730s by Robert Walker and Jacob Tonson or Bell’s Shakespeare (1773-4). The nineteenth century saw the publication of cheaper mass-market texts and, after the Bowdlers’ Family Shakespeare (1807), a proliferation of expurgated texts explicitly aimed at women and children. In the twentieth century, Shakespeare continued to be big business for publishers and editors, with hot competition for school, college and university markets, and the consequent provision both of popular versions of Shakespeare and of increasingly specialist series such as Shakespeare in Performance, which provides detailed annotation of stage business, and Shakespearean Originals, which offers reprints of the earliest texts.

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12 The three witches in the television cartoon version of Macbeth (1993)

Shakespeare has also, of course, been translated into many languages. Some translations have become ‘classics’ in their own right – François-Victor Hugo’s translations into French, August Wilhelm Schlegel’s translations into German, and Boris Pasternak’s translations into Russian – but it has also seemed necessary for each generation to produce new translations, just as each generation of English speakers produces new editions.

Performance

Our records of performances in Shakespeare’s lifetime are poor, possibly because of the fire which destroyed the first Globe Theatre (and presumably its papers) in 1613. The title-pages of play-texts sometimes give misleading information about whether plays were (or were not) performed and where; sometimes we have to rely on chance diary entries or on what we can deduce from passing references by contemporaries – evidence for pre-1623 performances is provided in the introductions to individual plays in this volume. We do know that the plays were not performed at all after 1642 when the theatres were closed during the Civil War and the Commonwealth period, but that they returned as staple fare when the theatres reopened at the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. At this time Shakespeare was popular but not as popular as the Jacobean dramatists Beaumont and Fletcher. Two significant innovations in 1660 were the use of stage scenery and the introduction of female performers; before 1640 women’s roles had been played by boys.

The Restoration theatres were relatively small, indoor and expensive, attracting patrons from upper- and middle-class circles. In this they were like the Blackfriars Theatre, used by the King’s Men before the Civil War, and unlike the large outdoor Globe which had cheap standing room for those who could not afford a seat. Attendance at a Shakespearean performance had thus become more of a minority pursuit, though touring companies continued to flourish in the British provinces and abroad in the eighteenth and nineteenth and indeed twentieth centuries. Shakespeare reached a mass market again with the invention of film and video in the twentieth century. The versions performed in the Restoration and in the eighteenth century were regularly cut (partly in order to allow time for changing the scenery and trimming the candles) and often substantially rewritten. Despite a first attempt by the famous actor David Garrick in the mid-eighteenth century to restore more of Shakespeare’s lines, the performance tradition continued to give audiences far less of the texts than was available in published versions.

A fashion for historical accuracy and heavily pictorial staging in the nineteenth century further weighted the plays with unnecessary baggage, and it was not until the 1880s that, under the influence of William Poel, a serious attempt was made to return to fluid ‘Elizabethan’ staging with minimal props and scenery. In Britain in the twentieth century the performance of Shakespeare became institutionalized with the foundation of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (originally built 1879, rebuilt after a fire in 1932) and later, in 1961, of the Royal Shakespeare Company, which currently performs in three theatres in Stratford-upon-Avon and two in London and undertakes national and international tours.

Shakespeare’s plays were widely performed in Europe from the very beginning (English actors toured to Germany, Poland and other countries), and a strong acting tradition grew up in America in the nineteenth century, but the silent cinema brought a new and powerful means of internationalization. Dozens of silent versions were made, in America, England, Germany, France and Italy, usually abbreviating the plots but often finding inventive ways of replacing Shakespeare’s language with visual images. This tradition continued into the sound period after 1929 when, perhaps ironically, it has been precisely those films which have not been ‘hampered’ by Shakespeare’s text which have been seen as the most successful screen versions: Akira Kurosawa’s Japanese Macbeth (Throne of Blood, 1957), for example, and Grigori Kozintsev’s Russian Hamlet (1964) and King Lear (1970). A few English-language directors have nevertheless managed to make creditable films, notably Laurence Olivier (Henry V, 1944, Hamlet, 1948, Richard III, 1955), Orson Welles (Macbeth, 1948, Othello, 1952, Chimes at Midnight (the Falstaff plays), 1966) and Kenneth Branagh (Henry V, 1989, Much Ado About Nothing, 1993, Hamlet, 1996). Many Shakespeare films are commercially available on video; the British Broadcasting Company and the American Time-Life Corporation sponsored a series of the complete works for television from 1979 to 1985 which, while proving uneven aesthetically, has become an invaluable resource for those without access to live performances.

Criticism

The first person to publish a critical essay on Shakespeare was Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, in 1664. She was a poet, dramatist and essayist, and in effect inaugurated a tradition of critical writing on Shakespeare by people who were themselves creative writers: John Dryden, Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and T.S. Eliot are examples of such influential critics whose work is still read today. While from the beginning Shakespeare was highly praised for his dramatic skills, particularly in the construction of lifelike characters, late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers were often critical of what they saw as his grammatical incorrectness, his undisciplined elaboration of metaphors and his carelessness with plotting and historical accuracy. During the nineteenth century the general tone became more adulatory and the focus on character increased: many studies treated Shakespeare’s men and women as if they were real people or at least characters in realistic novels. The publication by famous performers of their reminiscences enhanced this tendency. At the same time, the introduction of English Literature as a subject for study at universities brought about a professionalization of criticism and resulted in the situation we have today where most Shakespeare criticism is written by people with full-time academic posts in university departments of English or Drama.

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13 David Garrick in four of his most famous Shakespearean roles, from a contemporary engraving

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14 Ellen Terry as Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor

Modern criticism is diverse and alarmingly prolific: the American journal Shakespeare Quarterly publishes listings which show that around two hundred items (editions, translations, books and essays) are currently published every year on King Lear, and around four hundred on Hamlet. As in the past, critics today aim in various ways to elucidate Shakespeare for audiences and readers. They study his language and the literary and dramatic conventions of his time. They explore the circumstances in which the texts were originally produced – how and where they were performed, how they were copied and printed. They are also perhaps more attentive than their predecessors were to the circumstances in which the texts are continually reproduced – how and why we keep rereading and even rewriting Shakespeare for our own purposes. Dominant in recent criticism are issues of power and gender: ‘power’ in the sense of Shakespeare’s relation to and analysis of early modern political structures and also in the sense of the power of ‘Shakespeare’ as a cultural artefact; ‘gender’ in the sense of his representations of gender identity and sexual relations when seen from the perspective of the continuing struggle of women, gay men and lesbians for acceptance and equality.

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15 A modern production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1994)

Adaptation and creative influence

While he was still alive, some of Shakespeare’s works were already exerting an influence on other writers. John Fletcher’s play The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed (1611) is a ‘sequel’ to The Taming of the Shrew, and Fletcher and Francis Beaumont’s Philaster (1609) could not have been written without Hamlet; if we read the plays of the next generation of dramatists such as John Ford, Philip Massinger, Thomas Middleton and John Webster, we keep encountering echoes of Shakespeare in characters, situations, lines and phrases. In the Restoration period playwrights ‘adapted’ his plays for their own stage by cutting them and ‘improving’ the language, correcting Shakespeare’s grammar and clarifying his difficult metaphors. They also began to rewrite the plays substantially, producing hybrids which are clearly dependent on their Shakespearean originals but sometimes very different in their handling of the plots. John Dryden and William Davenant’s 1667 The Enchanted Island, for example, a version of The Tempest, introduces a sister for Miranda and Hippolito, a man who has never seen a woman; Dryden’s 1678 All for Love is a version of Antony and Cleopatra in which Antony’s wife Octavia confronts Cleopatra (who never wavers in her commitment to Antony); Nahum Tate’s 1681 King Lear leaves Lear and Gloucester alive at the end and Cordelia about to marry Edgar.

In later centuries, the plays inspired works in other genres: operas, novels, films and musicals. Neither Henry Purcell’s opera The Fairy Queen (1692) nor Benjamin Britten’s opera (1960) would exist without A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Hamlet inspired countless works in the nineteenth century from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795) and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1860-1) to Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull (1896); such musicals as Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate (1948) and Jerome Robbins’s and Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story (1957) depend on The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet respectively. In recent times King Lear has inspired Akira Kurosawa’s film Ran (1984) and Jane Smiley’s novel A Thousand Acres (1991); The Tempest has inspired Suniti Namjoshi’s poem sequence Snapshots of Caliban (1984) and Marina Warner’s novel Indigo (1992).

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16 (above) Sir Henry Beerbohm Tree in the surviving silent film fragment of King John, 1899

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17 (right) Laurence Olivier as the King in the 1944 film of Henry V

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18 (below) Akira Kurosawa’s Japanese film version of Macbeth, Throne of Blood, 1957

Shakespeare’s fame and influence began early and show no sign of abating. In the volume of his notebooks covering the years 1661-3, John Ward, vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon from 1662 to 1681, wrote of his most famous deceased parishioner:

I have heard that Mr. Shakespeare was a natural wit, without any art at all; he frequented the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage with 2 plays every year, and for that had an allowance so large, that he spent at the rate of a thousand pounds a year, as I have heard.

He continued with a note to himself: ‘Remember to peruse Shakespeare’s plays, and be versed in them, that I may not be ignorant in that matter’. We can think of no better advice to give our readers, and to repeat with it the encouragement of his first editors inviting the public to ‘read and censure’ their volume of the collected works. ‘Do so’, they exhort frankly, ‘but buy it first’:

Then, how odd soever your brains be, or your wisdoms, make your licence the same, and spare not. Judge your six penn’orth, your shilling’s worth, your five shillings’ worth at a time, or higher, so you rise to the just rates, and welcome. But whatever you do, buy. Censure will not drive a trade, or make the jack go. And though you be a magistrate of wit, and sit on the stage at Blackfriars or the Cockpit to arraign plays daily, know: these plays have had their trial already and stood out all appeals, and do now come forth quitted rather by a decree of court than any purchased letters of commendation.

Like Heminges and Condell and all our distinguished predecessor editors, we urge you to buy and read or reread Shakespeare, confident that ‘if then you do not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger not to understand him’.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint

On the evidence of Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia, by 1598 Shakespeare was known to have written ‘sugared sonnets’ and to have circulated them among his ‘private friends’. In 1599 four sonnets by him were printed in The Passionate Pilgrim together with a further collection of lyrical poems, several of which, despite a general title-page attribution of the small book to ‘W. Shakespeare’, are known to be the work of other poets. Two of those sonnets had already been printed in 1598, in the Quarto of Love’s Labour’s Lost, the other two were to be numbered 138 and 144 in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, printed together with A Lover’s Complaint in 1609. Surviving manuscript copies of various sonnets probably all date from later than Shakespeare’s death in 1616 and none is earlier than the 1609 edition. The celebrated dedication of the Sonnets by their publisher T[homas] T[horpe] to ‘Mr. W.H.’ as ‘only begetter of these ensuing sonnets’ will continue to provoke conjecture and controversy. The most plausible identifications of ‘W.H.’ are: William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, which fits if the poems are of early seventeenth-century date; Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, which only makes sense if they were written in the early 1590s; and William Shakespeare –assuming that the ‘H’ is a misprint for ‘S’.

Though other views have long prevailed, the Sonnets can be seen as an authorized publication in which the 154 sonnets appear in a significant order determined by Shakespeare, and the Complaint (whose characters and situation bear some resemblance to those in Troilus, Othello, All’s Well and Measure for Measure) is also a planned feature of the volume. Few of the sonnets admit of certain dating, but 138 and 144 were written before 1599 and 107 may well relate to the death of Queen Elizabeth I in the spring of 1603 and to the coronation of King James I in the following spring. This likelihood is a caution against too ready an assumption that all the sonnets must have been written in the mid-1590s, at the height of the sonneteering vogue. The final line of 94 occurs also in a play called The Reign of King Edward III, printed in 1596, but it remains unclear which was the debtor, and the possibility of common authorship cannot be ruled out.

The relationships and narrative implicit in Shakespeare’s sonnets contrast strongly with the conventional pattern in which courtship of a woman by a male lover leads to acceptance (as in Spenser’s Amoretti (1594)), or to a final rejection (as in Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella (1595)), or to the death of the lady and the continuance of celebration by her lover (as in the Canzoniere of Petrarch (1358–74)). Shakespeare’s sonnets are poems of introspection in which no character but the poet has a name, which makes it easy for the reader to identify with him. Sonnets 1-126 are mainly addressed to a man younger and of higher social standing than the poet; sonnets 127-52 to an unfaithful mistress, whose other lovers include the young man. The last two sonnets, on the traditional theme of Cupid and Diana, stand apart from this pattern. In the Complaint, a young woman abandoned by a lying and faithless lover recounts her story to a stranger, re-enacting the seduction to which she concludes that she would still be vulnerable.

The earliest reprint of the sonnets, in the volume of Shakespeare’s poems published by John Benson in 1640, rearranged them, changed many male pronouns to their female equivalents and added titles describing them in terms of address to a mistress. Interest in the sonnets waned until 1780, when Edmond Malone republished them in an influential edition. Nineteenth-century attempts to read them as Shakespeare’s amatory autobiography have persisted throughout the twentieth century, but without reaching any stable conclusions. To Wordsworth’s claim that ‘With this key, Shakespeare unlocked his heart’, Robert Browning’s rejoinder was, ‘Did Shakespeare? If so – the less Shakespeare he’. Oscar Wilde’s notorious interest in the sonnets as homosexual love poems articulated a source of unease felt by many scholars and readers since 1780 and led to half a century of nervous evasion of any such unseemly possibility. The question that will always divide opinion is whether or not, and if so in what sense, these poems reflect the lived experience of their playwright-poet.

The Arden text is based on the 1609 First Quarto.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

TO. THE. ONLY. BEGETTER. OF.
THESE. ENSUING. SONNETS.
Mr. W.H. ALL. HAPPINESS.
AND. THAT. ETERNITY.
PROMISED.
BY.
OUR. EVER-LIVING. POET.
WISHETH.
THE. WELL-WISHING.
ADVENTURER. IN.
SETTING.
FORTH.

T.T.

1

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease

His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

2

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,

Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now,

Will be a tattered weed of small worth held:

Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,

Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,

To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,

Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

How much more praise deserved thy beauty’s use

If thou couldst answer, ‘This fair child of mine

Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse’,

Proving his beauty by succession thine:

This were to be new made when thou art old,

And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

3

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another,

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose uneared womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime:

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,

Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

But if thou live remembered not to be,

Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

4

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?

Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,

And being frank, she lends to those are free:

Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

The bounteous largesse given thee to give?

Profitless usurer, why dost thou use

So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?

For having traffic with thyself alone,

Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive;

Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,

What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,

Which used, lives th’executor to be.

5

Those hours that with gentle work did frame

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell

Will play the tyrants to the very same,

And that unfair which fairly doth excel.

For never-resting time leads summer on

To hideous winter, and confounds him there,

Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness everywhere;

Then were not summer’s distillation left,

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,

Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was.

But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,

Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

6

Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface

In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled:

Make sweet some vial, treasure thou some place

With beauty’s treasure, ere it be self-killed.

That use is not forbidden usury

Which happies those that pay the willing loan;

That’s for thyself to breed another thee,

Or ten times happier, be it ten for one:

Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,

If ten of thine ten times refigured thee;

Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,

Leaving thee living in posterity?

Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair

To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.

7

Lo, in the Orient when the gracious light

Lifts up his burning head, each under eye

Doth homage to his new appearing sight,

Serving with looks his sacred majesty;

And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,

Resembling strong youth in his middle age,

Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,

Attending on his golden pilgrimage:

But when from high-most pitch with weary car

Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,

The eyes, fore-duteous, now converted are

From his low tract, and look another way:

So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,

Unlooked on diest, unless thou get a son.

8

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?

Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy;

Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,

Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?

If the true concord of well-tuned sounds

By unions married, do offend thine ear,

They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear:

Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,

Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother,

Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:

Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,

Sings this to thee: ‘Thou single wilt prove none.’

9

Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye

That thou consum’st thyself in single life?

Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,

The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;

The world will be thy widow, and still weep

That thou no form of thee hast left behind,

When every private widow well may keep,

By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind:

Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend,

Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;

But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,

And kept unused the user so destroys it:

No love toward others in that bosom sits

That on himself such murd’rous shame commits.

10

For shame deny that thou bear’st love to any,

Who for thyself art so unprovident;

Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,

But that thou none lov’st is most evident:

For thou art so possessed with murd’rous hate

That ’gainst thyself thou stick’st not to conspire,

Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate

Which to repair should be thy chief desire:

O change thy thought, that I may change my mind;

Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?

Be as thy presence is, gracious and kind;

Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove,

Make thee another self for love of me,

That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

11

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st

In one of thine, from that which thou departest;

And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st

Thou mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest;

Herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase;

Without this, folly, age and cold decay.

If all were minded so, the times should cease,

And threescore year would make the world away:

Let those whom nature hath not made for store,

Harsh, featureless and rude, barrenly perish;

Look whom she best endowed, she gave the more,

Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:

She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby

Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

12

When I do count the clock that tells the time,

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;

When I behold the violet past prime,

And sable curls all silvered o’er with white:

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,

And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves

Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard:

Then of thy beauty do I question make,

That thou among the wastes of time must go,

Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,

And die as fast as they see others grow,

And nothing ’gainst time’s scythe can make defence

Save breed to brave him, when he takes thee hence.

13

O that you were yourself! But, love, you are

No longer yours, than you yourself here live;

Against this coming end you should prepare,

And your sweet semblance to some other give:

So should that beauty which you hold in lease

Find no determination; then you were

Yourself again after yourself’s decease,

When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.

Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,

Which husbandry in honour might uphold

Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day

And barren rage of death’s eternal cold?

O none but unthrifts, dear my love you know:

You had a father; let your son say so.

14

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck;

And yet, methinks, I have astronomy,

But not to tell of good or evil luck,

Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality;

Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,

Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind;

Or say with princes if it shall go well

By aught predict that I in heaven find;

But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,

And, constant stars, in them I read such art

As truth and beauty shall together thrive

If from thyself, to store thou wouldst convert:

Or else of thee this I prognosticate,

Thy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.

15

When I consider everything that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment;

That this huge stage presenteth naught but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase,

Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky,

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

And wear their brave state out of memory:

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay

Sets you, most rich in youth, before my sight,

Where wasteful time debateth with decay

To change your day of youth to sullied night:

And all in war with time for love of you

As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

16

But wherefore do not you a mightier way

Make war upon this bloody tyrant, time,

And fortify yourself in your decay

With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?

Now stand you on the top of happy hours,

And many maiden gardens, yet unset,

With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,

Much liker than your painted counterfeit:

So should the lines of life that life repair,

Which this, time’s pencil or my pupil pen,

Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,

Can make you live yourself in eyes of men:

To give away yourself keeps yourself still,

And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.

17

Who will believe my verse in time to come,

If it were filled with your most high deserts?

Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb,

Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

The age to come would say, ‘This poet lies;

Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.’

So should my papers (yellowed with their age)

Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,

And your true rights be termed a poet’s rage,

And stretched metre of an antique song;

But were some child of yours alive that time,

You should live twice: in it, and in my rhyme.

18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

19

Devouring time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,

And burn the long-lived Phoenix in her blood;

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,

And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed time,

To the wide world and all her fading sweets:

But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,

O carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,

Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;

Him in thy course untainted do allow

For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.

Yet do thy worst, old Time, despite thy wrong,

My love shall in my verse ever live young.

20

A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted

Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;

A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted

With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,

Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth;

And for a woman wert thou first created,

Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,

And by addition me of thee defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing:

But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,

Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.

21

So is it not with me as with that Muse,

Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,

Who heaven itself for ornament doth use,

And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,

Making a couplement of proud compare

With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems;

With April’s first-born flowers and all things rare

That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems;

O let me true in love but truly write,

And then believe me: my love is as fair

As any mother’s child, though not so bright

As those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air:

Let them say more that like of hearsay well,

I will not praise, that purpose not to sell.

22

My glass shall not persuade me I am old

So long as youth and thou are of one date;

But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,

Then look I death my days should expiate:

For all that beauty that doth cover thee

Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,

Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me;

How can I then be elder than thou art?

O therefore love be of thyself so wary

As I not for myself, but for thee will,

Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary

As tender nurse her babe from faring ill:

Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;

Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

23

As an unperfect actor on the stage,

Who with his fear is put besides his part;

Or some fierce thing, replete with too much rage,

Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;

So I, for fear of trust, forget to say

The perfect ceremony of love’s right,

And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,

O’ercharged with burden of mine own love’s might:

O let my books be then the eloquence

And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,

Who plead for love, and look for recompense,

More than that tongue that more hath more expressed:

O learn to read what silent love hath writ!

To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.

24

Mine eye hath played the painter, and hath steeled

Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart;

My body is the frame wherein ’tis held,

And perspective it is best painter’s art;

For through the painter must you see his skill,

To find where your true image pictured lies,

Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,

That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes:

Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:

Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me

Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun

Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;

Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art:

They draw but what they see, know not the heart.

25

Let those who are in favour with their stars

Of public honour and proud titles boast,

Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,

Unlooked for joy in that I honour most;

Great princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread

But as the marigold at the sun’s eye,

And in themselves their pride lies buried,

For at a frown they in their glory die.

The painful warrior famoused for worth,

After a thousand victories once foiled,

Is from the book of honour razed quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:

Then happy I, that love and am beloved

Where I may not remove, nor be removed.

26

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage

Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit:

To thee I send this written embassage,

To witness duty, not to show my wit;

Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine

May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it;

But that I hope some good conceit of thine

In thy soul’s thought (all naked) will bestow it:

Till whatsoever star that guides my moving

Points on me graciously with fair aspect,

And puts apparel on my tattered loving,

To show me worthy of thy sweet respect;

Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;

Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.

27

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,

The dear repose for limbs with travail tired;

But then begins a journey in my head

To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:

For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,

Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,

Looking on darkness which the blind do see;

Save that my soul’s imaginary sight

Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,

Which like a jewel hung in ghastly night

Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new:

Lo, thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,

For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

28

How can I then return in happy plight

That am debarred the benefit of rest?

When day’s oppression is not eased by night,

But day by night and night by day oppressed,

And each, though enemies to either’s reign,

Do in consent shake hands to torture me,

The one by toil, the other to complain

How far I toil, still farther off from thee.

I tell the day to please him, thou art bright,

And dost him grace, when clouds do blot the heaven;

So flatter I the swart-complexioned night,

When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even;

But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,

And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger.

29

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heav’n with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising,

From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste;

Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow)

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,

And moan th’expense of many a vanished sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay, as if not paid before;

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

31

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts

Which I, by lacking, have supposed dead;

And there reigns love, and all love’s loving parts,

And all those friends which I thought buried.

How many a holy and obsequious tear

Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye,

As interest of the dead, which now appear

But things removed that hidden in thee lie:

Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,

Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,

Who all their parts of me to thee did give;

That due of many, now is thine alone.

Their images I loved, I view in thee,

And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.

32

If thou survive my well-contented day,

When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover,

And shalt by fortune once more re-survey

These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover:

Compare them with the bett’ring of the time,

And though they be outstripped by every pen,

Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,

Exceeded by the height of happier men.

O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:

‘Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,

A dearer birth than this his love had brought,

To march in ranks of better equipage:

But since he died and poets better prove,

Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love.’

33

Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

Anon permit the basest clouds to ride

With ugly rack on his celestial face,

And from the forlorn world his visage hide,

Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:

Even so my sun one early morn did shine

With all triumphant splendour on my brow;

But out alack, he was but one hour mine,

The region cloud hath masked him from me now.

Yet him for this, my love no whit disdaineth:

Suns of the world may stain, when heaven’s sun staineth.

34

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day

And make me travail forth without my cloak,

To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way,

Hiding thy brav’ry in their rotten smoke?

’Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,

To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,

For no man well of such a salve can speak

That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace;

Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;

Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss;

Th’offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief

To him that bears the strong offence’s loss.

Ah, but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,

And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.

35

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done;

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;

Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,

And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

All men make faults, and even I, in this,

Authorizing thy trespass with compare,

Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,

Excusing these sins more than these sins are:

For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense;

Thy adverse party is thy advocate,

And ’gainst myself a lawful plea commence:

Such civil war is in my love and hate

That I an accessory needs must be

To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

36

Let me confess that we two must be twain,

Although our undivided loves are one;

So shall those blots that do with me remain,

Without thy help, by me be borne alone.

In our two loves there is but one respect,

Though in our lives a separable spite;

Which, though it alter not love’s sole effect,

Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight.

I may not evermore acknowledge thee,

Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,

Nor thou with public kindness honour me,

Unless thou take that honour from thy name:

But do not so; I love thee in such sort,

As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

37

As a decrepit father takes delight

To see his active child do deeds of youth,

So I, made lame by fortune’s dearest spite,

Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth:

For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,

Or any of these all, or all, or more,

Entitled in thy parts do crowned sit,

I make my love engrafted to this store:

So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,

Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give

That I in thy abundance am sufficed,

And by a part of all thy glory live:

Look what is best, that best I wish in thee;

This wish I have, then ten times happy me.

38

How can my Muse want subject to invent

While thou dost breathe, that pour’st into my verse

Thine own sweet argument, too excellent

For every vulgar paper to rehearse?

O give thyself the thanks, if aught in me

Worthy perusal stand against thy sight:

For who’s so dumb, that cannot write to thee,

When thou thyself dost give invention light?

Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth

Than those old nine which rhymers invocate;

And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth

Eternal numbers to outlive long date.

If my slight Muse do please these curious days,

The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.

39

O how thy worth with manners may I sing,

When thou art all the better part of me?

What can mine own praise to mine own self bring,

And what is’t but mine own, when I praise thee?

Even for this, let us divided live,

And our dear love lose name of single one,

That by this separation I may give

That due to thee which thou deserv’st alone.

O absence, what a torment wouldst thou prove,

Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave

To entertain the time with thoughts of love,

Which time and thoughts so sweetly dost deceive,

And that thou teachest how to make one twain

By praising him here who doth hence remain.

40

Take all my loves, my love; yea, take them all;

What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?

No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;

All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more:

Then if for my love thou my love receivest,

I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest;

But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest

By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.

I do forgive thy robb’ry, gentle thief,

Although thou steal thee all my poverty;

And yet love knows it is a greater grief

To bear love’s wrong, than hate’s known injury.

Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,

Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.

41

Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits

When I am sometime absent from thy heart,

Thy beauty and thy years full well befits;

For still temptation follows where thou art.

Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won;

Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;

And when a woman woos, what woman’s son

Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed?

Ay me, but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,

And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth

Who lead thee in their riot even there

Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:

Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,

Thine by thy beauty being false to me.

42

That thou hast her it is not all my grief,

And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;

That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,

A loss in love that touches me more nearly.

Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye:

Thou dost love her, because thou knowst I love her,

And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,

Suff ’ring my friend for my sake to approve her;

If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain,

And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;

Both find each other, and I lose both twain,

And both for my sake lay on me this cross:

But here’s the joy, my friend and I are one;

Sweet flattery! Then she loves but me alone.

43

When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see;

For all the day they view things unrespected,

But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,

And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.

Then thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright,

How would thy shadow’s form form happy show

To the clear day with thy much clearer light,

When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so?

How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made

By looking on thee in the living day,

When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade

Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay?

All days are nights to see till I see thee,

And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

44

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,

Injurious distance should not stop my way;

For then, despite of space, I would be brought

From limits far remote, where thou dost stay;

No matter then although my foot did stand

Upon the farthest earth removed from thee,

For nimble thought can jump both sea and land

As soon as think the place where he would be.

But ah, thought kills me, that I am not thought,

To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,

But that so much of earth and water wrought,

I must attend time’s leisure with my moan;

Receiving naughts by elements so slow

But heavy tears, badges of either’s woe.

45

The other two, slight air, and purging fire,

Are both with thee, wherever I abide:

The first my thought, the other my desire,

These, present absent, with swift motion slide;

For when these quicker elements are gone

In tender embassy of love to thee,

My life being made of four, with two alone

Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy,

Until life’s composition be recured

By those swift messengers returned from thee

Who even but now come back again assured

Of thy fair health, recounting it to me.

This told, I joy; but then no longer glad,

I send them back again and straight grow sad.

46

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war

How to divide the conquest of thy sight;

Mine eye, my heart thy picture’s sight would bar;

My heart, mine eye the freedom of that right;

My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,

A closet never pierced with crystal eyes;

But the defendant doth that plea deny,

And says in him thy fair appearance lies.

To ’cide this title is empanelled

A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,

And by their verdict is determined

The clear eyes’ moiety, and the dear heart’s part:

As thus, mine eyes’ due is thy outward part,

And my heart’s right, thy inward love of heart.

47

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,

And each doth good turns now unto the other;

When that mine eye is famished for a look,

Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,

With my love’s picture then my eye doth feast,

And to the painted banquet bids my heart;

Another time mine eye is my heart’s guest,

And in his thoughts of love doth share a part.

So either by thy picture or my love,

Thyself away, art present still with me:

For thou no further than my thoughts canst move,

And I am still with them, and they with thee;

Or if they sleep, thy picture in my sight

Awakes my heart to heart’s and eye’s delight.

48

How careful was I, when I took my way,

Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,

That to my use it might unused stay

From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust;

But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,

Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,

Thou best of dearest, and mine only care,

Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.

Thee have I not locked up in any chest,

Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,

Within the gentle closure of my breast,

From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part;

And even thence thou wilt be stol’n, I fear;

For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.

49

Against that time, if ever that time come,

When I shall see thee frown on my defects;

Whenas thy love hath cast his utmost sum,

Called to that audit by advised respects;

Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,

And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye;

When love, converted from the thing it was,

Shall reasons find of settled gravity;

Against that time do I ensconce me here,

Within the knowledge of mine own desert,

And this my hand against myself uprear,

To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:

To leave poor me, thou hast the strength of laws,

Since why to love, I can allege no cause.

50

How heavy do I journey on the way

When what I seek, my weary travel’s end,

Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,

‘Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.’

The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,

Plods dully on to bear that weight in me,

As if by some instinct the wretch did know

His rider loved not speed being made from thee:

The bloody spur cannot provoke him on

That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,

Which heavily he answers with a groan,

More sharp to me than spurring to his side,

For that same groan doth put this in my mind:

My grief lies onward and my joy behind.

51

Thus can my love excuse the slow offence

Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed:

From where thou art, why should I haste me thence?

Till I return, of posting is no need.

O what excuse will my poor beast then find,

When swift extremity can seem but slow?

Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind;

In winged speed no motion shall I know;

Then can no horse with my desire keep pace;

Therefore desire, of perfect’st love being made,

Shall neigh no dull flesh in his fiery race,

But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade:

Since from thee going he went wilful slow,

Towards thee I’ll run, and give him leave to go.

52

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key

Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,

The which he will not every hour survey,

For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure;

Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,

Since, seldom coming, in the long year set,

Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,

Or captain jewels in the carcanet.

So is the time that keeps you as my chest,

Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,

To make some special instant special blessed

By new unfolding his imprisoned pride.

Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope,

Being had, to triumph; being lacked, to hope.

53

What is your substance, whereof are you made,

That millions of strange shadows on you tend?

Since every one hath every one one shade,

And you, but one, can every shadow lend;

Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit

Is poorly imitated after you;

On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set

And you in Grecian tires are painted new;

Speak of the spring, and foison of the year:

The one doth shadow of your beauty show,

The other as your bounty doth appear,

And you in every blessed shape we know.

In all external grace you have some part,

But you like none, none you, for constant heart.

54

O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!

The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem

For that sweet odour which doth in it live;

The canker blooms have full as deep a dye

As the perfumed tincture of the roses,

Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,

When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses;

But for their virtue only is their show

They live unwooed, and unrespected fade,

Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;

Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made;

And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth;

When that shall vade, by verse distils your truth.

55

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire, shall burn

The living record of your memory:

’Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity,

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So till the judgement that yourself arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

56

Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said

Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,

Which but today by feeding is allayed,

Tomorrow sharpened in his former might;

So, love, be thou; although today thou fill

Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fullness,

Tomorrow see again, and do not kill

The spirit of love with a perpetual dullness;

Let this sad interim like the ocean be

Which parts the shore, where two contracted new

Come daily to the banks, that when they see

Return of love, more blessed may be the view;

Or call it winter, which being full of care

Makes summer’s welcome thrice more wished, more rare.

57

Being your slave, what should I do but tend

Upon the hours and times of your desire?

I have no precious time at all to spend,

Nor services to do, till you require;

Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour

Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,

Nor think the bitterness of absence sour

When you have bid your servant once adieu;

Nor dare I question with my jealous thought

Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,

But like a sad slave stay and think of naught,

Save, where you are, how happy you make those.

So true a fool is love, that in your will,

Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

58

That god forbid, that made me first your slave,

I should in thought control your times of pleasure,

Or at your hand th’account of hours to crave,

Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure.

O let me suffer, being at your beck,

Th’imprisoned absence of your liberty,

And patience tame, to sufferance bide each check,

Without accusing you of injury.

Be where you list, your charter is so strong

That you yourself may privilege your time

To what you will; to you it doth belong

Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.

I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,

Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.

59

If there be nothing new, but that which is

Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,

Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss

The second burden of a former child?

O that record could with a backward look

Even of five hundred courses of the sun

Show me your image in some antique book,

Since mind at first in character was done,

That I might see what the old world could say

To this composed wonder of your frame;

Whether we are mended, or whe’er better they,

Or whether revolution be the same.

O sure I am, the wits of former days

To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

60

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end,

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity, once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity; wherewith being crowned

Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight,

And time, that gave, doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,

And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow;

Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.

And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,

Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

61

Is it thy will thy image should keep open

My heavy eyelids to the weary night?

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken

While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?

Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from thee

So far from home into my deeds to pry,

To find out shames and idle hours in me,

The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?

O no, thy love, though much, is not so great;

It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,

Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,

To play the watchman ever for thy sake.

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,

From me far off, with others all too near.

62

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,

And all my soul, and all my every part;

And for this sin there is no remedy,

It is so grounded inward in my heart.

Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,

No shape so true, no truth of such account,

And for myself mine own worth do define

As I all other in all worths surmount.

But when my glass shows me myself indeed,

Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity,

Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;

Self, so self-loving, were iniquity;

’Tis thee (myself) that for myself I praise,

Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

63

Against my love shall be as I am now,

With time’s injurious hand crushed and o’erworn;

When hours have drained his blood, and filled his brow

With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn

Hath travailed on to age’s steepy night,

And all those beauties whereof now he’s king

Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,

Stealing away the treasure of his spring;

For such a time do I now fortify

Against confounding age’s cruel knife,

That he shall never cut from memory

My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life.

His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,

And they shall live, and he in them still green.

64

When I have seen by time’s fell hand defaced

The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;

When sometime lofty towers I see down razed,

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;

When I have seen the hungry ocean gain

Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main,

Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;

When I have seen such interchange of state,

Or state itself confounded, to decay,

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate:

That time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

65

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

O how shall summer’s honey breath hold out

Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?

O fearful meditation! Where, alack,

Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,

Or who his spoil o’er beauty can forbid?

O none, unless this miracle have might:

That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

66

Tired with all these for restful death I cry:

As to behold desert a beggar born,

And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,

And purest faith unhappily forsworn,

And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,

And strength by limping sway disabled,

And art made tongue-tied by authority,

And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,

And simple truth miscalled simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill:

Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that to die I leave my love alone.

67

Ah, wherefore with infection should he live,

And with his presence grace impiety,

That sin by him advantage should achieve,

And lace itself with his society?

Why should false painting imitate his cheek,

And steal dead seeing of his living hue?

Why should poor beauty indirectly seek

Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?

Why should he live, now nature bankrupt is,

Beggared of blood to blush through lively veins?

For she hath no exchequer now but his,

And proud of many, lives upon his gains.

O, him she stores, to show what wealth she had

In days long since, before these last so bad.

68

Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,

When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,

Before these bastard signs of fair were borne,

Or durst inhabit on a living brow;

Before the golden tresses of the dead,

The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,

To live a second life on second head;

Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay:

In him those holy antique hours are seen,

Without all ornament, itself and true,

Making no summer of another’s green,

Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;

And him as for a map doth nature store

To show false art what beauty was of yore.

69

Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view

Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend;

All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,

Utt’ring bare truth, even so as foes commend:

Thy outward thus with outward praise is crowned.

But those same tongues that give thee so thine own

In other accents do this praise confound,

By seeing further than the eye hath shown;

They look into the beauty of thy mind,

And that in guess they measure by thy deeds;

Then churls their thoughts (although their eyes were kind)

To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds.

But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,

The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.

70

That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,

For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair;

The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.

So thou be good, slander doth but approve

Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time;

For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,

And thou present’st a pure unstained prime.

Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days,

Either not assailed, or victor, being charged;

Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,

To tie up envy, evermore enlarged:

If some suspect of ill masked not thy show

Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

71

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:

Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it, for I love you so

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,

If thinking on me then should make you woe.

O if (I say) you look upon this verse,

When I, perhaps, compounded am with clay,

Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,

But let your love even with my life decay;

Lest the wise world should look into your moan,

And mock you with me after I am gone.

72

O, lest the world should task you to recite

What merit lived in me that you should love,

After my death (dear love) forget me quite,

For you in me can nothing worthy prove;

Unless you would devise some virtuous lie

To do more for me than mine own desert,

And hang more praise upon deceased I

Than niggard truth would willingly impart;

O, lest your true love may seem false in this,

That you for love speak well of me untrue,

My name be buried where my body is,

And live no more to shame nor me, nor you:

For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,

And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold,

When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang;

In me thou seest the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death’s second self that seals up all in rest;

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the deathbed, whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourished by;

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

74

But be contented when that fell arrest

Without all bail shall carry me away;

My life hath in this line some interest,

Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.

When thou reviewest this, thou dost review

The very part was consecrate to thee;

The earth can have but earth, which is his due,

My spirit is thine, the better part of me;

So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,

The prey of worms, my body being dead,

The coward conquest of a wretch’s knife,

Too base of thee to be remembered:

The worth of that, is that which it contains,

And that is this, and this with thee remains.

75

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,

Or as sweet seasoned showers to the ground;

And for the peace of you I hold such strife

As ’twixt a miser and his wealth is found:

Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon

Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;

Now counting best to be with you alone,

Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure;

Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,

And by and by clean starved for a look,

Possessing or pursuing no delight

Save what is had, or must from you be took.

Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,

Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

76

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,

So far from variation or quick change?

Why with the time do I not glance aside

To new-found methods and to compounds strange?

Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word almost doth tell my name,

Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?

O know, sweet love, I always write of you,

And you and love are still my argument:

So all my best is dressing old words new,

Spending again what is already spent:

For as the sun is daily new and old,

So is my love still telling what is told.

77

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,

Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste,

The vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear,

And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste:

The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show

Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;

Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know

Time’s thievish progress to eternity;

Look what thy memory cannot contain,

Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find

Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,

To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.

These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,

Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.

78

So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse,

And found such fair assistance in my verse,

As every alien pen hath got my use,

And under thee their poesy disperse.

Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing,

And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,

Have added feathers to the learned’s wing,

And given grace a double majesty.

Yet be most proud of that which I compile,

Whose influence is thine, and born of thee:

In others’ works thou dost but mend the style,

And arts with thy sweet graces graced be;

But thou art all my art, and dost advance,

As high as learning, my rude ignorance.

79

Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid

My verse alone had all thy gentle grace;

But now my gracious numbers are decayed,

And my sick Muse doth give another place.

I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument

Deserves the travail of a worthier pen;

Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent

He robs thee of, and pays it thee again;

He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word

From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,

And found it in thy cheek; he can afford

No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live:

Then thank him not for that which he doth say,

Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay.

80

O how I faint when I of you do write,

Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,

And in the praise thereof spends all his might,

To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.

But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,

The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,

My saucy bark, inferior far to his,

On your broad main doth wilfully appear.

Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,

Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;

Or, being wracked, I am a worthless boat,

He of tall building, and of goodly pride.

Then if he thrive, and I be cast away,

The worst was this: my love was my decay.

81

Or I shall live, your epitaph to make;

Or you survive, when I in earth am rotten;

From hence your memory death cannot take,

Although in me each part will be forgotten.

Your name from hence immortal life shall have,

Though I, once gone, to all the world must die;

The earth can yield me but a common grave,

When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.

Your monument shall be my gentle verse,

Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read,

And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,

When all the breathers of this world are dead.

You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen,

Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

82

I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,

And therefore mayst without attaint o’erlook

The dedicated words which writers use

Of their fair subject, blessing every book.

Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,

Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,

And therefore art enforced to seek anew

Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days,

And do so love; yet when they have devised

What strained touches rhetoric can lend,

Thou, truly fair, wert truly sympathized

In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend;

And their gross painting might be better used

Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.

83

I never saw that you did painting need,

And therefore to your fair no painting set;

I found (or thought I found) you did exceed

The barren tender of a poet’s debt;

And therefore have I slept in your report,

That you yourself, being extant, well might show

How far a modern quill doth come too short,

Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.

This silence for my sin you did impute,

Which shall be most my glory, being dumb;

For I impair not beauty, being mute,

When others would give life, and bring a tomb.

There lives more life in one of your fair eyes

Than both your poets can in praise devise.

84

Who is it that says most? Which can say more,

Than this rich praise: that you alone are you,

In whose confine immured is the store

Which should example where your equal grew?

Lean penury within that pen doth dwell

That to his subject lends not some small glory;

But he that writes of you, if he can tell

That you are you, so dignifies his story.

Let him but copy what in you is writ,

Not making worse what nature made so clear,

And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,

Making his style admired everywhere.

You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,

Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

85

My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,

While comments of your praise richly compiled

Reserve your character with golden quill,

And precious phrase by all the Muses filed;

I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words,

And like unlettered clerk still cry ‘Amen’

To every hymn that able spirit affords

In polished form of well-refined pen.

Hearing you praised, I say, ‘’Tis so, ’tis true’,

And to the most of praise add something more;

But that is in my thought, whose love to you

(Though words come hindmost) holds his rank before;

Then others for the breath of words respect,

Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.

86

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,

Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you,

That did my ripe thoughts in my brain in-hearse,

Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?

Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write

Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?

No, neither he, nor his compeers by night,

Giving him aid, my verse astonished.

He, nor that affable familiar ghost

Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,

As victors of my silence cannot boast;

I was not sick of any fear from thence.

But when your countenance filled up his line,

Then lacked I matter, that enfeebled mine.

87

Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing,

And like enough thou knowst thy estimate;

The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;

My bonds in thee are all determinate.

For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,

And for that riches where is my deserving?

The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,

And so my patent back again is swerving.

Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing,

Or me, to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking;

So thy great gift upon misprision growing

Comes home again, on better judgement making.

Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,

In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

88

When thou shalt be disposed to set me light

And place my merit in the eye of scorn,

Upon thy side, against myself, I’ll fight,

And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn:

With mine own weakness being best acquainted,

Upon thy part I can set down a story

Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted,

That thou, in losing me, shall win much glory;

And I by this will be a gainer too,

For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,

The injuries that to myself I do,

Doing thee vantage, double vantage me:

Such is my love, to thee I so belong,

That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.

89

Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,

And I will comment upon that offence;

Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt,

Against thy reasons making no defence.

Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill,

To set a form upon desired change,

As I’ll myself disgrace, knowing thy will;

I will acquaintance strangle and look strange,

Be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue

Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,

Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong,

And haply of our old acquaintance tell.

For thee, against myself I’ll vow debate;

For I must ne’er love him whom thou dost hate.

90

Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now,

Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,

Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,

And do not drop in for an after-loss.

Ah, do not, when my heart hath ’scaped this sorrow,

Come in the rearward of a conquered woe;

Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,

To linger out a purposed overthrow.

If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,

When other petty griefs have done their spite;

But in the onset come, so shall I taste

At first the very worst of fortune’s might;

And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,

Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.

91

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,

Some in their wealth, some in their bodies’ force,

Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill,

Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse,

And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,

Wherein it finds a joy above the rest;

But these particulars are not my measure;

All these I better in one general best.

Thy love is better than high birth to me,

Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ cost,

Of more delight than hawks or horses be;

And having thee, of all men’s pride I boast –

Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take

All this away, and me most wretched make.

92

But do thy worst to steal thyself away;

For term of life thou art assured mine,

And life no longer than thy love will stay,

For it depends upon that love of thine.

Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,

When in the least of them my life hath end;

I see a better state to me belongs

Than that which on thy humour doth depend.

Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,

Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie.

O what a happy title do I find,

Happy to have thy love, happy to die!

But what’s so blessed fair that fears no blot?

Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.

93

So shall I live, supposing thou art true,

Like a deceived husband; so love’s face

May still seem love to me, though altered new,

Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place;

For there can live no hatred in thine eye,

Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.

In many’s looks, the false heart’s history

Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange;

But heaven in thy creation did decree

That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;

Whate’er thy thoughts or thy heart’s workings be,

Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell.

How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow,

If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show.

94

They that have power to hurt, and will do none,

That do not do the thing they most do show,

Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,

Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:

They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces,

And husband nature’s riches from expense;

They are the lords and owners of their faces,

Others, but stewards of their excellence.

The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,

Though to itself it only live and die,

But if that flower with base infection meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity:

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

95

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame

Which like a canker in the fragrant rose

Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name:

O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!

That tongue that tells the story of thy days,

Making lascivious comments on thy sport,

Cannot dispraise; but in a kind of praise,

Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.

O what a mansion have those vices got,

Which for their habitation chose out thee,

Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot,

And all things turns to fair that eyes can see!

Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;

The hardest knife ill used doth lose his edge.

96

Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness;

Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;

Both grace and faults are loved of more and less;

Thou mak’st faults graces, that to thee resort:

As on the finger of a throned queen

The basest jewel will be well esteemed,

So are those errors that in thee are seen

To truths translated, and for true things deemed.

How many lambs might the stern wolf betray

If like a lamb he could his looks translate?

How many gazers mightst thou lead away

If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state?

But do not so; I love thee in such sort,

As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

97

How like a winter hath my absence been

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen,

What old December’s bareness everywhere!

And yet this time removed was summer’s time,

The teeming autumn big with rich increase

Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,

Like widowed wombs after their lords’ decease:

Yet this abundant issue seemed to me

But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit;

For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,

And thou away, the very birds are mute;

Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer

That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

98

From you have I been absent in the spring,

When proud pied April, dressed in all his trim,

Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,

That heavy Saturn laughed, and leaped with him.

Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hue,

Could make me any summer’s story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;

Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;

They were but sweet, but figures of delight,

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.

Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,

As with your shadow I with these did play.

99

The forward violet thus did I chide:

‘Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,

If not from my love’s breath? The purple pride

Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells

In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dyed.’

The lily I condemned for thy hand,

And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair;

The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,

One blushing shame, another white despair;

A third, nor red, nor white, had stol’n of both,

And to his robb’ry had annexed thy breath;

But for his theft, in pride of all his growth,

A vengeful canker ate him up to death.

More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,

But sweet, or colour, it had stol’n from thee.

100

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget’st so long

To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?

Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song,

Dark’ning thy power to lend base subjects light?

Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,

In gentle numbers, time so idly spent;

Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,

And gives thy pen both skill and argument.

Rise, resty Muse: my love’s sweet face survey,

If time have any wrinkle graven there;

If any, be a satire to decay,

And make time’s spoils despised everywhere:

Give my love fame faster than time wastes life,

So thou prevent’st his scythe and crooked knife.

101

O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends

For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?

Both truth and beauty on my love depends;

So dost thou, too, and therein dignified:

Make answer, Muse, wilt thou not haply say,

‘Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,

Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay,

But best is best if never intermixed’?

Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?

Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee

To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,

And to be praised of ages yet to be.

Then do thy office, Muse: I teach thee how

To make him seem long hence as he shows now.

102

My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming;

I love not less, though less the show appear.

That love is merchandised, whose rich esteeming

The owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere.

Our love was new, and then but in the spring,

When I was wont to greet it with my lays,

As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,

And stops her pipe in growth of riper days.

Not that the summer is less pleasant now

Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night;

But that wild music burdens every bough,

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight:

Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue,

Because I would not dull you with my song.

103

Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth,

That, having such a scope to show her pride,

The argument all bare is of more worth

Than when it hath my added praise beside.

O blame me not if I no more can write!

Look in your glass, and there appears a face

That overgoes my blunt invention quite,

Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.

Were it not sinful, then, striving to mend,

To mar the subject that before was well?

For to no other pass my verses tend

Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;

And more, much more, than in my verse can sit

Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.

104

To me, fair friend, you never can be old;

For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still: three winters cold

Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride;

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned

In process of the seasons have I seen;

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,

Since first I saw you fresh, which yet art green.

Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived;

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred,

Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

105

Let not my love be called idolatry,

Nor my beloved as an idol show,

Since all alike my songs and praises be,

To one, of one, still such, and ever so.

Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind,

Still constant in a wondrous excellence;

Therefore my verse, to constancy confined,

One thing expressing, leaves out difference.

Fair, kind and true is all my argument;

Fair, kind and true, varying to other words,

And in this change is my invention spent,

Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.

Fair, kind and true have often lived alone,

Which three, till now, never kept seat in one.

106

When in the chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,

In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights;

Then in the blazon of sweet beauties best,

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

I see their antique pen would have expressed

Even such a beauty as you master now:

So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring;

And for they looked but with divining eyes

They had not skill enough your worth to sing;

For we which now behold these present days

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

107

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul

Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,

Can yet the lease of my true love control,

Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage;

Uncertainties now crown themselves assured,

And peace proclaims olives of endless age.

Now with the drops of this most balmy time

My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,

Since ’spite of him I’ll live in this poor rhyme,

While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes;

And thou in this shalt find thy monument,

When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.

108

What’s in the brain that ink may character

Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?

What’s new to speak, what new to register,

That may express my love, or thy dear merit?

Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,

I must each day say o’er the very same,

Counting no old thing old; thou mine, I thine,

Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name:

So that eternal love, in love’s fresh case,

Weighs not the dust and injury of age,

Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place

But makes antiquity for aye his page,

Finding the first conceit of love there bred,

Where time and outward form would show it dead.

109

O never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seemed my flame to qualify;

As easy might I from myself depart

As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:

That is my home of love; if I have ranged,

Like him that travels I return again,

Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,

So that myself bring water for my stain;

Never believe, though in my nature reigned

All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,

That it could so preposterously be stained,

To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:

For nothing this wide universe I call,

Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.

110

Alas, ’tis true, I have gone here and there,

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,

Made old offences of affections new.

Most true it is that I have looked on truth

Askance and strangely; but by all above,

These blenches gave my heart another youth,

And worse essays proved thee my best of love.

Now all is done, save what shall have no end;

Mine appetite I never more will grind

On newer proof, to try an older friend,

A god in love, to whom I am confined:

Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,

Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.

111

O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,

That did not better for my life provide

Than public means, which public manners breeds;

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,

And almost thence my nature is subdued

To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand;

Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed,

Whilst like a willing patient I will drink

Potions of eisell ’gainst my strong infection;

No bitterness that I will bitter think,

Nor double penance to correct correction.

Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,

Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

112

Your love and pity doth th’impression fill

Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;

For what care I who calls me well or ill

So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?

You are my all-the-world, and I must strive

To know my shames and praises from your tongue;

None else to me, nor I to none, alive,

That my steeled sense o’er-changes right or wrong.

In so profound abysm I throw all care

Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense

To critic and to flatterer stopped are.

Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:

You are so strongly in my purpose bred

That all the world besides me thinks you’re dead.

113

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,

And that which governs me to go about

Doth part his function, and is partly blind;

Seems seeing, but effectually is out:

For it no form delivers to the heart

Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch;

Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,

Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:

For if it see the rud’st or gentlest sight,

The most sweet-favoured or deformed’st creature,

The mountain, or the sea, the day, or night,

The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.

Incapable of more, replete with you,

My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.

114

Or whether doth my mind, being crowned with you,

Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery?

Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true,

And that your love taught it this alchemy,

To make of monsters and things indigest

Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,

Creating every bad a perfect best

As fast as objects to his beams assemble?

O, ’tis the first, ’tis flatt’ry in my seeing,

And my great mind most kingly drinks it up:

Mine eye well knows what with his gust is greeing,

And to his palate doth prepare the cup.

If it be poisoned, ’tis the lesser sin,

That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

115

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,

Even those that said I could not love you dearer;

Yet then my judgement knew no reason why

My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.

But reckoning time, whose millioned accidents

Creep in ’twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,

Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,

Divert strong minds to th’ course of alt’ring things;

Alas, why, fearing of time’s tyranny,

Might I not then say, ‘Now I love you best’,

When I was certain o’er uncertainty,

Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?

Love is a babe; then might I not say so,

To give full growth to that which still doth grow?

116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

117

Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all

Wherein I should your great deserts repay,

Forgot upon your dearest love to call,

Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;

That I have frequent been with unknown minds,

And given to time your own dear-purchased right;

That I have hoisted sail to all the winds

Which should transport me farthest from your sight.

Book both my wilfulness and errors down,

And on just proof surmise accumulate;

Bring me within the level of your frown,

But shoot not at me in your wakened hate:

Since my appeal says I did strive to prove

The constancy and virtue of your love.

118

Like as, to make our appetites more keen,

With eager compounds we our palate urge;

As, to prevent our maladies unseen,

We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;

Even so, being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness,

To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding,

And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness

To be diseased ere that there was true needing.

Thus policy in love, t’anticipate

The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,

And brought to medicine a healthful state

Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured;

But thence I learn, and find the lesson true,

Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.

119

What potions have I drunk of siren tears

Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,

Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,

Still losing when I saw myself to win?

What wretched errors hath my heart committed,

Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never?

How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted

In the distraction of this madding fever?

O benefit of ill: now I find true

That better is by evil still made better,

And ruined love when it is built anew

Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater:

So I return rebuked to my content,

And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.

120

That you were once unkind befriends me now,

And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,

Needs must I under my transgression bow,

Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel:

For if you were by my unkindness shaken,

As I by yours, you’ve passed a hell of time,

And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken

To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.

O that our night of woe might have remembered

My deepest sense how hard true sorrow hits,

And soon to you, as you to me then, tendered

The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits!

But that your trespass now becomes a fee;

Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

121

’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,

When not to be, receives reproach of being,

And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed

Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing.

For why should others’ false adulterate eyes

Give salutation to my sportive blood?

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,

Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

No, I am that I am, and they that level

At my abuses, reckon up their own;

I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel.

By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,

Unless this general evil they maintain:

All men are bad, and in their badness reign.

122

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain

Full charactered with lasting memory,

Which shall above that idle rank remain

Beyond all date, even to eternity;

Or at the least, so long as brain and heart

Have faculty by nature to subsist;

Till each to razed oblivion yield his part

Of thee, thy record never can be missed.

That poor retention could not so much hold,

Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;

Therefore to give them from me was I bold,

To trust those tables that receive thee more;

To keep an adjunct to remember thee

Were to import forgetfulness in me.

123

No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change;

Thy pyramids, built up with newer might,

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;

They are but dressings of a former sight:

Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire

What thou dost foist upon us that is old,

And rather make them born to our desire

Than think that we before have heard them told:

Thy registers and thee I both defy,

Not wond’ring at the present, nor the past,

For thy records, and what we see doth lie,

Made more or less by thy continual haste:

This I do vow, and this shall ever be,

I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.

124

If my dear love were but the child of state

It might, for fortune’s bastard, be unfathered,

As subject to time’s love or to time’s hate,

Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.

No, it was builded far from accident;

It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls

Under the blow of thralled discontent,

Whereto th’inviting time our fashion calls:

It fears not policy, that heretic,

Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,

But all alone stands hugely politic,

That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.

To this I witness call the fools of time,

Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

125

Were’t ought to me I bore the canopy,

With my extern the outward honouring,

Or laid great bases for eternity,

Which proves more short than waste or ruining?

Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour

Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent,

For compound sweet forgoing simple savour,

Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?

No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,

And take thou my oblation, poor but free,

Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,

But mutual render, only me for thee.

Hence, thou suborned informer, a true soul

When most impeached, stands least in thy control.

126

O thou my lovely Boy, who in thy power

Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his sickle hour,

Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st

Thy lover’s withering, as thy sweet self grow’st;

If nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,

As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,

She keeps thee to this purpose: that her skill

May time disgrace, and wretched minute kill.

Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure:

She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure!

Her audit, though delayed, answered must be,

And her quietus is to render thee.

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127

In the old age black was not counted fair,

Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;

But now is black beauty’s successive heir,

And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:

For since each hand hath put on nature’s power,

Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face,

Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,

But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.

Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black,

Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem

At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,

Sland’ring creation with a false esteem;

Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,

That every tongue says beauty should look so.

128

How oft when thou, my music, music play’st

Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds

With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway’st

The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,

Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,

At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand?

To be so tickled they would change their state

And situation with those dancing chips,

O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,

Making dead wood more blessed than living lips.

Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,

Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

129

Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;

Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,

Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,

On purpose laid to make the taker mad;

Mad in pursuit, and in possession so,

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

All this the world well knows, yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head;

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

131

Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,

As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;

For well thou knowst, to my dear doting heart

Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.

Yet in good faith some say, that thee behold,

Thy face hath not the power to make love groan;

To say they err, I dare not be so bold,

Although I swear it to myself alone;

And to be sure that is not false, I swear

A thousand groans but thinking on thy face;

One on another’s neck do witness bear

Thy black is fairest in my judgement’s place.

In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,

And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds.

132

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,

Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,

Have put on black, and loving mourners be,

Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain;

And truly, not the morning sun of heaven

Better becomes the grey cheeks of the East,

Nor that full star that ushers in the even

Doth half that glory to the sober West

As those two mourning eyes become thy face:

O let it then as well beseem thy heart

To mourn for me, since mourning doth thee grace,

And suit thy pity like in every part:

Then will I swear beauty herself is black,

And all they foul that thy complexion lack.

133

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan

For that deep wound it gives my friend and me;

Is’t not enough to torture me alone,

But slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be?

Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,

And my next self thou harder hast engrossed:

Of him, myself and thee I am forsaken,

A torment thrice threefold thus to be crossed.

Prison my heart in thy steel bosom’s ward;

But then my friend’s heart let my poor heart bail.

Whoe’er keeps me, let my heart be his guard;

Thou canst not then use rigour in my jail.

And yet thou wilt, for I being pent in thee,

Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.

134

So now I have confessed that he is thine,

And I myself am mortgaged to thy will,

Myself I’ll forfeit, so that other mine

Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still;

But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,

For thou art covetous, and he is kind;

He learned but surety-like to write for me,

Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.

The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,

Thou usurer, that put’st forth all to use,

And sue a friend, came debtor for my sake:

So him I lose through my unkind abuse.

Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me;

He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.

135

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,

And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;

More than enough am I, that vex thee still,

To thy sweet will making addition thus.

Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,

Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?

Shall will in others seem right gracious,

And in my will no fair acceptance shine?

The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,

And in abundance addeth to his store;

So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will

One will of mine, to make thy large Will more:

Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;

Think all but one, and me in that one Will.

136

If thy soul check thee that I come so near,

Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy Will,

And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there;

Thus far for love my love-suit sweet fulfil.

Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love,

Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one;

In things of great receipt with ease we prove

Among a number one is reckoned none.

Then in the number let me pass untold,

Though in thy store’s account I one must be.

For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold

That nothing, me, a something sweet to thee.

Make but my name thy love, and love that still;

And then thou lov’st me, for my name is Will.

137

Thou blind fool love, what dost thou to mine eyes,

That they behold, and see not what they see?

They know what beauty is, see where it lies,

Yet what the best is, take the worst to be.

If eyes, corrupt by over-partial looks,

Be anchored in the bay where all men ride,

Why of eyes’ falsehood hast thou forged hooks,

Whereto the judgement of my heart is tied?

Why should my heart think that a several plot

Which my heart knows the wide world’s common place?

Or mine eyes, seeing this, say this is not,

To put fair truth upon so foul a face?

In things right true my heart and eyes have erred,

And to this false plague are they now transferred.

138

When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her, though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutored youth

Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;

On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.

But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O love’s best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in love loves not t’ have years told:

Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

139

O call not me to justify the wrong

That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;

Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue;

Use power with power, and slay me not by art.

Tell me thou lov’st elsewhere; but in my sight,

Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside.

What need’st thou wound with cunning, when thy might

Is more than my o’er-pressed defence can bide?

Let me excuse thee: ah, my love well knows

Her pretty looks have been mine enemies,

And therefore from my face she turns my foes

That they elsewhere might dart their injuries.

Yet do not so, but since I am near slain,

Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.

140

Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press

My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain,

Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express

The manner of my pity-wanting pain.

If I might teach thee wit, better it were,

Though not to love, yet love to tell me so,

As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,

No news but health from their physicians know:

For if I should despair, I should grow mad,

And in my madness might speak ill of thee;

Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,

Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.

That I may not be so, nor thou belied,

Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.

141

In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,

For they in thee a thousand errors note;

But ’tis my heart that loves what they despise,

Who in despite of view is pleased to dote.

Nor are mine ears with thy tongue’s tune delighted,

Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,

Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited

To any sensual feast with thee alone:

But my five wits, nor my five senses, can

Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,

Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,

Thy proud heart’s slave and vassal wretch to be:

Only my plague thus far I count my gain,

That she that makes me sin, awards me pain.

142

Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,

Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving;

O but with mine compare thou thine own state,

And thou shalt find it merits not reproving;

Or if it do, not from those lips of thine,

That have profaned their scarlet ornaments,

And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine,

Robbed others’ beds’ revenues of their rents.

Be it lawful I love thee as thou lov’st those

Whom thine eyes woo, as mine importune thee,

Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows,

Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.

If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,

By self-example mayst thou be denied.

143

Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch

One of her feathered creatures broke away,

Sets down her babe, and makes all swift dispatch

In pursuit of the thing she would have stay;

Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,

Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent

To follow that which flies before her face,

Not prizing her poor infant’s discontent:

So run’st thou after that which flies from thee,

Whilst I, thy babe, chase thee afar behind.

But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,

And play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind:

So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,

If thou turn back and my loud crying still.

144

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,

Which, like two spirits, do suggest me still:

The better angel is a man right fair,

The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.

To win me soon to hell my female evil

Tempteth my better angel from my side,

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

Wooing his purity with her foul pride;

And whether that my angel be turned fiend

Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

But being both from me both to each friend,

I guess one angel in another’s hell.

Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,

Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

145

Those lips that love’s own hand did make

Breathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate’,

To me, that languished for her sake;

But when she saw my woeful state,

Straight in her heart did mercy come,

Chiding that tongue that, ever sweet,

Was used in giving gentle doom,

And taught it thus anew to greet:

‘I hate’ she altered with an end

That followed it as gentle day

Doth follow night, who like a fiend

From heaven to hell is flown away.

‘I hate’ from ‘hate’ away she threw,

And saved my life, saying ‘not you’.

146

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

Feeding these rebel powers that thee array,

Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,

Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,

Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end?

Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,

And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross,

Within be fed, without be rich no more:

So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,

And death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

147

My love is as a fever, longing still

For that which longer nurseth the disease,

Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,

Th’uncertain sickly appetite to please:

My reason, the physician to my love,

Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,

Hath left me, and I, desperate, now approve

Desire is death, which physic did except.

Past cure I am, now reason is past care,

And frantic mad with ever more unrest;

My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,

At random from the truth vainly expressed:

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

148

O me! What eyes hath love put in my head,

Which have no correspondence with true sight?

Or if they have, where is my judgement fled,

That censures falsely what they see aright?

If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,

What means the world to say it is not so?

If it be not, then love doth well denote,

Love’s eye is not so true as all men’s: no,

How can it? O how can love’s eye be true,

That is so vexed with watching and with tears?

No marvel then though I mistake my view:

The sun itself sees not, till heaven clears.

O cunning love, with tears thou keep’st me blind,

Lest eyes well seeing thy foul faults should find.

149

Canst thou, O cruel, say I love thee not,

When I against myself with thee partake?

Do I not think on thee, when I forgot

Am of myself, all, tyrant, for thy sake?

Who hateth thee, that I do call my friend?

On whom frown’st thou, that I do fawn upon?

Nay, if thou lour’st on me, do I not spend

Revenge upon myself with present moan?

What merit do I in myself respect

That is so proud thy service to despise,

When all my best doth worship thy defect,

Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?

But, love, hate on; for now I know thy mind:

Those that can see thou lov’st, and I am blind.

150

O from what power hast thou this powerful might,

With insufficiency my heart to sway,

To make me give the lie to my true sight,

And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?

Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,

That in the very refuse of thy deeds

There is such strength and warrantise of skill

That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds?

Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,

The more I hear and see just cause of hate?

O, though I love what others do abhor,

With others thou shouldst not abhor my state:

If thy unworthiness raised love in me,

More worthy I to be beloved of thee.

151

Love is too young to know what conscience is:

Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?

Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,

Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove;

For, thou betraying me, I do betray

My nobler part to my gross body’s treason;

My soul doth tell my body that he may

Triumph in love; flesh stays no further reason,

But rising at thy name doth point out thee

As his triumphant prize, proud of this pride:

He is contented thy poor drudge to be,

To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.

No want of conscience hold it that I call

Her ‘love’, for whose dear love I rise and fall.

152

In loving thee thou knowst I am forsworn;

But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing,

In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,

In vowing new hate after new love bearing.

But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee,

When I break twenty? I am perjured most,

For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,

And all my honest faith in thee is lost:

For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,

Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,

And to enlighten thee gave eyes to blindness,

Or made them swear against the thing they see:

For I have sworn thee fair: more perjured eye,

To swear against the truth so foul a lie.

153

Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep;

A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,

And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep

In a cold valley-fountain of that ground,

Which borrowed from this holy fire of love

A dateless lively heat still to endure,

And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove

Against strange maladies a sovereign cure:

But at my mistress’ eye love’s brand new fired,

The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;

I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,

And thither hied, a sad distempered guest,

But found no cure; the bath for my help lies

Where Cupid got new fire: my mistress’ eye.

154

The little love-god lying once asleep,

Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,

Whilst many nymphs, that vowed chaste life to keep,

Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand

The fairest votary took up that fire

Which many legions of true hearts had warmed;

And so the general of hot desire

Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarmed.

This brand she quenched in a cool well by,

Which from love’s fire took heat perpetual,

Growing a bath and healthful remedy

For men diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall,

Came there for cure, and this by that I prove:

Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

A Lover’s Complaint

From off a hill whose concave womb reworded

A plaintful story from a sist’ring vale,

My spirits t’attend this double voice accorded,

And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;

Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,

5

Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,

Storming her world with sorrow’s wind and rain.

Upon her head a plaited hive of straw,

Which fortified her visage from the sun,

Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw

10

The carcass of a beauty spent and done;

Time had not scythed all that youth begun,

Nor youth all quit, but spite of heaven’s fell rage

Some beauty peeped through lattice of seared age.

Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,

15

Which on it had conceited characters,

Laund’ring the silken figures in the brine

That seasoned woe had pelleted in tears,

And often reading what contents it bears;

As often shrieking undistinguished woe,

20

In clamours of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her levelled eyes their carriage ride,

As they did batt’ry to the spheres intend;

Sometime, diverted, their poor balls are tied

To th’orbed earth; sometimes they do extend

25

Their view right on; anon their gazes lend

To every place at once, and nowhere fixed,

The mind and sight distractedly commixed.

Her hair, nor loose, nor tied in formal plait,

Proclaimed in her a careless hand of pride;

30

For some untucked descended her sheaved hat,

Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside;

Some in her threaden fillet still did bide,

And, true to bondage, would not break from thence,

Though slackly braided in loose negligence.

35

A thousand favours from a maund she drew,

Of amber, crystal and of beaded jet,

Which, one by one, she in a river threw,

Upon whose weeping margent she was set,

Like usury, applying wet to wet,

40

Or monarch’s hands, that lets not bounty fall

Where want cries ‘Some!’, but where excess begs, ‘All!’

Of folded schedules had she many a one,

Which she perused, sighed, tore and gave the flood;

Cracked many a ring of posied gold and bone,

45

Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;

Found yet moe letters, sadly penned in blood,

With sleided silk, feat and affectedly

Enswathed and sealed to curious secrecy.

These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes,

50

And often kissed, and often gave to tear;

Cried, ‘O false blood, thou register of lies,

What unapproved witness dost thou bear!

Ink would have seemed more black and damned here.’

This said, in top of rage the lines she rents,

55

Big discontent so breaking their contents.

A reverend man, that grazed his cattle nigh,

Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew

Of court, of city, and had let go by

The swiftest hours observed as they flew,

60

Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew,

And, privileged by age, desires to know

In brief the grounds and motives of her woe.

So slides he down upon his grained bat,

And comely distant sits he by her side,

65

When he again desires her, being sat,

Her grievance with his hearing to divide:

If that from him there may be aught applied

Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,

’Tis promised in the charity of age.

70

‘Father,’ she says, ‘though in me ye behold

The injury of many a blasting hour,

Let it not tell your judgement I am old:

Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power.

I might as yet have been a spreading flower,

75

Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied

Love to myself, and to no love beside.

‘But woe is me! Too early I attended

A youthful suit; it was to gain my grace;

O, one by nature’s outwards so commended

80

That maidens’ eyes stuck over all his face;

Love lacked a dwelling, and made him her place;

And when in his fair parts she did abide

She was new-lodged and newly deified.

‘His browny locks did hang in crooked curls,

85

And every light occasion of the wind

Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls;

What’s sweet to do, to do will aptly find;

Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind:

For on his visage was in little drawn

90

What largeness thinks in paradise was sawn.

‘Small show of man was yet upon his chin;

His phoenix down began but to appear,

Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin,

Whose bare out-bragged the web it seemed to wear;

95

Yet showed his visage by that cost more dear,

And nice affections wavering stood in doubt

If best were as it was, or best without.

‘His qualities were beauteous as his form:

For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;

100

Yet if men moved him, was he such a storm

As oft ’twixt May and April is to see,

When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.

His rudeness so with his authorized youth

Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.

105

‘Well could he ride, and often men would say,

“That horse his mettle from his rider takes,

Proud of subjection, noble by the sway,

What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop he makes!”

And controversy hence a question takes,

110

Whether the horse by him became his deed,

Or he his manage, by th’ well-doing steed.

‘But quickly on this side the verdict went:

His real habitude gave life and grace

To appertainings and to ornament,

115

Accomplished in himself, not in his case;

All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,

Came for additions; yet their purposed trim

Pieced not his grace, but were all graced by him.

‘So on the tip of his subduing tongue

120

All kind of arguments and question deep,

All replication prompt, and reason strong,

For his advantage still did wake and sleep,

To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep:

He had the dialect and different skill,

125

Catching all passions in his craft of will.

‘That he did in the general bosom reign

Of young, of old, and sexes both enchanted

To dwell with him in thoughts, or to remain

In personal duty, following where he haunted;

130

Consent’s bewitched, ere he desire have granted,

And dialogued for him what he would say,

Asked their own wills, and made their wills obey.

‘Many there were that did his picture get

To serve their eyes, and in it put their mind,

135

Like fools, that in th’imagination set

The goodly objects which abroad they find,

Of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assigned,

And labouring in moe pleasures to bestow them

Than the true gouty landlord which doth owe them.

140

‘So many have, that never touched his hand,

Sweetly supposed them mistress of his heart:

My woeful self that did in freedom stand,

And was my own fee-simple, not in part,

What with his art in youth, and youth in art,

145

Threw my affections in his charmed power,

Reserved the stalk and gave him all my flower.

‘Yet did I not, as some, my equals, did,

Demand of him; nor, being desired, yielded,

Finding myself in honour so forbid:

150

With safest distance I mine honour shielded.

Experience for me many bulwarks builded

Of proofs new-bleeding, which remained the foil

Of this false jewel and his amorous spoil.

‘But ah! Who ever shunned by precedent

155

The destined ill she must herself assay,

Or forced examples ’gainst her own content,

To put the by-passed perils in her way?

Counsel may stop a while what will not stay:

For when we rage, advice is often seen

160

By blunting us to make our wits more keen.

‘Nor gives it satisfaction to our blood

That we must curb it upon others’ proof,

To be forebode the sweets that seems so good,

For fear of harms that preach in our behoof:

165

O appetite, from judgement stand aloof!

The one a palate hath that needs will taste,

Though reason weep and cry, “It is thy last!”

‘For further, I could say, “This man’s untrue”,

And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling;

170

Heard where his plants in others’ orchards grew;

Saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling;

Knew vows were ever brokers to defiling;

Thought characters and words merely but art,

And bastards of his foul adulterate heart.

175

‘And long upon these terms I held my city,

Till thus he ’gan besiege me: “Gentle maid,

Have of my suffering youth some feeling pity

And be not of my holy vows afraid:

That’s to ye sworn to none was ever said,

180

For feasts of love I have been called unto,

Till now, did ne’er invite, nor never woo.

‘ “All my offences that abroad you see

Are errors of the blood, none of the mind:

Love made them not; with acture they may be

185

Where neither party is nor true nor kind;

They sought their shame that so their shame did find,

And so much less of shame in me remains,

By how much of me their reproach contains.

‘ “Among the many that mine eyes have seen,

190

Not one whose flame my heart so much as warmed,

Or my affection put to th’ smallest teen,

Or any of my leisures ever charmed:

Harm have I done to them, but ne’er was harmed;

Kept hearts in liveries, but my own was free,

195

And reigned commanding in his monarchy.

‘ “Look here what tributes wounded fancies sent me,

Of pallid pearls and rubies red as blood,

Figuring that they their passions likewise lent me

Of grief and blushes, aptly understood,

200

In bloodless white and the encrimsoned mood,

Effects of terror and dear modesty,

Encamped in hearts, but fighting outwardly.

‘ “And lo! Behold these talons of their hair,

With twisted metal amorously empleached,

205

I have received from many a several fair,

Their kind acceptance weepingly beseeched,

With th’annexions of fair gems enriched,

And deep-brained sonnets, that did amplify

Each stone’s dear nature, worth and quality.

210

‘ “The diamond? Why, ’twas beautiful and hard,

Whereto his invised properties did tend:

The deep green emerald, in whose fresh regard

Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend;

The heaven-hued sapphire and the opal blend

215

With objects manifold; each several stone

With wit well-blazoned smiled, or made some moan.

‘ “Lo, all these trophies of affections hot,

Of pensived and subdued desires the tender,

Nature hath charged me that I hoard them not,

220

But yield them up where I myself must render,

That is, to you, my origin and ender:

For these of force must your oblations be;

Since I their altar, you empatron me.

‘ “O then advance of yours that phraseless hand,

225

Whose white weighs down the airy scale of praise;

Take all these similes to your own command,

Hallowed with sighs that burning lungs did raise:

What me, your minister for you, obeys,

Works under you; and to your audit comes

230

Their distract parcels in combined sums.

‘ “Lo, this device was sent me from a nun,

Or sister sanctified, of holiest note,

Which late her noble suit in court did shun,

Whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote;

235

For she was sought by spirits of richest coat,

But kept cold distance, and did thence remove

To spend her living in eternal love.

‘ “But O, my sweet, what labour is’t to leave

The thing we have not, mast’ring what not strives,

240

Planing the place which did no form receive,

Playing patient sports in unconstrained gyves;

She that her fame so to herself contrives

The scars of battle ’scapeth by the flight,

And makes her absence valiant, not her might.

245

‘ “O pardon me, in that my boast is true;

The accident which brought me to her eye

Upon the moment did her force subdue,

And now she would the caged cloister fly,

Religious love put out religion’s eye;

250

Not to be tempted would she be immured,

And now to tempt all liberty procured.

‘ “How mighty then you are, O hear me tell!

The broken bosoms that to me belong

Have emptied all their fountains in my well,

255

And mine I pour your ocean all among:

I strong o’er them, and you o’er me being strong,

Must for your victory us all congest,

As compound love, to physic your cold breast.

‘ “My parts had power to charm a sacred nun,

260

Who, disciplined, I dieted in grace,

Believed her eyes, when they t’assail begun,

All vows and consecrations giving place.

O most potential love! Vow, bond, nor space,

In thee hath neither sting, knot, nor confine,

265

For thou art all and all things else are thine.

‘ “When thou impressest, what are precepts worth

Of stale example? When thou wilt inflame,

How coldly those impediments stand forth,

Of wealth, of filial fear, law, kindred, fame?

270

Love’s arms are peace, ’gainst rule, ’gainst sense, ’gainst shame,

And sweetens in the suff’ring pangs it bears

The aloes of all forces, shocks and fears.

‘ “Now all these hearts that do on mine depend,

Feeling it break, with bleeding groans they pine,

275

And supplicant their sighs to you extend,

To leave the batt’ry that you make’gainst mine,

Lending soft audience to my sweet design

And credent soul to that strong-bonded oath

That shall prefer and undertake my troth.”

280

‘This said, his wat’ry eyes he did dismount,

Whose sights till then were levelled on my face;

Each cheek a river running from a fount

With brinish current downward flowed apace.

O how the channel to the stream gave grace,

285

Who glazed with crystal gate the glowing roses

That flame through water which their hue encloses!

‘O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies

In the small orb of one particular tear!

But with the inundation of the eyes

290

What rocky heart to water will not wear?

What breast so cold that is not warmed here?

O cleft effect! Cold modesty, hot wrath,

Both fire from hence and chill extincture hath.

‘For lo, his passion, but an art of craft,

295

Even there resolved my reason into tears;

There my white stole of chastity I daffed,

Shook off my sober guards and civil fears,

Appeared to him as he to me appears,

All melting, though our drops this diff’rence bore:

300

His poisoned me, and mine did him restore.

‘In him a plenitude of subtle matter,

Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives,

Of burning blushes, or of weeping water,

Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves

305

In either’s, aptness, as it best deceives,

To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes,

Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows.

‘That not a heart which in his level came

Could ’scape the hail of his all-hurting aim,

310

Showing fair nature is both kind and tame;

And veiled in them, did win whom he would maim.

Against the thing he sought he would exclaim;

When he most burned in heart-wished luxury

He preached pure maid, and praised cold chastity.

315

‘Thus, merely with the garment of a grace,

The naked and concealed fiend he covered,

That th’unexperient gave the tempter place

Which, like a cherubin, above them hovered.

Who, young and simple, would not be so lovered?

320

Ay me, I fell, and yet do question make

What I should do again for such a sake.

‘O, that infected moisture of his eye!

O, that false fire which in his cheek so glowed!

O, that forced thunder from his heart did fly!

325

O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestowed!

O, all that borrowed motion, seeming owed,

Would yet again betray the fore-betrayed,

And new pervert a reconciled maid.’

Venus and Adonis; Lucrece; The Passionate Pilgrim; ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’

The first published works to name William Shakespeare as their author were two long narrative poems. Venus and Adonis was published in April 1593, a few days before its author’s twenty-ninth birthday, Lucrece (or The Rape of Lucrece), a year later. Their printer, Richard Field, was, like Shakespeare, a native of Stratford-upon-Avon. Both poems were dedicated to Henry Wriothesley (probably pronounced ‘Risely’ or ‘Rosely’), Earl of Southampton, a prominent member of the circle that surrounded Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, the rising star of the 1590s. The dedicatory epistle to Venus and Adonis describes it as ‘the first heir of my invention’ and vows to Southampton that if he likes it it will be followed by ‘some graver labour’ as a more fitting gift. That ‘graver labour’, Lucrece, had gone through nine editions by 1655: Venus and Adonis – on this evidence the most popular of all Shakespeare’s works in his own time – went through sixteen editions by 1640. A marginal note by Gabriel Harvey, made no later than February 1601, records that while Venus and Adonis delights ‘the younger sort’, Lucrece and Hamlet ‘have it in them, to please the wiser sort’.

The poems complement each other. Venus and Adonis rewrites the classical myth, best known from Ovid’s version in Book 10 of his Metamorphoses, turning it into a contest between Venus’ passion for a sulky, adolescent Adonis and his greater passion for hunting the boar (which leads to his death). The poem has been interpreted as an erotic celebration of love, a satire on the indignities of sex, or a platonic myth. What can safely be claimed is that it offers, in the predicament of Venus, a sharply defined embodiment of the urgency, perversity and contrariety of love – ‘She’s love, she loves, and yet she is not lov’d’ – as well as justifying her prophecy that love will always be attended by disaster and that ‘They that love best, their loves shall not enjoy’.

Lucrece handles a crucial episode from early Roman history, in which the rape of the chaste wife of the Roman general Collatinus by the king’s son, Sextus Tarquinius, and her subsequent suicide became the flint to fire the republican rebellion which expelled the Tarquin kings from Rome. This story, known to Shakespeare from Chaucer, Ovid and Livy, provided him with his first serious tragic theme, and his poem is replete with ideas and images that were to remain in his imagination for the rest of his career. Tarquin is his first self-destructive self-deceiver, whose lust destroys him as surely as it destroys his victim. The lengthy complaint of Lucrece is written in a familiar tradition of poems of female lamentation. After it, she likens her situation to the siege and fall of Troy, as represented in a picture, in Shakespeare’s first extended treatment of that most familiar topos of tragic deceit, loss and suffering. The poem has provoked new interest and has found a new readership among modern feminists.

William Jaggard’s unauthorized anthology The Passionate Pilgrim, ‘By W. Shakespeare’ (1599), contains only five poems which are certainly by him (three from Love’s Labour’s Lost (3, 5 and 16) and Sonnets 138 and 144 (1 and 2)). Shakespeare is known to have been displeased by the publication, as another author, Thomas Heywood (himself misappropriated by Jaggard in a later edition), has left on record.

‘The Phoenix and Turtle’ is Shakespeare’s most enigmatic work. It was published in a book entitled Love’s Martyr (1601), compiled and largely written by Robert Chester, who also commissioned contributions from other poets. Shakespeare’s poem relates to the subject matter of Chester’s book and may call to mind the ‘metaphysical’ manner of John Donne, but it also belongs in a long tradition of bird poems whose most famous English examples include Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules and the closing songs of Shakespeare’s own Love’s Labour’s Lost.

The Arden text is based on the first editions of Venus and Adonis (1593), Lucrece (1594), The Passionate Pilgrim (1599) and Robert Chester’s Love’s Martyr (1601).

Venus and Adonis

Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.

To the Right Honourable
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton,
and Baron of Titchfield.

Right Honourable,

I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden. Only, if your Honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised; and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your Honourable survey, and your Honour to your heart’s content, which I wish may always answer your own wish, and the world’s hopeful expectation.

Your Honour’s in all duty,
William Shakespeare.

Even as the sun with purple-colour’d face

Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn,

Rose-cheek’d Adonis hied him to the chase;

Hunting he lov’d, but love he laugh’d to scorn.

Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,

5

And like a bold-fac’d suitor ’gins to woo him.

‘Thrice fairer than myself,’ thus she began,

‘The field’s chief flower, sweet above compare;

Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man,

More white and red than doves or roses are:

10

Nature that made thee with herself at strife,

Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.

‘Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed,

And rein his proud head to the saddle-bow;

If thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed

15

A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know.

Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses,

And being set, I’ll smother thee with kisses.

‘And yet not cloy thy lips with loath’d satiety,

But rather famish them amid their plenty,

20

Making them red, and pale, with fresh variety:

Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty.

A summer’s day will seem an hour but short,

Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.’

With this she seizeth on his sweating palm,

25

The precedent of pith and livelihood,

And trembling in her passion, calls it balm,

Earth’s sovereign salve to do a goddess good:

Being so enrag’d, desire doth lend her force

Courageously to pluck him from his horse.

30

Over one arm the lusty courser’s rein,

Under her other was the tender boy,

Who blush’d and pouted in a dull disdain,

With leaden appetite, unapt to toy:

She red and hot as coals of glowing fire,

35

He red for shame, but frosty in desire.

The studded bridle on a ragged bough

Nimbly she fastens – O how quick is love! –

The steed is stalled up, and even now

To tie the rider she begins to prove:

40

Backward she push’d him, as she would be thrust,

And govern’d him in strength, though not in lust.

So soon was she along as he was down,

Each leaning on their elbows and their hips;

Now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown,

45

And ’gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips,

And kissing speaks, with lustful language broken,

‘If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open.’

He burns with bashful shame, she with her tears

Doth quench the maiden burning of his cheeks;

50

Then with her windy sighs and golden hairs

To fan and blow them dry again she seeks.

He saith she is immodest, blames her miss;

What follows more, she murders with a kiss.

Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,

55

Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone,

Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste,

Till either gorge be stuff’d or prey be gone:

Even so she kiss’d his brow, his cheek, his chin,

And where she ends she doth anew begin.

60

Forc’d to content, but never to obey,

Panting he lies and breatheth in her face.

She feedeth on the steam as on a prey,

And calls it heavenly moisture, air of grace,

Wishing her cheeks were gardens full of flowers,

65

So they were dew’d with such distilling showers.

Look how a bird lies tangled in a net,

So fasten’d in her arms Adonis lies;

Pure shame and aw’d resistance made him fret,

Which bred more beauty in his angry eyes:

70

Rain added to a river that is rank

Perforce will force it overflow the bank.

Still she entreats, and prettily entreats,

For to a pretty ear she tunes her tale.

Still is he sullen, still he lours and frets,

75

’Twixt crimson shame and anger ashy pale.

Being red, she loves him best, and being white,

Her best is better’d with a more delight.

Look how he can, she cannot choose but love;

And by her fair immortal hand she swears,

80

From his soft bosom never to remove

Till he take truce with her contending tears,

Which long have rain’d, making her cheeks all wet:

And one sweet kiss shall pay this comptless debt.

Upon this promise did he raise his chin,

85

Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave,

Who being look’d on, ducks as quickly in:

So offers he to give what she did crave,

But when her lips were ready for his pay,

He winks, and turns his lips another way.

90

Never did passenger in summer’s heat

More thirst for drink than she for this good turn.

Her help she sees, but help she cannot get;

She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn.

‘Oh pity,’ ’gan she cry, ‘flint-hearted boy,

95

’Tis but a kiss I beg, why art thou coy?

‘I have been woo’d as I entreat thee now,

Even by the stern and direful god of war,

Whose sinewy neck in battle ne’er did bow,

Who conquers where he comes in every jar;

100

Yet hath he been my captive and my slave,

And begg’d for that which thou unask’d shalt have.

‘Over my altars hath he hung his lance,

His batter’d shield, his uncontrolled crest;

And for my sake hath learn’d to sport and dance,

105

To toy, to wanton, dally, smile and jest,

Scorning his churlish drum and ensign red,

Making my arms his field, his tent my bed.

‘Thus he that overrul’d I oversway’d,

Leading him prisoner in a red rose chain:

110

Strong-temper’d steel his stronger strength obey’d,

Yet was he servile to my coy disdain.

Oh be not proud, nor brag not of thy might,

For mast’ring her that foil’d the god of fight!

‘Touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine –

115

Though mine be not so fair, yet are they red –

The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine.

What see’st thou in the ground? hold up thy head,

Look in mine eye-balls, there thy beauty lies:

Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes?

120

‘Art thou asham’d to kiss? then wink again,

And I will wink; so shall the day seem night.

Love keeps his revels where there are but twain;

Be bold to play, our sport is not in sight.

These blue-vein’d violets whereon we lean

125

Never can blab, nor know not what we mean.

‘The tender spring upon thy tempting lip

Shows thee unripe; yet mayst thou well be tasted.

Make use of time, let not advantage slip;

Beauty within itself should not be wasted.

130

Fair flowers that are not gather’d in their prime

Rot, and consume themselves in little time.

‘Were I hard-favour’d, foul, or wrinkled old,

Ill-nurtur’d, crooked, churlish, harsh in voice,

O’erworn, despised, rheumatic and cold,

135

Thick-sighted, barren, lean, and lacking juice,

Then mightst thou pause, for then I were not for thee;

But having no defects, why dost abhor me?

‘Thou canst not see one wrinkle in my brow,

Mine eyes are grey and bright and quick in turning.

140

My beauty as the spring doth yearly grow,

My flesh is soft and plump, my marrow burning.

My smooth moist hand, were it with thy hand felt,

Would in thy palm dissolve, or seem to melt.

‘Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,

145

Or like a fairy trip upon the green,

Or like a nymph, with long dishevell’d hair,

Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen.

Love is a spirit all compact of fire,

Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.

150

‘Witness this primrose bank whereon I lie:

These forceless flowers like sturdy trees support me.

Two strengthless doves will draw me through the sky

From morn till night, even where I list to sport me.

Is love so light, sweet boy, and may it be

155

That thou should think it heavy unto thee?

‘Is thine own heart to thine own face affected?

Can thy right hand seize love upon thy left?

Then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected;

Steal thine own freedom, and complain on theft.

160

Narcissus so himself himself forsook,

And died to kiss his shadow in the brook.

‘Torches are made to light, jewels to wear,

Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use,

Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear:

165

Things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse.

Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty;

Thou wast begot, to get it is thy duty.

‘Upon the earth’s increase why shouldst thou feed,

Unless the earth with thy increase be fed?

170

By law of nature thou art bound to breed,

That thine may live when thou thyself art dead;

And so in spite of death thou dost survive,

In that thy likeness still is left alive.’

By this the love-sick queen began to sweat,

175

For where they lay, the shadow had forsook them;

And Titan, tired in the mid-day heat,

With burning eye did hotly overlook them,

Wishing Adonis had his team to guide,

So he were like him and by Venus’ side.

180

And now Adonis with a lazy sprite,

And with a heavy, dark, disliking eye,

His louring brows o’erwhelming his fair sight,

Like misty vapours when they blot the sky:

Souring his cheeks, cries, ‘Fie, no more of love!

185

The sun doth burn my face, I must remove.’

‘Ay me,’ quoth Venus, ‘young, and so unkind!

What bare excuses mak’st thou to be gone!

I’ll sigh celestial breath, whose gentle wind

Shall cool the heat of this descending sun

190

I’ll make a shadow for thee of my hairs;

If they burn too, I’ll quench them with my tears.

‘The sun that shines from heaven shines but warm,

And lo I lie between that sun and thee:

The heat I have from thence doth little harm,

195

Thine eye darts forth the fire that burneth me;

And were I not immortal, life were done,

Between this heavenly and earthly sun.

‘Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel?

Nay more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth;

200

Art thou a woman’s son and canst not feel

What ’tis to love, how want of love tormenteth?

O had thy mother borne so hard a mind,

She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind.

‘What am I that thou shouldst contemn me this,

205

Or what great danger dwells upon my suit?

What were thy lips the worse for one poor kiss?

Speak, fair, but speak fair words, or else be mute.

Give me one kiss, I’ll give it thee again,

And one for int’rest, if thou wilt have twain.

210

‘Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone,

Well-painted idol, image dull and dead,

Statue contenting but the eye alone,

Thing like a man, but of no woman bred!

Thou art no man, though of a man’s complexion,

215

For men will kiss even by their own direction.’

This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue,

And swelling passion doth provoke a pause.

Red cheeks and fiery eyes blaze forth her wrong;

Being judge in love, she cannot right her cause.

220

And now she weeps, and now she fain would speak,

And now her sobs do her intendments break.

Sometime she shakes her head, and then his hand,

Now gazeth she on him, now on the ground.

Sometime her arms infold him like a band:

225

She would, he will not in her arms be bound.

And when from thence he struggles to be gone,

She locks her lily fingers one in one.

‘Fondling,’ she saith, ‘since I have hemm’d thee here

Within the circuit of this ivory pale,

230

I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer:

Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale;

Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,

Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.

‘Within this limit is relief enough,

235

Sweet bottom grass and high delightful plain,

Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough,

To shelter thee from tempest and from rain:

Then be my deer, since I am such a park,

No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark.’

240

At this Adonis smiles as in disdain,

That in each cheek appears a pretty dimple;

Love made those hollows, if himself were slain,

He might be buried in a tomb so simple,

Foreknowing well, if there he came to lie,

245

Why there love liv’d, and there he could not die.

These lovely caves, these round enchanting pits,

Open’d their mouths to swallow Venus’ liking:

Being mad before, how doth she now for wits?

Struck dead before, what needs a second striking?

250

Poor queen of love, in thine own law forlorn,

To love a cheek that smiles at thee in scorn!

Now which way shall she turn? what shall she say?

Her words are done, her woes the more increasing;

The time is spent, her object will away,

255

And from her twining arms doth urge releasing.

‘Pity,’ she cries, ‘some favour, some remorse!’

Away he springs, and hasteth to his horse.

But lo from forth a copse that neighbours by,

A breeding jennet, lusty, young and proud,

260

Adonis’ trampling courser doth espy,

And forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud:

The strong-neck’d steed being tied unto a tree,

Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he.

Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds

265

And now his woven girths he breaks asunder;

The bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds,

Whose hollow womb resounds like heaven’s thunder;

The iron bit he crusheth ’tween his teeth,

Controlling what he was controlled with.

270

His ears up-prick’d, his braided hanging mane

Upon his compass’d crest now stand on end;

His nostrils drink the air, and forth again

As from a furnace, vapours doth he send;

His eye which scornfully glisters like fire

275

Shows his hot courage and his high desire.

Sometime he trots, as if he told the steps,

With gentle majesty and modest pride;

Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps,

As who should say ‘Lo thus my strength is tried:

280

And this I do to captivate the eye

Of the fair breeder that is standing by.’

What recketh he his rider’s angry stir,

His flattering ‘holla’ or his ‘Stand, I say’?

What cares he now for curb or pricking spur,

285

For rich caparisons or trappings gay?

He sees his love, and nothing else he sees,

For nothing else with his proud sight agrees.

Look when a painter would surpass the life

In limning out a well-proportion’d steed,

290

His art with nature’s workmanship at strife,

As if the dead the living should exceed:

So did this horse excel a common one,

In shape, in courage, colour, pace and bone.

Round-hoof’d, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,

295

Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide,

High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,

Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide:

Look what a horse should have he did not lack,

Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

300

Sometime he scuds far off, and there he stares;

Anon he starts at stirring of a feather.

To bid the wind a base he now prepares,

And where he run or fly, they know not whether,

For through his mane and tail the high wind sings,

305

Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather’d wings.

He looks upon his love, and neighs unto her:

She answers him, as if she knew his mind.

Being proud, as females are, to see him woo her,

She puts on outward strangeness, seems unkind,

310

Spurns at his love, and scorns the heat he feels,

Beating his kind embracements with her heels.

Then like a melancholy malcontent,

He vails his tail that like a falling plume

Cool shadow to his melting buttock lent;

315

He stamps, and bites the poor flies in his fume.

His love perceiving how he was enrag’d,

Grew kinder, and his fury was assuag’d.

His testy master goeth about to take him,

When lo the unback’d breeder, full of fear,

320

Jealous of catching, swiftly doth forsake him;

With her the horse, and left Adonis there:

As they were mad unto the wood they hie them,

Outstripping crows that strive to overfly them.

All swoln with chafing, down Adonis sits,

325

Banning his boist’rous and unruly beast.

And now the happy season once more fits

That love-sick love by pleading may be blest;

For lovers say, the heart hath treble wrong,

When it is barr’d the aidance of the tongue.

330

An oven that is stopp’d, or river stay’d,

Burneth more hotly, swelleth with more rage:

So of concealed sorrow may be said

Free vent of words love’s fire doth assuage;

But when the heart’s attorney once is mute,

335

The client breaks, as desperate in his suit.

He sees her coming, and begins to glow,

Even as a dying coal revives with wind;

And with his bonnet hides his angry brow,

Looks on the dull earth with disturbed mind,

340

Taking no notice that she is so nigh,

For all askance he holds her in his eye.

O what a sight it was, wistly to view

How she came stealing to the wayward boy!

To note the fighting conflict of her hue,

345

How white and red each other did destroy!

But now her cheek was pale, and by and by

It flash’d forth fire, as lightning from the sky.

Now was she just before him as he sat,

And like a lowly lover down she kneels;

350

With one fair hand she heaveth up his hat,

Her other tender hand his fair cheek feels:

His tend’rer cheek receives her soft hand’s print,

As apt as new-fall’n snow takes any dint.

Oh what a war of looks was then between them!

355

Her eyes petitioners to his eyes suing,

His eyes saw her eyes, as they had not seen them,

Her eyes woo’d still, his eyes disdain’d the wooing;

And all this dumb play had his acts made plain

With tears, which chorus-like her eyes did rain.

360

Full gently now she takes him by the hand,

A lily prison’d in a gaol of snow,

Or ivory in an alablaster band:

So white a friend engirts so white a foe.

This beauteous combat, wilful and unwilling,

365

Show’d like two silver doves that sit a-billing.

Once more the engine of her thoughts began:

‘O fairest mover on this mortal round,

Would thou wert as I am, and I a man,

My heart all whole as thine, thy heart my wound!

370

For one sweet look thy help I would assure thee,

Though nothing but my body’s bane would cure thee.’

‘Give me my hand,’ said he, ‘why dost thou feel it?’

‘Give me my heart,’ saith she, ‘and thou shalt have it.

O give it me lest thy hard heart do steel it,

375

And being steel’d, soft sighs can never grave it.

Then love’s deep groans I never shall regard,

Because Adonis’ heart hath made mine hard.’

‘For shame,’ he cries, ‘let go, and let me go:

My day’s delight is past, my horse is gone,

380

And ’tis your fault I am bereft him so.

I pray you hence, and leave me here alone,

For all my mind, my thought, my busy care,

Is how to get my palfrey from the mare.’

Thus she replies: ‘Thy palfrey as he should,

385

Welcomes the warm approach of sweet desire.

Affection is a coal that must be cool’d;

Else, suffer’d, it will set the heart on fire.

The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none;

Therefore no marvel though thy horse be gone.

390

‘How like a jade he stood tied to the tree,

Servilely master’d with a leathern rein!

But when he saw his love, his youth’s fair fee,

He held such petty bondage in disdain,

Throwing the base thong from his bending crest,

395

Enfranchising his mouth, his back, his breast.

‘Who sees his true-love in her naked bed,

Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white,

But when his glutton eye so full hath fed,

His other agents aim at like delight?

400

Who is so faint that dares not be so bold

To touch the fire, the weather being cold?

‘Let me excuse thy courser, gentle boy,

And learn of him, I heartily beseech thee,

To take advantage on presented joy;

405

Though I were dumb, yet his proceedings teach thee.

O learn to love, the lesson is but plain,

And once made perfect, never lost again.’

‘I know not love,’ quoth he, ‘nor will not know it,

Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it.

410

’Tis much to borrow, and I will not owe it:

My love to love is love but to disgrace it,

For I have heard, it is a life in death,

That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath.

‘Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinish’d?

415

Who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth?

If springing things be any jot diminish’d,

They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth;

The colt that’s back’d and burden’d being young,

Loseth his pride, and never waxeth strong.

420

‘You hurt my hand with wringing, let us part,

And leave this idle theme, this bootless chat;

Remove your siege from my unyielding heart,

To love’s alarms it will not ope the gate.

Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flatt’ry,

425

For where a heart is hard they make no batt’ry.’

‘What, canst thou talk?’ quoth she, ‘hast thou a tongue?

O would thou hadst not, or I had no hearing!

Thy mermaid’s voice hath done me double wrong;

I had my load before, now press’d with bearing:

430

Melodious discord, heavenly tune harsh-sounding,

Ears’ deep sweet music, and heart’s deep sore wounding!

‘Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love

That inward beauty and invisible;

Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move

435

Each part in me that were but sensible:

Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see,

Yet should I be in love by touching thee.

‘Say that the sense of feeling were bereft me,

And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch,

440

And nothing but the very smell were left me,

Yet would my love to thee be still as much;

For from the stillitory of thy face excelling

Comes breath perfum’d, that breedeth love by smelling.

‘But oh what banquet wert thou to the taste,

445

Being nurse and feeder of the other four!

Would they not wish the feast might ever last,

And bid suspicion double-lock the door,

Lest jealousy, that sour unwelcome guest,

Should by his stealing in disturb the feast?’

450

Once more the ruby-colour’d portal open’d,

Which to his speech did honey passage yield,

Like a red morn that ever yet betoken’d

Wrack to the seaman, tempest to the field,

Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,

455

Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.

This ill presage advisedly she marketh:

Even as the wind is hush’d before it raineth,

Or as the wolf doth grin before he barketh,

Or as the berry breaks before it staineth,

460

Or like the deadly bullet of a gun,

His meaning struck her ere his words begun.

And at his look she flatly falleth down,

For looks kill love, and love by looks reviveth:

A smile recures the wounding of a frown.

465

But blessed bankrout, that by love so thriveth!

Thy silly boy, believing she is dead,

Claps her pale cheek, till clapping makes it red.

And all amaz’d brake off his late intent,

For sharply did he think to reprehend her,

470

Which cunning love did wittily prevent:

Fair fall the wit that can so well defend her!

For on the grass she lies as she were slain,

Till his breath breatheth life in her again.

He wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks,

475

He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard,

He chafes her lips; a thousand ways he seeks

To mend the hurt that his unkindness marr’d.

He kisses her, and she by her good will

Will never rise, so he will kiss her still.

480

The night of sorrow now is turn’d to day:

Her two blue windows faintly she up-heaveth,

Like the fair sun when in his fresh array

He cheers the morn, and all the earth relieveth;

And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,

485

So is her face illumin’d with her eye.

Whose beams upon his hairless face are fix’d,

As if from thence they borrow’d all their shine.

Were never four such lamps together mix’d,

Had not his clouded with his brow’s repine;

490

But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light,

Shone like the moon in water seen by night.

‘O where am I?’ quoth she, ‘in earth or heaven?

Or in the ocean drench’d, or in the fire?

What hour is this, or morn, or weary even?

495

Do I delight to die, or life desire?

But now I liv’d, and life was death’s annoy;

But now I died, and death was lively joy.

‘O thou didst kill me, kill me once again!

Thy eyes’ shrewd tutor, that hard heart of thine,

500

Hath taught them scornful tricks, and such disdain,

That they have murder’d this poor heart of mine;

And these mine eyes, true leaders to their queen,

But for thy piteous lips no more had seen.

‘Long may they kiss each other for this cure!

505

Oh never let their crimson liveries wear,

And as they last, their verdour still endure,

To drive infection from the dangerous year:

That the star-gazers, having writ on death,

May say, the plague is banish’d by thy breath.

510

‘Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted,

What bargains may I make, still to be sealing?

To sell myself I can be well contented,

So thou wilt buy, and pay, and use good dealing:

Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips,

515

Set thy seal manual on my wax-red lips.

‘A thousand kisses buys my heart from me,

And pay them at thy leisure, one by one,

What is ten hundred touches unto thee?

Are they not quickly told and quickly gone?

520

Say for non-payment that the debt should double,

Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?’

‘Fair queen,’ quoth he, ‘if any love owe me,

Measure my strangeness with my unripe years.

Before I know myself, seek not to know me:

525

No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears;

The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast,

Or being early pluck’d, is sour to taste.

‘Look the world’s comforter with weary gait

His day’s hot task hath ended in the west;

530

The owl, night’s herald, shrieks, ’tis very late;

The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest,

And coal-black clouds that shadow heaven’s light

Do summon us to part, and bid good night.

‘Now let me say good night, and so say you;

535

If you will say so, you shall have a kiss.’

‘Good night,’ quoth she, and ere he says adieu,

The honey fee of parting tender’d is:

Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace;

Incorporate then they seem, face grows to face.

540

Till breathless he disjoin’d, and backward drew

The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth,

Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew,

Whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drouth.

He with her plenty press’d, she faint with dearth,

545

Their lips together glued, fall to the earth.

Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey,

And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth.

Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey,

Paying what ransom the insulter willeth;

550

Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high

That she will draw his lips’ rich treasure dry.

And having felt the sweetness of the spoil,

With blindfold fury she begins to forage;

Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil,

555

And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage,

Planting oblivion, beating reason back,

Forgetting shame’s pure blush and honour’s wrack.

Hot, faint and weary with her hard embracing,

Like a wild bird being tam’d with too much handling,

560

Or as the fleet-foot roe that’s tir’d with chasing,

Or like the froward infant still’d with dandling:

He now obeys, and now no more resisteth,

While she takes all she can, not all she listeth.

What wax so frozen but dissolves with temp’ring,

565

And yields at last to very light impression?

Things out of hope are compass’d oft with vent’ring,

Chiefly in love, whose leave exceeds commission:

Affection faints not like a pale-fac’d coward,

But then woos best when most his choice is froward.

570

When he did frown, O had she then gave over,

Such nectar from his lips she had not suck’d.

Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover;

What though the rose have prickles, yet ’tis pluck’d.

Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast,

575

Yet love breaks through, and picks them all at last.

For pity now she can no more detain him;

The poor fool prays her that he may depart.

She is resolv’d no longer to restrain him,

Bids him farewell, and look well to her heart,

580

The which by Cupid’s bow she doth protest

He carries thence encaged in his breast.

‘Sweet boy,’ she says, ‘this night I’ll waste in sorrow,

For my sick heart commands mine eyes to watch.

Tell me, love’s master, shall we meet tomorrow?

585

Say, shall we, shall we? wilt thou make the match?’

He tells her no, tomorrow he intends

To hunt the boar with certain of his friends.

‘The boar,’ quoth she: whereat a sudden pale,

Like lawn being spread upon the blushing rose,

590

Usurps her cheek; she trembles at his tale,

And on his neck her yoking arms she throws.

She sinketh down, still hanging by his neck;

He on her belly falls, she on her back.

Now is she in the very lists of love,

595

Her champion mounted for the hot encounter.

All is imaginary she doth prove;

He will not manage her, although he mount her:

That worse than Tantalus’ is her annoy,

To clip Elizium and to lack her joy.

600

Even so poor birds deceiv’d with painted grapes

Do surfeit by the eye and pine the maw:

Even so she languisheth in her mishaps,

As those poor birds that helpless berries saw.

The warm effects which she in him finds missing

605

She seeks to kindle with continual kissing.

But all in vain; good queen, it will not be.

She hath assay’d as much as may be prov’d:

Her pleading hath deserv’d a greater fee;

She’s love, she loves, and yet she is not lov’d.

610

‘Fie, fie,’ he says, ‘you crush me; let me go,

You have no reason to withhold me so.’

‘Thou hadst been gone,’ quoth she, ‘sweet boy, ere this,

But that thou told’st me, thou wouldst hunt the boar.

Oh be advis’d, thou know’st not what it is,

615

With javelin’s point a churlish swine to gore,

Whose tushes never sheath’d he whetteth still,

Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill.

‘On his bow-back he hath a battle set

Of bristly pikes that ever threat his foes;

620

His eyes like glow-worms shine when he doth fret,

His snout digs sepulchres where’er he goes;

Being mov’d, he strikes whate’er is in his way,

And whom he strikes his crooked tushes slay.

‘His brawny sides with hairy bristles armed

625

Are better proof than thy spear’s point can enter;

His short thick neck cannot be easily harmed;

Being ireful, on the lion he will venture.

The thorny brambles and embracing bushes,

As fearful of him, part; through whom he rushes.

630

‘Alas, he naught esteems that face of thine,

To which love’s eyes pays tributary gazes;

Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips and crystal eyne,

Whose full perfection all the world amazes:

But having thee at vantage – wondrous dread! –

635

Would root these beauties as he roots the mead.

‘Oh let him keep his loathsome cabin still!

Beauty hath naught to do with such foul fiends.

Come not within his danger by thy will:

They that thrive well, take counsel of their friends.

640

When thou didst name the boar, not to dissemble,

I fear’d thy fortune, and my joints did tremble.

‘Didst thou not mark my face, was it not white?

Saw’st thou not signs of fear lurk in mine eye?

Grew I not faint, and fell I not downright?

645

Within my bosom, whereon thou dost lie,

My boding heart pants, beats, and takes no rest,

But like an earthquake, shakes thee on my breast.

‘For where love reigns, disturbing jealousy

Doth call himself affection’s sentinel;

650

Gives false alarms, suggesteth mutiny,

And in a peaceful hour doth cry “Kill, kill!”

Distemp’ring gentle love in his desire,

As air and water do abate the fire.

‘This sour informer, this bate-breeding spy,

655

This canker that eats up love’s tender spring,

This carry-tale, dissentious jealousy,

That sometime true news, sometime false doth bring,

Knocks at my heart, and whispers in mine ear,

That if I love thee, I thy death should fear.

660

‘And more than so, presenteth to mine eye

The picture of an angry chafing boar,

Under whose sharp fangs on his back doth lie

An image like thyself, all stain’d with gore;

Whose blood upon the fresh flowers being shed,

665

Doth make them droop with grief and hang the head.

‘What should I do, seeing thee so indeed,

That tremble at th’imagination?

The thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed,

And fear doth teach it divination:

670

I prophesy thy death, my living sorrow,

If thou encounter with the boar tomorrow.

‘But if thou needs wilt hunt, be rul’d by me:

Uncouple at the timorous flying hare,

Or at the fox which lives by subtlety,

675

Or at the roe which no encounter dare;

Pursue these fearful creatures o’er the downs,

And on thy well-breath’d horse keep with thy hounds.

‘And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,

Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles,

680

How he outruns the wind, and with what care

He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles;

The many musits through the which he goes

Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.

‘Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep,

685

To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell;

And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,

To stop the loud pursuers in their yell;

And sometime sorteth with a heard of deer:

Danger deviseth shifts, wit waits on fear.

690

‘For there his smell with others being mingled,

The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,

Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled

With much ado the cold fault cleanly out;

Then they do spend their mouths: echo replies,

695

As if another chase were in the skies.

‘By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,

Stands on his hinder-legs with list’ning ear,

To hearken if his foes pursue him still.

Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;

700

And now his grief may be compared well

To one sore sick, that hears the passing bell.

‘Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch

Turn, and return, indenting with the way.

Each envious briar his weary legs do scratch,

705

Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay:

For misery is trodden on by many,

And being low, never reliev’d by any.

‘Lie quietly, and hear a little more;

Nay, do not struggle, for thou shalt not rise.

710

To make thee hate the hunting of the boar,

Unlike myself thou hear’st me moralise,

Applying this to that, and so to so,

For love can comment upon every woe.

‘Where did I leave?’ ‘No matter where,’ quoth he;

715

‘Leave me, and then the story aptly ends:

The night is spent.’ ‘Why, what of that?’ quoth she.

‘I am,’ quoth he, ‘expected of my friends,

And now ’tis dark, and going I shall fall.’

‘In night,’ quoth she, ‘desire sees best of all.

720

‘But if thou fall, oh then imagine this:

The earth in love with thee thy footing trips,

And all is but to rob thee of a kiss.

Rich preys make true men thieves; so do thy lips

Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn,

725

Lest she should steal a kiss and die forsworn.

‘Now of this dark night I perceive the reason:

Cynthia for shame obscures her silver shine,

Till forging nature be condemn’d of treason,

For stealing moulds from heaven, that were divine;

730

Wherein she fram’d thee, in high heaven’s despite,

To shame the sun by day and her by night.

‘And therefore hath she brib’d the destinies

To cross the curious workmanship of nature,

To mingle beauty with infirmities

735

And pure perfection with impure defeature,

Making it subject to the tyranny

Of mad mischances and much misery:

‘As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,

Life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wood,

740

The marrow-eating sickness whose attaint

Disorder breeds by heating of the blood;

Surfeits, imposthumes, grief and damn’d despair,

Swear nature’s death, for framing thee so fair.

‘And not the least of all these maladies

745

But in one minute’s fight brings beauty under;

Both favour, savour, hue and qualities,

Whereat th’impartial gazer late did wonder,

Are on the sudden wasted, thaw’d and done,

As mountain snow melts with the midday sun.

750

‘Therefore despite of fruitless chastity,

Love-lacking vestals and self-loving nuns,

That on the earth would breed a scarcity

And barren dearth of daughters and of sons,

Be prodigal; the lamp that burns by night

755

Dries up his oil to lend the world his light.

‘What is thy body but a swallowing grave,

Seeming to bury that posterity,

Which by the rights of time thou needs must have,

If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity?

760

If so, the world will hold thee in disdain,

Sith in thy pride so fair a hope is slain.

‘So in thyself thyself art made away;

A mischief worse than civil home-bred strife,

Or theirs whose desperate hands themselves do slay,

765

Or butcher sire that reaves his son of life.

Foul cank’ring rust the hidden treasure frets,

But gold that’s put to use more gold begets.’

‘Nay then,’ quoth Adon, ‘you will fall again

Into your idle over-handled theme.

770

The kiss I gave you is bestow’d in vain,

And all in vain you strive against the stream;

For by this black-fac’d night, desire’s foul nurse,

Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse.

‘If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues,

775

And every tongue more moving than your own,

Bewitching like the wanton mermaid’s songs,

Yet from my heart the tempting tune is blown;

For know, my heart stands armed in mine ear,

And will not let a false sound enter there;

780

‘Lest the deceiving harmony should run

Into the quiet closure of my breast,

And then my little heart were quite undone,

In his bedchamber to be barr’d of rest.

No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan,

785

But soundly sleeps, while now it sleeps alone.

‘What have you urg’d that I cannot reprove?

The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger.

I hate not love, but your device in love

That lends embracements unto every stranger.

790

You do it for increase: O strange excuse,

When reason is the bawd to lust’s abuse!

‘Call it not love, for love to heaven is fled,

Since sweating lust on earth usurp’d his name;

Under whose simple semblance he hath fed

795

Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame;

Which the hot tyrant stains and soon bereaves,

As caterpillars do the tender leaves.

‘Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,

But lust’s effect is tempest after sun;

800

Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain,

Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done;

Love surfeits not, lust like a glutton dies;

Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies.

‘More I could tell, but more I dare not say:

805

The text is old, the orator too green.

Therefore in sadness, now I will away;

My face is full of shame, my heart of teen,

Mine ears that to your wanton talk attended

Do burn themselves, for having so offended.’

810

With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace

Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,

And homeward through the dark laund runs apace;

Leaves love upon her back deeply distress’d.

Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky,

815

So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye;

Which after him she darts, as one on shore

Gazing upon a late embarked friend,

Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,

Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend:

820

So did the merciless and pitchy night

Fold in the object that did feed her sight.

Whereat amaz’d, as one that unaware

Hath dropp’d a precious jewel in the flood,

Or ’stonish’d as night-wand’rers often are,

825

Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood:

Even so confounded in the dark she lay,

Having lost the fair discovery of her way.

And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans,

That all the neighbour caves, as seeming troubled,

830

Make verbal repetition of her moans;

Passion on passion deeply is redoubled:

‘Ay me,’ she cries, and twenty times, ‘Woe, woe,’

And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.

She marking them, begins a wailing note,

835

And sings extemporally a woeful ditty:

How love makes young men thrall, and old men dote,

How love is wise in folly, foolish witty.

Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe,

And still the quire of echoes answer so.

840

Her song was tedious, and outwore the night,

For lovers’ hours are long, though seeming short.

If pleas’d themselves, others they think delight

In such like circumstance, with such like sport.

Their copious stories oftentimes begun,

845

End without audience, and are never done.

For who hath she to spend the night withal,

But idle sounds resembling parasites,

Like shrill-tongu’d tapsters answering every call,

Soothing the humour of fantastic wits?

850

She says ‘’Tis so,’ they answer all ‘’Tis so,’

And would say after her, if she said ‘No.’

Lo here the gentle lark, weary of rest,

From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,

And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast

855

The sun ariseth in his majesty;

Who doth the world so gloriously behold

That cedar tops and hills seem burnish’d gold.

Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow,

‘Oh thou clear god, and patron of all light,

860

From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow

The beauteous influence that makes him bright:

There lives a son that suck’d an earthly mother,

May lend thee light, as thou dost lend to other.’

This said, she hasteth to a myrtle grove,

865

Musing the morning is so much o’erworn,

And yet she hears no tidings of her love;

She hearkens for his hounds and for his horn.

Anon she hears them chant it lustily,

And all in haste she coasteth to the cry.

870

And as she runs, the bushes in the way,

Some catch her by the neck, some kiss her face,

Some twine about her thigh to make her stay;

She wildly breaketh from their strict embrace,

Like a milch doe, whose swelling dugs do ache,

875

Hasting to feed her fawn, hid in some brake.

By this she hears the hounds are at a bay,

Whereat she starts like one that spies an adder

Wreath’d up in fatal folds just in his way,

The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder:

880

Even so the timorous yelping of the hounds

Appals her senses and her spirit confounds.

For now she knows it is no gentle chase,

But the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud,

Because the cry remaineth in one place,

885

Where fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud;

Finding their enemy to be so curst,

They all strain court’sy who shall cope him first.

This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear,

Through which it enters to surprise her heart;

890

Who overcome by doubt and bloodless fear,

With cold pale weakness numbs each feeling part:

Like soldiers when their captain once doth yield,

They basely fly, and dare not stay the field.

Thus stands she in a trembling ecstasy,

895

Till cheering up her senses all dismay’d,

She tells them ’tis a causeless fantasy,

And childish error, that they are afraid;

Bids them leave quaking, bids them fear no more,

And with that word, she spied the hunted boar:

900

Whose frothy mouth bepainted all with red,

Like milk and blood being mingled both together,

A second fear through all her sinews spread,

Which madly hurries her she knows not whither.

This way she runs, and now she will no further,

905

And back retires, to rate the boar for murther.

A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways,

She treads the path that she untreads again;

Her more than haste is mated with delays

Like the proceedings of a drunken brain,

910

Full of respects, yet naught at all respecting,

In hand with all things, naught at all effecting.

Here kennell’d in a brake she finds a hound,

And asks the weary caitiff for his master;

And there another licking of his wound,

915

’Gainst venom’d sores the only sovereign plaster.

And here she meets another sadly scowling,

To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling.

When he hath ceas’d his ill-resounding noise,

Another flap-mouth’d mourner, black and grim,

920

Against the welkin volleys out his voice;

Another and another answer him,

Clapping their proud tails to the ground below,

Shaking their scratch’d ears, bleeding as they go.

Look how the world’s poor people are amazed

925

At apparitions, signs and prodigies,

Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gazed,

Infusing them with dreadful prophecies:

So she at these sad signs draws up her breath,

And sighing it again, exclaims on death.

930

‘Hard-favour’d tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean,

Hateful divorce of love,’ thus chides she death:

‘Grim-grinning ghost, earth’s worm, what dost thou mean,

To stifle beauty and to steal his breath?

Who when he liv’d, his breath and beauty set

935

Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet.

‘If he be dead, – O no, it cannot be,

Seeing his beauty, thou shouldst strike at it, –

O yes, it may, thou hast no eyes to see,

But hatefully at randon dost thou hit:

940

Thy mark is feeble age, but thy false dart

Mistakes that aim, and cleaves an infant’s heart.

‘Hadst thou but bid beware, then he had spoke,

And hearing him, thy power had lost his power.

The destinies will curse thee for this stroke:

945

They bid thee crop a weed, thou pluck’st a flower.

Love’s golden arrow at him should have fled,

And not death’s ebon dart to strike him dead.

‘Dost thou drink tears, that thou provok’st such weeping?

What may a heavy groan advantage thee?

950

Why hast thou cast into eternal sleeping

Those eyes that taught all other eyes to see?

Now nature cares not for thy mortal vigour,

Since her best work is ruin’d with thy rigour.’

Here overcome, as one full of despair,

955

She vail’d her eyelids, who like sluices stopp’d

The crystal tide that from her two cheeks fair

In the sweet channel of her bosom dropp’d;

But through the flood-gates breaks the silver rain,

And with his strong course opens them again.

960

O how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow!

Her eye seen in the tears, tears in her eye:

Both crystals where they view’d each other’s sorrow,

Sorrow that friendly sighs sought still to dry;

But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain,

965

Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again.

Variable passions throng her constant woe,

As striving who should best become her grief;

All entertain’d, each passion labours so,

That every present sorrow seemeth chief,

970

But none is best: then join they all together,

Like many clouds consulting for foul weather.

By this, far off she hears some huntsman holla:

A nurse’s song ne’er pleas’d her babe so well.

The dire imagination she did follow

975

This sound of hope doth labour to expel;

For now reviving joy bids her rejoice,

And flatters her it is Adonis’ voice.

Whereat her tears began to turn their tide,

Being prison’d in her eye like pearls in glass;

980

Yet sometimes falls an orient drop beside,

Which her cheek melts, as scorning it should pass

To wash the foul face of the sluttish ground,

Who is but drunken when she seemeth drown’d.

O hard-believing love, how strange it seems

985

Not to believe, and yet too credulous!

Thy weal and woe are both of them extremes;

Despair and hope makes thee ridiculous:

The one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely,

In likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly.

990

Now she unweaves the web that she hath wrought:

Adonis lives, and death is not to blame;

It was not she that call’d him all to naught;

Now she adds honours to his hateful name:

She clepes him king of graves, and grave for kings,

995

Imperious supreme of all mortal things.

‘No, no,’ quoth she, ‘sweet death, I did but jest;

Yet pardon me, I felt a kind of fear

Whenas I met the boar, that bloody beast,

Which knows no pity, but is still severe:

1000

Then, gentle shadow, – truth I must confess, –

I rail’d on thee, fearing my love’s decease.

‘ ’Tis not my fault, the boar provok’d my tongue:

Be wreak’d on him, invisible commander.

’Tis he, foul creature, that hath done thee wrong:

1005

I did but act, he’s author of thy slander.

Grief hath two tongues, and never woman yet

Could rule them both, without ten women’s wit.’

Thus hoping that Adonis is alive,

Her rash suspects she doth extenuate;

1010

And that his beauty may the better thrive,

With death she humbly doth insinuate;

Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs, and stories

His victories, his triumphs and his glories.

‘O love,’ quoth she, ‘how much a fool was I,

1015

To be of such a weak and silly mind,

To wail his death who lives, and must not die

’Till mutual overthrow of mortal kind!

For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,

And beauty dead, black Chaos comes again.

1020

‘Fie, fie, fond love, thou art as full of fear

As one with treasure laden, hemm’d with thieves!

Trifles unwitnessed with eye or ear

Thy coward heart with false bethinking grieves.’

Even at this word she hears a merry horn,

1025

Whereat she leaps that was but late forlorn.

As falcons to the lure, away she flies;

The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light,

And in her haste unfortunately spies

The foul boar’s conquest on her fair delight:

1030

Which seen, her eyes as murder’d with the view,

Like stars asham’d of day, themselves withdrew.

Or as the snail, whose tender horns being hit,

Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain,

And there all smother’d up in shade doth sit,

1035

Long after fearing to creep forth again:

So at his bloody view her eyes are fled

Into the deep dark cabins of her head.

Where they resign their office and their light

To the disposing of her troubled brain,

1040

Who bids them still consort with ugly night

And never wound the heart with looks again;

Who like a king perplexed in his throne

By their suggestion, gives a deadly groan.

Whereat each tributary subject quakes,

1045

As when the wind imprison’d in the ground,

Struggling for passage, earth’s foundation shakes;

Which with cold terror doth men’s minds confound.

This mutiny each part doth so surprise

That from their dark beds once more leap her eyes:

1050

And being open’d threw unwilling light

Upon the wide wound that the boar had trench’d

In his soft flank, whose wonted lily-white

With purple tears that his wound wept, was drench’d.

No flower was nigh, no grass, herb, leaf or weed,

1055

But stole his blood and seem’d with him to bleed.

This solemn sympathy poor Venus noteth;

Over one shoulder doth she hang her head.

Dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth:

She thinks he could not die, he is not dead.

1060

Her voice is stopp’d, her joints forget to bow,

Her eyes are mad, that they have wept till now.

Upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly

That her sight dazzling makes the wound seem three;

And then she reprehends her mangling eye,

1065

That makes more gashes, where no breach should be.

His face seems twain, each several limb is doubled,

For oft the eye mistakes, the brain being troubled.

‘My tongue cannot express my grief for one,

And yet,’ quoth she, ‘behold two Adons dead!

1070

My sighs are blown away, my salt tears gone;

Mine eyes are turn’d to fire, my heart to lead.

Heavy heart’s lead melt at mine eyes’ red fire!

So I shall die by drops of hot desire.

‘Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost!

1075

What face remains alive that’s worth the viewing?

What tongue is music now? what canst thou boast

Of things long since, or any thing ensuing?

The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim,

But true sweet beauty liv’d and died with him.

1080

‘Bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear:

Nor sun nor wind will ever strive to kiss you.

Having no fair to lose, you need not fear:

The sun doth scorn you and the wind doth hiss you.

But when Adonis liv’d, sun and sharp air

1085

Lurk’d like two thieves to rob him of his fair.

‘And therefore would he put his bonnet on,

Under whose brim the gaudy sun would peep:

The wind would blow it off, and being gone,

Play with his locks; then would Adonis weep,

1090

And straight, in pity of his tender years,

They both would strive who first should dry his tears.

‘To see his face the lion walk’d along,

Behind some hedge, because he would not fear him.

To recreate himself, when he hath sung,

1095

The tiger would be tame and gently hear him.

If he had spoke, the wolf would leave his prey,

And never fright the silly lamb that day.

‘When he beheld his shadow in the brook,

The fishes spread on it their golden gills;

1100

When he was by, the birds such pleasure took

That some would sing, some other in their bills

Would bring him mulberries and ripe red cherries:

He fed them with his sight, they him with berries.

But this foul, grim, and urchin-snouted boar,

1105

Whose downward eye still looketh for a grave,

Ne’er saw the beauteous livery that he wore;

Witness the entertainment that he gave.

If he did see his face, why then I know

He thought to kiss him, and hath kill’d him so.

1110

’Tis true, ’tis true, thus was Adonis slain:

He ran upon the boar with his sharp spear,

Who did not whet his teeth at him again,

But by a kiss thought to persuade him there;

And nuzzling in his flank, the loving swine

1115

Sheath’d unaware the tusk in his soft groin.

‘Had I been tooth’d like him, I must confess,

With kissing him I should have kill’d him first.

But he is dead, and never did he bless

My youth with his; the more am I accurst.’

1120

With this she falleth in the place she stood,

And stains her face with his congealed blood.

She looks upon his lips, and they are pale;

She takes him by the hand, and that is cold.

She whispers in his ears a heavy tale,

1125

As if they heard the woeful words she told.

She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes,

Where lo, two lamps burnt out in darkness lies.

Two glasses where herself herself beheld

A thousand times, and now no more reflect;

1130

Their virtue lost, wherein they late excell’d,

And every beauty robb’d of his effect.

‘Wonder of time,’ quoth she, ‘this is my spite,

That thou being dead, the day should yet be light.

‘Since thou art dead, lo here I prophesy,

1135

Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:

It shall be waited on with jealousy,

Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;

Ne’er settled equally, but high or low,

That all love’s pleasure shall not match his woe.

1140

‘It shall be fickle, false and full of fraud;

Bud, and be blasted, in a breathing while;

The bottom poison, and the top o’erstraw’d

With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile;

The strongest body shall it make most weak,

1145

Strike the wise dumb, and teach the fool to speak.

‘It shall be sparing, and too full of riot,

Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures;

The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet,

Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures;

1150

It shall be raging mad, and silly mild,

Make the young old, the old become a child.

‘It shall suspect where is no cause of fear,

It shall not fear where it should most mistrust;

It shall be merciful, and too severe,

1155

And most deceiving when it seems most just;

Perverse it shall be, where it shows most toward;

Put fear to valour, courage to the coward.

‘It shall be cause of war and dire events,

And set dissension ’twixt the son and sire;

1160

Subject and servile to all discontents,

As dry combustious matter is to fire.

Sith in his prime death doth my love destroy,

They that love best, their loves shall not enjoy.’

By this the boy that by her side lay kill’d

1165

Was melted like a vapour from her sight,

And in his blood that on the ground lay spill’d,

A purple flower sprung up, checker’d with white,

Resembling well his pale cheeks and the blood

Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.

1170

She bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell,

Comparing it to her Adonis’ breath,

And says within her bosom it shall dwell,

Since he himself is reft from her by death.

She crops the stalk, and in the breach appears

1175

Green-dropping sap, which she compares to tears.

‘Poor flower,’ quoth she, ‘this was thy father’s guise, –

Sweet issue of a more sweet-smelling sire, –

For every little grief to wet his eyes;

To grow unto himself was his desire,

1180

And so ’tis thine; but know, it is as good

To wither in my breast as in his blood.

‘Here was thy father’s bed, here in my breast;

Thou art the next of blood, and ’tis thy right.

Lo in this hollow cradle take thy rest;

1185

My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night:

There shall not be one minute in an hour

Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love’s flower.’

Thus weary of the world, away she hies,

And yokes her silver doves, by whose swift aid

1190

Their mistress mounted through the empty skies,

In her light chariot quickly is convey’d,

Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen

Means to immure herself and not be seen.

Lucrece

To the Right Honourable
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton,
and Baron of Titchfield.

The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet without beginning is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your Honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours, being part in all I have devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship, to whom I wish long life still lengthened with all happiness.

Your Lordship’s in all duty,
William Shakespeare.

THE ARGUMENT

Lucius Tarquinius (for his excessive pride surnamed Superbus), after he had caused his own father-in-law Servius Tullius to be cruelly murdered, and, contrary to the Roman laws and customs, not requiring or staying for the people’s suffrages, had possessed himself of the kingdom, went, accompanied with his sons and other noblemen of Rome, to besiege Ardea. During which siege, the principal men of the army meeting one evening at the tent of Sextus Tarquinius, the King’s son, in their discourses after supper everyone commended the virtues of his own wife; among whom Collatinus extolled the incomparable chastity of his wife Lucretia. In that pleasant humour they all posted to Rome, and, intending by their secret and sudden arrival to make trial of that which everyone had before avouched, only Collatinus finds his wife, though it were late in the night, spinning amongst her maids; the other ladies were all found dancing and revelling, or in several disports. Whereupon the noblemen yielded Collatinus the victory, and his wife the fame. At that time Sextus Tarquinius, being inflamed with Lucrece’ beauty, yet smothering his passions for the present, departed with the rest back to the camp; from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself, and was, according to his estate, royally entertained and lodged by Lucrece at Collatium. The same night he treacherously stealeth into her chamber, violently ravished her, and early in the morning speedeth away. Lucrece, in this lamentable plight, hastily despatcheth messengers, one to Rome for her father, another to the camp for Collatine. They came, the one accompanied with Junius Brutus, the other with Publius Valerius; and finding Lucrece attired in mourning habit, demanded the cause of her sorrow. She, first taking an oath of them for her revenge, revealed the actor, and whole manner of his dealing, and withal suddenly stabbed herself. Which done, with one consent they all vowed to root out the whole hated family of the Tarquins and, bearing the dead body to Rome, Brutus acquainted the people with the doer and manner of the vile deed, with a bitter invective against the tyranny of the King. Wherewith the people were so moved, that with one consent and a general acclamation the Tarquins were all exiled, and the state government changed from kings to consuls.

From the besieged Ardea all in post,

Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,

Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host

And to Collatium bears the lightless fire,

Which in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire,

5

And girdle with embracing flames the waist

Of Collatine’s fair love, Lucrece the chaste.

Haply that name of ‘chaste’ unhapp’ly set

This bateless edge on his keen appetite,

When Collatine unwisely did not let

10

To praise the clear unmatched red and white

Which triumph’d in that sky of his delight;

Where mortal stars as bright as heaven’s beauties,

With pure aspects did him peculiar duties.

For he the night before, in Tarquin’s tent

15

Unlock’d the treasure of his happy state:

What priceless wealth the heavens had him lent,

In the possession of his beauteous mate;

Reck’ning his fortune at such high proud rate

That kings might be espoused to more fame,

20

But king nor peer to such a peerless dame.

O happiness enjoy’d but of a few,

And if possess’d, as soon decay’d and done

As is the morning’s silver melting dew

Against the golden splendour of the sun!

25

An expir’d date cancell’d ere well begun!

Honour and beauty in the owner’s arms,

Are weakly fortress’d from a world of harms.

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade

The eyes of men without an orator;

30

What needeth then apologies be made,

To set forth that which is so singular?

Or why is Collatine the publisher

Of that rich jewel he should keep unknown

From thievish ears, because it is his own?

35

Perchance his boast of Lucrece’ sov’reignty

Suggested this proud issue of a king;

For by our ears our hearts oft tainted be.

Perchance that envy of so rich a thing,

Braving compare, disdainfully did sting

40

His high-pitch’d thoughts, that meaner men should vaunt

That golden hap which their superiors want.

But some untimely thought did instigate

His all-too-timeless speed, if none of those;

His honour, his affairs, his friends, his state,

45

Neglected all, with swift intent he goes

To quench the coal which in his liver glows.

O rash false heat, wrapp’d in repentant cold,

Thy hasty spring still blasts and ne’er grows old!

When at Collatium this false lord arrived,

50

Well was he welcom’d by the Roman dame,

Within whose face beauty and virtue strived

Which of them both should underprop her fame.

When virtue bragg’d, beauty would blush for shame;

When beauty boasted blushes, in despite

55

Virtue would stain that o’er with silver white.

But beauty in that white entituled

From Venus’ doves, doth challenge that fair field;

Then virtue claims from beauty beauty’s red,

Which virtue gave the golden age to gild

60

Their silver cheeks, and call’d it then their shield;

Teaching them thus to use it in the fight,

When shame assail’d, the red should fence the white.

This heraldry in Lucrece’ face was seen,

Argu’d by beauty’s red and virtue’s white;

65

Of either’s colour was the other queen,

Proving from world’s minority their right.

Yet their ambition makes them still to fight;

The sov’reignty of either being so great,

That oft they interchange each other’s seat.

70

This silent war of lilies and of roses,

Which Tarquin view’d in her fair face’s field,

In their pure ranks his traitor eye encloses;

Where, lest between them both it should be kill’d,

The coward captive vanquished doth yield

75

To those two armies, that would let him go

Rather than triumph in so false a foe.

Now thinks he that her husband’s shallow tongue, –

The niggard prodigal that prais’d her so, –

In that high task hath done her beauty wrong,

80

Which far exceeds his barren skill to show.

Therefore that praise which Collatine doth owe

Enchanted Tarquin answers with surmise,

In silent wonder of still-gazing eyes.

This earthly saint adored by this devil,

85

Little suspecteth the false worshipper;

For unstain’d thoughts do seldom dream on evil,

Birds never lim’d no secret bushes fear:

So guiltless she securely gives good cheer

And reverend welcome to her princely guest,

90

Whose inward ill no outward harm express’d.

For that he colour’d with his high estate,

Hiding base sin in pleats of majesty,

That nothing in him seem’d inordinate,

Save sometime too much wonder of his eye,

95

Which having all, all could not satisfy;

But poorly rich, so wanteth in his store

That cloy’d with much, he pineth still for more.

But she that never cop’d with stranger eyes,

Could pick no meaning from their parling looks,

100

Nor read the subtle shining secrecies

Writ in the glassy margents of such books;

She touch’d no unknown baits, nor fear’d no hooks:

Nor could she moralize his wanton sight,

More than his eyes were open’d to the light.

105

He stories to her ears her husband’s fame,

Won in the fields of fruitful Italy;

And decks with praises Collatine’s high name,

Made glorious by his manly chivalry

With bruised arms and wreaths of victory.

110

Her joy with heav’d-up hand she doth express,

And wordless so greets heaven for his success.

Far from the purpose of his coming thither,

He makes excuses for his being there;

No cloudy show of stormy blust’ring weather

115

Doth yet in his fair welkin once appear,

Till sable night, mother of dread and fear,

Upon the world dim darkness doth display,

And in her vaulty prison stows the day.

For then is Tarquin brought unto his bed,

120

Intending weariness with heavy sprite;

For after supper long he questioned

With modest Lucrece, and wore out the night.

Now leaden slumber with life’s strength doth fight,

And every one to rest themselves betake,

125

Save thieves and cares and troubled minds that wake.

As one of which doth Tarquin lie revolving

The sundry dangers of his will’s obtaining,

Yet ever to obtain his will resolving,

Though weak-built hopes persuade him to abstaining.

130

Despair to gain doth traffic oft for gaining,

And when great treasure is the meed proposed,

Though death be adjunct, there’s no death supposed.

Those that much covet are with gain so fond

That what they have not, that which they possess

135

They scatter and unloose it from their bond;

And so by hoping more they have but less,

Or gaining more, the profit of excess

Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,

That they prove bankrout in this poor rich gain.

140

The aim of all is but to nurse the life

With honour, wealth and ease, in waning age;

And in this aim there is such thwarting strife

That one for all or all for one we gage:

As life for honour in fell battle’s rage,

145

Honour for wealth; and oft that wealth doth cost

The death of all, and all together lost.

So that in vent’ring ill we leave to be

The things we are, for that which we expect;

And this ambitious foul infirmity,

150

In having much, torments us with defect

Of that we have: so then we do neglect

The thing we have, and all for want of wit,

Make something nothing by augmenting it.

Such hazard now must doting Tarquin make,

155

Pawning his honour to obtain his lust;

And for himself himself he must forsake.

Then where is truth if there be no self-trust?

When shall he think to find a stranger just,

When he himself himself confounds, betrays

160

To sland’rous tongues and wretched hateful days?

Now stole upon the time the dead of night,

When heavy sleep had clos’d up mortal eyes.

No comfortable star did lend his light,

No noise but owls’ and wolves’ death-boding cries;

165

Now serves the season that they may surprise

The silly lambs: pure thoughts are dead and still,

While lust and murder wakes to stain and kill.

And now this lustful lord leap’d from his bed,

Throwing his mantle rudely o’er his arm;

170

Is madly toss’d between desire and dread:

Th’one sweetly flatters, th’ other feareth harm.

But honest fear, bewitch’d with lust’s foul charm,

Doth too too oft betake him to retire,

Beaten away by brain-sick rude desire.

175

His falchion on a flint he softly smiteth,

That from the cold stone sparks of fire do fly;

Whereat a waxen torch forthwith he lighteth,

Which must be lodestar to his lustful eye:

And to the flame thus speaks advisedly:

180

‘As from this cold flint I enforc’d this fire,

So Lucrece must I force to my desire.’

Here pale with fear he doth premeditate

The dangers of his loathsome enterprise;

And in his inward mind he doth debate

185

What following sorrow may on this arise.

When looking scornfully, he doth despise

His naked armour of still slaughter’d lust,

And justly thus controls his thoughts unjust:

‘Fair torch, burn out thy light, and lend it not

190

To darken her whose light excelleth thine;

And die, unhallow’d thoughts, before you blot

With your uncleanness that which is divine;

Offer pure incense to so pure a shrine.

Let fair humanity abhor the deed

195

That spots and stains love’s modest snow-white weed.

‘O shame to knighthood and to shining arms!

O foul dishonour to my household’s grave!

O impious act including all foul harms!

A martial man to be soft fancy’s slave!

200

True valour still a true respect should have.

Then my digression is so vile, so base,

That it will live engraven in my face.

‘Yea, though I die the scandal will survive

And be an eye-sore in my golden coat;

205

Some loathsome dash the herald will contrive,

To cipher me how fondly I did dote:

That my posterity sham’d with the note,

Shall curse my bones, and hold it for no sin

To wish that I their father had not been.

210

‘What win I if I gain the thing I seek?

A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.

Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week,

Or sells eternity to get a toy?

For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?

215

Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown,

Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?

‘If Collatinus dream of my intent,

Will he not wake, and in a desp’rate rage

Post hither, this vile purpose to prevent? –

220

This siege that hath engirt his marriage,

This blur to youth, this sorrow to the sage,

This dying virtue, this surviving shame,

Whose crime will bear an ever-during blame.

‘O what excuse can my invention make

225

When thou shalt charge me with so black a deed?

Will not my tongue be mute, my frail joints shake,

Mine eyes forgo their light, my false heart bleed?

The guilt being great, the fear doth still exceed;

And extreme fear can neither fight nor fly,

230

But coward-like with trembling terror die.

‘Had Collatinus kill’d my son or sire,

Or lain in ambush to betray my life;

Or were he not my dear friend, this desire

Might have excuse to work upon his wife,

235

As in revenge or quittal of such strife:

But as he is my kinsman, my dear friend,

The shame and fault finds no excuse nor end.

‘Shameful it is, – ay, if the fact be known.

Hateful it is, – there is no hate in loving.

240

I’ll beg her love, – but she is not her own.

The worst is but denial and reproving.

My will is strong past reason’s weak removing:

Who fears a sentence or an old man’s saw

Shall by a painted cloth be kept in awe.’

245

Thus graceless holds he disputation

’Tween frozen conscience and hot burning will,

And with good thoughts makes dispensation,

Urging the worser sense for vantage still;

Which in a moment doth confound and kill

250

All pure effects, and doth so far proceed

That what is vile shows like a virtuous deed.

Quoth he, ‘She took me kindly by the hand,

And gaz’d for tidings in my eager eyes,

Fearing some hard news from the warlike band

255

Where her beloved Collatinus lies.

O how her fear did make her colour rise!

First red as roses that on lawn we lay,

Then white as lawn, the roses took away.

‘And how her hand in my hand being lock’d,

260

Forc’d it to tremble with her loyal fear!

Which strook her sad, and then it faster rock’d,

Until her husband’s welfare she did hear;

Whereat she smiled with so sweet a cheer

That had Narcissus seen her as she stood,

265

Self-love had never drown’d him in the flood.

‘Why hunt I then for colour or excuses?

All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth.

Poor wretches have remorse in poor abuses;

Love thrives not in the heart that shadows dreadeth.

270

Affection is my captain, and he leadeth;

And when his gaudy banner is display’d,

The coward fights, and will not be dismay’d.

‘Then childish fear avaunt, debating die!

Respect and reason wait on wrinkled age!

275

My heart shall never countermand mine eye:

Sad pause and deep regard beseems the sage;

My part is youth, and beats these from the stage.

Desire my pilot is, beauty my prize;

Then who fears sinking where such treasure lies?’

280

As corn o’ergrown by weeds, so heedful fear

Is almost chok’d by unresisted lust.

Away he steals with open list’ning ear,

Full of foul hope and full of fond mistrust;

Both which, as servitors to the unjust,

285

So cross him with their opposite persuasion

That now he vows a league, and now invasion.

Within his thought her heavenly image sits,

And in the self-same seat sits Collatine.

That eye which looks on her confounds his wits;

290

That eye which him beholds, as more divine,

Unto a view so false will not incline,

But with a pure appeal seeks to the heart,

Which once corrupted takes the worser part:

And therein heartens up his servile powers,

295

Who flatter’d by their leader’s jocund show,

Stuff up his lust, as minutes fill up hours;

And as their captain, so their pride doth grow,

Paying more slavish tribute than they owe.

By reprobate desire thus madly led,

300

The Roman lord marcheth to Lucrece’ bed.

The locks between her chamber and his will,

Each one by him enforc’d, retires his ward;

But as they open, they all rate his ill,

Which drives the creeping thief to some regard.

305

The threshold grates the door to have him heard;

Night-wand’ring weasels shriek to see him there:

They fright him, yet he still pursues his fear.

As each unwilling portal yields him way,

Through little vents and crannies of the place

310

The wind wars with his torch to make him stay,

And blows the smoke of it into his face,

Extinguishing his conduct in this case;

But his hot heart, which fond desire doth scorch,

Puffs forth another wind that fires the torch.

315

And being lighted, by the light he spies

Lucretia’s glove, wherein her needle sticks;

He takes it from the rushes where it lies,

And gripping it, the needle his finger pricks,

As who should say, ‘This glove to wanton tricks

320

Is not inur’d; return again in haste;

Thou seest our mistress’ ornaments are chaste.’

But all these poor forbiddings could not stay him;

He in the worst sense consters their denial.

The doors, the wind, the glove, that did delay him,

325

He takes for accidental things of trial;

Or as those bars which stop the hourly dial,

Who with a ling’ring stay his course doth let,

Till every minute pays the hour his debt.

‘So, so,’ quoth he, ‘these lets attend the time,

330

Like little frosts that sometime threat the spring,

To add a more rejoicing to the prime,

And give the sneaped birds more cause to sing.

Pain pays the income of each precious thing:

Huge rocks, high winds, strong pirates, shelves and sands

335

The merchant fears, ere rich at home he lands.’

Now is he come unto the chamber door

That shuts him from the heaven of his thought,

Which with a yielding latch, and with no more,

Hath barr’d him from the blessed thing he sought.

340

So from himself impiety hath wrought,

That for his prey to pray he doth begin,

As if the heavens should countenance his sin.

But in the midst of his unfruitful prayer,

Having solicited th’ eternal power

345

That his foul thoughts might compass his fair fair,

And they would stand auspicious to the hour,

Even there he starts; quoth he, ‘I must deflower:

The powers to whom I pray abhor this fact;

How can they then assist me in the act?

350

‘Then love and fortune be my gods, my guide!

My will is back’d with resolution;

Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried;

The blackest sin is clear’d with absolution.

Against love’s fire fear’s frost hath dissolution:

355

The eye of heaven is out, and misty night

Covers the shame that follows sweet delight.’

This said, his guilty hand pluck’d up the latch,

And with his knee the door he opens wide.

The dove sleeps fast that this night-owl will catch;

360

Thus treason works ere traitors be espied.

Who sees the lurking serpent steps aside;

But she, sound sleeping, fearing no such thing,

Lies at the mercy of his mortal sting.

Into the chamber wickedly he stalks,

365

And gazeth on her yet unstained bed.

The curtains being close, about he walks,

Rolling his greedy eyeballs in his head;

By their high treason is his heart misled,

Which gives the watch-word to his hand full soon,

370

To draw the cloud that hides the silver moon.

Look as the fair and fiery-pointed sun

Rushing from forth a cloud, bereaves our sight:

Even so, the curtain drawn, his eyes begun

To wink, being blinded with a greater light.

375

Whether it is that she reflects so bright,

That dazzleth them, or else some shame supposed;

But blind they are, and keep themselves enclosed.

O had they in that darksome prison died,

Then had they seen the period of their ill!

380

Then Collatine again by Lucrece’ side

In his clear bed might have reposed still.

But they must ope, this blessed league to kill;

And holy-thoughted Lucrece to their sight

Must sell her joy, her life, her world’s delight.

385

Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under,

Coz’ning the pillow of a lawful kiss;

Who therefore angry, seems to part in sunder,

Swelling on either side to want his bliss:

Between whose hills her head entombed is,

390

Where like a virtuous monument she lies,

To be admir’d of lewd unhallowed eyes.

Without the bed her other fair hand was,

On the green coverlet; whose perfect white

Show’d like an April daisy on the grass,

395

With pearly sweat resembling dew of night.

Her eyes like marigolds had sheath’d their light,

And canopied in darkness sweetly lay,

Till they might open to adorn the day.

Her hair like golden threads play’d with her breath:

400

O modest wantons, wanton modesty!

Showing life’s triumph in the map of death,

And death’s dim look in life’s mortality.

Each in her sleep themselves so beautify,

As if between them twain there were no strife,

405

But that life liv’d in death and death in life.

Her breasts like ivory globes circled with blue,

A pair of maiden worlds unconquered;

Save of their lord, no bearing yoke they knew,

And him by oath they truly honoured.

410

These worlds in Tarquin new ambition bred;

Who like a foul usurper went about,

From this fair throne to heave the owner out.

What could he see but mightily he noted?

What did he note but strongly he desired?

415

What he beheld, on that he firmly doted,

And in his will his wilful eye he tired.

With more than admiration he admired

Her azure veins, her alablaster skin,

Her coral lips, her snow-white dimpled chin.

420

As the grim lion fawneth o’er his prey,

Sharp hunger by the conquest satisfied;

So o’er this sleeping soul doth Tarquin stay,

His rage of lust by gazing qualified, –

Slak’d not suppress’d, for standing by her side,

425

His eye which late this mutiny restrains,

Unto a greater uproar tempts his veins.

And they like straggling slaves for pillage fighting,

Obdurate vassals fell exploits effecting,

In bloody death and ravishment delighting,

430

Nor children’s tears nor mothers’ groans respecting,

Swell in their pride, the onset still expecting.

Anon his beating heart, alarum striking,

Gives the hot charge, and bids them do their liking.

His drumming heart cheers up his burning eye,

435

His eye commends the leading to his hand;

His hand, as proud of such a dignity,

Smoking with pride, march’d on to make his stand

On her bare breast, the heart of all her land;

Whose ranks of blue veins, as his hand did scale,

440

Left their round turrets destitute and pale.

They must’ring to the quiet cabinet

Where their dear governess and lady lies,

Do tell her she is dreadfully beset,

And fright her with confusion of their cries.

445

She much amaz’d, breaks ope her lock’d-up eyes,

Who peeping forth this tumult to behold,

Are by his flaming torch dimm’d and controll’d.

Imagine her as one in dead of night

From forth dull sleep by dreadful fancy waking,

450

That thinks she hath beheld some ghastly sprite,

Whose grim aspect sets every joint a-shaking:

What terror ’tis! but she in worser taking,

From sleep disturbed, heedfully doth view

The sight which makes supposed terror true.

455

Wrapp’d and confounded in a thousand fears,

Like to a new-kill’d bird she trembling lies.

She dares not look, yet winking there appears

Quick-shifting antics, ugly in her eyes.

Such shadows are the weak brain’s forgeries;

460

Who, angry that the eyes fly from their lights,

In darkness daunts them with more dreadful sights.

His hand that yet remains upon her breast, –

Rude ram, to batter such an ivory wall! –

May feel her heart, poor citizen! distress’d,

465

Wounding itself to death, rise up and fall, –

Beating her bulk, that his hand shakes withal:

This moves in him more rage and lesser pity,

To make the breach and enter this sweet city.

First like a trumpet doth his tongue begin

470

To sound a parley to his heartless foe,

Who o’er the white sheet peers her whiter chin,

The reason of this rash alarm to know;

Which he by dumb demeanour seeks to show:

But she with vehement prayers urgeth still

475

Under what colour he commits this ill.

Thus he replies: ‘The colour in thy face,

That even for anger makes the lily pale

And the red rose blush at her own disgrace,

Shall plead for me and tell my loving tale.

480

Under that colour am I come to scale

Thy never-conquer’d fort: the fault is thine,

For those thine eyes betray thee unto mine.

‘Thus I forestall thee, if thou mean to chide:

Thy beauty hath ensnar’d thee to this night,

485

Where thou with patience must my will abide,

My will that marks thee for my earth’s delight;

Which I to conquer sought with all my might:

But as reproof and reason beat it dead,

By thy bright beauty was it newly bred.

490

‘I see what crosses my attempt will bring,

I know what thorns the growing rose defends;

I think the honey guarded with a sting:

All this beforehand counsel comprehends.

But will is deaf, and hears no heedful friends;

495

Only he hath an eye to gaze on beauty,

And dotes on what he looks, ’gainst law or duty.

‘I have debated even in my soul,

What wrong, what shame, what sorrow I shall breed;

But nothing can affection’s course control,

500

Or stop the headlong fury of his speed.

I know repentant tears ensue the deed,

Reproach, disdain and deadly enmity;

Yet strive I to embrace mine infamy.’

This said, he shakes aloft his Roman blade,

505

Which like a falcon tow’ring in the skies,

Coucheth the fowl below with his wings’ shade,

Whose crooked beak threats, if he mount he dies:

So under his insulting falchion lies

Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells

510

With trembling fear, as fowl hear falcons’ bells.

‘Lucrece,’ quoth he, ‘this night I must enjoy thee.

If thou deny, then force must work my way:

For in thy bed I purpose to destroy thee;

That done, some worthless slave of thine I’ll slay,

515

To kill thine honour with thy life’s decay;

And in thy dead arms do I mean to place him,

Swearing I slew him, seeing thee embrace him.

‘So thy surviving husband shall remain

The scornful mark of every open eye;

520

Thy kinsmen hang their heads at this disdain,

Thy issue blurr’d with nameless bastardy.

And thou, the author of their obloquy,

Shalt have thy trespass cited up in rhymes

And sung by children in succeeding times.

525

‘But if thou yield, I rest thy secret friend;

The fault unknown is as a thought unacted.

A little harm done to a great good end

For lawful policy remains enacted.

The poisonous simple sometime is compacted

530

In a pure compound; being so applied,

His venom in effect is purified.

‘Then for thy husband and thy children’s sake,

Tender my suit; bequeath not to their lot

The shame that from them no device can take,

535

The blemish that will never be forgot,

Worse than a slavish wipe or birth-hour’s blot:

For marks descried in men’s nativity

Are nature’s faults, not their own infamy.’

Here with a cockatrice’ dead-killing eye

540

He rouseth up himself, and makes a pause;

While she, the picture of pure piety,

Like a white hind under the gripe’s sharp claws,

Pleads in a wilderness where are no laws,

To the rough beast that knows no gentle right,

545

Nor aught obeys but his foul appetite.

But when a black-fac’d cloud the world doth threat,

In his dim mist th’ aspiring mountains hiding

From earth’s dark womb some gentle gust doth get,

Which blow these pitchy vapours from their biding,

550

Hind’ring their present fall by this dividing:

So his unhallowed haste her words delays,

And moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays.

Yet, foul night-waking cat, he doth but dally,

While in his hold-fast foot the weak mouse panteth.

555

Her sad behaviour feeds his vulture folly,

A swallowing gulf that even in plenty wanteth.

His ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth

No penetrable entrance to her plaining:

Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining.

560

Her pity-pleading eyes are sadly fixed

In the remorseless wrinkles of his face.

Her modest eloquence with sighs is mixed,

Which to her oratory adds more grace.

She puts the period often from his place,

565

And ’midst the sentence so her accent breaks

That twice she doth begin ere once she speaks.

She conjures him by high almighty Jove,

By knighthood, gentry, and sweet friendship’s oath,

By her untimely tears, her husband’s love,

570

By holy human law and common troth,

By heaven and earth, and all the power of both,

That to his borrowed bed he make retire,

And stoop to honour, not to foul desire.

Quoth she, ‘Reward not hospitality

575

With such black payment as thou hast pretended.

Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee,

Mar not the thing that cannot be amended.

End thy ill aim before thy shoot be ended;

He is no woodman that doth bend his bow

580

To strike a poor unseasonable doe.

‘My husband is thy friend; for his sake spare me.

Thyself art mighty; for thine own sake leave me.

Myself a weakling; do not then ensnare me.

Thou look’st not like deceit; do not deceive me.

585

My sighs like whirlwinds labour hence to heave thee;

If ever man were mov’d with woman’s moans,

Be moved with my tears, my sighs, my groans.

‘All which together, like a troubled ocean,

Beat at thy rocky and wrack-threat’ning heart,

590

To soften it with their continual motion;

For stones dissolv’d to water do convert.

O if no harder than a stone thou art,

Melt at my tears and be compassionate!

Soft pity enters at an iron gate.

595

‘In Tarquin’s likeness I did entertain thee:

Hast thou put on his shape to do him shame?

To all the host of heaven I complain me,

Thou wrong’st his honour, wound’st his princely name;

Thou art not what thou seem’st, and if the same,

600

Thou seem’st not what thou art, a god, a king:

For kings like gods should govern everything.

‘How will thy shame be seeded in thine age,

When thus thy vices bud before thy spring?

If in thy hope thou dar’st do such outrage,

605

What dar’st thou not when once thou art a king?

O be remember’d, no outrageous thing

From vassal actors can be wip’d away:

Then kings’ misdeeds cannot be hid in clay.

‘This deed will make thee only lov’d for fear;

610

But happy monarchs still are fear’d for love.

With foul offenders thou perforce must bear,

When they in thee the like offences prove.

If but for fear of this, thy will remove,

For princes are the glass, the school, the book,

615

Where subjects’ eyes do learn, do read, do look.

‘And wilt thou be the school where lust shall learn?

Must he in thee read lectures of such shame?

Wilt thou be glass wherein it shall discern

Authority for sin, warrant for blame?

620

To privilege dishonour in thy name,

Thou back’st reproach against long-living laud,

And mak’st fair reputation but a bawd.

‘Hast thou command? by him that gave it thee,

From a pure heart command thy rebel will.

625

Draw not thy sword to guard iniquity,

For it was lent thee all that brood to kill.

Thy princely office how canst thou fulfil,

When pattern’d by thy fault, foul sin may say

He learn’d to sin, and thou didst teach the way?

630

‘Think but how vile a spectacle it were,

To view thy present trespass in another.

Men’s faults do seldom to themselves appear;

Their own transgressions partially they smother.

This guilt would seem death-worthy in thy brother.

635

O how are they wrapp’d in with infamies,

That from their own misdeeds askance their eyes!

‘To thee, to thee, my heav’d-up hands appeal,

Not to seducing lust, thy rash relier.

I sue for exil’d majesty’s repeal:

640

Let him return, and flatt’ring thoughts retire;

His true respect will prison false desire,

And wipe the dim mist from thy doting eyne,

That thou shalt see thy state, and pity mine.’

‘Have done,’ quoth he, ‘my uncontrolled tide

645

Turns not, but swells the higher by this let.

Small lights are soon blown out, huge fires abide,

And with the wind in greater fury fret;

The petty streams that pay a daily debt

To their salt sovereign, with their fresh falls’ haste

650

Add to his flow, but alter not his taste.’

‘Thou art,’ quoth she, ‘a sea, a sovereign king,

And lo there falls into thy boundless flood

Black lust, dishonour, shame, misgoverning,

Who seek to stain the ocean of thy blood.

655

If all these petty ills shall change thy good,

Thy sea within a puddle’s womb is hearsed,

And not the puddle in thy sea dispersed.

‘So shall these slaves be king, and thou their slave:

Thou nobly base, they basely dignified;

660

Thou their fair life, and they thy fouler grave;

Thou loathed in their shame, they in thy pride.

The lesser thing should not the greater hide:

The cedar stoops not to the base shrub’s foot,

But low shrubs wither at the cedar’s root.

665

‘So let thy thoughts, low vassals to thy state’ –

‘No more,’ quoth he, ‘by heaven I will not hear thee.

Yield to my love: if not, enforced hate

Instead of love’s coy touch, shall rudely tear thee.

That done, despitefully I mean to bear thee

670

Unto the base bed of some rascal groom,

To be thy partner in this shameful doom.’

This said, he sets his foot upon the light,

For light and lust are deadly enemies:

Shame folded up in blind concealing night,

675

When most unseen, then most doth tyrannize.

The wolf hath seiz’d his prey, the poor lamb cries,

Till with her own white fleece her voice controll’d

Entombs her outcry in her lips’ sweet fold.

For with the nightly linen that she wears

680

He pens her piteous clamours in her head,

Cooling his hot face in the chastest tears

That ever modest eyes with sorrow shed.

O that prone lust should stain so pure a bed!

The spots whereof could weeping purify,

685

Her tears should drop on them perpetually.

But she hath lost a dearer thing than life,

And he hath won what he would lose again.

This forced league doth force a further strife;

This momentary joy breeds months of pain;

690

This hot desire converts to cold disdain.

Pure chastity is rifled of her store,

And lust the thief, far poorer than before.

Look as the full-fed hound or gorged hawk,

Unapt for tender smell or speedy flight,

695

Make slow pursuit, or altogether balk

The prey wherein by nature they delight:

So surfeit-taking Tarquin fares this night.

His taste delicious, in digestion souring,

Devours his will that liv’d by foul devouring.

700

O deeper sin than bottomless conceit

Can comprehend in still imagination!

Drunken desire must vomit his receipt,

Ere he can see his own abomination.

While lust is in his pride no exclamation

705

Can curb his heat or rein his rash desire,

Till, like a jade, self-will himself doth tire.

And then with lank and lean discolour’d cheek,

With heavy eye, knit brow, and strenghtless pace,

Feeble desire, all recreant, poor and meek,

710

Like to a bankrout beggar wails his case.

The flesh being proud, desire doth fight with grace;

For there it revels, and when that decays,

The guilty rebel for remission prays.

So fares it with this faultful lord of Rome,

715

Who this accomplishment so hotly chased;

For now against himself he sounds this doom,

That through the length of times he stands disgraced.

Besides, his soul’s fair temple is defaced,

To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares,

720

To ask the spotted princess how she fares.

She says her subjects with foul insurrection

Have batter’d down her consecrated wall,

And by their mortal fault brought in subjection

Her immortality, and made her thrall

725

To living death and pain perpetual:

Which in her prescience she controlled still,

But her foresight could not forestall their will.

Ev’n in this thought through the dark night he stealeth,

A captive victor that hath lost in gain,

730

Bearing away the wound that nothing healeth,

The scar that will despite of cure remain;

Leaving his spoil perplex’d in greater pain:

She bears the load of lust he left behind,

And he the burden of a guilty mind.

735

He like a thievish dog creeps sadly thence,

She like a wearied lamb lies panting there;

He scowls, and hates himself for his offence,

She desperate, with her nails her flesh doth tear.

He faintly flies, sweating with guilty fear;

740

She stays, exclaiming on the direful night,

He runs, and chides his vanish’d loath’d delight.

He thence departs a heavy convertite,

She there remains a hopeless castaway;

He in his speed looks for the morning light,

745

She prays she never may behold the day:

‘For day,’ quoth she, ‘night’s ’scapes doth open lay,

And my true eyes have never practis’d how

To cloak offences with a cunning brow.

‘They think not but that every eye can see

750

The same disgrace which they themselves behold;

And therefore would they still in darkness be,

To have their unseen sin remain untold.

For they their guilt with weeping will unfold,

And grave like water that doth eat in steel,

755

Upon my cheeks, what helpless shame I feel.’

Here she exclaims against repose and rest,

And bids her eyes hereafter still be blind.

She wakes her heart by beating on her breast,

And bids it leap from thence, where it may find

760

Some purer chest, to close so pure a mind.

Frantic with grief, thus breathes she forth her spite

Against the unseen secrecy of night:

‘O comfort-killing night, image of hell,

Dim register and notary of shame,

765

Black stage for tragedies and murders fell,

Vast sin-concealing Chaos, nurse of blame!

Blind muffled bawd, dark harbour for defame,

Grim cave of death, whisp’ring conspirator

With close-tongued treason and the ravisher!

770

‘O hateful, vaporous and foggy night,

Since thou art guilty of my cureless crime,

Muster thy mists to meet the eastern light,

Make war against proportion’d course of time:

Or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb

775

His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed,

Knit poisonous clouds about his golden head.

‘With rotten damps ravish the morning air;

Let their exhal’d unwholesome breaths make sick

The life of purity, the supreme fair,

780

Ere he arrive his weary noontide prick.

And let thy musty vapours march so thick,

That in their smoky ranks his smother’d light

May set at noon and make perpetual night.

‘Were Tarquin night, as he is but night’s child,

785

The silver-shining queen he would distain;

Her twinkling handmaids too, by him defil’d,

Through night’s black bosom should not peep again.

So should I have co-partners in my pain;

And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage,

790

As palmers’ chat makes short their pilgrimage.

‘Where now I have no one to blush with me,

To cross their arms and hang their heads with mine,

To mask their brows and hide their infamy;

But I alone, alone must sit and pine,

795

Seasoning the earth with showers of silver brine,

Mingling my talk with tears, my grief with groans,

Poor wasting monuments of lasting moans.

‘O night, thou furnace of foul reeking smoke,

Let not the jealous day behold that face

800

Which underneath thy black all-hiding cloak

Immodestly lies martyr’d with disgrace!

Keep still possession of thy gloomy place,

That all the faults which in thy reign are made

May likewise be sepulchred in thy shade.

805

‘Make me not object to the tell-tale day:

The light will show character’d in my brow

The story of sweet chastity’s decay,

The impious breach of holy wedlock vow;

Yea, the illiterate that know not how

810

To cipher what is writ in learned books,

Will quote my loathsome trespass in my looks.

‘The nurse to still her child will tell my story,

And fright her crying babe with Tarquin’s name.

The orator to deck his oratory

815

Will couple my reproach to Tarquin’s shame.

Feast-finding minstrels tuning my defame,

Will tie the hearers to attend each line,

How Tarquin wronged me, I Collatine.

‘Let my good name, that senseless reputation,

820

For Collatine’s dear love be kept unspotted.

If that be made a theme for disputation,

The branches of another root are rotted,

And undeserv’d reproach to him allotted

That is as clear from this attaint of mine

825

As I ere this was pure to Collatine.

‘O unseen shame, invisible disgrace!

O unfelt sore, crest-wounding private scar!

Reproach is stamp’d in Collatinus’ face,

And Tarquin’s eye may read the mot afar,

830

How he in peace is wounded, not in war:

Alas how many bear such shameful blows,

Which not themselves, but he that gives them knows!

If, Collatine, thine honour lay in me,

From me by strong assault it is bereft:

835

My honey lost, and I a drone-like bee,

Have no perfection of my summer left,

But robb’d and ransack’d by injurious theft;

In thy weak hive a wand’ring wasp hath crept,

And suck’d the honey which thy chaste bee kept.

840

‘Yet am I guilty of thy honour’s wrack;

Yet for thy honour did I entertain him:

Coming from thee I could not put him back,

For it had been dishonour to disdain him.

Besides, of weariness he did complain him,

845

And talk’d of virtue: O unlook’d-for evil,

When virtue is profan’d in such a devil!

‘Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud,

Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows’ nests?

Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud,

850

Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts?

Or kings be breakers of their own behests?

But no perfection is so absolute

That some impurity doth not pollute.

‘The aged man that coffers up his gold

855

Is plagu’d with cramps and gouts and painful fits,

And scarce hath eyes his treasure to behold;

But like still-pining Tantalus he sits,

And useless barns the harvest of his wits,

Having no other pleasure of his gain

860

But torment that it cannot cure his pain.

‘So then he hath it when he cannot use it,

And leaves it to be master’d by his young,

Who in their pride do presently abuse it;

Their father was too weak, and they too strong,

865

To hold their cursed-blessed fortune long:

The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours

Even in the moment that we call them ours.

‘Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring;

Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers;

870

The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing;

What virtue breeds iniquity devours.

We have no good that we can say is ours,

But ill-annexed opportunity

Or kills his life, or else his quality.

875

‘O opportunity, thy guilt is great!

’Tis thou that execut’st the traitor’s treason;

Thou sets the wolf where he the lamb may get;

Whoever plots the sin, thou poinst the season.

’Tis thou that spurn’st at right, at law, at reason;

880

And in thy shady cell where none may spy him,

Sits sin to seize the souls that wander by him.

‘Thou mak’st the vestal violate her oath;

Thou blow’st the fire when temperance is thaw’d;

Thou smother’st honesty, thou murder’st troth,

885

Thou foul abettor, thou notorious bawd!

Thou plantest scandal, and displacest laud:

Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief!

Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief.

‘Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame,

890

Thy private feasting to a public fast,

Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name,

Thy sugar’d tongue to bitter wormwood taste;

Thy violent vanities can never last.

How comes it then, vile opportunity,

895

Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?

‘When wilt thou be the humble suppliant’s friend,

And bring him where his suit may be obtained?

When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end,

Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chained?

900

Give physic to the sick, ease to the pained?

The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee;

But they ne’er meet with opportunity.

‘The patient dies while the physician sleeps;

The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds;

905

Justice is feasting while the widow weeps;

Advice is sporting while infection breeds.

Thou grant’st no time for charitable deeds;

Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder’s rages,

Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.

910

‘When truth and virtue have to do with thee,

A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid;

They buy thy help, but sin ne’er gives a fee:

He gratis comes, and thou art well appaid,

As well to hear as grant what he hath said.

915

My Collatine would else have come to me

When Tarquin did, but he was stay’d by thee.

‘Guilty thou art of murder and of theft,

Guilty of perjury and subornation,

Guilty of treason, forgery and shift,

920

Guilty of incest, that abomination:

An accessory by thine inclination

To all sins past and all that are to come

From the creation to the general doom.

‘Mis-shapen time, copesmate of ugly night,

925

Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care,

Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,

Base watch of woes, sin’s pack-horse, virtue’s snare!

Thou nurses all, and murder’st all that are:

O hear me then, injurious shifting time!

930

Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.

‘Why hath thy servant opportunity

Betray’d the hours thou gav’st me to repose,

Cancell’d my fortunes and enchained me

To endless date of never-ending woes?

935

Time’s office is to fine the hate of foes,

To eat up errors by opinion bred,

Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.

‘Time’s glory is to calm contending kings,

To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,

940

To stamp the seal of time in aged things,

To wake the morn and sentinel the night,

To wrong the wronger till he render right,

To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,

And smear with dust their glitt’ring golden tow’rs;

945

‘To fill with worm-holes stately monuments,

To feed oblivion with decay of things,

To blot old books and alter their contents,

To pluck the quills from ancient ravens’ wings,

To dry the old oak’s sap and cherish springs,

950

To spoil antiquities of hammer’d steel,

And turn the giddy round of fortune’s wheel;

‘To show the beldam daughters of her daughter,

To make the child a man, the man a child,

To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,

955

To tame the unicorn and lion wild,

To mock the subtle in themselves beguil’d,

To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,

And waste huge stones with little water-drops.

‘Why work’st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage,

960

Unless thou could’st return to make amends?

One poor retiring minute in an age

Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends,

Lending him wit that to bad debtors lends:

O this dread night, would’st thou one hour come back,

965

I could prevent this storm and shun thy wrack!

‘Thou ceaseless lackey to eternity,

With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight;

Devise extremes beyond extremity,

To make him curse this cursed crimeful night.

970

Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright,

And the dire thought of his committed evil

Shape every bush a hideous shapeless devil.

‘Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances,

Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans;

975

Let there bechance him pitiful mischances,

To make him moan, but pity not his moans.

Stone him with harden’d hearts harder than stones,

And let mild women to him lose their mildness,

Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness.

980

‘Let him have time to tear his curled hair,

Let him have time against himself to rave,

Let him have time of time’s help to despair,

Let him have time to live a loathed slave,

Let him have time a beggar’s orts to crave,

985

And time to see one that by alms doth live

Disdain to him disdained scraps to give.

‘Let him have time to see his friends his foes,

And merry fools to mock at him resort;

Let him have time to mark how slow time goes

990

In time of sorrow, and how swift and short

His time of folly and his time of sport:

And ever let his unrecalling crime

Have time to wail th’abusing of his time.

‘O time, thou tutor both to good and bad,

995

Teach me to curse him that thou taught’st this ill!

At his own shadow let the thief run mad,

Himself, himself seek every hour to kill:

Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill,

For who so base would such an office have

1000

As sland’rous deathsman to so base a slave?

‘The baser is he, coming from a king,

To shame his hope with deeds degenerate;

The mightier man the mightier is the thing

That makes him honour’d or begets him hate,

1005

For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.

The moon being clouded presently is miss’d,

But little stars may hide them when they list.

‘The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,

And unperceiv’d fly with the filth away;

1010

But if the like the snow-white swan desire,

The stain upon his silver down will stay.

Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day;

Gnats are unnoted wheresoe’er they fly,

But eagles gaz’d upon with every eye.

1015

‘Out idle words, servants to shallow fools,

Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators!

Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools,

Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters;

To trembling clients be you mediators:

1020

For me, I force not argument a straw,

Since that my case is past the help of law.

‘In vain I rail at opportunity,

At time, at Tarquin, at uncheerful night;

In vain I cavil with mine infamy,

1025

In vain I spurn at my confirm’d despite;

This helpless smoke of words doth me no right:

The remedy indeed to do me good

Is to let forth my foul defiled blood.

‘Poor hand, why quiver’s thou at this decree?

1030

Honour thyself to rid me of this shame:

For if I die, my honour lives in thee,

But if I live, thou liv’st in my defame.

Since thou could’st not defend thy loyal dame,

And wast afeard to scratch her wicked foe,

1035

Kill both thyself and her for yielding so.’

This said, from her betumbled couch she starteth,

To find some desp’rate instrument of death;

But this no slaughterhouse no tool imparteth

To make more vent for passage of her breath,

1040

Which thronging through her lips so vanisheth

As smoke from Aetna, that in air consumes,

Or that which from discharged cannon fumes.

‘In vain,’ quoth she, ‘I live, and seek in vain

Some happy mean to end a hapless life.

1045

I fear’d by Tarquin’s falchion to be slain,

Yet for the self-same purpose seek a knife;

But when I fear’d I was a loyal wife:

So am I now, – O no, that cannot be!

Of that true type hath Tarquin rifled me.

1050

‘O that is gone for which I sought to live,

And therefore now I need not fear to die!

To clear this spot by death, at least I give

A badge of fame to slander’s livery,

A dying life to living infamy:

1055

Poor helpless help, the treasure stol’n away,

To burn the guiltless casket where it lay!

‘Well well, dear Collatine, thou shalt not know

The stained taste of violated troth;

I will not wrong thy true affection so,

1060

To flatter thee with an infringed oath.

This bastard graff shall never come to growth:

He shall not boast who did thy stock pollute,

That thou art doting father of his fruit.

‘Nor shall he smile at thee in secret thought,

1065

Nor laugh with his companions at thy state;

But thou shalt know thy int’rest was not bought

Basely with gold, but stol’n from forth thy gate.

For me, I am the mistress of my fate,

And with my trespass never will dispense,

1070

Till life to death acquit my forc’d offence.

‘I will not poison thee with my attaint,

Nor fold my fault in cleanly-coin’d excuses;

My sable ground of sin I will not paint,

To hide the truth of this false night’s abuses.

1075

My tongue shall utter all, mine eyes like sluices,

As from a mountain-spring that feeds a dale,

Shall gush pure streams to purge my impure tale.’

By this, lamenting Philomel had ended

The well-tun’d warble of her nightly sorrow,

1080

And solemn night with slow sad gait descended

To ugly hell; when lo, the blushing morrow

Lends light to all fair eyes that light will borrow;

But cloudy Lucrece shames herself to see,

And therefore still in night would cloister’d be.

1085

Revealing day through every cranny spies,

And seems to point her out where she sits weeping;

To whom she sobbing speaks, ‘O eye of eyes,

Why pry’st thou through my window? leave thy peeping,

Mock with thy tickling beams eyes that are sleeping;

1090

Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light,

For day hath naught to do what’s done by night.’

Thus cavils she with every thing she sees.

True grief is fond and testy as a child,

Who wayward once, his mood with naught agrees;

1095

Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild.

Continuance tames the one; the other wild,

Like an unpractis’d swimmer plunging still,

With too much labour drowns for want of skill.

So she deep-drenched in a sea of care,

1100

Holds disputation with each thing she views,

And to herself all sorrow doth compare;

No object but her passion’s strength renews,

And as one shifts another straight ensues.

Sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words,

1105

Sometime ’tis mad and too much talk affords.

The little birds that tune their morning’s joy

Make her moans mad with their sweet melody,

For mirth doth search the bottom of annoy;

Sad souls are slain in merry company,

1110

Grief best is pleas’d with grief’s society:

True sorrow then is feelingly suffic’d

When with like semblance it is sympathis’d.

’Tis double death to drown in ken of shore;

He ten times pines that pines beholding food;

1115

To see the salve doth make the wound ache more;

Great grief grieves most at that would do it good;

Deep woes roll forward like a gentle flood,

Who being stopp’d, the bounding bank o’erflows;

Grief dallied with, nor law nor limit knows.

1120

‘You mocking birds,’ quoth she, ‘your tunes entomb

Within your hollow swelling feather’d breasts,

And in my hearing be you mute and dumb;

My restless discord loves no stops nor rests.

A woeful hostess brooks not merry guests.

1125

Relish your nimble notes to pleasing ears;

Distress likes dumps, when time is kept with tears.

‘Come Philomel, that sing’st of ravishment,

Make thy sad grove in my dishevel’d hair;

As the dank earth weeps at thy languishment,

1130

So I at each sad strain will strain a tear

And with deep groans the diapason bear;

For burden-wise I’ll hum on Tarquin still,

While thou on Tereus descants better skill.

‘And whiles against a thorn thou bear’st thy part

1135

To keep thy sharp woes waking, wretched I

To imitate thee well, against my heart

Will fix a sharp knife to affright mine eye,

Who if it wink shall thereon fall and die:

These means as frets upon an instrument

1140

Shall tune our heart-strings to true languishment.

‘And for, poor bird, thou sing’st not in the day,

As shaming any eye should thee behold,

Some dark deep desert seated from the way,

That knows not parching heat nor freezing cold,

1145

Will we find out; and there we will unfold

To creatures stern, sad tunes to change their kinds:

Since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds.’

As the poor frighted deer that stands at gaze,

Wildly determining which way to fly,

1150

Or one encompass’d with a winding maze,

That cannot tread the way out readily;

So with herself is she in mutiny,

To live or die which of the twain were better,

When life is sham’d and death reproach’s debtor.

1155

‘To kill myself,’ quoth she, ‘alack what were it,

But with my body my poor soul’s pollution?

They that lose half with greater patience bear it

Than they whose whole is swallowed in confusion.

That mother tries a merciless conclusion,

1160

Who having two sweet babes, when death takes one,

Will slay the other and be nurse to none.

‘My body or my soul, which was the dearer,

When the one pure, the other made divine?

Whose love of either to myself was nearer,

1165

When both were kept for heaven and Collatine?

Ay me, the bark pill’d from the lofty pine,

His leaves will wither and his sap decay;

So must my soul, her bark being pill’d away.

‘Her house is sack’d, her quiet interrupted,

1170

Her mansion batter’d by the enemy,

Her sacred temple spotted, spoil’d, corrupted,

Grossly engirt with daring infamy.

Then let it not be call’d impiety,

If in this blemish’d fort I make some hole,

1175

Through which I may convey this troubled soul.

‘Yet die I will not, till my Collatine

Have heard the cause of my untimely death,

That he may vow in that sad hour of mine

Revenge on him that made me stop my breath.

1180

My stained blood to Tarquin I’ll bequeath,

Which by him tainted shall for him be spent,

And as his due writ in my testament.

‘My honour I’ll bequeath unto the knife

That wounds my body so dishonoured.

1185

’Tis honour to deprive dishonour’d life;

The one will live, the other being dead.

So of shame’s ashes shall my fame be bred,

For in my death I murder shameful scorn:

My shame so dead, mine honour is new born.

1190

‘Dear lord of that dear jewel I have lost,

What legacy shall I bequeath to thee?

My resolution, love, shall be thy boast,

By whose example thou reveng’d mayst be.

How Tarquin must be us’d, read it in me:

1195

Myself thy friend will kill myself thy foe,

And for my sake serve thou false Tarquin so.

‘This brief abridgement of my will I make:

My soul and body to the skies and ground;

My resolution, husband, do thou take;

1200

Mine honour be the knife’s that makes my wound;

My shame be his that did my fame confound;

And all my fame that lives disbursed be

To those that live and think no shame of me.

‘Thou Collatine, shalt oversee this will;

1205

How was I overseen that thou shalt see it!

My blood shall wash the slander of mine ill;

My life’s foul deed my life’s fair end shall free it.

Faint not, faint heart, but stoutly say “So be it”;

Yield to my hand, my hand shall conquer thee:

1210

Thou dead, both die, and both shall victors be.’

This plot of death when sadly she had laid,

And wip’d the brinish pearl from her bright eyes,

With untun’d tongue she hoarsely calls her maid,

Whose swift obedience to her mistress hies;

1215

For fleet-wing’d duty with thought’s feathers flies.

Poor Lucrece’ cheeks unto her maid seem so

As winter meads when sun doth melt their snow.

Her mistress she doth give demure good-morrow,

With soft slow tongue, true mark of modesty,

1220

And sorts a sad look to her lady’s sorrow,

For why her face wore sorrow’s livery;

But durst not ask of her audaciously

Why her two suns were cloud-eclipsed so,

Nor why her fair cheeks over-wash’d with woe.

1225

But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set,

Each flower moisten’d like a melting eye,

Even so the maid with swelling drops ’gan wet

Her circled eyne, enforc’d by sympathy

Of those fair suns set in her mistress’ sky,

1230

Who in a salt-way’d ocean quench their light;

Which makes the maid weep like the dewy night.

A pretty while these pretty creatures stand,

Like ivory conduits coral cisterns filling.

One justly weeps, the other takes in hand

1235

No cause, but company, of her drops’ spilling;

Their gentle sex to weep are often willing,

Grieving themselves to guess at others’ smarts,

And then they drown their eyes or break their hearts.

For men have marble, women waxen, minds,

1240

And therefore are they form’d as marble will;

The weak oppress’d, th’ impression of strange kinds

Is form’d in them by force, by fraud, or skill.

Then call them not the authors of their ill,

No more than wax shall be accounted evil,

1245

Wherein is stamp’d the semblance of a devil.

Their smoothness, like a goodly champaign plain,

Lays open all the little worms that creep;

In men as in a rough-grown grove remain

Cave-keeping evils that obscurely sleep;

1250

Through crystal walls each little mote will peep;

Though men can cover them with bold stern looks,

Poor women’s faces are their own faults’ books.

No man inveigh against the withered flower,

But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill’d;

1255

Not that devour’d, but that which doth devour

Is worthy blame; O let it not be hild

Poor women’s faults, that they are so fulfill’d

With men’s abuses! those proud lords to blame

Make weak-made women tenants to their shame.

1260

The precedent whereof in Lucrece view,

Assail’d by night with circumstances strong

Of present death, and shame that might ensue

By that her death, to do her husband wrong;

Such danger to resistance did belong,

1265

That dying fear through all her body spread;

And who cannot abuse a body dead?

By this, mild patience bid fair Lucrece speak

To the poor counterfeit of her complaining.

‘My girl,’ quoth she, ‘on what occasion break

1270

Those tears from thee, that down thy cheeks are raining?

If thou dost weep for grief of my sustaining,

Know, gentle wench, it small avails my mood:

If tears could help, mine own would do me good.

‘But tell me, girl, when went’ – and there she stay’d,

1275

Till after a deep groan – ‘Tarquin from hence?’

‘Madam, ere I was up,’ replied the maid,

‘The more to blame my sluggard negligence.

Yet with the fault I can thus far dispense:

Myself was stirring ere the break of day,

1280

And ere I rose was Tarquin gone away.

‘But lady, if your maid may be so bold,

She would request to know your heaviness.’

‘O peace,’ quoth Lucrece, ‘if it should be told,

The repetition cannot make it less;

1285

For more it is than I can well express,

And that deep torture may be call’d a hell,

When more is felt than one hath power to tell.

‘Go get me hither paper, ink and pen;

Yet save that labour, for I have them here.

1290

– What should I say? – One of my husband’s men

Bid thou be ready by and by to bear

A letter to my lord, my love, my dear:

Bid him with speed prepare to carry it;

The cause craves haste, and it will soon be writ.’

1295

Her maid is gone, and she prepares to write,

First hovering o’er the paper with her quill;

Conceit and grief an eager combat fight,

What wit sets down is blotted straight with will:

This is too curious-good, this blunt and ill.

1300

Much like a press of people at a door,

Throng her inventions, which shall go before.

At last she thus begins: ‘Thou worthy lord

Of that unworthy wife that greeteth thee,

Health to thy person! next, vouchsafe t’afford –

1305

If ever, love, thy Lucrece thou wilt see –

Some present speed to come and visit me.

So I commend me, from our house in grief;

My woes are tedious, though my words are brief.’

Here folds she up the tenure of her woe,

1310

Her certain sorrow writ uncertainly.

By this short schedule Collatine may know

Her grief, but not her grief’s true quality;

She dares not thereof make discovery,

Lest he should hold it her own gross abuse,

1315

Ere she with blood had stain’d her stain’d excuse.

Besides, the life and feeling of her passion

She hoards, to spend when he is by to hear her,

When sighs and groans and tears may grace the fashion

Of her disgrace, the better so to clear her

1320

From that suspicion which the world might bear her:

To shun this blot, she would not blot the letter

With words, till action might become them better.

To see sad sights moves more than hear them told,

For then the eye interprets to the ear

1325

The heavy motion that it doth behold,

When every part a part of woe doth bear.

’Tis but a part of sorrow that we hear:

Deep sounds make lesser noise than shallow fords,

And sorrow ebbs, being blown with wind of words.

1330

Her letter now is seal’d, and on it writ

‘At Ardea to my lord with more than haste.’

The post attends, and she delivers it,

Charging the sour-fac’d groom to hie as fast

As lagging fowls before the northern blast;

1335

Speed more than speed but dull and slow she deems:

Extremity still urgeth such extremes.

The homely villain cur’sies to her low,

And blushing on her with a steadfast eye,

Receives the scroll without or yea or no,

1340

And forth with bashful innocence doth hie;

But they whose guilt within their bosoms lie,

Imagine every eye beholds their blame,

For Lucrece thought he blush’d to see her shame:

When, silly groom! God wot, it was defect

1345

Of spirit, life and bold audacity;

Such harmless creatures have a true respect

To talk in deeds, while others saucily

Promise more speed, but do it leisurely.

Even so this pattern of the worn-out age

1350

Pawn’d honest looks, but us’d no words to gage.

His kindled duty kindled her mistrust,

That two red fires in both their faces blazed;

She thought he blush’d, as knowing Tarquin’s lust,

And blushing with him, wistly on him gazed.

1355

Her earnest eye did make him more amazed;

The more she saw the blood his cheeks replenish,

The more she thought he spied in her some blemish.

But long she thinks till he return again,

And yet the duteous vassal scarce is gone;

1360

The weary time she cannot entertain,

For now ’tis stale to sigh, to weep and groan:

So woe hath wearied woe, moan tired moan,

That she her plaints a little while doth stay,

Pausing for means to mourn some newer way.

1365

At last she calls to mind where hangs a piece

Of skilful painting, made for Priam’s Troy,

Before the which is drawn the power of Greece,

For Helen’s rape the city to destroy,

Threat’ning cloud-kissing Ilion with annoy;

1370

Which the conceited painter drew so proud,

As heaven, it seem’d, to kiss the turrets bow’d.

A thousand lamentable objects there,

In scorn of nature, art gave lifeless life:

Many a dry drop seem’d a weeping tear,

1375

Shed for the slaughter’d husband by the wife;

The red blood reek’d to show the painter’s strife,

And dying eyes gleam’d forth their ashy lights,

Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.

There might you see the labouring pioner

1380

Begrim’d with sweat and smeared all with dust;

And from the towers of Troy there would appear

The very eyes of men through loop-holes thrust,

Gazing upon the Greeks with little lust:

Such sweet observance in this work was had,

1385

That one might see those far-off eyes look sad.

In great commanders grace and majesty

You might behold, triumphing in their faces,

In youth, quick bearing and dexterity;

And here and there the painter interlaces

1390

Pale cowards marching on with trembling paces,

Which heartless peasants did so well resemble,

That one would swear he saw them quake and tremble.

In Ajax and Ulysses, O what art

Of physiognomy might one behold!

1395

The face of either cipher’d either’s heart;

Their face their manners most expressly told.

In Ajax’ eyes blunt rage and rigour roll’d,

But the mild glance that sly Ulysses lent

Show’d deep regard and smiling government.

1400

There pleading might you see grave Nestor stand,

As ’twere encouraging the Greeks to fight,

Making such sober action with his hand

That it beguil’d attention, charm’d the sight;

In speech it seem’d his beard all silver white

1405

Wagg’d up and down, and from his lips did fly

Thin winding breath which purl’d up to the sky.

About him were a press of gaping faces,

Which seem’d to swallow up his sound advice,

All jointly list’ning, but with several graces,

1410

As if some mermaid did their ears entice, –

Some high, some low, the painter was so nice:

The scalps of many almost hid behind,

To jump up higher seem’d, to mock the mind.

Here one man’s hand lean’d on another’s head,

1415

His nose being shadowed by his neighbour’s ear;

Here one being throng’d bears back, all boll’n and red;

Another smother’d seems to pelt and swear:

And in their rage such signs of rage they bear

As but for loss of Nestor’s golden words,

1420

It seem’d they would debate with angry swords.

For much imaginary work was there, –

Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,

That for Achilles’ image stood his spear

Gripp’d in an armed hand; himself behind

1425

Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind:

A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head

Stood for the whole to be imagined.

And from the walls of strong besieged Troy,

When their brave hope, bold Hector, march’d to field,

1430

Stood many Trojan mothers sharing joy

To see their youthful sons bright weapons wield;

And to their hope they such odd action yield

That through their light joy seemed to appear,

Like bright things stain’d, a kind of heavy fear.

1435

And from the strond of Dardan where they fought,

To Simois’ reedy banks the red blood ran,

Whose waves to imitate the battle sought

With swelling ridges, and their ranks began

To break upon the galled shore, and than

1440

Retire again, till meeting greater ranks

They join, and shoot their foam at Simois’ banks.

To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come,

To find a face where all distress is stell’d.

Many she sees where cares have carved some,

1445

But none where all distress and dolour dwell’d,

Till she despairing Hecuba beheld,

Staring on Priam’s wounds with her old eyes,

Which bleeding under Pyrrhus’ proud foot lies.

In her the painter had anatomiz’d

1450

Time’s ruin, beauty’s wrack, and grim care’s reign;

Her cheeks with chops and wrinkles were disguis’d:

Of what she was no semblance did remain.

Her blue blood chang’d to black in every vein,

Wanting the spring that those shrunk pipes had fed,

1455

Show’d life imprison’d in a body dead.

On this sad shadow Lucrece spends her eyes,

And shapes her sorrow to the beldam’s woes,

Who nothing wants to answer her but cries

And bitter words to ban her cruel foes;

1460

The painter was no god to lend her those,

And therefore Lucrece swears he did her wrong,

To give her so much grief, and not a tongue.

‘Poor instrument,’ quoth she, ‘without a sound,

I’ll tune thy woes with my lamenting tongue,

1465

And drop sweet balm in Priam’s painted wound,

And rail on Pyrrhus that hath done him wrong,

And with my tears quench Troy that burns so long,

And with my knife scratch out the angry eyes

Of all the Greeks that are thine enemies.

1470

‘Show me the strumpet that began this stir,

That with my nails her beauty I may tear!

Thy heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur

This load of wrath that burning Troy doth bear;

Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here,

1475

And here in Troy, for trespass of thine eye,

The sire, the son, the dame and daughter die.

‘Why should the private pleasure of some one

Become the public plague of many moe?

Let sin alone committed, light alone

1480

Upon his head that hath transgressed so;

Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe:

For one’s offence why should so many fall,

To plague a private sin in general?

‘Lo here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies,

1485

Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds;

Here friend by friend in bloody channel lies,

And friend to friend gives unadvised wounds;

And one man’s lust these many lives confounds;

Had doting Priam check’d his son’s desire,

1490

Troy had been bright with fame and not with fire.’

Here feelingly she weeps Troy’s painted woes,

For sorrow, like a heavy hanging bell

Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes;

Then little strength rings out the doleful knell.

1495

So Lucrece set a-work, sad tales doth tell

To pencill’d pensiveness and colour’d sorrow:

She lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow.

She throws her eyes about the painting round,

And who she finds forlorn, she doth lament.

1500

At last she sees a wretched image bound,

That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent;

His face though full of cares, yet show’d content.

Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes,

So mild that patience seem’d to scorn his woes.

1505

In him the painter labour’d with his skill

To hide deceit and give the harmless show

An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still,

A brow unbent that seem’d to welcome woe,

Cheeks neither red nor pale, but mingled so

1510

That blushing red no guilty instance gave,

Nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts have.

But like a constant and confirmed devil,

He entertain’d a show so seeming just,

And therein so ensconc’d his secret evil,

1515

That jealousy itself could not mistrust

False creeping craft and perjury should thrust

Into so bright a day such black-fac’d storms,

Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms.

The well-skill’d workman this mild image drew

1520

For perjur’d Sinon, whose enchanting story

The credulous old Priam after slew;

Whose words like wildfire burnt the shining glory

Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry,

And little stars shot from their fixed places,

1525

When their glass fell, wherein they view’d their faces.

This picture she advisedly perus’d,

And chid the painter for his wondrous skill,

Saying some shape in Sinon’s was abus’d:

So fair a form lodg’d not a mind so ill.

1530

And still on him she gaz’d, and gazing still,

Such signs of truth in his plain face she spied,

That she concludes the picture was belied.

‘It cannot be,’ quoth she, ‘that so much guile,’ –

She would have said, – ‘can lurk in such a look.’

1535

But Tarquin’s shape came in her mind the while,

And from her tongue ‘can lurk’ from ‘cannot’ took:

‘It cannot be’ she in that sense forsook,

And turn’d it thus: ‘It cannot be, I find,

But such a face should bear a wicked mind.

1540

‘For even as subtle Sinon here is painted,

So sober sad, so weary and so mild, –

As if with grief or travail he had fainted, –

To me came Tarquin armed to beguild

With outward honesty, but yet defil’d

1545

With inward vice. As Priam him did cherish,

So did I Tarquin, – so my Troy did perish.

‘Look, look how list’ning Priam wets his eyes,

To see those borrow’d tears that Sinon sheds!

Priam, why art thou old and yet not wise?

1550

For every tear he falls a Trojan bleeds.

His eye drops fire, no water thence proceeds:

Those round clear pearls of his that move thy pity

Are balls of quenchless fire to burn thy city.

‘Such devils steal effects from lightless hell,

1555

For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold;

And in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell.

These contraries such unity do hold,

Only to flatter fools and make them bold;

So Priam’s trust false Sinon’s tears doth flatter,

1560

That he finds means to burn his Troy with water.’

Here all enrag’d, such passion her assails,

That patience is quite beaten from her breast.

She tears the senseless Sinon with her nails,

Comparing him to that unhappy guest

1565

Whose deed hath made herself herself detest.

At last she smilingly with this gives o’er:

‘Fool, fool,’ quoth she, ‘his wounds will not be sore.’

Thus ebbs and flows the current of her sorrow,

And time doth weary time with her complaining.

1570

She looks for night, and then she longs for morrow,

And both she thinks too long with her remaining.

Short time seems long in sorrow’s sharp sustaining:

Though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps,

And they that watch see time how slow it creeps.

1575

Which all this time hath overslipp’d her thought,

That she with painted images hath spent,

Being from the feeling of her own grief brought

By deep surmise of others’ detriment,

Losing her woes in shows of discontent.

1580

It easeth some, though none it ever cured,

To think their dolour others have endured.

But now the mindful messenger come back

Brings home his lord and other company;

Who finds his Lucrece clad in mourning black,

1585

And round about her tear-distained eye

Blue circles stream’d, like rainbows in the sky:

Those water-galls in her dim element

Foretell new storms to those already spent.

Which when her sad beholding husband saw,

1590

Amazedly in her sad face he stares;

Her eyes though sod in tears, look’d red and raw,

Her lively colour kill’d with deadly cares.

He hath no power to ask her how she fares;

Both stood like old acquaintance in a trance,

1595

Met far from home, wond’ring each other’s chance.

At last he takes her by the bloodless hand,

And thus begins: ‘What uncouth ill event

Hath thee befall’n, that thou dost trembling stand?

Sweet love, what spite hath thy fair colour spent?

1600

Why art thou thus attir’d in discontent?

Unmask, dear dear, this moody heaviness,

And tell thy grief, that we may give redress.’

Three times with sighs she gives her sorrow fire,

Ere once she can discharge one word of woe.

1605

At length address’d to answer his desire,

She modestly prepares to let them know

Her honour is ta’en prisoner by the foe;

While Collatine and his consorted lords

With sad attention long to hear her words.

1610

And now this pale swan in her wat’ry nest

Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending:

‘Few words,’ quoth she, ‘shall fit the trespass best,

Where no excuse can give the fault amending.

In me moe woes than words are now depending;

1615

And my laments would be drawn out too long,

To tell them all with one poor tired tongue.

‘Then be this all the task it hath to say:

Dear husband, in the interest of thy bed

A stranger came, and on that pillow lay

1620

Where thou wast wont to rest thy weary head;

And what wrong else may be imagined

By foul enforcement might be done to me,

From that, alas, thy Lucrece is not free.

‘For in the dreadful dead of dark midnight,

1625

With shining falchion in my chamber came

A creeping creature with a flaming light,

And softly cried “Awake, thou Roman dame,

And entertain my love; else lasting shame

On thee and thine this night I will inflict,

1630

If thou my love’s desire do contradict.

‘ “For some hard-favour’d groom of thine,” quoth he,

“Unless thou yoke thy liking to my will,

I’ll murder straight, and then I’ll slaughter thee,

And swear I found you where you did fulfil

1635

The loathsome act of lust, and so did kill

The lechers in their deed: this act will be

My fame, and thy perpetual infamy.”

‘With this I did begin to start and cry,

And then against my heart he set his sword,

1640

Swearing, unless I took all patiently,

I should not live to speak another word.

So should my shame still rest upon record,

And never be forgot in mighty Rome

Th’adulterate death of Lucrece and her groom.

1645

‘Mine enemy was strong, my poor self weak,

And far the weaker with so strong a fear.

My bloody judge forbod my tongue to speak;

No rightful plea might plead for justice there.

His scarlet lust came evidence to swear

1650

That my poor beauty had purloin’d his eyes;

And when the judge is robb’d, the prisoner dies.

‘O teach me how to make mine own excuse,

Or at the least, this refuge let me find:

Though my gross blood be stain’d with this abuse,

1655

Immaculate and spotless is my mind;

That was not forc’d, that never was inclin’d

To accessory yieldings, but still pure

Doth in her poison’d closet yet endure.’

Lo here the hopeless merchant of this loss,

1660

With head declin’d and voice damm’d up with woe,

With sad set eyes and wretched arms across,

From lips new-waxen pale begins to blow

The grief away that stops his answer so;

But wretched as he is, he strives in vain:

1665

What he breathes out his breath drinks up again.

As through an arch the violent roaring tide

Outruns the eye that doth behold his haste,

Yet in the eddy boundeth in his pride

Back to the strait that forc’d him on so fast,

1670

In rage sent out, recall’d in rage being past:

Even so his sighs, his sorrows make a saw,

To push grief on and back the same grief draw.

Which speechless woe of his poor she attendeth,

And his untimely frenzy thus awaketh:

1675

‘Dear lord, thy sorrow to my sorrow lendeth

Another power; no flood by raining slaketh;

My woe too sensible thy passion maketh

More feeling-painful. Let it then suffice

To drown one woe, one pair of weeping eyes.

1680

‘And for my sake, when I might charm thee so,

For she that was thy Lucrece, now attend me:

Be suddenly revenged on my foe, –

Thine, mine, his own. Suppose thou dost defend me

From what is past: the help that thou shalt lend me

1685

Comes all too late, yet let the traitor die,

For sparing justice feeds iniquity.

‘But ere I name him, you fair lords,’ quoth she,

Speaking to those that came with Collatine,

‘Shall plight your honourable faiths to me,

1690

With swift pursuit to ’venge this wrong of mine;

For ’tis a meritorious fair design

To chase injustice with revengeful arms:

Knights by their oaths should right poor ladies’ harms.’

At this request, with noble disposition

1695

Each present lord began to promise aid,

As bound in knighthood to her imposition,

Longing to hear the hateful foe bewray’d;

But she that yet her sad task hath not said,

The protestation stops. ‘O speak,’ quoth she:

1700

‘How may this forced stain be wip’d from me?

‘What is the quality of my offence,

Being constrain’d with dreadful circumstance?

May my pure mind with the foul act dispense,

My low-declined honour to advance?

1705

May any terms acquit me from this chance?

The poisoned fountain clears itself again,

And why not I from this compelled stain?’

With this they all at once began to say,

Her body’s stain her mind untainted clears,

1710

While with a joyless smile she turns away

The face, that map which deep impression bears

Of hard misfortune, carv’d in it with tears.

‘No, no,’ quoth she, ‘no dame hereafter living

By my excuse shall claim excuse’s giving.’

1715

Here with a sigh as if her heart would break,

She throws forth Tarquin’s name. ‘He, he,’ she says,

But more than ‘he’ her poor tongue could not speak;

Till after many accents and delays,

Untimely breathings, sick and short assays,

1720

She utters this: ‘He, he, fair lords, ’tis he,

That guides this hand to give this wound to me.’

Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast

A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheathed;

That blow did bail it from the deep unrest

1725

Of that polluted prison where it breathed.

Her contrite sighs unto the clouds bequeathed

Her winged sprite, and through her wounds doth fly

Life’s lasting date from cancell’d destiny.

Stone-still, astonish’d with this deadly deed,

1730

Stood Collatine and all his lordly crew,

Till Lucrece’ father that beholds her bleed,

Himself on her self-slaughter’d body threw,

And from the purple fountain Brutus drew

The murd’rous knife, and as it left the place,

1735

Her blood in poor revenge held it in chase.

And bubbling from her breast, it doth divide

In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood

Circles her body in on every side,

Who like a late-sack’d island vastly stood

1740

Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood.

Some of her blood still pure and red remain’d,

And some look’d black, and that false Tarquin stain’d.

About the mourning and congealed face

Of that black blood a watery rigol goes,

1745

Which seems to weep upon the tainted place;

And ever since, as pitying Lucrece’ woes,

Corrupted blood some watery token shows,

And blood untainted still doth red abide,

Blushing at that which is so putrified.

1750

‘Daughter, dear daughter,’ old Lucretius cries,

‘That life was mine which thou hast here deprived;

If in the child the father’s image lies,

Where shall I live now Lucrece is unlived?

Thou wast not to this end from me derived:

1755

If children predecease progenitors,

We are their offspring, and they none of ours.

‘Poor broken glass, I often did behold

In thy sweet semblance my old age new-born;

But now that fair fresh mirror, dim and old,

1760

Shows me a bare-bon’d death by time outworn.

O from thy cheeks my image thou hast torn,

And shiver’d all the beauty of my glass,

That I no more can see what once I was.

‘O time, cease thou thy course and last no longer,

1765

If they surcease to be that should survive!

Shall rotten death make conquest of the stronger,

And leave the falt’ring feeble souls alive?

The old bees die, the young possess their hive;

Then live, sweet Lucrece, live again and see

1770

Thy father die, and not thy father thee!’

By this, starts Collatine as from a dream,

And bids Lucretius give his sorrow place;

And then in key-cold Lucrece’ bleeding stream

He falls, and bathes the pale fear in his face,

1775

And counterfeits to die with her a space;

Till manly shame bids him possess his breath,

And live to be revenged on her death.

The deep vexation of his inward soul

Hath serv’d a dumb arrest upon his tongue;

1780

Who, mad that sorrow should his use control

Or keep him from heart-easing words so long,

Begins to talk; but through his lips do throng

Weak words, so thick come in his poor heart’s aid

That no man could distinguish what he said.

1785

Yet sometime ‘Tarquin’ was pronounced plain,

But through his teeth, as if the name he tore.

This windy tempest, till it blow up rain,

Held back his sorrow’s tide, to make it more.

At last it rains, and busy winds give o’er;

1790

Then son and father weep with equal strife

Who should weep most, for daughter or for wife.

Then one doth call her his, the other his,

Yet neither may possess the claim they lay.

The father says, ‘She’s mine.’ ‘O mine she is,’

1795

Replies her husband, ‘do not take away

My sorrow’s interest; let no mourner say

He weeps for her, for she was only mine,

And only must be wail’d by Collatine.’

‘O,’ quoth Lucretius, ‘I did give that life

1800

Which she too early and too late hath spill’d.’

‘Woe, woe,’ quoth Collatine, ‘she was my wife;

I ow’d her, and ’tis mine that she hath kill’d.’

‘My daughter’ and ‘my wife’ with clamours fill’d

The dispers’d air, who holding Lucrece’ life

1805

Answer’d their cries, ‘my daughter’ and ‘my wife’.

Brutus, who pluck’d the knife from Lucrece’ side,

Seeing such emulation in their woe,

Began to clothe his wit in state and pride,

Burying in Lucrece’ wound his folly’s show.

1810

He with the Romans was esteemed so

As silly jeering idiots are with kings,

For sportive words and utt’ring foolish things.

But now he throws that shallow habit by,

Wherein deep policy did him disguise,

1815

And arm’d his long-hid wits advisedly,

To check the tears in Collatinus’ eyes.

‘Thou wronged lord of Rome,’ quoth he, ‘arise!

Let my unsounded self, suppos’d a fool,

Now set thy long-experienc’d wit to school.

1820

‘Why Collatine, is woe the cure for woe?

Do wounds help wounds, or grief help grievous deeds?

Is it revenge to give thyself a blow

For his foul act by whom thy fair wife bleeds?

Such childish humour from weak minds proceeds;

1825

Thy wretched wife mistook the matter so,

To slay herself that should have slain her foe.

‘Courageous Roman, do not steep thy heart

In such relenting dew of lamentations;

But kneel with me and help to bear thy part

1830

To rouse our Roman gods with invocations,

That they will suffer these abominations, –

Since Rome herself in them doth stand disgraced, –

By our strong arms from forth her fair streets chased.

‘Now by that Capitol that we adore,

1835

And by this chaste blood so unjustly stained,

By heaven’s fair sun that breeds the fat earth’s store,

By all our country rights in Rome maintained,

And by chaste Lucrece’ soul that late complained

Her wrongs to us, and by this bloody knife,

1840

We will revenge the death of this true wife.’

This said, he strook his hand upon his breast,

And kiss’d the fatal knife to end his vow;

And to his protestation urg’d the rest,

Who wond’ring at him, did his words allow.

1845

Then jointly to the ground their knees they bow,

And that deep vow which Brutus made before,

He doth again repeat, and that they swore.

When they had sworn to this advised doom,

They did conclude to bear dead Lucrece thence,

1850

To show her bleeding body thorough Rome,

And so to publish Tarquin’s foul offence;

Which being done with speedy diligence,

The Romans plausibly did give consent

To Tarquin’s everlasting banishment.

1855

The Passionate Pilgrim

1

When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her, though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutor’d youth,

Unskilful in the world’s false forgeries.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although I know my years be past the best,

I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue,

Outfacing faults in love with love’s ill rest.

But wherefore says my love that she is young?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O, love’s best habit’s in a soothing tongue,

And age, in love, loves not to have years told.

Therefore I’ll lie with love, and love with me,

Since that our faults in love thus smother’d be.

2

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,

That like two spirits do suggest me still;

My better angel is a man, right fair,

My worser spirit a woman, colour’d ill.

To win me soon to hell, my female evil

Tempteth my better angel from my side,

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

Wooing his purity with her fair pride.

And whether that my angel be turn’d fiend,

Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

For being both to me, both to each, friend,

I guess one angel in another’s hell:

The truth I shall not know, but live in doubt,

Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

3

Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,

’Gainst whom the world could not hold argument,

Persuade my heart to this false perjury?

Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment.

A woman I forswore; but I will prove,

Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:

My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love;

Thy grace being gain’d cures all disgrace in me.

My vow was breath, and breath a vapour is;

Then thou, fair sun that on this earth doth shine,

Exhal’st this vapour vow. In thee it is;

If broken then, it is no fault of mine.

If by me broke, what fool is not so wise

To break an oath, to win a paradise?

4

Sweet Cytherea, sitting by a brook

With young Adonis, lovely, fresh and green,

Did court the lad with many a lovely look,

Such looks as none could look but beauty’s queen.

She told him stories to delight his ear;

She show’d him favours to allure his eye;

To win his heart, she touch’d him here and there;

Touches so soft still conquer chastity.

But whether unripe years did want conceit,

Or he refus’d to take her figur’d proffer,

The tender nibbler would not touch the bait,

But smile and jest at every gentle offer.

Then fell she on her back, fair queen, and toward:

He rose and ran away; ah fool too froward!

5

If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?

O never faith could hold, if not to beauty vowed.

Though to myself forsworn, to thee I’ll constant prove:

Those thoughts, to me like oaks, to thee like osiers bowed.

Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes,

Where all those pleasures live that art can comprehend.

If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice:

Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend,

All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder;

Which is to me some praise, that I thy parts admire.

Thine eye love’s lightning seems, thy voice his dreadful thunder,

Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire.

Celestial as thou art, O do not love that wrong,

To sing heaven’s praise with such an earthly tongue.

6

Scarce had the sun dried up the dewy morn,

And scarce the herd gone to the hedge for shade,

When Cytherea, all in love forlorn,

A longing tarriance for Adonis made

Under an osier growing by a brook,

A brook where Adon us’d to cool his spleen;

Hot was the day, she hotter that did look

For his approach, that often there had been.

Anon he comes, and throws his mantle by,

And stood stark naked on the brook’s green brim:

The sun look’d on the world with glorious eye,

Yet not so wistly as this queen on him.

He spying her, bounc’d in; whereas he stood,

‘O Jove,’ quoth she, ‘why was not I a flood?’

7

Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle,

Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty,

Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is, brittle,

Softer than wax, and yet as iron, rusty:

A lily pale, with damask dye to grace her,

None fairer, nor none falser to deface her.

Her lips to mine how often hath she joined,

Between each kiss her oaths of true love swearing!

How many tales to please me hath she coined,

Dreading my love, the loss whereof still fearing!

Yet in the midst of all her pure protestings,

Her faith, her oaths, her tears and all were jestings.

She burnt with love, as straw with fire flameth;

She burnt out love, as soon as straw out-burneth.

She fram’d the love, and yet she foil’d the framing;

She bade love last, and yet she fell a-turning.

Was this a lover, or a lecher whether?

Bad in the best, though excellent in neither.

8

If music and sweet poetry agree,

As they must needs, the sister and the brother,

Then must the love be great ’twixt thee and me,

Because thou lov’st the one and I the other.

Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch

Upon the lute, doth ravish human sense;

Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such

As passing all conceit, needs no defence.

Thou lov’st to hear the sweet melodious sound

That Phoebus’ lute, the queen of music, makes;

And I in deep delight am chiefly drown’d

Whenas himself to singing he betakes.

One god is god of both, as poets feign;

One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.

9

Fair was the morn, when the fair queen of love,

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

Paler for sorrow than her milk-white dove,

For Adon’s sake, a youngster proud and wild;

Her stand she takes upon a steep-up hill;

Anon Adonis comes with horn and hounds.

She silly queen, with more than love’s good will,

Forbade the boy he should not pass those grounds.

‘Once,’ quoth she, ‘did I see a fair sweet youth

Here in these brakes deep-wounded with a boar,

Deep in the thigh, a spectacle of ruth!

See in my thigh,’ quoth she, ‘here was the sore!’

She showed hers, he saw more wounds than one,

And blushing fled, and left her all alone.

10

Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely pluck’d, soon vaded,

Pluck’d in the bud and vaded in the spring!

Bright orient pearl, alack too timely shaded!

Fair creature kill’d too soon by death’s sharp sting!

Like a green plum that hangs upon a tree,

And falls, through wind, before the fall should be.

I weep for thee, and yet no cause I have,

For why thou lefts me nothing in thy will;

And yet thou lefts me more than I did crave,

For why I craved nothing of thee still.

O yes, dear friend, I pardon crave of thee:

Thy discontent thou didst bequeath to me.

11

Venus with Adonis sitting by her

Under a myrtle shade began to woo him;

She told the youngling how god Mars did try her,

And as he fell to her, she fell to him.

‘Even thus,’ quoth she, ‘the warlike god embrac’d me,’

And then she clipp’d Adonis in her arms.

‘Even thus,’ quoth she, ‘the warlike god unlac’d me,’

As if the boy should use like loving charms.

‘Even thus,’ quoth she, ‘he seized on my lips,’

And with her lips on his did act the seizure;

And as she fetched breath, away he skips,

And would not take her meaning nor her pleasure.

Ah, that I had my lady at this bay,

To kiss and clip me till I run away!

12

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together:

Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care;

Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather;

Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.

Youth is full of sport, age’s breath is short;

Youth is nimble, age is lame;

Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold;

Youth is wild and age is tame.

Age, I do abhor thee; youth, I do adore thee:

O my love, my love is young!

Age, I do defy thee. O sweet shepherd, hie thee,

For methinks thou stays too long.

13

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good,

A shining gloss that vadeth suddenly,

A flower that dies when first it ’gins to bud,

A brittle glass that’s broken presently:

A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,

Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour.

And as goods lost are seld or never found,

As vaded gloss no rubbing will refresh,

As flowers dead lie withered on the ground,

As broken glass no cement can redress:

So beauty blemish’d once, for ever lost,

In spite of physic, painting, pain and cost.

14

Good night, good rest: ah, neither be my share!

She bade good night that kept my rest away,

And daff’d me to a cabin hang’d with care,

To descant on the doubts of my decay.

‘Farewell,’ quoth she, ‘and come again tomorrow;’

Fare well I could not, for I supp’d with sorrow.

Yet at my parting sweetly did she smile,

In scorn or friendship, nill I conster whether:

’T may be she joy’d to jest at my exile,

’T may be again to make me wander thither:

‘Wander,’ a word for shadows like myself,

As take the pain, but cannot pluck the pelf.

Lord, how mine eyes throw gazes to the east!

My heart doth charge the watch; the morning rise

Doth cite each moving sense from idle rest.

Not daring trust the office of mine eyes,

While Philomela sings, I sit and mark,

And wish her lays were tuned like the lark.

For she doth welcome daylight with her ditty,

And drives away dark dreaming night.

The night so pack’d, I post unto my pretty;

Heart hath his hope and eyes their wished sight,

Sorrow chang’d to solace, and solace mix’d with sorrow;

For why, she sight, and bade me come to-morrow.

Were I with her, the night would post too soon,

But now are minutes added to the hours;

To spite me now, each minute seems a moon;

Yet not for me, shine sun to succour flowers!

Pack night, peep day; good day, of night now borrow:

Short night to night, and length thyself to morrow.

15

It was a lording’s daughter, the fairest one of three,

That liked of her master as well as well might be,

Till looking on an Englishman, the fairest that eye could see,

Her fancy fell a-turning.

Long was the combat doubtful, that love with love did fight,

To leave the master loveless, or kill the gallant knight;

To put in practice either, alas, it was a spite

Unto the silly damsel!

But one must be refused; more mickle was the pain,

That nothing could be used to turn them both to gain,

For of the two the trusty knight was wounded with disdain:

Alas, she could not help it!

Thus art with arms contending was victor of the day,

Which by a gift of learning did bear the maid away:

Then lullaby, the learned man hath got the lady gay;

For now my song is ended.

16

On a day (alack the day)

Love, whose month was ever May,

Spied a blossom passing fair,

Playing in the wanton air.

Through the velvet leaves the wind

All unseen ’gan passage find,

That the lover, sick to death,

Wish’d himself the heaven’s breath:

‘Air,’ quoth he, ‘thy cheeks may blow;

Air, would I might triumph so!

But, alas, my hand hath sworn

Ne’er to pluck thee from thy throne:

Vow, alack, for youth unmeet,

Youth so apt to pluck a sweet!

Thou for whom Jove would swear

Juno but an Ethiope were,

And deny himself for Jove,

Turning mortal for thy love.’

17

My flocks feed not, my ewes breed not,

My rams speed not, all is amiss:

Love is dying, faith’s defying,

Heart’s denying, causer of this.

All my merry jigs are quite forgot,

All my lady’s love is lost, God wot:

Where her faith was firmly fix’d in love,

There a nay is plac’d without remove.

One silly cross wrought all my loss:

O frowning fortune, cursed fickle dame!

For now I see inconstancy

More in women than in men remain.

In black mourn I, all fears scorn I,

Love hath forlorn me, living in thrall.

Heart is bleeding, all help needing,

O cruel speeding, fraughted with gall!

My shepherd’s pipe can sound no deal.

My wether’s bell rings doleful knell;

My curtal dog that wont to have play’d

Plays not at all, but seems afraid.

With sighs so deep procures to weep,

In howling wise, to see my doleful plight.

How sighs resound through heartless ground,

Like a thousand vanquish’d men in bloody fight!

Clear wells spring not, sweet birds sing not,

Green plants bring not forth their dye;

Herds stands weeping, flocks all sleeping,

Nymphs back peeping fearfully.

All our pleasure known to us poor swains,

All our merry meetings on the plains,

All our evening sport from us is fled;

All our love is lost, for love is dead.

Farewell, sweet love, thy like ne’er was

For a sweet content, the cause of all my woe!

Poor Corydon must live alone:

Other help for him I see that there is none.

18

Whenas thine eye hath chose the dame,

And stall’d the deer that thou shouldst strike,

Let reason rule things worthy blame,

As well as fancy, partial might;

Take counsel of some wiser head,

Neither too young nor yet unwed.

And when thou com’st thy tale to tell,

Smooth not thy tongue with filed talk,

Lest she some subtle practice smell, –

A cripple soon can find a halt, –

But plainly say thou lov’st her well,

And set her person forth to sale.

And to her will frame all thy ways;

Spare not to spend, and chiefly there

Where thy desert may merit praise,

By ringing in thy lady’s ear:

The strongest castle, tower and town,

The golden bullet beats it down.

Serve always with assured trust,

And in thy suit be humble true;

Unless thy lady prove unjust,

Press never thou to choose a new:

When time shall serve, be thou not slack,

To proffer, though she put thee back.

What though her frowning brows be bent?

Her cloudy looks will calm ere night,

And then too late she will repent,

That thus dissembled her delight;

And twice desire, ere it be day,

That which with scorn she put away.

What though she strive to try her strength,

And ban and brawl, and say thee nay?

Her feeble force will yield at length,

When craft hath taught her thus to say:

‘Had women been so strong as men,

In faith, you had not had it then.’

The wiles and guiles that women work,

Dissembled with an outward show,

The tricks and toys that in them lurk,

The cock that treads them shall not know.

Have you not heard it said full oft,

A woman’s nay doth stand for nought?

Think women still to strive with men,

To sin and never for to saint:

There is no heaven, by holy then,

When time with age shall them attaint.

Were kisses all the joys in bed,

One woman would another wed.

But soft, enough, – too much, – I fear

Lest that my mistress hear my song:

She will not stick to round me on th’ear,

To teach my tongue to be so long.

Yet will she blush, here be it said,

To hear her secrets so bewray’d.

19

Live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That hills and valleys, dales and fields,

And all the craggy mountains yield.

There will we sit upon the rocks,

And see the shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow rivers, by whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

There will I make thee a bed of roses,

With a thousand fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,

With coral clasps and amber studs:

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Then live with me and be my love.

LOVE’S ANSWER

If that the world and love were young,

And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,

These pretty pleasures might me move

To live with thee and be thy love.

20

As it fell upon a day

In the merry month of May,

Sitting in a pleasant shade

Which a grove of myrtles made,

Beasts did leap and birds did sing,

Trees did grow and plants did spring;

Everything did banish moan,

Save the nightingale alone:

She, poor bird, as all forlorn,

Lean’d her breast up-till a thorn,

And there sung the dolefull’st ditty,

That to hear it was great pity.

‘Fie, fie, fie,’ now would she cry,

‘Tereu, Tereu,’ by and by;

That to hear her so complain,

Scarce I could from tears refrain,

For her griefs so lively shown

Made me think upon mine own.

Ah, thought I, thou mourn’st in vain!

None takes pity on thy pain.

Senseless trees they cannot hear thee,

Ruthless bears they will not cheer thee;

King Pandion he is dead,

All thy friends are lapp’d in lead,

All thy fellow birds do sing,

Careless of thy sorrowing.

Whilst as fickle fortune smiled,

Thou and I were both beguiled.

Every one that flatters thee

Is no friend in misery.

Words are easy, like the wind;

Faithful friends are hard to find.

Every man will be thy friend

Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend;

But if store of crowns be scant,

No man will supply thy want.

If that one be prodigal,

Bountiful they will him call,

And with such-like flattering:

‘Pity but he were a king.’

If he be addict to vice,

Quickly him they will entice;

If to women he be bent,

They have at commandement.

But if fortune once do frown,

Then farewell his great renown:

They that fawn’d on him before,

Use his company no more.

He that is thy friend indeed,

He will help thee in thy need:

If thou sorrow, he will weep;

If thou wake, he cannot sleep:

Thus of every grief in heart

He with thee doth bear a part.

These are certain signs to know

Faithful friend from flatt’ring foe.

The Phoenix and Turtle

Let the bird of loudest lay

On the sole Arabian tree

Herald sad and trumpet be,

To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou shrieking harbinger,

5

Foul precurrer of the fiend,

Augur of the fever’s end,

To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict

Every fowl of tyrant wing,

10

Save the eagle, feather’d king;

Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white,

That defunctive music can,

Be the death-divining swan,

15

Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou treble-dated crow,

That thy sable gender mak’st

With the breath thou giv’st and tak’st,

’Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

20

Here the anthem doth commence:

Love and constancy is dead;

Phoenix and the Turtle fled

In a mutual flame from hence.

So they lov’d, as love in twain

25

Had the essence but in one:

Two distincts, division none;

Number there in love was slain.

Hearts remote, yet not asunder;

Distance and no space was seen

30

’Twixt this Turtle and his queen:

But in them it were a wonder.

So between them love did shine

That the Turtle saw his right

Flaming in the Phoenix’ sight;

35

Either was the other’s mine.

Property was thus appalled

That the self was not the same:

Single nature’s double name

Neither two nor one was called.

40

Reason, in itself confounded,

Saw division grow together,

To themselves yet either neither,

Simple were so well compounded:

That it cried, How true a twain

45

Seemeth this concordant one!

Love hath reason, reason none,

If what parts, can so remain.

Whereupon it made this Threne

To the Phoenix and the Dove,

50

Co-supremes and stars of love,

As Chorus to their tragic scene.

THRENOS

Beauty, truth and rarity,

Grace in all simplicity,

Here enclos’d, in cinders lie.

55

Death is now the Phoenix’ nest,

And the Turtle’s loyal breast

To eternity doth rest.

Leaving no posterity,

’Twas not their infirmity,

60

It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be;

Beauty brag, but ’tis not she;

Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair

65

That are either true or fair:

For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

All’s Well That Ends Well

The only early text of All’s Well That Ends Well is that of the 1623 Folio, in which it is the twelfth of the comedies, though it seems, judging from its tone and style, to have been written some twenty years earlier, probably about 1602-5. On 8 November 1623, along with fifteen other plays ‘not formerly entered to other men’, it was entered in the Stationers’ Register to the Folio’s principal publishers, Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard. Neither in print nor on stage has the play enjoyed great popular success, no doubt because it lacks the joyful exuberance of many other comedies. Nonetheless it is a fascinating if disturbing play, a subtle and sober exploration of human desire and human aspirations to honour.

The story of the healing of the king and the satisfying of apparently impossible conditions by the young heroine is the stuff of folklore, but Shakespeare seems to have read it in William Painter’s translation of the ninth story on the third day in Boccaccio’s Decameron, first published in 1566 in his collection of translated novelle, The Palace of Pleasure (which was several times reprinted). The heroine, Giletta of Narbonne, cures the French king of a painful fistula and demands, as her reward, the hand of Beltramo, Count of Rossiglione. The Count flees this unwanted marriage, but Giletta finds him and ‘by policy’ gets pregnant by him, ‘which known to her husband, he received her again, and afterwards he lived in great honour and felicity’.

Shakespeare follows this plot closely, but he has darkened its outlines and sharpened the social particularity of its characters. The callow, cowardly and ungenerous Bertram is hard to like, while Helena’s single-minded pursuit of the unwilling Count is itself too insistent and self-regarding to be an unproblematic source of audience delight. The play ends well for Helena, who has got her man, and for Bertram, who will not now face the charges of murdering his wife and of seducing Diana; but the two stand together at the play’s end in the knowledge that the process which has brought them there has also humiliated each. Shakespeare’s distinctive additions to the story include his portrayal of the older generation, the Countess, the King, Lord Lafeu, perhaps also Lavatch, the dead Count’s fool, and Diana’s mother, the widow of Florence. Their beneficent support does much to win Helena a sympathy not always invited by her actions. The unmasking of Parolles – also a Shakespearean addition –reveals an unexpected humanity in the braggart sadly lacking in Bertram when he in turn is shown for what he truly is.

The ending is appropriately hedged with qualifications and conditionals: ‘All yet seems well, and if it end so meet, / The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.’ The comedy has achieved the union of its lovers and the ordering of its society, as comedy must, but it has done so by questionable means, and the stability even of its subdued resolution is called into question by the King’s offer to Diana: ‘Choose thou thy husband and I’ll pay thy dower.’ The King’s gesture can seem merely absurd – an invitation to the release of happy laughter at his inability to learn from experience – or, more disturbingly, it can be presented as a reassertion of the arbitrary power whose earlier exercise in imposing marriage on Bertram and Helena when both held back initiated the unhappiness only now, perhaps, resolved.

No wonder, then, that modern criticism has sought other terms than comedy to designate this play’s genre. The label ‘problem play’ was first attached to it in 1896 by F.S. Boas, who recognized its kinship to Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida. These three plays, according to Boas, produced neither ‘simple joy nor pain; we are excited, fascinated, perplexed, for the issues raised preclude a completely satisfactory outcome’. This is arguably the very source of the play’s interest for us, as it complicates and holds up for criticism the wish-fulfilling logic of comedy itself. Helena desires to assure herself and us: ‘All’s well that ends well yet, / Though time seems so adverse and means unfit.’ Even if the action ‘ends well’, the ‘means unfit’ by which it does so must challenge the comic claim. All is not automatically well that ‘yet seems well’, and dramatic actions that end well may be comic only in the most formal sense.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

KING

of France

DUKE

of Florence

BERTRAM

Count of Rossillion

LAFEW

an old lord

TWO LORDS, the brothers Dumaine

French lords, later captains serving the Duke of Florence

PAROLLES

a follower of Bertram

A French GENTLEMAN

Rynaldo, a STEWARD

to the Countess of Rossillion

Lavatch, a CLOWN

in her household

PAGE

MESSENGER

COUNTESS

of Rossillion, mother to Bertram

HELENA

an orphan protected by the Countess

WIDOW Capilet

of Florence

DIANA

daughter to the widow

neighbours and friends to the widow

Lords, Attendants, Soldiers etc., French and Florentine

All’s Well That Ends Well

1.1 Enter young BERTRAM, Count of Rossillion, his mother, the COUNTESS, and HELENA, LORD LAFEW, all in black.

COUNTESS     In delivering my son from me, I bury a

second husband.

BERTRAM     And I in going, madam, weep o’er my father’s

death anew; but I must attend his majesty’s command,

to whom I am now in ward, evermore in subjection.

5

LAFEW     You shall find of the king a husband, madam;

you, sir, a father. He that so generally is at all times

good must of necessity hold his virtue to you, whose

worthiness would stir it up where it wanted, rather

than lack it where there is such abundance.

10

COUNTESS     What hope is there of his majesty’s

amendment?

LAFEW     He hath abandon’d his physicians, madam;

under whose practices he hath persecuted time with

hope, and finds no other advantage in the process but

15

only the losing of hope by time.

COUNTESS     This young gentlewoman had a father – O

that ‘had’, how sad a passage ’tis! – whose skill was

almost as great as his honesty; had it stretch’d so far,

would have made nature immortal, and death should

20

have play for lack of work. Would for the king’s sake he

were living! I think it would be the death of the king’s

disease.

LAFEW     How call’d you the man you speak of, madam?

COUNTESS     He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it

25

was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon.

LAFEW     He was excellent indeed, madam; the king very

lately spoke of him admiringly – and mourningly; he

was skilful enough to have liv’d still, if knowledge

could be set up against mortality.

30

BERTRAM     What is it, my good lord, the king languishes

of?

LAFEW     A fistula, my lord.

BERTRAM     I heard not of it before.

LAFEW     I would it were not notorious. Was this

35

gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?

COUNTESS     His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to

my overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that

her education promises her dispositions she inherits –

which makes fair gifts fairer; for where an unclean

40

mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations

go with pity; they are virtues and traitors too. In her

they are the better for their simpleness: she derives her

honesty and achieves her goodness.

LAFEW     Your commendations, madam, get from her

45

tears.

COUNTESS     ’Tis the best brine a maiden can season her

praise in. The remembrance of her father never

approaches her heart but the tyranny of her sorrows

takes all livelihood from her cheek. No more of this,

50

Helena; go to, no more; lest it be rather thought you

affect a sorrow than to have –

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

LAFEW     Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead;

excessive grief the enemy to the living.

55

COUNTESS     If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess

makes it soon mortal.

BERTRAM     Madam, I desire your holy wishes.

LAFEW     How understand we that?

COUNTESS

Be thou bless’d, Bertram, and succeed thy father

60

In manners as in shape! Thy blood and virtue

Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness

Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few,

Do wrong to none. Be able for thine enemy

Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend

65

Under thy own life’s key. Be check’d for silence,

But never tax’d for speech. What heaven more will,

That thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down,

Fall on thy head! Farewell. My lord,

’Tis an unseason’d courtier; good my lord,

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Advise him.

LAFEW     He cannot want the best

That shall attend his love.

COUNTESS     Heaven bless him! Farewell, Bertram. Exit.

BERTRAM     The best wishes that can be forg’d in your

thoughts be servants to you! [to Helena] Be comfortable

75

to my mother, your mistress, and make much of

her.

LAFEW     Farewell, pretty lady; you must hold the credit

of your father.     Exeunt Bertram and Lafew.

HELENA     O, were that all! I think not on my father,

80

And these great tears grace his remembrance more

Than those I shed for him. What was he like?

I have forgot him; my imagination

Carries no favour in’t but Bertram’s.

I am undone; there is no living, none,

85

If Bertram be away; ’twere all one

That I should love a bright particular star

And think to wed it, he is so above me.

In his bright radiance and collateral light

Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.

90

Th’ambition in my love thus plagues itself:

The hind that would be mated by the lion

Must die for love. ’Twas pretty, though a plague,

To see him every hour; to sit and draw

His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,

95

In our heart’s table – heart too capable

Of every line and trick of his sweet favour.

But now he’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy

Must sanctify his relics. Who comes here?

Enter PAROLLES.

One that goes with him; I love him for his sake,

100

And yet I know him a notorious liar,

Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;

Yet these fix’d evils sit so fit in him

That they take place when virtue’s steely bones

Looks bleak i’th’ cold wind; withal, full oft we see

105

Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.

PAROLLES     Save you, fair queen!

HELENA     And you, monarch!

PAROLLES     No.

HELENA     And no.

110

PAROLLES     Are you meditating on virginity?

HELENA     Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you; let

me ask you a question. Man is enemy to virginity; how

may we barricado it against him?

PAROLLES     Keep him out.

115

HELENA     But he assails; and our virginity, though

valiant, in the defence yet is weak. Unfold to us some

warlike resistance.

PAROLLES     There is none. Man setting down before you

will undermine you and blow you up.

120

HELENA     Bless our poor virginity from underminers and

blowers-up! Is there no military policy how virgins

might blow up men?

PAROLLES     Virginity being blown down man will

quicklier be blown up; marry, in blowing him down

125

again, with the breach yourselves made you lose your

city. It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to

preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational

increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity

was first lost. That you were made of is mettle to make

130

virgins. Virginity, by being once lost, may be ten times

found; by being ever kept it is ever lost. ’Tis too cold

a companion. Away with’t!

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

a virgin.

135

PAROLLES     There’s little can be said in’t; ’tis against the

rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity is to

accuse your mothers, which is most infallible

disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin;

virginity murthers itself, and should be buried in

140

highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate

offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites,

much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring,

and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides,

virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love

145

which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it

not; you cannot choose but lose by’t. Out with’t!

Within the year it will make itself two, which is a

goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the

worse. Away with’t!

150

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

liking?

PAROLLES     Let me see. Marry, ill, to like him that ne’er

it likes. ’Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying;

the longer kept, the less worth. Off with’t while ’tis

155

vendible; answer the time of request. Virginity, like an

old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion, richly suited

but unsuitable, just like the brooch and the toothpick,

which wear not now. Your date is better in your pie

and your porridge than in your cheek; and your

160

virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French

wither’d pears: it looks ill, it eats drily; marry, ’tis a

wither’d pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet ’tis a

wither’d pear. Will you anything with it?

HELENA     Not my virginity; yet …

165

There shall your master have a thousand loves,

A mother, and a mistress, and a friend,

A phoenix, captain, and an enemy,

A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign,

A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear;

170

His humble ambition, proud humility,

His jarring-concord, and his discord-dulcet,

His faith, his sweet disaster; with a world

Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms

That blinking Cupid gossips. Now shall he –

175

I know not what he shall. God send him well!

The court’s a learning-place, and he is one –

PAROLLES     What one, i’faith?

HELENA     That I wish well. ’Tis pity –

PAROLLES     What’s pity?

180

HELENA     That wishing well had not a body in’t

Which might be felt, that we, the poorer born,

Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,

Might with effects of them follow our friends,

And show what we alone must think, which never

185

Returns us thanks.

Enter Page.

PAGE     Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you.     Exit.

PAROLLES     Little Helen, farewell. If I can remember

thee I will think of thee at court.

HELENA     Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a

190

charitable star.

PAROLLES     Under Mars, I.

HELENA     I especially think under Mars.

PAROLLES     Why under Mars?

HELENA     The wars hath so kept you under, that you

195

must needs be born under Mars.

PAROLLES     When he was predominant.

HELENA     When he was retrograde, I think rather.

PAROLLES     Why think you so?

HELENA     You go so much backward when you fight.

200

PAROLLES     That’s for advantage.

HELENA     So is running away, when fear proposes the

safety; but the composition that your valour and fear

makes in you is a virtue of a good wing, and I like the

wear well.

205

PAROLLES     I am so full of businesses I cannot answer

thee acutely. I will return perfect courtier; in the

which my instruction shall serve to naturalize thee, so

thou wilt be capable of a courtier’s counsel, and

understand what advice shall thrust upon thee; else

210

thou diest in thine unthankfulness, and thine

ignorance makes thee away. Farewell. When thou hast

leisure, say thy prayers; when thou hast none,

remember thy friends. Get thee a good husband, and

use him as he uses thee. So, farewell.     Exit.

215

HELENA     Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,

Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky

Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull

Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.

What power is it which mounts my love so high,

220

That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?

The mightiest space in fortune nature brings

To join like likes, and kiss like native things.

Impossible be strange attempts to those

That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose

225

What hath been cannot be. Who ever strove

To show her merit that did miss her love?

The king’s disease – my project may deceive me,

But my intents are fix’d, and will not leave me.     Exit.

1.2 Flourish cornets. Enter the KING of France with letters, and divers attendants.

KING     The Florentines and Senoys are by th’ears;

Have fought with equal fortune, and continue

A braving war.

1 LORD     So ’tis reported, sir.

KING     Nay, ’tis most credible. We here receive it

A certainty, vouch’d from our cousin Austria,

5

With caution that the Florentine will move us

For speedy aid; wherein our dearest friend

Prejudicates the business, and would seem

To have us make denial.

1 LORD     His love and wisdom,

Approv’d so to your majesty, may plead

10

For amplest credence.

KING     He hath arm’d our answer,

And Florence is denied before he comes;

Yet, for our gentlemen that mean to see

The Tuscan service, freely have they leave

To stand on either part.

2 LORD     It well may serve

15

A nursery to our gentry, who are sick

For breathing and exploit.

KING     What’s he comes here?

Enter BERTRAM, LAFEW and PAROLLES.

1 LORD     It is the Count Rossillion, my good lord,

Young Bertram.

KING     Youth, thou bear’st thy father’s face;

Frank nature, rather curious than in haste,

20

Hath well compos’d thee. Thy father’s moral parts

Mayest thou inherit too! Welcome to Paris.

BERTRAM     My thanks and duty are your majesty’s.

KING     I would I had that corporal soundness now,

As when thy father and myself in friendship

25

First tried our soldiership. He did look far

Into the service of the time, and was

Discipled of the bravest. He lasted long,

But on us both did haggish age steal on,

And wore us out of act. It much repairs me

30

To talk of your good father; in his youth

He had the wit which I can well observe

Today in our young lords; but they may jest

Till their own scorn return to them unnoted

Ere they can hide their levity in honour.

35

So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness

Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were,

His equal had awak’d them, and his honour,

Clock to itself, knew the true minute when

Exception bid him speak, and at this time

40

His tongue obey’d his hand. Who were below him

He us’d as creatures of another place,

And bow’d his eminent top to their low ranks,

Making them proud of his humility

In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man

45

Might be a copy to these younger times;

Which, followed well, would demonstrate them now

But goers backward.

BERTRAM     His good remembrance, sir,

Lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb;

So in approof lives not his epitaph

50

As in your royal speech.

KING     Would I were with him! He would always say –

Methinks I hear him now; his plausive words

He scatter’d not in ears, but grafted them

To grow there and to bear – ‘Let me not live’,

55

(This his good melancholy oft began

On the catastrophe and heel of pastime,

When it was out) ‘Let me not live’, quoth he,

‘After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff

Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses

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All but new things disdain; whose judgments are

Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies

Expire before their fashions’. This he wish’d.

I, after him, do after him wish too,

Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home,

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I quickly were dissolved from my hive

To give some labourers room.

2 LORD     You’re loved, sir;

They that least lend it you shall lack you first.

KING     I fill a place, I know’t. How long is’t, count,

Since the physician at your father’s died?

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He was much fam’d.

BERTRAM     Some six months since, my lord.

KING     If he were living I would try him yet –

Lend me an arm – the rest have worn me out

With several applications; nature and sickness

Debate it at their leisure. Welcome, count;

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My son’s no dearer.

BERTRAM     Thank your majesty.

Exeunt. Flourish.

1.3 Enter COUNTESS, Steward and Clown.

COUNTESS     I will now hear. What say you of this

gentlewoman?

STEWARD     Madam, the care I have had to even your

content I wish might be found in the calendar of my

past endeavours; for then we wound our modesty, and

5

make foul the clearness of our deservings, when of

ourselves we publish them.

COUNTESS     What does this knave here? get you gone,

sirrah. The complaints I have heard of you I do not all

believe; ’tis my slowness that I do not; for I know you

10

lack not folly to commit them and have ability enough

to make such knaveries yours.

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

fellow.

COUNTESS     Well, sir.

15

CLOWN     No, madam, ’tis not so well that I am poor,

though many of the rich are damn’d; but if I may have

your ladyship’s good will to go to the world, Isbel the

woman and I will do as we may.

COUNTESS     Wilt thou needs be a beggar?

20

CLOWN     I do beg your good will in this case.

COUNTESS     In what case?

CLOWN     In Isbel’s case and mine own. Service is no

heritage, and I think I shall never have the blessing of

God till I have issue a’ my body; for they say barnes

25

are blessings.

COUNTESS     Tell me thy reason why thou wilt marry.

CLOWN     My poor body, madam, requires it; I am driven

on by the flesh, and he must needs go that the devil

drives.

30

COUNTESS     Is this all your worship’s reason?

CLOWN     Faith, madam, I have other holy reasons, such

as they are.

COUNTESS     May the world know them?

CLOWN     I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you

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and all flesh and blood are, and indeed I do marry that

I may repent.

COUNTESS     Thy marriage, sooner than thy wickedness.

CLOWN     I am out a’ friends, madam, and I hope to have

friends for my wife’s sake.

40

COUNTESS     Such friends are thine enemies, knave.

CLOWN     Y’are shallow, madam, in great friends; for the

knaves come to do that for me which I am aweary of.

He that ears my land spares my team, and gives me

leave to in the crop; if I be his cuckold, he’s my

45

drudge. He that comforts my wife is the cherisher of

my flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh and

blood loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh

and blood is my friend; ergo, he that kisses my wife is

my friend. If men could be contented to be what they

50

are, there were no fear in marriage; for young Charbon

the puritan and old Poysam the papist, howsome’er

their hearts are sever’d in religion, their heads are both

one; they may jowl horns together like any deer i’ th’

herd.

55

COUNTESS     Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouth’d and

calumnious knave?

CLOWN     A prophet I, madam; and I speak the truth the

next way:

For I the ballad will repeat

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Which men full true shall find:

Your marriage comes by destiny,

Your cuckoo sings by kind.

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

STEWARD     May it please you, madam, that he bid Helen

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come to you; of her I am to speak.

COUNTESS     Sirrah, tell my gentlewoman I would speak

with her – Helen I mean.

CLOWN     Was this fair face the cause, quoth she,

Why the Grecians sacked Troy?

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Fond done, done fond,

Was this King Priam’s joy?

With that she sighed as she stood,

With that she sighed as she stood,

And gave this sentence then:

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Among nine bad if one be good,

Among nine bad if one be good,

There’s yet one good in ten.

COUNTESS     What, one good in ten? You corrupt the

song, sirrah.

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CLOWN     One good woman in ten, madam, which is a

purifying a’th’ song. Would God would serve the

world so all the year! We’d find no fault with the tithe-

woman if I were the parson. One in ten, quoth’a! And

we might have a good woman born but or every

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blazing star or at an earthquake, ’twould mend the

lottery well; a man may draw his heart out ere ’a pluck

one.

COUNTESS     You’ll be gone, sir knave, and do as I

command you?

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CLOWN     That man should be at woman’s command, and

yet no hurt done! Though honesty be no puritan, yet it

will do no hurt; it will wear the surplice of humility

over the black gown of a big heart. I am going, forsooth;

the business is for Helen to come hither.     Exit.

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COUNTESS     Well, now.

STEWARD     I know, madam, you love your gentlewoman

entirely.

COUNTESS     Faith, I do. Her father bequeath’d her to me,

and she herself, without other advantage, may lawfully

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make title to as much love as she finds; there is more

owing her than is paid, and more shall be paid her than

she’ll demand.

STEWARD     Madam, I was very late more near her than I

think she wish’d me; alone she was, and did

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communicate to herself her own words to her own

ears; she thought, I dare vow for her, they touch’d not

any stranger sense. Her matter was, she loved your

son. Fortune, she said, was no goddess, that had put

such difference betwixt their two estates; Love no god,

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that would not extend his might only where qualities

were level; Diana no queen of virgins, that would

suffer her poor knight surpris’d without rescue in the

first assault or ransom afterward. This she deliver’d in

the most bitter touch of sorrow that ere I heard virgin

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exclaim in, which I held my duty speedily to acquaint

you withal, sithence, in the loss that may happen, it

concerns you something to know it.

COUNTESS     You have discharg’d this honestly; keep it to

yourself. Many likelihoods inform’d me of this before,

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which hung so tott’ring in the balance that I could

neither believe nor misdoubt. Pray you leave me; stall

this in your bosom; and I thank you for your honest

care. I will speak with you further anon.     Exit Steward.

Enter HELENA.

COUNTESS     Even so it was with me when I was young;

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If ever we are nature’s, these are ours; this thorn

Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong;

Our blood to us, this to our blood is born:

It is the show and seal of nature’s truth,

Where love’s strong passion is impress’d in youth.

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By our remembrances of days foregone,

Such were our faults, or then we thought them none.

Her eye is sick on’t; I observe her now.

HELENA     What is your pleasure, madam?

COUNTESS     You know, Helen,

I am a mother to you.

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HELENA     Mine honourable mistress.

COUNTESS     Nay, a mother.

Why not a mother? When I said ‘a mother’,

Methought you saw a serpent. What’s in ‘mother’

That you start at it? I say I am your mother,

And put you in the catalogue of those

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That were enwombed mine. ’Tis often seen

Adoption strives with nature, and choice breeds

A native slip to us from foreign seeds.

You ne’er oppress’d me with a mother’s groan,

Yet I express to you a mother’s care.

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God’s mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood

To say I am thy mother? what’s the matter,

That this distempered messenger of wet,

The many-colour’d Iris, rounds thine eye?

– Why, that you are my daughter?

HELENA     That I am not.

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COUNTESS     I say I am your mother.

HELENA     Pardon, madam;

The Count Rossillion cannot be my brother.

I am from humble, he from honoured name;

No note upon my parents, his all noble.

My master, my dear lord he is; and I

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His servant live, and will his vassal die.

He must not be my brother.

COUNTESS     Nor I your mother?

HELENA

You are my mother, madam; would you were –

So that my lord your son were not my brother –

Indeed my mother! or were you both our mothers

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I care no more for than I do for heaven,

So I were not his sister. Can’t no other

But, I your daughter, he must be my brother?

COUNTESS

Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law.

God shield you mean it not! daughter and mother

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So strive upon your pulse. What! pale again?

My fear hath catch’d your fondness; now I see

The myst’ry of your loneliness, and find

Your salt tears’ head. Now to all sense ’tis gross:

You love my son. Invention is asham’d

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Against the proclamation of thy passion

To say thou dost not. Therefore tell me true;

But tell me then, ’tis so; for, look, thy cheeks

Confess it t’one to th’other, and thine eyes

See it so grossly shown in thy behaviours

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That in their kind they speak it; only sin

And hellish obstinacy tie thy tongue,

That truth should be suspected. Speak, is’t so?

If it be so, you have wound a goodly clew;

If it be not, forswear’t; howe’er, I charge thee,

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As heaven shall work in me for thine avail,

To tell me truly.

HELENA     Good madam, pardon me.

COUNTESS     Do you love my son?

HELENA     Your pardon, noble mistress.

COUNTESS     Love you my son?

HELENA     Do not you love him, madam?

COUNTESS     Go not about; my love hath in’t a bond

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Whereof the world takes note. Come, come, disclose

The state of your affection, for your passions

Have to the full appeach’d.

HELENA     Then I confess,

Here on my knee, before high heaven and you,

That before you, and next unto high heaven,

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I love your son.

My friends were poor, but honest; so’s my love.

Be not offended, for it hurts not him

That he is lov’d of me; I follow him not

By any token of presumptuous suit,

195

Nor would I have him till I do deserve him;

Yet never know how that desert should be.

I know I love in vain, strive against hope;

Yet in this captious and inteemable sieve

I still pour in the waters of my love

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And lack not to lose still. Thus, Indian-like,

Religious in mine error, I adore

The sun that looks upon his worshipper

But knows of him no more. My dearest madam,

Let not your hate encounter with my love,

205

For loving where you do; but if yourself,

Whose aged honour cites a virtuous youth,

Did ever, in so true a flame of liking,

Wish chastely and love dearly, that your Dian

Was both herself and love – O then, give pity

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To her whose state is such that cannot choose

But lend and give where she is sure to lose;

That seeks not to find that her search implies,

But riddle-like lives sweetly where she dies!

COUNTESS

Had you not lately an intent – speak truly –

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To go to Paris?

HELENA     Madam, I had.

COUNTESS     Wherefore? tell true.

HELENA     I will tell truth, by grace itself I swear.

You know my father left me some prescriptions

Of rare and prov’d effects, such as his reading

And manifest experience had collected

220

For general sovereignty; and that he will’d me

In heedfull’st reservation to bestow them,

As notes whose faculties inclusive were

More than they were in note. Amongst the rest

There is a remedy, approv’d, set down,

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To cure the desperate languishings whereof

The king is render’d lost.

COUNTESS     This was your motive

For Paris was it? Speak.

HELENA     My lord your son made me to think of this;

Else Paris and the medicine and the king

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Had from the conversation of my thoughts

Haply been absent then.

COUNTESS     But think you, Helen,

If you should tender your supposed aid,

He would receive it? He and his physicians

Are of a mind; he, that they cannot help him;

235

They, that they cannot help. How shall they credit

A poor unlearned virgin, when the schools,

Embowel’d of their doctrine, have left off

The danger to itself?

HELENA     There’s something in’t

More than my father’s skill, which was the great’st

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Of his profession, that his good receipt

Shall for my legacy be sanctified

By th’ luckiest stars in heaven; and would your honour

But give me leave to try success, I’d venture

The well-lost life of mine on his grace’s cure

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By such a day, an hour.

COUNTESS     Dost thou believe’t?

HELENA     Ay, madam, knowingly.

COUNTESS

Why, Helen, thou shalt have my leave and love,

Means and attendants, and my loving greetings

To those of mine in court. I’ll stay at home

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And pray God’s blessing into thy attempt.

Be gone tomorrow; and be sure of this,

What I can help thee to, thou shalt not miss.     Exeunt.

2.1 Enter the KING with divers young Lords taking leave for the Florentine war; BERTRAM and PAROLLES; attendants. Flourish cornets.

KING     Farewell, young lords; these warlike principles

Do not throw from you; and you, my lords, farewell;

Share the advice betwixt you; if both gain all,

The gift doth stretch itself as ’tis receiv’d,

And is enough for both.

1 LORD     ’Tis our hope, sir,

5

After well-ent’red soldiers, to return

And find your grace in health.

KING     No, no, it cannot be; and yet my heart

Will not confess he owes the malady

That doth my life besiege. Farewell, young lords.

10

Whether I live or die, be you the sons

Of worthy Frenchmen; let Higher Italy –

Those bated that inherit but the fall

Of the last monarchy – see that you come

Not to woo honour, but to wed it, when

15

The bravest questant shrinks: find what you seek,

That fame may cry you loud. I say farewell.

1 LORD     Health at your bidding serve your majesty!

KING     Those girls of Italy, take heed of them;

They say our French lack language to deny

20

If they demand; beware of being captives

Before you serve.

BOTH LORDS     Our hearts receive your warnings.

KING     Farewell. [to some Lords] Come hither to me.

[Retires.]

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

PAROLLES     ’Tis not his fault, the spark.

2 LORD     O, ’tis brave wars!

25

PAROLLES     Most admirable! I have seen those wars.

BERTRAM     I am commanded here, and kept a coil with

‘Too young’, and ‘The next year’ and ‘’Tis too early’.

PAROLLES

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

BERTRAM     I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock,

30

Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry,

Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn

But one to dance with. By heaven, I’ll steal away!

1 LORD     There’s honour in the theft.

PAROLLES     Commit it, count.

2 LORD     I am your accessary; and so farewell.

35

BERTRAM

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

1 LORD     Farewell, captain.

2 LORD     Sweet Monsieur Parolles!

PAROLLES     Noble heroes, my sword and yours are kin.

Good sparks and lustrous, a word, good metals. You

40

shall find in the regiment of the Spinii one Captain

Spurio, with his cicatrice, an emblem of war, here on

his sinister cheek; it was this very sword entrench’d it.

Say to him I live, and observe his reports for me.

1 LORD     We shall, noble captain. Exeunt Lords.

45

PAROLLES     Mars dote on you for his novices! [to

Bertram] What will ye do?

BERTRAM     Stay the king.

PAROLLES     Use a more spacious ceremony to the noble

lords; you have restrain’d yourself within the list of too

50

cold an adieu. Be more expressive to them, for they

wear themselves in the cap of the time; there do

muster true gait, eat, speak, and move, under the

influence of the most receiv’d star; and though the

devil lead the measure, such are to be followed. After

55

them, and take a more dilated farewell.

BERTRAM     And I will do so.

PAROLLES     Worthy fellows, and like to prove most

sinewy sword-men.     Exeunt Bertram and Parolles.

Enter LAFEW. The KING comes forward.

LAFEW     [kneeling]

Pardon, my lord, for me and for my tidings.

60

KING     I’ll fee thee to stand up.

LAFEW     Then here’s a man stands that has brought his

pardon.

I would you had kneel’d, my lord, to ask me mercy,

And that at my bidding you could so stand up.

KING     I would I had; so I had broke thy pate

65

And ask’d thee mercy for’t.

LAFEW     Good faith, across!

But, my good lord, ’tis thus: will you be cur’d

Of your infirmity?

KING     No.

LAFEW     O, will you eat

No grapes, my royal fox? Yes, but you will

My noble grapes, and if my royal fox

70

Could reach them. I have seen a medicine

That’s able to breathe life into a stone,

Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary

With sprightly fire and motion; whose simple touch

Is powerful to araise King Pippen, nay,

75

To give great Charlemain a pen in’s hand

And write to her a love-line.

KING     What ‘her’ is this?

LAFEW     Why, Doctor She! My lord, there’s one arriv’d,

If you will see her. Now by my faith and honour,

If seriously I may convey my thoughts

80

In this my light deliverance, I have spoke

With one that in her sex, her years, profession,

Wisdom and constancy, hath amaz’d me more

Than I dare blame my weakness. Will you see her,

For that is her demand, and know her business?

85

That done, laugh well at me.

KING     Now, good Lafew,

Bring in the admiration that we with thee

May spend our wonder too, or take off thine

By wond’ring how thou took’st it.

LAFEW     Nay, I’ll fit you,

And not be all day neither. [Lafew goes to the door.]

90

KING     Thus he his special nothing ever prologues.

LAFEW     Nay, come your ways.

Enter HELENA.

KING     This haste hath wings indeed.

LAFEW     Nay, come your ways.

This is his majesty; say your mind to him.

A traitor you do look like, but such traitors

95

His majesty seldom fears; I am Cressid’s uncle

That dare leave two together. Fare you well.     Exit.

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

HELENA     Ay, my good lord.

Gerard de Narbon was my father,

100

In what he did profess, well found.

KING     I knew him.

HELENA

The rather will I spare my praises towards him;

Knowing him is enough. On’s bed of death

Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one,

Which, as the dearest issue of his practice,

105

And of his old experience th’only darling,

He bade me store up as a triple eye,

Safer than mine own two; more dear I have so,

And hearing your high majesty is touch’d

With that malignant cause, wherein the honour

110

Of my dear father’s gift stands chief in power,

I come to tender it and my appliance,

With all bound humbleness.

KING     We thank you, maiden;

But may not be so credulous of cure,

When our most learned doctors leave us, and

115

The congregated college have concluded

That labouring art can never ransom nature

From her inaidible estate. I say we must not

So stain our judgment or corrupt our hope,

To prostitute our past-cure malady

120

To empirics, or to dissever so

Our great self and our credit, to esteem

A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.

HELENA     My duty then shall pay me for my pains.

I will no more enforce mine office on you,

125

Humbly entreating from your royal thoughts

A modest one to bear me back again.

KING     I cannot give thee less, to be call’d grateful;

Thou thought’st to help me, and such thanks I give

As one near death to those that wish him live.

130

But what at full I know, thou know’st no part;

I knowing all my peril, thou no art.

HELENA     What I can do can do no hurt to try,

Since you set up your rest ’gainst remedy.

He that of greatest works is finisher

135

Oft does them by the weakest minister.

So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,

When judges have been babes. Great floods have flown

From simple sources, and great seas have dried

When miracles have by the great’st been denied.

140

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there

Where most it promises, and oft it hits

Where hope is coldest and despair most fits.

KING     I must not hear thee. Fare thee well, kind maid.

Thy pains, not us’d, must by thyself be paid;

145

Proffers not took reap thanks for their reward.

HELENA     Inspired merit so by breath is barr’d.

It is not so with Him that all things knows

As ’tis with us that square our guess by shows;

But most it is presumption in us when

150

The help of heaven we count the act of men.

Dear sir, to my endeavours give consent;

Of heaven, not me, make an experiment.

I am not an impostor, that proclaim

Myself against the level of mine aim,

155

But know I think, and think I know most sure,

My art is not past power, nor you past cure.

KING     Art thou so confident? Within what space

Hop’st thou my cure?

HELENA     The greatest Grace lending grace,

Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring

160

Their fiery coacher his diurnal ring,

Ere twice in murk and occidental damp

Moist Hesperus hath quench’d her sleepy lamp,

Or four and twenty times the pilot’s glass

Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass,

165

What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly,

Health shall live free and sickness freely die.

KING     Upon thy certainty and confidence

What dar’st thou venture?

HELENA     Tax of impudence,

A strumpet’s boldness, a divulged shame,

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Traduc’d by odious ballads; my maiden’s name

Sear’d otherwise; ne worse of worst, extended

With vildest torture, let my life be ended.

KING     Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak

His powerful sound within an organ weak;

175

And what impossibility would slay

In common sense, sense saves another way.

Thy life is dear, for all that life can rate

Worth name of life in thee hath estimate:

Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage – all

180

That happiness and prime can happy call.

Thou this to hazard needs must intimate

Skill infinite, or monstrous desperate.

Sweet practiser, thy physic I will try,

That ministers thine own death if I die.

185

HELENA     If I break time, or flinch in property

Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die,

And well deserv’d. Not helping, death’s my fee;

But if I help, what do you promise me?

KING     Make thy demand.

HELENA     But will you make it even?

190

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

HELENA     Then shalt thou give me with thy kingly hand

What husband in thy power I will command:

Exempted be from me the arrogance

To choose from forth the royal blood of France

195

My low and humble name to propagate

With any branch or image of thy state;

But such a one, thy vassal, whom I know

Is free for me to ask, thee to bestow.

KING     Here is my hand; the premises observ’d,

200

Thy will by my performance shall be serv’d;

So make the choice of thy own time, for I,

Thy resolv’d patient, on thee still rely.

More should I question thee, and more I must,

Though more to know could not be more to trust:

205

From whence thou cam’st, how tended on; but rest,

Unquestion’d, welcome, and undoubted bless’d.

Give me some help here, ho! If thou proceed

As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.

Flourish. Exeunt.

2.2 Enter COUNTESS and Clown.

COUNTESS     Come on, sir; I shall now put you to the

height of your breeding.

CLOWN     I will show myself highly fed and lowly taught.

I know my business is but to the court.

COUNTESS     To the court! Why, what place make you

5

special, when you put off that with such contempt?

But to the court!

CLOWN     Truly, madam, if God have lent a man any

manners he may easily put it off at court: he that

cannot make a leg, put off’s cap, kiss his hand, and say

10

nothing, has neither leg, hands, lip, nor cap; and

indeed such a fellow, to say precisely, were not for the

court; but for me, I have an answer will serve all men.

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

questions.

15

CLOWN     It is like a barber’s chair that fits all buttocks:

the pin-buttock, the quatch-buttock, the brawn-

buttock, or any buttock.

COUNTESS     Will your answer serve fit to all questions?

CLOWN     As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an

20

attorney, as your French crown for your taffety punk,

as Tib’s rush for Tom’s forefinger, as a pancake for

Shrove Tuesday, a morris for May-day, as the nail to

his hole, the cuckold to his horn, as a scolding quean

to a wrangling knave, as the nun’s lip to the friar’s

25

mouth; nay, as the pudding to his skin.

COUNTESS     Have you, I say, an answer of such fitness for

all questions?

CLOWN     From below your duke to beneath your

constable, it will fit any question.

30

COUNTESS     It must be an answer of most monstrous size

that must fit all demands.

CLOWN     But a trifle neither, in good faith, if the learned

should speak truth of it. Here it is, and all that belongs

to’t: ask me if I am a courtier; it shall do you no harm

35

to learn.

COUNTESS     To be young again, if we could, I will be a

fool in question, hoping to be the wiser by your

answer. I pray you, sir, are you a courtier?

CLOWN     O Lord, sir! There’s a simple putting off. More,

40

more, a hundred of them.

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

you.

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

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

45

meat.

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

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

CLOWN     O Lord, sir! Spare not me.

COUNTESS     Do you cry ‘O Lord, sir!’ at your whipping,

50

and ‘spare not me’? Indeed your ‘O Lord, sir!’ is very

sequent to your whipping; you would answer very well

to a whipping, if you were but bound to’t.

CLOWN

I ne’er had worse luck in my life in my ‘O Lord, sir!’

I see things may serve long, but not serve ever.

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COUNTESS     I play the noble housewife with the time,

To entertain it so merrily with a fool.

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

COUNTESS

An end, sir! To your business: give Helen this,

And urge her to a present answer back.

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Commend me to my kinsmen and my son.

This is not much.

CLOWN     Not much commendation to them?

COUNTESS

Not much employment for you. You understand me?

CLOWN     Most fruitfully. I am there before my legs.

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COUNTESS     Haste you again.     Exeunt.

2.3 Enter BERTRAM, LAFEW and PAROLLES.

LAFEW     They say miracles are past; and we have our

philosophical persons to make modern and familiar,

things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we

make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into

seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves

5

to an unknown fear.

PAROLLES     Why, ’tis the rarest argument of wonder that

hath shot out in our latter times.

BERTRAM     And so ’tis.

LAFEW     To be relinquish’d of the artists –

10

PAROLLES     So I say – both of Galen and Paracelsus.

LAFEW     Of all the learned and authentic Fellows –

PAROLLES     Right; so I say.

LAFEW     That gave him out incurable –

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

15

LAFEW     Not to be help’d.

PAROLLES     Right; as ’twere a man assur’d of a –

LAFEW     Uncertain life and sure death.

PAROLLES     Just. You say well. So would I have said.

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

20

PAROLLES     It is indeed; if you will have it in showing,

you shall read it in what-do-ye-call there.

LAFEW     [reading] A showing of a heavenly effect in an

earthly actor.

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

25

LAFEW     Why, your dolphin is not lustier; fore me, I

speak in respect –

PAROLLES     Nay, ’tis strange, ’tis very strange; that is the

brief and the tedious of it; and he’s of a most

facinerious spirit that will not acknowledge it to be

30

the –

LAFEW     Very hand of heaven.

PAROLLES     Ay, so I say.

LAFEW     In a most weak –

PAROLLES     And debile minister; great power, great

35

transcendence, which should indeed give us a further

use to be made than alone the recov’ry of the king, as

to be –

LAFEW     Generally thankful.

Enter KING, HELENA and attendants.

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

40

comes the king.

LAFEW     Lustique, as the Dutchman says. I’ll like a maid

the better whilst I have a tooth in my head. Why, he’s

able to lead her a coranto.

PAROLLES     Mor du vinager! Is not this Helen?

45

LAFEW     Fore God, I think so.

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

Exit attendant.

Sit, my preserver, by thy patient’s side,

And with this healthful hand, whose banish’d sense

Thou hast repeal’d, a second time receive

50

The confirmation of my promis’d gift,

Which but attends thy naming.

Enter three or four Lords.

Fair maid, send forth thine eye. This youthful parcel

Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing,

O’er whom both sovereign power and father’s voice

55

I have to use. Thy frank election make;

Thou hast power to choose, and they none to forsake.

HELENA     To each of you one fair and virtuous mistress

Fall, when love please! Marry, to each but one!

LAFEW     I’d give bay curtal and his furniture

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My mouth no more were broken than these boys’,

And writ as little beard.

KING     Peruse them well.

Not one of those but had a noble father.

[She addresses her to a Lord.]

HELENA     Gentlemen,

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

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ALL     We understand it, and thank heaven for you.

HELENA     I am a simple maid, and therein wealthiest

That I protest I simply am a maid.

Please it your majesty, I have done already.

The blushes in my cheeks thus whisper me:

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‘We blush that thou should’st choose; but, be refused,

Let the white death sit on thy cheek for ever,

We’ll ne’er come there again.’

KING     Make choice, and see,

Who shuns thy love shuns all his love in me.

HELENA     Now, Dian, from thy altar do I fly,

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And to imperial Love, that god most high

Do my sighs stream.

[to First Lord] Sir, will you hear my suit?

1 LORD     And grant it.

HELENA     Thanks, sir; all the rest is mute.

LAFEW     I had rather be in this choice than throw ames-

ace for my life.

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HELENA     [to Second Lord]

The honour, sir, that flames in your fair eyes

Before I speak, too threat’ningly replies.

Love make your fortunes twenty times above

Her that so wishes, and her humble love!

2 LORD     No better, if you please.

HELENA     My wish receive,

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Which great Love grant; and so I take my leave.

LAFEW     Do all they deny her? And they were sons of

mine I’d have them whipp’d, or I would send them to

th’ Turk to make eunuchs of.

HELENA     [to Third Lord]

Be not afraid that I your hand should take;

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I’ll never do you wrong, for your own sake.

Blessing upon your vows, and in your bed

Find fairer fortune if you ever wed!

LAFEW     These boys are boys of ice; they’ll none have

her. Sure they are bastards to the English; the French

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ne’er got ’em.

HELENA     [to Fourth Lord]

You are too young, too happy, and too good,

To make yourself a son out of my blood.

4 LORD     Fair one, I think not so.

LAFEW     There’s one grape yet. I am sure thy father

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drunk wine; but if thou be’st not an ass, I am a youth

of fourteen; I have known thee already.

HELENA     [to Bertram] I dare not say I take you, but I give

Me and my service, ever whilst I live,

Into your guiding power. This is the man.

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KING

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

BERTRAM

My wife, my liege! I shall beseech your highness,

In such a business give me leave to use

The help of mine own eyes.

KING     Know’st thou not, Bertram,

What she has done for me?

BERTRAM     Yes, my good lord,

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But never hope to know why I should marry her.

KING

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

BERTRAM     But follows it, my lord, to bring me down

Must answer for your raising? I know her well:

She had her breeding at my father’s charge –

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A poor physician’s daughter my wife! Disdain

Rather corrupt me ever!

KING     ’Tis only title thou disdain’st in her, the which

I can build up. Strange is it that our bloods,

Of colour, weight, and heat, pour’d all together,

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Would quite confound distinction, yet stands off

In differences so mighty. If she be

All that is virtuous, save what thou dislik’st –

A poor physician’s daughter – thou dislik’st

Of virtue for the name. But do not so.

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From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,

The place is dignified by th’ doer’s deed.

Where great additions swell’s and virtue none,

It is a dropsied honour. Good alone

Is good, without a name; vileness is so:

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The property by what it is should go,

Not by the title. She is young, wise, fair;

In these to nature she’s immediate heir,

And these breed honour; that is honour’s scorn

Which challenges itself as honour’s born

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And is not like the sire. Honours thrive

When rather from our acts we them derive

Than our foregoers. The mere word’s a slave,

Debosh’d on every tomb, on every grave

A lying trophy, and as oft is dumb,

140

Where dust and damn’d oblivion is the tomb

Of honour’d bones indeed. What should be said?

If thou canst like this creature as a maid,

I can create the rest. Virtue and she

Is her own dower; honour and wealth from me.

145

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

KING

Thou wrong’st thyself if thou should’st strive to choose.

HELENA

That you are well restor’d, my lord, I’m glad.

Let the rest go.

KING     My honour’s at the stake, which to defeat,

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I must produce my power. Here, take her hand,

Proud, scornful boy, unworthy this good gift,

That dost in vile misprision shackle up

My love and her desert; that canst not dream

We, poising us in her defective scale,

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Shall weigh thee to the beam; that wilt not know

It is in us to plant thine honour where

We please to have it grow. Check thy contempt;

Obey our will which travails in thy good;

Believe not thy disdain, but presently

160

Do thine own fortunes that obedient right

Which both thy duty owes and our power claims;

Or I will throw thee from my care for ever

Into the staggers and the careless lapse

Of youth and ignorance; both my revenge and hate

165

Loosing upon thee in the name of justice,

Without all terms of pity. Speak. Thine answer.

BERTRAM     Pardon, my gracious lord; for I submit

My fancy to your eyes. When I consider

What great creation and what dole of honour

170

Flies where you bid it, I find that she, which late

Was in my nobler thoughts most base, is now

The praised of the king; who, so ennobled,

Is as ’twere born so.

KING     Take her by the hand

And tell her she is thine; to whom I promise

175

A counterpoise, if not to thy estate,

A balance more replete.

BERTRAM     I take her hand.

KING     Good fortune and the favour of the king

Smile upon this contract; whose ceremony

Shall seem expedient on the now-born brief,

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And be perform’d tonight. The solemn feast

Shall more attend upon the coming space,

Expecting absent friends. As thou lov’st her

Thy love’s to me religious; else, does err.     Exeunt.

PAROLLES and LAFEW stay behind, commenting of this wedding.

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

185

PAROLLES     Your pleasure, sir.

LAFEW     Your lord and master did well to make his

recantation.

PAROLLES     Recantation! My lord! My master!

LAFEW     Ay. Is it not a language I speak?

190

PAROLLES     A most harsh one, and not to be understood

without bloody succeeding. My master!

LAFEW     Are you companion to the Count Rossillion?

PAROLLES     To any Count; to all Counts; to what is man.

LAFEW     To what is Count’s man; Count’s master is of

195

another style.

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

too old.

LAFEW     I must tell thee, sirrah, I write man; to which

title age cannot bring thee.

200

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

LAFEW     I did think thee for two ordinaries to be a pretty

wise fellow; thou didst make tolerable vent of thy travel;

it might pass. Yet the scarfs and the bannerets about

thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing thee a

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vessel of too great a burthen. I have now found thee;

when I lose thee again I care not. Yet art thou good for

nothing but taking up, and that thou’rt scarce worth.

PAROLLES     Hadst thou not the privilege of antiquity

upon thee –

210

LAFEW     Do not plunge thyself too far in anger, lest thou

hasten thy trial; which if – Lord have mercy on thee

for a hen! So, my good window of lattice, fare thee

well; thy casement I need not open, for I look through

thee. Give me thy hand.

215

PAROLLES     My lord, you give me most egregious

indignity.

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

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

LAFEW     Yes, good faith, ev’ry dram of it; and I will not

220

bate thee a scruple.

PAROLLES     Well, I shall be wiser.

LAFEW     Ev’n as soon as thou canst; for thou hast to pull

at a smack a’ th’ contrary. If ever thou be’st bound in

thy scarf and beaten thou shall find what it is to be

225

proud of thy bondage. I have a desire to hold my

acquaintance with thee, or rather my knowledge, that

I may say, in the default, ‘He is a man I know’.

PAROLLES     My lord, you do me most insupportable

vexation.

230

LAFEW     I would it were hell-pains for thy sake, and my

poor doing eternal; for doing I am past, as I will by

thee, in what motion age will give me leave.     Exit.

PAROLLES     Well, thou hast a son shall take this disgrace

off me; scurvy, old, filthy, scurvy lord! Well, I must be

235

patient; there is no fettering of authority. I’ll beat him,

by my life, if I can meet him with any convenience, and

he were double and double a lord. I’ll have no more

pity of his age than I would have of – I’ll beat him and

if I could but meet him again.

240

Re-enter LAFEW.

LAFEW     Sirrah, your lord and master’s married; there’s

news for you; you have a new mistress.

PAROLLES     I most unfeignedly beseech your lordship to

make some reservation of your wrongs. He is my good

lord; whom I serve above is my master.

245

LAFEW     Who? God?

PAROLLES     Ay, sir.

LAFEW     The devil it is that’s thy master. Why dost thou

garter up thy arms a’ this fashion? Dost make hose of

thy sleeves? Do other servants so? Thou wert best set

250

thy lower part where thy nose stands. By mine honour,

if I were but two hours younger I’d beat thee.

Methink’st thou art a general offence and every man

should beat thee. I think thou wast created for men to

breathe themselves upon thee.

255

PAROLLES     This is hard and undeserved measure, my

lord.

LAFEW     Go to, sir. You were beaten in Italy for picking a

kernel out of a pomegranate. You are a vagabond and

no true traveller. You are more saucy with lords and

260

honourable personages than the commission of your

birth and virtue gives you heraldry. You are not worth

another word, else I’d call you knave. I leave you.     Exit.

Re-enter BERTRAM.

PAROLLES     Good, very good; it is so then. Good, very

good; let it be conceal’d awhile.

265

BERTRAM     Undone and forfeited to cares for ever!

PAROLLES     What’s the matter, sweetheart?

BERTRAM

Although before the solemn priest I have sworn,

I will not bed her.

PAROLLES     What, what, sweetheart?

270

BERTRAM     O my Parolles, they have married me!

I’ll to the Tuscan wars and never bed her.

PAROLLES     France is a dog-hole and it no more merits

The tread of a man’s foot; to th’ wars!

BERTRAM

There’s letters from my mother; what th’import is

275

I know not yet.

PAROLLES

Ay, that would be known. To th’ wars, my boy, to th’ wars!

He wears his honour in a box unseen

That hugs his kicky-wicky here at home,

Spending his manly marrow in her arms,

280

Which should sustain the bound and high curvet

Of Mars’s fiery steed. To other regions!

France is a stable; we that dwell in’t jades.

Therefore to th’ war!

BERTRAM     It shall be so. I’ll send her to my house,

285

Acquaint my mother with my hate to her

And wherefore I am fled, write to the king

That which I durst not speak. His present gift

Shall furnish me to those Italian fields

Where noble fellows strike. Wars is no strife

290

To the dark house and the detested wife.

PAROLLES     Will this capriccio hold in thee, art sure?

BERTRAM     Go with me to my chamber and advise me.

I’ll send her straight away. Tomorrow

I’ll to the wars, she to her single sorrow.

295

PAROLLES

Why, these balls bound; there’s noise in it. ’Tis hard:

A young man married is a man that’s marr’d.

Therefore away, and leave her bravely; go.

The king has done you wrong; but hush ’tis so.

Exeunt.

2.4 Enter HELENA and Clown.

HELENA     My mother greets me kindly; is she well?

CLOWN     She is not well, but yet she has her health; she’s

very merry, but yet she is not well. But thanks be given

she’s very well and wants nothing i’th’ world; but yet

she is not well.

5

HELENA     If she be very well what does she ail that she’s

not very well?

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

things.

HELENA     What two things?

10

CLOWN     One, that she’s not in heaven, whither God

send her quickly! The other, that she’s in earth, from

whence God send her quickly!

Enter PAROLLES.

PAROLLES     Bless you, my fortunate lady.

HELENA     I hope, sir, I have your good will to have mine

15

own good fortune.

PAROLLES     You had my prayers to lead them on, and to

keep them on have them still. O, my knave! How does

my old lady?

CLOWN     So that you had her wrinkles and I her money,

20

I would she did as you say.

PAROLLES     Why, I say nothing.

CLOWN     Marry, you are the wiser man; for many a man’s

tongue shakes out his master’s undoing. To say

nothing, to do nothing, to know nothing, and to have

25

nothing, is to be a great part of your title, which is

within a very little of nothing.

PAROLLES     Away! Th’art a knave.

CLOWN     You should have said, sir, ‘Before a knave th’art

a knave’; that’s ‘Before me, th’art a knave’. This had

30

been truth, sir.

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

CLOWN     Did you find me in your self, sir, or were you

taught to find me? … The search, sir, was profitable;

and much fool may you find in you, even to the

35

world’s pleasure and the increase of laughter.

PAROLLES     A good knave i’faith, and well fed.

Madam, my lord will go away tonight;

A very serious business calls on him.

The great prerogative and rite of love,

40

Which as your due time claims, he does acknowledge,

But puts it off to a compell’d restraint;

Whose want and whose delay is strew’d with sweets,

Which they distil now in the curbed time,

To make the coming hour o’erflow with joy

45

And pleasure drown the brim.

HELENA     What’s his will else?

PAROLLES

That you will take your instant leave a’th’ king,

And make this haste as your own good proceeding,

Strength’ned with what apology you think

May make it probable need.

HELENA     What more commands he?

50

PAROLLES     That, having this obtain’d, you presently

Attend his further pleasure.

HELENA     In everything I wait upon his will.

PAROLLES     I shall report it so.     Exit.

HELENA     I pray you. Come, sirrah.     Exeunt.

2.5 Enter LAFEW and BERTRAM.

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

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

LAFEW     You have it from his own deliverance.

BERTRAM     And by other warranted testimony.

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

5

a bunting.

BERTRAM     I do assure you, my lord, he is very great in

knowledge, and accordingly valiant.

LAFEW     I have then sinn’d against his experience and

transgress’d against his valour; and my state that way

10

is dangerous, since I cannot yet find in my heart to

repent. Here he comes. I pray you make us friends; I

will pursue the amity.

Enter PAROLLES.

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

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

15

PAROLLES     Sir!

LAFEW     O, I know him well. Ay, ‘sir’, he, sir,’s a good

workman, a very good tailor.

BERTRAM     [aside to Parolles] Is she gone to the king?

PAROLLES     She is.

20

BERTRAM     Will she away tonight?

PAROLLES     As you’ll have her.

BERTRAM     I have writ my letters, casketed my treasure,

Given order for our horses; and tonight,

When I should take possession of the bride,

25

End ere I do begin.

LAFEW     [aside] A good traveller is something at the latter

end of a dinner, but one that lies three thirds and uses

a known truth to pass a thousand nothings with,

should be once heard and thrice beaten. [aloud] God

30

save you, captain!

BERTRAM     Is there any unkindness between my lord and

you, monsieur?

PAROLLES     I know not how I have deserved to run into

my lord’s displeasure.

35

LAFEW     You have made shift to run into’t, boots and

spurs and all, like him that leap’d into the custard; and

out of it you’ll run again rather than suffer question

for your residence.

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

40

LAFEW     And shall do so ever, though I took him at’s

prayers. Fare you well, my lord, and believe this of me:

there can be no kernel in this light nut; the soul of this

man is his clothes. Trust him not in matter of heavy

consequence; I have kept of them tame, and know

45

their natures. Farewell, monsieur; I have spoken better

of you than you have or will to deserve at my hand; but

we must do good against evil.     Exit.

PAROLLES     An idle lord, I swear.

BERTRAM     I think not so.

50

PAROLLES     Why, do you not know him?

BERTRAM     Yes, I do know him well; and common speech

Gives him a worthy pass. Here comes my clog.

Enter HELENA.

HELENA     I have, sir, as I was commanded from you,

Spoke with the king, and have procur’d his leave

55

For present parting; only he desires

Some private speech with you.

BERTRAM     I shall obey his will.

You must not marvel, Helen, at my course,

Which holds not colour with the time, nor does

The ministration and required office

60

On my particular. Prepar’d I was not

For such a business; therefore am I found

So much unsettled. This drives me to entreat you

That presently you take your way for home,

And rather muse than ask why I entreat you;

65

For my respects are better than they seem,

And my appointments have in them a need

Greater than shows itself at the first view

To you that know them not. This to my mother.

[giving a letter]

’Twill be two days ere I shall see you, so

70

I leave you to your wisdom.

HELENA     Sir, I can nothing say

But that I am your most obedient servant.

BERTRAM     Come, come; no more of that.

HELENA     And ever shall

With true observance seek to eke out that

Wherein toward me my homely stars have fail’d

75

To equal my great fortune.

BERTRAM     Let that go.

My haste is very great. Farewell. Hie home.

HELENA     Pray sir, your pardon.

BERTRAM     Well, what would you say?

HELENA     I am not worthy of the wealth I owe,

Nor dare I say ’tis mine – and yet it is;

80

But, like a timorous thief, most fain would steal

What law does vouch mine own.

BERTRAM     What would you have?

HELENA

Something, and scarce so much; nothing indeed.

I would not tell you what I would, my lord.

Faith, yes:

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Strangers and foes do sunder and not kiss.

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

HELENA     I shall not break your bidding, good my lord.

Where are my other men? Monsieur, farewell.     Exit.

BERTRAM

Go thou toward home, where I will never come

90

Whilst I can shake my sword or hear the drum.

Away, and for our flight.

PAROLLES     Bravely. Coragio!     Exeunt.

3.1 Flourish. Enter the DUKE of Florence, the two French Lords, with a troop of soldiers.

DUKE     So that from point to point now have you heard

The fundamental reasons of this war,

Whose great decision hath much blood let forth,

And more thirsts after.

1 LORD     Holy seems the quarrel

Upon your Grace’s part; black and fearful

5

On the opposer.

DUKE     Therefore we marvel much our cousin France

Would in so just a business shut his bosom

Against our borrowing prayers.

2 LORD     Good my lord,

The reasons of our state I cannot yield,

10

But like a common and an outward man

That the great figure of a council frames

By self-unable motion; therefore dare not

Say what I think of it, since I have found

Myself in my incertain grounds to fail

15

As often as I guess’d.

DUKE     Be it his pleasure.

1 LORD     But I am sure the younger of our nature

That surfeit on their ease will day by day

Come here for physic.

DUKE     Welcome shall they be,

And all the honours that can fly from us

20

Shall on them settle. You know your places well;

When better fall, for your avails they fell.

Tomorrow to the field.     Flourish. Exeunt.

3.2 Enter COUNTESS and Clown.

COUNTESS     It hath happen’d all as I would have had it,

save that he comes not along with her.

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

melancholy man.

COUNTESS     By what observance, I pray you?

5

CLOWN     Why, he will look upon his boot and sing; mend

the ruff and sing; ask questions and sing; pick his teeth

and sing. I know a man that had this trick of

melancholy sold a goodly manor for a song.

COUNTESS     Let me see what he writes, and when he

10

means to come. [Reads the letter.]

CLOWN     I have no mind to Isbel since I was at court. Our

old lings and our Isbels a’th’ country are nothing like

your old ling and your Isbels a’th’ court. The brains of

my Cupid’s knock’d out, and I begin to love as an old

15

man loves money, with no stomach.

COUNTESS     What have we here?

CLOWN     E’en that you have there.     Exit.

COUNTESS     [Reads.] I have sent you a daughter-in-law;

she hath recovered the king and undone me. I have wedded

20

her, not bedded her, and sworn to make the ‘not’ eternal.

You shall hear I am run away; know it before the report

come. If there be breadth enough in the world I will hold

a long distance. My duty to you. Your unfortunate son,

BERTRAM.

25

This is not well, rash and unbridled boy,

To fly the favours of so good a king,

To pluck his indignation on thy head

By the misprizing of a maid too virtuous

For the contempt of empire.

30

Re-enter Clown.

CLOWN     O madam, yonder is heavy news within,

between two soldiers and my young lady.

COUNTESS     What is the matter?

CLOWN     Nay, there is some comfort in the news, some

comfort; your son will not be kill’d so soon as I

35

thought he would.

COUNTESS     Why should he be kill’d?

CLOWN     So say I, madam – if he run away, as I hear he

does; the danger is in standing to’t; that’s the loss of

men, though it be the getting of children. Here they

40

come will tell you more. For my part, I only hear your

son was run away.     Exit.

Enter HELENA and the two French Lords.

1 LORD     Save you, good madam.

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

2 LORD     Do not say so.

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COUNTESS     Think upon patience. Pray you,

gentlemen –

I have felt so many quirks of joy and grief

That the first face of neither on the start

Can woman me unto’t. Where is my son, I pray you?

2 LORD

Madam, he’s gone to serve the Duke of Florence;

50

We met him thitherward, for thence we came,

And, after some dispatch in hand at court,

Thither we bend again.

HELENA

Look on his letter, madam; here’s my passport:

[Reads.] When thou canst get the ring upon my finger,

55

which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten

of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband; but

in such a ‘then’ I write a ‘never’.

This is a dreadful sentence.

COUNTESS     Brought you this letter, gentlemen?

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1 LORD     Ay, madam; and for the contents’ sake are sorry

for our pains.

COUNTESS     I prithee, lady, have a better cheer.

If thou engrossest all the griefs are thine

Thou robb’st me of a moiety. He was my son,

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But I do wash his name out of my blood

And thou art all my child. Towards Florence is he?

2 LORD     Ay, madam.

COUNTESS     And to be a soldier?

2 LORD     Such is his noble purpose; and, believe’t,

The duke will lay upon him all the honour

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That good convenience claims.

COUNTESS     Return you thither?

1 LORD     Ay, madam, with the swiftest wing of speed.

HELENA     [Reads.] Till I have no wife I have nothing in France.

     ’Tis bitter.

COUNTESS     Find you that there?

HELENA     Ay, madam.

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1 LORD     ’Tis but the boldness of his hand, haply, which

his heart was not consenting to.

COUNTESS     Nothing in France until he have no wife!

There’s nothing here that is too good for him

But only she, and she deserves a lord

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That twenty such rude boys might tend upon

And call her, hourly, mistress. Who was with him?

1 LORD     A servant only, and a gentleman which I have

sometime known.

COUNTESS     Parolles, was it not?

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1 LORD     Ay, my good lady, he.

COUNTESS     A very tainted fellow, and full of wickedness;

My son corrupts a well-derived nature

With his inducement.

1 LORD     Indeed, good lady,

The fellow has a deal of that too much,

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Which holds him much to have.

COUNTESS     Y’are welcome, gentlemen.

I will entreat you, when you see my son,

To tell him that his sword can never win

The honour that he loses; more I’ll entreat you

Written to bear along.

2 LORD     We serve you, madam,

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In that and all your worthiest affairs.

COUNTESS     Not so, but as we change our courtesies.

Will you draw near?      Exeunt Countess and Lords.

HELENA     ‘Till I have no wife I have nothing in France.’

Nothing in France until he has no wife!

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Thou shalt have none, Rossillion, none in France;

Then hast thou all again. Poor lord, is’t I

That chase thee from thy country, and expose

Those tender limbs of thine to the event

Of the none-sparing war? And is it I

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That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou

Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark

Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers,

That ride upon the violent speed of fire,

Fly with false aim; move the still-piecing air

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That sings with piercing; do not touch my lord.

Whoever shoots at him, I set him there;

Whoever charges on his forward breast,

I am the caitiff that do hold him to’t;

And though I kill him not, I am the cause

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His death was so effected. Better ’twere

I met the ravin lion when he roar’d

With sharp constraint of hunger; better ’twere

That all the miseries which nature owes

Were mine at once. No; come thou home, Rossillion,

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Whence honour but of danger wins a scar,

As oft it loses all; I will be gone;

My being here it is that holds thee hence.

Shall I stay here to do’t? No, no, although

The air of paradise did fan the house

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And angels offic’d all. I will be gone,

That pitiful rumour may report my flight

To consolate thine ear. Come, night; end, day;

For with the dark, poor thief, I’ll steal away.     Exit.

3.3 Flourish. Enter the DUKE of Florence, BERTRAM, drum and trumpets, soldiers, PAROLLES.

DUKE     The general of our horse thou art, and we,

Great in our hope, lay our best love and credence

Upon thy promising fortune.

BERTRAM     Sir, it is

A charge too heavy for my strength; but yet

We’ll strive to bear it for your worthy sake

5

To th’extreme edge of hazard.

DUKE     Then go thou forth;

And fortune play upon thy prosperous helm

As thy auspicious mistress!

BERTRAM     This very day,

Great Mars, I put myself into thy file;

Make me but like my thoughts and I shall prove

10

A lover of thy drum, hater of love.     Exeunt omnes.

3.4 Enter COUNTESS and Steward.

COUNTESS     Alas! and would you take the letter of her?

Might you not know she would do as she has done

By sending me a letter? Read it again.

STEWARD     [Reads.]

I am Saint Jaques’ pilgrim, thither gone.

Ambitious love hath so in me offended

5

That barefoot plod I the cold ground upon,

With sainted vow my faults to have amended.

Write, write, that from the bloody course of war

My dearest master, your dear son, may hie.

Bless him at home in peace, whilst I from far

10

His name with zealous fervour sanctify.

His taken labours bid him me forgive;

I, his despiteful Juno, sent him forth

From courtly friends, with camping foes to live

Where death and danger dogs the heels of worth.

15

He is too good and fair for death and me;

Whom I myself embrace to set him free.

COUNTESS

Ah, what sharp stings are in her mildest words!

Rynaldo, you did never lack advice so much

As letting her pass so; had I spoke with her,

20

I could have well diverted her intents,

Which thus she hath prevented.

STEWARD     Pardon me, madam;

If I had given you this at overnight

She might have been o’erta’en; and yet she writes

Pursuit would be but vain.

COUNTESS     What angel shall

25

Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive,

Unless her prayers, whom heaven delights to hear

And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath

Of greatest justice. Write, write, Rynaldo,

To this unworthy husband of his wife;

30

Let every word weigh heavy of her worth

That he does weigh too light; my greatest grief,

Though little he do feel it, set down sharply.

Dispatch the most convenient messenger.

When haply he shall hear that she is gone,

35

He will return; and hope I may that she,

Hearing so much, will speed her foot again,

Led hither by pure love. Which of them both

Is dearest to me I have no skill in sense

To make distinction. Provide this messenger.

40

My heart is heavy and mine age is weak;

Grief would have tears and sorrow bids me speak.

Exeunt.

3.5 A tucket afar off. Enter old Widow of Florence, her daughter DIANA, VIOLENTA and MARIANA, with other citizens.

WIDOW     Nay, come; for if they do approach the city, we

shall lose all the sight.

DIANA     They say the French count has done most

honourable service.

WIDOW     It is reported that he has taken their great’st

5

commander, and that with his own hand he slew the

duke’s brother. [Tucket.] We have lost our labour; they

are gone a contrary way. Hark! You may know by their

trumpets.

MARIANA     Come, let’s return again and suffice ourselves

10

with the report of it. Well, Diana, take heed of this

French earl; the honour of a maid is her name, and no

legacy is so rich as honesty.

WIDOW     I have told my neighbour how you have been

solicited by a gentleman his companion.

15

MARIANA     I know that knave, hang him! one Parolles; a

filthy officer he is in those suggestions for the young

earl. Beware of them, Diana: their promises,

enticements, oaths, tokens, and all these engines of

lust, are not the things they go under; many a maid

20

hath been seduced by them; and the misery is,

example, that so terrible shows in the wrack of

maidenhood, cannot for all that dissuade succession,

but that they are limed with the twigs that threatens

them. I hope I need not to advise you further; but I

25

hope your own grace will keep you where you are,

though there were no further danger known but the

modesty which is so lost.

DIANA     You shall not need to fear me.

Enter HELENA.

WIDOW     I hope so. Look, here comes a pilgrim. I know

30

she will lie at my house; thither they send one another.

I’ll question her: God save you, pilgrim! Whither are

bound?

HELENA     To Saint Jaques le Grand.

Where do the palmers lodge, I do beseech you?

35

WIDOW     At the Saint Francis here beside the port.

HELENA     Is this the way?     [A march afar.]

WIDOW     Ay, marry, is’t. Hark you, they come this way.

If you will tarry, holy pilgrim

But till the troops come by

40

I will conduct you where you shall be lodg’d;

The rather for I think I know your hostess

As ample as myself.

HELENA     Is it yourself?

WIDOW     If you shall please so, pilgrim.

HELENA     I thank you and will stay upon your leisure.

45

WIDOW     You came, I think, from France?

HELENA     I did so.

WIDOW     Here you shall see a countryman of yours

That has done worthy service.

HELENA     His name, I pray you.

DIANA     The Count Rossillion. Know you such a one?

HELENA     But by the ear, that hears most nobly of him;

50

His face I know not.

DIANA     Whatsome’er he is,

He’s bravely taken here. He stole from France,

As ’tis reported, for the king had married him

Against his liking. Think you it is so?

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

55

DIANA     There is a gentleman that serves the count

Reports but coarsely of her.

HELENA     What’s his name?

DIANA     Monsieur Parolles.

HELENA     O, I believe with him,

In argument of praise or to the worth

Of the great count himself, she is too mean

60

To have her name repeated; all her deserving

Is a reserved honesty, and that

I have not heard examin’d.

DIANA     Alas, poor lady!

’Tis a hard bondage to become the wife

Of a detesting lord.

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WIDOW     I warrant, good creature, wheresoe’er she is,

Her heart weighs sadly. This young maid might do

her

A shrewd turn if she pleas’d.

HELENA     How do you mean?

Maybe the amorous count solicits her

In the unlawful purpose?

WIDOW     He does indeed,

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And brokes with all that can in such a suit

Corrupt the tender honour of a maid;

But she is arm’d for him and keeps her guard

In honestest defence.

Drum and colours. Enter BERTRAM, PAROLLES and the whole army.

MARIANA     The gods forbid else!

WIDOW     So, now they come.

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That is Antonio, the duke’s eldest son;

That Escalus.

HELENA     Which is the Frenchman?

DIANA     He –

That with the plume; ’tis a most gallant fellow.

I would he lov’d his wife; if he were honester

He were much goodlier. Is’t not a handsome

gentleman?

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HELENA     I like him well.

DIANA

’Tis pity he is not honest. Yond’s that same knave

That leads him to these places. Were I his lady

I would poison that vile rascal.

HELENA     Which is he?

DIANA

That jackanapes with scarfs. Why is he melancholy?

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

PAROLLES     Lose our drum! Well!

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

has spied us.

WIDOW     Marry, hang you!

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MARIANA     And your curtsy, for a ring-carrier!

Exeunt Bertram, Parolles and the army.

WIDOW

The troop is past. Come, pilgrim, I will bring you

Where you shall host; of enjoin’d penitents

There’s four or five, to Great Saint Jaques bound,

Already at my house.

HELENA     I humbly thank you.

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Please it this matron and this gentle maid

To eat with us tonight; the charge and thanking

Shall be for me; and, to requite you further,

I will bestow some precepts of this virgin,

Worthy the note.

BOTH     We’ll take your offer kindly.     Exeunt.

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3.6 Enter BERTRAM and the two French Lords.

1 LORD     Nay, good my lord, put him to’t; let him have

his way.

2 LORD     If your lordship find him not a hilding, hold me

no more in your respect.

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

5

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

1 LORD     Believe it, my lord, in mine own direct

knowledge, without any malice, but to speak of him as

my kinsman, he’s a most notable coward, an infinite

and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner

10

of no one good quality worthy your lordship’s enter-

tainment.

2 LORD     It were fit you knew him; lest, reposing too far in

his virtue, which he hath not, he might at some great

and trusty business in a main danger fail you.

15

BERTRAM     I would I knew in what particular action to

try him.

2 LORD     None better than to let him fetch off his drum,

which you hear him so confidently undertake to do.

1 LORD     I, with a troop of Florentines, will suddenly

20

surprise him; such I will have whom I am sure he

knows not from the enemy. We will bind and

hoodwink him so, that he shall suppose no other but

that he is carried into the leaguer of the adversaries

when we bring him to our own tents. Be but your

25

lordship present at his examination; if he do not for

the promise of his life, and in the highest compulsion

of base fear, offer to betray you and deliver all the

intelligence in his power against you, and that with the

divine forfeit of his soul upon oath, never trust my

30

judgment in anything.

2 LORD     O, for the love of laughter, let him fetch his

drum; he says he has a stratagem for’t. When your

lordship sees the bottom of his success in’t, and to

what metal this counterfeit lump of ore will be melted,

35

if you give him not John Drum’s entertainment your

inclining cannot be removed. Here he comes.

Enter PAROLLES.

1 LORD     O, for the love of laughter, hinder not the

honour of his design; let him fetch off his drum in any

hand.

40

BERTRAM     How now, monsieur! This drum sticks sorely

in your disposition.

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

PAROLLES     But a drum! Is’t but a drum? A drum so lost!

There was excellent command: to charge in with our

45

horse upon our own wings and to rend our own

soldiers!

2 LORD     That was not to be blam’d in the command of

the service; it was a disaster of war that Caesar himself

could not have prevented if he had been there to

50

command.

BERTRAM     Well, we cannot greatly condemn our

success; some dishonour we had in the loss of that

drum, but it is not to be recovered.

PAROLLES     It might have been recovered.

55

BERTRAM     It might; but it is not now.

PAROLLES     It is to be recovered. But that the merit of

service is seldom attributed to the true and exact

performer, I would have that drum or another, or hic

jacet.

60

BERTRAM     Why, if you have a stomach, to’t, monsieur! If

you think your mystery in stratagem can bring this

instrument of honour again into his native quarter, be

magnanimious in the enterprise and go on; I will grace

the attempt for a worthy exploit; if you speed well in it

65

the duke shall both speak of it and extend to you what

further becomes his greatness, even to the utmost

syllable of your worthiness.

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

BERTRAM     But you must not now slumber in it.

70

PAROLLES     I’ll about it this evening; and I will presently

pen down my dilemmas, encourage myself in my

certainty, put myself into my mortal preparation; and

by midnight look to hear further from me.

BERTRAM     May I be bold to acquaint his grace you are

75

gone about it?

PAROLLES     I know not what the success will be, my lord,

but the attempt I vow.

BERTRAM     I know th’art valiant; and to the possibility of

thy soldiership will subscribe for thee. Farewell.

80

PAROLLES     I love not many words.     Exit.

1 LORD     No more than a fish loves water. Is not this a

strange fellow, my lord, that so confidently seems to

undertake this business, which he knows is not to be

done; damns himself to do, and dares better be damn’d

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than to do’t.

2 LORD     You do not know him, my lord, as we do; certain

it is that he will steal himself into a man’s favour and

for a week escape a great deal of discoveries, but when

you find him out you have him ever after.

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BERTRAM     Why, do you think he will make no deed at all

of this that so seriously he does address himself unto?

1 LORD     None in the world; but return with an invention,

and clap upon you two or three probable lies; but we

have almost emboss’d him; you shall see his fall tonight;

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for indeed he is not for your lordship’s respect.

2 LORD     We’ll make you some sport with the fox ere we

case him; he was first smok’d by the old Lord Lafew;

when his disguise and he is parted tell me what a sprat

you shall find him; which you shall see this very night.

100

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

BERTRAM     Your brother, he shall go along with me.

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

BERTRAM

Now will I lead you to the house and show you

The lass I spoke of.

2 LORD     But you say she’s honest.

105

BERTRAM

That’s all the fault. I spoke with her but once

And found her wondrous cold, but I sent to her

By this same coxcomb that we have i’th’ wind

Tokens and letters which she did re-send

And this is all I have done. She’s a fair creature;

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Will you go see her?

2 LORD     With all my heart, my lord.

Exeunt.

3.7 Enter HELENA and Widow.

HELENA     If you misdoubt me that I am not she,

I know not how I shall assure you further

But I shall lose the grounds I work upon.

WIDOW     Though my estate be fall’n, I was well born,

Nothing acquainted with these businesses,

5

And would not put my reputation now

In any staining act.

HELENA     Nor would I wish you.

First give me trust the count he is my husband,

And what to your sworn counsel I have spoken

Is so from word to word; and then you cannot,

10

By the good aid that I of you shall borrow,

Err in bestowing it.

WIDOW     I should believe you,

For you have show’d me that which well approves

Y’are great in fortune.

HELENA     Take this purse of gold,

And let me buy your friendly help thus far,

15

Which I will over-pay, and pay again

When I have found it. The count he woos your

daughter,

Lays down his wanton siege before her beauty,

Resolv’d to carry her; let her in fine consent

As we’ll direct her how ’tis best to bear it.

20

Now his important blood will naught deny

That she’ll demand; a ring the county wears

That downward hath succeeded in his house

From son to son some four or five descents

Since the first father wore it. This ring he holds

25

In most rich choice; yet, in his idle fire,

To buy his will it would not seem too dear,

Howe’er repented after.

WIDOW     Now I see

The bottom of your purpose.

HELENA     You see it lawful then; it is no more

30

But that your daughter, ere she seems as won,

Desires this ring; appoints him an encounter;

In fine, delivers me to fill the time,

Herself most chastely absent. After,

To marry her I’ll add three thousand crowns

35

To what is pass’d already.

WIDOW     I have yielded.

Instruct my daughter how she shall persever

That time and place with this deceit so lawful

May prove coherent. Every night he comes

With musics of all sorts, and songs compos’d

40

To her unworthiness; it nothing steads us

To chide him from our eaves, for he persists

As if his life lay on’t.

HELENA     Why then tonight

Let us assay our plot; which, if it speed,

Is wicked meaning in a lawful deed,

45

And lawful meaning in a lawful act,

Where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact.

But let’s about it.     Exeunt.

4.1 Enter first French Lord, with five or six other soldiers in ambush.

1 LORD     He can come no other way but by this hedge-

corner. When you sally upon him speak what terrible

language you will; though you understand it not

yourselves, no matter; for we must not seem to

understand him, unless some one among us, whom we

5

must produce for an interpreter.

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

1 LORD     Art not acquainted with him? Knows he not thy

voice?

1 SOLDIER     No sir, I warrant you.

10

1 LORD     But what linsey-woolsey hast thou to speak to

us again?

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

1 LORD     He must think us some band of strangers i’th’

adversary’s entertainment. Now he hath a smack of all

15

neighbouring languages; therefore we must every one

be a man of his own fancy, not to know what we speak

one to another; so we seem to know is to know straight

our purpose – choughs’ language: gabble enough and

good enough. As for you, interpreter, you must seem

20

very politic. But couch, ho! Here he comes to beguile

two hours in a sleep, and then to return and swear the

lies he forges.

Enter PAROLLES.

PAROLLES     Ten a’clock. Within these three hours ’twill be

time enough to go home. What shall I say I have done?

25

It must be a very plausive invention that carries it. They

begin to smoke me, and disgraces have of late knock’d

too often at my door. I find my tongue is too foolhardy,

but my heart hath the fear of Mars before it and of his

creatures, not daring the reports of my tongue.

30

1 LORD     This is the first truth that e’er thine own tongue

was guilty of.

PAROLLES     What the devil should move me to undertake

the recovery of this drum, being not ignorant of the

impossibility, and knowing I had no such purpose? I

35

must give myself some hurts, and say I got them in

exploit; yet slight ones will not carry it. They will say,

‘Came you off with so little?’ And great ones I dare not

give; wherefore, what’s the instance? Tongue, I must

put you into a butter-woman’s mouth, and buy myself

40

another of Bajazeth’s mule if you prattle me into these

perils.

1 LORD     Is it possible he should know what he is, and be

that he is?

PAROLLES     I would the cutting of my garments would

45

serve the turn, or the breaking of my Spanish sword.

1 LORD     We cannot afford you so.

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

in stratagem.

1 LORD     ’Twould not do.

50

PAROLLES     Or to drown my clothes and say I was

stripp’d.

1 LORD     Hardly serve.

PAROLLES     Though I swore I leap’d from the window of

the citadel –

55

1 LORD     How deep?

PAROLLES     Thirty fadom.

1 LORD     Three great oaths would scarce make that be

believed.

PAROLLES     I would I had any drum of the enemy’s; I

60

would swear I recover’d it.

1 LORD     You shall hear one anon.

PAROLLES     A drum now of the enemy’s –

[Alarum within.]

1 LORD     Throca movousus, cargo, cargo, cargo.

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

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[They seize him.]

PAROLLES     O, ransom, ransom! [They blindfold him.] Do

not hide mine eyes.

1 SOLDIER     Boskos thromuldo boskos.

PAROLLES     I know you are the Muskos’ regiment,

And I shall lose my life for want of language.

70

If there be here German, or Dane, Low Dutch,

Italian, or French, let him speak to me,

I’ll discover that which shall undo the Florentine.

1 SOLDIER     Boskos vauvado. I understand thee, and can

speak thy tongue. Kerelybonto. Sir, betake thee to thy

75

faith, for seventeen poniards are at thy bosom.

PAROLLES     O!

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

1 LORD     Oscorbidulchos volivorco.

1 SOLDIER     The general is content to spare thee yet,

80

And, hoodwink’d as thou art, will lead thee on

To gather from thee. Haply thou may’st inform

Something to save thy life.

PAROLLES     O, let me live,

And all the secrets of our camp I’ll show,

Their force, their purposes; nay, I’ll speak that

85

Which you will wonder at.

1 SOLDIER     But wilt thou faithfully?

PAROLLES     If I do not, damn me.

1 SOLDIER     Acordo linta.

Come on; thou art granted space.

Exit with Parolles guarded.

[A short alarum within]

1 LORD     Go tell the Count Rossillion and my brother

We have caught the woodcock and will keep him

muffled

90

Till we do hear from them.

2 SOLDIER     Captain, I will.

1 LORD     ’A will betray us all unto ourselves:

Inform on that.

2 SOLDIER     So I will, sir.

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

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Exeunt.

4.2 Enter BERTRAM and the maid called DIANA.

BERTRAM

They told me that your name was Fontybell.

DIANA     No, my good lord, Diana.

BERTRAM     Titled goddess;

And worth it, with addition! But, fair soul,

In your fine frame hath love no quality?

If the quick fire of youth light not your mind

5

You are no maiden but a monument.

When you are dead you should be such a one

As you are now; for you are cold and stern,

And now you should be as your mother was

When your sweet self was got.

10

DIANA     She then was honest.

BERTRAM     So should you be.

DIANA     No.

My mother did but duty; such, my lord,

As you owe to your wife.

BERTRAM     No more a’ that!

I prithee do not strive against my vows;

I was compell’d to her, but I love thee

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By love’s own sweet constraint, and will for ever

Do thee all rights of service.

DIANA     Ay, so you serve us

Till we serve you; but when you have our roses,

You barely leave our thorns to prick ourselves,

And mock us with our bareness.

BERTRAM     How have I sworn!

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DIANA     ’Tis not the many oaths that makes the truth,

But the plain single vow that is vow’d true.

What is not holy, that we swear not by,

But take the high’st to witness; then, pray you, tell me:

If I should swear by Jove’s great attributes

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I lov’d you dearly, would you believe my oaths

When I did love you ill? This has no holding,

To swear by Him whom I protest to love

That I will work against Him. Therefore your oaths

Are words, and poor conditions but unseal’d –

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At least in my opinion.

BERTRAM     Change it, change it.

Be not so holy-cruel; love is holy;

And my integrity ne’er knew the crafts

That you do charge men with. Stand no more off,

But give thyself unto my sick desires,

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Who then recovers. Say thou art mine, and ever

My love as it begins shall so persever.

DIANA     I see that men make rope’s in such a scarre,

That we’ll forsake ourselves. Give me that ring.

BERTRAM     I’ll lend it thee, my dear, but have no power

40

To give it from me.

DIANA     Will you not, my lord?

BERTRAM     It is an honour ’longing to our house,

Bequeathed down from many ancestors,

Which were the greatest obloquy i’th’ world

In me to lose.

DIANA     Mine honour’s such a ring;

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My chastity’s the jewel of our house,

Bequeathed down from many ancestors,

Which were the greatest obloquy i’th’ world

In me to lose. Thus your own proper wisdom

Brings in the champion Honour on my part

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Against your vain assault.

BERTRAM     Here, take my ring;

My house, mine honour, yea, my life be thine,

And I’ll be bid by thee.

DIANA     When midnight comes, knock at my chamber

window;

I’ll order take my mother shall not hear.

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Now will I charge you in the band of truth,

When you have conquer’d my yet maiden bed,

Remain there but an hour, nor speak to me.

My reasons are most strong and you shall know them

When back again this ring shall be deliver’d;

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And on your finger in the night I’ll put

Another ring, that what in time proceeds

May token to the future our past deeds

Adieu till then; then, fail not. You have won

A wife of me, though there my hope be done.

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BERTRAM

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

DIANA

For which live long to thank both Heaven and me!

You may so in the end.

My mother told me just how he would woo

As if she sat in’s heart. She says all men

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Have the like oaths. He had sworn to marry me

When his wife’s dead; therefore I’ll lie with him

When I am buried. Since Frenchmen are so braid,

Marry that will, I live and die a maid.

Only, in this disguise, I think’t no sin

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To cozen him that would unjustly win.     Exit.

4.3 Enter the two French Lords, and some two or three soldiers.

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

2 LORD     I have deliv’red it an hour since; there is

something in’t that stings his nature, for on the

reading it he chang’d almost into another man.

1 LORD     He has much worthy blame laid upon him for

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shaking off so good a wife and so sweet a lady.

2 LORD     Especially he hath incurred the everlasting

displeasure of the king, who had even tun’d his bounty

to sing happiness to him. I will tell you a thing, but

you shall let it dwell darkly with you.

10

1 LORD     When you have spoken it ’tis dead, and I am the

grave of it.

2 LORD     He hath perverted a young gentlewoman here in

Florence, of a most chaste renown, and this night he

fleshes his will in the spoil of her honour; he hath

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given her his monumental ring, and thinks himself

made in the unchaste composition.

1 LORD     Now, God delay our rebellion! As we are

ourselves, what things are we!

2 LORD     Merely our own traitors. And as in the

20

common course of all treasons we still see them reveal

themselves till they attain to their abhorr’d ends; so he

that in this action contrives against his own nobility, in

his proper stream o’erflows himself.

1 LORD     Is it not meant damnable in us to be trumpeters

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of our unlawful intents? We shall not then have his

company tonight?

2 LORD     Not till after midnight, for he is dieted to his

hour.

1 LORD     That approaches apace. I would gladly have

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him see his company anatomiz’d, that he might take a

measure of his own judgments wherein so curiously he

had set this counterfeit.

2 LORD     We will not meddle with him till he come, for

his presence must be the whip of the other.

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

2 LORD     I hear there is an overture of peace.

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

2 LORD     What will Count Rossillion do then? Will he

travel higher, or return again into France?

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1 LORD     I perceive by this demand you are not

altogether of his council.

2 LORD     Let it be forbid, sir! So should I be a great deal

of his act.

1 LORD     Sir, his wife some two months since fled from

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his house. Her pretence is a pilgrimage to Saint Jaques

le Grand; which holy undertaking with most austere

sanctimony she accomplish’d; and there residing, the

tenderness of her nature became as a prey to her grief;

in fine, made a groan of her last breath, and now she

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sings in heaven.

2 LORD     How is this justified?

1 LORD     The stronger part of it by her own letters,

which makes her story true even to the point of her

death. Her death itself, which could not be her office

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to say is come, was faithfully confirm’d by the rector

of the place.

2 LORD     Hath the count all this intelligence?

1 LORD     Ay, and the particular confirmations, point

from point, to the full arming of the verity.

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

1 LORD     How mightily sometimes we make us comforts

of our losses!

2 LORD     And how mightily some other times we drown

our gain in tears! The great dignity that his valour

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hath here acquir’d for him shall at home be

encount’red with a shame as ample.

1 LORD     The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good

and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our

faults whipp’d them not, and our crimes would

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despair if they were not cherish’d by our virtues.

Enter a Messenger.

How now? Where’s your master?

MESSENGER     He met the duke in the street, sir, of whom

he hath taken a solemn leave: his lordship will next

morning for France. The duke hath offered him

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letters of commendations to the king.

2 LORD     They shall be no more than needful there if they

were more than they can commend.

Enter BERTRAM.

1 LORD     They cannot be too sweet for the king’s tartness.

Here’s his lordship now. How now, my lord? Is’t not

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after midnight?

BERTRAM     I have tonight dispatch’d sixteen businesses a

month’s length apiece. By an abstract of success: I

have congied with the duke, done my adieu with his

nearest, buried a wife, mourn’d for her, writ to my lady

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mother I am returning, entertain’d my convoy, and

between these main parcels of dispatch effected many

nicer needs; the last was the greatest, but that I have

not ended yet.

2 LORD     If the business be of any difficulty, and this

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morning your departure hence, it requires haste of

your lordship.

BERTRAM     I mean, the business is not ended, as fearing

to hear of it hereafter. But shall we have this dialogue

between the Fool and the Soldier? Come, bring forth

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this counterfeit module has deceiv’d me like a double-

meaning prophesier.

2 LORD     Bring him forth. Exeunt soldiers.

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

BERTRAM     No matter. His heels have deserv’d it in

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usurping his spurs so long. How does he carry

himself?

2 LORD     I have told your lordship already: the stocks

carry him. But to answer you as you would be

understood: he weeps like a wench that had shed her

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milk; he hath confess’d himself to Morgan, whom he

supposes to be a friar, from the time of his

remembrance to this very instant disaster of his setting

i’th’ stocks. And what think you he hath confess’d?

BERTRAM     Nothing of me, has ’a?

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2 LORD     His confession is taken, and it shall be read to

his face; if your lordship be in’t, as I believe you are,

you must have the patience to hear it.

Re-enter soldiers and PAROLLES, with first Soldier as his interpreter.

BERTRAM     A plague upon him! muffled! He can say

nothing of me.

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1 LORD     [aside to BERTRAM] Hush, hush! Hoodman

comes. [aloud] Portotartarossa.

1 SOLDIER     He calls for the tortures. What will you say

without ’em?

PAROLLES     I will confess what I know without

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constraint. If ye pinch me like a pasty I can say no

more.

1 SOLDIER     Bosko chimurcho.

1 LORD     Boblibindo chicurmurco.

1 SOLDIER     You are a merciful general. Our general bids

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you answer to what I shall ask you out of a note.

PAROLLES     And truly, as I hope to live.

1 SOLDIER     [Reads.] First, demand of him, how many horse

the duke is strong. What say you to that?

PAROLLES     Five or six thousand; but very weak and

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unserviceable: the troops are all scattered and the

commanders very poor rogues, upon my reputation

and credit – and as I hope to live.

1 SOLDIER     Shall I set down your answer so?

PAROLLES     Do. I’ll take the sacrament on’t, how and

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which way you will.

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

this!

1 LORD     Y’are deceiv’d, my lord; this is Monsieur

Parolles, the gallant militarist – that was his own

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phrase – that had the whole theoric of war in the knot

of his scarf, and the practice in the chape of his dagger.

2 LORD     I will never trust a man again for keeping his

sword clean, nor believe he can have everything in him

by wearing his apparel neatly.

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1 SOLDIER     Well, that’s set down.

PAROLLES     ‘Five or six thousand horse’ I said – I will say

true – ‘or thereabouts’ set down, for I’ll speak truth.

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

BERTRAM     But I con him no thanks for’t, in the nature

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he delivers it.

PAROLLES     ‘Poor rogues’ I pray you say.

1 SOLDIER     Well, that’s set down.

PAROLLES     I humbly thank you, sir; a truth’s a truth; the

rogues are marvellous poor.

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1 SOLDIER     [Reads.] Demand of him of what strength they

are a-foot. What say you to that?

PAROLLES     By my troth, sir, if I were to live this present

hour, I will tell true. Let me see: Spurio, a hundred

and fifty; Sebastian, so many; Corambus, so many;

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Jaques, so many; Guiltian, Cosmo, Lodowick, and

Gratii, two hundred fifty each; mine own company,

Chitopher, Vaumond, Bentii, two hundred fifty each;

so that the muster-file, rotten and sound, upon my life,

amounts not to fifteen thousand poll; half of the which

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dare not shake the snow from off their cassocks lest

they shake themselves to pieces.

BERTRAM     What shall be done to him?

1 LORD     Nothing but let him have thanks. Demand of

him my condition, and what credit I have with the

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duke.

1 SOLDIER     Well, that’s set down. [Reads.] You shall

demand of him whether one Captain Dumaine be i’th’

camp, a Frenchman; what his reputation is with the duke,

what his valour, honesty and expertness in wars; or

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whether he thinks it were not possible with well-weighing

sums of gold to corrupt him to a revolt. What say you to

this? What do you know of it?

PAROLLES     I beseech you, let me answer to the particular

of the inter’gatories. Demand them singly.

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1 SOLDIER     Do you know this Captain Dumaine?

PAROLLES     I know him: ’a was a botcher’s prentice in

Paris, from whence he was whipp’d for getting the

shrieve’s fool with child, a dumb innocent that could

not say him nay.

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BERTRAM     Nay, by your leave, hold your hands – though

I know his brains are forfeit to the next tile that falls.

1 SOLDIER     Well, is this captain in the Duke of

Florence’s camp?

PAROLLES     Upon my knowledge he is, and lousy.

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1 LORD     Nay, look not so upon me; we shall hear of your

lordship anon.

1 SOLDIER     What is his reputation with the duke?

PAROLLES     The duke knows him for no other but a poor

officer of mine, and writ to me this other day to turn

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him out a’th’ band. I think I have his letter in my

pocket.

1 SOLDIER     Marry, we’ll search.

PAROLLES     In good sadness, I do not know; either it is

there or it is upon a file, with the duke’s other letters,

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in my tent.

1 SOLDIER     Here ’tis; here’s a paper; shall I read it to

you?

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

BERTRAM     Our interpreter does it well.

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1 LORD     Excellently.

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

PAROLLES     That is not the duke’s letter, sir; that is an

advertisement to a proper maid in Florence, one

Diana, to take heed of the allurement of one Count

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Rossillion, a foolish idle boy, but for all that very

ruttish. I pray you, sir, put it up again.

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

PAROLLES     My meaning in’t, I protest, was very honest

in the behalf of the maid; for I knew the young count

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to be a dangerous and lascivious boy, who is a whale to

virginity, and devours up all the fry it finds.

BERTRAM     Damnable both-sides rogue!

1 SOLDIER     [Reads.]

When he swears oaths, bid him drop gold, and take it;

After he scores he never pays the score.

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Half-won is match well made; match, and well make it;

He ne’er pays after-debts; take it before.

And say a soldier, Dian, told thee this:

Men are to mell with, boys are not to kiss;

For count of this, the count’s a fool, I know it,

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Who pays before, but not when he does owe it.

Thine, as he vow’d to thee in thine ear,

PAROLLES.

BERTRAM     He shall be whipp’d through the army, with

his rhyme in’s forehead.

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2 LORD     This is your devoted friend, sir, the manifold

linguist, and the armipotent soldier.

BERTRAM     I could endure anything before but a cat, and

now he’s a cat to me.

1 SOLDIER     I perceive, sir, by the general’s looks, we shall

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be fain to hang you.

PAROLLES     My life, sir, in any case! Not that I am afraid

to die, but that, my offences being many, I would

repent out the remainder of nature. Let me live, sir, in

a dungeon, i’th’ stocks, or anywhere, so I may live.

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1 SOLDIER     We’ll see what may be done, so you confess

freely. Therefore once more to this Captain Dumaine:

you have answer’d to his reputation with the duke and

to his valour; what is his honesty?

PAROLLES     He will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister; for

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rapes and ravishments he parallels Nessus. He professes

not keeping of oaths; in breaking ’em he is stronger than

Hercules. He will lie, sir, with such volubility that you

would think truth were a fool; drunkenness is his best

virtue, for he will be swine-drunk, and in his sleep he

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does little harm, save to his bedclothes about him; but

they know his conditions and lay him in straw. I have

but little more to say, sir, of his honesty: he has

everything that an honest man should not have; what an

honest man should have, he has nothing.

255

1 LORD     I begin to love him for this.

BERTRAM     For this description of thine honesty? A pox

upon him! for me, he’s more and more a cat.

1 SOLDIER     What say you to his expertness in war?

PAROLLES     Faith, sir, has led the drum before the

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English tragedians – to belie him I will not – and more

of his soldiership I know not, except in that country he

had the honour to be the officer at a place there called

Mile-end, to instruct for the doubling of files. I would

do the man what honour I can, but of this I am not

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certain.

1 LORD     He hath out-villain’d villainy so far that the

rarity redeems him.

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

1 SOLDIER     His qualities being at this poor price, I need

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not to ask you if gold will corrupt him to revolt.

PAROLLES     Sir, for a cardecue he will sell the fee-simple

of his salvation, the inheritance of it, and cut th’entail

from all remainders, and a perpetual succession for it

perpetually.

275

1 SOLDIER     What’s his brother, the other Captain

Dumaine?

2 LORD     Why does he ask him of me?

1 SOLDIER     What’s he?

PAROLLES     E’en a crow a’th’ same nest; not altogether so

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great as the first in goodness, but greater a great deal

in evil. He excels his brother for a coward, yet his

brother is reputed one of the best that is. In a retreat

he outruns any lackey; marry, in coming on he has the

cramp.

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1 SOLDIER     If your life be saved will you undertake to

betray the Florentine?

PAROLLES     Ay, and the captain of his horse, Count

Rossillion.

1 SOLDIER     I’ll whisper with the general and know his

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pleasure.

PAROLLES     I’ll no more drumming. A plague of all

drums! Only to seem to deserve well, and to beguile

the supposition of that lascivious young boy, the

count, have I run into this danger; yet who would have

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suspected an ambush where I was taken?

1 SOLDIER     There is no remedy, sir, but you must die.

The general says you that have so traitorously

discover’d the secrets of your army, and made such

pestiferous reports of men very nobly held, can serve

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the world for no honest use; therefore you must die.

Come, headsman, off with his head.

PAROLLES     O Lord, sir, let me live, or let me see my

death!

1 SOLDIER     That shall you, and take your leave of all your

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friends. [unmuffling him] So; look about you; know you

any here?

BERTRAM     Good morrow, noble captain.

2 LORD     God bless you, Captain Parolles.

1 LORD     God save you, noble captain.

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2 LORD     Captain, what greeting will you to my Lord

Lafew? I am for France.

1 LORD     Good captain, will you give me a copy of the

sonnet you writ to Diana in behalf of the Count

Rossillion. And I were not a very coward I’d compel it

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of you; but fare you well.     Exeunt Bertram     and Lords.

1 SOLDIER     You are undone, captain – all but your scarf;

that has a knot on’t yet.

PAROLLES     Who cannot be crush’d with a plot?

1 SOLDIER     If you could find out a country where but

320

women were that had received so much shame you

might begin an impudent nation. Fare ye well, sir. I

am for France too; we shall speak of you there.

Exeunt Soldiers.

PAROLLES     Yet am I thankful. If my heart were great

’Twould burst at this. Captain I’ll be no more,

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But I will eat and drink and sleep as soft

As captain shall. Simply the thing I am

Shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart,

Let him fear this; for it will come to pass

That every braggart shall be found an ass.

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Rust, sword; cool, blushes; and Parolles live

Safest in shame; being fool’d, by fool’ry thrive.

There’s place and means for every man alive.

I’ll after them.     Exit.

4.4 Enter HELENA, Widow and DIANA.

HELENA

That you may well perceive I have not wrong’d you

One of the greatest in the Christian world

Shall be my surety; fore whose throne ’tis needful,

Ere I can perfect mine intents, to kneel.

Time was, I did him a desired office,

5

Dear almost as his life; which gratitude

Through flinty Tartar’s bosom would peep forth

And answer thanks. I duly am inform’d

His grace is at Marcellus, to which place

We have convenient convoy. You must know

10

I am supposed dead. The army breaking,

My husband hies him home, where, heaven aiding,

And by the leave of my good lord the king,

We’ll be before our welcome.

WIDOW     Gentle madam,

You never had a servant to whose trust

15

Your business was more welcome.

HELENA     Nor you, mistress,

Ever a friend whose thoughts more truly labour

To recompense your love. Doubt not but heaven

Hath brought me up to be your daughter’s dower,

As it hath fated her to be my motive

20

And helper to a husband. But, O strange men!

That can such sweet use make of what they hate,

When saucy trusting of the cozen’d thoughts

Defiles the pitchy night; so lust doth play

With what it loathes for that which is away.

25

But more of this hereafter. You, Diana,

Under my poor instructions yet must suffer

Something in my behalf.

DIANA     Let death and honesty

Go with your impositions, I am yours,

Upon your will to suffer.

HELENA     Yet, I pray you;

30

But with the word: ‘the time will bring on summer’ –

When briars shall have leaves as well as thorns

And be as sweet as sharp. We must away;

Our wagon is prepar’d, and time revives us.

All’s well that ends well; still the fine’s the crown.

35

Whate’er the course, the end is the renown.     Exeunt.

4.5 Enter Clown, COUNTESS and LAFEW

LAFEW     No, no, no, your son was misled with a snipp’d-

taffeta fellow there, whose villainous saffron would

have made all the unbak’d and doughy youth of a

nation in his colour. Your daughter-in-law had been

alive at this hour, and your son here at home, more

5

advanc’d by the king than by that red-tail’d humble-

bee I speak of.

COUNTESS     I would I had not known him; it was the

death of the most virtuous gentlewoman that ever

nature had praise for creating. If she had partaken of

10

my flesh and cost me the dearest groans of a mother I

could not have owed her a more rooted love.

LAFEW     ’Twas a good lady; ’twas a good lady. We may pick

a thousand sallets ere we light on such another herb.

CLOWN     Indeed, sir, she was the sweet-marjoram of the

15

sallet, or, rather, the herb of grace.

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

herbs.

CLOWN     I am no great Nabuchadnezzar, sir; I have not

much skill in grass.

20

LAFEW     Whether dost thou profess thyself – a knave or a

fool?

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

a man’s.

LAFEW     Your distinction?

25

CLOWN     I would cozen the man of his wife and do his

service.

LAFEW     So you were a knave at his service indeed.

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

her service.

30

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

fool.

CLOWN     At your service.

LAFEW     No, no, no.

CLOWN     Why, sir, if I cannot serve you I can serve as

35

great a prince as you are.

LAFEW     Who’s that? a Frenchman?

CLOWN     Faith, sir, ’a has an English name; but his

fisnomy is more hotter in France than there.

LAFEW     What prince is that?

40

CLOWN     The black prince, sir, alias the prince of

darkness, alias the devil.

LAFEW     Hold thee, there’s my purse. I give thee not this

to suggest thee from thy master thou talk’st of; serve

him still.

45

CLOWN     I am a woodland fellow, sir, that always loved a

great fire, and the master I speak of ever keeps a good

fire; but sure he is the prince of the world; let his

nobility remain in’s court, I am for the house with the

narrow gate, which I take to be too little for pomp to

50

enter; some that humble themselves may, but the

many will be too chill and tender, and they’ll be for the

flow’ry way that leads to the broad gate and the great

fire.

LAFEW     Go thy ways; I begin to be aweary of thee; and I

55

tell thee so before, because I would not fall out with

thee. Go thy ways; let my horses be well look’d to,

without any tricks.

CLOWN     If I put any tricks upon ’em, sir, they shall be

jades’ tricks, which are their own right by the law of

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nature.     Exit.

LAFEW     A shrewd knave and an unhappy.

COUNTESS     So ’a is. My lord that’s gone made himself

much sport out of him; by his authority he remains

here, which he thinks is a patent for his sauciness; and

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indeed he has no pace, but runs where he will.

LAFEW     I like him well; ’tis not amiss. And I was about

to tell you, since I heard of the good lady’s death and

that my lord your son was upon his return home, I

moved the king my master to speak in the behalf of my

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daughter; which, in the minority of them both, his

majesty out of a self-gracious remembrance did first

propose. His highness hath promis’d me to do it; and

to stop up the displeasure he hath conceived against

your son there is no fitter matter. How does your

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ladyship like it?

COUNTESS     With very much content, my lord, and I

wish it happily effected.

LAFEW     His highness comes post from Marcellus, of as

able body as when he number’d thirty. ’A will be here

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tomorrow, or I am deceiv’d by him that in such

intelligence hath seldom fail’d.

COUNTESS     It rejoices me that I hope I shall see him ere

I die. I have letters that my son will be here tonight. I

shall beseech your lordship to remain with me till they

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meet together.

LAFEW     Madam, I was thinking with what manners I

might safely be admitted.

COUNTESS     You need but plead your honourable

privilege.

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LAFEW     Lady, of that I have made a bold charter; but, I

thank my God, it holds yet.

Re-enter Clown.

CLOWN     O madam, yonder’s my lord your son with a

patch of velvet on’s face; whether there be a scar

under’t or no, the velvet knows; but ’tis a goodly patch

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of velvet. His left cheek is a cheek of two pile and a

half, but his right cheek is worn bare.

LAFEW     A scar nobly got, or a noble scar, is a good liv’ry

of honour; so belike is that.

CLOWN     But it is your carbonado’d face.

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LAFEW     Let us go see your son, I pray you. I long to talk

with the young noble soldier.

CLOWN     Faith, there’s a dozen of ’em with delicate fine

hats, and most courteous feathers which bow the head

and nod at every man.     Exeunt.

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5.1 Enter HELENA, Widow and DIANA, with two attendants.

HELENA     But this exceeding posting day and night

Must wear your spirits low. We cannot help it;

But since you have made the days and nights as one

To wear your gentle limbs in my affairs,

Be bold you do so grow in my requital

5

As nothing can unroot you.

Enter a Gentleman, a stranger.

     In happy time!

This man may help me to his majesty’s ear,

If he would spend his power. God save you, sir!

GENTLEMAN     And you.

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

10

GENTLEMAN     I have been sometimes there.

HELENA     I do presume, sir, that you are not fall’n

From the report that goes upon your goodness,

And therefore, goaded with most sharp occasions

Which lay nice manners by, I put you to

15

The use of your own virtues, for the which

I shall continue thankful.

GENTLEMAN     What’s your will?

HELENA     That it will please you

To give this poor petition to the king,

And aid me with that store of power you have

20

To come into his presence.

GENTLEMAN     The king’s not here.

HELENA     Not here, sir?

GENTLEMAN     Not indeed.

He hence remov’d last night, and with more haste

Than is his use.

WIDOW     Lord, how we lose our pains!

HELENA     All’s well that ends well yet,

25

Though time seem so adverse and means unfit.

I do beseech you, whither is he gone?

GENTLEMAN     Marry, as I take it, to Rossillion;

Whither I am going.

HELENA     I do beseech you, sir,

Since you are like to see the king before me,

30

Commend the paper to his gracious hand,

Which I presume shall render you no blame,

But rather make you thank your pains for it.

I will come after you with what good speed

Our means will make us means.

GENTLEMAN     This I’ll do for you.

35

HELENA

And you shall find yourself to be well thank’d,

Whate’er falls more. We must to horse again.

Go, go, provide.     Exeunt.

5.2 Enter Clown and PAROLLES.

PAROLLES     Good Master Lavatch, give my Lord Lafew

this letter; I have ere now, sir, been better known to

you, when I have held familiarity with fresher clothes;

but I am now, sir, muddied in Fortune’s mood, and

smell somewhat strong of her strong displeasure.

5

CLOWN     Truly, Fortune’s displeasure is but sluttish if it

smell so strongly as thou speak’st of. I will henceforth

eat no fish of Fortune’s butt’ring. Prithee, allow the

wind.

PAROLLES     Nay, you need not to stop your nose, sir. I

10

spake but by a metaphor.

CLOWN     Indeed, sir, if your metaphor stink I will stop

my nose, or against any man’s metaphor. Prithee, get

thee further.

PAROLLES     Pray you, sir, deliver me this paper.

15

CLOWN     Foh! Prithee stand away. A paper from

Fortune’s close-stool, to give to a nobleman! Look,

here he comes himself.

Enter LAFEW.

Here is a pur of Fortune’s, sir, or of Fortune’s cat, but

not a musk-cat, that has fall’n into the unclean

20

fishpond of her displeasure and, as he says, is muddied

withal. Pray you, sir, use the carp as you may, for he

looks like a poor, decayed, ingenious, foolish, rascally

knave. I do pity his distress in my similes of comfort,

and leave him to your lordship.     Exit.

25

PAROLLES     My lord, I am a man whom Fortune hath

cruelly scratch’d.

LAFEW     And what would you have me to do? ’Tis too

late to pare her nails now. Wherein have you played

the knave with Fortune that she should scratch you,

30

who of herself is a good lady and would not have

knaves thrive long under her? There’s a cardecue for

you. Let the justices make you and Fortune friends; I

am for other business.

PAROLLES     I beseech your honour to hear me one single

35

word.

LAFEW     You beg a single penny more. Come, you shall

ha’t; save your word.

PAROLLES     My name, my good lord, is Parolles.

LAFEW     You beg more than ‘word’ then. Cox my

40

passion! Give me your hand. How does your drum?

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

me.

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

thee.

45

PAROLLES     It lies in you, my lord, to bring me in some

grace, for you did bring me out.

LAFEW     Out upon thee, knave! dost thou put upon me at

once both the office of God and the devil? One brings

thee in Grace and the other brings thee out. [Trumpets

50

sound.] The king’s coming; I know by his trumpets.

Sirrah, inquire further after me. I had talk of you last

night; though you are a fool and a knave you shall eat.

Go to; follow.

PAROLLES     I praise God for you.     Exeunt.

55

5.3 Flourish. Enter KING, COUNTESS, LAFEW, the two French Lords, with attendants.

KING     We lost a jewel of her, and our esteem

Was made much poorer by it; but your son,

As mad in folly, lack’d the sense to know

Her estimation home.

COUNTESS     ’Tis past, my liege,

And I beseech your majesty to make it

5

Natural rebellion done i’th’ blade of youth,

When oil and fire, too strong for reason’s force,

O’erbears it and burns on.

KING     My honour’d lady,

I have forgiven and forgotten all,

Though my revenges were high bent upon him

10

And watch’d the time to shoot.

LAFEW     This I must say –

But first I beg my pardon – the young lord

Did to his majesty, his mother and his lady

Offence of mighty note, but to himself

The greatest wrong of all. He lost a wife

15

Whose beauty did astonish the survey

Of richest eyes; whose words all ears took captive;

Whose dear perfection hearts that scorn’d to serve

Humbly call’d mistress.

KING     Praising what is lost

Makes the remembrance dear. Well, call him hither;

20

We are reconcil’d, and the first view shall kill

All repetition. Let him not ask our pardon;

The nature of his great offence is dead,

And deeper than oblivion we do bury

Th’incensing relics of it. Let him approach

25

A stranger, no offender; and inform him

So ’tis our will he should.

GENTLEMAN     I shall, my liege.     Exit.

KING

What says he to your daughter? Have you spoke?

LAFEW     All that he is hath reference to your highness.

KING     Then shall we have a match. I have letters sent me

30

That sets him high in fame.

Enter BERTRAM.

LAFEW     He looks well on’t.

KING     I am not a day of season,

For thou may’st see a sunshine and a hail

In me at once. But to the brightest beams

Distracted clouds give way; so stand thou forth;

35

The time is fair again.

BERTRAM     My high-repented blames

Dear sovereign, pardon to me.

KING     All is whole.

Not one word more of the consumed time;

Let’s take the instant by the forward top;

For we are old, and on our quick’st decrees

40

Th’inaudible and noiseless foot of time

Steals ere we can effect them. You remember

The daughter of this lord?

BERTRAM     Admiringly, my liege. At first

I stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart

45

Durst make too bold a herald of my tongue;

Where, the impression of mine eye infixing,

Contempt his scornful perspective did lend me,

Which warp’d the line of every other favour,

Scorn’d a fair colour or express’d it stol’n,

50

Extended or contracted all proportions

To a most hideous object. Thence it came

That she whom all men prais’d, and whom myself

Since I have lost, have lov’d, was in mine eye

The dust that did offend it.

KING     Well excus’d.

55

That thou didst love her, strikes some scores away

From the great compt; but love that comes too late,

Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried,

To the great sender turns a sour offence,

Crying, ‘That’s good that’s gone’. Our rash faults

60

Make trivial price of serious things we have,

Not knowing them until we know their grave.

Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust,

Destroy our friends and after weep their dust;

Our own love waking cries to see what’s done,

65

While shameful hate sleeps out the afternoon.

Be this sweet Helen’s knell, and now forget her.

Send forth your amorous token for fair Maudlin.

The main consents are had, and here we’ll stay

To see our widower’s second marriage-day.

70

COUNTESS

Which better than the first, O dear heaven, bless!

Or, ere they meet, in me, O nature, cesse!

LAFEW     Come on, my son, in whom my house’s name

Must be digested; give a favour from you

To sparkle in the spirits of my daughter,

75

That she may quickly come. [Bertram     gives a ring.]

     By my old beard

And ev’ry hair that’s on’t, Helen that’s dead

Was a sweet creature; such a ring as this,

The last that e’er I took her leave at court,

I saw upon her finger.

BERTRAM     Hers it was not.

80

KING     Now pray you let me see it; for mine eye,

While I was speaking, oft was fasten’d to’t.

This ring was mine, and when I gave it Helen

I bade her, if her fortunes ever stood

Necessitied to help, that by this token

85

I would relieve her. Had you that craft to reave her

Of what should stead her most?

BERTRAM     My gracious sovereign,

Howe’er it pleases you to take it so,

The ring was never hers.

COUNTESS     Son, on my life,

I have seen her wear it, and she reckon’d it

90

At her life’s rate.

LAFEW     I am sure I saw her wear it.

BERTRAM     You are deceiv’d, my lord; she never saw it.

In Florence was it from a casement thrown me,

Wrapp’d in a paper which contain’d the name

Of her that threw it. Noble she was, and thought

95

I stood ingag’d; but when I had subscrib’d

To mine own fortune, and inform’d her fully

I could not answer in that course of honour

As she had made the overture, she ceas’d

In heavy satisfaction, and would never

100

Receive the ring again.

KING     Plutus himself,

That knows the tinct and multiplying med’cine,

Hath not in nature’s mystery more science

Than I have in this ring. ’Twas mine, ’twas Helen’s,

Whoever gave it you; then if you know

105

That you are well acquainted with yourself,

Confess ’twas hers, and by what rough enforcement

You got it from her. She call’d the saints to surety

That she would never put it from her finger

Unless she gave it to yourself in bed,

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Where you have never come, or sent it us

Upon her great disaster.

BERTRAM     She never saw it.

KING     Thou speak’st it falsely, as I love mine honour,

And mak’st conjectural fears to come into me

Which I would fain shut out. If it should prove

115

That thou art so inhuman – ’twill not prove so,

And yet I know not; thou didst hate her deadly,

And she is dead; which nothing but to close

Her eyes myself could win me to believe,

More than to see this ring. Take him away.

120

My fore-past proofs, howe’er the matter fall,

Shall tax my fears of little vanity,

Having vainly fear’d too little. Away with him.

We’ll sift this matter further.

BERTRAM     If you shall prove

This ring was ever hers, you shall as easy

125

Prove that I husbanded her bed in Florence,

Where yet she never was.     Exit, guarded.

KING     I am wrapp’d in dismal thinkings.

Enter the Gentleman stranger.

GENTLEMAN     Gracious sovereign,

Whether I have been to blame or no, I know not:

Here’s a petition from a Florentine

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Who hath for four or five removes come short

To tender it herself. I undertook it,

Vanquish’d thereto by the fair grace and speech

Of the poor suppliant, who, by this, I know,

Is here attending; her business looks in her

135

With an importing visage, and she told me,

In a sweet verbal brief, it did concern

Your highness with herself.

KING     [Reads the letter.] Upon his many protestations to

marry me when his wife was dead, I blush to say it, he won

140

me. Now is the Count Rossillion a widower; his vows are

forfeited to me and my honour’s paid to him. He stole

from Florence, taking no leave, and I follow him to his

country for justice. Grant it me, O king! In you it best

lies; otherwise a seducer flourishes, and a poor maid is

145

undone.

DIANA CAPILET.

LAFEW     I will buy me a son-in-law in a fair, and toll for

this. I’ll none of him.

KING     The heavens have thought well on thee, Lafew,

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To bring forth this discov’ry. Seek these suitors.

Go speedily, and bring again the count.

     Exeunt attendants.

I am afear’d the life of Helen, lady,

Was foully snatch’d.

COUNTESS     Now justice on the doers!

Re-enter BERTRAM guarded.

KING     I wonder, sir, since wives are monsters to you,

155

And that you fly them as you swear them lordship,

Yet you desire to marry.

Enter Widow and DIANA.

     What woman’s that?

DIANA     I am, my lord, a wretched Florentine,

Derived from the ancient Capilet;

My suit, as I do understand, you know,

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And therefore know how far I may be pitied.

WIDOW     I am her mother, sir, whose age and honour

Both suffer under this complaint we bring,

And both shall cease, without your remedy.

KING     Come hither, count; do you know these women?

165

BERTRAM     My lord, I neither can nor will deny

But that I know them. Do they charge me further?

DIANA     Why do you look so strange upon your wife?

BERTRAM     She’s none of mine, my lord.

DIANA     If you shall marry

You give away this hand and that is mine,

170

You give away heaven’s vows and those are mine,

You give away myself which is known mine;

For I by vow am so embodied yours

That she which marries you must marry me –

Either both or none.

175

LAFEW

Your reputation comes too short for my daughter;

You are no husband for her.

BERTRAM

My lord, this is a fond and desp’rate creature

Whom sometime I have laugh’d with. Let your

highness

Lay a more noble thought upon mine honour

180

Than for to think that I would sink it here.

KING

Sir, for my thoughts, you have them ill to friend

Till your deeds gain them; fairer prove your honour

Than in my thought it lies!

DIANA     Good my lord,

Ask him upon his oath if he does think

185

He had not my virginity.

KING     What say’st thou to her?

BERTRAM     She’s impudent, my lord,

And was a common gamester to the camp.

DIANA     He does me wrong, my lord; if I were so

He might have bought me at a common price.

190

Do not believe him. O behold this ring

Whose high respect and rich validity

Did lack a parallel; yet for all that

He gave it to a commoner a’th’ camp –

If I be one.

COUNTESS     He blushes and ’tis hit.

195

Of six preceding ancestors, that gem

Conferr’d by testament to th’ sequent issue,

Hath it been owed and worn. This is his wife:

That ring’s a thousand proofs.

KING     Methought you said

You saw one here in court could witness it.

200

DIANA     I did, my lord, but loath am to produce

So bad an instrument; his name’s Parolles.

LAFEW     I saw the man today, if man he be.

KING

Find him and bring him hither.     Exit an attendant.

BERTRAM     What of him?

He’s quoted for a most perfidious slave

205

With all the spots a’th’ world tax’d and debosh’d,

Whose nature sickens but to speak a truth.

Am I or that or this for what he’ll utter,

That will speak anything?

KING     She hath that ring of yours.

BERTRAM     I think she has. Certain it is I lik’d her

210

And boarded her i’th’ wanton way of youth.

She knew her distance and did angle for me,

Madding my eagerness with her restraint,

As all impediments in fancy’s course

Are motives of more fancy; and in fine

215

Her inf ’nite cunning with her modern grace

Subdu’d me to her rate; she got the ring,

And I had that which any inferior might

At market-price have bought.

DIANA     I must be patient.

You that have turn’d off a first so noble wife

220

May justly diet me. I pray you yet –

Since you lack virtue I will lose a husband –

Send for your ring, I will return it home,

And give me mine again.

BERTRAM     I have it not.

KING     What ring was yours, I pray you?

DIANA     Sir, much like

225

The same upon your finger.

KING     Know you this ring? This ring was his of late.

DIANA     And this was it I gave him, being abed.

KING     The story then goes false you threw it him

Out of a casement?

DIANA     I have spoke the truth.

230

Enter PAROLLES.

BERTRAM     My lord, I do confess the ring was hers.

KING     You boggle shrewdly; every feather starts you.

Is this the man you speak of?

DIANA     Ay, my lord.

KING     Tell me, sirrah – but tell me true I charge you,

Not fearing the displeasure of your master,

235

Which on your just proceeding I’ll keep off –

By him and by this woman here what know you?

PAROLLES     So please your majesty, my master hath been

an honourable gentleman. Tricks he hath had in him,

which gentlemen have.

240

KING     Come, come, to th’ purpose. Did he love this

woman?

PAROLLES     Faith, sir, he did love her; but how?

KING     How, I pray you?

PAROLLES     He did love her, sir, as a gentleman loves a

245

woman.

KING     How is that?

PAROLLES     He lov’d her, sir, and lov’d her not.

KING     As thou art a knave and no knave. What an

equivocal companion is this!

250

PAROLLES     I am a poor man, and at your majesty’s

command.

LAFEW     He’s a good drum, my lord, but a naughty

orator.

DIANA     Do you know he promis’d me marriage?

255

PAROLLES     Faith, I know more than I’ll speak.

KING     But wilt thou not speak all thou know’st?

PAROLLES     Yes, so please your majesty. I did go between

them as I said; but more than that, he loved her, for

indeed he was mad for her and talk’d of Satan and of

260

Limbo and of furies and I know not what; yet I was in

that credit with them at that time that I knew of their

going to bed and of other motions, as promising her

marriage and things which would derive me ill will to

speak of; therefore I will not speak what I know.

265

KING     Thou hast spoken all already, unless thou canst

say they are married; but thou art too fine in thy

evidence; therefore, stand aside.

This ring you say was yours?

DIANA     Ay, my good lord.

KING     Where did you buy it? Or who gave it you?

270

DIANA     It was not given me, nor I did not buy it.

KING     Who lent it you?

DIANA     It was not lent me neither.

KING     Where did you find it then?

DIANA     I found it not.

KING     If it were yours by none of all these ways

How could you give it him?

DIANA     I never gave it him.

275

LAFEW     This woman’s an easy glove, my lord; she goes

off and on at pleasure.

KING     This ring was mine; I gave it his first wife.

DIANA     It might be yours or hers for ought I know.

KING     Take her away. I do not like her now.

280

To prison with her. And away with him.

Unless thou tell’st me where thou hadst this ring

Thou diest within this hour.

DIANA     I’ll never tell you.

KING     Take her away.

DIANA     I’ll put in bail, my liege.

KING     I think thee now some common customer.

285

DIANA     By Jove, if ever I knew man ’twas you.

KING     Wherefore hast thou accus’d him all this while?

DIANA     Because he’s guilty and he is not guilty.

He knows I am no maid, and he’ll swear to’t;

I’ll swear I am a maid and he knows not.

290

Great king, I am no strumpet; by my life

I am either maid or else this old man’s wife.

KING     She does abuse our ears. To prison with her.

DIANA     Good mother, fetch my bail. Stay, royal sir;

Exit Widow.

The jeweller that owes the ring is sent for

295

And he shall surety me. But for this lord

Who hath abus’d me as he knows himself –

Though yet he never harm’d me – here I quit him.

He knows himself my bed he hath defil’d;

And at that time he got his wife with child.

300

Dead though she be she feels her young one kick.

So there’s my riddle: one that’s dead is quick,

And now behold the meaning.

Re-enter Widow with HELENA.

KING     Is there no exorcist

Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes?

Is’t real that I see?

HELENA     No, my good lord;

305

’Tis but the shadow of a wife you see;

The name and not the thing.

BERTRAM     Both, both. O pardon!

HELENA     O my good lord, when I was like this maid

I found you wondrous kind. There is your ring,

And, look you, here’s your letter. This it says:

310

When from my finger you can get this ring

And is by me with child, etc. This is done;

Will you be mine now you are doubly won?

BERTRAM

If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly

I’ll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly.

315

HELENA     If it appear not plain and prove untrue

Deadly divorce step between me and you!

O my dear mother, do I see you living?

LAFEW     Mine eyes smell onions; I shall weep anon. [to

Parolles] Good Tom Drum, lend me a handkercher.

320

So, I thank thee. Wait on me home, I’ll make sport

with thee. Let thy curtsies alone, they are scurvy ones.

KING     Let us from point to point this story know

To make the even truth in pleasure flow.

[to Diana] If thou beest yet a fresh uncropped flower

325

Choose thou thy husband and I’ll pay thy dower;

For I can guess that by thy honest aid

Thou kept’st a wife herself, thyself a maid.

Of that and all the progress more and less

Resolvedly more leisure shall express.

330

All yet seems well, and if it end so meet,

The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.

[Flourish.]

EPILOGUE

The king’s a beggar, now the play is done;

All is well ended if this suit be won,

That you express content; which we will pay

With strife to please you, day exceeding day.

Ours be your patience then and yours our parts;

5

Your gentle hands lend us and take our hearts.

Exeunt omnes.

Antony and Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra was first published in the Folio of 1623, as the tenth of the tragedies. Along with ‘The booke of Pericles prynce of Tyre’, it had previously been entered by Edward Blount in the Stationers’ Register on 20 May 1608. Both Barnabe Barnes’s The Devil’s Charter (performed at Court on 2 February 1607) and Samuel Daniel’s ‘newly altered’ fourth edition of his tragedy Cleopatra (published in 1607) show knowledge of Shakespeare’s play. It was therefore probably completed sometime in 1606, roughly contemporaneously with the writing of Macbeth and shortly before Coriolanus.

The story of the tragic love affair was, of course, well known; literary references go back as far as Virgil and Horace, and Chaucer includes Cleopatra in his Legend of Good Women. Shakespeare almost certainly knew several Renaissance versions of the story, most notably the Countess of Pembroke’s tragedy Antonius (1592), adapted from Robert Garnier’s Marc Antoine, and Daniel’s Cleopatra, first published in 1594 and dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke. However, he depended mainly upon ‘The Life of Marcus Antonius’ in Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, translated from Greek into French by Jacques Amyot, from French into English by Thomas North, and published in London in 1579. Shakespeare often follows North’s Plutarch closely – verbal borrowings are frequent – but he shapes the story to his own purposes, as the action constantly shifts location, ranging quickly back and forth across the Mediterranean.

Rome and Egypt are not merely the geographical poles of the action, but become powerful symbols of competing emotional and ethical values. Rome is a world of measure, Egypt of excess; Rome of pragmatism, Egypt of passion; Rome of political ambition, Egypt of emotional desire. Even stylistically the differences are marked: Roman speech is ‘Attic’, spare and direct; Egyptian speech is ‘Asiatic’, ornate and sensuous. However, the competing values are not wholly consistent, nor do they admit of easy judgements. If Roman values, judged on their own terms, appear disciplined and high-minded, by Egyptian standards they seem cold and inhuman; similarly, Egyptian values, judged on Egyptian terms as generous and life-affirming, by Roman standards appear self-indulgent and irresponsible. The play never allows an audience a secure and stable moral vantage-point from which to judge the action or the characters, giving us instead multiple perspectives and inviting constant reassessment of our responses.

Even death partakes at once of tragic loss and of a paradoxical victory and transcendence. Plutarch’s Antony seeks his own death in despair, ‘sith spiteful fortune hath taken from thee the only joy thou hadst’; Shakespeare’s Antony rather seeks death, to be reunited with his queen: ‘I will o’ertake thee, Cleopatra, and / Weep for my pardon.’ Antony would be ‘A bridegroom in [his] death’, and Cleopatra dies with a final magnificent claim to Antony, ‘Husband, I come!’ For them, at least, love does overcome death. From Cleopatra’s viewpoint indeed ‘’Tis paltry to be Caesar’. But, of course, Caesar survives to become Emperor of the world, and Rome will not ‘in Tiber melt’.

The moral contents of the play are projected in a succession of scenes, many of them brief, which exploit to the full the fluid staging practices of early Jacobean theatres. The proscenium stages and the realistic props and scenery which developed after 1660 ensured that Shakespeare’s play was superseded for a century or more by John Dryden’s neoclassical rewriting of the story as All for Love, or the World Well Lost (1678). When Antony and Cleopatra returned to the theatres of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, productions became ever more opulent and operatic. Spectacle disrupted the play’s own dramatic structure, and critics and reviewers regularly decried its apparent lack of unity. Simply set and played with the staccato rhythms marked by the text, the play has achieved notable, though infrequent, success on the modern stage, its principle of construction clear and effective, its moral design complex and compelling.

The 1995 Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

triumvirs

CLEOPATRA

Queen of Egypt

Sextus Pompeius or POMPEY

rebel against the triumvirs

followers of Antony

OCTAVIA

sister of Octavius Caesar

followers of Caesar

attendants on Cleopatra

followers of Pompey

MESSENGERS

SOOTHSAYER

SERVANTS

of Pompey

BOY SINGER

CAPTAIN

in Antony»s army

SENTRIES and GUARDS

CLOWN

Eunuchs, Attendants, Captains, Soldiers, Servants

Antony and Cleopatra

1.1 Enter DEMETRIUS and PHILO.

PHILO     Nay, but this dotage of our general’s

O’erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes,

That o’er the files and musters of the war

Have glowed like plated Mars, now bend, now turn

The office and devotion of their view

5

Upon a tawny front. His captain’s heart,

Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst

The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper

And is become the bellows and the fan

To cool a gipsy’s lust.

Flourish. Enter ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, her ladies

CHARMIAN     and IRAS, the train, with eunuchs fanning her.

     Look where they come!

10

Take but good note, and you shall see in him

The triple pillar of the world transformed

Into a strumpet’s fool. Behold and see.

CLEOPATRA     If it be love indeed, tell me how much.

ANTONY

There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned.

15

CLEOPATRA     I’ll set a bourn how far to be beloved.

ANTONY

Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new

earth.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     News, my good lord, from Rome.

ANTONY     Grates me! The sum.

CLEOPATRA     Nay, hear them, Antony.

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Fulvia perchance is angry, or who knows

If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent

His powerful mandate to you: ‘Do this, or this;

Take in that kingdom and enfranchise that.

Perform’t, or else we damn thee.’

ANTONY     How, my love?

25

CLEOPATRA     Perchance? Nay, and most like.

You must not stay here longer; your dismission

Is come from Caesar; therefore hear it, Antony.

Where’s Fulvia’s process? – Caesar’s, I would say.

Both?

Call in the messengers! As I am Egypt’s Queen,

30

Thou blushest, Antony, and that blood of thine

Is Caesar’s homager; else so thy cheek pays shame

When shrill-tongued Fulvia scolds. The messengers!

ANTONY     Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch

Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space!

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Kingdoms are clay! Our dungy earth alike

Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life

Is to do thus, when such a mutual pair

And such a twain can do’t, in which I bind,

On pain of punishment, the world to weet

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We stand up peerless.

CLEOPATRA     Excellent falsehood!

Why did he marry Fulvia and not love her?

I’ll seem the fool I am not. Antony

Will be himself.

ANTONY     But stirred by Cleopatra.

Now, for the love of Love and her soft hours,

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Let’s not confound the time with conference harsh.

There’s not a minute of our lives should stretch

Without some pleasure now. What sport tonight?

CLEOPATRA     Hear the ambassadors.

ANTONY     Fie, wrangling queen,

Whom everything becomes – to chide, to laugh,

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To weep; whose every passion fully strives

To make itself, in thee, fair and admired!

No messenger but thine, and all alone

Tonight we’ll wander through the streets and note

The qualities of people. Come, my queen!

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Last night you did desire it. [to the Messenger] Speak

not to us.

Exeunt Antony and Cleopatra with the train.

DEMETRIUS     Is Caesar with Antonius prized so slight?

PHILO     Sir, sometimes, when he is not Antony,

He comes too short of that great property

Which still should go with Antony.

DEMETRIUS     I am full sorry

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That he approves the common liar who

Thus speaks of him at Rome, but I will hope

Of better deeds tomorrow. Rest you happy!     Exeunt.

1.2 Enter ENOBARBUS and other Roman officers, a Soothsayer, CHARMIAN, IRAS, MARDIAN the Eunuch and ALEXAS.

CHARMIAN     Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most anything

Alexas, almost most absolute Alexas, where’s the

soothsayer that you praised so to th’ Queen? O, that I

knew this husband which you say must charge his

horns with garlands!

5

ALEXAS     Soothsayer!

SOOTHSAYER     Your will?

CHARMIAN     Is this the man? Is’t you, sir, that know

things?

SOOTHSAYER     In nature’s infinite book of secrecy

10

A little I can read.

ALEXAS     Show him your hand.

ENOBARBUS

Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough

Cleopatra’s health to drink.

Enter servants with wine and other refreshments and exeunt.

CHARMIAN     [Gives her hand to the Soothsayer.] Good sir,

give me good fortune.

15

SOOTHSAYER     I make not, but foresee.

CHARMIAN     Pray then, foresee me one.

SOOTHSAYER     You shall be yet far fairer than you are.

CHARMIAN     He means in flesh.

IRAS     No, you shall paint when you are old.

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CHARMIAN     Wrinkles forbid!

ALEXAS     Vex not his prescience. Be attentive.

CHARMIAN     Hush!

SOOTHSAYER     You shall be more beloving than beloved.

CHARMIAN     I had rather heat my liver with drinking.

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ALEXAS     Nay, hear him.

CHARMIAN     Good now, some excellent fortune! Let

me be married to three kings in a forenoon and widow

them all. Let me have a child at fifty to whom Herod

of Jewry may do homage. Find me to marry me with

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Octavius Caesar and companion me with my mistress.

SOOTHSAYER

You shall outlive the lady whom you serve.

CHARMIAN     O, excellent! I love long life better than figs.

SOOTHSAYER

You have seen and proved a fairer former fortune

Than that which is to approach.

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CHARMIAN     Then belike my children shall have no names.

Prithee, how many boys and wenches must I have?

SOOTHSAYER     If every of your wishes had a womb,

And fertile every wish, a million.

CHARMIAN     Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch.

40

ALEXAS     You think none but your sheets are privy to

your wishes.

CHARMIAN     Nay, come, tell Iras hers.

ALEXAS     We’ll know all our fortunes.

ENOBARBUS     Mine, and most of our fortunes tonight,

45

shall be drunk to bed.

IRAS     [Holds out her hand.] There’s a palm presages

chastity, if nothing else.

CHARMIAN     E’en as the o’erflowing Nilus presageth

famine.

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IRAS     Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay!

CHARMIAN     Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful

prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear. Prithee,

tell her but a workaday fortune.

SOOTHSAYER     Your fortunes are alike.

55

IRAS     But how? But how? Give me particulars!

SOOTHSAYER     I have said.

IRAS     Am I not an inch of fortune better than she?

CHARMIAN     Well, if you were but an inch of fortune

better than I, where would you choose it?

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IRAS     Not in my husband’s nose.

CHARMIAN     Our worser thoughts heavens mend! Alexas

– come, his fortune, his fortune! O, let him marry a

woman that cannot go, sweet Isis I beseech thee, and

let her die too, and give him a worse, and let worse

65

follow worse, till the worst of all follow him laughing

to his grave, fiftyfold a cuckold! Good Isis, hear me

this prayer, though thou deny me a matter of more

weight; good Isis, I beseech thee!

IRAS     Amen. Dear goddess, hear that prayer of the

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people! For as it is a heartbreaking to see a handsome

man loose-wived, so it is a deadly sorrow to behold a

foul knave uncuckolded. Therefore, dear Isis, keep

decorum and fortune him accordingly!

CHARMIAN     Amen.

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ALEXAS     Lo now, if it lay in their hands to make me a

cuckold, they would make themselves whores, but

they’d do’t.

Enter CLEOPATRA.

ENOBARBUS     Hush, here comes Antony.

CHARMIAN     Not he, the Queen.

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CLEOPATRA     Saw you my lord?

ENOBARBUS     No, lady.

CLEOPATRA     Was he not here?

CHARMIAN     No, madam.

CLEOPATRA

He was disposed to mirth, but on the sudden

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A Roman thought hath struck him. Enobarbus!

ENOBARBUS     Madam?

CLEOPATRA

Seek him and bring him hither.     Exit Enobarbus.

     Where’s Alexas?

ALEXAS     Here, at your service. My lord approaches.

Enter ANTONY with a Messenger.

CLEOPATRA     We will not look upon him. Go with us.

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Exeunt all but Antony and Messenger.

MESSENGER     Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.

ANTONY     Against my brother Lucius?

MESSENGER     Ay,

But soon that war had end, and the time’s state

Made friends of them, jointing their force ’gainst

Caesar,

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Whose better issue in the war from Italy

Upon the first encounter drave them.

ANTONY     Well, what worst?

MESSENGER     The nature of bad news infects the teller.

ANTONY     When it concerns the fool or coward. On!

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Things that are past are done with me. ’Tis thus:

Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death,

I hear him as he flattered.

MESSENGER     Labienus –

This is stiff news – hath with his Parthian force

Extended Asia. From Euphrates

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His conquering banner shook, from Syria

To Lydia, and to Ionia,

Whilst –

ANTONY     ‘Antony’, thou wouldst say –

MESSENGER     O, my lord!

ANTONY

Speak to me home; mince not the general tongue;

Name Cleopatra as she is called in Rome;

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Rail thou in Fulvia’s phrase, and taunt my faults

With such full licence as both truth and malice

Have power to utter. Oh, then we bring forth weeds

When our quick minds lie still, and our ills told us

Is as our earing. Fare thee well awhile.

115

MESSENGER     At your noble pleasure.     Exit Messenger.

Enter another Messenger.

ANTONY     From Sicyon how the news? Speak there!

2 MESSENGER     The man from Sicyon –

ANTONY     Is there such a one?

2 MESSENGER     He stays upon your will.

ANTONY     Let him appear.

Exit Second Messenger.

These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,

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Or lose myself in dotage.

Enter another Messenger with a letter.

What are you?

MESSENGER     Fulvia thy wife is dead.

ANTONY     Where died she?

3 MESSENGER     In Sicyon.

Her length of sickness, with what else more serious

125

Importeth thee to know, this bears.

[Gives him the letter.]

ANTONY     Forbear me.

Exit Third Messenger.

There’s a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it.

What our contempts doth often hurl from us

We wish it ours again. The present pleasure,

By revolution lowering, does become

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The opposite of itself. She’s good, being gone.

The hand could pluck her back that shoved her on.

I must from this enchanting queen break off.

Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,

My idleness doth hatch. How now, Enobarbus!

135

Enter ENOBARBUS.

ENOBARBUS     What’s your pleasure, sir?

ANTONY     I must with haste from hence.

ENOBARBUS     Why then we kill all our women. We see

how mortal an unkindness is to them. If they suffer

our departure, death’s the word.

140

ANTONY     I must be gone.

ENOBARBUS     Under a compelling occasion let women

die. It were pity to cast them away for nothing,

though between them and a great cause they should be

esteemed nothing. Cleopatra, catching but the least

145

noise of this, dies instantly. I have seen her die twenty

times upon far poorer moment. I do think there is

mettle in death which commits some loving act upon

her, she hath such a celerity in dying.

ANTONY     She is cunning past man’s thought.

150

ENOBARBUS     Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of

nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call

her winds and waters sighs and tears; they are

greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report.

This cannot be cunning in her. If it be, she makes a

155

shower of rain as well as Jove.

ANTONY     Would I had never seen her!

ENOBARBUS     O, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful

piece of work, which not to have been blest withal

would have discredited your travel.

160

ANTONY     Fulvia is dead.

ENOBARBUS     Sir?

ANTONY     Fulvia is dead.

ENOBARBUS     Fulvia?

ANTONY     Dead.

165

ENOBARBUS     Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice.

When it pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man

from him, it shows to man the tailors of the earth;

comforting therein, that when old robes are worn out,

there are members to make new. If there were no more

170

women but Fulvia, then had you indeed a cut, and the

case to be lamented. This grief is crowned with

consolation: your old smock brings forth a new

petticoat, and indeed the tears live in an onion that

should water this sorrow.

175

ANTONY     The business she hath broached in the state

Cannot endure my absence.

ENOBARBUS     And the business you have broached here

cannot be without you, especially that of Cleopatra’s,

which wholly depends on your abode.

180

ANTONY     No more light answers. Let our officers

Have notice what we purpose. I shall break

The cause of our expedience to the Queen

And get her leave to part. For not alone

The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches,

185

Do strongly speak to us, but the letters too

Of many our contriving friends in Rome

Petition us at home. Sextus Pompeius

Hath given the dare to Caesar and commands

The empire of the sea. Our slippery people,

190

Whose love is never linked to the deserver

Till his deserts are past, begin to throw

Pompey the Great and all his dignities

Upon his son, who, high in name and power,

Higher than both in blood and life, stands up

195

For the main soldier; whose quality going on,

The sides o’th’ world may danger. Much is breeding

Which, like the courser’s hair, hath yet but life

And not a serpent’s poison. Say our pleasure,

To such whose place is under us, requires

200

Our quick remove from hence.

ENOBARBUS     I shall do’t.     Exeunt.

1.3 Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, ALEXAS and IRAS.

CLEOPATRA     Where is he?

CHARMIAN     I did not see him since.

CLEOPATRA     [to Alexas]

See where he is, who’s with him, what he does.

I did not send you. If you find him sad,

Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report

5

That I am sudden sick. Quick, and return.

Exit Alexas.

CHARMIAN

Madam, methinks if you did love him dearly,

You do not hold the method to enforce

The like from him.

CLEOPATRA     What should I do I do not?

CHARMIAN

In each thing give him way; cross him in nothing.

10

CLEOPATRA

Thou teachest like a fool: the way to lose him.

CHARMIAN     Tempt him not so too far; I wish, forbear.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

Enter ANTONY.

But here comes Antony.

CLEOPATRA     I am sick and sullen.

ANTONY     I am sorry to give breathing to my purpose –

15

CLEOPATRA     Help me away, dear Charmian! I shall fall!

It cannot be thus long; the sides of nature

Will not sustain it.

ANTONY     Now, my dearest queen –

CLEOPATRA     Pray you, stand farther from me!

ANTONY     What’s the matter?

CLEOPATRA

I know by that same eye there’s some good news.

20

What, says the married woman you may go?

Would she had never given you leave to come!

Let her not say ’tis I that keep you here.

I have no power upon you; hers you are.

ANTONY     The gods best know –

CLEOPATRA     O, never was there queen

25

So mightily betrayed! Yet at the first

I saw the treasons planted.

ANTONY     Cleopatra –

CLEOPATRA

Why should I think you can be mine and true –

Though you in swearing shake the throned gods –

Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness,

30

To be entangled with those mouth-made vows

Which break themselves in swearing!

ANTONY     Most sweet queen –

CLEOPATRA

Nay, pray you seek no colour for your going,

But bid farewell and go. When you sued staying,

Then was the time for words; no going then.

35

Eternity was in our lips and eyes,

Bliss in our brows’ bent; none our parts so poor

But was a race of heaven. They are so still,

Or thou, the greatest soldier of the world,

Art turned the greatest liar.

ANTONY     How now, lady?

40

CLEOPATRA

I would I had thy inches! Thou shouldst know

There were a heart in Egypt!

ANTONY     Hear me, queen.

The strong necessity of time commands

Our services awhile, but my full heart

Remains in use with you. Our Italy

45

Shines o’er with civil swords; Sextus Pompeius

Makes his approaches to the port of Rome;

Equality of two domestic powers

Breed scrupulous faction; the hated, grown to

strength,

Are newly grown to love; the condemned Pompey,

50

Rich in his father’s honour, creeps apace

Into the hearts of such as have not thrived

Upon the present state, whose numbers threaten;

And quietness, grown sick of rest, would purge

By any desperate change. My more particular,

55

And that which most with you should safe my going,

Is Fulvia’s death.

CLEOPATRA

Though age from folly could not give me freedom,

It does from childishness. Can Fulvia die?

ANTONY     She’s dead, my queen. [Gives her the letters.]

60

Look here, and at thy sovereign leisure read

The garboils she awaked. At the last, best,

See when and where she died.

CLEOPATRA     O most false love!

Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill

With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see,

65

In Fulvia’s death how mine received shall be.

ANTONY     Quarrel no more, but be prepared to know

The purposes I bear; which are, or cease,

As you shall give th’advice. By the fire

That quickens Nilus’ slime, I go from hence

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Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war

As thou affects.

CLEOPATRA     Cut my lace, Charmian, come!

But let it be; I am quickly ill and well –

So Antony loves.

ANTONY     My precious queen, forbear,

And give true evidence to his love, which stands

75

An honourable trial.

CLEOPATRA     So Fulvia told me.

I prithee, turn aside and weep for her,

Then bid adieu to me, and say the tears

Belong to Egypt. Good now, play one scene

Of excellent dissembling, and let it look

80

Like perfect honour.

ANTONY     You’ll heat my blood. No more.

CLEOPATRA     You can do better yet, but this is meetly.

ANTONY     Now by my sword –

CLEOPATRA     And target. Still he mends,

But this is not the best. Look, prithee, Charmian,

How this Herculean Roman does become

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The carriage of his chafe.

ANTONY     I’ll leave you, lady.

CLEOPATRA     Courteous lord, one word:

Sir, you and I must part, but that’s not it;

Sir, you and I have loved, but there’s not it;

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That you know well. Something it is I would –

Oh, my oblivion is a very Antony,

And I am all forgotten!

ANTONY     But that your royalty

Holds idleness your subject, I should take you

For idleness itself.

CLEOPATRA     ’Tis sweating labour

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To bear such idleness so near the heart

As Cleopatra this. But, sir, forgive me,

Since my becomings kill me when they do not

Eye well to you. Your honour calls you hence;

Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly,

100

And all the gods go with you! Upon your sword

Sit laurel victory, and smooth success

Be strewed before your feet!

ANTONY     Let us go. Come.

Our separation so abides and flies

That thou, residing here, goes yet with me,

105

And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee.

Away!     Exeunt.

1.4 Enter OCTAVIUS CAESAR reading a letter, LEPIDUS and their train.

CAESAR     You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know,

It is not Caesar’s natural vice to hate

Our great competitor. From Alexandria

This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes

The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike

5

Than Cleopatra, nor the Queen of Ptolemy

More womanly than he; hardly gave audience, or

Vouchsafed to think he had partners. You shall find

there

A man who is the abstract of all faults

That all men follow.

LEPIDUS     I must not think there are

10

Evils enough to darken all his goodness.

His faults, in him, seem as the spots of heaven,

More fiery by night’s blackness; hereditary

Rather than purchased; what he cannot change

Than what he chooses.

15

CAESAR     You are too indulgent. Let’s grant it is not

Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy,

To give a kingdom for a mirth, to sit

And keep the turn of tippling with a slave,

To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet

20

With knaves that smells of sweat. Say this becomes

him –

As his composure must be rare indeed

Whom these things cannot blemish – yet must

Antony

No way excuse his foils, when we do bear

So great weight in his lightness. If he filled

25

His vacancy with his voluptuousness,

Full surfeits and the dryness of his bones

Call on him for’t. But to confound such time

That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud

As his own state and ours, ’tis to be chid

30

As we rate boys who, being mature in knowledge,

Pawn their experience to their present pleasure

And so rebel to judgement.

Enter a Messenger.

LEPIDUS     Here’s more news.

MESSENGER     

Thy biddings have been done, and every hour,

Most noble Caesar, shalt thou have report

35

How ’tis abroad. Pompey is strong at sea,

And it appears he is beloved of those

That only have feared Caesar. To the ports

The discontents repair, and men’s reports

Give him much wronged.

CAESAR     I should have known no less.

40

It hath been taught us from the primal state

That he which is was wished until he were,

And the ebbed man, ne’er loved till ne’er worth love,

Comes deared by being lacked. This common body,

Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,

45

Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,

To rot itself with motion.

Enter another Messenger.

2 MESSENGER     Caesar, I bring thee word

Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates,

Makes the sea serve them, which they ear and wound

50

With keels of every kind. Many hot inroads

They make in Italy – the borders maritime

Lack blood to think on’t – and flush youth revolt.

No vessel can peep forth but ’tis as soon

Taken as seen; for Pompey’s name strikes more

55

Than could his war resisted.

CAESAR     Antony,

Leave thy lascivious wassails! When thou once

Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew’st

Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel

Did famine follow, whom thou fought’st against,

60

Though daintily brought up, with patience more

Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink

The stale of horses and the gilded puddle

Which beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did

deign

The roughest berry on the rudest hedge.

65

Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,

The barks of trees thou browsed. On the Alps,

It is reported, thou didst eat strange flesh

Which some did die to look on. And all this –

It wounds thine honour that I speak it now –

70

Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek

So much as lanked not.

LEPIDUS     ’Tis pity of him.

CAESAR     Let his shames quickly

Drive him to Rome. ’Tis time we twain

Did show ourselves i’th’ field, and to that end

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Assemble we immediate council. Pompey

Thrives in our idleness.

LEPIDUS     Tomorrow, Caesar,

I shall be furnished to inform you rightly

Both what by sea and land I can be able

To front this present time.

CAESAR     Till which encounter,

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It is my business too. Farewell.

LEPIDUS

Farewell, my lord. What you shall know meantime

Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir,

To let me be partaker.

CAESAR     Doubt not, sir.

I knew it for my bond.     Exeunt by different doors.

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1.5 Enter C LEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS and MARDIAN.

CLEOPATRA     Charmian!

CHARMIAN     Madam?

CLEOPATRA     [Yawns.] Ha, ha.

Give me to drink mandragora.

CHARMIAN     Why, madam?

CLEOPATRA

That I might sleep out this great gap of time

5

My Antony is away.

CHARMIAN     You think of him too much.

CLEOPATRA     O, ’tis treason!

CHARMIAN     Madam, I trust not so.

CLEOPATRA     Thou, eunuch Mardian!

MARDIAN     What’s your highness’ pleasure?

CLEOPATRA

Not now to hear thee sing. I take no pleasure

10

In aught an eunuch has. ’Tis well for thee

That, being unseminared, thy freer thoughts

May not fly forth of Egypt. Hast thou affections?

MARDIAN     Yes, gracious madam.

CLEOPATRA     Indeed?

15

MARDIAN     Not in deed, madam, for I can do nothing

But what indeed is honest to be done.

Yet have I fierce affections, and think

What Venus did with Mars.

CLEOPATRA     O, Charmian,

Where think’st thou he is now? Stands he, or sits he?

20

Or does he walk? Or is he on his horse?

O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!

Do bravely, horse, for wot’st thou whom thou

mov’st?

The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm

And burgonet of men! He’s speaking now,

25

Or murmuring ‘Where’s my serpent of old Nile?’

For so he calls me. Now I feed myself

With most delicious poison. Think on me

That am with Phoebus’ amorous pinches black

And wrinkled deep in time? Broad-fronted Caesar,

30

When thou wast here above the ground, I was

A morsel for a monarch; and great Pompey

Would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow;

There would he anchor his aspect, and die

With looking on his life.

35

Enter ALEXAS from Antony.

ALEXAS     Sovereign of Egypt, hail!

CLEOPATRA     How much unlike art thou Mark Antony!

Yet, coming from him, that great medicine hath

With his tinct gilded thee.

How goes it with my brave Mark Antony?

40

ALEXAS     Last thing he did, dear queen,

He kissed – the last of many doubled kisses –

This orient pearl. His speech sticks in my heart.

CLEOPATRA     Mine ear must pluck it thence.

ALEXAS     ‘Good friend,’ quoth he,

‘Say the firm Roman to great Egypt sends

45

This treasure of an oyster, at whose foot,

To mend this petty present, I will piece

Her opulent throne with kingdoms. All the East,

Say thou, shall call her mistress.’ So he nodded

And soberly did mount an arm-gaunt steed

50

Who neighed so high that what I would have spoke

Was beastly dumbed by him.

CLEOPATRA     What, was he sad or merry?

ALEXAS

Like to the time o’th’ year between the extremes

Of hot and cold, he was nor sad nor merry.

55

CLEOPATRA     O well-divided disposition! Note him,

Note him, good Charmian, ’tis the man; but note

him!

He was not sad, for he would shine on those

That make their looks by his; he was not merry,

Which seemed to tell them his remembrance lay

60

In Egypt with his joy; but between both.

O heavenly mingle! Be’st thou sad or merry,

The violence of either thee becomes,

So does it no man else. Met’st thou my posts?

ALEXAS     Ay, madam, twenty several messengers.

65

Why do you send so thick?

CLEOPATRA     Who’s born that day

When I forget to send to Antony

Shall die a beggar. Ink and paper, Charmian!

Welcome, my good Alexas! Did I, Charmian,

Ever love Caesar so?

CHARMIAN     O that brave Caesar!

70

CLEOPATRA     Be choked with such another emphasis!

Say, ‘the brave Antony’.

CHARMIAN     The valiant Caesar!

CLEOPATRA     By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth

If thou with Caesar paragon again

My man of men!

CHARMIAN     By your most gracious pardon,

75

I sing but after you.

CLEOPATRA     My salad days,

When I was green in judgement, cold in blood,

To say as I said then. But come, away,

Get me ink and paper!

He shall have every day a several greeting

80

Or I’ll unpeople Egypt!     Exeunt.

2.1 Enter POMPEY, MENECRATES and MENAS in warlike manner.

POMPEY If the great gods be just, they shall assist

The deeds of justest men.

MENECRATES     Know, worthy Pompey,

That what they do delay they not deny.

POMPEY     Whiles we are suitors to their throne, decays

The thing we sue for.

MENECRATES     We, ignorant of ourselves,

5

Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers

Deny us for our good; so find we profit

By losing of our prayers.

POMPEY     I shall do well.

The people love me, and the sea is mine;

My powers are crescent, and my auguring hope

10

Says it will come to th’ full. Mark Antony

In Egypt sits at dinner, and will make

No wars without doors; Caesar gets money where

He loses hearts; Lepidus flatters both,

Of both is flattered; but he neither loves,

15

Nor either cares for him.

MENAS     Caesar and Lepidus

Are in the field. A mighty strength they carry.

POMPEY     Where have you this? ’Tis false.

MENAS     From Silvius, sir.

POMPEY

He dreams. I know they are in Rome together,

Looking for Antony. But all the charms of love,

20

Salt Cleopatra, soften thy waned lip!

Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both;

Tie up the libertine in a field of feasts;

Keep his brain fuming. Epicurean cooks

Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite

25

That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour

Even till a Lethe’d dullness –

Enter VARRIUS.

     How now, Varrius?

VARRIUS     This is most certain that I shall deliver:

Mark Antony is every hour in Rome

Expected. Since he went from Egypt ’tis

30

A space for farther travel.

POMPEY     I could have given less matter

A better ear. Menas, I did not think

This amorous surfeiter would have donned his helm

For such a petty war. His soldiership

35

Is twice the other twain. But let us rear

The higher our opinion, that our stirring

Can from the lap of Egypt’s widow pluck

The ne’er-lust-wearied Antony.

MENAS     I cannot hope

Caesar     and Antony shall well greet together.

40

His wife that’s dead did trespasses to Caesar;

His brother warred upon him, although I think

Not moved by Antony.

POMPEY     I know not, Menas,

How lesser enmities may give way to greater.

Were’t not that we stand up against them all,

45

’Twere pregnant they should square between

themselves,

For they have entertained cause enough

To draw their swords. But how the fear of us

May cement their divisions, and bind up

The petty difference, we yet not know.

50

Be’t as our gods will have’t! It only stands

Our lives upon to use our strongest hands.

Come, Menas.     Exeunt.

2.2 Enter ENOBARBUS and LEPIDUS.

LEPIDUS     Good Enobarbus, ’tis a worthy deed,

And shall become you well, to entreat your captain

To soft and gentle speech.

ENOBARBUS     I shall entreat him

To answer like himself. If Caesar move him,

Let Antony look over Caesar’s head

5

And speak as loud as Mars. By Jupiter,

Were I the wearer of Antonio’s beard,

I would not shave’t today!

LEPIDUS     ’Tis not a time

For private stomaching.

ENOBARBUS     Every time

Serves for the matter that is then born in’t.

10

LEPIDUS

But small to greater matters must give way.

ENOBARBUS     Not if the small come first.

LEPIDUS     Your speech is passion;

But pray you stir no embers up. Here comes

The noble Antony.

Enter ANTONY and VENTIDIUS.

ENOBARBUS     And yonder Caesar.

Enter CAESAR, MAECENAS and AGRIPPA.

ANTONY     If we compose well here, to Parthia.

15

Hark, Ventidius.

CAESAR     I do not know, Maecenas. Ask Agrippa.

LEPIDUS     Noble friends,

That which combined us was most great, and let not

A leaner action rend us. What’s amiss,

20

May it be gently heard. When we debate

Our trivial difference loud, we do commit

Murder in healing wounds. Then, noble partners,

The rather for I earnestly beseech,

Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms,

25

Nor curstness grow to th’ matter.

ANTONY     ’Tis spoken well.

Were we before our armies, and to fight,

I should do thus.     [Flourish.]

CAESAR     Welcome to Rome.

ANTONY     Thank you.

30

CAESAR     Sit.

ANTONY     Sit, sir.

CAESAR     Nay then. [Caesar sits, then Antony.]

ANTONY     I learn you take things ill which are not so,

Or being, concern you not.

CAESAR     I must be laughed at

35

If, or for nothing or a little, I

Should say myself offended, and with you

Chiefly i’th’ world; more laughed at that I should

Once name you derogately when to sound your name

It not concerned me.

ANTONY     My being in Egypt, Caesar,

40

What was’t to you?

CAESAR     No more than my residing here at Rome

Might be to you in Egypt. Yet if you there

Did practise on my state, your being in Egypt

Might be my question.

ANTONY     How intend you, ‘practised’?

45

CAESAR     You may be pleased to catch at mine intent

By what did here befall me. Your wife and brother

Made wars upon me, and their contestation

Was theme for you; you were the word of war.

ANTONY

You do mistake your business. My brother never

50

Did urge me in his act. I did enquire it,

And have my learning from some true reports

That drew their swords with you. Did he not rather

Discredit my authority with yours,

And make the wars alike against my stomach,

55

Having alike your cause? Of this my letters

Before did satisfy you. If you’ll patch a quarrel,

As matter whole you have to make it with,

It must not be with this.

CAESAR     You praise yourself

By laying defects of judgement to me, but

60

You patched up your excuses.

ANTONY     Not so, not so!

I know you could not lack – I am certain on’t –

Very necessity of this thought, that I,

Your partner in the cause ’gainst which he fought,

Could not with graceful eyes attend those wars

65

Which fronted mine own peace. As for my wife,

I would you had her spirit in such another.

The third o’th’ world is yours, which with a snaffle

You may pace easy, but not such a wife.

ENOBARBUS Would we had all such wives, that the men

70

might go to wars with the women!

ANTONY     So much uncurbable, her garboils, Caesar,

Made out of her impatience – which not wanted

Shrewdness of policy too – I grieving grant

Did you too much disquiet. For that, you must

75

But say I could not help it.

CAESAR     I wrote to you

When rioting in Alexandria. You

Did pocket up my letters, and with taunts

Did gibe my missive out of audience.

ANTONY     Sir,

He fell upon me ere admitted, then.

80

Three kings I had newly feasted, and did want

Of what I was i’th’ morning. But next day

I told him of myself, which was as much

As to have asked him pardon. Let this fellow

Be nothing of our strife; if we contend,

85

Out of our question wipe him.

CAESAR     You have broken

The article of your oath, which you shall never

Have tongue to charge me with.

LEPIDUS     Soft, Caesar!

ANTONY     No, Lepidus, let him speak.

90

The honour is sacred which he talks on now,

Supposing that I lacked it. But on, Caesar:

‘The article of my oath –’

CAESAR

To lend me arms and aid when I required them,

The which you both denied.

ANTONY     Neglected, rather;

95

And then when poisoned hours had bound me up

From mine own knowledge. As nearly as I may

I’ll play the penitent to you, but mine honesty

Shall not make poor my greatness, nor my power

Work without it. Truth is that Fulvia,

100

To have me out of Egypt, made wars here,

For which myself, the ignorant motive, do

So far ask pardon as befits mine honour

To stoop in such a case.

LEPIDUS     ’Tis noble spoken.

MAECENAS     If it might please you to enforce no further

105

The griefs between ye; to forget them quite

Were to remember that the present need

Speaks to atone you.

LEPIDUS     Worthily spoken, Maecenas.

ENOBARBUS Or, if you borrow one another’s love for the

instant, you may, when you hear no more words of

110

Pompey, return it again. You shall have time to

wrangle in when you have nothing else to do.

ANTONY     Thou art a soldier only. Speak no more.

ENOBARBUS     That truth should be silent, I had almost

forgot.

115

ANTONY

You wrong this presence; therefore speak no more.

ENOBARBUS     Go to, then! Your considerate stone.

CAESAR     I do not much dislike the matter but

The manner of his speech; for’t cannot be

We shall remain in friendship, our conditions

120

So differing in their acts. Yet, if I knew

What hoop should hold us staunch, from edge to

edge

O’th’ world I would pursue it.

AGRIPPA     Give me leave, Caesar.

CAESAR     Speak, Agrippa.

AGRIPPA     Thou hast a sister by the mother’s side,

125

Admired Octavia. Great Mark Antony

Is now a widower.

CAESAR     Say not so, Agrippa.

If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof

Were well deserved of rashness.

ANTONY     I am not married, Caesar. Let me hear

130

Agrippa further speak.

AGRIPPA     To hold you in perpetual amity,

To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts

With an unslipping knot, take Antony

Octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims

135

No worse a husband than the best of men;

Whose virtue and whose general graces speak

That which none else can utter. By this marriage

All little jealousies which now seem great,

And all great fears which now import their dangers

140

Would then be nothing. Truths would be tales,

Where now half-tales be truths. Her love to both

Would each to other, and all loves to both

Draw after her. Pardon what I have spoke,

For ’tis a studied, not a present thought,

145

By duty ruminated.

ANTONY     Will Caesar speak?

CAESAR     Not till he hears how Antony is touched

With what is spoke already.

ANTONY     What power is in Agrippa,

If I would say, ‘Agrippa, be it so’,

150

To make this good?

CAESAR     The power of Caesar, and

His power unto Octavia.

ANTONY     May I never,

To this good purpose that so fairly shows,

Dream of impediment! Let me have thy hand.

Further this act of grace, and from this hour

155

The heart of brothers govern in our loves

And sway our great designs!

CAESAR     There’s my hand.

[They clasp hands.]

A sister I bequeath you, whom no brother

Did ever love so dearly. Let her live

To join our kingdoms and our hearts; and never

160

Fly off our loves again!

LEPIDUS     Happily, amen!

ANTONY

I did not think to draw my sword ’gainst Pompey,

For he hath laid strange courtesies and great

Of late upon me. I must thank him, only

Lest my remembrance suffer ill report;

165

At heel of that, defy him.

LEPIDUS     Time calls upon’s.

Of us must Pompey presently be sought

Or else he seeks out us.

ANTONY     Where lies he?

CAESAR     About the Mount Misena.

170

ANTONY     What is his strength by land?

CAESAR     Great and increasing, but by sea

He is an absolute master.

ANTONY     So is the fame.

Would we had spoke together! Haste we for it.

Yet, ere we put ourselves in arms, dispatch we

175

The business we have talked of.

CAESAR     With most gladness,

And do invite you to my sister’s view,

Whither straight I’ll lead you.

ANTONY     Let us, Lepidus, not lack your company.

LEPIDUS     Noble Antony, not sickness should detain me.

180

Flourish. Exeunt all except Enobarbus, Agrippa, Maecenas.

MAECENAS     Welcome from Egypt, sir.

ENOBARBUS Half the heart of Caesar, worthy Maecenas!

My honourable friend, Agrippa!

AGRIPPA     Good Enobarbus!

MAECENAS     We have cause to be glad that matters are

185

so well digested. You stayed well by’t in Egypt.

ENOBARBUS     Ay, sir, we did sleep day out of countenance

and made the night light with drinking.

MAECENAS     Eight wild boars roasted whole at a

breakfast, and but twelve persons there. Is this true?

190

ENOBARBUS     This was but as a fly by an eagle. We had

much more monstrous matter of feast, which worthily

deserved noting.

MAECENAS     She’s a most triumphant lady, if report be

square to her.

195

ENOBARBUS When she first met Mark Antony, she

pursed up his heart upon the river of Cydnus.

AGRIPPA     There she appeared indeed! Or my reporter

devised well for her.

ENOBARBUS I will tell you.

200

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,

Burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold;

Purple the sails, and so perfumed that

The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were

silver,

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

205

The water which they beat to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,

It beggared all description: she did lie

In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,

O’erpicturing that Venus where we see

210

The fancy outwork nature. On each side her

Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling cupids,

With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem

To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,

And what they undid did.

AGRIPPA     O, rare for Antony!

215

ENOBARBUS     Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,

So many mermaids, tended her i’th’ eyes,

And made their bends adornings. At the helm

A seeming mermaid steers. The silken tackle

Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands

220

That yarely frame the office. From the barge

A strange invisible perfume hits the sense

Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast

Her people out upon her, and Antony,

Enthroned i’th’ market-place, did sit alone,

225

Whistling to th’air, which, but for vacancy,

Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra, too,

And made a gap in nature.

AGRIPPA     Rare Egyptian!

ENOBARBUS Upon her landing, Antony sent to her;

Invited her to supper. She replied

230

It should be better he became her guest,

Which she entreated. Our courteous Antony,

Whom ne’er the word of ‘No’ woman heard speak,

Being barbered ten times o’er, goes to the feast,

And, for his ordinary, pays his heart

235

For what his eyes eat only.

AGRIPPA     Royal wench!

She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed.

He ploughed her, and she cropped.

ENOBARBUS     I saw her once

Hop forty paces through the public street

And, having lost her breath, she spoke and panted,

240

That she did make defect perfection,

And, breathless, pour breath forth.

MAECENAS     Now Antony must leave her utterly.

ENOBARBUS     Never! He will not.

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale

245

Her infinite variety. Other women cloy

The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry

Where most she satisfies; for vilest things

Become themselves in her, that the holy priests

Bless her when she is riggish.

250

MAECENAS     If beauty, wisdom, modesty can settle

The heart of Antony, Octavia is

A blessed lottery to him.

AGRIPPA     Let us go.

Good Enobarbus, make yourself my guest

Whilst you abide here.

ENOBARBUS     Humbly, sir, I thank you.

255

Exeunt.

2.3 Enter ANTONY, CAESAR; OCTAVIA between them.

ANTONY

The world and my great office will sometimes

Divide me from your bosom.

OCTAVIA     All which time

Before the gods my knee shall bow my prayers

To them for you.

ANTONY     Good night, sir. My Octavia,

Read not my blemishes in the world’s report.

5

I have not kept my square, but that to come

Shall all be done by th’ rule. Good night, dear lady.

OCTAVIA     Good night, sir.

CAESAR     Good night.     Exeunt Caesar and Octavia.

Enter Soothsayer.

ANTONY     Now, sirrah! You do wish yourself in Egypt?

10

SOOTHSAYER

Would I had never come from thence, nor you

thither!

ANTONY     If you can, your reason?

SOOTHSAYER

I see it in my motion; have it not in my tongue.

But yet hie you to Egypt again.

ANTONY     Say to me,

Whose fortunes shall rise higher, Caesar’s or mine?

15

SOOTHSAYER     Caesar’s.

Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side.

Thy daemon – that thy spirit which keeps thee – is

Noble, courageous, high unmatchable,

Where Caesar’s is not. But near him, thy angel

20

Becomes afeard, as being o’erpowered; therefore

Make space enough between you.

ANTONY     Speak this no more.

SOOTHSAYER

To none but thee; no more but when to thee.

If thou dost play with him at any game,

Thou art sure to lose; and of that natural luck

25

He beats thee ’gainst the odds. Thy lustre thickens

When he shines by. I say again, thy spirit

Is all afraid to govern thee near him;

But, he away, ’tis noble.

ANTONY     Get thee gone.

Say to Ventidius I would speak with him.

30

     Exit Soothsayer.

He shall to Parthia. Be it art or hap,

He hath spoken true. The very dice obey him,

And in our sports my better cunning faints

Under his chance. If we draw lots, he speeds;

His cocks do win the battle still of mine

35

When it is all to naught, and his quails ever

Beat mine, inhooped, at odds. I will to Egypt;

And though I make this marriage for my peace,

I’th’ East my pleasure lies.

Enter VENTIDIUS.

     O come, Ventidius.

You must to Parthia. Your commission’s ready.

40

Follow me and receive’t.     Exeunt.

2.4 Enter LEPIDUS, MAECENAS and AGRIPPA.

LEPIDUS

Trouble yourselves no further. Pray you hasten

Your generals after.

AGRIPPA     Sir, Mark Antony

Will e’en but kiss Octavia, and we’ll follow.

LEPIDUS     Till I shall see you in your soldiers’ dress,

Which will become you both, farewell.

MAECENAS     We shall,

5

As I conceive the journey, be at the Mount

Before you, Lepidus.

LEPIDUS     Your way is shorter;

My purposes do draw me much about.

You’ll win two days upon me.

MAECENAS, AGRIPPA     Sir, good success!

10

LEPIDUS     Farewell.     Exeunt.

2.5 Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS and ALEXAS.

CLEOPATRA     Give me some music – music, moody food

Of us that trade in love.

ALL     The music, ho!

Enter MARDIAN the Eunuch.

CLEOPATRA

Let it alone. Let’s to billiards. Come, Charmian.

CHARMIAN     My arm is sore. Best play with Mardian.

CLEOPATRA     As well a woman with an eunuch played

5

As with a woman. Come, you’ll play with me, sir?

MARDIAN     As well as I can, madam.

CLEOPATRA

And when good will is showed, though’t come too

short,

The actor may plead pardon. I’ll none now.

Give me mine angle; we’ll to th’ river. There,

10

My music playing far off, I will betray

Tawny-finned fishes. My bended hook shall pierce

Their slimy jaws, and, as I draw them up,

I’ll think them every one an Antony,

And say ‘Ah, ha! You’re caught!’

CHARMIAN     ’Twas merry when

15

You wagered on your angling; when your diver

Did hang a salt fish on his hook, which he

With fervency drew up.

CLEOPATRA     That time? O times!

I laughed him out of patience, and that night

I laughed him into patience, and next morn,

20

Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed,

Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst

I wore his sword Philippan.

Enter a Messenger.

     Oh, from Italy!

Ram thou thy fruitful tidings in mine ears,

That long time have been barren!

MESSENGER     Madam, madam –

25

CLEOPATRA     Antonio’s dead! If thou say so, villain,

Thou kill’st thy mistress; but well and free,

If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here

My bluest veins to kiss, a hand that kings

Have lipped, and trembled, kissing.

30

MESSENGER     First, madam, he is well.

CLEOPATRA     Why, there’s more gold.

But sirrah, mark, we use

To say the dead are well. Bring it to that,

The gold I give thee will I melt and pour

Down thy ill-uttering throat.

MESSENGER     Good madam, hear me.

35

CLEOPATRA     Well, go to, I will.

But there’s no goodness in thy face if Antony

Be free and healthful. So tart a favour

To trumpet such good tidings! If not well,

Thou shouldst come like a Fury crowned with

snakes,

40

Not like a formal man.

MESSENGER     Will’t please you hear me?

CLEOPATRA

I have a mind to strike thee ere thou speak’st.

Yet if thou say Antony lives, is well,

Or friends with Caesar, or not captive to him,

I’ll set thee in a shower of gold and hail

45

Rich pearls upon thee.

MESSENGER     Madam, he’s well.

CLEOPATRA     Well said!

MESSENGER     And friends with Caesar.

CLEOPATRA     Thou’rt an honest man!

MESSENGER     

Caesar and he are greater friends than ever.

CLEOPATRA     Make thee a fortune from me!

MESSENGER     But yet, madam –

CLEOPATRA     I do not like ‘But yet’. It does allay

50

The good precedence. Fie upon ‘But yet’!

‘But yet’ is as a gaoler to bring forth

Some monstrous malefactor. Prithee, friend,

Pour out the pack of matter to mine ear,

The good and bad together. He’s friends with Caesar,

55

In state of health, thou sayst, and, thou sayst, free.

MESSENGER     Free, madam? No. I made no such report.

He’s bound unto Octavia.

CLEOPATRA     For what good turn?

MESSENGER     For the best turn i’th’ bed.

CLEOPATRA     I am pale, Charmian.

MESSENGER     Madam, he’s married to Octavia.

60

CLEOPATRA     The most infectious pestilence upon thee!

[Strikes him down.]

MESSENGER     Good madam, patience!

CLEOPATRA     What say you?

[Strikes him.]     Hence,

Horrible villain, or I’ll spurn thine eyes

Like balls before me! I’ll unhair thy head!

[She hales him up and down.]

Thou shalt be whipped with wire and stewed in brine,

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Smarting in lingering pickle!

MESSENGER     Gracious madam,

I that do bring the news made not the match.

CLEOPATRA     Say ’tis not so, a province I will give thee,

And make thy fortunes proud. The blow thou hadst

Shall make thy peace for moving me to rage,

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And I will boot thee with what gift beside

Thy modesty can beg.

MESSENGER     He’s married, madam.

CLEOPATRA     Rogue, thou hast lived too long!

[Draws a knife.]

MESSENGER     Nay then, I’ll run.

What mean you, madam? I have made no fault.     Exit.

CHARMIAN

Good madam, keep yourself within yourself.

75

The man is innocent.

CLEOPATRA

Some innocents ’scape not the thunderbolt.

Melt Egypt into Nile, and kindly creatures

Turn all to serpents! Call the slave again!

Though I am mad, I will not bite him. Call!

80

CHARMIAN     He is afeard to come.

CLEOPATRA     I will not hurt him.

     Exit Charmian.

These hands do lack nobility that they strike

A meaner than myself, since I myself

Have given myself the cause.

Enter the Messenger again with CHARMIAN.

     Come hither, sir.

Though it be honest, it is never good

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To bring bad news. Give to a gracious message

An host of tongues, but let ill tidings tell

Themselves when they be felt.

MESSENGER     I have done my duty.

CLEOPATRA     Is he married?

I cannot hate thee worser than I do

90

If thou again say ‘Yes’.

MESSENGER     He’s married, madam.

CLEOPATRA

The gods confound thee! Dost thou hold there still?

MESSENGER     Should I lie, madam?

CLEOPATRA     Oh, I would thou didst,

So half my Egypt were submerged and made

A cistern for scaled snakes! Go, get thee hence!

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Hadst thou Narcissus in thy face, to me

Thou wouldst appear most ugly. He is married?

MESSENGER     I crave your highness’ pardon.

CLEOPATRA     He is married?

MESSENGER     

Take no offence that I would not offend you.

To punish me for what you make me do

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Seems much unequal. He’s married to Octavia.

CLEOPATRA

Oh, that his fault should make a knave of thee

That act not what thou’rt sure of! Get thee hence!

The merchandise which thou hast brought from

Rome

Are all too dear for me. Lie they upon thy hand

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And be undone by ’em.     Exit Messenger.

CHARMIAN     Good your highness, patience.

CLEOPATRA

In praising Antony, I have dispraised Caesar.

CHARMIAN     Many times, madam.

CLEOPATRA     I am paid for’t now.

Lead me from hence;

I faint! O Iras, Charmian! ’Tis no matter.

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Go to the fellow, good Alexas, bid him

Report the feature of Octavia, her years,

Her inclination; let him not leave out

The colour of her hair. Bring me word quickly.

Exit Alexas.

Let him for ever go! Let him not, Charmian.

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Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon,

The other way’s a Mars. [to Iras] Bid you Alexas

Bring me word how tall she is. Pity me, Charmian,

But do not speak to me. Lead me to my chamber.

Exeunt.

2.6 Flourish. Enter POMPEY and MENAS at one door with drum and trumpet; at another CAESAR, LEPIDUS, ANTONY, ENOBARBUS, MAECENAS, AGRIPPA, with soldiers marching.

POMPEY     Your hostages I have, so have you mine,

And we shall talk before we fight.

CAESAR     Most meet

That first we come to words, and therefore have we

Our written purposes before us sent,

Which if thou hast considered, let us know

5

If ’twill tie up thy discontented sword

And carry back to Sicily much tall youth

That else must perish here.

POMPEY     To you all three,

The senators alone of this great world,

Chief factors for the gods: I do not know

10

Wherefore my father should revengers want,

Having a son and friends, since Julius Caesar,

Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted,

There saw you labouring for him. What was’t

That moved pale Cassius to conspire? And what

15

Made the all-honoured, honest Roman, Brutus,

With the armed rest, courtiers of beauteous freedom,

To drench the Capitol, but that they would

Have one man but a man? And that is it

Hath made me rig my navy, at whose burden

20

The angered ocean foams, with which I meant

To scourge th’ingratitude that despiteful Rome

Cast on my noble father.

CAESAR     Take your time.

ANTONY

Thou canst not fear us, Pompey, with thy sails.

We’ll speak with thee at sea. At land thou know’st

25

How much we do o’ercount thee.

POMPEY     At land indeed

Thou dost o’ercount me of my father’s house;

But since the cuckoo builds not for himself,

Remain in’t as thou mayst.

LEPIDUS     Be pleased to tell us –

For this is from the present – how you take

30

The offers we have sent you.

CAESAR     There’s the point.

ANTONY     Which do not be entreated to, but weigh

What it is worth embraced.

CAESAR     And what may follow

To try a larger fortune.

POMPEY     You have made me offer

Of Sicily, Sardinia; and I must

35

Rid all the sea of pirates; then to send

Measures of wheat to Rome. This ’greed upon,

To part with unhacked edges, and bear back

Our targes undinted.

CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS

     That’s our offer.

POMPEY     Know, then,

I came before you here a man prepared

40

To take this offer, but Mark Antony

Put me to some impatience. Though I lose

The praise of it by telling, you must know

When Caesar and your brother were at blows,

Your mother came to Sicily and did find

45

Her welcome friendly.

ANTONY     I have heard it, Pompey,

And am well studied for a liberal thanks

Which I do owe you.

POMPEY     Let me have your hand.

[They shake hands.]

I did not think, sir, to have met you here.

ANTONY

The beds i’th’ East are soft; and thanks to you

50

That called me timelier than my purpose hither,

For I have gained by’t.

CAESAR     Since I saw you last,

There is a change upon you.

POMPEY     Well, I know not

What counts harsh Fortune casts upon my face,

But in my bosom shall she never come

55

To make my heart her vassal.

LEPIDUS     Well met here!

POMPEY

I hope so, Lepidus. Thus we are agreed.

I crave our composition may be written

And sealed between us.

CAESAR     That’s the next to do.

POMPEY     We’ll feast each other ere we part, and let’s

60

Draw lots who shall begin.

ANTONY     That will I, Pompey.

POMPEY     No, Antony, take the lot.

But, first or last, your fine Egyptian cookery

Shall have the fame. I have heard that Julius Caesar

Grew fat with feasting there.

ANTONY     You have heard much.

65

POMPEY     I have fair meanings, sir.

ANTONY     And fair words to them.

POMPEY     Then so much have I heard.

And I have heard Apollodorus carried –

ENOBARBUS     No more of that! He did so.

POMPEY     What, I pray you?

ENOBARBUS     A certain queen to Caesar in a mattress.

70

POMPEY     I know thee now. How far’st thou, soldier?

ENOBARBUS     Well;

And well am like to do, for I perceive

Four feasts are toward.

POMPEY     Let me shake thy hand.

[They shake hands.]

I never hated thee. I have seen thee fight

When I have envied thy behaviour.

ENOBARBUS     Sir,

75

I never loved you much, but I ha’ praised ye

When you have well deserved ten times as much

As I have said you did.

POMPEY     Enjoy thy plainness;

It nothing ill becomes thee.

Aboard my galley I invite you all.

80

Will you lead, lords?

CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS Show’s the way, sir.

POMPEY     Come.

     Exeunt all but Enobarbus and Menas.

MENAS     [aside] Thy father, Pompey, would ne’er have

made this treaty. [to Enobarbus] You and I have known,

sir.

ENOBARBUS     At sea, I think.

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MENAS     We have, sir.

ENOBARBUS     You have done well by water.

MENAS     And you by land.

ENOBARBUS     I will praise any man that will praise me,

though it cannot be denied what I have done by land.

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MENAS     Nor what I have done by water.

ENOBARBUS     Yes, something you can deny for your own

safety: you have been a great thief by sea.

MENAS     And you by land.

ENOBARBUS     There I deny my land service. But give me

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your hand, Menas! [They shake hands.] If our eyes had

authority, here they might take two thieves kissing.

MENAS     All men’s faces are true, whatsome’er their

hands are.

ENOBARBUS     But there is never a fair woman has a true

100

face.

MENAS     No slander. They steal hearts.

ENOBARBUS     We came hither to fight with you.

MENAS     For my part, I am sorry it is turned to a

drinking. Pompey doth this day laugh away his

105

fortune.

ENOBARBUS     If he do, sure he cannot weep’t back again.

MENAS     You’ve said, sir. We looked not for Mark Antony

here. Pray you, is he married to Cleopatra?

ENOBARBUS     Caesar’s sister is called Octavia.

110

MENAS     True, sir. She was the wife of Caius Marcellus.

ENOBARBUS     But she is now the wife of Marcus Antonius.

MENAS     Pray ye, sir?

ENOBARBUS     ’Tis true.

MENAS     Then is Caesar and he for ever knit together.

115

ENOBARBUS     If I were bound to divine of this unity, I

would not prophesy so.

MENAS     I think the policy of that purpose made more in

the marriage than the love of the parties.

ENOBARBUS     I think so too. But you shall find the band

120

that seems to tie their friendship together will be the

very strangler of their amity. Octavia is of a holy, cold

and still conversation.

MENAS     Who would not have his wife so?

ENOBARBUS     Not he that himself is not so; which is

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Mark Antony. He will to his Egyptian dish again.

Then shall the sighs of Octavia blow the fire up in

Caesar, and, as I said before, that which is the strength

of their amity shall prove the immediate author of

their variance. Antony will use his affection where it

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is. He married but his occasion here.

MENAS     And thus it may be. Come, sir, will you aboard?

I have a health for you.

ENOBARBUS     I shall take it, sir. We have used our throats

in Egypt.

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MENAS     Come, let’s away.     Exeunt.

2.7 Music plays. Enter two or three Servants with a banquet.

1 SERVANT     Here they’ll be man. Some o’ their plants are

ill-rooted already; the least wind i’th’ world will blow

them down.

2 SERVANT     Lepidus is high-coloured.

1 SERVANT     They have made him drink alms-drink.

5

2 SERVANT     As they pinch one another by the

disposition, he cries out ‘No more’, reconciles them to

his entreaty, and himself to th’ drink.

1 SERVANT     But it raises the greater war between him

and his discretion.

10

2 SERVANT     Why, this it is to have a name in great men’s

fellowship. I had as lief have a reed that will do me no

service as a partisan I could not heave.

1 SERVANT     To be called into a huge sphere and not to be

seen to move in’t, are the holes where eyes should be,

15

which pitifully disaster the cheeks.

A sennet sounded. Enter CAESAR, ANTONY, POMPEY, LEPIDUS, AGRIPPA, MAECENAS, ENOBARBUS, MENAS with other captains and a Boy Singer.

ANTONY

Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o’th’ Nile

By certain scales i’th’ pyramid. They know

By th’height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth

Or foison follow. The higher Nilus swells,

20

The more it promises. As it ebbs, the seedsman

Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain,

And shortly comes to harvest.

LEPIDUS     You’ve strange serpents there?

ANTONY     Ay, Lepidus.

25

LEPIDUS     Your serpent of Egypt is bred, now, of your

mud by the operation of your sun; so is your crocodile.

ANTONY     They are so.

POMPEY     Sit, and some wine! A health to Lepidus!

[They sit and drink.]

LEPIDUS     I am not so well as I should be, but I’ll ne’er

30

out.

ENOBARBUS     [aside] Not till you have slept. I fear me

you’ll be in till then.

LEPIDUS     Nay, certainly, I have heard the Ptolemies’

pyramises are very goodly things. Without contra-

35

diction I have heard that.

MENAS     [aside to Pompey] Pompey, a word.

POMPEY     [aside to Menas] Say in mine ear what is’t.

MENAS     [Whispers in his ear.]

Forsake thy seat, I do beseech thee, captain,

And hear me speak a word.

POMPEY     [aside to Menas]

Forbear me till anon. – This wine for Lepidus!

40

LEPIDUS     What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?

ANTONY     It is shaped, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as

it hath breadth. It is just so high as it is, and moves

with it own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth

it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.

45

LEPIDUS     What colour is it of?

ANTONY     Of it own colour too.

LEPIDUS     ’Tis a strange serpent.

ANTONY     ’Tis so, and the tears of it are wet.

CAESAR     Will this description satisfy him?

50

ANTONY     With the health that Pompey gives him, else

he is a very epicure. [Menas whispers again.]

POMPEY     [aside to Menas]

Go hang, sir, hang! Tell me of that? Away!

Do as I bid you. – Where’s this cup I called for?

MENAS     [aside to Pompey]

If for the sake of merit thou wilt hear me,

55

Rise from thy stool.

POMPEY     [aside to Menas]

     I think thou’rt mad. The matter?

[Rises and walks aside with Menas.]

MENAS     I have ever held my cap off to thy fortunes.

POMPEY

Thou hast served me with much faith. What’s else to

say? –

Be jolly, lords.

ANTONY     These quicksands, Lepidus,

Keep off them, for you sink.

60

MENAS     Wilt thou be lord of all the world?

POMPEY     What sayst thou?

MENAS     Wilt thou be lord of the whole world?

That’s twice.

POMPEY     How should that be?

MENAS     But entertain it,

And, though thou think me poor, I am the man

Will give thee all the world.

POMPEY     Hast thou drunk well?

65

MENAS     No, Pompey, I have kept me from the cup.

Thou art, if thou dar’st be, the earthly Jove,

Whate’er the ocean pales or sky inclips

Is thine, if thou wilt ha’t.

POMPEY     Show me which way.

MENAS     These three world-sharers, these competitors,

70

Are in thy vessel. Let me cut the cable,

And when we are put off, fall to their throats.

All then is thine.

POMPEY     Ah, this thou shouldst have done

And not have spoke on’t. In me ’tis villainy;

In thee’t had been good service. Thou must know

75

’Tis not my profit that does lead mine honour;

Mine honour, it. Repent that e’er thy tongue

Hath so betrayed thine act. Being done unknown,

I should have found it afterwards well done,

But must condemn it now. Desist and drink.

80

[Returns to the others.]

MENAS     [aside] For this,

I’ll never follow thy palled fortunes more.

Who seeks and will not take, when once ’tis offered,

Shall never find it more.

POMPEY     This health to Lepidus!

ANTONY

Bear him ashore. I’ll pledge it for him, Pompey.

85

ENOBARBUS     Here’s to thee, Menas!

MENAS     Enobarbus, welcome!

POMPEY

Fill till the cup be hid.

ENOBARBUS     There’s a strong fellow, Menas.

[Points to the attendant who carries off Lepidus.]

MENAS     Why?

ENOBARBUS

’A bears the third part of the world, man. Seest not?

90

MENAS

The third part then he is drunk. Would it were all,

That it might go on wheels!

ENOBARBUS     Drink thou! Increase the reels!

MENAS     Come!

POMPEY     This is not yet an Alexandrian feast.

95

ANTONY     It ripens towards it. Strike the vessels, ho!

Here’s to Caesar!

CAESAR     I could well forbear’t.

It’s monstrous labour when I wash my brain

And it grows fouler.

ANTONY     Be a child o’th’ time.

CAESAR     ‘Possess it’, I’ll make answer.

100

But I had rather fast from all, four days,

Than drink so much in one.

ENOBARBUS     [to Antony]     Ha, my brave emperor,

Shall we dance now the Egyptian Bacchanals

And celebrate our drink?

POMPEY     Let’s ha’t, good soldier.

ANTONY     Come, let’s all take hands

105

Till that the conquering wine hath steeped our sense

In soft and delicate Lethe.

ENOBARBUS     All take hands.

Make battery to our ears with the loud music,

The while I’ll place you; then the boy shall sing.

The holding every man shall beat as loud

110

As his strong sides can volley.

[Music plays. Enobarbus places them hand in hand.]

The Song.

BOY     Come, thou monarch of the vine,

     Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!

     In thy vats our cares be drowned;

     With thy grapes our hairs be crowned.

115

ALL     Cup us till the world go round!

     Cup us till the world go round!

CAESAR

What would you more? Pompey, good night. Good

brother,

Let me request you off. Our graver business

Frowns at this levity. Gentle lords, let’s part.

120

You see we have burnt our cheeks. Strong Enobarb

Is weaker than the wine, and mine own tongue

Splits what it speaks. The wild disguise hath almost

Anticked us all. What needs more words? Good

night.

Good Antony, your hand.

125

POMPEY     I’ll try you on the shore.

ANTONY     And shall, sir. Give’s your hand.

POMPEY     O, Antony, you have my father’s house.

But what? We are friends! Come down into the boat.

ENOBARBUS     Take heed you fall not.

     Exeunt all but Enobarbus and Menas.

     Menas, I’ll not on shore.

130

MENAS

No, to my cabin! These drums, these trumpets,

flutes! What!

Let Neptune hear we bid a loud farewell

To these great fellows. Sound and be hanged! Sound

out!     [Sound a flourish with drums.]

ENOBARBUS     Hoo, says ’a! There’s my cap!

[Flings his cap in the air.]

MENAS     Hoo! Noble captain, come!     Exeunt.

135

3.1 Enter VENTIDIUS as it were in triumph, with SILIUS and other Romans, officers and soldiers, the dead body of Pacorus borne before him.

VENTIDIUS

Now, darting Parthia, art thou struck, and now

Pleased Fortune does of Marcus Crassus’ death

Make me revenger. Bear the King’s son’s body

Before our army. Thy Pacorus, Orodes,

Pays this for Marcus Crassus.

SILIUS     Noble Ventidius,

5

Whilst yet with Parthian blood thy sword is warm,

The fugitive Parthians follow. Spur through Media,

Mesopotamia, and the shelters whither

The routed fly. So thy grand captain Antony

Shall set thee on triumphant chariots and

10

Put garlands on thy head.

VENTIDIUS     O Silius, Silius,

I have done enough. A lower place, note well,

May make too great an act. For learn this, Silius:

Better to leave undone than, by our deed,

Acquire too high a fame when him we serve’s away.

15

Caesar and Antony have ever won

More in their officer than person. Sossius,

One of my place in Syria, his lieutenant,

For quick accumulation of renown,

Which he achieved by th’ minute, lost his favour.

20

Who does i’th’ wars more than his captain can,

Becomes his captain’s captain; and ambition,

The soldier’s virtue, rather makes choice of loss

Than gain which darkens him.

I could do more to do Antonius good,

25

But ’twould offend him, and in his offence

Should my performance perish.

SILIUS

Thou hast, Ventidius, that

Without the which a soldier and his sword

Grants scarce distinction. Thou wilt write to Antony?

30

VENTIDIUS     I’ll humbly signify what in his name,

That magical word of war, we have effected;

How, with his banners and his well-paid ranks,

The ne’er-yet-beaten horse of Parthia

We have jaded out o’th’ field.

SILIUS     Where is he now?

35

VENTIDIUS

He purposeth to Athens, whither, with what haste

The weight we must convey with’s will permit,

We shall appear before him. On there! Pass along!

     Exeunt.

3.2 Enter AGRIPPA at one door, ENOBARBUS at another.

AGRIPPA     What, are the brothers parted?

ENOBARBUS

They have dispatched with Pompey; he is gone.

The other three are sealing. Octavia weeps

To part from Rome; Caesar is sad, and Lepidus

Since Pompey’s feast, as Menas says, is troubled

5

With the green-sickness.

AGRIPPA     ’Tis a noble Lepidus.

ENOBARBUS     A very fine one. O, how he loves Caesar!

AGRIPPA     Nay, but how dearly he adores Mark Antony!

ENOBARBUS     Caesar? Why he’s the Jupiter of men!

AGRIPPA     What’s Antony? The god of Jupiter!

10

ENOBARBUS     Spake you of Caesar? Hoo! The nonpareil!

AGRIPPA     O Antony! O thou Arabian bird!

ENOBARBUS

Would you praise Caesar, say ‘Caesar’. Go no further.

AGRIPPA

Indeed, he plied them both with excellent praises.

ENOBARBUS

But he loves Caesar best. Yet he loves Antony.

15

Hoo! Hearts, tongues, figures, scribes, bards, poets,

cannot

Think, speak, cast, write, sing, number – hoo! –

His love to Antony! But as for Caesar,

Kneel down, kneel down, and wonder!

AGRIPPA     Both he loves.

ENOBARBUS

They are his shards and he their beetle.

     [Trumpet within.]

     So,

20

This is to horse. Adieu, noble Agrippa.

AGRIPPA     Good fortune, worthy soldier, and farewell.

Enter CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS and OCTAVIA.

ANTONY     No further, sir.

CAESAR     You take from me a great part of myself.

Use me well in’t. Sister, prove such a wife

25

As my thoughts make thee, and as my farthest bond

Shall pass on thy approof. Most noble Antony,

Let not the piece of virtue which is set

Betwixt us, as the cement of our love

To keep it builded, be the ram to batter

30

The fortress of it. For better might we

Have loved without this mean, if on both parts

This be not cherished.

ANTONY     Make me not offended

In your distrust.

CAESAR     I have said.

ANTONY     You shall not find,

Though you be therein curious, the least cause

35

For what you seem to fear. So the gods keep you,

And make the hearts of Romans serve your ends.

We will here part.

CAESAR     Farewell, my dearest sister, fare thee well.

The elements be kind to thee, and make

40

Thy spirits all of comfort! Fare thee well.

OCTAVIA     My noble brother! [She weeps.]

ANTONY     The April’s in her eyes; it is love’s spring

And these the showers to bring it on. Be cheerful.

OCTAVIA     Sir, look well to my husband’s house, and –

45

CAESAR     What, Octavia?

OCTAVIA     I’ll tell you in your ear.

[She whispers to Caesar.]

ANTONY     Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can

Her heart inform her tongue – the swan’s-down

feather

That stands upon the swell at full of tide,

And neither way inclines.

50

ENOBARBUS     [aside to Agrippa]

Will Caesar weep?

AGRIPPA     [aside to Enobarbus] He has a cloud in’s face.

ENOBARBUS     [aside to Agrippa]

He were the worse for that were he a horse;

So is he, being a man.

AGRIPPA     [aside to Enobarbus] Why, Enobarbus,

When Antony found Julius Caesar dead,

He cried almost to roaring, and he wept

55

When at Philippi he found Brutus slain.

ENOBARBUS     [aside to Agrippa]

That year, indeed, he was troubled with a rheum.

What willingly he did confound he wailed,

Believe’t, till I wept too.

CAESAR     No, sweet Octavia,

You shall hear from me still. The time shall not

60

Outgo my thinking on you.

ANTONY     Come, sir, come,

I’ll wrestle with you in my strength of love.

Look, here I have you [embracing him];

     thus I let you go,

And give you to the gods.

CAESAR     Adieu. Be happy!

LEPIDUS     Let all the number of the stars give light

65

To thy fair way!

CAESAR     Farewell, farewell! [Kisses Octavia.]

ANTONY     Farewell!

     Trumpets sound. Exeunt.

3.3 Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS and ALEXAS.

CLEOPATRA     Where is the fellow?

ALEXAS     Half afeard to come.

CLEOPATRA

Go to, go to.

Enter the Messenger as before.

     Come hither, sir.

ALEXAS     Good majesty,

Herod of Jewry dare not look upon you

But when you are well pleased.

CLEOPATRA     That Herod’s head

I’ll have! But how, when Antony is gone,

5

Through whom I might command it? – Come thou

near.

MESSENGER     Most gracious majesty!

CLEOPATRA     Didst thou behold

Octavia?

MESSENGER     Ay, dread queen.

CLEOPATRA     Where?

MESSENGER     Madam, in Rome.

I looked her in the face, and saw her led

Between her brother and Mark Antony.

10

CLEOPATRA     Is she as tall as me?

MESSENGER     She is not, madam.

CLEOPATRA

Didst hear her speak? Is she shrill-tongued or low?

MESSENGER     

Madam, I heard her speak; she is low-voiced.

CLEOPATRA

That’s not so good. He cannot like her long.

CHARMIAN     Like her? O Isis! ’Tis impossible.

15

CLEOPATRA

I think so, Charmian. Dull of tongue and dwarfish.

What majesty is in her gait? Remember,

If e’er thou look’dst on majesty.

MESSENGER     She creeps.

Her motion and her station are as one.

She shows a body rather than a life,

20

A statue than a breather.

CLEOPATRA     Is this certain?

MESSENGER     

Or I have no observance.

CHARMIAN     Three in Egypt

Cannot make better note.

CLEOPATRA          He’s very knowing;

I do perceiv’t. There’s nothing in her yet.

The fellow has good judgement.

CHARMIAN     Excellent.

25

CLEOPATRA     Guess at her years, I prithee.

MESSENGER     Madam,

She was a widow –

CLEOPATRA     Widow? Charmian, hark!

MESSENGER     And I do think she’s thirty.

CLEOPATRA

Bear’st thou her face in mind? Is’t long or round?

MESSENGER     Round, even to faultiness.

30

CLEOPATRA

For the most part, too, they are foolish that are so.

Her hair, what colour?

MESSENGER     Brown, madam, and her forehead

As low as she would wish it.

CLEOPATRA     There’s gold for thee.

Thou must not take my former sharpness ill.

I will employ thee back again; I find thee

35

Most fit for business. Go, make thee ready;

Our letters are prepared.     Exit Messenger.

CHARMIAN     A proper man.

CLEOPATRA     Indeed, he is so. I repent me much

That so I harried him. Why methinks, by him,

This creature’s no such thing.

CHARMIAN     Nothing, madam.

40

CLEOPATRA

The man hath seen some majesty, and should know.

CHARMIAN     Hath he seen majesty? Isis else defend,

And serving you so long!

CLEOPATRA

I have one thing more to ask him yet, good

Charmian.

But ’tis no matter; thou shalt bring him to me

45

Where I will write. All may be well enough.

CHARMIAN     I warrant you, madam.     Exeunt.

3.4 Enter ANTONY and OCTAVIA.

ANTONY     Nay, nay, Octavia, not only that.

That were excusable – that, and thousands more

Of semblable import – but he hath waged

New wars ’gainst Pompey; made his will, and read it

To public ear;

5

Spoke scantly of me; when perforce he could not

But pay me terms of honour, cold and sickly

He vented them; most narrow measure lent me;

When the best hint was given him, he not took’t,

Or did it from his teeth.

OCTAVIA     O, my good lord,

10

Believe not all, or if you must believe,

Stomach not all. A more unhappy lady,

If this division chance, ne’er stood between,

Praying for both parts.

The good gods will mock me presently

15

When I shall pray ‘O, bless my lord and husband!’;

Undo that prayer by crying out as loud

‘O, bless my brother!’ Husband win, win brother,

Prays and destroys the prayer; no midway

’Twixt these extremes at all.

ANTONY     Gentle Octavia,

20

Let your best love draw to that point which seeks

Best to preserve it. If I lose mine honour,

I lose myself; better I were not yours

Than yours so branchless. But, as you requested,

Yourself shall go between’s. The meantime, lady,

25

I’ll raise the preparation of a war

Shall stain your brother. Make your soonest haste,

So your desires are yours.

OCTAVIA     Thanks to my lord.

The Jove of power make me, most weak, most weak,

Your reconciler! Wars ’twixt you twain would be

30

As if the world should cleave, and that slain men

Should solder up the rift.

ANTONY     When it appears to you where this begins,

Turn your displeasure that way, for our faults

Can never be so equal that your love

35

Can equally move with them. Provide your going;

Choose your own company, and command what cost

Your heart has mind to.     Exeunt.

3.5 Enter ENOBARBUS and EROS, meeting.

ENOBARBUS     How now, friend Eros?

EROS     There’s strange news come, sir.

ENOBARBUS     What, man?

EROS     Caesar and Lepidus have made wars upon

Pompey.

5

ENOBARBUS     This is old. What is the success?

EROS     Caesar, having made use of him in the wars ’gainst

Pompey, presently denied him rivality; would not let

him partake in the glory of the action, and, not resting

here, accuses him of letters he had formerly wrote to

10

Pompey; upon his own appeal, seizes him. So the poor

third is up, till death enlarge his confine.

ENOBARBUS

Then, world, thou hast a pair of chaps, no more,

And throw between them all the food thou hast,

They’ll grind the one the other. Where’s Antony?

15

EROS     He’s walking in the garden, thus, and spurns

The rush that lies before him; cries, ‘Fool Lepidus!’,

And threats the throat of that his officer

That murdered Pompey.

ENOBARBUS     Our great navy’s rigged.

EROS     For Italy and Caesar. More, Domitius:

20

My lord desires you presently. My news

I might have told hereafter.

ENOBARBUS     ’Twill be naught,

But let it be. Bring me to Antony.

EROS     Come, sir.     Exeunt.

3.6 Enter AGRIPPA, MAECENAS and CAESAR.

CAESAR

Contemning Rome, he has done all this, and more

In Alexandria. Here’s the manner of ’t:

I’th’ market-place, on a tribunal silvered,

Cleopatra and himself in chairs of gold

Were publicly enthroned. At the feet sat

5

Caesarion, whom they call my father’s son,

And all the unlawful issue that their lust

Since then hath made between them. Unto her

He gave the stablishment of Egypt; made her

Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia,

10

Absolute Queen.

MAECENAS     This in the public eye?

CAESAR     I’th’ common showplace where they exercise.

His sons he there proclaimed the kings of kings:

Great Media, Parthia and Armenia

He gave to Alexander; to Ptolemy he assigned

15

Syria, Cilicia and Phoenicia. She

In th’habiliments of the goddess Isis

That day appeared, and oft before gave audience,

As ’tis reported, so.

MAECENAS     Let Rome be thus informed.

20

AGRIPPA     Who, queasy with his insolence already,

Will their good thoughts call from him.

CAESAR     The people knows it, and have now received

His accusations.

AGRIPPA     Who does he accuse?

CAESAR     Caesar; and that having in Sicily

25

Sextus Pompeius spoiled, we had not rated him

His part o’th’ isle. Then does he say he lent me

Some shipping, unrestored. Lastly, he frets

That Lepidus of the triumvirate

Should be deposed and, being, that we detain

30

All his revenue.

AGRIPPA     Sir, this should be answered.

CAESAR

’Tis done already, and the messenger gone.

I have told him Lepidus was grown too cruel,

That he his high authority abused

And did deserve his change. For what I have

conquered,

35

I grant him part; but then in his Armenia

And other of his conquered kingdoms, I

Demand the like.

MAECENAS     He’ll never yield to that.

CAESAR     Nor must not then be yielded to in this.

Enter OCTAVIA with her train.

OCTAVIA

Hail, Caesar, and my lord! Hail, most dear Caesar!

40

CAESAR     That ever I should call thee castaway!

OCTAVIA

You have not called me so, nor have you cause.

CAESAR

Why have you stolen upon us thus? You come not

Like Caesar’s sister. The wife of Antony

Should have an army for an usher, and

45

The neighs of horse to tell of her approach

Long ere she did appear. The trees by th’ way

Should have borne men, and expectation fainted,

Longing for what it had not. Nay, the dust

Should have ascended to the roof of heaven,

50

Raised by your populous troops. But you are come

A market maid to Rome, and have prevented

The ostentation of our love which, left unshown,

Is often left unloved. We should have met you

By sea and land, supplying every stage

55

With an augmented greeting.

OCTAVIA     Good my lord,

To come thus was I not constrained, but did it

On my free will. My lord, Mark Antony,

Hearing that you prepared for war, acquainted

My grieved ear withal, whereon I begged

60

His pardon for return.

CAESAR     Which soon he granted,

Being an abstract ’tween his lust and him.

OCTAVIA     Do not say so, my lord.

CAESAR     I have eyes upon him,

And his affairs come to me on the wind.

Where is he now?

OCTAVIA     My lord, in Athens.

CAESAR     No,

65

My most wronged sister. Cleopatra hath

Nodded him to her. He hath given his empire

Up to a whore, who now are levying

The kings o’th’ earth for war. He hath assembled

Bocchus the King of Libya, Archelaus

70

Of Cappadocia, Philadelphos King

Of Paphlagonia, the Thracian King Adallas,

King Manchus of Arabia, King of Pont,

Herod of Jewry, Mithridates King

Of Comagene, Polemon and Amyntas,

75

The Kings of Mede and Lycaonia,

With a more larger list of sceptres.

OCTAVIA     Ay me, most wretched,

That have my heart parted betwixt two friends

That does afflict each other!

CAESAR     Welcome hither.

80

Your letters did withhold our breaking forth

Till we perceived both how you were wrong led

And we in negligent danger. Cheer your heart.

Be you not troubled with the time, which drives

O’er your content these strong necessities,

85

But let determined things to destiny

Hold unbewailed their way. Welcome to Rome,

Nothing more dear to me! You are abused

Beyond the mark of thought, and the high gods,

To do you justice, makes his ministers

90

Of us and those that love you. Best of comfort,

And ever welcome to us.

AGRIPPA     Welcome, lady.

MAECENAS     Welcome, dear madam.

Each heart in Rome does love and pity you.

Only th’adulterous Antony, most large

95

In his abominations, turns you off

And gives his potent regiment to a trull

That noises it against us.

OCTAVIA     Is it so, sir?

CAESAR     Most certain. Sister, welcome. Pray you

Be ever known to patience. My dear’st sister! Exeunt.

100

3.7 Enter CLEOPATRA and ENOBARBUS.

CLEOPATRA     I will be even with thee, doubt it not.

ENOBARBUS     But why, why, why?

CLEOPATRA

Thou hast forspoke my being in these wars

And say’st it is not fit.

ENOBARBUS     Well, is it, is it?

CLEOPATRA

Is’t not denounced against us? Why should not we

5

Be there in person?

ENOBARBUS     Well, I could reply

If we should serve with horse and mares together,

The horse were merely lost. The mares would bear

A soldier and his horse.

CLEOPATRA     What is’t you say?

ENOBARBUS     Your presence needs must puzzle Antony,

10

Take from his heart, take from his brain, from’s time

What should not then be spared. He is already

Traduced for levity, and ’tis said in Rome

That Photinus, an eunuch and your maids

Manage this war.

CLEOPATRA     Sink Rome, and their tongues rot

15

That speak against us! A charge we bear i’th’ war,

And, as the president of my kingdom, will

Appear there for a man. Speak not against it!

I will not stay behind.

Enter ANTONY and CANIDIUS.

ENOBARBUS     Nay, I have done.

Here comes the Emperor.

ANTONY     Is it not strange, Canidius,

20

That from Tarentum and Brundusium

He could so quickly cut the Ionian sea

And take in Toryne? You have heard on’t, sweet?

CLEOPATRA     Celerity is never more admired

Than by the negligent.

ANTONY     A good rebuke,

25

Which might have well becomed the best of men,

To taunt at slackness. Canidius, we

Will fight with him by sea.

CLEOPATRA     By sea – what else?

CANIDIUS     Why will my lord do so?

ANTONY     For that he dares us to’t.

ENOBARBUS     So hath my lord dared him to single fight.

30

CANIDIUS     Ay, and to wage this battle at Pharsalia,

Where Caesar fought with Pompey. But these offers,

Which serve not for his vantage, he shakes off,

And so should you.

ENOBARBUS     Your ships are not well manned,

Your mariners are muleteers, reapers, people

35

Engrossed by swift impress. In Caesar’s fleet

Are those that often have ’gainst Pompey fought;

Their ships are yare, yours heavy. No disgrace

Shall fall you for refusing him at sea,

Being prepared for land.

ANTONY     By sea, by sea.

40

ENOBARBUS     Most worthy sir, you therein throw away

The absolute soldiership you have by land;

Distract your army, which doth most consist

Of war-marked footmen; leave unexecuted

Your own renowned knowledge; quite forgo

45

The way which promises assurance; and

Give up yourself merely to chance and hazard

From firm security.

ANTONY     I’ll fight at sea.

CLEOPATRA     I have sixty sails, Caesar none better.

ANTONY     Our overplus of shipping will we burn,

50

And with the rest full-manned, from th’head of

Actium

Beat th’approaching Caesar. But if we fail,

We then can do’t at land.

Enter a Messenger.

     Thy business?

MESSENGER     The news is true, my lord; he is descried.

Caesar     has taken Toryne.

55

ANTONY     Can he be there in person? ’Tis impossible;

Strange that his power should be. Canidius,

Our nineteen legions thou shalt hold by land

And our twelve thousand horse. We’ll to our ship.

Away, my Thetis!

Enter a Soldier.

     How now, worthy soldier?

60

SOLDIER     O noble Emperor, do not fight by sea.

Trust not to rotten planks. Do you misdoubt

This sword and these my wounds? Let th’Egyptians

And the Phoenicians go a-ducking; we

Have used to conquer standing on the earth

65

And fighting foot to foot.

ANTONY     Well, well, away!

Exeunt Antony, Cleopatra and Enobarbus.

SOLDIER     By Hercules, I think I am i’th’ right.

CANIDIUS

Soldier, thou art. But his whole action grows

Not in the power on’t. So our leader’s led,

And we are women’s men.

SOLDIER     You keep by land

70

The legions and the horse whole, do you not?

CANIDIUS     Marcus Octavius, Marcus Justeius,

Publicola and Caelius are for sea,

But we keep whole by land. This speed of Caesar’s

Carries beyond belief.

SOLDIER     While he was yet in Rome,

75

His power went out in such distractions as

Beguiled all spies.

CANIDIUS     Who’s his lieutenant, hear you?

SOLDIER     They say one Taurus.

CANIDIUS     Well I know the man.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     The Emperor calls Canidius.

CANIDIUS

With news the time’s in labour, and throws forth

80

Each minute some.     Exeunt.

3.8 Enter CAESAR and TAURUS with his army, marching.

CAESAR     Taurus!

TAURUS     My lord?

CAESAR

Strike not by land; keep whole; provoke not battle

Till we have done at sea. Do not exceed

The prescript of this scroll. [Gives him a scroll.]

     Our fortune lies

5

Upon this jump.     Exeunt.

3.9 Enter ANTONY and ENOBARBUS.

ANTONY     Set we our squadrons on yond side o’th’ hill

In eye of Caesar’s battle, from which place

We may the number of the ships behold

And so proceed accordingly.     Exeunt.

3.10 CANIDIUS marcheth with his land army one way over the stage, and TAURUS, the lieutenant of Caesar, the other way. After their going in, is heard the noise of a sea fight.

Alarum. Enter ENOBARBUS.

ENOBARBUS

Naught, naught, all naught! I can behold no longer!

Th’Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,

With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder.

To see’t mine eyes are blasted.

Enter SCARUS.

SCARUS     Gods and goddesses!

All the whole synod of them!

ENOBARBUS     What’s thy passion?

5

SCARUS     The greater cantle of the world is lost

With very ignorance. We have kissed away

Kingdoms and provinces.

ENOBARBUS     How appears the fight?

SCARUS     On our side, like the tokened pestilence

Where death is sure. Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt –

10

Whom leprosy o’ertake! – i’th’ midst o’th’ fight

When vantage like a pair of twins appeared

Both as the same – or, rather, ours the elder –

The breeze upon her, like a cow in June,

Hoists sails and flies.

15

ENOBARBUS     That I beheld.

Mine eyes did sicken at the sight and could not

Endure a further view.

SCARUS     She once being loofed,

The noble ruin of her magic, Antony,

Claps on his sea-wing and, like a doting mallard,

20

Leaving the fight in height, flies after her.

I never saw an action of such shame.

Experience, manhood, honour, ne’er before

Did violate so itself.

ENOBARBUS     Alack, alack!

Enter CANIDIUS.

CANIDIUS     Our fortune on the sea is out of breath

25

And sinks most lamentably. Had our general

Been what he knew – himself – it had gone well.

Oh, he has given example for our flight

Most grossly by his own!

ENOBARBUS     Ay, are you thereabouts?

Why then, good night indeed.

30

CANIDIUS     Toward Peloponnesus are they fled.

SCARUS     ’Tis easy to’t, and there I will attend

What further comes.

CANIDIUS     To Caesar will I render

My legions and my horse. Six kings already

Show me the way of yielding.

ENOBARBUS     I’ll yet follow

35

The wounded chance of Antony, though my reason

Sits in the wind against me.

Exit at one door Canidius,

at the other Scarus and Enobarbus.

3.11 Enter ANTONY with attendants.

ANTONY

Hark! The land bids me tread no more upon’t;

It is ashamed to bear me. Friends, come hither.

I am so lated in the world that I

Have lost my way for ever. I have a ship

Laden with gold. Take that, divide it. Fly

5

And make your peace with Caesar.

ALL     Fly? Not we.

ANTONY

I have fled myself and have instructed cowards

To run and show their shoulders. Friends, be gone.

I have myself resolved upon a course

Which has no need of you. Be gone.

10

My treasure’s in the harbour. Take it. O,

I followed that I blush to look upon.

My very hairs do mutiny, for the white

Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them

For fear and doting. Friends, be gone. You shall

15

Have letters from me to some friends that will

Sweep your way for you. Pray you, look not sad

Nor make replies of loathness; take the hint

Which my despair proclaims. Let that be left

Which leaves itself. To the sea-side straightway.

20

I will possess you of that ship and treasure.

Leave me, I pray, a little – pray you, now;

Nay, do so; for indeed I have lost command;

Therefore, I pray you. I’ll see you by and by.

Exeunt attendants. Antony sits down.

Enter CLEOPATRA led by CHARMIAN, IRAS and EROS.

EROS     Nay, gentle madam, to him! Comfort him.

25

IRAS     Do, most dear queen.

CHARMIAN     Do? Why, what else?

CLEOPATRA     Let me sit down. O, Juno!

ANTONY     No, no, no, no, no!

EROS     See you here, sir?

30

ANTONY     O fie, fie, fie!

CHARMIAN     Madam!

IRAS     Madam! O, good empress!

EROS     Sir, sir!

ANTONY     Yes, my lord, yes. He at Philippi kept

35

His sword e’en like a dancer, while I struck

The lean and wrinkled Cassius, and ’twas I

That the mad Brutus ended. He alone

Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had

In the brave squares of war. Yet now – no matter.

40

CLEOPATRA     Ah, stand by.

EROS     The Queen, my lord! The Queen!

IRAS     Go to him, madam; speak to him.

He is unqualitied with very shame.

CLEOPATRA     Well then, sustain me. O!

45

EROS     Most noble sir, arise. The Queen approaches.

Her head’s declined, and death will seize her but

Your comfort makes the rescue.

ANTONY     I have offended reputation,

A most unnoble swerving.

EROS     Sir, the Queen!

50

ANTONY     O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt? See

How I convey my shame out of thine eyes

By looking back what I have left behind

’Stroyed in dishonour.

CLEOPATRA     O, my lord, my lord,

Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought

55

You would have followed.

ANTONY     Egypt, thou knewst too well

My heart was to thy rudder tied by th’ strings

And thou shouldst tow me after. O’er my spirit

Thy full supremacy thou knewst, and that

Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods

60

Command me.

CLEOPATRA     O, my pardon!

ANTONY     Now I must

To the young man send humble treaties; dodge

And palter in the shifts of lowness, who

With half the bulk o’th’ world played as I pleased,

Making and marring fortunes. You did know

65

How much you were my conqueror, and that

My sword, made weak by my affection, would

Obey it on all cause.

CLEOPATRA     Pardon, pardon!

ANTONY     Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates

All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss. [They kiss.]

70

Even this repays me.

We sent our schoolmaster. Is a come back?

Love, I am full of lead. Some wine

Within there and our viands! Fortune knows

We scorn her most when most she offers blows.

75

Exeunt.

3.12 Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, DOLABELLA and THIDIAS with others.

CAESAR     Let him appear that’s come from Antony.

Know you him?

DOLABELLA     Caesar, ’tis his schoolmaster;

An argument that he is plucked, when hither

He sends so poor a pinion of his wing,

Which had superfluous kings for messengers

5

Not many moons gone by.

Enter Ambassador from Antony.

CAESAR     Approach, and speak.

AMBASSADOR     Such as I am, I come from Antony.

I was of late as petty to his ends

As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf

To his grand sea.

CAESAR     Be’t so. Declare thine office.

10

AMBASSADOR     Lord of his fortunes he salutes thee, and

Requires to live in Egypt; which not granted,

He lessens his requests and to thee sues

To let him breathe between the heavens and earth,

A private man in Athens. This for him.

15

Next, Cleopatra does confess thy greatness,

Submits her to thy might, and of thee craves

The circle of the Ptolemies for her heirs,

Now hazarded to thy grace.

CAESAR     For Antony,

I have no ears to his request. The Queen

20

Of audience nor desire shall fail, so she

From Egypt drive her all-disgraced friend

Or take his life there. This if she perform,

She shall not sue unheard. So to them both.

AMBASSADOR     Fortune pursue thee!

CAESAR     Bring him through the bands.

25

     Exit Ambassador, attended.

[to Thidias]

To try thy eloquence now ’tis time. Dispatch.

From Antony win Cleopatra; promise,

And in our name, what she requires; add more,

From thine invention, offers. Women are not

In their best fortunes strong, but want will perjure

30

The ne’er-touch’d vestal. Try thy cunning, Thidias;

Make thine own edict for thy pains, which we

Will answer as a law.

THIDIAS     Caesar, I go.

CAESAR     Observe how Antony becomes his flaw,

And what thou think’st his very action speaks

35

In every power that moves.

THIDIAS     Caesar, I shall.     Exeunt.

3.13 Enter CLEOPATRA, ENOBARBUS, CHARMIAN and IRAS.

CLEOPATRA     What shall we do, Enobarbus?

ENOBARBUS     Think, and die.

CLEOPATRA     Is Antony or we in fault for this?

ENOBARBUS     Antony only, that would make his will

Lord of his reason. What though you fled

From that great face of war, whose several ranges

5

Frighted each other? Why should he follow?

The itch of his affection should not then

Have nicked his captainship, at such a point,

When half to half the world opposed, he being

The mered question. ’Twas a shame no less

10

Than was his loss, to course your flying flags

And leave his navy gazing.

CLEOPATRA     Prithee, peace.

Enter the Ambassador with ANTONY.

ANTONY     Is that his answer?

AMBASSADOR     Ay, my lord.

ANTONY     The Queen shall then have courtesy, so she

15

Will yield us up.

AMBASSADOR     He says so.

ANTONY     Let her know’t.

To the boy Caesar send this grizzled head,

And he will fill thy wishes to the brim

With principalities.

CLEOPATRA     That head, my lord?

ANTONY     To him again! Tell him he wears the rose

20

Of youth upon him, from which the world should

note

Something particular. His coin, ships, legions,

May be a coward’s, whose ministers would prevail

Under the service of a child as soon

As i’th’ command of Caesar. I dare him therefore

25

To lay his gay caparisons apart

And answer me declined, sword against sword,

Ourselves alone. I’ll write it. Follow me.

     Exeunt Antony and Ambassador.

ENOBARBUS     [aside]

Yes, like enough high-battled Caesar will

Unstate his happiness, and be staged to th’ show

30

Against a sworder! I see men’s judgements are

A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward

Do draw the inward quality after them

To suffer all alike. That he should dream,

Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will

35

Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdued

His judgement too.

Enter a Servant.

SERVANT     A messenger from Caesar.

CLEOPATRA

What, no more ceremony? See, my women,

Against the blown rose they may stop their nose

40

That kneeled unto the buds. Admit him, sir.

     Exit Servant.

ENOBARBUS     [aside]

Mine honesty and I begin to square.

The loyalty well held to fools does make

Our faith mere folly. Yet he that can endure

To follow with allegiance a fallen lord

45

Does conquer him that did his master conquer,

And earns a place i’th’ story.

Enter THIDIAS.

CLEOPATRA     Caesar’s will?

THIDIAS     Hear it apart.

CLEOPATRA     None but friends. Say boldly.

50

THIDIAS     So haply are they friends to Antony.

ENOBARBUS     He needs as many, sir, as Caesar has,

Or needs not us. If Caesar please, our master

Will leap to be his friend. For us, you know,

Whose he is we are, and that is Caesar’s.

THIDIAS     So.

55

Thus then, thou most renowned: Caesar entreats

Not to consider in what case thou stand’st

Further than he is Caesar.

CLEOPATRA     Go on; right royal.

THIDIAS     He knows that you embrace not Antony

As you did love, but as you feared him.

CLEOPATRA     O!

60

THIDIAS     The scars upon your honour, therefore, he

Does pity as constrained blemishes,

Not as deserved.

CLEOPATRA     He is a god and knows

What is most right. Mine honour was not yielded

But conquered merely.

65

ENOBARBUS     [aside]

To be sure of that, I will ask Antony.

Sir, sir, thou art so leaky

That we must leave thee to thy sinking, for

Thy dearest quit thee.     Exit Enobarbus.

THIDIAS     Shall I say to Caesar

What you require of him? For he partly begs

70

To be desired to give. It much would please him

That of his fortunes you should make a staff

To lean upon. But it would warm his spirits

To hear from me you had left Antony

And put yourself under his shroud,

75

The universal landlord.

CLEOPATRA     What’s your name?

THIDIAS     My name is Thidias.

CLEOPATRA     Most kind messenger,

Say to great Caesar this in deputation:

I kiss his conqu’ring hand. Tell him I am prompt

To lay my crown at’s feet, and there to kneel

80

Till from his all-obeying breath I hear

The doom of Egypt.

THIDIAS     ’Tis your noblest course.

Wisdom and fortune combating together,

If that the former dare but what it can,

No chance may shake it. Give me grace to lay

85

My duty on your hand.

CLEOPATRA     [Offers him her hand.]

Your Caesar’s father oft,

When he hath mused of taking kingdoms in,

Bestowed his lips on that unworthy place

As it rained kisses.

Enter ANTONY and ENOBARBUS.

ANTONY     Favours? By Jove that thunders!

90

What art thou, fellow?

THIDIAS     One that but performs

The bidding of the fullest man and worthiest

To have command obeyed.

ENOBARBUS     [aside]     You will be whipped.

ANTONY     [Calls for servants.]

Approach there! – Ah, you kite! – Now, gods and

devils,

Authority melts from me. Of late when I cried ‘Ho!’,

95

Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth

And cry ‘Your will?’

Enter servants.

     Have you no ears? I am

Antony yet. Take hence the jack and whip him!

ENOBARBUS     [aside]

’Tis better playing with a lion’s whelp

Than with an old one dying.

ANTONY     Moon and stars!

100

Whip him! Were’t twenty of the greatest tributaries

That do acknowledge Caesar, should I find them

So saucy with the hand of she here – what’s her

name

Since she was Cleopatra? Whip him, fellows,

Till like a boy you see him cringe his face

105

And whine aloud for mercy. Take him hence!

THIDIAS     Mark Antony –

ANTONY     Tug him away! Being whipped,

Bring him again. The jack of Caesar’s shall

Bear us an errand to him.

     Exeunt servants with Thidias.

You were half blasted ere I knew you. Ha?

110

Have I my pillow left unpressed in Rome,

Forborne the getting of a lawful race,

And by a gem of women, to be abused

By one that looks on feeders?

CLEOPATRA     Good my lord –

ANTONY     You have been a boggler ever.

115

But when we in our viciousness grow hard –

O, misery on’t! – the wise gods seel our eyes,

In our own filth drop our clear judgements, make us

Adore our errors, laugh at’s while we strut

To our confusion.

CLEOPATRA     O, is’t come to this?

120

ANTONY     I found you as a morsel, cold upon

Dead Caesar’s trencher – nay, you were a fragment

Of Gnaeus Pompey’s, besides what hotter hours,

Unregistered in vulgar fame, you have

Luxuriously picked out. For I am sure,

125

Though you can guess what temperance should be,

You know not what it is.

CLEOPATRA     Wherefore is this?

ANTONY     To let a fellow that will take rewards

And say ‘God quit you!’ be familiar with

My playfellow, your hand, this kingly seal

130

And plighter of high hearts! O that I were

Upon the hill of Basan, to outroar

The horned herd! For I have savage cause,

And to proclaim it civilly were like

A haltered neck which does the hangman thank

135

For being yare about him.

Enter a Servant with THIDIAS.

     Is he whipped?

SERVANT     Soundly, my lord.

ANTONY     Cried he? And begged ’a pardon?

SERVANT     He did ask favour.

ANTONY     [to Thidias]

If that thy father live, let him repent

Thou wast not made his daughter; and be thou sorry

140

To follow Caesar in his triumph, since

Thou hast been whipped for following him. Hence-

forth

The white hand of a lady fever thee;

Shake thou to look on’t. Get thee back to Caesar;

Tell him thy entertainment. Look thou say

145

He makes me angry with him. For he seems

Proud and disdainful, harping on what I am,

Not what he knew I was. He makes me angry,

And at this time most easy ’tis to do’t,

When my good stars that were my former guides

150

Have empty left their orbs and shot their fires

Into th’abysm of hell. If he mislike

My speech and what is done, tell him he has

Hipparchus, my enfranched bondman, whom

He may at pleasure whip or hang or torture,

155

As he shall like to quit me. Urge it thou.

Hence with thy stripes! Be gone!

     Exit Thidias with Servant.

CLEOPATRA     Have you done yet?

ANTONY     Alack, our terrene moon is now eclipsed

And it portends alone the fall of Antony.

CLEOPATRA     I must stay his time.

160

ANTONY     To flatter Caesar would you mingle eyes

With one that ties his points?

CLEOPATRA     Not know me yet?

ANTONY     Cold-hearted toward me?

CLEOPATRA     Ah, dear, if I be so,

From my cold heart let heaven engender hail

And poison it in the source, and the first stone

165

Drop in my neck; as it determines, so

Dissolve my life! The next Caesarion smite,

Till by degrees the memory of my womb,

Together with my brave Egyptians all,

By the discandying of this pelleted storm

170

Lie graveless, till the flies and gnats of Nile

Have buried them for prey!

ANTONY     I am satisfied.

Caesar sets down in Alexandria, where

I will oppose his fate. Our force by land

Hath nobly held; our severed navy too

175

Have knit again, and fleet, threat’ning most sea-like.

Where hast thou been, my heart? Dost thou hear,

lady?

If from the field I shall return once more

To kiss these lips, I will appear in blood.

I and my sword will earn our chronicle.

180

There’s hope in’t yet.

CLEOPATRA     That’s my brave lord!

ANTONY     I will be treble-sinewed, hearted, breathed,

And fight maliciously. For when mine hours

Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives

185

Of me for jests. But now, I’ll set my teeth

And send to darkness all that stop me. Come,

Let’s have one other gaudy night. Call to me

All my sad captains. Fill our bowls once more.

Let’s mock the midnight bell.

CLEOPATRA     It is my birthday.

190

I had thought t’have held it poor, but since my lord

Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.

ANTONY     We will yet do well.

CLEOPATRA     [to Charmian and Iras]

Call all his noble captains to my lord!

ANTONY

Do so, we’ll speak to them; and tonight I’ll force

195

The wine peep through their scars. Come on, my

queen,

There’s sap in’t yet! The next time I do fight

I’ll make Death love me, for I will contend

Even with his pestilent scythe.

     Exeunt all but Enobarbus.

ENOBARBUS

Now he’ll outstare the lightning. To be furious

200

Is to be frighted out of fear, and in that mood

The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still

A diminution in our captain’s brain

Restores his heart. When valour preys on reason,

It eats the sword it fights with. I will seek

205

Some way to leave him.     Exit.

4.1 Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA and MAECENAS, with his army, Caesar reading a letter.

CAESAR     He calls me boy, and chides as he had power

To beat me out of Egypt. My messenger

He hath whipped with rods; dares me to personal

combat,

Caesar to Antony. Let the old ruffian know

I have many other ways to die; meantime

5

Laugh at his challenge.

MAECENAS     Caesar must think,

When one so great begins to rage, he’s hunted

Even to falling. Give him no breath, but now

Make boot of his distraction. Never anger

10

Made good guard for itself.

CAESAR     Let our best heads

Know that tomorrow the last of many battles

We mean to fight. Within our files there are,

Of those that served Mark Antony but late,

Enough to fetch him in. See it done,

15

And feast the army. We have store to do’t

And they have earned the waste. Poor Antony!

     Exeunt.

4.2 Enter ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, ENOBARBUS, CHARMIAN, IRAS, ALEXAS with others.

ANTONY     He will not fight with me, Domitius?

ENOBARBUS     No.

ANTONY     Why should he not?

ENOBARBUS

He thinks, being twenty times of better fortune,

He is twenty men to one.

ANTONY     Tomorrow, soldier,

By sea and land I’ll fight. Or I will live,

5

Or bathe my dying honour in the blood

Shall make it live again. Woo’t thou fight well?

ENOBARBUS     I’ll strike, and cry ‘Take all!’

ANTONY     Well said! Come on!

Call forth my household servants.     Exit Alexas.

     Let’s tonight

Be bounteous at our meal.

Enter three or four servitors.

     Give me thy hand.

10

Thou hast been rightly honest; so hast thou,

Thou, and thou, and thou. You have served me well

And kings have been your fellows.

CLEOPATRA     [aside to Enobarbus]     What means this?

ENOBARBUS     [aside to Cleopatra]

’Tis one of those odd tricks which sorrow shoots

Out of the mind.

ANTONY     And thou art honest too.

15

I wish I could be made so many men,

And all of you clapped up together in

An Antony, that I might do you service

So good as you have done.

ALL THE SERVANTS     The gods forbid!

ANTONY     Well, my good fellows, wait on me tonight;

20

Scant not my cups, and make as much of me

As when mine empire was your fellow too

And suffered my command.

CLEOPATRA     [aside to Enobarbus] What does he mean?

ENOBARBUS     [aside to Cleopatra]

To make his followers weep.

ANTONY     Tend me tonight.

May be it is the period of your duty.

25

Haply you shall not see me more, or if,

A mangled shadow. Perchance tomorrow

You’ll serve another master. I look on you

As one that takes his leave. Mine honest friends,

I turn you not away, but, like a master

30

Married to your good service, stay till death.

Tend me tonight two hours – I ask no more –

And the gods yield you for’t!

ENOBARBUS     What mean you, sir,

To give them this discomfort? Look, they weep,

And I, an ass, am onion-eyed. For shame!

35

Transform us not to women!

ANTONY     Ho, ho, ho!

Now the witch take me if I meant it thus!

Grace grow where those drops fall! My hearty

friends,

You take me in too dolorous a sense,

For I spake to you for your comfort, did desire you

40

To burn this night with torches. Know, my hearts,

I hope well of tomorrow, and will lead you

Where rather I’ll expect victorious life

Than death and honour. Let’s to supper, come,

And drown consideration.     Exeunt.

45

4.3 Enter through one door, First Soldier and his Company, through the other door, Second Soldier.

1 SOLDIER     Brother, good night. Tomorrow is the day.

2 SOLDIER     It will determine one way. Fare you well.

Heard you of nothing strange about the streets?

1 SOLDIER     Nothing. What news?

2 SOLDIER     Belike ’tis but a rumour. Good night to you.

5

1 SOLDIER     Well sir, good night.

Other Soldiers enter and join Second Soldier.

2 SOLDIER     Soldiers, have careful watch.

3 SOLDIER     And you. Good night, good night.

[They place themselves in every corner of the stage.]

2 SOLDIER     Here we. And if tomorrow

Our navy thrive, I have an absolute hope

10

Our landmen will stand up.

1 SOLDIER     ’Tis a brave army and full of purpose –

     [Music of the hautboys is under the stage.]

2 SOLDIER     Peace! What noise?

1 SOLDIER     List, list!

2 SOLDIER     Hark!

15

1 SOLDIER     Music i’th’ air.

3 SOLDIER     Under the earth.

4 SOLDIER     It signs well, does it not?

3 SOLDIER     No.

1 SOLDIER     Peace, I say! What should this mean?

20

2 SOLDIER     ’Tis the god Hercules whom Antony loved

Now leaves him.

1 SOLDIER     Walk. Let’s see if other watchmen

Do hear what we do.

2 SOLDIER     How now, masters? [Speak together.]

ALL     How now? How now? Do you hear this?

25

1 SOLDIER     Ay. Is’t not strange?

3 SOLDIER     Do you hear, masters? Do you hear?

1 SOLDIER     Follow the noise so far as we have quarter.

Let’s see how it will give off.

ALL     Content. ’Tis strange.

     Exeunt.

4.4 Enter ANTONY and CLEOPATRA with CHARMIAN and others.

ANTONY     Eros! Mine armour, Eros!

CLEOPATRA     Sleep a little.

ANTONY

No, my chuck. Eros! Come, mine armour, Eros!

Enter EROS with armour.

Come, good fellow, put thine iron on.

If fortune be not ours today, it is

Because we brave her. Come!

CLEOPATRA     Nay, I’ll help too.

5

What’s this for?

ANTONY     Ah, let be, let be! Thou art

The armourer of my heart. False, false! This, this!

CLEOPATRA     Sooth, la, I’ll help. Thus it must be.

ANTONY     Well, well!

We shall thrive now. Seest thou, my good fellow?

Go put on thy defences.

EROS     Briefly, sir.

10

CLEOPATRA     Is not this buckled well?

ANTONY     Rarely, rarely!

He that unbuckles this, till we do please

To doff ’t for our repose, shall hear a storm.

Thou fumblest, Eros, and my queen’s a squire

More tight at this than thou. Dispatch. O love,

15

That thou couldst see my wars today and knew’st

The royal occupation, thou shouldst see

A workman in’t.

Enter an armed Soldier.

     Good morrow to thee! Welcome!

Thou look’st like him that knows a warlike charge.

To business that we love we rise betime

20

And go to’t with delight.

SOLDIER     A thousand, sir,

Early though’t be, have on their riveted trim

And at the port expect you.

     [Shout. Trumpets flourish.]

Enter Captains and Soldiers.

CAPTAIN     The morn is fair. Good morrow, General!

ALL THE SOLDIERS     Good morrow, General!

ANTONY     ’Tis well blown, lads!

25

This morning, like the spirit of a youth

That means to be of note, begins betimes.

[to Cleopatra] So, so. Come, give me that. This way.

Well said.

Fare thee well, dame. Whate’er becomes of me,

This is a soldier’s kiss. [Kisses her.] Rebukable

30

And worthy shameful check it were, to stand

On more mechanic compliment. I’ll leave thee

Now like a man of steel. – You that will fight,

Follow me close, I’ll bring you to’t. Adieu.

     Exeunt all but Cleopatra and Charmian

CHARMIAN     Please you retire to your chamber?

CLEOPATRA     Lead me.

35

He goes forth gallantly. That he and Caesar might

Determine this great war in single fight!

Then Antony – but now –. Well, on.     Exeunt.

4.5 Trumpets sound. Enter ANTONY and EROS, a Soldier meeting them.

SOLDIER     The gods make this a happy day to Antony!

ANTONY

Would thou and those thy scars had once prevailed

To make me fight at land!

SOLDIER     Hadst thou done so,

The kings that have revolted and the soldier

That has this morning left thee would have still

5

Followed thy heels.

ANTONY     Who’s gone this morning?

SOLDIER     Who?

One ever near thee. Call for Enobarbus,

He shall not hear thee, or from Caesar’s camp

Say ‘I am none of thine.’

ANTONY     What sayest thou?

SOLDIER     Sir,

He is with Caesar.

EROS     Sir, his chests and treasure

10

He has not with him.

ANTONY     Is he gone?

SOLDIER     Most certain.

ANTONY     Go, Eros, send his treasure after. Do it.

Detain no jot, I charge thee. Write to him –

I will subscribe – gentle adieus and greetings.

Say that I wish he never find more cause

15

To change a master. O, my fortunes have

Corrupted honest men! Dispatch. – Enobarbus!

     Exeunt.

4.6 Flourish. Enter AGRIPPA, CAESAR, with ENOBARBUS and DOLABELLA.

CAESAR     Go forth, Agrippa, and begin the fight.

Our will is Antony be took alive.

Make it so known.

AGRIPPA     Caesar, I shall.     Exit.

CAESAR     The time of universal peace is near.

5

Prove this a prosp’rous day, the three-nooked world

Shall bear the olive freely.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     Antony

Is come into the field.

CAESAR     Go charge Agrippa

Plant those that have revolted in the van

That Antony may seem to spend his fury

10

Upon himself.     Exeunt all but Enobarbus.

ENOBARBUS     Alexas did revolt and went to Jewry on

Affairs of Antony; there did dissuade

Great Herod to incline himself to Caesar

And leave his master Antony. For this pains

15

Caesar hath hanged him. Canidius and the rest

That fell away have entertainment but

No honourable trust. I have done ill,

Of which I do accuse myself so sorely

That I will joy no more.

20

Enter a Soldier of Caesar’s.

SOLDIER     Enobarbus, Antony

Hath after thee sent all thy treasure, with

His bounty overplus. The messenger

Came on my guard, and at thy tent is now

Unloading of his mules.

ENOBARBUS     I give it you.

25

SOLDIER     Mock not, Enobarbus.

I tell you true. Best you safed the bringer

Out of the host. I must attend mine office

Or would have done’t myself. Your emperor

Continues still a Jove.     Exit.

30

ENOBARBUS     I am alone the villain of the earth,

And feel I am so most. O Antony,

Thou mine of bounty, how wouldst thou have paid

My better service, when my turpitude

Thou dost so crown with gold! This blows my heart.

35

If swift thought break it not, a swifter mean

Shall outstrike thought, but thought will do’t, I feel.

I fight against thee? No, I will go seek

Some ditch wherein to die; the foul’st best fits

My latter part of life.     Exit.

40

4.7 Alarum. Drums and trumpets. Enter AGRIPPA and others.

AGRIPPA     Retire! We have engaged ourselves too far.

Caesar     himself has work, and our oppression

Exceeds what we expected.     Exeunt.

Alarums. Enter ANTONY, and SCARUS wounded.

SCARUS     O, my brave emperor, this is fought indeed!

Had we done so at first, we had droven them home

5

With clouts about their heads.

ANTONY     Thou bleed’st apace.

SCARUS     I had a wound here that was like a T

But now ’tis made an H.     [Sound retreat far off.]

ANTONY     They do retire.

SCARUS     We’ll beat ’em into bench-holes. I have yet

Room for six scotches more.

10

Enter EROS.

EROS     They’re beaten, sir, and our advantage serves

For a fair victory.

SCARUS     Let us score their backs

And snatch ’em up as we take hares – behind!

’Tis sport to maul a runner.

ANTONY     I will reward thee

Once for thy sprightly comfort, and tenfold

15

For thy good valour. Come thee on!

SCARUS     I’ll halt after.     Exeunt.

4.8 Alarum. Enter ANTONY again in a march; SCARUS with others.

ANTONY

We have beat him to his camp. Run one before

And let the Queen know of our gests.     Exit a Soldier.

     Tomorrow,

Before the sun shall see’s, we’ll spill the blood

That has today escaped. I thank you all,

For doughty-handed are you, and have fought

5

Not as you served the cause, but as’t had been

Each man’s like mine. You have shown all Hectors.

Enter the city; clip your wives, your friends;

Tell them your feats, whilst they with joyful tears

Wash the congealment from your wounds, and kiss

10

The honoured gashes whole.

Enter CLEOPATRA.

[to Scarus]     Give me thy hand.

To this great fairy I’ll commend thy acts,

Make her thanks bless thee.

[to Cleopatra]     O thou day o’th’ world,

Chain mine armed neck! Leap thou, attire and all,

Through proof of harness to my heart, and there

15

Ride on the pants triumphing! [They embrace.]

CLEOPATRA     Lord of lords!

O infinite virtue! Com’st thou smiling from

The world’s great snare uncaught?

ANTONY     My nightingale,

We have beat them to their beds. What, girl! Though

grey

Do something mingle with our younger brown, yet

have we

20

A brain that nourishes our nerves and can

Get goal for goal of youth. Behold this man.

Commend unto his lips thy favouring hand.

[She offers Scarus her hand.]

Kiss it, my warrior. He hath fought today

As if a god in hate of mankind had

25

Destroyed in such a shape.

CLEOPATRA     I’ll give thee, friend,

An armour all of gold. It was a king’s.

ANTONY     He has deserved it, were it carbuncled

Like holy Phoebus’ car. Give me thy hand.

Through Alexandria make a jolly march;

30

Bear our hacked targets like the men that owe them.

Had our great palace the capacity

To camp this host, we all would sup together

And drink carouses to the next day’s fate

Which promises royal peril. Trumpeters,

35

With brazen din blast you the city’s ear;

Make mingle with our rattling taborins

That heaven and earth may strike their sounds

together,

Applauding our approach.     Trumpets sound. Exeunt.

4.9 Enter a Sentry and his Company of Watch. ENOBARBUS follows.

SENTRY     If we be not relieved within this hour,

We must return to th’ court of guard. The night

Is shiny, and they say we shall embattle

By th’ second hour i’th’ morn.

1 WATCH     This last day was a shrewd one to’s.

5

ENOBARBUS     O bear me witness, night –

2 WATCH     What man is this?

1 WATCH     Stand close and list him. [They stand aside.]

ENOBARBUS     Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon,

When men revolted shall upon record

10

Bear hateful memory, poor Enobarbus did

Before thy face repent.

SENTRY     Enobarbus?

2 WATCH     Peace! Hark further.

ENOBARBUS     O sovereign mistress of true melancholy,

15

The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me,

That life, a very rebel to my will,

May hang no longer on me. Throw my heart

Against the flint and hardness of my fault,

Which, being dried with grief, will break to powder

20

And finish all foul thoughts. O Antony,

Nobler than my revolt is infamous,

Forgive me in thine own particular,

But let the world rank me in register

A master-leaver and a fugitive.

25

O Antony! O Antony! [He sinks down.]

1 WATCH     Let’s speak to him.

SENTRY     Let’s hear him, for the things he speaks may

concern Caesar.

2 WATCH     Let’s do so. But he sleeps.

30

SENTRY     Swoons rather, for so bad a prayer as his was

never yet for sleep.

1 WATCH     Go we to him.

2 WATCH     Awake sir! Awake! Speak to us!

1 WATCH     Hear you, sir?

35

SENTRY     The hand of death hath raught him. Hark!

[Drums afar off.]     The drums

Demurely wake the sleepers. Let us bear him

To th’ court of guard. He is of note. Our hour

Is fully out.

2 WATCH     Come on, then. He may recover yet.

40

     Exeunt with the body.

4.10 Enter ANTONY and SCARUS with their army.

ANTONY     Their preparation is today by sea;

We please them not by land.

SCARUS     For both, my lord.

ANTONY

I would they’d fight i’th’ fire or i’th’ air;

We’d fight there too. But this it is: our foot

Upon the hills adjoining to the city

5

Shall stay with us – order for sea is given;

They have put forth the haven –

Where their appointment we may best discover

And look on their endeavour.     Exeunt.

4.11 Enter CAESAR and his army.

CAESAR     But being charged we will be still by land,

Which, as I take’t, we shall, for his best force

Is forth to man his galleys. To the vales,

And hold our best advantage.     Exeunt.

4.12 Alarum afar off, as at a sea fight. Enter ANTONY and SCARUS.

ANTONY

Yet they are not joined. Where yond pine does stand

I shall discover all. I’ll bring thee word

Straight how ’tis like to go.     Exit.

SCARUS     Swallows have built

In Cleopatra’s sails their nests. The augurs

Say they know not, they cannot tell; look grimly,

5

And dare not speak their knowledge. Antony

Is valiant and dejected, and by starts

His fretted fortunes give him hope and fear

Of what he has and has not.

Enter ANTONY.

ANTONY     All is lost!

This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me.

10

My fleet hath yielded to the foe, and yonder

They cast their caps up and carouse together

Like friends long lost. Triple-turned whore! ’Tis

thou

Hast sold me to this novice, and my heart

Makes only wars on thee. Bid them all fly!

15

For when I am revenged upon my charm,

I have done all. Bid them all fly! Be gone!

     Exit Scarus.

O sun, thy uprise shall I see no more.

Fortune and Antony part here; even here

Do we shake hands. All come to this! The hearts

20

That spanieled me at heels, to whom I gave

Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets

On blossoming Caesar, and this pine is barked

That overtopped them all. Betrayed I am.

O this false soul of Egypt! This grave charm

25

Whose eye becked forth my wars and called them

home,

Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,

Like a right gipsy hath at fast and loose

Beguiled me to the very heart of loss.

What, Eros, Eros!

Enter CLEOPATRA.

     Ah, thou spell! Avaunt!

30

CLEOPATRA     Why is my lord enraged against his love?

ANTONY     Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving

And blemish Caesar’s triumph. Let him take thee

And hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians!

Follow his chariot like the greatest spot

35

Of all thy sex; most monster-like be shown

For poor’st diminutives, for dolts, and let

Patient Octavia plough thy visage up

With her prepared nails!     Exit Cleopatra.

     ’Tis well thou’rt gone

If it be well to live. But better ’twere

40

Thou fell’st into my fury, for one death

Might have prevented many. Eros, ho!

The shirt of Nessus is upon me. Teach me

Alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage;

Let me lodge Lichas on the horns o’th’ moon,

45

And with those hands that grasped the heaviest club

Subdue my worthiest self. The witch shall die.

To the young Roman boy she hath sold me, and I fall

Under this plot. She dies for’t. Eros, ho!     Exit.

4.13 Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, MARDIAN.

CLEOPATRA     Help me, my women! O, he’s more mad

Than Telamon for his shield; the boar of Thessaly

Was never so embossed.

CHARMIAN     To th’ monument!

There lock yourself and send him word you are dead.

The soul and body rive not more in parting

5

Than greatness going off.

CLEOPATRA     To th’ monument!

Mardian, go tell him I have slain myself.

Say that the last I spoke was ‘Antony’,

And word it, prithee, piteously. Hence, Mardian,

And bring me how he takes my death. To th’

monument!     Exeunt.

10

4.14 Enter ANTONY and EROS.

ANTONY     Eros, thou yet behold’st me?

EROS     Ay, noble lord.

ANTONY     Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish,

A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,

A towered citadel, a pendent rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontory

5

With trees upon’t that nod unto the world

And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these

signs?

They are black vesper’s pageants.

EROS     Ay, my lord.

ANTONY

That which is now a horse, even with a thought

The rack dislimns and makes it indistinct

10

As water is in water.

EROS     It does, my lord.

ANTONY     My good knave Eros, now thy captain is

Even such a body. Here I am Antony,

Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave.

I made these wars for Egypt, and the Queen –

15

Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine,

Which, whilst it was mine, had annexed unto’t

A million more, now lost – she, Eros, has

Packed cards with Caesar, and false-played my glory

Unto an enemy’s triumph.

20

Nay, weep not, gentle Eros. There is left us

Ourselves to end ourselves.

Enter MARDIAN.

     O thy vile lady!

She has robbed me of my sword.

MARDIAN     No, Antony,

My mistress loved thee and her fortunes mingled

With thine entirely.

ANTONY     Hence, saucy eunuch! Peace!

25

She hath betrayed me and shall die the death.

MARDIAN     Death of one person can be paid but once,

And that she has discharged. What thou wouldst do

Is done unto thy hand. The last she spake

Was ‘Antony! Most noble Antony!’

30

Then, in the midst, a tearing groan did break

The name of Antony; it was divided

Between her heart and lips. She rendered life,

Thy name so buried in her.

ANTONY     Dead, then?

MARDIAN     Dead.

ANTONY     Unarm, Eros. The long day’s task is done

35

And we must sleep.

[to Mardian] That thou depart’st hence safe

Does pay thy labour richly. Go.     Exit Mardian.

Off! Pluck off! [Eros unarms him.]

The sevenfold shield of Ajax cannot keep

The battery from my heart. O, cleave, my sides!

40

Heart, once be stronger than thy continent;

Crack thy frail case! Apace, Eros, apace!

No more a soldier; bruised pieces go;

You have been nobly borne. From me awhile.

     Exit Eros.

I will o’ertake thee, Cleopatra, and

45

Weep for my pardon. So it must be, for now

All length is torture; since the torch is out,

Lie down and stray no farther. Now all labour

Mars what it does – yea, very force entangles

Itself with strength. Seal then, and all is done.

50

Eros! – I come, my queen. – Eros! – Stay for me.

Where souls do couch on flowers we’ll hand in hand

And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze.

Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,

And all the haunt be ours. Come Eros! Eros!

55

Enter EROS.

EROS     What would my lord?

ANTONY     Since Cleopatra died,

I have lived in such dishonour that the gods

Detest my baseness. I, that with my sword

Quartered the world and o’er green Neptune’s back

With ships made cities, condemn myself to lack

60

The courage of a woman; less noble mind

Than she which, by her death, our Caesar tells

‘I am conqueror of myself.’ Thou art sworn, Eros,

That when the exigent should come – which now

Is come indeed – when I should see behind me

65

Th’inevitable prosecution of

Disgrace and horror, that on my command

Thou then wouldst kill me. Do’t. The time is come.

Thou strik’st not me; ’tis Caesar thou defeat’st.

Put colour in thy cheek.

EROS     The gods withhold me!

70

Shall I do that which all the Parthian darts,

Though enemy, lost aim and could not?

ANTONY     Eros,

Wouldst thou be windowed in great Rome and see

Thy master thus with pleached arms, bending down

His corrigible neck, his face subdued

75

To penetrative shame, whilst the wheeled seat

Of fortunate Caesar, drawn before him, branded

His baseness that ensued?

EROS     I would not see’t.

ANTONY

Come, then! For with a wound I must be cured.

Draw that thy honest sword which thou hast worn

80

Most useful for thy country.

EROS     O sir, pardon me!

ANTONY

When I did make thee free, swor’st thou not then

To do this when I bade thee? Do it at once,

Or thy precedent services are all

But accidents unpurposed. Draw, and come!

85

EROS     Turn from me then that noble countenance

Wherein the worship of the whole world lies.

ANTONY     [Turns from him.] Lo thee!

EROS     My sword is drawn.

ANTONY     Then let it do at once

The thing why thou hast drawn it.

EROS     My dear master,

90

My captain and my emperor, let me say,

Before I strike this bloody stroke, farewell.

ANTONY     ’Tis said, man, and farewell.

EROS     Farewell, great chief. Shall I strike now?

ANTONY     Now, Eros.

EROS     Why, there then! [Kills himself.]

     Thus I do escape the sorrow

95

Of Antony’s death.

ANTONY     Thrice nobler than myself!

Thou teachest me, O valiant Eros, what

I should and thou couldst not! My queen and Eros

Have by their brave instruction got upon me

A nobleness in record. But I will be

100

A bridegroom in my death and run into’t

As to a lover’s bed. Come then! And, Eros,

Thy master dies thy scholar. To do thus

[Falls on his sword.]

I learned of thee. How? Not dead? Not dead?

The guard, ho! O, dispatch me.

Enter a Company of the Guard, one of them DERCETUS.

1 GUARD     What’s the noise?

105

ANTONY

I have done my work ill, friends. O make an end

Of what I have begun.

2 GUARD     The star is fallen.

1 GUARD     And time is at his period.

ALL THE GUARD     Alas and woe!

ANTONY     Let him that loves me strike me dead.

1 GUARD     Not I!

2 GUARD     Nor I!

110

3 GUARD     Nor any one!

     Exeunt all the Guard but Dercetus.

DERCETUS

Thy death and fortunes bid thy followers fly.

This sword but shown to Caesar with this tidings

Shall enter me with him. [Takes up Antony’s sword.]

Enter DIOMEDES.

DIOMEDES     Where’s Antony?

115

DERCETUS     There, Diomed, there!

DIOMEDES     Lives he? Wilt thou not answer, man?

     Exit Dercetus with the sword of Antony.

ANTONY

Art thou there, Diomed? Draw thy sword and give

me

Sufficing strokes for death.

DIOMEDES     Most absolute lord,

My mistress Cleopatra sent me to thee.

120

ANTONY     When did she send thee?

DIOMEDES     Now, my lord.

ANTONY     Where is she?

DIOMEDES

Locked in her monument. She had a prophesying

fear

Of what hath come to pass, for when she saw –

Which never shall be found – you did suspect

She had disposed with Caesar, and that your rage

125

Would not be purged, she sent you word she was

dead,

But fearing since how it might work, hath sent

Me to proclaim the truth, and I am come,

I dread, too late.

ANTONY

Too late, good Diomed. Call my guard, I prithee.

130

DIOMEDES

What ho! The Emperor’s guard! The guard, what ho!

Come, your lord calls!

Enter four or five of the Guard of Antony.

ANTONY

Bear me, good friends, where Cleopatra bides.

’Tis the last service that I shall command you.

1 GUARD

Woe, woe are we, sir! You may not live to wear

135

All your true followers out.

ALL THE GUARD     Most heavy day!

ANTONY

Nay, good my fellows, do not please sharp fate

To grace it with your sorrows. Bid that welcome

Which comes to punish us, and we punish it,

Seeming to bear it lightly. Take me up.

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I have led you oft; carry me now, good friends,

And have my thanks for all.

     Exeunt, bearing Antony and Eros.

4.15 Enter CLEOPATRA and her maids aloft, with CHARMIAN and IRAS.

CLEOPATRA     O Charmian, I will never go from hence.

CHARMIAN     Be comforted, dear madam.

CLEOPATRA     No, I will not.

All strange and terrible events are welcome,

But comforts we despise. Our size of sorrow,

Proportioned to our cause, must be as great

5

As that which makes it.

Enter DIOMEDES below.

     How now? Is he dead?

DIOMEDES     His death’s upon him, but not dead.

Look out o’th’ other side your monument;

His guard have brought him thither.

Enter below ANTONY borne by the Guard.

CLEOPATRA     O sun,

10

Burn the great sphere thou mov’st in! Darkling stand

The varying shore o’th’ world! O Antony,

Antony, Antony! Help, Charmian! Help, Iras, help!

Help, friends below! Let’s draw him hither.

ANTONY     Peace!

Not Caesar’s valour hath o’erthrown Antony,

15

But Antony’s hath triumphed on itself.

CLEOPATRA     So it should be that none but Antony

Should conquer Antony, but woe ’tis so.

ANTONY     I am dying, Egypt, dying. Only

I here importune death awhile until

20

Of many thousand kisses the poor last

I lay upon thy lips.

CLEOPATRA     I dare not, dear.

Dear my lord, pardon. I dare not

Lest I be taken. Not th’imperious show

Of the full-fortuned Caesar ever shall

25

Be brooched with me. If knife, drugs, serpents, have

Edge, sting or operation, I am safe.

Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes

And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour

Demuring upon me. But come, come Antony –

30

Help me, my women – we must draw thee up.

Assist, good friends! [They begin lifting.]

ANTONY     O quick, or I am gone!

CLEOPATRA

Here’s sport indeed! How heavy weighs my lord!

Our strength is all gone into heaviness;

That makes the weight. Had I great Juno’s power,

35

The strong-winged Mercury should fetch thee up

And set thee by Jove’s side. Yet come a little;

Wishers were ever fools. O come, come, come,

[They heave Antony aloft to Cleopatra.]

And welcome, welcome! Die when thou hast lived;

Quicken with kissing. Had my lips that power,

40

Thus would I wear them out. [Kisses him.]

ALL THE GUARD     Ah, heavy sight!

ANTONY     I am dying, Egypt, dying.

Give me some wine and let me speak a little –

CLEOPATRA     No, let me speak, and let me rail so high

45

That the false huswife Fortune break her wheel,

Provoked by my offence –

ANTONY     One word, sweet queen:

Of Caesar seek your honour with your safety. O!

CLEOPATRA     They do not go together.

ANTONY     Gentle, hear me.

None about Caesar trust but Proculeius.

50

CLEOPATRA     My resolution and my hands I’ll trust;

None about Caesar.

ANTONY     The miserable change now at my end,

Lament nor sorrow at, but please your thoughts

In feeding them with those my former fortunes

55

Wherein I lived the greatest prince o’th’ world,

The noblest; and do now not basely die,

Not cowardly put off my helmet to

My countryman; a Roman by a Roman

Valiantly vanquished. Now my spirit is going;

60

I can no more.

CLEOPATRA     Noblest of men, woo’t die?

Hast thou no care of me? Shall I abide

In this dull world, which in thy absence is

No better than a sty? O see, my women,

The crown o’th’ earth doth melt. My lord!

65

[Antony dies.]

O withered is the garland of the war,

The soldier’s pole is fallen; young boys and girls

Are level now with men; the odds is gone

And there is nothing left remarkable

Beneath the visiting moon. [She faints.]

CHARMIAN     O quietness, lady!

70

IRAS     She’s dead too, our sovereign.

CHARMIAN     Lady!

IRAS     Madam!

CHARMIAN     O madam, madam, madam!

IRAS     Royal Egypt! Empress! [Cleopatra stirs.]

75

CHARMIAN     Peace, peace, Iras.

CLEOPATRA

No more but e’en a woman, and commanded

By such poor passion as the maid that milks

And does the meanest chares. It were for me

To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods

80

To tell them that this world did equal theirs

Till they had stolen our jewel. All’s but naught;

Patience is sottish, and impatience does

Become a dog that’s mad. Then is it sin

To rush into the secret house of death

85

Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women?

What, what, good cheer! Why, how now, Charmian?

My noble girls! Ah, women, women! Look,

Our lamp is spent, it’s out. Good sirs, take heart.

We’ll bury him, and then what’s brave, what’s noble,

90

Let’s do’t after the high Roman fashion

And make death proud to take us. Come, away.

This case of that huge spirit now is cold.

Ah, women, women! Come, we have no friend

But resolution and the briefest end.

95

     Exeunt, bearing off Antony’s body.

5.1 Enter CAESAR with his Council of War: AGRIPPA, DOLABELLA, MAECENAS, PROCULEIUS, GALLUS.

CAESAR     Go to him, Dolabella, bid him yield.

Being so frustrate, tell him, he mocks

The pauses that he makes.

DOLABELLA     Caesar, I shall.     Exit.

Enter DERCETUS with the sword of Antony.

CAESAR

Wherefore is that? And what art thou that dar’st

Appear thus to us?

DERCETUS     I am called Dercetus.

5

Mark Antony I served, who best was worthy

Best to be served. Whilst he stood up and spoke

He was my master, and I wore my life

To spend upon his haters. If thou please

To take me to thee, as I was to him

10

I’ll be to Caesar. If thou pleasest not,

I yield thee up my life.

CAESAR     What is’t thou say’st?

DERCETUS     I say, O Caesar, Antony is dead.

CAESAR     The breaking of so great a thing should make

A greater crack. The round world

15

Should have shook lions into civil streets

And citizens to their dens. The death of Antony

Is not a single doom; in the name lay

A moiety of the world.

DERCETUS     He is dead, Caesar,

Not by a public minister of justice,

20

Nor by a hired knife, but that self hand

Which writ his honour in the acts it did

Hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it,

Splitted the heart. This is his sword;

I robbed his wound of it. Behold it stained

25

With his most noble blood.

CAESAR     [Points to the sword.] Look you, sad friends.

The gods rebuke me, but it is tidings

To wash the eyes of kings.

AGRIPPA     And strange it is

That nature must compel us to lament

Our most persisted deeds.

MAECENAS     His taints and honours

30

Waged equal with him.

AGRIPPA     A rarer spirit never

Did steer humanity; but you gods will give us

Some faults to make us men. Caesar is touched.

MAECENAS

When such a spacious mirror’s set before him,

He needs must see himself.

CAESAR     O Antony,

35

I have followed thee to this; but we do launch

Diseases in our bodies. I must perforce

Have shown to thee such a declining day

Or look on thine. We could not stall together

In the whole world. But yet let me lament

40

With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts

That thou, my brother, my competitor

In top of all design, my mate in empire,

Friend and companion in the front of war,

The arm of mine own body, and the heart

45

Where mine his thoughts did kindle, that our stars,

Unreconciliable, should divide

Our equalness to this. Hear me, good friends –

Enter an Egyptian.

But I will tell you at some meeter season.

The business of this man looks out of him;

50

We’ll hear him what he says. Whence are you?

EGYPTIAN

A poor Egyptian yet. The Queen, my mistress,

Confined in all she has, her monument,

Of thy intents desires instruction,

That she preparedly may frame herself

55

To th’ way she’s forced to.

CAESAR     Bid her have good heart.

She soon shall know of us, by some of ours,

How honourable and how kindly we

Determine for her. For Caesar cannot lean

To be ungentle.

EGYPTIAN     So the gods preserve thee!     Exit.

60

CAESAR     Come hither, Proculeius. Go and say

We purpose her no shame. Give her what comforts

The quality of her passion shall require,

Lest, in her greatness, by some mortal stroke

She do defeat us. For her life in Rome

65

Would be eternal in our triumph. Go,

And with your speediest bring us what she says

And how you find of her.

PROCULEIUS     Caesar, I shall.

CAESAR     Gallus, go you along.

     Exeunt Proculeius and Gallus.

     Where’s Dolabella

To second Proculeius?

ALL BUT CAESAR     Dolabella!

70

CAESAR     Let him alone, for I remember now

How he’s employed. He shall in time be ready.

Go with me to my tent, where you shall see

How hardly I was drawn into this war,

How calm and gentle I proceeded still

75

In all my writings. Go with me and see

What I can show in this.     Exeunt.

5.2 Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN and IRAS.

CLEOPATRA     My desolation does begin to make

A better life. ’Tis paltry to be Caesar.

Not being Fortune, he’s but Fortune’s knave,

A minister of her will. And it is great

To do that thing that ends all other deeds,

5

Which shackles accidents and bolts up change,

Which sleeps and never palates more the dung,

The beggar’s nurse and Caesar’s.

Enter PROCULEIUS.

PROCULEIUS

Caesar sends greeting to the Queen of Egypt,

And bids thee study on what fair demands

10

Thou mean’st to have him grant thee.

CLEOPATRA     What’s thy name?

PROCULEIUS     My name is Proculeius.

CLEOPATRA     Antony

Did tell me of you, bade me trust you, but

I do not greatly care to be deceived

That have no use for trusting. If your master

15

Would have a queen his beggar, you must tell him

That majesty, to keep decorum, must

No less beg than a kingdom. If he please

To give me conquered Egypt for my son,

He gives me so much of mine own as I

20

Will kneel to him with thanks.

PROCULEIUS     Be of good cheer.

You’re fallen into a princely hand; fear nothing.

Make your full reference freely to my lord,

Who is so full of grace that it flows over

On all that need. Let me report to him

25

Your sweet dependency, and you shall find

A conqueror that will pray in aid for kindness

Where he for grace is kneeled to.

CLEOPATRA     Pray you tell him

I am his fortune’s vassal and I send him

The greatness he has got. I hourly learn

30

A doctrine of obedience, and would gladly

Look him i’th’ face.

PROCULEIUS     This I’ll report, dear lady.

Have comfort, for I know your plight is pitied

Of him that caused it.

Enter GALLUS and Roman soldiers.

[to the soldiers] You see how easily she may be

surprised.

35

Guard her till Caesar come.

IRAS     Royal queen!

CHARMIAN     O Cleopatra, thou art taken, queen!

CLEOPATRA     Quick, quick, good hands.

[Draws a dagger.]

PROCULEIUS     Hold, worthy lady, hold!

[Disarms her.]

Do not yourself such wrong, who are in this

Relieved, but not betrayed.

CLEOPATRA     What, of death too,

40

That rids our dogs of languish?

PROCULEIUS     Cleopatra,

Do not abuse my master’s bounty by

Th’undoing of yourself. Let the world see

His nobleness well acted, which your death

Will never let come forth.

CLEOPATRA     Where art thou, Death?

45

Come hither, come! Come, come and take a queen

Worth many babes and beggars!

PROCULEIUS     O temperance, lady!

CLEOPATRA     Sir, I will eat no meat; I’ll not drink, sir;

If idle talk will once be necessary,

I’ll not sleep neither. This mortal house I’ll ruin,

50

Do Caesar what he can. Know, sir, that I

Will not wait pinioned at your master’s court,

Nor once be chastised with the sober eye

Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up

And show me to the shouting varletry

55

Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt

Be gentle grave unto me! Rather on Nilus’ mud

Lay me stark naked, and let the water-flies

Blow me into abhorring! Rather make

My country’s high pyramides my gibbet

60

And hang me up in chains!

PROCULEIUS     You do extend

These thoughts of horror further than you shall

Find cause in Caesar.

Enter DOLABELLA.

DOLABELLA     Proculeius,

What thou hast done thy master Caesar knows,

And he hath sent for thee. For the Queen,

65

I’ll take her to my guard.

PROCULEIUS     So, Dolabella,

It shall content me best. Be gentle to her.

[to Cleopatra] To Caesar I will speak what you shall

please,

If you’ll employ me to him.

CLEOPATRA     Say I would die.

Exit Proculeius with Gallus and soldiers.

DOLABELLA

Most noble empress, you have heard of me?

70

CLEOPATRA     I cannot tell.

DOLABELLA     Assuredly you know me.

CLEOPATRA

No matter, sir, what I have heard or known.

You laugh when boys or women tell their dreams;

Is’t not your trick?

DOLABELLA     I understand not, madam.

CLEOPATRA     I dreamt there was an emperor Antony.

75

O, such another sleep, that I might see

But such another man!

DOLABELLA     If it might please ye –

CLEOPATRA

His face was as the heavens, and therein stuck

A sun and moon which kept their course and lighted

The little O, the earth.

DOLABELLA     Most sovereign creature –

80

CLEOPATRA     His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm

Crested the world; his voice was propertied

As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;

But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,

He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,

85

There was no winter in’t; an autumn it was

That grew the more by reaping. His delights

Were dolphin-like: they showed his back above

The element they lived in. In his livery

Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands

were

90

As plates dropped from his pocket.

DOLABELLA     Cleopatra –

CLEOPATRA

Think you there was or might be such a man

As this I dreamt of?

DOLABELLA     Gentle madam, no.

CLEOPATRA     You lie up to the hearing of the gods!

But if there be nor ever were one such,

95

It’s past the size of dreaming. Nature wants stuff

To vie strange forms with fancy; yet t’imagine

An Antony were nature’s piece ’gainst fancy,

Condemning shadows quite.

DOLABELLA     Hear me, good madam.

Your loss is as yourself, great, and you bear it

100

As answering to the weight. Would I might never

O’ertake pursued success, but I do feel,

By the rebound of yours, a grief that smites

My very heart at root.

CLEOPATRA     I thank you, sir.

Know you what Caesar means to do with me?

105

DOLABELLA

I am loath to tell you what I would you knew.

CLEOPATRA     Nay, pray you, sir.

DOLABELLA     Though he be honourable –

CLEOPATRA     He’ll lead me, then, in triumph.

DOLABELLA     Madam, he will. I know’t.

Flourish. Enter PROCULEIUS, CAESAR, GALLUS, MAECENAS and others of his train.

ALL     Make way there! Caesar!

110

CAESAR     Which is the Queen of Egypt?

DOLABELLA     It is the Emperor, madam.

[Cleopatra kneels.]

CAESAR     Arise! You shall not kneel.

I pray you rise. Rise, Egypt.

CLEOPATRA     Sir, the gods

Will have it thus. My master and my lord

115

I must obey. [She stands.]

CAESAR     Take to you no hard thoughts.

The record of what injuries you did us,

Though written in our flesh, we shall remember

As things but done by chance.

CLEOPATRA     Sole sir o’th’ world,

I cannot project mine own cause so well

120

To make it clear, but do confess I have

Been laden with like frailties which before

Have often shamed our sex.

CAESAR     Cleopatra, know

We will extenuate rather than enforce.

If you apply yourself to our intents,

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Which towards you are most gentle, you shall find

A benefit in this change; but if you seek

To lay on me a cruelty by taking

Antony’s course, you shall bereave yourself

Of my good purposes, and put your children

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To that destruction which I’ll guard them from

If thereon you rely. I’ll take my leave.

CLEOPATRA

And may through all the world! ’Tis yours, and we,

Your scutcheons and your signs of conquest, shall

Hang in what place you please. Here, my good lord.

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[Hands him a paper.]

CAESAR     You shall advise me in all for Cleopatra.

CLEOPATRA     This is the brief of money, plate and jewels

I am possessed of. ’Tis exactly valued,

Not petty things admitted. Where’s Seleucus?

Enter SELEUCUS.

SELEUCUS     Here, madam.

140

CLEOPATRA

This is my treasurer. Let him speak, my lord,

Upon his peril, that I have reserved

To myself nothing. Speak the truth, Seleucus.

SELEUCUS     Madam,

I had rather seel my lips than to my peril

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Speak that which is not.

CLEOPATRA     What have I kept back?

SELEUCUS

Enough to purchase what you have made known.

CAESAR     Nay, blush not, Cleopatra. I approve

Your wisdom in the deed.

CLEOPATRA     See, Caesar! O behold

How pomp is followed! Mine will now be yours

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And, should we shift estates, yours would be mine.

The ingratitude of this Seleucus does

Even make me wild. O slave, of no more trust

Than love that’s hired! What, go’st thou back?

Thou shalt

Go back, I warrant thee! But I’ll catch thine eyes

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Though they had wings! Slave! Soulless villain! Dog!

O rarely base!

CAESAR     Good queen, let us entreat you.

CLEOPATRA

O Caesar, what a wounding shame is this,

That – thou vouchsafing here to visit me,

Doing the honour of thy lordliness

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To one so meek – that mine own servant should

Parcel the sum of my disgraces by

Addition of his envy! Say, good Caesar,

That I some lady trifles have reserved,

Immoment toys, things of such dignity

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As we greet modern friends withal; and say

Some nobler token I have kept apart

For Livia and Octavia, to induce

Their mediation, must I be unfolded

With one that I have bred? The gods! It smites me

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Beneath the fall I have. [to Seleucus] Prithee go hence,

Or I shall show the cinders of my spirits

Through th’ashes of my chance. Wert thou a man,

Thou wouldst have mercy on me.

CAESAR     Forbear, Seleucus.

     Exit Seleucus.

CLEOPATRA

Be it known that we, the greatest, are misthought

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For things that others do, and when we fall,

We answer others’ merits in our name,

Are therefore to be pitied.

CAESAR     Cleopatra,

Not what you have reserved nor what acknowledged

Put we i’th’ roll of conquest. Still be’t yours;

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Bestow it at your pleasure, and believe

Caesar’s no merchant to make prize with you

Of things that merchants sold. Therefore be cheered;

Make not your thoughts your prisons. No, dear

queen,

For we intend so to dispose you as

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Yourself shall give us counsel. Feed and sleep.

Our care and pity is so much upon you

That we remain your friend; and so, adieu.

CLEOPATRA     My master and my lord!

CAESAR     Not so. Adieu.

     Flourish. Exeunt Caesar and his train.

CLEOPATRA

He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not

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Be noble to myself. But hark thee, Charmian.

[Whispers to Charmian.]

CHARMIAN     Finish, good lady. The bright day is done

And we are for the dark.

CLEOPATRA     Hie thee again.

I have spoke already and it is provided.

Go put it to the haste.

CHARMIAN     Madam, I will.

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Enter DOLABELLA.

DOLABELLA     Where’s the Queen?

CHARMIAN     Behold, sir.     Exit.

CLEOPATRA     Dolabella!

DOLABELLA

Madam, as thereto sworn by your command,

Which my love makes religion to obey,

I tell you this: Caesar through Syria

Intends his journey, and within three days

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You with your children will he send before.

Make your best use of this. I have performed

Your pleasure and my promise.

CLEOPATRA     Dolabella,

I shall remain your debtor.

DOLABELLA     I, your servant.

Adieu, good queen. I must attend on Caesar.

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CLEOPATRA     Farewell and thanks.     Exit Dolabella.

     Now, Iras, what think’st thou?

Thou an Egyptian puppet shall be shown

In Rome as well as I. Mechanic slaves

With greasy aprons, rules and hammers shall

Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths,

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Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded

And forced to drink their vapour.

IRAS     The gods forbid!

CLEOPATRA     Nay, ’tis most certain, Iras. Saucy lictors

Will catch at us like strumpets, and scald rhymers

Ballad us out o’tune. The quick comedians

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Extemporally will stage us and present

Our Alexandrian revels; Antony

Shall be brought drunken forth; and I shall see

Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness

I’th’ posture of a whore.

IRAS     O the good gods!

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CLEOPATRA     Nay, that’s certain.

IRAS     I’ll never see’t, for I am sure my nails

Are stronger than mine eyes!

CLEOPATRA     Why, that’s the way

To fool their preparation and to conquer

Their most absurd intents.

Enter CHARMIAN.

     Now, Charmian!

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Show me, my women, like a queen. Go fetch

My best attires. I am again for Cydnus

To meet Mark Antony. Sirrah Iras, go.

Now, noble Charmian, we’ll dispatch indeed,

And when thou hast done this chare, I’ll give thee

leave

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To play till doomsday. Bring our crown and all.

     Exit Iras.

     [a noise within]

Wherefore’s this noise?

Enter a Guardsman.

GUARDSMAN     Here is a rural fellow

That will not be denied your highness’ presence.

He brings you figs.

CLEOPATRA     Let him come in.     Exit Guardsman.

     What poor an instrument

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May do a noble deed! He brings me liberty.

My resolution’s placed, and I have nothing

Of woman in me. Now from head to foot

I am marble-constant. Now the fleeting moon

No planet is of mine.

Enter Guardsman and Clown with a basket.

GUARDSMAN     This is the man.

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CLEOPATRA     Avoid, and leave him.     Exit Guardsman.

Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there

That kills and pains not?

CLOWN     Truly, I have him; but I would not be the party

that should desire you to touch him, for his biting is

245

immortal. Those that do die of it do seldom or never

recover.

CLEOPATRA     Remember’st thou any that have died on’t?

CLOWN     Very many; men and women too. I heard of one

of them no longer than yesterday – a very honest

250

woman, but something given to lie, as a woman should

not do but in the way of honesty – how she died of the

biting of it, what pain she felt. Truly, she makes a very

good report o’th’ worm; but he that will believe all

that they say shall never be saved by half that they do.

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But this is most falliable, the worm’s an odd worm.

CLEOPATRA     Get thee hence. Farewell.

CLOWN     I wish you all joy of the worm.

[Sets down his basket.]

CLEOPATRA     Farewell.

CLOWN     You must think this, look you, that the worm

260

will do his kind.

CLEOPATRA     Ay, ay. Farewell.

CLOWN     Look you, the worm is not to be trusted but in

the keeping of wise people; for, indeed, there is no

goodness in the worm.

265

CLEOPATRA     Take thou no care; it shall be heeded.

CLOWN     Very good. Give it nothing, I pray you, for it is

not worth the feeding.

CLEOPATRA     Will it eat me?

CLOWN     You must not think I am so simple but I know

270

the devil himself will not eat a woman. I know that a

woman is a dish for the gods if the devil dress her not.

But truly, these same whoreson devils do the gods

great harm in their women, for in every ten that they

make, the devils mar five.

275

CLEOPATRA     Well, get thee gone. Farewell.

CLOWN     Yes, forsooth. I wish you joy o’th’ worm. Exit.

Enter IRAS with a robe, crown and other jewels.

CLEOPATRA

Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have

Immortal longings in me. Now no more

The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip.

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[The women dress her.]

Yare, yare, good Iras! Quick! Methinks I hear

Antony call. I see him rouse himself

To praise my noble act. I hear him mock

The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men

To excuse their after wrath. Husband, I come!

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Now to that name my courage prove my title!

I am fire and air; my other elements

I give to baser life. So, have you done?

Come, then, and take the last warmth of my lips.

Farewell, kind Charmian. Iras, long farewell.

290

[Kisses them. Iras falls and dies.]

Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?

If thou and nature can so gently part,

The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch

Which hurts and is desired. Dost thou lie still?

If thus thou vanishest, thou tell’st the world

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It is not worth leave-taking.

CHARMIAN

Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain, that I may say

The gods themselves do weep!

CLEOPATRA     This proves me base.

If she first meet the curled Antony,

He’ll make demand of her, and spend that kiss

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Which is my heaven to have.

[to the asp; applying it to her breast]

     Come, thou mortal wretch,

With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate

Of life at once untie. Poor venomous fool,

Be angry and dispatch. O, couldst thou speak,

That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass

305

Unpolicied!

CHARMIAN     O eastern star!

CLEOPATRA     Peace, peace!

Dost thou not see my baby at my breast

That sucks the nurse asleep?

CHARMIAN     O break! O break!

CLEOPATRA     As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle –

O Antony! – Nay, I will take thee too.

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[Applies another asp to her arm.]

What should I stay – [Dies.]

CHARMIAN     In this vile world? So fare thee well.

Now boast thee, Death, in thy possession lies

A lass unparalleled. Downy windows, close,

And golden Phoebus, never be beheld

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Of eyes again so royal! Your crown’s awry;

I’ll mend it, and then play.

Enter the Guard, rustling in.

1 GUARD     Where’s the Queen?

CHARMIAN     Speak softly. Wake her not.

1 GUARD     Caesar hath sent –

CHARMIAN     Too slow a messenger.

[Applies an asp.]

O come apace! Dispatch! I partly feel thee.

320

1 GUARD

Approach ho! All’s not well. Caesar’s beguiled.

2 GUARD

There’s Dolabella sent from Caesar. Call him.

     Exit a Guardsman.

1 GUARD

What work is here, Charmian? Is this well done?

CHARMIAN     It is well done, and fitting for a princess

Descended of so many royal kings.

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Ah, soldier! [Charmian dies.]

Enter DOLABELLA.

DOLABELLA     How goes it here?

2 GUARD     All dead.

DOLABELLA     Caesar, thy thoughts

Touch their effects in this. Thyself art coming

To see performed the dreaded act which thou

So sought’st to hinder.

330

Enter CAESAR and all his train, marching.

ALL BUT CAESAR     A way there! A way for Caesar!

DOLABELLA     O sir, you are too sure an augurer:

That you did fear is done.

CAESAR     Bravest at the last,

She levelled at our purposes and, being royal,

Took her own way. The manner of their deaths?

335

I do not see them bleed.

DOLABELLA     Who was last with them?

1 GUARD

A simple countryman that brought her figs.

This was his basket.

CAESAR     Poisoned, then.

1 GUARD     O Caesar,

This Charmian lived but now; she stood and spake.

I found her trimming up the diadem

340

On her dead mistress. Tremblingly she stood,

And on the sudden dropped.

CAESAR     O noble weakness!

If they had swallowed poison, ’twould appear

By external swelling; but she looks like sleep,

As she would catch another Antony

345

In her strong toil of grace.

DOLABELLA     Here on her breast

There is a vent of blood, and something blown;

The like is on her arm.

1 GUARD     This is an aspic’s trail, and these fig leaves

Have slime upon them such as th’aspic leaves

350

Upon the caves of Nile.

CAESAR     Most probable

That so she died, for her physician tells me

She hath pursued conclusions infinite

Of easy ways to die. Take up her bed,

And bear her women from the monument.

355

She shall be buried by her Antony.

No grave upon the earth shall clip in it

A pair so famous. High events as these

Strike those that make them, and their story is

No less in pity than his glory which

360

Brought them to be lamented. Our army shall

In solemn show attend this funeral,

And then to Rome. Come, Dolabella, see

High order in this great solemnity.

     Exeunt omnes, the soldiers bearing the dead bodies.

As You Like It

As You Like It seems to have been written about 1599, though it was first published in the Folio of 1623, where it is the tenth of the comedies. The list of Shakespeare’s comedies in Francis Meres’s Palladis Tamia, published in 1598, omits this play, but it was listed in the Stationers’ Register on 4 August 1600 as one of four of ‘My lord chamberlain’s men’s plays’ that were ordered ‘to be stayed’ from publication. It is, therefore, roughly contemporaneous with Much Ado About Nothing. The play is based on Thomas Lodge’s popular prose romance, Rosalynde: Euphues’ Golden Legacy (1590), and indeed Lodge’s breezy presentation of his tale ‘to the Gentleman readers’ – ‘if you like it, so’ – may well have suggested the title of Shakespeare’s play. Lodge’s story of Rosader and Rosalynde, itself based on the fourteenth-century Tale of Gamelyn, provides virtually all the elements of the plot of Shakespeare’s play.

Lodge’s novel is one of many late Elizabethan examples of pastoral, a literary mode with classical precedents reaching back to the Greek writer Theocritus, but which in Elizabethan England became a fashionable form seemingly celebrating the virtues of simplicity but doing so in an extravagantly artificial manner. Lodge never criticizes the artificiality of his pastoral tale, but Shakespeare, in giving prominence to the love affair of Rosalind and Orlando (Lodge’s Rosader), lessening the sensationalism of Lodge’s plot and adding to his cast of characters, provides alternative views of Lodge’s idealized story, exposing its artificiality to ironies and revealing the realities that conventions, both literary and social, obscure and, in some cases, ameliorate.

The most important of the play’s counter-voices are Touchstone and Jaques, each similarly sceptical of the idealizing imagination. For the clown, Touchstone, the absurdities he encounters are occasions genially to expose the inconsistencies of the human heart, while for Jaques they become hard evidence for his own cynicism and melancholy. Touchstone indeed marries, joining, with Audrey, the parade of couples marching two by two at the end, but Jaques insistently remains outside the magic circle, going off to join the penitent Duke Frederick, though not before offering the couples his own surprisingly benevolent wishes.

The similarity of Jaques’s blessings to Hymen’s suggests the play’s complex focus. Characters are redeemed and reunited in the Forest of Arden, but there is no magic in the forest. The natural is no more held up as an ideal than is the artificial, the country no more free from criticism than the court. The happy end that the play provides is made possible not by qualities inhering in a locale but by an enduring quality of human goodness, most apparent perhaps in Rosalind’s resilience and creativity, but also evident in Celia, Orlando, Old Adam, Duke Senior and all who come to recognize the natural bonds of humankind.

As You Like It may well have been an early play performed in the Globe Theatre in 1599. Jaques’s ‘All the world’s a stage’ would have resonated wittily in the new theatre, which allegedly bore a motto from Petronius: totus mundus agit histrionem. Indeed, such self-consciousness is marked throughout; Jaques’ fears that characters will speak in ‘blank verse’ call attention to the theatre poetry, just as Rosalind’s male disguise and subsequent female ‘pretence’ (to say nothing of her line in the epilogue, ‘If I were a woman …’) foreground the theatre’s convention of boys acting female parts.

For all the play’s awareness of itself as theatre, there is no record of an early performance (only a later tradition that it was performed by the King’s Men at Wilton in December 1603), and it was not until the mid-eighteenth century that the play became popular on stage, its attractive roles for women certainly part of its new appeal. On the modern stage it has been regularly played, its paradoxical combination of innocence and cynicism, of romanticism and realism, making it a popular comedy able to speak both to our knowledge and to our dreams.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

DUKE SENIOR

living in exile

DUKE FREDERICK

his brother and usurper of his dominions

LE BEAU

a courtier attending on Frederick

CHARLES

Duke Frederick’s wrestler

TOUCHSTONE

a fool at the Duke’s court

WILLIAM

a country fellow

SIR OLIVER Martext

vicar of a country parish

ROSALIND

daughter to Duke Senior

CELIA

daughter to Duke Frederick

PHEBE

a shepherdess

AUDREY

a goat-herd

HYMEN

Lords attending on the Dukes, with Pages and other Attendants

As You Like It

1.1 Enter ORLANDO and ADAM.

ORLANDO     As I remember, Adam, it was upon this

fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand

crowns, and, as thou sayst, charged my brother on his

blessing to breed me well; and there begins my

sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and

5

report speaks goldenly of his profit: for my part, he

keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more

properly, stays me here at home unkept; for call you

that keeping for a gentleman of my birth, that differs

not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred

10

better; for besides that they are fair with their feeding,

they are taught their manage, and to that end riders

dearly hired: but I, his brother, gain nothing under

him but growth, for the which his animals on his

dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this

15

nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something

that nature gave me his countenance seems to take

from me. He lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the

place of a brother, and, as much as in him lies, mines

my gentility with my education. This is it, Adam, that

20

grieves me, and the spirit of my father, which I think

is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude. I

will no longer endure it, though yet I know no wise

remedy how to avoid it.

ADAM     Yonder comes my master, your brother.

25

Enter OLIVER.

ORLANDO     Go apart Adam, and thou shalt hear how he

will shake me up.

OLIVER     Now sir, what make you here?

ORLANDO     Nothing. I am not taught to make anything.

OLIVER     What mar you then sir?

30

ORLANDO     Marry sir, I am helping you to mar that

which God made, a poor unworthy brother of yours,

with idleness.

OLIVER     Marry sir, be better employed, and be naught

awhile.

35

ORLANDO     Shall I keep your hogs and eat husks with

them? What prodigal portion have I spent that I

should come to such penury?

OLIVER     Know you where you are sir?

ORLANDO     O sir, very well: here in your orchard.

40

OLIVER     Know you before whom sir?

ORLANDO     Ay, better than him I am before knows me. I

know you are my eldest brother, and in the gentle

condition of blood you should so know me. The

courtesy of nations allows you my better, in that you

45

are the first-born, but the same tradition takes not

away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us.

I have as much of my father in me as you, albeit I

confess your coming before me is nearer to his

reverence.

50

OLIVER     [striking him] What, boy!

ORLANDO     [putting a wrestler’s grip on him] Come, come,

elder brother, you are too young in this.

OLIVER     Wilt thou lay hands on me villain?

ORLANDO     I am no villain. I am the youngest son of Sir

55

Rowland de Boys: he was my father, and he is thrice a

villain that says such a father begot villains. Wert thou

not my brother, I would not take this hand from thy

throat till this other had pulled out thy tongue for

saying so. Thou hast railed on thyself.

60

ADAM     Sweet masters be patient. For your father’s

remembrance, be at accord.

OLIVER     Let me go I say.

ORLANDO     I will not till I please: you shall hear me. My

father charged you in his will to give me good

65

education: you have trained me like a peasant,

obscuring and hiding from me all gentleman-like

qualities. The spirit of my father grows strong in me,

and I will no longer endure it. Therefore allow me

such exercises as may become a gentleman, or give me

70

the poor allottery my father left me by testament; with

that I will go buy my fortunes.

OLIVER     And what wilt thou do? Beg when that is spent?

Well sir, get you in. I will not long be troubled with

you; you shall have some part of your will. I pray you

75

leave me.

ORLANDO     I will no further offend you than becomes me

for my good.

OLIVER     Get you with him, you old dog.

ADAM     Is old dog my reward? Most true, I have lost my

80

teeth in your service. God be with my old master! – he

would not have spoke such a word.

     Exeunt Orlando and Adam.

OLIVER     Is it even so? Begin you to grow upon me? I will

physic your rankness, and yet give no thousand

crowns neither. Holla Dennis!

85

Enter DENNIS.

DENNIS     Calls your worship?

OLIVER     Was not Charles the Duke’s wrestler here to

speak with me?

DENNIS     So please you, he is here at the door and

importunes access to you.

90

OLIVER     Call him in.     Exit Dennis.

’Twill be a good way. And tomorrow the wrestling is.

Enter CHARLES.

CHARLES     Good morrow to your worship.

OLIVER     Good Monsieur Charles! What’s the new news

at the new court?

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CHARLES     There’s no news at the court sir, but the old

news. That is, the old Duke is banished by his younger

brother the new Duke, and three or four loving lords

have put themselves into voluntary exile with him,

whose lands and revenues enrich the new Duke,

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therefore he gives them good leave to wander.

OLIVER     Can you tell if Rosalind the Duke’s daughter

be banished with her father?

CHARLES     O no; for the Duke’s daughter her cousin so

loves her, being ever from their cradles bred together,

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that she would have followed her exile, or have died to

stay behind her. She is at the court, and no less

beloved of her uncle than his own daughter, and never

two ladies loved as they do.

OLIVER     Where will the old Duke live?

110

CHARLES     They say he is already in the Forest of Arden,

and a many merry men with him; and there they live

like the old Robin Hood of England. They say many

young gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet the

time carelessly as they did in the golden world.

115

OLIVER     What, you wrestle tomorrow before the new

Duke?

CHARLES     Marry do I sir. And I came to acquaint you

with a matter. I am given, sir, secretly to understand

that your younger brother Orlando hath a disposition

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to come in disguised against me to try a fall.

Tomorrow, sir, I wrestle for my credit, and he that

escapes me without some broken limb shall acquit him

well. Your brother is but young and tender, and for

your love I would be loath to foil him, as I must for my

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own honour if he come in. Therefore out of my love to

you, I came hither to acquaint you withal, that either

you might stay him from his intendment, or brook

such disgrace well as he shall run into, in that it is a

thing of his own search, and altogether against my

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will.

OLIVER     Charles, I thank thee for thy love to me, which

thou shalt find I will most kindly requite. I had myself

notice of my brother’s purpose herein, and have by

underhand means laboured to dissuade him from it;

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but he is resolute. I’ll tell thee Charles, it is the

stubbornest young fellow of France, full of ambition,

an envious emulator of every man’s good parts, a secret

and villainous contriver against me his natural

brother. Therefore use thy discretion; I had as lief

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thou didst break his neck as his finger. And thou wert

best look to’t; for if thou dost him any slight disgrace,

or if he do not mightily grace himself on thee, he will

practise against thee by poison, entrap thee by some

treacherous device, and never leave thee till he hath

145

ta’en thy life by some indirect means or other. For I

assure thee – and almost with tears I speak it – there is

not one so young and so villainous this day living. I

speak but brotherly of him, but should I anatomize

him to thee as he is, I must blush and weep, and thou

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must look pale and wonder.

CHARLES     I am heartily glad I came hither to you. If he

come tomorrow, I’ll give him his payment. If ever he

go alone again, I’ll never wrestle for prize more. And

so God keep your worship.

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OLIVER     Farewell good Charles.     Exit Charles.

Now will I stir this gamester. I hope I shall see an end

of him; for my soul – yet I know not why – hates

nothing more than he. Yet he’s gentle, never schooled

and yet learned, full of noble device, of all sorts

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enchantingly beloved, and indeed so much in the heart

of the world, and especially of my own people, who

best know him, that I am altogether misprised. But it

shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all.

Nothing remains but that I kindle the boy thither,

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which now I’ll go about.     Exit.

1.2 Enter ROSALIND and CELIA.

CELIA     I pray thee Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry.

ROSALIND     Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am

mistress of, and would you yet I were merrier? Unless

you could teach me to forget a banished father, you

must not learn me how to remember any extraordinary

5

pleasure.

CELIA     Herein I see thou lov’st me not with the full

weight that I love thee. If my uncle thy banished father

had banished thy uncle the Duke my father, so thou

hadst been still with me, I could have taught my love

10

to take thy father for mine; so wouldst thou, if the

truth of thy love to me were so righteously tempered

as mine is to thee.

ROSALIND     Well, I will forget the condition of my estate,

to rejoice in yours.

15

CELIA     You know my father hath no child but I, nor

none is like to have; and truly when he dies, thou shalt

be his heir; for what he hath taken away from thy

father perforce, I will render thee again in affection.

By mine honour I will, and when I break that oath, let

20

me turn monster. Therefore my sweet Rose, my dear

Rose, be merry.

ROSALIND     From henceforth I will, coz, and devise

sports. Let me see, what think you of falling in love?

CELIA     Marry I prithee do, to make sport withal. But

25

love no man in good earnest, nor no further in sport

neither, than with safety of a pure blush thou mayst in

honour come off again.

ROSALIND     What shall be our sport then?

CELIA     Let us sit and mock the good hussif Fortune

30

from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be

bestowed equally.

ROSALIND     I would we could do so; for her benefits are

mightily misplaced, and the bountiful blind woman

doth most mistake in her gifts to women.

35

CELIA     ’Tis true, for those that she makes fair, she scarce

makes honest; and those that she makes honest, she

makes very ill-favouredly.

ROSALIND     Nay now thou goest from Fortune’s office to

Nature’s; Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in

40

the lineaments of Nature.

CELIA     No? When Nature hath made a fair creature, may

she not by Fortune fall into the fire? Though Nature

hath given us wit to flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune

sent in this fool to cut off the argument?

45

Enter TOUCHSTONE.

ROSALIND     Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature,

when Fortune makes Nature’s natural the cutter-off of

Nature’s wit.

CELIA     Peradventure this is not Fortune’s work neither,

but Nature’s, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull

50

to reason of such goddesses, and hath sent this natural

for our whetstone; for always the dullness of the fool is

the whetstone of the wits. How now Wit, whither

wander you?

TOUCHSTONE     Mistress, you must come away to your

55

father.

CELIA     Were you made the messenger?

TOUCHSTONE     No by mine honour, but I was bid to

come for you.

CELIA     Where learned you that oath, fool?

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TOUCHSTONE     Of a certain knight, that swore by his

honour they were good pancakes, and swore by his

honour the mustard was naught. Now I’ll stand to it,

the pancakes were naught and the mustard was good,

and yet was not the knight forsworn.

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CELIA     How prove you that in the great heap of your

knowledge?

ROSALIND     Ay marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom.

TOUCHSTONE     Stand you both forth now: stroke your

chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave.

70

CELIA     By our beards, if we had them, thou art.

TOUCHSTONE     By my knavery, if I had it, then I were.

But if you swear by that that is not, you are not

forsworn. No more was this knight, swearing by his

honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had

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sworn it away before ever he saw those pancakes or

that mustard.

CELIA     Prithee, who is’t that thou mean’st?

TOUCHSTONE     One that old Frederick your father loves.

CELIA     My father’s love is enough to honour him.

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Enough, speak no more of him; you’ll be whipped for

taxation one of these days.

TOUCHSTONE     The more pity that fools may not speak

wisely what wisemen do foolishly.

CELIA     By my troth thou sayest true. For since the little

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wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that

wisemen have makes a great show. Here comes

Monsieur Le Beau.

Enter LE BEAU.

ROSALIND     With his mouth full of news.

CELIA     Which he will put on us, as pigeons feed their

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young.

ROSALIND     Then shall we be news-crammed.

CELIA     All the better; we shall be the more marketable.

Bonjour Monsieur Le Beau. What’s the news?

LE BEAU     Fair Princess, you have lost much good sport.

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CELIA     Sport? Of what colour?

LE BEAU     What colour madam? How shall I answer you?

ROSALIND     As wit and fortune will.

TOUCHSTONE     Or as the Destinies decrees.

CELIA     Well said! That was laid on with a trowel.

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TOUCHSTONE     Nay, if I keep not my rank –

ROSALIND     Thou losest thy old smell.

LE BEAU     You amaze me ladies. I would have told you of

good wrestling, which you have lost the sight of.

ROSALIND     Yet tell us the manner of the wrestling.

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LE BEAU     I will tell you the beginning, and if it please

your ladyships, you may see the end, for the best is yet

to do, and here where you are they are coming to

perform it.

CELIA     Well, the beginning that is dead and buried.

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LE BEAU     There comes an old man, and his three sons –

CELIA     I could match this beginning with an old tale.

LE BEAU     Three proper young men, of excellent growth

and presence –

ROSALIND     With bills on their necks: ‘Be it known unto

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all men by these presents’ –

LE BEAU     The eldest of the three wrestled with Charles

the Duke’s wrestler, which Charles in a moment threw

him and broke three of his ribs, that there is little hope

of life in him. So he served the second, and so the

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third. Yonder they lie, the poor old man their father

making such pitiful dole over them that all the

beholders take his part with weeping.

ROSALIND     Alas!

TOUCHSTONE     But what is the sport monsieur, that the

125

ladies have lost?

LE BEAU     Why this that I speak of.

TOUCHSTONE     Thus men may grow wiser every day. It

is the first time that ever I heard breaking of ribs was

sport for ladies.

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CELIA     Or I, I promise thee.

ROSALIND     But is there any else longs to see this broken

music in his sides? Is there yet another dotes upon

ribbreaking? Shall we see this wrestling, cousin?

LE BEAU     You must if you stay here, for here is the place

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appointed for the wrestling, and they are ready to

perform it.

CELIA     Yonder sure they are coming. Let us now stay

and see it.

Flourish. Enter DUKE FREDERICK, lords, ORLANDO, CHARLES and attendants.

DUKE FREDERICK     Come on. Since the youth will not be

140

entreated, his own peril on his forwardness.

ROSALIND     Is yonder the man?

LE BEAU     Even he, madam.

ROSALIND     Alas, he is too young. Yet he looks successfully.

DUKE FREDERICK     How now daughter and cousin? Are

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you crept hither to see the wrestling?

ROSALIND     Ay my liege, so please you give us leave.

DUKE FREDERICK     You will take little delight in it, I can

tell you, there is such odds in the man. In pity of the

challenger’s youth, I would fain dissuade him, but he

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will not be entreated. Speak to him ladies; see if you

can move him.

CELIA     Call him hither, good Monsieur Le Beau.

DUKE FREDERICK     Do so. I’ll not be by.

LE BEAU     Monsieur the challenger, the Princess calls for

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you.

ORLANDO     I attend them with all respect and duty.

ROSALIND     Young man, have you challenged Charles the

wrestler?

ORLANDO     No fair Princess: he is the general challenger.

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I come but in as others do, to try with him the strength

of my youth.

CELIA     Young gentleman, your spirits are too bold for

your years. You have seen cruel proof of this man’s

strength; if you saw yourself with your eyes or knew

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yourself with your judgement, the fear of your

adventure would counsel you to a more equal

enterprise. We pray you for your own sake to embrace

your own safety and give over this attempt.

ROSALIND     Do young sir; your reputation shall not

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therefore be misprized: we will make it our suit to the

Duke that the wrestling might not go forward.

ORLANDO     I beseech you, punish me not with your hard

thoughts, wherein I confess me much guilty to deny so

fair and excellent ladies anything. But let your fair eyes

175

and gentle wishes go with me to my trial; wherein if I

be foiled, there is but one shamed that was never

gracious; if killed, but one dead that is willing to be so.

I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none to

lament me; the world no injury, for in it I have

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nothing; only in the world I fill up a place which may

be better supplied when I have made it empty.

ROSALIND     The little strength that I have, I would it

were with you.

CELIA     And mine to eke out hers.

185

ROSALIND     Fare you well. Pray heaven I be deceived in

you!

CELIA     Your heart’s desires be with you!

CHARLES     Come, where is this young gallant that is so

desirous to lie with his mother earth?

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ORLANDO     Ready sir, but his will hath in it a more

modest working.

DUKE FREDERICK     You shall try but one fall.

CHARLES     No, I warrant your Grace you shall not

entreat him to a second, that have so mightily

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persuaded him from a first.

ORLANDO     You mean to mock me after: you should not

have mocked me before. But come your ways.

ROSALIND     Now Hercules be thy speed, young man!

CELIA     I would I were invisible, to catch the strong

200

fellow by the leg. [They wrestle.]

ROSALIND     O excellent young man!

CELIA     If I had a thunderbolt in mine eye, I can tell who

should down. [Shout. Charles is thrown.]

DUKE FREDERICK     No more, no more.

205

ORLANDO     Yes, I beseech your Grace, I am not yet well

breathed.

DUKE FREDERICK     How dost thou Charles?

LE BEAU     He cannot speak my lord.

DUKE FREDERICK     Bear him away.

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     Charles is borne out.

What is thy name, young man?

ORLANDO

Orlando my liege, the youngest son of Sir Rowland

de Boys.

DUKE FREDERICK

I would thou hadst been son to some man else.

The world esteem’d thy father honourable,

But I did find him still mine enemy.

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Thou should’st have better pleas’d me with this deed,

Hadst thou descended from another house.

But fare thee well, thou art a gallant youth –

I would thou hadst told me of another father.

     Exeunt Duke, Le Beau and train.

CELIA     Were I my father, coz, would I do this?

220

ORLANDO     I am more proud to be Sir Rowland’s son,

His youngest son, and would not change that calling

To be adopted heir to Frederick.

ROSALIND     My father lov’d Sir Rowland as his soul,

And all the world was of my father’s mind.

225

Had I before known this young man his son,

I should have given him tears unto entreaties,

Ere he should thus have ventur’d.

CELIA     Gentle cousin,

Let us go thank him and encourage him.

My father’s rough and envious disposition

230

Sticks me at heart. Sir, you have well deserv’d.

If you do keep your promises in love

But justly, as you have exceeded all promise,

Your mistress shall be happy.

ROSALIND     [giving him a chain from her neck]

Gentleman,

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Wear this for me; one out of suits with fortune,

That could give more but that her hand lacks means.

Shall we go coz?

CELIA     Ay. Fare you well, fair gentleman.

ORLANDO     Can I not say, ‘I thank you’? My better parts

Are all thrown down, and that which here stands up

240

Is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block.

ROSALIND

He calls us back. My pride fell with my fortunes;

I’ll ask him what he would. Did you call sir?

Sir, you have wrestled well, and overthrown

More than your enemies.

CELIA     Will you go coz?

245

ROSALIND     Have with you. Fare you well.

     Exeunt Rosalind and Celia.

ORLANDO

What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue?

I cannot speak to her, yet she urg’d conference.

Enter LE BEAU.

O poor Orlando, thou art overthrown!

Or Charles, or something weaker masters thee.

250

LE BEAU     Good sir, I do in friendship counsel you

To leave this place. Albeit you have deserv’d

High commendation, true applause, and love,

Yet such is now the Duke’s condition

That he misconsters all that you have done.

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The Duke is humorous; what he is indeed

More suits you to conceive than I to speak of.

ORLANDO     I thank you sir; and pray you tell me this,

Which of the two was daughter of the Duke

That here was at the wrestling?

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LE BEAU     Neither his daughter, if we judge by manners,

But yet indeed the taller is his daughter.

The other is daughter to the banish’d Duke,

And here detain’d by her usurping uncle

To keep his daughter company, whose loves

265

Are dearer than the natural bond of sisters.

But I can tell you that of late this Duke

Hath ta’en displeasure ’gainst his gentle niece,

Grounded upon no other argument

But that the people praise her for her virtues,

270

And pity her for her good father’s sake;

And on my life his malice ’gainst the lady

Will suddenly break forth. Sir, fare you well.

Hereafter, in a better world than this,

I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.

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ORLANDO     I rest much bounden to you. Fare you well.

     Exit Le Beau.

Thus must I from the smoke into the smother,

From tyrant Duke unto a tyrant brother.

But heavenly Rosalind!     Exit.

1.3 Enter CELIA and ROSALIND.

CELIA     Why cousin, why Rosalind! Cupid have mercy,

not a word?

ROSALIND     Not one to throw at a dog.

CELIA     No, thy words are too precious to be cast away

upon curs. Throw some of them at me; come lame me

5

with reasons.

ROSALIND     Then there were two cousins laid up, when

the one should be lamed with reasons and the other

mad without any.

CELIA     But is all this for your father?

10

ROSALIND     No, some of it is for my child’s father. O how

full of briers is this working-day world!

CELIA     They are but burs, cousin, thrown upon thee in

holiday foolery; if we walk not in the trodden paths

our very petticoats will catch them.

15

ROSALIND     I could shake them off my coat: these burs

are in my heart.

CELIA     Hem them away.

ROSALIND     I would try, if I could cry hem and have him.

CELIA     Come, come, wrestle with thy affections.

20

ROSALIND     O they take the part of a better wrestler than

myself.

CELIA     O a good wish upon you! You will cry in time, in

despite of a fall. But turning these jests out of service,

let us talk in good earnest. Is it possible, on such a

25

sudden, you should fall into so strong a liking with old

Sir Rowland’s youngest son?

ROSALIND     The Duke my father loved his father dearly.

CELIA     Doth it therefore ensue that you should love his

son dearly? By this kind of chase, I should hate him,

30

for my father hated his father dearly; yet I hate not

Orlando.

ROSALIND     No faith, hate him not, for my sake.

CELIA     Why should I not? Doth he not deserve well?

ROSALIND     Let me love him for that, and do you love

35

him because I do. Look, here comes the Duke.

Enter DUKE FREDERICK with lords.

CELIA     With his eyes full of anger.

DUKE FREDERICK

Mistress, dispatch you with your safest haste

And get you from our court.

ROSALIND     Me uncle?

DUKE FREDERICK     You cousin.

Within these ten days if that thou be’st found

40

So near our public court as twenty miles,

Thou diest for it.

ROSALIND     I do beseech your Grace,

Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me.

If with myself I hold intelligence,

Or have acquaintance with mine own desires,

45

If that I do not dream, or be not frantic,

As I do trust I am not, then dear uncle,

Never so much as in a thought unborn

Did I offend your Highness.

DUKE FREDERICK     Thus do all traitors.

If their purgation did consist in words,

50

They are as innocent as grace itself.

Let it suffice thee that I trust thee not.

ROSALIND     Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor.

Tell me whereon the likelihood depends.

DUKE FREDERICK

Thou art thy father’s daughter, there’s enough.

55

ROSALIND

So was I when your Highness took his dukedom,

So was I when your Highness banish’d him.

Treason is not inherited, my lord,

Or if we did derive it from our friends,

What’s that to me? My father was no traitor.

60

Then good my liege, mistake me not so much

To think my poverty is treacherous.

CELIA     Dear sovereign, hear me speak.

DUKE FREDERICK

Ay Celia, we stay’d her for your sake,

Else had she with her father rang’d along.

65

CELIA     I did not then entreat to have her stay;

It was your pleasure and your own remorse.

I was too young that time to value her,

But now I know her. If she be a traitor,

Why so am I. We still have slept together,

70

Rose at an instant, learn’d, play’d, eat together,

And whereso’er we went, like Juno’s swans,

Still we went coupled and inseparable.

DUKE FREDERICK

She is too subtle for thee, and her smoothness,

Her very silence, and her patience

75

Speak to the people and they pity her.

Thou art a fool; she robs thee of thy name,

And thou wilt show more bright and seem more

virtuous

When she is gone. Then open not thy lips.

Firm and irrevocable is my doom

80

Which I have pass’d upon her; she is banish’d.

CELIA     Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege.

I cannot live out of her company.

DUKE FREDERICK

You are a fool. You, niece, provide yourself.

If you outstay the time, upon mine honour,

85

And in the greatness of my word, you die.

     Exeunt Duke Frederick and train.

CELIA     O my poor Rosalind, whither wilt thou go?

Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine.

I charge thee be not thou more griev’d than I am.

ROSALIND     I have more cause.

CELIA     Thou hast not, cousin.

90

Prithee be cheerful. Know’st thou not the Duke

Hath banish’d me his daughter?

ROSALIND     That he hath not.

CELIA     No, hath not? Rosalind lacks then the love

Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one.

Shall we be sunder’d? Shall we part, sweet girl?

95

No, let my father seek another heir.

Therefore devise with me how we may fly,

Whither to go and what to bear with us,

And do not seek to take your change upon you,

To bear your griefs yourself and leave me out.

100

For by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale,

Say what thou canst, I’ll go along with thee.

ROSALIND     Why, whither shall we go?

CELIA     To seek my uncle in the Forest of Arden.

ROSALIND     Alas, what danger will it be to us,

105

Maids as we are, to travel forth so far?

Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.

CELIA     I’ll put myself in poor and mean attire,

And with a kind of umber smirch my face;

The like do you. So shall we pass along

110

And never stir assailants.

ROSALIND     Were it not better,

Because that I am more than common tall,

That I did suit me all points like a man?

A gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh,

A boar-spear in my hand, and in my heart,

115

Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will,

We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside,

As many other mannish cowards have

That do outface it with their semblances.

CELIA     What shall I call thee when thou art a man?

120

ROSALIND

I’ll have no worse a name than Jove’s own page,

And therefore look you call me Ganymede.

But what will you be call’d?

CELIA     Something that hath a reference to my state.

No longer Celia, but Aliena.

125

ROSALIND     But cousin, what if we assay’d to steal

The clownish fool out of your father’s court?

Would he not be a comfort to our travel?

CELIA     He’ll go along o’er the wide world with me;

Leave me alone to woo him. Let’s away,

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And get our jewels and our wealth together,

Devise the fittest time and safest way

To hide us from pursuit that will be made

After my flight. Now go we in content

To liberty, and not to banishment.     Exeunt.

135

2.1 Enter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS and two or three Lords like foresters.

DUKE SENIOR     Now my co-mates and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?

Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,

5

The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang

And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,

Which when it bites and blows upon my body

Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say

‘This is no flattery. These are counsellors

10

That feelingly persuade me what I am’.

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

15

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

AMIENS     I would not change it. Happy is your Grace,

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune

Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

20

DUKE SENIOR     Come, shall we go and kill us venison?

And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,

Being native burghers of this desert city,

Should in their own confines with forked heads

Have their round haunches gor’d.

1 LORD     Indeed my lord,

25

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,

And in that kind swears you do more usurp

Than doth your brother that hath banish’d you.

To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself

Did steal behind him as he lay along

30

Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out

Upon the brook that brawls along this wood,

To the which place a poor sequester’d stag,

That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt,

Did come to languish; and indeed my lord,

35

The wretched animal heav’d forth such groans

That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat

Almost to bursting, and the big round tears

Cours’d one another down his innocent nose

In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,

40

Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,

Stood on th’extremest verge of the swift brook,

Augmenting it with tears.

DUKE SENIOR     But what said Jaques?

Did he not moralize this spectacle?

1 LORD     O yes, into a thousand similes.

45

First, for his weeping into the needless stream,

‘Poor deer’, quoth he, ‘thou mak’st a testament

As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more

To that which had too much.’ Then being there

alone,

Left and abandon’d of his velvet friend,

50

‘’Tis right’, quoth he, ‘thus misery doth part

The flux of company.’ Anon a careless herd,

Full of the pasture, jumps along by him

And never stays to greet him. ‘Ay’, quoth Jaques,

‘Sweep on you fat and greasy citizens,

55

’Tis just the fashion. Wherefore do you look

Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?’

Thus most invectively he pierceth through

The body of country, city, court,

Yea, and of this our life, swearing that we

60

Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what’s worse,

To fright the animals and to kill them up

In their assign’d and native dwelling-place.

DUKE SENIOR

And did you leave him in this contemplation?

2 LORD     We did my lord, weeping and commenting

65

Upon the sobbing deer.

DUKE SENIOR     Show me the place:

I love to cope him in these sullen fits,

For then he’s full of matter.

1 LORD     I’ll bring you to him straight.     Exeunt.

2.2 Enter DUKE FREDERICK with Lords.

DUKE FREDERICK

Can it be possible that no man saw them?

It cannot be; some villains of my court

Are of consent and sufferance in this.

1 LORD     I cannot hear of any that did see her.

The ladies her attendants of her chamber

5

Saw her abed, and in the morning early,

They found the bed untreasur’d of their mistress.

2 LORD     My lord, the roynish clown, at whom so oft

Your Grace was wont to laugh, is also missing.

Hisperia, the princess’ gentlewoman,

10

Confesses that she secretly o’erheard

Your daughter and her cousin much commend

The parts and graces of the wrestler

That did but lately foil the sinewy Charles,

And she believes wherever they are gone

15

That youth is surely in their company.

DUKE FREDERICK

Send to his brother. Fetch that gallant hither.

If he be absent, bring his brother to me;

I’ll make him find him. Do this suddenly;

And let not search and inquisition quail

20

To bring again these foolish runaways.     Exeunt.

2.3 Enter ORLANDO and ADAM, meeting.

ORLANDO     Who’s there?

ADAM     What my young master? O my gentle master,

O my sweet master, O you memory

Of old Sir Rowland! Why, what make you here?

Why are you virtuous? Why do people love you?

5

And wherefore are you gentle, strong, and valiant?

Why would you be so fond to overcome

The bonny prizer of the humorous Duke?

Your praise is come too swiftly home before you.

Know you not master, to some kind of men,

10

Their graces serve them but as enemies?

No more do yours. Your virtues, gentle master,

Are sanctified and holy traitors to you.

O what a world is this, when what is comely

Envenoms him that bears it!

15

ORLANDO     Why, what’s the matter?

ADAM     O unhappy youth,

Come not within these doors; within this roof

The enemy of all your graces lives.

Your brother, no, no brother, yet the son –

Yet not the son, I will not call him son –

20

Of him I was about to call his father,

Hath heard your praises, and this night he means

To burn the lodging where you use to lie,

And you within it. If he fail of that,

He will have other means to cut you off.

25

I overheard him, and his practices.

This is no place: this house is but a butchery.

Abhor it, fear it, do not enter it.

ORLANDO

Why whither Adam would’st thou have me go?

ADAM     No matter whither, so you come not here.

30

ORLANDO

What, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food,

Or with a base and boist’rous sword enforce

A thievish living on the common road?

This I must do, or know not what to do;

Yet this I will not do, do how I can.

35

I rather will subject me to the malice

Of a diverted blood and bloody brother.

ADAM     But do not so. I have five hundred crowns,

The thrifty hire I sav’d under your father,

Which I did store to be my foster-nurse,

40

When service should in my old limbs lie lame,

And unregarded age in corners thrown.

Take that, and He that doth the ravens feed,

Yea providently caters for the sparrow,

Be comfort to my age. Here is the gold,

45

All this I give you. Let me be your servant.

Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;

For in my youth I never did apply

Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood,

Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo

50

The means of weakness and debility.

Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,

Frosty, but kindly. Let me go with you,

I’ll do the service of a younger man

In all your business and necessities.

55

ORLANDO     O good old man, how well in thee appears

The constant service of the antique world,

When service sweat for duty, not for meed.

Thou art not for the fashion of these times,

Where none will sweat but for promotion,

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And having that, do choke their service up

Even with the having; it is not so with thee.

But poor old man, thou prun’st a rotten tree,

That cannot so much as a blossom yield,

In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry.

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But come thy ways, we’ll go along together,

And ere we have thy youthful wages spent,

We’ll light upon some settled low content.

ADAM     Master go on, and I will follow thee

To the last gasp with truth and loyalty.

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From seventeen years, till now almost fourscore

Here lived I, but now live here no more.

At seventeen years, many their fortunes seek

But at fourscore, it is too late a week;

Yet fortune cannot recompense me better

75

Than to die well, and not my master’s debtor.

     Exeunt.

2.4 Enter ROSALIND as Ganymede, CELIA as Aliena and TOUCHSTONE.

ROSALIND     O Jupiter, how weary are my spirits!

TOUCHSTONE     I care not for my spirits, if my legs were

not weary.

ROSALIND     I could find in my heart to disgrace my

man’s apparel and to cry like a woman. But I must

5

comfort the weaker vessel, as doublet and hose ought

to show itself courageous to petticoat; therefore

courage, good Aliena.

CELIA     I pray you bear with me. I cannot go no further.

TOUCHSTONE     For my part, I had rather bear with you

10

than bear you; yet I should bear no cross if I did bear

you, for I think you have no money in your purse.

ROSALIND     Well, this is the Forest of Arden.

TOUCHSTONE     Ay, now am I in Arden, the more fool I;

when I was at home I was in a better place, but

15

travellers must be content.

ROSALIND     Ay, be so, good Touchstone.

Enter CORIN and SILVIUS.

Look you, who comes here,

A young man and an old in solemn talk.

CORIN     That is the way to make her scorn you still.

20

SILVIUS     O Corin, that thou knew’st how I do love her!

CORIN     I partly guess; for I have lov’d ere now.

SILVIUS     No Corin, being old, thou canst not guess,

Though in thy youth thou wast as true a lover

As ever sigh’d upon a midnight pillow.

25

But if thy love were ever like to mine,

As sure I think did never man love so,

How many actions most ridiculous

Hast thou been drawn to by thy fantasy?

CORIN     Into a thousand that I have forgotten.

30

SILVIUS     O thou didst then never love so heartily.

If thou remember’st not the slightest folly

That ever love did make thee run into,

Thou hast not lov’d.

Or if thou hast not sat as I do now,

35

Wearying thy hearer in thy mistress’ praise,

Thou hast not lov’d.

Or if thou hast not broke from company

Abruptly as my passion now makes me,

Thou hast not lov’d.

40

O Phebe, Phebe, Phebe!     Exit.

ROSALIND

Alas, poor shepherd, searching of thy wound,

I have by hard adventure found mine own.

TOUCHSTONE     And I mine. I remember when I was in

love I broke my sword upon a stone, and bid him take

45

that for coming a-night to Jane Smile; and I remember

the kissing of her batler, and the cow’s dugs that her

pretty chopt hands had milked; and I remember the

wooing of a peascod instead of her, from whom I took

two cods, and giving her them again, said with

50

weeping tears, ‘Wear these for my sake’. We that are

true lovers run into strange capers; but as all is mortal

in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.

ROSALIND     Thou speak’st wiser than thou art ware of.

TOUCHSTONE     Nay, I shall ne’er be ware of my own wit,

55

till I break my shins against it.

ROSALIND     Jove, Jove! this shepherd’s passion

Is much upon my fashion.

TOUCHSTONE     And mine, but it grows something stale

with me.

60

CELIA     I pray you, one of you question yond man, if he

for gold will give us any food. I faint almost to death.

TOUCHSTONE     Holla, you clown!

ROSALIND     Peace fool, he’s not thy kinsman.

CORIN     Who calls?

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TOUCHSTONE     Your betters sir.

CORIN     Else are they very wretched.

ROSALIND     Peace, I say. Good even to you friend.

CORIN     And to you gentle sir, and to you all.

ROSALIND     I prithee shepherd, if that love or gold

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Can in this desert place buy entertainment,

Bring us where we may rest ourselves and feed.

Here’s a young maid with travel much oppress’d,

And faints for succour.

CORIN     Fair sir, I pity her,

And wish, for her sake more than for mine own,

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My fortunes were more able to relieve her;

But I am shepherd to another man,

And do not shear the fleeces that I graze.

My master is of churlish disposition,

And little recks to find the way to heaven

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By doing deeds of hospitality.

Besides, his cote, his flocks, and bounds of feed

Are now on sale, and at our sheepcote now

By reason of his absence there is nothing

That you will feed on. But what is, come see,

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And in my voice most welcome shall you be.

ROSALIND

What is he that shall buy his flock and pasture?

CORIN

That young swain that you saw here but erewhile,

That little cares for buying anything.

ROSALIND     I pray thee, if it stand with honesty,

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Buy thou the cottage, pasture, and the flock,

And thou shalt have to pay for it of us.

CELIA     And we will mend thy wages. I like this place,

And willingly could waste my time in it.

CORIN     Assuredly the thing is to be sold.

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Go with me; if you like upon report

The soil, the profit, and this kind of life,

I will your very faithful feeder be,

And buy it with your gold right suddenly.     Exeunt.

2.5 Enter AMIENS, JAQUES and others.

AMIENS     [Sings.]

Under the greenwood tree,

Who loves to lie with me,

And turn his merry note

Unto the sweet bird’s throat,

Come hither, come hither, come hither.

5

Here shall he see

No enemy,

But winter and rough weather.

JAQUES     More, more, I prithee more.

AMIENS     It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaques.

10

JAQUES     I thank it. More, I prithee more. I can suck

melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs.

More, I prithee more.

AMIENS     My voice is ragged, I know I cannot please you.

JAQUES     I do not desire you to please me, I do desire you

15

to sing. Come, more, another stanzo. Call you ’em

stanzos?

AMIENS     What you will Monsieur Jaques.

JAQUES     Nay, I care not for their names, they owe me

nothing. Will you sing?

20

AMIENS     More at your request than to please myself.

JAQUES     Well then, if ever I thank any man, I’ll thank

you; but that they call compliment is like th’encounter

of two dog-apes. And when a man thanks me heartily,

methinks I have given him a penny and he renders me

25

the beggarly thanks. Come sing; and you that will not,

hold your tongues.

AMIENS     Well, I’ll end the song. Sirs, cover the while:

the Duke will drink under this tree. He hath been all

this day to look you.

30

JAQUES     And I have been all this day to avoid him. He is

too disputable for my company. I think of as many

matters as he, but I give heaven thanks and make no

boast of them. Come, warble, come.

AMIENS     [Sings.]

Who doth ambition shun,

35

And loves to live i’th’ sun,

Seeking the food he eats,

And pleas’d with what he gets,

ALL     Come hither, come hither, come hither.

Here shall he see

40

No enemy,

But winter and rough weather.

JAQUES     I’ll give you a verse to this note, that I made

yesterday in despite of my invention.

AMIENS     And I’ll sing it.

45

JAQUES     Thus it goes.

If it do come to pass

That any man turn ass,

Leaving his wealth and ease,

A stubborn will to please,

50

Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame,

Here shall he see

Gross fools as he,

And if he will come to me.

AMIENS     What’s that ‘ducdame’?

55

JAQUES     ’Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a

circle. I’ll go sleep if I can; if I cannot, I’ll rail against

all the first-born of Egypt.

AMIENS     And I’ll go seek the Duke; his banquet is

prepared.     Exeunt.

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2.6 Enter ORLANDO and ADAM.

ADAM     Dear master, I can go no further. O I die for food.

Here lie I down, and measure out my grave. Farewell

kind master.

ORLANDO     Why how now Adam? No greater heart in

thee? Live a little, comfort a little, cheer thyself a little.

5

If this uncouth forest yield anything savage, I will

either be food for it, or bring it for food to thee. Thy

conceit is nearer death than thy powers. For my sake

be comfortable; hold death awhile at the arm’s end. I

will here be with thee presently, and if I bring thee not

10

something to eat, I will give thee leave to die; but if

thou diest before I come, thou art a mocker of my

labour. Well said! Thou lookst cheerly, and I’ll be with

thee quickly. Yet thou liest in the bleak air. Come, I

will bear thee to some shelter and thou shalt not die for

15

lack of a dinner, if there live any thing in this desert.

Cheerly good Adam.     Exeunt.

2.7 Enter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS and Lords, like outlaws.

DUKE SENIOR     I think he be transform’d into a beast,

For I can nowhere find him like a man.

1 LORD     My lord, he is but even now gone hence.

Here was he merry, hearing of a song.

DUKE SENIOR     If he, compact of jars, grow musical,

5

We shall have shortly discord in the spheres.

Go seek him, tell him I would speak with him.

1 LORD     He saves my labour by his own approach.

Enter JAQUES.

DUKE SENIOR

Why how now monsieur? What a life is this,

That your poor friends must woo your company?

10

What, you look merrily?

JAQUES     A fool, a fool! I met a fool i’th’ forest,

A motley fool: a miserable world!

As I do live by food, I met a fool,

Who laid him down and bask’d him in the sun,

15

And rail’d on Lady Fortune in good terms,

In good set terms, and yet a motley fool.

‘Good morrow, fool’, quoth I. ‘No, sir,’ quoth he,

‘Call me not fool, till heaven hath sent me fortune’.

And then he drew a dial from his poke,

20

And looking on it, with lack-lustre eye,

Says, very wisely, ‘It is ten o’clock.

Thus we may see’, quoth he, ‘how the world wags:

’Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,

And after one hour more ’twill be eleven;

25

And so from hour to hour, we ripe, and ripe,

And then from hour to hour, we rot, and rot,

And thereby hangs a tale.’ When I did hear

The motley fool thus moral on the time,

My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,

30

That fools should be so deep-contemplative;

And I did laugh, sans intermission,

An hour by his dial. O noble fool!

A worthy fool! Motley’s the only wear.

DUKE SENIOR     What fool is this?

35

JAQUES     O worthy fool! One that hath been a courtier

And says, if ladies be but young and fair,

They have the gift to know it. And in his brain,

Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit

After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm’d

40

With observation, the which he vents

In mangled forms. O that I were a fool!

I am ambitious for a motley coat.

DUKE SENIOR     Thou shalt have one.

JAQUES     It is my only suit,

Provided that you weed your better judgements

45

Of all opinion that grows rank in them

That I am wise. I must have liberty

Withal, as large a charter as the wind,

To blow on whom I please, for so fools have;

And they that are most galled with my folly,

50

They most must laugh. And why sir must they so?

The why is plain as way to parish church.

He that a fool doth very wisely hit

Doth very foolishly, although he smart,

Not to seem senseless of the bob. If not,

55

The wiseman’s folly is anatomiz’d

Even by the squand’ring glances of the fool.

Invest me in my motley. Give me leave

To speak my mind, and I will through and through

Cleanse the foul body of th’infected world,

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If they will patiently receive my medicine.

DUKE SENIOR

Fie on thee! I can tell what thou wouldst do.

JAQUES     What, for a counter, would I do but good?

DUKE SENIOR

Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin.

For thou thyself hast been a libertine,

65

As sensual as the brutish sting itself,

And all th’embossed sores and headed evils

That thou with licence of free foot hast caught

Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world.

JAQUES     Why who cries out on pride,

70

That can therein tax any private party?

Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea,

Till that the weary very means do ebb?

What woman in the city do I name,

When that I say the city-woman bears

75

The cost of princes on unworthy shoulders?

Who can come in and say that I mean her,

When such a one as she, such is her neighbour?

Or what is he of basest function,

That says his bravery is not on my cost,

80

Thinking that I mean him, but therein suits

His folly to the mettle of my speech?

There then! How then? What then? Let me see

wherein

My tongue hath wrong’d him: if it do him right,

Then he hath wrong’d himself; if he be free,

85

Why then my taxing like a wild-goose flies

Unclaim’d of any man. But who comes here?

Enter ORLANDO with sword drawn.

ORLANDO     Forbear, and eat no more.

JAQUES     Why, I have eat none yet.

ORLANDO     Nor shalt not till necessity be served.

90

JAQUES     Of what kind should this cock come of?

DUKE SENIOR

Art thou thus bolden’d man by thy distress?

Or else a rude despiser of good manners,

That in civility thou seem’st so empty?

ORLANDO

You touch’d my vein at first: the thorny point

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Of bare distress hath ta’en from me the show

Of smooth civility. Yet am I inland bred,

And know some nurture. But forbear, I say,

He dies that touches any of this fruit,

Till I and my affairs are answered.

100

JAQUES

And you will not be answered with reason, I must

die.

DUKE SENIOR

What would you have? Your gentleness shall force,

More than your force move us to gentleness.

ORLANDO     I almost die for food, and let me have it.

DUKE SENIOR

Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table.

105

ORLANDO     Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you.

I thought that all things had been savage here,

And therefore put I on the countenance

Of stern commandment. But whate’er you are

That in this desert inaccessible

110

Under the shade of melancholy boughs,

Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time;

If ever you have look’d on better days;

If ever been where bells have knoll’d to church;

If ever sat at any good man’s feast;

115

If ever from your eyelids wip’d a tear,

And know what ’tis to pity and be pitied,

Let gentleness my strong enforcement be;

In the which hope, I blush, and hide my sword.

DUKE SENIOR     True is it that we have seen better days,

120

And have with holy bell been knoll’d to church,

And sat at good men’s feasts, and wip’d our eyes

Of drops that sacred pity hath engender’d;

And therefore sit you down in gentleness,

And take upon command what help we have

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That to your wanting may be minister’d.

ORLANDO     Then but forbear your food a little while,

Whiles, like a doe, I go to find my fawn,

And give it food. There is an old poor man,

Who after me hath many a weary step

130

Limp’d in pure love; till he be first suffic’d,

Oppress’d with two weak evils, age and hunger,

I will not touch a bit.

DUKE SENIOR     Go find him out,

And we will nothing waste till you return.

ORLANDO

I thank ye, and be blest for your good comfort.     Exit.

135

DUKE SENIOR

Thou seest, we are not all alone unhappy:

This wide and universal theatre

Presents more woeful pageants than the scene

Wherein we play in.

JAQUES     All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

140

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

Then, the whining school-boy with his satchel

145

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then, a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

150

Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then, the justice,

In fair round belly, with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,

155

Full of wise saws, and modern instances,

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,

His youthful hose well sav’d, a world too wide

160

For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

165

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Enter ORLANDO with ADAM.

DUKE SENIOR

Welcome. Set down your venerable burden,

And let him feed.

ORLANDO     I thank you most for him.

ADAM     So had you need,

I scarce can speak to thank you for myself.

170

DUKE SENIOR     Welcome, fall to. I will not trouble you

As yet to question you about your fortunes.

Give us some music, and good cousin, sing.

AMIENS     [Sings.]

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

175

As man’s ingratitude.

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly

180

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

Then heigh-ho, the holly,

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

That dost not bite so nigh

185

As benefits forgot.

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp,

As friend remember’d not.

Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly,

190

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

Then heigh-ho the holly,

This life is most jolly.

DUKE SENIOR

If that you were the good Sir Rowland’s son,

As you have whisper’d faithfully you were,

195

And as mine eye doth his effigies witness

Most truly limn’d and living in your face,

Be truly welcome hither. I am the duke

That lov’d your father. The residue of your fortune,

Go to my cave and tell me. Good old man,

200

Thou art right welcome as thy master is.

Support him by the arm. Give me your hand

And let me all your fortunes understand.     Exeunt.

3.1 Enter DUKE, lords and OLIVER.

DUKE FREDERICK

Not see him since? Sir, sir, that cannot be.

But were I not the better part made mercy,

I should not seek an absent argument

Of my revenge, thou present. But look to it:

Find out thy brother whereso’er he is;

5

Seek him with candle: bring him dead or living

Within this twelvmonth, or turn thou no more

To seek a living in our territory.

Thy lands and all things that thou dost call thine,

Worth seizure, do we seize into our hands,

10

Till thou canst quit thee by thy brother’s mouth

Of what we think against thee.

OLIVER     O that your Highness knew my heart in this!

I never lov’d my brother in my life.

DUKE FREDERICK

More villain thou. Well, push him out of doors,

15

And let my officers of such a nature

Make an extent upon his house and lands.

Do this expediently, and turn him going.     Exeunt.

3.2 Enter ORLANDO with a paper.

ORLANDO     Hang there my verse, in witness of my love,

And thou thrice-crowned queen of night, survey

With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above,

Thy huntress’ name, that my full life doth sway.

O Rosalind, these trees shall be my books,

5

And in their barks my thoughts I’ll character,

That every eye which in this forest looks,

Shall see thy virtue witness’d everywhere.

Run, run Orlando, carve on every tree

The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she.     Exit.

10

Enter CORIN and TOUCHSTONE.

CORIN     And how like you this shepherd’s life, Master

Touchstone?

TOUCHSTONE     Truly shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a

good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd’s life, it is

naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well;

15

but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life.

Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well;

but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it

is a spare life, look you, it fits my humour well; but as

there is no more plenty in it, it goes much against my

20

stomach. Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?

CORIN     No more but that I know the more one sickens

the worse at ease he is; and that he that wants money,

means, and content is without three good friends; that

the property of rain is to wet and fire to burn; that

25

good pasture makes fat sheep; and that a great cause of

the night is lack of the sun; that he that hath learned

no wit by nature nor art may complain of good

breeding or comes of a very dull kindred.

TOUCHSTONE     Such a one is a natural philosopher. Wast

30

ever in court, shepherd?

CORIN     No truly.

TOUCHSTONE     Then thou art damned.

CORIN     Nay, I hope.

TOUCHSTONE     Truly thou art damned, like an ill-

35

roasted egg, all on one side.

CORIN     For not being at court? Your reason.

TOUCHSTONE     Why, if thou never wast at court, thou

never saw’st good manners; if thou never saw’st good

manners, then thy manners must be wicked, and

40

wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation. Thou art in

a parlous state, shepherd.

CORIN     Not a whit, Touchstone. Those that are good

manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country

as the behaviour of the country is most mockable at the

45

court. You told me you salute not at the court, but you

kiss your hands: that courtesy would be uncleanly if

courtiers were shepherds.

TOUCHSTONE     Instance, briefly; come, instance.

CORIN     Why we are still handling our ewes, and their

50

fells you know are greasy.

TOUCHSTONE     Why, do not your courtier’s hands sweat?

And is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the

sweat of a man? Shallow, shallow. A better instance I

say. Come.

55

CORIN     Besides, our hands are hard.

TOUCHSTONE     Your lips will feel them the sooner.

Shallow again. A more sounder instance, come.

CORIN     And they are often tarred over with the surgery

of our sheep; and would you have us kiss tar? The

60

courtier’s hands are perfumed with civet.

TOUCHSTONE     Most shallow man! Thou worms-meat in

respect of a good piece of flesh indeed! Learn of the

wise and perpend. Civet is of a baser birth than tar, the

very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance,

65

shepherd.

CORIN     You have too courtly a wit for me, I’ll rest.

TOUCHSTONE     Wilt thou rest damned? God help thee,

shallow man! God make incision in thee, thou art raw!

CORIN     Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get

70

that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man’s

happiness; glad of other men’s good, content with my

harm; and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes

graze and my lambs suck.

TOUCHSTONE     That is another simple sin in you, to

75

bring the ewes and the rams together, and to offer to

get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd

to a bell-wether, and to betray a she-lamb of a twelve-

month to a crooked-pated old cuckoldly ram, out of all

reasonable match. If thou beest not damned for this,

80

the devil himself will have no shepherds. I cannot see

else how thou shouldst ’scape.

CORIN     Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new

mistress’s brother.

Enter ROSALIND with a paper, reading.

ROSALIND

From the east to western Inde,

85

No jewel is like Rosalind.

Her worth being mounted on the wind,

Through all the world bears Rosalind.

All the pictures fairest lin’d

Are but black to Rosalind.

90

Let no face be kept in mind

But the fair of Rosalind.

TOUCHSTONE     I’ll rhyme you so, eight years together;

dinners and suppers and sleeping-hours excepted. It

is the right butter-women’s rank to market.

95

ROSALIND     Out fool!

TOUCHSTONE     For a taste.

If a hart do lack a hind,

Let him seek out Rosalind.

If the cat will after kind,

100

So be sure will Rosalind.

Winter’d garments must be lin’d,

So must slender Rosalind.

They that reap must sheaf and bind,

Then to cart with Rosalind.

105

Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,

Such a nut is Rosalind.

He that sweetest rose will find

Must find love’s prick, and Rosalind.

This is the very false gallop of verses; why do you

110

infect yourself with them?

ROSALIND     Peace you dull fool! I found them on a tree.

TOUCHSTONE     Truly the tree yields bad fruit.

ROSALIND I’ll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it

with a medlar. Then it will be the earliest fruit i’th’

115

country; for you’ll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and

that’s the right virtue of the medlar.

TOUCHSTONE     You have said; but whether wisely or no,

let the forest judge.

ROSALIND     Peace! Here comes my sister, reading. Stand

120

aside.

Enter CELIA with a writing.

CELIA     [Reads.]

Why should this desert be,

For it is unpeopled? No.

Tongues I’ll hang on every tree,

That shall civil sayings show.

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Some, how brief the life of man

Runs his erring pilgrimage,

That the stretching of a span

Buckles in his sum of age.

Some of violated vows,

130

’Twixt the souls of friend and friend.

But upon the fairest boughs,

Or at every sentence end,

Will I Rosalinda write,

Teaching all that read to know

135

The quintessence of every sprite

Heaven would in little show.

Therefore Heaven Nature charg’d

That one body should be fill’d

With all graces wide-enlarg’d.

140

Nature presently distill’d

Helen’s cheek, but not her heart,

Cleopatra’s majesty,

Atalanta’s better part,

Sad Lucretia’s modesty.

145

Thus Rosalind of many parts

By heavenly synod was devis’d,

Of many faces, eyes, and hearts,

To have the touches dearest priz’d.

Heaven would that she these gifts should have,

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And I to live and die her slave.

ROSALIND     O most gentle Jupiter, what tedious homily

of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and

never cried, ‘Have patience good people!’

CELIA     How now? Back-friends! Shepherd, go off a

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little. Go with him sirrah.

TOUCHSTONE     Come shepherd, let us make an

honourable retreat, though not with bag and baggage,

yet with scrip and scrippage.     Exit with Corin.

CELIA     Didst thou hear these verses?

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ROSALIND     O yes, I heard them all, and more too, for

some of them had in them more feet than the verses

would bear.

CELIA     That’s no matter: the feet might bear the verses.

ROSALIND     Ay, but the feet were lame, and could not

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bear themselves without the verse, and therefore stood

lamely in the verse.

CELIA     But didst thou hear without wondering how thy

name should be hanged and carved upon these

trees?

170

ROSALIND     I was seven of the nine days out of the

wonder before you came; for look here what I found

on a palm-tree. I was never so berhymed since

Pythagoras’ time that I was an Irish rat, which I can

hardly remember.

175

CELIA     Trow you who hath done this?

ROSALIND     Is it a man?

CELIA     And a chain, that you once wore, about his neck.

Change you colour?

ROSALIND     I prithee who?

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CELIA     O Lord, Lord! It is a hard matter for friends to

meet; but mountains may be remov’d with

earthquakes, and so encounter.

ROSALIND     Nay, but who is it?

CELIA     Is it possible?

185

ROSALIND     Nay, I prithee now, with most petitionary

vehemence, tell me who it is.

CELIA     O wonderful, wonderful! And most wonderful

wonderful! And yet again wonderful! And after that

out of all whooping.

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ROSALIND     Good my complexion! Dost thou think

though I am caparisoned like a man I have a doublet

and hose in my disposition? One inch of delay more is

a South Sea of discovery. I prithee tell me who is it

quickly, and speak apace. I would thou couldst

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stammer, that thou mightst pour this concealed man

out of thy mouth, as wine comes out of a narrow-

mouthed bottle; either too much at once or none at all.

I prithee take the cork out of thy mouth, that I may

drink thy tidings.

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CELIA     So you may put a man in your belly.

ROSALIND     Is he of God’s making? What manner of

man? Is his head worth a hat? Or his chin worth a

beard?

CELIA     Nay, he hath but a little beard.

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ROSALIND     Why God will send more, if the man will be

thankful. Let me stay the growth of his beard, if thou

delay me not the knowledge of his chin.

CELIA     It is young Orlando, that tripped up the

wrestler’s heels and your heart, both in an instant.

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ROSALIND     Nay, but the devil take mocking. Speak sad

brow and true maid.

CELIA     I’faith, coz, ’tis he.

ROSALIND     Orlando?

CELIA     Orlando.

215

ROSALIND     Alas the day, what shall I do with my doublet

and hose? What did he when thou saw’st him? What

said he? How looked he? Wherein went he? What

makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where remains he?

How parted he with thee? And when shalt thou see

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him again? Answer me in one word.

CELIA     You must borrow me Gargantua’s mouth first.

’Tis a word too great for any mouth of this age’s size.

To say ay and no to these particulars is more than to

answer in a catechism.

225

ROSALIND     But doth he know that I am in this forest,

and in man’s apparel? Looks he as freshly as he did the

day he wrestled?

CELIA     It is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the

propositions of a lover. But take a taste of my finding

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him, and relish it with good observance. I found him

under a tree like a dropped acorn.

ROSALIND     It may well be called Jove’s tree, when it

drops such fruit.

CELIA     Give me audience, good madam.

235

ROSALIND     Proceed.

CELIA     There lay he stretched along like a wounded

knight.

ROSALIND     Though it be pity to see such a sight, it well

becomes the ground.

240

CELIA     Cry holla to the tongue, I prithee; it curvets

unseasonably. He was furnished like a hunter.

ROSALIND     O ominous! he comes to kill my heart!

CELIA     I would sing my song without a burden. Thou

bringest me out of tune.

245

ROSALIND     Do you not know I am a woman? When I

think, I must speak. Sweet, say on.

CELIA     You bring me out. Soft! comes he not here?

Enter ORLANDO and JAQUES.

ROSALIND     ’Tis he. Slink by and note him.

JAQUES     I thank you for your company, but good faith, I

250

had as lief have been myself alone.

ORLANDO     And so had I: but yet for fashion sake I thank

you too, for your society.

JAQUES     God buy you: let’s meet as little as we can.

ORLANDO     I do desire we may be better strangers.

255

JAQUES     I pray you mar no more trees with writing

lovesongs in their barks.

ORLANDO     I pray you mar no more of my verses with

reading them ill-favouredly.

JAQUES     Rosalind is your love’s name?

260

ORLANDO     Yes, just.

JAQUES     I do not like her name.

ORLANDO     There was no thought of pleasing you when

she was christened.

JAQUES     What stature is she of?

265

ORLANDO     Just as high as my heart.

JAQUES     You are full of pretty answers. Have you not

been acquainted with goldsmiths’ wives, and conned

them out of rings?

ORLANDO     Not so; but I answer you right painted cloth,

270

from whence you have studied your questions.

JAQUES     You have a nimble wit; I think ’twas made of

Atalanta’s heels. Will you sit down with me and we

two will rail against our mistress the world and all our

misery?

275

ORLANDO     I will chide no breather in the world but

myself, against whom I know most faults.

JAQUES     The worst fault you have is to be in love.

ORLANDO     ’Tis a fault I will not change for your best

virtue. I am weary of you.

280

JAQUES     By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I

found you.

ORLANDO     He is drowned in the brook. Look but in and

you shall see him.

JAQUES     There I shall see mine own figure.

285

ORLANDO     Which I take to be either a fool, or a cipher.

JAQUES     I’ll tarry no longer with you. Farewell good

Signior Love.

ORLANDO     I am glad of your departure. Adieu good

Monsieur Melancholy.     Exit Jaques.

290

ROSALIND     [aside to Celia] I will speak to him like a saucy

lackey and under that habit play the knave with him. –

Do you hear, forester?

ORLANDO     Very well. What would you?

ROSALIND     I pray you, what is’t o’clock?

295

ORLANDO     You should ask me what time o’ day; there’s

no clock in the forest.

ROSALIND     Then there is no true lover in the forest, else

sighing every minute and groaning every hour would

detect the lazy foot of Time, as well as a clock.

300

ORLANDO     And why not the swift foot of Time? Had not

that been as proper?

ROSALIND     By no means sir. Time travels in divers paces

with divers persons. I’ll tell you who Time ambles

withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops

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withal, and who he stands still withal.

ORLANDO     I prithee, who doth he trot withal?

ROSALIND     Marry he trots hard with a young maid,

between the contract of her marriage and the day it is

solemnized. If the interim be but a se’nnight, Time’s

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pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven year.

ORLANDO     Who ambles Time withal?

ROSALIND     With a priest that lacks Latin, and a rich man

that hath not the gout, for the one sleeps easily

because he cannot study, and the other lives merrily

315

because he feels no pain; the one lacking the burden

of lean and wasteful learning; the other knowing no

burden of heavy tedious penury. These Time ambles

withal.

ORLANDO     Who doth he gallop withal?

320

ROSALIND     With a thief to the gallows; for though he go

as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon

there.

ORLANDO     Who stays it still withal?

ROSALIND     With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep

325

between term and term, and then they perceive not

how Time moves.

ORLANDO     Where dwell you pretty youth?

ROSALIND     With this shepherdess my sister; here in the

skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat.

330

ORLANDO     Are you native of this place?

ROSALIND     As the cony that you see dwell where she is

kindled.

ORLANDO     Your accent is something finer than you

could purchase in so removed a dwelling.

335

ROSALIND     I have been told so of many. But indeed, an

old religious uncle of mine taught me to speak, who

was in his youth an inland man, one that knew

courtship too well, for there he fell in love. I have

heard him read many lectures against it, and I thank

340

God I am not a woman, to be touched with so many

giddy offences as he hath generally taxed their whole

sex withal.

ORLANDO     Can you remember any of the principal evils

that he laid to the charge of women?

345

ROSALIND     There were none principal: they were all like

one another as half-pence are, every one fault seeming

monstrous, till his fellow-fault came to match it.

ORLANDO     I prithee recount some of them.

ROSALIND     No; I will not cast away my physic but on

350

those that are sick. There is a man haunts the forest

that abuses our young plants with carving ‘Rosalind’

on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies

on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the name of

Rosalind. If I could meet that fancy-monger, I would

355

give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the

quotidian of love upon him.

ORLANDO     I am he that is so love-shaked. I pray you tell

me your remedy.

ROSALIND     There is none of my uncle’s marks upon you.

360

He taught me how to know a man in love; in which

cage of rushes I am sure you are not prisoner.

ORLANDO     What were his marks?

ROSALIND     A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye

and sunken, which you have not; an unquestionable

365

spirit, which you have not; a beard neglected, which

you have not – but I pardon you for that, for simply

your having in beard is a younger brother’s revenue.

Then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet

unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied,

370

and everything about you demonstrating a careless

desolation. But you are no such man: you are rather

point-device in your accoutrements, as loving yourself

than seeming the lover of any other.

ORLANDO     Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe

375

I love.

ROSALIND     Me believe it! You may as soon make her that

you love believe it, which I warrant she is apter to do

than to confess she does. That is one of the points in

the which women still give the lie to their consciences.

380

But in good sooth, are you he that hangs the verses on

the trees, wherein Rosalind is so admired?

ORLANDO     I swear to thee youth, by the white hand of

Rosalind, I am that he, that unfortunate he.

ROSALIND     But are you so much in love as your rhymes

385

speak?

ORLANDO     Neither rhyme nor reason can express how

much.

ROSALIND     Love is merely a madness, and I tell you,

deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen

390

do; and the reason why they are not so punished and

cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the

whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing it by

counsel.

ORLANDO     Did you ever cure any so?

395

ROSALIND     Yes, one, and in this manner. He was to

imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every

day to woo me. At which time would I, being but a

moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable,

longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow,

400

inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles, for every

passion something and for no passion truly

anything, as boys and women are for the most part

cattle of this colour; would now like him, now loathe

him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep

405

for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from

his mad humour of love to a living humour of

madness, which was, to forswear the full stream of the

world and to live in a nook merely monastic. And thus

I cured him, and this way will I take upon me to wash

410

your liver as clean as a sound sheep’s heart, that there

shall not be one spot of love in’t.

ORLANDO     I would not be cured, youth.

ROSALIND     I would cure you, if you would but call me

Rosalind     and come every day to my cote and woo me.

415

ORLANDO     Now by the faith of my love, I will. Tell me

where it is.

ROSALIND     Go with me to it, and I’ll show it you; and by

the way, you shall tell me where in the forest you live.

Will you go?

420

ORLANDO     With all my heart, good youth.

ROSALIND     Nay, you must call me Rosalind. Come sister,

will you go?     Exeunt.

3.3 Enter TOUCHSTONE, AUDREY and JAQUES behind.

TOUCHSTONE     Come apace good Audrey. I will fetch up

your goats, Audrey. And how Audrey, am I the man

yet? Doth my simple feature content you?

AUDREY     Your features? Lord warrant us! What

features?

5

TOUCHSTONE     I am here with thee and thy goats, as the

most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the

Goths.

JAQUES     [aside] O knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than

Jove in a thatched house!

10

TOUCHSTONE     When a man’s verses cannot be

understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the

forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more

dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I

would the gods had made thee poetical.

15

AUDREY     I do not know what ‘poetical’ is. Is it honest in

deed and word? Is it a true thing?

TOUCHSTONE     No truly; for the truest poetry is the most

feigning, and lovers are given to poetry; and what they

swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign.

20

AUDREY     Do you wish then that the gods had made me

poetical?

TOUCHSTONE     I do truly. For thou swear’st to me thou

art honest. Now if thou wert a poet, I might have some

hope thou didst feign.

25

AUDREY     Would you not have me honest?

TOUCHSTONE     No truly, unless thou wert hard-

favoured; for honesty coupled to beauty is to have

honey a sauce to sugar.

JAQUES     [aside] A material fool!

30

AUDREY     Well, I am not fair, and therefore I pray the

gods make me honest.

TOUCHSTONE     Truly, and to cast away honesty upon a

foul slut were to put good meat into an unclean dish.

AUDREY     I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am

35

foul.

TOUCHSTONE     Well, praised be the gods for thy

foulness; sluttishness may come hereafter. But be it as

it may be, I will marry thee; and to that end I have

been with Sir Oliver Martext, the vicar of the next

40

village, who hath promised to meet me in this place of

the forest and to couple us.

JAQUES     [aside] I would fain see this meeting.

AUDREY     Well, the gods give us joy!

TOUCHSTONE     Amen. A man may, if he were of a fearful

45

heart, stagger in this attempt; for here we have no

temple but the wood, no assembly but horn-beasts.

But what though? Courage! As horns are odious, they

are necessary. It is said, many a man knows no end of

his goods. Right. Many a man has good horns and

50

knows no end of them. Well, that is the dowry of his

wife, ’tis none of his own getting. Horns? Even so. Poor

men alone? No, no. The noblest deer hath them as

huge as the rascal. Is the single man therefore blessed?

No. As a walled town is more worthier than a village,

55

so is the forehead of a married man more honourable

than the bare brow of a bachelor; and by how much

defence is better than no skill, by so much is a horn

more precious than to want. Here comes Sir Oliver.

Enter SIR OLIVER MARTEXT.

Sir Oliver Martext, you are well met. Will you

60

dispatch us here under this tree or shall we go with

you to your chapel?

SIR OLIVER     Is there none here to give the woman?

TOUCHSTONE     I will not take her on gift of any man.

SIR OLIVER     Truly she must be given, or the marriage is

65

not lawful.

JAQUES     [advancing] Proceed, proceed. I’ll give her.

TOUCHSTONE     Good even, good Master What-ye-call’t.

How do you sir? You are very well met. God ’ild you

for your last company. I am very glad to see you. Even

70

a toy in hand here sir. Nay, pray be covered.

JAQUES     Will you be married, Motley?

TOUCHSTONE     As the ox hath his bow sir, the horse his

curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires,

and as pigeons bill, so wedlock would be nibbling.

75

JAQUES     And will you, being a man of your breeding, be

married under a bush like a beggar? Get you to

church, and have a good priest that can tell you what

marriage is. This fellow will but join you together as

they join wainscot; then one of you will prove a shrunk

80

panel, and like green timber, warp, warp.

TOUCHSTONE     [aside] I am not in the mind but I were

better to be married of him than of another, for he is

not like to marry me well; and not being well married,

it will be a good excuse for me hereafter to leave my

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wife.

JAQUES     Go thou with me, and let me counsel thee.

TOUCHSTONE     Come sweet Audrey, We must be married

or we must live in bawdry. Farewell good Master

Oliver. Not –

90

O sweet Oliver,

O brave Oliver,

Leave me not behind thee:

but –

Wind away,

95

Be gone, I say,

I will not to wedding with thee.

     Exeunt Jaques, Touchstone and Audrey.

SIR OLIVER     ’Tis no matter. Ne’er a fantastical knave of

them all shall flout me out of my calling.     Exit.

3.4 Enter ROSALIND and CELIA.

ROSALIND     Never talk to me, I will weep.

CELIA     Do I prithee, but yet have the grace to consider

that tears do not become a man.

ROSALIND     But have I not cause to weep?

CELIA     As good cause as one would desire, therefore

5

weep.

ROSALIND     His very hair is of the dissembling colour.

CELIA     Something browner than Judas’s. Marry his

kisses are Judas’s own children.

ROSALIND     I’faith his hair is of a good colour.

10

CELIA     An excellent colour. Your chestnut was ever the

only colour.

ROSALIND     And his kissing is as full of sanctity as the

touch of holy bread.

CELIA     He hath bought a pair of cast lips of Diana. A

15

nun of winter’s sisterhood kisses not more

religiously, the very ice of chastity is in them.

ROSALIND     But why did he swear he would come this

morning and comes not?

CELIA     Nay certainly there is no truth in him.

20

ROSALIND     Do you think so?

CELIA     Yes, I think he is not a pick-purse nor a horse-

stealer, but for his verity in love, I do think him as

concave as a covered goblet or a worm-eaten nut.

ROSALIND     Not true in love?

25

CELIA     Yes, when he is in, but I think he is not in.

ROSALIND     You have heard him swear downright he was.

CELIA     ‘Was’ is not ‘is’; besides, the oath of a lover is no

stronger than the word of a tapster. They are both

the confirmer of false reckonings. He attends here in

30

the forest on the Duke your father.

ROSALIND     I met the Duke yesterday and had much

question with him. He asked me of what parentage I

was: I told him of as good as he, so he laughed and let

me go. But what talk we of fathers, when there is such

35

a man as Orlando?

CELIA     O that’s a brave man! He writes brave verses,

speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks

them bravely, quite traverse, athwart the heart of his

lover, as a puisny tilter that spurs his horse but on

40

one side breaks his staff like a noble goose. But all’s

brave that youth mounts and folly guides. Who

comes here?

Enter CORIN.

CORIN     Mistress and master, you have oft enquir’d

After the shepherd that complain’d of love,

45

Who you saw sitting by me on the turf

Praising the proud disdainful shepherdess

That was his mistress.

CELIA     Well, and what of him?

CORIN     If you will see a pageant truly play’d

Between the pale complexion of true love

50

And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain,

Go hence a little, and I shall conduct you

If you will mark it.

ROSALIND     O come, let us remove.

The sight of lovers feedeth those in love.

Bring us to this sight, and you shall say

55

I’ll prove a busy actor in their play.     Exeunt.

3.5 Enter SILVIUS and PHEBE.

SILVIUS     Sweet Phebe do not scorn me, do not Phebe.

Say that you love me not, but say not so

In bitterness. The common executioner,

Whose heart th’accustom’d sight of death makes

hard,

Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck

5

But first begs pardon. Will you sterner be

Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops?

Enter ROSALIND, CELIA and CORIN behind.

PHEBE     I would not be thy executioner;

I fly thee, for I would not injure thee.

Thou tell’st me there is murder in mine eye:

10

’Tis pretty, sure, and very probable,

That eyes, that are the frail’st and softest things,

Who shut their coward gates on atomies,

Should be call’d tyrants, butchers, murderers.

Now I do frown on thee with all my heart,

15

And if mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee.

Now counterfeit to swoon: why now fall down,

Or if thou canst not, O for shame, for shame,

Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers.

Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee.

20

Scratch thee but with a pin, and there remains

Some scar of it; lean upon a rush,

The cicatrice and capable impressure

Thy palm some moment keeps; but now mine eyes,

Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not,

25

Nor, I am sure, there is no force in eyes

That can do hurt.

SILVIUS     O dear Phebe,

If ever, as that ever may be near,

You meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy,

Then shall you know the wounds invisible

30

That love’s keen arrows make.

PHEBE     But till that time

Come not thou near me; and when that time comes,

Afflict me with thy mocks, pity me not,

As till that time I shall not pity thee.

ROSALIND     [advancing]

And why I pray you? Who might be your mother,

35

That you insult, exult, and all at once,

Over the wretched? What though you have no beauty –

As by my faith I see no more in you

Than without candle may go dark to bed –

Must you be therefore proud and pitiless?

40

Why what means this? Why do you look on me?

I see no more in you than in the ordinary

Of Nature’s sale-work. ’Od’s my little life,

I think she means to tangle my eyes too!

No faith proud mistress, hope not after it.

45

’Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair,

Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream

That can entame my spirits to your worship.

You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her

Like foggy South puffing with wind and rain?

50

You are a thousand times a properer man

Than she a woman. ’Tis such fools as you

That makes the world full of ill-favour’d children.

’Tis not her glass but you that flatters her,

And out of you she sees herself more proper

55

Than any of her lineaments can show her.

But mistress, know yourself. Down on your knees

And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man’s love;

For I must tell you friendly in your ear,

Sell when you can, you are not for all markets.

60

Cry the man mercy, love him, take his offer;

Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer.

So take her to thee shepherd. Fare you well.

PHEBE     Sweet youth, I pray you chide a year together.

I had rather hear you chide than this man woo.

65

ROSALIND     [to Phebe] He’s fallen in love with your

foulness, [to Silvius] and she’ll fall in love with my

anger. If it be so, as fast as she answers thee with

frowning looks, I’ll sauce her with bitter words.

[to Phebe] Why look you so upon me?

70

PHEBE     For no ill will I bear you.

ROSALIND     I pray you do not fall in love with me,

For I am falser than vows made in wine.

Besides, I like you not. If you will know my house,

’Tis at the tuft of olives here hard by.

75

Will you go sister? Shepherd, ply her hard.

Come sister. Shepherdess, look on him better

And be not proud; though all the world could see,

None could be so abus’d in sight as he.

Come, to our flock.

80

     Exeunt Rosalind, Celia and Corin.

PHEBE     Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might,

‘Who ever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight?’

SILVIUS     Sweet Phebe!

PHEBE     Hah? What say’st thou, Silvius?

SILVIUS     Sweet Phebe pity me.

PHEBE     Why I am sorry for thee gentle Silvius.

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SILVIUS     Wherever sorrow is, relief would be.

If you do sorrow at my grief in love,

By giving love, your sorrow and my grief

Were both extermined.

PHEBE     Thou hast my love. Is not that neighbourly?

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SILVIUS     I would have you.

PHEBE     Why that were covetousness.

Silvius, the time was that I hated thee;

And yet it is not that I bear thee love,

But since that thou canst talk of love so well,

Thy company, which erst was irksome to me,

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I will endure; and I’ll employ thee too.

But do not look for further recompense

Than thine own gladness that thou art employ’d.

SILVIUS     So holy and so perfect is my love,

And I in such a poverty of grace,

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That I shall think it a most plenteous crop

To glean the broken ears after the man

That the main harvest reaps. Loose now and then

A scatter’d smile, and that I’ll live upon.

PHEBE

Know’st thou the youth that spoke to me erewhile?

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SILVIUS     Not very well, but I have met him oft,

And he hath bought the cottage and the bounds

That the old carlot once was master of.

PHEBE     Think not I love him, though I ask for him.

’Tis but a peevish boy – yet he talks well –

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But what care I for words? Yet words do well

When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.

It is a pretty youth – not very pretty –

But sure he’s proud, and yet his pride becomes him.

He’ll make a proper man. The best thing in him

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Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue

Did make offence, his eye did heal it up.

He is not very tall, yet for his years he’s tall.

His leg is but so so; and yet ’tis well.

There was a pretty redness in his lip,

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A little riper and more lusty red

Than that mix’d in his cheek; ’twas just the

difference

Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask.

There be some women Silvius, had they mark’d him

In parcels as I did, would have gone near

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To fall in love with him: but for my part

I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet

I have more cause to hate him than to love him.

For what had he to do to chide at me?

He said mine eyes were black, and my hair black,

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And now I am remember’d, scorn’d at me.

I marvel why I answer’d not again.

But that’s all one. Omittance is no quittance.

I’ll write to him a very taunting letter,

And thou shalt bear it, wilt thou Silvius?

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SILVIUS     Phebe, with all my heart.

PHEBE     I’ll write it straight.

The matter’s in my head, and in my heart.

I will be bitter with him and passing short.

Go with me Silvius.     Exeunt.

4.1 Enter ROSALIND, CELIA and JAQUES.

JAQUES     I prithee, pretty youth, let me be better

acquainted with thee.

ROSALIND     They say you are a melancholy fellow.

JAQUES     I am so. I do love it better than laughing.

ROSALIND     Those that are in extremity of either are

5

abominable fellows, and betray themselves to every

modern censure, worse than drunkards.

JAQUES     Why, ’tis good to be sad and say nothing.

ROSALIND     Why then ’tis good to be a post.

JAQUES     I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which

10

is emulation; nor the musician’s, which is fantastical;

nor the courtier’s, which is proud; nor the soldier’s,

which is ambitious; nor the lawyer’s, which is politic;

nor the lady’s, which is nice; nor the lover’s, which is

all these; but it is a melancholy of mine own,

15

compounded of many simples, extracted from many

objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my

travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a

most humorous sadness.

ROSALIND     A traveller! By my faith, you have great

20

reason to be sad. I fear you have sold your own lands

to see other men’s. Then to have seen much and to

have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands.

JAQUES     Yes, I have gained my experience.

Enter ORLANDO.

ROSALIND     And your experience makes you sad. I had

25

rather have a fool to make me merry than experience

to make me sad, and to travel for it too!

ORLANDO     Good day and happiness, dear Rosalind.

JAQUES     Nay then God buy you, and you talk in blank

verse!

30

ROSALIND     Farewell Monsieur Traveller. Look you lisp,

and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your

own country; be out of love with your nativity, and

almost chide God for making you that countenance

you are; or I will scarce think you have swam in a

35

gondola.     Exit Jaques.

Why how now Orlando, where have you been all this

while? You a lover! And you serve me such another

trick, never come in my sight more.

ORLANDO     My fair Rosalind, I come within an hour of

40

my promise.

ROSALIND     Break an hour’s promise in love! He that will

divide a minute into a thousand parts, and break but a

part of the thousand part of a minute in the affairs of

love, it may be said of him that Cupid hath clapped

45

him o’th’ shoulder, but I’ll warrant him heart-whole.

ORLANDO     Pardon me dear Rosalind.

ROSALIND     Nay, and you be so tardy, come no more in

my sight. I had as lief be wooed of a snail.

ORLANDO     Of a snail?

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ROSALIND     Ay, of a snail. For though he comes slowly, he

carries his house on his head; a better jointure I

think than you make a woman. Besides, he brings his

destiny with him.

ORLANDO     What’s that?

55

ROSALIND     Why horns – which such as you are fain to be

beholding to your wives for: but he comes armed in his

fortune, and prevents the slander of his wife.

ORLANDO     Virtue is no horn-maker; and my Rosalind is

virtuous.

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ROSALIND     And I am your Rosalind.

CELIA     It pleases him to call you so: but he hath a

Rosalind     of a better leer than you.

ROSALIND     Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a

holiday humour and like enough to consent. What

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would you say to me now, and I were your very very

Rosalind?

ORLANDO     I would kiss before I spoke.

ROSALIND     Nay, you were better speak first, and when

you were gravelled for lack of matter, you might take

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occasion to kiss. Very good orators when they are out,

they will spit, and for lovers lacking – God warr’nt

us! – matter, the cleanliest shift is to kiss.

ORLANDO     How if the kiss be denied?

ROSALIND     Then she puts you to entreaty, and there

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begins new matter.

ORLANDO     Who could be out, being before his beloved

mistress?

ROSALIND     Marry that should you, if I were your

mistress, or I should think my honesty ranker than my

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wit.

ORLANDO     What, of my suit?

ROSALIND     Not out of your apparel, and yet out of your

suit. Am not I your Rosalind?

ORLANDO     I take some joy to say you are, because I

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would be talking of her.

ROSALIND     Well, in her person, I say I will not have you.

ORLANDO     Then in mine own person, I die.

ROSALIND     No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is

almost six thousand years old, and in all this time

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there was not any man died in his own person,

videlicet, in a love-cause. Troilus had his brains

dashed out with a Grecian club, yet he did what he

could to die before, and he is one of the patterns of

love. Leander, he would have lived many a fair year

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though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a

hot mid summer night; for, good youth, he went but

forth to wash him in the Hellespont, and being taken

with the cramp, was drowned, and the foolish

chroniclers of that age found it was Hero of Sestos.

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But these are all lies: men have died from time to time

and worms have eaten them, but not for love.

ORLANDO     I would not have my right Rosalind of this

mind, for I protest her frown might kill me.

ROSALIND     By this hand, it will not kill a fly. But come,

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now I will be your Rosalind in a more coming-on

disposition; and ask me what you will, I will grant it.

ORLANDO     Then love me Rosalind.

ROSALIND     Yes faith will I, Fridays and Saturdays and

all.

110

ORLANDO     And wilt thou have me?

ROSALIND     Ay, and twenty such.

ORLANDO     What sayest thou?

ROSALIND     Are you not good?

ORLANDO     I hope so.

115

ROSALIND     Why then, can one desire too much of a good

thing? Come sister, you shall be the priest and marry

us. Give me your hand Orlando. What do you say

sister?

ORLANDO     Pray thee marry us.

120

CELIA     I cannot say the words.

ROSALIND     You must begin, ‘Will you Orlando – ’

CELIA     Go to. Will you Orlando have to wife this

Rosalind?

ORLANDO     I will.

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ROSALIND     Ay, but when?

ORLANDO     Why now, as fast as she can marry us.

ROSALIND     Then you must say ‘I take thee Rosalind for

wife.’

ORLANDO     I take thee Rosalind for wife.

130

ROSALIND     I might ask you for your commission; but I

do take thee Orlando for my husband. There’s a girl

goes before the priest, and certainly a woman’s

thought runs before her actions.

ORLANDO     So do all thoughts, they are winged.

135

ROSALIND     Now tell me how long you would have her,

after you have possessed her?

ORLANDO     For ever, and a day.

ROSALIND     Say a day, without the ever. No, no, Orlando,

men are April when they woo, December when they

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wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky

changes when they are wives. I will be more jealous of

thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen, more

clamorous than a parrot against rain, more new-

fangled than an ape, more giddy in my desires than a

145

monkey. I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the

fountain, and I will do that when you are disposed to

be merry. I will laugh like a hyen, and that when thou

art inclined to sleep.

ORLANDO     But will my Rosalind do so?

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ROSALIND     By my life, she will do as I do.

ORLANDO     O but she is wise.

ROSALIND     Or else she could not have the wit to do this.

The wiser, the waywarder. Make the doors upon a

woman’s wit, and it will out at the casement; shut

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that, and ’twill out at the keyhole; stop that, ’twill fly

with the smoke out at the chimney.

ORLANDO     A man that had a wife with such a wit, he

might say, ‘Wit, whither wilt?’

ROSALIND     Nay, you might keep that check for it, till you

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met your wife’s wit going to your neighbour’s bed.

ORLANDO     And what wit could wit have to excuse that?

ROSALIND     Marry to say she came to seek you there. You

shall never take her without her answer, unless you

take her without her tongue. O that woman that

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cannot make her fault her husband’s occasion, let her

never nurse her child herself, for she will breed it like

a fool.

ORLANDO     For these two hours Rosalind, I will leave

thee.

170

ROSALIND     Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours.

ORLANDO     I must attend the Duke at dinner. By two

o’clock I will be with thee again.

ROSALIND     Ay, go your ways, go your ways. I knew what

you would prove. My friends told me as much, and I

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thought no less. That flattering tongue of yours won

me. ’Tis but one cast away, and so, come death! Two

o’clock is your hour?

ORLANDO     Ay, sweet Rosalind.

ROSALIND     By my troth, and in good earnest, and so

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God mend me, and by all pretty oaths that are not

dangerous, if you break one jot of your promise, or

come one minute behind your hour, I will think you

the most pathetical break-promise, and the most

hollow lover, and the most unworthy of her you call

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Rosalind, that may be chosen out of the gross band

of the unfaithful: therefore beware my censure and

keep your promise.

ORLANDO     With no less religion than if thou wert indeed

my Rosalind. So adieu.

190

ROSALIND     Well, Time is the old justice that examines

all such offenders, and let Time try. Adieu.

     Exit Orlando.

CELIA     You have simply misused our sex in your love-

prate. We must have your doublet and hose plucked

over your head, and show the world what the bird hath

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done to her own nest.

ROSALIND     O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that

thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love!

But it cannot be sounded. My affection hath an

unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.

200

CELIA     Or rather bottomless, that as fast as you pour

affection in, it runs out.

ROSALIND     No. That same wicked bastard of Venus, that

was begot of thought, conceived of spleen and born of

madness, that blind rascally boy that abuses everyone’s

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eyes because his own are out, let him be judge how

deep I am in love. I’ll tell thee Aliena, I cannot be out

of the sight of Orlando. I’ll go find a shadow and sigh

till he come.

CELIA     And I’ll sleep.     Exeunt.

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4.2 Enter JAQUES and Lords, like foresters.

JAQUES     Which is he that killed the deer?

1 LORD     Sir, it was I.

JAQUES     Let’s present him to the Duke like a Roman

conqueror; and it would do well to set the deer’s horns

upon his head for a branch of victory. Have you no

5

song, forester, for this purpose?

2 LORD     Yes sir.

JAQUES     Sing it. ’Tis no matter how it be in tune, so it

make noise enough.

[Given a note, they sing.]

LORDS     What shall he have that kill’d the deer?

10

His leather skin and horns to wear.

Then sing him home. The rest shall bear

This burden.

Take thou no scorn to wear the horn,

It was a crest ere thou wast born.

15

Thy father’s father wore it,

And thy father bore it.

The horn, the horn, the lusty horn,

Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.     Exeunt.

4.3 Enter ROSALIND and CELIA.

ROSALIND     How say you now, is it not past two o’clock?

And here much Orlando!

CELIA     I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain,

he hath ta’en his bow and arrows, and is gone forth to

sleep. Look who comes here.

5

Enter SILVIUS.

SILVIUS     My errand is to you, fair youth.

My gentle Phebe did bid me give you this.

I know not the contents, but as I guess

By the stern brow and waspish action

Which she did use as she was writing of it,

10

It bears an angry tenour. Pardon me.

I am but as a guiltless messenger.

ROSALIND     Patience herself would startle at this letter,

And play the swaggerer. Bear this, bear all.

She says I am not fair, that I lack manners.

15

She calls me proud, and that she could not love me,

Were man as rare as phoenix. ’Od’s my will,

Her love is not the hare that I do hunt;

Why writes she so to me? Well shepherd, well,

This is a letter of your own device.

20

SILVIUS     No, I protest, I know not the contents,

Phebe did write it.

ROSALIND     Come, come, you are a fool,

And turn’d into the extremity of love.

I saw her hand. She has a leathern hand,

A freestone-colour’d hand. I verily did think

25

That her old gloves were on, but ’twas her hands.

She has a hussif’s hand. But that’s no matter.

I say she never did invent this letter.

This is a man’s invention, and his hand.

SILVIUS     Sure it is hers.

30

ROSALIND     Why, ’tis a boisterous and a cruel style,

A style for challengers. Why, she defies me,

Like Turk to Christian. Women’s gentle brain

Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention,

Such Ethiop words, blacker in their effect

35

Than in their countenance. Will you hear the letter?

SILVIUS     So please you, for I never heard it yet;

Yet heard too much of Phebe’s cruelty.

ROSALIND

She Phebes me. Mark how the tyrant writes.

[Reads.] Art thou god to shepherd turn’d,

40

That a maiden’s heart hath burn’d?

Can a woman rail thus?

SILVIUS     Call you this railing?

ROSALIND

[Reads.] Why, thy godhead laid apart,

Warr’st thou with a woman’s heart?

45

Did you ever hear such railing?

Whiles the eye of man did woo me,

That could do no vengeance to me.

Meaning me a beast.

If the scorn of your bright eyne

50

Have power to raise such love in mine,

Alack, in me, what strange effect

Would they work in mild aspect?

Whiles you chid me, I did love;

How then might your prayers move?

55

He that brings this love to thee

Little knows this love in me;

And by him seal up thy mind,

Whether that thy youth and kind

Will the faithful offer take

60

Of me and all that I can make,

Or else by him my love deny,

And then I’ll study how to die.

SILVIUS     Call you this chiding?

CELIA     Alas poor shepherd!

65

ROSALIND     Do you pity him? No, he deserves no pity.

Wilt thou love such a woman? What, to make thee an

instrument and play false strains upon thee? Not to

be endured! Well, go your way to her, for I see love

hath made thee a tame snake, and say this to her: that

70

if she love me, I charge her to love thee. If she will not,

I will never have her, unless thou entreat for her. If you

be a true lover, hence, and not a word; for here comes

more company.     Exit Silvius.

Enter OLIVER.

OLIVER

Good morrow, fair ones. Pray you, if you know,

75

Where in the purlieus of this forest stands

A sheep-cote fenc’d about with olive-trees?

CELIA

West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom.

The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream

Left on your right hand, brings you to the place.

80

But at this hour the house doth keep itself,

There’s none within.

OLIVER     If that an eye may profit by a tongue,

Then should I know you by description,

Such garments and such years. ‘The boy is fair,

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Of female favour, and bestows himself

Like a ripe sister. The woman low,

And browner than her brother.’ Are not you

The owner of the house I did enquire for?

CELIA     It is no boast, being ask’d, to say we are.

90

OLIVER     Orlando doth commend him to you both,

And to that youth he calls his Rosalind

He sends this bloody napkin. Are you he?

ROSALIND     I am. What must we understand by this?

OLIVER     Some of my shame, if you will know of me

95

What man I am, and how, and why, and where

This handkerchief was stain’d.

CELIA     I pray you tell it.

OLIVER

When last the young Orlando parted from you,

He left a promise to return again

Within an hour; and pacing through the forest,

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Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy,

Lo what befell! He threw his eye aside,

And mark what object did present itself.

Under an old oak, whose boughs were moss’d with

age

And high top bald with dry antiquity,

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A wretched ragged man, o’ergrown with hair,

Lay sleeping on his back. About his neck

A green and gilded snake had wreath’d itself,

Who with her head, nimble in threats, approach’d

The opening of his mouth. But suddenly

110

Seeing Orlando, it unlink’d itself,

And with indented glides did slip away

Into a bush, under which bush’s shade

A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,

Lay couching head on ground, with catlike watch

115

When that the sleeping man should stir; for ’tis

The royal disposition of that beast

To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.

This seen, Orlando did approach the man,

And found it was his brother, his elder brother.

120

CELIA     O I have heard him speak of that same brother,

And he did render him the most unnatural

That liv’d amongst men.

OLIVER     And well he might so do,

For well I know he was unnatural.

ROSALIND     But to Orlando. Did he leave him there,

125

Food to the suck’d and hungry lioness?

OLIVER     Twice did he turn his back, and purpos’d so.

But kindness, nobler ever than revenge,

And nature, stronger than his just occasion,

Made him give battle to the lioness,

130

Who quickly fell before him; in which hurtling

From miserable slumber I awak’d.

CELIA     Are you his brother?

ROSALIND     Was’t you he rescu’d?

CELIA     Was’t you that did so oft contrive to kill him?

OLIVER     ’Twas I. But ’tis not I. I do not shame

135

To tell you what I was, since my conversion

So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.

ROSALIND     But for the bloody napkin.

OLIVER     By and by.

When from the first to last betwixt us two

Tears our recountments had most kindly bath’d –

140

As how I came into that desert place –

In brief, he led me to the gentle Duke,

Who gave me fresh array and entertainment,

Committing me unto my brother’s love,

Who led me instantly unto his cave,

145

There stripp’d himself, and here upon his arm

The lioness had torn some flesh away,

Which all this while had bled; and now he fainted,

And cried in fainting upon Rosalind.

Brief, I recover’d him, bound up his wound,

150

And after some small space, being strong at heart,

He sent me hither, stranger as I am,

To tell this story, that you might excuse

His broken promise, and to give this napkin,

Dy’d in his blood, unto the shepherd youth

155

That he in sport doth call his Rosalind.

[Rosalind faints.]

CELIA     Why how now Ganymede! Sweet Ganymede!

OLIVER     Many will swoon when they do look on blood.

CELIA     There is more in it. Cousin Ganymede!

OLIVER     Look, he recovers.

160

ROSALIND     I would I were at home.

CELIA     We’ll lead you thither. I pray you, will you take

him by the arm?

OLIVER     Be of good cheer, youth. You a man! You lack a

man’s heart.

165

ROSALIND     I do so, I confess it. Ah, sirrah, a body would

think this was well counterfeited. I pray you tell your

brother how well I counterfeited. Heigh-ho!

OLIVER     This was not counterfeit, there is too great

testimony in your complexion that it was a passion of

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earnest.

ROSALIND     Counterfeit, I assure you.

OLIVER     Well then, take a good heart, and counterfeit to

be a man.

ROSALIND     So I do. But i’faith, I should have been a

175

woman by right.

CELIA     Come, you look paler and paler. Pray you draw

homewards. Good sir, go with us.

OLIVER     That will I. For I must bear answer back how

you excuse my brother, Rosalind.

180

ROSALIND     I shall devise something. But I pray you

commend my counterfeiting to him. Will you go?

     Exeunt.

5.1 Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY.

TOUCHSTONE     We shall find a time, Audrey. Patience

gentle Audrey.

AUDREY     Faith the priest was good enough, for all the

old gentleman’s saying.

TOUCHSTONE     A most wicked Sir Oliver, Audrey, a most

5

vile Martext. But Audrey, there is a youth here in the

forest lays claim to you.

AUDREY     Ay, I know who ’tis. He hath no interest in me

in the world. Here comes the man you mean.

Enter WILLIAM.

TOUCHSTONE     It is meat and drink to me to see a clown.

10

By my troth, we that have good wits have much to

answer for: we shall be flouting: we cannot hold.

WILLIAM     Good ev’n Audrey.

AUDREY     God ye good ev’n William.

WILLIAM     And good ev’n to you sir.

15

TOUCHSTONE     Good ev’n gentle friend. Cover thy head,

cover thy head. Nay prithee be covered. How old are

you friend?

WILLIAM     Five and twenty sir.

TOUCHSTONE     A ripe age. Is thy name William?

20

WILLIAM     William, sir.

TOUCHSTONE     A fair name. Was’t born i’th’ forest here?

WILLIAM     Ay sir, I thank God.

TOUCHSTONE     ‘Thank God.’ A good answer. Art rich?

WILLIAM     Faith sir, so so.

25

TOUCHSTONE     ‘So so’ is good, very good, very excellent

good. And yet it is not, it is but so so. Art thou wise?

WILLIAM     Ay sir, I have a pretty wit.

TOUCHSTONE     Why, thou sayest well. I do now

remember a saying: ‘The fool doth think he is wise,

30

but the wiseman knows himself to be a fool’. The

heathen philosopher, when he had a desire to eat a

grape, would open his lips when he put it into his

mouth, meaning thereby that grapes were made to eat

and lips to open. You do love this maid?

35

WILLIAM     I do sir.

TOUCHSTONE     Give me your hand. Art thou learned?

WILLIAM     No sir.

TOUCHSTONE     Then learn this of me. To have is to have:

for it is a figure in rhetoric that drink, being poured

40

out of a cup into a glass, by filling the one doth empty

the other. For all your writers do consent that ipse is

he. Now you are not ipse, for I am he.

WILLIAM     Which he sir?

TOUCHSTONE     He sir that must marry this woman.

45

Therefore you clown, abandon – which is in the

vulgar leave – the society – which in the boorish is

company – of this female – which in the common is

woman. Which together is, abandon the society of this

female, or clown thou perishest; or to thy better

50

understanding, diest; or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee

away, translate thy life into death, thy liberty into

bondage. I will deal in poison with thee, or in

bastinado, or in steel. I will bandy with thee in

faction; I will o’er-run thee with policy; I will kill

55

thee a hundred and fifty ways. Therefore tremble

and depart.

AUDREY     Do, good William.

WILLIAM     God rest you merry, sir.     Exit.

Enter CORIN.

CORIN     Our master and mistress seeks you. Come away,

60

away.

TOUCHSTONE     Trip Audrey, trip Audrey. I attend, I

attend.     Exeunt.

5.2 Enter ORLANDO and OLIVER.

ORLANDO     Is’t possible, that on so little acquaintance

you should like her? That but seeing, you should love

her? And loving woo? And wooing, she should grant?

And will you persever to enjoy her?

OLIVER     Neither call the giddiness of it in question, the

5

poverty of her, the small acquaintance, my sudden

wooing, nor her sudden consenting. But say with

me, I love Aliena; say with her that she loves me;

consent with both, that we may enjoy each other. It

shall be to your good; for my father’s house and all the

10

revenue that was old Sir Rowland’s will I estate upon

you, and here live and die a shepherd.

ORLANDO     You have my consent. Let your wedding be

tomorrow. Thither will I invite the Duke and all’s

contented followers. Go you and prepare Aliena; for

15

look you, here comes my Rosalind.

Enter ROSALIND.

ROSALIND     God save you brother.

OLIVER     And you fair sister.     Exit.

ROSALIND     O my dear Orlando, how it grieves me to see

thee wear thy heart in a scarf!

20

ORLANDO     It is my arm.

ROSALIND     I thought thy heart had been wounded with

the claws of a lion.

ORLANDO     Wounded it is, but with the eyes of a lady.

ROSALIND     Did your brother tell you how I counter-

25

feited to swoon, when he showed me your

handkerchief?

ORLANDO     Ay, and greater wonders than that.

ROSALIND     O, I know where you are. Nay, ’tis true.

There was never anything so sudden, but the fight of

30

two rams, and Caesar’s thrasonical brag of I came, saw,

and overcame. For your brother and my sister no

sooner met, but they looked; no sooner looked, but

they loved; no sooner loved, but they sighed; no

sooner sighed, but they asked one another the reason;

35

no sooner knew the reason, but they sought the

remedy. And in these degrees have they made a pair of

stairs to marriage, which they will climb incontinent,

or else be incontinent before marriage. They are in the

very wrath of love, and they will together. Clubs

40

cannot part them.

ORLANDO     They shall be married tomorrow, and I will

bid the Duke to the nuptial. But O, how bitter a thing

it is to look into happiness through another man’s

eyes! By so much the more shall I tomorrow be at the

45

height of heart-heaviness, by how much I shall think

my brother happy in having what he wishes for.

ROSALIND     Why then tomorrow I cannot serve your

turn for Rosalind?

ORLANDO     I can live no longer by thinking.

50

ROSALIND     I will weary you then no longer with idle

talking. Know of me then – for now I speak to some

purpose – that I know you are a gentleman of good

conceit. I speak not this that you should bear a good

opinion of my knowledge, insomuch I say I know you

55

are; neither do I labour for a greater esteem than may

in some little measure draw a belief from you to do

yourself good, and not to grace me. Believe then, if

you please, that I can do strange things. I have since I

was three year old conversed with a magician, most

60

profound in his art and yet not damnable. If you do

love Rosalind so near the heart as your gesture cries it

out, when your brother marries Aliena, shall you

marry her. I know into what straits of fortune she is

driven, and it is not impossible to me, if it appear not

65

inconvenient to you, to set her before your eyes

tomorrow, human as she is, and without any danger.

ORLANDO     Speak’st thou in sober meanings?

ROSALIND     By my life I do, which I tender dearly,

though I say I am a magician. Therefore put you in

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your best array, bid your friends; for if you will be

married tomorrow, you shall; and to Rosalind if you

will. Look, here comes a lover of mine, and a lover of

hers.

Enter SILVIUS and PHEBE.

PHEBE     Youth, you have done me much ungentleness,

75

To show the letter that I writ to you.

ROSALIND     I care not if I have. It is my study

To seem despiteful and ungentle to you.

You are there follow’d by a faithful shepherd,

Look upon him, love him. He worships you.

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PHEBE     Good shepherd, tell this youth what ’tis to love.

SILVIUS     It is to be all made of sighs and tears,

And so am I for Phebe.

PHEBE     And I for Ganymede.

ORLANDO     And I for Rosalind.

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ROSALIND     And I for no woman.

SILVIUS     It is to be all made of faith and service,

And so am I for Phebe.

PHEBE     And I for Ganymede.

ORLANDO     And I for Rosalind.

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ROSALIND     And I for no woman.

SILVIUS     It is to be all made of fantasy,

All made of passion and all made of wishes,

All adoration, duty and observance,

All humbleness, all patience and impatience,

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All purity, all trial, all observance;

And so am I for Phebe.

PHEBE     And so am I for Ganymede.

ORLANDO     And so am I for Rosalind.

ROSALIND     And so am I for no woman.

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PHEBE     [to Rosalind] If this be so, why blame you me to

love you?

SILVIUS     [to Phebe] If this be so, why blame you me to

love you?

ORLANDO     If this be so, why blame you me to love you?

105

ROSALIND     Who do you speak to ‘Why blame you me to

love you?’?

ORLANDO     To her that is not here, nor doth not hear.

ROSALIND     Pray you no more of this, ’tis like the howling

of Irish wolves against the moon. [to Silvius] I will

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help you if I can. [to Phebe] I would love you if I

could. Tomorrow meet me all together. [to Phebe] I

will marry you, if ever I marry woman, and I’ll be

married tomorrow. [to Orlando] I will satisfy you, if

ever I satisfied man, and you shall be married

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tomorrow. [to Silvius] I will content you, if what

pleases you contents you, and you shall be married

tomorrow. [to Orlando] As you love Rosalind meet.

[to Silvius] As you love Phebe meet. And as I love no

woman, I’ll meet. So fare you well. I have left you

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commands.

SILVIUS     I’ll not fail, if I live.

PHEBE     Nor I.

ORLANDO     Nor I.     Exeunt.

5.3 Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY.

TOUCHSTONE     Tomorrow is the joyful day, Audrey.

Tomorrow will we be married.

AUDREY     I do desire it with all my heart; and I hope it is

no dishonest desire, to desire to be a woman of the

world. Here come two of the banished Duke’s pages.

5

Enter two Pages.

1 PAGE     Well met honest gentleman.

TOUCHSTONE     By my troth well met. Come, sit, sit, and

a song.

2 PAGE     We are for you. Sit i’th’ middle.

1 PAGE     Shall we clap into’t roundly, without hawking or

10

spitting or saying we are hoarse, which are the only

prologues to a bad voice?

2 PAGE     I’faith, i’faith, and both in a tune like two gipsies

on a horse.

[They sing.]

It was a lover and his lass,

15

With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino,

That o’er the green corn-field did pass,

In spring-time, the only pretty ring-time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding,

Sweet lovers love the spring.

20

Between the acres of the rye,

With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino,

These pretty country-folks would lie,

In spring-time, the only pretty ring-time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding,

25

Sweet lovers love the spring.

This carol they began that hour,

With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino,

How that a life was but a flower,

In spring-time, the only pretty ring-time,

30

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding,

Sweet lovers love the spring.

And therefore take the present time,

With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino,

For love is crowned with the prime,

35

In spring-time, the only pretty ring-time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding,

Sweet lovers love the spring.

TOUCHSTONE     Truly young gentlemen, though there

was no great matter in the ditty, yet the note was very

40

untuneable.

1 PAGE     You are deceived sir. We kept time, we lost not

our time.

TOUCHSTONE     By my troth yes. I count it but time lost

to hear such a foolish song. God buy you, and God

45

mend your voices. Come Audrey.     Exeunt.

5.4 Enter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS, JAQUES, ORLANDO, OLIVER and CELIA.

DUKE SENIOR     Dost thou believe, Orlando, that the boy

Can do all this that he hath promised?

ORLANDO

I sometimes do believe, and sometimes do not,

As those that fear they hope, and know they fear.

Enter ROSALIND, SILVIUS and PHEBE.

ROSALIND

Patience once more, whiles our compact is urg’d.

5

You say, if I bring in your Rosalind,

You will bestow her on Orlando here?

DUKE SENIOR

That would I, had I kingdoms to give with her.

ROSALIND

And you say you will have her, when I bring her?

ORLANDO     That would I, were I of all kingdoms king.

10

ROSALIND     You say you’ll marry me, if I be willing?

PHEBE     That will I, should I die the hour after.

ROSALIND     But if you do refuse to marry me,

You’ll give yourself to this most faithful shepherd?

PHEBE     So is the bargain.

15

ROSALIND     You say that you’ll have Phebe if she will?

SILVIUS

Though to have her and death were both one thing.

ROSALIND

I have promis’d to make all this matter even.

Keep you your word, O Duke, to give your daughter,

You yours, Orlando, to receive his daughter;

20

Keep you your word Phebe, that you’ll marry me,

Or else refusing me to wed this shepherd.

Keep your word Silvius, that you’ll marry her

If she refuse me; and from hence I go

To makes these doubts all even.

25

     Exeunt Rosalind and Celia.

DUKE SENIOR     I do remember in this shepherd boy

Some lively touches of my daughter’s favour.

ORLANDO     My lord, the first time that I ever saw him,

Methought he was a brother to your daughter.

But my good lord, this boy is forest-born,

30

And hath been tutored in the rudiments

Of many desperate studies, by his uncle,

Whom he reports to be a great magician,

Obscured in the circle of this forest.

JAQUES     There is sure another flood toward, and these

35

couples are coming to the ark. Here comes a pair of very

strange beasts, which in all tongues are called fools.

Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY.

TOUCHSTONE     Salutation and greeting to you all.

JAQUES     Good my lord, bid him welcome. This is the

motley-minded gentleman that I have so often met in

40

the forest. He hath been a courtier he swears.

TOUCHSTONE     If any man doubt that, let him put me to

my purgation. I have trod a measure, I have flattered a

lady, I have been politic with my friend, smooth with

mine enemy, I have undone three tailors, I have had

45

four quarrels, and like to have fought one.

JAQUES     And how was that ta’en up?

TOUCHSTONE     Faith we met, and found the quarrel was

upon the seventh cause.

JAQUES     How seventh cause? Good my lord, like this

50

fellow.

DUKE SENIOR     I like him very well.

TOUCHSTONE     God ’ild you sir, I desire you of the like.

I press in here, sir, amongst the rest of the country

copulatives, to swear and to forswear, according as

55

marriage binds and blood breaks. A poor virgin sir, an

ill-favoured thing sir, but mine own; a poor humour of

mine sir, to take that that no man else will. Rich

honesty dwells like a miser sir, in a poor house, as your

pearl in your foul oyster.

60

DUKE SENIOR     By my faith, he is very swift and

sententious.

TOUCHSTONE     According to the fool’s bolt sir, and such

dulcet diseases.

JAQUES     But for the seventh cause. How did you find the

65

quarrel on the seventh cause?

TOUCHSTONE     Upon a lie seven times removed. (Bear

your body more seeming, Audrey.) As thus sir. I did

dislike the cut of a certain courtier’s beard; he sent me

word, if I said his beard was not well cut, he was in the

70

mind it was; this is called the Retort Courteous. If I

sent him word again, it was not well cut, he would

send me word he cut it to please himself; this is called

the Quip Modest. If again it was not well cut, he

disabled my judgement; this is called the Reply

75

Churlish. If again it was not well cut, he would answer

I spake not true; this is called the Reproof Valiant. If

again it was not well cut, he would say, I lie; this is

called the Countercheck Quarrelsome. And so to the

Lie Circumstantial and the Lie Direct.

80

JAQUES     And how oft did you say his beard was not well

cut?

TOUCHSTONE     I durst go no further than the Lie

Circumstantial, nor he durst not give me the Lie

Direct. And so we measured swords and parted.

85

JAQUES     Can you nominate in order now the degrees of

the lie?

TOUCHSTONE     O sir, we quarrel in print, by the book; as

you have books for good manners. I will name you the

degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the

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second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply

Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth,

the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie

with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All

these you may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may

95

avoid that too, with an If. I knew when seven justices

could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were

met themselves, one of them thought but of an If, as,

‘If you said so, then I said so’. And they shook hands

and swore brothers. Your If is the only peacemaker:

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much virtue in If.

JAQUES     Is not this a rare fellow my Lord? He’s as good

at anything, and yet a fool.

DUKE SENIOR     He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and

under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.

105

Enter HYMEN, ROSALIND and CELIA. Still music.

HYMEN     Then is there mirth in heaven,

When earthly things made even

Atone together.

Good Duke receive thy daughter,

Hymen from heaven brought her,

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Yea brought her hither,

That thou mightst join her hand with his

Whose heart within his bosom is.

ROSALIND     [to the Duke]

To you I give myself, for I am yours.

[to Orlando] To you I give myself, for I am yours.

115

DUKE SENIOR

If there be truth in sight, you are my daughter.

ORLANDO

If there be truth in sight, you are my Rosalind.

PHEBE     If sight and shape be true,

Why then my love adieu.

ROSALIND     I’ll have no father, if you be not he.

120

I’ll have no husband, if you be not he.

Nor ne’er wed woman, if you be not she.

HYMEN     Peace ho! I bar confusion.

’Tis I must make conclusion

Of these most strange events.

125

Here’s eight that must take hands

To join in Hymen’s bands,

If truth holds true contents.

You and you no cross shall part.

You and you are heart in heart.

130

You to his love must accord,

Or have a woman to your lord.

You and you are sure together,

As the winter to foul weather.

Whiles a wedlock hymn we sing,

135

Feed yourselves with questioning,

That reason wonder may diminish

How thus we met, and these things finish.

Song.

Wedding is great Juno’s crown,

O blessed bond of board and bed.

140

’Tis Hymen peoples every town;

High wedlock then be honoured.

Honour, high honour and renown

To Hymen, god of every town.

DUKE SENIOR

O my dear niece, welcome thou art to me,

145

Even daughter welcome, in no less degree.

PHEBE     [to Silvius]

I will not eat my word; now thou art mine,

Thy faith my fancy to thee doth combine.

Enter JACQUES DE BOYS.

JAQUES DE BOYS

Let me have audience for a word or two.

I am the second son of old Sir Rowland

150

That bring these tidings to this fair assembly.

Duke Frederick     hearing how that every day

Men of great worth resorted to this forest,

Address’d a mighty power, which were on foot

In his own conduct, purposely to take

155

His brother here, and put him to the sword.

And to the skirts of this wild wood he came,

Where, meeting with an old religious man,

After some question with him, was converted

Both from his enterprise and from the world,

160

His crown bequeathing to his banish’d brother,

And all their lands restor’d to them again

That were with him exil’d. This to be true,

I do engage my life.

DUKE SENIOR     Welcome young man.

Thou offer’st fairly to thy brothers’ wedding;

165

To one his lands withheld, and to the other

A land itself at large, a potent dukedom.

First, in this forest, let us do those ends

That here were well begun and well begot:

And after, every of this happy number

170

That have endur’d shrewd days and nights with us,

Shall share the good of our returned fortune,

According to the measure of their states.

Meantime forget this new-fall’n dignity,

And fall into our rustic revelry.

175

Play music, and you brides and bridegrooms all,

With measure heap’d in joy, to th’measures fall.

JAQUES     Sir, by your patience. If I heard you rightly,

The Duke hath put on a religious life,

And thrown into neglect the pompous court?

180

JAQUES DE BOYS     He hath.

JAQUES     To him will I. Out of these convertites,

There is much matter to be heard and learn’d.

[to Duke Senior] You to your former honour I

bequeath,

Your patience and your virtue well deserve it.

185

[to Orlando] You to a love that your true faith doth

merit:

[to Oliver] You to your land and love and great allies:

[to Silvius] You to a long and well-deserved bed:

[to Touchstone] And you to wrangling, for thy loving

voyage

Is but for two months victuall’d. So to your

pleasures.

190

I am for other than for dancing measures.

DUKE SENIOR     Stay, Jaques, stay.

JAQUES     To see no pastime, I. What you would have

I’ll stay to know at your abandon’d cave.     Exit.

DUKE SENIOR

Proceed, proceed. We will begin these rites,

195

As we do trust they’ll end, in true delights.

     A dance, after which Rosalind

     is left alone to speak the Epilogue.

ROSALIND     It is not the fashion to see the lady the

epilogue; but it is no more unhandsome than to see the

lord the prologue. If it be true that good wine needs no

bush, ’tis true that a good play needs no epilogue. Yet

200

to good wine they do use good bushes; and good plays

prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a

case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue, nor

cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play?

I am not furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will

205

not become me. My way is to conjure you, and I’ll

begin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the

love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as

please you. And I charge you, O men, for the love you

bear to women – as I perceive by your simpering none

210

of you hates them – that between you and the women

the play may please. If I were a woman, I would kiss as

many of you as had beards that pleased me,

complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied

not. And I am sure, as many as have good beards, or

215

good faces, or sweet breaths, will for my kind offer,

when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.     Exit.

The Comedy of Errors

First published in the Folio of 1623 as the fifth of the comedies, The Comedy of Errors was nonetheless among Shakespeare’s earliest plays, and seems, on grounds both of its style and of topical references in it, to belong to the early 1590s. Its first recorded performance was on 28 December 1594, during the Christmas revels at Gray’s Inn. On this occasion it replaced the evening’s ‘intended’ performance, cancelled after the festivities got out of hand, following which ‘it was thought good not to offer anything of account, save dancing and revelling with gentlewomen; and after such sports, a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the players’.

The reference is almost certainly to Shakespeare’s play, which is clearly based on Plautus’ Menaechmi, a lively farce of twins separated in their youth, who now find themselves both in Epidamnum, where one has been raised by a merchant. The twins are constantly mistaken for one another, to the dismay of the citizens and the bewilderment of the brothers themselves. Only when they are seen together at the end is the cause of the confusions made clear; they are then reunited and propose to return together to Syracuse, home of the visiting brother, and start their lives anew. The twin from Epidamnum finally prepares to sell all his property – including his shrewish wife.

Shakespeare outdoes Plautus and multiplies the potential confusions by giving his twin brothers twin servants, likewise separated in infancy. He also borrows from another play by Plautus, Amphitruo, for 3.1, where Adriana excludes her husband from his own house while dining with Antipholus of Syracuse, whom she has mistaken for him. Shakespeare shifts his action from Epidamnum to Ephesus, famous for its Temple of Diana, but also well known to his audience from St Paul’s journey to the city (Acts 19) and his Epistle to the Ephesians. This location imports Christian values into Plautus’ action and contributes to the emotional and psychological gravity that finds its full voice in the family reunions at the end and in the quashing of the death sentence on Egeon, both so different in spirit from the cynicism of the ending of the Menaechmi.

The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s shortest play, only some 1700 lines long. In common only with The Tempest, it observes the neoclassical unities of time and place, conventions which help to suspend the audience’s disbelief in the implausible situation for the brief hour and a half of performance. In one view a set piece, a self-conscious experiment in writing Roman comedy, adolescent in some regards, in another The Comedy of Errors anticipates themes and techniques which Shakespeare would develop and deepen in the mature comedies and later romances. Its affinities with Twelfth Night and Pericles are particularly marked.

In its own terms, The Comedy of Errors is a highly satisfying play and a reliable crowd-pleaser. Its theatrical effectiveness, a late nineteenth-century discovery, depended upon recovering the staging practices of the Elizabethan theatre. In the eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries the play was thought too indecorous and inconsequential to be played without adaptation, and Thomas Hull’s version, called simply The Twins, with added songs and an intensified love interest, largely displaced it from the stage. In 1895 William Poel, with his Elizabethan Stage Society, returned the play once more to Gray’s Inn, where he attempted exactly to reproduce the fluid staging of its original performances. Shakespeare’s play was recognized as a potential theatrical success and returned to the repertory. Today it is a popular play, regularly revived and often inventively staged. Its comic ingenuity and energy make it accessible and attractive to audiences, who are often surprised to find behind the slapstick comedy of situation a more complex and sustaining story, as broken families are knit together in an action that can indeed seem, as it does for Antipholus of Syracuse, enchanted.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

Solinus, DUKE of Ephesus

EGEON

a merchant of Syracuse

twin brothers, and sons of Egeon and Emilia

twin brothers, and servants to the Antipholus twins

BALTHASAR

a merchant

ANGELO

a goldsmith

Doctor PINCH

a schoolmaster

FIRST MERCHANT

SECOND MERCHANT

Emilia, ABBESS of Ephesus

and Egeon’s wife

ADRIANA

wife of Antipholus of Ephesus

LUCIANA

her sister

LUCE

her maid

COURTESAN

Jailor, Officers, Headsman and other Attendants

The Comedy of Errors

1.1 Enter SOLINUS the DUKE of Ephesus, with EGEON the merchant of Syracuse, Jailor and other attendants.

EGEON     Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall,

And by the doom of death end woes and all.

DUKE     Merchant of Syracusa, plead no more.

I am not partial to infringe our laws;

The enmity and discord which of late

5

Sprung from the rancorous outrage of your Duke

To merchants, our well-dealing countrymen,

Who, wanting guilders to redeem their lives,

Have seal’d his rigorous statutes with their bloods,

Excludes all pity from our threat’ning looks;

10

For since the mortal and intestine jars

’Twixt thy seditious countrymen and us,

It hath in solemn synods been decreed,

Both by the Syracusians and ourselves,

To admit no traffic to our adverse towns;

15

Nay more, if any born at Ephesus

Be seen at Syracusian marts and fairs;

Again, if any Syracusian born

Come to the bay of Ephesus, he dies,

His goods confiscate to the Duke’s dispose,

20

Unless a thousand marks be levied

To quit the penalty and to ransom him.

Thy substance, valued at the highest rate,

Cannot amount unto a hundred marks;

Therefore by law thou art condemn’d to die.

25

EGEON

Yet this my comfort; when your words are done,

My woes end likewise with the evening sun.

DUKE     Well, Syracusian; say in brief the cause

Why thou departedst from thy native home,

And for what cause thou cam’st to Ephesus.

30

EGEON     A heavier task could not have been impos’d,

Than I to speak my griefs unspeakable;

Yet that the world may witness that my end

Was wrought by nature, not by vile offence,

I’ll utter what my sorrow gives me leave.

35

In Syracusa was I born, and wed

Unto a woman happy but for me,

And by me, – had not our hap been bad.

With her I liv’d in joy; our wealth increas’d

By prosperous voyages I often made

40

To Epidamnum, till my factor’s death,

And the great care of goods at random left,

Drew me from kind embracements of my spouse;

From whom my absence was not six months old

Before herself (almost at fainting under

45

The pleasing punishment that women bear)

Had made provision for her following me,

And soon, and safe, arrived where I was.

There had she not been long, but she became

A joyful mother of two goodly sons,

50

And, which was strange, the one so like the other,

As could not be distinguish’d but by names.

That very hour, and in the self-same inn,

A mean woman was delivered

Of such a burden male, twins both alike;

55

Those, for their parents were exceeding poor,

I bought, and brought up to attend my sons.

My wife, not meanly proud of two such boys,

Made daily motions for our home return;

Unwilling I agreed; alas, too soon

60

We came aboard.

A league from Epidamnum had we sail’d

Before the always-wind-obeying deep

Gave any tragic instance of our harm,

But longer did we not retain much hope;

65

For what obscured light the heavens did grant,

Did but convey unto our fearful minds

A doubtful warrant of immediate death,

Which though myself would gladly have embrac’d,

Yet the incessant weepings of my wife,

70

Weeping before for what she saw must come,

And piteous plainings of the pretty babes,

That mourn’d for fashion, ignorant what to fear,

Forc’d me to seek delays for them and me,

And this it was (for other means was none):

75

The sailors sought for safety by our boat,

And left the ship, then sinking-ripe, to us.

My wife, more careful for the latter-born,

Had fasten’d him unto a small spare mast,

Such as sea-faring men provide for storms;

80

To him one of the other twins was bound,

Whilst I had been like heedful of the other.

The children thus dispos’d, my wife and I,

Fixing our eyes on whom our care was fix’d,

Fasten’d ourselves at either end the mast,

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And floating straight, obedient to the stream,

Was carried towards Corinth, as we thought.

At length the sun, gazing upon the earth,

Dispers’d those vapours that offended us,

And by the benefit of his wished light

90

The seas wax’d calm, and we discovered

Two ships from far, making amain to us,

Of Corinth that, of Epidaurus this,

But ere they came – O, let me say no more;

Gather the sequel by that went before.

95

DUKE     Nay forward, old man, do not break off so,

For we may pity, though not pardon thee.

EGEON     O, had the gods done so, I had not now

Worthily term’d them merciless to us:

For ere the ships could meet by twice five leagues,

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We were encounter’d by a mighty rock,

Which being violently borne upon,

Our helpful ship was splitted in the midst;

So that in this unjust divorce of us,

Fortune had left to both of us alike

105

What to delight in, what to sorrow for;

Her part, poor soul, seeming as burdened

With lesser weight, but not with lesser woe,

Was carried with more speed before the wind,

And in our sight they three were taken up

110

By fishermen of Corinth, as we thought.

At length another ship had seiz’d on us,

And knowing whom it was their hap to save,

Gave healthful welcome to their ship-wrack’d guests,

And would have reft the fishers of their prey,

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Had not their bark been very slow of sail;

And therefore homeward did they bend their course.

Thus have you heard me sever’d from my bliss,

That by misfortunes was my life prolong’d

To tell sad stories of my own mishaps.

120

DUKE     And for the sake of them thou sorrowest for,

Do me the favour to dilate at full

What have befall’n of them and thee till now.

EGEON     My youngest boy, and yet my eldest care,

At eighteen years became inquisitive

125

After his brother, and importun’d me

That his attendant, so his case was like,

Reft of his brother, but retain’d his name,

Might bear him company in the quest of him;

Whom whilst I labour’d of a love to see,

130

I hazarded the loss of whom I lov’d.

Five summers have I spent in farthest Greece,

Roaming clean through the bounds of Asia,

And coasting homeward came to Ephesus,

Hopeless to find, yet loth to leave unsought

135

Or that or any place that harbours men:

But here must end the story of my life,

And happy were I in my timely death,

Could all my travels warrant me they live.

DUKE     Hapless Egeon, whom the fates have mark’d

140

To bear the extremity of dire mishap;

Now trust me, were it not against our laws,

Against my crown, my oath, my dignity,

Which princes, would they, may not disannul,

My soul should sue as advocate for thee;

145

But though thou art adjudged to the death,

And passed sentence may not be recall’d

But to our honour’s great disparagement,

Yet will I favour thee in what I can;

Therefore, merchant, I’ll limit thee this day

150

To seek thy health by beneficial help;

Try all the friends thou hast in Ephesus,

Beg thou, or borrow, to make up the sum,

And live; if no, then thou art doom’d to die.

Jailor, take him to thy custody.

155

JAILOR     I will, my lord.

EGEON     Hopeless and helpless doth Egeon wend,

But to procrastinate his lifeless end.     Exeunt.

1.2 Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE, First Merchant and DROMIO.

1 MERCHANT

Therefore give out you are of Epidamnum,

Lest that your goods too soon be confiscate;

This very day a Syracusian merchant

Is apprehended for arrival here,

And not being able to buy out his life,

5

According to the statute of the town

Dies ere the weary sun set in the west.

There is your money that I had to keep.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Go, bear it to the Centaur, where we host,

And stay there, Dromio, till I come to thee;

10

Within this hour it will be dinner time;

Till that I’ll view the manners of the town,

Peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings,

And then return and sleep within mine inn,

For with long travel I am stiff and weary.

15

Get thee away.

DROMIO S.     Many a man would take you at your word,

And go indeed, having so good a mean.     Exit.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     A trusty villain, sir, that very oft,

When I am dull with care and melancholy,

20

Lightens my humour with his merry jests.

What, will you walk with me about the town,

And then go to my inn and dine with me?

1 MERCHANT     I am invited, sir, to certain merchants,

Of whom I hope to make much benefit.

25

I crave your pardon; soon at five o’clock,

Please you, I’ll meet with you upon the mart,

And afterward consort you till bed-time;

My present business calls me from you now.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Farewell till then: I will go lose myself,

30

And wander up and down to view the city.

1 MERCHANT

Sir, I commend you to your own content.     Exit.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

He that commends me to mine own content

Commends me to the thing I cannot get.

I to the world am like a drop of water

35

That in the ocean seeks another drop,

Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,

(Unseen, inquisitive) confounds himself.

So I, to find a mother and a brother,

In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.

40

Enter DROMIO OF EPHESUS.

Here comes the almanac of my true date:

What now? How chance thou art return’d so soon?

DROMIO E.

Return’d so soon? rather approach’d too late;

The capon burns, the pig falls from the spit;

The clock hath strucken twelve upon the bell;

45

My mistress made it one upon my cheek;

She is so hot because the meat is cold;

The meat is cold because you come not home;

You come not home because you have no stomach;

You have no stomach having broke your fast;

50

But we that know what ’tis to fast and pray,

Are penitent for your default to-day.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Stop in your wind, sir, tell me this I pray:

Where have you left the money that I gave you?

DROMIO E.     O, sixpence that I had o’ Wednesday last,

55

To pay the saddler for my mistress’ crupper:

The saddler had it, sir, I kept it not.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     I am not in a sportive humour now:

Tell me, and dally not, where is the money?

We being strangers here, how dar’st thou trust

60

So great a charge from thine own custody?

DROMIO E.     I pray you jest, sir, as you sit at dinner:

I from my mistress come to you in post;

If I return I shall be post indeed,

For she will scour your fault upon my pate.

65

Methinks your maw, like mine, should be your clock,

And strike you home without a messenger.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Come Dromio, come, these jests are out of season,

Reserve them till a merrier hour than this;

Where is the gold I gave in charge to thee?

70

DROMIO E.     To me, sir? why, you gave no gold to me.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Come on, sir knave, have done your foolishness,

And tell me how thou hast dispos’d thy charge.

DROMIO E.

My charge was but to fetch you from the mart

Home to your house, the Phoenix, sir, to dinner;

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My mistress and her sister stays for you.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Now as I am a Christian, answer me

In what safe place you have bestow’d my money,

Or I shall break that merry sconce of yours

That stands on tricks when I am undispos’d;

80

Where is the thousand marks thou hadst of me?

DROMIO E.     I have some marks of yours upon my pate;

Some of my mistress’ marks upon my shoulders;

But not a thousand marks between you both.

If I should pay your worship those again,

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Perchance you will not bear them patiently.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Thy mistress’ marks? what mistress, slave, hast thou?

DROMIO E.

Your worship’s wife, my mistress at the Phoenix;

She that doth fast till you come home to dinner,

And prays that you will hie you home to dinner.

90

ANTIPHOLUS S.

What, wilt thou flout me thus unto my face

Being forbid? There, take you that, sir knave.

DROMIO E.

What mean you, sir? for God’s sake hold your hands.

Nay, and you will not, sir, I’ll take my heels.     Exit.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Upon my life, by some device or other

95

The villain is o’er-raught of all my money.

They say this town is full of cozenage,

As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,

Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,

Soul-killing witches that deform the body,

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Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,

And many such-like liberties of sin:

If it prove so, I will be gone the sooner.

I’ll to the Centaur to go seek this slave;

I greatly fear my money is not safe.     Exit.

105

2.1 Enter ADRIANA, wife to Antipholus of Ephesus, with LUCIANA, her sister.

ADRIANA     Neither my husband nor the slave return’d,

That in such haste I sent to seek his master?

Sure, Luciana, it is two o’clock.

LUCIANA     Perhaps some merchant hath invited him,

And from the mart he’s somewhere gone to dinner.

5

Good sister let us dine, and never fret;

A man is master of his liberty;

Time is their master, and when they see time,

They’ll go or come; if so, be patient, sister.

ADRIANA     Why should their liberty than ours be more?

10

LUCIANA     Because their business still lies out o’door.

ADRIANA     Look, when I serve him so, he takes it ill.

LUCIANA     O, know he is the bridle of your will.

ADRIANA     There’s none but asses will be bridled so.

LUCIANA     Why, headstrong liberty is lash’d with woe.

15

There’s nothing situate under heaven’s eye

But hath his bound in earth, in sea, in sky.

The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls

Are their males’ subjects, and at their controls;

Man, more divine, the master of all these,

20

Lord of the wide world and wild wat’ry seas,

Indued with intellectual sense and souls,

Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls,

Are masters to their females, and their lords:

Then let your will attend on their accords.

25

ADRIANA     This servitude makes you to keep unwed.

LUCIANA     Not this, but troubles of the marriage bed.

ADRIANA

But were you wedded you would bear some sway.

LUCIANA     Ere I learn love, I’ll practise to obey.

ADRIANA

How if your husband start some other where?

30

LUCIANA     Till he come home again I would forbear.

ADRIANA

Patience unmov’d! no marvel though she pause;

They can be meek that have no other cause.

A wretched soul bruis’d with adversity,

We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;

35

But were we burden’d with like weight of pain,

As much, or more, we should ourselves complain:

So thou that hast no unkind mate to grieve thee,

With urging helpless patience would relieve me;

But if thou live to see like right bereft,

40

This fool-begg’d patience in thee will be left.

LUCIANA     Well, I will marry one day but to try.

Here comes your man, now is your husband nigh.

Enter DROMIO OF EPHESUS.

ADRIANA     Say, is your tardy master now at hand?

DROMIO E.     Nay, he’s at two hands with me, and that my

45

two ears can witness.

ADRIANA     Say, didst thou speak with him? knowst thou

his mind?

DROMIO E.     Ay, ay, he told his mind upon mine ear,

Beshrew his hand, I scarce could understand it.

50

LUCIANA     Spake he so doubtfully, thou couldst not feel

his meaning?

DROMIO E.     Nay, he struck so plainly I could too well feel

his blows; and withal so doubtfully, that I could scarce

understand them.

55

ADRIANA     But say, I prithee, is he coming home?

It seems he hath great care to please his wife.

DROMIO E.

Why, mistress, sure my master is horn-mad.

ADRIANA     Horn-mad, thou villain?

DROMIO E.     I mean not cuckold-mad,

But sure he is stark mad.

60

When I desir’d him to come home to dinner,

He ask’d me for a thousand marks in gold;

‘ ’Tis dinner-time’, quoth I; ‘my gold,’ quoth he;

‘Your meat will burn’, quoth I; ‘my gold’, quoth he,

‘Will you come?’, quoth I; ‘my gold’, quoth he,

65

‘Where is the thousand marks I gave thee, villain?’

‘The pig’, quoth I, ‘is burn’d’; ‘my gold’, quoth he;

‘My mistress, sir …’, quoth I; ‘hang up thy mistress;

I know not thy mistress, out on thy mistress …’

LUCIANA     Quoth who?

70

DROMIO E.     Quoth my master;

‘I know’, quoth he, ‘no house, no wife, no mistress’,

So that my errand due unto my tongue,

I thank him, I bare home upon my shoulders;

For in conclusion, he did beat me there.

75

ADRIANA

Go back again, thou slave, and fetch him home.

DROMIO E.     Go back again, and be new beaten home?

For God’s sake, send some other messenger.

ADRIANA     Back slave, or I will break thy pate across.

DROMIO E.

And he will bless that cross with other beating;

80

Between you I shall have a holy head.

ADRIANA

Hence, prating peasant, fetch thy master home.

DROMIO E.     Am I so round with you, as you with me,

That like a football you do spurn me thus?

You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither;

85

If I last in this service you must case me in leather.

     Exit.

LUCIANA     Fie, how impatience loureth in your face.

ADRIANA     His company must do his minions grace,

Whilst I at home starve for a merry look.

Hath homely age th’alluring beauty took

90

From my poor cheek? then he hath wasted it.

Are my discourses dull? barren my wit?

If voluble and sharp discourse be marr’d,

Unkindness blunts it more than marble hard.

Do their gay vestments his affections bait?

95

That’s not my fault, he’s master of my state.

What ruins are in me that can be found

By him not ruin’d? Then is he the ground

Of my defeatures; my decayed fair

A sunny look of his would soon repair;

100

But, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale

And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale.

LUCIANA     Self-harming jealousy! fie, beat it hence.

ADRIANA

Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense;

I know his eye doth homage otherwhere,

105

Or else what lets it but he would be here?

Sister, you know he promis’d me a chain;

Would that alone a toy he would detain,

So he would keep fair quarter with his bed:

I see the jewel best enamelled

110

Will lose his beauty: yet the gold bides still

That others touch, and often touching will

Wear gold, and no man that hath a name

By falsehood and corruption doth it shame.

Since that my beauty cannot please his eye,

115

I’ll weep what’s left away, and weeping die.

LUCIANA     How many fond fools serve mad jealousy?

     Exeunt.

2.2 Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up

Safe at the Centaur, and the heedful slave

Is wander’d forth in care to seek me out

By computation and mine host’s report.

I could not speak with Dromio since at first

5

I sent him from the mart; see, here he comes.

Enter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.

How now, sir, is your merry humour alter’d?

As you love strokes, so jest with me again.

You know no Centaur? you receiv’d no gold?

Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner?

10

My house was at the Phoenix? Wast thou mad

That thus so madly thou didst answer me?

DROMIO S.

What answer, sir? when spake I such a word?

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Even now, even here, not half an hour since.

DROMIO S.     I did not see you since you sent me hence,

15

Home to the Centaur with the gold you gave me.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Villain, thou didst deny the gold’s receipt,

And told’st me of a mistress and a dinner,

For which I hope thou felt’st I was displeas’d.

DROMIO S.     I am glad to see you in this merry vein;

20

What means this jest; I pray you master, tell me?

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth?

Think’st thou I jest? hold, take thou that, and that.

[Beats Dromio.]

DROMIO S.

Hold sir, for God’s sake; now your jest is earnest,

Upon what bargain do you give it me?

25

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Because that I familiarly sometimes

Do use you for my fool, and chat with you,

Your sauciness will jest upon my love,

And make a common of my serious hours;

When the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport,

30

But creep in crannies when he hides his beams.

If you will jest with me, know my aspect,

And fashion your demeanour to my looks,

Or I will beat this method in your sconce.

DROMIO S.     Sconce call you it? so you would leave

35

battering, I had rather have it a head; and you use

these blows long, I must get a sconce for my head, and

insconce it too, or else I shall seek my wit in my

shoulders; but I pray, sir, why am I beaten?

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Dost thou not know?

40

DROMIO S.     Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Shall I tell you why?

DROMIO S.     Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say, every

why hath a wherefore.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Why, first, for flouting me, and then

45

wherefore, for urging it the second time to me.

DROMIO S.

Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,

When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme

nor reason.

Well, sir, I thank you.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Thank me, sir, for what?

50

DROMIO S.     Marry, sir, for this something that you gave

me for nothing.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     I’ll make you amends next, to give you

nothing for something. But say, sir, is it dinner-time?

DROMIO S.     No, sir, I think the meat wants that I have.

55

ANTIPHOLUS S.     In good time, sir; what’s that?

DROMIO S.     Basting.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Well, sir, then ’twill be dry.

DROMIO S.     If it be, sir, I pray you eat none of it.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Your reason?

60

DROMIO S.     Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me

another dry basting.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Well, sir, learn to jest in good time;

there’s a time for all things.

DROMIO S.     I durst have denied that before you were so

65

choleric.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     By what rule, sir?

DROMIO S.     Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald

pate of Father Time himself.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Let’s hear it.

70

DROMIO S.     There’s no time for a man to recover his hair

that grows bald by nature.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     May he not do it by fine and recovery?

DROMIO S.     Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover

the lost hair of another man.

75

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Why is Time such a niggard of hair,

being (as it is) so plentiful an excrement?

DROMIO S.     Because it is a blessing that he bestows on

beasts, and what he hath scanted men in hair, he hath

given them in wit.

80

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Why, but there’s many a man hath more

hair than wit.

DROMIO S.     Not a man of those but he hath the wit to

lose his hair.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Why, thou didst conclude hairy men

85

plain dealers without wit.

DROMIO S.     The plainer dealer, the sooner lost; yet he

loseth it in a kind of jollity.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     For what reason?

DROMIO S.     For two, and sound ones too.

90

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Nay, not sound, I pray you.

DROMIO S.     Sure ones, then.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Nay, not sure in a thing falsing.

DROMIO S.     Certain ones then.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Name them.

95

DROMIO S.     The one, to save the money that he spends in

tiring; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in

his porridge.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     You would all this time have proved,

there is no time for all things.

100

DROMIO S.     Marry, and did, sir: namely, e’en no time to

recover hair lost by nature.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     But your reason was not substantial,

why there is no time to recover.

DROMIO S.     This I mend it: Time himself is bald, and

105

therefore to the world’s end will have bald followers.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     I knew ’twould be a bald conclusion;

but soft, who wafts us yonder?

Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA.

ADRIANA     Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown,

Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects;

110

I am not Adriana, nor thy wife.

The time was once when thou unurg’d wouldst vow

That never words were music to thine ear,

That never object pleasing in thine eye,

That never touch well welcome to thy hand,

115

That never meat sweet-savour’d in thy taste,

Unless I spake, or look’d, or touch’d, or carv’d to

thee.

How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,

That thou art then estranged from thyself? –

Thyself I call it, being strange to me,

120

That undividable, incorporate,

Am better than thy dear self’s better part.

Ah, do not tear away thyself from me;

For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall

A drop of water in the breaking gulf,

125

And take unmingled thence that drop again

Without addition or diminishing,

As take from me thyself, and not me too.

How dearly would it touch thee to the quick,

Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious?

130

And that this body, consecrate to thee,

By ruffian lust should be contaminate?

Wouldst thou not spit at me, and spurn at me,

And hurl the name of husband in my face,

And tear the stain’d skin off my harlot brow,

135

And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring,

And break it with a deep-divorcing vow?

I know thou canst; and therefore, see thou do it!

I am possess’d with an adulterate blot,

My blood is mingled with the crime of lust;

140

For if we two be one, and thou play false,

I do digest the poison of thy flesh,

Being strumpeted by thy contagion.

Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed,

I live unstain’d, thou undishonoured.

145

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Plead you to me fair dame? I know you not.

In Ephesus I am but two hours old,

As strange unto your town as to your talk,

Who, every word by all my wit being scann’d,

Wants wit in all one word to understand.

150

LUCIANA

Fie, brother, how the world is chang’d with you.

When were you wont to use my sister thus?

She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     By Dromio?

DROMIO S.     By me?

155

ADRIANA

By thee, and this thou didst return from him,

That he did buffet thee, and in his blows

Denied my house for his, me for his wife.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?

What is the course and drift of your compact?

160

DROMIO S.     I, sir? I never saw her till this time.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Villain, thou liest, for even her very words

Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.

DROMIO S.     I never spake with her in all my life.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

How can she thus then call us by our names? –

165

Unless it be by inspiration.

ADRIANA     How ill agrees it with your gravity

To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave,

Abetting him to thwart me in my mood;

Be it my wrong, you are from me exempt,

170

But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt.

Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine;

Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,

Whose weakness married to thy stronger state,

Makes me with thy strength to communicate:

175

If aught possess thee from me, it is dross,

Usurping ivy, briar, or idle moss,

Who all for want of pruning, with intrusion,

Infect thy sap, and live on thy confusion.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     [aside]

To me she speaks, she moves me for her theme;

180

What, was I married to her in my dream?

Or sleep I now, and think I hear all this?

What error drives our eyes and ears amiss?

Until I know this sure uncertainty,

I’ll entertain the offer’d fallacy.

185

LUCIANA

Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner.

DROMIO S.     O for my beads; I cross me for a sinner.

This is the fairy land; O spite of spites,

We talk with goblins, elves and sprites;

If we obey them not, this will ensue –

190

They’ll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.

LUCIANA

Why prat’st thou to thy self and answer’st not?

Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot.

DROMIO S.     I am transformed, master, am I not?

ANTIPHOLUS S.     I think thou art in mind, and so am I.

195

DROMIO S.     Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Thou hast thine own form.

DROMIO S.     No, I am an ape.

LUCIANA     If thou art chang’d to aught, ’tis to an ass.

DROMIO S.     ’Tis true, she rides me, and I long for grass;

’Tis so, I am an ass, else it could never be

200

But I should know her as well as she knows me.

ADRIANA     Come, come, no longer will I be a fool,

To put the finger in the eye and weep

Whilst man and master laughs my woes to scorn.

Come, sir, to dinner; Dromio, keep the gate.

205

Husband, I’ll dine above with you to-day,

And shrive you of a thousand idle pranks.

Sirrah, if any ask you for your master,

Say he dines forth, and let no creature enter.

Come, sister; Dromio, play the porter well.

210

ANTIPHOLUS S.     [aside]

Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?

Sleeping or waking, mad or well advis’d?

Known unto these, and to myself disguis’d,

I’ll say as they say, and persever so,

And in this mist at all adventures go.

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DROMIO S.     Master, shall I be porter at the gate?

ADRIANA     Ay, and let none enter, lest I break your pate.

LUCIANA     Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late.

     Exeunt.

3.1 Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS, his man DROMIO, ANGELO the goldsmith and BALTHASAR the merchant.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Good signior Angelo, you must excuse us all,

My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours;

Say that I linger’d with you at your shop

To see the making of her carcanet,

And that to-morrow you will bring it home.

5

But here’s a villain that would face me down

He met me on the mart, and that I beat him,

And charg’d him with a thousand marks in gold,

And that I did deny my wife and house;

Thou drunkard, thou, what didst thou mean by this?

10

DROMIO E.

Say what you will, sir, but I know what I know;

That you beat me at the mart I have your hand to

show.

If the skin were parchment and the blows you gave

were ink,

Your own hand-writing would tell you what I think.

ANTIPHOLUS E.     I think thou art an ass.

DROMIO E.     Marry, so it doth appear

15

By the wrongs I suffer and the blows I bear;

I should kick, being kick’d, and being at that pass,

You would keep from my heels, and beware of an ass.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

You’re sad, signior Balthazar; pray God our cheer

May answer my good will, and your good welcome

here.

20

BALTHASAR

I hold your dainties cheap, sir, and your welcome dear.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

O signior Balthazar, either at flesh or fish

A table full of welcome makes scarce one dainty dish.

BALTHASAR

Good meat, sir, is common; that every churl affords.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

And welcome more common, for that’s nothing but

words.

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BALTHASAR

Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Ay, to a niggardly host, and more sparing guest;

But though my cates be mean, take them in good part;

Better cheer may you have, but not with better heart.

But soft, my door is lock’d; go bid them let us in.

30

DROMIO E.

Maud, Bridget, Marian, Cicely, Gillian, Ginn!

DROMIO S.     [within]

Mome, malthorse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch,

Either get thee from the door or sit down at the hatch:

Dost thou conjure for wenches, that thou call’st for

such store

When one is too many? Go, get thee from the door.

35

DROMIO E.

What patch is made our porter? my master stays in

the street.

DROMIO S.

Let him walk from whence he came, lest he catch

cold on’s feet.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Who talks within there? ho, open the door.

DROMIO S.

Right, sir, I’ll tell you when, and you’ll tell me

wherefore.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Wherefore? for my dinner; I have not din’d to-day.

40

DROMIO S.

Nor to-day here you must not; come again when you

may.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

What art thou that keep’st me out from the house

I owe?

DROMIO S.

The porter for this time, sir, and my name is Dromio.

DROMIO E.

O villain, thou hast stol’n both mine office and my

name;

The one ne’er got me credit, the other mickle blame;

45

If thou hadst been Dromio to-day in my place,

Thou wouldst have chang’d thy office for an aim, or

thy name for an ass.

Enter LUCE, concealed from Antipholus of Ephesus and his companions.

LUCE

What a coil is there, Dromio? who are those at the

gate?

DROMIO E.     Let my master in, Luce.

LUCE     Faith, no, he comes too late,

And so tell your master.

DROMIO E.     O Lord, I must laugh;

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Have at you with a proverb – shall I set in my staff?

LUCE

Have at you with another, that’s – when? can you

tell?

DROMIO S.

If thy name be called Luce, Luce thou hast answer’d

him well.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Do you hear, you minion, you’ll let us in I trow?

LUCE     I thought to have ask’d you.

DROMIO S.     And you said, no.

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DROMIO E.

So come, help, well struck, there was blow for blow.

ANTIPHOLUS E.     Thou baggage, let me in.

LUCE     Can you tell for whose sake?

DROMIO E.     Master, knock the door hard.

LUCE     Let him knock till it ache.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

You’ll cry for this, minion, if I beat the door down.

LUCE

What needs all that, and a pair of stocks in the town?

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Enter ADRIANA to Luce.

ADRIANA

Who is that at the door that keeps all this noise?

DROMIO S.

By my troth, your town is troubled with unruly boys.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Are you there, wife? you might have come before.

ADRIANA

Your wife, sir knave? go, get you from the door.

     Exit with Luce.

DROMIO E.

If you went in pain, master, this knave would go sore.

65

ANGELO

Here is neither cheer, sir, nor welcome; we would

fain have either.

BALTHASAR

In debating which was best, we shall part with

neither.

DROMIO E.

They stand at the door, master; bid them welcome

hither.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

There is something in the wind that we cannot

get in.

DROMIO E.

You would say so, master, if your garments were thin.

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Your cake here is warm within; you stand here in the

cold;

It would make a man mad as a buck to be so bought

and sold.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Go fetch me something, I’ll break ope the gate.

DROMIO S.

Break any breaking here and I’ll break your knave’s

pate.

DROMIO E.

A man may break a word with you, sir, and words are

but wind;

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Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not

behind.

DROMIO S.

It seems thou want’st breaking; out upon thee, hind.

DROMIO E.

Here’s too much ‘out upon thee’; I pray thee let

me in.

DROMIO S.

Ay, when fowls have no feathers, and fish have no fin.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Well, I’ll break in; go, borrow me a crow.

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DROMIO E.

A crow without feather; master, mean you so?

For a fish without a fin, there’s a fowl without a

feather;

If a crow help us in, sirrah, we’ll pluck a crow

together.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Go, get thee gone; fetch me an iron crow.

BALTHASAR     Have patience, sir, O, let it not be so;

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Herein you war against your reputation,

And draw within the compass of suspect

Th’unviolated honour of your wife.

Once this, – your long experience of her wisdom,

Her sober virtue, years and modesty,

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Plead on her part some cause to you unknown;

And doubt not, sir, but she will well excuse

Why at this time the doors are made against you.

Be rul’d by me, depart in patience,

And let us to the Tiger all to dinner,

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And about evening, come yourself alone

To know the reason of this strange restraint.

If by strong hand you offer to break in

Now in the stirring passage of the day,

A vulgar comment will be made of it;

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And that supposed by the common rout

Against your yet ungalled estimation,

That may with foul intrusion enter in,

And dwell upon your grave when you are dead;

For slander lives upon succession,

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For e’er hous’d where it gets possession.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

You have prevail’d, I will depart in quiet,

And in despite of mirth mean to be merry.

I know a wench of excellent discourse,

Pretty and witty; wild and yet, too, gentle;

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There will we dine. This woman that I mean,

My wife (but I protest, without desert)

Hath oftentimes upbraided me withal;

To her will we to dinner; [to Angelo] get you home

And fetch the chain, by this I know ’tis made;

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Bring it, I pray you, to the Porpentine,

For there’s the house – that chain will I bestow

(Be it for nothing but to spite my wife)

Upon mine hostess there – good sir, make haste.

Since mine own doors refuse to entertain me,

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I’ll knock elsewhere, to see if they’ll disdain me.

ANGELO     I’ll meet you at that place some hour hence.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Do so; this jest shall cost me some expense.     Exeunt.

3.2 Enter LUCIANA, with ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.

LUCIANA     And may it be that you have quite forgot

A husband’s office? shall, Antipholus,

Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot?

Shall love in building grow so ruinous?

If you did wed my sister for her wealth,

5

Then for her wealth’s sake use her with more

kindness;

Or if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth,

Muffle your false love with some show of blindness.

Let not my sister read it in your eye;

Be not thy tongue thy own shame’s orator;

10

Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty;

Apparel vice like virtue’s harbinger;

Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted;

Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint,

Be secret false; what need she be acquainted?

15

What simple thief brags of his own attaint?

’Tis double wrong to truant with your bed,

And let her read it in thy looks at board;

Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed;

Ill deeds is doubled with an evil word.

20

Alas, poor women, make us but believe

(Being compact of credit) that you love us;

Though others have the arm, show us the sleeve;

We in your motion turn, and you may move us.

Then, gentle brother, get you in again;

25

Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife;

’Tis holy sport to be a little vain

When the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Sweet mistress, what your name is else I know not,

Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine;

30

Less in your knowledge and your grace you show not

Than our earth’s wonder, more than earth divine.

Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak;

Lay open to my earthy gross conceit,

Smother’d in errors, feeble, shallow, weak,

35

The folded meaning of your words’ deceit.

Against my soul’s pure truth, why labour you

To make it wander in an unknown field?

Are you a god? would you create me new?

Transform me then, and to your power I’ll yield.

40

But if that I am I, then well I know

Your weeping sister is no wife of mine,

Nor to her bed no homage do I owe;

Far more, far more to you do I decline;

O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note

45

To drown me in thy sister’s flood of tears;

Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote;

Spread o’er the silver waves thy golden hairs,

And as a bed I’ll take thee, and there lie,

And in that glorious supposition think

50

He gains by death that hath such means to die;

Let love, being light, be drowned if she sink.

LUCIANA     What, are you mad that you do reason so?

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Not mad, but mated, how I do not know.

LUCIANA     It is a fault that springeth from your eye.

55

ANTIPHOLUS S.

For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by.

LUCIANA

Gaze where you should, and that will clear your

sight.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night.

LUCIANA     Why call you me love? Call my sister so.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Thy sister’s sister.

LUCIANA     That’s my sister.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     No,

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It is thyself, mine own self’s better part,

Mine eye’s clear eye, my dear heart’s dearer heart,

My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope’s aim,

My sole earth’s heaven, and my heaven’s claim.

LUCIANA     All this my sister is, or else should be.

65

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Call thyself sister, sweet, for I am thee;

Thee will I love, and with thee lead my life;

Thou hast no husband yet, nor I no wife –

Give me thy hand.

LUCIANA     O, soft, sir, hold you still;

I’ll fetch my sister to get her good will.     Exit.

70

Enter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Why, how now Dromio, where run’st

thou so fast?

DROMIO S.     Do you know me sir? Am I Dromio? Am I

your man? Am I myself?

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Thou art Dromio, thou art my man,

75

thou art thyself.

DROMIO S.     I am an ass, I am a woman’s man, and besides

myself.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     What woman’s man? and how besides

thyself?

80

DROMIO S.     Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a

woman, one that claims me, one that haunts me, one

that will have me.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     What claim lays she to thee?

DROMIO S.     Marry sir, such claim as you would lay to

85

your horse; and she would have me as a beast, not that

I being a beast she would have me, but that she being

a very beastly creature lays claim to me.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     What is she?

DROMIO S.     A very reverend body; ay, such a one as a

90

man may not speak of, without he say ‘sir-reverence’;

I have but lean luck in the match, and yet is she a

wondrous fat marriage.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     How dost thou mean, a fat marriage?

DROMIO S.     Marry, sir, she’s the kitchen wench, and all

95

grease, and I know not what use to put her to but to

make a lamp of her, and run from her by her own light.

I warrant her rags and the tallow in them will burn a

Poland winter; if she lives till doomsday she’ll burn a

week longer than the whole world.

100

ANTIPHOLUS S.     What complexion is she of?

DROMIO S.     Swart like my shoe, but her face nothing like

so clean kept; for why? she sweats, a man may go over-

shoes in the grime of it.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     That’s a fault that water will mend.

105

DROMIO S.     No sir, ’tis in grain; Noah’s flood could not

do it.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     What’s her name?

DROMIO S.     Nell, sir; but her name and three quarters,

that’s an ell and threequarters, will not measure her

110

from hip to hip.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Then she bears some breadth?

DROMIO S.     No longer from head to foot than from hip

to hip; she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out

countries in her.

115

ANTIPHOLUS S.     In what part of her body stands Ireland?

DROMIO S.     Marry, sir, in her buttocks; I found it out by

the bogs.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Where Scotland?

DROMIO S.     I found it by the barrenness, hard in the

120

palm of the hand.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Where France?

DROMIO S.     In her forehead, armed and reverted, making

war against her heir.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Where England?

125

DROMIO S.     I looked for the chalky cliffs, but I could find

no whiteness in them. But I guess it stood in her chin,

by the salt rheum that ran between France and it.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Where Spain?

DROMIO S.     Faith, I saw it not; but I felt it hot in her

130

breath.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Where America, the Indies?

DROMIO S.     O, sir, upon her nose, all o’er-embellished

with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich

aspect to the hot breath of Spain, who sent whole

135

armadoes of carracks to be ballast at her nose.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?

DROMIO S.     O, sir, I did not look so low. To conclude, this

drudge or diviner laid claim to me, called me Dromio,

swore I was assured to her, told me what privy marks

140

I had about me, as the mark of my shoulder, the mole

in my neck, the great wart on my left arm, that I,

amazed, ran from her as a witch.

And I think if my breast had not been made of faith,

and my heart of steel,

She had transform’d me to a curtal dog, and made

me turn i’th’ wheel.

145

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Go, hie thee presently, post to the road;

And if the wind blow any way from shore

I will not harbour in this town to-night.

If any bark put forth, come to the mart,

Where I will walk till thou return to me;

150

If everyone knows us and we know none,

’Tis time I think to trudge, pack and be gone.

DROMIO S.     As from a bear a man would run for life,

So fly I from her that would be my wife.     Exit.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

There’s none but witches do inhabit here,

155

And therefore ’tis high time that I were hence;

She that doth call me husband, even my soul

Doth for a wife abhor. But her fair sister,

Possess’d with such a gentle sovereign grace,

Of such enchanting presence and discourse,

160

Hath almost made me traitor to myself;

But lest myself be guilty to self-wrong,

I’ll stop mine ears against the mermaid’s song.

Enter ANGELO with the chain.

ANGELO     Master Antipholus.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Ay, that’s my name.

ANGELO     I know it well, sir; lo, here’s the chain;

165

I thought to have ta’en you at the Porpentine,

The chain unfinish’d made me stay thus long.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

What is your will that I shall do with this?

ANGELO

What please yourself, sir; I have made it for you.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Made it for me, sir? I bespoke it not.

170

ANGELO

Not once, nor twice, but twenty times you have.

Go home with it, and please your wife withal,

And soon at supper-time I’ll visit you,

And then receive my money for the chain.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     I pray you, sir, receive the money now,

175

For fear you ne’er see chain nor money more.

ANGELO     You are a merry man, sir; fare you well.     Exit.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

What I should think of this I cannot tell;

But this I think, there’s no man is so vain

That would refuse so fair an offer’d chain.

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I see a man here needs not live by shifts

When in the streets he meets such golden gifts.

I’ll to the mart, and there for Dromio stay;

If any ship put out, then straight, away.     Exit.

4.1 Enter Second Merchant, the goldsmith ANGELO and an Officer.

2 MERCHANT

You know since Pentecost the sum is due,

And since I have not much importun’d you,

Nor now I had not, but that I am bound

To Persia, and want guilders for my voyage;

Therefore make present satisfaction,

5

Or I’ll attach you by this officer.

ANGELO     Even just the sum that I do owe to you

Is growing to me by Antipholus,

And in the instant that I met with you

He had of me a chain; at five o’clock

10

I shall receive the money for the same.

Pleaseth you walk with me down to his house,

I will discharge my bond, and thank you too.

Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS and DROMIO from the Courtesan’s.

OFFICER

That labour may you save; see where he comes.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

While I go to the goldsmith’s house, go thou

15

And buy a rope’s end; that will I bestow

Among my wife and her confederates

For locking me out of my doors by day –

But soft, I see the goldsmith; get thee gone,

Buy thou a rope and bring it home to me.

20

DROMIO E.

I buy a thousand pound a year, I buy a rope!     Exit.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

A man is well holp up that trusts to you;

I promised your presence and the chain,

But neither chain nor goldsmith came to me.

Belike you thought our love would last too long

25

If it were chain’d together, and therefore came not.

ANGELO     Saving your merry humour, here’s the note

How much your chain weighs to the utmost carrat,

The fineness of the gold, and chargeful fashion,

Which doth amount to three odd ducats more

30

Than I stand debted to this gentleman;

I pray you see him presently discharg’d,

For he is bound to sea and stays but for it.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

I am not furnish’d with the present money;

Besides, I have some business in the town;

35

Good signior, take the stranger to my house,

And with you take the chain, and bid my wife

Disburse the sum on the receipt thereof;

Perchance I will be there as soon as you.

ANGELO     Then you will bring the chain to her yourself.

40

ANTIPHOLUS E.

No, bear it with you, lest I come not time enough.

ANGELO     Well sir, I will. Have you the chain about you?

ANTIPHOLUS E.

And if I have not, sir, I hope you have,

Or else you may return without your money.

ANGELO     Nay, come, I pray you, sir, give me the chain;

45

Both wind and tide stays for this gentleman,

And I, to blame, have held him here too long.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Good Lord! You use this dalliance to excuse

Your breach of promise to the Porpentine;

I should have chid you for not bringing it,

50

But like a shrew you first begin to brawl.

2 MERCHANT

The hour steals on; I pray you, sir, dispatch.

ANGELO     You hear how he importunes me; the chain!

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Why, give it to my wife and fetch your money.

ANGELO

Come, come, you know I gave it you even now.

55

Either send the chain or send me by some token.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Fie, now you run this humour out of breath;

Come, where’s the chain? I pray you let me see it.

2 MERCHANT     My business cannot brook this dalliance;

Good sir, say whe’er you’ll answer me or no;

60

If not, I’ll leave him to the officer.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

I answer you? What should I answer you?

ANGELO     The money that you owe me for the chain.

ANTIPHOLUS E.     I owe you none, till I receive the chain.

ANGELO     You know I gave it you half an hour since.

65

ANTIPHOLUS E.

You gave me none; you wrong me much to say so.

ANGELO     You wrong me more, sir, in denying it.

Consider how it stands upon my credit.

2 MERCHANT     Well, officer, arrest him at my suit.

OFFICER     I do,

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And charge you in the duke’s name to obey me.

ANGELO     This touches me in reputation;

Either consent to pay this sum for me,

Or I attach you by this officer.

ANTIPHOLUS E.     Consent to pay thee that I never had?

75

Arrest me, foolish fellow, if thou dar’st.

ANGELO     Here is thy fee, arrest him officer.

I would not spare my brother in this case

If he should scorn me so apparently.

OFFICER     I do arrest you, sir; you hear the suit.

80

ANTIPHOLUS E.     I do obey thee, till I give thee bail.

But sirrah, you shall buy this sport as dear

As all the metal in your shop will answer.

ANGELO     Sir, sir, I shall have law in Ephesus,

To your notorious shame, I doubt it not.

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Enter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE from the bay.

DROMIO S.     Master, there’s a bark of Epidamnum

That stays but till her owner comes aboard,

And then she bears away. Our fraughtage, sir,

I have convey’d aboard, and I have bought

The oil, the balsamum and aqua-vitae.

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The ship is in her trim, the merry wind

Blows fair from land; they stay for nought at all

But for their owner, master, and yourself.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

How now? a madman? Why, thou peevish sheep,

What ship of Epidamnum stays for me?

95

DROMIO S.     A ship you sent me to, to hire waftage.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Thou drunken slave, I sent thee for a rope,

And told thee to what purpose and what end.

DROMIO S.     You sent me for a rope’s end, sir, as soon;

You sent me to the bay, sir, for a bark.

100

ANTIPHOLUS E.

I will debate this matter at more leisure,

And teach your ears to list me with more heed.

To Adriana, villain, hie thee straight:

Give her this key, and tell her in the desk

That’s cover’d o’er with Turkish tapestry,

105

There is a purse of ducats; let her send it.

Tell her I am arrested in the street,

And that shall bail me; hie thee slave, be gone;

On, officer, to prison, till it come.

     Exeunt all but Dromio.

DROMIO S.     To Adriana, – that is where we din’d,

110

Where Dowsabel did claim me for her husband;

She is too big I hope for me to compass.

Thither I must, although against my will;

For servants must their masters’ minds fulfil.     Exit.

4.2 Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA.

ADRIANA     Ah, Luciana, did he tempt thee so?

Might’st thou perceive austerely in his eye

That he did plead in earnest, yea or no?

Look’d he or red or pale, or sad or merrily?

What observation mad’st thou in this case,

5

Of his heart’s meteors tilting in his face?

LUCIANA     First he denied you had in him no right.

ADRIANA

He meant he did me none; the more my spite.

LUCIANA     Then swore he that he was a stranger here.

ADRIANA

And true he swore, though yet forsworn he were.

10

LUCIANA     Then pleaded I for you.

ADRIANA     And what said he?

LUCIANA     That love I begg’d for you, he begg’d of me.

ADRIANA     With what persuasion did he tempt thy love?

LUCIANA

With words that in an honest suit might move:

First he did praise my beauty, then my speech.

15

ADRIANA     Did’st speak him fair?

LUCIANA     Have patience, I beseech.

ADRIANA

I cannot, nor I will not hold me still.

My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will.

He is deformed, crooked, old and sere,

Ill-fac’d, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere;

20

Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind,

Stigmatical in making, worse in mind.

LUCIANA     Who would be jealous then of such a one?

No evil lost is wail’d when it is gone.

ADRIANA     Ah, but I think him better than I say,

25

And yet would herein others’ eyes were worse:

Far from her nest the lapwing cries away;

My heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse.

Enter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.

DROMIO S.

Here, go: the desk; the purse; sweat now, make haste.

LUCIANA     How hast thou lost thy breath?

DROMIO S.     By running fast.

30

ADRIANA     Where is thy master, Dromio? is he well?

DROMIO S.     No, he’s in Tartar limbo, worse than hell.

A devil in an everlasting garment hath him,

One whose hard heart is button’d up with steel;

A fiend, a fury, pitiless and rough,

35

A wolf, nay worse, a fellow all in buff;

A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that

countermands

The passages of alleys, creeks and narrow lands;

A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot

well,

One that, before the judgment, carries poor souls to

hell.

40

ADRIANA     Why, man, what is the matter?

DROMIO S.

I do not know the matter; he is ’rested on the case.

ADRIANA     What, is he arrested? tell me at whose suit?

DROMIO S.

I know not at whose suit he is arrested well;

But is in a suit of buff which ’rested him, that can I

tell:

45

Will you send him, mistress, redemption, the money

in his desk?

ADRIANA     Go, fetch it, sister; this I wonder at,

     Exit Luciana.

That he unknown to me should be in debt.

Tell me, was he arrested on a band?

DROMIO S.     Not on a band, but on a stronger thing;

50

A chain, a chain, do you not hear it ring?

ADRIANA     What, the chain?

DROMIO S.     No, no, the bell, ’tis time

that I were gone,

It was two ere I left him, and now the clock strikes

one.

ADRIANA     The hours come back; that did I never hear.

DROMIO S.

O yes, if any hour meet a sergeant, ’a turns back for

very fear.

55

ADRIANA

As if time were in debt; how fondly dost thou reason.

DROMIO S.

Time is a very bankrupt, and owes more than he’s

worth to season.

Nay, he’s a thief too; have you not heard men say

That time comes stealing on by night and day?

If ’a be in debt and theft, and a sergeant in the way,

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Hath he not reason to turn back an hour in a day?

Enter LUCIANA with the money.

ADRIANA

Go, Dromio, there’s the money, bear it straight,

And bring thy master home immediately.

Come, sister, I am press’d down with conceit;

Conceit, my comfort and my injury.     Exeunt.

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4.3 Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me

As if I were their well-acquainted friend,

And every one doth call me by my name:

Some tender money to me, some invite me,

Some other give me thanks for kindnesses,

5

Some offer me commodities to buy.

Even now a tailor call’d me in his shop,

And show’d me silks that he had bought for me,

And therewithal took measure of my body.

Sure these are but imaginary wiles,

10

And Lapland sorcerers inhabit here.

Enter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.

DROMIO S.     Master, here’s the gold you sent me for:

what, have you got the picture of old Adam new-

apparelled?

ANTIPHOLUS S.     What gold is this? What Adam dost

15

thou mean?

DROMIO S.     Not that Adam that kept the paradise, but

that Adam that keeps the prison; he that goes in the

calf’s-skin that was killed for the prodigal; he that

came behind you, sir, like an evil angel, and bid you

20

forsake your liberty.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     I understand thee not.

DROMIO S.     No? why, ’tis a plain case; he that went like a

bass-viol in a case of leather; the man, sir, that when

gentlemen are tired gives them a sob, and rests them;

25

he, sir, that takes pity on decayed men and gives them

suits of durance; he that sets up his rest to do more

exploits with his mace than a morris-pike.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     What, thou mean’st an officer?

DROMIO S.     Ay, sir, the sergeant of the band; he that

30

brings any man to answer it that breaks his band; one

that thinks a man always going to bed, and says, ‘God

give you good rest’.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Well, sir, there rest in your foolery. Is

there any ship puts forth to-night? may we be gone?

35

DROMIO S.     Why, sir, I brought you word an hour since,

that the bark Expedition put forth tonight, and then

were you hindered by the sergeant to tarry for the hoy

Delay. Here are the angels that you sent for to deliver

you.

40

ANTIPHOLUS S.     The fellow is distract, and so am I,

And here we wander in illusions –

Some blessed power deliver us from hence!

Enter a Courtesan.

COURTESAN     Well met, well met, master Antipholus;

I see, sir, you have found the goldsmith now;

45

Is that the chain you promis’d me to-day?

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Satan avoid, I charge thee tempt me not.

DROMIO S.     Master, is this mistress Satan?

ANTIPHOLUS S.     It is the devil.

DROMIO S.     Nay, she is worse, she is the devil’s dam; and

50

here she comes in the habit of a light wench, and

thereof comes that the wenches say ‘God damn me’,

that’s as much as to say, ‘God make me a light wench’.

It is written, they appear to men like angels of light;

light is an effect of fire, and fire will burn; ergo, light

55

wenches will burn; come not near her.

COURTESAN

Your man and you are marvellous merry, sir.

Will you go with me? we’ll mend our dinner here.

DROMIO S.     Master, if you do, expect spoon-meat, or

bespeak a long spoon.

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ANTIPHOLUS S.     Why, Dromio?

DROMIO S.     Marry, he must have a long spoon that must

eat with the devil.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Avoid then, fiend, what tell’st thou me of supping?

Thou art, as you are all, a sorceress:

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I conjure thee to leave me and be gone.

COURTESAN

Give me the ring of mine you had at dinner,

Or for my diamond the chain you promis’d,

And I’ll be gone, sir, and not trouble you.

DROMIO S.     Some devils ask but the parings of one’s nail,

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a rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin, a nut, a cherry-

stone; but she, more covetous, would have a chain.

Master, be wise; and if you give it her, the devil will

shake her chain and fright us with it.

COURTESAN     I pray you, sir, my ring, or else the chain;

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I hope you do not mean to cheat me so?

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Avaunt, thou witch. Come, Dromio, let us go.

DROMIO S.

Fly pride, says the peacock; mistress, that you know.

     Exeunt Antipholus and Dromio.

COURTESAN     Now out of doubt Antipholus is mad,

Else would he never so demean himself;

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A ring he hath of mine worth forty ducats,

And for the same he promis’d me a chain;

Both one and other he denies me now.

The reason that I gather he is mad,

Besides this present instance of his rage,

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Is a mad tale he told to-day at dinner

Of his own doors being shut against his entrance.

Belike his wife, acquainted with his fits,

On purpose shut the doors against his way –

My way is now to hie home to his house,

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And tell his wife that, being lunatic,

He rush’d into my house and took perforce

My ring away. This course I fittest choose,

For forty ducats is too much to lose.     Exit.

4.4 Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS with the Officer.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Fear me not, man, I will not break away.

I’ll give thee ere I leave thee so much money

To warrant thee as I am ’rested for.

My wife is in a wayward mood to-day,

And will not lightly trust the messenger

5

That I should be attach’d in Ephesus;

I tell you ’twill sound harshly in her ears.

Enter DROMIO OF EPHESUS with a rope’s end.

Here comes my man, I think he brings the money.

How now, sir? have you that I sent you for?

DROMIO E.     Here’s that, I warrant you, will pay them all.

10

ANTIPHOLUS E.     But where’s the money?

DROMIO E.     Why, sir, I gave the money for the rope.

ANTIPHOLUS E.     Five hundred ducats, villain, for a rope?

DROMIO E.     I’ll serve you, sir, five hundred at the rate.

ANTIPHOLUS E.     To what end did I bid thee hie thee

15

home?

DROMIO E.     To a rope’s end, sir, and to that end am I

return’d.

ANTIPHOLUS E.     And to that end, sir, I will welcome you.

[Beats Dromio.]

OFFICER     Good sir, be patient.

20

DROMIO E.     Nay, ’tis for me to be patient, I am in

adversity.

OFFICER     Good now, hold thy tongue.

DROMIO E.     Nay, rather persuade him to hold his hands.

ANTIPHOLUS E.     Thou whoreson, senseless villain.

25

DROMIO E.     I would I were senseless, sir, that I might not

feel your blows.

ANTIPHOLUS E.     Thou art sensible in nothing but blows,

and so is an ass.

DROMIO E.     I am an ass indeed; you may prove it by my

30

long ears. I have served him from the hour of my

nativity to this instant, and have nothing at his hands

for my service but blows. When I am cold, he heats me

with beating; when I am warm he cools me with

beating; I am waked with it when I sleep, raised with

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it when I sit, driven out of doors with it when I go

from home, welcomed home with it when I return,

nay, I bear it on my shoulders as a beggar wont her

brat; and I think when he hath lamed me, I shall beg

with it from door to door.

40

Enter ADRIANA, LUCIANA, Courtesan and a schoolmaster, called PINCH.

ANTIPHOLUS E.     Come, go along, my wife is coming

yonder.

DROMIO E.     Mistress, respice finem, respect your end, or

rather, to prophesy like the parrot, beware the rope’s

end.

45

ANTIPHOLUS E.     Wilt thou still talk? [Beats Dromio.]

COURTESAN

How say you now? Is not your husband mad?

ADRIANA     His incivility confirms no less.

Good Doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer;

Establish him in his true sense again,

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And I will please you what you will demand.

LUCIANA     Alas, how fiery, and how sharp he looks.

COURTESAN     Mark how he trembles in his ecstasy.

PINCH     Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

There is my hand, and let it feel your ear.

55

[He strikes Pinch.]

PINCH     I charge thee, Satan, hous’d within this man,

To yield possession to my holy prayers,

And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight;

I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Peace, doting wizard, peace; I am not mad.

60

ADRIANA     O that thou wert not, poor distressed soul.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

You minion, you, are these your customers?

Did this companion with the saffron face

Revel and feast it at my house to-day,

Whilst upon me the guilty doors were shut,

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And I denied to enter in my house?

ADRIANA

O husband, God doth know you din’d at home,

Where would you had remain’d until this time,

Free from these slanders and this open shame.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Din’d at home?

[to Dromio]     Thou villain, what sayest thou?

70

DROMIO E.     Sir, sooth to say, you did not dine at home.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Were not my doors lock’d up, and I shut out?

DROMIO E.

Perdy, your doors were lock’d, and you shut out.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

And did she not herself revile me there?

DROMIO E.     Sans fable, she herself revil’d you there.

75

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Did not her kitchen-maid rail, taunt and scorn me?

DROMIO E.

Certes she did, the kitchen-vestal scorn’d you.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

And did not I in rage depart from thence?

DROMIO E.     In verity you did; my bones bears witness.

That since have felt the vigour of his rage.

80

ADRIANA     Is’t good to soothe him in these contraries?

PINCH     It is no shame; the fellow finds his vein,

And yielding to him, humours well his frenzy.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Thou hast suborn’d the goldsmith to arrest me.

ADRIANA     Alas, I sent you money to redeem you

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By Dromio here, who came in haste for it.

DROMIO E.

Money by me? Heart and good will you might,

But surely, master, not a rag of money.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Went’st not thou to her for a purse of ducats?

ADRIANA     He came to me and I deliver’d it.

90

LUCIANA     And I am witness with her that she did.

DROMIO E.     God and the rope-maker bear me witness

That I was sent for nothing but a rope.

PINCH     Mistress, both man and master is possess’d,

I know it by their pale and deadly looks;

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They must be bound and laid in some dark room.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Say, wherefore didst thou lock me forth to-day,

And why dost thou deny the bag of gold?

ADRIANA     I did not, gentle husband, lock thee forth.

DROMIO E.     And gentle master, I receiv’d no gold;

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But I confess, sir, that we were lock’d out.

ADRIANA

Dissembling villain, thou speak’st false in both.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Dissembling harlot, thou art false in all,

And art confederate with a damned pack

To make a loathsome abject scorn of me;

105

But with these nails I’ll pluck out these false eyes

That would behold in me this shameful sport.

ADRIANA

O bind him, bind him, let him not come near me.

[Enter three or four and offer to bind him; he strives.]

PINCH     More company; the fiend is strong within him.

LUCIANA     Ay me, poor man, how pale and wan he looks.

110

ANTIPHOLUS E.

What, will you murder me? Thou jailor, thou,

I am thy prisoner; wilt thou suffer them

To make a rescue?

OFFICER     Masters, let him go;

He is my prisoner and you shall not have him.

PINCH     Go bind this man, for he is frantic too.

115

ADRIANA     What wilt thou do, thou peevish officer?

Hast thou delight to see a wretched man

Do outrage and displeasure to himself?

OFFICER     He is my prisoner; if I let him go

The debt he owes will be requir’d of me.

120

ADRIANA     I will discharge thee ere I go from thee;

Bear me forthwith unto his creditor,

And knowing how the debt grows, I will pay it.

Good master doctor, see him safe convey’d

Home to my house; O most unhappy day!

125

ANTIPHOLUS E.     O most unhappy strumpet!

DROMIO E.     Master, I am here enter’d in bond for you.

ANTIPHOLUS E.     Out on thee villain, wherefore dost thou

mad me?

DROMIO E.     Will you be bound for nothing? Be mad,

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good master; cry ‘the devil’.

LUCIANA     God help, poor souls, how idly do they talk!

ADRIANA     Go, bear him hence; sister, go you with me.

Say now, whose suit is he arrested at?

     Exeunt Pinch and his assistants carrying

     off Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus.

OFFICER     One Angelo, a goldsmith; do you know him?

135

ADRIANA     I know the man; what is the sum he owes?

OFFICER     Two hundred ducats.

ADRIANA     Say, how grows it due?

OFFICER     Due for a chain your husband had of him.

ADRIANA

He did bespeak a chain for me, but had it not.

COURTESAN     When as your husband all in rage to-day

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Came to my house and took away my ring,

The ring I saw upon his finger now,

Straight after did I meet him with a chain.

ADRIANA     It may be so, but I did never see it.

Come, jailor, bring me where the goldsmith is;

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I long to know the truth hereof at large.

Enter ANTIPHOLUS and DROMIO OF SYRACUSE with rapiers drawn.

LUCIANA     God for thy mercy, they are loose again!

ADRIANA

And come with naked swords; let’s call more help

To have them bound again.

OFFICER     Away, they’ll kill us!

     They run all out, as fast as may be, frighted.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

I see these witches are afraid of swords.

150

DROMIO S.

She that would be your wife now ran from you.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Come to the Centaur, fetch our stuff from thence;

I long that we were safe and sound aboard.

DROMIO S.     Faith, stay here this night, they will surely

do us no harm; you saw they speak us fair, give us

155

gold. Methinks they are such a gentle nation, that but

for the mountain of mad flesh that claims marriage of

me, I could find in my heart to stay here still and turn

witch.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     I will not stay to-night for all the town;

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Therefore away, to get our stuff aboard.     Exeunt.

5.1 Enter Second Merchant and ANGELO the goldsmith.

ANGELO     I am sorry, sir, that I have hinder’d you,

But I protest he had the chain of me,

Though most dishonestly he doth deny it.

2 MERCHANT

How is the man esteem’d here in the city?

ANGELO     Of very reverend reputation, sir,

5

Of credit infinite, highly belov’d,

Second to none that lives here in the city;

His word might bear my wealth at any time.

2 MERCHANT     Speak softly; yonder, as I think, he walks.

Enter ANTIPHOLUS and DROMIO OF SYRACUSE again.

ANGELO     ’Tis so; and that self chain about his neck

10

Which he forswore most monstrously to have.

Good sir, draw near to me; I’ll speak to him.

Signior Antipholus, I wonder much

That you would put me to this shame and trouble,

And not without some scandal to yourself,

15

With circumstance and oaths so to deny

This chain, which now you wear so openly.

Beside the charge, the shame, imprisonment,

You have done wrong to this my honest friend,

Who, but for staying on our controversy,

20

Had hoisted sail and put to sea to-day.

This chain you had of me, can you deny it?

ANTIPHOLUS S.     I think I had; I never did deny it.

ANGELO     Yes, that you did, sir, and forswore it too.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

Who heard me to deny it or forswear it?

25

2 MERCHANT

These ears of mine thou know’st did hear thee.

Fie on thee, wretch, ’tis pity that thou liv’st

To walk where any honest men resort.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Thou art a villain to impeach me thus;

I’ll prove mine honour and mine honesty

30

Against thee presently, if thou dar’st stand.

2 MERCHANT     I dare, and do defy thee for a villain.

They draw. Enter ADRIANA, LUCIANA, Courtesan and others.

ADRIANA

Hold, hurt him not for God’s sake, he is mad;

Some get within him, take his sword away;

Bind Dromio too, and bear them to my house.

35

DROMIO S.

Run master, run, for God’s sake take a house;

This is some priory; in, or we are spoil’d.

     Exeunt Antipholus and Dromio to the priory.

Enter EMILIA, the Lady Abbess.

ABBESS     Be quiet, people; wherefore throng you hither?

ADRIANA     To fetch my poor distracted husband hence;

Let us come in, that we may bind him fast

40

And bear him home for his recovery.

ANGELO     I knew he was not in his perfect wits.

2 MERCHANT     I am sorry now that I did draw on him.

ABBESS     How long hath this possession held the man?

ADRIANA     This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad,

45

And much, much different from the man he was;

But till this afternoon his passion

Ne’er brake into extremity of rage.

ABBESS     Hath he not lost much wealth by wrack of sea?

Buried some dear friend? Hath not else his eye

50

Stray’d his affection in unlawful love,

A sin prevailing much in youthful men,

Who give their eyes the liberty of gazing?

Which of these sorrows is he subject to?

ADRIANA     To none of these, except it be the last,

55

Namely, some love that drew him oft from home.

ABBESS     You should for that have reprehended him.

ADRIANA     Why, so I did.

ABBESS     Ay, but not rough enough.

ADRIANA     As roughly as my modesty would let me.

ABBESS     Haply in private.

ADRIANA     And in assemblies too.

60

ABBESS     Ay, but not enough.

ADRIANA     It was the copy of our conference;

In bed he slept not for my urging it,

At board he fed not for my urging it;

Alone, it was the subject of my theme;

65

In company I often glanc’d at it;

Still did I tell him it was vile and bad.

ABBESS     And thereof came it that the man was mad.

The venom clamours of a jealous woman

Poisons more deadly than a mad dog’s tooth.

70

It seems his sleeps were hinder’d by thy railing,

And thereof comes it that his head is light.

Thou say’st his meat was sauc’d with thy

upbraidings;

Unquiet meals make ill digestions;

Thereof the raging fire of fever bred,

75

And what’s a fever but a fit of madness?

Thou sayest his sports were hinder’d by thy brawls;

Sweet recreation barr’d, what doth ensue

But moody and dull melancholy,

Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair,

80

And at her heels a huge infectious troop

Of pale distemperatures and foes to life?

In food, in sport and life-preserving rest

To be disturb’d, would mad or man or beast;

The consequence is then, thy jealous fits

85

Hath scar’d thy husband from the use of wits.

LUCIANA     She never reprehended him but mildly,

When he demean’d himself rough, rude and wildly;

Why bear you these rebukes and answer not?

ADRIANA     She did betray me to mine own reproof.

90

Good people, enter and lay hold on him.

ABBESS     No, not a creature enters in my house.

ADRIANA

Then let your servants bring my husband forth.

ABBESS     Neither. He took this place for sanctuary,

And it shall privilege him from your hands

95

Till I have brought him to his wits again,

Or lose my labour in assaying it.

ADRIANA     I will attend my husband, be his nurse,

Diet his sickness, for it is my office,

And will have no attorney but myself,

100

And therefore let me have him home with me.

ABBESS     Be patient, for I will not let him stir

Till I have us’d the approved means I have,

With wholesome syrups, drugs and holy prayers,

To make of him a formal man again.

105

It is a branch and parcel of mine oath,

A charitable duty of my order;

Therefore depart, and leave him here with me.

ADRIANA     I will not hence and leave my husband here:

And ill it doth beseem your holiness

110

To separate the husband and the wife.

ABBESS     Be quiet and depart, thou shalt not have him.

     Exit.

LUCIANA     Complain unto the duke of this indignity.

ADRIANA     Come, go, I will fall prostrate at his feet,

And never rise until my tears and prayers

115

Have won his grace to come in person hither,

And take perforce my husband from the abbess.

2 MERCHANT     By this I think the dial points at five;

Anon I’m sure the Duke himself in person

Comes this way to the melancholy vale,

120

The place of death and sorry execution

Behind the ditches of the abbey here.

ANGELO     Upon what cause?

2 MERCHANT     To see a reverend Syracusian merchant,

Who put unluckily into this bay,

125

Against the laws and statutes of this town,

Beheaded publicly for his offence.

ANGELO

See where they come; we will behold his death.

LUCIANA     Kneel to the Duke before he pass the abbey.

Enter SOLINUS the DUKE of Ephesus, and EGEON the merchant of Syracuse barehead, with the headsman and other officers.

DUKE     Yet once again proclaim it publicly,

130

If any friend will pay the sum for him,

He shall not die, so much we tender him.

ADRIANA     Justice, most sacred duke, against the abbess.

DUKE     She is a virtuous and a reverend lady,

It cannot be that she hath done thee wrong.

135

ADRIANA

May it please your grace, Antipholus my husband,

Who I made lord of me and all I had

At your important letters, this ill day

A most outrageous fit of madness took him;

That desp’rately he hurried through the street,

140

With him his bondman, all as mad as he,

Doing displeasure to the citizens

By rushing in their houses; bearing thence

Rings, jewels, any thing his rage did like.

Once did I get him bound, and sent him home,

145

Whilst to take order for the wrongs I went,

That here and there his fury had committed;

Anon, I wot not by what strong escape,

He broke from those that had the guard of him,

And with his mad attendant and himself,

150

Each one with ireful passion, with drawn swords

Met us again, and madly bent on us,

Chas’d us away; till raising of more aid

We came again to bind them. Then they fled

Into this abbey, whither we pursu’d them,

155

And here the abbess shuts the gates on us,

And will not suffer us to fetch him out,

Nor send him forth that we may bear him hence.

Therefore, most gracious duke, with thy command

Let him be brought forth, and borne hence for help.

160

DUKE     Long since thy husband serv’d me in my wars,

And I to thee engag’d a prince’s word,

When thou didst make him master of thy bed,

To do him all the grace and good I could.

Go some of you, knock at the abbey gate,

165

And bid the lady abbess come to me.

I will determine this before I stir.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER

O mistress, mistress, shift and save yourself;

My master and his man are both broke loose,

Beaten the maids a-row, and bound the doctor,

170

Whose beard they have sing’d off with brands of fire,

And ever as it blaz’d, they threw on him

Great pails of puddled mire to quench the hair;

My master preaches patience to him, and the while

His man with scissors nicks him like a fool;

175

And sure (unless you send some present help)

Between them they will kill the conjurer.

ADRIANA     Peace, fool, thy master and his man are here,

And that is false thou dost report to us.

MESSENGER     Mistress, upon my life I tell you true,

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I have not breath’d almost since I did see it.

He cries for you, and vows if he can take you

To scorch your face and to disfigure you.

[cry within]

Hark, hark, I hear him, mistress – fly, be gone.

DUKE

Come, stand by me, fear nothing; guard with

halberds.

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ADRIANA     Ay me, it is my husband; witness you

That he is borne about invisible;

Even now we hous’d him in the abbey here,

And now he’s there, past thought of human reason.

Enter ANTIPHOLUS and DROMIO OF EPHESUS.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Justice, most gracious Duke, O, grant me justice,

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Even for the service that long since I did thee

When I bestrid thee in the wars, and took

Deep scars to save thy life; even for the blood

That then I lost for thee, now grant me justice.

EGEON     Unless the fear of death doth make me dote,

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I see my son Antipholus and Dromio.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Justice, sweet prince, against that woman there –

She whom thou gav’st to me to be my wife;

That hath abused and dishonour’d me,

Even in the strength and height of injury.

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Beyond imagination is the wrong

That she this day hath shameless thrown on me.

DUKE     Discover how, and thou shalt find me just.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

This day, great duke, she shut the doors upon me

While she with harlots feasted in my house.

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DUKE     A grievous fault: say, woman, didst thou so?

ADRIANA     No, my good lord. Myself, he, and my sister

To-day did dine together; so befall my soul

As this is false he burdens me withal.

LUCIANA     Ne’er may I look on day, nor sleep on night,

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But she tells to your highness simple truth.

ANGELO     [aside]

O perjur’d woman! They are both forsworn,

In this the madman justly chargeth them.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

My liege, I am advised what I say,

Neither disturb’d with the effect of wine,

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Nor heady-rash, provok’d with raging ire,

Albeit my wrongs might make one wiser mad.

This woman lock’d me out this day from dinner;

That goldsmith there, were he not pack’d with her,

Could witness it; for he was with me then,

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Who parted with me to go fetch a chain,

Promising to bring it to the Porpentine,

Where Balthasar and I did dine together.

Our dinner done, and he not coming thither,

I went to seek him. In the street I met him,

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And in his company that gentleman.

There did this perjur’d goldsmith swear me down

That I this day of him receiv’d the chain,

Which, God he knows, I saw not. For the which

He did arrest me with an officer;

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I did obey, and sent my peasant home

For certain ducats; he with none return’d.

Then fairly I bespoke the officer

To go in person with me to my house.

By th’way we met

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My wife, her sister, and a rabble more

Of vile confederates; along with them

They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-fac’d villain;

A mere anatomy, a mountebank,

A thread-bare juggler and a fortune-teller,

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A needy-hollow-ey’d-sharp-looking-wretch;

A living dead man. This pernicious slave

Forsooth took on him as a conjurer,

And gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,

And with no-face (as ’twere) out-facing me,

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Cries out, I was possess’d. Then all together

They fell upon me, bound me, bore me thence,

And in a dark and dankish vault at home

There left me and my man, both bound together,

Till gnawing with my teeth my bonds in sunder,

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I gain’d my freedom; and immediately

Ran hither to your grace, whom I beseech

To give me ample satisfaction

For these deep shames and great indignities.

ANGELO

My lord, in truth, thus far I witness with him,

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That he din’d not at home, but was lock’d out.

DUKE     But had he such a chain of thee, or no?

ANGELO     He had, my lord, and when he ran in here

These people saw the chain about his neck.

2 MERCHANT

Besides, I will be sworn these ears of mine

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Heard you confess you had the chain of him,

After you first forswore it on the mart,

And thereupon I drew my sword on you;

And then you fled into this abbey here,

From whence I think you are come by miracle.

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ANTIPHOLUS E.

I never came within these abbey walls,

Nor ever didst thou draw thy sword on me;

I never saw the chain, so help me heaven;

And this is false you burden me withal.

DUKE     Why, what an intricate impeach is this?

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I think you all have drunk of Circe’s cup:

If here you hous’d him, here he would have been;

If he were mad, he would not plead so coldly.

You say he din’d at home, the goldsmith here

Denies that saying. Sirrah, what say you?

275

DROMIO E.

Sir, he din’d with her there, at the Porpentine.

COURTESAN

He did, and from my finger snatch’d that ring.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

’Tis true, my liege, this ring I had of her.

DUKE     Saw’st thou him enter at the abbey here?

COURTESAN     As sure, my liege, as I do see your grace.

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DUKE     Why, this is strange: go, call the abbess hither.

I think you are all mated, or stark mad.

     Exit one to the Abbess.

EGEON     Most mighty duke, vouchsafe me speak a word;

Haply I see a friend will save my life,

And pay the sum that may deliver me.

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DUKE     Speak freely, Syracusian, what thou wilt.

EGEON     Is not your name, sir, call’d Antipholus?

And is not that your bondman Dromio?

DROMIO E.

Within this hour I was his bondman, sir,

But he, I thank him, gnaw’d in two my cords;

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Now I am Dromio, and his man, unbound.

EGEON     I am sure you both of you remember me.

DROMIO E.     Ourselves we do remember, sir, by you.

For lately we were bound as you are now.

You are not Pinch’s patient, are you sir?

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EGEON

Why look you strange on me? you know me well.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

I never saw you in my life till now.

EGEON

O! grief hath chang’d me since you saw me last,

And careful hours with time’s deformed hand

Have written strange defeatures in my face;

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But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice?

ANTIPHOLUS E.     Neither.

EGEON     Dromio, nor thou?

DROMIO E.     No, trust me sir, nor I.

EGEON     I am sure thou dost?

DROMIO E.     Ay sir, but I am sure I do not, and

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whatsoever a man denies, you are bound to believe

him.

EGEON     Not know my voice? O time’s extremity,

Hast thou so crack’d and splitted my poor tongue

In seven short years, that here my only son

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Knows not my feeble key of untun’d cares?

Though now this grained face of mine be hid

In sap-consuming winter’s drizzled snow,

And all the conduits of my blood froze up,

Yet hath my night of life some memory;

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My wasting lamps some fading glimmer left;

My dull deaf ears a little use to hear –

All these old witnesses, I cannot err,

Tell me thou art my son Antipholus.

ANTIPHOLUS E.     I never saw my father in my life.

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EGEON     But seven years since, in Syracusa, boy,

Thou know’st we parted, but perhaps, my son,

Thou sham’st to acknowledge me in misery.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

The duke, and all that know me in the city,

Can witness with me that it is not so.

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I ne’er saw Syracusa in my life.

DUKE     I tell thee Syracusian, twenty years

Have I been patron to Antipholus,

During which time he ne’er saw Syracusa.

I see thy age and dangers make thee dote.

330

Enter EMILIA the ABBESS with ANTIPHOLUS and DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.

ABBESS

Most mighty duke, behold a man much wrong’d.

[All gather to see them.]

ADRIANA     I see two husbands, or mine eyes deceive me.

DUKE     One of these men is genius to the other;

And so of these, which is the natural man,

And which the spirit? Who deciphers them?

335

DROMIO S.     I, sir, am Dromio, command him away.

DROMIO E.     I, sir, am Dromio, pray let me stay.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     Egeon art thou not? or else his ghost.

DROMIO S.

O, my old master, who hath bound him here?

ABBESS     Whoever bound him, I will loose his bonds,

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And gain a husband by his liberty.

Speak old Egeon, if thou be’st the man

That hadst a wife once call’d Emilia,

That bore thee at a burden two fair sons?

O, if thou be’st the same Egeon, speak –

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And speak unto the same Emilia.

DUKE     Why, here begins his morning story right:

These two Antipholus’, these two so like,

And these two Dromios, one in semblance,

Besides her urging of her wrack at sea.

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These are the parents to these children,

Which accidentally are met together.

EGEON     If I dream not, thou art Emilia;

If thou art she, tell me, where is that son

That floated with thee on the fatal raft?

355

ABBESS     By men of Epidamnum, he and I

And the twin Dromio, all were taken up;

But by and by, rude fishermen of Corinth

By force took Dromio and my son from them,

And me they left with those of Epidamnum.

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What then became of them I cannot tell;

I, to this fortune that you see me in.

DUKE     Antipholus, thou cam’st from Corinth first.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     No, sir, not I, I came from Syracuse.

DUKE     Stay, stand apart, I know not which is which.

365

ANTIPHOLUS E.

I came from Corinth, my most gracious lord.

DROMIO E.     And I with him.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Brought to this town by that most famous warrior,

Duke Menaphon, your most renowned uncle.

ADRIANA     Which of you two did dine with me to-day?

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ANTIPHOLUS S.     I, gentle mistress.

ADRIANA     And are you not my husband?

ANTIPHOLUS E.     No, I say nay to that.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     And so do I, yet did she call me so;

And this fair gentlewoman, her sister here,

Did call me brother.

[to Luciana]     What I told you then,

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I hope I shall have leisure to make good,

If this be not a dream I see and hear.

ANGELO     That is the chain, sir, which you had of me.

ANTIPHOLUS S.     I think it be, sir, I deny it not.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

And you, sir, for this chain arrested me.

380

ANGELO     I think I did, sir, I deny it not.

ADRIANA     I sent you money, sir, to be your bail

By Dromio, but I think he brought it not.

DROMIO E.     No, none by me.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

This purse of ducats I receiv’d from you,

385

And Dromio my man did bring them me.

I see we still did meet each other’s man,

And I was ta’en for him, and he for me,

And thereupon these errors are arose.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

These ducats pawn I for my father here.

390

DUKE     It shall not need, thy father hath his life.

COURTESAN     Sir, I must have that diamond from you.

ANTIPHOLUS E.

There, take it, and much thanks for my good cheer.

ABBESS     Renowned duke, vouchsafe to take the pains

To go with us into the abbey here,

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And hear at large discoursed all our fortunes;

And all that are assembled in this place,

That by this sympathised one day’s error

Have suffer’d wrong, go, keep us company.

And we shall make full satisfaction.

400

Thirty-three years have I but gone in travail

Of you, my sons, and till this present hour

My heavy burden ne’er delivered.

The duke, my husband, and my children both,

And you, the calendars of their nativity,

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Go to a gossips’ feast, and joy with me,

After so long grief, such felicity.

DUKE     With all my heart, I’ll gossip at this feast.

     Exeunt; the two Dromios and two brothers

     Antipholus remain behind.

DROMIO S.

Master, shall I fetch your stuff from shipboard?

ANTIPHOLUS E.

Dromio, what stuff of mine hast thou embark’d?

410

DROMIO S.

Your goods that lay at host, sir, in the Centaur.

ANTIPHOLUS S.

He speaks to me; I am your master, Dromio.

Come, go with us, we’ll look to that anon;

Embrace thy brother there, rejoice with him.

     Exeunt the two Antipholuses together.

DROMIO S.     There is a fat friend at your master’s house,

415

That kitchen’d me for you to-day at dinner;

She now shall be my sister, not my wife.

DROMIO E.

Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother:

I see by you I am a sweet-fac’d youth;

Will you walk in to see their gossiping?

420

DROMIO S.     Not I, sir, you are my elder.

DROMIO E.     That’s a question, how shall we try it?

DROMIO S.

We’ll draw cuts for the senior; till then, lead thou

first.

DROMIO E.     Nay then, thus:

We came into the world like brother and brother,

425

And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before

another.     Exeunt.

Coriolanus

Coriolanus was first published in the Folio of 1623 as the first of the tragedies. On stylistic grounds it is usually dated about 1608, and possible topical references seem to confirm that date. The citizens’ anger over the shortage of corn may well refer to the corn riots of 1607 in the Midlands (which would have lent immediacy to the ‘sedition at Rome’ described by Plutarch as partly motivated ‘by reason of famine’), and ‘the coal of fire upon the ice’ may allude to the great frost in the winter of 1607-8 when the Thames froze and, according to a contemporary pamphlet, entrepreneurial Londoners were ‘ready with pans of coals to warm your fingers’.

The main source of the play is Plutarch’s ‘Life of Caius Martius Coriolanus’ in his Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans which Shakespeare read in the English translation by Thomas North (1579). Plutarch’s ‘Life’ is a straightforward biography, beginning with Caius Martius’ ancestry and ending with his death. Shakespeare found in Plutarch all the necessary details for his play, but he imposed, as always, a different shape and emphasis to suit his dramatic vision, and amplified the roles of Menenius, Aufidius and Volumnia to bear greater significance. By contrast with the astonishing variety and amplitude of its immediate predecessor Antony and Cleopatra, also based on Plutarch, Coriolanus is sober and austere, its main character no ‘mine of bounty’ like Antony but arrogant and rigid, even in his virtue ‘too noble for the world’.

Shakespeare exploits the conflict between Coriolanus and the people of Rome, but not as a simple opposition of the noble individual and the ‘multiplying swarm’. Coriolanus is, indeed, a man of integrity, but if he is too honest to fawn before the populace for its support, he is also proud and contemptuous, caring little for Rome’s citizens, ‘the mutable, rank-scented meinie’, and finally willing to sacrifice the city itself to satisfy his honour. Conversely, the people, who rightly resent his aristocratic disdain and precociously declare that ‘the people are the city’, are themselves fickle and easily manipulated by the tribunes. Perhaps, as Coleridge suggested, the play ‘illustrates the wonderful philosophic impartiality in Shakespeare’s politics’; certainly its political sympathies are multiple and complex. While Coriolanus marks a further stage in Shakespeare’s exploration of Rome and romanitas, it focuses on an earlier moment in Roman history than either Antony and Cleopatra or its predecessor, Julius Caesar. Between them Coriolanus and Julius Caesar virtually define the historical limits of the Roman Republic. Caius Martius’ victory at Corioli, from which he earned his surname, was won in 439 BC, almost four hundred years before the murder of Julius Caesar in the Forum (44 BC), one of the events which led to the foundation of the Roman Empire under Augustus (Shakespeare’s Octavius Caesar).

The early republic portrayed in Coriolanus would, however, certainly have been of interest to many in Shakespeare’s audiences, who would have found in the struggle between an elected government, dependent for its authority upon the will of the people, and a polity still overseen by traditional aristocratic privilege, a powerful image of political strains just beginning to be articulated in the political discourses of Jacobean England.

But the play is also the play of a tragic individual, noble but flawed, his strengths and weaknesses inextricably entangled. Not only are his virtues more fit for war than for peace; his nobility too easily degenerates into an isolating pride and a withering contempt for others: ‘You speak o’th’ people / As if you were a god to punish, not / A man of their infirmity.’ But he is indeed a man of their infirmity, whose very drive to excel is born of a human need and vulnerability he fears to acknowledge. His self-chosen isolation, his wish that he could be, however improbably, ‘author of himself’, is revealed to be a terrible compensation for the world of relatedness he would, but at last cannot, deny. In his last Roman play Shakespeare joins the personal and the political in a bleak vision of both the city and its greatest hero tragically self-divided.

The role of Coriolanus has been memorably played by leading actors from John Philip Kemble to Laurence Olivier, but in performance the part of his mother, Volumnia, whose victory over her son is the play’s major climax, is of almost equal significance. The play’s complex embodiment of its political debates has led to its propagandist use in support of all political positions from monarchist to communist: performances of it have been known to provoke civil unrest and even riots.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

Caius MARTIUS

afterwards Caius Martius Coriolanus

generals against the Volscians

MENENIUS Agrippa

friend to Coriolanus

tribunes of the people

YOUNG MARTIUS

son to Coriolanus

A Roman HERALD

Nicanor, a ROMAN

Tullus AUFIDIUS

general of the Volscians

LIEUTENANT to Aufidius

CONSPIRATORS with Aufidius

Adrian, a VOLSCIAN

CITIZEN of Antium

Two Volscian WATCHMEN

VOLUMNIA

mother to Coriolanus

VIRGILIA

wife to Coriolanus

VALERIA

friend to Virgilia

GENTLEWOMAN

attending on Virgilia

Roman and Volscian Senators, Patricians, Aediles, Lictors, Soldiers, Citizens, Messengers, Servants to Aufidius and other Attendants.

Coriolanus

1.1 Enter a company of mutinous Citizens, with staves, clubs and other weapons.

1 CITIZEN     Before we proceed any further, hear me

speak.

ALL     Speak, speak.

1 CITIZEN     You are all resolved rather to die than to

famish?

5

ALL     Resolved, resolved.

1 CITIZEN     First, you know Caius Martius is chief enemy

to the people.

ALL     We know’t, we know’t.

1 CITIZEN     Let us kill him, and we’ll have corn at our

10

own price. Is’t a verdict?

ALL     No more talking on’t; let it be done. Away, away!

2 CITIZEN     One word, good citizens.

1 CITIZEN     We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians

good. What authority surfeits on would relieve us. If

15

they would yield us but the superfluity while it were

wholesome, we might guess they relieved us

humanely; but they think we are too dear: the leanness

that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an

inventory to particularise their abundance; our

20

sufferance is a gain to them. Let us revenge this with

our pikes, ere we become rakes. For the gods know, I

speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for

revenge.

2 CITIZEN     Would you proceed especially against Caius

25

Martius?

ALL     Against him first. He’s a very dog to the

commonalty.

2 CITIZEN     Consider you what services he has done for

his country?

30

1 CITIZEN     Very well, and could be content to give him

good report for’t, but that he pays himself with being

proud.

2 CITIZEN     Nay, but speak not maliciously.

1 CITIZEN     I say unto you, what he hath done famously,

35

he did it to that end: though soft-conscienced men can

be content to say it was for his country, he did it to

please his mother, and to be partly proud, which he is,

even to the altitude of his virtue.

2 CITIZEN     What he cannot help in his nature, you

40

account a vice in him. You must in no way say he is

covetous.

1 CITIZEN     If I must not, I need not be barren of

accusations. He hath faults, with surplus, to tire in

repetition. [shouts within] What shouts are these? The

45

other side o’th’ city is risen: why stay we prating here?

To th’ Capitol!

ALL     Come, come.

1 CITIZEN     Soft, who comes here?

Enter MENENIUS AGRIPPA.

2 CITIZEN     Worthy Menenius Agrippa, one that hath

50

always loved the people.

1 CITIZEN     He’s one honest enough, would all the rest

were so!

MENENIUS     What work’s, my countrymen, in hand?

Where go you

With bats and clubs? The matter? Speak, I pray you.

55

1 CITIZEN     Our business is not unknown to th’ Senate;

they have had inkling this fortnight what we intend to

do, which now we’ll show ’em in deeds. They say poor

suitors have strong breaths: they shall know we have

strong arms too.

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MENENIUS

Why masters, my good friends, mine honest

neighbours,

Will you undo yourselves?

1 CITIZEN     We cannot, sir, we are undone already.

MENENIUS     I tell you, friends, most charitable care

Have the patricians of you. For your wants,

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Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well

Strike at the heaven with your staves, as lift them

Against the Roman state, whose course will on

The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs

Of more strong link asunder than can ever

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Appear in your impediment. For the dearth,

The gods, not the patricians, make it, and

Your knees to them, not arms, must help. Alack,

You are transported by calamity

Thither where more attends you; and you slander

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The helms o’th’ state, who care for you like fathers,

When you curse them as enemies.

1 CITIZEN     Care for us? True indeed! They ne’er cared

for us yet. Suffer us to famish, and their store-houses

crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support

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usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established

against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes

daily, to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat

us not up, they will; and there’s all the love they bear

us.

85

MENENIUS     Either you must

Confess yourselves wondrous malicious,

Or be accus’d of folly. I shall tell you

A pretty tale; it may be you have heard it,

But since it serves my purpose, I will venture

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To stale’t a little more.

1 CITIZEN     Well, I’ll hear it, sir; yet you must not think

to fob off our disgrace with a tale; but, and’t please

you, deliver.

MENENIUS

There was a time, when all the body’s members

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Rebell’d against the belly; thus accus’d it:

That only like a gulf it did remain

I’th’ midst o’th’ body, idle and unactive,

Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing

Like labour with the rest, where th’other instruments

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Did see, and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,

And, mutually participate, did minister

Unto the appetite and affection common

Of the whole body. The belly answer’d –

1 CITIZEN     Well, sir, what answer made the belly?

105

MENENIUS     Sir, I shall tell you. With a kind of smile,

Which ne’er came from the lungs, but even thus –

For look you, I may make the belly smile,

As well as speak – it tauntingly replied

To th’ discontented members, the mutinous parts

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That envied his receipt; even so most fitly,

As you malign our senators, for that

They are not such as you.

1 CITIZEN     Your belly’s answer – what?

The kingly crown’d head, the vigilant eye,

The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier,

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Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter,

With other muniments and petty helps

In this our fabric, if that they –

MENENIUS     What then?

’Fore me, this fellow speaks! What then? What then?

1 CITIZEN     Should by the cormorant belly be restrain’d,

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Who is the sink o’th’ body –

MENENIUS     Well, what then?

1 CITIZEN     The former agents, if they did complain,

What could the belly answer?

MENENIUS     I will tell you,

If you’ll bestow a small (of what you have little)

Patience awhile, you’st hear the belly’s answer.

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1 CITIZEN     Y’are long about it.

MENENIUS     Note me this, good friend;

Your most grave belly was deliberate,

Not rash like his accusers, and thus answer’d:

‘True is it, my incorporate friends,’ quoth he,

‘That I receive the general food at first

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Which you do live upon; and fit it is,

Because I am the store-house and the shop

Of the whole body. But, if you do remember,

I send it through the rivers of your blood

Even to the court, the heart, to th’ seat o’th’ brain;

135

And through the cranks and offices of man,

The strongest nerves and small inferior veins

From me receive that natural competency

Whereby they live. And though that all at once,

You, my good friends,’ – this says the belly, mark

me –

140

1 CITIZEN     Ay, sir; well, well.

MENENIUS     ‘Though all at once cannot

See what I do deliver out to each,

Yet I can make my audit up, that all

From me do back receive the flour of all,

And leave me but the bran.’ What say you to’t?

145

1 CITIZEN     It was an answer. How apply you this?

MENENIUS     The senators of Rome are this good belly,

And you the mutinous members: for examine

Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly

Touching the weal o’th’ common, you shall find

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No public benefit which you receive

But it proceeds or comes from them to you,

And no way from yourselves. What do you think,

You, the great toe of this assembly?

1 CITIZEN     I the great toe? Why the great toe?

155

MENENIUS

For that being one o’th’ lowest, basest, poorest

Of this most wise rebellion, thou goest foremost:

Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run,

Lead’st first to win some vantage.

But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs;

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Rome and her rats are at the point of battle;

The one side must have bale.

Enter CAIUS MARTIUS.

     Hail, noble Martius.

MARTIUS

Thanks. What’s the matter, you dissentious rogues

That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,

Make yourselves scabs?

1 CITIZEN     We have ever your good word.

165

MARTIUS

He that will give good words to thee, will flatter

Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs,

That like nor peace nor war? The one affrights you,

The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you,

Where he should find you lions, finds you hares;

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Where foxes, geese: you are no surer, no,

Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,

Or hailstone in the sun. Your virtue is,

To make him worthy whose offence subdues him,

And curse that justice did it. Who deserves

greatness,

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Deserves your hate; and your affections are

A sick man’s appetite, who desires most that

Which would increase his evil. He that depends

Upon your favours, swims with fins of lead,

And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?

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With every minute you do change a mind,

And call him noble that was now your hate,

Him vile that was your garland. What’s the matter,

That in these several places of the city,

You cry against the noble Senate, who

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(Under the gods) keep you in awe, which else

Would feed on one another? What’s their seeking?

MENENIUS

For corn at their own rates, whereof they say

The city is well stor’d.

MARTIUS     Hang ’em! They say!

They’ll sit by th’ fire, and presume to know

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What’s done i’th’ Capitol: who’s like to rise,

Who thrives, and who declines; side factions, and

give out

Conjectural marriages; making parties strong,

And feebling such as stand not in their liking

Below their cobbled shoes. They say there’s grain

enough?

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Would the nobility lay aside their ruth,

And let me use my sword, I’d make a quarry

With thousands of these quarter’d slaves, as high

As I could pick my lance.

MENENIUS

Nay, these are almost thoroughly persuaded;

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For though abundantly they lack discretion,

Yet are they passing cowardly. But I beseech you,

What says the other troop?

MARTIUS     They are dissolv’d. Hang ’em!

They said they were an-hungry, sigh’d forth

proverbs –

That hunger broke stone walls; that dogs must eat;

205

That meat was made for mouths; that the gods sent

not

Corn for the rich men only. With these shreds

They vented their complainings, which being

answer’d

And a petition granted them, a strange one,

To break the heart of generosity

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And make bold power look pale, they threw their

caps

As they would hang them on the horns o’th’ moon,

Shouting their emulation.

MENENIUS     What is granted them?

MARTIUS

Five tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms,

Of their own choice. One’s Junius Brutus,

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Sicinius Velutus, and I know not. ’Sdeath,

The rabble should have first unroof’d the city

Ere so prevail’d with me; it will in time

Win upon power, and throw forth greater themes

For insurrection’s arguing.

MENENIUS     This is strange.

220

MARTIUS     Go get you home, you fragments!

Enter a Messenger hastily.

MESSENGER     Where’s Caius Martius?

MARTIUS     Here; what’s the matter?

MESSENGER     The news is, sir, the Volsces are in arms.

MARTIUS

I am glad on’t; then we shall ha’ means to vent

Our musty superfluity. See, our best elders.

225

Enter SICINIUS VELUTUS, JUNIUS BRUTUS; COMINIUS, TITUS LARTIUS, with other Senators.

1 SENATOR

Martius, ’tis true, that you have lately told us,

The Volsces are in arms.

MARTIUS     They have a leader,

Tullus Aufidius, that will put you to’t.

I sin in envying his nobility;

And were I anything but what I am,

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I would wish me only he.

COMINIUS     You have fought together!

MARTIUS     Were half to half the world by th’ears, and he

Upon my party, I’d revolt to make

Only my wars with him. He is a lion

That I am proud to hunt.

1 SENATOR     Then, worthy Martius,

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Attend upon Cominius to these wars.

COMINIUS     It is your former promise.

MARTIUS     Sir, it is,

And I am constant. Titus Lartius, thou

Shalt see me once more strike at Tullus’ face.

What, art thou stiff? Standst out?

LARTIUS     No, Caius Martius,

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I’ll lean upon one crutch, and fight with t’other,

Ere stay behind this business.

MENENIUS     Oh, true-bred!

1 SENATOR     Your company to th’ Capitol, where I know

Our greatest friends attend us.

LARTIUS     [to Cominius]     Lead you on.

[to Martius] Follow Cominius, we must follow you,

245

Right worthy you priority.

COMINIUS     Noble Martius.

1 SENATOR     [to the Citizens]

Hence to your homes, be gone!

MARTIUS     Nay, let them follow.

The Volsces have much corn: take these rats thither,

To gnaw their garners. Worshipful mutiners,

Your valour puts well forth: pray follow.     Exeunt.

250

[Citizens steal away. Sicinius and Brutus remain.]

SICINIUS     Was ever man so proud as is this Martius?

BRUTUS     He has no equal.

SICINIUS

When we were chosen tribunes for the people –

BRUTUS     Mark’d you his lip and eyes?

SICINIUS     Nay, but his taunts.

BRUTUS

Being mov’d, he will not spare to gird the gods.

255

SICINIUS     Bemock the modest moon.

BRUTUS     The present wars devour him! He is grown

Too proud to be so valiant.

SICINIUS     Such a nature,

Tickled with good success, disdains the shadow

Which he treads on at noon. But I do wonder

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His insolence can brook to be commanded

Under Cominius!

BRUTUS     Fame, at the which he aims,

In whom already he’s well grac’d, cannot

Better be held, nor more attain’d than by

A place below the first: for what miscarries

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Shall be the general’s fault, though he perform

To th’utmost of a man, and giddy censure

Will then cry out of Martius, ‘Oh, if he

Had borne the business!’

SICINIUS     Besides, if things go well,

Opinion, that so sticks on Martius, shall

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Of his demerits rob Cominius.

BRUTUS     Come.

Half all Cominius’ honours are to Martius,

Though Martius earn’d them not; and all his faults

To Martius shall be honours, though indeed

In aught he merit not.

SICINIUS     Let’s hence, and hear

275

How the dispatch is made; and in what fashion,

More than his singularity, he goes

Upon this present action.

BRUTUS          Let’s along.     Exeunt.

1.2 Enter TULLUS AUFIDIUS with Senators of Corioles.

1 SENATOR     So, your opinion is, Aufidius,

That they of Rome are enter’d in our counsels,

And know how we proceed.

AUFIDIUS     Is it not yours?

What ever have been thought on in this state

That could be brought to bodily act, ere Rome

5

Had circumvention? ’Tis not four days gone

Since I heard thence; these are the words – I think

I have the letter here – yes, here it is:

‘They have press’d a power, but it is not known

Whether for east or west. The dearth is great,

10

The people mutinous; and it is rumour’d,

Cominius, Martius your old enemy

(Who is of Rome worse hated than of you)

And Titus Lartius, a most valiant Roman,

These three lead on this preparation

15

Whither ’tis bent: most likely ’tis for you.

Consider of it.’

1 SENATOR     Our army’s in the field.

We never yet made doubt but Rome was ready

To answer us.

AUFIDIUS     Nor did you think it folly

To keep your great pretences veil’d, till when

20

They needs must show themselves, which in the

hatching,

It seem’d, appear’d to Rome. By the discovery

We shall be shorten’d in our aim, which was

To take in many towns, ere, almost, Rome

Should know we were afoot.

2 SENATOR     Noble Aufidius,

25

Take your commission, hie you to your bands;

Let us alone to guard Corioles.

If they set down before’s, for the remove

Bring up your army; but I think you’ll find

Th’have not prepar’d for us.

AUFIDIUS     Oh, doubt not that,

30

I speak from certainties. Nay more,

Some parcels of their power are forth already

And only hitherward. I leave your honours.

If we and Caius Martius chance to meet,

’Tis sworn between us, we shall ever strike

35

Till one can do no more.

ALL     The gods assist you!

AUFIDIUS     And keep your honours safe!

1 SENATOR     Farewell.

SECOND SENATOR     Farewell.

ALL     Farewell.     Exeunt.

1.3 Enter VOLUMNIA and VIRGILIA, mother and wife to MARTIUS. They set them down on two low stools and sew.

VOLUMNIA     I pray you, daughter, sing, or express

yourself in a more comfortable sort. If my son were my

husband I should freelier rejoice in that absence

wherein he won honour, than in the embracements of

his bed, where he would show most love. When yet he

5

was but tender-bodied, and the only son of my womb;

when youth with comeliness plucked all gaze his

way; when for a day of kings’ entreaties, a mother

should not sell him an hour from her beholding; I,

considering how honour would become such a

10

person – that it was no better than picture-like to hang

by th’wall, if renown made it not stir – was pleased

to let him seek danger where he was like to find

fame. To a cruel war I sent him, from whence he

returned, his brows bound with oak. I tell thee,

15

daughter, I sprang not more in joy at first hearing he

was a man-child, than now in first seeing he had

proved himself a man.

VIRGILIA     But had he died in the business, madam, how

then?

20

VOLUMNIA     Then his good report should have been my

son, I therein would have found issue. Hear me

profess sincerely: had I a dozen sons, each in my love

alike, and none less dear than thine and my good

Martius, I had rather had eleven die nobly for their

25

country, than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.

Enter a Gentlewoman.

GENTLEWOMAN

Madam, the Lady Valeria is come to visit you.

VIRGILIA     Beseech you give me leave to retire myself.

VOLUMNIA     Indeed you shall not.

Methinks I hear hither your husband’s drum;

30

See him pluck Aufidius down by th’hair,

As children from a bear, the Volsces shunning him.

Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus:

‘Come on you cowards, you were got in fear

Though you were born in Rome.’ His bloody brow

35

With his mail’d hand then wiping, forth he goes

Like to a harvest man that’s task’d to mow

Or all, or lose his hire.

VIRGILIA     His bloody brow? O Jupiter, no blood!

VOLUMNIA     Away you fool! it more becomes a man

40

Than gilt his trophy. The breasts of Hecuba

When she did suckle Hector, look’d not lovelier

Than Hector’s forehead when it spit forth blood

At Grecian sword contemning. Tell Valeria

We are fit to bid her welcome.     Exit Gentlewoman.

45

VIRGILIA     Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius!

VOLUMNIA     He’ll beat Aufidius’ head below his knee,

And tread upon his neck.

Enter VALERIA with an usher, and a gentlewoman.

VALERIA     My ladies both, good day to you.

VOLUMNIA     Sweet madam.

50

VIRGILIA     I am glad to see your ladyship.

VALERIA     How do you both? You are manifest

housekeepers. What are you sewing here? A fine spot,

in good faith. How does your little son?

VIRGILIA     I thank your ladyship; well, good madam.

55

VOLUMNIA     He had rather see the swords and hear a

drum, than look upon his schoolmaster.

VALERIA     O’my word, the father’s son! I’ll swear ’tis a

very pretty boy. O’my troth, I looked upon him o’

Wednesday half an hour together: ’has such a

60

confirmed countenance. I saw him run after a gilded

butterfly, and when he caught it, he let it go again, and

after it again, and over and over he comes, and up

again, catched it again; or whether his fall enraged

him, or how ’twas, he did so set his teeth and tear it.

65

Oh, I warrant how he mammocked it!

VOLUMNIA     One on’s father’s moods.

VALERIA     Indeed, la, ’tis a noble child.

VIRGILIA     A crack, madam.

VALERIA     Come, lay aside your stitchery, I must have you

70

play the idle huswife with me this afternoon.

VIRGILIA     No, good madam, I will not out of doors.

VALERIA     Not out of doors?

VOLUMNIA     She shall, she shall.

VIRGILIA     Indeed no, by your patience; I’ll not over the

75

threshold till my lord return from the wars.

VALERIA     Fie, you confine yourself most unreasonably.

Come, you must go visit the good lady that lies in.

VIRGILIA     I will wish her speedy strength, and visit her

with my prayers; but I cannot go thither.

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VOLUMNIA     Why, I pray you?

VIRGILIA     ’Tis not to save labour, nor that I want love.

VALERIA     You would be another Penelope; yet they say,

all the yarn she spun in Ulysses’ absence did but fill

Ithaca full of moths. Come, I would your cambric

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were sensible as your finger, that you might leave

pricking it for pity. Come, you shall go with us.

VIRGILIA     No, good madam, pardon me; indeed I will

not forth.

VALERIA     In truth, la, go with me, and I’ll tell you

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excellent news of your husband.

VIRGILIA     Oh, good madam, there can be none yet.

VALERIA     Verily I do not jest with you. There came news

from him last night.

VIRGILIA     Indeed, madam?

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VALERIA     In earnest, it’s true; I heard a senator speak it.

Thus it is: the Volsces have an army forth, against

whom Cominius the general is gone, with one part

of our Roman power. Your lord and Titus Lartius

are set down before their city Corioles; they nothing

100

doubt prevailing, and to make it brief wars. This is

true on mine honour, and so, I pray, go with us.

VIRGILIA     Give me excuse, good madam, I will obey you

in everything hereafter.

VOLUMNIA     Let her alone, lady; as she is now, she will

105

but disease our better mirth.

VALERIA     In troth, I think she would. Fare you well then.

Come, good sweet lady. Prithee, Virgilia, turn thy

solemness out o’door, and go along with us.

VIRGILIA     No, at a word, madam; indeed I must not. I

110

wish you much mirth.

VALERIA     Well then, farewell.     Exeunt.

1.4 Enter MARTIUS, TITUS LARTIUS, with drum and colours, with captains and soldiers, as before the city Corioles. To them a Messenger.

MARTIUS     Yonder comes news. A wager they have met.

LARTIUS     My horse to yours, no.

MARTIUS     ’Tis done.

LARTIUS     Agreed.

MARTIUS     Say, has our general met the enemy?

MESSENGER     

They lie in view, but have not spoke as yet.

LARTIUS     So, the good horse is mine.

MARTIUS     I’ll buy him of you.

5

LARTIUS

No, I’ll nor sell nor give him: lend you him I will

For half a hundred years. Summon the town.

MARTIUS     How far off lie these armies?

MESSENGER     Within this mile and half.

MARTIUS

Then shall we hear their ’larum, and they ours.

Now Mars, I prithee make us quick in work,

10

That we with smoking swords may march from

hence

To help our fielded friends. Come, blow thy blast.

They sound a parley. Enter two Senators with others, on the walls of Corioles.

Tullus Aufidius, is he within your walls?

1 SENATOR

No, nor a man that fears you less than he;

That’s lesser than a little.     [Drum afar off.]

     Hark, our drums

15

Are bringing forth our youth. We’ll break our walls

Rather than they shall pound us up; our gates,

Which yet seem shut, we have but pinn’d with

rushes;

They’ll open of themselves. Hark you, far off!

     [Alarum far off.]

There is Aufidius. List what work he makes

20

Amongst your cloven army.

MARTIUS     Oh, they are at it!

LARTIUS     Their noise be our instruction. Ladders ho!

Enter the army of the Volsces.

MARTIUS     They fear us not, but issue forth their city.

Now put your shields before your hearts, and fight

With hearts more proof than shields. Advance, brave

Titus.

25

They do disdain us much beyond our thoughts,

Which makes me sweat with wrath. Come on, my

fellows:

He that retires, I’ll take him for a Volsce,

And he shall feel mine edge.

[Alarum. The Romans are beat back to their trenches.]

Enter MARTIUS, cursing.

MARTIUS     All the contagion of the south light on you,

30

You shames of Rome! You herd of – boils and plagues

Plaster you o’er, that you may be abhorr’d

Farther than seen, and one infect another

Against the wind a mile! You souls of geese,

That bear the shapes of men, how have you run

35

From slaves that apes would beat! Pluto and hell!

All hurt behind, backs red, and faces pale

With flight and agued fear! Mend and charge home,

Or, by the fires of heaven, I’ll leave the foe

And make my wars on you. Look to’t. Come on;

40

If you’ll stand fast, we’ll beat them to their wives,

As they us to our trenches. Follow me!

[Another alarum, and Martius follows them to the gates.]

So, now the gates are ope. Now prove good seconds!

’Tis for the followers Fortune widens them,

Not for the fliers. Mark me, and do the like!

45

[Enters the gates.]

1 SOLDIER     Foolhardiness! not I.

2 SOLDIER     Nor I.

[Martius is shut in.]

1 SOLDIER     See, they have shut him in.

     [Alarum continues.]

ALL     To th’ pot, I warrant him.

Enter TITUS LARTIUS.

LARTIUS     What is become of Martius?

ALL     Slain, sir, doubtless.

1 SOLDIER     Following the fliers at the very heels,

With them he enters; who, upon the sudden,

50

Clapp’d to their gates; he is himself alone,

To answer all the city.

LARTIUS     Oh noble fellow!

Who sensibly outdares his senseless sword,

And when it bows, stand’st up. Thou art left,

Martius:

A carbuncle entire, as big as thou art,

55

Were not so rich a jewel. Thou wast a soldier

Even to Cato’s wish, not fierce and terrible

Only in strokes, but with thy grim looks and

The thunder-like percussion of thy sounds

Thou mad’st thine enemies shake, as if the world

60

Were feverous and did tremble.

Enter MARTIUS, bleeding, assaulted by the enemy.

1 SOLDIER     Look sir!

LARTIUS     Oh, ’tis Martius!

Let’s fetch him off, or make remain alike.

[They fight, and all enter the city.]

1.5 Enter certain Romans, with spoils.

1 ROMAN     This will I carry to Rome.

2 ROMAN     And I this.

3 ROMAN     A murrain on’t! I took this for silver. Exeunt.

     [Alarum continues still afar off.]

Enter MARTIUS and TITUS LARTIUS with a trumpet.

MARTIUS

See here these movers, that do prize their hours

At a crack’d drachma! Cushions, leaden spoons,

5

Irons of a doit, doublets that hangmen would

Bury with those that wore them, these base slaves,

Ere yet the fight be done, pack up. Down with them!

And hark, what noise the general makes! To him!

There is the man of my soul’s hate, Aufidius,

10

Piercing our Romans. Then, valiant Titus, take

Convenient numbers to make good the city,

Whilst I, with those that have the spirit, will haste

To help Cominius.

LARTIUS     Worthy sir, thou bleed’st;

Thy exercise hath been too violent

15

For a second course of fight.

MARTIUS     Sir, praise me not;

My work hath yet not warm’d me. Fare you well.

The blood I drop is rather physical

Than dangerous to me. To Aufidius thus

I will appear and fight.

LARTIUS     Now the fair goddess, Fortune,

20

Fall deep in love with thee, and her great charms

Misguide thy opposers’ swords! Bold gentleman,

Prosperity be thy page!

MARTIUS     Thy friend no less

Than those she placeth highest! So farewell.

LARTIUS

Thou worthiest Martius!     Exit Martius.

25

Go sound thy trumpet in the market-place;

Call thither all the officers o’th’town,

Where they shall know our mind. Away.     Exeunt.

1.6 Enter COMINIUS, as it were in retire, with soldiers.

COMINIUS

Breathe you, my friends; well fought; we are come off

Like Romans, neither foolish in our stands

Nor cowardly in retire. Believe me, sirs,

We shall be charg’d again. Whiles we have struck,

By interims and conveying gusts we have heard

5

The charges of our friends. The Roman gods

Lead their successes as we wish our own,

That both our powers, with smiling fronts

encount’ring,

May give you thankful sacrifice.

Enter a Messenger.

     Thy news?

MESSENGER     The citizens of Corioles have issued,

10

And given to Lartius and to Martius battle.

I saw our party to their trenches driven,

And then I came away.

COMINIUS     Though thou speak’st truth,

Methinks thou speak’st not well. How long is’t since?

MESSENGER     Above an hour, my lord.

15

COMINIUS

’Tis not a mile; briefly we heard their drums.

How could’st thou in a mile confound an hour,

And bring thy news so late?

MESSENGER     Spies of the Volsces

Held me in chase, that I was forc’d to wheel

Three or four miles about; else had I, sir,

20

Half an hour since brought my report.

Enter MARTIUS.

COMINIUS     Who’s yonder,

That does appear as he were flay’d? O Gods,

He has the stamp of Martius, and I have

Beforetime seen him thus.

MARTIUS     Come I too late?

COMINIUS

The shepherd knows not thunder from a tabor,

25

More than I know the sound of Martius’ tongue

From every meaner man.

MARTIUS     Come I too late?

COMINIUS     Ay, if you come not in the blood of others,

But mantled in your own.

MARTIUS     Oh! let me clip ye

In arms as sound as when I woo’d; in heart

30

As merry as when our nuptial day was done,

And tapers burn’d to bedward.

COMINIUS     Flower of warriors,

How is’t with Titus Lartius?

MARTIUS     As with a man busied about decrees:

Condemning some to death, and some to exile,

35

Ransoming him, or pitying, threat’ning th’other;

Holding Corioles in the name of Rome,

Even like a fawning greyhound in the leash,

To let him slip at will.

COMINIUS     Where is that slave

Which told me they had beat you to your trenches?

40

Where is he? Call him hither.

MARTIUS     Let him alone,

He did inform the truth; but for our gentlemen,

The common file – a plague! tribunes for them! –

The mouse ne’er shunn’d the cat as they did budge

From rascals worse than they.

COMINIUS     But how prevail’d you?

45

MARTIUS     Will the time serve to tell? I do not think.

Where is the enemy? Are you lords o’th’ field?

If not, why cease you till you are so?

COMINIUS     Martius, we have at disadvantage fought,

And did retire to win our purpose.

50

MARTIUS

How lies their battle? Know you on which side

They have plac’d their men of trust?

COMINIUS     As I guess, Martius,

Their bands i’th’ vaward are the Antiates

Of their best trust: o’er them Aufidius,

Their very heart of hope.

MARTIUS     I do beseech you,

55

By all the battles wherein we have fought,

By th’ blood we have shed together, by th’ vows

We have made to endure friends, that you directly

Set me against Aufidius and his Antiates;

And that you not delay the present, but,

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Filling the air with swords advanc’d and darts,

We prove this very hour.

COMINIUS     Though I could wish

You were conducted to a gentle bath,

And balms applied to you, yet dare I never

Deny your asking. Take your choice of those

65

That best can aid your action.

MARTIUS     Those are they

That most are willing. If any such be here –

As it were sin to doubt – that love this painting

Wherein you see me smear’d; if any fear

Lesser his person than an ill report;

70

If any think brave death outweighs bad life,

And that his country’s dearer than himself;

Let him alone, or so many so minded,

Wave thus to express his disposition,

And follow Martius.

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[They all shout and wave their swords.]

ALL     O me alone! Make you a sword of me!

[They take him up in their arms, and cast up their caps.]

MARTIUS     If these shows be not outward, which of you

But is four Volsces? None of you but is

Able to bear against the great Aufidius

A shield as hard as his. A certain number

80

(Though thanks to all) must I select from all: the rest

Shall bear the business in some other fight,

As cause will be obey’d. Please you to march,

And I shall quickly draw out my command,

Which men are best inclin’d.

COMINIUS     March on, my fellows:

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Make good this ostentation, and you shall

Divide in all with us.     Exeunt.

1.7 TITUS LARTIUS, having set a guard upon Corioles, going with drum and trumpet toward Cominius and Caius Martius, enters with a Lieutenant, other soldiers and a scout.

LARTIUS     So, let the ports be guarded; keep your duties

As I have set them down. If I do send, dispatch

Those centuries to our aid; the rest will serve

For a short holding: if we lose the field,

We cannot keep the town.

LIEUTENANT     Fear not our care, sir.

5

LARTIUS     Hence; and shut your gates upon’s.

Our guider, come; to the Roman camp conduct us.

     Exeunt.

1.8 Alarum as in battle.

Enter MARTIUS and AUFIDIUS at several doors.

MARTIUS

I’ll fight with none but thee, for I do hate thee

Worse than a promise-breaker.

AUFIDIUS     We hate alike:

Not Afric owns a serpent I abhor

More than thy fame and envy. Fix thy foot.

MARTIUS     Let the first budger die the other’s slave,

5

And the gods doom him after!

AUFIDIUS     If I fly, Martius,

Holloa me like a hare.

MARTIUS     Within these three hours, Tullus,

Alone I fought in your Corioles walls,

And made what work I pleas’d: ’tis not my blood

Wherein thou seest me mask’d. For thy revenge,

10

Wrench up thy power to th’highest.

AUFIDIUS     Wert thou the Hector

That was the whip of your bragg’d progeny,

Thou shouldst not ’scape me here.

[Here they fight, and certain Volsces come in the aid of

Aufidius. Martius fights till they be driven in breathless.]

Officious, and not valiant, you have sham’d me

In your condemned seconds.     Exeunt.

15

1.9 Flourish. Alarum. A retreat is sounded. Enter at one door, COMINIUS, with the Romans; at another door, MARTIUS, with his arm in a scarf.

COMINIUS     If I should tell thee o’er this thy day’s work,

Thou’t not believe thy deeds; but I’ll report it,

Where senators shall mingle tears with smiles,

Where great patricians shall attend, and shrug,

I’th’end admire; where ladies shall be frighted,

5

And, gladly quak’d, hear more; where the dull

tribunes,

That with the fusty plebeians hate thine honours,

Shall say against their hearts, ‘We thank the gods

Our Rome hath such a soldier.’

Yet cam’st thou to a morsel of this feast,

10

Having fully din’d before.

Enter TITUS LARTIUS, with his power, from the pursuit.

LARTIUS     O general,

Here is the steed, we the caparison:

Hadst thou beheld –

MARTIUS     Pray now, no more. My mother,

Who has a charter to extol her blood,

When she does praise me, grieves me. I have done

15

As you have done, that’s what I can; induc’d

As you have been, that’s for my country.

He that has but effected his good will

Hath overta’en mine act.

COMINIUS     You shall not be

The grave of your deserving; Rome must know

20

The value of her own. ’Twere a concealment

Worse than a theft, no less than a traducement,

To hide your doings, and to silence that

Which, to the spire and top of praises vouch’d,

Would seem but modest. Therefore I beseech you –

25

In sign of what you are, not to reward

What you have done – before our army hear me.

MARTIUS

I have some wounds upon me, and they smart

To hear themselves remember’d.

COMINIUS     Should they not,

Well might they fester ’gainst ingratitude,

30

And tent themselves with death. Of all the horses –

Whereof we have ta’en good, and good store – of all

The treasure in this field achiev’d and city,

We render you the tenth; to be ta’en forth,

Before the common distribution, at

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Your only choice.

MARTIUS     I thank you, general;

But cannot make my heart consent to take

A bribe to pay my sword: I do refuse it,

And stand upon my common part with those

That have beheld the doing.

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[A long flourish. They all cry, ‘ Martius! Martius!’, cast

up their caps and lances. Cominius and Lartius stand

bare.]

May these same instruments, which you profane,

Never sound more! When drums and trumpets shall

I’th’ field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be

Made all of false-fac’d soothing! When steel grows

Soft as the parasite’s silk, let him be made

45

An ovator for th’ wars! No more, I say!

For that I have not wash’d my nose that bled,

Or foil’d some debile wretch, which without note

Here’s many else have done, you shout me forth

In acclamations hyperbolical,

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As if I lov’d my little should be dieted

In praises sauc’d with lies.

COMINIUS     Too modest are you,

More cruel to your good report than grateful

To us that give you truly. By your patience,

If ’gainst yourself you be incens’d, we’ll put you

55

(Like one that means his proper harm) in manacles,

Then reason safely with you. Therefore be it known,

As to us, to all the world, that Caius Martius

Wears this war’s garland: in token of the which,

My noble steed, known to the camp, I give him,

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With all his trim belonging; and from this time,

For what he did before Corioles, call him,

With all th’applause and clamour of the host,

Martius     Caius Coriolanus!

Bear th’addition nobly ever!

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     [Flourish. Trumpets sound, and drums.]

ALL     Martius Caius Coriolanus!

CORIOLANUS     I will go wash;

And when my face is fair, you shall perceive

Whether I blush or no: howbeit, I thank you.

I mean to stride your steed, and at all times

To undercrest your good addition,

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To th’ fairness of my power.

COMINIUS     So, to our tent;

Where, ere we do repose us, we will write

To Rome of our success. You, Titus Lartius,

Must to Corioles back: send us to Rome

The best, with whom we may articulate

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For their own good and ours.

LARTIUS     I shall, my lord.

CORIOLANUS

The gods begin to mock me: I, that now

Refus’d most princely gifts, am bound to beg

Of my lord general.

COMINIUS     Take’t, ’tis yours. What is’t?

CORIOLANUS     I sometime lay here in Corioles,

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At a poor man’s house: he us’d me kindly.

He cried to me. I saw him prisoner.

But then Aufidius was within my view,

And wrath o’erwhelm’d my pity. I request you

To give my poor host freedom.

COMINIUS     Oh well begg’d!

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Were he the butcher of my son, he should

Be free as is the wind. Deliver him, Titus.

LARTIUS     Martius, his name?

CORIOLANUS     By Jupiter, forgot!

I am weary, yea, my memory is tired;

Have we no wine here?

COMINIUS     Go we to our tent.

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The blood upon your visage dries, ’tis time

It should be look’d to. Come.     Exeunt.

1.10 A flourish. Cornets. Enter TULLUS AUFIDIUS, bloody, with two or three Soldiers.

AUFIDIUS     The town is ta’en!

1 SOLDIER     ’Twill be deliver’d back on good condition.

AUFIDIUS     Condition!

I would I were a Roman, for I cannot,

Being a Volsce, be that I am. Condition?

5

What good condition can a treaty find

I’th’ part that is at mercy? Five times, Martius,

I have fought with thee; so often hast thou beat me;

And wouldst do so, I think, should we encounter

As often as we eat. By th’elements,

10

If e’er again I meet him beard to beard,

He’s mine, or I am his. Mine emulation

Hath not that honour in’t it had: for where

I thought to crush him in an equal force,

True sword to sword, I’ll potch at him some way,

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Or wrath or craft may get him.

1 SOLDIER     He’s the devil.

AUFIDIUS

Bolder, though not so subtle. My valour’s poison’d

With only suff ’ring stain by him: for him

Shall fly out of itself. Nor sleep, nor sanctuary,

Being naked, sick; nor fane, nor Capitol,

20

The prayers of priests, nor times of sacrifice –

Embarquements all of fury – shall lift up

Their rotten privilege and custom ’gainst

My hate to Martius. Where I find him, were it

At home, upon my brother’s guard, even there,

25

Against the hospitable canon, would I

Wash my fierce hand in’s heart. Go you to th’ city;

Learn how ’tis held, and what they are that must

Be hostages for Rome.

1 SOLDIER     Will not you go?

AUFIDIUS

I am attended at the cypress grove. I pray you –

30

’Tis south the city mills – bring me word thither

How the world goes, that to the pace of it

I may spur on my journey.

1 SOLDIER     I shall, sir.     Exeunt.

2.1 Enter MENENIUS with the two tribunes of the people, SICINIUS and BRUTUS.

MENENIUS     The augurer tells me we shall have news

tonight.

BRUTUS     Good or bad?

MENENIUS     Not according to the prayer of the people,

for they love not Martius.

5

SICINIUS     Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.

MENENIUS     Pray you, who does the wolf love?

SICINIUS     The lamb.

MENENIUS     Ay, to devour him, as the hungry plebeians

would the noble Martius.

10

BRUTUS     He’s a lamb indeed, that baes like a bear.

MENENIUS     He’s a bear indeed, that lives like a lamb.

You two are old men: tell me one thing that I shall ask

you.

BOTH     Well, sir.

15

MENENIUS     In what enormity is Martius poor in, that

you two have not in abundance?

BRUTUS     He’s poor in no one fault, but stored with all.

SICINIUS     Especially in pride.

BRUTUS     And topping all others in boasting.

20

MENENIUS     This is strange now. Do you two know how

you are censured here in the city, I mean of us o’th’

right-hand file? Do you?

BOTH     Why, how are we censured?

MENENIUS     Because you talk of pride now – will you not

25

be angry?

BOTH     Well, well, sir, well.

MENENIUS     Why, ’tis no great matter; for a very little

thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of

patience. Give your dispositions the reins, and be

30

angry at your pleasures; at the least, if you take it as a

pleasure to you in being so. You blame Martius for

being proud.

BRUTUS     We do it not alone, sir.

MENENIUS     I know you can do very little alone, for your

35

helps are many, or else your actions would grow

wondrous single: your abilities are too infant-like for

doing much alone. You talk of pride. O that you could

turn your eyes toward the napes of your necks, and

make but an interior survey of your good selves. O that

40

you could!

BOTH     What then, sir?

MENENIUS     Why, then you should discover a brace of

unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates (alias

fools) as any in Rome.

45

SICINIUS     Menenius, you are known well enough too.

MENENIUS     I am known to be a humorous patrician, and

one that loves a cup of hot wine, with not a drop of

allaying Tiber in’t; said to be something imperfect in

favouring the first complaint, hasty and tinder-like

50

upon too trivial motion; one that converses more with

the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the

morning. What I think, I utter, and spend my malice

in my breath. Meeting two such wealsmen as you are

– I cannot call you Lycurguses – if the drink you give

55

me touch my palate adversely, I make a crooked face at

it. I can say, your worships have delivered the matter

well, when I find the ass in compound with the major

part of your syllables. And though I must be content

to bear with those that say you are reverend grave

60

men, yet they lie deadly that tell you have good faces.

If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it

that I am known well enough too? What harm can

your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character,

if I be known well enough too?

65

BRUTUS     Come, sir, come, we know you well enough.

MENENIUS     You know neither me, yourselves, nor any

thing. You are ambitious for poor knaves’ caps and

legs: you wear out a good wholesome forenoon in

hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a faucet-

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seller, and then rejourn the controversy of threepence

to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a

matter between party and party, if you chance to be

pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers,

set up the bloody flag against all patience, and, in

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roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversy

bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing. All

the peace you make in their cause is calling both the

parties knaves. You are a pair of strange ones.

BRUTUS     Come, come, you are well understood to be a

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perfecter giber for the table than a necessary bencher

in the Capitol.

MENENIUS     Our very priests must become mockers, if

they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you

are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not

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worth the wagging of your beards; and your beards

deserve not so honourable a grave as to stuff a

botcher’s cushion, or to be entombed in an ass’s pack-

saddle. Yet you must be saying Martius is proud: who,

in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors

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since Deucalion, though peradventure some of the

best of ’em were hereditary hangmen. God-den to

your worships. More of your conversation would

infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly

plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave of you.

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[Brutus and Sicinius aside.]

Enter VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA and VALERIA.

How now, my as fair as noble ladies – and the moon,

were she earthly, no nobler – whither do you follow

your eyes so fast?

VOLUMNIA     Honourable Menenius, my boy Martius

approaches; for the love of Juno, let’s go.

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Menenius     Ha? Martius coming home?

VOLUMNIA     Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most

prosperous approbation.

MENENIUS     Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee. Hoo!

MARTIUS     coming home?

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VIRGILIA, VALERIA     Nay, ’tis true.

VOLUMNIA     Look, here’s a letter from him; the state

hath another, his wife another; and I think there’s one

at home for you.

MENENIUS     I will make my very house reel tonight. A

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letter for me?

VIRGILIA     Yes, certain, there’s a letter for you; I saw’t.

MENENIUS     A letter for me! It gives me an estate of seven

years’ health; in which time I will make a lip at the

physician. The most sovereign prescription in Galen

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is but empiricutic, and, to this preservative, of no

better report than a horse-drench. Is he not

wounded? He was wont to come home wounded.

VIRGILIA     Oh no, no, no.

VOLUMNIA     Oh, he is wounded; I thank the gods for’t.

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MENENIUS     So do I too, if it be not too much. Brings a

victory in his pocket? The wounds become him.

VOLUMNIA     On’s brows: Menenius, he comes the third

time home with the oaken garland.

MENENIUS     Has he disciplined Aufidius soundly?

125

VOLUMNIA     Titus Lartius writes, they fought together,

but Aufidius got off.

MENENIUS     And ’twas time for him too, I’ll warrant him

that: and he had stayed by him, I would not have been

so ’fidiussed for all the chests in Corioles and the gold

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that’s in them. Is the senate possessed of this?

VOLUMNIA     Good ladies, let’s go. Yes, yes, yes. The

senate has letters from the general, wherein he gives

my son the whole name of the war: he hath in this

action outdone his former deeds doubly.

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VALERIA     In troth, there’s wondrous things spoke of

him.

MENENIUS     Wondrous! Ay, I warrant you, and not

without his true purchasing.

VIRGILIA     The gods grant them true.

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VOLUMNIA     True? pow, waw!

MENENIUS     True? I’ll be sworn they are true. Where is

he wounded? [to the tribunes] God save your good

worships! Martius is coming home: he has more

cause to be proud. [to Volumnia] Where is he

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wounded?

VOLUMNIA     I’th’ shoulder, and i’th’ left arm: there will

be large cicatrices to show the people when he shall

stand for his place. He received in the repulse of

Tarquin seven hurts i’th’ body.

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MENENIUS     One i’th’ neck, and two i’th’ thigh – there’s

nine that I know.

VOLUMNIA     He had, before this last expedition, twenty-

five wounds upon him.

MENENIUS     Now it’s twenty-seven: every gash was an

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enemy’s grave. [A shout and flourish.] Hark, the

trumpets!

VOLUMNIA     These are the ushers of Martius: before him

he carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears:

Death, that dark spirit, in’s nervy arm doth lie,

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Which, being advanc’d, declines, and then men die.

A sennet. Trumpets sound. Enter COMINIUS the General, and TITUS LARTIUS: between them CORIOLANUS, crowned with an oaken garland; with captains and soldiers, and a Herald.

HERALD     Know, Rome, that all alone Martius did fight

Within Corioles gates: where he hath won,

With fame, a name to Martius Caius. These

In honour follows Coriolanus.

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Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!

     [Sound flourish.]

ALL     Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!

CORIOLANUS     No more of this; it does offend my heart.

Pray now, no more.

COMINIUS     Look, sir, your mother.

CORIOLANUS     Oh!

You have, I know, petition’d all the gods

170

For my prosperity. [Kneels.]

VOLUMNIA     Nay, my good soldier, up;

My gentle Martius, worthy Caius, and

By deed-achieving honour newly nam’d –

What is it? – Coriolanus, must I call thee?

But oh, thy wife –

CORIOLANUS     My gracious silence, hail!

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Wouldst thou have laugh’d had I come coffin’d home,

That weep’st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,

Such eyes the widows in Corioles wear,

And mothers that lack sons.

MENENIUS     Now the gods crown thee!

CORIOLANUS     And live you yet?

[to Valeria]     O my sweet lady, pardon.

180

VOLUMNIA

I know not where to turn: O welcome home!

And welcome, general; and y’are welcome all.

MENENIUS

A hundred thousand welcomes. I could weep,

And I could laugh, I am light and heavy. Welcome!

A curse begnaw at very root on’s heart,

185

That is not glad to see thee! You are three

That Rome should dote on: yet, by the faith of men,

We have some old crabtrees here at home that will

not

Be grafted to your relish. Yet welcome, warriors!

We call a nettle but a nettle, and

190

The faults of fools but folly.

COMINIUS     Ever right.

CORIOLANUS     Menenius, ever, ever.

HERALD     Give way there, and go on.

CORIOLANUS     [to Volumnia and Virgilia]

Your hand, and yours!

Ere in our own house I do shade my head,

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The good patricians must be visited,

From whom I have receiv’d not only greetings,

But with them change of honours.

VOLUMNIA     I have liv’d

To see inherited my very wishes,

And the buildings of my fancy: only

200

There’s one thing wanting, which I doubt not but

Our Rome will cast upon thee.

CORIOLANUS     Know, good mother,

I had rather be their servant in my way

Than sway with them in theirs.

COMINIUS     On, to the Capitol.

     Flourish. Cornets. Exeunt in state, as before.

[Brutus and Sicinius come forward.]

BRUTUS

All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights

205

Are spectacled to see him. Your prattling nurse

Into a rapture lets her baby cry

While she chats him. The kitchen malkin pins

Her richest lockram ’bout her reechy neck,

Clamb’ring the walls to eye him; stalls, bulks,

windows,

210

Are smother’d up, leads fill’d and ridges hors’d

With variable complexions, all agreeing

In earnestness to see him. Seld-shown flamens

Do press among the popular throngs, and puff

To win a vulgar station. Our veil’d dames

215

Commit the war of white and damask in

Their nicely gauded cheeks, to th’wanton spoil

Of Phoebus’ burning kisses. Such a pother,

As if that whatsoever god who leads him

Were slily crept into his human powers,

220

And gave him graceful posture.

SICINIUS     On the sudden,

I warrant him consul.

BRUTUS     Then our office may,

During his power, go sleep.

SICINIUS     He cannot temp’rately transport his honours

From where he should begin and end, but will

225

Lose those he hath won.

BRUTUS     In that there’s comfort.

SICINIUS     Doubt not

The commoners, for whom we stand, but they

Upon their ancient malice will forget

With the least cause these his new honours; which

That he will give them make I as little question

230

As he is proud to do’t.

BRUTUS     I heard him swear,

Were he to stand for consul, never would he

Appear i’th’ market-place, nor on him put

The napless vesture of humility;

Nor showing (as the manner is) his wounds

235

To th’ people, beg their stinking breaths.

SICINIUS     ’Tis right.

BRUTUS     It was his word. Oh, he would miss it rather

Than carry it but by the suit of the gentry to him

And the desire of the nobles.

SICINIUS     I wish no better

Than have him hold that purpose, and to put it

240

In execution.

BRUTUS     ’Tis most like he will.

SICINIUS     It shall be to him then, as our good wills,

A sure destruction.

BRUTUS     So it must fall out

To him; or our authority’s for an end;

We must suggest the people in what hatred

245

He still hath held them: that to’s power he would

Have made them mules, silenc’d their pleaders, and

Dispropertied their freedoms; holding them,

In human action and capacity,

Of no more soul nor fitness for the world

250

Than camels in their war, who have their provand

Only for bearing burthens, and sore blows

For sinking under them.

SICINIUS     This (as you say) suggested

At some time when his soaring insolence

Shall touch the people – which time shall not want,

255

If he be put upon’t, and that’s as easy

As to set dogs on sheep – will be his fire

To kindle their dry stubble; and their blaze

Shall darken him for ever.

Enter a Messenger.

BRUTUS     What’s the matter?

MESSENGER     

You are sent for to the Capitol. ’Tis thought

260

That Martius shall be consul.

I have seen the dumb men throng to see him, and

The blind to hear him speak. Matrons flung gloves,

Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers,

Upon him as he pass’d; the nobles bended

265

As to Jove’s statue, and the commons made

A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts:

I never saw the like.

BRUTUS     Let’s to the Capitol,

And carry with us ears and eyes for th’ time,

But hearts for the event.

SICINIUS     Have with you.     Exeunt.

270

2.2 Enter two Officers, to lay cushions, as it were in the Capitol.

1 OFFICER     Come, come, they are almost here. How

many stand for consulships?

2 OFFICER     Three, they say; but ’tis thought of everyone

Coriolanus will carry it.

1 OFFICER     That’s a brave fellow; but he’s vengeance

5

proud, and loves not the common people.

2 OFFICER     ’Faith, there hath been many great men that

have flattered the people, who ne’er loved them; and

there be many that they have loved, they know not

wherefore: so that if they love they know not why, they

10

hate upon no better a ground. Therefore, for

Coriolanus     neither to care whether they love or hate

him manifests the true knowledge he has in their

disposition, and out of his noble carelessness lets them

plainly see’t.

15

1 OFFICER     If he did not care whether he had their love

or no, he waved indifferently ’twixt doing them

neither good nor harm; but he seeks their hate with

greater devotion than they can render it him, and

leaves nothing undone that may fully discover him

20

their opposite. Now to seem to affect the malice and

displeasure of the people is as bad as that which he

dislikes, to flatter them for their love.

2 OFFICER     He hath deserved worthily of his country;

and his ascent is not by such easy degrees as those

25

who, having been supple and courteous to the

people, bonneted, without any further deed to have

them at all into their estimation and report; but he

hath so planted his honours in their eyes and his

actions in their hearts, that for their tongues to be

30

silent and not confess so much were a kind of

ingrateful injury. To report otherwise were a malice

that, giving itself the lie, would pluck reproof and

rebuke from every ear that heard it.

1 OFFICER     No more of him; he’s a worthy man: make

35

way, they are coming.

A sennet. Enter the patricians, and the tribunes of the people, lictors before them; CORIOLANUS, MENENIUS, COMINIUS the Consul. SICINIUS and BRUTUS take their places by themselves; Coriolanus stands.

MENENIUS     Having determin’d of the Volsces, and

To send for Titus Lartius, it remains,

As the main point of this our after-meeting,

To gratify his noble service that

40

Hath thus stood for his country. Therefore, please

you,

Most reverend and grave elders, to desire

The present consul, and last general

In our well-found successes, to report

A little of that worthy work perform’d

45

By Martius Caius Coriolanus, whom

We met here, both to thank and to remember,

With honours like himself. [Coriolanus sits.]

1 SENATOR     Speak, good Cominius.

Leave nothing out for length, and make us think

Rather our state’s defective for requital

50

Than we to stretch it out.

[to the tribunes]     Masters o’th’ people,

We do request your kindest ears, and after

Your loving motion toward the common body,

To yield what passes here.

SICINIUS     We are convented

Upon a pleasing treaty, and have hearts

55

Inclinable to honour and advance

The theme of our assembly.

BRUTUS     Which the rather

We shall be bless’d to do, if he remember

A kinder value of the people than

He hath hereto priz’d them at.

MENENIUS     That’s off, that’s off!

60

I would you rather had been silent. Please you

To hear Cominius speak?

BRUTUS     Most willingly;

But yet my caution was more pertinent

Than the rebuke you give it.

MENENIUS     He loves your people,

But tie him not to be their bedfellow.

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Worthy Cominius, speak.

[Coriolanus rises, and offers to go away.]

     Nay, keep your place.

1 SENATOR     Sit, Coriolanus: never shame to hear

What you have nobly done.

CORIOLANUS     Your honours’ pardon:

I had rather have my wounds to heal again

Than hear say how I got them.

BRUTUS     Sir, I hope

70

My words disbench’d you not?

CORIOLANUS     No, sir; yet oft,

When blows have made me stay, I fled from words.

You sooth’d not, therefore hurt not: but your people,

I love them as they weigh –

MENENIUS     Pray now, sit down.

CORIOLANUS

I had rather have one scratch my head i’th’ sun

75

When the alarum were struck, than idly sit

To hear my nothings monster’d.     Exit Coriolanus.

MENENIUS     Masters of the people,

Your multiplying spawn how can he flatter –

That’s thousand to one good one – when you now

see

He had rather venture all his limbs for honour

80

Than one on’s ears to hear it? Proceed, Cominius.

COMINIUS     I shall lack voice: the deeds of Coriolanus

Should not be utter’d feebly. It is held

That valour is the chiefest virtue and

Most dignifies the haver: if it be,

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The man I speak of cannot in the world

Be singly counter-pois’d. At sixteen years,

When Tarquin made a head for Rome, he fought

Beyond the mark of others; our then dictator,

Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight,

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When with his Amazonian chin he drove

The bristled lips before him; he bestrid

An o’erpress’d Roman, and i’th’ consul’s view

Slew three opposers; Tarquin’s self he met

And struck him on his knee. In that day’s feats,

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When he might act the woman in the scene,

He prov’d best man i’th’ field, and for his meed

Was brow-bound with the oak. His pupil age

Man-enter’d thus, he waxed like a sea,

And in the brunt of seventeen battles since

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He lurch’d all swords of the garland. For this last,

Before and in Corioles, let me say

I cannot speak him home. He stopp’d the fliers,

And by his rare example made the coward

Turn terror into sport; as weeds before

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A vessel under sail, so men obey’d

And fell below his stem: his sword, death’s stamp,

Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot

He was a thing of blood, whose every motion

Was tim’d with dying cries: alone he enter’d

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The mortal gate of th’ city, which he painted

With shunless destiny, aidless came off,

And with a sudden reinforcement struck

Corioles like a planet. Now all’s his;

When by and by the din of war gan pierce

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His ready sense, then straight his doubled spirit

Requicken’d what in flesh was fatigate,

And to the battle came he, where he did

Run reeking o’er the lives of men, as if

’Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we call’d

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BOTH     field and city ours, he never stood

To ease his breast with panting.

MENENIUS     Worthy man.

1 SENATOR

He cannot but with measure fit the honours

Which we devise him.

COMINIUS     Our spoils he kick’d at,

And look’d upon things precious as they were

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The common muck of the world. He covets less

Than misery itself would give, rewards

His deeds with doing them, and is content

To spend the time to end it.

MENENIUS     He’s right noble.

Let him be call’d for.

1 SENATOR     Call Coriolanus.

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OFFICER     He doth appear.

Enter CORIOLANUS.

MENENIUS     The senate, Coriolanus, are well pleas’d

To make thee consul.

CORIOLANUS     I do owe them still

My life and services.

MENENIUS     It then remains

That you do speak to the people.

CORIOLANUS     I do beseech you,

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Let me o’erleap that custom; for I cannot

Put on the gown, stand naked, and entreat them

For my wounds’ sake to give their suffrage. Please

you

That I may pass this doing.

SICINIUS     Sir, the people

Must have their voices; neither will they bate

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One jot of ceremony.

MENENIUS     Put them not to’t.

Pray you go fit you to the custom and

Take to you, as your predecessors have,

Your honour with your form.

CORIOLANUS     It is a part

That I shall blush in acting, and might well

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Be taken from the people.

BRUTUS     [to Sicinius]     Mark you that.

CORIOLANUS     To brag unto them, thus I did, and thus,

Show them th’unaching scars which I should hide,

As if I had receiv’d them for the hire

Of their breath only!

MENENIUS     Do not stand upon’t.

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We recommend to you, tribunes of the people,

Our purpose to them; and to our noble consul

Wish we all joy and honour.

SENATORS     To Coriolanus come all joy and honour!

Flourish cornets. Then exeunt.

[Sicinius and Brutus remain.]

BRUTUS     You see how he intends to use the people.

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SICINIUS

May they perceive’s intent! He will require them

As if he did contemn what he requested

Should be in them to give.

BRUTUS     Come, we’ll inform them

Of our proceedings here; on th’ market-place

I know they do attend us.     Exeunt.

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2.3 Enter seven or eight Citizens.

1 CITIZEN     Once, if he do require our voices, we ought

not to deny him.

2 CITIZEN     We may, sir, if we will.

3 CITIZEN     We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is

a power that we have no power to do. For, if he show

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us his wounds and tell us his deeds, we are to put our

tongues into those wounds and speak for them. So if

he tell us his noble deeds, we must also tell him our

noble acceptance of them. Ingratitude is monstrous,

and for the multitude to be ingrateful, were to make a

10

monster of the multitude; of the which we being

members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous

members.

1 CITIZEN     And to make us no better thought of, a little

help will serve: for once we stood up about the corn,

15

he himself stuck not to call us the many-headed

multitude.

3 CITIZEN     We have been called so of many; not that our

heads are some brown, some black, some abram, some

bald, but that our wits are so diversely coloured; and

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truly I think, if all our wits were to issue out of one

skull, they would fly east, west, north, south, and their

consent of one direct way should be at once to all the

points o’th’ compass.

2 CITIZEN     Think you so? Which way do you judge my

25

wit would fly?

3 CITIZEN     Nay, your wit will not so soon out as another

man’s will; ’tis strongly wedged up in a blockhead: but

if it were at liberty, ’twould, sure, southward.

2 CITIZEN     Why that way?

30

3 CITIZEN     To lose itself in a fog, where, being three

parts melted away with rotten dews, the fourth would

return for conscience’ sake, to help to get thee a wife.

2 CITIZEN     You are never without your tricks; you may,

you may.

35

3 CITIZEN     Are you all resolved to give your voices? But

that’s no matter, the greater part carries it. I say, if he

would incline to the people, there was never a worthier

man.

Enter CORIOLANUS in a gown of humility, with MENENIUS.

Here he comes, and in the gown of humility: mark his

40

behaviour. We are not to stay all together, but to come

by him where he stands, by ones, by twos and by

threes. He’s to make his requests by particulars,

wherein every one of us has a single honour, in giving

him our own voices with our own tongues: therefore

45

follow me, and I’ll direct you how you shall go by him.

ALL     Content, content.     Exeunt citizens.

MENENIUS

O sir, you are not right. Have you not known

The worthiest men have done’t?

CORIOLANUS     What must I say? –

‘I pray, sir,’ – Plague upon’t! I cannot bring

50

My tongue to such a pace. ‘Look, sir, my wounds!

I got them in my country’s service, when

Some certain of your brethren roar’d and ran

From th’ noise of our own drums.’

MENENIUS     O me, the gods!

You must not speak of that; you must desire them

55

To think upon you.

CORIOLANUS     Think upon me? Hang ’em!

I would they would forget me, like the virtues

Which our divines lose by ’em.

MENENIUS     You’ll mar all.

I’ll leave you. Pray you, speak to ’em, I pray you,

In wholesome manner.     Exit.

Enter three of the Citizens.

CORIOLANUS     Bid them wash their faces,

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And keep their teeth clean. So, here comes a brace.

You know the cause, sir, of my standing here?

3 CITIZEN     We do, sir; tell us what hath brought you to’t.

CORIOLANUS     Mine own desert.

2 CITIZEN     Your own desert?

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CORIOLANUS     Ay, but not mine own desire.

3 CITIZEN     How, not your own desire?

CORIOLANUS     No, sir, ’twas never my desire yet to

trouble the poor with begging.

3 CITIZEN     You must think, if we give you anything, we

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hope to gain by you.

CORIOLANUS     Well then, I pray, your price o’th’

consulship?

1 CITIZEN     The price is, to ask it kindly.

CORIOLANUS     Kindly, sir, I pray let me ha’t. I have

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wounds to show you, which shall be yours in private.

Your good voice, sir. What say you?

2 CITIZEN     You shall ha’t, worthy sir.

CORIOLANUS     A match, sir. There’s in all two worthy

voices begged. I have your alms: adieu!

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3 CITIZEN     But this is something odd.

2 CITIZEN     And ’twere to give again – but ’tis no matter.

     Exeunt the three Citizens.

Enter two other Citizens.

CORIOLANUS     Pray you now, if it may stand with the

tune of your voices that I may be consul, I have here

the customary gown.

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4 CITIZEN     You have deserved nobly of your country, and

you have not deserved nobly.

CORIOLANUS     Your enigma?

4 CITIZEN     You have been a scourge to her enemies, you

have been a rod to her friends; you have not indeed

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loved the common people.

CORIOLANUS     You should account me the more virtuous,

that I have not been common in my love. I will, sir,

flatter my sworn brother the people, to earn a dearer

estimation of them; ’tis a condition they account

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gentle; and since the wisdom of their choice is rather

to have my hat than my heart, I will practise the

insinuating nod, and be off to them most counter-

feitly; that is, sir, I will counterfeit the bewitchment

of some popular man, and give it bountiful to

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the desirers. Therefore, beseech you, I may be

consul.

5 CITIZEN     We hope to find you our friend, and therefore

give you our voices heartily.

4 CITIZEN     You have received many wounds for your

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country.

CORIOLANUS     I will not seal your knowledge with

showing them. I will make much of your voices, and so

trouble you no farther.

BOTH     The gods give you joy, sir, heartily.

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     Exeunt the two Citizens.

CORIOLANUS     Most sweet voices!

Better it is to die, better to starve,

Than crave the hire which first we do deserve.

Why in this wolvish toge should I stand here,

To beg of Hob and Dick that does appear

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Their needless vouches? Custom calls me to’t.

What custom wills, in all things should we do’t,

The dust on antique time would lie unswept

And mountainous error be too highly heap’d

For truth to o’erpeer. Rather than fool it so,

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Let the high office and the honour go

To one that would do thus. I am half through,

The one part suffer’d, the other will I do.

Enter three Citizens more.

Here come moe voices.

Your voices! For your voices I have fought,

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Watch’d for your voices; for your voices, bear

Of wounds two dozen odd; battles thrice six

I have seen and heard of; for your voices have

Done many things, some less, some more: your

voices!

Indeed I would be consul.

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6 CITIZEN     He has done nobly, and cannot go without

any honest man’s voice.

7 CITIZEN     Therefore let him be consul. The gods give

him joy, and make him good friend to the people!

ALL     Amen, amen. God save thee, noble consul!

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     Exeunt the three Citizens.

CORIOLANUS     Worthy voices!

Enter MENENIUS, with BRUTUS and SICINIUS.

MENENIUS

You have stood your limitation, and the tribunes

Endue you with the people’s voice; remains

That, in th’official marks invested, you

Anon do meet the senate.

CORIOLANUS     Is this done?

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SICINIUS     The custom of request you have discharg’d.

The people do admit you, and are summon’d

To meet anon upon your approbation.

CORIOLANUS     Where? At the senate-house?

SICINIUS     There, Coriolanus.

CORIOLANUS     May I change these garments?

SICINIUS     You may, sir.

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CORIOLANUS

That I’ll straight do; and knowing myself again,

Repair to th’ senate-house.

MENENIUS     I’ll keep you company. Will you along?

BRUTUS     We stay here for the people.

SICINIUS     Fare you well.

     Exeunt Coriolanus and Menenius.

He has it now; and by his looks, methinks

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’Tis warm at’s heart.

BRUTUS     With a proud heart he wore

His humble weeds. Will you dismiss the people?

Enter the Plebeians.

SICINIUS

How now, my masters, have you chose this man?

1 CITIZEN     He has our voices, sir.

BRUTUS     We pray the gods he may deserve your loves.

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2 CITIZEN     Amen, sir. To my poor unworthy notice,

He mock’d us when he begg’d our voices.

3 CITIZEN     Certainly,

He flouted us downright.

1 CITIZEN

No, ’tis his kind of speech; he did not mock us.

2 CITIZEN     Not one amongst us, save yourself, but says

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He us’d us scornfully: he should have show’d us

His marks of merit, wounds receiv’d for’s country.

SICINIUS     Why, so he did, I am sure.

ALL     No, no; no man saw ’em.

3 CITIZEN

He said he had wounds which he could show in

private;

And with his hat, thus waving it in scorn,

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‘I would be consul,’ says he; ‘aged custom,

But by your voices, will not so permit me:

Your voices therefore.’ When we granted that,

Here was, ‘I thank you for your voices, thank you;

Your most sweet voices: now you have left your

voices,

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I have no further with you.’ Was not this mockery?

SICINIUS     Why either were you ignorant to see’t,

Or, seeing it, of such childish friendliness

To yield your voices?

BRUTUS     Could you not have told him

As you were lesson’d: when he had no power,

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But was a petty servant to the state,

He was your enemy, ever spake against

Your liberties and the charters that you bear

I’th’ body of the weal; and now arriving

A place of potency and sway o’th’ state,

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If he should still malignantly remain

Fast foe to th’ plebeii, your voices might

Be curses to yourselves? You should have said

That, as his worthy deeds did claim no less

Than what he stood for, so his gracious nature

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Would think upon you for your voices, and

Translate his malice towards you into love,

Standing your friendly lord.

SICINIUS     Thus to have said,

As you were fore-advis’d, had touch’d his spirit

And tried his inclination: from him pluck’d

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Either his gracious promise, which you might

As cause had call’d you up, have held him to;

Or else it would have gall’d his surly nature

Which easily endures not article

Tying him to aught; so putting him to rage,

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You should have ta’en th’advantage of his choler,

And pass’d him unelected.

BRUTUS     Did you perceive

He did solicit you in free contempt

When he did need your loves; and do you think

That his contempt shall not be bruising to you

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When he hath power to crush? Why, had your bodies

No heart among you? Or had you tongues to cry

Against the rectorship of judgement?

SICINIUS     Have you,

Ere now, denied the asker, and now again,

Of him that did not ask but mock, bestow

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Your sued-for tongues?

3 CITIZEN     He’s not confirm’d: we may deny him yet.

2 CITIZEN     And will deny him!

I’ll have five hundred voices of that sound.

1 CITIZEN

I twice five hundred, and their friends to piece ’em.

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BRUTUS     Get you hence instantly, and tell those friends

They have chose a consul that will from them take

Their liberties, make them of no more voice

Than dogs that are as often beat for barking

As therefore kept to do so.

SICINIUS     Let them assemble;

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And, on a safer judgement, all revoke

Your ignorant election. Enforce his pride

And his old hate unto you. Besides, forget not

With what contempt he wore the humble weed,

How in his suit he scorn’d you; but your loves,

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Thinking upon his services, took from you

Th’apprehension of his present portance,

Which most gibingly, ungravely, he did fashion

After the inveterate hate he bears you.

BRUTUS     Lay

A fault on us, your tribunes: that we labour’d,

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No impediment between, but that you must

Cast your election on him.

SICINIUS     Say you chose him

More after our commandment than as guided

By your own true affections; and that your minds

Pre-occupied with what you rather must do,

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Than what you should, made you against the grain

To voice him consul. Lay the fault on us.

BRUTUS     Ay, spare us not. Say we read lectures to you,

How youngly he began to serve his country,

How long continued, and what stock he springs of –

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The noble house o’th’ Martians: from whence came

That Ancus Martius, Numa’s daughter’s son,

Who after great Hostilius here was king;

Of the same house Publius and Quintus were,

That our best water brought by conduits hither;

240

And Censorinus that was so surnam’d

And nobly named so, twice being censor,

Was his great ancestor.

SICINIUS     One thus descended,

That hath beside well in his person wrought,

To be set high in place, we did commend

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To your remembrances; but you have found,

Scaling his present bearing with his past,

That he’s your fixed enemy, and revoke

Your sudden approbation.

BRUTUS     Say you ne’er had done’t –

Harp on that still – but by our putting on;

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And presently, when you have drawn your number,

Repair to th’ Capitol.

ALL     We will so: almost all

Repent in their election.     Exeunt Plebeians.

BRUTUS     Let them go on;

This mutiny were better put in hazard

Than stay, past doubt, for greater.

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If, as his nature is, he fall in rage

With their refusal, both observe and answer

The vantage of his anger.

SICINIUS     To th’ Capitol, come:

We will be there before the stream o’th’people;

And this shall seem, as partly ’tis, their own,

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Which we have goaded onward.     Exeunt.

3.1 Cornets. Enter CORIOLANUS, MENENIUS, all the gentry. COMINIUS, TITUS LARTIUS and other Senators.

CORIOLANUS

Tullus Aufidius then had made new head?

LARTIUS

He had, my lord; and that it was which caus’d

Our swifter composition.

CORIOLANUS     So then the Volsces stand but as at first,

Ready when time shall prompt them to make road

5

Upon’s again.

COMINIUS     They are worn, lord consul, so,

That we shall hardly in our ages see

Their banners wave again.

CORIOLANUS     Saw you Aufidius?

LARTIUS     On safeguard he came to me, and did curse

Against the Volsces for they had so vilely

10

Yielded the town: he is retir’d to Antium.

CORIOLANUS     Spoke he of me?

LARTIUS     He did, my lord.

CORIOLANUS     How? What?

LARTIUS     How often he had met you, sword to sword;

That of all things upon the earth he hated

Your person most; that he would pawn his fortunes

15

To hopeless restitution, so he might

Be call’d your vanquisher.

CORIOLANUS     At Antium lives he?

LARTIUS     At Antium.

CORIOLANUS     I wish I had a cause to seek him there,

To oppose his hatred fully. Welcome home.

20

Enter SICINIUS and BRUTUS.

Behold, these are the tribunes of the people,

The tongues o’th’ common mouth. I do despise

them:

For they do prank them in authority,

Against all noble sufferance.

SICINIUS     Pass no further.

CORIOLANUS     Ha! what is that?

25

BRUTUS     It will be dangerous to go on. No further.

CORIOLANUS     What makes this change?

MENENIUS     The matter?

COMINIUS

Hath he not pass’d the noble and the common?

BRUTUS     Cominius, no.

CORIOLANUS     Have I had children’s voices?

30

1 SENATOR

Tribunes, give way: he shall to th’ market-place.

BRUTUS     The people are incens’d against him.

SICINIUS     Stop,

Or all will fall in broil.

CORIOLANUS     Are these your herd?

Must these have voices, that can yield them now

And straight disclaim their tongues? What are your

offices?

35

You being their mouths, why rule you not their

teeth?

Have you not set them on?

MENENIUS     Be calm, be calm.

CORIOLANUS     It is a purpos’d thing, and grows by plot,

To curb the will of the nobility:

Suffer’t, and live with such as cannot rule,

40

Nor ever will be rul’d.

BRUTUS     Call’t not a plot.

The people cry you mock’d them; and of late,

When corn was given them gratis, you repin’d,

Scandal’d the suppliants for the people, call’d them

Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness.

45

CORIOLANUS     Why, this was known before.

BRUTUS     Not to them all.

CORIOLANUS     Have you inform’d them sithence?

BRUTUS     How! I inform them!

COMINIUS     You are like to do such business.

BRUTUS     Not unlike

Each way to better yours.

CORIOLANUS

Why then should I be consul? By yond clouds,

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Let me deserve so ill as you, and make me

Your fellow tribune.

SICINIUS     You show too much of that

For which the people stir. If you will pass

To where you are bound, you must inquire your way,

Which you are out of, with a gentler spirit,

55

Or never be so noble as a consul,

Nor yoke with him for tribune.

MENENIUS     Let’s be calm.

COMINIUS

The people are abus’d; set on. This palt’ring

Becomes not Rome; nor has Coriolanus

Deserv’d this so dishonour’d rub, laid falsely

60

I’th’ plain way of his merit.

CORIOLANUS     Tell me of corn!

This was my speech, and I will speak’t again.

MENENIUS     Not now, not now.

1 SENATOR     Not in this heat, sir, now.

CORIOLANUS     Now as I live, I will. My nobler friends,

I crave their pardons.

65

For the mutable, rank-scented meinie, let them

Regard me as I do not flatter, and

Therein behold themselves. I say again,

In soothing them, we nourish ’gainst our senate

The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,

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Which we ourselves have plough’d for, sow’d and

scatter’d,

By mingling them with us, the honour’d number

Who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that

Which they have given to beggars.

MENENIUS     Well, no more.

1 SENATOR     No more words, we beseech you.

CORIOLANUS     How? no more!

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As for my country I have shed my blood,

Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs

Coin words till their decay, against those measles

Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought

The very way to catch them.

BRUTUS     You speak o’th’ people

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As if you were a god to punish, not

A man of their infirmity.

SICINIUS     ’     ’Twere well

We let the people know’t.

MENENIUS     What, what? His choler?

CORIOLANUS     Choler!

Were I as patient as the midnight sleep,

85

By Jove, ’twould be my mind!

SICINIUS     It is a mind

That shall remain a poison where it is,

Not poison any further.

CORIOLANUS     Shall remain!

Hear you this Triton of the minnows? Mark you

His absolute ‘shall’?

COMINIUS     ’Twas from the canon.

CORIOLANUS     ‘Shall!’

90

O good but most unwise patricians: why,

You grave but reckless senators, have you thus

Given Hydra here to choose an officer,

That with his peremptory ‘shall’, being but

The horn and noise o’th’ monster’s, wants not spirit

95

To say he’ll turn your current in a ditch

And make your channel his? If he have power,

Then vail your ignorance; if none, awake

Your dangerous lenity. If you are learn’d

Be not as common fools; if you are not,

100

Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians

If they be senators; and they are no less

When, both your voices blended, the great’st taste

Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate,

And such a one as he, who puts his ‘shall’,

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His popular ‘shall’, against a graver bench

Than ever frown’d in Greece. By Jove himself,

It makes the consuls base; and my soul aches

To know, when two authorities are up,

Neither supreme, how soon confusion

110

May enter ’twixt the gap of both, and take

The one by th’other.

COMINIUS     Well, on to th’ market place.

CORIOLANUS     Whoever gave that counsel, to give forth

The corn o’th’ storehouse gratis, as ’twas us’d

Sometime in Greece –

MENENIUS     Well, well, no more of that.

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CORIOLANUS

Though there the people had more absolute power –

I say they nourish’d disobedience, fed

The ruin of the state.

BRUTUS     Why shall the people give

One that speaks thus their voice?

CORIOLANUS     I’ll give my reasons

More worthier than their voices. They know the corn

120

Was not our recompense, resting well assur’d

They ne’er did service for’t; being press’d to the war,

Even when the navel of the state was touch’d,

They would not thread the gates: this kind of service

Did not deserve corn gratis. Being i’th’ war,

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Their mutinies and revolts, wherein they show’d

Most valour, spoke not for them. Th’accusation

Which they have often made against the senate,

All cause unborn, could never be the native

Of our so frank donation. Well, what then?

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How shall this bosom multiplied digest

The senate’s courtesy? Let deeds express

What’s like to be their words, ‘We did request it,

We are the greater poll, and in true fear

They gave us our demands.’ Thus we debase

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The nature of our seats, and make the rabble

Call our cares fears; which will in time

Break ope the locks o’th’ senate, and bring in

The crows to peck the eagles.

MENENIUS     Come, enough.

BRUTUS     Enough, with over-measure.

CORIOLANUS     No, take more!

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What may be sworn by, both divine and human,

Seal what I end withal! This double worship,

Where one part does disdain with cause, the other

Insult without all reason: where gentry, title, wisdom,

Cannot conclude but by the yea and no

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Of general ignorance, it must omit

Real necessities, and give way the while

To unstable slightness. Purpose so barr’d, it follows

Nothing is done to purpose. Therefore beseech you –

You that will be less fearful than discreet,

150

That love the fundamental part of state

More than you doubt the change on’t; that prefer

A noble life before a long, and wish

To jump a body with a dangerous physic

That’s sure of death without it – at once pluck out

155

The multitudinous tongue: let them not lick

The sweet which is their poison. Your dishonour

Mangles true judgement, and bereaves the state

Of that integrity which should becom’t,

Not having the power to do the good it would

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For th’ill which doth control’t.

BRUTUS     ’Has said enough.

SICINIUS     ’Has spoken like a traitor, and shall answer

As traitors do.

CORIOLANUS     Thou wretch, despite o’erwhelm thee!

What should the people do with these bald tribunes?

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On whom depending, their obedience fails

To th’greater bench. In a rebellion,

When what’s not meet, but what must be, was law,

Then were they chosen. In a better hour,

Let what is meet be said it must be meet,

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And throw their power i’th’ dust.

BRUTUS     Manifest treason!

SICINIUS     This a consul? No!

BRUTUS     The aediles, ho!

Enter an Aedile.

     Let him be apprehended.

SICINIUS     Go call the people;     Exit Aedile

     in whose name myself

Attach thee as a traitorous innovator,

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A foe to th’ public weal. Obey I charge thee,

And follow to thine answer.

CORIOLANUS     Hence, old goat!

ALL PATRICIANS     We’ll surety him.

COMINIUS     Aged sir, hands off.

CORIOLANUS

Hence rotten thing! or I shall shake thy bones

Out of thy garments.

SICINIUS     Help, ye citizens!

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Enter a rabble of Plebeians with the Aediles.

MENENIUS     On both sides more respect.

SICINIUS

Here’s he that would take from you all your power.

BRUTUS     Seize him, aediles!

ALL PLEBEIANS     Down with him! Down with him!

2 SENATOR Weapons, weapons, weapons!

185

[They all bustle about Coriolanus.]

ALL     Tribunes! Patricians! Citizens! What ho!

Sicinius! Brutus! Coriolanus! Citizens!

Peace, peace, peace! Stay! Hold! Peace!

MENENIUS     What is about to be? I am out of breath;

Confusion’s near, I cannot speak. You, tribunes

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To th’ people! Coriolanus, patience!

Speak, good Sicinius!

SICINIUS     Hear me, people. Peace!

ALL PLEBEIANS

Let’s hear our tribune. Peace! Speak, speak, speak!

SICINIUS     You are at point to lose your liberties:

Martius     would have all from you, Martius

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Whom late you have nam’d for consul.

MENENIUS     Fie, fie, fie!

This is the way to kindle, not to quench.

2 SENATOR     To unbuild the city and to lay all flat.

SICINIUS     What is the city but the people?

ALL PLEBEIANS     True,

The people are the city.

200

BRUTUS     By the consent of all we were establish’d

The people’s magistrates.

ALL PLEBEIANS     You so remain.

MENENIUS     And so are like to do.

COMINIUS     That is the way to lay the city flat,

To bring the roof to the foundation,

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And bury all which yet distinctly ranges

In heaps and piles of ruin.

SICINIUS     This deserves death.

BRUTUS     Or let us stand to our authority

Or let us lose it: we do here pronounce,

Upon the part o’th’ people, in whose power

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We were elected theirs, Martius is worthy

Of present death.

SICINIUS     Therefore lay hold of him.

Bear him to th’ rock Tarpeian, and from thence

Into destruction cast him.

BRUTUS     Aediles, seize him!

ALL PLEBEIANS     Yield, Martius, yield!

MENENIUS     Hear me one word.

215

Beseech you, tribunes, hear me but a word.

AEDILE     Peace, peace!

MENENIUS

Be that you seem, truly your country’s friend,

And temp’rately proceed to what you would

Thus violently redress.

BRUTUS     Sir, those cold ways,

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That seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous

Where the disease is violent. Lay hands upon him,

And bear him to the rock.

[Coriolanus draws his sword.]

CORIOLANUS     No, I’ll die here.

There’s some among you have beheld me fighting:

Come, try upon yourselves what you have seen me!

225

MENENIUS

Down with that sword! Tribunes, withdraw awhile.

BRUTUS     Lay hands upon him.

MENENIUS     Help Martius, help!

You that be noble, help him, young and old!

ALL PLEBEIANS     Down with him, down with him!

     In this mutiny, the tribunes, the aediles and the people

are beat in and exeunt.

MENENIUS     Go, get you to your house: be gone, away!

230

All will be naught else.

2 SENATOR     Get you gone.

CORIOLANUS     Stand fast.

We have as many friends as enemies.

MENENIUS     Shall it be put to that?

1 SENATOR     The gods forbid.

I prithee, noble friend, home to thy house:

Leave us to cure this cause.

MENENIUS     For ’tis a sore upon us

235

You cannot tent yourself: be gone, beseech you.

COMINIUS     Come, sir, along with us.

CORIOLANUS

I would they were barbarians – as they are,

Though in Rome litter’d; not Romans – as they are

not,

Though calv’d i’th’ porch o’th’ Capitol.

MENENIUS     Be gone!

240

Put not your worthy rage into your tongue.

One time will owe another.

CORIOLANUS     On fair ground

I could beat forty of them.

MENENIUS     I could myself

Take up a brace o’th’ best of them; yea, the two

tribunes.

COMINIUS     But now ’tis odds beyond arithmetic;

245

And manhood is call’d foolery when it stands

Against a falling fabric. Will you hence

Before the tag return? Whose rage doth rend

Like interrupted waters, and o’erbear

What they are us’d to bear.

MENENIUS     Pray you be gone.

250

I’ll try whether my old wit be in request

With those that have but little: this must be patch’d

With cloth of any colour.

COMINIUS     Nay, come away.

Exeunt Coriolanus and Cominius, and others.

PATRICIAN     This man has marr’d his fortune.

MENENIUS     His nature is too noble for the world:

255

He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,

Or Jove for’s power to thunder. His heart’s his

mouth:

What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent;

And being angry, does forget that ever

He heard the name of death.     [A noise within.]

260

Here’s goodly work!

PATRICIAN     I would they were abed!

MENENIUS

I would they were in Tiber! What the vengeance,

Could he not speak ’em fair?

Enter BRUTUS and SICINIUS with the rabble again.

SICINIUS     Where is this viper

That would depopulate the city and

Be every man himself?

MENENIUS     You worthy tribunes –

265

SICINIUS     He shall be thrown down the Tarpeian rock

With rigorous hands: he hath resisted law,

And therefore law shall scorn him further trial

Than the severity of the public power,

Which he so sets at naught.

1 CITIZEN     He shall well know

270

The noble tribunes are the people’s mouths

And we their hands.

ALL PLEBEIANS     He shall, sure on’t.

MENENIUS     Sir, sir!

SICINIUS     Peace!

MENENIUS

Do not cry havoc where you should but hunt

With modest warrant.

SICINIUS     Sir, how comes’t that you

275

Have holp to make this rescue?

MENENIUS     Hear me speak!

As I do know the consul’s worthiness,

So can I name his faults.

SICINIUS     Consul! What consul?

MENENIUS     The consul Coriolanus.

BRUTUS     He consul!

ALL PLEBEIANS     No, no, no, no, no.

280

MENENIUS

If, by the tribunes’ leave, and yours, good people,

I may be heard, I would crave a word or two,

The which shall turn you to no further harm

Than so much loss of time.

SICINIUS     Speak briefly then:

For we are peremptory to dispatch

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This viperous traitor. To eject him hence

Were but our danger, and to keep him here

Our certain death. Therefore it is decreed

He dies tonight.

MENENIUS     Now the good gods forbid

That our renowned Rome, whose gratitude

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Towards her deserved children is enroll’d

In Jove’s own book, like an unnatural dam

Should now eat up her own!

SICINIUS     He’s a disease that must be cut away.

MENENIUS     Oh, he’s a limb that has but a disease:

295

Mortal, to cut it off; to cure it, easy.

What has he done to Rome that’s worthy death?

Killing our enemies, the blood he hath lost

(Which I dare vouch, is more than that he hath

By many an ounce) he dropp’d it for his country;

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And what is left, to lose it by his country

Were to us all that do’t and suffer it

A brand to th’end o’th’ world.

SICINIUS     This is clean kam.

BRUTUS     Merely awry. When he did love his country,

It honour’d him.

SICINIUS     The service of the foot,

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Being once gangren’d, is not then respected

For what before it was.

BRUTUS     We’ll hear no more:

Pursue him to his house, and pluck him thence,

Lest his infection, being of catching nature,

Spread further.

MENENIUS     One word more, one word.

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This tiger-footed rage, when it shall find

The harm of unscann’d swiftness will, too late,

Tie leaden pounds to’s heels. Proceed by process,

Lest parties, as he is belov’d, break out

And sack great Rome with Romans.

BRUTUS     If it were so!

315

SICINIUS     What do ye talk?

Have we not had a taste of his obedience?

Our aediles smote? ourselves resisted? Come.

MENENIUS     Consider this: he has been bred i’th’ wars

Since a could draw a sword, and is ill school’d

320

In bolted language; meal and bran together

He throws without distinction. Give me leave,

I’ll go to him, and undertake to bring him

Where he shall answer by a lawful form –

In peace – to his utmost peril.

1 SENATOR     Noble tribunes,

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It is the humane way. The other course

Will prove too bloody, and the end of it

Unknown to the beginning.

SICINIUS     Noble Menenius,

Be you then as the people’s officer.

Masters, lay down your weapons.

BRUTUS     Go not home.

330

SICINIUS

Meet on the market-place: we’ll attend to you there,

Where, if you bring not Martius, we’ll proceed

In our first way.

MENENIUS     I’ll bring him to you.

[to the Senators] Let me desire your company. He

must come,

Or what is worst will follow.

1 SENATOR     Pray you, let’s to him.

335

     Exeunt.

3.2 Enter CORIOLANUS with Nobles.

CORIOLANUS

Let them pull all about mine ears, present me

Death on the wheel, or at wild horses’ heels,

Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock,

That the precipitation might down stretch

Below the beam of sight: yet will I still

5

Be thus to them.

Enter VOLUMNIA.

PATRICIAN     You do the nobler.

CORIOLANUS     I muse my mother

Does not approve me further, who was wont

To call them woollen vassals, things created

To buy and sell with groats, to show bare heads

10

In congregations, to yawn, be still, and wonder,

When one but of my ordinance stood up

To speak of peace or war. I talk of you.

Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me

False to my nature? Rather say I play

15

The man I am.

VOLUMNIA     O sir, sir, sir.

I would have had you put your power well on

Before you had worn it out.

CORIOLANUS     Let go.

VOLUMNIA

You might have been enough the man you are,

With striving less to be so: lesser had been

20

The thwartings of your dispositions, if

You had not show’d them how ye were dispos’d,

Ere they lack’d power to cross you.

CORIOLANUS     Let them hang.

VOLUMNIA     Ay, and burn too.

Enter MENENIUS with the Senators.

MENENIUS

Come, come, you have been too rough, something too

rough.

25

You must return and mend it.

1 SENATOR     There’s no remedy,

Unless by not so doing, our good city

Cleave in the midst, and perish.

VOLUMNIA     Pray be counsell’d;

I have a heart as little apt as yours,

But yet a brain that leads my use of anger

30

To better vantage.

MENENIUS     Well said, noble woman.

Before he should thus stoop to th’ herd, but that

The violent fit o’th’ time craves it as physic

For the whole state, I would put mine armour on,

Which I can scarcely bear.

CORIOLANUS     What must I do?

35

MENENIUS     Return to th’ tribunes.

CORIOLANUS     Well, what then? what then?

MENENIUS     Repent what you have spoke.

CORIOLANUS     For them? I cannot do it to the gods,

Must I then do’t to them?

VOLUMNIA     You are too absolute.

Though therein you can never be too noble,

40

But when extremities speak. I have heard you say,

Honour and policy, like unsever’d friends,

I’th’ war do grow together: grant that, and tell me,

In peace what each of them by th’other lose

That they combine not there.

CORIOLANUS     Tush, tush!

MENENIUS     A good demand.

45

VOLUMNIA     If it be honour in your wars to seem

The same you are not, which, for your best ends

You adopt your policy, how is it less or worse

That it shall hold companionship in peace

With honour, as in war, since that to both

50

It stands in like request?

CORIOLANUS     Why force you this?

VOLUMNIA     Because that now it lies you on to speak

To th’ people; not by your own instruction,

Nor by th’matter which your heart prompts you,

But with such words that are but roted in

55

Your tongue, though but bastards and syllables

Of no allowance to your bosom’s truth.

Now, this no more dishonours you at all,

Than to take in a town with gentle words

Which else would put you to your fortune and

60

The hazard of much blood.

I would dissemble with my nature where

My fortunes and my friends at stake requir’d

I should do so in honour. I am in this

Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles;

65

And you will rather show our general louts

How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon ’em

For the inheritance of their loves and safeguard

Of what that want might ruin.

MENENIUS     Noble lady!

Come, go with us; speak fair; you may salve so

70

Not what is dangerous present, but the loss

Of what is past.

VOLUMNIA     I prithee now, my son,

Go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand,

And thus far having stretch’d it – here be with

them –

Thy knee bussing the stones – for in such business

75

Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ignorant

More learned than the ears – waving thy head,

Which often, thus, correcting thy stout heart,

Now humble as the ripest mulberry

That will not hold the handling; or say to them,

80

Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils,

Hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess,

Were fit for thee to use, as they to claim,

In asking their good loves; but thou wilt frame

Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far

85

As thou hast power and person.

MENENIUS     This but done,

Even as she speaks, why, their hearts were yours:

For they have pardons, being ask’d, as free

As words to little purpose.

VOLUMNIA     Prithee now,

Go, and be rul’d; although I know thou hadst rather

90

Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf

Than flatter him in a bower.

Enter COMINIUS.

     Here is Cominius.

COMINIUS

I have been i’th’ market place; and, sir, ’tis fit

You make strong party, or defend yourself

By calmness or by absence. All’s in anger.

95

MENENIUS     Only fair speech.

COMINIUS     I think ’twill serve, if he

Can thereto frame his spirit.

VOLUMNIA     He must, and will:

Prithee now, say you will, and go about it.

CORIOLANUS

Must I go show them my unbarb’d sconce? Must I

With my base tongue give to my noble heart

100

A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do’t:

Yet were there but this single plot to lose,

This mould of Martius, they to dust should grind it

And throw’t against the wind. To th’ market-place!

You have put me now to such a part which never

105

I shall discharge to th’ life.

COMINIUS     Come, come, we’ll prompt you.

VOLUMNIA     I prithee now, sweet son, as thou hast said

My praises made thee first a soldier, so,

To have my praise for this, perform a part

Thou hast not done before.

CORIOLANUS     Well, I must do’t.

110

Away my disposition, and possess me

Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turn’d,

Which choired with my drum, into a pipe

Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice

That babies lull asleep! The smiles of knaves

115

Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys’ tears take up

The glasses of my sight! A beggar’s tongue

Make motion through my lips, and my arm’d knees

Who bow’d but in my stirrup, bend like his

That hath receiv’d an alms! I will not do’t,

120

Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth,

And by my body’s action teach my mind

A most inherent baseness.

VOLUMNIA     At thy choice then:

To beg of thee it is my more dishonour

Than thou of them. Come all to ruin; let

125

Thy mother rather feel thy pride than fear

Thy dangerous stoutness, for I mock at death

With as big heart as thou. Do as thou list.

Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck’st it from me,

But owe thy pride thyself.

CORIOLANUS     Pray be content.

130

Mother, I am going to the market-place:

Chide me no more. I’ll mountebank their loves,

Cog their hearts from them, and come home belov’d

Of all the trades in Rome. Look, I am going.

Commend me to my wife. I’ll return consul,

135

Or never trust to what my tongue can do

I’th’way of flattery further.

VOLUMNIA     Do your will.     Exit.

COMINIUS

Away! The tribunes do attend you: arm yourself

To answer mildly; for they are prepar’d

With accusations, as I hear, more strong

140

Than are upon you yet.

CORIOLANUS     The word is ‘mildly’. Pray you, let us go.

Let them accuse me by invention: I

Will answer in mine honour.

MENENIUS     Ay, but mildly.

CORIOLANUS     Well, mildly be it then. Mildly!

145

     Exeunt.

3.3 Enter SICINIUS and BRUTUS.

BRUTUS     In this point charge him home, that he affects

Tyrannical power. If he evade us there,

Enforce him with his envy to the people,

And that the spoil got on the Antiates

Was ne’er distributed.

Enter an Aedile.

     What, will he come?

5

AEDILE     He’s coming.

BRUTUS     How accompanied?

AEDILE     With old Menenius, and those senators

That always favour’d him.

SICINIUS     Have you a catalogue

Of all the voices that we have procur’d,

Set down by th’ poll?

AEDILE     I have: ’tis ready.

10

SICINIUS     Have you collected them by tribes?

AEDILE     I have.

SICINIUS     Assemble presently the people hither:

And when they hear me say, ‘It shall be so

I’th’ right and strength o’th’ commons,’ be it either

For death, for fine, or banishment, then let them

15

If I say fine, cry ‘Fine’, if death, cry ‘Death’,

Insisting on the old prerogative

And power i’th’ truth o’th’ cause.

AEDILE     I shall inform them.

BRUTUS     And when such time they have begun to cry,

Let them not cease, but with a din confus’d

20

Enforce the present execution

Of what we chance to sentence.

AEDILE     Very well.

SICINIUS     Make them be strong, and ready for this hint

When we shall hap to give’t them.

BRUTUS     Go about it.

     Exit Aedile.

Put him to choler straight; he hath been us’d

25

Ever to conquer, and to have his worth

Of contradiction. Being once chaf’d, he cannot

Be rein’d again to temperance; then he speaks

What’s in his heart, and that is there which looks

With us to break his neck.

SICINIUS     Well, here he comes.

30

Enter CORIOLANUS, MENENIUS and COMINIUS, with others.

MENENIUS     Calmly, I do beseech you.

CORIOLANUS

Ay, as an hostler, that for th’ poorest piece

Will bear the knave by th’ volume. Th’honour’d gods

Keep Rome in safety, and the chairs of justice

Supplied with worthy men, plant love among’s,

35

Throng our large temples with the shows of peace

And not our streets with war.

1 SENATOR     Amen, amen.

MENENIUS     A noble wish.

Enter the Aedile with the Plebeians.

SICINIUS     Draw near, ye people.

AEDILE     List to your tribunes. Audience! Peace, I say!

40

CORIOLANUS     First, hear me speak!

BOTH TRIBUNES     Well, say. Peace, ho!

CORIOLANUS

Shall I be charg’d no further than this present?

Must all determine here?

SICINIUS     I do demand,

If you submit you to the people’s voices,

Allow their officers, and are content

45

To suffer lawful censure for such faults

As shall be prov’d upon you.

CORIOLANUS     I am content.

MENENIUS     Lo, citizens, he says he is content.

The warlike service he has done, consider: think

Upon the wounds his body bears, which show

50

Like graves i’th’ holy churchyard.

CORIOLANUS     Scratches with briers,

Scars to move laughter only.

MENENIUS     Consider further,

That when he speaks not like a citizen,

You find him like a soldier. Do not take

His rougher accents for malicious sounds,

55

But, as I say, such as become a soldier,

Rather than envy you.

COMINIUS     Well, well, no more.

CORIOLANUS     What is the matter,

That being pass’d for consul with full voice,

I am so dishonour’d that the very hour

60

You take it off again?

SICINIUS     Answer to us.

CORIOLANUS     Say then: ’tis true, I ought so.

SICINIUS

We charge you, that you have contriv’d to take

From Rome all season’d office, and to wind

Yourself into a power tyrannical;

65

For which you are a traitor to the people.

CORIOLANUS     How! Traitor?

MENENIUS     Nay, temperately: your promise!

CORIOLANUS

The fires i’th’ lowest hell fold in the people!

Call me their traitor! Thou injurious tribune!

Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,

70

In thy hands clutch’d as many millions, in

Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say

‘Thou liest’ unto thee, with a voice as free

As I do pray the gods.

SICINIUS     Mark you this, people?

ALL PLEBEIANS     To th’ rock, to th’ rock with him.

75

SICINIUS     Peace!

We need not put new matter to his charge.

What you have seen him do, and heard him speak,

Beating your officers, cursing yourselves,

Opposing laws with strokes, and here defying

80

Those whose great power must try him – even this,

So criminal and in such capital kind,

Deserves th’extremest death.

BRUTUS     But since he hath

Serv’d well for Rome –

CORIOLANUS     What do you prate of service?

BRUTUS     I talk of that, that know it.

CORIOLANUS     You?

85

MENENIUS

Is this the promise that you made your mother?

COMINIUS     Know, I pray you –

CORIOLANUS     I’ll know no further.

Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death,

Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger

But with a grain a day, I would not buy

90

Their mercy at the price of one fair word,

Nor check my courage for what they can give,

To have’t with saying, ‘Good morrow’.

SICINIUS     For that he has,

As much as in him lies, from time to time

Envied against the people, seeking means

95

To pluck away their power, as now at last

Given hostile strokes, and that not in the presence

Of dreaded justice, but on the ministers

That doth distribute it – in the name o’th’ people,

And in the power of us the tribunes, we,

100

Ev’n from this instant, banish him our city,

In peril of precipitation

From off the rock Tarpeian, never more

To enter our Rome gates. I’th’ people’s name,

I say it shall be so.

105

ALL PLEBEIANS

It shall be so, it shall be so! Let him away!

He’s banish’d, and it shall be so!

COMINIUS

Hear me, my masters, and my common friends!

SICINIUS     He’s sentenc’d: no more hearing.

COMINIUS     Let me speak.

I have been consul, and can show for Rome

110

Her enemies’ marks upon me. I do love

My country’s good with a respect more tender,

More holy and profound, than mine own life,

My dear wife’s estimate, her womb’s increase

And treasure of my loins: then if I would

115

Speak that –

SICINIUS     We know your drift. Speak what?

BRUTUS     There’s no more to be said but he is banish’d,

As enemy to the people and his country.

It shall be so!

ALL PLEBEIANS     It shall be so, it shall be so!

CORIOLANUS

You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate

120

As reek o’th’ rotten fens, whose loves I prize

As the dead carcasses of unburied men

That do corrupt my air: I banish you!

And here remain with your uncertainty!

Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!

125

Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,

Fan you into despair! Have the power still

To banish your defenders, till at length

Your ignorance – which finds not till it feels,

Making but reservation of yourselves,

130

Still your own foes – deliver you as most

Abated captives to some nation

That won you without blows! Despising

For you the city, thus I turn my back.

There is a world elsewhere!

135

Exeunt Coriolanus, Cominius, Menenius with the other

     senators and patricians.

AEDILE     The people’s enemy is gone, is gone!

ALL PLEBEIANS

Our enemy is banish’d! He is gone! Hoo! hoo!

[They all shout, and throw up their caps.]

SICINIUS     Go see him out at gates, and follow him

As he hath follow’d you, with all despite.

Give him deserv’d vexation. Let a guard

Attend us through the city.

140

ALL PLEBEIANS

Come, come, let’s see him out at gates! Come!

The gods preserve our noble tribunes! Come!

     Exeunt.

4.1 Enter CORIOLANUS, VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, MENENIUS, COMINIUS, with the young nobility of Rome.

CORIOLANUS

Come, leave your tears. A brief farewell! The beast

With many heads butts me away. Nay, mother,

Where is your ancient courage? You were us’d

To say, extremities was the trier of spirits;

That common chances common men could bear,

5

That when the sea was calm all boats alike

Show’d mastership in floating; fortune’s blows,

When most struck home, being gentle wounded,

craves

A noble cunning. You were us’d to load me

With precepts that would make invincible

10

The heart that conn’d them.

VIRGILIA     O heavens! O heavens!

CORIOLANUS     Nay, I prithee woman.

VOLUMNIA

Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome,

And occupations perish!

CORIOLANUS     What, what, what!

I shall be lov’d when I am lack’d. Nay, mother,

15

Resume that spirit when you were wont to say,

If you had been the wife of Hercules,

Six of his labours you’d have done, and sav’d

Your husband so much sweat. Cominius,

Droop not: adieu. Farewell, my wife, my mother:

20

I’ll do well yet. Thou old and true Menenius,

Thy tears are salter than a younger man’s,

And venomous to thine eyes. My sometime general,

I have seen thee stern, and thou hast oft beheld

Heart-hard’ning spectacles; tell these sad women,

25

’Tis fond to wail inevitable strokes,

As ’tis to laugh at ’em. My mother, you wot well

My hazards still have been your solace; and

Believ’t not lightly, though I go alone,

Like to a lonely dragon that his fen

30

Makes fear’d and talk’d of more than seen, your son

Will or exceed the common, or be caught

With cautelous baits and practice.

VOLUMNIA     My first son,

Whither wilt thou go? Take good Cominius

With thee awhile; determine on some course

35

More than a wild exposture to each chance

That starts i’th’ way before thee.

VIRGILIA     O the gods!

COMINIUS     I’ll follow thee a month, devise with thee

Where thou shalt rest, that thou mayst hear of us

And we of thee. So if the time thrust forth

40

A cause for thy repeal, we shall not send

O’er the vast world to seek a single man

And lose advantage, which doth ever cool

I’th’ absence of the needer.

CORIOLANUS     Fare ye well.

Thou hast years upon thee, and thou art too full

45

Of the wars’ surfeits to go rove with one

That’s yet unbruis’d: bring me but out at gate.

Come, my sweet wife, my dearest mother, and

My friends of noble touch: when I am forth,

Bid me farewell, and smile. I pray you, come:

50

While I remain above the ground you shall

Hear from me still, and never of me aught

But what is like me formerly.

MENENIUS     That’s worthily

As any ear can hear. Come, let’s not weep.

If I could shake off but one seven years

55

From these old arms and legs, by the good gods

I’d with thee every foot.

CORIOLANUS     Give me thy hand.

Come.     Exeunt.

4.2 Enter the two tribunes, SICINIUS and BRUTUS, with the Aedile.

SICINIUS

Bid them all home; he’s gone, and we’ll no further.

The nobility are vex’d, whom we see have sided

In his behalf.

BRUTUS     Now we have shown our power,

Let us seem humbler after it is done

Than when it was a-doing.

SICINIUS     Bid them home.

5

Say their great enemy is gone and they

Stand in their ancient strength.

BRUTUS     Dismiss them home.

     Exit Aedile.

Here comes his mother.

Enter VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA and MENENIUS.

SICINIUS     Let’s not meet her.

BRUTUS     Why?

SICINIUS     They say she’s mad.

BRUTUS     They have ta’en note of us: keep on your way.

10

VOLUMNIA

Oh, y’are well met: the hoarded plague o’th’ gods

Requite your love!

MENENIUS     Peace, peace, be not so loud.

VOLUMNIA

If that I could for weeping, you should hear –

Nay, and you shall hear some.

[to Brutus]     Will you be gone?

[to Sicinius] You shall stay too.

VIRGILIA     I would I had the power

15

To say so to my husband.

SICINIUS     Are you mankind?

VOLUMNIA     Ay, fool; is that a shame? Note but this fool.

Was not a man my father? Hadst thou foxship

To banish him that struck more blows for Rome

Than thou hast spoken words?

SICINIUS     Oh blessed heavens!

20

VOLUMNIA

Moe noble blows than ever thou wise words;

And for Rome’s good. I’ll tell thee what – yet go!

Nay, but thou shalt stay too: I would my son

Were in Arabia, and thy tribe before him,

His good sword in his hand.

SICINIUS     What then?

VIRGILIA     What then!

25

VOLUMNIA     He’d make an end of thy posterity,

Bastards and all.

Good man, the wounds that he does bear for Rome!

MENENIUS     Come, come, peace!

SICINIUS     I would he had continued to his country

30

As he began, and not unknit himself

The noble knot he made.

BRUTUS     I would he had.

VOLUMNIA

‘I would he had!’ ’Twas you incens’d the rabble:

Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth

As I can of those mysteries which heaven

35

Will not have earth to know.

BRUTUS     Pray let’s go.

VOLUMNIA     Now, pray sir, get you gone.

You have done a brave deed. Ere you go, hear this:

As far as doth the Capitol exceed

The meanest house in Rome, so far my son –

40

This lady’s husband here, this, do you see? –

Whom you have banish’d, does exceed you all.

BRUTUS     Well, well, we’ll leave you.

SICINIUS     Why stay we to be baited

With one that wants her wits?     Exeunt tribunes.

VOLUMNIA     Take my prayers with you.

I would the gods had nothing else to do

45

But to confirm my curses! Could I meet ’em

But once a day, it would unclog my heart

Of what lies heavy to’t.

MENENIUS     You have told them home,

And, by my troth, you have cause. You’ll sup with

me?

VOLUMNIA     Anger’s my meat: I sup upon myself

50

And so shall starve with feeding. Come, let’s go.

Leave this faint puling, and lament as I do,

In anger, Juno-like. Come, come, come!

     Exeunt Volumnia and Virgilia.

MENENIUS     Fie, fie, fie!     Exit.

4.3 Enter a Roman and a Volsce.

NICANOR     I know you well, sir, and you know me: your

name I think is Adrian.

ADRIAN     It is so, sir; truly I have forgot you.

NICANOR     I am a Roman; and my services are, as you are,

against ’em. Know you me yet?

5

ADRIAN     Nicanor? No?

NICANOR     The same, sir.

ADRIAN     You had more beard when I last saw you, but

your favour is well appeared by your tongue. What’s

the news in Rome? I have a note from the Volscian

10

state to find you out there; you have well saved me a

day’s journey.

NICANOR     There hath been in Rome strange

insurrections: the people against the senators,

patricians and nobles.

15

ADRIAN     Hath been! Is it ended then? Our state thinks

not so; they are in a most warlike preparation, and

hope to come upon them in the heat of their

division.

NICANOR     The main blaze of it is past, but a small thing

20

would make it flame again. For the nobles receive so to

heart the banishment of that worthy Coriolanus,

that they are in a ripe aptness to take all power from

the people, and to pluck from them their tribunes for

ever. This lies glowing, I can tell you, and is almost

25

mature for the violent breaking out.

ADRIAN     Coriolanus banished?

NICANOR     Banished, sir.

ADRIAN     You will be welcome with this intelligence,

Nicanor.

30

NICANOR     The day serves well for them now. I have

heard it said, the fittest time to corrupt a man’s wife is

when she’s fallen out with her husband. Your noble

Tullus Aufidius will appear well in these wars, his

great opposer, Coriolanus, being now in no request of

35

his country.

ADRIAN     He cannot choose. I am most fortunate, thus

accidentally to encounter you. You have ended my

business, and I will merrily accompany you home.

NICANOR     I shall between this and supper tell you most

40

strange things from Rome, all tending to the good of

their adversaries. Have you an army ready, say you?

ADRIAN     A most royal one: the centurions and

their charges distinctly billeted, already in

th’entertainment, and to be on foot at an hour’s

45

warning.

NICANOR     I am joyful to hear of their readiness, and am

the man, I think, that shall set them in present action.

So, sir, heartily well met, and most glad of your

company.

50

ADRIAN     You take my part from me, sir: I have the most

cause to be glad of yours.

NICANOR     Well, let us go together.     Exeunt.

4.4 Enter CORIOLANUS in mean apparel, disguised and muffled.

CORIOLANUS     A goodly city is this Antium. City,

’Tis I that made thy widows: many an heir

Of these fair edifices ’fore my wars

Have I heard groan, and drop. Then know me not;

Lest that thy wives with spits, and boys with stones,

5

In puny battle slay me.

Enter a Citizen.

     Save you, sir.

CITIZEN     And you.

CORIOLANUS     Direct me, if it be your will,

Where great Aufidius lies. Is he in Antium?

CITIZEN     He is, and feasts the nobles of the state

At his house this night.

CORIOLANUS     Which is his house, beseech you?

10

CITIZEN     This, here before you.

CORIOLANUS     Thank you, sir. Farewell.

     Exit Citizen.

O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,

Whose double bosoms seems to wear one heart,

Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise

Are still together, who twin, as ’twere, in love

15

Unseparable, shall within this hour,

On a dissension of a doit, break out

To bitterest enmity: so fellest foes,

Whose passions and whose plots have broke their

sleep

To take the one the other, by some chance,

20

Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends

And interjoin their issues. So with me:

My birthplace hate I, and my love’s upon

This enemy town. I’ll enter: if he slay me

He does fair justice; if he give me way,

25

I’ll do his country service.     Exit.

4.5 Music plays. Enter a Servingman.

SERVINGMAN     Wine, wine, wine! What service is here!

1

I think our fellows are asleep.     Exit.

Enter another Servingman.

2 SERVINGMAN     Where’s Cotus? My master calls for

him. Cotus!     Exit.

Enter CORIOLANUS.

CORIOLANUS

A goodly house: the feast smells well, but I

5

Appear not like a guest.

Enter the First Servingman.

1 SERVINGMAN     What would you have, friend? Whence

are you? Here’s no place for you: pray, go to the door!

     Exit.

CORIOLANUS

I have deserv’d no better entertainment

In being Coriolanus.

10

Enter Second Servingman.

2 SERVINGMAN     Whence are you sir? Has the porter his

eyes in his head, that he gives entrance to such

companions? Pray, get you out.

CORIOLANUS Away!

2 SERVINGMAN     Away? Get you away!

15

CORIOLANUS Now th’art troublesome.

SERVINGMAN     Are you so brave! I’ll have you talked

2

with anon.

Enter Third Servingman. The First meets him.

3 SERVINGMAN     What fellow’s this?

1 SERVINGMAN     A strange one as ever I looked on. I

20

cannot get him out o’th’ house. Prithee call my master

to him. [Retires.]

3 SERVINGMAN     What have you to do here, fellow? Pray

you, avoid the house.

CORIOLANUS Let me but stand; I will not hurt your

25

hearth.

3 SERVINGMAN     What are you?

CORIOLANUS     A gentleman.

3 SERVINGMAN     A marv’llous poor one.

CORIOLANUS     True, so I am.

30

3 SERVINGMAN     Pray you, poor gentleman, take up some

other station. Here’s no place for you; pray you,

avoid. Come.

CORIOLANUS     Follow your function, go, and batten on

cold bits. [Pushes him away from him.]

35

3 SERVINGMAN     What, you will not? Prithee, tell my

master what a strange guest he has here.

2 SERVINGMAN     And I shall.     Exit Second Servingman.

3 SERVINGMAN     Where dwell’st thou?

CORIOLANUS     Under the canopy.

40

3 SERVINGMAN     Under the canopy?

CORIOLANUS     Ay.

3 SERVINGMAN     Where’s that?

CORIOLANUS     I’th’ city of kites and crows.

3 SERVINGMAN     I’th’ city of kites and crows? What an ass

45

it is! Then thou dwell’st with daws too?

CORIOLANUS     No, I serve not thy master.

3 SERVINGMAN     How, sir! Do you meddle with my

master?

CORIOLANUS     Ay; ’tis an honester service than to meddle

50

with thy mistress. Thou prat’st, and prat’st. Serve

with thy trencher: hence! [Beats him away.]

     Exit Third Servingman.

Enter AUFIDIUS with the Second Servingman.

AUFIDIUS     Where is this fellow?

2 SERVINGMAN     Here sir; I’d have beaten him like a dog,

but for disturbing the lords within.     [Retires.]

55

AUFIDIUS

Whence com’st thou? What wouldst thou? thy name?

Why speak’st not? Speak, man: what’s thy name?

CORIOLANUS     [unmuffling]     If, Tullus,

Not yet thou know’st me, and, seeing me, dost not

Think me for the man I am, necessity

Commands me name myself.

AUFIDIUS     What is thy name?

60

     [Servants retire.]

CORIOLANUS     A name unmusical to the Volscians’ ears,

And harsh in sound to thine.

AUFIDIUS     Say, what’s thy name?

Thou hast a grim appearance, and thy face

Bears a command in’t. Though thy tackle’s torn,

Thou show’st a noble vessel. What’s thy name?

65

CORIOLANUS

Prepare thy brow to frown: know’st thou me yet?

AUFIDIUS     I know thee not! Thy name?

CORIOLANUS

My name is Caius Martius, who hath done

To thee particularly, and to all the Volsces,

Great hurt and mischief: thereto witness may

70

My surname, Coriolanus. The painful service,

The extreme dangers, and the drops of blood

Shed for my thankless country, are requited

But with that surname: a good memory

And witness of the malice and displeasure

75

Which thou should’st bear me. Only that name

remains.

The cruelty and envy of the people,

Permitted by our dastard nobles, who

Have all forsook me, hath devour’d the rest;

And suffer’d me by th’ voice of slaves to be

80

Whoop’d out of Rome. Now this extremity

Hath brought me to thy hearth, not out of hope

(Mistake me not) to save my life: for if

I had fear’d death, of all the men i’th’ world

I would have ’voided thee; but in mere spite

85

To be full quit of those my banishers,

Stand I before thee here. Then if thou hast

A heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge

Thine own particular wrongs, and stop those maims

Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee

straight,

90

And make my misery serve thy turn: so use it

That my revengeful services may prove

As benefits to thee, for I will fight

Against my canker’d country with the spleen

Of all the under fiends. But if so be

95

Thou dar’st not this, and that to prove more fortunes

Th’art tir’d, then, in a word, I also am

Longer to live most weary, and present

My throat to thee and to thy ancient malice;

Which not to cut would show thee but a fool,

100

Since I have ever follow’d thee with hate,

Drawn tuns of blood out of thy country’s breast,

And cannot live but to thy shame, unless

It be to do thee service.

AUFIDIUS     O Martius, Martius!

Each word thou hast spoke hath weeded from my

heart

105

A root of ancient envy. If Jupiter

Should from yond cloud speak divine things

And say ‘’Tis true’, I’d not believe them more

Than thee, all-noble Martius. Let me twine

Mine arms about that body, where against

110

My grained ash an hundred times hath broke,

And scarr’d the moon with splinters. Here I clip

The anvil of my sword, and do contest

As hotly and as nobly with thy love

As ever in ambitious strength I did

115

Contend against thy valour. Know thou first,

I lov’d the maid I married; never man

Sigh’d truer breath; but that I see thee here,

Thou noble thing, more dances my rapt heart

Than when I first my wedded mistress saw

120

Bestride my threshold. Why, thou Mars! I tell thee

We have a power on foot; and I had purpose

Once more to hew thy target from thy brawn,

Or lose mine arm for’t. Thou hast beat me out

Twelve several times, and I have nightly since

125

Dreamt of encounters ’twixt thyself and me –

We have been down together in my sleep,

Unbuckling helms, fisting each other’s throat –

And wak’d half dead with nothing. Worthy Martius,

Had we no other quarrel else to Rome, but that

130

Thou art thence banish’d, we would muster all

From twelve to seventy, and pouring war

Into the bowels of ungrateful Rome,

Like a bold flood o’erbear’t. O come, go in,

And take our friendly senators by’th’ hands

135

Who now are here, taking their leaves of me

Who am prepar’d against your territories,

Though not for Rome itself.

CORIOLANUS     You bless me, gods!

AUFIDIUS

Therefore, most absolute sir, if thou wilt have

The leading of thine own revenges, take

140

Th’one half of my commission, and set down

As best thou art experienc’d, since thou know’st

Thy country’s strength and weakness, thine own

ways:

Whether to knock against the gates of Rome,

Or rudely visit them in parts remote,

145

To fright them, ere destroy. But come in.

Let me commend thee first to those that shall

Say yea to thy desires. A thousand welcomes!

And more a friend than e’er an enemy –

Yet, Martius, that was much! Your hand: most

welcome!     Exeunt Coriolanus and Aufidius.

150

[The two Servingmen come forward.]

1 SERVINGMAN     Here’s a strange alteration!

2 SERVINGMAN     By my hand, I had thought to have

strucken him with a cudgel; and yet my mind gave

me his clothes made a false report of him.

1 SERVINGMAN     What an arm he has! He turned me

155

about with his finger and his thumb, as one would set

up a top.

2 SERVINGMAN     Nay, I knew by his face that there was

something in him. He had, sir, a kind of face,

methought – I cannot tell how to term it.

160

1 SERVINGMAN     He had so, looking as it were – would I

were hanged, but I thought there was more in him

than I could think.

2 SERVINGMAN     So did I, I’ll be sworn. He is simply the

rarest man i’th’ world.

165

1 SERVINGMAN     I think he is: but a greater soldier than

he, you wot on.

2 SERVINGMAN     Who? my master?

1 SERVINGMAN     Nay, it’s no matter for that.

2 SERVINGMAN     Worth six on him.

170

1 SERVINGMAN     Nay, not so neither: but I take him to be

the greater soldier.

2 SERVINGMAN     Faith, look you, one cannot tell how to

say that: for the defence of a town our general is

excellent.

175

1 SERVINGMAN     Ay, and for an assault too.

Enter the Third Servingman.

3 SERVINGMAN     O slaves, I can tell you news, news you

rascals.

1, 2 SERVINGMEN     What, what, what? Let’s partake.

3 SERVINGMAN     I would not be a Roman of all nations; I

180

had as lief be a condemned man.

1, 2 SERVINGMEN     Wherefore? Wherefore?

3 SERVINGMAN     Why, here’s he that was wont to thwack

our general, Caius Martius.

1 SERVINGMAN     Why do you say ‘thwack our general’?

185

3 SERVINGMAN     I do not say ‘thwack our general’; but he

was always good enough for him.

2 SERVINGMAN     Come, we are fellows and friends: he was

ever too hard for him; I have heard him say so

himself.

190

1 SERVINGMAN     He was too hard for him directly, to say

the truth on’t: before Corioles he scotched him and

notched him like a carbonado.

2 SERVINGMAN     And he had been cannibally given, he

might have broiled and eaten him too.

195

1 SERVINGMAN     But more of thy news.

3 SERVINGMAN     Why, he is so made on here within as if

he were son and heir to Mars; set at upper end o’th’

table; no question asked him by any of the senators but

they stand bald before him. Our general himself

200

makes a mistress of him, sanctifies himself with’s

hand, and turns up the white o’th’ eye to his

discourse. But the bottom of the news is, our general

is cut i’th’ middle, and but one half of what he was

yesterday; for the other has half, by the entreaty and

205

grant of the whole table. He’ll go, he says, and sowl the

porter of Rome gates by th’ears. He will mow all down

before him, and leave his passage polled.

2 SERVINGMAN     And he’s as like to do’t as any man I can

imagine.

210

3 SERVINGMAN     Do’t? He will do’t: for look you, sir, he

has as many friends as enemies; which friends, sir, as it

were, durst not, look you sir, show themselves, as we

term it, his friends, whilst he’s in directitude.

1 SERVINGMAN     Directitude! What’s that?

215

3 SERVINGMAN     But when they shall see, sir, his crest up

again, and the man in blood, they will out of their

burrows, like conies after rain, and revel all with

him.

1 SERVINGMAN     But when goes this forward?

220

3 SERVINGMAN     Tomorrow, today, presently; you shall

have the drum struck up this afternoon. ’Tis as it were

a parcel of their feast, and to be executed ere they wipe

their lips.

2 SERVINGMAN     Why, then we shall have a stirring world

225

again. This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase

tailors, and breed ballad-makers.

1 SERVINGMAN     Let me have war, say I. It exceeds peace

as far as day does night: it’s sprightly walking, audible,

and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy;

230

mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more

bastard children than war’s a destroyer of

men.

2 SERVINGMAN     ’Tis so, and as wars, in some sort, may

be said to be a ravisher, so it cannot be denied but

235

peace is a great maker of cuckolds.

1 SERVINGMAN     Ay, and it makes men hate one another.

3 SERVINGMAN     Reason: because they then less need one

another. The wars for my money. I hope to see

Romans as cheap as Volscians. They are rising, they

240

are rising.

1, 2 SERVINGMEN     In, in, in, in!     Exeunt.

4.6 Enter the two tribunes, SICINIUS and BRUTUS.

SICINIUS

We hear not of him, neither need we fear him;

His remedies are tame i’th’ present peace

And quietness of the people, which before

Were in wild hurry. Here do we make his friends

Blush that the world goes well; who rather had,

5

Though they themselves did suffer by’t, behold

Dissentious numbers pest’ring streets, than see

Our tradesmen singing in their shops and going

About their functions friendly.

BRUTUS     We stood to’t in good time.

Enter MENENIUS.

     Is this Menenius?

10

SICINIUS     ’Tis he, ’tis he. Oh, he is grown most kind

Of late. Hail, sir!

MENENIUS     Hail to you both!

SICINIUS     Your Coriolanus is not much miss’d

But with his friends: the commonwealth doth stand,

And so would do, were he more angry at it.

15

MENENIUS

All’s well, and might have been much better if

He could have temporiz’d.

SICINIUS     Where is he, hear you?

MENENIUS

Nay, I hear nothing. His mother and his wife

Hear nothing from him.

Enter three or four Citizens.

ALL     The gods preserve you both!

SICINIUS     Good den, our neighbours.

20

BRUTUS     Good den to you all, good den to you all.

1 CITIZEN

Ourselves, our wives, and children, on our knees

Are bound to pray for you both.

SICINIUS     Live, and thrive!

BRUTUS

Farewell, kind neighbours. We wish’d Coriolanus

Had lov’d you as we did.

ALL     Now the gods keep you!

25

BOTH TRIBUNES     Farewell, farewell.     Exeunt Citizens.

SICINIUS     This is a happier and more comely time

Than when those fellows ran about the streets

Crying confusion.

BRUTUS     Caius Martius was

A worthy officer i’th’ war, but insolent,

30

O’ercome with pride, ambitious past all thinking,

Self-loving.

SICINIUS     And affecting one sole throne,

Without assistance.

MENENIUS     I think not so.

SICINIUS     We should by this, to all our lamentation,

If he had gone forth consul, found it so.

35

BRUTUS

The gods have well prevented it, and Rome

Sits safe and still without him.

Enter an Aedile.

AEDILE     Worthy tribunes,

There is a slave whom we have put in prison,

Reports the Volsces with two several powers

Are enter’d in the Roman territories,

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And with the deepest malice of the war,

Destroy what lies before ’em.

MENENIUS     ’Tis Aufidius,

Who, hearing of our Martius’ banishment,

Thrusts forth his horns again into the world,

Which were inshell’d when Martius stood for Rome,

45

And durst not once peep out.

SICINIUS     Come, what talk you

Of Martius?

BRUTUS     Go see this rumourer whipp’d. It cannot be

The Volsces dare break with us.

MENENIUS     Cannot be?

We have record that very well it can,

50

And three examples of the like hath been

Within my age. But reason with the fellow

Before you punish him, where he heard this,

Lest you shall chance to whip your information,

And beat the messenger who bids beware

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Of what is to be dreaded.

SICINIUS     Tell not me.

I know this cannot be.

BRUTUS     Not possible.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     The nobles in great earnestness are going

All to the senate-house. Some news is coming

That turns their countenances.

SICINIUS     ’Tis this slave –

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Go whip him ’fore the people’s eyes – his raising,

Nothing but his report.

MESSENGER     Yes, worthy sir,

The slave’s report is seconded; and more,

More fearful, is deliver’d.

SICINIUS     What more fearful?

MESSENGER     It is spoke freely out of many mouths,

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How probable I do not know, that Martius,

Join’d with Aufidius, leads a power ’gainst Rome,

And vows revenge as spacious as between

The young’st and oldest thing.

SICINIUS     This is most likely!

BRUTUS     Rais’d only that the weaker sort may wish

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Good Martius home again.

SICINIUS     The very trick on’t.

MENENIUS     This is unlikely:

He and Aufidius can no more atone

Than violent’st contrariety.

Enter a Second Messenger.

2 MESSENGER     You are sent for to the senate.

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A fearful army, led by Caius Martius,

Associated with Aufidius, rages

Upon our territories, and have already

O’erborne their way, consum’d with fire, and took

What lay before them.

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Enter COMINIUS.

COMINIUS

O, you have made good work.

MENENIUS     What news? What news?

COMINIUS

You have holp to ravish your own daughters, and

To melt the city leads upon your pates,

To see your wives dishonour’d to your noses –

MENENIUS     What’s the news? What’s the news?

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COMINIUS     Your temples burned in their cement, and

Your franchises, whereon you stood, confin’d

Into an auger’s bore.

MENENIUS     Pray now, your news? –

You have made fair work, I fear me. – Pray, your

news?

If Martius should be join’d wi’th’ Volscians –

COMINIUS     If!

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He is their god. He leads them like a thing

Made by some other deity than nature,

That shapes man better; and they follow him

Against us brats, with no less confidence

Than boys pursuing summer butterflies,

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Or butchers killing flies.

MENENIUS     You have made good work,

You, and your apron-men; you that stood so much

Upon the voice of occupation and

The breath of garlic-eaters!

COMINIUS     He’ll shake your Rome about your ears.

MENENIUS     As Hercules

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Did shake down mellow fruit. You have made fair

work!

BRUTUS     But is this true, sir?

COMINIUS     Ay, and you’ll look pale

Before you find it other. All the regions

Do smilingly revolt, and who resists

Are mock’d for valiant ignorance,

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And perish constant fools. Who is’t can blame him?

Your enemies and his find something in him.

MENENIUS     We are all undone unless

The noble man have mercy.

COMINIUS     Who shall ask it?

The tribunes cannot do’t for shame; the people

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Deserve such pity of him as the wolf

Does of the shepherds. For his best friends, if they

Should say, ‘Be good to Rome’, they charg’d him

even

As those should do that had deserv’d his hate,

And therein show’d like enemies.

MENENIUS     ’Tis true!

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If he were putting to my house the brand

That should consume it, I have not the face

To say, ‘Beseech you, cease’. You have made fair

hands,

You and your crafts! You have crafted fair!

COMINIUS     You have brought

A trembling upon Rome, such as was never

120

S’incapable of help.

BOTH TRIBUNES     Say not we brought it.

MENENIUS

How? Was’t we? We lov’d him, but, like beasts

And cowardly nobles, gave way unto your clusters,

Who did hoot him out o’th’ city.

COMINIUS     But I fear

They’ll roar him in again. Tullus Aufidius,

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The second name of men, obeys his points

As if he were his officer. Desperation

Is all the policy, strength and defence,

That Rome can make against them.

Enter a troop of Citizens.

MENENIUS     Here come the clusters.

And is Aufidius with him? You are they

130

That made the air unwholesome when you cast

Your stinking greasy caps in hooting at

Coriolanus’ exile. Now he’s coming,

And not a hair upon a soldier’s head

Which will not prove a whip. As many coxcombs

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As you threw caps up will he tumble down,

And pay you for your voices. ’Tis no matter,

If he could burn us all into one coal,

We have deserv’d it.

CITIZENS     Faith, we hear fearful news.

1 CITIZEN     For mine own part,

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When I said banish him, I said ’twas pity.

2 CITIZEN     And so did I.

3 CITIZEN     And so did I; and, to say the truth, so did very

many of us. That we did we did for the best, and

though we willingly consented to his banishment, yet

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it was against our will.

COMINIUS     Y’are goodly things, you voices.

MENENIUS     You have made good work,

You and your cry. Shall’s to the Capitol?

COMINIUS     O, ay, what else?

     Exeunt Cominius and Menenius.

SICINIUS     Go masters, get you home; be not dismay’d;

150

These are a side that would be glad to have

This true which they so seem to fear. Go home,

And show no sign of fear.

1 CITIZEN     The gods be good to us! Come, masters, let’s

home. I ever said we were i’th’ wrong when we

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banished him.

2 CITIZEN     So did we all. But come, let’s home.

     Exeunt Citizens.

BRUTUS     I do not like this news.

SICINIUS     Nor I.

BRUTUS     Let’s to the Capitol. Would half my wealth

160

Would buy this for a lie!

SICINIUS     Pray let’s go.     Exeunt.

4.7 Enter AUFIDIUS with his Lieutenant.

AUFIDIUS     Do they still fly to th’Roman?

LIEUTENANT

I do not know what witchcraft’s in him, but

Your soldiers use him as the grace ’fore meat,

Their talk at table and their thanks at end;

And you are darken’d in this action, sir,

5

Even by your own.

AUFIDIUS     I cannot help it now,

Unless, by using means, I lame the foot

Of our design. He bears himself more proudlier

Even to my person than I thought he would

When first I did embrace him. Yet his nature

10

In that’s no changeling, and I must excuse

What cannot be amended.

LIEUTENANT     Yet I wish, sir,

I mean for your particular, you had not

Join’d in commission with him; but either

Have borne the action of yourself, or else

15

To him had left it solely.

AUFIDIUS     I understand thee well, and be thou sure

When he shall come to his account, he knows not

What I can urge against him. Although it seems,

And so he thinks, and is no less apparent

20

To th’ vulgar eye, that he bears all things fairly

And shows good husbandry for the Volscian state,

Fights dragon-like, and does achieve as soon

As draw his sword: yet he hath left undone

That which shall break his neck or hazard mine

25

Whene’er we come to our account.

LIEUTENANT

Sir, I beseech you, think you he’ll carry Rome?

AUFIDIUS     All places yields to him ere he sits down,

And the nobility of Rome are his.

The senators and patricians love him too;

30

The tribunes are no soldiers, and their people

Will be as rash in the repeal as hasty

To expel him thence. I think he’ll be to Rome

As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it

By sovereignty of nature. First, he was

35

A noble servant to them, but he could not

Carry his honours even. Whether ’twas pride,

Which out of daily fortune ever taints

The happy man; whether defect of judgement,

To fail in the disposing of those chances

40

Which he was lord of; or whether nature,

Not to be other than one thing, not moving

From th’ casque to th’ cushion, but commanding

peace

Even with the same austerity and garb

As he controll’d the war; but one of these –

45

As he hath spices of them all, not all,

For I dare so far free him – made him fear’d,

So hated, and so banish’d: but he has a merit

To choke it in the utt’rance. So our virtues

Lie in th’interpretation of the time,

50

And power, unto itself most commendable,

Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair

T’extol what it hath done.

One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail;

Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail.

55

Come, let’s away. When, Caius, Rome is thine,

Thou art poor’st of all: then shortly art thou mine.

     Exeunt.

5.1 Enter MENENIUS, COMINIUS; SICINIUS, BRUTUS (the two tribunes), with others.

MENENIUS     No, I’ll not go: you hear what he hath said

Which was sometime his general, who lov’d him

In a most dear particular. He call’d me father:

But what o’ that? Go you that banish’d him;

A mile before his tent fall down, and knee

5

The way into his mercy. Nay, if he coy’d

To hear Cominius speak, I’ll keep at home.

COMINIUS     He would not seem to know me.

MENENIUS     Do you hear?

COMINIUS     Yet one time he did call me by my name.

I urg’d our old acquaintance, and the drops

10

That we have bled together. ‘Coriolanus’

He would not answer to; forbad all names:

He was a kind of nothing, titleless,

Till he had forg’d himself a name o’th’ fire

Of burning Rome.

MENENIUS     Why, so: you have made good work!

15

A pair of tribunes that have wrack’d for Rome

To make coals cheap: a noble memory!

COMINIUS     I minded him how royal ’twas to pardon

When it was less expected. He replied

It was a bare petition of a state

20

To one whom they had punish’d.

MENENIUS     Very well.

Could he say less?

COMINIUS     I offer’d to awaken his regard

For’s private friends. His answer to me was

He could not stay to pick them in a pile

25

Of noisome musty chaff. He said ’twas folly,

For one poor grain or two, to leave unburnt

And still to nose th’offence.

MENENIUS     For one poor grain or two?

I am one of those; his mother, wife, his child,

And this brave fellow too: we are the grains,

30

You are the musty chaff, and you are smelt

Above the moon. We must be burnt for you.

SICINIUS     Nay, pray be patient. If you refuse your aid

In this so never-needed help, yet do not

Upbraid’s with our distress. But sure, if you

35

Would be your country’s pleader, your good tongue

More than the instant army we can make,

Might stop our countryman.

MENENIUS     No, I’ll not meddle.

SICINIUS     Pray you go to him.

MENENIUS     What should I do?

BRUTUS     Only make trial what your love can do

40

For Rome, towards Martius.

MENENIUS     Well, and say that Martius

Return me, as Cominius is return’d,

Unheard; what then?

But as a discontented friend, grief-shot

With his unkindness? Say’t be so?

SICINIUS     Yet your good will

45

Must have that thanks from Rome after the measure

As you intended well.

MENENIUS     I’ll undertake’t.

I think he’ll hear me. Yet to bite his lip

And hum at good Cominius, much unhearts me.

He was not taken well; he had not din’d:

50

The veins unfill’d, our blood is cold, and then

We pout upon the morning, are unapt

To give or to forgive; but when we have stuff’d

These pipes and these conveyances of our blood

With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls

55

Than in our priest-like fasts. Therefore I’ll watch

him

Till he be dieted to my request,

And then I’ll set upon him.

BRUTUS     You know the very road into his kindness,

And cannot lose your way.

MENENIUS     Good faith, I’ll prove him,

60

Speed how it will. I shall ere long have knowledge

Of my success.     Exit.

COMINIUS     He’ll never hear him.

SICINIUS     Not?

COMINIUS     I tell you, he does sit in gold, his eye

Red as ’twould burn Rome; and his injury

The gaoler to his pity. I kneel’d before him:

65

’Twas very faintly he said ‘Rise’, dismiss’d me

Thus, with his speechless hand. What he would do

He sent in writing after me: what he would not,

Bound with an oath to yield to his conditions:

So that all hope is vain,

70

Unless his noble mother and his wife,

Who, as I hear, mean to solicit him

For mercy to his country. Therefore let’s hence,

And with our fair entreaties haste them on.     Exeunt.

5.2 Enter MENENIUS to the Watch or guard.

1 WATCH     Stay! Whence are you?

2 WATCH     Stand, and go back!

MENENIUS

You guard like men; ’tis well. But, by your leave,

I am an officer of state, and come

To speak with Coriolanus.

1 WATCH     From whence?

MENENIUS     From Rome.

1 WATCH

You may not pass; you must return: our general

5

Will no more hear from thence.

2 WATCH

You’ll see your Rome embrac’d with fire before

You’ll speak with Coriolanus.

MENENIUS     Good my friends,

If you have heard your general talk of Rome

And of his friends there, it is lots to blanks

10

My name hath touch’d your ears: it is Menenius.

1 WATCH

Be it so, go back: the virtue of your name

Is not here passable.

MENENIUS     I tell thee, fellow,

Thy general is my lover. I have been

The book of his good acts whence men have read

15

His fame unparallel’d, haply amplified;

For I have ever verified my friends,

Of whom he’s chief, with all the size that verity

Would without lapsing suffer. Nay, sometimes,

Like to a bowl upon a subtle ground,

20

I have tumbled past the throw, and in his praise

Have almost stamp’d the leasing. Therefore, fellow,

I must have leave to pass.

1 WATCH     Faith, sir, if you had told as many lies in his

behalf as you have uttered words in your own, you

25

should not pass here; no, though it were as virtuous to

lie as to live chastely. Therefore go back.

MENENIUS     Prithee, fellow, remember my name is

Menenius, always factionary on the party of your

general.

30

2 WATCH     Howsoever you have been his liar, as you say

you have, I am one that, telling true under him, must

say you cannot pass. Therefore go back.

MENENIUS     Has he dined, canst thou tell? For I would

not speak with him till after dinner.

35

1 WATCH     You are a Roman, are you?

MENENIUS     I am as thy general is.

1 WATCH     Then you should hate Rome, as he does.

Can you, when you have pushed out your gates the

very defender of them, and, in a violent popular

40

ignorance, given your enemy your shield, think to

front his revenges with the easy groans of old women,

the virginal palms of your daughters, or with the

palsied intercession of such a decayed dotant as you

seem to be? Can you think to blow out the intended

45

fire your city is ready to flame in, with such weak

breath as this? No, you are deceived; therefore back

to Rome, and prepare for your execution. You are

condemned; our general has sworn you out of reprieve

and pardon.

50

MENENIUS     Sirrah, if thy captain knew I were here, he

would use me with estimation.

1 WATCH     Come, my captain knows you not.

MENENIUS     I mean thy general.

1 WATCH     My general cares not for you. Back, I say, go:

55

lest I let forth your half-pint of blood. Back, that’s the

utmost of your having. Back!

MENENIUS     Nay, but fellow, fellow –

Enter CORIOLANUS with AUFIDIUS.

CORIOLANUS     What’s the matter?

MENENIUS     Now, you companion, I’ll say an errand for

60

you; you shall know now that I am in estimation; you

shall perceive that a Jack guardant cannot office me

from my son Coriolanus. Guess but by my

entertainment with him, if thou stand’st not i’th’ state

of hanging, or of some death more long in

65

spectatorship and crueller in suffering. Behold now

presently, and swound for what’s to come upon thee.

[to Coriolanus] The glorious gods sit in hourly synod

about thy particular prosperity, and love thee no worse

than thy old father Menenius does! O my son, my son,

70

thou art preparing fire for us: look thee, here’s water

to quench it. I was hardly moved to come to thee, but

being assured none but myself could move thee, I have

been blown out of your gates with sighs, and conjure

thee to pardon Rome and thy petitionary countrymen.

75

The good gods assuage thy wrath, and turn the dregs

of it upon this varlet here – this, who, like a block, hath

denied my access to thee.

CORIOLANUS     Away!

MENENIUS     How! Away?

80

CORIOLANUS

Wife, mother, child, I know not. My affairs

Are servanted to others. Though I owe

My revenge properly, my remission lies

In Volscian breasts. That we have been familiar,

Ingrate forgetfulness shall poison rather

85

Than pity note how much. Therefore be gone.

Mine ears against your suits are stronger than

Your gates against my force. Yet, for I lov’d thee,

Take this along; I writ it for thy sake,

And would have sent it. [Gives him a letter.]

     Another word, Menenius,

90

I will not hear thee speak. This man, Aufidius,

Was my belov’d in Rome: yet thou behold’st.

AUFIDIUS     You keep a constant temper.

     Exeunt Coriolanus and Aufidius.

[The Watch and Menenius remain.]

1 WATCH     Now, sir, is your name Menenius?

2 WATCH     ’Tis a spell, you see, of much power. You know

95

the way home again.

1 WATCH     Do you hear how we are shent for keeping

your greatness back?

2 WATCH     What cause do you think I have to swound?

MENENIUS     I neither care for th’ world nor your general.

100

For such things as you, I can scarce think there’s any,

y’are so slight. He that hath a will to die by himself,

fears it not from another: let your general do his worst.

For you, be that you are, long; and your misery

increase with your age! I say to you, as I was said to,

105

Away!     Exit.

1 WATCH     A noble fellow, I warrant him.

2 WATCH     The worthy fellow is our general: he’s the

rock, the oak not to be wind-shaken.     Exeunt.

5.3 Enter CORIOLANUS and AUFIDIUS with others.

CORIOLANUS

We will before the walls of Rome tomorrow

Set down our host. My partner in this action,

You must report to th’ Volscian lords how plainly

I have borne this business.

AUFIDIUS     Only their ends

You have respected, stopp’d your ears against

5

The general suit of Rome: never admitted

A private whisper, no, not with such friends

That thought them sure of you.

CORIOLANUS     This last old man,

Whom with a crack’d heart I have sent to Rome,

Lov’d me above the measure of a father,

10

Nay, godded me indeed. Their latest refuge

Was to send him; for whose old love I have

(Though I show’d sourly to him) once more offer’d

The first conditions, which they did refuse

And cannot now accept, to grace him only

15

That thought he could do more. A very little

I have yielded to. Fresh embassies and suits,

Nor from the state nor private friends, hereafter

Will I lend ear to. [Shout within.]

     Ha! what shout is this?

Shall I be tempted to infringe my vow

20

In the same time ’tis made? I will not.

Enter VIRGILIA, VOLUMNIA, VALERIA, YOUNG MARTIUS, with attendants.

My wife comes foremost; then the honour’d mould

Wherein this trunk was fram’d, and in her hand

The grandchild to her blood. But out, affection!

All bond and privilege of nature break!

25

Let it be virtuous to be obstinate.

What is that curtsy worth? or those doves’ eyes,

Which can make gods forsworn? I melt, and am not

Of stronger earth than others. My mother bows,

As if Olympus to a molehill should

30

In supplication nod; and my young boy

Hath an aspect of intercession which

Great nature cries, ‘Deny not’. Let the Volsces

Plough Rome and harrow Italy; I’ll never

Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand

35

As if a man were author of himself

And knew no other kin.

VIRGILIA     My lord and husband!

CORIOLANUS

These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome.

VIRGILIA     The sorrow that delivers us thus chang’d

Makes you think so.

CORIOLANUS     Like a dull actor now

40

I have forgot my part and I am out,

Even to a full disgrace. Best of my flesh,

Forgive my tyranny; but do not say,

For that ‘Forgive our Romans’. O, a kiss

Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!

45

Now by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss

I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip

Hath virgin’d it e’er since. You gods! I prate,

And the most noble mother of the world

Leave unsaluted. Sink, my knee, i’th’ earth: [Kneels.]

50

Of thy deep duty more impression show

Than that of common sons.

VOLUMNIA     Oh, stand up bless’d!

Whilst, with no softer cushion than the flint,

I kneel before thee, and unproperly

Show duty as mistaken all this while

55

Between the child and parent. [Kneels.]

CORIOLANUS     What’s this?

Your knees to me? to your corrected son?

Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach

Fillip the stars. Then let the mutinous winds

Strike the proud cedars ’gainst the fiery sun,

60

Murd’ring impossibility, to make

What cannot be, slight work!

VOLUMNIA     Thou art my warrior:

I holp to frame thee. Do you know this lady?

CORIOLANUS     The noble sister of Publicola,

The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle

65

That’s curdied by the frost from purest snow

And hangs on Dian’s temple! Dear Valeria!

VOLUMNIA     This is a poor epitome of yours,

Which by th’interpretation of full time

May show like all yourself.

CORIOLANUS     The god of soldiers,

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With the consent of supreme Jove, inform

Thy thoughts with nobleness, that thou mayst prove

To shame unvulnerable, and stick i’th’ wars

Like a great sea-mark standing every flaw

And saving those that eye thee!

VOLUMNIA     Your knee, sirrah.

75

CORIOLANUS     That’s my brave boy!

VOLUMNIA     Even he, your wife, this lady and myself

Are suitors to you.

CORIOLANUS     I beseech you, peace!

Or, if you’d ask, remember this before:

The thing I have forsworn to grant may never

80

Be held by you denials. Do not bid me

Dismiss my soldiers, or capitulate

Again with Rome’s mechanics. Tell me not

Wherein I seem unnatural. Desire not

T’allay my rages and revenges with

85

Your colder reasons.

VOLUMNIA     Oh, no more, no more!

You have said you will not grant us anything:

For we have nothing else to ask but that

Which you deny already. Yet we will ask,

That if you fail in our request, the blame

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May hang upon your hardness: therefore hear us.

CORIOLANUS

Aufidius, and you Volsces, mark; for we’ll

Hear nought from Rome in private. Your request?

VOLUMNIA

Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment

And state of bodies would bewray what life

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We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself

How more unfortunate than all living women

Are we come hither; since that thy sight, which

should

Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with

comforts,

Constrains them weep, and shake with fear and

sorrow,

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Making the mother, wife and child to see

The son, the husband and the father, tearing

His country’s bowels out. And to poor we

Thine enmity’s most capital. Thou barr’st us

Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort

105

That all but we enjoy; for how can we,

Alas! how can we for our country pray,

Whereto we are bound, together with thy victory,

Whereto we are bound? Alack, or we must lose

The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person,

110

Our comfort in the country. We must find

An evident calamity, though we had

Our wish, which side should win: for either thou

Must as a foreign recreant be led

With manacles through our streets, or else

115

Triumphantly tread on thy country’s ruin,

And bear the palm for having bravely shed

Thy wife and children’s blood. For myself, son,

I purpose not to wait on fortune till

These wars determine. If I cannot persuade thee

120

Rather to show a noble grace to both parts,

Than seek the end of one, thou shalt no sooner

March to assault thy country than to tread –

Trust to’t, thou shalt not – on thy mother’s womb

That brought thee to this world.

VIRGILIA     Ay, and mine,

125

That brought you forth this boy to keep your name

Living to time.

YOUNG MARTIUS     A shall not tread on me.

I’ll run away till I am bigger, but then I’ll fight.

CORIOLANUS     Not of a woman’s tenderness to be,

130

Requires nor child nor woman’s face to see.

I have sat too long. [rising]

VOLUMNIA     Nay, go not from us thus.

If it were so that our request did tend

To save the Romans, thereby to destroy

135

The Volsces whom you serve, you might condemn us

As poisonous of your honour. No, our suit

Is that you reconcile them: while the Volsces

May say, ‘This mercy we have show’d’, the Romans,

‘This we receiv’d’; and each in either side

140

Give the all-hail to thee, and cry, ‘Be bless’d

For making up this peace!’ Thou know’st, great son,

The end of war’s uncertain, but this certain,

That if thou conquer Rome, the benefit

Which thou shalt thereby reap is such a name

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Whose repetition will be dogg’d with curses,

Whose chronicle thus writ: ‘The man was noble,

But with his last attempt he wip’d it out,

Destroy’d his country, and his name remains

To th’insuing age abhorr’d.’ Speak to me, son:

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Thou has affected the fine strains of honour,

To imitate the graces of the gods,

To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o’th’ air,

And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt

That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?

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Think’st thou it honourable for a noble man

Still to remember wrongs? Daughter, speak you:

He cares not for your weeping. Speak thou, boy:

Perhaps thy childishness will move him more

Than can our reasons. There’s no man in the world

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More bound to’s mother, yet here he lets me prate

Like one i’th’ stocks. Thou hast never in thy life

Show’d thy dear mother any courtesy,

When she, poor hen, fond of no second brood,

Has cluck’d thee to the wars, and safely home,

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Loaden with honour. Say my request’s unjust,

And spurn me back; but if it be not so,

Thou art not honest, and the gods will plague thee

That thou restrain’st from me the duty which

To a mother’s part belongs. He turns away.

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Down ladies: let us shame him with our knees.

To his surname Coriolanus longs more pride

Than pity to our prayers. Down! an end:

This is the last. So, we will home to Rome

And die among our neighbours. Nay, behold’s,

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This boy that cannot tell what he would have,

But kneels, and holds up hands for fellowship,

Does reason our petition with more strength

Than thou hast to deny’t. Come, let us go:

This fellow had a Volscian to his mother;

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His wife is in Corioles, and his child

Like him by chance. Yet give us our dispatch:

I am husht until our city be afire,

And then I’ll speak a little.

CORIOLANUS     [Holds her by the hand silent.]

O mother, mother!

185

What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope,

The gods look down, and this unnatural scene

They laugh at. O my mother, mother! O!

You have won a happy victory to Rome;

But for your son, believe it, O, believe it,

190

Most dangerously you have with him prevail’d,

If not most mortal to him. But let it come.

Aufidius, though I cannot make true wars,

I’ll frame convenient peace. Now, good Aufidius,

Were you in my stead, would you have heard

195

A mother less? or granted less, Aufidius?

AUFIDIUS     I was mov’d withal.

CORIOLANUS     I dare be sworn you were:

And sir, it is no little thing to make

Mine eyes to sweat compassion. But, good sir,

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What peace you’ll make, advise me. For my part,

I’ll not to Rome, I’ll back with you; and pray you,

Stand to me in this cause. O mother! wife!

AUFIDIUS     [aside]

I am glad thou hast set thy mercy and thy honour

At difference in thee. Out of that I’ll work

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Myself a former fortune.

CORIOLANUS     [to Volumnia, Virgilia, etc.] Ay, by and by;

But we will drink together; and you shall bear

A better witness back than words, which we,

On like conditions, will have counterseal’d.

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Come, enter with us. Ladies, you deserve

To have a temple built you. All the swords

In Italy and her confederate arms

Could not have made this peace.     Exeunt.

5.4 Enter MENENIUS and SICINIUS.

MENENIUS     See you yond coign o’th’ Capitol, yond

cornerstone?

SICINIUS     Why, what of that?

MENENIUS     If it be possible for you to displace it with

your little finger, there is some hope the ladies of

5

Rome, especially his mother, may prevail with him.

But I say there is no hope in’t; our throats are

sentenced and stay upon execution.

SICINIUS     Is’t possible that so short a time can alter the

condition of a man?

10

MENENIUS     There is differency between a grub and a

butterfly; yet your butterfly was a grub. This Martius

is grown from man to dragon: he has wings: he’s more

than a creeping thing.

SICINIUS     He loved his mother dearly.

15

MENENIUS     So did he me; and he no more remembers

his mother now than an eight-year-old horse. The

tartness of his face sours ripe grapes. When he walks,

he moves like an engine and the ground shrinks before

his treading. He is able to pierce a corslet with his

20

eye, talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery. He sits

in his state as a thing made for Alexander. What he

bids be done is finished with his bidding. He wants

nothing of a god but eternity, and a heaven to throne

in.

25

SICINIUS     Yes, mercy, if you report him truly.

MENENIUS     I paint him in the character. Mark what

mercy his mother shall bring from him. There is no

more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger;

that shall our poor city find; and all this is long of you.

30

SICINIUS     The gods be good unto us.

MENENIUS     No, in such a case the gods will not be good

unto us. When we banished him, we respected not

them; and, he returning to break our necks, they

respect not us.

35

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     

Sir, if you’d save your life, fly to your house.

The plebeians have got your fellow-tribune,

And hale him up and down, all swearing, if

The Roman ladies bring not comfort home,

They’ll give him death by inches.

Enter another Messenger.

SICINIUS     What’s the news?

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2 MESSENGER

Good news, good news! The ladies have prevail’d,

The Volscians are dislodg’d, and Martius gone.

     Exeunt attendants.

A merrier day did never yet greet Rome,

No, not th’expulsion of the Tarquins.

SICINIUS     Friend,

Art thou certain this is true? Is’t most certain?

45

2 MESSENGER     As certain as I know the sun is fire.

Where have you lurk’d that you make doubt of it?

Ne’er through an arch so hurried the blown tide

As the recomforted through th’gates. Why, hark you!

     [Trumpets, hautboys, drums beat, all together.]

The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries and fifes,

50

Tabors and cymbals and the shouting Romans

Make the sun dance. Hark you! [A shout within.]

MENENIUS     This is good news.

I will go meet the ladies. This Volumnia

Is worth of consuls, senators, patricians,

A city full; of tribunes such as you,

55

A sea and land full. You have pray’d well today.

This morning for ten thousand of your throats

I’d not have given a doit. Hark, how they joy!

[Sound still with the shouts.]

SICINIUS

First, the gods bless you for your tidings; next

Accept my thankfulness.

2 MESSENGER     Sir, we have all

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Great cause to give great thanks.

SICINIUS     They are near the city?

2 MESSENGER     Almost at point to enter.

SICINIUS     We’ll meet them,

And help the joy.     Exeunt.

5.5 Enter two Senators, with the ladies VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA and VALERIA, passing over the stage, with other lords.

1 SENATOR

Behold our patroness, the life of Rome!

Call all your tribes together, praise the gods,

And make triumphant fires. Strew flowers before

them;

Unshout the noise that banish’d Martius;

Repeal him with the welcome of his mother:

5

Cry, ‘Welcome, ladies, welcome!’

ALL     Welcome, ladies,

Welcome!

A flourish with drums and trumpets. Exeunt.

5.6 Enter TULLUS AUFIDIUS, with attendants.

AUFIDIUS     Go tell the lords o’th’ city I am here.

Deliver them this paper. Having read it,

Bid them repair to th’market-place, where I,

Even in theirs and in the commons’ ears,

Will vouch the truth of it. Him I accuse

5

The city ports by this hath enter’d, and

Intends t’appear before the people, hoping

To purge himself with words. Dispatch.

     Exeunt attendants.

Enter three or four Conspirators of Aufidius’s faction.

Most welcome.

1 CONSPIRATOR     How is it with our general?

AUFIDIUS     Even so

10

As with a man by his own alms empoison’d,

And with his charity slain.

2 CONSPIRATOR     Most noble sir,

If you do hold the same intent wherein

You wish’d us parties, we’ll deliver you

Of your great danger.

AUFIDIUS     Sir, I cannot tell.

15

We must proceed as we do find the people.

3 CONSPIRATOR

The people will remain uncertain whilst

’Twixt you there’s difference; but the fall of either

Makes the survivor heir of all.

AUFIDIUS     I know it,

And my pretext to strike at him admits

20

A good construction. I rais’d him, and I pawn’d

Mine honour for his truth; who being so heighten’d,

He water’d his new plants with dews of flattery,

Seducing so my friends; and to this end

He bow’d his nature, never known before

25

But to be rough, unswayable and free.

3 CONSPIRATOR     Sir, his stoutness

When he did stand for consul, which he lost

By lack of stooping –

AUFIDIUS     That I would have spoke of.

Being banish’d for’t, he came unto my hearth,

30

Presented to my knife his throat; I took him,

Made him joint-servant with me, gave him way

In all his own desires; nay, let him choose

Out of my files, his projects to accomplish,

My best and freshest men; serv’d his designments

35

In mine own person; holp to reap the fame

Which he did end all his; and took some pride

To do myself this wrong: till at the last

I seem’d his follower, not partner, and

He wag’d me with his countenance, as if

40

I had been mercenary.

1 CONSPIRATOR     So he did, my lord.

The army marvell’d at it, and in the last,

When he had carried Rome, and that we look’d

For no less spoil than glory –

AUFIDIUS     There was it:

For which my sinews shall be stretch’d upon him;

45

At a few drops of women’s rheum, which are

As cheap as lies, he sold the blood and labour

Of our great action. Therefore shall he die,

And I’ll renew me in his fall. But hark!

     [Drums and trumpets sound,

     with great shouts of the people.]

1 CONSPIRATOR

Your native town you enter’d like a post,

50

And had no welcomes home; but he returns

Splitting the air with noise.

2 CONSPIRATOR     And patient fools,

Whose children he hath slain, their base throats tear

With giving him glory.

3 CONSPIRATOR     Therefore, at your vantage,

Ere he express himself or move the people

55

With what he would say, let him feel your sword,

Which we will second. When he lies along,

After your way his tale pronounc’d shall bury

His reasons with his body.

AUFIDIUS     Say no more.

Here come the lords.

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Enter the Lords of the city.

ALL LORDS     You are most welcome home.

AUFIDIUS     I have not deserv’d it.

But, worthy lords, have you with heed perus’d

What I have written to you?

ALL LORDS     We have.

1 LORD     And grieve to hear’t.

What faults he made before the last, I think

Might have found easy fines; but there to end

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Where he was to begin, and give away

The benefit of our levies, answering us

With our own charge, making a treaty where

There was a yielding: this admits no excuse.

AUFIDIUS

He approaches: you shall hear him.

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Enter CORIOLANUS marching with drum and colours, the Commoners being with him.

CORIOLANUS     Hail lords, I am return’d your soldier,

No more infected with my country’s love

Than when I parted hence, but still subsisting

Under your great command. You are to know

That prosperously I have attempted, and

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With bloody passage led your wars even to

The gates of Rome. Our spoils we have brought

home

Doth more than counterpoise a full third part

The charges of the action. We have made peace

With no less honour to the Antiates

80

Than shame to th’ Romans; and we here deliver,

Subscrib’d by th’ consuls and patricians,

Together with the seal o’th’ senate, what

We have compounded on.

AUFIDIUS     Read it not, noble lords;

But tell the traitor in the highest degree

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He hath abus’d your powers.

CORIOLANUS     Traitor? How now!

AUFIDIUS     Ay, traitor, Martius!

CORIOLANUS     Martius!

AUFIDIUS     Ay, Martius, Caius Martius! Dost thou think

I’ll grace thee with that robbery, thy stol’n name

Coriolanus, in Corioles?

90

You lords and heads o’th’ state, perfidiously

He has betray’d your business, and given up,

For certain drops of salt, your city Rome,

I say ‘your city’, to his wife and mother;

Breaking his oath and resolution, like

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A twist of rotten silk, never admitting

Counsel o’th’ war: but at his nurse’s tears

He whin’d and roar’d away your victory,

That pages blush’d at him, and men of heart

Look’d wond’ring each at others.

CORIOLANUS     Hear’st thou, Mars?

100

AUFIDIUS     Name not the god, thou boy of tears!

CORIOLANUS     Ha!

AUFIDIUS     No more.

CORIOLANUS

Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart

Too great for what contains it. ‘Boy’! O slave!

Pardon me, lords, ’tis the first time that ever

105

I was forc’d to scold. Your judgements, my grave

lords,

Must give this cur the lie; and his own notion,

Who wears my stripes impress’d upon him, that

Must bear my beating to his grave, shall join

To thrust the lie unto him.

1 LORD     Peace, both, and hear me speak.

110

CORIOLANUS     Cut me to pieces, Volsces, men and lads,

Stain all your edges on me. Boy! False hound!

If you have writ your annals true, ’tis there,

That like an eagle in a dove-cote, I

Flutter’d your Volscians in Corioles.

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Alone I did it. Boy!

AUFIDIUS     Why, noble lords,

Will you be put in mind of his blind fortune,

Which was your shame, by this unholy braggart,

’Fore your own eyes and ears?

ALL CONSPIRATORS     Let him die for’t.

ALL PEOPLE     Tear him to pieces! Do it presently! He

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killed my son! My daughter! He killed my cousin

Marcus! He killed my father!

2 LORD     Peace, ho! no outrage, peace!

The man is noble, and his fame folds in

This orb o’th’ earth. His last offences to us

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Shall have judicious hearing. Stand, Aufidius,

And trouble not the peace.

CORIOLANUS     O that I had him,

With six Aufidiuses, or more, his tribe,

To use my lawful sword.

AUFIDIUS     Insolent villian!

ALL CONSPIRATORS     Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him!

[The Conspirators draw, and kill Martius, who falls;

Aufidius stands on him.]

LORDS     Hold, hold, hold, hold!

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AUFIDIUS     My noble masters, hear me speak.

1 LORD     O Tullus!

2 LORD

Thou hast done a deed whereat valour will weep.

3 LORD     Tread not upon him. Masters all, be quiet!

Put up your swords.

AUFIDIUS

My lords, when you shall know (as in this rage,

135

Provok’d by him, you cannot) the great danger

Which this man’s life did owe you, you’ll rejoice

That he is thus cut off. Please it your honours

To call me to your senate, I’ll deliver

Myself your loyal servant or endure

140

Your heaviest censure.

1 LORD     Bear from hence his body,

And mourn you for him. Let him be regarded

As the most noble corse that ever herald

Did follow to his urn.

2 LORD     His own impatience

Takes from Aufidius a great part of blame.

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Let’s make the best of it.

AUFIDIUS     My rage is gone,

And I am struck with sorrow. Take him up.

Help, three o’th’ chiefest soldiers. I’ll be one.

Beat thou the drum that it speak mournfully;

Trail your steel pikes. Though in this city he

150

Hath widow’d and unchilded many a one,

Which to this hour bewail the injury,

Yet he shall have a noble memory.

Assist.     Exeunt, bearing the body of Martius.

     A dead march sounded.

Cymbeline

Cymbeline is one of the eighteen plays never printed in Shakespeare’s lifetime and first published in the Folio of 1623. On the basis of style and structure, scholars date it about 1610. In 1611, Simon Forman recorded in a commonplace book an account of the plot of ‘Cymbalin’, among several plays he saw at the Globe between April and September, when he died.

Cymbeline is unexpectedly placed in the Folio as the last of the tragedies. Though today the play’s affinities with the other late romances, Pericles, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest, are unmistakable, the Folio editors either struggled to determine the play’s genre or were aware that ‘tragedy with a happy ending’ was recognized by some critics. It is certainly a play in which two central characters die, ghosts appear, Jupiter throws thunderbolts and descends riding upon an eagle, and it lacks overtly comic characters. Dr Johnson’s impatience with its anachronistic mixing of the Rome of the first century BC with sixteenth-century Europe and his notorious reference to the plot’s ‘unresisting imbecility’ reflect his own, and his age’s, lack of sympathy with romantic fictions.

The very incongruities that Johnson scorned are arguably the essence of the play’s vision. The bewildering series of reversals and revelations that permits the play’s three plots to come together in a marvellous conclusion is the apt denouement of what Granville Barker, with fuller sympathy, called the play’s ‘sophisticated artlessness’. In part this is, no doubt, a reflection of a new literary fashion for Italianate tragicomedy represented by such plays as Beaumont and Fletcher’s popular Philaster (1609); but Shakespeare’s use of this experimental form and dramaturgy imbues it with a power that is uniquely his own. Each of the play’s three plot lines – that of Imogen’s love and Posthumus’ jealousy, that of Cymbeline’s long-lost sons and that of Britain’s challenge to the power of Rome – while very different in tone, even perhaps in genre, enacts the same archetypal pattern of innocence-fall-redemption; and each proves the truth of Caius Lucius’ claim: ‘Some falls are means the happier to arise.’ Each originates in Cymbeline’s own misvaluing of a relationship, so that Posthumus and Belarius are exiled from the court, Imogen is threatened with Cloten’s courtship and Britain is isolated from the wider community of the Roman world. In each plot characters move from error to truth, from scepticism to faith, from hatred to love; and each plot, from the individual regeneration of Posthumus, to the royal family reunion and the international reconciliation of Britain and Rome, describes an ever more inclusive circle of harmony.

In the final scene, all comes together. Cymbeline, the least informed figure on stage, faces one discovery after another (one critic counts twenty-five), but all the others also acquire knowledge that redeems the tragic potentialities of the play, and everything of value is restored. Confusion and loss are replaced by clarity and gain; families and nations are reunited and at peace. The comic order, as the soothsayer says of his vision, ‘at this instant / Is full accomplished’. And if here we hear an echo of Christ’s ‘consummatum est’, perhaps it is because the achievement of harmony in the play serves in some measure as a secular analogue to the ‘rarer action’ of salvation history. It can hardly be coincidental that the best known fact about the early British king Cymbeline was that he ruled at the moment of the Incarnation.

On 1 January 1634, the play was performed at court for Charles I, and it was ‘well liked by the king’. From the Restoration onwards, Cymbeline has remained a play better liked in the theatre than in the study. Distressed by inadequate productions of Cymbeline he had seen, George Bernard Shaw notoriously altered the last act. His Cymbeline Refinished (1937) eliminates Jupiter descending on his holy eagle, cuts out the heroic actions of Guiderius and Arviragus, and in general recreates the characters and relationships in the manner of Ibsen. His aim was partly critical of what, in his habitual vein of Bardoclastic provocation, he called the ‘tedious … sentimentality’ of the fifth act, but his more serious challenge was to theatre companies to have the courage to stage the full text of it, including Posthumus’ vision. He offered his rewriting as an alternative only to the truncated texts, not the full one.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

CYMBELINE

King of Britain

CLOTEN

son to the Queen by a former husband

POSTHUMUS Leonatus

a gentleman, husband to Imogen

BELARIUS

a banished lord, disguised under the name of Morgan

GUIDERIUS

son to Cymbeline, disguised under the name of Polydore, supposed son to Morgan

ARVIRAGUS

son to Cymbeline, disguised under the name of Cadwal, supposed son to Morgan

PHILARIO

friend to Posthumus, Italian

IACHIMO

friend to Philario, Italian

Caius LUCIUS

general of the Roman forces

PISANIO

servant to Posthumus

CORNELIUS

a physician

Philarmonus, a SOOTHSAYER

Roman CAPTAIN

Two British CAPTAINS

FRENCHMAN

friend to Philario

TWO LORDS

of Cymbeline’s Court

TWO GENTLEMEN

of the same

TWO GAOLERS

QUEEN

wife to Cymbeline

IMOGEN

daughter to Cymbeline by a former Queen

Helen, a LADY

attending on Imogen

apparitions

Lords, Ladies, Roman Senators, Tribunes, a Dutchman, a Spaniard, Musicians, Officers, Captains, Soldiers, Messengers and other Attendants.

Cymbeline

1.1 Enter two Gentlemen.

1 GENTLEMAN

You do not meet a man but frowns: our bloods

No more obey the heavens than our courtiers

Still seem as does the king’s.

2 GENTLEMAN     But what’s the matter?

1 GENTLEMAN

His daughter, and the heir of’s kingdom (whom

He purpos’d to his wife’s sole son – a widow

5

That late he married) hath referr’d herself

Unto a poor but worthy gentleman. She’s wedded,

Her husband banish’d; she imprison’d, all

Is outward sorrow, though I think the king

Be touch’d at very heart.

2 GENTLEMAN     None but the king?

10

1 GENTLEMAN

He that hath lost her too: so is the queen,

That most desir’d the match. But not a courtier,

Although they wear their faces to the bent

Of the king’s looks, hath a heart that is not

Glad at the thing they scowl at.

2 GENTLEMAN     And why so?

15

1 GENTLEMAN

He that hath miss’d the princess is a thing

Too bad for bad report: and he that hath her

(I mean, that married her, alack good man,

And therefore banish’d) is a creature such

As, to seek through the regions of the earth

20

For one his like; there would be something failing

In him that should compare. I do not think

So fair an outward, and such stuff within

Endows a man, but he.

2 GENTLEMAN     You speak him far.

1 GENTLEMAN

I do extend him, sir, within himself,

25

Crush him together, rather than unfold

His measure duly.

2 GENTLEMAN     What’s his name and birth?

1 GENTLEMAN

I cannot delve him to the root: his father

Was call’d Sicilius, who did join his honour

Against the Romans with Cassibelan,

30

But had his titles by Tenantius, whom

He served with glory and admired success:

So gain’d the sur-addition Leonatus:

And had (besides this gentleman in question)

Two other sons, who in the wars o’th’ time

35

Died with their swords in hand. For which their

father,

Then old, and fond of issue, took such sorrow

That he quit being; and his gentle lady,

Big of this gentleman (our theme) deceas’d

As he was born. The king he takes the babe

40

To his protection, calls him Posthumus Leonatus,

Breeds him, and makes him of his bed-chamber,

Puts to him all the learnings that his time

Could make him the receiver of, which he took,

As we do air, fast as ’twas minister’d,

45

And in’s spring became a harvest: liv’d in court

(Which rare it is to do) most prais’d, most lov’d;

A sample to the youngest, to th’ more mature

A glass that feated them, and to the graver

A child that guided dotards. To his mistress,

50

(For whom he now is banish’d) her own price

Proclaims how she esteem’d him; and his virtue

By her election may be truly read

What kind of man he is.

2 GENTLEMAN     I honour him,

Even out of your report. But pray you tell me,

55

Is she sole child to th’ king?

1 GENTLEMAN     His only child.

He had two sons (if this be worth your hearing,

Mark it) the eldest of them at three years old,

I’ th’ swathing-clothes the other, from their nursery

Were stol’n; and to this hour no guess in knowledge

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Which way they went.

2 GENTLEMAN     How long is this ago?

1 GENTLEMAN   Some twenty years.

2 GENTLEMAN

That a king’s children should be so convey’d,

So slackly guarded, and the search so slow

That could not trace them!

1 GENTLEMAN     Howsoe’er ’tis strange,

65

Or that the negligence may well be laugh’d at,

Yet is it true, sir.

2 GENTLEMAN     I do well believe you.

1 GENTLEMAN

We must forbear. Here comes the gentleman,

The queen, and princess.     Exeunt.

1.2 Enter the QUEEN, POSTHUMUS and IMOGEN.

QUEEN   No, be assur’d you shall not find me, daughter,

After the slander of most stepmothers,

Evil-ey’d unto you. You’re my prisoner, but

Your gaoler shall deliver you the keys

That lock up your restraint. For you Posthumus,

5

So soon as I can win th’offended king,

I will be known your advocate: marry, yet

The fire of rage is in him, and ’twere good

You lean’d unto his sentence, with what patience

Your wisdom may inform you.

POSTHUMUS     Please your highness,

10

I will from hence to-day.

QUEEN     You know the peril.

I’ll fetch a turn about the garden, pitying

The pangs of barr’d affections, though the king

Hath charg’d you should not speak together.     Exit.

IMOGEN     O

Dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant

15

Can tickle where she wounds! My dearest husband,

I something fear my father’s wrath, but nothing

(Always reserv’d my holy duty) what

His rage can do on me. You must be gone,

And I shall here abide the hourly shot

20

Of angry eyes: not comforted to live,

But that there is this jewel in the world

That I may see again.

POSTHUMUS     My queen, my mistress:

O lady, weep no more, lest I give cause

To be suspected of more tenderness

25

Than doth become a man. I will remain

The loyal’st husband that did e’er plight troth.

My residence in Rome, at one Philario’s,

Who to my father was a friend, to me

Known but by letter; thither write, my queen,

30

And with mine eyes I’ll drink the words you send,

Though ink be made of gall.

Re-enter QUEEN.

QUEEN     Be brief, I pray you:

If the king come, I shall incur I know not

How much of his displeasure:

[aside]     yet I’ll move him

To walk this way: I never do him wrong

35

But he does buy my injuries, to be friends:

Pays dear for my offences.     Exit.

POSTHUMUS     Should we be taking leave

As long a term as yet we have to live,

The loathness to depart would grow. Adieu!

IMOGEN     Nay, stay a little:

40

Were you but riding forth to air yourself,

Such parting were too petty. Look here, love;

This diamond was my mother’s; take it, heart;

But keep it till you woo another wife,

When Imogen is dead.

POSTHUMUS     How, how? Another?

45

You gentle gods, give me but this I have,

And sear up my embracements from a next

With bonds of death! Remain, remain thou here,

[putting on the ring]

While sense can keep it on: And sweetest, fairest,

As I my poor self did exchange for you

50

To your so infinite loss; so in our trifles

I still win of you. For my sake wear this,

It is a manacle of love, I’ll place it

Upon this fairest prisoner.

[putting a bracelet on her arm]

IMOGEN     O the gods!

When shall we see again?

Enter CYMBELINE and lords.

POSTHUMUS     Alack, the king!

55

CYMBELINE

Thou basest thing, avoid hence, from my sight!

If after this command thou fraught the court

With thy unworthiness, thou diest. Away!

Thou’rt poison to my blood.

POSTHUMUS     The gods protect you,

And bless the good remainders of the court!

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I am gone.     Exit.

IMOGEN     There cannot be a pinch in death

More sharp than this is.

CYMBELINE     O disloyal thing,

That shouldst repair my youth, thou heap’st

A year’s age on me!

IMOGEN     I beseech you sir,

Harm not yourself with your vexation,

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I am senseless of your wrath; a touch more rare

Subdues all pangs, all fears.

CYMBELINE     Past grace? obedience?

IMOGEN     Past hope, and in despair, that way past grace.

CYMBELINE

That mightst have had the sole son of my queen!

IMOGEN     O blessed, that I might not! I chose an eagle,

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And did avoid a puttock.

CYMBELINE

Thou took’st a beggar, wouldst have made my throne

A seat for baseness.

IMOGEN     No, I rather added

A lustre to it.

CYMBELINE     O thou vile one!

IMOGEN     Sir,

It is your fault that I have lov’d Posthumus:

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You bred him as my playfellow, and he is

A man worth any woman: overbuys me

Almost the sum he pays.

CYMBELINE     What? Art thou mad?

IMOGEN     Almost, sir: heaven restore me! Would I were

A neat-herd’s daughter, and my Leonatus

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Our neighbour-shepherd’s son!

CYMBELINE     Thou foolish thing! –

Re-enter QUEEN.

They were again together: you have done

Not after our command. Away with her,

And pen her up.

QUEEN     Beseech your patience. Peace

Dear lady daughter, peace! – Sweet sovereign,

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Leave us to ourselves, and make yourself some

comfort

Out of your best advice.

CYMBELINE     Nay, let her languish

A drop of blood a day, and being aged

Die of this folly.     Exeunt Cymbeline and lords.

QUEEN     Fie! you must give way.

Enter PISANIO.

Here is your servant. How now, sir? What news?

90

PISANIO     My Lord your son drew on my master.

QUEEN     Ha?

No harm I trust is done?

PISANIO     There might have been,

But that my master rather play’d than fought,

And had no help of anger: they were parted

By gentlemen at hand.

QUEEN     I am very glad on’t.

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IMOGEN

Your son’s my father’s friend, he takes his part

To draw upon an exile. O brave sir!

I would they were in Afric both together,

Myself by with a needle, that I might prick

The goer-back. Why came you from your master?

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PISANIO     On his command: he would not suffer me

To bring him to the haven: left these notes

Of what commands I should be subject to,

When’t pleased you to employ me.

QUEEN     This hath been

Your faithful servant: I dare lay mine honour

105

He will remain so.

PISANIO     I humbly thank your highness

QUEEN     Pray, walk awhile.

IMOGEN

About some half-hour hence, pray you, speak with

me;

You shall (at least) go see my lord aboard.

For this time leave me.     Exeunt.

110

1.3 Enter CLOTEN and two Lords.

1 LORD     Sir, I would advise you to shift a shirt; the

violence of action hath made you reek as a sacrifice:

where air comes out, air comes in: there’s none abroad

so wholesome as that you vent.

CLOTEN     If my shirt were bloody, then to shift it. Have I

5

hurt him?

2 LORD     [aside] No, faith: not so much as his patience.

1 LORD     Hurt him? his body’s a passable carcass, if he be

not hurt. It is a throughfare for steel, if it be not hurt.

2 LORD     [aside] His steel was in debt, it went o’th’

10

backside the town.

CLOTEN     The villain would not stand me.

2 LORD     [aside] No, but he fled forward still, toward your

face.

1 LORD     Stand you? You have land enough of your own:

15

but he added to your having, gave you some ground.

2 LORD     [aside] As many inches as you have oceans.

Puppies!

CLOTEN     I would they had not come between us.

2 LORD     [aside] So would I, till you had measur’d how

20

long a fool you were upon the ground.

CLOTEN     And that she should love this fellow, and refuse

me!

2 LORD     [aside] If it be a sin to make a true election, she

is damn’d.

25

1 LORD     Sir, as I told you always, her beauty and her

brain go not together. She’s a good sign, but I have

seen small reflection of her wit.

2 LORD     [aside] She shines not upon fools, lest the

reflection should hurt her.

30

CLOTEN     Come, I’ll to my chamber. Would there had

been some hurt done!

2 LORD     [aside] I wish not so, unless it had been the fall

of an ass, which is no great hurt.

CLOTEN     You’ll go with us?

35

1 LORD     I’ll attend your lordship.

CLOTEN     Nay come, let’s go together

2 LORD     Well my lord.     Exeunt.

1.4 Enter IMOGEN and PISANIO.

IMOGEN

I would thou grew’st unto the shores o’th’ haven,

And question’dst every sail: if he should write,

And I not have it, ’twere a paper lost

As offer’d mercy is. What was the last

That he spake to thee?

PISANIO     It was, his queen, his queen!

5

IMOGEN     Then wav’d his handkerchief?

PISANIO     And kiss’d it, madam.

IMOGEN     Senseless linen, happier therein than I!

And that was all?

PISANIO     No, madam: for so long

As he could make me with this eye, or ear,

Distinguish him from others, he did keep

10

The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief,

Still waving, as the fits and stirs of’s mind

Could best express how slow his soul sail’d on,

How swift his ship.

IMOGEN     Thou shouldst have made him

As little as a crow, or less, ere left

15

To after-eye him.

PISANIO     Madam, so I did.

IMOGEN

I would have broke mine eye-strings, crack’d them,

but

To look upon him, till the diminution

Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle:

Nay, followed him, till he had melted from

20

The smallness of a gnat, to air: and then

Have turn’d mine eye, and wept. But, good Pisanio,

When shall we hear from him?

PISANIO     Be assur’d, madam,

With his next vantage.

IMOGEN     I did not take my leave of him, but had

25

Most pretty things to say: ere I could tell him

How I would think on him at certain hours,

Such thoughts, and such: or I could make him swear

The shes of Italy should not betray

Mine interest, and his honour; or have charg’d him,

30

At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight,

T’encounter me with orisons, for then

I am in heaven for him; or ere I could

Give him that parting kiss, which I had set

Betwixt two charming words, comes in my father,

35

And like the tyrannous breathing of the north,

Shakes all our buds from growing.

Enter a Lady.

LADY     The queen, madam,

Desires your highness’ company.

IMOGEN

Those things I bid you do, get them dispatch’d. –

I will attend the queen.

PISANIO     Madam, I shall.     Exeunt.

40

1.5 Enter PHILARIO, IACHIMO, a Frenchman, a Dutchman and a Spaniard.

IACHIMO     Believe it sir, I have seen him in Britain; he

was then of a crescent note, expected to prove so

worthy as since he hath been allowed the name of. But

I could then have look’d on him without the help of

admiration, though the catalogue of his endowments

5

had been tabled by his side and I to peruse him by

items.

PHILARIO     You speak of him when he was less furnish’d

than now he is with that which makes him both

without and within.

10

FRENCHMAN     I have seen him in France: we had very

many there could behold the sun with as firm eyes as

he.

IACHIMO     This matter of marrying his king’s daughter,

wherein he must be weighed rather by her value than

15

his own, words him (I doubt not) a great deal from the

matter.

FRENCHMAN     And then his banishment.

IACHIMO     Ay, and the approbation of those that weep

this lamentable divorce under her colours are

20

wonderfully to extend him; be it but to fortify her

judgement, which else an easy battery might lay flat,

for taking a beggar without less quality. But how

comes it he is to sojourn with you? how creeps

acquaintance?

25

PHILARIO     His father and I were soldiers together, to

whom I have been often bound for no less than my life.

– Here comes the Briton. Let him be so entertained

amongst you as suits, with gentlemen of your

knowing, to a stranger of his quality.

30

Enter POSTHUMUS.

I beseech you all be better known to this gentleman,

whom I commend to you as a noble friend of mine.

How worthy he is I will leave to appear hereafter,

rather than story him in his own hearing.

FRENCHMAN     Sir, we have known together in Orleans.

35

POSTHUMUS     Since when I have been debtor to you for

courtesies which I will be ever to pay, and yet pay still.

FRENCHMAN     Sir, you o’er-rate my poor kindness: I was

glad I did atone my countryman and you: it had been

pity you should have been put together, with so mortal

40

a purpose as then each bore, upon importance of so

slight and trivial a nature.

POSTHUMUS     By your pardon, sir, I was then a young

traveller, rather shunn’d to go even with what I heard

than in my every action to be guided by others’

45

experiences: but upon my mended judgement (if I

offend not to say it is mended) my quarrel was not

altogether slight.

FRENCHMAN     Faith yes, to be put to the arbitrement of

swords, and by such two, that would by all likelihood

50

have confounded one the other, or have fallen both.

IACHIMO     Can we with manners ask what was the

difference?

FRENCHMAN     Safely, I think: ’twas a contention in

public, which may (without contradiction) suffer the

55

report. It was much like an argument that fell out last

night, where each of us fell in praise of our country

mistresses; this gentleman at that time vouching (and

upon warrant of bloody affirmation) his to be more

fair, virtuous, wise, chaste, constant, qualified and less

60

attemptable than any the rarest of our ladies in France.

IACHIMO     That lady is not now living; or this

gentleman’s opinion, by this, worn out.

POSTHUMUS     She holds her virtue still, and I my mind.

IACHIMO     You must not so far prefer her ’fore ours of

65

Italy.

POSTHUMUS     Being so far provok’d as I was in France, I

would abate her nothing, though I profess myself her

adorer, not her friend.

IACHIMO     As fair, and as good – a kind of hand-in-hand

70

comparison – had been something too fair, and too

good for any lady in Britany. If she went before others

I have seen, as that diamond of yours outlustres many

I have beheld, I could not believe she excelled many:

but I have not seen the most precious diamond that is,

75

nor you the lady.

POSTHUMUS     I prais’d her as I rated her: so do I my

stone.

IACHIMO     What do you esteem it at?

POSTHUMUS     More than the world enjoys.

80

IACHIMO     Either your unparagon’d mistress is dead, or

she’s outpriz’d by a trifle.

POSTHUMUS     You are mistaken: the one may be sold or

given, or if there were wealth enough for the purchase,

or merit for the gift. The other is not a thing for sale,

85

and only the gift of the gods.

IACHIMO     Which the gods have given you?

POSTHUMUS     Which by their graces I will keep.

IACHIMO     You may wear her in title yours: but you know

strange fowl light upon neighbouring ponds. Your

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ring may be stolen too: so your brace of unprizable

estimations, the one is but frail and the other casual; a

cunning thief, or a (that way) accomplished courtier,

would hazard the winning both of first and last.

POSTHUMUS     Your Italy contains none so accomplish’d

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a courtier to convince the honour of my mistress, if

in the holding or loss of that, you term her frail: I do

nothing doubt you have store of thieves; notwith-

standing, I fear not my ring.

PHILARIO     Let us leave here, gentlemen.

100

POSTHUMUS     Sir, with all my heart. This worthy signior,

I thank him, makes no stranger of me; we are familiar

at first.

IACHIMO     With five times so much conversation, I

should get ground of your fair mistress; make her go

105

back, even to the yielding, had I admittance, and

opportunity to friend.

POSTHUMUS     No, no.

IACHIMO     I dare thereupon pawn the moiety of my

estate, to your ring, which in my opinion o’ervalues it

110

something: but I make my wager rather against your

confidence than her reputation. And to bar your

offence herein too, I durst attempt it against any lady

in the world.

POSTHUMUS     You are a great deal abus’d in too bold a

115

persuasion, and I doubt not you sustain what you’re

worthy of by your attempt.

IACHIMO     What’s that?

POSTHUMUS     A repulse: though your attempt (as you

call it) deserve more; a punishment too.

120

PHILARIO     Gentlemen, enough of this, it came in too

suddenly, let it die as it was born, and I pray you be

better acquainted.

IACHIMO     Would I had put my estate and my

neighbour’s on th’approbation of what I have spoke!

125

POSTHUMUS     What lady would you choose to assail?

IACHIMO     Yours, whom in constancy you think stands so

safe. I will lay you ten thousand ducats to your ring,

that, commend me to the court where your lady is,

with no more advantage than the opportunity of a

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second conference, and I will bring from thence that

honour of hers, which you imagine so reserv’d.

POSTHUMUS     I will wage against your gold, gold to it:

my ring I hold dear as my finger, ’tis part of it.

IACHIMO     You are a friend, and therein the wiser. If you

135

buy ladies’ flesh at a million a dram, you cannot

preserve it from tainting; but I see you have some

religion in you, that you fear.

POSTHUMUS     This is but a custom in your tongue: you

bear a graver purpose I hope.

140

IACHIMO     I am the master of my speeches, and would

undergo what’s spoken, I swear.

POSTHUMUS     Will you? I shall but lend my diamond till

your return: let there be covenants drawn between’s.

My mistress exceeds in goodness the hugeness of your

145

unworthy thinking. I dare you to this match: here’s

my ring.

PHILARIO     I will have it no lay.

IACHIMO     By the gods, it is one. If I bring you no

sufficient testimony that I have enjoy’d the dearest

150

bodily part of your mistress, my ten thousand ducats

are yours, so is your diamond too: if I come off, and

leave her in such honour as you have trust in, she your

jewel, this your jewel, and my gold are yours: provided

I have your commendation for my more free

155

entertainment.

POSTHUMUS     I embrace these conditions, let us have

articles betwixt us. Only, thus far you shall answer: if

you make your voyage upon her, and give me directly

to understand you have prevail’d, I am no further your

160

enemy; she is not worth our debate. If she remain

unseduc’d, you not making it appear otherwise, for

your ill opinion, and th’assault you have made to her

chastity, you shall answer me with your sword.

IACHIMO     Your hand, a covenant: we will have these

165

things set down by lawful counsel, and straight away

for Britain, lest the bargain should catch cold and

starve. I will fetch my gold, and have our two wagers

recorded.

POSTHUMUS     Agreed.     Exeunt Posthumus and Iachimo.

170

FRENCHMAN     Will this hold, think you?

PHILARIO     Signior Iachimo will not from it. Pray let us

follow ’em.     Exeunt.

1.6 Enter QUEEN, Ladies and CORNELIUS.

QUEEN

Whiles yet the dew’s on ground, gather those

flowers;

Make haste. Who has the note of them?

1 LADY     I, madam.

QUEEN     Dispatch.     Exeunt Ladies.

Now master doctor, have you brought those drugs?

CORNELIUS

Pleaseth your highness, ay: here they are, madam:

5

[presenting a small box]

But I beseech your grace, without offence,

(My conscience bids me ask) wherefore you have

Commanded of me these most poisonous

compounds,

Which are the movers of a languishing death:

But though slow, deadly.

QUEEN     I wonder, doctor,

10

Thou ask’st me such a question. Have I not been

Thy pupil long? Hast thou not learn’d me how

To make perfumes? Distil? Preserve? Yea so,

That our great king himself doth woo me oft

For my confections? Having thus far proceeded

15

(Unless thou think’st me devilish) is’t not meet

That I did amplify my judgement in

Other conclusions? I will try the forces

Of these thy compounds on such creatures as

We count not worth the hanging (but none human)

20

To try the vigour of them, and apply

Allayments to their act, and by them gather

Their several virtues, and effects.

CORNELIUS     Your highness

Shall from this practice but make hard your heart:

Besides, the seeing these effects will be

25

Both     noisome and infectious.

QUEEN     O, content thee.

Enter PISANIO.

[aside] Here comes a flattering rascal, upon him

Will I first work: he’s for his master,

And enemy to my son. How now, Pisanio?

Doctor, your service for this time is ended,

30

Take your own way.

CORNELIUS     [aside]     I do suspect you, madam;

But you shall do no harm.

QUEEN     [to Pisanio]     Hark thee, a word.

CORNELIUS     [aside]

I do not like her. She doth think she has

Strange ling’ring poisons: I do know her spirit;

And will not trust one of her malice with

35

A drug of such damn’d nature. Those she has

Will stupefy and dull the sense awhile;

Which first (perchance) she’ll prove on cats and

dogs,

Then afterward up higher: but there is

No danger in what show of death it makes,

40

More than the locking up the spirits a time,

To be more fresh, reviving. She is fool’d

With a most false effect: and I the truer,

So to be false with her.

QUEEN     No further service, doctor,

Until I send for thee.

CORNELIUS     I humbly take my leave.     Exit.

45

QUEEN

Weeps she still, say’st thou? Dost thou think in time

She will not quench, and let instructions enter

Where folly now possesses? Do thou work:

When thou shalt bring me word she loves my son,

I’ll tell thee on the instant, thou art then

50

As great as is thy master: greater, for

His fortunes all lie speechless, and his name

Is at last gasp. Return he cannot, nor

Continue where he is: to shift his being

Is to exchange one misery with another,

55

And every day that comes comes to decay

A day’s work in him. What shalt thou expect,

To be depender on a thing that leans?

Who cannot be new built, nor has no friends,

So much as but to prop him?

[The Queen drops the box. Pisanio takes it up.]

     Thou tak’st up

60

Thou know’st not what: but take it for thy labour:

It is a thing I made, which hath the king

Five times redeem’d from death. I do not know

What is more cordial. Nay, I prithee take it;

It is an earnest of a farther good

65

That I mean to thee. Tell thy mistress how

The case stands with her: do’t, as from thyself;

Think what a chance thou changest on; but think

Thou hast thy mistress still, to boot, my son,

Who shall take notice of thee. I’ll move the king

70

To any shape of thy preferment, such

As thou’lt desire: and then myself, I chiefly,

That set thee on to this desert, am bound

To load thy merit richly. Call my women:

Think on my words.     Exit Pisanio.

     A sly and constant knave.

75

Not to be shak’d: the agent for his master,

And the remembrancer of her to hold

The hand-fast to her lord. I have given him that,

Which if he take, shall quite unpeople her

Of liegers for her sweet: and which she after,

80

Except she bend her humour, shall be assur’d

To taste of too.

Re-enter PISANIO and Ladies.

     So, so: well done, well done:

The violets, cowslips, and the primroses

Bear to my closet. Fare thee well, Pisanio;

Think on my words.     Exeunt Queen and Ladies.

PISANIO     And shall do:

85

But when to my good lord I prove untrue,

I’ll choke myself: there’s all I’ll do for you.     Exit.

1.7 Enter IMOGEN alone.

IMOGEN     A father cruel, and a step-dame false,

A foolish suitor to a wedded lady,

That hath her husband banish’d: – O, that husband,

My supreme crown of grief! and those repeated

Vexations of it! Had I been thief-stolen,

5

As my two brothers, happy: but most miserable

Is the desire that’s glorious. Bless’d be those,

How mean soe’er, that have their honest wills,

Which seasons comfort. – Who may this be? Fie!

Enter PISANIO and IACHIMO.

PISANIO     Madam, a noble gentleman of Rome,

10

Comes from my lord with letters.

IACHIMO     Change you, madam:

The worthy Leonatus is in safety,

And greets your highness dearly. [Presents a letter.]

IMOGEN     Thanks, good sir:

You’re kindly welcome.

IACHIMO     [aside]

All of her that is out of door most rich!

15

If she be furnish’d with a mind so rare,

She is alone th’Arabian bird; and I

Have lost the wager. Boldness be my friend!

Arm me, Audacity, from head to foot,

Or like the Parthian I shall flying fight;

20

Rather, directly fly.

IMOGEN     [Reads.] He is one of the noblest note, to whose

kindnesses I am infinitely tied. Reflect upon him accord-

ingly, as you value your trust –

     LEONATUS.

25

So far I read aloud.

But even the very middle of my heart

Is warm’d by th’ rest, and takes it thankfully.

You are as welcome, worthy sir, as I

Have words to bid you, and shall find it so

30

In all that I can do.

IACHIMO     Thanks, fairest lady. –

What! are men mad? Hath nature given them eyes

To see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop

Of sea and land, which can distinguish ’twixt

The fiery orbs above, and the twinn’d stones

35

Upon the number’d beach, and can we not

Partition make with spectacles so precious

’Twixt fair, and foul?

IMOGEN     What makes your admiration?

IACHIMO     It cannot be i’th’ eye: for apes and monkeys,

’Twixt two such shes, would chatter this way, and

40

Contemn with mows the other. Nor i’the judgement:

For idiots in this case of favour, would

Be wisely definite: nor i’th’ appetite.

Sluttery, to such neat excellence oppos’d,

Should make desire vomit emptiness,

45

Not so allur’d to feed.

IMOGEN     What is the matter, trow?

IACHIMO     The cloyed will –

That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub

Both     fill’d and running-ravening first the lamb,

Longs after for the garbage.

IMOGEN     What, dear sir,

50

Thus raps you? Are you well?

IACHIMO     Thanks madam, well:

[to Pisanio] Beseech you sir,

Desire my man’s abode where I did leave him:

He’s strange and peevish.

PISANIO     I was going, sir,

To give him welcome.     Exit.

55

IMOGEN

Continues well my lord? His health, beseech you?

IACHIMO     Well, madam.

IMOGEN     Is he disposed to mirth? I hope he is.

IACHIMO     Exceeding pleasant: none a stranger there,

So merry and so gamesome: he is call’d

60

The Briton reveller.

IMOGEN     When he was here

He did incline to sadness, and oft-times

Not knowing why.

IACHIMO     I never saw him sad.

There is a Frenchman his companion, one

An eminent monsieur, that, it seems, much loves

65

A Gallian girl at home. He furnaces

The thick sighs from him; whiles the jolly Briton

(Your lord, I mean) laughs from’s free lungs: cries ‘O,

Can my sides hold, to think that man, who knows

By history, report, or his own proof,

70

What woman is, yea what she cannot choose

But must be, will’s free hours languish for

Assured bondage?’

IMOGEN     Will my lord say so?

IACHIMO

Ay, madam, with his eyes in flood with laughter:

It is a recreation to be by

75

And hear him mock the Frenchman: but heavens

know

Some men are much to blame.

IMOGEN     Not he, I hope.

IACHIMO

Not he: but yet heaven’s bounty towards him might

Be us’d more thankfully. In himself ’tis much;

In you, which I account his, beyond all talents.

80

Whilst I am bound to wonder, I am bound

To pity too.

IMOGEN     What do you pity, sir?

IACHIMO     Two creatures heartily.

IMOGEN     Am I one, sir?

You look on me: what wrack discern you in me

Deserves your pity?

IACHIMO     Lamentable! What

85

To hide me from the radiant sun, and solace

I’ th’ dungeon by a snuff?

IMOGEN     I pray you, sir,

Deliver with more openness your answers

To my demands. Why do you pity me?

IACHIMO     That others do

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(I was about to say) enjoy your – But

It is an office of the gods to venge it,

Not mine to speak on’t.

IMOGEN     You do seem to know

Something of me, or what concerns me; pray you,

Since doubting things go ill often hurts more

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Than to be sure they do – for certainties

Either are past remedies; or timely knowing,

The remedy then born – discover to me

What both you spur and stop.

IACHIMO     Had I this cheek

To bathe my lips upon: this hand, whose touch

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(Whose every touch) would force the feeler’s soul

To th’oath of loyalty: this object, which

Takes prisoner the wild motion of mine eye,

Firing it only here; should I (damn’d then)

Slaver with lips as common as the stairs

105

That mount the Capitol: join gripes, with hands

Made hard with hourly falsehood (falsehood, as

With labour): then by-peeping in an eye

Base and illustrous as the smoky light

That’s fed with stinking tallow: it were fit

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That all the plagues of hell should at one time

Encounter such revolt.

IMOGEN     My lord, I fear,

Has forgot Britain.

IACHIMO     And himself. Not I,

Inclin’d to this intelligence, pronounce

The beggary of his change: but ’tis your graces

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That from my mutest conscience to my tongue

Charms this report out.

IMOGEN     Let me hear no more.

IACHIMO

O dearest soul: your cause doth strike my heart

With pity that doth make me sick! A lady

So fair, and fasten’d to an empery

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Would make the great’st king double, to be partner’d

With tomboys hir’d with that self exhibition

Which your own coffers yield! with diseas’d ventures,

That play with all infirmities for gold

Which rottenness can lend Nature! Such boil’d stuff

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As well might poison poison! Be reveng’d,

Or she that bore you was no queen, and you

Recoil from your great stock.

IMOGEN     Reveng’d!

How should I be reveng’d? If this be true,

(As I have such a heart that both mine ears

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Must not in haste abuse) if it be true,

How should I be reveng’d?

IACHIMO     Should he make me

Live like Diana’s priest, betwixt cold sheets,

Whiles he is vaulting variable ramps,

In your despite, upon your purse – Revenge it.

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I dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure,

More noble than that runagate to your bed,

And will continue fast to your affection,

Still close as sure.

IMOGEN     What ho, Pisanio!

IACHIMO     Let me my service tender on your lips.

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IMOGEN     Away, I do condemn mine ears, that have

So long attended thee. If thou wert honourable,

Thou wouldst have told this tale for virtue, not

For such an end thou seek’st, as base, as strange.

Thou wrong’st a gentleman, who is as far

145

From thy report as thou from honour, and

Solicits here a lady that disdains

Thee, and the devil alike. What ho, Pisanio!

The king my father shall be made acquainted

Of thy assault: if he shall think it fit

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A saucy stranger in his court to mart

As in a Romish stew, and to expound

His beastly mind to us, he hath a court

He little cares for, and a daughter who

He not respects at all. What ho, Pisanio!

155

IACHIMO     O happy Leonatus! I may say:

The credit that thy lady hath of thee

Deserves thy trust, and thy most perfect goodness

Her assur’d credit. Blessed live you long!

A lady to the worthiest sir that ever

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Country call’d his; and you, his mistress, only

For the most worthiest fit. Give me your pardon.

I have spoke this to know if your affiance

Were deeply rooted, and shall make your lord

That which he is, new o’er: and he is one

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The truest manner’d: such a holy witch

That he enchants societies into him:

Half all men’s hearts are his.

IMOGEN     You make amends.

IACHIMO     He sits ’mongst men like a descended god;

He hath a kind of honour sets him off,

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More than a mortal seeming. Be not angry,

Most mighty princess, that I have adventur’d

To try your taking of a false report, which hath

Honour’d with confirmation your great judgement

In the election of a sir so rare,

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Which you know cannot err. The love I bear him

Made me to fan you thus, but the gods made you

(Unlike all others) chaffless. Pray, your pardon.

IMOGEN

All’s well, sir: take my power i’th’ court for yours.

IACHIMO     My humble thanks. I had almost forgot

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T’entreat your grace, but in a small request,

And yet of moment too, for it concerns:

Your lord, myself, and other noble friends

Are partners in the business.

IMOGEN     Pray, what is’t?

IACHIMO     Some dozen Romans of us, and your lord

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(The best feather of our wing) have mingled sums

To buy a present for the emperor:

Which I (the factor for the rest) have done

In France: ’tis plate of rare device, and jewels

Of rich and exquisite form, their values great,

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And I am something curious, being strange,

To have them in safe stowage: may it please you

To take them in protection?

IMOGEN     Willingly:

And pawn mine honour for their safety, since

My lord hath interest in them; I will keep them

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In my bedchamber.

IACHIMO     They are in a trunk

Attended by my men: I will make bold

To send them to you, only for this night:

I must abroad to-morrow.

IMOGEN     O, no, no.

IACHIMO     Yes, I beseech: or I shall short my word

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By length’ning my return. From Gallia

I cross’d the seas on purpose and on promise

To see your grace.

IMOGEN     I thank you for your pains:

But not away to-morrow!

IACHIMO     O, I must madam.

Therefore I shall beseech you, if you please

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To greet your lord with writing, do’t to-night:

I have outstood my time, which is material

To th’ tender of our present.

IMOGEN     I will write.

Send your trunk to me, it shall safe be kept,

And truly yielded you: you’re very welcome.     Exeunt.

210

2.1 Enter CLOTEN and two Lords.

CLOTEN     Was there ever man had such luck? When I

kissed the jack upon an upcast, to be hit away! I had a

hundred pound on’t: and then a whoreson jackanapes

must take me up for swearing, as if I borrowed mine

oaths of him, and might not spend them at my

5

pleasure.

1 LORD     What got he by that? You have broke his pate

with your bowl.

2 LORD     [aside] If his wit had been like him that broke it,

it would have run all out.

10

CLOTEN     When a gentleman is dispos’d to swear, it is not

for any standers-by to curtail his oaths. Ha?

2 LORD     No, my lord; [aside] nor crop the ears of them.

CLOTEN     Whoreson dog! I gave him satisfaction! Would

he had been one of my rank!

15

2 LORD     [aside] To have smelt like a fool.

CLOTEN     I am not vex’d more at any thing in th’earth: a

pox on’t! I had rather not be so noble as I am: they dare

not fight with me, because of the queen my mother:

every Jack-slave hath his bellyful of fighting, and I

20

must go up and down like a cock, that nobody can

match.

2 LORD     [aside] You are cock and capon too, and you

crow, cock, with your comb on.

CLOTEN     Sayest thou?

25

2 LORD     It is not fit your lordship should undertake

every companion that you give offence to.

CLOTEN     No, I know that: but it is fit I should commit

offence to my inferiors.

2 LORD     Ay, it is fit for your lordship only.

30

CLOTEN     Why, so I say.

1 LORD     Did you hear of a stranger that’s come to court

to-night?

CLOTEN     A stranger, and I know not on’t?

2 LORD     [aside] He’s a strange fellow himself, and

35

knows it not.

1 LORD     There’s an Italian come, and ’tis thought one of

Leonatus’ friends.

CLOTEN     Leonatus? A banished rascal; and he’s another,

whatsoever he be. Who told you of this stranger?

40

1 LORD     One of your lordship’s pages.

CLOTEN     Is it fit I went to look upon him? Is there no

derogation in’t?

2 LORD     You cannot derogate, my lord.

CLOTEN     Not easily, I think.

45

2 LORD     [aside] You are a fool granted, therefore your

issues being foolish do not derogate.

CLOTEN     Come, I’ll go see this Italian: what I have lost

to-day at bowls I’ll win to-night of him. Come: go.

2 LORD     I’ll attend your lordship.

50

Exeunt Cloten and First Lord.

That such a crafty devil as is his mother

Should yield the world this ass! a woman that

Bears all down with her brain, and this her son

Cannot take two from twenty, for his heart,

And leave eighteen. Alas poor princess,

55

Thou divine Imogen, what thou endur’st,

Betwixt a father by thy step-dame govern’d,

A mother hourly coining plots, a wooer

More hateful than the foul expulsion is

Of thy dear husband, than that horrid act

60

Of the divorce, he’ld make. The heavens hold firm

The walls of thy dear honour, keep unshak’d

That temple, thy fair mind, that thou mayst stand,

T’enjoy thy banish’d lord and this great land!     Exit.

2.2 Enter IMOGEN in her bed, and a Lady.

IMOGEN     Who’s there? my woman Helen?

LADY     Please you, madam.

IMOGEN     What hour is it?

LADY     Almost midnight, madam.

IMOGEN

I have read three hours then: mine eyes are weak,

Fold down the leaf where I have left: to bed.

Take not away the taper, leave it burning:

5

And if thou canst awake by four o’th’ clock,

I prithee call me. Sleep hath seiz’d me wholly.

     Exit Lady.

To your protection I commend me, gods,

From fairies and the tempters of the night,

Guard me, beseech ye!

10

[Sleeps. Iachimo comes from the trunk.]

IACHIMO

The crickets sing, and man’s o’er-labour’d sense

Repairs itself by rest. Our Tarquin thus

Did softly press the rushes, ere he waken’d

The chastity he wounded. Cytherea,

How bravely thou becom’st thy bed! fresh lily!

15

And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch!

But kiss, one kiss! Rubies unparagon’d,

How dearly they do’t: ’tis her breathing that

Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o’th’ taper

Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids,

20

To see th’enclosed lights, now canopied

Under these windows, white and azure lac’d

With blue of heaven’s own tinct. But my design.

To note the chamber: I will write all down:

Such, and such pictures: there the window, such

25

Th’adornment of her bed; the arras, figures,

Why, such, and such; and the contents o’th’ story.

Ah, but some natural notes about her body

Above ten thousand meaner moveables

Would testify, t’enrich mine inventory.

30

O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her,

And be her sense but as a monument,

Thus in a chapel lying. Come off, come off;

[taking off her bracelet]

As slippery as the Gordian knot was hard.

’Tis mine, and this will witness outwardly,

35

As strongly as the conscience does within,

To th’ madding of her lord. On her left breast

A mole cinque-spotted: like the crimson drops

I’th’ bottom of a cowslip. Here’s a voucher,

Stronger than ever law could make; this secret

40

Will force him think I have pick’d the lock, and ta’en

The treasure of her honour. No more: to what end?

Why should I write this down, that’s riveted,

Screw’d to my memory? She hath been reading late,

The tale of Tereus, here the leaf’s turn’d down

45

Where Philomel gave up. I have enough:

To th’ trunk again, and shut the spring of it.

Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning

May bare the raven’s eye! I lodge in fear;

Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here.

50

     [Clock strikes.]

One, two, three: time, time!

[Goes into the trunk. The scene closes.]

2.3 Enter CLOTEN and Lords.

1 LORD     Your lordship is the most patient man in loss,

the most coldest that ever turn’d up ace.

CLOTEN     It would make any man cold to lose.

1 LORD     But not every man patient after the noble

temper of your lordship. You are most hot and furious

5

when you win.

CLOTEN     Winning will put any man into courage. If I

could get this foolish Imogen, I should have gold

enough. It’s almost morning, is’t not?

1 LORD     Day, my lord.

10

CLOTEN     I would this music would come: I am advised

to give her music a mornings, they say it will

penetrate.

Enter Musicians.

Come on, tune: if you can penetrate her with your

fingering, so: we’ll try with tongue too: if none will do,

15

let her remain: but I’ll never give o’er. First, a very

excellent good-conceited thing; after, a wonderful

sweet air, with admirable rich words to it, and then let

her consider.

SONG

Hark, hark, the lark at heaven’s gate sings,

20

And Phoebus gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs

On chalic’d flowers that lies;

And winking Mary-buds begin to ope their golden

eyes;

With every thing that pretty is, my lady sweet arise:

25

Arise, arise!

CLOTEN     So get you gone: if this penetrate, I will

consider your music the better: if it do not, it is a vice

in her ears, which horse-hairs, and calves’-guts, nor

the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never

30

amend.     Exeunt musicians.

2 LORD     Here comes the king.

CLOTEN     I am glad I was up so late, for that’s the reason

I was up so early: he cannot choose but take this

service I have done fatherly.

35

Enter CYMBELINE and QUEEN.

Good morrow to your majesty, and to my gracious

mother.

CYMBELINE

Attend you here the door of our stern daughter?

Will she not forth?

CLOTEN     I have assail’d her with musics, but she

40

vouchsafes no notice.

CYMBELINE     The exile of her minion is too new,

She hath not yet forgot him, some more time

Must wear the print of his remembrance on’t,

And then she’s yours.

QUEEN     You are most bound to th’ king,

45

Who lets go by no vantages that may

Prefer you to his daughter: frame yourself

To orderly solicits, and be friended

With aptness of the season: make denials

Increase your services: so seem, as if

50

You were inspir’d to do those duties which

You tender to her: that you in all obey her,

Save when command to your dismission tends,

And therein you are senseless.

CLOTEN     Senseless? not so.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     

So like you, sir, ambassadors from Rome;

55

The one is Caius Lucius.

CYMBELINE     A worthy fellow,

Albeit he comes on angry purpose now;

But that’s no fault of his: we must receive him

According to the honour of his sender,

And towards himself, his goodness forespent on us,

60

We must extend our notice. Our dear son,

When you have given good morning to your mistress,

Attend the queen and us; we will have need

T’employ you towards this Roman. Come, our

queen.     Exeunt all but Cloten.

CLOTEN     If she be up, I’ll speak with her: if not,

65

Let her lie still, and dream. By your leave, ho!

[Knocks.]

I know her women are about her: what

If I do line one of their hands? ’Tis gold

Which buys admittance (oft it doth) yea, and makes

Diana’s rangers false themselves, yield up

70

Their deer to th’ stand o’th’ stealer: and ’tis gold

Which makes the true-man kill’d, and saves the thief:

Nay, sometime hangs both thief, and true-man: what

Can it not do, and undo? I will make

One of her women lawyer to me, for

75

I yet not understand the case myself.

By your leave. [Knocks.]

Enter a Lady.

LADY     Who’s there that knocks?

CLOTEN     A gentleman.

LADY     No more?

CLOTEN     Yes, and a gentlewoman’s son.

LADY     That’s more

Than some whose tailors are as dear as yours

80

Can justly boast of. What’s your lordship’s pleasure?

CLOTEN     Your lady’s person, is she ready?

LADY     Ay,

To keep her chamber.

CLOTEN     There is gold for you,

Sell me your good report.

LADY     How, my good name? or to report of you

85

What I shall think is good? The princess!     Exit Lady.

Enter IMOGEN.

CLOTEN     Good morrow, fairest: sister, your sweet hand.

IMOGEN     Good morrow, sir. You lay out too much pains

For purchasing but trouble: the thanks I give

Is telling you that I am poor of thanks,

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And scarce can spare them.

CLOTEN     Still I swear I love you.

IMOGEN     If you but said so, ’twere as deep with me:

If you swear still, your recompense is still

That I regard it not.

CLOTEN     This is no answer.

IMOGEN     But that you shall not say I yield being silent,

95

I would not speak. I pray you spare me: ’faith

I shall unfold equal discourtesy

To your best kindness: one of your great knowing

Should learn (being taught) forbearance.

CLOTEN     To leave you in your madness, ’twere my sin,

100

I will not.

IMOGEN     Fools are not mad folks.

CLOTEN     Do you call me fool?

IMOGEN     As I am mad I do:

If you’ll be patient, I’ll no more be mad,

That cures us both. I am much sorry, sir,

105

You put me to forget a lady’s manners,

By being so verbal: and learn now, for all,

That I, which know my heart, do here pronounce,

By th’ very truth of it, I care not for you,

And am so near the lack of charity.

110

(To accuse myself) I hate you: which I had rather

You felt than make’t my boast.

CLOTEN     You sin against

Obedience, which you owe your father; for

The contract you pretend with that base wretch,

One bred of alms, and foster’d with cold dishes,

115

With scraps o’th’ court, it is no contract, none;

And though it be allow’d in meaner parties

(Yet who than he more mean?) to knit their souls

(On whom there is no more dependency

But brats and beggary) in self-figur’d knot,

120

Yet you are curb’d from that enlargement, by

The consequence o’th’ crown, and must not foil

The precious note of it; with a base slave,

A hiding for a livery, a squire’s cloth,

A pantler; not so eminent.

IMOGEN     Profane fellow,

125

Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more

But what thou art besides, thou wert too base

To be his groom: thou wert dignified enough,

Even to the point of envy, if ’twere made

Comparative for your virtues to be styled

130

The under-hangman of his kingdom; and hated

For being preferr’d so well.

CLOTEN     The south-fog rot him!

IMOGEN

He never can meet more mischance than come

To be but nam’d of thee. His mean’st garment,

That ever hath but clipp’d his body, is dearer

135

In my respect, than all the hairs above thee,

Were they all made such men. How now, Pisanio!

Enter PISANIO.

CLOTEN     ‘His garment!’ Now, the devil –

IMOGEN     To Dorothy my woman hie thee presently.

CLOTEN     ‘His garment!’

IMOGEN     I am sprited with a fool,

140

Frighted, and anger’d worse. Go bid my woman

Search for a jewel, that too casually

Hath left mine arm: it was thy master’s. ’Shrew me,

If I would lose it for a revenue

Of any king’s in Europe! I do think

145

I saw’t this morning: confident I am.

Last night ’twas on mine arm; I kiss’d it:

I hope it be not gone to tell my lord

That I kiss aught but he.

PISANIO     ’Twill not be lost.

IMOGEN     I hope so: go and search.     Exit Pisanio.

CLOTEN     You have abus’d me:

150

‘His meanest garment!’

IMOGEN     Ay, I said so, sir:

If you will make’t an action, call witness to’t.

CLOTEN     I will inform your father.

IMOGEN     Your mother too:

She’s my good lady; and will conceive, I hope,

But the worst of me. So I leave you, sir,

155

To th’ worst of discontent.     Exit.

CLOTEN     I’ll be reveng’d:

‘His mean’st garment!’ Well.     Exit.

2.4 Enter POSTHUMUS and PHILARIO.

POSTHUMUS     Fear it not, sir: I would I were so sure

To win the king as I am bold her honour

Will remain hers.

PHILARIO     What means do you make to him?

POSTHUMUS     Not any: but abide the change of time,

Quake in the present winter’s state, and wish

5

That warmer days would come: in these fear’d hopes,

I barely gratify your love; they failing,

I must die much your debtor.

PHILARIO     Your very goodness, and your company,

O’erpays all I can do. By this, your king

10

Hath heard of great Augustus: Caius Lucius

Will do’s commission throughly. And I think

He’ll grant the tribute: send th’arrearages,

Or look upon our Romans, whose remembrance

Is yet fresh in their grief.

POSTHUMUS     I do believe

15

(Statist though I am none, nor like to be)

That this will prove a war; and you shall hear

The legion now in Gallia sooner landed

In our not-fearing Britain than have tidings

Of any penny tribute paid. Our countrymen

20

Are men more order’d than when Julius Caesar

Smil’d at their lack of skill, but found their courage

Worthy his frowning at. Their discipline,

(Now wing-led with their courages) will make known

To their approvers they are people such

25

That mend upon the world.

Enter IACHIMO.

PHILARIO     See! Iachimo!

POSTHUMUS

The swiftest harts have posted you by land;

And winds of all the corners kiss’d your sails,

To make your vessel nimble.

PHILARIO     Welcome, sir.

POSTHUMUS     I hope the briefness of your answer made

30

The speediness of your return.

IACHIMO     Your lady,

Is one the fairest that I have look’d upon –

POSTHUMUS

And therewithal the best, or let her beauty

Look through a casement to allure false hearts,

And be false with them.

IACHIMO     Here are letters for you.

35

POSTHUMUS     Their tenour good, I trust.

IACHIMO     ’Tis very like.

POSTHUMUS     Was Caius Lucius in the Britain court

When you were there?

IACHIMO     He was expected then,

But not approach’d.

POSTHUMUS     All is well yet.

Sparkles this stone as it was wont, or is’t not

40

Too dull for your good wearing?

IACHIMO     If I have lost it,

I should have lost the worth of it in gold –

I’ll make a journey twice as far, t’enjoy

A second night of such sweet shortness which

Was mine in Britain; for the ring is won.

45

POSTHUMUS     The stone’s too hard to come by.

IACHIMO     Not a whit,

Your lady being so easy.

POSTHUMUS     Make not, sir,

Your loss your sport: I hope you know that we

Must not continue friends.

IACHIMO     Good sir, we must

If you keep covenant. Had I not brought

50

The knowledge of your mistress home, I grant

We were to question farther; but I now

Profess myself the winner of her honour,

Together with your ring; and not the wronger

Of her or you, having proceeded but

55

By both your wills.

POSTHUMUS     If you can make’t apparent

That you have tasted her in bed, my hand

And ring is yours. If not, the foul opinion

You had of her pure honour gains, or loses,

Your sword, or mine, or masterless leave both

60

To who shall find them.

IACHIMO     Sir, my circumstances,

Being so near the truth, as I will make them,

Must first induce you to believe; whose strength

I will confirm with oath, which I doubt not

You’ll give me leave to spare, when you shall find

65

You need it not.

POSTHUMUS     Proceed.

IACHIMO     First, her bedchamber,

(Where I confess I slept not, but profess

Had that was well worth watching) it was hang’d

With tapestry of silk and silver, the story

Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman,

70

And Cydnus swell’d above the banks, or for

The press of boats, or pride. A piece of work

So bravely done, so rich, that it did strive

In workmanship and value; which I wonder’d

Could be so rarely and exactly wrought,

75

Since the true life on’t was –

POSTHUMUS     This is true:

And this you might have heard of here, by me,

Or by some other.

IACHIMO     More particulars

Must justify my knowledge.

POSTHUMUS     So they must,

Or do your honour injury.

IACHIMO     The chimney

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Is south the chamber, and the chimney-piece,

Chaste Dian, bathing: never saw I figures

So likely to report themselves; the cutter

Was as another Nature, dumb; outwent her,

Motion and breath left out.

POSTHUMUS     This is a thing

85

Which you might from relation likewise reap,

Being, as it is, much spoke of.

IACHIMO     The roof o’th’ chamber

With golden cherubins is fretted. Her andirons

(I had forgot them) were two winking Cupids

Of silver, each on one foot standing, nicely

90

Depending on their brands.

POSTHUMUS     This is her honour!

Let it be granted you have seen all this (and praise

Be given to your remembrance) the description

Of what is in her chamber nothing saves

The wager you have laid.

IACHIMO     Then, if you can

95

[showing the bracelet]

Be pale, I beg but leave to air this jewel: see!

And now ’tis up again: it must be married

To that your diamond, I’ll keep them.

POSTHUMUS     Jove! –

Once more let me behold it: is it that

Which I left with her?

IACHIMO     Sir (I thank her) that!

100

She stripp’d it from her arm: I see her yet:

Her pretty action did outsell her gift,

And yet enrich’d it too: she gave it me,

And said she priz’d it once.

POSTHUMUS     May be she pluck’d it off

To send it me.

IACHIMO     She writes so to you? Doth she?

105

POSTHUMUS     O, no, no, no, ’tis true. Here, take this too;

[Gives the ring.]

It is a basilisk unto mine eye,

Kills me to look on’t. Let there be no honour

Where there is beauty: truth, where semblance: love,

Where there’s another man. The vows of women

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Of no more bondage be to where they are made

Than they are to their virtues, which is nothing.

O, above measure false!

PHILARIO     Have patience, sir,

And take your ring again, ’tis not yet won:

It may be probable she lost it: or

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Who knows if one of her women, being corrupted,

Hath stol’n it from her?

POSTHUMUS     Very true,

And so, I hope, he came by’t. Back my ring,

Render me some corporal sign about her

More evident than this: for this was stol’n.

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IACHIMO     By Jupiter, I had it from her arm.

POSTHUMUS

Hark you, he swears: by Jupiter he swears.

’Tis true, nay, keep the ring, ’tis true: I am sure

She would not lose it: her attendants are

All sworn, and honourable: – they induc’d to steal it?

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And by a stranger? No, he hath enjoy’d her:

The cognizance of her incontinency

Is this: she hath bought the name of whore, thus

dearly.

There, take thy hire, and all the fiends of hell

Divide themselves between you!

PHILARIO     Sir, be patient:

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This is not strong enough to be believed

Of one persuaded well of.

POSTHUMUS     Never talk on’t:

She hath been colted by him.

IACHIMO     If you seek

For further satisfying, under her breast

(Worthy her pressing) lies a mole, right proud

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Of that most delicate lodging. By my life,

I kiss’d it, and it gave me present hunger

To feed again, though full. You do remember

This stain upon her?

POSTHUMUS     Ay, and it doth confirm

Another stain, as big as hell can hold,

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Were there no more but it.

IACHIMO     Will you hear more?

POSTHUMUS

Spare your arithmetic, never count the turns:

Once, and a million!

IACHIMO     I’ll be sworn –

POSTHUMUS     No swearing:

If you will swear you have not done’t you lie,

And I will kill thee if thou dost deny

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Thou’st made me cuckold.

IACHIMO     I’ll deny nothing.

POSTHUMUS

O, that I had her here, to tear her limb-meal!

I will go there and do’t, i’th’ court, before

Her father. I’ll do something –     Exit.

PHILARIO     Quite besides

The government of patience! You have won:

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Let’s follow him, and pervert the present wrath

He hath against himself.

IACHIMO     With all my heart.     Exeunt.

Re-enter POSTHUMUS.

POSTHUMUS     Is there no way for men to be, but women

Must be half-workers? We are all bastards,

And that most venerable man, which I

155

Did call my father, was I know not where

When I was stamp’d. Some coiner with his tools

Made me a counterfeit: yet my mother seem’d

The Dian of that time: so doth my wife

The nonpareil of this. O vengeance, vengeance!

160

Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain’d,

And pray’d me oft forbearance: did it with

A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on’t

Might well have warm’d old Saturn; that I thought

her

As chaste as unsunn’d snow. O, all the devils!

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This yellow Iachimo, in an hour, was’t not?

Or less; at first? Perchance he spoke not, but

Like a full-acorn’d boar, a German one,

Cried ‘O!’ and mounted; found no opposition

But what he look’d for should oppose and she

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Should from encounter guard. Could I find out

The woman’s part in me – for there’s no motion

That tends to vice in man, but I affirm

It is the woman’s part: be it lying, note it,

The woman’s: flattering, hers; deceiving, hers:

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Lust, and rank thoughts, hers, hers: revenges, hers:

Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,

Nice longing, slanders, mutability;

All faults that name, nay, that hell knows, why, hers

In part, or all: but rather all. For even to vice

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They are not constant, but are changing still;

One vice, but of a minute old, for one

Not half so old as that. I’ll write against them,

Detest them, curse them: yet ’tis greater skill

In a true hate, to pray they have their will:

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The very devils cannot plague them better. Exit.

3.1 Enter in state, CYMBELINE, QUEEN, CLOTEN and Lords at one door, and at another, CAIUS LUCIUS and attendants.

CYMBELINE

Now say, what would Augustus Caesar with us?

LUCIUS     When Julius Caesar, (whose remembrance yet

Lives in men’s eyes, and will to ears and tongues

Be theme and hearing ever) was in this Britain

And conquer’d it, Cassibelan, thine uncle,

5

(Famous in Caesar’s praises, no whit less

Than in his feats deserving it) for him,

And his succession, granted Rome a tribute,

Yearly three thousand pounds; which (by thee) lately

Is left untender’d.

QUEEN     And, to kill the marvel,

10

Shall be so ever.

CLOTEN     There be many Caesars ere such another

Julius: Britain’s a world by itself, and we will nothing

pay for wearing our own noses.

QUEEN     That opportunity,

15

Which then they had to take from’s, to resume

We have again. Remember, sir, my liege,

The kings your ancestors, together with

The natural bravery of your isle, which stands

As Neptune’s park, ribb’d and pal’d in

20

With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters,

With sands that will not bear your enemies’ boats,

But suck them up to th’ topmast. A kind of conquest

Caesar made here, but made not here his brag

Of ‘Came, and saw, and overcame:’ with shame

25

(The first that ever touch’d him) he was carried

From off our coast, twice beaten: and his shipping

(Poor ignorant baubles!) on our terrible seas,

Like egg-shells mov’d upon their surges, crack’d

As easily ’gainst our rocks. For joy whereof

30

The fam’d Cassibelan, who was once at point

(O giglot fortune!) to master Caesar’s sword,

Made Lud’s town with rejoicing-fires bright,

And Britons strut with courage.

CLOTEN     Come, there’s no more tribute to be paid: our

35

kingdom is stronger than it was at that time: and (as I

said) there is no moe such Caesars, other of them may

have crook’d noses, but to owe such straight arms,

none.

CYMBELINE     Son, let your mother end.

40

CLOTEN     We have yet many among us can gripe as hard

as Cassibelan: I do not say I am one: but I have a hand.

Why tribute? Why should we pay tribute? If Caesar

can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the

moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light:

45

else, sir, no more tribute, pray you now.

CYMBELINE     You must know,

Till the injurious Romans did extort

This tribute from us, we were free. Caesar’s

ambition,

Which swell’d so much that it did almost stretch

50

The sides o’th’ world, against all colour here

Did put the yoke upon’s: which to shake off

Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon

Ourselves to be.

CLOTEN AND LORDS     We do.

CYMBELINE     Say then to Caesar,

Our ancestor was that Mulmutius which

55

Ordain’d our laws, whose use the sword of Caesar

Hath too much mangled; whose repair, and franchise,

Shall (by the power we hold) be our good deed,

Though Rome be therefore angry. Mulmutius made

our laws,

Who was the first of Britain which did put

60

His brows within a golden crown, and call’d

Himself a king.

LUCIUS     I am sorry, Cymbeline,

That I am to pronounce Augustus Caesar

(Caesar, that hath moe kings his servants than

Thyself domestic officers) thine enemy:

65

Receive it from me, then. War and confusion

In Caesar’s name pronounce I ’gainst thee: look

For fury, not to be resisted. Thus defied,

I thank thee for myself.

CYMBELINE     Thou art welcome, Caius.

Thy Caesar knighted me; my youth I spent

70

Much under him; of him I gather’d honour,

Which he to seek of me again, perforce,

Behoves me keep at utterance. I am perfect

That the Pannonians and Dalmatians for

Their liberties are now in arms: a precedent

75

Which not to read would show the Britons cold:

So Caesar shall not find them.

LUCIUS     Let proof speak.

CLOTEN     His majesty bids you welcome. Make pastime

with us a day or two, or longer: if you seek us

afterwards in other terms, you shall find us in our salt-

80

water girdle: if you beat us out of it, it is yours: if you

fall in the adventure, our crows shall fare the better for

you: and there’s an end.

LUCIUS     So, sir.

CYMBELINE

I know your master’s pleasure, and he mine:

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All the remain is ‘Welcome’.     Exeunt.

3.2 Enter PISANIO, with a letter.

PISANIO     How? of adultery? Wherefore write you not

What monster’s her accuser? Leonatus!

O master, what a strange infection

Is fall’n into thy ear! What false Italian

(As poisonous tongu’d as handed) hath prevail’d

5

On thy too ready hearing? Disloyal? No.

She’s punish’d for her truth; and undergoes,

More goddess-like than wife-like, such assaults

As would take in some virtue. O my master,

Thy mind to her is now as low as were

10

Thy fortunes. How? that I should murder her,

Upon the love and truth and vows which I

Have made to thy command? I, her? Her blood?

If it be so to do good service, never

Let me be counted serviceable. How look I,

15

That I should seem to lack humanity

So much as this fact comes to? [reading]

     Do’t: the letter

That I have sent her by her own command

Shall give thee opportunity. O damn’d paper!

Black as the ink that’s on thee! Senseless bauble,

20

Art thou a feodary for this act, and look’st

So virgin-like without? Lo, here she comes.

I am ignorant in what I am commanded.

Enter IMOGEN.

IMOGEN     How now, Pisanio?

PISANIO     Madam, here is a letter from my lord.

25

IMOGEN     Who? thy lord? that is my lord Leonatus!

O, learn’d indeed were that astronomer

That knew the stars as I his characters;

He’d lay the future open. You good gods,

Let what is here contain’d relish of love,

30

Of my lord’s health, of his content: yet not

That we two are asunder; let that grieve him;

Some griefs are med’cinable, that is one of them,

For it doth physic love: of his content,

All but in that! Good wax, thy leave: blest be

35

You bees that make these locks of counsel! Lovers

And men in dangerous bonds pray not alike:

Though forfeiters you cast in prison, yet

You clasp young Cupid’s tables. Good news, gods!

[Reads.] Justice, and your father’s wrath (should he take

40

me in his dominion) could not be so cruel to me, as you (O

the dearest of creatures) would even renew me with your

eyes. Take notice that I am in Cambria at Milford-Haven:

what your own love will out of this advise you, follow. So

he wishes you all happiness, that remains loyal to his vow,

45

and your increasing in love.

     LEONATUS POSTHUMUS.

O, for a horse with wings! Hear’st thou, Pisanio?

He is at Milford-Haven: read, and tell me

How far ’tis thither. If one of mean affairs

50

May plod it in a week, why may not I

Glide thither in a day? Then, true Pisanio,

Who long’st, like me, to see thy lord; who long’st

(O let me bate) but not like me: yet long’st

But in a fainter kind. O, not like me:

55

For mine’s beyond beyond: say, and speak thick,

(Love’s counsellor should fill the bores of hearing,

To th’smothering of the sense) how far it is

To this same blessed Milford. And by th’ way

Tell me how Wales was made so happy as

60

T’inherit such a haven. But, first of all,

How we may steal from hence: and for the gap

That we shall make in time, from our hence-going

And our return, to excuse: but first, how get hence.

Why should excuse be born or ere begot?

65

We’ll talk of that hereafter. Prithee speak,

How many score of miles may we well rid

’Twixt hour, and hour?

PISANIO     One score ’twixt sun and sun,

Madam’s enough for you: and too much too.

IMOGEN     Why, one that rode to’s execution, man,

70

Could never go so slow: I have heard of riding

wagers,

Where horses have been nimbler than the sands

That run i’th’ clock’s behalf. But this is foolery:

Go, bid my woman feign a sickness, say

She’ll home to her father; and provide me presently

75

A riding-suit; no costlier than would fit

A franklin’s housewife.

PISANIO     Madam, you’re best consider.

IMOGEN     I see before me, man: nor here, nor here,

Nor what ensues, but have a fog in them,

That I cannot look through. Away, I prithee,

80

Do as I bid thee: there’s no more to say:

Accessible is none but Milford way.     Exeunt.

3.3 Enter BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS.

BELARIUS     A goodly day not to keep house with such

Whose roof’s as low as ours! Stoop, boys: this gate

Instructs you how t’adore the heavens; and bows you

To a morning’s holy office. The gates of monarchs

Are arch’d so high that giants may jet through

5

And keep their impious turbans on, without

Good morrow to the sun. Hail, thou fair heaven!

We house i’th’ rock, yet use thee not so hardly

As prouder livers do.

GUIDERIUS     Hail, heaven!

ARVIRAGUS     Hail, heaven!

BELARIUS

Now for our mountain sport, up to yond hill!

10

Your legs are young: I’ll tread these flats. Consider,

When you above perceive me like a crow,

That it is place which lessens and sets off,

And you may then revolve what tales I have told you

Of courts, of princes; of the tricks in war.

15

This service is not service, so being done,

But being so allow’d. To apprehend thus,

Draws us a profit from all things we see:

And often, to our comfort, shall we find

The sharded beetle in a safer hold

20

Than is the full-wing’d eagle. O, this life

Is nobler than attending for a check:

Richer than doing nothing for a robe,

Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk:

Such gain the cap of him that makes him fine,

25

Yet keeps his book uncross’d: no life to ours.

GUIDERIUS

Out of your proof you speak: we poor unfledg’d,

Have never wing’d from view o’th’ nest; nor know

not

What air’s from home. Haply this life is best

(If quiet life be best) sweeter to you

30

That have a sharper known, well corresponding

With your stiff age; but unto us it is

A cell of ignorance, travelling a-bed,

A prison, or a debtor that not dares

To stride a limit.

ARVIRAGUS     What should we speak of

35

When we are old as you? When we shall hear

The rain and wind beat dark December? How

In this our pinching cave shall we discourse

The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing:

We are beastly: subtle as the fox for prey,

40

Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat:

Our valour is to chase what flies: our cage

We make a quire, as doth the prison’d bird,

And sing our bondage freely.

BELARIUS     How you speak!

Did you but know the city’s usuries,

45

And felt them knowingly: the art o’th’ court,

As hard to leave as keep: whose top to climb

Is certain falling: or so slipp’ry that

The fear’s as bad as falling: the toil o’th’ war,

A pain that only seems to seek out danger

50

I’th’ name of fame and honour, which dies i’th’

search,

And hath as oft a sland’rous epitaph

As record of fair act. Nay, many times,

Doth ill deserve by doing well: what’s worse,

Must court’sy at the censure. O boys, this story

55

The world may read in me: my body’s mark’d

With Roman swords; and my report was once

First, with the best of note. Cymbeline lov’d me,

And when a soldier was the theme, my name

Was not far off: then was I as a tree

60

Whose boughs did bend with fruit. But in one night,

A storm, or robbery (call it what you will)

Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves,

And left me bare to weather.

GUIDERIUS     Uncertain favour!

BELARIUS

My fault being nothing (as I have told you oft)

65

But that two villains, whose false oaths prevail’d

Before my perfect honour, swore to Cymbeline

I was confederate with the Romans: so

Follow’d my banishment, and this twenty years

This rock, and these demesnes, have been my world,

70

Where I have liv’d at honest freedom, paid

More pious debts to heaven than in all

The fore-end of my time. But up to th’ mountains!

This is not hunter’s language; he that strikes

The venison first shall be the lord o’th’ feast,

75

To him the other two shall minister,

And we will fear no poison, which attends

In place of greater state. I’ll meet you in the valleys.

     Exeunt Guiderius and Arviragus.

How hard it is to hide the sparks of Nature!

These boys know little they are sons to th’ king,

80

Nor Cymbeline dreams that they are alive.

They think they are mine, and though train’d up

thus meanly,

I’th’ cave wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit

The roofs of palaces, and Nature prompts them

In simple and low things to prince it, much

85

Beyond the trick of others. This Polydore,

The heir of Cymbeline and Britain, who

The king his father call’d Guiderius, – Jove!

When on my three-foot stool I sit, and tell

The warlike feats I have done, his spirits fly out

90

Into my story: say ‘Thus mine enemy fell,

And thus I set my foot on’s neck,’ even then

The princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats,

Strains his young nerves, and puts himself in posture

That acts my words. The younger brother, Cadwal,

95

Once Arviragus, in as like a figure

Strikes life into my speech, and shows much more

His own conceiving. Hark, the game is rous’d!

O Cymbeline, heaven and my conscience knows

Thou didst unjustly banish me: whereon,

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At three and two years old, I stole these babes,

Thinking to bar thee of succession as

Thou refts me of my lands. Euriphile,

Thou wast their nurse, they took thee for their

mother,

And every day do honour to her grave:

105

Myself, Belarius, that am Morgan call’d,

They take for natural father. The game is up.     Exit.

3.4 Enter PISANIO and IMOGEN.

IMOGEN

Thou told’st me when we came from horse, the place

Was near at hand: ne’er long’d my mother so

To see me first, as I have now – Pisanio! man!

Where is Posthumus? What is in thy mind

That makes thee stare thus? Wherefore breaks that

sigh

5

From th’inward of thee? One but painted thus

Would be interpreted a thing perplex’d

Beyond self-explication. Put thyself

Into a haviour of less fear, ere wildness

Vanquish my staider senses. What’s the matter?

10

Why tender’st thou that paper to me, with

A look untender? If ’t be summer news,

Smile to’t before: if winterly, thou need’st

But keep that count’nance still. My husband’s hand?

That drug-damn’d Italy hath out-craftied him,

15

And he’s at some hard point. Speak, man, thy tongue

May take off some extremity, which to read

Would be even mortal to me.

PISANIO     Please you read;

And you shall find me (wretched man) a thing

The most disdain’d of fortune.

20

IMOGEN     [Reads.]     Thy mistress, Pisanio, hath played the

strumpet in my bed: the testimonies whereof lie bleeding in

me. I speak not out of weak surmises, but from proof as

strong as my grief, and as certain as I expect my revenge.

That part thou, Pisanio, must act for me, if thy faith be not

25

tainted with the breach of hers; let thine own hands take

away her life: I shall give thee opportunity at Milford-

Haven: she hath my letter for the purpose: where, if thou

fear to strike, and to make me certain it is done, thou art

the pandar to her dishonour, and equally to me disloyal.

30

PISANIO

What shall I need to draw my sword? the paper

Hath cut her throat already. No, ’tis slander,

Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue

Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath

Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie

35

All corners of the world. Kings, queens, and states,

Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave

This viperous slander enters. What cheer, madam?

IMOGEN     False to his bed? What is it to be false?

To lie in watch there, and to think on him?

40

To weep ’twixt clock and clock? If sleep charge

Nature,

To break it with a fearful dream of him,

And cry myself awake? That’s false to’s bed, is it?

PISANIO     Alas, good lady!

IMOGEN     I false? Thy conscience witness: Iachimo,

45

Thou didst accuse him of incontinency;

Thou then look’dst like a villain: now, methinks,

Thy favour’s good enough. Some jay of Italy

(Whose mother was her painting) hath betray’d him:

Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion,

50

And, for I am richer than to hang by th’ walls,

I must be ripp’d: – to pieces with me! – O,

Men’s vows are women’s traitors! All good seeming,

By thy revolt, O husband, shall be thought

Put on for villainy; not born where’t grows,

55

But worn a bait for ladies.

PISANIO     Good madam, hear me.

IMOGEN

True honest men, being heard like false Aeneas,

Were in his time thought false: and Sinon’s weeping

Did scandal many a holy tear, took pity

From most true wretchedness: so thou, Posthumus

60

Wilt lay the leaven on all proper men;

Goodly and gallant shall be false and perjur’d

From thy great fail. Come fellow, be thou honest

Do thou thy master’s bidding. When thou see’st him,

A little witness my obedience. Look,

65

I draw the sword myself, take it, and hit

The innocent mansion of my love, my heart:

Fear not, ’tis empty of all things, but grief:

Thy master is not there, who was indeed

The riches of it. Do his bidding, strike.

70

Thou mayst be valiant in a better cause;

But now thou seem’st a coward.

PISANIO     Hence, vile instrument!

Thou shalt not damn my hand.

IMOGEN     Why, I must die:

And if I do not by thy hand, thou art

No servant of thy master’s. Against self-slaughter

75

There is a prohibition so divine

That cravens my weak hand. Come, here’s my heart,

(Something’s afore’t, – soft, soft! we’ll no defence)

Obedient as the scabbard. What is here?

The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus,

80

All turn’d to heresy? Away, away,

Corrupters of my faith! you shall no more

Be stomachers to my heart: thus may poor fools

Believe false teachers: though those that are betray’d

Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor

85

Stands in worse case of woe.

And thou, Posthumus, thou that didst set up

My disobedience ’gainst the king my father,

And make me put into contempt the suits

Of princely fellows, shalt hereafter find

90

It is no act of common passage, but

A strain of rareness: and I grieve myself

To think, when thou shalt be disedg’d by her

That now thou tirest on, how thy memory

Will then be pang’d by me. Prithee, dispatch:

95

The lamb entreats the butcher. Where’s thy knife?

Thou art too slow to do thy master’s bidding

When I desire it too.

PISANIO     O gracious lady:

Since I received command to do this business

I have not slept one wink.

IMOGEN     Do’t, and to bed then.

100

PISANIO     I’ll wake mine eye-balls out first.

IMOGEN     Wherefore then

Didst undertake it? Why hast thou abus’d

So many miles, with a pretence? This place?

Mine action, and thine own? Our horses’ labour?

The time inviting thee? The perturb’d court

105

For my being absent? whereunto I never

Purpose return. Why hast thou gone so far,

To be unbent when thou hast ta’en thy stand,

Th’elected deer before thee?

PISANIO     But to win time

To lose so bad employment, in the which

110

I have consider’d of a course: good lady,

Hear me with patience.

IMOGEN     Talk thy tongue weary, speak:

I have heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear,

Therein false struck, can take no greater wound,

Nor tent, to bottom that. But speak.

PISANIO     Then, madam,

115

I thought you would not back again.

IMOGEN     Most like,

Bringing me here to kill me.

PISANIO     Not so, neither:

But if I were as wise as honest, then

My purpose would prove well: it cannot be

But that my master is abus’d: some villain,

120

Ay, and singular in his art, hath done you both

This cursed injury.

IMOGEN     Some Roman courtezan?

PISANIO     No, on my life:

I’ll give but notice you are dead, and send him

Some bloody sign of it. For ’tis commanded

125

I should do so: you shall be miss’d at court,

And that will well confirm it.

IMOGEN     Why, good fellow,

What shall I do the while? Where bide? How live?

Or in my life what comfort, when I am

Dead to my husband?

PISANIO     If you’ll back to th’ court –

130

IMOGEN     No court, no father, nor no more ado

With that harsh, noble, simple nothing,

That Cloten, whose love-suit hath been to me

As fearful as a siege.

PISANIO     If not at court,

Then not in Britain must you bide.

IMOGEN     Where then?

135

Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day? Night?

Are they not but in Britain? I’th’ world’s volume

Our Britain seems as of it, but not in’t:

In a great pool, a swan’s nest: prithee think

There’s livers out of Britain.

PISANIO     I am most glad

140

You think of other place: th’ambassador,

Lucius     the Roman, comes to Milford-Haven

To-morrow. Now, if you could wear a mind

Dark, as your fortune is, and but disguise

That which, t’appear itself, must not yet be

145

But by self-danger, you should tread a course

Pretty, and full of view; yea, haply, near

The residence of Posthumus; so nigh (at least)

That though his actions were not visible, yet

Report should render him hourly to your ear

150

As truly as he moves.

IMOGEN     O, for such means,

Though peril to my modesty, not death on’t,

I would adventure!

PISANIO     Well then, here’s the point:

You must forget to be a woman: change

Command into obedience: fear, and niceness

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(The handmaids of all women, or, more truly,

Woman it pretty self) into a waggish courage,

Ready in gibes, quick-answer’d, saucy, and

As quarrelous as the weasel: nay, you must

Forget that rarest treasure of your cheek,

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Exposing it (but, O, the harder heart!

Alack, no remedy) to the greedy touch

Of common-kissing Titan: and forget

Your laboursome and dainty trims, wherein

You made great Juno angry.

IMOGEN     Nay, be brief:

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I see into thy end, and am almost

A man already.

PISANIO     First, make yourself but like one.

Fore-thinking this, I have already fit

(’Tis in my cloak-bag) doublet, hat, hose, all

That answer to them: would you, in their serving

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(And with what imitation you can borrow

From youth of such a season) ’fore noble Lucius

Present yourself, desire his service: tell him

Wherein you’re happy; which will make him know,

If that his head have ear in music, doubtless

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With joy he will embrace you: for he’s honourable,

And, doubling that, most holy. Your means abroad:

You have me, rich, and I will never fail

Beginning, nor supplyment.

IMOGEN     Thou art all the comfort

The gods will diet me with. Prithee away,

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There’s more to be consider’d: but we’ll even

All that good time will give us. This attempt

I am soldier to, and will abide it with

A prince’s courage. Away, I prithee.

PISANIO     Well, madam, we must take a short farewell,

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Lest being miss’d, I be suspected of

Your carriage from the court. My noble mistress,

Here is a box, I had it from the queen,

What’s in’t is precious: if you are sick at sea,

Or stomach-qualm’d at land, a dram of this

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Will drive away distemper. To some shade,

And fit you to your manhood: may the gods

Direct you to the best!

IMOGEN     Amen: I thank thee.

     Exeunt severally.

3.5 Enter CYMBELINE, QUEEN, CLOTEN, LUCIUS and lords.

CYMBELINE     Thus far, and so farewell.

LUCIUS     Thanks, royal sir:

My emperor hath wrote, I must from hence,

And am right sorry that I must report ye

My master’s enemy.

CYMBELINE     Our subjects, sir,

Will not endure his yoke; and for ourself

5

To show less sovereignty than they, must needs

Appear unkinglike.

LUCIUS     So, sir: I desire of you

A conduct over land, to Milford-Haven.

Madam, all joy befal your grace, and you!

CYMBELINE

My lords, you are appointed for that office:

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The due of honour in no point omit.

So farewell, noble Lucius.

LUCIUS     Your hand, my lord.

CLOTEN     Receive it friendly: but from this time forth

I wear it as your enemy.

LUCIUS     Sir, the event

Is yet to name the winner. Fare you well.

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CYMBELINE

Leave not the worthy Lucius, good my lords,

Till he have cross’d the Severn. Happiness!

     Exeunt Lucius and lords.

QUEEN     He goes hence frowning: but it honours us

That we have given him cause.

CLOTEN     ’Tis all the better,

Your valiant Britons have their wishes in it.

20

CYMBELINE     Lucius hath wrote already to the emperor

How it goes here. It fits us therefore ripely

Our chariots and our horsemen be in readiness:

The powers that he already hath in Gallia

Will soon be drawn to head, from whence he moves

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His war for Britain.

QUEEN     ’Tis not sleepy business,

But must be look’d to speedily, and strongly.

CYMBELINE     Our expectation that it would be thus

Hath made us forward. But, my gentle queen,

Where is our daughter? She hath not appear’d

30

Before the Roman, nor to us hath tender’d

The duty of the day. She looks us like

A thing more made of malice than of duty,

We have noted it. Call her before us, for

We have been too slight in sufferance.

     Exit an Attendant.

QUEEN     Royal sir,

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Since the exile of Posthumus, most retir’d

Hath her life been: the cure whereof, my lord,

’Tis time must do. Beseech your majesty,

Forbear sharp speeches to her. She’s a lady

So tender of rebukes that words are strokes,

40

And strokes death to her.

Re-enter Attendant.

CYMBELINE     Where is she, sir? How

Can her contempt be answer’d?

ATTENDANT     Please you, sir,

Her chambers are all lock’d, and there’s no answer

That will be given to th’ loud of noise we make.

QUEEN     My lord, when last I went to visit her,

45

She pray’d me to excuse her keeping close,

Whereto constrain’d by her infirmity,

She should that duty leave unpaid to you

Which daily she was bound to proffer: this

She wish’d me to make known: but our great court

50

Made me to blame in memory.

CYMBELINE     Her doors lock’d?

Not seen of late? Grant heavens, that which I fear

Prove false!     Exit.

QUEEN     Son, I say, follow the king.

CLOTEN     That man of hers, Pisanio, her old servant,

55

I have not seen these two days.

QUEEN     Go, look after:

     Exit Cloten.

Pisanio, thou that stand’st so for Posthumus –

He hath a drug of mine: I pray his absence

Proceed by swallowing that. For he believes

It is a thing most precious. But for her,

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Where is she gone? Haply, despair hath seiz’d her:

Or, wing’d with fervour of her love, she’s flown

To her desir’d Posthumus: gone she is,

To death, or to dishonour, and my end

Can make good use of either. She being down,

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I have the placing of the British crown.

Re-enter CLOTEN.

How now, my son?

CLOTEN     ’Tis certain she is fled:

Go in and cheer the king, he rages, none

Dare come about him.

QUEEN     [aside]     All the better: may

This night forestall him of the coming day!     Exit.

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CLOTEN     I love, and hate her: for she’s fair and royal,

And that she hath all courtly parts more exquisite

Than lady, ladies, woman, from every one

The best she hath, and she of all compounded

Outsells them all. I love her therefore, but

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Disdaining me, and throwing favours on

The low Posthumus, slanders so her judgement

That what’s else rare is chok’d: and in that point

I will conclude to hate her, nay indeed,

To be reveng’d upon her. For, when fools

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Shall –

Enter PISANIO.

Who is here? What, are you packing, sirrah?

Come hither: ah, you precious pandar! Villain,

Where is thy lady? In a word, or else

Thou art straightway with the fiends.

PISANIO     O, good my lord!

CLOTEN     Where is thy lady? or, by Jupiter –

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I will not ask again. Close villain,

I’ll have this secret from thy heart, or rip

Thy heart to find it. Is she with Posthumus?

From whose so many weights of baseness cannot

A dram of worth be drawn.

PISANIO     Alas, my lord,

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How can she be with him? When was she miss’d?

He is in Rome.

CLOTEN     Where is she, sir? Come nearer:

No farther halting: satisfy me home,

What is become of her?

PISANIO     O, my all-worthy lord!

CLOTEN     All-worthy villain!

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Discover where thy mistress is, at once,

At the next word: no more of ‘worthy lord!’

Speak, or thy silence on the instant is

Thy condemnation and thy death.

PISANIO     Then, sir:

This paper is the history of my knowledge

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Touching her flight. [presenting a letter]

CLOTEN     Let’s see’t: I will pursue her

Even to Augustus’ throne.

PISANIO     [aside]     Or this, or perish.

She’s far enough, and what he learns by this

May prove his travel, not her danger.

CLOTEN     Hum!

PISANIO     [aside]

I’ll write to my lord she’s dead: O Imogen,

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Safe mayst thou wander, safe return again!

CLOTEN     Sirrah, is this letter true?

PISANIO     Sir, as I think.

CLOTEN     It is Posthumus’ hand, I know’t. Sirrah, if thou

wouldst not be a villain, but do me true service,

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undergo those employments wherein I should have

cause to use thee with a serious industry, that is,

what villainy soe’er I bid thee do, to perform it,

directly and truly, I would think thee an honest man:

thou shouldst neither want my means for thy relief,

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nor my voice for thy preferment.

PISANIO     Well, my good lord.

CLOTEN     Wilt thou serve me? For since patiently and

constantly thou hast stuck to the bare fortune of that

beggar Posthumus, thou canst not in the course of

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gratitude but be a diligent follower of mine. Wilt

thou serve me?

PISANIO     Sir, I will.

CLOTEN     Give me thy hand, here’s my purse. Hast any

of thy late master’s garments in thy possession?

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PISANIO     I have my lord, at my lodging the same suit he

wore when he took leave of my lady and mistress.

CLOTEN     The first service thou dost me, fetch that suit

hither, let it be thy first service, go.

PISANIO     I shall, my lord.     Exit.

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CLOTEN     Meet thee at Milford-Haven! (I forgot to ask

him one thing, I’ll remember’t anon) even there, thou

villain Posthumus, will I kill thee. I would these

garments were come. She said upon a time (the

bitterness of it I now belch from my heart) that she

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held the very garment of Posthumus in more respect

than my noble and natural person; together with the

adornment of my qualities. With that suit upon my

back, will I ravish her: first kill him, and in her eyes;

there shall she see my valour, which will then be a

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torment to her contempt. He on the ground, my

speech of insultment ended on his dead body, and

when my lust hath dined (which, as I say, to vex her I

will execute in the clothes that she so prais’d) to the

court I’ll knock her back, foot her home again. She

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hath despis’d me rejoicingly, and I’ll be merry in my

revenge.

Re-enter PISANIO, with the clothes.

Be those the garments?

PISANIO     Ay, my noble lord.

CLOTEN     How long is’t since she went to Milford-

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Haven?

PISANIO     She can scarce be there yet.

CLOTEN     Bring this apparel to my chamber, that is the

second thing that I have commanded thee. The third

is, that thou wilt be a voluntary mute to my design. Be

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but duteous, and true preferment shall tender itself to

thee. My revenge is now at Milford: would I had wings

to follow it! Come, and be true.     Exit.

PISANIO     Thou bid’st me to my loss: for true to thee

Were to prove false, which I will never be,

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To him that is most true. To Milford go,

And find not her whom thou pursuest. Flow, flow,

You heavenly blessings, on her! This fool’s speed

Be cross’d with slowness; labour be his meed!     Exit.

3.6 Enter IMOGEN, in boy’s clothes.

IMOGEN     I see a man’s life is a tedious one,

I have tir’d myself: and for two nights together

Have made the ground my bed. I should be sick,

But that my resolution helps me: Milford,

When from the mountain-top Pisanio show’d thee,

5

Thou was within a ken. O Jove! I think

Foundations fly the wretched: such, I mean,

Where they should be reliev’d. Two beggars told me

I could not miss my way. Will poor folks lie,

That have afflictions on them, knowing ’tis

10

A punishment, or trial? Yes; no wonder,

When rich ones scarce tell true. To lapse in fulness

Is sorer than to lie for need: and falsehood

Is worse in kings than beggars. My dear lord,

Thou art one o’th’ false ones! Now I think on thee,

15

My hunger’s gone; but even before, I was

At point to sink, for food. – But what is this?

Here is a path to’t: ’tis some savage hold:

I were best not call; I dare not call: yet famine,

Ere clean it o’erthrow Nature, makes it valiant.

20

Plenty and peace breeds cowards: hardness ever

Of hardiness is mother. Ho! who’s here?

If any thing that’s civil, speak: if savage,

Take, or lend. Ho! No answer? Then I’ll enter.

Best draw my sword; and if mine enemy

25

But fear the sword like me, he’ll scarcely look on’t.

Such a foe, good heavens!     Exit, to the cave.

3.7 Enter BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS.

BELARIUS

You, Polydore, have prov’d best woodman, and

Are master of the feast: Cadwal and I

Will play the cook and servant, ’tis our match:

The sweat and industry would dry and die,

But for the end it works to. Come, our stomachs

5

Will make what’s homely savoury: weariness

Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth

Finds the down-pillow hard. Now peace be here,

Poor house, that keep’st thyself!

GUIDERIUS     I am throughly weary.

ARVIRAGUS     I am weak with toil, yet strong in appetite.

10

GUIDERIUS

There is cold meat i’th’ cave, we’ll browse on that,

Whilst what we have kill’d be cook’d.

BELARIUS     [looking into the cave]     Stay, come not in:

But that it eats our victuals, I should think

Here were a fairy.

GUIDERIUS     What’s the matter, sir?

BELARIUS     By Jupiter, an angel! or, if not,

15

An earthly paragon! Behold divineness

No elder than a boy!

Enter IMOGEN.

IMOGEN     Good masters, harm me not:

Before I enter’d here, I call’d, and thought

To have begg’d or bought what I have took: good

troth,

20

I have stol’n nought, nor would not, though I had

found

Gold strew’d i’th’ floor. Here’s money for my meat,

I would have left it on the board, so soon

As I had made my meal; and parted

With pray’rs for the provider.

GUIDERIUS     Money, youth?

25

ARVIRAGUS     All gold and silver rather turn to dirt,

As ’tis no better reckon’d, but of those

Who worship dirty gods.

IMOGEN     I see you’re angry:

Know, if you kill me for my fault, I should

Have died had I not made it.

BELARIUS     Whither bound?

30

IMOGEN     To Milford-Haven.

BELARIUS     What’s your name?

IMOGEN     Fidele, sir: I have a kinsman who

Is bound for Italy; he embark’d at Milford;

To whom being going, almost spent with hunger,

35

I am fall’n in this offence.

BELARIUS     Prithee, fair youth,

Think us no churls: nor measure our good minds

By this rude place we live in. Well encounter’d!

’Tis almost night, you shall have better cheer

Ere you depart; and thanks to stay and eat it:

40

Boys, bid him welcome.

GUIDERIUS     Were you a woman, youth,

I should woo hard, but be your groom in honesty:

I bid for you as I do buy.

ARVIRAGUS     I’ll make’t my comfort

He is a man, I’ll love him as my brother:

And such a welcome as I’ld give to him

45

(After long absence) such is yours. Most welcome!

Be sprightly, for you fall ’mongst friends.

IMOGEN     ’Mongst friends?

If brothers: [aside] would it had been so, that they

Had been my father’s sons, then had my prize

Been less, and so more equal ballasting

50

To thee, Posthumus.

BELARIUS     He wrings at some distress.

GUIDERIUS     Would I could free’t!

ARVIRAGUS     Or I, whate’er it be,

What pain it cost, what danger! Gods!

BELARIUS     [whispering]     Hark, boys.

IMOGEN     Great men,

That had a court no bigger than this cave,

55

That did attend themselves, and had the virtue

Which their own conscience seal’d them, laying by

That nothing-gift of differing multitudes,

Could not out-peer these twain. Pardon me, gods!

I’ld change my sex to be companion with them,

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Since Leonatus false.

BELARIUS     It shall be so:

Boys, we’ll go dress our hunt. Fair youth, come in;

Discourse is heavy, fasting: when we have supp’d

We’ll mannerly demand thee of thy story,

So far as thou wilt speak it.

GUIDERIUS     Pray, draw near.

65

ARVIRAGUS

The night to th’owl and morn to th’ lark less

welcome.

IMOGEN     Thanks, sir.

ARVIRAGUS     I pray, draw near.     Exeunt.

3.8 Enter two Senators and Tribunes.

1 SENATOR

This is the tenour of the emperor’s writ;

That since the common men are now in action

’Gainst the Pannonians and Dalmatians,

And that the legions now in Gallia are

Full weak to undertake our wars against

5

The fall’n-off Britons, that we do incite

The gentry to this business. He creates

Lucius proconsul: and to you the tribunes,

For this immediate levy, he commands

His absolute commission. Long live Caesar!

10

1 TRIBUNE     Is Lucius general of the forces?

2 SENATOR     Ay.

1 TRIBUNE     Remaining now in Gallia?

1 SENATOR     With those legions

Which I have spoke of, whereunto your levy

Must be supplyant: the words of your commission

Will tie you to the numbers and the time

15

Of their despatch.

1 TRIBUNE     We will discharge our duty.

     Exeunt.

4.1 Enter CLOTEN alone.

CLOTEN     I am near to th’ place where they should meet,

if Pisanio have mapp’d it truly. How fit his garments

serve me! Why should his mistress who was made by

him that made the tailor, not be fit too? The rather

(saving reverence of the word) for ’tis said a woman’s

5

fitness comes by fits. Therein I must play the

workman, I dare speak it to myself, for it is not vain-

glory for a man and his glass to confer in his own

chamber; I mean, the lines of my body are as well

drawn as his; no less young, more strong, not beneath

10

him in fortunes, beyond him in the advantage of the

time, above him in birth, alike conversant in general

services, and more remarkable in single oppositions;

yet this imperseverant thing loves him in my despite.

What mortality is! Posthumus, thy head (which now is

15

growing upon thy shoulders) shall within this hour

be off, thy mistress enforced, thy garments cut to

pieces before thy face: and all this done, spurn her

home to her father, who may (haply) be a little angry

for my so rough usage: but my mother, having power

20

of his testiness, shall turn all into my commendations.

My horse is tied up safe, out, sword, and to a sore

purpose! Fortune, put them into my hand! This is the

very description of their meeting-place, and the fellow

dares not deceive me.     Exit.

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4.2 Enter BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, ARVIRAGUS and IMOGEN from the cave.

BELARIUS     [to Imogen]

You are not well: remain here in the cave,

We’ll come to you after hunting.

ARVIRAGUS     [to Imogen]     Brother, stay here:

Are we not brothers?

IMOGEN     So man and man should be;

But clay and clay differs in dignity,

Whose dust is both alike. I am very sick.

5

GUIDERIUS     Go you to hunting, I’ll abide with him.

IMOGEN     So sick I am not, yet I am not well:

But not so citizen a wanton as

To seem to die ere sick: so please you, leave me,

Stick to your journal course: the breach of custom

10

Is breach of all. I am ill, but your being by me

Cannot amend me. Society is no comfort

To one not sociable: I am not very sick,

Since I can reason of it: pray you, trust me here,

I’ll rob none but myself, and let me die,

15

Stealing so poorly.

GUIDERIUS     I love thee: I have spoke it,

How much the quantity, the weight as much,

As I do love my father.

BELARIUS     What? How? How?

ARVIRAGUS     If it be sin to say so, sir, I yoke me

In my good brother’s fault: I know not why

20

I love this youth, and I have heard you say,

Love’s reason’s without reason. The bier at door,

And a demand who is’t shall die, I’ld say

‘My father, not this youth.’

BELARIUS     [aside]     O noble strain!

O worthiness of nature! breed of greatness!

25

Cowards father cowards, and base things sire base;

Nature hath meal, and bran; contempt, and grace.

I’m not their father, yet who this should be,

Doth miracle itself, lov’d before me. –

’Tis the ninth hour o’ th’ morn.

ARVIRAGUS     Brother, farewell.

30

IMOGEN     I wish ye sport.

ARVIRAGUS     You health. – So please you, sir.

IMOGEN     [aside]

These are kind creatures. Gods, what lies I have

heard!

Our courtiers say all’s savage but at court;

Experience, O, thou disprov’st report!

Th’emperious seas breed monsters; for the dish

35

Poor tributary rivers as sweet fish:

I am sick still, heart-sick; Pisanio,

I’ll now taste of thy drug.

GUIDERIUS     I could not stir him:

He said he was gentle, but unfortunate;

Dishonestly afflicted, but yet honest.

40

ARVIRAGUS     Thus did he answer me: yet said, hereafter

I might know more.

BELARIUS     To th’ field, to th’ field!

We’ll leave you for this time, go in, and rest.

ARVIRAGUS     We’ll not be long away.

BELARIUS     Pray be not sick,

For you must be our housewife.

IMOGEN     Well, or ill,

45

I am bound to you.

BELARIUS     And shalt be ever.

     Exit Imogen, to the cave.

This youth, howe’er distress’d, appears he hath had

Good ancestors.

ARVIRAGUS     How angel-like he sings!

GUIDERIUS

But his neat cookery! he cut our roots in characters,

And sauced our broths, as Juno had been sick,

50

And he her dieter.

ARVIRAGUS     Nobly he yokes

A smiling with a sigh; as if the sigh

Was that it was, for not being such a smile;

The smile mocking the sigh, that it would fly

From so divine a temple, to commix

55

With winds that sailors rail at.

GUIDERIUS     I do note

That grief and patience, rooted in them both,

Mingle their spurs together.

ARVIRAGUS     Grow, patience!

And let the stinking-elder, grief, untwine

His perishing root, with the increasing vine!

60

BELARIUS

It is great morning. Come, away! – who’s there?

Enter CLOTEN.

CLOTEN     I cannot find those runagates, that villain

Hath mock’d me. I am faint.

BELARIUS     ‘Those runagates!’

Means he not us? I partly know him, ’tis

Cloten, the son o’th’ queen. I fear some ambush:

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I saw him not these many years, and yet

I know ’tis he: we are held as outlaws: hence!

GUIDERIUS     He is but one: you, and my brother search

What companies are near: pray you, away,

Let me alone with him.

     Exeunt Belarius and Arviragus.

CLOTEN     Soft, what are you

70

That fly me thus? Some villain mountaineers?

I have heard of such. What slave art thou?

GUIDERIUS     A thing

More slavish did I ne’er than answering

A slave without a knock.

CLOTEN     Thou art a robber,

A law-breaker, a villain: yield thee, thief.

75

GUIDERIUS

To who? to thee? What art thou? Have not I

An arm as big as thine? a heart as big?

Thy words I grant are bigger: for I wear not

My dagger in my mouth. Say what thou art:

Why I should yield to thee.

CLOTEN     Thou villain base,

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Know’st me not by my clothes?

GUIDERIUS     No, nor thy tailor, rascal,

Who is thy grandfather: he made those clothes,

Which (as it seems) make thee.

CLOTEN     Thou precious varlet,

My tailor made them not.

GUIDERIUS     Hence then, and thank

The man that gave them thee. Thou art some fool,

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I am loath to beat thee.

CLOTEN     Thou injurious thief,

Hear but my name, and tremble.

GUIDERIUS     What’s thy name?

CLOTEN     Cloten, thou villain.

GUIDERIUS     Cloten, thou double villain, be thy name,

I cannot tremble at it, were it Toad, or Adder,

Spider,

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’Twould move me sooner.

CLOTEN     To thy further fear,

Nay, to thy mere confusion, thou shalt know

I am son to th’ queen.

GUIDERIUS     I am sorry for’t: not seeming

So worthy as thy birth.

CLOTEN     Art not afeard?

GUIDERIUS

Those that I reverence, those I fear: the wise:

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At fools I laugh: not fear them.

CLOTEN     Die the death:

When I have slain thee with my proper hand,

I’ll follow those that even now fled hence:

And on the gates of Lud’s town set your heads:

Yield, rustic mountaineer.     Exeunt, fighting.

100

Re-enter BELARIUS and ARVIRAGUS.

BELARIUS     No company’s abroad?

ARVIRAGUS

None in the world: you did mistake him sure.

BELARIUS     I cannot tell: long is it since I saw him,

But time hath nothing blurr’d those lines of favour

Which then he wore: the snatches in his voice,

105

And burst of speaking were as his: I am absolute

’Twas very Cloten.

ARVIRAGUS     In this place we left them;

I wish my brother make good time with him,

You say he is so fell.

BELARIUS     Being scarce made up,

I mean, to man, he had not apprehension

110

Of roaring terrors: for defect of judgement

Is oft the cause of fear. But see, thy brother.

Re-enter GUIDERIUS with Cloten’s head.

GUIDERIUS     This Cloten was a fool, an empty purse,

There was no money in’t: not Hercules

Could have knock’d out his brains, for he had none:

115

Yet I not doing this, the fool had borne

My head, as I do his.

BELARIUS     What hast thou done?

GUIDERIUS

I am perfect what: cut off one Cloten’s head,

Son to the queen (after his own report),

Who call’d me traitor, mountaineer, and swore,

120

With his own single hand he’ld take us in,

Displace our heads where (thank the gods!) they

grow,

And set them on Lud’s town.

BELARIUS     We are all undone.

GUIDERIUS     Why, worthy father, what have we to lose,

But that he swore to take, our lives? The law

125

Protects not us, then why should we be tender,

To let an arrogant piece of flesh threat us,

Play judge, and executioner, all himself,

For we do fear the law? What company

Discover you abroad?

BELARIUS     No single soul

130

Can we set eye on; but in all safe reason

He must have some attendants. Though his honour

Was nothing but mutation, ay, and that

From one bad thing to worse, not frenzy, not

Absolute madness could so far have rav’d,

135

To bring him here alone: although perhaps

It may be heard at court that such as we

Cave here, hunt here, are outlaws, and in time

May make some stronger head, the which he hearing

(As it is like him) might break out, and swear

140

He’ld fetch us in, yet is’t not probable

To come alone, either he so undertaking,

Or they so suffering: then on good ground we fear,

If we do fear this body hath a tail

More perilous than the head.

ARVIRAGUS     Let ordinance

145

Come as the gods foresay it: howsoe’er,

My brother hath done well.

BELARIUS     I had no mind

To hunt this day: the boy Fidele’s sickness

Did make my way long forth.

GUIDERIUS     With his own sword,

Which he did wave against my throat, I have ta’en

150

His head from him: I’ll throw’t into the creek

Behind our rock, and let it to the sea,

And tell the fishes he’s the queen’s son, Cloten,

That’s all I reck.     Exit.

BELARIUS     I fear ’twill be reveng’d:

Would, Polydore, thou hadst not done’t: though

valour

155

Becomes thee well enough.

ARVIRAGUS     Would I had done’t:

So the revenge alone pursued me! Polydore,

I love thee brotherly, but envy much

Thou hast robb’d me of this deed: I would revenges,

That possible strength might meet, would seek us

through

160

And put us to our answer.

BELARIUS     Well, ’tis done:

We’ll hunt no more to-day, nor seek for danger

Where there’s no profit. I prithee, to our rock,

You and Fidele play the cooks: I’ll stay

Till hasty Polydore return, and bring him

165

To dinner presently.

ARVIRAGUS     Poor sick Fidele!

I’ll willingly to him; to gain his colour

I’ld let a parish of such Clotens blood,

And praise myself for charity.     Exit.

BELARIUS     O thou goddess,

Thou divine Nature; thou thyself thou blazon’st

170

In these two princely boys: they are as gentle

As zephyrs blowing below the violet,

Not wagging his sweet head; and yet, as rough,

(Their royal blood enchaf’d) as the rud’st wind

That by the top doth take the mountain pine

175

And make him stoop to th’ vale. ’Tis wonder

That an invisible instinct should frame them

To royalty unlearn’d, honour untaught,

Civility not seen from other, valour

That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop

180

As if it had been sow’d. Yet still it’s strange

What Cloten’s being here to us portends,

Or what his death will bring us.

Re-enter GUIDERIUS.

GUIDERIUS     Where’s my brother?

I have sent Cloten’s clotpoll down the stream,

In embassy to his mother; his body’s hostage

185

For his return.     [Solemn music.]

BELARIUS     My ingenious instrument

(Hark, Polydore) it sounds: but what occasion

Hath Cadwal now to give it motion? Hark!

GUIDERIUS

Is he at home?

BELARIUS     He went hence even now.

GUIDERIUS

What does he mean? Since death of my dear’st

mother

190

It did not speak before. All solemn things

Should answer solemn accidents. The matter?

Triumphs for nothing, and lamenting toys,

Is jollity for apes, and grief for boys.

Is Cadwal mad?

Re-enter ARVIRAGUS with IMOGEN, dead, bearing her in his arms.

BELARIUS     Look, here he comes,

195

And brings the dire occasion in his arms

Of what we blame him for!

ARVIRAGUS     The bird is dead

That we have made so much on. I had rather

Have skipp’d from sixteen years of age to sixty:

To have turn’d my leaping time into a crutch,

200

Than have seen this.

GUIDERIUS     O sweetest, fairest lily:

My brother wears thee not the one half so well

As when thou grew’st thyself.

BELARIUS     O melancholy,

Who ever yet could sound thy bottom, find

The ooze, to show what coast thy sluggish care

205

Might’st easil’est harbour in? Thou blessed thing,

Jove knows what man thou mightst have made: but I,

Thou diedst a most rare boy, of melancholy.

How found you him?

ARVIRAGUS     Stark, as you see:

Thus smiling, as some fly had tickled slumber,

210

Not as death’s dart, being laugh’d at: his right cheek

Reposing on a cushion.

GUIDERIUS     Where?

ARVIRAGUS     O’th’ floor;

His arms thus leagu’d, I thought he slept, and put

My clouted brogues from off my feet, whose

rudeness

Answer’d my steps too loud.

GUIDERIUS     Why, he but sleeps:

215

If he be gone, he’ll make his grave a bed:

With female fairies will his tomb be haunted,

And worms will not come to thee.

ARVIRAGUS     With fairest flowers

Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,

I’ll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack

220

The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose, nor

The azur’d harebell, like thy veins: no, nor

The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,

Out-sweet’ned not thy breath: the ruddock would

With charitable bill (O bill, sore shaming

225

Those rich-left heirs, that let their fathers lie

Without a monument!) bring thee all this;

Yea, and furr’d moss besides. When flowers are none,

To winter-ground thy corse –

GUIDERIUS     Prithee, have done,

And do not play in wench-like words with that

230

Which is so serious. Let us bury him,

And not protract with admiration what

Is now due debt. To th’ grave!

ARVIRAGUS     Say, where shall’s lay him?

GUIDERIUS     By good Euriphile, our mother.

ARVIRAGUS     Be’t so:

And let us, Polydore, though now our voices

235

Have got the mannish crack, sing him to th’ ground,

As once to our mother: use like note and words,

Save that Euriphile must be Fidele.

GUIDERIUS     Cadwal,

I cannot sing: I’ll weep, and word it with thee;

240

For notes of sorrow out of tune are worse

Than priests and fanes that lie.

ARVIRAGUS     We’ll speak it then.

BELARIUS

Great griefs, I see, med’cine the less; for Cloten

Is quite forgot. He was a queen’s son, boys,

And though he came our enemy, remember,

245

He was paid for that: though mean and mighty,

rotting

Together, have one dust, yet reverence

(That angel of the world) doth make distinction

Of place ’tween high, and low. Our foe was princely,

And though you took his life, as being our foe,

250

Yet bury him, as a prince.

GUIDERIUS     Pray you, fetch him hither,

Thersites’ body is as good as Ajax’,

When neither are alive.

ARVIRAGUS     If you’ll go fetch him,

We’ll say our song the whilst. – Brother, begin.

Exit Belarius.

GUIDERIUS

Nay, Cadwal, we must lay his head to the east,

255

My father hath a reason for’t.

ARVIRAGUS     ’Tis true.

GUIDERIUS     Come on then, and remove him.

ARVIRAGUS     So, – Begin.

Song.

GUIDERIUS     Fear no more the heat o’th’ sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages,

Thou thy worldly task has done,

260

Home art gone and ta’en thy wages.

Golden lads and girls all must,

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

ARVIRAGUS     Fear no more the frown o’th’ great,

Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke,

265

Care no more to clothe and eat,

To thee the reed is as the oak:

The sceptre, learning, physic, must

All follow this and come to dust.

GUIDERIUS     Fear no more the lightning-flash.

270

ARVIRAGUS     Nor th’all-dreaded thunder-stone.

GUIDERIUS     Fear not slander, censure rash.

ARVIRAGUS     Thou hast finish’d joy and moan.

BOTH     All lovers young, all lovers must

Consign to thee and come to dust.

275

GUIDERIUS     No exorciser harm thee!

ARVIRAGUS     Nor no witchcraft charm thee!

GUIDERIUS     Ghost unlaid forbear thee!

ARVIRAGUS     Nothing ill come near thee!

BOTH     Quiet consummation have,

280

And renowned be thy grave!

Re-enter BELARIUS with the body of Cloten.

GUIDERIUS

We have done our obsequies: come, lay him down.

BELARIUS

Here’s a few flowers, but ’bout midnight more:

The herbs that have on them cold dew o’th’ night

Are strewings fitt’st for graves: upon their faces.

285

You were as flowers, now wither’d: even so

These herblets shall, which we upon you strew.

Come on, away, apart upon our knees:

The ground that gave them first has them again:

Their pleasures here are past, so is their pain.

290

Exeunt Belarius, Guiderius and Arviragus.

IMOGEN     [awakes]

Yes sir, to Milford-Haven, which is the way?

I thank you: by yond bush? pray, how far thither?

’Ods pittikins: can it be six mile yet?

I have gone all night: faith, I’ll lie down and sleep.

But, soft! no bedfellow! O gods and goddesses!

295

[seeing the body of Cloten]

These flowers are like the pleasures of the world;

This bloody man, the care on’t. I hope I dream:

For so I thought I was a cave-keeper,

And cook to honest creatures. But ’tis not so:

’Twas but a bolt of nothing, shot at nothing,

300

Which the brain makes of fumes. Our very eyes

Are sometimes like our judgements, blind. Good

faith,

I tremble still with fear: but if there be

Yet left in heaven as small a drop of pity

As a wren’s eye, fear’d gods, a part of it!

305

The dream’s here still: even when I wake it is

Without me, as within me: not imagin’d, felt.

A headless man? The garments of Posthumus?

I know the shape of’s leg: this is his hand:

His foot Mercurial: his Martial thigh:

310

The brawns of Hercules: but his Jovial face –

Murder in heaven! How –? ’Tis gone. Pisanio,

All curses madded Hecuba gave the Greeks,

And mine to boot, be darted on thee! Thou,

Conspir’d with that irregulous devil, Cloten,

315

Hast here cut off my lord. To write, and read

Be henceforth treacherous! Damn’d Pisanio

Hath with his forged letters (damn’d Pisanio)

From this most bravest vessel of the world

Struck the main-top! O Posthumus, alas,

320

Where is thy head? where’s that? Ay me! where’s

that?

Pisanio might have kill’d thee at the heart,

And left this head on. How should this be, Pisanio?

’Tis he, and Cloten: malice and lucre in them

Have laid this woe here. O, ’tis pregnant, pregnant!

325

The drug he gave me, which he said was precious

And cordial to me, have I not found it

Murd’rous to th’ senses? That confirms it home:

This is Pisanio’s deed, and Cloten – O!

Give colour to my pale cheek with thy blood,

330

That we the horrider may seem to those

Which chance to find us. O, my lord! my lord!

[Falls on the body.]

Enter LUCIUS, Captains and a Soothsayer.

CAPTAIN     To them, the legions garrison’d in Gallia

After your will have cross’d the sea, attending

You here at Milford-Haven, with your ships:

335

They are in readiness.

LUCIUS     But what from Rome?

CAPTAIN     The senate hath stirr’d up the confiners

And gentlemen of Italy, most willing spirits,

That promise noble service: and they come

Under the conduct of bold Iachimo,

340

Siena’s brother.

LUCIUS     When expect you them?

CAPTAIN     With the next benefit o’th’ wind.

LUCIUS     This forwardness

Makes our hopes fair. Command our present

numbers

Be muster’d; bid the captains look to’t. Now sir,

What have you dream’d of late of this war’s purpose?

345

SOOTHSAYER

Last night the very gods show’d me a vision

(I fast, and pray’d for their intelligence) thus:

I saw Jove’s bird, the Roman eagle, wing’d

From the spongy south to this part of the west,

There vanish’d in the sunbeams, which portends

350

(Unless my sins abuse my divination)

Success to th’ Roman host.

LUCIUS     Dream often so,

And never false. Soft ho, what trunk is here?

Without his top? The ruin speaks that sometime

It was a worthy building. How? a page?

355

Or dead, or sleeping on him? But dead rather:

For nature doth abhor to make his bed

With the defunct, or sleep upon the dead.

Let’s see the boy’s face.

CAPTAIN     He’s alive, my lord.

LUCIUS

He’ll then instruct us of this body. Young one,

360

Inform us of thy fortunes, for it seems

They crave to be demanded. Who is this

Thou mak’st thy bloody pillow? Or who was he

That (otherwise than noble Nature did)

Hath alter’d that good picture? What’s thy interest

365

In this sad wreck? How came’t? Who is’t?

What art thou?

IMOGEN     I am nothing; or if not,

Nothing to be were better. This was my master,

A very valiant Briton, and a good,

That here by mountaineers lies slain. Alas!

370

There is no more such masters: I may wander

From east to occident, cry out for service,

Try many, all good: serve truly: never

Find such another master.

LUCIUS     ’Lack, good youth!

Thou mov’st no less with thy complaining than

375

Thy master in bleeding: say his name, good friend.

IMOGEN

Richard du Champ: [aside] if I do lie, and do

No harm by it, though the gods hear, I hope

They’ll pardon it. Say you, sir?

LUCIUS     Thy name?

IMOGEN     Fidele, sir.

LUCIUS

Thou dost approve thyself the very same:

380

Thy name well fits thy faith; thy faith thy name:

Wilt take thy chance with me? I will not say

Thou shalt be so well master’d, but be sure

No less belov’d. The Roman emperor’s letters

Sent by a consul to me should not sooner

385

Than thine own worth prefer thee: go with me.

IMOGEN     I’ll follow, sir. But first, an’t please the gods,

I’ll hide my master from the flies, as deep

As these poor pickaxes can dig: and when

With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha’ strew’d his

grave

390

And on it said a century of prayers

(Such as I can) twice o’er, I’ll weep and sigh,

And leaving so his service, follow you,

So please you entertain me.

LUCIUS     Ay, good youth;

And rather father thee than master thee.

395

My friends,

The boy hath taught us manly duties: let us

Find out the prettiest daisied plot we can,

And make him with our pikes and partisans

A grave: come, arm him. Boy, he is preferr’d

400

By thee to us, and he shall be interr’d

As soldiers can. Be cheerful, wipe thine eyes:

Some falls are means the happier to arise.     Exeunt.

4.3 Enter CYMBELINE, Lords, PISANIO and attendants.

CYMBELINE

Again: and bring me word how ’tis with her.

Exit an attendant.

A fever with the absence of her son;

A madness, of which her life’s in danger: heavens,

How deeply you at once do touch me! Imogen,

The great part of my comfort gone: my queen

5

Upon a desperate bed, and in a time

When fearful wars point at me: her son gone,

So needful for this present. It strikes me, past

The hope of comfort. But for thee, fellow,

Who needs must know of her departure, and

10

Dost seem so ignorant, we’ll enforce it from thee

By a sharp torture.

PISANIO     Sir, my life is yours,

I humbly set it at your will: but, for my mistress,

I nothing know where she remains: why gone,

Nor when she purposes return. Beseech your

highness,

15

Hold me your loyal servant.

1 LORD     Good my liege,

The day that she was missing, he was here:

I dare be bound he’s true, and shall perform

All parts of his subjection loyally. For Cloten,

There wants no diligence in seeking him,

20

And will no doubt be found.

CYMBELINE     The time is troublesome:

[to Pisanio] We’ll slip you for a season, but our

jealousy

Does yet depend.

1 LORD     So please your majesty,

The Roman legions, all from Gallia drawn,

Are landed on your coast, with a supply

25

Of Roman gentlemen, by the Senate sent.

CYMBELINE     Now for the counsel of my son and queen,

I am amaz’d with matter.

1 LORD     Good my liege,

Your preparation can affront no less

Than what you hear of. Come more, for more you’re

ready:

30

The want is but to put those powers in motion

That long to move.

CYMBELINE     I thank you: let’s withdraw

And meet the time, as it seeks us. We fear not

What can from Italy annoy us, but

We grieve at chances here. Away!

35

Exeunt Cymbeline, Lords and attendants.

PISANIO     I heard no letter from my master since

I wrote him Imogen was slain. ’Tis strange:

Nor hear I from my mistress, who did promise

To yield me often tidings. Neither know I

What is betid to Cloten, but remain

40

Perplex’d in all. The heavens still must work.

Wherein I am false, I am honest; not true, to be true.

These present wars shall find I love my country,

Even to the note o’th’ king, or I’ll fall in them:

All other doubts, by time let them be clear’d,

45

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer’d.

Exit.

4.4 Enter BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS.

GUIDERIUS     The noise is round about us.

BELARIUS     Let us from it.

ARVIRAGUS     What pleasure, sir, we find in life, to lock it

From action and adventure.

GUIDERIUS     Nay, what hope

Have we in hiding us? This way, the Romans

Must or for Britons slay us or receive us

5

For barbarous and unnatural revolts

During their use, and slay us after.

BELARIUS     Sons,

We’ll higher to the mountains, there secure us.

To the king’s party there’s no going: newness

Of Cloten’s death (we being not known, not muster’d

10

Among the bands) may drive us to a render

Where we have liv’d, and so extort from’s that

Which we have done, whose answer would be death

Drawn on with torture.

GUIDERIUS     This is, sir, a doubt

In such a time nothing becoming you,

15

Nor satisfying us.

ARVIRAGUS     It is not likely

That when they hear their Roman horses neigh,

Behold their quarter’d fires; have both their eyes

And ears so cloy’d importantly as now,

That they will waste their time upon our note,

20

To know from whence we are.

BELARIUS     O, I am known

Of many in the army: many years

(Though Cloten then but young) you see, not wore

him

From my remembrance. And besides, the king

Hath not deserv’d my service nor your loves,

25

Who find in my exile the want of breeding,

The certainty of this hard life, aye hopeless

To have the courtesy your cradle promis’d,

But to be still hot Summer’s tanlings, and

The shrinking slaves of Winter.

GUIDERIUS     Than be so,

30

Better to cease to be. Pray, sir, to th’army:

I and my brother are not known; yourself

So out of thought, and thereto so o’ergrown,

Cannot be question’d.

ARVIRAGUS     By this sun that shines

I’ll thither: what thing is’t that I never

35

Did see man die, scarce ever look’d on blood,

But that of coward hares, hot goats, and venison!

Never bestrid a horse, save one that had

A rider like myself, who ne’er wore rowel,

Nor iron on his heel! I am ashamed

40

To look upon the holy sun, to have

The benefit of his blest beams, remaining

So long a poor unknown.

GUIDERIUS     By heavens, I’ll go,

If you will bless me, sir, and give me leave,

I’ll take the better care: but if you will not,

45

The hazard therefore due fall on me by

The hands of Romans!

ARVIRAGUS     So say I, amen.

BELARIUS     No reason I (since of your lives you set

So slight a valuation) should reserve

My crack’d one to more care. Have with you, boys!

50

If in your country wars you chance to die,

That is my bed too, lads, and there I’ll lie.

Lead, lead. The time seems long, their blood thinks

scorn

Till it fly out and show them princes born.     Exeunt.

5.1 Enter POSTHUMUS alone.

POSTHUMUS

Yea, bloody cloth, I’ll keep thee: for I wish’d

Thou shouldst be colour’d thus. You married ones,

If each of you should take this course, how many

Must murder wives much better than themselves

For wrying but a little? O Pisanio,

5

Every good servant does not all commands:

No bond, but to do just ones. Gods, if you

Should have ta’en vengeance on my faults, I never

Had liv’d to put on this: so had you saved

The noble Imogen, to repent, and struck

10

Me, wretch, more worth your vengeance. But alack,

You snatch some hence for little faults; that’s love,

To have them fall no more: you some permit

To second ills with ills, each elder worse,

And make them dread it, to the doers’ thrift.

15

But Imogen is your own, do your best wills,

And make me blest to obey. I am brought hither

Among th’Italian gentry, and to fight

Against my lady’s kingdom: ’tis enough

That, Britain, I have kill’d thy mistress: peace,

20

I’ll give no wound to thee: therefore, good heavens,

Hear patiently my purpose. I’ll disrobe me

Of these Italian weeds, and suit myself

As does a Briton peasant: so I’ll fight

Against the part I come with: so I’ll die

25

For thee, O Imogen, even for whom my life

Is, every breath, a death: and thus, unknown,

Pitied, nor hated, to the face of peril

Myself I’ll dedicate. Let me make men know

More valour in me than my habits show.

30

Gods, put the strength o’th’ Leonati in me!

To shame the guise o’th’ world, I will begin,

The fashion less without, and more within.     Exit.

5.2 Enter LUCIUS, IACHIMO and the Roman army at one door: and the Briton Army at another: LEONATUS POSTHUMUS following, like a poor soldier. They march over, and go out. Then enter again, in skirmish, IACHIMO and POSTHUMUS: he vanquisheth and disarmeth Iachimo, and then leaves him.

IACHIMO     The heaviness and guilt within my bosom

Takes off my manhood: I have belied a lady,

The princess of this country; and the air on’t

Revengingly enfeebles me, or could this carl,

A very drudge of Nature’s, have subdued me

5

In my profession? Knighthoods and honours, borne

As I wear mine, are titles but of scorn.

If that thy gentry, Britain, go before

This lout, as he exceeds our lords, the odds

Is that we scarce are men and you are gods.     Exit.

10

The battle continues, the Britons fly, Cymbeline is taken: then enter to his rescue, BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS.

BELARIUS

Stand, stand, We have th’advantage of the ground;

The lane is guarded: nothing routs us but

The villainy of our fears.

GUIDERIUS, ARVIRAGUS     Stand, stand, and fight!

Re-enter POSTHUMUS, and seconds the Britons. They rescue Cymbeline and exeunt. Then re-enter LUCIUS, IACHIMO and IMOGEN.

LUCIUS     Away, boy, from the troops, and save thyself:

For friends kill friends, and the disorder’s such

15

As war were hoodwink’d.

IACHIMO     ’Tis their fresh supplies.

LUCIUS     It is a day turn’d strangely: or betimes

Let’s re-inforce, or fly.     Exeunt.

5.3 Enter POSTHUMUS and a Briton Lord.

LORD     Cam’st thou from where they made the stand?

POSTHUMUS     I did,

Though you it seems come from the fliers.

LORD     I did.

POSTHUMUS     No blame be to you, sir, for all was lost,

But that the heavens fought: the king himself

Of his wings destitute, the army broken,

5

And but the backs of Britons seen; all flying

Through a strait lane; the enemy full-hearted,

Lolling the tongue with slaught’ring, having work

More plentiful than tools to do’t, struck down

Some mortally, some slightly touch’d, some falling

10

Merely through fear, that the strait pass was damm’d

With dead men, hurt behind, and cowards living

To die with length’ned shame.

LORD     Where was this lane?

POSTHUMUS

Close by the battle, ditch’d, and wall’d with turf –

Which gave advantage to an ancient soldier,

15

(An honest one, I warrant) who deserv’d

So long a breeding as his white beard came to,

In doing this for’s country. Athwart the lane,

He, with two striplings (lads more like to run

The country base than to commit such slaughter,

20

With faces fit for masks, or rather fairer

Than those for preservation cas’d, or shame)

Made good the passage, cried to those that fled,

‘Our Britain’s harts die flying, not our men:

To darkness fleet souls that fly backwards; stand,

25

Or we are Romans, and will give you that

Like beasts which you shun beastly, and may save

But to look back in frown: stand, stand!’ These three,

Three thousand confident, in act as many, –

For three performers are the file when all

30

The rest do nothing, – with this word ‘Stand, stand,’

Accommodated by the place, more charming,

With their own nobleness, which could have turn’d

A distaff to a lance, gilded pale looks;

Part shame, part spirit renew’d, that some, turn’d

coward

35

But by example (O, a sin in war,

Damn’d in the first beginners) ’gan to look

The way that they did, and to grin like lions

Upon the pikes o’th’ hunters. Then began

A stop i’th’ chaser; a retire: anon

40

A rout, confusion thick: forthwith they fly

Chickens, the way which they stoop’d eagles: slaves,

The strides they victors made: and now our cowards

Like fragments in hard voyages became

The life o’th’ need: having found the back-door

open

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Of the unguarded hearts, heavens, how they wound!

Some slain before, some dying, some their friends

O’er-borne i’th’ former wave, ten chas’d by one,

Are now each one the slaughter-man of twenty:

Those that would die, or ere resist, are grown

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The mortal bugs o’th’ field.

LORD     This was strange chance:

A narrow lane, an old man, and two boys.

POSTHUMUS     Nay, do not wonder at it: you are made

Rather to wonder at the things you hear

Than to work any. Will you rhyme upon’t,

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And vent it for a mock’ry? Here is one:

Two boys, an old man twice a boy, a lane,

Preserv’d the Britons, was the Romans’ bane.

LORD

Nay, be not angry, sir.

POSTHUMUS     ’Lack, to what end?

Who dares not stand his foe, I’ll be his friend:

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For if he’ll do as he is made to do,

I know he’ll quickly fly my friendship too.

You have put me into rhyme.

LORD     Farewell, you’re angry.

Exit.

POSTHUMUS

Still going? This is a lord! O noble misery,

To be i’th’ field, and ask ‘what news?’ of me!

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To-day how many would have given their honours

To have sav’d their carcasses? Took heel to do’t,

And yet died too! I, in mine own woe charm’d,

Could not find death where I did hear him groan,

Nor feel him where he struck. Being an ugly

monster,

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’Tis strange he hides him in fresh cups, soft beds,

Sweet words; or hath moe ministers than we

That draw his knives i’th’ war. Well, I will find him:

For being now a favourer to the Briton,

No more a Briton, I have resumed again

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The part I came in. Fight I will no more,

But yield me to the veriest hind that shall

Once touch my shoulder. Great the slaughter is

Here made by th’ Roman; great the answer be

Britons must take. For me, my ransom’s death:

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On either side I come to spend my breath,

Which neither here I’ll keep nor bear again,

But end it by some means for Imogen.

Enter two British Captains and soldiers.

1 CAPTAIN     Great Jupiter be prais’d, Lucius is taken:

’Tis thought the old man, and his sons, were angels.

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2 CAPTAIN     There was a fourth man, in a silly habit,

That gave th’affront with them.

1 CAPTAIN     So ’tis reported:

But none of ’em can be found. Stand! who’s there?

POSTHUMUS     A Roman,

Who had not now been drooping here if seconds

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Had answer’d him.

2 CAPTAIN     Lay hands on him: a dog,

A leg of Rome shall not return to tell

What crows have peck’d them here: he brags his

service

As if he were of note: bring him to th’ king.

Enter CYMBELINE, BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, ARVIRAGUS, PISANIO and Roman captives. The captains present Posthumus to Cymbeline, who delivers him over to a Gaoler.

Exeunt.

5.4 Enter POSTHUMUS and two Gaolers.

1 GAOLER

You shall not now be stol’n, you have locks upon you:

So graze, as you find pasture.

2 GAOLER     Ay, or a stomach.

Exeunt Gaolers.

POSTHUMUS

Most welcome bondage; for thou art a way,

I think to liberty: yet am I better

Than one that’s sick o’th’ gout, since he had rather

5

Groan so in perpetuity than be cur’d

By th’ sure physician, Death; who is the key

T’unbar these locks. My conscience, thou art fetter’d

More than my shanks and wrists: you good gods, give

me

The penitent instrument to pick that bolt,

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Then free for ever. Is’t enough I am sorry?

So children temporal fathers do appease;

Gods are more full of mercy. Must I repent,

I cannot do it better than in gyves,

Desir’d more than constrain’d: to satisfy,

15

If of my freedom ’tis the mainport, take

No stricter render of me than my all.

I know you are more clement than vile men,

Who of their broken debtors take a third,

A sixth, a tenth, letting them thrive again

20

On their abatement; that’s not my desire.

For Imogen’s dear life take mine, and though

’Tis not so dear, yet ’tis a life; you coin’d it:

’Tween man and man they weigh not every stamp;

Though light, take pieces for the figure’s sake:

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You rather, mine being yours: and so, great powers,

If you will take this audit, take this life,

And cancel these cold bonds. O Imogen,

I’ll speak to thee in silence. [Sleeps.]

Solemn music. Enter, as in an apparition, SICILIUS LEONATUS, father to Posthumus, an old man, attired like a warrior, leading in his hand an ancient matron, his wife, and Mother to Posthumus, with music before them. Then, after other music, follow the two young Leonati, Brothers to Posthumus, with wounds as they died in the wars. They circle Posthumus round as he lies sleeping.

SICILIUS     No more thou thunder-master show

30

thy spite on mortal flies:

With Mars fall out, with Juno chide,

that thy adulteries

Rates and revenges.

Hath my poor boy done aught but well,

35

whose face I never saw?

I died whilst in the womb he stay’d,

attending Nature’s law:

Whose father then (as men report

thou orphans’ father art)

40

Thou shouldst have been, and shielded him

from this earth-vexing smart.

MOTHER     Lucina lent not me her aid,

but took me in my throes,

That from me was Posthumus ript,

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came crying ’mongst his foes,

A thing of pity!

SICILIUS     Great nature, like his ancestry,

moulded the stuff so fair,

That he deserved the praise o’th’ world,

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as great Sicilius’ heir.

1 BROTHER

When once he was mature for man,

in Britain where was he

That could stand up his parallel,

or fruitful object be

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In eye of Imogen, that best

could deem his dignity?

MOTHER     With marriage wherefore was he mock’d

to be exil’d, and thrown

From Leonati seat, and cast

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from her his dearest one,

Sweet Imogen?

SICILIUS     Why did you suffer Iachimo,

slight thing of Italy,

To taint his nobler heart and brain

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with needless jealousy;

And to become the geck and scorn

o’th’ other’s villainy?

2 BROTHER

For this, from stiller seats we came,

our parents and us twain,

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That striking in our country’s cause

fell bravely and were slain,

Our fealty, and Tenantius’ right,

with honour to maintain.

1 BROTHER

Like hardiment Posthumus hath

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to Cymbeline perform’d:

Then, Jupiter, thou king of gods

why hast thou thus adjourn’d

The graces for his merits due,

being all to dolours turn’d?

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SICILIUS     Thy crystal window ope; look out;

no longer exercise

Upon a valiant race thy harsh

and potent injuries.

MOTHER     Since, Jupiter, our son is good,

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take off his miseries.

SICILIUS     Peep through thy marble mansion, help,

or we poor ghosts will cry

To th’ shining synod of the rest

against thy deity.

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BROTHERS

Help, Jupiter, or we appeal,

and from thy justice fly.

JUPITER descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. The Ghosts fall on their knees.

JUPITER

No more, you petty spirits of region low,

Offend our hearing: hush! How dare you ghosts

Accuse the thunderer, whose bolt (you know)

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Sky-planted, batters all rebelling coasts?

Poor shadows of Elysium, hence, and rest

Upon your never-withering banks of flowers:

Be not with mortal accidents opprest,

No care of yours it is, you know ’tis ours.

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Whom best I love I cross; to make my gift,

The more delay’d, delighted. Be content,

Your low-laid son our godhead will uplift:

His comforts thrive, his trials well are spent:

Our Jovial star reign’d at his birth, and in

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Our temple was he married. Rise, and fade.

He shall be lord of lady Imogen,

And happier much by his affliction made.

This tablet lay upon his breast, wherein

Our pleasure his full fortune doth confine,

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And so away: no farther with your din

Express impatience, lest you stir up mine.

Mount, eagle, to my palace crystalline.     Ascends.

SICILIUS

He came in thunder; his celestial breath

Was sulphurous to smell: the holy eagle

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Stoop’d, as to foot us: his ascension is

More sweet than our blest fields: his royal bird

Prunes the immortal wing, and cloys his beak,

As when his god is pleased.

ALL     Thanks, Jupiter!

SICILIUS

The marble pavement closes, he is enter’d

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His radiant roof. Away! and to be blest

Let us with care perform his great behest.

The Ghosts vanish.

POSTHUMUS [waking]

Sleep, thou hast been a grandsire, and begot

A father to me: and thou hast created

A mother, and two brothers: but, O scorn!

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Gone! they went hence so soon as they were born:

And so I am awake. Poor wretches, that depend

On greatness’ favour, dream as I have done,

Wake, and find nothing. But, alas, I swerve:

Many dream not to find, neither deserve,

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And yet are steep’d in favours; so am I,

That have this golden chance, and know not why.

What fairies haunt this ground? A book? O rare one,

Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment

Nobler than that it covers. Let thy effects

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So follow, to be most unlike our courtiers,

As good as promise.

[Reads.] When as a lion’s whelp shall, to himself

unknown, without seeking find, and be embrac’d by a

piece of tender air: and when from a stately cedar shall be

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lopp’d branches, which, being dead many years, shall

after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow,

then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be

fortunate, and flourish in peace and plenty.

’Tis still a dream: or else such stuff as madmen

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Tongue, and brain not: either both, or nothing,

Or senseless speaking, or a speaking such

As sense cannot untie. Be what it is,

The action of my life is like it, which

I’ll keep, if but for sympathy.

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Re-enter Gaolers.

1 GAOLER     Come, sir, are you ready for death?

POSTHUMUS     Over-roasted rather: ready long ago.

1 GAOLER     Hanging is the word, sir: if you be ready for

that, you are well cook’d.

POSTHUMUS     So, if I prove a good repast to the

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spectators, the dish pays the shot.

1 GAOLER     A heavy reckoning for you sir: but the

comfort is you shall be called to no more payments,

fear no more tavern-bills, which are often the sadness

of parting, as the procuring of mirth: you come in faint

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for want of meat, depart reeling with too much drink:

sorry that you have paid too much, and sorry that you

are paid too much: purse and brain, both empty: the

brain the heavier for being too light; the purse too

light, being drawn of heaviness. O, of this

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contradiction you shall now be quit. O, the charity of

a penny cord! it sums up thousands in a trice: you have

no true debitor and creditor but it: of what’s past, is,

and to come, the discharge: your neck, sir, is pen,

book, and counters; so the acquittance follows.

170

POSTHUMUS     I am merrier to die than thou art to live.

1 GAOLER     Indeed sir, he that sleeps feels not the

toothache: but a man that were to sleep your sleep, and

a hangman to help him to bed, I think he would

change places with his officer: for, look you, sir, you

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know not which way you shall go.

POSTHUMUS     Yes, indeed do I, fellow.

1 GAOLER     Your death has eyes in’s head then: I have not

seen him so pictur’d: you must either be directed by

some that take upon them to know, or to take upon

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yourself that which I am sure you do not know, or

jump the after-inquiry on your own peril: and how

you shall speed in your journey’s end, I think you’ll

never return to tell on.

POSTHUMUS     I tell thee, fellow, there are none want eyes

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to direct them the way I am going, but such as wink,

and will not use them.

1 GAOLER     What an infinite mock is this, that a man

should have the best use of eyes to see the way of

blindness! I am sure hanging’s the way of winking.

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Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     Knock off his manacles, bring your

prisoner to the king.

POSTHUMUS     Thou bring’st good news, I am call’d to be

made free.

1 GAOLER     I’ll be hang’d then.

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POSTHUMUS     Thou shalt be then freer than a gaoler; no

bolts for the dead.     Exeunt all but First Gaoler.

1 GAOLER     Unless a man would marry a gallows, and

beget young gibbets, I never saw one so prone: yet, on

my conscience, there are verier knaves desire to live,

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for all he be a Roman; and there be some of them too,

that die against their wills; so should I, if I were one. I

would we were all of one mind, and one mind good: O,

there were desolation of gaolers and gallowses! I speak

against my present profit, but my wish hath a

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preferment in’t.     Exit.

5.5 Enter CYMBELINE, BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, ARVIRAGUS, PISANIO, lords, officers and attendants.

CYMBELINE

Stand by my side, you whom the gods have made

Preservers of my throne: woe is my heart,

That the poor soldier that so richly fought,

Whose rags sham’d gilded arms, whose naked breast

Stepp’d before targes of proof, cannot be found:

5

He shall be happy that can find him, if

Our grace can make him so.

BELARIUS     I never saw

Such noble fury in so poor a thing;

Such precious deeds in one that promised nought

But beggary and poor looks.

CYMBELINE     No tidings of him?

10

PISANIO

He hath been search’d among the dead and living;

But no trace of him.

CYMBELINE     To my grief, I am

The heir of his reward,

[to Belarius, Guiderius and Arviragus]

which I will add

To you, the liver, heart, and brain of Britain,

By whom (I grant) she lives. ’Tis now the time

15

To ask of whence you are. Report it.

BELARIUS     Sir,

In Cambria are we born, and gentlemen:

Further to boast were neither true nor modest,

Unless I add we are honest.

CYMBELINE     Bow your knees:

Arise my knights o’th’ battle, I create you

20

Companions to our person, and will fit you

With dignities becoming your estates.

Enter CORNELIUS and Ladies.

There’s business in these faces; why so sadly

Greet you our victory? you look like Romans,

And not o’th’ court of Britain.

CORNELIUS     Hail, great king!

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To sour your happiness, I must report

The queen is dead.

CYMBELINE     Who worse than a physician

Would this report become? But I consider,

By med’cine life may be prolong’d, yet death

Will seize the doctor too. How ended she?

30

CORNELIUS     With horror, madly dying, like her life,

Which (being cruel to the world) concluded

Most cruel to herself. What she confess’d

I will report, so please you. These her women

Can trip me, if I err, who with wet cheeks

35

Were present when she finish’d.

CYMBELINE     Prithee say.

CORNELIUS

First, she confess’d she never lov’d you: only

Affected greatness got by you: not you:

Married your royalty, was wife to your place:

Abhorr’d your person.

CYMBELINE     She alone knew this:

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And but she spoke it dying, I would not

Believe her lips in opening it. Proceed.

CORNELIUS

Your daughter, whom she bore in hand to love

With such integrity, she did confess

Was as a scorpion to her sight, whose life

45

(But that her flight prevented it) she had

Ta’en off by poison.

CYMBELINE     O most delicate fiend!

Who is’t can read a woman? Is there more?

CORNELIUS

More, sir, and worse. She did confess she had

For you a mortal mineral, which, being took,

50

Should by the minute feed on life and ling’ring

By inches waste you. In which time, she purpos’d

By watching, weeping, tendance, kissing, to

O’ercome you with her show; and in time

(When she had fitted you with her craft) to work

55

Her son into th’adoption of the crown:

But, failing of her end by his strange absence,

Grew shameless-desperate, open’d (in despite

Of heaven and men) her purposes: repented

The evils she hatch’d were not effected: so

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Despairing died.

CYMBELINE     Heard you all this, her women?

LADIES     We did, so please your highness.

CYMBELINE     Mine eyes

Were not in fault, for she was beautiful:

Mine ears that heard her flattery, nor my heart

That thought her like her seeming. It had been

vicious

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To have mistrusted her: yet, O my daughter,

That it was folly in me, thou mayst say,

And prove it in thy feeling. Heaven mend all!

Enter LUCIUS, IACHIMO, the Soothsayer and other Roman prisoners, guarded; POSTHUMUS behind, and IMOGEN.

Thou com’st not, Caius, now for tribute; that

The Britons have raz’d out, though with the loss

70

Of many a bold one: whose kinsmen have made suit

That their good souls may be appeas’d with slaughter

Of you their captives, which ourself have granted:

So think of your estate.

LUCIUS     Consider, sir, the chance of war, the day

75

Was yours by accident: had it gone with us,

We should not, when the blood was cool, have

threaten’d

Our prisoners with the sword. But since the gods

Will have it thus, that nothing but our lives

May be call’d ransom, let it come: sufficeth

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A Roman with a Roman’s heart can suffer:

Augustus lives to think on’t: and so much

For my peculiar care. This one thing only

I will entreat, my boy (a Briton born)

Let him be ransom’d: never master had

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A page so kind, so duteous, diligent,

So tender over his occasions, true,

So feat, so nurse-like: let his virtue join

With my request, which I’ll make bold your highness

Cannot deny: he hath done no Briton harm,

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Though he have serv’d a Roman. Save him, sir,

And spare no blood beside.

CYMBELINE     I have surely seen him:

His favour is familiar to me. Boy,

Thou hast look’d thyself into my grace,

And art mine own. I know not why, wherefore,

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To say, live boy: ne’er thank thy master, live;

And ask of Cymbeline what boon thou wilt,

Fitting my bounty, and thy state, I’ll give it:

Yea, though thou do demand a prisoner,

The noblest ta’en.

IMOGEN     I humbly thank your highness.

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LUCIUS     I do not bid thee beg my life, good lad,

And yet I know thou wilt.

IMOGEN     No, no alack,

There’s other work in hand: I see a thing

Bitter to me as death: your life, good master,

Must shuffle for itself.

LUCIUS     The boy disdains me,

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He leaves me, scorns me: briefly die their joys

That place them on the truth of girls and boys.

Why stands he so perplex’d?

CYMBELINE     What wouldst thou, boy?

I love thee more and more: think more and more

What’s best to ask. Know’st him thou look’st on?

speak,

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Wilt have him live? Is he thy kin? thy friend?

IMOGEN     He is a Roman, no more kin to me

Than I to your highness, who being born your vassal,

Am something nearer.

CYMBELINE     Wherefore ey’st him so?

IMOGEN     I’ll tell you, sir, in private, if you please

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To give me hearing.

CYMBELINE     Ay, with all my heart,

And lend my best attention. What’s thy name?

IMOGEN     Fidele, sir.

CYMBELINE     Thou’rt my good youth: my page

I’ll be thy master: walk with me: speak freely.

[Cymbeline and Imogen walk aside.]

BELARIUS     Is not this boy reviv’d from death?

ARVIRAGUS     One sand another

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Not more resembles that sweet rosy lad,

Who died, and was Fidele! What think you?

GUIDERIUS     The same dead thing alive.

BELARIUS

Peace, peace, see further: he eyes us not, forbear;

Creatures may be alike: were’t he, I am sure

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He would have spoke to us.

GUIDERIUS     But we see him dead.

BELARIUS     Be silent: let’s see further.

PISANIO     [aside] It is my mistress:

Since she is living, let the time run on,

To good, or bad.

[Cymbeline and Imogen come forward.]

CYMBELINE     Come, stand thou by our side,

Make thy demand aloud.

[to Iachimo] Sir, step you forth,

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Give answer to this boy, and do it freely,

Or, by our greatness and the grace of it

(Which is our honour) bitter torture shall

Winnow the truth from falsehood. On, speak to him.

IMOGEN     My boon is, that this gentleman may render

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Of whom he had this ring.

POSTHUMUS     [aside] What’s that to him?

CYMBELINE     That diamond upon your finger, say

How came it yours?

IACHIMO     Thou’lt torture me to leave unspoken that

Which, to be spoke, would torture thee.

CYMBELINE     How? me?

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IACHIMO     I am glad to be constrain’d to utter that

Which torments me to conceal. By villainy

I got this ring; ’twas Leonatus’ jewel,

Whom thou didst banish: and – which more may

grieve thee,

As it doth me, – a nobler sir ne’er lived

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’Twixt sky and ground. Wilt thou hear more, my

lord?

CYMBELINE     All that belongs to this.

IACHIMO     That paragon, thy daughter,

For whom my heart drops blood, and my false spirits

Quail to remember – Give me leave; I faint.

CYMBELINE

My daughter? what of her? Renew thy strength:

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I had rather thou shouldst live, while Nature will,

Than die ere I hear more: strive, man, and speak.

IACHIMO     Upon a time, unhappy was the clock

That struck the hour: it was in Rome, accurst

The mansion where: ’twas at a feast, O, would

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Our viands had been poison’d (or at least

Those which I heaved to head) the good Posthumus

(What should I say? he was too good to be

Where ill men were, and was the best of all

Amongst the rar’st of good ones) sitting sadly,

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Hearing us praise our loves of Italy

For beauty, that made barren the swell’d boast

Of him that best could speak: for feature, laming

The shrine of Venus, or straight-pight Minerva,

Postures, beyond brief Nature. For condition,

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A shop of all the qualities that man

Loves woman for, besides that hook of wiving,

Fairness, which strikes the eye.

CYMBELINE     I stand on fire.

Come to the matter.

IACHIMO     All too soon I shall,

Unless thou wouldst grieve quickly. This Posthumus,

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Most like a noble lord in love and one

That had a royal lover, took his hint,

And (not dispraising whom we prais’d, therein

He was as calm as virtue) he began

His mistress’ picture, which, by his tongue, being

made,

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And then a mind put in’t, either our brags

Were crak’d of kitchen-trulls, or his description

Prov’d us unspeaking sots.

CYMBELINE     Nay, nay, to th’ purpose.

IACHIMO     Your daughter’s chastity (there it begins) –

He spoke of her, as Dian had hot dreams,

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And she alone were cold: whereat I, wretch,

Made scruple of his praise, and wager’d with him

Pieces of gold, ’gainst this (which he then wore

Upon his honour’d finger) to attain

In suit the place of’s bed, and win this ring

185

By hers and mine adultery: he, true knight,

No lesser of her honour confident

Than I did truly find her, stakes this ring,

And would so, had it been a carbuncle

Of Phoebus’ wheel; and might so safely, had it

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Been all the worth of’s car. Away to Britain

Post I in this design: well may you, sir,

Remember me at court, where I was taught

Of your chaste daughter the wide difference

’Twixt amorous and villainous. Being thus quench’d

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Of hope, not longing, mine Italian brain

Gan in your duller Britain operate

Most vilely: for my vantage, excellent.

And to be brief, my practice so prevail’d,

That I return’d with simular proof enough

200

To make the noble Leonatus mad,

By wounding his belief in her renown,

With tokens thus, and thus: averring notes

Of chamber-hanging, pictures, this her bracelet

(O cunning, how I got it!) nay, some marks

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Of secret on her person, that he could not

But think her bond of chastity quite crack’d,

I having ta’en the forfeit. Whereupon –

Methinks I see him now –

POSTHUMUS     [advancing] Ay, so thou dost

Italian fiend! Ay me, most credulous fool,

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Egregious murderer, thief, any thing

That’s due to all the villains past, in being,

To come. O, give me cord, or knife, or poison

Some upright justicer! Thou, king, send out

For torturers ingenious: it is I

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That all th’ abhorred things o’th’ earth amend

By being worse than they. I am Posthumus,

That kill’d thy daughter: villain-like, I lie;

That caus’d a lesser villain than myself,

A sacrilegious thief, to do’t. The temple

220

Of Virtue was she; yea, and she herself.

Spit, and throw stones, cast mire upon me, set

The dogs o’th’ street to bay me: every villain

Be call’d Posthumus Leonatus, and

Be villainy less than ’twas. O Imogen!

225

My queen, my life, my wife, O Imogen,

Imogen, Imogen!

IMOGEN     Peace, my lord, hear, hear –

POSTHUMUS

Shall’s have a play of this? Thou scornful page,

There lie thy part. [Striking her: she falls.]

PISANIO     O, gentlemen, help!

Mine and your mistress: O, my lord Posthumus!

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You ne’er kill’d Imogen till now. Help, help!

Mine honour’d lady!

CYMBELINE     Does the world go round?

POSTHUMUS     How comes these staggers on me?

PISANIO     Wake, my mistress!

CYMBELINE

If this be so, the gods do mean to strike me

To death with mortal joy.

PISANIO     How fares my mistress?

235

IMOGEN     O, get thee from my sight,

Thou gav’st me poison: dangerous fellow, hence!

Breathe not where princes are.

CYMBELINE     The tune of Imogen!

PISANIO     Lady,

The gods throw stones of sulphur on me, if

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That box I gave you was not thought by me

A precious thing: I had it from the queen.

CYMBELINE     New matter still.

IMOGEN     It poison’d me.

CORNELIUS     O gods!

I left out one thing which the queen confess’d,

Which must approve thee honest. ‘If Pisanio

245

Have,’ said she, ‘given his mistress that confection

Which I gave him for cordial, she is serv’d

As I would serve a rat.’

CYMBELINE     What’s this, Cornelius?

CORNELIUS     The queen, sir, very oft importun’d me

To temper poisons for her, still pretending

250

The satisfaction of her knowledge only

In killing creatures vile, as cats and dogs

Of no esteem. I, dreading that her purpose

Was of more danger, did compound for her

A certain stuff, which being ta’en would cease

255

The present power of life, but in short time

All offices of nature should again

Do their due functions. Have you ta’en of it?

IMOGEN     Most like I did, for I was dead.

BELARIUS     My boys,

There was our error.

GUIDERIUS     This is sure Fidele.

260

IMOGEN

Why did you throw your wedded lady from you?

Think that you are upon a rock, and now

Throw me again. [embracing him]

POSTHUMUS     Hang there like fruit, my soul,

Till the tree die.

CYMBELINE     How now, my flesh, my child?

What, mak’st thou me a dullard in this act?

265

Wilt thou not speak to me?

IMOGEN     [kneeling] Your blessing, sir.

BELARIUS     [to Guiderius and Arviragus]

Though you did love this youth, I blame ye not,

You had a motive for’t.

CYMBELINE     My tears that fall

Prove holy water on thee; Imogen,

Thy mother’s dead.

IMOGEN     I am sorry for’t, my lord.

270

CYMBELINE     O, she was naught; and long of her it was

That we meet here so strangely: but her son

Is gone, we know not how, nor where.

PISANIO     My lord,

Now fear is from me, I’ll speak troth. Lord Cloten,

Upon my lady’s missing, came to me

275

With his sword drawn, foam’d at the mouth, and

swore,

If I discover’d not which way she was gone,

It was my instant death. By accident,

I had a feigned letter of my master’s

Then in my pocket, which directed him

280

To seek her on the mountains near to Milford;

Where, in a frenzy, in my master’s garments,

(Which he enforc’d from me) away he posts

With unchaste purpose, and with oath to violate

My lady’s honour: what became of him

285

I further know not.

GUIDERIUS     Let me end the story:

I slew him there.

CYMBELINE     Marry, the gods forfend!

I would not thy good deeds should from my lips

Pluck a hard sentence: prithee, valiant youth,

Deny’t again.

GUIDERIUS     I have spoke it, and I did it.

290

CYMBELINE     He was a prince.

GUIDERIUS     A most incivil one. The wrongs he did me

Were nothing prince-like; for he did provoke me

With language that would make me spurn the sea,

If it could so roar to me. I cut off’s head,

295

And am right glad he is not standing here

To tell this tale of mine.

CYMBELINE     I am sorrow for thee:

By thine own tongue thou art condemn’d, and must

Endure our law: thou’rt dead.

IMOGEN     That headless man

I thought had been my lord.

CYMBELINE     Bind the offender,

300

And take him from our presence.

BELARIUS     Stay, sir king.

This man is better than the man he slew,

As well descended as thyself, and hath

More of thee merited than a band of Clotens

Had ever scar for. [to the guard] Let his arms alone,

305

They were not born for bondage.

CYMBELINE     Why, old soldier:

Wilt thou undo the worth thou art unpaid for

By tasting of our wrath? How of descent

As good as we?

ARVIRAGUS     In that he spake too far.

CYMBELINE     And thou shalt die for’t.

BELARIUS     We will die all three,

310

But I will prove that two on’s are as good

As I have given out him. My sons, I must

For mine own part unfold a dangerous speech,

Though haply well for you.

ARVIRAGUS     Your danger’s ours.

GUIDERIUS     And our good his.

BELARIUS     Have at it then, by leave:

315

Thou hadst, great king, a subject, who

Was call’d Belarius. –

CYMBELINE     What of him? he is a banish’d traitor.

BELARIUS     He it is that hath

Assum’d this age: indeed a banish’d man,

320

I know not how a traitor.

CYMBELINE     Take him hence,

The whole world shall not save him.

BELARIUS     Not too hot;

First pay me for the nursing of thy sons,

And let it be confiscate all, so soon

As I have receiv’d it.

CYMBELINE     Nursing of my sons?

325

BELARIUS     I am too blunt, and saucy: here’s my knee:

Ere I arise I will prefer my sons;

Then spare not the old father. Mighty sir,

These two young gentlemen that call me father

And think they are my sons, are none of mine;

330

They are the issue of your loins, my liege,

And blood of your begetting.

CYMBELINE     How? my issue?

BELARIUS

So sure as you your father’s. I (old Morgan)

Am that Belarius, whom you sometime banish’d:

Your pleasure was my ne’er-offence, my punishment

335

Itself, and all my treason: that I suffer’d,

Was all the harm I did. These gentle princes

(For such and so they are) these twenty years

Have I train’d up; those arts they have; as I

Could put into them. My breeding was, sir, as

340

Your highness knows. Their nurse, Euriphile,

(Whom for the theft I wedded) stole these children

Upon my banishment: I mov’d her to’t,

Having receiv’d the punishment before

For that which I did then. Beaten for loyalty

345

Excited me to treason. Their dear loss,

The more of you ’twas felt, the more it shap’d

Unto my end of stealing them. But gracious sir,

Here are your sons again, and I must lose

Two of the sweet’st companions in the world.

350

The benediction of these covering heavens

Fall on their heads like dew, for they are worthy

To inlay heaven with stars.

CYMBELINE     Thou weep’st, and speak’st:

The service that you three have done is more

Unlike than this thou tell’st. I lost my children:

355

If these be they, I know not how to wish

A pair of worthier sons.

BELARIUS     Be pleas’d awhile;

This gentleman, whom I call Polydore,

Most worthy prince, as yours, is true Guiderius:

This gentleman, my Cadwal, Arviragus

360

Your younger princely son, he, sir, was lapp’d

In a most curious mantle, wrought by th’ hand

Of his queen mother, which for more probation

I can with ease produce.

CYMBELINE     Guiderius had

Upon his neck a mole, a sanguine star;

365

It is a mark of wonder.

BELARIUS     This is he,

Who hath upon him still that natural stamp:

It was wise Nature’s end, in the donation

To be his evidence now.

CYMBELINE     O, what am I?

A mother to the birth of three? Ne’er mother

370

Rejoic’d deliverance more. Blest pray you be,

That, after this strange starting from your orbs,

You may reign in them now! O Imogen,

Thou hast lost by this a kingdom.

IMOGEN     No, my lord;

I have got two worlds by’t. O my gentle brothers,

375

Have we thus met? O, never say hereafter

But I am truest speaker. You call’d me brother,

When I was but your sister: I you brothers,

When ye were so indeed.

CYMBELINE     Did you e’er meet?

ARVIRAGUS     Ay, my good lord.

GUIDERIUS     And at first meeting lov’d,

380

Continu’d so, until we thought he died.

CORNELIUS     By the queen’s dram she swallow’d.

CYMBELINE     O rare instinct!

When shall I hear all through? This fierce

abridgement

Hath to it circumstantial branches, which

Distinction should be rich in. Where? how liv’d you?

385

And when came you to serve our Roman captive?

How parted with your brothers? how first met them?

Why fled you from the court? and whither? These,

And your three motives to the battle, with

I know not how much more, should be demanded

390

And all the other by-dependances,

From chance to chance. But nor the time nor place

Will serve our long inter’gatories. See,

Posthumus anchors upon Imogen;

And she (like harmless lightning) throws her eye

395

On him: her brothers, me: her master hitting

Each object with a joy: the counterchange

Is severally in all. Let’s quit this ground,

And smoke the temple with our sacrifices.

[to Belarius] Thou art my brother; so we’ll hold thee

ever.

400

IMOGEN     You are my father too, and did relieve me,

To see this gracious season.

CYMBELINE     All o’erjoy’d,

Save these in bonds, let them be joyful too,

For they shall taste our comfort.

IMOGEN     My good master,

I will yet do you service.

LUCIUS     Happy be you!

405

CYMBELINE     The forlorn soldier that so nobly fought,

He would have well becom’d this place, and grac’d

The thankings of a king.

POSTHUMUS     I am, sir,

The soldier that did company these three

In poor beseeming: ’twas a fitment for

410

The purpose I then follow’d. That I was he,

Speak, Iachimo: I had you down, and might

Have made you finish.

IACHIMO     [kneels] I am down again:

But now my heavy conscience sinks my knee,

As then your force did. Take that life, beseech you,

415

Which I so often owe: but your ring first,

And here the bracelet of the truest princess

That ever swore her faith.

POSTHUMUS     Kneel not to me:

The power that I have on you, is to spare you:

The malice towards you, to forgive you. Live

420

And deal with others better.

CYMBELINE     Nobly doom’d!

We’ll learn our freeness of a son-in-law:

Pardon’s the word to all.

ARVIRAGUS     You holp us, sir,

As you did mean indeed to be our brother;

Joy’d are we that you are.

425

POSTHUMUS

Your servant, princes. Good my lord of Rome,

Call forth your soothsayer: as I slept, methought

Great Jupiter, upon his eagle back’d,

Appear’d to me, with other spritely shows

Of mine own kindred. When I wak’d, I found

430

This label on my bosom; whose containing

Is so from sense in hardness, that I can

Make no collection of it. Let him show

His skill in the construction.

LUCIUS     Philarmonus!

SOOTHSAYER     Here, my good lord.

LUCIUS     Read, and declare the meaning.

435

SOOTHSAYER     [Reads.] When as a lion’s whelp shall, to

himself unknown, without seeking find, and be

embrac’d by a piece of tender air: and when from a

stately cedar shall be lopp’d branches, which, being

dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the

440

old stock, and freshly grow, then shall Posthumus end

his miseries, Britain be fortunate, and flourish in peace

and plenty.

Thou, Leonatus, art the lion’s whelp,

The fit and apt construction of thy name,

445

Being Leo-natus, doth impart so much:

[to Cymbeline] The piece of tender air, thy virtuous

daughter,

Which we call mollis aer; and mollis aer

We term it mulier: which mulier I divine

Is this most constant wife, who even now,

450

Answering the letter of the oracle,

Unknown to you, unsought, were clipp’d about

With this most tender air.

CYMBELINE     This hath some seeming.

SOOTHSAYER     The lofty cedar, royal Cymbeline,

Personates thee: and thy lopp’d branches point

455

Thy two sons forth: who, by Belarius stol’n,

For many years thought dead, are now reviv’d,

To the majestic cedar join’d; whose issue

Promises Britain peace and plenty.

CYMBELINE     Well,

My peace we will begin: and Caius Lucius,

460

Although the victor, we submit to Caesar,

And to the Roman empire; promising

To pay our wonted tribute, from the which

We were dissuaded by our wicked queen,

Whom heavens in justice both on her, and hers,

465

Have laid most heavy hand.

SOOTHSAYER     The fingers of the powers above do tune

The harmony of this peace. The vision,

Which I made known to Lucius ere the stroke

Of yet this scarce-cold battle, at this instant

470

Is full accomplish’d. For the Roman eagle,

From south to west on wing soaring aloft,

Lessen’d herself and in the beams o’the sun

So vanish’d; which foreshadow’d our princely eagle,

Th’imperial Caesar, should again unite

475

His favour with the radiant Cymbeline,

Which shines here in the west.

CYMBELINE     Laud we the gods,

And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils

From our blest altars. Publish we this peace

To all our subjects. Set we forward: let

480

A Roman, and a British ensign wave

Friendly together: so through Lud’s town march,

And in the temple of great Jupiter

Our peace we’ll ratify: seal it with feasts.

Set on there! Never was a war did cease

485

(Ere bloody hands were wash’d) with such a peace.

Exeunt.

Hamlet

A short play called The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark was printed in 1603. It was ascribed to William Shakespeare on its title-page which also claimed that it had been ‘divers times acted by his Highness’ servants in the city of London, as also in the two universities of Cambridge and Oxford and elsewhere’; this text is known as the First Quarto (Q1). Soon another version appeared, variously dated 1604 or 1605, claiming on its title-page to be ‘newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much again as it was, according to the true and perfect copy’; this text is known as the Second Quarto (Q2). Its claim as to length is more or less accurate, and it is also a much more careful and coherent text than Q1, which has generally been dismissed as a ‘bad’ quarto, an unreliable version put together from the memories of actors or reporters. Finally, yet a third text (F) appeared in the First Folio in 1623, very like Q2 in many ways, but lacking around 230 lines that are in Q2 and adding around 70 lines of its own; it also has numerous minor verbal variants, some of which seem to be corrections but others of which are substitutions or errors.

Scholars have accepted both Q2 and F as authorial versions, with recent opinion inclining towards seeing F as Shakespeare’s revision of Q2. The most significant of F’s ‘cuts’ is the omission of the whole of 4.4 after the first 8 lines, including Hamlet’s last soliloquy, but there are other major omissions in 1.1, 1.4, 3.4, 4.7 and 5.2. Most editions of Hamlet virtually ignore Q1 but include all the lines from both Q2 and F, providing a composite or ‘conflated’ text. Some recent editions bracket the Q2-only lines, or even consign them to an appendix.

The play is usually dated around 1600, just after Julius Caesar, whose story is mentioned in 1.1, 3.2 and 5.1. Shakespeare’s Brutus in some ways prefigures his Hamlet and presumably the same actor, Richard Burbage, played both roles. Shakespeare’s previous tragedies at this point were Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet, both of which share Hamlet’s revenge theme; he went on to write Othello, King Lear and Macbeth over the next six years. Hamlet was an immediate and enduring success. Its story derives ultimately from a twelfth-century history of Denmark written in Latin by Saxo Grammaticus, but Shakespeare also seems to have used a 1580 French version by François de Belleforest and a lost play on the topic, now referred to as the Ur-Hamlet, and probably written by Thomas Kyd, whose Spanish Tragedy has many features in common with Hamlet.

Hamlet has a relatively unbroken history of performance, not only in England but virtually throughout the world; there have been over fifty films based on it. It was heavily cut in the Restoration but not, like most of the other plays, radically adapted or rewritten. Nevertheless it has of course inspired many spin-offs, sequels, prequels and parodies. The title-role has always attracted and challenged actors (including a large number of women). The play is endlessly quoted, and some key moments -the appearance of the Ghost on the battlements, the man in black holding a skull, the drowning of Ophelia - are instantly recognizable from countless illustrations. The character of the hero has been taken as representative of the spirit of entire countries, particularly Germany and Russia, while its political situation has been seen to parallel that in countries as different as Romania and South Africa.

Generally hailed until very recently as Shakespeare’s ‘greatest play’, Hamlet is still performed and studied more often than its only rival, King Lear. The annual bibliographies published by the American journal Shakespeare Quarterly show that around 400 items (editions, translations, books and essays) appear on Hamlet every year, as compared with around 200 on Lear. It remains to be seen whether a mid-twentieth-century shift in taste towards Lear will be sustained or whether Hamlet will reassert its preeminence.

The Arden text is based primarily on the 1604-5 Second Quarto, but also draws on the 1623 First Folio and includes the Folio-only passages.

LIST OF ROLES

HAMLET

Prince of Denmark

KING Claudius

King of Denmark, Hamlet’s uncle

GHOST

of the late king, Hamlet’s father

QUEEN Gertrude

the Queen, Hamlet’s mother, now wife of Claudius

POLONIUS

councillor of State

LAERTES

Polonius’ son

OPHELIA

Polonius’ daughter

HORATIO

friend and confidant of Hamlet

courtiers, former schoolfellows of Hamlet

FORTINBRAS

Prince of Norway

Danish councillors, ambassadors to Norway

members of the King’s guard

OSRIC

a foppish courtier

REYNALDO

a servant of Polonius

Players

GENTLEMAN

of the court

PRIEST

GRAVE-DIGGER

The OTHER grave-digger

CAPTAIN

in Fortinbras’ army

English Ambassadors

Lords, Ladies, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers and Attendants

Hamlet

1.1 Enter BARNARDO and FRANCISCO, two sentinels.

BARNARDO     Who’s there?

FRANCISCO

Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

BARNARDO     Long live the King!

FRANCISCO     Barnardo?

BARNARDO     He.

5

FRANCISCO     You come most carefully upon your hour.

BARNARDO

’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.

FRANCISCO

For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold,

And I am sick at heart.

BARNARDO     Have you had quiet guard?

10

FRANCISCO     Not a mouse stirring.

BARNARDO     Well, good night.

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,

The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

FRANCISCO     I think I hear them.

Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.

     Stand, ho! Who is there?

15

HORATIO     Friends to this ground.

MARCELLUS     And liegemen to the Dane.

FRANCISCO     Give you good night.

MARCELLUS

O, farewell honest soldier, who hath reliev’d you?

FRANCISCO

Barnardo     hath my place. Give you good night.     Exit.

MARCELLUS     Holla, Barnardo!

20

BARNARDO     Say, what, is Horatio there?

HORATIO     A piece of him.

BARNARDO

Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.

HORATIO     What, has this thing appear’d again tonight?

BARNARDO     I have seen nothing.

25

MARCELLUS     Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy,

And will not let belief take hold of him,

Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.

Therefore I have entreated him along

With us to watch the minutes of this night,

30

That if again this apparition come,

He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

HORATIO     Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.

BARNARDO     Sit down awhile,

And let us once again assail your ears,

That are so fortified against our story,

35

What we have two nights seen.

HORATIO     Well, sit we down.

And let us hear Barnardo speak of this.

BARNARDO     Last night of all,

When yond same star that’s westward from the pole,

Had made his course t’illume that part of heaven

40

Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,

The bell then beating one –

Enter Ghost.

MARCELLUS

Peace, break thee off. Look where it comes again.

BARNARDO

In the same figure like the King that’s dead.

MARCELLUS

Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio.

45

BARNARDO

Looks a not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.

HORATIO

Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.

BARNARDO

It would be spoke to.

MARCELLUS     Question it, Horatio.

HORATIO

What art thou that usurp’st this time of night,

Together with that fair and warlike form

50

In which the majesty of buried Denmark

Did sometimes march? By heaven, I charge thee speak.

MARCELLUS     It is offended.

BARNARDO     See, it stalks away.

HORATIO     Stay, speak, speak, I charge thee speak.

     Exit Ghost.

MARCELLUS     ’Tis gone and will not answer.

55

BARNARDO

How now, Horatio? You tremble and look pale.

Is not this something more than fantasy?

What think you on’t?

HORATIO

Before my God, I might not this believe

Without the sensible and true avouch

60

Of mine own eyes.

MARCELLUS     Is it not like the King?

HORATIO     As thou art to thyself.

Such was the very armour he had on

When he th’ambitious Norway combated.

So frown’d he once, when in an angry parle

65

He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.

’Tis strange.

MARCELLUS

Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,

With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

HORATIO

In what particular thought to work I know not,

70

But in the gross and scope of my opinion,

This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

MARCELLUS

Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,

Why this same strict and most observant watch

So nightly toils the subject of the land,

75

And why such daily cast of brazen cannon

And foreign mart for implements of war,

Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task

Does not divide the Sunday from the week.

What might be toward that this sweaty haste

80

Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day,

Who is’t that can inform me?

HORATIO     That can I.

At least the whisper goes so: our last King,

Whose image even but now appear’d to us,

Was as you know by Fortinbras of Norway,

85

Thereto prick’d on by a most emulate pride,

Dar’d to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet

(For so this side of our known world esteem’d him)

Did slay this Fortinbras, who by a seal’d compact

Well ratified by law and heraldry

90

Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands

Which he stood seiz’d of to the conqueror;

Against the which a moiety competent

Was gaged by our King, which had return’d

To the inheritance of Fortinbras,

95

Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same cov’nant

And carriage of the article design’d,

His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,

Of unimproved mettle, hot and full,

Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there

100

Shark’d up a list of lawless resolutes

For food and diet to some enterprise

That hath a stomach in’t, which is no other,

As it doth well appear unto our state,

But to recover of us by strong hand

105

And terms compulsatory those foresaid lands

So by his father lost. And this, I take it,

Is the main motive of our preparations,

The source of this our watch, and the chief head

Of this post-haste and rummage in the land.

110

BARNARDO     I think it be no other but e’en so.

Well may it sort that this portentous figure

Comes armed through our watch so like the King

That was and is the question of these wars.

HORATIO     A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.

115

In the most high and palmy state of Rome,

A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,

The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;

As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,

120

Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,

Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands,

Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.

And even the like precurse of fear’d events,

As harbingers preceding still the fates

125

And prologue to the omen coming on,

Have heaven and earth together demonstrated

Unto our climatures and countrymen.

Enter Ghost.

But soft, behold. Lo, where it comes again.

I’ll cross it though it blast me. [Ghost spreads its arms.]

     Stay, illusion:

130

If thou hast any sound or use of voice,

Speak to me.

If there be any good thing to be done

That may to thee do ease, and grace to me,

Speak to me;

135

If thou art privy to thy country’s fate,

Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid,

O speak;

Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life

Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,

140

For which they say your spirits oft walk in death,

Speak of it, stay and speak.

[The cock crows.]     Stop it, Marcellus.

MARCELLUS     Shall I strike at it with my partisan?

HORATIO     Do if it will not stand.

BARNARDO     ’Tis here.

145

HORATIO     Exit Ghost.

MARCELLUS     ’Tis gone.

We do it wrong, being so majestical,

To offer it the show of violence,

For it is as the air, invulnerable,

150

And our vain blows malicious mockery.

BARNARDO     It was about to speak when the cock crew.

HORATIO     And then it started like a guilty thing

Upon a fearful summons. I have heard

The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,

155

Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat

Awake the god of day, and at his warning,

Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,

Th’extravagant and erring spirit hies

To his confine; and of the truth herein

160

This present object made probation.

MARCELLUS     It faded on the crowing of the cock.

Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,

This bird of dawning singeth all night long;

165

And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,

The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallow’d and so gracious is that time.

HORATIO     So have I heard and do in part believe it.

170

But look, the morn in russet mantle clad

Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.

Break we our watch up, and by my advice

Let us impart what we have seen tonight

Unto young Hamlet; for upon my life

175

This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.

Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it

As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

MARCELLUS

Let’s do’t, I pray, and I this morning know

Where we shall find him most convenient.     Exeunt.

180

1.2 Flourish. Enter Claudius KING of Denmark,

Gertrude the QUEEN, Council, including VOLTEMAND, CORNELIUS, POLONIUS and his son LAERTES, HAMLET dressed in black, with others.

KING     Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death

The memory be green, and that it us befitted

To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom

To be contracted in one brow of woe,

Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature

5

That we with wisest sorrow think on him

Together with remembrance of ourselves.

Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,

Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state,

Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy,

10

With an auspicious and a dropping eye,

With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,

In equal scale weighing delight and dole,

Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barr’d

Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone

15

With this affair along. For all, our thanks.

Now follows that you know young Fortinbras,

Holding a weak supposal of our worth,

Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death

Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,

20

Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,

He hath not fail’d to pester us with message

Importing the surrender of those lands

Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,

To our most valiant brother. So much for him.

25

Now for ourself, and for this time of meeting,

Thus much the business is: we have here writ

To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras –

Who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears

Of this his nephew’s purpose – to suppress

30

His further gait herein, in that the levies,

The lists, and full proportions are all made

Out of his subject; and we here dispatch

You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,

For bearers of this greeting to old Norway,

35

Giving to you no further personal power

To business with the King more than the scope

Of these dilated articles allow.

Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.

CORNELIUS, VOLTEMAND

In that, and all things, will we show our duty.

40

KING     We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell.

     Exeunt Voltemand and Cornelius.

And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?

You told us of some suit: what is’t, Laertes?

You cannot speak of reason to the Dane

And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,

45

That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?

The head is not more native to the heart,

The hand more instrumental to the mouth,

Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.

What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

LAERTES     My dread lord,

50

Your leave and favour to return to France,

From whence though willingly I came to Denmark

To show my duty in your coronation,

Yet now I must confess, that duty done,

My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France

55

And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

KING

Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?

POLONIUS

He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave

By laboursome petition, and at last

Upon his will I seal’d my hard consent.

60

I do beseech you give him leave to go.

KING     Take thy fair hour, Laertes, time be thine,

And thy best graces spend it at thy will.

But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son –

HAMLET     A little more than kin, and less than kind.

65

KING     How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET     Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun.

QUEEN     Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,

And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.

Do not for ever with thy vailed lids

70

Seek for thy noble father in the dust.

Thou know’st ’tis common: all that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity.

HAMLET     Ay, madam, it is common.

QUEEN     If it be,

Why seems it so particular with thee?

75

HAMLET

Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not ‘seems’.

’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forc’d breath,

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

80

Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,

Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,

That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,

For they are actions that a man might play;

But I have that within which passes show,

85

These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

KING

’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,

To give these mourning duties to your father,

But you must know your father lost a father,

That father lost, lost his – and the survivor bound

90

In filial obligation for some term

To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever

In obstinate condolement is a course

Of impious stubbornness, ’tis unmanly grief,

It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,

95

A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,

An understanding simple and unschool’d;

For what we know must be, and is as common

As any the most vulgar thing to sense –

Why should we in our peevish opposition

100

Take it to heart? Fie, ’tis a fault to heaven,

A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,

To reason most absurd, whose common theme

Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried

From the first corse till he that died today,

105

‘This must be so’. We pray you throw to earth

This unprevailing woe, and think of us

As of a father; for let the world take note

You are the most immediate to our throne,

And with no less nobility of love

110

Than that which dearest father bears his son

Do I impart toward you. For your intent

In going back to school in Wittenberg,

It is most retrograde to our desire,

And we beseech you bend you to remain

115

Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,

Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

QUEEN     Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.

I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.

HAMLET     I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

120

KING     Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply.

Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come.

This gentle and unforc’d accord of Hamlet

Sits smiling to my heart; in grace whereof

No jocund health that Denmark drinks today

125

But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,

And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again,

Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.

     Flourish. Exeunt all but Hamlet.

HAMLET     O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,

130

Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d

His canon ’gainst self-slaughter. O God! God!

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on’t, ah fie, ’tis an unweeded garden

135

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature

Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

But two months dead – nay, not so much, not two –

So excellent a king, that was to this

Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother

140

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven

Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth,

Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on; and yet within a month –

145

Let me not think on’t – Frailty, thy name is woman –

A little month, or ere those shoes were old

With which she follow’d my poor father’s body,

Like Niobe, all tears – why, she –

O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason

150

Would have mourn’d longer – married with my uncle,

My father’s brother – but no more like my father

Than I to Hercules. Within a month,

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears

Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,

155

She married – O most wicked speed! To post

With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

It is not, nor it cannot come to good.

But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

Enter HORATIO, MARCELLUS and BARNARDO.

HORATIO       Hail to your lordship.

HAMLET       I am glad to see you well.

160

Horatio, or I do forget myself.

HORATIO

The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.

HAMLET

Sir, my good friend, I’ll change that name with you.

And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? –

Marcellus.

165

MARCELLUS       My good lord.

HAMLET

I am very glad to see you. –

[to Barnardo]     Good even, sir. –

But what in faith make you from Wittenberg?

HORATIO     A truant disposition, good my lord.

HAMLET     I would not hear your enemy say so,

170

Nor shall you do my ear that violence

To make it truster of your own report

Against yourself. I know you are no truant.

But what is your affair in Elsinore?

We’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.

175

HORATIO     My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.

HAMLET     I prithee do not mock me, fellow-student.

I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.

HORATIO     Indeed, my lord, it follow’d hard upon.

HAMLET

Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral bak’d meats

180

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven

Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio.

My father – methinks I see my father –

HORATIO     Where, my lord?

HAMLET     In my mind’s eye, Horatio.

185

HORATIO     I saw him once; a was a goodly king.

HAMLET     ’A was a man, take him for all in all:

I shall not look upon his like again.

HORATIO     My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

HAMLET     Saw? Who?

HORATIO     My lord, the king your father.

190

HAMLET     The king my father?

HORATIO     Season your admiration for a while

With an attent ear till I may deliver

Upon the witness of these gentlemen

This marvel to you.

HAMLET     For God’s love let me hear!

195

HORATIO     Two nights together had these gentlemen,

Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch

In the dead waste and middle of the night

Been thus encounter’d: a figure like your father

Armed at point exactly, cap-à-pie,

200

Appears before them, and with solemn march

Goes slow and stately by them; thrice he walk’d

By their oppress’d and fear-surprised eyes

Within his truncheon’s length, whilst they, distill’d

Almost to jelly with the act of fear,

205

Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me

In dreadful secrecy impart they did,

And I with them the third night kept the watch,

Where, as they had deliver’d, both in time,

Form of the thing, each word made true and good,

210

The apparition comes. I knew your father;

These hands are not more like.

HAMLET     But where was this?

MARCELLUS

My lord, upon the platform where we watch.

HAMLET     Did you not speak to it?

HORATIO     My lord, I did,

But answer made it none. Yet once methought

215

It lifted up it head and did address

Itself to motion like as it would speak.

But even then the morning cock crew loud,

And at the sound it shrunk in haste away

And vanish’d from our sight.

HAMLET     ’Tis very strange.

220

HORATIO     As I do live, my honour’d lord, ’tis true;

And we did think it writ down in our duty

To let you know of it.

HAMLET     Indeed, sirs; but this troubles me.

Hold you the watch tonight?

ALL     We do, my lord.

225

HAMLET     Arm’d, say you?

ALL     Arm’d, my lord.

HAMLET     From top to toe?

ALL     My lord, from head to foot.

HAMLET     Then saw you not his face?

HORATIO     O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.

HAMLET     What look’d he, frowningly?

230

HORATIO     A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

HAMLET     Pale, or red?

HORATIO     Nay, very pale.

HAMLET     And fix’d his eyes upon you?

HORATIO     Most constantly.

HAMLET     I would I had been there.

HORATIO     It would have much amaz’d you.

HAMLET     Very like.

235

Stay’d it long?

HORATIO

While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.

MARCELLUS, BARNARDO     Longer, longer.

HORATIO     Not when I saw’t.

HAMLET     His beard was grizzled, no?

240

HORATIO     It was as I have seen it in his life,

A sable silver’d.

HAMLET     I will watch tonight.

Perchance ’twill walk again.

HORATIO     I war’nt it will.

HAMLET     If it assume my noble father’s person,

I’ll speak to it though hell itself should gape

245

And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,

If you have hitherto conceal’d this sight,

Let it be tenable in your silence still;

And whatsomever else shall hap tonight,

Give it an understanding but no tongue.

250

I will requite your loves. So fare you well.

Upon the platform ’twixt eleven and twelve

I’ll visit you.

ALL Our duty to your honour.

HAMLET     Your loves, as mine to you. Farewell.

Exeunt Horatio, Marcellus and Barnardo.

My father’s spirit – in arms! All is not well.

255

I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come.

Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise,

Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

Exit.

1.3 Enter LAERTES AND OPHELIA, his sister.

LAERTES     My necessaries are embark’d. Farewell.

And sister, as the winds give benefit

And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,

But let me hear from you.

OPHELIA     Do you doubt that?

LAERTES     For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour,

5

Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,

A violet in the youth of primy nature,

Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,

The perfume and suppliance of a minute,

No more.

OPHELIA     No more but so?

LAERTES     Think it no more.

10

For nature crescent does not grow alone

In thews and bulk, but as this temple waxes,

The inward service of the mind and soul

Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,

And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch

15

The virtue of his will; but you must fear,

His greatness weigh’d, his will is not his own.

For he himself is subject to his birth:

He may not, as unvalu’d persons do,

Carve for himself, for on his choice depends

20

The sanity and health of this whole state;

And therefore must his choice be circumscrib’d

Unto the voice and yielding of that body

Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,

It fits your wisdom so far to believe it

25

As he in his particular act and place

May give his saying deed; which is no further

Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.

Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain

If with too credent ear you list his songs,

30

Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open

To his unmaster’d importunity.

Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,

And keep you in the rear of your affection

Out of the shot and danger of desire.

35

The chariest maid is prodigal enough

If she unmask her beauty to the moon.

Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes.

The canker galls the infants of the spring

Too oft before their buttons be disclos’d,

40

And in the morn and liquid dew of youth

Contagious blastments are most imminent.

Be wary then: best safety lies in fear.

Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.

OPHELIA     I shall th’effect of this good lesson keep

45

As watchman to my heart. But good my brother,

Do not as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,

Whiles like a puff’d and reckless libertine

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,

50

And recks not his own rede.

LAERTES     O fear me not.

I stay too long.

Enter POLONIUS.

But here my father comes.

A double blessing is a double grace:

Occasion smiles upon a second leave.

POLONIUS

Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard for shame.

55

The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,

And you are stay’d for. There, my blessing with thee.

And these few precepts in thy memory

Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.

60

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel,

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d courage. Beware

65

Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,

Bear’t that th’opposed may beware of thee.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

70

But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man,

And they in France of the best rank and station

Are of a most select and generous chief in that.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,

75

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow as the night the day

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

80

Farewell, my blessing season this in thee.

LAERTES     Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

POLONIUS

The time invests you; go, your servants tend.

LAERTES     Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well

What I have said to you.

OPHELIA’Tis in my memory lock’d,

85

And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

LAERTES     Farewell.     Exit.

POLONIUS     What is’t, Ophelia, he hath said to you?

OPHELIA

So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.

POLONIUS     Marry, well bethought.

90

’Tis told me he hath very oft of late

Given private time to you, and you yourself

Have of your audience been most free and bounteous.

If it be so – as so ’tis put on me,

And that in way of caution – I must tell you

95

You do not understand yourself so clearly

As it behoves my daughter and your honour.

What is between you? Give me up the truth.

OPHELIA     He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders

Of his affection to me.

100

POLONIUS     Affection? Pooh, you speak like a green girl,

Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.

Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?

OPHELIA     I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

POLONIUS

Marry, I will teach you. Think yourself a baby

105

That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay

Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly

Or – not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,

Running it thus – you’ll tender me a fool.

OPHELIA     My lord, he hath importun’d me with love

110

In honourable fashion.

POLONIUS     Ay, fashion you may call it. Go to, go to.

OPHELIA

And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,

With almost all the holy vows of heaven.

POLONIUS     Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,

115

When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul

Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter,

Giving more light than heat, extinct in both

Even in their promise as it is a-making,

You must not take for fire. From this time

120

Be something scanter of your maiden presence,

Set your entreatments at a higher rate

Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,

Believe so much in him that he is young,

And with a larger tether may he walk

125

Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,

Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers

Not of that dye which their investments show,

But mere implorators of unholy suits,

Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds

130

The better to beguile. This is for all.

I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth

Have you so slander any moment leisure

As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.

Look to’t, I charge you. Come your ways.

135

OPHELIA     I shall obey, my lord.     Exeunt.

1.4 Enter HAMLET, HORATIO and MARCELLUS.

HAMLET     The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold.

HORATIO     It is a nipping and an eager air.

HAMLET     What hour now?

HORATIO     I think it lacks of twelve.

MARCELLUS     No, it is struck.

HORATIO     Indeed? I heard it not.

It then draws near the season

5

Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

[A flourish of trumpets, and two pieces of ordnance go off.]

What does this mean, my lord?

HAMLET

The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse,

Keeps wassail, and the swagg’ring upspring reels;

And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,

10

The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out

The triumph of his pledge.

HORATIO     Is it a custom?

HAMLET     Ay marry is’t,

But to my mind, though I am native here

And to the manner born, it is a custom

15

More honour’d in the breach than the observance.

This heavy-headed revel east and west

Makes us traduc’d and tax’d of other nations –

They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase

Soil our addition; and indeed it takes

20

From our achievements, though perform’d at height,

The pith and marrow of our attribute.

So, oft it chances in particular men

That for some vicious mole of nature in them,

As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty

25

(Since nature cannot choose his origin),

By their o’ergrowth of some complexion,

Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,

Or by some habit, that too much o’erleavens

The form of plausive manners – that these men,

30

Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,

Being Nature’s livery or Fortune’s star,

His virtues else, be they as pure as grace,

As infinite as man may undergo,

Shall in the general censure take corruption

35

From that particular fault. The dram of evil

Doth all the noble substance often dout

To his own scandal.

Enter Ghost.

HORATIO     Look, my lord, it comes.

HAMLET     Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,

40

Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou com’st in such a questionable shape

That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee Hamlet,

King, father, royal Dane. O answer me.

45

Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell

Why thy canoniz’d bones, hearsed in death,

Have burst their cerements, why the sepulchre

Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d

Hath op’d his ponderous and marble jaws

50

To cast thee up again. What may this mean,

That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel

Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon,

Making night hideous and we fools of nature

So horridly to shake our disposition

55

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

Say why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?

[Ghost beckons.]

HORATIO     It beckons you to go away with it,

As if it some impartment did desire

To you alone.

MARCELLUS     Look with what courteous action

60

It waves you to a more removed ground.

But do not go with it.

HORATIO     No, by no means.

HAMLET     It will not speak. Then I will follow it.

HORATIO     Do not, my lord.

HAMLET     Why, what should be the fear?

I do not set my life at a pin’s fee,

65

And for my soul, what can it do to that,

Being a thing immortal as itself?

It waves me forth again. I’ll follow it.

HORATIO

What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,

Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff

70

That beetles o’er his base into the sea,

And there assume some other horrible form

Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason

And draw you into madness? Think of it.

The very place puts toys of desperation,

75

Without more motive, into every brain

That looks so many fathoms to the sea

And hears it roar beneath.

HAMLET     It waves me still.

Go on, I’ll follow thee.

MARCELLUS     You shall not go, my lord.

HAMLET     Hold off your hands.

80

HORATIO     Be rul’d; you shall not go.

HAMLET     My fate cries out

And makes each petty artire in this body

As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.

Still am I call’d. Unhand me, gentlemen.

By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me.

85

I say away. – Go on, I’ll follow thee.

Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet.

HORATIO     He waxes desperate with imagination.

MARCELLUS     Let’s follow. ’Tis not fit thus to obey him.

HORATIO     Have after. To what issue will this come?

MARCELLUS

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

90

HORATIO     Heaven will direct it.

MARCELLUS     Nay, let’s follow him.

Exeunt.

1.5 Enter Ghost and HAMLET.

HAMLET

Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak, I’ll go no further.

GHOST Mark me.

HAMLET     I will.

GHOST     My hour is almost come

When I to sulph’rous and tormenting flames

Must render up myself.

HAMLET     Alas, poor ghost.

GHOST     Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing

5

To what I shall unfold.

HAMLET     Speak, I am bound to hear.

GHOST     So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear.

HAMLET     What?

GHOST     I am thy father’s spirit,

Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,

10

And for the day confin’d to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purg’d away. But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word

15

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part,

And each particular hair to stand an end

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

20

But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list!

If thou didst ever thy dear father love –

HAMLET     O God!

GHOST     Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

25

HAMLET     Murder!

GHOST     Murder most foul, as in the best it is,

But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

HAMLET

Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift

As meditation or the thoughts of love

30

May sweep to my revenge.

GHOST     I find thee apt.

And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed

That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,

Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear.

’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,

35

A serpent stung me – so the whole ear of Denmark

Is by a forged process of my death

Rankly abus’d – but know, thou noble youth,

The serpent that did sting thy father’s life

Now wears his crown.

40

HAMLET     O my prophetic soul! My uncle!

GHOST     Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,

With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts –

O wicked wit, and gifts that have the power

So to seduce! – won to his shameful lust

45

The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.

O Hamlet, what a falling off was there,

From me, whose love was of that dignity

That it went hand in hand even with the vow

I made to her in marriage, and to decline

50

Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor

To those of mine.

But virtue, as it never will be mov’d,

Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,

So lust, though to a radiant angel link’d,

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Will sate itself in a celestial bed

And prey on garbage.

But soft, methinks I scent the morning air:

Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,

My custom always of the afternoon,

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Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole

With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,

And in the porches of my ears did pour

The leperous distilment, whose effect

Holds such an enmity with blood of man

65

That swift as quicksilver it courses through

The natural gates and alleys of the body,

And with a sudden vigour it doth posset

And curd, like eager droppings into milk,

The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine,

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And a most instant tetter bark’d about,

Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust

All my smooth body.

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand

Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatch’d,

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Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,

Unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d,

No reck’ning made, but sent to my account

With all my imperfections on my head.

O horrible! O horrible! most horrible!

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If thou has nature in thee, bear it not,

Let not the royal bed of Denmark be

A couch for luxury and damned incest.

But howsomever thou pursuest this act,

Taint not thy mind nor let thy soul contrive

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Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven,

And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge

To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once:

The glow-worm shows the matin to be near

And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

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Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me.     Exit.

HAMLET     O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?

And shall I couple hell? O fie! Hold, hold, my heart,

And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,

But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?

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Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat

In this distracted globe. Remember thee?

Yea, from the table of my memory

I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past

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That youth and observation copied there,

And thy commandment all alone shall live

Within the book and volume of my brain,

Unmix’d with baser matter. Yes, by heaven!

O most pernicious woman!

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O villain, villain, smiling damned villain!

My tables. Meet it is I set it down

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain –

At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark. [Writes.]

So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word.

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It is ‘Adieu, adieu, remember me.’

I have sworn’t.

Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS calling.

HORATIO     My lord, my lord.

MARCELLUS     Lord Hamlet.

HORATIO     Heavens secure him.

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HAMLET     [aside] So be it.

MARCELLUS     Hillo, ho, ho, my lord.

HAMLET     Hillo, ho, ho, boy. Come, bird, come.

MARCELLUS     How is’t, my noble lord?

HORATIO     What news, my lord?

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HAMLET     O, wonderful!

HORATIO     Good my lord, tell it.

HAMLET     No, you will reveal it.

HORATIO     Not I, my lord, by heaven.

MARCELLUS     Nor I, my lord.

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HAMLET

How say you then, would heart of man once think it –

But you’ll be secret?

HORATIO, MARCELLUS Ay, by heaven.

HAMLET

There’s never a villain dwelling in all Denmark

But he’s an arrant knave.

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HORATIO

There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave

To tell us this.

HAMLET     Why, right, you are in the right.

And so without more circumstance at all

I hold it fit that we shake hands and part,

You as your business and desire shall point you –

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For every man hath business and desire,

Such as it is – and for my own poor part,

I will go pray.

HORATIO

These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.

HAMLET     I am sorry they offend you, heartily –

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Yes faith, heartily.

HORATIO     There’s no offence, my lord.

HAMLET     Yes by Saint Patrick but there is, Horatio,

And much offence too. Touching this vision here,

It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you.

For your desire to know what is between us,

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O’ermaster’t as you may. And now, good friends,

As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,

Give me one poor request.

HORATIO     What is’t, my lord? We will.

HAMLET

Never make known what you have seen tonight.

HORATIO, MARCELLUS My lord, we will not.

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HAMLET     Nay, but swear’t.

HORATIO     In faith, my lord, not I.

MARCELLUS     Nor I, my lord, in faith.

HAMLET     Upon my sword.

MARCELLUS     We have sworn, my lord, already.

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HAMLET     Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.

GHOST     [Cries under the stage.] Swear.

HAMLET

Ah ha, boy, say’st thou so? Art thou there, truepenny?

Come on, you hear this fellow in the cellarage.

Consent to swear.

HORATIO     Propose the oath, my lord.

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HAMLET     Never to speak of this that you have seen.

Swear by my sword.

GHOST     Swear. [They swear.]

HAMLET     Hic et ubique? Then we’ll shift our ground.

Come hither, gentlemen,

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And lay your hands again upon my sword.

Swear by my sword

Never to speak of this that you have heard.

GHOST     Swear by his sword. [They swear.]

HAMLET

Well said, old mole. Canst work i’th’ earth so fast?

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A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends.

HORATIO

O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.

HAMLET

And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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But come,

Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,

How strange or odd some’er I bear myself –

As I perchance hereafter shall think meet

To put an antic disposition on –

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That you, at such time seeing me, never shall,

With arms encumber’d thus, or this head-shake,

Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,

As ‘Well, we know’, or ‘We could and if we would’,

Or ‘If we list to speak’, or ‘There be and if they might’,

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Or such ambiguous giving out, to note

That you know aught of me – this do swear,

So grace and mercy at your most need help you.

GHOST     Swear. [They swear.]

HAMLET     Rest, rest, perturbed spirit. So, gentlemen,

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With all my love I do commend me to you;

And what so poor a man as Hamlet is

May do t’express his love and friending to you,

God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together.

And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.

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The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right.

Nay, come, let’s go together.     Exeunt.

2.1 Enter old POLONIUS, with his man REYNALDO.

POLONIUS

Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.

REYNALDO     I will, my lord.

POLONIUS

You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo,

Before you visit him, to make inquire

Of his behaviour.

REYNALDO     My lord, I did intend it.

5

POLONIUS

Marry, well said, very well said. Look you, sir,

Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris,

And how, and who, what means, and where they keep,

What company, at what expense; and finding

By this encompassment and drift of question

10

That they do know my son, come you more nearer

Than your particular demands will touch it.

Take you as ’twere some distant knowledge of him,

As thus, ‘I know his father, and his friends,

And in part him’ – do you mark this, Reynaldo?

15

REYNALDO     Ay, very well, my lord.

POLONIUS

‘And in part him. But’, you may say, ‘not well;

But if ’t be he I mean, he’s very wild,

Addicted so and so’ – and there put on him

What forgeries you please – marry, none so rank

20

As may dishonour him – take heed of that –

But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips

As are companions noted and most known

To youth and liberty.

REYNALDO     As gaming, my lord?

POLONIUS     Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing,

25

Quarrelling, drabbing – you may go so far.

REYNALDO     My lord, that would dishonour him.

POLONIUS

’Faith no, as you may season it in the charge.

You must not put another scandal on him,

That he is open to incontinency –

30

That’s not my meaning; but breathe his faults so quaintly

That they may seem the taints of liberty,

The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,

A savageness in unreclaimed blood,

Of general assault.

35

REYNALDO     But my good lord –

POLONIUS     Wherefore should you do this?

REYNALDO     Ay, my lord, I would know that.

POLONIUS     Marry, sir, here’s my drift,

And I believe it is a fetch of warrant.

You laying these slight sullies on my son,

40

As ’twere a thing a little soil’d i’th’ working,

Mark you,

Your party in converse, him you would sound,

Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes

The youth you breathe of guilty, be assur’d

45

He closes with you in this consequence:

‘Good sir’, or so, or ‘friend’, or ‘gentleman’,

According to the phrase or the addition

Of man and country.

REYNALDO     Very good, my lord.

POLONIUS     And then, sir, does a this – a does – what was

50

I about to say? By the mass, I was about to say

something. Where did I leave?

REYNALDO     At ‘closes in the consequence’.

POLONIUS     At ‘closes in the consequence’, ay, marry.

He closes thus: ‘I know the gentleman,

55

I saw him yesterday’, or ‘th’other day’,

Or then, or then, with such or such, ‘and as you say,

There was a gaming’, ‘there o’ertook in’s rouse’,

‘There falling out at tennis’, or perchance

‘I saw him enter such a house of sale’ –

60

Videlicet a brothel, or so forth.

See you now,

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth;

And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,

With windlasses and with assays of bias,

65

By indirections find directions out.

So by my former lecture and advice

Shall you my son. You have me, have you not?

REYNALDO     My lord, I have.

POLONIUS     God buy ye, fare ye well.

REYNALDO     Good my lord.

70

POLONIUS     Observe his inclination in yourself.

REYNALDO     I shall, my lord.

POLONIUS     And let him ply his music.

REYNALDO     Well, my lord.     Exit.

Enter OPHELIA.

POLONIUS

Farewell. How now, Ophelia, what’s the matter?

OPHELIA

O my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted.

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POLONIUS     With what, i’th’ name of God?

OPHELIA     My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,

Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac’d,

No hat upon his head, his stockings foul’d,

Ungarter’d and down-gyved to his ankle,

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Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,

And with a look so piteous in purport

As if he had been loosed out of hell

To speak of horrors, he comes before me.

POLONIUS     Mad for thy love?

OPHELIA     My lord, I do not know,

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But truly I do fear it.

POLONIUS     What said he?

OPHELIA

He took me by the wrist and held me hard.

Then goes he to the length of all his arm,

And with his other hand thus o’er his brow

He falls to such perusal of my face

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As a would draw it. Long stay’d he so.

At last, a little shaking of mine arm,

And thrice his head thus waving up and down,

He rais’d a sigh so piteous and profound

As it did seem to shatter all his bulk

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And end his being. That done, he lets me go,

And with his head over his shoulder turn’d

He seem’d to find his way without his eyes,

For out o’ doors he went without their helps,

And to the last bended their light on me.

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POLONIUS     Come, go with me, I will go seek the King.

This is the very ecstasy of love,

Whose violent property fordoes itself

And leads the will to desperate undertakings

As oft as any passion under heaven

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That does afflict our natures. I am sorry –

What, have you given him any hard words of late?

OPHELIA     No, my good lord, but as you did command,

I did repel his letters and denied

His access to me.

POLONIUS     That hath made him mad.

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I am sorry that with better heed and judgment

I had not quoted him. I fear’d he did but trifle

And meant to wrack thee. But beshrew my jealousy!

By heaven, it is as proper to our age

To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions

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As it is common for the younger sort

To lack discretion. Come, go we to the King.

This must be known, which, being kept close, might move

More grief to hide than hate to utter love.

Come.     Exeunt.

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2.2 Flourish. Enter KING and QUEEN, ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN, with attendants.

KING     Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Moreover that we much did long to see you,

The need we have to use you did provoke

Our hasty sending. Something have you heard

Of Hamlet’s transformation – so I call it,

5

Sith nor th’exterior nor the inward man

Resembles that it was. What it should be,

More than his father’s death, that thus hath put him

So much from th’understanding of himself

I cannot dream of. I entreat you both

10

That, being of so young days brought up with him,

And sith so neighbour’d to his youth and haviour,

That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court

Some little time, so by your companies

To draw him on to pleasures and to gather,

15

So much as from occasion you may glean,

Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus

That, open’d, lies within our remedy.

QUEEN     Good gentlemen, he hath much talk’d of you,

And sure I am, two men there is not living

20

To whom he more adheres. If it will please you

To show us so much gentry and good will

As to expend your time with us awhile

For the supply and profit of our hope,

Your visitation shall receive such thanks

25

As fits a king’s remembrance.

ROSENCRANTZ     Both your Majesties

Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,

Put your dread pleasures more into command

Than to entreaty.

GUILDENSTERN     But we both obey,

And here give up ourselves in the full bent

30

To lay our service freely at your feet

To be commanded.

KING     Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

QUEEN     Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.

And I beseech you instantly to visit

35

My too much changed son. Go, some of you,

And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.

GUILDENSTERN

Heavens make our presence and our practices

Pleasant and helpful to him.

QUEEN     Ay, amen.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and an attendant.

Enter POLONIUS.

POLONIUS

Th’ambassadors from Norway, my good lord,

40

Are joyfully return’d.

KING     Thou still hast been the father of good news.

POLONIUS     Have I, my lord? I assure my good liege

I hold my duty as I hold my soul,

Both to my God and to my gracious King;

45

And I do think – or else this brain of mine

Hunts not the trail of policy so sure

As it hath us’d to do – that I have found

The very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy.

KING     O speak of that: that do I long to hear.

50

POLONIUS     Give first admittance to th’ambassadors.

My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.

KING     Thyself do grace to them and bring them in.

Exit Polonius.

He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found

The head and source of all your son’s distemper.

55

QUEEN     I doubt it is no other but the main,

His father’s death and our o’er-hasty marriage.

KING     Well, we shall sift him.

Enter POLONIUS, VOLTEMAND and CORNELIUS.

Welcome, my good friends.

Say, Voltemand, what from our brother Norway?

VOLTEMAND

Most fair return of greetings and desires.

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Upon our first, he sent out to suppress

His nephew’s levies, which to him appear’d

To be a preparation ’gainst the Polack;

But better look’d into, he truly found

It was against your Highness; whereat griev’d

65

That so his sickness, age, and impotence

Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests

On Fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys,

Receives rebuke from Norway, and, in fine,

Makes vow before his uncle never more

70

To give th’assay of arms against your Majesty:

Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,

Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee

And his commission to employ those soldiers

So levied, as before, against the Polack,

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With an entreaty, herein further shown,

[Gives a paper.]

That it might please you to give quiet pass

Through your dominions for this enterprise

On such regards of safety and allowance

As therein are set down.

KING     It likes us well;

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And at our more consider’d time we’ll read,

Answer, and think upon this business.

Meantime, we thank you for your well-took labour.

Go to your rest, at night we’ll feast together.

Most welcome home.

Exeunt Voltemand and Cornelius.

POLONIUS     This business is well ended.

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My liege and madam, to expostulate

What majesty should be, what duty is,

Why day is day, night night, and time is time,

Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time.

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,

90

And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,

I will be brief. Your noble son is mad.

Mad call I it, for to define true madness,

What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?

But let that go.

QUEEN     More matter with less art.

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POLONIUS     Madam, I swear I use no art at all.

That he is mad ’tis true; ’tis true ’tis pity;

And pity ’tis ’tis true. A foolish figure –

But farewell it, for I will use no art.

Mad let us grant him then. And now remains

100

That we find out the cause of this effect,

Or rather say the cause of this defect,

For this effect defective comes by cause.

Thus it remains; and the remainder thus:

Perpend,

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I have a daughter – have while she is mine –

Who in her duty and obedience, mark,

Hath given me this. Now gather and surmise.

[Reads.] To the celestial and my soul’s idol, the most

beautified Ophelia – That’s an ill phrase, a vile phrase,

110

‘beautified’ is a vile phrase. But you shall hear – these;

in her excellent white bosom, these, etc.

QUEEN     Came this from Hamlet to her?

POLONIUS     Good madam, stay awhile, I will be faithful.

Doubt thou the stars are fire,

115

Doubt that the sun doth move,

Doubt truth to be a liar,

But never doubt I love.

O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers. I have not art

to reckon my groans. But that I love thee best, O most

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best, believe it. Adieu.

Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this

machine is to him,     Hamlet.

This in obedience hath my daughter shown me,

And, more above, hath his solicitings,

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As they fell out by time, by means, and place,

All given to mine ear.

KING     But how hath she receiv’d his love?

POLONIUS     What do you think of me?

KING     As of a man faithful and honourable.

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POLONIUS

I would fain prove so. But what might you think,

When I had seen this hot love on the wing –

As I perceiv’d it, I must tell you that,

Before my daughter told me – what might you

Or my dear Majesty your queen here think,

135

If I had play’d the desk or table-book,

Or given my heart a winking mute and dumb,

Or look’d upon this love with idle sight –

What might you think? No, I went round to work,

And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:

140

‘Lord Hamlet is a prince out of thy star.

This must not be.’ And then I prescripts gave her,

That she should lock herself from his resort,

Admit no messengers, receive no tokens;

Which done, she took the fruits of my advice,

145

And he, repelled – a short tale to make –

Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,

Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,

Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,

Into the madness wherein now he raves

150

And all we mourn for.

KING     Do you think ’tis this?

QUEEN     It may be; very like.

POLONIUS

Hath there been such a time – I would fain know that–

That I have positively said ‘’Tis so’,

When it prov’d otherwise?

KING     Not that I know.

155

POLONIUS     Take this from this if this be otherwise.

[Points to his head and shoulder.]

If circumstances lead me, I will find

Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed

Within the centre.

KING     How may we try it further?

POLONIUS

You know sometimes he walks four hours together

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Here in the lobby.

QUEEN     So he does indeed.

POLONIUS

At such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him.

Be you and I behind an arras then,

Mark the encounter. If he love her not,

And be not from his reason fall’n thereon,

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Let me be no assistant for a state,

But keep a farm and carters.

KING     We will try it.

Enter HAMLET, reading on a book.

QUEEN

But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.

POLONIUS     Away, I do beseech you both, away.

I’ll board him presently. O give me leave.

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Exeunt King and Queen and attendants.

How does my good Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET     Well, God-a-mercy.

POLONIUS     Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET     Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.

POLONIUS     Not I, my lord.

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HAMLET     Then I would you were so honest a man.

POLONIUS     Honest, my lord?

HAMLET     Ay sir. To be honest, as this world goes, is to

be one man picked out of ten thousand.

POLONIUS     That’s very true, my lord.

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HAMLET     For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog,

being a good kissing carrion – Have you a daughter?

POLONIUS     I have, my lord.

HAMLET     Let her not walk i’th’ sun. Conception is a

blessing, but as your daughter may conceive – friend,

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look to’t.

POLONIUS     [aside] How say you by that? Still harping on

my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first; a said I was

a fishmonger. A is far gone. And truly in my youth I

suffered much extremity for love, very near this. I’ll

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speak to him again. – What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET     Words, words, words.

POLONIUS     What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET     Between who?

POLONIUS     I mean the matter that you read, my lord.

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HAMLET     Slanders, sir. For the satirical rogue says here

that old men have gray beards, that their faces are

wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-

tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit,

together with most weak hams – all which, sir,

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though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I

hold it not honesty to have it thus set down. For

yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am – if like a crab you

could go backward.

POLONIUS [aside]     Though this be madness, yet there is

205

method in’t. – Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET     Into my grave?

POLONIUS     Indeed, that’s out of the air. – [aside] How

pregnant sometimes his replies are – a happiness that

often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could

210

not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him

and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between

him and my daughter. – My lord, I will take my leave

of you.

HAMLET     You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I

215

will not more willingly part withal – except my life,

except my life, except my life.

POLONIUS     Fare you well, my lord.

HAMLET     These tedious old fools.

Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

POLONIUS     You go to seek the Lord Hamlet. There he is.

220

ROSENCRANTZ     God save you, sir.     Exit Polonius.

GUILDENSTERN     My honoured lord.

ROSENCRANTZ     My most dear lord.

HAMLET     My excellent good friends. How dost thou,

Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz. Good lads, how do

225

you both?

ROSENCRANTZ     As the indifferent children of the earth.

GUILDENSTERN     Happy in that we are not over-happy:

on Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.

HAMLET     Nor the soles of her shoe?

230

ROSENCRANTZ     Neither, my lord.

HAMLET     Then you live about her waist, or in the

middle of her favours?

GUILDENSTERN     Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET     In the secret parts of Fortune? O most true,

235

she is a strumpet. What news?

ROSENCRANTZ     None, my lord, but the world’s grown

honest.

HAMLET     Then is doomsday near. But your news is not

true. Let me question more in particular. What have

240

you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of

Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN     Prison, my lord?

HAMLET     Denmark’s a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ     Then is the world one.

245

HAMLET     A goodly one, in which there are many

confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one

o’th’ worst.

ROSENCRANTZ     We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET     Why, then ’tis none to you; for there is nothing

250

either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it

is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ     Why, then your ambition makes it one:

’tis too narrow for your mind.

HAMLET     O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and

255

count myself a king of infinite space – were it not that

I have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN     Which dreams indeed are ambition; for

the very substance of the ambitious is merely the

shadow of a dream.

260

HAMLET     A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ     Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and

light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.

HAMLET     Then are our beggars bodies, and our

monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars’

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shadows. Shall we to th’ court? For by my fay, I cannot

reason.

ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN We’ll wait upon you.

HAMLET     No such matter. I will not sort you with the

rest of my servants; for, to speak to you like an honest

270

man, I am most dreadfully attended. But in the beaten

way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?

ROSENCRANTZ     To visit you, my lord, no other occasion.

HAMLET     Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks,

but I thank you. And sure, dear friends, my thanks are

275

too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your

own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, come, deal

justly with me. Come, come. Nay, speak.

GUILDENSTERN     What should we say, my lord?

HAMLET     Anything but to th’ purpose. You were sent

280

for, and there is a kind of confession in your looks,

which your modesties have not craft enough to colour.

I know the good King and Queen have sent for you.

ROSENCRANTZ     To what end, my lord?

HAMLET     That, you must teach me. But let me conjure

285

you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy

of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved

love, and by what more dear a better proposer can

charge you withal, be even and direct with me

whether you were sent for or no.

290

ROSENCRANTZ [aside to Guildenstern]     What say you?

HAMLET     Nay, then I have an eye of you. If you love me,

hold not off.

GUILDENSTERN     My lord, we were sent for.

HAMLET     I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation

295

prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the King

and Queen moult no feather. I have of late, but

wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all

custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with

my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems

300

to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy

the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament,

this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it

appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent

congregation of vapours. What piece of work is a man,

305

how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form

and moving how express and admirable, in action how

like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the

beauty of the world, the paragon of animals – and yet,

to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights

310

not me – nor woman neither, though by your smiling

you seem to say so.

ROSENCRANTZ     My lord, there was no such stuff in my

thoughts.

HAMLET     Why did ye laugh then, when I said man

315

delights not me?

ROSENCRANTZ     To think, my lord, if you delight not in

man, what Lenten entertainment the players shall

receive from you. We coted them on the way, and

hither are they coming to offer you service.

320

HAMLET     He that plays the king shall be welcome – his

Majesty shall have tribute on me, the adventurous

knight shall use his foil and target, the lover shall not

sigh gratis, the humorous man shall end his part in

peace, the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs

325

are tickle a’th’ sear, and the lady shall say her mind

freely – or the blank verse shall halt for’t. What

players are they?

ROSENCRANTZ     Even those you were wont to take such

delight in, the tragedians of the city.

330

HAMLET     How chances it they travel? Their residence,

both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.

ROSENCRANTZ     I think their inhibition comes by the

means of the late innovation.

HAMLET     Do they hold the same estimation they did

335

when I was in the city? Are they so followed?

ROSENCRANTZ     No, indeed are they not.

HAMLET     How comes it? Do they grow rusty?

ROSENCRANTZ     Nay, their endeavour keeps in the

wonted pace; but there is, sir, an eyrie of children,

340

little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and

are most tyrannically clapped for’t. These are now the

fashion, and so berattle the common stages – so they

call them – that many wearing rapiers are afraid of

goose-quills and dare scarce come thither.

345

HAMLET     What, are they children? Who maintains ’em?

How are they escotted? Will they pursue the quality

no longer than they can sing? Will they not say

afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common

players – as it is most like, if their means are no

350

better – their writers do them wrong to make them

exclaim against their own succession?

ROSENCRANTZ     Faith, there has been much to do on

both sides; and the nation holds it no sin to tar them

to controversy. There was for a while no money bid for

355

argument unless the poet and the player went to cuffs

in the question.

HAMLET     Is’t possible?

GUILDENSTERN     O, there has been much throwing about

of brains.

360

HAMLET     Do the boys carry it away?

ROSENCRANTZ     Ay, that they do, my lord, Hercules and

his load too.

HAMLET     It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of

Denmark, and those that would make mouths at him

365

while my father lived give twenty, forty, fifty, a

hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little.

’Sblood, there is something in this more than

natural, if philosophy could find it out.

[A flourish of trumpets.]

GUILDENSTERN     There are the players.

370

HAMLET     Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your

hands, come then. Th’appurtenance of welcome is

fashion and ceremony. Let me comply with you in this

garb – lest my extent to the players, which I tell you

must show fairly outwards, should more appear like

375

entertainment than yours. You are welcome. But my

uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.

GUILDENSTERN     In what, my dear lord?

HAMLET     I am but mad north-north-west. When the

wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

380

Enter POLONIUS.

POLONIUS     Well be with you, gentlemen.

HAMLET     Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too – at each

ear a hearer. That great baby you see there is not yet

out of his swaddling-clouts.

ROSENCRANTZ     Happily he is the second time come to

385

them, for they say an old man is twice a child.

HAMLET     I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the

players. Mark it. – You say right, sir, a Monday

morning, ’twas then indeed.

POLONIUS     My lord, I have news to tell you.

390

HAMLET     My lord, I have news to tell you. When

Roscius was an actor in Rome –

POLONIUS     The actors are come hither, my lord.

HAMLET     Buzz, buzz.

POLONIUS     Upon my honour –

395

HAMLET     Then came each actor on his ass –

POLONIUS     The best actors in the world, either for

tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,

historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical comical

historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlim-

400

ited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too

light. For the law of writ, and the liberty, these are

the only men.

HAMLET     O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure

hadst thou!

405

POLONIUS     What a treasure had he, my lord?

HAMLET     Why,

One fair daughter and no more,

The which he loved passing well.

POLONIUS [aside]     Still on my daughter.

410

HAMLET     Am I not i’th’ right, old Jephthah?

POLONIUS     If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a

daughter that I love passing well.

HAMLET     Nay, that follows not.

POLONIUS     What follows then, my lord?

415

HAMLET     Why,

As by lot God wot,

and then, you know,

It came to pass, as most like it was.

The first row of the pious chanson will show you

420

more, for look where my abridgement comes.

Enter the Players.

You are welcome, masters. Welcome, all. – I am glad to

see thee well. – Welcome, good friends. – O, old

friend, why, thy face is valanced since I saw thee last.

Com’st thou to beard me in Denmark? – What, my

425

young lady and mistress! By’r lady, your ladyship is

nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the

altitude of a chopine. Pray God your voice, like a

piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the

ring. – Masters, you are all welcome. We’ll e’en to’t

430

like French falconers, fly at anything we see. We’ll

have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your

quality. Come, a passionate speech.

1 PLAYER     What speech, my good lord?

HAMLET     I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was

435

never acted, or if it was, not above once – for the play,

I remember, pleased not the million, ’twas caviare to

the general. But it was, as I received it – and others,

whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of

mine – an excellent play, well digested in the scenes,

440

set down with as much modesty as cunning. I

remember one said there were no sallets in the lines to

make the matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase

that might indict the author of affection, but called it

an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very

445

much more handsome than fine. One speech in’t I

chiefly loved – ’twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido – and

thereabout of it especially when he speaks of Priam’s

slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at this line –

let me see, let me see –

450

The rugged Pyrrhus, like th’Hyrcanian beast –

’Tis not so. It begins with Pyrrhus –

The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,

Black as his purpose, did the night resemble

When he lay couched in the ominous horse,

455

Hath now this dread and black complexion smear’d

With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot

Now is he total gules, horridly trick’d

With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,

Bak’d and impasted with the parching streets,

460

That lend a tyrannous and a damned light

To their lord’s murder. Roasted in wrath and fire,

And thus o’ersized with coagulate gore,

With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus

Old grandsire Priam seeks.

465

So proceed you.

POLONIUS     ’Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good

accent and good discretion.

1 PLAYER     Anon he finds him,

Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword,

470

Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,

Repugnant to command. Unequal match’d,

Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide;

But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword

Th’unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,

475

Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top

Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash

Takes prisoner Pyrrhus’ ear. For lo, his sword,

Which was declining on the milky head

Of reverend Priam, seem’d i’th’ air to stick;

480

So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,

And like a neutral to his will and matter,

Did nothing.

But as we often see against some storm

A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,

485

The bold winds speechless, and the orb below

As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder

Doth rend the region; so after Pyrrhus’ pause

Aroused vengeance sets him new awork,

And never did the Cyclops’ hammers fall

490

On Mars’s armour, forg’d for proof eterne,

With less remorse than Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword

Now falls on Priam.

Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods

In general synod take away her power,

495

Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,

And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven

As low as to the fiends.

POLONIUS     This is too long.

HAMLET     It shall to the barber’s with your beard. –

500

Prithee say on. He’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he

sleeps. Say on, come to Hecuba.

1 PLAYER

But who – ah, woe! – had seen the mobbled queen –

HAMLET     ‘The mobbled queen’.

POLONIUS     That’s good.

505

1 PLAYER

Run barefoot up and down, threat’ning the flames

With bisson rheum, a clout upon that head

Where late the diadem stood, and, for a robe,

About her lank and all o’erteemed loins

A blanket, in th’alarm of fear caught up –

510

Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep’d,

’Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have pronounc’d.

But if the gods themselves did see her then,

When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport

In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs,

515

The instant burst of clamour that she made,

Unless things mortal move them not at all,

Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven

And passion in the gods.

POLONIUS     Look whe’er he has not turned his colour

520

and has tears in’s eyes. Prithee no more.

HAMLET     ’Tis well. I’ll have thee speak out the rest of

this soon. – Good my lord, will you see the players

well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used, for

they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time.

525

After your death you were better have a bad epitaph

than their ill report while you live.

POLONIUS     My lord, I will use them according to their

desert.

HAMLET     God’s bodkin, man, much better. Use every

530

man after his desert, and who shall scape whipping?

Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less

they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take

them in.

POLONIUS     Come, sirs.

535

HAMLET     Follow him, friends. We’ll hear a play

tomorrow. [to First Player] Dost thou hear me, old

friend? Can you play The Murder of Gonzago?

1 PLAYER Ay, my lord.

HAMLET     We’ll ha’t tomorrow night. You could for a

540

need study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines,

which I would set down and insert in’t, could you not?

1 PLAYER     Ay, my lord.

HAMLET     Very well. [to all the Players] Follow that lord,

and look you mock him not.

545

Exeunt Polonius and Players.

[to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern] My good friends, I’ll

leave you till night. You are welcome to Elsinore.

ROSENCRANTZ     Good my lord.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

HAMLET     Ay, so, God buy to you. Now I am alone.

O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

550

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all his visage wann’d,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,

555

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!

For Hecuba!

What’s Hecuba to him, or he to her,

That he should weep for her? What would he do

560

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,

Make mad the guilty and appal the free,

Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed

565

The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,

And can say nothing – no, not for a king,

570

Upon whose property and most dear life

A damn’d defeat was made. Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across,

Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face,

Tweaks me by the nose, gives me the lie i’th’ throat

575

As deep as to the lungs – who does me this?

Ha!

’Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be

But I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

580

I should ha’ fatted all the region kites

With this slave’s offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,

That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,

585

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

Must like a whore unpack my heart with words

And fall a-cursing like a very drab,

A scullion! Fie upon’t! Foh!

About, my brains. Hum – I have heard

590

That guilty creatures sitting at a play

Have, by the very cunning of the scene,

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim’d their malefactions.

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

595

With most miraculous organ. I’ll have these players

Play something like the murder of my father

Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks;

I’ll tent him to the quick. If a do blench,

I know my course. The spirit that I have seen

600

May be a devil, and the devil hath power

T’assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps,

Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

As he is very potent with such spirits,

Abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds

605

More relative than this. The play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.     Exit.

3.1 Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN.

KING     And can you by no drift of conference

Get from him why he puts on this confusion,

Grating so harshly all his days of quiet

With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

ROSENCRANTZ

He does confess he feels himself distracted,

5

But from what cause a will by no means speak.

GUILDENSTERN

Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,

But with a crafty madness keeps aloof

When we would bring him on to some confession

Of his true state.

QUEEN     Did he receive you well?

10

ROSENCRANTZ     Most like a gentleman.

GUILDENSTERN

But with much forcing of his disposition.

ROSENCRANTZ

Niggard of question, but of our demands

Most free in his reply.

QUEEN     Did you assay him

To any pastime?

15

ROSENCRANTZ

Madam, it so fell out that certain players

We o’erraught on the way. Of these we told him,

And there did seem in him a kind of joy

To hear of it. They are here about the court,

And, as I think, they have already order

20

This night to play before him.

POLONIUS     ’Tis most true,

And he beseech’d me to entreat your Majesties

To hear and see the matter.

KING     With all my heart; and it doth much content me

To hear him so inclin’d.

25

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,

And drive his purpose into these delights.

ROSENCRANTZ     We shall, my lord.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING     Sweet Gertrude, leave us too,

For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither

That he, as ’twere by accident, may here

30

Affront Ophelia.

Her father and myself, lawful espials,

We’ll so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,

We may of their encounter frankly judge,

And gather by him, as he is behav’d,

35

If ’t be th’affliction of his love or no

That thus he suffers for.

QUEEN     I shall obey you.

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish

That your good beauties be the happy cause

Of Hamlet’s wildness; so shall I hope your virtues

40

Will bring him to his wonted way again,

To both your honours.

OPHELIA     Madam, I wish it may.

Exit Queen.

POLONIUS

Ophelia, walk you here. – Gracious, so please you,

We will bestow ourselves. – Read on this book,

That show of such an exercise may colour

45

Your loneliness. – We are oft to blame in this,

’Tis too much prov’d, that with devotion’s visage

And pious action we do sugar o’er

The devil himself.

KING [aside]     O ’tis too true.

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience.

50

The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plast’ring art,

Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it

Than is my deed to my most painted word.

O heavy burden!

POLONIUS

I hear him coming. Let’s withdraw, my lord.

55

Exeunt King and Polonius.

Enter HAMLET.

HAMLET     To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die – to sleep,

60

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub:

65

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause – there’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

70

Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

75

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

80

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

85

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action. Soft you now,

The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remember’d.

OPHELIA     Good my lord,

90

How does your honour for this many a day?

HAMLET     I humbly thank you, well.

OPHELIA     My lord, I have remembrances of yours

That I have longed long to redeliver.

I pray you now receive them.

HAMLET     No, not I.

95

I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA

My honour’d lord, you know right well you did,

And with them words of so sweet breath compos’d

As made the things more rich. Their perfume lost,

Take these again; for to the noble mind

100

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

There, my lord.

HAMLET     Ha, ha! Are you honest?

OPHELIA     My lord?

HAMLET     Are you fair?

105

OPHELIA     What means your lordship?

HAMLET     That if you be honest and fair, your honesty

should admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPHELIA     Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce

than with honesty?

110

HAMLET     Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner

transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the

force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness.

This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives

it proof. I did love you once.

115

OPHELIA     Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET     You should not have believed me; for virtue

cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of

it. I loved you not.

OPHELIA     I was the more deceived.

120

HAMLET     Get thee to a nunnery. Why, wouldst thou be a

breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest,

but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were

better my mother had not borne me. I am very

proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at

125

my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,

imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.

What should such fellows as I do crawling between

earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all, believe

none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your

130

father?

OPHELIA     At home, my lord.

HAMLET     Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may

play the fool nowhere but in’s own house. Farewell.

OPHELIA     O help him, you sweet heavens.

135

HAMLET     If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for

thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,

thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery,

farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for

wise men know well enough what monsters you make

140

of them. To a nunnery, go – and quickly too. Farewell.

OPHELIA     Heavenly powers, restore him.

HAMLET     I have heard of your paintings well enough.

God hath given you one face and you make yourselves

another. You jig and amble, and you lisp, you

145

nickname God’s creatures, and make your wantonness

your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t, it hath made

me mad. I say we will have no mo marriage. Those

that are married already – all but one – shall live; the

rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.     Exit.

150

OPHELIA     O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,

Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

Th’observ’d of all observers, quite, quite down!

155

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

That suck’d the honey of his music vows,

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason

Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh,

That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth

160

Blasted with ecstasy. O woe is me

T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see.

Enter KING and POLONIUS.

KING     Love? His affections do not that way tend,

Nor what he spake, though it lack’d form a little,

Was not like madness. There’s something in his soul

165

O’er which his melancholy sits on brood,

And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose

Will be some danger; which for to prevent,

I have in quick determination

Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England

170

For the demand of our neglected tribute.

Haply the seas and countries different,

With variable objects, shall expel

This something settled matter in his heart,

Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus

175

From fashion of himself. What think you on’t?

POLONIUS     It shall do well. But yet do I believe

The origin and commencement of his grief

Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia?

You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said,

180

We heard it all. My lord, do as you please,

But if you hold it fit, after the play

Let his queen-mother all alone entreat him

To show his grief, let her be round with him,

And I’ll be plac’d, so please you, in the ear

185

Of all their conference. If she find him not,

To England send him; or confine him where

Your wisdom best shall think.

KING     It shall be so.

Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.

Exeunt.

3.2 Enter HAMLET and three of the Players.

HAMLET     Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced

it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it

as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier

spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with

your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very

5

torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of

your passion, you must acquire and beget a

temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends

me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated

fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the

10

ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are

capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and

noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for

o’erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods Herod. Pray you

avoid it.

15

1 PLAYER     I warrant your honour.

HAMLET     Be not too tame neither, but let your own

discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word,

the word to the action, with this special observance,

that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature. For

20

anything so o’erdone is from the purpose of playing,

whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to

hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue

her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age

and body of the time his form and pressure. Now

25

this overdone or come tardy off, though it makes the

unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious

grieve, the censure of the which one must in your

allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O,

there be players that I have seen play – and heard

30

others praise, and that highly – not to speak it

profanely, that neither having th’accent of Christians,

nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so

strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of

Nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made

35

them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

1 PLAYER     I hope we have reformed that indifferently

with us.

HAMLET     O reform it altogether. And let those that play

your clowns speak no more than is set down for them

40

– for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set

on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too,

though in the meantime some necessary question of

the play be then to be considered. That’s villainous,

and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses

45

it. Go make you ready.     Exeunt Players.

Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

How now, my lord? Will the King hear this piece of

work?

POLONIUS     And the Queen too, and that presently.

HAMLET     Bid the players make haste.     Exit Polonius.

50

Will you two help to hasten them?

ROSENCRANTZ     Ay, my lord.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

HAMLET     What ho, Horatio!

Enter HORATIO.

HORATIO     Here, sweet lord, at your service.

HAMLET     Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man

55

As e’er my conversation cop’d withal.

HORATIO     O my dear lord.

HAMLET     Nay, do not think I flatter,

For what advancement may I hope from thee

That no revenue hast but thy good spirits

To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter’d?

60

No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,

And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee

Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,

And could of men distinguish her election,

65

Sh’ath seal’d thee for herself; for thou hast been

As one, in suff ’ring all, that suffers nothing,

A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards

Hast ta’en with equal thanks; and blest are those

Whose blood and judgment are so well commeddled

70

That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger

To sound what stop she please. Give me that man

That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him

In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,

As I do thee. Something too much of this.

75

There is a play tonight before the King:

One scene of it comes near the circumstance

Which I have told thee of my father’s death.

I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,

Even with the very comment of thy soul

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Observe my uncle. If his occulted guilt

Do not itself unkennel in one speech,

It is a damned ghost that we have seen,

And my imaginations are as foul

As Vulcan’s stithy. Give him heedful note;

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For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,

And after we will both our judgments join

In censure of his seeming.

HORATIO     Well, my lord.

If a steal aught the whilst this play is playing

And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

90

Enter trumpets and kettle-drums and sound a flourish.

HAMLET     They are coming to the play. I must be idle.

Get you a place.

Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ,

GUILDENSTERN and other lords attendant, with the King’s guard carrying torches.

KING     How fares our cousin Hamlet?

HAMLET     Excellent, i’faith, of the chameleon’s dish. I

eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons

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so.

KING     I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. These

words are not mine.

HAMLET     No, nor mine now. – [to Polonius] My lord, you

played once i’th’ university, you say?

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POLONIUS     That did I, my lord, and was accounted a

good actor.

HAMLET     What did you enact?

POLONIUS     I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i’th’

Capitol. Brutus killed me.

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HAMLET     It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a

calf there. Be the players ready?

ROSENCRANTZ     Ay, my lord, they stay upon your

patience.

QUEEN     Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

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HAMLET     No, good mother, here’s metal more attractive.

[Turns to Ophelia.]

POLONIUS [aside to the King]     O ho! do you mark that?

HAMLET [lying down at Ophelia’s feet]     Lady, shall I lie in

your lap?

OPHELIA     No, my lord.

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HAMLET     I mean, my head upon your lap.

OPHELIA     Ay, my lord.

HAMLET     Do you think I meant country matters?

OPHELIA     I think nothing, my lord.

HAMLET     That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’

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legs.

OPHELIA     What is, my lord?

HAMLET     Nothing.

OPHELIA     You are merry, my lord.

HAMLET     Who, I?

125

OPHELIA     Ay, my lord.

HAMLET     O God, your only jig-maker. What should a

man do but be merry? For look you how cheerfully my

mother looks and my father died within’s two hours.

OPHELIA     Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.

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HAMLET     So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for

I’ll have a suit of sables. O heavens, die two months

ago and not forgotten yet! Then there’s hope a great

man’s memory may outlive his life half a year. But by’r

lady a must build churches then, or else shall a suffer

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not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose

epitaph is ‘For O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot’.

[The trumpets sound. A dumb-show follows.]

Enter a KING and a QUEEN, the Queen embracing him and

he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him.

He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck. He lies

him down upon a bank of flowers. She, seeing him asleep,

leaves him. Anon comes in another Man, takes off his crown,

kisses it, pours poison in the sleeper’s ears, and leaves him.

The QUEEN returns, finds the King dead, makes passionate

action. The Poisoner with some three or four comes in again.

They seem to condole with her. The dead body is carried

away. The Poisoner woos the Queen with gifts. She

seems harsh awhile, but in the end accepts his love.

Exeunt.

OPHELIA     What means this, my lord?

HAMLET     Marry, this is miching malicho. It means mischief.

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OPHELIA     Belike this show imports the argument of the play.

Enter PROLOGUE.

HAMLET     We shall know by this fellow. The players

cannot keep counsel: they’ll tell all.

OPHELIA     Will a tell us what this show meant?

145

HAMLET     Ay, or any show that you will show him. Be not

you ashamed to show, he’ll not shame to tell you what

it means.

OPHELIA     You are naught, you are naught. I’ll mark the

play.

150

PROLOGUE For us and for our tragedy,

Here stooping to your clemency,

We beg your hearing patiently.     Exit.

HAMLET     Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

OPHELIA     ’Tis brief, my lord.

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HAMLET     As woman’s love.

Enter the PLAYER KING and QUEEN.

PLAYER KING

Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round

Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground,

And thirty dozen moons with borrow’d sheen

About the world have times twelve thirties been

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Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands

Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

PLAYER QUEEN So many journeys may the sun and moon

Make us again count o’er ere love be done.

But woe is me, you are so sick of late,

165

So far from cheer and from your former state,

That I distrust you. Yet though I distrust,

Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must;

For women’s fear and love hold quantity,

In neither aught, or in extremity.

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Now what my love is, proof hath made you know,

And as my love is siz’d, my fear is so.

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;

Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

PLAYER KING

Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too:

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My operant powers their functions leave to do;

And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,

Honour’d, belov’d; and haply one as kind

For husband shalt thou –

PLAYER QUEEN     O confound the rest.

Such love must needs be treason in my breast.

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In second husband let me be accurst;

None wed the second but who kill’d the first.

HAMLET [aside]     That’s wormwood.

PLAYER QUEEN The instances that second marriage move

Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.

185

A second time I kill my husband dead,

When second husband kisses me in bed.

PLAYER KING I do believe you think what now you speak;

But what we do determine, oft we break.

Purpose is but the slave to memory,

190

Of violent birth but poor validity,

Which now, the fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,

But fall unshaken when they mellow be.

Most necessary ’tis that we forget

To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.

195

What to ourselves in passion we propose,

The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.

The violence of either grief or joy

Their own enactures with themselves destroy.

Where joy most revels grief doth most lament;

200

Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.

This world is not for aye, nor ’tis not strange

That even our loves should with our fortunes change,

For ’tis a question left us yet to prove,

Whether love lead fortune or else fortune love.

205

The great man down, you mark his favourite flies;

The poor advanc’d makes friends of enemies;

And hitherto doth love on fortune tend:

For who not needs shall never lack a friend,

And who in want a hollow friend doth try

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Directly seasons him his enemy.

But orderly to end where I begun,

Our wills and fates do so contrary run

That our devices still are overthrown:

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

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So think thou wilt no second husband wed,

But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

PLAYER QUEEN

Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light,

Sport and repose lock from me day and night,

To desperation turn my trust and hope,

220

An anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope,

Each opposite, that blanks the face of joy,

Meet what I would have well and it destroy,

Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,

If, once a widow, ever I be a wife.

225

HAMLET     If she should break it now.

PLAYER KING

’Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile.

My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile

The tedious day with sleep.

PLAYER QUEEN     Sleep rock thy brain,

And never come mischance between us twain.

230

[He sleeps.]     Exit.

HAMLET     Madam, how like you this play?

QUEEN     The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

HAMLET     O, but she’ll keep her word.

KING     Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in’t?

235

HAMLET     No, no, they do but jest – poison in jest. No

offence i’th’ world.

KING     What do you call the play?

HAMLET The Mousetrap – marry, how tropically! This

play is the image of a murder done in Vienna –

240

Gonzago is the Duke’s name, his wife Baptista – you

shall see anon. ’Tis a knavish piece of work, but what

o’ that? Your Majesty, and we that have free souls, it

touches us not. Let the galled jade wince, our withers

are unwrung.

245

Enter LUCIANUS.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.

OPHELIA     You are as good as a chorus, my lord.

HAMLET     I could interpret between you and your love if

I could see the puppets dallying.

OPHELIA     You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

250

HAMLET     It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.

OPHELIA     Still better, and worse.

HAMLET     So you mis-take your husbands. – Begin,

murderer. Leave thy damnable faces and begin. Come,

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the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.

LUCIANUS

Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing,

Confederate season, else no creature seeing,

Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,

With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,

260

Thy natural magic and dire property

On wholesome life usurps immediately.

[Pours the poison in the sleeper’s ears.]

HAMLET     A poisons him i’th’ garden for his estate. His

name’s Gonzago. The story is extant, and written in

very choice Italian. You shall see anon how the

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murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.

OPHELIA     The King rises.

HAMLET     What, frighted with false fire?

QUEEN     How fares my lord?

POLONIUS     Give o’er the play.

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KING     Give me some light. Away.

POLONIUS     Lights, lights, lights.

Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio.

HAMLET

Why, let the strucken deer go weep,

The hart ungalled play;

For some must watch while some must sleep,

275

Thus runs the world away.

Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, if the rest

of my fortunes turn Turk with me, with Provincial

roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry

of players?

280

HORATIO     Half a share.

HAMLET     A whole one, I.

For thou dost know, O Damon dear,

This realm dismantled was

Of Jove himself, and now reigns here

285

A very, very – pajock.

HORATIO     You might have rhymed.

HAMLET     O good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for

a thousand pound. Didst perceive?

HORATIO     Very well, my lord.

290

HAMLET     Upon the talk of the poisoning?

HORATIO     I did very well note him.

HAMLET     Ah ha! Come, some music; come, the recorders.

For if the King like not the comedy,

Why then, belike he likes it not, perdie.

295

Come, some music.

Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

GUILDENSTERN     Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word

with you.

HAMLET     Sir, a whole history.

GUILDENSTERN     The King, sir –

300

HAMLET     Ay, sir, what of him?

GUILDENSTERN     Is in his retirement marvellous

distempered.

HAMLET     With drink, sir?

GUILDENSTERN     No, my lord, with choler.

305

HAMLET     Your wisdom should show itself more richer

to signify this to the doctor, for for me to put him to

his purgation would perhaps plunge him into more

choler.

GUILDENSTERN     Good my lord, put your discourse into

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some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair.

HAMLET     I am tame, sir. Pronounce.

GUILDENSTERN     The Queen your mother, in most great

affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.

HAMLET     You are welcome.

315

GUILDENSTERN     Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not

of the right breed. If it shall please you to make me a

wholesome answer, I will do your mother’s

commandment; if not, your pardon and my return

shall be the end of my business.

320

HAMLET     Sir, I cannot.

ROSENCRANTZ     What, my lord?

HAMLET     Make you a wholesome answer. My wit’s

diseased. But sir, such answer as I can make, you shall

command – or rather, as you say, my mother.

325

Therefore no more, but to the matter. My mother, you

say –

ROSENCRANTZ     Then thus she says: your behaviour hath

struck her into amazement and admiration.

HAMLET     O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother!

330

But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother’s

admiration? Impart.

ROSENCRANTZ     She desires to speak with you in her

closet ere you go to bed.

HAMLET     We shall obey, were she ten times our mother.

335

Have you any further trade with us?

ROSENCRANTZ     My lord, you once did love me.

HAMLET     And do still, by these pickers and stealers.

ROSENCRANTZ     Good my lord, what is your cause of

distemper? You do surely bar the door upon your own

340

liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend.

HAMLET     Sir, I lack advancement.

ROSENCRANTZ     How can that be, when you have the

voice of the King himself for your succession in

Denmark?

345

HAMLET     Ay, sir, but while the grass grows – the proverb

is something musty.

Enter the Players with recorders.

O, the recorders. Let me see one. – To withdraw with

you, why do you go about to recover the wind of me,

as if you would drive me into a toil?

350

GUILDENSTERN     O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my

love is too unmannerly.

HAMLET     I do not well understand that. Will you play

upon this pipe?

GUILDENSTERN     My lord, I cannot.

355

HAMLET     I pray you.

GUILDENSTERN     Believe me, I cannot.

HAMLET     I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN     I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET     It is as easy as lying. Govern these ventages

360

with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your

mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music.

Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN     But these cannot I command to any

utterance of harmony. I have not the skill.

365

HAMLET     Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you

make of me. You would play upon me, you would seem

to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of

my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note

to the top of my compass; and there is much music,

370

excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you

make it speak. ’Sblood, do you think I am easier to be

played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you

will, though you fret me, you cannot play upon me.

Enter POLONIUS.

God bless you, sir.

375

POLONIUS     My lord, the Queen would speak with you,

and presently.

HAMLET     Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in

shape of a camel?

POLONIUS     By th’ mass and ’tis – like a camel indeed.

380

HAMLET     Methinks it is like a weasel.

POLONIUS     It is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET     Or like a whale.

POLONIUS     Very like a whale.

HAMLET     Then I will come to my mother by and by. –

385

[aside] They fool me to the top of my bent. – I will

come by and by.

POLONIUS     I will say so.     Exit.

HAMLET     ‘By and by’ is easily said. – Leave me, friends.

Exeunt all but Hamlet.

’Tis now the very witching time of night,

390

When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,

And do such bitter business as the day

Would quake to look on. Soft, now to my mother.

O heart, lose not thy nature. Let not ever

395

The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom;

Let me be cruel, not unnatural.

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites:

How in my words somever she be shent,

400

To give them seals never my soul consent.     Exit.

3.3 Enter KING, ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

KING     I like him not, nor stands it safe with us

To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you.

I your commission will forthwith dispatch,

And he to England shall along with you.

The terms of our estate may not endure

5

Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow

Out of his brows.

GUILDENSTERN     We will ourselves provide.

Most holy and religious fear it is

To keep those many many bodies safe

That live and feed upon your Majesty.

10

ROSENCRANTZ     The single and peculiar life is bound

With all the strength and armour of the mind

To keep itself from noyance; but much more

That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests

The lives of many. The cess of majesty

15

Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw

What’s near it with it. Or it is a massy wheel

Fix’d on the summit of the highest mount,

To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things

Are mortis’d and adjoin’d, which when it falls,

20

Each small annexment, petty consequence,

Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never alone

Did the King sigh, but with a general groan.

KING     Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage,

For we will fetters put about this fear

25

Which now goes too free-footed.

ROSENCRANTZ     We will haste us.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Enter POLONIUS.

POLONIUS     My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet.

Behind the arras I’ll convey myself

To hear the process. I’ll warrant she’ll tax him home,

And as you said – and wisely was it said –

30

’Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,

Since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear

The speech of vantage. Fare you well, my liege.

I’ll call upon you ere you go to bed,

And tell you what I know.

KING     Thanks, dear my lord.

35

Exit Polonius.

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;

It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t –

A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,

Though inclination be as sharp as will,

My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,

40

And, like a man to double business bound,

I stand in pause where I shall first begin,

And both neglect. What if this cursed hand

Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,

Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

45

To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy

But to confront the visage of offence?

And what’s in prayer but this twofold force,

To be forestalled ere we come to fall

Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up.

50

My fault is past – but O, what form of prayer

Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder?’

That cannot be, since I am still possess’d

Of those effects for which I did the murder –

My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.

55

May one be pardon’d and retain th’offence?

In the corrupted currents of this world

Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,

And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself

Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above:

60

There is no shuffling, there the action lies

In his true nature, and we ourselves compell’d

Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults

To give in evidence. What then? What rests?

Try what repentance can. What can it not?

65

Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?

O wretched state! O bosom black as death!

O limed soul, that struggling to be free

Art more engag’d! Help, angels! Make assay.

Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel,

70

Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.

All may be well. [He kneels.]

Enter HAMLET.

HAMLET     Now might I do it pat, now a is a-praying.

And now I’ll do’t. [Draws his sword.]

And so a goes to heaven;

And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d:

75

A villain kills my father, and for that

I, his sole son, do this same villain send

To heaven.

Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.

A took my father grossly, full of bread,

80

With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;

And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?

But in our circumstance and course of thought

’Tis heavy with him. And am I then reveng’d,

To take him in the purging of his soul,

85

When he is fit and season’d for his passage?

No.

Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent:

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,

Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed,

90

At game a-swearing, or about some act

That has no relish of salvation in’t,

Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven

And that his soul may be as damn’d and black

As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.

95

This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.      Exit.

KING     My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.     Exit.

3.4 Enter QUEEN and POLONIUS.

POLONIUS

A will come straight. Look you lay home to him,

Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with

And that your Grace hath screen’d and stood between

Much heat and him. I’ll silence me even here.

Pray you be round.

QUEEN     I’ll war’nt you, fear me not.

5

Withdraw, I hear him coming.

[Polonius hides behind the arras.]

Enter HAMLET.

HAMLET     Now mother, what’s the matter?

QUEEN     Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

HAMLET     Mother, you have my father much offended.

QUEEN     Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

10

HAMLET     Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

QUEEN     Why, how now, Hamlet?

HAMLET     What’s the matter now?

QUEEN     Have you forgot me?

HAMLET     No, by the rood, not so.

You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,

And, would it were not so, you are my mother.

15

QUEEN     Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.

HAMLET

Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge.

You go not till I set you up a glass

Where you may see the inmost part of you.

QUEEN     What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?

20

Help, ho!

POLONIUS [behind the arras]     What ho! Help!

HAMLET     How now? A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead.

[Thrusts his rapier through the arras.]

POLONIUS [behind]     O, I am slain.

QUEEN     O me, what hast thou done?

HAMLET     Nay, I know not.

25

Is it the King?

[Lifts up the arras and discovers Polonius, dead.]

QUEEN     O what a rash and bloody deed is this!

HAMLET     A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother,

As kill a king and marry with his brother.

QUEEN     As kill a king?

HAMLET     Ay, lady, it was my word. –

30

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell.

I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune:

Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger. –

Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down,

And let me wring your heart; for so I shall

35

If it be made of penetrable stuff,

If damned custom have not braz’d it so,

That it be proof and bulwark against sense.

QUEEN

What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue

In noise so rude against me?

HAMLET     Such an act

40

That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,

Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose

From the fair forehead of an innocent love

And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows

As false as dicers’ oaths – O, such a deed

45

As from the body of contraction plucks

The very soul, and sweet religion makes

A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow

O’er this solidity and compound mass

With tristful visage, as against the doom,

50

Is thought-sick at the act.

QUEEN     Ay me, what act

That roars so loud and thunders in the index?

HAMLET     Look here upon this picture, and on this,

The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.

See what a grace was seated on this brow,

55

Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,

An eye like Mars to threaten and command,

A station like the herald Mercury

New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill,

A combination and a form indeed

60

Where every god did seem to set his seal

To give the world assurance of a man.

This was your husband. Look you now what follows.

Here is your husband, like a mildew’d ear

Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?

65

Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed

And batten on this moor? Ha, have you eyes?

You cannot call it love; for at your age

The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble,

And waits upon the judgment, and what judgment

70

Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,

Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense

Is apoplex’d, for madness would not err

Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thrall’d

But it reserv’d some quantity of choice

75

To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t

That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?

Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,

Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,

Or but a sickly part of one true sense

80

Could not so mope. O shame, where is thy blush?

Rebellious hell,

If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,

To flaming youth let virtue be as wax

And melt in her own fire; proclaim no shame

85

When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,

Since frost itself as actively doth burn

And reason panders will.

QUEEN     O Hamlet, speak no more.

Thou turn’st my eyes into my very soul,

And there I see such black and grained spots

90

As will not leave their tinct.

HAMLET     Nay, but to live

In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,

Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love

Over the nasty sty!

QUEEN     O speak to me no more.

These words like daggers enter in my ears.

95

No more, sweet Hamlet.

HAMLET     A murderer and a villain,

A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe

Of your precedent lord, a vice of kings,

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,

That from a shelf the precious diadem stole

100

And put it in his pocket –

QUEEN     No more.

HAMLET     A king of shreds and patches –

Enter GHOST.

Save me and hover o’er me with your wings,

You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

105

QUEEN     Alas, he’s mad.

HAMLET     Do you not come your tardy son to chide,

That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go by

Th’important acting of your dread command?

O say.

GHOST     Do not forget. This visitation

110

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

But look, amazement on thy mother sits.

O step between her and her fighting soul.

Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.

Speak to her, Hamlet.

115

HAMLET     How is it with you, lady?

QUEEN     Alas, how is’t with you,

That you do bend your eye on vacancy,

And with th’incorporal air do hold discourse?

Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,

And, as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm,

120

Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,

Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper

Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

HAMLET

On him, on him. Look you how pale he glares.

125

His form and cause conjoin’d, preaching to stones,

Would make them capable. – Do not look upon me,

Lest with this piteous action you convert

My stern effects. Then what I have to do

Will want true colour – tears perchance for blood.

130

QUEEN     To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET     Do you see nothing there?

QUEEN     Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

HAMLET     Nor did you nothing hear?

QUEEN     No, nothing but ourselves.

135

HAMLET     Why, look you there, look how it steals away.

My father, in his habit as he liv’d!

Look where he goes even now out at the portal.

Exit Ghost.

QUEEN     This is the very coinage of your brain.

This bodiless creation ecstasy

140

Is very cunning in.

HAMLET

My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,

And makes as healthful music. It is not madness

That I have utter’d. Bring me to the test,

And I the matter will re-word, which madness.

145

Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,

That not your trespass but my madness speaks.

It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,

Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,

150

Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven,

Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come;

And do not spread the compost on the weeds

To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;

For in the fatness of these pursy times

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Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,

Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

QUEEN     O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

HAMLET     O throw away the worser part of it

And live the purer with the other half.

160

Good night. But go not to my uncle’s bed.

Assume a virtue if you have it not.

That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat

Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,

That to the use of actions fair and good

165

He likewise gives a frock or livery

That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence, the next more easy;

For use almost can change the stamp of nature,

170

And either lodge the devil or throw him out

With wondrous potency. Once more, good night,

And when you are desirous to be blest,

I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord

I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so,

175

To punish me with this and this with me,

That I must be their scourge and minister.

I will bestow him, and will answer well

The death I gave him. So, again, good night.

I must be cruel only to be kind.

180

This bad begins, and worse remains behind.

One word more, good lady.

QUEEN     What shall I do?

HAMLET     Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:

Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed,

Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,

185

And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,

Or paddling in your neck with his damn’d fingers,

Make you to ravel all this matter out

That I essentially am not in madness,

But mad in craft. ’Twere good you let him know,

190

For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,

Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,

Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?

No, in despite of sense and secrecy,

Unpeg the basket on the house’s top,

195

Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,

To try conclusions, in the basket creep,

And break your own neck down.

QUEEN     Be thou assur’d, if words be made of breath,

And breath of life, I have no life to breathe

200

What thou hast said to me.

HAMLET     I must to England, you know that?

QUEEN     Alack,

I had forgot. ’Tis so concluded on.

HAMLET

There’s letters seal’d, and my two schoolfellows,

Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d –

205

They bear the mandate, they must sweep my way

And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;

For ’tis the sport to have the enginer

Hoist with his own petard, and’t shall go hard

But I will delve one yard below their mines

210

And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet

When in one line two crafts directly meet.

This man shall set me packing.

I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.

Mother, good night indeed. This counsellor

215

Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,

Who was in life a foolish prating knave.

Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.

Good night, mother.

Exit lugging in Polonius. The Queen remains.

4.1 To the QUEEN, enter KING, with ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

KING

There’s matter in these sighs, these profound heaves,

You must translate. ’Tis fit we understand them.

Where is your son?

QUEEN     Bestow this place on us a little while.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Ah, mine own lord, what have I seen tonight!

5

KING     What, Gertrude, how does Hamlet?

QUEEN     Mad as the sea and wind when both contend

Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit,

Behind the arras hearing something stir,

Whips out his rapier, cries ‘A rat, a rat’,

10

And in this brainish apprehension kills

The unseen good old man.

KING     O heavy deed!

It had been so with us had we been there.

His liberty is full of threats to all –

To you yourself, to us, to everyone.

15

Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer’d?

It will be laid to us, whose providence

Should have kept short, restrain’d, and out of haunt

This mad young man. But so much was our love,

We would not understand what was most fit,

20

But like the owner of a foul disease,

To keep it from divulging, let it feed

Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?

QUEEN     To draw apart the body he hath kill’d,

O’er whom – his very madness, like some ore

25

Among a mineral of metals base,

Shows itself pure – a weeps for what is done.

KING     O Gertrude, come away.

The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch

But we will ship him hence; and this vile deed

30

We must with all our majesty and skill

Both countenance and excuse. – Ho, Guildenstern!

Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

Friends both, go join you with some further aid.

Hamlet     in madness hath Polonius slain,

And from his mother’s closet hath he dragg’d him.

35

Go seek him out – speak fair – and bring the body

Into the chapel. I pray you haste in this.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Come, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends,

And let them know both what we mean to do

And what’s untimely done. So envious slander,

40

Whose whisper o’er the world’s diameter,

As level as the cannon to his blank,

Transports his poison’d shot, may miss our name

And hit the woundless air. O come away,

My soul is full of discord and dismay.     Exeunt.

45

4.2 Enter HAMLET.

HAMLET     Safely stowed. [calling within] But soft, what

noise? Who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come.

Enter ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN and others.

ROSENCRANTZ     What have you done, my lord, with the

dead body?

HAMLET     Compounded it with dust, whereto ’tis kin.

5

ROSENCRANTZ     Tell us where ’tis, that we may take it

thence and bear it to the chapel.

HAMLET     Do not believe it.

ROSENCRANTZ     Believe what?

HAMLET     That I can keep your counsel and not mine

10

own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge – what

replication should be made by the son of a king?

ROSENCRANTZ     Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

HAMLET     Ay, sir, that soaks up the King’s countenance,

his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the

15

King best service in the end: he keeps them, like an

ape, in the corner of his jaw – first mouthed, to be last

swallowed. When he needs what you have gleaned, it

is but squeezing you and, sponge, you shall be dry

again.

20

ROSENCRANTZ     I understand you not, my lord.

HAMLET     I am glad of it. A knavish speech sleeps in a

foolish ear.

ROSENCRANTZ     My lord, you must tell us where the

body is and go with us to the King.

25

HAMLET     The body is with the King, but the King is not

with the body. The King is a thing –

GUILDENSTERN     A thing, my lord?

HAMLET     Of nothing. Bring me to him.     Exeunt.

4.3 Enter KING and two or three lords.

KING     I have sent to seek him and to find the body.

How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!

Yet must not we put the strong law on him:

He’s lov’d of the distracted multitude,

Who like not in their judgment but their eyes,

5

And where ’tis so, th’offender’s scourge is weigh’d,

But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,

This sudden sending him away must seem

Deliberate pause. Diseases desperate grown

By desperate appliance are reliev’d,

10

Or not at all.

Enter ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN and others.

How now, what hath befall’n?

ROSENCRANTZ

Where the dead body is bestow’d, my lord,

We cannot get from him.

KING     But where is he?

ROSENCRANTZ

Without, my lord, guarded, to know your pleasure.

KING     Bring him before us.

ROSENCRANTZ     Ho! Bring in the lord.

15

Enter HAMLET with guards.

KING     Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?

HAMLET     At supper.

KING     At supper? Where?

HAMLET     Not where he eats, but where a is eaten. A

certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him.

20

Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all

creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for

maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but

variable service – two dishes, but to one table.

That’s the end.

25

KING     Alas, alas.

HAMLET     A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of

a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

KING     What dost thou mean by this?

HAMLET     Nothing but to show you how a king may go a

30

progress through the guts of a beggar.

KING     Where is Polonius?

HAMLET     In heaven. Send thither to see. If your

messenger find him not there, seek him i’th’ other

place yourself. But if indeed you find him not within

35

this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs

into the lobby.

KING [to some attendants]     Go seek him there.

HAMLET     A will stay till you come. Exeunt attendants.

KING     Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety –

40

Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve

For that which thou hast done – must send thee hence

With fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself.

The bark is ready, and the wind at help,

Th’associates tend, and everything is bent

45

For England.

HAMLET     For England?

KING     Ay, Hamlet.

HAMLET     Good.

KING     So is it, if thou knew’st our purposes.

50

HAMLET     I see a cherub that sees them. But come, for

England. Farewell, dear mother.

KING     Thy loving father, Hamlet.

HAMLET     My mother. Father and mother is man and

wife, man and wife is one flesh; so my mother. Come,

55

for England.     Exit.

KING

Follow him at foot. Tempt him with speed aboard,

Delay it not – I’ll have him hence tonight.

Away, for everything is seal’d and done

That else leans on th’affair. Pray you make haste.

60

Exeunt all but the King.

And England, if my love thou hold’st at aught –

As my great power thereof may give thee sense,

Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red

After the Danish sword, and thy free awe

Pays homage to us – thou mayst not coldly set

65

Our sovereign process, which imports at full,

By letters congruing to that effect,

The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England;

For like the hectic in my blood he rages,

And thou must cure me. Till I know ’tis done,

70

Howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.     Exit.

4.4 Enter FORTINBRAS with his army marching over the stage.

FORTINBRAS

Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king.

Tell him that by his licence Fortinbras

Craves the conveyance of a promis’d march

Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.

If that his Majesty would aught with us,

5

We shall express our duty in his eye;

And let him know so.

CAPTAIN     I will do’t, my lord.

FORTINBRAS Go softly on. Exeunt all but the Captain.

Enter HAMLET, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN and others.

HAMLET     Good sir, whose powers are these?

CAPTAIN     They are of Norway, sir.

10

HAMLET     How purpos’d, sir, I pray you?

CAPTAIN     Against some part of Poland.

HAMLET     Who commands them, sir?

CAPTAIN     The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.

HAMLET     Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,

15

Or for some frontier?

CAPTAIN     Truly to speak, and with no addition,

We go to gain a little patch of ground

That hath in it no profit but the name.

To pay five ducats – five – I would not farm it;

20

Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole

A ranker rate should it be sold in fee.

HAMLET     Why, then the Polack never will defend it.

CAPTAIN     Yes, it is already garrison’d.

HAMLET

Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats

25

Will not debate the question of this straw!

This is th’impostume of much wealth and peace,

That inward breaks, and shows no cause without

Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.

CAPTAIN     God buy you, sir.     Exit.

ROSENCRANTZ     Will’t please you go, my lord?

30

HAMLET     I’ll be with you straight. Go a little before.

Exeunt all but Hamlet.

How all occasions do inform against me,

And spur my dull revenge. What is a man

If his chief good and market of his time

Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.

35

Sure he that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and godlike reason

To fust in us unus’d. Now whether it be

Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple

40

Of thinking too precisely on th’event –

A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom

And ever three parts coward – I do not know

Why yet I live to say this thing’s to do,

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means

45

To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me,

Witness this army of such mass and charge,

Led by a delicate and tender prince,

Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff’d,

Makes mouths at the invisible event,

50

Exposing what is mortal and unsure

To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,

Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great

Is not to stir without great argument,

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

55

When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,

That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,

Excitements of my reason and my blood,

And let all sleep, while to my shame I see

The imminent death of twenty thousand men

60

That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,

Which is not tomb enough and continent

To hide the slain? O, from this time forth

65

My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth. Exit.

4.5 Enter QUEEN, HORATIO and a Gentleman.

QUEEN     I will not speak with her.

GENTLEMAN She is importunate,

Indeed distract. Her mood will needs be pitied.

QUEEN     What would she have?

GENTLEMAN

She speaks much of her father, says she hears

There’s tricks i’th’ world, and hems, and beats her heart,

5

Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt

That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,

Yet the unshaped use of it doth move

The hearers to collection. They aim at it,

And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,

10

Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,

Indeed would make one think there might be thought,

Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.

HORATIO

’Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew

Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.

15

QUEEN     Let her come in.     Exit Gentleman.

[aside] To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is,

Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.

So full of artless jealousy is guilt,

It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

20

Enter OPHELIA.

OPHELIA     Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?

QUEEN     How now, Ophelia?

OPHELIA [Sings.]

How should I your true love know

From another one?

By his cockle hat and staff

25

And his sandal shoon.

QUEEN     Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

OPHELIA     Say you? Nay, pray you mark.

[Sings.]     He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone,

30

At his head a grass-green turf,

At his heels a stone.

O ho!

QUEEN     Nay, but Ophelia –

OPHELIA     Pray you mark.

35

[Sings.]

White his shroud as the mountain snow –

Enter KING.

QUEEN     Alas, look here, my lord.

OPHELIA     [Sings.]

Larded with sweet flowers

Which bewept to the grave did not go

With true-love showers.

40

KING     How do you, pretty lady?

OPHELIA     Well, good dild you. They say the owl was a

baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but

know not what we may be. God be at your table.

KING     Conceit upon her father.

45

OPHELIA     Pray let’s have no words of this, but when they

ask you what it means, say you this.

[Sings.] Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,

All in the morning betime,

And I a maid at your window,

50

To be your Valentine.

Then up he rose, and donn’d his clo’es,

And dupp’d the chamber door,

Let in the maid that out a maid

Never departed more.

55

KING     Pretty Ophelia –

OPHELIA     Indeed, without an oath, I’ll make an end on’t.

Sings.     By Gis and by Saint Charity,

Alack and fie for shame,

Young men will do’t if they come to’t –

60

By Cock, they are to blame.

Quoth she, ‘Before you tumbled me,

You promis’d me to wed. ’

He answers,

Sings. ‘So would I a done, by yonder sun,

65

And thou hadst not come to my bed.’

KING     How long hath she been thus?

OPHELIA     I hope all will be well. We must be patient. But

I cannot choose but weep to think they would lay

him i’th’ cold ground. My brother shall know of it.

70

And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my

coach. Good night, ladies, good night. Sweet ladies,

good night, good night.     Exit.

KING     Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.

Exit Horatio.

O, this is the poison of deep grief: it springs

75

All from her father’s death. And now behold –

O Gertrude, Gertrude,

When sorrows come, they come not single spies,

But in battalions. First, her father slain;

Next, your son gone, and he most violent author

80

Of his own just remove; the people muddied,

Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers

For good Polonius’ death – and we have done but greenly

In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia

Divided from herself and her fair judgment,

85

Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts;

Last, and as much containing as all these,

Her brother is in secret come from France,

Feeds on this wonder, keeps himself in clouds,

And wants not buzzers to infect his ear

90

With pestilent speeches of his father’s death,

Wherein necessity, of matter beggar’d,

Will nothing stick our person to arraign

In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,

Like to a murd’ring-piece, in many places

95

Gives me superfluous death. [A noise within.]

Attend!

Where is my Switzers? Let them guard the door.

Enter a Messenger.

What is the matter?

MESSENGER     Save yourself, my lord.

The ocean, overpeering of his list,

Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste

100

Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,

O’erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord,

And, as the world were now but to begin,

Antiquity forgot, custom not known –

The ratifiers and props of every word –

105

They cry, ‘Choose we! Laertes shall be king.’

Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,

‘Laertes shall be king, Laertes king.’

QUEEN     How cheerfully on the false trail they cry.

O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs.

110

[A noise within.]

KING     The doors are broke.

Enter LAERTES with Followers.

LAERTES

Where is this king? – Sirs, stand you all without.

FOLLOWERS No, let’s come in.

LAERTES     I pray you give me leave.

FOLLOWERS We will, we will.

LAERTES     I thank you. Keep the door. Exeunt Followers.

O thou vile king,

115

Give me my father.

QUEEN     [holding him] Calmly, good Laertes.

LAERTES

That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard,

Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot

Even here between the chaste unsmirched brow

Of my true mother.

KING     What is the cause, Laertes,

120

That thy rebellion looks so giant-like? –

Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.

There’s such divinity doth hedge a king

That treason can but peep to what it would,

Acts little of his will. – Tell me, Laertes,

125

Why thou art thus incens’d. – Let him go, Gertrude. –

Speak, man.

LAERTES     Where is my father?

KING     Dead.

QUEEN     But not by him.

KING     Let him demand his fill.

LAERTES     How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with.

130

To hell, allegiance! Vows to the blackest devil!

Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!

I dare damnation. To this point I stand,

That both the worlds I give to negligence,

Let come what comes, only I’ll be reveng’d

135

Most throughly for my father.

KING     Who shall stay you?

LAERTES     My will, not all the world’s.

And for my means, I’ll husband them so well,

They shall go far with little.

KING     Good Laertes,

If you desire to know the certainty

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Of your dear father, is’t writ in your revenge

That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe,

Winner and loser?

LAERTES     None but his enemies.

KING     Will you know them then?

LAERTES

To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms,

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And, like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,

Repast them with my blood.

KING     Why, now you speak

Like a good child and a true gentleman.

That I am guiltless of your father’s death

And am most sensibly in grief for it,

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It shall as level to your judgment ‘pear

As day does to your eye.

[A noise within. Ophelia is heard singing.]

Let her come in.

LAERTES     How now, what noise is that?

Enter OPHELIA.

O heat, dry up my brains. Tears seven times salt

Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye.

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By heaven, thy madness shall be paid with weight

Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!

Dear maid – kind sister – sweet Ophelia –

O heavens, is’t possible a young maid’s wits

Should be as mortal as an old man’s life?

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Nature is fine in love, and where ’tis fine

It sends some precious instance of itself

After the thing it loves.

OPHELIA     [Sings.]

They bore him bare-fac’d on the bier,

And in his grave rain’d many a tear –

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Fare you well, my dove.

LAERTES

Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge,

It could not move thus.

OPHELIA     You must sing A-down a-down, and you Call

him a-down-a. O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the

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false steward that stole his master’s daughter.

LAERTES     This nothing’s more than matter.

OPHELIA     There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance –

pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s

for thoughts.

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LAERTES     A document in madness: thoughts and

remembrance fitted.

OPHELIA     There’s fennel for you, and columbines.

There’s rue for you. And here’s some for me. We may

call it herb of grace a Sundays. You must wear your

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rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would give you

some violets, but they withered all when my father

died. They say a made a good end.

[Sings.] For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.

LAERTES     Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself

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She turns to favour and to prettiness.

OPHELIA     [Sings.]

And will ’a not come again?

And will ’a not come again?

No, no, he is dead,

Go to thy death-bed,

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He never will come again.

His beard was as white as snow,

All flaxen was his poll.

He is gone, he is gone,

And we cast away moan.

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God a mercy on his soul.

And of all Christian souls. God buy you. Exit.

LAERTES     Do you see this, O God?

KING     Laertes, I must commune with your grief,

Or you deny me right. Go but apart,

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Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,

And they shall hear and judge ’twixt you and me.

If by direct or by collateral hand

They find us touch’d, we will our kingdom give,

Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours

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To you in satisfaction; but if not,

Be you content to lend your patience to us,

And we shall jointly labour with your soul

To give it due content.

LAERTES     Let this be so.

His means of death, his obscure funeral –

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No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones,

No noble rite, nor formal ostentation –

Cry to be heard, as ’twere from heaven to earth,

That I must call’t in question.

KING     So you shall.

And where th’offence is, let the great axe fall.

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I pray you go with me. Exeunt.

4.6 Enter HORATIO and a Servant.

HORATIO     What are they that would speak with me?

SERVANT Seafaring men, sir. They say they have letters

for you.

HORATIO     Let them come in.     Exit Servant.

I do not know from what part of the world

5

I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.

Enter Sailors.

1 SAILOR God bless you, sir.

HORATIO     Let him bless thee too.

1 SAILOR A shall, sir, and please him. There’s a letter for

you, sir. It came from th’ambassador that was bound

10

for England – if your name be Horatio, as I am let to

know it is.

HORATIO     [Reads the letter.] Horatio, when thou shalt have

overlooked this, give these fellows some means to the King.

They have letters for him. Ere we were two days old at

15

sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase.

Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled

valour, and in the grapple I boarded them. On the instant

they got clear of our ship, so I alone became their prisoner.

They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy. But they

20

knew what they did: I am to do a turn for them. Let the

King have the letters I have sent, and repair thou to me

with as much speed as thou wouldest fly death. I have

words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are

they much too light for the bore of the matter. These good

25

fellows will bring thee where I am. Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern hold their course for England; of them I

have much to tell thee. Farewell.

He that thou knowest thine, Hamlet.

30

Come, I will give you way for these your letters,

And do’t the speedier that you may direct me

To him from whom you brought them.     Exeunt.

4.7 Enter KING and LAERTES.

KING     Now must your conscience my acquittance seal,

And you must put me in your heart for friend,

Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,

That he which hath your noble father slain

Pursu’d my life.

LAERTES     It well appears. But tell me

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Why you proceeded not against these feats,

So crimeful and so capital in nature,

As by your safety, wisdom, all things else

You mainly were stirr’d up.

KING     O, for two special reasons,

Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinew’d,

10

But yet to me th’are strong. The Queen his mother

Lives almost by his looks, and for myself –

My virtue or my plague, be it either which –

She is so conjunctive to my life and soul

That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,

15

I could not but by her. The other motive

Why to a public count I might not go

Is the great love the general gender bear him,

Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,

Work like the spring that turneth wood to stone,

20

Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows,

Too slightly timber’d for so loud a wind,

Would have reverted to my bow again,

But not where I had aim’d them.

LAERTES     And so have I a noble father lost,

25

A sister driven into desp’rate terms,

Whose worth, if praises may go back again,

Stood challenger on mount of all the age

For her perfections. But my revenge will come.

KING

Break not your sleeps for that. You must not think

30

That we are made of stuff so flat and dull

That we can let our beard be shook with danger

And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more.

I lov’d your father, and we love ourself,

And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine –

35

Enter a Messenger with letters.

MESSENGER These to your Majesty, this to the Queen.

KING     From Hamlet! Who brought them?

MESSENGER Sailors, my lord, they say. I saw them not.

They were given me by Claudio. He receiv’d them

Of him that brought them.

KING     Laertes, you shall hear them. –

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Leave us.     Exit Messenger.

[Reads.]     High and mighty, you shall know I am set

naked on your kingdom. Tomorrow shall I beg leave to see

your kingly eyes, when I shall, first asking your pardon,

thereunto recount the occasion of my sudden and more

45

strange return.

Hamlet.

What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?

Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?

LAERTES     Know you the hand?

KING     ’Tis Hamlet’s character.

50

‘Naked’ –

And in a postscript here he says ‘Alone’.

Can you devise me?

LAERTES     I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come.

It warms the very sickness in my heart

55

That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,

‘Thus diest thou’.

KING     If it be so, Laertes –

As how should it be so, how otherwise? –

Will you be rul’d by me?

LAERTES     Ay, my lord,

So you will not o’errule me to a peace.

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KING     To thine own peace. If he be now return’d,

As checking at his voyage, and that he means

No more to undertake it, I will work him

To an exploit, now ripe in my device,

Under the which he shall not choose but fall;

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And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe,

But even his mother shall uncharge the practice

And call it accident.

LAERTES     My lord, I will be rul’d,

The rather if you could devise it so

That I might be the organ.

KING     It falls right.

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You have been talk’d of since your travel much,

And that in Hamlet’s hearing, for a quality

Wherein they say you shine. Your sum of parts

Did not together pluck such envy from him

As did that one, and that, in my regard,

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Of the unworthiest siege.

LAERTES     What part is that, my lord?

KING     A very ribbon in the cap of youth –

Yet needful too, for youth no less becomes

The light and careless livery that it wears

Than settled age his sables and his weeds

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Importing health and graveness. Two months since

Here was a gentleman of Normandy –

I have seen myself, and serv’d against, the French,

And they can well on horseback, but this gallant

Had witchcraft in’t. He grew unto his seat,

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And to such wondrous doing brought his horse

As had he been incorps’d and demi-natur’d

With the brave beast. So far he topp’d my thought

That I in forgery of shapes and tricks

Come short of what he did.

LAERTES     A Norman was’t?

90

KING     A Norman.

LAERTES     Upon my life, Lamord.

KING     The very same.

LAERTES     I know him well. He is the brooch indeed

And gem of all the nation.

KING     He made confession of you,

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And gave you such a masterly report

For art and exercise in your defence,

And for your rapier most especial,

That he cried out ’twould be a sight indeed

If one could match you. The scrimers of their nation

100

He swore had neither motion, guard, nor eye,

If you oppos’d them. Sir, this report of his

Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy

That he could nothing do but wish and beg

Your sudden coming o’er to play with you.

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Now out of this –

LAERTES     What out of this, my lord?

KING     Laertes, was your father dear to you?

Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,

A face without a heart?

LAERTES     Why ask you this?

KING     Not that I think you did not love your father,

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But that I know love is begun by time,

And that I see, in passages of proof,

Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.

There lives within the very flame of love

A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;

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And nothing is at a like goodness still,

For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,

Dies in his own too-much. That we would do,

We should do when we would: for this ‘would’ changes

And hath abatements and delays as many

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As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents,

And then this ‘should’ is like a spendthrift sigh

That hurts by easing. But to the quick of th’ulcer:

Hamlet     comes back; what would you undertake

To show yourself in deed your father’s son

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More than in words?

LAERTES     To cut his throat i’th’ church.

KING     No place indeed should murder sanctuarize;

Revenge should have no bounds. But good Laertes,

Will you do this, keep close within your chamber:

Hamlet, return’d, shall know you are come home;

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We’ll put on those shall praise your excellence,

And set a double varnish on the fame

The Frenchman gave you, bring you, in fine, together,

And wager o’er your heads. He, being remiss,

Most generous, and free from all contriving,

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Will not peruse the foils, so that with ease –

Or with a little shuffling – you may choose

A sword unbated, and in a pass of practice

Requite him for your father.

LAERTES     I will do’t.

And for that purpose, I’ll anoint my sword.

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I bought an unction of a mountebank

So mortal that but dip a knife in it,

Where it draws blood, no cataplasm so rare,

Collected from all simples that have virtue

Under the moon, can save the thing from death

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That is but scratch’d withal. I’ll touch my point

With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly,

It may be death.

KING     Let’s further think of this,

Weigh what convenience both of time and means

May fit us to our shape. If this should fail,

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And that our drift look through our bad performance,

’Twere better not essay’d. Therefore this project

Should have a back or second that might hold

If this did blast in proof. Soft, let me see.

We’ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings –

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I ha’t!

When in your motion you are hot and dry –

As make your bouts more violent to that end –

And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepar’d him

A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,

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If he by chance escape your venom’d stuck,

Our purpose may hold there. But stay, what noise?

Enter QUEEN.

QUEEN     One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,

So fast they follow. Your sister’s drown’d, Laertes.

LAERTES     Drown’d? O, where?

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QUEEN     There is a willow grows askant the brook

That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.

Therewith fantastic garlands did she make

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,

That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

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But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.

There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds

Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,

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And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up,

Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and indued

Unto that element. But long it could not be

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Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay

To muddy death.

LAERTES     Alas, then she is drown’d.

QUEEN     Drown’d, drown’d.

LAERTES     Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,

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And therefore I forbid my tears. But yet

It is our trick; nature her custom holds,

Let shame say what it will. [Weeps.]

When these are gone,

The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord,

I have a speech o’ fire that fain would blaze

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But that this folly douts it.     Exit

KING     Let’s follow, Gertrude.

How much I had to do to calm his rage.

Now fear I this will give it start again.

Therefore let’s follow.     Exeunt.

5.1 Enter two clowns – the Gravedigger and Another.

GRAVEDIGGER     Is she to be buried in Christian burial,

when she wilfully seeks her own salvation?

OTHER     I tell thee she is, therefore make her grave

straight. The crowner hath sat on her and finds it

Christian burial.

5

GRAVEDIGGER     How can that be, unless she drowned

herself in her own defence?

OTHER     Why, ’tis found so.

GRAVEDIGGER     It must be se offendendo, it cannot be else.

For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it

10

argues an act, and an act hath three branches – it is to

act, to do, to perform; argal, she drowned herself

wittingly.

OTHER     Nay, but hear you, Goodman Delver –

GRAVEDIGGER     Give me leave. Here lies the water –

15

good. Here stands the man – good. If the man go to

this water and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he

goes, mark you that. But if the water come to him and

drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is

not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.

20

OTHER     But is this law?

GRAVEDIGGER     Ay, marry is’t, crowner’s quest law.

OTHER     Will you ha’ the truth an’t? If this had not been

a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o’

Christian burial.

25

GRAVEDIGGER     Why, there thou say’st. And the more

pity that great folk should have countenance in this

world to drown or hang themselves more than their

even-Christen. Come, my spade. There is no ancient

gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers

30

– they hold up Adam’s profession. [He digs.]

OTHER     Was he a gentleman?

GRAVEDIGGER     A was the first that ever bore arms.

OTHER     Why, he had none.

GRAVEDIGGER     What, art a heathen? How dost thou

35

understand the Scripture? The Scripture says Adam

digged. Could he dig without arms? I’ll put another

question to thee. If thou answerest me not to the

purpose, confess thyself –

OTHER     Go to.

40

GRAVEDIGGER     What is he that builds stronger than

either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

OTHER     The gallows-maker, for that frame outlives a

thousand tenants.

GRAVEDIGGER     I like thy wit well in good faith, the

45

gallows does well. But how does it well? It does well to

those that do ill. Now, thou dost ill to say the gallows

is built stronger than the church; argal, the gallows

may do well to thee. To’t again, come.

OTHER     Who builds stronger than a mason, a

50

shipwright, or a carpenter?

GRAVEDIGGER     Ay, tell me that and unyoke.

OTHER     Marry, now I can tell.

GRAVEDIGGER     To’t.

OTHER     Mass, I cannot tell.

55

GRAVEDIGGER     Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for

your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating. And

when you are asked this question next, say ‘A grave-

maker’. The houses he makes lasts till doomsday. Go,

get thee to Yaughan; fetch me a stoup of liquor.

60

Exit the other clown.

[The Gravedigger continues digging.]

[Sings.]     In youth when I did love, did love,

Methought it was very sweet:

To contract – O – the time for – a – my behove,

O methought there – a – was nothing – a – meet.

While he is singing, enter HAMLET and HORATIO.

HAMLET     Has this fellow no feeling of his business a

65

sings in grave-making?

HORATIO     Custom hath made it in him a property of

easiness.

HAMLET     ’Tis e’en so, the hand of little employment

hath the daintier sense.

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GRAVEDIGGER [Sings.]

But age with his stealing steps

Hath claw’d me in his clutch,

And hath shipp’d me intil the land,

As if I had never been such.

[He throws up a skull.]

HAMLET     That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing

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once. How the knave jowls it to th’ ground, as if ’twere

Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder. This

might be the pate of a politician which this ass now

o’er-offices, one that would circumvent God, might

it not?

80

HORATIO     It might, my lord.

HAMLET     Or of a courtier, which could say, ‘Good

morrow, sweet lord. How dost thou, sweet lord?’ This

might be my Lord Such-a-one, that praised my Lord

Such-a-one’s horse when a meant to beg it, might it

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not?

HORATIO     Ay, my lord.

HAMLET     Why, e’en so, and now my Lady Worm’s,

chopless, and knocked about the mazard with a

sexton’s spade. Here’s fine revolution and we had the

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trick to see’t. Did these bones cost no more the

breeding but to play at loggets with ’em? Mine ache to

think on’t.

GRAVEDIGGER [Sings.]

A pickaxe and a spade, a spade,

For and a shrouding-sheet,

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O a pit of clay for to be made

For such a guest is meet.

[Throws up another skull.]

HAMLET     There’s another. Why, may not that be the

skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his

quillities, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why

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does he suffer this mad knave now to knock him about

the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of

his action of battery? Hum, this fellow might be in’s

time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his

recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his

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recoveries. Is this the fine of his fines and the

recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of

fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of

his purchases, and double ones too, than the length

and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very

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conveyances of his lands will scarcely lie in this box,

and must th’inheritor himself have no more, ha?

HORATIO     Not a jot more, my lord.

HAMLET     Is not parchment made of sheepskins?

HORATIO     Ay, my lord, and of calveskins too.

115

HAMLET     They are sheep and calves which seek out

assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow. – Whose

grave’s this, sirrah?

GRAVEDIGGER     Mine, sir.

[Sings.]     O a pit of clay for to be made –

120

HAMLET     I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in’t.

GRAVEDIGGER     You lie out on’t, sir, and therefore ’tis not

yours. For my part, I do not lie in’t, yet it is mine.

HAMLET     Thou dost lie in’t, to be in’t and say ’tis thine.

’Tis for the dead, not for the quick: therefore thou

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liest.

GRAVEDIGGER     ’Tis a quick lie, sir, ’twill away again

from me to you.

HAMLET     What man dost thou dig it for?

GRAVEDIGGER     For no man, sir.

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HAMLET     What woman then?

GRAVEDIGGER     For none neither.

HAMLET     Who is to be buried in’t?

GRAVEDIGGER     One that was a woman, sir; but rest her

soul, she’s dead.

135

HAMLET     How absolute the knave is. We must speak by

the card or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord,

Horatio, this three years I have took note of it, the age

is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so

near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe. – How

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long hast thou been grave-maker?

GRAVEDIGGER     Of all the days i’th’ year I came to’t that

day that our last King Hamlet o’ercame Fortinbras.

HAMLET     How long is that since?

GRAVEDIGGER     Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell

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that. It was that very day that young Hamlet was born

– he that is mad and sent into England.

HAMLET     Ay, marry. Why was he sent into England?

GRAVEDIGGER     Why, because a was mad. A shall

recover his wits there. Or if a do not, ’tis no great

150

matter there.

HAMLET     Why?

GRAVEDIGGER     ’Twill not be seen in him there. There

the men are as mad as he.

HAMLET     How came he mad?

155

GRAVEDIGGER     Very strangely, they say.

HAMLET     How ‘strangely’?

GRAVEDIGGER     Faith, e’en with losing his wits.

HAMLET     Upon what ground?

GRAVEDIGGER     Why, here in Denmark. I have been

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sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.

HAMLET     How long will a man lie i’th’ earth ere he rot?

GRAVEDIGGER     Faith, if a be not rotten before a die – as

we have many pocky corses nowadays that will

scarce hold the laying in – a will last you some eight

165

year or nine year. A tanner will last you nine year.

HAMLET     Why he more than another?

GRAVEDIGGER     Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his

trade that a will keep out water a great while, and your

water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.

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Here’s a skull now hath lien you i’th’ earth three and

twenty years.

HAMLET     Whose was it?

GRAVEDIGGER     A whoreson mad fellow’s it was. Whose

do you think it was?

175

HAMLET     Nay, I know not.

GRAVEDIGGER     A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! A

poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This

same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the King’s jester.

HAMLET     This? [Takes the skull.]

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GRAVEDIGGER     E’en that.

HAMLET     Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio, a

fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath

bore me on his back a thousand times, and now – how

abhorred in my imagination it is. My gorge rises at it.

185

Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not

how oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols,

your songs, your flashes of merriment, that were

wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock

your own grinning? Quite chop-fallen? Now get you

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to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an

inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her

laugh at that. – Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

HORATIO     What’s that, my lord?

HAMLET     Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this

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fashion i’th’ earth?

HORATIO     E’en so.

HAMLET     And smelt so? Pah! [Puts down the skull.]

HORATIO     E’en so, my lord.

HAMLET     To what base uses we may return, Horatio!

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Why, may not imagination trace the noble dust of

Alexander till a find it stopping a bung-hole?

HORATIO     ’Twere to consider too curiously to consider

so.

HAMLET     No, faith, not a jot, but to follow him thither

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with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it.

Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander

returneth to dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make

loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted

might they not stop a beer-barrel?

210

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,

Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

O that that earth which kept the world in awe

Should patch a wall t’expel the winter’s flaw.

But soft, but soft awhile. Here comes the King,

215

The Queen, the courtiers.

Enter bearers with a coffin, a Priest, KING, QUEEN, LAERTES, lords attendant.

Who is this they follow?

And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken

The corse they follow did with desp’rate hand

Fordo it own life. ’Twas of some estate.

Couch we awhile and mark.

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LAERTES     What ceremony else?

HAMLET     That is Laertes, a very noble youth. Mark.

LAERTES     What ceremony else?

PRIEST Her obsequies have been as far enlarg’d

As we have warranty. Her death was doubtful;

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And but that great command o’ersways the order,

She should in ground unsanctified been lodg’d

Till the last trumpet: for charitable prayers

Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.

Yet here she is allow’d her virgin crants,

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Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home

Of bell and burial.

LAERTES     Must there no more be done?

PRIEST No more be done.

We should profane the service of the dead

To sing sage requiem and such rest to her

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As to peace-parted souls.

LAERTES     Lay her i’th’ earth,

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring. I tell thee, churlish priest,

A minist’ring angel shall my sister be

When thou liest howling.

HAMLET     What, the fair Ophelia!

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QUEEN     [scattering flowers]

Sweets to the sweet. Farewell.

I hop’d thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife:

I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d, sweet maid,

And not have strew’d thy grave.

LAERTES     O, treble woe

Fall ten times treble on that cursed head

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Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense

Depriv’d thee of. – Hold off the earth awhile,

Till I have caught her once more in mine arms.

[Leaps in the grave.]

Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,

Till of this flat a mountain you have made

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T’o’ertop old Pelion or the skyish head

Of blue Olympus.

HAMLET     What is he whose grief

Bears such an emphasis, whose phrase of sorrow

Conjures the wand’ring stars and makes them stand

Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,

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Hamlet     the Dane.

LAERTES [grappling with him]

The devil take thy soul!

HAMLET     Thou pray’st not well.

I prithee take thy fingers from my throat,

For though I am not splenative and rash,

Yet have I in me something dangerous,

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Which let thy wiseness fear. Hold off thy hand.

KING     Pluck them asunder.

QUEEN     Hamlet! Hamlet!

ALL Gentlemen!

HORATIO     Good my lord, be quiet.

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HAMLET     Why, I will fight with him upon this theme

Until my eyelids will no longer wag.

QUEEN     O my son, what theme?

HAMLET     I lov’d Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers

Could not with all their quantity of love

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Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?

KING     O, he is mad, Laertes.

QUEEN     For love of God forbear him.

HAMLET     ’Swounds, show me what thou’t do.

Woo’t weep, woo’t fight, woo’t fast, woo’t tear thyself,

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Woo’t drink up eisel, eat a crocodile?

I’ll do’t. Dost come here to whine,

To outface me with leaping in her grave?

Be buried quick with her, and so will I.

And if thou prate of mountains, let them throw

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Millions of acres on us, till our ground,

Singeing his pate against the burning zone,

Make Ossa like a wart. Nay, and thou’lt mouth,

I’ll rant as well as thou.

QUEEN     This is mere madness,

And thus awhile the fit will work on him.

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Anon, as patient as the female dove

When that her golden couplets are disclos’d,

His silence will sit drooping.

HAMLET     Hear you, sir,

What is the reason that you use me thus?

I lov’d you ever. But it is no matter.

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Let Hercules himself do what he may,

The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.     Exit.

KING     I pray thee, good Horatio, wait upon him.

Exit Horatio.

[to Laertes] Strengthen your patience in our last night’s speech:

We’ll put the matter to the present push. –

295

Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.

This grave shall have a living monument.

An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;

Till then in patience our proceeding be.     Exeunt.

5.2 Enter HAMLET and HORATIO.

HAMLET

So much for this, sir. Now shall you see the other.

You do remember all the circumstance?

HORATIO     Remember it, my lord!

HAMLET     Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting

That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay

5

Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly –

And prais’d be rashness for it: let us know

Our indiscretion sometime serves us well

When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

10

Rough-hew them how we will –

HORATIO     That is most certain.

HAMLET     Up from my cabin,

My sea-gown scarf’d about me, in the dark

Grop’d I to find out them, had my desire,

Finger’d their packet, and in fine withdrew

15

To mine own room again, making so bold,

My fears forgetting manners, to unseal

Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio –

Ah, royal knavery! – an exact command,

Larded with many several sorts of reasons

20

Importing Denmark’s health, and England’s too,

With ho! such bugs and goblins in my life,

That on the supervise, no leisure bated,

No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,

My head should be struck off.

HORATIO     Is’t possible?

25

HAMLET

Here’s the commission, read it at more leisure.

But wilt thou hear now how I did proceed?

HORATIO     I beseech you.

HAMLET     Being thus benetted round with villainies –

Or I could make a prologue to my brains,

30

They had begun the play – I sat me down,

Devis’d a new commission, wrote it fair –

I once did hold it, as our statists do,

A baseness to write fair, and labour’d much

How to forget that learning, but, sir, now

35

It did me yeoman’s service. Wilt thou know

Th’effect of what I wrote?

HORATIO     Ay, good my lord.

HAMLET     An earnest conjuration from the King,

As England was his faithful tributary,

As love between them like the palm might flourish,

40

As peace should still her wheaten garland wear

And stand a comma ’tween their amities,

And many such-like ‘as’es of great charge,

That on the view and knowing of these contents,

Without debatement further more or less,

45

He should those bearers put to sudden death,

Not shriving-time allow’d.

HORATIO     How was this seal’d?

HAMLET     Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.

I had my father’s signet in my purse,

Which was the model of that Danish seal,

50

Folded the writ up in the form of th’other,

Subscrib’d it, gave’t th’impression, plac’d it safely,

The changeling never known. Now the next day

Was our sea-fight, and what to this was sequent

Thou knowest already.

55

HORATIO     So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to’t.

HAMLET

Why, man, they did make love to this employment.

They are not near my conscience, their defeat

Does by their own insinuation grow.

’Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes

60

Between the pass and fell incensed points

Of mighty opposites.

HORATIO     Why, what a king is this!

HAMLET

Does it not, think thee, stand me now upon –

He that hath kill’d my king and whor’d my mother,

Popp’d in between th’election and my hopes,

65

Thrown out his angle for my proper life

And with such coz’nage – is’t not perfect conscience

To quit him with this arm? And is’t not to be damn’d

To let this canker of our nature come

In further evil?

70

HORATIO

It must be shortly known to him from England

What is the issue of the business there.

HAMLET     It will be short. The interim is mine.

And a man’s life’s no more than to say ‘one’.

But I am very sorry, good Horatio,

75

That to Laertes I forgot myself;

For by the image of my cause I see

The portraiture of his. I’ll court his favours.

But sure the bravery of his grief did put me

Into a tow’ring passion.

HORATIO     Peace, who comes here?

80

Enter OSRIC, a courtier.

OSRIC     Your Lordship is right welcome back to

Denmark.

HAMLET     I humbly thank you sir. – Dost know this

waterfly?

HORATIO     No, my good lord.

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HAMLET     Thy state is the more gracious, for ’tis a vice to

know him. He hath much land and fertile. Let a

beast be lord of beasts and his crib shall stand at the

king’s mess. ’Tis a chuff, but, as I say, spacious in the

possession of dirt.

90

OSRIC     Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I

should impart a thing to you from his Majesty.

HAMLET     I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of spirit.

Your bonnet to his right use: ’tis for the head.

OSRIC     I thank your lordship, it is very hot.

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HAMLET     No, believe me, ’tis very cold, the wind is

northerly.

OSRIC     It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.

HAMLET     But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for

my complexion.

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OSRIC     Exceedingly, my lord, it is very sultry – as ’twere

– I cannot tell how. My lord, his Majesty bade me

signify to you that a has laid a great wager on your

head. Sir, this is the matter –

HAMLET     [signing to him to put on his hat] I beseech you

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remember –

OSRIC     Nay, good my lord, for my ease, in good faith. Sir,

here is newly come to court Laertes – believe me, an

absolute gentleman, full of most excellent differences,

of very soft society and great showing. Indeed, to

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speak feelingly of him, he is the card or calendar of

gentry; for you shall find in him the continent of what

part a gentleman would see.

HAMLET     Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in

you, though I know to divide him inventorially would

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dozy th’arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw

neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in the verity

of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great article

and his infusion of such dearth and rareness as, to

make true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror

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and who else would trace him his umbrage, nothing

more.

OSRIC     Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him.

HAMLET     The concernancy, sir? Why do we wrap the

gentleman in our more rawer breath?

125

OSRIC     Sir?

HORATIO     Is’t not possible to understand in another

tongue? You will to’t, sir, really.

HAMLET     What imports the nomination of this

gentleman?

130

OSRIC     Of Laertes?

HORATIO     His purse is empty already, all’s golden words

are spent.

HAMLET     Of him, sir.

OSRIC     I know you are not ignorant –

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HAMLET     I would you did, sir. Yet in faith if you did, it

would not much approve me. Well, sir?

OSRIC You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes

is –

HAMLET     I dare not confess that, lest I should compare

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with him in excellence; but to know a man well were to

know himself.

OSRIC     I mean, sir, for his weapon; but in the imputation

laid on him, by them in his meed, he’s unfellowed.

HAMLET     What’s his weapon?

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OSRIC     Rapier and dagger.

HAMLET     That’s two of his weapons. But well.

OSRIC     The King, sir, hath wagered with him six

Barbary horses, against the which he has impawned, as

I take it, six French rapiers and poniards, with their

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assigns, as girdle, hanger, and so. Three of the

carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very

responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and of

very liberal conceit.

HAMLET     What call you the carriages?

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HORATIO     I knew you must be edified by the margin ere

you had done.

OSRIC     The carriages, sir, are the hangers.

HAMLET     The phrase would be more german to the

matter if we could carry a cannon by our sides – I

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would it might be hangers till then. But on. Six

Barbary horses against six French swords, their

assigns, and three liberal-conceited carriages – that’s

the French bet against the Danish. Why is this –

impawned, as you call it?

165

OSRIC     The King, sir, hath laid, sir, that in a dozen

passes between yourself and him he shall not exceed

you three hits; he hath laid on twelve for nine. And it

would come to immediate trial if your lordship would

vouchsafe the answer.

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HAMLET     How if I answer no?

OSRIC     I mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in

trial.

HAMLET     Sir, I will walk here in the hall. If it please his

Majesty, it is the breathing time of day with me. Let

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the foils be brought, the gentleman willing, and the

King     hold his purpose, I will win for him and I can; if

not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.

OSRIC     Shall I deliver you so?

HAMLET     To this effect, sir, after what flourish your

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nature will.

OSRIC     I commend my duty to your lordship.

HAMLET     Yours.     Exit Osric.

A does well to commend it himself, there are no

tongues else for’s turn.

185

HORATIO     This lapwing runs away with the shell on his

head.

HAMLET     A did comply with his dug before a sucked it.

Thus has he – and many more of the same bevy that I

know the drossy age dotes on – only got the tune of

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the time and, out of an habit of encounter, a kind of

yeasty collection, which carries them through and

through the most fanned and winnowed opinions;

and do but blow them to their trial, the bubbles are

out.

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Enter a Lord.

LORD     My lord, his Majesty commended him to you by

young Osric, who brings back to him that you attend

him in the hall. He sends to know if your pleasure hold

to play with Laertes or that you will take longer time.

HAMLET     I am constant to my purposes, they follow the

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King’s pleasure. If his fitness speaks, mine is ready.

Now or whensoever, provided I be so able as now.

LORD     The King and Queen and all are coming down.

HAMLET     In happy time.

LORD     The Queen desires you to use some gentle

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entertainment to Laertes before you fall to play.

HAMLET     She well instructs me.     Exit Lord.

HORATIO     You will lose, my lord.

HAMLET     I do not think so. Since he went into France, I

have been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds.

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Thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my

heart; but it is no matter.

HORATIO     Nay, good my lord.

HAMLET     It is but foolery, but it is such a kind of

gaingiving as would perhaps trouble a woman.

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HORATIO     If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will

forestall their repair hither and say you are not fit.

HAMLET     Not a whit. We defy augury. There is special

providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not

to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not

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now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no

man, of aught he leaves, knows aught, what is’t to leave

betimes? Let be.

A table prepared. Trumpets, drums and officers with cushions. Enter KING, QUEEN, LAERTES, OSRIC and all the state, and attendants with foils and daggers.

KING

Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.

[Puts Laertes’s hand into Hamlet’s.]

HAMLET

Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong;

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But pardon’t as you are a gentleman.

This presence knows, and you must needs have heard,

How I am punish’d with a sore distraction.

What I have done

That might your nature, honour, and exception

230

Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.

Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet.

If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away,

And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,

Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.

235

Who does it then? His madness. If ’t be so,

Hamlet     is of the faction that is wrong’d;

His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy.

Sir, in this audience,

Let my disclaiming from a purpos’d evil

240

Free me so far in your most generous thoughts

That I have shot my arrow o’er the house

And hurt my brother.

LAERTES     I am satisfied in nature,

Whose motive in this case should stir me most

To my revenge; but in my terms of honour

245

I stand aloof, and will no reconcilement

Till by some elder masters of known honour

I have a voice and precedent of peace

To keep my name ungor’d. But till that time

I do receive your offer’d love like love

250

And will not wrong it.

HAMLET     I embrace it freely,

And will this brothers’ wager frankly play. –

Give us the foils.

LAERTES     Come, one for me.

HAMLET     I’ll be your foil, Laertes. In mine ignorance

255

Your skill shall like a star i’th’ darkest night

Stick fiery off indeed.

LAERTES     You mock me, sir.

HAMLET     No, by this hand.

KING

Give them the foils, young Osric. Cousin Hamlet,

You know the wager?

HAMLET     Very well, my lord.

260

Your Grace has laid the odds o’th’ weaker side.

KING     I do not fear it. I have seen you both,

But since he is better’d, we have therefore odds.

LAERTES     This is too heavy. Let me see another.

HAMLET

This likes me well. These foils have all a length?

265

OSRIC     Ay, my good lord. [They prepare to play.]

Enter servants with flagons of wine.

KING     Set me the stoups of wine upon that table.

If Hamlet give the first or second hit,

Or quit in answer of the third exchange,

Let all the battlements their ordnance fire:

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The King shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath,

And in the cup an union shall he throw

Richer than that which four successive kings

In Denmark’s crown have worn – give me the cups –

And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,

275

The trumpet to the cannoneer without,

The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth,

‘Now the King drinks to Hamlet.’ Come, begin.

And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.

HAMLET     Come on, sir.

280

LAERTES     Come, my lord. [They play.]

HAMLET     One.

LAERTES     No.

HAMLET     Judgment.

OSRIC     A hit, a very palpable hit.

285

LAERTES     Well, again.

KING     Stay, give me drink. Hamlet this pearl is thine.

Here’s to thy health.

[Drums; trumpets; and shot goes off.]

Give him the cup.

HAMLET     I’ll play this bout first. Set it by awhile. Come.

[They play again.] Another hit. What say you?

290

LAERTES     I do confess’t.

KING     Our son shall win.

QUEEN     He’s fat and scant of breath.

Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows.

The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.

HAMLET     Good madam.

295

KING     Gertrude, do not drink.

QUEEN     I will, my lord, I pray you pardon me.

[She drinks and offers the cup to Hamlet.]

KING [aside]     It is the poison’d cup. It is too late.

HAMLET     I dare not drink yet, madam – by and by.

QUEEN     Come, let me wipe thy face.

300

LAERTES     My lord, I’ll hit him now.

KING     I do not think’t.

LAERTES [aside]

And yet it is almost against my conscience.

HAMLET     Come for the third, Laertes. You do but dally.

I pray you pass with your best violence.

I am afeard you make a wanton of me.

305

LAERTES     Say you so? Come on. [They play.]

OSRIC     Nothing neither way.

LAERTES     Have at you now.

[Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling, they change

rapiers.]

KING     Part them; they are incensed.

HAMLET     Nay, come again.

310

[He wounds Laertes. The Queen falls.]

OSRIC     Look to the Queen there, ho!

HORATIO

They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?

OSRIC     How is’t, Laertes?

LAERTES

Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric.

I am justly kill’d with mine own treachery.

315

HAMLET

How does the Queen?

KING     She swoons to see them bleed.

QUEEN

No, no, the drink, the drink! O my dear Hamlet!

The drink, the drink! I am poison’d. [Dies.]

HAMLET     O villainy! Ho! Let the door be lock’d.

Treachery! Seek it out. Exit Osric.

320

LAERTES     It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain.

No medicine in the world can do thee good;

In thee there is not half an hour’s life.

The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,

Unbated and envenom’d. The foul practice

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Hath turn’d itself on me. Lo, here I lie,

Never to rise again. Thy mother’s poison’d.

I can no more. The King – the King’s to blame.

HAMLET

The point envenom’d too! Then, venom, to thy

work. [Wounds the King.]

ALL Treason! treason!

330

KING     O yet defend me, friends. I am but hurt.

HAMLET

Here, thou incestuous, murd’rous, damned Dane,

Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?

Follow my mother. [King dies.]

LAERTES     He is justly serv’d.

It is a poison temper’d by himself.

335

Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.

Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee,

Nor thine on me. [Dies.]

HAMLET     Heaven make thee free of it. I follow thee.

I am dead, Horatio. Wretched Queen, adieu.

340

You that look pale and tremble at this chance,

That are but mutes or audience to this act,

Had I but time – as this fell sergeant, Death,

Is strict in his arrest – O, I could tell you –

But let it be. Horatio, I am dead,

345

Thou livest. Report me and my cause aright

To the unsatisfied.

HORATIO     Never believe it.

I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.

Here’s yet some liquor left.

HAMLET     As th’art a man

Give me the cup. Let go, by Heaven I’ll ha’t.

350

O God, Horatio, what a wounded name,

Things standing thus unknown, shall I leave behind me.

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain

355

To tell my story. [A march afar off and shot within.]

What warlike noise is this?

Enter OSRIC.

OSRIC

Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,

To the ambassadors of England gives

This warlike volley.

HAMLET     O, I die, Horatio.

The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit.

360

I cannot live to hear the news from England,

But I do prophesy th’election lights

On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice.

So tell him, with th’occurrents more and less

Which have solicited – the rest is silence. [Dies.]

HORATIO

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,

365

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

[March within.]

Why does the drum come hither?

Enter FORTINBRAS, and the English Ambassadors, and soldiers with drum and colours.

FORTINBRAS Where is this sight?

HORATIO     What is it you would see?

If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.

370

FORTINBRAS

This quarry cries on havoc. O proud Death,

What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,

That thou so many princes at a shot

So bloodily hast struck?

1 AMBASSADOR     The sight is dismal;

And our affairs from England come too late.

375

The ears are senseless that should give us hearing

To tell him his commandment is fulfill’d,

That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

Where should we have our thanks?

HORATIO     Not from his mouth,

Had it th’ability of life to thank you.

380

He never gave commandment for their death.

But since, so jump upon this bloody question,

You from the Polack wars and you from England

Are here arriv’d, give order that these bodies

High on a stage be placed to the view,

385

And let me speak to th’yet unknowing world

How these things came about. So shall you hear

Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,

Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,

Of deaths put on by cunning and forc’d cause,

390

And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

Fall’n on th’inventors’ heads. All this can I

Truly deliver.

FORTINBRAS     Let us haste to hear it,

And call the noblest to the audience.

For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune.

395

I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,

Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.

HORATIO     Of that I shall have also cause to speak,

And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more.

But let this same be presently perform’d

400

Even while men’s minds are wild, lest more mischance

On plots and errors happen.

FORTINBRAS     Let four captains

Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage,

For he was likely, had he been put on,

To have prov’d most royal; and for his passage,

405

The soldier’s music and the rite of war

Speak loudly for him.

Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this

Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.

Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

410

Exeunt marching, bearing off the bodies, after which a peal of ordnance is shot off.

Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar seems to have been one of the first plays to be performed in the new Globe Theatre in the summer or autumn of 1599: Thomas Platter, a Swiss doctor who was in London from 18 September to 20 October, recorded having seen a performance of ‘the tragedy of the first Emperor Julius’ on 21 September which was in all probability Shakespeare’s play. It is unlikely to have been written earlier since it is not included in the list of plays given by Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia (1598), but allusions to it begin to appear in 1600, indicating that it was a popular and influential work. It was not published, however, until it was included in the First Folio in 1623, as the fifth of the tragedies, in an unusually accurate text based apparently on a very clear manuscript, formerly thought to be authorial but now assumed to be a good scribal copy.

While today Julius Caesar tends to be categorized as a ‘classical tragedy’ or a ‘Roman play’, and discussed in relation to later plays of this kind such as Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, its immediate context in Shakespeare’s career as a dramatist gives it equally strong links with Henry V and Hamlet. By 1599 Shakespeare had written only two ‘straight’ tragedies, Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet, though some of the English history plays had been printed with the word ‘tragedy’ on their title-pages. He seems to have been reading and thinking about Julius Caesar when he wrote Henry V (also generally dated 1599) since in the Chorus to act 5 he compares the triumphant return of Henry to England to the greeting of ‘conquering Caesar’ by the senators and plebeians of ‘antique Rome’ – the material of the opening scene of this play. A further link is provided by Fluellen’s comparison of Henry and Alexander in 4.7 of Henry V: Shakespeare read about Alexander in Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, where Alexander is paired with Julius Caesar in Plutarch’s system of providing parallel Greek and Roman biographies. Shakespeare, who used Plutarch extensively in Julius Caesar, seems to suggest that Henry V could be added as a third, English example of a great military leader.

As Henry V looks forward to Julius Caesar, the latter play looks forward to Hamlet. The difficulty Brutus faces in arriving at his decision to kill Caesar can be compared with Hamlet’s dilemma over killing Claudius, and the way Brutus describes the ‘interim’ between ‘the acting of a dreadful thing / And the first motion’ in 2.1 is if anything more accurate about Hamlet’s situation than it is about his own. The ‘sheeted dead’ squeaking and gibbering in the Roman streets ‘A little ere the mightiest Julius fell’ are remembered in the first scene of Hamlet, and Polonius recalls acting the part of Caesar in 3.2.

While Hamlet quickly became a personal tragedy, with many of its political passages cut in performance, the theatrical and critical history of Julius Caesar has seen debate centred on its main political issue: were the conspirators justified in killing Caesar? The question was familiar to educated people in Elizabethan England as a stock topic for debate or ‘disputation’ in schools and universities. In the theatre, where it has been one of the most frequently performed of Shakespeare’s plays, there has been a long tradition of presenting Brutus as a sympathetic hero and endorsing his republican sympathies; critics, and especially editors of the play, have been more inclined to find fault with him and to view the murder of Caesar as a crime or even ‘sacrilege’. Many twentieth-century productions since Orson Welles’s sensational 1937 New York version (subtitled ‘Death of a Dictator’) have modernized and simplified the play’s politics by presenting Caesar as a Fascist leader like Hitler or Mussolini.

The 1998 Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

Julius CAESAR

conspirators against Julius Caesar

triumvirs after the death of Caesar

CALPHURNIA

wife of Caesar

PORTIA

wife of Brutus

LUCIUS

personal servant to Brutus

senators

tribunes of the people

CINNA

a poet

supporters of Brutus and Cassius, and officers in their army

soldiers with Brutus and Cassius

PINDARUS

ARTEMIDORUS

CARPENTER

COBBLER

POET

SOOTHSAYER

SERVANT

to Caesar

SERVANT

to Antony

SERVANT

to Octavius

MESSENGER

FOUR PLEBEIANS

THREE SOLDIERS

in the army of Brutus

TWO SOLDIERS

in the army of Antony

GHOST of Caesar

Commoners, Soldiers and others

Julius Caesar

1.1 Enter FLAVIUS, MURELLUS and certain Commoners over the stage.

FLAVIUS

Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home!

Is this a holiday? What, know you not

(Being mechanical) you ought not walk

Upon a labouring day, without the sign

Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou?

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CARPENTER     Why, sir, a carpenter.

MURELLUS     Where is thy leather apron, and thy rule?

What dost thou with thy best apparel on?

You, sir, what trade are you?

COBBLER     Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am

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but as you would say, a cobbler.

MURELLUS

But what trade art thou? Answer me directly.

COBBLER     A trade, sir, that I hope I may use with a safe

conscience, which is indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.

FLAVIUS

What trade, thou knave? Thou naughty knave, what trade?

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COBBLER     Nay I beseech you, sir, be not out with me:

yet if you be out, sir, I can mend you.

MURELLUS     What mean’st thou by that? Mend me, thou

saucy fellow?

COBBLER     Why, sir, cobble you.

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FLAVIUS     Thou art a cobbler, art thou?

COBBLER     Truly, sir, all that I live by, is with the awl: I

meddle with no tradesman’s matters, nor women’s

matters; but withal I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old

shoes; when they are in great danger, I recover them.

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As proper men as ever trod upon neat’s leather have

gone upon my handiwork.

FLAVIUS     But wherefore art not in thy shop today?

Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?

COBBLER     Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get

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myself into more work. But indeed, sir, we make

holiday to see Caesar and to rejoice in his triumph.

MURELLUS

Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home?

What tributaries follow him to Rome

To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels?

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You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!

O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,

Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft

Have you climbed up to walls and battlements,

To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,

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Your infants in your arms, and there have sat

The livelong day, with patient expectation,

To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:

And when you saw his chariot but appear,

Have you not made an universal shout,

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That Tiber trembled underneath her banks

To hear the replication of your sounds

Made in her concave shores?

And do you now put on your best attire?

And do you now cull out a holiday?

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And do you now strew flowers in his way,

That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood?

Be gone!

Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,

Pray to the gods to intermit the plague

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That needs must light on this ingratitude.

FLAVIUS     Go, go, good countrymen, and for this fault

Assemble all the poor men of your sort;

Draw them to Tiber banks, and weep your tears

Into the channel, till the lowest stream

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Do kiss the most exalted shores of all.

Exeunt all the Commoners.

See where their basest mettle be not moved.

They vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness.

Go you down that way towards the Capitol.

This way will I. Disrobe the images,

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If you do find them decked with ceremonies.

MURELLUS     May we do so?

You know it is the feast of Lupercal.

FLAVIUS     It is no matter. Let no images

Be hung with Caesar’s trophies. I’ll about,

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And drive away the vulgar from the streets.

So do you too, where you perceive them thick.

These growing feathers plucked from Caesar’s wing

Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,

Who else would soar above the view of men,

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And keep us all in servile fearfulness.     Exeunt.

1.2 Enter CAESAR, ANTONY for the course, CALPHURNIA, PORTIA, DECIUS, CICERO, BRUTUS, CASSIUS, CASKA, a Soothsayer; after them MURELLUS and FLAVIUS.

CAESAR     Calphurnia.

CASKA     Peace, ho! Caesar speaks.

CAESAR     Calphurnia.

CALPHURNIA     Here, my lord.

CAESAR     Stand you directly in Antonio’s way

When he doth run his course. Antonio.

ANTONY     Caesar, my lord.

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CAESAR     Forget not in your speed, Antonio,

To touch Calphurnia; for our elders say,

The barren touched in this holy chase

Shake off their sterile curse.

ANTONY     I shall remember.

When Caesar says ‘Do this’, it is performed.

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CAESAR     Set on, and leave no ceremony out. [Music.]

SOOTHSAYER     Caesar!

CAESAR     Ha! Who calls?

CASKA     Bid every noise be still. Peace yet again!

CAESAR     Who is it in the press that calls on me?

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I hear a tongue shriller than all the music

Cry ‘Caesar!’ Speak. Caesar is turned to hear.

SOOTHSAYER     Beware the Ides of March.

CAESAR     What man is that?

BRUTUS

A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.

CAESAR     Set him before me. Let me see his face.

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CASSIUS

Fellow, come from the throng. Look upon Caesar.

CAESAR

What sayst thou to me now? Speak once again.

SOOTHSAYER     Beware the Ides of March.

CAESAR     He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass.

Sennet. Exeunt all but Brutus and Cassius.

CASSIUS     Will you go see the order of the course?

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BRUTUS     Not I.

CASSIUS     I pray you, do.

BRUTUS     I am not gamesome. I do lack some part

Of that quick spirit that is in Antony.

Let me not hinder, Cassius, your desires;

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I’ll leave you.

CASSIUS     Brutus, I do observe you now of late.

I have not from your eyes that gentleness

And show of love as I was wont to have.

You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand

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Over your friend, that loves you.

BRUTUS     Cassius,

Be not deceived. If I have veiled my look,

I turn the trouble of my countenance

Merely upon myself. Vexed I am

Of late with passions of some difference,

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Conceptions only proper to myself

Which give some soil, perhaps, to my behaviours.

But let not therefore my good friends be grieved

(Among which number, Cassius, be you one)

Nor construe any further my neglect

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Than that poor Brutus, with himself at war,

Forgets the shows of love to other men.

CASSIUS

Then, Brutus, I have much mistook your passion,

By means whereof this breast of mine hath buried

Thoughts of great value, worthy cogitations.

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Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?

BRUTUS     No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself

But by reflection, by some other things.

CASSIUS     ’Tis just,

And it is very much lamented, Brutus,

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That you have no such mirrors as will turn

Your hidden worthiness into your eye,

That you might see your shadow: I have heard

Where many of the best respect in Rome

(Except immortal Caesar) speaking of Brutus,

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And groaning underneath this age’s yoke,

Have wished that noble Brutus had his eyes.

BRUTUS

Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius,

That you would have me seek into myself

For that which is not in me?

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CASSIUS     Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear.

And since you know you cannot see yourself

So well as by reflection, I your glass

Will modestly discover to yourself

That of yourself which you yet know not of.

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And be not jealous on me, gentle Brutus.

Were I a common laughter, or did use

To stale with ordinary oaths my love

To every new protester; if you know

That I do fawn on men, and hug them hard,

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And after scandal them; or if you know

That I profess myself in banqueting

To all the rout, then hold me dangerous.

[Flourish, and shout]

BRUTUS

What means this shouting? I do fear the people

Choose Caesar for their king.

CASSIUS     Ay, do you fear it?

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Then must I think you would not have it so.

BRUTUS     I would not, Cassius, yet I love him well.

But wherefore do you hold me here so long?

What is it that you would impart to me?

If it be aught toward the general good,

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Set honour in one eye, and death i’th’ other,

And I will look on both indifferently.

For let the gods so speed me as I love

The name of honour more than I fear death.

CASSIUS     I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus,

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As well as I do know your outward favour.

Well, honour is the subject of my story.

I cannot tell what you and other men

Think of this life; but for my single self

I had as lief not be as live to be

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In awe of such a thing as I myself.

I was born free as Caesar, so were you;

We both have fed as well, and we can both

Endure the winter’s cold as well as he.

For once, upon a raw and gusty day,

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The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,

Caesar said to me, ‘Dar’st thou, Cassius, now

Leap in with me into this angry flood

And swim to yonder point?’ Upon the word,

Accoutred as I was, I plunged in

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And bade him follow; so indeed he did.

The torrent roared, and we did buffet it

With lusty sinews, throwing it aside,

And stemming it with hearts of controversy.

But ere we could arrive the point proposed

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Caesar cried, ‘Help me, Cassius, or I sink!’

I, as Aeneas, our great ancestor,

Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder

The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber

Did I the tired Caesar: and this man

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Is now become a god, and Cassius is

A wretched creature, and must bend his body

If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.

He had a fever when he was in Spain,

And when the fit was on him I did mark

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How he did shake. ’Tis true, this god did shake:

His coward lips did from their colour fly,

And that same eye, whose bend doth awe the world,

Did lose his lustre: I did hear him groan:

Ay, and that tongue of his that bade the Romans

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Mark him, and write his speeches in their books,

‘Alas,’ it cried, ‘give me some drink, Titinius’,

As a sick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me

A man of such a feeble temper should

So get the start of the majestic world

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And bear the palm alone. [Shout. Flourish.]

BRUTUS     Another general shout?

I do believe that these applauses are

For some new honours that are heaped on Caesar.

CASSIUS     Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a colossus, and we petty men

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Walk under his huge legs and peep about

To find ourselves dishonourable graves.

Men at some time are masters of their fates.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

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‘Brutus’ and ‘Caesar’: what should be in that ‘Caesar’?

Why should that name be sounded more than yours?

Write them together: yours is as fair a name:

Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well.

Weigh them, it is as heavy: conjure with ’em,

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‘Brutus’ will start a spirit as soon as ‘Caesar’.

Now in the names of all the gods at once,

Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed

That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!

Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!

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When went there by an age, since the great flood,

But it was famed with more than with one man?

When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome,

That her wide walks encompassed but one man?

Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,

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When there is in it but one only man.

O, you and I have heard our fathers say

There was a Brutus once that would have brooked

Th’eternal devil to keep his state in Rome

As easily as a king.

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BRUTUS     That you do love me, I am nothing jealous:

What you would work me to, I have some aim:

How I have thought of this and of these times

I shall recount hereafter. For this present,

I would not, so with love I might entreat you,

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Be any further moved. What you have said

I will consider: what you have to say

I will with patience hear, and find a time

Both meet to hear and answer such high things.

Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this:

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Brutus     had rather be a villager

Than to repute himself a son of Rome

Under these hard conditions as this time

Is like to lay upon us.

CASSIUS     I am glad

That my weak words have struck but thus much show

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Of fire from Brutus.

Enter CAESAR and his train.

BRUTUS     The games are done, and Caesar is returning.

CASSIUS     As they pass by, pluck Caska by the sleeve,

And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you

What hath proceeded worthy note today.

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BRUTUS     I will do so: but look you, Cassius,

The angry spot doth glow on Caesar’s brow,

And all the rest look like a chidden train:

Calphurnia’s cheek is pale, and Cicero

Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes

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As we have seen him in the Capitol

Being crossed in conference by some senators.

CASSIUS     Caska will tell us what the matter is.

CAESAR     Antonio.

ANTONY     Caesar.

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CAESAR     Let me have men about me that are fat,

Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nights.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look:

He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

ANTONY     Fear him not, Caesar, he’s not dangerous.

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He is a noble Roman, and well given.

CAESAR     Would he were fatter! But I fear him not:

Yet if my name were liable to fear

I do not know the man I should avoid

So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much,

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He is a great observer, and he looks

Quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays

As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music.

Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort

As if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit

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That could be moved to smile at anything.

Such men as he be never at heart’s ease

Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,

And therefore are they very dangerous.

I rather tell thee what is to be feared

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Than what I fear: for always I am Caesar.

Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,

And tell me truly what thou think’st of him.

Sennet. Exeunt Caesar and his train.

CASKA     You pulled me by the cloak. Would you speak

with me?

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BRUTUS     Ay, Caska, tell us what hath chanced today

That Caesar looks so sad.

CASKA     Why, you were with him, were you not?

BRUTUS     I should not then ask Caska what had

chanced.

CASKA     Why, there was a crown offered him; and being

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offered him, he put it by with the back of his hand,

thus, and then the people fell a-shouting.

BRUTUS     What was the second noise for?

CASKA     Why, for that too.

CASSIUS

They shouted thrice: what was the last cry for?

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CASKA     Why, for that too.

BRUTUS     Was the crown offered him thrice?

CASKA     Ay, marry, was’t, and he put it by thrice, every

time gentler than other; and at every putting-by, mine

honest neighbours shouted.

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CASSIUS     Who offered him the crown?

CASKA     Why, Antony.

BRUTUS     Tell us the manner of it, gentle Caska.

CASKA     I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it.

It was mere foolery: I did not mark it. I saw Mark

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Antony offer him a crown – yet ’twas not a crown

neither, ’twas one of these coronets – and, as I told

you, he put it by once; but for all that, to my thinking,

he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him

again; then he put it by again; but to my thinking, he

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was very loth to lay his fingers off it. And then he

offered it the third time; he put it the third time by;

and still as he refused it the rabblement hooted, and

clapped their chopped hands, and threw up their

sweaty nightcaps, and uttered such a deal of stinking

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breath because Caesar refused the crown that it had

almost choked Caesar; for he swooned and fell down at

it. And for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear

of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.

CASSIUS     But soft, I pray you: what, did Caesar swoon?

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CASKA     He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at

mouth, and was speechless.

BRUTUS     ’Tis very like. He hath the falling sickness.

CASSIUS     No, Caesar hath it not: but you, and I,

And honest Caska, we have the falling sickness.

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CASKA     I know not what you mean by that, but I am sure

Caesar     fell down. If the tag-rag people did not clap

him and hiss him according as he pleased and

displeased them, as they use to do the players in the

theatre, I am no true man.

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BRUTUS     What said he when he came unto himself?

CASKA     Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived

the common herd was glad he refused the crown, he

plucked me ope his doublet and offered them his

throat to cut. An I had been a man of any occupation,

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if I would not have taken him at a word, I would I

might go to hell among the rogues. And so he fell.

When he came to himself again, he said, if he had

done or said anything amiss, he desired their worships

to think it was his infirmity. Three or four wenches

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where I stood cried, ‘Alas, good soul’, and forgave him

with all their hearts. But there’s no heed to be taken of

them: if Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would

have done no less.

BRUTUS     And after that he came thus sad away.

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CASKA     Ay.

CASSIUS     Did Cicero say anything?

CASKA     Ay, he spoke Greek.

CASSIUS     To what effect?

CASKA     Nay, an I tell you that, I’ll ne’er look you i’th’

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face again. But those that understood him, smiled at

one another, and shook their heads; but for mine own

part, it was Greek to me. I could tell you more news

too: Murellus and Flavius, for pulling scarves off

Caesar’s images, are put to silence. Fare you well.

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There was more foolery yet, if I could remember it.

CASSIUS     Will you sup with me tonight, Caska?

CASKA     No, I am promised forth.

CASSIUS     Will you dine with me tomorrow?

CASKA     Ay, if I be alive, and your mind hold, and your

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dinner worth the eating.

CASSIUS     Good. I will expect you.

CASKA     Do so. Farewell, both.     Exit.

BRUTUS     What a blunt fellow is this grown to be!

He was quick mettle when he went to school.

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CASSIUS     So is he now, in execution

Of any bold or noble enterprise,

However he puts on this tardy form.

This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,

Which gives men stomach to digest his words

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With better appetite.

BRUTUS     And so it is.

For this time I will leave you.

Tomorrow if you please to speak with me

I will come home to you: or, if you will,

Come home to me, and I will wait for you.

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CASSIUS     I will do so. Till then, think of the world.

Exit Brutus.

Well, Brutus, thou art noble: yet I see

Thy honourable mettle may be wrought

From that it is disposed. Therefore it is meet

That noble minds keep ever with their likes;

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For who so firm that cannot be seduced?

Caesar doth bear me hard, but he loves Brutus.

If I were Brutus now, and he were Cassius,

He should not humour me. I will this night

In several hands in at his windows throw,

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As if they came from several citizens,

Writings all tending to the great opinion

That Rome holds of his name – wherein obscurely

Caesar’s ambition shall be glanced at.

And after this, let Caesar seat him sure,

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For we will shake him, or worse days endure.     Exit.

1.3 Thunder and lightning. Enter CASKA and CICERO.

CICERO     Good even, Caska. Brought you Caesar home?

Why are you breathless, and why stare you so?

CASKA     Are you not moved, when all the sway of earth

Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,

I have seen tempests when the scolding winds

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Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen

Th’ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,

To be exalted with the threatening clouds:

But never till tonight, never till now,

Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.

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Either there is a civil strife in heaven,

Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,

Incenses them to send destruction.

CICERO     Why, saw you anything more wonderful?

CASKA

A common slave – you know him well by sight –

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Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn

Like twenty torches joined; and yet his hand,

Not sensible of fire, remained unscorched.

Besides – I ha’not since put up my sword –

Against the Capitol I met a lion

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Who glazed upon me and went surly by

Without annoying me. And there were drawn

Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women

Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw

Men, all in fire, walk up and down the streets.

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And yesterday the bird of night did sit

Even at noonday upon the market-place

Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies

Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,

‘These are their reasons, they are natural’:

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For I believe they are portentous things

Unto the climate that they point upon.

CICERO     Indeed it is a strange-disposed time.

But men may construe things after their fashion

Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.

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Comes Caesar to the Capitol tomorrow?

CASKA     He doth, for he did bid Antonio

Send word to you he would be there tomorrow.

CICERO     Good night then, Caska: this disturbed sky

Is not to walk in.

CASKA     Farewell, Cicero.     Exit Cicero.

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Enter CASSIUS.

CASSIUS     Who’s there?

CASKA     A Roman.

CASSIUS     Caska, by your voice.

CASKA     Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is this?

CASSIUS     A very pleasing night to honest men.

CASKA     Whoever knew the heavens menace so?

CASSIUS

Those that have known the earth so full of faults.

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For my part, I have walked about the streets,

Submitting me unto the perilous night,

And thus unbraced, Caska, as you see,

Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone:

And when the cross blue lightning seemed to open

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The breast of heaven, I did present myself

Even in the aim and very flash of it.

CASKA

But wherefore did you so much tempt the heavens?

It is the part of men to fear and tremble

When the most mighty gods by tokens send

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Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.

CASSIUS     You are dull, Caska, and those sparks of life

That should be in a Roman you do want

Or else you use not. You look pale, and gaze,

And put on fear, and cast yourself in wonder

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To see the strange impatience of the heavens.

But if you would consider the true cause

Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts,

Why birds and beasts, from quality and kind,

Why old men, fools, and children calculate,

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Why all these things change from their ordinance

Their natures and preformed faculties

To monstrous quality, why, you shall find

That heaven hath infused them with these spirits

To make them instruments of fear and warning

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Unto some monstrous state.

Now could I, Caska, name to thee a man

Most like this dreadful night

That thunders, lightens, opens graves and roars

As doth the lion in the Capitol:

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A man no mightier than thyself, or me,

In personal action, yet prodigious grown

And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.

CASKA     ’Tis Caesar that you mean. Is it not, Cassius?

CASSIUS     Let it be who it is: for Romans now

80

Have thews and limbs like to their ancestors:

But woe the while, our fathers’ minds are dead,

And we are governed with our mothers’ spirits:

Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.

CASKA     Indeed, they say the senators tomorrow

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Mean to establish Caesar as a king,

And he shall wear his crown by sea and land

In every place save here in Italy.

CASSIUS     I know where I will wear this dagger then:

Cassius     from bondage will deliver Cassius.

90

Therein, ye gods, ye make the weak most strong;

Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,

Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,

Can be retentive to the strength of spirit:

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But life being weary of these worldly bars

Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

If I know this, know all the world besides,

That part of tyranny that I do bear

I can shake off at pleasure.     [Thunder still]

CASKA     So can I.

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So every bondman in his own hand bears

The power to cancel his captivity.

CASSIUS     And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?

Poor man, I know he would not be a wolf

But that he sees the Romans are but sheep.

105

He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.

Those that with haste will make a mighty fire

Begin it with weak straws. What trash is Rome?

What rubbish, and what offal? when it serves

For the base matter to illuminate

110

So vile a thing as Caesar? But, O grief,

Where hast thou led me? I perhaps speak this

Before a willing bondman: then I know

My answer must be made. But I am armed

And dangers are to me indifferent.

115

CASKA     You speak to Caska, and to such a man

That is no fleering tell-tale. Hold, my hand.

Be factious for redress of all these griefs

And I will set this foot of mine as far

As who goes farthest.

CASSIUS     There’s a bargain made.

120

Now know you, Caska, I have moved already

Some certain of the noblest-minded Romans

To undergo with me an enterprise

Of honourable dangerous consequence;

And I do know by this, they stay for me

125

In Pompey’s Porch. For now this fearful night

There is no stir or walking in the streets;

And the complexion of the element

In favour’s like the work we have in hand,

Most bloody, fiery and most terrible.

130

Enter CINNA.

CASKA     Stand close awhile, for here comes one in haste.

CASSIUS     ’Tis Cinna. I do know him by his gait.

He is a friend. Cinna, where haste you so?

CINNA     To find out you. Who’s that? Metellus Cimber?

CASSIUS     No, it is Caska, one incorporate

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To our attempts. Am I not stayed for, Cinna?

CINNA     I am glad on’t. What a fearful night is this?

There’s two or three of us have seen strange sights.

CASSIUS     Am I not stayed for? Tell me.

CINNA     Yes, you are.

O Cassius, if you could

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But win the noble Brutus to our party –

CASSIUS     Be you content. Good Cinna, take this paper

And look you lay it in the praetor’s chair

Where Brutus may but find it. And throw this

In at his window. Set this up with wax

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Upon old Brutus’ statue. All this done,

Repair to Pompey’s Porch, where you shall find us.

Is Decius Brutus and Trebonius there?

CINNA     All but Metellus Cimber, and he’s gone

To seek you at your house. Well, I will hie,

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And so bestow these papers as you bade me.

CASSIUS     That done, repair to Pompey’s Theatre.

Exit Cinna.

Come, Caska, you and I will yet ere day

See Brutus at his house. Three parts of him

Is ours already, and the man entire

155

Upon the next encounter yields him ours.

CASKA     O he sits high in all the people’s hearts:

And that which would appear offence in us

His countenance, like richest alchemy,

Will change to virtue and to worthiness.

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CASSIUS

Him, and his worth, and our great need of him

You have right well conceited. Let us go,

For it is after midnight, and ere day

We will awake him and be sure of him.     Exeunt.

2.1 Enter BRUTUS in his orchard.

BRUTUS     What, Lucius, ho?

I cannot by the progress of the stars

Give guess how near to day – Lucius, I say?

I would it were my fault to sleep so soundly.

When, Lucius, when? Awake, I say: what, Lucius!

5

Enter LUCIUS.

LUCIUS     Called you, my lord?

BRUTUS     Get me a taper in my study, Lucius.

When it is lighted, come and call me here.

LUCIUS     I will, my lord.     Exit.

BRUTUS     It must be by his death: and for my part

10

I know no personal cause to spurn at him

But for the general. He would be crowned:

How that might change his nature, there’s the question.

It is the bright day that brings forth the adder,

And that craves wary walking. Crown him that,

15

And then I grant we put a sting in him

That at his will he may do danger with.

Th’abuse of greatness is when it disjoins

Remorse from power; and to speak truth of Caesar

I have not known when his affections swayed

20

More than his reason. But ’tis a common proof

That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder

Whereto the climber upward turns his face;

But when he once attains the upmost round

He then unto the ladder turns his back,

25

Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees

By which he did ascend. So Caesar may.

Then, lest he may, prevent. And since the quarrel

Will bear no colour for the thing he is,

Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented,

30

Would run to these and these extremities.

And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg

Which hatched, would as his kind grow mischievous,

And kill him in the shell.

Enter LUCIUS.

LUCIUS     The taper burneth in your closet, sir.

35

Searching the window for a flint, I found

This paper, thus sealed up, and I am sure

It did not lie there when I went to bed.

[Gives him the letter]

BRUTUS     Get you to bed again, it is not day.

Is not tomorrow, boy, the first of March?

40

LUCIUS     I know not, sir.

BRUTUS     Look in the calendar and bring me word.

LUCIUS     I will, sir.     Exit.

BRUTUS     The exhalations whizzing in the air

Give so much light that I may read by them.

45

[Opens the letter and reads]

‘Brutus, thou sleep’st; awake and see thyself.

Shall Rome, et cetera. Speak, strike, redress.’

‘Brutus, thou sleep’st; awake.’

Such instigations have been often dropped

Where I have took them up.

50

‘Shall Rome, et cetera.’ Thus must I piece it out:

Shall Rome stand under one man’s awe? What Rome?

My ancestors did from the streets of Rome

The Tarquin drive, when he was called a king.

‘Speak, strike, redress.’ Am I entreated

55

To speak and strike? O Rome, I make thee promise,

If the redress will follow, thou receivest

Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus.

Enter LUCIUS.

LUCIUS     Sir, March is wasted fifteen days. [Knock within.]

BRUTUS     ’Tis good. Go to the gate: somebody knocks.

60

Exit Lucius.

Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar

I have not slept.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is

Like a phantasma or a hideous dream:

65

The genius and the mortal instruments

Are then in council, and the state of man,

Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection.

Enter LUCIUS.

LUCIUS     Sir, ’tis your brother Cassius at the door,

70

Who doth desire to see you.

BRUTUS     Is he alone?

LUCIUS     No, sir, there are moe with him.

BRUTUS     Do you know them?

LUCIUS     No, sir, their hats are plucked about their ears

And half their faces buried in their cloaks,

That by no means I may discover them

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By any mark of favour.

BRUTUS     Let ’em enter.     Exit Lucius.

They are the faction. O conspiracy,

Sham’st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,

When evils are most free? O then by day

Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough

80

To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy:

Hide it in smiles and affability;

For if thou path, thy native semblance on,

Not Erebus itself were dim enough

To hide thee from prevention.

85

Enter the conspirators: CASSIUS, CASKA, DECIUS, CINNA, METELLUS and TREBONIUS.

CASSIUS     I think we are too bold upon your rest.

Good morrow, Brutus. Do we trouble you?

BRUTUS     I have been up this hour, awake all night.

Know I these men that come along with you?

CASSIUS     Yes, every man of them; and no man here

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But honours you, and every one doth wish

You had but that opinion of yourself

Which every noble Roman bears of you.

This is Trebonius.

BRUTUS     He is welcome hither.

CASSIUS     This, Decius Brutus.

BRUTUS     He is welcome too.

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CASSIUS

This, Caska. This, Cinna. And this, Metellus Cimber.

BRUTUS     They are all welcome.

What watchful cares do interpose themselves

Betwixt your eyes and night?

CASSIUS     Shall I entreat a word?

[They whisper.]

DECIUS

Here lies the east. Doth not the day break here?

100

CASKA     No.

CINNA     O pardon, sir, it doth, and yon grey lines

That fret the clouds are messengers of day.

CASKA     You shall confess that you are both deceived.

Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises,

105

Which is a great way growing on the south,

Weighing the youthful season of the year.

Some two months hence, up higher toward the north

He first presents his fire, and the high east

Stands as the Capitol, directly here.

110

BRUTUS     [Comes forward with Cassius.]

Give me your hands all over, one by one.

CASSIUS     And let us swear our resolution.

BRUTUS     No, not an oath. If not the face of men,

The sufferance of our souls, the time’s abuse;

If these be motives weak, break off betimes,

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And every man hence to his idle bed.

So let high-sighted tyranny range on

Till each man drop by lottery. But if these,

As I am sure they do, bear fire enough

To kindle cowards, and to steel with valour

120

The melting spirits of women: then, countrymen,

What need we any spur but our own cause

To prick us to redress? What other bond

Than secret Romans that have spoke the word

And will not palter? And what other oath,

125

Than honesty to honesty engaged,

That this shall be, or we will fall for it?

Swear priests and cowards, and men cautelous,

Old feeble carrions, and such suffering souls

That welcome wrongs: unto bad causes swear

130

Such creatures as men doubt. But do not stain

The even virtue of our enterprise,

Nor th’insuppressive mettle of our spirits,

To think that or our cause or our performance

Did need an oath, when every drop of blood

135

That every Roman bears, and nobly bears,

Is guilty of a several bastardy

If he do break the smallest particle

Of any promise that hath passed from him.

CASSIUS     But what of Cicero? Shall we sound him?

140

I think he will stand very strong with us.

CASKA     Let us not leave him out.

CINNA     No, by no means.

METELLUS     O let us have him, for his silver hairs

Will purchase us a good opinion,

And buy men’s voices to commend our deeds.

145

It shall be said his judgement ruled our hands.

Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear,

But all be buried in his gravity.

BRUTUS     O name him not. Let us not break with him,

For he will never follow anything

150

That other men begin.

CASSIUS     Then leave him out.

CASKA     Indeed he is not fit.

DECIUS     Shall no man else be touched but only Caesar?

CASSIUS     Decius, well urged. I think it is not meet

Mark Antony, so well beloved of Caesar,

155

Should outlive Caesar. We shall find of him

A shrewd contriver. And you know his means

If he improve them may well stretch so far

As to annoy us all: which to prevent

Let Antony and Caesar fall together.

160

BRUTUS

Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius,

To cut the head off and then hack the limbs –

Like wrath in death and envy afterwards –

For Antony is but a limb of Caesar.

Let’s be sacrificers but not butchers, Caius.

165

We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar,

And in the spirit of men there is no blood.

O that we then could come by Caesar’s spirit

And not dismember Caesar! But, alas,

Caesar must bleed for it. And, gentle friends,

170

Let’s kill him boldly, but not wrathfully:

Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods,

Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds.

And let our hearts, as subtle masters do,

Stir up their servants to an act of rage

175

And after seem to chide ’em. This shall make

Our purpose necessary and not envious,

Which so appearing to the common eyes,

We shall be called purgers, not murderers.

And for Mark Antony, think not of him,

180

For he can do no more than Caesar’s arm

When Caesar’s head is off.

CASSIUS     Yet I fear him,

For in the ingrafted love he bears to Caesar –

BRUTUS     Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him.

If he love Caesar, all that he can do

185

Is to himself – take thought, and die for Caesar.

And that were much he should, for he is given

To sports, to wildness and much company.

TREBONIUS     There is no fear in him. Let him not die,

For he will live and laugh at this hereafter.

190

[Clock strikes.]

BRUTUS     Peace! Count the clock.

CASSIUS     The clock hath stricken three.

TREBONIUS     ’Tis time to part.

CASSIUS     But it is doubtful yet

Whether Caesar will come forth this day or no,

For he is superstitious grown of late,

Quite from the main opinion he held once

195

Of fantasy, of dreams and ceremonies.

It may be these apparent prodigies,

The unaccustomed terror of this night

And the persuasion of his augurers,

May hold him from the Capitol today.

200

DECIUS     Never fear that. If he be so resolved

I can o’ersway him: for he loves to hear

That unicorns may be betrayed with trees,

And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,

Lions with toils and men with flatterers.

205

But when I tell him he hates flatterers,

He says he does, being then most flattered.

Let me work.

For I can give his humour the true bent,

And I will bring him to the Capitol.

210

CASSIUS     Nay, we will all of us be there to fetch him.

BRUTUS     By the eighth hour. Is that the uttermost?

CINNA     Be that the uttermost, and fail not then.

METELLUS     Caius Ligarius doth bear Caesar hard,

Who rated him for speaking well of Pompey.

215

I wonder none of you have thought of him.

BRUTUS     Now, good Metellus, go along by him.

He loves me well, and I have given him reasons.

Send him but hither and I’ll fashion him.

CASSIUS

220

The morning comes upon’s. We’ll leave you, Brutus.

And, friends, disperse yourselves – but all remember

What you have said, and show yourselves true Romans.

BRUTUS     Good gentlemen, look fresh and merrily.

Let not our looks put on our purposes,

But bear it as our Roman actors do,

225

With untired spirits and formal constancy.

And so good morrow to you every one.

Exeunt all but Brutus.

Boy! Lucius! Fast asleep? It is no matter.

Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber.

Thou hast no figures, nor no fantasies

230

Which busy care draws in the brains of men.

Therefore thou sleep’st so sound.

Enter PORTIA.

PORTIA     Brutus, my lord.

BRUTUS     Portia, what mean you? Wherefore rise you now?

It is not for your health thus to commit

Your weak condition to the raw cold morning.

235

PORTIA     Nor for yours neither. Y’have ungently, Brutus,

Stole from my bed: and yesternight at supper

You suddenly arose, and walked about,

Musing, and sighing, with your arms across;

And when I asked you what the matter was

240

You stared upon me with ungentle looks.

I urged you further: then you scratched your head

And too impatiently stamped with your foot.

Yet I insisted, yet you answered not

But with an angry wafture of your hand

245

Gave sign for me to leave you. So I did,

Fearing to strengthen that impatience

Which seemed too much enkindled, and withal

Hoping it was but an effect of humour,

Which sometime hath his hour with every man.

250

It will not let you eat, nor talk, nor sleep;

And could it work so much upon your shape

As it hath much prevailed on your condition,

I should not know you Brutus. Dear my lord,

Make me acquainted with your cause of grief.

255

BRUTUS     I am not well in health, and that is all.

PORTIA     Brutus is wise, and were he not in health,

He would embrace the means to come by it.

BRUTUS     Why, so I do. Good Portia, go to bed.

PORTIA     Is Brutus sick, and is it physical

260

To walk unbraced and suck up the humours

Of the dank morning? What, is Brutus sick?

And will he steal out of his wholesome bed

To dare the vile contagion of the night?

And tempt the rheumy and unpurged air

265

To add unto his sickness? No, my Brutus,

You have some sick offence within your mind

Which by the right and virtue of my place

I ought to know of: and upon my knees

I charm you, by my once commended beauty,

270

By all your vows of love, and that great vow

Which did incorporate and make us one,

That you unfold to me, your self, your half,

Why you are heavy – and what men tonight

Have had resort to you: for here have been

275

Some six or seven who did hide their faces

Even from darkness.

BRUTUS     Kneel not, gentle Portia.

PORTIA     I should not need, if you were gentle Brutus.

Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus,

Is it excepted I should know no secrets

280

That appertain to you? Am I your self

But as it were in sort or limitation,

To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed

And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs

Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,

285

Portia     is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife.

BRUTUS     You are my true and honourable wife,

As dear to me as are the ruddy drops

That visit my sad heart.

PORTIA     If this were true, then I should know this secret.

290

I grant I am a woman: but withal

A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife.

I grant I am a woman: but withal

A woman well reputed, Cato’s daughter.

Think you I am no stronger than my sex

295

Being so fathered and so husbanded?

Tell me your counsels. I will not disclose ’em.

I have made strong proof of my constancy,

Giving myself a voluntary wound,

Here in the thigh. Can I bear that with patience

300

And not my husband’s secrets?

BRUTUS     O ye gods,

Render me worthy of this noble wife! [Knock.]

Hark, hark, one knocks. Portia, go in a while,

And by and by thy bosom shall partake

The secrets of my heart.

305

All my engagements I will construe to thee,

All the charactery of my sad brows.

Leave me with haste.     Exit Portia.

Enter LUCIUS and Caius LIGARIUS.

Lucius, who’s that knocks?

LUCIUS     Here is a sick man that would speak with you.

BRUTUS     Caius Ligarius, that Metellus spake of.

310

Boy, stand aside. Caius Ligarius, how?

LIGARIUS     Vouchsafe good morrow from a feeble tongue.

BRUTUS

O, what a time have you chose out, brave Caius,

To wear a kerchief? Would you were not sick!

LIGARIUS     I am not sick if Brutus have in hand

315

Any exploit worthy the name of honour.

BRUTUS     Such an exploit have I in hand, Ligarius,

Had you a healthful ear to hear of it.

LIGARIUS     By all the gods that Romans bow before,

I here discard my sickness. Soul of Rome,

320

Brave son, derived from honourable loins,

Thou like an exorcist hast conjured up

My mortified spirit. Now bid me run

And I will strive with things impossible,

Yea, get the better of them. What’s to do?

325

BRUTUS     A piece of work that will make sick men whole.

LIGARIUS

But are not some whole that we must make sick?

BRUTUS     That must we also. What it is, my Caius,

I shall unfold to thee as we are going

To whom it must be done.

LIGARIUS     Set on your foot,

330

And with a heart new-fired I follow you,

To do I know not what: but it sufficeth

That Brutus leads me on.     [Thunder]

BRUTUS     Follow me, then.     Exeunt.

[2.2] Thunder and lightning. Enter Julius CAESAR in his nightgown.

CAESAR

Nor heaven nor earth have been at peace tonight.

Thrice hath Calphurnia in her sleep cried out,

‘Help ho: they murder Caesar.’ Who’s within?

Enter a Servant.

SERVANT     My lord?

CAESAR     Go bid the priests do present sacrifice

5

And bring me their opinions of success.

SERVANT     I will, my lord.     Exit.

Enter CALPHURNIA.

CALPHURNIA

What mean you, Caesar? Think you to walk forth?

You shall not stir out of your house today.

CAESAR

Caesar     shall forth. The things that threatened me

10

Ne’er looked but on my back: when they shall see

The face of Caesar, they are vanished.

CALPHURNIA     Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies,

Yet now they fright me. There is one within,

Besides the things that we have heard and seen,

15

Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.

A lioness hath whelped in the streets,

And graves have yawned and yielded up their dead.

Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds

In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,

20

Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol.

The noise of battle hurtled in the air,

Horses do neigh, and dying men did groan,

And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.

O Caesar, these things are beyond all use,

25

And I do fear them.

CAESAR     What can be avoided

Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?

Yet Caesar shall go forth, for these predictions

Are to the world in general as to Caesar.

CALPHURNIA     When beggars die there are no comets seen;

30

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

CAESAR     Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear,

35

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.

Enter Servant.

What say the augurers?

SERVANT     They would not have you to stir forth today.

Plucking the entrails of an offering forth,

They could not find a heart within the beast.

40

CAESAR     The gods do this in shame of cowardice.

Caesar     should be a beast without a heart

If he should stay at home today for fear.

No, Caesar shall not. Danger knows full well

That Caesar is more dangerous than he.

45

We are two lions littered in one day,

And I the elder and more terrible,

And Caesar shall go forth.

CALPHURNIA     Alas, my lord,

Your wisdom is consumed in confidence.

Do not go forth today. Call it my fear

50

That keeps you in the house, and not your own.

We’ll send Mark Antony to the Senate House,

And he shall say you are not well today.

Let me upon my knee prevail in this.

CAESAR     Mark Antony shall say I am not well,

55

And for thy humour I will stay at home.

Enter DECIUS.

Here’s Decius Brutus. He shall tell them so.

DECIUS     Caesar, all hail. Good morrow, worthy Caesar,

I come to fetch you to the Senate House.

CAESAR     And you are come in very happy time

60

To bear my greeting to the senators

And tell them that I will not come today.

Cannot is false; and that I dare not, falser.

I will not come today. Tell them so, Decius.

CALPHURNIA     Say he is sick.

CAESAR     Shall Caesar send a lie?

65

Have I in conquest stretched mine arm so far

To be afeard to tell greybeards the truth?

Decius, go tell them Caesar will not come.

DECIUS     Most mighty Caesar, let me know some cause,

Lest I be laughed at when I tell them so.

70

CAESAR     The cause is in my will, I will not come,

That is enough to satisfy the Senate.

But for your private satisfaction,

Because I love you, I will let you know.

Calphurnia here, my wife, stays me at home.

75

She dreamt tonight she saw my statue,

Which, like a fountain with an hundred spouts,

Did run pure blood; and many lusty Romans

Came smiling and did bathe their hands in it.

And these she does apply for warnings and portents

80

And evils imminent, and on her knee

Hath begged that I will stay at home today.

DECIUS     This dream is all amiss interpreted.

It was a vision, fair and fortunate.

Your statue spouting blood in many pipes

85

In which so many smiling Romans bathed

Signifies that from you great Rome shall suck

Reviving blood, and that great men shall press

For tinctures, stains, relics and cognizance.

This by Calphurnia’s dream is signified.

90

CAESAR     And this way have you well expounded it.

DECIUS     I have, when you have heard what I can say.

And know it now: the Senate have concluded

To give this day a crown to mighty Caesar.

If you shall send them word you will not come,

95

Their minds may change. Besides, it were a mock

Apt to be rendered, for some one to say,

‘Break up the Senate till another time

When Caesar’s wife shall meet with better dreams.’

If Caesar hide himself, shall they not whisper,

100

‘Lo, Caesar is afraid’?

Pardon me, Caesar, for my dear, dear love

To your proceeding bids me tell you this,

And reason to my love is liable.

CAESAR     How foolish do your fears seem now, Calphurnia!

105

I am ashamed I did yield to them.

Give me my robe, for I will go.

Enter BRUTUS, Caius LIGARIUS, METELLUS Cimber, CASKA, TREBONIUS, CINNA and PUBLIUS.

And look where Publius is come to fetch me.

PUBLIUS     Good morrow, Caesar.

CAESAR     Welcome, Publius.

What, Brutus, are you stirred so early too?

110

Good morrow, Caska. Caius Ligarius,

Caesar was ne’er so much your enemy

As that same ague which hath made you lean.

What is’t o’clock?

BRUTUS     Caesar, ’tis strucken eight.

CAESAR     I thank you for your pains and courtesy.

115

Enter ANTONY.

See, Antony, that revels long a-nights,

Is notwithstanding up. Good morrow, Antony.

ANTONY     So to most noble Caesar.

CAESAR     Bid them prepare within.

I am too blame to be thus waited for.

Now, Cinna. Now, Metellus. What, Trebonius,

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I have an hour’s talk in store for you.

Remember that you call on me today:

Be near me, that I may remember you.

TREBONIUS     Caesar, I will. [aside] And so near will I be

That your best friends shall wish I had been further.

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CAESAR

Good friends, go in, and taste some wine with me,

And we, like friends, will straightway go together.

BRUTUS     [aside]

That every like is not the same, O Caesar,

The heart of Brutus earns to think upon. Exeunt.

2.3 Enter ARTEMIDORUS reading a paper.

ARTEMIDORUS     Caesar, beware of Brutus. Take heed of

Cassius. Come not near Caska. Have an eye to Cinna.

Trust not Trebonius. Mark well Metellus Cimber. Decius

Brutus loves thee not. Thou hast wronged Caius Ligarius.

There is but one mind in all these men, and it is bent

5

against Caesar. If thou beest not immortal, look about

you. Security gives way to conspiracy. The mighty gods

defend thee.

Thy lover, Artemidorus.

Here will I stand till Caesar pass along

10

And as a suitor will I give him this.

My heart laments that virtue cannot live

Out of the teeth of emulation.

If thou read this, O Caesar, thou mayst live;

If not, the Fates with traitors do contrive.     Exit.

2.4 Enter PORTIA and LUCIUS.

PORTIA     I prithee, boy, run to the Senate House.

Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.

Why dost thou stay?

LUCIUS     To know my errand, madam.

PORTIA

I would have had thee there and here again

Ere I can tell thee what thou shouldst do there.

5

[aside] O constancy, be strong upon my side:

Set a huge mountain ’tween my heart and tongue.

I have a man’s mind, but a woman’s might.

How hard it is for women to keep counsel.

[to Lucius] Art thou here yet?

LUCIUS     Madam, what should I do?

10

Run to the Capitol, and nothing else?

And so return to you, and nothing else?

PORTIA     Yes, bring me word, boy, if thy lord look well,

For he went sickly forth; and take good note

What Caesar doth, what suitors press to him.

15

Hark, boy, what noise is that?

LUCIUS     I hear none, madam.

PORTIA     Prithee listen well.

I heard a bustling rumour like a fray,

And the wind brings it from the Capitol.

LUCIUS     Sooth, madam, I hear nothing.

20

Enter the Soothsayer.

PORTIA

Come hither, fellow. Which way hast thou been?

SOOTHSAYER     At mine own house, good lady.

PORTIA     What is’t o’clock?

SOOTHSAYER     About the ninth hour, lady.

PORTIA     Is Caesar yet gone to the Capitol?

SOOTHSAYER     Madam, not yet. I go to take my stand

25

To see him pass on to the Capitol.

PORTIA     Thou hast some suit to Caesar, hast thou not?

SOOTHSAYER     That I have, lady, if it will please Caesar

To be so good to Caesar as to hear me:

I shall beseech him to befriend himself.

30

PORTIA

Why, knowst thou any harm’s intended towards him?

SOOTHSAYER     None that I know will be,

Much that I fear may chance.

Good morrow to you. Here the street is narrow.

The throng that follows Caesar at the heels,

35

Of senators, of praetors, common suitors,

Will crowd a feeble man almost to death.

I’ll get me to a place more void, and there

Speak to great Caesar as he comes along.     Exit.

PORTIA     I must go in. Ay me, how weak a thing

40

The heart of woman is. O Brutus,

The heavens speed thee in thy enterprise.

Sure the boy heard me. Brutus hath a suit

That Caesar will not grant. O, I grow faint:

Run, Lucius, and commend me to my lord.

45

Say I am merry. Come to me again

And bring me word what he doth say to thee.

Exeunt at separate doors.

3.1 Flourish. Enter CAESAR, BRUTUS, CASSIUS, CASKA, DECIUS, METELLUS, TREBONIUS, CINNA, ANTONY, LEPIDUS, ARTEMIDORUS, PUBLIUS, POPILIUS Lena and the Soothsayer.

CAESAR     The Ides of March are come.

SOOTHSAYER     Ay, Caesar, but not gone.

ARTEMIDORUS     Hail, Caesar. Read this schedule.

DECIUS     Trebonius doth desire you to o’er-read

At your best leisure this his humble suit.

5

ARTEMIDORUS     O Caesar, read mine first, for mine’s a suit

That touches Caesar nearer. Read it, great Caesar.

CAESAR     What touches us ourself shall be last served.

ARTEMIDORUS     Delay not, Caesar, read it instantly!

CAESAR     What, is the fellow mad?

PUBLIUS     Sirrah, give place.

10

CASSIUS     What, urge you your petitions in the street?

Come to the Capitol.

[Caesar and his followers move upstage.]

POPILIUS     I wish your enterprise today may thrive.

CASSIUS     What enterprise, Popilius?

POPILIUS     Fare you well.

BRUTUS     What said Popilius Lena?

15

CASSIUS     He wished today our enterprise might thrive.

I fear our purpose is discovered.

BRUTUS     Look how he makes to Caesar. Mark him.

CASSIUS     Caska, be sudden, for we fear prevention.

Brutus, what shall be done? If this be known,

20

Cassius or Caesar never shall turn back,

For I will slay myself.

BRUTUS     Cassius, be constant.

Popilius     Lena speaks not of our purposes,

For look, he smiles, and Caesar doth not change.

CASSIUS     Trebonius knows his time: for look you, Brutus,

25

He draws Mark Antony out of the way.

Exeunt Antony and Trebonius.

DECIUS     Where is Metellus Cimber? Let him go

And presently prefer his suit to Caesar.

BRUTUS     He is addressed. Press near and second him.

CINNA     Caska, you are the first that rears your hand.

30

CAESAR     Are we all ready? What is now amiss

That Caesar and his Senate must redress?

METELLUS     Most high, most mighty and most puissant

Caesar,

Metellus     Cimber throws before thy seat

An humble heart –

CAESAR     I must prevent thee, Cimber:

35

These couchings and these lowly courtesies

Might fire the blood of ordinary men,

And turn pre-ordinance and first decree

Into the lane of children. Be not fond

To think that Caesar bears such rebel blood

40

That will be thawed from the true quality

With that which melteth fools – I mean sweet words,

Low-crooked curtsies and base spaniel fawning.

Thy brother by decree is banished.

If thou dost bend and pray and fawn for him

45

I spurn thee like a cur out of my way.

Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause

Will he be satisfied.

METELLUS

Is there no voice more worthy than my own

To sound more sweetly in great Caesar’s ear

50

For the repealing of my banished brother?

BRUTUS     I kiss thy hand, but not in flattery, Caesar,

Desiring thee that Publius Cimber may

Have an immediate freedom of repeal.

CAESAR     What, Brutus?

CASSIUS     Pardon, Caesar: Caesar, pardon.

55

As low as to thy foot doth Cassius fall

To beg enfranchisement for Publius Cimber.

CAESAR     I could be well moved if I were as you:

If I could pray to move, prayers would move me.

But I am constant as the northern star,

60

Of whose true-fixed and resting quality

There is no fellow in the firmament.

The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks:

They are all fire, and every one doth shine;

But there’s but one in all doth hold his place.

65

So in the world: ’tis furnished well with men,

And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive.

Yet in the number I do know but one

That unassailable holds on his rank

Unshaked of motion. And that I am he

70

Let me a little show it even in this,

That I was constant Cimber should be banished

And constant do remain to keep him so.

CINNA     O Caesar –

CAESAR     Hence! Wilt thou lift up Olympus?

DECIUS     Great Caesar –

CAESAR     Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?

75

CASKA     Speak hands for me! [They stab Caesar.]

CAESAR     Et tu, Brute? – Then fall, Caesar. [Dies]

CINNA     Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!

Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets.

CASSIUS     Some to the common pulpits and cry out

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Liberty, freedom and enfranchisement!

BRUTUS     People and senators, be not affrighted.

Fly not. Stand still. Ambition’s debt is paid.

CASKA     Go to the pulpit, Brutus.

DECIUS     And Cassius too.

BRUTUS     Where’s Publius?

85

CINNA     Here, quite confounded with this mutiny.

METELLUS

Stand fast together, lest some friend of Caesar’s

Should chance –

BRUTUS     Talk not of standing. Publius, good cheer.

There is no harm intended to your person,

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Nor to no Roman else. So tell them, Publius.

CASSIUS     And leave us, Publius, lest that the people

Rushing on us, should do your age some mischief.

BRUTUS     Do so, and let no man abide this deed

But we the doers.

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Enter TREBONIUS.

CASSIUS     Where is Antony?

TREBONIUS     Fled to his house amazed.

Men, wives and children stare, cry out and run,

As it were doomsday.

BRUTUS     Fates, we will know your pleasures.

That we shall die we know; ’tis but the time

And drawing days out, that men stand upon.

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CASKA     Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life

Cuts off so many years of fearing death.

BRUTUS     Grant that, and then is death a benefit.

So are we Caesar’s friends that have abridged

His time of fearing death. Stoop, Romans, stoop,

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And let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood

Up to the elbows and besmear our swords.

Then walk we forth even to the market-place,

And waving our red weapons o’er our heads

Let’s all cry, ‘Peace, Freedom and Liberty.’

110

CASSIUS     Stoop, then, and wash. How many ages hence

Shall this our lofty scene be acted over

In states unborn and accents yet unknown?

BRUTUS     How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport

That now on Pompey’s basis lies along,

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No worthier than the dust?

CASSIUS     So oft as that shall be,

So often shall the knot of us be called

The men who gave their country liberty.

DECIUS     What, shall we forth?

CASSIUS     Ay, every man away.

Brutus     shall lead, and we will grace his heels

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With the most boldest and best hearts of Rome.

Enter a Servant.

BRUTUS     Soft, who comes here? A friend of Antony’s.

SERVANT     Thus, Brutus, did my master bid me kneel.

Thus did Mark Antony bid me fall down,

And being prostrate thus he bade me say:

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Brutus is noble, wise, valiant and honest.

Caesar was mighty, bold, royal and loving.

Say I love Brutus and I honour him.

Say I feared Caesar, honoured him and loved him.

If Brutus will vouchsafe that Antony

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May safely come to him and be resolved

How Caesar hath deserved to lie in death,

Mark Antony shall not love Caesar dead

So well as Brutus living, but will follow

The fortunes and affairs of noble Brutus

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Thorough the hazards of this untrod state

With all true faith. So says my master Antony.

BRUTUS     Thy master is a wise and valiant Roman;

I never thought him worse.

Tell him, so please him come unto this place

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He shall be satisfied; and by my honour

Depart untouched.

SERVANT     I’ll fetch him presently.     Exit.

BRUTUS     I know that we shall have him well to friend.

CASSIUS     I wish we may; but yet I have a mind

That fears him much, and my misgiving still

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Falls shrewdly to the purpose.

Enter ANTONY.

BRUTUS     But here comes Antony. Welcome, Mark Antony.

ANTONY     O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?

Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,

Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.

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I know not, gentlemen, what you intend,

Who else must be let blood, who else is rank.

If I myself, there is no hour so fit

As Caesar’s death’s hour, nor no instrument

Of half that worth as those your swords, made rich

155

With the most noble blood of all this world.

I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard,

Now, whilst your purple hands do reek and smoke,

Fulfil your pleasure. Live a thousand years,

I shall not find myself so apt to die.

160

No place shall please me so, no mean of death,

As here by Caesar, and by you cut off,

The choice and master spirits of this age.

BRUTUS     O Antony, beg not your death of us:

Though now we must appear bloody and cruel,

165

As by our hands and this our present act

You see we do, yet see you but our hands

And this the bleeding business they have done:

Our hearts you see not. They are pitiful,

And pity to the general wrong of Rome –

170

As fire drives out fire, so pity pity –

Hath done this deed on Caesar. For your part,

To you our swords have leaden points, Mark Antony.

Our arms in strength of malice, and our hearts

Of brothers’ temper, do receive you in,

175

With all kind love, good thoughts and reverence.

CASSIUS     Your voice shall be as strong as any man’s

In the disposing of new dignities.

BRUTUS     Only be patient till we have appeased

The multitude, beside themselves with fear,

180

And then we will deliver you the cause

Why I, that did love Caesar when I struck him,

Have thus proceeded.

ANTONY     I doubt not of your wisdom.

Let each man render me his bloody hand.

First, Marcus Brutus, will I shake with you.

185

Next, Caius Cassius, do I take your hand.

Now, Decius Brutus, yours. Now yours, Metellus.

Yours, Cinna; and my valiant Caska, yours.

Though last, not least in love, yours good Trebonius.

Gentlemen all: alas, what shall I say?

190

My credit now stands on such slippery ground

That one of two bad ways you must conceit me,

Either a coward or a flatterer.

That I did love thee, Caesar, O ’tis true:

If then thy spirit look upon us now,

195

Shall it not grieve thee dearer than thy death

To see thy Antony making his peace,

Shaking the bloody fingers of thy foes?

Most noble in the presence of thy corse,

Had I as many eyes as thou hast wounds,

200

Weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood,

It would become me better than to close

In terms of friendship with thine enemies.

Pardon me, Julius! Here wast thou bayed, brave hart.

Here didst thou fall. And here thy hunters stand

205

Signed in thy spoil and crimsoned in thy lethe.

O world, thou wast the forest to this hart,

And this indeed, O world, the heart of thee.

How like a deer, strucken by many princes,

Dost thou here lie?

210

CASSIUS     Mark Antony –

ANTONY     Pardon me, Caius Cassius.

The enemies of Caesar shall say this:

Then, in a friend, it is cold modesty.

CASSIUS     I blame you not for praising Caesar so,

But what compact mean you to have with us?

215

Will you be pricked in number of our friends,

Or shall we on, and not depend on you?

ANTONY     Therefore I took your hands, but was indeed

Swayed from the point by looking down on Caesar.

Friends am I with you all, and love you all,

220

Upon this hope, that you shall give me reasons

Why and wherein Caesar was dangerous.

BRUTUS     Or else were this a savage spectacle.

Our reasons are so full of good regard

That were you, Antony, the son of Caesar,

225

You should be satisfied.

ANTONY     That’s all I seek,

And am moreover suitor that I may

Produce his body to the market-place,

And in the pulpit, as becomes a friend,

Speak in the order of his funeral.

230

BRUTUS     You shall, Mark Antony.

CASSIUS     Brutus, a word with you.

[aside] You know not what you do. Do not consent

That Antony speak in his funeral.

Know you how much the people may be moved

By that which he will utter.

BRUTUS     By your pardon:

235

I will myself into the pulpit first,

And show the reason of our Caesar’s death.

What Antony shall speak, I will protest

He speaks by leave and by permission;

And that we are contented Caesar shall

240

Have all true rites and lawful ceremonies,

It shall advantage more than do us wrong.

CASSIUS     I know not what may fall. I like it not.

BRUTUS     Mark Antony, here, take you Caesar’s body.

You shall not in your funeral speech blame us,

245

But speak all good you can devise of Caesar,

And say you do’t by our permission:

Else shall you not have any hand at all

About his funeral. And you shall speak

In the same pulpit whereto I am going,

250

After my speech is ended.

ANTONY     Be it so.

I do desire no more.

BRUTUS     Prepare the body, then, and follow us.

Exeunt all but Antony.

ANTONY     O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,

That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.

255

Thou art the ruins of the noblest man

That ever lived in the tide of times.

Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood.

Over thy wounds now I do prophesy

(Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips

260

To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue)

A curse shall light upon the limbs of men:

Domestic fury and fierce civil strife

Shall cumber all the parts of Italy:

Blood and destruction shall be so in use,

265

And dreadful objects so familiar,

That mothers shall but smile when they behold

Their infants quartered with the hands of war:

All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,

And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,

270

With Ate by his side come hot from hell,

Shall in these confines, with a monarch’s voice,

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,

That this foul deed shall smell above the earth

With carrion men, groaning for burial.

275

Enter Octavius’ Servant.

You serve Octavius Caesar, do you not?

SERVANT     I do, Mark Antony.

ANTONY     Caesar did write for him to come to Rome.

SERVANT     He did receive his letters and is coming,

And bid me say to you by word of mouth –

280

O Caesar!

ANTONY     Thy heart is big: get thee apart and weep.

Passion, I see, is catching, for mine eyes,

Seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine,

Begin to water. Is thy master coming?

285

SERVANT     He lies tonight within seven leagues of Rome.

ANTONY

Post back with speed and tell him what hath chanced.

Here is a mourning Rome, a dangerous Rome,

No Rome of safety for Octavius yet.

Hie hence, and tell him so. Yet stay awhile –

290

Thou shalt not back till I have borne this corpse

Into the market-place. There shall I try

In my oration how the people take

The cruel issue of these bloody men,

According to the which thou shalt discourse

295

To young Octavius of the state of things.

Lend me your hand.     Exeunt.

3.2 Enter BRUTUS and CASSIUS with the Plebeians.

PLEBEIANS     We will be satisfied: let us be satisfied.

BRUTUS     Then follow me, and give me audience, friends.

Cassius, go you into the other street

And part the numbers:

Those that will hear me speak, let ’em stay here.

5

Those that will follow Cassius, go with him

And public reasons shall be rendered

Of Caesar’s death. [Goes into the pulpit.]

1 PLEBEIAN     I will hear Brutus speak.

2 PLEBEIAN     I will hear Cassius, and compare their

reasons

When severally we hear them rendered.

10

Exeunt Cassius and some of the Plebeians.

3 PLEBEIAN The noble Brutus is ascended. Silence.

BRUTUS

Be patient till the last.

Romans, countrymen and lovers, hear me for my cause

and be silent, that you may hear. Believe me for mine

honour and have respect to mine honour, that you may

15

believe. Censure me in your wisdom and awake your

senses, that you may the better judge. If there be any

in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I

say, that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his. If

then that friend demand why Brutus rose against

20

Caesar, this is my answer: not that I loved Caesar less,

but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar

were living, and die all slaves, than that Caesar were

dead, to live all freemen? As Caesar loved me, I weep

for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was

25

valiant, I honour him: but as he was ambitious, I slew

him. There is tears, for his love; joy, for his fortune;

honour, for his valour; and death, for his ambition.

Who is here so base, that would be a bondman? If any,

speak, for him have I offended. Who is here so rude,

30

that would not be a Roman? If any, speak, for him have

I offended. Who is here so vile, that will not love his

country? If any, speak, for him have I offended. I pause

for a reply.

ALL     None, Brutus, none.

35

BRUTUS     Then none have I offended. I have done no

more to Caesar, than you shall do to Brutus. The

question of his death is enrolled in the Capitol: his

glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy, nor his

offences enforced, for which he suffered death.

40

Enter Mark ANTONY with CAESAR’s body.

Here comes his body, mourned by Mark Antony, who,

though he had no hand in his death, shall receive the

benefit of his dying, a place in the commonwealth, as

which of you shall not? With this I depart, that as I

slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the

45

same dagger for myself, when it shall please my

country to need my death. [Comes down.]

ALL Live Brutus, live, live.

1 PLEBEIAN

Bring him with triumph home unto his house.

2 PLEBEIAN     Give him a statue with his ancestors.

50

3 PLEBEIAN     Let him be Caesar.

4 PLEBEIAN     Caesar’s better parts

Shall be crowned in Brutus.

1 PLEBEIAN

We’ll bring him to his house with shouts and clamours.

BRUTUS     My countrymen.

2 PLEBEIAN     Peace, silence, Brutus speaks.

1 PLEBEIAN     Peace ho.

55

BRUTUS     Good countrymen, let me depart alone,

And, for my sake, stay here with Antony:

Do grace to Caesar’s corpse and grace his speech

Tending to Caesar’s glories, which Mark Antony,

By our permission, is allowed to make.

60

I do intreat you, not a man depart

Save I alone, till Antony have spoke.     Exit.

1 PLEBEIAN     Stay ho, and let us hear Mark Antony.

3 PLEBEIAN     Let him go up into the public chair.

We’ll hear him. Noble Antony, go up.

65

ANTONY     For Brutus’ sake I am beholding to you.

[Goes into the pulpit.]

4 PLEBEIAN     What does he say of Brutus?

3 PLEBEIAN     He says, for Brutus’ sake

He finds himself beholding to us all.

4 PLEBEIAN

’Twere best he speak no harm of Brutus here.

1 PLEBEIAN

This Caesar was a tyrant.

3 PLEBEIAN     Nay, that’s certain.

70

We are blest that Rome is rid of him.

2 PLEBEIAN     Peace, let us hear what Antony can say.

ANTONY     You gentle Romans.

ALL     Peace ho, let us hear him.

ANTONY

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears:

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

75

The evil that men do lives after them:

The good is oft interred with their bones.

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus

Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

80

And grievously hath Caesar answered it.

Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest

(For Brutus is an honourable man;

So are they all, all honourable men)

Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.

85

He was my friend, faithful and just to me;

But Brutus says, he was ambitious,

And Brutus is an honourable man.

He hath brought many captives home to Rome,

Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.

90

Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious,

And Brutus is an honourable man.

95

You all did see, that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?

Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious,

And sure he is an honourable man.

100

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love him once, not without cause:

What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?

O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts

105

And men have lost their reason. Bear with me.

My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,

And I must pause till it come back to me.

1 PLEBEIAN     Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.

2 PLEBEIAN     If thou consider rightly of the matter, Caesar has had great wrong.

110

3 PLEBEIAN     Has he, masters?

I fear there will a worse come in his place.

4 PLEBEIAN

Mark ye his words? He would not take the crown;

Therefore ’tis certain he was not ambitious.

1 PLEBEIAN     If it be found so, some will dear abide it.

115

2 PLEBEIAN

Poor soul, his eyes are red as fire with weeping.

3 PLEBEIAN

There’s not a nobler man in Rome than Antony.

4 PLEBEIAN     Now mark him; he begins again to speak.

ANTONY     But yesterday the word of Caesar might

Have stood against the world. Now lies he there,

120

And none so poor to do him reverence.

O masters! If I were disposed to stir

Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,

I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,

Who (you all know) are honourable men.

125

I will not do them wrong. I rather choose

To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,

Than I will wrong such honourable men.

But here’s a parchment, with the seal of Caesar.

I found it in his closet. ’Tis his will.

130

Let but the commons hear this testament –

Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read –

And they would go and kiss dead Caesar’s wounds,

And dip their napkins in his sacred blood,

Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,

135

And, dying, mention it within their wills,

Bequeathing it as a rich legacy

Unto their issue.

4 PLEBEIAN     We’ll hear the will. Read it, Mark Antony.

ALL     The will, the will. We will hear Caesar’s will.

140

ANTONY

Have patience, gentle friends. I must not read it.

It is not meet you know how Caesar loved you.

You are not wood, you are not stones, but men:

And being men, hearing the will of Caesar,

It will inflame you, it will make you mad.

145

’Tis good you know not that you are his heirs,

For if you should, O what would come of it?

4 PLEBEIAN     Read the will, we’ll hear it, Antony.

You shall read us the will, Caesar’s will.

ANTONY     Will you be patient? Will you stay awhile?

150

I have o’ershot myself to tell you of it.

I fear I wrong the honourable men

Whose daggers have stabbed Caesar: I do fear it.

4 PLEBEIAN     They were traitors: honourable men?

ALL     The will, the testament.

155

2 PLEBEIAN

They were villains, murderers. The will, read the will.

ANTONY     You will compel me then to read the will?

Then make a ring about the corpse of Caesar,

And let me show you him that made the will.

Shall I descend? And will you give me leave?

160

ALL     Come down.

2 PLEBEIAN     Descend.

[Antony comes down from the pulpit.]

3 PLEBEIAN     You shall have leave.

4 PLEBEIAN     A ring.

Stand round.

1 PLEBEIAN

Stand from the hearse, stand from the body.

2 PLEBEIAN     Room for Antony, most noble Antony.

ANTONY     Nay, press not so upon me. Stand far off.

165

ALL     Stand back. Room, bear back.

ANTONY     If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

You all do know this mantle. I remember

The first time ever Caesar put it on.

’Twas on a summer’s evening in his tent,

170

That day he overcame the Nervii.

Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through:

See what a rent the envious Caska made:

Through this, the well-beloved Brutus stabbed,

And as he plucked his cursed steel away,

175

Mark how the blood of Caesar followed it,

As rushing out of doors to be resolved

If Brutus so unkindly knocked or no;

For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel.

Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him.

180

This was the most unkindest cut of all:

For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,

Ingratitude, more strong than traitor’s arms,

Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart;

And in his mantle muffling up his face,

185

Even at the base of Pompey’s statue,

Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.

O what a fall was there, my countrymen!

Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,

Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.

190

O, now you weep, and I perceive you feel

The dint of pity: these are gracious drops.

Kind souls, what weep you when you but behold

Our Caesar’s vesture wounded? Look you here,

Here is himself, marred as you see with traitors.

195

1 PLEBEIAN     O piteous spectacle!

2 PLEBEIAN     O noble Caesar!

3 PLEBEIAN     O woeful day!

4 PLEBEIAN     O traitors, villains!

1 PLEBEIAN     O most bloody sight!

2 PLEBEIAN     We will be revenged!

ALL

Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay!

Let not a traitor live!

ANTONY     Stay, countrymen.

200

1 PLEBEIAN     Peace there, hear the noble Antony.

ALL

We’ll hear him, we’ll follow him, we’ll die with him!

ANTONY

Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up

To such a sudden flood of mutiny:

They that have done this deed are honourable.

205

What private griefs they have, alas, I know not,

That made them do it: they are wise and honourable

And will no doubt with reasons answer you.

I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts.

I am no orator, as Brutus is,

210

But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man

That love my friend, and that they know full well

That gave me public leave to speak of him.

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,

Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech

215

To stir men’s blood. I only speak right on:

I tell you that which you yourselves do know,

Show you sweet Caesar’s wounds, poor poor dumb mouths,

And bid them speak for me. But were I Brutus,

And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony

220

Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue

In every wound of Caesar that should move

The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.

ALL     We’ll mutiny.

1 PLEBEIAN     We’ll burn the house of Brutus.

3 PLEBEIAN     Away then, come, seek the conspirators.

225

ANTONY     Yet hear me, countrymen, yet hear me speak.

ALL     Peace ho, hear Antony, most noble Antony.

ANTONY

Why, friends, you go to do you know not what.

Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves?

Alas, you know not. I must tell you then.

230

You have forgot the will I told you of.

ALL     Most true. The will, let’s stay and hear the will.

ANTONY     Here is the will, and under Caesar’s seal.

To every Roman citizen he gives,

To every several man, seventy-five drachmas.

235

2 PLEBEIAN     Most noble Caesar, we’ll revenge his death.

3 PLEBEIAN     O royal Caesar!

ANTONY     Hear me with patience.

ALL     Peace ho.

ANTONY     Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,

His private arbours and new-planted orchards,

On this side Tiber. He hath left them you

240

And to your heirs for ever: common pleasures

To walk abroad and recreate yourselves.

Here was a Caesar: when comes such another?

1 PLEBEIAN     Never, never. Come, away, away.

We’ll burn his body in the holy place,

245

And with the brands fire all the traitors’ houses.

Take up the body.

2 PLEBEIAN     Go fetch fire.

3 PLEBEIAN     Pluck down benches.

4 PLEBEIAN     Pluck down forms, windows, anything.

250

Exit Plebeians with the body.

ANTONY     Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot:

Take thou what course thou wilt.

Enter Servant.

How now, fellow?

SERVANT     Sir, Octavius is already come to Rome.

ANTONY     Where is he?

SERVANT     He and Lepidus are at Caesar’s house.

ANTONY     And thither will I straight to visit him.

255

He comes upon a wish. Fortune is merry

And in this mood will give us anything.

SERVANT     I heard him say Brutus and Cassius

Are rid like madmen through the gates of Rome.

ANTONY     Belike they had some notice of the people

260

How I had moved them. Bring me to Octavius.

Exeunt.

3.3 Enter CINNA the poet, and after him the Plebeians.

CINNA     I dreamt tonight that I did feast with Caesar,

And things unluckily charge my fantasy.

I have no will to wander forth of doors,

Yet something leads me forth.

1 PLEBEIAN     What is your name?

5

2 PLEBEIAN     Whither are you going?

3 PLEBEIAN     Where do you dwell?

4 PLEBEIAN     Are you a married man or a bachelor?

2 PLEBEIAN     Answer every man directly.

1 PLEBEIAN     Ay, and briefly.

10

4 PLEBEIAN     Ay, and wisely.

3 PLEBEIAN     Ay, and truly, you were best.

CINNA     What is my name? Whither am I going? Where

do I dwell? Am I a married man or a bachelor? Then

to answer every man, directly and briefly, wisely and

15

truly: wisely I say, I am a bachelor.

2 PLEBEIAN     That’s as much as to say they are fools that

marry. You’ll bear me a bang for that, I fear. Proceed,

directly.

CINNA     Directly, I am going to Caesar’s funeral.

20

1 PLEBEIAN     As a friend or an enemy?

CINNA     As a friend.

2 PLEBEIAN     That matter is answered directly.

4 PLEBEIAN     For your dwelling, briefly.

CINNA     Briefly, I dwell by the Capitol.

25

3 PLEBEIAN     Your name, sir, truly.

CINNA     Truly, my name is Cinna.

1 PLEBEIAN     Tear him to pieces, he’s a conspirator.

CINNA     I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.

4 PLEBEIAN     Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his

30

bad verses.

CINNA     I am not Cinna the conspirator.

4 PLEBEIAN     It is no matter, his name’s Cinna. Pluck but

his name out of his heart and turn him going.

3 PLEBEIAN     Tear him, tear him! [They set upon him.]

35

ALL     Come, brands, ho! Firebrands! To Brutus’, to

Cassius’, burn all! Some to Decius’ house, and some to

Casca’s, some to Ligarius’! Away, go!

Exeunt all the Plebeians dragging off Cinna.

4.1 Enter ANTONY, OCTAVIUS and LEPIDUS.

ANTONY

These many, then, shall die; their names are pricked.

OCTAVIUS

Your brother too must die; consent you, Lepidus?

LEPIDUS     I do consent.

OCTAVIUS     Prick him down, Antony.

LEPIDUS     Upon condition Publius shall not live,

Who is your sister’s son, Mark Antony.

5

ANTONY

He shall not live. Look, with a spot I damn him.

But, Lepidus, go you to Caesar’s house:

Fetch the will hither, and we shall determine

How to cut off some charge in legacies.

LEPIDUS     What, shall I find you here?

10

OCTAVIUS     Or here, or at the Capitol.     Exit Lepidus.

ANTONY     This is a slight unmeritable man,

Meet to be sent on errands: is it fit,

The threefold world divided, he should stand

One of the three to share it?

OCTAVIUS     So you thought him,

15

And took his voice who should be pricked to die

In our black sentence and proscription.

ANTONY     Octavius, I have seen more days than you;

And though we lay these honours on this man

To ease ourselves of diverse slanderous loads,

20

He shall but bear them as the ass bears gold,

To groan and sweat under the business,

Either led or driven, as we point the way:

And having brought our treasure where we will,

Then take we down his load and turn him off,

25

Like to the empty ass, to shake his ears

And graze in commons.

OCTAVIUS     You may do your will;

But he’s a tried and valiant soldier.

ANTONY     So is my horse, Octavius, and for that

I do appoint him store of provender.

30

It is a creature that I teach to fight,

To wind, to stop, to run directly on,

His corporal motion governed by my spirit,

And, in some taste, is Lepidus but so:

He must be taught, and trained, and bid go forth;

35

A barren-spirited fellow; one that feeds

On objects, arts and imitations

Which, out of use and staled by other men,

Begin his fashion. Do not talk of him

But as a property. And now, Octavius,

40

Listen great things. Brutus and Cassius

Are levying powers. We must straight make head.

Therefore let our alliance be combined,

Our best friends made, our means stretched,

And let us presently go sit in counsel,

45

How covert matters may be best disclosed,

And open perils surest answered.

OCTAVIUS     Let us do so: for we are at the stake

And bayed about with many enemies,

And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear,

50

Millions of mischiefs.     Exeunt.

4.2 Drum. Enter BRUTUS, LUCILIUS and the army. TITINIUS and PINDARUS meet them.

BRUTUS     Stand ho.

LUCILIUS     Give the word, ho, and stand.

BRUTUS     What now, Lucilius, is Cassius near?

LUCILIUS     He is at hand, and Pindarus is come

To do you salutation from his master.

5

BRUTUS     He greets me well. Your master, Pindarus,

In his own change, or by ill officers,

Hath given me some worthy cause to wish

Things done, undone: but if he be at hand

I shall be satisfied.

PINDARUS     I do not doubt

10

But that my noble master will appear

Such as he is, full of regard and honour.

BRUTUS     He is not doubted. A word, Lucilius,

How he received you: let me be resolved.

LUCILIUS     With courtesy and with respect enough,

15

But not with such familiar instances

Nor with such free and friendly conference

As he hath used of old.

BRUTUS     Thou hast described

A hot friend, cooling. Ever note, Lucilius,

When love begins to sicken and decay

20

It useth an enforced ceremony.

There are no tricks in plain and simple faith:

But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,

Make gallant show and promise of their mettle:

[Low march within.]

But when they should endure the bloody spur,

25

They fall their crests, and like deceitful jades

Sink in the trial. Comes his army on?

LUCILIUS

They mean this night in Sardis to be quartered.

The greater part, the horse in general,

Are come with Cassius.

Enter CASSIUS and his powers.

BRUTUS     Hark, he is arrived.

30

March gently on to meet him.

CASSIUS     Stand ho.

BRUTUS     Stand ho. Speak the word along.

1 SOLDIER     Stand.

2 SOLDIER     Stand.

35

3 SOLDIER     Stand.

CASSIUS     Most noble brother, you have done me wrong.

BRUTUS     Judge me, you gods; wrong I mine enemies?

And if not so, how should I wrong a brother?

CASSIUS

Brutus, this sober form of yours hides wrongs,

40

And when you do them –

BRUTUS     Cassius, be content.

Speak your griefs softly. I do know you well.

Before the eyes of both our armies here,

Which should perceive nothing but love from us,

Let us not wrangle. Bid them move away:

45

Then in my tent, Cassius, enlarge your griefs

And I will give you audience.

CASSIUS     Pindarus,

Bid our commanders lead their charges off

A little from this ground.

BRUTUS     Lucilius, do you the like, and let no man

50

Come to our tent till we have done our conference.

Let Lucius and Titinius guard our door.

Exeunt all but Brutus and Cassius.

4.3

CASSIUS

That you have wronged me doth appear in this:

You have condemned and noted Lucius Pella

For taking bribes here of the Sardians;

Wherein my letters, praying on his side

Because I knew the man, was slighted off.

5

BRUTUS     You wronged yourself to write in such a case.

CASSIUS     In such a time as this it is not meet

That every nice offence should bear his comment.

BRUTUS     Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself

Are much condemned to have an itching palm,

10

To sell and mart your offices for gold

To undeservers.

CASSIUS     I, an itching palm?

You know that you are Brutus that speaks this,

Or, by the gods, this speech were else your last.

BRUTUS     The name of Cassius honours this corruption,

15

And chastisement doth therefore hide his head.

CASSIUS     Chastisement?

BRUTUS

Remember March, the Ides of March remember:

Did not great Julius bleed for justice’ sake?

What villain touched his body, that did stab

20

And not for justice? What, shall one of us,

That struck the foremost man of all this world

But for supporting robbers: shall we now

Contaminate our fingers with base bribes,

And sell the mighty space of our large honours

25

For so much trash as may be grasped thus?

I had rather be a dog and bay the moon

Than such a Roman.

CASSIUS     Brutus, bait not me.

I’ll not endure it. You forget yourself

To hedge me in. I am a soldier, I,

30

Older in practice, abler than yourself

To make conditions.

BRUTUS     Go to, you are not, Cassius.

CASSIUS     I am.

BRUTUS     I say you are not.

CASSIUS     Urge me no more. I shall forget myself.

35

Have mind upon your health. Tempt me no farther.

BRUTUS     Away, slight man!

CASSIUS     Is’t possible?

BRUTUS     Hear me, for I will speak.

Must I give way and room to your rash choler?

Shall I be frighted when a madman stares?

40

CASSIUS     O ye gods, ye gods, must I endure all this?

BRUTUS

All this? Ay, more: fret till your proud heart break.

Go show your slaves how choleric you are,

And make your bondmen tremble. Must I budge?

Must I observe you? Must I stand and crouch

45

Under your testy humour? By the gods,

You shall digest the venom of your spleen

Though it do split you; for, from this day forth,

I’ll use you for my mirth, yea for my laughter,

When you are waspish.

CASSIUS     Is it come to this?

50

BRUTUS     You say you are a better soldier:

Let it appear so. Make your vaunting true

And it shall please me well. For mine own part,

I shall be glad to learn of noble men.

CASSIUS

You wrong me every way: you wrong me, Brutus.

55

I said an elder soldier, not a better.

Did I say better?

BRUTUS     If you did, I care not.

CASSIUS

When Caesar lived he durst not thus have moved me.

BRUTUS

Peace, peace, you durst not so have tempted him.

CASSIUS     I durst not?

60

BRUTUS     No.

CASSIUS     What, durst not tempt him?

BRUTUS     For your life you durst not.

CASSIUS     Do not presume too much upon my love:

I may do that I shall be sorry for.

BRUTUS     You have done that you should be sorry for.

65

There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats:

For I am armed so strong in honesty

That they pass by me as the idle wind,

Which I respect not. I did send to you

For certain sums of gold, which you denied me,

70

For I can raise no money by vile means:

By heaven, I had rather coin my heart

And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring

From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash

By any indirection. I did send

75

To you for gold to pay my legions,

Which you denied me: was that done like Cassius?

Should I have answered Caius Cassius so?

When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous,

To lock such rascal counters from his friends,

80

Be ready gods with all your thunderbolts,

Dash him to pieces!

CASSIUS     I denied you not.

BRUTUS     You did.

CASSIUS     I did not. He was but a fool

That brought my answer back. Brutus hath rived my heart.

A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities,

85

But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.

BRUTUS     I do not, till you practise them on me.

CASSIUS     You love me not.

BRUTUS     I do not like your faults.

CASSIUS     A friendly eye could never see such faults.

BRUTUS

A flatterer’s would not, though they do appear

90

As huge as high Olympus.

CASSIUS     Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come,

Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius,

For Cassius is a-weary of the world:

Hated by one he loves, braved by his brother,

95

Checked like a bondman; all his faults observed,

Set in a notebook, learned and conned by rote

To cast into my teeth. O I could weep

My spirit from mine eyes! There is my dagger,

And here my naked breast: within, a heart

100

Dearer than Pluto’s mine, richer than gold.

If that thou beest a Roman, take it forth.

I that denied thee gold will give my heart.

Strike as thou didst at Caesar: for I know,

When thou didst hate him worst, thou lov’dst him better

105

Than ever thou lov’dst Cassius.

BRUTUS     Sheathe your dagger:

Be angry when you will, it shall have scope:

Do what you will, dishonour shall be humour.

O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb

That carries anger as the flint bears fire,

110

Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark

And straight is cold again.

CASSIUS     Hath Cassius lived

To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus,

When grief and blood ill-tempered vexeth him?

BRUTUS     When I spoke that, I was ill-tempered too.

115

CASSIUS     Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.

BRUTUS     And my heart too.

CASSIUS     O Brutus!

BRUTUS     What’s the matter?

CASSIUS     Have you not love enough to bear with me,

When that rash humour which my mother gave me

Makes me forgetful?

BRUTUS     Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth

120

When you are over-earnest with your Brutus,

He’ll think your mother chides, and leave you so.

Enter a Poet, LUCILIUS and TITINIUS.

POET     Let me go in to see the generals.

There is some grudge between ‘em; ’tis not meet

They be alone.

LUCILIUS     You shall not come to them.

125

POET     Nothing but death shall stay me.

CASSIUS     How now? What’s the matter?

POET     For shame, you generals, what do you mean?

Love and be friends, as two such men should be,

For I have seen more years, I’m sure, than ye.

130

CASSIUS     Ha, ha, how vildly doth this cynic rhyme.

BRUTUS     Get you hence, sirrah; saucy fellow, hence.

CASSIUS     Bear with him, Brutus, ’tis his fashion.

BRUTUS     I’ll know his humour when he knows his time.

What should the wars do with these jigging fools?

135

Companion, hence.

CASSIUS     Away, away, be gone.     Exit Poet.

BRUTUS     Lucilius and Titinius, bid the commanders

Prepare to lodge their companies tonight.

CASSIUS

And come yourselves, and bring Messala with you

Immediately to us.     Exeunt Lucilius and Titinius.

BRUTUS     [Calls.] Lucius! A bowl of wine.

140

CASSIUS     I did not think you could have been so angry.

BRUTUS     O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs.

CASSIUS     Of your philosophy you make no use

If you give place to accidental evils.

BRUTUS     No man bears sorrow better. Portia is dead.

145

CASSIUS     Ha? Portia?

BRUTUS     She is dead.

CASSIUS     How scaped I killing when I crossed you so?

O insupportable and touching loss!

Upon what sickness?

BRUTUS     Impatient of my absence,

150

And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony

Have made themselves so strong – for with her death

That tidings came – with this she fell distract,

And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.

CASSIUS     And died so?

BRUTUS     Even so.

CASSIUS     O ye immortal gods!

155

Enter LUCIUS with wine and tapers.

BRUTUS

Speak no more of her: give me a bowl of wine.

In this I bury all unkindness, Cassius [Drinks.]

CASSIUS     My heart is thirsty for that noble pledge.

Fill, Lucius, till the wine o’er-swell the cup.

I cannot drink too much of Brutus’ love. Exit Lucius.

160

Enter TITINIUS and MESSALA.

BRUTUS     Come in, Titinius. Welcome, good Messala.

Now sit we close about this taper here

And call in question our necessities.

CASSIUS     Portia, art thou gone?

BRUTUS     No more, I pray you.

Messala, I have here received letters

That young Octavius and Mark Antony

165

Come down upon us with a mighty power,

Bending their expedition toward Philippi.

MESSALA     Myself have letters of the selfsame tenor.

BRUTUS     With what addition?

MESSALA     That by proscription and bills of outlawry

170

Octavius, Antony and Lepidus

Have put to death an hundred senators.

BRUTUS     Therein our letters do not well agree.

Mine speak of seventy senators that died

By their proscriptions, Cicero being one.

175

CASSIUS     Cicero one?

MESSALA     Cicero is dead,

And by that order of proscription.

Had you your letters from your wife, my lord?

BRUTUS     No, Messala.

MESSALA     Nor nothing in your letters writ of her?

180

BRUTUS     Nothing, Messala.

MESSALA     That methinks is strange.

BRUTUS     Why ask you? Hear you aught of her in yours?

MESSALA     No, my lord.

BRUTUS     Now, as you are a Roman, tell me true.

MESSALA     Then like a Roman bear the truth I tell,

185

For certain she is dead, and by strange manner.

BRUTUS     Why, farewell, Portia: we must die, Messala:

With meditating that she must die once

I have the patience to endure it now.

MESSALA

190

Even so great men great losses should endure.

CASSIUS     I have as much of this in art as you,

But yet my nature could not bear it so.

BRUTUS     Well, to our work alive. What do you think

Of marching to Philippi presently?

CASSIUS     I do not think it good.

195

BRUTUS     Your reason?

CASSIUS     This it is:

’Tis better that the enemy seek us,

So shall he waste his means, weary his soldiers,

Doing himself offence, whilst we, lying still,

Are full of rest, defence and nimbleness.

BRUTUS

200

Good reasons must of force give place to better:

The people ’twixt Philippi and this ground

Do stand but in a forced affection,

For they have grudged us contribution.

The enemy, marching along by them,

By them shall make a fuller number up,

205

Come on refreshed, new-added and encouraged;

From which advantage shall we cut him off

If at Philippi we do face him there,

These people at our back.

CASSIUS     Hear me, good brother.

BRUTUS     Under your pardon. You must note beside

210

That we have tried the utmost of our friends,

Our legions are brimful, our cause is ripe.

The enemy increaseth every day;

We, at the height, are ready to decline.

There is a tide in the affairs of men

215

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune:

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves,

220

Or lose our ventures.

CASSIUS     Then with your will go on.

We’ll along ourselves, and meet them at Philippi.

BRUTUS     The deep of night is crept upon our talk,

And nature must obey necessity,

Which we will niggard with a little rest.

225

There is no more to say.

CASSIUS     No more. Good night.

Early tomorrow will we rise, and hence.

Enter LUCIUS.

BRUTUS     Lucius. My gown.     Exit Lucius.

Farewell, good Messala.

Good night, Titinius. Noble, noble Cassius,

Good night, and good repose.

230

CASSIUS     O my dear brother,

This was an ill beginning of the night.

Never come such division ’tween our souls.

Let it not, Brutus.

Enter LUCIUS with the gown.

BRUTUS     Everything is well.

CASSIUS     Good night, my lord.

BRUTUS     Good night, good brother.

TITINIUS, MESSALA     Good night, Lord Brutus.

235

BRUTUS     Farewell, every one.

Exeunt Cassius, Titinius and Messala.

Give me the gown. Where is thy instrument?

LUCIUS     Here in the tent.

BRUTUS     What, thou speak’st drowsily?

Poor knave, I blame thee not; thou art o’erwatched.

Call Claudio and some other of my men.

I’ll have them sleep on cushions in my tent.

240

LUCIUS     Varrus and Claudio!

Enter VARRUS and CLAUDIO.

VARRUS     Calls my lord?

BRUTUS     I pray you, sirs, lie in my tent and sleep.

It may be I shall raise you by and by

On business to my brother Cassius.

245

VARRUS

So please you, we will stand and watch your pleasure.

BRUTUS     I will not have it so: lie down, good sirs.

It may be I shall otherwise bethink me.

Look, Lucius, here’s the book I sought for so:

I put it in the pocket of my gown.

250

LUCIUS     I was sure your lordship did not give it me.

BRUTUS     Bear with me, good boy, I am much forgetful.

Canst thou hold up thy heavy eyes awhile

And touch thy instrument a strain or two?

LUCIUS     Ay, my lord, an’t please you.

255

BRUTUS     It does, my boy.

I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing.

LUCIUS     It is my duty, sir.

BRUTUS     I should not urge thy duty past thy might.

I know young bloods look for a time of rest.

LUCIUS     I have slept, my lord, already.

260

BRUTUS     It was well done, and thou shalt sleep again.

I will not hold thee long. If I do live,

I will be good to thee.     [Music, and a song.]

This is a sleepy tune: O murderous slumber!

Layest thou thy leaden mace upon my boy

265

That plays thee music? Gentle knave, good night:

I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee.

If thou dost nod, thou break’st thy instrument;

I’ll take it from thee; and, good boy, good night.

Let me see, let me see: is not the leaf turned down

270

Where I left reading? Here it is, I think.

Enter the Ghost of Caesar.

How ill this taper burns. Ha! Who comes here?

I think it is the weakness of mine eyes

That shapes this monstrous apparition.

It comes upon me: art thou any thing?

275

Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil,

That mak’st my blood cold, and my hair to stare?

Speak to me what thou art.

GHOST     Thy evil spirit, Brutus.

BRUTUS     Why com’st thou?

GHOST     To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi.

280

BRUTUS     Well: then I shall see thee again?

GHOST     Ay, at Philippi.

BRUTUS

Why, I will see thee at Philippi then:     Exit Ghost.

Now I have taken heart thou vanishest.

Ill spirit, I would hold more talk with thee.

285

Boy, Lucius, Varrus, Claudio, sirs, awake!

Claudio!

LUCIUS     The strings, my lord, are false.

BRUTUS     He thinks he still is at his instrument.

Lucius, awake.

290

LUCIUS     My lord?

BRUTUS

Didst thou dream, Lucius, that thou so cried’st out?

LUCIUS     My lord, I do not know that I did cry.

BRUTUS     Yes, that thou didst. Didst thou see anything?

LUCIUS     Nothing, my lord.

295

BRUTUS     Sleep again, Lucius. Sirrah Claudio,

Fellow, thou, awake!

VARRUS     My lord?

CLAUDIO     My lord?

BRUTUS     Why did you so cry out, sirs, in your sleep?

BOTH     Did we, my lord?

BRUTUS     Ay. Saw you anything?

VARRUS     No, my lord, I saw nothing.

300

CLAUDIO     Nor I, my lord.

BRUTUS

Go and commend me to my brother Cassius.

Bid him set on his powers betimes before

And we will follow.

BOTH     It shall be done, my lord. Exeunt.

5.1 Enter OCTAVIUS, ANTONY and their army.

OCTAVIUS     Now, Antony, our hopes are answered.

You said the enemy would not come down,

But keep the hills and upper regions.

It proves not so: their battles are at hand.

They mean to warn us at Philippi here,

Answering before we do demand of them.

5

ANTONY     Tut, I am in their bosoms and I know

Wherefore they do it: they could be content

To visit other places, and come down

With fearful bravery, thinking by this face

To fasten in our thoughts that they have courage.

10

But ’tis not so.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     Prepare you, generals:

The enemy comes on in gallant show.

Their bloody sign of battle is hung out,

And something to be done immediately.

ANTONY     Octavius, lead your battle softly on,

15

Upon the left hand of the even field.

OCTAVIUS     Upon the right hand I. Keep thou the left.

ANTONY     Why do you cross me in this exigent?

OCTAVIUS     I do not cross you: but I will do so. [March.]

Drum. Enter BRUTUS, CASSIUS and their army: LUCILIUS, TITINIUS, MESSALA and others

20

BRUTUS     They stand, and would have parley.

CASSIUS     Stand fast, Titinius. We must out and talk.

OCTAVIUS     Mark Antony, shall we give sign of battle?

ANTONY     No, Caesar, we will answer on their charge.

Make forth, the generals would have some words.

OCTAVIUS     [to a commander] Stir not until the signal.

25

BRUTUS     Words before blows: is it so, countrymen?

OCTAVIUS     Not that we love words better, as you do.

BRUTUS

Good words are better than bad strokes, Octavius.

ANTONY

In your bad strokes, Brutus, you give good words.

Witness the hole you made in Caesar’s heart,

30

Crying, ‘Long live! Hail, Caesar!’

CASSIUS     Antony,

The posture of your blows are yet unknown;

But, for your words, they rob the Hybla bees

And leave them honeyless.

ANTONY     Not stingless too?

BRUTUS     O yes, and soundless too.

35

For you have stol’n their buzzing, Antony,

And very wisely threat before you sting.

ANTONY

Villains! You did not so, when your vile daggers

Hacked one another in the sides of Caesar.

You showed your teeth like apes, and fawned like

hounds,

40

And bowed like bondsmen, kissing Caesar’s feet;

Whilst damned Caska, like a cur, behind

Struck Caesar in the neck. O you flatterers!

CASSIUS     Flatterers? Now, Brutus, thank yourself.

This tongue had not offended so today

If Cassius might have ruled.

45

OCTAVIUS

Come, come, the cause. If arguing makes us sweat,

The proof of it will turn to redder drops:

Look, I draw a sword against conspirators.

When think you that the sword goes up again?

Never till Caesar’s three and thirty wounds

50

Be well avenged, or till another Caesar

Have added slaughter to the sword of traitors.

BRUTUS     Caesar, thou canst not die by traitors’ hands

Unless thou bring’st them with thee.

OCTAVIUS     So I hope.

55

I was not born to die on Brutus’ sword.

BRUTUS     O, if thou wert the noblest of thy strain,

Young man, thou couldst not die more honourable.

CASSIUS

A peevish schoolboy, worthless of such honour,

Joined with a masquer and a reveller.

ANTONY     Old Cassius still.

60

OCTAVIUS     Come, Antony, away.

Defiance, traitors, hurl we in your teeth.

If you dare fight today, come to the field;

If not, when you have stomachs.

Exeunt Octavius, Antony and army.

CASSIUS

65

Why now, blow wind, swell billow and swim bark.

The storm is up and all is on the hazard.

BRUTUS     Ho, Lucilius, hark, a word with you.

LUCILIUS     My lord. [Brutus speaks apart to Lucilius.]

CASSIUS     Messala.

MESSALA     What says my general?

CASSIUS     Messala,

This is my birthday: as this very day

Was Cassius born. Give me thy hand, Messala:

70

Be thou my witness that against my will

(As Pompey was) am I compelled to set

Upon one battle all our liberties.

You know that I held Epicurus strong

And his opinion: now I change my mind

75

And partly credit things that do presage.

Coming from Sardis, on our former ensign

Two mighty eagles fell and there they perched,

Gorging and feeding from our soldiers’ hands,

Who to Philippi here consorted us:

80

This morning are they fled away and gone,

And in their steads do ravens, crows and kites

Fly o’er our heads and downward look on us

As we were sickly prey: their shadows seem

A canopy most fatal, under which

85

Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost.

MESSALA     Believe not so.

CASSIUS     I but believe it partly,

For I am fresh of spirit and resolved

To meet all perils very constantly.

BRUTUS     [Comes forward.] Even so, Lucilius.

90

CASSIUS     Now, most noble Brutus,

The gods today stand friendly, that we may,

Lovers in peace, lead on our days to age.

But since the affairs of men rest still incertain,

Let’s reason with the worst that may befall.

If we do lose this battle, then is this

95

The very last time we shall speak together.

What are you then determined to do?

BRUTUS     Even by the rule of that philosophy

By which I did blame Cato for the death

Which he did give himself – I know not how,

100

But I do find it cowardly and vile,

For fear of what might fall, so to prevent

The time of life – arming myself with patience

To stay the providence of some high powers

That govern us below.

105

CASSIUS     Then, if we lose this battle,

You are contented to be led in triumph

Thorough the streets of Rome?

BRUTUS     No, Cassius, no: think not, thou noble Roman,

That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome.

He bears too great a mind. But this same day

110

Must end that work the Ides of March begun;

And whether we shall meet again, I know not:

Therefore our everlasting farewell take:

For ever and for ever farewell, Cassius.

If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;

115

If not, why then this parting was well made.

CASSIUS     For ever and for ever farewell, Brutus:

If we do meet again, we’ll smile indeed;

If not, ’tis true this parting was well made.

BRUTUS     Why then, lead on. O that a man might know

120

The end of this day’s business ere it come:

But it sufficeth that the day will end,

And then the end is known. Come ho, away. Exeunt.

125

5.2 Alarum. Enter BRUTUS and MESSALA.

BRUTUS     Ride, ride, Messala, ride, and give these bills

Unto the legions on the other side. [Loud alarum.]

Let them set on at once, for I perceive

But cold demeanour in Octavius’ wing,

And sudden push gives them the overthrow.

Ride, ride, Messala. Let them all come down. Exeunt.

5

5.3 Alarums. Enter CASSIUS and TITINIUS.

CASSIUS     O look, Titinius, look, the villains fly:

Myself have to mine own turned enemy:

This ensign here of mine was turning back;

I slew the coward and did take it from him.

TITINIUS     O Cassius, Brutus gave the word too early,

Who having some advantage on Octavius

Took it too eagerly: his soldiers fell to spoil,

5

Whilst we by Antony are all enclosed.

Enter PINDARUS.

PINDARUS     Fly further off, my lord, fly further off,

Mark Antony is in your tents, my lord:

Fly, therefore, noble Cassius, fly far off.

CASSIUS     This hill is far enough. Look, look, Titinius,

10

Are those my tents where I perceive the fire?

TITINIUS     They are, my lord.

CASSIUS     Titinius, if thou lovest me,

Mount thou my horse and hide thy spurs in him,

Till he have brought thee up to yonder troops

And here again, that I may rest assured

15

Whether yond troops are friend or enemy.

TITINIUS

I will be here again, even with a thought.     Exit.

CASSIUS     Go, Pindarus, get higher on that hill;

My sight was ever thick: regard, Titinius,

And tell me what thou not’st about the field.

20

Exit Pindarus.

This day I breathed first. Time is come round;

And where I did begin, there shall I end.

My life is run his compass. Sirrah, what news?

PINDARUS     [above] O my lord!

CASSIUS     What news?

25

PINDARUS     Titinius is enclosed round about

With horsemen, that make to him on the spur,

Yet he spurs on. Now they are almost on him.

Now, Titinius. Now some light: O, he lights too.

He’s ta’en. [Shout.] And hark, they shout for joy.

30

CASSIUS     Come down, behold no more:

O, coward that I am, to live so long,

To see my best friend ta’en before my face.

Enter PINDARUS.

35

Come hither, sirrah.

In Parthia did I take thee prisoner,

And then I swore thee, saving of thy life,

That whatsoever I did bid thee do,

Thou shouldst attempt it. Come now, keep thine oath.

Now be a free man, and with this good sword

That ran through Caesar’s bowels, search this bosom.

40

Stand not to answer: here, take thou the hilts,

And when my face is covered, as ’tis now,

Guide thou the sword – Caesar, thou art revenged

Even with the sword that killed thee.

[Pindarus kills him.]

45

PINDARUS     So, I am free; yet would not so have been

Durst I have done my will. O Cassius!

Far from this country Pindarus shall run,

Where never Roman shall take note of him.     Exit.

Enter TITINIUS and MESSALA.

50

MESSALA     It is but change, Titinius: for Octavius

Is overthrown by noble Brutus’ power,

As Cassius’ legions are by Antony.

TITINIUS     These tidings will well comfort Cassius.

MESSALA     Where did you leave him?

TITINIUS     All disconsolate,

With Pindarus his bondman, on this hill.

MESSALA     Is not that he that lies upon the ground?

55

TITINIUS     He lies not like the living. O, my heart!

MESSALA     Is not that he?

TITINIUS     No, this was he, Messala,

But Cassius is no more. O setting sun:

As in thy red rays thou dost sink tonight,

So in his red blood Cassius’ day is set.

60

The sun of Rome is set. Our day is gone:

Clouds, dews and dangers come: our deeds are done.

Mistrust of my success hath done this deed.

MESSALA

Mistrust of good success hath done this deed.

65

O hateful Error, Melancholy’s child,

Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men

The things that are not? O Error, soon conceived,

Thou never com’st unto a happy birth

But kill’st the mother that engendered thee.

TITINIUS     What, Pindarus? Where art thou, Pindarus?

70

MESSALA     Seek him, Titinius, whilst I go to meet

The noble Brutus, thrusting this report

Into his ears. I may say thrusting it:

For piercing steel and darts envenomed

Shall be as welcome to the ears of Brutus

75

As tidings of this sight.

TITINIUS     Hie you, Messala,

And I will seek for Pindarus the while. Exit Messala.

Why didst thou send me forth, brave Cassius?

Did I not meet thy friends, and did not they

Put on my brows this wreath of victory

80

And bid me give it thee? Didst thou not hear their shouts?

Alas, thou hast misconstrued everything.

But hold thee, take this garland on thy brow;

Thy Brutus bid me give it thee, and I

Will do his bidding. Brutus, come apace,

85

And see how I regarded Caius Cassius.

By your leave, gods. This is a Roman’s part.

Come, Cassius’ sword, and find Titinius’ heart.

[Dies.]

90

Alarum. Enter BRUTUS, MESSALA, Young CATO, STRATO, VOLUMNIUS and LUCILIUS.

BRUTUS     Where, where, Messala, doth his body lie?

MESSALA     Lo yonder, and Titinius mourning it.

BRUTUS     Titinius’ face is upward.

CATO     He is slain.

BRUTUS     O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet.

Thy spirit walks abroad and turns our swords

In our own proper entrails.     [Low alarums.]

CATO     Brave Titinius.

95

Look whe’er he have not crowned dead Cassius.

BRUTUS     Are yet two Romans living such as these?

The last of all the Romans, fare thee well:

It is impossible that ever Rome

Should breed thy fellow. Friends, I owe more tears

To this dead man than you shall see me pay.

100

I shall find time, Cassius: I shall find time.

Come therefore, and to Thasos send his body.

His funerals shall not be in our camp,

Lest it discomfort us. Lucilius, come,

And come, young Cato: let us to the field.

105

Labio and Flavio set our battles on.

’Tis three o’clock; and, Romans, yet ere night,

We shall try fortune in a second fight.     Exeunt.

110

5.4 Alarum. Enter BRUTUS, MESSALA, Young CATO, LUCILIUS and FLAVIUS.

BRUTUS     Yet, countrymen: O yet, hold up your heads!

Exit fighting, followed by Messala and Flavius.

CATO     What bastard doth not? Who will go with me?

I will proclaim my name about the field.

I am the son of Marcus Cato, ho!

A foe to tyrants and my country’s friend.

I am the son of Marcus Cato, ho!

5

Enter Soldiers and fight.

LUCILIUS     And I am Brutus, Marcus Brutus, I!

Brutus, my country’s friend: know me for Brutus!

[Young Cato is killed.]

O young and noble Cato, art thou down?

Why, now thou diest as bravely as Titinius,

And mayst be honoured, being Cato’s son.

1 SOLDIER     Yield, or thou diest.

10

LUCILIUS     Only I yield to die.

There is so much that thou wilt kill me straight:

Kill Brutus and be honoured in his death.

1 SOLDIER     We must not: a noble prisoner!

Enter ANTONY.

15

2 SOLDIER     Room, ho! Tell Antony, Brutus is ta’en.

1 SOLDIER     I’ll tell the news. Here comes the general.

Brutus is ta’en, Brutus is ta’en, my lord.

ANTONY     Where is he?

LUCILIUS     Safe, Antony; Brutus is safe enough.

I dare assure thee that no enemy

Shall ever take alive the noble Brutus.

20

The gods defend him from so great a shame!

When you do find him, or alive or dead,

He will be found like Brutus, like himself.

ANTONY     This is not Brutus, friend, but, I assure you,

25

A prize no less in worth. Keep this man safe;

Give him all kindness. I had rather have

Such men my friends than enemies. Go on,

And see whe’er Brutus be alive or dead,

And bring us word unto Octavius’ tent

How everything is chanced.     Exeunt.

30

5.5 Enter BRUTUS, DARDANIUS, CLITUS, STRATO and VOLUMNIUS.

BRUTUS

Come, poor remains of friends, rest on this rock.

CLITUS     Statilius showed the torchlight, but, my lord,

He came not back. He is or ta’en or slain.

BRUTUS     Sit thee down, Clitus. Slaying is the word.

It is a deed in fashion. Hark thee, Clitus. [Whispers.]

CLITUS     What, I, my lord? No, not for all the world.

BRUTUS     Peace, then. No words.

5

CLITUS     I’ll rather kill myself.

BRUTUS     Hark thee, Dardanius. [Whispers.]

DARDANIUS     Shall I do such a deed?

CLITUS     O Dardanius!

DARDANIUS     O Clitus!

CLITUS     What ill request did Brutus make to thee?

DARDANIUS     To kill him, Clitus. Look, he meditates.

10

CLITUS     Now is that noble vessel full of grief,

That it runs over even at his eyes.

BRUTUS     Come hither, good Volumnius, list a word.

VOLUMNIUS     What says my lord?

BRUTUS     Why this, Volumnius:

15

The ghost of Caesar hath appeared to me

Two several times by night: at Sardis once,

And this last night, here in Philippi fields:

I know my hour is come.

VOLUMNIUS     Not so, my lord.

BRUTUS     Nay, I am sure it is, Volumnius.

Thou seest the world, Volumnius, how it goes.

20

Our enemies have beat us to the pit. [Low alarums.]

It is more worthy to leap in ourselves

Than tarry till they push us. Good Volumnius,

Thou knowst that we two went to school together:

Even for that our love of old, I prithee

25

Hold thou my sword-hilts while I run on it.

VOLUMNIUS     That’s not an office for a friend, my lord.

[Alarum still]

CLITUS     Fly, fly, my lord, there is no tarrying here.

BRUTUS

Farewell to you; and you; and you, Volumnius.

30

Strato, thou hast been all this while asleep:

Farewell to thee too, Strato. Countrymen:

My heart doth joy that yet in all my life

I found no man but he was true to me.

I shall have glory by this losing day

More than Octavius and Mark Antony

35

By this vile conquest shall attain unto.

So fare you well at once, for Brutus’ tongue

Hath almost ended his life’s history:

Night hangs upon mine eyes: my bones would rest,

That have but laboured to attain this hour.

40

[Alarum. Cry within, ‘Fly, fly, fly.’]

CLITUS     Fly, my lord, fly!

BRUTUS     Hence; I will follow.

Exeunt Clitus, Dardanius and Volumnius.

I prithee, Strato, stay thou by thy lord.

Thou art a fellow of a good respect:

Thy life hath had some smatch of honour in it.

Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face,

45

While I do run upon it. Wilt thou, Strato?

STRATO

Give me your hand first. Fare you well, my lord.

BRUTUS     Farewell, good Strato – [Runs on his sword.]

Caesar, now be still.

I killed not thee with half so good a will. [Dies.]

50

Alarm. Retreat. Enter ANTONY, OCTAVIUS, MESSALA, LUCILIUS and the army.

OCTAVIUS     What man is that?

MESSALA

My master’s man. Strato, where is thy master?

STRATO     Free from the bondage you are in, Messala,

The conquerors can but make a fire of him:

For Brutus only overcame himself,

And no man else hath honour by his death.

55

LUCILIUS

So Brutus should be found. I thank thee, Brutus,

That thou hast proved Lucilius’ saying true.

OCTAVIUS

All that served Brutus, I will entertain them.

60

Fellow, wilt thou bestow thy time with me?

STRATO     Ay, if Messala will prefer me to you.

OCTAVIUS     Do so, good Messala.

MESSALA     How died my master, Strato?

STRATO     I held the sword and he did run on it.

65

MESSALA     Octavius, then take him to follow thee,

That did the latest service to my master.

ANTONY     This was the noblest Roman of them all:

All the conspirators save only he

Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.

70

He only, in a general honest thought

And common good to all, made one of them.

His life was gentle, and the elements

So mixed in him that nature might stand up

And say to all the world, ’This was a man!’

75

OCTAVIUS     According to his virtue let us use him,

With all respect and rites of burial.

Within my tent his bones tonight shall lie,

Most like a soldier, ordered honourably.

So call the field to rest, and let’s away,

80

To part the glories of this happy day.     Exeunt omnes.

King Henry IV, Part 1

King Henry IV, Part 1 was from the first both a theatrical and a literary success, as popular in the bookstalls as on stage. Entered in the Stationers’ Register on 25 February 1598, as ‘The historye of Henry the iiijth’ (it was not until the 1623 Folio that the play was published as The First Part of King Henry the Fourth), the play quickly became a best seller. Two editions appeared in 1598 (the first surviving only in a single sheet, now in the Folger Shakespeare Library), and seven more editions were published before 1640, making it not only Shakespeare’s most frequently reprinted play before the Interregnum but also one of the most popular of all printed plays in the period. In the theatre also it continuously thrived, though early references to specific performances are few.

Probably first performed in 1597, it held the stage throughout the seventeenth century. In a commendatory poem to Shakespeare’s Poems (1640), Leonard Digges noted that, while Ben Jonson’s plays no longer draw an audience large enough to cover the costs of production, ‘let but Falstaff come, / Hal, Poins, the rest, you scarce shall have a room, / All is so pestered’.

Much of the play’s popularity is no doubt due to the appeal of Falstaff. Indeed, in the seventeenth century there are more references to the fat knight than to any other dramatic character, though he first appeared on stage with the name ‘Sir John Oldcastle’. A well-known fifteenth-century Lollard who had been burned as a heretic, Oldcastle emerged a century later as a celebrated precursor of the Protestant martyrs. Shakespeare’s irreverent treatment of the historical figure seems to have offended William Brooke, Lord Cobham, who held his title in descent from Oldcastle’s wife. Brooke was Queen Elizabeth’s Lord Chamberlain from August 1596 to his death on 5 March 1597, and he seems to have insisted on the change of name. It has even been suggested that publication of the play was required to prove that Shakespeare and his acting company had complied with the Lord Chamberlain’s demand.

By whatever name, however, the irrepressible knight has long delighted readers and audiences, offering a vital alternative to the sober world of political consideration over which Henry IV rules. The two men stand as opposing father figures for Prince Henry, one fat and full of life, the other ‘portly’ only in his power, each in turn drawing the commitment of the Prince who must, as history dictates, finally reject revel for responsibility and accept his destiny to rule. There is a third vector in the play, however, that further complicates his choice: the chivalric energies of the rebel Hotspur that lead Henry IV to wish this son of Northumberland his child instead of Hal. But on the battlefield at Shrewsbury the Prince displays both heroism and magnanimity, proving himself a worthy successor and putting to rest fears either that the irresponsible tavern world has claimed him or that he is only the self-regarding son of a calculating father.

The play, of course, is a ‘history’ and appears as the third of ten such in the catalogue of the 1623 Folio, but though it concerns the reign of a historical English king and is largely based upon Holinshed’s Chronicles, it is hardly faithful to the historical record. Not only does it select, restructure and change that history (for example, Hotspur was in fact three years older than the King rather than the Prince’s contemporary), but it mixes in completely invented material, that very tavern world that threatens to keep the Prince from his fate. It is precisely this that has made the play so continuously popular: that it is more than its historical plot. It mingles kings and clowns, history and comedy, challenging the exclusive logic of the aristocratic, political action with its rich variety and demotic energy.

The Arden text is based on the two Quartos of 1598.

LIST OF ROLES

KING Henry the Fourth

sons to the King

Earl of WESTMORELAND

Sir Walter BLUNT

Thomas Percy, Earl of WORCESTER

Henry Percy, Earl of NORTHUMBERLAND

Henry Percy, surnamed HOTSPUR

his son

Edmund MORTIMER, Earl of March.

Archibald, Earl of DOUGLAS

Owen GLENDOWER

Sir Richard VERNON

Richard Scroop, ARCHBISHOP of York

Sir John FALSTAFF

POINS

PETO

BARDOLPH

GADSHILL

LADY PERCY

wife to Hotspur, and sister to Mortimer

LADY MORTIMER

daughter to Glendower, and wife to Mortimer

Mistress Quickly, HOSTESS

of the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap

Lords, Officers, Sheriff, Vintner, Chamberlain, Drawers, two Carriers, Ostler, Messengers, Travellers and Attendants.

1.1 Enter the KING, LORD JOHN OF LANCASTER, EARL OF WESTMORELAND, SIR WALTER BLUNT, with others.

KING     So shaken as we are, so wan with care,

Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,

And breathe short-winded accents of new broils

To be commenc’d in stronds afar remote:

No more the thirsty entrance of this soil

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Shall daub her lips with her own children’s blood,

No more shall trenching war channel her fields,

Nor bruise her flow’rets with the armed hoofs

Of hostile paces: those opposed eyes,

Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,

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All of one nature, of one substance bred,

Did lately meet in the intestine shock

And furious close of civil butchery,

Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,

March all one way, and be no more oppos’d

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Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies.

The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife,

No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends,

As far as to the sepulchre of Christ –

Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross

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We are impressed and engag’d to fight –

Forthwith a power of English shall we levy,

Whose arms were moulded in their mothers’ womb

To chase these pagans in those holy fields

Over whose acres walk’d those blessed feet

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Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d

For our advantage on the bitter cross.

But this our purpose now is twelve month old,

And bootless ’tis to tell you we will go;

Therefor we meet not now. Then let me hear

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Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland,

What yesternight our Council did decree

In forwarding this dear expedience.

WESTMORELAND

My liege, this haste was hot in question,

And many limits of the charge set down

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But yesternight, when all athwart there came

A post from Wales, loaden with heavy news,

Whose worst was that the noble Mortimer,

Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight

Against the irregular and wild Glendower,

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Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken,

A thousand of his people butchered,

Upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse,

Such beastly shameless transformation,

By those Welshwomen done, as may not be

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Without much shame retold or spoken of.

KING     It seems then that the tidings of this broil

Brake off our business for the Holy Land.

WESTMORELAND

This match’d with other did, my gracious lord,

For more uneven and unwelcome news

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Came from the north, and thus it did import:

On Holy-rood day, the gallant Hotspur there,

Young Harry Percy, and brave Archibald,

That ever valiant and approved Scot,

At Holmedon met, where they did spend

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A sad and bloody hour;

As by discharge of their artillery,

And shape of likelihood, the news was told;

For he that brought them, in the very heat

And pride of their contention did take horse,

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Uncertain of the issue any way.

KING     Here is a dear, a true industrious friend,

Sir Walter Blunt, new lighted from his horse,

Stain’d with the variation of each soil

Betwixt that Holmedon and this seat of ours;

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And he hath brought us smooth and welcome news.

The Earl of Douglas is discomfited;

Ten thousand bold Scots, two and twenty knights,

Balk’d in their own blood, did Sir Walter see

On Holmedon’s plains; of prisoners Hotspur took

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Mordake, Earl of Fife and eldest son

To beaten Douglas, and the Earl of Athol,

Of Murray, Angus, and Menteith:

And is not this an honourable spoil?

A gallant prize? ha, cousin, is it not?

WESTMORELAND     In faith,

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It is a conquest for a prince to boast of.

KING

Yea, there thou mak’st me sad, and mak’st me sin

In envy that my Lord Northumberland

Should be the father to so blest a son;

A son who is the theme of honour’s tongue,

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Amongst a grove the very straightest plant,

Who is sweet Fortune’s minion and her pride;

Whilst I by looking on the praise of him

See riot and dishonour stain the brow

Of my young Harry. O that it could be prov’d

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That some night-tripping fairy had exchang’d

In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,

And call’d mine Percy, his Plantagenet!

Then would I have his Harry, and he mine:

But let him from my thoughts. What think you, coz,

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Of this young Percy’s pride? The prisoners

Which he in this adventure hath surpris’d

To his own use he keeps, and sends me word

I shall have none but Mordake, Earl of Fife.

WESTMORELAND

This is his uncle’s teaching, this is Worcester,

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Malevolent to you in all aspects,

Which makes him prune himself, and bristle up

The crest of youth against your dignity.

KING     But I have sent for him to answer this;

And for this cause awhile we must neglect

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Our holy purpose to Jerusalem.

Cousin, on Wednesday next our Council we

Will hold at Windsor, so inform the lords:

But come yourself with speed to us again,

For more is to be said and to be done

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Than out of anger can be uttered.

WESTMORELAND I will, my liege.     Exeunt.

1.2 Enter PRINCE OF WALES and SIR JOHN FALSTAFF.

FALSTAFF     Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?

PRINCE     Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old

sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping

upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to

demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know.

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What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day?

Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons,

and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of

leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot

wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why

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thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of

the day.

FALSTAFF     Indeed, you come near me now, Hal, for we

that take purses go by the moon and the seven stars,

and not ‘by Phoebus, he, that wand’ring knight so

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fair’: and I prithee sweet wag, when thou art king, as

God save thy Grace – Majesty I should say, for grace

thou wilt have none –

PRINCE     What, none?

FALSTAFF     No, by my troth, not so much as will serve to

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be prologue to an egg and butter.

PRINCE     Well, how then? Come, roundly, roundly.

FALSTAFF     Marry then sweet wag, when thou art king let

not us that are squires of the night’s body be called

thieves of the day’s beauty: let us be Diana’s foresters,

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gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon; and let

men say we be men of good government, being

governed as the sea is, by our noble and chaste

mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.

PRINCE     Thou sayest well, and it holds well too, for the

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fortune of us that are the moon’s men doth ebb and

flow like the sea, being governed as the sea is, by the

moon – as for proof now, a purse of gold most

resolutely snatched on Monday night, and most

dissolutely spent on Tuesday morning, got with

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swearing ‘Lay by!’, and spent with crying ‘Bring in!’,

now in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladder, and by

and by in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows.

FALSTAFF     By the Lord thou say’st true, lad; and is not

my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench?

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PRINCE     As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle;

and is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?

FALSTAFF     How now, how now, mad wag? What, in thy

quips and thy quiddities? What a plague have I to do

with a buff jerkin?

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PRINCE     Why, what a pox have I to do with my hostess of

the tavern?

FALSTAFF     Well, thou hast called her to a reckoning

many a time and oft.

PRINCE     Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part?

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FALSTAFF     No, I’ll give thee thy due, thou hast paid all

there.

PRINCE     Yea, and elsewhere, so far as my coin would

stretch, and where it would not I have used my credit.

FALSTAFF     Yea, and so used it that were it not here

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apparent that thou art heir apparent – But I prithee

sweet wag, shall there be gallows standing in England

when thou art king? and resolution thus fubbed as it is

with the rusty curb of old father Antic the law? Do not

thou when thou art king hang a thief.

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PRINCE     No, thou shalt.

FALSTAFF     Shall I? O rare! By the Lord, I’ll be a brave

judge!

PRINCE     Thou judgest false already, I mean thou shalt

have the hanging of the thieves, and so become a rare

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hangman.

FALSTAFF     Well, Hal, well; and in some sort it jumps

with my humour, as well as waiting in the court, I can

tell you.

PRINCE     For obtaining of suits?

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FALSTAFF     Yea, for obtaining of suits, whereof the

hangman hath no lean wardrobe. ‘Sblood, I am as

melancholy as a gib cat, or a lugged bear.

PRINCE     Or an old lion, or a lover’s lute.

FALSTAFF     Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe.

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PRINCE     What sayest thou to a hare, or the melancholy of

Moor-ditch?

FALSTAFF     Thou hast the most unsavoury similes, and

art indeed the most comparative rascalliest sweet

young prince. But Hal, I prithee trouble me no more

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with vanity. I would to God thou and I knew where a

commodity of good names were to be bought: an old

lord of the Council rated me the other day in the street

about you, sir, but I marked him not, and yet he talked

very wisely, but I regarded him not, and yet he talked

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wisely, and in the street too.

PRINCE     Thou didst well, for wisdom cries out in the

streets and no man regards it.

FALSTAFF     O, thou hast damnable iteration, and art

indeed able to corrupt a saint: thou hast done much

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harm upon me, Hal, God forgive thee for it: before I

knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing, and now am I, if a

man should speak truly, little better than one of the

wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it

over: by the Lord, and I do not I am a villain, I’ll be

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damned for never a king’s son in Christendom.

PRINCE     Where shall we take a purse tomorrow, Jack?

FALSTAFF     ‘Zounds, where thou wilt, lad, I’ll make one;

an I do not, call me villain and baffle me.

PRINCE     I see a good amendment of life in thee, from

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praying to purse-taking.

FALSTAFF     Why, Hal, ’tis my vocation, Hal, ’tis no sin

for a man to labour in his vocation.

Enter POINS.

Poins! – Now shall we know if Gadshill have set a

match. O, if men were to be saved by merit, what hole

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in hell were hot enough for him? This is the most

omnipotent villain that ever cried ‘Stand!’ to a true

man.

PRINCE     Good morrow, Ned.

POINS     Good morrow, sweet Hal. What says Monsieur

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Remorse? What says Sir John Sack – and Sugar? Jack!

how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou

soldest him on Good Friday last, for a cup of Madeira

and a cold capon’s leg?

PRINCE     Sir John stands to his word, the devil shall have

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his bargain, for he was never yet a breaker of proverbs:

he will give the devil his due.

POINS     Then art thou damned for keeping thy word with

the devil.

PRINCE     Else he had been damned for cozening the

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devil.

POINS     But my lads, my lads, tomorrow morning, by

four o’clock early at Gad’s Hill, there are pilgrims

going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders

riding to London with fat purses. I have vizards for

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you all; you have horses for yourselves. Gadshill lies

tonight in Rochester, I have bespoke supper tomorrow

night in Eastcheap: we may do it as secure as sleep. If

you will go, I will stuff your purses full of crowns: if

you will not, tarry at home and be hanged.

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FALSTAFF     Hear ye, Yedward, if I tarry at home and go

not, I’ll hang you for going.

POINS     You will, chops?

FALSTAFF     Hal, wilt thou make one?

PRINCE     Who, I rob? I a thief? Not I, by my faith.

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FALSTAFF     There’s neither honesty, manhood, nor good

fellowship in thee, nor thou cam’st not of the blood

royal, if thou darest not stand for ten shillings.

PRINCE     Well then, once in my days I’ll be a madcap.

FALSTAFF     Why, that’s well said.

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PRINCE     Well, come what will, I’ll tarry at home.

FALSTAFF     By the Lord, I’ll be a traitor then, when thou

art king.

PRINCE     I care not.

POINS     Sir John, I prithee leave the Prince and me alone:

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I will lay him down such reasons for this adventure

that he shall go.

FALSTAFF     Well, God give thee the spirit of persuasion,

and him the ears of profiting, that what thou speakest

may move, and what he hears may be believed, that the

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true prince may (for recreation sake) prove a false

thief, for the poor abuses of the time want

countenance. Farewell, you shall find me in East-

cheap.

PRINCE     Farewell, the latter spring! Farewell, All-hallown

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summer!     Exit Falstaff.

POINS     Now, my good sweet honey lord, ride with us

tomorrow. I have a jest to execute that I cannot

manage alone. Falstaff, Bardolph, Peto, and Gadshill

shall rob those men that we have already waylaid –

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yourself and I will not be there: and when they have

the booty, if you and I do not rob them, cut this head

off from my shoulders.

PRINCE     How shall we part with them in setting forth?

POINS     Why, we will set forth before or after them, and

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appoint them a place of meeting, wherein it is at our

pleasure to fail; and then will they adventure upon the

exploit themselves, which they shall have no sooner

achieved but we’ll set upon them.

PRINCE     Yea, but ’tis like that they will know us by our

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horses, by our habits, and by every other appointment

to be ourselves.

POINS     Tut, our horses they shall not see, I’ll tie them in

the wood; our vizards we will change after we leave

them; and sirrah, I have cases of buckram for the

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nonce, to immask our noted outward garments.

PRINCE     Yea, but I doubt they will be too hard for us.

POINS     Well, for two of them, I know them to be as true-

bred cowards as ever turned back; and for the third, if

he fight longer than he sees reason, I’ll forswear arms.

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The virtue of this jest will be the incomprehensible

lies that this same fat rogue will tell us when we meet

at supper, how thirty at least he fought with, what

wards, what blows, what extremities he endured; and

in the reproof of this lives the jest.

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PRINCE     Well, I’ll go with thee; provide us all things

necessary, and meet me tomorrow night in Eastcheap;

there I’ll sup. Farewell.

POINS     Farewell, my lord.     Exit.

PRINCE     I know you all, and will awhile uphold

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The unyok’d humour of your idleness.

Yet herein will I imitate the sun,

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds

To smother up his beauty from the world,

That, when he please again to be himself,

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Being wanted he may be more wonder’d at

By breaking through the foul and ugly mists

Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

If all the year were playing holidays,

To sport would be as tedious as to work;

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But when they seldom come, they wish’d-for come,

And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents:

So when this loose behaviour I throw off,

And pay the debt I never promised,

By how much better than my word I am,

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By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;

And like bright metal on a sullen ground,

My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault,

Shall show more goodly, and attract more eyes

Than that which hath no foil to set it off.

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I’ll so offend, to make offence a skill,

Redeeming time when men think least I will.     Exit.

1.3 Enter the KING, NORTHUMBERLAND, WORCESTER, HOTSPUR, SIR WALTER BLUNT, with others.

KING     My blood hath been too cold and temperate,

Unapt to stir at these indignities,

And you have found me – for accordingly

You tread upon my patience: but be sure

I will from henceforth rather be myself,

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Mighty, and to be fear’d, than my condition,

Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down,

And therefore lost that title of respect

Which the proud soul ne’er pays but to the proud.

WORCESTER

Our house, my sovereign liege, little deserves

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The scourge of greatness to be us’d on it,

And that same greatness too which our own hands

Have holp to make so portly.

NORTHUMBERLAND     My lord, –

KING     Worcester, get thee gone, for I do see

Danger and disobedience in thine eye:

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O sir, your presence is too bold and peremptory,

And majesty might never yet endure

The moody frontier of a servant brow.

You have good leave to leave us; when we need

Your use and counsel we shall send for you.

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Exit Worcester.

[to Northumberland] You were about to speak.

NORTHUMBERLAND     Yea, my good lord.

Those prisoners in your Highness’ name demanded,

Which Harry Percy here at Holmedon took,

Were, as he says, not with such strength deny’d

As is deliver’d to your Majesty.

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Either envy therefore, or misprision,

Is guilty of this fault, and not my son.

HOTSPUR     My liege, I did deny no prisoners,

But I remember, when the fight was done,

When I was dry with rage, and extreme toil,

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Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,

Came there a certain lord, neat and trimly dress’d,

Fresh as a bridegroom, and his chin new reap’d

Show’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home.

He was perfumed like a milliner,

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And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held

A pouncet-box, which ever and anon

He gave his nose, and took’t away again –

Who therewith angry, when it next came there,

Took it in snuff – and still he smil’d and talk’d:

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And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,

He call’d them untaught knaves, unmannerly,

To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse

Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

With many holiday and lady terms

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He question’d me, amongst the rest demanded

My prisoners in your Majesty’s behalf.

I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,

To be so pester’d with a popinjay,

Out of my grief and my impatience

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Answer’d neglectingly, I know not what,

He should, or he should not, for he made me mad

To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,

And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman

Of guns, and drums, and wounds, God save the mark!

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And telling me the sovereignest thing on earth

Was parmacity for an inward bruise,

And that it was great pity, so it was,

This villainous saltpetre should be digg’d

Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,

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Which many a good tall fellow had destroy’d

So cowardly, and but for these vile guns

He would himself have been a soldier.

This bald unjointed chat of his, my lord,

I answer’d indirectly, as I said,

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And I beseech you, let not his report

Come current for an accusation

Betwixt my love and your high Majesty.

BLUNT     The circumstance consider’d, good my lord,

Whate’er Lord Harry Percy then had said

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To such a person, and in such a place,

At such a time, with all the rest retold,

May reasonably die, and never rise

To do him wrong, or any way impeach

What then he said, so he unsay it now.

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KING     Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners,

But with proviso and exception,

That we at our own charge shall ransom straight

His brother-in-law, the foolish Mortimer,

Who, on my soul, hath wilfully betray’d

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The lives of those that he did lead to fight

Against that great magician, damn’d Glendower,

Whose daughter, as we hear, the Earl of March

Hath lately marry’d: shall our coffers then

Be empty’d to redeem a traitor home?

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Shall we buy treason, and indent with fears

When they have lost and forfeited themselves?

No, on the barren mountains let him starve;

For I shall never hold that man my friend

Whose tongue shall ask me for one penny cost

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To ransom home revolted Mortimer.

HOTSPUR     Revolted Mortimer!

He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,

But by the chance of war: to prove that true

Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds,

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Those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took,

When on the gentle Severn’s sedgy bank,

In single opposition hand to hand,

He did confound the best part of an hour

In changing hardiment with great Glendower.

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Three times they breath’d, and three times did they drink

Upon agreement of swift Severn’s flood,

Who then affrighted with their bloody looks

Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,

And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank,

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Bloodstained with these valiant combatants.

Never did bare and rotten policy

Colour her working with such deadly wounds,

Nor never could the noble Mortimer

Receive so many, and all willingly:

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Then let not him be slander’d with revolt.

KING     Thou dost belie him, Percy, thou dost belie him,

He never did encounter with Glendower:

I tell thee, he durst as well have met the devil alone

As Owen Glendower for an enemy.

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Art thou not asham’d? But sirrah, henceforth

Let me not hear you speak of Mortimer:

Send me your prisoners with the speediest means,

Or you shall hear in such a kind from me

As will displease you. My Lord Northumberland:

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We license your departure with your son.

Send us your prisoners, or you will hear of it.

Exit King, with Blunt and train.

HOTSPUR     And if the devil come and roar for them

I will not send them: I will after straight

And tell him so, for I will ease my heart,

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Albeit I make a hazard of my head.

NORTHUMBERLAND

What, drunk with choler? Stay, and pause awhile,

Here comes your uncle.

Re-enter WORCESTER.

HOTSPUR    Speak of Mortimer?

‘Zounds, I will speak of him, and let my soul

Want mercy if I do not join with him:

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Yea, on his part I’ll empty all these veins,

And shed my dear blood, drop by drop in the dust,

But I will lift the down-trod Mortimer

As high in the air as this unthankful King,

As this ingrate and canker’d Bolingbroke.

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NORTHUMBERLAND

Brother, the King hath made your nephew mad.

WORCESTER     Who struck this heat up after I was gone?

HOTSPUR     He will forsooth have all my prisoners,

And when I urg’d the ransom once again

Of my wife’s brother, then his cheek look’d pale,

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And on my face he turn’d an eye of death,

Trembling even at the name of Mortimer.

WORCESTER

I cannot blame him: was not he proclaim’d,

By Richard that dead is, the next of blood?

NORTHUMBERLAND     He was, I heard the proclamation:

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And then it was, when the unhappy King

(Whose wrongs in us God pardon!) did set forth

Upon his Irish expedition;

From whence he, intercepted, did return

To be depos’d, and shortly murdered.

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WORCESTER

And for whose death we in the world’s wide mouth

Live scandaliz’d and foully spoken of.

HOTSPUR     But soft, I pray you, did King Richard then

Proclaim my brother Edmund Mortimer

Heir to the crown?

NORTHUMBERLAND     He did, myself did hear it.

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HOTSPUR     Nay, then I cannot blame his cousin King,

That wish’d him on the barren mountains starve.

But shall it be that you that set the crown

Upon the head of this forgetful man,

And for his sake wear the detested blot

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Of murderous subornation – shall it be

That you a world of curses undergo,

Being the agents, or base second means,

The cords, the ladder, or the hangman rather?

– O, pardon me, that I descend so low,

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To show the line and the predicament

Wherein you range under this subtle King!

Shall it for shame be spoken in these days,

Or fill up chronicles in time to come,

That men of your nobility and power

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Did gage them both in an unjust behalf

(As both of you, God pardon it, have done)

To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose,

And plant this thorn, this canker Bolingbroke?

And shall it in more shame be further spoken,

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That you are fool’d, discarded, and shook off

By him for whom these shames ye underwent?

No, yet time serves wherein you may redeem

Your banish’d honours, and restore yourselves

Into the good thoughts of the world again:

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Revenge the jeering and disdain’d contempt

Of this proud King, who studies day and night

To answer all the debt he owes to you,

Even with the bloody payment of your deaths:

Therefore, I say –

WORCESTER     Peace, cousin, say no more.

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And now I will unclasp a secret book,

And to your quick-conceiving discontents

I’ll read you matter deep and dangerous,

As full of peril and adventurous spirit

As to o’er-walk a current roaring loud

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On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

HOTSPUR     If he fall in, good night, or sink, or swim!

Send danger from the east unto the west,

So honour cross it from the north to south,

And let them grapple: O, the blood more stirs

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To rouse a lion than to start a hare!

NORTHUMBERLAND     Imagination of some great exploit

Drives him beyond the bounds of patience.

HOTSPUR     By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap

To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac’d moon,

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Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,

And pluck up drowned honour by the locks,

So he that doth redeem her thence might wear

Without corrival all her dignities:

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But out upon this half-fac’d fellowship!

WORCESTER     He apprehends a world of figures here,

But not the form of what he should attend:

Good cousin, give me audience for a while.

HOTSPUR     I cry you mercy.

WORCESTER     Those same noble Scots

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That are your prisoners –

HOTSPUR     I’ll keep them all;

By God he shall not have a Scot of them,

No, if a Scot would save his soul he shall not.

I’ll keep them, by this hand!

WORCESTER     You start away,

And lend no ear unto my purposes:

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Those prisoners you shall keep –

HOTSPUR     Nay, I will: that’s flat!

He said he would not ransom Mortimer,

Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer,

But I will find him when he lies asleep,

And in his ear I’ll holla ‘Mortimer!’

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Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak

Nothing but ‘Mortimer’, and give it him

To keep his anger still in motion.

WORCESTER     Hear you, cousin, a word.

HOTSPUR     All studies here I solemnly defy,

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Save how to gall and pinch this Bolingbroke:

And that same sword-and-buckler Prince of Wales,

But that I think his father loves him not,

And would be glad he met with some mischance –

I would have him poison’d with a pot of ale!

230

WORCESTER     Farewell, kinsman: I’ll talk to you

When you are better temper’d to attend.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Why, what a wasp-stung and impatient fool

Art thou to break into this woman’s mood,

Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own!

235

HOTSPUR

Why, look you, I am whipp’d and scourg’d with rods,

Nettled, and stung with pismires, when I hear

Of this vile politician Bolingbroke.

In Richard’s time – what do you call the place?

A plague upon it, it is in Gloucestershire –

240

’Twas where the mad-cap Duke his uncle kept,

His uncle York – where I first bow’d my knee

Unto this king of smiles, this Bolingbroke,

‘Sblood, when you and he came back from Ravenspurgh.

NORTHUMBERLAND     At Berkeley castle.

245

HOTSPUR     You say true.

Why, what a candy deal of courtesy

This fawning greyhound then did proffer me!

‘Look when his infant fortune came to age’,

And ‘gentle Harry Percy’, and ‘kind cousin’:

250

O, the devil take such cozeners! – God forgive me!

Good uncle, tell your tale; I have done.

WORCESTER     Nay, if you have not, to it again,

We will stay your leisure.

HOTSPUR     I have done, i’faith.

WORCESTER

Then once more to your Scottish prisoners;

255

Deliver them up without their ransom straight,

And make the Douglas’ son your only mean

For powers in Scotland, which, for divers reasons

Which I shall send you written, be assur’d

Will easily be granted. –

[to Northumberland]     You, my lord,

260

Your son in Scotland being thus employ’d,

Shall secretly into the bosom creep

Of that same noble prelate well-belov’d,

The Archbishop.

HOTSPUR     Of York, is it not?

WORCESTER     True, who bears hard

His brother’s death at Bristow, the Lord Scroop.

265

I speak not this in estimation,

As what I think might be, but what I know

Is ruminated, plotted, and set down,

And only stays but to behold the face

Of that occasion that shall bring it on.

270

HOTSPUR     I smell it. Upon my life it will do well!

NORTHUMBERLAND

Before the game is afoot thou still let’st slip.

HOTSPUR     Why, it cannot choose but be a noble plot;

And then the power of Scotland, and of York,

To join with Mortimer, ha?

WORCESTER     And so they shall.

275

HOTSPUR     In faith it is exceedingly well aim’d.

WORCESTER     And ’tis no little reason bids us speed,

To save our heads by raising of a head;

For, bear ourselves as even as we can,

The King will always think him in our debt,

280

And think we think ourselves unsatisfy’d,

Till he hath found a time to pay us home:

And see already how he doth begin

To make us strangers to his looks of love.

HOTSPUR     He does, he does, we’ll be reveng’d on him.

285

WORCESTER     Cousin, farewell. No further go in this

Than I by letters shall direct your course.

When time is ripe, which will be suddenly,

I’ll steal to Glendower, and Lord Mortimer,

Where you, and Douglas, and our powers at once,

290

As I will fashion it, shall happily meet,

To bear our fortunes in our own strong arms,

Which now we hold at much uncertainty.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Farewell, good brother; we shall thrive, I trust.

HOTSPUR     Uncle, adieu: O, let the hours be short,

295

Till fields, and blows, and groans applaud our sport!

Exeunt.

2.1 Enter a Carrier, with a lantern in his hand.

1 CARRIER     Heigh-ho! An it be not four by the day I’ll be

hanged; Charles’ wain is over the new chimney, and

yet our horse not packed. What, ostler!

OSTLER [within]     Anon, anon.

1 CARRIER     I prithee, Tom, beat Cut’s saddle, put a few

5

flocks in the point; poor jade is wrung in the withers

out of all cess.

Enter another Carrier.

2 CARRIER     Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and

that is the next way to give poor jades the bots: this

house is turned upside down since Robin Ostler died.

10

1 CARRIER     Poor fellow never joyed since the price of oats

rose, it was the death of him.

2 CARRIER     I think this be the most villainous house in all

London road for fleas, I am stung like a tench.

1 CARRIER     Like a tench! By the mass, there is ne’er a

15

king christen could be better bit than I have been since

the first cock.

2 CARRIER     Why, they will allow us ne’er a jordan, and

then we leak in your chimney, and your chamber-lye

breeds fleas like a loach.

20

1 CARRIER     What, ostler! Come away, and be hanged,

come away!

2 CARRIER     I have a gammon of bacon, and two razes of

ginger, to be delivered as far as Charing Cross.

1 CARRIER     God’s body! The turkeys in my pannier are

25

quite starved. What, ostler! A plague on thee, hast

thou never an eye in thy head? canst not hear? And

’twere not as good deed as drink to break the pate on

thee, I am a very villain. Come, and be hanged! Hast

no faith in thee?

30

Enter GADSHILL.

GADSHILL     Good morrow, carriers, what’s o’clock?

1 CARRIER     I think it be two o’clock.

GADSHILL     I prithee lend me thy lantern, to see my

gelding in the stable.

1 CARRIER     Nay, by God, soft! I know a trick worth two

35

of that, i’faith.

GADSHILL     I pray thee lend me thine.

2 CARRIER     Ay, when? Canst tell? Lend me thy lantern,

quoth he! Marry I’ll see thee hanged first.

GADSHILL     Sirrah carrier, what time do you mean to

40

come to London?

2 CARRIER     Time enough to go to bed with a candle, I

warrant thee; come, neighbour Mugs, we’ll call up the

gentlemen, they will along with company, for they

have great charge.     Exeunt Carriers.

45

GADSHILL     What ho! Chamberlain!

Enter CHAMBERLAIN.

CHAMBERLAIN     ‘At hand, quoth pick-purse.’

GADSHILL     That’s even as fair as ‘At hand, quoth the

chamberlain’: for thou variest no more from picking of

purses than giving direction doth from labouring;

50

thou layest the plot how.

CHAMBERLAIN     Good morrow, master Gadshill. It holds

current that I told you yesternight: there’s a franklin

in the Wild of Kent hath brought three hundred

marks with him in gold, I heard him tell it to one of his

55

company last night at supper, a kind of auditor, one

that hath abundance of charge too, God knows what;

they are up already, and call for eggs and butter – they

will away presently.

GADSHILL     Sirrah, if they meet not with Saint Nicholas’

60

clerks, I’ll give thee this neck.

CHAMBERLAIN     No, I’ll none of it, I pray thee keep that

for the hangman, for I know thou worshippest Saint

Nicholas, as truly as a man of falsehood may.

GADSHILL     What talkest thou to me of the hangman? If

65

I hang, I’ll make a fat pair of gallows: for if I hang, old

Sir John hangs with me, and thou knowest he is no

starveling. Tut, there are other Troyans that thou

dream’st not of, the which for sport sake are content to

do the profession some grace, that would (if matters

70

should be looked into) for their own credit sake

make all whole. I am joined with no foot-landrakers,

no long-staff sixpenny strikers, none of these mad

mustachio purple-hued maltworms, but with nobility

and tranquillity, burgomasters and great onyers, such

75

as can hold in, such as will strike sooner than speak,

and speak sooner than drink, and drink sooner than

pray – and yet, ‘zounds, I lie, for they pray continually

to their saint the commonwealth, or rather not pray to

her, but prey on her, for they ride up and down on her,

80

and make her their boots.

CHAMBERLAIN     What, the commonwealth their boots?

Will she hold out water in foul way?

GADSHILL     She will, she will, justice hath liquored her:

we steal as in a castle, cock-sure: we have the receipt of

85

fern-seed, we walk invisible.

CHAMBERLAIN     Nay, by my faith, I think you are more

beholding to the night than to fern-seed for your

walking invisible.

GADSHILL     Give me thy hand, thou shalt have a share in

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our purchase, as I am a true man.

CHAMBERLAIN     Nay, rather let me have it, as you are a

false thief.

GADSHILL     Go to, homo is a common name to all men:

bid the ostler bring my gelding out of the stable.

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Farewell, you muddy knave.     Exeunt.

2.2 Enter PRINCE, POINS and PETO.

POINS     Come, shelter, shelter! I have removed Falstaff ‘s

horse, and he frets like a gummed velvet.

PRINCE     Stand close! [They retire.]

Enter FALSTAFF.

FALSTAFF     Poins! Poins, and be hanged! Poins!

PRINCE     [coming forward] Peace, ye fat-kidneyed rascal,

5

what a brawling dost thou keep!

FALSTAFF     Where’s Poins, Hal?

PRINCE     He is walked up to the top of the hill; I’ll go seek

him. [Retires.]

FALSTAFF     I am accursed to rob in that thief ‘s company;

10

the rascal hath removed my horse and tied him I know

not where. If I travel but four foot by the squier

further afoot, I shall break my wind. Well, I doubt not

but to die a fair death for all this, if I scape hanging for

killing that rogue. I have forsworn his company hourly

15

any time this two and twenty years, and yet I am

bewitched with the rogue’s company. If the rascal have

not given me medicines to make me love him, I’ll be

hanged. It could not be else, I have drunk medicines.

Poins! Hal! A plague upon you both! Bardolph! Peto!

20

I’ll starve ere I’ll rob a foot further – and ’twere not as

good a deed as drink to turn true man, and to leave

these rogues, I am the veriest varlet that ever chewed

with a tooth; eight yards of uneven ground is

threescore and ten miles afoot with me, and the stony-

25

hearted villains know it well enough. A plague upon it

when thieves cannot be true one to another!

[They whistle.] Whew! A plague upon you all, give me

my horse, you rogues, give me my horse and be

hanged!

30

PRINCE     [coming forward] Peace, ye fat guts, lie down, lay

thine ear close to the ground, and list if thou canst

hear the tread of travellers.

FALSTAFF     Have you any levers to lift me up again, being

down? ‘Sblood, I’ll not bear my own flesh so far afoot

35

again for all the coin in thy father’s exchequer. What a

plague mean ye to colt me thus?

PRINCE     Thou liest, thou art not colted, thou art

uncolted.

FALSTAFF     I prithee good Prince Hal, help me to my

40

horse, good king’s son.

PRINCE     Out, ye rogue, shall I be your ostler?

FALSTAFF     Hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent

garters! If I be ta’en, I’ll peach for this: and I have not

ballads made on you all, and sung to filthy tunes, let a

45

cup of sack be my poison – when a jest is so forward,

and afoot too! I hate it.

Enter GADSHILL and BARDOLPH.

GADSHILL     Stand!

FALSTAFF     So I do, against my will.

POINS     O, ’tis our setter, I know his voice. [coming

50

forward with Peto] Bardolph, what news?

BARDOLPH     Case ye, case ye, on with your vizards,

there’s money of the King’s coming down the hill, ’tis

going to the King’s exchequer.

FALSTAFF     You lie, ye rogue, ’tis going to the King’s

55

tavern.

GADSHILL     There’s enough to make us all.

FALSTAFF     To be hanged.

PRINCE     Sirs, you four shall front them in the narrow

lane: Ned Poins and I will walk lower – if they scape

60

from your encounter, then they light on us.

PETO     How many be there of them?

GADSHILL     Some eight or ten.

FALSTAFF     ‘Zounds, will they not rob us?

PRINCE     What, a coward, Sir John Paunch?

65

FALSTAFF     Indeed, I am not John of Gaunt your

grandfather, but yet no coward, Hal.

PRINCE     Well, we leave that to the proof.

POINS     Sirrah Jack, thy horse stands behind the hedge;

when thou need’st him, there thou shalt find him.

70

Farewell, and stand fast.

FALSTAFF     Now cannot I strike him, if I should be

hanged.

PRINCE     Ned, where are our disguises?

POINS     Here, hard by, stand close.

75

Exeunt Prince and Poins.

FALSTAFF     Now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say

I – every man to his business.

Enter the Travellers.

1 TRAVELLER Come, neighbour, the boy shall lead our

horses down the hill; we’ll walk afoot awhile and ease

our legs.

80

THIEVES     Stand!

2 TRAVELLER     Jesus bless us!

FALSTAFF     Strike, down with them, cut the villains’

throats! Ah, whoreson caterpillars, bacon-fed knaves,

they hate us youth! Down with them, fleece them!

85

1 TRAVELLER O, we are undone, both we and ours for

ever!

FALSTAFF     Hang ye, gorbellied knaves, are ye undone?

No, ye fat chuffs, I would your store were here! On,

bacons, on! What, ye knaves! young men must live.

90

You are grandjurors, are ye? We’ll jure ye, faith.

[Here they rob them and bind them.]     Exeunt.

Re-enter the PRINCE and POINS, disguised.

PRINCE     The thieves have bound the true men; now

could thou and I rob the thieves, and go merrily to

London, it would be argument for a week, laughter for

a month, and a good jest for ever.

95

POINS     Stand close, I hear them coming. [They retire.]

Enter the Thieves again.

FALSTAFF     Come, my masters, let us share, and then to

horse before day; and the Prince and Poins be not two

arrant cowards there’s no equity stirring; there’s no

more valour in that Poins than in a wild duck.

100

[As they are sharing the PRINCE and POINS set upon

them.]

PRINCE     Your money!

POINS     Villains!

They all run away, and Falstaff after a blow or two

runs away too, leaving the booty behind them.

PRINCE     Got with much ease. Now merrily to horse:

The thieves are all scatter’d and possess’d with fear

So strongly that they dare not meet each other;

105

Each takes his fellow for an officer!

Away, good Ned – Falstaff sweats to death,

And lards the lean earth as he walks along.

Were’t not for laughing I should pity him.

POINS     How the fat rogue roared.     Exeunt.

110

2.3 Enter HOTSPUR alone, reading a letter.

HOTSPUR     But, for mine own part, my lord, I could be well

contented to be there, in respect of the love I bear your

house. He could be contented: why is he not then? In

respect of the love he bears our house: he shows in

this, he loves his own barn better than he loves our

5

house. Let me see some more. The purpose you

undertake is dangerous– Why, that’s certain; ’tis

dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell

you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck

this flower, safety. The purpose you undertake is

10

dangerous, the friends you have named uncertain, the time

itself unsorted, and your whole plot too light, for the

counterpoise of so great an opposition. Say you so, say

you so? I say unto you again, you are a shallow

cowardly hind, and you lie: what a lack-brain is this!

15

By the Lord, our plot is a good plot, as ever was laid,

our friends true and constant: a good plot, good

friends, and full of expectation: an excellent plot, very

good friends; what a frosty-spirited rogue is this! Why,

my Lord of York commends the plot, and the general

20

course of the action. ‘Zounds, and I were now by this

rascal I could brain him with his lady’s fan. Is there

not my father, my uncle, and myself? Lord Edmund

Mortimer, my Lord of York, and Owen Glendower? Is

there not besides the Douglas? Have I not all their

25

letters to meet me in arms by the ninth of the next

month, and are they not some of them set forward

already? What a pagan rascal is this, an infidel! Ha!

You shall see now in very sincerity of fear and cold

heart will he to the King, and lay open all our

30

proceedings! O, I could divide myself, and go to

buffets, for moving such a dish of skim milk with so

honourable an action! Hang him, let him tell the King,

we are prepared: I will set forward tonight.

Enter LADY PERCY.

How now, Kate? I must leave you within these two

35

hours.

LADY PERCY     O my good lord, why are you thus alone?

For what offence have I this fortnight been

A banish’d woman from my Harry’s bed?

Tell me, sweet lord, what is’t that takes from thee

40

Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?

Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,

And start so often when thou sit’st alone?

Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks,

And given my treasures and my rights of thee

45

To thick-ey’d musing, and curst melancholy?

In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch’d,

And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars,

Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed,

Cry ‘Courage! To the field!’ And thou hast talk’d

50

Of sallies, and retires, of trenches, tents,

Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,

Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,

Of prisoners’ ransom, and of soldiers slain,

And all the currents of a heady fight.

55

Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war,

And thus hath so bestirr’d thee in thy sleep,

That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow

Like bubbles in a late-disturbed stream,

And in thy face strange motions have appear’d,

60

Such as we see when men restrain their breath

On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these?

Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,

And I must know it, else he loves me not.

HOTSPUR     What ho!

Enter a Servant.

Is Gilliams with the packet gone?

65

SERVANT     He is, my lord, an hour ago.

HOTSPUR

Hath Butler brought those horses from the sheriff?

SERVANT     One horse, my lord, he brought even now.

HOTSPUR     What horse? A roan, a crop-ear is it not?

SERVANT     It is, my lord.

HOTSPUR     That roan shall be my throne.

70

Well, I will back him straight: O Esperance!

Bid Butler lead him forth into the park.

Exit Servant.

LADY PERCY     But hear you, my lord.

HOTSPUR     What say’st thou, my lady?

LADY PERCY     What is it carries you away?

75

HOTSPUR     Why, my horse, my love, my horse.

LADY PERCY     Out, you mad-headed ape!

A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen

As you are toss’d with. In faith,

I’ll know your business, Harry, that I will;

80

I fear my brother Mortimer doth stir

About his title, and hath sent for you

To line his enterprise. But if you go –

HOTSPUR     So far afoot I shall be weary, love.

LADY PERCY     Come, come, you paraquito, answer me

85

Directly unto this question that I ask;

In faith, I’ll break thy little finger, Harry,

And if thou wilt not tell me all things true.

HOTSPUR     Away,

Away, you trifler! Love! I love thee not,

90

I care not for thee, Kate; this is no world

To play with mammets, and to tilt with lips;

We must have bloody noses, and crack’d crowns,

And pass them current too. God’s me! my horse!

What say’st thou, Kate? What wouldst thou have

with me?

95

LADY PERCY     Do you not love me? Do you not indeed?

Well, do not then, for since you love me not

I will not love myself. Do you not love me?

Nay, tell me if you speak in jest or no.

HOTSPUR     Come, wilt thou see me ride?

100

And when I am a-horseback I will swear

I love thee infinitely. But hark you, Kate,

I must not have you henceforth question me

Whither I go, nor reason whereabout:

Whither I must, I must; and, to conclude,

105

This evening must I leave you, gentle Kate.

I know you wise, but yet no farther wise

Than Harry Percy’s wife; constant you are,

But yet a woman; and for secrecy

No lady closer, for I well believe

110

Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know;

And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate.

LADY PERCY     How? so far?

HOTSPUR     Not an inch further. But hark you, Kate,

Whither I go, thither shall you go too:

115

Today will I set forth, tomorrow you.

Will this content you, Kate?

LADY PERCY     It must, of force.

Exeunt.

2.4 Enter PRINCE and POINS.

PRINCE     Ned, prithee come out of that fat room, and

lend me thy hand to laugh a little.

POINS     Where hast been, Hal?

PRINCE     With three or four loggerheads, amongst three

or fourscore hogsheads. I have sounded the very

5

basestring of humility. Sirrah, I am sworn brother to a

leash of drawers, and can call them all by their christen

names, as Tom, Dick, and Francis. They take it

already upon their salvation, that though I be but

Prince of Wales, yet I am the king of courtesy, and tell

10

me flatly I am no proud Jack like Falstaff, but a

Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy (by the Lord,

so they call me!), and when I am King of England I

shall command all the good lads in Eastcheap. They

call drinking deep ‘dyeing scarlet’, and when you

15

breathe in your watering they cry ‘Hem!’ and bid you

‘Play it off!’ To conclude, I am so good a proficient in

one quarter of an hour that I can drink with any tinker

in his own language during my life. I tell thee, Ned,

thou hast lost much honour that thou wert not with

20

me in this action; but, sweet Ned – to sweeten which

name of Ned I give thee this pennyworth of sugar,

clapped even now into my hand by an underskinker,

one that never spake other English in his life than

‘Eight shillings and sixpence’, and ‘You are welcome’,

25

with this shrill addition, ‘Anon, anon, sir! Score a pint

of bastard in the Half-moon’, or so. But Ned, to drive

away the time till Falstaff come: – I prithee do thou

stand in some by-room, while I question my puny

drawer to what end he gave me the sugar, and do thou

30

never leave calling ‘Francis!’, that his tale to me may

be nothing but ‘Anon’. Step aside, and I’ll show thee a

precedent. [Poins retires.]

POINS [within]     Francis!

PRINCE     Thou art perfect.

35

POINS [within]     Francis!

Enter FRANCIS, a drawer.

FRANCIS     Anon, anon, sir. Look down into the

Pomgarnet, Ralph.

PRINCE     Come hither, Francis.

FRANCIS     My lord?

40

PRINCE     How long hast thou to serve, Francis?

FRANCIS     Forsooth, five years, and as much as to –

POINS [within]     Francis!

FRANCIS     Anon, anon, sir.

PRINCE     Five year! By’r lady, a long lease for the clinking

45

of pewter; but Francis, darest thou be so valiant as to

play the coward with thy indenture, and show it a fair

pair of heels, and run from it?

FRANCIS     O Lord, sir, I’ll be sworn upon all the books in

England, I could find in my heart –

50

POINS [within]     Francis!

FRANCIS     Anon, sir.

PRINCE     How old art thou, Francis?

FRANCIS     Let me see, about Michaelmas next I shall

be –

55

POINS [within]     Francis!

FRANCIS     Anon, sir – pray stay a little, my lord.

PRINCE     Nay but hark you, Francis, for the sugar thou

gavest me, ’twas a pennyworth, was’t not?

FRANCIS     O Lord, I would it had been two!

60

PRINCE     I will give thee for it a thousand pound – ask me

when thou wilt, and thou shalt have it.

POINS [within]     Francis!

FRANCIS     Anon, anon.

PRINCE     Anon, Francis? No, Francis, but tomorrow,

65

Francis; or, Francis, a-Thursday; or indeed, Francis,

when thou wilt. But Francis!

FRANCIS     My lord?

PRINCE     Wilt thou rob this leathern-jerkin, crystal-

button, not-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-

70

garter, smooth-tongue Spanish pouch?

FRANCIS     O Lord, sir, who do you mean?

PRINCE     Why then your brown bastard is your only

drink: for look you, Francis, your white canvas doublet

will sully. In Barbary, sir, it cannot come to so much.

75

FRANCIS     What, sir?

POINS [within]     Francis!

PRINCE     Away, you rogue, dost thou not hear them call?

[Here they both call him; the Drawer stands amazed, not

knowing which way to go.]

Enter Vintner.

VINTNER     What, stand’st thou still and hear’st such a

calling? Look to the guests within.     Exit Francis.

80

My lord, old Sir John with half-a-dozen more are at

the door – shall I let them in?

PRINCE     Let them alone awhile, and then open the door.

Exit Vintner.

Poins!

Re-enter POINS.

POINS     Anon, anon, sir.

85

PRINCE     Sirrah, Falstaff and the rest of the thieves are

at the door; shall we be merry?

POINS     As merry as crickets, my lad; but hark ye, what

cunning match have you made with this jest of the

drawer: come, what’s the issue?

90

PRINCE     I am now of all humours that have showed

themselves humours since the old days of goodman

Adam to the pupil age of this present twelve o’clock at

midnight.

Re-enter FRANCIS.

What’s o’clock, Francis?

95

FRANCIS     Anon, anon, sir.     Exit.

PRINCE     That ever this fellow should have fewer words

than a parrot, and yet the son of a woman! His

industry is up-stairs and down-stairs, his eloquence

the parcel of a reckoning. I am not yet of Percy’s mind,

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the Hotspur of the north, he that kills me some six or

seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands,

and says to his wife, ‘Fie upon this quiet life, I want

work’. ‘O my sweet Harry’, says she, ‘how many hast

thou killed today?’ ‘Give my roan horse a drench’, says

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he, and answers, ‘Some fourteen’, an hour after; ‘a

trifle, a trifle’. I prithee call in Falstaff; I’ll play Percy,

and that damned brawn shall play Dame Mortimer his

wife. Rivo! says the drunkard: call in Ribs, call in

Tallow.

110

Enter FALSTAFF, GADSHILL, BARDOLPH and PETO; followed by FRANCIS, with wine.

POINS     Welcome, Jack, where hast thou been?

FALSTAFF     A plague of all cowards, I say, and a

vengeance too, marry and amen! Give me a cup of

sack, boy. Ere I lead this life long, I’ll sew nether-

stocks, and mend them and foot them too. A plague of

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all cowards! Give me a cup of sack, rogue; is there no

virtue extant? [He drinketh.]

PRINCE     Didst thou never see Titan kiss a dish of butter

(pitiful-hearted Titan!), that melted at the sweet tale

of the sun’s? If thou didst, then behold that

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compound.

FALSTAFF     You rogue, here’s lime in this sack too: there

is nothing but roguery to be found in villainous man,

yet a coward is worse than a cup of sack with lime in

it. A villainous coward! Go thy ways, old Jack, die

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when thou wilt – if manhood, good manhood, be not

forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten

herring: there lives not three good men unhanged in

England, and one of them is fat, and grows old, God

help the while, a bad world I say. I would I were a

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weaver; I could sing psalms, or anything. A plague of

all cowards, I say still.

PRINCE     How now, wool-sack, what mutter you?

FALSTAFF     A king’s son! If I do not beat thee out of thy

kingdom with a dagger of lath, and drive all thy

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subjects afore thee like a flock of wild geese, I’ll never

wear hair on my face more. You, Prince of Wales!

PRINCE     Why, you whoreson round man, what’s the

matter?

FALSTAFF     Are not you a coward? Answer me to that –

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and Poins there?

POINS     ‘Zounds, ye fat paunch, and ye call me coward by

the Lord I’ll stab thee.

FALSTAFF     I call thee coward? I’ll see thee damned ere I

call thee coward, but I would give a thousand pound I

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could run as fast as thou canst. You are straight

enough in the shoulders, you care not who sees your

back: call you that backing of your friends? A plague

upon such backing, give me them that will face me!

Give me a cup of sack: I am a rogue if I drunk today.

150

PRINCE     O villain! Thy lips are scarce wiped since thou

drunk’st last.

FALSTAFF     All is one for that. [He drinketh.] A plague

of all cowards, still say I.

PRINCE     What’s the matter?

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FALSTAFF     What’s the matter? There be four of us here

have ta’en a thousand pound this day morning.

PRINCE     Where is it, Jack, where is it?

FALSTAFF     Where is it? Taken from us it is: a hundred

upon poor four of us.

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PRINCE     What, a hundred, man?

FALSTAFF     I am a rogue if I were not at half-sword with

a dozen of them two hours together. I have scaped by

miracle. I am eight times thrust through the doublet,

four through the hose, my buckler cut through and

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through, my sword hacked like a handsaw – ecce

signum! I never dealt better since I was a man: all

would not do. A plague of all cowards! Let them speak

– if they speak more or less than truth, they are

villains, and the sons of darkness.

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PRINCE     Speak, sirs, how was it?

GADSHILL     We four set upon some dozen –

FALSTAFF     Sixteen at least, my lord.

GADSHILL     And bound them.

PETO     No, no, they were not bound.

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FALSTAFF     You rogue, they were bound, every man of

them, or I am a Jew else: an Ebrew Jew.

GADSHILL     As we were sharing, some six or seven fresh

men set upon us –

FALSTAFF     And unbound the rest, and then come in the

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other.

PRINCE     What, fought you with them all?

FALSTAFF     All? I know not what you call all, but if I

fought not with fifty of them I am a bunch of radish:

if there were not two or three and fifty upon poor old

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Jack, then am I no two-legg’d creature.

PRINCE     Pray God you have not murdered some of them.

FALSTAFF     Nay, that’s past praying for, I have peppered

two of them. Two I am sure I have paid, two rogues in

buckram suits. I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell thee a lie,

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spit in my face, call me horse. Thou knowest my old

ward – here I lay, and thus I bore my point. Four

rogues in buckram let drive at me –

PRINCE     What, four? Thou saidst but two even now.

FALSTAFF     Four, Hal, I told thee four.

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POINS     Ay, ay, he said four.

FALSTAFF     These four came all afront, and mainly thrust

at me; I made me no more ado, but took all their seven

points in my target, thus!

PRINCE     Seven? Why, there were but four even now.

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FALSTAFF     In buckram?

POINS     Ay, four, in buckram suits.

FALSTAFF     Seven, by these hilts, or I am a villain else.

PRINCE     Prithee let him alone, we shall have more anon.

FALSTAFF     Dost thou hear me, Hal?

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PRINCE     Ay, and mark thee too, Jack.

FALSTAFF     Do so, for it is worth the listening to. These

nine in buckram that I told thee of –

PRINCE     So, two more already.

FALSTAFF     Their points being broken –

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POINS     Down fell their hose.

FALSTAFF     Began to give me ground; but I followed me

close, came in, foot and hand, and, with a thought,

seven of the eleven I paid.

PRINCE     O monstrous! Eleven buckram men grown out

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of two!

FALSTAFF     But as the devil would have it, three

misbegotten knaves in Kendal green came at my back

and let drive at me, for it was so dark, Hal, that thou

couldst not see thy hand.

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PRINCE     These lies are like their father that begets them,

gross as a mountain, open, palpable. Why, thou clay-

brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson

obscene greasy tallow-catch, –

FALSTAFF     What, art thou mad? art thou mad? Is not the

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truth the truth?

PRINCE     Why, how couldst thou know these men in

Kendal green when it was so dark thou couldst not see

thy hand? Come, tell us your reason. What sayest thou

to this?

230

POINS     Come, your reason, Jack, your reason.

FALSTAFF     What, upon compulsion? ‘Zounds, and I

were at the strappado, or all the racks in the world, I

would not tell you on compulsion. Give you a reason

on compulsion? If reasons were as plentiful as

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blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon

compulsion, I.

PRINCE     I’ll be no longer guilty of this sin. This sanguine

coward, this bed-presser, this horse-back-breaker, this

huge hill of flesh, –

240

FALSTAFF     ‘Sblood, you starveling, you eel-skin, you

dried neat’s-tongue, you bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish –

O for breath to utter what is like thee! – you tailor’s-

yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing

tuck!

245

PRINCE     Well, breathe awhile, and then to it again, and

when thou hast tired thyself in base comparisons hear

me speak but this.

POINS     Mark, Jack.

PRINCE     We two saw you four set on four, and bound

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them and were masters of their wealth – mark now

how a plain tale shall put you down. Then did we two

set on you four, and, with a word, out-faced you from

your prize, and have it, yea, and can show it you here

in the house: and Falstaff you carried your guts away

255

as nimbly, with as quick dexterity, and roared for

mercy, and still run and roared, as ever I heard bull-

calf. What a slave art thou to hack thy sword as thou

hast done, and then say it was in fight! What trick,

what device, what starting-hole canst thou now find

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out, to hide thee from this open and apparent shame?

POINS     Come, let’s hear, Jack, what trick hast thou now?

FALSTAFF     By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that

made ye. Why, hear you, my masters, was it for me to

kill the heir-apparent? should I turn upon the true

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prince? Why, thou knowest I am as valiant as

Hercules: but beware instinct – the lion will not touch

the true prince; instinct is a great matter. I was now a

coward on instinct: I shall think the better of myself,

and thee, during my life – I for a valiant lion, and thou

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for a true prince. But by the Lord, lads, I am glad you

have the money. Hostess, clap to the doors! Watch

tonight, pray tomorrow! – Gallants, lads, boys, hearts

of gold, all the titles of good fellowship come to you!

What, shall we be merry, shall we have a play

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extempore?

PRINCE     Content, and the argument shall be thy running

away.

FALSTAFF     Ah, no more of that, Hal, and thou lovest me.

Enter Hostess.

HOSTESS     O Jesu, my lord the Prince!

280

PRINCE     How now, my lady the hostess, what say’st thou

to me?

HOSTESS     Marry, my lord, there is a nobleman of the

court at door would speak with you: he says he comes

from your father.

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PRINCE     Give him as much as will make him a royal man,

and send him back again to my mother.

FALSTAFF     What manner of man is he?

HOSTESS     An old man.

FALSTAFF     What doth gravity out of his bed at

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midnight? Shall I give him his answer?

PRINCE     Prithee do, Jack.

FALSTAFF     Faith, and I’ll send him packing.     Exit.

PRINCE     Now, sirs: by’r lady, you fought fair, so did you,

Peto, so did you, Bardolph; you are lions too, you ran

295

away upon instinct, you will not touch the true prince,

no, fie!

BARDOLPH     Faith, I ran when I saw others run.

PRINCE     Faith, tell me now in earnest, how came

Falstaff ‘s sword so hacked?

300

PETO     Why, he hacked it with his dagger, and said he

would swear truth out of England but he would make

you believe it was done in fight, and persuaded us to

do the like.

BARDOLPH     Yea, and to tickle our noses with spear-grass,

305

to make them bleed, and then to beslubber our

garments with it, and swear it was the blood of true

men. I did that I did not this seven year before, I

blushed to hear his monstrous devices.

PRINCE     O villain, thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen

310

years ago, and wert taken with the manner, and ever

since thou hast blushed extempore. Thou hadst fire

and sword on thy side, and yet thou ran’st away – what

instinct hadst thou for it?

BARDOLPH     My lord, do you see these meteors? do you

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behold these exhalations?

PRINCE     I do.

BARDOLPH     What think you they portend?

PRINCE     Hot livers, and cold purses.

BARDOLPH     Choler, my lord, if rightly taken.

320

PRINCE     No, if rightly taken, halter.

Re-enter FALSTAFF.

Here comes lean Jack, here comes bare-bone. How

now, my sweet creature of bombast, how long is’t ago,

Jack, since thou sawest thine own knee?

FALSTAFF     My own knee? When I was about thy years,

325

Hal, I was not an eagle’s talon in the waist, I could

have crept into any alderman’s thumb-ring: a plague

of sighing and grief, it blows a man up like a bladder.

There’s villainous news abroad: here was Sir John

Bracy from your father; you must to the court in the

330

morning. That same mad fellow of the north, Percy,

and he of Wales that gave Amamon the bastinado, and

made Lucifer cuckold, and swore the devil his true

liegeman upon the cross of a Welsh hook – what a

plague call you him?

335

POINS     O, Glendower.

FALSTAFF     Owen, Owen, the same; and his son-in-law

Mortimer, and old Northumberland, and that

sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that runs a-

horseback up a hill perpendicular –

340

PRINCE     He that rides at high speed, and with his pistol

kills a sparrow flying.

FALSTAFF     You have hit it.

PRINCE     So did he never the sparrow.

FALSTAFF     Well, that rascal hath good mettle in him, he

345

will not run.

PRINCE     Why, what a rascal art thou then, to praise him

so for running!

FALSTAFF     A-horseback, ye cuckoo, but afoot he will not

budge a foot.

350

PRINCE     Yes, Jack, upon instinct.

FALSTAFF     I grant ye, upon instinct: well, he is there too,

and one Mordake, and a thousand blue-caps more.

Worcester is stolen away tonight; thy father’s beard is

turned white with the news; you may buy land now as

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cheap as stinking mackerel.

PRINCE     Why then, it is like if there come a hot June, and

this civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maidenheads as

they buy hob-nails, by the hundreds.

FALSTAFF     By the mass, lad, thou sayest true, it is like we

360

shall have good trading that way. But tell me, Hal, art

not thou horrible afeard? Thou being heir apparent,

could the world pick thee out three such enemies

again, as that fiend Douglas, that spirit Percy, and that

devil Glendower? Art thou not horribly afraid? Doth

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not thy blood thrill at it?

PRINCE     Not a whit, i’faith, I lack some of thy instinct.

FALSTAFF     Well, thou wilt be horribly chid tomorrow

when thou comest to thy father; if thou love me

practise an answer.

370

PRINCE     Do thou stand for my father and examine me

upon the particulars of my life.

FALSTAFF     Shall I? Content! This chair shall be my

state, this dagger my sceptre, and this cushion my

crown.

375

PRINCE     Thy state is taken for a joint-stool, thy golden

sceptre for a leaden dagger, and thy precious rich

crown for a pitiful bald crown.

FALSTAFF     Well, and the fire of grace be not quite out of

thee, now shalt thou be moved. Give me a cup of sack

380

to make my eyes look red, that it may be thought I

have wept, for I must speak in passion, and I will do it

in King Cambyses’ vein.

PRINCE     Well, here is my leg.

FALSTAFF     And here is my speech. Stand aside, nobility.

385

HOSTESS     O Jesu, this is excellent sport, i’faith.

FALSTAFF

Weep not, sweet Queen, for trickling tears are vain.

HOSTESS     O the Father, how he holds his countenance!

FALSTAFF

For God’s sake, lords, convey my tristful Queen,

For tears do stop the floodgates of her eyes.

390

HOSTESS     O Jesu, he doth it as like one of these harlotry

players as ever I see!

FALSTAFF     Peace, good pint-pot, peace, good tickle-

brain. – Harry, I do not only marvel where thou

spendest thy time, but also how thou art accompanied.

395

For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on

the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted the

sooner it wears. That thou art my son I have partly thy

mother’s word, partly my own opinion, but chiefly a

villainous trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of

400

thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. If then thou be

son to me, here lies the point – why, being son to me,

art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven

prove a micher, and eat blackberries? A question not to

be asked. Shall the son of England prove a thief, and

405

take purses? A question to be asked. There is a thing,

Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known

to many in our land by the name of pitch. This pitch

(as ancient writers do report) doth defile, so doth the

company thou keepest: for, Harry, now I do not speak

410

to thee in drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, but in

passion; not in words only, but in woes also. And yet

there is a virtuous man whom I have often noted in thy

company, but I know not his name.

PRINCE     What manner of man, and it like your Majesty?

415

FALSTAFF     A goodly portly man, i’faith, and a corpulent;

of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble

carriage; and, as I think, his age some fifty, or by’r lady

inclining to threescore; and now I remember me, his

name is Falstaff. If that man should be lewdly given,

420

he deceiveth me; for, Harry, I see virtue in his looks. If

then the tree may be known by the fruit, as the fruit by

the tree, then peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in

that Falstaff; him keep with, the rest banish. And tell

me now, thou naughty varlet, tell me where hast thou

425

been this month?

PRINCE     Dost thou speak like a king? Do thou stand for

me, and I’ll play my father.

FALSTAFF     Depose me? If thou dost it half so gravely, so

majestically, both in word and matter, hang me up by

430

the heels for a rabbit-sucker, or a poulter’s hare.

PRINCE     Well, here I am set.

FALSTAFF     And here I stand. Judge, my masters.

PRINCE     Now, Harry, whence come you?

FALSTAFF     My noble lord, from Eastcheap.

435

PRINCE     The complaints I hear of thee are grievous.

FALSTAFF     ‘Sblood, my lord, they are false: nay, I’ll

tickle ye for a young prince, i’faith.

PRINCE     Swearest thou, ungracious boy? Henceforth

ne’er look on me. Thou art violently carried away

440

from grace, there is a devil haunts thee in the likeness

of an old fat man, a tun of man is thy companion. Why

dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that

bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of

dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed

445

cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with

the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey

iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years?

Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it?

wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat

450

it? wherein cunning, but in craft? wherein crafty, but

in villainy? wherein villainous, but in all things?

wherein worthy, but in nothing?

FALSTAFF     I would your Grace would take me with you:

whom means your Grace?

455

PRINCE     That villainous abominable misleader of youth,

Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan.

FALSTAFF     My lord, the man I know.

PRINCE     I know thou dost.

FALSTAFF     But to say I know more harm in him than in

460

myself were to say more than I know. That he is old,

the more the pity, his white hairs do witness it, but

that he is, saving your reverence, a whoremaster, that I

utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the

wicked! If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an

465

old host that I know is damned: if to be fat be to be

hated, then Pharaoh’s lean kine are to be loved. No,

my good lord; banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish

Poins – but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff,

true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore

470

more valiant, being as he is old Jack Falstaff, banish

not him thy Harry’s company, banish not him thy

Harry’s company, banish plump Jack, and banish all

the world.

PRINCE     I do, I will.

475

[A knocking heard.]

Exeunt Hostess, Francis and Bardolph.

Re-enter BARDOLPH, running.

BARDOLPH     O my lord, my lord, the sheriff with a most

monstrous watch is at the door.

FALSTAFF     Out, ye rogue! Play out the play! I have much

to say in the behalf of that Falstaff.

Re-enter the Hostess.

HOSTESS     O Jesu, my lord, my lord!

480

PRINCE     Heigh, heigh, the devil rides upon a fiddle-

stick, what’s the matter?

HOSTESS     The sheriff and all the watch are at the door;

they are come to search the house. Shall I let them in?

FALSTAFF     Dost thou hear, Hal? Never call a true piece

485

of gold a counterfeit: thou art essentially made without

seeming so.

PRINCE     And thou a natural coward without instinct.

FALSTAFF     I deny your major. If you will deny the

sheriff, so; if not, let him enter. If I become not a cart

490

as well as another man, a plague on my bringing up! I

hope I shall as soon be strangled with a halter as

another.

PRINCE     Go hide thee behind the arras, the rest walk up

above. Now, my masters, for a true face, and good

495

conscience.

FALSTAFF     Both which I have had, but their date is out,

and therefore I’ll hide me.

Exeunt all but the Prince and Peto.

PRINCE     Call in the sheriff.

Enter Sheriff and the Carrier.

Now, master sheriff, what is your will with me?

500

SHERIFF     First, pardon me, my lord. A hue and cry

Hath follow’d certain men unto this house.

PRINCE     What men?

SHERIFF     One of them is well known, my gracious lord,

A gross fat man.

1 CARRIER     As fat as butter.

505

PRINCE     The man I do assure you is not here,

For I myself at this time have employ’d him:

And sheriff, I will engage my word to thee,

That I will by tomorrow dinner-time

Send him to answer thee, or any man,

510

For anything he shall be charg’d withal;

And so let me entreat you leave the house.

SHERIFF     I will, my lord: there are two gentlemen

Have in this robbery lost three hundred marks.

PRINCE     It may be so: if he have robb’d these men

515

He shall be answerable; and so, farewell.

SHERIFF     Good night, my noble lord.

PRINCE     I think it is good morrow, is it not?

SHERIFF     Indeed, my lord, I think it be two o’clock.

Exit, with Carrier.

PRINCE     This oily rascal is known as well as Paul’s: go

520

call him forth.

PETO     Falstaff! – Fast asleep behind the arras, and

snorting like a horse.

PRINCE     Hark how hard he fetches breath – search his

pockets. [He searcheth his pockets, and findeth certain

525

papers.] What hast thou found?

PETO     Nothing but papers, my lord.

PRINCE     Let’s see what they be, read them.

PETO     [Reads.]

     Item a capon … 2s. 2d.

     Item sauce … .4d.

530

     Item sack two gallons. .5s. 8d.

     Item anchovies and sack after supper 2s. 6d.

     Item bread … .ob.

PRINCE     O monstrous! but one halfpennyworth of bread

to this intolerable deal of sack? What there is else keep

535

close, we’ll read it at more advantage. There let him

sleep till day; I’ll to the court in the morning. We must

all to the wars, and thy place shall be honourable. I’ll

procure this fat rogue a charge of foot, and I know his

death will be a march of twelve score. The money shall

540

be paid back again with advantage. Be with me

betimes in the morning; and so, good morrow, Peto.

PETO     Good morrow, good my lord.     Exeunt.

3.1 Enter HOTSPUR, WORCESTER, LORD MORTIMER, OWEN GLENDOWER.

MORTIMER     These promises are fair, the parties sure,

And our induction full of prosperous hope.

HOTSPUR

Lord Mortimer, and cousin Glendower, will you sit down?

And uncle Worcester. A plague upon it!

I have forgot the map.

GLENDOWER     No, here it is:

5

Sit, cousin Percy, sit, good cousin Hotspur;

For by that name as oft as Lancaster doth speak of you

His cheek looks pale, and with a rising sigh

He wisheth you in heaven.

HOTSPUR     And you in hell,

As oft as he hears Owen Glendower spoke of.

10

GLENDOWER     I cannot blame him; at my nativity

The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,

Of burning cressets, and at my birth

The frame and huge foundation of the earth

Shak’d like a coward.

HOTSPUR     Why, so it would have done

15

At the same season if your mother’s cat

Had but kitten’d, though yourself had never been born.

GLENDOWER

I say the earth did shake when I was born.

HOTSPUR     And I say the earth was not of my mind,

If you suppose as fearing you it shook.

20

GLENDOWER

The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble –

HOTSPUR

O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire,

And not in fear of your nativity.

Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth

In strange eruptions, oft the teeming earth

25

Is with a kind of colic pinch’d and vex’d

By the imprisoning of unruly wind

Within her womb, which for enlargement striving

Shakes the old beldam earth, and topples down

Steeples and moss-grown towers. At your birth

30

Our grandam earth, having this distemp’rature,

In passion shook.

GLENDOWER     Cousin, of many men

I do not bear these crossings; give me leave

To tell you once again that at my birth

The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,

35

The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds

Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields.

These signs have mark’d me extraordinary,

And all the courses of my life do show

I am not in the roll of common men.

40

Where is he living, clipp’d in with the sea

That chides the banks of England, Scotland, Wales,

Which calls me pupil or hath read to me?

And bring him out that is but woman’s son

Can trace me in the tedious ways of art,

45

And hold me pace in deep experiments.

HOTSPUR     I think there’s no man speaks better Welsh:

I’ll to dinner.

MORTIMER

Peace, cousin Percy, you will make him mad.

GLENDOWER     I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

50

HOTSPUR     Why, so can I, or so can any man,

But will they come when you do call for them?

GLENDOWER

Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command the devil.

HOTSPUR

And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil,

By telling truth; tell truth, and shame the devil.

55

If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither,

And I’ll be sworn I have power to shame him hence:

O, while you live, tell truth, and shame the devil!

MORTIMER

Come, come, no more of this unprofitable chat.

GLENDOWER

Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head

60

Against my power, thrice from the banks of Wye

And sandy-bottom’d Severn have I sent him

Bootless home, and weather-beaten back.

HOTSPUR

Home without boots, and in foul weather too!

How scapes he agues, in the devil’s name?

65

GLENDOWER

Come, here is the map, shall we divide our right

According to our threefold order ta’en?

MORTIMER     The Archdeacon hath divided it

Into three limits very equally:

England, from Trent and Severn hitherto,

70

By south and east is to my part assign’d:

All westward, Wales beyond the Severn shore,

And all the fertile land within that bound,

To Owen Glendower: and, dear coz, to you

The remnant northward lying off from Trent.

75

And our indentures tripartite are drawn,

Which being sealed interchangeably,

(A business that this night may execute)

Tomorrow, cousin Percy, you and I

And my good Lord of Worcester will set forth

80

To meet your father and the Scottish power,

As is appointed us, at Shrewsbury.

My father Glendower is not ready yet,

Nor shall we need his help these fourteen days.

[to Glendower] Within that space you may have drawn together

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Your tenants, friends, and neighbouring gentlemen.

GLENDOWER

A shorter time shall send me to you, lords,

And in my conduct shall your ladies come,

From whom you now must steal and take no leave,

For there will be a world of water shed

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Upon the parting of your wives and you.

HOTSPUR

Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,

In quantity equals not one of yours:

See how this river comes me cranking in,

And cuts me from the best of all my land

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A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.

I’ll have the current in this place damm’d up,

And here the smug and silver Trent shall run

In a new channel fair and evenly;

It shall not wind with such a deep indent,

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To rob me of so rich a bottom here.

GLENDOWER

Not wind? It shall, it must – you see it doth.

MORTIMER     Yea,

But mark how he bears his course, and runs me up

With like advantage on the other side,

105

Gelding the opposed continent as much

As on the other side it takes from you.

WORCESTER

Yea, but a little charge will trench him here,

And on this north side win this cape of land,

And then he runs straight and even.

110

HOTSPUR     I’ll have it so, a little charge will do it.

GLENDOWER     I’ll not have it alter’d.

HOTSPUR     Will not you?

GLENDOWER     No, nor you shall not.

HOTSPUR     Who shall say me nay?

GLENDOWER     Why, that will I.

HOTSPUR

Let me not understand you then, speak it in Welsh.

115

GLENDOWER     I can speak English, lord, as well as you,

For I was train’d up in the English court,

Where being but young I framed to the harp

Many an English ditty lovely well,

And gave the tongue a helpful ornament –

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A virtue that was never seen in you.

HOTSPUR     Marry and I am glad of it with all my heart!

I had rather be a kitten and cry ‘mew’

Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers;

I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn’d,

125

Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree,

And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,

Nothing so much as mincing poetry –

’Tis like the forc’d gait of a shuffling nag.

GLENDOWER     Come, you shall have Trent turn’d.

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HOTSPUR     I do not care, I’ll give thrice so much land

To any well-deserving friend:

But in the way of bargain, mark ye me,

I’ll cavil on the ninth part of a hair.

Are the indentures drawn? Shall we be gone?

135

GLENDOWER

The moon shines fair, you may away by night:

I’ll haste the writer, and withal

Break with your wives of your departure hence.

I am afraid my daughter will run mad,

So much she doteth on her Mortimer.     Exit.

140

MORTIMER     Fie, cousin Percy, how you cross my father!

HOTSPUR     I cannot choose; sometime he angers me

With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant,

Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies,

And of a dragon and a finless fish,

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A clip-wing’d griffin and a moulten raven,

A couching lion and a ramping cat,

And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff

As puts me from my faith. I tell you what –

He held me last night at least nine hours

150

In reckoning up the several devils’ names

That were his lackeys: I cried ‘Hum’, and ‘Well, go to!’

But mark’d him not a word. O, he is as tedious

As a tired horse, a railing wife,

Worse than a smoky house. I had rather live

155

With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far,

Than feed on cates and have him talk to me

In any summer house in Christendom.

MORTIMER     In faith, he is a worthy gentleman,

Exceedingly well read, and profited

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In strange concealments, valiant as a lion,

And wondrous affable, and as bountiful

As mines of India. Shall I tell you, cousin?

He holds your temper in a high respect

And curbs himself even of his natural scope

165

When you come ‘cross his humour, faith he does:

I warrant you that man is not alive

Might so have tempted him as you have done

Without the taste of danger and reproof:

But do not use it oft, let me entreat you.

170

WORCESTER

In faith, my lord, you are too wilful-blame,

And since your coming hither have done enough

To put him quite besides his patience;

You must needs learn, lord, to amend this fault.

Though sometimes it show greatness, courage, blood,

175

– And that’s the dearest grace it renders you –

Yet oftentimes it doth present harsh rage,

Defect of manners, want of government,

Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain,

The least of which haunting a nobleman

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Loseth men’s hearts and leaves behind a stain

Upon the beauty of all parts besides,

Beguiling them of commendation.

HOTSPUR

Well, I am school’d – good manners be your speed!

Here come our wives, and let us take our leave.

185

Re-enter GLENDOWER with the Ladies.

MORTIMER     This is the deadly spite that angers me,

My wife can speak no English, I no Welsh.

GLENDOWER

My daughter weeps, she’ll not part with you,

She’ll be a soldier too, she’ll to the wars.

MORTIMER

Good father, tell her that she and my aunt Percy

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Shall follow in your conduct speedily.

[Glendower speaks to her in Welsh, and she answers him

in the same.]

GLENDOWER

She is desperate here, a peevish, self-willed harlotry,

one that no persuasion can do good upon.

[The lady speaks in Welsh.]

MORTIMER     I understand thy looks, that pretty Welsh

Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens

195

I am too perfect in, and but for shame

In such a parley should I answer thee.

[The lady speaks again in Welsh.]

I understand thy kisses, and thou mine,

And that’s a feeling disputation,

But I will never be a truant, love,

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Till I have learnt thy language, for thy tongue

Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penn’d,

Sung by a fair queen in a summer’s bow’r

With ravishing division to her lute.

GLENDOWER     Nay, if you melt, then will she run mad.

205

[The lady speaks again in Welsh.]

MORTIMER     O, I am ignorance itself in this!

GLENDOWER

She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down,

And rest your gentle head upon her lap,

And she will sing the song that pleaseth you,

And on your eyelids crown the god of sleep,

210

Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness,

Making such difference ’twixt wake and sleep

As is the difference betwixt day and night,

The hour before the heavenly-harness’d team

Begins his golden progress in the east.

215

MORTIMER     With all my heart I’ll sit and hear her sing,

By that time will our book I think be drawn.

GLENDOWER

Do so, and those musicians that shall play to you

Hang in the air a thousand leagues from hence,

And straight they shall be here: sit, and attend.

220

HOTSPUR     Come, Kate, thou art perfect in lying down:

Come, quick, quick, that I may lay my head in thy lap.

LADY PERCY     Go, ye giddy goose. [The music plays.]

HOTSPUR     Now I perceive the devil understands Welsh,

And ’tis no marvel he is so humorous,

225

By’r lady, he is a good musician.

LADY PERCY     Then should you be nothing but musical,

For you are altogether govern’d by humours.

Lie still, ye thief, and hear the lady sing in Welsh.

HOTSPUR

I had rather hear Lady my brach howl in Irish.

230

LADY PERCY     Wouldst thou have thy head broken?

HOTSPUR     No.

LADY PERCY     Then be still.

HOTSPUR     Neither, ’tis a woman’s fault.

LADY PERCY     Now God help thee!

235

HOTSPUR     To the Welsh lady’s bed.

LADY PERCY     What’s that?

HOTSPUR     Peace, she sings.

[Here the lady sings a Welsh song.]

Come, Kate, I’ll have your song too.

LADY PERCY     Not mine, in good sooth.

240

HOTSPUR     Not yours, in good sooth! Heart, you swear

like a comfit-maker’s wife – ‘Not you, in good sooth!’,

and ‘As true as I live!’, and ‘As God shall mend me!’,

and ‘As sure as day!’ –

And givest such sarcenet surety for thy oaths

245

As if thou never walk’st further than Finsbury.

Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art,

A good mouth-filling oath, and leave ‘In sooth’,

And such protest of pepper-gingerbread,

To velvet-guards, and Sunday citizens.

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Come, sing.

LADY PERCY     I will not sing.

HOTSPUR     ’Tis the next way to turn tailor, or be

redbreast teacher. And the indentures be drawn I’ll

away within these two hours; and so come in when ye

255

will.     Exit.

GLENDOWER

Come, come, Lord Mortimer, you are as slow

As hot Lord Percy is on fire to go:

By this our book is drawn – we’ll but seal,

And then to horse immediately.

MORTIMER     With all my heart.

260

Exeunt.

3.2 Enter the KING, PRINCE OF WALES and others.

KING     Lords, give us leave; the Prince of Wales and I

Must have some private conference: but be near at hand,

For we shall presently have need of you.

Exeunt lords.

I know not whether God will have it so

For some displeasing service I have done,

5

That in his secret doom out of my blood

He’ll breed revengement and a scourge for me;

But thou dost in thy passages of life

Make me believe that thou art only mark’d

For the hot vengeance and the rod of heaven,

10

To punish my mistreadings. Tell me else

Could such inordinate and low desires,

Such poor, such bare, such lewd, such mean attempts,

Such barren pleasures, rude society,

As thou art match’d withal, and grafted to,

15

Accompany the greatness of thy blood,

And hold their level with thy princely heart?

PRINCE     So please your Majesty, I would I could

Quit all offences with as clear excuse

As well as I am doubtless I can purge

20

Myself of many I am charg’d withal:

Yet such extenuation let me beg

As, in reproof of many tales devis’d,

Which oft the ear of greatness needs must hear,

By smiling pickthanks, and base newsmongers,

25

I may for some things true, wherein my youth

Hath faulty wander’d and irregular,

Find pardon on my true submission.

KING     God pardon thee! Yet let me wonder, Harry,

At thy affections, which do hold a wing

30

Quite from the flight of all thy ancestors.

Thy place in Council thou hast rudely lost,

Which by thy younger brother is supply’d,

And art almost an alien to the hearts

Of all the court and princes of my blood:

35

The hope and expectation of thy time

Is ruin’d, and the soul of every man

Prophetically do forethink thy fall.

Had I so lavish of my presence been,

So common-hackney’d in the eyes of men,

40

So stale and cheap to vulgar company,

Opinion, that did help me to the crown,

Had still kept loyal to possession,

And left me in reputeless banishment,

A fellow of no mark nor likelihood.

45

By being seldom seen, I could not stir

But like a comet I was wonder’d at,

That men would tell their children, ‘This is he!’

Others would say, ‘Where, which is Bolingbroke?’

And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,

50

And dress’d myself in such humility

That I did pluck allegiance from men’s hearts,

Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths,

Even in the presence of the crowned King.

Thus did I keep my person fresh and new,

55

My presence, like a robe pontifical,

Ne’er seen but wonder’d at, and so my state,

Seldom, but sumptuous, show’d like a feast,

And wan by rareness such solemnity.

The skipping King, he ambled up and down,

60

With shallow jesters, and rash bavin wits,

Soon kindled and soon burnt, carded his state,

Mingled his royalty with cap’ring fools,

Had his great name profaned with their scorns,

And gave his countenance against his name

65

To laugh at gibing boys, and stand the push

Of every beardless vain comparative,

Grew a companion to the common streets,

Enfeoff ‘d himself to popularity,

That, being daily swallow’d by men’s eyes,

70

They surfeited with honey, and began

To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little

More than a little is by much too much.

So, when he had occasion to be seen,

He was but as the cuckoo is in June,

75

Heard, not regarded; seen, but with such eyes

As, sick and blunted with community,

Afford no extraordinary gaze,

Such as is bent on sun-like majesty

When it shines seldom in admiring eyes,

80

But rather drows’d and hung their eyelids down,

Slept in his face, and render’d such aspect

As cloudy men use to their adversaries,

Being with his presence glutted, gorg’d, and full.

And in that very line, Harry, standest thou,

85

For thou hast lost thy princely privilege

With vile participation. Not an eye

But is a-weary of thy common sight,

Save mine, which hath desir’d to see thee more,

Which now doth that I would not have it do,

90

Make blind itself with foolish tenderness.

PRINCE     I shall hereafter, my thrice gracious lord,

Be more myself.

KING     For all the world

As thou art to this hour was Richard then

When I from France set foot at Ravenspurgh,

95

And even as I was then is Percy now.

Now by my sceptre, and my soul to boot,

He hath more worthy interest to the state

Than thou the shadow of succession.

For of no right, nor colour like to right,

100

He doth fill fields with harness in the realm,

Turns head against the lion’s armed jaws,

And being no more in debt to years than thou

Leads ancient lords and reverend bishops on

To bloody battles, and to bruising arms.

105

What never-dying honour hath he got

Against renowned Douglas! whose high deeds,

Whose hot incursions and great name in arms,

Holds from all soldiers chief majority

And military title capital

110

Through all the kingdoms that acknowledge Christ.

Thrice hath this Hotspur, Mars in swathling clothes,

This infant warrior, in his enterprises

Discomfited great Douglas, ta’en him once,

Enlarged him, and made a friend of him,

115

To fill the mouth of deep defiance up,

And shake the peace and safety of our throne.

And what say you to this? Percy, Northumberland,

The Archbishop’s Grace of York, Douglas, Mortimer,

Capitulate against us and are up.

120

But wherefore do I tell these news to thee?

Why, Harry, do I tell thee of my foes,

Which art my nearest and dearest enemy?

Thou that art like enough, through vassal fear,

Base inclination, and the start of spleen,

125

To fight against me under Percy’s pay,

To dog his heels, and curtsy at his frowns,

To show how much thou art degenerate.

PRINCE     Do not think so, you shall not find it so;

And God forgive them that so much have sway’d

130

Your Majesty’s good thoughts away from me!

I will redeem all this on Percy’s head,

And in the closing of some glorious day

Be bold to tell you that I am your son,

When I will wear a garment all of blood,

135

And stain my favours in a bloody mask,

Which, wash’d away, shall scour my shame with it;

And that shall be the day, whene’er it lights,

That this same child of honour and renown,

This gallant Hotspur, this all-praised knight,

140

And your unthought-of Harry chance to meet.

For every honour sitting on his helm,

Would they were multitudes, and on my head

My shames redoubled! For the time will come

That I shall make this northern youth exchange

145

His glorious deeds for my indignities.

Percy is but my factor, good my lord,

To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf,

And I will call him to so strict account

That he shall render every glory up,

150

Yea, even the slightest worship of his time,

Or I will tear the reckoning from his heart.

This in the name of God I promise here,

The which if He be pleas’d I shall perform,

I do beseech your Majesty may salve

155

The long-grown wounds of my intemperance:

If not, the end of life cancels all bands,

And I will die a hundred thousand deaths

Ere break the smallest parcel of this vow.

KING     A hundred thousand rebels die in this –

160

Thou shalt have charge and sovereign trust herein.

Enter BLUNT.

How now, good Blunt? Thy looks are full of speed.

BLUNT     So hath the business that I come to speak of.

Lord Mortimer of Scotland hath sent word

That Douglas and the English rebels met

165

The eleventh of this month at Shrewsbury.

A mighty and a fearful head they are,

If promises be kept on every hand,

As ever offer’d foul play in a state.

KING     The Earl of Westmoreland set forth today,

170

With him my son, Lord John of Lancaster,

For this advertisement is five days old.

On Wednesday next, Harry, you shall set forward,

On Thursday we ourselves will march.

Our meeting is Bridgnorth, and, Harry, you

175

Shall march through Gloucestershire, by which account,

Our business valued, some twelve days hence

Our general forces at Bridgnorth shall meet.

Our hands are full of business, let’s away,

Advantage feeds him fat while men delay.     Exeunt.

180

3.3 Enter FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH.

FALSTAFF     Bardolph, am I not fallen away vilely since

this last action? Do I not bate? Do I not dwindle? Why,

my skin hangs about me like an old lady’s loose gown.

I am withered like an old apple-john. Well, I’ll repent,

and that suddenly, while I am in some liking; I shall be

5

out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength

to repent. And I have not forgotten what the inside of

a church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewer’s

horse: the inside of a church! Company, villainous

company, hath been the spoil of me.

10

BARDOLPH     Sir John, you are so fretful you cannot live

long.

FALSTAFF     Why, there is it: come, sing me a bawdy song,

make me merry. I was as virtuously given as a

gentleman need to be; virtuous enough; swore little;

15

diced not above seven times – a week; went to a

bawdy-house not above once in a quarter – of an hour;

paid money that I borrowed – three or four times;

lived well, and in good compass; and now I live out of

all order, out of all compass.

20

BARDOLPH     Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must

needs be out of all compass, out of all reasonable

compass, Sir John.

FALSTAFF     Do thou amend thy face, and I’ll amend my

life: thou art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in

25

the poop, but ’tis in the nose of thee: thou art the

Knight of the Burning Lamp.

BARDOLPH     Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.

FALSTAFF     No, I’ll be sworn, I make as good use of it as

many a man doth of a death’s-head, or a memento mori.

30

I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire, and

Dives that lived in purple: for there he is in his robes,

burning, burning. If thou wert any way given to

virtue, I would swear by thy face: my oath should be

‘By this fire, that’s God’s angel!’ But thou art

35

altogether given over; and wert indeed, but for the

light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou

ran’st up Gad’s Hill in the night to catch my horse, if

I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus, or a ball

of wildfire, there’s no purchase in money. O, thou art

40

a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light!

Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and

torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern

and tavern: but the sack that thou hast drunk me

would have bought me lights as good cheap at the

45

dearest chandler’s in Europe. I have maintained that

salamander of yours with fire any time this two and

thirty years, God reward me for it!

BARDOLPH     ‘Sblood, I would my face were in your belly!

FALSTAFF     God-a-mercy! so should I be sure to be

50

heartburnt.

Enter Hostess.

How now, dame Partlet the hen, have you enquired yet

who picked my pocket?

HOSTESS     Why, Sir John, what do you think, Sir John,

do you think I keep thieves in my house? I have

55

searched, I have enquired, so has my husband, man by

man, boy by boy, servant by servant – the tithe of a

hair was never lost in my house before.

FALSTAFF     Ye lie, hostess: Bardolph was shaved and lost

many a hair, and I’ll be sworn my pocket was picked:

60

go to, you are a woman, go.

HOSTESS     Who, I? No, I defy thee: God’s light, I was

never called so in mine own house before.

FALSTAFF     Go to, I know you well enough.

HOSTESS     No, Sir John, you do not know me, Sir John, I

65

know you, Sir John, you owe me money, Sir John, and

now you pick a quarrel to beguile me of it. I bought

you a dozen of shirts to your back.

FALSTAFF     Dowlas, filthy dowlas. I have given them

away to bakers’ wives; they have made bolters of them.

70

HOSTESS     Now as I am a true woman, holland of eight

shillings an ell! You owe money here besides, Sir John,

for your diet, and by-drinkings, and money lent you,

four and twenty pound.

FALSTAFF     He had his part of it, let him pay.

75

HOSTESS     He? Alas, he is poor, he hath nothing.

FALSTAFF     How? Poor? Look upon his face. What call

you rich? Let them coin his nose, let them coin his

cheeks, I’ll not pay a denier. What, will you make a

younker of me? Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn

80

but I shall have my pocket picked? I have lost a seal-

ring of my grandfather’s worth forty mark.

HOSTESS     O Jesu, I have heard the Prince tell him, I

know not how oft, that that ring was copper.

FALSTAFF     How? the Prince is a Jack, a sneak-up.

85

‘Sblood, and he were here I would cudgel him like a

dog if he would say so.

Enter the PRINCE marching, with PETO, and FALSTAFF meets him, playing upon his truncheon like a fife.

How now, lad? Is the wind in that door, i’faith, must

we all march?

BARDOLPH     Yea, two and two, Newgate fashion.

90

HOSTESS     My lord, I pray you hear me.

PRINCE     What say’st thou, Mistress Quickly? How doth

thy husband? I love him well, he is an honest man.

HOSTESS     Good my lord, hear me.

FALSTAFF     Prithee let her alone, and list to me.

95

PRINCE     What say’st thou, Jack?

FALSTAFF     The other night I fell asleep here, behind the

arras, and had my pocket picked: this house is turned

bawdy-house, they pick pockets.

PRINCE     What didst thou lose, Jack?

100

FALSTAFF     Wilt thou believe me, Hal, three or four

bonds of forty pound apiece, and a seal-ring of my

grandfather’s.

PRINCE     A trifle, some eightpenny matter.

HOSTESS     So I told him, my lord, and I said I heard your

105

Grace say so: and, my lord, he speaks most vilely of

you, like a foul-mouthed man as he is, and said he

would cudgel you.

PRINCE     What! he did not?

HOSTESS     There’s neither faith, truth, nor womanhood

110

in me else.

FALSTAFF     There’s no more faith in thee than in a

stewed prune, nor no more truth in thee than in a

drawn fox – and for womanhood, Maid Marian may be

the deputy’s wife of the ward to thee. Go, you thing,

115

go!

HOSTESS     Say, what thing, what thing?

FALSTAFF     What thing? Why, a thing to thank God on.

HOSTESS     I am no thing to thank God on, I would thou

shouldst know it, I am an honest man’s wife, and

120

setting thy knighthood aside, thou art a knave to call

me so.

FALSTAFF     Setting thy womanhood aside, thou art a

beast to say otherwise.

HOSTESS     Say, what beast, thou knave, thou?

125

FALSTAFF     What beast? Why, an otter.

PRINCE     An otter, Sir John? Why an otter?

FALSTAFF     Why? She’s neither fish nor flesh, a man

knows not where to have her.

HOSTESS     Thou art an unjust man in saying so, thou or

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any man knows where to have me, thou knave, thou.

PRINCE     Thou say’st true, hostess, and he slanders thee

most grossly.

HOSTESS     So he doth you, my lord, and said this other

day you ought him a thousand pound.

135

PRINCE     Sirrah, do I owe you a thousand pound?

FALSTAFF     A thousand pound, Hal? A million, thy love

is worth a million, thou owest me thy love.

HOSTESS     Nay, my lord, he called you Jack, and said he

would cudgel you.

140

FALSTAFF     Did I, Bardolph?

BARDOLPH     Indeed, Sir John, you said so.

FALSTAFF     Yea, if he said my ring was copper.

PRINCE     I say ’tis copper, darest thou be as good as thy

word now?

145

FALSTAFF     Why, Hal, thou knowest as thou art but man

I dare, but as thou art prince, I fear thee as I fear the

roaring of the lion’s whelp.

PRINCE     And why not as the lion?

FALSTAFF     The King himself is to be feared as the lion:

150

dost thou think I’ll fear thee as I fear thy father? Nay,

and I do, I pray God my girdle break.

PRINCE     O, if it should, how would thy guts fall about

thy knees! But sirrah, there’s no room for faith, truth,

nor honesty in this bosom of thine; it is all filled up

155

with guts and midriff. Charge an honest woman with

picking thy pocket? Why, thou whoreson impudent

embossed rascal, if there were anything in thy pocket

but tavern reckonings, memorandums of bawdy-

houses, and one poor pennyworth of sugar-candy to

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make thee long-winded, if thy pocket were enriched

with any other injuries but these, I am a villain: and yet

you will stand to it, you will not pocket up wrong! Art

thou not ashamed?

FALSTAFF     Dost thou hear, Hal? Thou knowest in the

165

state of innocency Adam fell, and what should poor

Jack Falstaff do in the days of villainy? Thou seest I

have more flesh than another man, and therefore more

frailty. You confess then, you picked my pocket?

PRINCE     It appears so by the story.

170

FALSTAFF     Hostess, I forgive thee, go make ready

breakfast, love thy husband, look to thy servants,

cherish thy guests, thou shalt find me tractable to any

honest reason, thou seest I am pacified still, nay

prithee be gone.     Exit Hostess.

175

Now, Hal, to the news at court: for the robbery, lad,

how is that answered?

PRINCE     O my sweet beef, I must still be good angel to

thee – the money is paid back again.

FALSTAFF     O, I do not like that paying back, ’tis a double

180

labour.

PRINCE     I am good friends with my father and may do

anything.

FALSTAFF     Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou

dost, and do it with unwashed hands too.

185

BARDOLPH     Do, my lord.

PRINCE     I have procured thee, Jack, a charge of foot.

FALSTAFF     I would it had been of horse. Where shall I

find one that can steal well? O for a fine thief of the age

of two and twenty or thereabouts: I am heinously

190

unprovided. Well, God be thanked for these rebels,

they offend none but the virtuous; I laud them, I

praise them.

PRINCE     Bardolph!

BARDOLPH     My Lord?

195

PRINCE     Go bear this letter to Lord John of Lancaster,

To my brother John, this to my Lord of

Westmoreland.     Exit Bardolph.

Go, Peto, to horse, to horse, for thou and I

Have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinner-time.

Exit Peto.

Jack, meet me tomorrow in the Temple hall

200

At two o’clock in the afternoon:

There shalt thou know thy charge, and there receive

Money and order for their furniture.

The land is burning, Percy stands on high,

And either we or they must lower lie.     Exit.

205

FALSTAFF

Rare words! Brave world! Hostess, my breakfast, come!

O, I could wish this tavern were my drum.     Exit.

4.1 Enter HOTSPUR, WORCESTER and DOUGLAS.

HOTSPUR     Well said, my noble Scot! If speaking truth

In this fine age were not thought flattery,

Such attribution should the Douglas have

As not a soldier of this season’s stamp

Should go so general current through the world.

5

By God, I cannot flatter, I do defy

The tongues of soothers, but a braver place

In my heart’s love hath no man than yourself:

Nay, task me to my word, approve me, lord.

DOUGLAS     Thou art the king of honour:

10

No man so potent breathes upon the ground

But I will beard him.

HOTSPUR     Do so, and ’tis well.

Enter a Messenger, with letters.

What letters hast thou there? – I can but thank you.

MESSENGER     These letters come from your father.

HOTSPUR

Letters from him? Why comes he not himself?

15

MESSENGER

He cannot come, my lord, he is grievous sick.

HOTSPUR     ‘Zounds, how has he the leisure to be sick

In such a justling time? Who leads his power?

Under whose government come they along?

MESSENGER     His letters bear his mind, not I, my lord.

20

WORCESTER     I prithee tell me, doth he keep his bed?

MESSENGER     He did, my lord, four days ere I set forth,

And at the time of my departure thence

He was much fear’d by his physicians.

WORCESTER

I would the state of time had first been whole

25

Ere he by sickness had been visited:

His health was never better worth than now.

HOTSPUR

Sick now? Droop now? This sickness doth infect

The very life-blood of our enterprise;

’Tis catching hither, even to our camp.

30

He writes me here that inward sickness,

And that his friends by deputation could not

So soon be drawn, nor did he think it meet

To lay so dangerous and dear a trust

On any soul remov’d but on his own.

35

Yet doth he give us bold advertisement

That with our small conjunction we should on,

To see how fortune is dispos’d to us;

For, as he writes, there is no quailing now,

Because the King is certainly possess’d

40

Of all our purposes. What say you to it?

WORCESTER     Your father’s sickness is a maim to us.

HOTSPUR     A perilous gash, a very limb lopp’d off –

And yet, in faith, it is not! His present want

Seems more than we shall find it. Were it good

45

To set the exact wealth of all our states

All at one cast? to set so rich a main

On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour?

It were not good, for therein should we read

The very bottom and the soul of hope,

50

The very list, the very utmost bound

Of all our fortunes.

DOUGLAS     Faith, and so we should, where now remains

A sweet reversion – we may boldly spend

Upon the hope of what is to come in.

55

A comfort of retirement lives in this.

HOTSPUR     A rendezvous, a home to fly unto,

If that the devil and mischance look big

Upon the maidenhead of our affairs.

WORCESTER

But yet I would your father had been here:

60

The quality and hair of our attempt

Brooks no division; it will be thought,

By some that know not why he is away,

That wisdom, loyalty, and mere dislike

Of our proceedings kept the Earl from hence;

65

And think how such an apprehension

May turn the tide of fearful faction,

And breed a kind of question in our cause:

For well you know we of the off ‘ring side

Must keep aloof from strict arbitrement,

70

And stop all sight-holes, every loop from whence

The eye of reason may pry in upon us:

This absence of your father’s draws a curtain

That shows the ignorant a kind of fear

Before not dreamt of.

HOTSPUR     You strain too far.

75

I rather of his absence make this use:

It lends a lustre and more great opinion,

A larger dare to our great enterprise,

Than if the Earl were here; for men must think

If we without his help can make a head

80

To push against a kingdom, with his help

We shall o’erturn it topsy-turvy down.

Yet all goes well, yet all our joints are whole.

DOUGLAS     As heart can think: there is not such a word

Spoke of in Scotland as this term of fear.

85

Enter SIR RICHARD VERNON.

HOTSPUR     My cousin Vernon! Welcome, by my soul!

VERNON     Pray God my news be worth a welcome, lord.

The Earl of Westmoreland seven thousand strong

Is marching hitherwards, with him Prince John.

HOTSPUR     No harm, what more?

VERNON     And further, I have learn’d,

90

The King himself in person is set forth,

Or hitherwards intended speedily,

With strong and mighty preparation.

HOTSPUR     He shall be welcome too: where is his son,

The nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales,

95

And his comrades that daft the world aside

And bid it pass?

VERNON     All furnish’d, all in arms;

All plum’d like estridges that with the wind

Bated, like eagles having lately bath’d,

Glittering in golden coats like images,

100

As full of spirit as the month of May,

And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;

Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.

I saw young Harry with his beaver on,

His cushes on his thighs, gallantly arm’d,

105

Rise from the ground like feather’d Mercury,

And vaulted with such ease into his seat

As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds

To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,

And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

110

HOTSPUR

No more, no more! Worse than the sun in March,

This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come!

They come like sacrifices in their trim,

And to the fire-ey’d maid of smoky war

All hot and bleeding will we offer them:

115

The mailed Mars shall on his altar sit

Up to the ears in blood. I am on fire

To hear this rich reprisal is so nigh,

And yet not ours! Come, let me taste my horse,

Who is to bear me like a thunderbolt

120

Against the bosom of the Prince of Wales.

Harry to Harry shall, hot horse to horse,

Meet and ne’er part till one drop down a corse.

O that Glendower were come!

VERNON     There is more news:

I learn’d in Worcester as I rode along

125

He cannot draw his power this fourteen days.

DOUGLAS     That’s the worst tidings that I hear of yet.

WORCESTER     Ay, by my faith, that bears a frosty sound.

HOTSPUR

What may the King’s whole battle reach unto?

VERNON     To thirty thousand.

HOTSPUR     Forty let it be:

130

My father and Glendower being both away,

The powers of us may serve so great a day.

Come, let us take a muster speedily –

Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily.

DOUGLAS     Talk not of dying, I am out of fear

135

Of death or death’s hand for this one half year.

Exeunt.

4.2 Enter FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH.

FALSTAFF     Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me

a bottle of sack. Our soldiers shall march through;

we’ll to Sutton Co’fil’ tonight.

BARDOLPH     Will you give me money, captain?

FALSTAFF     Lay out, lay out.

5

BARDOLPH     This bottle makes an angel.

FALSTAFF     And if it do, take it for thy labour – and if it

make twenty, take them all, I’ll answer the coinage.

Bid my lieutenant Peto meet me at town’s end.

BARDOLPH     I will, captain: farewell.     Exit.

10

FALSTAFF     If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a

soused gurnet; I have misused the King’s press

damnably. I have got in exchange of a hundred and

fifty soldiers three hundred and odd pounds. I press

me none but good householders, yeomen’s sons,

15

inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been

asked twice on the banns, such a commodity of warm

slaves as had as lief hear the devil as a drum, such as

fear the report of a caliver worse than a struck fowl or

a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none but such toasts-

20

and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than

pins’ heads, and they have bought out their services;

and now my whole charge consists of ancients,

corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies – slaves

as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the

25

glutton’s dogs licked his sores: and such as indeed

were never soldiers, but discarded unjust servingmen,

younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters,

and ostlers trade-fallen, the cankers of a calm world

and a long peace, ten times more dishonourable-

30

ragged than an old fazed ancient; and such have I to

fill up the rooms of them as have bought out their

services, that you would think that I had a hundred

and fifty tattered prodigals lately come from swine-

keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow

35

met me on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the

gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen

such scarecrows. I’ll not march through Coventry

with them, that’s flat: nay, and the villains march wide

betwixt the legs as if they had gyves on, for indeed I

40

had the most of them out of prison. There’s not a shirt

and a half in all my company, and the half shirt is two

napkins tacked together and thrown over the

shoulders like a herald’s coat without sleeves; and the

shirt to say the truth stolen from my host at Saint

45

Albans, or the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry. But

that’s all one, they’ll find linen enough on every hedge.

Enter the PRINCE and the LORD OF WESTMORELAND.

PRINCE     How now, blown Jack? How now, quilt?

FALSTAFF     What, Hal! How now, mad wag? What a devil

dost thou in Warwickshire? My good Lord of

50

Westmoreland, I cry you mercy, I thought your

honour had already been at Shrewsbury.

WESTMORELAND Faith, Sir John, ’tis more than time

that I were there, and you too, but my powers are there

already; the King I can tell you looks for us all, we

55

must away all night.

FALSTAFF     Tut, never fear me, I am as vigilant as a cat to

steal cream.

PRINCE     I think, to steal cream indeed, for thy theft hath

already made thee butter; but tell me, Jack, whose

60

fellows are these that come after?

FALSTAFF     Mine, Hal, mine.

PRINCE     I did never see such pitiful rascals.

FALSTAFF     Tut, tut, good enough to toss, food for

powder, food for powder, they’ll fill a pit as well as

65

better; tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.

WESTMORELAND Ay, but, Sir John, methinks they are

exceeding poor and bare, too beggarly.

FALSTAFF     Faith, for their poverty I know not where

they had that; and for their bareness I am sure they

70

never learned that of me.

PRINCE     No, I’ll be sworn, unless you call three fingers

in the ribs bare. But sirrah, make haste; Percy is

already in the field.     Exit.

FALSTAFF     What, is the King encamped?

75

WESTMORELAND He is, Sir John, I fear we shall stay too

long.     Exit.

FALSTAFF     Well,

To the latter end of a fray, and the beginning of a feast

Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.     Exit.

80

4.3 Enter HOTSPUR, WORCESTER, DOUGLAS, VERNON.

HOTSPUR     We’ll fight with him tonight.

WORCESTER     It may not be.

DOUGLAS     You give him then advantage.

VERNON     Not a whit.

HOTSPUR     Why say you so, looks he not for supply?

VERNON     So do we.

HOTSPUR     His is certain, ours is doubtful.

WORCESTER     Good cousin, be advis’d, stir not tonight.

5

VERNON     Do not, my lord.

DOUGLAS     You do not counsel well.

You speak it out of fear and cold heart.

VERNON     Do me no slander, Douglas; by my life,

And I dare well maintain it with my life,

If well-respected honour bid me on,

10

I hold as little counsel with weak fear

As you, my lord, or any Scot that this day lives;

Let it be seen tomorrow in the battle

Which of us fears.

DOUGLAS     Yea, or tonight.

VERNON     Content.

HOTSPUR     Tonight, say I.

15

VERNON     Come, come, it may not be. I wonder much,

Being men of such great leading as you are,

That you foresee not what impediments

Drag back our expedition: certain horse

Of my cousin Vernon’s are not yet come up,

20

Your uncle Worcester’s horse came but today,

And now their pride and mettle is asleep,

Their courage with hard labour tame and dull,

That not a horse is half the half himself.

HOTSPUR     So are the horses of the enemy

25

In general journey-bated and brought low.

The better part of ours are full of rest.

WORCESTER     The number of the King exceedeth ours:

For God’s sake, cousin, stay till all come in.

[The trumpet sounds a parley.]

Enter SIR WALTER BLUNT.

BLUNT     I come with gracious offers from the King,

30

If you vouchsafe me hearing and respect.

HOTSPUR

Welcome, Sir Walter Blunt: and would to God

You were of our determination!

Some of us love you well, and even those some

Envy your great deservings and good name,

35

Because you are not of our quality,

But stand against us like an enemy.

BLUNT     And God defend but still I should stand so,

So long as out of limit and true rule

You stand against anointed majesty.

40

But to my charge. The King hath sent to know

The nature of your griefs, and whereupon

You conjure from the breast of civil peace

Such bold hostility, teaching his duteous land

Audacious cruelty. If that the King

45

Have any way your good deserts forgot,

Which he confesseth to be manifold,

He bids you name your griefs, and with all speed

You shall have your desires with interest

And pardon absolute for yourself, and these

50

Herein misled by your suggestion.

HOTSPUR

The King is kind, and well we know the King

Knows at what time to promise, when to pay:

My father, and my uncle, and myself

Did give him that same royalty he wears,

55

And when he was not six and twenty strong,

Sick in the world’s regard, wretched and low,

A poor unminded outlaw sneaking home,

My father gave him welcome to the shore:

And when he heard him swear and vow to God

60

He came but to be Duke of Lancaster,

To sue his livery, and beg his peace

With tears of innocency, and terms of zeal,

My father, in kind heart and pity mov’d,

Swore him assistance, and perform’d it too.

65

Now when the lords and barons of the realm

Perceiv’d Northumberland did lean to him,

The more and less came in with cap and knee,

Met him in boroughs, cities, villages,

Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes,

70

Laid gifts before him, proffer’d him their oaths,

Gave him their heirs as pages, follow’d him

Even at the heels in golden multitudes.

He presently, as greatness knows itself,

Steps me a little higher than his vow

75

Made to my father while his blood was poor

Upon the naked shore at Ravenspurgh;

And now forsooth takes on him to reform

Some certain edicts and some strait decrees

That lie too heavy on the commonwealth;

80

Cries out upon abuses, seems to weep

Over his country’s wrongs; and by this face,

This seeming brow of justice, did he win

The hearts of all that he did angle for;

Proceeded further – cut me off the heads

85

Of all the favourites that the absent King

In deputation left behind him here,

When he was personal in the Irish war.

BLUNT     Tut, I came not to hear this.

HOTSPUR     Then to the point.

In short time after he depos’d the King,

90

Soon after that depriv’d him of his life,

And in the neck of that task’d the whole state;

To make that worse, suffer’d his kinsman March

(Who is, if every owner were well plac’d,

Indeed his King) to be engag’d in Wales,

95

There without ransom to lie forfeited;

Disgrac’d me in my happy victories,

Sought to entrap me by intelligence,

Rated mine uncle from the Council-board,

In rage dismiss’d my father from the court,

100

Broke oath on oath, committed wrong on wrong,

And in conclusion drove us to seek out

This head of safety, and withal to pry

Into his title, the which we find

Too indirect for long continuance.

105

BLUNT     Shall I return this answer to the King?

HOTSPUR     Not so, Sir Walter. We’ll withdraw awhile.

Go to the King, and let there be impawn’d

Some surety for a safe return again,

And in the morning early shall mine uncle

110

Bring him our purposes – and so, farewell.

BLUNT     I would you would accept of grace and love.

HOTSPUR     And may be so we shall.

BLUNT     Pray God you do.

Exeunt.

4.4 Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK and SIR MICHAEL.

ARCHBISHOP

Hie, good Sir Michael, bear this sealed brief

With winged haste to the lord marshal,

This to my cousin Scroop, and all the rest

To whom they are directed. If you knew

How much they do import you would make haste.

5

SIR MICHAEL     My good lord,

I guess their tenor.

ARCHBISHOP     Like enough you do.

Tomorrow, good Sir Michael, is a day

Wherein the fortune of ten thousand men

Must bide the touch; for, sir, at Shrewsbury,

10

As I am truly given to understand,

The King with mighty and quick-raised power

Meets with Lord Harry: and I fear, Sir Michael,

What with the sickness of Northumberland,

Whose power was in the first proportion,

15

And what with Owen Glendower’s absence thence,

Who with them was a rated sinew too,

And comes not in, o’er-rul’d by prophecies,

I fear the power of Percy is too weak

To wage an instant trial with the King.

20

SIR MICHAEL     Why, my good lord, you need not fear,

There is Douglas, and Lord Mortimer.

ARCHBISHOP     No, Mortimer is not there.

SIR MICHAEL

But there is Mordake, Vernon, Lord Harry Percy,

And there is my Lord of Worcester, and a head

25

Of gallant warriors, noble gentlemen.

ARCHBISHOP

And so there is: but yet the King hath drawn

The special head of all the land together:

The Prince of Wales, Lord John of Lancaster,

The noble Westmoreland, and warlike Blunt,

30

And many mo corrivals and dear men

Of estimation and command in arms.

SIR MICHAEL

Doubt not, my lord, they shall be well oppos’d.

ARCHBISHOP     I hope no less, yet needful ’tis to fear;

And to prevent the worst, Sir Michael, speed.

35

For if Lord Percy thrive not, ere the King

Dismiss his power he means to visit us,

For he hath heard of our confederacy,

And ’tis but wisdom to make strong against him:

Therefore make haste – I must go write again

40

To other friends; and so, farewell, Sir Michael.

Exeunt.

5.1 Enter the KING, PRINCE OF WALES, LORD JOHN OF LANCASTER, SIR WALTER BLUNT, FALSTAFF.

KING     How bloodily the sun begins to peer

Above yon bulky hill! The day looks pale

At his distemp’rature.

PRINCE     The southern wind

Doth play the trumpet to his purposes,

And by his hollow whistling in the leaves

5

Foretells a tempest and a blust’ring day.

KING     Then with the losers let it sympathise,

For nothing can seem foul to those that win.

[The trumpet sounds.]

Enter WORCESTER and VERNON.

How now, my Lord of Worcester! ’tis not well

That you and I should meet upon such terms

10

As now we meet. You have deceiv’d our trust,

And made us doff our easy robes of peace

To crush our old limbs in ungentle steel:

This is not well, my lord, this is not well.

What say you to it? Will you again unknit

15

This churlish knot of all-abhorred war,

And move in that obedient orb again

Where you did give a fair and natural light,

And be no more an exhal’d meteor,

A prodigy of fear, and a portent

20

Of broached mischief to the unborn times?

WORCESTER     Hear me, my liege:

For mine own part I could be well content

To entertain the lag end of my life

With quiet hours. For I protest

25

I have not sought the day of this dislike.

KING     You have not sought it? How comes it, then?

FALSTAFF     Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.

PRINCE     Peace, chewet, peace!

WORCESTER     It pleas’d your Majesty to turn your looks

30

Of favour from myself, and all our house,

And yet I must remember you, my lord,

We were the first and dearest of your friends;

For you my staff of office did I break

In Richard’s time, and posted day and night

35

To meet you on the way, and kiss your hand,

When yet you were in place and in account

Nothing so strong and fortunate as I.

It was myself, my brother, and his son,

That brought you home, and boldly did outdare

40

The dangers of the time. You swore to us,

And you did swear that oath at Doncaster,

That you did nothing purpose ‘gainst the state,

Nor claim no further than your new-fall’n right,

The seat of Gaunt, dukedom of Lancaster.

45

To this we swore our aid: but in short space

It rain’d down fortune show’ring on your head,

And such a flood of greatness fell on you,

What with our help, what with the absent King,

What with the injuries of a wanton time,

50

The seeming sufferances that you had borne,

And the contrarious winds that held the King

So long in his unlucky Irish wars

That all in England did repute him dead:

And from this swarm of fair advantages

55

You took occasion to be quickly woo’d

To gripe the general sway into your hand,

Forgot your oath to us at Doncaster,

And being fed by us, you us’d us so

As that ungentle gull the cuckoo’s bird

60

Useth the sparrow – did oppress our nest,

Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk

That even our love durst not come near your sight

For fear of swallowing; but with nimble wing

We were enforc’d for safety sake to fly

65

Out of your sight, and raise this present head,

Whereby we stand opposed by such means

As you yourself have forg’d against yourself,

By unkind usage, dangerous countenance,

And violation of all faith and troth

70

Sworn to us in your younger enterprise.

KING     These things indeed you have articulate,

Proclaim’d at market crosses, read in churches,

To face the garment of rebellion

With some fine colour that may please the eye

75

Of fickle changelings and poor discontents,

Which gape and rub the elbow at the news

Of hurlyburly innovation;

And never yet did insurrection want

Such water-colours to impaint his cause,

80

Nor moody beggars starving for a time

Of pellmell havoc and confusion.

PRINCE     In both your armies there is many a soul

Shall pay full dearly for this encounter

If once they join in trial. Tell your nephew,

85

The Prince of Wales doth join with all the world

In praise of Henry Percy: by my hopes,

This present enterprise set off his head,

I do not think a braver gentleman,

More active-valiant or more valiant-young,

90

More daring or more bold, is now alive

To grace this latter age with noble deeds.

For my part, I may speak it to my shame,

I have a truant been to chivalry,

And so I hear he doth account me too;

95

Yet this before my father’s majesty –

I am content that he shall take the odds

Of his great name and estimation,

And will, to save the blood on either side,

Try fortune with him in a single fight.

100

KING

And, Prince of Wales, so dare we venture thee,

Albeit, considerations infinite

Do make against it: no, good Worcester, no,

We love our people well, even those we love

That are misled upon your cousin’s part,

105

And will they take the offer of our grace,

Both he, and they, and you, yea, every man

Shall be my friend again, and I’ll be his:

So tell your cousin, and bring me word

What he will do. But if he will not yield,

110

Rebuke and dread correction wait on us,

And they shall do their office. So, be gone;

We will not now be troubled with reply:

We offer fair, take it advisedly.

Exit Worcester, with Vernon.

PRINCE     It will not be accepted, on my life;

115

The Douglas and the Hotspur both together

Are confident against the world in arms.

KING     Hence, therefore, every leader to his charge;

For on their answer will we set on them,

And God befriend us as our cause is just!

120

Exeunt all but the Prince and Falstaff.

FALSTAFF     Hal, if thou see me down in the battle and

bestride me, so; ’Tis a point of friendship.

PRINCE     Nothing but a Colossus can do thee that

friendship. Say thy prayers, and farewell.

FALSTAFF     I would ’twere bed-time, Hal, and all well.

125

PRINCE     Why, thou owest God a death.     Exit.

FALSTAFF     ’Tis not due yet, I would be loath to pay him

before his day – what need I be so forward with him

that calls not on me? Well, ’tis no matter, honour

pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off

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when I come on, how then? Can honour set to a leg?

No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound?

No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is

honour? A word. What is in that word honour? What

is that honour? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?

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He that died a-Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth

he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead.

But will it not live with the living? No. Why?

Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it.

Honour is a mere scutcheon – and so ends my

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catechism.     Exit.

5.2 Enter WORCESTER and SIR RICHARD VERNON.

WORCESTER

O no, my nephew must not know, Sir Richard,

The liberal and kind offer of the King.

VERNON     ’Twere best he did.

WORCESTER     Then are we all undone.

It is not possible, it cannot be,

The King should keep his word in loving us;

5

He will suspect us still, and find a time

To punish this offence in other faults:

Supposition all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes,

For treason is but trusted like the fox,

Who, never so tame, so cherish’d and lock’d up,

10

Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.

Look how we can, or sad or merrily,

Interpretation will misquote our looks,

And we shall feed like oxen at a stall,

The better cherish’d still the nearer death.

15

My nephew’s trespass may be well forgot,

It hath the excuse of youth and heat of blood,

And an adopted name of privilege –

A hare-brain’d Hotspur, govern’d by a spleen:

All his offences live upon my head

20

And on his father’s. We did train him on,

And, his corruption being ta’en from us,

We as the spring of all shall pay for all:

Therefore, good cousin, let not Harry know

In any case the offer of the King.

25

VERNON     Deliver what you will; I’ll say ’tis so.

Here comes your cousin.

Enter HOTSPUR and DOUGLAS.

HOTSPUR     My uncle is return’d;

Deliver up my Lord of Westmoreland.

Uncle, what news?

WORCESTER     The King will bid you battle presently.

30

DOUGLAS     Defy him by the Lord of Westmoreland.

HOTSPUR     Lord Douglas, go you and tell him so.

DOUGLAS     Marry, and shall, and very willingly.     Exit.

WORCESTER     There is no seeming mercy in the King.

HOTSPUR     Did you beg any? God forbid!

35

WORCESTER     I told him gently of our grievances,

Of his oath-breaking; which he mended thus,

By now forswearing that he is forsworn:

He calls us rebels, traitors, and will scourge

With haughty arms this hateful name in us.

40

Re-enter DOUGLAS.

DOUGLAS     Arm, gentlemen, to arms! for I have thrown

A brave defiance in King Henry’s teeth,

And Westmoreland that was engag’d did bear it,

Which cannot choose but bring him quickly on.

WORCESTER

The Prince of Wales stepp’d forth before the King,

45

And, nephew, challeng’d you to single fight.

HOTSPUR     O, would the quarrel lay upon our heads,

And that no man might draw short breath today

But I and Harry Monmouth! Tell me, tell me,

How show’d his tasking? Seem’d it in contempt?

50

VERNON     No, by my soul, I never in my life

Did hear a challenge urg’d more modestly,

Unless a brother should a brother dare

To gentle exercise and proof of arms.

He gave you all the duties of a man,

55

Trimm’d up your praises with a princely tongue,

Spoke your deservings like a chronicle,

Making you ever better than his praise

By still dispraising praise valu’d with you,

And, which became him like a prince indeed,

60

He made a blushing cital of himself,

And chid his truant youth with such a grace

As if he master’d there a double spirit

Of teaching and of learning instantly.

There did he pause: but let me tell the world –

65

If he outlive the envy of this day,

England did never owe so sweet a hope

So much misconstru’d in his wantonness.

HOTSPUR     Cousin, I think thou art enamoured

On his follies: never did I hear

70

Of any prince so wild a liberty.

But be he as he will, yet once ere night

I will embrace him with a soldier’s arm,

That he shall shrink under my courtesy.

Arm, arm with speed! And fellows, soldiers, friends,

75

Better consider what you have to do

Than I that have not well the gift of tongue

Can lift your blood up with persuasion.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     My lord, here are letters for you.

HOTSPUR     I cannot read them now.

80

O gentlemen, the time of life is short!

To spend that shortness basely were too long

If life did ride upon a dial’s point,

Still ending at the arrival of an hour.

And if we live, we live to tread on kings,

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If die, brave death when princes die with us!

Now, for our consciences, the arms are fair

When the intent of bearing them is just.

Enter another Messenger.

MESSENGER

My lord, prepare, the King comes on apace.

HOTSPUR     I thank him that he cuts me from my tale,

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For I profess not talking: only this –

Let each man do his best; and here draw I

A sword whose temper I intend to stain

With the best blood that I can meet withal

In the adventure of this perilous day.

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Now, Esperance! Percy! and set on,

Sound all the lofty instruments of war,

And by that music let us all embrace,

For, heaven to earth, some of us never shall

A second time do such a courtesy.

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Here they embrace, the trumpets sound, exeunt.

5.3 The KING enters with his power. Alarum to the battle. Then enter DOUGLAS and SIR WALTER BLUNT, disguised as the King.

BLUNT     What is thy name that in the battle thus

Thou crossest me? What honour dost thou seek

Upon my head?

DOUGLAS     Know then my name is Douglas,

And I do haunt thee in the battle thus

Because some tell me that thou art a king.

5

BLUNT     They tell thee true.

DOUGLAS

The Lord of Stafford dear today hath bought

Thy likeness, for instead of thee, King Harry,

This sword hath ended him: so shall it thee

Unless thou yield thee as my prisoner.

10

BLUNT     I was not born a yielder, thou proud Scot,

And thou shalt find a king that will revenge

Lord Stafford’s death.

[They fight. Douglas kills Blunt.]

Then enter HOTSPUR.

HOTSPUR

O Douglas, hadst thou fought at Holmedon thus

I never had triumph’d upon a Scot.

15

DOUGLAS

All’s done, all’s won: here breathless lies the King.

HOTSPUR     Where?

DOUGLAS     Here.

HOTSPUR

This, Douglas? No, I know this face full well,

A gallant knight he was, his name was Blunt,

20

Semblably furnish’d like the King himself.

DOUGLAS     A fool go with thy soul, whither it goes!

A borrow’d title hast thou bought too dear.

Why didst thou tell me that thou wert a king?

HOTSPUR     The King hath many marching in his coats.

25

DOUGLAS     Now, by my sword, I will kill all his coats;

I’ll murder all his wardrobe, piece by piece,

Until I meet the King.

HOTSPUR     Up and away!

Our soldiers stand full fairly for the day.     Exeunt.

Alarum. Enter FALSTAFF alone.

FALSTAFF     Though I could scape shot-free at London, I

30

fear the shot here, here’s no scoring but upon the pate.

Soft! who are you? Sir Walter Blunt – there’s honour

for you! Here’s no vanity! I am as hot as molten lead,

and as heavy too: God keep lead out of me, I need no

more weight than mine own bowels. I have led my

35

ragamuffins where they are peppered; there’s not

three of my hundred and fifty left alive, and they are

for the town’s end, to beg during life. But who comes

here?

Enter the PRINCE.

PRINCE

What, stands thou idle here? Lend me thy sword:

40

Many a nobleman lies stark and stiff

Under the hoofs of vaunting enemies,

whose deaths are yet unrevenged. I prithee lend me

thy sword.

FALSTAFF     O Hal, I prithee give me leave to breathe

45

awhile – Turk Gregory never did such deeds in arms

as I have done this day; I have paid Percy, I have made

him sure.

PRINCE     He is indeed, and living to kill thee:

I prithee lend me thy sword.

50

FALSTAFF     Nay, before God, Hal, if Percy be alive thou

gets not my sword, but take my pistol if thou wilt.

PRINCE     Give it me: what, is it in the case?

FALSTAFF     Ay, Hal, ’tis hot, ’tis hot; there’s that will sack

a city. [The Prince draws it out, and finds it to be a bottle

55

of sack.]

PRINCE     What, is it a time to jest and dally now? [He

throws the bottle at him.]     Exit.

FALSTAFF     Well, if Percy be alive, I’ll pierce him. If he

do come in my way, so: if he do not, if I come in his

willingly, let him make a carbonado of me. I like not

such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath. Give me life,

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which if I can save, so: if not, honour comes unlooked

for, and there’s an end.     Exit.

5.4 Alarum. Excursions. Enter the KING, the PRINCE, LORD JOHN OF LANCASTER, EARL OF WESTMORELAND.

KING

I prithee, Harry, withdraw thyself, thou bleed’st too much.

Lord John of Lancaster, go you with him.

LANCASTER     Not I, my lord, unless I did bleed too.

PRINCE     I beseech your Majesty, make up,

Lest your retirement do amaze your friends.

5

KING     I will do so. My Lord of Westmoreland,

Lead him to his tent.

WESTMORELAND

Come, my lord, I’ll lead you to your tent.

PRINCE     Lead me, my lord? I do not need your help,

And God forbid a shallow scratch should drive

10

The Prince of Wales from such a field as this,

Where stain’d nobility lies trodden on,

And rebels’ arms triumph in massacres!

LANCASTER

We breathe too long: come, cousin Westmoreland,

Our duty this way lies: for God’s sake, come.

15

Exeunt Lancaster and Westmoreland.

PRINCE     By God, thou hast deceiv’d me, Lancaster,

I did not think thee lord of such a spirit:

Before, I lov’d thee as a brother, John,

But now I do respect thee as my soul.

KING     I saw him hold Lord Percy at the point

20

With lustier maintenance than I did look for

Of such an ungrown warrior.

PRINCE     O, this boy

Lends mettle to us all!     Exit.

Enter DOUGLAS.

DOUGLAS

Another king! They grow like Hydra’s heads:

I am the Douglas, fatal to all those

25

That wear those colours on them. What art thou

That counterfeit’st the person of a king?

KING

The King himself, who, Douglas, grieves at heart

So many of his shadows thou hast met,

And not the very King. I have two boys

30

Seek Percy and thyself about the field,

But seeing thou fall’st on me so luckily

I will assay thee, and defend thyself.

DOUGLAS     I fear thou art another counterfeit,

And yet, in faith, thou bearest thee like a king;

35

But mine I am sure thou art, whoe’er thou be,

And thus I win thee.

[They fight, the King being in danger.]

Re-enter PRINCE.

PRINCE     Hold up thy head, vile Scot, or thou art like

Never to hold it up again! The spirits

Of valiant Shirley, Stafford, Blunt are in my arms.

40

It is the Prince of Wales that threatens thee,

Who never promiseth but he means to pay.

[They fight.]     Douglas flieth.

Cheerly, my lord, how fares your grace?

Sir Nicholas Gawsey hath for succour sent,

And so hath Clifton – I’ll to Clifton straight.

45

KING     Stay and breathe a while:

Thou hast redeem’d thy lost opinion,

And show’d thou mak’st some tender of my life,

In this fair rescue thou hast brought to me.

PRINCE     O God, they did me too much injury

50

That ever said I hearken’d for your death.

If it were so, I might have let alone

The insulting hand of Douglas over you,

Which would have been as speedy in your end

As all the poisonous potions in the world,

55

And sav’d the treacherous labour of your son.

KING

Make up to Clifton, I’ll to Sir Nicholas Gawsey.

Exit.

Enter HOTSPUR.

HOTSPUR     If I mistake not, thou art Harry Monmouth.

PRINCE     Thou speak’st as if I would deny my name.

HOTSPUR     My name is Harry Percy.

PRINCE     Why then I see

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A very valiant rebel of the name.

I am the Prince of Wales, and think not, Percy,

To share with me in glory any more:

Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere,

Nor can one England brook a double reign

65

Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales.

HOTSPUR     Nor shall it, Harry, for the hour is come

To end the one of us, and would to God

Thy name in arms were now as great as mine!

PRINCE     I’ll make it greater ere I part from thee,

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And all the budding honours on thy crest

I’ll crop to make a garland for my head.

HOTSPUR     I can no longer brook thy vanities.

[They fight.]

Enter FALSTAFF.

FALSTAFF     Well said, Hal! To it, Hal! Nay, you shall find

no boy’s play here, I can tell you.

75

Re-enter DOUGLAS; he fighteth with Falstaff,

who falls down as if he were dead. Exit Douglas. The Prince mortally wounds Hotspur.

HOTSPUR     O Harry, thou hast robb’d me of my youth!

I better brook the loss of brittle life

Than those proud titles thou hast won of me;

They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh:

But thoughts, the slaves of life, and life, time’s fool,

80

And time, that takes survey of all the world,

Must have a stop. O, I could prophesy,

But that the earthy and cold hand of death

Lies on my tongue: no, Percy, thou art dust,

And food for – [Dies.]

85

PRINCE

For worms, brave Percy. Fare thee well, great heart!

Ill-weav’d ambition, how much art thou shrunk!

When that this body did contain a spirit,

A kingdom for it was too small a bound;

But now two paces of the vilest earth

90

Is room enough. This earth that bears thee dead

Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.

If thou wert sensible of courtesy

I should not make so dear a show of zeal;

But let my favours hide thy mangled face,

95

And even in thy behalf I’ll thank myself

For doing these fair rites of tenderness.

Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heaven!

Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave,

But not remember’d in thy epitaph!

100

[He spieth Falstaff on the ground.]

What, old acquaintance, could not all this flesh

Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell!

I could have better spar’d a better man:

O, I should have a heavy miss of thee

If I were much in love with vanity:

105

Death hath not struck so fat a deer today,

Though many dearer, in this bloody fray.

Embowell’d will I see thee by and by,

Till then in blood by noble Percy lie.     Exit.

[Falstaff riseth up.]

FALSTAFF     Embowelled? If thou embowel me today, I’ll

110

give you leave to powder me and eat me too tomorrow.

‘Sblood, ’twas time to counterfeit, or that hot

termagant Scot had paid me, scot and lot too.

Counterfeit? I lie, I am no counterfeit: to die is to be a

counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man, who

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hath not the life of a man: but to counterfeit dying,

when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but

the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better

part of valour is discretion, in the which better part I

have saved my life. ‘Zounds, I am afraid of this

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gunpowder Percy, though he be dead; how if he should

counterfeit too and rise? By my faith, I am afraid he

would prove the better counterfeit; therefore I’ll make

him sure, yea, and I’ll swear I killed him. Why may not

he rise as well as I? Nothing confutes me but eyes, and

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nobody sees me: therefore, sirrah [stabbing him], with

a new wound in your thigh, come you along with me.

[He takes up Hotspur on his back.]

Re-enter PRINCE and LORD JOHN OF LANCASTER.

PRINCE

Come, brother John, full bravely hast thou flesh’d

Thy maiden sword.

LANCASTER     But soft, whom have we here?

Did you not tell me this fat man was dead?

130

PRINCE

I did, I saw him dead,

Breathless and bleeding on the ground. Art thou alive?

Or is it fantasy that plays upon our eyesight?

I prithee speak, we will not trust our eyes

Without our ears: thou art not what thou seem’st.

135

FALSTAFF     No, that’s certain, I am not a double-man:

but if I be not Jack Falstaff, then am I a Jack: there is

Percy [throwing the body down]! If your father will do

me any honour, so: if not, let him kill the next Percy

himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure

140

you.

PRINCE     Why, Percy I kill’d myself, and saw thee dead.

FALSTAFF     Didst thou? Lord, Lord, how this world is

given to lying! I grant you I was down, and out of

breath, and so was he, but we rose both at an instant,

145

and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may

be believed, so: if not, let them that should reward

valour bear the sin upon their own heads. I’ll take it

upon my death, I gave him this wound in the thigh; if

the man were alive, and would deny it, ‘zounds, I

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would make him eat a piece of my sword.

LANCASTER     This is the strangest tale that ever I heard.

PRINCE     This is the strangest fellow, brother John.

Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back.

[aside to Falstaff] For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,

I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.

[A retreat is sounded.]

The trumpet sounds retreat, the day is ours.

Come, brother, let us to the highest of the field,

To see what friends are living, who are dead.

Exeunt Prince of Wales and Lancaster.

FALSTAFF     I’ll follow, as they say, for reward. He that

160

rewards me, God reward him! If I do grow great, I’ll

grow less, for I’ll purge, and leave sack, and live

cleanly as a nobleman should do.

Exit, bearing off the body.

5.5 The trumpets sound. Enter the KING, PRINCE, LORD JOHN OF LANCASTER, EARL OF WESTMORELAND, with WORCESTER and VERNON prisoners.

KING     Thus ever did rebellion find rebuke.

Ill-spirited Worcester, did not we send grace,

Pardon, and terms of love to all of you?

And wouldst thou turn our offers contrary?

Misuse the tenor of thy kinsman’s trust?

5

Three knights upon our party slain today,

A noble earl and many a creature else,

Had been alive this hour,

If like a Christian thou hadst truly borne

Betwixt our armies true intelligence.

10

WORCESTER     What I have done my safety urg’d me to;

And I embrace this fortune patiently,

Since not to be avoided it falls on me.

KING     Bear Worcester to the death, and Vernon too:

Other offenders we will pause upon.

15

Exeunt Worcester and Vernon, guarded.

How goes the field?

PRINCE     The noble Scot, Lord Douglas, when he saw

The fortune of the day quite turn’d from him,

The noble Percy slain, and all his men

Upon the foot of fear, fled with the rest,

20

And falling from a hill, he was so bruis’d

That the pursuers took him. At my tent

The Douglas is; and I beseech your Grace

I may dispose of him.

KING     With all my heart.

PRINCE     Then, brother John of Lancaster, to you

25

This honourable bounty shall belong;

Go to the Douglas and deliver him

Up to his pleasure, ransomless and free:

His valours shown upon our crests today

Have taught us how to cherish such high deeds,

30

Even in the bosom of our adversaries.

LANCASTER     I thank your Grace for this high courtesy,

Which I shall give away immediately.

KING     Then this remains, that we divide our power:

You, son John, and my cousin Westmoreland,

35

Towards York shall bend you with your dearest speed

To meet Northumberland and the prelate Scroop,

Who, as we hear, are busily in arms:

Myself and you, son Harry, will towards Wales,

To fight with Glendower and the Earl of March.

40

Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway,

Meeting the check of such another day,

And since this business so fair is done,

Let us not leave till all our own be won.     Exeunt.

King Henry IV, Part 2

‘The second parte of the history of kinge HENRY the iiijth with the humours of Sir JOHN FFALLSTAFF’ was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 23 August 1600, and a Quarto was published that year, printed by Valentine Simmes. One scene, 3.1, in which King Henry makes his belated first appearance, was accidently omitted. To insert it Simmes set four new leaves, which not only include the missing scene but reprint the surrounding lines from the end of 2.4 and the beginning of 3.2. The two states of the 1600 Quarto, with or without 3.1, mark the only appearance of the play in print before the 1623 Folio, a surprising fact given the extraordinary popularity of King Henry IV, Part 1.

The Quarto text serves as the primary authority for most modern editions. The Folio, however, includes eight substantial passages absent from the Quarto, and seems in other places authoritatively to correct and add to the earlier text, so it too must be taken into account by editors. In other particulars, however, the Folio seems further from Shakespeare’s own hand than the Quarto, regularizing its colloquialisms and purging the text of most of its oaths and profanities.

The play was written soon after King Henry IV, Part 1, probably early in 1598, but more as a sequel than as the second half of a single ten-act dramatic entity. Had two plays been clearly in his mind from the outset, Shakespeare would no doubt have parcelled out the historical material more evenly. Though Part 2 brings the action forward to King Henry’s death and Hal’s accession to the throne, the play does more than merely complete the history of the reign. Shakespeare echoes the structure of the earlier play, transposing it into a darker key. Part 2 also ignores various aspects of the plot of Part 1, even forgetting the reconciliation of father and son that ends the earlier play.

Yet if the trajectory of the action is the same in each play, dividing interest between the King and Prince, the rebels and Falstaff, the history in Part 2 is more troubled and troubling. The climactic battles of each play, while structurally analogous, starkly establish the plays’ different tones. Part 1’s glorious victory at Shrewsbury, where Hal magnificently proves himself a worthy successor, is paralleled by the betrayal at Gaultree Forest, where Prince John of Lancaster displays not the chivalric magnanimity of Hal but a prudential cynicism all too appropriate to the dispiriting world of this play.

Hal does not even appear on stage until 2.2, and his first line is telling: ‘Before God, I am exceeding weary.’ Even Falstaff is here more tired and cynical than in Part 1, his actions meaner, his wit less agile. Though his presence is still engaging, he shows the marks of the disease that infects the play world. He first enters worrying about the doctor’s report about his urine sample, and his own diagnosis is that he suffers from ‘consumption of the purse’.

Falstaff in this play is no longer a father figure for Hal; indeed the two are rarely together on stage, and the play’s most notorious moment is the fat knight’s public rejection. Falstaff eagerly anticipates the crowning of his erstwhile tavern friend as King, but the ‘Hal’ he knew is no more. The once wayward Prince is now King of England, and coldly tells Falstaff: ‘Presume not that I am the thing I was.’ The newly crowned Henry V has no choice but to repudiate the dissolute knight, but audiences inevitably feel that the new King gives up some of his humanity in so fully taking on his necessary public role. It is here, in the way in which Henry performs the rejection, in the degree of evident regret, in the extent to which he realizes what he has lost and what he has become, that productions of this complex and unsettling play reveal their moral focus.

Though never as popular on stage as its predecessor, Part 2 has a distinguished performance history. It was one of the plays performed at Court in the winter of 1612-13 to celebrate the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine. After the Restoration it continued to be played, but often in adaptations that emphasized the role of Falstaff, or in conflations of the two parts. Such conflations go back at least as far as 1622-3, when Sir Edward Dering prepared one for his own private theatricals, but the tradition survives into the twentieth century, as in Orson Welles’s film Chimes at Midnight (1966) and an extraordinary production of Enrico IV by the Colletivo di Parma, first staged in Italy in 1982 and brought to London the following year.

The Arden text is based on the 1600 Quarto, supplemented by the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

RUMOUR

the presenter

KING Henry the Fourth

PRINCE Henry

afterwards crowned King Henry the Fifth Prince John of LANCASTER

sons to Henry the Fourth, and brethren to Henry the Fifth

opposites against King Henry the Fourth

of the King’s party

irregular humourist

both country Justices

DAVY
FANG and SNARE

servant to Shallow two sergeants

country soldiers

LADY NORTHUMBERLAND

Northumberland’s wife

LADY PERCY

Percy’s widow

HOSTESS Quickly

DOLL Tearsheet

Speaker of the EPILOGUE

FRANCIS and other DRAWERS

Beadles and other Officers, Grooms, Porter, Messenger, Soldiers, Lords, Musicians, Attendants

King Henry IV, Part 2

INDUCTION

Enter RUMOUR painted full of tongues.

RUMOUR     Open your ears; for which of you will stop

The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?

I, from the Orient to the drooping West,

Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold

The acts commenced on this ball of earth.

5

Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,

The which in every language I pronounce,

Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.

I speak of peace, while covert enmity

Under the smile of safety wounds the world;

10

And who but Rumour, who but only I,

Make fearful musters, and prepar’d defence,

Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief,

Is thought with child by the stern tyrant War,

And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe

15

Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,

And of so easy and so plain a stop

That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,

The still-discordant wav’ring multitude,

Can play upon it. But what need I thus

20

My well-known body to anatomize

Among my household? Why is Rumour here?

I run before King Harry’s victory,

Who in a bloody field by Shrewsbury

Hath beaten down young Hotspur and his troops,

25

Quenching the flame of bold rebellion

Even with the rebels’ blood. But what mean I

To speak so true at first? My office is

To noise abroad that Harry Monmouth fell

Under the wrath of noble Hotspur’s sword,

30

And that the King before the Douglas’ rage

Stoop’d his anointed head as low as death.

This have I rumour’d through the peasant towns

Between that royal field of Shrewsbury

And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone,

35

Where Hotspur’s father, old Northumberland,

Lies crafty-sick. The posts come tiring on,

And not a man of them brings other news

Than they have learnt of me. From Rumour’s tongues

They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs.     Exit.

40

1.1 Enter LORD BARDOLPH.

LORD BARDOLPH     Who keeps the gate here, ho?

Enter the Porter.

Where is the Earl?

PORTER     What shall I say you are?

LORD BARDOLPH     Tell thou the Earl

That the Lord Bardolph doth attend him here.

PORTER     His lordship is walk’d forth into the orchard.

Please it your honour knock but at the gate,

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And he himself will answer.

Enter NORTHUMBERLAND.

LORD BARDOLPH     Here comes the Earl.

Exit Porter.

NORTHUMBERLAND

What news, Lord Bardolph? Every minute now

Should be the father of some stratagem.

The times are wild; contention, like a horse

Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose,

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And bears down all before him.

LORD BARDOLPH     Noble Earl,

I bring you certain news from Shrewsbury.

NORTHUMBERLAND     Good, and God will!

LORD BARDOLPH     As good as heart can wish.

The King is almost wounded to the death;

And, in the fortune of my lord your son,

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Prince Harry slain outright; and both the Blunts

Kill’d by the hand of Douglas; young Prince John

And Westmoreland and Stafford fled the field;

And Harry Monmouth’s brawn, the hulk Sir John,

Is prisoner to your son. O, such a day,

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So fought, so follow’d, and so fairly won,

Came not till now to dignify the times

Since Caesar’s fortunes!

NORTHUMBERLAND     How is this deriv’d?

Saw you the field? Came you from Shrewsbury?

LORD BARDOLPH

I spake with one, my lord, that came from thence,

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A gentleman well bred, and of good name,

That freely render’d me these news for true.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Here comes my servant Travers whom I sent

On Tuesday last to listen after news.

Enter TRAVERS.

LORD BARDOLPH     My lord, I over-rode him on the way,

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And he is furnish’d with no certainties

More than he haply may retail from me.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Now, Travers, what good tidings comes with you?

TRAVERS     My lord, Sir John Umfrevile turn’d me back

With joyful tidings, and, being better hors’d,

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Out-rode me. After him came spurring hard

A gentleman almost forspent with speed,

That stopp’d by me to breathe his bloodied horse.

He ask’d the way to Chester, and of him

I did demand what news from Shrewsbury.

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He told me that rebellion had ill luck,

And that young Harry Percy’s spur was cold.

With that he gave his able horse the head,

And bending forward struck his armed heels

Against the panting sides of his poor jade

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Up to the rowel-head; and starting so

He seem’d in running to devour the way,

Staying no longer question.

NORTHUMBERLAND     Ha? Again!

Said he young Harry Percy’s spur was cold?

Of Hotspur, Coldspur? that rebellion

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Had met ill luck?

LORD BARDOLPH     My lord, I’ll tell you what:

If my young lord your son have not the day,

Upon mine honour, for a silken point

I’ll give my barony, never talk of it.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Why should that gentleman that rode by Travers

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Give then such instances of loss?

LORD BARDOLPH     Who, he?

He was some hilding fellow that had stol’n

The horse he rode on, and, upon my life,

Spoke at a venture. Look, here comes more news.

Enter MORTON.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Yea, this man’s brow, like to a title-leaf,

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Foretells the nature of a tragic volume.

So looks the strond whereon the imperious flood

Hath left a witness’d usurpation.

Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury?

MORTON     I ran from Shrewsbury, my noble lord,

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Where hateful death put on his ugliest mask

To fright our party.

NORTHUMBERLAND     How doth my son, and brother?

Thou tremblest, and the whiteness in thy cheek

Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.

Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,

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So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,

Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night,

And would have told him half his Troy was burnt:

But Priam found the fire ere he his tongue,

And I my Percy’s death ere thou report’st it.

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This thou wouldst say, ‘Your son did thus and thus;

Your brother thus; so fought the noble Douglas’ –

Stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds:

But in the end, to stop my ear indeed,

Thou hast a sigh to blow away this praise,

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Ending with ‘Brother, son, and all are dead’.

MORTON

Douglas is living, and your brother, yet;

But, for my lord your son –

NORTHUMBERLAND     Why, he is dead.

See what a ready tongue suspicion hath!

He that but fears the thing he would not know

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Hath by instinct knowledge from others’ eyes

That what he fear’d is chanced. Yet speak, Morton;

Tell thou an earl his divination lies,

And I will take it as a sweet disgrace,

And make thee rich for doing me such wrong.

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MORTON     You are too great to be by me gainsaid,

Your spirit is too true, your fears too certain.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Yet, for all this, say not that Percy’s dead.

I see a strange confession in thine eye:

Thou shak’st thy head, and hold’st it fear or sin

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To speak a truth. If he be slain, say so:

The tongue offends not that reports his death;

And he doth sin that doth belie the dead,

Not he which says the dead is not alive.

Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news

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Hath but a losing office, and his tongue

Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,

Remember’d tolling a departing friend.

LORD BARDOLPH

I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead.

MORTON     I am sorry I should force you to believe

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That which I would to God I had not seen;

But these mine eyes saw him in bloody state,

Rend’ring faint quittance, wearied, and out-breath’d,

To Harry Monmouth, whose swift wrath beat down

The never-daunted Percy to the earth,

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From whence with life he never more sprung up.

In few, his death, whose spirit lent a fire

Even to the dullest peasant in his camp,

Being bruited once, took fire and heat away

From the best-temper’d courage in his troops:

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For from his metal was his party steel’d,

Which once in him abated, all the rest

Turn’d on themselves, like dull and heavy lead:

And as the thing that’s heavy in itself

Upon enforcement flies with greatest speed,

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So did our men, heavy in Hotspur’s loss,

Lend to this weight such lightness with their fear

That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim

Than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety,

Fly from the field. Then was that noble Worcester

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Too soon ta’en prisoner, and that furious Scot,

The bloody Douglas, whose well-labouring sword

Had three times slain th’appearance of the King,

Gan vail his stomach, and did grace the shame

Of those that turn’d their backs, and in his flight,

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Stumbling in fear, was took. The sum of all

Is that the King hath won, and hath sent out

A speedy power to encounter you, my lord,

Under the conduct of young Lancaster

And Westmoreland. This is the news at full.

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NORTHUMBERLAND

For this I shall have time enough to mourn.

In poison there is physic; and these news,

Having been well, that would have made me sick,

Being sick, have in some measure made me well.

And as the wretch whose fever-weaken’d joints,

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Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life,

Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire

Out of his keeper’s arms, even so my limbs,

Weaken’d with grief, being now enrag’d with grief,

Are thrice themselves. Hence, therefore, thou nice crutch!

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A scaly gauntlet now with joints of steel

Must glove this hand: and hence, thou sickly coif!

Thou art a guard too wanton for the head

Which princes, flesh’d with conquest, aim to hit.

Now bind my brows with iron, and approach

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The ragged’st hour that time and spite dare bring

To frown upon th’enrag’d Northumberland!

Let heaven kiss earth! Now let not Nature’s hand

Keep the wild flood confin’d! Let order die!

And let this world no longer be a stage

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To feed contention in a ling’ring act;

But let one spirit of the first-born Cain

Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set

On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,

And darkness be the burier of the dead!

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LORD BARDOLPH

This strained passion doth you wrong, my lord.

MORTON

Sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour;

The lives of all your loving complices

Lean on your health; the which, if you give o’er

To stormy passion, must perforce decay.

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You cast th’event of war, my noble lord,

And summ’d the account of chance, before you said

‘Let us make head’. It was your presurmise

That in the dole of blows your son might drop.

You knew he walk’d o’er perils, on an edge,

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More likely to fall in than to get o’er.

You were advis’d his flesh was capable

Of wounds and scars, and that his forward spirit

Would lift him where most trade of danger rang’d.

Yet did you say ‘Go forth’; and none of this,

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Though strongly apprehended, could restrain

The stiff-borne action. What hath then befall’n,

Or what hath this bold enterprise brought forth,

More than that being which was like to be?

LORD BARDOLPH     We all that are engaged to this loss

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Knew that we ventur’d on such dangerous seas

That if we wrought out life ’twas ten to one;

And yet we ventur’d for the gain propos’d,

Chok’d the respect of likely peril fear’d,

And since we are o’erset, venture again.

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Come, we will all put forth, body and goods.

MORTON

’Tis more than time. And, my most noble lord,

I hear for certain, and dare speak the truth,

The gentle Archbishop of York is up

With well-appointed pow’rs. He is a man

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Who with a double surety binds his followers.

My lord your son had only but the corpse,

But shadows and the shows of men, to fight;

For that same word ‘rebellion’ did divide

The action of their bodies from their souls,

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And they did fight with queasiness, constrain’d,

As men drink potions, that their weapons only

Seem’d on our side; but, for their spirits and souls,

This word ‘rebellion’ – it had froze them up,

As fish are in a pond. But now the Bishop

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Turns insurrection to religion;

Suppos’d sincere and holy in his thoughts,

He’s follow’d both with body and with mind,

And doth enlarge his rising with the blood

Of fair King Richard, scrap’d from Pomfret stones;

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Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause;

Tells them he doth bestride a bleeding land,

Gasping for life under great Bolingbroke;

And more and less do flock to follow him.

NORTHUMBERLAND

I knew of this before, but, to speak truth,

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This present grief had wip’d it from my mind.

Go in with me, and counsel every man

The aptest way for safety and revenge:

Get posts and letters, and make friends with speed:

Never so few, and never yet more need. Exeunt.

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1.2 Enter SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, with his Page bearing his sword and buckler.

FALSTAFF     Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water?

PAGE     He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy

water; but, for the party that owed it, he might have

moe diseases than he knew for.

5

FALSTAFF     Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me.

The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is

not able to invent anything that intends to laughter

more than I invent, or is invented on me; I am not only

witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.

10

I do here walk before thee like a sow that hath

overwhelmed all her litter but one. If the Prince put

thee into my service for any other reason than to set

me off, why then I have no judgment. Thou whoreson

mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap than to

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wait at my heels. I was never manned with an agate till

now, but I will inset you, neither in gold nor silver, but

in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master

for a jewel, – the juvenal the Prince your master,

whose chin is not yet fledge. I will sooner have a beard

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grow in the palm of my hand than he shall get one off

his cheek; and yet he will not stick to say his face is a

face-royal. God may finish it when He will, ’tis not a

hair amiss yet. He may keep it still at a face-royal, for

a barber shall never earn sixpence out of it. And yet

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he’ll be crowing as if he had writ man ever since his

father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but

he’s almost out of mine, I can assure him. What said

Master Dommelton about the satin for my short cloak

and my slops?

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PAGE     He said, sir, you should procure him better

assurance than Bardolph: he would not take his bond

and yours, he liked not the security.

FALSTAFF     Let him be damned like the glutton! Pray

God his tongue be hotter! A whoreson Achitophel!

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A rascally yea-forsooth knave, to bear a gentleman in

hand, and then stand upon security! The whoreson

smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes and

bunches of keys at their girdles; and if a man is

through with them in honest taking up, then they

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must stand upon security. I had as lief they would put

ratsbane in my mouth as offer to stop it with security.

I looked a should have sent me two and twenty yards

of satin, as I am a true knight, and he sends me

‘security’! Well, he may sleep in security, for he hath

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the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife

shines through it; and yet cannot he see, though he

have his own lanthorn to light him. Where’s

Bardolph?

PAGE     He’s gone into Smithfield to buy your worship a horse.

50

FALSTAFF     I bought him in Paul’s, and he’ll buy me a

horse in Smithfield. And I could get me but a wife in

the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.

Enter Lord Chief Justice and Servant.

PAGE     Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the

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Prince for striking him about Bardolph.

FALSTAFF     Wait close, I will not see him.

CHIEF JUSTICE What’s he that goes there?

SERVANT     Falstaff, and’t please your lordship.

CHIEF JUSTICE     He that was in question for the robbery?

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SERVANT     He, my lord: but he hath since done good

service at Shrewsbury, and, as I hear, is now going

with some charge to the Lord John of Lancaster.

CHIEF JUSTICE What, to York? Call him back again.

SERVANT     Sir John Falstaff!

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FALSTAFF     Boy, tell him I am deaf.

PAGE     You must speak louder, my master is deaf.

CHIEF JUSTICE     I am sure he is, to the hearing of

anything good. Go pluck him by the elbow, I must

speak with him.

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SERVANT     Sir John!

FALSTAFF     What! A young knave, and begging! Is there

not wars? Is there not employment? Doth not the

King lack subjects? Do not the rebels need soldiers?

Though it be a shame to be on any side but one, it is

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worse shame to beg than to be on the worst side, were

it worse than the name of rebellion can tell how to

make it.

SERVANT     You mistake me, sir.

FALSTAFF     Why, sir, did I say you were an honest man?

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Setting my knighthood and my soldiership aside, I had

lied in my throat if I had said so.

SERVANT I pray you, sir, then set your knighthood and

your soldiership aside, and give me leave to tell you

you lie in your throat, if you say I am any other than

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an honest man.

FALSTAFF     I give thee leave to tell me so? I lay aside that

which grows to me? If thou get’st any leave of me,

hang me. If thou tak’st leave, thou wert better be

hanged. You hunt counter. Hence! Avaunt!

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SERVANT     Sir, my lord would speak with you.

CHIEF JUSTICE     Sir John Falstaff, a word with you.

FALSTAFF     My good lord! God give your lordship good

time of day. I am glad to see your lordship abroad, I

heard say your lordship was sick. I hope your lordship

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goes abroad by advice; your lordship, though not clean

past your youth, have yet some smack of age in you,

some relish of the saltness of time; and I most humbly

beseech your lordship to have a reverend care of your

health.

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CHIEF JUSTICE     Sir John, I sent for you before your

expedition to Shrewsbury.

FALSTAFF     And’t please your lordship, I hear his

Majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales.

CHIEF JUSTICE     I talk not of his Majesty. You would not

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come when I sent for you.

FALSTAFF     And I hear, moreover, his Highness is fallen

into this same whoreson apoplexy.

CHIEF JUSTICE Well, God mend him! I pray you let me

speak with you.

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FALSTAFF     This apoplexy, as I take it, is a kind of

lethargy, and’t please your lordship, a kind of sleeping

in the blood, a whoreson tingling.

CHIEF JUSTICE     What tell you me of it? Be it as it is.

FALSTAFF     It hath it original from much grief, from

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study, and perturbation of the brain; I have read the

cause of his effects in Galen, it is a kind of deafness.

CHIEF JUSTICE     I think you are fallen into the disease, for

you hear not what I say to you.

FALSTAFF     Very well, my lord, very well. Rather, and’t

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please you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady

of not marking, that I am troubled withal.

CHIEF JUSTICE     To punish you by the heels would

amend the attention of your ears, and I care not if I do

become your physician.

125

FALSTAFF     I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so

patient. Your lordship may minister the potion of

imprisonment to me in respect of poverty; but how I

should be your patient to follow your prescriptions,

the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or indeed

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a scruple itself.

CHIEF JUSTICE     I sent for you when there were matters

against you for your life, to come speak with me.

FALSTAFF     As I was then advised by my learned counsel

in the laws of this land-service, I did not come.

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CHIEF JUSTICE Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in

great infamy.

FALSTAFF     He that buckles himself in my belt cannot

live in less.

CHIEF JUSTICE     Your means are very slender, and your

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waste is great.

FALSTAFF     I would it were otherwise, I would my means

were greater and my waist slenderer.

CHIEF JUSTICE     You have misled the youthful Prince.

FALSTAFF     The young Prince hath misled me. I am the

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fellow with the great belly, and he my dog.

CHIEF JUSTICE Well, I am loath to gall a new-healed

wound. Your day’s service at Shrewsbury hath a little

gilded over your night’s exploit on Gad’s Hill. You

may thank th’unquiet time for your quiet o’er-posting

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that action.

FALSTAFF     My lord! –

CHIEF JUSTICE     But since all is well, keep it so: wake not

a sleeping wolf.

FALSTAFF     To wake a wolf is as bad as smell a fox.

155

CHIEF JUSTICE What! You are as a candle, the better

part burnt out.

FALSTAFF     A wassail candle, my lord, all tallow – if I did

say of wax, my growth would approve the truth.

CHIEF JUSTICE     There is not a white hair in your face but

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should have his effect of gravity.

FALSTAFF     His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.

CHIEF JUSTICE     You follow the young Prince up and

down, like his ill angel.

FALSTAFF     Not so, my lord, your ill angel is light, but I

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hope he that looks upon me will take me without

weighing. And yet in some respects, I grant, I cannot

go. I cannot tell – virtue is of so little regard in these

costermongers’ times that true valour is turned

bearherd; pregnancy is made a tapster, and his quick

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wit wasted in giving reckonings; all the other gifts

appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes

them, are not worth a gooseberry. You that are old

consider not the capacities of us that are young; you do

measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of

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your galls; and we that are in the vaward of our youth,

I must confess, are wags too.

CHIEF JUSTICE     Do you set down your name in the scroll

of youth, that are written down old with all the

characters of age? Have you not a moist eye, a dry

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hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg,

an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your

wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and

every part about you blasted with antiquity? And will

you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!

185

FALSTAFF     My lord, I was born about three of the clock

in the afternoon, with a white head, and something a

round belly. For my voice, I have lost it with hallooing,

and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further,

I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgment and

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understanding; and he that will caper with me for a

thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have

at him! For the box of the ear that the Prince gave you,

he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a

sensible lord. I have checked him for it, and the young

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lion repents – [aside] marry, not in ashes and

sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.

CHIEF JUSTICE Well, God send the Prince a better

companion!

FALSTAFF     God send the companion a better prince!

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I cannot rid my hands of him.

CHIEF JUSTICE Well, the King hath severed you and

Prince Harry: I hear you are going with Lord John of

Lancaster, against the Archbishop and the Earl of

Northumberland.

205

FALSTAFF     Yea, I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But

look you pray, all you that kiss my lady Peace at home,

that our armies join not in a hot day; for, by the Lord,

I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to

sweat extraordinarily. If it be a hot day, and I brandish

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anything but a bottle, I would I might never spit white

again. There is not a dangerous action can peep out

his head but I am thrust upon it. Well, I cannot last

ever; but it was alway yet the trick of our English

nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too

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common. If ye will needs say I am an old man, you

should give me rest. I would to God my name were not

so terrible to the enemy as it is – I were better to be

eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to

nothing with perpetual motion.

220

CHIEF JUSTICE Well, be honest, be honest, and God

bless your expedition!

FALSTAFF     Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound

to furnish me forth?

CHIEF JUSTICE     Not a penny, not a penny; you are too

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impatient to bear crosses. Fare you well: commend me

to my cousin Westmoreland.

Exeunt Lord Chief Justice and Servant.

FALSTAFF     If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A

man can no more separate age and covetousness than

a can part young limbs and lechery: but the gout galls

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the one, and the pox pinches the other; and so both the

degrees prevent my curses. Boy!

PAGE     Sir?

FALSTAFF     What money is in my purse?

PAGE     Seven groats and two pence.

235

FALSTAFF     I can get no remedy against this consumption

of the purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out,

but the disease is incurable. Go bear this letter to my

Lord of Lancaster; this to the Prince; this to the Earl

of Westmoreland; – and this to old mistress Ursula,

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whom I have weekly sworn to marry since I perceived

the first white hair of my chin. About it; you know

where to find me.     Exit Page.

A pox of this gout! or a gout of this pox! for the one or

the other plays the rogue with my great toe. ’Tis no

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matter if I do halt; I have the wars for my colour, and

my pension shall seem the more reasonable. A good

wit will make use of anything; I will turn diseases to

commodity.     Exit.

1.3 Enter the Archbishop, THOMAS MOWBRAY the Earl Marshal, the Lords HASTINGS and BARDOLPH.

ARCHBISHOP

Thus have you heard our cause, and known our means,

And, my most noble friends, I pray you all

Speak plainly your opinions of our hopes:

And first, Lord Marshal, what say you to it?

MOWBRAY     I well allow the occasion of our arms,

5

But gladly would be better satisfied

How in our means we should advance ourselves

To look with forehead bold and big enough

Upon the power and puissance of the King.

HASTINGS     Our present musters grow upon the file

10

To five and twenty thousand men of choice;

And our supplies live largely in the hope

Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns

With an incensed fire of injuries.

LORD BARDOLPH

The question then, Lord Hastings, standeth thus –

15

Whether our present five and twenty thousand

May hold up head without Northumberland.

HASTINGS     With him we may.

LORD BARDOLPH     Yea, marry, there’s the point:

But if without him we be thought too feeble

My judgment is, we should not step too far

20

Till we had his assistance by the hand;

For in a theme so bloody-fac’d as this

Conjecture, expectation, and surmise

Of aids incertain should not be admitted.

ARCHBISHOP     ’Tis very true, Lord Bardolph, for indeed

25

It was young Hotspur’s case at Shrewsbury.

LORD BARDOLPH

It was, my lord; who lin’d himself with hope,

Eating the air and promise of supply,

Flatt’ring himself in project of a power

Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts,

30

And so, with great imagination

Proper to madmen, led his powers to death,

And winking leap’d into destruction.

HASTINGS     But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt

To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.

35

LORD BARDOLPH     Yes, if this present quality of war –

Indeed the instant action, a cause on foot –

Lives so in hope, as in an early spring

We see th’appearing buds; which to prove fruit

Hope gives not so much warrant, as despair

40

That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build,

We first survey the plot, then draw the model,

And when we see the figure of the house,

Then must we rate the cost of the erection,

Which if we find outweighs ability,

45

What do we then but draw anew the model

In fewer offices, or at least desist

To build at all? Much more, in this great work –

Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down

And set another up – should we survey

50

The plot of situation and the model,

Consent upon a sure foundation,

Question surveyors, know our own estate,

How able such a work to undergo,

To weigh against his opposite; or else

55

We fortify in paper and in figures,

Using the names of men instead of men,

Like one that draws the model of an house

Beyond his power to build it, who, half-through,

Gives o’er, and leaves his part-created cost

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A naked subject to the weeping clouds,

And waste for churlish winter’s tyranny.

HASTINGS

Grant that our hopes, yet likely of fair birth,

Should be still-born, and that we now possess’d

The utmost man of expectation,

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I think we are a body strong enough,

Even as we are, to equal with the King.

LORD BARDOLPH

What, is the King but five and twenty thousand?

HASTINGS

To us no more; nay, not so much, Lord Bardolph;

For his divisions, as the times do brawl,

70

Are in three heads: one power against the French;

And one against Glendower; perforce a third

Must take up us. So is the unfirm King

In three divided, and his coffers sound

With hollow poverty and emptiness.

75

ARCHBISHOP

That he should draw his several strengths together

And come against us in full puissance

Need not be dreaded.

HASTINGS     If he should do so,

He leaves his back unarm’d, the French and Welsh

Baying him at the heels: never fear that.

80

LORD BARDOLPH

Who is it like should lead his forces hither?

HASTINGS     The Duke of Lancaster, and Westmoreland;

Against the Welsh, himself and Harry Monmouth;

But who is substituted ’gainst the French

I have no certain notice.

ARCHBISHOP     Let us on,

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And publish the occasion of our arms.

The commonwealth is sick of their own choice;

Their over-greedy love hath surfeited.

An habitation giddy and unsure

Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.

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O thou fond many, with what loud applause

Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke,

Before he was what thou wouldst have him be!

And being now trimm’d in thine own desires,

Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him,

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That thou provok’st thyself to cast him up.

So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge

Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard;

And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up,

And howl’st to find it. What trust is in these times?

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They that, when Richard liv’d, would have him die

Are now become enamour’d on his grave.

Thou that threw’st dust upon his goodly head,

When through proud London he came sighing on

After th’admired heels of Bolingbroke,

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Cry’st now, ‘O earth, yield us that King again,

And take thou this!’ O thoughts of men accurs’d!

Past and to come seems best; things present, worst.

MOWBRAY     Shall we go draw our numbers and set on?

HASTINGS

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

110

Exeunt.

2.1 Enter Hostess, with two officers, FANG with her and SNARE following.

HOSTESS     Master Fang, have you entered the action?

FANG     It is entered.

HOSTESS     Where’s your yeoman? Is’t a lusty yeoman?

Will a stand to’t?

FANG     Sirrah – Where’s Snare?

5

HOSTESS     O Lord, ay! Good Master Snare.

SNARE     Here, here.

FANG     Snare, we must arrest Sir John Falstaff.

HOSTESS     Yea, good Master Snare, I have entered him

and all.

10

SNARE     It may chance cost some of us our lives, for he

will stab.

HOSTESS     Alas the day, take heed of him – he stabbed me

in mine own house, most beastly in good faith. A cares

not what mischief he does, if his weapon be out; he

15

will foin like any devil, he will spare neither man,

woman, nor child.

FANG     If I can close with him, I care not for his thrust.

HOSTESS     No, nor I neither; I’ll be at your elbow.

FANG     And I but fist him once, and a come but within

20

my vice, –

HOSTESS     I am undone by his going, I warrant you, he’s

an infinitive thing upon my score. Good Master Fang,

hold him sure; good Master Snare, let him not ’scape.

A comes continuantly to Pie Corner – saving your

25

manhoods – to buy a saddle, and he is indited to

dinner to the Lubber’s Head in Lumbert Street to

Master Smooth’s the silkman. I pray you, since my

exion is entered, and my case so openly known to the

world, let him be brought in to his answer. A hundred

30

mark is a long one for a poor lone woman to bear, and

I have borne, and borne, and borne, and have been

fubbed off, and fubbed off, and fubbed off, from this

day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought on.

There is no honesty in such dealing, unless a woman

35

should be made an ass, and a beast, to bear every

knave’s wrong.

Enter FALSTAFF, BARDOLPH and Page.

Yonder he comes, and that arrant malmsey-nose knave

Bardolph with him. Do your offices, do your offices,

Master Fang and Master Snare, do me, do me, do me

40

your offices.

FALSTAFF     How now, whose mare’s dead? What’s the

matter?

FANG     Sir John, I arrest you at the suit of Mistress

Quickly.

45

FALSTAFF     Away, varlets! Draw, Bardolph! Cut me off

the villain’s head! Throw the quean in the channel!

HOSTESS     Throw me in the channel? I’ll throw thee in

the channel. Wilt thou, wilt thou, thou bastardly

rogue? Murder! Murder! Ah, thou honeysuckle

50

villain, wilt thou kill God’s officers and the King’s?

Ah, thou honeyseed rogue! thou art a honeyseed, a

man queller, and a woman queller.

FALSTAFF     Keep them off, Bardolph!

FANG     A rescue! A rescue!

55

HOSTESS     Good people, bring a rescue or two. Thou

wot, wot thou, thou wot, wot ta? Do, do, thou rogue!

Do, thou hempseed!

PAGE     Away, you scullion! you rampallian! you

fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe!

60

Enter Lord Chief Justice and his men.

CHIEF JUSTICE     What is the matter? Keep the peace

here, ho!

HOSTESS     Good my lord, be good to me, I beseech you

stand to me.

CHIEF JUSTICE

How now, Sir John? What are you brawling here?

65

Doth this become your place, your time, and business?

You should have been well on your way to York.

Stand from him, fellow, wherefore hang’st thou upon

him?

HOSTESS     O my most worshipful lord, and’t please your

Grace, I am a poor widow of Eastcheap, and he is

70

arrested at my suit.

CHIEF JUSTICE     For what sum?

HOSTESS     It is more than for some, my lord, it is for all I

have. He hath eaten me out of house and home, he

hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his: but

75

I will have some of it out again, or I will ride thee a-

nights like the mare.

FALSTAFF     I think I am as like to ride the mare if I have

any vantage of ground to get up.

CHIEF JUSTICE     How comes this, Sir John? Fie! what

80

man of good temper would endure this tempest of

exclamation? Are you not ashamed to enforce a poor

widow to so rough a course to come by her own?

FALSTAFF     What is the gross sum that I owe thee?

HOSTESS     Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself

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and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a

parcelgilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin chamber, at

the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in

Wheeson week, when the Prince broke thy head for

liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor – thou

90

didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound,

to marry me, and make me my lady thy wife. Canst

thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech the butcher’s

wife come in then and call me gossip Quickly? –

coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar, telling us she

95

had a good dish of prawns, whereby thou didst desire

to eat some, whereby I told thee they were ill for a

green wound? And didst thou not, when she was gone

downstairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with

such poor people, saying that ere long they should call

100

me madam? And didst thou not kiss me, and bid me

fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy book

oath, deny it if thou canst.

FALSTAFF     My lord, this is a poor mad soul, and she says

up and down the town that her eldest son is like you.

105

She hath been in good case, and the truth is, poverty

hath distracted her. But for these foolish officers, I

beseech you I may have redress against them.

CHIEF JUSTICE     Sir John, Sir John, I am well acquainted

with your manner of wrenching the true cause the

110

false way. It is not a confident brow, nor the throng of

words that come with such more than impudent

sauciness from you, can thrust me from a level

consideration. You have, as it appears to me, practised

upon the easy-yielding spirit of this woman, and made

115

her serve your uses both in purse and in person.

HOSTESS     Yea, in truth, my lord.

CHIEF JUSTICE     Pray thee, peace. Pay her the debt you

owe her, and unpay the villainy you have done with

her; the one you may do with sterling money, and the

120

other with current repentance.

FALSTAFF     My lord, I will not undergo this sneap

without reply. You call honourable boldness impudent

sauciness; if a man will make curtsy and say nothing,

he is virtuous. No, my lord, my humble duty

125

remembered, I will not be your suitor. I say to you I do

desire deliverance from these officers, being upon

hasty employment in the King’s affairs.

CHIEF JUSTICE     You speak as having power to do wrong;

but answer in th’effect of your reputation, and satisfy

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the poor woman.

FALSTAFF     Come hither, hostess. [Takes her aside.]

Enter GOWER.

CHIEF JUSTICE     Now, Master Gower, what news?

GOWER     The King, my lord, and Harry Prince of Wales

Are near at hand: the rest the paper tells.

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[Gives a letter.]

FALSTAFF     As I am a gentleman!

HOSTESS     Faith, you said so before.

FALSTAFF     As I am a gentleman! Come, no more words

of it.

HOSTESS     By this heavenly ground I tread on, I must be

140

fain to pawn both my plate and the tapestry of my

dining-chambers.

FALSTAFF     Glasses, glasses, is the only drinking; and for

thy walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the

Prodigal, or the German hunting, in waterwork, is

145

worth a thousand of these bed-hangers and these fly-

bitten tapestries. Let it be ten pound if thou canst.

Come, and ’twere not for thy humours, there’s not a

better wench in England. Go, wash thy face, and draw

the action. Come, thou must not be in this humour

150

with me, dost not know me? Come, come, I know thou

wast set on to this.

HOSTESS     Pray thee, Sir John, let it be but twenty

nobles; i’faith, I am loath to pawn my plate, so God

save me, la!

155

FALSTAFF     Let it alone, I’ll make other shift: you’ll be a

fool still.

HOSTESS     Well, you shall have it, though I pawn my

gown. I hope you’ll come to supper. You’ll pay me all

together?

160

FALSTAFF     Will I live? [to Bardolph] Go, with her, with

her! Hook on, hook on!

HOSTESS     Will you have Doll Tearsheet meet you at

supper?

FALSTAFF     No more words, let’s have her.

165

Exeunt Hostess, Fang, Snare, Bardolph and Page.

CHIEF JUSTICE     I have heard better news.

FALSTAFF     What’s the news, my lord?

CHIEF JUSTICE     Where lay the King tonight?

GOWER     At Basingstoke, my lord.

FALSTAFF     I hope, my lord, all’s well. What is the news,

170

my lord?

CHIEF JUSTICE     Come all his forces back?

GOWER     No, fifteen hundred foot, five hundred horse

Are march’d up to my Lord of Lancaster,

Against Northumberland and the Archbishop.

175

FALSTAFF     Comes the King back from Wales, my noble

lord?

CHIEF JUSTICE     You shall have letters of me presently.

Come, go along with me, good Master Gower.

FALSTAFF     My lord!

180

CHIEF JUSTICE     What’s the matter?

FALSTAFF     Master Gower, shall I entreat you with me to

dinner?

GOWER     I must wait upon my good lord here, I thank

you, good Sir John.

185

CHIEF JUSTICE     Sir John, you loiter here too long, being

you are to take soldiers up in counties as you go.

FALSTAFF     Will you sup with me, Master Gower?

CHIEF JUSTICE     What foolish master taught you these

manners, Sir John?

190

FALSTAFF     Master Gower, if they become me not, he

was a fool that taught them me. This is the right

fencing grace, my lord; tap for tap, and so part fair.

CHIEF JUSTICE     Now the Lord lighten thee, thou art a

great fool.     Exeunt.

195

2.2 Enter PRINCE HENRY and POINS.

PRINCE     Before God, I am exceeding weary.

POINS     Is’t come to that? I had thought weariness durst

not have attached one of so high blood.

PRINCE     Faith, it does me, though it discolours the

complexion of my greatness to acknowledge it. Doth it

5

not show vilely in me to desire small beer?

POINS     Why, a prince should not be so loosely studied as

to remember so weak a composition.

PRINCE     Belike then my appetite was not princely got,

for, by my troth, I do now remember the poor creature

10

small beer. But indeed, these humble considerations

make me out of love with my greatness. What a

disgrace is it to me to remember thy name! or to know

thy face tomorrow! or to take note how many pair

of silk stockings thou hast – viz. these, and those that

15

were thy peach-coloured ones! or to bear the inventory

of thy shirts – as, one for superfluity, and another

for use! But that the tennis-court keeper knows

better than I, for it is a low ebb of linen with thee

when thou keepest not racket there; as thou hast not

20

done a great while, because the rest of thy low

countries have made a shift to eat up thy holland. And

God knows whether those that bawl out the ruins of

thy linen shall inherit his kingdom: but the midwives

say the children are not in the fault; whereupon

25

the world increases, and kindreds are mightily

strengthened.

POINS     How ill it follows, after you have laboured so

hard, you should talk so idly! Tell me, how many good

young princes would do so, their fathers being so sick

30

as yours at this time is.

PRINCE     Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins?

POINS     Yes, faith, and let it be an excellent good thing.

PRINCE     It shall serve, among wits of no higher breeding

than thine.

35

POINS     Go to, I stand the push of your one thing that you

will tell.

PRINCE     Marry, I tell thee it is not meet that I should be

sad now my father is sick; albeit I could tell to thee, as

to one it pleases me for fault of a better to call my

40

friend, I could be sad, and sad indeed too.

POINS     Very hardly, upon such a subject.

PRINCE     By this hand, thou thinkest me as far in the

devil’s book as thou and Falstaff, for obduracy and

persistency. Let the end try the man. But I tell thee,

45

my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick; and

keeping such vile company as thou art hath in reason

taken from me all ostentation of sorrow.

POINS     The reason?

PRINCE     What wouldst thou think of me if I should

50

weep?

POINS     I would think thee a most princely hypocrite.

PRINCE     It would be every man’s thought; and thou art a

blessed fellow, to think as every man thinks. Never a

man’s thought in the world keeps the roadway better

55

than thine: every man would think me an hypocrite

indeed. And what accites your most worshipful

thought to think so?

POINS     Why, because you have been so lewd, and so

much engraffed to Falstaff.

60

PRINCE     And to thee.

POINS     By this light, I am well spoke on; I can hear it

with mine own ears. The worst that they can say of me

is that I am a second brother, and that I am a proper

fellow of my hands, and those two things I confess I

65

cannot help. By the mass, here comes Bardolph.

Enter BARDOLPH and Page.

PRINCE     And the boy that I gave Falstaff – a had him

from me Christian, and look if the fat villain have not

transformed him ape.

BARDOLPH     God save your Grace!

70

PRINCE     And yours, most noble Bardolph!

POINS     [to Bardolph] Come, you virtuous ass, you

bashful fool, must you be blushing? Wherefore blush

you now? What a maidenly man-at-arms are you

become! Is’t such a matter to get a pottle-pot’s

75

maidenhead?

PAGE     A calls me e’en now, my lord, through a red

lattice, and I could discern no part of his face from the

window. At last I spied his eyes, and methought he had

made two holes in the ale-wife’s new petticoat, and so

80

peeped through.

PRINCE     Has not the boy profited?

BARDOLPH     Away, you whoreson upright rabbit, away!

PAGE     Away, you rascally Althaea’s dream, away!

PRINCE     Instruct us, boy; what dream, boy?

85

PAGE     Marry, my lord, Althaea dreamt she was delivered

of a firebrand; and therefore I call him her dream.

PRINCE     A crown’s-worth of good interpretation! There

’tis, boy.

POINS     O, that this blossom could be kept from cankers!

90

Well, there is sixpence to preserve thee.

BARDOLPH     And you do not make him be hanged among

you, the gallows shall have wrong.

PRINCE     And how doth thy master, Bardolph?

BARDOLPH     Well, my lord. He heard of your Grace’s

95

coming to town – there’s a letter for you.

POINS     Delivered with good respect. And how doth the

martlemas your master?

BARDOLPH     In bodily health, sir.

POINS     Marry, the immortal part needs a physician, but

100

that moves not him; though that be sick, it dies not.

PRINCE     I do allow this wen to be as familiar with me as

my dog, and he holds his place, for look you how he

writes – [Reads.] John Falstaff, Knight.

POINS     Every man must know that, as oft as he has

105

occasion to name himself: even like those that are kin

to the King, for they never prick their finger but they

say, ‘There’s some of the King’s blood spilt’. ‘How

comes that?’ says he that takes upon him not to

conceive. The answer is as ready as a borrower’s cap –

110

‘I am the King’s poor cousin, sir’.

PRINCE     Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it

from Japhet. But the letter: – Sir John Falstaff, Knight,

to the son of the King nearest his father, Harry Prince of

Wales, greeting.

115

POINS     Why, this is a certificate!

PRINCE     Peace! I will imitate the honourable Romans in

brevity.

POINS     He sure means brevity in breath, short-winded.

PRINCE     I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave

120

thee. Be not too familiar with Poins, for he misuses thy

favours so much that he swears thou art to marry his sister

Nell. Repent at idle times as thou mayst, and so, farewell.

Thine by yea and no – which is as much as to say, as

thou usest him – Jack Falstaff with my familiars, John

125

with my brothers and sisters, and Sir John with all

Europe.

POINS     My lord, I’ll steep this letter in sack and make

him eat it.

PRINCE     That’s to make him eat twenty of his words.

130

But do you use me thus, Ned? Must I marry your

sister?

POINS     God send the wench no worse fortune! But I

never said so.

PRINCE     Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and

135

the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us. Is

your master here in London?

BARDOLPH     Yea, my lord.

PRINCE     Where sups he? Doth the old boar feed in the

old frank?

140

BARDOLPH     At the old place, my lord, in Eastcheap.

PRINCE     What company?

PAGE     Ephesians, my lord, of the old church.

PRINCE     Sup any women with him?

PAGE     None, my lord, but old Mistress Quickly, and

145

Mistress Doll Tearsheet.

PRINCE     What pagan may that be?

PAGE     A proper gentlewoman, sir, and a kinswoman of

my master’s.

PRINCE     Even such kin as the parish heifers are to

150

the town bull. Shall we steal upon them, Ned, at

supper?

POINS     I am your shadow, my lord, I’ll follow you.

PRINCE     Sirrah, you boy, and Bardolph, no word to your

master that I am yet come to town – there’s for your

155

silence.

BARDOLPH     I have no tongue, sir.

PAGE     And for mine, sir, I will govern it.

PRINCE     Fare you well; go.

Exeunt Bardolph and Page.

This Doll Tearsheet should be some road.

160

POINS     I warrant you, as common as the way between

Saint Albans and London.

PRINCE     How might we see Falstaff bestow himself

tonight in his true colours, and not ourselves be seen?

POINS     Put on two leathern jerkins and aprons, and wait

165

upon him at his table as drawers.

PRINCE     From a god to a bull? A heavy descension! It

was Jove’s case. From a prince to a prentice? A low

transformation, that shall be mine, for in everything

the purpose must weigh with the folly. Follow me,

170

Ned.     Exeunt.

2.3 Enter NORTHUMBERLAND, LADY NORTHUMBERLAND and LADY PERCY.

NORTHUMBERLAND

I pray thee, loving wife and gentle daughter,

Give even way unto my rough affairs;

Put not you on the visage of the times

And be like them to Percy troublesome.

LADY NORTHUMBERLAND

I have given over, I will speak no more.

5

Do what you will, your wisdom be your guide.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Alas, sweet wife, my honour is at pawn,

And, but my going, nothing can redeem it.

LADY PERCY

O yet, for God’s sake, go not to these wars!

The time was, father, that you broke your word

10

When you were more endear’d to it than now;

When your own Percy, when my heart’s dear Harry,

Threw many a northward look to see his father

Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain.

Who then persuaded you to stay at home?

15

There were two honours lost, yours and your son’s.

For yours, the God of heaven brighten it!

For his, it stuck upon him as the sun

In the grey vault of heaven, and by his light

Did all the chivalry of England move

20

To do brave acts. He was indeed the glass

Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.

He had no legs that practis’d not his gait;

And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,

Became the accents of the valiant;

25

For those that could speak low and tardily

Would turn their own perfection to abuse,

To seem like him. So that in speech, in gait,

In diet, in affections of delight,

In military rules, humours of blood,

30

He was the mark and glass, copy and book,

That fashion’d others. And him – O wondrous him!

O miracle of men! – him did you leave,

Second to none, unseconded by you,

To look upon the hideous god of war

35

In disadvantage, to abide a field

Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur’s name

Did seem defensible: so you left him.

Never, O never, do his ghost the wrong

To hold your honour more precise and nice

40

With others than with him! Let them alone.

The Marshal and the Archbishop are strong:

Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers,

Today might I, hanging on Hotspur’s neck,

Have talk’d of Monmouth’s grave.

NORTHUMBERLAND     Beshrew your heart,

45

Fair daughter, you do draw my spirits from me

With new lamenting ancient oversights.

But I must go and meet with danger there,

Or it will seek me in another place,

And find me worse provided.

LADY NORTHUMBERLAND     O, fly to Scotland,

50

Till that the nobles and the armed commons

Have of their puissance made a little taste.

LADY PERCY

If they get ground and vantage of the King,

Then join you with them like a rib of steel,

To make strength stronger: but, for all our loves,

55

First let them try themselves. So did your son;

He was so suffer’d; so came I a widow,

And never shall have length of life enough

To rain upon remembrance with mine eyes,

That it may grow and sprout as high as heaven

60

For recordation to my noble husband.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Come, come, go in with me. ’Tis with my mind

As with the tide swell’d up unto his height,

That makes a still-stand, running neither way.

Fain would I go to meet the Archbishop,

65

But many thousand reasons hold me back.

I will resolve for Scotland. There am I,

Till time and vantage crave my company.     Exeunt.

2.4 Enter two Drawers, FRANCIS and another.

FRANCIS

What the devil hast thou brought there – apple-johns?

Thou knowest Sir John cannot endure an apple-john.

2 DRAWER Mass, thou sayst true. The Prince once set a

dish of apple-johns before him, and told him there

were five more Sir Johns; and, putting off his hat, said,

5

‘I will now take my leave of these six dry, round, old,

withered knights’. It angered him to the heart; but he

hath forgot that.

FRANCIS     Why then, cover, and set them down, and see

if thou canst find out Sneak’s noise. Mistress

10

Tearsheet would fain hear some music.

Enter Third Drawer.

3 DRAWER Dispatch! The room where they supped is

too hot, they’ll come in straight.

FRANCIS     Sirrah, here will be the Prince and Master

Poins anon, and they will put on two of our jerkins and

15

aprons, and Sir John must not know of it; Bardolph

hath brought word.

3 DRAWER By the mass, here will be old utis; it will be an

excellent stratagem.

2 DRAWER I’ll see if I can find out Sneak.

20

Exit with Third Drawer.

Enter Hostess and DOLL TEARSHEET.

HOSTESS     I’faith, sweetheart, methinks now you are in

an excellent good temperality. Your pulsidge beats as

extraordinarily as heart would desire, and your colour

I warrant you is as red as any rose, in good truth, la!

But i’faith you have drunk too much canaries, and

25

that’s a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes

the blood ere one can say, ‘What’s this?’ How do you

now?

DOLL     Better than I was – hem!

HOSTESS

Why, that’s well said – a good heart’s worth gold.

30

Lo, here comes Sir John.

Enter FALSTAFF, singing.

FALSTAFF

‘When Arthur first in court’ – Empty the jordan.

Exit Francis.

– ‘And was a worthy king’ – How now, Mistress Doll?

HOSTESS     Sick of a calm, yea, good faith.

FALSTAFF     So is all her sect; and they be once in a calm

35

they are sick.

DOLL     A pox damn you, you muddy rascal, is that all the

comfort you give me?

FALSTAFF     You make fat rascals, Mistress Doll.

DOLL     I make them? Gluttony and diseases make them,

40

I make them not.

FALSTAFF     If the cook help to make the gluttony, you

help to make the diseases, Doll; we catch of you, Doll,

we catch of you; grant that, my poor virtue, grant that.

DOLL     Yea, joy, our chains and our jewels.

45

FALSTAFF     ‘Your brooches, pearls, and ouches’ – for to

serve bravely is to come halting off, you know; to come

off the breach, with his pike bent bravely; and to

surgery bravely; to venture upon the charged

chambers bravely; –

50

DOLL     Hang yourself, you muddy conger, hang

yourself!

HOSTESS     By my troth, this is the old fashion; you two

never meet but you fall to some discord. You are both

i’ good truth as rheumatic as two dry toasts, you

55

cannot one bear with another’s confirmities. What the

goodyear! one must bear, [to Doll] and that must be

you – you are the weaker vessel, as they say, the

emptier vessel.

DOLL     Can a weak empty vessel bear such a huge

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full hogshead? There’s a whole merchant’s venture

of Bordeaux stuff in him; you have not seen a

hulk better stuffed in the hold. Come, I’ll be friends

with thee, Jack, thou art going to the wars, and

whether I shall ever see thee again or no there is

65

nobody cares.

Enter Drawer.

DRAWER     Sir, Ancient Pistol’s below, and would speak

with you.

DOLL     Hang him, swaggering rascal, let him not

come hither: it is the foul-mouth’dst rogue in

70

England.

HOSTESS     If he swagger, let him not come here. No, by

my faith! I must live among my neighbours, I’ll no

swaggerers. I am in good name and fame with the very

best. Shut the door, there comes no swaggerers here. I

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have not lived all this while to have swaggering now.

Shut the door I pray you.

FALSTAFF     Dost thou hear, hostess?

HOSTESS     Pray ye pacify yourself, Sir John, there comes

no swaggerers here.

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FALSTAFF     Dost thou hear? It is mine ancient.

HOSTESS     Tilly-fally, Sir John, ne’er tell me: and your

ancient swagger, a comes not in my doors. I was before

Master Tisick the debuty t’other day, and, as he said

to me – ’twas no longer ago than Wednesday last, i’

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good faith – ‘Neighbour Quickly,’ says he – Master

Dumb our minister was by then – ‘Neighbour

Quickly,’ says he, ‘receive those that are civil, for’, said

he, ‘you are in an ill name’ – now a said so, I can tell

whereupon. ‘For’, says he, ‘you are an honest woman,

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and well thought on, therefore take heed what guests

you receive; receive’, says he, ‘no swaggering

companions’: there comes none here. You would bless

you to hear what he said. No, I’ll no swaggerers.

FALSTAFF     He’s no swaggerer, hostess, a tame cheater,

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i’faith, you may stroke him as gently as a puppy

greyhound. He’ll not swagger with a Barbary hen, if

her feathers turn back in any show of resistance. Call

him up, drawer.     Exit Drawer.

HOSTESS     Cheater, call you him? I will bar no honest

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man my house, nor no cheater, but I do not love

swaggering, by my troth, I am the worse when one

says ‘swagger’. Feel, masters, how I shake, look you, I

warrant you.

DOLL     So you do, hostess.

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HOSTESS     Do I? Yea, in very truth do I, and ’twere an

aspen leaf. I cannot abide swaggerers.

Enter Ancient PISTOL, BARDOLPH and Page.

PISTOL     God save you, Sir John!

FALSTAFF     Welcome, Ancient Pistol! Here, Pistol, I

charge you with a cup of sack; do you discharge upon

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mine hostess.

PISTOL     I will discharge upon her, Sir John, with two

bullets.

FALSTAFF     She is pistol-proof, sir; you shall not hardly

offend her.

115

HOSTESS     Come, I’ll drink no proofs, nor no bullets; I’ll

drink no more than will do me good, for no man’s

pleasure, I.

PISTOL     Then to you, Mistress Dorothy! I will charge

you.

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DOLL     Charge me? I scorn you, scurvy companion.

What, you poor, base, rascally, cheating, lack-linen

mate! Away, you mouldy rogue, away! I am meat for

your master.

PISTOL     I know you, Mistress Dorothy.

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DOLL     Away, you cutpurse rascal, you filthy bung, away!

By this wine, I’ll thrust my knife in your mouldy

chaps and you play the saucy cuttle with me. Away,

you bottle-ale rascal, you basket-hilt stale juggler, you!

Since when, I pray you, sir? God’s light, with two

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points on your shoulder? Much!

PISTOL     God let me not live, but I will murder your ruff

for this.

FALSTAFF     No more, Pistol! I would not have you go off

here. Discharge yourself of our company, Pistol.

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HOSTESS

No, good Captain Pistol, not here, sweet captain.

DOLL     Captain! Thou abominable damned cheater, art

thou not ashamed to be called captain? And captains

were of my mind, they would truncheon you out, for

taking their names upon you before you have earned

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them. You a captain? You slave! For what? For tearing

a poor whore’s ruff in a bawdy-house? He a captain?

Hang him, rogue, he lives upon mouldy stewed prunes

and dried cakes. A captain? God’s light, these villains

will make the word as odious as the word ‘occupy’,

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which was an excellent good word before it was ill

sorted: therefore captains had need look to’t.

BARDOLPH     Pray thee go down, good ancient.

FALSTAFF     Hark thee hither, Mistress Doll.

PISTOL     Not I! I tell thee what, Corporal Bardolph, I

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could tear her! I’ll be revenged of her.

PAGE     Pray thee go down.

PISTOL     I’ll see her damned first! To Pluto’s damnèd

lake, by this hand, to th’infernal deep, with Erebus

and tortures vile also! Hold hook and line, say I!

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Down, down, dogs! Down, faitors! Have we not Hiren

here? [Draws his sword.]

HOSTESS     Good Captain Peesel, be quiet, ’tis very

late i’ faith; I beseek you now, aggravate your

choler.

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PISTOL

These be good humours indeed! Shall pack-horses,

And hollow pamper’d jades of Asia,

Which cannot go but thirty mile a day,

Compare with Caesars and with Cannibals,

And Troyant Greeks? Nay, rather damn them with

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King Cerberus, and let the welkin roar!

Shall we fall foul for toys?

HOSTESS     By my troth, captain, these are very bitter

words.

BARDOLPH     Be gone, good ancient, this will grow to a

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brawl anon.

PISTOL     Die men like dogs! Give crowns like pins! Have

we not Hiren here?

HOSTESS     O’ my word, captain, there’s none such here.

What the goodyear, do you think I would deny her?

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For God’s sake be quiet.

PISTOL     Then feed and be fat, my fair Calipolis!

Come, give’s some sack.

Si fortune me tormente sperato me contento.

Fear we broadsides? No, let the fiend give fire!

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Give me some sack; and sweetheart, lie thou there!

[Lays down his sword.]

Come we to full points here? And are etceteras nothings?

FALSTAFF     Pistol, I would be quiet.

PISTOL     Sweet knight, I kiss thy neaf. What! we have

seen the seven stars.

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DOLL     For God’s sake, thrust him downstairs, I cannot

endure such a fustian rascal.

PISTOL     Thrust him downstairs? Know we not Galloway

nags?

FALSTAFF     Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a shove-

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groat shilling. Nay, and a do nothing but speak

nothing, a shall be nothing here.

BARDOLPH     Come, get you downstairs.

PISTOL     What! shall we have incision? shall we imbrue?

[Snatches up his sword.]

Then death rock me asleep, abridge my doleful days!

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Why then let grievous, ghastly, gaping wounds

Untwind the Sisters Three! Come, Atropos, I say!

HOSTESS     Here’s goodly stuff toward!

FALSTAFF     Give me my rapier, boy.

DOLL     I pray thee, Jack, I pray thee do not draw.

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FALSTAFF     [drawing] Get you downstairs.

HOSTESS     Here’s a goodly tumult! I’ll forswear keeping

house afore I’ll be in these tirrits and frights! [Falstaff

thrusts at Pistol.] So! Murder, I warrant now! Alas,

alas, put up your naked weapons, put up your naked

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weapons.     Exit Bardolph, driving Pistol out.

DOLL     I pray thee, Jack, be quiet, the rascal’s gone. Ah,

you whoreson little valiant villain, you!

HOSTESS     Are you not hurt i’th’ groin? Methought a

made a shrewd thrust at your belly.

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Enter BARDOLPH.

FALSTAFF     Have you turned him out a-doors?

BARDOLPH     Yea, sir, the rascal’s drunk. You have hurt

him, sir, i’th’ shoulder.

FALSTAFF     A rascal, to brave me!

DOLL     Ah, you sweet little rogue, you! Alas, poor ape,

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how thou sweat’st! Come, let me wipe thy face. Come

on, you whoreson chops! Ah, rogue, i’faith, I love

thee. Thou art as valorous as Hector of Troy, worth

five of Agamemnon, and ten times better than the

Nine Worthies. Ah, villain!

220

FALSTAFF     A rascally slave! I will toss the rogue in a

blanket.

DOLL     Do, and thou dar’st for thy heart. And thou dost,

I’ll canvass thee between a pair of sheets.

Enter musicians.

PAGE     The music is come, sir.

225

FALSTAFF     Let them play. Play, sirs! [Music.]

Sit on my knee, Doll. A rascal bragging slave! The

rogue fled from me like quicksilver.

DOLL     I’faith, and thou followedst him like a church.

Thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig,

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when wilt thou leave fighting a-days, and foining a-

nights, and begin to patch up thine old body for

heaven?

Enter, behind, the PRINCE and POINS disguised as drawers.

FALSTAFF     Peace, good Doll, do not speak like a death’s-

head, do not bid me remember mine end.

235

DOLL     Sirrah, what humour’s the Prince of?

FALSTAFF     A good shallow young fellow; a would have

made a good pantler, a would ha’ chipped bread well.

DOLL     They say Poins has a good wit.

FALSTAFF     He a good wit? Hang him, baboon! His wit’s

240

as thick as Tewkesbury mustard; there’s no more

conceit in him than is in a mallet.

DOLL     Why does the Prince love him so, then?

FALSTAFF     Because their legs are both of a bigness, and

a plays at quoits well, and eats conger and fennel, and

245

drinks off candles’ ends for flap-dragons, and rides the

wild mare with the boys, and jumps upon joint-stools,

and swears with a good grace, and wears his boots very

smooth like unto the sign of the Leg, and breeds no

bate with telling of discreet stories, and such other

250

gambol faculties a has that show a weak mind and an

able body, for the which the Prince admits him: for the

Prince himself is such another, the weight of a hair will

turn the scales between their avoirdupois.

PRINCE     Would not this nave of a wheel have his ears cut

255

off?

POINS     Let’s beat him before his whore.

PRINCE     Look whe’er the withered elder hath not his

poll clawed like a parrot.

POINS     Is it not strange that desire should so many years

260

outlive performance?

FALSTAFF     Kiss me, Doll.

PRINCE     Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction!

What says th’almanac to that?

POINS     And look whether the fiery Trigon his man be

265

not lisping to his master’s old tables, his note-book, his

counsel-keeper.

FALSTAFF     Thou dost give me flattering busses.

DOLL     By my troth, I kiss thee with a most constant

heart.

270

FALSTAFF     I am old, I am old.

DOLL     I love thee better than I love e’er a scurvy young

boy of them all.

FALSTAFF     What stuff wilt have a kirtle of? I shall

receive money a-Thursday, shalt have a cap tomorrow.

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A merry song! Come, it grows late, we’ll to bed.

Thou’t forget me when I am gone.

DOLL     By my troth, thou’t set me a-weeping and thou

sayst so. Prove that ever I dress myself handsome till

thy return, – Well, hearken a’th’ end.

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FALSTAFF     Some sack, Francis.

PRINCE POINS [coming forward] Anon, anon, sir.

FALSTAFF     Ha! A bastard son of the King’s? And art not

thou Poins his brother?

PRINCE     Why, thou globe of sinful continents, what a life

285

dost thou lead!

FALSTAFF     A better than thou – I am a gentleman, thou

art a drawer.

PRINCE     Very true, sir, and I come to draw you out by the

ears.

290

HOSTESS     O the Lord preserve thy good Grace! By my

troth, welcome to London! Now the Lord bless that

sweet face of thine! O Jesu, are you come from Wales?

FALSTAFF     Thou whoreson mad compound of majesty,

by this light flesh and corrupt blood [leaning his hand

295

upon Doll], thou art welcome.

DOLL     How! You fat fool, I scorn you.

POINS     My lord, he will drive you out of your revenge

and turn all to a merriment, if you take not the heat.

PRINCE     You whoreson candle-mine you, how vilely did

300

you speak of me even now, before this honest,

virtuous, civil gentlewoman!

HOSTESS     God’s blessing of your good heart! and so she

is, by my troth.

FALSTAFF     Didst thou hear me?

305

PRINCE     Yea, and you knew me, as you did when you ran

away by Gad’s Hill; you knew I was at your back, and

spoke it on purpose to try my patience.

FALSTAFF     No, no, no, not so; I did not think thou wast

within hearing.

310

PRINCE     I shall drive you then to confess the wilful

abuse, and then I know how to handle you.

FALSTAFF     No abuse, Hal, o’mine honour, no abuse.

PRINCE     Not? – to dispraise me, and call me pantler, and

bread-chipper, and I know not what?

315

FALSTAFF     No abuse, Hal.

POINS     No abuse?

FALSTAFF     No abuse, Ned, i’th’ world, honest Ned,

none. I dispraised him before the wicked [Turns to the

Prince.] that the wicked might not fall in love with

320

thee: in which doing, I have done the part of a careful

friend and a true subject, and thy father is to give me

thanks for it. No abuse, Hal; none, Ned, none; no,

faith, boys, none.

PRINCE     See now whether pure fear and entire cowardice

325

doth not make thee wrong this virtuous gentlewoman

to close with us. Is she of the wicked? Is thine hostess

here of the wicked? Or is thy boy of the wicked? Or

honest Bardolph, whose zeal burns in his nose, of the

wicked?

330

POINS     Answer, thou dead elm, answer.

FALSTAFF     The fiend hath pricked down Bardolph

irrecoverable, and his face is Lucifer’s privy-kitchen,

where he doth nothing but roast malt-worms. For the

boy, there is a good angel about him, but the devil

335

attends him too.

PRINCE     For the women?

FALSTAFF     For one of them, she’s in hell already, and

burns poor souls. For th’other, I owe her money, and

whether she be damned for that I know not.

340

HOSTESS     No, I warrant you.

FALSTAFF     No, I think thou art not, I think thou art quit

for that. Marry, there is another indictment upon thee,

for suffering flesh to be eaten in thy house, contrary to

the law, for the which I think thou wilt howl.

345

HOSTESS     All vict’lers do so. What’s a joint of mutton or

two in a whole Lent?

PRINCE     You, gentlewoman, –

DOLL     What says your Grace?

FALSTAFF     His Grace says that which his flesh rebels

350

against. [Peto knocks at door.]

HOSTESS     Who knocks so loud at door? Look to th’ door

there, Francis.

Enter PETO.

PRINCE     Peto, how now, what news?

PETO     The King your father is at Westminster,

355

And there are twenty weak and wearied posts

Come from the north; and as I came along

I met and overtook a dozen captains,

Bareheaded, sweating, knocking at the taverns,

And asking every one for Sir John Falstaff.

360

PRINCE     By heaven, Poins, I feel me much to blame,

So idly to profane the precious time,

When tempest of commotion, like the south

Borne with black vapour, doth begin to melt

And drop upon our bare unarmed heads.

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Give me my sword and cloak. Falstaff, good night.

Exeunt Prince and Poins.

FALSTAFF     Now comes in the sweetest morsel of the

night, and we must hence and leave it unpicked.

Knocking within. Exit Bardolph.

More knocking at the door?

Enter BARDOLPH.

How now, what’s the matter?

370

BARDOLPH     You must away to court, sir, presently.

A dozen captains stay at door for you.

FALSTAFF     [to the Page] Pay the musicians, sirrah.

Farewell, hostess; farewell, Doll. You see, my good

wenches, how men of merit are sought after; the

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undeserver may sleep, when the man of action is called

on. Farewell, good wenches: if I be not sent away post,

I will see you again ere I go.

DOLL     I cannot speak; if my heart be not ready to burst

– Well, sweet Jack, have a care of thyself.

380

FALSTAFF     Farewell, farewell.

Exit with Bardolph, Peto, Page and musicians.

HOSTESS     Well, fare thee well. I have known thee these

twenty-nine years, come peascod-time, but an

honester and truer-hearted man – Well, fare thee well.

BARDOLPH     [at the door] Mistress Tearsheet!

385

HOSTESS     What’s the matter?

BARDOLPH     Bid Mistress Tearsheet come to my master.

HOSTESS     O, run Doll, run; run good Doll; come. She

comes blubbered. [to Doll] Yea, will you come, Doll?

Exeunt.

3.1 Enter the KING in his nightgown, with a page.

KING     Go call the Earls of Surrey and of Warwick;

But ere they come, bid them o’er-read these letters

And well consider of them. Make good speed.

Exit page.

How many thousand of my poorest subjects

Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,

5

Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,

That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,

And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,

Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

10

And husht with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,

Than in the perfum’d chambers of the great,

Under the canopies of costly state,

And lull’d with sound of sweetest melody?

O thou dull god, why li’st thou with the vile

15

In loathsome beds, and leav’st the kingly couch

A watch-case, or a common ’larum-bell?

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast

Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains

In cradle of the rude imperious surge,

20

And in the visitation of the winds,

Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them

With deafing clamour in the slippery clouds,

That with the hurly death itself awakes?

25

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose

To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,

And in the calmest and most stillest night,

With all appliances and means to boot,

Deny it to a King? Then happy low, lie down!

30

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Enter WARWICK and SURREY.

WARWICK     Many good morrows to your Majesty!

KING     Is it good morrow, lords?

WARWICK     ’Tis one o’clock, and past.

KING     Why then, good morrow to you all, my lords.

35

Have you read o’er the letters that I sent you?

WARWICK     We have, my liege.

KING     Then you perceive the body of our kingdom

How foul it is, what rank diseases grow,

And with what danger, near the heart of it.

40

WARWICK     It is but as a body yet distemper’d,

Which to his former strength may be restor’d

With good advice and little medicine.

My Lord Northumberland will soon be cool’d.

KING     O God, that one might read the book of fate,

45

And see the revolution of the times

Make mountains level, and the continent,

Weary of solid firmness, melt itself

Into the sea, and other times to see

The beachy girdle of the ocean

50

Too wide for Neptune’s hips; how chance’s mocks

And changes fill the cup of alteration

With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,

The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,

What perils past, what crosses to ensue,

55

Would shut the book and sit him down and die.

’Tis not ten years gone,

Since Richard and Northumberland, great friends,

Did feast together, and in two years after

Were they at wars. It is but eight years since,

60

This Percy was the man nearest my soul;

Who like a brother toil’d in my affairs,

And laid his love and life under my foot;

Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard

Gave him defiance. But which of you was by –

65

[to Warwick] You, cousin Nevil, as I may remember –

When Richard, with his eye brimful of tears,

Then check’d and rated by Northumberland,

Did speak these words, now prov’d a prophecy?

‘Northumberland, thou ladder by the which

70

My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne’

(Though then, God knows, I had no such intent

But that necessity so bow’d the state

That I and greatness were compell’d to kiss)

‘The time shall come’ – thus did he follow it –

75

‘The time will come, that foul sin, gathering head,

Shall break into corruption’ – so went on,

Foretelling this same time’s condition,

And the division of our amity.

WARWICK     There is a history in all men’s lives

80

Figuring the nature of the times deceas’d;

The which observ’d, a man may prophesy,

With a near aim, of the main chance of things

As yet not come to life, who in their seeds

And weak beginnings lie intreasured.

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Such things become the hatch and brood of time;

And by the necessary form of this

King Richard might create a perfect guess

That great Northumberland, then false to him,

Would of that seed grow to a greater falseness,

90

Which should not find a ground to root upon

Unless on you.

KING     Are these things then necessities?

Then let us meet them like necessities;

And that same word even now cries out on us.

They say the Bishop and Northumberland

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Are fifty thousand strong.

WARWICK     It cannot be, my lord.

Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo,

The numbers of the feared. Please it your Grace

To go to bed: upon my soul, my lord,

The powers that you already have sent forth

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Shall bring this prize in very easily.

To comfort you the more, I have receiv’d

A certain instance that Glendower is dead.

Your Majesty hath been this fortnight ill,

And these unseason’d hours perforce must add

105

Unto your sickness.

KING     I will take your counsel.

And were these inward wars once out of hand,

We would, dear lords, unto the Holy Land. Exeunt.

3.2 Enter Justice SHALLOW and Justice SILENCE, with MOULDY, SHADOW, WART, FEEBLE, BULLCALF and servants, behind.

SHALLOW     Come on, come on, come on: give me your

hand, sir, give me your hand, sir; an early stirrer, by

the rood! And how doth my good cousin Silence?

SILENCE     Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.

SHALLOW     And how doth my cousin your bedfellow?

5

and your fairest daughter and mine, my god-daughter

Ellen?

SILENCE     Alas, a black woosel, cousin Shallow!

SHALLOW     By yea and no, sir: I dare say my cousin

William is become a good scholar; he is at Oxford still,

10

is he not?

SILENCE     Indeed, sir, to my cost.

SHALLOW     A must then to the Inns o’Court shortly:

I was once of Clement’s Inn, where I think they will

talk of mad Shallow yet.

15

SILENCE     You were called ‘lusty Shallow’ then, cousin.

SHALLOW     By the mass, I was called anything, and I

would have done anything indeed too, and roundly

too. There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire,

and black George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and

20

Will Squele, a Cotsole man – you had not four such

swinge-bucklers in all the Inns o’Court again; and I

may say to you, we knew where the bona-robas were,

and had the best of them all at commandment. Then

was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, a boy, and page to

25

Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk.

SILENCE     This Sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon

about soldiers?

SHALLOW     The same Sir John, the very same. I see him

break Scoggin’s head at the court gate, when a was a

30

crack, not thus high; and the very same day did I fight

with one Samson Stockfish a fruiterer, behind

Gray’s Inn. Jesu, Jesu, the mad days that I have spent!

And to see how many of my old acquaintance

are dead!

35

SILENCE     We shall all follow, cousin.

SHALLOW     Certain, ’tis certain, very sure, very sure.

Death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all, all shall

die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?

SILENCE     By my troth, I was not there.

40

SHALLOW     Death is certain. Is old Double of your town

living yet?

SILENCE     Dead, sir.

SHALLOW     Jesu, Jesu, dead! A drew a good bow, and

dead! A shot a fine shoot. John a Gaunt loved him

45

well, and betted much money on his head. Dead! A

would have clapped i’th’ clout at twelve score, and

carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen

and a half, that it would have done a man’s heart good

to see. How a score of ewes now?

50

SILENCE     Thereafter as they be; a score of good ewes

may be worth ten pounds.

SHALLOW     And is old Double dead?

SILENCE     Here come two of Sir John Falstaff’s men, as I

think.

55

Enter BARDOLPH and one with him.

SHALLOW     Good morrow, honest gentlemen.

BARDOLPH     I beseech you, which is Justice Shallow?

SHALLOW     I am Robert Shallow, sir, a poor esquire of

this county, and one of the King’s justices of the peace.

What is your good pleasure with me?

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BARDOLPH     My captain, sir, commends him to you, my

captain Sir John Falstaff, a tall gentleman, by heaven,

and a most gallant leader.

SHALLOW     He greets me well, sir; I knew him a good

backsword man. How doth the good knight? May I ask

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how my lady his wife doth?

BARDOLPH     Sir, pardon: a soldier is better accom-

modated than with a wife.

SHALLOW     It is well said, in faith, sir, and it is well said

indeed, too. ‘Better accommodated’! It is good, yea

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indeed is it; good phrases are surely, and ever were,

very commendable. ‘Accommodated’ – it comes of

‘accommodo’; very good, a good phrase.

BARDOLPH     Pardon, sir, I have heard the word – phrase

call you it? By this day, I know not the phrase, but I

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will maintain the word with my sword to be a soldier-

like word, and a word of exceeding good command, by

heaven. Accommodated: that is, when a man is, as they

say, accommodated, or when a man is being whereby a

may be thought to be accommodated; which is an

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excellent thing.

SHALLOW     It is very just.

Enter FALSTAFF.

Look, here comes good Sir John. Give me your good

hand, give me your worship’s good hand. By my troth,

you like well, and bear your years very well. Welcome,

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good Sir John.

FALSTAFF     I am glad to see you well, good Master

Robert Shallow. Master Surecard, as I think?

SHALLOW     No, Sir John, it is my cousin Silence, in

commission with me.

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FALSTAFF     Good Master Silence, it well befits you

should be of the peace.

SILENCE     Your good worship is welcome.

FALSTAFF     Fie, this is hot weather, gentlemen. Have you

provided me here half a dozen sufficient men?

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SHALLOW     Marry have we, sir. Will you sit?

FALSTAFF     Let me see them, I beseech you.

SHALLOW     Where’s the roll? where’s the roll? where’s

the roll? Let me see, let me see, let me see. So, so, so,

so, so, so, so. Yea, marry, sir: Rafe Mouldy! Let them

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appear as I call; let them do so, let them do so. Let me

see; where is Mouldy?

MOULDY     Here, and’t please you.

SHALLOW     What think you, Sir John? A good-limbed

fellow, young, strong, and of good friends.

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FALSTAFF     Is thy name Mouldy?

MOULDY     Yea, and’t please you.

FALSTAFF     ’Tis the more time thou wert used.

SHALLOW     Ha, ha, ha! most excellent, i’faith, things that

are mouldy lack use: very singular good, in faith, well

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said, Sir John, very well said.

FALSTAFF     Prick him.

MOULDY     I was pricked well enough before, and you

could have let me alone. My old dame will be undone

now for one to do her husbandry and her drudgery.

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You need not to have pricked me, there are other men

fitter to go out than I.

FALSTAFF     Go to; peace, Mouldy; you shall go, Mouldy;

it is time you were spent.

MOULDY     Spent?

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SHALLOW     Peace, fellow, peace – stand aside; know you

where you are? For th’other, Sir John – let me see:

Simon Shadow!

FALSTAFF     Yea, marry, let me have him to sit under. He’s

like to be a cold soldier.

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SHALLOW     Where’s Shadow?

SHADOW     Here, sir.

FALSTAFF     Shadow, whose son art thou?

SHADOW     My mother’s son, sir.

FALSTAFF     Thy mother’s son! Like enough, and thy

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father’s shadow. So the son of the female is the shadow

of the male; it is often so indeed – but much of the

father’s substance!

SHALLOW     Do you like him, Sir John?

FALSTAFF     Shadow will serve for summer. Prick him, for

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we have a number of shadows fill up the muster-book.

SHALLOW     Thomas Wart!

FALSTAFF     Where’s he?

WART     Here, sir.

FALSTAFF     Is thy name Wart?

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WART     Yea, sir.

FALSTAFF     Thou art a very ragged Wart.

SHALLOW     Shall I prick him, Sir John?

FALSTAFF     It were superfluous, for his apparel is built

upon his back, and the whole frame stands upon pins:

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prick him no more.

SHALLOW     Ha, ha, ha! you can do it, sir, you can do it, I

commend you well. Francis Feeble!

FEEBLE     Here, sir.

FALSTAFF     What trade art thou, Feeble?

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FEEBLE     A woman’s tailor, sir.

SHALLOW     Shall I prick him, sir?

FALSTAFF     You may; but if he had been a man’s tailor

he’d ha’ pricked you. Wilt thou make as many holes in

an enemy’s battle as thou hast done in a woman’s

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petticoat?

FEEBLE     I will do my good will, sir, you can have no

more.

FALSTAFF     Well said, good woman’s tailor! Well said,

courageous Feeble! Thou wilt be as valiant as the

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wrathful dove, or most magnanimous mouse. Prick

the woman’s tailor: well, Master Shallow; deep,

Master Shallow.

FEEBLE     I would Wart might have gone, sir.

FALSTAFF     I would thou wert a man’s tailor, that thou

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mightst mend him and make him fit to go. I cannot

put him to a private soldier, that is the leader of so

many thousands. Let that suffice, most forcible Feeble.

FEEBLE     It shall suffice, sir.

FALSTAFF     I am bound to thee, reverend Feeble. Who is

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next?

SHALLOW     Peter Bullcalf o’th’ green!

FALSTAFF     Yea, marry, let’s see Bullcalf.

BULLCALF     Here, sir.

FALSTAFF     Fore God, a likely fellow! Come, prick me

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Bullcalf till he roar again.

BULLCALF     O Lord, good my lord captain –

FALSTAFF     What, dost thou roar before thou art pricked?

BULLCALF     O Lord, sir, I am a diseased man.

FALSTAFF     What disease hast thou?

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BULLCALF     A whoreson cold, sir, a cough, sir, which I

caught with ringing in the King’s affairs upon his

coronation day, sir.

FALSTAFF     Come, thou shalt go to the wars in a gown;

we will have away thy cold, and I will take such order

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that thy friends shall ring for thee. Is here all?

SHALLOW     Here is two more called than your number;

you must have but four here, sir: and so, I pray you, go

in with me to dinner.

FALSTAFF     Come, I will go drink with you, but I cannot

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tarry dinner. I am glad to see you, by my troth, Master

Shallow.

SHALLOW     O, Sir John, do you remember since we lay all

night in the Windmill in Saint George’s Field?

FALSTAFF     No more of that, good Master Shallow, no

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more of that.

SHALLOW     Ha, ’twas a merry night! And is Jane

Nightwork alive?

FALSTAFF     She lives, Master Shallow.

SHALLOW     She never could away with me.

200

FALSTAFF     Never, never; she would always say she could

not abide Master Shallow.

SHALLOW     By the mass, I could anger her to th’heart.

She was then a bona-roba. Doth she hold her own

well?

205

FALSTAFF     Old, old, Master Shallow.

SHALLOW     Nay, she must be old, she cannot choose but

be old, certain she’s old, and had Robin Nightwork by

old Nightwork before I came to Clement’s Inn.

SILENCE     That’s fifty-five year ago.

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SHALLOW     Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that

that this knight and I have seen! Ha, Sir John, said I

well?

FALSTAFF     We have heard the chimes at midnight,

Master Shallow.

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SHALLOW     That we have, that we have, that we have; in

faith, Sir John, we have; our watchword was ‘Hem,

boys!’ – Come, let’s to dinner; come, let’s to dinner.

Jesus, the days that we have seen! Come, come.

Exeunt Falstaff, Shallow and Silence.

BULLCALF     Good Master Corporate Bardolph, stand my

220

friend; and here’s four Harry ten shillings in French

crowns for you. In very truth, sir, I had as lief be

hanged, sir, as go. And yet for mine own part, sir, I do

not care; but rather because I am unwilling, and, for

mine own part, have a desire to stay with my friends;

225

else, sir, I did not care, for mine own part, so much.

BARDOLPH     Go to, stand aside.

MOULDY     And, good Master Corporal Captain, for my

old dame’s sake stand my friend. She has nobody to do

anything about her when I am gone, and she is old and

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cannot help herself. You shall have forty, sir.

BARDOLPH     Go to, stand aside.

FEEBLE     By my troth I care not, a man can die but once,

we owe God a death. I’ll ne’er bear a base mind – and’t

be my destiny, so; and’t be not, so. No man’s too good

235

to serve’s prince, and let it go which way it will, he that

dies this year is quit for the next.

BARDOLPH     Well said, th’art a good fellow.

FEEBLE     Faith, I’ll bear no base mind.

Enter FALSTAFF and the Justices.

FALSTAFF     Come, sir, which men shall I have?

240

SHALLOW     Four of which you please.

BARDOLPH     Sir, a word with you. I have three pound to

free Mouldy and Bullcalf.

FALSTAFF     Go to, well.

SHALLOW     Come, Sir John, which four will you have?

245

FALSTAFF     Do you choose for me.

SHALLOW     Marry then, Mouldy, Bullcalf, Feeble, and

Shadow.

FALSTAFF     Mouldy and Bullcalf: for you, Mouldy, stay

at home till you are past service; and for your part,

250

Bullcalf, grow till you come unto it. I will none of you.

SHALLOW     Sir John, Sir John, do not yourself wrong,

they are your likeliest men, and I would have you

served with the best.

FALSTAFF     Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to

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choose a man? Care I for the limb, the thews, the

stature, bulk, and big assemblance of a man? Give me

the spirit, Master Shallow. Here’s Wart; you see what

a ragged appearance it is – a shall charge you, and

discharge you, with the motion of a pewterer’s

260

hammer, come off and on swifter than he that gibbets

on the brewer’s bucket. And this same half-faced

fellow Shadow; give me this man, he presents no mark

to the enemy – the foeman may with as great aim level

at the edge of a penknife. And for a retreat, how

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swiftly will this Feeble the woman’s tailor run off! O,

give me the spare men, and spare me the great ones.

Put me a caliver into Wart’s hand, Bardolph.

BARDOLPH     Hold, Wart, traverse – thas! thas! thas!

FALSTAFF     Come, manage me your caliver. So, very well!

270

Go to, very good! Exceeding good! O, give me always

a little, lean, old, chopt, bald shot. Well said, i’ faith,

Wart, th’art a good scab. Hold, there’s a tester for thee.

SHALLOW     He is not his craft’s master, he doth not do it

right. I remember at Mile-End Green, when I lay at

275

Clement’s Inn – I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur’s

show – there was a little quiver fellow, and a would

manage you his piece thus, and a would about, and

about, and come you in, and come you in. ‘Rah, tah,

tah’, would a say; ‘Bounce’, would a say; and away

280

again would a go, and again would a come: I shall ne’er

see such a fellow.

FALSTAFF     These fellows will do well, Master Shallow.

God keep you, Master Silence: I will not use many

words with you. Fare you well, gentlemen both; I

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thank you. I must a dozen mile tonight. Bardolph, give

the soldiers coats.

SHALLOW     Sir John, the Lord bless you! God prosper

your affairs! God send us peace! At your return, visit

our house, let our old acquaintance be renewed.

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Peradventure I will with ye to the court.

FALSTAFF     Fore God, I would you would, Master

Shallow.

SHALLOW     Go to, I have spoke at a word. God keep you!

FALSTAFF     Fare you well, gentle gentlemen.

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Exeunt Justices.

On Bardolph, lead the men away.

Exeunt Bardolph and recruits.

As I return, I will fetch off these justices. I do see the

bottom of Justice Shallow. Lord, Lord, how subject we

old men are to this vice of lying! This same starved

justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the

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wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath done about

Turnbull Street, and every third word a lie, duer paid

to the hearer than the Turk’s tribute. I do remember

him at Clement’s Inn, like a man made after supper of

a cheese-paring. When a was naked, he was for all the

305

world like a forked radish, with a head fantastically

carved upon it with a knife. A was so forlorn, that his

dimensions to any thick sight were invisible; a was the

very genius of famine, yet lecherous as a monkey, and

the whores called him mandrake. A came ever in the

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rearward of the fashion, and sung those tunes to the

overscutched housewives that he heard the carmen

whistle, and sware they were his fancies or his good-

nights. And now is this Vice’s dagger become a squire,

and talks as familiarly of John a Gaunt as if he had

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been sworn brother to him, and I’ll be sworn a ne’er

saw him but once in the tilt-yard, and then he burst his

head for crowding among the marshal’s men. I saw it

and told John a Gaunt he beat his own name, for you

might have thrust him and all his apparel into an eel-

320

skin – the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for

him, a court; and now has he land and beefs. Well, I’ll

be acquainted with him if I return, and’t shall go hard

but I’ll make him a philosopher’s two stones to me. If

the young dace be a bait for the old pike, I see no

325

reason in the law of nature but I may snap at him: let

time shape, and there an end.     Exit.

4.1 Enter the Archbishop, MOWBRAY, HASTINGS and others.

ARCHBISHOP     What is this forest call’d?

HASTINGS

’Tis Gaultree Forest, and’t shall please your Grace.

ARCHBISHOP

Here stand, my lords, and send discoverers forth

To know the numbers of our enemies.

HASTINGS     We have sent forth already.

ARCHBISHOP     ’Tis well done.

5

My friends and brethren in these great affairs,

I must acquaint you that I have receiv’d

New-dated letters from Northumberland,

Their cold intent, tenor, and substance, thus:

Here doth he wish his person, with such powers

10

As might hold sortance with his quality,

The which he could not levy; whereupon

He is retir’d to ripe his growing fortunes

To Scotland, and concludes in hearty prayers

That your attempts may overlive the hazard

15

And fearful meeting of their opposite.

MOWBRAY

Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground

And dash themselves to pieces.

Enter Messenger.

HASTINGS     Now, what news?

MESSENGER     West of this forest, scarcely off a mile,

In goodly form comes on the enemy,

20

And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number

Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand.

MOWBRAY     The just proportion that we gave them out.

Let us sway on and face them in the field.

Enter WESTMORELAND.

ARCHBISHOP

What well-appointed leader fronts us here?

25

MOWBRAY     I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland.

WESTMORELAND

Health and fair greeting from our general,

The Prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster.

ARCHBISHOP

Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace,

What doth concern your coming.

WESTMORELAND     Then, my lord,

30

Unto your Grace do I in chief address

The substance of my speech. If that rebellion

Came like itself, in base and abject routs,

Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags,

And countenanc’d by boys and beggary;

35

I say, if damn’d commotion so appear’d

In his true, native, and most proper shape,

You, reverend father, and these noble lords

Had not been here to dress the ugly form

Of base and bloody insurrection

40

With your fair honours. You, Lord Archbishop,

Whose see is by a civil peace maintain’d,

Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch’d,

Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor’d,

Whose white investments figure innocence,

45

The dove and very blessed spirit of peace,

Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself

Out of the speech of peace that bears such grace

Into the harsh and boist’rous tongue of war;

Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood,

50

Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine

To a loud trumpet and a point of war?

ARCHBISHOP

Wherefore do I this? so the question stands.

Briefly, to this end: we are all diseas’d,

And with our surfeiting, and wanton hours,

55

Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,

And we must bleed for it; of which disease

Our late King Richard being infected died.

But, my most noble Lord of Westmoreland,

I take not on me here as a physician,

60

Nor do I as an enemy to peace

Troop in the throngs of military men,

But rather show awhile like fearful war

To diet rank minds sick of happiness,

And purge th’ obstructions which begin to stop

65

Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.

I have in equal balance justly weigh’d

What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,

And find our griefs heavier than our offences.

We see which way the stream of time doth run,

70

And are enforc’d from our most quiet there

By the rough torrent of occasion,

And have the summary of all our griefs,

When time shall serve, to show in articles,

Which long ere this we offer’d to the King

75

And might by no suit gain our audience.

When we are wrong’d, and would unfold our griefs,

We are denied access unto his person,

Even by those men that most have done us wrong.

The dangers of the days but newly gone,

80

Whose memory is written on the earth

With yet-appearing blood, and the examples

Of every minute’s instance, present now,

Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms,

Not to break peace, or any branch of it,

85

But to establish here a peace indeed,

Concurring both in name and quality.

WESTMORELAND

Whenever yet was your appeal denied?

Wherein have you been galled by the King?

What peer hath been suborn’d to grate on you,

90

That you should seal this lawless bloody book

Of forg’d rebellion with a seal divine,

And consecrate commotion’s bitter edge?

ARCHBISHOP     My brother general, the commonwealth,

To brother born an household cruelty,

95

I make my quarrel in particular.

WESTMORELAND     There is no need of any such redress,

Or if there were, it not belongs to you.

MOWBRAY     Why not to him in part, and to us all

That feel the bruises of the days before,

100

And suffer the condition of these times

To lay a heavy and unequal hand

Upon our honours?

WESTMORELAND     O, my good Lord Mowbray,

Construe the times to their necessities,

And you shall say, indeed, it is the time,

105

And not the King, that doth you injuries.

Yet for your part, it not appears to me

Either from the King or in the present time

That you should have an inch of any ground

To build a grief on: were you not restor’d

110

To all the Duke of Norfolk’s signories,

Your noble and right well-remember’d father’s?

MOWBRAY     What thing, in honour, had my father lost,

That need to be reviv’d and breath’d in me?

The King that lov’d him, as the state stood then,

115

Was force perforce compell’d to banish him,

And then that Henry Bolingbroke and he,

Being mounted and both roused in their seats,

Their neighing coursers daring of the spur,

Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down,

120

Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel,

And the loud trumpet blowing them together,

Then, then, when there was nothing could have stay’d

My father from the breast of Bolingbroke,

O, when the King did throw his warder down,

125

His own life hung upon the staff he threw;

Then threw he down himself and all their lives

That by indictment and by dint of sword

Have since miscarried under Bolingbroke.

WESTMORELAND

You speak, Lord Mowbray, now you know not what.

130

The Earl of Hereford was reputed then

In England the most valiant gentleman.

Who knows on whom Fortune would then have smil’d?

But if your father had been victor there,

He ne’er had borne it out of Coventry;

135

For all the country, in a general voice,

Cried hate upon him; and all their prayers and love

Were set on Hereford, whom they doted on,

And bless’d, and grac’d, indeed more than the King.

But this is mere digression from my purpose.

140

Here come I from our princely general

To know your griefs, to tell you from his Grace

That he will give you audience; and wherein

It shall appear that your demands are just,

You shall enjoy them, everything set off

145

That might so much as think you enemies.

MOWBRAY     But he hath forc’d us to compel this offer,

And it proceeds from policy, not love.

WESTMORELAND     Mowbray, you overween to take it so.

This offer comes from mercy, not from fear;

150

For lo, within a ken our army lies,

Upon mine honour, all too confident

To give admittance to a thought of fear.

Our battle is more full of names than yours,

Our men more perfect in the use of arms,

155

Our armour all as strong, our cause the best;

Then reason will our hearts should be as good.

Say you not then, our offer is compell’d.

MOWBRAY     Well, by my will we shall admit no parley.

WESTMORELAND

That argues but the shame of your offence:

160

A rotten case abides no handling.

HASTINGS     Hath the Prince John a full commission,

In very ample virtue of his father,

To hear, and absolutely to determine,

Of what conditions we shall stand upon?

165

WESTMORELAND

That is intended in the general’s name:

I muse you make so slight a question.

ARCHBISHOP

Then take, my Lord of Westmoreland, this schedule,

For this contains our general grievances.

Each several article herein redress’d,

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All members of our cause, both here and hence,

That are ensinew’d to this action

Acquitted by a true substantial form

And present execution of our wills –

To us and to our purposes confin’d

175

We come within our aweful banks again,

And knit our powers to the arm of peace.

WESTMORELAND

This will I show the general. Please you, lords,

In sight of both our battles we may meet,

And either end in peace – which God so frame! –

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Or to the place of diff ’rence call the swords

Which must decide it.

ARCHBISHOP     My lord, we will do so.

Exit Westmoreland.

MOWBRAY     There is a thing within my bosom tells me

That no conditions of our peace can stand.

HASTINGS     Fear you not that: if we can make our peace

185

Upon such large terms, and so absolute,

As our conditions shall consist upon,

Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.

MOWBRAY     Yea, but our valuation shall be such

That every slight and false-derived cause,

190

Yea, every idle, nice, and wanton reason,

Shall to the King taste of this action;

That were our royal faiths martyrs in love,

We shall be winnow’d with so rough a wind

That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff

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And good from bad find no partition.

ARCHBISHOP

No, no, my lord, note this: the King is weary

Of dainty and such picking grievances;

For he hath found, to end one doubt by death

Revives two greater in the heirs of life:

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And therefore will he wipe his tables clean,

And keep no tell-tale to his memory

That may repeat and history his loss

To new remembrance. For full well he knows

He cannot so precisely weed this land

205

As his misdoubts present occasion.

His foes are so enrooted with his friends

That plucking to unfix an enemy

He doth unfasten so and shake a friend.

So that this land, like an offensive wife

210

That hath enrag’d him on to offer strokes,

As he is striking, holds his infant up,

And hangs resolv’d correction in the arm

That was uprear’d to execution.

HASTINGS     Besides, the King hath wasted all his rods

215

On late offenders, that he now doth lack

The very instruments of chastisement;

So that his power, like to a fangless lion,

May offer, but not hold.

ARCHBISHOP     ’Tis very true:

And therefore be assur’d, my good Lord Marshal,

220

If we do now make our atonement well,

Our peace will, like a broken limb united,

Grow stronger for the breaking.

MOWBRAY     Be it so.

Here is return’d my Lord of Westmoreland.

Enter WESTMORELAND.

WESTMORELAND

The Prince is here at hand. Pleaseth your lordship

225

To meet his Grace just distance ’tween our armies.

MOWBRAY

Your Grace of York, in God’s name then set forward.

YORK     Before! and greet his Grace. – My lord, we come.

[They go forward.]

4.2 Enter PRINCE JOHN OF LANCASTER and his army.

LANCASTER

You are well encounter’d here, my cousin Mowbray;

Good day to you, gentle Lord Archbishop;

And so to you, Lord Hastings, and to all.

My Lord of York, it better show’d with you

When that your flock, assembled by the bell,

5

Encircled you to hear with reverence

Your exposition on the holy text

Than now to see you here an iron man,

Cheering a rout of rebels with your drum,

Turning the word to sword, and life to death.

10

That man that sits within a monarch’s heart,

And ripens in the sunshine of his favour,

Would he abuse the countenance of the king,

Alack, what mischiefs might he set abroach

In shadow of such greatness! With you, Lord Bishop,

15

It is even so. Who hath not heard it spoken

How deep you were within the books of God,

To us the speaker in his parliament,

To us th’imagin’d voice of God himself,

The very opener and intelligencer

20

Between the grace, the sanctities of heaven,

And our dull workings? O, who shall believe

But you misuse the reverence of your place,

Employ the countenance and grace of heav’n

As a false favourite doth his prince’s name,

25

In deeds dishonourable? You have ta’en up,

Under the counterfeited zeal of God,

The subjects of his substitute, my father,

And both against the peace of heaven and him

Have here up-swarm’d them.

ARCHBISHOP     Good my Lord of Lancaster,

30

I am not here against your father’s peace;

But, as I told my Lord of Westmoreland,

The time misorder’d doth, in common sense,

Crowd us and crush us to this monstrous form

To hold our safety up. I sent your Grace

35

The parcels and particulars of our grief,

The which hath been with scorn shov’d from the court,

Whereon this Hydra son of war is born,

Whose dangerous eyes may well be charm’d asleep

With grant of our most just and right desires,

40

And true obedience, of this madness cur’d,

Stoop tamely to the foot of majesty.

MOWBRAY     If not, we ready are to try our fortunes

To the last man.

HASTINGS     And though we here fall down,

We have supplies to second our attempt:

45

If they miscarry, theirs shall second them;

And so success of mischief shall be born,

And heir from heir shall hold this quarrel up

Whiles England shall have generation.

LANCASTER

You are too shallow, Hastings, much too shallow,

50

To sound the bottom of the after-times.

WESTMORELAND

Pleaseth your Grace to answer them directly

How far forth you do like their articles.

LANCASTER     I like them all, and do allow them well,

And swear here, by the honour of my blood,

55

My father’s purposes have been mistook,

And some about him have too lavishly

Wrested his meaning and authority.

My lord, these griefs shall be with speed redress’d;

Upon my soul they shall. If this may please you,

60

Discharge your powers unto their several counties,

As we will ours; and here between the armies

Let’s drink together friendly and embrace,

That all their eyes may bear those tokens home

Of our restored love and amity.

65

ARCHBISHOP

I take your princely word for these redresses.

LANCASTER     I give it you, and will maintain my word;

And thereupon I drink unto your Grace.

HASTINGS     Go, captain, and deliver to the army

This news of peace. Let them have pay, and part.

70

I know it will well please them. Hie thee, captain.

Exit officer.

ARCHBISHOP     To you, my noble Lord of Westmoreland.

WESTMORELAND

I pledge your Grace; and if you knew what pains

I have bestow’d to breed this present peace

You would drink freely; but my love to ye

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Shall show itself more openly hereafter.

ARCHBISHOP     I do not doubt you.

WESTMORELAND     I am glad of it.

Health to my lord and gentle cousin, Mowbray.

MOWBRAY     You wish me health in very happy season,

For I am on the sudden something ill.

80

ARCHBISHOP     Against ill chances men are ever merry,

But heaviness foreruns the good event.

WESTMORELAND

Therefore be merry, coz, since sudden sorrow

Serves to say thus, ‘Some good thing comes tomorrow’.

ARCHBISHOP     Believe me, I am passing light in spirit.

85

MOWBRAY

So much the worse, if your own rule be true.

[Shouts within.]

LANCASTER

The word of peace is render’d. Hark how they shout!

MOWBRAY     This had been cheerful after victory.

ARCHBISHOP     A peace is of the nature of a conquest,

For then both parties nobly are subdu’d,

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And neither party loser.

LANCASTER     Go, my lord,

And let our army be discharged too.

Exit Westmoreland.

And, good my lord, so please you, let our trains

March by us, that we may peruse the men

We should have cop’d withal.

ARCHBISHOP     Go, good Lord Hastings,

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And, ere they be dismiss’d, let them march by.

Exit Hastings.

LANCASTER     I trust, lords, we shall lie tonight together.

Enter WESTMORELAND.

Now, cousin, wherefore stands our army still?

WESTMORELAND

The leaders, having charge from you to stand,

Will not go off until they hear you speak.

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LANCASTER     They know their duties.

Enter HASTINGS.

HASTINGS     My lord, our army is dispers’d already.

Like youthful steers unyok’d they take their courses

East, west, north, south; or, like a school broke up,

Each hurries toward his home and sporting-place.

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WESTMORELAND

Good tidings, my Lord Hastings; for the which

I do arrest thee, traitor, of high treason;

And you, Lord Archbishop, and you, Lord Mowbray,

Of capital treason I attach you both.

MOWBRAY     Is this proceeding just and honourable?

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WESTMORELAND     Is your assembly so?

ARCHBISHOP     Will you thus break your faith?

LANCASTER     I pawn’d thee none.

I promis’d you redress of these same grievances

Whereof you did complain; which, by mine honour,

I will perform with a most Christian care.

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But, for you rebels, look to taste the due

Meet for rebellion and such acts as yours.

Most shallowly did you these arms commence,

Fondly brought here, and foolishly sent hence.

Strike up our drums, pursue the scatter’d stray:

120

God, and not we, hath safely fought today.

Some guard these traitors to the block of death,

Treason’s true bed and yielder-up of breath.     Exeunt.

4.3 Alarum. Excursions. Enter FALSTAFF and COLEVILE, meeting.

FALSTAFF     What’s your name, sir? Of what condition are

you, and of what place?

COLEVILE     I am a knight, sir, and my name is Colevile of

the Dale.

FALSTAFF     Well then, Colevile is your name, a knight is

5

your degree, and your place the Dale. Colevile shall be

still your name, a traitor your degree, and the dungeon

your place – a place deep enough; so shall you be still

Colevile of the Dale.

COLEVILE     Are not you Sir John Falstaff?

10

FALSTAFF     As good a man as he, sir, whoe’er I am. Do ye

yield, sir, or shall I sweat for you? If I do sweat, they

are the drops of thy lovers, and they weep for thy

death; therefore rouse up fear and trembling, and do

observance to my mercy.

15

COLEVILE     [Kneels.] I think you are Sir John Falstaff,

and in that thought yield me.

FALSTAFF     I have a whole school of tongues in this belly

of mine, and not a tongue of them all speaks any other

word but my name. And I had but a belly of any

20

indifferency, I were simply the most active fellow in

Europe: my womb, my womb, my womb undoes me.

Here comes our general.

Retreat sounded. Enter PRINCE JOHN, WESTMORELAND, BLUNT and others.

LANCASTER     The heat is past; follow no further now.

Call in the powers, good cousin Westmoreland.

25

Exit Westmoreland.

Now Falstaff, where have you been all this while?

When everything is ended, then you come.

These tardy tricks of yours will, on my life,

One time or other break some gallows’ back.

FALSTAFF     I would be sorry, my lord, but it should be

30

thus. I never knew yet but rebuke and check was the

reward of valour. Do you think me a swallow, an arrow,

or a bullet? Have I in my poor and old motion the

expedition of thought? I have speeded hither with the

very extremest inch of possibility; I have foundered

35

nine score and odd posts; and here, travel-tainted as I

am, have in my pure and immaculate valour taken Sir

John Colevile of the Dale, a most furious knight and

valorous enemy. But what of that? He saw me, and

yielded; that I may justly say, with the hook-nosed

40

fellow of Rome, three words, ‘I came, saw, and

overcame’.

LANCASTER     It was more of his courtesy than your

deserving.

FALSTAFF     I know not: here he is, and here I yield him;

45

and I beseech your Grace, let it be booked with the

rest of this day’s deeds, or by the Lord I will have it in

a particular ballad else, with mine own picture on the

top on’t, Colevile kissing my foot: to the which course

if I be enforced, if you do not all show like gilt

50

twopences to me, and I in the clear sky of fame

o’ershine you as much as the full moon doth the

cinders of the element, which show like pins’ heads to

her, believe not the word of the noble. Therefore let

me have right, and let desert mount.

55

LANCASTER     Thine’s too heavy to mount.

FALSTAFF     Let it shine, then.

LANCASTER     Thine’s too thick to shine.

FALSTAFF     Let it do something, my good lord, that may

do me good, and call it what you will.

60

LANCASTER     Is thy name Colevile?

COLEVILE     It is, my lord.

LANCASTER     A famous rebel art thou, Colevile.

FALSTAFF     And a famous true subject took him.

COLEVILE     I am, my lord, but as my betters are

That led me hither. Had they been rul’d by me,

65

You should have won them dearer than you have.

FALSTAFF     I know not how they sold themselves, but

thou like a kind fellow gavest thyself away gratis, and

I thank thee for thee.

Enter WESTMORELAND.

LANCASTER     Now, have you left pursuit?

70

WESTMORELAND     Retreat is made and execution stay’d.

LANCASTER     Send Colevile with his confederates

To York, to present execution.

Blunt, lead him hence, and see you guard him sure.

Exit Blunt with Colevile, guarded.

And now dispatch we toward the court, my lords;

75

I hear the King my father is sore sick.

Our news shall go before us to his Majesty,

Which, cousin, you shall bear to comfort him,

And we with sober speed will follow you.

FALSTAFF     My lord, I beseech you give me leave to go

80

Through Gloucestershire, and when you come to court

Stand my good lord, pray, in your good report.

LANCASTER     Fare you well, Falstaff. I, in my condition,

Shall better speak of you than you deserve.

Exit, with all but Falstaff.

FALSTAFF     I would you had but the wit, ’twere better

85

than your dukedom. Good faith, this same young

sober-blooded boy doth not love me, nor a man cannot

make him laugh; but that’s no marvel, he drinks no

wine. There’s never none of these demure boys come

to any proof; for thin drink doth so over-cool their

90

blood, and making many fish meals, that they fall into

a kind of male green-sickness; and then when they

marry they get wenches. They are generally fools and

cowards – which some of us should be too, but for

inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a twofold

95

operation in it. It ascends me into the brain, dries me

there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which

environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full

of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which

delivered o’er to the voice, the tongue, which is the

100

birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of

your excellent sherris is the warming of the blood,

which before, cold and settled, left the liver white and

pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and

cowardice; but the sherris warms it, and makes it

105

course from the inwards to the parts’ extremes. It

illumineth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning

to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and

then the vital commoners, and inland petty spirits,

muster me all to their captain, the heart; who, great

110

and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of

courage; and this valour comes of sherris. So that skill

in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it

a-work, and learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a

devil, till sack commences it and sets it in act and use.

115

Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the

cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father he

hath like lean, sterile, and bare land manured,

husbanded, and tilled, with excellent endeavour of

drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he

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is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand

sons, the first human principle I would teach them

should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict

themselves to sack.

Enter BARDOLPH.

How now, Bardolph?

125

BARDOLPH     The army is discharged all and gone.

FALSTAFF     Let them go. I’ll through Gloucestershire,

and there will I visit Master Robert Shallow, Esquire.

I have him already tempering between my finger and

my thumb, and shortly will I seal with him. Come

130

away.     Exeunt.

4.4 Enter the KING, carried in a chair, WARWICK, THOMAS DUKE OF CLARENCE, HUMPHREY DUKE OF GLOUCESTER and others.

KING     Now, lords, if God doth give successful end

To this debate that bleedeth at our doors,

We will our youth lead on to higher fields,

And draw no swords but what are sanctified.

Our navy is address’d, our power collected,

5

Our substitutes in absence well invested,

And every thing lies level to our wish;

Only we want a little personal strength,

And pause us till these rebels now afoot

Come underneath the yoke of government.

10

WARWICK     Both which we doubt not but your Majesty

Shall soon enjoy.

KING     Humphrey, my son of Gloucester,

Where is the Prince your brother?

GLOUCESTER

I think he’s gone to hunt, my lord, at Windsor.

KING     And how accompanied?

GLOUCESTER     I do not know, my lord.

15

KING     Is not his brother Thomas of Clarence with him?

GLOUCESTER     No, my good lord, he is in presence here.

CLARENCE     What would my lord and father?

KING     Nothing but well to thee, Thomas of Clarence.

How chance thou art not with the Prince thy brother?

20

He loves thee, and thou dost neglect him, Thomas.

Thou hast a better place in his affection

Than all thy brothers: cherish it, my boy,

And noble offices thou mayst effect

Of mediation, after I am dead,

25

Between his greatness and thy other brethren.

Therefore omit him not, blunt not his love,

Nor lose the good advantage of his grace

By seeming cold, or careless of his will;

For he is gracious, if he be observ’d,

30

He hath a tear for pity, and a hand

Open as day for melting charity:

Yet notwithstanding, being incens’d, he’s flint,

As humorous as winter, and as sudden

As flaws congealed in the spring of day.

35

His temper therefore must be well observ’d.

Chide him for faults, and do it reverently,

When you perceive his blood inclin’d to mirth;

But being moody, give him time and scope,

Till that his passions, like a whale on ground,

40

Confound themselves with working. Learn this, Thomas,

And thou shalt prove a shelter to thy friends,

A hoop of gold to bind thy brothers in,

That the united vessel of their blood,

Mingled with venom of suggestion –

45

As force perforce the age will pour it in –

Shall never leak, though it do work as strong

As aconitum or rash gunpowder.

CLARENCE     I shall observe him with all care and love.

KING

Why art thou not at Windsor with him, Thomas?

50

CLARENCE     He is not there today, he dines in London.

KING     And how accompanied? Canst thou tell that?

CLARENCE

With Poins, and other his continual followers.

KING     Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds,

And he, the noble image of my youth,

55

Is overspread with them; therefore my grief

Stretches itself beyond the hour of death.

The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape

In forms imaginary th’unguided days

And rotten times that you shall look upon

60

When I am sleeping with my ancestors.

For when his headstrong riot hath no curb,

When rage and hot blood are his counsellors,

When means and lavish manners meet together,

O, with what wings shall his affections fly

65

Towards fronting peril and oppos’d decay!

WARWICK

My gracious lord, you look beyond him quite.

The Prince but studies his companions

Like a strange tongue, wherein, to gain the language,

’Tis needful that the most immodest word

70

Be look’d upon and learnt; which once attain’d,

Your Highness knows, comes to no further use

But to be known and hated. So, like gross terms,

The Prince will, in the perfectness of time,

Cast off his followers, and their memory

75

Shall as a pattern or a measure live

By which his Grace must mete the lives of other,

Turning past evils to advantages.

KING     ’Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb

In the dead carrion.

Enter WESTMORELAND.

Who’s here? Westmoreland?

80

WESTMORELAND

Health to my sovereign, and new happiness

Added to that that I am to deliver!

Prince John your son doth kiss your Grace’s hand:

Mowbray, the Bishop Scroop, Hastings and all

Are brought to the correction of your law.

85

There is not now a rebel’s sword unsheath’d,

But Peace puts forth her olive everywhere.

The manner how this action hath been borne

Here at more leisure may your Highness read,

With every course in his particular.

90

KING     O Westmoreland, thou art a summer bird,

Which ever in the haunch of winter sings

The lifting up of day.

Enter HARCOURT.

Look, here’s more news.

HARCOURT     From enemies heaven keep your Majesty;

And when they stand against you, may they fall

95

As those that I am come to tell you of!

The Earl Northumberland, and the Lord Bardolph,

With a great power of English and of Scots,

Are by the shrieve of Yorkshire overthrown.

The manner and true order of the fight

100

This packet, please it you, contains at large.

KING

And wherefore should these good news make me sick?

Will Fortune never come with both hands full,

But write her fair words still in foulest letters?

She either gives a stomach, and no food –

105

Such are the poor, in health; or else a feast

And takes away the stomach – such are the rich

That have abundance and enjoy it not.

I should rejoice now at this happy news,

And now my sight fails, and my brain is giddy.

110

O me! come near me, now I am much ill.

GLOUCESTER     Comfort, your Majesty!

CLARENCE     O my royal father!

WESTMORELAND

My sovereign lord, cheer up yourself, look up.

WARWICK

Be patient, Princes; you do know these fits

Are with his Highness very ordinary.

115

Stand from him, give him air; he’ll straight be well.

CLARENCE

No, no, he cannot long hold out these pangs.

Th’incessant care and labour of his mind

Hath wrought the mure that should confine it in

So thin that life looks through and will break out.

120

GLOUCESTER

The people fear me, for they do observe

Unfather’d heirs and loathly births of nature.

The seasons change their manners, as the year

Had found some months asleep and leap’d them over.

CLARENCE

The river hath thrice flow’d, no ebb between,

125

And the old folk, time’s doting chronicles,

Say it did so a little time before

That our great-grandsire Edward sick’d and died.

WARWICK     Speak lower, Princes, for the King recovers.

GLOUCESTER     This apoplexy will certain be his end.

130

KING     I pray you take me up, and bear me hence

Into some other chamber: softly, pray.

4.5 They take the KING up and lay him on a bed.

KING     Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends,

Unless some dull and favourable hand

Will whisper music to my weary spirit.

WARWICK     Call for the music in the other room.

KING     Set me the crown upon my pillow here.

5

CLARENCE     His eye is hollow, and he changes much.

WARWICK     Less noise, less noise!

Enter PRINCE HENRY.

PRINCE     Who saw the Duke of Clarence?

CLARENCE     I am here, brother, full of heaviness.

PRINCE     How now, rain within doors, and none abroad?

How doth the King?

10

GLOUCESTER     Exceeding ill.

PRINCE     Heard he the good news yet?

Tell it him.

GLOUCESTER     He alter’d much upon the hearing it.

PRINCE

If he be sick with joy, he’ll recover without physic.

WARWICK

Not so much noise, my lords. Sweet Prince, speak low;

15

The King your father is dispos’d to sleep.

CLARENCE     Let us withdraw into the other room.

WARWICK     Will’t please your Grace to go along with us?

PRINCE     No, I will sit and watch here by the King.

Exeunt all but the Prince.

Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow,

20

Being so troublesome a bedfellow?

O polish’d perturbation! golden care!

That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide

To many a watchful night! Sleep with it now:

Yet not so sound, and half so deeply sweet,

25

As he whose brow with homely biggen bound

Snores out the watch of night. O majesty!

When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit

Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,

That scald’st with safety. By his gates of breath

30

There lies a downy feather which stirs not:

Did he suspire, that light and weightless down

Perforce must move. My gracious lord! My father!

This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep

That from this golden rigol hath divorc’d

35

So many English kings. Thy due from me

Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood,

Which nature, love, and filial tenderness

Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously.

My due from thee is this imperial crown,

40

Which, as immediate from thy place and blood,

Derives itself to me. [putting it on his head]

Lo where it sits,

Which God shall guard; and put the world’s whole strength

Into one giant arm, it shall not force

This lineal honour from me. This from thee

45

Will I to mine leave, as ’tis left to me.     Exit.

KING     Warwick! Gloucester! Clarence!

Enter WARWICK, GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE and the rest.

CLARENCE     Doth the King call?

WARWICK

What would your Majesty? How fares your Grace?

KING     Why did you leave me here alone, my lords?

50

CLARENCE

We left the Prince my brother here, my liege,

Who undertook to sit and watch by you.

KING

The Prince of Wales? Where is he? Let me see him.

He is not here.

WARWICK     This door is open, he is gone this way.

55

GLOUCESTER

He came not through the chamber where we stay’d.

KING

Where is the crown? Who took it from my pillow?

WARWICK     When we withdrew, my liege, we left it here.

KING     The Prince hath ta’en it hence. Go seek him out.

Is he so hasty that he doth suppose

60

My sleep my death?

Find him, my Lord of Warwick, chide him hither.

Exit Warwick.

This part of his conjoins with my disease,

And helps to end me. See, sons, what things you are,

How quickly nature falls into revolt

65

When gold becomes her object!

For this the foolish over-careful fathers

Have broke their sleep with thoughts,

Their brains with care, their bones with industry;

For this they have engrossed and pil’d up

70

The canker’d heaps of strange-achieved gold;

For this they have been thoughtful to invest

Their sons with arts and martial exercises;

When, like the bee, tolling from every flower

The virtuous sweets,

75

Our thighs pack’d with wax, our mouths with honey,

We bring it to the hive; and like the bees

Are murder’d for our pains. This bitter taste

Yields his engrossments to the ending father.

Enter WARWICK.

Now where is he that will not stay so long

80

Till his friend sickness have determin’d me?

WARWICK

My lord, I found the Prince in the next room,

Washing with kindly tears his gentle cheeks,

With such a deep demeanour in great sorrow,

That tyranny, which never quaff’d but blood,

85

Would, by beholding him, have wash’d his knife

With gentle eye-drops. He is coming hither.

KING     But wherefore did he take away the crown?

Enter PRINCE HENRY.

Lo where he comes. Come hither to me, Harry.

Depart the chamber, leave us here alone.

90

Exeunt Warwick and the rest.

PRINCE     I never thought to hear you speak again.

KING     Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought;

I stay too long by thee, I weary thee.

Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair

That thou wilt needs invest thee with my honours

95

Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth!

Thou seek’st the greatness that will overwhelm thee.

Stay but a little, for my cloud of dignity

Is held from falling with so weak a wind

That it will quickly drop; my day is dim.

100

Thou hast stol’n that which after some few hours

Were thine without offence, and at my death

Thou hast seal’d up my expectation.

Thy life did manifest thou lov’dst me not,

And thou wilt have me die assur’d of it.

105

Thou hid’st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts,

Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart,

To stab at half an hour of my life.

What, canst thou not forbear me half an hour?

Then get thee gone, and dig my grave thyself,

110

And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear

That thou art crowned, not that I am dead.

Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse

Be drops of balm to sanctify thy head,

Only compound me with forgotten dust.

115

Give that which gave thee life unto the worms;

Pluck down my officers; break my decrees;

For now a time is come to mock at form –

Harry the fifth is crown’d! Up, vanity!

Down, royal state! All you sage counsellors, hence!

120

And to the English court assemble now

From every region, apes of idleness!

Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum!

Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance,

Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit

125

The oldest sins the newest kind of ways?

Be happy, he will trouble you no more.

England shall double gild his treble guilt,

England shall give him office, honour, might:

For the fifth Harry from curb’d licence plucks

130

The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog

Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent.

O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows!

When that my care could not withhold thy riots,

What wilt thou do when riot is thy care?

135

O, thou wilt be a wilderness again,

Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!

PRINCE [Kneels.]

O, pardon me, my liege! But for my tears,

The moist impediments unto my speech,

I had forestall’d this dear and deep rebuke,

140

Ere you with grief had spoke and I had heard

The course of it so far. There is your crown;

And He that wears the crown immortally

Long guard it yours! If I affect it more

Than as your honour and as your renown,

145

Let me no more from this obedience rise,

Which my most inward true and duteous spirit

Teacheth this prostrate and exterior bending.

God witness with me, when I here came in,

And found no course of breath within your Majesty,

150

How cold it struck my heart! If I do feign,

O, let me in my present wildness die,

And never live to show th’incredulous world

The noble change that I have purposed!

Coming to look on you, thinking you dead,

155

And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,

I spake unto this crown as having sense,

And thus upbraided it: ‘The care on thee depending

Hath fed upon the body of my father;

Therefore thou best of gold art worst of gold.

160

Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,

Preserving life in med’cine potable;

But thou, most fine, most honour’d, most renown’d,

Hast eat thy bearer up’. Thus, my most royal liege,

Accusing it, I put it on my head,

165

To try with it, as with an enemy

That had before my face murder’d my father,

The quarrel of a true inheritor.

But if it did infect my blood with joy,

Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride,

170

If any rebel or vain spirit of mine

Did with the least affection of a welcome

Give entertainment to the might of it,

Let God for ever keep it from my head,

And make me as the poorest vassal is,

175

That doth with awe and terror kneel to it!

KING     O my son,

God put it in thy mind to take it hence,

That thou mightst win the more thy father’s love,

Pleading so wisely in excuse of it!

180

Come hither, Harry, sit thou by my bed,

And hear, I think, the very latest counsel

That ever I shall breathe. God knows, my son,

By what by-paths and indirect crook’d ways

I met this crown, and I myself know well

185

How troublesome it sat upon my head.

To thee it shall descend with better quiet,

Better opinion, better confirmation,

For all the soil of the achievement goes

With me into the earth. It seem’d in me

190

But as an honour snatch’d with boist’rous hand,

And I had many living to upbraid

My gain of it by their assistances,

Which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed,

Wounding supposed peace. All these bold fears

195

Thou seest with peril I have answered;

For all my reign hath been but as a scene

Acting that argument. And now my death

Changes the mood, for what in me was purchas’d

Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort;

200

So thou the garland wear’st successively.

Yet though thou stand’st more sure than I could do,

Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green;

And all my friends, which thou must make thy friends,

Have but their stings and teeth newly ta’en out;

205

By whose fell working I was first advanc’d,

And by whose power I well might lodge a fear

To be again displac’d; which to avoid,

I cut them off, and had a purpose now

To lead out many to the Holy Land,

210

Lest rest and lying still might make them look

Too near unto my state. Therefore, my Harry,

Be it thy course to busy giddy minds

With foreign quarrels, that action hence borne out

May waste the memory of the former days.

215

More would I, but my lungs are wasted so

That strength of speech is utterly denied me.

How I came by the crown, O God forgive,

And grant it may with thee in true peace live!

PRINCE     My gracious liege,

220

You won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me;

Then plain and right must my possession be,

Which I with more than with a common pain

’Gainst all the world will rightfully maintain.

Enter PRINCE JOHN OF LANCASTER, WARWICK and others.

KING     Look, look, here comes my John of Lancaster.

225

LANCASTER

Health, peace, and happiness to my royal father!

KING

Thou bring’st me happiness and peace, son John,

But health, alack, with youthful wings is flown

From this bare wither’d trunk. Upon thy sight

My worldly business makes a period.

230

Where is my Lord of Warwick?

LANCASTER     My Lord of Warwick!

KING     Doth any name particular belong

Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?

WARWICK     ’Tis call’d Jerusalem, my noble lord.

KING     Laud be to God! Even there my life must end.

235

It hath been prophesied to me, many years,

I should not die but in Jerusalem,

Which vainly I suppos’d the Holy Land.

But bear me to that chamber; there I’ll lie;

In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.     Exeunt.

240

5.1 Enter SHALLOW, FALSTAFF, BARDOLPH and page.

SHALLOW     By cock and pie, sir, you shall not away

tonight. What, Davy, I say!

FALSTAFF     You must excuse me, Master Robert Shallow.

SHALLOW     I will not excuse you, you shall not be

excused, excuses shall not be admitted, there is no

5

excuse shall serve, you shall not be excused. Why,

Davy!

Enter DAVY.

DAVY     Here, sir.

SHALLOW     Davy, Davy, Davy, Davy; let me see, Davy; let

me see, Davy; let me see – yea, marry, William cook,

10

bid him come hither. Sir John, you shall not be

excused.

DAVY     Marry, sir, thus: those precepts cannot be

served; and again, sir – shall we sow the hade land

with wheat?

15

SHALLOW     With red wheat, Davy. But for William cook

– are there no young pigeons?

DAVY     Yes, sir. Here is now the smith’s note for shoeing

and plough-irons.

SHALLOW     Let it be cast and paid. Sir John, you shall not

20

be excused.

DAVY     Now, sir, a new link to the bucket must needs be

had; and sir, do you mean to stop any of William’s

wages, about the sack he lost the other day at Hinckley

fair?

25

SHALLOW     A shall answer it. Some pigeons, Davy, a

couple of short-legged hens, a joint of mutton, and any

pretty little tiny kickshaws, tell William cook.

DAVY     Doth the man of war stay all night, sir?

SHALLOW     Yea, Davy, I will use him well: a friend i’th’

30

court is better than a penny in purse. Use his men

well, Davy, for they are arrant knaves, and will

backbite.

DAVY     No worse than they are backbitten, sir, for they

have marvellous foul linen.

35

SHALLOW     Well conceited, Davy – about thy business,

Davy.

DAVY     I beseech you, sir, to countenance William Visor

of Woncot against Clement Perkes a’th’ Hill.

SHALLOW     There is many complaints, Davy, against that

40

Visor; that Visor is an arrant knave, on my knowledge.

DAVY     I grant your worship that he is a knave, sir: but yet

God forbid, sir, but a knave should have some

countenance at his friend’s request. An honest man,

sir, is able to speak for himself, when a knave is not. I

45

have served your worship truly, sir, this eight years;

and if I cannot once or twice in a quarter bear out a

knave against an honest man, I have but a very little

credit with your worship. The knave is mine honest

friend, sir, therefore I beseech your worship let him be

50

countenanced.

SHALLOW     Go to; I say he shall have no wrong. Look

about, Davy.     Exit Davy.

Where are you, Sir John? Come, come, come, off with

your boots. Give me your hand, Master Bardolph.

55

BARDOLPH     I am glad to see your worship.

SHALLOW     I thank thee with all my heart, kind Master

Bardolph; and [to the page] welcome, my tall fellow.

Come, Sir John.

FALSTAFF     I’ll follow you, good Master Robert Shallow.

60

Exit Shallow.

Bardolph, look to our horses.

Exeunt Bardolph and page.

If I were sawed into quantities, I should make four

dozen of such bearded hermits’ staves as Master

Shallow. It is a wonderful thing to see the semblable

coherence of his men’s spirits and his. They, by

65

observing of him, do bear themselves like foolish

justices; he, by conversing with them, is turned into a

justice-like servingman. Their spirits are so married in

conjunction, with the participation of society, that

they flock together in consent, like so many wild geese.

70

If I had a suit to Master Shallow, I would humour his

men with the imputation of being near their master: if

to his men, I would curry with Master Shallow that no

man could better command his servants. It is certain

that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught,

75

as men take diseases, one of another; therefore let men

take heed of their company. I will devise matter

enough out of this Shallow to keep Prince Harry in

continual laughter the wearing out of six fashions,

which is four terms, or two actions, and a shall laugh

80

without intervallums. O, it is much that a lie with a

slight oath, and a jest with a sad brow, will do with a

fellow that never had the ache in his shoulders! O, you

shall see him laugh till his face be like a wet cloak ill

laid up!

85

SHALLOW     [within] Sir John!

FALSTAFF     I come, Master Shallow, I come, Master

Shallow.     Exit.

5.2 Enter WARWICK and the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE, meeting.

WARWICK

How now, my Lord Chief Justice, whither away?

CHIEF JUSTICE     How doth the King?

WARWICK     Exceeding well: his cares are now all ended.

CHIEF JUSTICE     I hope, not dead.

WARWICK     He’s walk’d the way of nature,

And to our purposes he lives no more.

5

CHIEF JUSTICE

I would his Majesty had call’d me with him.

The service that I truly did his life

Hath left me open to all injuries.

WARWICK

Indeed I think the young King loves you not.

CHIEF JUSTICE     I know he doth not, and do arm myself

10

To welcome the condition of the time,

Which cannot look more hideously upon me

Than I have drawn it in my fantasy.

Enter PRINCE JOHN OF LANCASTER, CLARENCE, GLOUCESTER and others.

WARWICK     Here come the heavy issue of dead Harry.

O that the living Harry had the temper

15

Of he, the worst of these three gentlemen!

How many nobles then should hold their places

That must strike sail to spirits of vile sort!

CHIEF JUSTICE     O God, I fear all will be overturn’d.

LANCASTER

Good morrow, cousin Warwick, good morrow.

20

GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE     Good morrow, cousin.

LANCASTER     We meet like men that had forgot to

speak.

WARWICK     We do remember, but our argument

Is all too heavy to admit much talk.

LANCASTER

Well, peace be with him that hath made us heavy!

25

CHIEF JUSTICE     Peace be with us, lest we be heavier!

GLOUCESTER

O good my lord, you have lost a friend indeed;

And I dare swear you borrow not that face

Of seeming sorrow – it is sure your own.

LANCASTER

Though no man be assur’d what grace to find,

30

You stand in coldest expectation.

I am the sorrier; would ’twere otherwise.

CLARENCE

Well, you must now speak Sir John Falstaff fair,

Which swims against your stream of quality.

CHIEF JUSTICE

Sweet Princes, what I did I did in honour,

35

Led by th’impartial conduct of my soul.

And never shall you see that I will beg

A ragged and forestall’d remission.

If truth and upright innocency fail me,

I’ll to the King my master that is dead,

40

And tell him who hath sent me after him.

WARWICK     Here comes the Prince.

Enter KING HENRY THE FIFTH, attended.

CHIEF JUSTICE

Good morrow, and God save your Majesty!

KING     This new and gorgeous garment, majesty,

Sits not so easy on me as you think.

45

Brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear.

This is the English, not the Turkish court;

Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,

But Harry Harry. Yet be sad, good brothers,

For by my faith it very well becomes you.

50

Sorrow so royally in you appears

That I will deeply put the fashion on,

And wear it in my heart. Why then, be sad;

But entertain no more of it, good brothers,

Than a joint burden laid upon us all.

55

For me, by heaven, I bid you be assur’d,

I’ll be your father and your brother too;

Let me but bear your love, I’ll bear your cares.

Yet weep that Harry’s dead, and so will I;

But Harry lives, that shall convert those tears

60

By number into hours of happiness.

PRINCES     We hope no otherwise from your Majesty.

KING     You all look strangely on me – and you most;

You are, I think, assur’d I love you not.

CHIEF JUSTICE     I am assur’d, if I be measur’d rightly,

65

Your Majesty hath no just cause to hate me.

KING     No?

How might a prince of my great hopes forget

So great indignities you laid upon me?

What! rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison

70

Th’immediate heir of England? Was this easy?

May this be wash’d in Lethe and forgotten?

CHIEF JUSTICE

I then did use the person of your father;

The image of his power lay then in me;

And in th’administration of his law,

75

Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth,

Your Highness pleased to forget my place,

The majesty and power of law and justice,

The image of the King whom I presented,

And struck me in my very seat of judgment;

80

Whereon, as an offender to your father,

I gave bold way to my authority

And did commit you. If the deed were ill,

Be you contented, wearing now the garland,

To have a son set your decrees at naught?

85

To pluck down justice from your aweful bench?

To trip the course of law, and blunt the sword

That guards the peace and safety of your person?

Nay more, to spurn at your most royal image,

And mock your workings in a second body?

90

Question your royal thoughts, make the case yours,

Be now the father, and propose a son,

Hear your own dignity so much profan’d,

See your most dreadful laws so loosely slighted,

Behold yourself so by a son disdain’d:

95

And then imagine me taking your part,

And in your power soft silencing your son.

After this cold considerance sentence me;

And, as you are a king, speak in your state

What I have done that misbecame my place,

100

My person, or my liege’s sovereignty.

KING     You are right, Justice, and you weigh this well.

Therefore still bear the balance and the sword;

And I do wish your honours may increase

Till you do live to see a son of mine

105

Offend you and obey you, as I did.

So shall I live to speak my father’s words:

‘Happy am I, that have a man so bold

That dares do justice on my proper son;

And not less happy, having such a son

110

That would deliver up his greatness so

Into the hands of justice.’ You did commit me:

For which I do commit into your hand

Th’unstained sword that you have us’d to bear,

With this remembrance – that you use the same

115

With the like bold, just, and impartial spirit

As you have done ’gainst me. There is my hand.

You shall be as a father to my youth,

My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear,

And I will stoop and humble my intents

120

To your well-practis’d wise directions.

And Princes all, believe me, I beseech you,

My father is gone wild into his grave,

For in his tomb lie my affections;

And with his spirits sadly I survive

125

To mock the expectation of the world,

To frustrate prophecies, and to raze out

Rotten opinion, who hath writ me down

After my seeming. The tide of blood in me

Hath proudly flow’d in vanity till now.

130

Now doth it turn, and ebb back to the sea,

Where it shall mingle with the state of floods,

And flow henceforth in formal majesty.

Now call we our high court of parliament,

And let us choose such limbs of noble counsel

135

That the great body of our state may go

In equal rank with the best-govern’d nation;

That war, or peace, or both at once, may be

As things acquainted and familiar to us;

In which you, father, shall have foremost hand.

140

Our coronation done, we will accite,

As I before remember’d, all our state:

And, God consigning to my good intents,

No prince nor peer shall have just cause to say,

God shorten Harry’s happy life one day!     Exeunt.

145

5.3 Enter FALSTAFF, SHALLOW, SILENCE, DAVY, BARDOLPH and page.

SHALLOW     Nay, you shall see my orchard, where, in an

arbour, we will eat a last year’s pippin of mine own

graffing, with a dish of caraways, and so forth – come,

cousin Silence – and then to bed.

FALSTAFF     Fore God, you have here a goodly dwelling,

5

and a rich.

SHALLOW     Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars

all, Sir John – marry, good air. Spread, Davy, spread,

Davy, well said, Davy.

FALSTAFF     This Davy serves you for good uses; he is

10

your serving-man, and your husband.

SHALLOW     A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good

varlet, Sir John – by the mass, I have drunk too much

sack at supper – a good varlet. Now sit down, now sit

down – come, cousin.

15

SILENCE     Ah, sirrah! quoth-a, we shall

[Sings.]

Do nothing but eat, and make good cheer,

And praise God for the merry year,

When flesh is cheap and females dear,

And lusty lads roam here and there, So merrily,

20

And ever among so merrily.

FALSTAFF     There’s a merry heart, good Master Silence!

I’ll give you a health for that anon.

SHALLOW     Give Master Bardolph some wine, Davy.

25

DAVY     Sweet sir, sit – I’ll be with you anon – Most sweet

sir, sit; master page, good master page, sit. Proface!

What you want in meat, we’ll have in drink; but you

must bear; the heart’s all. Exit.

SALLOW     Be merry, Master Bardolph, and my little soldier there, be merry.

30

SILENCE     [Sings.]

Be merry, be merry, my wife has all,

For women are shrews, both short and tall.

’Tis merry in hall, when beards wags all,

And welcome merry Shrove-tide! Be merry, be merry.

35

FALSTAFF     I did not think Master Silence had been a

man of this mettle.

SILENCE     Who, I? I have been merry twice and once ere

now.

Enter DAVY.

DAVY     [to Bardolph] There’s a dish of leather-coats for

40

you.

SHALLOW     Davy!

DAVY     Your worship? I’ll be with you straight. [to

Bardolph] A cup of wine, sir?

SILENCE     [Sings.]

A cup of wine that’s brisk and fine,

45

And drink unto thee, leman mine,

And a merry heart lives long-a.

FALSTAFF     Well said, Master Silence.

SILENCE     And we shall be merry, now comes in the sweet

o’th’ night.

50

FALSTAFF     Health and long life to you, Master Silence.

SILENCE     [Sings.]

Fill the cup, and let it come,

I’ll pledge you a mile to th’ bottom.

SHALLOW     Honest Bardolph, welcome! If thou want’st

anything, and wilt not call, beshrew thy heart. [to the

55

page] Welcome, my little tiny thief, and welcome

indeed, too! I’ll drink to Master Bardolph, and to all

the cabileros about London.

DAVY     I hope to see London once ere I die.

BARDOLPH     And I might see you there, Davy, –

60

SHALLOW     By the mass, you’ll crack a quart together –

ha! will you not, Master Bardolph?

BARDOLPH     Yea, sir, in a pottle-pot.

SHALLOW     By God’s liggens, I thank thee; the knave will

stick by thee, I can assure thee that. A will not out, a;

65

’tis true bred!

BARDOLPH     And I’ll stick by him, sir.

SHALLOW     Why, there spoke a king. Lack nothing!

Be merry! [One knocks at door.] Look who’s at door

there, ho! Who knocks?     Exit Davy.

70

FALSTAFF     [to Silence, seeing him take off a bumper]     Why,

now you have done me right.

SILENCE     [Sings.] Do me right,

And dub me knight:

Samingo.

75

Is’t not so?

FALSTAFF     ’Tis so.

SILENCE     Is’t so? Why then, say an old man can do

somewhat.

Enter DAVY.

DAVY     And’t please your worship, there’s one Pistol

80

come from the court with news.

FALSTAFF     From the court? Let him come in.

Enter PISTOL.

How now, Pistol?

PISTOL     Sir John, God save you!

FALSTAFF     What wind blew you hither, Pistol?

85

PISTOL     Not the ill wind which blows no man to good.

Sweet knight, thou art now one of the greatest men in

this realm.

SILENCE     By’r lady, I think a be, but goodman Puff of

Barson.

90

PISTOL     Puff?

Puff i’ thy teeth, most recreant coward base!

Sir John, I am thy Pistol and thy friend,

And helter-skelter have I rode to thee,

And tidings do I bring, and lucky joys,

95

And golden times, and happy news of price.

FALSTAFF     I pray thee now, deliver them like a man of

this world.

PISTOL     A foutre for the world and worldlings base!

I speak of Africa and golden joys.

100

FALSTAFF

O base Assyrian knight, what is thy news?

Let King Cophetua know the truth thereof.

SILENCE     [Sings.] And Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John.

PISTOL     Shall dunghill curs confront the Helicons?

And shall good news be baffled?

105

Then, Pistol, lay thy head in Furies’ lap.

SHALLOW     Honest gentleman, I know not your

breeding.

PISTOL     Why then, lament therefor.

SHALLOW     Give me pardon, sir; if, sir, you come with

110

news from the court, I take it there’s but two ways,

either to utter them or conceal them. I am, sir, under

the King, in some authority.

PISTOL     Under which king, Besonian? Speak, or die.

SHALLOW     Under King Harry.

PISTOL     Harry the Fourth, or Fifth?

115

SHALLOW     Harry the Fourth.

PISTOL     A foutre for thine office!

Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is King;

Harry the Fifth’s the man: I speak the truth.

When Pistol lies, do this, and fig me, like

The bragging Spaniard.

FALSTAFF     What, is the old King dead?

120

PISTOL     As nail in door! The things I speak are just.

FALSTAFF     Away, Bardolph, saddle my horse. Master

Robert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the

land, ’tis thine. Pistol, I will double-charge thee with

dignities.

125

BARDOLPH     O joyful day!

I would not take a knighthood for my fortune.

PISTOL     What, I do bring good news?

FALSTAFF     Carry Master Silence to bed. Master

Shallow, my Lord Shallow – be what thou wilt; I am

130

Fortune’s steward! Get on thy boots, we’ll ride all

night. O sweet Pistol! Away, Bardolph!

Exit Bardolph.

Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and withal devise

something to do thyself good. Boot, boot, Master

Shallow! I know the young King is sick for me. Let us

135

take any man’s horses – the laws of England are at my

commandment. Blessed are they that have been my

friends, and woe to my Lord Chief Justice!

PISTOL     Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also!

‘Where is the life that late I led?’ say they:

140

Why, here it is; welcome these pleasant days!     Exeunt.

5.4 Enter Beadles, dragging in HOSTESS QUICKLY and DOLL TEARSHEET.

HOSTESS     No, thou arrant knave! I would to God that I

might die, that I might have thee hanged. Thou hast

drawn my shoulder out of joint.

1 BEADLE The constables have delivered her over to me,

and she shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant

5

her; there hath been a man or two lately killed about

her.

DOLL     Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie! Come on, I’ll tell

thee what, thou damned tripe-visaged rascal, and the

child I go with do miscarry, thou wert better thou

10

hadst struck thy mother, thou paper-faced villain.

HOSTESS     O the Lord, that Sir John were come! He

would make this a bloody day to somebody. But I pray

God the fruit of her womb miscarry!

1 BEADLE If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions

15

again; you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you

both, go with me, for the man is dead that you and

Pistol beat amongst you.

DOLL     I’ll tell you what, you thin man in a censer, I will

have you as soundly swinged for this – you blue-bottle

20

rogue, you filthy famished correctioner, if you be not

swinged I’ll forswear half-kirtles.

1 BEADLE Come, come, you she knight-errant, come!

HOSTESS     O God, that right should thus overcome

might! Well, of sufferance comes ease.

25

DOLL     Come, you rogue, come, bring me to a justice.

HOSTESS     Ay, come, you starved bloodhound.

DOLL     Goodman death, goodman bones!

HOSTESS     Thou atomy, thou!

DOLL     Come, you thin thing, come, you rascal!

30

1 BEADLE Very well.     Exeunt.

5.5 Enter three Grooms, strewers of rushes.

1 GROOM More rushes, more rushes!

2 GROOM The trumpets have sounded twice.

3 GROOM ’Twill be two o’clock ere they come from the

coronation. Dispatch, dispatch.     Exeunt.

Trumpets sound, and the KING and his train pass over the stage: after them enter FALSTAFF, SHALLOW, PISTOL, BARDOLPH and the page.

FALSTAFF     Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow, I

5

will make the King do you grace. I will leer upon him

as a comes by, and do but mark the countenance that

he will give me.

PISTOL     God bless thy lungs, good knight!

FALSTAFF     Come here, Pistol, stand behind me. [to

10

Shallow] O, if I had had time to have made new

liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pound I

borrowed of you. But ’tis no matter, this poor show

doth better, this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.

SHALLOW     It doth so.

15

FALSTAFF     It shows my earnestness of affection –

SHALLOW     It doth so.

FALSTAFF     My devotion –

SHALLOW     It doth, it doth, it doth.

FALSTAFF     As it were, to ride day and night, and not to

20

deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to

shift me –

SHALLOW     It is best, certain.

FALSTAFF     But to stand stained with travel, and sweating

with desire to see him, thinking of nothing else,

25

putting all affairs else in oblivion, as if there were

nothing else to be done but to see him.

PISTOL     ’Tis semper idem, for obsque hoc nihil est; ’tis all

in every part.

SHALLOW     ’Tis so, indeed.

30

PISTOL     My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver,

And make thee rage.

Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts,

Is in base durance and contagious prison,

Hal’d thither

35

By most mechanical and dirty hand.

Rouse up Revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto’s snake,

For Doll is in. Pistol speaks naught but truth.

FALSTAFF     I will deliver her. [Shouts within.]

[The trumpets sound.]

PISTOL

There roar’d the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.

40

Enter the KING and his train, the

Lord Chief Justice among them.

FALSTAFF

God save thy Grace, King Hal, my royal Hal!

PISTOL

The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!

FALSTAFF     God save thee, my sweet boy!

KING     My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.

CHIEF JUSTICE

Have you your wits? Know you what ’tis you speak?

45

FALSTAFF

My King! My Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!

KING     I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.

How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester!

I have long dreamt of such a kind of man,

So surfeit-swell’d, so old, and so profane;

50

But being awak’d I do despise my dream.

Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;

Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape

For thee thrice wider than for other men.

Reply not to me with a fool-born jest;

55

Presume not that I am the thing I was;

For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,

That I have turn’d away my former self;

So will I those that kept me company.

When thou dost hear I am as I have been,

60

Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,

The tutor and the feeder of my riots.

Till then I banish thee, on pain of death,

As I have done the rest of my misleaders,

Not to come near our person by ten mile.

65

For competence of life I will allow you,

That lack of means enforce you not to evils;

And as we hear you do reform yourselves,

We will, according to your strengths and qualities,

Give you advancement.

[to the Lord Chief Justice] Be it your charge, my lord,

70

To see perform’d the tenor of my word.

Set on.     Exit King with his train.

FALSTAFF     Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand

pound.

SHALLOW     Yea, marry, Sir John, which I beseech you to

75

let me have home with me.

FALSTAFF     That can hardly be, Master Shallow. Do not

you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him.

Look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not

your advancements; I will be the man yet that shall

80

make you great.

SHALLOW     I cannot perceive how, unless you give me

your doublet, and stuff me out with straw. I beseech

you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of my

thousand.

85

FALSTAFF     Sir, I will be as good as my word. This that

you heard was but a colour.

SHALLOW     A colour that I fear you will die in, Sir John.

FALSTAFF     Fear no colours. Go with me to dinner.

Come, Lieutenant Pistol; come, Bardolph. I shall be

90

sent for soon at night.

Enter the Lord Chief Justice and PRINCE JOHN, with officers.

CHIEF JUSTICE     Go carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet;

Take all his company along with him.

FALSTAFF     My lord, my lord, –

CHIEF JUSTICE

I cannot now speak: I will hear you soon.

95

Take them away.

PISTOL     Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta. Exeunt all but Prince John and the Chief Justice.

LANCASTER     I like this fair proceeding of the King’s.

He hath intent his wonted followers

Shall all be very well provided for,

100

But all are banish’d till their conversations

Appear more wise and modest to the world.

CHIEF JUSTICE     And so they are.

LANCASTER

The King hath call’d his parliament, my lord.

CHIEF JUSTICE     He hath.

105

LANCASTER     I will lay odds that, ere this year expire,

We bear our civil swords and native fire

As far as France. I heard a bird so sing,

Whose music, to my thinking, pleas’d the King.

Come, will you hence?     Exeunt.

110

EPILOGUE

First, my fear; then, my curtsy; last, my speech.

My fear, is your displeasure; my curtsy, my duty;

and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a

good speech now, you undo me, for what I have to say

is of mine own making; and what indeed I should say

5

will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the

purpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you, as

it is very well, I was lately here in the end of a

displeasing play, to pray your patience for it, and to

promise you a better. I meant indeed to pay you with

10

this; which if like an ill venture it come unluckily

home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here

I promised you I would be, and here I commit my

body to your mercies. Bate me some, and I will pay

you some, and, as most debtors do, promise you

15

infinitely: and so I kneel down before you – but,

indeed, to pray for the Queen.

If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will

you command me to use my legs? And yet that were

but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a

20

good conscience will make any possible satisfaction,

and so would I. All the gentlewomen here have

forgiven me: if the gentlemen will not, then the

gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which

was never seen before in such an assembly.

25

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too

much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will

continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you

merry with fair Katharine of France; where, for

anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless

30

already a be killed with your hard opinions; for

Oldcastle died martyr, and this is not the man. My

tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you

good night.

King Henry V

King Henry V was first published in 1600 as The Cronicle History of Henry the fift. The printed play is about half the length of the one that would appear as the fifth of the histories in the Folio in 1623, lacking the choruses and omitting many passages and three entire scenes (1.1, 3.1 and 4.2). Possibly it is a ‘reported’ text, compiled by some process of recollection, probably by actors in a production; perhaps one based on a script abridged for performance on tour. The Folio text derives not from this early Quarto but from a manuscript, just possibly one in Shakespeare’s own hand. Thus it serves as the basis of all modern editions, though the Quarto may well reflect an early staging of the play.

Apparently written about 1599, King Henry V could have been the first play performed at the Globe. The Chorus’s apology for the limited resources of the ‘wooden O’ in which the action must be performed is perhaps an ironic reference to the fine new playhouse that had opened that year. The play contains Shakespeare’s only unquestionable reference to a current event, which allows us to date it with some precision. Speaking of King Henry’s triumphant re-entry into London after Agincourt, the Chorus compares the excitement that greets Henry to the enthusiastic response that would occur ‘Were now the General of our gracious Empress, / As in good time he may, from Ireland coming, / Bringing rebellion broached on his sword’. These lines probably refer to the Earl of Essex, who had been sent by Elizabeth to Ireland in late March of 1599 to put down the rebellion led by Hugh O’Neill. Essex, however, failed in his charge and returned to London in late September. He was put under house arrest for leaving his command and was tried and sentenced in June of 1600. If the Chorus’s lines are indeed a reference to Essex, the play must have been acted between March and September of 1599, between his optimistic departure and the ignominy of his return.

Essex’s adventure could not have provided the impetus for the play itself, which is the foreseen conclusion of Hal’s Bildungsspiel in the two parts of King Henry IV, though Henry V is the charismatic national hero that Essex aspired to be. Shakespeare’s play can indeed be seen as an examination of the claims of heroic achievement, imparting a mythic shape and significance to the history of Henry’s reign by organizing the historical material he found in Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587) along the lines mapped out earlier by Edward Hall in his chronicle with the heading ‘The Victorious Reign of King Henry V’. Henry leads a band of brave and loyal soldiers against a much larger force of arrogant Frenchmen, and the astounding victory at Agincourt confirms England’s military and moral superiority. If this does not exactly conform to the facts of history, it does conform to the poetic logic of giant killing.

But if the play allows us to see and enjoy the great military and political achievements of Henry, it enables us also to see their costs. Shakespeare allows alternative angles of vision to the heroic. While the Chorus speaks the language of heroic idealization, the comic plot that parallels and comments on the historical action shows us a world of baser motive. The very structure of the play depends upon such ironic contrasts; the promises of the Chorus introducing each act are inevitably frustrated by the action that follows, as when at the beginning we are told that we shall see the confrontation of ‘two mighty monarchies’ but see instead the political manoeuvrings of worldly churchmen urging the French war to avoid a confiscatory bill.

The lustre of the celebrated war will certainly be tarnished if it is seen to be motivated not by a principled desire to regain lost rights but by the self-interest of a Church desperate to retain its wealth. Indeed, it is precisely by allowing an audience to see the uncertain genesis of the famous victories that Shakespeare begins his exploration of the necessarily imperfect man who must play the King. Performances on stage and on the screen have not always wished to see this qualification of Henry’s heroic achievements; Laurence Olivier’s film version, completed during World War II, understandably ignored all the play’s darker tones. But Shakespeare’s play, though not cynical about heroic action, is always aware of the matrix of human falliblity in which it is grounded. ‘The king is a good king’, as Pistol says, ‘but it must be as it may’.

The 1995 Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

CHORUS

KING Henry the Fifth

his brothers

Duke of EXETER

his uncle

Duke of YORK

Earl of HUNTINGDON

Earl of SALISBURY

Earl of WARWICK

Earl of WESTMORLAND

conspirators against the King

Archbishop of CANTERBURY

Bishop of ELY

officers in the King’s army

soldiers in the King’s army

associates of Sir John Falstaff

BOY

Falstaff’s page

Nell, HOSTESS

of an Eastcheap tavern, formerly Mistress Quickly, now married to Pistol

Charles the Sixth, the FRENCH KING

QUEEN ISABEL

the French Queen

Louis, the DAUPHIN

their son

Princess KATHERINE

their daughter

ALICE

a lady attending on Princess Katherine

Duke of BERRY

Duke of BOURBON

Duke of BRITAIN

Duke of BURGUNDY

Duke of ORLEANS

Charles Delabreth, the CONSTABLE

of France

Earl of GRANDPRÉ

Lord RAMBURES

GOVERNOR

of Harfleur

MONTJOY

the French herald

Two French Ambassadors to the King of England

Monsier Le Fer, a FRENCH SOLDIER

A French Messenger

Attendants, Lords, Soldiers, Citizens of Harfleur

PROLOGUE

Enter CHORUS.

CHORUS     O for a muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,

5

Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels,

Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire

Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,

The flat unraised spirits that hath dared

On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth

10

So great an object. Can this cockpit hold

The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram

Within this wooden O the very casques

That did affright the air at Agincourt?

O pardon, since a crooked figure may

15

Attest in little place a million,

And let us, ciphers to this great account,

On your imaginary forces work.

Suppose within the girdle of these walls

Are now confined two mighty monarchies,

20

Whose high upreared and abutting fronts

The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.

Into a thousand parts divide one man

And make imaginary puissance.

25

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them

Printing their proud hoofs i’th’ receiving earth.

For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,

Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,

Turning th’accomplishment of many years

30

Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,

Admit me Chorus to this history,

Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,

Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play. Exit.

1.1 Enter the Archbishop of CANTERBURY and the Bishop of ELY.

CANTERBURY

My lord, I’ll tell you, that self bill is urged

Which in th’eleventh year of the last king’s reign

Was like and had indeed against us passed

But that the scambling and unquiet time

Did push it out of farther question.

5

ELY     But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?

CANTERBURY

It must be thought on. If it pass against us

We lose the better half of our possession:

For all the temporal lands which men devout

By testament have given to the Church

10

Would they strip from us, being valued thus:

As much as would maintain, to the King’s honour,

Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,

Six thousand and two hundred good esquires,

And to relief of lazars and weak age,

15

Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil,

A hundred almshouses right well supplied,

And to the coffers of the King beside,

A thousand pounds by th’ year. Thus runs the bill.

ELY     This would drink deep.

CANTERBURY     ’Twould drink the cup and all.

20

ELY     But what prevention?

CANTERBURY     The King is full of grace and fair regard.

ELY     And a true lover of the holy Church.

CANTERBURY

The courses of his youth promised it not.

The breath no sooner left his father’s body

25

But that his wildness, mortified in him,

Seemed to die too; yea, at that very moment,

Consideration like an angel came

And whipped th’offending Adam out of him,

Leaving his body as a paradise

30

T’envelop and contain celestial spirits.

Never was such a sudden scholar made,

Never came reformation in a flood

With such a heady currence scouring faults,

Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness

35

So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,

As in this king.

ELY     We are blessed in the change.

CANTERBURY     Hear him but reason in divinity

And, all-admiring, with an inward wish

You would desire the King were made a prelate.

40

Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,

You would say it hath been all in all his study.

List his discourse of war, and you shall hear

A fearful battle rendered you in music.

Turn him to any cause of policy,

45

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,

Familiar as his garter, that when he speaks,

The air, a chartered libertine, is still,

And the mute wonder lurketh in men’s ears

To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences.

50

So that the art and practic part of life

Must be the mistress to this theoric:

Which is a wonder how his grace should glean it,

Since his addiction was to courses vain,

His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow,

55

His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports,

And never noted in him any study,

Any retirement, any sequestration

From open haunts and popularity.

ELY     The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,

60

And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best

Neighboured by fruit of baser quality.

And so the Prince obscured his contemplation

Under the veil of wildness, which, no doubt,

Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,

65

Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.

CANTERBURY     It must be so, for miracles are ceased,

And therefore we must needs admit the means

How things are perfected.

ELY     But my good lord,

How now for mitigation of this bill

70

Urged by the Commons? Doth his majesty

Incline to it, or no?

CANTERBURY     He seems indifferent,

Or rather swaying more upon our part

Than cherishing th’exhibitors against us.

For I have made an offer to his majesty,

75

Upon our spiritual convocation,

And in regard of causes now in hand

Which I have opened to his grace at large,

As touching France, to give a greater sum

Than ever at one time the clergy yet

80

Did to his predecessors part withal.

ELY     How did this offer seem received, my lord?

CANTERBURY     With good acceptance of his majesty,

Save that there was not time enough to hear,

As I perceived his grace would fain have done,

85

The severals and unhidden passages

Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms,

And generally to the crown and seat of France,

Derived from Edward, his great-grandfather.

ELY     What was th’impediment that broke this off?

90

CANTERBURY

The French ambassador upon that instant

Craved audience, and the hour I think is come

To give him hearing. Is it four o’clock?

ELY     It is.

CANTERBURY     Then go we in, to know his embassy,

95

Which I could with a ready guess declare

Before the Frenchman speak a word of it.

ELY     I’ll wait upon you, and I long to hear it.     Exeunt.

1.2 Enter the KING, GLOUCESTER, BEDFORD, CLARENCE, WARWICK, WESTMORLAND and EXETER and attendants.

KING     Where is my gracious lord of Canterbury?

EXETER     Not here in presence.

KING                                   Send for him, good uncle.

Exit an attendant.

WESTMORLAND

Shall we call in th’ambassador, my liege?

KING     Not yet, my cousin: we would be resolved,

Before we hear him, of some things of weight

5

That task our thoughts concerning us and France.

Enter the Archbishop of CANTERBURY and the Bishop of ELY.

CANTERBURY

God and his angels guard your sacred throne

And make you long become it!

KING     Sure, we thank you.

My learned lord, we pray you to proceed

And justly and religiously unfold

10

Why the law Salic that they have in France

Or should or should not bar us in our claim.

And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord,

That you should fashion, wrest or bow your reading

Or nicely charge your understanding soul

15

With opening titles miscreate, whose right

Suits not in native colours with the truth.

For God doth know how many now in health

Shall drop their blood in approbation

Of what your reverence shall incite us to.

20

Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,

How you awake our sleeping sword of war:

We charge you in the name of God take heed.

For never two such kingdoms did contend

Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops

25

Are every one a woe, a sore complaint

’Gainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords

That makes such waste in brief mortality.

Under this conjuration speak, my lord,

For we will hear, note, and believe in heart

30

That what you speak is in your conscience washed

As pure as sin with baptism.

CANTERBURY

Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers

That owe your selves, your lives and services

To this imperial throne. There is no bar

35

To make against your highness’ claim to France

But this which they produce from Pharamond:

In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant,

‘No woman shall succeed in Salic land’:

Which Salic land the French unjustly gloze

40

To be the realm of France, and Pharamond

The founder of this law and female bar.

Yet their own authors faithfully affirm

That the land Salic is in Germany,

Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe,

45

Where Charles the Great, having subdued the Saxons,

There left behind and settled certain French,

Who, holding in disdain the German women

For some dishonest manners of their life,

Established then this law, to wit, no female

50

Should be inheritrix in Salic land;

Which Salic (as I said, ’twixt Elbe and Sala)

Is at this day in Germany called Meissen.

Then doth it well appear the Salic law

Was not devised for the realm of France.

55

Nor did the French possess the Salic land

Until four hundred one-and-twenty years

After defunction of King Pharamond,

Idly supposed the founder of this law,

Who died within the year of our redemption

60

Four hundred twenty-six, and Charles the Great

Subdued the Saxons and did seat the French

Beyond the river Sala in the year

Eight hundred five. Besides, their writers say,

King Pepin, which deposed Childeric,

65

Did as heir general, being descended

Of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clothair,

Make claim and title to the crown of France.

Hugh Capet also, who usurped the crown

Of Charles the Duke of Lorraine, sole heir male

70

Of the true line and stock of Charles the Great,

To fine his title with some shows of truth,

Though in pure truth it was corrupt and naught,

Conveyed himself as heir to th’ Lady Lingard,

Daughter to Charlemagne, who was the son

75

To Louis the Emperor, and Louis the son

Of Charles the Great. Also King Louis the Ninth,

Who was sole heir to the usurper Capet,

Could not keep quiet in his conscience,

Wearing the crown of France, till satisfied

80

That fair Queen Isabel, his grandmother,

Was lineal of the Lady Ermengard,

Daughter to Charles the foresaid Duke of Lorraine,

By the which marriage the line of Charles the Great

Was reunited to the crown of France.

85

So that, as clear as is the summer’s sun,

King Pepin’s title, and Hugh Capet’s claim,

King Louis his satisfaction, all appear

To hold in right and title of the female.

So do the kings of France unto this day,

90

Howbeit they would hold up this Salic law

To bar your highness claiming from the female,

And rather choose to hide them in a net

Than amply to embare their crooked titles

Usurped from you and your progenitors.

95

KING

May I with right and conscience make this claim?

CANTERBURY     The sin upon my head, dread sovereign:

For in the Book of Numbers is it writ,

‘When the man dies, let the inheritance

Descend unto the daughter.’ Gracious lord,

100

Stand for your own, unwind your bloody flag,

Look back into your mighty ancestors.

Go, my dread lord, to your great-grandsire’s tomb,

From whom you claim; invoke his warlike spirit,

And your great-uncle’s, Edward the Black Prince,

105

Who on the French ground played a tragedy,

Making defeat on the full power of France,

Whiles his most mighty father on a hill

Stood smiling to behold his lion’s whelp

Forage in blood of French nobility.

110

O noble English, that could entertain

With half their forces the full pride of France

And let another half stand laughing by,

All out of work and cold for action!

ELY     Awake remembrance of these valiant dead,

115

And with your puissant arm renew their feats.

You are their heir, you sit upon their throne,

The blood and courage that renowned them

Runs in your veins, and my thrice-puissant liege

Is in the very May-morn of his youth,

120

Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises.

EXETER     Your brother kings and monarchs of the earth

Do all expect that you should rouse yourself

As did the former lions of your blood.

WESTMORLAND

They know your grace hath cause, and means, and might;

125

So doth your highness. Never king of England

Had nobles richer and more loyal subjects,

Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England

And lie pavilioned in the fields of France.

CANTERBURY     O let their bodies follow, my dear liege,

130

With blood and sword and fire to win your right;

In aid whereof we of the spiritualty

Will raise your highness such a mighty sum

As never did the clergy at one time

Bring in to any of your ancestors.

135

KING     We must not only arm t’invade the French,

But lay down our proportions to defend

Against the Scot, who will make road upon us

With all advantages.

CANTERBURY

They of those marches, gracious sovereign,

140

Shall be a wall sufficient to defend

Our inland from the pilfering borderers.

KING     We do not mean the coursing snatchers only,

But fear the main intendment of the Scot,

Who hath been still a giddy neighbour to us.

145

For you shall read that my great-grandfather

Never went with his forces into France

But that the Scot on his unfurnished kingdom

Came pouring like the tide into a breach,

With ample and brim fullness of his force,

150

Galling the gleaned land with hot assays,

Girding with grievous siege castles and towns,

That England, being empty of defence,

Hath shook and trembled at th’ill neighbourhood.

CANTERBURY     She hath been then more feared than harmed, my liege.

155

For hear her but exampled by herself:

When all her chivalry hath been in France

And she a mourning widow of her nobles,

She hath herself not only well defended

But taken and impounded as a stray

160

The King of Scots, whom she did send to France,

To fill King Edward’s fame with prisoner kings

And make her chronicle as rich with praise

As is the ooze and bottom of the sea

With sunken wrack and sumless treasuries.

165

WESTMORLAND     But there’s a saying very old and true,

If that you will France win,

Then with Scotland first begin.

For once the eagle England being in prey,

To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot

170

Comes sneaking and so sucks her princely eggs,

Playing the mouse in absence of the cat,

To ’tame and havoc more than she can eat.

EXETER     It follows then the cat must stay at home;

Yet that is but a crushed necessity,

175

Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries

And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves.

While that the armed hand doth fight abroad

Th’advised head defends itself at home.

For government, though high and low and lower

180

Put into parts, doth keep in one concent,

Congreeing in a full and natural close

Like music.

CANTERBURY     True. Therefore doth heaven divide

The state of man in diverse functions,

Setting endeavour in continual motion,

185

To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,

Obedience. For so work the honey-bees,

Creatures that by a rule in nature teach

The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

They have a king and officers of sorts,

190

Where some like magistrates correct at home,

Others like merchants venture trade abroad,

Others like soldiers, armed in their stings,

Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds,

Which pillage they with merry march bring home

195

To the tent-royal of their emperor,

Who busied in his majesty surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold,

The civil citizens kneading up the honey,

The poor mechanic porters crowding in

200

Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,

The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,

Delivering o’er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone. I this infer,

That many things having full reference

205

To one consent may work contrariously,

As many arrows loosed several ways

Come to one mark,

As many several ways meet in one town,

As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea,

210

As many lines close in the dial’s centre.

So may a thousand actions once afoot

End in one purpose and be all well borne

Without defeat. Therefore to France, my liege.

Divide your happy England into four,

215

Whereof take you one quarter into France

And you withal shall make all Gallia shake.

If we with thrice such powers left at home

Cannot defend our own doors from the dog,

Let us be worried and our nation lose

220

The name of hardiness and policy.

KING     Call in the messengers sent from the Dauphin.

Exeunt some attendants.

Now are we well resolved; and by God’s help

And yours, the noble sinews of our power,

France being ours, we’ll bend it to our awe

225

Or break it all to pieces. Or there we’ll sit,

Ruling in large and ample empery

O’er France and all her almost kingly dukedoms,

Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn,

Tombless, with no remembrance over them.

230

Either our history shall with full mouth

Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave

Like Turkish mute shall have a tongueless mouth,

Not worshipped with a waxen epitaph.

Enter Ambassadors of France, with attendants carrying a tun.

Now are we well prepared to know the pleasure

235

Of our fair cousin Dauphin; for we hear

Your greeting is from him, not from the King.

AMBASSADOR

May’t please your majesty to give us leave

Freely to render what we have in charge,

Or shall we sparingly show you far off

240

The Dauphin’s meaning and our embassy?

KING     We are no tyrant but a Christian king,

Unto whose grace our passion is as subject

As are our wretches fettered in our prisons:

Therefore with frank and with uncurbed plainness

245

Tell us the Dauphin’s mind.

AMBASSADOR     Thus then, in few.

Your highness lately sending into France

Did claim some certain dukedoms in the right

Of your great predecessor King Edward the Third.

In answer of which claim the Prince our master

250

Says that you savour too much of your youth

And bids you be advised. There’s naught in France

That can be with a nimble galliard won;

You cannot revel into dukedoms there.

He therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit,

255

This tun of treasure, and in lieu of this

Desires you let the dukedoms that you claim

Hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.

KING     What treasure, uncle?

EXETER     Tennis-balls, my liege.

KING     We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us.

260

His present and your pains we thank you for.

When we have matched our rackets to these balls

We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set

Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.

Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler

265

That all the courts of France shall be disturbed

With chases. And we understand him well,

How he comes o’er us with our wilder days,

Not measuring what use we made of them.

We never valued this poor seat of England,

270

And therefore living hence did give ourself

To barbarous licence, as ’tis ever common

That men are merriest when they are from home.

But tell the Dauphin I will keep my state,

Be like a king and show my sail of greatness,

275

When I do rouse me in my throne of France.

For that have I laid by my majesty

And plodded like a man for working-days,

But I will rise there with so full a glory

That I will dazzle all the eyes of France,

280

Yea, strike the Dauphin blind to look on us.

And tell the pleasant Prince this mock of his

Hath turned his balls to gun-stones, and his soul

Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance

That shall fly with them; for many a thousand widows

285

Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands,

Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down,

And some are yet ungotten and unborn

That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin’s scorn.

But this lies all within the will of God,

290

To whom I do appeal, and in whose name

Tell you the Dauphin I am coming on

To venge me as I may, and to put forth

My rightful hand in a well-hallowed cause.

So get you hence in peace. And tell the Dauphin

295

His jest will savour but of shallow wit

When thousands weep more than did laugh at it. –

Convey them with safe conduct. – Fare you well.

Exeunt Ambassadors and attendants.

EXETER     This was a merry message.

KING     We hope to make the sender blush at it.

300

Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour

That may give furtherance to our expedition,

For we have now no thought in us but France,

Save those to God that run before our business.

Therefore let our proportions for these wars

305

Be soon collected and all things thought upon

That may with reasonable swiftness add

More feathers to our wings, for, God before,

We’ll chide this Dauphin at his father’s door.

Therefore let every man now task his thought,

310

That this fair action may on foot be brought.

Flourish. Exeunt.

2.0 Enter CHORUS.

CHORUS     Now all the youth of England are on fire,

And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.

Now thrive the armourers, and honour’s thought

Reigns solely in the breast of every man.

They sell the pasture now to buy the horse,

5

Following the mirror of all Christian kings

With winged heels, as English Mercuries.

For now sits expectation in the air

And hides a sword from hilts unto the point

With crowns imperial, crowns and coronets,

10

Promised to Harry and his followers.

The French, advised by good intelligence

Of this most dreadful preparation,

Shake in their fear, and with pale policy

Seek to divert the English purposes.

15

O England, model to thy inward greatness,

Like little body with a mighty heart,

What mightst thou do, that honour would thee do,

Were all thy children kind and natural!

But see, thy fault France hath in thee found out,

20

A nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills

With treacherous crowns; and three corrupted men,

One, Richard Earl of Cambridge, and the second,

Henry Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third,

Sir Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland,

25

Have, for the gilt of France, – O guilt indeed! –

Confirmed conspiracy with fearful France,

And by their hands this grace of kings must die,

If hell and treason hold their promises,

Ere he take ship for France, and in Southampton.

30

Linger your patience on and well digest

Th’abuse of distance, and we’ll force our play.

The sum is paid, the traitors are agreed,

The King is set from London, and the scene

Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton.

35

There is the playhouse now, there must you sit,

And thence to France shall we convey you safe

And bring you back, charming the narrow seas

To give you gentle pass; for if we may,

We’ll not offend one stomach with our play.

40

But till the King come forth and not till then

Unto Southampton do we shift our scene.     Exit.

2.1 Enter Corporal NYM and Lieutenant BARDOLPH, meeting.

BARDOLPH     Well met, Corporal Nym.

NYM     Good morrow, Lieutenant Bardolph.

BARDOLPH

What, are Ancient Pistol and you friends yet?

NYM     For my part I care not. I say little; but when time

shall serve there shall be smiles; but that shall be as it

5

may. I dare not fight, but I will wink and hold out mine

iron. It is a simple one, but what though? It will toast

cheese, and it will endure cold as another man’s sword

will, and there’s an end.

BARDOLPH     I will bestow a breakfast to make you

10

friends, and we’ll be all three sworn brothers to

France. Let’t be so, good Corporal Nym.

NYM     Faith, I will live so long as I may, that’s the certain

of it, and when I cannot live any longer, I will do as I

may. That is my rest, that is the rendezvous of it.

15

BARDOLPH     It is certain, Corporal, that he is married to

Nell Quickly, and certainly she did you wrong, for you

were troth-plight to her.

NYM     I cannot tell. Things must be as they may. Men

may sleep, and they may have their throats about them

20

at that time, and some say knives have edges. It must

be as it may. Though patience be a tired mare, yet she

will plod. There must be conclusions. Well, I cannot

tell.

Enter PISTOL and Hostess.

BARDOLPH     Here comes Ancient Pistol and his wife.

25

Good Corporal, be patient here.

NYM     How now, mine host Pistol?

PISTOL     Base tyke, call’st thou me host?

Now by this hand I swear I scorn the term;

Nor shall my Nell keep lodgers.

30

HOSTESS     No, by my troth, not long. For we cannot

lodge and board a dozen or fourteen gentlewomen that

live honestly by the prick of their needles but it will be

thought we keep a bawdy-house straight. [Nym draws

his sword.] O well-a-day, Lady, if he be not drawn!

35

Now we shall see wilful adultery and murder

committed. [Pistol draws his sword.]

BARDOLPH

Good Lieutenant, good Corporal, offer nothing here.

NYM     Pish!

PISTOL     Pish for thee, Iceland dog, thou prick-eared cur

40

of Iceland!

HOSTESS     Good Corporal Nym, show thy valour and

put up your sword. [Nym and Pistol sheathe their swords]

NYM     [to Pistol] Will you shog off? I would have you

solus.

45

PISTOL     Solus, egregious dog? O viper vile!

The solus in thy most marvailous face,

The solus in thy teeth, and in thy throat,

And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy,

And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth!

50

I do retort the solus in thy bowels,

For I can take, and Pistol’s cock is up,

And flashing fire will follow.

NYM     I am not Barbason, you cannot conjure me. I have

an humour to knock you indifferently well. If you

55

grow foul with me, Pistol, I will scour you with my

rapier, as I may, in fair terms. If you would walk off, I

would prick your guts a little, in good terms, as I may,

and that’s the humour of it.

PISTOL     O braggart vile and damned furious wight,

60

The grave doth gape, and doting death is near;

Therefore exhale. [Pistol and Nym draw their swords.]

BARDOLPH     [Draws his sword.] Hear me, hear me what I

say. He that strikes the first stroke, I’ll run him up to

the hilts, as I am a soldier.

65

PISTOL     An oath of mickle might, and fury shall abate.

[All sheathe their swords.]

Give me thy fist, thy fore-foot to me give.

Thy spirits are most tall.

NYM     I will cut thy throat one time or other, in fair

terms, that is the humour of it.

70

PISTOL     ‘Couple a gorge’!

That is the word. I thee defy again.

O hound of Crete, think’st thou my spouse to get?

No, to the spital go,

And from the powdering-tub of infamy

75

Fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid’s kind,

Doll Tearsheet she by name, and her espouse.

I have and I will hold the quondam Quickly

For the only she; and pauca, there’s enough.

Go to.

80

Enter the Boy.

BOY     Mine host Pistol, you must come to my master, and

you, hostess. He is very sick and would to bed. Good

Bardolph, put thy face between his sheets and do the

office of a warming-pan. Faith, he’s very ill.

BARDOLPH     Away, you rogue!

85

HOSTESS     By my troth, he’ll yield the crow a pudding

one of these days. The King has killed his heart. Good

husband, come home presently.

Exeunt Hostess and Boy.

BARDOLPH     Come, shall I make you two friends? We

must to France together. Why the devil should we

90

keep knives to cut one another’s throats?

PISTOL

Let floods o’erswell and fiends for food howl on!

NYM     You’ll pay me the eight shillings I won of you at

betting?

PISTOL     Base is the slave that pays.

95

NYM     That now I will have; that’s the humour of it.

PISTOL     As manhood shall compound: push home! [Pistol

and Nym draw their swords.]

BARDOLPH     [Draws his sword.] By this sword, he that

makes the first thrust, I’ll kill him. By this sword, I

will.

100

PISTOL

Sword is an oath, and oaths must have their course.

[He sheathes his sword.]

BARDOLPH     Corporal Nym, an thou wilt be friends, be

friends. An thou wilt not, why then, be enemies with

me too. Prithee, put up.

NYM     I shall have my eight shillings?

105

PISTOL     A noble shalt thou have, and present pay,

And liquor likewise will I give to thee,

And friendship shall combine and brotherhood.

I’ll live by Nym and Nym shall live by me.

Is not this just? For I shall sutler be

110

Unto the camp, and profits will accrue.

Give me thy hand.

NYM     I shall have my noble?

PISTOL     In cash, most justly paid.

NYM     Well, then, that’s the humour of ’t. [Nym and

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Bardolph sheathe their swords. Pistol and Nym shake

hands.]

Enter Hostess.

HOSTESS     As ever you come of women, come in quickly

to Sir John. Ah, poor heart, he is so shaked of a

burning quotidian tertian that it is most lamentable to

behold. Sweet men, come to him.     Exit.

NYM     The King hath run bad humours on the knight,

120

that’s the even of it.

PISTOL     Nym, thou hast spoke the right;

His heart is fracted and corroborate.

NYM     The King is a good king, but it must be as it

may. He passes some humours and careers.

125

PISTOL     Let us condole the knight, for, lambkins, we will

live.     Exeunt.

2.2 Enter EXETER, BEDFORD and WESTMORLAND.

BEDFORD

’Fore God, his grace is bold to trust these traitors.

EXETER     They shall be apprehended by and by.

WESTMORLAND

How smooth and even they do bear themselves,

As if allegiance in their bosoms sat,

Crowned with faith and constant loyalty!

5

BEDFORD     The King hath note of all that they intend,

By interception, which they dream not of.

EXETER     Nay, but the man that was his bedfellow,

Whom he hath dulled and cloyed with gracious favours,

That he should for a foreign purse so sell

10

His sovereign’s life to death and treachery!

Sound trumpets. Enter the KING, SCROOP,

CAMBRIDGE and GREY, lords and soldiers.

KING     Now sits the wind fair, and we will aboard. –

My lord of Cambridge, and my kind lord of Masham,

And you, my gentle knight, give me your thoughts:

Think you not that the powers we bear with us

15

Will cut their passage through the force of France,

Doing the execution and the act

For which we have in head assembled them?

SCROOP     No doubt, my liege, if each man do his best.

KING     I doubt not that, since we are well persuaded

20

We carry not a heart with us from hence

That grows not in a fair consent with ours,

Nor leave not one behind that doth not wish

Success and conquest to attend on us.

CAMBRIDGE

Never was monarch better feared and loved

25

Than is your majesty; there’s not, I think, a subject

That sits in heart-grief and uneasiness

Under the sweet shade of your government.

GREY     True: those that were your father’s enemies

Have steeped their galls in honey and do serve you

30

With hearts create of duty and of zeal.

KING     We therefore have great cause of thankfulness,

And shall forget the office of our hand

Sooner than quittance of desert and merit

According to their weight and worthiness.

35

SCROOP     So service shall with steeled sinews toil,

And labour shall refresh itself with hope

To do your grace incessant services.

KING     We judge no less. – Uncle of Exeter,

Enlarge the man committed yesterday

40

That railed against our person. We consider

It was excess of wine that set him on,

And on his more advice we pardon him.

SCROOP     That’s mercy, but too much security.

Let him be punished, sovereign, lest example

45

Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind.

KING     O let us yet be merciful.

CAMBRIDGE     So may your highness, and yet punish too.

GREY     Sir,

You show great mercy if you give him life,

50

After the taste of much correction.

KING     Alas, your too much love and care of me

Are heavy orisons ’gainst this poor wretch.

If little faults proceeding on distemper

Shall not be winked at, how shall we stretch our eye

55

When capital crimes, chewed, swallowed, and digested,

Appear before us? – We’ll yet enlarge that man,

Though Cambridge, Scroop and Grey, in their dear care

And tender preservation of our person,

Would have him punished. And now to our French causes.

60

Who are the late commissioners?

CAMBRIDGE     I one, my lord;

Your highness bade me ask for it today.

SCROOP     So did you me, my liege.

GREY     And me, my royal sovereign.

65

KING     [Gives papers.]

Then, Richard Earl of Cambridge, there is yours;

There yours, Lord Scroop of Masham; and, sir knight,

Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours:

Read them, and know I know your worthiness.–My lord of Westmorland and uncle Exeter,

70

We will aboard tonight. – Why, how now, gentlemen!

What see you in those papers, that you lose

So much complexion? – Look ye how they change!

Their cheeks are paper. – Why, what read you there,

That hath so cowarded and chased your blood

75

Out of appearance?

[Cambridge, Scroop and Grey fall upon their knees.]

CAMBRIDGE     I do confess my fault

And do submit me to your highness’ mercy.

GREY, SCROOP     To which we all appeal.

KING     The mercy that was quick in us but late

By your own counsel is suppressed and killed:

80

You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy,

For your own reasons turn into your bosoms

As dogs upon their masters, worrying you. –

See you, my princes and my noble peers,

These English monsters! My lord of Cambridge here,

85

You know how apt our love was to accord

To furnish him with all appertinents

Belonging to his honour; and this man

Hath for a few light crowns lightly conspired

And sworn unto the practices of France

90

To kill us here in Hampton. To the which

This knight, no less for bounty bound to us

Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. – But oh,

What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop, thou cruel,

Ingrateful, savage and inhuman creature,

95

Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,

That knewst the very bottom of my soul,

That almost mightst have coined me into gold

Wouldst thou have practised on me for thy use?

May it be possible that foreign hire

100

Could out of thee extract one spark of evil

That might annoy my finger? ’Tis so strange

That though the truth of it stands off as gross

As black on white, my eye will scarcely see it.

Treason and murder ever kept together,

105

As two yoke-devils sworn to either’s purpose,

Working so grossly in a natural cause

That admiration did not whoop at them.

But thou, ’gainst all proportion, didst bring in

Wonder to wait on treason and on murder;

110

And whatsoever cunning fiend it was

That wrought upon thee so preposterously

Hath got the voice in hell for excellence.

All other devils that suggest by treasons

Do botch and bungle up damnation

115

With patches, colours and with forms being fetched

From glistering semblances of piety;

But he that tempered thee, bade thee stand up,

Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason

Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.

120

If that same demon that hath gulled thee thus

Should with his lion-gait walk the whole world,

He might return to vasty Tartar back

And tell the legions ‘I can never win

A soul so easy as that Englishman’s.’

125

O how hast thou with jealousy infected

The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?

Why, so didst thou. Seem they grave and learned?

Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family?

Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious?

130

Why, so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet,

Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,

Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,

Garnished and decked in modest complement,

Not working with the eye without the ear,

135

And but in purged judgement trusting neither?

Such and so finely boulted didst thou seem:

And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot

To mark the full-fraught man and best endued

With some suspicion. I will weep for thee,

140

For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like

Another fall of man. – Their faults are open.

Arrest them to the answer of the law,

And God acquit them of their practices!

[Cambridge, Scroop and Grey rise.]

EXETER     I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of

145

Richard Earl of Cambridge.

I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Henry

Lord Scroop of Masham.

I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Thomas

Grey, knight, of Northumberland.

150

SCROOP     Our purposes God justly hath discovered,

And I repent my fault more than my death,

Which I beseech your highness to forgive,

Although my body pay the price of it.

CAMBRIDGE     For me, the gold of France did not seduce,

155

Although I did admit it as a motive

The sooner to effect what I intended.

But God be thanked for prevention,

Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice,

Beseeching God and you to pardon me.

160

GREY     Never did faithful subject more rejoice

At the discovery of most dangerous treason

Than I do at this hour joy o’er myself,

Prevented from a damned enterprise.

My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.

165

KING     God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence.

You have conspired against our royal person,

Joined with an enemy proclaimed and fixed,

And from his coffers

Received the golden earnest of our death;

170

Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,

His princes and his peers to servitude,

His subjects to oppression and contempt,

And his whole kingdom into desolation.

Touching our person seek we no revenge,

175

But we our kingdom’s safety must so tender,

Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws

We do deliver you. Get ye therefore hence,

Poor miserable wretches, to your death,

The taste whereof God of his mercy give

180

You patience to endure, and true repentance

Of all your dear offences! – Bear them hence.

Exeunt Cambridge, Scroop and Grey, guarded.

Now, lords, for France; the enterprise whereof

Shall be to you as us, like glorious.

We doubt not of a fair and lucky war,

185

Since God so graciously hath brought to light

This dangerous treason lurking in our way

To hinder our beginnings. We doubt not now

But every rub is smoothed on our way.

Then forth, dear countrymen. Let us deliver

190

Our puissance into the hand of God,

Putting it straight in expedition.

Cheerly to sea; the signs of war advance.

No king of England, if not king of France!

Flourish. Exeunt.

2.3 Enter PISTOL, NYM, BARDOLPH, Boy and Hostess.

HOSTESS     Prithee, honey-sweet husband, let me bring

thee to Staines.

PISTOL     No; for my manly heart doth earn.

Bardolph, be blithe. Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins.

Boy, bristle thy courage up;

5

For Falstaff he is dead, and we must earn therefore.

BARDOLPH     Would I were with him, wheresome’er he is,

either in heaven or in hell!

HOSTESS     Nay, sure, he’s not in hell; he’s in Arthur’s

bosom, if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom. ’A made

10

a finer end, and went away an it had been any christom

child. ’A parted even just between twelve and one,

even at the turning o’th’ tide. For after I saw him

fumble with the sheets and play wi’th’ flowers, and

smile upon his fingers’ ends, I knew there was but one

15

way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and ’a babbled

of green fields. ‘How now, Sir John?’ quoth I, ‘what,

man! be o’ good cheer.’ So ’a cried out ‘God, God,

God!’ three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid

him ’a should not think of God; I hoped there was no

20

need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So

’a bade me lay more clothes on his feet. I put my hand

into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as

any stone. Then I felt to his knees, and so up’ard and

up’ard, and all was as cold as any stone.

25

NYM     They say he cried out of sack.

HOSTESS     Ay, that ’a did.

BARDOLPH     And of women.

HOSTESS     Nay, that ’a did not.

BOY     Yes, that ’a did, and said they were devils incarnate.

30

HOSTESS     ’A could never abide carnation, ’twas a colour

he never liked.

BOY     ’A said once the devil would have him about

women.

HOSTESS     ’A did in some sort, indeed, handle women;

35

but then he was rheumatic and talked of the Whore of

Babylon.

BOY     Do you not remember ’a saw a flea stick upon

Bardolph’s nose and ’a said it was a black soul burning

in hell-fire?

40

BARDOLPH     Well, the fuel is gone that maintained that

fire; that’s all the riches I got in his service.

NYM     Shall we shog? The King will be gone from

Southampton.

PISTOL     Come, let’s away. – My love, give me thy lips.

45

[Kisses her.]

Look to my chattels and my moveables.

Let senses rule. The word is ‘Pitch and pay’.

Trust none;

For oaths are straws, men’s faiths are wafer-cakes,

And Holdfast is the only dog, my duck;

50

Therefore Caveto be thy counsellor.

Go, clear thy crystals. – Yoke-fellows in arms,

Let us to France, like horse-leeches, my boys,

To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck!

BOY     And that’s but unwholesome food, they say.

55

PISTOL     Touch her soft mouth, and march.

BARDOLPH     Farewell, hostess. [Kisses her.]

NYM     I cannot kiss, that is the humour of it; but adieu.

PISTOL     Let housewifery appear; keep close, I thee

command.

60

HOSTESS     Farewell. Adieu.     Exeunt.

2.4 Flourish. Enter the FRENCH KING, the DAUPHIN, the Constable and the Dukes of Berry and Britain.

FRENCH KING

Thus comes the English with full power upon us,

And more than carefully it us concerns

To answer royally in our defences.

Therefore the Dukes of Berry and of Britain,

Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth,

5

And you, Prince Dauphin, with all swift dispatch,

To line and new repair our towns of war

With men of courage and with means defendant,

For England his approaches makes as fierce

As waters to the sucking of a gulf.

10

It fits us then to be as provident

As fear may teach us, out of late examples

Left by the fatal and neglected English

Upon our fields.

DAUPHIN     My most redoubted father,

It is most meet we arm us ’gainst the foe,

15

For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom,

Though war nor no known quarrel were in question,

But that defences, musters, preparations,

Should be maintained, assembled, and collected,

As were a war in expectation.

20

Therefore, I say, ’tis meet we all go forth

To view the sick and feeble parts of France.

And let us do it with no show of fear,

No, with no more than if we heard that England

Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance.

25

For, my good liege, she is so idly kinged,

Her sceptre so fantastically borne

By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,

That fear attends her not.

CONSTABLE     O peace, Prince Dauphin!

You are too much mistaken in this king.

30

Question your grace the late ambassadors,

With what great state he heard their embassy,

How well supplied with noble counsellors,

How modest in exception, and withal

How terrible in constant resolution,

35

And you shall find his vanities forespent

Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,

Covering discretion with a coat of folly,

As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots

That shall first spring and be most delicate.

40

DAUPHIN     Well, ’tis not so, my lord High Constable;

But though we think it so, it is no matter.

In cases of defence ’tis best to weigh

The enemy more mighty than he seems.

So the proportions of defence are filled,

45

Which, of a weak and niggardly projection,

Doth like a miser spoil his coat with scanting

A little cloth.

FRENCH KING     Think we King Harry strong;

And, princes, look you strongly arm to meet him.

The kindred of him hath been fleshed upon us,

50

And he is bred out of that bloody strain

That haunted us in our familiar paths.

Witness our too much memorable shame

When Cressy battle fatally was struck,

And all our princes captived, by the hand

55

Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales;

Whiles that his mountain sire, on mountain standing

Up in the air, crowned with the golden sun,

Saw his heroical seed, and smiled to see him,

Mangle the work of nature and deface

60

The patterns that by God and by French fathers

Had twenty years been made. This is a stem

Of that victorious stock, and let us fear

The native mightiness and fate of him.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER

Ambassadors from Harry, King of England, Do crave admittance to your majesty.

65

FRENCH KING

We’ll give them present audience. Go and bring them. Exit Messenger.

You see this chase is hotly followed, friends.

DAUPHIN     Turn head and stop pursuit, for coward dogs

Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten

70

Runs far before them. Good my sovereign,

Take up the English short and let them know

Of what a monarchy you are the head.

Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin

As self-neglecting.

Enter EXETER, with attendants.

FRENCH KING     From our brother England?

75

EXETER     From him, and thus he greets your majesty:

He wills you, in the name of God Almighty,

That you divest yourself and lay apart

The borrowed glories that by gift of heaven,

By law of nature and of nations, longs

80

To him and to his heirs, namely the crown

And all wide-stretched honours that pertain

By custom and the ordinance of times

Unto the crown of France. That you may know

’Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim,

85

Picked from the worm-holes of long-vanished days,

Nor from the dust of old oblivion raked,

He sends you this most memorable line,

In every branch truly demonstrative,

Willing you overlook this pedigree.

90

And when you find him evenly derived

From his most famed of famous ancestors,

Edward the Third, he bids you then resign

Your crown and kingdom indirectly held

From him the native and true challenger.

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[Gives the French King a paper.]

FRENCH KING     Or else what follows?

EXETER     Bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown

Even in your heart, there will he rake for it.

Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,

In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,

100

That if requiring fail, he will compel.

And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,

Deliver up the crown and to take mercy

On the poor souls for whom this hungry war

Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head

105

Turning the widows’ tears, the orphans’ cries,

The dead men’s blood, the pining maidens’ groans,

For husbands, fathers and betrothed lovers

That shall be swallowed in this controversy.

This is his claim, his threatening, and my message –

110

Unless the Dauphin be in presence here,

To whom expressly I bring greeting too.

FRENCH KING     For us, we will consider of this further.

Tomorrow shall you bear our full intent

Back to our brother England.

DAUPHIN     For the Dauphin,

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I stand here for him. What to him from England?

EXETER     Scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt,

And anything that may not misbecome

The mighty sender, doth he prize you at.

Thus says my king: an if your father’s highness

120

Do not, in grant of all demands at large,

Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his majesty,

He’ll call you to so hot an answer for it

That caves and womby vaultages of France

Shall chide your trespass and return your mock

125

In second accent of his ordinance.

DAUPHIN     Say if my father render fair return

It is against my will, for I desire

Nothing but odds with England. To that end,

As matching to his youth and vanity,

130

I did present him with the Paris-balls.

EXETER     He’ll make your Paris Louvre shake for it,

Were it the mistress-court of mighty Europe.

And be assured you’ll find a difference,

As we his subjects have in wonder found,

135

Between the promise of his greener days

And these he masters now. Now he weighs time

Even to the utmost grain. That you shall read

In your own losses, if he stay in France.

FRENCH KING

Tomorrow shall you know our mind at full. [Flourish.]

140

EXETER     Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king

Come here himself to question our delay,

For he is footed in this land already.

FRENCH KING

You shall be soon dispatched with fair conditions.

A night is but small breath and little pause

145

To answer matters of this consequence.

Flourish. Exeunt.

3.0            Enter CHORUS.

CHORUS     Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies

In motion of no less celerity

Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen

The well-appointed King at Hampton pier

Embark his royalty, and his brave fleet

5

With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning.

Play with your fancies, and in them behold

Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;

Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give

To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails,

10

Borne with th’invisible and creeping wind,

Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea,

Breasting the lofty surge. O do but think

You stand upon the rivage and behold

A city on th’inconstant billows dancing,

15

For so appears this fleet majestical,

Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow!

Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy,

And leave your England as dead midnight still,

Guarded with grandsires, babies and old women,

20

Either past or not arrived to pith and puissance.

For who is he, whose chin is but enriched

With one appearing hair, that will not follow

These culled and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?

Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;

25

Behold the ordnance on their carriages,

With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.

Suppose th’ambassador from the French comes back,

Tells Harry that the King doth offer him

Katherine his daughter and with her, to dowry,

30

Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms.

The offer likes not; and the nimble gunner

With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,

[Alarum, and chambers go off.]

And down goes all before them. Still be kind,

And eke out our performance with your mind. Exit.

35

3.1 Alarum. Enter soldiers with scaling-ladders at Harfleur. Enter the KING, EXETER, BEDFORD and GLOUCESTER.

KING

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,

Or close the wall up with our English dead.

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility;

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

5

Then imitate the action of the tiger:

Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage.

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

Let it pry through the portage of the head

10

Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it

As fearfully as doth a galled rock

O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,

Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,

15

Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit

To his full height. On, on, you noble English,

Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof,

Fathers that like so many Alexanders

Have in these parts from morn till even fought,

20

And sheathed their swords for lack of argument.

Dishonour not your mothers; now attest

That those whom you called fathers did beget you.

Be copy now to men of grosser blood

And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen,

25

Whose limbs were made in England, show us here

The mettle of your pasture; let us swear

That you are worth your breeding – which I doubt not,

For there is none of you so mean and base

That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.

30

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,

Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot.

Follow your spirit, and upon this charge

Cry ‘God for Harry! England and Saint George!’

Exeunt. Alarum, and chambers go off.

3.2      Enter NYM, BARDOLPH, PISTOL and Boy.

BARDOLPH     On, on, on, on, on, to the breach, to the

breach!

NYM     Pray thee, Corporal, stay; the knocks are too hot,

and for mine own part I have not a case of lives. The

humour of it is too hot, that is the very plain-song of

5

it.

PISTOL     The plain-song is most just, for humours do

abound.

Knocks go and come, God’s vassals drop and die,

And sword and shield

10

In bloody field

Doth win immortal fame.

BOY     Would I were in an alehouse in London! I would

give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.

PISTOL     And I.

15

If wishes would prevail with me

My purpose should not fail with me,

But thither would I hie.

BOY     As duly –

But not as truly –

20

As bird doth sing on bough

Enter FLUELLEN.

FLUELLEN     [Beats them.]

Up to the breach, you dogs! Avaunt, you cullions!

PISTOL     Be merciful, great duke, to men of mould!

Abate thy rage, abate thy manly rage,

Abate thy rage, great duke!

25

Good bawcock, bate thy rage! Use lenity, sweet chuck!

NYM     These be good humours! Your honour runs bad

humours! Exeunt all but Boy.

BOY     As young as I am, I have observed these three

swashers. I am boy to them all three, but all they three,

30

though they would serve me, could not be man to me,

for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man.

For Bardolph, he is white-livered and red-faced, by

the means whereof ’a faces it out but fights not. For

Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword, by

35

the means whereof a breaks words and keeps whole

weapons. For Nym, he hath heard that men of few

words are the best men, and therefore he scorns to say

his prayers lest ’a should be thought a coward: but his

few bad words are matched with as few good deeds, for

40

’a never broke any man’s head but his own, and that

was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal

anything, and call it purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-

case, bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three-

halfpence. Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in

45

filching, and in Calais they stole a fire-shovel. I knew

by that piece of service the men would carry coals.

They would have me as familiar with men’s pockets as

their gloves or their handkerchiefs, which makes much

against my manhood if I should take from another’s

50

pocket to put into mine, for it is plain pocketing up of

wrongs. I must leave them and seek some better

service; their villainy goes against my weak stomach,

and therefore I must cast it up. Exit.

Enter GOWER and FLUELLEN, meeting.

GOWER     Captain Fluellen, you must come presently to

55

the mines; the Duke of Gloucester would speak with

you.

FLUELLEN     To the mines? Tell you the Duke it is not so

good to come to the mines; for, look you, the mines is

not according to the disciplines of the wars; the

60

concavities of it is not sufficient; for, look you,

th’athversary, you may discuss unto the Duke, look

you, is digt himself four yard under the countermines.

By Cheshu, I think ’a will plow up all, if there is not

better directions.

65

GOWER     The Duke of Gloucester, to whom the order of

the siege is given, is altogether directed by an

Irishman, a very valiant gentleman, i’faith.

FLUELLEN     It is Captain Macmorris, is it not?

GOWER     I think it be.

70

FLUELLEN     By Cheshu, he is an ass, as any is in the

world. I will verify as much in his beard. He has no

more directions in the true disciplines of the wars,

look you, of the Roman disciplines, than is a puppy-

dog.

75

Enter MACMORRIS and JAMY.

GOWER     Here ’a comes, and the Scots captain, Captain

Jamy, with him.

FLUELLEN     Captain Jamy is a marvellous falorous

gentleman, that is certain, and of great expedition and

knowledge in th’anchient wars, upon my particular

80

knowledge of his directions. By Cheshu, he will

maintain his argument as well as any military man in

the world, in the disciplines of the pristine wars of the

Romans.

JAMY     I say guid day, Captain Fluellen.

85

FLUELLEN     God-den to your worship, good Captain

James.

GOWER     How now, Captain Macmorris, have you quit

the mines? Have the pioneers given o’er?

MACMORRIS     By Chrish, la, ’tish ill done; the work ish

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give over, the trompet sound the retreat. By my hand

I swear, and my father’s soul, the work ish ill done; it

ish give over. I would have blowed up the town, so

Chrish save me, la, in an hour. Oh, ’tish ill done, ’tish

ill done; by my hand, ’tish ill done!

95

FLUELLEN     Captain Macmorris, I beseech you now, will

you vouchsafe me, look you, a few disputations with

you as partly touching or concerning the disciplines of

the wars, the Roman wars, in the way of argument,

look you, and friendly communication? Partly to

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satisfy my opinion, and partly for the satisfaction, look

you, of my mind, as touching the direction of the

military discipline, that is the point.

JAMY     It sall be vara guid, guid feith, guid captains baith,

and I sall quit you, with guid leave, as I may pick

105

occasion; that sall I, marry.

MACMORRIS     It is no time to discourse, so Chrish save

me. The day is hot, and the weather, and the wars, and

the King, and the Dukes. It is no time to discourse, the

town is besieched, and the trumpet call us to the

110

breach, and we talk, and, be Chrish, do nothing. ’Tis

shame for us all, so God sa’ me, ’tis shame to stand

still, it is shame, by my hand; and there is throats to be

cut, and works to be done, and there ish nothing done,

so Chrish sa’ me, la!

115

JAMY     By the mess, ere these eyes of mine take

themselves to slumber I’ll dae guid service, or I’ll lig

i’th’ grund for it. I owe God a death, and I’ll pay’t as

valorously as I may, that sall I surely do, that is the

breff and the long. Marry, I wad full fain heard some

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question ’tween you twa.

FLUELLEN     Captain Macmorris, I think, look you, under

your correction, there is not many of your nation –

MACMORRIS     Of my nation? What ish my nation? Ish a

villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal?

125

What ish my nation? Who talks of my nation?

FLUELLEN     Look you, if you take the matter otherwise

than is meant, Captain Macmorris, peradventure I

shall think you do not use me with that affability as in

discretion you ought to use me, look you, being as

130

good a man as yourself, both in the disciplines of war,

and in the derivation of my birth, and in other

particularities.

MACMORRIS     I do not know you so good a man as myself.

So Chrish save me, I will cut off your head.

135

GOWER     Gentlemen both, you will mistake each other.

JAMY     Ah, that’s a foul fault. [A parley is sounded.]

GOWER     The town sounds a parley.

FLUELLEN     Captain Macmorris, when there is more

better opportunity to be required, look you, I will be

140

so bold as to tell you I know the disciplines of war, and

there is an end.     Exeunt.

3.3 The Governor and others upon the walls. Enter the KING and all his train before the gates.

KING     How yet resolves the Governor of the town?

This is the latest parle we will admit.

Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves,

Or like to men proud of destruction

Defy us to our worst; for, as I am a soldier,

5

A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,

If I begin the battery once again,

I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur

Till in her ashes she lie buried.

The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,

10

And the fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart,

In liberty of bloody hand shall range

With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass

Your fresh fair virgins and your flowering infants.

What is it then to me if impious war,

15

Arrayed in flames like to the prince of fiends,

Do with his smirched complexion all fell feats

Enlinked to waste and desolation?

What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause,

If your pure maidens fall into the hand

20

Of hot and forcing violation?

What rein can hold licentious wickedness

When down the hill he holds his fierce career?

We may as bootless spend our vain command

Upon th’enraged soldiers in their spoil

25

As send precepts to the leviathan

To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,

Take pity of your town and of your people

Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command,

Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace

30

O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds

Of heady murder, spoil and villainy.

If not, why, in a moment look to see

The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand

Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters,

35

Your fathers taken by the silver beards,

And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls,

Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,

Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused

Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry

40

At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen.

What say you? Will you yield and this avoid?

Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroyed?

GOVERNOR     Our expectation hath this day an end.

The Dauphin, whom of succours we entreated,

45

Returns us that his powers are yet not ready

To raise so great a siege. Therefore, dread King,

We yield our town and lives to thy soft mercy.

Enter our gates, dispose of us and ours,

For we no longer are defensible.

50

KING     Open your gates.     Exit Governor.

Come, uncle Exeter,

Go you and enter Harfleur; there remain

And fortify it strongly ’gainst the French.

Use mercy to them all. For us, dear uncle,

The winter coming on and sickness growing

55

Upon our soldiers, we will retire to Calais.

Tonight in Harfleur will we be your guest;

Tomorrow for the march are we addressed.

[Flourish, and enter the town.]

3.4    Enter KATHERINE and ALICE, an old gentlewoman.

KATHERINE     Alice, tu as été en Angleterre, et tu bien parles

le langage.

ALICE     Un peu, madame.

KATHERINE     Je te prie m’enseigner; il faut que j’apprenne à

parler. Comment appelez-vous la main en anglais?

5

ALICE     La main, elle est appelée de hand.

KATHERINE     De hand. Et les doigts?

ALICE     Les doigts? Ma foi, j’oublie les doigts, mais je me

souviendrai. Les doigts, je pense qu’ils sont appelés de

fingres; oui, de fingres.

10

KATHERINE     La main, de hand; les doigts, de fingres. Je

pense que je suis le bon écolier. J’ai gagné deux mots

d’anglais vitement. Comment appelez-vous les ongles?

ALICE     Les ongles, nous les appelons de nails.

KATHERINE     De nails. Écoutez; dites-moi si je parle

15

bien:de hand, de fingres, et de nails.

ALICE     C’est bien dit, madame; il est fort bon anglais.

KATHERINE     Dites-moi l’anglais pour le bras.

ALICE     De arm, madame.

KATHERINE     Et le coude?

20

ALICE     D’elbow.

KATHERINE     D’elbow. Je m’en fais la répétition de tous les

mots que vous m’avez appris dès à présent.

ALICE     Il est trop difficile, madame, comme je pense.

KATHERINE     Excusez-moi, Alice. Écoutez: d’ hand, de

25

fingres, de nails, de arm, de bilbow.

ALICE     D’elbow, madame.

KATHERINE     O Seigneur Dieu, je m’en oublie! D’elbow.

Comment appelez-vous le col?

ALICE     De nick, madame.

30

KATHERINE     De nick. Et le menton?

ALICE     De chin.

KATHERINE     De sin. Le col, de nick; le menton, de sin.

ALICE     Oui. Sauf votre honneur, en vérité, vous prononcez

les mots aussi droit que les natifs d’Angleterre.

35

KATHERINE     Je ne doute point d’apprendre, par la grâce de

Dieu, et en peu de temps.

ALICE     N’avez-vous déjà oublié ce que je vous ai enseigné?

KATHERINE     Non, je le réciterai à vous promptement:

d’hand, de fingres, de mails, –

40

ALICE     De nails, madame.

KATHERINE     De nails, de arm, de ilbow –

ALICE     Sauf votre honneur, d’elbow.

KATHERINE     Ainsi dis-je, d’elbow – de nick, et de sin.

Comment appelez-vous le pied et la robe?

45

ALICE     De foot, madame, et de coun.

KATHERINE     De foot, et de coun? O Seigneur Dieu, ils sont

les mots de son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et impudique, et

non pour les dames d’honneur d’user. Je ne voudrais

prononcer ces mots devant les seigneurs de France pour

50

tout le monde. Foh! De foot et de coun! Néanmoins, je

réciterai une autre fois ma leçon ensemble: d’ hand, de

fingres, de nails, d’arm, d’elbow, de nick, de sin, de

foot, de coun.

ALICE     Excellent, madame!

55

KATHERINE     C’est assez pour une fois. Allons-nous à dîner.

Exeunt.

3.5 Enter the KING of France, the DAUPHIN, the DUKE OF BRITAIN, the Constable of France and others.

FRENCH KING

’Tis certain he hath passed the river Somme.

CONSTABLE     An if he be not fought withal, my lord,

Let us not live in France; let us quit all

And give our vineyards to a barbarous people.

DAUPHIN     O Dieu vivant! Shall a few sprays of us,

5

The emptying of our fathers’ luxury,

Our scions, put in wild and savage stock,

Spirt up so suddenly into the clouds

And overlook their grafters?

BRITAIN

Normans, but bastard Normans, Norman bastards!

10

Mort de ma vie, if they march along

Unfought withal, but I will sell my dukedom

To buy a slobbery and a dirty farm

In that nook-shotten isle of Albion.

CONSTABLE

Dieu de batailles, where have they this mettle?

15

Is not their climate foggy, raw and dull,

On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale,

Killing their fruit with frowns? Can sodden water,

A drench for sur-reined jades, their barley-broth,

Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?

20

And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine,

Seem frosty? O, for honour of our land,

Let us not hang like roping icicles

Upon our houses’ thatch, whiles a more frosty people

Sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields!

25

Poor we may call them in their native lords.

DAUPHIN     By faith and honour,

Our madams mock at us and plainly say

Our mettle is bred out, and they will give

Their bodies to the lust of English youth,

30

To new-store France with bastard warriors.

BRITAIN     They bid us to the English dancing-schools

And teach lavoltas high and swift corantos,

Saying our grace is only in our heels,

And that we are most lofty runaways.

35

FRENCH KING

Where is Montjoy the herald? Speed him hence:

Let him greet England with our sharp defiance.

Up, princes, and with spirit of honour edged

More sharper than your swords hie to the field.

Charles Delabreth, High Constable of France,

40

You Dukes of Orleans, Bourbon and of Berry,

Alençon, Brabant, Bar and Burgundy,

Jaques Chatillon, Rambures, Vaudemont,

Beaumont, Grandpré, Roussi and Fauconbridge,

Foix, Lestrelles, Boucicault and Charolais,

45

High dukes, great princes, barons, lords and knights,

For your great seats now quit you of great shames.

Bar Harry England, that sweeps through our land

With pennons painted in the blood of Harfleur.

Rush on his host as doth the melted snow

50

Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat

The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon.

Go down upon him, you have power enough,

And in a captive chariot into Rouen

Bring him our prisoner.

CONSTABLE     This becomes the great.

55

Sorry am I his numbers are so few,

His soldiers sick and famished in their march,

For I am sure when he shall see our army

He’ll drop his heart into the sink of fear

And for achievement offer us his ransom.

60

FRENCH KING

Therefore, Lord Constable, haste on Montjoy,

And let him say to England that we send

To know what willing ransom he will give. –

Prince Dauphin, you shall stay with us in Rouen.

DAUPHIN     Not so, I do beseech your majesty.

65

FRENCH KING

Be patient, for you shall remain with us. –

Now forth, Lord Constable and princes all,

And quickly bring us word of England’s fall.     Exeunt.

3.6 Enter the English and Welsh captains GOWER and FLUELLEN, meeting.

GOWER     How now, Captain Fluellen, come you from the

bridge?

FLUELLEN     I assure you there is very excellent services

committed at the bridge.

GOWER     Is the Duke of Exeter safe?

5

FLUELLEN     The Duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as

Agamemnon, and a man that I love and honour with

my soul, and my heart, and my duty, and my life, and

my living, and my uttermost power. He is not, God be

praised and blessed, any hurt in the world, but keeps

10

the bridge most valiantly, with excellent discipline.

There is an anchient lieutenant there at the pridge, I

think in my very conscience he is as valiant a man as

Mark Antony, and he is a man of no estimation in the

world, but I did see him do as gallant service –

15

GOWER     What do you call him?

FLUELLEN     He is called Anchient Pistol.

GOWER     I know him not.

Enter PISTOL.

FLUELLEN     Here is the man.

PISTOL     Captain, I thee beseech to do me favours.

20

The Duke of Exeter doth love thee well.

FLUELLEN

Ay, I praise God, and I have merited some love at his

hands.

PISTOL     Bardolph, a soldier firm and sound of heart,

Of buxom valour, hath, by cruel fate

25

And giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel,

That goddess blind

That stands upon the rolling restless stone –

FLUELLEN     By your patience, Anchient Pistol. Fortune

is painted blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to

30

signify to you that Fortune is blind; and she is painted

also with a wheel, to signify to you, which is the moral

of it, that she is turning, and inconstant, and

mutability, and variation; and her foot, look you, is

fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls,

35

and rolls. In good truth, the poet makes a most

excellent description of it: Fortune is an excellent

moral.

PISTOL     Fortune is Bardolph’s foe, and frowns on him,

For he hath stolen a pax,

40

And hanged must ’a be, a damned death!

Let gallows gape for dog, let man go free,

And let not hemp his windpipe suffocate!

But Exeter hath given the doom of death

For pax of little price.

45

Therefore go speak – the Duke will hear thy voice –

And let not Bardolph’s vital thread be cut

With edge of penny cord and vile reproach.

Speak, Captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.

FLUELLEN     Anchient Pistol, I do partly understand your

50

meaning.

PISTOL     Why then, rejoice therefor.

FLUELLEN     Certainly, Anchient, it is not a thing to

rejoice at; for if, look you, he were my brother, I would

desire the Duke to use his good pleasure and put him

55

to execution; for discipline ought to be used.

PISTOL

Die and be damned, and fico for thy friendship!

FLUELLEN     It is well.

PISTOL     The fig of Spain!     Exit.

FLUELLEN     Very good.

60

GOWER     Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal, I

remember him now – a bawd, a cutpurse.

FLUELLEN     I’ll assure you ’a uttered as prave words at

the pridge as you shall see in a summer’s day. But it is

very well; what he has spoke to me, that is well, I

65

warrant you, when time is serve.

GOWER     Why, ’tis a gull, a fool, a rogue, that now and

then goes to the wars to grace himself at his return

into London under the form of a soldier. And such

fellows are perfect in the great commanders’ names,

70

and they will learn you by rote where services were

done, at such and such a sconce, at such a breach, at

such a convoy; who came off bravely, who was shot,

who disgraced, what terms the enemy stood on. And

this they con perfectly in the phrase of war, which

75

they trick up with new-tuned oaths; and what a beard

of the General’s cut and a horrid suit of the camp will

do among foaming bottles and ale-washed wits is

wonderful to be thought on. But you must learn to

know such slanders of the age, or else you may be

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marvellously mistook.

FLUELLEN     I tell you what, Captain Gower: I do

perceive he is not the man that he would gladly make

show to the world he is. If I find a hole in his coat, I

will tell him my mind. [Drum within.]

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Hark you, the King is coming, and I must speak with

him from the pridge.

Drum and colours. Enter the KING and GLOUCESTER and his poor soldiers.

God pless your majesty!

KING

How now, Fluellen, cam’st thou from the bridge?

FLUELLEN     Ay, so please your majesty. The Duke of

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Exeter has very gallantly maintained the pridge; the

French is gone off, look you, and there is gallant and

most prave passages. Marry, th’athversary was have

possession of the pridge, but he is enforced to retire,

and the Duke of Exeter is master of the pridge. I can

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tell your majesty, the Duke is a prave man.

KING     What men have you lost, Fluellen?

FLUELLEN     The perdition of th’athversary hath been

very great, reasonable great. Marry, for my part, I

think the Duke hath lost never a man, but one that is

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like to be executed for robbing a church, one

Bardolph, if your majesty know the man. His face is all

bubuncles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o’ fire,

and his lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of

fire, sometimes plue and sometimes red; but his nose

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is executed, and his fire’s out.

KING     We would have all such offenders so cut off; and

we give express charge that in our marches through

the country there be nothing compelled from the

villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the

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French upbraided or abused in disdainful language;

for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the

gentler gamester is the soonest winner.

Tucket. Enter MONTJOY.

MONTJOY     You know me by my habit.

KING     Well then, I know thee: what shall I know of thee?

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MONTJOY     My master’s mind.

KING     Unfold it.

MONTJOY     Thus says my king: ‘Say thou to Harry of

England, though we seemed dead, we did but sleep.

Advantage is a better soldier than rashness. Tell him

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we could have rebuked him at Harfleur, but that we

thought not good to bruise an injury till it were full

ripe. Now we speak upon our cue, and our voice is

imperial. England shall repent his folly, see his

weakness, and admire our sufferance. Bid him

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therefore consider of his ransom, which must

proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we

have lost, the disgrace we have digested, which in

weight to reanswer, his pettiness would bow under.

For our losses, his exchequer is too poor; for

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th’effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom

too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own

person kneeling at our feet but a weak and worthless

satisfaction. To this add defiance, and tell him, for

conclusion, he hath betrayed his followers, whose

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condemnation is pronounced.’ So far my king and

master, so much my office.

KING     What is thy name? I know thy quality.

MONTJOY     Montjoy.

KING     Thou dost thy office fairly. Turn thee back,

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And tell thy king I do not seek him now,

But could be willing to march on to Calais

Without impeachment; for, to say the sooth,

Though ’tis no wisdom to confess so much

Unto an enemy of craft and vantage,

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My people are with sickness much enfeebled,

My numbers lessened, and those few I have

Almost no better than so many French;

Who when they were in health, I tell thee, herald,

I thought upon one pair of English legs

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Did march three Frenchmen. Yet forgive me, God,

That I do brag thus! This your air of France

Hath blown that vice in me. I must repent.

Go therefore, tell thy master here I am.

My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk,

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My army but a weak and sickly guard.

Yet, God before, tell him we will come on,

Though France himself and such another neighbour

Stand in our way. [Gives a purse.]

There’s for thy labour, Montjoy.

Go, bid thy master well advise himself.

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If we may pass, we will; if we be hindered,

We shall your tawny ground with your red blood

Discolour. And so, Montjoy, fare you well.

The sum of all our answer is but this:

We would not seek a battle as we are,

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Nor as we are, we say, we will not shun it:

So tell your master.

MONTJOY     I shall deliver so. Thanks to your highness.

Exit.

GLOUCESTER     I hope they will not come upon us now.

KING     We are in God’s hand, brother, not in theirs. –

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March to the bridge. – It now draws toward night.

Beyond the river we’ll encamp ourselves,

And on tomorrow bid them march away.     Exeunt.

3.7 Enter the Constable of France, the LORD RAMBURES, ORLEANS and the DAUPHIN, with others.

CONSTABLE     Tut, I have the best armour of the world.

Would it were day!

ORLEANS     You have an excellent armour; but let my

horse have his due.

CONSTABLE     It is the best horse of Europe.

5

ORLEANS     Will it never be morning?

DAUPHIN     My lord of Orleans and my lord High

Constable, you talk of horse and armour?

ORLEANS     You are as well provided of both as any prince

in the world.

10

DAUPHIN     What a long night is this! I will not change my

horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. Ch’ha!

He bounds from the earth as if his entrails were hairs

– le cheval volant, the Pegasus, qui a les narines de feu!

When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk. He trots the

15

air. The earth sings when he touches it; the basest

horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of

Hermes.

ORLEANS     He’s of the colour of the nutmeg.

DAUPHIN     And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for

20

Perseus; he is pure air and fire, and the dull elements

of earth and water never appear in him but only in

patient stillness while his rider mounts him. He is

indeed a horse, and all other jades you may call beasts.

CONSTABLE     Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and

25

excellent horse.

DAUPHIN     It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the

bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces

homage.

ORLEANS     No more, cousin.

30

DAUPHIN     Nay, the man hath no wit that cannot, from

the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary

deserved praise on my palfrey. It is a theme as fluent

as the sea. Turn the sands into eloquent tongues and

my horse is argument for them all. ’Tis a subject for a

35

sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign’s sovereign

to ride on, and for the world, familiar to us and

unknown, to lay apart their particular functions and

wonder at him. I once writ a sonnet in his praise and

began thus: ‘Wonder of nature!’

40

ORLEANS     I have heard a sonnet begin so to one’s

mistress.

DAUPHIN     Then did they imitate that which I composed

to my courser, for my horse is my mistress.

ORLEANS     Your mistress bears well.

45

DAUPHIN     Me well, which is the prescript praise and

perfection of a good and particular mistress.

CONSTABLE     Nay, for methought yesterday your mistress

shrewdly shook your back.

DAUPHIN     So perhaps did yours.

50

CONSTABLE     Mine was not bridled.

DAUPHIN     O then belike she was old and gentle, and you

rode like a kern of Ireland, your French hose off and

in your strait strossers.

CONSTABLE     You have good judgement in horse-

55

manship.

DAUPHIN     Be warned by me then: they that ride so, and

ride not warily, fall into foul bogs. I had rather have my

horse to my mistress.

CONSTABLE     I had as lief have my mistress a jade.

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DAUPHIN     I tell thee, Constable, my mistress wears his

own hair.

CONSTABLE     I could make as true a boast as that if I had

a sow to my mistress.

DAUPHIN     ‘Le chien est retourné à son propre vomissement,

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et la truie lavée au bourbier.’ Thou mak’st use of

anything.

CONSTABLE     Yet do I not use my horse for my mistress,

or any such proverb so little kin to the purpose.

RAMBURES     My Lord Constable, the armour that I saw

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in your tent tonight, are those stars or suns upon it?

CONSTABLE     Stars, my lord.

DAUPHIN     Some of them will fall tomorrow, I hope.

CONSTABLE     And yet my sky shall not want.

DAUPHIN     That may be, for you bear a many

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superfluously, and ’twere more honour some were

away.

CONSTABLE     Even as your horse bears your praises, who

would trot as well were some of your brags

dismounted.

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DAUPHIN     Would I were able to load him with his desert!

Will it never be day? I will trot tomorrow a mile, and

my way shall be paved with English faces.

CONSTABLE     I will not say so, for fear I should be faced

out of my way. But I would it were morning, for I

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would fain be about the ears of the English.

RAMBURES     Who will go to hazard with me for twenty

prisoners?

CONSTABLE     You must first go yourself to hazard ere you

have them.

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DAUPHIN     ’Tis midnight; I’ll go arm myself.     Exit.

ORLEANS     The Dauphin longs for morning.

RAMBURES     He longs to eat the English.

CONSTABLE     I think he will eat all he kills.

ORLEANS     By the white hand of my lady, he’s a gallant

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prince.

CONSTABLE     Swear by her foot, that she may tread out

the oath.

ORLEANS     He is simply the most active gentleman of

France.

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CONSTABLE     Doing is activity, and he will still be doing.

ORLEANS     He never did harm that I heard of.

CONSTABLE     Nor will do none tomorrow; he will keep

that good name still.

ORLEANS     I know him to be valiant.

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CONSTABLE     I was told that by one that knows him

better than you.

ORLEANS     What’s he?

CONSTABLE     Marry, he told me so himself, and he said

he cared not who knew it.

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ORLEANS     He needs not, it is no hidden virtue in him.

CONSTABLE     By my faith, sir, but it is: never anybody

saw it but his lackey. ’Tis a hooded valour, and when it

appears it will bate.

ORLEANS     ‘Ill will never said well.’

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CONSTABLE     I will cap that proverb with ‘There is

flattery in friendship.’

ORLEANS     And I will take up that with ‘Give the devil

his due.’

CONSTABLE     Well placed: there stands your friend for

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the devil. Have at the very eye of that proverb with ‘A

pox of the devil.’

ORLEANS     You are the better at proverbs by how much

‘A fool’s bolt is soon shot.’

CONSTABLE     You have shot over.

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ORLEANS     ’Tis not the first time you were overshot.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     My lord High Constable, the English lie

within fifteen hundred paces of your tents.

CONSTABLE     Who hath measured the ground?

MESSENGER     The Lord Grandpré.

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CONSTABLE     A valiant and most expert gentleman.

Exit Messenger.

Would it were day! Alas, poor Harry of England! He

longs not for the dawning as we do.

ORLEANS     What a wretched and peevish fellow is this

King of England, to mope with his fat-brained

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followers so far out of his knowledge!

CONSTABLE     If the English had any apprehension they

would run away.

ORLEANS     That they lack, for if their heads had any

intellectual armour they could never wear such heavy

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headpieces.

RAMBURES     That island of England breeds very valiant

creatures: their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.

ORLEANS     Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth

of a Russian bear and have their heads crushed like

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rotten apples. You may as well say that’s a valiant flea

that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

CONSTABLE     Just, just; and the men do sympathize with

the mastiffs in robustious and rough coming on,

leaving their wits with their wives. And then give them

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great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like

wolves and fight like devils.

ORLEANS     Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef.

CONSTABLE     Then shall we find tomorrow they have

only stomachs to eat and none to fight. Now is it time

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to arm; come, shall we about it?

ORLEANS     It is now two o’clock; but, let me see, by ten

We shall have each a hundred Englishmen. Exeunt.

4.0          Enter CHORUS.

CHORUS     Now entertain conjecture of a time

When creeping murmur and the poring dark

Fills the wide vessel of the universe.

From camp to camp through the foul womb of night

The hum of either army stilly sounds,

5

That the fixed sentinels almost receive

The secret whispers of each other’s watch.

Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames

Each battle sees the other’s umbered face.

Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs

10

Piercing the night’s dull ear; and from the tents

The armourers accomplishing the knights,

With busy hammers closing rivets up,

Give dreadful note of preparation.

The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll,

15

And the third hour of drowsy morning name.

Proud of their numbers and secure in soul,

The confident and over-lusty French

Do the low-rated English play at dice,

And chide the cripple tardy-gaited night

20

Who like a foul and ugly witch doth limp

So tediously away. The poor condemned English,

Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires

Sit patiently and inly ruminate

The morning’s danger; and their gesture sad,

25

Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-torn coats,

Presenteth them unto the gazing moon

So many horrid ghosts. O now, who will behold

The royal captain of this ruined band

Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent,

30

Let him cry ‘Praise and glory on his head!’

For forth he goes and visits all his host,

Bids them good morrow with a modest smile,

And calls them brothers, friends and countrymen.

Upon his royal face there is no note

35

How dread an army hath enrounded him,

Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour

Unto the weary and all-watched night,

But freshly looks and overbears attaint

With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty,

40

That every wretch, pining and pale before,

Beholding him plucks comfort from his looks.

A largess universal, like the sun,

His liberal eye doth give to every one,

Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all

45

Behold, as may unworthiness define,

A little touch of Harry in the night.

And so our scene must to the battle fly,

Where – oh for pity! – we shall much disgrace

With four or five most vile and ragged foils

50

Right ill-disposed in brawl ridiculous

The name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see,

Minding true things by what their mockeries be.

Exit.

4.1    Enter the KING and GLOUCESTER, meeting BEDFORD.

KING     Gloucester, ’tis true that we are in great danger;

The greater therefore should our courage be. –

Good morrow, brother Bedford. God Almighty!

There is some soul of goodness in things evil,

Would men observingly distil it out:

5

For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,

Which is both healthful and good husbandry.

Besides, they are our outward consciences

And preachers to us all, admonishing

That we should dress us fairly for our end.

10

Thus may we gather honey from the weed

And make a moral of the devil himself.

Enter ERPINGHAM.

Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham.

A good soft pillow for that good white head

Were better than a churlish turf of France.

15

ERPINGHAM

Not so, my liege, this lodging likes me better,

Since I may say ‘Now lie I like a king.’

KING ’Tis good for men to love their present pains

Upon example: so the spirit is eased,

And when the mind is quickened, out of doubt

20

The organs, though defunct and dead before,

Break up their drowsy grave and newly move

With casted slough and fresh legerity.

Lend me thy cloak, Sir Thomas. – Brothers both,

Commend me to the princes in our camp;

25

Do my good morrow to them, and anon

Desire them all to my pavilion.

GLOUCESTER     We shall, my liege.

ERPINGHAM     Shall I attend your grace?

KING     No, my good knight;

Go with my brothers to my lords of England.

30

I and my bosom must debate awhile,

And then I would no other company.

ERPINGHAM

The Lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry!

Exeunt all but the King.

KING     God-a-mercy, old heart, thou speak’st cheerfully.

Enter PISTOL.

PISTOL     Che vous là?

35

KING     A friend.

PISTOL     Discuss unto me, art thou officer,

Or art thou base, common and popular?

KING I am a gentleman of a company.

PISTOL     Trail’st thou the puissant pike?

40

KING     Even so. What are you?

PISTOL     As good a gentleman as the Emperor.

KING     Then you are a better than the King.

PISTOL     The King’s a bawcock and a heart of gold,

A lad of life, an imp of Fame,

45

Of parents good, of fist most valiant.

I kiss his dirty shoe, and from heart-string

I love the lovely bully. What is thy name?

KING     Harry le Roy.

PISTOL     Le Roy?

50

A Cornish name: art thou of Cornish crew?

KING     No, I am a Welshman.

PISTOL     Know’st thou Fluellen?

KING     Yes.

PISTOL     Tell him I’ll knock his leek about his pate

55

Upon Saint Davy’s day.

KING     Do not you wear your dagger in your cap that day,

lest he knock that about yours.

PISTOL     Art thou his friend?

KING     And his kinsman too.

60

PISTOL     The fico for thee then!

KING I thank you. God be with you!

PISTOL     My name is Pistol called.     Exit.

KING     It sorts well with your fierceness.

Enter FLUELLEN and GOWER, separately.

GOWER     Captain Fluellen!

65

FLUELLEN ’So! In the name of Jesu Christ, speak fewer.

It is the greatest admiration in the universal world

when the true and anchient prerogatifs and laws of the

wars is not kept. If you would take the pains but to

examine the wars of Pompey the Great you shall find,

70

I warrant you, that there is no tiddle-taddle nor

pibble-pabble in Pompey’s camp. I warrant you, you

shall find the ceremonies of the wars, and the cares of

it, and the forms of it, and the sobriety of it, and the

modesty of it, to be otherwise.

75

GOWER     Why, the enemy is loud; you hear him all night.

FLUELLEN     If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a

prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should

also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating

coxcomb, in your own conscience now?

80

GOWER     I will speak lower.

FLUELLEN     I pray you and beseech you that you will.

Exeunt Gower and Fluellen.

KING     Though it appear a little out of fashion,

There is much care and valour in this Welshman.

Enter three soldiers, JOHN BATES, ALEXANDER COURT and MICHAEL WILLIAMS.

COURT     Brother John Bates, is not that the morning

85

which breaks yonder?

BATES     I think it be; but we have no great cause to desire

the approach of day.

WILLIAMS     We see yonder the beginning of the day, but

I think we shall never see the end of it. – Who goes

90

there?

KING     A friend.

WILLIAMS     Under what captain serve you?

KING     Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.

WILLIAMS     A good old commander and a most kind

95

gentleman. I pray you, what thinks he of our estate?

KING     Even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look to be

washed off the next tide.

BATES     He hath not told his thought to the King?

KING     No, nor it is not meet he should. For though I

100

speak it to you, I think the King is but a man, as I am:

the violet smells to him as it doth to me; the element

shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but

human conditions; his ceremonies laid by, in his

nakedness he appears but a man; and though his

105

affections are higher mounted than ours, yet when

they stoop they stoop with the like wing. Therefore

when he sees reason of fears as we do, his fears, out of

doubt, be of the same relish as ours are. Yet, in reason,

no man should possess him with any appearance of

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fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army.

BATES     He may show what outward courage he will, but

I believe, as cold a night as ’tis, he could wish himself

in Thames up to the neck; and so I would he were, and

I by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here.

115

KING     By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the

King. I think he would not wish himself anywhere but

where he is.

BATES     Then I would he were here alone; so should he

be sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men’s lives

120

saved.

KING     I dare say you love him not so ill to wish him here

alone, howsoever you speak this to feel other men’s

minds. Methinks I could not die anywhere so

contented as in the King’s company, his cause being

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just and his quarrel honourable.

WILLIAMS     That’s more than we know.

BATES     Ay, or more than we should seek after, for we

know enough if we know we are the King’s subjects. If

his cause be wrong, our obedience to the King wipes

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the crime of it out of us.

WILLIAMS     But if the cause be not good, the King

himself hath a heavy reckoning to make when all those

legs and arms and heads chopped off in a battle shall

join together at the latter day and cry all ‘We died at

135

such a place’, some swearing, some crying for a

surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind

them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their

children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well

that die in a battle, for how can they charitably dispose

140

of anything when blood is their argument? Now if

these men do not die well it will be a black matter for

the King, that led them to it, who to disobey were

against all proportion of subjection.

KING     So if a son that is by his father sent about

145

merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the

imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be

imposed upon his father that sent him; or if a servant,

under his master’s command transporting a sum of

money, be assailed by robbers and die in many

150

irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of

the master the author of the servant’s damnation. But

this is not so: the King is not bound to answer the

particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son,

nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not

155

their death when they purpose their services. Besides,

there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it

come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with

all unspotted soldiers. Some, peradventure, have on

them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder,

160

some of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of

perjury, some, making the wars their bulwark, that

have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with

pillage and robbery. Now if these men have defeated

the law and outrun native punishment, though they

165

can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God.

War is his beadle, war is his vengeance; so that here

men are punished for before breach of the King’s laws

in now the King’s quarrel. Where they feared the

death they have borne life away, and where they would

170

be safe they perish. Then if they die unprovided, no

more is the King guilty of their damnation than he was

before guilty of those impieties for the which they are

now visited. Every subject’s duty is the King’s, but

every subject’s soul is his own. Therefore should every

175

soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed,

wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so,

death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was

blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained;

and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that,

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making God so free an offer, he let him outlive that

day to see his greatness and to teach others how they

should prepare.

WILLIAMS     ’Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill

upon his own head; the King is not to answer it.

185

BATES     I do not desire he should answer for me, and yet

I determine to fight lustily for him.

KING     I myself heard the King say he would not be

ransomed.

WILLIAMS     Ay, he said so to make us fight cheerfully; but

190

when our throats are cut he may be ransomed and we

ne’er the wiser.

KING     If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.

WILLIAMS     You pay him then! That’s a perilous shot out

of an elder-gun that a poor and a private displeasure

195

can do against a monarch. You may as well go about to

turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a

peacock’s feather. You’ll never trust his word after!

Come, ’tis a foolish saying.

KING     Your reproof is something too round; I should be

200

angry with you if the time were convenient.

WILLIAMS     Let it be a quarrel between us, if you live.

KING     I embrace it.

WILLIAMS     How shall I know thee again?

KING     Give me any gage of thine and I will wear it in my

205

bonnet. Then if ever thou dar’st acknowledge it I will

make it my quarrel.

WILLIAMS     Here’s my glove. Give me another of thine.

KING     There. [They exchange gloves.]

WILLIAMS     This will I also wear in my cap. If ever thou

210

come to me and say after tomorrow ‘This is my glove’,

by this hand I will take thee a box on the ear.

KING     If ever I live to see it I will challenge it.

WILLIAMS     Thou dar’st as well be hanged.

KING     Well, I will do it, though I take thee in the King’s

215

company.

WILLIAMS     Keep thy word. Fare thee well.

BATES     Be friends, you English fools, be friends! We

have French quarrels enough, if you could tell how to

reckon.

220

KING     Indeed, the French may lay twenty French

crowns to one they will beat us, for they bear them on

their shoulders, but it is no English treason to cut

French crowns, and tomorrow the King himself will

be a clipper. Exeunt soldiers.

225

Upon the King! ‘Let us our lives, our souls,

Our debts, our careful wives,

Our children and our sins lay on the King!’

We must bear all. O hard condition,

Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath

230

Of every fool whose sense no more can feel

But his own wringing! What infinite heart’s ease

Must kings neglect that private men enjoy!

And what have kings that privates have not too,

Save ceremony, save general ceremony?

235

And what art thou, thou idol ceremony?

What kind of god art thou, that suffer’st more

Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?

What are thy rents, what are thy comings-in?

O ceremony, show me but thy worth!

240

What is thy soul, O adoration?

Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,

Creating awe and fear in other men,

Wherein thou art less happy, being feared,

Than they in fearing?

245

What drink’st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,

But poisoned flattery? O be sick, great greatness,

And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!

Think’st thou the fiery fever will go out

With titles blown from adulation?

250

Will it give place to flexure and low bending?

Canst thou, when thou command’st the beggar’s knee,

Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream

That play’st so subtly with a king’s repose,

I am a king that find thee, and I know

255

’Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,

The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,

The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,

The farced title running ’fore the king,

The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp

260

That beats upon the high shore of this world,

No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,

Not all these, laid in bed majestical,

Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,

Who with a body filled and vacant mind

265

Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread:

Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,

But like a lackey from the rise to set

Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night

Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn

270

Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,

And follows so the ever-running year

With profitable labour to his grave.

And but for ceremony such a wretch,

Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,

275

Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.

The slave, a member of the country’s peace,

Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots

What watch the King keeps to maintain the peace,

Whose hours the peasant best advantages.

280

Enter ERPINGHAM.

ERPINGHAM

My lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence,

Seek through your camp to find you.

KING     Good old knight,

Collect them all together at my tent.

I’ll be before thee.

ERPINGHAM     I shall do’t, my lord.     Exit.

KING [Kneels.]

O     God of battles, steel my soldiers’ hearts;

285

Possess them not with fear. Take from them now

The sense of reckoning, if th’opposed numbers

Pluck their hearts from them. Not today, O Lord,

O not today, think not upon the fault

My father made in compassing the crown.

290

I Richard’s body have interred new,

And on it have bestowed more contrite tears

Than from it issued forced drops of blood.

Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,

Who twice a day their withered hands hold up

295

Toward heaven to pardon blood; and I have built

Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests

Sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do,

Though all that I can do is nothing worth,

Since that my penitence comes after all,

300

Imploring pardon.

GLOUCESTER [within]     My liege!

KING [Rises.]     My brother Gloucester’s voice?

Enter GLOUCESTER.

I know thy errand, I will go with thee.

The day, my friends and all things stay for me.

Exeunt.

4.2 Enter the DAUPHIN, ORLEANS and RAMBURES.

ORLEANS     The sun doth gild our armour; up, my lords!

DAUPHIN     Monte à cheval! My horse, varlet laquais, ha!

ORLEANS     O brave spirit!

DAUPHIN     Via, les eaux et terre!

ORLEANS     Rien puis? L’air et feu?

5

DAUPHIN     Cieux, cousin Orleans!

Enter Constable.

DAUPHIN     Now, my lord Constable!

CONSTABLE

Hark, how our steeds for present service neigh!

DAUPHIN

Mount them and make incision in their hides,

That their hot blood may spin in English eyes

And dout them with superfluous courage, ha!

10

RAMBURES

What, will you have them weep our horses’ blood?

How shall we then behold their natural tears?

Enter Messenger.

MESSENGER

The English are embattled, you French peers. Exit.

CONSTABLE

To horse, you gallant princes, straight to horse!

Do but behold yon poor and starved band,

15

And your fair show shall suck away their souls,

Leaving them but the shales and husks of men.

There is not work enough for all our hands,

Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins

To give each naked curtle-axe a stain

20

That our French gallants shall today draw out

And sheathe for lack of sport. Let us but blow on them,

The vapour of our valour will o’erturn them.

’Tis positive ’gainst all exceptions, lords,

That our superfluous lackeys and our peasants

25

Who in unnecessary action swarm

About our squares of battle were enough

To purge this field of such a hilding foe,

Though we upon this mountain’s basis by

Took stand for idle speculation:

30

But that our honours must not. What’s to say?

A very little little let us do,

And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound

The tucket sonance and the note to mount,

For our approach shall so much dare the field

35

That England shall couch down in fear and yield.

Enter GRANDPRÉ.

GRANDPRÉ

Why do you stay so long, my lords of France?

Yon island carrions, desperate of their bones,

Ill-favouredly become the morning field.

Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,

40

And our air shakes them passing scornfully.

Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggared host

And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps.

The horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks

With torch-staves in their hand, and their poor jades

45

Lob down their heads, drooping the hides and hips,

The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes,

And in their palled dull mouths the gimmaled bit

Lies foul with chewed grass, still and motionless.

And their executors, the knavish crows,

50

Fly o’er them all, impatient for their hour.

Description cannot suit itself in words

To demonstrate the life of such a battle

In life so lifeless as it shows itself.

CONSTABLE

They have said their prayers, and they stay for death.

55

DAUPHIN

Shall we go send them dinners and fresh suits

And give their fasting horses provender,

And after fight with them?

CONSTABLE     I stay but for my guidon. To the field!

I will the banner from a trumpet take

60

And use it for my haste. Come, come away!

The sun is high and we outwear the day.     Exeunt.

4.3 Enter GLOUCESTER, BEDFORD, EXETER, ERPINGHAM with all his host, SALISBURY and WESTMORLAND.

GLOUCESTER     Where is the King?

BEDFORD

The King himself is rode to view their battle.

WESTMORLAND

Of fighting men they have full threescore thousand.

EXETER     There’s five to one; besides, they all are fresh.

SALISBURY

God’s arm strike with us! ’Tis a fearful odds.

5

God bye you, princes all; I’ll to my charge.

If we no more meet till we meet in heaven,

Then joyfully, my noble lord of Bedford,

My dear lord Gloucester, and my good lord Exeter,

And my kind kinsman, warriors all, adieu.

10

BEDFORD

Farewell, good Salisbury, and good luck go with thee.

EXETER     Farewell, kind lord. Fight valiantly today.

And yet I do thee wrong to mind thee of it,

For thou art framed of the firm truth of valour.

Exit Salisbury.

BEDFORD     He is as full of valour as of kindness,

15

Princely in both.

Enter the KING.

WESTMORLAND     O that we now had here

But one ten thousand of those men in England

That do no work today!

KING     What’s he that wishes so?

My cousin Westmorland? No, my fair cousin:

If we are marked to die, we are enough

20

To do our country loss, and if to live,

The fewer men, the greater share of honour.

God’s will, I pray thee wish not one man more.

By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,

Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;

25

It earns me not if men my garments wear:

Such outward things dwell not in my desires.

But if it be a sin to covet honour

I am the most offending soul alive.

No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.

30

God’s peace, I would not lose so great an honour

As one man more, methinks, would share from me,

For the best hope I have. O do not wish one more!

Rather proclaim it, Westmorland, through my host,

That he which hath no stomach to this fight,

35

Let him depart; his passport shall be made

And crowns for convoy put into his purse.

We would not die in that man’s company

That fears his fellowship to die with us.

This day is called the feast of Crispian.

40

He that outlives this day and comes safe home

Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall see this day and live old age

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

45

And say ‘Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.’

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,

And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot

But he’ll remember, with advantages,

50

What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words,

Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,

Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.

55

This story shall the good man teach his son,

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by

From this day to the ending of the world

But we in it shall be remembered,

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

60

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition.

And gentlemen in England now abed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

65

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Enter SALISBURY.

SALISBURY

My sovereign lord, bestow yourself with speed.

The French are bravely in their battles set

And will with all expedience charge on us.

70

KING     All things are ready, if our minds be so.

WESTMORLAND

Perish the man whose mind is backward now!

KING

Thou dost not wish more help from England, coz?

WESTMORLAND

God’s will, my liege, would you and I alone,

Without more help, could fight this royal battle!

75

KING

Why, now thou hast unwished five thousand men,

Which likes me better than to wish us one.

You know your places. God be with you all!

Tucket. Enter MONTJOY.

MONTJOY

Once more I come to know of thee, King Harry,

If for thy ransom thou wilt now compound,

80

Before thy most assured overthrow:

For certainly thou art so near the gulf

Thou needs must be englutted. Besides, in mercy,

The Constable desires thee thou wilt mind

Thy followers of repentance, that their souls

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May make a peaceful and a sweet retire

From off these fields where, wretches, their poor bodies

Must lie and fester.

KING     Who hath sent thee now?

MONTJOY     The Constable of France.

KING     I pray thee bear my former answer back:

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Bid them achieve me and then sell my bones.

Good God, why should they mock poor fellows thus?

The man that once did sell the lion’s skin

While the beast lived, was killed with hunting him.

A many of our bodies shall no doubt

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Find native graves, upon the which, I trust,

Shall witness live in brass of this day’s work.

And those that leave their valiant bones in France,

Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills,

They shall be famed, for there the sun shall greet them,

And draw their honours reeking up to heaven,

Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime,

The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France.

Mark then abounding valour in our English,

That being dead, like to the bullets crazing,

105

Break out into a second course of mischief,

Killing in relapse of mortality.

Let me speak proudly. Tell the Constable

We are but warriors for the working-day;

Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirched

110

With rainy marching in the painful field.

There’s not a piece of feather in our host

(Good argument, I hope, we will not fly),

And time hath worn us into slovenry.

But by the mass, our hearts are in the trim,

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And my poor soldiers tell me yet ere night

They’ll be in fresher robes, or they will pluck

The gay new coats o’er the French soldiers’ heads

And turn them out of service. If they do this,

As, if God please, they shall, my ransom then

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Will soon be levied. Herald, save thou thy labour:

Come thou no more for ransom, gentle herald.

They shall have none, I swear, but these my joints,

Which if they have as I will leave ’em them

Shall yield them little, tell the Constable.

125

MONTJOY     I shall, King Harry. And so fare thee well:

Thou never shalt hear herald any more.     Exit.

KING

I fear thou wilt once more come again for a ransom.

Enter YORK.

YORK     My lord, most humbly on my knee I beg

The leading of the vaward.

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KING

Take it, brave York. – Now, soldiers, march away,

And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day!

Exeunt.

4.4 Alarum. Excursions. Enter PISTOL, FRENCH SOLDIER and Boy.

PISTOL     Yield, cur!

FRENCH SOLDIER     Je pense que vous êtes le gentilhomme

de bonne qualité.

PISTOL     Qualité? ‘Caleno custore me’!

Art thou a gentleman? What is thy name? Discuss.

5

FRENCH SOLDIER     O Seigneur Dieu!

PISTOL     O Signieur Dew should be a gentleman. –

Perpend my words, O Signieur Dew, and mark:

O Signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox,

Except, O Signieur, thou do give to me

10

Egregious ransom.

FRENCH SOLDIER     O prenez miséricorde! Ayez pitié de moi!

PISTOL     Moy shall not serve, I will have forty moys,

Or I will fetch thy rim out at thy throat

In drops of crimson blood.

15

FRENCH SOLDIER

Est-il impossible d’échapper la force de ton bras?

PISTOL     Brass, cur?

Thou damned and luxurious mountain goat,

Offer’st me brass?

FRENCH SOLDIER     O pardonnez-moi!

20

PISTOL     Say’st thou me so? Is that a ton of moys?

Come hither, boy;

Ask me this slave in French what is his name.

BOY     Écoutez. Comment êtes-vous appelé?

FRENCH SOLDIER     Monsieur le Fer.

25

BOY     He says his name is Master Fer.

PISTOL     Master Fer? I’ll fer him, and firk him, and ferret

him. Discuss the same in French unto him.

BOY     I do not know the French for fer, and ferret and

firk.

30

PISTOL     Bid him prepare, for I will cut his throat.

FRENCH SOLDIER     Que dit-il, monsieur?

BOY     Il me commande à vous dire que vous faites vous prêt,

car ce soldat ici est disposé tout à cette heure de couper

votre gorge.

35

PISTOL     Owy, cuppele gorge, permafoy,

Peasant, unless thou give me crowns, brave crowns;

Or mangled shalt thou be by this my sword.

FRENCH SOLDIER     O je vous supplie pour l’amour de Dieu

me pardonner! Je suis le gentilhomme de bonne maison:

40

gardez ma vie, et je vous donnerai deux cents écus.

PISTOL     What are his words?

BOY     He prays you to save his life: he is a gentleman of a

good house, and for his ransom he will give you two

hundred crowns.

45

PISTOL     Tell him

My fury shall abate, and I the crowns will take.

FRENCH SOLDIER     Petit monsieur, que dit-il?

BOY     Encore qu’il est contre son jurement de pardonner

aucun prisonnier, néanmoins, pour les écus que vous lui ici

50

promettez, il est content à vous donner la liberté, le

franchisement.

FRENCH SOLDIER [to Pistol] Sur mes genoux je vous donne

mille remerciements, et je m’estime heureux que j’ai tombé

entre les mains d’un chevalier, comme je pense, le plus

55

brave, vaillant et très distingué seigneur d’Angleterre.

PISTOL     Expound unto me, boy.

BOY     He gives you upon his knees a thousand thanks,

and he esteems himself happy that he hath fallen into

the hands of one, as he thinks, the most brave,

60

valorous and thrice-worthy seigneur of England.

PISTOL     As I suck blood, I will some mercy show.

Follow me.

BOY     Suivez-vous le grand capitaine.

Exeunt Pistol and French Soldier.

I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a

65

heart; but the saying is true, ‘The empty vessel makes

the greatest sound.’ Bardolph and Nym had ten times

more valour than this roaring devil i’th’ old play, that

every vice may pare his nails with a wooden dagger,

and they are both hanged, and so would this be if he

70

durst steal anything adventurously. I must stay with

the lackeys with the luggage of our camp; the French

might have a good prey of us if he knew of it, for there

is none to guard it but boys.     Exit.

4.5 Enter Constable, ORLEANS, BOURBON, the DAUPHIN and RAMBURES.

CONSTABLE     O diable!

ORLEANS     O Seigneur! Le jour est perdu, tout est perdu!

DAUPHIN     Mort de ma vie, all is confounded, all!

Mortal reproach and everlasting shame

Sits mocking in our plumes. O méchante Fortune!

5

[A short alarum.]

Do not run away.

CONSTABLE     Why, all our ranks are broke.

DAUPHIN     O perdurable shame! Let’s stab ourselves.

Be these the wretches that we played at dice for?

ORLEANS     Is this the king we sent to for his ransom?

BOURBON

Shame, and eternal shame, nothing but shame!

10

Let us die instant. Once more back again,

And he that will not follow Bourbon now,

Let him go home and with his cap in hand

Like a base pandar hold the chamber-door

Whilst by a slave no gentler than my dog

15

His fairest daughter is contaminated.

CONSTABLE

Disorder, that hath spoiled us, friend us now!

Let us on heaps go offer up our lives.

ORLEANS     We are enough yet living in the field

To smother up the English in our throngs

20

If any order might be thought upon.

BOURBON     The devil take order now! I’ll to the throng.

Let life be short, else shame will be too long.     Exeunt.

4.6 Alarum. Enter the KING and his train, with prisoners.

KING     Well have we done, thrice-valiant countrymen,

But all’s not done: yet keep the French the field.

Exeunt soldiers and prisoners.

Enter EXETER.

EXETER

The Duke of York commends him to your majesty.

KING     Lives he, good uncle? Thrice within this hour

I saw him down, thrice up again and fighting;

5

From helmet to the spur all blood he was.

EXETER     In which array, brave soldier, doth he lie,

Larding the plain; and by his bloody side,

Yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds,

The noble Earl of Suffolk also lies.

10

Suffolk first died, and York, all haggled over,

Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteeped,

And takes him by the beard, kisses the gashes

That bloodily did yawn upon his face.

He cries aloud ‘Tarry, my cousin Suffolk!

15

My soul shall thine keep company to heaven.

Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast,

As in this glorious and well-foughten field

We kept together in our chivalry.’

Upon these words I came and cheered him up;

20

He smiled me in the face, raught me his hand,

And with a feeble gripe says ‘Dear my lord,

Commend my service to my sovereign.’

So did he turn, and over Suffolk’s neck

He threw his wounded arm and kissed his lips,

25

And so, espoused to death, with blood he sealed

A testament of noble-ending love.

The pretty and sweet manner of it forced

Those waters from me which I would have stopped,

But I had not so much of man in me,

30

And all my mother came into mine eyes

And gave me up to tears.

KING     I blame you not,

For hearing this I must perforce compound

With my full eyes, or they will issue too.     [Alarum.]

But hark, what new alarum is this same?

35

The French have reinforced their scattered men.

Then every soldier kill his prisoners!

Give the word through.     Exeunt.

4.7 Enter FLUELLEN and GOWER.

FLUELLEN     Kill the poys and the luggage! ’Tis expressly

against the law of arms. ’Tis as arrant a piece of

knavery, mark you now, as can be offert, in your

conscience now, is it not?

GOWER ’Tis certain there’s not a boy left alive, and the

5

cowardly rascals that ran from the battle ha’ done this

slaughter. Besides, they have burned and carried away

all that was in the King’s tent, wherefore the King

most worthily hath caused every soldier to cut his

prisoner’s throat. O, ’tis a gallant king!

10

FLUELLEN     Ay, he was porn at Monmouth, Captain

Gower. What call you the town’s name where

Alexander the Pig was born?

GOWER     Alexander the Great.

FLUELLEN     Why, I pray you, is not pig great? The pig,

15

or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the

magnanimous, are all one reckonings, save the phrase

is a little variations.

GOWER     I think Alexander the Great was born in

Macedon: his father was called Philip of Macedon, as

20

I take it.

FLUELLEN     I think it is in Macedon where Alexander is

porn. I tell you, Captain, if you look in the maps of the

world, I warrant you shall find, in the comparisons

between Macedon and Monmouth, that the

25

situations, look you, is both alike. There is a river in

Macedon, and there is also moreover a river at

Monmouth. It is called Wye at Monmouth, but it is

out of my prains what is the name of the other river;

but ’tis all one, ’tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers,

30

and there is salmons in both. If you mark Alexander’s

life well, Harry of Monmouth’s life is come after it

indifferent well, for there is figures in all things.

Alexander, God knows, and you know, in his rages,

and his furies, and his wraths, and his cholers, and his

35

moods, and his displeasures, and his indignations, and

also being a little intoxicate in his prains, did in his ales

and his angers, look you, kill his best friend Clytus.

GOWER     Our king is not like him in that: he never killed

any of his friends.

40

FLUELLEN     It is not well done, mark you now, to take the

tales out of my mouth ere it is made an end and

finished. I speak but in the figures and comparisons of

it. As Alexander killed his friend Clytus, being in his

ales and his cups, so also Harry Monmouth, being in

45

his right wits and his good judgements, turned away

the fat knight with the great-belly doublet: he was full

of jests, and gipes, and knaveries, and mocks; I have

forgot his name.

GOWER     Sir John Falstaff.

50

FLUELLEN     That is he. I’ll tell you, there is good men

porn at Monmouth.

GOWER     Here comes his majesty.

Alarum. Enter KING HARRY with BOURBON as his prisoner, WARWICK, GLOUCESTER, EXETER, a herald and others, with prisoners. Flourish.

KING     I was not angry since I came to France

Until this instant. Take a trumpet, herald;

55

Ride thou unto the horsemen on yon hill.

If they will fight with us bid them come down,

Or void the field: they do offend our sight.

If they’ll do neither, we will come to them

And make them skirr away as swift as stones

60

Enforced from the old Assyrian slings.

Besides, we’ll cut the throats of those we have,

And not a man of them that we shall take

Shall taste our mercy. Go and tell them so.

Enter MONTJOY.

EXETER

Here comes the herald of the French, my liege.

65

GLOUCESTER

His eyes are humbler than they used to be.

KING

How now, what means this, herald? Know’st thou not

That I have fined these bones of mine for ransom?

Com’st thou again for ransom?

MONTJOY     No, great King:

I come to thee for charitable licence

70

That we may wander o’er this bloody field

To look our dead and then to bury them;

To sort our nobles from our common men.

For many of our princes – woe the while! –

Lie drowned and soaked in mercenary blood;

75

So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs

In blood of princes; and their wounded steeds

Fret fetlock-deep in gore and with wild rage

Yerk out their armed heels at their dead masters,

Killing them twice. O give us leave, great King,

80

To view the field in safety and dispose

Of their dead bodies.

KING     I tell thee truly, herald,

I know not if the day be ours or no,

For yet a many of your horsemen peer

And gallop o’er the field.

MONTJOY     The day is yours.

85

KING     Praised be God, and not our strength, for it!

What is this castle called that stands hard by?

MONTJOY     They call it Agincourt.

KING     Then call we this the field of Agincourt,

Fought on the day of Crispin Crispian.

90

FLUELLEN     Your grandfather of famous memory, an’t

please your majesty, and your great-uncle Edward the

Plack Prince of Wales, as I have read in the chronicles,

fought a most prave pattle here in France.

KING     They did, Fluellen.

95

FLUELLEN     Your majesty says very true. If your majesty

is remembered of it, the Welshmen did good service in

a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their

Monmouth caps, which your majesty know to this

hour is an honourable badge of the service; and I do

100

believe your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek

upon Saint Tavy’s day.

KING     I wear it for a memorable honour,

For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman.

FLUELLEN     All the water in Wye cannot wash your

105

majesty’s Welsh plood out of your pody, I can tell you

that. God pless it and preserve it, as long as it pleases

his grace, and his majesty too!

KING     Thanks, good my countryman.

FLUELLEN     By Jeshu, I am your majesty’s countryman, I

110

care not who know it. I will confess it to all the world:

I need not to be ashamed of your majesty, praised be

God, so long as your majesty is an honest man.

KING     God keep me so!

Enter WILLIAMS.

Our herald go with him:

Bring me just notice of the numbers dead

115

On both our parts.

Exeunt Montjoy, Gower and the English herald.

Call yonder fellow hither.

EXETER     Soldier, you must come to the King.

KING     Soldier, why wear’st thou that glove in thy cap?

WILLIAMS     An’t please your majesty, ’tis the gage of one

that I should fight withal, if he be alive.

120

KING     An Englishman?

WILLIAMS     An’t please your majesty, a rascal that

swaggered with me last night, who if ’a live and ever

dare to challenge this glove, I have sworn to take him

a box o’th’ ear; or if I can see my glove in his cap,

125

which he swore as he was a soldier he would wear if ’a

lived, I will strike it out soundly.

KING     What think you, Captain Fluellen, is it fit this

soldier keep his oath?

FLUELLEN     He is a craven and a villain else, an’t please

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your majesty, in my conscience.

KING     It may be his enemy is a gentleman of great sort,

quite from the answer of his degree.

FLUELLEN     Though he be as good a gentleman as the

devil is, as Lucifer and Belzebub himself, it is

135

necessary, look your grace, that he keep his vow and

his oath. If he be perjured, see you now, his reputation

is as arrant a villain and a jack-sauce as ever his black

shoe trod upon God’s ground and his earth, in my

conscience, la!

140

KING     Then keep thy vow, sirrah, when thou meet’st the

fellow.

WILLIAMS     So I will, my liege, as I live.

KING     Who serv’st thou under?

WILLIAMS     Under Captain Gower, my liege.

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FLUELLEN     Gower is a good captain, and is good

knowledge and literature in the wars.

KING     Call him hither to me, soldier.

WILLIAMS     I will, my liege.     Exit.

KING     Here, Fluellen, wear thou this favour for me and

150

stick it in thy cap. When Alençon and myself were

down together I plucked this glove from his helm. If

any man challenge this he is a friend to Alençon and

an enemy to our person. If thou encounter any such,

apprehend him, an thou dost me love.

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FLUELLEN     Your grace does me as great honours as can

be desired in the hearts of his subjects. I would fain see

the man that has but two legs that shall find himself

aggriefed at this glove, that is all; I would fain but see

it once, an’t please God of his grace that I might.

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KING     Know’st thou Gower?

FLUELLEN     He is my dear friend, an’t please you.

KING     Pray thee go seek him and bring him to my tent.

FLUELLEN     I will fetch him.     Exit.

KING     My lord of Warwick and my brother Gloucester,

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Follow Fluellen closely at the heels.

The glove which I have given him for a favour

May haply purchase him a box o’th’ ear;

It is the soldier’s. I by bargain should

Wear it myself. Follow, good cousin Warwick.

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If that the soldier strike him – as I judge

By his blunt bearing he will keep his word –

Some sudden mischief may arise of it,

For I do know Fluellen valiant

And, touched with choler, hot as gunpowder,

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And quickly will return an injury.

Follow, and see there be no harm between them. –

Go you with me, uncle of Exeter.     Exeunt.

4.8 Enter GOWER and WILLIAMS.

WILLIAMS     I warrant it is to knight you, Captain.

Enter FLUELLEN.

FLUELLEN     God’s will and his pleasure, Captain, I

beseech you now, come apace to the King: there is

more good toward you, peradventure, than is in your

knowledge to dream of.

5

WILLIAMS     Sir, know you this glove?

FLUELLEN     Know the glove? I know the glove is a glove.

WILLIAMS     I know this, and thus I challenge it.

[Strikes him.]

FLUELLEN ’Sblood, an arrant traitor as any’s in the

universal world, or in France, or in England!

10

GOWER     How now, sir, you villain!

WILLIAMS     Do you think I’ll be forsworn?

FLUELLEN     Stand away, Captain Gower: I will give

treason his payment into plows, I warrant you.

WILLIAMS     I am no traitor.

15

FLUELLEN     That’s a lie in thy throat.

Enter soldiers.

I charge you in his majesty’s name apprehend him,

he’s a friend of the Duke Alençon’s.

Enter WARWICK and GLOUCESTER.

WARWICK     How now, how now, what’s the matter?

FLUELLEN     My lord of Warwick, here is, praised be God

20

for it, a most contagious treason come to light, look

you, as you shall desire in a summer’s day.

Enter the KING and EXETER.

Here is his majesty.

KING     How now, what’s the matter?

FLUELLEN     My liege, here is a villain and a traitor that,

25

look your grace, has struck the glove which your

majesty is take out of the helmet of Alençon.

WILLIAMS     My liege, this was my glove, here is the

fellow of it; and he that I gave it to in change promised

to wear it in his cap; I promised to strike him if he did.

30

I met this man with my glove in his cap, and I have

been as good as my word.

FLUELLEN     Your majesty hear now, saving your

majesty’s manhood, what an arrant, rascally, beggarly,

lousy knave it is. I hope your majesty is pear me

35

testimony, and witness, and avouchment that this is

the glove of Alençon that your majesty is give me, in

your conscience now.

KING     Give me thy glove, soldier. Look, here is the

fellow of it.

40

’Twas I indeed thou promised’st to strike,

And thou hast given me most bitter terms.

FLUELLEN     An’t please your majesty, let his neck answer

for it, if there is any martial law in the world.

KING     How canst thou make me satisfaction?

45

WILLIAMS     All offences, my lord, come from the heart:

never came any from mine that might offend your

majesty.

KING     It was our self thou didst abuse.

WILLIAMS     Your majesty came not like your self: you

50

appeared to me but as a common man – witness the

night, your garments, your lowliness; and what your

highness suffered under that shape, I beseech you take

it for your own fault and not mine, for had you been as

I took you for, I made no offence; therefore I beseech

55

your highness pardon me. [Kneels.]

KING     [Raises him.]

Here, uncle Exeter, fill this glove with crowns

And give it to this fellow. – Keep it, fellow,

And wear it for an honour in thy cap

Till I do challenge it. – Give him the crowns. –

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And Captain, you must needs be friends with him.

FLUELLEN     By this day and this light, the fellow has

mettle enough in his belly. – Hold, there is twelve

pence for you, and I pray you to serve God, and keep

you out of prawls and prabbles, and quarrels and

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dissensions, and I warrant you it is the better for you.

WILLIAMS     I will none of your money.

FLUELLEN     It is with a good will. I can tell you, it will

serve you to mend your shoes. Come, wherefore

should you be so pashful? Your shoes is not so good.

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’Tis a good shilling, I warrant you, or I will change it.

Enter Herald.

KING     Now, herald, are the dead numbered?

HERALD

Here is the number of the slaughtered French.

[Gives the King a paper.]

KING     What prisoners of good sort are taken, uncle?

EXETER

Charles, Duke of Orleans, nephew to the King;

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John, Duke of Bourbon, and Lord Boucicault.

Of other lords and barons, knights and squires,

Full fifteen hundred, besides common men.

KING     This note doth tell me of ten thousand French

That in the field lie slain. Of princes in this number

80

And nobles bearing banners, there lie dead

One hundred twenty-six. Added to these,

Of knights, esquires and gallant gentlemen,

Eight thousand and four hundred, of the which

Five hundred were but yesterday dubbed knights.

85

So that in these ten thousand they have lost

There are but sixteen hundred mercenaries;

The rest are princes, barons, lords, knights, squires

And gentlemen of blood and quality.

The names of those their nobles that lie dead:

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Charles Delabreth, High Constable of France;

Jaques of Chatillon, Admiral of France;

The Master of the Crossbows, Lord Rambures;

Great Master of France, the brave Sir Guichard Dauphin;

John, Duke of Alençon; Anthony, Duke of Brabant,

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The brother to the Duke of Burgundy;

And Edward, Duke of Bar: of lusty earls,

Grandpré and Roussi, Fauconbridge and Foix,

Beaumont and Marle, Vaudemont and Lestrelles.

Here was a royal fellowship of death.

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Where is the number of our English dead?

[Herald gives him another paper.]

Edward the Duke of York; the Earl of Suffolk;

Sir Richard Keighley; Davy Gam, esquire;

None else of name, and of all other men

But five-and-twenty. O God, thy arm was here;

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And not to us but to thy arm alone

Ascribe we all. When, without stratagem,

But in plain shock and even play of battle,

Was ever known so great and little loss

On one part and on th’other? Take it, God,

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For it is none but thine.

EXETER     ’Tis wonderful.

KING     Come, go we in procession to the village,

And be it death proclaimed through our host

To boast of this, or take that praise from God

Which is his only.

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FLUELLEN     Is it not lawful, an’t please your majesty, to

tell how many is killed?

KING     Yes, Captain, but with this acknowledgement,

That God fought for us.

FLUELLEN     Yes, in my conscience, he did us great good.

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KING     Do we all holy rites.

Let there be sung Non nobis and Te Deum,

The dead with charity enclosed in clay,

And then to Calais, and to England then,

Where ne’er from France arrived more happy men.

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Exeunt.

5.0 Enter CHORUS.

CHORUS

Vouchsafe to those that have not read the story

That I may prompt them; and of such as have,

I humbly pray them to admit th’excuse

Of time, of numbers and due course of things

Which cannot in their huge and proper life

5

Be here presented. Now we bear the King

Toward Calais: grant him there; there seen,

Heave him away upon your winged thoughts

Athwart the sea. Behold, the English beach

Pales in the flood with men, with wives and boys,

10

Whose shouts and claps outvoice the deep-mouthed sea,

Which like a mighty whiffler ’fore the King

Seems to prepare his way. So let him land,

And solemnly see him set on to London.

So swift a pace hath thought that even now

15

You may imagine him upon Blackheath,

Where that his lords desire him to have borne

His bruised helmet and his bended sword

Before him through the city. He forbids it,

Being free from vainness and self-glorious pride,

20

Giving full trophy, signal and ostent

Quite from himself to God. But now behold,

In the quick forge and working-house of thought,

How London doth pour out her citizens.

The Mayor and all his brethren in best sort,

25

Like to the senators of th’antique Rome

With the plebeians swarming at their heels,

Go forth and fetch their conquering Caesar in;

As, by a lower but as loving likelihood,

Were now the General of our gracious Empress,

30

As in good time he may, from Ireland coming,

Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,

How many would the peaceful city quit

To welcome him! Much more, and much more cause,

Did they this Harry. Now in London place him.

35

As yet the lamentation of the French

Invites the King of England’s stay at home.

The Emperor’s coming in behalf of France,

To order peace between them and omit

All the occurrences, whatever chanced,

40

Till Harry’s back return again to France.

There must we bring him; and myself have played

The interim, by remembering you ’tis past.

Then brook abridgement and your eyes advance

After your thoughts straight back again to France.

45

Exit.

5.1 Enter FLUELLEN and GOWER.

GOWER     Nay, that’s right. But why wear you your leek

today? Saint Davy’s day is past.

FLUELLEN     There is occasions and causes why and

wherefore in all things. I will tell you ass my friend,

Captain Gower. The rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy,

5

pragging knave Pistol, which you and yourself and all

the world know to be no petter than a fellow, look you

now, of no merits, he is come to me and prings me

pread and salt yesterday, look you, and bid me eat my

leek. It was in a place where I could not breed no

10

contention with him, but I will be so bold as to wear it

in my cap till I see him once again, and then I will tell

him a little piece of my desires.

Enter PISTOL.

GOWER     Why, here he comes, swelling like a turkey-

cock.

15

FLUELLEN ’Tis no matter for his swellings nor his

turkey-cocks. – God pless you, Anchient Pistol, you

scurvy, lousy knave, God pless you!

PISTOL

Ha, art thou bedlam? Dost thou thirst, base Trojan,

To have me fold up Parca’s fatal web?

20

Hence! I am qualmish at the smell of leek.

FLUELLEN     I peseech you heartily, scurvy, lousy knave,

at my desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to

eat, look you, this leek. Because, look you, you do not

love it, nor your affections and your appetites and your

25

digestions does not agree with it, I would desire you to

eat it.

PISTOL     Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.

FLUELLEN [Strikes him with a cudgel.] There is one goat

for you. Will you be so good, scald knave, as eat it?

30

PISTOL     Base Trojan, thou shalt die.

FLUELLEN     You say very true, scald knave, when God’s

will is. I will desire you to live in the meantime and eat

your victuals. [Strikes him.] Come, there is sauce for it.

You called me yesterday mountain-squire, but I will

35

make you today a squire of low degree. I pray you, fall

to; if you can mock a leek you can eat a leek.

GOWER     Enough, Captain, you have astonished him.

FLUELLEN     I say I will make him eat some part of my

leek, or I will peat his pate four days. – Bite, I pray

40

you; it is good for your green wound and your ploody

coxcomb.

PISTOL     Must I bite?

FLUELLEN     Yes, certainly, and out of doubt and out of

question too, and ambiguities.

45

PISTOL     By this leek, I will most horribly revenge –

[Fluellen threatens him.] I eat and eat – I swear –

FLUELLEN     Eat, I pray you. Will you have some more

sauce to your leek? There is not enough leek to swear

by.

50

PISTOL     Quiet thy cudgel, thou dost see I eat.

FLUELLEN     Much good do you, scald knave, heartily.

Nay, pray you, throw none away; the skin is good for

your broken coxcomb. When you take occasions to see

leeks hereafter, I pray you mock at ’em, that is all.

55

PISTOL     Good.

FLUELLEN     Ay, leeks is good. Hold you, there is a groat

to heal your pate.

PISTOL     Me a groat?

FLUELLEN     Yes, verily and in truth, you shall take it, or

60

I have another leek in my pocket which you shall eat.

PISTOL     I take thy groat in earnest of revenge.

FLUELLEN     If I owe you anything, I will pay you in

cudgels: you shall be a woodmonger, and buy nothing

of me but cudgels. God bye you, and keep you, and

65

heal your pate.     Exit.

PISTOL     All hell shall stir for this.

GOWER     Go, go, you are a counterfeit cowardly knave.

Will you mock at an ancient tradition, begun upon an

honourable respect and worn as a memorable trophy

70

of predeceased valour, and dare not avouch in your

deeds any of your words? I have seen you gleeking and

galling at this gentleman twice or thrice. You thought

because he could not speak English in the native garb

he could not therefore handle an English cudgel. You

75

find it otherwise, and henceforth let a Welsh

correction teach you a good English condition. Fare ye

well.     Exit.

PISTOL     Doth Fortune play the huswife with me now?

News have I that my Nell is dead i’th’ spital

80

Of malady of France,

And there my rendezvous is quite cut off.

Old I do wax, and from my weary limbs

Honour is cudgelled. Well, bawd I’ll turn,

And something lean to cutpurse of quick hand.

85

To England will I steal, and there I’ll steal;

And patches will I get unto these cudgelled scars,

And swear I got them in the Gallia wars.     Exit.

5.2 Enter at one door KING HENRY, EXETER, BEDFORD, WARWICK and other lords (GLOUCESTER, WESTMORLAND, CLARENCE and HUNTINGDON). At another, QUEEN ISABEL, the FRENCH KING, KATHERINE, ALICE, the DUKE OF BURGUNDY, and other French.

KING     Peace to this meeting, wherefore we are met.

Unto our brother France and to our sister

Health and fair time of day; joy and good wishes

To our most fair and princely cousin Katherine;

And, as a branch and member of this royalty,

5

By whom this great assembly is contrived,

We do salute you, Duke of Burgundy;

And, princes French and peers, health to you all.

FRENCH KING     Right joyous are we to behold your face,

Most worthy brother England; fairly met.

10

So are you, princes English, every one.

QUEEN ISABEL     So happy be the issue, brother England,

Of this good day and of this gracious meeting,

As we are now glad to behold your eyes,

Your eyes which hitherto have borne in them

15

Against the French that met them in their bent

The fatal balls of murdering basilisks.

The venom of such looks we fairly hope

Have lost their quality, and that this day

Shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.

20

KING     To cry amen to that, thus we appear.

QUEEN     ISABEL You English princes all, I do salute you.

BURGUNDY     My duty to you both, on equal love,

Great Kings of France and England. That I have laboured

With all my wits, my pains and strong endeavours,

25

To bring your most imperial majesties

Unto this bar and royal interview

Your mightiness on both parts best can witness.

Since then my office hath so far prevailed

That face to face and royal eye to eye

30

You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me

If I demand before this royal view

What rub or what impediment there is

Why that the naked, poor and mangled peace,

Dear nurse of arts, plenties and joyful births,

35

Should not in this best garden of the world,

Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?

Alas, she hath from France too long been chased,

And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,

Corrupting in it own fertility.

40

Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,

Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleached,

Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,

Put forth disordered twigs; her fallow leas

The darnel, hemlock and rank fumitory

45

Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts

That should deracinate such savagery.

The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth

The freckled cowslip, burnet and green clover,

Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,

50

Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems

But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burrs,

Losing both beauty and utility.

And as our vineyards, fallows, meads and hedges,

Defective in their natures, grow to wildness,

55

Even so our houses and our selves and children

Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,

The sciences that should become our country,

But grow like savages, as soldiers will

That nothing do but meditate on blood,

60

To swearing and stern looks, diffused attire,

And everything that seems unnatural.

Which to reduce into our former favour

You are assembled; and my speech entreats

That I may know the let why gentle peace

65

Should not expel these inconveniences

And bless us with her former qualities.

KING     If, Duke of Burgundy, you would the peace

Whose want gives growth to th’imperfections

Which you have cited, you must buy that peace

70

With full accord to all our just demands,

Whose tenors and particular effects

You have, enscheduled briefly, in your hands.

BURGUNDY     The King hath heard them, to the which as yet

There is no answer made.

KING     Well then, the peace

75

Which you before so urged lies in his answer.

FRENCH KING     I have but with a cursitory eye

O’er-glanced the articles. Pleaseth your grace

To appoint some of your council presently

To sit with us once more, with better heed

80

To re-survey them, we will suddenly

Pass our accept and peremptory answer.

KING     Brother, we shall. – Go, uncle Exeter,

And brother Clarence, and you, brother Gloucester,

Warwick and Huntingdon, go with the King,

85

And take with you free power to ratify,

Augment or alter, as your wisdoms best

Shall see advantageable for our dignity,

Anything in or out of our demands,

And we’ll consign thereto. – Will you, fair sister,

90

Go with the princes, or stay here with us?

QUEEN ISABEL

Our gracious brother, I will go with them.

Haply a woman’s voice may do some good

When articles too nicely urged be stood on.

KING     Yet leave our cousin Katherine here with us:

95

She is our capital demand, comprised

Within the fore-rank of our articles.

QUEEN ISABEL     She hath good leave.

Exeunt all but King and Katherine and Alice.

KING     Fair Katherine, and most fair,

Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms

Such as will enter at a lady’s ear

100

And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?

KATHERINE     Your majesty shall mock at me; I cannot

speak your England.

KING     O fair Katherine, if you will love me soundly with

your French heart I will be glad to hear you confess it

105

brokenly with your English tongue. Do you like me,

Kate?

KATHERINE     Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell vat is ‘like me’.

KING     An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an

angel.

110

KATHERINE     Que dit-il, que je suis semblable à les anges?

ALICE     Oui, vraiment, sauf votre grâce, ainsi dit-il.

KING     I said so, dear Katherine, and I must not blush to

affirm it.

KATHERINE     O bon Dieu, les langues des hommes sont

115

pleines de tromperies!

KING     What says she, fair one? That the tongues of men

are full of deceits?

ALICE     Oui, dat de tongues of de mans is be full of

deceits: dat is de Princess.

120

KING     The Princess is the better Englishwoman. I’faith,

Kate, my wooing is fit for thy understanding. I am

glad thou canst speak no better English, for if thou

couldst thou wouldst find me such a plain king that

thou wouldst think I had sold my farm to buy my

125

crown. I know no ways to mince it in love but directly

to say ‘I love you.’ Then if you urge me farther than to

say ‘Do you in faith?’, I wear out my suit. Give me

your answer, i’faith do, and so clap hands and a

bargain. How say you, lady?

130

KATHERINE     Sauf votre honneur, me understand vell.

KING     Marry, if you would put me to verses or to dance

for your sake, Kate, why, you undid me: for the one I

have neither words nor measure, and for the other I

have no strength in measure, yet a reasonable measure

135

in strength. If I could win a lady at leapfrog, or by

vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my back,

under the correction of bragging be it spoken, I should

quickly leap into a wife. Or if I might buffet for my

love or bound my horse for her favours, I could lay on

140

like a butcher and sit like a jackanapes, never off. But

before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly nor gasp out

my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation,

only downright oaths, which I never use till urged, nor

never break for urging. If thou canst love a fellow of

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this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth

sunburning, that never looks in his glass for love of

anything he sees there, let thine eye be thy cook. I

speak to thee plain soldier. If thou canst love me for

this, take me; if not, to say to thee that I shall die is

150

true; but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee

too. And while thou liv’st, dear Kate, take a fellow of

plain and uncoined constancy, for he perforce must do

thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other

places; for these fellows of infinite tongue, that can

155

rhyme themselves into ladies’ favours, they do always

reason themselves out again. What, a speaker is but a

prater, a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall, a

straight back will stoop, a black beard will turn white,

a curled pate will grow bald, a fair face will wither, a

160

full eye will wax hollow; but a good heart, Kate, is the

sun and the moon, or rather the sun and not the moon,

for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his

course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me;

and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king.

165

And what sayst thou then to my love? Speak, my fair,

and fairly, I pray thee.

KATHERINE     Is it possible dat I sould love de enemy of

France?

KING     No, it is not possible you should love the enemy of

170

France, Kate: but in loving me you should love the

friend of France; for I love France so well that I will

not part with a village of it; I will have it all mine: and

Kate, when France is mine, and I am yours, then yours

is France, and you are mine.

175

KATHERINE     I cannot tell vat is dat.

KING     No, Kate? I will tell thee in French, which I am

sure will hang upon my tongue like a new-married

wife about her husband’s neck, hardly to be shook off.

Je, quand j’ai le possession de France, et quand vous avez

180

le possession de moi – let me see, what then? Saint Denis

be my speed! – donc votre est France, et vous êtes mienne.

It is as easy for me, Kate, to conquer the kingdom as

to speak so much more French. I shall never move thee

in French, unless it be to laugh at me.

185

KATHERINE     Sauf votre honneur, le français que vous

parlez, il est meilleur que l’anglais lequel je parle.

KING     No, faith, is’t not, Kate; but thy speaking of my

tongue, and I thine, most truly-falsely, must needs be

granted to be much at one. But Kate, dost thou

190

understand thus much English? ‘Canst thou love me?’

KATHERINE     I cannot tell.

KING     Can any of your neighbours tell, Kate? I’ll ask

them. Come, I know thou lovest me, and at night,

when you come into your closet, you’ll question this

195

gentlewoman about me; and I know, Kate, you will to

her dispraise those parts in me that you love with your

heart: but, good Kate, mock me mercifully, the rather,

gentle Princess, because I love thee cruelly. If ever

thou be’st mine, Kate, as I have a saving faith within

200

me tells me thou shalt, I get thee with scambling, and

thou must therefore needs prove a good soldier-

breeder. Shall not thou and I, between Saint Denis

and Saint George, compound a boy, half French, half

English, that shall go to Constantinople and take the

205

Turk by the beard? Shall we not? What sayst thou, my

fair flower-de-luce?

KATHERINE     I do not know dat.

KING     No, ’tis hereafter to know, but now to promise: do

but now promise, Kate, you will endeavour for your

210

French part of such a boy, and for my English moiety

take the word of a king and a bachelor. How answer

you, la plus belle Katherine du monde, mon très cher et

divin déesse?

KATHERINE     Your majesty ’ave fausse French enough to

215

deceive de most sage demoiselle dat is en France.

KING     Now fie upon my false French! By mine honour,

in true English, I love thee, Kate: by which honour I

dare not swear thou lovest me, yet my blood begins to

flatter me that thou dost, notwithstanding the poor

220

and untempering effect of my visage. Now beshrew

my father’s ambition! He was thinking of civil wars

when he got me: therefore was I created with a

stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron, that when I

come to woo ladies I fright them. But in faith, Kate,

225

the elder I wax the better I shall appear. My comfort is

that old age, that ill layer-up of beauty, can do no more

spoil upon my face. Thou hast me, if thou hast me, at

the worst; and thou shalt wear me, if thou wear me,

better and better. And therefore tell me, most fair

230

Katherine, will you have me? Put off your maiden

blushes, avouch the thoughts of your heart with the

looks of an empress, take me by the hand, and say

‘Harry of England, I am thine’: which word thou shalt

no sooner bless mine ear withal but I will tell thee

235

aloud ‘England is thine, Ireland is thine, France is

thine, and Henry Plantagenet is thine’, who, though I

speak it before his face, if he be not fellow with the

best king, thou shalt find the best king of good fellows.

Come, your answer in broken music, for thy voice is

240

music and thy English broken. Therefore, queen of all,

Katherine, break thy mind to me in broken English:

wilt thou have me?

KATHERINE     Dat is as it sall please le roi mon père.

KING     Nay, it will please him well, Kate; it shall please

245

him, Kate.

KATHERINE     Den it sall also content me.

KING     Upon that I kiss your hand, and I call you my

Queen.

KATHERINE     Laissez, mon seigneur, laissez, laissez! Ma foi,

250

je ne veux point que vous abaissiez votre grandeur en

baisant la main d’une de votre seigneurie indigne

serviteur. Excusez-moi, je vous supplie, mon très-puissant

seigneur.

KING     Then I will kiss your lips, Kate.

255

KATHERINE     Les dames et demoiselles pour être baisées

devant leurs noces, il n’est pas la coutume de France.

KING     Madam my interpreter, what says she?

ALICE     Dat it is not de fashion pour les ladies of France –

I cannot tell vat is baiser en Anglish.

260

KING     To kiss.

ALICE     Your majesty entend bettre que moi.

KING     It is not a fashion for the maids in France to kiss

before they are married, would she say?

ALICE     Oui, vraiment.

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king O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear

Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak

list of a country’s fashion. We are the makers of

manners, Kate, and the liberty that follows our places

stops the mouth of all find-faults, as I will do yours for

270

upholding the nice fashion of your country in denying

me a kiss: therefore patiently, and yielding – [Kisses

her.] You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate: there is

more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the

tongues of the French Council, and they should

275

sooner persuade Harry of England than a general

petition of monarchs. Here comes your father.

Enter the French power and the English lords.

BURGUNDY     God save your majesty! My royal cousin,

Teach you our Princess English?

KING     I would have her learn, my fair cousin, how

280

perfectly I love her, and that is good English.

BURGUNDY     Is she not apt?

KING     Our tongue is rough, coz, and my condition is not

smooth, so that having neither the voice nor the heart

of flattery about me I cannot so conjure up the spirit

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of love in her that he will appear in his true likeness.

BURGUNDY     Pardon the frankness of my mirth if I

answer you for that. If you would conjure in her, you

must make a circle; if conjure up love in her in his true

likeness, he must appear naked and blind. Can you

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blame her then, being a maid yet rosed over with the

virgin crimson of modesty, if she deny the appearance

of a naked blind boy in her naked seeing self? It were,

my lord, a hard condition for a maid to consign to.

KING     Yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and

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enforces.

BURGUNDY     They are then excused, my lord, when they

see not what they do.

KING     Then good my lord, teach your cousin to consent

winking.

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BURGUNDY     I will wink on her to consent, my lord, if

you will teach her to know my meaning. For maids

well summered and warm kept are like flies at

Bartholomew-tide, blind, though they have their eyes;

and then they will endure handling, which before

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would not abide looking on.

KING     This moral ties me over to time and a hot

summer; and so I shall catch the fly, your cousin, in

the latter end, and she must be blind too.

BURGUNDY     As love is, my lord, before that it loves.

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KING     It is so: and you may some of you thank love for

my blindness, who cannot see many a fair French city

for one fair French maid that stands in my way.

FRENCH KING     Yes, my lord, you see them perspectively,

the cities turned into a maid; for they are all girdled

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with maiden walls that no war hath entered.

KING     Shall Kate be my wife?

FRENCH KING     So please you.

KING     I am content, so the maiden cities you talk of may

wait on her: so the maid that stood in the way for my

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wish shall show me the way to my will.

FRENCH KING     We have consented to all terms of reason.

KING     Is’t so, my lords of England?

WESTMORLAND     The King hath granted every article:

His daughter first, and in the sequel all,

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According to their firm proposed natures.

EXETER     Only he hath not yet subscribed this, where

your majesty demands that the King of France, having

any occasion to write for matter of grant, shall name

your highness in this form and with this addition:

330

[Reads.] in French, Notre très cher fils Henri, roi

d’Angleterre, héritier de France; and thus in Latin,

Praeclarissimus filius noster Henricus, rex Angliae et

haeres Franciae.

FRENCH KING     Nor this I have not, brother, so denied

335

But your request shall make me let it pass.

KING     I pray you then, in love and dear alliance,

Let that one article rank with the rest,

And thereupon give me your daughter.

FRENCH KING

Take her, fair son, and from her blood raise up

340

Issue to me, that the contending kingdoms

Of France and England, whose very shores look pale

With envy of each other’s happiness,

May cease their hatred, and this dear conjunction

Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord

345

In their sweet bosoms, that never war advance

His bleeding sword ’twixt England and fair France.

LORDS     Amen.

KING     Now welcome, Kate, and bear me witness all

That here I kiss her as my sovereign queen.

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[Kisses her.]     [Flourish.]

QUEEN ISABEL     God, the best maker of all marriages,

Combine your hearts in one, your realms in one!

As man and wife, being two, are one in love,

So be there ’twixt your kingdoms such a spousal

That never may ill office or fell jealousy,

355

Which troubles oft the bed of blessed marriage,

Thrust in between the paction of these kingdoms

To make divorce of their incorporate league;

That English may as French, French Englishmen,

Receive each other. God speak this amen.

360

ALL     Amen.

KING     Prepare we for our marriage; on which day,

My lord of Burgundy, we’ll take your oath,

And all the peers’, for surety of our leagues.

Then shall I swear to Kate, and you to me,

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And may our oaths well kept and prosperous be!

Sennet. Exeunt.

EPILOGUE

Enter CHORUS.

CHORUS     Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,

Our bending author hath pursued the story,

In little room confining mighty men,

Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.

Small time, but in that small most greatly lived

5

This star of England. Fortune made his sword

By which the world’s best garden he achieved,

And of it left his son imperial lord.

Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crowned King

Of France and England, did this king succeed,

10

Whose state so many had the managing

That they lost France and made his England bleed,

Which oft our stage hath shown; and for their sake

In your fair minds let this acceptance take.     Exit.

King Henry VI, Part 1

First published as the sixth of the histories in the Folio of 1623, King Henry VI, Part 1 may have been written as early as 1589: more certainly it was ready for the stage by 1592. A play entitled ‘harey the vj’ was performed at the Rose on 3 March 1592 by Lord Strange’s Men, and it is usually assumed that it was this play. Later that year, Thomas Nashe remarked upon the play’s extraordinary appeal, writing of how ‘the brave Talbot (the terror of the French)’ triumphed in the theatre, where ‘ten thousand spectators at least (at several times) … imagine they behold him fresh bleeding’.

For all its early success, since 1734, when Lewis Theobald asserted that it was not ‘entirely of his writing’, scholars have wondered if the play was solely the product of Shakespeare’s pen. Like the present Arden editor, Edward Burns, many have come to believe that it was a collaboration – as were so many Elizabethan plays – written by Shakespeare with Nashe and two other dramatists, perhaps Robert Greene and George Peele, in spite of the fact that Heminges and Condell, who included it in the Folio, seem to have regarded it as Shakespeare’s alone. In any case, the question of authorship can make little difference to our sense of the work.

The three plays on Henry VI are the first of the history plays which, along with King Richard III, treat the end of the Plantagenet dynasty. The political and military achievements of Henry V are undone by the civil dissension that follows his death, as his son, who succeeded as a nine-month- old infant, proves unable to unify the country. King Henry VI, Part 1 moves from the funeral of Henry V in 1422 to the impending marriage of Henry VI to Margaret of Anjou, covering some twenty-three years (actually the play covers more than thirty, as the death of Talbot took place only in 1453, eight years after the last event in the play), proceeding episodically across time and space to tell its tale of England weakened by disunity and faction at home.

As Nashe’s comment reveals, the play’s most powerful source of appeal was the character of Talbot, the ‘terror of the French’, an exemplary hero, who stands as an ideal of physical and moral excellence. His very name inspires his men. ‘A Talbot! A Talbot!’, they cry, rushing ‘into the bowels of the battle’. His rigid commitment to chivalric values, however, prevents him from fleeing the battlefield in a lost cause, prematurely depriving England of its greatest hero and also of Talbot’s only son (another of Shakespeare’s changes of history; in fact Talbot was succeeded as Earl of Shrewsbury by a surviving son, also named John). Thus, though the play ends with an English triumph, the nation is weakened and made vulnerable, not only by Talbot’s death but by the political faction that was its direct cause.

The play’s other memorable character is Joan of Arc. She is Talbot’s chief rival, heroine of the French, though in English eyes she is no holy maid but something monstrous, at once erotic and demonic. That she is French, but also that she is an assertive and powerful woman, marks her as unnatural; her presence is thoroughly discredited, identified entirely with its challenge to English virtue – though the history plays’ readiness to demonize all women of action perhaps suggests that it is as much an insecure masculinity that is at risk.

Henry VI himself is of strangely little dramatic consequence in the play. He does not appear on stage until 3.1 – no doubt this is, in part, because he was less than one year old when the action begins – but the virtual absence from this play of the King whose name it bears is arguably its most telling dramatic point, unmistakable evidence of the power vacuum that each of the squabbling factions seeks to fill.

The play was an early success on stage, performed at least fifteen times in 1592 alone, but it has been seldom staged since. A performance at Stratford in 1889 advertised itself as the first since Shakespeare’s time, and modern audiences rarely have an opportunity to see it whole. If seen at all, it is often as a much reduced element in adaptations and conflations of the three parts of King Henry VI, as in John Barton’s two-part Wars of the Roses (1963), or in the two-part adaptation by Charles Wood for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s trilogy of The Plantagenets in 1988. In 1977, however, Terry Hands directed all three plays in sequence at Stratford-upon- Avon, and in 2000–1 the RSC staged them as part of its ambitious series ‘This England, the Histories’, comprising all the histories from Richard II to Richard III in chronological order.

The 2000 Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

THE HOUSES OF YORK AND LANCASTER

19 Genealogical table showing the houses of York and Lancaster

LIST OF ROLES

LONDON AND THE ENGLISH COURT

Duke of GLOUCESTER

Protector of the realm, in the minority of the King

Duke of EXETER

Earl of WARWICK

Bishop of WINCHESTER

Henry Beaufort, great-uncle to the King, and later Cardinal

Duke of SOMERSET

WOODVILLE

Lieutenant of the Tower of London

RICHARD Plantagenet

Later Duke of YORK, and Regent of France

Duke of SUFFOLK

(William de la Pole)

VERNON

a gentleman of the Inns of Court, who joins the party of Richard Plantagenet

Edmund MORTIMER

KING Henry the Sixth

BASSET

a follower of the Duke of Somerset

Three MESSENGERS

to the funeral of Henry V

Two WARDERS

of the Tower of London

SERVINGMEN

of Winchester and Gloucester

MAYOR

of London

His OFFICERS

LAWYER

of the Temple

GAOLERS

of Edmund Mortimer

LEGATE

from the Pope to Winchester

Ambassadors to the English court

THE ENGLISH ARMY IN FRANCE

Duke of BEDFORD

Regent of France

Earl of SALISBURY

Sir John TALBOT

later Earl of Shrewsbury

Sir Thomas GARGRAVE

Sir William GLANSDALE

Sir John FASTOLFE

Sir William LUCY

JOHN

Talbot’s son

SOLDIER

at the siege of Orleans

MESSENGER

to Sir John Talbot

Talbot’s CAPTAIN

MESSENGER

to York

SERVANT

to Sir John Talbot

Soldiers, two Attendants on Bedford

THE FRENCH

CHARLES, the Dolphin

crowned by the French as King Charles VII,

of France

a title unrecognised by the English

Duke of ALENÇON

REIGNIER

Duke of Anjou and Maine, King of Naples and Jerusalem

BASTARD of Orleans

JOAN Puzel

a peasant

Duke of BURGUNDY

COUNTESS of Auvergne

MARGARET

daughter of King Reignier

Master GUNNER of Orleans

Master Gunner’s BOY

his son

SERGEANT

of a band

Two SENTINELS

before Orleans

MESSENGER

to Talbot from the Countess of Auvergne

PORTER

to the Countess of Auvergne

Four SOLDIERS

at Rouen

WATCH

of the City of Rouen

Governor of Paris

CAPTAIN

of the French forces in Bordeaux

SCOUT

SHEPHERD

who claims to be Joan Puzel’s father

Soldiers, Fiends, Herald

1.1 Dead march. Enter the funeral of King Henry the Fifth, attended on by the Duke of BEDFORD, Regent of France; the Duke of GLOUCESTER, Protector; the Duke of EXETER; the Earl of WARWICK; the Bishop of WINCHESTER; and the Duke of SOMERSET.

BEDFORD

Hung be the heavens with black. Yield day to night.

Comets, importing change of times and states,

Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky

And with them scourge the bad revolting stars

That have consented unto Henry’s death –

5

King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long.

England ne’er lost a king of so much worth.

GLOUCESTER     England ne’er had a king until his time.

Virtue he had, deserving to command,

His brandished sword did blind men with his beams,

10

His arms spread wider than a dragon’s wings:

His sparkling eyes, replete with wrathful fire,

More dazzled and drove back his enemies

Than midday sun fierce bent against their faces.

What should I say? His deeds exceed all speech;

15

He ne’er lift up his hand but conquered.

EXETER

We mourn in black, why mourn we not in blood?

Henry is dead, and never shall revive:

Upon a wooden coffin we attend,

And death’s dishonourable victory

20

We with our stately presence glorify,

Like captives bound to a triumphant car.

What? Shall we curse the planets of mishap

That plotted thus our glory’s overthrow?

Or shall we think the subtle-witted French

25

Conjurers and sorcerers, that, afraid of him,

By magic verses have contrived his end?

WINCHESTER

He was a king, blest of the King of kings.

Unto the French the dreadful Judgement Day

So dreadful will not be as was his sight.

30

The battles of the Lord of Hosts he fought;

The Church’s prayers made him so prosperous.

GLOUCESTER

The Church? Where is it? Had not churchmen

prayed,

His thread of life had not so soon decayed.

None do you like but an effeminate prince,

35

Whom like a schoolboy you may overawe.

WINCHESTER

Gloucester, whate’er we like, thou art Protector,

And lookest to command the prince and realm.

Thy wife is proud, she holdeth thee in awe,

More than God or religious churchmen may.

40

GLOUCESTER

Name not religion, for thou lov’st the flesh,

And ne’er throughout the year to church thou goest –

Except it be to pray against thy foes.

BEDFORD

Cease, cease these jars and rest your minds in peace.

Let’s to the altar. Heralds wait on us.

45

Instead of gold we’ll offer up our arms –

Since arms avail not now that Henry’s dead.

Posterity, await for wretched years

When at their mothers’ moistened eyes babes shall suck,

Our isle be made a nourish of salt tears,

50

And none but women left to wail the dead.

Henry the Fifth, thy ghost I invocate:

Prosper this realm, keep it from civil broils,

Combat with adverse planets in the heavens;

A far more glorious star thy soul will make

55

Than Julius Caesar, or bright –

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     My honourable lords, health to you all.

Sad tidings bring I to you out of France,

Of loss, of slaughter and discomfiture.

Guyenne, Champagne, Reims, Rouen, Orleans,

60

Paris, Gisors, Poitiers are all quite lost.

BEDFORD

What sayest thou, man, before dead Henry’s corse?

Speak softly, or the loss of those great towns

Will make him burst his lead and rise from death.

GLOUCESTER     Is Paris lost? Is Rouen yielded up?

65

If Henry were recalled to life again

These news would cause him once more yield the ghost.

EXETER

How were they lost? What treachery was used?

MESSENGER

No treachery, but want of men and money.

Amongst the soldiers this is muttered:

70

That here you maintain several factions,

And whilst a field should be dispatched and fought

You are disputing of your generals.

One would have lingering wars, with little cost.

Another would fly swift, but wanteth wings.

75

A third thinks, without expense at all,

By guileful fair words peace may be obtained.

Awake, awake, English nobility,

Let not sloth dim your honours new begot;

Cropped are the flower-de-luces in your arms;

80

Of England’s coat one half is cut away. Exit.

EXETER     Were our tears wanting to this funeral

These tidings would call forth her flowing tides.

BEDFORD

Me they concern; regent I am of France.

Give me my steeled coat. I’ll fight for France.

85

Away with these disgraceful wailing robes;

Wounds will I lend the French, instead of eyes,

To weep their intermissive miseries.

Enter to them another Messenger.

2 MESSENGER

Lords, view these letters, full of bad mischance.

France is revolted from the English quite,

90

Except some petty towns of no import.

The Dolphin Charles is crowned king in Reims:

The Bastard of Orleans with him is joined.

Reignier, Duke of Anjou, doth take his part.

The Duke of Alençon flieth to his side.     Exit.

EXETER     The Dolphin crowned king? All fly to him?

96

O whither shall we fly from this reproach?

GLOUCESTER

We will not fly, but to our enemies’ throats.

Bedford, if thou be slack, I’ll fight it out.

BEDFORD

Gloucester, why doubt’st thou of my forwardness?

100

An army have I mustered in my thoughts,

Wherewith already France is overrun.

Enter another Messenger.

3 MESSENGER

My gracious lords – to add to your laments,

Wherewith you now bedew King Henry’s hearse,

I must inform you of a dismal fight

105

Betwixt the stout Lord Talbot and the French.

WINCHESTER     What? Wherein Talbot overcame, is’t so?

3 MESSENGER

O no: wherein Lord Talbot was o’erthrown.

The circumstance I’ll tell you at more large.

The tenth of August last, this dreadful lord

110

Retiring from the siege of Orleans,

Having full scarce six thousand in his troop,

By three and twenty thousand of the French

Was round incompassed and set upon.

No leisure had he to enrank his men.

115

He wanted pikes to set before his archers,

Instead whereof sharp stakes plucked out of hedges

They pitched in the ground confusedly,

To keep the horsemen off from breaking in.

More than three hours the fight continued,

120

Where valiant Talbot, above human thought,

Enacted wonders with his sword and lance.

Hundreds he sent to hell, and none durst stand him.

Here, there and everywhere enraged he slew.

The French exclaimed the devil was in arms,

125

All the whole army stood agazed on him.

His soldiers, spying his undaunted spirit,

‘A Talbot, a Talbot’ cried out amain,

And rushed into the bowels of the battle.

Here had the conquest fully been sealed up,

130

If Sir John Fastolfe had not played the coward.

He being in the vanguard, placed behind

With purpose to relieve and follow them,

Cowardly fled, not having struck one stroke.

Hence grew the general wrack and massacre.

135

Enclosed were they with their enemies.

A base villain, to win the Dolphin’s grace,

Thrust Talbot with a spear into the back –

Whom all France, with their chief assembled strength,

Durst not presume to look once in the face.

140

BEDFORD     Is Talbot slain? Then I will slay myself,

For living idly here in pomp and ease

Whilst such a worthy leader, wanting aid,

Unto his dastard foemen is betrayed.

3 MESSENGER     O no, he lives, but is took prisoner,

145

And Lord Scales with him, and Lord Hungerford:

Most of the rest slaughtered, or took likewise.

BEDFORD     His ransom there is none but I shall pay.

I’ll hale the Dolphin headlong from his throne;

His crown shall be the ransom of my friend.

150

Four of their lords I’ll change for one of ours.

Farewell, my masters. To my task will I.

Bonfires in France forthwith I am to make,

To keep our great Saint George’s feast withal.

Ten thousand soldiers with me I will take,

155

Whose bloody deeds shall make all Europe quake.

3 MESSENGER

So you had need, for Orleans is besieged.

The English army is grown weak and faint:

The Earl of Salisbury craveth supply

And hardly keeps his men from mutiny,

160

Since they, so few, watch such a multitude.     Exit.

EXETER     Remember, lords, your oaths to Henry sworn:

Either to quell the Dolphin utterly,

Or bring him in obedience to your yoke.

BEDFORD     I do remember it, and here take my leave,

165

To go about my preparation.     Exit.

GLOUCESTER     I’ll to the Tower with all the haste I can,

To view th’artillery and munition,

And then I will proclaim young Henry king.     Exit.

EXETER     To Eltham will I, where the young King is,

170

Being ordained his special governor,

And for his safety there I’ll best devise.     Exit.

WINCHESTER

Each hath his place and function to attend.

I am left out; for me nothing remains.

But long I will not be Jack out of office.

175

The King from Eltham I intend to steal,

And sit at chiefest stern of public weal.

Exit Winchester one way. Exit the funeral

another way, with Warwick and Somerset.

1.2 Sound a flourish. Enter CHARLES the Dolphin, ALENÇON and REIGNIER, marching with drum and soldiers.

CHARLES     Mars his true moving, even as in the heavens

So in the earth, to this day is not known.

Late did he shine upon the English side:

Now we are victors – upon us he smiles.

What towns of any moment but we have?

5

At pleasure here we lie near Orleans:

Otherwhiles, the famished English, like pale ghosts,

Faintly besiege us one hour in a month.

ALENÇON

They want their porridge and their fat bull-beeves:

Either they must be dieted like mules

10

And have their provender tied to their mouths,

Or piteous they will look, like drowned mice.

REIGNIER     Let’s raise the siege: why live we idly here?

Talbot is taken, whom we wont to fear.

Remaineth none but mad-brained Salisbury,

15

And he may well in fretting spend his gall;

Nor men nor money hath he to make war.

CHARLES     Sound, sound alarum, we will rush on them.

Now for the honour of the forlorn French:

Him I forgive my death that killeth me

20

When he sees me go back one foot, or fly.     Exeunt.

Here alarum. They are beaten back by the English, with

great loss. Enter CHARLES, ALENÇON and REIGNIER.

CHARLES     Who ever saw the like? What men have I?

Dogs, cowards, dastards! I would ne’er have fled,

But that they left me midst my enemies.

REIGNIER

Salisbury is a desperate homicide;

25

He fighteth as one weary of his life.

The other lords, like lions wanting food,

Do rush upon us as their hungry prey.

ALENÇON Froissart, a countryman of ours, records

England all Olivers and Rolands bred

30

During the time Edward the Third did reign.

More truly now may this be verified,

For none but Samsons and Goliases

It sendeth forth to skirmish. One to ten?

Lean raw-boned rascals – who would e’er suppose

35

They had such courage and audacity?

CHARLES

Let’s leave this town, for they are hare-brained slaves,

And hunger will enforce them to be more eager.

Of old I know them; rather with their teeth

The walls they’ll tear down than forsake the siege.

40

REIGNIER     I think by some odd gimmers or device

Their arms are set, like clocks, still to strike on;

Else ne’er could they hold out so as they do.

By my consent, we’ll even let them alone.

ALENÇON Be it so.

45

Enter the BASTARD of Orleans.

BASTARD

Where’s the Prince Dolphin? I have news for him.

CHARLES     Bastard of Orleans, thrice welcome to us.

BASTARD

Methinks your looks are sad, your cheer appalled.

Hath the late overthrow wrought this offence?

Be not dismayed, for succour is at hand:

50

A holy maid hither with me I bring,

Which by a vision sent to her from heaven

Ordained is to raise this tedious siege

And drive the English forth the bounds of France.

The spirit of deep prophecy she hath,

55

Exceeding the nine sibyls of old Rome:

What’s past and what’s to come she can descry.

Speak, shall I call her in? Believe my words,

For they are certain and unfallible.

CHARLES     Go call her in: but first – to try her skill –

60

Reignier, stand thou as Dolphin in my place.

Question her proudly, let thy looks be stern.

By this means shall we sound what skill she hath.

Enter JOAN Puzel.

REIGNIER

Fair maid, is’t thou wilt do these wondrous feats?

JOAN     Reignier, is’t thou that thinkest to beguile me?

65

Where is the Dolphin? Come, come from behind.

I know thee well, though never seen before.

Be not amazed, there’s nothing hid from me.

In private will I talk with thee apart.

Stand back, you lords, and give us leave awhile.

70

REIGNIER     She takes upon her bravely at first dash.

JOAN     Dolphin, I am by birth a shepherd’s daughter,

My wit untrained in any kind of art;

Heaven and Our Lady gracious hath it pleased

To shine on my contemptible estate.

75

Lo, whilst I waited on my tender lambs

And to sun’s parching heat displayed my cheeks,

God’s mother deigned to appear to me

And, in a vision full of majesty,

Willed me to leave my base vocation

80

And free my country from calamity:

Her aid she promised and assured success.

In complete glory she revealed herself.

And, whereas I was black and swart before,

With those clear rays which she infused on me,

85

That beauty am I blest with, which you may see.

Ask me what question thou canst possible

And I will answer unpremeditated;

My courage try by combat, if thou dar’st,

And thou shalt find that I exceed my sex.

90

Resolve on this: thou shalt be fortunate,

If thou receive me for thy warlike mate.

CHARLES

Thou hast astonished me with thy high terms.

Only this proof I’ll of thy valour make –

In single combat thou shalt buckle with me,

95

And, if thou vanquishest, thy words are true;

Otherwise I renounce all confidence.

JOAN     I am prepared. Here is my keen-edged sword,

Decked with five flower-de-luces on each side,

The which at Touraine, in Saint Katherine’s

churchyard,

100

Out of a great deal of old iron, I chose forth.

CHARLES

Then come, o’ God’s name. I fear no woman.

JOAN     And while I live I’ll ne’er fly from a man.

[Here they fight and Joan Puzel overcomes.]

CHARLES     Stay, stay thy hands. Thou art an Amazon

And fightest with the sword of Deborah.

105

JOAN     Christ’s mother helps me, else I were too weak.

CHARLES

Whoe’er helps thee, ’tis thou that must help me.

Impatiently I burn with thy desire,

My heart and hands thou hast at once subdued.

Excellent Puzel, if thy name be so,

110

Let me thy servant and not sovereign be.

’Tis the French Dolphin sueth to thee thus.

JOAN     I must not yield to any rights of love,

For my profession’s sacred from above:

When I have chased all thy foes from hence,

115

Then will I think upon a recompense.

CHARLES

Meantime look gracious on thy prostrate thrall.

REIGNIER     My lord, methinks, is very long in talk.

ALENÇON

Doubtless he shrives this woman to her smock –

Else ne’er could he so long protract his speech.

120

REIGNIER

Shall we disturb him, since he keeps no mean?

ALENÇON

He may mean more than we poor men do know:

These women are shrewd tempters with their tongues.

REIGNIER

My lord, where are you? What devise you on?

Shall we give o’er Orleans, or no?

125

JOAN     Why no, I say. Distrustful recreants!

Fight till the last gasp. I’ll be your guard.

CHARLES     What she says I’ll confirm. We’ll fight it out.

JOAN     Assigned am I to be the English scourge.

This night the siege assuredly I’ll raise.

130

Expect Saint Martin’s summer, halcyons’ days,

Since I have entered into these wars.

Glory is like a circle in the water,

Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself

Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.

135

With Henry’s death the English circle ends:

Dispersed are the glories it included.

Now am I like that proud insulting ship

Which Caesar and his fortune bare at once.

CHARLES     Was Mahomet inspired with a dove?

140

Thou with an eagle art inspired then.

Helen, the mother of great Constantine,

Nor yet Saint Philip’s daughters were like thee.

Bright star of Venus, fallen down on the earth,

How may I reverently worship thee enough?

145

ALENÇON Leave off delays, and let us raise the siege.

REIGNIER

Woman, do what thou canst to save our honours,

Drive them from Orleans and be immortalized.

CHARLES     Presently we’ll try. Come, let’s away about it.

No prophet will I trust, if she prove false. Exeunt.

150

1.3 Enter GLOUCESTER, with his Servingmen in blue coats.

GLOUCESTER     I am come to survey the Tower this day:

Since Henry’s death I fear there is conveyance.

Where be these warders that they wait not here?

Open the gates, ’tis Gloucester that calls.

Enter two Warders on the walls.

1 WARDER     Who’s there, that knocks so imperiously?

5

1 SERVINGMAN     It is the noble Duke of Gloucester.

2 WARDER     Whoe’er he be, you may not be let in.

1 SERVINGMAN

Villains, answer you so the Lord Protector?

1 WARDER     The Lord protect him – so we answer him.

We do no otherwise than we are willed.

10

GLOUCESTER

Who willed you? Or whose will stands but mine?

There’s none Protector of the realm, but I.

Break up the gates, I’ll be your warrantize;

Shall I be flouted thus by dunghill grooms?

[Gloucester’s men rush at the Tower gates, and

Woodville, the Lieutenant, speaks within.]

WOODVILLE

What noise is this? What traitors have we here?

15

GLOUCESTER     Lieutenant, is it you whose voice I hear?

Open the gates, here’s Gloucester that would enter.

WOODVILLE

Have patience, noble duke, I may not open;

The Cardinal of Winchester forbids.

From him I have express commandment

20

That thou nor none of thine shall be let in.

GLOUCESTER

Faint-hearted Woodville, prizest him ’fore me?

Arrogant Winchester, that haughty prelate

Whom Henry, our late sovereign, ne’er could brook?

Thou art no friend to God, or to the King:

25

Open the gates, or I’ll shut thee out shortly.

SERVINGMEN     Open the gates unto the Lord Protector,

Or we’ll burst them open, if that you come not quickly.

Enter, to the Protector at the Tower gates, WINCHESTER, and his men in tawny coats.

WINCHESTER

How now, ambitious Humphrey, what means this?

GLOUCESTER

Peeled priest, dost thou command me to be shut out?

30

WINCHESTER     I do, thou most usurping proditor –

And not Protector – of the King, or realm.

GLOUCESTER     Stand back, thou manifest conspirator,

Thou that contrived’st to murder our dead lord,

Thou that giv’st whores indulgences to sin;

35

I’ll canvas thee in thy broad cardinal’s hat

If thou proceed in this thy insolence.

WINCHESTER

Nay, stand thou back – I will not budge a foot.

This be Damascus, be thou cursed Cain,

To slay thy brother Abel, if thou wilt.

40

GLOUCESTER

I will not slay thee, but I’ll drive thee back:

Thy scarlet robes as a child’s bearing cloth

I’ll use, to carry thee out of this place.

WINCHESTER

Do what thou dar’st, I beard thee to thy face.

GLOUCESTER

What? Am I dared, and bearded to my face?

45

Draw, men, for all this privileged place.

Blue coats to tawny coats. Priest, beware your beard;

I mean to tug it and to cuff you soundly.

Under my feet I stamp thy cardinal’s hat.

In spite of Pope or dignities of Church,

50

Here by the cheeks I’ll drag thee up and down.

WINCHESTER

Gloucester, thou wilt answer this before the Pope.

GLOUCESTER     Winchester goose, I cry, a rope, a rope.

Now beat them hence – why do you let them stay?

Thee I’ll chase hence, thou wolf in sheep’s array.

55

Out, tawny coats – out, scarlet hypocrite.

Here Gloucester’s men beat out the Cardinal’s men, and enter in the hurly-burly the Mayor of London and his Officers.

MAYOR

Fie, lords, that you, being supreme magistrates,

Thus contumeliously should break the peace.

GLOUCESTER

Peace, mayor, thou knowst little of my wrongs.

Here’s Beaufort, that regards nor God nor king,

60

Hath here distrained the Tower to his use.

WINCHESTER     Here’s Gloucester, a foe to citizens,

One that still motions war and never peace,

O’ercharging your free purses with large fines –

That seeks to overthrow religion,

65

Because he is Protector of the realm,

And would have armour here out of the Tower,

To crown himself king and suppress the Prince.

GLOUCESTER

I will not answer thee with words, but blows.

[Here they skirmish again.]

MAYOR     Naught rests for me, in this tumultuous strife,

70

But to make open proclamation.

Come, officer, as loud as e’er thou canst.

[The Officer gives the cry:]

OFFICER All manner of men, assembled here in arms this day

against God’s peace and the King’s, we charge and command

you, in his Highness’s name, to repair to your several dwelling

75

places, and not to wear, handle or use any sword, weapon or

dagger henceforward, upon pain of death.

GLOUCESTER     Cardinal, I’ll be no breaker of the law:

But we shall meet and break our minds at large.

WINCHESTER

Gloucester, we’ll meet to thy cost, be sure.

80

Thy heart-blood I will have for this day’s work.

MAYOR     I’ll call for clubs, if you will not away:

[to the audience] This Cardinal’s more haughty than the devil.

GLOUCESTER

Mayor, farewell: thou dost but what thou mayst.

WINCHESTER     Abominable Gloucester, guard thy head,

85

For I intend to have it ere long.

Exeunt Winchester, Gloucester and their men.

MAYOR     See the coast cleared, and then we will depart.

Good God, these nobles should such stomachs bear!

I myself fight not once in forty year.     Exeunt.

1.4 Enter the Master Gunner of Orleans and his Boy.

GUNNER     Sirrah, thou knowst how Orleans is besieged,

And how the English have the suburbs won.

BOY     Father, I know, and oft have shot at them –

Howe’er, unfortunate, I missed my aim.

GUNNER     But now thou shalt not: be thou ruled by me.

5

Chief master gunner am I of this town –

Something I must do to procure me grace.

The Prince’s espials have informed me

How the English, in the suburbs close entrenched,

Went through a secret grate of iron bars

10

In yonder tower, to overpeer the city

And thence discover how with most advantage

They may vex us with shot or with assault.

To intercept this inconvenience,

A piece of ordnance ’gainst it I have placed,

15

And even these three days have I watched if I could see them.

Now do thou watch, for I can stay no longer.

If thou spiest any, run and bring me word,

And thou shalt find me at the Governor’s.

BOY     Father, I warrant you, take you no care.

20

Exit Gunner.

I’ll never trouble you, if I may spy them.     Exit.

Enter SALISBURY and TALBOT on the turrets, with others, Sir Thomas GARGRAVE and Sir William GLANSDALE.

SALISBURY     Talbot, my life, my joy, again returned?

How wert thou handled, being prisoner?

Or by what means got’st thou to be released?

Discourse, I prithee, on this turret’s top.

25

TALBOT     The Earl of Bedford had a prisoner

Called the brave Lord Ponton de Saintrailles:

For him was I exchanged and ransomed.

But with a baser man of arms by far,

Once, in contempt, they would have bartered me:

30

Which I, disdaining, scorned and craved death,

Rather than I would be so peeled esteemed.

In fine, redeemed I was as I desired.

But O, the treacherous Fastolfe wounds my heart,

Whom with my bare fists I would execute,

35

If I now had him brought into my power.

SALISBURY

Yet tellest thou not how thou wert entertained.

TALBOT

With scoffs and scorns and contumelious taunts.

In open market-place produced they me

To be a public spectacle to all.

40

‘Here’, said they, ‘is the terror of the French,

The scarecrow that affrights our children so’.

Then broke I from the officers that led me

And with my nails digged stones out of the ground

To hurl at the beholders of my shame.

45

My grisly countenance made others fly;

None durst come near for fear of sudden death.

In iron walls they deemed me not secure:

So great fear of my name ’mongst them were spread

That they supposed I could rend bars of steel

50

And spurn in pieces posts of adamant.

Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had,

That walked about me every minute while,

And if I did but stir out of my bed

Ready they were to shoot me to the heart.

55

Enter the Boy with a linstock lit and burning, and passes over the stage.

SALISBURY

I grieve to hear what torments you endured;

But we will be revenged sufficiently.

Now it is supper-time in Orleans.

Here, through this grate, I count each one

And view the Frenchmen how they fortify.

60

Let us look in: the sight will much delight thee.

Sir Thomas Gargrave and Sir William Glansdale,

Let me have your express opinions –

Where is best place to make our battery next?

GARGRAVE

I think at the north gate, for there stands lords.

65

GLANSDALE     And I, here, at the bulwark of the bridge.

TALBOT     For aught I see, this city must be famished,

Or with light skirmishes enfeebled.

[Here they shoot from offstage, and Salisbury

and Gargrave fall down.]

SALISBURY

O Lord, have mercy on us, wretched sinners.

GARGRAVE     O Lord, have mercy on me, woeful man.

70

TALBOT

What chance is this that suddenly hath crossed us?

Speak, Salisbury; at least, if thou canst, speak.

How far’st thou, mirror of all martial men?

One of thy eyes and thy cheek’s side struck off?

Accursed tower, accursed fatal hand,

75

That hath contrived this woeful tragedy.

In thirteen battles Salisbury o’ercame:

Henry the Fifth he first trained to the wars.

Whilst any trump did sound or drum struck up,

His sword did ne’er leave striking in the field.

80

Yet liv’st thou, Salisbury? Though thy speech doth fail,

One eye thou hast to look to heaven for grace.

The sun with one eye vieweth all the world.

Heaven, be thou gracious to none alive,

If Salisbury wants mercy at thy hands.

85

Bear hence his body – I will help to bury it.

Sir Thomas Gargrave, hast thou any life?

Speak unto Talbot, nay, look up to him.

Salisbury, cheer thy spirit with this comfort;

Thou shalt not die whiles –

90

He beckons with his hand and smiles on me

As who should say, ‘When I am dead and gone,

Remember to avenge me on the French’.

Plantagenet, I will; and like thee, Nero,

Play on the lute, beholding the towns burn:

95

Wretched shall France be only in my name.

[Here an alarum, and it thunders and lightens.]

What stir is this? What tumult’s in the heavens?

Whence cometh this alarum and the noise?

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER

My lord, my lord, the French have gathered head.

The Dolphin, with one Joan de Puzel joined –

100

A holy prophetess, new risen up –

Is come with a great power to raise the siege.

[Here Salisbury lifteth himself up, and groans.]

TALBOT     Hear, hear, how dying Salisbury doth groan:

It irks his heart he cannot be revenged.

Frenchmen, I’ll be a Salisbury to you.

105

Puzel or pussel, Dolphin or dogfish,

Your hearts I’ll stamp out with my horse’s heels

And make a quagmire of your mingled brains.

Convey me Salisbury into his tent –

And then we’ll try what these dastard Frenchmen

dare.     Alarum. Exeunt.

110

1.5 Here an alarum again, and TALBOT pursueth CHARLES the Dolphin, and driveth him; then enter JOAN Puzel driving Englishmen before her. Then enter TALBOT.

TALBOT

Where is my strength, my valour and my force?

Our English troops retire, I cannot stay them;

A woman clad in armour chaseth them.

[Puzel approaches him.]

Here, here she comes. I’ll have a bout with thee –

Devil, or devil’s dam, I’ll conjure thee.

5

Blood will I draw on thee – thou art a witch –

And straightway give thy soul to him thou serv’st.

JOAN     Come, come, ’tis only I that must disgrace thee.

[Here they fight.]

TALBOT

Heavens, can you suffer hell so to prevail?

My breast I’ll burst with straining of my courage

10

And from my shoulders crack my arms asunder,

But I will chastise this high-minded strumpet.

[They fight again.]

JOAN     Talbot, farewell. Thy hour is not yet come.

I must go victual Orleans forthwith.

[A short alarum: then Charles passes over the stage and

enters the town with soldiers.]

O’ertake me if thou canst – I scorn thy strength.

15

Go, go – cheer up thy hungry, starved men,

Help Salisbury to make his testament.

This day is ours, as many more shall be. Exit.

TALBOT

My thoughts are whirled like a potter’s wheel,

I know not where I am nor what I do.

20

A witch by fear, not force, like Hannibal,

Drives back our troops and conquers as she lists:

So bees with smoke and doves with noisome stench

Are from their hives and houses driven away.

They called us, for our fierceness, English dogs;

25

Now like to whelps we crying run away.

[A short alarum.]

Hark, countrymen – either renew the fight

Or tear the lions out of England’s coat.

Renounce your soil, give sheep in lions’ stead;

Sheep run not half so treacherous from the wolf,

30

Or horse or oxen from the leopard,

As you fly from your oft-subdued slaves.

[Alarum. Here another skirmish in which the English

attempt to enter Orleans.]

It will not be, retire into your trenches.

You all consented unto Salisbury’s death,

For none would strike a stroke in his revenge.

35

Puzel is entered into Orleans

In spite of us or aught that we could do.

O would I were to die with Salisbury:

The shame hereof will make me hide my head.

Exit Talbot. Alarum. The English sound a retreat

and exeunt. The French sound aflourish.

Enter on the walls JOAN Puzel, CHARLES the

                               Dolphin, REIGNIER, ALENÇON and soldiers.

[1.6]

JOAN     Advance our waving colours on the walls.

40

Rescued is Orleans from the English.

Thus Joan de Puzel hath performed her word.

CHARLES     Divinest creature, Astraea’s daughter,

How shall I honour thee for this success?

Thy promises are like Adonis’ garden,

45

That one day bloomed and fruitful were the next.

France, triumph in thy glorious prophetess.

Recovered is the town of Orleans;

More blessed hap did ne’er befall our state.

[10]

REIGNIER

Why ring not out the bells aloud throughout the

town?

50

Dolphin, command the citizens make bonfires

And feast and banquet in the open streets,

To celebrate the joy that God hath given us.

ALENÇON

All France will be replete with mirth and joy,

When they shall hear how we have played the men.

55

CHARLES     ’Tis Joan, not we, by whom the day is won:

For which I will divide my crown with her,

And all the priests and friars in my realm

Shall in procession sing her endless praise.

[20]

A statelier pyramis to her I’ll rear

60

Than Rhodope’s or Memphis’ ever was.

In memory of her, when she is dead,

Her ashes, in an urn more precious

Than the rich-jewelled coffer of Darius,

Transported shall be at high festivals

65

Before the kings and queens of France.

No longer on Saint Denis will we cry,

But Joan de Puzel shall be France’s saint.

[30]

Come in, and let us banquet royally,

After this golden day of victory. Flourish. Exeunt.

70

2.1 Enter on the walls a French Sergeant of a band, with two Sentinels.

SERGEANT     Sirs, take your places and be vigilant.

If any noise or soldier you perceive

Near to the walls, by some apparent sign

Let us have knowledge at the court of guard.

1 SENTINEL     Sergeant, you shall. Exit Sergeant.

Thus are poor servitors,

5

When others sleep upon their quiet beds,

Constrained to watch in darkness, rain and cold.

Enter TALBOT, BEDFORD and BURGUNDY, with three scaling ladders.

TALBOT     Lord Regent, and redoubted Burgundy –

By whose approach the regions of Artois,

Wallon and Picardy are friends to us –

10

This happy night the Frenchmen are secure,

Having all day caroused and banqueted.

Embrace we then this opportunity

As fitting best to quittance their deceit,

Contrived by art and baleful sorcery.

15

BEDFORD

Coward of France! How much he wrongs his fame,

Despairing of his own arms’ fortitude,

To join with witches and the help of hell.

BURGUNDY     Traitors have never other company.

But what’s that Puzel, whom they term so pure?

20

TALBOT     A maid, they say.

BEDFORD     A maid? And be so martial?

BURGUNDY

Pray God she prove not masculine ere long –

If underneath the standard of the French

She carry armour, as she hath begun.

TALBOT

Well, let them practise and converse with spirits.

25

God is our fortress, in whose conquering name

Let us resolve to scale their flinty bulwarks.

BEDFORD     Ascend, brave Talbot. We will follow thee.

TALBOT     Not altogether. Better far, I guess,

That we do make our entrance several ways:

30

That if it chance that one of us do fail

The other yet may rise against their force.

BEDFORD     Agreed; I’ll to yond corner.

BURGUNDY     And I to this.

TALBOT

And here will Talbot mount, or make his grave.

Now, Salisbury, for thee and for the right

35

Of English Henry, shall this night appear

How much in duty I am bound to both.

[The English cry, ‘ Saint George, a Talbot’

as they enter Orleans.]

1 SENTINEL

Arm, arm, the enemy doth make assault.

Exeunt French Sentinels.

The French leap over the walls in their shirts. Enter several ways the BASTARD, ALENÇON, REIGNIER, half ready and half unready.

ALENÇON How now, my lords? What, all unready so?

BASTARD     Unready? Ay, and glad we scaped so well.

40

REIGNIER

’Twas time, I trow, to wake and leave our beds,

Hearing alarums at our chamber doors.

ALENÇON Of all exploits since first I followed arms,

Ne’er heard I of a warlike enterprise

More venturous or desperate than this.

45

BASTARD     I think this Talbot be a fiend of hell.

REIGNIER     If not of hell, the heavens sure favour him.

ALENÇON Here cometh Charles. I marvel how he sped.

Enter CHARLES and JOAN.

BASTARD     Tut, holy Joan was his defensive guard.

CHARLES     Is this thy cunning, thou deceitful dame?

50

Didst thou at first, to flatter us withal,

Make us partakers of a little gain,

That now our loss might be ten times so much?

JOAN     Wherefore is Charles impatient with his friend?

At all times will you have my power alike?

55

Sleeping or waking, must I still prevail,

Or will you blame and lay the fault on me?

Improvident soldiers, had your watch been good,

This sudden mischief never could have fallen.

CHARLES     Duke of Alençon, this was your default,

60

That, being captain of the watch tonight,

Did look no better to that weighty charge.

ALENÇON Had all your quarters been as safely kept

As that whereof I had the government,

We had not been thus shamefully surprised.

65

BASTARD     Mine was secure.

REIGNIER     And so was mine, my lord.

CHARLES     And for myself, most part of all this night

Within her quarter and mine own precinct

I was employed in passing to and fro

About relieving of the sentinels;

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Then how, or which way, should they first break in?

JOAN     Question, my lords, no further of the case

‘How, or which way?’; ’tis sure they found some place

But weakly guarded, where the breach was made.

And now there rests no other shift but this –

75

To gather our soldiers, scattered and dispersed,

And lay new platforms to endamage them.

Alarum. Enter an English Soldier, crying, ‘A Talbot, a Talbot’;they fly, leaving their clothes behind.

SOLDIER     I’ll be so bold to take what they have left.

The cry of ‘Talbot’ serves me for a sword –

For I have loaden me with many spoils,

80

Using no other weapon but his name.     Exit.

2.2 Enter TALBOT, BEDFORD, BURGUNDY with a Captain, and soldiers carrying the body of Salisbury, their drums beating a dead march.

BEDFORD     The day begins to break, and night is fled,

Whose pitchy mantle overveiled the earth.

Here sound retreat and cease our hot pursuit.

[They sound retreat.]

TALBOT     Bring forth the body of old Salisbury,

And here advance it in the market-place,

5

The middle centre of this cursed town.

Now have I paid my vow unto his soul.

For every drop of blood was drawn from him

There hath at least five Frenchmen died tonight.

And that hereafter ages may behold

10

What ruin happened in revenge of him,

Within their chiefest temple I’ll erect

A tomb wherein his corpse shall be interred,

Upon the which, that everyone may read,

Shall be engraved the sack of Orleans,

15

The treacherous manner of his mournful death,

And what a terror he had been to France.

But, lords, in all our bloody massacre

I muse we met not with the Dolphin’s grace,

His new-come champion, virtuous Joan of Aire,

20

Nor any of his false confederates.

BEDFORD

’Tis thought, Lord Talbot, when the fight began,

Roused on the sudden from their drowsy beds,

They did, amongst the troops of armed men,

Leap o’er the walls for refuge in the field.

25

BURGUNDY     Myself, as far as I could well discern

For smoke and dusky vapours of the night,

Am sure I scared the Dolphin and his trull,

When arm in arm they both came swiftly running,

Like to a pair of loving turtle-doves

30

That could not live asunder day or night.

After that things are set in order here

We’ll follow them with all the power we have.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER

All hail, my lords. Which of this princely train

Call ye the warlike Talbot, for his acts

35

So much applauded through the realm of France?

TALBOT

Here is the Talbot. Who would speak with him?

MESSENGER     The virtuous lady, Countess of Auvergne,

With modesty admiring thy renown,

By me entreats, great lord, thou wouldst vouchsafe

40

To visit her poor castle where she lies,

That she may boast she hath beheld the man

Whose glory fills the world with loud report.

BURGUNDY     Is it even so? Nay, then I see our wars

Will turn unto a peaceful comic sport,

45

When ladies crave to be encountered with.

You may not, my lord, despise her gentle suit.

TALBOT     Ne’er trust me then; for when a world of men

Could not prevail with all their oratory,

Yet hath a woman’s kindness overruled.

50

And therefore tell her I return great thanks

And in submission will attend on her.

Will not your honours bear me company?

BEDFORD     No, truly, ’tis more than manners will:

And I have heard it said unbidden guests

55

Are often welcomest when they are gone.

TALBOT     Why then, alone (since there’s no remedy)

I mean to prove this lady’s courtesy.

Come hither, captain, you perceive my mind.

[The Captain comes forward; Talbot whispers to him.]

CAPTAIN     I do, my lord, and mean accordingly. Exeunt.

60

2.3 Enter COUNTESS of Auvergne, and her Porter.

COUNTESS     Porter, remember what I gave in charge;

And when you have done so, bring the keys to me.

PORTER     Madam, I will.     Exit.

COUNTESS     The plot is laid. If all things fall out right

I shall as famous be by this exploit

5

As Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus’ death.

Great is the rumour of this dreadful knight,

And his achievements of no less account:

Fain would mine eyes be witness with mine ears,

To give their censure of these rare reports.

10

Enter Messenger and TALBOT.

MESSENGER

Madam, according as your ladyship desired,

By message craved, so is Lord Talbot come.

COUNTESS     And he is welcome. What? Is this the man?

MESSENGER     Madam, it is.

COUNTESS     Is this the scourge of France?

Is this the Talbot, so much feared abroad

15

That with his name the mothers still their babes?

I see report is fabulous and false.

I thought I should have seen some Hercules,

A second Hector for his grim aspect

And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs.

20

Alas, this is a child, a silly dwarf:

It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp

Should strike such terror to his enemies.

TALBOT     Madam, I have been bold to trouble you;

But, since your ladyship is not at leisure,

25

I’ll sort some other time to visit you.

COUNTESS

What means he now? Go ask him whither he goes.

MESSENGER     Stay, my Lord Talbot, for my lady craves

To know the cause of your abrupt departure.

TALBOT     Marry, for that she’s in a wrong belief,

30

I go to certify her Talbot’s here.

Enter Porter with keys.

COUNTESS     If thou be he, then art thou prisoner.

TALBOT     Prisoner? To whom?

COUNTESS     To me, bloodthirsty lord;

And for that cause I trained thee to my house.

Long time thy shadow hath been thrall to me;

35

For in my gallery thy picture hangs.

But now the substance shall endure the like,

And I will chain these legs and arms of thine,

That hast by tyranny these many years

Wasted our country, slain our citizens

40

And sent our sons and husbands captivate.

TALBOT     Ha, ha, ha.

COUNTESS

Laughest thou, wretch? Thy mirth shall turn to moan.

TALBOT     I laugh to see your ladyship so fond

To think that you have aught but Talbot’s shadow

45

Whereon to practise your severity.

COUNTESS     Why? Art not thou the man?

TALBOT     I am indeed.

COUNTESS     Then have I substance too.

TALBOT     No, no, I am but shadow of myself:

You are deceived, my substance is not here;

50

For what you see is but the smallest part

And least proportion of humanity.

I tell you, madam, were the whole frame here,

It is of such a spacious lofty pitch

Your roof were not sufficient to contain’t.

55

COUNTESS     This is a riddling merchant, for the nonce.

He will be here, and yet he is not here:

How can these contrarieties agree?

TALBOT     That will I show you presently.

[Winds his horn. Drums strike up. A peal of ordnance.]

Enter soldiers.

How say you, madam? Are you now persuaded

60

That Talbot is but shadow of himself?

These are his substance, sinews, arms and strength,

With which he yoketh your rebellious necks,

Razeth your cities and subverts your towns,

And in a moment makes them desolate.

65

COUNTESS     Victorious Talbot, pardon my abuse.

I find thou art no less than fame hath bruited,

And more than may be gathered by thy shape.

Let my presumption not provoke thy wrath,

For I am sorry that with reverence

70

I did not entertain thee as thou art.

TALBOT     Be not dismayed, fair lady, nor misconster

The mind of Talbot as you did mistake

The outward composition of his body.

What you have done hath not offended me;

75

Nor other satisfaction do I crave,

But only, with your patience, that we may

Taste of your wine and see what cates you have;

For soldiers’ stomachs always serve them well.

COUNTESS

With all my heart – and think me honoured

80

To feast so great a warrior in my house.     Exeunt.

2.4 Enter RICHARD Plantagenet, WARWICK, SOMERSET, SUFFOLK, VERNON and a Lawyer.

RICHARD

Great lords, and gentlemen, what means this silence?

Dare no man answer in a case of truth?

SUFFOLK     Within the Temple Hall we were too loud;

The garden here is more convenient.

RICHARD     Then say at once if I maintained the truth;

5

Or else was wrangling Somerset in th’error?

SUFFOLK     Faith, I have been a truant in the law

And never yet could frame my will to it,

And therefore frame the law unto my will.

SOMERSET

Judge you, my lord of Warwick, then, between us.

10

WARWICK

Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch,

Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth,

Between two blades, which bears the better temper,

Between two horses, which doth bear him best,

Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye,

15

I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgement:

But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,

Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.

RICHARD     Tut, tut, here is a mannerly forbearance:

The truth appears so naked on my side

20

That any purblind eye may find it out.

SOMERSET     And on my side it is so well apparelled,

So clear, so shining and so evident,

That it will glimmer through a blind man’s eye.

RICHARD

Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak,

25

In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts.

Let him that is a true-born gentleman

And stands upon the honour of his birth,

If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,

From off this briar pluck a white rose with me.

30

SOMERSET     Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer,

But dare maintain the party of the truth,

Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

WARWICK     I love no colours: and, without all colour

Of base insinuating flattery,

35

I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.

SUFFOLK     I pluck this red rose with young Somerset,

And say withal I think he held the right.

VERNON     Stay, lords and gentlemen, and pluck no more

Till you conclude that he upon whose side

40

The fewest roses are cropped from the tree

Shall yield the other in the right opinion.

SOMERSET     Good Master Vernon, it is well objected:

If I have fewest I subscribe in silence.

RICHARD     And I.

45

VERNON     Then, for the truth and plainness of the case,

I pluck this pale and maiden blossom here,

Giving my verdict on the white rose side.

SOMERSET     Prick not your finger as you pluck it off,

Lest, bleeding, you do paint the white rose red

50

And fall on my side so, against your will.

VERNON     If I, my lord, for my opinion bleed,

Opinion shall be surgeon to my hurt

And keep me on the side where still I am.

SOMERSET     Well, well, come on, who else?

55

LAWYER     Unless my study and my books be false,

The argument you held was wrong in you;

In sign whereof I pluck a white rose too.

RICHARD     Now, Somerset, where is your argument?

SOMERSET     Here in my scabbard, meditating that

60

Shall dye your white rose in a bloody red.

RICHARD

Meantime your cheeks do counterfeit our roses;

For pale they look with fear, as witnessing

The truth on our side.

SOMERSET     No, Plantagenet:

’Tis not for fear, but anger, that thy cheeks

65

Blush for pure shame, to counterfeit our roses –

And yet thy tongue will not confess thy error.

RICHARD     Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?

SOMERSET     Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?

RICHARD     Ay, sharp and piercing to maintain his truth,

70

Whiles thy consuming canker eats his falsehood.

SOMERSET

Well, I’ll find friends to wear my bleeding roses

That shall maintain what I have said is true,

Where false Plantagenet dare not be seen.

RICHARD     Now, by this maiden blossom in my hand,

75

I scorn thee and thy fashion, peevish boy.

SUFFOLK     Turn not thy scorns this way, Plantagenet.

RICHARD

Proud Poole, I will, and scorn both him and thee.

SUFFOLK     I’ll turn my part thereof into thy throat.

SOMERSET     Away, away, good William de la Pole –

80

We grace the yeoman by conversing with him.

WARWICK

Now, by God’s will, thou wrong’st him, Somerset:

His grandfather was Lionel, Duke of Clarence,

Third son to the third Edward, King of England;

Spring crestless yeomen from so deep a root?

85

RICHARD     He bears him on the place’s privilege,

Or durst not, for his craven heart, say thus.

SOMERSET

By him that made me, I’ll maintain my words

On any plot of ground in Christendom.

Was not thy father Richard, Earl of Cambridge,

90

For treason executed in our late king’s days?

And by his treason stand’st not thou attainted,

Corrupted, and exempt from ancient gentry?

His trespass yet lives guilty in thy blood,

And till thou be restored thou art a yeoman.

95

RICHARD     My father was attached, not attainted,

Condemned to die for treason, but no traitor;

And that I’ll prove on better men than Somerset,

Were growing time once ripened to my will.

For your partaker Poole, and you yourself,

100

I’ll note you in my book of memory,

To scourge you for this apprehension;

Look to it well, and say you are well warned.

SOMERSET     Ah, thou shalt find us ready for thee still,

And know us by these colours for thy foes;

105

For these my friends, in spite of thee, shall wear.

RICHARD     And, by my soul, this pale and angry rose,

As cognizance of my blood-drinking hate,

Will I for ever, and my faction, wear

Until it wither with me to my grave

110

Or flourish to the height of my degree.

SUFFOLK

Go forward, and be choked with thy ambition:

And so farewell, until I meet thee next.     Exit.

SOMERSET

Have with thee, Pole. Farewell, ambitious Richard.

Exit.

RICHARD

How I am braved, and must perforce endure it.

115

WARWICK     This blot that they object against your house

Shall be whipped out in the next parliament,

Called for the truce of Winchester and Gloucester:

And if thou be not then created York,

I will not live to be accounted Warwick.

120

Meantime, in signal of my love to thee,

Against proud Somerset and William Poole

Will I upon thy party wear this rose.

And here I prophesy: this brawl today,

Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden,

125

Shall send between the red rose and the white

A thousand souls to death and deadly night.

RICHARD     Good Master Vernon, I am bound to you,

That you on my behalf would pluck a flower.

VERNON     In your behalf, still will I wear the same.

130

LAWYER     And so will I.

RICHARD     Thanks, gentle.

Come, let us four to dinner: I dare say

This quarrel will drink blood another day.     Exeunt.

2.5 Enter MORTIMER, brought in a chair, and Gaolers.

MORTIMER     Kind keepers of my weak decaying age,

Let dying Mortimer here rest himself.

Even like a man new haled from the rack,

So fare my limbs with long imprisonment;

And these grey locks, the pursuivants of death,

5

Nestor-like aged, in an age of care,

Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer.

These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent,

Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent;

Weak shoulders, overborne with burdening grief,

10

And pithless arms, like to a withered vine

That droops his sapless branches to the ground.

Yet are these feet, whose strengthless stay is numb,

Unable to support this lump of clay,

Swift-winged with desire to get a grave,

15

As witting I no other comfort have.

But tell me, keeper, will my nephew come?

GAOLER     Richard Plantagenet, my lord, will come:

We sent unto the Temple, unto his chamber,

And answer was returned that he will come.

20

MORTIMER     Enough; my soul shall then be satisfied.

Poor gentleman, his wrong doth equal mine.

Since Henry Monmouth first began to reign –

Before whose glory I was great in arms –

This loathsome sequestration have I had;

25

And even since then hath Richard been obscured,

Deprived of honour and inheritance.

But now the arbitrator of despairs,

Just death, kind umpire of men’s miseries,

With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence:

30

I would his troubles likewise were expired,

That so he might recover what was lost.

Enter RICHARD.

GAOLER     My lord, your loving nephew now is come.

MORTIMER

Richard Plantagenet, my friend, is he come?

RICHARD     Ay, noble uncle, thus ignobly used,

35

Your nephew, late despised Richard, comes.

MORTIMER

Direct mine arms – I may embrace his neck,

And in his bosom spend my latter gasp.

O tell me when my lips do touch his cheeks,

That I may kindly give one fainting kiss.

40

And now declare, sweet stem from York’s great stock,

Why didst thou say of late thou wert despised?

RICHARD     First, lean thine aged back against mine arm,

And in that ease I’ll tell thee my disease.

This day, in argument upon a case,

45

Some words there grew ’twixt Somerset and me,

Among which terms he used his lavish tongue

And did upbraid me with my father’s death;

Which obloquy set bars before my tongue,

Else with the like I had requited him.

50

Therefore, good uncle, for my father’s sake –

In honour of a true Plantagenet –

And for alliance’ sake, declare the cause

My father, Earl of Cambridge, lost his head.

MORTIMER

That cause, fair nephew, that imprisoned me,

55

And hath detained me all my flowering youth

Within a loathsome dungeon, there to pine,

Was cursed instrument of his decease.

RICHARD     Discover more at large what cause that was,

For I am ignorant and cannot guess.

60

MORTIMER     I will, if that my fading breath permit,

And death approach not ere my tale be done.

Henry the Fourth, grandfather to this King,

Deposed his nephew Richard, Edward’s son,

The first begotten and the lawful heir

65

Of Edward, king, the third of that descent,

During whose reign the Percies of the north,

Finding his usurpation most unjust,

Endeavoured my advancement to the throne.

The reason moved these warlike lords to this

70

Was for that – young Richard thus removed,

Leaving no heir begotten of his body –

I was the next by birth and parentage:

For by my mother I derived am

From Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son

75

To King Edward the Third, whereas he

From John of Gaunt doth bring his pedigree,

Being but fourth of that heroic line.

But mark: as in this haughty great attempt

They laboured to plant the rightful heir,

80

I lost my liberty and they their lives.

Long after this, when Henry the Fifth,

Succeeding his father Bolingbroke, did reign,

Thy father, Earl of Cambridge then – derived

From famous Edmund Langley, Duke of York –

85

Marrying my sister, that thy mother was,

Again, in pity of my hard distress,

Levied an army, weening to redeem

And have installed me in the diadem;

But as the rest, so fell that noble earl,

90

And was beheaded. Thus the Mortimers,

In whom the title rested, were suppressed.

RICHARD     Of which, my lord, your honour is the last.

MORTIMER     True; and thou seest that I no issue have,

And that my fainting words do warrant death.

95

Thou art my heir. The rest, I wish thee gather:

But yet be wary in thy studious care.

RICHARD     Thy grave admonishments prevail with me.

But yet, methinks, my father’s execution

Was nothing less than bloody tyranny.

100

MORTIMER     With silence, nephew, be thou politic.

Strong fixed is the house of Lancaster,

And, like a mountain, not to be removed.

But now thy uncle is removing hence,

As princes do their courts, when they are cloyed

105

With long continuance in a settled place.

RICHARD     O uncle, would some part of my young years

Might but redeem the passage of your age.

MORTIMER

Thou dost then wrong me, as that slaughterer doth

Which giveth many wounds when one will kill.

110

Mourn not, except thou sorrow for my good;

Only give order for my funeral.

And so farewell, and fair be all thy hopes,

And prosperous be thy life in peace and war. [Dies.]

RICHARD     And peace, no war, befall thy parting soul.

115

In prison hast thou spent a pilgrimage

And like a hermit overpassed thy days.

Well, I will lock his counsel in my breast,

And what I do imagine – let that rest.

Keepers, convey him hence, and I myself

120

Will see his burial better than his life.

Exeunt Gaolers, bearing out the body of Mortimer.

Here dies the dusky torch of Mortimer,

Choked with ambition of the meaner sort.

And for those wrongs, those bitter injuries

Which Somerset hath offered to my house,

125

I doubt not but with honour to redress.

And therefore haste I to the parliament –

Either to be restored to my blood,

Or make my will th’advantage of my good.

Exit.

3.1 Flourish. Enter KING, EXETER, GLOUCESTER, WINCHESTER, WARWICK, SOMERSET, SUFFOLK, RICHARD Plantagenet. Gloucester offers to put up a bill; Winchester snatches it, tears it.

WINCHESTER

Com’st thou with deep premeditated lines?

With written pamphlets, studiously devised?

Humphrey of Gloucester, if thou canst accuse,

Or aught intend’st to lay unto my charge,

Do it without invention, suddenly,

5

As I with sudden and extemporal speech

Purpose to answer what thou canst object.

GLOUCESTER

Presumptuous priest, this place commands my patience,

Or thou shouldst find thou hast dishonoured me.

Think not, although in writing I preferred

10

The manner of thy vile outrageous crimes,

That therefore I have forged or am not able

Verbatim to rehearse the method of my pen.

No, prelate, such is thy audacious wickedness,

Thy lewd, pestiferous and dissentious pranks,

15

As very infants prattle of thy pride.

Thou art a most pernicious usurer,

Froward by nature, enemy to peace,

Lascivious, wanton – more than well beseems

A man of thy profession and degree.

20

And for thy treachery, what’s more manifest,

In that thou laid’st a trap to take my life,

As well at London Bridge as at the Tower?

Beside, I fear me, if thy thoughts were sifted,

The King, thy sovereign, is not quite exempt

25

From envious malice of thy swelling heart.

WINCHESTER

Gloucester, I do defy thee. Lords, vouchsafe

To give me hearing what I shall reply.

If I were covetous, ambitious, or perverse –

As he will have me – how am I so poor?

30

Or how haps it I seek not to advance

Or raise myself, but keep my wonted calling?

And for dissension, who preferreth peace

More than I do? – except I be provoked.

No, my good lords, it is not that offends,

35

It is not that that hath incensed the Duke.

It is because no one should sway but he,

No one but he should be about the King;

And that engenders thunder in his breast

And makes him roar these accusations forth.

40

But he shall know I am as good –

GLOUCESTER     As good?

Thou bastard of my grandfather!

WINCHESTER     Ay, lordly sir; for what are you, I pray,

But one imperious in another’s throne?

GLOUCESTER     Am I not Protector, saucy priest?

45

WINCHESTER     And am not I a prelate of the Church?

GLOUCESTER     Yes, as an outlaw in a castle keeps

And useth it to patronage his theft.

WINCHESTER     Unreverent Gloucester!

GLOUCESTER     Thou art reverend

Touching thy spiritual function, not thy life.

50

WINCHESTER     Rome shall remedy this.

GLOUCESTER     Roam thither, then.

WARWICK     [to Gloucester]

My lord, it were your duty to forbear.

SOMERSET     Ay, see the Bishop be not overborne.

Methinks my lord should be religious

And know the office that belongs to such.

55

WARWICK     Methinks his lordship should be humbler:

It fitteth not a prelate so to plead.

SOMERSET     Yes, when his holy state is touched so near.

WARWICK     State – holy or unhallowed – what of that?

Is not his grace Protector to the King?

60

RICHARD     [to the audience]

Plantagenet, I see, must hold his tongue,

Lest it be said, ‘Speak, sirrah, when you should:

Must your bold verdict enter talk with lords?’

Else would I have a fling at Winchester.

KING     Uncles of Gloucester and of Winchester,

65

The special watchmen of our English weal,

I would prevail – if prayers might prevail –

To join your hearts in love and amity.

O what a scandal is it to our crown

That two such noble peers as ye should jar?

70

Believe me, lords – my tender years can tell –

Civil dissension is a viperous worm,

That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.

[A noise within. Gloucester’s men shout: ‘ Down with

the tawny coats’.]

What tumult’s this?

WARWICK     An uproar, I dare warrant,

Begun through malice of the Bishop’s men.

75

[A noise again. Gloucester’s and Winchester’s men shout:

‘ Stones, stones’.]

Enter Mayor.

MAYOR     O my good lords, and virtuous Henry,

Pity the city of London, pity us:

The Bishop and the Duke of Gloucester’s men,

Forbidden late to carry any weapon,

Have filled their pockets full of pebble stones

80

And, banding themselves in contrary parts,

Do pelt so fast at one another’s pate

That many have their giddy brains knocked out.

Our windows are broke down in every street,

And we, for fear, compelled to shut our shops.

85

Enter Servingmen of Gloucester and Winchester in skirmish, with bloody pates.

KING     We charge you, on allegiance to ourself,

To hold your slaughtering hands and keep the peace.

Pray, uncle Gloucester, mitigate this strife.

1 SERVINGMAN     Nay, if we be forbidden stones, we’ll

fall to it with our teeth.

90

2 SERVINGMAN     Do what ye dare, we are as resolute.

[Skirmish again.]

GLOUCESTER

You of my household, leave this peevish broil

And set this unaccustomed fight aside.

3 SERVINGMAN

My lord, we know your grace to be a man

Just and upright, and for your royal birth

95

Inferior to none but to his majesty;

And ere that we will suffer such a prince,

So kind a father of the commonweal,

To be disgraced by an ink-horn mate,

We and our wives and children all will fight,

100

And have our bodies slaughtered by thy foes.

1 SERVINGMAN     Ay, and the very parings of our nails

Shall pitch a field when we are dead. [They begin again.]

GLOUCESTER     Stay, stay, I say:

And if you love me, as you say you do,

105

Let me persuade you to forbear awhile.

KING     O, how this discord doth afflict my soul.

Can you, my lord of Winchester, behold

My sighs and tears, and will not once relent?

Who should be pitiful, if you be not?

110

Or who should study to prefer a peace

If holy churchmen take delight in broils?

WARWICK

Yield, my lord Protector, yield, Winchester –

Except you mean with obstinate repulse

To slay your sovereign and destroy the realm.

115

You see what mischief, and what murder too,

Hath been enacted through your enmity:

Then be at peace – except ye thirst for blood.

WINCHESTER     He shall submit, or I will never yield.

GLOUCESTER

Compassion on the King commands me stoop,

120

Or I would see his heart out ere the priest

Should ever get that privilege of me.

WARWICK     Behold, my lord of Winchester – the Duke

Hath banished moody discontented fury,

As by his smoothed brows it doth appear.

125

Why look you still so stern and tragical?

GLOUCESTER     Here, Winchester, I offer thee my hand.

[Winchester ignores Gloucester’s offered hand.]

KING     Fie, uncle Beaufort, I have heard you preach

That malice was a great and grievous sin:

And will not you maintain the thing you teach,

130

But prove a chief offender in the same?

WARWICK     Sweet King! The Bishop hath a kindly gird.

For shame, my lord of Winchester, relent;

What, shall a child instruct you what to do?

WINCHESTER

Well, Duke of Gloucester, I will yield to thee.

135

Love for thy love and hand for hand I give.

[He takes Gloucester’s hand.]

GLOUCESTER     Ay, but I fear me with a hollow heart.

See here, my friends and loving countrymen,

This token serveth for a flag of truce

Betwixt ourselves, and all our followers:

140

So help me God, as I dissemble not.

WINCHESTER     So help me God, as I intend it not.

KING     O loving uncle, kind Duke of Gloucester,

How joyful am I made by this contract.

Away, my masters, trouble us no more,

145

But join in friendship, as your lords have done.

1 SERVINGMAN     Content. I’ll to the surgeon’s.

2 SERVINGMAN     And so will I.

3 SERVINGMAN     And I will see what physic the tavern

affords.     Exeunt Servingmen and Mayor.

150

WARWICK     Accept this scroll, most gracious sovereign,

Which in the right of Richard Plantagenet

We do exhibit to your majesty.

GLOUCESTER

Well urged, my lord of Warwick – for, sweet prince,

An if your grace mark every circumstance,

155

You have great reason to do Richard right,

Especially for those occasions

At Eltham Place I told your majesty.

KING     And those occasions, uncle, were of force.

Therefore, my loving lords, our pleasure is

160

That Richard be restored to his blood.

WARWICK     Let Richard be restored to his blood:

So shall his father’s wrongs be recompensed.

WINCHESTER     As will the rest, so willeth Winchester.

KING     If Richard will be true, not that alone

165

But all the whole inheritance I give

That doth belong unto the house of York,

From whence you spring by lineal descent.

RICHARD     Thy humble servant vows obedience

And humble service till the point of death.

170

KING     Stoop then and set your knee against my foot:

And, in reguerdon of that duty done,

I girt thee with the valiant sword of York.

Rise, Richard, like a true Plantagenet,

And rise created princely Duke of York.

RICHARD     And so thrive Richard, as thy foes may fall:

175

And, as my duty springs, so perish they

That grudge one thought against your majesty.

ALL     Welcome, high prince, the mighty Duke of York.

SOMERSET     [to the audience]

Perish, base prince, ignoble Duke of York.

180

GLOUCESTER     Now will it best avail your majesty

To cross the seas and to be crowned in France:

The presence of a king engenders love

Amongst his subjects and his loyal friends,

As it disanimates his enemies.

KING

185

When Gloucester says the word, King Henry goes –

For friendly counsel cuts off many foes.

GLOUCESTER     Your ships already are in readiness.

Sennet. Flourish. Exeunt all but Exeter.

EXETER     Ay, we may march in England or in France,

Not seeing what is likely to ensue:

This late dissension grown betwixt the peers

190

Burns under feigned ashes of forged love

And will at last break out into a flame:

As festered members rot but by degree,

Till bones and flesh and sinews fall away,

So will this base and envious discord breed.

195

And now I fear that fatal prophecy,

Which in the time of Henry, named the Fifth,

Was in the mouth of every sucking babe –

That Henry born at Monmouth should win all,

And Henry born at Windsor lose all:

200

Which is so plain that Exeter doth wish

His days may finish ere that hapless time. Exit.

3.2 Enter JOAN Puzel, disguised as a poor peasant, with four Soldiers with sacks upon their backs.

JOAN     These are the city gates, the gates of Rouen,

Through which our policy must make a breach.

Take heed – be wary how you place your words;

Talk like the vulgar sort of market men

That come to gather money for their corn.

5

If we have entrance, as I hope we shall,

And that we find the slothful watch but weak,

I’ll by a sign give notice to our friends

That Charles the Dolphin may encounter them.

SOLDIER     Our sacks shall be a mean to sack the city,

10

And we be lords and rulers over Rouen.

Therefore we’ll knock. [They knock.]

WATCH     [within]     Qui est là?

JOAN     Paysans, les pauvres gens de France,

Poor market folks that come to sell their corn.

WATCH     [within]     Enter, go in – the market bell is rung.

15

[Opens the gate.]

JOAN

Now, Rouen, I’ll shake thy bulwarks to the ground.

Exeunt into the town.

Enter CHARLES, the BASTARD, ALENÇON and REIGNIER.

CHARLES     Saint Denis bless this happy stratagem,

And once again we’ll sleep secure in Rouen.

BASTARD     Here entered Puzel and her practisants.

Now she is there, how will she specify

20

‘Here is the best and safest passage in’?

REIGNIER     By thrusting out a torch from yonder tower;

Which, once discerned, shows that her meaning is,

No way to that – for weakness – which she entered.

Enter JOAN Puzel, on the top, thrusting out a torch, burning.

JOAN     Behold, this is the happy wedding torch

25

That joineth Rouen unto her countrymen –

But burning fatal to the Talbonites.

BASTARD     See, noble Charles, the beacon of our friend;

The burning torch in yonder turret stands.

CHARLES     Now shine it like a comet of revenge,

30

A prophet to the fall of all our foes.

REIGNIER     Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.

Enter and cry ‘The Dolphin’ presently,

And then do execution on the watch.

Alarum and exeunt into the town.

An alarum. Enter TALBOT in an excursion.

TALBOT

France, thou shalt rue this treason with thy tears,

35

If Talbot but survive thy treachery.

Puzel, that witch, that damned sorceress,

Hath wrought this hellish mischief unawares,

That hardly we escaped the pride of France.

Exit. An alarum, excursions.

Enter BEDFORD, brought in sick in a chair by two attendants. Enter TALBOT and BURGUNDY without; within, JOAN Puzel, CHARLES, the BASTARD and REIGNIER on the walls.

JOAN     Good morrow, gallants; want ye corn for bread?

40

I think the Duke of Burgundy will fast

Before he’ll buy again at such a rate.

’Twas full of darnel: do you like the taste?

BURGUNDY

Scoff on, vile fiend and shameless courtesan.

I trust ere long to choke thee with thine own,

45

And make thee curse the harvest of that corn.

CHARLES

Your grace may starve perhaps before that time.

BEDFORD

O let no words, but deeds, revenge this treason.

JOAN     What will you do, good greybeard? Break a lance

And run a-tilt at death within a chair?

50

TALBOT     Foul fiend of France and hag of all despite,

Encompassed with thy lustful paramours,

Becomes it thee to taunt his valiant age

And twit with cowardice a man half dead?

Damsel, I’ll have a bout with you again,

55

Or else let Talbot perish with this shame.

JOAN     Are ye so hot, sir? Yet, Puzel, hold thy peace;

If Talbot do but thunder, rain will follow.

[The English whisper together in counsel.]

God speed the parliament: who shall be the speaker?

TALBOT     Dare ye come forth and meet us in the field?

60

JOAN     Belike your lordship takes us then for fools,

To try if that our own be ours or no.

TALBOT     I speak not to that railing Hecate,

But unto thee, Alençon, and the rest.

Will ye, like soldiers, come and fight it out?

65

ALENÇON     Seigneur, no.

TALBOT     Seigneur, hang: base muleteers of France –

Like peasant footboys do they keep the walls

And dare not take up arms like gentlemen.

JOAN     Away, captains; let’s get us from the walls,

70

For Talbot means no goodness by his looks.

Goodbye, my lord. We came but to tell you that we

are here.     Exeunt from the walls.

TALBOT     And there will we be too, ere it be long,

Or else reproach be Talbot’s greatest fame.

Vow, Burgundy, by honour of thy house,

75

Pricked on by public wrongs sustained in France,

Either to get the town again, or die.

And I, as sure as English Henry lives,

And as his father here was conqueror,

As sure as in this late betrayed town

80

Great Cœur de Lion’s heart was buried,

So sure I swear to get the town or die.

BURGUNDY     My vows are equal partners with thy vows.

TALBOT     But ere we go regard this dying prince,

The valiant Duke of Bedford. Come, my lord,

85

We will bestow you in some better place,

Fitter for sickness and for crazy age.

BEDFORD     Lord Talbot, do not so dishonour me.

Here will I sit, before the walls of Rouen,

And will be partner of your weal or woe.

90

BURGUNDY

Courageous Bedford, let us now persuade you.

BEDFORD     Not to be gone from hence; for once I read

That stout Pendragon, in his litter sick,

Came to the field, and vanquished his foes.

Methinks I should revive the soldiers’ hearts,

95

Because I ever found them as myself.

TALBOT     Undaunted spirit in a dying breast!

Then be it so: heavens keep old Bedford safe.

And now no more ado, brave Burgundy,

But gather we our forces out of hand

100

And set upon our boasting enemy.

Exeunt all but Bedford and two attendants.

An alarum; excursions. Enter Sir John FASTOLFE and a Captain.

CAPTAIN

Whither away, Sir John Fastolfe, in such haste?

FASTOLFE     Whither away? To save myself by flight –

We are like to have the overthrow again.

CAPTAIN     What? Will you fly, and leave Lord Talbot?

105

FASTOLFE

Ay, all the Talbots in the world, to save my life.       Exit.

CAPTAIN

Cowardly knight, ill fortune follow thee.                   Exit.

Retreat. Excursions.JOAN Puzel, ALENÇON and CHARLES enter and fly.

BEDFORD     Now, quiet soul, depart when heaven please,

For I have seen our enemies’ overthrow.

What is the trust or strength of foolish man?

110

They that of late were daring with their scoffs

Are glad and fain by flight to save themselves.

Bedford dies, and is carried in, by two, in his chair.

An alarum. Enter TALBOT, BURGUNDY and the rest.

TALBOT     Lost – and recovered in a day again!

This is a double honour, Burgundy;

Yet heavens have glory for this victory.

115

BURGUNDY     Warlike and martial Talbot, Burgundy

Enshrines thee in his heart, and there erects

Thy noble deeds as valour’s monuments.

TALBOT     Thanks, gentle duke. But where is Puzel now?

I think her old familiar is asleep.

120

Now where’s the Bastard’s braves and Charles his gleeks?

What, all amort? Rouen hangs her head for grief

That such a valiant company are fled.

Now will we take some order in the town,

Placing therein some expert officers,

125

And then depart to Paris to the King,

For there young Henry with his nobles lie.

BURGUNDY

What wills Lord Talbot pleaseth Burgundy.

TALBOT     But yet before we go let’s not forget

The noble Duke of Bedford, late deceased,

130

But see his exequies fulfilled in Rouen.

A braver soldier never couched lance,

A gentler heart did never sway in court.

But kings and mightiest potentates must die,

For that’s the end of human misery.     Exeunt.

135

3.3 Enter CHARLES, the BASTARD, ALENÇON and JOAN Puzel.

JOAN     Dismay not, princes, at this accident,

Nor grieve that Rouen is so recovered:

Care is no cure, but rather corrosive,

For things that are not to be remedied.

Let frantic Talbot triumph for a while,

5

And like a peacock sweep along his tail;

We’ll pull his plumes and take away his train,

If Dolphin and the rest will be but ruled.

CHARLES     We have been guided by thee hitherto

And of thy cunning had no diffidence.

10

One sudden foil shall never breed distrust.

BASTARD     Search out thy wit for secret policies

And we will make thee famous through the world.

ALENÇON We’ll set thy statue in some holy place

And have thee reverenced like a blessed saint.

15

Employ thee then, sweet virgin, for our good.

JOAN     Then thus it must be – this doth Joan devise:

By fair persuasions mixed with sugared words

We will entice the Duke of Burgundy

To leave the Talbot and to follow us.

20

CHARLES     Ay marry, sweeting, if we could do that,

France were no place for Henry’s warriors,

Nor should that nation boast it so with us,

But be extirped from our provinces.

ALENÇON

For ever should they be expulsed from France,

25

And not have title of an earldom here.

JOAN     Your honours shall perceive how I will work

To bring this matter to the wished end.

[Drum sounds afar off.]

Hark – by the sound of drum you may perceive

Their powers are marching unto Paris-ward.

30

[Here sound an English march offstage.]

There goes the Talbot with his colours spread,

And all the troops of English after him.

[French march sounds offstage.]

Now in the rearward comes the Duke and his:

Fortune, in favour, makes him lag behind.

Summon a parley. We will talk with him.

35

[Trumpets sound a parley.]

CHARLES     A parley with the Duke of Burgundy.

Enter BURGUNDY.

BURGUNDY     Who craves a parley with the Burgundy?

JOAN

The princely Charles of France, thy countryman.

BURGUNDY

What sayst thou, Charles? For I am marching hence.

CHARLES

Speak, Puzel, and enchant him with thy words.

40

JOAN     Brave Burgundy, undoubted hope of France,

Stay, let thy humble handmaid speak to thee.

BURGUNDY     Speak on, but be not over-tedious.

JOAN     Look on thy country, look on fertile France,

And see the cities and the towns defaced

45

By wasting ruin of the cruel foe,

As looks the mother on her lowly babe

When death doth close his tender-dying eyes.

See, see the pining malady of France,

Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds,

50

Which thou thyself hast given her woeful breast.

O turn thy edged sword another way,

Strike those that hurt, and hurt not those that help:

One drop of blood drawn from thy country’s bosom

Should grieve thee more than streams of foreign gore.

55

Return thee therefore with a flood of tears

And wash away thy country’s stained spots.

BURGUNDY [aside]

Either she hath bewitched me with her words,

Or nature makes me suddenly relent.

JOAN

Besides, all French and France exclaims on thee,

60

Doubting thy birth and lawful progeny.

Who join’st thou with but with a lordly nation,

That will not trust thee but for profit’s sake?

When Talbot hath set footing once in France

And fashioned thee that instrument of ill,

65

Who then but English Henry will be lord,

And thou be thrust out, like a fugitive?

Call we to mind – and mark but this for proof –

Was not the Duke of Orleans thy foe?

And was he not in England prisoner?

70

But when they heard he was thine enemy

They set him free without his ransom paid,

In spite of Burgundy and all his friends.

See then, thou fight’st against thy countrymen

And join’st with them will be thy slaughter-men.

75

Come, come, return; return, thou wandering lord.

Charles and the rest will take thee in their arms.

BURGUNDY [aside]

I am vanquished: these haughty words of hers

Have battered me like roaring cannon-shot

And made me almost yield upon my knees. –

80

Forgive me, country, and sweet countrymen;

And, lords, accept this hearty kind embrace.

My forces and my power of men are yours.

So farewell, Talbot. I’ll no longer trust thee.

JOAN     Done like a Frenchman: turn and turn again.

85

CHARLES

Welcome, brave Duke. Thy friendship makes us

fresh.

BASTARD     And doth beget new courage in our breasts.

ALENÇON Puzel hath bravely played her part in this

And doth deserve a coronet of gold.

CHARLES

Now let us on, my lords, and join our powers,

90

And seek how we may prejudice the foe.     Exeunt.

3.4 Enter the KING, GLOUCESTER, WINCHESTER, Richard Plantagenet, now Duke of YORK, SUFFOLK, SOMERSET, WARWICK, VERNON and BASSET, EXETER; to them, with his soldiers, TALBOT.

TALBOT     My gracious Prince and honourable peers,

Hearing of your arrival in this realm

I have awhile given truce unto my wars

To do my duty to my sovereign.

In sign whereof, this arm – that hath reclaimed

5

To your obedience fifty fortresses,

Twelve cities and seven walled towns of strength,

Beside five hundred prisoners of esteem –

Lets fall his sword before your highness’ feet,

[Kneels.]

And with submissive loyalty of heart

10

Ascribes the glory of his conquest got

First to my God, and next unto your grace.

KING     Is this the Lord Talbot, uncle Gloucester,

That hath so long been resident in France?

GLOUCESTER     Yes, if it please your majesty, my liege.

15

KING     Welcome, brave captain and victorious lord.

When I was young – as yet I am not old –

I do remember how my father said

A stouter champion never handled sword.

Long since we were resolved of your truth,

20

Your faithful service and your toil in war;

Yet never have you tasted our reward,

Or been reguerdoned with so much as thanks,

Because till now we never saw your face.

Therefore stand up, and for these good deserts

25

We here create you Earl of Shrewsbury,

And in our coronation take your place.

Sennet. Flourish. Exeunt all but Vernon and Basset.

VERNON     Now, sir, to you, that were so hot at sea,

Disgracing of these colours that I wear

In honour of my noble lord of York –

30

Dar’st thou maintain the former words thou spak’st?

BASSET     Yes, sir, as well as you dare patronage

The envious barking of your saucy tongue

Against my lord the Duke of Somerset.

VERNON     Sirrah, thy lord I honour as he is.

35

BASSET     Why, what is he? As good a man as York.

VERNON

Hark ye, not so; in witness, take ye that. Strikes him.

BASSET     Villain, thou knowest the law of arms is such

That whoso draws a sword, ’tis present death –

Or else this blow should broach thy dearest blood.

40

But I’ll unto his majesty, and crave

I may have liberty to venge this wrong –

When, thou shalt see, I’ll meet thee to thy cost.

VERNON

Well, miscreant, I’ll be there as soon as you

And after meet you sooner than you would. Exeunt.

45

4.1 Enter KING, GLOUCESTER, WINCHESTER, YORK, SUFFOLK, SOMERSET, WARWICK, TALBOT, Governor of Paris and EXETER.

GLOUCESTER

Lord Bishop, set the crown upon his head.

WINCHESTER

God save King Henry, of that name the Sixth.

GLOUCESTER     Now, Governor of Paris, take your oath:

That you elect no other king but him,

Esteem none friends but such as are his friends,

5

And none your foes but such as shall pretend

Malicious practices against his state:

This shall ye do, so help you righteous God.

Exit Governor.

Enter FASTOLFE.

FASTOLFE

My gracious sovereign, as I rode from Calais

To haste unto your coronation,

10

A letter was delivered to my hands,

Writ to your grace from the Duke of Burgundy.

TALBOT     Shame to the Duke of Burgundy, and thee.

[Tears the emblem of the Garter from Fastolfe’s leg.]

I vowed, base knight, when I did meet thee next

To tear the Garter from thy craven’s leg,

15

Which I have done, because unworthily

Thou wast installed in that high degree.

Pardon me, princely Henry, and the rest:

This dastard, at the battle of Patay, –

When but in all I was six thousand strong,

20

And that the French were almost ten to one –

Before we met, or that a stroke was given,

Like to a trusty squire, did run away;

In which assault we lost twelve hundred men.

Myself and divers gentlemen beside

25

Were there surprised and taken prisoners.

Then judge, great lords, if I have done amiss;

Or whether that such cowards ought to wear

This ornament of knighthood, yea or no?

GLOUCESTER     To say the truth, this fact was infamous

30

And ill beseeming any common man,

Much more a knight, a captain and a leader.

TALBOT     When first this order was ordained, my lords,

Knights of the Garter were of noble birth,

Valiant and virtuous, full of haughty courage,

35

Such as were grown to credit by the wars;

Not fearing death nor shrinking for distress

But always resolute in most extremes.

He then that is not furnished in this sort

Doth but usurp the sacred name of knight,

40

Profaning this most honourable order,

And should (if I were worthy to be judge)

Be quite degraded, like a hedge-born swain

That doth presume to boast of gentle blood.

KING     Stain to thy countrymen, thou hear’st thy doom:

45

Be packing, therefore, thou that wast a knight.

Henceforth we banish thee on pain of death.

Exit Fastolfe.

And now, my lord Protector, view the letter

Sent from our uncle, Duke of Burgundy.

GLOUCESTER

What means his grace, that he hath changed his style?

No more but, plain and bluntly, ‘To the King’.

Hath he forgot he is his sovereign?

Or doth this churlish superscription

Pretend some alteration in good will?

What’s here? I have upon especial cause,

55

Moved with compassion of my country’s wrack,

Together with the pitiful complaints

Of such as your oppression feeds upon,

Forsaken your pernicious faction

And joined with Charles, the rightful King of France.

60

O monstrous treachery: can this be so,

That in alliance, amity and oaths

There should be found such false dissembling guile?

KING     What? Doth my uncle Burgundy revolt?

GLOUCESTER

He doth, my lord, and is become your foe.

65

KING     Is that the worst this letter doth contain?

GLOUCESTER

It is the worst – and all, my lord, he writes.

KING     Why then, Lord Talbot there shall talk with him

And give him chastisement for this abuse.

How say you, my lord, are you not content?

70

TALBOT

Content, my liege? Yes: but that I am prevented,

I should have begged I might have been employed.

KING

Then gather strength and march unto him straight.

Let him perceive how ill we brook his treason

And what offence it is to flout his friends.

75

TALBOT     I go, my lord, in heart desiring still

You may behold confusion of your foes.     Exit.

Enter VERNON and BASSET.

VERNON     Grant me the combat, gracious sovereign.

BASSET     And me, my lord, grant me the combat too.

YORK     This is my servant: hear him, noble prince.

80

SOMERSET     And this is mine: sweet Henry, favour him.

KING     Be patient, lords, and give them leave to speak.

Say, gentlemen, what makes you thus exclaim,

And wherefore crave you combat? Or with whom?

VERNON

With him, my lord, for he hath done me wrong.

85

BASSET     And I with him, for he hath done me wrong.

KING     What is that wrong whereof you both complain?

First let me know and then I’ll answer you.

BASSET     Crossing the sea from England into France,

This fellow here with envious carping tongue

90

Upbraided me about the rose I wear,

Saying the sanguine colour of the leaves

Did represent my master’s blushing cheeks

When stubbornly he did repugn the truth

About a certain question in the law,

95

Argued betwixt the Duke of York and him –

With other vile and ignominious terms.

In confutation of which rude reproach

And in defence of my lord’s worthiness

I crave the benefit of law of arms.

100

VERNON     And that is my petition, noble lord:

For though he seem with forged quaint conceit

To set a gloss upon his bold intent,

Yet know, my lord, I was provoked by him,

And he first took exceptions at this badge,

105

Pronouncing that the paleness of this flower

Bewrayed the faintness of my master’s heart.

YORK     Will not this malice, Somerset, be left?

SOMERSET

Your private grudge, my lord of York, will out,

Though ne’er so cunningly you smother it.

110

KING

Good Lord, what madness rules in brainsick men,

When for so slight and frivolous a cause

Such factious emulations shall arise?

Good cousins both, of York and Somerset,

Quiet yourselves, I pray, and be at peace.

115

YORK     Let this dissension first be tried by fight,

And then your highness shall command a peace.

SOMERSET     The quarrel toucheth none but us alone;

Betwixt ourselves let us decide it then.

YORK     There is my pledge; accept it, Somerset.

120

[York throws down his gauntlet.]

VERNON     Nay, let it rest where it began at first.

BASSET     Confirm it so, mine honourable lord.

GLOUCESTER

Confirm it so? Confounded be your strife

And perish ye with your audacious prate.

Presumptuous vassals, are you not ashamed

125

With this immodest clamorous outrage

To trouble and disturb the King and us?

And you, my lords, methinks you do not well

To bear with their perverse objections –

Much less to take occasion from their mouths

130

To raise a mutiny betwixt yourselves.

Let me persuade you take a better course.

EXETER

It grieves his highness. Good my lords, be friends.

KING     Come hither, you that would be combatants.

Henceforth I charge you, as you love our favour,

135

Quite to forget this quarrel and the cause.

And you, my lords; remember where we are –

In France, amongst a fickle wavering nation.

If they perceive dissension in our looks,

And that within ourselves we disagree,

140

How will their grudging stomachs be provoked

To wilful disobedience and rebel!

Beside, what infamy will there arise

When foreign princes shall be certified

That for a toy, a thing of no regard,

145

King Henry’s peers and chief nobility

Destroyed themselves and lost the realm of France!

O think upon the conquest of my father,

My tender years, and let us not forgo

That for a trifle that was bought with blood.

150

Let me be umpire in this doubtful strife.

[Takes the red rose from Basset.]

I see no reason, if I wear this rose,

That anyone should therefore be suspicious

I more incline to Somerset than York:

Both are my kinsmen, and I love them both.

155

As well they may upbraid me with my crown

Because, forsooth, the King of Scots is crowned.

But your discretions better can persuade

Than I am able to instruct or teach:

And therefore, as we hither came in peace,

160

So let us still continue peace and love.

Cousin of York, we institute your grace

To be our regent in these parts of France:

And, good my lord of Somerset, unite

Your troops of horsemen with his bands of foot,

165

And like true subjects, sons of your progenitors,

Go cheerfully together and digest

Your angry choler on your enemies.

Ourself, my lord Protector and the rest

After some respite will return to Calais,

170

From thence to England – where I hope ere long

To be presented, by your victories,

With Charles, Alençon and that traitorous rout.

Flourish. Exeunt all but York, Warwick, Exeter and Vernon.

WARWICK     My lord of York, I promise you the King

Prettily, methought, did play the orator.

175

YORK     And so he did, but yet I like it not,

In that he wears the badge of Somerset.

WARWICK

Tush, that was but his fancy. Blame him not.

I dare presume, sweet prince, he thought no harm.

YORK     An if I wist he did – but let it rest;

180

Other affairs must now be managed.

Exeunt all but Exeter.

EXETER

Well didst thou, Richard, to suppress thy voice;

For had the passions of thy heart burst out

I fear we should have seen deciphered there

More rancorous spite, more furious raging broils,

185

Than yet can be imagined or supposed:

But howsoe’er, no simple man that sees

This jarring discord of nobility,

This shouldering of each other in the court,

This factious bandying of their favourites,

190

But that it doth presage some ill event.

’Tis much when sceptres are in children’s hands,

But more when envy breeds unkind division –

There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.     Exit.

4.2 Enter TALBOT with trumpet and drum, before Bordeaux.

TALBOT     Go to the gates of Bordeaux, trumpeter;

Summon their general unto the wall.

[Trumpet sounds for parley.]

Enter Captain aloft.

English John Talbot, captain, calls you forth,

Servant in arms to Harry, King of England.

And thus he would: open your city gates,

5

Be humble to us, call my sovereign yours

And do him homage as obedient subjects,

And I’ll withdraw me and my bloody power.

But if you frown upon this proffered peace

You tempt the fury of my three attendants,

10

Lean famine, quartering steel and climbing fire,

Who, in a moment, even with the earth

Shall lay your stately and air-braving towers,

If you forsake the offer of their love.

CAPTAIN     Thou ominous and fearful owl of death,

15

Our nation’s terror and their bloody scourge,

The period of thy tyranny approacheth.

On us thou canst not enter but by death:

For I protest we are well fortified

And strong enough to issue out and fight.

20

If thou retire, the Dolphin well appointed

Stands with the snares of war to tangle thee.

On either hand thee there are squadrons pitched

To wall thee from the liberty of flight;

And no way canst thou turn thee for redress

25

But death doth front thee with apparent spoil

And pale destruction meets thee in the face.

Ten thousand French have ta’en the sacrament

To rive their dangerous artillery

Upon no Christian soul but English Talbot.

30

Lo, there thou stand’st a breathing valiant man

Of an invincible unconquered spirit:

This is the latest glory of thy praise

That I, thy enemy, due thee withal;

For ere the glass that now begins to run

35

Finish the process of his sandy hour,

These eyes that see thee now well coloured

Shall see thee withered, bloody, pale and dead.

[Drum afar off.]

Hark, hark; the Dolphin’s drum, a warning bell,

Sings heavy music to thy timorous soul,

40

And mine shall ring thy dire departure out.     Exit.

TALBOT     He fables not. I hear the enemy.

Out, some light horsemen, and peruse their wings.

O negligent and heedless discipline –

How are we parked and bounded in a pale –

45

A little herd of England’s timorous deer

Mazed with a yelping kennel of French curs.

If we be English deer, be then in blood:

Not rascal-like to fall down with a pinch,

But rather, moody-mad and desperate stags,

50

Turn on the bloody hounds with heads of steel

And make the cowards stand aloof at bay.

Sell every man his life as dear as mine

And they shall find dear deer of us, my friends.

God and Saint George, Talbot and England’s right,

55

Prosper our colours in this dangerous fight.     Exit.

4.3 Enter a Messenger that meets YORK. Enter YORK with trumpet and many soldiers.

YORK     Are not the speedy scouts returned again,

That dogged the mighty army of the Dolphin?

MESSENGER

They are returned, my lord, and give it out

That he is marched to Bordeaux with his power

To fight with Talbot; as he marched along,

5

By your espials were discovered

Two mightier troops than that the Dolphin led,

Which joined with him and made their march for Bordeaux.

YORK     A plague upon that villain Somerset,

That thus delays my promised supply

10

Of horsemen, that were levied for this siege.

Renowned Talbot doth expect my aid,

And I am louted by a traitor villain,

And cannot help the noble chevalier.

God comfort him in this necessity.

15

If he miscarry, farewell wars in France.

Enter another messenger, Sir William LUCY.

LUCY     Thou princely leader of our English strength –

Never so needful on the earth of France –

Spur to the rescue of the noble Talbot,

Who now is girdled with a waste of iron

20

And hemmed about with grim destruction.

To Bordeaux, warlike Duke, to Bordeaux, York,

Else farewell Talbot, France and England’s honour.

YORK     O God, that Somerset, who in proud heart

Doth stop my cornets, were in Talbot’s place;

25

So should we save a valiant gentleman

By forfeiting a traitor and a coward.

Mad ire and wrathful fury makes me weep,

That thus we die while remiss traitors sleep.

LUCY     O send some succour to the distressed lord.

30

YORK     He dies, we lose, I break my warlike word.

We mourn, France smiles; we lose, they daily get,

All long of this vile traitor Somerset.

LUCY     Then God take mercy on brave Talbot’s soul,

And on his son, young John, who two hours since

35

I met in travail toward his warlike father.

This seven years did not Talbot see his son,

And now they meet where both their lives are done.

YORK     Alas, what joy shall noble Talbot have,

To bid his young son welcome to his grave.

40

Away, vexation almost stops my breath,

That sundered friends greet in the hour of death.

Lucy, farewell; no more my fortune can

But curse the cause I cannot aid the man.

Maine, Blois, Poitiers and Tours are won away,

45

Long all of Somerset and his delay.

Exeunt all but Lucy.

LUCY     Thus, while the vulture of sedition

Feeds in the bosom of such great commanders,

Sleeping neglection doth betray to loss

The conquest of our scarce-cold conqueror,

50

That ever-living man of memory,

Henry the Fifth. Whiles they each other cross,

Lives, honours, lands and all hurry to loss.

Enter SOMERSET with his army and a Captain of Talbot’s.

[4.4]

SOMERSET     It is too late, I cannot send them now.

This expedition was by York and Talbot

55

Too rashly plotted. All our general force

Might with a sally of the very town

Be buckled with: the over-daring Talbot

Hath sullied all his gloss of former honour

By this unheedful, desperate, wild adventure.

60

York set him on to fight and die in shame,

That, Talbot dead, great York might bear the name.

CAPTAIN [to Somerset]

Here is Sir William Lucy, who, with me,

[10]

Set from our o’ermatched forces forth for aid.

SOMERSET

How now, Sir William, whither were you sent?

65

LUCY

Whither, my lord? From bought and sold Lord Talbot

Who – ringed about with bold adversity –

Cries out for noble York and Somerset

To beat assailing death from his weak regions;

And whiles the honourable captain there

70

Drops bloody sweat from his war-wearied limbs

And, in advantage lingering, looks for rescue,

You, his false hopes, the trust of England’s

honour,

[20]

Keep off aloof with worthless emulation.

Let not your private discord keep away

75

The levied succours that should lend him aid,

While he, renowned noble gentleman,

Yield up his life unto a world of odds.

Orleans the Bastard, Charles, Burgundy,

Alençon, Reignier, compass him about,

80

And Talbot perisheth by your default.

SOMERSET

York set him on, York should have sent him aid.

LUCY     And York as fast upon your grace exclaims,

[30]

Swearing that you withhold his levied host,

Collected for this expedition.

85

SOMERSET

York lies. He might have sent, and had the horse.

I owe him little duty and less love,

And take foul scorn to fawn on him by sending.

LUCY     The fraud of England, not the force of France,

Hath now entrapped the noble-minded Talbot.

90

Never to England shall he bear his life,

But dies betrayed to fortune by your strife.

SOMERSET

Come – go – I will dispatch the horsemen

straight:

[40]

Within six hours they will be at his aid.

LUCY     Too late comes rescue: he is ta’en or slain,

95

For fly he could not, if he would have fled;

And fly would Talbot never, though he might.

SOMERSET     If he be dead – brave Talbot, then, adieu.

LUCY

His fame lives in the world, his shame in you. Exeunt.

4.4 Enter TALBOT and his son JOHN.

TALBOT     O young John Talbot, I did send for thee

To tutor thee in stratagems of war,

That Talbot’s name might be in thee revived

When sapless age and weak unable limbs

Should bring thy father to his drooping chair.

5

But – O malignant and ill-boding stars –

Now thou art come unto a feast of death,

A terrible and unavoided danger.

Therefore, dear boy, mount on my swiftest horse,

And I’ll direct thee how thou shalt escape

10

By sudden flight. Come – dally not, be gone.

JOHN     Is my name Talbot? And am I your son?

And shall I fly? O, if you love my mother,

Dishonour not her honourable name

To make a bastard and a slave of me.

15

The world will say, ‘He is not Talbot’s blood,

That basely fled when noble Talbot stood’.

TALBOT     Fly, to revenge my death if I be slain.

JOHN     He that flies so will ne’er return again.

TALBOT     If we both stay we both are sure to die.

20

JOHN     Then let me stay and, father, do you fly.

Your loss is great – so your regard should be;

My worth unknown – no loss is known in me.

Upon my death the French can little boast;

In yours they will, in you all hopes are lost.

25

Flight cannot stain the honour you have won;

But mine it will, that no exploit have done.

You fled for vantage, everyone will swear;

But if I bow they’ll say it was for fear.

There is no hope that ever I will stay

30

If the first hour I shrink and run away.

Here on my knee I beg mortality,

Rather than life preserved with infamy. [He Kneels.]

TALBOT     Shall all thy mother’s hopes lie in one tomb?

JOHN     Ay, rather than I’ll shame my mother’s womb.

35

TALBOT     Upon my blessing I command thee go.

[John rises.]

JOHN     To fight I will, but not to fly the foe.

TALBOT     Part of thy father may be saved in thee.

JOHN     No part of him but will be shame in me.

TALBOT

Thou never hadst renown, nor canst not lose it.

40

JOHN     Yes, your renowned name: shall flight abuse it?

TALBOT

Thy father’s charge shall clear thee from that stain.

JOHN     You cannot witness for me, being slain.

If death be so apparent then both fly.

TALBOT     And leave my followers here to fight and die?

45

My age was never tainted with such shame.

JOHN     And shall my youth be guilty of such blame?

No more can I be severed from your side

Than can yourself yourself in twain divide.

Stay, go, do what you will, the like do I;

50

For live I will not, if my father die.

TALBOT     Then here I take my leave of thee, fair son,

Born to eclipse thy life this afternoon.

Come, side by side together live and die,

And soul with soul from France to heaven fly.

55

Alarum. Exit Talbot.

Enter ALENÇON, BASTARD and BURGUNDY in excursions, wherein Talbot’s son is hemmed about by the three Frenchmen, as he goes after his father, and TALBOT re-enters and rescues him.

[4.6]

TALBOT

Saint George and victory! Fight, soldiers, fight.

The regent hath with Talbot broke his word

And left us to the rage of France his sword.

Where is John Talbot? Pause, and take thy breath.

I gave thee life, and rescued thee from death.

60

JOHN     O twice my father, twice am I thy son:

The life thou gav’st me first was lost and done,

Till with thy warlike sword, despite of fate,

To my determined time thou gav’st new date.

[9]

TALBOT

When from the Dolphin’s crest thy sword struck fire

65

It warmed thy father’s heart with proud desire

Of bold-faced victory. Then leaden age,

Quickened with youthful spleen and warlike rage,

Beat down Alençon, Orleans, Burgundy,

And from the pride of Gallia rescued thee.

70

The ireful bastard Orleans, that drew blood

From thee, my boy, and had the maidenhood

Of thy first fight, I soon encountered,

And, interchanging blows, I quickly shed

[19]

Some of his bastard blood, and in disgrace

75

Bespoke him thus: ‘Contaminated, base

And misbegotten blood I spill of thine,

Mean and right poor, for that pure blood of mine

Which thou didst force from Talbot, my brave boy’.

Here, purposing the Bastard to destroy,

80

Came in strong rescue. Speak, thy father’s care:

Art thou not weary, John? How dost thou fare?

Wilt thou yet leave the battle, boy, and fly,

Now thou art sealed the son of chivalry?

[29]

Fly, to revenge my death when I am dead;

85

The help of one stands me in little stead.

O, too much folly is it, well I wot,

To hazard all our lives in one small boat.

If I today die not with Frenchmen’s rage,

Tomorrow I shall die with mickle age.

90

By me they nothing gain, an if I stay,

’Tis but the shortening of my life one day;

In thee thy mother dies, our household’s name,

My death’s revenge, thy youth and England’s fame.

All these, and more, we hazard by thy stay;

95

All these are saved, if thou wilt fly away.

JOHN     The sword of Orleans hath not made me smart:

These words of yours draw life-blood from my heart.

On that advantage, bought with such a shame,

To save a paltry life and slay bright fame?

100

Before young Talbot from old Talbot fly,

The coward horse that bears me fall and die!

And like me to the peasant boys of France,

To be shame’s scorn, and subject of mischance.

[49]

Surely, by all the glory you have won,

105

An if I fly I am not Talbot’s son.

Then talk no more of flight, it is no boot:

If son to Talbot, die at Talbot’s foot.

TALBOT     Then follow thou thy desperate sire of Crete,

Thou Icarus; thy life to me is sweet.

110

If thou wilt fight, fight by thy father’s side,

And, commendable proved, let’s die in pride.     Exeunt.

Alarum. Excursions. Enter old TALBOT led by a Servant. [4.7]

TALBOT     Where is my other life? Mine own is gone.

O where’s young Talbot? Where is valiant John?

Triumphant death, smeared with captivity,

115

Young Talbot’s valour makes me smile at thee.

When he perceived me shrink and on my knee,

His bloody sword he brandished over me

And like a hungry lion did commence

Rough deeds of rage and stern impatience.

120

But when my angry guardant stood alone,

Tendering my ruin and assailed of none,

[10]

Dizzy-eyed fury and great rage of heart

Suddenly made him from my side to start

Into the clustering battle of the French,

125

And in that sea of blood my boy did drench

His over-mounting spirit, and there died

My Icarus, my blossom, in his pride.

Enter soldiers with JOHN Talbot, borne.

SERVANT     O my dear lord, lo where your son is borne.

TALBOT

Thou antic death, which laugh’st us here to scorn,

130

Anon from thy insulting tyranny,

Coupled in bonds of perpetuity,

[20]

Two Talbots, winged, through the lither sky

In thy despite shall scape mortality.

O thou, whose wounds become hard-favoured death,

135

Speak to thy father ere thou yield thy breath:

Brave death by speaking, whether he will or no;

Imagine him a Frenchman, and thy foe.

Poor boy, he smiles, methinks, as who should say,

‘Had death been French, then death had died today’.

140

Come, come, and lay him in his father’s arms;

My spirit can no longer bear these harms.

[30]

Soldiers, adieu. I have what I would have,

Now my old arms are young John Talbot’s grave.     Dies.

Enter CHARLES, ALENÇON, BURGUNDY, the BASTARD and JOAN Puzel.

CHARLES     Had York and Somerset brought rescue in

145

We should have found a bloody day of this.

BASTARD

How the young whelp of Talbot’s, raging wood,

Did flesh his puny sword in Frenchmen’s blood.

JOAN     Once I encountered him, and thus I said:

‘Thou maiden youth, be vanquished by a maid’.

150

But with a proud majestical high scorn

He answered thus: ‘Young Talbot was not born

[40]

To be the pillage of a giglot wench’.

So, rushing in the bowels of the French,

He left me proudly, as unworthy fight.

155

BURGUNDY

Doubtless he would have made a noble knight.

See where he lies inhearsed in the arms

Of the most bloody nurser of his harms.

BASTARD

Hew them to pieces. Hack their bones asunder,

Whose life was England’s glory, Gallia’s wonder.

160

CHARLES     O no, forbear. For that which we have fled

During the life, let us not wrong it dead.

[50]

Enter Sir William LUCY with a French herald.

LUCY     Herald, conduct me to the Dolphin’s tent,

To know who hath obtained the glory of the day.

CHARLES     On what submissive message art thou sent?

165

LUCY

Submission, Dolphin? ’Tis a mere French word:

We English warriors wot not what it means.

I come to know what prisoners thou hast ta’en,

And to survey the bodies of the dead.

CHARLES     For prisoners ask’st thou? Hell our prison is.

170

But tell me whom thou seek’st.

LUCY     But where’s the great Alcides of the field? –

[60]

Valiant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury,

Created for his rare success in arms

Great Earl of Washford, Waterford and Valence,

175

Lord Talbot of Goodrig and Urchinfield,

Lord Strange of Blackmere, Lord Verdon of Alton,

Lord Cromwell of Wingfield, Lord Furnival of Sheffield,

The thrice victorious Lord of Falconbridge,

Knight of the noble order of Saint George,

180

Worthy Saint Michael and the Golden Fleece,

Great marshal to Henry the Sixth

[70]

Of all his wars within the realm of France.

JOAN     Here’s a silly stately style indeed:

The Turk, that two and fifty kingdoms hath,

185

Writes not so tedious a style as this.

Him that thou magnifiest with all these titles

Stinking and fly-blown lies here at our feet.

LUCY     Is Talbot slain, the Frenchmen’s only scourge,

Your kingdom’s terror and black Nemesis?

190

O, were mine eyeballs into bullets turned,

That I in rage might shoot them at your faces.

[80]

O, that I could but call these dead to life,

It were enough to fright the realm of France.

Were but his picture left amongst you here

195

It would amaze the proudest of you all.

Give me their bodies that I may bear them hence

And give them burial as beseems their worth.

JOAN     I think this upstart is old Talbot’s ghost,

He speaks with such a proud commanding spirit.

200

For God’s sake let him have him: to keep them here,

They would but stink, and putrefy the air.

[90]

CHARLES     Go, take their bodies hence.

LUCY     I’ll bear them hence;

But from their ashes shall be reared

A phoenix that shall make all France afeared.

205

CHARLES

So we be rid of them, do with him what thou wilt.

And now to Paris, in this conquering vein.

All will be ours, now bloody Talbot’s slain. Exeunt.

5.1 Sennet. Enter KING, GLOUCESTER and EXETER.

KING     Have you perused the letters from the Pope,

The Emperor and the Earl of Armagnac?

GLOUCESTER     I have, my lord, and their intent is this:

They humbly sue unto your excellence

To have a godly peace concluded of

5

Between the realms of England and of France.

KING     How doth your grace affect their motion?

GLOUCESTER

Well, my good lord, and as the only means

To stop effusion of our Christian blood

And ’stablish quietness on every side.

10

KING     Ay marry, uncle, for I always thought

It was both impious and unnatural

That such immanity and bloody strife

Should reign among professors of one faith.

GLOUCESTER     Beside, my lord, the sooner to effect

15

And surer bind this knot of amity,

The Earl of Armagnac – near knit to Charles,

A man of great authority in France –

Proffers his only daughter to your grace

In marriage, with a large and sumptuous dowry.

20

KING     Marriage, uncle? Alas, my years are young,

And fitter is my study and my books

Than wanton dalliance with a paramour.

Yet call th’ambassadors and, as you please,

So let them have their answers every one.

25

I shall be well content with any choice

Tends to God’s glory and my country’s weal.

Enter WINCHESTER and three Ambassadors among them the papal Legate and an ambassador from the Earl of Armagnac.

EXETER     What, is my lord of Winchester installed

And called unto a cardinal’s degree?

Then, I perceive, that will be verified

30

Henry the Fifth did sometime prophesy:

‘If once he come to be a cardinal

He’ll make his cap co-equal with the crown’.

KING     My lords ambassadors, your several suits

Have been considered and debated on.

35

Your purpose is both good and reasonable,

And therefore are we certainly resolved

To draw conditions of a friendly peace,

Which by my lord of Winchester we mean

Shall be transported presently to France.

40

GLOUCESTER     [to the Ambassador of the Earl of Armagnac]

And for the proffer of my lord your master,

I have informed his highness so at large

As, liking of the lady’s virtuous gifts,

Her beauty and the value of her dower,

He doth intend she shall be England’s queen.

45

KING     In argument and proof of which contract,

Bear her this jewel, pledge of my affection.

[Gives the Ambassador a ring.]

And so, my lord Protector, see them guarded,

And safely brought to Dover, wherein shipped,

Commit them to the fortune of the sea.

50

Exeunt all but Winchester,

who keeps back the papal Legate.

WINCHESTER

Stay, my lord legate. You shall first receive

The sum of money which I promised

Should be delivered to his holiness

For clothing me in these grave ornaments.

LEGATE     I will attend upon your lordship’s leisure.

55

WINCHESTER     Now Winchester will not submit, I trow,

Or be inferior to the proudest peer;

Humphrey of Gloucester, thou shalt well perceive

That neither in birth or for authority

The Bishop will be overborne by thee.

60

I’ll either make thee stoop and bend thy knee,

Or sack this country with a mutiny.     Exeunt.

5.2 Enter CHARLES, BURGUNDY, ALENÇON, the BASTARD, REIGNIER and JOAN.

CHARLES

These news, my lords, may cheer our drooping spirits:

’Tis said the stout Parisians do revolt

And turn again unto the warlike French.

ALENÇON

Then march to Paris, royal Charles of France,

And keep not back your powers in dalliance.

5

JOAN     Peace be amongst them if they turn to us;

Else ruin combat with their palaces.

Enter Scout.

SCOUT     Success unto our valiant general

And happiness to his accomplices.

CHARLES

What tidings send our scouts? I prithee, speak.

10

SCOUT     The English army, that divided was

Into two parties, is now conjoined in one

And means to give you battle presently.

CHARLES     Somewhat too sudden, sirs, the warning is;

But we will presently provide for them.

15

BURGUNDY     I trust the ghost of Talbot is not there.

Now he is gone, my lord, you need not fear.

JOAN     Of all base passions, fear is most accursed.

Command the conquest, Charles, it shall be thine:

Let Henry fret, and all the world repine.

20

CHARLES

Then on, my lords, and France be fortunate.     Exeunt.

Alarum. Excursions. Enter JOAN Puzel.

[5.3]

JOAN     The regent conquers and the Frenchmen fly.

Now help, ye charming spells and periapts,

And ye, choice spirits that admonish me

And give me signs of future accidents.     Thunder.

25

You speedy helpers, that are substitutes

Under the lordly monarch of the north,

Appear, and aid me in this enterprise.

Enter fiends.

This speedy and quick appearance argues proof

Of your accustomed diligence to me.

30

Now, ye familiar spirits, that are culled

[10]

Out of the powerful regions under earth,

Help me this once, that France may get the field.

[They walk, and speak not.]

O hold me not with silence over-long:

Where I was wont to feed you with my blood,

35

I’ll lop a member off and give it you

In earnest of a further benefit

So you do condescend to help me now.

[They hang their heads.]

No hope to have redress? My body shall

Pay recompense if you will grant my suit.

40

[They shake their heads.]

Cannot my body nor blood sacrifice

[20]

Entreat you to your wonted furtherance?

Then take my soul – my body, soul, and all –

Before that England give the French the foil.

They depart.

See, they forsake me. Now the time is come

45

That France must vail her lofty-plumed crest,

And let her head fall into England’s lap.

My ancient incantations are too weak,

And hell too strong for me to buckle with.

Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust.     Exit.

50

Excursions: BURGUNDY and YORK enter and fight hand to hand. French enter with JOAN and fly. York captures Joan Puzel.

YORK     Damsel of France, I think I have you fast.

[30]

Unchain your spirits now with spelling charms

And try if they can gain your liberty.

A goodly prize, fit for the devil’s grace.

See how the ugly witch doth bend her brows

55

As if, with Circe, she would change my shape.

JOAN     Changed to a worser shape thou canst not be.

YORK     O, Charles the Dolphin is a proper man;

No shape but his can please your dainty eye.

JOAN     A plaguing mischief light on Charles and thee,

60

And may ye both be suddenly surprised

[40]

By bloody hands, in sleeping on your beds.

YORK     Fell banning hag, enchantress, hold thy tongue.

JOAN     I prithee, give me leave to curse awhile.

YORK     Curse, miscreant, when thou com’st to the stake.

65

Exeunt.

Alarum. Enter SUFFOLK with MARGARET in his hand.

SUFFOLK     Be what thou wilt, thou art my prisoner.

Gazes on her.

O fairest beauty, do not fear nor fly,

For I will touch thee but with reverent hands;

I kiss these fingers for eternal peace

And lay them gently on thy tender side.

70

Who art thou? Say, that I may honour thee.

[50]

MARGARET

Margaret my name, and daughter to a king,

The King of Naples – whosoe’er thou art.

SUFFOLK     An earl I am, and Suffolk am I called.

Be not offended, Nature’s miracle;

75

Thou art allotted to be ta’en by me.

So doth the swan her downy cygnets save,

Keeping them prisoner underneath his wings.

Yet, if this servile usage once offend,

Go, and be free again as Suffolk’s friend. [She is going.]

80

O stay: [to himself] I have no power to let her pass.

[60]

My hand would free her, but my heart says no.

As plays the sun upon the glassy streams,

Twinkling another counterfeited beam,

So seems this gorgeous beauty to mine eyes.

85

Fain would I woo her, yet I dare not speak.

I’ll call for pen and ink and write my mind.

Fie, de la Pole, disable not thyself:

Hast not a tongue? Is she not here?

Wilt thou be daunted at a woman’s sight?

90

Ay. Beauty’s princely majesty is such

[70]

Confounds the tongue, and makes the senses rough.

MARGARET     Say, Earl of Suffolk – if thy name be so –

What ransom must I pay before I pass?

For I perceive I am thy prisoner.

95

SUFFOLK [to himself]

How canst thou tell she will deny thy suit

Before thou make a trial of her love?

MARGARET

Why speak’st thou not? What ransom must I pay?

SUFFOLK [to himself]

She’s beautiful, and therefore to be wooed:

She is a woman, therefore to be won.

100

MARGARET [to herself]

Wilt thou accept of ransom, yea or no?

[80]

SUFFOLK [to himself]

Fond man, remember that thou hast a wife.

Then how can Margaret be thy paramour?

MARGARET [to herself]

I were best to leave him, for he will not hear.

SUFFOLK [to himself]

There all is marred; there lies a cooling card.

105

MARGARET [to herself]

He talks at random: sure the man is mad.

SUFFOLK [to himself]

And yet a dispensation may be had.

MARGARET

And yet I would that you would answer me.

SUFFOLK [to himself]

I’ll win this Lady Margaret. For whom?

Why, for my king. Tush, that’s a wooden thing.

110

MARGARET

He talks of wood: it is some carpenter.

[90]

SUFFOLK [to himself]

Yet so my fancy may be satisfied,

And peace established between these realms.

But there remains a scruple in that too:

For though her father be the King of Naples,

115

Duke of Anjou and Maine, yet is he poor

And our nobility will scorn the match.

MARGARET     Hear ye, captain? Are you not at leisure?

SUFFOLK [to himself]

It shall be so, disdain they ne’er so much.

Henry is youthful, and will quickly yield.

120

[to Margaret] Madam, I have a secret to reveal.

[100]

MARGARET [to herself]

What though I be enthralled? He seems a knight,

And will not any way dishonour me.

SUFFOLK     Lady, vouchsafe to listen what I say.

MARGARET [to herself]

Perhaps I shall be rescued by the French,

125

And then I need not crave his courtesy.

SUFFOLK     Sweet madam, give me hearing in a cause.

MARGARET [to herself]

Tush, women have been captivate ere now.

SUFFOLK     Lady, wherefore talk you so?

MARGARET     I cry you mercy, ’tis but quid for quo.

130

SUFFOLK

Say, gentle princess, would you not suppose

[110]

Your bondage happy, to be made a queen?

MARGARET     To be a queen in bondage is more vile

Than is a slave in base servility;

For princes should be free.

SUFFOLK     And so shall you,

135

If happy England’s royal king be free.

MARGARET     Why, what concerns his freedom unto me?

SUFFOLK     I’ll undertake to make thee Henry’s queen,

To put a golden sceptre in thy hand

And set a precious crown upon thy head,

140

If thou wilt condescend to be my –

MARGARET     What?

[120]

SUFFOLK     His love.

MARGARET     I am unworthy to be Henry’s wife.

SUFFOLK     No, gentle madam; I unworthy am

To woo so fair a dame to be his wife –

145

And have no portion in the choice myself.

How say you, madam, are ye so content?

MARGARET     An if my father please, I am content.

SUFFOLK     Then call our captains and our colours forth,

And, madam, at your father’s castle walls

150

We’ll crave a parley to confer with him.

[130]

[Sound trumpets, at Suffolk’s command.]

Enter REIGNIER on the walls.

See, Reignier, see, thy daughter prisoner.

REIGNIER     To whom?

SUFFOLK     To me.

REIGNIER     Suffolk, what remedy?

I am a soldier, and unapt to weep,

Or to exclaim on fortune’s fickleness.

155

SUFFOLK     Yes, there is remedy enough, my lord.

Consent – and for thy honour give consent –

Thy daughter shall be wedded to my king,

Whom I with pain have wooed and won thereto,

And this, her easy-held imprisonment,

160

Hath gained thy daughter princely liberty.

[140]

REIGNIER     Speaks Suffolk as he thinks?

SUFFOLK     Fair Margaret knows

That Suffolk doth not flatter, face or feign.

REIGNIER     Upon thy princely warrant I descend

To give thee answer of thy just demand.

165

Exit Reignier from the walls.

SUFFOLK     And here I will expect thy coming.

[Trumpets sound.]

Enter REIGNIER.

REIGNIER     Welcome, brave earl, into our territories.

Command in Anjou what your honour pleases.

SUFFOLK

Thanks, Reignier, happy for so sweet a child,

Fit to be made companion with a king.

170

What answer makes your grace unto my suit?

[150]

REIGNIER     Since thou dost deign to woo her little worth

To be the princely bride of such a lord –

Upon condition I may quietly

Enjoy mine own, the country Maine and Anjou,

175

Free from oppression or the stroke of war –

My daughter shall be Henry’s, if he please.

SUFFOLK     That is her ransom. I deliver her,

And those two counties I will undertake

Your grace shall well and quietly enjoy.

180

REIGNIER     And I – again in Henry’s royal name,

[160]

As deputy unto that gracious king –

Give thee her hand for sign of plighted faith.

SUFFOLK

Reignier of France, I give thee kingly thanks,

Because this is in traffic of a king.

185

And yet methinks I could be well content

To be mine own attorney in this case.

I’ll over then to England with this news,

And make this marriage to be solemnized.

So farewell, Reignier; set this diamond safe

190

In golden palaces, as it becomes.

[170]

REIGNIER     I do embrace thee, as I would embrace

The Christian prince King Henry were he here.

MARGARET

Farewell, my lord. Good wishes, praise and prayers

Shall Suffolk ever have of Margaret.

195

Exit Reignier. She is going after him, when Suffolk stops her.

SUFFOLK

Farewell, sweet madam; but hark you, Margaret –

No princely commendations to my king?

MARGARET     Such commendations as becomes a maid,

A virgin and his servant, say to him.

SUFFOLK     Words sweetly placed, and modesty directed.

200

But, madam, I must trouble you again –

[180]

No loving token to his majesty?

MARGARET     Yes, my good lord: a pure unspotted heart,

Never yet taint with love, I send the King.

SUFFOLK     And this withal. [Kisses her.]

205

MARGARET     That for thyself. I will not so presume

To send such peevish tokens to a king. Exit.

SUFFOLK     O wert thou for myself! But Suffolk, stay,

Thou mayst not wander in that labyrinth:

There Minotaurs and ugly treasons lurk.

210

Solicit Henry with her wondrous praise,

[190]

Bethink thee on her virtues that surmount,

Mad natural graces that extinguish art;

Repeat their semblance often on the seas,

That when thou com’st to kneel at Henry’s feet

215

Thou mayst bereave him of his wits with wonder.

Exit.

5.3 Enter YORK, WARWICK, Shepherd and JOAN Puzel.

YORK     Bring forth that sorceress condemned to burn.

SHEPHERD

Ah, Joan, this kills thy father’s heart outright.

Have I sought every country far and near

And – now it is my chance to find thee out –

Must I behold thy timeless cruel death?

5

Ah, Joan, sweet daughter Joan, I’ll die with thee.

JOAN     Decrepit miser, base ignoble wretch,

I am descended of a gentler blood.

Thou art no father, nor no friend of mine.

SHEPHERD

Out, out! My lords, an please you, ’tis not so.

10

I did beget her, all the parish knows.

Her mother liveth yet, can testify

She was the first fruit of my bachelorship.

WARWICK     Graceless, wilt thou deny thy parentage?

YORK     This argues what her kind of life hath been –

15

Wicked and vile, and so her death concludes.

SHEPHERD

Fie, Joan, that thou wilt be so obstacle.

God knows, thou art a collop of my flesh,

And for thy sake have I shed many a tear.

Deny me not, I prithee, gentle Joan.

20

JOAN

Peasant, avaunt! [to York] You have suborned this man

Of purpose to obscure my noble birth.

SHEPHERD     ’Tis true, I gave a noble to the priest

The morn that I was wedded to her mother.

Kneel down and take my blessing, good my girl.

25

Wilt thou not stoop? Now cursed be the time

Of thy nativity. I would the milk

Thy mother gave thee when thou suck’st her breast

Had been a little ratsbane for thy sake –

Or else, when thou didst keep my lambs a-field,

30

I wish some ravenous wolf had eaten thee.

Dost thou deny thy father, cursed drab?

O burn her, burn her, hanging is too good. Exit.

YORK     Take her away, for she hath lived too long,

To fill the world with vicious qualities.

35

JOAN

First let me tell you whom you have condemned:

Not me begotten of a shepherd swain,

But issued from the progeny of kings;

Virtuous and holy, chosen from above

By inspiration of celestial grace

40

To work exceeding miracles on earth.

I never had to do with wicked spirits;

But you, that are polluted with your lusts,

Stained with the guiltless blood of innocents,

Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices,

45

Because you want the grace that others have,

You judge it straight a thing impossible

To compass wonders but by help of devils.

No – misconceived, Joan of Aire hath been

A virgin from her tender infancy,

50

Chaste and immaculate in very thought,

Whose maiden-blood, thus rigorously effused,

Will cry for vengeance at the gates of heaven.

YORK     Ay, ay: away with her to execution.

WARWICK     And hark ye, sirs: because she is a maid,

55

Spare for no faggots, let there be enough.

Place barrels of pitch upon the fatal stake

That so her torture may be shortened.

JOAN     Will nothing turn your unrelenting hearts?

Then, Joan, discover thine infirmity,

60

That warranteth by law to be thy privilege.

I am with child, ye bloody homicides:

Murder not then the fruit within my womb,

Although ye hale me to a violent death.

YORK     Now heaven forfend, the holy maid with child?

65

WARWICK     The greatest miracle that e’er ye wrought.

Is all your strict preciseness come to this?

YORK     She and the Dolphin have been ingling.

I did imagine what would be her refuge.

WARWICK     Well, go to, we’ll have no bastards live;

70

Especially since Charles must father it.

JOAN     You are deceived, my child is none of his.

It was Alençon that enjoyed my love.

YORK     Alençon, that notorious Machiavel?

It dies, an if it had a thousand lives.

75

JOAN     O give me leave, I have deluded you.

’Twas neither Charles, nor yet the Duke I named,

But Reignier, King of Naples, that prevailed.

WARWICK     A married man, that’s most intolerable.

YORK     Why, here’s a girl! I think she knows not well –

80

There were so many – whom she may accuse.

WARWICK     It’s sign she hath been liberal and free.

YORK     And yet, forsooth, she is a virgin pure.

Strumpet, thy words condemn thy brat and thee.

Use no entreaty, for it is in vain.

85

JOAN

Then lead me hence – with whom I leave my curse.

May never glorious sun reflex his beams

Upon the country where you make abode,

But darkness and the gloomy shade of death

Environ you, till mischief and despair

90

Drive you to break your necks, or hang yourselves.

Exit.

Enter the Cardinal of WINCHESTER.

YORK     Break thou in pieces, and consume to ashes,

Thou foul accursed minister of hell.

WINCHESTER     Lord Regent, I do greet your excellence

With letters of commission from the King.

95

For know, my lords, the states of Christendom,

Moved with remorse of these outrageous broils,

Have earnestly implored a general peace

Betwixt our nation and the aspiring French;

And here at hand the Dolphin and his train

100

Approacheth, to confer about some matter.

YORK     Is all our travail turned to this effect?

After the slaughter of so many peers,

So many captains, gentlemen and soldiers

That in this quarrel have been overthrown

105

And sold their bodies for their country’s benefit,

Shall we at last conclude effeminate peace?

Have we not lost most part of all the towns,

By treason, falsehood and by treachery,

Our great progenitors had conquered?

110

O Warwick, Warwick, I foresee with grief

The utter loss of all the realm of France.

WARWICK     Be patient, York. If we conclude a peace

It shall be with such strict and severe covenants

As little shall the Frenchmen gain thereby.

115

Enter CHARLES, ALENÇON, the BASTARD and REIGNIER.

CHARLES     Since, lords of England, it is thus agreed

That peaceful truce shall be proclaimed in France,

We come to be informed, by yourselves,

What the conditions of that league must be.

120

YORK     Speak, Winchester, for boiling choler chokes

The hollow passage of my poisoned voice

By sight of these, our baleful enemies.

WINCHESTER     Charles, and the rest, it is enacted thus:

That, in regard King Henry gives consent,

Of mere compassion and of lenity,

125

To ease your country of distressful war

And suffer you to breathe in fruitful peace,

You shall become true liegemen to his crown.

And Charles, upon condition thou wilt swear

To pay him tribute and submit thyself,

130

Thou shalt be placed as viceroy under him

And still enjoy thy regal dignity.

ALENÇON Must he be then as shadow of himself –

Adorn his temples with a coronet,

And yet in substance and authority

135

Retain but privilege of a private man?

This proffer is absurd and reasonless.

CHARLES     ’Tis known already that I am possessed

With more than half the Gallian territories,

And therein reverenced for their lawful king.

140

Shall I, for lucre of the rest unvanquished,

Detract so much from that prerogative

As to be called but viceroy of the whole?

No, lord ambassador; I’ll rather keep

That which I have, than, coveting for more,

145

Be cast from possibility of all.

YORK     Insulting Charles, hast thou by secret means

Used intercession to obtain a league

And, now the matter grows to compromise,

Stand’st thou aloof upon comparison?

150

Either accept the title thou usurp’st –

Of benefit proceeding from our king,

And not of any challenge of desert –

Or we will plague thee with incessant wars.

[The French turn to talk among themselves.]

REIGNIER     My lord, you do not well in obstinacy

155

To cavil in the course of this contract.

If once it be neglected, ten to one

We shall not find like opportunity.

ALENÇON To say the truth, it is your policy

To save your subjects from such massacre

160

And ruthless slaughters as are daily seen

By our proceeding in hostility:

And therefore take this compact of a truce –

Although you break it, when your pleasure serves.

WARWICK

How sayest thou, Charles? Shall our condition stand?

165

CHARLES     It shall:

Only reserved you claim no interest

In any of our towns of garrison.

YORK     Then swear allegiance to his majesty:

As thou art knight, never to disobey

170

Nor be rebellious to the crown of England –

Thou nor thy nobles to the crown of England.

So, now dismiss your army when ye please.

Hang up your ensigns, let your drums be still,

For here we entertain a solemn peace.     Exeunt.

175

5.4 Enter SUFFOLK in conference with the KING, GLOUCESTER and EXETER.

KING     Your wondrous rare description, noble earl,

Of beauteous Margaret hath astonished me.

Her virtues, graced with external gifts,

Do breed love’s settled passions in my heart;

And like as rigour of tempestuous gusts

5

Provokes the mightiest hulk against the tide,

So am I driven, by breath of her renown,

Either to suffer shipwreck or arrive

Where I may have fruition of her love.

SUFFOLK     Tush, my good lord, this superficial tale

10

Is but a preface of her worthy praise:

The chief perfections of that lovely dame –

Had I sufficient skill to utter them –

Would make a volume of enticing lines

Able to ravish any dull conceit.

15

And, which is more, she is not so divine,

So full replete with choice of all delights,

But with as humble lowliness of mind

She is content to be at your command –

Command, I mean, of virtuous chaste intents –

20

To love and honour Henry as her lord.

KING     And otherwise will Henry ne’er presume.

Therefore, my lord Protector, give consent

That Margaret may be England’s royal queen.

GLOUCESTER     So should I give consent to flatter sin.

25

You know, my lord, your highness is betrothed

Unto another lady of esteem;

How shall we then dispense with that contract,

And not deface your honour with reproach?

SUFFOLK     As doth a ruler with unlawful oaths,

30

Or one that, at a triumph having vowed

To try his strength, forsaketh yet the lists

By reason of his adversary’s odds.

A poor earl’s daughter is unequal odds

And therefore may be broke without offence.

35

GLOUCESTER

Why, what, I pray, is Margaret more than that?

Her father is no better than an earl,

Although in glorious titles he excel.

SUFFOLK     Yes, my lord, her father is a king,

The King of Naples and Jerusalem,

40

And of such great authority in France

As his alliance will confirm our peace,

And keep the Frenchmen in allegiance.

GLOUCESTER     And so the Earl of Armagnac may do,

Because he is near kinsman unto Charles.

45

EXETER

Beside, his wealth doth warrant a liberal dower,

Where Reignier sooner will receive than give.

SUFFOLK

A dower, my lords? Disgrace not so your king

That he should be so abject, base and poor

To choose for wealth, and not for perfect love.

50

Henry is able to enrich his queen,

And not to seek a queen to make him rich;

So worthless peasants bargain for their wives,

As market-men for oxen, sheep or horse.

Marriage is a matter of more worth

55

Than to be dealt in by attorneyship:

Not whom we will, but whom his grace affects,

Must be companion of his nuptial bed.

And therefore, lords, since he affects her most,

Most of all these reasons bindeth us:

60

In our opinions she should be preferred.

For what is wedlock forced but a hell,

An age of discord and continual strife?

Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss,

And is a pattern of celestial peace.

65

Whom should we match with Henry, being a king,

But Margaret, that is daughter to a king?

Her peerless feature, joined with her birth,

Approves her fit for none but for a king.

Her valiant courage and undaunted spirit

70

(More than in women commonly is seen)

Will answer our hope in issue of a king.

For Henry, son unto a conqueror,

Is likely to beget more conquerors,

If with a lady of so high resolve

75

As is fair Margaret he be linked in love.

Then yield, my lords, and here conclude with me

That Margaret shall be queen, and none but she.

KING

Whether it be through force of your report,

My noble lord of Suffolk, or for that

80

My tender youth was never yet attaint

With any passion of inflaming love,

I cannot tell; but this I am assured –

I feel such sharp dissension in my breast,

Such fierce alarums both of hope and fear,

85

As I am sick with working of my thoughts.

Take therefore shipping post, my lord, to France.

Agree to any covenants, and procure

That lady Margaret do vouchsafe to come,

To cross the seas to England and be crowned

90

King Henry’s faithful and anointed queen.

For your expenses and sufficient charge,

Among the people gather up a tenth.

Begone, I say, for till you do return

I rest perplexed with a thousand cares.

95

And you, good uncle, banish all offence:

If you do censure me by what you were,

Not what you are, I know it will excuse

This sudden execution of my will.

And so conduct me where, from company,

100

I may revolve and ruminate my grief.     Exit.

GLOUCESTER

Ay, grief, I fear me, both at first and last.

Exeunt Gloucester and Exeter.

SUFFOLK

Thus Suffolk hath prevailed, and thus he goes,

As did the youthful Paris once to Greece,

With hope to find the like event in love –

105

But prosper better than the Trojan did.

Margaret shall now be queen, and rule the King:

But I will rule both her, the King and realm.     Exit.

King Henry VI, Part 2

Before its appearance as the seventh of the histories in the Folio of 1623, a version of King Henry VI, Part 2 was published in 1594 as The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster. The 1594 Quarto was reprinted in 1600, and in 1619 this play and King Henry VI, Part 3 (published in 1595 as The true Tragedy of Richard Duke of York) were combined and published as The Whole Contention between the two Famous Houses, Lancaster and York. These earliest printings of Part 2 differ from the Folio text: they are shorter by about a third and seem to represent a reported version, put together probably by actors who had performed the play. Thus, in general, they have less authority than the fuller and better text available in the 1623 Folio, but they do provide, by virtue of their provenance, important evidence of early theatrical practice.

King Henry VI, Part 2, continues the history soon after it breaks off in Part 1, but with its own formal and thematic integrity. The play covers ten years of Henry’s tumultuous reign, beginning with Margaret’s coronation (which took place in May 1445, two years after the disgrace of Duke Humphrey’s wife Eleanor, also included within the action), and continues to the Battle of St Albans (1455). France has now effectively been lost. The factionalism evident in Part 1 finally bursts here into fullfledged civil war, and the aristocratic struggles for the throne have a demotic echo in the emergence of the popular unrest that explodes into Jack Cade’s rebellion. Through it all, we can see the ominous emergence of one man able to impose his will on history, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York.

Part 1 plays off England against France, Talbot against Joan, mighty opposites that work to define a model of English greatness, however vulnerable it is finally shown to be; Part 2 confronts the stresses and tensions tearing at the fabric of the nation itself. This is a new world, no longer based on aristocratic honour and feudal obligation, but a world of appetite and ambition, a world in which neither Henry’s piety nor Gloucester’s virtue offers protection or relief.

Jack Cade’s rebellion is perhaps a mere inset into the dismal story of aristocratic wrangles, but it is a telling episode. It can be seen as evidence of the dangerous unruliness of the rabble, a degrading comedy of misrule, but the rebels voice legitimate social concerns and aspirations. If the uprising seems finally a travesty of the desire for social justice, it is because their leader, Cade, is revealed as a pawn of York’s ambitions and his pathetic mimic, rather than because the issues are themselves laughable.

Thirteen people die in King Henry VI, Part 2, none in easeful sleep. The language is of snakes, spiders and scorpions; bleeding heifers, slaughtered calves, innocent lambs threatened by wolves; butchers with axes and headless bodies on piles of dung. Not far beneath the veneer of courtly sophistication is a fierce and violent world that can no longer be ordered by the institutions and ceremonies designed to control the flux of reality. The fall of the good and innocent Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, is at once symptom and at least partial cause of the lawlessness that reigns. His absence leaves the state without any effective force of social coherence. The idea of kingship itself is endlessly appealed to, but it is never a unifying centre for the country or the play; for the ambitious York it is only the object of his brazen will to power, and for the inept Henry it is a condition to be escaped: ‘never subject longed to be a king / As I do long and wish to be a subject’.

Of the three parts of King Henry VI, Dr Johnson thought ‘the second the best’. Certainly it is a powerful play, though one that modern audiences have had little chance to see. When played at all, it has usually been cut and adapted, as in John Barton’s two-part The Wars of the Roses (1963), tailored from the three parts of King Henry VI, or in 1986 by the English Shakespeare Company and in 1988 by the Royal Shakespeare Company, both of whom also condensed the three plays into two. In 1977, however, Terry Hands directed all three plays in sequence at Stratford-upon-Avon, and in 2000–1 the RSC staged them as part of its ambitious series ‘This England, the Histories’, comprising all the histories from Richard II to Richard III in chronological order.

The 2000 Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

LANCASTRIANS

KING Henry the Sixth

QUEEN Margaret

Humphrey, Duke of GLOUCESTER

uncle of the King

ELEANOR, Duchess of Gloucester

CARDINAL Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester

great-uncle of the King

Marquess of SUFFOLK

Duke of SOMERSET

Duke of BUCKINGHAM

OLD CLIFFORD

YOUNG CLIFFORD

his son

VAUX

YORKISTS

Richard, Duke of YORK

his sons

Earl of SALISBURY

Earl of WARWICK

his sons

PETITION AND COMBAT 1.3, 2.3

Thomas HORNER

armourer

PETER Thump

his apprentice

PETITIONERS, PRENTICES, NEIGHBOURS

CONJURATION 1.4

John HUME

John SOUTHWELL

Margery JOURDAIN

a witch

Roger BOLINBROKE

a conjuror

SPIRIT

THE FALSE MIRACLE 2.1

Simon SIMPCOX

Simpcox’s WIFE

MAYOR of St Albans

BEADLE

TOWNSMEN

ELEANOR’S PENANCE 2. 4

Sir John STANLEY

SHERIFF of London

HERALD, SERVANTS

Officers, Commoners

GLOUCESTER’S MURDER 3. 2

Two MURDERERS

Commons

SUFFOLK’S MURDER 4.1

LIEUTENANT

MASTER

Master’s MATE

Walter WHITMORE

Two GENTLEMEN

CADE’S REBELLION 4.2–10

GEORGE

NICK

Jack CADE

Dick the BUTCHER

Smith the WEAVER

Sawyer

Rebels

Emmanuel the CLERK of Chartham

MICHAEL

Sir Humphrey STAFFORD

Stafford’s BROTHER

Lord SAYE

Lord SCALES

Matthew GOUGH

Alexander IDEN

Drummers, Soldiers, Trumpeter

CITIZENS

OTHERS

Attendants, Falconers, Guards

POST, MESSENGERS

King Henry VI, Part 2

1.1 Flourish of trumpets; then hautboys. Enter the KING, GLOUCESTER, SALISBURY, WARWICK and CARDINAL Beaufort, on the one side; the QUEEN, SUFFOLK, YORK, SOMERSET and BUCKINGHAM, on the other; with attendants.

SUFFOLK     As by your high imperial majesty

I had in charge at my depart for France,

As procurator to your excellence,

To marry Princess Margaret for your grace;

So, in the famous ancient city Tours,

5

In presence of the Kings of France and Sicil,

The Dukes of Orleans, Calaber, Bretagne and Alençon,

Seven earls, twelve barons and twenty reverend bishops,

I have performed my task and was espoused,

And humbly now upon my bended knee, [Kneels.]

10

In sight of England and her lordly peers,

Deliver up my title in the Queen

To your most gracious hands, that are the substance

Of that great shadow I did represent;

The happiest gift that ever marquess gave,

15

The fairest queen that ever king received.

KING     Suffolk arise. [Suffolk rises.]

– Welcome, Queen Margaret:

I can express no kinder sign of love

Than this kind kiss. [Kisses her.]

– O Lord, that lends me life,

Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!

20

For thou hast given me in this beauteous face

A world of earthly blessings to my soul,

If sympathy of love unite our thoughts.

QUEEN     Great King of England, and my gracious lord,

The mutual conference that my mind hath had

25

By day, by night, waking and in my dreams,

In courtly company, or at my beads,

With you mine alderliefest sovereign,

Makes me the bolder to salute my King

With ruder terms, such as my wit affords

30

And overjoy of heart doth minister.

KING     Her sight did ravish, but her grace in speech,

Her words y-clad with wisdom’s majesty,

Makes me from wondering fall to weeping joys,

Such is the fulness of my heart’s content.

35

Lords, with one cheerful voice welcome my love.

ALL [Kneel.]

Long live Queen Margaret, England’s happiness!

QUEEN     We thank you all.     [Flourish.]

SUFFOLK     My Lord Protector, so it please your grace,

Here are the articles of contracted peace

40

Between our sovereign and the French King Charles,

For eighteen months concluded by consent.

GLOUCESTER [Reads.]     Imprimis, it is agreed between the

French King Charles and William de la Pole, Marquess

of Suffolk, ambassador for Henry, King of England,

45

that the said Henry shall espouse the Lady Margaret,

daughter unto Reignier, King of Naples, Sicilia and

Jerusalem, and crown her Queen of England, ere the

thirtieth of May next ensuing. Item, that the duchy of

Anjou and the county of Maine shall be released and

50

delivered to the King her father.

[Lets the paper fall.]

KING     Uncle, how now?

GLOUCESTER     Pardon me, gracious lord.

Some sudden qualm hath struck me at the heart

And dimmed mine eyes, that I can read no further.

KING     Uncle of Winchester, I pray read on.

55

CARDINAL [Reads.] Item, it is further agreed between them

that the duchy of Anjou and the county of Maine shall

be released and delivered to the King her father, and she

sent over of the King of England’s own proper cost and

charges, without having any dowry.

60

KING

They please us well. – Lord Marquess, kneel down.

[Suffolk kneels.]

We here create thee the first Duke of Suffolk,

[Suffolk rises.]

And girt thee with the sword. – Cousin of York,

We here discharge your grace from being regent

I’th’ parts of France, till term of eighteen months

65

Be full expired. – Thanks, uncle Winchester,

Gloucester, York, Buckingham, Somerset,

Salisbury and Warwick.

We thank you all for this great favour done,

In entertainment to my princely Queen.

70

Come, let us in, and with all speed provide

To see her coronation be performed.

Exeunt King, Queen and Suffolk with attendants.

Gloucester stays all the rest.

GLOUCESTER

Brave peers of England, pillars of the state,

To you Duke Humphrey must unload his grief,

Your grief, the common grief of all the land.

75

What! Did my brother Henry spend his youth,

His valour, coin and people, in the wars?

Did he so often lodge in open field,

In winter’s cold and summer’s parching heat,

To conquer France, his true inheritance?

80

And did my brother Bedford toil his wits

To keep by policy what Henry got?

Have you yourselves, Somerset, Buckingham,

Brave York, Salisbury and victorious Warwick,

Received deep scars in France and Normandy?

85

Or hath mine uncle Beaufort and myself,

With all the learned council of the realm,

Studied so long, sat in the council house

Early and late, debating to and fro

How France and Frenchmen might be kept in awe,

90

And had his highness in his infancy

Crowned in Paris in despite of foes?

And shall these labours and these honours die?

Shall Henry’s conquest, Bedford’s vigilance,

Your deeds of war and all our counsel die?

95

O peers of England, shameful is this league;

Fatal this marriage, cancelling your fame,

Blotting your names from books of memory,

Razing the characters of your renown,

Defacing monuments of conquered France,

100

Undoing all, as all had never been!

CARDINAL

Nephew, what means this passionate discourse,

This peroration with such circumstance?

For France ’tis ours; and we will keep it still.

GLOUCESTER     Ay, uncle, we will keep it if we can,

105

But now it is impossible we should.

Suffolk, the new-made duke that rules the roast,

Hath given the duchy of Anjou and Maine

Unto the poor King Reignier, whose large style

Agrees not with the leanness of his purse.

110

SALISBURY     Now by the death of Him that died for all,

These counties were the keys of Normandy.

But wherefore weeps Warwick, my valiant son?

WARWICK     For grief that they are past recovery.

For were there hope to conquer them again

115

My sword should shed hot blood, mine eyes no tears.

Anjou and Maine! Myself did win them both;

Those provinces these arms of mine did conquer;

And are the cities that I got with wounds

Delivered up again with peaceful words?

120

Mort Dieu!

YORK     For Suffolk’s Duke, may he be suffocate,

That dims the honour of this warlike isle!

France should have torn and rent my very heart

Before I would have yielded to this league.

125

I never read but England’s kings have had

Large sums of gold and dowries with their wives;

And our King Henry gives away his own,

To match with her that brings no vantages.

GLOUCESTER     A proper jest, and never heard before,

130

That Suffolk should demand a whole fifteenth

For costs and charges in transporting her!

She should have stayed in France, and starved in France

Before –

CARDINAL

My Lord of Gloucester, now ye grow too hot:

135

It was the pleasure of my lord the King.

GLOUCESTER

My Lord of Winchester, I know your mind.

’Tis not my speeches that you do mislike,

But ’tis my presence that doth trouble ye.

Rancour will out: proud prelate, in thy face

140

I see thy fury. If I longer stay

We shall begin our ancient bickerings. –

Lordings, farewell; and say when I am gone,

I prophesied France will be lost ere long. Exit.

CARDINAL     So, there goes our Protector in a rage.

145

’Tis known to you he is mine enemy,

Nay more, an enemy unto you all,

And no great friend, I fear me, to the King.

Consider, lords, he is the next of blood

And heir apparent to the English crown.

150

Had Henry got an empire by his marriage

And all the wealthy kingdoms of the west,

There’s reason he should be displeased at it.

Look to it, lords; let not his smoothing words

Bewitch your hearts; be wise and circumspect.

155

What though the common people favour him,

Calling him ‘Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester’,

Clapping their hands and crying with loud voice,

‘Jesu maintain your royal excellence!’,

With ‘God preserve the good Duke Humphrey!’,

160

I fear me, lords, for all this flattering gloss,

He will be found a dangerous Protector.

BUCKINGHAM

Why should he then protect our sovereign,

He being of age to govern of himself?

Cousin of Somerset, join you with me,

165

And all together, with the Duke of Suffolk,

We’ll quickly hoist Duke Humphrey from his seat.

CARDINAL     This weighty business will not brook delay;

I’ll to the Duke of Suffolk presently. Exit.

SOMERSET

Cousin of Buckingham, though Humphrey’s pride

170

And greatness of his place be grief to us,

Yet let us watch the haughty Cardinal;

His insolence is more intolerable

Than all the princes’ in the land beside.

If Gloucester be displaced, he’ll be Protector.

BUCKINGHAM

175

Or thou or I, Somerset, will be Protectors,

Despite Duke Humphrey, or the Cardinal.

Exeunt Buckingham and Somerset.

SALISBURY     Pride went before; Ambition follows him.

While these do labour for their own preferment,

Behoves it us to labour for the realm.

180

I never saw but Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,

Did bear him like a noble gentleman.

Oft have I seen the haughty Cardinal,

More like a soldier than a man o’th’ church,

As stout and proud as he were lord of all,

185

Swear like a ruffian, and demean himself

Unlike the ruler of a commonweal. –

Warwick, my son, the comfort of my age,

Thy deeds, thy plainness and thy housekeeping

Hath won thee greatest favour of the commons,

190

Excepting none but good Duke Humphrey. –

And, brother York, thy acts in Ireland

In bringing them to civil discipline;

Thy late exploits done in the heart of France

When thou wert regent for our sovereign,

195

Have made thee feared and honoured of the people. –

Join we together for the public good,

In what we can to bridle and suppress

The pride of Suffolk and the Cardinal,

With Somerset’s and Buckingham’s ambition;

200

And, as we may, cherish Duke Humphrey’s deeds,

While they do tend the profit of the land.

WARWICK     So God help Warwick, as he loves the land

And common profit of his country!

YORK

And so says York, [aside] for he hath greatest cause.

205

SALISBURY

Then let’s make haste and look unto the main.

WARWICK     Unto the main! O father, Maine is lost,

That Maine which by main force Warwick did win,

And would have kept so long as breath did last!

Main chance, father, you meant, but I meant Maine,

210

Which I will win from France, or else be slain.

Exeunt Warwick and Salisbury.

YORK     Anjou and Maine are given to the French;

Paris is lost; the state of Normandy

Stands on a tickle point now they are gone.

Suffolk concluded on the articles,

215

The peers agreed, and Henry was well pleased

To change two dukedoms for a duke’s fair daughter.

I cannot blame them all – what is’t to them?

’Tis thine they give away, and not their own.

Pirates may make cheap pennyworths of their pillage

220

And purchase friends, and give to courtesans,

Still revelling like lords till all be gone;

While as the silly owner of the goods

Weeps over them, and wrings his hapless hands,

And shakes his head, and trembling stands aloof,

225

While all is shared and all is borne away

Ready to starve and dare not touch his own.

So York must sit and fret and bite his tongue,

While his own lands are bargained for and sold.

Methinks the realms of England, France and Ireland

230

Bear that proportion to my flesh and blood

As did the fatal brand Althaea burnt

Unto the prince’s heart of Calydon.

Anjou and Maine both given unto the French!

Cold news for me, for I had hope of France

235

Even as I have of fertile England’s soil.

A day will come when York shall claim his own;

And therefore I will take the Nevilles’ parts

And make a show of love to proud Duke Humphrey,

And when I spy advantage, claim the crown,

240

For that’s the golden mark I seek to hit.

Nor shall proud Lancaster usurp my right,

Nor hold the sceptre in his childish fist,

Nor wear the diadem upon his head,

Whose church-like humours fits not for a crown.

245

Then, York, be still awhile, till time do serve.

Watch thou and wake, when others be asleep,

To pry into the secrets of the state;

Till Henry, surfeiting in joys of love

With his new bride and England’s dear-bought Queen,

And Humphrey with the peers be fallen at jars.

Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose,

With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfumed,

And in my standard bear the arms of York,

To grapple with the house of Lancaster;

255

And force perforce I’ll make him yield the crown,

Whose bookish rule hath pulled fair England down.

Exit.

1.2 Enter GLOUCESTER and his wife ELEANOR.

ELEANOR     Why droops my lord, like over-ripened corn

Hanging the head at Ceres’ plenteous load?

Why doth the great Duke Humphrey knit his brows,

As frowning at the favours of the world?

Why are thine eyes fixed to the sullen earth,

5

Gazing on that which seems to dim thy sight?

What seest thou there? King Henry’s diadem

Enchased with all the honours of the world?

If so, gaze on, and grovel on thy face,

Until thy head be circled with the same.

10

Put forth thy hand, reach at the glorious gold.

What, is’t too short? I’ll lengthen it with mine;

And having both together heaved it up,

We’ll both together lift our heads to heaven,

And never more abase our sight so low

15

As to vouchsafe one glance unto the ground.

GLOUCESTER

O Nell, sweet Nell, if thou dost love thy lord,

Banish the canker of ambitious thoughts.

And may that hour, when I imagine ill

Against my King and nephew, virtuous Henry,

20

Be my last breathing in this mortal world!

My troublous dreams this night doth make me sad.

ELEANOR

What dreamed my lord? Tell me, and I’ll requite it

With sweet rehearsal of my morning’s dream.

GLOUCESTER

Methought this staff, mine office-badge in court,

25

Was broke in twain; by whom I have forgot

But, as I think, it was by th’ Cardinal;

And on the pieces of the broken wand

Were placed the heads of Edmund, Duke of Somerset,

And William de la Pole, first Duke of Suffolk.

30

This was my dream; what it doth bode, God knows.

ELEANOR     Tut! This was nothing but an argument

That he that breaks a stick of Gloucester’s grove

Shall lose his head for his presumption.

But list to me, my Humphrey, my sweet Duke:

35

Methought I sat in seat of majesty

In the cathedral church of Westminster,

And in that chair where kings and queens are crowned,

Where Henry and Dame Margaret kneeled to me,

And on my head did set the diadem.

40

GLOUCESTER     Nay, Eleanor, then must I chide outright:

Presumptuous dame, ill-nurtured Eleanor!

Art thou not second woman in the realm,

And the Protector’s wife, beloved of him?

Hast thou not worldly pleasure at command,

45

Above the reach or compass of thy thought?

And wilt thou still be hammering treachery

To tumble down thy husband and thyself

From top of honour to disgrace’s feet?

Away from me and let me hear no more!

50

ELEANOR     What, what, my lord! Are you so choleric

With Eleanor, for telling but her dream?

Next time I’ll keep my dreams unto myself,

And not be checked.

GLOUCESTER     Nay, be not angry, I am pleased again.

55

Enter Messenger.

MESSENGER

My Lord Protector, ’tis his highness’ pleasure

You do prepare to ride unto Saint Albans,

Whereas the King and Queen do mean to hawk.

GLOUCESTER     I go. Come, Nell, thou wilt ride with us?

ELEANOR     Yes, my good lord, I’ll follow presently.

60

Exeunt Gloucester and Messenger.

Follow I must; I cannot go before

While Gloucester bears this base and humble mind.

Were I a man, a duke and next of blood,

I would remove these tedious stumbling-blocks

And smooth my way upon their headless necks.

65

And, being a woman, I will not be slack

To play my part in Fortune’s pageant. –

Where are you there? Sir John!

Enter HUME.

Nay, fear not, man,

We are alone; here’s none but thee and I.

HUME     Jesus preserve your royal majesty!

70

ELEANOR     What sayst thou? Majesty! I am but grace.

HUME     But by the grace of God, and Hume’s advice,

Your grace’s title shall be multiplied.

ELEANOR

What sayst thou, man? Hast thou as yet conferred

With Margery Jourdain, the cunning witch,

75

With Roger Bolingbroke, the conjuror?

And will they undertake to do me good?

HUME     This they have promised, to show your highness

A spirit, raised from depth of underground,

That shall make answer to such questions

80

As by your grace shall be propounded him.

ELEANOR     It is enough, I’ll think upon the questions.

When from Saint Albans we do make return

We’ll see these things effected to the full.

Here, Hume, take this reward; make merry, man,

85

With thy confederates in this weighty cause.     Exit.

HUME     Hume must make merry with the Duchess’ gold;

Marry, and shall. But how now, Sir John Hume!

Seal up your lips and give no words but mum;

The business asketh silent secrecy.

90

Dame Eleanor gives gold to bring the witch:

Gold cannot come amiss, were she a devil.

Yet have I gold flies from another coast:

I dare not say from the rich Cardinal

And from the great and new-made Duke of Suffolk,

95

Yet I do find it so. For, to be plain,

They, knowing Dame Eleanor’s aspiring humour,

Have hired me to undermine the Duchess

And buzz these conjurations in her brain.

They say ‘A crafty knave does need no broker’,

100

Yet am I Suffolk and the Cardinal’s broker.

Hume, if you take not heed, you shall go near

To call them both a pair of crafty knaves.

Well, so it stands; and thus, I fear, at last

Hume’s knavery will be the Duchess’ wrack,

105

And her attainture will be Humphrey’s fall.

Sort how it will, I shall have gold for all.     Exit.

1.3 Enter three or four Petitioners, PETER the armourer’s man being one.

1 PETITIONER     My masters, let’s stand close. My Lord

Protector will come this way by and by, and then we

may deliver our supplications in the quill.

2 PETITIONER     Marry, the Lord protect him, for he’s a

good man, Jesu bless him.

5

Enter SUFFOLK and QUEEN.

1 PETITIONER     Here ’a comes, methinks, and the Queen

with him. I’ll be the first, sure.

2 PETITIONER     Come back, fool! This is the Duke of

Suffolk, and not my Lord Protector.

SUFFOLK     How now, fellow; wouldst anything with me?

10

1 PETITIONER     I pray, my lord, pardon me, I took ye for

my Lord Protector.

QUEEN     ‘For my Lord Protector’? Are your

supplications to his lordship? Let me see them.

[Takes First Petitioner’s supplication.] What is thine?

15

1 PETITIONER     Mine is, an’t please your grace, against

John Goodman, my Lord Cardinal’s man, for keeping

my house and lands and wife and all from me.

SUFFOLK     Thy wife too! That’s some wrong indeed. –

What’s yours? What’s here! [Reads.] Against the Duke

20

of Suffolk, for enclosing the commons of Melford. How

now, sir knave!

2 PETITIONER     Alas, sir, I am but a poor petitioner of our

whole township.

PETER [Offers his petition.] Against my master Thomas

25

Horner, for saying that the Duke of York was rightful

heir to the crown.

QUEEN     What sayst thou? Did the Duke of York say he

was rightful heir to the crown?

PETER     That my master was? No, forsooth, my master

30

said that he was, and that the King was an usurer.

QUEEN     An usurper thou wouldst say.

PETER     Ay, forsooth, an usurper.

SUFFOLK     Who is there? [Snatches Peter’s supplication.]

Enter servant.

Take this fellow in, and send for his master with a

35

pursuivant presently. – We’ll hear more of your matter

before the King.     Exit servant with Peter.

QUEEN     And as for you, that love to be protected

Under the wings of our Protector’s grace,

Begin your suits anew, and sue to him.

40

[Tears the supplication.]

Away, base cullions! Suffolk, let them go.

ALL PETITIONERS Come, let’s be gone.     Exeunt.

QUEEN     My Lord of Suffolk, say, is this the guise,

Is this the fashions in the court of England?

Is this the government of Britain’s isle,

45

And this the royalty of Albion’s king?

What, shall King Henry be a pupil still

Under the surly Gloucester’s governance?

Am I a queen in title and in style

And must be made a subject to a duke?

50

I tell thee, Pole, when in the city Tours

Thou ran’st a-tilt in honour of my love

And stol’st away the ladies’ hearts of France,

I thought King Henry had resembled thee

In courage, courtship and proportion.

55

But all his mind is bent to holiness,

To number Ave-Maries on his beads.

His champions are the prophets and apostles,

His weapons, holy saws of sacred writ;

His study is his tilt-yard, and his loves

60

Are brazen images of canonized saints.

I would the college of the cardinals

Would choose him Pope, and carry him to Rome

And set the triple crown upon his head:

That were a state fit for his Holiness.

65

SUFFOLK     Madam, be patient. As I was cause

Your highness came to England, so will I

In England work your grace’s full content.

QUEEN     Beside the haughty Protector have we Beaufort,

The imperious churchman, Somerset, Buckingham

70

And grumbling York; and not the least of these

But can do more in England than the King.

SUFFOLK     And he of these that can do most of all

Cannot do more in England than the Nevilles:

Salisbury and Warwick are no simple peers.

75

QUEEN     Not all these lords do vex me half so much

As that proud dame, the Lord Protector’s wife.

She sweeps it through the court with troops of ladies,

More like an empress than Duke Humphrey’s wife.

Strangers in court do take her for the Queen.

80

She bears a duke’s revenues on her back

And in her heart she scorns our poverty.

Shall I not live to be avenged on her?

Contemptuous base-born callet as she is,

She vaunted ’mongst her minions t’other day

85

The very train of her worst wearing gown

Was better worth than all my father’s lands,

Till Suffolk gave two dukedoms for his daughter.

SUFFOLK     Madam, myself have limed a bush for her

And placed a choir of such enticing birds

90

That she will light to listen to the lays

And never mount to trouble you again.

So let her rest; and, madam, list to me –

For I am bold to counsel you in this –

Although we fancy not the Cardinal,

95

Yet must we join with him and with the lords

Till we have brought Duke Humphrey in disgrace.

As for the Duke of York, this late complaint

Will make but little for his benefit.

So one by one we’ll weed them all at last,

100

And you yourself shall steer the happy helm.

Sound a sennet. Enter the KING, GLOUCESTER, CARDINAL Beaufort, BUCKINGHAM, YORK, SALISBURY, WARWICK and ELEANOR.

KING     For my part, noble lords, I care not which;

Or Somerset, or York, all’s one to me.

YORK     If York have ill demeaned himself in France,

Then let him be denied the regentship.

105

SOMERSET     If Somerset be unworthy of the place,

Let York be regent; I will yield to him.

WARWICK     Whether your Grace be worthy, yea or no,

Dispute not that; York is the worthier.

CARDINAL     Ambitious Warwick, let thy betters speak.

110

WARWICK     The Cardinal’s not my better in the field.

BUCKINGHAM

All in this presence are thy betters, Warwick.

WARWICK     Warwick may live to be the best of all.

SALISBURY

Peace, son! – And show some reason, Buckingham,

Why Somerset should be preferred in this.

115

QUEEN     Because the King, forsooth, will have it so.

GLOUCESTER     Madam, the King is old enough himself

To give his censure. These are no women’s matters.

QUEEN     If he be old enough, what needs your grace

To be Protector of his excellence?

120

GLOUCESTER     Madam, I am Protector of the realm,

And at his pleasure will resign my place.

SUFFOLK     Resign it then, and leave thine insolence.

Since thou wert king – as who is king but thou? –

The commonwealth hath daily run to wrack,

125

The Dauphin hath prevailed beyond the seas,

And all the peers and nobles of the realm

Have been as bondmen to thy sovereignty.

CARDINAL

The commons hast thou racked; the clergy’s bags

Are lank and lean with thy extortions.

130

SOMERSET

Thy sumptuous buildings and thy wife’s attire

Have cost a mass of public treasury.

BUCKINGHAM     Thy cruelty in execution

Upon offenders hath exceeded law,

And left thee to the mercy of the law.

135

QUEEN     Thy sale of offices and towns in France,

If they were known, as the suspect is great,

Would make thee quickly hop without thy head.

Exit Gloucester.

[The Queen drops her fan.]

Give me my fan. What, minion! Can ye not?

[She gives Eleanor a box on the ear.]

I cry you mercy, madam; was it you?

140

ELEANOR     Was’t I! Yea, I it was, proud Frenchwoman.

Could I come near your beauty with my nails

I’d set my ten commandments in your face.

KING     Sweet aunt, be quiet; ’twas against her will.

ELEANOR

Against her will! Good King, look to’t in time;

145

She’ll pamper thee, and dandle thee like a baby.

Though in this place most master wear no breeches,

She shall not strike Dame Eleanor unrevenged.

Exit.

BUCKINGHAM     Lord Cardinal, I will follow Eleanor,

And listen after Humphrey, how he proceeds.

150

She’s tickled now, her fury needs no spurs,

She’ll gallop far enough to her destruction.

Exit.

Enter GLOUCESTER.

GLOUCESTER     Now, lords, my choler being overblown

With walking once about the quadrangle,

I come to talk of commonwealth affairs.

155

As for your spiteful false objections,

Prove them, and I lie open to the law.

But God in mercy so deal with my soul

As I in duty love my king and country.

But to the matter that we have in hand. –

160

I say, my sovereign, York is meetest man

To be your regent in the realm of France.

SUFFOLK     Before we make election, give me leave

To show some reason, of no little force,

That York is most unmeet of any man.

165

YORK     I’ll tell thee, Suffolk, why I am unmeet:

First, for I cannot flatter thee in pride;

Next, if I be appointed for the place

My Lord of Somerset will keep me here

Without discharge, money or furniture,

170

Till France be won into the Dauphin’s hands.

Last time I danced attendance on his will

Till Paris was besieged, famished and lost.

WARWICK     That can I witness, and a fouler fact

Did never traitor in the land commit.

175

SUFFOLK     Peace, headstrong Warwick!

WARWICK     Image of pride, why should I hold my peace?

Enter HORNER the armourer and his man PETER, guarded.

SUFFOLK     Because here is a man accused of treason:

Pray God the Duke of York excuse himself!

YORK     Doth anyone accuse York for a traitor?

180

KING

What mean’st thou, Suffolk? Tell me, what are these?

SUFFOLK     Please it your majesty, this is the man

That doth accuse his master of high treason.

His words were these: that Richard, Duke of York,

Was rightful heir unto the English crown,

185

And that your majesty was an usurper.

KING     Say, man, were these thy words?

HORNER     An’t shall please your majesty, I never said nor

thought any such matter. God is my witness, I am

falsely accused by the villain.

190

PETER     By these ten bones, my lords, he did speak them

to me in the garret one night as we were scouring my

Lord of York’s armour.

YORK     Base dunghill villain and mechanical,

I’ll have thy head for this thy traitor’s speech! –

195

I do beseech your royal majesty,

Let him have all the rigour of the law.

HORNER     Alas, my lord, hang me if ever I spake the

words. My accuser is my prentice, and when I did

correct him for his fault the other day, he did vow

200

upon his knees he would be even with me. I have good

witness of this, therefore I beseech your majesty, do

not cast away an honest man for a villain’s accusation.

KING     Uncle, what shall we say to this in law?

GLOUCESTER

This doom, my lord, if I may judge by case:

205

Let Somerset be regent o’er the French,

Because in York this breeds suspicion;

And let these have a day appointed them

For single combat in convenient place,

For he hath witness of his servant’s malice.

210

This is the law, and this Duke Humphrey’s doom.

SOMERSET     I humbly thank your royal majesty.

HORNER     And I accept the combat willingly.

PETER     Alas, my lord, I cannot fight. For God’s sake

pity my case! The spite of man prevaileth against me.

215

O Lord, have mercy upon me! I shall never be able to

fight a blow. O Lord, my heart!

GLOUCESTER

Sirrah, or you must fight, or else be hanged.

KING     Away with them to prison, and the day

Of combat shall be the last of the next month.

220

Come, Somerset, we’ll see thee sent away.

Flourish. Exeunt.

1.4 Enter Margery JOURDAIN, a witch, the two priests, HUME and SOUTHWELL, and BOLINGBROKE.

HUME     Come, my masters! The Duchess, I tell you,

expects performance of your promises.

BOLINGBROKE     Master Hume, we are therefor provided.

Will her ladyship behold and hear our exorcisms?

HUME     Ay, what else? Fear you not her courage.

5

BOLINGBROKE     I have heard her reported to be a woman

of an invincible spirit; but it shall be convenient,

Master Hume, that you be by her aloft, while we be

busy below; and so, I pray you, go in God’s name, and

leave us.     Exit Hume.

10

Mother Jourdain, be you prostrate and grovel on the

earth; John Southwell, read you; and let us to our work.

Enter ELEANOR aloft, HUME following.

ELEANOR     Well said, my masters, and welcome all. To

this gear, the sooner the better.

BOLINGBROKE

Patience, good lady; wizards know their times.

15

Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night,

The time of night when Troy was set on fire,

The time when screech-owls cry and ban-dogs howl,

And spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves;

That time best fits the work we have in hand.

20

Madam, sit you, and fear not. Whom we raise

We will make fast within a hallowed verge.

Here do the ceremonies belonging, and make the circle; Bolingbroke or Southwell reads, ‘ Conjuro te’, etc. It thunders and lightens terribly; then the Spirit riseth.

SPIRIT     Adsum.

JOURDAIN     Asnath,

By the eternal God whose name and power

25

Thou tremblest at, answer that I shall ask;

For till thou speak thou shalt not pass from hence.

SPIRIT     Ask what thou wilt – that I had said and done!

BOLINGBROKE [Reads.]

First of the King: what shall of him become?

SPIRIT     The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose,

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But him outlive, and die a violent death.

[As the Spirit speaks, Southwell writes the answer.]

BOLINGBROKE

Tell me, what fate awaits the Duke of Suffolk?

SPIRIT     By water shall he die and take his end.

BOLINGBROKE     What shall betide the Duke of Somerset?

SPIRIT     Let him shun castles:

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Safer shall he be upon the sandy plains

Than where castles mounted stand.

Have done, for more I hardly can endure.

BOLINGBROKE

Descend to darkness and the burning lake!

False fiend, avoid! Thunder and lightning. Exit Spirit.

40

Enter the Duke of YORK and the Duke of BUCKINGHAM with their guard, Sir Humphrey STAFFORD, and break in. Guards rush in above.

YORK     Lay hands upon these traitors and their trash!

Beldam, I think we watched you at an inch. –

What, madam, are you there? The King and commonweal

Are deeply indebted for this piece of pains.

My Lord Protector will, I doubt it not,

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See you well guerdoned for these good deserts.

ELEANOR     Not half so bad as thine to England’s king,

Injurious duke, that threatest where’s no cause.

BUCKINGHAM     True, madam, none at all. [Shows papers.]

What call you this? –

Away with them, let them be clapped up close

50

And kept asunder. – You, madam, shall with us. –

Stafford, take her to thee.     Exit Stafford.

Exeunt Eleanor, Hume and guard, above.

We’ll see your trinkets here all forthcoming.

All away!

Exeunt Jourdain, Southwell, Bolingbroke and guard.

YORK

Lord Buckingham, methinks you watched her well. –

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A pretty plot, well chosen to build upon. –

Now, pray, my lord, let’s see the devil’s writ.

What have we here? [Reads.]

The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose,

But him outlive, and die a violent death.

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Why, this is just

Aio te, Aeacida, Romanos vincere posse.

Well, to the rest:

‘Tell me, what fate awaits the Duke of Suffolk?’

By water shall he die, and take his end.

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‘What shall betide the Duke of Somerset?’

Let him shun castles.

Safer shall he be upon the sandy plains

Than where castles mounted stand.

Come, come, my lords, these oracles

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Are hardly attained, and hardly understood.

The King is now in progress towards Saint Albans,

With him the husband of this lovely lady.

Thither goes these news as fast as horse can carry them:

A sorry breakfast for my Lord Protector.

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BUCKINGHAM

Your grace shall give me leave, my Lord of York,

To be the post, in hope of his reward.

YORK     At your pleasure, my good lord.

Exit Buckingham.

Who’s within there, ho?

Enter a servingman.

Invite my Lords of Salisbury and Warwick

To sup with me tomorrow night. Away!     Exeunt.

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2.1 Enter the KING, QUEEN, GLOUCESTER, CARDINAL and SUFFOLK, with falconers hallooing.

QUEEN     Believe me, lords, for flying at the brook

I saw not better sport these seven years’ day;

Yet, by your leave, the wind was very high

And, ten to one, old Joan had not gone out.

KING [to Gloucester]

But what a point, my lord, your falcon made

5

And what a pitch she flew above the rest!

To see how God in all his creatures works!

Yea, man and birds are fain of climbing high.

SUFFOLK     No marvel, an it like your majesty,

My Lord Protector’s hawks do tower so well,

10

They know their master loves to be aloft,

And bears his thoughts above his falcon’s pitch.

GLOUCESTER     My lord, ’tis but a base ignoble mind

That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.

CARDINAL

I thought as much: he would be above the clouds.

15

GLOUCESTER

Ay, my Lord Cardinal, how think you by that?

Were it not good your grace could fly to heaven?

KING     The treasury of everlasting joy.

CARDINAL

Thy heaven is on earth, thine eyes and thoughts

Beat on a crown, the treasure of thy heart,

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Pernicious Protector, dangerous peer

That smooth’st it so with king and commonweal!

GLOUCESTER

What, Cardinal? Is your priesthood grown peremptory?

Tantaene animis coelestibus irae?

Churchmen so hot? Good uncle, hide such malice:

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With such holiness can you do it?

SUFFOLK     No malice, sir; no more than well becomes

So good a quarrel and so bad a peer.

GLOUCESTER     As who, my lord?

SUFFOLK     Why, as you, my lord.

An’t like your lordly Lord Protectorship.

30

GLOUCESTER

Why, Suffolk, England knows thine insolence.

QUEEN     And thy ambition, Gloucester.

KING     I prithee, peace,

Good Queen, and whet not on these furious peers;

For blessed are the peacemakers on earth.

CARDINAL [aside to Suffolk]

Let me be blessed for the peace I make

35

Against this proud Protector with my sword!

GLOUCESTER [aside to Cardinal]

Faith, holy uncle, would ’twere come to that!

CARDINAL [aside to Gloucester] Marry, when thou dar’st.

GLOUCESTER [aside to Cardinal]

Make up no factious numbers for the matter,

In thine own person answer thy abuse.

40

CARDINAL [aside to Gloucester]

Ay, where thou dar’st not peep; and if thou dar’st,

This evening on the east side of the grove.

KING     How now, my lords?

CARDINAL     Believe me, cousin Gloucester,

Had not your man put up the fowl so suddenly,

We had had more sport.

[aside to Gloucester] Come with thy two-hand sword.

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GLOUCESTER     True uncle.

[aside to Cardinal]

Are ye advised? The east side of the grove.

CARDINAL [aside to Gloucester] I am with you.

KING     Why, how now, uncle Gloucester?

GLOUCESTER

Talking of hawking, nothing else, my lord.

[aside to Cardinal] Now, by God’s mother, priest, I’ll shave your crown for this,

50

Or all my fence shall fail.

CARDINAL [aside to Gloucester] Medice teipsum. –

Protector, see to’t well, protect yourself.

KING

The winds grow high; so do your stomachs, lords.

How irksome is this music to my heart!

55

When such strings jar what hope of harmony?

I pray, my lords, let me compound this strife.

Enter Townsman crying, ‘ A miracle!’

GLOUCESTER     What means this noise?

Fellow, what miracle dost thou proclaim?

TOWNSMAN     A miracle! A miracle!

60

SUFFOLK

Come to the King and tell him what miracle.

TOWNSMAN

Forsooth, a blind man at Saint Alban’s shrine

Within this half-hour hath received his sight –

A man that ne’er saw in his life before.

KING     Now God be praised, that to believing souls

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Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair!

Enter the Mayor of Saint Albans and his brethren, with music, bearing the man SIMPCOX between two in a chair, his Wife and townsmen following.

CARDINAL     Here comes the townsmen, on procession,

To present your highness with the man.

KING     Great is his comfort in this earthly vale,

Although by sight his sin be multiplied.

70

GLOUCESTER

Stand by, my masters, bring him near the King.

His highness’ pleasure is to talk with him.

KING     Good fellow, tell us here the circumstance,

That we for thee may glorify the Lord.

What, hast thou been long blind and now restored?

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SIMPCOX     Born blind, an’t please your grace.

WIFE     Ay, indeed, was he.

SUFFOLK     What woman is this?

WIFE     His wife, an’t like your worship.

GLOUCESTER

Hadst thou been his mother, thou couldst have better told.

KING     Where wert thou born?

SIMPCOX     At Berwick in the north, an’t like your grace.

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KING

Poor soul, God’s goodness hath been great to thee.

Let never day nor night unhallowed pass,

But still remember what the Lord hath done.

QUEEN

Tell me, good fellow, cam’st thou here by chance,

Or of devotion to this holy shrine?

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SIMPCOX     God knows, of pure devotion; being called

A hundred times and oft’ner, in my sleep,

By good Saint Alban, who said, ‘Simon, come;

Come offer at my shrine, and I will help thee.’

WIFE     Most true, forsooth; and many time and oft

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Myself have heard a voice to call him so.

CARDINAL     What, art thou lame?

SIMPCOX     Ay, God Almighty help me!

SUFFOLK     How cam’st thou so?

SIMPCOX     A fall off of a tree.

WIFE     A plum-tree, master.

GLOUCESTER     How long hast thou been blind?

SIMPCOX     O, born so, master.

GLOUCESTER     What, and wouldst climb a tree?

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SIMPCOX     But that in all my life, when I was a youth.

WIFE     Too true, and bought his climbing very dear.

GLOUCESTER

’Mass, thou lov’dst plums well, that wouldst venture so.

SIMPCOX

Alas, good master, my wife desired some damsons,

And made me climb, with danger of my life.

100

GLOUCESTER

A subtle knave! But yet it shall not serve. –

Let me see thine eyes; wink now – now open them.

In my opinion yet thou seest not well.

SIMPCOX

Yes, master, clear as day, I thank God and Saint Alban.

GLOUCESTER

Sayst thou me so? What colour is this cloak of?

105

SIMPCOX     Red, master, red as blood.

GLOUCESTER

Why, that’s well said. What colour is my gown of?

SIMPCOX     Black, forsooth, coal-black as jet.

KING     Why then, thou knowst what colour jet is of?

SUFFOLK     And yet, I think, jet did he never see.

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GLOUCESTER

But cloaks and gowns before this day a many.

WIFE     Never before this day, in all his life.

GLOUCESTER     Tell me, sirrah, what’s my name?

SIMPCOX     Alas, master, I know not.

GLOUCESTER     What’s his name?

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SIMPCOX     I know not.

GLOUCESTER     Nor his?

SIMPCOX     No, indeed, master.

GLOUCESTER     What’s thine own name?

SIMPCOX     Simon Simpcox, an if it please you, master.

120

GLOUCESTER     Then, Simon, sit there the lying’st knave

In Christendom. If thou hadst been born blind

Thou mightst as well have known all our names as thus

To name the several colours we do wear.

Sight may distinguish of colours, but suddenly

125

To nominate them all, it is impossible.

My lords, Saint Alban here hath done a miracle.

And would ye not think that cunning to be great

That could restore this cripple to his legs again?

SIMPCOX     O master, that you could!

130

GLOUCESTER     My masters of Saint Albans, have you not

Beadles in your town, and things called whips?

MAYOR     Yes, my lord, if it please your grace.

GLOUCESTER     Then send for one presently.

MAYOR     Sirrah, go fetch the beadle hither straight.

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Exit a townsman.

GLOUCESTER     Now fetch me a stool hither by and by. –

Now, sirrah, if you mean to save yourself from whipping,

Leap me over this stool, and run away.

SIMPCOX     Alas, master, I am not able to stand alone.

You go about to torture me in vain.

140

Enter a Beadle with whips.

GLOUCESTER     Well, sir, we must have you find your legs.

Sirrah beadle, whip him till he leap over that same stool.

BEADLE     I will, my lord. –

Come on, sirrah, off with your doublet quickly.

SIMPCOX

Alas, master, what shall I do? I am not able to stand.

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After the Beadle hath hit him once, he leaps over the stool and runs away; and they follow and cry, ‘ A miracle!’

KING     O God, seest thou this, and bearest so long?

QUEEN     It made me laugh to see the villain run.

GLOUCESTER     Follow the knave, and take this drab away.

WIFE     Alas, sir, we did it for pure need.

GLOUCESTER

Let them be whipped through every market town

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Till they come to Berwick, from whence they came.

Exeunt Wife, Beadle, Mayor and others.

CARDINAL     Duke Humphrey has done a miracle today.

SUFFOLK     True, made the lame to leap and fly away.

GLOUCESTER     But you have done more miracles than I

You made in a day, my lord, whole towns to fly.

155

Enter BUCKINGHAM.

KING     What tidings with our cousin Buckingham?

BUCKINGHAM     Such as my heart doth tremble to unfold.

A sort of naughty persons, lewdly bent,

Under the countenance and confederacy

Of Lady Eleanor, the Protector’s wife,

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The ringleader and head of all this rout,

Have practised dangerously against your state,

Dealing with witches and with conjurors,

Whom we have apprehended in the fact,

Raising up wicked spirits from under ground,

165

Demanding of King Henry’s life and death,

And other of your highness’ Privy Council,

As more at large your grace shall understand.

CARDINAL     And so, my Lord Protector, by this means

Your lady is forthcoming yet at London.

170

This news, I think, hath turned your weapon’s edge.

’Tis like, my lord, you will not keep your hour.

GLOUCESTER

Ambitious churchman, leave to afflict my heart.

Sorrow and grief have vanquished all my powers,

And, vanquished as I am, I yield to thee

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Or to the meanest groom.

KING     O God, what mischiefs work the wicked ones,

Heaping confusion on their own heads thereby!

QUEEN     Gloucester, see here the tainture of thy nest,

And look thyself be faultless, thou wert best.

180

GLOUCESTER     Madam, for myself, to heaven I do appeal

How I have loved my king and commonweal;

And for my wife I know not how it stands.

Sorry I am to hear what I have heard.

Noble she is, but if she have forgot

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Honour and virtue, and conversed with such

As, like to pitch, defile nobility,

I banish her my bed and company

And give her as a prey to law and shame

That hath dishonoured Gloucester’s honest name.

190

KING     Well, for this night we will repose us here;

Tomorrow toward London back again,

To look into this business thoroughly

And call these foul offenders to their answers,

And poise the cause in Justice’ equal scales,

195

Whose beam stands sure, whose rightful cause

prevails.     Flourish. Exeunt.

2.2 Enter YORK, SALISBURY and WARWICK.

YORK     Now, my good Lords of Salisbury and Warwick,

Our simple supper ended, give me leave

In this close walk to satisfy myself

In craving your opinion of my title,

Which is infallible, to England’s crown.

5

SALISBURY     My lord, I long to hear it out at full.

WARWICK     Sweet York, begin; an if thy claim be good,

The Nevilles are thy subjects to command.

YORK     Then thus:

Edward the Third, my lords, had seven sons:

10

The first, Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales;

The second, William of Hatfield; and the third,

Lionel, Duke of Clarence; next to whom

Was John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster;

The fifth was Edmund Langley, Duke of York;

15

The sixth was Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester;

William of Windsor was the seventh and last.

Edward the Black Prince died before his father,

And left behind him Richard, his only son,

Who after Edward the Third’s death reigned as king,

20

Till Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster,

The eldest son and heir of John of Gaunt,

Crowned by the name of Henry the Fourth,

Seized on the realm, deposed the rightful king,

Sent his poor queen to France, from whence she came,

25

And him to Pomfret; where, as all you know,

Harmless Richard was murdered traitorously.

WARWICK     Father, the Duke of York hath told the truth;

Thus got the house of Lancaster the crown.

YORK     Which now they hold by force and not by right;

30

For Richard, the first son’s heir being dead,

The issue of the next son should have reigned.

SALISBURY

But William of Hatfield died without an heir.

YORK

The third son, Duke of Clarence, from whose line

I claim the crown, had issue Philippe, a daughter,

35

Who married Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March;

Edmund had issue, Roger, Earl of March;

Roger had issue, Edmund, Anne and Eleanor.

SALISBURY     This Edmund in the reign of Bolingbroke,

As I have read, laid claim unto the crown

40

And, but for Owen Glendower, had been king,

Who kept him in captivity till he died.

But to the rest.

YORK     His eldest sister, Anne,

My mother, being heir unto the crown,

Married Richard, Earl of Cambridge, who was son

45

To Edmund Langley, Edward the Third’s fifth son.

By her I claim the kingdom; she was heir

To Roger, Earl of March, who was the son

Of Edmund Mortimer, who married Philippe,

Sole daughter unto Lionel, Duke of Clarence.

50

So, if the issue of the elder son

Succeed before the younger, I am king.

WARWICK

What plain proceeding is more plain than this?

Henry doth claim the crown from John of Gaunt,

The fourth son; York claims it from the third.

55

Till Lionel’s issue fails, Gaunt’s should not reign;

It fails not yet, but flourishes in thee

And in thy sons, fair slips of such a stock.

Then, father Salisbury, kneel we together,

[They kneel.]

And, in this private plot, be we the first

60

That shall salute our rightful sovereign

With honour of his birthright to the crown.

BOTH

Long live our sovereign, Richard, England’s king!

YORK     We thank you, lords. [They rise.]

But I am not your king

Till I be crowned and that my sword be stained

65

With heart-blood of the house of Lancaster;

And that’s not suddenly to be performed

But with advice and silent secrecy.

Do you as I do in these dangerous days –

Wink at the Duke of Suffolk’s insolence,

70

At Beaufort’s pride, at Somerset’s ambition,

At Buckingham, and all the crew of them,

Till they have snared the shepherd of the flock,

That virtuous prince, the good Duke Humphrey.

’Tis that they seek; and they, in seeking that,

75

Shall find their deaths, if York can prophesy.

SALISBURY

My lord, break we off; we know your mind at full.

WARWICK     My heart assures me that the Earl of Warwick

Shall one day make the Duke of York a king.

YORK     And, Neville, this I do assure myself:

80

Richard shall live to make the Earl of Warwick

The greatest man in England but the king.     Exeunt.

2.3 Sound trumpets. Enter the KING, the QUEEN, GLOUCESTER, YORK, SUFFOLK, SALISBURY; and ELEANOR, Margery JOURDAIN, SOUTHWELL, HUME and BOLINGBROKE, under guard.

KING

Stand forth, Dame Eleanor Cobham, Gloucester’s wife.

In sight of God and us, your guilt is great;

Receive the sentence of the law for sin

Such as by God’s book are adjudged to death.

You four, from hence to prison back again;

5

From thence unto the place of execution.

The witch in Smithfield shall be burnt to ashes

And you three shall be strangled on the gallows.

You, madam, for you are more nobly born,

Despoiled of your honour in your life,

10

Shall, after three days’ open penance done,

Live in your country here, in banishment

With Sir John Stanley in the Isle of Man.

ELEANOR

Welcome is banishment; welcome were my death.

GLOUCESTER

Eleanor, the law, thou seest, hath judged thee:

15

I cannot justify whom the law condemns.

Mine eyes are full of tears, my heart of grief.

Exeunt Eleanor and other prisoners, guarded.

Ah, Humphrey, this dishonour in thine age

Will bring thy head with sorrow to the ground! –

I beseech your majesty, give me leave to go;

20

Sorrow would solace, and mine age would ease.

KING

Stay, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Ere thou go,

Give up thy staff. Henry will to himself

Protector be; and God shall be my hope,

My stay, my guide and lantern to my feet.

25

And go in peace, Humphrey, no less beloved

Than when thou wert Protector to thy king.

QUEEN     I see no reason why a king of years

Should be to be protected like a child.

God and King Henry govern England’s realm!

30

Give up your staff, sir, and the King his realm.

GLOUCESTER     My staff? Here, noble Henry, is my staff:

As willingly do I the same resign

As e’er thy father Henry made it mine;

And even as willing at thy feet I leave it

35

As others would ambitiously receive it.

[Lays down staff.]

Farewell, good King. When I am dead and gone

May honourable peace attend thy throne.     Exit.

QUEEN     Why, now is Henry King and Margaret Queen,

And Humphrey Duke of Gloucester scarce himself,

40

That bears so shrewd a maim: two pulls at once;

His lady banished, and a limb lopped off.

This staff of honour raught, [Picks up staff.]

there let it stand

Where it best fits to be, in Henry’s hand.

SUFFOLK

Thus droops this lofty pine and hangs his sprays;

45

Thus Eleanor’s pride dies in her youngest days.

YORK     Lords, let him go. Please it your majesty,

This is the day appointed for the combat,

And ready are the appellant and defendant,

The armourer and his man, to enter the lists,

50

So please your highness to behold the fight.

QUEEN     Ay, good my lord; for purposely therefore

Left I the court to see this quarrel tried.

KING     I’God’s name, see the lists and all things fit;

Here let them end it, and God defend the right!

55

YORK     I never saw a fellow worse bested,

Or more afraid to fight, than is the appellant,

The servant of this armourer, my lords.

Enter at one door HORNER the armourer and his Neighbours, drinking to him so much that he is drunk; and he enters with a drum before him, and his staff with a sandbag fastened to it; and at the other door PETER, his man, with a drum and sandbag, and Prentices drinking to him.

1 NEIGHBOUR     Here, neighbour Horner, I drink to you in

a cup of sack; and fear not neighbour, you shall do well

60

enough.

2 NEIGHBOUR     And here, neighbour, here’s a cup of

charneco.

3 NEIGHBOUR     And here’s a pot of good double beer,

neighbour: drink, and fear not your man.

65

HORNER     Let it come, i’faith, and I’ll pledge you all; and

a fig for Peter!

1 PRENTICE     Here, Peter, I drink to thee, and be not afraid.

2 PRENTICE     Here, Peter, here’s a pint of claret wine for

thee.

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3 PRENTICE     And here’s a quart for me; and be merry,

Peter, and fear not thy master. Fight for credit of the

prentices.

PETER     I thank you all. Drink and pray for me, I pray

you, for I think I have taken my last draught in this

75

world. Here, Robin, an if I die, I give thee my apron;

and Will, thou shalt have my hammer; and here, Tom,

take all the money that I have. O Lord bless me, I pray

God, for I am never able to deal with my master, he

hath learnt so much fence already.

80

SALISBURY     Come, leave your drinking, and fall to blows.

Sirrah, what’s thy name?

PETER     Peter, forsooth.

SALISBURY     Peter! What more?

PETER     Thump.

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SALISBURY     Thump! Then see thou thump thy master

well.

HORNER     Masters, I am come hither, as it were, upon my

man’s instigation, to prove him a knave and myself an

honest man; and touching the Duke of York, I will

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take my death I never meant him any ill, nor the King,

nor the Queen; and therefore, Peter, have at thee with

a downright blow!

YORK     Dispatch! This knave’s tongue begins to double.

Sound trumpets! [Alarum to the combatants.]

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[They fight, and Peter strikes Horner down.]

HORNER     Hold, Peter, hold! I confess, I confess treason.

[Dies.]

YORK     Take away his weapon. – Fellow, thank God and

the good wine in thy master’s way.

PETER [Kneels.] O God! Have I overcome mine enemies

in this presence? O Peter, thou hast prevailed in right!

100

KING     Go, take hence that traitor from our sight,

For by his death we do perceive his guilt.

And God in justice hath revealed to us

The truth and innocence of this poor fellow,

Which he had thought to have murdered wrongfully.

105

Come, fellow, [Peter rises.]

follow us for thy reward.

Sound a flourish. Exeunt.

2.4 Enter GLOUCESTER and his Servants in mourning cloaks.

GLOUCESTER

Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud;

And after summer evermore succeeds

Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold;

So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.

Sirs, what’s o’clock?

SERVANT     Ten, my lord.

5

GLOUCESTER     Ten is the hour that was appointed me

To watch the coming of my punished duchess;

Uneath may she endure the flinty streets,

To tread them with her tender-feeling feet.

Sweet Nell, ill can thy noble mind abrook

10

The abject people gazing on thy face

With envious looks, laughing at thy shame,

That erst did follow thy proud chariot wheels

When thou didst ride in triumph through the streets.

But soft, I think she comes; and I’ll prepare

15

My tear-stained eyes, to see her miseries.

Enter ELEANOR barefoot, and a white sheet about her, with a wax candle in her hand, and verses written on her back and pinned on, and accompanied with the Sheriff of London, and Sir John STANLEY and officers with bills and halberds and commoners.

SERVANT

So please your grace, we’ll take her from the sheriff.

GLOUCESTER     No, stir not for your lives; let her pass by.

ELEANOR     Come you, my lord, to see my open shame?

Now thou dost penance too. Look how they gaze!

20

See how the giddy multitude do point

And nod their heads and throw their eyes on thee.

Ah, Gloucester, hide thee from their hateful looks

And, in thy closet pent up, rue my shame

And ban thine enemies, both mine and thine.

25

GLOUCESTER     Be patient, gentle Nell, forget this grief.

ELEANOR     Ah, Gloucester, teach me to forget myself;

For whilst I think I am thy married wife

And thou a prince, Protector of this land,

Methinks I should not thus be led along,

30

Mailed up in shame, with papers on my back,

And followed with a rabble that rejoice

To see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans.

The ruthless flint doth cut my tender feet,

And when I start, the envious people laugh

35

And bid me be advised how I tread.

Ah, Humphrey, can I bear this shameful yoke?

Trowest thou that e’er I’ll look upon the world,

Or count them happy that enjoys the sun?

No: dark shall be my light and night my day;

40

To think upon my pomp shall be my hell.

Sometime I’ll say, ‘I am Duke Humphrey’s wife,

And he a prince and ruler of the land;

Yet so he ruled, and such a prince he was,

As he stood by whilst I, his forlorn duchess,

45

Was made a wonder and a pointing-stock

To every idle rascal follower.’

But be thou mild and blush not at my shame,

Nor stir at nothing, till the axe of death

Hang over thee, as sure it shortly will.

50

For Suffolk, he that can do all in all

With her that hateth thee and hates us all,

And York and impious Beaufort, that false priest,

Have all limed bushes to betray thy wings;

And fly thou how thou canst, they’ll tangle thee.

55

But fear not thou until thy foot be snared,

Nor never seek prevention of thy foes.

GLOUCESTER     Ah, Nell, forbear! Thou aimest all awry.

I must offend before I be attainted.

And had I twenty times so many foes,

60

And each of them had twenty times their power,

All these could not procure me any scathe

So long as I am loyal, true and crimeless.

Wouldst have me rescue thee from this reproach?

Why yet thy scandal were not wiped away,

65

But I in danger for the breach of law.

Thy greatest help is quiet, gentle Nell:

I pray thee, sort thy heart to patience;

These few days’ wonder will be quickly worn.

Enter a Herald.

HERALD

I summon your grace to his majesty’s parliament,

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Holden at Bury the first of this next month.

GLOUCESTER

And my consent ne’er asked herein before?

This is close dealing. Well, I will be there. Exit Herald.

My Nell, I take my leave; and, master sheriff,

Let not her penance exceed the King’s commission.

75

SHERIFF

An’t please your grace, here my commission stays,

And Sir John Stanley is appointed now

To take her with him to the Isle of Man.

GLOUCESTER     Must you, Sir John, protect my lady here?

STANLEY

So am I given in charge, may’t please your grace.

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GLOUCESTER     Entreat her not the worse, in that I pray

You use her well. The world may laugh again,

And I may live to do you kindness if

You do it her. And so, Sir John, farewell.

[Gloucester begins to leave.]

ELEANOR     What, gone, my lord, and bid me not farewell?

85

GLOUCESTER     Witness my tears, I cannot stay to speak.

Exeunt Gloucester and Servants.

ELEANOR     Art thou gone too? All comfort go with thee,

For none abides with me; my joy is death;

Death, at whose name I oft have been afeared,

Because I wished this world’s eternity.

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Stanley, I prithee go, and take me hence,

I care not whither, for I beg no favour;

Only convey me where thou art commanded.

STANLEY     Why, madam, that is to the Isle of Man,

There to be used according to your state.

95

ELEANOR     That’s bad enough, for I am but reproach;

And shall I then be used reproachfully?

STANLEY

Like to a duchess, and Duke Humphrey’s lady,

According to that state you shall be used.

ELEANOR     Sheriff, farewell, and better than I fare,

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Although thou hast been conduct of my shame.

SHERIFF     It is my office, and, madam, pardon me.

ELEANOR     Ay, ay, farewell; thy office is discharged.

Exit Sheriff with officers and commoners.

Come, Stanley, shall we go?

STANLEY

Madam, your penance done, throw off this sheet,

105

And go we to attire you for our journey.

ELEANOR     My shame will not be shifted with my sheet:

No, it will hang upon my richest robes

And show itself, attire me how I can.

Go, lead the way, I long to see my prison.     Exeunt.

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3.1 Sound a sennet. Enter two heralds before, the KING, QUEEN, CARDINAL, SUFFOLK, YORK, BUCKINGHAM, SALISBURY and WARWICK to the parliament, with attendants.

KING     I muse my Lord of Gloucester is not come.

’Tis not his wont to be the hindmost man,

Whate’er occasion keeps him from us now.

QUEEN     Can you not see, or will ye not observe

The strangeness of his altered countenance?

5

With what a majesty he bears himself,

How insolent of late he is become, how proud,

How peremptory, and unlike himself.

We know the time since he was mild and affable;

An if we did but glance a far-off look,

10

Immediately he was upon his knee,

That all the court admired him for submission.

But meet him now, and be it in the morn,

When everyone will give the time of day,

He knits his brow and shows an angry eye

15

And passeth by with stiff unbowed knee,

Disdaining duty that to us belongs.

Small curs are not regarded when they grin,

But great men tremble when the lion roars;

And Humphrey is no little man in England.

20

First note that he is near you in descent,

And should you fall, he is the next will mount.

Meseemeth then it is no policy,

Respecting what a rancorous mind he bears

And his advantage following your decease,

25

That he should come about your royal person

Or be admitted to your highness’ Council.

By flattery hath he won the commons’ hearts;

And when he please to make commotion,

’Tis to be feared they all will follow him.

30

Now ’tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;

Suffer them now and they’ll o’ergrow the garden

And choke the herbs for want of husbandry.

The reverent care I bear unto my lord

Made me collect these dangers in the Duke.

35

If it be fond, call it a woman’s fear;

Which fear if better reasons can supplant,

I will subscribe and say I wronged the Duke.

My Lord of Suffolk, Buckingham and York,

Reprove my allegation if you can,

40

Or else conclude my words effectual.

SUFFOLK     Well hath your highness seen into this Duke;

And had I first been put to speak my mind,

I think I should have told your grace’s tale.

The Duchess by his subornation,

45

Upon my life, began her devilish practices;

Or if he were not privy to those faults,

Yet by reputing of his high descent,

As next the King he was successive heir –

And such high vaunts of his nobility –

50

Did instigate the bedlam brainsick Duchess

By wicked means to frame our sovereign’s fall.

Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep,

And in his simple show he harbours treason.

The fox barks not when he would steal the lamb.

55

No, no, my sovereign, Gloucester is a man

Unsounded yet and full of deep deceit.

CARDINAL     Did he not, contrary to form of law,

Devise strange deaths for small offences done?

YORK     And did he not, in his Protectorship,

60

Levy great sums of money through the realm

For soldiers’ pay in France, and never sent it?

By means whereof the towns each day revolted.

BUCKINGHAM

Tut, these are petty faults to faults unknown

Which time will bring to light in smooth Duke Humphrey.

KING     My lords, at once: the care you have of us

To mow down thorns that would annoy our foot

Is worthy praise; but, shall I speak my conscience,

Our kinsman Gloucester is as innocent

From meaning treason to our royal person

70

As is the sucking lamb or harmless dove.

The Duke is virtuous, mild and too well given

To dream on evil or to work my downfall.

QUEEN

Ah, what’s more dangerous than this fond affiance?

Seems he a dove? His feathers are but borrowed,

75

For he’s disposed as the hateful raven.

Is he a lamb? His skin is surely lent him,

For he’s inclined as is the ravenous wolves.

Who cannot steal a shape, that means deceit?

Take heed, my lord; the welfare of us all

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Hangs on the cutting short that fraudful man.

Enter SOMERSET.

SOMERSET     All health unto my gracious sovereign!

KING

Welcome, Lord Somerset. What news from France?

SOMERSET     That all your interest in those territories

Is utterly bereft you; all is lost.

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KING

Cold news, Lord Somerset; but God’s will be done.

YORK [aside]     Cold news for me; for I had hope of France

As firmly as I hope for fertile England.

Thus are my blossoms blasted in the bud,

And caterpillars eat my leaves away;

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But I will remedy this gear ere long,

Or sell my title for a glorious grave.

Enter GLOUCESTER.

GLOUCESTER     All happiness unto my lord the King!

Pardon, my liege, that I have stayed so long.

SUFFOLK

Nay, Gloucester, know that thou art come too soon,

95

Unless thou wert more loyal than thou art.

I do arrest thee of high treason here.

GLOUCESTER

Well, Suffolk’s Duke, thou shalt not see me blush,

Nor change my countenance for this arrest.

A heart unspotted is not easily daunted.

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The purest spring is not so free from mud

As I am clear from treason to my sovereign.

Who can accuse me? Wherein am I guilty?

YORK

’Tis thought, my lord, that you took bribes of France,

And, being Protector, stayed the soldiers’ pay,

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By means whereof his highness hath lost France.

GLOUCESTER

Is it but thought so? What are they that think it?

I never robbed the soldiers of their pay,

Nor ever had one penny bribe from France.

So help me God, as I have watched the night,

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Ay, night by night, in studying good for England!

That doit that e’er I wrested from the King,

Or any groat I hoarded to my use,

Be brought against me at my trial day!

No: many a pound of mine own proper store,

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Because I would not tax the needy commons,

Have I dispursed to the garrisons

And never asked for restitution.

CARDINAL     It serves you well, my lord, to say so much.

GLOUCESTER     I say no more than truth, so help me God!

120

YORK     In your Protectorship you did devise

Strange tortures for offenders, never heard of,

That England was defamed by tyranny.

GLOUCESTER

Why, ’tis well known that whiles I was Protector

Pity was all the fault that was in me,

125

For I should melt at an offender’s tears,

And lowly words were ransom for their fault.

Unless it were a bloody murderer,

Or foul felonious thief that fleeced poor passengers,

I never gave them condign punishment.

130

Murder indeed, that bloody sin, I tortured

Above the felon or what trespass else.

SUFFOLK

My lord, these faults are easy, quickly answered,

But mightier crimes are laid unto your charge

Whereof you cannot easily purge yourself.

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I do arrest you in his highness’ name

And here commit you to my Lord Cardinal

To keep until your further time of trial.

KING     My Lord of Gloucester, ’tis my special hope

That you will clear yourself from all suspense.

140

My conscience tells me you are innocent.

GLOUCESTER

Ah, gracious lord, these days are dangerous.

Virtue is choked with foul ambition,

And charity chased hence by rancour’s hand;

Foul subornation is predominant,

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And equity exiled your highness’ land.

I know their complot is to have my life;

And if my death might make this island happy

And prove the period of their tyranny,

I would expend it with all willingness.

150

But mine is made the prologue to their play;

For thousands more that yet suspect no peril

Will not conclude their plotted tragedy.

Beaufort’s red sparkling eyes blab his heart’s malice,

And Suffolk’s cloudy brow his stormy hate;

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Sharp Buckingham unburdens with his tongue

The envious load that lies upon his heart;

And dogged York, that reaches at the moon,

Whose overweening arm I have plucked back,

By false accuse doth level at my life.

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And you, my sovereign lady, with the rest,

Causeless have laid disgraces on my head

And with your best endeavour have stirred up

My liefest liege to be mine enemy.

Ay, all of you have laid your heads together –

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Myself had notice of your conventicles –

And all to make away my guiltless life.

I shall not want false witness to condemn me,

Nor store of treasons to augment my guilt.

The ancient proverb will be well effected:

170

A staff is quickly found to beat a dog.

CARDINAL     My liege, his railing is intolerable.

If those that care to keep your royal person

From treason’s secret knife and traitor’s rage

Be thus upbraided, chid, and rated at,

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And the offender granted scope of speech,

’Twill make them cool in zeal unto your grace.

SUFFOLK     Hath he not twit our sovereign lady here

With ignominious words, though clerkly couched,

As if she had suborned some to swear

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False allegations to o’erthrow his state?

QUEEN     But I can give the loser leave to chide.

GLOUCESTER

Far truer spoke than meant: I lose indeed –

Beshrew the winners, for they played me false!

And well such losers may have leave to speak.

185

BUCKINGHAM

He’ll wrest the sense and hold us here all day.

Lord Cardinal, he is your prisoner.

CARDINAL

Sirs, take away the Duke and guard him sure.

GLOUCESTER

Ah, thus King Henry throws away his crutch

Before his legs be firm to bear his body.

190

Thus is the shepherd beaten from thy side,

And wolves are gnarling who shall gnaw thee first.

Ah, that my fear were false; ah, that it were!

For, good King Henry, thy decay I fear.

Exit Gloucester with attendants.

KING     My lords, what to your wisdoms seemeth best

195

Do, or undo, as if ourself were here.

QUEEN     What, will your highness leave the parliament?

KING     Ay, Margaret; my heart is drowned with grief,

Whose flood begins to flow within mine eyes,

My body round engirt with misery;

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For what’s more miserable than discontent?

Ah, uncle Humphrey, in thy face I see

The map of honour, truth and loyalty;

And yet, good Humphrey, is the hour to come

That e’er I proved thee false or feared thy faith.

205

What louring star now envies thy estate

That these great lords and Margaret our Queen

Do seek subversion of thy harmless life?

Thou never didst them wrong, nor no man wrong.

And as the butcher takes away the calf

210

And binds the wretch and beats it when it strains,

Bearing it to the bloody slaughterhouse,

Even so remorseless have they borne him hence;

And as the dam runs lowing up and down,

Looking the way her harmless young one went,

215

And can do naught but wail her darling’s loss,

Even so myself bewails good Gloucester’s case

With sad unhelpful tears, and with dimmed eyes

Look after him, and cannot do him good,

So mighty are his vowed enemies.

220

His fortunes I will weep, and ’twixt each groan

Say, ‘Who’s a traitor, Gloucester he is none.’

Exit with Buckingham, Salisbury and Warwick.

QUEEN

Free lords, cold snow melts with the sun’s hot beams.

Henry my lord is cold in great affairs,

Too full of foolish pity; and Gloucester’s show

225

Beguiles him, as the mournful crocodile

With sorrow snares relenting passengers,

Or as the snake, rolled in a flowering bank,

With shining checkered slough doth sting a child

That for the beauty thinks it excellent.

230

Believe me, lords, were none more wise than I –

And yet herein I judge mine own wit good –

This Gloucester should be quickly rid the world,

To rid us from the fear we have of him.

CARDINAL     That he should die is worthy policy;

235

But yet we want a colour for his death.

’Tis meet he be condemned by course of law.

SUFFOLK     But in my mind that were no policy.

The King will labour still to save his life,

The commons haply rise to save his life;

240

And yet we have but trivial argument,

More than mistrust, that shows him worthy death.

YORK     So that, by this, you would not have him die?

SUFFOLK     Ah, York, no man alive so fain as I.

YORK [aside]

’Tis York that hath more reason for his death. –

245

But, my Lord Cardinal, and you, my Lord of Suffolk,

Say as you think, and speak it from your souls:

Were’t not all one an empty eagle were set

To guard the chicken from a hungry kite,

As place Duke Humphrey for the King’s Protector?

250

QUEEN     So the poor chicken should be sure of death.

SUFFOLK

Madam, ’tis true; and were’t not madness then

To make the fox surveyor of the fold,

Who being accused a crafty murderer,

His guilt should be but idly posted over

255

Because his purpose is not executed?

No – let him die in that he is a fox,

By nature proved an enemy to the flock,

Before his chaps be stained with crimson blood,

As Humphrey proved, by reasons, to my liege.

260

And do not stand on quillets how to slay him;

Be it by gins, by snares, by subtlety,

Sleeping or waking, ’tis no matter how,

So he be dead; for that is good deceit

Which mates him first that first intends deceit.

265

QUEEN     Thrice-noble Suffolk, ’tis resolutely spoke.

SUFFOLK     Not resolute, except so much were done;

For things are often spoke and seldom meant.

But that my heart accordeth with my tongue –

Seeing the deed is meritorious,

270

And to preserve my sovereign from his foe –

Say but the word, and I will be his priest.

CARDINAL

But I would have him dead, my Lord of Suffolk,

Ere you can take due orders for a priest.

Say you consent and censure well the deed,

275

And I’ll provide his executioner;

I tender so the safety of my liege.

SUFFOLK     Here is my hand, the deed is worthy doing.

QUEEN     And so say I.

YORK     And I: and now we three have spoke it,

It skills not greatly who impugns our doom.

280

Enter a Post.

POST     Great lords, from Ireland am I come amain

To signify that rebels there are up

And put the Englishmen unto the sword.

Send succours, lords, and stop the rage betime,

Before the wound do grow uncurable;

285

For, being green, there is great hope of help.

CARDINAL

A breach that craves a quick expedient stop! –

What counsel give you in this weighty cause?

YORK     That Somerset be sent as regent thither.

’Tis meet that lucky ruler be employed;

290

Witness the fortune he hath had in France.

SOMERSET     If York, with all his far-fet policy,

Had been the regent there instead of me,

He never would have stayed in France so long.

YORK     No, not to lose it all, as thou hast done.

295

I rather would have lost my life betimes

Than bring a burden of dishonour home

By staying there so long till all were lost.

Show me one scar charactered on thy skin;

Men’s flesh preserved so whole do seldom win.

300

QUEEN     Nay, then, this spark will prove a raging fire

If wind and fuel be brought to feed it with.

No more, good York. Sweet Somerset, be still.

Thy fortune, York, hadst thou been regent there,

Might happily have proved far worse than his.

305

YORK

What, worse than naught? Nay, then a shame take all!

SOMERSET     And in the number thee, that wishest shame.

CARDINAL     My Lord of York, try what your fortune is.

Th’uncivil kerns of Ireland are in arms

And temper clay with blood of Englishmen.

310

To Ireland will you lead a band of men

Collected choicely, from each county some,

And try your hap against the Irishmen?

YORK     I will, my lord, so please his majesty.

SUFFOLK     Why, our authority is his consent,

315

And what we do establish he confirms.

Then, noble York, take thou this task in hand.

YORK     I am content. Provide me soldiers, lords,

Whiles I take order for mine own affairs.

SUFFOLK

A charge, Lord York, that I will see performed.

320

But now return we to the false Duke Humphrey.

CARDINAL     No more of him; for I will deal with him

That henceforth he shall trouble us no more.

And so break off, the day is almost spent.

[aside] Lord Suffolk, you and I must talk of that event.

325

YORK     My Lord of Suffolk, within fourteen days

At Bristol I expect my soldiers;

For there I’ll ship them all for Ireland.

SUFFOLK     I’ll see it truly done, my Lord of York.

Exeunt all but York.

YORK     Now, York, or never, steel thy fearful thoughts,

330

And change misdoubt to resolution.

Be that thou hop’st to be, or what thou art

Resign to death; it is not worth th’enjoying.

Let pale-faced fear keep with the mean-born man

And find no harbour in a royal heart.

335

Faster than springtime showers comes thought on thought,

And not a thought but thinks on dignity.

My brain, more busy than the labouring spider,

Weaves tedious snares to trap mine enemies.

Well, nobles, well; ’tis politicly done,

340

To send me packing with an host of men;

I fear me you but warm the starved snake

Who, cherished in your breasts, will sting your hearts.

’Twas men I lacked, and you will give them me;

I take it kindly, yet be well assured

345

You put sharp weapons in a madman’s hands.

Whiles I in Ireland nurse a mighty band

I will stir up in England some black storm

Shall blow ten thousand souls to heaven or hell;

And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage

350

Until the golden circuit on my head,

Like to the glorious sun’s transparent beams,

Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw.

And for a minister of my intent

I have seduced a headstrong Kentishman,

355

John Cade of Ashford,

To make commotion, as full well he can,

Under the title of John Mortimer.

In Ireland have I seen this stubborn Cade

Oppose himself against a troop of kerns,

360

And fought so long till that his thighs with darts

Were almost like a sharp-quilled porpentine;

And in the end, being rescued, I have seen

Him caper upright like a wild Morisco,

Shaking the bloody darts as he his bells.

365

Full often, like a shag-haired crafty kern,

Hath he conversed with the enemy

And, undiscovered, come to me again

And given me notice of their villainies.

This devil here shall be my substitute;

370

For that John Mortimer, which now is dead,

In face, in gait, in speech, he doth resemble.

By this I shall perceive the commons’ mind,

How they affect the house and claim of York.

Say he be taken, racked and tortured,

375

I know no pain they can inflict upon him

Will make him say I moved him to those arms.

Say that he thrive, as ’tis great like he will,

Why then from Ireland come I with my strength

And reap the harvest which that rascal sowed.

380

For Humphrey being dead, as he shall be,

And Henry put apart, the next for me.

Exit.

3.2 Enter two or three Murderers running over the stage, from the murder of Duke Humphrey.

1 MURDERER     Run to my Lord of Suffolk; let him know

We have dispatched the Duke as he commanded.

2 MURDERER     O that it were to do! What have we done?

Didst ever hear a man so penitent?

Enter SUFFOLK.

1 MURDERER     Here comes my lord.

5

SUFFOLK     Now, sirs, have you dispatched this thing?

1 MURDERER     Ay, my good lord, he’s dead.

SUFFOLK

Why, that’s well said. Go, get you to my house,

I will reward you for this venturous deed.

The King and all the peers are here at hand.

10

Have you laid fair the bed? Is all things well,

According as I gave directions?

1 MURDERER     ’Tis, my good lord.

SUFFOLK     Away, be gone!     Exeunt Murderers.

Sound trumpets. Enter the KING, the QUEEN, CARDINAL, SOMERSET, with attendants.

KING     Go, call our uncle to our presence straight;

15

Say we intend to try his grace today

If he be guilty, as ’tis published.

SUFFOLK     I’ll call him presently, my noble lord.

Exit.

KING     Lords, take your places; and, I pray you all,

Proceed no straiter ’gainst our uncle Gloucester

20

Than from true evidence, of good esteem,

He be approved in practice culpable.

QUEEN     God forbid any malice should prevail

That faultless may condemn a noble man!

Pray God he may acquit him of suspicion!

25

KING

I thank thee, Meg; these words content me much.

Enter SUFFOLK.

How now? Why look’st thou pale? Why tremblest thou?

Where is our uncle? What’s the matter, Suffolk?

SUFFOLK     Dead in his bed, my lord; Gloucester is dead.

QUEEN     Marry, God forfend!

30

CARDINAL     God’s secret judgement. I did dream tonight

The Duke was dumb and could not speak a word.

[The King swoons.]

QUEEN

How fares my lord? Help, lords, the King is dead!

SOMERSET     Rear up his body; wring him by the nose.

QUEEN     Run, go, help, help! O, Henry, ope thine eyes!

35

SUFFOLK     He doth revive again; madam, be patient.

KING     O heavenly God!

QUEEN     How fares my gracious lord?

SUFFOLK

Comfort, my sovereign! Gracious Henry, comfort!

KING     What, doth my Lord of Suffolk comfort me?

Came he right now to sing a raven’s note,

40

Whose dismal tune bereft my vital powers;

And thinks he that the chirping of a wren,

By crying comfort from a hollow breast,

Can chase away the first-conceived sound?

Hide not thy poison with such sugared words;

45

Lay not thy hands on me – forbear, I say!

Their touch affrights me as a serpent’s sting.

Thou baleful messenger, out of my sight!

Upon thy eyeballs murderous tyranny

Sits in grim majesty to fright the world.

50

Look not upon me, for thine eyes are wounding.

Yet do not go away; come, basilisk,

And kill the innocent gazer with thy sight.

For in the shade of death I shall find joy,

In life but double death, now Gloucester’s dead.

55

QUEEN     Why do you rate my Lord of Suffolk thus?

Although the Duke was enemy to him,

Yet he most Christian-like laments his death.

And for myself, foe as he was to me,

Might liquid tears, or heart-offending groans,

60

Or blood-consuming sighs recall his life,

I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans,

Look pale as primrose with blood-drinking sighs,

And all to have the noble Duke alive.

What know I how the world may deem of me?

65

For it is known we were but hollow friends.

It may be judged I made the Duke away.

So shall my name with slander’s tongue be wounded,

And princes’ courts be filled with my reproach.

This get I by his death. Ay me, unhappy!

70

To be a queen, and crowned with infamy.

KING     Ah, woe is me for Gloucester, wretched man!

QUEEN     Be woe for me, more wretched than he is.

What, dost thou turn away and hide thy face?

I am no loathsome leper – look on me!

75

What? Art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf?

Be poisonous too and kill thy forlorn Queen.

Is all thy comfort shut in Gloucester’s tomb?

Why then Queen Margaret was ne’er thy joy.

Erect his statue and worship it,

80

And make my image but an alehouse sign.

Was I for this nigh wrecked upon the sea

And twice by awkward wind from England’s bank

Drove back again unto my native clime?

What boded this, but well-forewarning wind

85

Did seem to say, ‘Seek not a scorpion’s nest,

Nor set no footing on this unkind shore’?

What did I then, but cursed the gentle gusts

And he that loosed them forth their brazen caves

And bid them blow towards England’s blessed shore

90

Or turn our stern upon a dreadful rock.

Yet Aeolus would not be a murderer,

But left that hateful office unto thee.

The pretty vaulting sea refused to drown me,

Knowing that thou wouldst have me drowned on shore

With tears as salt as sea through thy unkindness.

The splitting rocks cowered in the sinking sands

And would not dash me with their ragged sides,

Because thy flinty heart, more hard than they,

Might in thy palace perish Margaret.

100

As far as I could ken thy chalky cliffs,

When from thy shore the tempest beat us back,

I stood upon the hatches in the storm,

And when the dusky sky began to rob

My earnest-gaping sight of thy land’s view,

105

I took a costly jewel from my neck –

A heart it was, bound in with diamonds –

And threw it towards thy land. The sea received it,

And so I wished thy body might my heart;

And even with this I lost fair England’s view,

110

And bid mine eyes be packing with my heart,

And called them blind and dusky spectacles

For losing ken of Albion’s wished coast.

How often have I tempted Suffolk’s tongue –

The agent of thy foul inconstancy –

115

To sit and witch me, as Ascanius did

When he to madding Dido would unfold

His father’s acts, commenced in burning Troy!

Am I not witched like her? Or thou not false like him?

Ay me, I can no more! Die, Margaret,

120

For Henry weeps that thou dost live so long!

Noise within. Enter WARWICK, SALISBURY and many commons.

WARWICK     It is reported, mighty sovereign,

That good Duke Humphrey traitorously is murdered

By Suffolk and the Cardinal Beaufort’s means.

The commons, like an angry hive of bees

125

That want their leader, scatter up and down

And care not who they sting in his revenge.

Myself have calmed their spleenful mutiny,

Until they hear the order of his death.

KING     That he is dead, good Warwick, ’tis too true;

130

But how he died, God knows, not Henry.

Enter his chamber, view his breathless corpse,

And comment then upon his sudden death.

WARWICK     That shall I do, my liege. Stay, Salisbury,

With the rude multitude till I return.

135

Exeunt severally Warwick, and Salisbury with the commons.

KING     O thou that judgest all things, stay my thoughts:

My thoughts that labour to persuade my soul

Some violent hands were laid on Humphrey’s life.

If my suspect be false, forgive me, God,

For judgement only doth belong to thee.

140

Fain would I go to chafe his paly lips

With twenty thousand kisses, and to drain

Upon his face an ocean of salt tears,

To tell my love unto his dumb deaf trunk,

And with my fingers feel his hand unfeeling;

145

But all in vain are these mean obsequies.

And to survey his dead and earthy image,

What were it but to make my sorrow greater?

Bed put forth. Enter WARWICK.

WARWICK

Come hither, gracious sovereign, view this body.

[Draws the curtains, and shows Gloucester in his bed.]

KING     That is to see how deep my grave is made,

150

For with his soul fled all my worldly solace;

For, seeing him, I see my life in death.

WARWICK     As surely as my soul intends to live

With that dread King that took our state upon Him

To free us from his Father’s wrathful curse,

155

I do believe that violent hands were laid

Upon the life of this thrice-famed duke.

SUFFOLK     A dreadful oath, sworn with a solemn tongue!

What instance gives Lord Warwick for his vow?

WARWICK     See how the blood is settled in his face.

160

Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost

Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale and bloodless,

Being all descended to the labouring heart

Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,

Attracts the same for aidance ’gainst the enemy,

165

Which with the heart there cools and ne’er returneth

To blush and beautify the cheek again.

But see, his face is black and full of blood,

His eyeballs further out than when he lived,

Staring full ghastly like a strangled man;

170

His hair upreared, his nostrils stretched with struggling;

His hands abroad displayed, as one that grasped

And tugged for life and was by strength subdued.

Look, on the sheets his hair, you see, is sticking;

His well-proportioned beard made rough and rugged,

175

Like to the summer’s corn by tempest lodged.

It cannot be but he was murdered here;

The least of all these signs were probable.

[Closes the curtains.]

SUFFOLK

Why, Warwick, who should do the Duke to death?

Myself and Beaufort had him in protection,

180

And we, I hope, sir, are no murderers.

WARWICK

But both of you were vowed Duke Humphrey’s foes,

And you, forsooth, had the good Duke to keep.

’Tis like you would not feast him like a friend,

And ’tis well seen he found an enemy.

185

QUEEN     Then you, belike, suspect these noblemen

As guilty of Duke Humphrey’s timeless death?

WARWICK     Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh

And sees fast by a butcher with an axe,

But will suspect ’twas he that made the slaughter?

190

Who finds the partridge in the puttock’s nest

But may imagine how the bird was dead,

Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?

Even so suspicious is this tragedy.

QUEEN

Are you the butcher, Suffolk? Where’s your knife?

195

Is Beaufort termed a kite? Where are his talons?

[The bed is withdrawn.]

Exeunt Cardinal, Somerset and others.

SUFFOLK     I wear no knife to slaughter sleeping men,

But here’s a vengeful sword, rusted with ease,

That shall be scoured in his rancorous heart

That slanders me with murder’s crimson badge.

200

Say, if thou dar’st, proud Lord of Warwickshire,

That I am faulty in Duke Humphrey’s death.

WARWICK

What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?

QUEEN     He dares not calm his contumelious spirit,

Nor cease to be an arrogant controller,

205

Though Suffolk dare him twenty thousand times.

WARWICK     Madam, be still, with reverence may I say;

For every word you speak in his behalf

Is slander to your royal dignity.

SUFFOLK     Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour!

210

If ever lady wronged her lord so much,

Thy mother took into her blameful bed

Some stern untutored churl, and noble stock

Was graft with crab-tree slip, whose fruit thou art,

And never of the Nevilles’ noble race.

215

WARWICK     But that the guilt of murder bucklers thee,

And I should rob the deathsman of his fee,

Quitting thee thereby of ten thousand shames,

And that my sovereign’s presence makes me mild,

I would, false murderous coward, on thy knee

220

Make thee beg pardon for thy passed speech,

And say it was thy mother that thou meant’st,

That thou thyself wast born in bastardy;

And after all this fearful homage done,

Give thee thy hire and send thy soul to hell,

225

Pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men!

SUFFOLK     Thou shalt be waking while I shed thy blood,

If from this presence thou dar’st go with me.

WARWICK     Away even now, or I will drag thee hence.

Unworthy though thou art, I’ll cope with thee

230

And do some service to Duke Humphrey’s ghost.

Exeunt Suffolk and Warwick.

KING     What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?

Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just,

And he but naked, though locked up in steel,

Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

235

[A noise within. The commons cry, ‘ Down with Suffolk!’]

QUEEN     What noise is this?

Enter SUFFOLK and WARWICK with their weapons drawn.

KING

Why, how now, lords? Your wrathful weapons drawn

Here in our presence? Dare you be so bold?

Why, what tumultuous clamour have we here?

SUFFOLK     The traitorous Warwick with the men of Bury

240

Set all upon me, mighty sovereign.

Enter SALISBURY from the commons, again crying, ‘ Down with Suffolk! Down with Suffolk!’

SALISBURY [to the commons, who try to enter]

Sirs, stand apart; the King shall know your mind. –

Dread lord, the commons send you word by me,

Unless Lord Suffolk straight be done to death,

Or banished fair England’s territories,

245

They will by violence tear him from your palace

And torture him with grievous lingering death.

They say, by him the good Duke Humphrey died;

They say, in him they fear your highness’ death;

And mere instinct of love and loyalty,

250

Free from a stubborn opposite intent,

As being thought to contradict your liking,

Makes them thus forward in his banishment.

They say, in care of your most royal person,

That if your highness should intend to sleep

255

And charge that no man should disturb your rest,

In pain of your dislike, or pain of death,

Yet notwithstanding such a strait edict,

Were there a serpent seen, with forked tongue,

That slyly glided towards your majesty,

260

It were but necessary you were waked,

Lest, being suffered in that harmful slumber,

The mortal worm might make the sleep eternal.

And therefore do they cry, though you forbid,

That they will guard you, whe’er you will or no,

265

From such fell serpents as false Suffolk is,

With whose envenomed and fatal sting

Your loving uncle, twenty times his worth,

They say is shamefully bereft of life.

COMMONS [within]

An answer from the King, my Lord of Salisbury!

270

SUFFOLK

’Tis like the commons, rude unpolished hinds,

Could send such message to their sovereign.

But you, my lord, were glad to be employed

To show how quaint an orator you are.

But all the honour Salisbury hath won

275

Is that he was the lord ambassador

Sent from a sort of tinkers to the King.

COMMONS [within]

An answer from the King or we will all break in!

KING     Go, Salisbury, and tell them all from me

I thank them for their tender loving care;

280

And had I not been cited so by them,

Yet did I purpose as they do entreat.

For sure, my thoughts do hourly prophesy

Mischance unto my state by Suffolk’s means.

And therefore by His majesty I swear,

285

Whose far unworthy deputy I am,

He shall not breathe infection in this air

But three days longer, on the pain of death.

Exit Salisbury.

QUEEN     O Henry, let me plead for gentle Suffolk!

KING     Ungentle Queen, to call him gentle Suffolk!

290

No more, I say; if thou dost plead for him

Thou wilt but add increase unto my wrath.

Had I but said, I would have kept my word;

But when I swear, it is irrevocable.

If after three days’ space thou here be’st found

295

On any ground that I am ruler of,

The world shall not be ransom for thy life.

Come, Warwick, come; good Warwick, go with me;

I have great matters to impart to thee.

Exeunt all but Queen and Suffolk.

QUEEN     Mischance and sorrow go along with you!

300

Heart’s discontent and sour affliction

Be playfellows to keep you company!

There’s two of you, the devil make a third,

And threefold vengeance tend upon your steps.

SUFFOLK     Cease, gentle Queen, these execrations,

305

And let thy Suffolk take his heavy leave.

QUEEN     Fie, coward woman and soft-hearted wretch!

Hast thou not spirit to curse thine enemies?

SUFFOLK

A plague upon them! Wherefore should I curse them?

Could curses kill, as doth the mandrake’s groan,

310

I would invent as bitter searching terms,

As curst, as harsh and horrible to hear,

Delivered strongly through my fixed teeth,

With full as many signs of deadly hate,

As lean-faced Envy in her loathsome cave.

315

My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words,

Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint,

My hair be fixed on end, as one distract;

Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban.

And even now my burdened heart would break

320

Should I not curse them. Poison be their drink!

Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest that they taste!

Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress trees;

Their chiefest prospect murdering basilisks;

Their softest touch as smart as lizards’ stings;

325

Their music frightful as the serpent’s hiss,

And boding screech-owls make the consort full!

All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell –

QUEEN     Enough, sweet Suffolk; thou torment’st thyself,

And these dread curses, like the sun ’gainst glass,

330

Or like an overcharged gun, recoil

And turns the force of them upon thyself.

SUFFOLK     You bade me ban, and will you bid me leave?

Now, by the ground that I am banished from,

Well could I curse away a winter’s night

335

Though standing naked on a mountain top,

Where biting cold would never let grass grow,

And think it but a minute spent in sport.

QUEEN     O, let me entreat thee cease. Give me thy hand,

That I may dew it with my mournful tears;

340

[Kisses his hand.]

Nor let the rain of heaven wet this place

To wash away my woeful monuments.

O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand,

That thou mightst think upon these by the seal,

Through whom a thousand sighs are breathed for thee.

So, get thee gone that I may know my grief;

’Tis but surmised whiles thou art standing by,

As one that surfeits thinking on a want.

I will repeal thee or, be well assured,

Adventure to be banished myself.

350

And banished I am, if but from thee.

Go; speak not to me; even now be gone!

O, go not yet. Even thus, two friends condemned

Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,

Loather a hundred times to part than die.

355

Yet now farewell, and farewell life with thee.

SUFFOLK     Thus is poor Suffolk ten times banished,

Once by the King, and three times thrice by thee.

’Tis not the land I care for, wert thou thence:

A wilderness is populous enough,

360

So Suffolk had thy heavenly company.

For where thou art, there is the world itself,

With every several pleasure in the world;

And where thou art not, desolation.

I can no more. Live thou to joy thy life,

365

Myself no joy in naught but that thou liv’st.

Enter VAUX.

QUEEN

Whither goes Vaux so fast? What news, I prithee?

VAUX     To signify unto his majesty

That Cardinal Beaufort is at point of death;

For suddenly a grievous sickness took him,

370

That makes him gasp, and stare, and catch the air,

Blaspheming God and cursing men on earth.

Sometime he talks as if Duke Humphrey’s ghost

Were by his side; sometime he calls the King

And whispers to his pillow, as to him,

375

The secrets of his overcharged soul.

And I am sent to tell his majesty

That even now he cries aloud for him.

QUEEN     Go, tell this heavy message to the King. –

Exit Vaux.

Ay me! What is this world? What news are these?

380

But wherefore grieve I at an hour’s poor loss,

Omitting Suffolk’s exile, my soul’s treasure?

Why only, Suffolk, mourn I not for thee

And with the southern clouds contend in tears,

Theirs for the earth’s increase, mine for my sorrow’s?

385

Now get thee hence; the King, thou knowst, is coming.

If thou be found by me thou art but dead.

SUFFOLK     If I depart from thee I cannot live,

And in thy sight to die, what were it else

But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?

390

Here could I breathe my soul into the air,

As mild and gentle as the cradle-babe

Dying with mother’s dug between its lips;

Where, from thy sight, I should be raging mad

And cry out for thee to close up mine eyes,

395

To have thee with thy lips to stop my mouth;

So shouldst thou either turn my flying soul,

Or I should breathe it so into thy body,

And then it lived in sweet Elysium.

To die by thee were but to die in jest;

400

From thee to die were torture more than death.

O let me stay, befall what may befall!

QUEEN     Though parting be a fretful corrosive

It is applied to a deathful wound.

To France, sweet Suffolk! Let me hear from thee;

405

For wheresoe’er thou art in this world’s globe,

I’ll have an Iris that shall find thee out.

Away!

SUFFOLK     I go.

QUEEN     And take my heart with thee. [Kisses him.]

SUFFOLK     A jewel locked into the woefullest cask

That ever did contain a thing of worth.

410

Even as a splitted bark, so sunder we:

This way fall I to death.     Exit by one door.

QUEEN     This way for me. Exit by another.

3.3 Enter the KING, SALISBURY and WARWICK, to the CARDINAL in bed, raving and staring as if he were mad.

KING

How fares my lord? Speak, Beaufort, to thy sovereign.

CARDINAL

If thou be’st Death I’ll give thee England’s treasure,

Enough to purchase such another island,

So thou wilt let me live and feel no pain.

KING     Ah, what a sign it is of evil life

5

Where death’s approach is seen so terrible!

WARWICK     Beaufort, it is thy sovereign speaks to thee.

CARDINAL     Bring me unto my trial when you will.

Died he not in his bed? Where should he die?

Can I make men live whe’er they will or no?

10

O, torture me no more! I will confess.

Alive again? Then show me where he is.

I’ll give a thousand pound to look upon him.

He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them.

Comb down his hair; look, look, it stands upright

15

Like lime twigs set to catch my winged soul!

Give me some drink, and bid the apothecary

Bring the strong poison that I bought of him.

KING [Kneels.]     O Thou eternal mover of the heavens,

Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch.

20

O beat away the busy meddling fiend

That lays strong siege unto this wretch’s soul,

And from his bosom purge this black despair.

WARWICK

See how the pangs of death do make him grin.

SALISBURY     Disturb him not; let him pass peaceably.

25

KING     Peace to his soul, if God’s good pleasure be.

Lord Cardinal, if thou thinkst on heaven’s bliss,

Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope.

[Cardinal dies.]

He dies and makes no sign. O God, forgive him!

WARWICK     So bad a death argues a monstrous life.

30

KING     [Rises.] Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.

Close up his eyes, and draw the curtain close,

And let us all to meditation.     Exeunt.

4.1 Alarum. Fight at sea. Ordnance goes off. Enter Lieutenant, SUFFOLK disguised, a prisoner, the Master a nd Master’s Mate, and Walter WHITMORE, with two Gentlemen as prisoners and others.

LIEUTENANT     The gaudy, blabbing and remorseful day

Is crept into the bosom of the sea;

And now loud-howling wolves arouse the jades

That drag the tragic melancholy night,

Who with their drowsy, slow and flagging wings

5

Clip dead men’s graves and from their misty jaws

Breathe foul contagious darkness in the air.

Therefore bring forth the soldiers of our prize,

For whilst our pinnace anchors in the Downs,

Here shall they make their ransom on the sand,

10

Or with their blood stain this discoloured shore.

Master, this prisoner [Indicates First Gentleman.]

freely give I thee,

And thou that art his mate, make boot of this;

[Indicates Second Gentleman.]

The other, [Indicates Suffolk.]

Walter Whitmore, is thy share.

1 GENTLEMAN

What is my ransom, master? Let me know.

15

MASTER

A thousand crowns, or else lay down your head.

MATE     And so much shall you give, or off goes yours.

LIEUTENANT

What, think you much to pay two thousand crowns,

And bear the name and port of gentlemen?

WHITMORE

Cut both the villains’ throats! [to Suffolk] For die you shall.

20

LIEUTENANT

The lives of those which we have lost in fight

Be counterpoised with such a petty sum.

1 GENTLEMAN

I’ll give it, sir, and therefore spare my life.

2 GENTLEMAN

And so will I, and write home for it straight.

WHITMORE [to Suffolk]

I lost mine eye in laying the prize aboard,

25

And therefore to revenge it shalt thou die,

And so should these, if I might have my will.

LIEUTENANT

Be not so rash; take ransom, let him live.

SUFFOLK     Look on my George; I am a gentleman.

[Reveals his badge.]

Rate me at what thou wilt, thou shalt be paid.

30

WHITMORE     And so am I; my name is Walter Whitmore.

How now! Why starts thou? What, doth death affright?

SUFFOLK

Thy name affrights me, in whose sound is death.

A cunning man did calculate my birth

And told me that by water I should die.

35

Yet let not this make thee be bloody-minded,

Thy name is Gualtier, being rightly sounded.

WHITMORE     Gualtier or Walter, which it is I care not.

Never yet did base dishonour blur our name

But with our sword we wiped away the blot.

40

Therefore, when merchant-like I sell revenge,

Broke be my sword, my arms torn and defaced

And I proclaimed a coward through the world.

SUFFOLK     Stay, Whitmore, for thy prisoner is a prince,

The Duke of Suffolk, William de la Pole.

45

[Removes his cloak.]

WHITMORE     The Duke of Suffolk, muffled up in rags?

SUFFOLK     Ay, but these rags are no part of the Duke.

Jove sometime went disguised, and why not I?

LIEUTENANT     But Jove was never slain as thou shalt be.

SUFFOLK

Obscure and lousy swain, King Henry’s blood,

50

The honourable blood of Lancaster,

Must not be shed by such a jaded groom.

Hast thou not kissed thy hand and held my stirrup?

And bare-head plodded by my foot-cloth mule,

And thought thee happy when I shook my head?

55

How often hast thou waited at my cup,

Fed from my trencher, kneeled down at the board

When I have feasted with Queen Margaret?

Remember it, and let it make thee crestfallen,

Ay, and allay this thy abortive pride.

60

How in our voiding lobby hast thou stood

And duly waited for my coming forth?

This hand of mine hath writ in thy behalf

And therefore shall it charm thy riotous tongue.

WHITMORE

Speak, captain, shall I stab the forlorn swain?

65

LIEUTENANT

First let my words stab him, as he hath me.

SUFFOLK

Base slave, thy words are blunt, and so art thou.

LIEUTENANT

Convey him hence, and on our longboat’s side

Strike off his head.

SUFFOLK     Thou dar’st not for thy own.

LIEUTENANT     Yes, poll!

SUFFOLK     Pole!

LIEUTENANT     Pool! Sir Pool! Lord!

70

Ay, kennel, puddle, sink, whose filth and dirt

Troubles the silver spring where England drinks;

Now will I dam up this thy yawning mouth

For swallowing the treasure of the realm.

Thy lips that kissed the Queen shall sweep the ground;

75

And thou that smiledst at good Duke Humphrey’s death

Against the senseless winds shall grin in vain

Who in contempt shall hiss at thee again.

And wedded be thou to the hags of hell

For daring to affy a mighty lord

80

Unto the daughter of a worthless king,

Having neither subject, wealth nor diadem.

By devilish policy art thou grown great

And, like ambitious Sulla, overgorged

With gobbets of thy mother’s bleeding heart.

85

By thee Anjou and Maine were sold to France,

The false revolting Normans thorough thee

Disdain to call us lord, and Picardy

Hath slain their governors, surprised our forts

And sent the ragged soldiers wounded home.

90

The princely Warwick, and the Nevilles all,

Whose dreadful swords were never drawn in vain,

As hating thee, are rising up in arms.

And now the house of York, thrust from the crown

By shameful murder of a guiltless king

95

And lofty, proud, encroaching tyranny,

Burns with revenging fire, whose hopeful colours

Advance our half-faced sun, striving to shine,

Under which is writ ‘Invitis nubibus’.

The commons here in Kent are up in arms;

100

And, to conclude, reproach and beggary

Is crept into the palace of our King,

And all by thee. Away! Convey him hence.

SUFFOLK     O, that I were a god, to shoot forth thunder

Upon these paltry, servile, abject drudges!

105

Small things make base men proud: this villain here,

Being captain of a pinnace, threatens more

Than Bargulus, the strong Illyrian pirate.

Drones suck not eagles’ blood, but rob beehives.

It is impossible that I should die

110

By such a lowly vassal as thyself.

Thy words move rage and not remorse in me.

LIEUTENANT     Ay, but my deeds shall stay thy fury soon.

SUFFOLK     I go of message from the Queen to France;

I charge thee waft me safely ’cross the Channel.

115

LIEUTENANT     Walter!

WHITMORE

Come, Suffolk, I must waft thee to thy death.

SUFFOLK Pene gelidus timor occupat artus:

It is thee I fear.

WHITMORE

Thou shalt have cause to fear before I leave thee.

120

What, are ye daunted now? Now will ye stoop?

1 GENTLEMAN

My gracious lord, entreat him, speak him fair.

SUFFOLK     Suffolk’s imperial tongue is stern and rough,

Used to command, untaught to plead for favour.

Far be it we should honour such as these

125

With humble suit: no, rather let my head

Stoop to the block than these knees bow to any

Save to the God of heaven and to my King;

And sooner dance upon a bloody pole

Than stand uncovered to the vulgar groom.

130

True nobility is exempt from fear;

More can I bear than you dare execute.

LIEUTENANT     Hale him away, and let him talk no more.

SUFFOLK     Come, soldiers, show what cruelty ye can,

That this my death may never be forgot.

135

Great men oft die by vile Bezonians.

A Roman sworder and banditto slave

Murdered sweet Tully; Brutus’ bastard hand

Stabbed Julius Caesar; savage islanders

Pompey the Great; and Suffolk dies by pirates.

140

Exit Whitmore with Suffolk and others.

LIEUTENANT

And as for these whose ransom we have set,

It is our pleasure one of them depart:

Therefore come you with us, and let him go.

Exeunt all but First Gentleman.

Enter WHITMORE with Suffolk’s body and head.

WHITMORE     There let his head and lifeless body lie,

Until the Queen his mistress bury it.

Exit.

145

1 GENTLEMAN     O barbarous and bloody spectacle!

His body will I bear unto the King.

If he revenge it not, yet will his friends;

So will the Queen, that living held him dear.

Exit with the body and head.

4.2 Enter two of the rebels, GEORGE and NICK, with long staves.

GEORGE     Come and get thee a sword, though made of a

lath; they have been up these two days.

NICK     They have the more need to sleep now, then.

GEORGE     I tell thee, Jack Cade the clothier means to

dress the commonwealth, and turn it, and set a new

5

nap upon it.

NICK     So he had need, for ’tis threadbare. Well, I say it

was never merry world in England since gentlemen

came up.

GEORGE     O miserable age! Virtue is not regarded in

10

handicraftsmen.

NICK     The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons.

GEORGE     Nay, more, the King’s Council are no good

workmen.

NICK     True; and yet it is said, ‘Labour in thy vocation’;

15

which is as much to say as, ‘Let the magistrates be

labouring men’; and therefore should we be magistrates.

GEORGE     Thou hast hit it; for there’s no better sign of a

brave mind than a hard hand.

NICK     I see them! I see them! There’s Best’s son, the

20

tanner of Wingham.

GEORGE     He shall have the skins of our enemies to make

dog’s leather of.

NICK     And Dick the butcher.

GEORGE     Then is sin struck down like an ox, and

25

iniquity’s throat cut like a calf.

NICK     And Smith the weaver.

GEORGE     Argo, their thread of life is spun.

NICK     Come, come, let’s fall in with them.

Drum. Enter CADE, Dick the Butcher, Smith the Weaver, and a sawyer, with infinite numbers carrying long staves.

CADE     We, John Cade, so termed of our supposed father –

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BUTCHER [aside]     Or rather of stealing a cade of herrings.

CADE     For our enemies shall fall before us, inspired

with the spirit of putting down kings and princes.

Command silence.

BUTCHER     Silence!

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CADE     My father was a Mortimer –

BUTCHER [aside]     He was an honest man, and a good

bricklayer.

CADE     My mother a Plantagenet –

BUTCHER [aside]     I knew her well, she was a midwife.

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CADE     My wife descended of the Lacies –

BUTCHER [aside]     She was indeed a pedlar’s daughter

and sold many laces.

WEAVER [aside]     But now of late, not able to travel with

her furred pack, she washes bucks here at home.

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CADE     Therefore am I of an honourable house.

BUTCHER [aside]     Ay, by my faith, the field is

honourable, and there was he born, under a hedge; for

his father had never a house but the cage.

CADE     Valiant I am.

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WEAVER [aside]     ’ A must needs, for beggary is valiant.

CADE     I am able to endure much.

BUTCHER [aside]     No question of that, for I have seen

him whipped three market days together.

CADE     I fear neither sword nor fire.

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WEAVER [aside]     He need not fear the sword, for his coat

is of proof.

BUTCHER [aside]     But methinks he should stand in fear

of fire, being burnt i’th’ hand for stealing of sheep.

CADE     Be brave, then, for your captain is brave, and

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vows reformation. There shall be in England seven

half-penny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped

pot shall have ten hoops, and I will make it felony to

drink small beer. All the realm shall be in common,

and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass. And

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when I am king, as king I will be –

ALL     God save your majesty!

CADE     I thank you, good people. – There shall be no

money, all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will

apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like

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brothers and worship me their lord.

BUTCHER     The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

CADE     Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable

thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be

made parchment; that parchment, being scribbled

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o’er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings, but

I say ’tis the bee’s wax; for I did but seal once to a thing

and I was never mine own man since. How now?

Who’s there?

Enter some, bringing forward the Clerk of Chartham.

WEAVER     The clerk of Chartham: he can write and read

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and cast account.

CADE     O, monstrous!

WEAVER     We took him setting of boys’ copies.

CADE     Here’s a villain!

WEAVER     H’as a book in his pocket with red letters in’t.

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CADE     Nay, then, he is a conjuror.

BUTCHER     Nay, he can make obligations and write court-

hand.

CADE     I am sorry for’t. The man is a proper man, of mine

honour; unless I find him guilty, he shall not die. Come

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hither, sirrah, I must examine thee. What is thy name?

CLERK     Emmanuel.

BUTCHER     They use to write that on the top of letters.

’Twill go hard with you.

CADE     Let me alone. Dost thou use to write thy name?

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Or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest plain-

dealing man?

CLERK     Sir, I thank God I have been so well brought up

that I can write my name.

ALL     He hath confessed: away with him! He’s a villain

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and a traitor.

CADE     Away with him, I say! Hang him with his pen and

inkhorn about his neck.     Exit one with the Clerk.

Enter MICHAEL.

MICHAEL     Where’s our general?

CADE     Here I am, thou particular fellow.

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MICHAEL     Fly, fly, fly! Sir Humphrey Stafford and his

brother are hard by, with the King’s forces.

CADE     Stand, villain, stand, or I’ll fell thee down. He

shall be encountered with a man as good as himself.

He is but a knight, is ’a?

MICHAEL     No.

CADE     To equal him I will make myself a knight

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presently. [Kneels.] Rise up, Sir John Mortimer.

[Rises.] Now have at him!

Enter Sir Humphrey STAFFORD and his Brother with drum and soldiers.

STAFFORD     Rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent,

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Marked for the gallows, lay your weapons down;

Home to your cottages, forsake this groom.

The King is merciful, if you revolt.

BROTHER     But angry, wrathful and inclined to blood,

If you go forward: therefore yield, or die.

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CADE     As for these silken-coated slaves, I pass not.

It is to you, good people, that I speak,

Over whom, in time to come, I hope to reign,

For I am rightful heir unto the crown.

STAFFORD     Villain, thy father was a plasterer,

And thou thyself a shearman, art thou not?

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CADE     And Adam was a gardener.

BROTHER     What of that?

CADE     Marry, this: Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March,

Married the Duke of Clarence’ daughter, did he not?

STAFFORD     Ay, sir.

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CADE     By her he had two children at one birth.

BROTHER     That’s false.

CADE     Ay, there’s the question; but I say ’tis true.

The elder of them, being put to nurse,

Was by a beggar-woman stolen away;

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And, ignorant of his birth and parentage,

Became a bricklayer when he came to age.

His son am I; deny it if you can.

BUTCHER     Nay, ’tis too true, therefore he shall be King.

WEAVER     Sir, he made a chimney in my father’s house,

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and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it;

therefore deny it not.

STAFFORD

And will you credit this base drudge’s words,

That speaks he knows not what?

ALL     Ay, marry, will we; therefore get ye gone.

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BROTHER

Jack Cade, the Duke of York hath taught you this.

CADE [aside]     He lies, for I invented it myself. – Go to,

sirrah, tell the King from me, that for his father’s sake,

Henry the Fifth, in whose time boys went to span-

counter for French crowns, I am content he shall

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reign, but I’ll be Protector over him.

BUTCHER     And furthermore, we’ll have the Lord Saye’s

head for selling the dukedom of Maine.

CADE     And good reason, for thereby is England mained

and fain to go with a staff, but that my puissance holds

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it up. Fellow kings, I tell you that that Lord Saye hath

gelded the commonwealth and made it an eunuch; and

more than that, he can speak French, and therefore he

is a traitor.

STAFFORD     O gross and miserable ignorance!

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CADE     Nay, answer if you can: the Frenchmen are our

enemies; go to then, I ask but this – can he that speaks

with the tongue of an enemy be a good counsellor or no?

ALL     No, no, and therefore we’ll have his head.

BROTHER     Well, seeing gentle words will not prevail,

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Assail them with the army of the King.

STAFFORD     Herald, away, and throughout every town

Proclaim them traitors that are up with Cade;

That those which fly before the battle ends

May, even in their wives’ and children’s sight,

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Be hanged up for example at their doors.

And you that be the King’s friends, follow me.

Exeunt the two Staffords and soldiers.

CADE     And you that love the commons, follow me.

Now show yourselves men; ’tis for liberty.

We will not leave one lord, one gentleman:

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Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon,

For they are thrifty honest men, and such

As would, but that they dare not, take our parts.

BUTCHER     They are all in order and march toward us.

CADE     But then are we in order when we are most out of

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order. Come, march forward.     Exeunt.

4.3 Alarums to the fight, wherein both the Staffords are slain. Enter CADE and the rest.

CADE     Where’s Dick, the butcher of Ashford?

BUTCHER     Here, sir.

CADE     They fell before thee like sheep and oxen, and

thou behaved’st thyself as if thou hadst been in thine

own slaughterhouse. Therefore, thus will I reward

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thee: the Lent shall be as long again as it is, and thou

shalt have a licence to kill for a hundred lacking one.

BUTCHER     I desire no more.

CADE     And, to speak truth, thou deserv’st no less.

[Takes up Stafford’s sword.] This monument of the

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victory will I bear, and the bodies shall be dragged at

my horse heels till I do come to London, where we will

have the Mayor’s sword borne before us.

BUTCHER     If we mean to thrive and do good, break open

the gaols and let out the prisoners.

15

CADE     Fear not that, I warrant thee. Come, let’s march

towards London.     Exeunt dragging off the bodies.

4.4 Enter the KING with a supplication, and the QUEEN with Suffolk’s head, the Duke of BUCKINGHAM and the Lord SAYE.

QUEEN [aside]

Oft have I heard that grief softens the mind

And makes it fearful and degenerate;

Think therefore on revenge and cease to weep.

But who can cease to weep and look on this?

Here may his head lie on my throbbing breast;

5

But where’s the body that I should embrace?

BUCKINGHAM

What answer makes your grace to the rebels’ supplication?

KING     I’ll send some holy bishop to entreat,

For God forbid so many simple souls

Should perish by the sword. And I myself,

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Rather than bloody war shall cut them short,

Will parley with Jack Cade their general.

But stay, I’ll read it over once again.

QUEEN [aside]

Ah, barbarous villains! Hath this lovely face

Ruled like a wandering planet over me

15

And could it not enforce them to relent,

That were unworthy to behold the same?

KING

Lord Saye, Jack Cade hath sworn to have thy head.

SAYE     Ay, but I hope your highness shall have his.

KING     How now, madam?

20

Still lamenting and mourning for Suffolk’s death?

I fear me, love, if that I had been dead

Thou wouldest not have mourned so much for me.

QUEEN

No, my love, I should not mourn but die for thee.

Enter a Messenger.

KING

How now? What news? Why com’st thou in such haste?

25

MESSENGER     The rebels are in Southwark; fly, my lord!

Jack Cade proclaims himself Lord Mortimer,

Descended from the Duke of Clarence’ house,

And calls your grace usurper, openly,

And vows to crown himself in Westminster.

30

His army is a ragged multitude

Of hinds and peasants, rude and merciless.

Sir Humphrey Stafford and his brother’s death

Hath given them heart and courage to proceed.

All scholars, lawyers, courtiers, gentlemen,

35

They call false caterpillars and intend their death.

KING     O, graceless men! They know not what they do.

BUCKINGHAM     My gracious lord, retire to Killingworth

Until a power be raised to put them down.

QUEEN     Ah, were the Duke of Suffolk now alive,

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These Kentish rebels would be soon appeased.

KING     Lord Saye, the traitors hateth thee,

Therefore away with us to Killingworth.

SAYE     So might your grace’s person be in danger.

The sight of me is odious in their eyes;

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And therefore in this city will I stay

And live alone, as secret as I may.

Enter another Messenger.

2 MESSENGER

Jack Cade hath almost gotten London Bridge;

The citizens fly and forsake their houses;

The rascal people, thirsting after prey,

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Join with the traitor; and they jointly swear

To spoil the city and your royal court.

BUCKINGHAM

Then linger not, my lord: away, take horse!

KING     Come, Margaret. God, our hope, will succour us.

QUEEN [aside]

My hope is gone, now Suffolk is deceased.

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KING     Farewell, my lord. Trust not the Kentish rebels.

BUCKINGHAM     Trust nobody, for fear you be betrayed.

SAYE     The trust I have is in mine innocence,

And therefore am I bold and resolute.     Exeunt.

4.5 Enter Lord SCALES aloft upon the Tower walking. Then enters two or three Citizens below.

SCALES     How now? Is Jack Cade slain?

1 CITIZEN     No, my lord, nor likely to be slain; for they

have won the bridge, killing all those that withstand

them. The Lord Mayor craves aid of your honour

from the Tower to defend the city from the rebels.

5

SCALES     Such aid as I can spare you shall command,

But I am troubled here with them myself;

The rebels have assayed to win the Tower.

But get you to Smithfield and gather head,

And thither I will send you Matthew Gough.

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Fight for your king, your country and your lives!

And so farewell, for I must hence again.

Exeunt severally.

4.6 Enter Jack CADE and the rest, and strikes his staff on London Stone.

CADE     Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here,

sitting upon London Stone, I charge and command

that, at the city’s cost, the Pissing Conduit run

nothing but claret wine this first year of our reign.

And now henceforward it shall be treason for any that

5

calls me other than Lord Mortimer.

Enter a Soldier running.

SOLDIER     Jack Cade! Jack Cade!

CADE     Knock him down there. [They kill him.]

BUTCHER     If this fellow be wise, he’ll never call ye Jack

Cade more. I think he hath a very fair warning. [Reads

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soldier’s message.] My lord, there’s an army gathered

together in Smithfield.

CADE     Come, then, let’s go fight with them. But first go

and set London Bridge on fire; and, if you can, burn

down the Tower too. Come, let’s away.

15

Exeunt with the body.

4.7 Alarums. Matthew Gough is slain and all the rest. Then enter Jack CADE with his company.

CADE     So, sirs: now go some and pull down the Savoy.

Others to th’Inns of Court; down with them all!

BUTCHER     I have a suit unto your lordship.

CADE     Be it a lordship, thou shalt have it for that word.

BUTCHER     Only that the laws of England may come out

5

of your mouth.

NICK [aside]     ’Mass, ’twill be sore law then, for he was

thrust in the mouth with a spear and ’tis not whole yet.

WEAVER [aside]     Nay, Nick, it will be stinking law, for his

breath stinks with eating toasted cheese.

10

CADE     I have thought upon it, it shall be so. Away, burn

all the records of the realm, my mouth shall be the

parliament of England.

NICK [aside]     Then we are like to have biting statutes,

unless his teeth be pulled out.

15

CADE     And henceforward all things shall be in common.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     My lord, a prize, a prize! Here’s the Lord

Saye which sold the towns in France; he that made us

pay one-and-twenty fifteens, and one shilling to the

pound, the last subsidy.

20

Enter GEORGE with the Lord SAYE.

CADE     Well, he shall be beheaded for it ten times. Ah,

thou say, thou serge – nay, thou buckram lord! Now art

thou within point-blank of our jurisdiction regal.

What canst thou answer to my majesty for giving up of

Normandy unto Mounsieur Basimecu, the Dauphin

25

of France? Be it known unto thee by these presence,

even the presence of Lord Mortimer, that I am the

besom that must sweep the court clean of such filth as

thou art. Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the

youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school; and,

30

whereas before our forefathers had no other books but

the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be

used and, contrary to the King his crown and dignity,

thou hast built a paper-mill. It will be proved to thy

face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of

35

a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no

Christian ear can endure to hear. Thou hast appointed

justices of peace, to call poor men before them, about

matters they were not able to answer. Moreover, thou

hast put them in prison, and because they could not

40

read thou hast hanged them, when indeed only for

that cause they have been most worthy to live. Thou

dost ride on a foot-cloth, dost thou not?

SAYE     What of that?

CADE     Marry, thou ought’st not to let thy horse wear a

45

cloak when honester men than thou go in their hose

and doublets.

BUTCHER     And work in their shirts too; as myself, for

example, that am a butcher.

SAYE     You men of Kent –

50

BUTCHER     What say you of Kent?

SAYE     Nothing but this: ’tis bona terra, mala gens.

CADE     Away with him, away with him! He speaks Latin.

SAYE     Hear me but speak, and bear me where you will.

Kent, in the Commentaries Caesar writ,

55

Is termed the civil’st place of all this isle;

Sweet is the country, because full of riches,

The people liberal, valiant, active, wealthy;

Which makes me hope you are not void of pity.

I sold not Maine, I lost not Normandy,

60

Yet to recover them would lose my life.

Justice with favour have I always done;

Prayers and tears have moved me, gifts could never.

When have I aught exacted at your hands,

Kent to maintain, the King, the realm and you?

65

Large gifts have I bestowed on learned clerks

Because my book preferred me to the King:

And seeing ignorance is the curse of God,

Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven,

Unless you be possessed with devilish spirits,

70

You cannot but forbear to murder me.

This tongue hath parleyed unto foreign kings

For your behoof –

CADE     Tut, when struck’st thou one blow in the field?

SAYE     Great men have reaching hands; oft have I struck

75

Those that I never saw, and struck them dead.

GEORGE     O monstrous coward! What, to come behind

folks?

SAYE

These cheeks are pale with watching for your good.

CADE     Give him a box o’th’ ear, and that will make ’em

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red again.

SAYE     Long sitting to determine poor men’s causes

Hath made me full of sickness and diseases.

CADE     Ye shall have a hempen caudle then and the help

of hatchet.

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BUTCHER     Why dost thou quiver, man?

SAYE     The palsy and not fear provokes me.

CADE     Nay, he nods at us, as who should say, ‘I’ll be even

with you.’ I’ll see if his head will stand steadier on a

pole, or no. Take him away and behead him.

90

SAYE     Tell me, wherein have I offended most?

Have I affected wealth or honour? Speak.

Are my chests filled up with extorted gold?

Is my apparel sumptuous to behold?

Whom have I injured, that ye seek my death?

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These hands are free from guiltless bloodshedding,

This breast from harbouring foul deceitful thoughts.

O, let me live!

CADE [aside]     I feel remorse in myself with his words,

but I’ll bridle it. He shall die, an it be but for pleading

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so well for his life. – Away with him! He has a familiar

under his tongue; he speaks not i’God’s name. Go,

take him away, I say, and strike off his head presently;

and then break into his son-in-law’s house, Sir James

Crowmer, and strike off his head, and bring them both

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upon two poles hither.

ALL     It shall be done.

SAYE     Ah, countrymen, if when you make your prayers

God should be so obdurate as yourselves,

How would it fare with your departed souls?

110

And therefore yet relent and save my life!

CADE     Away with him! And do as I command ye.

Exeunt one or two with the Lord Saye.

The proudest peer in the realm shall not wear a head

on his shoulders, unless he pay me tribute; there shall

not a maid be married, but she shall pay to me her

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maidenhead ere they have it; men shall hold of me in

capite; and we charge and command that their wives be

as free as heart can wish or tongue can tell.

BUTCHER     My lord, when shall we go to Cheapside and

take up commodities upon our bills?

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CADE     Marry, presently.

ALL     O brave!

Enter one with the heads upon poles.

CADE     But is not this braver? Let them kiss one another,

for they loved well when they were alive. Now part

them again, lest they consult about the giving up of

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some more towns in France. Soldiers, defer the spoil

of the city until night; for with these borne before us

instead of maces will we ride through the streets, and

at every corner have them kiss. Away!     Exeunt.

4.8 Alarum and retreat. Enter again CADE and all his rabblement.

CADE     Up Fish Street! Down Saint Magnus’ Corner!

Kill and knock down! Throw them into Thames!

[Sound a parley.]

What noise is this I hear?

Enter BUCKINGHAM and OLD CLIFFORD, attended.

Dare any be so bold to sound retreat or parley when I

5

command them kill?

BUCKINGHAM

Ay, here they be that dare and will disturb thee!

Know, Cade, we come ambassadors from the King

Unto the commons, whom thou hast misled,

And here pronounce free pardon to them all

That will forsake thee and go home in peace.

10

OLD CLIFFORD

What say ye, countrymen? Will ye relent,

And yield to mercy whilst ’tis offered you?

Or let a rebel lead you to your deaths?

Who loves the King and will embrace his pardon,

Fling up his cap and say, ‘God save his majesty!’

15

Who hateth him and honours not his father,

Henry the Fifth, that made all France to quake,

Shake he his weapon at us, and pass by.

[They forsake Cade.]

ALL     God save the King! God save the King!

CADE     What, Buckingham and Clifford, are ye so brave?

20

And you, base peasants, do ye believe him? Will you

needs be hanged with your pardons about your necks?

Hath my sword therefore broke through London

gates, that you should leave me at the White Hart in

Southwark? I thought ye would never have given o’er

25

these arms till you had recovered your ancient

freedom; but you are all recreants and dastards and

delight to live in slavery to the nobility. Let them

break your backs with burdens, take your houses over

your heads, ravish your wives and daughters before

30

your faces. For me, I will make shift for one, and so

God’s curse light upon you all!

ALL     We’ll follow Cade! We’ll follow Cade!

[They run to Cade again.]

OLD CLIFFORD     Is Cade the son of Henry the Fifth

That thus you do exclaim you’ll go with him?

35

Will he conduct you through the heart of France

And make the meanest of you earls and dukes?

Alas, he hath no home, no place to fly to,

Nor knows he how to live but by the spoil,

Unless by robbing of your friends and us.

40

Were’t not a shame that whilst you live at jar

The fearful French, whom you late vanquished,

Should make a start o’er seas and vanquish you?

Methinks already in this civil broil

I see them lording it in London streets,

45

Crying ‘Villiago!’ unto all they meet.

Better ten thousand base-born Cades miscarry

Than you should stoop unto a Frenchman’s mercy.

To France! To France! And get what you have lost!

Spare England, for it is your native coast.

50

Henry hath money, you are strong and manly;

God on our side, doubt not of victory.

ALL     A Clifford! A Clifford! We’ll follow the King and

Clifford. [They forsake Cade.]

CADE [aside]     Was ever feather so lightly blown to and

55

fro as this multitude? The name of Henry the Fifth

hales them to an hundred mischiefs and makes them

leave me desolate. I see them lay their heads together

to surprise me. My sword make way for me, for here is

no staying. – In despite of the devils and hell, have

60

through the very midst of you! And heavens and

honour be witness that no want of resolution in me,

but only my followers’ base and ignominious treasons,

makes me betake me to my heels.     Exit.

BUCKINGHAM

What, is he fled? Go some and follow him.

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And he that brings his head unto the King

Shall have a thousand crowns for his reward.

Exeunt some of them.

Follow me, soldiers; we’ll devise a mean

To reconcile you all unto the King.     Exeunt.

4.9 Sound trumpets. Enter KING, QUEEN and SOMERSET on the terrace aloft.

KING     Was ever king that joyed an earthly throne

And could command no more content than I?

No sooner was I crept out of my cradle

But I was made a king at nine months old.

Was never subject longed to be a king

5

As I do long and wish to be a subject.

Enter BUCKINGHAM and OLD CLIFFORD.

BUCKINGHAM     Health and glad tidings to your majesty.

KING     Why, Buckingham, is the traitor Cade surprised,

Or is he but retired to make him strong?

Enter multitudes with halters about their necks.

OLD CLIFFORD

He is fled, my lord, and all his powers do yield,

10

And humbly thus with halters on their necks

Expect your highness’ doom of life or death.

KING     Then, heaven, set ope thy everlasting gates

To entertain my vows of thanks and praise.

Soldiers, this day have you redeemed your lives

15

And showed how well you love your prince and country.

Continue still in this so good a mind,

And Henry, though he be unfortunate,

Assure yourselves will never be unkind.

And so, with thanks and pardon to you all,

20

I do dismiss you to your several countries.

ALL     God save the King! God save the King!

Exeunt rebels.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     Please it your grace to be advertised

The Duke of York is newly come from Ireland,

And with a puissant and a mighty power

25

Of gallowglasses and stout kerns

Is marching hitherward in proud array,

And still proclaimeth, as he comes along,

His arms are only to remove from thee

The Duke of Somerset, whom he terms a traitor.

30

KING

Thus stands my state, ’twixt Cade and York distressed,

Like to a ship that having scaped a tempest

Is straightway calmed and boarded with a pirate.

But now is Cade driven back, his men dispersed,

And now is York in arms to second him.

35

I pray thee, Buckingham, go and meet him,

And ask him what’s the reason of these arms.

Tell him I’ll send Duke Edmund to the Tower –

And, Somerset, we will commit thee thither,

Until his army be dismissed from him.

40

SOMERSET     My lord, I’ll yield myself to prison willingly,

Or unto death, to do my country good.

KING     In any case, be not too rough in terms,

For he is fierce and cannot brook hard language.

BUCKINGHAM     I will, my lord, and doubt not so to deal

45

As all things shall redound unto your good.

KING     Come, wife, let’s in, and learn to govern better;

For yet may England curse my wretched reign.

Flourish. Exeunt.

4.10 Enter CADE.

CADE     Fie on ambitions! Fie on myself that have a sword

and yet am ready to famish! These five days have I hid

me in these woods and durst not peep out, for all the

country is laid for me; but now am I so hungry that if I

might have a lease of my life for a thousand years, I

5

could stay no longer. Wherefore, o’er a brick wall have

I climbed into this garden, to see if I can eat grass, or

pick a sallet another while, which is not amiss to cool a

man’s stomach this hot weather. And I think this word

‘sallet’ was born to do me good: for many a time, but for

10

a sallet, my brain-pan had been cleft with a brown bill;

and many a time, when I have been dry and bravely

marching, it hath served me instead of a quart pot to

drink in; and now the word ‘sallet’ must serve me to

feed on. [Lies down picking of herbs and eating them.]

15

Enter IDEN and his men.

IDEN     Lord, who would live turmoiled in the court

And may enjoy such quiet walks as these?

This small inheritance my father left me

Contenteth me, and worth a monarchy.

I seek not to wax great by others’ waning

20

Or gather wealth I care not with what envy;

Sufficeth that I have maintains my state,

And sends the poor well pleased from my gate.

CADE [aside]     Here’s the lord of the soil come to seize me

for a stray for entering his fee-simple without leave. –

25

Ah, villain, thou wilt betray me and get a thousand

crowns of the King by carrying my head to him; but

I’ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my

sword like a great pin, ere thou and I part. [Draws his

sword.]

IDEN     Why, rude companion, whatsoe’er thou be,

30

I know thee not; why then should I betray thee?

Is’t not enough to break into my garden

And like a thief to come to rob my grounds,

Climbing my walls in spite of me the owner,

But thou wilt brave me with these saucy terms?

35

CADE     Brave thee? Ay, by the best blood that ever was

broached, and beard thee too. Look on me well: I have

eat no meat these five days, yet come thou and thy five

men, an if I do not leave you all as dead as a doornail,

I pray God I may never eat grass more.

40

IDEN     Nay, it shall ne’er be said, while England stands,

That Alexander Iden, a squire of Kent,

Took odds to combat a poor famished man.

Oppose thy steadfast-gazing eyes to mine,

See if thou canst outface me with thy looks.

45

Set limb to limb, and thou art far the lesser;

Thy hand is but a finger to my fist,

Thy leg a stick compared with this truncheon.

My foot shall fight with all the strength thou hast;

An if mine arm be heaved in the air

50

Thy grave is digged already in the earth.

As for words, whose greatness answers words,

Let this my sword report what speech forbears.

[Draws his sword.]

CADE     By my valour, the most complete champion that

ever I heard! Steel, if thou turn the edge or cut not out

55

the burly-boned clown in chines of beef ere thou sleep

in thy sheath, I beseech God on my knees thou mayst

be turned to hobnails. [They fight and Cade falls down.]

O, I am slain! Famine and no other hath slain me. Let

ten thousand devils come against me, and give me but

60

the ten meals I have lost, and I’d defy them all.

Wither, garden, and be henceforth a burying place to

all that do dwell in this house, because the

unconquered soul of Cade is fled.

IDEN     Is’t Cade that I have slain, that monstrous traitor?

65

Sword, I will hallow thee for this thy deed,

And hang thee o’er my tomb when I am dead.

Ne’er shall this blood be wiped from thy point,

But thou shalt wear it as a herald’s coat

To emblaze the honour that thy master got.

70

CADE     Iden, farewell, and be proud of thy victory. Tell

Kent from me she hath lost her best man, and exhort

all the world to be cowards. For I, that never feared

any, am vanquished by famine, not by valour. [Dies.]

IDEN

How much thou wrong’st me, heaven be my judge.

75

Die, damned wretch, the curse of her that bore thee!

And as I thrust thy body in with my sword,

So wish I I might thrust thy soul to hell.

Hence will I drag thee headlong by the heels

Unto a dunghill, which shall be thy grave,

80

And there cut off thy most ungracious head,

Which I will bear in triumph to the King,

Leaving thy trunk for crows to feed upon.

Exeunt Iden and his men with the body.

5.1 Enter YORK and his army of Irish, with drum and colours.

YORK     From Ireland thus comes York to claim his right

And pluck the crown from feeble Henry’s head.

Ring, bells, aloud; burn, bonfires, clear and bright,

To entertain great England’s lawful king.

Ah, sancta majestas, who would not buy thee dear?

5

Let them obey that knows not how to rule.

This hand was made to handle nought but gold.

I cannot give due action to my words,

Except a sword or sceptre balance it;

A sceptre shall it have, have I a soul,

10

On which I’ll toss the fleur-de-lis of France.

Enter BUCKINGHAM.

Whom have we here? Buckingham, to disturb me?

The King hath sent him, sure. I must dissemble.

BUCKINGHAM

York, if thou meanest well, I greet thee well.

YORK     Humphrey of Buckingham, I accept thy greeting.

15

Art thou a messenger, or come of pleasure?

BUCKINGHAM

A messenger from Henry, our dread liege,

To know the reason of these arms in peace;

Or why thou, being a subject as I am,

Against thy oath and true allegiance sworn,

20

Should raise so great a power without his leave

Or dare to bring thy force so near the court?

YORK [aside]     Scarce can I speak, my choler is so great.

O, I could hew up rocks and fight with flint,

I am so angry at these abject terms;

25

And now like Ajax Telamonius,

On sheep or oxen could I spend my fury.

I am far better born than is the King,

More like a king, more kingly in my thoughts.

But I must make fair weather yet awhile

30

Till Henry be more weak and I more strong. –

Buckingham, I prithee pardon me

That I have given no answer all this while;

My mind was troubled with deep melancholy.

The cause why I have brought this army hither

35

Is to remove proud Somerset from the King,

Seditious to his grace and to the state.

BUCKINGHAM

That is too much presumption on thy part;

But if thy arms be to no other end,

The King hath yielded unto thy demand:

40

The Duke of Somerset is in the Tower.

YORK     Upon thine honour, is he prisoner?

BUCKINGHAM     Upon mine honour, he is prisoner.

YORK     Then, Buckingham, I do dismiss my powers.

Soldiers, I thank you all; disperse yourselves;

45

Meet me tomorrow in Saint George’s Field,

You shall have pay and everything you wish.

Exeunt soldiers.

And let my sovereign, virtuous Henry,

Command my eldest son, nay, all my sons,

As pledges of my fealty and love,

50

I’ll send them all, as willing as I live.

Lands, goods, horse, armour, anything I have

Is his to use, so Somerset may die.

BUCKINGHAM     York, I commend this kind submission.

We twain will go into his highness’ tent.

55

Enter KING and attendants.

KING     Buckingham, doth York intend no harm to us

That thus he marcheth with thee arm in arm?

YORK     In all submission and humility

York doth present himself unto your highness.

KING     Then what intends these forces thou dost bring?

60

YORK     To heave the traitor Somerset from hence

And fight against that monstrous rebel Cade,

Who since I heard to be discomfited.

Enter IDEN with Cade’s head.

IDEN     If one so rude and of so mean condition

May pass into the presence of a king,

65

Lo, I present your grace a traitor’s head,

The head of Cade, whom I in combat slew.

KING

The head of Cade! Great God, how just art Thou!

O let me view his visage, being dead,

That living wrought me such exceeding trouble.

70

Tell me, my friend, art thou the man that slew him?

IDEN     I was, an’t like your majesty.

KING     How art thou called? And what is thy degree?

IDEN     Alexander Iden, that’s my name;

A poor esquire of Kent, that loves his King.

75

BUCKINGHAM

So please it you, my lord, ’twere not amiss

He were created knight for his good service.

KING     Iden, kneel down. [Iden kneels.]

Rise up a knight. [Iden rises.]

We give thee for reward a thousand marks

And will that thou henceforth attend on us.

80

IDEN     May Iden live to merit such a bounty,

And never live but true unto his liege. Exit.

Enter QUEEN and SOMERSET.

KING     [aside to Buckingham]

See, Buckingham, Somerset comes with the Queen.

Go bid her hide him quickly from the Duke.

QUEEN     For thousand Yorks he shall not hide his head,

85

But boldly stand and front him to his face.

YORK     How now! Is Somerset at liberty?

Then, York, unloose thy long-imprisoned thoughts

And let thy tongue be equal with thy heart.

Shall I endure the sight of Somerset?

90

False king, why hast thou broken faith with me,

Knowing how hardly I can brook abuse?

‘King’ did I call thee? No, thou art not king,

Not fit to govern and rule multitudes,

Which dar’st not, no, nor canst not rule a traitor.

95

That head of thine doth not become a crown;

Thy hand is made to grasp a palmer’s staff

And not to grace an awful princely sceptre.

That gold must round engirt these brows of mine,

Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles’ spear,

100

Is able with the change to kill and cure.

Here is a hand to hold a sceptre up

And with the same to act controlling laws.

Give place! By heaven, thou shalt rule no more

O’er him whom heaven created for thy ruler.

105

SOMERSET     O monstrous traitor! I arrest thee, York,

Of capital treason ’gainst the King and crown.

Obey, audacious traitor, kneel for grace.

YORK     Wouldst have me kneel? First let me ask of these

If they can brook I bow a knee to man.

110

Sirrah, call in my sons to be my bail.     Exit attendant.

I know, ere they will have me go to ward

They’ll pawn their swords for my enfranchisement.

QUEEN     Call hither Clifford; bid him come amain,

To say if that the bastard boys of York

115

Shall be the surety for their traitor father.

Exit Buckingham.

YORK     O blood-bespotted Neapolitan,

Outcast of Naples, England’s bloody scourge!

The sons of York, thy betters in their birth,

Shall be their father’s bail; and bane to those

120

That for my surety will refuse the boys!

Enter EDWARD and RICHARD.

See where they come. I’ll warrant they’ll make it good.

Enter OLD CLIFFORD and YOUNG CLIFFORD.

QUEEN     And here comes Clifford to deny their bail.

OLD CLIFFORD     [Kneels to Henry.]

Health and all happiness to my lord the King. [Rises.]

YORK     I thank thee, Clifford. Say, what news with thee?

125

Nay, do not fright us with an angry look.

We are thy sovereign, Clifford; kneel again.

For thy mistaking so, we pardon thee.

OLD CLIFFORD     This is my king, York, I do not mistake;

But thou mistakes me much to think I do.

130

To Bedlam with him! Is the man grown mad?

KING     Ay, Clifford; a bedlam and ambitious humour

Makes him oppose himself against his king.

OLD CLIFFORD     He is a traitor; let him to the Tower,

And chop away that factious pate of his.

135

QUEEN     He is arrested, but will not obey;

His sons, he says, shall give their words for him.

YORK     Will you not, sons?

EDWARD     Ay, noble father, if our words will serve.

RICHARD     And if words will not, then our weapons shall.

140

OLD CLIFFORD

Why, what a brood of traitors have we here!

YORK     Look in a glass, and call thy image so.

I am thy king, and thou a false-heart traitor.

Call hither to the stake my two brave bears,

That with the very shaking of their chains

145

They may astonish these fell-lurking curs.

Bid Salisbury and Warwick come to me.

Enter the Earls of WARWICK and SALISBURY.

OLD CLIFFORD

Are these thy bears? We’ll bait thy bears to death

And manacle the bearherd in their chains,

If thou dar’st bring them to the baiting-place.

150

RICHARD     Oft have I seen a hot o’erweening cur

Run back and bite, because he was withheld;

Who, being suffered, with the bear’s fell paw

Hath clapped his tail between his legs and cried;

And such a piece of service will you do,

155

If you oppose yourselves to match Lord Warwick.

OLD CLIFFORD

Hence, heap of wrath, foul indigested lump,

As crooked in thy manners as thy shape.

YORK     Nay, we shall heat you thoroughly anon.

OLD CLIFFORD

Take heed, lest by your heat you burn yourselves.

160

KING     Why, Warwick, hath thy knee forgot to bow?

Old Salisbury, shame to thy silver hair,

Thou mad misleader of thy brainsick son!

What, wilt thou on thy deathbed play the ruffian,

And seek for sorrow with thy spectacles?

165

O, where is faith? O, where is loyalty?

If it be banished from the frosty head,

Where shall it find a harbour in the earth?

Wilt thou go dig a grave to find out war,

And shame thine honourable age with blood?

170

Why art thou old, and want’st experience?

Or wherefore dost abuse it, if thou hast it?

For shame, in duty bend thy knee to me,

That bows unto the grave with mickle age.

SALISBURY     My lord, I have considered with myself

175

The title of this most renowned duke,

And in my conscience do repute his grace

The rightful heir to England’s royal seat.

KING     Hast thou not sworn allegiance unto me?

SALISBURY     I have.

180

KING

Canst thou dispense with heaven for such an oath?

SALISBURY     It is great sin to swear unto a sin,

But greater sin to keep a sinful oath.

Who can be bound by any solemn vow

To do a murderous deed, to rob a man,

185

To force a spotless virgin’s chastity,

To reave the orphan of his patrimony,

To wring the widow from her customed right,

And have no other reason for this wrong

But that he was bound by a solemn oath?

190

QUEEN     A subtle traitor needs no sophister.

KING     Call Buckingham, and bid him arm himself.

YORK     Call Buckingham, and all the friends thou hast.

I am resolved for death or dignity.

OLD CLIFFORD

The first, I warrant thee, if dreams prove true.

195

WARWICK     You were best to go to bed and dream again,

To keep thee from the tempest of the field.

OLD CLIFFORD     I am resolved to bear a greater storm

Than any thou canst conjure up today;

And that I’ll write upon thy burgonet,

200

Might I but know thee by thy household badge.

WARWICK

Now by my father’s badge, old Neville’s crest,

The rampant bear chained to the ragged staff,

This day I’ll wear aloft my burgonet,

As on a mountain top the cedar shows

205

That keeps his leaves in spite of any storm,

Even to affright thee with the view thereof.

OLD CLIFFORD

And from thy burgonet I’ll rend thy bear

And tread it underfoot with all contempt,

Despite the bearherd that protects the bear.

210

YOUNG CLIFFORD     And so to arms, victorious father,

To quell the rebels and their complices.

RICHARD     Fie, charity for shame! Speak not in spite,

For you shall sup with Jesu Christ tonight.

YOUNG CLIFFORD

Foul stigmatic, that’s more than thou canst tell.

215

RICHARD     If not in heaven, you’ll surely sup in hell.

Exeunt severally.

5.2 An inn-sign of the Castle is displayed. Alarums to the battle. Enter WARWICK.

WARWICK     Clifford of Cumberland, ’tis Warwick calls;

An if thou dost not hide thee from the bear,

Now, when the angry trumpet sounds alarum,

And dead men’s cries do fill the empty air,

Clifford, I say, come forth and fight with me!

5

Proud northern lord, Clifford of Cumberland,

Warwick is hoarse with calling thee to arms.

Enter YORK.

How now, my noble lord! What, all afoot?

YORK     The deadly-handed Clifford slew my steed;

But match to match I have encountered him

10

And made a prey for carrion kites and crows

Even of the bonny beast he loved so well.

Enter OLD CLIFFORD.

WARWICK     Of one or both of us the time is come.

YORK     Hold, Warwick, seek thee out some other chase,

For I myself must hunt this deer to death.

15

WARWICK

Then nobly, York; ’tis for a crown thou fight’st.

As I intend, Clifford, to thrive today,

It grieves my soul to leave thee unassailed. Exit.

OLD CLIFFORD

What seest thou in me, York? Why dost thou pause?

YORK     With thy brave bearing should I be in love,

20

But that thou art so fast mine enemy.

OLD CLIFFORD

Nor should thy prowess want praise and esteem,

But that ’tis shown ignobly and in treason.

YORK     So let it help me now against thy sword

As I in justice and true right express it.

25

OLD CLIFFORD     My soul and body on the action both!

YORK     A dreadful lay! Address thee instantly.

[They fight, and Old Clifford falls.]

OLD CLIFFORD     La fin couronne les oeuvres. [Dies.]

YORK

Thus war hath given thee peace, for thou art still.

Peace with his soul, heaven, if it be thy will! Exit.

30

Enter YOUNG CLIFFORD.

YOUNG CLIFFORD

Shame and confusion! All is on the rout,

Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds

Where it should guard. O war, thou son of hell,

Whom angry heavens do make their minister,

Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part

35

Hot coals of vengeance! Let no soldier fly.

He that is truly dedicate to war

Hath no self-love; nor he that loves himself

Hath not essentially, but by circumstance,

The name of valour. [Sees his dead father.]

O, let the vile world end,

40

And the premised flames of the last day

Knit earth and heaven together!

Now let the general trumpet blow his blast,

Particularities and petty sounds

To cease! Wast thou ordained, dear father,

45

To lose thy youth in peace and to achieve

The silver livery of advised age,

And, in thy reverence and thy chair-days, thus

To die in ruffian battle? Even at this sight

My heart is turned to stone, and while ’tis mine

50

It shall be stony. York not our old men spares;

No more will I their babes; tears virginal

Shall be to me even as the dew to fire,

And beauty, that the tyrant oft reclaims,

Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax.

55

Henceforth I will not have to do with pity.

Meet I an infant of the house of York,

Into as many gobbets will I cut it

As wild Medea young Absyrtus did.

In cruelty will I seek out my fame.

60

Come, thou new ruin of old Clifford’s house;

[Takes him up on his back.]

As did Aeneas old Anchises bear,

So bear I thee upon my manly shoulders;

But then Aeneas bare a living load,

Nothing so heavy as these woes of mine.

65

Exit with the body.

Enter the Duke of SOMERSET and RICHARD fighting. Somerset is killed.

RICHARD     So, lie thou there;

For underneath an alehouse’ paltry sign,

The Castle in Saint Albans, Somerset

Hath made the wizard famous in his death.

Sword, hold thy temper; heart, be wrathful still:

70

Priests pray for enemies, but princes kill.

Exit with the body.

Fight. Excursions. Enter KING, QUEEN and others.

QUEEN     Away, my lord! You are slow, for shame, away!

KING     Can we outrun the heavens? Good Margaret, stay.

QUEEN     What are you made of? You’ll nor fight nor fly.

Now is it manhood, wisdom and defence

75

To give the enemy way and to secure us

By what we can, which can no more but fly.

[Alarum afar off.]

If you be ta’en we then should see the bottom

Of all our fortunes; but if we haply scape –

As well we may, if not through your neglect –

80

We shall to London get, where you are loved

And where this breach now in our fortunes made

May readily be stopped.

Enter YOUNG CLIFFORD.

YOUNG CLIFFORD

But that my heart’s on future mischief set,

I would speak blasphemy ere bid you fly;

85

But fly you must; uncurable discomfit

Reigns in the hearts of all our present part.

Away for your relief! And we will live

To see their day and them our fortune give.

Away, my lord, away!     Exeunt.

90

5.3 Alarum. Retreat. Enter YORK, RICHARD, EDWARD, WARWICK and soldiers with drum and colours.

YORK     Old Salisbury, who can report of him,

That winter lion, who in rage forgets

Aged contusions and all brush of time,

And, like a gallant in the brow of youth,

Repairs him with occasion? This happy day

5

Is not itself, nor have we won one foot

If Salisbury be lost.

RICHARD     My noble father,

Three times today I holp him to his horse,

Three times bestrid him; thrice I led him off,

Persuaded him from any further act;

10

But still where danger was, still there I met him,

And like rich hangings in a homely house,

So was his will in his old feeble body.

But, noble as he is, look where he comes.

Enter SALISBURY.

Now, by my sword, well hast thou fought today.

15

SALISBURY

By th’ mass, so did we all. I thank you, Richard.

God knows how long it is I have to live,

And it hath pleased him that three times today

You have defended me from imminent death.

Well, lords, we have not got that which we have:

20

’Tis not enough our foes are this time fled,

Being opposites of such repairing nature.

YORK     I know our safety is to follow them,

For, as I hear, the King is fled to London

To call a present court of parliament.

25

Let us pursue him ere the writs go forth.

What says Lord Warwick? Shall we after them?

WARWICK     After them? Nay, before them if we can!

Now by my faith, lords, ’twas a glorious day.

Saint Albans’ battle won by famous York

30

Shall be eternized in all age to come.

Sound drum and trumpets, and to London all,

And more such days as these to us befall!     Exeunt.

King Henry VI, Part 3

The textual history of King Henry VI, Part 3, is much like that of Part 2, and indeed is intertwined with it. Part 3 also exists in two versions: it was published as the eighth of the histories in the Folio of 1623, though in 1595 a shorter version had appeared in an octavo printing, entitled The true Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, and the death of good King Henry the Sixth, with the whole contention between the two houses Lancaster and York. This was reprinted in 1600, and in 1619 Parts 2 and 3 were published together as The Whole Contention between the two Famous Houses, Lancaster and York. These early printings of Part 3 appear to be based on a memorial text, one reconstructed by actors, possibly those playing Warwick and Clifford. The Folio text is verbally superior and about a third as long again as the earlier printings.

The play must have been written about 1590. In a pamphlet published in September 1592, the dying Robert Greene parodied a line from it (1.4.137) in an attack on Shakespeare as an ‘upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his “tiger’s heart wrapp’d in a player’s hide”, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you’. Seemingly Greene objects that a mere actor and non-graduate like Shakespeare, who may well have performed in plays by Greene, would presume to compete with the dramatists, and he is bitter that Shakespeare has done so with such success. Whatever Greene’s intent, his allusion provides a later limit for dating the play of the summer of 1592, when A Groatsworth of Wit Purchased with a Million of Repentance was written.

The play seems to have succeeded on stage, though its early theatrical history is obscure. The 1595 octavo tells us on the title-page that the play ‘was sundry times acted by the Right Honourable the Earl of Pembroke his servants’, and the Folio has ‘Sinklo’ and ‘Humphrey’ as the speech prefixes for the two keepers in 3.1. Almost certainly these are the names of the actors who played the roles, John Sincler and Humphrey Jeffes, both members of Pembroke’s Men in the 1590s. Little is know of this company or of Shakespeare’s relation to it beyond the fact that it was active in London in 1592, was disbanded on tour in the provinces in the late summer of 1593 and apparently had a few of Shakespeare’s plays in its repertoire. Perhaps the shortened text of King Henry VI, Part 3 was even prepared for its tour in 1593.

The play itself continues the history of Henry’s reign from the very point where Part 2 ends, though like Parts 1 and 2 it stands as an independent play, with its own structure and thematic concerns. It picks up the action in the aftermath of the Lancastrian defeat at St Albans (1455) and continues the history to the death of Henry and the confirmation of Edward IV as King in 1471. As the seventeen-year scope demands, history is condensed, events omitted, rearranged or fused together. Still, the broad outline follows the pattern Shakespeare found in the historical accounts of Edward Hall’s Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548).

If in one sense King Henry VI, Part 3 can be seen as a continuation of Shakespeare’s dramatic meditation on the horrors of unchecked human appetite visible in the Wars of the Roses, in another it reveals a unique understanding of the tragedy that has befallen England. The object that has motivated the action is the crown, but here it is stripped of all dignity, a bone fought over by hungry dogs. The word ‘crown’ itself appears more often than in any other play, but rather than establishing its value, the repetition gradually erodes its meaning. The oscillations of rule, as power shifts back and forth from Henry to Edward, further evacuate what sacred authority might once have inhered in the crown. In this world, the pious Henry is clearly unsuited to rule, as he himself knows: the crown he seeks ‘is call’d content’. This world demands harder men, and by the end the sinister figure of Richard of Gloucester emerges, the nightmare fulfilment of the play’s deepest logic.

On the modern stage, the play has usually been seen in two-part conflations of the three plays, as in that by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. In 1977, however, Terry Hands directed all three parts of King Henry VI in sequence at Stratford-upon-Avon, where in 1994 Katie Mitchell directed Part 3 independently at The Other Place, and in 2000–1 the RSC staged all three plays as part of its chronological series ‘This England, the Histories’.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

KING HENRY the Sixth

Edward, PRINCE of Wales

his son

KING LEWIS the Eleventh

of France

of King Henry’s party

his sons

of the Duke of York’s Party

uncles to the Duke of York

HENRY, Earl of Richmond

a youth

Earl RIVERS

brother to Lady Grey

Sir William Stanley

Sir John MONTGOMERY

Sir John SOMERVILLE

TUTOR

to Rutland

MAYOR of York

LIEUTENANT

of the Tower

NOBLEMAN

TWO KEEPERS

HUNTSMAN

SON

that has killed his father

FATHER

that has killed his son

QUEEN MARGARET

LADY Elizabeth GREY

afterwards Queen to Edward the Fourth

BONA

sister to the French Queen

Soldiers, Attendants, Messengers, Watchmen, etc.

King Henry VI, Part 3

1.1 Alarum. Enter the DUKE OF YORK, EDWARD, RICHARD, NORFOLK, FALCONBRIDGE, WARWICK and soldiers, with white roses in their hats.

WARWICK     I wonder how the King escap’d our hands!

YORK     While we pursu’d the horsemen of the north,

He slily stole away and left his men:

Whereat the great Lord of Northumberland,

Whose war-like ears could never brook retreat,

5

Cheer’d up the drooping army; and himself,

Lord Clifford, and Lord Stafford, all abreast,

Charg’d our main battle’s front, and breaking in

Were by the swords of common soldiers slain.

EDWARD     Lord Stafford’s father, Duke of Buckingham,

10

Is either slain or wounded dangerous;

I cleft his beaver with a downright blow:

That this is true, father, behold his blood.

FALCONBRIDGE

And, brother, here’s the Earl of Wiltshire’s blood,

Whom I encounter’d as the battles join’d.

15

RICHARD

Speak thou for me, and tell them what I did.

[throwing down the Duke of Somerset’s head]

YORK     Richard hath best deserv’d of all my sons.

But is your Grace dead, my Lord of Somerset?

NORFOLK     Such hap have all the line of John of Gaunt!

RICHARD     Thus do I hope to shake King Henry’s head.

20

WARWICK     And so do I. Victorious Prince of York,

Before I see thee seated in that throne

Which now the house of Lancaster usurps,

I vow by heavens these eyes shall never close.

This is the palace of the fearful King,

25

And this the regal seat: possess it, York;

For this is thine and not King Henry’s heirs’.

YORK     Assist me then, sweet Warwick, and I will;

For hither we have broken in by force.

NORFOLK     We’ll all assist you; he that flies shall die.

30

YORK     Thanks, gentle Norfolk. Stay by me, my lords;

And, soldiers, stay and lodge by me this night.

[They go up.]

WARWICK

And when the King comes, offer him no violence,

Unless he seek to thrust you out perforce.

YORK     The Queen this day here holds her Parliament,

35

But little thinks we shall be of her Council:

By words or blows here let us win our right.

RICHARD     Arm’d as we are, let’s stay within this house.

WARWICK     The bloody parliament shall this be call’d,

Unless Plantagenet, Duke of York, be king,

40

And bashful Henry be depos’d, whose cowardice

Hath made us by-words to our enemies.

YORK     Then leave me not, my lords; be resolute;

I mean to take possession of my right.

WARWICK

Neither the King, nor he that loves him best,

45

The proudest he that holds up Lancaster,

Dares stir a wing if Warwick shake his bells.

I’ll plant Plantagenet, root him up who dares.

Resolve thee, Richard; claim the English crown.

Flourish. Enter KING HENRY, CLIFFORD, NORTHUMBERLAND, WESTMORELAND, EXETER and the rest, with red roses in their hats.

KING HENRY

My lords, look where the sturdy rebel sits,

50

Even in the chair of state! Belike he means,

Back’d by the power of Warwick, that false peer,

To aspire unto the crown and reign as king.

Earl of Northumberland, he slew thy father,

And thine, Lord Clifford; and you both have vow’d revenge

On him, his sons, his favourites, and his friends.

NORTHUMBERLAND

If I be not, heavens be reveng’d on me!

CLIFFORD

The hope thereof makes Clifford mourn in steel.

WESTMORELAND

What! shall we suffer this? Let’s pluck him down:

My heart for anger burns: I cannot brook it.

60

KING HENRY     Be patient, gentle Earl of Westmoreland.

CLIFFORD     Patience is for poltroons, such as he:

He durst not sit there had your father liv’d.

My gracious lord, here in the parliament

Let us assail the family of York.

65

NORTHUMBERLAND

Well hast thou spoken, cousin: be it so.

KING HENRY     Ah, know you not the city favours them,

And they have troops of soldiers at their beck?

EXETER     But when the Duke is slain they’ll quickly fly.

KING HENRY

Far be the thought of this from Henry’s heart,

70

To make a shambles of the parliament-house!

Cousin of Exeter, frowns, words, and threats,

Shall be the war that Henry means to use.

Thou factious Duke of York, descend my throne,

And kneel for grace and mercy at my feet;

75

I am thy sovereign.

YORK     I am thine.

EXETER

For shame, come down: he made thee Duke of York.

YORK     ’Twas mine inheritance, as the earldom was.

EXETER     Thy father was a traitor to the crown.

WARWICK     Exeter, thou art a traitor to the crown

80

In following this usurping Henry.

CLIFFORD

Whom should he follow but his natural king?

WARWICK

True, Clifford: that is Richard, Duke of York.

KING HENRY

And shall I stand, and thou sit in my throne?

YORK     It must and shall be so: content thyself.

85

WARWICK     Be Duke of Lancaster: let him be King.

WESTMORELAND

He is both King and Duke of Lancaster;

And that the Lord of Westmoreland shall maintain.

WARWICK     And Warwick shall disprove it. You forget

That we are those which chas’d you from the field

90

And slew your fathers, and with colours spread

March’d through the city to the palace gates.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Yes, Warwick, I remember it to my grief;

And, by his soul, thou and thy house shall rue it.

WESTMORELAND

Plantagenet, of thee and these thy sons,

95

Thy kinsmen and thy friends, I’ll have more lives

Than drops of blood were in my father’s veins.

CLIFFORD     Urge it no more; lest that, instead of words,

I send thee, Warwick, such a messenger

As shall revenge his death before I stir.

100

WARWICK

Poor Clifford, how I scorn his worthless threats!

YORK     Will you we show our title to the crown?

If not, our swords shall plead it in the field.

KING HENRY     What title hast thou, traitor, to the crown?

Thy father was, as thou art, Duke of York.

105

Thy grandsire, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March.

I am the son of Henry the Fifth,

Who made the Dauphin and the French to stoop,

And seiz’d upon their towns and provinces.

WARWICK     Talk not of France, sith thou hast lost it all.

110

KING HENRY     The Lord Protector lost it, and not I:

When I was crown’d I was but nine months old.

RICHARD

You are old enough now, and yet, methinks, you lose.

Father, tear the crown from the usurper’s head.

EDWARD     Sweet father, do so; set it on your head.

115

FALCONBRIDGE

Good brother, as thou lov’st and honourest arms,

Let’s fight it out and not stand cavilling thus.

RICHARD

Sound drums and trumpets, and the King will fly.

YORK     Sons, peace!

NORTHUMBERLAND

Peace thou, and give King Henry leave to speak.

120

WARWICK     Plantagenet shall speak first: hear him, lords;

And be you silent and attentive too,

For he that interrupts him shall not live.

KING HENRY

Plantagenet, why seek’st thou to depose me?

Are we not both Plantagenets by birth,

125

And from two brothers lineally descent?

Suppose by right and equity thou be king,

Think’st thou that I will leave my kingly throne,

Wherein my grandsire and my father sat?

No: first shall war unpeople this my realm;

130

Ay, and their colours, often borne in France,

And now in England to our heart’s great sorrow,

Shall be my winding-sheet. Why faint you, lords?

My title’s good, and better far than his.

WARWICK     Prove it, Henry, and thou shalt be king.

135

KING HENRY

Henry the Fourth by conquest got the crown.

YORK     ’Twas by rebellion against his king.

KING HENRY     [aside]

I know not what to say: my title’s weak.

Tell me, may not a king adopt an heir?

YORK     What then?

140

KING HENRY     And if he may, then am I lawful king;

For Richard, in the view of many lords,

Resign’d the crown to Henry the Fourth,

Whose heir my father was, and I am his.

YORK     He rose against him, being his sovereign,

145

And made him to resign his crown perforce.

WARWICK     Suppose, my lords, he did it unconstrain’d,

Think you ’twere prejudicial to his crown?

EXETER     No: for he could not so resign his crown

But that the next heir should succeed and reign.

150

KING HENRY     Art thou against us, Duke of Exeter?

EXETER     His is the right, and therefore pardon me.

YORK     Why whisper you, my lords, and answer not?

EXETER     My conscience tells me he is lawful king.

KING HENRY     [aside]

All will revolt from me, and turn to him.

155

NORTHUMBERLAND

Plantagenet, for all the claim thou lay’st,

Think not that Henry shall be so depos’d.

WARWICK     Depos’d he shall be in despite of all.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Thou art deceiv’d: ’tis not thy southern power,

Of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, nor of Kent,

160

Which makes thee thus presumptuous and proud,

Can set the Duke up in despite of me.

CLIFFORD     King Henry, be thy title right or wrong,

Lord Clifford vows to fight in thy defence:

May that ground gape and swallow me alive,

165

Where I shall kneel to him that slew my father!

KING HENRY

O Clifford, how thy words revive my heart!

YORK     Henry of Lancaster, resign thy crown.

What mutter you, or what conspire you, lords?

WARWICK     Do right unto this princely Duke of York,

170

Or I will fill the house with armed men,

And o’er the chair of state, where now he sits,

Write up his title with usurping blood.

[He stamps with his foot, and the soldiers show

themselves.]

KING HENRY

My Lord of Warwick, hear me but one word:

Let me for this my life-time reign as king.

175

YORK     Confirm the crown to me and to mine heirs,

And thou shalt reign in quiet whilst thou liv’st.

KING HENRY

Convey the soldiers hence, and then I will.

WARWICK     Captain, conduct them into Tuthill Fields.

Exeunt soldiers.

KING HENRY     I am content: Richard Plantagenet,

180

Enjoy the kingdom after my decease.

CLIFFORD

What wrong is this unto the Prince your son!

WARWICK     What good is this to England and himself!

WESTMORELAND     Base, fearful, and despairing Henry!

CLIFFORD     How hast thou injur’d both thyself and us!

185

WESTMORELAND     I cannot stay to hear these articles.

NORTHUMBERLAND     Nor I.

CLIFFORD

Come, cousin, let us tell the Queen these news.

WESTMORELAND

Farewell, faint-hearted and degenerate king,

In whose cold blood no spark of honour bides.     Exit.

190

NORTHUMBERLAND

Be thou a prey unto the house of York,

And die in bands for this unmanly deed!     Exit.

CLIFFORD     In dreadful war may’st thou be overcome,

Or live in peace abandon’d and despis’d!     Exit.

WARWICK     Turn this way, Henry, and regard them not.

195

EXETER

They seek revenge and therefore will not yield.

KING HENRY     Ah! Exeter.

WARWICK     Why should you sigh, my lord?

KING HENRY

Not for myself, Lord Warwick, but my son,

Whom I unnaturally shall disinherit.

But be it as it may: [to York] I here entail

200

The crown to thee and to thine heirs for ever;

Conditionally that here thou take thine oath

To cease this civil war and, whilst I live,

To honour me as thy king and sovereign;

And neither by treason nor hostility

205

To seek to put me down and reign thyself.

YORK     This oath I willingly take and will perform.

[coming from the throne]

WARWICK

Long live King Henry! Plantagenet, embrace him.

KING HENRY

And long live thou and these thy forward sons!

YORK     Now York and Lancaster are reconcil’d.

210

EXETER

Accurs’d be he that seeks to make them foes!

[Sennet. Here they come down.]

YORK     Farewell, my gracious lord; I’ll take my leave,

For I’ll to Wakefield to my castle.     Exit with his sons.

WARWICK     And I’ll keep London with my soldiers.

Exeunt.

NORFOLK     And I to Norfolk with my followers.     Exeunt.

215

FALCONBRIDGE

And I unto the sea from whence I came.

Exit.

KING HENRY     And I with grief and sorrow to the court.

Enter QUEEN MARGARET and the PRINCE OF WALES.

EXETER

Here comes the Queen, whose looks bewray her anger:

I’ll steal away.

KING HENRY     Exeter, so will I.

QUEEN MARGARET

Nay, go not from me; I will follow thee.

220

KING HENRY     Be patient, gentle Queen, and I will stay.

QUEEN MARGARET

Who can be patient in such extremes?

Ah! wretched man, would I had died a maid,

And never seen thee, never borne thee son,

Seeing thou hast prov’d so unnatural a father.

225

Hath he deserv’d to lose his birthright thus?

Hadst thou but lov’d him half so well as I,

Or felt that pain which I did for him once,

Or nourish’d him as I did with my blood,

Thou would’st have left thy dearest heart-blood there,

230

Rather than made that savage duke thine heir,

And disinherited thine only son.

PRINCE     Father, you cannot disinherit me:

If you be king, why should not I succeed?

KING HENRY

Pardon me, Margaret; pardon me, sweet son:

235

The Earl of Warwick and the Duke enforc’d me.

QUEEN MARGARET

Enforc’d thee! Art thou King, and wilt be forc’d?

I shame to hear thee speak. Ah! timorous wretch,

Thou hast undone thyself, thy son, and me;

And given unto the house of York such head

240

As thou shalt reign but by their sufferance.

To entail him and his heirs unto the crown,

What is it but to make thy sepulchre,

And creep into it far before thy time?

Warwick is Chancellor, Salisbury Lord of Calais;

245

Stern Falconbridge commands the narrow seas;

The Duke is made Protector of the realm;

And yet shalt thou be safe? Such safety finds

The trembling lamb environed with wolves.

Had I been there, which am a silly woman,

250

The soldiers should have toss’d me on their pikes

Before I would have granted to that act;

But thou prefer’st thy life before thine honour:

And seeing thou dost, I here divorce myself

Both from thy table, Henry, and thy bed,

255

Until that act of parliament be repeal’d

Whereby my son is disinherited.

The northern lords, that have forsworn thy colours,

Will follow mine, if once they see them spread;

And spread they shall be, to thy foul disgrace,

260

And utter ruin of the house of York.

Thus do I leave thee. Come, son, let’s away;

Our army is ready; come, we’ll after them.

KING HENRY     Stay, gentle Margaret, and hear me speak.

QUEEN MARGARET

Thou hast spoke too much already: get thee gone.

265

KING HENRY

Gentle son Edward, thou wilt stay with me?

QUEEN MARGARET     Ay, to be murder’d by his enemies.

PRINCE     When I return with victory from the field

I’ll see your Grace: till then I’ll follow her.

QUEEN MARGARET

Come, son, away; we may not linger thus.

270

Exeunt Queen Margaret and the Prince.

KING HENRY

Poor Queen! how love to me and to her son

Hath made her break out into terms of rage.

Reveng’d may she be on that hateful Duke,

Whose haughty spirit, winged with desire,

Will cost my crown, and like an empty eagle

275

Tire on the flesh of me and of my son!

The loss of those three lords torments my heart:

I’ll write unto them and entreat them fair.

Come, cousin; you shall be the messenger.

EXETER     And I, I hope, shall reconcile them all.

280

Flourish. Exeunt.

1.2 Enter EDWARD, RICHARD and MONTAGUE.

RICHARD

Brother, though I be youngest, give me leave.

EDWARD     No, I can better play the orator.

MONTAGUE     But I have reasons strong and forcible.

Enter the DUKE OF YORK.

YORK     Why, how now, sons and brother! at a strife?

What is your quarrel? How began it first?

5

EDWARD     No quarrel, but a slight contention.

YORK     About what?

RICHARD

About that which concerns your Grace and us –

The crown of England, father, which is yours.

YORK     Mine, boy? Not till King Henry be dead.

10

RICHARD     Your right depends not on his life or death.

EDWARD     Now you are heir, therefore enjoy it now:

By giving the house of Lancaster leave to breathe,

It will outrun you, father, in the end.

YORK     I took an oath that he should quietly reign.

15

EDWARD     But for a kingdom any oath may be broken:

I would break a thousand oaths to reign one year.

RICHARD

No; God forbid your Grace should be forsworn.

YORK     I shall be, if I claim by open war.

RICHARD

I’ll prove the contrary, if you’ll hear me speak.

20

YORK     Thou canst not, son; it is impossible.

RICHARD     An oath is of no moment, being not took

Before a true and lawful magistrate

That hath authority over him that swears.

Henry had none, but did usurp the place;

25

Then, seeing ’twas he that made you to depose,

Your oath, my lord, is vain and frivolous.

Therefore, to arms! And, father, do but think

How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown,

Within whose circuit is Elysium

30

And all that poets feign of bliss and joy.

Why do we linger thus? I cannot rest

Until the white rose that I wear be dy’d

Even in the lukewarm blood of Henry’s heart.

YORK     Richard, enough; I will be king, or die.

35

Brother, thou shalt to London presently,

And whet on Warwick to this enterprise.

Thou, Richard, shalt to the Duke of Norfolk straight

And tell him privily of our intent.

You, Edward, shall to Edmund Brook Lord Cobham,

40

With whom the Kentishmen will willingly rise:

In them I trust, for they are soldiers,

Witty, courteous, liberal, full of spirit.

While you are thus employ’d, what resteth more

But that I seek occasion how to rise,

45

And yet the King not privy to my drift,

Nor any of the house of Lancaster?

Enter a Messenger.

But stay: what news? Why com’st thou in such post?

MESSENGER

The Queen with all the northern earls and lords

Intend here to besiege you in your castle.

50

She is hard by with twenty thousand men;

And therefore fortify your hold, my lord.

YORK

Ay, with my sword. What! think’st thou that we fear them?

Edward and Richard, you shall stay with me;

My brother Montague shall post to London.

55

Let noble Warwick, Cobham, and the rest,

Whom we have left protectors of the King,

With powerful policy strengthen themselves,

And trust not simple Henry nor his oaths.

MONTAGUE     Brother, I go; I’ll win them, fear it not:

60

And thus most humbly I do take my leave.     Exit.

Enter SIR JOHN and Sir Hugh Mortimer.

YORK     Sir John and Sir Hugh Mortimer, mine uncles,

You are come to Sandal in a happy hour;

The army of the Queen mean to besiege us.

SIR JOHN

She shall not need; we’ll meet her in the field.

65

YORK     What, with five thousand men!

RICHARD     Ay, with five hundred, father, for a need.

A woman’s general; what should we fear?

[A march afar off.]

EDWARD     I hear their drums: let’s set our men in order,

And issue forth and bid them battle straight.

70

YORK     Five men to twenty! Though the odds be great,

I doubt not, uncles, of our victory.

Many a battle have I won in France,

When as the enemy hath been ten to one:

Why should I not now have the like success?     Exeunt.

75

1.3 Alarums. Enter RUTLAND and his Tutor.

RUTLAND     Ah, whither shall I fly to scape their hands?

Ah, tutor, look where bloody Clifford comes!

Enter CLIFFORD and soldiers.

CLIFFORD

Chaplain, away! thy priesthood saves thy life.

As for the brat of this accursed duke,

Whose father slew my father, he shall die.

5

TUTOR     And I, my lord, will bear him company.

CLIFFORD     Soldiers, away with him!

TUTOR     Ah, Clifford, murder not this innocent child,

Lest thou be hated both of God and man.

Exit, dragged off by soldiers.

CLIFFORD     How now! is he dead already? Or is it fear

10

That makes him close his eyes? I’ll open them.

RUTLAND     So looks the pent-up lion o’er the wretch

That trembles under his devouring paws;

And so he walks, insulting o’er his prey,

And so he comes to rend his limbs in sunder.

15

Ah, gentle Clifford, kill me with thy sword,

And not with such a cruel threatening look.

Sweet Clifford, hear me speak before I die:

I am too mean a subject for thy wrath;

Be thou reveng’d on men, and let me live.

20

CLIFFORD

In vain thou speak’st, poor boy; my father’s blood

Hath stopp’d the passage where thy words should enter.

RUTLAND     Then let my father’s blood open it again:

He is a man, and, Clifford, cope with him.

CLIFFORD

Had I thy brethren here, their lives and thine

25

Were not revenge sufficient for me;

No, if I digg’d up thy forefathers’ graves

And hung their rotten coffins up in chains,

It could not slake mine ire nor ease my heart.

The sight of any of the house of York

30

Is as a Fury to torment my soul;

And till I root out their accursed line

And leave not one alive, I live in hell.

Therefore – [lifting his hand]

RUTLAND     O, let me pray before I take my death!

35

To thee I pray; sweet Clifford, pity me.

CLIFFORD     Such pity as my rapier’s point affords.

RUTLAND

I never did thee harm; why wilt thou slay me?

CLIFFORD     Thy father hath.

RUTLAND     But ’twas ere I was born.

Thou hast one son; for his sake pity me,

40

Lest in revenge thereof, sith God is just,

He be as miserably slain as I.

Ah, let me live in prison all my days,

And when I give occasion of offence

Then let me die, for now thou hast no cause.

45

CLIFFORD     Thy father slew my father; therefore die.

[Stabs him.]

RUTLAND Di faciant laudis summa sit ista tuae!

CLIFFORD     Plantagenet, I come, Plantagenet!

And this thy son’s blood cleaving to my blade

Shall rust upon my weapon, till thy blood,

50

Congeal’d with this, do make me wipe off both. Exit.

1.4 Alarum. Enter RICHARD, DUKE OF YORK.

YORK     The army of the Queen hath got the field:

My uncles both are slain in rescuing me;

And all my followers to the eager foe

Turn back and fly, like ships before the wind,

Or lambs pursu’d by hunger-starved wolves.

5

My sons, God knows what hath bechanced them:

But this I know, they have demean’d themselves

Like men born to renown by life or death.

Three times did Richard make a lane to me,

And thrice cried ‘Courage, father! fight it out!’

10

And full as oft came Edward to my side

With purple falchion, painted to the hilt

In blood of those that had encounter’d him:

And when the hardiest warriors did retire,

Richard cried, ‘Charge! and give no foot of ground!’

15

Edward, ‘A crown, or else a glorious tomb!

A sceptre, or an earthly sepulchre!’

With this we charg’d again: but out alas!

We budg’d again; as I have seen a swan

With bootless labour swim against the tide

20

And spend her strength with over-matching waves.

[A short alarum within.]

Ah, hark! the fatal followers do pursue,

And I am faint and cannot fly their fury;

And were I strong I would not shun their fury.

The sands are number’d that makes up my life;

25

Here must I stay, and here my life must end.

Enter QUEEN MARGARET, CLIFFORD, NORTHUMBERLAND, the young PRINCE and soldiers.

Come, bloody Clifford, rough Northumberland,

I dare your quenchless fury to more rage:

I am your butt, and I abide your shot.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Yield to our mercy, proud Plantagenet.

30

CLIFFORD     Ay, to such mercy as his ruthless arm

With downright payment show’d unto my father.

Now Phaëthon hath tumbled from his car,

And made an evening at the noontide prick.

YORK     My ashes, like the phoenix, may bring forth

35

A bird that will revenge upon you all;

And in that hope I throw mine eyes to heaven,

Scorning whate’er you can afflict me with.

Why come you not? What! multitudes, and fear?

CLIFFORD

So cowards fight when they can fly no further;

40

So doves do peck the falcon’s piercing talons;

So desperate thieves, all hopeless of their lives,

Breathe out invectives ’gainst the officers.

YORK     O Clifford, but bethink thee once again,

And in thy thought o’errun my former time;

45

And, if thou canst for blushing, view this face,

And bite thy tongue that slanders him with cowardice

Whose frown hath made thee faint and fly ere this.

CLIFFORD     I will not bandy with thee word for word,

But buckle with thee blows twice two for one.

50

[Draws.]

QUEEN MARGARET

Hold, valiant Clifford; for a thousand causes

I would prolong awhile the traitor’s life.

Wrath makes him deaf: speak thou, Northumberland.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Hold, Clifford! do not honour him so much

To prick thy finger, though to wound his heart.

55

What valour were it, when a cur doth grin,

For one to thrust his hand between his teeth,

When he might spurn him with his foot away?

It is war’s prize to take all vantages;

And ten to one is no impeach of valour.

60

[They lay hands on York, who struggles.]

CLIFFORD     Ay, ay, so strives the woodcock with the gin.

NORTHUMBERLAND

So doth the cony struggle in the net.

YORK     So triumph thieves upon their conquer’d booty;

So true men yield, with robbers so o’er-match’d.

NORTHUMBERLAND

What would your Grace have done unto him now?

65

QUEEN MARGARET

Brave warriors, Clifford and Northumberland,

Come make him stand upon this molehill here,

That raught at mountains with outstretched arms,

Yet parted but the shadow with his hand.

What, was it you that would be England’s king?

70

Was’t you that revell’d in our parliament

And made a preachment of your high descent?

Where are your mess of sons to back you now –

The wanton Edward and the lusty George?

And where’s that valiant crook-back prodigy,

75

Dicky your boy, that with his grumbling voice

Was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies?

Or, with the rest, where is your darling Rutland?

Look, York: I stain’d this napkin with the blood

That valiant Clifford with his rapier’s point

80

Made issue from the bosom of the boy;

And if thine eyes can water for his death,

I give thee this to dry thy cheeks withal.

Alas, poor York! but that I hate thee deadly,

I should lament thy miserable state.

85

I prithee grieve, to make me merry, York.

What, hath thy fiery heart so parch’d thine entrails

That not a tear can fall for Rutland’s death?

Why art thou patient, man? thou should’st be mad;

And I to make thee mad do mock thee thus.

90

Stamp, rave, and fret, that I may sing and dance.

Thou would’st be fee’d, I see, to make me sport;

York cannot speak unless he wear a crown.

A crown for York! and, lords, bow low to him:

Hold you his hands whilst I do set it on.

95

[Putting a paper crown on his head]

Ay, marry, sir, now looks he like a king!

Ay, this is he that took King Henry’s chair,

And this is he was his adopted heir.

But how is it that great Plantagenet

Is crown’d so soon and broke his solemn oath?

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As I bethink me, you should not be king

Till our King Henry had shook hands with Death.

And will you pale your head in Henry’s glory,

And rob his temples of the diadem,

Now in his life, against your holy oath?

105

O, ’tis a fault too too unpardonable!

Off with the crown, and, with the crown, his head;

And, whilst we breathe, take time to do him dead.

CLIFFORD     That is my office, for my father’s sake.

QUEEN MARGARET

Nay, stay; let’s hear the orisons he makes.

110

YORK

She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France,

Whose tongue more poisons than the adder’s tooth!

How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex

To triumph like an Amazonian trull

Upon their woes whom Fortune captivates!

115

But that thy face is vizard-like, unchanging,

Made impudent with use of evil deeds,

I would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush.

To tell thee whence thou cam’st, of whom deriv’d,

Were shame enough to shame thee, wert not shameless.

Thy father bears the type of King of Naples,

Of both the Sicils, and Jerusalem,

Yet not so wealthy as an English yeoman.

Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult?

It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen;

125

Unless the adage must be verified,

That beggars mounted run their horse to death.

’Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud;

But God he knows thy share thereof is small.

’Tis virtue that doth make them most admir’d;

130

The contrary doth make thee wonder’d at.

’Tis government that makes them seem divine;

The want thereof makes thee abominable.

Thou art as opposite to every good

As the Antipodes are unto us,

135

Or as the south to the Septentrion.

O tiger’s heart wrapp’d in a woman’s hide!

How could’st thou drain the life-blood of the child,

To bid the father wipe his eyes withal,

And yet be seen to bear a woman’s face?

140

Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible;

Thou stern, indurate, flinty, rough, remorseless.

Bid’st thou me rage? Why, now thou hast thy wish.

Would’st have me weep? Why, now thou hast thy will.

For raging wind blows up incessant showers,

145

And when the rage allays, the rain begins.

These tears are my sweet Rutland’s obsequies,

And every drop cries vengeance for his death

’Gainst thee, fell Clifford, and thee, false French-woman.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Beshrew me, but his passion moves me so

150

As hardly can I check my eyes from tears.

YORK     That face of his the hungry cannibals

Would not have touch’d, would not have stain’d with blood;

But you are more inhuman, more inexorable –

O, ten times more – than tigers of Hyrcania.

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See, ruthless queen, a hapless father’s tears.

This cloth thou dipp’d’st in blood of my sweet boy,

And I with tears do wash the blood away.

Keep thou the napkin, and go boast of this;

And if thou tell the heavy story right,

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Upon my soul, the hearers will shed tears;

Yea, even my foes will shed fast-falling tears,

And say ‘Alas! it was a piteous deed.’

There, take the crown, and with the crown my curse;

And in thy need such comfort come to thee

165

As now I reap at thy too cruel hand!

Hard-hearted Clifford, take me from the world:

My soul to heaven, my blood upon your heads!

NORTHUMBERLAND

Had he been slaughter-man to all my kin

I should not for my life but weep with him,

170

To see how inly sorrow gripes his soul.

QUEEN MARGARET

What, weeping-ripe, my lord Northumberland?

Think but upon the wrong he did us all,

And that will quickly dry thy melting tears.

CLIFFORD

Here’s for my oath, here’s for my father’s death.

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[stabbing him]

QUEEN MARGARET

And here’s to right our gentle-hearted king.

[stabbing him]

YORK     Open thy gate of mercy, gracious God!

My soul flies through these wounds to seek out Thee. [Dies.]

QUEEN MARGARET

Off with his head, and set it on York gates;

So York may overlook the town of York.

180

Flourish. Exeunt.

2.1 A March. Enter EDWARD, RICHARD and their power.

EDWARD     I wonder how our princely father scap’d,

Or whether he be scap’d away or no

From Clifford’s and Northumberland’s pursuit.

Had he been ta’en, we should have heard the news;

Had he been slain, we should have heard the news;

5

Or had he scap’d, methinks we should have heard

The happy tidings of his good escape.

How fares my brother? Why is he so sad?

RICHARD     I cannot joy until I be resolv’d

Where our right valiant father is become.

10

I saw him in the battle range about,

And watch’d him how he singled Clifford forth.

Methought he bore him in the thickest troop

As doth a lion in a herd of neat;

Or as a bear, encompass’d round with dogs,

15

Who having pinch’d a few and made them cry,

The rest stand all aloof and bark at him.

So far’d our father with his enemies;

So fled his enemies my warlike father:

Methinks ’tis prize enough to be his son.

20

See how the morning opes her golden gates,

And takes her farewell of the glorious sun;

How well resembles it the prime of youth,

Trimm’d like a younker prancing to his love!

[Three suns appear in the air.]

EDWARD     Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns?

25

RICHARD     Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun;

Not separated with the racking clouds,

But sever’d in a pale clear-shining sky.

See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss,

As if they vow’d some league inviolable:

30

Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun.

In this the heaven figures some event.

EDWARD

’Tis wondrous strange, the like yet never heard of.

I think it cites us, brother, to the field,

That we, the sons of brave Plantagenet,

35

Each one already blazing by our meeds,

Should notwithstanding join our lights together,

And over-shine the earth, as this the world.

Whate’er it bodes, henceforward will I bear

Upon my target three fair-shining suns.

40

RICHARD

Nay, bear three daughters: by your leave I speak it,

You love the breeder better than the male.

Enter a Messenger, blowing.

But what art thou, whose heavy looks foretell

Some dreadful story hanging on thy tongue?

MESSENGER     Ah, one that was a woeful looker-on

45

When as the noble Duke of York was slain,

Your princely father and my loving lord!

EDWARD     O, speak no more, for I have heard too much.

RICHARD     Say how he died, for I will hear it all.

MESSENGER     Environed he was with many foes,

50

And stood against them, as the hope of Troy

Against the Greeks that would have enter’d Troy.

But Hercules himself must yield to odds;

And many strokes, though with a little axe,

Hews down and fells the hardest-timber’d oak.

55

By many hands your father was subdu’d;

But only slaughter’d by the ireful arm

Of unrelenting Clifford, and the Queen,

Who crown’d the gracious Duke in high despite,

Laugh’d in his face; and when with grief he wept,

60

The ruthless Queen gave him to dry his cheeks

A napkin steeped in the harmless blood

Of sweet young Rutland by rough Clifford slain:

And after many scorns, many foul taunts,

They took his head, and on the gates of York

65

They set the same; and there it doth remain,

The saddest spectacle that e’er I view’d.

EDWARD     Sweet Duke of York, our prop to lean upon,

Now thou art gone, we have no staff, no stay.

O Clifford, boisterous Clifford! thou hast slain

70

The flower of Europe for his chivalry;

And treacherously hast thou vanquish’d him,

For hand to hand he would have vanquish’d thee.

Now my soul’s palace is become a prison:

Ah, would she break from hence, that this my body

75

Might in the ground be closed up in rest!

For never henceforth shall I joy again;

Never, O never, shall I see more joy.

RICHARD     I cannot weep, for all my body’s moisture

Scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart;

80

Nor can my tongue unload my heart’s great burden;

For self-same wind that I should speak withal

Is kindling coals that fires all my breast,

And burns me up with flames that tears would quench.

To weep is to make less the depth of grief:

85

Tears then for babes; blows and revenge for me!

Richard, I bear thy name; I’ll venge thy death,

Or die renowned by attempting it.

EDWARD

His name that valiant duke hath left with thee;

His dukedom and his chair with me is left.

90

RICHARD     Nay, if thou be that princely eagle’s bird,

Show thy descent by gazing ’gainst the sun:

For chair and dukedom, throne and kingdom say,

Either that is thine, or else thou wert not his.

March. Enter WARWICK, MARQUESS MONTAGUE and their army.

WARWICK

How now, fair lords! What fare? What news abroad?

95

RICHARD     Great Lord of Warwick, if we should recount

Our baleful news, and at each word’s deliverance

Stab poniards in our flesh till all were told,

The words would add more anguish than the wounds.

O valiant lord, the Duke of York is slain!

100

EDWARD     O Warwick, Warwick! that Plantagenet

Which held thee dearly as his soul’s redemption

Is by the stern Lord Clifford done to death.

WARWICK     Ten days ago I drown’d these news in tears,

And now, to add more measure to your woes,

105

I come to tell you things sith then befall’n.

After the bloody fray at Wakefield fought,

Where your brave father breath’d his latest gasp,

Tidings, as swiftly as the posts could run,

Were brought me of your loss and his depart.

110

I, then in London, keeper of the King,

Muster’d my soldiers, gather’d flocks of friends,

And very well appointed, as I thought,

March’d toward St Albans to intercept the Queen,

Bearing the King in my behalf along;

115

For by my scouts I was advertised

That she was coming with a full intent

To dash our late decree in Parliament,

Touching King Henry’s oath and your succession.

Short tale to make, we at St Albans met,

120

Our battles join’d, and both sides fiercely fought:

But whether ’twas the coldness of the King,

Who look’d full gently on his warlike Queen,

That robb’d my soldiers of their heated spleen;

Or whether ’twas report of her success;

125

Or more than common fear of Clifford’s rigour,

Who thunders to his captives blood and death,

I cannot judge: but, to conclude with truth,

Their weapons like to lightning came and went;

Our soldiers’, like the night-owl’s lazy flight,

130

Or like an idle thresher with a flail,

Fell gently down, as if they struck their friends.

I cheer’d them up with justice of our cause,

With promise of high pay and great rewards:

But all in vain; they had no heart to fight,

135

And we in them no hope to win the day;

So that we fled: the King unto the Queen;

Lord George your brother, Norfolk and myself,

In haste, post-haste, are come to join with you;

For in the Marches here we heard you were,

140

Making another head to fight again.

EDWARD

Where is the Duke of Norfolk, gentle Warwick?

And when came George from Burgundy to England?

WARWICK

Some six miles off the Duke is with the soldiers;

And for your brother, he was lately sent

145

From your kind aunt, Duchess of Burgundy,

With aid of soldiers to this needful war.

RICHARD

’Twas odds, belike, when valiant Warwick fled:

Oft have I heard his praises in pursuit,

But ne’er till now his scandal of retire.

150

WARWICK

Nor now my scandal, Richard, dost thou hear;

For thou shalt know this strong right hand of mine

Can pluck the diadem from faint Henry’s head,

And wring the awful sceptre from his fist,

Were he as famous and as bold in war

155

As he is fam’d for mildness, peace, and prayer.

RICHARD     I know it well, Lord Warwick; blame me not:

’Tis love I bear thy glories makes me speak.

But in this troublous time what’s to be done?

Shall we go throw away our coats of steel,

160

And wrap our bodies in black mourning gowns,

Numbering our Ave-Maries with our beads?

Or shall we on the helmets of our foes

Tell our devotion with revengeful arms?

If for the last, say ay, and to it, lords.

165

WARWICK

Why, therefore Warwick came to seek you out,

And therefore comes my brother Montague.

Attend me, lords. The proud insulting Queen,

With Clifford and the haught Northumberland,

And of their feather many moe proud birds,

170

Have wrought the easy-melting King like wax.

He sware consent to your succession,

His oath enrolled in the Parliament;

And now to London all the crew are gone,

To frustrate both his oath and what beside

175

May make against the house of Lancaster.

Their power, I think, is thirty thousand strong:

Now, if the help of Norfolk and myself,

With all the friends that thou, brave Earl of March,

Amongst the loving Welshmen canst procure,

180

Will but amount to five-and-twenty thousand,

Why, Via! to London will we march amain,

And once again bestride our foaming steeds,

And once again cry ‘Charge upon our foes!’

But never once again turn back and fly.

185

RICHARD

Ay, now methinks I hear great Warwick speak.

Ne’er may he live to see a sunshine day,

That cries ‘Retire’, if Warwick bid him stay.

EDWARD     Lord Warwick, on thy shoulder will I lean;

And when thou fall’st – as God forbid the hour! –

190

Must Edward fall, which peril heaven forfend!

WARWICK     No longer Earl of March, but Duke of York:

The next degree is England’s royal throne;

For King of England shalt thou be proclaim’d

In every borough as we pass along;

195

And he that throws not up his cap for joy

Shall for the fault make forfeit of his head.

King Edward, valiant Richard, Montague,

Stay we no longer, dreaming of renown,

But sound the trumpets, and about our task.

200

RICHARD

Then, Clifford, were thy heart as hard as steel,

As thou hast shown it flinty by thy deeds,

I come to pierce it, or to give thee mine.

EDWARD

Then strike up, drums! God and Saint George for us!

Enter a Messenger.

WARWICK     How now! what news?

205

MESSENGER

The Duke of Norfolk sends you word by me,

The Queen is coming with a puissant host;

And craves your company for speedy counsel.

WARWICK

Why then it sorts; brave warriors, let’s away. Exeunt.

2.2 Flourish. Enter KING HENRY, QUEEN MARGARET, the PRINCE OF WALES, CLIFFORD and NORTHUMBERLAND, with drum and trumpets.

QUEEN MARGARET

Welcome, my lord, to this brave town of York.

Yonder’s the head of that arch-enemy

That sought to be encompass’d with your crown:

Doth not the object cheer your heart, my lord?

KING HENRY

Ay, as the rocks cheer them that fear their wrack:

5

To see this sight, it irks my very soul.

Withhold revenge, dear God! ’tis not my fault,

Nor wittingly have I infring’d my vow.

CLIFFORD     My gracious liege, this too much lenity

And harmful pity must be laid aside.

10

To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?

Not to the beast that would usurp their den.

Whose hand is that the forest bear doth lick?

Not his that spoils her young before her face.

Who scapes the lurking serpent’s mortal sting?

15

Not he that sets his foot upon her back.

The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,

And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.

Ambitious York did level at thy crown,

Thou smiling while he knit his angry brows:

20

He, but a duke, would have his son a king,

And raise his issue like a loving sire;

Thou, being a king, bless’d with a goodly son,

Didst yield consent to disinherit him,

Which argued thee a most unloving father.

25

Unreasonable creatures feed their young;

And though man’s face be fearful to their eyes,

Yet, in protection of their tender ones,

Who hath not seen them, even with those wings

Which sometime they have us’d with fearful flight,

30

Make war with him that climb’d unto their nest,

Offering their own lives in their young’s defence?

For shame, my liege, make them your precedent!

Were it not pity that this goodly boy

Should lose his birthright by his father’s fault,

35

And long hereafter say unto his child,

‘What my great-grandfather and grandsire got

My careless father fondly gave away’?

Ah, what a shame were this! Look on the boy;

And let his manly face, which promiseth

40

Successful fortune, steel thy melting heart

To hold thine own and leave thine own with him.

KING HENRY     Full well hath Clifford play’d the orator,

Inferring arguments of mighty force.

But, Clifford, tell me, didst thou never hear

45

That things evil got had ever bad success?

And happy always was it for that son

Whose father for his hoarding went to hell?

I’ll leave my son my virtuous deeds behind;

And would my father had left me no more!

50

For all the rest is held at such a rate

As brings a thousand-fold more care to keep

Than in possession any jot of pleasure.

Ah, cousin York, would thy best friends did know

How it doth grieve me that thy head stands here!

55

QUEEN MARGARET

My lord, cheer up your spirits; our foes are nigh,

And this soft courage makes your followers faint.

You promis’d knighthood to our forward son:

Unsheathe your sword, and dub him presently.

Edward, kneel down.

60

KING HENRY     Edward Plantagenet, arise a knight;

And learn this lesson: Draw thy sword in right.

PRINCE     My gracious father, by your kingly leave,

I’ll draw it as apparent to the crown,

And in that quarrel use it to the death.

65

CLIFFORD     Why, that is spoken like a toward prince.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     Royal commanders, be in readiness;

For with a band of thirty thousand men

Comes Warwick, backing of the Duke of York;

And in the towns, as they do march along,

70

Proclaims him king, and many fly to him.

Darraign your battle, for they are at hand.

CLIFFORD

I would your highness would depart the field:

The Queen hath best success when you are absent.

QUEEN MARGARET

Ay, good my lord, and leave us to our fortune.

75

KING HENRY

Why, that’s my fortune too: therefore I’ll stay.

NORTHUMBERLAND     Be it with resolution then to fight.

PRINCE     My royal father, cheer these noble lords,

And hearten those that fight in your defence.

Unsheathe your sword, good father: cry, ‘Saint George’.

March. Enter EDWARD, GEORGE, RICHARD, WARWICK, NORFOLK, MONTAGUE and soldiers.

EDWARD

Now, perjur’d Henry, wilt thou kneel for grace,

And set thy diadem upon my head;

Or bide the mortal fortune of the field?

QUEEN MARGARET

Go rate thy minions, proud insulting boy!

Becomes it thee to be thus bold in terms

85

Before thy sovereign and thy lawful king?

EDWARD     I am his king, and he should bow his knee:

I was adopted heir by his consent:

Since when his oath is broke; for, as I hear,

You that are king, though he do wear the crown,

90

Have caus’d him by new Act of Parliament

To blot out me, and put his own son in.

CLIFFORD     And reason too:

Who should succeed the father but the son?

RICHARD     Are you there, butcher? O, I cannot speak!

95

CLIFFORD     Ay, Crook-back, here I stand to answer thee,

Or any he, the proudest of thy sort.

RICHARD

’Twas you that kill’d young Rutland, was it not?

CLIFFORD     Ay, and old York, and yet not satisfied.

RICHARD     For God’s sake, lords, give signal to the fight.

100

WARWICK

What say’st thou, Henry, wilt thou yield the crown?

QUEEN MARGARET

Why, how now, long-tongu’d Warwick! dare you speak?

When you and I met at St Albans last,

Your legs did better service than your hands.

WARWICK

Then ’twas my turn to flee, and now ’tis thine.

105

CLIFFORD     You said so much before, and yet you fled.

WARWICK

’Twas not your valour, Clifford, drove me thence.

NORTHUMBERLAND

No, nor your manhood that durst make you stay.

RICHARD     Northumberland, I hold thee reverently.

Break off the parley; for scarce I can refrain

110

The execution of my big-swoln heart

Upon that Clifford, that cruel child-killer.

CLIFFORD     I slew thy father: call’st thou him a child?

RICHARD     Ay, like a dastard and a treacherous coward,

As thou didst kill our tender brother Rutland;

115

But ere sun set I’ll make thee curse the deed.

KING HENRY

Have done with words, my lords, and hear me speak.

QUEEN MARGARET

Defy them then, or else hold close thy lips.

KING HENRY     I prithee give no limits to my tongue:

I am a king, and privileg’d to speak.

120

CLIFFORD

My liege, the wound that bred this meeting here

Cannot be cur’d by words; therefore be still.

RICHARD     Then, executioner, unsheathe thy sword.

By Him that made us all, I am resolv’d

That Clifford’s manhood lies upon his tongue.

125

EDWARD     Say, Henry, shall I have my right or no?

A thousand men have broke their fasts to-day

That ne’er shall dine unless thou yield the crown.

WARWICK     If thou deny, their blood upon thy head;

For York in justice puts his armour on.

130

PRINCE     If that be right which Warwick says is right,

There is no wrong, but every thing is right.

RICHARD     Whoever got thee, there thy mother stands;

For well I wot thou hast thy mother’s tongue.

QUEEN MARGARET

But thou art neither like thy sire nor dam,

135

But like a foul misshapen stigmatic,

Mark’d by the Destinies to be avoided,

As venom toads, or lizards’ dreadful stings.

RICHARD     Iron of Naples, hid with English gilt,

Whose father bears the title of a king

140

As if a channel should be call’d the sea –

Sham’st thou not, knowing whence thou art extraught,

To let thy tongue detect thy base-born heart?

EDWARD

A wisp of straw were worth a thousand crowns

To make this shameless callet know herself.

145

Helen of Greece was fairer far than thou,

Although thy husband may be Menelaus;

And ne’er was Agamemnon’s brother wrong’d

By that false woman as this king by thee.

His father revell’d in the heart of France,

150

And tam’d the King, and made the Dauphin stoop;

And had he match’d according to his state,

He might have kept that glory to this day;

But when he took a beggar to his bed

And grac’d thy poor sire with his bridal day,

155

Even then that sunshine brew’d a shower for him

That wash’d his father’s fortunes forth of France

And heap’d sedition on his crown at home.

For what hath broach’d this tumult but thy pride?

Hadst thou been meek, our title still had slept;

160

And we, in pity of the gentle King,

Had slipp’d our claim until another age.

GEORGE

But when we saw our sunshine made thy spring,

And that thy summer bred us no increase,

We set the axe to thy usurping root;

165

And though the edge have something hit ourselves,

Yet know thou, since we have begun to strike,

We’ll never leave till we have hewn thee down,

Or bath’d thy growing with our heated bloods.

EDWARD     And in this resolution I defy thee;

170

Not willing any longer conference,

Since thou deniest the gentle King to speak.

Sound trumpets! let our bloody colours wave!

And either victory, or else a grave.

QUEEN MARGARET     Stay, Edward.

175

EDWARD     No wrangling woman, we’ll no longer stay:

These words will cost ten thousand lives this day.

Exeunt.

2.3 Alarum. Excursions. Enter WARWICK.

WARWICK     Forspent with toil, as runners with a race,

I lay me down a little while to breathe;

For strokes receiv’d, and many blows repaid,

Have robb’d my strong-knit sinews of their strength,

And spite of spite needs must I rest awhile.

5

Enter EDWARD, running.

EDWARD

Smile, gentle heaven, or strike, ungentle death;

For this world frowns, and Edward’s sun is clouded.

WARWICK

How now, my lord! What hap? What hope of good?

Enter GEORGE.

GEORGE     Our hap is loss, our hope but sad despair,

Our ranks are broke, and ruin follows us.

10

What counsel give you? Whither shall we fly?

EDWARD     Bootless is flight, they follow us with wings;

And weak we are, and cannot shun pursuit.

Enter RICHARD.

RICHARD

Ah, Warwick, why hast thou withdrawn thyself?

Thy brother’s blood the thirsty earth hath drunk,

15

Broach’d with the steely point of Clifford’s lance;

And in the very pangs of death he cried,

Like to a dismal clangor heard from far,

‘Warwick, revenge! Brother, revenge my death!’

So, underneath the belly of their steeds,

20

That stain’d their fetlocks in his smoking blood,

The noble gentleman gave up the ghost.

WARWICK

Then let the earth be drunken with our blood;

I’ll kill my horse because I will not fly.

Why stand we like soft-hearted women here,

25

Wailing our losses, whiles the foe doth rage;

And look upon, as if the tragedy

Were play’d in jest by counterfeiting actors?

Here on my knee I vow to God above

I’ll never pause again, never stand still,

30

Till either death hath clos’d these eyes of mine,

Or fortune given me measure of revenge.

EDWARD     O Warwick, I do bend my knee with thine;

And in this vow do chain my soul to thine!

And ere my knee rise from the earth’s cold face,

35

I throw my hands, mine eyes, my heart to Thee,

Thou setter up and plucker down of kings,

Beseeching Thee, if with Thy will it stands,

That to my foes this body must be prey,

Yet that Thy brazen gates of heaven may ope,

40

And give sweet passage to my sinful soul!

Now, lords, take leave until we meet again,

Where’er it be, in heaven or in earth.

RICHARD

Brother, give me thy hand; and, gentle Warwick,

Let me embrace thee in my weary arms:

45

I, that did never weep, now melt with woe

That winter should cut off our spring-time so.

WARWICK

Away, away! Once more, sweet lords, farewell.

GEORGE     Yet let us all together to our troops,

And give them leave to fly that will not stay,

50

And call them pillars that will stand to us;

And if we thrive, promise them such rewards

As victors wear at the Olympian games.

This may plant courage in their quailing breasts;

For yet is hope of life and victory.

55

Forslow no longer; make we hence amain.     Exeunt.

2.4 Excursions. Enter RICHARD and CLIFFORD.

RICHARD     Now, Clifford, I have singled thee alone.

Suppose this arm is for the Duke of York,

And this for Rutland; both bound to revenge,

Wert thou environ’d with a brazen wall.

CLIFFORD     Now, Richard, I am with thee here alone.

5

This is the hand that stabb’d thy father York,

And this the hand that slew thy brother Rutland;

And here’s the heart that triumphs in their death

And cheers these hands, that slew thy sire and brother,

To execute the like upon thyself;

10

And so, have at thee!

They fight. WARWICK comes. Clifford flies.

RICHARD     Nay, Warwick, single out some other chase;

For I myself will hunt this wolf to death.     Exeunt.

2.5 Alarum. Enter KING HENRY alone.

KING HENRY

This battle fares like to the morning’s war,

When dying clouds contend with growing light,

What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,

Can neither call it perfect day nor night.

Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea

5

Forc’d by the tide to combat with the wind;

Now sways it that way, like the self-same sea

Forc’d to retire by fury of the wind.

Sometime the flood prevails, and then the wind;

Now one the better, then another best;

10

Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast;

Yet neither conqueror nor conquered.

So is the equal poise of this fell war.

Here on this molehill will I sit me down.

To whom God will, there be the victory!

15

For Margaret my queen, and Clifford too,

Have chid me from the battle, swearing both

They prosper best of all when I am thence.

Would I were dead, if God’s good will were so!

For what is in this world but grief and woe?

20

O God! methinks it were a happy life

To be no better than a homely swain;

To sit upon a hill, as I do now,

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,

Thereby to see the minutes how they run –

25

How many makes the hour full complete,

How many hours brings about the day,

How many days will finish up the year,

How many years a mortal man may live.

When this is known, then to divide the times –

30

So many hours must I tend my flock;

So many hours must I take my rest;

So many hours must I contemplate;

So many hours must I sport myself;

So many days my ewes have been with young;

35

So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean;

So many years ere I shall shear the fleece:

So minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years,

Pass’d over to the end they were created,

Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.

40

Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely!

Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade

To shepherds looking on their silly sheep,

Than doth a rich embroider’d canopy

To kings that fear their subjects’ treachery?

45

O yes, it doth; a thousand-fold it doth.

And to conclude, the shepherd’s homely curds,

His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,

His wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade,

All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,

50

Is far beyond a prince’s delicates –

His viands sparkling in a golden cup,

His body couched in a curious bed,

When Care, Mistrust, and Treason waits on him.

Alarum. Enter a Son that hath kill’d his father, with the body in his arms.

SON     Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.

55

This man whom hand to hand I slew in fight

May be possessed with some store of crowns;

And I, that haply take them from him now,

May yet ere night yield both my life and them

To some man else, as this dead man doth me.

60

Who’s this? O God! it is my father’s face,

Whom in this conflict I unwares have kill’d.

O heavy times, begetting such events!

From London by the King was I press’d forth;

My father, being the Earl of Warwick’s man,

65

Came on the part of York, press’d by his master;

And I, who at his hands receiv’d my life,

Have by my hands of life bereaved him.

Pardon me, God, I knew not what I did:

And pardon, father, for I knew not thee.

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My tears shall wipe away these bloody marks;

And no more words till they have flow’d their fill.

KING HENRY     O piteous spectacle! O bloody times!

Whilst lions war and battle for their dens,

Poor harmless lambs abide their enmity.

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Weep, wretched man; I’ll aid thee tear for tear;

And let our hearts and eyes, like civil war,

Be blind with tears, and break o’ercharg’d with grief.

Enter a Father that hath kill’d his son, with the body in his arms.

FATHER     Thou that so stoutly hath resisted me,

Give me thy gold, if thou hast any gold,

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For I have bought it with an hundred blows.

But let me see: is this our foeman’s face?

Ah, no, no, no; it is mine only son!

Ah, boy, if any life be left in thee,

Throw up thine eye! see, see, what showers arise,

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Blown with the windy tempest of my heart

Upon thy wounds, that kills mine eye and heart!

O, pity, God, this miserable age!

What stratagems, how fell, how butcherly,

Erroneous, mutinous, and unnatural,

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This deadly quarrel daily doth beget!

O boy, thy father gave thee life too soon,

And hath bereft thee of thy life too late!

KING HENRY

Woe above woe! grief more than common grief!

O that my death would stay these ruthful deeds!

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O pity, pity, gentle heaven, pity!

The red rose and the white are on his face,

The fatal colours of our striving houses:

The one his purple blood right well resembles;

The other his pale cheeks, methinks, presenteth.

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Wither one rose, and let the other flourish!

If you contend, a thousand lives must wither.

SON     How will my mother for a father’s death

Take on with me and ne’er be satisfied!

FATHER     How will my wife for slaughter of my son

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Shed seas of tears and ne’er be satisfied!

KING HENRY

How will the country for these woeful chances

Misthink the King and not be satisfied!

SON     Was ever son so rued a father’s death?

FATHER     Was ever father so bemoan’d his son?

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KING HENRY

Was ever king so griev’d for subjects’ woe?

Much is your sorrow; mine, ten times so much.

SON     I’ll bear thee hence, where I may weep my fill.

Exit with the body.

FATHER

These arms of mine shall be thy winding-sheet;

My heart, sweet boy, shall be thy sepulchre,

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For from my heart thine image ne’er shall go.

My sighing breast shall be thy funeral bell;

And so obsequious will thy father be,

Even for the loss of thee, having no more,

As Priam was for all his valiant sons.

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I’ll bear thee hence; and let them fight that will,

For I have murder’d where I should not kill.

Exit with the body.

KING HENRY

Sad-hearted men, much overgone with care,

Here sits a king more woeful than you are.

Alarums. Excursions. Enter QUEEN MARGARET, the PRINCE and EXETER.

PRINCE     Fly, father, fly! for all your friends are fled,

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And Warwick rages like a chafed bull.

Away! for death doth hold us in pursuit.

QUEEN MARGARET

Mount you, my lord; towards Berwick post amain.

Edward and Richard, like a brace of greyhounds

Having the fearful-flying hare in sight,

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With fiery eyes sparkling for very wrath,

And bloody steel grasp’d in their ireful hands,

Are at our backs; and therefore hence amain.

EXETER     Away! for vengeance comes along with them.

Nay, stay not to expostulate; make speed,

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Or else come after: I’ll away before.

KING HENRY

Nay, take me with thee, good sweet Exeter:

Not that I fear to stay, but love to go

Whither the Queen intends. Forward; away! Exeunt.

2.6 A loud alarum. Enter CLIFFORD wounded, with an arrow in his neck.

CLIFFORD     Here burns my candle out; ay, here it dies,

Which, whiles it lasted, gave King Henry light.

Oh, Lancaster, I fear thy overthrow

More than my body’s parting with my soul.

My love and fear glu’d many friends to thee;

5

And, now I fall, thy tough commixture melts,

Impairing Henry, strengthening misproud York.

The common people swarm like summer flies;

And whither fly the gnats but to the sun?

And who shines now but Henry’s enemies?

10

O Phoebus, hadst thou never given consent

That Phaëthon should check thy fiery steeds,

Thy burning car never had scorch’d the earth!

And, Henry, hadst thou sway’d as kings should do,

Or as thy father, and his father did,

15

Giving no ground unto the house of York,

They never then had sprung like summer flies;

I, and ten thousand in this luckless realm

Had left no mourning widows for our death;

And thou this day hadst kept thy chair in peace.

20

For what doth cherish weeds but gentle air?

And what makes robbers bold but too much lenity?

Bootless are plaints, and cureless are my wounds;

No way to fly, nor strength to hold our flight:

The foe is merciless and will not pity;

25

For at their hands I have deserv’d no pity.

The air hath got into my deadly wounds,

And much effuse of blood doth make me faint.

Come, York and Richard, Warwick and the rest;

I stabb’d your fathers’ bosoms: split my breast.

30

[He faints.]

Alarum and retreat. Enter EDWARD, GEORGE, RICHARD, MONTAGUE, WARWICK and soldiers.

EDWARD

Now breathe we, lords: good fortune bids us pause

And smooth the frowns of war with peaceful looks.

Some troops pursue the bloody-minded Queen,

That led calm Henry, though he were a king,

As doth a sail, fill’d with a fretting gust,

35

Command an argosy to stem the waves.

But think you, lords, that Clifford fled with them?

WARWICK     No, ’tis impossible he should escape;

For, though before his face I speak the words,

Your brother Richard mark’d him for the grave;

40

And, wheresoe’er he be, he’s surely dead.

[Clifford groans and dies.]

RICHARD

Whose soul is that which takes her heavy leave?

A deadly groan, like life and death’s departing.

See who it is.

EDWARD     And now the battle’s ended,

If friend or foe, let him be gently us’d.

45

RICHARD     Revoke that doom of mercy, for ’tis Clifford,

Who, not contented that he lopp’d the branch

In hewing Rutland when his leaves put forth,

But set his murdering knife unto the root

From whence that tender spray did sweetly spring –

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I mean our princely father, Duke of York.

WARWICK

From off the gates of York fetch down the head,

Your father’s head, which Clifford placed there;

Instead whereof let this supply the room;

Measure for measure must be answered.

55

EDWARD

Bring forth that fatal screech-owl to our house,

That nothing sung but death to us and ours:

Now death shall stop his dismal threatening sound,

And his ill-boding tongue no more shall speak.

WARWICK     I think his understanding is bereft.

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Speak, Clifford, dost thou know who speaks to thee?

Dark cloudy death o’ershades his beams of life,

And he nor sees, nor hears us, what we say.

RICHARD     O, would he did! and so, perhaps, he doth:

’Tis but his policy to counterfeit,

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Because he would avoid such bitter taunts

Which in the time of death he gave our father.

GEORGE     If so thou think’st, vex him with eager words.

RICHARD     Clifford, ask mercy, and obtain no grace.

EDWARD     Clifford, repent in bootless penitence.

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WARWICK     Clifford, devise excuses for thy faults.

GEORGE     While we devise fell tortures for thy faults.

RICHARD     Thou didst love York, and I am son to York.

EDWARD     Thou pitied’st Rutland, I will pity thee.

GEORGE     Where’s Captain Margaret, to fence you now?

75

WARWICK

They mock thee, Clifford; swear as thou wast wont.

RICHARD

What, not an oath? Nay, then the world goes hard

When Clifford cannot spare his friends an oath.

I know by that he’s dead; and, by my soul,

If this right hand would buy but two hours’ life,

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That I in all despite might rail at him,

This hand should chop it off, and with the issuing blood

Stifle the villain whose unstaunched thirst

York and young Rutland could not satisfy.

WARWICK

Ay, but he’s dead. Off with the traitor’s head,

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And rear it in the place your father’s stands.

And now to London with triumphant march,

There to be crowned England’s royal king;

From whence shall Warwick cut the sea to France,

And ask the Lady Bona for thy queen.

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So shalt thou sinew both these lands together;

And, having France thy friend, thou shalt not dread

The scatter’d foe that hopes to rise again;

For though they cannot greatly sting to hurt,

Yet look to have them buzz to offend thine ears.

95

First will I see the coronation;

And then to Brittany I’ll cross the sea

To effect this marriage, so it please my lord.

EDWARD     Even as thou wilt, sweet Warwick, let it be;

For in thy shoulder do I build my seat,

100

And never will I undertake the thing

Wherein thy counsel and consent is wanting.

Richard, I will create thee Duke of Gloucester;

And George, of Clarence; Warwick, as ourself,

Shall do and undo as him pleaseth best.

105

RICHARD

Let me be Duke of Clarence, George of Gloucester,

For Gloucester’s dukedom is too ominous.

WARWICK     Tut, that’s a foolish observation:

Richard, be Duke of Gloucester. Now to London,

To see these honours in possession.     Exeunt.

110

3.1 Enter two Keepers, with cross-bows in their hands.

1 KEEPER

Under this thick-grown brake we’ll shroud ourselves,

For through this laund anon the deer will come;

And in this covert will we make our stand,

Culling the principal of all the deer.

2 KEEPER     I’ll stay above the hill, so both may shoot.

5

1 KEEPER

That cannot be; the noise of thy cross-bow

Will scare the herd, and so my shoot is lost.

Here stand we both, and aim we at the best;

And, for the time shall not seem tedious,

I’ll tell thee what befell me on a day

10

In this self place where now we mean to stand.

2 KEEPER

Here comes a man; let’s stay till he be past.

Enter KING HENRY, disguised, with a prayer-book.

KING HENRY

From Scotland am I stol’n, even of pure love,

To greet mine own land with my wishful sight.

No, Harry, Harry, ’tis no land of thine;

15

Thy place is fill’d, thy sceptre wrung from thee,

Thy balm wash’d off wherewith thou wast anointed:

No bending knee will call thee Caesar now,

No humble suitors press to speak for right,

No, not a man comes for redress of thee:

20

For how can I help them and not myself?

1 KEEPER

Ay, here’s a deer whose skin’s a keeper’s fee:

This is the quondam king; let’s seize upon him.

KING HENRY     Let me embrace thee, sour Adversity,

For wise men say it is the wisest course.

25

2 KEEPER

Why linger we? let us lay hands upon him.

1 KEEPER     Forbear awhile; we’ll hear a little more.

KING HENRY

My queen and son are gone to France for aid;

And, as I hear, the great commanding Warwick

Is thither gone, to crave the French King’s sister

30

To wife for Edward. If this news be true,

Poor queen and son, your labour is but lost;

For Warwick is a subtle orator

And Lewis a prince soon won with moving words.

By this account, then, Margaret may win him,

35

For she’s a woman to be pitied much:

Her sighs will make a battery in his breast;

Her tears will pierce into a marble heart;

The tiger will be mild whiles she doth mourn;

And Nero will be tainted with remorse,

40

To hear and see her plaints, her brinish tears.

Ay, but she’s come to beg, Warwick to give;

She on his left side craving aid for Henry:

He on his right, asking a wife for Edward.

She weeps, and says her Henry is depos’d:

45

He smiles, and says his Edward is install’d;

That she, poor wretch, for grief can speak no more;

Whiles Warwick tells his title, smooths the wrong,

Inferreth arguments of mighty strength,

And in conclusion wins the King from her

50

With promise of his sister, and what else,

To strengthen and support King Edward’s place.

O Margaret, thus ’twill be; and thou, poor soul,

Art then forsaken, as thou went’st forlorn.

2 KEEPER

Say, what art thou that talk’st of kings and queens?

55

KING HENRY

More than I seem, and less than I was born to:

A man at least, for less I should not be;

And men may talk of kings, and why not I?

2 KEEPER     Ay, but thou talk’st as if thou wert a king.

KING HENRY     Why, so I am, in mind; and that’s enough.

60

2 KEEPER     But if thou be a king, where is thy crown?

KING HENRY     My crown is in my heart, not on my head;

Not deck’d with diamonds and Indian stones,

Nor to be seen: my crown is call’d content;

A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.

65

2 KEEPER

Well, if you be a king crown’d with content,

Your crown content, and you, must be contented

To go along with us; for, as we think,

You are the king King Edward hath depos’d;

And we his subjects, sworn in all allegiance,

70

Will apprehend you as his enemy.

KING HENRY

But did you never swear, and break an oath?

2 KEEPER     No, never such an oath; nor will not now.

KING HENRY

Where did you dwell when I was King of England?

2 KEEPER

Here in this country, where we now remain.

75

KING HENRY     I was anointed king at nine months old;

My father and my grandfather were kings,

And you were sworn true subjects unto me:

And tell me then, have you not broke your oaths?

1 KEEPER

No, we were subjects but while you were king.

80

KING HENRY     Why, am I dead? do I not breathe a man?

Ah, simple men, you know not what you sware.

Look, as I blow this feather from my face,

And as the air blows it to me again,

Obeying with my wind when I do blow,

85

And yielding to another when it blows,

Commanded always by the greater gust,

Such is the lightness of you common men.

But do not break your oaths; for of that sin

My mild entreaty shall not make you guilty.

90

Go where you will, the King shall be commanded;

And be you kings; command, and I’ll obey.

1 KEEPER

We are true subjects to the king, King Edward.

KING HENRY     So would you be again to Henry,

If he were seated as King Edward is.

95

1 KEEPER

Therefore we charge you, in God’s name, and the king’s,

To go with us unto the officers.

KING HENRY

In God’s name, lead; your king’s name be obey’d:

And what God will, that let your king perform;

And what he will, I humbly yield unto.     Exeunt.

100

3.2 Enter KING EDWARD, RICHARD, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, GEORGE, DUKE OF CLARENCE and LADY ELIZABETH GREY.

KING EDWARD

Brother of Gloucester, at St Albans field

This lady’s husband, Sir John Grey, was slain,

His lands then seiz’d on by the conqueror.

Her suit is now to repossess those lands;

Which we in justice cannot well deny,

5

Because in quarrel of the house of York

The worthy gentleman did lose his life.

RICHARD

Your Highness shall do well to grant her suit;

It were dishonour to deny it her.

KING EDWARD

It were no less; but yet I’ll make a pause.

10

RICHARD [aside to George]     Yea, is it so?

I see the lady hath a thing to grant,

Before the King will grant her humble suit.

GEORGE [aside to Richard]

He knows the game: how true he keeps the wind!

RICHARD [aside to George]     Silence!

15

KING     EDWARD Widow, we will consider of your suit;

And come some other time to know our mind.

LADY     GREY Right gracious lord, I cannot brook delay:

May it please your Highness to resolve me now;

And what your pleasure is shall satisfy me.

20

RICHARD [aside to George]

Ay, widow? then I’ll warrant you all your lands,

And if what pleases him shall pleasure you.

Fight closer or, good faith, you’ll catch a clap.

GEORGE [aside to Richard]

I fear her not, unless she chance to fall.

RICHARD [aside to George]

Marry, Godsforbot! for he’ll take vantages.

25

KING EDWARD

How many children hast thou, widow, tell me.

GEORGE [aside to Richard]

I think he means to beg a child of her.

RICHARD [aside to George]

Nay, whip me then; he’ll rather give her two.

LADY GREY     Three, my most gracious lord.

RICHARD [aside]

You shall have four, and you’ll be rul’d by him.

30

KING EDWARD

’Twere pity they should lose their father’s lands.

LADY GREY     Be pitiful, dread lord, and grant it then.

KING EDWARD

Lords, give us leave; I’ll try this widow’s wit.

RICHARD [aside]

Ay, good leave have you; for you will have leave

Till youth take leave and leave you to the crutch.

35

[Richard and George retire.]

KING EDWARD

Now tell me, madam, do you love your children?

LADY GREY     Ay, full as dearly as I love myself.

KING EDWARD

And would you not do much to do them good?

LADY GREY

To do them good, I would sustain some harm.

KING EDWARD

Then get your husband’s lands, to do them good.

40

LADY GREY     Therefore I came unto your Majesty.

KING EDWARD

I’ll tell you how these lands are to be got.

LADY GREY

So shall you bind me to your Highness’ service.

KING EDWARD

What service wilt thou do me if I give them?

LADY GREY     What you command that rests in me to do.

45

KING EDWARD

But you will take exceptions to my boon.

LADY GREY     No, gracious lord, except I cannot do it.

KING EDWARD

Ay, but thou canst do what I mean to ask.

LADY GREY

Why, then I will do what your Grace commands.

RICHARD [aside to George]

He plies her hard; and much rain wears the marble.

50

GEORGE [aside to Richard]

As red as fire! Nay, then, her wax must melt.

LADY GREY

Why stops my lord? Shall I not hear my task?

KING EDWARD     An easy task; ’tis but to love a king.

LADY GREY

That’s soon perform’d, because I am a subject.

KING EDWARD

Why, then, thy husband’s lands I freely give thee.

55

LADY GREY

I take my leave with many thousand thanks.

RICHARD [aside to George]

The match is made; she seals it with a curtsy.

KING EDWARD

But stay thee – ’tis the fruits of love I mean.

LADY GREY     The fruits of love I mean, my loving liege.

KING EDWARD     Ay, but, I fear me, in another sense.

60

What love think’st thou I sue so much to get?

LADY GREY

My love till death, my humble thanks, my prayers;

That love which virtue begs, and virtue grants.

KING EDWARD

No, by my troth, I did not mean such love.

LADY GREY

Why, then, you mean not as I thought you did.

65

KING EDWARD

But now you partly may perceive my mind.

LADY GREY     My mind will never grant what I perceive

Your Highness aims at, if I aim aright.

KING EDWARD     To tell thee plain, I aim to lie with thee.

LADY GREY     To tell you plain, I had rather lie in prison.

70

KING EDWARD

Why, then thou shalt not have thy husband’s lands.

LADY GREY

Why, then mine honesty shall be my dower;

For by that loss I will not purchase them.

KING EDWARD

Therein thou wrong’st thy children mightily.

LADY GREY

Herein your Highness wrongs both them and me;

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But, mighty lord, this merry inclination

Accords not with the sadness of my suit:

Please you dismiss me, either with ay or no.

KING EDWARD     Ay, if thou wilt say ay to my request;

No, if thou dost say no to my demand.

80

LADY GREY     Then, no, my lord. My suit is at an end.

RICHARD [aside to George]

The widow likes him not, she knits her brows.

GEORGE [aside to Richard]

He is the bluntest wooer in Christendom.

KING EDWARD     [aside]

Her looks doth argue her replete with modesty;

Her words doth show her wit incomparable;

85

All her perfections challenge sovereignty:

One way or other, she is for a king;

And she shall be my love, or else my queen. –

Say that King Edward take thee for his queen?

LADY GREY

’Tis better said than done, my gracious lord:

90

I am a subject, fit to jest withal,

But far unfit to be a sovereign.

KING EDWARD

Sweet widow, by my state I swear to thee

I speak no more than what my soul intends;

And that is to enjoy thee for my love.

95

LADY GREY     And that is more than I will yield unto.

I know I am too mean to be your queen,

And yet too good to be your concubine.

KING EDWARD     You cavil, widow, I did mean my queen.

LADY GREY

’Twill grieve your Grace my sons should call you father.

100

KING EDWARD

No more than when my daughters call thee mother.

Thou art a widow, and thou hast some children;

And by God’s mother, I, being but a bachelor,

Have other some. Why, ’tis a happy thing

To be the father unto many sons.

105

Answer no more, for thou shalt be my queen.

RICHARD [aside to George]

The ghostly father now hath done his shrift.

GEORGE [aside to Richard]

When he was made a shriver, ’twas for shift.

KING EDWARD

Brothers, you muse what chat we two have had.

RICHARD     The widow likes it not, for she looks vex’d.

110

KING EDWARD

You’d think it strange if I should marry her.

GEORGE     To who, my lord?

KING EDWARD     Why, Clarence, to myself.

RICHARD     That would be ten days’ wonder at the least.

GEORGE     That’s a day longer than a wonder lasts.

RICHARD     By so much is the wonder in extremes.

115

KING EDWARD

Well, jest on, brothers: I can tell you both

Her suit is granted for her husband’s lands.

Enter a Nobleman.

NOBLEMAN     My gracious lord, Henry your foe is taken

And brought your prisoner to your palace gate.

KING EDWARD

See that he be convey’d unto the Tower:

120

And go we, brothers, to the man that took him,

To question of his apprehension.

Widow, go you along. Lords, use her honourably.

Exeunt all but Richard.

RICHARD     Ay, Edward will use women honourably.

Would he were wasted, marrow, bones, and all,

125

That from his loins no hopeful branch may spring,

To cross me from the golden time I look for!

And yet, between my soul’s desire and me –

The lustful Edward’s title buried –

Is Clarence, Henry, and his son young Edward,

130

And all the unlook’d for issue of their bodies,

To take their rooms ere I can plant myself –

A cold premeditation for my purpose!

Why then I do but dream on sovereignty;

Like one that stands upon a promontory

135

And spies a far-off shore where he would tread,

Wishing his foot were equal with his eye;

And chides the sea, that sunders him from thence,

Saying he’ll lade it dry to have his way:

So do I wish the crown, being so far off;

140

And so I chide the means that keeps me from it;

And so I say I’ll cut the causes off,

Flattering me with impossibilities.

My eye’s too quick, my heart o’erweens too much,

Unless my hand and strength could equal them.

145

Well, say there is no kingdom then for Richard;

What other pleasure can the world afford?

I’ll make my heaven in a lady’s lap,

And deck my body in gay ornaments,

And ’witch sweet ladies with my words and looks.

150

O miserable thought! and more unlikely,

Than to accomplish twenty golden crowns.

Why, Love forswore me in my mother’s womb:

And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,

She did corrupt frail Nature with some bribe,

155

To shrink mine arm up like a wither’d shrub;

To make an envious mountain on my back,

Where sits Deformity to mock my body;

To shape my legs of an unequal size;

To disproportion me in every part,

160

Like to a chaos, or unlick’d bear-whelp

That carries no impression like the dam.

And am I then a man to be belov’d?

O monstrous fault to harbour such a thought!

Then, since this earth affords no joy to me

165

But to command, to check, to o’erbear such

As are of better person than myself,

I’ll make my heaven to dream upon the crown;

And, whiles I live, t’account this world but hell,

Until my misshap’d trunk that bears this head

170

Be round impaled with a glorious crown.

And yet I know not how to get the crown,

For many lives stand between me and home:

And I, – like one lost in a thorny wood,

That rents the thorns and is rent with the thorns,

175

Seeking a way, and straying from the way;

Not knowing how to find the open air,

But toiling desperately to find it out –

Torment myself to catch the English crown:

And from that torment I will free myself,

180

Or hew my way out with a bloody axe.

Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,

And cry ‘Content!’ to that that grieves my heart,

And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,

And frame my face to all occasions.

185

I’ll drown more sailors than the Mermaid shall;

I’ll slay more gazers than the basilisk;

I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor,

Deceive more slily than Ulysses could,

And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.

190

I can add colours to the chameleon,

Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,

And set the murderous Machiavel to school.

Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?

Tut! were it further off, I’ll pluck it down.

Exit.

195

3.3 Flourish. Enter LEWIS the French King, his sister BONA, his Admiral, called Bourbon; PRINCE EDWARD, QUEEN MARGARET and the EARL OF OXFORD. LEWIS sits, and riseth up again.

KING     LEWIS Fair Queen of England, worthy Margaret,

Sit down with us: it ill befits thy state

And birth that thou should’st stand while Lewis doth sit.

QUEEN MARGARET

No, mighty King of France: now Margaret

Must strike her sail, and learn awhile to serve

5

Where kings command. I was, I must confess,

Great Albion’s Queen in former golden days;

But now mischance hath trod my title down

And with dishonour laid me on the ground,

Where I must take like seat unto my fortune

10

And to my humble state conform myself.

KING LEWIS

Why, say, fair Queen, whence springs this deep despair?

QUEEN MARGARET

From such a cause as fills mine eyes with tears

And stops my tongue, while heart is drown’d in cares.

KING LEWIS     Whate’er it be, be thou still like thyself,

15

And sit thee by our side. [Seats her by him.]

Yield not thy neck

To Fortune’s yoke, but let thy dauntless mind

Still ride in triumph over all mischance.

Be plain, Queen Margaret, and tell thy grief;

It shall be eas’d, if France can yield relief.

20

QUEEN MARGARET

Those gracious words revive my drooping thoughts

And give my tongue-tied sorrows leave to speak.

Now, therefore, be it known to noble Lewis

That Henry, sole possessor of my love,

Is, of a king, become a banish’d man,

25

And forc’d to live in Scotland a forlorn;

While proud ambitious Edward, Duke of York,

Usurps the regal title and the seat

Of England’s true-anointed lawful King.

This is the cause that I, poor Margaret,

30

With this my son, Prince Edward, Henry’s heir,

Am come to crave thy just and lawful aid;

And if thou fail us, all our hope is done.

Scotland hath will to help, but cannot help;

Our people and our peers are both misled,

35

Our treasure seiz’d, our soldiers put to flight,

And, as thou seest, ourselves in heavy plight.

KING LEWIS

Renowned Queen, with patience calm the storm,

While we bethink a means to break it off.

QUEEN MARGARET

The more we stay, the stronger grows our foe.

40

KING LEWIS     The more I stay, the more I’ll succour thee.

QUEEN MARGARET

O, but impatience waiteth on true sorrow.

And see where comes the breeder of my sorrow.

Enter WARWICK.

KING LEWIS

What’s he approacheth boldly to our presence?

QUEEN MARGARET

Our Earl of Warwick, Edward’s greatest friend.

45

KING LEWIS

Welcome, brave Warwick! What brings thee to France?

[He descends. She ariseth.]

QUEEN MARGARET

Ay, now begins a second storm to rise;

For this is he that moves both wind and tide.

WARWICK     From worthy Edward, King of Albion,

My lord and sovereign, and thy vowed friend,

50

I come, in kindness and unfeigned love,

First, to do greetings to thy royal person,

And then to crave a league of amity,

And lastly to confirm that amity

With nuptial knot, if thou vouchsafe to grant

55

That virtuous Lady Bona, thy fair sister,

To England’s King in lawful marriage.

QUEEN     MARGARET [aside]

If that go forward, Henry’s hope is done.

WARWICK [to Bona]

And, gracious madam, in our king’s behalf,

I am commanded, with your leave and favour,

60

Humbly to kiss your hand, and with my tongue

To tell the passion of my sovereign’s heart;

Where Fame, late entering at his heedful ears,

Hath plac’d thy beauty’s image and thy virtue.

QUEEN MARGARET

King Lewis and Lady Bona, hear me speak

65

Before you answer Warwick. His demand

Springs not from Edward’s well-meant honest love,

But from Deceit, bred by Necessity;

For how can tyrants safely govern home

Unless abroad they purchase great alliance?

70

To prove him tyrant this reason may suffice,

That Henry liveth still; but were he dead,

Yet here Prince Edward stands, King Henry’s son.

Look, therefore, Lewis, that by this league and marriage

Thou draw not on thy danger and dishonour;

75

For though usurpers sway the rule awhile,

Yet heavens are just, and time suppresseth wrongs.

WARWICK     Injurious Margaret!

PRINCE     And why not Queen?

WARWICK     Because thy father Henry did usurp;

And thou no more art prince than she is queen.

80

OXFORD

Then Warwick disannuls great John of Gaunt,

Which did subdue the greatest part of Spain;

And after John of Gaunt, Henry the Fourth,

Whose wisdom was a mirror to the wisest;

And after that wise prince, Henry the Fifth,

85

Who by his prowess conquered all France:

From these our Henry lineally descends.

WARWICK

Oxford, how haps it in this smooth discourse

You told not how Henry the Sixth hath lost

All that which Henry the Fifth had gotten?

90

Methinks these peers of France should smile at that.

But for the rest: you tell a pedigree

Of threescore and two years – a silly time

To make prescription for a kingdom’s worth.

OXFORD

Why, Warwick, canst thou speak against thy liege,

95

Whom thou obeyed’st thirty and six years,

And not bewray thy treason with a blush?

WARWICK     Can Oxford, that did ever fence the right,

Now buckler falsehood with a pedigree?

For shame! leave Henry, and call Edward king.

100

OXFORD     Call him my king by whose injurious doom

My elder brother, the Lord Aubrey Vere,

Was done to death? and more than so, my father,

Even in the downfall of his mellow’d years,

When Nature brought him to the door of Death?

105

No, Warwick, no; while life upholds this arm,

This arm upholds the house of Lancaster.

WARWICK     And I the house of York.

KING LEWIS

Queen Margaret, Prince Edward, and Oxford,

Vouchsafe at our request to stand aside,

110

While I use further conference with Warwick.

[They stand aloof.]

QUEEN MARGARET

Heavens grant that Warwick’s words bewitch him not!

KING LEWIS

Now, Warwick, tell me, even upon thy conscience,

Is Edward your true king? for I were loath

To link with him that were not lawful chosen.

115

WARWICK     Thereon I pawn my credit and mine honour.

KING LEWIS     But is he gracious in the people’s eye?

WARWICK     The more that Henry was unfortunate.

KING LEWIS     Then further: all dissembling set aside,

Tell me for truth the measure of his love

120

Unto our sister Bona.

WARWICK     Such it seems

As may beseem a monarch like himself.

Myself have often heard him say, and swear,

That this his love was an eternal plant,

Whereof the root was fix’d in Virtue’s ground,

125

The leaves and fruit maintain’d with Beauty’s sun,

Exempt from envy, but not from disdain,

Unless the Lady Bona quite his pain.

KING LEWIS     Now, sister, let us hear your firm resolve.

BONA     Your grant, or your denial, shall be mine:

130

[to Warwick] Yet I confess that often ere this day,

When I have heard your king’s desert recounted,

Mine ear hath temper’d judgment to desire.

KING LEWIS

Then, Warwick, thus: our sister shall be Edward’s.

And now forthwith shall articles be drawn

135

Touching the jointure that your king must make,

Which with her dowry shall be counterpois’d.

Draw near, Queen Margaret, and be a witness

That Bona shall be wife to the English king.

PRINCE     To Edward, but not to the English king.

140

QUEEN MARGARET

Deceitful Warwick, it was thy device

By this alliance to make void my suit:

Before thy coming Lewis was Henry’s friend.

KING LEWIS     And still is friend to him and Margaret:

But if your title to the crown be weak,

145

As may appear by Edward’s good success,

Then ’tis but reason that I be releas’d

From giving aid which late I promised.

Yet shall you have all kindness at my hand

That your estate requires and mine can yield.

150

WARWICK     Henry now lives in Scotland, at his ease,

Where having nothing, nothing can he lose.

And as for you yourself, our quondam queen,

You have a father able to maintain you,

And better ’twere you troubled him than France.

155

QUEEN MARGARET

Peace, impudent and shameless Warwick, peace,

Proud setter up and puller down of kings!

I will not hence till with my talk and tears,

Both full of truth, I make King Lewis behold

Thy sly conveyance and thy lord’s false love;

160

For both of you are birds of self-same feather.

[Post blowing a horn within.]

KING LEWIS     Warwick, this is some post to us or thee.

Enter the Post.

POST [to Warwick]

My lord ambassador, these are for you,

Sent from your brother, Marquess Montague;

[to Lewis] These from our King unto your Majesty:

165

[to Margaret] And, madam, these for you; from whom

I know not. [They all read their letters.]

OXFORD     I like it well that our fair Queen and mistress

Smiles at her news, while Warwick frowns at his.

PRINCE

Nay, mark how Lewis stamps as he were nettled:

I hope all’s for the best.

170

KING LEWIS

Warwick, what are thy news? and yours, fair Queen?

QUEEN MARGARET

Mine, such as fill my heart with unhop’d joys.

WARWICK     Mine, full of sorrow and heart’s discontent.

KING LEWIS

What? has your king married the Lady Grey?

And now, to soothe your forgery and his,

175

Sends me a paper to persuade me patience?

Is this th’alliance that he seeks with France?

Dare he presume to scorn us in this manner?

QUEEN MARGARET     I told your Majesty as much before:

This proveth Edward’s love and Warwick’s honesty.

180

WARWICK

King Lewis, I here protest in sight of heaven,

And by the hope I have of heavenly bliss,

That I am clear from this misdeed of Edward’s –

No more my king, for he dishonours me,

But most himself, if he could see his shame.

185

Did I forget that by the house of York

My father came untimely to his death?

Did I let pass th’abuse done to my niece?

Did I impale him with the regal crown?

Did I put Henry from his native right?

190

And am I guerdon’d at the last with shame?

Shame on himself! for my desert is honour;

And to repair my honour lost for him

I here renounce him and return to Henry.

My noble Queen, let former grudges pass,

195

And henceforth I am thy true servitor.

I will revenge his wrong to Lady Bona,

And replant Henry in his former state.

QUEEN MARGARET

Warwick, these words have turn’d my hate to love;

And I forgive and quite forget old faults,

200

And joy that thou becom’st King Henry’s friend.

WARWICK     So much his friend, ay, his unfeigned friend,

That if King Lewis vouchsafe to furnish us

With some few bands of chosen soldiers,

I’ll undertake to land them on our coast

205

And force the tyrant from his seat by war.

’Tis not his new-made bride shall succour him;

And as for Clarence, as my letters tell me,

He’s very likely now to fall from him

For matching more for wanton lust than honour

210

Or than for strength and safety of our country.

BONA     Dear brother, how shall Bona be reveng’d

But by thy help to this distressed queen?

QUEEN MARGARET

Renowned Prince, how shall poor Henry live

Unless thou rescue him from foul despair?

215

BONA     My quarrel and this English queen’s are one.

WARWICK     And mine, fair Lady Bona, joins with yours.

KING LEWIS

And mine with hers, and thine, and Margaret’s.

Therefore at last I firmly am resolv’d

You shall have aid.

220

QUEEN MARGARET

Let me give humble thanks for all at once.

KING LEWIS

Then, England’s messenger, return in post

And tell false Edward, thy supposed king,

That Lewis of France is sending over maskers

To revel it with him and his new bride.

225

Thou seest what’s past, go fear thy king withal.

BONA     Tell him, in hope he’ll prove a widower shortly,

I’ll wear the willow garland for his sake.

QUEEN MARGARET

Tell him my mourning weeds are laid aside,

And I am ready to put armour on.

230

WARWICK

Tell him from me that he hath done me wrong,

And therefore I’ll uncrown him ere’t be long.

There’s thy reward; be gone.     Exit Post.

KING LEWIS     But, Warwick,

Thou and Oxford, with five thousand men,

Shall cross the seas and bid false Edward battle;

235

And, as occasion serves, this noble Queen

And Prince shall follow with a fresh supply.

Yet, ere thou go, but answer me one doubt:

What pledge have we of thy firm loyalty?

WARWICK     This shall assure my constant loyalty:

240

That if our Queen and this young Prince agree,

I’ll join mine eldest daughter and my joy

To him forthwith in holy wedlock’s bands.

QUEEN MARGARET

Yes, I agree, and thank you for your motion.

Son Edward, she is fair and virtuous,

245

Therefore delay not, give thy hand to Warwick;

And with thy hand thy faith irrevocable

That only Warwick’s daughter shall be thine.

PRINCE     Yes, I accept her, for she well deserves it;

And here, to pledge my vow, I give my hand.

250

[He gives his hand to Warwick.]

KING LEWIS

Why stay we now? These soldiers shall be levied,

And thou, Lord Bourbon, our High Admiral,

Shalt waft them over with our royal fleet.

I long till Edward fall by war’s mischance

For mocking marriage with a dame of France.

255

Exeunt all but Warwick.

WARWICK     I came from Edward as ambassador,

But I return his sworn and mortal foe:

Matter of marriage was the charge he gave me,

But dreadful war shall answer his demand.

Had he none else to make a stale but me?

260

Then none but I shall turn his jest to sorrow.

I was the chief that rais’d him to the crown,

And I’ll be chief to bring him down again:

Not that I pity Henry’s misery,

But seek revenge on Edward’s mockery.

Exit.

265

4.1 Enter RICHARD, GEORGE, SOMERSET and MONTAGUE.

RICHARD

Now tell me, brother Clarence, what think you

Of this new marriage with the Lady Grey?

Hath not our brother made a worthy choice?

GEORGE     Alas, you know ’tis far from hence to France!

How could he stay till Warwick made return?

5

SOMERSET

My lords, forbear this talk; here comes the King.

Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD attended; LADY GREY, as QUEEN; Pembroke, Stafford, HASTINGS and others. Four stand on one side and four on the other.

RICHARD     And his well-chosen bride.

GEORGE     I mind to tell him plainly what I think.

KING EDWARD

Now, brother of Clarence, how like you our choice,

That you stand pensive, as half malcontent?

10

GEORGE

As well as Lewis of France or the Earl of Warwick,

Which are so weak of courage and in judgment

That they’ll take no offence at our abuse.

KING EDWARD

Suppose they take offence without a cause;

They are but Lewis and Warwick: I am Edward,

15

Your King and Warwick’s, and must have my will.

RICHARD

And you shall have your will, because our King:

Yet hasty marriage seldom proveth well.

KING EDWARD

Yea, brother Richard, are you offended too?

RICHARD

No, God forfend that I should wish them sever’d

20

Whom God hath join’d: ay, and ’twere pity

To sunder them that yoke so well together.

KING EDWARD

Setting your scorns and your mislike aside,

Tell me some reason why the Lady Grey

Should not become my wife and England’s Queen.

25

And you too, Somerset and Montague,

Speak freely what you think.

GEORGE     Then this is my opinion: that King Lewis

Becomes your enemy for mocking him

About the marriage of the Lady Bona.

30

RICHARD

And Warwick, doing what you gave in charge,

Is now dishonour’d by this marriage.

KING EDWARD

What if both Lewis and Warwick be appeas’d

By such invention as I can devise?

MONTAGUE

Yet to have join’d with France in such alliance

35

Would more have strengthen’d this our commonwealth

’Gainst foreign storms than any home-bred marriage.

HASTINGS     Why, knows not Montague that of itself

England is safe, if true within itself?

MONTAGUE     But the safer when ’tis back’d with France.

40

HASTINGS

’Tis better using France than trusting France.

Let us be back’d with God and with the seas

Which he hath given for fence impregnable,

And with their helps only defend ourselves:

In them and in ourselves our safety lies.

45

GEORGE

For this one speech Lord Hastings well deserves

To have the heir of the Lord Hungerford.

KING EDWARD

Ay, what of that? it was my will and grant;

And for this once my will shall stand for law.

RICHARD

And yet, methinks, your Grace hath not done well

50

To give the heir and daughter of Lord Scales

Unto the brother of your loving bride;

She better would have fitted me, or Clarence:

But in your bride you bury brotherhood.

GEORGE     Or else you would not have bestow’d the heir

55

Of the Lord Bonville on your new wife’s son,

And leave your brothers to go speed elsewhere.

KING EDWARD     Alas, poor Clarence! is it for a wife

That thou art malcontent? I will provide thee.

GEORGE

In choosing for yourself you show’d your judgment,

60

Which being shallow, you shall give me leave

To play the broker in mine own behalf;

And to that end I shortly mind to leave you.

KING EDWARD

Leave me, or tarry, Edward will be King,

And not be tied unto his brother’s will.

65

QUEEN ELIZABETH

My lords, before it pleas’d his Majesty

To raise my state to title of a queen,

Do me but right, and you must all confess

That I was not ignoble of descent;

And meaner than myself have had like fortune.

70

But as this title honours me and mine,

So your dislikes, to whom I would be pleasing,

Doth cloud my joys with danger and with sorrow.

KING EDWARD

My love, forbear to fawn upon their frowns:

What danger or what sorrow can befall thee

75

So long as Edward is thy constant friend

And their true sovereign whom they must obey?

Nay, whom they shall obey, and love thee too,

Unless they seek for hatred at my hands;

Which if they do, yet will I keep thee safe,

80

And they shall feel the vengeance of my wrath.

RICHARD [aside]

I hear, yet say not much, but think the more.

Enter a Post.

KING EDWARD

Now, messenger, what letters or what news

From France?

POST     My sovereign liege, no letters, and few words,

85

But such as I, without your special pardon,

Dare not relate.

KING EDWARD

Go to, we pardon thee: therefore, in brief,

Tell me their words as near as thou canst guess them.

What answer makes King Lewis unto our letters?

90

POST     At my depart, these were his very words:

‘Go tell false Edward, thy supposed king,

That Lewis of France is sending over maskers

To revel it with him and his new bride.’

KING EDWARD

Is Lewis so brave? Belike he thinks me Henry.

95

But what said Lady Bona to my marriage?

POST

These were her words, utter’d with mild disdain:

‘Tell him, in hope he’ll prove a widower shortly,

I’ll wear the willow garland for his sake.’

KING EDWARD     I blame not her; she could say little less;

100

She had the wrong. But what said Henry’s queen?

For I have heard that she was there in place.

POST

‘Tell him,’ quoth she, ‘my mourning weeds are done,

And I am ready to put armour on.’

KING EDWARD     Belike she minds to play the Amazon.

105

But what said Warwick to these injuries?

POST     He, more incens’d against your Majesty

Than all the rest, discharg’d me with these words:

‘Tell him from me that he hath done me wrong,

And therefore I’ll uncrown him ere’t be long.’

110

KING EDWARD

Ha! durst the traitor breathe out so proud words?

Well, I will arm me, being thus forewarn’d:

They shall have wars and pay for their presumption.

But say, is Warwick friends with Margaret?

POST

Ay, gracious sovereign, they are so link’d in friendship

115

That young Prince Edward marries Warwick’s daughter.

GEORGE

Belike the elder; Clarence will have the younger.

Now, brother king, farewell, and sit you fast,

For I will hence to Warwick’s other daughter;

That, though I want a kingdom, yet in marriage

120

I may not prove inferior to yourself.

You that love me and Warwick, follow me.

Exit George, and Somerset follows.

RICHARD [aside]

Not I: my thoughts aim at a further matter;

I stay not for the love of Edward, but the crown.

KING EDWARD

Clarence and Somerset both gone to Warwick!

125

Yet am I arm’d against the worst can happen,

And haste is needful in this desperate case.

Pembroke and Stafford, you in our behalf

Go levy men and make prepare for war;

They are already, or quickly will be, landed:

130

Myself in person will straight follow you.

Exeunt Pembroke and Stafford.

But, ere I go, Hastings and Montague,

Resolve my doubt. You twain, of all the rest,

Are nearest to Warwick by blood and by alliance:

Tell me if you love Warwick more than me.

135

If it be so, then both depart to him;

I rather wish you foes than hollow friends.

But if you mind to hold your true obedience,

Give me assurance with some friendly vow,

That I may never have you in suspect.

140

MONTAGUE     So God help Montague as he proves true!

HASTINGS     And Hastings as he favours Edward’s cause!

KING EDWARD

Now, brother Richard, will you stand by us?

RICHARD     Ay, in despite of all that shall withstand you.

KING EDWARD     Why, so! then am I sure of victory.

145

Now, therefore, let us hence, and lose no hour

Till we meet Warwick with his foreign power.’

Exeunt.

4.2 Enter WARWICK and OXFORD in England, with French soldiers.

WARWICK     Trust me, my lord, all hitherto goes well;

The common people by numbers swarm to us.

Enter GEORGE and SOMERSET.

But see where Somerset and Clarence comes.

Speak suddenly, my lords: are we all friends?

GEORGE     Fear not that, my lord.

5

WARWICK

Then, gentle Clarence, welcome unto Warwick;

And welcome Somerset. I hold it cowardice

To rest mistrustful where a noble heart

Hath pawn’d an open hand in sign of love;

Else might I think that Clarence, Edward’s brother,

10

Were but a feigned friend to our proceedings.

But come, sweet Clarence; my daughter shall be thine.

And now what rests but, in night’s coverture,

Thy brother being carelessly encamp’d,

His soldiers lurking in the towns about,

15

And but attended by a simple guard,

We may surprise and take him at our pleasure?

Our scouts have found the adventure very easy:

That, as Ulysses and stout Diomede

With sleight and manhood stole to Rhesus’ tents,

20

And brought from thence the Thracian fatal steeds,

So we, well cover’d with the night’s black mantle,

At unawares may beat down Edward’s guard,

And seize himself – I say not, slaughter him,

For I intend but only to surprise him.

25

You that will follow me to this attempt,

Applaud the name of Henry with your leader.

[They all cry ‘Henry!’]

Why, then, let’s on our way in silent sort,

For Warwick and his friends, God and St George!

Exeunt.

4.3 Enter three Watchmen to guard the King’s tent.

1 WATCHMAN

Come on, my masters, each man take his stand:

The King by this is set him down to sleep.

2 WATCHMAN     What, will he not to bed?

1 WATCHMAN

Why, no; for he hath made a solemn vow

Never to lie and take his natural rest

5

Till Warwick or himself be quite suppress’d.

2 WATCHMAN

To-morrow then belike shall be the day,

If Warwick be so near as men report.

3 WATCHMAN

But say, I pray, what nobleman is that

That with the King here resteth in his tent?

10

1 WATCHMAN

’Tis the Lord Hastings, the King’s chiefest friend.

3 WATCHMAN

O, is it so? But why commands the King

That his chief followers lodge in towns about him,

While he himself keeps in the cold field?

2 WATCHMAN

’Tis the more honour because more dangerous.

15

3 WATCHMAN

Ay, but give me worship and quietness;

I like it better than a dangerous honour.

If Warwick knew in what estate he stands,

’Tis to be doubted he would waken him.

1 WATCHMAN

Unless our halberds did shut up his passage.

20

2 WATCHMAN

Ay, wherefore else guard we his royal tent

But to defend his person from night-foes?

Enter WARWICK, GEORGE, OXFORD, SOMERSET and French soldiers, silent all.

WARWICK

This is his tent; and see where stand his guard.

Courage, my masters! Honour now or never!

But follow me, and Edward shall be ours.

25

1 WATCHMAN     Who goes there?

2 WATCHMAN     Stay, or thou diest.

[Warwick and the rest cry all, ‘ Warwick! Warwick!’ and set upon the guard, who fly, crying, ‘ Arm! Arm!’, Warwick and the rest following them.]

The drum playing and the trumpet sounding, enter WARWICK, SOMERSET and the rest, bringing the KING out in his gown, sitting in a chair.RICHARD and HASTINGS fly over the stage.

SOMERSET     What are they that fly there?

WARWICK     Richard and Hastings; let them go;

Here is the Duke.

KING EDWARD     Why, Warwick, when we parted,

30

Thou call’dst me King.

WARWICK     Ay, but the case is alter’d.

When you disgrac’d me in my embassade,

Then I degraded you from being King,

And come now to create you Duke of York.

Alas, how should you govern any kingdom

35

That know not how to use ambassadors,

Nor how to be contented with one wife,

Nor how to use your brothers brotherly,

Nor how to study for the people’s welfare,

Nor how to shroud yourself from enemies?

40

KING EDWARD

Yea, brother of Clarence, art thou here too?

Nay, then I see that Edward needs must down.

Yet, Warwick, in despite of all mischance,

Of thee thyself and all thy complices,

Edward will always bear himself a king.

45

Though Fortune’s malice overthrow my state,

My mind exceeds the compass of her wheel.

WARWICK

Then, for his mind, be Edward England’s king;

[Takes off his crown.]

But Henry now shall wear the English crown

And be true King indeed; thou but the shadow.

50

My lord of Somerset, at my request,

See that forthwith Duke Edward be convey’d

Unto my brother, Archbishop of York.

When I have fought with Pembroke and his fellows,

I’ll follow you, and come and tell what answer

55

Lewis and the Lady Bona send to him.

Now, for a while, farewell, good Duke of York.

KING EDWARD

What fates impose, that men must needs abide;

It boots not to resist both wind and tide.

They lead him out forcibly.

OXFORD     What now remains, my lords, for us to do

60

But march to London with our soldiers?

WARWICK     Ay, that’s the first thing that we have to do,

To free King Henry from imprisonment

And see him seated in the regal throne.     Exeunt.

4.4 Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH and RIVERS.

RIVERS

Madam, what makes in you this sudden change?

QUEEN ELIZABETH

Why, brother Rivers, are you yet to learn

What late misfortune is befall’n King Edward?

RIVERS

What, loss of some pitch’d battle against Warwick?

QUEEN ELIZABETH

No, but the loss of his own royal person.

5

RIVERS     Then is my sovereign slain?

QUEEN ELIZABETH

Ay, almost slain, for he is taken prisoner;

Either betray’d by falsehood of his guard,

Or by his foe surpris’d at unawares:

And, as I further have to understand,

10

Is new committed to the Bishop of York,

Fell Warwick’s brother, and by that our foe.

RIVERS     These news, I must confess, are full of grief;

Yet gracious madam, bear it as you may:

Warwick may lose that now hath won the day.

15

QUEEN ELIZABETH

Till then, fair hope must hinder life’s decay,

And I the rather wean me from despair

For love of Edward’s offspring in my womb:

This is it that makes me bridle passion

And bear with mildness my misfortune’s cross,

20

Ay, ay, for this I draw in many a tear

And stop the rising of blood-sucking sighs,

Lest with my sighs or tears I blast or drown

King Edward’s fruit, true heir to th’ English crown.

RIVERS     But, madam, where is Warwick then become?

25

QUEEN ELIZABETH

I am inform’d that he comes towards London

To set the crown once more on Henry’s head.

Guess thou the rest: King Edward’s friends must down.

But to prevent the tyrant’s violence –

For trust not him that hath once broken faith –

30

I’ll hence forthwith unto the sanctuary

To save at least the heir of Edward’s right.

There shall I rest secure from force and fraud.

Come, therefore, let us fly while we may fly:

If Warwick take us, we are sure to die.     Exeunt.

35

4.5 Enter RICHARD, LORD HASTINGS, Sir William Stanley and others.

RICHARD

Now, my Lord Hastings and Sir William Stanley

Leave off to wonder why I drew you hither

Into this chiefest thicket of the park.

Thus stands the case: you know our King, my brother,

Is prisoner to the Bishop here, at whose hands

5

He hath good usage and great liberty,

And often but attended with weak guard

Comes hunting this way to disport himself.

I have advertis’d him by secret means

That if about this hour he make this way,

10

Under the colour of his usual game,

He shall here find his friends with horse and men

To set him free from his captivity.

Enter KING EDWARD and a Huntsman with him.

HUNTSMAN

This way, my lord, for this way lies the game.

KING EDWARD

Nay, this way, man: see where the huntsmen stand.

15

Now, brother of Gloucester, Hastings, and the rest,

Stand you thus close to steal the Bishop’s deer?

RICHARD     Brother, the time and case requireth haste;

Your horse stands ready at the park corner.

KING EDWARD     But whither shall we then?

HASTINGS     To Lynn, my lord?

20

And ship from thence to Flanders?

RICHARD

Well guess’d, believe me; for that was my meaning.

KING EDWARD     Stanley, I will requite thy forwardness.

RICHARD     But wherefore stay we? ’tis no time to talk.

KING EDWARD

Huntsman, what say’st thou? wilt thou go along?

25

HUNTSMAN     Better do so than tarry and be hang’d.

RICHARD     Come then, away; let’s ha’ no more ado.

KING EDWARD

Bishop, farewell: shield thee from Warwick’s frown,

And pray that I may repossess the crown.     Exeunt.

4.6 Flourish. Enter KING HENRY, GEORGE, WARWICK, SOMERSET, young RICHMOND, OXFORD, MONTAGUE and Lieutenant of the Tower.

KING HENRY

Master Lieutenant, now that God and friends

Have shaken Edward from the regal seat

And turn’d my captive state to liberty,

My fear to hope, my sorrows unto joys,

At our enlargement what are thy due fees?

5

LIEUTENANT

Subjects may challenge nothing of their sovereigns;

But, if an humble prayer may prevail,

I then crave pardon of your Majesty.

KING HENRY

For what, Lieutenant? For well using me?

Nay, be thou sure, I’ll well requite thy kindness,

10

For that it made my prisonment a pleasure;

Ay, such a pleasure as incaged birds

Conceive when, after many moody thoughts,

At last by notes of household harmony

They quite forget their loss of liberty.

15

But, Warwick, after God, thou set’st me free,

And chiefly therefore I thank God and thee;

He was the author, thou the instrument.

Therefore, that I may conquer Fortune’s spite

By living low where Fortune cannot hurt me,

20

And that the people of this blessed land

May not be punish’d with my thwarting stars,

Warwick, although my head still wear the crown,

I here resign my government to thee,

For thou are fortunate in all thy deeds.

25

WARWICK

Your Grace hath still been fam’d for virtuous,

And now may seem as wise as virtuous

By spying and avoiding Fortune’s malice,

For few men rightly temper with the stars;

Yet in this one thing let me blame your Grace,

30

For choosing me when Clarence is in place.

GEORGE     No, Warwick, thou art worthy of the sway,

To whom the heavens in thy nativity

Adjudg’d an olive branch and laurel crown,

As likely to be blest in peace and war;

35

And therefore I yield thee my free consent.

WARWICK     And I choose Clarence only for Protector.

KING HENRY

Warwick and Clarence, give me both your hands:

Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts,

That no dissension hinder government.

40

I make you both Protectors of this land,

While I myself will lead a private life

And in devotion spend my latter days

To sin’s rebuke and my Creator’s praise.

WARWICK

What answers Clarence to his sovereign’s will?

45

GEORGE     That he consents, if Warwick yield consent;

For on thy fortune I repose myself.

WARWICK

Why then, though loath, yet must I be content.

We’ll yoke together, like a double shadow

To Henry’s body, and supply his place;

50

I mean, in bearing weight of government,

While he enjoys the honour, and his ease.

And, Clarence, now then it is more than needful

Forthwith that Edward be pronounc’d a traitor

And all his lands and goods be confiscate.

55

GEORGE

What else? And that succession be determin’d.

WARWICK     Ay, therein Clarence shall not want his part.

KING HENRY     But with the first of all your chief affairs

Let me entreat – for I command no more –

That Margaret your Queen and my son Edward

60

Be sent for to return from France with speed;

For till I see them here, by doubtful fear

My joy of liberty is half eclips’d.

GEORGE     It shall be done, my sovereign, with all speed.

KING HENRY

My Lord of Somerset, what youth is that,

65

Of whom you seem to have so tender care?

SOMERSET

My liege, it is young Henry, Earl of Richmond.

KING HENRY

Come hither, England’s hope.

[Lays his hand on his head.]     If secret powers

Suggest but truth to my divining thoughts,

This pretty lad will prove our country’s bliss.

70

His looks are full of peaceful majesty;

His head by nature fram’d to wear a crown,

His hand to wield a sceptre; and himself

Likely in time to bless a regal throne.

Make much of him, my lords, for this is he

75

Must help you more than you are hurt by me.

Enter a Post.

WARWICK     What news, my friend?

POST     That Edward is escaped from your brother

And fled, as he hears since, to Burgundy.

WARWICK     Unsavoury news! But how made he escape?

80

POST

He was convey’d by Richard, Duke of Gloucester

And the Lord Hastings, who attended him

In secret ambush on the forest side

And from the Bishop’s huntsmen rescu’d him;

For hunting was his daily exercise.

85

WARWICK     My brother was too careless of his charge.

But let us hence, my sovereign, to provide

A salve for any sore that may betide.

Exeunt all but Somerset, Richmond and Oxford.

SOMERSET

My lord, I like not of this flight of Edward’s;

For doubtless Burgundy will yield him help,

90

And we shall have more wars before’t be long.

As Henry’s late presaging prophecy

Did glad my heart with hope of this young Richmond,

So doth my heart misgive me, in these conflicts,

What may befall him to his harm and ours.

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Therefore, Lord Oxford, to prevent the worst,

Forthwith we’ll send him hence to Brittany,

Till storms be past of civil enmity.

OXFORD     Ay, for if Edward repossess the crown,

’Tis like that Richmond with the rest shall down.

100

SOMERSET     It shall be so: he shall to Brittany.

Come, therefore, let’s about it speedily. Exeunt.

4.7 Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD, RICHARD, HASTINGS and soldiers.

KING EDWARD

Now, brother Richard, Hastings, and the rest,

Yet thus far Fortune maketh us amends,

And says that once more I shall interchange

My waned state for Henry’s regal crown.

Well have we pass’d and now repass’d the seas,

5

And brought desired help from Burgundy;

What then remains, we being thus arriv’d

From Ravenspurgh haven before the gates of York,

But that we enter, as into our dukedom?

RICHARD     The gates made fast! Brother, I like not this;

10

For many men that stumble at the threshold

Are well foretold that danger lurks within.

KING EDWARD

Tush, man, abodements must not now affright us:

By fair or foul means we must enter in,

For hither will our friends repair to us.

15

HASTINGS

My liege, I’ll knock once more to summon them.

Enter, on the walls, the Mayor of York and his brethren.

MAYOR     My lords, we were forewarned of your coming

And shut the gates for safety of ourselves,

For now we owe allegiance unto Henry.

KING EDWARD

But, Master Mayor, if Henry be your king,

20

Yet Edward, at the least, is Duke of York.

MAYOR     True, my good lord, I know you for no less.

KING EDWARD

Why, and I challenge nothing but my dukedom,

As being well content with that alone.

RICHARD [aside]

But when the fox hath once got in his nose,

25

He’ll soon find means to make the body follow.

HASTINGS

Why, Master Mayor, why stand you in a doubt?

Open the gates; we are King Henry’s friends.

MAYOR     Ay, say you so? the gates shall then be open’d.

He descends.

RICHARD     A wise stout captain, and soon persuaded!

30

HASTINGS

The good old man would fain that all were well

So ’twere not ’long of him; but being enter’d,

I doubt not, I, but we shall soon persuade

Both him and all his brothers unto reason.

Enter the Mayor and two Aldermen, below.

KING EDWARD

So, Master Mayor: these gates must not be shut

35

But in the night or in the time of war.

What! fear not, man, but yield me up the keys;

[Takes his keys.]

For Edward will defend the town and thee

And all those friends that deign to follow me.

March. Enter SIR JOHN MONTGOMERY, with drum and soldiers.

RICHARD     Brother, this is Sir John Montgomery,

40

Our trusty friend, unless I be deceiv’d.

KING EDWARD

Welcome, Sir John! But why come you in arms?

MONTGOMERY

To help King Edward in his time of storm,

As every loyal subject ought to do.

KING EDWARD

Thanks, good Montgomery; but we now forget

45

Our title to the crown, and only claim

Our dukedom till God please to send the rest.

MONTGOMERY

Then fare you well, for I will hence again:

I came to serve a king and not a duke.

Drummer, strike up, and let us march away.

50

[The drum begins to march.]

KING EDWARD

Nay, stay, Sir John, a while; and we’ll debate

By what safe means the crown may be recover’d.

MONTGOMERY

What talk you of debating? In few words:

If you’ll not here proclaim yourself our King,

I’ll leave you to your fortune and be gone

55

To keep them back that come to succour you.

Why shall we fight, if you pretend no title?

RICHARD

Why, brother, wherefore stand you on nice points?

Resolve yourself, and let us claim the crown.

KING EDWARD

When we grow stronger, then we’ll make our claim:

60

Till then ’tis wisdom to conceal our meaning.

HASTINGS

Away with scrupulous wit! Now arms must rule.

RICHARD

And fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns.

Brother, we will proclaim you out of hand;

The bruit thereof will bring you many friends.

65

KING EDWARD     Then be it as you will; for ’tis my right,

And Henry but usurps the diadem.

MONTGOMERY

Ay, now my sovereign speaketh like himself,

And now will I be Edward’s champion.

HASTINGS

Sound trumpet; Edward shall be here proclaim’d.

70

Come, fellow soldier, make thou proclamation.

[Gives him a paper.]     [Flourish.]

SOLDIER

Edward the Fourth, by the grace of God, King of

England and France, and Lord of Ireland, etc.

MONTGOMERY

And whosoe’er gainsays King Edward’s right,

By this I challenge him to single fight.

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[Throws down his gauntlet.]

ALL     Long live Edward the Fourth!

KING EDWARD

Thanks, brave Montgomery, and thanks unto you all:

If Fortune serve me, I’ll requite this kindness.

Now for this night let’s harbour here in York,

And when the morning sun shall raise his car

80

Above the border of this horizon

We’ll forward towards Warwick and his mates;

For well I wot that Henry is no soldier.

Ah, froward Clarence, how evil it beseems thee

To flatter Henry and forsake thy brother!

85

Yet, as we may, we’ll meet both thee and Warwick.

Come on, brave soldiers: doubt not of the day,

And, that once gotten, doubt not of large pay.

Exeunt.

4.8 Flourish. Enter KING HENRY, WARWICK, MONTAGUE, GEORGE, OXFORD and EXETER.

WARWICK     What counsel, lords? Edward from Belgia,

With hasty Germans and blunt Hollanders,

Is pass’d in safety through the Narrow Seas,

And with his troops doth march amain to London;

And many giddy people flock to him.

5

KING HENRY     Let’s levy men and beat him back again.

GEORGE     A little fire is quickly trodden out,

Which, being suffer’d, rivers cannot quench.

WARWICK     In Warwickshire I have true-hearted friends,

Not mutinous in peace, yet bold in war;

10

Those will I muster up, and thou, son Clarence,

Shalt stir in Suffolk, Norfolk, and in Kent,

The knights and gentlemen to come with thee:

Thou, brother Montague, in Buckingham,

Northampton, and in Leicestershire, shalt find

15

Men well inclin’d to hear what thou command’st:

And thou, brave Oxford, wondrous well-belov’d

In Oxfordshire, shalt muster up thy friends.

My sovereign, with the loving citizens,

Like to his island girt in with the ocean,

20

Or modest Dian circled with her nymphs,

Shall rest in London till we come to him.

Fair lords, take leave and stand not to reply.

Farewell, my sovereign.

KING HENRY

Farewell, my Hector and my Troy’s true hope.

25

GEORGE     In sign of truth, I kiss your Highness’ hand.

KING HENRY

Well-minded Clarence, be thou fortunate.

MONTAGUE     Comfort, my lord; and so I take my leave.

OXFORD     And thus I seal my truth and bid adieu.

KING HENRY

Sweet Oxford, and my loving Montague,

30

And all at once, once more a happy farewell.

WARWICK     Farewell, sweet lords; let’s meet at Coventry.

Exeunt all but King Henry and Exeter.

KING HENRY

Here at the palace will I rest a while.

Cousin of Exeter, what thinks your lordship?

Methinks the power that Edward hath in field

35

Should not be able to encounter mine.

EXETER     The doubt is that he will seduce the rest.

KING HENRY

That’s not my fear; my meed hath got me fame:

I have not stopp’d mine ears to their demands,

Nor posted off their suits with slow delays;

40

My pity hath been balm to heal their wounds,

My mildness hath allay’d their swelling griefs,

My mercy dried their water-flowing tears;

I have not been desirous of their wealth,

Nor much oppress’d them with great subsidies,

45

Nor forward of revenge, though they much err’d.

Then why should they love Edward more than me?

No, Exeter, these graces challenge grace;

And, when the lion fawns upon the lamb,

The lamb will never cease to follow him.

50

[Shout within, ‘A York! A York!’]

EXETER     Hark, hark, my lord! what shouts are these?

Enter KING EDWARD, RICHARD and soldiers.

KING EDWARD

Seize on the shame-fac’d Henry, bear him hence;

And once again proclaim us King of England.

You are the fount that makes small brooks to flow:

Now stops thy spring; my sea shall suck them dry,

55

And swell so much the higher by their ebb.

Hence with him to the Tower: let him not speak.

Exeunt some with King Henry.

And, lords, towards Coventry bend we our course,

Where peremptory Warwick now remains.

The sun shines hot; and if we use delay,

60

Cold biting winter mars our hop’d-for hay.

RICHARD     Away betimes, before his forces join,

And take the great-grown traitor unawares:

Brave warriors, march amain towards Coventry.

Exeunt.

5.1 Enter WARWICK, the Mayor of Coventry, two Messengers and others upon the walls.

WARWICK

Where is the post that came from valiant Oxford?

How far hence is thy lord, mine honest fellow?

1 MESSENGER

By this at Dunsmore, marching hitherward.

WARWICK     How far off is our brother Montague?

Where is the post that came from Montague?

5

2 MESSENGER

By this at Daintry, with a puissant troop.

Enter SIR JOHN SOMERVILLE.

WARWICK     Say, Somerville, what says my loving son?

And by thy guess how nigh is Clarence now?

SOMERSET     At Southam I did leave him with his forces,

And do expect him here some two hours hence.

10

[Drum heard.]

WARWICK     Then Clarence is at hand; I hear his drum.

SOMERSET     It is not his, my lord; here Southam lies:

The drum your honour hears marcheth from Warwick.

WARWICK

Who should that be? Belike, unlook’d for friends.

SOMERSET

They are at hand, and you shall quickly know.

15

March. Flourish. Enter EDWARD, RICHARD and soldiers.

KING EDWARD

Go, trumpet, to the walls and sound a parle.

RICHARD     See how the surly Warwick mans the wall.

WARWICK     O unbid spite! Is sportful Edward come?

Where slept our scouts or how are they seduc’d

That we could hear no news of his repair?

20

KING EDWARD

Now, Warwick, wilt thou ope the city gates,

Speak gentle words, and humbly bend thy knee,

Call Edward King, and at his hands beg mercy,

And he shall pardon thee these outrages?

WARWICK     Nay, rather, wilt thou draw thy forces hence,

25

Confess who set thee up and pluck’d thee down,

Call Warwick patron, and be penitent,

And thou shalt still remain – the Duke of York?

RICHARD

I thought at least he would have said the King;

Or did he make the jest against his will?

30

WARWICK     Is not a dukedom, sir, a goodly gift?

RICHARD     Ay, by my faith, for a poor earl to give;

I’ll do thee service for so good a gift.

WARWICK

’Twas I that gave the kingdom to thy brother.

KING EDWARD

Why then ’tis mine, if but by Warwick’s gift.

35

WARWICK     Thou art no Atlas for so great a weight;

And, weakling, Warwick takes his gift again;

And Henry is my King, Warwick his subject.

KING EDWARD

But Warwick’s king is Edward’s prisoner;

And, gallant Warwick, do but answer this:

40

What is the body when the head is off?

RICHARD     Alas, that Warwick had no more forecast,

But, whiles he thought to steal the single ten,

The king was slily finger’d from the deck!

You left poor Henry at the Bishop’s palace,

45

And ten to one you’ll meet him in the Tower.

KING EDWARD     ’Tis even so: yet you are Warwick still.

RICHARD

Come, Warwick, take the time; kneel down, kneel down.

Nay, when? Strike now, or else the iron cools.

WARWICK     I had rather chop this hand off at a blow

50

And with the other fling it at thy face,

Than bear so low a sail to strike to thee.

KING EDWARD

Sail how thou canst, have wind and tide thy friend,

This hand, fast wound about thy coal-black hair,

Shall, whiles thy head is warm and new cut off,

55

Write in the dust this sentence with thy blood:

‘Wind-changing Warwick now can change no more’.

Enter OXFORD, with drum and colours.

WARWICK

O cheerful colours! See where Oxford comes!

OXFORD     Oxford, Oxford, for Lancaster!

[He and his forces enter the city.]

RICHARD     The gates are open, let us enter too.

60

KING EDWARD     So other foes may set upon our backs.

Stand we in good array, for they no doubt

Will issue out again and bid us battle;

If not, the city being but of small defence,

We’ll quickly rouse the traitors in the same.

65

WARWICK     O welcome, Oxford, for we want thy help.

Enter MONTAGUE, with drum and colours.

MONTAGUE     Montague, Montague, for Lancaster!

[He and his forces enter the city.]

RICHARD

Thou and thy brother both shall buy this treason

Even with the dearest blood your bodies bear.

KING EDWARD

The harder match’d, the greater victory:

70

My mind presageth happy gain and conquest.

Enter SOMERSET, with drum and colours.

SOMERSET     Somerset, Somerset, for Lancaster!

[He and his forces enter the city.]

RICHARD     Two of thy name, both Dukes of Somerset,

Have sold their lives unto the house of York,

And thou shalt be the third, and this sword hold.

75

Enter GEORGE, with drum and colours.

WARWICK

And lo, where George of Clarence sweeps along,

Of force enough to bid his brother battle;

With whom an upright zeal to right prevails

More than the nature of a brother’s love.

GEORGE     Clarence, Clarence, for Lancaster!

80

KING EDWARD     Et tu, Brute! wilt thou stab Caesar too?

A parley, sirrah, to George of Clarence.

[Sound a parley. Richard and George whisper.]

WARWICK

Come, Clarence, come; thou wilt if Warwick call.

[George takes the red rose from his hat and throws it at

Warwick.]

GEORGE

Father of Warwick, know you what this means?

Look, here I throw my infamy at thee:

85

I will not ruinate my father’s house,

Who gave his blood to lime the stones together,

And set up Lancaster. Why, trowest thou, Warwick,

That Clarence is so harsh, so blunt, unnatural,

To bend the fatal instruments of war

90

Against his brother and his lawful King?

Perhaps thou wilt object my holy oath:

To keep that oath were more impiety

Than Jephthah’s when he sacrific’d his daughter.

I am so sorry for my trespass made,

95

That, to deserve well at my brothers’ hands,

I here proclaim myself thy mortal foe;

With resolution, wheresoe’er I meet thee –

As I will meet thee if thou stir abroad –

To plague thee for thy foul misleading me.

100

And so, proud-hearted Warwick, I defy thee,

And to my brother turn my blushing cheeks.

Pardon me, Edward, I will make amends:

And, Richard, do not frown upon my faults,

For I will henceforth be no more unconstant.

105

KING EDWARD

Now welcome more, and ten times more belov’d,

Than if thou never hadst deserv’d our hate.

RICHARD     Welcome, good Clarence; this is brother-like.

WARWICK     O passing traitor, perjur’d and unjust!

KING EDWARD

What, Warwick, wilt thou leave the town and fight?

110

Or shall we beat the stones about thine ears?

WARWICK     Alas, I am not coop’d here for defence!

I will away towards Barnet presently

And bid thee battle, Edward, if thou dar’st.

KING EDWARD

Yes, Warwick, Edward dares, and leads the way.

115

Lords, to the field; Saint George and victory!

Exeunt. March. Warwick and his company follow.

5.2 Alarum, and excursions. Enter KING EDWARD, bringing forth WARWICK wounded.

KING EDWARD

So, lie thou there: die thou, and die our fear;

For Warwick was a bug that fear’d us all.

Now, Montague, sit fast; I seek for thee,

That Warwick’s bones may keep thine company. Exit.

WARWICK     Ah, who is nigh? Come to me, friend or foe,

5

And tell me who is victor, York or Warwick?

Why ask I that my mangled body shows? –

My blood, my want of strength, my sick heart shows? –

That I must yield my body to the earth,

And, by my fall, the conquest to my foe.

10

Thus yields the cedar to the axe’s edge

Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle,

Under whose shade the ramping lion slept,

Whose top branch over-peer’d Jove’s spreading tree

And kept low shrubs from winter’s powerful wind.

15

These eyes, that now are dimm’d with death’s black veil,

Have been as piercing as the mid-day sun

To search the secret treasons of the world;

The wrinkles in my brows, now fill’d with blood,

Were liken’d oft to kingly sepulchres;

20

For who liv’d King but I could dig his grave?

And who durst smile when Warwick bent his brow?

Lo now my glory smear’d in dust and blood!

My parks, my walks, my manors that I had,

Even now forsake me; and of all my lands

25

Is nothing left me but my body’s length.

Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?

And live we how we can, yet die we must.

Enter OXFORD and SOMERSET.

SOMERSET     Ah, Warwick, Warwick! wert thou as we are

We might recover all our loss again.

30

The Queen from France hath brought a puissant power.

Even now we heard the news. Ah, couldst thou fly!

WARWICK     Why then, I would not fly. Ah, Montague,

If thou be there, sweet brother, take my hand,

And with thy lips keep in my soul a while!

35

Thou lov’st me not; for, brother, if thou didst,

Thy tears would wash this cold congealed blood

That glues my lips and will not let me speak.

Come quickly, Montague, or I am dead.

SOMERSET

Ah, Warwick! Montague hath breath’d his last;

40

And to the latest gasp cried out for Warwick,

And said, ‘Commend me to my valiant brother.’

And more he would have said; and more he spoke;

Which sounded like a cannon in a vault

That mought not be distinguish’d; but at last

45

I well might hear, deliver’d with a groan,

‘O farewell, Warwick!’

WARWICK     Sweet rest his soul!

Fly, lords, and save yourselves, for Warwick bids

You all farewell, to meet in heaven. [He dies.]

OXFORD     Away, away, to meet the Queen’s great power!

50

Here they bear away his body. Exeunt.

5.3 Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD in triumph, with RICHARD, GEORGE and the rest.

KING EDWARD

Thus far our fortune keeps an upward course,

And we are grac’d with wreaths of victory:

But in the midst of this bright-shining day

I spy a black suspicious threatening cloud

That will encounter with our glorious sun

5

Ere he attain his easeful western bed –

I mean, my lord, those powers that the Queen

Hath rais’d in Gallia have arriv’d our coast,

And, as we hear, march on to fight with us.

GEORGE     A little gale will soon disperse that cloud

10

And blow it to the source from whence it came;

Thy very beams will dry those vapours up,

For every cloud engenders not a storm.

RICHARD     The Queen is valu’d thirty thousand strong,

And Somerset, with Oxford, fled to her:

15

If she have time to breathe, be well assur’d

Her faction will be full as strong as ours.

KING EDWARD     We are advertis’d by our loving friends

That they do hold their course toward Tewkesbury.

We, having now the best at Barnet field,

20

Will thither straight, for willingness rids way;

And as we march our strength will be augmented

In every county as we go along.

Strike up the drum; cry ‘Courage!’ and away. Exeunt.

5.4 Flourish. March. Enter QUEEN MARGARET, PRINCE EDWARD SOMERSET, OXFORD and soldiers.

QUEEN MARGARET

Great lords, wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss,

But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.

What though the mast be now blown overboard,

The cable broke, the holding anchor lost,

And half our sailors swallow’d in the flood;

5

Yet lives our pilot still: is’t meet that he

Should leave the helm and, like a fearful lad,

With tearful eyes add water to the sea

And give more strength to that which hath too much;

Whiles, in his moan, the ship splits on the rock,

10

Which industry and courage might have sav’d?

Ah, what a shame! ah, what a fault were this!

Say Warwick was our anchor; what of that?

And Montague our top-mast; what of him?

Our slaughter’d friends the tackles; what of these?

15

Why, is not Oxford here another anchor?

And Somerset another goodly mast?

The friends of France our shrouds and tacklings?

And, though unskilful, why not Ned and I

For once allow’d the skilful pilot’s charge?

20

We will not from the helm to sit and weep,

But keep our course, though the rough wind say no,

From shelves and rocks that threaten us with wrack.

As good to chide the waves as speak them fair.

And what is Edward but a ruthless sea?

25

What Clarence but a quicksand of deceit?

And Richard but a ragged fatal rock?

All these the enemies to our poor bark.

Say you can swim – alas, ’tis but a while!

Tread on the sand – why, there you quickly sink:

30

Bestride the rock – the tide will wash you off,

Or else you famish; that’s a threefold death.

This speak I, lords, to let you understand,

If case some one of you would fly from us,

That there’s no hop’d-for mercy with the brothers

35

More than with ruthless waves, with sands, and rocks.

Why, courage then! what cannot be avoided

’Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.

PRINCE     Methinks a woman of this valiant spirit

Should, if a coward heard her speak these words,

40

Infuse his breast with magnanimity

And make him, naked, foil a man at arms.

I speak not this as doubting any here;

For did I but suspect a fearful man,

He should have leave to go away betimes,

45

Lest in our need he might infect another

And make him of like spirit to himself.

If any such be here – as God forbid! –

Let him depart before we need his help.

OXFORD     Women and children of so high a courage,

50

And warriors faint! why, ’twere perpetual shame.

O brave young Prince! thy famous grandfather

Doth live again in thee: long may’st thou live

To bear his image and renew his glories!

SOMERSET     And he that will not fight for such a hope

55

Go home to bed and, like the owl by day,

If he arise, be mock’d and wonder’d at.

QUEEN MARGARET

Thanks, gentle Somerset; sweet Oxford, thanks.

PRINCE     And take his thanks that yet hath nothing else.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     Prepare you, lords, for Edward is at hand

60

Ready to fight; therefore be resolute.

OXFORD     I thought no less: it is his policy

To haste thus fast, to find us unprovided.

SOMERSET     But he’s deceiv’d; we are in readiness.

QUEEN MARGARET

This cheers my heart, to see your forwardness.

65

OXFORD

Here pitch our battle; hence we will not budge.

Flourish, and march. Enter KING EDWARD, RICHARD, GEORGE and soldiers.

KING EDWARD

Brave followers, yonder stands the thorny wood

Which by the heavens’ assistance and your strength

Must by the roots be hewn up yet ere night.

I need not add more fuel to your fire,

70

For well I wot ye blaze to burn them out.

Give signal to the fight, and to it, lords!

QUEEN MARGARET

Lords, knights, and gentlemen, what I should say

My tears gainsay; for every word I speak

Ye see I drink the water of my eye.

75

Therefore no more but this: Henry, your sovereign,

Is prisoner to the foe, his state usurp’d,

His realm a slaughter-house, his subjects slain,

His statutes cancell’d, and his treasure spent;

And yonder stands the wolf that makes this spoil.

80

You fight in justice: then, in God’s name, lords,

Be valiant, and give signal to the fight.

Alarum. Retreat. Excursions. Exeunt.

5.5 Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD, RICHARD, GEORGE and soldiers; with QUEEN MARGARET, OXFORD and SOMERSET, prisoners.

KING EDWARD     Now here a period of tumultuous broils.

Away with Oxford to Hames Castle straight:

For Somerset, off with his guilty head.

Go, bear them hence; I will not hear them speak.

OXFORD     For my part, I’ll not trouble thee with words.

5

SOMERSET

Nor I; but stoop with patience to my fortune.

Exeunt Oxford and Somerset, guarded.

QUEEN MARGARET

So part we sadly in this troublous world,

To meet with joy in sweet Jerusalem.

KING EDWARD

Is proclamation made that who finds Edward

Shall have a high reward, and he his life?

10

RICHARD     It is: and lo where youthful Edward comes.

Enter soldiers, with PRINCE EDWARD.

KING EDWARD

Bring forth the gallant: let us hear him speak.

What, can so young a thorn begin to prick?

Edward, what satisfaction canst thou make

For bearing arms, for stirring up my subjects,

15

And all the trouble thou hast turn’d me to?

PRINCE     Speak like a subject, proud ambitious York.

Suppose that I am now my father’s mouth;

Resign thy chair, and where I stand kneel thou,

Whilst I propose the self-same words to thee

20

Which, traitor, thou would’st have me answer to.

QUEEN MARGARET

Ah, that thy father had been so resolv’d!

RICHARD     That you might still have worn the petticoat

And ne’er have stol’n the breech from Lancaster.

PRINCE     Let Aesop fable in a winter’s night;

25

His currish riddles sorts not with this place.

RICHARD     By heaven, brat, I’ll plague ye for that word.

QUEEN MARGARET

Ay, thou wast born to be a plague to men.

RICHARD     For God’s sake, take away this captive scold.

PRINCE     Nay, take away this scolding crookback rather.

30

KING EDWARD

Peace, wilful boy, or I will charm your tongue.

GEORGE     Untutor’d lad, thou art too malapert.

PRINCE     I know my duty; you are all undutiful:

Lascivious Edward, and thou perjur’d George,

And thou misshapen Dick, I tell ye all

35

I am your better, traitors as ye are,

And thou usurp’st my father’s right and mine.

KING EDWARD

Take that, the likeness of this railer here. [Stabs him.]

RICHARD     Sprawl’st thou? Take that to end thy agony.

[Stabs him.]

GEORGE     And there’s for twitting me with perjury.

40

[Stabs him.]

QUEEN MARGARET     O, kill me too!

RICHARD     Marry, and shall.

[Offers to kill her.]

KING EDWARD

Hold, Richard, hold; for we have done too much.

RICHARD

Why should she live to fill the world with words?

KING EDWARD

What, doth she swoon? Use means for her recovery.

RICHARD     Clarence, excuse me to the King my brother:

45

I’ll hence to London on a serious matter:

Ere ye come there, be sure to hear some news.

GEORGE     What? what?

RICHARD     The Tower! the Tower! I’ll root them out.

Exit.

QUEEN MARGARET

O Ned, sweet Ned, speak to thy mother, boy!

Canst thou not speak? O traitors! murderers!

50

They that stabb’d Caesar shed no blood at all,

Did not offend, nor were not worthy blame,

If this foul deed were by to equal it.

He was a man; this, in respect, a child;

And men ne’er spend their fury on a child.

55

What’s worse than murderer, that I may name it?

No, no, my heart will burst and if I speak;

And I will speak, that so my heart may burst.

Butchers and villains! bloody cannibals!

How sweet a plant have you untimely cropp’d!

60

You have no children, butchers; if you had,

The thought of them would have stirr’d up remorse:

But if you ever chance to have a child,

Look in his youth to have him so cut off

As, deathsmen, you have rid this sweet young prince!

65

KING EDWARD

Away with her; go bear her hence perforce.

QUEEN MARGARET

Nay, never bear me hence; dispatch me here:

Here sheath thy sword; I’ll pardon thee my death.

What, wilt thou not? Then, Clarence, do it thou.

GEORGE     By heaven, I will not do thee so much ease.

70

QUEEN MARGARET

Good Clarence, do; sweet Clarence, do thou do it.

GEORGE

Didst thou not hear me swear I would not do it?

QUEEN MARGARET

Ay, but thou usest to forswear thyself.

’Twas sin before, but now ’tis charity.

What! wilt thou not? Where is that devil’s butcher?

75

Richard, hard-favour’d Richard, where art thou,

Thou art not here: murder is thy alms-deed;

Petitioners for blood thou ne’er put’st back.

KING EDWARD     Away, I say; I charge ye bear her hence.

QUEEN MARGARET

So come to you and yours as to this prince!

80

Exit, led out forcibly.

KING EDWARD     Where’s Richard gone?

GEORGE     To London all in post, and, as I guess,

To make a bloody supper in the Tower.

KING EDWARD     He’s sudden if a thing come in his head.

Now march we hence: discharge the common sort

85

With pay and thanks, and let’s away to London

And see our gentle Queen how well she fares:

By this, I hope, she hath a son for me.     Exeunt.

5.6 Enter KING HENRY and RICHARD, with the lieutenant, on the walls.

RICHARD

Good day, my lord. What, at your book so hard?

KING HENRY

Ay, my good lord – my lord, I should say rather.

’Tis sin to flatter; ‘good’ was little better:

‘Good Gloucester’ and ‘good devil’ were alike,

And both preposterous; therefore not ‘good lord’.

5

RICHARD

Sirrah, leave us to ourselves; we must confer.

Exit lieutenant.

KING HENRY

So flies the reckless shepherd from the wolf;

So first the harmless sheep doth yield his fleece,

And next his throat unto the butcher’s knife.

What scene of death hath Roscius now to act?

10

RICHARD     Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;

The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

KING HENRY     The bird that hath been limed in a bush

With trembling wings misdoubteth every bush;

And I, the hapless male to one sweet bird,

15

Have now the fatal object in my eye

Where my poor young was lim’d, was caught, and kill’d.

RICHARD     Why, what a peevish fool was that of Crete,

That taught his son the office of a fowl!

And yet, for all his wings, the fool was drown’d.

20

KING HENRY     I, Daedalus; my poor boy, Icarus;

Thy father, Minos, that denied our course;

The sun that sear’d the wings of my sweet boy,

Thy brother Edward; and thyself, the sea

Whose envious gulf did swallow up his life.

25

Ah, kill me with thy weapon, not with words!

My breast can better brook thy dagger’s point

Than can my ears that tragic history.

But wherefore dost thou come? Is’t for my life?

RICHARD     Think’st thou I am an executioner?

30

KING HENRY     A persecutor I am sure thou art:

If murdering innocents be executing,

Why then thou art an executioner.

RICHARD     Thy son I kill’d for his presumption.

KING HENRY

Hadst thou been kill’d when first thou didst presume,

35

Thou hadst not liv’d to kill a son of mine.

And thus I prophesy: that many a thousand

Which now mistrust no parcel of my fear,

And many an old man’s sigh, and many a widow’s,

And many an orphan’s water-standing eye –

40

Men for their sons’, wives for their husbands’,

Orphans for their parents’ timeless death –

Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born.

The owl shriek’d at thy birth – an evil sign;

The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time;

45

Dogs howl’d, and hideous tempests shook down trees;

The raven rook’d her on the chimney’s top,

And chattering pies in dismal discords sung;

Thy mother felt more than a mother’s pain,

And yet brought forth less than a mother’s hope,

50

To wit, an indigest deformed lump,

Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree.

Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born,

To signify thou cam’st to bite the world;

And if the rest be true which I have heard,

55

Thou cam’st –

RICHARD     I’ll hear no more: die, prophet, in thy speech.

[Stabs him.]

For this, amongst the rest, was I ordain’d.

KING HENRY     Ay, and for much more slaughter after this.

O God, forgive my sins and pardon thee! [Dies.]

60

RICHARD     What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster

Sink in the ground? I thought it would have mounted.

See how my sword weeps for the poor King’s death.

O, may such purple tears be alway shed

From those that wish the downfall of our house!

65

If any spark of life be yet remaining,

Down, down to hell; and say I sent thee thither –

[Stabs him again.]

I that have neither pity, love, nor fear.

Indeed ’tis true that Henry told me of:

For I have often heard my mother say

70

I came into the world with my legs forward.

Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste

And seek their ruin that usurp’d our right?

The midwife wonder’d, and the women cried

‘O Jesu bless us, he is born with teeth!’

75

And so I was, which plainly signified

That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog.

Then, since the heavens have shap’d my body so,

Let hell make crook’d my mind to answer it.

I have no brother, I am like no brother;

80

And this word ‘love’, which greybeards call divine,

Be resident in men like one another,

And not in me: I am myself alone.

Clarence, beware; thou keep’st me from the light,

But I will sort a pitchy day for thee;

85

For I will buzz abroad such prophecies

As Edward shall be fearful of his life;

And then, to purge his fear, I’ll be thy death.

King Henry and the Prince his son are gone;

Clarence, thy turn is next, and then the rest,

90

Counting myself but bad till I be best.

I’ll throw thy body in another room,

And triumph, Henry, in thy day of doom.

Exit, with the body.

5.7 Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD, QUEEN ELIZABETH, GEORGE, RICHARD, HASTINGS, a nurse with the young Prince and attendants.

KING EDWARD

Once more we sit in England’s royal throne,

Repurchas’d with the blood of enemies.

What valiant foemen, like to autumn’s corn,

Have we mow’d down in tops of all their pride!

Three Dukes of Somerset, threefold renown’d

5

For hardy and undoubted champions;

Two Cliffords, as the father and the son;

And two Northumberlands – two braver men

Ne’er spurr’d their coursers at the trumpet’s sound;

With them, the two brave bears, Warwick and Montague,

10

That in their chains fetter’d the kingly lion

And made the forest tremble when they roar’d.

Thus have we swept suspicion from our seat

And made our footstool of security.

Come hither, Bess, and let me kiss my boy.

15

Young Ned, for thee thine uncles and myself

Have in our armours watch’d the winter’s night,

Went all afoot in summer’s scalding heat,

That thou might’st repossess the crown in peace;

And of our labours thou shalt reap the gain.

20

RICHARD [aside]

I’ll blast his harvest, and your head were laid;

For yet I am not look’d on in the world.

This shoulder was ordain’d so thick to heave,

And heave it shall some weight, or break my back:

Work thou the way, and that shall execute.

25

KING EDWARD

Clarence and Gloucester, love my lovely Queen;

And kiss your princely nephew, brothers both.

GEORGE     The duty that I owe unto your Majesty

I seal upon the lips of this sweet babe.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

Thanks, noble Clarence; worthy brother, thanks.

30

RICHARD

And, that I love the tree from whence thou sprang’st,

Witness the loving kiss I give the fruit.

[aside] To say the truth, so Judas kiss’d his master

And cried ‘All hail!’ when as he meant all harm.

KING EDWARD     Now am I seated as my soul delights,

35

Having my country’s peace and brothers’ loves.

GEORGE

What will your Grace have done with Margaret?

Reignier, her father, to the King of France

Hath pawn’d the Sicils and Jerusalem,

And hither have they sent it for her ransom.

40

KING EDWARD

Away with her and waft her hence to France.

And now what rests but that we spend the time

With stately triumphs, mirthful comic shows,

Such as befits the pleasure of the court?

Sound drums and trumpets! Farewell, sour annoy!

45

For here, I hope, begins our lasting joy.     Exeunt.

King Henry VIII

King Henry VIII, also known as All Is True, can be dated with unusual precision because it was being performed at the Globe on 29 June 1613 when the firing of cannon set light to the thatched roof and the theatre was burnt to the ground – fortunately without loss of life or injury. Several contemporary accounts of the fire refer to King Henry VIII as a new play at the time, so scholars agree in dating it 1613, though some would put it back to the beginning of that year, arguing that it would have been appropriate for performance at Court during the wedding celebrations of James I’s daughter Elizabeth and Frederick, the Elector Palatine. Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, did perform six of his plays as contributions to the festivities but there is no definite proof that King Henry VIII was one of them.

It was printed as the last of Shakespeare’s English history plays in the First Folio in 1623, and its historical material derives in part from the chronicles of Raphael Holinshed and Edward Hall – sources Shakespeare had used for his earlier histories – but it was composed some fourteen years after Henry V, the latest in the sequence of nine history plays Shakespeare had written between 1590 and 1599, and in some ways it is a different kind of play, having as many affinities with the late tragicomedies or ‘romances’ such as The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest as it has with the histories. It comes no nearer to a battlefield than a description of the ceremonial ‘Field of the Cloth of Gold’, where Henry VIII met Francis I to inaugurate a peace treaty between England and France; and it presents its main political events, which provide an implicit history of the Reformation, as a series of set-pieces on the fall from greatness of some characters (the Duke of Buckingham, Katherine of Aragon, Cardinal Wolsey) and the rise of others (Anne Bullen, Thomas Cranmer). It ends with a celebration of the birth of the future Elizabeth I and a tribute – which, in context, can be read as backhanded – to her supposedly even more glorious successor, James I. It imbues its historical events with a degree of myth or symbolism and presents Henry as an intemperate monarch, repeatedly upstaged by his subjects, notably the prelates, Wolsey and Cranmer.

Most editors and scholars believe that this play, like Cardenio (now lost) and The Two Noble Kinsmen, was a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher. All three plays date from the period 1612-13 when Shakespeare was scaling down his level of participation in the King’s Men’s activities; Fletcher succeeded him as the chief dramatist of the company, and seems to have preferred to work collaboratively, writing plays with Francis Beaumont and Philip Massinger as well as with Shakespeare. The scenes in the play generally attributed to Shakespeare are 1.1, 1.2, 2.3, 2.4, 3.2 to line 203 and 5.1, although to separate out the work of one participant in a collaboration is, in a sense, to miss the point.

The play was revived during the Restoration and remained popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, partly because of the opportunities it afforded for lavish spectacle and pageantry; it tends to be performed at times of coronation. The roles of Wolsey and Katherine came to dominate productions and were performed by leading actors from John Philip Kemble and his sister Sarah Siddons in 1806 to Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in 1892; much of the play used to be cut in order to focus attention on these roles. Twentieth-century productions restored Henry to a central position and aimed for a more thoughtful and serious reading of the play, finding ironies and contradictions in it as well as theatrical display.

The 2000 Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

PROLOGUE

Duke of NORFOLK

Duke of BUCKINGHAM

Lord ABERGAVENNY

son-in-law to the Duke of Buckingham

Cardinal WOLSEY

Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor

SECRETARY

to Cardinal Wolsey

BRANDON

SERGEANT-at-Arms

KING     Henry the Eighth

of England

Sir Thomas LOVELL

KATHERINE

of Aragon, Queen of England, later divorced

Duke of SUFFOLK

SURVEYOR

to the Duke of Buckingham

Lord CHAMBERLAIN

Lord SANDYS

ANNE     Bullen

maid of honour to Katherine, later Queen of England

Sir Henry GUILDFORD

SERVANT

at Wolsey’s party

First GENTLEMAN

Second GENTLEMAN

Sir Nicholas VAUX

Cardinal CAMPEIUS

papal legate

GARDINER

the King’s secretary, later Bishop of Winchester

OLD LADY

friend to Anne Bullen

Bishop of LINCOLN

GRIFFITH

Gentleman Usher to Katherine

SCRIBE

to the court

CRIER

to the court

Earl of SURREY

son-in-law to the Duke of Buckingham

Thomas CROMWELL

Wolsey’s secretary, later secretary to the Privy Council

Lord CHANCELLOR

(Sir Thomas More)

GARTER

King-of-Arms

Third GENTLEMAN

PATIENCE

attendant on Katherine

MESSENGER

at Kimbolton

Lord CAPUTIUS

ambassador from the Holy Roman Emperor

Gardiner’s PAGE

Sir Anthony DENNY

Thomas CRANMER

Archbishop of Canterbury

Door KEEPER

of the Council Chamber

Doctor BUTTS

the King’s physician

PORTER

Porter’s MAN

EPILOGUE

Musicians, Guards, Secretaries, Noblemen, Ladies, Gentlemen, Masquers, Tipstaves, Halberdiers, Attendants, Common People, Vergers, Scribes, Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishops of Ely, Rochester and St Asaph, Priests, Gentleman Usher, Women attendant on Katherine, Judges, Choristers, Lord Mayor of London, Marquess of Dorset, four Barons of the Cinque Ports, Bishop of London, Duchess of Norfolk, six Dancers (spirits) in Katherine’s vision, Marchioness of Dorset, Aldermen, Servants, Grooms

King Henry VIII

Enter PROLOGUE.

PROLOGUE

I come no more to make you laugh: things now

That bear a weighty and a serious brow,

Sad, high and working, full of state and woe,

Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,

We now present. Those that can pity here

5

May, if they think it well, let fall a tear:

The subject will deserve it. Such as give

Their money out of hope they may believe

May here find truth, too. Those that come to see

Only a show or two and so agree

10

The play may pass, if they be still and willing

I’ll undertake may see away their shilling

Richly in two short hours. Only they

That come to hear a merry, bawdy play,

A noise of targets, or to see a fellow

15

In a long motley coat guarded with yellow,

Will be deceived. For, gentle hearers, know

To rank our chosen truth with such a show

As fool and fight is, beside forfeiting

Our own brains and the opinion that we bring

20

To make that only true we now intend,

Will leave us never an understanding friend.

Therefore, for goodness’ sake, and as you are known

The first and happiest hearers of the town,

Be sad, as we would make ye. Think ye see

25

The very persons of our noble story

As they were living; think you see them great,

And followed with the general throng and sweat

Of thousand friends; then, in a moment, see

How soon this mightiness meets misery;

30

And if you can be merry then, I’ll say

A man may weep upon his wedding day.     Exit.

1.1 Enter the Duke of NORFOLK at one door. At the other, the Duke of BUCKINGHAM and the Lord ABERGAVENNY.

BUCKINGHAM

Good morrow and well met. How have ye done

Since last we saw in France?

NORFOLK     I thank your grace,

Healthful, and ever since a fresh admirer

Of what I saw there.

BUCKINGHAM     An untimely ague

Stayed me a prisoner in my chamber when

5

Those suns of glory, those two lights of men,

Met in the vale of Andres.

NORFOLK     ’Twixt Guînes and Ardres

I was then present, saw them salute on horseback,

Beheld them when they lighted, how they clung

In their embracement as they grew together –

10

Which had they, what four throned ones could have weighed

Such a compounded one?

BUCKINGHAM     All the whole time

I was my chamber’s prisoner.

NORFOLK     Then you lost

The view of earthly glory. Men might say

Till this time pomp was single, but now married

15

To one above itself. Each following day

Became the next day’s master, till the last

Made former wonders its. Today the French,

All clinquant, all in gold like heathen gods,

Shone down the English; and tomorrow they

20

Made Britain India. Every man that stood

Showed like a mine. Their dwarfish pages were

As cherubims, all gilt. The madams too,

Not used to toil, did almost sweat to bear

The pride upon them, that their very labour

25

Was to them as a painting. Now this masque

Was cried incomparable; and th’ensuing night

Made it a fool and beggar. The two kings,

Equal in lustre, were now best, now worst,

As presence did present them: him in eye,

30

Still him in praise, and being present both,

’Twas said they saw but one, and no discerner

Durst wag his tongue in censure. When these suns –

For so they phrase ’em – by their heralds challenged

The noble spirits to arms, they did perform

35

Beyond thought’s compass – that former fabulous story

Being now seen possible enough, got credit

That Bevis was believed.

BUCKINGHAM     O, you go far.

NORFOLK     As I belong to worship and affect

In honour honesty, the tract of everything

40

Would by a good discourser lose some life

Which action’s self was tongue to. All was royal;

To the disposing of it naught rebelled;

Order gave each thing view; the office did

Distinctly his full function.

BUCKINGHAM     Who did guide –

45

I mean, who set the body and the limbs

Of this great sport together, as you guess?

NORFOLK     One, certes, that promises no element

In such a business.

BUCKINGHAM     I pray you who, my lord?

NORFOLK     All this was ordered by the good discretion

50

Of the right reverend Cardinal of York.

BUCKINGHAM

The devil speed him! No man’s pie is freed

From his ambitious finger. What had he

To do in these fierce vanities? I wonder

That such a keech can with his very bulk

55

Take up the rays o’th’ beneficial sun

And keep it from the earth.

NORFOLK     Surely, sir,

There’s in him stuff that puts him to these ends;

For being not propped by ancestry, whose grace

Chalks successors their way, nor called upon

60

For high feats done to th’ crown, neither allied

To eminent assistants, but spider-like,

Out of his self-drawing web, ’a gives us note

The force of his own merit makes his way

A gift that heaven gives for him, which buys

65

A place next to the King.

ABERGAVENNY     I cannot tell

What heaven hath given him – let some graver eye

Pierce into that – but I can see his pride

Peep through each part of him. Whence has he that?

If not from hell, the devil is a niggard

70

Or has given all before, and he begins

A new hell in himself.

BUCKINGHAM     Why the devil,

Upon this French going-out, took he upon him,

Without the privity o’th’ King, t’appoint

Who should attend on him? He makes up the file

75

Of all the gentry, for the most part such

To whom as great a charge, as little honour

He meant to lay upon; and his own letter –

The honourable board of Council out –

Must fetch him in he papers.

ABERGAVENNY     I do know

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Kinsmen of mine – three at the least – that have

By this so sickened their estates that never

They shall abound as formerly.

BUCKINGHAM     O, many

Have broke their backs with laying manors on ’em

For this great journey. What did this vanity

85

But minister communication of

A most poor issue?

NORFOLK     Grievingly, I think

The peace between the French and us not values

The cost that did conclude it.

BUCKINGHAM     Every man,

After the hideous storm that followed, was

90

A thing inspired and, not consulting, broke

Into a general prophecy, that this tempest,

Dashing the garment of this peace, aboded

The sudden breach on’t.

NORFOLK     Which is budded out,

For France hath flawed the league, and hath attached

95

Our merchants’ goods at Bordeaux.

ABERGAVENNY     Is it therefore

Th’ambassador is silenced?

NORFOLK     Marry, is’t.

ABERGAVENNY     A proper title of a peace, and purchased

At a superfluous rate.

BUCKINGHAM     Why, all this business

Our reverend Cardinal carried.

NORFOLK     Like it your grace,

100

The state takes notice of the private difference

Betwixt you and the Cardinal. I advise you –

And take it from a heart that wishes towards you

Honour and plenteous safety – that you read

The Cardinal’s malice and his potency

105

Together; to consider further that

What his high hatred would effect wants not

A minister in his power. You know his nature,

That he’s revengeful, and I know his sword

Hath a sharp edge: it’s long, and’t may be said

110

It reaches far, and where ’twill not extend,

Thither he darts it. Bosom up my counsel;

You’ll find it wholesome. Lo, where comes that rock

That I advise your shunning.

Enter Cardinal WOLSEY, the purse borne before him, certain of the guard and two Secretaries with papers. The Cardinal, in his passage, fixeth his eye on Buckingham, and Buckingham on him, both full of disdain.

WOLSEY     The Duke of Buckingham’s surveyor, ha?

115

Where’s his examination?

SECRETARY     Here, so please you.

WOLSEY     Is he in person ready?

SECRETARY     Ay, please your grace.

WOLSEY

Well, we shall then know more, and Buckingham

Shall lessen this big look.

Exeunt Cardinal and his train.

BUCKINGHAM

This butcher’s cur is venom-mouthed, and I

120

Have not the power to muzzle him: therefore best

Not wake him in his slumber. A beggar’s book

Outworths a noble’s blood.

NORFOLK     What, are you chafed?

Ask God for temperance: that’s th’appliance only

Which your disease requires.

BUCKINGHAM     I read in’s looks

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Matter against me, and his eye reviled

Me as his abject object. At this instant

He bores me with some trick. He’s gone to th’ King:

I’ll follow and out-stare him.

NORFOLK     Stay, my lord,

And let your reason with your choler question

130

What ’tis you go about. To climb steep hills

Requires slow pace at first. Anger is like

A full hot horse, who being allowed his way

Self-mettle tires him. Not a man in England

Can advise me like you: be to yourself

135

As you would to your friend.

BUCKINGHAM     I’ll to the King,

And from a mouth of honour quite cry down

This Ipswich fellow’s insolence, or proclaim

There’s difference in no persons.

NORFOLK     Be advised:

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot

140

That it do singe yourself. We may outrun

By violent swiftness that which we run at,

And lose by over-running. Know you not

The fire that mounts the liquor till’t run o’er,

In seeming to augment it, wastes it? Be advised:

145

I say again there is no English soul

More stronger to direct you than yourself,

If with the sap of reason you would quench

Or but allay the fire of passion.

BUCKINGHAM     Sir,

I am thankful to you, and I’ll go along

150

By your prescription; but this top-proud fellow –

Whom from the flow of gall I name not, but

From sincere motions – by intelligence

And proofs as clear as founts in July when

We see each grain of gravel, I do know

155

To be corrupt and treasonous.

NORFOLK     Say not ‘treasonous’.

BUCKINGHAM

To th’ King I’ll say’t, and make my vouch as strong

As shore of rock. Attend. This holy fox,

Or wolf, or both – for he is equal ravenous

As he is subtle, and as prone to mischief

160

As able to perform’t – his mind and place

Infecting one another – yea, reciprocally –

Only to show his pomp as well in France

As here at home, suggests the King our master

To this last costly treaty, th’interview

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That swallowed so much treasure and like a glass

Did break i’th’ rinsing.

NORFOLK     Faith, and so it did.

BUCKINGHAM

Pray give me favour, sir. This cunning Cardinal

The articles o’th’ combination drew

As himself pleased; and they were ratified

170

As he cried, ‘Thus let be’, to as much end

As give a crutch to th’ dead. But our Count–Cardinal

Has done this, and ’tis well: for worthy Wolsey,

Who cannot err, he did it. Now this follows –

Which, as I take it, is a kind of puppy

175

To th’old dam treason – Charles the Emperor,

Under pretence to see the Queen his aunt –

For ’twas indeed his colour, but he came

To whisper Wolsey – here makes visitation.

His fears were that the interview betwixt

180

England and France might through their amity

Breed him some prejudice, for from this league

Peeped harms that menaced him. He privily

Deals with our Cardinal, and as I trow –

Which I do well, for I am sure the Emperor

185

Paid ere he promised, whereby his suit was granted

Ere it was asked – but when the way was made

And paved with gold, the Emperor thus desired

That he would please to alter the King’s course

And break the foresaid peace. Let the King know,

190

As soon he shall by me, that thus the Cardinal

Does buy and sell his honour as he pleases,

And for his own advantage.

NORFOLK     I am sorry

To hear this of him, and could wish he were

Something mistaken in’t.

BUCKINGHAM     No, not a syllable.

195

I do pronounce him in that very shape

He shall appear in proof.

Enter BRANDON, a Sergeant-at-Arms before him, and two or three of the guard.

BRANDON     Your office, sergeant: execute it.

SERGEANT     Sir,

My lord the Duke of Buckingham, and Earl

Of Hereford, Stafford and Northampton, I

200

Arrest thee of high treason in the name

Of our most sovereign King.

BUCKINGHAM     Lo you, my lord,

The net has fallen upon me: I shall perish

Under device and practice.

BRANDON     I am sorry

To see you ta’en from liberty, to look on

205

The business present. ’Tis his highness’ pleasure

You shall to th’ Tower.

BUCKINGHAM     It will help me nothing

To plead mine innocence, for that dye is on me

Which makes my whitest part black. The will of heaven

Be done in this and all things: I obey.

210

O my lord Abergavenny, fare you well.

BRANDON     Nay, he must bear you company.

[to Abergavenny]     The King

Is pleased you shall to th’ Tower, till you know

How he determines further.

ABERGAVENNY     As the Duke said,

The will of heaven be done, and the King’s pleasure

215

By me obeyed.

BRANDON     Here is a warrant from

The King t’attach Lord Montague and the bodies

Of the Duke’s confessor, John de la Court,

One Gilbert Park, his chancellor –

BUCKINGHAM     So, so;

These are the limbs o’th’ plot. No more, I hope?

220

BRANDON     A monk o’th’ Chartreux.

BUCKINGHAM     O, Nicholas Hopkins?

BRANDON     He.

BUCKINGHAM

My surveyor is false: the o’er-great Cardinal

Hath showed him gold. My life is spanned already.

I am the shadow of poor Buckingham,

Whose figure even this instant cloud puts on

225

By darkening my clear sun. My lord, farewell.

     Exeunt.

1.2 Cornetts. Enter KING Henry, leaning on the Cardinal ’s shoulder, the nobles, and Sir Thomas LOVELL; the Cardinal places himself under the King’s feet on his right side.[A secretary attends the Cardinal.]

KING     My life itself, and the best heart of it,

Thanks you for this great care. I stood i’th’ level

Of a full-charged confederacy, and give thanks

To you that choked it. Let be called before us

That gentleman of Buckingham’s: in person

5

I’ll hear him his confessions justify,

And point by point the treasons of his master

He shall again relate.

A noise within crying ‘ Room for the Queen!’ who, as she enters is ushered by the Duke of NORFOLK. Enter Queen KATHERINE, NORFOLK and the Duke of SUFFOLK. Katherine kneels. King riseth from his state, takes her up, and kisses her.

KATHERINE     Nay, we must longer kneel. I am a suitor.

KING     Arise, and take place by us.

[The King placeth her by him.]

Half your suit

10

Never name to us. You have half our power;

The other moiety ere you ask is given.

Repeat your will and take it.

KATHERINE     Thank your majesty.

That you would love yourself, and in that love

Not unconsidered leave your honour nor

15

The dignity of your office, is the point

Of my petition.

KING     Lady mine, proceed.

KATHERINE     I am solicited – not by a few,

And those of true condition – that your subjects

Are in great grievance. There have been commissions

20

Sent down among ’em which hath flawed the heart

Of all their loyalties; wherein although,

My good lord Cardinal, they vent reproaches

Most bitterly on you as putter-on

Of these exactions, yet the King our master –

25

Whose honour heaven shield from soil – even he escapes not

Language unmannerly, yea, such which breaks

The sides of loyalty and almost appears

In loud rebellion.

NORFOLK     Not almost appears,

It doth appear; for, upon these taxations,

30

The clothiers all, not able to maintain

The many to them longing, have put off

The spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers, who,

Unfit for other life, compelled by hunger

And lack of other means, in desperate manner,

35

Daring th’event to th’ teeth, are all in uproar,

And danger serves among them.

KING     Taxation?

Wherein, and what taxation? My lord Cardinal,

You that are blamed for it alike with us,

Know you of this taxation?

WOLSEY     Please you, sir,

40

I know but of a single part in aught

Pertains to th’ state, and front but in that file

Where others tell steps with me.

KATHERINE     No, my lord,

You know no more than others, but you frame

Things that are known alike, which are not wholesome

45

To those which would not know them and yet must

Perforce be their acquaintance. These exactions

Whereof my sovereign would have note, they are

Most pestilent to th’ hearing, and to bear ’em

The back is sacrifice to th’ load. They say

50

They are devised by you, or else you suffer

Too hard an exclamation.

KING     Still ‘exaction’!

The nature of it? In what kind, let’s know,

Is this exaction?

KATHERINE     I am much too venturous

In tempting of your patience, but am boldened

55

Under your promised pardon. The subjects’ grief

Comes through commissions which compels from each

The sixth part of his substance, to be levied

Without delay; and the pretence for this

Is named your wars in France. This makes bold mouths:

60

Tongues spit their duties out, and cold hearts freeze

Allegiance in them. Their curses now

Live where their prayers did, and it’s come to pass

This tractable obedience is a slave

To each incensed will. I would your highness

65

Would give it quick consideration, for

There is no primer baseness.

KING     By my life,

This is against our pleasure.

WOLSEY     And for me,

I have no further gone in this than by

A single voice, and that not passed me but

70

By learned approbation of the judges. If I am

Traduced by ignorant tongues, which neither know

My faculties nor person yet will be

The chronicles of my doing, let me say

’Tis but the fate of place and the rough brake

75

That virtue must go through. We must not stint

Our necessary actions in the fear

To cope malicious censurers, which ever,

As ravenous fishes, do a vessel follow

That is new-trimmed, but benefit no further

80

Than vainly longing. What we oft do best,

By sick interpreters, or weak ones, is

Not ours or not allowed; what worst, as oft,

Hitting a grosser quality, is cried up

For our best act. If we shall stand still

85

In fear our motion will be mocked or carped at,

We should take root here where we sit,

Or sit state-statues only.

KING     Things done well,

And with a care, exempt themselves from fear;

Things done without example in their issue

90

Are to be feared. Have you a precedent

Of this commission? I believe not any.

We must not rend our subjects from our laws

And stick them in our will. Sixth part of each?

A trembling contribution! Why, we take

95

From every tree lop, bark and part o’th’ timber,

And though we leave it with a root, thus hacked

The air will drink the sap. To every county

Where this is questioned send our letters with

Free pardon to each man that has denied

100

The force of this commission. Pray look to’t:

I put it to your care.

WOLSEY     [apart to his secretary] A word with you.

Let there be letters writ to every shire

Of the King’s grace and pardon. The grieved commons

Hardly conceive of me: let it be noised

105

That through our intercession this revokement

And pardon comes. I shall anon advise you

Further in the proceeding.     Exit secretary.

Enter Surveyor.

KATHERINE     I am sorry that the Duke of Buckingham

Is run in your displeasure.

KING     It grieves many.

110

The gentleman is learned and a most rare speaker,

To nature none more bound, his training such

That he may furnish and instruct great teachers

And never seek for aid out of himself. Yet see,

When these so noble benefits shall prove

115

Not well disposed, the mind growing once corrupt,

They turn to vicious forms, ten times more ugly

Than ever they were fair. This man so complete,

Who was enrolled ’mongst wonders – and when we,

Almost with ravished listening, could not find

120

His hour of speech a minute – he, my lady,

Hath into monstrous habits put the graces

That once were his and is become as black

As if besmeared in hell. Sit by us. You shall hear –

This was his gentleman in trust – of him

125

Things to strike honour sad. Bid him recount

The fore-recited practices, whereof

We cannot feel too little, hear too much.

WOLSEY

Stand forth, and with bold spirit relate what you,

Most like a careful subject, have collected

130

Out of the Duke of Buckingham.

KING     Speak freely.

SURVEYOR     First, it was usual with him – every day

It would infect his speech – that if the King

Should without issue die, he’ll carry it so

To make the sceptre his. These very words

135

I’ve heard him utter to his son-in-law,

Lord Abergavenny, to whom by oath he menaced

Revenge upon the Cardinal.

WOLSEY     Please your highness note

His dangerous conception in this point,

Not friended by his wish to your high person;

140

His will is most malignant, and it stretches

Beyond you to your friends.

KATHERINE     My learned lord Cardinal,

Deliver all with charity.

KING     Speak on.

How grounded he his title to the crown

Upon our fail? To this point hast thou heard him

145

At any time speak aught?

SURVEYOR     He was brought to this

By a vain prophecy of Nicholas Hopkins.

KING     What was that Hopkins?

SURVEYOR     Sir, a Chartreux friar,

His confessor, who fed him every minute

With words of sovereignty.

KING     How knowst thou this?

150

SURVEYOR

Not long before your highness sped to France,

The Duke being at the Rose, within the parish

Saint Laurence Pountney, did of me demand

What was the speech among the Londoners

Concerning the French journey. I replied

155

Men feared the French would prove perfidious,

To the King’s danger. Presently, the Duke

Said ’twas the fear indeed, and that he doubted

’Twould prove the verity of certain words

Spoke by a holy monk, ‘that oft’, says he,

160

‘Hath sent to me, wishing me to permit

John de la Court, my chaplain, a choice hour

To hear from him a matter of some moment;

Whom after, under the confession’s seal,

He solemnly had sworn that what he spoke

165

My chaplain to no creature living but

To me should utter, with demure confidence

This pausingly ensued: “Neither the King, nor’s heirs –

Tell you the Duke – shall prosper. Bid him strive

To purchase the love o’th’ commonalty. The Duke

170

Shall govern England.” ’

KATHERINE     If I know you well,

You were the Duke’s surveyor, and lost your office

On the complaint o’th’ tenants. Take good heed

You charge not in your spleen a noble person

And spoil your nobler soul. I say, take heed –

175

Yes, heartily beseech you.

KING     Let him on:

[to the Surveyor] Go forward.

SURVEYOR     On my soul, I’ll speak but truth.

I told my lord the Duke, by th’ devil’s illusions

The monk might be deceived, and that ’twas dangerous

For him to ruminate on this so far until

180

It forged him some design – which, being believed,

It was much like to do. He answered, ‘Tush,

It can do me no damage,’ adding further

That had the King in his last sickness failed,

The Cardinal’s and Sir Thomas Lovell’s heads

185

Should have gone off.

KING     Ha? What, so rank? Ah, ha!

There’s mischief in this man. Canst thou say further?

SURVEYOR     I can, my liege.

KING     Proceed.

SURVEYOR     Being at Greenwich,

After your highness had reproved the Duke

About Sir William Bulmer –

190

KING     I remember

Of such a time: being my sworn servant,

The Duke retained him his. But on: what hence?

SURVEYOR

‘If’, quoth he, ‘I for this had been committed’ –

As to the Tower, I thought – ‘I would have played

195

The part my father meant to act upon

Th’usurper Richard who, being at Salisbury,

Made suit to come in’s presence; which if granted,

As he made semblance of his duty would

Have put his knife into him.’

KING     A giant traitor.

WOLSEY

200

Now, madam, may his highness live in freedom

And this man out of prison?

KATHERINE     God mend all.

KING

There’s something more would out of thee: what sayst?

SURVEYOR     After ‘the Duke his father’, with ‘the knife’,

He stretched him, and with one hand on his dagger,

205

Another spread on’s breast, mounting his eyes,

He did discharge a horrible oath, whose tenor

Was, were he evil used, he would outgo

His father by as much as a performance

Does an irresolute purpose.

KING     There’s his period:

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To sheathe his knife in us. He is attached;

Call him to present trial. If he may

Find mercy in the law, ’tis his; if none,

Let him not seek’t of us. By day and night,

He’s traitor to th’ height!     Exeunt.

1.3 Enter Lord CHAMBERLAIN and Lord SANDYS

CHAMBERLAIN

Is’t possible the spells of France should juggle

Men into such strange mysteries?

SANDYS     New customs,

Though they be never so ridiculous –

Nay, let ’em be unmanly – yet are followed.

CHAMBERLAIN

5

As far as I see, all the good our English

Have got by the late voyage is but merely

A fit or two o’th’ face – but they are shrewd ones,

For when they hold ’em you would swear directly

Their very noses had been counsellors

10

To Pepin or Clotharius, they keep state so.

SANDYS

They have all new legs, and lame ones. One would take it,

That never see ’em pace before, the spavin

Or springhalt reigned among ’em.

CHAMBERLAIN     Death, my lord,

Their clothes are after such a pagan cut to’t,

That sure they’ve worn out Christendom.

Enter Sir Thomas LOVELL.

How now?

15

What news, Sir Thomas Lovell?

LOVELL     Faith, my lord,

I hear of none but the new proclamation

That’s clapped upon the Court Gate.

CHAMBERLAIN     What is’t for?

LOVELL     The reformation of our travelled gallants

That fill the court with quarrels, talk and tailors.

20

CHAMBERLAIN

I’m glad ’tis there. Now I would pray our monsieurs

To think an English courtier may be wise

And never see the Louvre.

LOVELL     They must either,

For so run the conditions, leave those remnants

Of fool and feather that they got in France,

25

With all their honourable points of ignorance

Pertaining thereunto – as fights and fireworks;

Abusing better men than they can be

Out of a foreign wisdom – renouncing clean

The faith they have in tennis and tall stockings,

30

Short blistered breeches, and those types of travel,

And understand again like honest men,

Or pack to their old playfellows. There, I take it,

They may, cum privilegio, oui away

The lag end of their lewdness and be laughed at.

35

SANDYS     ’Tis time to give ’em physic, their diseases

Are grown so catching.

CHAMBERLAIN     What a loss our ladies

Will have of these trim vanities!

LOVELL     Ay, marry,

There will be woe indeed, lords. The sly whoresons

Have got a speeding trick to lay down ladies:

40

A French song and a fiddle has no fellow.

SANDYS     The devil fiddle ’em! I am glad they are going,

For sure there’s no converting of ’em. Now

An honest country lord, as I am, beaten

A long time out of play, may bring his plainsong

45

And have an hour of hearing, and, by’r Lady,

Held current music too.

CHAMBERLAIN     Well said, Lord Sandys.

Your colt’s tooth is not cast yet?

SANDYS     No, my lord,

Nor shall not while I have a stump.

CHAMBERLAIN     Sir Thomas,

Whither were you a-going?

LOVELL     To the Cardinal’s.

50

Your lordship is a guest too.

CHAMBERLAIN     O, ’tis true.

This night he makes a supper, and a great one,

To many lords and ladies. There will be

The beauty of this kingdom, I’ll assure you.

LOVELL

That churchman bears a bounteous mind indeed,

55

A hand as fruitful as the land that feeds us:

His dews fall everywhere.

CHAMBERLAIN     No doubt he’s noble –

He had a black mouth that said other of him.

SANDYS     He may, my lord; ’has wherewithal. In him

Sparing would show a worse sin than ill doctrine.

60

Men of his way should be most liberal:

They are set here for examples.

CHAMBERLAIN     True, they are so,

But few now give so great ones. My barge stays.

Your lordship shall along. Come, good Sir Thomas,

We shall be late else, which I would not be,

65

For I was spoke to, with Sir Henry Guildford,

This night to be comptrollers.

SANDYS     I am your lordship’s.     Exeunt.

1.4 Hautboys. A small table under a state for the Cardinal; a longer table for the guests. Then enter ANNE Bullen and diverse other ladies and gentlemen, as guests, at one door. At another door enter Sir Henry GUILDFORD.

GUILDFORD     Ladies, a general welcome from his grace

Salutes ye all. This night he dedicates

To fair content and you. None here, he hopes,

In all this noble bevy has brought with her

One care abroad: he would have all as merry

5

As, first, good company, good wine, good welcome

Can make good people.

Enter Lord CHAMBERLAIN, Lord SANDYS and Sir Thomas LOVELL.

O my lord, you’re tardy.

The very thought of this fair company

Clapped wings to me.

CHAMBERLAIN     You are young, Sir Harry Guildford.

SANDYS     Sir Thomas Lovell, had the Cardinal

10

But half my lay thoughts in him, some of these

Should find a running banquet ere they rested

I think would better please ’em. By my life,

They are a sweet society of fair ones.

LOVELL     O, that your lordship were but now confessor

15

To one or two of these.

SANDYS     I would I were:

They should find easy penance.

LOVELL     Faith, how easy?

SANDYS     As easy as a down bed would afford it.

CHAMBERLAIN

Sweet ladies, will it please you sit? Sir Harry,

Place you that side; I’ll take the charge of this.

20

His grace is entering. Nay, you must not freeze:

Two women placed together makes cold weather.

My lord Sandys, you are one will keep ’em waking:

Pray sit between these ladies.

SANDYS     By my faith,

And thank your lordship. By your leave, sweet ladies.

25

If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me:

I had it from my father.

ANNE     Was he mad, sir?

SANDYS     O, very mad – exceeding mad in love, too –

But he would bite none. Just as I do now,

He would kiss you twenty with a breath.

CHAMBERLAIN     Well said, my lord.

30

So, now you’re fairly seated, gentlemen,

The penance lies on you if these fair ladies

Pass away frowning.

SANDYS     For my little cure

Let me alone.

Hautboys. Enter Cardinal WOLSEY and takes his state.

WOLSEY

You’re welcome, my fair guests. That noble lady

35

Or gentleman that is not freely merry

Is not my friend. This, to confirm my welcome;

And to you all, good health!

SANDYS     Your grace is noble:

Let me have such a bowl may hold my thanks

And save me so much talking.

WOLSEY     My lord Sandys,

40

I am beholding to you. Cheer your neighbours.

Ladies, you are not merry. Gentlemen,

Whose fault is this?

SANDYS     The red wine first must rise

In their fair cheeks, my lord; then we shall have ’em

Talk us to silence.

ANNE     You are a merry gamester,

45

My lord Sandys.

SANDYS     Yes, if I make my play.

Here’s to your ladyship; and pledge it, madam,

For ’tis to such a thing –

ANNE     You cannot show me.

SANDYS     I told your grace they would talk anon.

[Drum and trumpet. Chambers discharged.]

WOLSEY     What’s that?

CHAMBERLAIN     Look out there, some of ye.

WOLSEY     What warlike voice,

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And to what end, is this? Nay, ladies, fear not:

By all the laws of war you’re privileged.

Enter a Servant.

CHAMBERLAIN     How now, what is’t?

SERVANT     A noble troop of strangers,

For so they seem. They’ve left their barge and landed,

And hither make, as great ambassadors

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From foreign princes.

WOLSEY     Good Lord Chamberlain,

Go, give ’em welcome – you can speak the French tongue –

And pray receive ’em nobly, and conduct ’em

Into our presence, where this heaven of beauty

Shall shine at full upon them. Some attend him.

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Exit Lord Chamberlain, attended.

[All rise, and tables removed.]

You have now a broken banquet, but we’ll mend it.

A good digestion to you all, and once more

I shower a welcome on ye. Welcome all!

Hautboys. Enter KING and others as masquers, habited like shepherds, ushered by the Lord CHAMBERLAIN. They pass directly before the Cardinal and gracefully salute him.

A noble company. What are their pleasures?

CHAMBERLAIN

Because they speak no English, thus they prayed

To tell your grace: that having heard by fame

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Of this so noble and so fair assembly

This night to meet here, they could do no less,

Out of the great respect they bear to beauty,

But leave their flocks and, under your fair conduct,

Crave leave to view these ladies and entreat

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An hour of revels with ’em.

WOLSEY     Say, Lord Chamberlain,

They have done my poor house grace; for which I pay ’em

A thousand thanks and pray ’em take their pleasures.

[The masquers choose ladies. The King chooses Anne

Bullen.]

KING     The fairest hand I ever touched. O Beauty,

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Till now I never knew thee.     [Music. Dance.]

WOLSEY     My lord.

CHAMBERLAIN     Your grace?

WOLSEY     Pray tell ’em thus much from me:

There should be one amongst ’em by his person

More worthy this place than myself, to whom,

If I but knew him, with my love and duty

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I would surrender it.

CHAMBERLAIN     I will, my lord.

[Chamberlain talks in a whisper with the masquers].

WOLSEY     What say they?

CHAMBERLAIN     Such a one they all confess

There is indeed, which they would have your grace

Find out, and he will take it.

WOLSEY     Let me see, then.

By all your good leaves, gentlemen, here I’ll make

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My royal choice.

KING     Ye have found him, Cardinal.

[Unmasks.]

You hold a fair assembly. You do well, lord:

You are a churchman, or I’ll tell you, Cardinal,

I should judge now unhappily.

WOLSEY     I am glad

Your grace is grown so pleasant.

KING     My lord Chamberlain,

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Prithee come hither. What fair lady’s that?

CHAMBERLAIN

An’t please your grace, Sir Thomas Bullen’s daughter,

The Viscount Rochford, one of her highness’ women.

KING

By heaven, she is a dainty one. [to Anne] Sweetheart,

I were unmannerly to take you out

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And not to kiss you. A health, gentlemen!

Let it go round.

WOLSEY     Sir Thomas Lovell, is the banquet ready

I’th’ privy chamber?

LOVELL     Yes, my lord.

WOLSEY     Your grace,

I fear, with dancing is a little heated.

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KING     I fear too much.

WOLSEY     There’s fresher air, my lord,

In the next chamber.

KING     Lead in your ladies, everyone. Sweet partner,

I must not yet forsake you. Let’s be merry,

Good my lord Cardinal. I have half a dozen healths

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To drink to these fair ladies, and a measure

To lead ’em once again, and then let’s dream

Who’s best in favour. Let the music knock it.

Exeunt with trumpets.

2.1 Enter two Gentlemen at several doors.

1 GENTLEMAN     Whither away so fast?

2 GENTLEMAN     O, God save ye.

Even to the Hall to hear what shall become

Of the great Duke of Buckingham.

1 GENTLEMAN     I’ll save you

That labour, sir. All’s now done but the ceremony

Of bringing back the prisoner.

2 GENTLEMAN     Were you there?

5

1 GENTLEMAN     Yes, indeed was I.

2 GENTLEMAN     Pray speak what has happened.

1 GENTLEMAN

You may guess quickly what.

2 GENTLEMAN     Is he found guilty?

1 GENTLEMAN     Yes, truly is he, and condemned upon’t.

2 GENTLEMAN     I am sorry for’t.

1 GENTLEMAN     So are a number more.

2 GENTLEMAN     But pray, how passed it?

10

1 GENTLEMAN     I’ll tell you in a little. The great Duke

Came to the bar, where to his accusations

He pleaded still not guilty and alleged

Many sharp reasons to defeat the law.

The King’s attorney, on the contrary,

15

Urged on the examinations, proofs, confessions,

Of diverse witnesses, which the Duke desired

To have brought viva voce to his face;

At which appeared against him his surveyor,

Sir Gilbert Park his chancellor, and John Court,

20

Confessor to him, with that devil monk,

Hopkins, that made this mischief.

2 GENTLEMAN     That was he

That fed him with his prophecies.

1 GENTLEMAN     The same.

All these accused him strongly, which he fain

Would have flung from him, but indeed he could not.

25

And so his peers, upon this evidence,

Have found him guilty of high treason. Much

He spoke, and learnedly, for life, but all

Was either pitied in him or forgotten.

2 GENTLEMAN     After all this, how did he bear himself?

30

1 GENTLEMAN

When he was brought again to th’ bar to hear

His knell rung out, his judgement, he was stirred

With such an agony he sweat extremely

And something spoke in choler, ill and hasty;

But he fell to himself again, and sweetly

35

In all the rest showed a most noble patience.

2 GENTLEMAN     I do not think he fears death.

1 GENTLEMAN     Sure he does not;

He never was so womanish. The cause

He may a little grieve at.

2 GENTLEMAN     Certainly

The Cardinal is the end of this.

1 GENTLEMAN     ’Tis likely,

40

By all conjectures: first, Kildare’s attainder,

Then Deputy of Ireland, who removed,

Earl Surrey was sent thither, and in haste too,

Lest he should help his father.

2 GENTLEMAN     That trick of state

Was a deep envious one.

1 GENTLEMAN     At his return

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No doubt he will requite it. This is noted,

And generally: whoever the King favours,

The Cardinal instantly will find employment –

And far enough from court, too.

2 GENTLEMAN     All the commons

Hate him perniciously and, o’my conscience,

50

Wish him ten fathom deep. This Duke as much

They love and dote on, call him ‘bounteous Buckingham,

The mirror of all courtesy’ –

Enter BUCKINGHAM from his arraignment, tipstaves before him, the axe with the edge towards him, halberds on each side, accompanied with Sir Thomas LOVELL, Sir Nicholas VAUX, Lord SANDYS, attendants and common people.

1 GENTLEMAN     Stay there, sir,

And see the noble ruined man you speak of.

2 GENTLEMAN     Let’s stand close and behold him.

BUCKINGHAM     All good people,

55

You that thus far have come to pity me,

Hear what I say, and then go home and lose me.

I have this day received a traitor’s judgement,

And by that name must die; yet heaven bear witness,

And if I have a conscience, let it sink me,

60

Even as the axe falls, if I be not faithful.

The law I bear no malice for my death –

’T has done upon the premises but justice –

But those that sought it I could wish more Christians.

Be what they will, I heartily forgive ’em.

65

Yet let ’em look they glory not in mischief

Nor build their evils on the graves of great men,

For then my guiltless blood must cry against ’em.

For further life in this world I ne’er hope,

Nor will I sue, although the King have mercies

70

More than I dare make faults. You few that loved me

And dare be bold to weep for Buckingham,

His noble friends and fellows, whom to leave

Is only bitter to him, only dying,

Go with me like good angels to my end,

75

And as the long divorce of steel falls on me,

Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice,

And lift my soul to heaven. Lead on, i’God’s name.

LOVELL     I do beseech your grace, for charity,

If ever any malice in your heart

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Were hid against me, now to forgive me frankly.

BUCKINGHAM     Sir Thomas Lovell, I as free forgive you

As I would be forgiven. I forgive all.

There cannot be those numberless offences

’Gainst me that I cannot take peace with. No black envy

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Shall make my grave. Commend me to his grace,

And if he speak of Buckingham, pray tell him

You met him half in heaven. My vows and prayers

Yet are the King’s and, till my soul forsake,

Shall cry for blessings on him. May he live

90

Longer than I have time to tell his years;

Ever beloved and loving may his rule be;

And when old Time shall lead him to his end,

Goodness and he fill up one monument.

LOVELL     To th’ waterside I must conduct your grace,

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Then give my charge up to Sir Nicholas Vaux,

Who undertakes you to your end.

VAUX [to attendants]     Prepare there:

The Duke is coming. See the barge be ready,

And fit it with such furniture as suits

The greatness of his person.

BUCKINGHAM     Nay, Sir Nicholas,

100

Let it alone. My state now will but mock me.

When I came hither, I was Lord High Constable

And Duke of Buckingham; now, poor Edward Bohun.

Yet I am richer than my base accusers,

That never knew what truth meant. I now seal it,

105

And with that blood will make ’em one day groan for’t.

My noble father, Henry of Buckingham,

Who first raised head against usurping Richard,

Flying for succour to his servant Banister,

Being distressed, was by that wretch betrayed,

110

And, without trial, fell. God’s peace be with him.

Henry the Seventh succeeding, truly pitying

My father’s loss, like a most royal prince,

Restored me to my honours and out of ruins

Made my name once more noble. Now his son,

115

Henry the Eighth, life, honour, name, and all

That made me happy at one stroke has taken

For ever from the world. I had my trial,

And must needs say a noble one, which makes me

A little happier than my wretched father.

120

Yet thus far we are one in fortunes: both

Fell by our servants, by those men we loved most –

A most unnatural and faithless service.

Heaven has an end in all. Yet, you that hear me,

This from a dying man receive as certain:

125

Where you are liberal of your loves and counsels,

Be sure you be not loose; for those you make friends

And give your hearts to, when they once perceive

The least rub in your fortunes, fall away

Like water from ye, never found again

130

But where they mean to sink ye. All good people,

Pray for me. I must now forsake ye. The last hour

Of my long weary life is come upon me.

Farewell, and when you would say something that is sad,

Speak how I fell. I have done, and God forgive me.

135

Exeunt Duke and train.

1 GENTLEMAN     O, this is full of pity. Sir, it calls,

I fear, too many curses on their heads

That were the authors.

2 GENTLEMAN     If the Duke be guiltless,

’Tis full of woe. Yet I can give you inkling

Of an ensuing evil, if it fall,

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Greater than this.

1 GENTLEMAN     Good angels keep it from us.

What may it be? You do not doubt my faith, sir?

2 GENTLEMAN

This secret is so weighty ’twill require

A strong faith to conceal it.

1 GENTLEMAN     Let me have it;

I do not talk much.

2 GENTLEMAN     I am confident;

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You shall, sir. Did you not of late days hear

A buzzing of a separation

Between the King and Katherine?

1 GENTLEMAN     Yes, but it held not,

For when the King once heard it, out of anger

He sent command to the Lord Mayor straight

150

To stop the rumour and allay those tongues

That durst disperse it.

2 GENTLEMAN     But that slander, sir,

Is found a truth now, for it grows again

Fresher then e’er it was, and held for certain

The King will venture at it. Either the Cardinal

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Or some about him near have, out of malice

To the good Queen, possessed him with a scruple

That will undo her. To confirm this, too,

Cardinal Campeius is arrived, and lately,

As all think, for this business.

1 GENTLEMAN     ’Tis the Cardinal;

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And merely to revenge him on the Emperor

For not bestowing on him at his asking

The archbishopric of Toledo this is purposed.

2 GENTLEMAN

I think you have hit the mark. But is’t not cruel

That she should feel the smart of this? The Cardinal

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Will have his will, and she must fall.

1 GENTLEMAN     ’Tis woeful.

We are too open here to argue this.

Let’s think in private more.     Exeunt.

2.2 Enter Lord CHAMBERLAIN, reading this letter.

CHAMBERLAIN     My lord, the horses your lordship sent

for, with all the care I had I saw well chosen, ridden and

furnished. They were young and handsome and of the best

breed in the north. When they were ready to set out for

London, a man of my lord Cardinal’s, by commission and

5

main power, took ’em from me with this reason: his master

would be served before a subject, if not before the King,

which stopped our mouths, sir.

I fear he will indeed. Well, let him have them;

He will have all, I think.

10

Enter to the Lord Chamberlain the Dukes of NORFOLK and SUFFOLK.

NORFOLK     Well met, my lord Chamberlain.

CHAMBERLAIN     Good day to both your graces.

SUFFOLK     How is the King employed?

CHAMBERLAIN     I left him private,

Full of sad thoughts and troubles.

NORFOLK     What’s the cause?

CHAMBERLAIN

It seems the marriage with his brother’s wife

15

Has crept too near his conscience.

SUFFOLK     No, his conscience

Has crept too near another lady.

NORFOLK     ’Tis so;

This is the Cardinal’s doing. The King–Cardinal,

That blind priest, like the eldest son of Fortune,

Turns what he list. The King will know him one day.

20

SUFFOLK

Pray God he do. He’ll never know himself else.

NORFOLK     How holily he works in all his business,

And with what zeal! For now he has cracked the league

Between us and the Emperor, the Queen’s great nephew,

He dives into the King’s soul and there scatters

25

Dangers, doubts, wringing of the conscience,

Fears and despairs – and all these for his marriage.

And out of all these, to restore the King,

He counsels a divorce, a loss of her

That like a jewel has hung twenty years

30

About his neck yet never lost her lustre;

Of her that loves him with that excellence

That angels love good men with; even of her

That, when the greatest stroke of Fortune falls,

Will bless the King – and is not this course pious?

35

CHAMBERLAIN

Heaven keep me from such counsel! ’Tis most true:

These news are everywhere – every tongue speaks ’em,

And every true heart weeps for’t. All that dare

Look into these affairs see this main end:

The French king’s sister. Heaven will one day open

40

The King’s eyes, that so long have slept upon

This bold bad man.

SUFFOLK     And free us from his slavery.

NORFOLK     We had need pray,

And heartily, for our deliverance,

Or this imperious man will work us all

45

From princes into pages. All men’s honours

Lie like one lump before him, to be fashioned

Into what pitch he please.

SUFFOLK     For me, my lords,

I love him not nor fear him: there’s my creed.

As I am made without him, so I’ll stand,

50

If the King please. His curses and his blessings

Touch me alike: they’re breath I not believe in.

I knew him and I know him; so I leave him

To him that made him proud, the Pope.

NORFOLK     Let’s in,

And with some other business put the King

55

From these sad thoughts that work too much upon him.

My lord, you’ll bear us company?

CHAMBERLAIN     Excuse me;

The King has sent me otherwhere. Besides,

You’ll find a most unfit time to disturb him.

Health to your lordships.

NORFOLK     Thanks, my good lord Chamberlain.

60

Exit Lord Chamberlain, and the King draws the

curtain and sits reading pensively.

SUFFOLK     How sad he looks. Sure he is much afflicted.

KING     Who’s there? Ha?

NORFOLK     Pray God he be not angry.

KING

Who’s there, I say? How dare you thrust yourselves

Into my private meditations?

Who am I? Ha?

65

NORFOLK     A gracious king that pardons all offences

Malice ne’er meant. Our breach of duty this way

Is business of estate, in which we come

To know your royal pleasure.

KING     Ye are too bold.

Go to. I’ll make ye know your times of business.

70

Is this an hour for temporal affairs? Ha?

Enter WOLSEY and CAMPEIUS with a commission.

Who’s there? My good lord Cardinal? O my Wolsey,

The quiet of my wounded conscience,

Thou art a cure fit for a king. [to Campeius] You’re welcome,

Most learned reverend sir, into our kingdom;

75

Use us and it. [to Wolsey] My good lord, have great care

I be not found a talker.

WOLSEY     Sir, you cannot.

I would your grace would give us but an hour

Of private conference.

KING [to Norfolk and Suffolk]     We are busy. Go.

NORFOLK [aside to Suffolk]

This priest has no pride in him!

SUFFOLK [aside to Norfolk]     Not to speak of.

80

I would not be so sick, though, for his place.

But this cannot continue.

NORFOLK [aside to Suffolk]     If it do,

I’ll venture one have-at-him.

SUFFOLK [aside to Norfolk]     I another.

Exeunt Norfolk and Suffolk.

WOLSEY     Your grace has given a precedent of wisdom

Above all princes in committing freely

85

Your scruple to the voice of Christendom.

Who can be angry now? What envy reach you?

The Spaniard, tied by blood and favour to her,

Must now confess, if they have any goodness,

The trial just and noble. All the clerks –

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I mean the learned ones in Christian kingdoms –

Have their free voices. Rome, the nurse of judgement,

Invited by your noble self, hath sent

One general tongue unto us: this good man,

This just and learned priest, Cardinal Campeius,

95

Whom once more I present unto your highness.

KING

And once more in mine arms I bid him welcome,

And thank the holy conclave for their loves:

They have sent me such a man I would have wished for.

CAMPEIUS

Your grace must needs deserve all strangers’ loves,

100

You are so noble. To your highness’ hand

I tender my commission, by whose virtue,

The court of Rome commanding, you, my lord

Cardinal of York, are joined with me their servant

In the unpartial judging of this business.

105

KING     Two equal men. The Queen shall be acquainted

Forthwith for what you come. Where’s Gardiner?

WOLSEY     I know your majesty has always loved her

So dear in heart not to deny her that

A woman of less place might ask by law –

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Scholars allowed freely to argue for her.

KING     Ay, and the best she shall have – and my favour

To him that does best: God forbid else. Cardinal,

Prithee call Gardiner to me, my new secretary:

I find him a fit fellow.

115

Enter GARDINER.

WOLSEY [aside to Gardiner]

Give me your hand. Much joy and favour to you;

You are the King’s now.

GARDINER [aside to Wolsey]     But to be commanded

For ever by your grace, whose hand has raised me.

KING     Come hither, Gardiner.

[The King walks and whispers with Gardiner.]

CAMPEIUS     My lord of York, was not one Doctor Pace

120

In this man’s place before him?

WOLSEY     Yes, he was.

CAMPEIUS     Was he not held a learned man?

WOLSEY     Yes, surely.

CAMPEIUS

Believe me, there’s an ill opinion spread, then,

Even of yourself, lord Cardinal.

WOLSEY     How? Of me?

CAMPEIUS     They will not stick to say you envied him,

125

And fearing he would rise – he was so virtuous –

Kept him a foreign man still, which so grieved him

That he ran mad and died.

WOLSEY     Heaven’s peace be with him:

That’s Christian care enough. For living murmurers

There’s places of rebuke. He was a fool,

130

For he would needs be virtuous.

[Gestures towards Gardiner.]     That good fellow,

If I command him, follows my appointment.

I will have none so near else. Learn this, brother:

We live not to be griped by meaner persons.

KING     Deliver this with modesty to th’ Queen.

135

Exit Gardiner.

The most convenient place that I can think of

For such receipt of learning is Blackfriars:

There ye shall meet about this weighty business.

My Wolsey, see it furnished. O my lord,

Would it not grieve an able man to leave

140

So sweet a bedfellow? But conscience, conscience –

O, ’tis a tender place, and I must leave her.     Exeunt.

2.3 Enter ANNE Bullen and an Old Lady.

ANNE

Not for that neither. Here’s the pang that pinches:

His highness having lived so long with her and she

So good a lady that no tongue could ever

Pronounce dishonour of her – by my life,

She never knew harm-doing – O, now, after

5

So many courses of the sun enthroned,

Still growing in a majesty and pomp the which

To leave a thousandfold more bitter than

’Tis sweet at first t’acquire – after this process,

To give her the avaunt, it is a pity

10

Would move a monster.

OLD LADY     Hearts of most hard temper

Melt and lament for her.

ANNE     O, God’s will! Much better

She ne’er had known pomp: though’t be temporal,

Yet if that quarrel and Fortune do divorce

It from the bearer, ’tis a sufferance panging

15

As soul and body’s severing.

OLD LADY     Alas, poor lady,

She’s a stranger now again.

ANNE     So much the more

Must pity drop upon her. Verily,

I swear, ’tis better to be lowly born

And range with humble livers in content

20

Than to be perked up in a glistering grief

And wear a golden sorrow.

OLD LADY     Our content

Is our best having.

ANNE     By my troth and maidenhead,

I would not be a queen.

OLD LADY     Beshrew me, I would,

And venture maidenhead for’t; and so would you,

25

For all this spice of your hypocrisy.

You, that have so fair parts of woman on you,

Have, too, a woman’s heart which ever yet

Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty;

Which, to say sooth, are blessings; and which gifts –

30

Saving your mincing – the capacity

Of your soft cheverel conscience would receive,

If you might please to stretch it.

ANNE     Nay, good troth.

OLD LADY

Yes, troth and troth. You would not be a queen?

ANNE     No, not for all the riches under heaven.

35

OLD LADY

’Tis strange: a threepence bowed would hire me,

Old as I am, to queen it. But I pray you,

What think you of a duchess? Have you limbs

To bear that load of title?

ANNE     No, in truth.

OLD LADY

Then you are weakly made. Pluck off a little:

40

I would not be a young count in your way

For more than blushing comes to. If your back

Cannot vouchsafe this burden, ’tis too weak

Ever to get a boy.

ANNE     How you do talk!

I swear again, I would not be a queen

45

For all the world.

OLD LADY     In faith, for little England

You’d venture an emballing. I myself

Would for Caernarfonshire, although there longed

No more to th’ crown but that. Lo, who comes here?

Enter Lord CHAMBERLAIN.

CHAMBERLAIN

Good morrow, ladies. What were’t worth to know

50

The secret of your conference?

ANNE     My good lord,

Not your demand: it values not your asking.

Our mistress’ sorrows we were pitying.

CHAMBERLAIN     It was a gentle business, and becoming

The action of good women. There is hope

55

All will be well.

ANNE     Now I pray God, amen.

CHAMBERLAIN

You bear a gentle mind, and heavenly blessings

Follow such creatures. That you may, fair lady,

Perceive I speak sincerely, and high note’s

Ta’en of your many virtues, the King’s majesty

60

Commends his good opinion of you, and

Does purpose honour to you no less flowing

Than Marchioness of Pembroke, to which title

A thousand pound a year annual support

Out of his grace he adds.

ANNE     I do not know

65

What kind of my obedience I should tender.

More than my all is nothing; nor my prayers

Are not words duly hallowed, nor my wishes

More worth than empty vanities; yet prayers and wishes

Are all I can return. Beseech your lordship,

70

Vouchsafe to speak my thanks and my obedience,

As from a blushing handmaid, to his highness,

Whose health and royalty I pray for.

CHAMBERLAIN     Lady,

I shall not fail t’approve the fair conceit

The King hath of you. [aside] I have perused her well.

75

Beauty and honour in her are so mingled

That they have caught the King, and who knows yet

But from this lady may proceed a gem

To lighten all this isle. [to Anne] I’ll to the King

And say I spoke with you.

ANNE     My honoured lord.

80

Exit Lord Chamberlain.

OLD LADY     Why, this it is: see, see!

I have been begging sixteen years in court –

Am yet a courtier beggarly, nor could

Come pat betwixt too early and too late

For any suit of pounds – and you (O, fate!),

85

A very fresh fish here – fie, fie, fie upon

This compelled fortune! – have your mouth filled up

Before you open it.

ANNE     This is strange to me.

OLD LADY     How tastes it? Is it bitter? Forty pence, no.

There was a lady once – ’tis an old story –

90

That would not be a queen, that would she not,

For all the mud in Egypt. Have you heard it?

ANNE     Come, you are pleasant.

OLD LADY     With your theme I could

O’ermount the lark. The Marchioness of Pembroke?

A thousand pounds a year, for pure respect?

95

No other obligation? By my life,

That promises more thousands: honour’s train

Is longer than his foreskirt. By this time,

I know your back will bear a duchess. Say,

Are you not stronger than you were?

ANNE     Good lady,

100

Make yourself mirth with your particular fancy

And leave me out on’t. Would I had no being

If this salute my blood a jot. It faints me

To think what follows.

The Queen is comfortless, and we forgetful

105

In our long absence. Pray do not deliver

What here you’ve heard to her.

OLD LADY     What do you think me?

     Exeunt.

2.4 Trumpets, sennet and cornetts. Enter two vergers with short silver wands; next them two Scribes in the habit of doctors; after them, the Archbishop of Canterbury alone; after him, the Bishops of LINCOLN, Ely, Rochester and St Asaph; next them, with some small distance, follows a gentleman, bearing the purse with the great seal and a cardinal’s hat; then two priests, bearing each a silver cross; then a gentleman usher, bare-headed, accompanied with a sergeant-at-arms, bearing a silver mace; then two gentlemen, bearing two great silver pillars; after them, side by side, the two Cardinal s; two noblemen with the sword and mace. The KING takes place under the cloth of state. The two Cardinals sit under him as judges. Queen KATHERINE, attended by GRIFFITH, takes place some distance from the King. The Bishops place themselves on each side the court in manner of a consistory; below them the scribes and a Crier. The lords sit next the Bishops. The rest of the attendants stand in convenient order about the stage.

WOLSEY     Whilst our commission from Rome is read,

Let silence be commanded.

KING     What’s the need?

It hath already publicly been read,

And on all sides th’authority allowed;

You may then spare that time.

WOLSEY     Be’t so. Proceed.

5

SCRIBE

Say, ‘Henry, King of England, come into the court.’

CRIER     Henry, King of England, come into the court.

KING     Here.

SCRIBE

Say, ‘Katherine, Queen of England, come into the court.’

CRIER

Katherine, Queen of England, come into the court.

10

[The Queen makes no answer, rises out of her chair, goes

about the court, comes to the King, and kneels at his

feet; then speaks.]

KATHERINE     Sir, I desire you do me right and justice,

And to bestow your pity on me, for

I am a most poor woman and a stranger,

Born out of your dominions, having here

No judge indifferent nor no more assurance

15

Of equal friendship and proceeding. Alas, sir,

In what have I offended you? What cause

Hath my behaviour given to your displeasure

That thus you should proceed to put me off

And take your good grace from me? Heaven witness

20

I have been to you a true and humble wife,

At all times to your will conformable,

Ever in fear to kindle your dislike,

Yea, subject to your countenance, glad or sorry

As I saw it inclined. When was the hour

25

I ever contradicted your desire,

Or made it not mine too? Or which of your friends

Have I not strove to love, although I knew

He were mine enemy? What friend of mine

That had to him derived your anger did I

30

Continue in my liking? Nay, gave notice

He was from thence discharged? Sir, call to mind

That I have been your wife in this obedience

Upward of twenty years, and have been blessed

With many children by you. If, in the course

35

And process of this time, you can report,

And prove it too, against mine honour aught,

My bond to wedlock, or my love and duty

Against your sacred person, in God’s name

Turn me away and let the foulest contempt

40

Shut door upon me, and so give me up

To the sharpest kind of justice. Please you, sir,

The King your father was reputed for

A prince most prudent, of an excellent

And unmatched wit and judgement. Ferdinand,

45

My father, King of Spain, was reckoned one

The wisest prince that there had reigned by many

A year before. It is not to be questioned

That they had gathered a wise council to them

Of every realm, that did debate this business,

50

Who deemed our marriage lawful. Wherefore I humbly

Beseech you, sir, to spare me till I may

Be by my friends in Spain advised, whose counsel

I will implore. If not, i’th’ name of God,

Your pleasure be fulfilled.

WOLSEY     You have here, lady,

55

And of your choice, these reverend fathers, men

Of singular integrity and learning,

Yea, the elect o’th’ land, who are assembled

To plead your cause. It shall be therefore bootless

That longer you desire the court, as well

60

For your own quiet as to rectify

What is unsettled in the King.

CAMPEIUS     His grace

Hath spoken well and justly. Therefore, madam,

It’s fit this royal session do proceed

And that without delay their arguments

65

Be now produced and heard.

KATHERINE     Lord Cardinal,

To you I speak.

WOLSEY     Your pleasure, madam.

KATHERINE     Sir,

I am about to weep; but, thinking that

We are a queen, or long have dreamed so, certain

The daughter of a king, my drops of tears

70

I’ll turn to sparks of fire.

WOLSEY     Be patient yet.

KATHERINE     I will, when you are humble – nay, before,

Or God will punish me. I do believe,

Induced by potent circumstances, that

You are mine enemy, and make my challenge

75

You shall not be my judge. For it is you

Have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me,

Which God’s dew quench. Therefore, I say again,

I utterly abhor, yea, from my soul

Refuse you for my judge, whom yet once more

80

I hold my most malicious foe and think not

At all a friend to truth.

WOLSEY     I do profess

You speak not like yourself, who ever yet

Have stood to charity and displayed th’effects

Of disposition gentle and of wisdom

85

O’er-topping woman’s power. Madam, you do me wrong.

I have no spleen against you, nor injustice

For you or any. How far I have proceeded,

Or how far further shall, is warranted

By a commission from the Consistory,

90

Yea, the whole Consistory of Rome. You charge me

That I have ‘blown this coal’: I do deny it.

The King is present. If it be known to him

That I gainsay my deed, how may he wound,

And worthily, my falsehood – yea, as much

95

As you have done my truth. If he know

That I am free of your report, he knows

I am not of your wrong. Therefore in him

It lies to cure me, and the cure is to

Remove these thoughts from you, the which before

100

His highness shall speak in, I do beseech

You, gracious madam, to unthink your speaking,

And to say so no more.

KATHERINE     My lord, my lord,

I am a simple woman, much too weak

T’oppose your cunning. You’re meek and humble-mouthed;

105

You sign your place and calling, in full seeming,

With meekness and humility; but your heart

Is crammed with arrogancy, spleen and pride.

You have, by fortune and his highness’ favours,

Gone slightly o’er low steps, and now are mounted

110

Where powers are your retainers, and your words,

Domestics to you, serve your will as’t please

Yourself pronounce their office. I must tell you,

You tender more your person’s honour than

Your high profession spiritual; that again

115

I do refuse you for my judge; and here

Before you all, appeal unto the Pope,

To bring my whole cause ’fore His Holiness,

And to be judged by him.

[She curtsies to the King and offers to depart.]

CAMPEIUS     The Queen is obstinate,

Stubborn to justice, apt to accuse it, and

120

Disdainful to be tried by’t. ’Tis not well.

She’s going away.

KING     Call her again.

CRIER

Katherine, Queen of England, come into the court!

GRIFFITH     Madam, you are called back.

KATHERINE

What need you note it? Pray you keep your way.

125

When you are called, return. Now the Lord help:

They vex me past my patience. Pray you, pass on.

I will not tarry: no, nor ever more

Upon this business my appearance make

In any of their courts.

Exeunt Queen and her attendants.

KING     Go thy ways, Kate.

130

That man i’th’ world who shall report he has

A better wife, let him in naught be trusted

For speaking false in that. Thou art alone –

If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness,

Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government,

135

Obeying in commanding, and thy parts

Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out –

The queen of earthly queens. She’s noble born,

And like her true nobility she has

Carried herself towards me.

WOLSEY     Most gracious sir,

140

In humblest manner I require your highness

That it shall please you to declare in hearing

Of all these ears – for where I am robbed and bound,

There must I be unloosed, although not there

At once and fully satisfied – whether ever I

145

Did broach this business to your highness, or

Laid any scruple in your way which might

Induce you to the question on’t, or ever

Have to you, but with thanks to God for such

A royal lady, spake one the least word that might

150

Be to the prejudice of her present state

Or touch of her good person?

KING     My lord Cardinal,

I do excuse you – yea, upon mine honour,

I free you from’t. You are not to be taught

That you have many enemies that know not

155

Why they are so but, like to village curs,

Bark when their fellows do. By some of these

The Queen is put in anger. You’re excused.

But will you be more justified? You ever

Have wished the sleeping of this business, never desired

160

It to be stirred, but oft have hindered, oft,

The passages made toward it. On my honour,

I speak my good lord Cardinal to this point

And thus far clear him. Now, what moved me to’t,

I will be bold with time and your attention:

165

Then mark th’inducement. Thus it came: give heed to’t.

My conscience first received a tenderness,

Scruple and prick on certain speeches uttered

By th’ Bishop of Bayonne, then French ambassador,

Who had been hither sent on the debating

170

A marriage ’twixt the Duke of Orléans and

Our daughter Mary. I’th’ progress of this business,

Ere a determinate resolution, he –

I mean the Bishop – did require a respite,

Wherein he might the King his lord advertise

175

Whether our daughter were legitimate

Respecting this our marriage with the dowager,

Sometimes our brother’s wife. This respite shook

The bosom of my conscience, entered me,

Yea, with a spitting power, and made to tremble

180

The region of my breast; which forced such way

That many mazed considerings did throng

And pressed in with this caution. First, methought

I stood not in the smile of heaven, who had

Commanded nature that my lady’s womb,

185

If it conceived a male child by me, should

Do no more offices of life to’t than

The grave does to th’ dead: for her male issue

Or died where they were made, or shortly after

This world had aired them. Hence I took a thought

190

This was a judgement on me, that my kingdom –

Well worthy the best heir o’th’ world – should not

Be gladded in’t by me. Then follows that

I weighed the danger which my realms stood in

By this my issue’s fail, and that gave to me

195

Many a groaning throe. Thus hulling in

The wild sea of my conscience, I did steer

Toward this remedy whereupon we are

Now present here together: that’s to say,

I meant to rectify my conscience – which

200

I then did feel full sick, and yet not well –

By all the reverend fathers of the land

And doctors learned. First, I began in private

With you, my lord of Lincoln. You remember

How under my oppression I did reek

205

When I first moved you?

LINCOLN     Very well, my liege.

KING     I have spoke long. Be pleased yourself to say

How far you satisfied me.

LINCOLN     So please your highness,

The question did at first so stagger me,

Bearing a state of mighty moment in’t

210

And consequence of dread, that I committed

The daringest counsel which I had to doubt

And did entreat your highness to this course

Which you are running here.

KING     I then moved you,

My lord of Canterbury, and got your leave

215

To make this present summons. Unsolicited

I left no reverend person in this court,

But by particular consent proceeded

Under your hands and seals. Therefore go on,

For no dislike i’th’ world against the person

220

Of the good Queen, but the sharp thorny points

Of my alleged reasons, drives this forward.

Prove but our marriage lawful, by my life

And kingly dignity, we are contented

To wear our mortal state to come with her,

225

Katherine, our Queen, before the primest creature

That’s paragoned o’th’ world.

CAMPEIUS     So please your highness,

The Queen being absent, ’tis a needful fitness

That we adjourn this court till further day.

Meanwhile must be an earnest motion

230

Made to the Queen to call back her appeal

She intends unto His Holiness.

KING [aside]     I may perceive

These cardinals trifle with me. I abhor

This dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome.

My learned and well-beloved servant, Cranmer,

235

Prithee return. With thy approach I know

My comfort comes along. – Break up the court!

I say, set on.     Exeunt in manner as they entered.

3.1 Enter Queen KATHERINE and her Women, as at work.

KATHERINE

Take thy lute, wench. My soul grows sad with troubles.

Sing, and disperse ’em if thou canst. Leave working.

WOMAN [Sings.]

Orpheus, with his lute, made trees

And the mountain tops that freeze

Bow themselves, when he did sing.

5

To his music, plants and flowers

Ever sprung, as sun and showers

There had made a lasting spring.

Everything that heard him play,

Even the billows of the sea,

10

Hung their heads and then lay by.

In sweet music is such art,

Killing care and grief of heart

Fall asleep or, hearing, die.

Enter GRIFFITH.

KATHERINE     How now?

15

GRIFFITH

An’t please your grace, the two great Cardinals

Wait in the presence.

KATHERINE     Would they speak with me?

GRIFFITH     They willed me say so, madam.

KATHERINE     Pray their graces

To come near.     Exit Griffith.

What can be their business

With me, a poor weak woman, fallen from favour?

20

I do not like their coming. Now I think on’t,

They should be good men, their affairs as righteous –

But all hoods make not monks.

Enter the two Cardinals, WOLSEY and CAMPEIUS.

WOLSEY     Peace to your highness.

KATHERINE

Your graces find me here part of a housewife:

I would be all, against the worst may happen.

25

What are your pleasures with me, reverend lords?

WOLSEY     May it please you, noble madam, to withdraw

Into your private chamber? We shall give you

The full cause of our coming.

KATHERINE     Speak it here.

There’s nothing I have done yet, o’my conscience,

30

Deserves a corner. Would all other women

Could speak this with as free a soul as I do.

My lords, I care not – so much I am happy

Above a number – if my actions

Were tried by every tongue, every eye saw ’em,

35

Envy and base opinion set against ’em,

I know my life so even. If your business

Seek me out, and that way I am wife in,

Out with it boldly. Truth loves open dealing.

WOLSEY     Tanta est erga te mentis integritas, Regina serenissima –

40

KATHERINE     O, good my lord, no Latin.

I am not such a truant since my coming

As not to know the language I have lived in.

A strange tongue makes my cause more strange, suspicious.

45

Pray speak in English. Here are some will thank you,

If you speak truth, for their poor mistress’ sake.

Believe me, she has had much wrong. Lord Cardinal,

The willingest sin I ever yet committed

May be absolved in English.

WOLSEY     Noble lady,

50

I am sorry my integrity should breed –

And service to his majesty and you –

So deep suspicion where all faith was meant.

We come not by the way of accusation,

To taint that honour every good tongue blesses,

55

Nor to betray you any way to sorrow –

You have too much, good lady – but to know

How you stand minded in the weighty difference

Between the King and you, and to deliver,

Like free and honest men, our just opinions

60

And comforts to your cause.

CAMPEIUS     Most honoured madam,

My lord of York, out of his noble nature,

Zeal, and obedience he still bore your grace,

Forgetting, like a good man, your late censure

Both of his truth and him – which was too far –

65

Offers, as I do, in a sign of peace,

His service and his counsel.

KATHERINE [aside]     To betray me.

[to them] My lords, I thank you both for your good wills.

Ye speak like honest men – pray God ye prove so.

But how to make ye suddenly an answer

70

In such a point of weight, so near mine honour –

More near my life, I fear – with my weak wit,

And to such men of gravity and learning,

In truth I know not. I was set at work

Among my maids, full little, God knows, looking

75

Either for such men or such business.

For her sake that I have been – for I feel

The last fit of my greatness – good your graces,

Let me have time and counsel for my cause.

Alas, I am a woman friendless, hopeless.

80

WOLSEY

Madam, you wrong the King’s love with these fears:

Your hopes and friends are infinite.

KATHERINE     In England

But little for my profit. Can you think, lords,

That any Englishman dare give me counsel?

Or be a known friend ’gainst his highness’ pleasure –

85

Though he be grown so desperate to be honest –

And live a subject? Nay, forsooth, my friends,

They that must weigh out my afflictions,

They that my trust must grow to, live not here:

They are, as all my other comforts, far hence

90

In mine own country, lords.

CAMPEIUS     I would your grace

Would leave your griefs and take my counsel.

KATHERINE     How, sir?

CAMPEIUS

Put your main cause into the King’s protection.

He’s loving and most gracious. ’Twill be much

Both for your honour better and your cause,

95

For if the trial of the law o’ertake ye,

You’ll part away disgraced.

WOLSEY     He tells you rightly.

KATHERINE

Ye tell me what ye wish for both – my ruin.

Is this your Christian counsel? Out upon ye!

Heaven is above all yet: there sits a judge

100

That no king can corrupt.

CAMPEIUS     Your rage mistakes us.

KATHERINE

The more shame for ye. Holy men I thought ye,

Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues –

But cardinal sins and hollow hearts I fear ye.

Mend ’em for shame, my lords. Is this your comfort?

105

The cordial that ye bring a wretched lady,

A woman lost among ye, laughed at, scorned?

I will not wish ye half my miseries:

I have more charity. But say I warned ye.

Take heed, for heaven’s sake take heed, lest at once

110

The burden of my sorrows fall upon ye.

WOLSEY     Madam, this is a mere distraction.

You turn the good we offer into envy.

KATHERINE     Ye turn me into nothing. Woe upon ye,

And all such false professors! Would you have me –

115

If you have any justice, any pity,

If ye be anything but churchmen’s habits –

Put my sick cause into his hands that hates me?

Alas, ’has banished me his bed already;

His love, too, long ago. I am old, my lords,

120

And all the fellowship I hold now with him

Is only my obedience. What can happen

To me above this wretchedness? All your studies

Make me a curse, like this.

CAMPEIUS     Your fears are worse.

KATHERINE

Have I lived thus long – let me speak myself,

125

Since virtue finds no friends – a wife, a true one –

A woman, I dare say without vainglory,

Never yet branded with suspicion –

Have I with all my full affections

Still met the King, loved him next heaven, obeyed him,

130

Been, out of fondness, superstitious to him,

Almost forgot my prayers to content him,

And am I thus rewarded? ’Tis not well, lords.

Bring me a constant woman to her husband,

One that ne’er dreamed a joy beyond his pleasure,

135

And to that woman, when she has done most,

Yet will I add an honour: a great patience.

WOLSEY

Madam, you wander from the good we aim at.

KATHERINE

My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty

To give up willingly that noble title

140

Your master wed me to. Nothing but death

Shall e’er divorce my dignities.

WOLSEY     Pray hear me.

KATHERINE     Would I had never trod this English earth

Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it.

Ye have angels’ faces, but heaven knows your hearts.

145

What will become of me now, wretched lady?

I am the most unhappy woman living.

[to her women] Alas, poor wenches, where are now your fortunes?

Shipwrecked upon a kingdom where no pity,

No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me,

150

Almost no grave allowed me, like the lily

That once was mistress of the field and flourished,

I’ll hang my head and perish.

WOLSEY     If your grace

Could but be brought to know our ends are honest,

You’d feel more comfort. Why should we, good lady,

155

Upon what cause, wrong you? Alas, our places,

The way of our profession, is against it.

We are to cure such sorrows, not to sow ’em.

For goodness’ sake, consider what you do,

How you may hurt yourself, ay, utterly

160

Grow from the King’s acquaintance, by this carriage.

The hearts of princes kiss obedience,

So much they love it, but to stubborn spirits

They swell and grow as terrible as storms.

I know you have a gentle, noble temper,

165

A soul as even as a calm. Pray think us

Those we profess: peacemakers, friends, and servants.

CAMPEIUS

Madam, you’ll find it so. You wrong your virtues

With these weak women’s fears. A noble spirit,

As yours was put into you, ever casts

170

Such doubts as false coin from it. The King loves you:

Beware you lose it not. For us, if you please

To trust us in your business, we are ready

To use our utmost studies in your service.

KATHERINE

Do what ye will, my lords, and pray forgive me

175

If I have used myself unmannerly.

You know I am a woman, lacking wit

To make a seemly answer to such persons.

Pray do my service to his majesty:

He has my heart yet, and shall have my prayers

180

While I shall have my life. Come, reverend fathers,

Bestow your counsels on me. She now begs

That little thought when she set footing here

She should have bought her dignities so dear.

     Exeunt.

3.2 Enter the Duke of NORFOLK, Duke of SUFFOLK, Lord SURREY and Lord CHAMBERLAIN.

NORFOLK     If you will now unite in your complaints

And force them with a constancy, the Cardinal

Cannot stand under them. If you omit

The offer of this time, I cannot promise

But that you shall sustain more new disgraces

5

With these you bear already.

SURREY     I am joyful

To meet the least occasion that may give me

Remembrance of my father-in-law the Duke,

To be revenged on him.

SUFFOLK     Which of the peers

Have uncontemned gone by him, or at least

10

Strangely neglected? When did he regard

The stamp of nobleness in any person

Out of himself?

CHAMBERLAIN     My lords, you speak your pleasures.

What he deserves of you and me, I know;

What we can do to him – though now the time

15

Gives way to us – I much fear. If you cannot

Bar his access to th’ King, never attempt

Anything on him, for he hath a witchcraft

Over the King in’s tongue.

NORFOLK     O, fear him not:

His spell in that is out. The King hath found

20

Matter against him that for ever mars

The honey of his language. No, he’s settled,

Not to come off, in his displeasure.

SURREY     Sir,

I should be glad to hear such news as this

Once every hour.

NORFOLK     Believe it, this is true.

25

In the divorce his contrary proceedings

Are all unfolded, wherein he appears

As I would wish mine enemy.

SURREY     How came

His practices to light?

SUFFOLK     Most strangely.

SURREY     O, how, how?

SUFFOLK

The Cardinal’s letters to the Pope miscarried

30

And came to th’eye o’th’ King, wherein was read

How that the Cardinal did entreat his holiness

To stay the judgement o’th’ divorce; for if

It did take place, ‘I do’, quoth he, ‘perceive

My King is tangled in affection to

35

A creature of the Queen’s, Lady Anne Bullen.’

SURREY     Has the King this?

SUFFOLK     Believe it.

SURREY     Will this work?

CHAMBERLAIN

The King in this perceives him how he coasts

And hedges his own way. But in this point

All his tricks founder, and he brings his physic

40

After his patient’s death. The King already

Hath married the fair lady.

SURREY     Would he had!

SUFFOLK     May you be happy in your wish, my lord,

For I profess you have it.

SURREY     Now all my joy

Trace the conjunction.

SUFFOLK     My amen to’t.

NORFOLK     All men’s.

45

SUFFOLK     There’s order given for her coronation.

Marry, this is yet but young, and may be left

To some ears unrecounted. But, my lords,

She is a gallant creature, and complete

In mind and feature. I persuade me from her

50

Will fall some blessing to this land which shall

In it be memorized.

SURREY     But will the King

Digest this letter of the Cardinal’s?

The Lord forbid.

NORFOLK     Marry, amen.

SUFFOLK     No, no:

There be more wasps that buzz about his nose

55

Will make this sting the sooner. Cardinal Campeius

Is stolen away to Rome; hath ta’en no leave;

Has left the cause o’th’ King unhandled; and

Is posted as the agent of our Cardinal

To second all his plot. I do assure you

60

The King cried ‘Ha!’ at this.

CHAMBERLAIN     Now God incense him,

And let him cry ‘Ha!’ louder.

NORFOLK     But, my lord,

When returns Cranmer?

SUFFOLK     He is returned in his opinions, which

Have satisfied the King for his divorce,

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Together with all famous colleges,

Almost, in Christendom. Shortly, I believe,

His second marriage shall be published, and

Her coronation. Katherine no more

Shall be called ‘Queen’, but ‘Princess Dowager’,

70

And ‘widow to Prince Arthur’.

NORFOLK     This same Cranmer’s

A worthy fellow, and hath ta’en much pain

In the King’s business.

SUFFOLK     He has, and we shall see him

For it an archbishop.

NORFOLK     So I hear.

SUFFOLK     ’Tis so.

Enter WOLSEY and CROMWELL.

The Cardinal.

NORFOLK     Observe, observe: he’s moody.

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[They stand apart.]

WOLSEY     The packet, Cromwell: gave’t you the King?

CROMWELL

To his own hand, in’s bedchamber.

WOLSEY     Looked he

O’th’ inside of the paper?

CROMWELL     Presently

He did unseal them, and the first he viewed,

He did it with a serious mind; a heed

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Was in his countenance. You he bade

Attend him here this morning.

WOLSEY     Is he ready

To come abroad?

CROMWELL     I think by this he is.

WOLSEY     Leave me a while.     Exit Cromwell.

It shall be to the Duchess of Alençon,

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The French King’s sister: he shall marry her.

Anne Bullen? No, I’ll no Anne Bullens for him:

There’s more in’t than fair visage. Bullen?

No, we’ll no Bullens. Speedily I wish

To hear from Rome. The Marchioness of Pembroke?

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NORFOLK     He’s discontented.

SUFFOLK     Maybe he hears the King

Does whet his anger to him.

SURREY     Sharp enough,

Lord, for thy justice.

WOLSEY

The late Queen’s gentlewoman? A knight’s daughter

To be her mistress’ mistress? The Queen’s Queen?

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This candle burns not clear. ’Tis I must snuff it;

Then out it goes. What though I know her virtuous

And well-deserving? Yet I know her for

A spleeny Lutheran, and not wholesome to

Our cause, that she should lie i’th’ bosom of

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Our hard-ruled King. Again, there is sprung up

An heretic, an arch-one, Cranmer, one

Hath crawled into the favour of the King

And is his oracle.

NORFOLK     He is vexed at something.

Enter KING, reading of a schedule, and LOVELL.

SURREY

I would ’twere something that would fret the string,

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The master-cord on’s heart.

SUFFOLK     The King, the King.

KING     What piles of wealth hath he accumulated

To his own portion! And what expense by th’hour

Seems to flow from him! How i’th’ name of thrift

Does he rake this together? – Now, my lords,

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Saw you the Cardinal?

NORFOLK     My lord, we have

Stood here observing him. Some strange commotion

Is in his brain. He bites his lip, and starts,

Stops on a sudden, looks upon the ground,

Then lays his finger on his temple; straight

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Springs out into fast gait; then stops again,

Strikes his breast hard, and anon he casts

His eye against the moon. In most strange postures

We have seen him set himself.

KING     It may well be

There is a mutiny in’s mind. This morning,

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Papers of state he sent me to peruse

As I required; and wot you what I found

There – on my conscience, put unwittingly?

Forsooth, an inventory, thus importing

The several parcels of his plate, his treasure,

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Rich stuffs and ornaments of household, which

I find at such proud rate that it outspeaks

Possession of a subject.

NORFOLK     It’s heaven’s will;

Some spirit put this paper in the packet

To bless your eye withal.

KING     If we did think

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His contemplation were above the earth

And fixed on spiritual object, he should still

Dwell in his musings. But I am afraid

His thinkings are below the moon, not worth

His serious considering.

[King takes his seat; and whispers Lovell, who goes to

the Cardinal.]

WOLSEY     Heaven forgive me.

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[to the King] Ever God bless your highness.

KING     Good my lord,

You are full of heavenly stuff, and bear the inventory

Of your best graces in your mind, the which

You were now running o’er. You have scarce time

To steal from spiritual leisure a brief span

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To keep your earthly audit. Sure, in that

I deem you an ill husband, and am glad

To have you therein my companion.

WOLSEY     Sir,

For holy offices I have a time; a time

To think upon the part of business which

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I bear i’th’ state; and nature does require

Her times of preservation which, perforce,

I, her frail son, amongst my brethren mortal,

Must give my tendance to.

KING     You have said well.

WOLSEY     And ever may your highness yoke together,

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As I will lend you cause, my doing well

With my well saying.

KING     ’Tis well said again,

And ’tis a kind of good deed to say well –

And yet words are no deeds. My father loved you:

He said he did, and with his deed did crown

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His word upon you. Since I had my office,

I have kept you next my heart, have not alone

Employed you where high profits might come home,

But pared my present havings to bestow

My bounties upon you.

WOLSEY [aside]     What should this mean?

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SURREY [aside]     The Lord increase this business!

KING     Have I not made you

The prime man of the state? I pray you tell me

If what I now pronounce you have found true,

And, if you may confess it, say withal

If you are bound to us or no. What say you?

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WOLSEY     My sovereign, I confess your royal graces,

Showered on me daily, have been more than could

My studied purposes requite, which went

Beyond all man’s endeavours. My endeavours

Have ever come too short of my desires,

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Yet filed with my abilities. Mine own ends

Have been mine so that evermore they pointed

To th’ good of your most sacred person and

The profit of the state. For your great graces

Heaped upon me – poor undeserver – I

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Can nothing render but allegiant thanks;

My prayers to heaven for you; my loyalty,

Which ever has and ever shall be growing,

Till death, that winter, kill it.

KING     Fairly answered:

A loyal and obedient subject is

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Therein illustrated. The honour of it

Does pay the act of it, as i’th’ contrary

The foulness is the punishment. I presume

That as my hand has opened bounty to you,

My heart dropped love, my power rained honour,

more

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On you than any, so your hand and heart,

Your brain, and every function of your power,

Should, notwithstanding that your bond of duty,

As ’twere in love’s particular, be more

To me, your friend, than any.

WOLSEY      I do profess

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That for your highness’ good I ever laboured

More than mine own that am, have and will be.

Though all the world should crack their duty to you

And throw it from their soul – though perils did

Abound as thick as thought could make ’em, and

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Appear in forms more horrid – yet my duty,

As doth a rock against the chiding flood,

Should the approach of this wild river break

And stand unshaken yours.

KING     ’Tis nobly spoken.

Take notice, lords: he has a loyal breast,

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For you have seen him open’t.

[Gives him papers.] Read o’er this,

And after, this, and then to breakfast with

What appetite you have.

Exit King, frowning upon the Cardinal; the nobles

throng after him, smiling and whispering.

WOLSEY     What should this mean?

What sudden anger’s this? How have I reaped it?

He parted frowning from me, as if ruin

205

Leaped from his eyes. So looks the chafed lion

Upon the daring huntsman that has galled him,

Then makes him nothing. I must read this paper –

I fear, the story of his anger. ’Tis so:

This paper has undone me. ’Tis th’account

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Of all that world of wealth I have drawn together

For mine own ends – indeed to gain the popedom

And fee my friends in Rome. O, negligence,

Fit for a fool to fall by! What cross devil

Made me put this main secret in the packet

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I sent the King? Is there no way to cure this?

No new device to beat this from his brains?

I know ’twill stir him strongly. Yet I know

A way, if it take right, in spite of fortune

Will bring me off again. What’s this? ‘To th’ Pope’?

220

The letter, as I live, with all the business

I writ to’s Holiness. Nay then, farewell.

I have touched the highest point of all my greatness,

And from that full meridian of my glory

I haste now to my setting. I shall fall

225

Like a bright exhalation in the evening,

And no man see me more.

Enter to Wolsey the Dukes of NORFOLK and SUFFOLK, the

Earl of SURREY and the Lord CHAMBERLAIN.

NORFOLK

Hear the King’s pleasure, Cardinal, who commands you

To render up the great seal presently

Into our hands, and to confine yourself

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To Esher House, my lord of Winchester’s,

Till you hear further from his highness.

WOLSEY     Stay.

Where’s your commission, lords? Words cannot carry

Authority so weighty.

SUFFOLK     Who dare cross ’em,

Bearing the King’s will from his mouth expressly?

235

WOLSEY     Till I find more than will or words to do it –

I mean your malice – know, officious lords,

I dare, and must, deny it. Now I feel

Of what coarse metal ye are moulded – envy!

How eagerly ye follow my disgraces

240

As if it fed ye, and how sleek and wanton

Ye appear in everything may bring my ruin!

Follow your envious courses, men of malice:

You have Christian warrant for ’em, and no doubt

In time will find their fit rewards. That seal

245

You ask with such a violence, the King –

Mine and your master – with his own hand gave me;

Bade me enjoy it, with the place and honours,

During my life; and to confirm his goodness,

Tied it by letters patents. Now, who’ll take it?

250

SURREY     The King that gave it.

WOLSEY     It must be himself, then.

SURREY     Thou art a proud traitor, priest.

WOLSEY     Proud lord, thou liest.

Within these forty hours Surrey durst better

Have burnt that tongue than said so.

SURREY     Thy ambition,

Thou scarlet sin, robbed this bewailing land

255

Of noble Buckingham, my father-in-law.

The heads of all thy brother cardinals,

With thee and all thy best parts bound together,

Weighed not a hair of his. Plague of your policy!

You sent me Deputy for Ireland,

260

Far from his succour, from the King, from all

That might have mercy on the fault thou gavest him,

Whilst your great goodness, out of holy pity,

Absolved him with an axe.

WOLSEY     This, and all else

This talking lord can lay upon my credit,

265

I answer, is most false. The Duke by law

Found his deserts. How innocent I was

From any private malice in his end,

His noble jury and foul cause can witness.

If I loved many words, lord, I should tell you

270

You have as little honesty as honour,

That in the way of loyalty and truth

Toward the King, my ever royal master,

Dare mate a sounder man than Surrey can be,

And all that love his follies.

SURREY     By my soul,

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Your long coat, priest, protects you; thou shouldst feel

My sword i’th’ lifeblood of thee else. My lords,

Can ye endure to hear this arrogance?

And from this fellow? If we live thus tamely,

To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet,

280

Farewell, nobility: let his grace go forward

And dare us with his cap, like larks.

WOLSEY     All goodness

Is poison to thy stomach.

SURREY     Yes, that ‘goodness’

Of gleaning all the land’s wealth into one,

Into your own hands, Cardinal, by extortion;

285

The ‘goodness’ of your intercepted packets

You writ to th’ Pope against the King – your ‘goodness’,

Since you provoke me, shall be most notorious.

My lord of Norfolk, as you are truly noble,

As you respect the common good, the state

290

Of our despised nobility, our issues –

Who, if he live, will scarce be gentlemen –

Produce the grand sum of his sins, the articles

Collected from his life. I’ll startle you

Worse than the sacring-bell when the brown wench

295

Lay kissing in your arms, lord Cardinal.

WOLSEY

How much, methinks, I could despise this man,

But that I am bound in charity against it.

NORFOLK

Those articles, my lord, are in the King’s hand;

But thus much: they are foul ones.

WOLSEY     So much fairer,

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And spotless, shall mine innocence arise

When the King knows my truth.

SURREY     This cannot save you.

I thank my memory I yet remember

Some of these articles, and out they shall.

Now, if you can blush and cry ‘Guilty’, Cardinal,

305

You’ll show a little honesty.

WOLSEY     Speak on, sir;

I dare your worst objections. If I blush,

It is to see a nobleman want manners.

SURREY

I had rather want those than my head. Have at you!

First, that without the King’s assent or knowledge,

310

You wrought to be a legate, by which power

You maimed the jurisdiction of all bishops.

NORFOLK     Then, that in all you writ to Rome, or else

To foreign princes, ‘ego et rex meus’

Was still inscribed, in which you brought the King

315

To be your servant.

SUFFOLK     Then, that without the knowledge

Either of King or Council, when you went

Ambassador to the Emperor, you made bold

To carry into Flanders the great seal.

SURREY     Item, you sent a large commission

320

To Gregory de Cassado, to conclude,

Without the King’s will or the state’s allowance,

A league between his highness and Ferrara.

SUFFOLK     That out of mere ambition you have caused

Your holy hat to be stamped on the King’s coin.

325

SURREY

Then, that you have sent innumerable substance –

By what means got, I leave to your own conscience –

To furnish Rome and to prepare the ways

You have for dignities, to the mere undoing

Of all the kingdom. Many more there are,

330

Which since they are of you, and odious,

I will not taint my mouth with.

CHAMBERLAIN     O my lord,

Press not a falling man too far. ’Tis virtue.

His faults lie open to the laws: let them,

Not you, correct him. My heart weeps to see him

335

So little of his great self.

SURREY     I forgive him.

SUFFOLK

Lord Cardinal, the King’s further pleasure is,

Because all those things you have done of late

By your power legative within this kingdom

Fall into th’ compass of a praemunire,

340

That therefore such a writ be sued against you

To forfeit all your goods, lands, tenements,

Chattels and whatsoever, and to be

Out of the King’s protection. This is my charge.

NORFOLK     And so we’ll leave you to your meditations

345

How to live better. For your stubborn answer

About the giving back the great seal to us,

The King shall know it and, no doubt, shall thank you.

So fare you well, my little good lord Cardinal.

Exeunt all but Wolsey.

WOLSEY     So, farewell to the little good you bear me.

350

Farewell? A long farewell to all my greatness.

This is the state of man. Today he puts forth

The tender leaves of hopes; tomorrow blossoms,

And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,

355

And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely

His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,

And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,

Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,

This many summers in a sea of glory,

360

But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride

At length broke under me and now has left me,

Weary and old with service, to the mercy

Of a rude stream that must for ever hide me.

Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye!

365

I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched

Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favours!

There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to,

That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin

More pangs and fears than wars or women have;

370

And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,

Never to hope again.

Enter CROMWELL, standing amazed.

Why, how now, Cromwell?

CROMWELL     I have no power to speak, sir.

WOLSEY     What, amazed

At my misfortunes? Can thy spirit wonder

A great man should decline? Nay, an you weep

375

I am fallen indeed.

CROMWELL     How does your grace?

WOLSEY     Why, well.

Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell.

I know myself now, and I feel within me

A peace above all earthly dignities,

A still and quiet conscience. The King has cured me,

380

I humbly thank his grace, and from these shoulders,

These ruined pillars, out of pity, taken

A load would sink a navy – too much honour.

O, ’tis a burden, Cromwell, ’tis a burden

Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven.

385

CROMWELL

I am glad your grace has made that right use of it.

WOLSEY     I hope I have. I am able now, methinks,

Out of a fortitude of soul I feel,

To endure more miseries and greater far

Than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer.

390

What news abroad?

CROMWELL     The heaviest and the worst

Is your displeasure with the King.

WOLSEY     God bless him.

CROMWELL

The next is that Sir Thomas More is chosen

Lord Chancellor in your place.

WOLSEY     That’s somewhat sudden.

But he’s a learned man. May he continue

395

Long in his highness’ favour, and do justice

For truth’s sake and his conscience, that his bones,

When he has run his course and sleeps in blessings,

May have a tomb of orphans’ tears wept on him.

What more?

CROMWELL     That Cranmer is returned with welcome,

400

Installed lord Archbishop of Canterbury.

WOLSEY     That’s news indeed.

CROMWELL     Last, that the Lady Anne,

Whom the King hath in secrecy long married,

This day was viewed in open as his Queen,

Going to chapel, and the voice is now

405

Only about her coronation.

WOLSEY

There was the weight that pulled me down. O Cromwell,

The King has gone beyond me. All my glories

In that one woman I have lost for ever.

No sun shall ever usher forth mine honours,

410

Or gild again the noble troops that waited

Upon my smiles. Go get thee from me, Cromwell:

I am a poor fallen man, unworthy now

To be thy lord and master. Seek the King –

That sun I pray may never set. I have told him

415

What, and how true, thou art. He will advance thee:

Some little memory of me will stir him –

I     know his noble nature – not to let

Thy hopeful service perish too. Good Cromwell,

Neglect him not. Make use now, and provide

420

For thine own future safety.

CROMWELL     O my lord,

Must I then leave you? Must I needs forgo

So good, so noble and so true a master?

Bear witness, all that have not hearts of iron,

With what a sorrow Cromwell leaves his lord.

425

The King shall have my service, but my prayers

For ever and for ever shall be yours.

WOLSEY     Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear

In all my miseries, but thou hast forced me,

Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.

430

Let’s dry our eyes, and thus far hear me, Cromwell,

And when I am forgotten, as I shall be,

And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention

Of me more must be heard of, say I taught thee.

Say Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory

435

And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour,

Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in,

A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it.

Mark but my fall and that that ruined me.

Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition.

440

By that sin fell the angels. How can man then,

The image of his maker, hope to win by it?

Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee.

Corruption wins not more than honesty.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace

445

To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not.

Let all the ends thou aimest at be thy country’s,

Thy God’s, and truth’s. Then if thou fallest, O Cromwell,

Thou fallest a blessed martyr.

Serve the King. And prithee lead me in:

450

There take an inventory of all I have.

To the last penny, ’tis the King’s. My robe

And my integrity to heaven is all

I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell,

Had I but served my God with half the zeal

455

I served my King, he would not in mine age

Have left me naked to mine enemies.

CROMWELL     Good sir, have patience.

WOLSEY     So I have. Farewell,

The hopes of court: my hopes in heaven do dwell.

Exeunt.

4.1 Enter two Gentlemen, meeting one another.

1 GENTLEMAN     You’re well met once again.

2 GENTLEMAN     So are you.

1 GENTLEMAN

You come to take your stand here and behold

The Lady Anne pass from her coronation?

2 GENTLEMAN

’Tis all my business. At our last encounter,

The Duke of Buckingham came from his trial.

5

1 GENTLEMAN

’Tis very true. But that time offered sorrow,

This, general joy.

2 GENTLEMAN     ’Tis well. The citizens,

I am sure, have shown at full their royal minds –

As, let ’em have their rights, they are ever forward –

In celebration of this day with shows,

10

Pageants, and sights of honour.

1 GENTLEMAN     Never greater,

Nor, I’ll assure you, better taken, sir.

2 GENTLEMAN

May I be bold to ask what that contains,

That paper in your hand?

1 GENTLEMAN     Yes, ’tis the list

Of those that claim their offices this day

15

By custom of the coronation.

The Duke of Suffolk is the first, and claims

To be High Steward; next, the Duke of Norfolk,

He to be Earl Marshal. You may read the rest.

2 GENTLEMAN

I thank you, sir. Had I not known those customs,

20

I should have been beholding to your paper.

But I beseech you, what’s become of Katherine,

The Princess Dowager? How goes her business?

1 GENTLEMAN

That I can tell you too. The Archbishop

Of Canterbury, accompanied with other

25

Learned and reverend fathers of his order,

Held a late court at Dunstable, six miles off

From Ampthill, where the Princess lay; to which

She was often cited by them, but appeared not;

And, to be short, for not appearance and

30

The King’s late scruple, by the main assent

Of all these learned men, she was divorced,

And the late marriage made of none effect;

Since which she was removed to Kimbolton,

Where she remains now sick.

2 GENTLEMAN     Alas, good lady. [Trumpets.]

35

The trumpets sound. Stand close. The Queen is coming.

The order of the coronation

1 A lively flourish of trumpets.

2 Then, two judges.

3 Lord CHANCELLOR, with purse and mace before him.

4 Choristers singing. Music.

36.5

5 Mayor of London, bearing the mace. Then GARTER, in his

coat of arms, and on his head he wears a gilt copper crown.

6 Marquess Dorset, bearing a sceptre of gold, on his head a

demi-coronal of gold. With him the Earl of SURREY,

bearing the rod of silver with the dove, crowned with an

36.10

earl’s coronet. Collars of esses.

7 Duke of SUFFOLK, in his robe of estate, his coronet on his

head, bearing a long white wand, as High Steward. With

him, the Duke of NORFOLK, with the rod of marshalship,

a coronet on his head. Collars of esses.

36.15

8 A canopy, borne by four of the Cinque Ports; under it, the

Queen ANNE in her robe, in her hair, richly adorned with

pearl; crowned. On each side her, the Bishops of London

and Winchester.

9 The old Duchess of Norfolk, in a coronal of gold wrought

36.20

with flowers, bearing the Queen’s train.

10 Certain ladies or countesses, with plain circlets of gold

without flowers.

Exeunt, first passing over the stage in order and state,

and then a great flourish of trumpets.

2 GENTLEMAN     A royal train, believe me. These I know.

Who’s that that bears the sceptre?

1 GENTLEMAN     Marquess Dorset,

And that the Earl of Surrey with the rod.

2 GENTLEMAN

A bold brave gentleman. That should be

40

The Duke of Suffolk.

1 GENTLEMAN     ’Tis the same: High Steward.

2 GENTLEMAN     And that my lord of Norfolk?

1 GENTLEMAN     Yes.

2 GENTLEMAN [Sees Anne.]     Heaven bless thee!

Thou hast the sweetest face I ever looked on.

Sir, as I have a soul, she is an angel.

Our King has all the Indies in his arms,

45

And more, and richer, when he strains that lady.

I cannot blame his conscience.

1 GENTLEMAN     They that bear

The cloth of honour over her are four barons

Of the Cinque Ports.

2 GENTLEMAN

Those men are happy, and so are all are near her.

50

I take it she that carries up the train

Is that old noble lady, Duchess of Norfolk?

1 GENTLEMAN     It is, and the rest are countesses.

2 GENTLEMAN

Their coronets say so. These are stars indeed –

1 GENTLEMAN     And sometimes falling ones.

2 GENTLEMAN     No more of that.

55

Enter a Third Gentleman.

1 GENTLEMAN

God save you, sir. Where have you been broiling?

3 GENTLEMAN

Among the crowd i’th’ Abbey, where a finger

Could not be wedged in more. I am stifled

With the mere rankness of their joy.

2 GENTLEMAN     You saw

The ceremony?

3 GENTLEMAN     That I did.

1 GENTLEMAN     How was it?

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3 GENTLEMAN     Well worth the seeing.

2 GENTLEMAN     Good sir, speak it to us.

3 GENTLEMAN     As well as I am able. The rich stream

Of lords and ladies, having brought the Queen

To a prepared place in the choir, fell off

A distance from her, while her grace sat down

65

To rest a while – some half an hour or so –

In a rich chair of state, opposing freely

The beauty of her person to the people –

Believe me, sir, she is the goodliest woman

That ever lay by man – which when the people

70

Had the full view of, such a noise arose

As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest,

As loud and to as many tunes. Hats, cloaks –

Doublets, I think – flew up, and had their faces

Been loose, this day they had been lost. Such joy

75

I never saw before. Great-bellied women

That had not half a week to go, like rams

In the old time of war, would shake the press

And make ’em reel before ’em. No man living

Could say ‘This is my wife’ there, all were woven

80

So strangely in one piece.

2 GENTLEMAN     But what followed?

3 GENTLEMAN

At length her grace rose, and with modest paces

Came to the altar, where she kneeled and, saint-like,

Cast her fair eyes to heaven and prayed devoutly;

Then rose again and bowed her to the people,

85

When by the Archbishop of Canterbury

She had all the royal makings of a queen,

As holy oil, Edward Confessor’s crown,

The rod, and bird of peace, and all such emblems

Laid nobly on her; which performed, the choir,

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With all the choicest music of the kingdom,

Together sung Te Deum. So she parted,

And with the same full state paced back again

To York Place, where the feast is held.

1 GENTLEMAN     Sir,

You must no more call it ‘York Place’ – that’s past;

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For since the Cardinal fell, that title’s lost.

’Tis now the King’s, and called ‘Whitehall’.

3 GENTLEMAN     I know it,

But ’tis so lately altered that the old name

Is fresh about me.

2 GENTLEMAN     What two reverend bishops

Were those that went on each side of the Queen?

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3 GENTLEMAN

Stokesley and Gardiner, the one of Winchester,

Newly preferred from the King’s secretary;

The other, London.

2 GENTLEMAN     He of Winchester

Is held no great good lover of the Archbishop’s,

The virtuous Cranmer.

3 GENTLEMAN     All the land knows that.

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However, yet there is no great breach. When it comes,

Cranmer will find a friend will not shrink from him.

2 GENTLEMAN     Who may that be, I pray you?

3 GENTLEMAN     Thomas Cromwell,

A man in much esteem wi’th’ King, and truly

A worthy friend. The King has made him

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Master o’th’ Jewel House,

And one already of the Privy Council.

2 GENTLEMAN     He will deserve more.

3 GENTLEMAN     Yes, without all doubt.

Come, gentlemen, ye shall go my way,

Which is to th’ court, and there ye shall be my guests:

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Something I can command. As I walk thither

I’ll tell ye more.

1 & 2 GENTLEMEN You may command us, sir. Exeunt.

4.2 Enter KATHERINE Dowager, sick, led between GRIFFITH, her gentleman usher, and PATIENCE, her woman.

GRIFFITH     How does your grace?

KATHERINE     O Griffith, sick to death.

My legs like loaden branches bow to th’earth,

Willing to leave their burden. Reach a chair. [Sits.]

So. Now, methinks, I feel a little ease.

Didst thou not tell me, Griffith, as thou leddest me,

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That the great child of honour, Cardinal Wolsey,

Was dead?

GRIFFITH     Yes, madam, but I think your grace,

Out of the pain you suffered, gave no ear to’t.

KATHERINE

Prithee, good Griffith, tell me how he died.

If well, he stepped before me happily

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For my example.

GRIFFITH     Well, the voice goes, madam.

For after the stout Earl Northumberland

Arrested him at York and brought him forward,

As a man sorely tainted, to his answer,

He fell sick suddenly and grew so ill

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He could not sit his mule.

KATHERINE     Alas, poor man.

GRIFFITH

At last, with easy roads, he came to Leicester;

Lodged in the abbey, where the reverend abbot,

With all his convent, honourably received him;

To whom he gave these words: ‘O father abbot,

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An old man, broken with the storms of state,

Is come to lay his weary bones among ye.

Give him a little earth, for charity.’

So went to bed, where eagerly his sickness

Pursued him still, and three nights after this,

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About the hour of eight, which he himself

Foretold should be his last, full of repentance,

Continual meditations, tears and sorrows,

He gave his honours to the world again,

His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.

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KATHERINE

So may he rest: his faults lie gently on him.

Yet thus far, Griffith, give me leave to speak him,

And yet with charity. He was a man

Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking

Himself with princes; one that by suggestion

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Tied all the kingdom. Simony was fair play.

His own opinion was his law. I’th’ presence

He would say untruths, and be ever double

Both in his words and meaning. He was never,

But where he meant to ruin, pitiful.

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His promises were as he then was, mighty;

But his performance, as he is now, nothing.

Of his own body he was ill, and gave

The clergy ill example.

GRIFFITH     Noble madam,

Men’s evil manners live in brass, their virtues

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We write in water. May it please your highness

To hear me speak his good now?

KATHERINE     Yes, good Griffith;

I were malicious else.

GRIFFITH     This Cardinal,

Though from an humble stock, undoubtedly

Was fashioned to much honour. From his cradle

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He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one,

Exceeding wise, fair-spoken and persuading;

Lofty and sour to them that loved him not,

But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer.

And though he were unsatisfied in getting –

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Which was a sin – yet in bestowing, madam,

He was most princely: ever witness for him

Those twins of learning that he raised in you,

Ipswich and Oxford – one of which fell with him,

Unwilling to outlive the good that did it;

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The other, though unfinished, yet so famous,

So excellent in art, and still so rising,

That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue.

His overthrow heaped happiness upon him,

For then, and not till then, he felt himself,

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And found the blessedness of being little.

And, to add greater honours to his age

Than man could give him, he died fearing God.

KATHERINE     After my death I wish no other herald,

No other speaker of my living actions,

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To keep mine honour from corruption

But such an honest chronicler as Griffith.

Whom I most hated living, thou hast made me,

With thy religious truth and modesty,

Now in his ashes honour. Peace be with him.

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Patience, be near me still, and set me lower.

I have not long to trouble thee. Good Griffith,

Cause the musicians play me that sad note

I named my knell, whilst I sit meditating

On that celestial harmony I go to.

[Sad and solemn music.]

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GRIFFITH

She is asleep. Good wench, let’s sit down quiet,

For fear we wake her. Softly, gentle Patience.

The vision

Enter, solemnly tripping one after another, six

personages, clad in white robes, wearing on their heads

garlands of bays, and golden vizards on their faces,

branches of bays or palm in their hands. They first

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congé unto her, then dance; and at certain changes, the

first two hold a spare garland over her head, at which

the other four make reverend curtsies. Then the two

that held the garland deliver the same to the other next

two, who observe the same order in their changes and

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holding the garland over her head. Which done, they

deliver the same garland to the last two, who likewise

observe the same order. At which (as it were by

inspiration) she makes in her sleep signs of rejoicing and

holdeth up her hands to heaven. And so, in their

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dancing, vanish, carrying the garland with them.

The music continues.

KATHERINE

Spirits of peace, where are ye? Are ye all gone,

And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye?

GRIFFITH     Madam, we are here.

KATHERINE     It is not you I call for.

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Saw ye none enter since I slept?

GRIFFITH     None, madam.

KATHERINE     No? Saw you not even now a blessed troop

Invite me to a banquet, whose bright faces

Cast thousand beams upon me, like the sun?

They promised me eternal happiness

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And brought me garlands, Griffith, which I feel

I am not worthy yet to wear. I shall, assuredly.

GRIFFITH     I am most joyful, madam, such good dreams

Possess your fancy.

KATHERINE     Bid the music leave.

They are harsh and heavy to me.     [Music ceases.]

PATIENCE     Do you note

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How much her grace is altered on the sudden?

How long her face is drawn? How pale she looks,

And of an earthy cold? Mark her eyes.

GRIFFITH     She is going, wench. Pray, pray.

PATIENCE     Heaven comfort her.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     An’t like your grace –

KATHERINE     You are a saucy fellow.

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Deserve we no more reverence?

GRIFFITH [to the Messenger]     You are to blame,

Knowing she will not lose her wonted greatness,

To use so rude behaviour. Go to, kneel.

MESSENGER

I humbly do entreat your highness’ pardon.

My haste made me unmannerly. There is staying

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A gentleman sent from the King to see you.

KATHERINE

Admit him entrance, Griffith. But this fellow

Let me ne’er see again.     Exit Messenger.

Enter Lord CAPUTIUS.

If my sight fail not,

You should be lord ambassador from the Emperor,

My royal nephew, and your name Caputius.

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CAPUTIUS     Madam, the same. Your servant.

KATHERINE     O my lord,

The times and titles now are altered strangely

With me since first you knew me. But I pray you,

What is your pleasure with me?

CAPUTIUS     Noble lady,

First, mine own service to your grace; the next,

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The King’s request that I would visit you,

Who grieves much for your weakness and by me

Sends you his princely commendations

And heartily entreats you take good comfort.

KATHERINE

O my good lord, that comfort comes too late;

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’Tis like a pardon after execution.

That gentle physic given in time had cured me,

But now I am past all comforts here but prayers.

How does his highness?

CAPUTIUS     Madam, in good health.

KATHERINE     So may he ever do, and ever flourish

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When I shall dwell with worms and my poor name

Banished the kingdom. Patience, is that letter

I caused you write yet sent away?

PATIENCE     No, madam.

KATHERINE     Sir, I most humbly pray you to deliver

This to my lord the King.

CAPUTIUS     Most willing, madam.

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KATHERINE

In which I have commended to his goodness

The model of our chaste loves, his young daughter –

The dews of heaven fall thick in blessings on her! –

Beseeching him to give her virtuous breeding –

She is young and of a noble, modest nature;

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I hope she will deserve well – and a little

To love her for her mother’s sake that loved him,

Heaven knows how dearly. My next poor petition

Is that his noble grace would have some pity

Upon my wretched women, that so long

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Have followed both my fortunes faithfully;

Of which there is not one, I dare avow –

And now I should not lie – but will deserve,

For virtue and true beauty of the soul,

For honesty and decent carriage,

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A right good husband – let him be a noble –

And sure those men are happy that shall have ’em.

The last is for my men – they are the poorest,

But poverty could never draw ’em from me –

That they may have their wages duly paid ’em,

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And something over to remember me by.

If heaven had pleased to have given me longer life

And able means, we had not parted thus.

These are the whole contents, and, good my lord,

By that you love the dearest in this world,

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As you wish Christian peace to souls departed,

Stand these poor people’s friend, and urge the King

To do me this last right.

CAPUTIUS     By heaven, I will,

Or let me lose the fashion of a man.

KATHERINE     I thank you, honest lord. Remember me

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In all humility unto his highness.

Say his long trouble now is passing

Out of this world. Tell him in death I blessed him,

For so I will. Mine eyes grow dim. Farewell,

My lord. Griffith, farewell. Nay, Patience,

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You must not leave me yet: I must to bed.

Call in more women. When I am dead, good wench,

Let me be used with honour. Strew me over

With maiden flowers, that all the world may know

I was a chaste wife to my grave. Embalm me,

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Then lay me forth. Although unqueened, yet like

A queen and daughter to a king inter me.

I can no more.     Exeunt leading Katherine.

5.1 Enter GARDINER, Bishop of Winchester, a Page with a torch before him, met by Sir Thomas LOVELL.

GARDINER     It’s one o’clock, boy, is’t not?

PAGE     It hath struck.

GARDINER     These should be hours for necessities,

Not for delights; times to repair our nature

With comforting repose, and not for us

To waste these times. Good hour of the night, Sir Thomas.

5

Whither so late?

LOVELL     Came you from the King, my lord?

GARDINER

I did, Sir Thomas, and left him at primero

With the Duke of Suffolk.

LOVELL     I must to him, too,

Before he go to bed. I’ll take my leave.

GARDINER

Not yet, Sir Thomas Lovell. What’s the matter?

10

It seems you are in haste. And if there be

No great offence belongs to’t, give your friend

Some touch of your late business. Affairs that walk,

As they say spirits do, at midnight have

In them a wilder nature than the business

15

That seeks dispatch by day.

LOVELL     My lord, I love you,

And durst commend a secret to your ear

Much weightier than this work. The Queen’s in labour –

They say in great extremity, and feared

She’ll with the labour end.

GARDINER     The fruit she goes with

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I pray for heartily, that it may find

Good time, and live. But, for the stock, Sir Thomas,

I wish it grubbed up now.

LOVELL     Methinks I could

Cry the amen, and yet my conscience says

She’s a good creature and, sweet lady, does

25

Deserve our better wishes.

GARDINER     But sir, sir –

Hear me, Sir Thomas. You’re a gentleman

Of mine own way. I know you wise, religious,

And let me tell you, it will ne’er be well –

’Twill not, Sir Thomas Lovell, take’t of me –

30

Till Cranmer, Cromwell (her two hands) and she

Sleep in their graves.

LOVELL     Now, sir, you speak of two

The most remarked i’th’ kingdom. As for Cromwell,

Beside that of the Jewel House, is made Master

O’th’ Rolls and the King’s secretary; further, sir,

35

Stands in the gap and trade of more preferments,

With which the time will load him. Th’Archbishop

Is the King’s hand and tongue, and who dare speak

One syllable against him?

GARDINER     Yes, yes, Sir Thomas,

There are that dare, and I myself have ventured

40

To speak my mind of him; and indeed this day,

Sir – I may tell it you, I think – I have

Incensed the lords o’th’ Council that he is –

For so I know he is, they know he is –

A most arch heretic, a pestilence

45

That does infect the land; with which they, moved,

Have broken with the King, who hath so far

Given ear to our complaint, of his great grace

And princely care foreseeing those fell mischiefs

Our reasons laid before him, hath commanded

50

Tomorrow morning to the Council board

He be convented. He’s a rank weed, Sir Thomas,

And we must root him out. From your affairs

I hinder you too long. Good night, Sir Thomas.

LOVELL

Many good nights, my lord. I rest your servant.

55

Exeunt Gardiner and Page.

Enter KING and SUFFOLK.

KING     Charles, I will play no more tonight:

My mind’s not on’t. You are too hard for me.

SUFFOLK     Sir, I did never win of you before.

KING     But little, Charles,

Nor shall not, when my fancy’s on my play.

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Now, Lovell, from the Queen what is the news?

LOVELL     I could not personally deliver to her

What you commanded me, but by her woman

I sent your message, who returned her thanks

In the greatest humbleness and desired your highness

65

Most heartily to pray for her.

KING     What sayest thou? Ha?

To pray for her? What, is she crying out?

LOVELL

So said her woman, and that her sufferance made

Almost each pang a death.

KING     Alas, good lady.

SUFFOLK     God safely quit her of her burden, and

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With gentle travail, to the gladding of

Your highness with an heir.

KING     ’Tis midnight, Charles.

Prithee to bed, and in thy prayers remember

Th’estate of my poor Queen. Leave me alone,

For I must think of that which company

75

Would not be friendly to.

SUFFOLK     I wish your highness

A quiet night, and my good mistress will

Remember in my prayers.

KING     Charles, good night.

Exit Suffolk.

Enter Sir Anthony DENNY.

Well, sir, what follows?

DENNY     Sir, I have brought my lord the Archbishop,

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As you commanded me.

KING     Ha? Canterbury?

DENNY     Ay, my good lord.

KING     ’Tis true. Where is he, Denny?

DENNY     He attends your highness’ pleasure.

KING     Bring him to us. Exit Denny.

LOVELL [aside]

This is about that which the Bishop spake.

I am happily come hither.

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Enter CRANMER and DENNY.

KING     Avoid the gallery! [Lovell seems to stay.]

Ha? I have said. Be gone.

What?     Exeunt Lovell and Denny.

CRANMER     [aside] I am fearful. Wherefore frowns he thus?

’Tis his aspect of terror. All’s not well.

KING     How now, my lord? You do desire to know

Wherefore I sent for you.

CRANMER [Kneels.]     It is my duty

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T’attend your highness’ pleasure.

KING     Pray you, arise,

My good and gracious lord of Canterbury.

Come, you and I must walk a turn together:

I have news to tell you. Come, come: give me your hand.

Ah, my good lord, I grieve at what I speak,

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And am right sorry to repeat what follows.

I have, and most unwillingly, of late

Heard many grievous – I do say, my lord,

Grievous – complaints of you, which, being considered,

Have moved us and our Council that you shall

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This morning come before us, where I know

You cannot with such freedom purge yourself

But that, till further trial in those charges

Which will require your answer, you must take

Your patience to you and be well contented

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To make your house our Tower. You a brother of us,

It fits we thus proceed, or else no witness

Would come against you.

CRANMER [Kneels.]     I humbly thank your highness,

And am right glad to catch this good occasion

Most throughly to be winnowed, where my chaff

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And corn shall fly asunder. For I know

There’s none stands under more calumnious tongues

Than I myself, poor man.

KING     Stand up, good Canterbury.

Thy truth and thy integrity is rooted

In us, thy friend. Give me thy hand. Stand up.

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Prithee, let’s walk. Now, by my halidom,

What manner of man are you? My lord, I looked

You would have given me your petition that

I should have ta’en some pains to bring together

Yourself and your accusers and to have heard you

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Without endurance further.

CRANMER     Most dread liege,

The good I stand on is my truth and honesty.

If they shall fail, I with mine enemies

Will triumph o’er my person, which I weigh not

Being of those virtues vacant. I fear nothing

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What can be said against me.

KING     Know you not

How your state stands i’th’ world, with the whole world?

Your enemies are many and not small: their practices

Must bear the same proportion, and not ever

The justice and the truth o’th’ question carries

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The due o’th’ verdict with it. At what ease

Might corrupt minds procure knaves as corrupt

To swear against you? Such things have been done.

You are potently opposed, and with a malice

Of as great size. Ween you of better luck –

135

I mean in perjured witness – than your master,

Whose minister you are, whiles here he lived

Upon this naughty earth? Go to, go to:

You take a precipice for no leap of danger,

And woo your own destruction.

CRANMER     God and your majesty

140

Protect mine innocence, or I fall into

The trap is laid for me.

KING     Be of good cheer.

They shall no more prevail than we give way to.

Keep comfort to you, and this morning see

You do appear before them. If they shall chance,

145

In charging you with matters, to commit you,

The best persuasions to the contrary

Fail not to use, and with what vehemency

Th’occasion shall instruct you. If entreaties

Will render you no remedy, this ring

150

Deliver them, and your appeal to us

There make before them. – Look, the good man weeps.

He’s honest, on mine honour. God’s blest mother,

I swear he is true-hearted, and a soul

None better in my kingdom. – Get you gone,

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And do as I have bid you.     Exit Cranmer.

He has strangled

His language in his tears.

Enter Old Lady; LOVELL follows.

LOVELL [within]     Come back! What mean you?

OLD LADY     I’ll not come back. The tidings that I bring

Will make my boldness manners. [to the King] Now good angels

Fly o’er thy royal head and shade thy person

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Under their blessed wings.

KING     Now by thy looks

I guess thy message. Is the Queen delivered?

Say ‘Ay, and of a boy’.

OLD LADY     Ay, ay, my liege,

And of a lovely boy. The God of heaven

Both now and ever bless her: ’tis a girl

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Promises boys hereafter. Sir, your Queen

Desires your visitation and to be

Acquainted with this stranger. ’Tis as like you

As cherry is to cherry.

KING     Lovell.

LOVELL     Sir?

KING     Give her an hundred marks. I’ll to the Queen.

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Exeunt King and Lovell.

OLD LADY

An hundred marks? By this light, I’ll ha’ more.

An ordinary groom is for such payment.

I will have more or scold it out of him.

Said I for this the girl was like to him? I’ll

Have more, or else unsay’t; and now, while ’tis hot,

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I’ll put it to the issue.

Exit Old Lady.

5.2 Enter CRANMER, Archbishop of Canterbury.

CRANMER

I hope I am not too late, and yet the gentleman

That was sent to me from the Council prayed me

To make great haste. All fast? What means this? Ho!

Who waits there?

Enter [Door] Keeper.

Sure you know me?

KEEPER     Yes, my lord,

But yet I cannot help you.

CRANMER     Why?

KEEPER     Your grace

5

Must wait till you be called for.

Enter Doctor BUTTS.

CRANMER     So.

BUTTS [aside]     This is a piece of malice. I am glad

I came this way so happily. The King

Shall understand it presently.     Exit Butts.

CRANMER [aside]     ’Tis Butts,

The King’s physician. As he passed along,

10

How earnestly he cast his eyes upon me.

Pray heaven he sound not my disgrace. For certain,

This is of purpose laid by some that hate me –

God turn their hearts: I never sought their malice –

To quench mine honour. They would shame to make me

15

Wait else at door, a fellow Councillor

’Mong boys, grooms and lackeys. But their pleasures

Must be fulfilled, and I attend with patience.

Enter the KING and BUTTS at a window above.

BUTTS     I’ll show your grace the strangest sight –

KING     What’s that, Butts?

BUTTS

– I think your highness saw this many a day.

20

KING     Body o’me, where is it?

BUTTS     There, my lord:

The high promotion of his grace of Canterbury,

Who holds his state at door ’mongst pursuivants,

Pages and footboys.

KING     Ha? ’Tis he indeed.

Is this the honour they do one another?

25

’Tis well there’s one above ’em yet. I had thought

They had parted so much honesty among ’em –

At least good manners – as not thus to suffer

A man of his place, and so near our favour,

To dance attendance on their lordships’ pleasures –

30

And at the door, too, like a post with packets.

By holy Mary, Butts, there’s knavery!

Let ’em alone, and draw the curtain close:

We shall hear more anon.

A council table brought in with chairs and stools and placed

under the state. Enter Lord CHANCELLOR, places himself at

the upper end of the table, on the left hand; a seat being left

    void above him, as for Canterbury’s seat. Duke of

        SUFFOLK, Duke of NORFOLK, SURREY, Lord

CHAMBERLAIN, GARDINER seat themselves in order on each

        side; CROMWELL at lower end, as secretary.

CHANCELLOR     Speak to the business, master secretary.

35

Why are we met in Council?

CROMWELL     Please your honours,

The chief cause concerns his grace of Canterbury.

GARDINER     Has he had knowledge of it?

CROMWELL   Yes.

NORFOLK     Who waits there?

KEEPER        Without, my noble lords?

GARDINER    Yes.

KEEPER          My lord Archbishop,

And has done half an hour to know your pleasures.

40

CHANCELLOR     Let him come in.

KEEPER     Your grace may enter now.

[Cranmer approaches the council table.]

CHANCELLOR

 My good lord Archbishop, I’m very sorry

To sit here at this present and behold

That chair stand empty. But we all are men,

In our own natures frail, and capable

45

Of our flesh – few are angels – out of which frailty

And want of wisdom, you that best should teach us

Have misdemeaned yourself, and not a little,

Toward the King first, then his laws, in filling

The whole realm, by your teaching and your chaplains’ –

50

For so we are informed – with new opinions,

Diverse and dangerous, which are heresies

And, not reformed, may prove pernicious.

GARDINER     Which reformation must be sudden too,

My noble lords, for those that tame wild horses

55

Pace ’em not in their hands to make ’em gentle,

But stop their mouths with stubborn bits and spur ’em

Till they obey the manage. If we suffer,

Out of our easiness and childish pity

To one man’s honour, this contagious sickness,

60

Farewell, all physic. And what follows then?

Commotions, uproars, with a general taint

Of the whole state, as of late days our neighbours,

The upper Germany, can dearly witness,

Yet freshly pitied in our memories.

65

CRANMER     My good lords, hitherto, in all the progress

Both of my life and office, I have laboured,

And with no little study, that my teaching

And the strong course of my authority

Might go one way, and safely; and the end

70

Was ever to do well. Nor is there living –

I speak it with a single heart, my lords –

A man that more detests, more stirs against,

Both in his private conscience and his place,

Defacers of a public peace than I do.

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Pray heaven the King may never find a heart

With less allegiance in it. Men that make

Envy and crooked malice nourishment

Dare bite the best. I do beseech your lordships

That in this case, of justice, my accusers,

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Be what they will, may stand forth face to face

And freely urge against me.

SUFFOLK     Nay, my lord,

That cannot be. You are a Councillor,

And by that virtue no man dare accuse you.

GARDINER

My lord, because we have business of more moment,

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We will be short with you. ’Tis his highness’ pleasure

And our consent, for better trial of you,

From hence you be committed to the Tower,

Where, being but a private man again,

You shall know many dare accuse you boldly –

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More than, I fear, you are provided for.

CRANMER

Ah, my good lord of Winchester, I thank you;

You are always my good friend. If your will pass,

I shall both find your lordship judge and juror,

You are so merciful. I see your end:

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’Tis my undoing. Love and meekness, lord,

Become a churchman better than ambition.

Win straying souls with modesty again;

Cast none away. That I shall clear myself,

Lay all the weight ye can upon my patience,

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I make as little doubt as you do conscience

In doing daily wrongs. I could say more,

But reverence to your calling makes me modest.

GARDINER     My lord, my lord, you are a sectary.

That’s the plain truth. Your painted gloss discovers,

105

To men that understand you, words and weakness.

CROMWELL     My lord of Winchester, you’re a little,

By your good favour, too sharp. Men so noble,

However faulty, yet should find respect

For what they have been. ’Tis a cruelty

110

To load a falling man.

GARDINER     Good master secretary,

I cry your honour mercy: you may worst

Of all this table say so.

CROMWELL     Why, my lord?

GARDINER     Do not I know you for a favourer

Of this new sect? Ye are not sound.

CROMWELL     Not sound?

115

GARDINER     Not sound, I say.

CROMWELL     Would you were half so honest!

Men’s prayers then would seek you, not their fears.

GARDINER     I shall remember this bold language.

CROMWELL     Do.

Remember your bold life, too.

CHANCELLOR     This is too much.

Forbear, for shame, my lords.

GARDINER     I have done.

CROMWELL     And I.

120

CHANCELLOR [to Cranmer]

Then thus for you, my lord. It stands agreed,

I take it, by all voices, that forthwith

You be conveyed to th’ Tower a prisoner,

There to remain till the King’s further pleasure

Be known unto us. Are you all agreed, lords?

125

ALL     We are.

CRANMER     Is there no other way of mercy

But I must needs to th’ Tower, my lords?

GARDINER     What other

Would you expect? You are strangely troublesome.

Let some o’th’ guard be ready there.

Enter the guard.

CRANMER     For me?

Must I go like a traitor thither?

GARDINER     Receive him,

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And see him safe i’th’ Tower.

CRANMER     Stay, good my lords,

I have a little yet to say. Look there, my lords.

By virtue of that ring, I take my cause

Out of the gripes of cruel men and give it

To a most noble judge, the King my master.

135

CHANCELLOR     This is the King’s ring.

SURREY     ’Tis no counterfeit.

SUFFOLK     ’Tis the right ring, by heaven. I told ye all,

When we first put this dangerous stone a-rolling,

’Twould fall upon ourselves.

NORFOLK     Do you think, my lords,

The King will suffer but the little finger

140

Of this man to be vexed?

CHAMBERLAIN     ’Tis now too certain.

How much more is his life in value with him?

Would I were fairly out on’t.

CROMWELL     My mind gave me,

In seeking tales and informations

Against this man, whose honesty the devil

145

And his disciples only envy at,

Ye blew the fire that burns ye. Now have at ye!

Enter KING, frowning on them. He takes his seat.

GARDINER

Dread sovereign, how much are we bound to heaven

In daily thanks, that gave us such a prince,

Not only good and wise but most religious;

150

One that, in all obedience, makes the Church

The chief aim of his honour and, to strengthen

That holy duty out of dear respect,

His royal self in judgement comes to hear

The cause betwixt her and this great offender.

155

KING     You were ever good at sudden commendations,

Bishop of Winchester, but know I come not

To hear such flattery now, and in my presence

They are too thin and bare to hide offences.

To me you cannot reach, you play the spaniel

160

And think with wagging of your tongue to win me.

But whatsoe’er thou takest me for, I’m sure

Thou hast a cruel nature and a bloody.

[to Cranmer] Good man, sit down. Now let me see the proudest –

He that dares most – but wag his finger at thee.

165

By all that’s holy, he had better starve,

Than but once think his place becomes thee not.

SURREY     May it please your grace –

KING     No, sir, it does not please me.

I had thought I had had men of some understanding

And wisdom of my Council, but I find none.

170

Was it discretion, lords, to let this man,

This good man – few of you deserve that title –

This honest man, wait like a lousy footboy

At chamber door? And one as great as you are?

Why, what a shame was this! Did my commission

175

Bid ye so far forget yourselves? I gave ye

Power as he was a Councillor to try him,

Not as a groom. There’s some of ye, I see,

More out of malice than integrity,

Would try him to the utmost, had ye mean,

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Which ye shall never have while I live.

CHANCELLOR     Thus far,

My most dread sovereign, may it like your grace

To let my tongue excuse all. What was purposed

Concerning his imprisonment was rather –

If there be faith in men – meant for his trial

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And fair purgation to the world than malice,

I’m sure, in me.

KING     Well, well, my lords, respect him.

Take him, and use him well: he’s worthy of it.

I will say thus much for him: if a prince

May be beholding to a subject, I

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Am, for his love and service, so to him.

Make me no more ado, but all embrace him.

Be friends, for shame, my lords! My lord of Canterbury,

I have a suit which you must not deny me:

That is, a fair young maid that yet wants baptism.

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You must be godfather and answer for her.

CRANMER     The greatest monarch now alive may glory

In such an honour. How may I deserve it,

That am a poor and humble subject to you?

KING     Come, come, my lord, you’d spare your spoons!

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You shall have two noble partners with you: the old

Duchess of Norfolk and Lady Marquess Dorset. Will

these please you?

Once more, my lord of Winchester, I charge you

Embrace and love this man.

GARDINER     With a true heart

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And brother’s love I do it.

CRANMER     And let heaven

Witness how dear I hold this confirmation.

KING

Good man, those joyful tears show thy true heart.

The common voice, I see, is verified

Of thee, which says thus: ‘Do my lord of Canterbury

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A shrewd turn, and he’s your friend forever.’

Come, lords, we trifle time away. I long

To have this young one made a Christian.

As I have made ye one, lords, one remain:

So I grow stronger, you more honour gain.     Exeunt.

215

5.3 Noise and tumult within. Enter Porter and his Man.

PORTER     You’ll leave your noise anon, ye rascals. Do you

take the court for Parish Garden? Ye rude slaves, leave

your gaping.

ONE [within]     Good master porter, I belong to th’ larder.

PORTER     Belong to th’ gallows, and be hanged, ye rogue! Is

5

this a place to roar in? Fetch me a dozen crab-tree staves,

and strong ones: these are but switches to ’em. I’ll

scratch your heads. You must be seeing christenings? Do

you look for ale and cakes here, you rude rascals?

MAN     Pray, sir, be patient. ’Tis as much impossible,

10

Unless we sweep ’em from the door with cannons,

To scatter ’em as ’tis to make ’em sleep

On May-day morning – which will never be.

We may as well push against Paul’s as stir ’em.

PORTER     How got they in, and be hanged?

15

MAN     Alas, I know not. How gets the tide in?

As much as one sound cudgel of four foot –

You see the poor remainder – could distribute,

I made no spare, sir.

PORTER     You did nothing, sir.

MAN     I am not Samson, nor Sir Guy, nor Colbrand,

20

To mow ’em down before me; but if I spared any

That had a head to hit, either young or old,

He or she, cuckold or cuckold-maker,

Let me ne’er hope to see a chine again –

And that I would not for a cow, God save her!

25

ONE [within]     Do you hear, master porter?

PORTER

I shall be with you presently, good master puppy.

[to his Man] Keep the door close, sirrah.

MAN     What would you have me do?

PORTER     What should you do, but knock ’em down by

30

th’ dozens? Is this Moorfields to muster in? Or have

we some strange Indian with the great tool come to

court, the women so besiege us? Bless me, what a fry

of fornication is at door! On my Christian conscience,

this one christening will beget a thousand: here will be

35

father, godfather, and all together.

MAN     The spoons will be the bigger, sir. There is a fellow

somewhat near the door – he should be a brazier by his

face, for, o’my conscience, twenty of the dog-days now

reign in’s nose. All that stand about him are under the

40

line: they need no other penance. That fire-drake did I

hit three times on the head, and three times was his

nose discharged against me. He stands there like a

mortar-piece, to blow us. There was a haberdasher’s

wife of small wit near him that railed upon me till her

45

pinked porringer fell off her head for kindling such a

combustion in the state. I missed the meteor once and

hit that woman, who cried out ‘Clubs!’, when I might

see from far some forty truncheoners draw to her

succour, which were the hope o’th’ Strand, where she

50

was quartered. They fell on; I made good my place; at

length they came to th’ broomstaff to me; I defied ’em

still, when suddenly a file of boys behind ’em, loose

shot, delivered such a shower of pebbles that I was fain

to draw mine honour in and let ’em win the work. The

55

devil was amongst ’em, I think, surely.

PORTER     These are the youths that thunder at a

playhouse and fight for bitten apples, that no audience

but the ‘Tribulation’ of Tower Hill or the ‘Limbs’ of

Limehouse, their dear brothers, are able to endure. I

60

have some of ’em in Limbo Patrum – and there they are

like to dance these three days – besides the running

banquet of two beadles that is to come.

Enter Lord CHAMBERLAIN.

CHAMBERLAIN     Mercy o’me, what a multitude are here!

They grow still, too. From all parts they are coming,

65

As if we kept a fair here! Where are these porters,

These lazy knaves? You’ve made a fine hand, fellows!

There’s a trim rabble let in! Are all these

Your faithful friends o’th’ suburbs? We shall have

Great store of room, no doubt, left for the ladies,

70

When they pass back from the christening.

PORTER     An’t please your honour,

We are but men, and what so many may do,

Not being torn a-pieces, we have done:

An army cannot rule ’em.

CHAMBERLAIN     As I live,

If the King blame me for’t, I’ll lay ye all

75

By th’ heels, and suddenly, and on your heads

Clap round fines for neglect. You’re lazy knaves,

And here ye lie, baiting of bombards, when

Ye should do service. Hark, the trumpets sound:

They’re come already from the christening.

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Go break among the press and find a way out

To let the troop pass fairly, or I’ll find

A Marshalsea shall hold ye play these two months.

PORTER     Make way there for the Princess!

MAN     You, great fellow,

Stand close up, or I’ll make your head ache!

85

PORTER     You i’th’ chamblet, get up o’th’ rail –

I’ll peck you o’er the pales else.     Exeunt.

5.4 Enter trumpets sounding; then two aldermen, Lord Mayor, GARTER, CRANMER, Duke of NORFOLK with his marshal’s staff, Duke of SUFFOLK, two noblemen bearing great standing bowls for the christening gifts; then four noblemen bearing a canopy, under which the Duchess of Norfolk, godmother, bearing the child richly habited in a mantle, etc., train borne by a lady; then follows the Marchioness Dorset, the other godmother, and ladies. The troop pass once about the stage, and Garter speaks.

GARTER     Heaven, from thy endless goodness, send

prosperous life, long and ever happy, to the high and

mighty Princess of England, Elizabeth.

Flourish. Enter KING and guard.

CRANMER [Kneels.]

And to your royal grace and the good Queen,

My noble partners and myself thus pray

5

All comfort, joy, in this most gracious lady

Heaven ever laid up to make parents happy

May hourly fall upon ye.

KING     Thank you, good lord Archbishop.

What is her name?

CRANMER     Elizabeth.

KING     Stand up, lord.

[to the child] With this kiss, take my blessing. God protect thee,

10

Into whose hand I give thy life.

CRANMER     Amen.

KING     My noble gossips, you’ve been too prodigal.

I thank ye heartily: so shall this lady,

When she has so much English.

CRANMER     Let me speak, sir,

For heaven now bids me; and the words I utter

15

Let none think flattery, for they’ll find ’em truth.

This royal infant – heaven still move about her –

Though in her cradle, yet now promises

Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings,

Which time shall bring to ripeness. She shall be –

20

But few now living can behold that goodness –

A pattern to all princes living with her

And all that shall succeed. Saba was never

More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue

Than this pure soul shall be. All princely graces

25

That mould up such a mighty piece as this is,

With all the virtues that attend the good,

Shall still be doubled on her. Truth shall nurse her;

Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her.

She shall be loved and feared. Her own shall bless her;

30

Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn,

And hang their heads with sorrow. Good grows with her.

In her days, every man shall eat in safety

Under his own vine what he plants, and sing

The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.

35

God shall be truly known, and those about her

From her shall read the perfect ways of honour

And by those claim their greatness, not by blood.

Nor shall this peace sleep with her, but as when

The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,

40

Her ashes new create another heir

As great in admiration as herself,

So shall she leave her blessedness to one,

When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness,

Who from the sacred ashes of her honour

45

Shall star-like rise as great in fame as she was

And so stand fixed. Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror,

That were the servants to this chosen infant,

Shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him.

Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,

50

His honour and the greatness of his name

Shall be, and make new nations. He shall flourish,

And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches

To all the plains about him. Our children’s children

Shall see this and bless heaven.

KING     Thou speakest wonders.

55

CRANMER     She shall be to the happiness of England

An aged princess. Many days shall see her,

And yet no day without a deed to crown it.

Would I had known no more. But she must die:

She must, the saints must have her. Yet a virgin,

60

A most unspotted lily, shall she pass to th’ ground,

And all the world shall mourn her.

KING     O lord Archbishop,

Thou hast made me now a man. Never before

This happy child did I get anything.

This oracle of comfort has so pleased me

65

That when I am in heaven I shall desire

To see what this child does and praise my maker.

I thank ye all. To you, my good Lord Mayor,

And your good brethren, I am much beholding:

I have received much honour by your presence,

70

And ye shall find me thankful. Lead the way, lords:

Ye must all see the Queen, and she must thank ye –

She will be sick else. This day, no man think

’Has business at his house, for all shall stay:

This little one shall make it holiday.     Exeunt.

75

Enter EPILOGUE.

EPILOGUE     ’Tis ten to one this play can never please

All that are here. Some come to take their ease,

And sleep an act or two (but those, we fear,

We’ve frighted with our trumpets, so ’tis clear

They’ll say ’tis naught), others to hear the city

5

Abused extremely and to cry ‘That’s witty!’

(Which we have not done neither), that I fear

All the expected good we’re like to hear

For this play at this time is only in

The merciful construction of good women,

10

For such a one we showed ’em. If they smile

And say ’twill do, I know within a while

All the best men are ours – for ’tis ill hap

If they hold when their ladies bid ’em clap.     Exit.

King John

The date and sources of King John are difficult to determine with any certainty because of the intricate and disputed relationship between the Folio text of this play and that of a play called The Troublesome Reign of King John which was published anonymously as a quarto in 1591 and reprinted with an attribution to ‘W. Sh.’ in 1611. The many parallels between the works in plot and structure (though not in language) indicate either that one was a source for the other or that they both drew on the same common source; scholars have been unable to agree on these matters, though they do agree that the Folio play was probably written between 1590 and 1595. It uses material from John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1583, often referred to as ‘Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’) and the second edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587); it was listed amongst Shakespeare’s ‘tragedies’ by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia in 1598.

King John stands outside the historical sequence of the two ‘tetralogies’ – the eight ‘Richard’ and ‘Henry’ plays covering the period of English history from the events leading up to the deposition of Richard II (1399) to the overthrow of Richard III at Bosworth (1485). The play accordingly appears as the first of the histories in the First Folio. John’s reign was much earlier (1199-1216), and was mainly noted by Tudor historians for the monarch’s defiance of the Pope, which allowed him to be seen as a proto-Protestant figure (the Troublesome Reign is rather more anti-Catholic than King John). The one event most English people associate with King John today – the signing of the Magna Carta – is not highlighted in Tudor accounts. A feature of Shakespeare’s play is the focus on the Bastard, Philip Faulconbridge, an essentially fictional figure based on one fleeting reference in the chronicles who also appears in the Troublesome Reign. His engaging and often satirical commentary on morality, war and politics serves to expose the opportunism and cynicism of most of the other characters. Ironically, he seems better equipped to be king than either of the legitimate claimants, John and Arthur; Shakespeare in fact altered his sources to make both their claims weaker: by suggesting John rules by might rather than by right and by making Arthur younger than he really was.

There are no records of any pre-Restoration performances, but it was revived in the mid-eighteenth century and also adapted by Colley Cibber as Papal Tyranny in the Reign of John (1745). It had a reasonably steady stage history from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century and was traditionally seen as a good vehicle for actors because of the number of strong roles and the opportunities for big set-piece debates and confrontations. Despite his earlier cynicism, the Bastard’s final speech has aroused patriotic fervour at times when the play’s concern with foreign invasion has seemed topical.

During the nineteenth century in particular, King John’s popularity seems to have depended on some spectacular productions including large casts and elaborately detailed historical sets. These were also notable for the presence of star performers in the role of Constance, from Sarah Siddons to Sybil Thorndike. Like King Richard III it has four significant roles for women (Eleanor, Lady Faulconbridge and Blanche, as well as Constance); their roles as the mothers and wives of powerful men underline the play’s concern with legitimacy and usurpation. The tolerant attitude taken to the adultery of Lady Faulconbridge is in marked contrast to Shakespeare’s attitude elsewhere in the canon, as the positive representation of the Bastard contrasts with his portrayals of Don John in Much Ado About Nothing and Edmund in King Lear.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

KING JOHN

PRINCE HENRY

son to the king

ARTHUR

Duke of Brittany, nephew to the king

The Earl of SALISBURY

The Earl of PEMBROKE

The Earl of ESSEX

The Lord BIGOT

ROBERT Faulconbridge

son to Sir Robert Faulconbridge

Philip the BASTARD

his half-brother

HUBERT

a citizen of Angers

James GURNEY

servant to Lady Faulconbridge

PETER of Pomfret

a prophet

KING PHILIP

of France

LEWIS

the Dauphin

Limoges, Duke of AUSTRIA

MELUN

a French lord

CHATILLON

ambassador from France to King John

Cardinal PANDULPH

the Pope’s legate

Queen ELEANOR

mother to King John

CONSTANCE

mother to Arthur

BLANCHE

of Spain, niece to King John

LADY FAULCONBRIDGE

widow to Sir Robert Faulconbridge

Lords, Sheriff, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Messengers and other Attendants

King John

1.1 Enter KING JOHN, QUEEN ELEANOR, PEMBROKE, ESSEX, SALISBURY and attendants, with them CHATILLON of France.

KING JOHN

Now, say, Chatillon, what would France with us?

CHATILLON

Thus, after greeting, speaks the King of France

In my behaviour to the majesty,

The borrow’d majesty, of England here.

ELEANOR     A strange beginning: ‘borrow’d majesty’!

5

KING JOHN     Silence, good mother; hear the embassy.

CHATILLON     Philip of France, in right and true behalf

Of thy deceased brother Geoffrey’s son,

Arthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claim

To this fair island and the territories:

10

To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,

Desiring thee to lay aside the sword

Which sways usurpingly these several titles,

And put the same into young Arthur’s hand,

Thy nephew and right royal sovereign.

15

KING JOHN     What follows if we disallow of this?

CHATILLON

The proud control of fierce and bloody war,

To enforce these rights so forcibly withheld.

KING JOHN

Here have we war for war and blood for blood,

Controlment for controlment: so answer France.

20

CHATILLON

Then take my king’s defiance from my mouth,

The farthest limit of my embassy.

KING JOHN     Bear mine to him, and so depart in peace.

Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France,

For, ere thou canst report, I will be there:

25

The thunder of my cannon shall be heard.

So, hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath

And sullen presage of your own decay.

An honourable conduct let him have:

Pembroke, look to’t. Farewell, Chatillon.

30

Exeunt Chatillon and Pembroke.

ELEANOR     What now, my son! have I not ever said

How that ambitious Constance would not cease

Till she had kindled France, and all the world,

Upon the right and party of her son?

This might have been prevented and made whole

35

With very easy arguments of love,

Which now the manage of two kingdoms must

With fearful-bloody issue arbitrate.

KING JOHN     Our strong possession and our right for us.

ELEANOR

Your strong possession much more than your right,

40

Or else it must go wrong with you and me:

So much my conscience whispers in your ear,

Which none but heaven, and you, and I, shall hear.

Enter a sheriff.

ESSEX     My liege, here is the strangest controversy,

Come from the country to be judg’d by you,

45

That e’er I heard: shall I produce the men?

KING JOHN     Let them approach.

Our abbeys and our priories shall pay

This expeditious charge.

Enter ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE, and PHILIP, his Bastard brother.

What men are you?

BASTARD     Your faithful subject I, a gentleman,

50

Born in Northamptonshire, and eldest son,

As I suppose, to Robert Faulconbridge,

A soldier, by the honour-giving hand

Of Coeur-de-lion knighted in the field.

KING JOHN     What art thou?

55

ROBERT

The son and heir to that same Faulconbridge.

KING JOHN     Is that the elder, and art thou the heir?

You came not of one mother then, it seems.

BASTARD     Most certain of one mother, mighty king;

That is well known; and, as I think, one father:

60

But for the certain knowledge of that truth

I put you o’er to heaven and to my mother:

Of that I doubt, as all men’s children may.

ELEANOR

Out on thee, rude man! thou dost shame thy mother

And wound her honour with this diffidence.

65

BASTARD     I, madam? no, I have no reason for it;

That is my brother’s plea and none of mine;

The which if he can prove, a pops me out

At least from fair five hundred pound a year:

Heaven guard my mother’s honour, and my land!

70

KING JOHN

A good blunt fellow. Why, being younger born,

Doth he lay claim to thine inheritance?

BASTARD     I know not why – except to get the land –

But once he slander’d me with bastardy:

But whe’r I be as true begot or no,

75

That still I lay upon my mother’s head;

But that I am as well begot, my liege –

Fair fall the bones that took the pains for me! –

Compare our faces and be judge yourself.

If old Sir Robert did beget us both

80

And were our father, and this son like him,

O old Sir Robert, father, on my knee

I give heaven thanks I was not like to thee!

KING JOHN

Why, what a madcap hath heaven lent us here!

ELEANOR     He hath a trick of Coeur-de-lion’s face;

85

The accent of his tongue affecteth him.

Do you not read some tokens of my son

In the large composition of this man?

KING JOHN     Mine eye hath well examined his parts

And finds them perfect Richard. Sirrah, speak,

90

What doth move you to claim your brother’s land?

BASTARD     Because he hath a half-face, like my father!

With half that face would he have all my land:

A half-fac’d groat five hundred pound a year!

ROBERT     My gracious liege, when that my father liv’d,

95

Your brother did employ my father much –

BASTARD     Well sir, by this you cannot get my land:

Your tale must be how he employ’d my mother.

ROBERT     – And once dispatch’d him in an embassy

To Germany, there with the emperor

100

To treat of high affairs touching that time.

Th’advantage of his absence took the king

And in the mean time sojourn’d at my father’s,

Where how he did prevail I shame to speak;

But truth is truth: large lengths of seas and shores

105

Between my father and my mother lay,

As I have heard my father speak himself,

When this same lusty gentleman was got.

Upon his death-bed he by will bequeath’d

His lands to me, and took it on his death

110

That this my mother’s son was none of his;

And if he were, he came into the world

Full fourteen weeks before the course of time.

Then, good my liege, let me have what is mine,

My father’s land, as was my father’s will.

115

KING JOHN     Sirrah, your brother is legitimate;

Your father’s wife did after wedlock bear him,

And if she did play false, the fault was hers;

Which fault lies on the hazards of all husbands

That marry wives. Tell me, how if my brother,

120

Who, as you say, took pains to get this son,

Had of your father claim’d this son for his?

In sooth, good friend, your father might have kept

This calf, bred from his cow, from all the world;

In sooth he might; then, if he were my brother’s,

125

My brother might not claim him; nor your father,

Being none of his, refuse him: this concludes;

My mother’s son did get your father’s heir;

Your father’s heir must have your father’s land.

ROBERT     Shall then my father’s will be of no force

130

To dispossess that child which is not his?

BASTARD     Of no more force to dispossess me, sir,

Than was his will to get me, as I think.

ELEANOR

Whether hadst thou rather be a Faulconbridge,

And like thy brother, to enjoy thy land,

135

Or the reputed son of Coeur-de-lion,

Lord of thy presence and no land beside?

BASTARD     Madam, and if my brother had my shape,

And I had his, Sir Robert’s his like him;

And if my legs were two such riding-rods,

140

My arms such eel-skins stuff’d, my face so thin

That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose

Lest men should say ‘Look, where three-farthings goes!’

And, to his shape, were heir to all this land,

Would I might never stir from off this place,

145

I would give it every foot to have this face:

It would not be Sir Knob in any case.

ELEANOR

I like thee well: wilt thou forsake thy fortune,

Bequeath thy land to him and follow me?

I am a soldier and now bound to France.

150

BASTARD

Brother, take you my land, I’ll take my chance.

Your face hath got five hundred pound a year,

Yet sell your face for five pence and ’tis dear.

Madam, I’ll follow you unto the death.

ELEANOR     Nay, I would have you go before me thither.

155

BASTARD     Our country manners give our betters way.

KING JOHN     What is thy name?

BASTARD     Philip, my liege, so is my name begun;

Philip, good old Sir Robert’s wive’s eldest son.

KING JOHN

From henceforth bear his name whose form thou bearest:

160

Kneel thou down Philip, but rise more great,

Arise Sir Richard, and Plantagenet.

BASTARD

Brother by th’ mother’s side, give me your hand:

My father gave me honour, yours gave land.

Now blessed be the hour, by night or day,

165

When I was got, Sir Robert was away!

ELEANOR     The very spirit of Plantagenet!

I am thy grandam, Richard; call me so.

BASTARD

Madam, by chance but not by truth; what though?

Something about, a little from the right,

170

In at the window, or else o’er the hatch:

Who dares not stir by day must walk by night,

And have is have, however men do catch.

Near or far off, well won is still well shot,

And I am I, howe’er I was begot.

175

KING JOHN

Go, Faulconbridge: now hast thou thy desire;

A landless knight makes thee a landed squire.

Come, madam, and come, Richard, we must speed

For France, for France, for it is more than need.

BASTARD     Brother, adieu: good fortune come to thee!

180

For thou wast got i’th’ way of honesty.

Exeunt all but Bastard.

A foot of honour better than I was,

But many a many foot of land the worse.

Well, now can I make any Joan a lady.

‘Good den, Sir Richard!’ – ‘God-a-mercy, fellow!’ –

185

And if his name be George, I’ll call him Peter;

For new-made honour doth forget men’s names:

’Tis too respective and too sociable

For your conversion. Now your traveller,

He and his toothpick at my worship’s mess,

190

And when my knightly stomach is suffic’d,

Why then I suck my teeth and catechize

My picked man of countries: ‘My dear sir,’ –

Thus, leaning on mine elbow, I begin,

‘I shall beseech you,’ – that is Question now;

195

And then comes Answer like an Absey book:

‘O sir,’ says Answer, ‘at your best command;

At your employment; at your service, sir:’

‘No, sir,’ says Question, ‘I, sweet sir, at yours:’

And so, ere Answer knows what Question would,

200

Saving in dialogue of compliment,

And talking of the Alps and Apennines,

The Pyrenean and the river Po,

It draws toward supper in conclusion so.

But this is worshipful society,

205

And fits the mounting spirit like myself;

For he is but a bastard to the time

That doth not smack of observation;

And so am I, whether I smoke or no.

And not alone in habit and device,

210

Exterior form, outward accoutrement,

But from the inward motion to deliver

Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age’s tooth:

Which, though I will not practise to deceive,

Yet, to avoid deceit, I mean to learn;

215

For it shall strew the footsteps of my rising.

But who comes in such haste in riding-robes?

What woman-post is this? hath she no husband

That will take pains to blow a horn before her?

Enter LADY FAULCONBRIDGE and JAMES GURNEY.

O me! ’tis my mother. – How now, good lady?

220

What brings you here to court so hastily?

LADY FAULCONBRIDGE

Where is that slave, thy brother? where is he,

That holds in chase mine honour up and down?

BASTARD     My brother Robert? old Sir Robert’s son?

Colbrand the giant, that same mighty man?

225

Is it Sir Robert’s son that you seek so?

LADY FAULCONBRIDGE

Sir Robert’s son! Ay, thou unreverend boy –

Sir Robert’s son? – why scorn’st thou at Sir Robert?

He is Sir Robert’s son, and so art thou.

BASTARD

James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile?

230

GURNEY     Good leave, good Philip.

BASTARD     Philip? – sparrow! – James,

There’s toys abroad: anon I’ll tell thee more.

Exit Gurney.

Madam, I was not old Sir Robert’s son:

Sir Robert might have ate his part in me

Upon Good Friday and ne’er broke his fast:

235

Sir Robert could do – well, marry, to confess –

Could … get me? Sir Robert could not do it.

We know his handiwork: therefore, good mother,

To whom am I beholding for these limbs?

Sir Robert never holp to make this leg.

240

LADY FAULCONBRIDGE

Hast thou conspired with thy brother too,

That for thine own gain shouldst defend mine honour?

What means this scorn, thou most untoward knave?

BASTARD     Knight, knight, good mother, Basilisco-like:

What! I am dubb’d! I have it on my shoulder.

245

But, mother, I am not Sir Robert’s son:

I have disclaim’d Sir Robert and my land;

Legitimation, name and all is gone.

Then, good my mother, let me know my father;

Some proper man, I hope: who was it, mother?

250

LADY FAULCONBRIDGE

Hast thou denied thyself a Faulconbridge?

BASTARD     As faithfully as I deny the devil.

LADY FAULCONBRIDGE

King Richard Coeur-de-lion was thy father:

By long and vehement suit I was seduc’d

To make room for him in my husband’s bed.

255

Heaven, lay not my transgression to my charge

That art the issue of my dear offence,

Which was so strongly urg’d past my defence!

BASTARD     Now, by this light, were I to get again,

Madam, I would not wish a better father.

260

Some sins do bear their privilege on earth,

And so doth yours: your fault was not your folly.

Needs must you lay your heart at his dispose,

Subjected tribute to commanding love,

Against whose fury and unmatched force

265

The aweless lion could not wage the fight,

Nor keep his princely heart from Richard’s hand.

He that perforce robs lions of their hearts

May easily win a woman’s. Ay, my mother,

With all my heart I thank thee for my father!

270

Who lives and dares but say thou didst not well

When I was got, I’ll send his soul to hell.

Come, lady, I will show thee to my kin;

And they shall say, when Richard me begot,

If thou hadst said him nay, it had been sin;

275

Who says it was, he lies: I say ’twas not!     Exeunt.

2.1 Enter, on one side, the Archduke of AUSTRIA, and forces; on the other, PHILIP, King of France, and forces, LEWIS, CONSTANCE, ARTHUR and attendants.

LEWIS     Before Angiers well met, brave Austria.

KING PHILIP     Arthur, that great forerunner of thy blood,

Richard, that robb’d the lion of his heart

And fought the holy wars in Palestine,

By this brave duke came early to his grave:

5

And for amends to his posterity

At our importance hither is he come,

To spread his colours, boy, in thy behalf,

And to rebuke the usurpation

Of thy unnatural uncle, English John:

10

Embrace him, love him, give him welcome hither.

ARTHUR

God shall forgive you Coeur-de-lion’s death

The rather that you give his offspring life,

Shadowing their right under your wings of war:

I give you welcome with a powerless hand,

15

But with a heart full of unstained love:

Welcome before the gates of Angiers, duke.

LEWIS     Ah, noble boy, who would not do thee right?

AUSTRIA     Upon thy cheek lay I this zealous kiss,

As seal to this indenture of my love:

20

That to my home I will no more return,

Till Angiers and the right thou hast in France,

Together with that pale, that white-fac’d shore,

Whose foot spurns back the ocean’s roaring tides

And coops from other lands her islanders,

25

Even till that England, hedg’d in with the main,

That water-walled bulwark, still secure

And confident from foreign purposes,

Even till that utmost corner of the west

Salute thee for her king; till then, fair boy,

30

Will I not think of home, but follow arms.

CONSTANCE

O, take his mother’s thanks, a widow’s thanks,

Till your strong hand shall help to give him strength

To make a more requital to your love!

AUSTRIA

The peace of heaven is theirs that lift their swords

35

In such a just and charitable war.

KING PHILIP     Well then, to work; our cannon shall be bent

Against the brows of this resisting town.

Call for our chiefest men of discipline,

To cull the plots of best advantages:

40

We’ll lay before this town our royal bones,

Wade to the market-place in Frenchmen’s blood,

But we will make it subject to this boy.

CONSTANCE     Stay for an answer to your embassy,

Lest unadvis’d you stain your swords with blood:

45

My Lord Chatillon may from England bring

That right in peace which here we urge in war,

And then we shall repent each drop of blood

That hot rash haste so indirectly shed.

Enter CHATILLON.

KING PHILIP     A wonder, lady! lo, upon thy wish,

50

Our messenger Chatillon is arriv’d!

What England says, say briefly, gentle lord;

We coldly pause for thee; Chatillon, speak.

CHATILLON

Then turn your forces from this paltry siege

And stir them up against a mightier task.

55

England, impatient of your just demands,

Hath put himself in arms: the adverse winds,

Whose leisure I have stay’d, have given him time

To land his legions all as soon as I;

His marches are expedient to this town,

60

His forces strong, his soldiers confident.

With him along is come the mother-queen,

An Ate, stirring him to blood and strife;

With her her niece, the Lady Blanche of Spain;

With them a bastard of the king’s deceas’d,

65

And all th’unsettled humours of the land;

Rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries,

With ladies’ faces and fierce dragons’ spleens,

Have sold their fortunes at their native homes,

Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs,

70

To make a hazard of new fortunes here:

In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits

Than now the English bottoms have waft o’er

Did never float upon the swelling tide,

To do offence and scathe in Christendom.

75

[Drum beats.]

The interruption of their churlish drums

Cuts off more circumstance: they are at hand,

To parley or to fight; therefore prepare.

KING PHILIP     How much unlook’d for is this expedition!

AUSTRIA     By how much unexpected, by so much

80

We must awake endeavour for defence,

For courage mounteth with occasion:

Let them be welcome then; we are prepar’d.

Enter KING JOHN, ELEANOR, BLANCHE, the Bastard, lords and forces.

KING JOHN

Peace be to France, if France in peace permit

Our just and lineal entrance to our own;

85

If not, bleed France, and peace ascend to heaven,

Whiles we, God’s wrathful agent, do correct

Their proud contempt that beats His peace to heaven.

KING PHILIP     Peace be to England, if that war return

From France to England, there to live in peace.

90

England we love; and for that England’s sake

With burden of our armour here we sweat.

This toil of ours should be a work of thine;

But thou from loving England art so far,

That thou hast underwrought his lawful king,

95

Cut off the sequence of posterity,

Outfaced infant state, and done a rape

Upon the maiden virtue of the crown.

Look here upon thy brother Geoffrey’s face;

These eyes, these brows, were moulded out of his:

100

This little abstract doth contain that large

Which died in Geoffrey: and the hand of time

Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume.

That Geoffrey was thy elder brother born,

And this his son; England was Geoffrey’s right,

105

And this is Geoffrey’s; in the name of God

How comes it then that thou art call’d a king,

When living blood doth in these temples beat,

Which owe the crown that thou o’ermasterest?

KING JOHN

From whom hast thou this great commission, France,

110

To draw my answer from thy articles?

KING PHILIP

From that supernal judge that stirs good thoughts

In any beast of strong authority

To look into the blots and stains of right.

That judge hath made me guardian to this boy:

115

Under whose warrant I impeach thy wrong

And by whose help I mean to chastise it.

KING JOHN     Alack, thou dost usurp authority.

KING PHILIP     Excuse it is to beat usurping down.

ELEANOR     Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?

120

CONSTANCE     Let me make answer: thy usurping son.

ELEANOR     Out, insolent! thy bastard shall be king,

That thou mayst be a queen, and check the world!

CONSTANCE     My bed was ever to thy son as true

As thine was to thy husband; and this boy

125

Liker in feature to his father Geoffrey

Than thou and John in manners; being as like

As rain to water, or devil to his dam.

My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think

His father never was so true begot:

130

It cannot be and if thou wert his mother.

ELEANOR

There’s a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.

CONSTANCE

There’s a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee.

AUSTRIA     Peace!

BASTARD     Hear the crier!

AUSTRIA     What the devil art thou?

BASTARD     One that will play the devil, sir, with you,

135

And a may catch your hide and you alone:

You are the hare of whom the proverb goes,

Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard.

I’ll smoke your skin-coat, and I catch you right;

Sirrah, look to’t; i’faith I will, i’faith.

140

BLANCHE     O, well did he become that lion’s robe

That did disrobe the lion of that robe!

BASTARD     It lies as sightly on the back of him

As great Alcides’ shoes upon an ass:

But, ass, I’ll take that burthen from your back,

145

Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack.

AUSTRIA     What cracker is this same that deafs our ears

With this abundance of superfluous breath?

KING PHILIP

Lewis, determine what we shall do straight.

LEWIS     Women and fools, break off your conference.

150

KING PHILIP     King John, this is the very sum of all:

England and Ireland, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,

In right of Arthur do I claim of thee.

Wilt thou resign them and lay down thy arms?

KING JOHN     My life as soon: I do defy thee, France.

155

Arthur of Britain, yield thee to my hand;

And out of my dear love I’ll give thee more

Than e’er the coward hand of France can win:

Submit thee, boy.

ELEANOR     Come to thy grandam, child.

CONSTANCE     Do, child, go to it grandam, child;

160

Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will

Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig:

There’s a good grandam.

ARTHUR     Good my mother, peace!

I would that I were low laid in my grave:

I am not worth this coil that’s made for me.

165

ELEANOR

His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.

CONSTANCE

Now shame upon you, whe’r she does or no!

His grandam’s wrongs, and not his mother’s shames,

Draws those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes,

Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee;

170

Ay, with these crystal beads heaven shall be brib’d

To do him justice and revenge on you.

ELEANOR

Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!

CONSTANCE

Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth!

Call not me slanderer; thou and thine usurp

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The dominations, royalties and rights

Of this oppressed boy: this is thy eldest son’s son,

Infortunate in nothing but in thee:

Thy sins are visited in this poor child;

The canon of the law is laid on him,

180

Being but the second generation

Removed from thy sin-conceiving womb.

KING JOHN     Bedlam, have done.

CONSTANCE     I have but this to say,

That he is not only plagued for her sin,

But God hath made her sin and her the plague

185

On this removed issue, plagued for her

And with her plague; her sin his injury,

Her injury the beadle to her sin,

All punish’d in the person of this child,

And all for her; a plague upon her!

190

ELEANOR     Thou unadvised scold, I can produce

A will that bars the title of thy son.

CONSTANCE     Ay, who doubts that? a will! a wicked will;

A woman’s will; a cank’red grandam’s will!

KING PHILIP     Peace, lady! pause, or be more temperate:

195

It ill beseems this presence to cry aim

To these ill-tuned repetitions.

Some trumpet summon hither to the walls

These men of Angiers: let us hear them speak

Whose title they admit, Arthur’s or John’s.

200

Trumpet sounds. Enter HUBERT upon the walls.

HUBERT     Who is it that hath warn’d us to the walls?

KING PHILIP     ’Tis France, for England.

KING JOHN     England, for itself.

You men of Angiers, and my loving subjects –

KING PHILIP

You loving men of Angiers, Arthur’s subjects,

Our trumpet call’d you to this gentle parle –

205

KING JOHN     For our advantage; therefore hear us first.

These flags of France, that are advanced here

Before the eye and prospect of your town,

Have hither march’d to your endamagement.

The cannons have their bowels full of wrath,

210

And ready mounted are they to spit forth

Their iron indignation ’gainst your walls:

All preparation for a bloody siege

And merciless proceeding by these French

Comforts your city’s eyes, your winking gates;

215

And but for our approach those sleeping stones,

That as a waist doth girdle you about,

By the compulsion of their ordinance

By this time from their fixed beds of lime

Had been dishabited, and wide havoc made

220

For bloody power to rush upon your peace.

But on the sight of us your lawful king,

Who painfully with much expedient march

Have brought a countercheck before your gates,

To save unscratch’d your city’s threat’ned cheeks,

225

Behold, the French amaz’d vouchsafe a parle;

And now, instead of bullets wrapp’d in fire,

To make a shaking fever in your walls,

They shoot but calm words folded up in smoke,

To make a faithless error in your ears:

230

Which trust accordingly, kind citizens,

And let us in, your king, whose labour’d spirits

Forwearied in this action of swift speed

Craves harbourage within your city walls.

KING PHILIP

When I have said, make answer to us both.

235

Lo, in this right hand, whose protection

Is most divinely vow’d upon the right

Of him it holds, stands young Plantagenet,

Son to the elder brother of this man,

And king o’er him and all that he enjoys:

240

For this down-trodden equity we tread

In warlike march these greens before your town,

Being no further enemy to you

Than the constraint of hospitable zeal

In the relief of this oppressed child

245

Religiously provokes. Be pleased then

To pay that duty which you truly owe

To him that owes it, namely this young prince:

And then our arms, like to a muzzled bear,

Save in aspect, hath all offence seal’d up;

250

Our cannons’ malice vainly shall be spent

Against th’ invulnerable clouds of heaven;

And with a blessed and unvex’d retire,

With unhack’d swords and helmets all unbruis’d,

We will bear home that lusty blood again

255

Which here we came to spout against your town,

And leave your children, wives and you in peace.

But if you fondly pass our proffer’d offer,

’Tis not the roundure of your old-fac’d walls

Can hide you from our messengers of war,

260

Though all these English and their discipline

Were harbour’d in their rude circumference.

Then tell us, shall your city call us lord,

In that behalf which we have challeng’d it?

Or shall we give the signal to our rage

265

And stalk in blood to our possession?

HUBERT

In brief, we are the king of England’s subjects:

For him, and in his right, we hold this town.

KING JOHN     Acknowledge then the king, and let me in.

HUBERT     That can we not; but he that proves the king,

270

To him will we prove loyal: till that time

Have we ramm’d up our gates against the world.

KING JOHN

Doth not the crown of England prove the king?

And if not that, I bring you witnesses,

Twice fifteen thousand hearts of England’s breed –

275

BASTARD     Bastards and else.

KING JOHN     To verify our title with their lives.

KING PHILIP

As many and as well-born bloods as those –

BASTARD     Some bastards too.

KING PHILIP     Stand in his face to contradict his claim.

280

HUBERT     Till you compound whose right is worthiest,

We for the worthiest hold the right from both.

KING JOHN     Then God forgive the sin of all those souls

That to their everlasting residence,

Before the dew of evening fall, shall fleet,

285

In dreadful trial of our kingdom’s king!

KING PHILIP     Amen, amen! Mount, chevaliers! to arms!

BASTARD

Saint George, that swindg’d the dragon, and e’er since

Sits on’s horse-back at mine hostess’ door,

Teach us some fence!

[to Austria]     Sirrah, were I at home,

290

At your den, sirrah, with your lioness,

I would set an ox-head to your lion’s hide,

And make a monster of you.

AUSTRIA     Peace! no more.

BASTARD     O, tremble: for you hear the lion roar!

KING JOHN

Up higher to the plain; where we’ll set forth

295

In best appointment all our regiments.

BASTARD     Speed then, to take advantage of the field.

KING PHILIP     It shall be so; and at the other hill

Command the rest to stand. God and our right!

      Exeunt, severally, the English and French kings, etc.

Here, after excursions, enter the Herald of France, with trumpeters, to the gates.

FRENCH HERALD

You men of Angiers, open wide your gates,

300

And let young Arthur, Duke of Britain, in,

Who by the hand of France this day hath made

Much work for tears in many an English mother,

Whose sons lie scatter’d on the bleeding ground:

Many a widow’s husband grovelling lies,

305

Coldly embracing the discolour’d earth;

And victory, with little loss, doth play

Upon the dancing banners of the French,

Who are at hand, triumphantly display’d,

To enter conquerors, and to proclaim

310

Arthur of Britain England’s king, and yours.

Enter English Herald, with trumpeter.

ENGLISH HERALD

Rejoice, you men of Angiers, ring your bells;

King John, your king and England’s, doth approach,

Commander of this hot malicious day.

Their armours, that march’d hence so silver-bright,

315

Hither return all gilt with Frenchmen’s blood;

There stuck no plume in any English crest

That is removed by a staff of France;

Our colours do return in those same hands

That did display them when we first march’d forth;

320

And, like a jolly troop of huntsmen, come

Our lusty English, all with purpled hands,

Dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes:

Open your gates and give the victors way.

HUBERT

Heralds, from off our towers we might behold,

325

From first to last, the onset and retire

Of both your armies; whose equality

By our best eyes cannot be censured:

Blood hath bought blood and blows have answer’d blows;

Strength match’d with strength, and power confronted power:

330

Both are alike, and both alike we like.

One must prove greatest: while they weigh so ever

We hold our town for neither, yet for both.

Re-enter, on one side, KING JOHN, ELEANOR, BLANCHE, the BASTARD, lords and forces; on the other, KING PHILIP, LEWIS, AUSTRIA and forces.

KING JOHN

France, hast thou yet more blood to cast away?

Say, shall the current of our right roam on?

335

Whose passage, vex’d with thy impediment,

Shall leave his native channel and o’erswell,

With course disturb’d, even thy confining shores,

Unless thou let his silver water keep

A peaceful progress to the ocean.

340

KING PHILIP

England, thou hast not sav’d one drop of blood,

In this hot trial, more than we of France;

Rather, lost more. And by this hand I swear,

That sways the earth this climate overlooks,

Before we will lay down our just-borne arms,

345

We’ll put thee down ’gainst whom these arms we bear,

Or add a royal number to the dead,

Gracing the scroll that tells of this war’s loss

With slaughter coupled to the name of kings.

BASTARD     Ha, majesty! how high thy glory towers

350

When the rich blood of kings is set on fire!

O, now doth death line his dead chaps with steel;

The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs;

And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men,

In undetermin’d differences of kings.

355

Why stand these royal fronts amazed thus?

Cry ‘havoc!’ kings; back to the stained field,

You equal potents, fiery kindled spirits!

Then let confusion of one part confirm

The other’s peace; till then, blows, blood, and death!

360

KING JOHN     Whose party do the townsmen yet admit?

KING PHILIP

Speak, citizens, for England; who’s your king?

HUBERT     The king of England, when we know the king.

KING PHILIP

Know him in us, that here hold up his right.

KING JOHN     In us, that are our own great deputy,

365

And bear possession of our person here,

Lord of our presence, Angiers, and of you.

HUBERT     A greater power than we denies all this;

And till it be undoubted, we do lock

Our former scruple in our strong-barr’d gates:

370

Kings of our fear, until our fears, resolv’d,

Be by some certain king purg’d and depos’d.

BASTARD

By heaven, these scroyles of Angiers flout you, kings,

And stand securely on their battlements,

As in a theatre, whence they gape and point

375

At your industrious scenes and acts of death.

Your royal presences be rul’d by me:

Do like the mutines of Jerusalem,

Be friends awhile and both conjointly bend

Your sharpest deeds of malice on this town.

380

By east and west let France and England mount

Their battering cannon charged to the mouths,

Till their soul-fearing clamours have brawl’d down

The flinty ribs of this contemptuous city:

I’d play incessantly upon these jades,

385

Even till unfenced desolation

Leave them as naked as the vulgar air.

That done, dissever your united strengths,

And part your mingled colours once again;

Turn face to face and bloody point to point;

390

Then, in a moment, fortune shall cull forth

Out of one side her happy minion,

To whom in favour she shall give the day,

And kiss him with a glorious victory.

How like you this wild counsel, mighty states?

395

Smacks it not something of the policy?

KING JOHN

Now, by the sky that hangs above our heads,

I like it well. France, shall we knit our powers

And lay this Angiers even with the ground;

Then after fight who shall be king of it?

400

BASTARD     And if thou hast the mettle of a king,

Being wrong’d as we are by this peevish town,

Turn thou the mouth of thy artillery,

As we will ours, against these saucy walls;

And when that we have dash’d them to the ground,

405

Why then defy each other, and pell-mell

Make work upon ourselves, for heaven or hell.

KING PHILIP     Let it be so. Say, where will you assault?

KING JOHN     We from the west will send destruction

Into this city’s bosom.

410

AUSTRIA     I from the north.

KING PHILIP     Our thunder from the south

Shall rain their drift of bullets on this town.

BASTARD     [aside]

O prudent discipline! From north to south

Austria and France shoot in each other’s mouth:

I’ll stir them to it. – Come, away, away!

415

HUBERT     Hear us, great kings: vouchsafe awhile to stay,

And I shall show you peace and fair-fac’d league;

Win you this city without stroke or wound;

Rescue those breathing lives to die in beds,

That here come sacrifices for the field:

420

Persever not, but hear me, mighty kings!

KING JOHN     Speak on, with favour; we are bent to hear.

HUBERT

That daughter there of Spain, the Lady Blanche,

Is near to England: look upon the years

Of Lewis the Dolphin and that lovely maid:

425

If lusty love should go in quest of beauty,

Where should he find it fairer than in Blanche?

If zealous love should go in search of virtue,

Where should he find it purer than in Blanche?

If love ambitious sought a match of birth,

430

Whose veins bound richer blood than Lady Blanche?

Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth,

Is the young Dolphin every way complete:

If not complete of, say he is not she;

And she again wants nothing, to name want,

435

If want it be not that she is not he:

He is the half part of a blessed man,

Left to be finished by such as she;

And she a fair divided excellence,

Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.

440

O, two such silver currents, when they join,

Do glorify the banks that bound them in;

And two such shores, to two such streams made one,

Two such controlling bounds shall you be, kings,

To these two princes, if you marry them.

445

This union shall do more than battery can

To our fast-closed gates; for at this match,

With swifter spleen than powder can enforce,

The mouth of passage shall we fling wide ope,

And give you entrance: but without this match

450

The sea enraged is not half so deaf,

Lions more confident, mountains and rocks

More free from motion, no, not death himself

In mortal fury half so peremptory,

As we to keep this city.

BASTARD     Here’s a stay

455

That shakes the rotten carcass of old death

Out of his rags! Here’s a large mouth indeed,

That spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas,

Talks as familiarly of roaring lions

As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs!

460

What cannoneer begot this lusty blood?

He speaks plain cannon, fire, and smoke, and bounce;

He gives the bastinado with his tongue;

Our ears are cudgell’d; not a word of his

But buffets better than a fist of France.

465

Zounds! I was never so bethump’d with words

Since I first call’d my brother’s father dad.

ELEANOR

Son, list to this conjunction, make this match;

Give with our niece a dowry large enough:

For by this knot thou shalt so surely tie

470

Thy now unsur’d assurance to the crown,

That yon green boy shall have no sun to ripe

The bloom that promiseth a mighty fruit.

I see a yielding in the looks of France;

Mark, how they whisper: urge them while their souls

475

Are capable of this ambition,

Lest zeal, now melted by the windy breath

Of soft petitions, pity and remorse,

Cool and congeal again to what it was.

HUBERT     Why answer not the double majesties

480

This friendly treaty of our threat’ned town?

KING PHILIP

Speak England first, that hath been forward first

To speak unto this city: what say you?

KING JOHN     If that the Dolphin there, thy princely son,

Can in this book of beauty read ‘I love’,

485

Her dowry shall weigh equal with a queen:

For Anjou, and fair Touraine, Maine, Poictiers,

And all that we upon this side the sea –

Except this city now by us besieg’d –

Find liable to our crown and dignity,

490

Shall gild her bridal bed, and make her rich

In titles, honours and promotions,

As she in beauty, education, blood,

Holds hand with any princess of the world.

KING PHILIP

What say’st thou, boy? look in the lady’s face.

495

LEWIS     I do, my lord; and in her eye I find

A wonder, or a wondrous miracle,

The shadow of myself form’d in her eye;

Which, being but the shadow of your son,

Becomes a sun and makes your son a shadow:

500

I do protest I never lov’d myself

Till now infixed I beheld myself

Drawn in the flattering table of her eye.

[Whispers with Blanche.]

BASTARD [aside]

Drawn in the flattering table of her eye!

Hang’d in the frowning wrinkle of her brow!

505

And quarter’d in her heart! he doth espy

Himself love’s traitor: this is pity now,

That, hang’d and drawn and quarter’d, there should be

In such a love so vile a lout as he!

BLANCHE     [to Lewis]

My uncle’s will in this respect is mine:

510

If he see aught in you that makes him like,

That any thing he sees, which moves his liking,

I can with ease translate it to my will;

Or if you will, to speak more properly,

I will enforce it eas’ly to my love.

515

Further I will not flatter you, my lord,

That all I see in you is worthy love,

Than this: that nothing do I see in you,

Though churlish thoughts themselves should be your judge,

That I can find should merit any hate.

520

KING JOHN

What say these young ones? What say you, my niece?

BLANCHE     That she is bound in honour still to do

What you in wisdom still vouchsafe to say.

KING JOHN

Speak then, prince Dolphin: can you love this lady?

LEWIS     Nay, ask me if I can refrain from love;

525

For I do love her most unfeignedly.

KING JOHN

Then do I give Volquessen, Touraine, Maine,

Poictiers, and Anjou, these five provinces,

With her to thee; and this addition more,

Full thirty thousand marks of English coin.

530

Philip of France, if thou be pleas’d withal,

Command thy son and daughter to join hands.

KING PHILIP

It likes us well; young princes, close your hands.

AUSTRIA     And your lips too; for I am well assur’d

That I did so when I was first assur’d.

535

KING PHILIP     Now, citizens of Angiers, ope your gates,

Let in that amity which you have made;

For at Saint Mary’s chapel presently

The rites of marriage shall be solemniz’d.

Is not the Lady Constance in this troop?

540

I know she is not, for this match made up

Her presence would have interrupted much:

Where is she and her son? tell me, who knows.

LEWIS     She is sad and passionate at your highness’ tent.

KING PHILIP

And, by my faith, this league that we have made

545

Will give her sadness very little cure.

Brother of England, how may we content

This widow lady? In her right we came;

Which we, God knows, have turn’d another way,

To our own vantage.

KING JOHN     We will heal up all;

550

For we’ll create young Arthur Duke of Britain

And Earl of Richmond; and this rich fair town

We make him lord of. Call the Lady Constance;

Some speedy messenger bid her repair

To our solemnity: I trust we shall,

555

If not fill up the measure of her will,

Yet in some measure satisfy her so

That we shall stop her exclamation.

Go we, as well as haste will suffer us,

To this unlook’d for, unprepared pomp.

560

Exeunt all but the Bastard.

BASTARD     Mad world! mad kings! mad composition!

John, to stop Arthur’s title in the whole,

Hath willingly departed with a part:

And France, whose armour conscience buckled on,

Whom zeal and charity brought to the field

565

As God’s own soldier, rounded in the ear

With that same purpose-changer, that sly divel,

That broker, that still breaks the pate of faith,

That daily break-vow, he that wins of all,

Of kings, of beggars, old men, young men, maids,

570

Who, having no external thing to lose

But the word ‘maid’, cheats the poor maid of that,

That smooth-fac’d gentleman, tickling commodity,

Commodity, the bias of the world,

The world, who of itself is peised well,

575

Made to run even upon even ground,

Till this advantage, this vile drawing bias,

This sway of motion, this commodity,

Makes it take head from all indifferency,

From all direction, purpose, course, intent:

580

And this same bias, this commodity,

This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word,

Clapp’d on the outward eye of fickle France,

Hath drawn him from his own determin’d aid,

From a resolv’d and honourable war,

585

To a most base and vile-concluded peace.

And why rail I on this commodity?

But for because he hath not woo’d me yet:

Not that I have the power to clutch my hand,

When his fair angels would salute my palm;

590

But for my hand, as unattempted yet,

Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich.

Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail

And say there is no sin but to be rich;

And being rich, my virtue then shall be

595

To say there is no vice but beggary.

Since kings break faith upon commodity,

Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee!     Exit.

2.2 Enter CONSTANCE, ARTHUR and SALISBURY.

CONSTANCE

Gone to be married! gone to swear a peace!

False blood to false blood join’d! gone to be friends!

Shall Lewis have Blanche, and Blanche those

provinces?

It is not so; thou hast misspoke, misheard;

Be well advis’d, tell o’er thy tale again.

5

It cannot be; thou dost but say ’tis so.

I trust I may not trust thee, for thy word

Is but the vain breath of a common man;

Believe me, I do not believe thee, man:

I have a king’s oath to the contrary.

10

Thou shalt be punish’d for thus frighting me,

For I am sick and capable of fears,

Oppress’d with wrongs and therefore full of fears,

A widow, husbandless, subject to fears,

A woman, naturally born to fears;

And though thou now confess thou didst but jest

15

With my vex’d spirits I cannot take a truce,

But they will quake and tremble all this day.

What dost thou mean by shaking of thy head?

Why dost thou look so sadly on my son?

What means that hand upon that breast of thine?

20

Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum,

Like a proud river peering o’er his bounds?

Be these sad signs confirmers of thy words?

Then speak again; not all thy former tale,

But this one word, whether thy tale be true.

25

SALISBURY     As true as I believe you think them false

That give you cause to prove my saying true.

CONSTANCE     O, if thou teach me to believe this sorrow,

Teach thou this sorrow how to make me die,

And let belief and life encounter so

30

As doth the fury of two desperate men

Which in the very meeting fall, and die.

Lewis marry Blanche! O boy, then where art thou?

France friend with England, what becomes of me?

Fellow, be gone: I cannot brook thy sight.

35

This news hath made thee a most ugly man.

SALISBURY     What other harm have I, good lady, done,

But spoke the harm that is by others done?

CONSTANCE     Which harm within itself so heinous is

As it makes harmful all that speak of it.

40

ARTHUR     I do beseech you, madam, be content.

CONSTANCE

If thou, that bid’st me be content, wert grim,

Ugly, and sland’rous to thy mother’s womb,

Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,

Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious,

45

Patch’d with foul moles and eye-offending marks,

I would not care, I then would be content,

For then I should not love thee: no, nor thou

Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown.

But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy,

50

Nature and fortune join’d to make thee great:

Of nature’s gifts thou mayst with lilies boast

And with the half-blown rose. But fortune, O,

She is corrupted, chang’d and won from thee;

Sh’ adulterates hourly with thine uncle John,

55

And with her golden hand hath pluck’d on France

To tread down fair respect of sovereignty,

And made his majesty the bawd to theirs.

France is a bawd to fortune and King John,

That strumpet fortune, that usurping John!

60

Tell me, thou fellow, is not France forsworn?

Envenom him with words, or get thee gone,

And leave those woes alone which I alone

Am bound to underbear!

SALISBURY     Pardon me, madam,

I may not go without you to the kings.

65

CONSTANCE

Thou mayst, thou shalt; I will not go with thee:

I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,

For grief is proud an’t makes his owner stoop.

To me and to the state of my great grief

70

Let kings assemble; for my grief’s so great

That no supporter but the huge firm earth

Can hold it up: here I and sorrows sit;

Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.

[Throws herself on the ground.]     Exit Salisbury.

3.1 CONSTANCE and ARTHUR, seated. Enter KING JOHN, KING PHILIP, LEWIS, BLANCHE, ELEANOR, the BASTARD, AUSTRIA, SALISBURY and attendants.

KING PHILIP

’Tis true, fair daughter; and this blessed day

Ever in France shall be kept festival:

To solemnize this day the glorious sun

Stays in his course and plays the alchemist,

Turning with splendour of his precious eye

5

The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold:

The yearly course that brings this day about

Shall never see it but a holy day.

CONSTANCE     A wicked day, and not a holy day! [rising]

What hath this day deserv’d? what hath it done,

10

That it in golden letters should be set

Among the high tides in the calendar?

Nay, rather turn this day out of the week,

This day of shame, oppression, perjury.

Or, if it must stand still, let wives with child

15

Pray that their burthens may not fall this day,

Lest that their hopes prodigiously be cross’d:

But on this day let seamen fear no wrack;

No bargains break that are not this day made;

This day, all things begun come to ill end,

20

Yea, faith itself to hollow falsehood change!

KING PHILIP     By heaven, lady, you shall have no cause

To curse the fair proceedings of this day:

Have I not pawn’d to you my majesty?

CONSTANCE     You have beguil’d me with a counterfeit

25

Resembling majesty, which, being touch’d and tried,

Proves valueless: you are forsworn, forsworn!

You came in arms to spill mine enemies’ blood,

But now in arms you strengthen it with yours.

The grappling vigour and rough frown of war

30

Is cold in amity, and painted peace,

And our oppression hath made up this league.

Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjur’d kings!

A widow cries; be husband to me, heavens!

Let not the hours of this ungodly day

35

Wear out the day’s in peace; but, ere sunset,

Set armed discord ’twixt these perjur’d kings!

Hear me, O, hear me!

AUSTRIA     Lady Constance, peace!

CONSTANCE     War! war! no peace! peace is to me a war.

O Limoges! O Austria! thou dost shame

40

That bloody spoil: thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward!

Thou little valiant, great in villainy!

Thou ever strong upon the stronger side!

Thou fortune’s champion, that dost never fight

But when her humorous ladyship is by

45

To teach thee safety! thou art perjur’d too,

And sooth’st up greatness. What a fool art thou,

A ramping fool, to brag, and stamp, and swear

Upon my party! Thou cold-blooded slave,

Hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side,

50

Been sworn my soldier, bidding me depend

Upon thy stars, thy fortune and thy strength,

And dost thou now fall over to my foes?

Thou wear a lion’s hide! doff it for shame,

And hang a calve’s-skin on those recreant limbs.

55

AUSTRIA

O, that a man should speak those words to me!

BASTARD

And hang a calve’s-skin on those recreant limbs.

AUSTRIA     Thou dar’st not say so, villain, for thy life.

BASTARD

And hang a calve’s-skin on those recreant limbs.

KING JOHN     We like not this; thou dost forget thyself.

60

Enter PANDULPH.

KING PHILIP     Here comes the holy legate of the pope.

PANDULPH     Hail, you anointed deputies of heaven!

To thee, King John, my holy errand is.

I Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal,

And from Pope Innocent the legate here,

65

Do in his name religiously demand

Why thou against the church, our holy mother,

So wilfully dost spurn; and force perforce

Keep Stephen Langton, chosen archbishop

Of Canterbury, from that holy see:

70

This, in our foresaid holy father’s name,

Pope Innocent, I do demand of thee.

KING JOHN     What earthy name to interrogatories

Can taste the free breath of a sacred king?

Thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name

75

So slight, unworthy and ridiculous,

To charge me to an answer, as the pope.

Tell him this tale; and from the mouth of England

Add thus much more, that no Italian priest

Shall tithe or toll in our dominions;

80

But as we, under God, are supreme head,

So under Him that great supremacy,

Where we do reign, we will alone uphold

Without th’ assistance of a mortal hand:

So tell the pope, all reverence set apart

85

To him and his usurp’d authority.

KING PHILIP

Brother of England, you blaspheme in this.

KING JOHN

Though you and all the kings of Christendom

Are led so grossly by this meddling priest,

Dreading the curse that money may buy out;

90

And by the merit of vild gold, dross, dust,

Purchase corrupted pardon of a man,

Who in that sale sells pardon from himself;

Though you and all the rest so grossly led

This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish,

95

Yet I alone, alone do me oppose

Against the pope, and count his friends my foes.

PANDULPH     Then, by the lawful power that I have,

Thou shalt stand curs’d and excommunicate:

And blessed shall he be that doth revolt

100

From his allegiance to an heretic;

And meritorious shall that hand be call’d,

Canonized and worshipp’d as a saint,

That takes away by any secret course

Thy hateful life.

CONSTANCE     O, lawful let it be

105

That I have room with Rome to curse awhile!

Good father cardinal, cry thou amen

To my keen curses; for without my wrong

There is no tongue hath power to curse him right.

PANDULPH

There’s law and warrant, lady, for my curse.

110

CONSTANCE

And for mine too: when law can do no right

Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong!

Law cannot give my child his kingdom here,

For he that holds his kingdom holds the law;

Therefore, since law itself is perfect wrong,

115

How can the law forbid my tongue to curse?

PANDULPH     Philip of France, on peril of a curse,

Let go the hand of that arch-heretic;

And raise the power of France upon his head,

Unless he do submit himself to Rome.

120

ELEANOR

Look’st thou pale, France? do not let go thy hand.

CONSTANCE

Look to that, devil, lest that France repent,

And by disjoining hands, hell lose a soul.

AUSTRIA     King Philip, listen to the cardinal.

BASTARD

And hang a calve’s-skin on his recreant limbs.

125

AUSTRIA     Well, ruffian, I must pocket up these wrongs,

Because –

BASTARD     Your breeches best may carry them.

KING JOHN     Philip, what say’st thou to the cardinal?

CONSTANCE     What should he say, but as the cardinal?

LEWIS     Bethink you, father; for the difference

130

Is purchase of a heavy curse from Rome,

Or the light loss of England for a friend:

Forgo the easier.

BLANCHE     That’s the curse of Rome.

CONSTANCE

O Lewis, stand fast! the devil tempts thee here

In likeness of a new untrimmed bride.

135

BLANCHE

The Lady Constance speaks not from her faith,

But from her need.

CONSTANCE     O, if thou grant my need,

Which only lives but by the death of faith,

That need must needs infer this principle,

That faith would live again by death of need.

140

O then tread down my need, and faith mounts up:

Keep my need up, and faith is trodden down!

KING JOHN     The king is mov’d, and answers not to this.

CONSTANCE     O, be remov’d from him, and answer well!

AUSTRIA     Do so, King Philip; hang no more in doubt.

145

BASTARD

Hang nothing but a calve’s-skin, most sweet lout.

KING PHILIP     I am perplex’d, and know not what to say.

PANDULPH

What canst thou say but will perplex thee more,

If thou stand excommunicate and curs’d?

KING PHILIP

Good reverend father, make my person yours,

150

And tell me how you would bestow yourself.

This royal hand and mine are newly knit,

And the conjunction of our inward souls –

Married in league, coupled and link’d together

With all religious strength of sacred vows;

155

The latest breath that gave the sound of words –

Was deep-sworn faith, peace, amity, true love

Between our kingdoms and our royal selves.

And even before this truce, but new before,

No longer than we well could wash our hands

160

To clap this royal bargain up of peace,

Heaven knows, they were besmear’d and overstain’d

With slaughter’s pencil, where revenge did paint

The fearful difference of incensed kings:

And shall these hands, so lately purg’d of blood,

165

So newly join’d in love, so strong in both,

Unyoke this seizure and this kind regreet?

Play fast and loose with faith? so jest with heaven,

Make such unconstant children of ourselves,

As now again to snatch our palm from palm,

170

Unswear faith sworn, and on the marriage-bed

Of smiling peace to march a bloody host,

And make a riot on the gentle brow

Of true sincerity? O, holy sir,

My reverend father, let it not be so!

175

Out of your grace, devise, ordain, impose

Some gentle order, and then we shall be blest

To do your pleasure and continue friends.

PANDULPH     All form is formless, order orderless,

Save what is opposite to England’s love.

180

Therefore to arms! be champion of our church,

Or let the church, our mother, breathe her curse,

A mother’s curse, on her revolting son.

France, thou mayst hold a serpent by the tongue,

A cased lion by the mortal paw,

185

A fasting tiger safer by the tooth,

Than keep in peace that hand which thou dost hold.

KING PHILIP     I may disjoin my hand, but not my faith.

PANDULPH     So mak’st thou faith an enemy to faith,

And like a civil war set’st oath to oath,

190

Thy tongue against thy tongue. O, let thy vow

First made to heaven, first be to heaven perform’d,

That is, to be the champion of our church.

What since thou swor’st is sworn against thyself

And may not be performed by thyself,

195

For that which thou hast sworn to do amiss

Is not amiss when it is truly done,

And being not done, where doing tends to ill,

The truth is then most done not doing it:

The better act of purposes mistook

200

Is to mistake again; though indirect,

Yet indirection thereby grows direct,

And falsehood falsehood cures, as fire cools fire

Within the scorched veins of one new-burn’d.

It is religion that doth make vows kept,

205

But thou hast sworn against religion:

By what thou swear’st against the thing thou swear’st,

And mak’st an oath the surety for thy truth!

Against an oath the truth thou art unsure

To swear – swears only not to be forsworn! –

210

Else what a mockery should it be to swear?

But thou dost swear only to be forsworn,

And most forsworn, to keep what thou dost swear.

Therefore thy later vows against thy first

Is in thyself rebellion to thyself;

215

And better conquest never canst thou make

Than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts

Against these giddy loose suggestions:

Upon which better part our prayers come in,

If thou vouchsafe them. But if not, then know

220

The peril of our curses light on thee

So heavy as thou shalt not shake them off,

But in despair die under their black weight.

AUSTRIA     Rebellion, flat rebellion!

BASTARD     Will’t not be?

Will not a calve’s-skin stop that mouth of thine?

225

LEWIS     Father, to arms!

BLANCHE     Upon thy wedding-day?

Against the blood that thou hast married?

What, shall our feast be kept with slaughter’d men?

Shall braying trumpets and loud churlish drums,

Clamours of hell, be measures to our pomp?

230

O husband, hear me! ay, alack, how new

Is ‘husband’ in my mouth! even for that name,

Which till this time my tongue did ne’er pronounce,

Upon my knee I beg, go not to arms

Against mine uncle.

CONSTANCE     O, upon my knee,

235

Made hard with kneeling, I do pray to thee,

Thou virtuous Dolphin, alter not the doom

Forethought by heaven!

BLANCHE     Now shall I see thy love: what motive may

Be stronger with thee than the name of wife?

240

CONSTANCE

That which upholdeth him that thee upholds,

His honour: O, thine honour, Lewis, thine honour!

LEWIS     I muse your majesty doth seem so cold,

When such profound respects do pull you on.

PANDULPH     I will denounce a curse upon his head.

245

KING PHILIP

Thou shalt not need. England, I will fall from thee.

CONSTANCE     O fair return of banish’d majesty!

ELEANOR     O foul revolt of French inconstancy!

KING JOHN

France, thou shalt rue this hour within this hour.

BASTARD

Old time the clock-setter, that bald sexton time,

250

Is it as he will? well then, France shall rue.

BLANCHE

The sun’s o’ercast with blood: fair day, adieu!

Which is the side that I must go withal?

I am with both: each army hath a hand;

And in their rage, I having hold of both,

255

They whirl asunder and dismember me.

Husband, I cannot pray that thou mayst win;

Uncle, I needs must pray that thou mayst lose;

Father, I may not wish the fortune thine;

Grandam, I will not wish thy wishes thrive:

260

Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose;

Assured loss before the match be play’d.

LEWIS     Lady, with me, with me thy fortune lies.

BLANCHE

There where my fortune li’es, there my life dies.

KING JOHN     Cousin, go draw our puissance together.

265

Exit Bastard.

France, I am burn’d up with inflaming wrath;

A rage whose heat hath this condition,

That nothing can allay, nothing but blood,

The blood, and dearest-valued blood, of France.

KING PHILIP

Thy rage shall burn thee up, and thou shalt turn

270

To ashes, ere our blood shall quench that fire:

Look to thyself, thou art in jeopardy.

KING JOHN

No more than he that threats. To arms let’s hie!

     Exeunt.

3.2 Alarums, excursions. Enter the Bastard, with AUSTRIA’S head.

BASTARD

Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot;

Some airy devil hovers in the sky,

And pours down mischief. Austria’s head lie there,

Enter KING JOHN, ARTHUR and HUBERT.

While Philip breathes.

KING JOHN     Hubert, keep this boy. Philip, make up:

5

My mother is assailed in our tent,

And ta’en, I fear.

BASTARD     My lord, I rescued her;

Her highness is in safety, fear you not:

But on, my liege; for very little pains

Will bring this labour to an happy end.     Exeunt.

10

Alarums, excursions, retreat. Re-enter KING JOHN, ARTHUR, the Bastard, HUBERT, with ELEANOR and lords.

KING JOHN [to Eleanor]

So shall it be; your grace shall stay behind

So strongly guarded. [to Arthur] Cousin, look not sad:

Thy grandam loves thee; and thy uncle will

As dear be to thee as thy father was.

ARTHUR     O, this will make my mother die with grief!

15

KING JOHN     [to the Bastard]

Cousin, away for England! haste before:

And, ere our coming, see thou shake the bags

Of hoarding abbots; imprison’d angels

Set at liberty: the fat ribs of peace

Must by the hungry now be fed upon:

20

Use our commission in his utmost force.

BASTARD

Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back

When gold and silver becks me to come on:

I leave your highness. Grandam, I will pray –

If ever I remember to be holy –

25

For your fair safety; so, I kiss your hand.

ELEANOR     Farewell, gentle cousin.

KING JOHN     Coz, farewell.

Exit Bastard.

ELEANOR     Come hither, little kinsman; hark, a word.

[She takes Arthur aside.]

KING JOHN     Come hither, Hubert. O my gentle Hubert,

We owe thee much! within this wall of flesh

30

There is a soul counts thee her creditor,

And with advantage means to pay thy love:

And, my good friend, thy voluntary oath

Lives in this bosom, dearly cherished.

Give me thy hand. I had a thing to say,

35

But I will fit it with some better tune.

By heaven, Hubert, I am almost asham’d

To say what good respect I have of thee.

HUBERT     I am much bounden to your majesty.

KING JOHN

Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet,

40

But thou shalt have; and creep time ne’er so slow,

Yet it shall come for me to do thee good.

I had a thing to say, but let it go:

The sun is in the heaven, and the proud day,

Attended with the pleasures of the world,

45

Is all too wanton and too full of gauds

To give me audience: if the midnight bell

Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth,

Sound on into the drowsy race of night;

If this same were a churchyard where we stand,

50

And thou possessed with a thousand wrongs;

Or if that surly spirit, melancholy,

Had bak’d thy blood and made it heavy, thick,

Which else runs tickling up and down the veins,

Making that idiot, laughter, keep men’s eyes

55

And strain their cheeks to idle merriment,

A passion hateful to my purposes;

Or if that thou couldst see me without eyes,

Hear me without thine ears, and make reply

Without a tongue, using conceit alone,

60

Without eyes, ears, and harmful sound of words;

Then, in despite of brooded watchful day,

I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts:

But, ah, I will not. Yet I love thee well;

And, by my troth, I think thou lov’st me well.

65

HUBERT     So well, that what you bid me undertake,

Though that my death were adjunct to my act,

By heaven, I would do it.

KING JOHN     Do not I know thou wouldst?

Good Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, throw thine eye

On yon young boy; I’ll tell thee what, my friend,

70

He is a very serpent in my way;

And wheresoe’er this foot of mine doth tread,

He lies before me: dost thou understand me?

Thou art his keeper.

HUBERT     And I’ll keep him so

That he shall not offend your majesty.

75

KING JOHN     Death.

HUBERT     My lord?

KING JOHN     A grave.

HUBERT     He shall not live.

KING JOHN     Enough.

I could be merry now. Hubert, I love thee.

Well, I’ll not say what I intend for thee:

Remember. – Madam, fare you well:

I’ll send those powers o’er to your majesty.

80

ELEANOR     My blessing go with thee!

KING JOHN     For England, cousin, go:

Hubert shall be your man, attend on you

With all true duty. On toward Calais, ho!     Exeunt.

3.3 Enter KING PHILIP, LEWIS, PANDULPH and attendants.

KING PHILIP     So, by a roaring tempest on the flood,

A whole armado of convicted sail

Is scatter’d and disjoin’d from fellowship.

PANDULPH     Courage and comfort! all shall yet go well.

KING PHILIP

What can go well, when we have run so ill?

5

Are we not beaten? Is not Angiers lost?

Arthur ta’en prisoner? divers dear friends slain?

And bloody England into England gone,

O’erbearing interruption, spite of France?

LEWIS     What he hath won, that hath he fortified:

10

So hot a speed with such advice dispos’d,

Such temperate order in so fierce a cause,

Doth want example: who hath read or heard

Of any kindred action like to this?

KING PHILIP

Well could I bear that England had this praise

15

So we could find some pattern of our shame.

Enter CONSTANCE.

Look, who comes here! a grave unto a soul;

Holding th’eternal spirit, against her will,

In the vild prison of afflicted breath.

I prithee, lady, go away with me.

20

CONSTANCE

Lo! now – now see the issue of your peace!

KING PHILIP

Patience, good lady! comfort, gentle Constance!

CONSTANCE     No! – I defy all counsel, all redress,

But that which ends all counsel, true redress:

Death! death, O amiable, lovely death!

25

Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!

Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,

Thou hate and terror to prosperity,

And I will kiss thy detestable bones

And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows,

30

And ring these fingers with thy household worms,

And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,

And be a carrion monster like thyself:

Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil’st,

And buss thee as thy wife. Misery’s love,

35

O, come to me!

KING PHILIP     O fair affliction, peace!

CONSTANCE     No, no, I will not, having breath to cry:

O, that my tongue were in the thunder’s mouth!

Then with a passion would I shake the world;

And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy

40

Which cannot hear a lady’s feeble voice,

Which scorns a modern invocation.

PANDULPH     Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow.

CONSTANCE     Thou art holy to belie me so! –

I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;

45

My name is Constance; I was Geoffrey’s wife;

Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost!

I am not mad: I would to heaven I were!

For then ’tis like I should forget myself:

O, if I could, what grief should I forget!

50

Preach some philosophy to make me mad,

And thou shalt be canoniz’d, cardinal;

For, being not mad but sensible of grief,

My reasonable part produces reason

How I may be deliver’d of these woes,

55

And teaches me to kill or hang myself:

If I were mad, I should forget my son,

Or madly think a babe of clouts were he.

I am not mad; too well, too well I feel

The different plague of each calamity.

60

KING PHILIP     Bind up those tresses. O, what love I note

In the fair multitude of those her hairs!

Where but by chance a silver drop hath fall’n,

Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends

Do glue themselves in sociable grief,

65

Like true, inseparable, faithful loves,

Sticking together in calamity.

CONSTANCE     To England, if you will.

KING PHILIP     Bind up your hairs.

CONSTANCE     Yes, that I will; and wherefore will I do it?

I tore them from their bonds and cried aloud,

70

‘O that these hands could so redeem my son,

As they have given these hairs their liberty!’

But now I envy at their liberty,

And will again commit them to their bonds,

Because my poor child is a prisoner.

75

And, father cardinal, I have heard you say

That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:

If that be true, I shall see my boy again;

For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,

To him that did but yesterday suspire,

80

There was not such a gracious creature born.

But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud

And chase the native beauty from his cheek

And he will look as hollow as a ghost,

As dim and meagre as an ague’s fit,

85

And so he’ll die; and, rising so again,

When I shall meet him in the court of heaven

I shall not know him: therefore never, never

Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.

PANDULPH     You hold too heinous a respect of grief.

90

CONSTANCE     He talks to me that never had a son.

KING PHILIP     You are as fond of grief as of your child.

CONSTANCE

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

95

Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;

Then have I reason to be fond of grief?

Fare you well: had you such a loss as I

I could give better comfort than you do.

100

I will not keep this form upon my head,

When there is such disorder in my wit.

O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!

My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!

My widow-comfort, and my sorrows’ cure!     Exit.

105

KING PHILIP     I fear some outrage, and I’ll follow her.

Exit.

LEWIS     There’s nothing in this world can make me joy:

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale

Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man;

And bitter shame hath spoil’d the sweet word’s taste,

110

That it yields nought but shame and bitterness.

PANDULPH     Before the curing of a strong disease,

Even in the instant of repair and health,

The fit is strongest; evils that take leave,

On their departure most of all show evil.

115

What have you lost by losing of this day?

LEWIS     All days of glory, joy and happiness.

PANDULPH     If you had won it, certainly you had.

No, no; when fortune means to men most good

She looks upon them with a threat’ning eye.

120

’Tis strange to think how much King John hath lost

In this which he accounts so clearly won:

Are not you griev’d that Arthur is his prisoner?

LEWIS     As heartily as he is glad he hath him.

PANDULPH     Your mind is all as youthful as your blood.

125

Now hear me speak with a prophetic spirit;

For even the breath of what I mean to speak

Shall blow each dust, each straw, each little rub,

Out of the path which shall directly lead

Thy foot to England’s throne; and therefore mark.

130

John hath seiz’d Arthur; and it cannot be

That, whiles warm life plays in that infant’s veins,

The misplac’d John should entertain an hour,

One minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest.

A sceptre snatch’d with an unruly hand

135

Must be as boisterously maintain’d as gain’d;

And he that stands upon a slipp’ry place

Makes nice of no vild hold to stay him up:

That John may stand, then, Arthur needs must fall;

So be it, for it cannot but be so.

140

LEWIS     But what shall I gain by young Arthur’s fall?

PANDULPH

You, in the right of Lady Blanche your wife,

May then make all the claim that Arthur did.

LEWIS     And lose it, life and all, as Arthur did.

PANDULPH

How green you are and fresh in this old world!

145

John lays you plots; the times conspire with you;

For he that steeps his safety in true blood

Shall find but bloody safety and untrue.

This act so evilly borne shall cool the hearts

Of all his people, and freeze up their zeal,

150

That none so small advantage shall step forth

To check his reign, but they will cherish it;

No natural exhalation in the sky,

No scope of nature, no distemper’d day,

No common wind, no customed event,

155

But they will pluck away his natural cause

And call them meteors, prodigies and signs,

Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven,

Plainly denouncing vengeance upon John.

LEWIS     Maybe he will not touch young Arthur’s life,

160

But hold himself safe in his prisonment.

PANDULPH     O, sir, when he shall hear of your approach,

If that young Arthur be not gone already,

Even at that news he dies; and then the hearts

Of all his people shall revolt from him,

165

And kiss the lips of unacquainted change,

And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath

Out of the bloody fingers’ ends of John.

Methinks I see this hurly all on foot:

And, O, what better matter breeds for you

170

Than I have nam’d! The bastard Faulconbridge

Is now in England ransacking the church,

Offending charity: if but a dozen French

Were there in arms, they would be as a call

To train ten thousand English to their side,

175

Or as a little snow, tumbled about,

Anon becomes a mountain. O noble Dolphin,

Go with me to the king: ’tis wonderful

What may be wrought out of their discontent,

Now that their souls are topful of offence.

180

For England go; I will whet on the king.

LEWIS

Strong reasons makes strange actions. Let us go:

If you say ay, the king will not say no.     Exeunt.

4.1 Enter HUBERT and Executioners.

HUBERT     Heat me these irons hot; and look thou stand

Within the arras: when I strike my foot

Upon the bosom of the ground, rush forth

And bind the boy which you shall find with me

Fast to the chair. Be heedful: hence, and watch.

1 EXECUTIONER

5

I hope your warrant will bear out the deed.

HUBERT     Uncleanly scruples! fear not you; look to’t.

[The Executioners withdraw.]

Young lad, come forth; I have to say with you.

Enter ARTHUR.

ARTHUR     Good morrow, Hubert.

HUBERT     Good morrow, little prince.

ARTHUR     As little prince having so great a title

To be more prince, as may be. – You are sad.

10

HUBERT     Indeed, I have been merrier.

ARTHUR     Mercy on me!

Methinks nobody should be sad but I:

Yet, I remember, when I was in France,

Young gentlemen would be as sad as night,

Only for wantonness. By my christendom,

15

So I were out of prison and kept sheep,

I should be as merry as the day is long;

And so I would be here, but that I doubt

My uncle practises more harm to me.

He is afraid of me and I of him:

20

Is it my fault that I was Geoffrey’s son?

No, indeed, is’t not; and I would to heaven

I were your son, so you would love me, Hubert.

HUBERT [aside]     If I talk to him, with his innocent prate

He will awake my mercy, which lies dead:

25

Therefore I will be sudden and dispatch.

ARTHUR     Are you sick, Hubert? you look pale to-day.

In sooth, I would you were a little sick,

That I might sit all night and watch with you:

I warrant I love you more than you do me.

30

HUBERT [aside]

His words do take possession of my bosom.

Read here, young Arthur. [showing a paper]

[aside]     How now, foolish rheum!

Turning dispiteous torture out of door!

I must be brief, lest resolution drop

Out at mine eyes in tender womanish tears. –

35

Can you not read it? is it not fair writ?

ARTHUR     Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect:

Must you with hot irons burn out both mine eyes?

HUBERT     Young boy, I must.

ARTHUR     And will you?

HUBERT     And I will.

40

ARTHUR

Have you the heart? When your head did but ache,

I knit my handkercher about your brows,

The best I had, a princess wrought it me,

And I did never ask it you again;

And with my hand at midnight held your head,

45

And, like the watchful minutes to the hour,

Still and anon cheer’d up the heavy time,

Saying, ‘What lack you?’ and ‘Where lies your grief?’

Or ‘What good love may I perform for you?’

Many a poor man’s son would have lien still

50

And ne’er have spoke a loving word to you;

But you at your sick-service had a prince.

Nay, you may think my love was crafty love,

And call it cunning: do, and if you will.

If heaven be pleas’d that you must use me ill,

55

Why then you must. Will you put out mine eyes?

These eyes that never did nor never shall

So much as frown on you.

HUBERT     I have sworn to do it;

And with hot irons must I burn them out.

ARTHUR     Ah, none but in this iron age would do it!

60

The iron of itself, though heat red-hot,

Approaching near these eyes, would drink my tears

And quench this fiery indignation

Even in the matter of mine innocence;

Nay, after that, consume away in rust,

65

But for containing fire to harm mine eye.

Are you more stubborn-hard than hammer’d iron?

And if an angel should have come to me

And told me Hubert should put out mine eyes,

I would not have believ’d him, – no tongue

70

But Hubert’s.

HUBERT     Come forth! [Stamps.]

[The Executioners come forth, with a cord, irons, etc.]

Do as I bid you do.

ARTHUR     O, save me, Hubert, save me! my eyes are out

Even with the fierce looks of these bloody men.

HUBERT     Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here.

ARTHUR     Alas, what need you be so boist’rous-rough?

75

I will not struggle, I will stand stone-still.

For heaven sake, Hubert, let me not be bound!

Nay, hear me, Hubert, drive these men away,

And I will sit as quiet as a lamb;

I will not stir, nor winch, nor speak a word,

80

Nor look upon the iron angerly:

Thrust but these men away, and I’ll forgive you

Whatever torment you do put me to.

HUBERT     Go, stand within; let me alone with him.

1 EXECUTIONER

I am best pleas’d to be from such a deed.

85

Exeunt Executioners.

ARTHUR     Alas, I then have chid away my friend!

He hath a stern look, but a gentle heart:

Let him come back, that his compassion may

Give life to yours.

HUBERT     Come, boy, prepare yourself.

ARTHUR     Is there no remedy?

HUBERT     None, but to lose your eyes.

90

ARTHUR

O heaven, that there were but a mote in yours,

A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair,

Any annoyance in that precious sense!

Then, feeling what small things are boisterous there,

Your vild intent must needs seem horrible.

95

HUBERT     Is this your promise? go to, hold your tongue.

ARTHUR     Hubert, the utterance of a brace of tongues.

Must needs want pleading for a pair of eyes:

Let me not hold my tongue, let me not, Hubert!

Or, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue,

100

So I may keep mine eyes: O, spare mine eyes,

Though to no use but still to look on you!

Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold

And would not harm me.

HUBERT     I can heat it, boy.

ARTHUR     No, in good sooth; the fire is dead with grief,

105

Being create for comfort, to be us’d

In undeserv’d extremes; see else yourself:

There is no malice in this burning coal;

The breath of heaven hath blown his spirit out

And strew’d repentant ashes on his head.

110

HUBERT     But with my breath I can revive it, boy.

ARTHUR     And if you do, you will but make it blush

And glow with shame of your proceedings, Hubert:

Nay, it perchance will sparkle in your eyes;

And, like a dog that is compell’d to fight,

115

Snatch at his master that doth tarre him on.

All things that you should use to do me wrong

Deny their office: only you do lack

That mercy which fierce fire and iron extends –

Creatures of note for mercy lacking uses!

120

HUBERT     Well, see to live; I will not touch thine eye

For all the treasure that thine uncle owes:

Yet am I sworn and I did purpose, boy,

With this same very iron to burn them out.

ARTHUR     O, now you look like Hubert! all this while

125

You were disguis’d.

HUBERT     Peace; no more. Adieu.

Your uncle must not know but you are dead.

I’ll fill these dogged spies with false reports:

And, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure

That Hubert, for the wealth of all the world,

130

Will not offend thee.

ARTHUR     O heaven! I thank you, Hubert.

HUBERT     Silence; no more. Go closely in with me:

Much danger do I undergo for thee.     Exeunt.

4.2 Enter KING JOHN, PEMBROKE, SALISBURY and other lords.

KING JOHN

Here once again we sit, once again crown’d,

And look’d upon, I hope, with cheerful eyes.

PEMBROKE

This ‘once again’, but that your highness pleas’d,

Was once superfluous: you were crown’d before,

And that high royalty was ne’er pluck’d off,

5

The faiths of men ne’er stained with revolt;

Fresh expectation troubled not the land

With any long’d-for change or better state.

SALISBURY

Therefore, to be possess’d with double pomp,

To guard a title that was rich before,

10

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw a perfume on the violet,

To smooth the ice, or add another hue

Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

15

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

PEMBROKE     But that your royal pleasure must be done,

This act is as an ancient tale new told,

And, in the last repeating, troublesome,

Being urged at a time unseasonable.

20

SALISBURY     In this the antique and well-noted face

Of plain old form is much disfigured;

And, like a shifted wind unto a sail,

It makes the course of thoughts to fetch about,

Startles and frights consideration,

25

Makes sound opinion sick and truth suspected,

For putting on so new a fashion’d robe.

PEMBROKE

When workmen strive to do better than well

They do confound their skill in covetousness;

And oftentimes excusing of a fault

30

Doth make the fault the worse by th’excuse:

As patches set upon a little breach

Discredit more in hiding of the fault

Than did the fault before it was so patch’d.

SALISBURY

To this effect, before you were new crown’d,

35

We breath’d our counsel: but it pleas’d your highness

To overbear it, and we are all well pleas’d,

Since all and every part of what we would

Doth make a stand at what your highness will.

KING JOHN     Some reasons of this double coronation

40

I have possess’d you with, and think them strong;

And more, more strong than lesser is my fear,

I shall indue you with: meantime but ask

What you would have reform’d that is not well,

And well shall you perceive how willingly

45

I will both hear and grant you your requests.

PEMBROKE     Then I, as one that am the tongue of these,

To sound the purposes of all their hearts,

Both for myself and them, but, chief of all,

Your safety, for the which, myself and them,

50

Bend their best studies, heartily request

Th’enfranchisement of Arthur: whose restraint

Doth move the murmuring lips of discontent

To break into this dangerous argument:

If what in rest you have in right you hold,

55

Why then your fears, which, as they say, attend

The steps of wrong, should move you to mew up

Your tender kinsman, and to choke his days

With barbarous ignorance, and deny his youth

The rich advantage of good exercise?

60

That the time’s enemies may not have this

To grace occasions, let it be our suit

That you have bid us ask his liberty;

Which for our goods we do no further ask

Than whereupon our weal, on you depending,

65

Counts it your weal he have his liberty.

Enter HUBERT.

KING JOHN     Let it be so: I do commit his youth

To your direction. Hubert, what news with you?

[taking him apart]

PEMBROKE     This is the man should do the bloody deed:

He show’d his warrant to a friend of mine.

70

The image of a wicked heinous fault

Lives in his eye; that close aspect of his

Do show the mood of a much troubled breast;

And I do fearfully believe ’tis done,

What we so fear’d he had a charge to do.

75

SALISBURY     The colour of the king doth come and go

Between his purpose and his conscience,

Like heralds ’twixt two dreadful battles set:

His passion is so ripe, it needs must break.

PEMBROKE     And when it breaks, I fear will issue thence

80

The foul corruption of a sweet child’s death.

KING JOHN     We cannot hold mortality’s strong hand:

Good lords, although my will to give is living,

The suit which you demand is gone and dead:

He tells us Arthur is deceas’d to-night.

85

SALISBURY     Indeed we fear’d his sickness was past cure.

PEMBROKE

Indeed we heard how near his death he was,

Before the child himself felt he was sick:

This must be answer’d, either here or hence.

KING JOHN

Why do you bend such solemn brows on me?

90

Think you I bear the shears of destiny?

Have I commandment on the pulse of life?

SALISBURY     It is apparent foul-play; and ’tis shame

That greatness should so grossly offer it:

So thrive it in your game! and so, farewell.

95

PEMBROKE     Stay yet, Lord Salisbury; I’ll go with thee,

And find th’ inheritance of this poor child,

His little kingdom of a forced grave.

That blood which ow’d the breadth of all this isle

Three foot of it doth hold: bad world the while!

100

This must not be thus borne: this will break out

To all our sorrows, and ere long I doubt.

Exeunt Lords.

KING JOHN     They burn in indignation.

Enter a Messenger.

I repent:

There is no sure foundation set on blood,

No certain life achiev’d by others’ death.

105

[to the Messenger] A fearful eye thou hast: where is that blood

That I have seen inhabit in those cheeks?

So foul a sky clears not without a storm:

Pour down thy weather: how goes all in France?

MESSENGER

From France to England. Never such a power

110

For any foreign preparation

Was levied in the body of a land.

The copy of your speed is learn’d by them;

For when you should be told they do prepare

The tidings comes that they are all arriv’d.

115

KING JOHN     O, where hath our intelligence been drunk?

Where hath it slept? Where is my mother’s care,

That such an army could be drawn in France,

And she not hear of it?

MESSENGER     My liege, her ear

Is stopp’d with dust: the first of April died

120

Your noble mother; and, as I hear, my lord,

The Lady Constance in a frenzy died

Three days before: but this from rumour’s tongue

I idly heard; if true or false I know not.

KING JOHN     Withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion!

125

O, make a league with me, till I have pleas’d

My discontented peers! What! mother dead!

How wildly then walks my estate in France!

Under whose conduct came those powers of France

That thou for truth giv’st out are landed here?

130

MESSENGER     Under the Dolphin.

Enter the Bastard and PETER of Pomfret.

KING JOHN     Thou hast made me giddy

With these ill tidings. – Now, what says the world

To your proceedings? do not seek to stuff

My head with more ill news, for it is full.

BASTARD     But if you be afeard to hear the worst,

135

Then let the worst unheard fall on your head.

KING JOHN     Bear with me, cousin; for I was amaz’d

Under the tide: but now I breathe again

Aloft the flood, and can give audience

To any tongue, speak it of what it will.

140

BASTARD     How I have sped among the clergymen

The sums I have collected shall express.

But as I travaill’d hither through the land

I find the people strangely fantasied;

Possess’d with rumours, full of idle dreams,

145

Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear.

And here’s a prophet, that I brought with me

From forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found

With many hundreds treading on his heels;

To whom he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes,

150

That, ere the next Ascension-day at noon,

Your highness should deliver up your crown.

KING JOHN

Thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst thou so?

PETER     Foreknowing that the truth will fall out so.

KING JOHN     Hubert, away with him; imprison him:

155

And on that day at noon, whereon he says

I shall yield up my crown, let him be hang’d.

Deliver him to safety, and return,

For I must use thee.     Exit Hubert with Peter.

O my gentle cousin,

Hear’st thou the news abroad, who are arriv’d?

160

BASTARD

The French, my lord: men’s mouths are full of it.

Besides, I met Lord Bigot and Lord Salisbury,

With eyes as red as new-enkindled fire,

And others more, going to seek the grave

Of Arthur, whom they say is kill’d to-night

165

On your suggestion.

KING JOHN     Gentle kinsman, go,

And thrust thyself into their companies.

I have a way to win their loves again;

Bring them before me.

BASTARD     I will seek them out.

KING JOHN     Nay, but make haste: the better foot before!

170

O, let me have no subject enemies,

When adverse foreigners affright my towns

With dreadful pomp of stout invasion!

Be Mercury, set feathers to thy heels,

And fly like thought from them to me again.

175

BASTARD     The spirit of the time shall teach me speed.

Exit.

KING JOHN     Spoke like a sprightful noble gentleman.

Go after him; for he perhaps shall need

Some messenger betwixt me and the peers;

And be thou he.

MESSENGER     With all my heart, my liege.     Exit.

180

KING JOHN     My mother dead!

Re-enter HUBERT.

HUBERT

My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night:

Four fixed, and the fift did whirl about

The other four in wondrous motion.

KING JOHN     Five moons?

HUBERT     Old men and beldams in the streets

185

Do prophesy upon it dangerously:

Young Arthur’s death is common in their mouths:

And when they talk of him, they shake their heads

And whisper one another in the ear;

And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer’s wrist,

190

Whilst he that hears makes fearful action,

With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes.

I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,

The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,

With open mouth swallowing a tailor’s news;

195

Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,

Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste

Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet,

Told of a many thousand warlike French

That were embattailed and rank’d in Kent:

200

Another lean unwash’d artificer

Cuts off his tale and talks of Arthur’s death.

KING JOHN

Why seek’st thou to possess me with these fears?

Why urgest thou so oft young Arthur’s death?

Thy hand hath murd’red him: I had a mighty cause

205

To wish him dead, but thou hadst none to kill him.

HUBERT

No had, my lord! why, did you not provoke me?

KING JOHN     It is the curse of kings to be attended

By slaves that take their humours for a warrant

To break within the bloody house of life,

210

And on the winking of authority

To understand a law, to know the meaning

Of dangerous majesty, when perchance it frowns

More upon humour than advis’d respect.

HUBERT     Here is your hand and seal for what I did.

215

KING JOHN

O, when the last accompt ’twixt heaven and earth

Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal

Witness against us to damnation!

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds

Make deeds ill done! Hadst not thou been by,

220

A fellow by the hand of nature mark’d,

Quoted and sign’d to do a deed of shame,

This murther had not come into my mind;

But taking note of thy abhorr’d aspect,

Finding thee fit for bloody villainy,

225

Apt, liable to be employ’d in danger,

I faintly broke with thee of Arthur’s death;

And thou, to be endeared to a king,

Made it no conscience to destroy a prince.

HUBERT     My lord –

230

KING JOHN

Hadst thou but shook thy head or made a pause

When I spake darkly what I purposed,

Or turn’d an eye of doubt upon my face,

As bid me tell my tale in express words,

Deep shame had struck me dumb, made me break off,

235

And those thy fears might have wrought fears in me:

But thou didst understand me by my signs

And didst in signs again parley with sin;

Yea, without stop, didst let thy heart consent,

And consequently thy rude hand to act

240

The deed, which both our tongues held vild to name.

Out of my sight, and never see me more!

My nobles leave me, and my state is brav’d,

Even at my gates, with ranks of foreign powers:

Nay, in the body of this fleshly land,

245

This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath,

Hostility and civil tumult reigns

Between my conscience and my cousin’s death.

HUBERT     Arm you against your other enemies,

I’ll make a peace between your soul and you.

250

Young Arthur is alive: this hand of mine

Is yet a maiden and an innocent hand,

Not painted with the crimson spots of blood.

Within this bosom never ent’red yet

The dreadful motion of a murderous thought;

255

And you have slander’d nature in my form,

Which, howsoever rude exteriorly,

Is yet the cover of a fairer mind

Than to be butcher of an innocent child.

KING JOHN

Doth Arthur live? O, haste thee to the peers,

260

Throw this report on their incensed rage,

And make them tame to their obedience!

Forgive the comment that my passion made

Upon thy feature; for my rage was blind,

And foul imaginary eyes of blood

265

Presented thee more hideous than thou art.

O, answer not, but to my closet bring

The angry lords with all expedient haste.

I conjure thee but slowly: run more fast!     Exeunt.

4.3 Enter ARTHUR, on the walls.

ARTHUR     The wall is high, and yet will I leap down:

Good ground, be pitiful and hurt me not!

There’s few or none do know me: if they did,

This ship-boy’s semblance hath disguis’d me quite.

I am afraid; and yet I’ll venture it.

5

If I get down, and do not break my limbs,

I’ll find a thousand shifts to get away:

As good to die and go, as die and stay.

[He leaps, and lies momentarily in a trance.]

O me! my uncle’s spirit is in these stones:

Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones!

10

[Dies.]

Enter PEMBROKE, SALISBURY and BIGOT.

SALISBURY

Lords, I will meet him at Saint Edmundsbury:

It is our safety, and we must embrace

This gentle offer of the perilous time.

PEMBROKE     Who brought that letter from the cardinal?

SALISBURY     The Count Melun, a noble lord of France;

15

Whose private with me of the Dolphin’s love

Is much more general than these lines import.

BIGOT     To-morrow morning let us meet him then.

SALISBURY     Or rather then set forward; for ’twill be

Two long days’ journey, lords, or ere we meet.

20

Enter the Bastard.

BASTARD

Once more to-day well met, distemper’d lords!

The king by me requests your presence straight.

SALISBURY     The king hath dispossess’d himself of us:

We will not line his thin bestained cloak

With our pure honours, nor attend the foot

25

That leaves the print of blood where’er it walks.

Return and tell him so: we know the worst.

BASTARD

Whate’er you think, good words, I think, were best.

SALISBURY

Our griefs, and not our manners, reason now.

BASTARD     But there is little reason in your grief;

30

Therefore ’twere reason you had manners now.

PEMBROKE     Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege.

BASTARD

’Tis true, to hurt his master, no manners else.

SALISBURY

This is the prison.

[seeing Arthur] What is he lies here?

PEMBROKE

O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty!

35

The earth had not a hole to hide this deed.

SALISBURY     Murther, as hating what himself hath done,

Doth lay it open to urge on revenge.

BIGOT     Or, when he doom’d this beauty to a grave,

Found it too precious-princely for a grave.

40

SALISBURY

Sir Richard, what think you? You have beheld.

Or have you read, or heard? or could you think,

Or do you almost think, although you see,

That you do see? could thought, without this object,

Form such another? This is the very top,

45

The heighth, the crest, or crest unto the crest,

Of murther’s arms: this is the bloodiest shame,

The wildest savagery, the vildest stroke,

That ever wall-ey’d wrath or staring rage

Presented to the tears of soft remorse.

50

PEMBROKE     All murthers past do stand excus’d in this:

And this, so sole and so unmatchable,

Shall give a holiness, a purity,

To the yet unbegotten sin of times;

And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest,

55

Exampled by this heinous spectacle.

BASTARD     It is a damned and a bloody work;

The graceless action of a heavy hand,

If that it be the work of any hand.

SALISBURY     If that it be the work of any hand!

60

We had a kind of light what would ensue:

It is the shameful work of Hubert’s hand,

The practice and the purpose of the king:

From whose obedience I forbid my soul,

Kneeling before this ruin of sweet life,

65

And breathing to his breathless excellence

The incense of a vow, a holy vow,

Never to taste the pleasures of the world,

Never to be infected with delight,

Nor conversant with ease and idleness,

70

Till I have set a glory to this hand,

By giving it the worship of revenge.

PEMBROKE, BIGOT

Our souls religiously confirm thy words.

Enter HUBERT.

HUBERT     Lords, I am hot with haste in seeking you:

Arthur doth live; the king hath sent for you.

75

SALISBURY     O, he is bold and blushes not at death.

Avaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone!

HUBERT     I am no villain.

SALISBURY     Must I rob the law?

[drawing his sword]

BASTARD     Your sword is bright, sir; put it up again.

SALISBURY     Not till I sheathe it in a murtherer’s skin.

80

HUBERT     Stand back, Lord Salisbury, stand back, I say;

By heaven, I think my sword’s as sharp as yours.

I would not have you, lord, forget yourself,

Nor tempt the danger of my true defence;

Lest I, by marking of your rage, forget

85

Your worth, your greatness and nobility.

BIGOT     Out, dunghill! dar’st thou brave a nobleman?

HUBERT     Not for my life: but yet I dare defend

My innocent life against an emperor.

SALISBURY     Thou art a murtherer.

HUBERT     Do not prove me so:

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Yet I am none. Whose tongue soe’er speaks false,

Not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies.

PEMBROKE     Cut him to pieces!

BASTARD     Keep the peace, I say.

SALISBURY     Stand by, or I shall gall you, Faulconbridge.

BASTARD     Thou wert better gall the divel, Salisbury:

95

If thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot,

Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame,

I’ll strike thee dead. Put up thy sword betime –

Or I’ll so maul you and your toasting-iron

That you shall think the divel is come from hell.

100

BIGOT     What wilt thou do, renowned Faulconbridge?

Second a villain and a murtherer?

HUBERT     Lord Bigot, I am none.

BIGOT     Who kill’d this prince?

HUBERT     ’Tis not an hour since I left him well:

I honour’d him, I lov’d him, and will weep

105

My date of life out for his sweet live’s loss.

SALISBURY     Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes,

For villainy is not without such rheum;

And he, long traded in it, makes it seem

Like rivers of remorse and innocency.

110

Away with me, all you whose souls abhor

Th’uncleanly savours of a slaughter-house;

For I am stifled with this smell of sin.

BIGOT     Away toward Bury, to the Dolphin there!

PEMBROKE     There tell the king he may inquire us out.

115

Exeunt Lords.

BASTARD

Here’s a good world! Knew you of this fair work?

Beyond the infinite and boundless reach

Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death,

Art thou damn’d, Hubert.

HUBERT     Do but hear me, sir –

BASTARD     Ha! I’ll tell thee what;

120

Thou’rt damn’d as black – nay, nothing is so black;

Thou art more deep damn’d than Prince Lucifer:

There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell

As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.

HUBERT     Upon my soul –

BASTARD     If thou didst but consent

125

To this most cruel act, do but despair;

And if thou want’st a cord, the smallest thread

That ever spider twisted from her womb

Will serve to strangle thee; a rush will be a beam

To hang thee on; or wouldst thou drown thyself,

130

Put but a little water in a spoon,

And it shall be as all the ocean,

Enough to stifle such a villain up.

I do suspect thee very grievously.

HUBERT     If I in act, consent, or sin of thought,

135

Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath

Which was embounded in this beauteous clay,

Let hell want pains enough to torture me!

I left him well.

BASTARD     Go, bear him in thine arms.

I am amaz’d, methinks and lose my way

140

Among the thorns and dangers of this world.

How easy dost thou take all England up

From forth this morsel of dead royalty!

The life, the right and truth of all this realm

Is fled to heaven; and England now is left

145

To tug and scamble, and to part by th’ teeth

The unow’d interest of proud swelling state.

Now for the bare-pick’d bone of majesty

Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest

And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace:

150

Now powers from home and discontents at home

Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits,

As doth a raven on a sick-fall’n beast,

The imminent decay of wrested pomp.

Now happy he whose cloak and ceinture can

155

Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child

And follow me with speed: I’ll to the king.

A thousand businesses are brief in hand,

And heaven itself doth frown upon the land.     Exeunt.

5.1 Enter KING JOHN, PANDULPH and attendants.

KING JOHN     Thus have I yielded up into your hand

The circle of my glory. [giving the crown]

PANDULPH     Take again

[giving back the crown]

From this my hand, as holding of the pope,

Your sovereign greatness and authority.

KING JOHN

Now keep your holy word: go meet the French,

5

And from his holiness use all your power

To stop their marches ’fore we are inflam’d.

Our discontented counties do revolt;

Our people quarrel with obedience,

Swearing allegiance and the love of soul

10

To stranger blood, to foreign royalty.

This inundation of mistemp’red humour

Rests by you only to be qualified:

Then pause not; for the present time’s so sick

That present med’cine must be minist’red

15

Or overthrow incurable ensues.

PANDULPH     It was my breath that blew this tempest up,

Upon your stubborn usage of the pope;

But since you are a gentle convertite

My tongue shall hush again this storm of war,

20

And make fair weather in your blust’ring land.

On this Ascension-day, remember well,

Upon your oath of service to the pope,

Go I to make the French lay down their arms.     Exit.

KING JOHN     Is this Ascension-day? Did not the prophet

25

Say that before Ascension-day at noon

My crown I should give off? Even so I have:

I did suppose it should be on constraint;

But, heaven be thank’d, it is but voluntary.

Enter the Bastard.

BASTARD

All Kent hath yielded: nothing there holds out

30

But Dover Castle; London hath receiv’d,

Like a kind host, the Dolphin and his powers;

Your nobles will not hear you, but are gone

To offer service to your enemy;

And wild amazement hurries up and down

35

The little number of your doubtful friends.

KING JOHN     Would not my lords return to me again

After they heard young Arthur was alive?

BASTARD

They found him dead and cast into the streets,

An empty casket, where the jewel of life

40

By some damn’d hand was robb’d and ta’en away.

KING JOHN     That villain Hubert told me he did live.

BASTARD     So, on my soul, he did, for aught he knew.

But wherefore do you droop? why look you sad?

Be great in act, as you have been in thought;

45

Let not the world see fear and sad distrust

Govern the motion of a kingly eye!

Be stirring as the time, be fire with fire,

Threaten the threat’ner, and outface the brow

Of bragging horror: so shall inferior eyes,

50

That borrow their behaviours from the great,

Grow great by your example and put on

The dauntless spirit of resolution.

Away, and glister like the god of war

When he intendeth to become the field:

55

Show boldness and aspiring confidence!

What, shall they seek the lion in his den,

And fright him there? and make him tremble there?

O, let it not be said: forage, and run

To meet displeasure farther from the doors,

60

And grapple with him ere he come so nigh!

KING JOHN     The legate of the pope hath been with me,

And I have made a happy peace with him;

And he hath promis’d to dismiss the powers

Led by the Dolphin.

BASTARD     O inglorious league!

65

Shall we, upon the footing of our land,

Send fair-play orders and make comprimise,

Insinuation, parley and base truce

To arms invasive? shall a beardless boy,

A cock’red silken wanton, brave our fields,

70

And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil,

Mocking the air with colours idlely spread,

And find no check? Let us, my liege, to arms!

Perchance the cardinal cannot make your peace;

Or if he do, let it at least be said

75

They saw we had a purpose of defence.

KING JOHN

Have thou the ordering of this present time.

BASTARD     Away, then, with good courage! yet, I know,

Our party may well meet a prouder foe.      Exeunt.

5.2 Enter, in arms, LEWIS, SALISBURY, MELUN, PEMBROKE, BIGOT and soldiers.

LEWIS     My Lord Melun, let this be copied out,

And keep it safe for our remembrance:

Return the precedent to these lords again;

That, having our fair order written down,

Both they and we, perusing o’er these notes,

5

May know wherefore we took the sacrament

And keep our faiths firm and inviolable.

SALISBURY     Upon our sides it never shall be broken.

And, noble Dolphin, albeit we swear

A voluntary zeal and an unurg’d faith

10

To your proceedings; yet believe me, prince,

I am not glad that such a sore of time

Should seek a plaster by contemn’d revolt,

And heal the inveterate canker of one wound

By making many. O, it grieves my soul,

15

That I must draw this metal from my side

To be a widow-maker! O, and there

Where honourable rescue and defence

Cries out upon the name of Salisbury!

But such is the infection of the time,

20

That, for the health and physic of our right,

We cannot deal but with the very hand

Of stern injustice and confused wrong.

And is’t not pity, O my grieved friends,

That we, the sons and children of this isle,

25

Was born to see so sad an hour as this;

Wherein we step after a stranger, march

Upon her gentle bosom, and fill up

Her enemies’ ranks – I must withdraw and weep

Upon the spot of this enforced cause –

30

To grace the gentry of a land remote,

And follow unacquainted colours here?

What, here? O nation, that thou couldst remove!

That Neptune’s arms, who clippeth thee about,

Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself –

35

And cripple thee – unto a pagan shore,

Where these two Christian armies might combine

The blood of malice in a vein of league,

And not to spend it so unneighbourly!

LEWIS     A noble temper dost thou show in this;

40

And great affections wrastling in thy bosom

Doth make an earthquake of nobility.

O, what a noble combat hast thou fought

Between compulsion and a brave respect!

Let me wipe off this honourable dew,

45

That silverly doth progress on thy cheeks:

My heart hath melted at a lady’s tears,

Being an ordinary inundation;

But this effusion of such manly drops,

This shower, blown up by tempest of the soul,

50

Startles mine eyes, and makes me more amaz’d

Than had I seen the vaulty top of heaven

Figur’d quite o’er with burning meteors.

Lift up thy brow, renowned Salisbury,

And with a great heart heave away this storm:

55

Commend these waters to those baby eyes

That never saw the giant world enrag’d,

Nor met with fortune other than at feasts,

Full warm of blood, of mirth, of gossiping.

Come, come; for thou shalt thrust thy hand as deep

60

Into the purse of rich prosperity

As Lewis himself: so, nobles, shall you all,

That knit your sinews to the strength of mine.

Enter PANDULPH.

And even there, methinks, an angel spake:

Look, where the holy legate comes apace,

65

To give us warrant from the hand of heaven,

And on our actions set the name of right

With holy breath.

PANDULPH     Hail, noble prince of France!

The next is this: King John hath reconcil’d

Himself to Rome; his spirit is come in,

70

That so stood out against the holy church,

The great metropolis and see of Rome.

Therefore thy threat’ning colours now wind up,

And tame the savage spirit of wild war,

That, like a lion foster’d up at hand,

75

It may lie gently at the foot of peace,

And be no further harmful than in show.

LEWIS     Your grace shall pardon me, I will not back:

I am too high-born to be propertied,

To be a secondary at control,

80

Or useful serving-man and instrument

To any sovereign state throughout the world.

Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars

Between this chastis’d kingdom and myself,

And brought in matter that should feed this fire;

85

And now ’tis far too huge to be blown out

With that same weak wind which enkindled it.

You taught me how to know the face of right,

Acquainted me with interest to this land,

Yea, thrust this enterprise into my heart;

90

And come ye now to tell me John hath made

His peace with Rome? What is that peace to me?

I, by the honour of my marriage-bed,

After young Arthur, claim this land for mine;

And, now it is half-conquer’d, must I back

95

Because that John hath made his peace with Rome?

Am I Rome’s slave? What penny hath Rome borne,

What men provided, what munition sent,

To underprop this action? Is’t not I

That undergo this charge? who else but I,

100

And such as to my claim are liable,

Sweat in this business and maintain this war?

Have I not heard these islanders shout out

‘Vive le roi!’ as I have bank’d their towns?

Have I not here the best cards for the game

105

To win this easy match play’d for a crown?

And shall I now give o’er the yielded set?

No, no, on my soul, it never shall be said.

PANDULPH     You look but on the outside of this work.

LEWIS     Outside or inside, I will not return

110

Till my attempt so much be glorified

As to my ample hope was promised

Before I drew this gallant head of war,

And cull’d these fiery spirits from the world,

To outlook conquest and to win renown

115

Even in the jaws of danger and of death.

[Trumpet sounds.]

What lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?

Enter the Bastard, attended.

BASTARD     According to the fair-play of the world,

Let me have audience; I am sent to speak:

My holy lord of Milan, from the king

120

I come, to learn how you have dealt for him;

And, as you answer, I do know the scope

And warrant limited unto my tongue.

PANDULPH     The Dolphin is too wilful-opposite,

And will not temporize with my entreaties;

125

He flatly says he’ll not lay down his arms.

BASTARD     By all the blood that ever fury breath’d,

The youth says well. Now hear our English king,

For thus his royalty doth speak in me:

He is prepar’d, and reason too he should –

130

This apish and unmannerly approach,

This harness’d masque and unadvised revel,

This unhair’d sauciness and boyish troops,

The king doth smile at; and is well prepar’d

To whip this dwarfish war, this pigmy arms,

135

From out the circle of his territories. –

That hand which had the strength, even at your door,

To cudgel you and make you take the hatch,

To dive like buckets in concealed wells,

To crouch in litter of your stable planks,

140

To lie like pawns lock’d up in chests and trunks,

To hug with swine, to seek sweet safety out

In vaults and prisons, and to thrill and shake

Even at the crying of your nation’s crow,

Thinking this voice an armed Englishman;

145

Shall that victorious hand be feebled here,

That in your chambers gave you chastisement?

No: know the gallant monarch is in arms

And like an eagle o’er his aery towers,

To souse annoyance that comes near his nest.

150

And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts,

You bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb

Of your dear mother England, blush for shame:

For your own ladies and pale-visag’d maids

Like Amazons come tripping after drums,

155

Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change,

Their needl’s to lances, and their gentle hearts

To fierce and bloody inclination.

LEWIS

There end thy brave, and turn thy face in peace;

We grant thou canst outscold us: fare thee well;

160

We hold our time too precious to be spent

With such a brabbler.

PANDULPH     Give me leave to speak.

BASTARD       No, I will speak.

LEWIS           We will attend to neither.

Strike up the drums; and let the tongue of war

Plead for our interest and our being here.

165

BASTARD

Indeed, your drums, being beaten, will cry out;

And so shall you, being beaten: do but start

An echo with the clamour of thy drum,

And even at hand a drum is ready brac’d

That shall reverberate all, as loud as thine:

170

Sound but another, and another shall

As loud as thine rattle the welkin’s ear

And mock the deep-mouth’d thunder: for at hand –

Not trusting to this halting legate here,

Whom he hath us’d rather for sport than need –

175

Is warlike John; and in his forehead sits

A bare-ribb’d death, whose office is this day

To feast upon whole thousands of the French.

LEWIS     Strike up our drums, to find this danger out.

BASTARD

And thou shalt find it, Dolphin, do not doubt.

180

     Exeunt.

5.3 Alarums. Enter KING JOHN and HUBERT.

KING JOHN

How goes the day with us? O, tell me, Hubert.

HUBERT     Badly, I fear. How fares your majesty?

KING JOHN     This fever, that hath troubled me so long,

Lies heavy on me; O, my heart is sick!

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER

My lord, your valiant kinsman, Faulconbridge,

5

Desires your majesty to leave the field

And send him word by me which way you go.

KING JOHN

Tell him, toward Swinstead, to the abbey there.

MESSENGER     Be of good comfort; for the great supply

That was expected by the Dolphin here,

10

Are wrack’d three nights ago on Goodwin Sands.

This news was brought to Richard but even now:

The French fight coldly, and retire themselves.

KING JOHN     Ay me! this tyrant fever burns me up,

And will not let me welcome this good news.

15

Set on toward Swinstead; to my litter straight:

Weakness possesseth me, and I am faint.      Exeunt.

5.4 Enter SALISBURY, PEMBROKE and BIGOT.

SALISBURY

I did not think the king so stor’d with friends.

PEMBROKE     Up once again; put spirit in the French:

If they miscarry, we miscarry too.

SALISBURY     That misbegotten divel, Faulconbridge,

In spite of spite, alone upholds the day.

5

PEMBROKE

They say King John sore sick hath left the field.

Enter MELUN, wounded.

MELUN     Lead me to the revolts of England here.

SALISBURY     When we were happy we had other names.

PEMBROKE     It is the Count Melun.

SALISBURY     Wounded to death.

MELUN     Fly, noble English, you are bought and sold;

10

Unthread the rude eye of rebellion

And welcome home again discarded faith.

Seek out King John and fall before his feet;

For if the French be lords of this loud day

Lewis means to recompense the pains you take

15

By cutting off your heads: thus hath he sworn

And I with him, and many moe with me,

Upon the altar at Saint Edmundsbury;

Even on that altar where we swore to you

Dear amity and everlasting love.

20

SALISBURY     May this be possible? may this be true?

MELUN     Have I not hideous death within my view,

Retaining but a quantity of life,

Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax

Resolveth from his figure ’gainst the fire?

25

What in the world should make me now deceive,

Since I must lose the use of all deceit?

Why should I then be false, since it is true

That I must die here and live hence by truth?

I say again, if Lewis do win the day,

30

He is forsworn if e’er those eyes of yours

Behold another day break in the east:

But even this night, whose black contagious breath

Already smokes about the burning crest

Of the old, feeble and day-wearied sun,

35

Even this ill night, your breathing shall expire,

Paying the fine of rated treachery

Even with a treacherous fine of all your lives,

If Lewis by your assistance win the day.

Commend me to one Hubert with your king:

40

The love of him, and this respect besides,

For that my grandsire was an Englishman,

Awakes my conscience to confess all this.

In lieu whereof, I pray you, bear me hence

From forth the noise and rumour of the field,

45

Where I may think the remnant of my thoughts

In peace, and part this body and my soul

With contemplation and devout desires.

SALISBURY     We do believe thee; and beshrew my soul

But I do love the favour and the form

50

Of this most fair occasion, by the which

We will untread the steps of damned flight,

And like a bated and retired flood,

Leaving our rankness and irregular course,

Stoop low within those bounds we have o’erlook’d,

55

And calmly run on in obedience

Even to our ocean, to our great King John.

My arm shall give thee help to bear thee hence;

For I do see the cruel pangs of death

Right in thine eye. Away, my friends! New flight;

60

And happy newness, that intends old right!

Exeunt, leading off Melun.

5.5 Enter LEWIS and his train.

LEWIS     The sun of heaven methought was loath to set,

But stay’d and made the western welkin blush,

When English measure backward their own ground

In faint retire. O, bravely came we off,

When with a volley of our needless shot,

5

After such bloody toil, we bid good-night,

And wound our tott’ring colours clearly up,

Last in the field, and almost lords of it!

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     Where is my prince, the Dolphin?

LEWIS     Here: what news?

MESSENGER

The Count Melun is slain; the English lords

10

By his persuasion are again fall’n off,

And your supply, which you have wish’d so long,

Are cast away and sunk on Goodwin Sands.

LEWIS     Ah, foul shrewd news! beshrew thy very heart!

I did not think to be so sad to-night

15

As this hath made me. Who was he that said

King John did fly an hour or two before

The stumbling night did part our weary powers?

MESSENGER     Whoever spoke it, it is true, my lord.

LEWIS     Well; keep good quarter and good care to-night:

20

The day shall not be up so soon as I,

To try the fair adventure of to-morrow.     Exeunt.

5.6 Enter the BASTARD and HUBERT, severally.

HUBERT

Who’s there? speak, ho! speak quickly, or I shoot.

BASTARD     A friend. What art thou?

HUBERT     Of the part of England.

BASTARD     Whither dost thou go?

HUBERT

What’s that to thee? [pause] Why, may not I demand

Of thine affairs as well as thou of mine?

5

BASTARD     Hubert, I think.

HUBERT     Thou hast a perfect thought:

I will upon all hazards well believe

Thou art my friend, that know’st my tongue so well.

Who art thou?

BASTARD     Who thou wilt: and if thou please

Thou mayst befriend me so much as to think

10

I come one way of the Plantagenets.

HUBERT

Unkind remembrance! thou and endless night

Have done me shame: brave soldier, pardon me,

That any accent breaking from thy tongue

Should ’scape the true acquaintance of mine ear.

15

BASTARD

Come, come; sans compliment, what news abroad?

HUBERT     Why, here walk I in the black brow of night,

To find you out.

BASTARD     Brief, then; and what’s the news?

HUBERT     O, my sweet sir, news fitting to the night,

Black, fearful, comfortless and horrible.

20

BASTARD     Show me the very wound of this ill news:

I am no woman, I’ll not swound at it.

HUBERT     The king, I fear, is poison’d by a monk:

I left him almost speechless; and broke out

To acquaint you with this evil, that you might

25

The better arm you to the sudden time,

Than if you had at leisure known of this.

BASTARD     How did he take it? who did taste to him?

HUBERT     A monk – I tell you, a resolved villain –

Whose bowels suddenly burst out: the king

30

Yet speaks and peradventure may recover.

BASTARD     Who didst thou leave to tend his majesty?

HUBERT

Why, know you not? the lords are all come back,

And brought Prince Henry in their company;

At whose request the king hath pardon’d them,

35

And they are all about his majesty.

BASTARD     Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven,

And tempt us not to bear above our power!

I’ll tell thee, Hubert, half my power this night,

Passing these flats, are taken by the tide;

40

These Lincoln Washes have devoured them;

Myself, well mounted, hardly have escap’d.

Away before: conduct me to the king;

I doubt he will be dead or ere I come.     Exeunt.

5.7 Enter PRINCE HENRY, SALISBURY and BIGOT.

PRINCE HENRY     It is too late: the life of all his blood

Is touch’d corruptibly, and his pure brain,

Which some suppose the soul’s frail dwelling-house,

Doth by the idle comments that it makes

Foretell the ending of mortality.

5

Enter PEMBROKE.

PEMBROKE

His highness yet doth speak, and holds belief

That, being brought into the open air,

It would allay the burning quality

Of that fell poison which assaileth him.

PRINCE HENRY

Let him be brought into the orchard here.

10

Doth he still rage?     Exit Bigot.

PEMBROKE     He is more patient

Than when you left him; even now he sung.

PRINCE HENRY     O vanity of sickness! fierce extremes

In their continuance will not feel themselves.

Death, having prey’d upon the outward parts,

15

Leaves them invisible, and his siege is now

Against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds

With many legions of strange fantasies,

Which, in their throng and press to that last hold,

Confound themselves. ’Tis strange that death should sing.

20

I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan

Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death

And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings

His soul and body to their lasting rest.

SALISBURY

Be of good comfort, prince; for you are born

25

To set a form upon that indigest

Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude.

Enter attendants and BIGOT, bringing in KING JOHN

in a chair.

KING JOHN     Ay, marry, now my soul hath elbow-room

It would not out at windows nor at doors.

There is so hot a summer in my bosom,

30

That all my bowels crumble up to dust:

I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen

Upon a parchment, and against this fire

Do I shrink up.

PRINCE HENRY     How fares your majesty?

KING JOHN     Poison’d, ill fare; dead, forsook, cast off:

35

And none of you will bid the winter come

To thrust his icy fingers in my maw,

Nor let my kingdom’s rivers take their course

Through my burn’d bosom, nor entreat the north

To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips

40

And comfort me with cold. I do not ask you much,

I beg cold comfort; and you are so strait,

And so ingrateful, you deny me that.

PRINCE HENRY

O that there were some virtue in my tears

That might relieve you!

KING JOHN     The salt in them is hot.

45

Within me is a hell; and there the poison

Is as a fiend confin’d to tyrannize

On unreprievable condemned blood.

Enter the Bastard.

BASTARD     O, I am scalded with my violent motion,

And spleen of speed to see your majesty!

50

KING JOHN     O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye:

The tackle of my heart is crack’d and burn’d,

And all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail

Are turned to one thread, one little hair;

My heart hath one poor string to stay it by,

55

Which holds but till thy news be uttered;

And then all this thou seest is but a clod

And module of confounded royalty.

BASTARD     The Dolphin is preparing hitherward,

Where God He knows how we shall answer him;

60

For in a night the best part of my power,

As I upon advantage did remove,

Were in the Washes all unwarily

Devoured by the unexpected flood. [The King dies.]

SALISBURY

You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear.

65

My liege! my lord! – But now a king, now thus.

PRINCE HENRY

Even so must I run on, and even so stop.

What surety of the world, what hope, what stay,

When this was now a king, and now is clay?

BASTARD     Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind

70

To do the office for thee of revenge,

And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven,

As it on earth hath been thy servant still.

Now, now, you stars that move in your right spheres,

Where be your powers? show now your mended faiths,

75

And instantly return with me again,

To push destruction and perpetual shame

Out of the weak door of our fainting land.

Straight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought;

The Dolphin rages at our very heels.

80

SALISBURY

It seems you know not, then, so much as we:

The Cardinal Pandulph is within at rest,

Who half an hour since came from the Dolphin,

And brings from him such offers of our peace

As we with honour and respect may take,

85

With purpose presently to leave this war.

BASTARD     He will the rather do it when he sees

Ourselves well sinew’d to our defence.

SALISBURY     Nay, ’tis in a manner done already,

For many carriages he hath dispatch’d

90

To the sea-side, and put his cause and quarrel

To the disposing of the cardinal:

With whom yourself, myself and other lords,

If you think meet, this afternoon will post

To consummate this business happily.

95

BASTARD     Let it be so: and you, my noble prince,

With other princes that may best be spar’d,

Shall wait upon your father’s funeral.

PRINCE HENRY     At Worcester must his body be interr’d;

For so he will’d it.

BASTARD     Thither shall it then:

100

And happily may your sweet self put on

The lineal state and glory of the land!

To whom, with all submission, on my knee

I do bequeath my faithful services

And true subjection everlastingly.

105

SALISBURY     And the like tender of our love we make,

To rest without a spot for evermore.

PRINCE HENRY

I have a kind soul that would give thanks

And knows not how to do it but with tears.

BASTARD     O, let us pay the time but needful woe,

110

Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.

This England never did, nor never shall,

Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,

But when it first did help to wound itself.

Now these her princes are come home again

115

Come the three corners of the world in arms

And we shall shock them! Nought shall make us rue

If England to itself do rest but true!     Exeunt.

King Lear

King Lear was first printed in quarto format with the title The History of King Lear in 1608; a different text appeared in the First Folio, where it is the eighth of the tragedies, as The Tragedy of King Lear in 1623. There are in addition something like 850 verbal variants between the two texts, and several speeches are assigned to different speakers. The military action of acts 4 and 5 is handled differently, and there are minor changes in the characterization of Lear, Cordelia and Goneril, but the most striking change is in Edgar who is a stronger character in 1623 than in the 1608 version; Albany and Kent are weaker by comparison. Several recent scholars maintain that the 1608 text represents Shakespeare’s first version of the play and the 1623 version represents his revision of it; they therefore reject the traditional editorial practice of combining the two texts into a single conflated version; some editions of the ‘Complete Works’ now print both texts of the play.

King Lear is usually dated 1604-5, putting it after Hamlet and Othello but before Macbeth. The 1608 Quarto title-page refers to a performance before King James at Whitehall on 24 December 1606 (see Fig. 9, p. 7). Shakespeare knew the Lear story from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587) and from the Mirror for Magistrates (1574) as well as from a brief version in Edmund Spenser’s Fairy Queen (1590: book 2, canto 10). He also knew, and may have acted in, an anonymous play called The True Chronicle History of King Leir and his three daughters (usually referred to as King Leir), which was published in 1605 but probably written and first performed around 1590. He complicated the Lear story by inventing Lear’s madness and by adding the parallel plot of Gloucester and his sons which derives from Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (1590). He used Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (1603) for building up the characterization of Edgar as Poor Tom.

Nahum Tate’s Restoration adaptation of Shakespeare’s play (1681) is notorious for providing a happy ending, with Lear and Gloucester still alive and Cordelia betrothed to Edgar, who has earlier saved her from being raped by Edmund. This version, which also omitted the Fool, was thought to be more acceptable by readers and audiences until the mid-nineteenth century, but since then admiration for Shakespeare’s bleak play has increased to the point that many people would now see King Lear as his greatest tragedy, surpassing even Hamlet. Its social and political vision of ‘the promised end … or image of that horror’ has appealed to a world threatened by genocide and environmental or nuclear catastrophe, while at the personal and familial level the play’s presentation of conflict between the generations (‘age is unnecessary’) speaks to societies where people are living longer and the elderly make up an increasing proportion of the population. Modern productions and films frequently evoke Samuel Beckett’s Endgame (1957), turning it into a kind of prophecy of the disintegration of modern as well as Renaissance civilization.

King Lear has been interpreted more positively as a tragedy of Christian suffering and redemption, and as one which embraces radical socialism (‘So distribution should undo excess, / And each man have enough’). However, despite the fact that a number of major characters are still alive at the end of the play and gestures are made towards ‘sustaining’ ‘the gored state’, the final impression is one of apocalyptic finality where an escape from suffering is all that can be hoped for.

Note on the text

There are two texts of King Lear, the Quarto of 1608 and the First Folio of 1623. They differ in many ways, and any editor has to choose between variant readings. The 1997 text presented here relies mainly on the Folio text, which was probably revised by Shakespeare, perhaps with advice from his fellow-actors. However, the Quarto has about 300 lines that are not found in the Folio, and the Folio has about 110 lines that are not in the Quarto. Since all these appear to be authentically Shakespearean, they are included in the present text; but so that they can be readily identified, passages and words found only in the Quarto are marked by superscript Q, and passages or words found only in the Folio by superscript F, at the beginning and end of them. Where no superscript Q or F, occurs, square brackets indicate stage directions, or words in them, which have been added by the editor.

LIST OF ROLES

LEAR

King of Britain

GONERIL

his eldest daughter

REGAN

his second daughter

CORDELIA

his youngest daughter

Duke of ALBANY

married to Goneril

Duke of CORNWALL

married to Regan

King of FRANCE

Duke of BURGUNDY

Earl of GLOUCESTER

EDGAR

his elder son

EDMUND

his younger bastard son

Earl of KENT

FOOL

attendant on Lear

OSWALD

Goneril’s steward

CURAN

a follower of Gloucester

OLD MAN

Gloucester’s tenant

A Herald, a Captain, an Officer, a Doctor, Knights, Gentlemen, Attendants, Servants and Messengers

1.1 Enter KENT, GLOUCESTER and EDMUND.

KENT     I thought the King had more affected the Duke

of Albany than Cornwall.

GLOUCESTER     It did always seem so to us: but now, in the

division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the

dukes he values most, for qualities are so weighed that

5

curiosity in neither can make choice of either’s moiety.

KENT     Is not this your son, my lord?

GLOUCESTER     His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge.

I have so often blushed to acknowledge him that now

I am brazed to’t.

10

KENT     I cannot conceive you.

GLOUCESTER     Sir, this young fellow’s mother could;

whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had,

indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband

for her bed. Do you smell a fault?

15

KENT     I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it

being so proper.

GLOUCESTER     But I have a son, sir, by order of law, some

year elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my

account. Though this knave came something saucily

20

to the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother

fair, there was good sport at his making, and the

whoreson must be acknowledged. Do you know this

noble gentleman, Edmund?

EDMUND     No, my lord.

25

GLOUCESTER     [to Edmund] My lord of Kent: remember

him hereafter, as my honourable friend.

EDMUND     My services to your lordship.

KENT     I must love you, and sue to know you better.

EDMUND     [to Kent] Sir, I shall study deserving.

30

GLOUCESTER     He hath been out nine years, and away he

shall again. The King is coming.

Sennet. Enter Qone bearing a coronet, thenQ LEAR, CORNWALL, ALBANY, GONERIL, REGAN, CORDELIA and attendants.

LEAR

Attend the lords of France and Burgundy, Gloucester.

GLOUCESTER     I shall, my lord.     FExit.F

LEAR     Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.

35

FGive meF the map there. Know FthatF we have divided

In three our kingdom; and ’tis our fast intent

To shake all cares and business from our age,

Conferring them on younger strengths, Fwhile we

Unburdened crawl toward death. Our son of Cornwall,

40

And you, our no less loving son of Albany,

We have this hour a constant will to publish

Our daughters’ several dowers, that future strife

May be prevented now.F

The Q two greatQ princes, France and Burgundy,

45

Great rivals in our youngest daughter’s love,

Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn,

And here are to be answered. Tell me, my daughters –

Since now we will divest us both of rule, F

Interest of territory, cares of state –F

50

Which of you shall we say doth love us most,

That we our largest bounty may extend

Where nature doth with merit challenge. – Goneril,

Our eldest born, speak first.

GONERIL

Sir, I Q doQ love you more than word can wield the matter,

55

Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty,

Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare,

No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour.

As much as child e’er loved, or father found,

A love that makes breath poor and speech unable,

60

Beyond all manner of so much I love you.

CORDELIA [aside]

What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.

LEAR     Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,

With shadowy forests Fand with champaigns riched,

With plenteous riversF and wide-skirted meads,

65

We make thee lady. To thine and Albany’s issues

Be this perpetual. – What says our second daughter,

Our dearest Regan, wife of Cornwall? QSpeak.Q

REGAN     QSirQ I am made of that self mettle as my sister,

And prize me at her worth. In my true heart

70

I find she names my very deed of love:

Only she comes FtooF short, that I profess

Myself an enemy to all other joys

Which the most precious square of sense possesses,

And find I am alone felicitate

75

In your dear highness’ love.

CORDELIA [aside]     Then poor Cordelia,

And yet not so, since I am sure my love’s

More ponderous than my tongue.

LEAR     To thee and thine hereditary ever

Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom,

80

No less in space, validity and pleasure

Than that conferred on Goneril. –QButQ now our joy,

Although our last and least, to whose young love

FThe vines of France and milk of Burgundy

Strive to be interessed,F what can you say to draw

85

A third more opulent than your sisters? FSpeak.F

CORDELIA     Nothing, my lord.

FLEAR     Nothing?

CORDELIA     Nothing.F

LEAR

QHow,Q nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.

90

CORDELIA     Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave

My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty

According to my bond, no more nor less.

LEAR     How, how, FCordelia?F Mend your speech a little,

Lest you may mar your fortunes.

CORDELIA     Good my lord,

95

You have begot me, bred me, loved me. I

Return those duties back as are right fit,

Obey you, love you and most honour you.

Why have my sisters husbands, if they say

They love you all? Haply when I shall wed,

100

That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry

Half my love with him, half my care and duty.

Sure I shall never marry like my sisters

QTo love my father all.Q

LEAR     But goes thy heart with this?

105

CORDELIA     Ay, my good lord.

LEAR     So young and so untender?

CORDELIA     So young, my lord, and true.

LEAR

QWellQ, let it be so. Thy truth then be thy dower,

For by the sacred radiance of the sun,

110

The mysteries of Hecate and the night,

By all the operation of the orbs

From whom we do exist and cease to be,

Here I disclaim all my paternal care,

Propinquity and property of blood,

115

And as a stranger to my heart and me

Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,

Or he that makes his generation messes

To gorge his appetite, shall Fto my bosomF

Be as well neighboured, pitied and relieved,

120

As thou my sometime daughter.

KENT     Good my liege –

LEAR     Peace, Kent,

Come not between the dragon and his wrath!

I loved her most, and thought to set my rest

On her kind nursery.

[to Cordelia] Hence and avoid my sight.

125

So be my grave my peace, as here I give

Her father’s heart from her. Call France. Who stirs?

Call Burgundy.     [Attendants rush off.]

     Cornwall and Albany,

With my two daughters’ dowers, digest this third.

Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.

130

I do invest you jointly with my power,

Pre-eminence and all the large effects

That troop with majesty. Ourself by monthly course,

With reservation of an hundred knights

By you to be sustained, shall our abode

135

Make with you by due turn; only we shall retain

The name, and all th’addition to a king: the sway,

Revenue, execution of the rest,

Beloved sons, be yours; which to confirm,

This coronet part between you.

KENT     Royal Lear,

140

Whom I have ever honoured as my king,

Loved as my father, as my master followed,

As my great patron thought on in my prayers –

LEAR

The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.

KENT     Let it fall rather, though the fork invade

145

The region of my heart: be Kent unmannerly

When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man?

Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak,

When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour’s bound

When majesty falls to folly. Reserve thy state,

150

And in thy best consideration check

This hideous rashness. Answer my life my judgement,

Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,

Nor are those empty-hearted, whose low sounds

Reverb no hollowness.

LEAR     Kent, on thy life, no more.

155

KENT     My life I never held but as QaQ pawn

To wage against thine enemies, ne’er fear to lose it,

Thy safety being QtheQ motive.

LEAR     Out of my sight!

KENT     See better, Lear, and let me still remain

The true blank of thine eye.

160

LEAR     Now by Apollo –

KENT     Now by Apollo, King,

Thou swear’st thy gods in vain.

LEAR     FOF vassal! Miscreant!

FALBANY, CORNWALL     Dear sir, forbear!F

KENT     QDo,Q kill thy physician, and thy fee bestow

Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift,

165

Or whilst I can vent clamour from my throat

I’ll tell thee thou dost evil.

LEAR     Hear me, Frecreant,F on thine allegiance, hear me:

That thou hast sought to make us break our vows,

Which we durst never yet, and with strained pride

170

To come betwixt our sentences and our power,

Which nor our nature, nor our place can bear,

Our potency made good, take thy reward.

Five days we do allot thee for provision,

To shield thee from disasters of the world,

175

And on the sixth to turn thy hated back

Upon our kingdom. If on the next day following

Thy banished trunk be found in our dominions,

The moment is thy death. Away! By Jupiter,

This shall not be revoked.

180

KENT

QWhyQ, fare thee well, King, since thus thou wilt appear,

Freedom lives hence and banishment is here.

[to Cordelia] The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid,

That justly think’st and hast most rightly said;

[to Goneril and Regan] And your large speeches may your deeds approve,

185

That good effects may spring from words of love.

Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu;

He’ll shape his old course in a country new.     FExit.F

FFlourish.FEnter GLOUCESTER with FRANCE, and BURGUNDY [and] Fattendants.F

CORNWALL     Here’s France and Burgundy, my noble lord.

LEAR     My lord of Burgundy,

190

We first address toward you, who with this king

Hath rivalled for our daughter. What in the least

Will you require in present dower with her,

Or cease your quest of love?

BURGUNDY     FMostF royal majesty,

I crave no more than hath your highness offered –

195

Nor will you tender less?

LEAR     Right noble Burgundy,

When she was dear to us, we did hold her so,

But now her price is fallen. Sir, there she stands:

If aught within that little-seeming substance,

Or all of it, with our displeasure pieced,

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And nothing more, may fitly like your grace,

She’s there, and she is yours.

BURGUNDY     I know no answer.

LEAR     QSirQ, will you, with those infirmities she owes,

Unfriended, new adopted to our hate,

Dowered with our curse and strangered with our oath,

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Take her or leave her?

BURGUNDY     Pardon me, royal sir;

Election makes not up in such conditions.

LEAR

Then leave her, sir, for, by the power that made me,

I tell you all her wealth. [to France] For you, great king,

I would not from your love make such a stray

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To match you where I hate, therefore beseech you

T’avert your liking a more worthier way

Than on a wretch whom nature is ashamed

Almost t’acknowledge hers.

FRANCE     This is most strange,

That she who even but now was your QbestQ object,

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The argument of your praise, balm of your age,

The best, the dearest, should in this trice of time

Commit a thing so monstrous, to dismantle

So many folds of favour. Sure her offence

Must be of such unnatural degree

220

That monsters it, or your fore-vouched affection

Fall into taint, which to believe of her

Must be a faith that reason without miracle

Should never plant in me.

CORDELIA     I yet beseech your majesty,

225

If for I want that glib and oily art

To speak and purpose not – since what I well intend,

I’ll do’t before I speak – that you make known

It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,

No unchaste action or dishonoured step,

230

That hath deprived me of your grace and favour,

But even for want of that for which I am richer,

A still soliciting eye and such a tongue

That I am glad I have not – though not to have it

Hath lost me in your liking.

LEAR     QGo to, go to,Q better thou

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Hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better.

FRANCE     Is it Qno moreQ but this? – a tardiness in nature,

Which often leaves the history unspoke

That it intends to do? My lord of Burgundy,

What say you to the lady? Love’s not love

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When it is mingled with regards that stands

Aloof from th’entire point. Will you have her?

She is herself a dowry.

BURGUNDY     Royal King,

Give but that portion which yourself proposed,

And here I take Cordelia by the hand,

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Duchess of Burgundy.

LEAR     Nothing. I have sworn, FI am firm.F

BURGUNDY [to Cordelia]

I am sorry then you have so lost a father

That you must lose a husband.

CORDELIA     Peace be with Burgundy.

Since that respect and fortunes are his love,

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I shall not be his wife.

FRANCE     Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich being poor,

Most choice forsaken and most loved despised,

Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon,

Be it lawful I take up what’s cast away.

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Gods, gods! ’Tis strange that from their cold’st neglect

My love should kindle to inflamed respect.

Thy dowerless daughter, King, thrown to my chance,

Is queen of us, of ours and our fair France.

Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy

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Can buy this unprized, precious maid of me.

Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind;

Thou losest here a better where to find.

LEAR     Thou hast her, France; let her be thine, for we

Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see

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That face of hers again. Therefore, be gone,

Without our grace, our love, our benison.

Come, noble Burgundy.

FFlourish.FExeunt QLear and BurgundyQ [Cornwall,F Albany, Gloucester, Edmund and attendants.]

FRANCE     Bid farewell to your sisters.

CORDELIA     The jewels of our father, with washed eyes

270

Cordelia leaves you. I know you what you are,

And like a sister am most loath to call

Your faults as they are named. Love well our father.

To your professed bosoms I commit him,

But yet, alas, stood I within his grace

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I would prefer him to a better place.

So farewell to you both.

REGAN     Prescribe not us our duty.

GONERIL     Let your study

Be to content your lord, who hath received you

At fortune’s alms. You have obedience scanted,

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And well are worth the want that you have wanted.

CORDELIA

Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides,

Who covert faults at last with shame derides.

Well may you prosper.

FRANCE     Come, FmyF fair Cordelia.

Exeunt France and Cordelia.

GONERIL     Sister, it is not Q aQ little I have to say of what most nearly appertains to us both. I think our father will hence tonight.

285

REGAN     That’s most certain, and with you. Next month with us.

GONERIL     You see how full of changes his age is. The

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observation we have made of it hath QnotQ been little.

He always loved our sister most, and with what poor

judgement he hath now cast her off appears too grossly.

REGAN     ’Tis the infirmity of his age, yet he hath ever but

slenderly known himself.

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GONERIL     The best and soundest of his time hath been

but rash; then must we look from his age to receive not

alone the imperfections of long-engrafted condition,

but therewithal FtheF unruly waywardness that infirm

and choleric years bring with them.

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REGAN     Such unconstant starts are we like to have from

him as this of Kent’s banishment.

GONERIL     There is further compliment of leave-taking

between France and him. Pray FyouF let us hit

together. If our father carry authority with such

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disposition as he bears, this last surrender of his will

but offend us.

REGAN     We shall further think of it.

GONERIL     We must do something, and i’the heat.

Exeunt.

1.2     Enter [EDMUND, the] Bastard [, holding a letter].

EDMUND     Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law

My services are bound. Wherefore should I

Stand in the plague of custom, and permit

The curiosity of nations to deprive me?

For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines

5

Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base?

When my dimensions are as well compact,

My mind as generous and my shape as true

As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us

With base? With baseness, bastardy?FBase, base?F

10

Who in the lusty stealth of nature take

More composition and fierce quality

Than doth within a dull stale tired bed

Go to the creating QofQ a whole tribe of fops

Got ’tween a sleep and wake. Well, then,

15

Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.

Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund

As to the legitimate. FFine word, ‘legitimate’!F

Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed

And my invention thrive, Edmund the base

20

Shall top the legitimate. I grow, I prosper:

Now gods, stand up for bastards!

Enter GLOUCESTER.

GLOUCESTER

Kent banished thus? and France in choler parted?

And the King gone tonight? Prescribed his power,

Confined to exhibition? All this done

25

Upon the gad? – Edmund, how now, what news?

EDMUND     [Pockets the letter.]     So please your lordship, none.

GLOUCESTER     Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?

EDMUND     I know no news, my lord.

30

GLOUCESTER     What paper were you reading?

EDMUND     Nothing, my lord.

GLOUCESTER     No?     What needed then that terrible

dispatch of it into your pocket? The quality of nothing

hath not such need to hide itself. Let’s see. – Come, if

35

it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles.

EDMUND     I beseech you, sir, pardon me. It is a letter

from my brother that I have not all o’er-read; FandF for

so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your

o’er-looking.

40

GLOUCESTER     Give me the letter, sir.

EDMUND     I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The

contents, as in part I understand them, are too blame.

GLOUCESTER     Let’s see, let’s see.

EDMUND     I hope, for my brother’s justification, he

45

wrote this but as an essay, or taste of my virtue.

GLOUCESTER     [FReadsF.] This policy, Fand reverenceF of age,

makes the world bitter to the best of our times, keeps our

fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them. I begin

to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged

50

tyranny, who sways not as it hath power, but as it is

suffered. Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our

father would sleep till I waked him, you should enjoy half

his revenue for ever and live the beloved of your brother.

Edgar. Hum! Conspiracy! Sleep till I wake him, you

55

should enjoy half his revenue – My son Edgar, had he

a hand to write this? A heart and brain to breed it in?

When came this to you? Who brought it?

EDMUND     It was not brought me, my lord, there’s the

cunning of it. I found it thrown in at the casement of

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my closet.

GLOUCESTER     You know the character to be your

brother’s?

EDMUND     If the matter were good, my lord, I durst

swear it were his; but, in respect of that, I would fain

65

think it were not.

GLOUCESTER     It is his?

EDMUND     It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is

not in the contents.

GLOUCESTER     Has he never before sounded you in this

70

business?

EDMUND     Never, my lord. But I have heard him oft

maintain it to be fit that, sons at perfect age and

fathers declined, the father should be as ward to the

son and the son manage his revenue.

75

GLOUCESTER     O villain, villain! His very opinion in the

letter. Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish

villain – worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him. I’ll

apprehend him. Abominable villain, where is he?

EDMUND     I do not well know, my lord. If it shall please

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you to suspend your indignation against my brother till

you can derive from him better testimony of his intent,

you should run a certain course; where, if you violently

proceed against him, mistaking his purpose, it would

make a great gap in your own honour and shake in

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pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my

life for him, FthatF he hath writ this to feel my affection

to your honour and to no other pretence of danger.

GLOUCESTER     Think you so?

EDMUND     If your honour judge it meet, I will place you

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where you shall hear us confer of this and by an

auricular assurance have your satisfaction, and that

without any further delay than this very evening.

GLOUCESTER     He cannot be such a monster.

QEDMUND     Nor is not, sure.

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GLOUCESTER     To his father, that so tenderly and

entirely loves him. Heaven and earth!Q Edmund, seek

him out. Wind me into him, I pray you: frame the

business after your own wisdom. I would unstate

myself to be in a due resolution.

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EDMUND     I will seek him, sir, presently, convey the

business as I shall find means and acquaint you withal.

GLOUCESTER     These late eclipses in the sun and moon

portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of Nature

can reason FitF thus and thus, yet nature finds itself

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scourged by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship

falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in

countries, discord; FinF palaces, treason; FandF the

bond cracked ’twixt son and father. FThis villain of

mine comes under the prediction – there’s son against

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father. The King falls from bias of nature – there’s

father against child. We have seen the best of our time.

Machinations, hollowness, treachery and all ruinous

disorders follow us disquietly to our graves. FFind out

this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing. Do it

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carefully. – And the noble and true-hearted Kent

banished, his offence honesty! F’TisF strange,

Qstrange!Q     FExit.F

EDMUND     This is the excellent foppery of the world, that

when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own

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behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the

moon and QtheQ stars, as if we were villains on necessity,

fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves and

treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars

and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary

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influence; and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting

on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his

goatish disposition on the charge of a star. My father

compounded with my mother under the dragon’s tail

and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows

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I am rough and lecherous. QFut!Q I should have been

that I am had the maidenliest star in the firmament

twinkled on my bastardizing.

Enter EDGAR.

Pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy.

My cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom

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o’Bedlam. – O, these eclipses do portend these

divisions. FFa, sol, la, mi.F

EDGAR     How now, brother Edmund, what serious

contemplation are you in?

EDMUND     I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read

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this other day, what should follow these eclipses.

EDGAR     Do you busy yourself with that?

EDMUND     I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed

unhappily, Q as of unnaturalness between the child and

the parent, death, dearth, dissolutions of ancient

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amities, divisions in state, menaces and maledictions

against King and nobles, needless diffidences,

banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts, nuptial

breaches and I know not what.

EDGAR     How long have you been a sectary astronomical?

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EDMUND     Come, come,Q when saw you my father last?

EDGAR     QWhy,Q the night gone by.

EDMUND     Spake you with him?

EDGAR     FAy,F two hours together.

EDMUND     Parted you in good terms? Found you no

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displeasure in him, by word nor countenance?

EDGAR     None at all.

EDMUND     Bethink yourself wherein you may have

offended him, and at my entreaty forbear his presence

until some little time hath qualified the heat of his

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displeasure; which at this instant so rageth in him that

with the mischief of your person it would scarcely allay.

EDGAR     Some villain hath done me wrong.

EDMUND     That’s my fear. FI pray you have a continent

forbearance till the speed of his rage goes slower; and,

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as I say, retire with me to my lodging, from whence I

will fitly bring you to hear my lord speak. Pray ye, go:

there’s my key. If you do stir abroad, go armed.

EDGAR     Armed, brother?F

EDMUND     Brother, I advise you to the best, Qgo armed.Q

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I am no honest man if there be any good meaning

toward you. I have told you what I have seen and heard

– but faintly; nothing like the image and horror of it.

Pray you, away!

EDGAR     Shall I hear from you anon?

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EDMUND     I do serve you in this business.     Exit Edgar.

A credulous father and a brother noble,

Whose nature is so far from doing harms

That he suspects none – on whose foolish honesty

My practices ride easy. I see the business.

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Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit;

All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit.     Exit.

1.3     Enter GONERIL and [OSWALD, her] steward.

GONERIL     Did my father strike my gentleman for

chiding of his fool?

OSWALD     Ay, madam.

GONERIL     By day and night he wrongs me. Every hour

He flashes into one gross crime or other

5

That sets us all at odds. I’ll not endure it.

His knights grow riotous and himself upbraids us

On every trifle. When he returns from hunting,

I will not speak with him; say I am sick.

If you come slack of former services

10

You shall do well; the fault of it I’ll answer.

[Horns within.]

OSWALD     He’s coming, madam, I hear him.

GONERIL     Put on what weary negligence you please,

You and your fellows; I’d have it come to question.

If he distaste it, let him to my sister,

15

Whose mind and mine I know in that are one,

QNot to be overruled. Idle old man,

That still would manage those authorities

That he hath given away. Now by my life

Old fools are babes again and must be used

20

With checks as flatteries, when they are seen abused.Q

Remember what I have said.

OSWALD     QVeryQ well, madam.

GONERIL

And let his knights have colder looks among you,

What grows of it no matter; advise your fellows so.

QI would breed from hence occasions, and I shall,

25

That I may speak.Q I’ll write straight to my sister

To hold my QveryQ course. QGo,Q prepare for dinner.

Exeunt.

1.4     Enter KENT [, disguised].

KENT     If but as well I other accents borrow

That can my speech diffuse, my good intent

May carry through itself to that full issue

For which I razed my likeness. Now, banished Kent,

If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemned

5

FSo may it comeF thy master whom thou lov’st

Shall find thee full of labours.

FHorns within.F Enter LEAR FandF [four or more Knights as]Fattendants.F

LEAR     Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go, get it ready.

[Exit First Knight.]

[to Kent] How now, what art thou?

KENT     A man, sir.

10

LEAR     What dost thou profess? What wouldst thou with us?

KENT     I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve

him truly that will put me in trust, to love him that is

honest, to converse with him that is wise and says

15

little, to fear judgement, to fight when I cannot choose

– and to eat no fish.

LEAR     What art thou?

KENT     A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the King.

LEAR     If thou be’st as poor for a subject as he’s for a king,

thou art poor enough. What wouldst thou?

KENT     Service.

LEAR     Who wouldst thou serve?

KENT     You.

25

LEAR     Dost thou know me, fellow?

KENT     No, sir; but you have that in your countenance

which I would fain call master.

LEAR     What’s that?

KENT     Authority.

30

LEAR     What services canst FthouF do?

KENT     I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a

curious tale in telling it and deliver a plain message

bluntly. That which ordinary men are fit for I am

qualified in, and the best of me is diligence.

35

LEAR     How old art thou?

KENT     Not so young, FsirF, to love a woman for singing,

nor so old to dote on her for anything. I have years on

my back forty-eight.

LEAR     Follow me, thou shalt serve me; if I like thee no

40

worse after dinner, I will not part from thee yet.

Dinner, ho, dinner! Where’s my knave, my fool? Go

you and call my fool hither. [Exit Second Knight.]

Enter OSWALD.

You, FyouF, sirrah, where’s my daughter?

OSWALD     So please you     –FExit.F

45

LEAR     What says the fellow there? Call the clotpoll back.

[Exit Third Knight.]

Where’s my fool? Ho, I think the world’s asleep.

Enter Third Knight.

How now, where’s that mongrel?

3 KNIGHT     He says, my lord, your daughter is not well.

LEAR     Why came not the slave back to me when I called him?

50

3 KNIGHT     Sir, he answered me in the roundest manner, he would not.

LEAR     He would not?

3 KNIGHT     My lord, I know not what the matter is, but

55

to my judgement your highness is not entertained with

that ceremonious affection as you were wont. There’s

a great abatement Fof kindnessF appears as well in the

general dependants as in the Duke himself also, and

your daughter.

60

LEAR     Ha? Sayst thou so?

3 KNIGHT     I beseech you pardon me, my lord, if I be

mistaken, for my duty cannot be silent when I think

your highness wronged.

LEAR     Thou but rememberest me of mine own

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conception. I have perceived a most faint neglect of

late, which I have rather blamed as mine own jealous

curiosity than as a very pretence and purpose of

unkindness. I will look further into’t. But where’s my

fool? I have not seen him this two days.

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3 KNIGHT Since my young lady’s going into France, sir,

the fool hath much pined away.

LEAR     No more of that, I have noted it FwellF. Go you

and tell my daughter I would speak with her.

[Exit Third Knight.]

Go you; call hither my fool.     [Exit Fourth Knight.]

75

F Enter OSWALD.F

O you, sir, you, come you hither, sir: who am I, sir?

OSWALD     My lady’s father.

LEAR     My lady’s father? My lord’s knave, you whoreson

dog, you slave, you cur!

OSWALD     I am none of these, my lord, I beseech your

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pardon.

LEAR     Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?

[Strikes him.]

OSWALD     I’ll not be strucken, my lord.

KENT     [Trips him.] Nor tripped neither, you base

football player.

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LEAR     I thank thee, fellow. Thou serv’st me and I’ll love

thee.

KENT     Come, sir, Farise, away,F I’ll teach you differences.

Away, away; if you will measure your lubber’s length

again, tarry; but away, Fgo to,F have you wisdom? FSo!F

90

[Pushes him out.]

LEAR     Now, FmyF friendly knave, I thank thee. There’s

earnest of thy service. [Gives him money.]

Enter Fool.

FOOL     Let me hire him too; [to Kent, holding out his cap]

here’s my coxcomb.

LEAR     How now, my pretty knave, how dost thou?

95

FOOL     [to Kent] Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb.

KENT     Why, fool?

FOOL     Why? For taking one’s part that’s out of favour.

Nay, an thou canst not smile as the wind sits, thou’lt

catch cold shortly. There, take my coxcomb. Why, this

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fellow has banished two on’s daughters and did the

third a blessing against his will – if thou follow him,

thou must needs wear my coxcomb. [to Lear] How now,

nuncle? Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters.

LEAR     Why, my boy?

105

FOOL     If I gave them all my living, I’d keep my coxcombs

myself. There’s mine; beg another of thy daughters.

LEAR     Take heed, sirrah, the whip.

FOOL     Truth’s a dog Q thatQ must to kennel; he must be

whipped out, when the Lady Brach may stand by the

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fire and stink.

LEAR     A pestilent gall to me.

FOOL     Sirrah, I’ll teach thee a speech.

LEAR     Do.

FOOL     Mark it, nuncle:

115

Have more than thou showest,

Speak less than thou knowest,

Lend less than thou owest,

Ride more than thou goest,

Learn more than thou trowest,

120

Set less than thou throwest,

Leave thy drink and thy whore

And keep in-a-door,

And thou shalt have more

Than two tens to a score.

125

KENT     This is nothing, fool.

FOOL     Then F’tisF like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer,

you gave me nothing for’t. [to Lear] Can you make no

use of nothing, nuncle?

LEAR     Why no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.

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FOOL     [to Kent] Prithee tell him, so much the rent of his

land comes to; he will not believe a fool.

LEAR     A bitter fool.

FOOL     Dost FthouFknow the difference, my boy, between

a bitter fool and a sweet one?

135

LEAR     No, lad, teach me.

QFOOL

That lord that counselled thee to give away thy land,

Come place him here by me; do thou for him stand.

The sweet and bitter fool will presently appear,

The one in motley here, the other found out there.

140

LEAR     Dost thou call me fool, boy?

FOOL     All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou

wast born with.

KENT     This is not altogether fool, my lord.

FOOL     No, faith, lords and great men will not let me; if I

145

had a monopoly out, they would have part on’t; and

ladies too, they will not let me have all the fool to

myself, they’ll be snatching.Q Nuncle, give me an egg

and I’ll give thee two crowns.

LEAR     What two crowns shall they be?

150

FOOL     Why, after I have cut the egg i’the middle and eat

up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou

clovest thy crown i’the middle and gav’st away both

parts, thou bor’st thine ass on thy back o’er the dirt.

Thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou

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gav’st thy golden one away. If I speak like myself in

this, let him be whipped that first finds it so.

[Sings.] Fools had ne’er less grace in a year,

For wise men are grown foppish,

And know not how their wits to wear,

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Their manners are so apish.

LEAR     When were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah?

FOOL     I have used it, nuncle, e’er since thou mad’st thy

daughters thy mothers; for when thou gav’st them the

rod and putt’st down thine own breeches,

165

[Sings.] Then they for sudden joy did weep

And I for sorrow sung,

That such a king should play bo-peep,

And go the fools among.

Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy

170

fool to lie; I would fain learn to lie.

LEAR     An you lie, Fsirrah,F we’ll have you whipped.

FOOL     I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are.

They’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt

have me whipped for lying, and sometimes I am

175

whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any

kind o’thing than a fool, and yet I would not be thee,

nuncle. Thou hast pared thy wit o’both sides and left

nothing i’the middle. Here comes one o’the parings.

Enter GONERIL.

LEAR

How now, daughter? What makes that frontlet on?

180

QMethinksQ you are too much of late i’the frown.

FOOL     Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no

need to care for her frowning. Now thou art an O

without a figure; I am better than thou art now. I am a

fool, thou art nothing. [to Goneril] Yes, forsooth, I will

185

hold my tongue; so your face bids me, though you say

nothing. Mum, mum!

He that keeps nor crust nor crumb,

Weary of all, shall want some.

[Points to Lear.] That’s a shelled peascod.

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GONERIL     Not only, sir, this your all-licensed fool,

But other of your insolent retinue

Do hourly carp and quarrel, breaking forth

In rank and not to be endured riots. Sir,

I had thought by making this well known unto you

195

To have found a safe redress, but now grow fearful

By what yourself too late have spoke and done,

That you protect this course and put FitF on

By your allowance; which if you should, the fault

Would not scape censure, nor the redresses sleep,

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Which in the tender of a wholesome weal

Might in their working do you that offence

Which else were shame, that then necessity

Will call discreet proceeding.

FOOL     For you know, nuncle,

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The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long

That it’s had it head bit off by it young.

So out went the candle and we were left darkling.

LEAR     Are you our daughter?

GONERIL     QCome, sir,Q

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I would you would make use of your good wisdom,

Whereof I know you are fraught, and put away

These dispositions, which of late transport you

From what you rightly are.

FOOL     May not an ass know when the cart draws the

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horse? Whoop, Jug, I love thee.

LEAR

Does any here know me? QWhyQ, this is not Lear.

Does Lear walk thus, speak thus? Where are his eyes?

Either his notion weakens, Q orQ his discernings are

lethargied – Ha! Qsleeping orQ waking? QSureQ’tis not

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so. Who is it that can tell me who I am?

FFOOLF Lear’s shadow.

QLEAR I would learn that, for by the marks of

sovereignty, knowledge and reason, I should be false

persuaded I had daughters.

225

FOOL     Which they will make an obedient father.Q

LEAR     Your name, fair gentlewoman?

GONERIL     This admiration, sir, is much o’the savour

Of other your new pranks. I do beseech you

FToF understand my purposes aright:

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As you are old and reverend, should be wise.

Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires,

Men so disordered, so debauched and bold,

That this our court, infected with their manners,

Shows like a riotous inn. Epicurism and lust

235

Makes FitF more like a tavern or a brothel

Than a graced palace. The shame itself doth speak

For instant remedy. Be then desired,

By her that else will take the thing she begs,

A little to disquantity your train,

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And the remainders that shall still depend

To be such men as may besort your age,

Which know themselves, and you.

LEAR     Darkness and devils!

Saddle my horses; call my train together.

Degenerate bastard, I’ll not trouble thee:

245

Yet have I left a daughter.

GONERIL

You strike my people, and your disordered rabble

Make servants of their betters.

Enter ALBANY.

LEAR

Woe that too late repents! – QO sir, are you come?Q

Is it your will? Speak, sir. – Prepare my horses.

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[Exit a Knight.]

Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,

More hideous when thou show’st thee in a child

Than the sea-monster.

FALBANY     Pray, sir, be patient.

LEARF [to Goneril] Detested kite, thou liest.

My train are men of choice and rarest parts

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That all particulars of duty know,

And in the most exact regard support

The worships of their name. O most small fault,

How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show,

Which like an engine wrenched my frame of nature

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From the fixed place, drew from my heart all love

And added to the gall. O Lear, LearF, LearF!

[striking his head] Beat at this gate that let thy folly in

And thy dear judgement out. Go, go, my people.

[Exeunt Kent, Knights and attendants.]

ALBANY     My lord, I am guiltless as I am ignorant

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FOf what hath moved you.F

LEAR     It may be so, my lord.

Hear, Nature, hear, dear goddess, FhearF:

Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend

To make this creature fruitful.

Into her womb convey sterility,

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Dry up in her the organs of increase,

And from her derogate body never spring

A babe to honour her. If she must teem,

Create her child of spleen, that it may live

And be a thwart disnatured torment to her.

275

Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,

With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,

Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits

To laughter and contempt, that she may feel

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is

280

To have a thankless child. Away, away!

ExeuntF [Lear and Fool]

ALBANY     Now gods that we adore, whereof comes this?

GONERIL     Never afflict yourself to know more of it,

But let his disposition have that scope

As dotage gives it.

285

FEnter LEARF, followed by the Fool.

LEAR     What, fifty of my followers at a clap?

Within a fortnight?

ALBANY     What’s the matter, sir?

LEAR

I’ll tell thee. [to Goneril] Life and death, I am ashamed

That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus,

That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,

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Should make thee worth them. Blasts and fogs upon FtheeF!

Th’untented woundings of a father’s curse

Pierce every sense about thee. Old fond eyes,

Beweep this cause again, I’ll pluck ye out,

And cast you with the waters that you loose

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To temper clay. QYea, is’t come to this?Q

FHa? Let it be so.F I have another daughter,

Who I am sure is kind and comfortable:

When she shall hear this of thee with her nails

She’ll flay thy wolvish visage. Thou shalt find

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That I’ll resume the shape which thou dost think

I have cast off for ever. Q Thou shalt, I warrant thee.Q

FExitF.

GONERIL Do you mark that, Qmy lordQ?

ALBANY I cannot be so partial, Goneril,

To the great love I bear you –

GONERIL     FPray you, content.F

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QCome, sir, no moreQ. FWhat, Oswald, ho?F

[to the Fool] You, Fsir,F more knave than fool, after your master.

FOOL Nuncle Lear, nuncle Lear, tarry, QandQ take the fool with Fthee:F

A fox when one has caught her,

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And such a daughter,

Should sure to the slaughter,

If my cap would buy a halter;

So the fool follows after.     FExitF.

GONERIL

FThis man hath had good counsel – a hundred knights!

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’Tis politic, and safe, to let him keep

At point a hundred knights! Yes, that on every dream,

Each buzz, each fancy, each complaint, dislike,

He may enguard his dotage with their powers

And hold our lives in mercy. Oswald, I say!

320

ALBANY Well, you may fear too far.

GONERIL Safer than trust too far.

Let me still take away the harms I fear,

Not fear still to be taken. I know his heart;

What he hath uttered I have writ my sister.

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If she sustain him and his hundred knights

When I have showed th’unfitness –F

FEnter OSWALD.F

QOSWALD Here, madam.Q

GONERIL FHow now, Oswald?F What, have you writ

that letter to my sister?

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OSWALD Ay, madam.

GONERIL Take you some company and away to horse.

Inform her full of my particular fear,

And thereto add such reasons of your own

As may compact it more. Get you gone,

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And hasten your return.     [Exit Oswald.]

No, no, my lord,

This milky gentleness and course of yours,

Though I condemn not, yet, under pardon,

You are much more attasked for want of wisdom

Than praised for harmful mildness.

340

ALBANY

How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell;

Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.

GONERIL     Nay then –

ALBANY     Well, well, th’event.     Exeunt.

1.5 Enter LEAR, FKENT[, disguised,] and Fool.F

LEAR     [to Kent] Go you before to Gloucester with these

letters. Acquaint my daughter no further with

anything you know than comes from her demand out

of the letter. If your diligence be not speedy, I shall be

there afore you.

5

KENT     I will not sleep, my lord, till I have delivered your

letter.     Exit.

FOOL     If a man’s brains were in’s heels, were’t not in

danger of kibes?

LEAR     Ay, boy.

10

FOOL     Then I prithee be merry; thy wit shall not go

slipshod.

LEAR     Ha, ha, ha.

FOOL     Shalt see thy other daughter will use thee kindly,

for though she’s as like this as a crab’s like an apple, yet

15

I can tell what I can tell.

LEAR     QWhy,Q what canst QthouQ tell, QmyQ boy?

FOOL     She will taste as like this as a crab does to a crab.

Thou canst QnotQ tell why one’s nose stands i’the

middle on’s face?

20

LEAR     No.

FOOL     Why, to keep one’s eyes of either side’s nose, that

what a man cannot smell out he may spy into.

LEAR     I did her wrong.

FOOL     Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?

25

LEAR     No.

FOOL     Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house.

LEAR     Why?

FOOL     Why, to put’s head in, not to give it away to his

daughters and leave his horns without a case.

30

LEAR     I will forget my nature: so kind a father! Be my

horses ready?

FOOL     Thy asses are gone about ‘em. The reason why the

seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.

LEAR     Because they are not eight.

35

FOOL     Yes Findeed,F thou wouldst make a good fool.

LEAR     To take’t again perforce – monster ingratitude!

FOOL     If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I’d have thee beaten

for being old before thy time.

LEAR     How’s that?

40

FOOL     Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst

been wise.

LEAR     O let me not be mad, Fnot madF, sweet heaven! QI would not be mad.Q

Keep me in temper, I would not be mad.

45

[Enter a Gentleman.]

FHow now,F are the horses ready?

GENTLEMAN     Ready, my lord.

LEAR     Come, boy. QExeuntQ [Lear and Gentleman].

FOOL

She that’s a maid now, and laughs at my departure,

Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter.

50

Exit.

2.1 Enter EDMUND and CURAN, severally.

EDMUND     Save thee, Curan.

CURAN     And you, sir. I have been with your father and

given him notice that the Duke of Cornwall and

FReganF his Duchess will be here with him this

night.

5

EDMUND     How comes that?

CURAN     Nay, I know not. You have heard of the news

abroad? – I mean the whispered ones, for they are yet

but ear-bussing arguments.

EDMUND     Not I; pray you, what are they?

10

CURAN     Have you heard of no likely wars toward ’twixt

the QtwoQ dukes of Cornwall and Albany?

EDMUND     Not a word.

CURAN     You may FdoF then in time. Fare you well, sir.

FExit.F

EDMUND     The Duke be here tonight? The better – best!

15

This weaves itself perforce into my business.

My father hath set guard to take my brother,

And I have one thing of a queasy question

Which I must act. Briefness and fortune work!

Brother, a word; descend, brother, I say.

20

Enter EDGAR.

My father watches; O FsirF, fly this place!

Intelligence is given where you are hid:

You have now the good advantage of the night.

Have you not spoken ‘gainst the Duke of CornwallQaughtQ? –

He’s coming hither, now, i’the night, i’the haste,

25

And Regan with him. Have you nothing said

Upon his party ‘gainst the Duke of Albany?

Advise yourself.

EDGAR     I am sure on’t, not a word.

EDMUND     I hear my father coming – pardon me;

In cunning I must draw my sword upon you.

30

FDraw,F seem to defend yourself; now quit you well.

[loudly] Yield, come before my father! Light, ho, here!

[to Edgar] Fly, brother, QflyQ! [loudly] Torches,

torches! – [to Edgar] So farewell.     FExit Edgar.F

Some blood drawn on me would beget opinion

Of my more fierce endeavour. [Cuts his arm.]

I have seen drunkards

35

Do more than this in sport. Father, father!

Stop, stop, no help?

Enter GLOUCESTER Fand servants, with torches.F

GLOUCESTER     Now, Edmund, where’s the villain?

EDMUND

Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out,

Mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon

To standQ’sQ auspicious mistress.

GLOUCESTER     But where is he?

40

EDMUND     Look, sir, I bleed.

GLOUCESTER     Where is the villain, Edmund?

EDMUND

Fled this way, sir, when by no means he could –

GLOUCESTER     [to servants]

Pursue him, Fho!F Go after!     [Servants rush off.]

– ‘By no means’ what?

EDMUND     Persuade me to the murder of your lordship,

But that I told him the revenging gods

45

’Gainst parricides did all their thunders bend,

Spoke with how manifold and strong a bond

The child was bound to the father. Sir, in fine,

Seeing how loathly opposite I stood

To his unnatural purpose, in fell motion,

50

With his prepared sword, he charges home

My unprovided body, latched mine arm;

But when he saw my best alarumed spirits,

Bold in the quarrel’s right, roused to th’encounter,

55

Or whether ghasted by the noise I made,

Full suddenly he fled.

GLOUCESTER     Let him fly far:

Not in this land shall he remain uncaught,

And found – dispatch! The noble Duke, my master,

My worthy arch and patron, comes tonight;

By his authority I will proclaim it,

60

That he which finds him shall deserve our thanks,

Bringing the murderous coward to the stake:

He that conceals him, death!

EDMUND     When I dissuaded him from his intent,

And found him pight to do it, with curst speech

65

I threatened to discover him. He replied,

‘Thou unpossessing bastard, dost thou think,

If I would stand against thee, would the reposal

Of any trust, virtue or worth in thee

Make thy words faithed? No, what I should deny,

70

As this I would, Qay,Q though thou didst produce

My very character, I’d turn it all

To thy suggestion, plot and damned practice;

And thou must make a dullard of the world

If they not thought the profits of my death

75

Were very pregnant and potential spurs

To make thee seek it.’     [FTucket within.F]

GLOUCESTER     FOF strange and fastened villain,

Would he deny his letter, Fsaid he?F Q I never got him.Q

Hark, the Duke’s trumpets; I know not why he comes.

All ports I’ll bar, the villain shall not scape;

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The Duke must grant me that. Besides, his picture

I will send far and near, that all the kingdom

May have FdueF note of him; and of my land,

Loyal and natural boy, I’ll work the means

To make thee capable.

85

Enter CORNWALL,FREGAN and attendants.F

CORNWALL

How now, my noble friend? Since I came hither,

Which I can call but now, I have heard strange news.

REGAN     If it be true, all vengeance comes too short

Which can pursue th’offender. How dost, my lord?

GLOUCESTER

FOF madam, my old heart is cracked, it’s cracked.

90

REGAN     What, did my father’s godson seek your life?

He whom my father named, your Edgar?

GLOUCESTER     O lady, lady, shame would have it hid.

REGAN

Was he not companion with the riotous knights

That tended upon my father?

95

GLOUCESTER     I know not, madam; ’tis too bad, too bad.

EDMUND     Yes, madam, he was Fof that consortF.

REGAN     No marvel, then, though he were ill affected.

’Tis they have put him on the old man’s death,

To have th’expense and waste of his revenues.

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I have this present evening from my sister

Been well informed of them, and with such cautions

That if they come to sojourn at my house

I’ll not be there.

CORNWALL     Nor I, assure thee, Regan.

Edmund, I hear that you have shown your father

105

A child-like office.

EDMUND     It was my duty, sir.

GLOUCESTER [to Cornwall]

He did bewray his practice, and received

This hurt you see, striving to apprehend him.

CORNWALL     Is he pursued?

GLOUCESTER     Ay, my good lord.

110

CORNWALL     If he be taken, he shall never more

Be feared of doing harm, make your own purpose

How in my strength you please. For you, Edmund,

Whose virtue and obedience doth this instant

So much commend itself, you shall be ours.

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Natures of such deep trust we shall much need;

You we first seize on.

EDMUND     I shall serve you, FsirF, truly, however else.

GLOUCESTER     For him I thank your grace.

CORNWALL     You know not why we came to visit you?

120

REGAN     Thus out of season, threading dark-eyed night?

Occasions, noble Gloucester, of some poise

Wherein we must have use of your advice.

Our father he hath writ, so hath our sister,

Of differences, which I best thought it fit

125

To answer from our home. The several messengers

From hence attend dispatch. Our good old friend,

Lay comforts to your bosom, and bestow

Your needful counsel to our business,

Which craves the instant use.

GLOUCESTER     I serve you, madam.

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Your graces are right welcome. Exeunt.     FFlourish.F

2.2 Enter KENT[, disguised,] and OSWALD, Fseverally.F

OSWALD     Good dawning to thee, friend. Art of this house?

KENT     Ay.

OSWALD     Where may we set our horses?

KENT     I’the mire.

5

OSWALD     Prithee, if thou lov’st me, tell me.

KENT     I love thee not.

OSWALD     Why then, I care not for thee.

KENT     If I had thee in Lipsbury pinfold, I would make

thee care for me.

10

OSWALD     Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not.

KENT     Fellow, I know thee.

OSWALD     What dost thou know me for?

KENT     A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base,

proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited-hundred-pound,

15

filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-

taking Qknave, aQ whoreson, glass-gazing, super-

serviceable, finical rogue; one trunk-inheriting slave,

one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service and

art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar,

20

coward, pander and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch;

FoneF whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou

deniest the least syllable of thy addition.

OSWALD     FWhy,F what a monstrous fellow art thou, thus

to rail on one that is neither known of thee, nor knows

25

thee!

KENT     What a brazen-faced varlet art thou to deny thou

knowest me? Is it two days Q agoQ since I tripped up thy

heels and beat thee before the King? Draw, you rogue,

for though it be night, FyetF the moon shines. [Draws

30

his sword.] I’ll make a sop o’the moonshine of you.

QDrawQ you whoreson cullionly barber-monger! Draw!

OSWALD     Away, I have nothing to do with thee.

KENT     Draw, you rascal! You come with letters against

the King, and take Vanity the puppet’s part against the

35

royalty of her father. Draw, you rogue, or I’ll so

carbonado your shanks! – draw, you rascal, come your

ways!

OSWALD     Help, ho! Murder, help!

KENT     Strike, you slave. Stand, rogue, stand you neat

40

slave, strike! [Beats him.]

OSWALD     Help, ho! Murder, murder!

Enter EDMUND,Qwith his rapier drawn,Q CORNWALL, REGAN, GLOUCESTER [and] Fservants.F

EDMUND     How now, what’s the matter? FPart!F

KENT     [to Edmund] With you, goodman boy, if you

please. Come, I’ll flesh ye; come on, young master.

45

GLOUCESTER     Weapons? Arms? What’s the matter here?

CORNWALL     Keep peace upon your lives: he dies that

strikes again. What is the matter?

REGAN     The messengers from our sister and the King.

CORNWALL     [to Kent] What is your difference? Speak.

50

OSWALD     I am scarce in breath, my lord.

KENT     No marvel, you have so bestirred your valour,

you cowardly rascal; nature disclaims in thee – a tailor

made thee.

CORNWALL     Thou art a strange fellow – a tailor make a

55

man?

KENT     QAy,Q a tailor, sir; a stone-cutter or a painter could

not have made him so ill, though they had been but

two years o’the trade.

CORNWALL     [to Oswald] Speak yet: how grew your

60

quarrel?

OSWALD     This ancient ruffian, sir, whose life I have

spared at suit of his grey beard –

KENT     Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter! My

lord, if you will give me leave, I will tread this

65

unbolted villain into mortar and daub the wall of a

jakes with him. [to Oswald] Spare my grey beard, you

wagtail?

CORNWALL     Peace, sirrah. You beastly knave, know you

no reverence?

70

KENT     Yes, sir, but anger hath a privilege.

CORNWALL     Why art thou angry?

KENT     That such a slave as this should wear a sword,

Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these

Like rats oft bite the FholyF cords atwain

75

Which are too intrince t’unloose; smooth every passion

That in the natures of their lords rebel,

Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods,

Renege, affirm and turn their halcyon beaks

With every gale and vary of their masters,

80

Knowing naught, like dogs, but following.

[to Oswald] A plague upon your epileptic visage.

Smile you my speeches as I were a fool?

Goose, if I had you upon Sarum plain,

I’d drive ye cackling home to Camelot.

85

CORNWALL     What, art thou mad, old fellow?

GLOUCESTER     How fell you out, say that.

KENT     No contraries hold more antipathy

Than I and such a knave.

CORNWALL

Why dost thou call him knave? What is his fault?

90

KENT     His countenance likes me not.

CORNWALL

No more perchance does mine, nor his, nor hers.

KENT     Sir, ’tis my occupation to be plain:

I have seen better faces in my time

Than stands on any shoulder that I see

95

Before me at this instant.

CORNWALL     This is some fellow

Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect

A saucy roughness and constrains the garb

Quite from his nature. He cannot flatter, he;

An honest mind and plain, he must speak truth;

100

An they will take it, so; if not, he’s plain.

These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness

Harbour more craft and more corrupter ends

Than twenty silly-ducking observants

That stretch their duties nicely.

105

KENT     Sir, in good faith, QorQ in sincere verity,

Under th’allowance of your great aspect,

Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire

On flickering Phoebus’ front –

CORNWALL     What mean’st QthouQ by this?

KENT     To go out of my dialect, which you discommend

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so much. I know, sir, I am no flatterer. He that

beguiled you in a plain accent was a plain knave, which

for my part I will not be, though I should win your

displeasure to entreat me to’t.

CORNWALL     [to Oswald] What was th’offence you gave him?

115

OSWALD     I never gave him any.

It pleased the King his master very late

To strike at me upon his misconstruction,

When he, compact and flattering his displeasure,

Tripped me behind; being down, insulted, railed

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And put upon him such a deal of man

That worthied him, got praises of the King

For him attempting who was self-subdued;

And in the fleshment of this dread exploit

Drew on me here again.

KENT     None of these rogues and cowards

125

But Ajax is their fool.

CORNWALL     Fetch forth the stocks, Q hoQ!

[Exeunt one or two servants.]

You stubborn, ancient knave, you reverend braggart,

We’ll teach you.

KENT     FSir,F I am too old to learn.

Call not your stocks for me; I serve the King,

On whose employment I was sent to you.

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You shall do small respect, show too bold malice

Against the grace and person of my master,

Stocking his messenger.

CORNWALL     Fetch forth the stocks!

As I have life and honour, there shall he sit till noon.

REGAN

Till noon? Till night, my lord, and all night too.

135

KENT     Why, madam, if I were your father’s dog

You should not use me so.

REGAN     Sir, being his knave, I will.

[FStocks brought out.F]

CORNWALL     This is a fellow of the selfsame colour

Our sister speaks of. Come, bring away the stocks.

GLOUCESTER     Let me beseech your grace not to do so.

140

QHis fault is much, and the good King, his master,

Will check him for’t. Your purposed low correction

Is such as basest and contemnedst wretches

For pilferings and most common trespasses

Are punished with.Q

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The King, Fhis master, needsF must take it ill

That he, so slightly valued in his messenger,

Should have him thus restrained.

CORNWALL     I’ll answer that.

REGAN     My sister may receive it much more worse

To have her gentleman abused, assaulted,

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QFor following her affairs. Put in his legs.Q

[Kent is put in the stocks.]

FCORNWALLF Come, my Q goodQ lord, away.

FExeuntF [all but Gloucester and Kent].

GLOUCESTER

I am sorry for thee, friend; ’tis the Duke’s pleasure,

Whose disposition all the world well knows

Will not be rubbed nor stopped. I’ll entreat for thee.

155

KENT

Pray Q youQ do not, sir. I have watched and travelled

hard.

Some time I shall sleep out, the rest I’ll whistle.

A good man’s fortune may grow out at heels.

Give you good morrow.

GLOUCESTER

The Duke’s too blame in this; ’twill be ill taken.

160

Exit.FF

KENT     Good King, that must approve the common saw,

Thou out of heaven’s benediction com’st

To the warm sun.

Approach, thou beacon to this under-globe,

That by thy comfortable beams I may

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Peruse this letter. Nothing almost sees miracles

But misery. I know ’tis from Cordelia,

Who hath most fortunately been informed

Of my obscured course,

[reading the letter]     and shall find time

From this enormous state, seeking to give

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Losses their remedies. All weary and o’erwatched,

Take vantage, heavy eyes, not to behold

This shameful lodging.

Fortune, good night: smile once more; turn thy wheel.

[Q Sleeps.Q]

Enter EDGAR.     [2.3]

EDGAR     I heard myself proclaimed,

175

And by the happy hollow of a tree

Escaped the hunt. No port is free, no place

That guard and most unusual vigilance

Does not attend my taking. While I may scape

I will preserve myself, and am bethought

180

To take the basest and most poorest shape

That ever penury in contempt of man

Brought near to beast. My face I’ll grime with filth,

Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots

[10]

And with presented nakedness outface

185

The winds and persecutions of the sky.

The country gives me proof and precedent

Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,

Strike in their numbed FandF mortified Q bareQ arms

Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;

190

And with this horrible object, from low farms,

Poor pelting villages, sheepcotes and mills,

Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,

Enforce their charity. Poor Turlygod, poor Tom,

[20]

That’s something yet: Edgar I nothing am. Exit.

195

Enter LEAR,FFool and a Knight.F     [2.4]

LEAR

’Tis strange that they should so depart from home

And not send back my messenger.

KNIGHT     As I learned,

The night before there was no purpose Fin themF

Of this remove.

KENT     [Wakes.] Hail to thee, noble master.

LEAR     Ha? Mak’st thou this shame thy pastime?

FKENT     No, my lord.F

200

FOOL     Ha, ha, Q lookQ, he wears cruel garters. Horses are

tied by the heads, dogs and bears by the neck, monkeys

by the loins and men by the legs. When a man’s

overlusty at legs, then he wears wooden nether-stocks.

LEAR     [to Kent]

What’s he that hath so much thy place mistook

205

To set thee here?

KENT     It is both he and she,

[11]

Your son and daughter.

LEAR     No.

KENT     Yes.

LEAR     No, I say.

210

KENT     I say, yea.

QLEAR No, no, they would not.

KENT     Yes, they have.Q

LEAR     By Jupiter, I swear no.

FKENT     By Juno, I swear ay.

LEARF     They durst not do’t:

215

They could not, would not do’t – ’tis worse than murder

[21]

To do upon respect such violent outrage.

Resolve me with all modest haste which way

Thou mightst deserve or they impose this usage,

Coming from us.

220

KENT     My lord, when at their home

I did commend your highness’ letters to them,

Ere I was risen from the place that showed

My duty kneeling, came there a reeking post,

Stewed in his haste, half breathless, panting forth

From Goneril, his mistress, salutations;

225

Delivered letters, spite of intermission,

[31]

Which presently they read; on those contents

They summoned up their meiny, straight took horse,

Commanded me to follow and attend

The leisure of their answer, gave me cold looks;

230

And meeting here the other messenger,

Whose welcome I perceived had poisoned mine,

Being the very fellow which of late

Displayed so saucily against your highness,

Having more man than wit about me, drew.

235

He raised the house with loud and coward cries.

[41]

Your son and daughter found this trespass worth

The shame which here it suffers.

FFOOL     Winter’s not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way.

240

Fathers that wear rags

Do make their children blind,

But fathers that bear bags

Shall see their children kind:

Fortune, that arrant whore,

245

Ne’er turns the key to the poor.

[51]

But for all this thou shalt have as many dolours for thy

daughters as thou canst tell in a year.F

LEAR     O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!

Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow,

250

Thy element’s below. Where is this daughter?

KENT     With the Earl, sir, F hereF within.

LEAR     Follow me not; stay here.     FExit.F

KNIGHT     Made you no more offence but what you speak of?

KENT     None. How chance the King comes with so small

255

a number?

[61]

FOOL     An thou hadst been set i’the stocks for that

question, thou hadst well deserved it.

KENT     Why, fool?

FOOL     We’ll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee

260

there’s no labouring i’the winter. All that follow their

noses are led by their eyes but blind men, and there’s

not a nose among twenty but can smell him that’s

stinking. Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs

down a hill lest it break thy neck with following Q itQ;

265

but the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee

[71]

after. When a wise man gives thee better counsel give

me mine again; I would have none but knaves follow it,

since a fool gives it.

That sir which serves Fand seeksF for gain,

270

And follows but for form,

Will pack when it begins to rain,

And leave thee in the storm;

But I will tarry, the fool will stay,

And let the wise man fly:

275

The knave turns fool that runs away,

[81]

The fool no knave perdy.

KENT     Where learned you this, fool?

FOOL     Not i’the stocks, Ffool.F

Enter LEAR and GLOUCESTER

LEAR

Deny to speak with me? They are sick, they are weary,

280

They FhaveF travelled all the night? – mere fetches QayQ,

The images of revolt and flying off.

Fetch me a better answer.

GLOUCESTER     My dear lord,

You know the fiery quality of the Duke,

How unremovable and fixed he is

285

In his own course.

[91]

LEAR     Vengeance, plague, death, confusion!

Fiery? What quality? Why, Gloucester, Gloucester,

I’d speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife.

FGLOUCESTER

Well, my good lord, I have informed them so.

290

LEAR

‘Informed them’? Dost thou understand me, man?F

GLOUCESTER     Ay, my good lord.

LEAR

The King would speak with Cornwall, the dear father

Would with his daughter speak, commands – tends – service.

FAre they informed of this? My breath and blood!

295

‘Fiery’?F The fiery Duke, tell the hot Duke that

Q LearQ –

[101]

No, but not yet, maybe he is not well;

Infirmity doth still neglect all office

Whereto our health is bound. We are not ourselves

When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind

300

To suffer with the body. I’ll forbear,

And am fallen out with my more headier will

To take the indisposed and sickly fit

For the sound man.

[Notices Kent.]     Death on my state! Wherefore

Should he sit here? This act persuades me

305

That this remotion of the Duke and her

[111]

Is practice only. Give me my servant forth.

FGoF tell the Duke and’s wife I’d speak with them,

Now, presently: bid them come forth and hear me,

Or at their chamber door I’ll beat the drum

310

Till it cry sleep to death.

GLOUCESTER     I would have all well betwixt you.FExit.F

LEAR     O Fme,F my heart! My FrisingF heart! FBut down!

FOOL     Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels

when she put ’em i’the paste alive: she knapped ‘em

315

o’the coxcombs with a stick, and cried ‘Down,

[121]

wantons, down!’ ’Twas her brother that in pure

kindness to his horse buttered his hay.

Enter CORNWALL, REGAN,FGLOUCESTER [and] servants.F

LEAR     Good morrow to you both.

CORNWALL     Hail to your grace.

[FKent here set at liberty.F]

REGAN     I am glad to see your highness.

320

LEAR     Regan, I think you are. I know what reason

I have to think so. If thou shouldst not be glad,

I would divorce me from thy mother’s tomb,

Sepulchring an adultress. [to Kent] O, are you free?

Some other time for that. – Beloved Regan,

325

Thy sister’s naught. O, Regan, she hath tied

[131]

Sharp-toothed unkindness, like a vulture, here.

[Lays his hand on his heart.]

I can scarce speak to thee; thou’lt not believe

With how depraved a quality – O, Regan!

REGAN     I pray FyouF, sir, take patience. I have hope

330

You less know how to value her desert

Than she to scant her duty.

FLEAR     Say? how is that?

REGAN     I cannot think my sister in the least

Would fail her obligation. If, sir, perchance

She have restrained the riots of your followers,

335

’Tis on such ground and to such wholesome end

[141]

As clears her from all blame.F

LEAR     My curses on her.

REGAN     O, sir, you are old:

Nature in you stands on the very verge

Of her confine. You should be ruled and led

340

By some discretion that discerns your state

Better than you yourself. Therefore I pray FyouF

That to our sister you do make return;

Say you have wronged her, Q sir.Q

LEAR     Ask her forgiveness?

Do you FbutF mark how this becomes the house?

345

[Kneels.] Dear daughter, I confess that I am old;

[151]

Age is unnecessary. On my knees I beg

That you’ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed and food.

REGAN     Good sir, no more. These are unsightly tricks.

Return you to my sister.

LEAR     [Rises.] Never, Regan:

350

She hath abated me of half my train,

Looked black upon me, struck me with her tongue

Most serpent-like, upon the very heart.

All the stored vengeances of heaven fall

On her ingrateful top! Strike her young bones,

355

You taking airs, with lameness!

CORNWALL     Fie, sir, fie!

[161]

FLEARF

You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames

Into her scornful eyes! Infect her beauty,

You fen-sucked fogs, drawn by the powerful sun

To fall and blister!

REGAN     O, the blest gods!

360

So will you wish on me when the rash mood Fis on.F

LEAR     No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse.

Thy tender-hafted nature shall not give

Thee o’er to harshness. Her eyes are fierce, but thine

Do comfort and not burn. ’Tis not in thee

365

To grudge my pleasures, to cut off my train,

[171]

To bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes

And, in conclusion, to oppose the bolt

Against my coming in. Thou better knowst

The offices of nature, bond of childhood,

370

Effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude.

Thy half o’the kingdom hast thou not forgot,

Wherein I thee endowed.

REGAN     Good sir, to the purpose

[FTucket within.F]

LEAR     Who put my man i’the stocks?

Enter OSWALD.

CORNWALL     What trumpet’s that?

REGAN     I know’t, my sister’s. This approves her letter

375

That she would soon be here.

[to Oswald]     Is your lady come?

[181]

LEAR     This is a slave whose easy borrowed pride

Dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows.

Out, varlet, from my sight!

CORNWALL     What means your grace?

Enter GONERIL.

LEAR

Who stocked my servant? Regan, I have good hope

380

Thou didst not know on’t. Who comes here? O heavens!

If you do love old men, if your sweet sway

Allow obedience, if FyouF yourselves are old,

Make it your cause. Send down, and take my part!

[to Goneril] Art not ashamed to look upon this beard?

385

O, Regan, will you take her by the hand?

[191]

GONERIL

Why not by the hand, sir? How have I offended?

All’s not offence that indiscretion finds

And dotage terms so.

LEAR     O sides, you are too tough!

Will you yet hold? How came my man i’the stocks?

390

CORNWALL     I set him there, sir; but his own disorders

Deserved much less advancement.

LEAR     You? Did you?

REGAN     I pray you, father, being weak, seem so.

If till the expiration of your month

You will return and sojourn with my sister,

395

Dismissing half your train, come then to me.

[201]

I am now from home and out of that provision

Which shall be needful for your entertainment.

LEAR     Return to her? And fifty men dismissed?

No! Rather I abjure all roofs and choose

400

To wage against the enmity o’th’ air –

To be a comrade with the wolf and owl –

Necessity’s sharp pinch! Return with her?

Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took

Our youngest born, I could as well be brought

405

To knee his throne and squire-like pension beg,

[211]

To keep base life afoot. Return with her?

Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter

To this detested groom. [Points at Oswald.]

GONERIL     At your choice, sir.

LEAR

Q NowQ I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad:

410

I will not trouble thee, my child. Farewell:

We’ll no more meet, no more see one another.

But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter,

Or rather a disease that’s in my flesh,

Which I must needs call mine. Thou art a boil,

415

A plague sore, or embossed carbuncle

[221]

In my corrupted blood. But I’ll not chide thee:

Let shame come when it will; I do not call it,

I do not bid the thunder-bearer shoot,

Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove.

420

Mend when thou canst, be better at thy leisure:

I can be patient, I can stay with Regan,

I and my hundred knights.

REGAN     Not altogether so, Q sirQ.

I looked not for you yet, nor am provided

For your fit welcome. Give ear, sir, to my sister;

425

For those that mingle reason with your passion

[231]

Must be content to think you QareQ old, and so –

But she knows what she does.

LEAR     Is this well spoken Q nowQ?

REGAN     I dare avouch it, sir. What, fifty followers?

Is it not well? What should you need of more?

430

Yea, or so many, sith that both charge and danger

Speak ‘gainst so great a number? How in one house

Should many people, under two commands,

Hold amity? ’Tis hard, almost impossible.

GONERIL

Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance

435

From those that she calls servants or from mine?

[241]

REGAN

Why not, my lord? If then they chanced to slack ye

We could control them. If you will come to me –

For now I spy a danger – I entreat you

To bring but five and twenty: to no more

440

Will I give place or notice.

LEAR     I gave you all –

REGAN     And in good time you gave it.

LEAR     – Made you my guardians, my depositaries,

But kept a reservation to be followed

With such a number. What, must I come to you

445

With five and twenty? Regan, said you so?

[251]

REGAN     And speak’t again, my lord: no more with me.

LEAR

Those wicked creatures yet do look well favoured

When others are more wicked; not being the worst

Stands in some rank of praise.

[to Goneril] I’ll go with thee;

450

Thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty,

And thou art twice her love.

GONERIL     Hear me, my lord:

What need you five and twenty? Ten? Or five?

To follow in a house where twice so many

Have a command to tend you?

REGAN     What need one?

455

LEAR     O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars

450

Are in the poorest thing superfluous;

Allow not nature more than nature needs,

Man’s life is cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady;

If only to go warm were gorgeous,

460

Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st,

Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But for true need –

You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!

You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,

As full of grief as age, wretched in both:

465

If it be you that stirs these daughters’ hearts

[271]

Against their father, fool me not so much

To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,

And let not women’s weapons, water-drops,

Stain my man’s cheeks. No, you unnatural hags,

470

I will have such revenges on you both

That all the world shall – I will do such things –

What they are yet I know not, but they shall be

The terrors of the earth! You think I’ll weep,

No, I’ll not weep.     [FStorm and tempest.F]

475

I have full cause of weeping, but this heart

[281]

Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws

Or e’er I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad.

ExeuntQLear, Gloucester, Kent, FoolQ [and Knight].

CORNWALL     Let us withdraw; ’twill be a storm.

REGAN     This house is little; the old man and’s people

480

Cannot be well bestowed.

GONERIL     ’Tis his own blame; hath put himself from rest

And must needs taste his folly.

REGAN     For his particular, I’ll receive him gladly,

But not one follower.

GONERIL     So am I purposed.

485

Where is my lord of Gloucester?

[291]

Enter GLOUCESTER.

CORNWALL

Followed the old man forth – he is returned.

GLOUCESTER     The King is in high rage.

FCORNWALL     Whither is he going?

GLOUCESTER

He calls to horse,F but will I know not whither.

490

CORNWALL     ’Tis best to give him way; he leads himself.

GONERIL     [to Gloucester]

My lord, entreat him by no means to stay.

GLOUCESTER

Alack, the night comes on, and the high winds

Do sorely ruffle; for many miles about

There’s scarce a bush.

REGAN     O sir, to wilful men

495

The injuries that they themselves procure

[301]

Must be their schoolmasters. Shut up your doors.

He is attended with a desperate train,

And what they may incense him to, being apt

To have his ear abused, wisdom bids fear.

500

CORNWALL

Shut up your doors, my lord; ’tis a wild night.

My Regan counsels well; come out o’the storm.

Exeunt.

3.1 FStorm still.FEnter KENT[, disguised,] and a Knight, severally.

KENT     Who’s there, besides foul weather?

KNIGHT     One minded like the weather, most unquietly.

KENT     I know you. Where’s the King?

KNIGHT     Contending with the fretful elements;

Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,

5

Or swell the curled waters ‘bove the main,

That things might change, or cease; Qtears his white hair,

Which the impetuous blasts with eyeless rage

Catch in their fury and make nothing of,

Strives in his little world of man to outscorn

10

The to and fro conflicting wind and rain;

This night wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,

The lion and the belly-pinched wolf

Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs,

And bids what will take all.Q

KENT     But who is with him?

15

KNIGHT     None but the fool, who labours to outjest

His heart-struck injuries.

KENT     Sir, I do know you

And dare upon the warrant of my note

Commend a dear thing to you. There is division,

Although as yet the face of it is covered

20

With mutual cunning, ’twixt Albany and Cornwall,

FWho have, as who have not that their great stars

Throned and set high, servants, who seem no less,

Which are to France the spies and speculations

Intelligent of our state – what hath been seen,

25

Either in snuffs and packings of the dukes,

Or the hard rein which both of them hath borne

Against the old kind King, or something deeper,

Whereof, perchance, these are but furnishings. –F

QNow to you:

30

If on my credit you dare build so far

To make your speed to Dover, you shall find

Some that will thank you, making just report

Of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow

The King hath cause to plain.

35

I am a gentleman of blood and breeding,

And from some knowledge and assurance

Offer this office to you.Q

KNIGHT     I will talk further with you.

KENT     No, do not.

For confirmation that I FamF much more

40

Than my out-wall, open this purse and take

What it contains. If you shall see Cordelia,

As fear not but you shall, show her this ring,

And she will tell you who your fellow is

That yet you do not know. Fie on this storm;

45

I will go seek the King.

KNIGHT     Give me your hand.

Have you no more to say?

KENT     Few words, but to effect

More than all yet: that when we have found the King,

FIn which your painF that way, I’ll this,

He that first lights on him holla the other.     Exeunt.

50

3.2 FStorm still.FEnter LEAR and Fool.

LEAR     Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!

You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

5

Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,

Strike flat the thick rotundity o’the world,

Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once

That make ingrateful man!

FOOL     O, nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is

10

better than this rain-water out o’door. Good nuncle,

in, Q andQ ask thy daughters blessing. Here’s a night

pities neither wise men nor fools.

LEAR     Rumble thy bellyful! Spit fire, spout rain!

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters;

15

I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.

I never gave you kingdom, called you children;

You owe me no subscription. Q WhyQ then, let fall

Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,

A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man.

20

But yet I call you servile ministers

That will with two pernicious daughters join

Your high-engendered battles ‘gainst a head

So old and white as this. O Fho!F ’tis foul.

FOOL     He that has a house to put’s head in has a good headpiece:

25

The codpiece that will house

Before the head has any,

The head and he shall louse:

So beggars marry many.

30

The man that makes his toe

What he his heart should make,

Shall of a corn cry woe

And turn his sleep to wake.

For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

35

Enter KENT[, disguised].

LEAR     No, I will be the pattern of all patience,

I will say nothing.

KENT     Who’s there?

FOOL     Marry, here’s grace and a codpiece – that’s a wise man and a fool.

40

KENT [to Lear]

Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night

Love not such nights as these. The wrathful skies

Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,

And make them keep their caves. Since I was man

45

Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,

Such groans of roaring wind and rain I never

Remember to have heard. Man’s nature cannot carry

Th’affliction, nor the fear.

LEAR     Let the great gods

That keep this dreadful pudder o’er our heads

50

Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,

That hast within thee undivulged crimes,

Unwhipped of justice. Hide thee, thou bloody hand,

Thou perjured, and thou simular of virtue

That art incestuous. Caitiff, to pieces shake,

55

That under covert and convenient seeming

Has practised on man’s life. Close pent-up guilts

Rive your concealing continents and cry

These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man

More sinned against than sinning.

KENT     Alack, bareheaded?

60

Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel:

Some friendship will it lend you ‘gainst the tempest.

Repose you there, while I to this hard house –

More harder than the stones whereof ’tis raised,

Which even but now, demanding after you,

65

Denied me to come in – return and force

Their scanted courtesy.

LEAR     My wits begin to turn.

[to the Fool] Come on, my boy. How dost my boy? Art cold?

I am cold myself.

[to Kent]     Where is this straw, my fellow?

The art of our necessities is strange,

70

And can make vile things precious. Come; your hovel.

[to the Fool] Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart

That’s sorry yet for thee.

FOOL     He that has FandF a little tiny wit,

With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain,

Must make content with his fortunes fit,

75

Though the rain it raineth every day.

LEAR     True, Q my goodQ boy.

[to Kent]     Come, bring us to this hovel.

[Exeunt Lear and Kent.]

FFOOL     This is a brave night to cool a courtesan. I’ll

speak a prophecy ere I go:

When priests are more in word than matter,

80

When brewers mar their malt with water,

When nobles are their tailors’ tutors,

No heretics burned but wenches’ suitors;

When every case in law is right

No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;

85

When slanders do not live in tongues,

Nor cut-purses come not to throngs,

When usurers tell their gold i’the field,

And bawds and whores do churches build,

Then shall the realm of Albion

90

Come to great confusion:

Then comes the time, who lives to see’t,

That going shall be used with feet.

This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time.     Exit. F

95

3.3 Enter GLOUCESTER and EDMUND, Qwith lights Q.

GLOUCESTER     Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this

unnatural dealing. When I desired their leave that I

might pity him, they took from me the use of mine

own house; charged me on pain of perpetual

displeasure neither to speak of him, entreat for him, or

5

any way sustain him.

EDMUND     Most savage and unnatural.

GLOUCESTER     Go to, say you nothing. There is division

between the dukes, and a worse matter than that: I

have received a letter this night – ’tis dangerous to be

10

spoken – I have locked the letter in my closet. These

injuries the King now bears will be revenged home.

There is part of a power already footed; we must

incline to the King. I will look him and privily relieve

him. Go you and maintain talk with the Duke, that my

15

charity be not of him perceived. If he ask for me, I am

ill and gone to bed. If I die for it – as no less is

threatened me – the King my old master must be

relieved. There is strange things toward, Edmund;

pray you, be careful.     Exit.

20

EDMUND     This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the Duke

Instantly know and of that letter too.

This seems a fair deserving and must draw me

That which my father loses, no less than all.

The younger rises when the old doth fall.     Exit.

25

3.4 Enter LEAR, KENT[, disguised,] and Fool.

KENT     Here is the place, my lord: good my lord, enter;

The tyranny of the open night’s too rough

For nature to endure.     [FStorm still.F]

LEAR     Let me alone.

KENT     Good my lord, enter FhereF.

LEAR     Wilt break my heart?

KENT

I had rather break mine own. Good my lord, enter.

5

LEAR

Thou think’st ’tis much that this contentious storm

Invades us to the skin: so ’tis to thee,

But where the greater malady is fixed,

The lesser is scarce felt. Thou’dst shun a bear,

But if thy flight lay toward the roaring sea,

10

Thou’dst meet the bear i’the mouth. When the mind’s free,

The body’s delicate: this tempest in my mind

Doth from my senses take all feeling else,

Save what beats there, filial ingratitude.

Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand

15

For lifting food to’t? But I will punish home;

No, I will weep no more. FIn such a night

To shut me out? Pour on, I will endure.F

In such a night as this? O, Regan, Goneril,

Your old, kind father, whose frank heart gave Q youQ all –

20

O, that way madness lies, let me shun that;

No more of that.

KENT     Good my lord, enter FhereF.

LEAR     Prithee go in thyself, seek thine own ease.

This tempest will not give me leave to ponder

On things would hurt me more. But I’ll go in;

25

[to the Fool] FIn boy, go first. You houseless poverty –

Nay, get thee in. I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep.

ExitF [Fool].

[Kneels.] Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

30

Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en

Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp,

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them

35

And show the heavens more just.

[Enter Fool, as from the hovel.]

FEDGAR [within] Fathom and half, fathom and half:

Poor Tom!F

FOOL     Come not in here, nuncle, here’s a spirit. Help me, help me!

40

KENT     Give me thy hand. Who’s there?

FOOL A spirit, Fa spirit.F He says his name’s Poor Tom.

KENT     What art thou that dost grumble there i’the straw? Come forth.

Enter EDGAR[, disguised as Poor Tom].

EDGAR     Away, the foul fiend follows me. Through the

45

sharp hawthorn blows the Q coldQ wind. F Humh,F go

to thy Q coldQ bed and warm thee.

LEAR     Didst thou give all to thy Q twoQ daughters? And

art thou come to this?

EDGAR     Who gives anything to Poor Tom? Whom the

50

foul fiend hath led through fire and Fthrough flame,F

through ford and whirlpool, o’er bog and quagmire;

that hath laid knives under his pillow and halters in his

pew; set ratsbane by his porridge, made him proud of

heart, to ride on a bay trotting horse over four-inched

55

bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor. Bless

thy five wits, Tom’s a-cold. FO do, de, do, de, do, de:F

bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting and taking.

Do Poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend

vexes. There could I have him now, and there, and

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there again, Fand there.F[FStorm still.F]

LEAR     Have his daughters brought him to this pass?

Couldst thou save nothing? Wouldst thou give ’em all?

FOOL     Nay, he reserved a blanket, else we had been all shamed.

65

LEAR [to Edgar]

Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air

Hang fated o’er men’s faults light on thy daughters.

KENT     He hath no daughters, sir.

LEAR

Death, traitor! Nothing could have subdued nature

To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.

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Is it the fashion that discarded fathers

Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?

Judicious punishment, ’twas this flesh begot

Those pelican daughters.

EDGAR     Pillicock sat on Pillicock hill,

75

Alow, alow, loo, loo!

FOOL     This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.

EDGAR     Take heed o’the foul fiend; obey thy parents,

keep thy word justly, swear not, commit not with

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man’s sworn spouse, set not thy sweet-heart on proud

array. Tom’s a-cold.

LEAR     What hast thou been?

EDGAR A serving-man, proud in heart and mind, that

curled my hair, wore gloves in my cap, served the lust

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of my mistress’ heart and did the act of darkness with

her; swore as many oaths as I spake words and broke

them in the sweet face of heaven. One that slept in the

contriving of lust and waked to do it. Wine loved I

deeply, dice dearly; and, in woman, out-paramoured

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the Turk: false of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand;

hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in

madness, lion in prey. Let not the creaking of shoes,

nor the rustling of silks, betray thy poor heart to

woman. Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of

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plackets, thy pen from lenders’ books, and defy the

foul fiend. Still through the hawthorn blows the cold

wind, says suum, mun, nonny, Dauphin my boy, Q myQ

boy, cessez! Let him trot by.     [FStorm still.F]

LEAR     QWhyQ, thou wert better in a grave than to answer

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with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies. Is

man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou

ow’st the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no

wool, the cat no perfume. FHa?F Here’s three on’s us

are sophisticated; thou art the thing itself.

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Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor,

bare, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings:

come, unbutton FhereF. [Tearing at his clothes, he is

restrained by Kent and the Fool.]

F Enter GLOUCESTER, with a torch.F

FOOL     Prithee, nuncle, be contented; ’tis a naughty night

to swim in. Now a little fire in a wild field were like an

110

old lecher’s heart, a small spark, all the rest on’s body

cold: look, here comes a walking fire.

EDGAR     This is the foul QfiendQ Flibbertigibbet: he

begins at curfew and walks till the first cock; he gives

the web and the pin, squinies the eye and makes the

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harelip; mildews the white wheat and hurts the poor

creature of earth.

Swithold footed thrice the wold;

He met the nightmare and her nine foal,

Bid her alight and her troth plight,

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And aroint thee, witch, aroint thee.

KENT     How fares your grace?

LEAR     What’s he?

KENT [to Gloucester] Who’s there? What is’t you seek?

GLOUCESTER     What are you there? Your names?

125

EDGAR     Poor Tom, that eats the swimming frog, the

toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water –; that

in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages, eats

cow-dung for salads; swallows the old rat and the

ditch-dog; drinks the green mantle of the standing

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pool; who is whipped from tithing to tithing and

stocked, punished and imprisoned – who hath Q hadQ

three suits to his back, six shirts to his body,

Horse to ride and weapon to wear.

But mice and rats and such small deer

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Have been Tom’s food for seven long year.

Beware my follower. Peace Smulkin, peace, thou fiend.

GLOUCESTER

What, hath your grace no better company?

EDGAR     The prince of darkness is a gentleman. Modo he’s called, and Mahu.

140

GLOUCESTER

Our flesh and blood, my lord, is grown so vile

That it doth hate what gets it.

EDGAR     Poor Tom’s a-cold.

GLOUCESTER [to Lear]

Go in with me. My duty cannot suffer

T’obey in all your daughters’ hard commands.

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Though their injunction be to bar my doors

And let this tyrannous night take hold upon you,

Yet have I ventured to come seek you out,

And bring you where both fire and food is ready.

LEAR     First let me talk with this philosopher:

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[to Edgar] What is the cause of thunder?

KENT     Good my lord,

Take his offer, go into the house.

LEAR     I’ll talk a word with this same learned Theban:

What is your study?

EDGAR     How to prevent the fiend and to kill vermin.

155

LEAR     Let me ask you one word in private.

KENT [to Gloucester]

Importune him Fonce moreF to go, my lord;

His wits begin t’unsettle.

GLOUCESTER     Canst thou blame him?

[FStorm still.F]

His daughters seek his death. Ah, that good Kent,

He said it would be thus, poor banished man.

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Thou sayest the King grows mad; I’ll tell thee, friend,

I am almost mad myself. I had a son,

Now outlawed from my blood; he sought my life,

But lately, very late. I loved him, friend,

No father his son dearer. True to tell thee,

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The grief hath crazed my wits. What a night’s this?

[to Lear] I do beseech your grace.

LEAR     O, cry you mercy, Fsir.F

[to Edgar] Noble philosopher, your company.

EDGAR     Tom’s a-cold.

GLOUCESTER

In, fellow, there, into the hovel; keep thee warm.

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LEAR     Come, let’s in all.

KENT     This way, my lord.

LEAR     With him;

I will keep still with my philosopher.

KENT

Good my lord, soothe him; let him take the fellow.

GLOUCESTER     Take you him on.

KENT     Sirrah, come on; go along with us.

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LEAR     Come, good Athenian.

GLOUCESTER     No words, no words; hush.

EDGAR

Childe Rowland to the dark tower came,

His word was still ‘Fie, foh and fum,

I smell the blood of a British man.’     FExeunt.F

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3.5 Enter CORNWALL and EDMUND.

CORNWALL     I will have my revenge, ere I depart his house.

EDMUND     How, my lord, I may be censured that nature

thus gives way to loyalty something fears me to think of.

CORNWALL I now perceive it was not altogether your

5

brother’s evil disposition made him seek his death, but

a provoking merit set a-work by a reprovable badness

in himself.

EDMUND     How malicious is my fortune, that I must

repent to be just? This is the letter FwhichF he spoke

10

of, which approves him an intelligent party to the

advantages of France. O heavens! That this treason

were FnotF, or not I the detector.

CORNWALL     Go with me to the Duchess.

EDMUND     If the matter of this paper be certain, you have

15

mighty business in hand.

CORNWALL     True or false, it hath made thee Earl of

Gloucester. Seek out where thy father is, that he may

be ready for our apprehension.

EDMUND [aside] If I find him comforting the King, it

20

will stuff his suspicion more fully. [to Cornwall] I will

persever in my course of loyalty, though the conflict be

sore between that and my blood.

CORNWALL I will lay trust upon thee and thou shalt find

a dear father in my love. Exeunt.

25

3.6 Enter KENT[, disguised,] and GLOUCESTER.

GLOUCESTER     Here is better than the open air; take it

thankfully. I will piece out the comfort with what

addition I can. I will not be long from you.

KENT     All the power of his wits have given way to FhisF

impatience. The gods reward your kindness.

5

Exit [Gloucester].

Enter LEAR, EDGAR[, disguised as Poor Tom,] and Fool.

EDGAR     Frateretto calls me, and tells me Nero is an

angler in the lake of darkness. Pray, innocent, FandF

beware the foul fiend.

FOOL     Prithee, nuncle, tell me whether a madman be a

gentleman or a yeoman?

10

LEAR A king, a king.

FFOOL     No, he’s a yeoman that has a gentleman to his

son; for he’s a mad yeoman that sees his son a

gentleman before him.

LEARF To have a thousand with red burning spits

15

Come hizzing in upon ‘em!

QEDGAR The foul fiend bites my back.

FOOL     He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a

horse’s health, a boy’s love or a whore’s oath.

LEAR     It shall be done, I will arraign them straight.

20

[to Edgar] Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer;

[to the Fool] Thou sapient sir, sit here. No, you she-foxes –

EDGAR     Look where she stands and glares! Want’st thou

eyes at trial, madam?

Come o’er the bourn, Bessy, to me.

25

FOOL     Her boat hath a leak,

     And she must not speak

Why she dares not come over to thee.

EDGAR     The foul fiend haunts Poor Tom in the voice of

a nightingale. Hoppedance cries in Tom’s belly for

30

two white herring. Croak not, black angel, I have no

food for thee.

KENT     How do you, sir? Stand you not so amazed.

Will you lie down and rest upon the cushions?

LEAR I’ll see their trial first. Bring in their evidence.

35

[to Edgar] Thou robed man of justice, take thy place.

[to the Fool] And thou, his yoke-fellow of equity,

Bench by his side. [to Kent] You are o’the commission;

Sit you too.

EDGAR     Let us deal justly.

40

Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?

Thy sheep be in the corn;

And for one blast of thy minikin mouth

Thy sheep shall take no harm.

Purr, the cat is grey.

45

LEAR     Arraign her first, ’tis Goneril – I here take my

oath before this honourable assembly – kicked the

poor King her father.

FOOL     Come hither, mistress: is your name Goneril?

LEAR     She cannot deny it.

50

FOOL     Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool.

LEAR

And here’s another whose warped looks proclaim

What store her heart is made on. Stop her there!

Arms, arms, sword, fire, corruption in the place!

False justicer, why hast thou let her ‘scape?Q

55

EDGAR     Bless thy five wits.

KENT O pity! Sir, where is the patience now

That you so oft have boasted to retain?

EDGAR [aside]

My tears begin to take his part so much

They mar my counterfeiting.

LEAR     The little dogs and all,

60

Trey, Blanch and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.

EDGAR     Tom will throw his head at them: avaunt, you curs!

Be thy mouth or black or white,

Tooth that poisons if it bite;

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Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim,

Hound or spaniel, brach or him,

FOrF bobtail tyke or trundle-tail,

Tom will make him weep and wail;

For with throwing thus my head,

70

Dogs leap the hatch and all are fled.

Do, de, de, de. FCessez!F Come, march to wakes and

fairs and market towns. Poor Tom, thy horn is dry.

LEAR     Then let them anatomize Regan; see what breeds

about her heart. Is there any cause in nature that make

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these hard hearts? [to Edgar] You, sir, I entertain Q youQ

for one of my hundred; only I do not like the fashion

of your garments. You will say they are Persian

QattireQ, but let them be changed.

KENT     Now, good my lord, lie here Fand restF awhile.

80

LEAR     Make no noise, make no noise, draw the curtains.

So, so, Q soQ; we’ll go to supper i’the morning Qso, so, so.Q

[He sleeps.]

FFOOL     And I’ll go to bed at noon.F

Enter GLOUCESTER.

GLOUCESTER

Come hither, friend; where is the King my master?

KENT

Here, sir, but trouble him not; his wits are gone.

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GLOUCESTER

Good friend, I prithee take him in thy arms.

I have o’erheard a plot of death upon him.

There is a litter ready; lay him in’t

And drive toward Dover, friend, where thou shalt meet

Both welcome and protection. Take up thy master:

90

If thou shouldst dally half an hour his life,

With thine and all that offer to defend him,

Stand in assured loss. Take up, take up,

And follow me, that will to some provision

Give thee quick conduct.

QKENT     Oppressed nature sleeps.

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This rest might yet have balmed thy broken sinews,

Which if convenience will not allow

Stand in hard cure. [to the Fool] Come, help to bear thy master;

Thou must not stay behind.Q

GLOUCESTER     Come, come away!

Exeunt [all but Edgar;

Kent and the Fool supporting Lear].

QEDGAR When we our betters see bearing our woes,

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We scarcely think our miseries our foes.

Who alone suffers, suffers most i’the mind,

Leaving free things and happy shows behind.

But then the mind much sufferance doth o’erskip,

When grief hath mates and bearing fellowship.

105

How light and portable my pain seems now,

When that which makes me bend makes the King bow,

He childed as I fathered. Tom, away;

Mark the high noises, and thyself bewray

When false opinion, whose wrong thoughts defile thee,

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In thy just proof repeals and reconciles thee.

What will hap more tonight, safe ‘scape the King.

Lurk, lurk!Q     [Exit.]

3.7 Enter CORNWALL, REGAN, GONERIL, EDMUND and servants.FF

CORNWALL [to Goneril] Post speedily to my lord your

husband. Show him this letter: the army of France is

landed. [to servants] Seek out the traitor, Gloucester.

REGAN     Hang him instantly! [Some servants rush off.]

GONERIL     Pluck out his eyes!

5

CORNWALL     Leave him to my displeasure. Edmund, keep

you our sister company; the revenges we are bound to

take upon your traitorous father are not fit for your

beholding. Advise the Duke where you are going to a

most festinate preparation; we are bound to the like.

10

Our posts shall be swift and intelligent betwixt us.

Farewell, dear sister; farewell, my lord of Gloucester.

Enter OSWALD.

How now, where’s the King?

OSWALD

My lord of Gloucester hath conveyed him hence.

Some five- or six-and-thirty of his knights,

15

Hot questrists after him, met him at gate,

Who with some other of the lord’s dependants

Are gone with him toward Dover, where they boast

To have well-armed friends.

CORNWALL     Get horses for your mistress. [Exit Oswald.]

20

GONERIL     Farewell, sweet lord and sister.

CORNWALL

Edmund, farewell.     Exeunt QGoneril and EdmundQ.

[to servants]     Go, seek the traitor Gloucester;

Pinion him like a thief, bring him before us.

[Servants leave.]

Though FwellF we may not pass upon his life

Without the form of justice, yet our power

25

Shall do a courtesy to our wrath, which men

May blame but not control. Who’s there? The traitor?

Enter GLOUCESTER,Q brought in by two or threeQ FServants.F

REGAN     Ingrateful fox, ’tis he.

CORNWALL     Bind fast his corky arms.

GLOUCESTER     What means your graces?

Good my friends, consider; you are my guests.

30

Do me no foul play, friends.

CORNWALL     Bind him, I say –

[Servants bind his arms.]

REGAN     Hard, hard. O, filthy traitor!

GLOUCESTER     Unmerciful lady as you are, I’m none.

CORNWALL

To this chair bind him. [to Gloucester] Villain, thou shalt find – [Regan plucks his beard.]

GLOUCESTER     By the kind gods, ’tis most ignobly done

35

To pluck me by the beard.

REGAN     So white, and such a traitor?

GLOUCESTER     Naughty lady,

These hairs which thou dost ravish from my chin

Will quicken and accuse thee. I am your host;

With robber’s hands my hospitable favours

40

You should not ruffle thus. What will you do?

CORNWALL

Come, sir, what letters had you late from France?

REGAN     Be simple answered, for we know the truth.

CORNWALL

And what confederacy have you with the traitors,

Late footed in the kingdom?

REGAN     To whose hands

45

You have sent the lunatic King. Speak.

GLOUCESTER I have a letter guessingly set down

Which came from one that’s of a neutral heart,

And not from one opposed.

CORNWALL     Cunning.

REGAN     And false.

CORNWALL     Where hast thou sent the King?

GLOUCESTER     To Dover.

50

REGAN

Wherefore to Dover? Wast thou not charged at peril –

CORNWALL

Wherefore to Dover? Let him Q firstQ answer that.

GLOUCESTER

I am tied to the stake and I must stand the course.

REGAN     Wherefore to Dover, Q sirQ?

GLOUCESTER     Because I would not see thy cruel nails

55

Pluck out his poor old eyes; nor thy fierce sister

In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs.

The sea, with such a storm as his bare head

In hell-black night endured, would have buoyed up

And quenched the stelled fires.

60

Yet, poor old heart, he holp the heavens to rain.

If wolves had at thy gate howled that stern time,

Thou shouldst have said, ‘Good porter, turn the key,

All cruels else subscribed’; but I shall see

The winged vengeance overtake such children.

65

CORNWALL

See’t shalt thou never. Fellows, hold the chair;

Upon these eyes of thine I’ll set my foot.

GLOUCESTER     He that will think to live till he be old,

Give me some help! – O cruel! O you gods!

REGAN     One side will mock another – th’other too.

70

CORNWALL     If you see vengeance –

1 SERVANT     Hold your hand, my lord.

I have served FyouF ever since I was a child,

But better service have I never done you

Than now to bid you hold.

REGAN     How now, you dog?

1 SERVANT If you did wear a beard upon your chin,

75

I’d shake it on this quarrel. What do you mean?

CORNWALL     My villein? [They] Qdraw and fight. Q

1 SERVANT

Nay then, come on, and take the chance of anger.

[He wounds Cornwall.]

REGAN [to another Servant]

Give me thy sword. A peasant stand up thus?

[Q She takes a sword and runs at him behind.Q F Kills him.F]

1 SERVANT

O, I am slain. My lord, you have one eye left

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To see some mischief on him. O! [He dies.]

CORNWALL     Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly,

Where is thy lustre now?

GLOUCESTER

All dark and comfortless? Where’s my son Edmund?

Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature

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To quit this horrid act.

REGAN     Out, FtreacherousF villain,

Thou call’st on him that hates thee. It was he

That made the overture of thy treasons to us,

Who is too good to pity thee.

GLOUCESTER O my follies! Then Edgar was abused?

90

Kind gods, forgive me that and prosper him.

REGAN [to a Servant]

Go, thrust him out at gates and let him smell

His way to Dover. How is’t, my lord? How look you?

CORNWALL I have received a hurt. Follow me, lady.

[to Servants] Turn out that eyeless villain. Throw this slave

95

Upon the dunghill.

Exeunt [Servants] Fwith GloucesterF [and the body].

Regan, I bleed apace;

Untimely comes this hurt. Give me your arm.

Exeunt [Cornwall and Regan].

Q₂SERVANT     I’ll never care what wickedness I do

If this man come to good.

3 SERVANT     If she live long

And in the end meet the old course of death,

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Women will all turn monsters.

2 SERVANT

Let’s follow the old Earl and get the bedlam

To lead him where he would. His roguish madness

Allows itself to anything.

3 SERVANT

Go thou: I’ll fetch some flax and whites of eggs

105

To apply to his bleeding face. Now heaven help him!

Exeunt.Q

4.1 Enter EDGAR[, disguised as Poor Tom].

EDGAR     Yet better thus, and known to be contemned

Than still contemned and flattered. To be worst,

The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,

Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear.

The lamentable change is from the best,

5

The worst returns to laughter. FWelcome then,

Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace;

The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst

Owes nothing to thy blasts.F

Enter GLOUCESTER, led by an Old Man.

FButF who comes here? My father, poorly led?

10

World, world, O world!

But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,

Life would not yield to age.

OLD MAN O my good lord, I have been your tenant and

your father’s tenant these fourscore FyearsF –

15

GLOUCESTER

Away, get thee away; good friend, be gone.

Thy comforts can do me no good at all,

Thee they may hurt.

OLD MAN Alack, sir,Q you cannot see your way.Q

GLOUCESTER

I have no way, and therefore want no eyes:

20

I stumbled when I saw. Full oft ’tis seen

Our means secure us and our mere defects

Prove our commodities. O dear son Edgar,

The food of thy abused father’s wrath,

Might I but live to see thee in my touch,

25

I’d say I had eyes again.

OLD MAN     How now? Who’s there?

EDGAR [aside]

O gods! Who is’t can say ‘I am at the worst’?

I am worse than e’er I was.

OLD MAN [to Gloucester]     ’Tis poor mad Tom.

EDGAR [aside] And worse I may be yet; the worst is not

So long as we can say ‘This is the worst.’

30

OLD MAN [to Edgar] Fellow, where goest?

GLOUCESTER     Is it a beggar-man?

OLD MAN     Madman, and beggar too.

GLOUCESTER

He has some reason, else he could not beg.

I’the last night’s storm I such a fellow saw,

Which made me think a man a worm. My son

35

Came then into my mind, and yet my mind

Was then scarce friends with him. I have heard more since:

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,

They kill us for their sport.

EDGAR [aside]     How should this be?

Bad is the trade that must play fool to sorrow,

40

Angering itself and others.

[to Gloucester]     Bless thee, master.

GLOUCESTER     Is that the naked fellow?

OLD MAN     Ay, my lord.

GLOUCESTER

QThen pritheeQ get thee away. If for my sake

Thou wilt o’ertake us hence a mile or twain

I’the way toward Dover, do it for ancient love,

45

And bring some covering for this naked soul,

Which I’ll entreat to lead me.

OLD MAN     Alack, sir, he is mad.

GLOUCESTER

’Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind.

Do as I bid thee, or rather do thy pleasure;

50

Above the rest, be gone.

OLD MAN I’ll bring him the best ‘pparel that I have,

Come on’t what will. FExit.F

GLOUCESTER     Sirrah, naked fellow.

EDGAR

Poor Tom’s a-cold. [aside] I cannot daub it further –

55

GLOUCESTER     Come hither, fellow.

EDGAR [aside]

FAnd yet I must.F

[to Gloucester] Bless thy sweet eyes, they bleed.

GLOUCESTER     Knowst thou the way to Dover?

EDGAR     Both stile and gate, horseway and footpath. Poor

Tom hath been scared out of his good wits. Bless thee,

60

goodman’s son, from the foul fiend. Q Five fiends have

been in Poor Tom at once, of lust, as Obidicut;

Hobbididence, prince of darkness; Mahu, of stealing;

Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and

mowing, who since possesses chambermaids and

65

waiting-women. So, bless thee, master.Q

GLOUCESTER

Here, take this purse, thou whom the heaven’s plagues

Have humbled to all strokes. That I am wretched

Makes thee the happier. Heavens deal so still!

Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man

70

That slaves your ordinance, that will not see

Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly:

So distribution should undo excess

And each man have enough. Dost thou know Dover?

EDGAR       Ay, master.

75

GLOUCESTER

There is a cliff whose high and bending head

Looks fearfully in the confined deep:

Bring me but to the very brim of it,

And I’ll repair the misery thou dost bear

With something rich about me. From that place

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I shall no leading need.

EDGAR        Give me thy arm,

Poor Tom shall lead thee.     FExeunt.F

4.2 Enter GONERIL, EDMUND, [followed by] OSWALD.

GONERIL

Welcome, my lord. I marvel our mild husband

Not met us on the way.

[to Oswald] Now, where’s your master?

OSWALD     Madam, within; but never man so changed.

I told him of the army that was landed;

He smiled at it. I told him you were coming;

5

His answer was ‘The worse.’ Of Gloucester’s treachery

And of the loyal service of his son,

When I informed him, then he called me sot,

And told me I had turned the wrong side out.

What most he should dislike seems pleasant to him,

10

What like, offensive.

GONERIL [to Edmund] Then shall you go no further.

It is the cowish terror of his spirit,

That dares not undertake. He’ll not feel wrongs

Which tie him to an answer. Our wishes on the way

May prove effects. Back, Edmund, to my brother;

15

Hasten his musters and conduct his powers.

I must change names at home and give the distaff

Into my husband’s hands. This trusty servant

Shall pass between us. Ere long you are like to hear –

If you dare venture in your own behalf –

20

A mistress’s command. Wear this.

[She places a chain about his neck.] Spare speech,

Decline your head. This kiss, if it durst speak,

Would stretch thy spirits up into the air.

Conceive, and fare thee well –

EDMUND     Yours in the ranks of death.     FExit.F

GONERIL     – my most dear Gloucester.

25

FO, the difference of man and man!F

To thee a woman’s services are due;

A fool usurps my bed.

OSWALD     Madam, here comes my lord.     Q Exit.Q

F Enter ALBANY.F

GONERIL I have been worth the whistling.

ALBANY     O Goneril,

30

You are not worth the dust which the rude wind

Blows in your face. QI fear your disposition;

That nature which contemns its origin

Cannot be bordered certain in itself.

She that herself will sliver and disbranch

35

From her material sap perforce must wither,

And come to deadly use.

GONERIL      No more, the text is foolish.

ALBANY     Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;

Filths savour but themselves. What have you done?

40

Tigers, not daughters, what have you performed?

A father, and a gracious aged man

Whose reverence even the head-lugged bear would lick,

Most barbarous, most degenerate, have you madded.

Could my good brother suffer you to do it?

45

A man, a prince, by him so benefitted?

If that the heavens do not their visible spirits

Send quickly down to tame these vile offences,

It will come:

Humanity must perforce prey on itself,

50

Like monsters of the deep.Q

GONERIL     Milk-livered man,

That bear’st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs,

Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning

Thine honour from thy suffering; Q that not knowst

Fools do those villains pity who are punished

55

Ere they have done their mischief. Where’s thy drum?

France spreads his banners in our noiseless land;

With plumed helm thy state begins to threat,

Whilst thou, a moral fool, sits still and cries,

‘Alack, why does he so?’Q

ALBANY     See thyself, devil:

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Proper deformity shows not in the fiend

So horrid as in woman.

GONERIL O vain fool!

QALBANY

Thou changed and self-covered thing, for shame

Be-monster not thy feature. Were’t my fitness

To let these hands obey my blood,

65

They are apt enough to dislocate and tear

Thy flesh and bones. Howe’er thou art a fiend,

A woman’s shape doth shield thee.

GONERIL     Marry, your manhood, mew! –Q

Enter a Messenger.

QALBANY     What news?Q

70

MESSENGER

O my good lord, the Duke of Cornwall’s dead,

Slain by his servant, going to put out

The other eye of Gloucester.

ALBANY     Gloucester’s eyes?

MESSENGER

A servant that he bred, thrilled with remorse,

Opposed against the act, bending his sword

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To his great master, who, thereat enraged,

Flew on him and amongst them felled him dead;

But not without that harmful stroke which since

Hath plucked him after.

ALBANY     This shows you are above,

You justicers, that these our nether crimes

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So speedily can venge. But, O, poor Gloucester,

Lost he his other eye?

MESSENGER     Both, both, my lord.

[to Goneril] This letter, madam, craves a speedy answer;

’Tis from your sister.

GONERIL [aside]     One way I like this well;

But being widow, and my Gloucester with her,

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May all the building in my fancy pluck

Upon my hateful life. Another way

The news is not so tart.

[to the Messenger]     I’ll read and answer. Q Exit.Q

ALBANY

Where was his son when they did take his eyes?

MESSENGER     Come with my lady hither.

ALBANY     He is not here.

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MESSENGER     No, my good lord; I met him back again.

ALBANY     Knows he the wickedness?

MESSENGER

Ay, my good lord, ’twas he informed against him

And quit the house on purpose that their punishment

Might have the freer course.

ALBANY     Gloucester, I live

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To thank thee for the love thou showd’st the King

And to revenge thine eyes. Come hither, friend,

Tell me what more thou knowst.

Exeunt.

4.3 Q Enter KENT[, disguised,] and a Gentleman.

KENT     Why the King of France is so suddenly gone

back, know you no reason?

GENTLEMAN     Something he left imperfect in the state

which since his coming forth is thought of, which

imports to the kingdom so much fear and danger that

5

his personal return was most required and necessary.

KENT     Who hath he left behind him General?

GENTLEMAN     The Marshal of France, Monsieur la Far.

KENT     Did your letters pierce the queen to any demonstration of grief?

10

GENTLEMAN

Ay, sir. She took them, read them in my presence,

And now and then an ample tear trilled down

Her delicate cheek. It seemed she was a queen

Over her passion, who, most rebel-like,

Sought to be king o’er her.

KENT O, then, it moved her?

15

GENTLEMAN     Not to a rage; patience and sorrow strove

Who should express her goodliest. You have seen

Sunshine and rain at once, her smiles and tears

Were like a better way. Those happy smilets

That played on her ripe lip seemed not to know

20

What guests were in her eyes, which parted thence

As pearls from diamonds dropped. In brief,

Sorrow would be a rarity most beloved

If all could so become it.

KENT     Made she no verbal question?

25

GENTLEMAN

Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of father

Pantingly forth as if it pressed her heart;

Cried ‘Sisters, sisters, shame of ladies, sisters!

Kent, father, sisters! What, i’the storm, i’the night?

Let pity not be believed!’ There she shook

30

The holy water from her heavenly eyes,

And clamour mastered her; then away she started,

To deal with grief alone.

KENT     It is the stars,

The stars above us govern our conditions,

Else one self mate and make could not beget

35

Such different issues. You spoke not with her since?

GENTLEMAN     No.

KENT     Was this before the King returned?

GENTLEMAN     No, since.

KENT     Well, sir, the poor distressed Lear’s i’the town,

Who sometime in his better tune remembers

40

What we are come about, and by no means

Will yield to see his daughter.

GENTLEMAN     Why, good sir?

KENT

A sovereign shame so elbows him. His own unkindness

That stripped her from his benediction, turned her

To foreign casualties, gave her dear rights

45

To his dog-hearted daughters, these things sting

His mind so venomously that burning shame

Detains him from Cordelia.

GENTLEMAN     Alack, poor gentleman.

KENT

Of Albany’s and Cornwall’s powers you heard not?

GENTLEMAN     ’Tis so; they are afoot.

50

KENT     Well, sir, I’ll bring you to our master, Lear,

And leave you to attend him. Some dear cause

Will in concealment wrap me up awhile.

When I am known aright, you shall not grieve,

Lending me this acquaintance.

55

I pray you, go along with me.     Exeunt.Q

4.4 Enter Fwith drum and coloursF CORDELIA Gentleman, [officer] Fand soldiers.F

CORDELIA     Alack, ’tis he. Why, he was met even now

As mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud,

Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,

With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,

Darnel and all the idle weeds that grow

5

In our sustaining corn.

[to officer]     A century send forth;

Search every acre in the high-grown field

And bring him to our eye. What can man’s wisdom

In the restoring his bereaved sense,

He that helps him take all my outward worth.

10

[Exit officer, with soldiers.]

GENTLEMAN     There is means, madam.

Our foster nurse of nature is repose,

The which he lacks: that to provoke in him

Are many simples operative, whose power

Will close the eye of anguish.

CORDELIA     All blest secrets,

15

All you unpublished virtues of the earth,

Spring with my tears. Be aidant and remediate

In the good man’s distress. Seek, seek for him,

Lest his ungoverned rage dissolve the life

That wants the means to lead it.

Enter Messenger.

MESSENGER     News, madam:

20

The British powers are marching hitherward.

CORDELIA ’Tis known before. Our preparation stands

In expectation of them. O dear father,

It is thy business that I go about;

Therefore great France

25

My mourning and important tears hath pitied.

No blown ambition doth our arms incite,

But love, dear love, and our aged father’s right:

Soon may I hear and see him.     Exeunt.

4.5 Enter REGAN and OSWALD.

REGAN     But are my brother’s powers set forth?

OSWALD     Ay, madam.

REGAN     Himself in person FthereF?

OSWALD     Madam, with much ado; your sister is the better soldier.

5

REGAN     Lord Edmund spake not with your lord at home?

OSWALD     No, madam.

REGAN     What might import my sister’s letter to him?

OSWALD     I know not, lady.

REGAN     Faith, he is posted hence on serious matter.

10

It was great ignorance, Gloucester’s eyes being out,

To let him live. Where he arrives he moves

All hearts against us. Edmund, I think, is gone

In pity of his misery to dispatch

His nighted life; moreover to descry

15

The strength o’th’ enemy.

OSWALD I must needs after him, Fmadam,F with my letter.

REGAN

Our troops set forth tomorrow; stay with us.

The ways are dangerous.

OSWALD I may not, madam;

My lady charged my duty in this business.

20

REGAN

Why should she write to Edmund? Might not you

Transport her purposes by word? Belike –

Some things, I know not what – I’ll love thee much;

Let me unseal the letter.

OSWALD     Madam, I had rather –

REGAN I know your lady does not love her husband,

25

I am sure of that; and at her late being here

She gave strange oeillades and most speaking looks

To noble Edmund. I know you are of her bosom.

OSWALD I, madam?

REGAN I speak in understanding; y’are, I know’t.

30

Therefore I do advise you take this note.

My lord is dead; Edmund and I have talked,

And more convenient is he for my hand

Than for your lady’s. You may gather more.

If you do find him, pray you give him this;

35

And when your mistress hears thus much from you,

I pray desire her call her wisdom to her.

So fare FyouF well.

If you do chance to hear of that blind traitor,

Preferment falls on him that cuts him off.

40

OSWALD

Would I could meet Q himQ, madam, I should show

What party I do follow.

REGAN     Fare thee well.     Exeunt.

4.6 Enter GLOUCESTER and EDGAR[, in peasant’s clothing and with a staff].

GLOUCESTER

When shall I come to the top of that same hill?

EDGAR     You do climb up it now. Look how we labour.

GLOUCESTER     Methinks the ground is even.

EDGAR     Horrible steep.

Hark, do you hear the sea?

GLOUCESTER     No, truly.

EDGAR     Why then, your other senses grow imperfect

5

By your eyes’ anguish.

GLOUCESTER     So may it be indeed.

Methinks thy voice is altered and thou speak’st

In better phrase and matter than thou didst.

EDGAR     You’re much deceived; in nothing am I changed

But in my garments.

GLOUCESTER     Methinks you’re better spoken.

10

EDGAR

Come on, sir, here’s the place. Stand still: how fearful

And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low.

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air

Show scarce so gross as beetles. Half-way down

Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade;

15

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.

The fishermen that walk upon the beach

Appear like mice, and yon tall anchoring barque

Diminished to her cock, her cock a buoy

Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge

20

That on th’unnumbered idle pebble chafes,

Cannot be heard so high. I’ll look no more,

Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight

Topple down headlong.

GLOUCESTER     Set me where you stand.

EDGAR     Give me your hand: you are now within a foot

25

Of th’extreme verge. For all beneath the moon

Would I not leap upright.

GLOUCESTER     Let go my hand.

Here, friend, ‘s another purse, in it a jewel

Well worth a poor man’s taking. Fairies and gods

Prosper it with thee. Go thou further off;

30

Bid me farewell and let me hear thee going.

EDGAR     Now fare ye well, good sir.

GLOUCESTER     With all my heart.

EDGAR [aside] Why I do trifle thus with his despair

Is done to cure it.

GLOUCESTER [QHe kneels.Q] O you mighty gods,

This world I do renounce and in your sights

35

Shake patiently my great affliction off.

If I could bear it longer and not fall

To quarrel with your great opposeless wills,

My snuff and loathed part of nature should

Burn itself out. If Edgar live, O, bless FhimF!

40

Now, fellow, fare thee well. [QHe falls.Q]

EDGAR     Gone, sir; farewell.

[aside] And yet I know not how conceit may rob

The treasury of life when life itself

Yields to the theft. Had he been where he thought,

By this had thought been past.

[to Gloucester]     Alive or dead?

45

Ho, you, sir! FFriend,F hear you, sir? Speak! –

[aside] Thus might he pass indeed. Yet he revives. –

What are you, sir?

GLOUCESTER     Away and let me die.

EDGAR

Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air,

So many fathom down precipitating,

50

Thou’dst shivered like an egg; but thou dost breathe,

Hast heavy substance, bleed’st not, speak’st, art sound.

Ten masts at each make not the altitude

Which thou hast perpendicularly fell.

Thy life’s a miracle. Speak yet again.

55

GLOUCESTER     But have I fallen, or no?

EDGAR     From the dread summit of this chalky bourn.

Look up a-height: the shrill-gorged lark so far

Cannot be seen or heard. Do but look up.

GLOUCESTER     Alack, I have no eyes.

60

Is wretchedness deprived that benefit

To end itself by death? ’Twas yet some comfort

When misery could beguile the tyrant’s rage

And frustrate his proud will.

EDGAR     Give me your arm.

Up, so. How Fis’tF? Feel you your legs? You stand.

65

GLOUCESTER     Too well, too well.

EDGAR     This is above all strangeness.

Upon the crown o’the cliff what thing was that

Which parted from you?

GLOUCESTER A poor unfortunate beggar.

EDGAR     As I stood here below methought his eyes

Were two full moons. He had a thousand noses,

70

Horns whelked and waved like the enraged sea.

It was some fiend. Therefore, thou happy father,

Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours

Of men’s impossibilities, have preserved thee.

GLOUCESTER     I do remember now. Henceforth I’ll bear

75

Affliction till it do cry out itself

‘Enough, enough’ and die. That thing you speak of,

I took it for a man. Often ’twould say

‘The fiend, the fiend’; he led me to that place.

EDGAR     Bear free and patient thoughts.

Enter LEARQmad Q[, crowned with wild flowers].

But who comes here?

80

The safer sense will ne’er accommodate

His master thus.

LEAR     No, they cannot touch me for coining. I am the

King himself.

EDGAR O thou side-piercing sight!

85

LEAR     Nature’s above art in that respect. There’s your

press-money. That fellow handles his bow like a crow-

keeper: draw me a clothier’s yard. Look, look, a

mouse: peace, peace, this Fpiece ofF toasted cheese will

do’t. There’s my gauntlet, I’ll prove it on a giant.

90

Bring up the brown bills. O well flown, bird, i’the

clout, i’the clout! Hewgh! Give the word.

EDGAR     Sweet marjoram.

LEAR     Pass.

GLOUCESTER I know that voice.

95

LEAR     Ha! Goneril Fwith a white beard?F They flattered

me like a dog and told me I had FtheF white hairs in my

beard ere the black ones were there. To say ‘ay’ and ‘no’

to everything FthatF I said ‘ay’ and ‘no’ to was no good

divinity. When the rain came to wet me once and the

100

wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not

peace at my bidding, there I found ‘em, there I smelt

‘em out. Go to, they are not men o’their words: they

told me I was everything; ’tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.

GLOUCESTER

The trick of that voice I do well remember:

105

Is’t not the King?

LEAR     Ay, every inch a king.

When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.

I pardon that man’s life. What was thy cause?

Adultery?

Thou shalt not die – die for adultery? No!

110

The wren goes to’t and the small gilded fly

Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive,

For Gloucester’s bastard son was kinder to his father

Than were my daughters got ’tween the lawful sheets.

To’t, luxury, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers.

115

Behold yon simp’ring dame,

Whose face between her forks presages snow,

That minces virtue and does shake the head

FToF hear of pleasure’s name –F

The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to’t with a

120

more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are

centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do

the gods inherit, beneath is all the fiend’s: there’s hell,

there’s darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning,

scalding, stench, consumption! Fie, fie, fie! Pah, pah!

125

Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, Q toQ

sweeten my imagination. There’s money for thee.

GLOUCESTER O, let me kiss that hand!

LEAR     Let me wipe it first, it smells of mortality.

GLOUCESTER

O ruined piece of nature, this great world

130

Shall so wear out to naught. Dost thou know me?

LEAR I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny at me?

No, do thy worst, blind Cupid, I’ll not love.

Read thou this challenge, mark FbutF the penning of it.

135

GLOUCESTER

Were all thy letters suns, I could not see Q oneQ.

EDGAR [aside] I would not take this from report: it is,

And my heart breaks at it.

LEAR     Read.

GLOUCESTER     What? With the case of eyes?

140

LEAR     Oh ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your

head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a

heavy case, your purse in a light, yet you see how this

world goes.

GLOUCESTER I see it feelingly.

145

LEAR     What, art mad? A man may see how this world

goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears. See how yon

justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark in thine ear:

Fchange places andF handy-dandy, which is the justice,

which is the thief? Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark

150

at a beggar?

GLOUCESTER     Ay, sir.

LEAR     And the creature run from the cur – there thou

mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog’s

obeyed in office.

155

Thou, rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand;

Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back,

Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind

For which thou whipp’st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.

Through tattered clothes great vices do appear;

160

Robes and furred gowns hide all. FPlate sin with gold,

And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;

Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw does pierce it.

None does offend, none, I say none. I’ll able ‘em;

Take that of me, my friend, who have the power

165

To seal th’accuser’s lips.F Get thee glass eyes,

And like a scurvy politician seem

To see the things thou dost not. Now, Fnow, now, now,F

pull off my boots; harder, harder, so.

EDGAR [aside] O matter and impertinency mixed,

170

Reason in madness.

LEAR     If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes.

I know thee well enough, thy name is Gloucester.

Thou must be patient. We came crying hither:

Thou knowst the first time that we smell the air

175

We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee: mark QmeQ.

GLOUCESTER     Alack, alack the day!

LEAR     When we are born we cry that we are come

To this great stage of fools. This a good block:

It were a delicate stratagem to shoe

180

A troop of horse with felt. FI’ll put it in proofF

And when I have stolen upon these son-in-laws,

Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!

Enter a Gentleman[, and two attendants].

GENTLEMAN O, here he is: lay hand upon him. Sir,

Your most dear Fdaughter – F

185

LEAR     No rescue? What, a prisoner? I am even

The natural fool of fortune. Use me well,

You shall have ransom. Let me have surgeons,

I am cut to the brains.

GENTLEMAN     You shall have anything.

LEAR     No seconds? All myself?

190

Why, this would make a man Fa manF of salt,

To use his eyes for garden water-pots.

QAy, and laying autumn’s dust.Q

Q2 GENTLEMAN       Good sir.Q2

QLEARQ I will die bravely, like a FsmugF bridegroom.

What? I will be jovial. Come, come,

195

I am a king, Q myQ masters, know you that?

GENTLEMAN     You are a royal one and we obey you.

LEAR     Then there’s life in’t. Come, an you get it,

You shall get it by running. FSa, sa, sa, sa.F

ExitQrunning Q [, followed by attendants].

GENTLEMAN

A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch,

200

Past speaking of in a king. Thou hast one daughter

Who redeems nature from the general curse

Which twain have brought her to.

EDGAR     Hail, gentle sir.

GENTLEMAN     Sir, speed you. What’s your will?

EDGAR     Do you hear aught,

FSir,F of a battle toward?

GENTLEMAN     Most sure and vulgar.

205

Everyone hears that, which can distinguish sound.

EDGAR

But, by your favour, how near’s the other army?

GENTLEMAN

Near, and on speedy foot. The main descry

Stands on the hourly thought.

EDGAR     I thank you, sir.

That’s all.

210

GENTLEMAN

Though that the queen on special cause is here

Her army is moved on.

EDGAR     I thank you, sir

Exit [Gentleman].

GLOUCESTER

You ever gentle gods, take my breath from me;

Let not my worser spirit tempt me again

To die before you please.

EDGAR     Well pray you, father.

215

GLOUCESTER     Now, good sir, what are you?

EDGAR

A most poor man, made tame to fortune’s blows,

Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows,

Am pregnant to good pity. Give me your hand;

I’ll lead you to some biding.

GLOUCESTER     Hearty thanks.

220

The bounty and the benison of heaven

To boot, to boot.

Enter OSWALD.

OSWALD A proclaimed prize; most happy!

That eyeless head of thine was first framed flesh

To raise my fortunes! Thou old, unhappy traitor,

Briefly thyself remember. The sword is out

225

That must destroy thee.

GLOUCESTER     Now let thy friendly hand

Put strength enough to’t.

OSWALD     Wherefore, bold peasant,

Dar’st thou support a published traitor? Hence,

Lest FthatF th’ infection of his fortune take

Like hold on thee. Let go his arm.

230

EDGAR     Ch’ill not let go, zir, without FvurtherF ‘cagion.

OSWALD     Let go, slave, or thou diest.

EDGAR     Good gentleman, go your gait FandF let poor

volk pass. And ‘ch’ud ha’ been zwaggered out of my

life, ’twould not ha’ been zo long Fas ’tisF by a

235

vortnight. Nay, come not near th’old man; keep out,

che vor ye, or I’se try whether your costard or my

baton be the harder. Ch’ill be plain with you.

OSWALD     Out, dunghill. [Draws his sword.] QThey fight.Q

EDGAR     Ch’ill pick your teeth, zir. Come, no matter vor

240

your foins. [Oswald falls.]

OSWALD

Slave, thou hast slain me. Villain, take my purse.

If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body,

And give the letters which thou find’st about me

To Edmund, Earl of Gloucester. Seek him out

245

Upon the English party. O untimely death, death!

[QHe dies.Q]

EDGAR I know thee well; a serviceable villain,

As duteous to the vices of thy mistress

As badness would desire.

GLOUCESTER     What, is he dead?

EDGAR     Sit you down, father; rest you. –

250

Let’s see these pockets: the letters that he speaks of

May be my friends. He’s dead; I am only sorry

He had no other deathsman. Let us see:

Leave, gentle wax; and manners, blame us not.

To know our enemies’ minds we rip their hearts,

255

Their papers is more lawful.

[FReads the letter.F] Let our reciprocal vows be

remembered. You have many opportunities to cut him off.

If your will want not, time and place will be fruitfully

offered. There is nothing done if he return the conqueror;

260

then am I the prisoner, and his bed my gaol, from the

loathed warmth whereof, deliver me and supply the place

for your labour. Your (wife, so I would say) affectionate

servant Qand for you her own for venture.Q Goneril.

O indistinguished space of woman’s will!

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A plot upon her virtuous husband’s life

And the exchange my brother. Here in the sands

Thee I’ll rake up, the post unsanctified

Of murderous lechers; and in the mature time,

With this ungracious paper strike the sight

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Of the death-practised duke. For him ’tis well

That of thy death and business I can tell.

[Exit, dragging the body.]

GLOUCESTER

The King is mad: how stiff is my vile sense,

That I stand up and have ingenious feeling

Of my huge sorrows? Better I were distract;

275

So should my thoughts be severed from my griefs,

And woes by wrong imaginations lose

The knowledge of themselves.     Drum afar off.

[Enter EDGAR.]

EDGAR     Give me your hand.

Far off methinks I hear the beaten drum.

Come, father, I’ll bestow you with a friend. Exeunt.

280

4.7 Enter CORDELIA, KENT[, disguised,] and Gentleman.

CORDELIA O thou good Kent, how shall I live and work

To match thy goodness? My life will be too short,

And every measure fail me.

KENT     To be acknowledged, madam, is o’erpaid.

All my reports go with the modest truth,

5

Nor more, nor clipped, but so.

CORDELIA     Be better suited;

These weeds are memories of those worser hours.

I prithee put them off.

KENT     Pardon, dear madam;

Yet to be known shortens my made intent.

My boon I make it that you know me not

10

Till time and I think meet.

CORDELIA

Then be’t so, my good lord.

[to the Gentleman] How does the King?

GENTLEMAN     Madam, sleeps still.

CORDELIA O you kind gods!

Cure this great breach in his abused nature;

15

Th’untuned and jarring senses, O, wind up

Of this child-changed father.

GENTLEMAN     So please your majesty,

That we may wake the King? He hath slept long.

CORDELIA

Be governed by your knowledge and proceed

I’the sway of your own will. Is he arrayed?

20

Enter LEAR in a chair carried by servants. FF

GENTLEMAN     Ay, madam. In the heaviness of sleep

We put fresh garments on him.

Be by, good madam, when we do awake him.

I doubt Q notQ of his temperance.

Q CORDELIA     Very well.

GENTLEMAN

Please you draw near; louder the music there.Q

25

CORDELIA O my dear father, restoration hang

Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss

Repair those violent harms that my two sisters

Have in thy reverence made.

KENT     Kind and dear princess!

CORDELIA

Had you not been their father, these white flakes

30

Did challenge pity of them. Was this a face

To be opposed against the warring winds?

QTo stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder,

In the most terrible and nimble stroke

Of quick cross-lightning? To watch, poor perdu,

35

With this thin helm?Q Mine enemy’s dog

Though he had bit me should have stood that night

Against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father,

To hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn

In short and musty straw? Alack, alack!

40

’Tis wonder that thy life and wits at once

Had not concluded all. He wakes; speak to him.

GENTLEMAN     Madam, do you; ’tis fittest.

CORDELIA

How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?

LEAR     You do me wrong to take me out o’the grave.

45

Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound

Upon a wheel of fire that mine own tears

Do scald like molten lead.

CORDELIA     Sir, Fdo youF know me?

LEAR     You are a spirit, I know; where did you die?

CORDELIA     Still, still far wide.

50

GENTLEMAN     He’s scarce awake; let him alone awhile.

LEAR

Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight?

I am mightily abused. I should ev’n die with pity

To see another thus. I know not what to say.

I will not swear these are my hands: let’s see –

55

I feel this pinprick. Would I were assured

Of my condition.

CORDELIA [Kneels.]     O look upon me, sir,

And hold your hands in benediction o’er me!

[She restrains him as he tries to kneel.]

Q     No, sir,Q you must not kneel.

LEAR     Pray do not mock FmeF.

I am a very foolish, fond old man,

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Fourscore and upward, Fnot an hour more nor less;F

And to deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

Methinks I should know you and know this man,

Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant

65

What place this is and all the skill I have

Remembers not these garments; nor I know not

Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me,

For, as I am a man, I think this lady

To be my child Cordelia.

CORDELIA     And so I am, FI amF.

70

LEAR     Be your tears wet? Yes, faith; I pray weep not.

If you have poison for me, I will drink it.

I know you do not love me, for your sisters

Have, as I do remember, done me wrong.

You have some cause, they have not.

CORDELIA     No cause, no cause.

75

LEAR     Am I in France?

KENT     In your own kingdom, sir.

LEAR     Do not abuse me.

GENTLEMAN

Be comforted, good madam, the great rage

You see is killed in him, Q and yet it is danger

To make him even o’er the time he has lost.Q

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Desire him to go in. Trouble him no more

Till further settling.

CORDELIA     Will’t please your highness walk?

LEAR     You must bear with me. Pray FyouF now, forget

and forgive; I am old and foolish.

Exeunt.QKent and the Gentleman remain.Q

QGENTLEMAN Holds it true, sir, that the Duke of

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Cornwall was so slain?

KENT     Most certain, sir.

GENTLEMAN     Who is conductor of his people?

KENT     As ’tis said, the bastard son of Gloucester.

GENTLEMAN     They say Edgar his banished son is with

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the Earl of Kent in Germany.

KENT     Report is changeable; ’tis time to look about. The

powers of the kingdom approach apace.

GENTLEMAN     The arbitrement is like to be bloody. Fare

you well, sir.     Exit.

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KENT

My point and period will be throughly wrought,

Or well or ill as this day’s battle’s fought. Exit.Q

5.1 Enter Fwith drum and coloursF EDMUND, REGAN, gentlemen and soldiers

EDMUND [to a gentleman]

Know of the Duke if his last purpose hold,

Or whether since he is advised by aught

To change the course. He’s full of alteration

And self-reproving. Bring his constant pleasure.

[Exit gentleman.]

REGAN     Our sister’s man is certainly miscarried.

5

EDMUND ’Tis to be doubted, madam.

REGAN     Now, sweet lord,

You know the goodness I intend upon you:

Tell me but truly, but then speak the truth,

Do you not love my sister?

EDMUND     In honoured love.

REGAN     But have you never found my brother’s way

10

To the forfended place?

QEDMUND       That thought abuses you.

REGAN     I am doubtful that you have been conjunct

And bosomed with her, as far as we call hers.Q

EDMUND   No, by mine honour, madam.

REGAN     I never shall endure her. Dear my lord,

15

Be not familiar with her.

EDMUND   Fear Q meQ not –

EnterFwith drum and coloursF ALBANY, GONERIL

[and] soldiers.

She and the Duke her husband.

Q GONERIL [aside]

I had rather lose the battle than that sister

Should loosen him and me.Q

ALBANY   Our very loving sister, well be-met.

20

Sir, this I heard: the King is come to his daughter,

With others whom the rigour of our state

Forced to cry out. QWhere I could not be honest

I never yet was valiant. For this business,

It touches us as France invades our land,

25

Not bolds the King, with others whom I fear

Most just and heavy causes make oppose.

EDMUND   Sir, you speak nobly.Q

REGAN   Why is this reasoned?

GONERIL   Combine together ‘gainst the enemy,

For these domestic and particular broils

30

Are not the question here.

ALBANY   Let’s then determine with the ancient of war on our proceeding.

QEDMUND I shall attend you presently at your tent.Q

Exit.

REGAN   Sister, you’ll go with us?

35

GONERIL     No.

REGAN ’Tis most convenient; pray Q youQ go with us.

GONERIL O ho, I know the riddle. I will go.

Exeunt [Edmund, Regan, Goneril and] Fboth the armies

.F

[As Albany is leaving,] enter EDGAR[, in peasant’s clothing].

EDGAR     If e’er your grace had speech with man so poor,

Hear me one word.

ALBANY [to his soldiers] I’ll overtake you.

[to Edgar]     Speak.

EDGAR     Before you fight the battle, ope this letter.

If you have victory, let the trumpet sound

For him that brought it. Wretched though I seem,

I can produce a champion that will prove

What is avouched there. If you miscarry,

45

Your business of the world hath so an end

FAnd machination ceases.F Fortune love you.

ALBANY     Stay till I have read the letter.

EDGAR       I was forbid it.

When time shall serve, let but the herald cry

And I’ll appear again.     Exit.

50

ALBANY     Why, fare thee well. I will o’erlook thy paper.

Enter EDMUND.

EDMUND     The enemy’s in view; draw up your powers.

[Hands him a note.] Here is the guess of their true strength and forces,

By diligent discovery; but your haste

Is now urged on you.

ALBANY     We will greet the time.     Exit.

55

EDMUND     To both these sisters have I sworn my love,

Each jealous of the other as the stung

Are of the adder. Which of them shall I take?

Both? One? Or neither? Neither can be enjoyed

If both remain alive. To take the widow

60

Exasperates, makes mad her sister Goneril,

And hardly shall I carry out my side,

Her husband being alive. Now then, we’ll use

His countenance for the battle, which being done,

Let her who would be rid of him devise

65

His speedy taking off. As for the mercy

Which he intends to Lear and to Cordelia,

The battle done, and they within our power,

Shall never see his pardon; for my state

Stands on me to defend, not to debate.     Exit.

70

5.2 Alarum FwithinF. EnterFwith drum and coloursF LEAR, CORDELIA and soldiers [. They pass] over the stage Fand exeunt.F

Enter EDGAR [, in peasant’s clothing,] and GLOUCESTER.

EDGAR     Here, father, take the shadow of this tree

For your good host. Pray that the right may thrive.

If ever I return to you again

I’ll bring you comfort.

GLOUCESTER     Grace go with you, sir.

Exit [Edgar].

Alarum and retreatF within. Enter EDGAR.F

EDGAR     Away, old man, give me thy hand, away!

5

King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta’en.

Give me thy hand; come on!

GLOUCESTER     No further, sir; a man may rot even here.

EDGAR     What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure

Their going hence even as their coming hither.

10

Ripeness is all. Come on.

FGLOUCESTER     And that’s true too.

Exeunt.F

5.3 Enter Fin conquest with drum and coloursF EDMUND, [with] LEAR and CORDELIA as prisoners, Fsoldiers [and a] Captain.F

EDMUND     Some officers take them away – good guard,

Until their greater pleasures first be known

That are to censure them.

CORDELIA     We are not the first

Who with best meaning have incurred the worst.

For thee, oppressed King, I am cast down;

5

Myself could else outfrown false fortune’s frown.

Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?

LEAR     No, no, Fno, noF. Come, let’s away to prison;

We two alone will sing like birds i’the cage.

When thou dost ask me blessing I’ll kneel down

10

And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh

At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too –

Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out –

15

And take upon’s the mystery of things

As if we were God’s spies. And we’ll wear out

In a walled prison packs and sects of great ones

That ebb and flow by the moon.

EDMUND [to soldiers] Take them away.

LEAR     Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,

20

The gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee? [Embraces her.]

He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,

And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes;

The good FyearsF shall devour them, flesh and fell,

Ere they shall make us weep!

25

We’ll see ’em starved first: come.

FExeuntF [Lear and Cordelia, guarded].

EDMUND     Come hither, captain, hark:

Take thou this note. Go, follow them to prison.

One step I have advanced thee. If thou dost

As this instructs thee, thou dost make thy way

30

To noble fortunes. Know thou this, that men

Are as the time is; to be tender-minded

Does not become a sword. Thy great employment

Will not bear question: either say thou’lt do’t,

Or thrive by other means.

CAPTAIN     I’ll do’t, my lord.

35

EDMUND

About it and write ‘happy’ when thou’st done’t.

Mark, I say, instantly; and carry it so

As I have set it down.

QCAPTAIN I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats.

If it be man’s work, I’ll do’t.QF Exit.F

40

F Flourish.F Enter ALBANY, GONERIL, REGAN [and] soldiers

[with a trumpeter].

ALBANY     Sir, you have showed today your valiant strain

And fortune led you well. You have the captives

Who were the opposites of this day’s strife:

I do require them of you, so to use them

As we shall find their merits and our safety

45

May equally determine.

EDMUND     Sir, I thought it fit

To send the old and miserable King

To some retention Q and appointed guard,Q

Whose age had charms in it, whose title more,

To pluck the common bosom on his side,

50

And turn our impressed lances in our eyes

Which do command them. With him I sent the queen,

My reason all the same; and they are ready

Tomorrow, or at further space, t’appear

Where you shall hold your session. QAt this time

55

We sweat and bleed; the friend hath lost his friend

And the best quarrels in the heat are cursed

By those that feel their sharpness.

The question of Cordelia and her father

Requires a fitter place.Q

ALBANY     Sir, by your patience,

60

I hold you but a subject of this war,

Not as a brother.

REGAN     That’s as we list to grace him.

Methinks our pleasure might have been demanded

Ere you had spoke so far. He led our powers,

Bore the commission of my place and person,

65

The which immediacy may well stand up

And call itself your brother.

GONERIL     Not so hot!

In his own grace he doth exalt himself

More than in your addition.

REGAN     In my rights,

By me invested, he compeers the best.

70

ALBANY

That were the most, if he should husband you.

REGAN     Jesters do oft prove prophets.

GONERIL     Holla, holla!

That eye that told you so looked but asquint.

REGAN     Lady, I am not well, else I should answer

From a full-flowing stomach. [to Edmund] General,

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Take thou my soldiers, prisoners, patrimony;

FDispose of them, of me, the walls is thine.F

Witness the world, that I create thee here

My lord and master.

GONERIL     Mean you to enjoy him Q thenQ?

ALBANY     The let-alone lies not in your good will.

80

EDMUND     Nor in thine, lord.

ALBANY     Half-blooded fellow, yes.

REGAN [to Edmund]

Let the drum strike and prove my title thine.

ALBANY     Stay yet, hear reason: Edmund, I arrest thee

On capital treason, and in thine attaint

This gilded serpent. [Points to Goneril.]

[to Regan]     For your claim, fair sister,

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I bar it in the interest of my wife:

’Tis she is sub-contracted to this lord

And I her husband contradict your banns:

If you will marry, make your love to me;

My lady is bespoke.

FGONERIL       An interlude!

90

ALBANYF

Thou art armed, Gloucester. FLet the trumpet sound.F

If none appear to prove upon thy person

Thy heinous, manifest and many treasons,

There is my pledge. [Throws down his gauntlet.]

I’ll make it on thy heart,

Ere I taste bread, thou art in nothing less

95

Than I have here proclaimed thee.

REGAN       Sick, O, sick!

GONERIL [aside] If not, I’ll ne’er trust medicine.

EDMUND

There’s my exchange. [Throws down his gauntlet.]

What in the world he is

That names me traitor, villain-like he lies.

Call by the trumpet: he that dares approach,

100

On him, on you – who not? – I will maintain

My truth and honour firmly.

ALBANY       A herald, ho!

Enter a Herald.FF

[to Edmund] Trust to thy single virtue, for thy soldiers,

All levied in my name, have in my name

Took their discharge.

REGAN     My sickness grows upon me.

105

ALBANY     She is not well; convey her to my tent.

[Exit Regan, supported.]

Come hither, herald; let the trumpet sound

And read out this. [FA trumpet sounds.F]

HERALD [FReads.F] If any man of quality or degree within

the lists of the army will maintain upon Edmund,

110

supposed Earl of Gloucester, that he is a manifold traitor,

let him appear by the third sound of the trumpet. He is

bold in his defence.     [FFirst trumpet.F]

Again!     [FSecond trumpet.F]

Again!     [FThird trumpet.F]

115

[FTrumpet answers within.F]

Enter EDGARFarmed.F

ALBANY     Ask him his purposes, why he appears

Upon this call o’the trumpet.

HERALD     What are you?

Your name, your quality, and why you answer

This present summons?

EDGAR       QOQknow my name is lost,

By treason’s tooth bare-gnawn and canker-bit;

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Yet am I noble as the adversary

I come to cope Q withalQ.

ALBANY     Which is that adversary?

EDGAR

What’s he that speaks for Edmund, Earl of Gloucester?

EDMUND     Himself. What sayst thou to him?

EDGAR     Draw thy sword,

That if my speech offend a noble heart,

125

Thy arm may do thee justice. Here is mine.

[Draws his sword.]

Behold: it is the privilege of mine honours,

My oath and my profession. I protest,

Maugre thy strength, youth, place and eminence,

Despite thy victor sword and fire-new fortune,

130

Thy valour and thy heart, thou art a traitor:

False to thy gods, thy brother and thy father,

Conspirant ‘gainst this high illustrious prince,

And from th’extremest upward of thy head

To the descent and dust below thy foot

135

A most toad-spotted traitor. Say thou no,

This sword, this arm and my best spirits are bent

To prove upon thy heart, whereto I speak,

Thou liest.

EDMUND     In wisdom I should ask thy name,

But since thy outside looks so fair and warlike,

140

And that thy tongue some say of breeding breathes,

What safe and nicely I might well delayFF

By rule of knighthood, I disdain and spurn.

Back do I toss these treasons to thy head,

With the hell-hated lie o’erwhelm thy heart,

145

Which for they yet glance by and scarcely bruise,

This sword of mine shall give them instant way,

Where they shall rest for ever. Trumpets, speak.

[F Alarums. Fight.F [Edmund falls].]

ALBANY [to Edgar] Save him, save him!

GONERIL     This is Q mereQ practice, Gloucester.

By the law of war thou wast not bound to answer

150

An unknown oppposite. Thou art not vanquished,

But cozened and beguiled.

ALBANY     Shut your mouth, dame,

Or with this paper shall I stop it.

[to Edmund]     FHold, sir,F

Thou worse than any name, read thine own evil.

[to Goneril] Q NayQ, no tearing, lady; I perceive you know it.

155

GONERIL     Say if I do, the laws are mine, not thine.

Who can arraign me for’t?Exit.

ALBANY     Most monstrous! FO!F

[to Edmund] Knowst thou this paper?

EDMUND     Ask me not what I know.

ALBANY [to an officer, who follows Goneril]

Go after her; she’s desperate, govern her.

EDMUND

What you have charged me with, that have I done,

160

And more, much more; the time will bring it out.

’Tis past and so am I. [to Edgar] But what art thou

That hast this fortune on me? If thou’rt noble,

I do forgive thee.

EDGAR     Let’s exchange charity:

I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund;

165

If more, the more thou’st wronged me.

My name is Edgar and thy father’s son.

The gods are just and of our pleasant vices

Make instruments to plague us:

The dark and vicious place where thee he got

170

Cost him his eyes.

EDMUND     Thou’st spoken Fright, ’tisF true;

The wheel is come full circle, I am here.

ALBANY [to Edgar]

Methought thy very gait did prophesy

A royal nobleness. I must embrace thee.

Let sorrow split my heart if ever I

175

Did hate thee or thy father.

EDGAR     Worthy prince, I know’t.

ALBANY     Where have you hid yourself?

How have you known the miseries of your father?

EDGAR     By nursing them, my lord. List a brief tale,

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And when ’tis told, O, that my heart would burst!

The bloody proclamation to escape

That followed me so near – O, our lives’ sweetness,

That we the pain of death would hourly die

Rather than die at once! – taught me to shift

185

Into a madman’s rags, t’assume a semblance

That very dogs disdained; and in this habit

Met I my father with his bleeding rings,

Their precious stones new lost; became his guide,

Led him, begged for him, saved him from despair,

190

Never – O fault! – revealed myself unto him

Until some half-hour past, when I was armed,

Not sure, though hoping of this good success.

I asked his blessing and from first to last

Told him our pilgrimage. But his flawed heart,

195

Alack, too weak the conflict to support,

’Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,

Burst smilingly.

EDMUND     This speech of yours hath moved me,

And shall perchance do good; but speak you on,

You look as you had something more to say.

200

ALBANY     If there be more, more woeful, hold it in,

For I am almost ready to dissolve

Hearing of this.

QEDGAR     This would have seemed a period

To such as love not sorrow, but another

To amplify too much would make much more

205

And top extremity.

Whilst I was big in clamour, came there in a man

Who, having seen me in my worst estate,

Shunned my abhorred society, but then finding

Who ’twas that so endured, with his strong arms,

210

He fastened on my neck and bellowed out

As he’d burst heaven, threw him on my father,

Told the most piteous tale of Lear and him

That ever ear received, which in recounting

His grief grew puissant and the strings of life

215

Began to crack. Twice then the trumpets sounded

And there I left him tranced.

ALBANY     But who was this?

EDGAR     Kent, sir, the banished Kent, who in disguise

Followed his enemy king and did him service

Improper for a slave.Q

220

Enter a Gentleman Qwith a bloody knife. Q

GENTLEMAN     Help, help, FO, help!F

EDGAR     What kind of help?

FALBANY     Speak, man.

EDGARF     What means this bloody knife?

GENTLEMAN     ’Tis hot, it smokes,

It came even from the heart of – FO, she’s dead!F

ALBANY     Who FdeadF? Speak, man.

GENTLEMAN     Your lady, sir, your lady; and her sister

225

By her is poisoned; she confesses it.

EDMUND I was contracted to them both; all three

Now marry in an instant.

EDGAR     Here comes Kent.

Enter KENT.

ALBANY     Produce the bodies, be they alive or dead.

Goneril’s and Regan’s bodies brought out.

This judgement of the heavens that makes us tremble

230

Touches us not with pity – O, is this he?

The time will not allow the compliment

Which very manners urges.

KENT     I am come

To bid my King and master aye good night.

Is he not here?

ALBANY     Great thing of us forgot!

235

Speak, Edmund, where’s the King? And where’s Cordelia?

Seest thou this object, Kent?

KENT     Alack, why thus?

EDMUND     Yet Edmund was beloved:

The one the other poisoned for my sake,

And after slew herself.

ALBANY     Even so; cover their faces.

240

EDMUND     I pant for life. Some good I mean to do,

Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send –

Be brief in it – to the castle, for my writ

Is on the life of Lear and on Cordelia;

Nay, send in time.

ALBANY     Run, run, O run.

245

EDGAR

To who, my lord? Who has the office?

[to Edmund]     Send

Thy token of reprieve.

EDMUND

Well thought on, take my sword; Q the captain,Q

Give it the captain.

EDGAR [to Gentleman] Haste thee for thy life.

[Exit Gentleman.]

EDMUND   He hath commission from thy wife and me

250

To hang Cordelia in the prison and

To lay the blame upon her own despair,

That she fordid herself.

ALBANY     The gods defend her. Bear him hence awhile.

[Edmund is carried off.]

Enter LEAR with CORDELIA in his arms [followed by the Gentleman].

LEAR

Howl, howl, howl, QhowlQ! O, you are men of stones!

255

Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so

That heaven’s vault should crack: she’s gone for ever.

I know when one is dead and when one lives;

She’s dead as earth. [He lays her down.]

Lend me a looking-glass;

If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,

260

Why then she lives.

KENT     Is this the promised end?

EDGAR     Or image of that horror?

ALBANY     Fall, and cease.

LEAR     This feather stirs, she lives: if it be so,

It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows

That ever I have felt.

KENT O, my good master!

265

LEAR     Prithee, away!

EDGAR ’Tis noble Kent, your friend.

LEAR A plague upon you murderers, traitors all;

I might have saved her; now she’s gone for ever.

Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little. Ha?

What is’t thou sayst? Her voice was ever soft,

270

Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.

I killed the slave that was a-hanging thee.

GENTLEMAN ’Tis true, my lords, he did.

LEAR     Did I not, fellow?

I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion

I would have made him skip. I am old now

275

And these same crosses spoil me.

[to Kent]     Who are you?

Mine eyes are not o’the best, I’ll tell you straight.

KENT     If Fortune brag of two she loved and hated,

One of them we behold.

LEAR     FThis is a dull sight:F are you not Kent?

KENT     The same;

280

Your servant Kent; where is your Servant Caius?

LEAR   He’s a good fellow, I can tell FyouF that;

He’ll strike and quickly too. He’s dead and rotten.

KENT     No, my good lord, I am the very man –

LEAR     I’ll see that straight.

285

KENT     That from your first of difference and decay

Have followed your sad steps –

LEAR       You’re welcome hither.

KENT

Nor no man else. All’s cheerless, dark and deadly;

Your eldest daughters have fordone themselves

And desperately are dead.

LEAR     Ay, so I think.

290

ALBANY     He knows not what he says and vain is it

That we present us to him.

Enter a Messenger.

EDGAR     Very bootless.

MESSENGER [to Albany] Edmund is dead, my lord.

ALBANY     That’s but a trifle here.

You lords and noble friends, know our intent:

295

What comfort to this FgreatF decay may come

Shall be applied. For us, we will resign

During the life of this old majesty

To him our absolute power;

[to Edgar and Kent]     you to your rights,

With boot and such addition as your honours

300

Have more than merited. All friends shall taste

The wages of their virtue and all foes

The cup of their deservings. O, see, see!

LEAR     And my poor fool is hanged. No, no, FnoF life!

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life

305

And thou no breath at all? Q OQ thou’lt come no more,

Never, never, never, Fnever, never.F

[to Edgar?] Pray you undo this button. Thank you, sir. Q O, o, o, o.Q

FDo you see this? Look on her: look, her lips,

Look there, look there! [He dies.F]

EDGAR     He faints: my lord, my lord!

310

KENT     Break, heart, I prithee break.

EDGAR     Look up, my lord.

KENT

Vex not his ghost; O, let him pass. He hates him

That would upon the rack of this tough world

Stretch him out longer.

EDGAR Q OQ he is gone indeed.

KENT     The wonder is he hath endured so long;

315

He but usurped his life.

ALBANY     Bear them from hence. Our present business

Is Q toQ general woe.

[to Edgar and Kent] Friends of my soul, you twain,

Rule in this realm and the gored state sustain.

KENT I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;

320

My master calls me, I must not say no.

EDGAR     The weight of this sad time we must obey,

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

The oldest hath borne most; we that are young

Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

325

FExeunt with a dead march.F

King Richard II

When this play first appeared in print in 1597 under the title The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, the episode showing Richard relinquishing his crown to Bolingbroke in 4.1 was omitted, as it was in subsequent editions until 1608. Scholars assume that this was because the deposition of a king was an inflammatory topic in Elizabethan England, and that the printed texts of the play (though not, apparently, the performances) were subject to political censorship. Such an assumption is supported by an anecdote recorded by William Lambarde in which Queen Elizabeth compared herself to Richard II, and by the incident in 1601 when the Earl of Essex paid for a special performance of a Richard II play, most likely Shakespeare’s, on the eve of his abortive rebellion, presumably hoping it would incite people to assist him in deposing the Queen.

Despite the fact that one of the Globe shareholders described King Richard II in 1601 as ‘so old and so long out of use that they should have small or no company at it’, the play is usually dated around 1595, partly because it makes use of Samuel Daniel’s The Civil Wars, of which the first four books were published that year. It must also have preceded the King Henry IV plays, which are dated 1596-7 on circumstantial evidence. The main source is Raphael Holinshed’s account of the last two years of Richard’s reign in his Chronicles, of which Shakespeare used the 1587 edition. He seems also to have consulted the translation of Froissart’s Chronicles by John Bouchier, Lord Berners, and possibly the anonymous play Woodstock (c. 1592–3) which focuses on the murder of the Duke of Gloucester (called ‘Woodstock’ by John of Gaunt in King Richard II at 1.2.1).

While King Richard II is the first of Shakespeare’s second tetralogy on English history, it goes back in time to the beginning of the events that led to the Wars of the Roses. In the first tetralogy, consisting of the three King Henry VI plays and King Richard III, Shakespeare had previously dramatized history from the death of Henry V through the long period of contention between the Houses of York and Lancaster to the death of Richard III and the establishment of the Tudor dynasty with the accession of Henry VII after the battle of Bosworth. The second tetralogy, consisting of King Richard II, the King Henry IV plays and King Henry V, forms a kind of extended prequel to the first by showing the deposition of Richard II and the usurpation of the throne by Henry Bolingbroke (who became Henry IV), Henry IV’s problems with incipient rebellion, and his son Henry V’s solution to the problem of unrest at home by taking his father’s advice to ‘busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels’ (2 Henry IV 4.5.213-14). As the final Chorus of King Henry V reminds us, this solution turns out to be a temporary one.

King Richard II seems to have been a popular play before the Civil War but ran into censorship problems during the Restoration and was little performed in the eighteenth century. In 1815 Edmund Kean reintroduced the play to the London stage, presenting Richard as a tragic hero rather than as an incompetent king, and interpretations of this kind, sometimes ending with the death of Richard, dominated the nineteenth century. As in the case of Hamlet, the twentieth century broadly continued this focus on the psychology of the individual hero at the expense of the play’s political issues.

The Arden text is based on the 1597 First Quarto, with the addition of the deposition scene (4.1.162–318) from the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

King RICHARD the Second

John of GAUNT, Duke of Lancaster

uncle to the King

Henry BOLINGBROKE, Duke of Hereford

son to John of Gaunt, afterwards King Henry IV

Thomas MOWBRAY, Duke of Norfolk

The DUCHESS of Gloucester

widow to Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester

The Lord MARSHAL

The Duke of AUMERLE

son to the Duke of York

Two HERALDS

Sir Henry GREENE

Sir John BUSHY

Sir John BAGOT

EDMUND of Langley, Duke of YORK

uncle to the King

Henry Percy, Earl of NORTHUMBERLAND

Lord ROSS

Lord WILLOUGHBY

Isabel, QUEEN

to King Richard

The Duke of York’s SERVINGMAN

Harry PERCY

surnamed Hotspur, son to the Earl of Northumberland

Lord BERKELEY

The Earl of SALISBURY

A Welsh CAPTAIN

The Bishop of CARLISLE

Sir Stephen SCROOPE

Two LADIES

attendant upon Queen Isabel

GARDENER

His MAN

Lord FITZWATER

LORD

The Duke of SURREY

The ABBOT of Westminster

The DUCHESS OF YORK

Sir Piers EXTON

His SERVANT

GROOM

of the stable to King Richard

The KEEPER

of the prison at Pomfret

Guards, Soldiers and Servants

1.1 Enter KING RICHARD, JOHN OF GAUNT, with other nobles and attendants.

RICHARD     Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster,

Hast thou according to thy oath and band

Brought hither Henry Herford thy bold son,

Here to make good the boist’rous late appeal,

Which then our leisure would not let us hear,

5

Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?

GAUNT I have, my liege.

RICHARD     Tell me, moreover, hast thou sounded him,

If he appeal the Duke on ancient malice,

Or worthily as a good subject should

10

On some known ground of treachery in him?

GAUNT     As near as I could sift him on that argument,

On some apparent danger seen in him,

Aim’d at your Highness, no inveterate malice.

RICHARD     Then call them to our presence; face to face,

15

And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear

The accuser and the accused freely speak.

High-stomach’d are they both and full of ire,

In rage, deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.

Enter BOLINGBROKE and MOWBRAY.

BOLINGBROKE     Many years of happy days befall

20

My gracious sovereign, my most loving liege!

MOWBRAY     Each day still better other’s happiness

Until the heavens, envying earth’s good hap,

Add an immortal title to your crown!

RICHARD     We thank you both, yet one but flatters us,

25

As well appeareth by the cause you come,

Namely, to appeal each other of high treason:

Cousin of Herford, what dost thou object

Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?

BOLINGBROKE

First – heaven be the record to my speech!

30

In the devotion of a subject’s love,

Tend’ring the precious safety of my prince,

And free from other misbegotten hate,

Come I appellant to this princely presence.

Now Thomas Mowbray do I turn to thee,

35

And mark my greeting well; for what I speak

My body shall make good upon this earth,

Or my divine soul answer it in heaven.

Thou art a traitor and a miscreant,

Too good to be so, and too bad to live,

40

Since the more fair and crystal is the sky,

The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly;

Once more, the more to aggravate the note,

With a foul traitor’s name stuff I thy throat,

And wish – so please my sovereign – ere I move,

45

What my tongue speaks my right drawn sword may prove.

MOWBRAY     Let not my cold words here accuse my zeal.

’Tis not the trial of a woman’s war,

The bitter clamour of two eager tongues,

Can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain;

50

The blood is hot that must be cool’d for this.

Yet can I not of such tame patience boast

As to be hush’d and nought at all to say.

First, the fair reverence of your Highness curbs me

From giving reins and spurs to my free speech,

55

Which else would post until it had return’d

These terms of treason doubled down his throat;

Setting aside his high blood’s royalty,

And let him be no kinsman to my liege,

I do defy him, and I spit at him,

60

Call him a slanderous coward, and a villain,

Which to maintain I would allow him odds,

And meet him were I tied to run afoot

Even to the frozen ridges of the Alps,

Or any other ground inhabitable

65

Where ever Englishman durst set his foot.

Meantime, let this defend my loyalty –

By all my hopes most falsely doth he lie.

BOLINGBROKE

Pale trembling coward, there I throw my gage,

Disclaiming here the kindred of the king,

70

And lay aside my high blood’s royalty,

Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except.

If guilty dread have left thee so much strength

As to take up mine honour’s pawn, then stoop.

By that, and all the rites of knighthood else,

75

Will I make good against thee, arm to arm,

What I have spoke, or thou canst worse devise.

MOWBRAY I take it up; and by that sword I swear,

Which gently laid my knighthood on my shoulder,

I’ll answer thee in any fair degree

80

Or chivalrous design of knightly trial;

And when I mount, alive may I not light,

If I be traitor or unjustly fight!

RICHARD

What doth our cousin lay to Mowbray’s charge?

It must be great that can inherit us

85

So much as of a thought of ill in him.

BOLINGBROKE

Look what I speak, my life shall prove it true:

That Mowbray hath receiv’d eight thousand nobles

In name of lendings for your Highness’ soldiers,

The which he hath detain’d for lewd imployments,

90

Like a false traitor, and injurious villain;

Besides I say, and will in battle prove,

Or here, or elsewhere to the furthest verge

That ever was survey’d by English eye,

That all the treasons for these eighteen years

95

Complotted and contrived in this land

Fetch from false Mowbray their first head and spring;

Further I say, and further will maintain

Upon his bad life to make all this good,

That he did plot the Duke of Gloucester’s death,

100

Suggest his soon-believing adversaries,

And consequently, like a traitor coward,

Sluic’d out his innocent soul through streams of blood,

Which blood, like sacrificing Abel’s, cries

Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth

105

To me for justice and rough chastisement;

And, by the glorious worth of my descent,

This arm shall do it, or this life be spent.

RICHARD     How high a pitch his resolution soars!

Thomas of Norfolk, what say’st thou to this?

110

MOWBRAY O, let my sovereign turn away his face,

And bid his ears a little while be deaf,

Till I have told this slander of his blood

How God and good men hate so foul a liar.

RICHARD     Mowbray, impartial are our eyes and ears.

115

Were he my brother, nay, my kingdom’s heir,

As he is but my father’s brother’s son,

Now by my sceptre’s awe I make a vow,

Such neighbour nearness to our sacred blood

Should nothing privilege him nor partialize

120

The unstooping firmness of my upright soul.

He is our subject, Mowbray; so art thou:

Free speech and fearless I to thee allow.

MOWBRAY     Then, Bolingbroke, as low as to thy heart

Through the false passage of thy throat thou liest.

125

Three parts of that receipt I had for Callice

Disburs’d I duly to his Highness’ soldiers;

The other part reserv’d I by consent,

For that my sovereign liege was in my debt

Upon remainder of a dear account

130

Since last I went to France to fetch his queen:

Now swallow down that lie. For Gloucester’s death,

I slew him not, but to my own disgrace

Neglected my sworn duty in that case.

For you, my noble lord of Lancaster,

135

The honourable father to my foe,

Once did I lay an ambush for your life,

A trespass that doth vex my grieved soul;

But ere I last receiv’d the sacrament,

I did confess it, and exactly begg’d

140

Your grace’s pardon, and I hope I had it.

This is my fault – as for the rest appeal’d,

It issues from the rancour of a villain,

A recreant and most degenerate traitor,

Which in myself I boldly will defend,

145

And interchangeably hurl down my gage

Upon this overweening traitor’s foot,

To prove myself a loyal gentleman

Even in the best blood chamber’d in his bosom.

In haste whereof most heartily I pray

150

Your Highness to assign our trial day.

RICHARD     Wrath-kindled gentlemen, be rul’d by me,

Let’s purge this choler without letting blood –

This we prescribe, though no physician;

Deep malice makes too deep incision.

155

Forget, forgive, conclude and be agreed:

Our doctors say this is no month to bleed.

Good uncle, let this end where it begun;

We’ll calm the Duke of Norfolk, you your son.

GAUNT     To be a make-peace shall become my age.

160

Throw down, my son, the Duke of Norfolk’s gage.

RICHARD     And, Norfolk, throw down his.

GAUNT     When, Harry, when?

Obedience bids I should not bid again.

RICHARD     Norfolk, throw down we bid, there is no boot.

MOWBRAY     Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot;

165

My life thou shalt command, but not my shame:

The one my duty owes, but my fair name,

Despite of death, that lives upon my grave,

To dark dishonour’s use thou shalt not have.

I am disgrac’d, impeach’d, and baffl’d here,

170

Pierc’d to the soul with slander’s venom’d spear,

The which no balm can cure but his heart-blood

Which breath’d this poison.

RICHARD     Rage must be withstood:

Give me his gage; lions make leopards tame.

MOWBRAY

Yea, but not change his spots. Take but my shame,

175

And I resign my gage. My dear dear lord,

The purest treasure mortal times afford

Is spotless reputation – that away,

Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay.

A jewel in a ten-times barr’d-up chest

180

Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.

Mine honour is my life, both grow in one,

Take honour from me, and my life is done.

Then, dear my liege, mine honour let me try;

In that I live, and for that will I die.

185

RICHARD     Cousin, throw up your gage, do you begin.

BOLINGBROKE

O God defend my soul from such deep sin!

Shall I seem crest-fallen in my father’s sight?

Or with pale beggar-fear impeach my height

Before this out-dar’d dastard? Ere my tongue

190

Shall wound my honour with such feeble wrong,

Or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear

The slavish motive of recanting fear,

And spit it bleeding in his high disgrace,

Where shame doth harbour, even in Mowbray’s face.

195

RICHARD     We were not born to sue, but to command;

Which since we cannot do to make you friends,

Be ready, as your lives shall answer it,

At Coventry upon Saint Lambert’s day.

There shall your swords and lances arbitrate

200

The swelling difference of your settled hate.

Since we cannot atone you, we shall see

Justice design the victor’s chivalry.

Marshal, command our officers-at-arms

Be ready to direct these home alarms.     Exeunt.

205

1.2 Enter JOHN OF GAUNT with the DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER.

GAUNT     Alas, the part I had in Woodstock’s blood

Doth more solicit me than your exclaims

To stir against the butchers of his life;

But since correction lieth in those hands

Which made the fault that we cannot correct,

5

Put we our quarrel to the will of heaven,

Who, when they see the hours ripe on earth,

Will rain hot vengeance on offenders’ heads.

DUCHESS     Finds brotherhood in thee no sharper spur?

Hath love in thy old blood no living fire?

10

Edward’s seven sons, whereof thyself art one,

Were as seven vials of his sacred blood,

Or seven fair branches springing from one root.

Some of those seven are dried by nature’s course,

Some of those branches by the Destinies cut;

15

But Thomas my dear lord, my life, my Gloucester,

One vial full of Edward’s sacred blood,

One flourishing branch of his most royal root,

Is crack’d, and all the precious liquor spilt,

Is hack’d down, and his summer leaves all faded,

20

By envy’s hand, and murder’s bloody axe.

Ah, Gaunt, his blood was thine! that bed, that womb,

That mettle, that self mould, that fashioned thee

Made him a man; and though thou livest and breathest,

Yet art thou slain in him; thou dost consent

25

In some large measure to thy father’s death

In that thou seest thy wretched brother die,

Who was the model of thy father’s life.

Call it not patience, Gaunt, it is despair;

In suff’ring thus thy brother to be slaught’red,

30

Thou showest the naked pathway to thy life,

Teaching stern murder how to butcher thee.

That which in mean men we intitle patience

Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.

What shall I say? to safeguard thine own life,

35

The best way is to venge my Gloucester’s death.

GAUNT     God’s is the quarrel – for God’s substitute,

His deputy anointed in His sight,

Hath caus’d his death; the which if wrongfully,

Let heaven revenge, for I may never lift

40

An angry arm against His minister.

DUCHESS     Where then, alas, may I complain myself?

GAUNT     To God, the widow’s champion and defence.

DUCHESS     Why then, I will. Farewell, old Gaunt.

Thou goest to Coventry, there to behold

45

Our cousin Herford and fell Mowbray fight.

O, sit my husband’s wrongs on Herford’s spear,

That it may enter butcher Mowbray’s breast!

Or if misfortune miss the first career,

Be Mowbray’s sins so heavy in his bosom

50

That they may break his foaming courser’s back

And throw the rider headlong in the lists,

A caitive recreant to my cousin Herford!

Farewell, old Gaunt; thy sometimes brother’s wife

With her companion, grief, must end her life.

55

GAUNT     Sister, farewell; I must to Coventry,

As much good stay with thee as go with me!

DUCHESS

Yet one word more – grief boundeth where it falls,

Not with the empty hollowness, but weight.

I take my leave before I have begun,

60

For sorrow ends not when it seemeth done.

Commend me to thy brother Edmund York.

Lo, this is all – nay, yet depart not so,

Though this be all, do not so quickly go;

I shall remember more. Bid him – ah, what? –

65

With all good speed at Plashy visit me.

Alack, and what shall good old York there see

But empty lodgings and unfurnish’d walls,

Unpeopled offices, untrodden stones,

And what hear there for welcome but my groans?

70

Therefore commend me; let him not come there

To seek out sorrow that dwells everywhere.

Desolate, desolate, will I hence and die:

The last leave of thee takes my weeping eye.     Exeunt.

1.3 Enter Lord Marshal and the DUKE AUMERLE.

MARSHAL     My Lord Aumerle, is Harry Herford arm’d?

AUMERLE     Yea, at all points, and longs to enter in.

MARSHAL     The Duke of Norfolk, sprightfully and bold,

Stays but the summons of the appellant’s trumpet.

AUMERLE

Why then, the champions are prepar’d, and stay

5

For nothing but his Majesty’s approach.

The trumpets sound and the KING enters with his nobles;

when they are set, enter MOWBRAY in arms, defendant.

RICHARD     Marshal, demand of yonder champion

The cause of his arrival here in arms,

Ask him his name, and orderly proceed

To swear him in the justice of his cause.

10

MARSHAL

In God’s name and the king’s, say who thou art,

And why thou comest thus knightly clad in arms,

Against what man thou com’st and what thy quarrel.

Speak truly on thy knighthood and thy oath,

As so defend thee heaven and thy valour!

15

MOWBRAY

My name is Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,

Who hither come ingaged by my oath

(Which God defend a knight should violate!)

Both to defend my loyalty and truth

To God, my king, and my succeeding issue,

20

Against the Duke of Herford that appeals me,

And by the grace of God, and this mine arm,

To prove him, in defending of myself,

A traitor to my God, my king, and me –

And as I truly fight, defend me heaven!

25

The trumpets sound. Enter BOLINGBROKE, appellant, in armour.

RICHARD     Marshal, demand of yonder knight in arms,

Both who he is, and why he cometh hither

Thus plated in habiliments of war;

And formally, according to our law,

Depose him in the justice of his cause.

30

MARSHAL

What is thy name? and wherefore com’st thou hither

Before King Richard in his royal lists?

Against whom comest thou? and what’s thy quarrel?

Speak like a true knight, so defend thee heaven!

BOLINGBROKE     Harry of Herford, Lancaster and Derby

35

Am I, who ready here do stand in arms

To prove by God’s grace, and my body’s valour

In lists, on Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,

That he’s a traitor foul and dangerous,

To God of heaven, King Richard and to me –

40

And as I truly fight, defend me heaven!

MARSHAL     On pain of death, no person be so bold

Or daring-hardy as to touch the lists,

Except the marshal and such officers

Appointed to direct these fair designs.

45

BOLINGBROKE

Lord Marshal, let me kiss my sovereign’s hand,

And bow my knee before his Majesty;

For Mowbray and myself are like two men

That vow a long and weary pilgrimage;

Then let us take a ceremonious leave

50

And loving farewell of our several friends.

MARSHAL

The appellant in all duty greets your Highness,

And craves to kiss your hand and take his leave.

RICHARD     We will descend and fold him in our arms.

Cousin of Herford, as thy cause is right,

55

So be thy fortune in this royal fight!

Farewell, my blood; which if to-day thou shed,

Lament we may, but not revenge thee dead.

BOLINGBROKE O, let no noble eye profane a tear

For me, if I be gor’d with Mowbray’s spear!

60

As confident as is the falcon’s flight

Against a bird, do I with Mowbray fight.

My loving lord, I take my leave of you;

Of you, my noble cousin, Lord Aumerle;

Not sick, although I have to do with death,

65

But lusty, young, and cheerly drawing breath.

Lo, as at English feasts, so I regreet

The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet.

O thou, the earthly author of my blood,

Whose youthful spirit in me regenerate

70

Doth with a twofold vigour lift me up

To reach at victory above my head,

Add proof unto mine armour with thy prayers,

And with thy blessings steel my lance’s point,

That it may enter Mowbray’s waxen coat,

75

And furbish new the name of John a Gaunt,

Even in the lusty haviour of his son.

GAUNT     God in thy good cause make thee prosperous,

Be swift like lightning in the execution,

And let thy blows, doubly redoubled,

80

Fall like amazing thunder on the casque

Of thy adverse pernicious enemy!

Rouse up thy youthful blood, be valiant and live.

BOLINGBROKE

Mine innocence and Saint George to thrive!

MOWBRAY     However God or Fortune cast my lot,

85

There lives or dies true to King Richard’s throne,

A loyal, just, and upright gentleman.

Never did captive with a freer heart

Cast off his chains of bondage, and embrace

His golden uncontroll’d enfranchisement,

90

More than my dancing soul doth celebrate

This feast of battle with mine adversary.

Most mighty liege, and my companion peers,

Take from my mouth the wish of happy years;

As gentle and as jocund as to jest

95

Go I to fight: truth hath a quiet breast.

RICHARD     Farewell, my lord, securely I espy

Virtue with valour couched in thine eye.

Order the trial, Marshal, and begin.

MARSHAL     Harry of Herford, Lancaster and Derby,

100

Receive thy lance, and God defend the right!

BOLINGBROKE     Strong as a tower in hope, I cry amen.

MARSHAL

Go bear this lance to Thomas, Duke of Norfolk.

1 HERALD     Harry of Herford, Lancaster and Derby,

Stands here, for God, his sovereign, and himself,

105

On pain to be found false and recreant,

To prove the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray,

A traitor to his God, his king, and him,

And dares him to set forward to the fight.

2 HERALD

Here standeth Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,

110

On pain to be found false and recreant,

Both to defend himself, and to approve

Henry of Herford, Lancaster and Derby,

To God, his sovereign, and to him disloyal,

Courageously, and with a free desire,

115

Attending but the signal to begin.

MARSHAL

Sound trumpets, and set forward, combatants.

[A charge sounded.]

Stay, the king hath thrown his warder down.

RICHARD

Let them lay by their helmets and their spears,

And both return back to their chairs again.

120

Withdraw with us, and let the trumpets sound,

While we return these dukes what we decree.

[A long flourish]

Draw near,

And list what with our council we have done.

For that our kingdom’s earth should not be soil’d

125

With that dear blood which it hath fostered;

And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect

Of civil wounds plough’d up with neighbours’ sword,

And for we think the eagle-winged pride

Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts,

130

With rival-hating envy, set on you

To wake our peace, which in our country’s cradle

Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep;

Which so rous’d up with boist’rous untun’d drums,

With harsh-resounding trumpets’ dreadful bray,

135

And grating shock of wrathful iron arms,

Might from our quiet confines fright fair peace,

And make us wade even in our kindred’s blood –

Therefore we banish you our territories.

You, cousin Herford, upon pain of life,

140

Till twice five summers have enrich’d our fields,

Shall not regreet our fair dominions,

But tread the stranger paths or banishment.

BOLINGBROKE

You will be done; this must my comfort be,

That sun that warms you here, shall shine on me,

145

And those his golden beams to you here lent

Shall point on me and gild my banishment.

RICHARD     Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom,

Which I with some unwillingness pronounce.

The sly slow hours shall not determinate

150

The dateless limit of thy dear exile;

The hopeless word of ‘never to return’

Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.

MOWBRAY     A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege,

And all unlook’d for from your Highness’ mouth;

155

A dearer merit, not so deep a maim

As to be cast forth in the common air,

Have I deserved at your Highness’ hands.

The language I have learnt these forty years,

My native English, now I must forgo,

160

And now my tongue’s use is to me no more

Than an unstringed viol or a harp,

Or like a cunning instrument cas’d up –

Or being open, put into his hands

That knows no touch to tune the harmony.

165

Within my mouth you have engaol’d my tongue,

Doubly portcullis’d with my teeth and lips,

And dull unfeeling barren ignorance

Is made my gaoler to attend on me.

I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,

170

Too far in years to be a pupil now:

What is thy sentence then but speechless death,

Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?

RICHARD     It boots thee not to be compassionate;

After our sentence plaining comes too late.

175

MOWBRAY

Then thus I turn me from my country’s light,

To dwell in solemn shades of endless night.

RICHARD     Return again, and take an oath with thee.

Lay on our royal sword your banish’d hands,

Swear by the duty that you owe to God –

180

Our part therein we banish with yourselves –

To keep the oath that we administer:

You never shall, so help you truth and God,

Embrace each other’s love in banishment,

Nor never look upon each other’s face,

185

Nor never write, regreet, nor reconcile

This louring tempest of your home-bred hate,

Nor never by advised purpose meet

To plot, contrive, or complot any ill

’Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.

190

BOLINGBROKE I swear.

MOWBRAY     And I, to keep all this.

BOLINGBROKE     Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy:

By this time, had the king permitted us,

One of our souls had wand’red in the air,

195

Banish’d this frail sepulchre of our flesh,

As now our flesh is banish’d from this land –

Confess thy treasons ere thou fly the realm;

Since thou hast far to go, bear not along

The clogging burthen of a guilty soul.

200

MOWBRAY     No, Bolingbroke, if ever I were traitor,

My name be blotted from the book of life,

And I from heaven banish’d as from hence!

But what thou art, God, thou, and I do know,

And all too soon, I fear, the king shall rue.

205

Farewell, my liege. Now no way can I stray –

Save back to England all the world’s my way.     Exit.

RICHARD     Uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes

I see thy grieved heart. Thy sad aspect

Hath from the number of his banish’d years

210

Pluck’d four away.

[to Bolingbroke] Six frozen winters spent,

Return with welcome home from banishment.

BOLINGBROKE     How long a time lies in one little word!

Four lagging winters and four wanton springs

End in a word: such is the breath of kings.

215

GAUNT     I thank my liege that in regard of me

He shortens four years of my son’s exile,

But little vantage shall I reap thereby;

For ere the six years that he hath to spend

Can change their moons, and bring their times about,

220

My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light

Shall be extinct with age and endless night,

My inch of taper will be burnt and done,

And blindfold Death not let me see my son.

RICHARD     Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live.

225

GAUNT     But not a minute, king, that thou canst give:

Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow,

And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow;

Thou canst help time to furrow me with age,

But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage;

230

Thy word is current with him for my death,

But dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath.

RICHARD     Thy son is banish’d upon good advice,

Whereto thy tongue a party-verdict gave:

Why at our justice seem’st thou then to lour?

235

GAUNT     Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.

You urg’d me as a judge, but I had rather

You would have bid me argue like a father.

O, had it been a stranger, not my child,

To smooth his fault I should have been more mild.

240

A partial slander sought I to avoid,

And in the sentence my own life destroy’d.

Alas, I look’d when some of you should say

I was too strict to make mine own away;

But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue

245

Against my will to do myself this wrong.

RICHARD     Cousin, farewell – and uncle, bid him so,

Six years we banish him and he shall go.

Flourish. Exeunt King Richard and train.

AUMERLE     Cousin, farewell; what presence must not know,

From where you do remain let paper show.

250

MARSHAL     My lord, no leave take I, for I will ride

As far as land will let me by your side.

GAUNT     O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words,

That thou returnest no greeting to thy friends?

BOLINGBROKE I have too few to take my leave of you,

255

When the tongue’s office should be prodigal

To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.

GAUNT     Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.

BOLINGBROKE     Joy absent, grief is present for that time.

GAUNT     What is six winters? they are quickly gone –

260

BOLINGBROKE

To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.

GAUNT     Call it a travel that thou tak’st for pleasure.

BOLINGBROKE     My heart will sigh when I miscall it so,

Which finds it an inforced pilgrimage.

GAUNT     The sullen passage of thy weary steps

265

Esteem as foil wherein thou art to set

The precious jewel of thy home return.

BOLINGBROKE     Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make

Will but remember me what a deal of world

I wander from the jewels that I love.

270

Must I not serve a long apprenticehood

To foreign passages, and in the end,

Having my freedom, boast of nothing else

But that I was a journeyman to grief?

GAUNT     All places that the eye of heaven visits

275

Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.

Teach thy necessity to reason thus –

There is no virtue like necessity.

Think not the king did banish thee,

But thou the king. Woe doth the heavier sit

280

Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.

Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour,

And not the king exil’d thee; or suppose

Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,

And thou art flying to a fresher clime.

285

Look what thy soul holds dear, imagine it

To lie that way thou goest, not whence thou com’st.

Suppose the singing birds musicians,

The grass whereon thou tread’st the presence strew’d,

The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more

290

Than a delightful measure or a dance;

For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite

The man that mocks at it and sets it light.

BOLINGBROKE O, who can hold a fire in his hand

By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?

295

Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite

By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow

By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?

O no, the apprehension of the good

300

Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.

Fell sorrow’s tooth doth never rankle more

Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore.

GAUNT     Come, come, my son, I’ll bring thee on thy way,

Had I thy youth and cause, I would not stay.

305

BOLINGBROKE

Then, England’s ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu,

My mother and my nurse that bears me yet!

Where’er I wander boast of this I can,

Though banish’d, yet a true-born Englishman.

Exeunt.

1.4 Enter the KING with BAGOT and GREENE at one door; and the LORD AUMERLE at another.

RICHARD     We did observe. Cousin Aumerle,

How far brought you high Herford on his way?

AUMERLE I brought high Herford, if you call him so,

But to the next highway, and there I left him.

RICHARD

And say, what store of parting tears were shed?

5

AUMERLE

Faith, none for me, except the north-east wind,

Which then blew bitterly against our faces,

Awak’d the sleeping rheum, and so by chance

Did grace our hollow parting with a tear.

RICHARD

What said our cousin when you parted with him?

10

AUMERLE     ‘Farewell’ –

And, for my heart disdained that my tongue

Should so profane the word, that taught me craft

To counterfeit oppression of such grief

That words seem’d buried in my sorrow’s grave.

15

Marry, would the word ‘farewell’ have length’ned hours

And added years to his short banishment,

He should have had a volume of farewells;

But since it would not, he had none of me.

RICHARD     He is our cousin, cousin, but ’tis doubt,

20

When time shall call him home from banishment,

Whether our kinsman come to see his friends.

Ourself and Bushy

Observ’d his courtship to the common people,

How he did seem to dive into their hearts

25

With humble and familiar courtesy;

What reverence he did throw away on slaves,

Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles

And patient underbearing of his fortune,

As ’twere to banish their affects with him.

30

Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;

A brace of draymen bid God speed him well,

And had the tribute of his supple knee,

With ‘Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends’ –

As were our England in reversion his,

35

And he our subjects’ next degree in hope.

GREENE

Well, he is gone; and with him go these thoughts.

Now for the rebels which stand out in Ireland,

Expedient manage must be made, my liege,

Ere further leisure yield them further means

40

For their advantage and your Highness’ loss.

RICHARD     We will ourself in person to this war;

And for our coffers, with too great a court

And liberal largess, are grown somewhat light,

We are inforc’d to farm our royal realm,

45

The revenue whereof shall furnish us

For our affairs in hand. If that come short,

Our substitutes at home shall have blank charters,

Whereto, when they shall know what men are rich,

They shall subscribe them for large sums of gold,

50

And send them after to supply our wants;

For we will make for Ireland presently.

Enter BUSHY.

Bushy, what news?

BUSHY     Old John of Gaunt is grievous sick, my lord,

Suddenly taken, and hath sent post-haste

55

To intreat your Majesty to visit him.

RICHARD     Where lies he?

BUSHY     At Ely House.

RICHARD     Now put it, God, in the physician’s mind

To help him to his grave immediately!

60

The lining of his coffers shall make coats

To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars.

Come, gentlemen, let’s all go visit him,

Pray God we may make haste and come too late!

ALL     Amen.      Exeunt.

65

2.1 Enter JOHN OF GAUNT sick, with the DUKE OF YORK, etc.

GAUNT     Will the king come that I may breathe my last

In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth?

YORK

Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath;

For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.

GAUNT     O, but they say the tongues of dying men

5

Inforce attention like deep harmony.

Where words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain,

For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.

He that no more must say is listened more

Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;

10

More are men’s ends mark’d than their lives before.

The setting sun, and music at the close,

As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,

Writ in remembrance more than things long past:

Though Richard my life’s counsel would not hear,

15

My death’s sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.

YORK     No, it is stopp’d with other flattering sounds,

As praises, of whose taste the wise are fond,

Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound

The open ear of youth doth always listen,

20

Report of fashions in proud Italy,

Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation

Limps after in base imitation.

Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity –

So it be new, there’s no respect how vile –

25

That is not quickly buzz’d into his ears?

Then all too late comes counsel to be heard,

Where will doth mutiny with wit’s regard.

Direct not him whose way himself will choose:

’Tis breath thou lack’st and that breath wilt thou lose.

30

GAUNT     Methinks I am a prophet new inspir’d,

And thus expiring do foretell of him:

His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last.

For violent fires soon burn out themselves;

Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;

35

He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;

With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder;

Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,

Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.

This royal throne of kings, this scept’red isle,

40

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

45

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall,

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands;

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

50

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,

Fear’d by their breed, and famous by their birth,

Renowned for their deeds as far from home,

For Christian service and true chivalry,

As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry

55

Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s son;

This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,

Dear for her reputation through the world,

Is now leas’d out – I die pronouncing it –

Like to a tenement or pelting farm.

60

England, bound in with the triumphant sea,

Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege

Of wat’ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame,

With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds;

That England, that was wont to conquer others,

65

Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,

How happy then were my ensuing death!

Enter KING, QUEEN, AUMERLE, BUSHY, GREENE, BAGOT, ROSS and WILLOUGHBY.

YORK     The king is come, deal mildly with his youth,

For young hot colts being rein’d do rage the more.

70

QUEEN     How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster?

RICHARD

What comfort, man? how is’t with aged Gaunt?

GAUNT     O, how that name befits my composition!

Old Gaunt indeed, and gaunt in being old.

Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast,

75

And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt?

For sleeping England long time have I watch’d,

Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt.

The pleasure that some fathers feed upon

Is my strict fast – I mean my children’s looks,

80

And therein fasting hast thou made me gaunt.

GAUNT     am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,

Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.

RICHARD     Can sick men play so nicely with their names?

GAUNT     No, misery makes sport to mock itself:

85

Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,

I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.

RICHARD     Should dying men flatter with those that live?

GAUNT     No, no, men living flatter those that die.

RICHARD     Thou now a-dying sayest thou flatterest me.

90

GAUNT     Oh no, thou diest, though I the sicker be.

RICHARD     I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill.

GAUNT     Now He that made me knows I see thee ill,

Ill in myself to see, and in thee, seeing ill.

Thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land,

95

Wherein thou liest in reputation sick,

And thou, too careless patient as thou art,

Commit’st thy anointed body to the cure

Of those physicians that first wounded thee:

A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,

100

Whose compass is no bigger than thy head,

And yet, incaged in so small a verge,

The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.

O, had thy grandsire with a prophet’s eye

Seen how his son’s son should destroy his sons,

105

From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,

Deposing thee before thou wert possess’d,

Which art possess’d now to depose thyself.

Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world,

It were a shame to let this land by lease;

110

But for thy world enjoying but this land,

Is it not more than shame to shame it so?

Landlord of England art thou now, not king,

Thy state of law is bondslave to the law,

And thou –

RICHARD     A lunatic lean-witted fool,

115

Presuming on an ague’s privilege,

Darest with thy frozen admonition

Make pale our cheek, chasing the royal blood

With fury from his native residence.

Now by my seat’s right royal majesty,

120

Wert thou not brother to great Edward’s son,

This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head

Should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders.

GAUNT     O, spare me not, my brother Edward’s son,

For that I was his father Edward’s son;

125

That blood already, like the pelican,

Hast thou tapp’d out and drunkenly carous’d:

My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul,

Whom fair befall in heaven ’mongst happy souls,

May be a president and witness good

130

That thou respect’st not spilling Edward’s blood.

Join with the present sickness that I have,

And thy unkindness be like crooked age,

To crop at once a too long withered flower.

Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!

135

These words hereafter thy tormentors be!

Convey me to my bed, then to my grave –

Love they to live that love and honour have.     Exit.

RICHARD     And let them die that age and sullens have,

For both hast thou, and both become the grave.

140

YORK     I do beseech your Majesty, impute his words

To wayward sickliness and age in him;

He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear,

As Harry Duke of Herford, were he here.

RICHARD     Right, you say true; as Herford’s love, so his;

145

As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.

Enter NORTHUMBERLAND.

NORTHUMBERLAND

My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your Majesty.

RICHARD     What says he?

NORTHUMBERLAND     Nay nothing, all is said:

His tongue is now a stringless instrument;

Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent.

150

YORK     Be York the next that must be bankrout so!

Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.

RICHARD     The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he;

His time is spent, our pilgrimage must be.

So much for that. Now for our Irish wars:

155

We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns,

Which live like venom where no venom else,

But only they, have privilege to live.

And for these great affairs do ask some charge,

Towards our assistance we do seize to us

160

The plate, coin, revenues, and moveables,

Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess’d.

YORK     How long shall I be patient? ah, how long

Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?

Not Gloucester’s death, nor Herford’s banishment,

165

Nor Gaunt’s rebukes, nor England’s private wrongs,

Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke

About his marriage, nor my own disgrace,

Have ever made me sour my patient cheek,

Or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign’s face.

170

I am the last of noble Edward’s sons,

Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first.

In war was never lion rag’d more fierce,

In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,

Than was that young and princely gentleman.

175

His face thou hast, for even so look’d he,

Accomplish’d with the number of thy hours;

But when he frown’d it was against the French,

And not against his friends; his noble hand

Did win what he did spend, and spent not that

180

Which his triumphant father’s hand had won;

His hands were guilty of no kindred blood,

But bloody with the enemies of his kin.

O Richard! York is too far gone with grief,

Or else he never would compare between –

185

RICHARD     Why, uncle, what’s the matter?

YORK     O my liege,

Pardon me, if you please; if not, I pleas’d

Not to be pardoned, am content withal.

Seek you to seize and gripe into your hands

The royalties and rights of banish’d Herford?

190

Is not Gaunt dead? and doth not Herford live?

Was not Gaunt just? and is not Harry true?

Did not the one deserve to have an heir?

Is not his heir a well-deserving son?

Take Herford’s rights away, and take from time

195

His charters, and his customary rights;

Let not to-morrow then ensue to-day:

Be not thyself. For how art thou a king

But by fair sequence and succession?

Now afore God – God forbid I say true! –

200

If you do wrongfully seize Herford’s rights,

Call in the letters patents that he hath

By his attorneys-general to sue

His livery, and deny his off ’red homage,

You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,

205

You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts,

And prick my tender patience to those thoughts

Which honour and allegiance cannot think.

RICHARD     Think what you will, we seize into our hands

His plate, his goods, his money and his lands.

210

GAUNT     I’ll not be by the while. My liege, farewell.

What will ensue hereof there’s none can tell;

But by bad courses may be understood

That their events can never fall out good.     Exit.

RICHARD     Go, Bushy, to the Earl of Wiltshire straight,

215

Bid him repair to us to Ely House

To see this business. To-morrow next

We will for Ireland, and ’tis time, I trow.

And we create, in absence of ourself,

Our uncle York Lord Governor of England;

220

For he is just, and always loved us well.

Come on, our queen, to-morrow must we part;

Be merry, for our time of stay is short.

Exeunt King, Queen, Aumerle, Bushy, Greene and Bagot.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Well, lords, the Duke of Lancaster is dead.

ROSS     And living too, for now his son is Duke.

225

WILLOUGHBY     Barely in title, not in revenues.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Richly in both, if justice had her right.

ROSS     My heart is great, but it must break with silence,

Ere’t be disburdened with a liberal tongue.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Nay, speak thy mind, and let him ne’er speak more

230

That speaks thy words again to do thee harm.

WILLOUGHBY

Tends that that thou wouldst speak to the Duke of Herford?

If it be so, out with it boldly, man;

Quick is mine ear to hear of good towards him.

ROSS     No good at all that I can do for him,

235

Unless you call it good to pity him,

Bereft, and gelded of his patrimony.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Now afore God ’tis shame such wrongs are borne

In him, a royal prince, and many mo

Of noble blood in this declining land;

240

The king is not himself, but basely led

By flatterers; and what they will inform,

Merely in hate, ’gainst any of us all,

That will the king severely prosecute

’Gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs.

245

ROSS     The commons hath he pill’d with grievous taxes,

And quite lost their hearts. The nobles hath he fin’d

For ancient quarrels and quite lost their hearts.

WILLOUGHBY     And daily new exactions are devis’d.

As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what –

250

But what a God’s name doth become of this?

NORTHUMBERLAND

Wars hath not wasted it, for warr’d he hath not,

But basely yielded upon compromise

That which his ancestors achiev’d with blows;

More hath he spent in peace than they in wars.

255

ROSS     The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.

WILLOUGHBY

The king’s grown bankrout like a broken man.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Reproach and dissolution hangeth over him.

ROSS     He hath not money for these Irish wars,

His burthenous taxations notwithstanding,

260

But by the robbing of the banish’d Duke.

NORTHUMBERLAND

His noble kinsman – most degenerate king!

But, lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,

Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm;

We see the wind sit sore upon our sails,

265

And yet we strike not, but securely perish.

ROSS     We see the very wrack that we must suffer,

And unavoided is the danger now,

For suffering so the causes of our wrack.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Not so, even through the hollow eyes of death

270

I spy life peering; but I dare not say

How near the tidings of our comfort is.

WILLOUGHBY

Nay, let us share thy thoughts as thou dost ours.

ROSS     Be confident to speak, Northumberland:

We three are but thyself, and, speaking so,

275

Thy words are but as thoughts; therefore be bold.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Then thus: I have from le Port Blanc,

A bay in Brittaine, receiv’d intelligence

That Harry Duke of Herford, Rainold Lord Cobham,

The son of Richard Earl of Arundel,

280

That late broke from the Duke of Exeter,

His brother, Archbishop late of Canterbury,

Sir Thomas Erpingham, Sir John Ramston,

Sir John Norbery, Sir Robert Waterton, and Francis Quoint –

All these well furnished by the Duke of Brittaine

285

With eight tall ships, three thousand men of war,

Are making hither with all due expedience,

And shortly mean to touch our northern shore.

Perhaps they had ere this, but that they stay

The first departing of the king for Ireland.

290

If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke,

Imp out our drooping country’s broken wing,

Redeem from broking pawn the blemish’d crown,

Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre’s gilt,

And make high majesty look like itself,

295

Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh;

But if you faint, as fearing to do so,

Stay, and be secret, and myself will go.

ROSS     To horse, to horse! urge doubts to them that fear.

WILLOUGHBY

Hold out my horse, and I will first be there.     Exeunt.

300

2.2 Enter the QUEEN, BUSHY and BAGOT.

BUSHY     Madam, your Majesty is too much sad.

You promis’d, when you parted with the king,

To lay aside life-harming heaviness,

And entertain a cheerful disposition.

QUEEN     To please the king I did – to please myself

5

I cannot do it; yet I know no cause

Why I should welcome such a guest as grief,

Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest

As my sweet Richard. Yet again methinks

Some unborn sorrow ripe in Fortune’s womb

10

Is coming towards me, and my inward soul

With nothing trembles; at some thing it grieves,

More than with parting from my lord the king.

BUSHY     Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,

Which shows like grief itself, but is not so.

15

For sorrow’s eye, glazed with blinding tears,

Divides one thing entire to many objects,

Like perspectives, which, rightly gaz’d upon,

Show nothing but confusion; ey’d awry,

Distinguish form. So your sweet Majesty,

20

Looking awry upon your lord’s departure,

Find shapes of grief more than himself to wail,

Which, look’d on as it is, is nought but shadows

Of what it is not; then, thrice-gracious queen,

More than your lord’s departure weep not – more’s not seen,

25

Or if it be, ’tis with false sorrow’s eye,

Which, for things true, weeps things imaginary.

QUEEN     It may be so; but yet my inward soul

Persuades me it is otherwise. Howe’er it be,

I cannot but be sad; so heavy sad,

30

As, though on thinking on no thought I think,

Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink.

BUSHY     ’Tis nothing but conceit, my gracious lady.

QUEEN     ’Tis nothing less: conceit is still deriv’d

From some forefather grief; mine is not so,

35

For nothing hath begot my something grief,

Or something hath the nothing that I grieve –

’Tis in reversion that I do possess –

But what it is that is not yet known what,

I cannot name: ’tis nameless woe, I wot.

40

Enter GREENE.

GREENE

God save your Majesty! and well met, gentlemen.

I hope the king is not yet shipp’d for Ireland.

QUEEN     Why hopest thou so? ’tis better hope he is,

For his designs crave haste, his haste good hope.

Then wherefore dost thou hope he is not shipp’d?

45

GREENE

That he, our hope, might have retir’d his power,

And driven into despair an enemy’s hope,

Who strongly hath set footing in this land:

The banish’d Bolingbroke repeals himself,

And with uplifted arms is safe arriv’d

50

At Ravenspurgh.

QUEEN     Now God in heaven forbid!

GREENE     Ah, madam, ’tis too true; and that is worse,

The lord Northumberland, his son young Henry Percy,

The lords of Ross, Beaumond, and Willoughby,

With all their powerful friends, are fled to him.

55

BUSHY     Why have you not proclaim’d Northumberland

And all the rest revolted faction traitors?

GREENE     We have; whereupon the Earl of Worcester

Hath broken his staff, resign’d his stewardship,

And all the household servants fled with him

60

To Bolingbroke.

QUEEN     So, Greene, thou art the midwife to my woe,

And Bolingbroke my sorrow’s dismal heir;

Now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy,

And I, a gasping new-deliver’d mother,

65

Have woe to woe, sorrow to sorrow join’d.

BUSHY     Despair not, madam.

QUEEN     Who shall hinder me?

I will despair, and be at enmity

With cozening Hope – he is a flatterer,

A parasite, a keeper-back of Death,

70

Who gently would dissolve the bands of life,

Which false Hope lingers in extremity.

Enter YORK.

GREENE     Here comes the Duke of York.

QUEEN     With signs of war about his aged neck;

O, full of careful business are his looks!

75

Uncle, for God’s sake, speak comfortable words.

YORK     Should I do so, I should belie my thoughts;

Comfort’s in heaven, and we are on the earth,

Where nothing lives but crosses, cares, and grief.

Your husband, he is gone to save far off,

80

Whilst others come to make him lose at home.

Here am I left to underprop his land,

Who weak with age cannot support myself;

Now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made,

Now shall he try his friends that flatter’d him.

85

Enter a Servant.

SERVANT     My lord, your son was gone before I came.

YORK     He was? why, so go all which way it will!

The nobles they are fled, the commons cold,

And will, I fear, revolt on Herford’s side.

Sirrah, get thee to Plashy, to my sister Gloucester,

90

Bid her send me presently a thousand pound.

Hold, take my ring.

SERVANT     My lord, I had forgot to tell your lordship:

To-day as I came by I called there –

But I shall grieve you to report the rest.

95

YORK     What is’t, knave?

SERVANT     An hour before I came the Duchess died.

YORK     God for his mercy, what a tide of woes

Comes rushing on this woeful land at once!

I know not what to do, I would to God,

100

So my untruth had not provok’d him to it,

The king had cut my head off with my brother’s.

What, are there no posts dispatch’d for Ireland?

How shall we do for money for these wars?

Come, sister – cousin, I would say, pray pardon me.

105

Go, fellow, get thee home, provide some carts

And bring away the armour that is there.

Exit Servant.

Gentlemen, will you go muster men?

If I know how or which way to order these affairs,

Thus thrust disorderly into my hands,

110

Never believe me. Both are my kinsmen:

Th’one is my sovereign, whom both my oath

And duty bids defend; th’other again

Is my kinsman, whom the king hath wrong’d,

Whom conscience and my kindred bids to right.

115

Well, somewhat we must do. Come, cousin,

I’ll dispose of you. Gentlemen, go muster up your men,

And meet me presently at Berkeley.

I should to Plashy too,

But time will not permit. All is uneven,

120

And everything is left at six and seven.

Exeunt York and Queen.

BUSHY     The wind sits fair for news to go for Ireland,

But none returns. For us to levy power

Proportionable to the enemy

Is all unpossible.

125

GREENE     Besides, our nearness to the king in love

Is near the hate of those love not the king.

BAGOT

And that’s the wavering commons, for their love

Lies in their purses, and whoso empties them,

By so much fills their hearts with deadly hate.

130

BUSHY     Wherein the king stands generally condemn’d.

BAGOT     If judgment lie in them, then so do we,

Because we ever have been near the king.

GREENE

Well, I will for refuge straight to Bristow castle,

The Earl of Wiltshire is already there.

135

BUSHY     Thither will I with you; for little office

The hateful commons will perform for us,

Except like curs to tear us all to pieces.

Will you go along with us?

BAGOT     No, I will to Ireland to his Majesty.

140

Farewell. If heart’s presages be not vain,

We three here part that ne’er shall meet again.

BUSHY     That’s as York thrives to beat back Bolingbroke.

GREENE     Alas, poor Duke! the task he undertakes

Is numb’ring sands and drinking oceans dry;

145

Where one on his side fights, thousands will fly.

Farewell at once – for once, for all, and ever.

BUSHY     Well, we may meet again.

BAGOT     I fear me, never.

Exeunt.

2.3 Enter BOLINGBROKE and NORTHUMBERLAND.

BOLINGBROKE     How far is it, my lord, to Berkeley now?

NORTHUMBERLAND     Believe me, noble lord,

I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire.

These high wild hills and rough uneven ways

Draws out our miles and makes them wearisome,

5

And yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar,

Making the hard way sweet and delectable.

But I bethink me what a weary way

From Ravenspurgh to Cotshall will be found

In Ross and Willoughby, wanting your company,

10

Which I protest hath very much beguil’d

The tediousness and process of my travel.

But theirs is sweet’ned with the hope to have

The present benefit which I possess,

And hope to joy is little less in joy

15

Than hope enjoy’d. By this the weary lords

Shall make their way seem short, as mine hath done

By sight of what I have, your noble company.

BOLINGBROKE     Of much less value is my company

Than your good words. But who comes here?

20

Enter HARRY PERCY.

NORTHUMBERLAND     It is my son, young Harry Percy,

Sent from my brother Worcester, whencesoever.

Harry, how fares your uncle?

PERCY

I had thought, my lord, to have learn’d his health of

you.

NORTHUMBERLAND     Why, is he not with the queen?

25

PERCY     No, my good lord, he hath forsook the court,

Broken his staff of office and dispers’d

The household of the king.

NORTHUMBERLAND     What was his reason?

He was not so resolv’d when last we spake together.

PERCY     Because your lordship was proclaimed traitor.

30

But he, my lord, is gone to Ravenspurgh

To offer service to the Duke of Herford,

And sent me over by Berkeley to discover

What power the Duke of York had levied there,

Then with directions to repair to Ravenspurgh.

35

NORTHUMBERLAND

Have you forgot the Duke of Herford, boy?

PERCY     No, my good lord, for that is not forgot

Which ne’er I did remember: to my knowledge,

I never in my life did look on him.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Then learn to know him now. This is the Duke.

40

PERCY     My gracious lord, I tender you my service,

Such as it is, being tender, raw, and young,

Which elder days shall ripen and confirm

To more approved service and desert.

BOLINGBROKE I thank thee, gentle Percy, and be sure

45

I count myself in nothing else so happy

As in a soul rememb’ring my good friends,

And as my fortune ripens with thy love,

It shall be still thy true love’s recompense.

My heart this covenant makes, my hand thus seals it.

50

NORTHUMBERLAND

How far is it to Berkeley? and what stir

Keeps good old York there with his men of war?

PERCY     There stands the castle by yon tuft of trees,

Mann’d with three hundred men, as I have heard,

And in it are the Lords of York, Berkeley, and

Seymour –

55

None else of name and noble estimate.

Enter ROSS and WILLOUGHBY.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Here come the Lords of Ross and Willoughby,

Bloody with spurring, fiery-red with haste.

BOLINGBROKE

Welcome, my lords; I wot your love pursues

A banish’d traitor. All my treasury

60

Is yet but unfelt thanks, which, more inrich’d,

Shall be your love and labour’s recompense.

ROSS     Your presence makes us rich, most noble lord.

WILLOUGHBY     And far surmounts our labour to attain it.

BOLINGBROKE

Evermore thank’s the exchequer of the poor,

65

Which, till my infant fortune comes to years,

Stands for my bounty. But who comes here?

Enter BERKELEY.

NORTHUMBERLAND

It is my Lord of Berkeley, as I guess.

BERKELEY     My Lord of Herford, my message is to you.

BOLINGBROKE     My lord, my answer is – to Lancaster,

70

And I am come to seek that name in England,

And I must find that title in your tongue,

Before I make reply to aught you say.

BERKELEY

Mistake me not, my lord, ’tis not my meaning

To race one title of your honour out.

75

To you, my lord, I come, what lord you will,

From the most gracious regent of this land,

The Duke of York, to know what pricks you on

To take advantage of the absent time,

And fright our native peace with self-borne arms.

80

Enter YORK.

BOLINGBROKE

I shall not need transport my words by you;

Here comes his grace in person. My noble uncle!

[Kneels.]

YORK     Show me thy humble heart, and not thy knee,

Whose duty is deceivable and false.

BOLINGBROKE     My gracious uncle –

85

YORK

Tut, tut! grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle,

I am no traitor’s uncle, and that word ‘grace’

In an ungracious mouth is but profane.

Why have those banish’d and forbidden legs

Dar’d once to touch a dust of England’s ground?

90

But then more ‘why?’ – why have they dar’d to march

So many miles upon her peaceful bosom,

Frighting her pale-fac’d villages with war

And ostentation of despised arms?

Com’st thou because the anointed king is hence?

95

Why, foolish boy, the king is left behind,

And in my loyal bosom lies his power.

Were I but now the lord of such hot youth,

As when brave Gaunt, thy father, and myself,

Rescued the Black Prince, that young Mars of men,

100

From forth the ranks of many thousand French,

O then how quickly should this arm of mine,

Now prisoner to the palsy, chastise thee,

And minister correction to thy fault!

BOLINGBROKE

My gracious uncle, let me know my fault:

105

On what condition stands it and wherein?

YORK     Even in condition of the worst degree –

In gross rebellion and detested treason;

Thou art a banish’d man, and here art come,

Before the expiration of thy time,

110

In braving arms against thy sovereign.

BOLINGBROKE

As I was banish’d, I was banish’d Herford;

But as I come, I come for Lancaster.

And, noble uncle, I beseech your grace

Look on my wrongs with an indifferent eye.

115

You are my father, for methinks in you

I see old Gaunt alive. O then my father,

Will you permit that I shall stand condemn’d

A wandering vagabond, my rights and royalties

Pluck’d from my arms perforce, and given away

120

To upstart unthrifts? Wherefore was I born?

If that my cousin king be King in England,

It must be granted I am Duke of Lancaster.

You have a son, Aumerle, my noble cousin;

Had you first died, and he been thus trod down,

125

He should have found his uncle Gaunt a father

To rouse his wrongs and chase them to the bay.

I am denied to sue my livery here,

And yet my letters patents give me leave.

My father’s goods are all distrain’d and sold,

130

And these, and all, are all amiss employ’d.

What would you have me do? I am a subject,

And I challenge law; attorneys are denied me,

And therefore personally I lay my claim

To my inheritance of free descent.

135

NORTHUMBERLAND

The noble Duke hath been too much abused.

ROSS     It stands your grace upon to do him right.

WILLOUGHBY

Base men by his endowments are made great.

YORK     My lords of England, let me tell you this:

I have had feeling of my cousin’s wrongs,

140

And labour’d all I could to do him right.

But in this kind to come, in braving arms,

Be his own carver, and cut out his way,

To find out right with wrong – it may not be.

And you that do abet him in this kind

145

Cherish rebellion, and are rebels all.

NORTHUMBERLAND

The noble Duke hath sworn his coming is

But for his own; and for the right of that

We all have strongly sworn to give him aid.

And let him ne’er see joy that breaks that oath!

150

YORK     Well, well, I see the issue of these arms.

I cannot mend it, I must needs confess,

Because my power is weak and all ill left.

But if I could, by Him that gave me life,

I would attach you all, and make you stoop

155

Unto the sovereign mercy of the king;

But since I cannot, be it known unto you,

I do remain as neuter. So, fare you well,

Unless you please to enter in the castle,

And there repose you for this night.

160

BOLINGBROKE     An offer, uncle, that we will accept.

But we must win your grace to go with us

To Bristow castle, which they say is held

By Bushy, Bagot, and their complices,

The caterpillars of the commonwealth,

165

Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.

YORK     It may be I will go with you; but yet I’ll pause

For I am loath to break our country’s laws.

Nor friends, nor foes, to me welcome you are.

Things past redress are now with me past care.

170

Exeunt.

2.4 Enter EARL OF SALISBURY and a Welsh Captain.

CAPTAIN

My Lord of Salisbury, we have stay’d ten days,

And hardly kept our countrymen together,

And yet we hear no tidings from the king;

Therefore we will disperse ourselves. Farewell.

SALISBURY     Stay yet another day, thou trusty Welshman:

5

The king reposeth all his confidence in thee.

CAPTAIN     ’Tis thought the king is dead; we will not stay.

The bay-trees in our country are all wither’d,

And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven,

The pale-fac’d moon looks bloody on the earth,

10

And lean-look’d prophets whisper fearful change,

Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap –

The one in fear to lose what they enjoy,

The other to enjoy by rage and war.

These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.

15

Farewell: our countrymen are gone and fled,

As well assured Richard their king is dead.     Exit.

SALISBURY     Ah, Richard! with the eyes of heavy mind

I see thy glory like a shooting star

Fall to the base earth from the firmament.

20

Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west,

Witnessing storms to come, woe, and unrest.

Thy friends are fled to wait upon thy foes,

And crossly to thy good all fortune goes.     Exit.

3.1 Enter BOLINGBROKE, YORK, NORTHUMBERLAND, with BUSHY and GREENE, prisoners.

BOLINGBROKE     Bring forth these men.

Bushy and Greene, I will not vex your souls,

Since presently your souls must part your bodies,

With too much urging your pernicious lives,

For ’twere no charity; yet, to wash your blood

5

From off my hands, here in the view of men

I will unfold some causes of your deaths:

You have misled a prince, a royal king,

A happy gentleman in blood and lineaments,

By you unhappied and disfigured clean;

10

You have in manner, with your sinful hours,

Made a divorce betwixt his queen and him,

Broke the possession of a royal bed,

And stain’d the beauty of a fair queen’s cheeks

With tears, drawn from her eyes by your foul wrongs;

15

Myself – a prince by fortune of my birth,

Near to the king in blood, and near in love,

Till you did make him misinterpret me –

Have stoop’d my neck under your injuries,

And sigh’d my English breath in foreign clouds,

20

Eating the bitter bread of banishment,

Whilst you have fed upon my signories,

Dispark’d my parks and fell’d my forest woods,

From my own windows torn my household coat,

Rac’d out my imprese, leaving me no sign,

25

Save men’s opinions and my living blood,

To show the world I am a gentleman.

This and much more, much more than twice all this,

Condemns you to the death. See them delivered over

To execution and the hand of death.

30

BUSHY     More welcome is the stroke of death to me

Than Bolingbroke to England. Lords, farewell.

GREENE     My comfort is, that heaven will take our souls,

And plague injustice with the pains of hell.

BOLINGBROKE

My lord Northumberland, see them dispatch’d.

35

Exeunt Northumberland and prisoners.

Uncle, you say the queen is at your house;

For God’s sake fairly let her be intreated,

Tell her I send to her my kind commends;

Take special care my greetings be delivered.

YORK     A gentleman of mine I have dispatch’d

40

With letters of your love to her at large.

BOLINGBROKE     Thanks, gentle uncle. Come, lords, away,

To fight with Glendor and his complices:

A while to work, and after holiday.     Exeunt.

3.2 Drums: flourish and colours. Enter KING RICHARD, AUMERLE, the Bishop of CARLISLE and soldiers.

RICHARD     Barkloughly castle call they this at hand?

AUMERLE     Yea, my lord. How brooks your grace the air,

After your late tossing on the breaking seas?

RICHARD     Needs must I like it well: I weep for joy

To stand upon my kingdom once again.

5

Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,

Though rebels wound thee with their horses’ hoofs.

As a long-parted mother with her child

Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting,

So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth,

10

And do thee favours with my royal hands;

Feed not thy sovereign’s foe, my gentle earth,

Nor with thy sweets comfort his ravenous sense,

But let thy spiders that suck up thy venom

And heavy-gaited toads lie in their way,

15

Doing annoyance to the treacherous feet,

Which with usurping steps do trample thee;

Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies;

And when they from thy bosom pluck a flower,

Guard it, I pray thee, with a lurking adder,

20

Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch

Throw death upon thy sovereign’s enemies.

Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords:

This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones

Prove armed soldiers ere her native king

25

Shall falter under foul rebellion’s arms.

CARLISLE

Fear not, my lord. That Power that made you king

Hath power to keep you king in spite of all.

The means that heaven yields must be imbrac’d

And not neglected; else, heaven would,

30

And we will not; heavens offer, we refuse

The proffered means of succour and redress.

AUMERLE     He means, my lord, that we are too remiss;

Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security,

Grows strong and great in substance and in power.

35

RICHARD     Discomfortable cousin! know’st thou not

That when the searching eye of heaven is hid

Behind the globe and lights the lower world,

Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen

In murthers and in outrage boldly here;

40

But when from under this terrestrial ball

He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines,

And darts his light through every guilty hole,

Then murthers, treasons, and detested sins,

The cloak of night being pluck’d from off their backs,

45

Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves?

So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke,

Who all this while hath revell’d in the night,

Whilst we were wand’ring with the Antipodes,

Shall see us rising in our throne the east,

50

His treasons will sit blushing in his face,

Not able to endure the sight of day,

But self-affrighted tremble at his sin.

Not all the water in the rough rude sea

Can wash the balm off from an anointed king;

55

The breath of worldly men cannot depose

The deputy elected by the Lord;

For every man that Bolingbroke hath press’d

To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,

God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay

60

A glorious angel: then, if angels fight,

Weak men must fall, for heaven still guards the right.

Enter SALISBURY.

Welcome, my lord: how far off lies your power?

SALISBURY     Nor near nor farther off, my gracious lord,

Than this weak arm; discomfort guides my tongue,

65

And bids me speak of nothing but despair.

One day too late, I fear me, noble lord,

Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth.

O, call back yesterday, bid time return,

And thou shalt have twelve thousand fighting men!

70

To-day, to-day, unhappy day too late,

O’erthrows thy joys, friends, fortune and thy state;

For all the Welshmen, hearing thou wert dead,

Are gone to Bolingbroke, dispers’d and fled.

AUMERLE

Comfort, my liege, why looks your grace so pale?

75

RICHARD     But now the blood of twenty thousand men

Did triumph in my face, and they are fled;

And till so much blood thither come again,

Have I not reason to look pale and dead?

All souls that will be safe, fly from my side,

80

For time hath set a blot upon my pride.

AUMERLE     Comfort, my liege, remember who you are.

RICHARD     I had forgot myself, am I not king?

Awake, thou coward majesty! thou sleepest.

Is not the king’s name twenty thousand names?

85

Arm, arm, my name! a puny subject strikes

At thy great glory. Look not to the ground,

Ye favourites of a king, are we not high?

High be our thoughts. I know my uncle York

Hath power enough to serve our turn. But who comes here?

90

Enter SCROOPE.

SCROOPE     More health and happiness betide my liege

Than can my care-tun’d tongue deliver him.

RICHARD     Mine ear is open and my heart prepar’d.

The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold.

Say, is my kingdom lost? why, ’twas my care,

95

And what loss is it to be rid of care?

Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we?

Greater he shall not be. If he serve God,

We’ll serve Him too, and be his fellow so.

Revolt our subjects? that we cannot mend;

100

They break their faith to God as well as us.

Cry woe, destruction, ruin, and decay –

The worst is death, and death will have his day.

SCROOPE     Glad am I that your Highness is so arm’d

To bear the tidings of calamity.

105

Like an unseasonable stormy day,

Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores,

As if the world were all dissolv’d to tears,

So high above his limits swells the rage

Of Bolingbroke, covering your fearful land

110

With hard bright steel, and hearts harder than steel.

White-beards have arm’d their thin and hairless scalps

Against thy majesty; boys, with women’s voices,

Strive to speak big, and clap their female joints

In stiff unwieldy arms against thy crown;

115

Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows

Of double-fatal yew against thy state;

Yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills

Against thy seat: both young and old rebel,

And all goes worse than I have power to tell.

120

RICHARD     Too well, too well thou tell’st tale so ill.

Where is the Earl of Wiltshire? where is Bagot?

What is become of Bushy? where is Greene?

That they have let the dangerous enemy

Measure our confines with such peaceful steps?

125

If we prevail, their heads shall pay for it:

I warrant they have made peace with Bolingbroke.

SCROOPE

Peace have they made with him indeed, my lord.

RICHARD

O villains, vipers, damn’d without redemption!

Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!

130

Snakes, in my heart-blood warm’d, that sting my heart!

Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas!

Would they make peace? Terrible hell,

Make war upon their spotted souls for this!

SCROOPE     Sweet love, I see, changing his property,

135

Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate.

Again uncurse their souls; their peace is made

With heads and not with hands; those whom you curse

Have felt the worst of death’s destroying wound,

And lie full low, grav’d in the hollow ground.

140

AUMERLE

Is Bushy, Greene, and the Earl of Wiltshire dead?

SCROOPE     Ay, all of them at Bristow lost their heads.

AUMERLE

Where is the Duke my father with his power?

RICHARD     No matter where – of comfort no man speak.

Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,

145

Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes

Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.

Let’s choose executors and talk of wills.

And yet not so – for what can we bequeath

Save our deposed bodies to the ground?

150

Our lands, our lives, and all, are Bolingbroke’s,

And nothing can we call our own but death;

And that small model of the barren earth

Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.

For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground

155

And tell sad stories of the death of kings:

How some have been depos’d, some slain in war,

Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,

Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping kill’d,

All murthered – for within the hollow crown

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That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,

Allowing him a breath, a little scene,

To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks;

165

Infusing him with self and vain conceit,

As if this flesh which walls about our life

Were brass impregnable; and, humour’d thus,

Comes at the last, and with a little pin

Bores thorough his castle wall, and farewell king!

170

Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood

With solemn reverence; throw away respect,

Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty;

For you have but mistook me all this while.

I live with bread like you, feel want,

175

Taste grief, need friends – subjected thus,

How can you say to me, I am a king?

CARLISLE

My lord, wise men ne’er sit and wail their woes,

But presently prevent the ways to wail.

To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength,

180

Gives in your weakness strength unto your foe,

And so your follies fight against yourself.

Fear and be slain – no worse can come to fight;

And fight and die is death destroying death,

Where fearing dying pays death servile breath.

185

AUMERLE     My father hath a power; inquire of him,

And learn to make a body of a limb.

RICHARD

Thou chid’st me well. Proud Bolingbroke, I come

To change blows with thee for our day of doom.

This ague fit of fear is overblown;

190

An easy task it is to win our own.

Say, Scroope, where lies our uncle with his power?

Speak sweetly, man, although thy looks be sour.

SCROOPE     Men judge by the complexion of the sky

The state and inclination of the day;

195

So may you by my dull and heavy eye:

My tongue hath but a heavier tale to say.

I play the torturer by small and small

To lengthen out the worst that must be spoken:

Your uncle York is join’d with Bolingbroke,

200

And all your northern castles yielded up,

And all your southern gentlemen in arms

Upon his party.

RICHARD     Thou hast said enough.

Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth

[to Aumerle] Of that sweet way I was in to despair!

205

What say you now? What comfort have we now?

By heaven, I’ll hate him everlastingly

That bids me be of comfort any more.

Go to Flint Castle, there I’ll pine away –

A king, woe’s slave, shall kingly woe obey.

210

That power I have, discharge, and let them go

To ear the land that hath some hope to grow,

For I have none. Let no man speak again

To alter this, for counsel is but vain.

AUMERLE     My liege, one word.

RICHARD     He does me double wrong

215

That wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue.

Discharge my followers; let them hence away,

From Richard’s night, to Bolingbroke’s fair day.

Exeunt.

3.3 Enter, with drum and colours, BOLINGBROKE, YORK, NORTHUMBERLAND, attendants.

BOLINGBROKE     So that by this intelligence we learn

The Welshmen are dispers’d; and Salisbury

Is gone to meet the king, who lately landed

With some few private friends upon this coast.

NORTHUMBERLAND

The news is very fair and good, my lord;

5

Richard not far from hence hath hid his head.

YORK     It would beseem the Lord Northumberland

To say ‘King Richard’. Alack the heavy day,

When such a sacred king should hide his head!

NORTHUMBERLAND

Your grace mistakes; only to be brief,

10

Left I his title out.

YORK     The time hath been,

Would you have been so brief with him, he would

Have been so brief with you to shorten you,

For taking so the head, your whole head’s length

BOLINGBROKE

Mistake not, uncle, further than you should.

15

YORK     Take not, good cousin, further than you should,

Lest you mistake: the heavens are o’er our heads.

BOLINGBROKE I know it, uncle; and oppose not myself

Against their will. But who comes here?

Enter PERCY.

Welcome, Harry. What, will not this castle yield?

20

PERCY     The castle royally is mann’d, my lord,

Against thy entrance.

BOLINGBROKE     Royally!

Why, it contains no king?

PERCY     Yes, my good lord,

It doth contain a king; King Richard lies

25

Within the limits of yon lime and stone;

And with him are the Lord Aumerle, Lord Salisbury,

Sir Stephen Scroope, besides a clergyman

Of holy reverence; who, I cannot learn.

NORTHUMBERLAND     O belike it is the Bishop of Carlisle.

30

BOLINGBROKE     Noble lord,

Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle,

Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parle

Into his ruin’d ears, and thus deliver:

Henry Bolingbroke

35

On both his knees doth kiss King Richard’s hand,

And sends allegiance and true faith of heart

To his most royal person; hither come

Even at his feet to lay my arms and power,

Provided that my banishment repeal’d

40

And lands restor’d again be freely granted;

If not, I’ll use the advantage of my power

And lay the summer’s dust with showers of blood

Rain’d from the wounds of slaughtered Englishmen –

The which, how far off from the mind of Bolingbroke

45

It is such crimson tempest should bedrench

The fresh green lap of fair King Richard’s land,

My stooping duty tenderly shall show.

Go, signify as much, while here we march

Upon the grassy carpet of this plain.

50

Let’s march without the noise of threat’ning drum,

That from this castle’s tottered battlements

Our fair appointments may be well perus’d.

Methinks King Richard and myself should meet

With no less terror than the elements

55

Of fire and water, when their thund’ring shock

At meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven.

Be he the fire, I’ll be the yielding water;

The rage be his, whilst on the earth I rain

My waters – on the earth, and not on him.

60

March on, and mark King Richard how he looks.

Parle without, and answer within: then a flourish. Enter on the walls RICHARD, CARLISLE, AUMERLE, SCROOPE, SALISBURY.

See, see, King Richard doth himself appear,

As doth the blushing discontented sun

From out the fiery portal of the East,

When he perceives the envious clouds are bent

65

To dim his glory and to stain the track

Of his bright passage to the occident.

YORK     Yet looks he like a king. Behold, his eye,

As bright as is the eagle’s, lightens forth

Controlling majesty; alack, alack for woe

70

That any harm should stain so fair a show!

RICHARD [to Northumberland]

We are amaz’d, and thus long have we stood

To watch the fearful bending of thy knee,

Because we thought ourself thy lawful king;

And if we be, how dare thy joints forget

75

To pay their awful duty to our presence?

If we be not, show us the hand of God

That hath dismiss’d us from our stewardship;

For well we know no hand of blood and bone

Can gripe the sacred handle of our sceptre,

80

Unless he do profane, steal, or usurp.

And though you think that all, as you have done,

Have torn their souls by turning them from us,

And we are barren and bereft of friends,

Yet know, my master, God omnipotent,

85

Is mustering in his clouds, on our behalf,

Armies of pestilence, and they shall strike

Your children yet unborn, and unbegot,

That lift your vassal hands against my head,

And threat the glory of my precious crown.

90

Tell Bolingbroke, for yon methinks he stands,

That every stride he makes upon my land

Is dangerous treason. He is come to open

The purple testament of bleeding war.

But ere the crown he looks for live in peace,

95

Ten thousand bloody crowns of mother’s sons

Shall ill become the flower of England’s face,

Change the complexion of her maid-pale peace

To scarlet indignation and bedew

Her pastures’ grass with faithful English blood.

100

NORTHUMBERLAND

The King of Heaven forbid our lord the king

Should so with civil and uncivil arms

Be rush’d upon! Thy thrice noble cousin,

Harry Bolingbroke, doth humbly kiss thy hand,

And by the honourable tomb he swears,

105

That stands upon your royal grandsire’s bones,

And by the royalties of both your bloods,

Currents that spring from one most gracious head,

And by the buried hand of warlike Gaunt,

And by the worth and honour of himself,

110

Comprising all that may be sworn or said,

His coming hither hath no further scope

Than for his lineal royalties, and to beg

Infranchisement immediate on his knees,

Which on thy royal party granted once,

115

His glittering arms he will commend to rust,

His barbed steeds to stables, and his heart

To faithful service of your Majesty.

This, swears he as he is a prince and just;

And, as I am a gentleman, I credit him.

120

RICHARD

Northumberland, say thus the king returns:

His noble cousin is right welcome hither,

And all the number of his fair demands

Shall be accomplish’d without contradiction;

With all the gracious utterance that thou hast

125

Speak to his gentle hearing kind commends.

[to Aumerle] We do debase ourselves, cousin, do we not,

To look so poorly, and to speak so fair?

Shall we call back Northumberland and send

Defiance to the traitor, and so die?

130

AUMERLE

No, good my lord, let’s fight with gentle words.

Till time lend friends, and friends their helpful swords.

RICHARD

O God! O God! that e’er this tongue of mine,

That laid the sentence of dread banishment

On yon proud man, should take it off again

135

With words of sooth! O that I were as great

As is my grief, or lesser than my name!

Or that I could forget what I have been!

Or not remember what I must be now!

Swell’st thou, proud heart? I’ll give thee scope to beat,

140

Since foes have scope to beat both thee and me.

AUMERLE

Northumberland comes back from Bolingbroke.

RICHARD

What must the king do now? Must he submit?

The king shall do it. Must he be depos’d?

The king shall be contented. Must he lose

145

The name of king? a God’s name, let it go.

I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads;

My gorgeous palace for a hermitage;

My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown;

My figur’d goblets for a dish of wood;

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My sceptre for a palmer’s walking staff;

My subjects for a pair of carved saints,

And my large kingdom for a little grave,

A little little grave, an obscure grave,

Or I’ll be buried in the king’s highway,

155

Some way of common trade, where subjects’ feet

May hourly trample on their sovereign’s head;

For on my heart they tread now whilst I live:

And buried once, why not upon my head?

Aumerle, thou weep’st (my tender-hearted cousin!),

160

We’ll make foul weather with despised tears;

Our sighs and they shall lodge the summer corn,

And make a dearth in this revolting land.

Or shall we play the wantons with our woes,

And make some pretty match with shedding tears?

165

As thus to drop them still upon one place,

Till they have fretted us a pair of graves

Within the earth, and therein laid – there lies

Two kinsmen digg’d their graves with weeping eyes!

Would not this ill do well? Well, well, I see

170

I talk but idly, and you laugh at me.

Most mighty prince, my Lord Northumberland,

What says King Bolingbroke? Will his Majesty

Give Richard leave to live till Richard die?

You make a leg, and Bolingbroke says ‘ay’.

175

NORTHUMBERLAND

My lord, in the base court he doth attend

To speak with you; may it please you to come down?

RICHARD     Down, down I come, like glist’ring Phaeton,

Wanting the manage of unruly jades.

In the base court? Base court, where kings grow base,

180

To come at traitors’ calls, and do them grace!

In the base court? Come down? Down, court! down, king!

For night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.     Exeunt from above.

BOLINGBROKE     What says his Majesty?

NORTHUMBERLAND     Sorrow and grief of heart

Makes him speak fondly like a frantic man;

185

Yet he is come.

Enter KING RICHARD and his attendants below.

BOLINGBROKE     Stand all apart,

And show fair duty to his Majesty. [He kneels down.]

My gracious lord.

RICHARD     Fair cousin, you debase your princely knee

190

To make the base earth proud with kissing it.

Me rather had my heart might feel your love,

Than my unpleased eye see your courtesy.

Up, cousin, up; your heart is up, I know,

Thus high at least, although your knee be low.

195

BOLINGBROKE

My gracious lord, I come but for mine own.

RICHARD     Your own is yours, and I am yours, and all.

BOLINGBROKE     So far be mine, my most redoubted lord,

As my true service shall deserve your love.

RICHARD     Well you deserve. They well deserve to have

200

That know the strong’st and surest way to get.

Uncle, give me your hands; nay, dry your eyes –

Tears show their love, but want their remedies.

Cousin, I am too young to be your father,

Though you are old enough to be my heir;

205

What you will have, I’ll give, and willing too,

For do we must what force will have us do.

Set on towards London, cousin, is it so?

BOLINGBROKE     Yea, my good lord.

RICHARD     Then I must not say no.

Flourish. Exeunt.

3.4 Enter the QUEEN and two Ladies.

QUEEN     What sport shall we devise here in this garden,

To drive away the heavy thought of care?

LADY     Madam, we’ll play at bowls.

QUEEN     ’Twill make me think the world is full of rubs

And that my fortune runs against the bias.

5

LADY     Madam, we’ll dance.

QUEEN     My legs can keep no measure in delight,

When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief:

Therefore no dancing, girl – some other sport.

LADY     Madam, we’ll tell tales.

10

QUEEN     Of sorrow or of joy?

LADY     Of either, madam.

QUEEN     Of neither, girl.

For if of joy, being altogether wanting,

It doth remember me the more of sorrow;

Or if of grief, being altogether had,

15

It adds more sorrow to my want of joy;

For what I have I need not to repeat,

And what I want it boots not to complain.

LADY     Madam, I’ll sing.

QUEEN     ’Tis well that thou hast cause,

But thou shouldst please me better wouldst thou weep.

20

LADY     I could weep, madam, would it do you good.

QUEEN     And I could sing, would weeping do me good,

And never borrow any tear of thee.

Enter a Gardener and two Servants.

But stay, here come the gardeners.

Let’s step into the shadow of these trees.

25

My wretchedness unto a row of pins,

They’ll talk of state, for everyone doth so

Against a change: woe is forerun with woe.

GARDENER

Go, bind thou up young dangling apricocks,

Which like unruly children make their sire

30

Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight,

Give some supportance to the bending twigs.

Go thou, and like an executioner

Cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays,

That look too lofty in our commonwealth:

35

All must be even in our government.

You thus employed, I will go root away

The noisome weeds which without profit suck

The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.

MAN     Why should we, in the compass of a pale,

40

Keep law and form and due proportion,

Showing, as in a model, our firm estate,

When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,

Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers chok’d up,

Her fruit-trees all unprun’d, her hedges ruin’d,

45

Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs

Swarming with caterpillars?

GARDENER     Hold thy peace –

He that hath suffered this disordered spring

Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf.

The weeds which his broad-spreading leaves did shelter,

50

That seem’d in eating him to hold him up,

Are pluck’d up root and all by Bolingbroke –

I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Greene.

MAN     What, are they dead?

GARDENER     They are; and Bolingbroke

Hath seiz’d the wasteful king. O, what pity is it

55

That he had not so trimm’d and dress’d his land

As we this garden! We at time of year

Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees,

Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,

With too much riches it confound itself;

60

Had he done so to great and growing men,

They might have liv’d to bear, and he to taste

Their fruits of duty. Superfluous branches

We lop away, that bearing boughs may live;

Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,

65

Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.

MAN     What, think you the king shall be deposed?

GARDENER     Depress’d he is already, and depos’d

’Tis doubt he will be. Letters came last night

To a dear friend of the good Duke of York’s

70

That tell black tidings.

QUEEN

O, I am press’d to death through want of speaking!

Thou, old Adam’s likeness set to dress this garden,

How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news?

What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested thee

75

To make a second fall of cursed man?

Why dost thou say King Richard is depos’d?

Dar’st thou, thou little better thing than earth,

Divine his downfall? Say, where, when, and how

Cam’st thou by this ill tidings? Speak, thou wretch.

80

GARDENER     Pardon me, madam, little joy have I

To breathe this news, yet what I say is true.

King Richard he is in the mighty hold

Of Bolingbroke. Their fortunes both are weigh’d;

In your lord’s scale is nothing but himself,

85

And some few vanities that make him light.

But in the balance of great Bolingbroke,

Besides himself, are all the English peers,

And with that odds he weighs King Richard down.

Post you to London and you’ll find it so;

90

I speak no more than everyone doth know.

QUEEN     Nimble mischance, that art so light of foot,

Doth not thy embassage belong to me,

And am I last that knows it? O, thou thinkest

To serve me last that I may longest keep

95

Thy sorrow in my breast. Come, ladies, go

To meet at London London’s king in woe.

What, was I born to this, that my sad look

Should grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke?

Gard’ner, for telling me these news of woe,

100

Pray God the plants thou graft’st may never grow.

Exeunt Queen and Ladies.

GARDENER

Poor queen, so that thy state might be no worse,

I would my skill were subject to thy curse.

Here did she fall a tear; here in this place

I’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace.

105

Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,

In the remembrance of a weeping queen.     Exeunt.

4.1 Enter as to the Parliament BOLINGBROKE, AUMERLE, NORTHUMBERLAND, PERCY, FITZWATER, SURREY, the Bishop of CARLISLE, the Abbot of Westminster and another LORD, herald, officers and BAGOT.

BOLINGBROKE     Call forth Bagot.

Now, Bagot, freely speak thy mind –

What thou dost know of noble Gloucester’s death,

Who wrought it with the king, and who perform’d

The bloody office of his timeless end.

5

BAGOT     Then set before my face the Lord Aumerle.

BOLINGBROKE

Cousin, stand forth, and look upon that man.

BAGOT     My Lord Aumerle, I know your daring tongue

Scorns to unsay what once it hath delivered.

In that dead time when Gloucester’s death was plotted,

10

I heard you say ‘Is not my arm of length,

That reacheth from the restful English court

As far as Callice, to mine uncle’s head?’

Amongst much other talk that very time

I heard you say that you had rather refuse

15

The offer of an hundred thousand crowns

Than Bolingbroke’s return to England –

Adding withal, how bless’d this would be,

In this your cousin’s death.

AUMERLE     Princes and noble lords,

What answer shall I make to this base man?

20

Shall I so much dishonour my fair stars

On equal terms to give him chastisement?

Either I must, or have mine honour soil’d

With the attainder of his slanderous lips.

There is my gage, the manual seal of death,

25

That marks thee out for hell. I say thou liest,

And will maintain what thou hast said is false

In thy heart-blood, though being all too base

To stain the temper of my knightly sword.

BOLINGBROKE

Bagot, forbear, thou shalt not take it up.

30

AUMERLE     Excepting one, I would he were the best

In all this presence that hath mov’d me so.

FITZWATER     If that thy valour stand on sympathy,

There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine;

By that fair sun which shows me where thou stand’st,

35

I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak’st it,

That thou wert cause of noble Gloucester’s death.

If thou deniest it twenty times, thou liest;

And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart,

Where it was forged, with my rapier’s point.

40

AUMERLE     Thou dar’st not, coward, live to see that day.

FITZWATER     Now by my soul, I would it were this hour.

AUMERLE     Fitzwater, thou art damn’d to hell for this.

PERCY     Aumerle, thou liest, his honour is as true

In this appeal as thou art all unjust;

45

And that thou art so, there I throw my gage,

To prove it on thee to the extremest point

Of mortal breathing. Seize it, if thou dar’st.

AUMERLE     And if I do not, may my hands rot off,

And never brandish more revengeful steel

50

Over the glittering helmet of my foe!

ANOTHER LORD

I task the earth to the like, forsworn Aumerle,

And spur thee on with full as many lies

As may be hollowed in thy treacherous ear

From sun to sun. There is my honour’s pawn;

55

Ingage it to the trial if thou darest.

AUMERLE

Who sets me else? By heaven, I’ll throw at all!

I have a thousand spirits in one breast

To answer twenty thousand such as you.

SURREY     My Lord Fitzwater, I do remember well

60

The very time Aumerle and you did talk.

FITZWATER ’Tis very true; you were in presence then,

And you can witness with me this is true.

SURREY     As false, by heaven, as heaven itself is true.

FITZWATER     Surrey, thou liest.

SURREY     Dishonourable boy,

65

That lie shall lie so heavy on my sword

That it shall render vengeance and revenge

Till thou, the lie-giver, and that lie do lie

In earth as quiet as thy father’s skull.

In proof whereof there is my honour’s pawn;

70

Ingage it to the trial if thou darest.

FITZWATER     How fondly dost thou spur a forward horse!

If I dare eat, or drink, or breathe, or live,

I dare meet Surrey in a wilderness,

And spit upon him whilst I say he lies,

75

And lies, and lies. There is my bond of faith

To tie thee to my strong correction.

As I intend to thrive in this new world,

Aumerle is guilty of my true appeal.

Besides, I heard the banished Norfolk say

80

That thou, Aumerle, did’st send two of thy men

To execute the noble Duke at Callice.

AUMERLE     Some honest Christian trust me with a gage,

That Norfolk lies – here do I throw down this,

If he may be repeal’d to try his honour.

85

BOLINGBROKE

These differences shall all rest under gage

Till Norfolk be repeal’d – repeal’d he shall be,

And, though mine enemy, restor’d again

To all his lands and signories. When he’s return’d,

Against Aumerle we will inforce his trial.

90

CARLISLE     That honourable day shall ne’er be seen.

Many a time hath banish’d Norfolk fought

For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field,

Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross

Against black Pagans, Turks, and Saracens;

95

And, toil’d with works of war, retir’d himself

To Italy; and there at Venice gave

His body to that pleasant country’s earth,

And his pure soul unto his captain Christ,

Under whose colours he had fought so long.

100

BOLINGBROKE     Why, Bishop, is Norfolk dead?

CARLISLE     As surely as I live, my lord.

BOLINGBROKE

Sweet peace conduct his sweet soul to the bosom

Of good old Abraham! Lords appellants,

Your differences shall all rest under gage

105

Till we assign you to your days of trial.

Enter YORK.

YORK     Great Duke of Lancaster, I come to thee

From plume-pluck’d Richard, who with willing soul

Adopts thee heir, and his high sceptre yields

To the possession of thy royal hand.

110

Ascend his throne, descending now from him,

And long live Henry, fourth of that name!

BOLINGBROKE

In God’s name, I’ll ascend the regal throne.

CARLISLE     Marry, God forbid!

Worst in this royal presence may I speak,

115

Yet best beseeming me to speak the truth.

Would God that any in this noble presence

Were enough noble to be upright judge

Of noble Richard! then true noblesse would

Learn him forbearance from so foul a wrong.

120

What subject can give sentence on his king?

And who sits here that is not Richard’s subject?

Thieves are not judg’d but they are by to hear,

Although apparent guilt be seen in them,

And shall the figure of God’s majesty,

125

His captain, steward, deputy elect,

Anointed, crowned, planted many years,

Be judg’d by subject and inferior breath,

And he himself not present? O forfend it, God,

That in Christian climate souls refin’d

130

Should show so heinous, black, obscene a deed!

I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks,

Stirr’d up by God thus boldly for his king.

My Lord of Herford here, whom you call king,

Is a foul traitor to proud Herford’s king,

135

And if you crown him, let me prophesy –

The blood of English shall manure the ground,

And future ages groan for this foul act,

Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels,

And, in this seat of peace, tumultuous wars

140

Shall kin with kin, and kind with kind, confound.

Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny,

Shall here inhabit, and this land be call’d

The field of Golgotha and dead men’s skulls –

O, if you raise this house against this house,

145

It will the woefullest division prove

That ever fell upon this cursed earth.

Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so,

Lest child, child’s children, cry against you woe.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Well have you argued, sir, and, for your pains,

150

Of capital treason we arrest you here.

My Lord of Westminster, be it your charge

To keep him safely till his day of trial.

May it please you, lords, to grant the commons’ suit?

BOLINGBROKE

Fetch hither Richard, that in common view

155

He may surrender; so we shall proceed

Without suspicion.

GAUNT     I will be his conduct.     Exit.

BOLINGBROKE

Lords, you that here are under our arrest,

Procure your sureties for your days of answer.

Little are we beholding to your love,

160

And little look’d for at your helping hands.

Re-enter YORK, with RICHARD, and officers bearing the regalia.

RICHARD     Alack, why am I sent for to a king

Before I have shook off the regal thoughts

Wherewith I reign’d? I hardly yet have learn’d

To insinuate, flatter, bow, and bend my knee.

165

Give sorrow leave awhile to tutor me

To this submission. Yet I well remember

The favours of these men. Were they not mine?

Did they not sometime cry ‘All hail!’ to me?

So Judas did to Christ. But he, in twelve,

170

Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none.

God save the king! Will no man say amen?

Am I both priest and clerk? well then, amen.

God save the king! although I be not he;

And yet, amen, if heaven do think him me.

175

To do what service am I sent for hither?

YORK     To do that office of thine own good will

Which tired majesty did make thee offer:

The resignation of thy state and crown

To Henry Bolingbroke.

180

RICHARD

Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown.

Here, cousin,

On this side my hand, and on that side thine.

Now is this golden crown like a deep well

That owes two buckets, filling one another,

185

The emptier ever dancing in the air,

The other down, unseen, and full of water.

That bucket down and full of tears am I,

Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.

BOLINGBROKE

I thought you had been willing to resign.

190

RICHARD     My crown I am, but still my griefs are mine.

You may my glories and my state depose,

But not my griefs; still am I king of those.

BOLINGBROKE

Part of your cares you give me with your crown.

RICHARD     Your cares set up do not pluck my cares down.

195

My care is loss of care, by old care done;

Your care is gain of care, by new care won.

The cares I give, I have, though given away,

They ’tend the crown, yet still with me they stay.

BOLINGBROKE

Are you contented to resign the crown?

200

RICHARD     Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be.

Therefore no ‘no’, for I resign to thee.

Now, mark me how I will undo myself.

I give this heavy weight from off my head,

And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,

205

The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;

With mine own tears I wash away my balm,

With mine own hands I give away my crown,

With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,

With mine own breath release all duteous oaths;

210

All pomp and majesty I do forswear;

My manors, rents, revenues, I forgo;

My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny.

God pardon all oaths that are broke to me,

God keep all vows unbroke are made to thee!

215

Make me, that nothing have, with nothing griev’d,

And thou with all pleas’d, that hast all achiev’d.

Long may’st thou live in Richard’s seat to sit,

And soon lie Richard in an earthy pit.

God save King Henry, unking’d Richard says,

220

And send him many years of sunshine days!

What more remains?

NORTHUMBERLAND     No more; but that you read

These accusations, and these grievous crimes

Committed by your person and your followers

Against the state and profit of this land;

225

That, by confessing them, the souls of men

May deem that you are worthily depos’d.

RICHARD     Must I do so? and must I ravel out

My weav’d-up follies? Gentle Northumberland,

If thy offences were upon record,

230

Would it not shame thee, in so fair a troop,

To read a lecture of them? If thou wouldst,

There shouldst thou find one heinous article,

Containing the deposing of a king,

And cracking the strong warrant of an oath,

235

Mark’d with a blot, damn’d in the book of heaven.

Nay, all of you, that stand and look upon me

Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself,

Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands,

Showing an outward pity – yet you Pilates

240

Have here deliver’d me to my sour cross,

And water cannot wash away your sin.

NORTHUMBERLAND

My lord, dispatch, read o’er these articles.

RICHARD     Mine eyes are full of tears, I cannot see.

And yet salt water blinds them not so much

245

But they can see a sort of traitors here.

Nay, if I turn mine eyes upon myself,

I find myself a traitor with the rest.

For I have given here my soul’s consent

T’undeck the pompous body of a king;

250

Made glory base, and sovereignty a slave;

Proud majesty a subject, state a peasant.

NORTHUMBERLAND     My lord –

RICHARD     No lord of thine, thou haught insulting man;

Nor no man’s lord. I have no name, no title;

255

No, not that name was given me at the font,

But ’tis usurp’d. Alack the heavy day,

That I have worn so many winters out,

And know not now what name to call myself!

O that I were a mockery king of snow,

260

Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,

To melt myself away in water-drops!

Good king, great king, and yet not greatly good,

And if my word be sterling yet in England,

Let it command a mirror hither straight,

265

That it may show me what a face I have

Since it is bankrupt of his majesty.

BOLINGBROKE

Go some of you, and fetch a looking-glass.

Exit an attendant.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Read o’er this paper while the glass doth come.

RICHARD     Fiend, thou torments me ere I come to hell.

270

BOLINGBROKE

Urge it no more, my Lord Northumberland.

NORTHUMBERLAND

The commons will not then be satisfi’d.

RICHARD     They shall be satisfi’d. I’ll read enough

When I do see the very book indeed

Where all my sins are writ, and that’s myself.

275

Enter one with a glass.

Give me that glass, and therein will I read.

No deeper wrinkles yet? hath sorrow struck

So many blows upon this face of mine

And made no deeper wounds? O flatt’ring glass,

Like to my followers in prosperity,

280

Thou dost beguile me. Was this face the face

That every day under his household roof

Did keep ten thousand men? Was this the face

That like the sun did make beholders wink?

Is this the face which fac’d so many follies,

285

That was at last out-fac’d by Bolingbroke?

A brittle glory shineth in this face;

As brittle as the glory is the face,

[Dashes the glass against the ground.]

For there it is, crack’d in an hundred shivers.

Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport –

290

How soon my sorrow hath destroy’d my face.

BOLINGBROKE

The shadow of your sorrow hath destroy’d

The shadow of your face.

RICHARD     Say that again.

The shadow of my sorrow? ha! let’s see –

’Tis very true, my grief lies all within,

295

And these external manners of lament

Are merely shadows to the unseen grief

That swells with silence in the tortur’d soul.

There lies the substance. And I thank thee, king,

For thy great bounty, that not only giv’st

300

Me cause to wail, but teachest me the way

How to lament the cause. I’ll beg one boon,

And then be gone, and trouble you no more.

Shall I obtain it?

BOLINGBROKE     Name it, fair cousin.

RICHARD     Fair cousin! I am greater than a king;

305

For when I was a king, my flatterers

Were then but subjects; being now a subject,

I have a king here to my flatterer.

Being so great, I have no need to beg.

BOLINGBROKE     Yet ask.

310

RICHARD              And shall I have?

BOLINGBROKE     You shall.

RICHARD              Then give me leave to go.

BOLINGBROKE     Whither?

RICHARD

Whither you will, so I were from your sights.

315

BOLINGBROKE

Go some of you, convey him to the Tower.

RICHARD     O, good! Convey! Conveyers are you all,

That rise thus nimbly by a true king’s fall.

Exeunt Richard and Guard.

BOLINGBROKE

On Wednesday next we solemnly set down

Our coronation. Lords, prepare yourselves.

320

Exeunt all except the Bishop of Carlisle, the Abbot of Westminster and Aumerle.

ABBOT     A woeful pageant have we here beheld.

CARLISLE     The woe’s to come; the children yet unborn

Shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn.

AUMERLE     You holy clergymen, is there no plot

To rid the realm of this pernicious blot?

325

ABBOT     My lord,

Before I freely speak my mind herein,

You shall not only take the sacrament

To bury mine intents, but also to effect

Whatever I shall happen to devise.

330

I see your brows are full of discontent,

Your hearts of sorrow, and your eyes of tears.

Come home with me to supper; I will lay

A plot shall show us all a merry day.     Exeunt

5.1 Enter the QUEEN with her attendants.

QUEEN     This way the king will come; this is the way

To Julius Caesar’s ill-erected tower,

To whose flint bosom my condemned lord

Is doom’d a prisoner by proud Bolingbroke.

Here let us rest, if this rebellious earth

5

Have any resting for her true king’s queen.

Enter RICHARD and guard.

But soft, but see, or rather do not see,

My fair rose wither – yet look up, behold,

That you in pity may dissolve to dew,

And wash him fresh again with true-love tears.

10

Ah, thou, the model where old Troy did stand!

Thou map of honour, thou King Richard’s tomb,

And not King Richard! Thou most beauteous inn,

Why should hard-favour’d grief be lodg’d in thee,

When triumph is become an alehouse guest?

15

RICHARD     Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so,

To make my end too sudden. Learn, good soul,

To think our former state a happy dream;

From which awak’d, the truth of what we are

Shows us but this. I am sworn brother, sweet,

20

To grim Necessity, and he and I

Will keep a league till death. Hie thee to France

And cloister thee in some religious house.

Our holy lives must win a new world’s crown

Which our profane hours here have thrown down.

25

QUEEN     What, is my Richard both in shape and mind

Transform’d and weak’ned? hath Bolingbroke depos’d

Thine intellect? hath he been in thy heart?

The lion dying thrusteth forth his paw

And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage

30

To be o’erpow’r’d, and wilt thou, pupil-like,

Take the correction mildly, kiss the rod,

And fawn on rage with base humility,

Which art a lion and the king of beasts?

RICHARD     A king of beasts, indeed – if aught but beasts,

35

I had been still a happy king of men.

Good sometimes queen, prepare thee hence for France.

Think I am dead, and that even here thou takest,

As from my death-bed, thy last living leave.

In winter’s tedious nights sit by the fire

40

With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales

Of woeful ages long ago betid;

And ere thou bid good night, to quite their griefs

Tell thou the lamentable tale of me,

And send the hearers weeping to their beds;

45

For why, the senseless brands will sympathize

The heavy accent of thy moving tongue,

And in compassion weep the fire out,

And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black,

For the deposing of a rightful king.

50

Enter NORTHUMBERLAND.

NORTHUMBERLAND

My lord, the mind of Bolingbroke is chang’d;

You must to Pomfret, not unto the Tower.

And, madam, there is order ta’en for you:

With all swift speed you must away to France.

RICHARD     Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal

55

The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne,

The time shall not be many hours of age

More than it is, ere foul sin gathering head

Shall break into corruption: thou shalt think,

Though he divide the realm and give thee half,

60

It is too little, helping him to all;

He shall think that thou, which knowest the way

To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again,

Being ne’er so little urg’d, another way

To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne.

65

The love of wicked men converts to fear,

That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both

To worthy danger and deserved death.

NORTHUMBERLAND

My guilt be on my head, and there an end.

Take leave and part, for you must part forthwith.

70

RICHARD     Doubly divorc’d! Bad men, you violate

A two-fold marriage – ’twixt my crown and me,

And then betwixt me and my married wife.

Let me unkiss the oath ’twixt thee and me;

And yet not so, for with a kiss ’twas made.

75

Part us, Northumberland: I towards the north,

Where shivering cold and sickness pines the clime;

My wife to France, from whence set forth in pomp,

She came adorned hither like sweet May,

Sent back like Hollowmas or short’st of day.

80

QUEEN     And must we be divided? must we part?

RICHARD

Ay, hand from hand, my love, and heart from heart.

QUEEN     Banish us both, and send the king with me.

NORTHUMBERLAND

That were some love, but little policy.

QUEEN     Then whither he goes, thither let me go.

85

RICHARD     So two, together weeping, make one woe.

Weep thou for me in France, I for thee here;

Better far off than, near, be ne’er the near.

Go count thy way with sighs; I mine with groans.

QUEEN     So longest way shall have the longest moans.

90

RICHARD

Twice for one step I’ll groan, the way being short,

And piece the way out with a heavy heart.

Come, come, in wooing sorrow let’s be brief,

Since, wedding it, there is such length in grief:

One kiss shall stop our mouths, and dumbly part;

95

Thus give I mine, and thus take I thy heart.

QUEEN     Give me mine own again; ’twere no good part

To take on me to keep and kill thy heart.

So, now I have mine own again, be gone,

That I may strive to kill it with a groan.

100

RICHARD     We make woe wanton with this fond delay.

Once more, adieu; the rest let sorrow say.     Exeunt.

5.2 Enter DUKE OF YORK and the DUCHESS.

DUCHESS OF YORK

My lord, you told me you would tell the rest,

When weeping made you break the story off,

Of our two cousins’ coming into London.

YORK     Where did I leave?

DUCHESSOF YORK      At that sad stop, my lord,

Where rude misgoverned hands from windows’ tops

5

Threw dust and rubbish on King Richard’s head.

YORK     Then, as I said, the Duke, great Bolingbroke,

Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed

Which his aspiring rider seem’d to know,

With slow but stately pace kept on his course,

10

Whilst all tongues cried ‘God save thee, Bolingbroke!’

You would have thought the very windows spake,

So many greedy looks of young and old

Through casements darted their desiring eyes

Upon his visage; and that all the walls

15

With painted imagery had said at once

‘Jesu preserve thee! Welcome, Bolingbroke!’

Whilst he, from one side to the other turning,

Bare-headed, lower than his proud steed’s neck,

Bespake them thus, ‘I thank you, countrymen’.

20

And thus still doing, thus he pass’d along.

DUCHESS OF YORK

Alack, poor Richard! where rode he the whilst?

YORK     As in a theatre the eyes of men,

After a well-grac’d actor leaves the stage,

Are idly bent on him that enters next,

25

Thinking his prattle to be tedious;

Even so, or with much more contempt, men’s eyes

Did scowl on Richard. No man cried ‘God save him!’

No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home,

But dust was thrown upon his sacred head;

30

Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off,

His face still combating with tears and smiles,

The badges of his grief and patience,

That had not God for some strong purpose steel’d

The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,

35

And barbarism itself have pitied him.

But heaven hath a hand in these events,

To whose high will we bound our calm contents.

To Bolingbroke are we sworn subjects now,

Whose state and honour I for aye allow.

40

Enter AUMERLE.

DUCHESS OF YORK     Here comes my son Aumerle.

YORK     Aumerle that was,

But that is lost for being Richard’s friend,

And, madam, you must call him Rutland now.

I am in parliament pledge for his truth

And lasting fealty to the new-made king.

45

DUCHESS OF YORK

Welcome, my son. Who are the violets now

That strew the green lap of the new-come spring?

AUMERLE     Madam, I know not, nor I greatly care not;

God knows I had as lief be none as one.

YORK     Well, bear you well in this new spring of time,

50

Lest you be cropp’d before you come to prime.

What news from Oxford? Do these justs and triumphs hold?

AUMERLE     For aught I know, my lord, they do.

YORK     You will be there, I know.

AUMERLE     If God prevent it not, I purpose so.

55

YORK     What seal is that that hangs without thy bosom?

Yea, look’st thou pale? Let me see the writing.

AUMERLE     My lord, ’tis nothing.

YORK     No matter, then, who see it.

I will be satisfied; let me see the writing.

AUMERLE     I do beseech your grace to pardon me;

60

It is a matter of small consequence,

Which for some reasons I would not have seen.

YORK     Which for some reasons, sir, I mean to see.

I fear, I fear –

DUCHESS OF YORK     What should you fear?

’Tis nothing but some band that he is ent’red into

65

For gay apparel ’gainst the triumph day.

YORK     Bound to himself? What doth he with a bond

That he is bound to? Wife, thou art a fool.

Boy, let me see the writing.

AUMERLE

I do beseech you, pardon me; I may not show it.

70

GAUNT     I will be satisfied; let me see it, I say.

[He plucks it out of his bosom and reads it.]

Treason, foul treason! Villain! Traitor! Slave!

DUCHESS OF YORK What is the matter, my lord?

YORK     Ho, who is within there? Saddle my horse!

God for his mercy! What treachery is here!

75

DUCHESS OF YORK     Why, what is it, my lord?

YORK     Give me my boots, I say! Saddle my horse!

Now by mine honour, by my life, by my troth,

I will appeach the villain.

DUCHESS OF YORK     What is the matter?

YORK     Peace, foolish woman.

80

DUCHESS OF YORK

I will not peace. What is the matter, Aumerle?

AUMERLE     Good mother, be content – it is no more

Than my poor life must answer.

DUCHESS OF YORK     Thy life answer!

YORK     Bring me my boots: I will unto the king.

His man enters with his boots.

DUCHESS OF YORK

Strike him, Aumerle. Poor boy, thou art amaz’d.

85

Hence, villain! never more come in my sight.

YORK     Give me my boots, I say.

DUCHESS OF YORK     Why, York, what wilt thou do?

Wilt thou not hide the trespass of thine own?

Have we more sons? Or are we like to have?

90

Is not my teeming date drunk up with time?

And wilt thou pluck my fair son from mine age

And rob me of a happy mother’s name?

Is he not like thee? Is he not thine own?

YORK     Thou fond mad woman,

95

Wilt thou conceal this dark conspiracy?

A dozen of them here have ta’en the sacrament,

And interchangeably set down their hands

To kill the king at Oxford.

DUCHESS OF YORK     He shall be none;

We’ll keep him here, then what is that to him?

100

YORK     Away, fond woman! were he twenty times my son

I would appeach him.

DUCHESS OF YORK     Had’st thou groan’d for him

As I have done, thou wouldst be more pitiful.

But now I know thy mind: thou dost suspect

That I have been disloyal to thy bed,

105

And that he is a bastard, not thy son.

Sweet York, sweet husband, be not of that mind;

He is as like thee as a man may be,

Not like to me, or any of my kin,

And yet I love him.

YORK     Make way, unruly woman!      Exit.

110

DUCHESS OF YORK

After, Aumerle! Mount thee upon his horse,

Spur post, and get before him to the king,

And beg thy pardon ere he do accuse thee.

I’ll not be long behind – though I be old,

I doubt not but to ride as fast as York;

115

And never will I rise up from the ground

Till Bolingbroke have pardoned thee. Away, be gone.

Exeunt.

5.3 Enter BOLINGBROKE, PERCY and other lords.

BOLINGBROKE     Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?

’Tis full three months since I did see him last.

If any plague hang over us, ’tis he.

I would to God, my lords, he might be found.

Inquire at London, ’mongst the taverns there,

5

For there, they say, he daily doth frequent

With unrestrained loose companions,

Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes

And beat our watch and rob our passengers,

While he, young wanton, and effeminate boy,

10

Takes on the point of honour to support

So dissolute a crew.

PERCY     My lord, some two days since I saw the prince,

And told him of those triumphs held at Oxford.

BOLINGBROKE     And what said the gallant?

15

PERCY     His answer was, he would unto the stews,

And from the common’st creature pluck a glove,

And wear it as a favour; and with that

He would unhorse the lustiest challenger.

BOLINGBROKE     As dissolute as desperate! But yet

20

Through both I see some sparks of better hope,

Which elder years may happily bring forth.

But who comes here?

Enter AUMERLE, amazed.

AUMERLE     Where is the king?

BOLINGBROKE     What means

Our cousin, that he stares and looks so wildly?

AUMERLE

God save your grace! I do beseech your Majesty

25

To have some conference with your grace alone.

BOLINGBROKE

Withdraw yourselves, and leave us here alone.

Exeunt Percy and lords.

What is the matter with our cousin now?

AUMERLE     For ever may my knees grow to the earth,

My tongue cleave to my roof within my mouth,

30

Unless a pardon ere I rise or speak.

BOLINGBROKE     Intended, or committed, was this fault?

If on the first, how heinous e’er it be,

To win thy after-love I pardon thee.

AUMERLE     Then give me leave that I may turn the key,

35

That no man enter till my tale be done.

BOLINGBROKE     Have thy desire.

[The Duke of York knocks at the door and crieth.]

YORK     My liege, beware; look to thyself;

Thou hast a traitor in thy presence there.

BOLINGBROKE I’ll make thee safe. [Draws his sword.]

AUMERLE     Stay thy revengeful hand,

40

Thou hast no cause to fear.

YORK     Open the door,

Secure, foolhardy king. Shall I, for love,

Speak treason to thy face? Open the door,

Or I will break it open.

Enter YORK.

BOLINGBROKE     Uncle, speak,

Recover breath, tell us how near is danger

45

That we may arm us to encounter it.

YORK     Peruse this writing here, and thou shalt know

The treason that my haste forbids me show.

AUMERLE

Remember, as thou read’st, thy promise pass’d;

I do repent me, read not my name there,

50

My heart is not confederate with my hand.

YORK     It was, villain, ere thy hand did set it down.

I tore it from the traitor’s bosom, king;

Fear, and not love, begets his penitence.

Forget to pity him, lest thy pity prove

55

A serpent that will sting thee to the heart.

BOLINGBROKE O heinous, strong, and bold conspiracy!

O loyal father of a treacherous son!

Thou sheer, immaculate and silver fountain,

From whence this stream, through muddy passages,

60

Hath held his current and defil’d himself,

Thy overflow of good converts to bad;

And thy abundant goodness shall excuse

This deadly blot in thy digressing son.

YORK     So shall my virtue be his vice’s bawd,

65

And he shall spend mine honour with his shame,

As thriftless sons their scraping fathers’ gold.

Mine honour lives when his dishonour dies,

Or my sham’d life in his dishonour lies;

Thou kill’st me in his life – giving him breath,

70

The traitor lives, the true man’s put to death.

DUCHESS OF YORK     [within]

What ho, my liege, for God’s sake, let me in!

BOLINGBROKE

What shrill-voic’d suppliant makes this eager cry?

DUCHESS OF YORK

A woman, and thine aunt, great king, – ’tis I.

Speak with me, pity me, open the door,

75

A beggar begs that never begg’d before.

BOLINGBROKE

Our scene is alt’red from a serious thing,

And now chang’d to ‘The Beggar and the King’.

My dangerous cousin, let your mother in;

I know she’s come to pray for your foul sin.

80

YORK     If thou do pardon, whosoever pray,

More sins for this forgiveness prosper may.

This fest’red joint cut off, the rest rest sound;

This, let alone, will all the rest confound.

Enter DUCHESS.

DUCHESS OF YORK

O king, believe not this hard-hearted man!

85

Love loving not itself none other can.

YORK     Thou frantic woman, what dost thou make here?

Shall thy old dugs once more a traitor rear?

DUCHESS OF YORK

Sweet York, be patient. Hear me, gentle liege.

BOLINGBROKE     Rise up, good aunt.

DUCHESS OF YORK     Not yet, I thee beseech:

90

For ever will I walk upon my knees,

And never see day that the happy sees

Till thou give joy – until thou bid me joy,

By pardoning Rutland my transgressing boy.

AUMERLE     Unto my mother’s prayers I bend my knee.

95

YORK     Against them both my true joints bended be.

Ill may’st thou thrive if thou grant any grace!

DUCHESS OF YORK

Pleads he in earnest? Look upon his face.

His eyes do drop no tears, his prayers are in jest,

His words come from his mouth, ours from our

breast;

100

He prays but faintly and would be denied,

We pray with heart and soul, and all beside;

His weary joints would gladly rise, I know;

Our knees still kneel till to the ground they grow;

His prayers are full of false hypocrisy,

105

Ours of true zeal and deep integrity;

Our prayers do outpray his – then let them have

That mercy which true prayer ought to have.

BOLINGBROKE     Good aunt, stand up.

DUCHESS OF YORK     Nay, do not say ‘stand up’;

Say ‘pardon’ first, and afterwards ‘stand up’.

110

And if I were thy nurse, thy tongue to teach,

‘Pardon’ should be the first word of thy speech.

I never long’d to hear a word till now;

Say ‘pardon’, king, let pity teach thee how;

The word is short, but not so short as sweet;

115

No word like ‘pardon’ for kings’ mouths so meet.

YORK     Speak it in French, king, say ‘pardonne moy’.

DUCHESS OF YORK

Dost thou teach pardon pardon to destroy?

Ah, my sour husband, my hard-hearted lord,

That sets the word itself against the word!

120

Speak ‘pardon’ as ’tis current in our land,

The chopping French we do not understand.

Thine eye begins to speak, set thy tongue there;

Or in thy piteous heart plant thou thine ear,

That, hearing how our plaints and prayers do pierce,

125

Pity may move thee ‘pardon’ to rehearse.

BOLINGBROKE     Good aunt, stand up.

DUCHESS OF YORK     I do not sue to stand.

Pardon is all the suit I have in hand.

BOLINGBROKE I pardon him, as God shall pardon me.

DUCHESS OF YORK     

O happy vantage of a kneeling knee!

130

Yet am I sick for fear – speak it again:

Twice saying ‘pardon’ doth not pardon twain,

But makes one pardon strong.

BOLINGBROKE     With all my heart

I pardon him.

DUCHESS OF YORK     A god on earth thou art.

BOLINGBROKE

But for our trusty brother-in-law and the abbot,

135

With all the rest of that consorted crew,

Destruction straight shall dog them at the heels.

Good uncle, help to order several powers

To Oxford, or where’er these traitors are.

They shall not live within this world, I swear,

140

But I will have them, if I once know where.

Uncle, farewell; and cousin too, adieu:

Your mother well hath pray’d, and prove you true.

DUCHESS OF YORK

Come, my old son, I pray God make thee new.

Exeunt.

5.4 Enter EXTON and Servants.

EXTON

Didst thou not mark the king, what words he spake?

‘Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?’

Was it not so?

SERVANT     These were his very words.

EXTON

‘Have I no friend?’ quoth he. He spake it twice,

And urg’d it twice together, did he not?

5

SERVANT     He did.

EXTON     And, speaking it, he wishtly look’d on me,

As who should say ‘I would thou wert the man

That would divorce this terror from my heart’,

Meaning the king at Pomfret. Come, let’s go.

10

I am the king’s friend, and will rid his foe.     Exeunt.

5.5 Enter RICHARD alone.

RICHARD     I have been studying how I may compare

This prison where I live unto the world;

And, for because the world is populous

And here is not a creature but myself,

I cannot do it. Yet I’ll hammer it out.

5

My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul,

My soul the father, and these two beget

A generation of still-breeding thoughts,

And these same thoughts people this little world,

In humours like the people of this world;

10

For no thought is contented. The better sort,

As thoughts of things divine, are intermix’d

With scruples, and do set the word itself

Against the word,

As thus: ‘Come, little ones’; and then again,

15

‘It is as hard to come as for a camel

To thread the postern of a small needle’s eye’.

Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot

Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails

May tear a passage thorough the flinty ribs

20

Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls;

And for they cannot, die in their own pride.

Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves

That they are not the first of fortune’s slaves,

Nor shall not be the last – like silly beggars

25

Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame,

That many have and others must sit there;

And in this thought they find a kind of ease,

Bearing their own misfortunes on the back

Of such as have before indur’d the like.

30

Thus play I in one person many people,

And none contented. Sometimes am I king,

Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,

And so I am. Then crushing penury

Persuades me I was better when a king;

35

Then am I king’d again, and by and by

Think that I am unking’d by Bolingbroke,

And straight am nothing. But whate’er I be,

Nor I, nor any man that but man is,

With nothing shall be pleas’d, till he be eas’d

40

With being nothing.     [The music plays.]

     Music do I hear?

Ha, ha! keep time – how sour sweet music is

When time is broke and no proportion kept!

So is it in the music of men’s lives.

And here have I the daintiness of ear

45

To check time broke in a disordered string;

But for the concord of my state and time,

Had not an ear to hear my true time broke:

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;

For now hath time made me his numb’ring clock;

50

My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar

Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,

Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point,

Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.

Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is

55

Are clamorous groans which strike upon my heart,

Which is the bell – so sighs, and tears, and groans,

Show minutes, times, and hours. But my time

Runs posting on in Bolingbroke’s proud joy,

While I stand fooling here, his Jack of the clock.

60

This music mads me. Let it sound no more;

For though it have holp mad men to their wits,

In me it seems it will make wise men mad.

Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me,

For ’tis a sign of love; and love to Richard

65

Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.

Enter a Groom of the stable.

GROOM     Hail, royal prince!

RICHARD     Thanks, noble peer;

The cheapest of us is ten groats too dear.

What art thou? and how comest thou hither,

Where no man never comes, but that sad dog

70

That brings me food to make misfortune live?

GROOM     I was a poor groom of thy stable, king,

When thou wert king; who, travelling towards York,

With much ado at length have gotten leave

To look upon my sometimes royal master’s face.

75

O, how it ern’d my heart when I beheld

In London streets that coronation day

When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary –

That horse that thou so often hast bestrid,

That horse that I so carefully have dress’d!

80

RICHARD     Rode he on Barbary? Tell me, gentle friend,

How went he under him?

GROOM     So proudly as if he disdain’d the ground.

RICHARD     So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back!

That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand;

85

This hand hath made him proud with clapping him.

Would he not stumble? would he not fall down,

Since pride must have a fall, and break the neck

Of that proud man that did usurp his back?

Forgiveness, horse! why do I rail on thee,

90

Since thou, created to be aw’d by man,

Wast born to bear? I was not made a horse,

And yet I bear a burthen like an ass,

Spurr’d, gall’d, and tir’d by jauncing Bolingbroke.

Enter One to Richard with meat.

KEEPER     Fellow, give place; here is no longer stay.

95

RICHARD     If thou love me, ’tis time thou wert away.

GROOM

What my tongue dares not, that my heart shall say.

Exit Groom.

KEEPER     My lord, will’t please you to fall to?

RICHARD     Taste of it first as thou art wont to do.

KEEPER     My lord, I dare not. Sir Pierce of Exton, who

100

lately came from the king, commands the contrary.

RICHARD     The devil take Henry of Lancaster, and thee!

Patience is stale, and I am weary of it.

[Strikes the Keeper.]

KEEPER     Help, help, help!

The Murderers rush in.

RICHARD

How now! what means death in this rude assault?

105

Villain, thy own hand yields thy death’s instrument.

Go thou and fill another room in hell.

[Here Exton strikes him down.]

That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire

That staggers thus my person. Exton, thy fierce hand

Hath with the king’s blood stain’d the king’s own land.

110

Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high,

Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.

[Dies.]

EXTON     As full of valour as of royal blood.

Both have I spill’d; O would the deed were good!

For now the devil that told me I did well

115

Says that this deed is chronicled in hell.

This dead king to the living king I’ll bear.

Take hence the rest, and give them burial here.

Exeunt.

5.6 Flourish. Enter BOLINGBROKE, YORK, with other lords and attendants.

BOLINGBROKE

Kind uncle York, the latest news we hear,

Is that the rebels have consum’d with fire

Our town of Ciceter in Gloucestershire,

But whether they be ta’en or slain we hear not.

Enter NORTHUMBERLAND.

Welcome, my lord; what is the news?

5

NORTHUMBERLAND

First, to thy sacred state wish I all happiness.

The next news is, I have to London sent

The heads of Salisbury, Spencer, Blunt and Kent:

The manner of their taking may appear

At large discoursed in this paper here.

10

BOLINGBROKE

We thank thee, gentle Percy, for thy pains,

And to thy worth will add right worthy gains.

Enter FITZWATER.

FITZWATER

My lord, I have from Oxford sent to London

The heads of Broccas and Sir Bennet Seely,

Two of the dangerous consorted traitors

15

That sought at Oxford thy dire overthrow.

BOLINGBROKE     Thy pains, Fitzwater, shall not be forgot;

Right noble is thy merit, well I wot.

Enter PERCY and the Bishop of CARLISLE.

PERCY     The grand conspirator, Abbot of Westminster,

With clog of conscience and sour melancholy

20

Hath yielded up his body to the grave.

But here is Carlisle living, to abide

Thy kingly doom and sentence of his pride.

BOLINGBROKE     Carlisle, this is your doom:

Choose out some secret place, some reverend room,

25

More than thou hast, and with it joy thy life.

So as thou liv’st in peace, die free from strife;

For though mine enemy thou hast ever been,

High sparks of honour in thee have I seen.

Enter EXTON with the coffin.

EXTON     Great king, within this coffin I present

30

Thy buried fear. Herein all breathless lies

The mightiest of thy greatest enemies,

Richard of Burdeaux, by me hither brought.

BOLINGBROKE

Exton, I thank thee not, for thou hast wrought

A deed of slander with thy fatal hand

35

Upon my head and all this famous land.

EXTON

From your own mouth, my lord, did I this deed

BOLINGBROKE

They love not poison that do poison need,

Nor do I thee. Though I did wish him dead,

I hate the murtherer, love him murthered.

40

The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour,

But neither my good word nor princely favour;

With Cain go wander thorough shades of night,

And never show thy head by day nor light.

Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe

45

That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow.

Come mourn with me for what I do lament,

And put on sullen black incontinent.

I’ll make a voyage to the Holy Land,

To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.

50

March sadly after; grace my mournings here

In weeping after this untimely bier.     Exeunt.

King Richard III

King Richard III was an early bestseller. Published first in 1597 as The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, it was reprinted five times before it appeared as the ninth of the histories in the First Folio in 1623. The Folio text differs significantly from the Quartos, including about 230 lines absent from them and cutting about 50 that they do print. The relation between the Quarto and Folio texts is complex: roughnesses in the Quarto have suggested either that it is based on a reconstruction of the play by actors or that it derives from an incompletely revised authorial draft; the Folio made use of the third and sixth Quartos (1602, 1622), but corrected them from an independent manuscript of a more complete and tidier version. Modern editions tend to be based on the Folio, while adopting some readings from the Quarto text, but Richard III remains among the most perplexing of Shakespearean textual puzzles.

Richard III is the earliest English play to have had continuous success on stage from its first performance to the present day. Frequent references indicate its popularity in Shakespeare’s time, when the title-role was taken by Richard Burbage. It was performed at Court on 16 November 1633. After the Restoration it retained its popularity, after 1700 in an adaptation by Colley Cibber, including lines from Shakespeare’s other histories, which held the stage until Henry Irving restored Shakespeare’s text for his 1877 production. Some of Cibber’s ‘improvements’ endured (a few can still be heard in Laurence Olivier’s 1955 film version).

The play’s popularity derives from the outrageous wickedness of its title character. Richard is a star role irresistible to actors: always aware of his own impressive theatricality, he delights himself as much as the audience with his virtuosity and range. He plays the concerned brother, the good-natured uncle, the pious student, the passionate lover. This last is the most audacious, as the misshapen Richard sets out to seduce Lady Anne, whose husband and father-in-law he has murdered. After his success, he shares the audience’s amazement: ‘Was ever woman in this humour woo’d? / Was ever woman in this humour won?’

Shakespeare did not invent the character of the villainous Richard. About 1516, Sir Thomas More wrote an unfinished History of Richard III, which was appropriated by chroniclers and forms part of the account of Richard’s reign in Edward Hall’s Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548) and the Chronicles of Raphael Holinshed (1577, second edition 1587). Shakespeare dramatizes More’s deformed villain, a monstrous tyrant with a self-dramatizing will to power. More provides much of the ironic action and commentary concerning Edward IV, Buckingham and Hastings, but the unhistorical roles of Queen Margaret (dead in exile before Richard became king) and Lady Anne (Richard’s wife of many years and mother of his only son) are Shakespeare’s invention.

Already in Shakespeare’s time some questioned the accuracy of this portrait of Richard. In 1617 Sir William Cornwallis offered his paradoxical ‘Praise of King Richard III’, bemoaning the ‘malicious credulity’ of ‘witty playmakers’ who had unfairly denigrated the King’s character and achievement. The effort to rehabilitate Richard continues today (including, in popular form, a fine detective novel, Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time). His defenders insist – despite evidence dating from his own lifetime of suspicion that Richard had had his nephews murdered in the Tower – that the blackening of Richard’s character is the result of a Tudor conspiracy designed to legitimize Henry VII’s path to the throne. Some of the myth was undoubtedly so motivated: a coronation portrait of Richard shows no sign of his alleged deformity, which can be traced to a hostile early chronicler, and he was not implicated in the death of Clarence.

Shakespeare’s acceptance of the legitimacy of Edward IV and his sons shows that he was no propagandist for the Tudors, though the play does confirm the providential vision of English history in which Henry Richmond’s victory at Bosworth in 1485 (and his inauguration of the Tudor dynasty) is seen as divine deliverance of England from Richard’s evil, which was itself punishment for the nation’s sins. Far more important, though, for Shakespeare than these Tudor orthodoxies is the role of Richard himself, a charismatic villain who candidly shares his thoughts with us as he contrives and dominates the action.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio, with some readings from the 1597 First Quarto.

LIST OF ROLES

RICHARD, Duke of Gloucester, later KING RICHARD III

The Duke of CLARENCE

his brother (later, his GHOST)

Sir Robert BRAKENBURY

Lieutenant of the Tower

Lord HASTINGS

the Lord Chamberlain (later, his GHOST)

Lady ANNE

widow of Edward, Prince of Wales (later, her GHOST)

Gentlemen attending Lady Anne

QUEEN ELIZABETH

wife of King Edward IV

Lord RIVERS

her brother (later, his GHOST)

Lord GREY

her son (later, his GHOST)

The Marquess of DORSET

her son

The Duke of BUCKINGHAM

(later, his GHOST)

STANLEY, Earl of Derby

QUEEN MARGARET

widow of King Henry VI

Sir William CATESBY

Two MURDERERS

The KEEPER of the Tower

KING EDWARD IV

Sir Richard RATCLIFFE

The DUCHESS of York

mother of Richard, Edward IV, and Clarence

Clarence’s children

GIRL

Three CITIZENS

ARCHBISHOP of York

Richard, the Duke of YORK

younger son of King Edward IV (later, his GHOST)

PRINCE Edward, Prince of Wales

elder son of King Edward IV (later, his GHOST)

Lord CARDINAL Bourchier

Archbishop of Canterbury

Lord MAYOR of London

HASTINGS, a PURSUIVANT

PRIEST

Sir Thomas VAUGHAN

(later, his GHOST)

The Bishop of ELY, John Morton

The Duke of NORFOLK

Lord LOVELL

SCRIVENER

Two Bishops (Shaa and Penker)

PAGE

Sir James TYRREL

Seven MESSENGERS

CHRISTOPHER Urswick

a priest

SHERIFF

of Wiltshire

The Earl of RICHMOND

afterwards King Henry VII

The Earl of OXFORD

Sir James BLUNT

Sir Walter HERBERT

The Earl of SURREY

Sir William BRANDON

GHOST OF EDWARD

Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI

GHOST OF KING HENRY VI

Guards, Halberdiers, Gentlemen, Lords, Citizens, Attendants, Soldiers

1.1 Enter RICHARD, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, alone.

RICHARD     Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this son of York;

And all the clouds that lour’d upon our House

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,

5

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments,

Our stern alarums chang’d to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visag’d War hath smooth’d his wrinkled front:

And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds

10

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber,

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

But I, that am not shap’d for sportive tricks,

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

15

I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph:

I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,

Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time

20

Into this breathing world scarce half made up –

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them –

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

25

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,

And descant on mine own deformity.

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain,

30

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,

To set my brother Clarence and the King

In deadly hate, the one against the other:

35

And if King Edward be as true and just

As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,

This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up

About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’

Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be –

40

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here Clarence comes.

Enter CLARENCE and BRAKENBURY, with a guard of men.

Brother, good day; what means this armed guard

That waits upon your Grace?

CLARENCE     His Majesty,

Tend’ring my person’s safety, hath appointed

This conduct to convey me to the Tower.

45

RICHARD     Upon what cause?

CLARENCE     Because my name is George.

RICHARD     Alack, my lord, that fault is none of yours:

He should for that commit your godfathers.

O, belike his Majesty hath some intent

That you should be new-christen’d in the Tower.

50

But what’s the matter, Clarence, may I know?

CLARENCE     Yea, Richard, when I know: for I protest

As yet I do not. But, as I can learn,

He hearkens after prophecies and dreams,

And from the cross-row plucks the letter G;

55

And says a wizard told him that by ‘G’

His issue disinherited should be.

And for my name of George begins with G.

It follows in his thought that I am he.

These, as I learn, and such like toys as these,

60

Have mov’d his Highness to commit me now.

RICHARD     Why, this it is, when men are rul’d by women:

’Tis not the King that sends you to the Tower;

My Lady Grey, his wife, Clarence, ’tis she

That tempers him to this extremity.

65

Was it not she, and that good man of worship,

Anthony Woodeville, her brother there,

That made him send Lord Hastings to the Tower,

From whence this present day he is deliver’d?

We are not safe, Clarence, we are not safe!

70

CLARENCE     By heaven, I think there is no man secure,

But the Queen’s kindred, and night-walking heralds

That trudge betwixt the King and Mistress Shore.

Heard you not what an humble suppliant

Lord Hastings was to her, for his delivery?

75

RICHARD     Humbly complaining to her deity

Got my Lord Chamberlain his liberty.

I’ll tell you what: I think it is our way,

If we will keep in favour with the King,

To be her men, and wear her livery.

80

The jealous o’er-worn widow and herself,

Since that our brother dubb’d them gentlewomen,

Are mighty gossips in our monarchy.

BRAKENBURY

I beseech your Graces both to pardon me:

His Majesty hath straitly given in charge

85

That no man shall have private conference –

Of what degree soever – with his brother.

RICHARD

Even so; and please your worship, Brakenbury,

You may partake of any thing we say.

We speak no treason, man: we say the King

90

Is wise and virtuous, and his noble Queen

Well struck in years, fair, and not jealous.

We say that Shore’s wife hath a pretty foot,

A cherry lip, a bonny eye, a passing pleasing tongue,

And that the Queen’s kindred are made gentlefolks.

95

How say you, sir? Can you deny all this?

BRAKENBURY

With this, my lord, myself have nought to do.

RICHARD

Naught with Mistress Shore? I tell thee, fellow,

He that doth naught with her (excepting one)

Were best to do it secretly, alone.

100

BRAKENBURY     What one, my lord?

RICHARD

Her husband, knave! Wouldst thou betray me?

BRAKENBURY

I do beseech your Grace to pardon me, and withal

Forbear your conference with the noble Duke.

CLARENCE

We know thy charge, Brakenbury, and will obey.

105

RICHARD     We are the Queen’s abjects, and must obey.

Brother, farewell. I will unto the King,

And whatso’er you will employ me in –

Were it to call King Edward’s widow ‘sister’ –

I will perform it to enfranchise you.

110

Meantime, this deep disgrace in brotherhood

Touches me deeper than you can imagine.

[Embraces Clarence, weeping.]

CLARENCE     I know it pleaseth neither of us well.

RICHARD     Well, your imprisonment shall not be long:

I will deliver you, or else lie for you.

115

Meantime, have patience.

CLARENCE     I must, perforce. Farewell.

     Exeunt Clarence, Brakenbury and guard.

RICHARD

Go, tread the path that thou shalt ne’er return;

Simple, plain Clarence, I do love thee so

That I will shortly send thy soul to Heaven –

If Heaven will take the present at our hands.

120

But who comes here? The new-deliver’d Hastings?

Enter LORD HASTINGS.

HASTINGS     Good time of day unto my gracious lord.

RICHARD     As much unto my good Lord Chamberlain:

Well are you welcome to the open air.

How hath your lordship brook’d imprisonment?

125

HASTINGS

With patience, noble lord, as prisoners must;

But I shall live, my lord, to give them thanks

That were the cause of my imprisonment.

RICHARD

No doubt, no doubt; and so shall Clarence too:

For they that were your enemies are his,

130

And have prevail’d as much on him, as you.

HASTINGS     More pity that the eagles should be mew’d,

While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.

RICHARD     What news abroad?

HASTINGS     No news so bad abroad, as this at home:

135

The King is sickly, weak and melancholy,

And his physicians fear him mightily.

RICHARD     Now by Saint John, that news is bad indeed.

O, he hath kept an evil diet long,

And over-much consum’d his royal person:

140

’Tis very grievous to be thought upon.

Where is he, in his bed?

HASTINGS     He is.

RICHARD     Go you before, and I will follow you.

Exit Hastings.

He cannot live, I hope, and must not die

145

Till George be pack’d with post-horse up to Heaven.

I’ll in to urge his hatred more to Clarence,

With lies well-steel’d with weighty arguments;

And if I fail not in my deep intent,

Clarence hath not another day to live:

150

Which done, God take King Edward to his mercy,

And leave the world for me to bustle in.

For then I’ll marry Warwick’s youngest daughter –

What though I kill’d her husband and her father?

The readiest way to make the wench amends

155

Is to become her husband, and her father:

The which will I, not all so much for love

As for another secret close intent,

By marrying her which I must reach unto.

But yet I run before my horse to market:

160

Clarence still breathes, Edward still lives and reigns;

When they are gone, then must I count my gains.

Exit.

1.2 Enter the corse of Henry the Sixth with Halberds to guard it, LADY ANNE being the mourner, attended by TRESSEL, BERKELEY and other Gentlemen.

ANNE     Set down, set down your honourable load

(If honour may be shrouded in a hearse)

Whilst I awhile obsequiously lament

Th’untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.

Poor key-cold Figure of a holy king,

5

Pale ashes of the House of Lancaster,

Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood:

Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost

To hear the lamentations of poor Anne,

Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughter’d son,

10

Stabb’d by the selfsame hand that made these wounds.

Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life

I pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes.

O, cursed be the hand that made these holes;

Cursed the heart that had the heart to do it;

15

Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence.

More direful hap betide that hated wretch

That makes us wretched by the death of thee

Than I can wish to adders, spiders, toads,

Or any creeping venom’d thing that lives.

20

If ever he have child, abortive be it:

Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,

Whose ugly and unnatural aspect

May fright the hopeful mother at the view,

And that be heir to his unhappiness.

25

If ever he have wife, let her be made

More miserable by the death of him

Than I am made by my young lord, and thee.

Come now towards Chertsey with your holy load,

Taken from Paul’s to be interred there;

30

And still, as you are weary of the weight,

Rest you, while I lament King Henry’s corse.

Enter RICHARD.

RICHARD     Stay, you that bear the corse, and set it down.

ANNE     What black magician conjures up this fiend

To stop devoted charitable deeds?

35

RICHARD     Villains! set down the corse or by Saint Paul

I’ll make a corse of him that disobeys!

HALBERDIER

My lord, stand back and let the coffin pass.

RICHARD

Unmanner’d dog, stand thou when I command!

Advance thy halberd higher than my breast,

40

Or by Saint Paul I’ll strike thee to my foot,

And spurn upon thee, beggar, for thy boldness.

ANNE     What, do you tremble? Are you all afraid?

Alas, I blame you not, for you are mortal,

And mortal eyes cannot endure the devil.

45

Avaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell!

Thou hadst but power over his mortal body:

His soul thou canst not have; therefore begone.

RICHARD     Sweet saint, for charity be not so curst.

ANNE

Foul devil, for God’s sake hence, and trouble us not;

50

For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell,

Fill’d it with cursing cries and deep exclaims.

If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds,

Behold this pattern of thy butcheries.

O gentlemen! See, see dead Henry’s wounds

55

Open their congeal’d mouths and bleed afresh.

Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity,

For ’tis thy presence that exhales this blood

From cold and empty veins where no blood dwells:

Thy deed inhuman and unnatural

60

Provokes this deluge most unnatural.

O God! which this blood mad’st, revenge his death;

O earth! which this blood drink’st, revenge his death;

Either heav’n with lightning strike the murderer

     dead,

Or earth gape open wide and eat him quick,

65

As thou dost swallow up this good King’s blood

Which his hell-govern’d arm hath butchered.

RICHARD     Lady, you know no rules of charity,

Which renders good for bad, blessings for curses.

ANNE     Villain, thou know’st no law of God nor man.

70

No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.

RICHARD     But I know none, and therefore am no beast.

ANNE     O wonderful, when devils tell the truth!

RICHARD     More wonderful, when angels are so angry.

Vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman,

75

Of these supposed crimes, to give me leave,

By circumstance, but to acquit myself.

ANNE     Vouchsafe, diffus’d infection of a man,

Of these known evils, but to give me leave,

By circumstance, t’accuse thy cursed self.

80

RICHARD

Fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have

Some patient leisure to excuse myself.

ANNE

Fouler than heart can think thee, thou canst make

No excuse current but to hang thyself.

RICHARD     By such despair I should accuse myself.

85

ANNE     And by despairing shalt thou stand excus’d

For doing worthy vengeance on thyself

That didst unworthy slaughter upon others.

RICHARD     Say that I slew them not?

ANNE     Then say they were not slain:

90

But dead they are, and, devilish slave, by thee.

RICHARD     I did not kill your husband.

ANNE     Why then he is alive.

RICHARD     Nay he is dead, and slain by Edward’s hand.

ANNE

In thy foul throat thou liest: Queen Margaret saw

95

Thy murd’rous falchion smoking in his blood,

The which thou once didst bend against her breast,

But that thy brothers beat aside the point.

RICHARD     I was provoked by her sland’rous tongue,

That laid their guilt upon my guiltless shoulders.

100

ANNE     Thou wast provoked by thy bloody mind,

That never dream’st on aught but butcheries.

Didst thou not kill this King?

RICHARD     I grant ye, yea.

ANNE

Dost grant me, hedgehog! Then God grant me too

Thou mayst be damned for that wicked deed.

105

O he was gentle, mild, and virtuous.

RICHARD

The better for the King of Heaven that hath him.

ANNE     He is in Heaven, where thou shalt never come.

RICHARD

Let him thank me that holp to send him thither,

For he was fitter for that place than earth.

110

ANNE     And thou unfit for any place but hell.

RICHARD

Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it.

ANNE     Some dungeon?

RICHARD     Your bed-chamber.

ANNE     Ill rest betide the chamber where thou liest.

115

RICHARD     So will it, madam, till I lie with you.

ANNE     I hope so!

RICHARD     I know so. But, gentle Lady Anne,

To leave this keen encounter of our wits,

And fall something into a slower method:

120

Is not the causer of the timeless deaths

Of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward,

As blameful as the executioner?

ANNE     Thou wast the cause, and most accurs’d effect.

RICHARD     Your beauty was the cause of that effect:

125

Your beauty, that did haunt me in my sleep

To undertake the death of all the world,

So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.

ANNE     If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide,

These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks.

130

RICHARD

These eyes could not endure that beauty’s wrack;

You should not blemish it if I stood by.

As all the world is cheered by the sun,

So I by that; it is my day, my life.

ANNE     Black night o’ershade thy day, and death thy life.

135

RICHARD

Curse not thyself, fair creature; thou art both.

ANNE     I would I were, to be reveng’d on thee.

RICHARD     It is a quarrel most unnatural,

To be reveng’d on him that loveth thee.

ANNE     It is a quarrel just and reasonable,

140

To be reveng’d on him that kill’d my husband.

RICHARD     He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband,

Did it to help thee to a better husband.

ANNE     His better doth not breathe upon the earth.

RICHARD     He lives that loves thee better than he could.

145

ANNE          Name him.

RICHARD     Plantagenet.

ANNE          Why that was he.

RICHARD     The selfsame name, but one of better nature.

ANNE     Where is he?

RICHARD     Here.      [She spits at him.]

Why dost thou spit at me?

ANNE     Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake.

RICHARD     Never came poison from so sweet a place.

150

ANNE     Never hung poison on a fouler toad.

Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes.

RICHARD     Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.

ANNE     Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead.

RICHARD     I would they were, that I might die at once;

155

For now they kill me with a living death.

Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears,

Sham’d their aspects with store of childish drops;

These eyes, which never shed remorseful tear,

No, when my father York and Edward wept

160

To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made

When black-fac’d Clifford shook his sword at him;

Nor when thy warlike father, like a child

Told the sad story of my father’s death,

And twenty times made pause to sob and weep,

165

That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks

Like trees bedash’d with rain. In that sad time

My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear;

And what these sorrows could not thence exhale,

Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with

     weeping.

170

I never sued to friend nor enemy:

My tongue could never learn sweet smoothing word;

But now thy beauty is propos’d my fee,

My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to

speak. [She looks scornfully at him.]

Teach not thy lip such scorn; for it was made

175

For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.

If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive,

Lo here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword,

Which if thou please to hide in this true breast,

And let the soul forth that adoreth thee,

180

I lay it naked to the deadly stroke,

And humbly beg the death upon my knee.

[Kneels; he lays his breast open, she offers at it with his sword.]

Nay, do not pause, for I did kill King Henry –

But ’twas thy beauty that provoked me.

Nay, now dispatch: ’twas I that stabb’d young

Edward –

185

But ’twas thy heavenly face that set me on.

[She falls the sword.]

Take up the sword again, or take up me.

ANNE     Arise, dissembler; though I wish thy death,

[He rises.]

I will not be thy executioner.

RICHARD     Then bid me kill myself, and I will do it.

190

ANNE     I have already.

RICHARD     That was in thy rage:

Speak it again, and even with the word,

This hand, which for thy love did kill thy love,

Shall for thy love kill a far truer love:

To both their deaths shalt thou be accessary.

195

ANNE     I would I knew thy heart.

RICHARD ’Tis figur’d in my tongue.

ANNE     I fear me both are false.

RICHARD     Then never was man true.

ANNE     Well, well, put up your sword.

200

RICHARD     Say then my peace is made.

ANNE     That shalt thou know hereafter.

RICHARD     But shall I live in hope?

ANNE     All men, I hope, live so.

RICHARD     Vouchsafe to wear this ring.

205

ANNE     To take is not to give.

RICHARD     Look how my ring encompasseth thy finger:

Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart;

Wear both of them, for both of them are thine.

And if thy poor devoted servant may

210

But beg one favour at thy gracious hand,

Thou dost confirm his happiness for ever.

ANNE     What is it?

RICHARD

That it may please you leave these sad designs

To him that hath most cause to be a mourner,

215

And presently repair to Crosby Place,

Where, after I have solemnly interr’d

At Chertsey Monastery this noble King,

And wet his grave with my repentant tears,

I will with all expedient duty see you.

220

For divers unknown reasons, I beseech you

Grant me this boon.

ANNE     With all my heart, and much it joys me too,

To see you are become so penitent.

Tressel and Berkeley, go along with me.

225

RICHARD     Bid me farewell.

ANNE     ’Tis more than you deserve;

But since you teach me how to flatter you,

Imagine I have said farewell already.

     Exeunt Tressel and Berkeley with Anne.

RICHARD     Sirs, take up the corse.

GENTLEMAN     Towards Chertsey, noble lord?

230

RICHARD     No, to Whitefriars; there attend my coming.

     Exeunt Gentlemen and Halberds with corse.

Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?

Was ever woman in this humour won?

I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long.

What, I that kill’d her husband and his father:

235

To take her in her heart’s extremest hate,

With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,

The bleeding witness of her hatred by,

Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me –

And I, no friends to back my suit at all

240

But the plain devil and dissembling looks –

And yet to win her, all the world to nothing!

Ha!

Hath she forgot already that brave prince,

Edward, her lord, whom I, some three months since,

245

Stabb’d in my angry mood at Tewkesbury?

A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman,

Fram’d in the prodigality of Nature,

Young, valiant, wise, and no doubt right royal,

The spacious world cannot again afford.

250

And will she yet debase her eyes on me,

That cropp’d the golden prime of this sweet prince,

And made her widow to a woeful bed?

On me, whose all not equals Edward’s moiety?

On me, that halts and am misshapen thus?

255

My dukedom to a beggarly denier,

I do mistake my person all this while!

Upon my life, she finds – although I cannot –

Myself to be a marvellous proper man.

I’ll be at charges for a looking-glass,

260

And entertain a score or two of tailors

To study fashions to adorn my body:

Since I am crept in favour with myself,

I will maintain it with some little cost.

But first I’ll turn yon fellow in his grave,

265

And then return, lamenting, to my love.

Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,

That I may see my shadow as I pass.     Exit.

1.3 Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, LORD RIVERS, LORD GREY and the MARQUESS OF DORSET.

RIVERS

Have patience, Madam, there’s no doubt his Majesty

Will soon recover his accustom’d health.

GREY     In that you brook it ill, it makes him worse;

Therefore, for God’s sake entertain good comfort,

And cheer his Grace with quick and merry eyes.

5

ELIZABETH     If he were dead, what would betide on me?

GREY             No other harm but loss of such a lord.

ELIZABETH     The loss of such a lord includes all harms.

GREY             The heavens have bless’d you with a goodly son

To be your comforter when he is gone.

10

ELIZABETH     Ah, he is young, and his minority

Is put unto the trust of Richard Gloucester,

A man that loves not me, nor none of you.

RIVERS     Is it concluded he shall be Protector?

ELIZABETH     It is determin’d, not concluded yet;

15

But so it must be, if the King miscarry.

Enter BUCKINGHAM and STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY.

GREY     Here come the lords of Buckingham and Derby.

BUCKINGHAM

Good time of day unto your royal Grace.

STANLEY

God make your Majesty joyful, as you have been.

ELIZABETH

The Countess Richmond, good my lord of Derby,

20

To your good prayer will scarcely say Amen;

Yet, Derby, notwithstanding she’s your wife,

And loves not me, be you, good lord, assur’d

I hate not you for her proud arrogance.

STANLEY     I do beseech you, either not believe

25

The envious slanders of her false accusers,

Or if she be accus’d on true report,

Bear with her weakness, which I think proceeds

From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice.

RIVERS     Saw you the King today, my lord of Derby?

30

STANLEY     But now the Duke of Buckingham and I

Are come from visiting his Majesty.

ELIZABETH     What likelihood of his amendment, lords?

BUCKINGHAM

Madam, good hope; his Grace speaks cheerfully.

ELIZABETH

God grant him health. Did you confer with him?

35

BUCKINGHAM

Ay, madam; he desires to make atonement

Between the Duke of Gloucester and your brothers,

And between them and my Lord Chamberlain;

And sent to warn them to his royal presence.

ELIZABETH

Would all were well – but that will never be;

40

I fear our happiness is at the height.

Enter RICHARD and HASTINGS.

RICHARD     They do me wrong, and I will not endure it!

Who is it that complains unto the King

That I, forsooth, am stern, and love them not?

By holy Paul, they love his Grace but lightly

45

That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours.

Because I cannot flatter, and look fair,

Smile in men’s faces, smooth, deceive and cog,

Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,

I must be held a rancorous enemy.

50

Cannot a plain man live and think no harm,

But thus his simple truth must be abus’d

With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

GREY     To who in all this presence speaks your Grace?

RICHARD     To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace.

55

When have I injur’d thee? When done thee wrong?

Or thee? Or thee? Or any of your faction?

A plague upon you all! His royal Grace

(Whom God preserve better than you would wish)

Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing while

60

But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.

ELIZABETH

Brother of Gloucester, you mistake the matter:

The King, on his own royal disposition,

And not provok’d by any suitor else,

Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred,

65

That in your outward action shows itself

Against my children, brothers, and myself,

Makes him to send, that he may learn the ground

Of your ill will, and thereby to remove it.

RICHARD     I cannot tell; the world is grown so bad

70

That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.

Since every Jack became a gentleman

There’s many a gentle person made a jack.

ELIZABETH

Come, come: we know your meaning, brother

     Gloucester.

You envy my advancement, and my friends’.

75

God grant we never may have need of you.

RICHARD

Meantime, God grants that we have need of you:

Our brother is imprison’d by your means,

Myself disgrac’d, and the nobility

Held in contempt, while great promotions

80

Are daily given to ennoble those

That scarce some two days since were worth a noble.

ELIZABETH

By Him that rais’d me to this careful height

From that contented hap which I enjoy’d,

I never did incense his Majesty

85

Against the Duke of Clarence, but have been

An earnest advocate to plead for him.

My lord, you do me shameful injury,

Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects.

RICHARD     You may deny that you were not the mean

90

Of my Lord Hastings’ late imprisonment.

RIVERS     She may, my lord, for –

RICHARD

She may, Lord Rivers; why, who knows not so?

She may do more, sir, than denying that:

She may help you to many fair preferments,

95

And then deny her aiding hand therein,

And lay those honours on your high desert.

What may she not? She may – ay, marry may she –

RIVERS     What, marry may she?

RICHARD     What marry may she? Marry with a king;

100

A bachelor, and a handsome stripling too:

Iwis, your grandam had a worser match.

ELIZABETH

My lord of Gloucester, I have too long borne

Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs;

By heaven, I will acquaint his Majesty

105

Of those gross taunts that oft I have endur’d.

Enter old QUEEN MARGARET.

I had rather be a country servant maid,

Than a great queen, with this condition,

To be so baited, scorn’d, and stormed at:

Small joy have I in being England’s queen.

110

MARGARET [aside]

And lessen’d be that small, God I beseech Him:

Thy honour, state, and seat is due to me.

RICHARD

What, threat you me with telling of the King?

Tell him, and spare not: look what I have said

I will avouch’t in presence of the King:

115

I dare adventure to be sent to th’ Tower;

’Tis time to speak: my pains are quite forgot.

MARGARET [aside]

Out, devil! I remember them too well:

Thou kill’dst my husband Henry in the Tower,

And Edward, my poor son, at Tewkesbury.

120

RICHARD

Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king,

I was a pack-horse in his great affairs;

A weeder-out of his proud adversaries;

A liberal rewarder of his friends:

To royalize his blood, I spent mine own.

125

MARGARET [aside]

Ay, and much better blood than his, or thine.

RICHARD

In all which time, you and your husband Grey

Were factious for the House of Lancaster:

And Rivers, so were you. Was not your husband

In Margaret’s battle at Saint Albans slain?

130

Let me put in your minds, if you forget,

What you have been ere this, and what you are;

Withal, what I have been, and what I am.

MARGARET [aside]

A murd’rous villain, and so still thou art.

RICHARD

Poor Clarence did forsake his father Warwick,

135

Ay, and forswore himself – which Jesu pardon –

MARGARET [aside] Which God revenge.

RICHARD     To fight on Edward’s party for the crown:

And for his meed, poor lord, he is mew’d up.

I would to God my heart were flint, like Edward’s,

140

Or Edward’s soft and pitiful, like mine.

I am too childish-foolish for this world.

MARGARET [aside]

Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave this world,

Thou cacodemon: there thy kingdom is.

RIVERS     My lord of Gloucester, in those busy days

145

Which here you urge to prove us enemies,

We follow’d then our lord, our sovereign king:

So should we you, if you should be our king.

RICHARD     If I should be? I had rather be a pedlar!

Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof.

150

ELIZABETH     As little joy, my lord, as you suppose

You should enjoy, were you this country’s king:

As little joy you may suppose in me

That I enjoy, being the Queen thereof.

MARGARET [aside]

Ay, little joy enjoys the Queen thereof:

155

For I am she, and altogether joyless.

I can no longer hold me patient! [coming forward]

Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out

In sharing that which you have pill’d from me:

Which of you trembles not, that looks on me?

160

If not that I am Queen you bow like subjects,

Yet that by you depos’d you quake like rebels.

Ah, gentle villain! do not turn away.

RICHARD

Foul wrinkled witch, what mak’st thou in my sight?

MARGARET     But repetition of what thou hast marr’d:

165

That will I make, before I let thee go.

RICHARD     Wert thou not banished on pain of death?

MARGARET

I was, but I do find more pain in banishment

Than death can yield me here by my abode.

A husband and a son thou ow’st to me;

170

And thou a kingdom; all of you, allegiance.

This sorrow that I have by right is yours;

And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.

RICHARD     The curse my noble father laid on thee

When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper,

175

And with thy scorns drew’st rivers from his eyes,

And then to dry them, gav’st the Duke a clout

Steep’d in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland –

His curses then, from bitterness of soul

Denounc’d against thee, are all fall’n upon thee,

180

And God, not we, hath plagu’d thy bloody deed.

ELIZABETH     So just is God, to right the innocent.

HASTINGS     O, ’twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,

And the most merciless, that e’er was heard of.

RIVERS

Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.

185

DORSET     No man but prophesied revenge for it.

BUCKINGHAM

Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.

MARGARET

What? Were you snarling all before I came,

Ready to catch each other by the throat,

And turn you all your hatred now on me?

190

Did York’s dread curse prevail so much with heaven

That Henry’s death, my lovely Edward’s death,

Their kingdom’s loss, my woeful banishment,

Should all but answer for that peevish brat?

Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?

195

Why then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses:

Though not by war, by surfeit die your King,

As ours by murder, to make him a king.

Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales,

For Edward my son, that was Prince of Wales,

200

Die in his youth, by like untimely violence.

Thyself, a queen, for me that was a queen,

Outlive thy glory like my wretched self:

Long may’st thou live to wail thy children’s death,

And see another, as I see thee now,

205

Deck’d in thy rights, as thou art stall’d in mine;

Long die thy happy days before thy death,

And after many lengthen’d hours of grief,

Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s Queen.

Rivers and Dorset, you were standers-by,

210

And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son

Was stabb’d with bloody daggers. God, I pray Him,

That none of you may live his natural age,

But by some unlook’d accident cut off.

RICHARD

Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither’d hag.

215

MARGARET

And leave out thee? Stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.

If heaven have any grievous plague in store

Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,

O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,

And then hurl down their indignation

220

On thee, the troubler of the poor world’s peace.

The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul;

Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st,

And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends;

No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,

225

Unless it be while some tormenting dream

Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils.

Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog,

Thou that wast seal’d in thy nativity

The slave of Nature, and the son of hell;

230

Thou slander of thy heavy mother’s womb,

Thou loathed issue of thy father’s loins,

Thou rag of honour, thou detested –

RICHARD     Margaret!

MARGARET     Richard!

RICHARD     Ha?

MARGARET     I call thee not.

RICHARD     I cry thee mercy then, for I did think

235

That thou hadst call’d me all these bitter names.

MARGARET

Why so I did, but look’d for no reply.

O, let me make the period to my curse!

RICHARD ’Tis done by me, and ends in ‘Margaret’.

ELIZABETH

Thus have you breath’d your curse against yourself.

240

MARGARET

Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune:

Why strew’st thou sugar on that bottled spider,

Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?

Fool, fool; thou whet’st a knife to kill thyself.

The day will come that thou shalt wish for me

245

To help thee curse this poisonous bunch-back’d toad.

HASTINGS     False-boding woman, end thy frantic curse,

Lest to thy harm thou move our patience.

MARGARET

Foul shame upon you, you have all mov’d mine.

RIVERS

Were you well serv’d, you would be taught your duty.

250

MARGARET

To serve me well, you all should do me duty:

Teach me to be your queen, and you my subjects.

O, serve me well, and teach yourselves that duty.

DORSET     Dispute not with her; she is lunatic.

MARGARET Peace, Master Marquess: you are malapert;

255

Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current.

O, that your young nobility could judge

What ’twere to lose it and be miserable.

They that stand high have many blasts to shake

     them,

And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.

260

RICHARD

Good counsel, marry! Learn it, learn it, Marquess.

DORSET     It touches you, my lord, as much as me.

RICHARD     Ay, and much more; but I was born so high:

Our aery buildeth in the cedar’s top,

And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.

265

MARGARET     And turns the sun to shade, alas, alas!

Witness my son, now in the shade of death,

Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath

Hath in eternal darkness folded up.

Your aery buildeth in our aery’s nest;

270

O God, that seest it, do not suffer it:

As it is won with blood, lost be it so.

BUCKINGHAM

Peace, peace, for shame, if not for charity.

MARGARET     Urge neither charity nor shame to me:

Uncharitably with me have you dealt,

275

And shamefully my hopes by you are butcher’d.

My charity is outrage, life my shame;

And in that shame, still live my sorrows’ rage.

BUCKINGHAM     Have done, have done!

MARGARET     O princely Buckingham, I’ll kiss thy hand

280

In sign of league and amity with thee:

Now fair befall thee and thy noble House;

Thy garments are not spotted with our blood,

Nor thou within the compass of my curse.

BUCKINGHAM     Nor no-one here: for curses never pass

285

The lips of those that breathe them in the air.

MARGARET

I will not think but they ascend the sky,

And there awake God’s gentle sleeping peace.

O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog!

Look when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites

290

His venom tooth will rankle to the death.

Have not to do with him; beware of him;

Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him,

And all their ministers attend on him.

RICHARD     What doth she say, my lord of Buckingham?

295

BUCKINGHAM

Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord.

MARGARET

What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle counsel,

And soothe the devil that I warn thee from?

O, but remember this another day

When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow,

300

And say, poor Margaret was a prophetess.

Live, each of you, the subjects to his hate,

And he to yours, and all of you to God’s. Exit.

BUCKINGHAM

My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses.

RIVERS     And so doth mine; I muse why she’s at liberty.

305

RICHARD     I cannot blame her: by God’s holy mother,

She hath had too much wrong; and I repent

My part thereof that I have done to her.

ELIZABETH     I never did her any, to my knowledge.

RICHARD     Yet you have all the vantage of her wrong.

310

I was too hot to do somebody good

That is too cold in thinking of it now;

Marry, as for Clarence, he is well repaid:

He is frank’d up to fatting for his pains.

God pardon them that are the cause thereof.

315

RIVERS     A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion,

To pray for them that have done scathe to us.

RICHARD

So do I ever – [Speaks to himself.] being well advis’d;

For had I curs’d now, I had curs’d myself.

Enter CATESBY.

CATESBY     Madam, his Majesty doth call for you,

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And for your Grace, and you my gracious lords.

ELIZABETH

Catesby, I come. Lords, will you go with me?

RIVERS     We wait upon your Grace.

     Exeunt all but Richard.

RICHARD     I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl:

The secret mischiefs that I set abroach

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I lay unto the grievous charge of others.

Clarence, whom I, indeed, have cast in darkness,

I do beweep to many simple gulls,

Namely to Derby, Hastings, Buckingham;

And tell them ’tis the Queen and her allies

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That stir the King against the Duke my brother.

Now they believe it, and withal whet me

To be reveng’d on Rivers, Dorset, Grey.

But then I sigh, and, with a piece of Scripture,

Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:

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And thus I clothe my naked villainy

With odd old ends stol’n forth of Holy Writ,

And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

Enter two Murderers.

But soft, here come my executioners.

How now, my hardy, stout, resolved mates;

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Are you now going to dispatch this thing?

1 MURDERER

We are, my lord, and come to have the warrant,

That we may be admitted where he is.

RICHARD     Well thought upon; I have it here about me.

When you have done, repair to Crosby Place –

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But sirs, be sudden in the execution,

Withal obdurate: do not hear him plead;

For Clarence is well-spoken, and perhaps

May move your hearts to pity, if you mark him.

2 MURDERER

Tut, tut, my lord: we will not stand to prate.

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Talkers are no good doers; be assur’d

We go to use our hands, and not our tongues.

RICHARD

Your eyes drop millstones, when fools’ eyes fall tears.

I like you, lads: about your business straight.

Go, go, dispatch.

BOTH     We will, my noble lord. Exeunt.

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1.4 Enter CLARENCE and Keeper.

KEEPER     Why looks your Grace so heavily today?

CLARENCE     O, I have pass’d a miserable night,

So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,

That, as I am a Christian faithful man,

I would not spend another such a night

5

Though ’twere to buy a world of happy days,

So full of dismal terror was the time.

KEEPER

What was your dream, my lord? I pray you tell me.

CLARENCE

Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower,

And was embark’d to cross to Burgundy;

10

And in my company my brother Gloucester,

Who from my cabin tempted me to walk

Upon the hatches: thence we look’d toward England,

And cited up a thousand heavy times,

During the wars of York and Lancaster,

15

That had befall’n us. As we pac’d along

Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,

Methought that Gloucester stumbled, and in falling,

Struck me (that thought to stay him) overboard,

Into the tumbling billows of the main.

20

O Lord! Methought what pain it was to drown:

What dreadful noise of waters in my ears;

What sights of ugly death within my eyes!

Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;

Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw’d upon;

25

Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,

Inestimable stones, unvalu’d jewels,

All scatter’d in the bottom of the sea.

Some lay in dead men’s skulls, and in the holes

Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept –

30

As ’twere in scorn of eyes – reflecting gems,

That woo’d the slimy bottom of the deep,

And mock’d the dead bones that lay scatter’d by.

KEEPER     Had you such leisure in the time of death

To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?

35

CLARENCE     Methought I had; and often did I strive

To yield the ghost, but still the envious flood

Stopp’d in my soul, and would not let it forth

To find the empty, vast, and wand’ring air,

But smother’d it within my panting bulk,

40

Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.

KEEPER     Awak’d you not in this sore agony?

CLARENCE

No, no; my dream was lengthen’d after life.

O, then began the tempest to my soul:

I pass’d, methought, the melancholy flood,

45

With that sour ferryman which poets write of,

Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

The first that there did greet my stranger-soul

Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick,

Who spake aloud, ‘What scourge for perjury

50

Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?’

And so he vanish’d. Then came wand’ring by

A shadow like an angel, with bright hair

Dabbled in blood; and he shriek’d out aloud,

‘Clarence is come: false, fleeting, perjur’d Clarence,

55

That stabb’d me in the field by Tewkesbury!

Seize on him, Furies! Take him unto torment!’

With that, methoughts, a legion of foul fiends

Environ’d me, and howled in mine ears

Such hideous cries, that with the very noise

60

I trembling wak’d, and for a season after

Could not believe but that I was in hell,

Such terrible impression made my dream.

KEEPER     No marvel, lord, though it affrighted you;

I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it.

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CLARENCE

Ah, Keeper, Keeper, I have done these things,

That now give evidence against my soul,

For Edward’s sake: and see how he requites me.

O God, if my deep prayers cannot appease Thee,

But Thou wilt be aveng’d on my misdeeds,

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Yet execute Thy wrath in me alone;

O spare my guiltless wife and my poor children.

Keeper, I prithee sit by me awhile:

My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.

KEEPER

I will, my lord; God give your Grace good rest.

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Enter BRAKENBURY the lieutenant.

BRAKENBURY

Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,

Makes the night morning, and the noontide night.

Princes have but their titles for their glories,

An outward honour for an inward toil;

And for unfelt imaginations

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They often feel a world of restless cares:

So that between their titles, and low name,

There’s nothing differs but the outward fame.

Enter the two Murderers.

1 MURDERER Ho, who’s here?

BRAKENBURY

What would’st thou, fellow? And how cam’st thou

     hither?

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2 MURDERER I would speak with Clarence, and I came

hither on my legs.

BRAKENBURY     What, so brief?

1 MURDERER ’Tis better, sir, than to be tedious. Let

him see our commission, and talk no more.

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[Brakenbury reads.]

BRAKENBURY     I am in this commanded to deliver

The noble Duke of Clarence to your hands.

I will not reason what is meant hereby,

Because I will be guiltless from the meaning.

There lies the Duke asleep; and there the keys.

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I’ll to the King, and signify to him

That thus I have resign’d to you my charge.

1 MURDERER

You may, sir; ’tis a point of wisdom. Fare you well.

     Exeunt Brakenbury and Keeper.

2 MURDERER What, shall I stab him as he sleeps?

1 MURDERER No: he’ll say ’twas done cowardly, when he

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wakes.

2 MURDERER Why, he shall never wake until the great

Judgement Day.

1 MURDERER Why, then he’ll say we stabbed him

sleeping.

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2 MURDERER The urging of that word, ‘Judgement’,

hath bred a kind of remorse in me.

1 MURDERER What, art thou afraid?

2 MURDERER Not to kill him – having a warrant – but to

be damned for killing him, from the which no warrant

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can defend me.

1 MURDERER I thought thou hadst been resolute.

2 MURDERER So I am – to let him live.

1 MURDERER I’ll back to the Duke of Gloucester, and

tell him so.

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2 MURDERER Nay, I prithee stay a little: I hope this

passionate humour of mine will change. It was wont to

hold me but while one tells twenty.

1 MURDERER How dost thou feel thyself now?

2 MURDERER Some certain dregs of conscience are yet

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within me.

1 MURDERER Remember our reward, when the deed’s

done.

2 MURDERER Zounds, he dies! I had forgot the reward.

1 MURDERER Where’s thy conscience now?

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2 MURDERER Oh, in the Duke of Gloucester’s purse.

1 MURDERER When he opens his purse to give us our

reward, thy conscience flies out?

2 MURDERER ’Tis no matter; let it go. There’s few, or

none, will entertain it.

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1 MURDERER What if it come to thee again?

2 MURDERER I’ll not meddle with it; it makes a man a

coward. A man cannot steal but it accuseth him; a man

cannot swear but it checks him; a man cannot lie with

his neighbour’s wife but it detects him. ’Tis a

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blushing, shamefaced spirit, that mutinies in a man’s

bosom. It fills a man full of obstacles; it made me

once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found. It

beggars any man that keeps it; it is turned out of

towns and cities for a dangerous thing; and every

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man that means to live well endeavours to trust to

himself, and live without it.

1 MURDERER Zounds, ’tis even now at my elbow,

persuading me not to kill the Duke.

2 MURDERER Take the devil in thy mind, and believe

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him not: he would insinuate with thee but to make

thee sigh.

1 MURDERER I am strong-framed; he cannot prevail

with me.

2 MURDERER Spoke like a tall man that respects thy

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reputation! Come, shall we fall to work?

1 MURDERER Take him on the costard with the hilts of

thy sword, and then throw him into the malmsey-butt

in the next room.

2 MURDERER Oh excellent device! and make a sop of

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him.

1 MURDERER Soft, he wakes.

2 MURDERER Strike!

1 MURDERER No, we’ll reason with him.

CLARENCE

Where art thou, Keeper? Give me a cup of wine.

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2 MURDERER

You shall have wine enough, my lord, anon.

CLARENCE     In God’s name, what art thou?

2 MURDERER     A man, as you are.

CLARENCE     But not as I am, royal.

1 MURDERER Nor you as we are, loyal.

CLARENCE

Thy voice is thunder, but thy looks are humble.

165

1 MURDERER

My voice is now the King’s, my looks mine own.

CLARENCE

How darkly, and how deadly dost thou speak.

Your eyes do menace me; why look you pale?

Who sent you hither? Wherefore do you come?

BOTH     To – to – to –

CLARENCE     To murder me?

BOTH     Ay, ay.

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CLARENCE     You scarcely have the hearts to tell me so,

And therefore cannot have the hearts to do it.

Wherein, my friends, have I offended you?

1 MURDERER Offended us you have not, but the King.

CLARENCE     I shall be reconcil’d to him again.

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2 MURDERER Never, my lord; therefore prepare to die.

CLARENCE     Are you drawn forth among a world of men

To slay the innocent? What is my offence?

Where is the evidence that doth accuse me?

What lawful quest have giv’n their verdict up

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Unto the frowning judge? Or who pronounc’d

The bitter sentence of poor Clarence’ death?

Before I be convict by course of law,

To threaten me with death is most unlawful.

I charge you, as you hope to have redemption,

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By Christ’s dear blood, shed for our grievous sins,

That you depart and lay no hands on me:

The deed you undertake is damnable.

1 MURDERER What we will do, we do upon command.

2 MURDERER

And he that hath commanded is our King.

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CLARENCE     Erroneous vassals! The great King of kings

Hath in the table of His law commanded

That thou shalt do no murder. Will you then

Spurn at His edict, and fulfil a man’s?

Take heed! For He holds vengeance in His hand

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To hurl upon their heads that break His law.

2 MURDERER

And that same vengeance doth He hurl on thee,

For false forswearing, and for murder too:

Thou didst receive the sacrament to fight

In quarrel of the House of Lancaster.

200

1 MURDERER And like a traitor to the name of God

Didst break that vow, and with thy treacherous blade

Unrip’st the bowels of thy sovereign’s son.

2 MURDERER

Whom thou wast sworn to cherish and defend.

1 MURDERER

How canst thou urge God’s dreadful law to us,

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When thou hast broke it in such dear degree?

CLARENCE     Alas, for whose sake did I that ill deed?

For Edward, for my brother, for his sake.

He sends you not to murder me for this,

For in that sin he is as deep as I.

210

If God will be avenged for the deed,

O know you yet, He doth it publicly;

Take not the quarrel from His powerful arm.

He needs no indirect or lawless course

To cut off those that have offended Him.

215

1 MURDERER Who made thee then a bloody minister,

When gallant-springing, brave Plantagenet,

That princely novice, was struck dead by thee?

CLARENCE     My brother’s love, the devil, and my rage.

1 MURDERER

Thy brother’s love, our duty, and thy faults

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Provoke us hither now to slaughter thee.

CLARENCE     O, if you love my brother, hate not me:

I am his brother, and I love him well.

If you are hir’d for meed, go back again,

And I will send you to my brother Gloucester,

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Who shall reward you better for my life

Than Edward will for tidings of my death.

2 MURDERER

You are deceiv’d: your brother Gloucester hates you.

CLARENCE     O no, he loves me, and he holds me dear;

Go you to him from me.

1 MURDERER     Ay, so we will.

230

CLARENCE

Tell him, when that our princely father York

Bless’d his three sons with his victorious arm,

And charg’d us from his soul to love each other,

He little thought of this divided friendship:

Bid Gloucester think of this, and he will weep.

235

1 MURDERER

Ay, millstones, as he lesson’d us to weep.

CLARENCE     O, do not slander him, for he is kind.

1 MURDERER Right, as snow in harvest.

Come: you deceive yourself;

’Tis he that sends us to destroy you here.

240

CLARENCE     It cannot be: for he bewept my fortune,

And hugg’d me in his arms, and swore with sobs

That he would labour my delivery.

1 MURDERER Why so he doth, when he delivers you

From this earth’s thraldom to the joys of Heaven.

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2 MURDERER

Make peace with God, for you must die, my lord.

CLARENCE     Have you that holy feeling in your souls

To counsel me to make my peace with God,

And are you yet to your own souls so blind

That you will war with God by murd’ring me?

250

O sirs, consider: they that set you on

To do this deed will hate you for the deed.

2 MURDERER What shall we do?

CLARENCE     Relent, and save your souls.

1 MURDERER     Relent? No, ’tis cowardly and womanish.

CLARENCE     Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish.

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Which of you – if you were a prince’s son,

Being pent from liberty as I am now –

If two such murderers as yourselves came to you,

Would not entreat for life? Ay, you would beg,

Were you in my distress.

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[to Second Murderer] My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks:

O, if thine eye be not a flatterer,

Come thou on my side, and entreat for me;

A begging prince, what beggar pities not?

2 MURDERER Look behind you, my lord!

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1 MURDERER Take that! and that!

[Stabs him.]      If all this will not do,

I’ll drown you in the malmsey-butt within.

     Exit with body.

2 MURDERER

A bloody deed, and desperately dispatch’d.

How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands

Of this most grievous murder.

270

Enter First Murderer.

1 MURDERER How now? What mean’st thou that

thou help’st me not?

By heavens, the Duke shall know how slack you have been.

2 MURDERER

I would he knew that I had sav’d his brother.

Take thou the fee, and tell him what I say,

For I repent me that the Duke is slain.      Exit.

275

1 MURDERER So do not I: go, coward as thou art.

Well, I’ll go hide the body in some hole

Till that the Duke give order for his burial.

And when I have my meed, I will away:

For this will out, and then I must not stay.      Exit.

280

2.1 Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD sick, QUEEN ELIZABETH, DORSET, RIVERS, HASTINGS, BUCKINGHAM and GREY.

KING     Why, so: now have I done a good day’s work:

You peers, continue this united league.

I every day expect an embassage

From my Redeemer, to redeem me hence;

And more in peace my soul shall part to Heaven

5

Since I have made my friends at peace on earth.

Rivers and Hastings, take each other’s hand;

Dissemble not your hatred: swear your love.

RIVERS

By heaven, my soul is purg’d from grudging hate,

And with my hand I seal my true heart’s love.

10

HASTINGS     So thrive I, as I truly swear the like.

KING     Take heed you dally not before your King,

Lest He that is the supreme King of kings

Confound your hidden falsehood, and award

Either of you to be the other’s end.

15

HASTINGS     So prosper I, as I swear perfect love.

RIVERS     And I, as I love Hastings with my heart.

KING     Madam, yourself is not exempt from this;

Nor you, son Dorset; Buckingham, nor you:

You have been factious, one against the other.

20

Wife, love Lord Hastings, let him kiss your hand:

And what you do, do it unfeignedly.

ELIZABETH

There, Hastings: I will never more remember

Our former hatred, so thrive I and mine.

KING

Dorset, embrace him; Hastings, love lord Marquess.

25

DORSET     This interchange of love, I here protest,

Upon my part shall be inviolable.

HASTINGS     And so swear I. [They embrace.]

KING     Now, princely Buckingham, seal thou this league

With thy embracements to my wife’s allies,

30

And make me happy in your unity.

BUCKINGHAM

Whenever Buckingham doth turn his hate

Upon your Grace, but with all duteous love

Doth cherish you and yours, God punish me

With hate in those where I expect most love.

35

When I have most need to employ a friend,

And most assured that he is a friend,

Deep, hollow, treacherous, and full of guile

Be he unto me: this do I beg of God,

When I am cold in love to you or yours. [Embrace.]

40

KING     A pleasing cordial, princely Buckingham,

Is this thy vow unto my sickly heart.

There wanteth now our brother Gloucester here

To make the blessed period of this peace.

Enter RATCLIFFE and RICHARD.

BUCKINGHAM     And in good time,

45

Here comes Sir Richard Ratcliffe and the Duke.

RICHARD

Good morrow to my sovereign King and Queen;

And princely peers, a happy time of day.

KING     Happy indeed, as we have spent the day;

Gloucester, we have done deeds of charity,

50

Made peace of enmity, fair love of hate,

Between these swelling, wrong-incensed peers.

RICHARD     A blessed labour, my most sovereign lord.

Among this princely heap – if any here

By false intelligence or wrong surmise

55

Hold me a foe –

If I unwittingly, or in my rage,

Have aught committed that is hardly borne

By any in this presence, I desire

To reconcile me to his friendly peace:

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’Tis death to me to be at enmity;

I hate it, and desire all good men’s love.

First, madam, I entreat true peace of you,

Which I will purchase with my duteous service;

Of you, my noble cousin Buckingham,

65

If ever any grudge were lodg’d between us;

Of you, Lord Rivers, and Lord Grey, of you,

That all without desert have frown’d on me:

Dukes, earls, lords, gentlemen: indeed of all.

I do not know that Englishmen alive

70

With whom my soul is any jot at odds,

More than the infant that is born tonight –

I thank my God for my humility.

ELIZABETH     A holy day shall this be kept hereafter;

I would to God all strifes were well compounded.

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My sovereign lord, I do beseech your Highness

To take our brother Clarence to your grace.

RICHARD     Why, madam, have I offer’d love for this,

To be so flouted in this royal presence?

Who knows not that the gentle Duke is dead?

80

[They all start.]

You do him injury to scorn his corse!

RIVERS     Who knows not he is dead! Who knows he is?

ELIZABETH     All-seeing heaven, what a world is this?

BUCKINGHAM     Look I so pale, Lord Dorset, as the rest?

DORSET     Ay, my good lord, and no man in the presence

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But his red colour hath forsook his cheeks.

KING     Is Clarence dead? The order was revers’d.

RICHARD     But he, poor man, by your first order died,

And that a winged Mercury did bear;

Some tardy cripple bore the countermand,

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That came too lag to see him buried.

God grant that some, less noble and less loyal,

Nearer in bloody thoughts, but not in blood,

Deserve not worse than wretched Clarence did,

And yet go current from suspicion.

95

Enter STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY.

STANLEY     A boon, my sovereign, for my service done!

KING     I prithee peace; my soul is full of sorrow.

STANLEY     I will not rise unless your Highness hear me.

KING     Then say at once what is it thou demand’st.

STANLEY     The forfeit, Sovereign, of my servant’s life.

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Who slew today a riotous gentleman

Lately attendant on the Duke of Norfolk.

KING     Have I a tongue to doom my brother’s death,

And shall that tongue give pardon to a slave?

My brother kill’d no man: his fault was thought,

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And yet his punishment was bitter death.

Who sued to me for him? Who, in my wrath,

Kneel’d at my feet and bade me be advis’d?

Who spoke of brotherhood? Who spoke of love?

Who told me how the poor soul did forsake

110

The mighty Warwick, and did fight for me?

Who told me, in the field at Tewkesbury

When Oxford had me down, he rescued me

And said, ‘Dear brother, live and be a king’?

Who told me, when we both lay in the field

115

Frozen almost to death, how he did lap me

Even in his garments, and did give himself,

All thin and naked, to the numb-cold night?

All this from my remembrance brutish wrath

Sinfully pluck’d, and not a man of you

120

Had so much grace to put it in my mind.

But when your carters or your waiting vassals

Have done a drunken slaughter, and defac’d

The precious image of our dear Redeemer,

You straight are on your knees for ‘Pardon, pardon!’

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And I, unjustly too, must grant it you.

But for my brother not a man would speak,

Nor I, ungracious, speak unto myself

For him, poor soul. The proudest of you all

Have been beholding to him in his life,

130

Yet none of you would once beg for his life.

O God, I fear Thy justice will take hold

On me, and you, and mine and yours for this.

Come, Hastings, help me to my closet.

Ah, poor Clarence!

135

     Exeunt some with King and Queen.

RICHARD     This is the fruits of rashness: mark’d you not

How that the guilty kindred of the Queen

Look’d pale when they did hear of Clarence’ death?

O, they did urge it still unto the King:

God will revenge it. Come, lords, will you go

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To comfort Edward with our company.

BUCKINGHAM     We wait upon your Grace.      Exeunt.

2.2 Enter the old DUCHESS OF YORK, with the two Children of Clarence.

BOY     Good grandam tell us, is our father dead?

DUCHESS     No, boy.

GIRL     Why do you weep so oft, and beat your breast?

And cry ‘O Clarence, my unhappy son’?

BOY     Why do you look on us, and shake your head,

5

And call us orphans, wretches, castaways,

If that our noble father were alive?

DUCHESS     My pretty cousins, you mistake me both:

I do lament the sickness of the King,

As loath to lose him; not your father’s death:

10

It were lost sorrow to wail one that’s lost.

BOY     Then you conclude, my grandam, he is dead:

The King mine uncle is to blame for it.

God will revenge it, whom I will importune

With earnest prayers, all to that effect.

15

GIRL     And so will I.

DUCHESS

Peace, children, peace: the King doth love you well.

Incapable and shallow innocents,

You cannot guess who caus’d your father’s death.

BOY     Grandam, we can: for my good uncle Gloucester

20

Told me the King, provok’d to’t by the Queen,

Devis’d impeachments to imprison him;

And when my uncle told me so he wept,

And pitied me, and kindly kiss’d my cheek;

Bade me rely on him as on my father,

25

And he would love me dearly as a child.

DUCHESS

Ah, that Deceit should steal such gentle shape,

And with a virtuous vizor hide deep Vice!

He is my son, ay, and herein my shame;

Yet from my dugs he drew not this deceit.

30

BOY     Think you my uncle did dissemble, grandam?

DUCHESS     Ay, boy.

BOY     I cannot think it. Hark, what noise is this?

Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH with her hair about her ears, RIVERS and DORSET after her.

ELIZABETH     Ah! who shall hinder me to wail and weep,

To chide my fortune, and torment myself?

35

I’ll join with black despair against my soul

And to myself become an enemy.

DUCHESS     What means this scene of rude impatience?

ELIZABETH     To make an act of tragic violence:

Edward, my lord, thy son, our King, is dead.

40

Why grow the branches, when the root is gone?

Why wither not the leaves that want their sap?

If you will live, lament; if die, be brief,

That our swift-winged souls may catch the King’s

Or like obedient subjects follow him

45

To his new kingdom of ne’er-changing night.

DUCHESS     Ah, so much interest have I in thy sorrow

As I had title in thy noble husband.

I have bewept a worthy husband’s death,

And liv’d with looking on his images:

50

But now two mirrors of his princely semblance

Are crack’d in pieces by malignant death;

And I, for comfort, have but one false glass,

That grieves me when I see my shame in him.

Thou art a widow – yet thou art a mother,

55

And hast the comfort of thy children left;

But death hath snatch’d my husband from mine arms

And pluck’d two crutches from my feeble hands:

Clarence and Edward. O, what cause have I,

Thine being but a moiety of my moan,

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To overgo thy woes and drown thy cries.

BOY     Ah, Aunt, you wept not for our father’s death:

How can we aid you with our kindred tears?

GIRL     Our fatherless distress was left unmoan’d:

Your widow-dolour likewise be unwept.

65

ELIZABETH     Give me no help in lamentation:

I am not barren to bring forth complaints:

All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes,

That I, being govern’d by the watery moon,

May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world.

70

Ah, for my husband, for my dear lord Edward!

CHILDREN

Ah, for our father, for our dear lord Clarence!

DUCHESS

Alas for both, both mine Edward and Clarence!

ELIZABETH

What stay had I but Edward, and he’s gone.

CHILDREN

What stay had we but Clarence, and he’s gone.

75

DUCHESS

What stays had I but they, and they are gone.

ELIZABETH     Was never widow had so dear a loss.

CHILDREN     Were never orphans had so dear a loss.

DUCHESS     Was never mother had so dear a loss

Alas, I am the mother of these griefs:

80

Their woes are parcell’d, mine is general.

She for an Edward weeps, and so do I;

I for a Clarence weep, so doth not she;

These babes for Clarence weep, and so do I;

I for an Edward weep, so do not they.

85

Alas, you three, on me, threefold distress’d,

Pour all your tears: I am your sorrow’s nurse.

And I will pamper it with lamentation.

DORSET

Comfort, dear mother: God is much displeas’d

That you take with unthankfulness His doing.

90

In common worldly things, ’tis call’d ungrateful

With dull unwillingness to repay a debt

Which with more bounteous hand was kindly lent:

Much more to be thus opposite with Heaven,

For it requires the royal debt it lent you.

95

RIVERS     Madam, bethink you, like a careful mother,

Of the young prince your son: send straight for him;

Let him be crown’d; in him your comfort lives.

Drown desperate sorrow in dead Edward’s grave,

And plant your joys in living Edward’s throne.

100

Enter RICHARD, BUCKINGHAM, STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY, HASTINGS and RATCLIFFE.

RICHARD     Sister, have comfort: all of us have cause

To wail the dimming of our shining star,

But none can help our harms by wailing them.

Madam my mother, I do cry your mercy:

I did not see your Grace. Humbly on my knee

105

I crave your blessing. [Kneels.]

DUCHESS

God bless thee, and put meekness in thy breast;

Love, charity, obedience, and true duty.

RICHARD     Amen;

[Rises: aside] and make me die a good old man –

That is the butt-end of a mother’s blessing:

110

I marvel that her Grace did leave it out.

BUCKINGHAM

You cloudy princes and heart-sorrowing peers

That bear this heavy mutual load of moan,

Now cheer each other in each other’s love.

Though we have spent our harvest of this king,

115

We are to reap the harvest of his son.

The broken rancour of your high-swoll’n hates,

But lately splinted, knit, and join’d together

Must gently be preserv’d, cherish’d, and kept.

Meseemeth good, that with some little train,

120

Forthwith from Ludlow the young Prince be fet

Hither to London, to be crown’d our King.

RIVERS

Why with some little train, my lord of Buckingham?

BUCKINGHAM     Marry, my lord, lest by a multitude

The new-heal’d wound of malice should break out,

125

Which would be so much the more dangerous

By how much the estate is green and yet ungovern’d.

Where every horse bears his commanding rein,

And may direct his course as please himself,

As well the fear of harm, as harm apparent,

130

In my opinion, ought to be prevented.

RICHARD     I hope the King made peace with all of us,

And the compact is firm and true in me.

RIVERS     And so in me, and so, I think, in all:

Yet since it is but green, it should be put

135

To no apparent likelihood of breach,

Which haply by much company might be urg’d.

Therefore I say with noble Buckingham

That it is meet so few should fetch the Prince.

HASTINGS     And so say I.

140

RICHARD     Then be it so, and go we to determine

Who they shall be that straight shall post to Ludlow.

Madam, and you my sister, will you go

To give you censures in this business?

ELIZABETH, DUCHESS With all our hearts.

145

     Exeunt all but Buckingham and Richard.

BUCKINGHAM

My lord, whoever journeys to the Prince,

For God’s sake let not us two stay at home:

For by the way I’ll sort occasion,

As index to the story we late talk’d of,

To part the Queen’s proud kindred from the Prince.

150

RICHARD     My other self, my counsel’s consistory,

My oracle, my prophet, my dear cousin:

I, as a child, will go by thy direction.

Toward Ludlow then, for we’ll not stay behind.

     Exeunt.

2.3 Enter one Citizen at one door, and Another at the other.

1 CITIZEN

Good morrow, neighbour: whither away so fast?

2 CITIZEN I promise you, I scarcely know myself.

Hear you the news abroad?

1 CITIZEN     Yes, that the King is dead.

2 CITIZEN Ill news, by’rlady; seldom comes the better.

I fear, I fear, ’twill prove a giddy world.

5

Enter another Citizen.

3 CITIZEN     Neighbours, God speed.

1 CITIZEN     Give you good-morrow, sir.

3 CITIZEN

Doth the news hold of good King Edward’s death?

2 CITIZEN Ay, sir, it is too true, God help the while.

3 CITIZEN

Then, masters, look to see a troublous world.

1 CITIZEN

No, no; by God’s good grace, his son shall reign.

10

3 CITIZEN Woe to that land that’s govern’d by a child.

2 CITIZEN In him there is a hope of government,

Which, in his nonage, council under him,

And in his full and ripen’d years himself,

No doubt shall then, and till then, govern well.

15

1 CITIZEN So stood the state when Henry the Sixth

Was crown’d in Paris but at nine months old.

3 CITIZEN

Stood the state so? No, no, good friends, God wot.

For then this land was famously enrich’d

With politic grave counsel; then the King

20

Had virtuous uncles to protect his Grace.

1 CITIZEN

Why, so hath this, both by his father and mother.

3 CITIZEN Better it were they all came by his father,

Or by his father there were none at all:

For emulation who shall now be nearest

25

Will touch us all too near, if God prevent not.

O, full of danger is the Duke of Gloucester,

And the Queen’s sons and brothers, haught and proud;

And were they to be rul’d, and not to rule,

This sickly land might solace as before.

30

1 CITIZEN

Come, come: we fear the worst; all will be well.

3 CITIZEN

When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks;

When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;

When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?

Untimely storms makes men expect a dearth.

35

All may be well; but if God sort it so

’Tis more than we deserve, or I expect.

2 CITIZEN Truly, the hearts of men are full of fear:

You cannot reason almost with a man

That looks not heavily and full of dread.

40

3 CITIZEN Before the days of change still is it so:

By a divine instinct men’s minds mistrust

Ensuing danger, as by proof we see

The water swell before a boist’rous storm.

But leave it all to God. Whither away?

45

2 CITIZEN Marry, we were sent for to the Justices.

3 CITIZEN And so was I: I’ll bear you company.

     Exeunt.

2.4 Enter ARCHBISHOP of York, the young DUKE OF YORK, QUEEN ELIZABETH and the DUCHESS OF YORK.

ARCHBISHOP

Last night, I hear, they lay at Stony Stratford,

And at Northampton they do rest tonight:

Tomorrow, or next day, they will be here.

DUCHESS     I long with all my heart to see the Prince;

I hope he is much grown since last I saw him.

5

ELIZABETH     But I hear no: they say my son of York

Has almost overta’en him in his growth.

YORK          Ay, mother, but I would not have it so.

DUCHESS     Why, my good cousin? It is good to grow.

YORK          Grandam, one night as we did sit at supper,

10

My uncle Rivers talk’d how I did grow

More than my brother. ‘Ay,’ quoth my uncle Gloucester,

‘Small herbs have grace; great weeds do grow apace.’

And since, methinks I would not grow so fast,

Because sweet flowers are slow and weeds make

haste.

15

DUCHESS

Good faith, good faith, the saying did not hold

In him that did object the same to thee!

He was the wretched’st thing when he was young,

So long a-growing, and so leisurely,

That if his rule were true, he should be gracious.

20

ARCHBISHOP

And so no doubt he is, my gracious madam.

DUCHESS     I hope he is, but yet let mothers doubt.

YORK     Now by my troth, if I had been remember’d,

I could have given my uncle’s Grace a flout

To touch his growth nearer than he touch’d mine.

25

DUCHESS

How, my young York? I prithee let me hear it.

YORK     Marry, they say my uncle grew so fast

That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old:

’Twas full two years ere I could get a tooth.

Grandam, this would have been a biting jest!

30

DUCHESS     I prithee, pretty York, who told thee this?

YORK     Grandam, his nurse.

DUCHESS

His nurse? Why she was dead ere thou wast born.

YORK     If ’twere not she, I cannot tell who told me.

ELIZABETH     A parlous boy: go to, you are too shrewd.

35

DUCHESS     Good madam, be not angry with the child.

ELIZABETH     Pitchers have ears.

Enter a Messenger.

ARCHBISHOP     Here comes a messenger. What news?

MESSENGER

Such news, my lord, as grieves me to report.

ELIZABETH     How doth the Prince?

MESSENGER     Well, madam, and in health.

40

DUCHESS     What is thy news?

MESSENGER     Lord Rivers and Lord Grey

Are sent to Pomfret, and with them

Sir Thomas Vaughan, prisoners.

DUCHESS     Who hath committed them?

MESSENGER     The mighty Dukes,

Gloucester and Buckingham.

ARCHBISHOP     For what offence?

45

MESSENGER     The sum of all I can I have disclos’d:

Why or for what the nobles were committed

Is all unknown to me, my gracious lord.

ELIZABETH     Ay me! I see the ruin of my House:

The tiger now hath seiz’d the gentle hind;

50

Insulting tyranny begins to jut

Upon the innocent and aweless throne.

Welcome destruction, blood, and massacre;

I see, as in a map, the end of all.

DUCHESS     Accursed and unquiet wrangling days,

55

How many of you have mine eyes beheld!

My husband lost his life to get the crown,

And often up and down my sons were toss’d

For me to joy and weep their gain and loss;

And being seated, and domestic broils

60

Clean over-blown, themselves, the conquerors,

Make war upon themselves, brother to brother,

Blood to blood, self against self. O preposterous

And frantic outrage, end thy damned spleen,

Or let me die, to look on earth no more.

65

ELIZABETH     Come, come my boy: we will to sanctuary, Madam, farewell.

DUCHESS     Stay, I will go with you.

ELIZABETH     You have no cause.

ARCHBISHOP     My gracious lady, go,

And thither bear your treasure and your goods.

For my part, I’ll resign unto your Grace

70

The seal I keep; and so betide to me

As well I tender you and all of yours.

Go; I’ll conduct you to the sanctuary.     Exeunt.

3.1 The trumpets sound. Enter young PRINCE EDWARD,
the DUKES OF GLOUCESTER and BUCKINGHAM,
LORD CARDINAL BOURCHIER, CATESBY, with others.

BUCKINGHAM

Welcome, sweet Prince, to London, to your chamber.

RICHARD

Welcome, dear cousin, my thoughts’ sovereign.

The weary way hath made you melancholy.

PRINCE     No, uncle, but our crosses on the way

Have made it tedious, wearisome, and heavy;

5

I want more uncles here to welcome me.

RICHARD

Sweet Prince, the untainted virtue of your years

Hath not yet div’d into the world’s deceit,

Nor more can you distinguish of a man

Than of his outward show, which – God He knows –

10

Seldom or never jumpeth with the heart:

Those uncles which you want were dangerous;

Your Grace attended to their sugar’d words,

But look’d not on the poison of their hearts.

God keep you from them, and from such false friends!

15

PRINCE

God keep me from false friends – but they were none.

Enter Lord Mayor with attendants.

RICHARD

My Lord, the Mayor of London comes to greet you.

MAYOR

God bless your Grace with health and happy days!

PRINCE     I thank you, good my lord, and thank you all.

I thought my mother and my brother York

20

Would long ere this have met us on the way.

Fie, what a slug is Hastings, that he comes not

To tell us whether they will come or no.

Enter LORD HASTINGS.

BUCKINGHAM

And in good time, here comes the sweating lord.

PRINCE

Welcome, my lord. What, will our mother come?

25

HASTINGS     On what occasion God he knows, not I,

The Queen your mother and your brother York

Have taken sanctuary. The tender prince

Would fain have come with me to meet your Grace,

But by his mother was perforce withheld.

30

BUCKINGHAM     Fie, what an indirect and peevish course

Is this of hers! Lord Cardinal, will your Grace

Persuade the Queen to send the Duke of York

Unto his princely brother presently?

If she deny, Lord Hastings, go with him

And from her jealous arms pluck him perforce.

35

CARDINAL

My Lord of Buckingham, if my weak oratory

Can from his mother win the Duke of York,

Anon expect him here; but if she be obdurate

To mild entreaties, God in Heaven forbid

40

We should infringe the holy privilege

Of blessed sanctuary! Not for all this land

Would I be guilty of so deep a sin.

BUCKINGHAM     You are too senseless-obstinate, my lord,

Too ceremonious and traditional.

45

Weigh it but with the grossness of this age,

You break not sanctuary in seizing him;

The benefit thereof is always granted

To those whose dealings have deserv’d the place,

And those who have the wit to claim the place.

50

The prince hath neither claim’d it nor deserv’d it:

And therefore in mine opinion cannot have it;

Then taking him from thence that is not there,

You break no privilege nor charter there.

Oft have I heard of sanctuary men,

55

But sanctuary children, never till now.

CARDINAL

My lord, you shall o’er-rule my mind for once.

Come on, Lord Hastings, will you go with me?

HASTINGS     I go my lord.

PRINCE     Good lords, make all the speedy haste you may.

60

Exeunt Cardinal and Hastings.

Say, uncle Gloucester, if our brother come,

Where shall we sojourn till our coronation?

RICHARD     Where it seems best unto your royal self.

If I may counsel you, some day or two

Your Highness shall repose you at the Tower,

65

Then where you please and shall be thought most fit

For your best health and recreation.

PRINCE     I do not like the Tower, of any place.

Did Julius Caesar build that place, my lord?

BUCKINGHAM

He did, my gracious lord, begin that place,

70

Which since, succeeding ages have re-edified.

PRINCE     Is it upon record, or else reported

Successively from age to age, he built it?

BUCKINGHAM     Upon record, my gracious lord.

PRINCE     But say, my lord, it were not register’d,

75

Methinks the truth should live from age to age,

As ’twere retail’d to all posterity,

Even to the general all-ending day.

RICHARD [aside]

So wise so young, they say, do never live long.

PRINCE     What say you, uncle?

80

RICHARD     I say, without characters fame lives long.

[aside] Thus, like the formal Vice, Iniquity,

I moralize two meanings in one word.

PRINCE     That Julius Caesar was a famous man:

With what his valour did enrich his wit,

85

His wit set down to make his valour live;

Death makes no conquest of this conqueror,

For now he lives in fame, though not in life.

I’ll tell you what, my cousin Buckingham.

BUCKINGHAM     What, my gracious lord?

90

PRINCE     And if I live until I be a man,

I’ll win our ancient right in France again,

Or die a soldier, as I liv’d a king.

RICHARD     Short summers lightly have a forward spring.

Enter young DUKE OF YORK, HASTINGS, CARDINAL.

BUCKINGHAM

Now in good time here comes the Duke of York.

95

PRINCE     Richard of York: how fares our loving brother?

YORK     Well, my dread lord – so must I call you now.

PRINCE     Ay, brother, to our grief as it is yours;

Too late he died that might have kept that title,

Which by his death hath lost much majesty.

100

RICHARD     How fares our cousin, noble lord of York?

YORK     I thank you, gentle uncle. O my lord,

You said that idle weeds are fast in growth:

The Prince my brother hath outgrown me far!

RICHARD     He hath, my lord.

YORK     And therefore is he idle?

105

RICHARD     O my fair cousin, I must not say so!

YORK     Then he is more beholding to you than I.

RICHARD     He may command me as my sovereign,

But you have power in me as in a kinsman.

YORK     I pray you, uncle, give me this dagger.

110

RICHARD     My dagger, little cousin? With all my heart.

PRINCE     A beggar, brother?

YORK     Of my kind uncle, that I know will give,

And being but a toy, which is no grief to give.

RICHARD     A greater gift than that I’ll give my cousin.

115

YORK     A greater gift? O, that’s the sword to it.

RICHARD     Ay, gentle cousin, were it light enough.

YORK     O, then I see you will part but with light gifts;

In weightier things you’ll say a beggar nay.

RICHARD     It is too heavy for your Grace to wear.

120

YORK     I weigh it lightly, were it heavier.

RICHARD

What, would you have my weapon, little lord?

YORK     I would, that I might thank you as you call me.

RICHARD     How?

YORK     Little.

125

PRINCE     My lord of York will still be cross in talk;

Uncle, your Grace knows how to bear with him.

YORK     You mean to bear me, not to bear with me;

Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me:

Because that I am little like an ape,

130

He thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders!

BUCKINGHAM

With what a sharp-provided wit he reasons:

To mitigate the scorn he gives his uncle

He prettily and aptly taunts himself.

So cunning and so young is wonderful!

135

RICHARD     My lord, will’t please you pass along?

Myself and my good cousin Buckingham

Will to your mother, to entreat of her

To meet you at the Tower and welcome you.

YORK     What, will you go unto the Tower, my lord?

140

PRINCE     My Lord Protector needs will have it so.

YORK     I shall not sleep in quiet at the Tower.

RICHARD     Why, what should you fear?

YORK     Marry, my uncle Clarence’ angry ghost:

My grandam told me he was murder’d there.

145

PRINCE     I fear no uncles dead.

RICHARD     Nor none that live, I hope?

PRINCE     And if they live, I hope I need not fear.

But come, my lord: with a heavy heart,

Thinking on them, go I unto the Tower.

150

A Sennet. Exeunt Prince, York, Hastings, Dorset and all but Richard, Buckingham, and Catesby.

BUCKINGHAM

Think you, my lord, this little prating York

Was not incensed by his subtle mother

To taunt and scorn you thus opprobriously?

RICHARD     No doubt, no doubt; O, ’tis a parlous boy,

Bold, quick, ingenious, forward, capable:

155

He is all the mother’s, from the top to toe.

BUCKINGHAM

Well, let them rest. Come hither, Catesby:

Thou art sworn as deeply to effect what we intend

As closely to conceal what we impart;

Thou know’st our reasons, urg’d upon the way:

160

What think’st thou? Is it not an easy matter

To make William Lord Hastings of our mind

For the instalment of this noble Duke

In the seat royal of this famous isle?

CATESBY     He for his father’s sake so loves the Prince

165

That he will not be won to aught against him.

BUCKINGHAM

What think’st thou then of Stanley? Will not he?

CATESBY     He will do all in all as Hastings doth.

BUCKINGHAM

Well, then, no more but this: go, gentle Catesby,

And as it were afar off, sound thou Lord Hastings

170

How he doth stand affected to our purpose,

And summon him tomorrow to the Tower

To sit about the coronation.

If thou dost find him tractable to us,

Encourage him, and tell him all our reasons;

175

If he be leaden, icy, cold, unwilling,

Be thou so too, and so break off the talk,

And give us notice of his inclination:

For we tomorrow hold divided Councils,

Wherein thyself shalt highly be employ’d.

180

RICHARD

Commend me to Lord William; tell him, Catesby,

His ancient knot of dangerous adversaries

Tomorrow are let blood at Pomfret castle,

And bid my lord for joy of this good news

Give Mistress Shore one gentle kiss the more.

185

BUCKINGHAM

Good Catesby, go effect this business soundly.

CATESBY     My good lords both, with all the heed I can.

RICHARD

Shall we hear from you, Catesby, ere we sleep?

CATESBY     You shall, my lord.

RICHARD

At Crosby Place, there shall you find us both.

190

Exit Catesby.

BUCKINGHAM

Now, my lord, what shall we do if we perceive

Lord Hastings will not yield to our complots?

RICHARD

Chop off his head, man; somewhat will we do.

And look when I am king, claim thou of me

The earldom of Hereford, and all the moveables

195

Whereof the King my brother was possess’d.

BUCKINGHAM

I’ll claim that promise at your Grace’s hand.

RICHARD

And look to have it yielded with all kindness.

Come, let us sup betimes, that afterwards

We may digest our complots in some form.     Exeunt.

200

3.2 Enter a Messenger to the door of Lord Hastings.

MESSENGER     My lord, my lord! [Knocks.]

HASTINGS [within] Who knocks?

MESSENGER     One from the Lord Stanley.

Enter HASTINGS.

HASTINGS     What is’t o’clock?

MESSENGER     Upon the stroke of four.

HASTINGS

Cannot my Lord Stanley sleep these tedious nights?

5

MESSENGER     So it appears by that I have to say.

First, he commends him to your noble self.

HASTINGS     What then?

MESSENGER

Then certifies your lordship that this night

He dreamt the boar had razed off his helm;

10

Besides, he says there are two Councils kept,

And that may be determin’d at the one

Which may make you and him to rue at th’other.

Therefore he sends to know your lordship’s pleasure,

If you will presently take horse with him

15

And with all speed post with him toward the north,

To shun the danger that his soul divines.

HASTINGS     Go, fellow, go: return unto thy lord;

Bid him not fear the separated Council:

His honour and myself are at the one,

20

And at the other is my good friend Catesby,

Where nothing can proceed that toucheth us

Whereof I shall not have intelligence.

Tell him his fears are shallow, without instance;

And for his dreams, I wonder he’s so simple

25

To trust the mockery of unquiet slumbers.

To fly the boar before the boar pursues

Were to incense the boar to follow us,

And make pursuit where he did mean no chase.

Go, bid thy master rise, and come to me,

30

And we will both together to the Tower,

Where he shall see the boar will use us kindly.

MESSENGER

I’ll go, my lord, and tell him what you say.     Exit.

Enter CATESBY.

CATESBY     Many good morrows to my noble lord.

HASTINGS

Good morrow, Catesby; you are early stirring.

35

What news, what news in this our tott’ring state?

CATESBY     It is a reeling world indeed, my lord,

And I believe will never stand upright

Till Richard wear the garland of the realm.

HASTINGS

How, wear the garland? Dost thou mean the crown?

40

CATESBY     Ay, my good lord.

HASTINGS

I’ll have this crown of mine cut from my shoulders

Before I’ll see the crown so foul misplac’d.

But canst thou guess that he doth aim at it?

CATESBY     Ay, on my life, and hopes to find you forward

45

Upon his party for the gain thereof;

And thereupon he sends you this good news

That this same very day your enemies,

The kindred of the Queen, must die at Pomfret.

HASTINGS     Indeed, I am no mourner for that news,

50

Because they have been still my adversaries:

But that I’ll give my voice on Richard’s side

To bar my master’s heirs in true descent,

God knows I will not do it, to the death.

CATESBY

God keep your lordship in that gracious mind.

55

HASTINGS

But I shall laugh at this a twelve-month hence,

That they which brought me in my master’s hate,

I live to look upon their tragedy.

Well, Catesby, ere a fortnight make me older

I’ll send some packing that yet think not on’t.

60

CATESBY ’Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord,

When men are unprepar’d and look not for’t.

HASTINGS

O, monstrous, monstrous! And so falls it out

With Rivers, Vaughan, Grey: and so ’twill do

With some men else that think themselves as safe

65

As thou and I, who as thou know’st are dear

To princely Richard and to Buckingham.

CATESBY

The Princes both make high account of you –

[aside] For they account his head upon the Bridge.

HASTINGS     I know they do, and I have well deserv’d it.

70

Enter STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY.

Come on, come on: where is your boar-spear, man?

Fear you the boar, and go so unprovided?

STANLEY

My lord, good morrow; good morrow, Catesby.

You may jest on, but by the holy Rood,

I do not like these several Councils, I.

75

HASTINGS     My lord, I hold my life as dear as you,

And never in my days, I do protest,

Was it so precious to me as ’tis now:

Think you, but that I know our state secure,

I would be so triumphant as I am?

80

STANLEY

The lords at Pomfret, when they rode from London,

Were jocund, and suppos’d their states were sure,

And they indeed had no cause to mistrust:

But yet you see how soon the day o’ercast.

This sudden stab of rancour I misdoubt;

85

Pray God, I say, I prove a needless coward.

What, shall we toward the Tower? The day is spent.

HASTINGS

Come, come: have with you. Wot you what, my lord?

Today the lords you talk’d of are beheaded.

STANLEY

They, for their truth, might better wear their heads

90

Than some that have accus’d them wear their hats.

But come, my lord, let’s away.

Enter HASTINGS, a Pursuivant.

HASTINGS     Go on before; I’ll talk with this good fellow.

Exeunt Stanley and Catesby.

Well met, Hastings; how goes the world with thee?

H. PURSUIVANT

The better that your lordship please to ask.

95

HASTINGS     I tell thee, man, ’tis better with me now

Than when I met thee last, where now we meet:

Then was I going prisoner to the Tower,

By the suggestion of the Queen’s allies:

But now I tell thee – keep it to thyself –

100

This day those enemies are put to death,

And I in better state than e’er I was!

H. PURSUIVANT

God hold it to your honour’s good content.

HASTINGS

Gramercy, Hastings: there, drink that for me.

[Throws him his purse.]

H. PURSUIVANT I thank your honour.      Exit.

105

Enter a Priest.

PRIEST

Well met, my lord; I am glad to see your honour.

HASTINGS

I thank thee, good Sir John, with all my heart.

I am in your debt for your last exercise:

Come the next sabbath and I will content you.

[He whispers in his ear.]

Enter BUCKINGHAM.

PRIEST     I’ll wait upon your lordship.      Exit Priest.

110

BUCKINGHAM

What, talking with a priest, Lord Chamberlain?

Your friends at Pomfret, they do need the priest;

Your honour hath no shriving work in hand!

HASTINGS     Good faith, and when I met this holy man,

The men you talk of came into my mind.

115

What, go you toward the Tower?

BUCKINGHAM

I do, my lord, but long I cannot stay there:

I shall return before your lordship thence.

HASTINGS     Nay, like enough, for I stay dinner there.

BUCKINGHAM [aside]

And supper too, although thou know’st it not.

120

Come, will you go?

HASTINGS     I’ll wait upon your lordship.

Exeunt.

3.3 Enter SIR RICHARD RATCLIFFE, with halberds, carrying the nobles, RIVERS, GREY and VAUGHAN, to death at Pomfret.

RATCLIFFE     Come, bring forth the prisoners.

RIVERS     Sir Richard Ratcliffe, let me tell thee this:

Today shalt thou behold a subject die

For truth, for duty, and for loyalty.

GREY     God bless the Prince from all the pack of you!

5

A knot you are of damned bloodsuckers.

VAUGHAN

You live, that shall cry woe for this hereafter.

RATCLIFFE     Dispatch: the limit of your lives is out.

RIVERS     O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison,

Fatal and ominous to noble peers!

10

Within the guilty closure of thy walls

Richard the Second here was hack’d to death;

And for more slander to thy dismal seat,

We give to thee our guiltless blood to drink.

GREY     Now Margaret’s curse is fall’n upon our heads,

15

When she exclaim’d on Hastings, you, and I,

For standing by when Richard stabb’d her son.

RIVERS

Then curs’d she Richard, then curs’d she Buckingham,

Then curs’d she Hastings. O remember, God,

To hear her prayer for them, as now for us;

20

And for my sister and her princely sons,

Be satisfied, dear God, with our true blood,

Which – as thou know’st – unjustly must be spilt.

RATCLIFFE     Make haste: the hour of death is expiate.

RIVERS

Come Grey, come Vaughan, let us here embrace.

25

Farewell, until we meet again in Heaven.      Exeunt.

3.4 Enter BUCKINGHAM, STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY,
HASTINGS, the Bishop of ELY, NORFOLK, RATCLIFFE,
LOVELL, with others, at a table.

HASTINGS     Now, noble peers, the cause why we are met

Is to determine of the coronation.

In God’s name speak: when is the royal day?

BUCKINGHAM     Is all things ready for the royal time?

STANLEY     It is, and wants but nomination.

5

ELY     Tomorrow, then, I judge a happy day.

BUCKINGHAM

Who knows the Lord Protector’s mind herein?

Who is most inward with the noble Duke?

ELY

Your Grace, we think, should soonest know his mind.

BUCKINGHAM

We know each other’s faces; for our hearts

10

He knows no more of mine than I of yours,

Or I of his, my lord, than you of mine.

Lord Hastings, you and he are near in love.

HASTINGS     I thank his Grace, I know he loves me well;

But for his purpose in the coronation

15

I have not sounded him, nor he deliver’d

His gracious pleasure any way therein.

But you, my honourable lords, may name the time,

And in the Duke’s behalf I’ll give my voice,

Which I presume he’ll take in gentle part.

20

Enter RICHARD.

ELY     In happy time, here comes the Duke himself.

RICHARD

My noble lords and cousins all, good morrow:

I have been long a sleeper, but I trust

My absence doth neglect no great design

Which by my presence might have been concluded.

25

BUCKINGHAM

Had you not come upon your cue, my lord,

William Lord Hastings had pronounc’d your part –

I mean your voice for crowning of the King.

RICHARD

Than my Lord Hastings no man might be bolder:

His lordship knows me well, and loves me well.

30

My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn

I saw good strawberries in your garden there;

I do beseech you, send for some of them.

ELY     Marry, and will, my lord, with all my heart.      Exit.

RICHARD     Cousin of Buckingham, a word with you.

35

Catesby hath sounded Hastings in our business,

And finds the testy gentleman so hot

That he will lose his head ere give consent

His master’s child (as worshipfully he terms it)

Shall lose the royalty of England’s throne.

40

BUCKINGHAM

Withdraw yourself a while: I’ll go with you.

Exeunt Richard and Buckingham.

STANLEY

We have not yet set down this day of triumph.

Tomorrow, in my judgement, is too sudden,

For I myself am not so well provided

As else I would be, were the day prolong’d.

45

Enter Bishop of ELY.

ELY     Where is my lord the Duke of Gloucester?

I have sent for these strawberries.

HASTINGS

His Grace looks cheerfully and smooth today:

There’s some conceit or other likes him well

When that he bids good morrow with such spirit.

50

I think there’s never a man in Christendom

Can lesser hide his love or hate than he,

For by his face straight shall you know his heart.

STANLEY     What of his heart perceive you in his face

By any livelihood he show’d today?

55

HASTINGS

Marry, that with no man here he is offended,

For were he, he had shown it in his looks.

STANLEY     I pray God he be not, I say.

Enter RICHARD and BUCKINGHAM.

RICHARD     I pray you all, tell me what they deserve

That do conspire my death with devilish plots

60

Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail’d

Upon my body with their hellish charms?

HASTINGS     The tender love I bear your Grace, my lord,

Makes me most forward in this princely presence,

To doom th’offenders, whatso’er they be:

65

I say, my lord, they have deserved death.

RICHARD     Then be your eyes the witness of their evil.

See how I am bewitch’d! Behold, mine arm

Is like a blasted sapling wither’d up!

And this is Edward’s wife, that monstrous witch,

70

Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore,

That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.

HASTINGS

If they have done this deed, my noble lord –

RICHARD If? Thou protector of this damned strumpet,

Talk’st thou to me of ifs! Thou art a traitor:

75

Off with his head! Now by Saint Paul I swear

I will not dine until I see the same.

Lovell and Ratcliffe, look that it be done;

The rest that love me, rise and follow me.

Exeunt all but Lovell and Ratcliffe and the Lord Hastings.

HASTINGS     Woe, woe for England; not a whit for me –

80

For I, too fond, might have prevented this.

Stanley did dream the boar did raze his helm,

And I did scorn it and disdain to fly;

Three times today my foot-cloth horse did stumble,

And started when he look’d upon the Tower,

85

As loath to bear me to the slaughter-house.

O, now I need the priest that spake to me;

I now repent I told the pursuivant,

As too triumphing, how mine enemies

Today at Pomfret bloodily were butcher’d,

90

And I myself secure in grace and favour.

O Margaret, Margaret, now thy heavy curse

Is lighted on poor Hastings’ wretched head.

RATCLIFFE

Come, come, dispatch: the Duke would be at dinner;

Make a short shrift: he longs to see your head.

95

HASTINGS     O momentary grace of mortal men,

Which we more hunt for than the grace of God.

Who builds his hope in air of your good looks

Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast,

Ready with every nod to tumble down

100

Into the fatal bowels of the deep.

LOVELL     Come, come, dispatch: ’tis bootless to exclaim.

HASTINGS     O bloody Richard! Miserable England,

I prophesy the fearfull’st time to thee

That ever wretched age hath look’d upon.

105

Come, lead me to the block: bear him my head.

They smile at me who shortly shall be dead.      Exeunt.

3.5 Enter RICHARD and BUCKINGHAM in rotten armour, marvellous ill-favoured.

RICHARD

Come, cousin, canst thou quake and change thy colour,

Murder thy breath in middle of a word,

And then again begin, and stop again,

As if thou were distraught and mad with terror?

BUCKINGHAM

Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian,

5

Speak, and look back, and pry on every side,

Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,

Intending deep suspicion. Ghastly looks

Are at my service like enforced smiles,

And both are ready in their offices

10

At any time to grace my stratagems.

But what, is Catesby gone?

Enter the Lord Mayor and CATESBY.

RICHARD     He is, and see, he brings the Mayor along.

BUCKINGHAM     Lord Mayor –

RICHARD     Look to the draw-bridge there!

15

BUCKINGHAM     Hark, a drum!

RICHARD     Catesby, o’erlook the walls!      Exit Catesby.

BUCKINGHAM     Lord Mayor, the reason we have sent –

Enter LOVELL and RATCLIFFE, with Hastings’s head.

RICHARD     Look back! Defend thee, here are enemies!

BUCKINGHAM

God and our innocence defend and guard us!

20

RICHARD

Be patient, they are friends: Ratcliffe and Lovell.

LOVELL     Here is the head of that ignoble traitor,

The dangerous and unsuspected Hastings.

RICHARD     So dear I lov’d the man that I must weep.

I took him for the plainest harmless creature

25

That breath’d upon the earth a Christian;

Made him my book, wherein my soul recorded

The history of all her secret thoughts.

So smooth he daub’d his vice with show of virtue

That, his apparent open guilt omitted –

30

I mean his conversation with Shore’s wife –

He liv’d from all attainder of suspects.

BUCKINGHAM

Well, well, he was the covert’st shelter’d traitor.

Would you imagine, or almost believe,

Were’t not that by great preservation

35

We live to tell it, that the subtle traitor

This day had plotted, in the council-house,

To murder me and my good lord of Gloucester?

MAYOR     Had he done so?

RICHARD     What, think you we are Turks or infidels?

40

Or that we would, against the form of law,

Proceed thus rashly in the villain’s death,

But that the extreme peril of the case,

The peace of England, and our persons’ safety,

Enforc’d us to this execution.

45

MAYOR     Now fair befall you! He deserv’d his death,

And your good Graces both have well proceeded,

To warn false traitors from the like attempts.

BUCKINGHAM     I never look’d for better at his hands

After he once fell in with Mistress Shore.

50

Yet had we not determin’d he should die

Until your lordship came to see his end –

Which now the loving haste of these our friends,

Something against our meanings, have prevented –

Because, my lord, we would have had you heard

55

The traitor speak, and timorously confess

The manner and the purpose of his treasons,

That you might well have signified the same

Unto the citizens, who haply may

Misconstrue us in him and wail his death.

60

MAYOR

But, my good lord, your Graces’ words shall serve

As well as I had seen and heard him speak;

And do not doubt, right noble princes both,

But I’ll acquaint our duteous citizens

With all your just proceedings in this cause.

65

RICHARD

And to that end we wish’d your lordship here,

T’ avoid the censures of the carping world.

BUCKINGHAM

Which, since you come too late of our intent,

Yet witness what you hear we did intend:

And so, my good Lord Mayor, we bid farewell.

70

Exit Lord Mayor.

RICHARD     Go after, after, cousin Buckingham:

The Mayor towards Guildhall hies him in all post.

There, at your meet’st advantage of the time,

Infer the bastardy of Edward’s children;

Tell them how Edward put to death a citizen

75

Only for saying he would make his son

Heir to the Crown – meaning indeed his house,

Which by the sign thereof was termed so.

Moreover, urge his hateful luxury

And bestial appetite in change of lust,

80

Which stretch’d unto their servants, daughters, wives,

Even where his raging eye or savage heart

Without control lusted to make a prey.

Nay, for a need, thus far come near my person:

Tell them, when that my mother went with child

85

Of that insatiate Edward, noble York

My princely father then had wars in France,

And by true computation of the time

Found that the issue was not his-begot;

Which well appeared in his lineaments,

90

Being nothing like the noble Duke, my father –

Yet touch this sparingly, as ’twere far off;

Because, my lord, you know my mother lives.

BUCKINGHAM     Doubt not, my lord: I’ll play the orator

As if the golden fee for which I plead

95

Were for myself; and so, my lord, adieu.

RICHARD

If you thrive well, bring them to Baynard’s Castle,

Where you shall find me well accompanied

With reverend fathers and well-learned bishops.

BUCKINGHAM     I go, and towards three or four o’clock

100

Look for the news that the Guildhall affords. Exit.

RICHARD     Go, Lovell, with all speed, to Doctor Shaa;

[to Ratcliffe] Go thou to Friar Penker; bid them both

Meet me within this hour at Baynard’s Castle.

Exeunt Ratcliffe and Lovell.

Now will I go to take some privy order

To draw the brats of Clarence out of sight,

105

And to give notice that no manner person

Have, any time, recourse unto the Princes.     Exit.

3.6 Enter a Scrivener with a paper in his hand.

SCRIVENERS

Here is the indictment of the good Lord Hastings,

Which in a set hand fairly is engross’d,

That it may be today read o’er in Paul’s.

And mark how well the sequel hangs together:

Eleven hours I have spent to write it over,

5

For yesternight by Catesby was it sent me;

The precedent was full as long a-doing

And yet within these five hours Hastings liv’d,

Untainted, unexamin’d, free, at liberty.

Here’s a good world the while! Who is so gross

10

That cannot see this palpable device?

Yet who’s so bold but says he sees it not?

Bad is the world, and all will come to naught

When such ill-dealing must be seen in thought.      Exit.

3.7 Enter RICHARD and BUCKINGHAM at several doors.

RICHARD     How now, how now? What say the citizens?

BUCKINGHAM     Now by the holy Mother of our Lord,

The citizens are mum, say not a word.

RICHARD

Touch’d you the bastardy of Edward’s children?

BUCKINGHAM     I did, with his contract with Lady Lucy,

5

And his contract by deputy in France;

Th’unsatiate greediness of his desire,

And his enforcement of the city wives;

His tyranny for trifles; his own bastardy,

As being got, your father then in France,

10

And his resemblance, being not like the Duke.

Withal, I did infer your lineaments –

Being the right idea of your father,

Both in your form and nobleness of mind –

Laid open all your victories in Scotland,

15

Your discipline in war, wisdom in peace,

Your bounty, virtue, fair humility;

Indeed, left nothing fitting for your purpose

Untouch’d, or slightly handled in discourse.

And when mine oratory drew to an end,

20

I bid them that did love their country’s good

Cry, ‘God save Richard, England’s royal King!’

RICHARD     And did they so?

BUCKINGHAM

No, so God help me: they spake not a word,

But like dumb statues or breathing stones

25

Star’d each on other, and look’d deadly pale.

Which when I saw, I reprehended them,

And ask’d the Mayor what meant this wilful silence.

His answer was, the people were not us’d

To be spoke to but by the Recorder.

30

Then he was urg’d to tell my tale again:

‘Thus saith the Duke; thus hath the Duke inferr’d’ –

But nothing spake in warrant from himself.

When he had done, some followers of mine own

At lower end of the hall, hurl’d up their caps,

35

And some ten voices cried ‘God save King Richard!’

And thus I took the vantage of those few:

‘Thanks gentle citizens and friends,’ quoth I;

‘This general applause and cheerful shout

Argues your wisdoms and your love to Richard.’

40

And even here brake off, and came away.

RICHARD

What, tongueless blocks were they? Would they not speak!

Will not the Mayor then and his brethren come?

BUCKINGHAM

The Mayor is here at hand. Intend some fear;

Be not you spoke with but by mighty suit.

45

And look you get a prayer-book in your hand,

And stand between two churchmen, good my lord:

For on that ground I’ll build a holy descant.

And be not easily won to our requests:

Play the maid’s part: still answer nay, and take it.

50

RICHARD     I go, and if you plead as well for them

As I can say nay to thee for myself,

No doubt we bring it to a happy issue.

BUCKINGHAM

Go, go up to the leads, the Lord Mayor knocks.

Exit Richard.

Enter the Lord Mayor and citizens.

Welcome, my lord: I dance attendance here.

55

I think the Duke will not be spoke withal.

Enter CATESBY above.

Now, Catesby, what says your lord to my request?

CATESBY     He doth entreat your Grace, my noble lord,

To visit him tomorrow, or next day:

He is within, with two right reverend fathers,

60

Divinely bent to meditation;

And in no worldly suits would he be mov’d

To draw him from his holy exercise.

BUCKINGHAM

Return, good Catesby, to the gracious Duke;

Tell him myself, the Mayor and aldermen,

65

In deep designs, in matter of great moment,

No less importing than our general good,

Are come to have some conference with his Grace.

CATESBY     I’ll signify so much unto him straight. Exit.

BUCKINGHAM

Ah ha, my lord, this prince is not an Edward:

70

He is not lolling on a lewd love-bed,

But on his knees at meditation;

Not dallying with a brace of courtesans,

But meditating with two deep divines;

Not sleeping, to engross his idle body,

75

But praying, to enrich his watchful soul.

Happy were England, would this virtuous Prince

Take on his Grace the sovereignty thereof.

But sure I fear we shall not win him to it.

MAYOR

Marry, God defend his Grace should say us nay!

80

BUCKINGHAM     I fear he will.

Enter CATESBY.

Here Catesby comes again.

Now, Catesby, what says his Grace?

CATESBY     He wonders to what end you have assembled

Such troops of citizens to come to him,

His Grace not being warn’d thereof before.

85

He fears, my lord, you mean no good to him.

BUCKINGHAM     Sorry I am my noble cousin should

Suspect me that I mean no good to him.

By heaven, we come to him in perfect love:

And so once more return and tell his Grace.

90

Exit Catesby.

When holy and devout religious men

Are at their beads, ’tis much to draw them thence,

So sweet is zealous contemplation.

Enter RICHARD aloft, between two bishops with CATESBY.

MAYOR

See where his Grace stands, ’tween two clergymen!

BUCKINGHAM

Two props of virtue for a Christian Prince,

95

To stay him from the fall of vanity;

And see, a book of prayer in his hand –

True ornaments to know a holy man.

Famous Plantagenet, most gracious Prince,

Lend favourable ear to our requests,

100

And pardon us the interruption

Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal.

RICHARD     My lord, there needs no such apology;

I do beseech your Grace to pardon me,

Who – earnest in the service of my God –

105

Deferr’d the visitation of my friends.

But leaving this, what is your Grace’s pleasure?

BUCKINGHAM

Even that, I hope, which pleaseth God above,

And all good men of this ungovern’d isle.

RICHARD     I do suspect I have done some offence

110

That seems disgracious in the City’s eye.

And that you come to reprehend my ignorance.

BUCKINGHAM

You have, my lord: would it might please your Grace

On our entreaties to emend your fault.

RICHARD     Else wherefore breathe I in a Christian land?

115

BUCKINGHAM

Know then, it is your fault that you resign

The supreme seat, the throne majestical,

The sceptred office of your ancestors,

Your state of fortune, and your due of birth,

The lineal glory of your royal House,

120

To the corruption of a blemish’d stock;

Whiles in the mildness of your sleepy thoughts –

Which here we waken to our country’s good –

The noble isle doth want her proper limbs;

Her face defac’d with scars of infamy,

125

Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants,

And almost shoulder’d in the swallowing gulf

Of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion;

Which to recure, we heartily solicit

Your gracious self to take on you the charge

130

And kingly government of this your land,

Not as Protector, steward, substitute,

Or lowly factor for another’s gain,

But as successively from blood to blood,

Your right of birth, your empery, your own.

135

For this, consorted with the citizens –

Your very worshipful and loving friends,

And by their vehement instigation –

In this just cause come I to move your Grace.

RICHARD     I cannot tell if to depart in silence

140

Or bitterly to speak in your reproof

Best fitteth my degree or your condition.

If not to answer, you might haply think

Tongue-tied ambition, not replying, yielded

To bear the golden yoke of sovereignty

145

Which fondly you would here impose on me;

If to reprove you for this suit of yours,

So season’d with your faithful love to me,

Then, on the other side, I check’d my friends.

Therefore, to speak, and to avoid the first,

150

And then, in speaking, not to incur the last,

Definitively thus I answer you:

Your love deserves my thanks, but my desert

Unmeritable shuns your high request.

First, if all obstacles were cut away,

155

And that my path were even to the crown

As the ripe revenue and due of birth,

Yet so much is my poverty of spirit,

So mighty and so many my defects,

That I would rather hide me from my greatness –

160

Being a bark to brook no mighty sea –

Than in my greatness covet to be hid,

And in the vapour of my glory smother’d.

But, God be thank’d, there is no need of me –

And much I need, to help you, were there need.

165

The royal tree hath left us royal fruit,

Which, mellow’d by the stealing hours of time,

Will well become the seat of majesty,

And make, no doubt, us happy by his reign.

On him I lay that you would lay on me:

170

The right and fortune of his happy stars,

Which God defend that I should wring from him.

BUCKINGHAM

My lord, this argues conscience in your Grace;

But the respects thereof are nice and trivial,

All circumstances well considered.

175

You say that Edward is your brother’s son:

So say we too – but not by Edward’s wife.

For first was he contract to Lady Lucy

(Your mother lives a witness to his vow),

And afterward by substitute betroth’d

180

To Bona, sister to the King of France.

These both put off, a poor petitioner,

A care-craz’d mother to a many sons,

A beauty-waning and distressed widow,

Even in the afternoon of her best days

185

Made prize and purchase of his wanton eye,

Seduc’d the pitch and height of his degree

To base declension and loath’d bigamy.

By her, in his unlawful bed, he got

This Edward, whom our manners call the Prince.

190

More bitterly could I expostulate,

Save that for reverence to some alive

I give a sparing limit to my tongue.

Then, good my lord, take to your royal self

This proffer’d benefit of dignity:

195

If not to bless us and the land withal,

Yet to draw forth your noble ancestry

From the corruption of abusing times

Unto a lineal, true-derived course.

MAYOR     Do, good my lord: your citizens entreat you.

200

BUCKINGHAM

Refuse not, mighty lord, this proffer’d love.

CATESBY     O make them joyful; grant their lawful suit.

RICHARD     Alas, why would you heap this care on me?

I am unfit for state and majesty.

I do beseech you, take it not amiss;

205

I cannot, nor I will not, yield to you.

BUCKINGHAM     If you refuse it, as in love and zeal

Loath to despose the child, your brother’s son –

As well we know your tenderness of heart,

And gentle, kind, effeminate remorse,

210

Which we have noted in you to your kindred,

And equally indeed to all estates –

Yet know, whe’er you accept our suit or no,

Your brother’s son shall never reign our king,

But we will plant some other in the throne

215

To the disgrace and downfall of your House;

And with this resolution here we leave you.

Come, citizens; zounds, I’ll entreat no more.

RICHARD     O, do not swear, my lord of Buckingham!

     Exeunt Buckingham, Lord Mayor, and citizens.

CATESBY

Call him again, sweet Prince; accept their suit.

220

If you deny them, all the land will rue it.

RICHARD     Will you enforce me to a world of cares?

Call them again. I am not made of stones,

But penetrable to your kind entreaties,

Albeit against my conscience and my soul.

225

Enter BUCKINGHAM and the rest.

Cousin of Buckingham, and sage grave men,

Since you will buckle fortune on my back

To bear her burden whe’er I will or no,

I must have patience to endure the load.

But if black scandal, or foul-fac’d reproach,

230

Attend the sequel of your imposition,

Your mere enforcement shall acquittance me

From all the impure blots and stains thereof:

For God doth know, and you may partly see,

How far I am from the desire of this.

235

MAYOR     God bless your Grace: we see it, and will say it.

RICHARD     In saying so, you shall but say the truth.

BUCKINGHAM     Then I salute you with this royal title:

Long live Richard, England’s worthy King!

ALL    Amen.

240

BUCKINGHAM

Tomorrow may it please you to be crown’d?

RICHARD     Even when you please, for you will have it so.

BUCKINGHAM

Tomorrow then we will attend your Grace;

And so most joyfully we take our leave.

RICHARD     Come, let us to our holy work again.

245

Farewell my cousin, farewell gentle friends.      Exeunt.

4.1 Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, the DUCHESS OF YORK,
MARQUESS OF DORSET at one door; ANNE, DUCHESS OF
GLOUCESTER at another door with Clarence’s daughter.

DUCHESS     Who meets us here? My niece Plantagenet

Led in the hand of her kind aunt of Gloucester:

Now, for my life, she’s wandering to the Tower,

On pure heart’s love, to greet the tender Prince.

Daughter, well met.

ANNE     God give your Graces both

5

A happy and a joyful time of day.

ELIZABETH

As much to you, good sister; whither away?

ANNE     No farther than the Tower, and as I guess,

Upon the like devotion as yourselves:

To gratulate the gentle Princes there.

10

ELIZABETH     Kind sister, thanks; we’ll enter all together.

Enter BRAKENBURY.

And in good time, here the Lieutenant comes.

Master Lieutenant, pray you by your leave:

How doth the Prince and my young son of York?

BRAKENBURY

Right well, dear madam. By your patience,

15

I may not suffer you to visit them:

The King hath strictly charg’d the contrary.

ELIZABETH     The King! Who’s that?

BRAKENBURY     I mean the Lord Protector.

ELIZABETH

The Lord protect him from that kingly title!

Hath he set bounds between their love and me?

20

I am their mother; who shall bar me from them?

DUCHESS     I am their father’s mother: I will see them.

ANNE     Their aunt I am in law, in love their mother;

Then bring me to their sights. I’ll bear thy blame,

And take thy office from thee, on my peril.

25

BRAKENBURY     No, madam, no: I may not leave it so.

I am bound by oath; and therefore pardon me. Exit.

Enter STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY.

STANLEY     Let me but meet you, ladies, one hour hence,

And I’ll salute your Grace of York as mother

And reverend looker-on of two fair queens.

30

[to Anne] Come, madam, you must straight to Westminster,

There to be crowned Richard’s royal queen.

ELIZABETH     Ah, cut my lace asunder

That my pent heart may have some scope to beat,

Or else I swoon with this dead-killing news.

35

ANNE     Despiteful tidings! O unpleasing news!

DORSET

Be of good cheer, mother: how fares your Grace?

ELIZABETH     O Dorset, speak not to me; get thee gone.

Death and destruction dogs thee at thy heels;

Thy mother’s name is ominous to children.

40

If thou wilt outstrip death, go, cross the seas

And live with Richmond, from the reach of hell.

Go: hie thee, hie thee from this slaughter-house

Lest thou increase the number of the dead,

And make me die the thrall of Margaret’s curse:

45

Nor mother, wife, nor England’s counted Queen.

STANLEY

Full of wise care is this your counsel, madam.

[to Dorset] Take all the swift advantage of the hours;

You shall have letters from me to my son

In your behalf, to meet you on the way.

50

Be not ta’en tardy by unwise delay.

DUCHESS     O ill-dispersing wind of misery!

O my accursed womb, the bed of death!

A cockatrice hast thou hatch’d to the world

Whose unavoided eye is murderous.

55

STANLEY     Come madam, come: I in all haste was sent.

ANNE     And I with all unwillingness will go.

O would to God that the inclusive verge

Of golden metal that must round my brow

Were red-hot steel, to sear me to the brains.

60

Anointed let me be with deadly venom,

And die ere men can say ‘God save the Queen’.

ELIZABETH     Go, go, poor soul; I envy not thy glory.

To feed my humour, wish thyself no harm.

ANNE     No? Why? When he that is my husband now

65

Came to me as I follow’d Henry’s corse,

When scarce the blood was well wash’d from his hands

Which issued from my other angel-husband,

And that dear saint which then I weeping follow’d;

O when, I say, I look’d on Richard’s face

70

This was my wish: ‘Be thou’, quoth I, ‘accurs’d

For making me, so young, so old a widow;

And when thou wed’st, let sorrow haunt thy bed;

And be thy wife – if any be so mad –

More miserable by the life of thee

75

Than thou hast made me by my dear lord’s death’.

Lo, ere I can repeat this curse again,

Within so small a time, my woman’s heart

Grossly grew captive to his honey words,

And prov’d the subject of mine own soul’s curse,

80

Which hitherto hath held my eyes from rest;

For never yet one hour in his bed

Did I enjoy the golden dew of sleep,

But with his timorous dreams was still awak’d.

Besides, he hates me for my father Warwick,

85

And will, no doubt, shortly be rid of me.

ELIZABETH

Poor heart, adieu; I pity thy complaining.

ANNE     No more than with my soul I mourn for yours.

DORSET     Farewell, thou woeful welcomer of glory.

ANNE     Adieu, poor soul, that tak’st thy leave of it.

90

DUCHESS [to Dorset]

Go thou to Richmond, and good fortune guide thee;

[to Anne] Go thou to Richard, and good angels tend thee;

[to Elizabeth] Go thou to sanctuary, and good thoughts posess thee;

I to my grave, where peace and rest lie with me.

Eighty odd years of sorrow have I seen,

95

And each hour’s joy wrack’d with a week of teen.

ELIZABETH     Stay, yet look back with me unto the Tower.

Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes

Whom envy hath immur’d within your walls –

Rough cradle for such little pretty ones,

100

Rude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow

For tender princes, use my babies well.

So foolish sorrows bids your stones farewell.      Exeunt.

4.2 The trumpets sound a sennet. Enter RICHARD in pomp, crowned; BUCKINGHAM, CATESBY, RATCLIFFE, LOVELL with other nobles and a Page.

KING RICHARD Stand all apart. Cousin of Buckingham!

BUCKINGHAM     My gracious sovereign!

KING RICHARD Give me thy hand.

[Here he ascendeth the throne.]      [Sound trumpets.]

     Thus high, by thy advice

And thy assistance is King Richard seated.

But shall we wear these glories for a day.

5

Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?

BUCKINGHAM     Still live they, and for ever let them last!

KING RICHARD

Ah, Buckingham, now do I play the touch

To try if thou be current gold indeed.

Young Edward lives – think now what I would speak.

10

BUCKINGHAM     Say on, my loving lord.

KING RICHARD

Why, Buckingham, I say I would be King.

BUCKINGHAM

Why so you are, my thrice-renowned lord.

KING RICHARD

Ha, am I King? ’Tis so – but Edward lives.

BUCKINGHAM     True, noble Prince.

KING RICHARD     O bitter consequence,

15

That Edward still should live – true noble prince!

Cousin, thou wast not wont to be so dull.

Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead,

And I would have it suddenly perform’d.

What say’st thou now? Speak suddenly, be brief.

20

BUCKINGHAM     Your Grace may do your pleasure.

KING RICHARD

Tut, tut, thou art all ice; thy kindness freezes.

Say, have I thy consent that they shall die?

BUCKINGHAM

Give me some little breath, some pause, dear lord,

Before I positively speak in this;

25

I will resolve you herein presently.      Exit.

CATESBY     The King is angry: see, he gnaws his lip.

KING RICHARD [aside]

I will converse with iron-witted fools

And unrespective boys; none are for me

That look into me with considerate eyes.

30

High-reaching Buckingham grows circumspect. –

Boy!

PAGE     My lord?

KING RICHARD

Know’st thou not any whom corrupting gold

Will tempt unto a close exploit of death?

35

PAGE     I know a discontented gentleman,

Whose humble means match not his haughty spirit;

Gold were as good as twenty orators,

And will, no doubt, tempt him to anything.

KING RICHARD What is his name?

PAGE     His name, my lord, is Tyrrel.

40

KING RICHARD

I partly know the man: go call him hither. Exit Page.

[aside] The deep-revolving, witty Buckingham

No more shall be the neighbour to my counsels.

Hath he so long held out with me, untir’d,

And stops he now for breath! Well, be it so.

45

Enter STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY.

How now, Lord Stanley, what’s the news?

STANLEY     Know, my loving lord,

The Marquess Dorset, as I hear, is fled

To Richmond in the parts where he abides.

KING RICHARD

Come hither, Catesby. Rumour it abroad

50

That Anne my wife is very grievous sick;

I will take order for her keeping close.

Enquire me out some mean poor gentleman,

Whom I will marry straight to Clarence’ daughter –

The boy is foolish, and I fear not him.

55

Look how thou dream’st! I say again, give out

That Anne, my Queen, is sick and like to die.

About it, for it stands me much upon

To stop all hopes whose growth may damage me.

Exit Catesby.

I must be married to my brother’s daughter,

60

Or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass.

Murder her brothers, and then marry her –

Uncertain way of gain! But I am in

So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin;

Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye.

65

Enter TYRREL.

Is thy name Tyrrel?

TYRREL     James Tyrrel, and your most obedient subject.

KING RICHARD     Art thou indeed?

TYRREL     Prove me, my gracious lord.

KING RICHARD

Dar’st thou resolve to kill a friend of mine?

TYRREL     Please you; but I had rather kill two enemies.

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KING RICHARD

Why then thou hast it; two deep enemies,

Foes to my rest, and my sweet sleep’s disturbers,

Are they that I would have thee deal upon.

Tyrrel, I mean those bastards in the Tower.

TYRREL     Let me have open means to come to them,

75

And soon I’ll rid you from the fear of them.

KING RICHARD

Thou sing’st sweet music. Hark, come hither, Tyrrel:

Go by this token. Rise, and lend thine ear.

[He whispers in his ear.]

There is no more but so: say it is done,

And I will love thee, and prefer thee for it.

80

TYRREL     I will dispatch it straight.      Exit.

Enter BUCKINGHAM.

BUCKINGHAM     My lord, I have consider’d in my mind

The late request that you did sound me in.

KING RICHARD

Well, let that rest. Dorset is fled to Richmond.

BUCKINGHAM     I hear the news, my lord.

85

KING RICHARD

Stanley, he is your wife’s son. Well, look unto it.

BUCKINGHAM

My lord, I claim the gift, my due by promise,

For which your honour and your faith is pawn’d:

Th’earldom of Hereford, and the moveables

Which you have promised I shall possess.

90

KING RICHARD Stanley, look to your wife; if she convey

Letters to Richmond, you shall answer it.

BUCKINGHAM

What says your Highness to my just demand?

KING RICHARD I do remember me, Henry the Sixth

Did prophesy that Richmond should be King,

95

When Richmond was a little peevish boy.

A king … perhaps … perhaps –

BUCKINGHAM     My lord!

KING RICHARD

How chance the prophet could not, at that time,

Have told me – I being by – that I should kill him?

BUCKINGHAM

My lord, your promise for the earldom –

100

KING RICHARD Richmond! When last I was at Exeter,

The Mayor in courtesy show’d me the castle,

And call’d it Rougemont, at which name I started,

Because a bard of Ireland told me once

I should not live long after I saw ‘Richmond’.

105

BUCKINGHAM     My lord –

KING RICHARD Ay – what’s o’clock?

BUCKINGHAM

I am thus bold to put your Grace in mind

Of what you promis’d me.

KING RICHARD Well, but what’s o’clock?

110

BUCKINGHAM     Upon the stroke of ten.

KING RICHARD Well, let it strike.

BUCKINGHAM     Why let it strike?

KING RICHARD

Because that like a jack thou keep’st the stroke

Betwixt thy begging and my meditation.

115

I am not in the giving vein today.

BUCKINGHAM

May it please you to resolve me in my suit?

KING RICHARD Thou troublest me; I am not in vein.

Exit followed by all save Buckingham.

BUCKINGHAM

And is it thus? Repays he my deep service

With such contempt? Made I him King for this?

120

O let me think on Hastings, and be gone

To Brecknock while my fearful head is on.      Exit.

4.3 Enter TYRREL.

TYRREL     The tyrannous and bloody act is done;

The most arch deed of piteous massacre

That ever yet this land was guilty of.

Dighton and Forrest, who I did suborn

To do this piece of ruthless butchery –

5

Albeit they were flesh’d villains, bloody dogs –

Melted with tenderness and mild compassion,

Wept like two children, in their deaths’ sad story.

‘O thus’, quoth Dighton, ‘lay the gentle babes’;

‘Thus, thus’, quoth Forrest, ‘girdling one another

10

Within their alabaster innocent arms;

Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,

And in their summer beauty kiss’d each other.

A book of prayers on their pillow lay,

Which once’, quoth Forrest, ‘almost chang’d my mind.

15

But O, the Devil – ’There the villain stopp’d,

When Dighton thus told on: ‘We smothered

The most replenished sweet work of Nature,

That from the prime creation e’er she fram’d.’

Hence both are gone with conscience and remorse

20

They could not speak, and so I left them both

To bear this tidings to the bloody King;

Enter KING RICHARD.

And here he comes. All health, my sovereign lord.

KING RICHARD Kind Tyrrel, am I happy in thy news?

TYRREL     If to have done the thing you gave in charge

25

Beget your happiness, be happy then,

For it is done.

KING RICHARD But did’st thou see them dead?

TYRREL     I did, my lord.

KING RICHARD     And buried, gentle Tyrrel?

TYRREL     The chaplain of the Tower hath buried them,

But where, to say the truth, I do not know.

30

KING RICHARD

Come to me, Tyrrel, soon at after-supper,

When thou shalt tell the process of their death.

Meantime, but think how I may do thee good,

And be inheritor of thy desire.

Farewell till then.

TYRREL     I humbly take my leave.      Exit.

35

KING RICHARD

The son of Clarence have I pent up close;

His daughter meanly have I match’d in marriage;

The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham’s bosom,

And Anne my wife hath bid this world good night.

Now, for I know the Breton Richmond aims

40

At young Elizabeth, my brother’s daughter,

And by that knot looks proudly on the crown –

To her go I, a jolly thriving wooer.

Enter RATCLIFFE.

RATCLIFFE     My lord!

KING RICHARD

Good or bad news, that thou com’st in so bluntly?

45

RATCLIFFE

Bad news, my lord. Morton is fled to Richmond,

And Buckingham, back’d with the hardy Welshmen,

Is in the field, and still his power increaseth.

KING RICHARD

Ely with Richmond troubles me more near

Than Buckingham and his rash-levied strength.

50

Come: I have learn’d that fearful commenting

Is leaden servitor to dull delay;

Delay leads impotent and snail-pac’d beggary:

Then fiery expedition be my wing,

Jove’s Mercury, and herald for a king.

55

Go muster men. My counsel is my shield.

We must be brief, when traitors brave the field.

Exeunt.

4.4 Enter old QUEEN MARGARET.

MARGARET     So now prosperity begins to mellow,

And drop into the rotten mouth of death.

Here in these confines slily have I lurk’d

To watch the waning of mine enemies.

A dire induction am I witness to,

5

And will to France, hoping the consequence

Will prove as bitter, black, and tragical.

Enter DUCHESS OF YORK and QUEEN ELIZABETH.

Withdraw thee, wretched Margaret: who comes here?

ELIZABETH     Ah, my poor Princes! Ah, my tender babes,

My unblow’d flowers, new-appearing sweets!

10

If yet your gentle souls fly in the air,

And be not fix’d in doom perpetual,

Hover about me with your airy wings,

And hear your mother’s lamentation.

MARGARET [aside]

Hover about her; say that right for right

15

Hath dimm’d your infant morn to aged night.

DUCHESS     So many miseries have craz’d my voice

That my woe-wearied tongue is still and mute.

Edward Plantagenet, why art thou dead?

MARGARET [aside] Plantagenet doth quit Plantagenet:

20

Edward, for Edward, pays a dying debt.

ELIZABETH

Wilt thou, O God, fly from such gentle lambs,

And throw them in the entrails of the wolf?

When didst Thou sleep when such a deed was done?

MARGARET [aside]

When holy Harry died, and my sweet son.

25

DUCHESS

Dead life, blind sight, poor mortal living ghost;

Woe’s scene, world’s shame, grave’s due by life usurp’d;

Brief abstract and record of tedious days,

[sitting] Rest thy unrest on England’s lawful earth,

Unlawfully made drunk with innocent blood.

30

ELIZABETH

Ah, that thou wouldst as soon afford a grave

As thou canst yield a melancholy seat,

Then would I hide my bones, not rest them here.

[sitting] Ah, who hath any cause to mourn but we?

MARGARET     If ancient sorrow be most reverend

35

Give mine the benefit of seigniory,

And let my griefs frown on the upper hand.

If sorrow can admit society,

Tell o’er your woes again by viewing mine.

I had an Edward, till a Richard kill’d him;

40

I had a husband, till a Richard kill’d him:

Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard kill’d him;

Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard kill’d him.

DUCHESS     I had a Richard too, and thou didst kill him;

I had a Rutland too: thou holp’st to kill him.

45

MARGARET

Thou hadst a Clarence too, and Richard kill’d him.

From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept

A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death:

That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes,

To worry lambs, and lap their gentle blood;

50

That excellent grand tyrant of the earth,

That reigns in galled eyes of weeping souls;

That foul defacer of God’s handiwork

Thy womb let loose to chase us to our graves.

O upright, just, and true-disposing God!

55

How do I thank thee, that this carnal cur

Preys on the issue of his mother’s body,

And makes her pew-fellow with others’ moan.

DUCHESS     O, Harry’s wife, triumph not in my woes.

God witness with me, I have wept for thine.

60

MARGARET     Bear with me: I am hungry for revenge,

And now I cloy me with beholding it.

Thy Edward he is dead, that kill’d my Edward;

Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward;

Young York, he is but boot, because both they

65

Match’d not the high perfection of my loss.

Thy Clarence he is dead, that stabb’d my Edward;

And the beholders of this frantic play,

Th’adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey,

Untimely smother’d in their dusky graves.

70

Richard yet lives, hell’s black intelligencer,

Only reserv’d their factor to buy souls

And send them thither. But at hand, at hand

Ensues his piteous and unpitied end.

Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray,

75

To have him suddenly convey’d from hence.

Cancel his bond of life, dear God I pray,

That I may live and say ‘The dog is dead.’

ELIZABETH

O, thou didst prophesy the time would come

That I should wish for thee to help me curse

80

That bottled spider, that foul bunch-back’d toad.

MARGARET

I call’d thee then vain flourish of my fortune;

I call’d thee, then, poor shadow, painted queen,

The presentation of but what I was;

The flattering index of a direful pageant;

85

One heav’d a-high, to be hurl’d down below;

A mother only mock’d with two fair babes;

A dream of what thou wast; a garish flag

To be the aim of every dangerous shot;

A sign of dignity; a breath, a bubble;

90

A queen in jest, only to fill the scene.

Where is thy husband now? Where be thy brothers?

Where are thy two sons? Wherein dost thou joy?

Who sues, and kneels, and says ‘God save the Queen’?

Where be the bending peers that flatter’d thee?

95

Where be the thronging troops that follow’d thee?

Decline all this, and see what now thou art:

For happy wife, a most distressed widow;

For joyful mother, one that wails the name;

For one being sued to, one that humbly sues;

100

For Queen, a very caitiff, crown’d with care;

For she that scorn’d at me, now scorn’d of me;

For she being fear’d of all, now fearing one;

For she commanding all, obey’d of none.

Thus hath the course of justice whirl’d about

105

And left thee but a very prey to time,

Having no more but thought of what thou wast

To torture thee the more, being what thou art.

Thou didst usurp my place, and dost thou not

Usurp the just proportion of my sorrow?

110

Now thy proud neck bears half my burden’d yoke,

From which even here I slip my weary head,

And leave the burden of it all on thee.

Farewell, York’s wife, and Queen of sad mischance;

These English woes shall make me smile in France.

115

ELIZABETH     O thou, well skill’d in curses, stay awhile

And teach me how to curse mine enemies.

MARGARET

Forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the days;

Compare dead happiness with living woe;

Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were,

120

And he that slew them fouler than he is:

Bettering thy loss makes the bad-causer worse.

Revolving this will teach thee how to curse.

ELIZABETH

My words are dull: O quicken them with thine.

MARGARET

Thy woes will make them sharp and pierce like mine.

125

Exit.

DUCHESS     Why should calamity be full of words?

ELIZABETH     Windy attorneys to their clients’ woes,

Airy succeeders of intestate joys,

Poor breathing orators of miseries:

Let them have scope, though what they will impart

130

Help nothing else, yet do they ease the heart.

DUCHESS     If so, then be not tongue-tied; go with me

And in the breath of bitter words let’s smother

My damned son, that thy two sweet sons smother’d.

The trumpet sounds; be copious in exclaims.

135

Enter KING RICHARD and his train including CATESBY, marching with drums and trumpets.

KING RICHARD Who intercepts me in my expedition?

DUCHESS     O, she that might have intercepted thee –

By strangling thee in her accursed womb –

From all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done.

ELIZABETH

Hid’st thou that forehead with a golden crown

140

Where should be branded, if that right were right,

The slaughter of the Prince that ow’d that crown,

And the dire death of my poor sons and brothers?

Tell me, thou villain-slave, where are my children?

DUCHESS

Thou toad, thou toad, where is thy brother Clarence,

145

And little Ned Plantagenet his son?

ELIZABETH     Where is the gentle Rivers, Vaughan, Grey?

DUCHESS     Where is kind Hastings?

KING RICHARD

A flourish, trumpets! Strike alarum, drums!

Let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women

150

Rail on the Lord’s anointed. Strike, I say!

[Flourish; alarums.]

Either be patient and entreat me fair,

Or with the clamorous report of war

Thus will I drown your exclamations.

DUCHESS     Art thou my son?

155

KING RICHARD

Ay, I thank God, my father, and yourself.

DUCHESS     Then patiently hear my impatience.

KING RICHARD

Madam, I have a touch of your condition,

That cannot brook the accent of reproof.

DUCHESS     O let me speak.

KING RICHARD     Do then, but I’ll not hear.

160

DUCHESS     I will be mild and gentle in my words.

KING RICHARD

And brief, good mother, for I am in haste.

DUCHESS     Art thou so hasty? I have stay’d for thee,

God knows, in torment and in agony.

KING RICHARD And came I not at last to comfort you?

165

DUCHESS     No, by the holy Rood, thou know’st it well:

Thou cam’st on earth to make the earth my hell.

A grievous burden was thy birth to me;

Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy;

Thy school-days frightful, desp’rate, wild, and furious;

170

Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous;

Thy age confirm’d, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody:

More mild, but yet more harmful, kind in hatred.

What comfortable hour canst thou name

That ever grac’d me with thy company?

175

KING RICHARD

Faith, none but Humphrey Hower, that call’d your Grace

To breakfast once, forth of my company.

If I be so disgracious in your eye,

Let me march on and not offend you, madam.

Strike up the drum!

DUCHESS     I prithee, hear me speak.

180

KING RICHARD You speak too bitterly.

DUCHESS     Hear me a word,

For I shall never speak to thee again.

KING RICHARD So!

DUCHESS     Either thou wilt die by God’s just ordinance

Ere from this war thou turn a conqueror,

185

Or I with grief and extreme age shall perish,

And nevermore behold thy face again.

Therefore, take with thee my most grievous curse,

Which in the day of battle tire thee more

Than all the complete armour that thou wear’st.

190

My prayers on the adverse party fight;

And there the little souls of Edward’s children

Whisper the spirits of thine enemies

And promise them success and victory.

Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end.

195

Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.

Exit.

ELIZABETH

Though far more cause, yet much less spirit to curse

Abides in me, I say Amen to her.

KING RICHARD

Stay, madam: I must talk a word with you.

ELIZABETH     I have no more sons of the royal blood

200

For thee to slaughter. For my daughters, Richard,

They shall be praying nuns, not weeping queens,

And therefore level not to hit their lives.

KING RICHARD You have a daughter call’d Elizabeth,

Virtuous and fair, royal and gracious.

205

ELIZABETH     And must she die for this? O let her live,

And I’ll corrupt her manners, stain her beauty,

Slander myself as false to Edward’s bed,

Throw over her the veil of infamy;

So she may live unscarr’d of bleeding slaughter

210

I will confess she was not Edward’s daughter.

KING RICHARD

Wrong not her birth; she is a royal princess.

ELIZABETH     To save her life I’ll say she is not so.

KING RICHARD Her life is safest only in her birth.

ELIZABETH     And only in that safety died her brothers.

215

KING RICHARD

Lo, at their birth good stars were opposite.

ELIZABETH     No, to their lives ill friends were contrary.

KING RICHARD All unavoided is the doom of destiny.

ELIZABETH     True, when avoided grace makes destiny.

My babes were destin’d to a fairer death,

220

If grace had blest thee with a fairer life.

KING RICHARD

You speak as if that I had slain my cousins.

ELIZABETH

Cousins indeed! And by their uncle cozen’d

Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life:

Whose hand soever lanc’d their tender hearts,

225

Thy head, all indirectly, gave direction.

No doubt the murd’rous knife was dull and blunt

Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart

To revel in the entrails of my lambs.

But that still use of grief makes wild grief tame,

230

My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys

Till that my nails were anchor’d in thine eyes,

And I in such a desp’rate bay of death,

Like a poor bark of sails and tackling reft,

Rush all to pieces on thy rocky bosom.

235

KING RICHARD Madam, so thrive I in my enterprise

And dangerous success of bloody wars,

As I intend more good to you and yours

Than ever you or yours by me were harm’d.

ELIZABETH

What good is cover’d with the face of heaven,

240

To be discover’d, that can do me good?

KING RICHARD

Th’advancement of your children, gentle lady.

ELIZABETH

Up to some scaffold, there to lose their heads.

KING RICHARD Unto the dignity and height of fortune,

The high imperial type of this earth’s glory!

245

ELIZABETH     Flatter my sorrow with report of it.

Tell me what state, what dignity, what honour,

Canst thou demise to any child of mine?

KING RICHARD Even all I have – ay, and myself and all

Will I withal endow a child of thine;

250

So in the Lethe of thy angry soul

Thou drown the sad remembrance of those wrongs

Which thou supposest I have done to thee.

ELIZABETH

Be brief, lest that the process of thy kindness

Last longer telling than thy kindness’ date.

255

KING RICHARD

Then know that from my soul I love thy daughter.

ELIZABETH

My daughter’s mother thinks it with her soul.

KING RICHARD What do you think?

ELIZABETH

That thou dost love my daughter from thy soul:

So from thy soul’s love didst thou love her brothers,

260

And from my heart’s love I do thank thee for it.

KING RICHARD

Be not so hasty to confound my meaning:

I mean that with my soul I love thy daughter,

And do intend to make her Queen of England.

ELIZABETH

Well then, who dost thou mean shall be her king?

265

KING RICHARD

Even he that makes her Queen. Who else should be?

ELIZABETH     What, thou?

KING RICHARD Even so. How think you of it?

ELIZABETH     How canst thou woo her?

KING RICHARD That would I learn of you,

As one being best acquainted with her humour.

ELIZABETH     And wilt thou learn of me?

KING RICHARD     Madam, with all my heart!

270

ELIZABETH

Send to her, by the man that slew her brothers,

A pair of bleeding hearts; thereon engrave

‘Edward’ and ‘York’. Then haply will she weep;

Therefore present to her – as sometimes Margaret

Did to thy father, steep’d in Rutland’s blood –

275

A handkerchief: which, say to her, did drain

The purple sap from her sweet brother’s body,

And bid her wipe her weeping eyes withal.

If this inducement move her not to love,

Send her a letter of thy noble deeds:

280

Tell her thou mad’st away her uncle Clarence,

Her uncle Rivers – ay, and for her sake

Mad’st quick conveyance with her good aunt Anne.

KING RICHARD

You mock me, madam; this is not the way

To win your daughter!

ELIZABETH     There is no other way –

285

Unless thou couldst put on some other shape,

And not be Richard, that hath done all this.

KING RICHARD Say that I did all this for love of her?

ELIZABETH

Nay, then indeed she cannot chose but hate thee,

Having bought love with such a bloody spoil.

290

KING RICHARD

Look what is done cannot be now amended:

Men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes,

Which after-hours gives leisure to repent.

If I did take the kingdom from your sons,

To make amends I’ll give it to your daughter;

295

If I have kill’d the issue of your womb,

To quicken your increase, I will beget

Mine issue of your blood upon your daughter.

A grandam’s name is little less in love

Than is the doting title of a mother;

300

They are as children but one step below;

Even of your metal, of your very blood;

Of all one pain, save for a night of groans

Endur’d of her, for whom you bid like sorrow.

Your children were vexation to your youth,

305

But mine shall be a comfort to your age;

The loss you have is but a son being King;

And by that loss your daughter is made Queen.

I cannot make you what amends I would:

Therefore accept such kindness as I can.

310

Dorset your son, that with a fearful soul

Leads discontented steps in foreign soil,

This fair alliance quickly shall call home

To high promotions and great dignity.

The King that calls your beauteous daughter wife,

315

Familiarly shall call thy Dorset brother;

Again shall you be mother to a king,

And all the ruins of distressful times

Repair’d with double riches of content.

What! We have many goodly days to see.

320

The liquid drops of tears that you have shed

Shall come again, transform’d to orient pearl,

Advantaging their loan with interest

Of ten times double gain of happiness.

Go then, my mother; to thy daughter go:

325

Make bold her bashful years with your experience;

Prepare her ears to hear a wooer’s tale;

Put in her tender heart th’aspiring flame

Of golden sovereignty; acquaint the Princess

With the sweet, silent hours of marriage joys,

330

And when this arm of mine hath chastised

The petty rebel, dull-brain’d Buckingham,

Bound with triumphant garlands will I come

And lead thy daughter to a conqueror’s bed;

To whom I will retail my conquest won,

335

And she shall be sole victoress, Caesar’s Caesar.

ELIZABETH

What were I best to say? Her father’s brother

Would be her lord? Or shall I say her uncle?

Or he that slew her brothers and her uncles?

Under what title shall I woo for thee,

340

That God, the law, my honour, and her love

Can make seem pleasing to her tender years?

KING RICHARD

Infer fair England’s peace by this alliance.

ELIZABETH

Which she shall purchase with still-lasting war.

KING RICHARD

Tell her the King, that may command, entreats.

345

ELIZABETH

That, at her hands, which the King’s King forbids.

KING RICHARD

Say she shall be a high and mighty queen.

ELIZABETH     To vail the title, as her mother doth.

KING RICHARD Say I will love her everlastingly.

ELIZABETH     But how long shall that title ‘ever’ last?

350

KING RICHARD

Sweetly in force, until her fair life’s end.

ELIZABETH

But how long fairly shall her sweet life last?

KING RICHARD

As long as heaven and nature lengthens it.

ELIZABETH     As long as hell and Richard likes of it.

KING RICHARD Say I, her sovereign, am her subject low.

355

ELIZABETH

But she, your subject, loathes such sovereignty.

KING RICHARD Be eloquent in my behalf to her.

ELIZABETH     An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.

KING RICHARD Then plainly to her tell my loving tale.

ELIZABETH     Plain and not honest is too harsh a style.

360

KING RICHARD

Your reasons are too shallow and too quick.

ELIZABETH     O no, my reasons are too deep and dead:

Too deep and dead, poor infants, in their graves.

KING RICHARD

Harp not on that string, madam; that is past.

ELIZABETH

Harp on it still shall I, till heart-strings break.

365

KING RICHARD

Now by my George, my Garter, and my crown –

ELIZABETH

Profan’d, dishonour’d, and the third usurp’d.

KING RICHARD I swear –

ELIZABETH     By nothing, for this is no oath:

Thy George, profan’d, hath lost his holy honour;

Thy Garter, blemish’d, pawn’d his knightly virtue;

370

Thy crown, usurp’d, disgrac’d his kingly glory.

If something thou wouldst swear to be believ’d,

Swear then by something that thou hast not wrong’d.

KING RICHARD Now, by the world –

ELIZABETH     ’Tis full of thy foul wrongs.

KING RICHARD My father’s death –

ELIZABETH     Thy life hath it dishonour’d.

375

KING RICHARD Then by my self –

ELIZABETH     Thy self is self-misus’d.

KING RICHARD Why then, by God –

ELIZABETH     God’s wrong is most of all:

If thou didst fear to break an oath with Him,

The unity the King my husband made

Thou hadst not broken, nor my brothers died;

380

If thou hadst fear’d to break an oath by Him,

Th’imperial metal circling now thy head

Had grac’d the tender temples of my child,

And both the Princes had been breathing here,

Which now – two tender bed-fellows for dust –

385

Thy broken faith hath made the prey for worms.

What can’st thou swear by now?

KING RICHARD     The time to come!

ELIZABETH

That thou hast wronged in the time o’erpast:

For I myself have many tears to wash

Hereafter time, for time past wrong’d by thee.

390

The children live whose fathers thou hast slaughter’d:

Ungovern’d youth, to wail it in their age;

The parents live whose children thou hast butcher’d:

Old barren plants, to wail it with their age.

Swear not by time to come, for that thou hast

395

Misus’d, ere us’d, by times ill-us’d o’erpast.

KING RICHARD As I intend to prosper and repent,

So thrive I in my dangerous affairs

Of hostile arms! Myself myself confound!

God and fortune, bar me happy hours!

400

Day, yield me not thy light, nor, night, thy rest!

Be opposite, all planets of good luck,

To my proceeding if with dear heart’s love,

Immaculate devotion, holy thoughts,

I tender not thy beauteous, princely daughter.

405

In her consists my happiness and thine;

Without her follows to myself, and thee,

Herself, the land, and many a Christian soul,

Death, desolation, ruin, and decay.

It cannot be avoided but by this;

410

It will not be avoided but by this.

Therefore, dear mother – I must call you so –

Be the attorney of my love to her;

Plead what I will be, not what I have been;

Not my deserts, but what I will deserve.

415

Urge the necessity and state of times,

And be not peevish found in great designs.

ELIZABETH     Shall I be tempted of the devil thus?

KING RICHARD Ay, if the devil tempt you to do good.

ELIZABETH     Shall I forget myself to be myself?

420

KING RICHARD

Ay, if your self’s remembrance wrong yourself.

ELIZABETH     Yet thou didst kill my children.

KING RICHARD

But in your daughter’s womb I bury them,

Where, in that nest of spicery, they will breed

Selves of themselves, to your recomforture.

425

ELIZABETH     Shall I go win my daughter to thy will?

KING RICHARD And be a happy mother by the deed.

ELIZABETH     I go. Write to me very shortly,

And you shall understand from me her mind.

KING RICHARD

Bear her my true love’s kiss; [Kisses her]

     and so farewell.

430

Exit Elizabeth

Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman!

Enter RATCLIFFE.

How now, what news?

RATCLIFFE

Most mighty sovereign, on the western coast

Rideth a puissant navy; to our shores

Throng many doubtful, hollow-hearted friends,

435

Unarm’d, and unresolv’d to beat them back.

’Tis thought that Richmond is their admiral;

And there they hull, expecting but the aid

Of Buckingham to welcome them ashore.

KING RICHARD

Some light-foot friend post to the Duke of Norfolk.

440

Ratcliffe, thyself – or Catesby – where is he?

CATESBY     Here, my good lord.

KING RICHARD     Catesby, fly to the Duke.

CATESBY     I will, my lord, with all convenient haste.

KING RICHARD

Ratcliffe, come hither. Post to Salisbury.

When thou com’st thither –

[to Catesby]      Dull unmindful villain!

445

Why stay’st thou here and go’st not to the Duke?

CATESBY

First, mighty liege, tell me your Highness’ pleasure,

What from your Grace I shall deliver to him.

KING RICHARD

O, true, good Catesby! Bid him levy straight

The greatest strength and power that he can make,

450

And meet me suddenly at Salisbury.

CATESBY     I go.      Exit.

RATCLIFFE

What, may it please you, shall I do at Salisbury?

KING RICHARD

Why, what wouldst thou do there before I go?

RATCLIFFE

Your Highness told me I should post before.

455

KING RICHARD My mind is chang’d.

Enter STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY.

     Stanley, what news with you?

STANLEY

None good, my liege, to please you with the hearing;

Nor none so bad but well may be reported.

KING RICHARD

Hoyday, a riddle! Neither good nor bad –

What need’st thou run so many miles about

460

When thou mayst tell thy tale the nearest way?

Once more, what news?

STANLEY     Richmond is on the seas.

KING RICHARD

There let him sink, and the seas on him –

White-liver’d runagate! What doth he there?

STANLEY     I know not, mighty sovereign, but by guess.

465

KING RICHARD Well, as you guess?

STANLEY

Stirr’d up by Dorset, Buckingham, and Morton,

He makes for England, here to claim the crown.

KING RICHARD

Is the chair empty? Is the sword unsway’d?

Is the King dead? The empire unpossess’d?

470

What heir of York is there alive but we?

And who is England’s King but great York’s heir?

Then tell me, what makes he upon the seas!

STANLEY     Unless for that, my liege, I cannot guess.

KING RICHARD

Unless for that he comes to be your liege,

475

You cannot guess wherefore the Welshman comes.

Thou wilt revolt and fly to him, I fear.

STANLEY     No, my good lord; therefore mistrust me not.

KING RICHARD

Where is thy power then to beat him back?

Where be thy tenants and thy followers?

480

Are they not now upon the western shore,

Safe-conducting the rebels from their ships?

STANLEY

No, my good lord, my friends are in the north.

KING RICHARD

Cold friends to me! What do they in the north,

When they should serve their sovereign in the west?

485

STANLEY

They have not been commanded, mighty King.

Pleaseth your Majesty to give me leave,

I’ll muster up my friends, and meet your Grace

Where and what time your Majesty shall please.

KING RICHARD

Ay, ay, thou wouldst be gone, to join with Richmond.

490

But I’ll not trust thee.

STANLEY     Most mighty sovereign,

You have no cause to hold my friendship doubtful.

I never was, nor never will be, false.

KING RICHARD

Go then, and muster men – but leave behind

Your son George Stanley. Look your heart be firm,

495

Or else his head’s assurance is but frail.

STANLEY     So deal with him as I prove true to you.

Exit.

Enter a Messenger.

1 MESSENGER

My gracious sovereign, now in Devonshire –

As I by friends am well advertised –

Sir Edward Courtney and the haughty prelate,

500

Bishop of Exeter, his elder brother,

With many more confederates, are in arms.

Enter another Messenger.

2 MESSENGER

In Kent, my liege, the Guilfords are in arms,

And every hour more competitors

Flock to the rebels, and their power grows strong.

505

Enter another Messenger.

3 MESSENGER

My lord, the army of great Buckingham –

KING RICHARD

Out on you, owls! Nothing but songs of death?

[He striketh him.]

There, take thou that, till thou bring better news.

3 MESSENGER

The news I have to tell your Majesty

Is, that by sudden floods and fall of waters,

510

Buckingham’s army is dispers’d and scatter’d,

And he himself wander’d away alone,

No man knows whither.

KING RICHARD     I cry thee mercy;

There is my purse, to cure that blow of thine.

Hath any well-advised friend proclaim’d

515

Reward to him that brings the traitor in?

3 MESSENGER

Such proclamation hath been made, my lord.

Enter another Messenger.

4 MESSENGER

Sir Thomas Lovel and Lord Marquess Dorset

’Tis said, my liege, in Yorkshire are in arms;

But this good comfort bring I to your Highness:

520

The Breton navy is dispers’d by tempest.

Richmond, in Dorsetshire, sent out a boat

Unto the shore, to ask those on the banks

If they were his assistants, yea or no? –

Who answer’d him they came from Buckingham

525

Upon his party. He, mistrusting them,

Hois’d sail, and made his course again for Bretagne.

KING RICHARD

March on, march on, since we are up in arms:

If not to fight with foreign enemies,

Yet to beat down these rebels here at home.

530

Enter CATESBY.

CATESBY     My liege, the Duke of Buckingham is taken:

That is the best news. That the Earl of Richmond

Is with a mighty power landed at Milford

Is colder tidings, yet they must be told.

KING RICHARD

Away towards Salisbury! While we reason here

535

A royal battle might be won and lost.

Someone take order Buckingham be brought

To Salisbury; the rest march on with me.

Flourish. Exeunt.

4.5 Enter STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY and SIR CHRISTOPHER URSWICK.

STANLEY

Sir Christopher, tell Richmond this from me:

That in the sty of the most deadly boar

My son George Stanley is frank’d up in hold;

If I revolt, off goes young George’s head;

The fear of that holds off my present aid.

5

So get thee gone: commend me to thy lord;

Withal say that the Queen hath heartily consented

He should espouse Elizabeth her daughter.

But tell me, where is princely Richmond now?

CHRISTOPHER

At Pembroke, or at Ha’rfordwest in Wales.

10

STANLEY     What men of name resort to him?

CHRISTOPHER     Sir Walter Herbert, a renowned soldier;

Sir Gilbert Talbot, Sir William Stanley,

Oxford, redoubted Pembroke, Sir James Blunt,

And Rice ap Thomas, with a valiant crew,

15

And many other of great name and worth;

And towards London do they bend their power,

If by the way they be not fought withal.

STANLEY     Well, hie thee to thy lord; I kiss his hand.

My letter will resolve him of my mind.

20

Farewell. Exeunt.

5.1 Enter Sheriff with halberds, and BUCKINGHAM led to execution.

BUCKINGHAM

Will not King Richard let me speak with him?

SHERIFF No, my good lord; therefore be patient.

BUCKINGHAM

Hastings, and Edward’s children, Grey and Rivers,

Holy King Henry, and thy fair son Edward,

Vaughan, and all that have miscarried

5

By underhand, corrupted foul injustice –

If that your moody, discontented souls

Do through the clouds behold this present hour,

Even for revenge mock my destruction.

This is All-Souls’ day, fellow, is it not?

10

SHERIFF     It is.

BUCKINGHAM

Why then, All-Souls’ day is my body’s doomsday.

This is the day which, in King Edward’s time,

I wish’d might fall on me when I was found

False to his children and his wife’s allies.

15

This is the day wherein I wish’d to fall

By the false faith of him whom most I trusted.

This, this All-Souls’ day to my fearful soul

Is the determin’d respite of my wrongs:

That high All-seer which I dallied with

20

Hath turn’d my feigned prayer on my head,

And given in earnest what I begg’d in jest.

Thus doth He force the swords of wicked men

To turn their own points in their masters’ bosoms.

Thus Margaret’s curse falls heavy on my neck:

25

‘When he,’ quoth she, ‘shall split thy heart with sorrow,

Remember Margaret was a prophetess!’

Come, lead me, officers, to the block of shame;

Wrong hath but wrong, and blame the due of blame.

Exit with officers.

5.2 Enter RICHMOND, OXFORD, BLUNT, HERBERT and others, with drum and colours.

RICHMOND

Fellows in arms, and my most loving friends,

Bruis’d underneath the yoke of tyranny;

Thus far into the bowels of the land

Have we march’d on without impediment;

And here receive we from our father Stanley

5

Lines of fair comfort and encouragement.

The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar,

That spoil’d your summer fields and fruitful vines,

Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough

In your embowell’d bosoms – this foul swine

10

Is now even in the centre of this isle,

Near to the town of Leicester, as we learn.

From Tamworth thither is but one day’s march:

In God’s name, cheerly on, courageous friends,

To reap the harvest of perpetual peace

15

By this one bloody trial of sharp war.

OXFORD     Every man’s conscience is a thousand men,

To fight against this guilty homicide.

HERBERT     I doubt not but his friends will turn to us.

BLUNT

He hath no friends but what are friends for fear,

20

Which in his dearest need will fly from him.

RICHMOND

All for our vantage; then in God’s name march.

True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings:

Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.

Exeunt.

5.3 Enter KING RICHARD in arms, with NORFOLK, RATCLIFFE and the EARL OF SURREY, with others.

KING RICHARD

Here pitch our tent, even here in Bosworth field.

[Richard’s tent is raised, on one side of the stage.]

My lord of Surrey, why look you so sad?

SURREY     My heart is ten times lighter than my looks.

KING RICHARD My lord of Norfolk.

NORFOLK     Here, most gracious liege.

KING RICHARD

Norfolk, we must have knocks – ha, must we not?

5

NORFOLK     We must both give and take, my loving lord.

KING RICHARD

Up with my tent! Here will I lie tonight –

But where tomorrow? Well, all’s one for that.

Who hath descried the number of the traitors?

NORFOLK     Six or seven thousand is their utmost power.

10

KING RICHARD Why, our battalia trebles that account!

Besides, the King’s name is a tower of strength

Which they upon the adverse faction want.

Up with the tent! Come, noble gentlemen,

Let us survey the vantage of the ground.

15

Call for some men of sound direction;

Let’s lack no discipline, make no delay:

For, lords, tomorrow is a busy day!

[The tent is now ready.]      Exeunt through one door.

Enter through the other door RICHMOND, SIR WILLIAM BRANDON, OXFORD, and HERBERT, BLUNT, and others, who pitch Richmond’s tent on the other side of the stage.

RICHMOND     The weary sun hath made a golden set,

And by the bright track of his fiery car

20

Gives token of a goodly day tomorrow.

Sir William Brandon, you shall bear my standard.

My lord of Oxford, you Sir William Brandon,

And you Sir Walter Herbert, stay with me;

The Earl of Pembroke keeps his regiment –

25

Good captain Blunt, bear my goodnight to him,

And by the second hour in the morning

Desire the Earl to see me in my tent.

Yet one thing more, good captain, do for me:

Where is Lord Stanley quarter’d, do you know?

30

BLUNT     Unless I have mista’en his colours much,

Which well I am assur’d I have not done,

His regiment lies half a mile at least

South from the mighty power of the King.

RICHMOND     If without peril it be possible,

35

Sweet Blunt, make some good means to speak with him,

And give him from me this most needful note.

BLUNT     Upon my life, my lord, I’ll undertake it;

And so God give you quiet rest tonight.

RICHMOND     Good night, good captain Blunt.

40

Exit Blunt.

Give me some ink and paper in my tent;

I’ll draw the form and model of our battle;

Limit each leader to his several charge,

And part in just proportion our small power.

Come, gentlemen:

45

Let us consult upon tomorrow’s business;

Into my tent: the dew is raw and cold.

     Richmond, Brandon, Oxford and Herbert withdraw into the tent. The others exeunt.

Enter KING RICHARD, RATCLIFFE, NORFOLK and CATESBY and attendant soldiers.

KING RICHARD What is’t o’clock?

CATESBY     It’s supper time, my lord: it’s nine o’clock.

KING RICHARD

I will not sup tonight. Give me some ink and paper.

50

What, is my beaver easier than it was,

And all my armour laid into my tent?

CATESBY     It is, my liege, and all things are in readiness.

KING RICHARD Good Norfolk, hie thee to thy charge;

Use careful watch; choose trusty sentinels.

55

NORFOLK     I go, my lord.

KING RICHARD

Stir with the lark tomorrow, gentle Norfolk.

NORFOLK     I warrant you, my lord.      Exit.

KING RICHARD Catesby!

CATESBY     My lord?

KING RICHARD     Send out a pursuivant-at-arms

60

To Stanley’s regiment. Bid him bring his power

Before sun-rising, lest his son George fall

Into the blind cave of eternal night.      Exit Catesby.

Fill me a bowl of wine. Give me a watch.

Saddle white Surrey for the field tomorrow;

65

Look that my staves be sound, and not too heavy.

Ratcliffe!

RATCLIFFE     My lord?

KING RICHARD

Saw’st thou the melancholy Lord Northumberland?

RATCLIFFE     Thomas the Earl of Surrey and himself,

70

Much about cockshut time, from troop to troop

Went through the army cheering up the soldiers.

KING RICHARD

So, I am satisfied. Give me a bowl of wine.

I have not that alacrity of spirit

Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have.

75

Set it down. Is ink and paper ready?

RATCLIFFE     It is, my lord.

KING RICHARD Bid my guard watch; leave me.

Ratcliffe, about the mid of night come to my tent

And help to arm me. Leave me, I say.

Exit Ratcliffe. Richard withdraws into his tent;

attendant soldiers guard it.

Enter STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY to Richmond in his tent.

STANLEY     Fortune and Victory sit on thy helm!

80

RICHMOND     All comfort that the dark night can afford

Be to thy person, noble father-in-law.

Tell me, how fares our loving mother?

STANLEY     I, by attorney, bless thee from thy mother,

Who prays continually for Richmond’s good.

85

So much for that. The silent hours steal on,

And flaky darkness breaks within the East.

In brief, for so the season bids us be,

Prepare thy battle early in the morning,

And put thy fortune to the arbitrement

90

Of bloody strokes and mortal-staring war.

I, as I may – that which I would, I cannot –

With best advantage will deceive the time,

And aid thee in this doubtful shock of arms.

But on thy side I may not be too forward,

95

Lest, being seen, thy brother, tender George,

Be executed in his father’s sight.

Farewell; the leisure and the fearful time

Cuts off the ceremonious vows of love

And ample interchange of sweet discourse

100

Which so long sunder’d friends should dwell upon.

God give us leisure for these rites of love.

Once more adieu: be valiant, and speed well.

RICHMOND     Good lords, conduct him to his regiment.

I’ll strive, with troubled thoughts, to take a nap

105

Lest leaden slumber peise me down tomorrow

When I should mount with wings of victory.

Once more, good night, kind lords and gentlemen.

     Exeunt Stanley with Brandon, Oxford, Herbert.

[Kneels.] O Thou, whose captain I account myself,

Look on my forces with a gracious eye;

110

Put in their hands Thy bruising irons of wrath

That they may crush down, with a heavy fall,

Th’usurping helmets of our adversaries;

Make us Thy ministers of chastisement,

That we may praise Thee in the victory.

115

To Thee I do commend my watchful soul

Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes:

Sleeping and waking, O defend me still!

[Rises, withdraws into his tent, lies down and sleeps.]

Enter the ghost of young PRINCE EDWARD, son of Harry the Sixth.

GHOST OF PRINCE EDWARD [to King Richard]

Let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow.

Think how thou stab’st me in my prime of youth

120

At Tewkesbury; despair therefore, and die.

[to Richmond] Be cheerful, Richmond, for the wronged souls

Of butcher’d princes fight in thy behalf;

King Henry’s issue, Richmond, comforts thee. Exit.

Enter the ghost of HENRY THE SIXTH.

GHOST OF HENRY [to King Richard]

When I was mortal, my anointed body

125

By thee was punched full of deadly holes.

Think on the Tower and me: despair and die;

Harry the Sixth bids thee despair and die!

[to Richmond] Virtuous and holy, be thou conqueror:

Harry, that prophesied thou shouldst be King,

130

Doth comfort thee in thy sleep. Live and flourish!

Exit.

Enter the ghost of CLARENCE.

GHOST OF CLARENCE [to King Richard]

Let me sit heavy in thy soul tomorrow –

I, that was wash’d to death with fulsome wine,

Poor Clarence, by thy guile betray’d to death –

Tomorrow in the battle think on me,

135

And fall thy edgeless sword; despair and die.

[to Richmond] Thou offspring of the House of Lancaster,

The wronged heirs of York do pray for thee.

Good angels guard thy battle; live and flourish.

Exit.

Enter the ghosts of RIVERS, GREY and VAUGHAN.

GHOST OF RIVERS [to King Richard]

Let me sit heavy in thy soul tomorrow,

140

Rivers that died at Pomfret: despair and die.

GHOST OF GREY [to King Richard]

Think upon Grey, and let thy soul despair.

GHOST OF VAUGHAN [to King Richard]

Think upon Vaughan, and with guilty fear

Let fall thy lance; despair and die.

ALL [to Richmond]

Awake, and think our wrongs in Richard’s bosom

145

Will conquer him: awake, and win the day.      Exeunt.

Enter the ghost of HASTINGS.

GHOST OF HASTINGS [to King Richard]

Bloody and guilty, guiltily awake,

And in a bloody battle end thy days.

Think on Lord Hastings; despair and die.

[to Richmond] Quiet, untroubled soul, awake, awake:

150

Arm, fight, and conquer for fair England’s sake.

Exit.

Enter the ghosts of the two young PRINCES.

GHOSTS OF PRINCES EDWARD AND YORK

[to King Richard]

Dream on thy cousins, smother’d in the Tower:

Let us be lead within thy bosom, Richard,

And weigh thee down to ruin, shame, and death;

Thy nephews’ souls bid thee despair and die.

155

[to Richmond] Sleep, Richmond, sleep in peace, and wake in joy;

Good angels guard thee from the boar’s annoy.

Live, and beget a happy race of kings;

Edward’s unhappy sons do bid thee flourish.

Exeunt.

Enter the ghost of LADY ANNE, his wife.

GHOST OF ANNE [to King Richard]

Richard, thy wife, that wretched Anne, thy wife,

160

That never slept a quiet hour with thee,

Now fills thy sleep with perturbations.

Tomorrow in the battle think on me,

And fall thy edgeless sword: despair and die.

[to Richmond] Thou quiet soul, sleep thou a quiet

     sleep;

165

Dream of success and happy victory.

Thy adversary’s wife doth pray for thee.     Exit.

Enter the ghost of BUCKINGHAM.

GHOST OF BUCKINGHAM [to King Richard]

The first was I that help’d thee to the crown;

The last was I that felt thy tyranny.

O, in the battle think of Buckingham,

170

And die in terror of thy guiltiness.

Dream on, dream on of bloody deeds and death;

Fainting, despair: despairing, yield thy breath.

[to Richmond] I died for hope ere I could lend thee aid,

But cheer thy heart, and be thou not dismay’d.

175

God and good angels fight on Richmond’s side;

And Richard fall in height of all his pride.      Exit.

[Richard starteth up out of a dream.]

KING RICHARD

Give me another horse! Bind up my wounds!

Have mercy, Jesu! – Soft, I did but dream.

O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!

180

The lights burn blue; it is now dead midnight.

Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.

What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by;

Richard loves Richard, that is, I and I.

Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am!

185

Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why,

Lest I revenge? What, myself upon myself?

Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good

That I myself have done unto myself?

O no, alas, I rather hate myself

190

For hateful deeds committed by myself.

I am a villain – yet I lie, I am not!

Fool, of thyself speak well! Fool, do not flatter.

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,

And every tongue brings in a several tale,

195

And every tale condemns me for a villain:

Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree;

Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree;

All several sins, all us’d in each degree,

Throng to the bar, crying all, ‘Guilty, guilty!’

200

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me,

And if I die, no soul will pity me –

And wherefore should they, since that I myself

Find in myself no pity to myself?

Methought the souls of all that I had murder’d

205

Came to my tent, and every one did threat

Tomorrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard.

Enter RATCLIFFE.

RATCLIFFE     My lord!

KING RICHARD Zounds! Who is there?

RATCLIFFE

Ratcliffe, my lord; ’tis I. The early village cock

210

Hath twice done salutation to the morn;

Your friends are up and buckle on their armour.

KING RICHARD

O Ratcliffe, I have dream’d a fearful dream!

What thinkest thou – will our friends prove all true?

RATCLIFFE     No doubt, my lord.

KING RICHARD     O Ratcliffe, I fear, I fear!

215

RATCLIFFE

Nay, good my lord, be not afraid of shadows.

KING RICHARD By the Apostle Paul, shadows tonight

Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard

Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers,

Armed in proof, and led by shallow Richmond.

220

’Tis not yet near day; come, go with me:

Under our tents I’ll play the eavesdropper

To see if any mean to shrink from me.

     Exeunt Richard and Ratcliffe.

Enter the Lords to RICHMOND sitting in his tent.

LORDS     Good morrow, Richmond.

RICHMOND     Cry mercy, lords and watchful gentlemen,

225

That you have ta’en a tardy sluggard here.

1 LORD How have you slept, my lord?

RICHMOND

The sweetest sleep and fairest-boding dreams

That ever enter’d in a drowsy head

Have I, since your departure, had, my lords.

230

Methought their souls whose bodies Richard murder’d

Came to my tent and cried on victory.

I promise you my soul is very jocund

In the remembrance of so fair a dream.

How far into the morning is it, lords?

235

1 LORD Upon the stroke of four

RICHMOND

Why then ’tis time to arm and give direction.

[Comes out from the tent.]

His oration to his soldiers.

More than I have said, loving countrymen,

The leisure and enforcement of the time

Forbids to dwell upon. Yet remember this:

240

God, and our good cause, fight upon our side;

The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls,

Like high-rear’d bulwarks, stand before our faces.

Richard except, those whom we fight against

Had rather have us win than him they follow.

245

For what is he they follow? Truly, gentlemen,

A bloody tyrant and a homicide;

One rais’d in blood, and one in blood establish’d;

One that made means to come by what he hath,

And slaughter’d those that were the means to help him;

250

A base foul stone, made precious by the foil

Of England’s chair, where he is falsely set;

One that hath ever been God’s enemy.

Then, if you fight against God’s enemy,

God will, in justice, ward you as his soldiers;

255

If you do sweat to put a tyrant down,

You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain;

If you do fight against your country’s foes,

Your country’s fat shall pay your pains the hire;

If you do fight in safeguard of your wives,

260

Your wives shall welcome home the conquerors;

If you do free your children from the sword,

Your children’s children quits in it your age.

Then, in the name of God and all these rights,

Advance your standards, draw your willing swords!

265

For me, the ransom of my bold attempt

Shall be this cold corpse on the earth’s cold face;

But if I thrive, the gain of my attempt

The least of you shall share his part thereof.

Sound, drums, and trumpets, boldly and cheerfully!

270

God, and Saint George! Richmond and victory!

     Exeunt Richmond and his followers.

Enter KING RICHARD, RATCLIFFE and soldiers.

KING RICHARD

What said Northumberland, as touching Richmond?

RATCLIFFE     That he was never trained up in arms.

KING RICHARD

He said the truth. And what said Surrey then?

RATCLIFFE

He smil’d and said, ‘The better for our purpose.’

275

KING RICHARD He was in the right, and so indeed it is.

[The clock striketh.]

Tell the clock there! Give me a calendar –

Who saw the sun today?

RATCLIFFE     Not I, my lord.

KING RICHARD

Then he disdains to shine, for by the book

He should have brav’d the east an hour ago.

280

A black day will it be to somebody.

Ratcliffe!

RATCLIFFE     My lord?

KING RICHARD The sun will not be seen today!

The sky doth frown and lour upon our army:

I would these dewy tears were from the ground.

285

Not shine today? Why, what is that to me

More than to Richmond? For the self-same heaven

That frowns on me looks sadly upon him.

Enter NORFOLK.

NORFOLK

Arm, arm, my lord: the foe vaunts in the field!

KING RICHARD

Come, bustle, bustle! Caparison my horse.

290

[Richard arms.]

Call up Lord Stanley; bid him bring his power.

I will lead forth my soldiers to the plain,

And thus my battle shall be ordered:

My foreward shall be drawn out all in length,

Consisting equally of horse and foot;

295

Our archers shall be placed in the midst.

John, Duke of Norfolk, Thomas, Earl of Surrey

Shall have the leading of this foot and horse;

They thus directed, we will follow

In the main battle, whose puissance on either side

300

Shall be well winged with our chiefest horse.

This, and Saint George to boot! What think’st thou, Norfolk?

NORFOLK     A good direction, warlike sovereign.

[He sheweth him a paper.]

This I found on my tent this morning.

KING RICHARD [reading]

     Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold:

305

     For Dickon thy master is bought and sold.

A thing devised by the enemy.

Go, gentlemen: every man unto his charge!

Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls;

Conscience is but a word that cowards use,

310

Devis’d at first to keep the strong in awe.

Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.

March on! Join bravely. Let us to it pell-mell –

If not to Heaven, then hand in hand to hell!

His oration to his army.

What shall I say, more than I have inferr’d?

315

Remember whom you are to cope withal:

A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways;

A scum of Bretons and base lackey peasants,

Whom their o’er-cloyed country vomits forth

To desperate adventures and assur’d destruction.

320

You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest;

You having lands, and bless’d with beauteous wives,

They would restrain the one, distain the other.

And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow,

Long kept in Bretagne at our brother’s cost?

325

A milksop! One that never in his life

Felt so much cold as over-shoes in snow.

Let’s whip these stragglers o’er the seas again,

Lash hence these overweening rags of France,

These famish’d beggars, weary of their lives –

330

Who, but for dreaming on this fond exploit,

For want of means, poor rats, had hang’d themselves.

If we be conquer’d, let men conquer us!

And not these bastard Bretons, whom our fathers

Have in their own land beaten, bobb’d, and thump’d,

335

And in record left them the heirs of shame.

Shall these enjoy our lands? Lie with our wives?

Ravish our daughters?      [Drum afar off.]

     Hark, I hear their drum.

Fight, gentlemen of England! Fight, bold yeomen!

Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head!

340

Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood!

Amaze the welkin with your broken staves!

Enter a Messenger.

What says Lord Stanley? Will he bring his power?

MESSENGER     My lord, he doth deny to come.

KING RICHARD Off with his son George’s head!

345

NORFOLK     My lord, the enemy is past the marsh!

After the battle let George Stanley die.

KING RICHARD

A thousand hearts are great within my bosom.

Advance, our standards! Set upon our foes!

Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George,

350

Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons!

Upon them! Victory sits on our helms.     Exeunt.

5.4 Alarum. Excursions. Enter NORFOLK and soldiers; then at the other door CATESBY.

CATESBY     Rescue! My lord of Norfolk, rescue, rescue!

The King enacts more wonders than a man,

Daring an opposite to every danger.

His horse is slain, and all on foot he fights,

Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death.

5

Rescue, fair lord, or else the day is lost!

Exeunt Norfolk and soldiers.

Alarums. Enter KING RICHARD.

KING RICHARD

A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!

CATESBY     Withdraw, my lord; I’ll help you to a horse.

KING RICHARD Slave! I have set my life upon a cast,

And I will stand the hazard of the die.

10

I think there be six Richmonds in the field:

Five have I slain today instead of him.

A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!      Exeunt.

5.5 Alarum. Enter KING RICHARD and RICHMOND;
they fight. Richard is slain, then, retreat being sounded,
exit Richmond; Richard’s body is carried off.
Flourish. Enter RICHMOND, STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY
bearing the crown, with other lords and soldiers.

RICHMOND

God, and your arms, be prais’d, victorious friends:

The day is ours; the bloody dog is dead.

STANLEY

Courageous Richmond, well hast thou acquit thee!

[presenting the crown]

Lo, here, this long-usurped royalty

From the dead temples of this bloody wretch

5

Have I pluck’d off to grace thy brows withal.

Wear it, enjoy it, and make much of it.

RICHMOND     Great God of Heaven, say Amen to all!

But tell me, is young George Stanley living?

STANLEY     He is, my lord, and safe in Leicester town,

10

Whither, if it please you, we may now withdraw us.

RICHMOND     What men of name are slain on either side?

STANLEY

John, Duke of Norfolk; Walter, Lord Ferrers;

Sir Robert Brakenbury, and Sir William Brandon.

RICHMOND     Inter their bodies as become their births.

15

Proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled

That in submission will return to us;

And then, as we have ta’en the sacrament,

We will unite the white rose and the red.

Smile, heaven, upon this fair conjunction,

20

That long have frown’d upon their enmity.

What traitor hears me and says not Amen?

England hath long been mad, and scarr’d herself:

The brother blindly shed the brother’s blood;

The father rashly slaughter’d his own son;

25

The son, compell’d, been butcher to the sire.

All this divided York and Lancaster –

Divided, in their dire division.

O now let Richmond and Elizabeth,

The true succeeders of each royal House,

30

By God’s fair ordinance conjoin together,

And let their heirs, God, if Thy will be so,

Enrich the time to come with smooth-fac’d peace,

With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days.

Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord,

35

That would reduce these bloody days again,

And make poor England weep in streams of blood.

Let them not live to taste this land’s increase,

That would with treason wound this fair land’s peace.

Now civil wounds are stopp’d; peace lives again.

40

That she may long live here, God say Amen. Exeunt

Love’s Labour’s Lost

Love’s Labour’s Lost is generally labelled an ‘early comedy’ along with The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew and The Comedy of Errors. The four plays show Shakespeare at the beginning of his career experimenting with a range of materials and moods including romantic intrigue, classical farce and traditional folktale. Unlike the other three plays in this category, Love’s Labour’s Lost does not have a readily identifiable narrative or dramatic source, though affinities have been discerned with both literary and real-life accounts of courtly activities. Its presentation of Rosaline as a ‘dark’ heroine has encouraged some readers to speculate on possible connections with the narrative recounted in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Somewhat blighted by its reputation as a ‘topical’ play, it is perhaps more often performed than studied today.

The 1598 First Quarto of the play is the earliest dramatic text to have ‘by W. Shakespeare’ on its title-page. Love’s Labour’s Lost is described as ‘a pleasant conceited comedy’ and we are informed that it was ‘presented before her Highness this last Christmas’. The title-page further claims that the text is ‘newly corrected and augmented’, implying that it was written and performed somewhat earlier than 1598, and perhaps that a previous edition, now lost, had been published. It is listed by Francis Meres (along with the mysterious Love’s Labour’s Won) as one of Shakespeare’s comedies in his Palladis Tamia (also 1598), but it is usually dated 1594-5, mainly on internal evidence. It was revived in 1604 for performance at Court before Queen Anne. Some inconsistencies in the narrative, confusion over characters’ names and repetition of dialogue in this text seem to indicate that it was printed from Shakespeare’s working manuscript.

The phrase ‘conceited comedy’ is in this case an appropriate designation of a play whose verbal wit and ingenuity must have dazzled its original audiences and can occasionally baffle modern ones. Not only the supposedly sophisticated courtiers but also the lower-class characters play endlessly with language, achieving effects which can be brilliant, pedantic or bathetic, but are very frequently connected with obscenity. This has been one cause of the play’s relative unpopularity, though recent productions have shown that it can work well on stage as a lively and quite acerbic courtship comedy. Some of the wordplay does seem to be topical – the play is self-conscious about what Moth refers to as ‘a great feast of languages’ (5.1.35–6) – but broader attempts to find historical models for the characters and situations are now widely discounted.

The play’s title reflects its unconventional ending: in the short term at least the male lovers (with the surprising exception of Armado) have lost their labour in so far as they have not won the women. The closing songs are enigmatic, particularly in raising the threat of infidelity even before marriage is assured. A modern emphasis on the darker aspects of the play has taken more seriously such things as the breaking of vows, the cruelty of the courtiers to the amateur actors and the intrusion of death at the end. At the same time Berowne and Rosaline as sparring partners have appealed to actors and audiences as prototypes of Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, and talented performers have proved that the comedy of Don Armado and Holofernes is still not past its sell-by date.

The 1998 Arden text is based on the 1598 First Quarto, with reference in some places to the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

KING Ferdinand of Navarre

BOYET

a lord attending the Princess

Monsieur MARCADÉ

a messenger

Don Adriano de ARMADO

a Spanish knight and braggart

MOTH

his page, a boy

HOLOFERNES

a schoolmaster

NATHANIEL

a curate

Anthony DULL

a constable

COSTARD

a clown

JAQUENETTA

a dairymaid

FORESTER

LORDS

attending the Princess

Blackamoors and others attending the King

1.1 Enter Ferdinand, KING of Navarre, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE and DUMAINE.

KING     Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,

Live registered upon our brazen tombs,

And then grace us in the disgrace of death;

When, spite of cormorant devouring time,

Th’endeavour of this present breath may buy

5

That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge,

And make us heirs of all eternity.

Therefore, brave conquerors – for so you are,

That war against your own affections

And the huge army of the world’s desires –

10

Our late edict shall strongly stand in force.

Navarre shall be the wonder of the world,

Our court shall be a little academe,

Still and contemplative in living art.

You three, Berowne, Dumaine and Longaville,

15

Have sworn for three years’ term to live with me,

My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes

That are recorded in this schedule here.

Your oaths are passed, and now subscribe your names,

That his own hand may strike his honour down

20

That violates the smallest branch herein.

If you are armed to do as sworn to do,

Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too.

LONGAVILLE     I am resolved: ’tis but a three years’ fast.

The mind shall banquet though the body pine.

25

Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits

Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.

[Signs.]

DUMAINE     My loving lord, Dumaine is mortified.

The grosser manner of these world’s delights

He throws upon the gross world’s baser slaves.

30

To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die,

With all these living in philosophy. [Signs.]

BEROWNE     I can but say their protestation over.

So much, dear liege, I have already sworn,

That is, to live and study here three years.

35

But there are other strict observances:

As not to see a woman in that term,

Which I hope well is not enrolled there;

And one day in a week to touch no food,

And but one meal on every day beside,

40

The which I hope is not enrolled there;

And then to sleep but three hours in the night,

And not be seen to wink of all the day,

When I was wont to think no harm all night

And make a dark night too of half the day,

45

Which I hope well is not enrolled there.

O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep:

Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep.

KING     Your oath is passed to pass away from these.

BEROWNE     Let me say no, my liege, an if you please.

50

I only swore to study with your grace

And stay here in your court for three years’ space.

LONGAVILLE

You swore to that, Berowne, and to the rest.

BEROWNE     By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest.

What is the end of study, let me know?

55

KING

Why, that to know which else we should not know.

BEROWNE

Things hid and barred, you mean, from common sense?

KING     Ay, that is study’s god-like recompense.

BEROWNE     Come on then, I will swear to study so,

To know the thing I am forbid to know:

60

As thus, to study where I well may dine,

     When I to feast expressly am forbid;

Or study where to meet some mistress fine,

     When mistresses from common sense are hid.

Or, having sworn too hard-a-keeping oath,

65

Study to break it, and not break my troth.

If study’s gain be thus, and this be so,

Study knows that which yet it doth not know.

Swear me to this, and I will ne’er say no.

KING     These be the stops that hinder study quite

70

And train our intellects to vain delight.

BEROWNE     Why, all delights are vain, but that most vain

Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain:

As painfully to pore upon a book

To seek the light of truth, while truth the while

75

Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.

Light seeking light doth light of light beguile;

So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,

Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.

Study me how to please the eye indeed

80

     By fixing it upon a fairer eye,

Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed,

     And give him light that it was blinded by.

Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun,

     That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks;

85

Small have continual plodders ever won,

     Save base authority from others’ books.

These earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights,

     That give a name to every fixed star,

Have no more profit of their shining nights

90

     Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

Too much to know is to know naught but fame,

And every godfather can give a name.

KING     How well he’s read, to reason against reading.

DUMAINE     Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding.

95

LONGAVILLE

He weeds the corn, and still lets grow the weeding.

BEROWNE

The spring is near when green geese are a-breeding.

DUMAINE     How follows that?

BEROWNE     Fit in his place and time.

DUMAINE     In reason nothing.

BEROWNE     Something then in rhyme.

KING     Berowne is like an envious sneaping frost,

100

     That bites the first-born infants of the spring.

BEROWNE

Well, say I am. Why should proud summer boast

     Before the birds have any cause to sing?

Why should I joy in any abortive birth?

At Christmas I no more desire a rose

105

Than wish a snow in May’s newfangled shows,

But like of each thing that in season grows.

So you, to study now it is too late,

Climb o’er the house to unlock the little gate.

KING     Well, sit you out. Go home, Berowne: adieu.

110

BEROWNE

No, my good lord, I have sworn to stay with you,

And though I have for barbarism spoke more

     Than for that angel knowledge you can say,

Yet confident I’ll keep what I have sworn

     And bide the penance of each three years’ day.

115

Give me the paper, let me read the same,

And to the strictest decrees I’ll write my name.

KING     How well this yielding rescues thee from shame.

BEROWNE [Reads.] Item, That no woman shall come

within a mile of my court– Hath this been proclaimed?

120

LONGAVILLE     Four days ago.

BEROWNE     Let’s see the penalty – On pain of losing her

tongue. Who devised this penalty?

LONGAVILLE     Marry, that did I.

BEROWNE     Sweet lord, and why?

125

LONGAVILLE

To fright them hence with that dread penalty.

BEROWNE     A dangerous law against gentility.

Item, If any man be seen to talk with a woman within the

term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as

the rest of the court can possible devise.

130

This article, my liege, yourself must break,

For well you know here comes in embassy

The French King’s daughter with yourself to speak –

     A maid of grace and complete majesty –

About surrender up of Aquitaine

135

     To her decrepit, sick and bedrid father.

Therefore this article is made in vain,

     Or vainly comes th’admired Princess hither.

KING     What say you, lords? Why, this was quite forgot.

BEROWNE     So study evermore is overshot.

140

While it doth study to have what it would,

It doth forget to do the thing it should;

And when it hath the thing it hunteth most,

’Tis won as towns with fire: so won, so lost.

KING     We must of force dispense with this decree.

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She must lie here on mere necessity.

BEROWNE     Necessity will make us all forsworn

Three thousand times within this three years’ space;

For every man with his affects is born,

     Not by might mastered, but by special grace.

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If I break faith, this word shall speak for me:

I am forsworn ‘on mere necessity’.

So to the laws at large I write my name,

     And he that breaks them in the least degree

Stands in attainder of eternal shame.

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     Suggestions are to other as to me;

But I believe, although I seem so loath,

I am the last that will last keep his oath. [Signs.]

But is there no quick recreation granted?

KING

Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted

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     With a refined traveller of Spain,

A man in all the world’s new fashion planted,

     That hath a mint of phrases in his brain,

One who the music of his own vain tongue

     Doth ravish like enchanting harmony,

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A man of compliments, whom right and wrong

     Have chose as umpire of their mutiny.

This child of fancy, that Armado hight,

     For interim to our studies shall relate

In high-born words the worth of many a knight

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     From tawny Spain, lost in the world’s debate.

How you delight, my lords, I know not, I,

But I protest I love to hear him lie,

And I will use him for my minstrelsy.

BEROWNE     Armado is a most illustrious wight,

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A man of fire-new words, fashion’s own knight.

LONGAVILLE

Costard the swain and he shall be our sport,

And so to study three years is but short.

Enter DULL, a constable, with a letter, and COSTARD.

DULL     Which is the Duke’s own person?

BEROWNE     This, fellow. What wouldst?

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DULL     I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his

grace’s farborough. But I would see his own person in

flesh and blood.

BEROWNE     This is he.

DULL     Señor Arm … Arm … commends you. There’s

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villainy abroad. This letter will tell you more.

COSTARD     Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me.

KING     A letter from the magnificent Armado.

BEROWNE     How low soever the matter, I hope in God for

high words.

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LONGAVILLE     A high hope for a low heaven. God grant

us patience!

BEROWNE     To hear, or forbear hearing?

LONGAVILLE     To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh

moderately, or to forbear both.

195

BEROWNE     Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause

to climb in the merriness.

COSTARD     The matter is to me, sir, as concerning

Jaquenetta. The manner of it is, I was taken with the

manner.

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BEROWNE     In what manner?

COSTARD     In manner and form following, sir, all those

three. I was seen with her in the manor-house, sitting

with her upon the form, and taken following her into

the park, which, put together, is ’in manner and form

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following’. Now, sir, for the manner: it is the manner of

     a man to speak to a woman; for the form: in some form.

BEROWNE     For the ‘following’, sir?

COSTARD     As it shall follow in my correction, and God

defend the right!

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KING     Will you hear this letter with attention?

BEROWNE     As we would hear an oracle.

COSTARD     Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.

KING [Reads.] Great deputy, the welkin’s vicegerent, and

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sole dominator of Navarre, my soul’s earth’s god and body’s fostering patron –

COSTARD     Not a word of Costard yet.

KING So it is –

COSTARD     It may be so; but if he say it is so, he is, in

220

telling true, but so.

KING     Peace!

COSTARD     Be to me and every man that dares not fight.

KING     No words!

COSTARD     Of other men’s secrets, I beseech you.

225

KING So it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did

commend the black oppressing humour to the most

wholesome physic of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a

gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time, when? About

the sixth hour, when beasts most graze, birds best peck and

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men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper. So

much for the time when. Now for the ground, which?

Which, I mean, I walked upon. It is ycleped thy park. Then

for the place, where? Where, I mean, I did encounter that

obscene and most preposterous event that draweth from my

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snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which here thou

viewest, beholdest, surveyest or seest. But to the place,

where? It standeth north-north-east and by east from the

west corner of thy curious-knotted garden. There did I see

that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth –

240

COSTARD     Me?

KING That unlettered small-knowing soul –

COSTARD     Me?

KING That shallow vassal –

COSTARD     Still me?

245

KING Which, as I remember, hight Costard –

COSTARD     O, me!

KING Sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established

proclaimed edict and continent canon, which with, O,

with – but with this I passion to say wherewith –

250

COSTARD     With a wench.

KING With a child of our grandmother Eve, a female, or,

for thy more sweet understanding, a woman. Him I, as my

ever-esteemed duty pricks me on, have sent to thee, to

receive the meed of punishment, by thy sweet grace’s

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officer, Anthony Dull, a man of good repute, carriage,

bearing and estimation.

DULL     Me, an’t shall please you. I am Anthony Dull.

KING For Jaquenetta, so is the weaker vessel called which I

apprehended with the aforesaid swain, I keep her as a

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vessel of thy law’s fury, and shall, at the least of thy sweet

notice, bring her to trial. Thine in all compliments of

devoted and heartburning heat of duty,

Don Adriano de Armado.

BEROWNE     This is not so well as I looked for, but the best

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that ever I heard.

KING     Ay, the best for the worst. But, sirrah, what say

you to this?

COSTARD     Sir, I confess the wench.

KING     Did you hear the proclamation?

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COSTARD     I do confess much of the hearing it, but little

of the marking of it.

KING     It was proclaimed a year’s imprisonment to be

taken with a wench.

COSTARD     I was taken with none, sir; I was taken with a

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damsel.

KING     Well, it was proclaimed damsel.

COSTARD     This was no damsel neither, sir; she was a

virgin.

KING     It is so varied too, for it was proclaimed virgin.

280

COSTARD     If it were, I deny her virginity: I was taken

with a maid.

KING     This maid will not serve your turn, sir.

COSTARD     This maid will serve my turn, sir.

KING     Sir, I will pronounce your sentence: you shall fast

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a week with bran and water.

COSTARD     I had rather pray a month with mutton and

porridge.

KING     And Don Armado shall be your keeper.

My lord Berowne, see him delivered o’er;

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And go we, lords, to put in practice that

     Which each to other hath so strongly sworn.

     Exeunt the King, Longaville and Dumaine.

BEROWNE

I’ll lay my head to any goodman’s hat

     These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn.

Sirrah, come on.

295

COSTARD     I suffer for the truth, sir, for true it is, I was

taken with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl.

And therefore welcome the sour cup of prosperity!

Affliction may one day smile again, and, till then, sit

thee down, sorrow.     Exeunt.

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1.2 Enter ARMADO and MOTH, his page.

ARMADO     Boy, what sign is it when a man of great spirit

grows melancholy?

MOTH     A great sign, sir, that he will look sad.

ARMADO     Why, sadness is one and the selfsame thing,

dear imp.

5

MOTH     No, no, O Lord, sir, no.

ARMADO     How canst thou part sadness and melancholy,

my tender juvenal?

MOTH     By a familiar demonstration of the working, my

tough señor.

10

ARMADO     Why tough señor? Why tough señor?

MOTH     Why tender juvenal? Why tender juvenal?

ARMADO     I spoke it, tender juvenal, as a congruent

epitheton appertaining to thy young days, which we

may nominate tender.

15

MOTH     And I, tough señor, as an appertinent title to

your old time, which we may name tough.

ARMADO     Pretty and apt.

MOTH     How mean you, sir? I pretty and my saying apt,

or I apt and my saying pretty?

20

ARMADO     Thou pretty, because little.

MOTH     Little pretty, because little. Wherefore apt?

ARMADO     And therefore apt, because quick.

MOTH     Speak you this in my praise, master?

ARMADO     In thy condign praise.

25

MOTH     I will praise an eel with the same praise.

ARMADO     What, that an eel is ingenious?

MOTH     That an eel is quick.

ARMADO     I do say thou art quick in answers. Thou

heatest my blood.

30

MOTH     I am answered sir.

ARMADO     I love not to be crossed.

MOTH [aside] He speaks the mere contrary: crosses love

not him.

ARMADO     I have promised to study three years with the

35

Duke.

MOTH     You may do it in an hour, sir.

ARMADO     Impossible.

MOTH     How many is one thrice told?

ARMADO     I am ill at reckoning. It fitteth the spirit of a

40

tapster.

MOTH     You are a gentleman and a gamester, sir.

ARMADO     I confess both. They are both the varnish of a

complete man.

MOTH     Then I am sure you know how much the gross

45

sum of deuce-ace amounts to.

ARMADO     It doth amount to one more than two.

MOTH     Which the base vulgar do call three.

ARMADO     True.

MOTH     Why, sir, is this such a piece of study? Now here

50

is three studied ere ye’ll thrice wink. And how easy it

is to put ‘years’ to the word ‘three’, and study three

years in two words, the dancing horse will tell you.

ARMADO     A most fine figure!

MOTH [aside] To prove you a cipher.

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ARMADO     I will hereupon confess I am in love. And as it

is base for a soldier to love, so am I in love with a base

wench. If drawing my sword against the humour of

affection would deliver me from the reprobate thought

of it, I would take desire prisoner and ransom him to

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any French courtier for a new-devised curtsy. I think

scorn to sigh; methinks I should outswear Cupid.

Comfort me, boy. What great men have been in love?

MOTH     Hercules, master.

ARMADO     Most sweet Hercules! More authority, dear

65

boy, name more. And, sweet my child, let them be men

of good repute and carriage.

MOTH     Samson, master. He was a man of good carriage,

great carriage, for he carried the town-gates on his

back like a porter, and he was in love.

70

ARMADO     O well-knit Samson, strong-jointed Samson! I

do excel thee in my rapier as much as thou didst me in

carrying gates. I am in love too. Who was Samson’s

love, my dear Moth?

MOTH     A woman, master.

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ARMADO     Of what complexion?

MOTH     Of all the four, or the three, or the two, or one of the four.

ARMADO     Tell me precisely of what complexion?

MOTH     Of the sea-water green, sir.

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ARMADO     Is that one of the four complexions?

MOTH     As I have read, sir; and the best of them too.

ARMADO     Green indeed is the colour of lovers. But to

have a love of that colour, methinks Samson had small

reason for it. He surely affected her for her wit.

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MOTH     It was so, sir, for she had a green wit.

ARMADO     My love is most immaculate white and red.

MOTH     Most maculate thoughts, master, are masked

under such colours.

ARMADO     Define, define, well-educated infant.

90

MOTH     My father’s wit and my mother’s tongue assist me!

ARMADO     Sweet invocation of a child, most pretty and

pathetical!

MOTH     If she be made of white and red,

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     Her faults will ne’er be known,

For blushing cheeks by faults are bred,

     And fears by pale white shown.

Then if she fear or be to blame,

     By this you shall not know,

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For still her cheeks possess the same

     Which native she doth owe.

A dangerous rhyme, master, against the reason of

white and red.

ARMADO     Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the

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Beggar?

MOTH     The world was very guilty of such a ballad some

three ages since, but I think now ’tis not to be found,

or, if it were, it would neither serve for the writing nor

the tune.

110

ARMADO     I will have that subject newly writ o’er, that I

may example my digression by some mighty precedent.

Boy, I do love that country girl that I took in the park

with the rational hind Costard. She deserves well.

115

MOTH [aside] To be whipped: and yet a better love than

my master.

ARMADO     Sing, boy. My spirit grows heavy in love.

MOTH [aside] And that’s great marvel, loving a light

wench.

120

ARMADO     I say sing.

MOTH     Forbear till this company be passed.

Enter COSTARD, the Clown, DULL, the Constable, and JAQUENETTA, a wench.

DULL     Sir, the Duke’s pleasure is that you keep Costard

safe; and you must suffer him to take no delight, nor

no penance, but ’a must fast three days a week. For

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this damsel, I must keep her at the park: she is allowed

for the dey-woman. Fare you well.

ARMADO [aside] I do betray myself with blushing. –

Maid –

JAQUENETTA     Man.

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ARMADO     I will visit thee at the lodge.

JAQUENETTA     That’s hereby.

ARMADO     I know where it is situate.

JAQUENETTA     Lord, how wise you are!

ARMADO     I will tell thee wonders.

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JAQUENETTA     With that face?

ARMADO     I love thee.

JAQUENETTA     So I heard you say.

ARMADO     And so farewell.

JAQUENETTA     Fair weather after you.

DULL     Come, Jaquenetta, away.

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Exeunt Dull and Jaquenetta.

ARMADO     Villain, thou shalt fast for thy offences ere

thou be pardoned.

COSTARD     Well, sir, I hope when I do it I shall do it on a

full stomach.

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ARMADO     Thou shalt be heavily punished.

COSTARD     I am more bound to you than your fellows, for

they are but lightly rewarded.

ARMADO     Take away this villain. Shut him up.

MOTH     Come, you transgressing slave, away!

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COSTARD     Let me not be pent up, sir, I will fast being

loose.

MOTH     No, sir, that were fast and loose. Thou shalt to prison.

COSTARD     Well, if ever I do see the merry days of

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desolation that I have seen, some shall see –

MOTH     What shall some see?

COSTARD     Nay, nothing, Master Moth, but what they

look upon. It is not for prisoners to be too silent in

their words and therefore I will say nothing. I thank

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God I have as little patience as another man and

therefore Ican be quiet. Exeunt Moth and Costard.

ARMADO     I do affect the very ground, which is base,

where her shoe, which is baser, guided by her foot,

which is basest, doth tread. I shall be forsworn, which

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is a great argument of falsehood, if I love. And how

can that be true love which is falsely attempted? Love

is a familiar; Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but

Love. Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an

excellent strength. Yet was Solomon so seduced, and

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he had a very good wit. Cupid’s butt-shaft is too hard

for Hercules’ club, and therefore too much odds for a

Spaniard’s rapier. The first and second cause will not

serve my turn. The passado he respects not; the duello

he regards not. His disgrace is to be called boy, but his

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glory is to subdue men. Adieu, valour; rust, rapier; be

still, drum, for your manager is in love. Yea, he loveth.

Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am

sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise, wit; write, pen; for I

am for whole volumes in folio.                    Exit.

180

2.1 Enter the PRINCESS of France, with three attending ladies, ROSALINE, MARIA and KATHERINE and three lords

BOYET and two others.

BOYET Now, madam, summon up your dearest spirits.

Consider who the King your father sends,

To whom he sends and what’s his embassy:

Yourself, held precious in the world’s esteem,

To parley with the sole inheritor

5

Of all perfections that a man may owe,

Matchless Navarre; the plea of no less weight

Than Aquitaine, a dowry for a queen.

Be now as prodigal of all dear grace

As Nature was in making graces dear

10

When she did starve the general world beside

And prodigally gave them all to you.

PRINCESS

Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise.

Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,

15

Not uttered by base sale of chapmen’s tongues.

I am less proud to hear you tell my worth

Than you much willing to be counted wise

In spending your wit in the praise of mine.

But now to task the tasker. Good Boyet,

20

You are not ignorant all-telling fame

Doth noise abroad Navarre hath made a vow,

Till painful study shall outwear three years,

No woman may approach his silent court.

Therefore to’s seemeth it a needful course,

25

Before we enter his forbidden gates,

To know his pleasure; and in that behalf,

Bold of your worthiness, we single you

As our best-moving fair solicitor.

Tell him the daughter of the King of France,

30

On serious business craving quick dispatch,

Importunes personal conference with his grace.

Haste, signify so much, while we attend,

Like humble-visaged suitors, his high will.

BOYET     Proud of employment, willingly I go.

35

PRINCESS     All pride is willing pride, and yours is so.

Exit Boyet.

Who are the votaries, my loving lords,

That are vow-fellows with this virtuous Duke?

LORD     Longaville is one.

PRINCESS     Know you the man?

MARIA     I know him, madam. At a marriage feast

40

Between Lord Perigort and the beauteous heir

Of Jaques Falconbridge, solemnized

In Normandy, saw I this Longaville.

A man of sovereign parts, he is esteemed,

Well fitted in arts, glorious in arms.

45

Nothing becomes him ill that he would well.

The only soil of his fair virtue’s gloss –

If virtue’s gloss will stain with any soil –

Is a sharp wit matched with too blunt a will,

Whose edge hath power to cut, whose will still wills

50

It should none spare that come within his power.

PRINCESS     Some merry mocking lord belike: is’t so?

MARIA     They say so most that most his humours know.

PRINCESS

Such short-lived wits do wither as they grow.

Who are the rest?

55

KATHERINE

The young Dumaine, a well-accomplished youth,

Of all that virtue love for virtue loved;

Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill,

For he hath wit to make an ill shape good,

And shape to win grace, though he had no wit.

60

I saw him at the Duke Alençon’s once;

And much too little of that good I saw

Is my report to his great worthiness.

ROSALINE     Another of these students at that time

Was there with him, if I have heard a truth.

65

Berowne they call him, but a merrier man,

Within the limit of becoming mirth,

I never spent an hour’s talk withal.

His eye begets occasion for his wit,

For every object that the one doth catch

70

The other turns to a mirth-moving jest,

Which his fair tongue, conceit’s expositor,

Delivers in such apt and gracious words

That aged ears play truant at his tales

And younger hearings are quite ravished,

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So sweet and voluble is his discourse.

PRINCESS     God bless my ladies! Are they all in love,

That every one her own hath garnished

With such bedecking ornaments of praise?

LORD     Here comes Boyet.

Enter BOYET.

PRINCESS     Now, what admittance, lord?

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BOYET     Navarre had notice of your fair approach,

And he and his competitors in oath

Were all addressed to meet you, gentle lady,

Before I came. Marry, thus much I have learned:

He rather means to lodge you in the field,

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Like one that comes here to besiege his court,

Than seek a dispensation for his oath,

To let you enter his unpeopled house.

Enter the KING of Navarre, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE and DUMAINE and attendants.

Here comes Navarre.

KING     Fair Princess, welcome to the court of Navarre.

90

PRINCESS ‘Fair’ I give you back again, and ‘welcome’ I

have not yet. The roof of this court is too high to be

yours, and welcome to the wide fields too base to be

mine.

KING     You shall be welcome, madam, to my court.

95

PRINCESS     I will be welcome then. Conduct me thither.

KING     Hear me, dear lady: I have sworn an oath.

PRINCESS     Our Lady help my lord! He’ll be forsworn.

KING     Not for the world, fair madam, by my will.

PRINCESS

Why, will shall break it; will, and nothing else.

100

KING     Your ladyship is ignorant what it is.

PRINCESS     Were my lord so, his ignorance were wise,

Where now his knowledge must prove ignorance.

I hear your grace hath sworn out housekeeping.

’Tis deadly sin to keep that oath, my lord,

105

And sin to break it.

But pardon me, I am too sudden bold;

To teach a teacher ill beseemeth me.

Vouchsafe to read the purpose of my coming

And suddenly resolve me in my suit.

110

[Gives the King a paper.]

KING     Madam, I will, if suddenly I may.

PRINCESS     You will the sooner that I were away,

For you’ll prove perjured if you make me stay.

[The King reads.]

BEROWNE [to Rosaline]

Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?

ROSALINE     Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?

115

BEROWNE     I know you did.

ROSALINE     How needless was it then

To ask the question!

BEROWNE     You must not be so quick.

ROSALINE

’Tis long of you that spur me with such questions.

BEROWNE

Your wit’s too hot, it speeds too fast, ’twill tire.

ROSALINE     Not till it leave the rider in the mire.

120

BEROWNE     What time o’day?

ROSALINE     The hour that fools should ask.

BEROWNE     Now fair befall your mask.

ROSALINE     Fair fall the face it covers.

BEROWNE     And send you many lovers.

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ROSALINE     Amen, so you be none.

BEROWNE     Nay, then will I be gone. [Leaves her.]

KING     Madam, your father here doth intimate

The payment of a hundred thousand crowns,

Being but the one half of an entire sum

130

Disbursed by my father in his wars.

But say that he or we – as neither have –

Received that sum, yet there remains unpaid

A hundred thousand more, in surety of the which

One part of Aquitaine is bound to us,

135

Although not valued to the money’s worth.

If then the King your father will restore

But that one half which is unsatisfied,

We will give up our right in Aquitaine

And hold fair friendship with his majesty.

140

But that, it seems, he little purposeth:

For here he doth demand to have repaid

A hundred thousand crowns, and not demands,

On payment of a hundred thousand crowns,

To have his title live in Aquitaine,

145

Which we much rather had depart withal,

And have the money by our father lent,

Than Aquitaine, so gelded as it is.

Dear Princess, were not his requests so far

From reason’s yielding, your fair self should make

150

A yielding ’gainst some reason in my breast

And go well satisfied to France again.

PRINCESS     You do the King my father too much wrong

And wrong the reputation of your name,

In so unseeming to confess receipt

155

Of that which hath so faithfully been paid.

KING     I do protest I never heard of it.

And, if you prove it, I’ll repay it back

Or yield up Aquitaine.

PRINCESS     We arrest your word.

Boyet, you can produce acquittances

160

For such a sum from special officers

Of Charles, his father.

KING     Satisfy me so.

BOYET     So please your grace, the packet is not come

Where that and other specialties are bound.

Tomorrow you shall have a sight of them.

165

KING     It shall suffice me; at which interview

All liberal reason I will yield unto.

Meantime, receive such welcome at my hand

As honour, without breach of honour, may

Make tender of to thy true worthiness.

170

You may not come, fair Princess, within my gates,

But here without you shall be so received

As you shall deem yourself lodged in my heart,

Though so denied fair harbour in my house.

Your own good thoughts excuse me, and farewell.

175

Tomorrow shall we visit you again.

PRINCESS

Sweet health and fair desires consort your grace.

KING     Thy own wish wish I thee in every place.

     Exeunt the King, Longaville and Dumaine.

BEROWNE     Lady, I will commend you to mine own heart.

ROSALINE     Pray you, do my commendations; I would be

180

glad to see it.

BEROWNE     I would you heard it groan.

ROSALINE     Is the fool sick?

BEROWNE     Sick at the heart.

ROSALINE     Alack, let it blood.

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BEROWNE     Would that do it good?

ROSALINE     My physic says ay.

BEROWNE     Will you prick’t with your eye?

ROSALINE Non point, with my knife.

BEROWNE     Now God save thy life.

190

ROSALINE     And yours from long living.

BEROWNE     I cannot stay thanksgiving.     Exit.

Enter DUMAINE.

DUMAINE

Sir, I pray you a word. What lady is that same?

BOYET     The heir of Alençon, Katherine her name.

DUMAINE     A gallant lady. Monsieur, fare you well. Exit.

195

[Enter LONGAVILLE.]

LONGAVILLE

I beseech you a word. What is she in the white?

BOYET

A woman sometimes, an you saw her in the light.

LONGAVILLE

Perchance light in the light. I desire her name.

BOYET

She hath but one for herself; to desire that were a shame.

LONGAVILLE     Pray you, sir, whose daughter?

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BOYET     Her mother’s, I have heard.

LONGAVILLE     God’s blessing on your beard!

BOYET     Good sir, be not offended.

She is an heir of Falconbridge.

LONGAVILLE     Nay, my choler is ended.

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She is a most sweet lady.

BOYET     Not unlike, sir, that may be.     Exit Longaville.

Enter BEROWNE.

BEROWNE     What’s her name in the cap?

BOYET     Rosaline, by good hap.

BEROWNE     Is she wedded or no?

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BOYET     To her will sir, or so.

BEROWNE     You are welcome, sir. Adieu.

BOYET     Farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you.

Exit Berowne.

MARIA     That last is Berowne, the merry madcap lord.

Not a word with him but a jest.

BOYET     And every jest but a word.

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PRINCESS

It was well done of you to take him at his word.

BOYET     I was as willing to grapple as he was to board.

KATHERINE     Two hot sheeps, marry!

BOYET     And wherefore not ‘ships’?

No sheep, sweet lamb, unless we feed on your lips.

KATHERINE

You sheep, and I pasture. Shall that finish the jest?

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BOYET     So you grant pasture for me. [Tries to kiss her.]

KATHERINE     Not so, gentle beast.

My lips are no common, though several they be.

BOYET     Belonging to whom?

KATHERINE     To my fortunes and me.

PRINCESS

Good wits will be jangling; but, gentles, agree.

This civil war of wits were much better used

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On Navarre and his bookmen, for here ’tis abused.

BOYET     If my observation, which very seldom lies

By the heart’s still rhetoric disclosed with eyes,

Deceive me not now, Navarre is infected.

PRINCESS     With what?

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BOYET     With that which we lovers entitle ‘affected’.

PRINCESS     Your reason?

BOYET     Why, all his behaviours did make their retire

To the court of his eye, peeping thorough desire.

His heart, like an agate with your print impressed,

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Proud with his form, in his eye pride expressed.

His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see,

Did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be.

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All senses to that sense did make their repair,

To feel only looking on fairest of fair.

Methought all his senses were locked in his eye,

As jewels in crystal for some prince to buy;

Who, tendering their own worth from where they

     were glassed,

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Did point you to buy them along as you passed.

His face’s own margin did quote such amazes

That all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes.

I’ll give you Aquitaine, and all that is his,

An you give him for my sake but one loving kiss.

PRINCESS     Come, to our pavilion. Boyet is disposed.

BOYET

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But to speak that in words which his eye hath disclosed.

I only have made a mouth of his eye

By adding a tongue which I know will not lie.

MARIA

Thou art an old love-monger, and speakest skilfully.

KATHERINE

He is Cupid’s grandfather, and learns news of him.

ROSALINE

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Then was Venus like her mother, for her father is but grim.

BOYET     Do you hear, my mad wenches?

MARIA     No.

BOYET     What then, do you see?

MARIA     Ay, our way to be gone.

BOYET     You are too hard for me.

     Exeunt omnes.

3.1 Enter ARMADO, the Braggart, and MOTH, his boy.

ARMADO     Warble, child, make passionate my sense of hearing.

MOTH [Sings.] Concolinel.

5

ARMADO     Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years, take this key,

give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately

hither. I must employ him in a letter to my love.

MOTH     Master, will you win your love with a French

brawl?

10

ARMADO     How meanest thou? Brawling in French?

MOTH     No, my complete master; but to jig off a tune at

the tongue’s end, canary to it with your feet, humour it

with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a

note, sometime through the throat as if you swallowed

15

love with singing love, sometime through the nose as if

you snuffed up love by smelling love, with your hat

penthouse-like o’er the shop of your eyes, with your

arms crossed on your thin-belly doublet like a rabbit on

a spit, or your hands in your pocket like a man after the

20

old painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a

snip and away. These are compliments, these are

humours, these betray nice wenches that would be

betrayed without these; and make them men of note –

do you note me? – that most are affected to these.

25

ARMADO     How hast thou purchased this experience?

MOTH     By my penny of observation.

ARMADO     But O – But O –

MOTH ‘The hobby-horse is forgot.’

ARMADO     Call’st thou my love ‘hobby-horse’?

30

MOTH     No, master. The hobby-horse is but a colt, and

your love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your

love?

ARMADO     Almost I had.

MOTH     Negligent student! Learn her by heart.

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ARMADO     By heart and in heart, boy.

MOTH     And out of heart, master. All those three I will prove.

ARMADO     What wilt thou prove?

MOTH     A man, if I live; and this ‘by’, ‘in’ and ‘without’

40

upon the instant. ‘By’ heart you love her, because your

heart cannot come by her; ‘in’ heart you love her, because

your heart is in love with her; and ‘out’ of heart you love

her, being out of heart that you cannot enjoy her.

ARMADO     I am all these three.

45

MOTH     And three times as much more, and yet nothing

at all.

ARMADO     Fetch hither the swain. He must carry me a

letter.

MOTH     A message well sympathized: a horse to be

50

ambassador for an ass.

ARMADO     Ha, ha, what sayest thou?

MOTH     Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse,

for he is very slow-gaited. But I go.

ARMADO     The way is but short. Away!

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MOTH     As swift as lead, sir.

ARMADO     The meaning, pretty ingenious?

Is not lead a metal heavy, dull and slow?

MOTH Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.

ARMADO     I say lead is slow.

MOTH     You are too swift, sir, to say so.

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Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun?

ARMADO     Sweet smoke of rhetoric!

He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that’s he.

I shoot thee at the swain.

MOTH     Thump then, and I flee. Exit.

ARMADO

A most acute juvenal, voluble and free of grace!

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By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face.

Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.

My herald is returned.

Enter MOTH, the Page, and COSTARD, the Clown.

MOTH

A wonder, master! Here’s a costard broken in a shin.

ARMADO

Some enigma, some riddle. Come, thy l’envoy – begin.

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COSTARD     No egma, no riddle, no l’envoy, no salve in the

mail, sir! O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain! No l’envoy,

no l’envoy, no salve, sir, but a plantain!

ARMADO By virtue, thou enforcest laughter; thy silly

thought, my spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes

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me to ridiculous smiling. O, pardon me, my stars!

Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l’envoy, and the

word ‘l’envoy’ for a salve?

MOTH     Do the wise think them other? Is not l’envoy a salve?

ARMADO

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No, page; it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain

Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.

I will example it:

     The fox, the ape and the humble-bee

     Were still at odds, being but three.

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There’s the moral. Now the l’envoy.

MOTH     I will add the l’envoy. Say the moral again.

ARMADO     The fox, the ape and the humble-bee

     Were still at odds, being but three.

MOTH     Until the goose came out of door,

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         And stayed the odds by adding four.

Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l’envoy.

     The fox, the ape and the humble-bee

     Were still at odds, being but three.

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ARMADO     Until the goose came out of door,

               Staying the odds by adding four.

MOTH     A good l’envoy, ending in the goose. Would you desire more?

COSTARD

The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that’s flat.

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Sir, your pennyworth is good, an your goose be fat.

To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose.

Let me see: a fat l’envoy – ay, that’s a fat goose.

ARMADO

Come hither, come hither. How did this argument

begin?

MOTH     By saying that a costard was broken in a shin.

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Then called you for the l’envoy.

COSTARD     True, and I for a plantain: thus came your

argument in. Then the boy’s fat l’envoy, the goose that

you bought; and he ended the market.

ARMADO     But tell me, how was there a costard broken in

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a shin?

MOTH     I will tell you sensibly.

COSTARD     Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth. I will speak

that l’envoy.

     I, Costard, running out, that was safely within,

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     Fell over the threshold, and broke my shin.

ARMADO     We will talk no more of this matter.

COSTARD     Till there be more matter in the shin.

ARMADO     Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.

COSTARD     O, marry me to one Frances! I smell some

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l’envoy, some goose in this.

ARMADO     By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at

liberty, enfreedoming thy person. Thou wert

immured, restrained, captivated, bound.

COSTARD     True, true, and now you will be my

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purgation, and let me loose.

ARMADO     I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance,

and in lieu thereof impose on thee nothing but this:

[Gives Costard a letter.] bear this significant to the

country maid Jaquenetta. There is remuneration,

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[Gives Costard a coin.] for the best ward of mine

honour is rewarding my dependants. Moth, follow.

Exit.

MOTH     Like the sequel, I. Signor Costard, adieu.

Exit.

COSTARD

My sweet ounce of man’s flesh, my incony jew!

Now will I look to his remuneration. ‘Remuneration’!

135

O, that’s the Latin word for three farthings. Three

farthings – remuneration. ‘What’s the price of this

inkle?’ ‘One penny.’ ‘No, I’ll give you a remuneration.’

Why, it carries it! ‘Remuneration’! Why, it is a fairer

name than French crown. I will never buy and sell out

of this word.

140

Enter BEROWNE.

BEROWNE     My good knave Costard, exceedingly well

met.

COSTARD     Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon

may a man buy for a remuneration?

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BEROWNE     What is a remuneration?

COSTARD     Marry, sir, halfpenny-farthing.

BEROWN     Why then, three-farthing-worth of silk.

COSTARD     I thank your worship. God be wi’you.

BEROWNE     Stay, slave. I must employ thee.

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As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave,

Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.

COSTARD     When would you have it done, sir?

BEROWNE     This afternoon.

COSTARD     Well, I will do it, sir. Fare you well.

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BEROWNE     Thou knowest not what it is.

COSTARD     I shall know, sir, when I have done it.

BEROWNE     Why, villain, thou must know first.

COSTARD     I will come to your worship tomorrow morning.

BEROWNE     It must be done this afternoon. Hark, slave, it

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is but this:

The Princess comes to hunt here in the park,

And in her train there is a gentle lady;

When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name,

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And Rosaline they call her. Ask for her

And to her white hand see thou do commend

This sealed-up counsel. [Gives Costard a letter.]

     There’s thy guerdon: go.

[Gives Costard money.]

COSTARD     Guerdon, O sweet guerdon! Better than

remuneration, elevenpence-farthing better. Most

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sweet guerdon! I will do it, sir, in print. Guerdon!

Remuneration!     Exit.

BEROWNE

And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love’s whip,

A very beadle to a humorous sigh,

A critic, nay, a night-watch constable,

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A domineering pedant o’er the boy,

Than whom no mortal so magnificent!

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,

This Signor Junior, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid,

Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,

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Th’anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,

Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,

Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,

Sole imperator and great general

Of trotting paritors – O my little heart!

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And I to be a corporal of his field

And wear his colours like a tumbler’s hoop!

What? I love, I sue, I seek a wife?

A woman that is like a German clock,

Still a-repairing, ever out of frame

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And never going aright, being a watch,

But being watched that it may still go right!

Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all;

And among three to love the worst of all,

A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,

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With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes;

Ay, and by heaven, one that will do the deed

Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard.

And I to sigh for her, to watch for her,

To pray for her! Go to, it is a plague

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That Cupid will impose for my neglect

Of his almighty dreadful little might.

Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue and groan.

Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.     Exit.

4.1 Enter the PRINCESS, a Forester, her ladies, ROSALINE, MARIA and KATHERINE and her lords, BOYET and others.

PRINCESS

Was that the King that spurred his horse so hard

Against the steep-up rising of the hill?

BOYET     I know not, but I think it was not he.

5

PRINCESS     Whoe’er ‘a was, ‘a showed a mounting mind.

Well, lords, today we shall have our dispatch;

On Saturday we will return to France.

Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush

That we must stand and play the murderer in?

10

FORESTER     Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice,

A stand where you may make the fairest shoot.

PRINCESS     I thank my beauty, I am fair that shoot,

And thereupon thou speak’st ‘the fairest shoot’.

FORESTER     Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so.

PRINCESS     What, what? First praise me, and again say

15

     no?

O, short-lived pride! Not fair? Alack for woe!

FORESTER     Yes, madam, fair.

PRINCESS     Nay, never paint me now.

Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow.

Here, good my glass, take this for telling true:

20

[Gives him money.]

Fair payment for foul words is more than due.

FORESTER     Nothing but fair is that which you inherit.

PRINCESS     See, see, my beauty will be saved by merit!

O heresy in fair, fit for these days!

A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise.

25

But come, the bow. Now mercy goes to kill,

And shooting well is then accounted ill.

Thus will I save my credit in the shoot:

Not wounding, pity would not let me do’t;

If wounding, then it was to show my skill,

30

That more for praise than purpose meant to kill.

And out of question so it is sometimes,

Glory grows guilty of detested crimes,

When for fame’s sake, for praise, an outward part,

We bend to that the working of the heart;

35

As I for praise alone now seek to spill

The poor deer’s blood, that my heart means no ill.

BOYET     Do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty

Only for praise’ sake when they strive to be

Lords o’er their lords?

40

PRINCESS     Only for praise, and praise we may afford

To any lady that subdues a lord.

Enter COSTARD, the Clown, with a letter.

BOYET     Here comes a member of the commonwealth.

COSTARD     God dig-you-den all! Pray you which is the

head lady?

45

PRINCESS     Thou shalt know her, fellow, by the rest that

have no heads.

COSTARD     Which is the greatest lady, the highest?

PRINCESS     The thickest and the tallest.

COSTARD     The thickest and the tallest. It is so, truth is

     truth.

50

An your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit,

One o’these maids’ girdles for your waist should be fit.

Are not you the chief woman? You are the thickest

here.

PRINCESS     What’s your will, sir? What’s your will?

COSTARD

I have a letter from Monsieur Berowne to one Lady

     Rosaline.

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PRINCESS

O, thy letter, thy letter! He’s a good friend of mine.

[Takes the letter.]

Stand aside, good bearer. Boyet, you can carve:

Break up this capon.

BOYET     I am bound to serve.

[Examines the letter.]

This letter is mistook; it importeth none here.

It is writ to Jaquenetta.

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PRINCESS     We will read it, I swear.

Break the neck of the wax, and everyone give ear.

BOYET [Reads.] By heaven, that thou art fair is most

infallible; true that thou art beauteous; truth itself that

thou art lovely. More fairer than fair, beautiful than

65

beauteous, truer than truth itself, have commiseration on

thy heroical vassal. The magnanimous and most illustrate

King Cophetua set eye upon the pernicious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon, and he it was that might rightly say,

Veni, vidi, vici, which to annothanize in the vulgar – O

70

base and obscure vulgar! – videlicet, he came, see and

overcame. He came, one; see, two; overcame, three. Who

came? The King. Why did he come? To see. Why did he

see? To overcome. To whom came he? To the beggar. What

saw he? The beggar. Who overcame he? The beggar. The

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conclusion is victory. On whose side? The King’s. The

captive is enriched. On whose side? The beggar’s. The

catastrophe is a nuptial. On whose side? The King’s? No,

on both in one, or one in both. I am the King, for so stands

the comparison, thou the beggar, for so witnesseth thy

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lowliness. Shall I command thy love? I may. Shall I

enforce thy love? I could. Shall I entreat thy love? I will.

What shalt thou exchange for rags? Robes. For tittles?

Titles. For thyself? Me. Thus expecting thy reply, I

profane my lips on thy foot, my eyes on thy picture and

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my heart on thy every part.

     Thine in the dearest design of industry,

     Don Adriano de Armado.

Thus dost thou hear the Nemean lion roar

     ’Gainst thee, thou lamb, that standest as his prey.

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Submissive fall his princely feet before,

     And he from forage will incline to play.

But if thou strive, poor soul, what art thou then?

Food for his rage, repasture for his den.

PRINCESS

What plume of feathers is he that indited this letter?

What vane? What weathercock? Did you ever hear better?

BOYET     I am much deceived but I remember the style.

PRINCESS

Else your memory is bad, going o’er it erewhile.

BOYET

This Armado is a Spaniard that keeps here in court,

A phantasime, a Monarcho, and one that makes sport

To the Prince and his book-mates.

PRINCESS     Thou, fellow, a word.

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Who gave thee this letter?

COSTARD     I told you: my lord.

PRINCESS

To whom shouldst thou give it?

COSTARD     From my lord to my lady.

PRINCESS     From which lord to which lady?

COSTARD

From my lord Berowne, a good master of mine,

To a lady of France that he called Rosaline.

105

PRINCESS

Thou hast mistaken his letter. Come, lords, away.

[to Rosaline] Here, sweet, put up this; ’twill be thine another day.

     Exeunt all but Boyet, Rosaline, Maria and Costard.

BOYET     Who is the shooter? Who is the shooter?

110

ROSALINE     Shall I teach you to know?

BOYET     Ay, my continent of beauty.

ROSALINE     Why, she that bears the bow.

Finely put off!

BOYET     My lady goes to kill horns, but if thou marry,

Hang me by the neck if horns that year miscarry.

Finely put on!

ROSALINE     Well, then, I am the shooter.

BOYET     And who is your deer?

ROSALINE

115

If we choose by the horns, yourself come not near.

Finely put on indeed!

MARIA

You still wrangle with her, Boyet, and she strikes at the brow.

BOYET     But she herself is hit lower. Have I hit her now?

ROSALINE     Shall I come upon thee with an old saying

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that was a man when King Pepin of France was a little

boy, as touching the hit-it?

BOYET     So I may answer thee with one as old, that was a

woman when Queen Guinevere of Britain was a little

wench, as touching the hit-it.

125

ROSALINE     Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it,

     Thou canst not hit it, my good man.

BOYET     An I cannot, cannot, cannot,

     An I cannot, another can. Exit Rosaline.

COSTARD

By my troth, most pleasant! How both did fit it!

MARIA

A mark marvellous well shot, for they both did hit it.

130

BOYET

A mark! O, mark but that mark! A mark, says my lady.

Let the mark have a prick in’t, to mete at, if it may be.

MARIA     Wide o’the bow hand! I’faith your hand is out.

COSTARD

Indeed, ’a must shoot nearer, or he’ll ne’er hit the clout.

BOYET

An if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in.

135

COSTARD

Then will she get the upshoot by cleaving the pin.

MARIA

Come, come, you talk greasily, your lips grow foul.

COSTARD

She’s too hard for you at pricks, sir. Challenge her to bowl.

BOYET

I fear too much rubbing. Good night, my good owl.

Exeunt Boyet and Maria.

140

COSTARD     By my soul, a swain, a most simple clown!

Lord, lord, how the ladies and I have put him down!

O’my troth, most sweet jests, most incony vulgar wit,

When it comes so smoothly off, so obscenely, as it were, so fit.

Armado o’th’ t’other side – O, a most dainty man!

To see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan!

145

To see him kiss his hand and how most sweetly ’a will swear!

And his page o’ t’other side, that handful of wit!

Ah, heavens, it is a most pathetical nit! Shout within.

Sola, sola!     Exit.

4.2 Enter DULL, HOLOFERNES, the Pedant, and NATHANIEL.

NATHANIEL     Very reverend sport, truly, and done in the

testimony of a good conscience.

HOLOFERNES     The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in

5

blood, ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a

jewel in the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven,

and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra, the soil,

the land, the earth.

NATHANIEL     Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are

10

sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least: but, sir, I

assure ye it was a buck of the first head.

HOLOFERNES     Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.

DULL ’Twas not a ‘auld grey doe’, ’twas a pricket.

HOLOFERNES     Most barbarous intimation! Yet a kind of

15

insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of explication,

facere, as it were, replication, or rather ostentare, to

show, as it were, his inclination, after his undressed,

unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or

rather unlettered, or ratherest unconfirmed fashion,

20

to insert again my haud credo for a deer.

DULL     I said the deer was not a ‘auld grey doe’, ’twas a pricket.

HOLOFERNES     Twice-sod simplicity, bis coctus!

O, thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!

NATHANIEL

Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book.

He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk

ink. His intellect is not replenished; he is only an

animal, only sensible in the duller parts.

And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should be –

Which we of taste and feeling are – for those parts that do fructify in us more than he.

30

For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool,

So were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school.

But omne bene, say I, being of an old father’s mind;

Many can brook the weather, that love not the wind.

DULL

You two are bookmen: can you tell me by your wit

35

What was a month old at Cain’s birth, that’s not five weeks old as yet?

HOLOFERNES     Dictynna, goodman Dull. Dictynna, goodman Dull.

DULL     What is Dictynna?

NATHANIEL     A title to Phoebe, to Luna, to the moon.

40

HOLOFERNES

The moon was a month old, when Adam was no more,

And raught not to five weeks when he came to five-score.

Th’allusion holds in the exchange.

DULL ’Tis true indeed: the collusion holds in the exchange.

HOLOFERNES     God comfort thy capacity! I say

th’allusion holds in the exchange.

DULL     And I say the pollution holds in the exchange, for

the moon is never but a month old; and I say beside

that ’twas a pricket that the Princess killed.

50

HOLOFERNES     Sir Nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal

epitaph on the death of the deer? And, to humour the

ignorant, call I the deer the Princess killed a pricket.

NATHANIEL Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge, so it

shall please you to abrogate scurrility.

55

HOLOFERNES     I will something affect the letter, for it

argues facility.

The preyful Princess pierced and pricked a pretty

pleasing pricket;

Some say a sore, but not a sore till now made sore with shooting.

The dogs did yell, put ‘l’ to sore, then sorrel jumps from thicket;

Or pricket, sore, or else sorrel, the people fall a-hooting.

60

If sore be sore, then ‘l’ to sore makes fifty sores o’sorrel:

Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but one more ‘l’.

NATHANIEL     A rare talent!

DULL     If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with

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a talent.

HOLOFERNES     This is a gift that I have – simple, simple;

a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures,

shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions.

These are begot in the ventricle of memory,

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nourished in the womb of pia mater and delivered

upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in

those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.

NATHANIEL     Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may

my parishioners, for their sons are well tutored by you,

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and their daughters profit very greatly under you. You

are a good member of the commonwealth.

HOLOFERNES Mehercle! If their sons be ingenious, they

shall want no instruction. If their daughters be

capable, I will put it to them. But vir sapit qui pauca

loquitur. A soul feminine saluteth us.

Enter JAQUENETTA, with a letter, and COSTARD, the Clown.

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JAQUENETTA     God give you good morrow, Master Person.

HOLOFERNES     Master Person, quasi pierce-one? And if

one should be pierced, which is the one?

COSTARD     Marry, Master Schoolmaster, he that is likest

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to a hogshead.

HOLOFERNES ‘Of piercing a hogshead’ – a good lustre of

conceit in a turf of earth, fire enough for a flint, pearl

enough for a swine: ’tis pretty, it is well.

JAQUENETTA     Good Master Parson, be so good as read

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me this letter. It was given me by Costard and sent me

from Don Armado. I beseech you read it.

HOLOFERNES

Fauste precor, gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra

Ruminat –

and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan, I may speak of

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thee as the traveller doth of Venice:

     Venetia, Venetia,

     Chi non ti vede, non ti pretia.

Old Mantuan, old Mantuan, who understandeth thee

not, loves thee not. [Sings.]

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     Ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa.

Under pardon, sir, what are the contents? Or rather as

Horace says in his – What, my soul, verses?

NATHANIEL     Ay, sir, and very learned.

HOLOFERNES     Let me hear a staff, a stanza, a verse.

Lege, domine.

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NATHANIEL [Reads.]

‘If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?

Ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vowed.

Though to myself forsworn, to thee I’ll faithful prove.

Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed.

Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes,

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     Where all those pleasures live, that art would comprehend.

If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice:

Well learned is that tongue, that well can thee commend,

All ignorant that soul, that sees thee without wonder;

Which is to me some praise, that I thy parts admire.

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Thy eye Jove’s lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder,

Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire.

Celestial as thou art, O, pardon love this wrong,

That sings heaven’s praise, with such an earthly

tongue.’

120

HOLOFERNES     You find not the apostrophus and so miss

the accent. Let me supervise the canzonet. [Takes the

letter.] Here are only numbers ratified, but for the

elegancy, facility and golden cadence of poesy, caret.

Ovidius Naso was the man; and why indeed ‘Naso’, but

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for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the

jerks of invention? Imitari is nothing. So doth the

hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his

rider. But, damosella virgin, was this directed to you?

JAQUENETTA     Ay, sir, from one Monsieur Berowne, one

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of the strange queen’s lords.

HOLOFERNES     I will overglance the superscript. To the

snow-white hand of the most beauteous Lady Rosaline. I

will look again on the intellect of the letter, for the

nomination of the party writing to the person written

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unto: Your Ladyship’s in all desired employment,

Berowne. Sir Nathaniel, this Berowne is one of the

votaries with the King, and here he hath framed a letter

to a sequent of the stranger queen’s, which accidentally,

or by the way of progression, hath miscarried. Trip and

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go, my sweet, deliver this paper into the royal hand of

the King; it may concern much. Stay not thy compliment: I forgive thy duty, adieu.

JAQUENETTA     Good Costard, go with me. Sir, God save your life.

COSTARD     Have with thee, my girl.

145

Exeunt Costard and Jaquenetta.

NATHANIEL     Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very religiously; and as a certain father saith –

HOLOFERNES     Sir, tell not me of the father, I do fear

colourable colours. But to return to the verses: did

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they please you, Sir Nathaniel?

NATHANIEL     Marvellous well for the pen.

HOLOFERNES     I do dine today at the father’s of a certain

pupil of mine, where if, before repast, it shall please

you to gratify the table with a grace, I will, on my

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privilege I have with the parents of the foresaid child

or pupil, undertake your ben venuto; where I will prove

those verses to be very unlearned, neither savouring of

poetry, wit, nor invention. I beseech your society.

NATHANIEL     And thank you too, for society, saith the

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text, is the happiness of life.

HOLOFERNES     And certes, the text most infallibly

concludes it. [to Dull] Sir, I do invite you too: you shall

not say me nay. Pauca verba. Away, the gentles are at

their game and we will to our recreation.     Exeunt.

4.3 Enter BEROWNE with a paper in his hand, alone.

BEROWNE     The King, he is hunting the deer; I am

coursing myself. They have pitched a toil; I am toiling

in a pitch, pitch that defiles. Defile, a foul word. Well,

5

set thee down, sorrow, for so they say the fool said, and

so say I, and I the fool. Well proved, wit! By the Lord,

this love is as mad as Ajax. It kills sheep, it kills me – I

a sheep. Well proved again, o’my side! I will not love; if

I do, hang me! I’faith, I will not. O, but her eye! By this

10

light, but for her eye, I would not love her – yes, for her

two eyes. Well, I do nothing in the world but lie, and lie

in my throat. By heaven, I do love, and it hath taught

me to rhyme, and to be melancholy. And here is part of

my rhyme, and here my melancholy. Well, she hath one

15

o’my sonnets already. The clown bore it, the fool sent it,

and the lady hath it. Sweet clown, sweeter fool, sweetest

lady! By the world, I would not care a pin if the other

three were in. Here comes one, with a paper. God give

him grace to groan! [Stands aside.]

Enter the KING with a paper.

20

KING     Ay me!

BEROWNE     Shot, by heaven! Proceed, sweet Cupid, thou

hast thumped him with thy birdbolt under the left

pap. In faith, secrets!

KING [Reads.]

‘So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not

25

     To those fresh morning drops upon the rose,

As thy eye-beams when their fresh rays have smote

     The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows.

Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright

Through the transparent bosom of the deep

30

As doth thy face, through tears of mine, give light.

     Thou shin’st in every tear that I do weep,

No drop but as a coach doth carry thee:

     So ridest thou triumphing in my woe.

Do but behold the tears that swell in me,

35

     And they thy glory through my grief will show.

But do not love thyself: then thou will keep

My tears for glasses, and still make me weep.

O Queen of queens, how far dost thou excel,

No thought can think, nor tongue of mortal tell.’

40

How shall she know my griefs? I’ll drop the paper.

Sweet leaves shade folly. Who is he comes here?

[Steps aside.]

Enter LONGAVILLE with a paper.

What, Longaville, and reading? Listen, ear!

BEROWNE     Now, in thy likeness, one more fool appear!

LONGAVILLE     Ay me, I am forsworn!

45

BEROWNE     Why, he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers.

KING     In love, I hope. Sweet fellowship in shame.

BEROWNE     One drunkard loves another of the name.

LONGAVILLE     Am I the first that have been perjured so?

BEROWNE

50

I could put thee in comfort: not by two that I know.

Thou makest the triumviry, the corner-cap of society,

The shape of Love’s Tyburn, that hangs up simplicity.

LONGAVILLE

I fear these stubborn lines lack power to move.

O sweet Maria, empress of my love,

These numbers will I tear and write in prose.

55

BEROWNE

O, rhymes are guards on wanton Cupid’s hose:

Disfigure not his shop.

LONGAVILLE     This same shall go.

[Reads the sonnet.]

‘Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,

     ‘Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,

60

Persuade my heart to this false perjury?

     Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment.

A woman I forswore, but I will prove,

     Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee.

My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love;

65

     Thy grace being gained, cures all disgrace in me.

Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is:

     Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine,

Exhal’st this vapour-vow; in thee it is.

     If broken then, it is no fault of mine;

70

If by me broke, what fool is not so wise

To lose an oath to win a paradise?’

BEROWNE

This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity,

A green goose a goddess. Pure, pure idolatry.

God amend us, God amend! We are much out o’th’ way.

Enter DUMAINE with a paper.

LONGAVILLE

By whom shall I send this? Company? Stay.

75

[Stands aside.]

BEROWNE     All hid, all hid, an old infant play.

Like a demi-god here sit I in the sky,

And wretched fools’ secrets heedfully o’er-eye.

More sacks to the mill. O heavens, I have my wish!

80

Dumaine transformed! Four woodcocks in a dish!

DUMAINE     O most divine Kate!

BEROWNE     O most profane coxcomb!

DUMAINE     By heaven, the wonder in a mortal eye!

BEROWNE     By earth, she is not, corporal: there you lie.

85

DUMAINE     Her amber hairs for foul hath amber quoted.

BEROWNE     An amber-coloured raven was well noted.

DUMAINE     As upright as the cedar.

BEROWNE     Stoop, I say.

Her shoulder is with child.

DUMAINE     As fair as day.

BEROWNE

Ay, as some days, but then no sun must shine.

DUMAINE     O that I had my wish!

90

LONGAVILLE     And I had mine!

KING     And I mine too, good Lord!

BEROWNE

Amen, so I had mine! Is not that a good word?

DUMAINE     I would forget her, but a fever she

Reigns in my blood and will remembered be.

95

BEROWNE     A fever in your blood? Why then incision

Would let her out in saucers. Sweet misprision!

DUMAINE     Once more I’ll read the ode that I have writ.

BEROWNE     Once more I’ll mark how love can vary wit.

DUMAINE [Reads his sonnet.]

     ‘On a day – alack the day! –

100

     Love, whose month is ever May,

     Spied a blossom passing fair

     Playing in the wanton air.

     Through the velvet leaves the wind,

     All unseen, can passage find;

105

     That the lover, sick to death,

     Wished himself the heaven’s breath.

     “Air,” quoth he, “thy cheeks may blow;

     Air, would I might triumph so!

     But, alack, my hand is sworn

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     Ne’er to pluck thee from thy thorn.

     Vow, alack, for youth unmeet,

     Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.

     Do not call it sin in me,

     That I am forsworn for thee;

115

     Thou for whom Jove would swear

     Juno but an Ethiop were,

     And deny himself for Jove,

     Turning mortal for thy love.”’

This will I send, and something else more plain,

That shall express my true love’s fasting pain.

O, would the King, Berowne and Longaville

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Were lovers too! Ill, to example ill,

Would from my forehead wipe a perjured note,

For none offend where all alike do dote.

LONGAVILLE [Comes forward.]

Dumaine, thy love is far from charity,

That in love’s grief desirest society.

125

You may look pale, but I should blush, I know,

To be o’erheard and taken napping so.

KING [Comes forward.]

Come, sir, you blush. As his your case is such.

You chide at him, offending twice as much.

You do not love Maria? Longaville

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Did never sonnet for her sake compile,

Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart

His loving bosom to keep down his heart.

I have been closely shrouded in this bush,

And marked you both, and for you both did blush.

135

I heard your guilty rhymes, observed your fashion,

Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion.

‘Ay me!’ says one, ‘O Jove!’ the other cries.

One, her hairs were gold; crystal the other’s eyes.

[to Longaville] You would for paradise break faith

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and troth;

[to Dumaine] And Jove for your love would infringe an oath.

What will Berowne say when that he shall hear

Faith infringed which such zeal did swear?

How will he scorn, how will he spend his wit!

How will he triumph, leap and laugh at it!

145

For all the wealth that ever I did see,

I would not have him know so much by me.

BEROWNE [Comes forward.]

Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy.

Ah, good my liege, I pray thee pardon me.

Good heart, what grace hast thou thus to reprove

150

These worms for loving, that art most in love?

Your eyes do make no coaches; in your tears

There is no certain princess that appears;

You’ll not be perjured, ’tis a hateful thing;

Tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting!

155

But are you not ashamed? Nay, are you not,

All three of you, to be thus much o’ershot?

You found his mote, the King your mote did see;

But I a beam do find in each of three.

O, what a scene of foolery have I seen,

160

Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow and of teen!

O me, with what strict patience have I sat,

To see a king transformed to a gnat!

To see great Hercules whipping a gig,

And profound Solomon to tune a jig,

165

And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys,

And critic Timon laugh at idle toys.

Where lies thy grief? O, tell me, good Dumaine.

And, gentle Longaville, where lies thy pain?

And where my liege’s? All about the breast?

170

A caudle, ho!

KING     Too bitter is thy jest.

Are we betrayed thus to thy over-view?

BEROWNE     Not you to me, but I betrayed by you;

I that am honest, I that hold it sin

To break the vow I am engaged in –

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I am betrayed by keeping company

With men like you, men of inconstancy.

When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme?

Or groan for Joan? Or spend a minute’s time

In pruning me? When shall you hear that I

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Will praise a hand, a foot, a face, an eye,

A gait, a state, a brow, a breast, a waist,

A leg, a limb –

KING     Soft! Whither away so fast?

A true man, or a thief, that gallops so?

BEROWNE     I post from love. Good lover, let me go.

185

Enter JAQUENETTA, with a letter, and COSTARD, the Clown.

JAQUENETTA     God bless the King!

KING     What present hast thou there?

COSTARD     Some certain treason.

KING     What makes treason here?

COSTARD     Nay, it makes nothing, sir.

KING     If it mar nothing neither,

The treason and you go in peace away together.

JAQUENETTA

I beseech your grace let this letter be read.

190

Our person misdoubts it; ’twas treason, he said.

KING

Berowne, read it over. [Berowne reads the letter.]

     Where hadst thou it?

JAQUENETTA     Of Costard.

KING     Where hadst thou it?

COSTARD     Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio.

195

[Berowne tears the letter up.]

KING     How now, what is in you? Why dost thou tear it?

BEROWNE

A toy, my liege, a toy. Your grace needs not fear it.

LONGAVILLE

It did move him to passion and therefore let’s hear it.

DUMAINE [Picks up the pieces.]

It is Berowne’s writing and here is his name.

BEROWNE [to Costard]

Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, you were born to do

me shame.

200

Guilty, my lord, guilty: I confess, I confess.

KING     What?

BEROWNE

That you three fools lacked me fool to make up the mess.

He, he and you – and you, my liege – and I

Are pick-purses in love and we deserve to die.

205

O, dismiss this audience and I shall tell you more.

DUMAINE     Now the number is even.

BEROWNE     True, true, we are four.

Will these turtles be gone?

KING     Hence, sirs, away!

COSTARD

Walk aside the true folk and let the traitors stay.

Exeunt Costard and Jaquenetta.

BEROWNE     Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O, let us embrace!

210

     As true we are as flesh and blood can be,

The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face;

     Young blood doth not obey an old decree.

We cannot cross the cause why we were born;

Therefore of all hands must we be forsworn.

215

KING

What, did these rent lines show some love of thine?

BEROWNE

‘Did they?’ quoth you! Who sees the heavenly

     Rosaline

That, like a rude and savage man of Ind,

     At the first opening of the gorgeous east,

Bows not his vassal head and, strucken blind,

220

     Kisses the base ground with obedient breast?

What peremptory eagle-sighted eye

     Dares look upon the heaven of her brow

That is not blinded by her majesty?

KING     What zeal, what fury hath inspired thee now?

225

My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon;

     She, an attending star, scarce seen a light.

BEROWNE     My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Berowne.

     O, but for my love, day would turn to night!

Of all complexions the culled sovereignty

230

     Do meet as at a fair in her fair cheek,

Where several worthies make one dignity,

     Where nothing wants, that want itself doth seek.

Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues –

     Fie, painted rhetoric! O, she needs it not.

235

To things of sale, a seller’s praise belongs:

     She passes praise; then praise too short doth blot.

A withered hermit, five-score winters worn,

     Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye.

Beauty doth varnish age, as if new born,

240

     And gives the crutch the cradle’s infancy.

O, ’tis the sun that maketh all things shine.

KING     By heaven, thy love is black as ebony!

BEROWNE     Is ebony like her? O word divine!

     A wife of such wood were felicity.

245

O, who can give an oath? Where is a book?

     That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack

If that she learn not of her eye to look.

     No face is fair that is not full so black.

KING     O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,

250

     The hue of dungeons and the school of night;

And beauty’s crest becomes the heavens well.

BEROWNE

     Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.

O, if in black my lady’s brows be decked,

     It mourns that painting and usurping hair

255

Should ravish doters with a false aspect;

     And therefore is she born to make black fair.

Her favour turns the fashion of the days,

     For native blood is counted painting now;

And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise,

260

     Paints itself black, to imitate her brow.

DUMAINE

To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.

LONGAVILLE

And since her time are colliers counted bright.

KING     And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack.

DUMAINE     Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.

265

BEROWNE     Your mistresses dare never come in rain,

     For fear their colours should be washed away.

KING ’Twere good yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain,

     I’ll find a fairer face not washed today.

BEROWNE     I’ll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.

270

KING     No devil will fright thee then so much as she.

DUMAINE     I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear.

LONGAVILLE [Shows his shoe.]

     Look, here’s thy love, my foot and her face see.

BEROWNE     O, if the streets were paved with thine eyes,

     Her feet were much too dainty for such tread.

275

DUMAINE     O, vile! Then, as she goes, what upward lies

     The street should see as she walked overhead.

KING     But what of this? Are we not all in love?

BEROWNE     O, nothing so sure, and thereby all forsworn.

KING

Then leave this chat and, good Berowne, now prove

280

     Our loving lawful and our faith not torn.

DUMAINE     Ay, marry, there; some flattery for this evil.

LONGAVILLE     O, some authority how to proceed.

Some tricks, some quillets how to cheat the devil.

DUMAINE     Some salve for perjury.

BEROWNE     O, ’tis more than need.

285

Have at you then, affection’s men-at-arms.

Consider what you first did swear unto:

To fast, to study and to see no woman –

Flat treason ‘gainst the kingly state of youth.

Say, can you fast? Your stomachs are too young,

290

And abstinence engenders maladies.

O, we have made a vow to study, lords,

And in that vow we have forsworn our books;

For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,

In leaden contemplation have found out

295

Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes

Of beauty’s tutors have enriched you with?

Other slow arts entirely keep the brain,

And therefore, finding barren practisers,

Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil;

300

But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes,

Lives not alone immured in the brain

But with the motion of all elements

Courses as swift as thought in every power

And gives to every power a double power,

305

Above their functions and their offices.

It adds a precious seeing to the eye:

A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind.

A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound

When the suspicious head of theft is stopped.

310

Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible

Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.

Love’s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste,

For valour, is not Love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?

315

Subtle as Sphinx, as sweet and musical

As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair.

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods

Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.

Never durst poet touch a pen to write

320

Until his ink were tempered with Love’s sighs.

O, then his lines would ravish savage ears

And plant in tyrants mild humility.

From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:

They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;

325

They are the books, the arts, the academes,

That show, contain and nourish all the world;

Else none at all in aught proves excellent.

Then fools you were these women to forswear,

Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.

330

For wisdom’s sake, a word that all men love,

Or, for love’s sake, a word that loves all men,

Or, for men’s sake, the authors of these women,

Or women’s sake, by whom we men are men,

Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,

335

Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.

It is religion to be thus forsworn,

For charity itself fulfils the law,

And who can sever love from charity?

KING     Saint Cupid, then! And, soldiers, to the field!

340

BEROWNE

Advance your standards and upon them, lords!

Pell-mell, down with them! But be first advised

In conflict that you get the sun of them.

LONGAVILLE

Now to plain dealing. Lay these glozes by.

Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?

345

KING     And win them too! Therefore let us devise

Some entertainment for them in their tents.

BEROWNE

First, from the park let us conduct them thither.

Then homeward every man attach the hand

Of his fair mistress. In the afternoon

350

We will with some strange pastime solace them,

Such as the shortness of the time can shape;

For revels, dances, masques and merry hours

Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.

KING     Away, away! No time shall be omitted

355

That will betime and may by us be fitted.

BEROWNE

Allons, allons!

     Exeunt the King, Longaville and Dumaine.

     Sowed cockle reaped no corn:

     And justice always whirls in equal measure.

Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn;

     If so, our copper buys no better treasure. Exit.

360

5.1 Enter HOLOFERNES, the Pedant, NATHANIEL, the Curate, and DULL, the Constable.

HOLOFERNES Satis quod sufficit.

NATHANIEL     I praise God for you, sir. Your reasons at

dinner have been sharp and sententious, pleasant

without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious

without impudency, learned without opinion and

5

strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam

day with a companion of the King’s, who is intituled,

nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.

HOLOFERNES Novi hominem tanquam te. His humour is

lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his

10

eye ambitious, his gait majestical and his general

behaviour vain, ridiculous and thrasonical. He is too

picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were,

too peregrinate, as I may call it.

NATHANIEL     A most singular and choice epithet.

15

[Draws out his table-book.]

HOLOFERNES     He draweth out the thread of his verbosity

finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such

fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-device

companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak

‘dout’ sine ‘b’, when he should say ‘doubt’, ‘det’ when

20

he should pronounce ‘debt’: d, e, b, t, not d, e, t. He

clepeth a calf ‘cauf ’, half ‘hauf ’; neighbour vocatur

‘nebour’, neigh abbreviated ‘ne’. This is abhominable,

which he would call ‘abominable’. It insinuateth me of

insanie. Ne intelligis, domine? To make frantic, lunatic.

25

NATHANIEL Laus Deo, bone intelligo.

HOLOFERNES Bone? ‘Bone’ for ‘bene’! Priscian a little

scratched; ’twill serve.

Enter ARMADO, the Braggart, MOTH, his boy, and COSTARD.

NATHANIEL Videsne quis venit?

HOLOFERNES Video et gaudeo.

30

ARMADO     Chirrah!

HOLOFERNES Quare ‘chirrah’, not ‘sirrah’?

ARMADO     Men of peace, well encountered.

HOLOFERNES     Most military sir, salutation.

MOTH [to Costard] They have been at a great feast of

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languages and stolen the scraps.

COSTARD [to Moth] O, they have lived long on the

alms-basket of words! I marvel thy master hath not

eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the

head as honorificabilitudinitatibus. Thou art easier

40

swallowed than a flap-dragon.

MOTH     Peace! The peal begins.

ARMADO [to Holofernes] Monsieur, are you not lettered?

MOTH     Yes, yes! He teaches boys the hornbook. What is

a, b, spelt backward with the horn on his head?

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HOLOFERNES     Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

MOTH     Ba, most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning.

HOLOFERNES Quis, quis, thou consonant?

MOTH     The last of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or

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the fifth, if I.

HOLOFERNES     I will repeat them: a, e, i –

MOTH     The sheep. The other two concludes it: o, u.

ARMADO     Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a

sweet touch, a quick venue of wit! Snip-snap, quick

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and home! It rejoiceth my intellect. True wit!

MOTH     Offered by a child to an old man – which is wit-old.

HOLOFERNES     What is the figure? What is the figure?

MOTH     Horns.

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HOLOFERNES     Thou disputes like an infant. Go, whip thy gig.

MOTH     Lend me your horn to make one and I will whip

about your infamy manu cita. A gig of a cuckold’s horn!

COSTARD     An I had but one penny in the world, thou

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shouldst have it to buy gingerbread. Hold, there is the

very remuneration I had of thy master, thou halfpenny

purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discretion. O, an the

heavens were so pleased that thou wert but my bastard,

what a joyful father wouldst thou make me! Go to, thou

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hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers’ ends, as they say.

HOLOFERNES     O, I smell false Latin: ‘dunghill’ for unguem.

ARMADO     Arts-man, preambulate. We will be singuled

from the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the

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charge-house on the top of the mountain?

HOLOFERNES     Or mons, the hill.

ARMADO     At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.

HOLOFERNES     I do, sans question.

ARMADO     Sir, it is the King’s most sweet pleasure and

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affection to congratulate the Princess at her pavilion

in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude

call the afternoon.

HOLOFERNES     The posterior of the day, most generous

sir, is liable, congruent and measurable for the

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afternoon. The word is well culled, choice, sweet and

apt, I do assure you, sir, I do assure.

ARMADO     Sir, the King is a noble gentleman, and my

familiar, I do assure ye, very good friend. For what is

inward between us, let it pass. I do beseech thee,

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remember thy courtesy: I beseech thee, apparel thy

head. And among other importunate and most serious

designs, and of great import indeed too – but let that

pass. For I must tell thee it will please his grace, by the

world, sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder and

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with his royal finger thus dally with my excrement,

with my mustachio. But, sweet heart, let that pass. By

the world, I recount no fable! Some certain special

honours it pleaseth his greatness to impart to Armado,

a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world. But

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let that pass. The very all of all is – but, sweet heart, I

do implore secrecy – that the King would have me

present the Princess – sweet chuck – with some

delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antic, or

firework. Now, understanding that the curate and your

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sweet self are good at such eruptions and sudden

breaking-out of mirth, as it were, I have acquainted you

withal, to the end to crave your assistance.

HOLOFERNES     Sir, you shall present before her the

Nine Worthies. Sir Nathaniel, as concerning some

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entertainment of time, some show in the posterior of

this day, to be rendered by our assistance, the King’s

command and this most gallant, illustrate and learned

gentleman, before the Princess – I say, none so fit as to

present the Nine Worthies.

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NATHANIEL     Where will you find men worthy enough to

present them?

HOLOFERNES     Joshua, yourself; this gallant gentleman,

Judas Maccabaeus; this swain, because of his great

limb or joint, shall pass Pompey the Great; the page,

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Hercules.

ARMADO     Pardon, sir, error! He is not quantity enough

for that Worthy’s thumb. He is not so big as the end of his club.

HOLOFERNES     Shall I have audience? He shall present

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Hercules in minority. His enter and exit shall be

strangling a snake; and I will have an apology for that purpose.

MOTH     An excellent device! So if any of the audience

hiss, you may cry, ‘Well done, Hercules! Now thou

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crushest the snake!’ That is the way to make an

offence gracious, though few have the grace to do it.

ARMADO     For the rest of the Worthies?

HOLOFERNES     I will play three myself.

MOTH     Thrice-worthy gentleman.

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ARMADO     Shall I tell you a thing?

HOLOFERNES     We attend.

ARMADO     We will have, if this fadge not, an antic. I beseech you, follow.

HOLOFERNES Via, goodman Dull! Thou hast spoken no

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word all this while.

DULL     Nor understood none neither, sir.

HOLOFERNES Allons! We will employ thee.

DULL     I’ll make one in a dance, or so; or I will play on

the tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay.

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HOLOFERNES     Most Dull, honest Dull! To our sport,

away!      Exeunt.

5.2 Enter the ladies, the PRINCESS, ROSALINE, MARIA and KATHERINE.

PRINCESS     Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart

If fairings come thus plentifully in.

A lady walled about with diamonds!

Look you what I have from the loving King.

ROSALINE     Madam, came nothing else along with that?

5

PRINCESS

Nothing but this? Yes, as much love in rhyme

As would be crammed up in a sheet of paper

Writ o’both sides the leaf, margin and all,

That he was fain to seal on Cupid’s name.

ROSALINE     That was the way to make his godhead wax,

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For he hath been five thousand year a boy.

KATHERINE     Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too.

ROSALINE

You’ll ne’er be friends with him: ‘a killed your sister.

KATHERINE     He made her melancholy, sad and heavy;

And so she died. Had she been light, like you,

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Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit,

She might ha’ been a grandam ere she died.

And so may you, for a light heart lives long.

ROSALINE

What’s your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?

KATHERINE     A light condition in a beauty dark.

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ROSALINE

We need more light to find your meaning out.

KATHERINE     You’ll mar the light by taking it in snuff;

Therefore I’ll darkly end the argument.

ROSALINE     Look what you do, you do it still i’th’ dark.

KATHERINE     So do not you, for you are a light wench.

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ROSALINE     Indeed I weigh not you, and therefore light.

KATHERINE

You weigh me not? O, that’s you care not for me!

ROSALINE     Great reason, for past cure is still past care.

PRINCESS     Well bandied both! A set of wit well played.

But, Rosaline, you have a favour too:

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Who sent it? And what is it?

ROSALINE     I would you knew.

An if my face were but as fair as yours,

My favour were as great. Be witness this:

Nay, I have verses too, I thank Berowne;

The numbers true, and, were the numbering too,

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I were the fairest goddess on the ground.

I am compared to twenty thousand fairs.

O, he hath drawn my picture in his letter!

PRINCESS     Anything like?

ROSALINE     Much in the letters, nothing in the praise.

40

PRINCESS     Beauteous as ink: a good conclusion.

KATHERINE     Fair as a text B in a copy-book.

ROSALINE

‘Ware pencils, ho! Let me not die your debtor,

My red dominical, my golden letter.

O, that your face were not so full of O’s!

45

PRINCESS     A pox of that jest and I beshrew all shrews.

But, Katherine, what was sent to you from fair Dumaine?

KATHERINE     Madam, this glove.

PRINCESS     Did he not send you twain?

KATHERINE     Yes, madam, and moreover

Some thousand verses of a faithful lover.

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A huge translation of hypocrisy,

Vilely compiled, profound simplicity.

MARIA     This and these pearls to me sent Longaville.

The letter is too long by half a mile.

PRINCESS     I think no less. Dost thou not wish in heart

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The chain were longer and the letter short?

MARIA     Ay, or I would these hands might never part.

PRINCESS     We are wise girls to mock our lovers so.

ROSALINE

They are worse fools to purchase mocking so.

That same Berowne I’ll torture ere I go.

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O that I knew he were but in by th’ week!

How I would make him fawn, and beg, and seek,

And wait the season, and observe the times,

And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes,

And shape his service wholly to my hests,

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And make him proud to make me proud that jests!

So pair-taunt-like would I o’ersway his state,

That he should be my fool, and I his fate.

PRINCESS

None are so surely caught, when they are catched,

As wit turned fool. Folly, in wisdom hatched,

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Hath wisdom’s warrant and the help of school

And wit’s own grace to grace a learned fool.

ROSALINE

The blood of youth burns not with such excess

As gravity’s revolt to wantonness.

MARIA     Folly in fools bears not so strong a note

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As foolery in the wise when wit doth dote,

Since all the power thereof it doth apply

To prove, by wit, worth in simplicity.

Enter BOYET.

PRINCESS     Here comes Boyet, and mirth is in his face.

BOYET

O, I am stabbed with laughter! Where’s her grace?

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PRINCESS     Thy news, Boyet?

BOYET     Prepare, madam, prepare!

Arm, wenches, arm! Encounters mounted are

Against your peace. Love doth approach disguised,

Armed in arguments: you’ll be surprised.

Muster your wits, stand in your own defence,

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Or hide your heads like cowards and fly hence.

PRINCESS     Saint Denis to Saint Cupid! What are they

That charge their breath against us? Say, scout, say.

BOYET     Under the cool shade of a sycamore

I thought to close mine eyes some half an hour,

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When, lo, to interrupt my purposed rest,

Toward that shade I might behold addressed

The King and his companions. Warily

I stole into a neighbour thicket by

And overheard what you shall overhear:

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That, by and by, disguised they will be here.

Their herald is a pretty knavish page

That well by heart hath conned his embassage.

Action and accent did they teach him there:

‘Thus must thou speak and thus thy body bear.’

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And ever and anon they made a doubt

Presence majestical would put him out;

‘For’, quoth the King, ‘an angel shalt thou see;

Yet fear not thou, but speak audaciously.’

The boy replied, ‘An angel is not evil;

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I should have feared her had she been a devil.’

With that all laughed and clapped him on the shoulder,

Making the bold wag by their praises bolder.

One rubbed his elbow thus, and fleered, and swore

A better speech was never spoke before.

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Another with his finger and his thumb

Cried, ‘Via, we will do’t, come what will come!’

The third he capered and cried, ‘All goes well!’

The fourth turned on the toe, and down he fell.

With that they all did tumble on the ground,

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With such a zealous laughter, so profound,

That in this spleen ridiculous appears,

To check their folly, passion’s solemn tears.

PRINCESS     But what, but what, come they to visit us?

BOYET     They do, they do, and are apparelled thus,

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Like Muscovites, or Russians, as I guess.

Their purpose is to parley, court and dance,

And every one his love-suit will advance

Unto his several mistress, which they’ll know

By favours several which they did bestow.

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PRINCESS

And will they so? The gallants shall be tasked;

For, ladies, we will every one be masked,

And not a man of them shall have the grace,

Despite of suit, to see a lady’s face.

Hold, Rosaline, this favour thou shalt wear,

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And then the King will court thee for his dear.

Hold, take thou this, my sweet, and give me thine,

So shall Berowne take me for Rosaline.

And change you favours too; so shall your loves

Woo contrary, deceived by these removes.

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ROSALINE

Come on, then, wear the favours most in sight.

KATHERINE     But in this changing what is your intent?

PRINCESS     The effect of my intent is to cross theirs.

They do it but in mockery merriment,

And mock for mock is only my intent.

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Their several counsels they unbosom shall

To loves mistook, and so be mocked withal

Upon the next occasion that we meet,

With visages displayed to talk and greet.

ROSALINE     But shall we dance if they desire us to’t?

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PRINCESS     No, to the death we will not move a foot;

Nor to their penned speech render we no grace,

But while ’tis spoke each turn away her face.

BOYET     Why, that contempt will kill the speaker’s heart

And quite divorce his memory from his part.

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PRINCESS     Therefore I do it, and I make no doubt

The rest will e’er come in, if he be out.

There’s no such sport as sport by sport o’erthrown,

To make theirs ours and ours none but our own.

So shall we stay, mocking intended game,

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And they, well mocked, depart away with shame.

[Sound trumpet.]

BOYET

The trumpet sounds. Be masked. The maskers come.

Enter blackamoors with music, MOTH, the boy, with a speech, and the rest of the lords disguised.

MOTH All hail the richest beauties on the earth!

BOYET     Beauties no richer than rich taffeta.

MOTH A holy parcel of the fairest dames

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[The ladies turn their backs to him.]

That ever turned their – backs – to mortal views.

BEROWNE Their eyes, villain, their eyes.

MOTH That ever turned their eyes to mortal views. Out –

BOYET     True! Out indeed!

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MOTH Out of your favours, heavenly spirits, vouchsafe Not to behold –

BEROWNE Once to behold, rogue!

MOTH Once to behold with your sun-beamed eyes –With your sun-beamed eyes –

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BOYET     They will not answer to that epithet.

You were best call it ‘daughter-beamed eyes’.

MOTH     They do not mark me and that brings me out.

BEROWNE

Is this your perfectness? Be gone, you rogue!

Exit Moth.

ROSALINE

What would these strangers? Know their minds, Boyet.

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If they do speak our language, ’tis our will

That some plain man recount their purposes.

Know what they would.

BOYET     What would you with the Princess?

BEROWNE     Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.

ROSALINE     What would they, say they?

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BOYET     Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.

ROSALINE

Why, that they have, and bid them so be gone.

BOYET     She says you have it and you may be gone.

KING     Say to her, we have measured many miles

To tread a measure with her on this grass.

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BOYET     They say that they have measured many a mile

To tread a measure with you on this grass.

ROSALINE     It is not so. Ask them how many inches

Is in one mile? If they have measured many,

The measure then of one is easily told.

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BOYET     If to come hither you have measured miles,

And many miles, the Princess bids you tell

How many inches doth fill up one mile.

BEROWNE     Tell her we measure them by weary steps.

BOYET     She hears herself.

ROSALINE     How many weary steps,

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Of many weary miles you have o’ergone,

Are numbered in the travel of one mile?

BEROWNE     We number nothing that we spend for you.

Our duty is so rich, so infinite,

That we may do it still without account.

200

Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face,

That we like savages may worship it.

ROSALINE     My face is but a moon and clouded too.

KING     Blessed are clouds, to do as such clouds do.

Vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine –

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Those clouds removed – upon our watery eyne.

ROSALINE     O vain petitioner! Beg a greater matter:

Thou now requests but moonshine in the water.

KING

Then, in our measure, do but vouchsafe one change.

Thou biddest me beg: this begging is not strange.

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ROSALINE

Play music then! Nay, you must do it soon.

Music plays.

Not yet? No dance! Thus change I like the moon.

KING

Will you not dance? How come you thus estranged?

ROSALINE

You took the moon at full, but now she’s changed.

KING     Yet still she is the moon and I the man.

215

The music plays, vouchsafe some motion to it.

ROSALINE     Our ears vouchsafe it.

KING     But your legs should do it.

ROSALINE

Since you are strangers and come here by chance,

We’ll not be nice. Take hands. We will not dance.

KING     Why take we hands then?

ROSALINE     Only to part friends.

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Curtsy, sweet hearts, and so the measure ends.

Music stops.

KING     More measure of this measure! Be not nice.

ROSALINE     We can afford no more at such a price.

KING     Price you yourselves. What buys your company?

ROSALINE     Your absence only.

KING     That can never be.

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ROSALINE     Then cannot we be bought. And so adieu –

Twice to your visor and half once to you!

KING     If you deny to dance, let’s hold more chat.

ROSALINE     In private then.

KING     I am best pleased with that.

[They converse apart.]

BEROWNE

White-handed mistress, one sweet word with thee.

230

PRINCESS     Honey, and milk, and sugar: there is three.

BEROWNE     Nay then, two treys, an if you grow so nice,

Metheglin, wort and malmsey. Well run, dice!

There’s half-a-dozen sweets.

PRINCESS     Seventh sweet, adieu.

Since you can cog, I’ll play no more with you.

235

BEROWNE     One word in secret.

PRINCESS     Let it not be sweet.

BEROWNE     Thou griev’st my gall.

PRINCESS     Gall? Bitter.

BEROWNE     Therefore meet.

[They converse apart.]

DUMAINE

Will you vouchsafe with me to change a word?

MARIA     Name it.

DUMAINE     Fair lady –

MARIA     Say you so? Fair lord!

Take that for your ‘fair lady’.

DUMAINE     Please it you,

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As much in private and I’ll bid adieu.

[They converse apart.]

KATHERINE

What, was your visor made without a tongue?

LONGAVILLE     I know the reason, lady, why you ask.

KATHERINE     O, for your reason! Quickly, sir, I long.

LONGAVILLE

You have a double tongue within your mask

245

And would afford my speechless visor half.

KATHERINE

‘Veal’, quoth the Dutchman. Is not veal a calf?

LONGAVILLE     A calf, fair lady.

KATHERINE     No, a fair lord calf.

LONGAVILLE     Let’s part the word.

KATHERINE     No, I’ll not be your half.

Take all and wean it; it may prove an ox.

250

LONGAVILLE

Look how you butt yourself in these sharp mocks.

Will you give horns, chaste lady? Do not so.

KATHERINE     Then die a calf before your horns do grow.

LONGAVILLE     One word in private with you ere I die.

KATHERINE

Bleat softly then; the butcher hears you cry.

255

[They converse apart.]

BOYET     The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen

     As is the razor’s edge invisible,

Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen;

     Above the sense of sense, so sensible

Seemeth their conference. Their conceits have wings

260

Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things.

ROSALINE

Not one word more, my maids; break off, break off.

BEROWNE     By heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff!

KING     Farewell, mad wenches. You have simple wits.

     Exeunt the King, lords and blackamoors.

PRINCESS     Twenty adieus, my frozen Muscovites.

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Are these the breed of wits so wondered at?

BOYET

Tapers they are, with your sweet breaths puffed out.

ROSALINE

Well-liking wits they have; gross, gross, fat, fat.

PRINCESS     O poverty in wit, kingly-poor flout!

Will they not, think you, hang themselves tonight?

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Or ever but in visors show their faces?

This pert Berowne was out of countenance quite.

ROSALINE     They were all in lamentable cases.

The King was weeping-ripe for a good word.

PRINCESS     Berowne did swear himself out of all suit.

275

MARIA     Dumaine was at my service, and his sword.

‘Non point,’ quoth I; my servant straight was mute.

KATHERINE     Lord Longaville said I came o’er his heart;

And trow you what he called me?

PRINCESS     Qualm perhaps?

KATHERINE     Yes, in good faith.

PRINCESS     Go, sickness as thou art!

280

ROSALINE

     Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps.

But will you hear? The King is my love sworn.

PRINCESS

And quick Berowne hath plighted faith to me.

KATHERINE     And Longaville was for my service born.

MARIA     Dumaine is mine as sure as bark on tree.

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BOYET     Madam, and pretty mistresses, give ear:

Immediately they will again be here

In their own shapes, for it can never be

They will digest this harsh indignity.

PRINCESS     Will they return?

BOYET     They will, they will, God knows;

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And leap for joy, though they are lame with blows.

Therefore change favours and, when they repair,

Blow like sweet roses in this summer air.

PRINCESS

How ‘blow’? How ‘blow’? Speak to be understood.

BOYET     Fair ladies masked are roses in their bud;

295

Dismasked, their damask sweet commixture shown,

Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown.

PRINCESS     Avaunt, perplexity! What shall we do

If they return in their own shapes to woo?

ROSALINE     Good madam, if by me you’ll be advised

300

Let’s mock them still, as well known as disguised.

Let us complain to them what fools were here,

Disguised like Muscovites in shapeless gear;

And wonder what they were, and to what end

Their shallow shows and prologue vilely penned,

305

And their rough carriage so ridiculous,

Should be presented at our tent to us.

BOYET     Ladies, withdraw. The gallants are at hand.

PRINCESS     Whip to our tents, as roes runs o’er the land.

     Exeunt the Princess and ladies.

Enter the KING and the rest, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE and DUMAINE, as themselves.

KING     Fair sir, God save you. Where’s the Princess?

310

BOYET     Gone to her tent. Please it your majesty

Command me any service to her thither?

KING     That she vouchsafe me audience for one word.

BOYET     I will; and so will she, I know, my lord.      Exit.

BEROWNE     This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons peas

315

And utters it again when God doth please.

He is wit’s pedlar and retails his wares

At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;

And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,

Have not the grace to grace it with such show.

320

This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve.

Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve.

‘A can carve too, and lisp. Why, this is he

That kissed his hand away in courtesy.

This is the ape of form, Monsieur the Nice,

325

That when he plays at tables chides the dice

In honourable terms. Nay, he can sing

A mean most meanly; and in ushering

Mend him who can. The ladies call him sweet.

The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet.

330

This is the flower that smiles on everyone,

To show his teeth as white as whale’s bone;

And consciences that will not die in debt

Pay him the due of ‘honey-tongued Boyet’.

KING     A blister on his sweet tongue, with my heart,

335

That put Armado’s page out of his part!

Enter the ladies, the PRINCESS, ROSALINE, MARIA and KATHERINE, with BOYET.

BEROWNE

See where it comes! Behaviour, what wert thou

Till this man showed thee, and what art thou now?

KING     All hail, sweet madam, and fair time of day.

PRINCESS ‘Fair’ in ‘all hail’ is foul, as I conceive.

340

KING     Construe my speeches better, if you may.

PRINCESS     Then wish me better; I will give you leave.

KING     We came to visit you and purpose now

     To lead you to our court. Vouchsafe it then.

PRINCESS

This field shall hold me, and so hold your vow.

345

     Nor God nor I delights in perjured men.

KING     Rebuke me not for that which you provoke.

     The virtue of your eye must break my oath.

PRINCESS

You nickname virtue: ‘vice’ you should have spoke;

     For virtue’s office never breaks men’s troth.

350

Now, by my maiden honour, yet as pure

     As the unsullied lily, I protest,

A world of torments though I should endure,

     I would not yield to be your house’s guest,

So much I hate a breaking cause to be

355

Of heavenly oaths, vowed with integrity.

KING     O, you have lived in desolation here,

     Unseen, unvisited, much to our shame.

PRINCESS     Not so, my lord. It is not so, I swear.

     We have had pastimes here and pleasant game:

360

A mess of Russians left us but of late.

KING     How, madam? Russians?

PRINCESS     Ay, in truth, my lord.

Trim gallants, full of courtship and of state.

ROSALINE     Madam, speak true! It is not so, my lord.

My lady, to the manner of the days,

365

In courtesy gives undeserving praise.

We four indeed confronted were with four

In Russian habit. Here they stayed an hour

And talked apace; and in that hour, my lord,

They did not bless us with one happy word.

370

I dare not call them fools, but this I think,

When they are thirsty, fools would fain have drink.

BEROWNE     This jest is dry to me. My gentle sweet,

Your wits makes wise things foolish. When we greet,

With eyes’ best seeing, heaven’s fiery eye,

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By light we lose light. Your capacity

Is of that nature that to your huge store

Wise things seem foolish and rich things but poor.

ROSALINE

This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye –

BEROWNE     I am a fool and full of poverty.

380

ROSALINE     But that you take what doth to you belong,

It were a fault to snatch words from my tongue.

BEROWNE     O, I am yours, and all that I possess.

ROSALINE     All the fool mine?

BEROWNE     I cannot give you less.

ROSALINE     Which of the visors was it that you wore?

385

BEROWNE

Where, when, what visor? Why demand you this?

ROSALINE

There, then, that visor: that superfluous case

That hid the worse and showed the better face.

KING

We were descried. They’ll mock us now downright.

DUMAINE     Let us confess and turn it to a jest.

390

PRINCESS

Amazed, my lord? Why looks your highness sad?

ROSALINE

Help! Hold his brows! He’ll swoon. Why look you pale?

Seasick, I think, coming from Muscovy!

BEROWNE

Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury.

     Can any face of brass hold longer out?

395

Here stand I, lady; dart thy skill at me.

     Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout,

Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance,

     Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit,

And I will wish thee never more to dance,

400

     Nor never more in Russian habit wait.

O, never will I trust to speeches penned,

     Nor to the motion of a schoolboy’s tongue,

Nor never come in visor to my friend,

     Nor woo in rhyme like a blind harper’s song.

405

Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,

     Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,

Figures pedantical: these summer flies

     Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.

I do forswear them, and I here protest,

410

     By this white glove – how white the hand, God knows! –

Henceforth my wooing mind shall be expressed

     In russet yeas and honest kersey noes.

And, to begin: wench, so God help me, law!

My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.

415

ROSALINE Sans ‘sans’, I pray you.

BEROWNE     Yet I have a trick

Of the old rage. Bear with me, I am sick;

I’ll leave it by degrees. Soft, let us see:

Write ‘Lord have mercy on us’ on those three.

They are infected; in their hearts it lies;

420

They have the plague and caught it of your eyes.

These lords are visited: you are not free,

For the Lord’s tokens on you do I see.

PRINCESS

No, they are free that gave these tokens to us.

BEROWNE     Our states are forfeit. Seek not to undo us.

425

ROSALINE

It is not so; for how can this be true,

That you stand forfeit, being those that sue?

BEROWNE     Peace! for I will not have to do with you.

ROSALINE     Nor shall not if I do as I intend.

BEROWNE [to the other lords]

Speak for yourselves. My wit is at an end.

430

KING

Teach us, sweet madam, for our rude transgression

Some fair excuse.

PRINCESS     The fairest is confession.

Were not you here but even now, disguised?

KING     Madam, I was.

PRINCESS     And were you well advised?

KING     I was, fair madam.

PRINCESS     When you then were here,

435

What did you whisper in your lady’s ear?

KING     That more than all the world I did respect her.

PRINCESS

When she shall challenge this, you will reject her.

KING     Upon mine honour, no.

PRINCESS     Peace, peace, forbear!

Your oath once broke, you force not to forswear.

440

KING     Despise me when I break this oath of mine.

PRINCESS     I will; and therefore keep it. Rosaline,

What did the Russian whisper in your ear?

ROSALINE     Madam, he swore that he did hold me dear

As precious eyesight and did value me

445

Above this world; adding thereto, moreover,

That he would wed me, or else die my lover.

PRINCESS     God give thee joy of him. The noble lord

Most honourably doth uphold his word.

KING

What mean you, madam? By my life, my troth,

450

I never swore this lady such an oath.

ROSALINE     By heaven you did! And to confirm it plain,

You gave me this; but take it, sir, again.

KING     My faith and this the Princess I did give.

I knew her by this jewel on her sleeve.

455

PRINCESS     Pardon me, sir, this jewel did she wear,

And Lord Berowne, I thank him, is my dear.

What! Will you have me or your pearl again?

BEROWNE     Neither of either; I remit both twain.

I see the trick on’t. Here was a consent,

460

Knowing aforehand of our merriment,

To dash it like a Christmas comedy.

Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany,

Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick

That smiles his cheek in years and knows the trick

465

To make my lady laugh when she’s disposed,

Told our intents before; which, once disclosed,

The ladies did change favours and then we,

Following the signs, wooed but the sign of she.

Now, to our perjury to add more terror,

470

We are again forsworn in will and error.

Much upon this ’tis. [to Boyet] And might not you

Forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue?

Do not you know my lady’s foot by th’ squier,

     And laugh upon the apple of her eye?

475

And stand between her back, sir, and the fire,

     Holding a trencher, jesting merrily?

You put our page out – Go, you are allowed;

Die when you will, a smock shall be your shroud.

You leer upon me, do you? There’s an eye

480

Wounds like a leaden sword.

BOYET     Full merrily

Hath this brave manage, this career, been run.

BEROWNE     Lo, he is tilting straight. Peace! I have done.

Enter COSTARD, the Clown.

     Welcome, pure wit! Thou partest a fair fray.

COSTARD     O Lord, sir, they would know

485

     Whether the three Worthies shall come in or no.

BEROWNE     What, are there but three?

COSTARD     No, sir, but it is vara fine,

For every one pursents three.

BEROWNE     And three times thrice is nine.

COSTARD

Not so, sir – under correction, sir – I hope it is not so.

You cannot beg us, sir, I can assure you, sir; we know

     what we know.

490

I hope, sir, three times thrice, sir –

BEROWNE     Is not nine?

COSTARD     Under correction, sir, we know whereuntil it doth amount.

BEROWNE     By Jove, I always took three threes for nine.

COSTARD     O Lord, sir, it were pity you should get your

495

living by reckoning, sir.

BEROWNE     How much is it?

COSTARD     O Lord, sir, the parties themselves, the actors,

sir, will show whereuntil it doth amount. For mine

own part, I am, as they say, but to parfect one man in

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one poor man – Pompion the Great, sir.

BEROWNE     Art thou one of the Worthies?

COSTARD     It pleased them to think me worthy of

Pompey the Great. For mine own part, I know not the

degree of the Worthy, but I am to stand for him.

505

BEROWNE     Go bid them prepare.

COSTARD     We will turn it finely off, sir; we will take

some care.     Exit.

KING

Berowne, they will shame us. Let them not approach.

BEROWNE

We are shame-proof, my lord; and ’tis some policy

510

To have one show worse than the King’s and his company.

KING     I say they shall not come.

PRINCESS     Nay, my good lord, let me o’errule you now.

That sport best pleases that doth least know how –

Where zeal strives to content and the contents

515

Dies in the zeal of that which it presents;

Their form confounded makes most form in mirth,

When great things labouring perish in their birth.

BEROWNE     A right description of our sport, my lord.

Enter ARMADO, the Braggart.

ARMADO     Anointed, I implore so much expense of thy

520

royal sweet breath as will utter a brace of words.

[Armado and the King talk apart.]

PRINCESS     Doth this man serve God?

BEROWNE     Why ask you?

PRINCESS ‘A speaks not like a man of God his making.

ARMADO     That is all one, my fair, sweet, honey monarch;

525

for, I protest, the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical;

too, too vain; too, too vain; but we will put it, as they say,

to fortuna de la guerra. [Gives the King a paper.] I wish

you the peace of mind, most royal couplement. Exit.

KING     Here is like to be a good presence of Worthies. He

530

presents Hector of Troy; the swain, Pompey the

Great; the parish curate, Alexander; Armado’s page,

Hercules; the pedant, Judas Maccabaeus.

And if these four Worthies in their first show thrive,

These four will change habits and present the other five.

535

BEROWNE     There is five in the first show.

KING     You are deceived: ’tis not so.

BEROWNE     The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest,

the fool and the boy.

Abate throw at novum, and the whole world again

540

Cannot pick out five such, take each one in his vein.

KING

The ship is under sail and here she comes amain.

Enter COSTARD as Pompey.

COSTARD I Pompey am –

BEROWNE     You lie, you are not he.

COSTARD I Pompey am –

BOYET     With leopard’s head on knee.

BEROWNE

Well said, old mocker. I must needs be friends with thee.

545

COSTARD I Pompey am, Pompey surnamed the Big.

DUMAINE     The ‘Great’.

COSTARD     It is ‘Great’, sir: Pompey surnamed the Great,

That oft in field, with targe and shield, did make my foe to sweat;

And travelling along this coast, I here am come by chance,

550

And lay my arms before the legs of this sweet lass of France.

If your ladyship would say, ‘Thanks, Pompey’, I had done.

PRINCESS     Great thanks, great Pompey.

COSTARD ’Tis not so much worth, but I hope I was perfect. I made a little fault in ‘Great’.

555

BEROWNE     My hat to a halfpenny, Pompey proves the best Worthy.

Enter NATHANIEL, the Curate, for Alexander.

NATHANIEL

When in the world I lived, I was the world’s commander;

By east, west, north and south, I spread my conquering might;

My scutcheon plain declares that I am Alisander.

560

BOYET

Your nose says no, you are not; for it stands too right.

BEROWNE

Your nose smells ‘no’ in this, most tender-smelling knight.

PRINCESS

The conqueror is dismayed. Proceed, good Alexander.

NATHANIEL

When in the world I lived, I was the world’s commander –

BOYET     Most true, ’tis right: you were so, Alisander.

565

BEROWNE     Pompey the Great –

COSTARD     Your servant, and Costard.

BEROWNE     Take away the conqueror; take away Alisander.

COSTARD [to Nathaniel] O sir, you have overthrown

570

Alisander the conqueror. You will be scraped out of the

painted cloth for this. Your lion, that holds his pole-axe

sitting on a close-stool, will be given to Ajax. He will be

the ninth Worthy. A conqueror, and afeard to speak?

Run away for shame, Alisander. [Nathaniel retires.]

575

There, an’t shall please you, a foolish mild man; an

honest man, look you, and soon dashed. He is a

marvellous good neighbour, faith, and a very good

bowler; but for Alisander, alas you see how ’tis – a little

o’erparted. But there are Worthies a-coming will speak

580

their mind in some other sort.

PRINCESS     Stand aside, good Pompey.

Enter HOLOFERNES, the Pedant, as Judas, and MOTH, the Boy, as Hercules.

HOLOFERNES Great Hercules is presented by this imp,

     Whose club killed Cerberus, that three-headed canus,

And when he was a babe, a child, a shrimp,

585

     Thus did he strangle serpents in his manus.

Quoniam he seemeth in minority,

Ergo I come with this apology.

Keep some state in thy exit, and vanish.

[Moth retires.]

     Judas I am –

590

DUMAINE     A Judas!

HOLOFERNES     Not Iscariot, sir.

Judas I am, ycleped Maccabaeus.

DUMAINE     Judas Maccabaeus clipped is plain Judas.

BEROWNE     A kissing traitor. How, art thou proved

595

Judas?

HOLOFERNES Judas I am –

DUMAINE     The more shame for you, Judas.

HOLOFERNES     What mean you, sir?

BOYET     To make Judas hang himself.

600

HOLOFERNES     Begin, sir; you are my elder.

BEROWNE     Well followed: Judas was hanged on an elder.

HOLOFERNES     I will not be put out of countenance.

BEROWNE     Because thou hast no face.

HOLOFERNES     What is this?

605

BOYET     A cittern-head.

DUMAINE     The head of a bodkin.

BEROWNE     A death’s face in a ring.

LONGAVILLE     The face of an old Roman coin, scarce seen.

610

BOYET     The pommel of Caesar’s falchion.

DUMAINE     The carved-bone face on a flask.

BEROWNE     Saint George’s half-cheek in a brooch.

DUMAINE     Ay, and in a brooch of lead.

BEROWNE     Ay, and worn in the cap of a tooth-drawer. And

615

now forward, for we have put thee in countenance.

HOLOFERNES     You have put me out of countenance.

BEROWNE     False! We have given thee faces.

HOLOFERNES     But you have outfaced them all.

BEROWNE     An thou wert a lion, we would do so.

620

BOYET     Therefore, as he is an ass, let him go.

And so adieu, sweet Jude. Nay, why dost thou stay?

DUMAINE     For the latter end of his name.

BEROWNE

For the ass to the Jude? Give it him. Jud-as, away!

HOLOFERNES

This is not generous, not gentle, not humble.

BOYET

A light for Monsieur Judas! It grows dark; he may

625

     stumble. [Holofernes retires.]

PRINCESS     Alas, poor Maccabaeus, how hath he been baited!

Enter ARMADO, the Braggart, as Hector.

BEROWNE     Hide thy head, Achilles! Here comes Hector in arms.

DUMAINE     Though my mocks come home by me, I will

630

now be merry.

KING     Hector was but a Trojan in respect of this.

BOYET     But is this Hector?

KING     I think Hector was not so clean-timbered.

635

LONGAVILLE     His leg is too big for Hector’s.

DUMAINE     More calf, certain.

BOYET     No, he is best endued in the small.

BEROWNE     This cannot be Hector.

DUMAINE     He’s a god or a painter, for he makes faces.

640

ARMADO The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, Gave Hector a gift –

DUMAINE     A gilt nutmeg.

BEROWNE     A lemon.

LONGAVILLE     Stuck with cloves.

645

DUMAINE     No, cloven.

ARMADO     Peace!

The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, Gave Hector a gift, the heir of Ilion;

A man so breathed that certain he would fight, yea,

650

     From morn till night, out of his pavilion.

I am that flower –

DUMAINE     That mint!

LONGAVILLE     That columbine!

ARMADO     Sweet Lord Longaville, rein thy tongue.

655

LONGAVILLE     I must rather give it the rein, for it runs against Hector.

DUMAINE Ay, and Hector’s a greyhound.

ARMADO     The sweet war-man is dead and rotten. Sweet

chucks beat not the bones of the buried. When he

660

breathed, he was a man. But I will forward with my

device. Sweet royalty, bestow on me the sense of

hearing. [Berowne steps forth.]

PRINCESS     Speak, brave Hector; we are much delighted.

ARMADO     I do adore thy sweet grace’s slipper.

665

BOYET     Loves her by the foot.

DUMAINE     He may not by the yard.

ARMADO This Hector far surmounted Hannibal;

The party is gone –

COSTARD     Fellow Hector, she is gone! She is two months

670

on her way.

ARMADO     What meanest thou?

COSTARD     Faith, unless you play the honest Trojan, the

poor wench is cast away: she’s quick, the child brags in

her belly already. ’Tis yours.

675

ARMADO     Dost thou infamonize me among potentates? Thou shalt die!

COSTARD     Then shall Hector be whipped for Jaquenetta

that is quick by him and hanged for Pompey that is

dead by him.

680

DUMAINE     Most rare Pompey!

BOYET     Renowned Pompey!

BEROWNE     Greater than ‘Great’. Great, great, great Pompey! Pompey the huge!

DUMAINE     Hector trembles.

685

BEROWNE     Pompey is moved. More Ates, more Ates!

Stir them on, stir them on!

DUMAINE     Hector will challenge him.

BEROWNE     Ay, if ‘a have no more man’s blood in his belly than will sup a flea.

690

ARMADO     By the north pole, I do challenge thee.

COSTARD     I will not fight with a pole like a northern

man. I’ll slash, I’ll do it by the sword. I bepray you, let

me borrow my arms again.

DUMAINE     Room for the incensed Worthies.

695

COSTARD     I’ll do it in my shirt.

DUMAINE     Most resolute Pompey!

MOTH     Master, let me take you a buttonhole lower. Do

you not see, Pompey is uncasing for the combat. What

mean you? You will lose your reputation.

700

ARMADO     Gentlemen and soldiers, pardon me. I will not combat in my shirt.

DUMAINE     You may not deny it. Pompey hath made the challenge.

ARMADO     Sweet bloods, I both may and will.

705

BEROWNE     What reason have you for’t?

ARMADO     The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt. I go woolward for penance.

MOTH     True, and it was enjoined him in Rome for want

of linen. Since when, I’ll be sworn he wore none but a

710

dishclout of Jaquenetta’s, and that ‘a wears next his

heart for a favour.

Enter a messenger, Monsieur MARCADÉ.

MARCADÉ God save you, madam.

PRINCESS     Welcome, Marcadé,

But that thou interruptest our merriment.

MARCADÉ I am sorry, madam, for the news I bring

715

Is heavy in my tongue. The King, your father –

PRINCESS     Dead, for my life!

MARCADÉ     Even so; my tale is told.

BEROWNE

Worthies, away! The scene begins to cloud.

ARMADO     For mine own part, I breathe free breath. I

have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of

720

discretion and I will right myself like a soldier.

Exeunt Worthies.

KING     How fares your majesty?

PRINCESS     Boyet, prepare. I will away tonight.

KING     Madam, not so. I do beseech you, stay.

PRINCESS     Prepare, I say. I thank you, gracious lords,

725

For all your fair endeavours, and entreat,

Out of a new-sad soul, that you vouchsafe

In your rich wisdom to excuse or hide

The liberal opposition of our spirits,

If over-boldly we have borne ourselves

730

In the converse of breath. Your gentleness

Was guilty of it. Farewell, worthy lord!

A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue.

Excuse me so, coming too short of thanks

For my great suit so easily obtained.

735

KING     The extreme parts of time extremely forms

All causes to the purpose of his speed

And often at his very loose decides

That which long process could not arbitrate.

And though the mourning brow of progeny

740

Forbid the smiling courtesy of love

The holy suit which fain it would convince,

Yet, since love’s argument was first on foot,

Let not the cloud of sorrow jostle it

From what it purposed; since to wail friends lost

745

Is not by much so wholesome-profitable

As to rejoice at friends but newly found.

PRINCESS

I understand you not. My griefs are double.

BEROWNE

Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief;

And by these badges understand the King.

750

For your fair sakes have we neglected time,

Played foul play with our oaths. Your beauty, ladies,

Hath much deformed us, fashioning our humours

Even to the opposed end of our intents;

And what in us hath seemed ridiculous –

755

As love is full of unbefitting strains,

All wanton as a child, skipping and vain,

Formed by the eye and therefore, like the eye,

Full of strange shapes, of habits and of forms,

Varying in subjects as the eye doth roll

760

To every varied object in his glance;

Which parti-coated presence of loose love

Put on by us, if, in your heavenly eyes,

Have misbecomed our oaths and gravities,

Those heavenly eyes that look into these faults,

765

Suggested us to make. Therefore, ladies,

Our love being yours, the error that love makes

Is likewise yours. We to ourselves prove false

By being once false, for ever to be true

To those that make us both – fair ladies, you.

770

And even that falsehood, in itself a sin,

Thus purifies itself and turns to grace.

PRINCESS     We have received your letters full of love,

Your favours, the ambassadors of love,

And in our maiden counsel rated them

775

At courtship, pleasant jest and courtesy,

As bombast and as lining to the time.

But more devout than this in our respects

Have we not been; and therefore met your loves

In their own fashion, like a merriment.

DUMAINE

Our letters, madam, showed much more than jest.

780

LONGAVILLE     So did our looks.

ROSALINE     We did not quote them so.

KING     Now, at the latest minute of the hour,

Grant us your loves.

PRINCESS     A time, methinks, too short

To make a world-without-end bargain in.

785

No, no, my lord, your grace is perjured much,

Full of dear guiltiness; and therefore this:

If for my love – as there is no such cause –

You will do aught, this shall you do for me:

Your oath I will not trust, but go with speed

790

To some forlorn and naked hermitage,

Remote from all the pleasures of the world,

There stay until the twelve celestial signs

Have brought about the annual reckoning.

If this austere insociable life

795

Change not your offer made in heat of blood;

If frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds,

Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,

But that it bear this trial and last love;

Then, at the expiration of the year,

800

Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts,

And, by this virgin palm now kissing thine,

I will be thine. And, till that instance, shut

My woeful self up in a mourning house,

Raining the tears of lamentation

805

For the remembrance of my father’s death.

If this thou do deny, let our hands part,

Neither entitled in the other’s heart.

KING     If this, or more than this, I would deny,

     To flatter up these powers of mine with rest,

810

The sudden hand of death close up mine eye!

     Hence, hermit then – my heart is in thy breast.

[They converse apart.]

DUMAINE     But what to me, my love? But what to me? A wife?

KATHERINE     A beard, fair health and honesty;

815

With threefold love, I wish you all these three.

DUMAINE     O, shall I say, ‘I thank you, gentle wife’?

KATHERINE     Not so, my lord. A twelvemonth and a day

I’ll mark no words that smooth-faced wooers say.

Come when the King doth to my lady come;

820

Then, if I have much love, I’ll give you some.

DUMAINE     I’ll serve thee true and faithfully till then.

KATHERINE     Yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again.

[They converse apart.]

LONGAVILLE     What says Maria?

MARIA     At the twelvemonth’s end

I’ll change my black gown for a faithful friend.

825

LONGAVILLE

I’ll stay with patience, but the time is long.

MARIA     The liker you; few taller are so young.

[They converse apart.]

BEROWNE     Studies, my lady? Mistress, look on me.

Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,

What humble suit attends thy answer there.

830

Impose some service on me for thy love.

ROSALINE     Oft have I heard of you, my lord Berowne,

Before I saw you, and the world’s large tongue

Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks,

Full of comparisons and wounding flouts,

835

Which you on all estates will execute

That lie within the mercy of your wit.

To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain

And therewithal to win me, if you please –

Without the which I am not to be won –

840

You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day

Visit the speechless sick and still converse

With groaning wretches; and your task shall be

With all the fierce endeavour of your wit

To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

BEROWNE

845

To move wild laughter in the throat of death?

It cannot be, it is impossible.

Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

ROSALINE     Why, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit,

Whose influence is begot of that loose grace

850

Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools.

A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it, never in the tongue

Of him that makes it. Then, if sickly ears,

Deafed with the clamours of their own dear groans,

855

Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,

And I will have you and that fault withal;

But, if they will not, throw away that spirit,

And I shall find you empty of that fault,

Right joyful of your reformation.

BEROWNE     A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall,

860

I’ll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.

PRINCESS [to the King]

Ay, sweet my lord, and so I take my leave.

KING     No, madam, we will bring you on your way.

BEROWNE     Our wooing doth not end like an old play:

865

Jack hath not Jill. These ladies’ courtesy

Might well have made our sport a comedy.

KING     Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day,

And then ’twill end.

BEROWNE     That’s too long for a play.

Enter ARMADO, the Braggart.

ARMADO     Sweet majesty, vouchsafe me –

870

PRINCESS     Was not that Hector?

DUMAINE     The worthy knight of Troy.

ARMADO     I will kiss thy royal finger and take leave. I am

a votary; I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the

plough for her sweet love three year. But, most

875

esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the

two learned men have compiled, in praise of the owl

and the cuckoo? It should have followed in the end of

our show.

KING     Call them forth quickly; we will do so.

880

ARMADO     Holla! Approach.

Enter all.

This side is Hiems, winter; this Ver, the spring: the

one maintained by the owl, th’other by the cuckoo.

Ver, begin.

The Song.

VER     When daisies pied and violets blue

885

     And lady-smocks all silver-white

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

     Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then on every tree

Mocks married men; for thus sings he:

890

     ‘Cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo!’ O, word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear.

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws

     And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks,

895

When turtles tread and rooks and daws,

     And maidens bleach their summer smocks,

     The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men; for thus sings he:

     ‘Cuckoo!

900

Cuckoo, cuckoo!’ O, word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear.

HIEMS     When icicles hang by the wall

     And Dick the shepherd blows his nail

And Tom bears logs into the hall

905

     And milk comes frozen home in pail,

When blood is nipped and ways be foul,

     Then nightly sings the staring owl:

     ‘Tu-whit, Tu-whoo!’

A merry note,

910

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow

     And coughing drowns the parson’s saw

And birds sit brooding in the snow

     And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,

915

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,

Then nightly sings the staring owl:

     ‘Tu-whit, Tu-whoo!’

A merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

920

ARMADO     The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You that way, we this way.     Exeunt.

Macbeth

Macbeth was first published as the sixth of the tragedies in the First Folio in 1623, but it is generally thought to have been written around 1606, quite early in the reign of James VI of Scotland, who succeeded to the English throne in 1603, becoming James I of England. Also in 1603, James became the patron of Shakespeare’s acting company, who changed their name from the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to the King’s Men. In addition to its Scottish setting, the play has further links with the King, who traced his ancestry to Macbeth’s fellow-thane Banquo, prided himself on his ability to cure the King’s evil (as the English King is said to do in 4.3), and took an interest in witchcraft, having published a book on the topic, the Daemonology, in 1599. Macbeth seems to have been written after Hamlet, Othello and King Lear, but before Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. Its concern with the murder of a king links it with history plays like Richard II as well as with Hamlet.

The text that was printed in the Folio is unusually short compared with the other tragedies and may have been cut for performance at some point between 1606 and 1623. It also contains some passages which have long been held to be interpolations from another hand: the passages in question are 3.5 and parts of 4.1. These passages involve Hecate, Queen of the Witches, who does not appear elsewhere, and they are written mainly in octosyllabic couplets rather than in iambic pentameter. They call for the performance of two songs: just the opening words are cited but the songs appear in full in a play called The Witch by Thomas Middleton, who is thought by many scholars to have been responsible for the interpolations. Some scholars today credit him as the ’adapter’ of Macbeth.

Shakespeare’s principal source was the Scottish section of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587), which he had used for his English history plays. In this case the accounts of the reigns of Duncan and Macbeth (covering the years 1034 to 1057) were used, together with an account of an earlier king, Duff, who was killed at Forres by his thane Donwald and his wife. Shakespeare compresses the time-scale of events and somewhat idealizes Duncan as a king. He also idealizes Banquo, who is Macbeth’s co-conspirator in Holinshed; this is not surprising, since James I traced his ancestry to Banquo and Fleance. He follows up his experiment with the introduction of a comic character - the Fool - in King Lear by inventing the Porter, whose role derives ultimately from the medieval mystery plays which dramatized Christ’s descent into Hell and featured comic devils as gatekeepers. The jokes about ’equivocation’ in the Porter’s monologue in 2.3 may be a topical reference to the post- Gunpowder Plot trial of the Jesuit Henry Garnet, who famously equivocated under interrogation.

The play has always been popular on the stage, though at the same time it has been regarded as unlucky in the theatre, where it is never named but always referred to superstitiously as ’the Scottish play’. William Davenant rewrote it in quasi-operatic mode in 1666 but David Garrick restored much of Shakespeare’s text (though not the Porter) in 1744. Lady Macbeth is one of the best roles in Shakespearean tragedy for a mature actress, and many have triumphed in the part, from Sarah Siddons to Ellen Terry and Judi Dench. Nineteenthcentury productions were often burdened with elaborately ’authentic’ scenery and costumes, while simpler styles of staging in the twentieth century often served to emphasize the claustrophobic intensity of the play and substituted psychological for pictorial realism. Modern productions and films use special effects and lighting (or rather darkness) to create the atmosphere that must have been evoked by the language and sound effects alone in early daylight performances at the Globe.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

DUNCAN

King of Scotland

his sons

generals of the King’s army

noblemen of Scotland

FLEANCE

son to Banquo

SIWARD

Earl of Northumberland, general of the English forces

YOUNG SIWARD

his son

SEYTON

an officer attending on Macbeth

BOY

son to Macduff

English DOCTOR

Scottish DOCTOR

SOLDIER

PORTER

OLD MAN

LADY MACBETH

LADY MACDUFF

GENTLEWOMAN

attending on Lady Macbeth

HECATE

THREE WITCHES

Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Murderers, Witches, Attendants and Messengers

The Ghost of Banquo and other Apparitions

1.1 Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches.

1 WITCH     When shall we three meet again?

In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

2 WITCH     When the hurlyburly’s done,

When the battle’s lost and won.

3 WITCH     That will be ere the set of sun.

5

1 WITCH     Where the place?

2 WITCH     Upon the heath.

3 WITCH     There to meet with Macbeth.

1 WITCH     I come, Graymalkin!

2 WITCH     Paddock calls.

3 WITCH     Anon!

10

ALL     Fair is foul, and foul is fair:

Hover through the fog and filthy air.     Exeunt.

1.2 Alarum within. Enter KING DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENOX, with attendants, meeting a bleeding Captain.

DUNCAN     What bloody man is that? He can report,

As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt

The newest state.

MALCOLM     This is the Sergeant,

Who, like a good and hardy soldier, fought

‘Gainst my captivity. – Hail, brave friend!

5

Say to the King the knowledge of the broil,

As thou didst leave it.

CAPTAIN     Doubtful it stood;

As two spent swimmers, that do cling together

And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald

(Worthy to be a rebel, for to that

10

The multiplying villainies of nature

Do swarm upon him) from the western isles

Of Kernes and Gallowglasses is supplied;

And Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,

Show’d like a rebel’s whore: but all’s too weak;

15

For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name),

Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish’d steel,

Which smok’d with bloody execution,

Like Valour’s minion, carv’d out his passage,

Till he fac’d the slave;

20

Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,

Till he unseam’d him from the nave to th’ chops,

And fix’d his head upon our battlements.

DUNCAN     O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!

CAPTAIN     As whence the sun ‘gins his reflection,

25

Shipwracking storms and direful thunders break,

So from that spring, whence comfort seem’d to come,

Discomfort swells. Mark, King of Scotland, mark:

No sooner justice had, with valour arm’d,

Compell’d these skipping Kernes to trust their heels,

30

But the Norweyan Lord, surveying vantage,

With furbish’d arms, and new supplies of men,

Began a fresh assault.

DUNCAN     Dismay’d not this

Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?

CAPTAIN     Yes;

As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion.

35

If I say sooth, I must report they were

As cannons overcharg’d with double cracks;

So they

Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe:

Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,

40

Or memorize another Golgotha,

I cannot tell –

But I am faint, my gashes cry for help.

DUNCAN     

So well thy words become thee, as thy wounds:

They smack of honour both. – Go, get him surgeons.

45

Exit Captain, attended.

Enter ROSSE and ANGUS.

Who comes here?

MALCOLM     The worthy Thane of Rosse.

LENOX     

What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look

That seems to speak things strange.

ROSSE     God save the King!

DUNCAN     Whence cam’st thou, worthy Thane?

ROSSE     From Fife, great King,

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky,

50

And fan our people cold. Norway himself,

With terrible numbers,

Assisted by that most disloyal traitor,

The Thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict;

Till that Bellona’s bridegroom, lapp’d in proof,

55

Confronted him with self-comparisons,

Point against point, rebellious arm ‘gainst arm,

Curbing his lavish spirit: and, to conclude,

The victory fell on us; –

DUNCAN     Great happiness!

ROSSE     That now

60

Sweno, the Norways’ King, craves composition;

Nor would we deign him burial of his men

Till he disbursed at Saint Colme’s Inch

Ten thousand dollars to our general use.

DUNCAN     No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive

65

Our bosom interest. – Go pronounce his present death,

And with his former title greet Macbeth.

ROSSE     I’ll see it done.

DUNCAN     What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won.

Exeunt.

1.3 Thunder. Enter the three Witches.

1 WITCH     Where hast thou been, Sister?

2 WITCH     Killing swine.

3 WITCH     Sister, where thou?

1 WITCH     A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap,

And mounch’d, and mounch’d, and mounch’d: ‘Give

     me,’ quoth I: –

5

‘Aroynt thee, witch!’ the rump-fed ronyon cries.

Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’th’ Tiger:

     But in a sieve I’ll thither sail,

     And like a rat without a tail;

     I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.

10

2 WITCH     I’ll give thee a wind.

1 WITCH     Th’art kind.

3 WITCH     And I another.

1 WITCH     I myself have all the other;

     And the very ports they blow,

15

     All the quarters that they know

     I’th’ shipman’s card.

     I’ll drain him dry as hay:

     Sleep shall neither night nor day

     Hang upon his penthouse lid;

20

     He shall live a man forbid.

     Weary sev’n-nights nine times nine,

     Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine:

     Though his bark cannot be lost,

     Yet it shall be tempest-tost.

25

     Look what I have.

2 WITCH     Show me, show me.

1 WITCH     Here I have a pilot’s thumb,

     Wrack’d, as homeward he did come.

[Drum within.]

3 WITCH     A drum! a drum!

30

     Macbeth doth come.

ALL     The Weïrd Sisters, hand in hand,

     Posters of the sea and land,

     Thus do go about, about:

     Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,

35

     And thrice again, to make up nine

     Peace! – the charm’s wound up.

Enter MACBETH and BANQUO.

MACBETH     So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

BANQUO     

How far is’t call’d to Forres? – What are these,

So wither’d and so wild in their attire,

40

That look not like th’inhabitants o’th’earth,

And yet are on’t? Live you? or are you aught

That man may question? You seem to understand me,

By each at once her choppy finger laying

Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,

45

And yet your beards forbid me to interpret

That you are so.

MACBETH     Speak, if you can: – what are you?

1 WITCH

All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!

2 WITCH

All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!

3 WITCH

All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be King hereafter.

50

BANQUO     Good Sir, why do you start, and seem to fear

Things that do sound so fair? – I’th’ name of truth,

Are ye fantastical, or that indeed

Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner

You greet with present grace, and great prediction

55

Of noble having, and of royal hope,

That he seems rapt withal: to me you speak not.

If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow, and which will not,

Speak then to me, who neither beg, nor fear,

60

Your favours nor your hate.

1 WITCH     Hail!

2 WITCH     Hail!

3 WITCH     Hail!

1 WITCH     Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.

65

2 WITCH     Not so happy, yet much happier.

3 WITCH     Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none:

So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!

1 WITCH     Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!

MACBETH     Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more.

70

By Sinel’s death I know I am Thane of Glamis;

But how of Cawdor? the Thane of Cawdor lives,

A prosperous gentleman; and to be King

Stands not within the prospect of belief,

No more than to be Cawdor. Say from whence

75

You owe this strange intelligence? or why

Upon this blasted heath you stop our way

With such prophetic greeting? – Speak, I charge you.

Witches vanish.

BANQUO     The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,

And these are of them. – Whither are they vanish’d?

80

MACBETH     Into the air; and what seem’d corporal,

Melted as breath into the wind. Would they had stay’d!

BANQUO     Were such things here, as we do speak about,

Or have we eaten on the insane root,

That takes the reason prisoner?

85

MACBETH     Your children shall be kings.

BANQUO     You shall be King.

MACBETH     And Thane of Cawdor too; went it not so?

BANQUO     To th’ selfsame tune, and words. Who’s here?

Enter ROSSE and ANGUS.

ROSSE     The King hath happily receiv’d, Macbeth,

The news of thy success; and when he reads

90

Thy personal venture in the rebels’ fight,

His wonders and his praises do contend,

Which should be thine, or his: silenc’d with that,

In viewing o’er the rest o’th’ selfsame day,

He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks,

95

Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make,

Strange images of death. As thick as hail,

Came post with post; and every one did bear

Thy praises in his kingdom’s great defence,

And pour’d them down before him.

ANGUS     We are sent,

100

To give thee from our royal master thanks;

Only to herald thee into his sight,

Not pay thee.

ROSSE     And, for an earnest of a greater honour,

He bade me, from him, call thee Thane of Cawdor:

105

In which addition, hail, most worthy Thane,

For it is thine.

BANQUO     What! can the Devil speak true?

MACBETH

The Thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me

In borrow’d robes?

ANGUS     Who was Thane, lives yet;

But under heavy judgment bears that life

110

Which he deserves to lose. Whether he was combin’d

With those of Norway, or did line the rebel

With hidden help and vantage, or that with both

He labour’d in his country’s wrack, I know not;

But treasons capital, confess’d and prov’d,

115

Have overthrown him.

MACBETH     [aside] Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor:

The greatest is behind.

[to Rosse and Angus] Thanks for your pains. –

[to Banquo] Do you not hope your children shall be kings,

When those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me

Promis’d no less to them?

BANQUO     That, trusted home,

120

Mighty yet enkindle you unto the crown,

Besides the Thane of Cawdor. But ’tis strange:

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

The instruments of Darkness tell us truths;

Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s

125

In deepest consequence. –

Cousins, a word, I pray you.

MACBETH [aside]     Two truths are told,

As happy prologues to the swelling act

Of the imperial theme. – I thank you, gentlemen. –

[aside] This supernatural soliciting

130

Cannot be ill; cannot be good: –

If ill, why hath it given me earnest of success,

Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor:

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion

Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,

135

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,

Against the use of nature? Present fears

Are less than horrible imaginings.

My thought, whose murther yet is but fantastical,

Shakes so my single state of man,

140

That function is smother’d in surmise,

And nothing is, but what is not.

BANQUO     Look, how our partner’s rapt.

MACBETH [aside]     If Chance will have me King, why,

Chance may crown me,

Without my stir.

BANQUO     New honours come upon him,

145

Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould,

But with the aid of use.

MACBETH [aside]     Come what come may,

Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

BANQUO     Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure.

MACBETH

Give me your favour: my dull brain was wrought

150

With things forgotten. Kind gentlemen, your pains

Are register’d where every day I turn

The leaf to read them. – Let us toward the King. –

[to Banquo] Think upon what hath chanc’d; and at more time,

The Interim having weigh’d it, let us speak

155

Our free hearts each to other.

BANQUO     Very gladly.

MACBETH     Till then, enough. – Come, friends. Exeunt.

1.4 Flourish. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENOX and attendants.

DUNCAN     Is execution done on Cawdor? Or not

Those in commission yet return’d?

MALCOLM     My Liege,

They are not yet come back; but I have spoke

With one that saw him die: who did report,

That very frankly he confess’d his treasons,

5

Implor’d your Highness’ pardon, and set forth

A deep repentance. Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it: he died

As one that had been studied in his death,

To throw away the dearest thing he ow’d,

10

As ’twere a careless trifle.

DUNCAN     There’s no art

To find the mind’s construction in the face:

He was a gentleman on whom I built

An absolute trust –

Enter MACBETH, BANQUO, ROSSE and ANGUS.

     O worthiest cousin!

The sin of my ingratitude even now

15

Was heavy on me. Thou art so far before,

That swiftest wing of recompense is slow

To overtake thee: would thou hadst less deserv’d,

That the proportion both of thanks and payment

Might have been mine! only I have left to say,

20

More is thy due than more than all can pay.

MACBETH     The service and the loyalty I owe,

In doing it, pays itself. Your Highness’ part

Is to receive our duties: and our duties

Are to your throne and state, children and servants;

25

Which do but what they should, by doing everything

Safe toward your love and honour.

DUNCAN     Welcome hither:

I have begun to plant thee, and will labour

To make thee full of growing. – Noble Banquo,

That hast no less deserv’d, nor must be known

30

No less to have done so, let me infold thee,

And hold thee to my heart.

BANQUO     There if I grow,

The harvest is your own.

DUNCAN     My plenteous joys,

Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves

In drops of sorrow. – Sons, kinsmen, Thanes,

35

And you whose places are the nearest, know,

We will establish our estate upon

Our eldest, Malcolm; whom we name hereafter

The Prince of Cumberland: which honour must

Not unaccompanied invest him only,

40

But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine

On all deservers. – From hence to Inverness,

And bind us further to you.

MACBETH     The rest is labour, which is not us’d for you:

I’ll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful

45

The hearing of my wife with your approach;

So, humbly take my leave.

DUNCAN     My worthy Cawdor!

MACBETH [aside]

The Prince of Cumberland! – That is a step

On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap,

For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires!

50

Let not light see my black and deep desires;

The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,

Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.     Exit.

DUNCAN     True, worthy Banquo: he is full so valiant,

And in his commendations I am fed;

55

It is a banquet to me. Let’s after him,

Whose care is gone before to bid us welcome:

It is a peerless kinsman.     Flourish. Exeunt.

1.5 Enter LADY MACBETH, reading a letter.

LADY MACBETH     They met me in the day of success; and I

have learn’d by the perfect’st report, they have more in

them than mortal knowledge. When I burn’d in desire to

question them further, they made themselves air, into

which they vanish’d. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of

5

it, came missives from the King, who all-hail’d me,

‘Thane of Cawdor’; by which title, before, these Weïrd

Sisters saluted me, and referr’d me to the coming on of

time, with ‘Hail, King that shalt be!’ This have I thought

good to deliver thee (my dearest partner of greatness) that

10

thou might’st not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being

ignorant of what greatness is promis’d thee. Lay it to thy

heart, and farewell.

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be

What thou art promis’d. – Yet do I fear thy nature:

15

It is too full o’th’ milk of human kindness,

To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great;

Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly,

That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,

20

And yet wouldst wrongly win; thou’dst have, great Glamis,

That which cries, ‘Thus thou must do,’ if thou have it;

And that which rather thou dost fear to do,

Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither,

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,

25

And chastise with the valour of my tongue

All that impedes thee from the golden round,

Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem

To have thee crown’d withal.

Enter a Messenger.

     What is your tidings?

MESSENGER     The King comes here to-night.

LADY MACBETH     Thou’rt mad to say it.

30

Is not thy master with him? who, were’t so,

Would have inform’d for preparation.

MESSENGER

So please you, it is true: our Thane is coming;

One of my fellows had the speed of him,

Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more

35

Than would make up his message.

LADY MACBETH     Give him tending:

He brings great news.     Exit Messenger.

     The raven himself is hoarse,

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements. Come, you Spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

40

And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full

Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,

Stop up th’access and passage to remorse;

That no compunctious visitings of Nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

45

Th’effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murth’ring ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on Nature’s mischief! Come, thick Night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell,

50

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry, ‘Hold, hold!’

Enter MACBETH

     Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!

Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!

Thy letters have transported me beyond

55

This ignorant present, and I feel now

The future in the instant.

MACBETH     My dearest love,

Duncan comes here to-night.

LADY MACBETH     And when goes hence?

MACBETH     To-morrow, as he purposes.

LADY MACBETH     O! never

Shall sun that morrow see!

60

Your face, my Thane, is as a book, where men

May read strange matters. To beguile the time,

Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,

Your hand, your tongue: look like th’innocent flower,

But be the serpent under’t. He that’s coming

65

Must be provided for; and you shall put

This night’s great business into my dispatch;

Which shall to all our nights and days to come

Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

MACBETH     We will speak further.

LADY MACBETH     Only look up clear;

70

To alter favour ever is to fear.

Leave all the rest to me.     Exeunt.

1.6 Hautboys and torches. Enter DUNCAN,
MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, BANQUO, LENOX,
MACDUFF, ROSSE, ANGUS and attendants.

DUNCAN     This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air

Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself

Unto our gentle senses.

BANQUO     This guest of summer,

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,

By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath

5

Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,

Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird

Hath made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle:

Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ’d

The air is delicate.

Enter LADY MACBETH.

DUNCAN     See, see! our honour’d hostess. –

10

The love that follows us sometime is our trouble,

Which still we thank as love. Herein I teach you,

How you shall bid God ‘ild us for your pains,

And thank us for your trouble.

LADY MACBETH     All our service,

In every point twice done, and then done double,

15

Were poor and single business, to contend

Against those honours deep and broad, wherewith

Your Majesty loads our house: for those of old,

And the late dignities heap’d up to them,

We rest your hermits.

DUNCAN     Where’s the Thane of Cawdor?

20

We cours’d him at the heels, and had a purpose

To be his purveyor: but he rides well;

And his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp him

To his home before us. Fair and noble hostess,

We are your guest to-night.

LADY MACBETH     Your servants ever

25

Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt,

To make their audit at your Highness’ pleasure,

Still to return your own.

DUNCAN     Give me your hand;

Conduct me to mine host: we love him highly,

And shall continue our graces towards him.

30

By your leave, hostess. Exeunt.

1.7 Hautboys and torches. Enter, and pass over the
stage, a sewer and divers servants with dishes
and service. Then enter MACBETH.

MACBETH

If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well

It were done quickly: if th’assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch

With his surcease success; that but this blow

Might be the be-all and the end-all – here,

5

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

We’d jump the life to come. – But in these cases,

We still have judgment here; that we but teach

Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return

To plague th’inventor: this even-handed Justice

10

Commends th’ingredience of our poison’d chalice

To our own lips. He’s here in double trust:

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,

Who should against his murtherer shut the door,

15

Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

So clear in his great office, that his virtues

Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongu’d, against

The deep damnation of his taking-off;

20

And Pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven’s Cherubins, hors’d

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind. – I have no spur

25

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself

And falls on th’other –

Enter LADY MACBETH

     How now! what news?

LADY MACBETH     

He has almost supp’d. Why have you left the chamber?

MACBETH     Hath he ask’d for me?

LADY MACBETH     Know you not, he has?

30

MACBETH     We will proceed no further in this business:

He hath honour’d me of late; and I have bought

Golden opinions from all sorts of people,

Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,

Not cast aside so soon.

LADY MACBETH     Was the hope drunk,

35

Wherein you dress’d yourself? Hath it slept since?

And wakes it now, to look so green and pale

At what it did so freely? From this time

Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard

To be the same in thine own act and valour,

40

As thou art in desire? Would’st thou have that

Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life,

And live a coward in thine own esteem,

Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’

Like the poor cat i’th’adage?

MACBETH     Pr’ythee, peace.

45

I dare do all that may become a man;

Who dares do more, is none.

LADY MACBETH     What beast was’t then,

That made you break this enterprise to me?

When you durst do it, then you were a man;

And, to be more than what you were, you would

50

Be so much more the man. Nor time, nor place,

Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:

They have made themselves, and that their fitness now

Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know

How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:

55

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn

As you have done to this.

MACBETH     If we should fail?

LADY MACBETH     We fail?

60

But screw your courage to the sticking-place,

And we’ll not fail. When Duncan is asleep

(Whereto the rather shall his day’s hard journey

Soundly invite him), his two chamberlains

Will I with wine and wassail so convince,

65

That memory, the warder of the brain,

Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason

A limbeck only: when in swinish sleep

Their drenched natures lie, as in a death,

What cannot you and I perform upon

70

Th’unguarded Duncan? what not put upon

His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt

Of our great quell?

MACBETH     Bring forth men-children only!

For thy undaunted mettle should compose

Nothing but males. Will it not be receiv’d,

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When we have mark’d with blood those sleepy two

Of his own chamber, and us’d their very daggers,

That they have done’t?

LADY MACBETH     Who dares receive it other,

As we shall make our griefs and clamour roar

Upon his death?

MACBETH     I am settled, and bend up

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Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.

Away, and mock the time with fairest show:

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

Exeunt.

2.1 Enter BANQUO and FLEANCE,
with a torch before him.

BANQUO     How goes the night, boy?

FLEANCE     

The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.

BANQUO     And she goes down at twelve.

FLEANCE     I take’t, ’tis later, Sir.

BANQUO     

Hold, take my sword. – There’s husbandry in heaven;

Their candles are all out. – Take thee that too.

5

A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,

And yet I would not sleep: merciful Powers!

Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature

Gives way to in repose! – Give me my sword.

Enter MACBETH, and a servant with a torch.

Who’s there?

10

MACBETH     A friend.

BANQUO     What, Sir! not yet at rest? The King’s a-bed:

He hath been in unusual pleasure, and

Sent forth great largess to your offices.

This diamond he greets your wife withal,

15

By the name of most kind hostess, and shut up

In measureless content.

MACBETH     Being unprepar’d,

Our will became the servant to defect,

Which else should free have wrought.

BANQUO     All’s well.

I dreamt last night of the three Weïrd Sisters:

20

To you they have show’d some truth.

MACBETH     I think not of them:

Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,

We would spend it in some words upon that business,

If you would grant the time.

BANQUO     At your kind’st leisure.

MACBETH     If you shall cleave to my consent, when ’tis,

25

It shall make honour for you.

BANQUO     So I lose none

In seeking to augment it, but still keep

My bosom franchis’d, and allegiance clear,

I shall be counsell’d.

MACBETH     Good repose, the while!

BANQUO     Thanks, Sir: the like to you.

30

Exeunt Banquo and Fleance.

MACBETH     

Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,

She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed. –

Exit servant.

Is this a dagger, which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: –

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

35

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

40

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going;

And such an instrument I was to use. –

Mine eyes are made the fools o’th’ other senses,

Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still;

45

And on thy blade, and dudgeon, gouts of blood,

Which was not so before. – There’s no such thing.

It is the bloody business which informs

Thus to mine eyes. – Now o’er the one half-world

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

50

The curtain’d sleep: Witchcraft celebrates

Pale Hecate’s off ‘rings; and wither’d Murther,

Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design

55

Moves like a ghost. – Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

Thy very stones prate of my where-about,

And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it. – Whiles I threat, he lives:

60

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

[A bell rings.]

I go, and it is done: the bell invites me.

Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell

That summons thee to Heaven, or to Hell.     Exit.

2.2 Enter LADY MACBETH.

LADY MACBETH     

That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold:

What hath quench’d them hath given me fire. –

     Hark! – Peace!

It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman,

Which gives the stern’st good-night. He is about it.

The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms

5

Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg’d their possets,

That Death and Nature do contend about them,

Whether they live, or die.

MACBETH [within]     Who’s there? – what, ho!

LADY MACBETH     Alack! I am afraid they have awak’d,

And ’tis not done: – th’attempt and not the deed

10

Confounds us. – Hark! – I laid their daggers ready;

He could not miss ‘em. – Had he not resembled

My father as he slept, I had done’t. – My husband!

Enter MACBETH.

MACBETH     

I have done the deed. – Didst thou not hear a noise?

LADY MACBETH     

I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry.

15

Did not you speak?

MACBETH     When?

LADY MACBETH     Now.

MACBETH     As I descended?

LADY MACBETH     Ay.

MACBETH     Hark!

Who lies i’th’ second chamber?

LADY MACBETH     Donalbain.

MACBETH     This is a sorry sight.

20

LADY MACBETH     A foolish thought to say a sorry sight.

MACBETH     

There’s one did laugh in’s sleep, and one cried, ‘Murther!’

That they did wake each other: I stood and heard them;

But they did say their prayers, and address’d them

Again to sleep.

LADY MACBETH     There are two lodg’d together.

25

MACBETH     

One cried, ‘God bless us!’ and, ‘Amen,’ the other,

As they had seen me with these hangman’s hands.

List’ning their fear, I could not say, ‘Amen,’

When they did say, ‘God bless us.’

LADY MACBETH     Consider it not so deeply.

MACBETH     

But wherefore could not I pronounce ‘Amen’?

30

I had most need of blessing, and ‘Amen’

Stuck in my throat.

LADY MACBETH     These deeds must not be thought

After these ways: so, it will make us mad.

MACBETH     

Methought, I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!

Macbeth does murther Sleep,’ – the innocent Sleep;

35

Sleep, that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great Nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast; –

LADY MACBETH     What do you mean?

MACBETH     

Still it cried, ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house:

40

‘Glamis hath murther’d Sleep, and therefore Cawdor

Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!’

LADY MACBETH     

Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy Thane,

You do unbend your noble strength, to think

So brainsickly of things. Go, get some water,

45

And wash this filthy witness from your hand. –

Why did you bring these daggers from the place?

They must lie there: go, carry them, and smear

The sleepy grooms with blood.

MACBETH     I’ll go no more:

I am afraid to think what I have done;

50

Look on’t again I dare not.

LADY MACBETH     Infirm of purpose!

Give me the daggers. The sleeping, and the dead,

Are but as pictures; ’tis the eye of childhood

That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,

I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal,

55

For it must seem their guilt.     Exit.

[Knocking within.]

MACBETH     Whence is that knocking? –

How is’t with me, when every noise appals me?

What hands are here? Ha! they pluck out mine eyes.

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

60

The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green one red.

Re-enter LADY MACBETH.

LADY MACBETH     

My hands are of your colour; but I shame

To wear a heart so white. [knock] I hear a knocking

At the south entry: – retire we to our chamber.

65

A little water clears us of this deed:

How easy is it then! Your constancy

Hath left you unattended. –

[knock]     Hark! more knocking.

Get on your night-gown, lest occasion call us,

And show us to be watchers. – Be not lost

70

So poorly in your thoughts.

MACBETH     

To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself.

[knock]

Wake Duncan with thy knocking: I would thou

     couldst!     Exeunt.

2.3 Enter a Porter.

[knocking within]

PORTER     Here’s a knocking, indeed! If a man were Porter

of Hell Gate, he should have old turning the key.

[knocking] Knock, knock, knock. Who’s there, i’th’

name of Belzebub? – Here’s a farmer, that hang’d

himself on th’ expectation of plenty: come in, time-

5

pleaser; have napkins enow about you; here you’ll

sweat for’t. [knocking] Knock, knock. Who’s there,

i’th’ other devil’s name? – Faith, here’s an equivocator,

that could swear in both the scales against either scale;

who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet

10

could not equivocate to heaven: O! come in,

equivocator. [knocking] Knock, knock, knock. Who’s

there? – Faith, here’s an English tailor come hither for

stealing out of a French hose: come in, tailor; here you

may roast your goose. [knocking] Knock, knock. Never

15

at quiet! What are you? – But this place is too cold for

Hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to

have let in some of all professions, that go the primrose

way to th’everlasting bonfire. [knocking] Anon, anon:

I pray you, remember the Porter. [Opens the gate.]

20

Enter MACDUFF and LENOX.

MACDUFF     Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed,

That you do lie so late?

PORTER     Faith, Sir, we were carousing till the second

cock; and drink, Sir, is a great provoker of three

things.

25

MACDUFF     What three things does drink especially

provoke?

PORTER     Marry, Sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.

Lechery, Sir, it provokes, and unprovokes: it provokes

the desire, but it takes away the performance.

30

Therefore, much drink may be said to be an

equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars

him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades

him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not

stand to: in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep,

35

and, giving him the lie, leaves him.

MACDUFF     I believe, drink gave thee the lie last night.

PORTER     That it did, Sir, i’the very throat on me: but I

requited him for his lie; and (I think) being too strong

for him, though he took up my legs sometime, yet I

40

made a shift to cast him.

MACDUFF     Is thy master stirring?

Enter MACBETH.

Our knocking has awak’d him; here he comes.

LENOX Good morrow, noble Sir!

MACBETH     Good morrow, both!

MACDUFF     Is the King stirring, worthy Thane?

MACBETH     Not yet.

45

MACDUFF     He did command me to call timely on him:

I have almost slipp’d the hour.

MACBETH     I’ll bring you to him.

MACDUFF     I know, this is a joyful trouble to you;

But yet ’tis one.

MACBETH     The labour we delight in physics pain.

50

This is the door.

MACDUFF     I’ll make so bold to call,

For ’tis my limited service.     Exit.

LENOX     Goes the King hence to-day?

MACBETH     He does: – he did appoint so.

LENOX     The night has been unruly: where we lay,

Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,

55

Lamentings heard i’th’ air; strange screams of death,

And, prophesying with accents terrible

Of dire combustion, and confus’d events,

New hatch’d to th’ woeful time, the obscure bird

Clamour’d the livelong night: some say, the earth

60

Was feverous, and did shake.

MACBETH     ’Twas a rough night.

LENOX     My young remembrance cannot parallel A fellow to it.

Re-enter MACDUFF.

MACDUFF     O horror! horror! horror!

Tongue nor heart cannot conceive, nor name thee!

MACBETH, LENOX What’s the matter?

65

MACDUFF     Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!

Most sacrilegious Murther hath broke ope

The Lord’s anointed Temple, and stole thence

The life o’th’ building!

MACBETH     What is’t you say? the life?

LENOX     Mean you his Majesty?

MACDUFF     

Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight

70

With a new Gorgon. – Do not bid me speak:

See, and then speak yourselves. –

     Exeunt Macbeth and Lenox.

     Awake! awake! –

Ring the alarum-bell. – Murther, and treason!

Banquo, and Donalbain! Malcolm, awake!

Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit,

75

And look on death itself! – up, up, and see

The great doom’s image! – Malcolm! Banquo!

As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites,

To countenance this horror!      [Bell rings.]

Enter LADY MACBETH.

LADY MACBETH     What’s the business,

That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley

80

The sleepers of the house? speak, speak!

MACDUFF     O gentle lady,

’Tis not for you to hear what I can speak:

The repetition, in a woman’s ear,

Would murther as it fell.

Enter BANQUO.

O Banquo! Banquo!

Our royal master’s murther’d!

LADY MACBETH     Woe, alas!

85

What! in our house?

BANQUO     Too cruel, anywhere.

Dear Duff, I pr’ythee, contradict thyself,

And say, it is not so.

Re-enter MACBETH and LENOX.

MACBETH     Had I but died an hour before this chance,

I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant,

90

There’s nothing serious in mortality;

All is but toys: renown, and grace, is dead;

The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees

Is left this vault to brag of.

Enter MALCOLM and DONALBAIN.

DONALBAIN     What is amiss?

MACBETH     You are, and do not know’t:

95

The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood

Is stopp’d; the very source of it is stopp’d.

MACDUFF     Your royal father’s murther’d.

MALCOLM     O! by whom?

LENOX     Those of his chamber, as it seem’d, had done’t:

Their hands and faces were all badg’d with blood;

100

So were their daggers, which, unwip’d, we found

Upon their pillows: they star’d, and were distracted;

No man’s life was to be trusted with them.

MACBETH     O! yet I do repent me of my fury,

That I did kill them.

MACDUFF     Wherefore did you so?

105

MACBETH     

Who can be wise, amaz’d, temperate and furious,

Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:

Th’expedition of my violent love

Outrun the pauser, reason. – Here lay Duncan,

His silver skin lac’d with his golden blood;

110

And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature

For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murtherers.

Steep’d in the colours of their trade, their daggers

Unmannerly breech’d with gore. Who could refrain,

That had a heart to love, and in that heart

115

Courage, to make’s love known?

LADY MACBETH     Help me hence, ho!

MACDUFF     Look to the Lady.

MALCOLM     [aside to Donalbain]

Why do we hold our tongues, that most may claim

This argument for ours?

DONALBAIN [aside to Malcolm]     What should be spoken

120

Here, where our fate, hid in an auger-hole,

May rush, and seize us? Let’s away:

Our tears are not yet brew’d.

MALCOLM [aside to Donalbain]     Nor our strong sorrow

Upon the foot of motion.

BANQUO     Look to the Lady: –

125

     Lady Macbeth is carried out.

And when we have our naked frailties hid,

That suffer in exposure, let us meet,

And question this most bloody piece of work,

To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us:

In the great hand of God I stand; and thence

130

Against the undivulg’d pretence I fight

Of treasonous malice.

MACDUFF     And so do I.

ALL     So all.

MACBETH     Let’s briefly put on manly readiness, And meet i’th’ hall together.

ALL     Well contented.

     Exeunt all but Malcolm and Donalbain.

MALCOLM     

What will you do? Let’s not consort with them:

135

To show an unfelt sorrow is an office

Which the false man does easy. I’ll to England.

DONALBAIN     To Ireland, I: our separated fortune

Shall keep us both the safer; where we are,

There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood,

140

The nearer bloody.

MALCOLM     This murtherous shaft that’s shot

Hath not yet lighted, and our safest way

Is to avoid the aim: therefore, to horse;

And let us not be dainty of leave-taking,

But shift away. There’s warrant in that theft

145

Which steals itself, when there’s no mercy left.

Exeunt.

2.4 Enter ROSSE and an Old Man.

OLD MAN     Threescore and ten I can remember well;

Within the volume of which time I have seen

Hours dreadful, and things strange, but this sore night

Hath trifled former knowings.

ROSSE     Ha, good Father,

Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,

5

Threatens his bloody stage: by th’ clock ’tis day,

And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.

Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame,

That darkness does the face of earth entomb,

When living light should kiss it?

OLD MAN     ’Tis unnatural,

10

Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last,

A falcon, towering in her pride of place,

Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at, and kill’d.

ROSSE     

And Duncan’s horses (a thing most strange and certain)

Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,

15

Turn’d wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,

Contending ‘gainst obedience, as they would make

War with mankind.

OLD MAN     ’Tis said, they eat each other.

ROSSE     They did so; to th’amazement of mine eyes,

That look’d upon’t.

Enter MACDUFF.

     Here comes the good Macduff.

20

How goes the world, Sir, now?

MACDUFF     Why, see you not?

ROSSE     

Is’t known, who did this more than bloody deed?

MACDUFF     Those that Macbeth hath slain.

ROSSE     Alas, the day!

What good could they pretend?

MACDUFF     They were suborn’d.

Malcolm, and Donalbain, the King’s two sons,

25

Are stol’n away and fled; which puts upon them

Suspicion of the deed.

ROSSE     ‘Gainst nature still:

Thriftless Ambition, that will ravin up

Thine own life’s means! – Then ’tis most like

The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.

30

MACDUFF     He is already nam’d, and gone to Scone

To be invested.

ROSSE     Where is Duncan’s body?

MACDUFF     Carried to Colme-kill,

The sacred storehouse of his predecessors,

And guardian of their bones.

ROSSE     Will you to Scone?

35

MACDUFF     No cousin; I’ll to Fife.

ROSSE     Well, I will thither.

MACDUFF     

Well, may you see things well done there: – adieu! –

Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!

ROSSE     Farewell, Father.

OLD MAN     God’s benison go with you; and with those

40

That would make good of bad, and friends of foes!

Exeunt.

3.1 Enter BANQUO.

BANQUO     Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glamis, all,

As the Weïrd Women promis’d; and, I fear,

Thou play’dst most foully for’t; yet it was said,

It should not stand in thy posterity;

But that myself should be the root and father

5

Of many kings. If there come truth from them

(As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine),

Why, by the verities on thee made good,

May they not be my oracles as well,

And set me up in hope? But, hush; no more.

10

Sennet sounded. Enter MACBETH as King;
LADY MACBETH     as Queen; LENOX, ROSSE,
lords and attendants.

MACBETH     Here’s our chief guest.

LADY MACBETH     If he had been forgotten,

It had been as a gap in our great feast,

And all-thing unbecoming.

MACBETH     To-night we hold a solemn supper, Sir,

And I’ll request your presence.

BANQUO     Let your Highness

15

Command upon me, to the which my duties

Are with a most indissoluble tie

For ever knit.

MACBETH     Ride you this afternoon?

BANQUO     Ay, my good Lord.

MACBETH     

We should have else desir’d your good advice

20

(Which still hath been both grave and prosperous)

In this day’s council; but we’ll take to-morrow.

Is’t far you ride?

BANQUO     As far, my Lord, as will fill up the time

’Twixt this and supper: go not my horse the better,

25

I must become a borrower of the night,

For a dark hour, or twain.

MACBETH     Fail not our feast.

BANQUO     My Lord, I will not.

MACBETH     We hear, our bloody cousins are bestow’d

In England, and in Ireland; not confessing

30

Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers

With strange invention. But of that to-morrow,

When, therewithal, we shall have cause of State,

Craving us jointly. Hie you to horse: adieu,

Till you return at night. Goes Fleance with you?

35

BANQUO     Ay, my good Lord: our time does call upon’s.

MACBETH     I wish your horses swift, and sure of foot;

And so I do commend you to their backs.

Farewell. –      Exit Banquo.

Let every man be master of his time

40

Till seven at night;

To make society the sweeter welcome,

We will keep ourself till supper-time alone:

While then, God be with you.

     Exeunt all except Macbeth and a Servant.

     Sirrah, a word with you.

Attend those men our pleasure?

SERVANT     They are, my Lord,

45

Without the palace gate.

MACBETH     Bring them before us.

Exit Servant.

To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus:

Our fears in Banquo

Stick deep, and in his royalty of nature

Reigns that which would be fear’d: ’tis much he dares;

50

And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,

He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour

To act in safety. There is none but he

Whose being I do fear: and under him

My Genius is rebuk’d; as, it is said,

55

Mark Antony’s was by Caesar. He chid the Sisters,

When first they put the name of King upon me,

And bade them speak to him; then, prophet-like,

They hail’d him father to a line of kings:

Upon my head they plac’d a fruitless crown,

60

And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,

Thence to be wrench’d with an unlineal hand,

No son of mine succeeding. If ‘t be so,

For Banquo’s issue have I fil’d my mind;

For them the gracious Duncan have I murther’d;

65

Put rancours in the vessel of my peace,

Only for them; and mine eternal jewel

Given to the common Enemy of man,

To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings!

Rather than so, come, fate, into the list,

70

And champion me to th’utterance! – Who’s there? –

Re-enter Servant, with two Murderers.

Now, go to the door, and stay there till we call.

Exit Servant.

Was it not yesterday we spoke together?

1 MURDERER     It was, so please your Highness.

MACBETH     Well then, now

Have you consider’d of my speeches? – know

75

That it was he, in the times past, which held you

So under fortune, which you thought had been

Our innocent self? This I made good to you

In our last conference; pass’d in probation with you,

How you were borne in hand; how cross’d; the instruments;

80

Who wrought with them; and all things else, that might,

To half a soul, and to a notion craz’d,

Say, ‘Thus did Banquo.’

1 MURDERER     You made it known to us.

MACBETH     I did so; and went further, which is now

Our point of second meeting. Do you find

85

Your patience so predominant in your nature,

That you can let this go? Are you so gospell’d,

To pray for this good man, and for his issue,

Whose heavy hand hath bow’d you to the grave,

And beggar’d yours for ever?

1 MURDERER     We are men, my Liege.

90

MACBETH     Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men;

As hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,

Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are clept

All by the name of dogs: the valu’d file

Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,

95

The housekeeper, the hunter, every one

According to the gift which bounteous Nature

Hath in him clos’d; whereby he does receive

Particular addition, from the bill

That writes them all alike; and so of men.

100

Now, if you have a station in the file,

Not i’th’ worst rank of manhood, say’t;

And I will put that business in your bosoms,

Whose execution takes your enemy off,

Grapples you to the heart and love of us,

105

Who wear our health but sickly in his life,

Which in his death were perfect.

2 MURDERER     I am one, my Liege,

Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world

Hath so incens’d, that I am reckless what

I do, to spite the world.

1 MURDERER     And I another,

110

So weary with disasters, tugg’d with fortune,

That I would set my life on any chance,

To mend it, or be rid on’t.

MACBETH     Both of you

Know, Banquo was your enemy.

2 MURDERER     True, my Lord.

MACBETH     So is he mine; and in such bloody distance,

115

That every minute of his being thrusts

Against my near’st of life: and though I could

With bare-fac’d power sweep him from my sight,

And bid my will avouch it, yet I must not,

For certain friends that are both his and mine,

120

Whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall

Who I myself struck down: and thence it is

That I to your assistance do make love,

Masking the business from the common eye,

For sundry weighty reasons.

2 MURDERER     We shall, my Lord,

125

Perform what you command us.

1 MURDERER     Though our lives –

MACBETH     

Your spirits shine through you. Within this hour, at most,

I will advise you where to plant yourselves,

Acquaint you with the perfect spy o’th’ time,

The moment on’t; for’t must be done to-night,

130

And something from the palace; always thought,

That I require a clearness: and with him

(To leave no rubs nor botches in the work),

Fleance his son, that keeps him company,

Whose absence is no less material to me

135

Than is his father’s, must embrace the fate

Of that dark hour. Resolve yourselves apart;

I’ll come to you anon.

2 MURDERER     We are resolv’d, my Lord.

MACBETH     I’ll call upon you straight: abide within. –

Exeunt Murderers.

It is concluded: Banquo, thy soul’s flight,

140

If it find Heaven, must find it out to-night.     Exit.

3.2 Enter LADY MACBETH and a Servant.

LADY MACBETH     Is Banquo gone from court?

SERVANT     Ay, Madam, but returns again to-night.

LADY MACBETH     

Say to the King, I would attend his leisure

For a few words.

SERVANT     Madam, I will.     Exit.

LADY MACBETH     Nought’s had, all’s spent,

Where our desire is got without content:

5

’Tis safer to be that which we destroy,

Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

Enter MACBETH.

How now, my Lord? why do you keep alone,

Of sorriest fancies your companions making,

Using those thoughts, which should indeed have died

10

With them they think on? Things without all remedy

Should be without regard: what’s done is done.

MACBETH     We have scorch’d the snake, not kill’d it:

She’ll close, and be herself; whilst our poor malice

Remains in danger of her former tooth.

15

But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,

Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep

In the affliction of these terrible dreams,

That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead,

Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,

20

Than on the torture of the mind to lie

In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;

After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;

Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing

25

Can touch him further!

LADY MACBETH     Come on:

Gentle my Lord, sleek o’er your rugged looks;

Be bright and jovial among your guests to-night.

MACBETH     So shall I, Love; and so, I pray, be you.

Let your remembrance apply to Banquo:

30

Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue:

Unsafe the while, that we

Must lave our honours in these flattering streams,

And make our faces vizards to our hearts,

Disguising what they are.

LADY MACBETH     You must leave this

35

MACBETH     O! full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!

Thou know’st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.

LADY MACBETH     

But in them Nature’s copy’s not eterne.

MACBETH     There’s comfort yet; they are assailable:

Then be thou jocund. Ere the bat hath flown

40

His cloister’d flight; ere to black Hecate’s summons

The shard-born beetle, with his drowsy hums,

Hath rung Night’s yawning peal, there shall be done

A deed of dreadful note.

LADY MACBETH     What’s to be done?

MACBETH     

Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,

45

Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling Night,

Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful Day,

And, with thy bloody and invisible hand,

Cancel, and tear to pieces, that great bond

Which keeps me pale! – Light thickens; and the crow

50

Makes wing to th’ rooky wood;

Good things of Day begin to droop and drowse,

Whiles Night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

Thou marvell’st at my words: but hold thee still;

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

55

So, pr’ythee, go with me.     Exeunt.

3.3 Enter three Murderers.

1 MURDERER     But who did bid thee join with us?

3 MURDERER     Macbeth.

2 MURDERER     

He needs not our mistrust; since he delivers

Our offices, and what we have to do,

To the direction just.

1 MURDERER     Then stand with us.

The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day;

5

Now spurs the lated traveller apace,

To gain the timely inn; and near approaches

The subject of our watch.

3 MURDERER     Hark! I hear horses.

BANQUO [within] Give us a light there, ho!

2 MURDERER     Then ’tis he: the rest

That are within the note of expectation,

10

Already are i’th’ court.

1 MURDERER     His horses go about.

3 MURDERER     Almost a mile; but he does usually,

So all men do, from hence to the palace gate

Make it their walk.

Enter BANQUO and FLEANCE, with a torch.

2 MURDERER     A light, a light!

3 MURDERER     ’Tis he.

1 MURDERER     Stand to’t.

15

BANQUO     It will be rain to-night.

1 MURDERER     Let it come down.

[The First Murderer strikes out the light, while the others assault Banquo.]

BANQUO     O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!

Thou may’st revenge – O slave! [Dies.]

Fleance escapes.

3 MURDERER     Who did strike out the light?

1 MURDERER     Was’t not the way?

3 MURDERER     There’s but one down: the son is fled.

2 MURDERER     We have lost

20

Best half of our affair.

1 MURDERER     Well, let’s away,

And say how much is done.      Exeunt.

3.4 A banquet prepared. Enter MACBETH,
LADY MACBETH, ROSSE, LENOX
, Lords and attendants.

MACBETH     

You know your own degrees, sit down: at first

And last, the hearty welcome.

LORDS     Thanks to your Majesty.

MACBETH     Ourself will mingle with society,

And play the humble host.

Our hostess keeps her state; but, in best time,

5

We will require her welcome.

LADY MACBETH     

Pronounce it for me, Sir, to all our friends;

For my heart speaks, they are welcome.

Enter First Murderer, to the door.

MACBETH     

See, they encounter thee with their hearts’ thanks.

Both sides are even: here I’ll sit i’th’ midst.

10

Be large in mirth; anon, we’ll drink a measure

The table round. [Goes to door.]

There’s blood upon thy face.

1 MURDERER     ’Tis Banquo’s then.

MACBETH     ’Tis better thee without, than he within.

Is he dispatch’d?

1 MURDERER     My Lord, his throat is cut;

15

That I did for him.

MACBETH     Thou art the best o’th’ cut-throats;

Yet he’s good that did the like for Fleance:

If thou didst it, thou art the nonpareil.

1 MURDERER     Most royal Sir … Fleance is scap’d.

MACBETH     

Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect;

20

Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,

As broad and general as the casing air:

But now, I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in

To saucy doubts and fears. – But Banquo’s safe?

1 MURDERER     

Ay, my good Lord, safe in a ditch he bides,

25

With twenty trenched gashes on his head;

The least a death to nature.

MACBETH     Thanks for that. –

There the grown serpent lies; the worm, that’s fled,

Hath nature that in time will venom breed,

No teeth for th’ present. – Get thee gone; to-morrow

30

We’ll hear ourselves again.     Exit Murderer.

LADY MACBETH     My royal Lord,

You do not give the cheer: the feast is sold,

That is not often vouch’d, while ’tis a-making,

’Tis given with welcome: to feed were best at home;

From thence, the sauce to meat is ceremony;

35

Meeting were bare without it.

MACBETH     Sweet remembrancer! –

Now, good digestion wait on appetite,

And health on both!

LENOX     May it please your Highness sit?

MACBETH     

Here had we now our country’s honour roof’d,

Were the grac’d person of our Banquo present;

40

     The ghost of BANQUO enters,

     and sits in Macbeth’s place.

Who may I rather challenge for unkindness,

Than pity for mischance!

ROSSE     His absence, Sir,

Lays blame upon his promise. Please’t your Highness

To grace us with your royal company?

MACBETH     The table’s full.

LENOX     Here is a place reserv’d, Sir.

45

MACBETH     Where?

LENOX     

Here, my good Lord. What is’t that moves your Highness?

MACBETH     Which of you have done this?

LORDS     What, my good Lord?

MACBETH     Thou canst not say, I did it: never shake

Thy gory locks at me.

50

ROSSE     Gentlemen, rise; his Highness is not well.

LADY MACBETH     

Sit, worthy friends. My Lord is often thus,

And hath been from his youth: pray you, keep seat;

The fit is momentary; upon a thought

He will again be well. If much you note him,

55

You shall offend him, and extend his passion;

Feed, and regard him not. – Are you a man?

MACBETH     Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that

Which might appal the Devil.

LADY MACBETH     O proper stuff!

This is the very painting of your fear:

60

This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said,

Led you to Duncan. O! these flaws and starts

(Impostors to true fear), would well become

A woman’s story at a winter’s fire,

Authoris’d by her grandam. Shame itself!

65

Why do you make such faces? When all’s done,

You look but on a stool.

MACBETH     Pr’ythee, see there!

Behold! look! lo! how say you?

Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too. –

If charnel-houses and our graves must send

70

Those that we bury, back, our monuments

Shall be the maws of kites.     Ghost disappears.

LADY MACBETH     What! quite unmann’d in folly?

MACBETH     If I stand here, I saw him.

LADY MACBETH     Fie! for shame!

MACBETH     

Blood hath been shed ere now, i’th’ olden time,

Ere humane statute purg’d the gentle weal;

75

Ay, and since too, murthers have been perform’d

Too terrible for the ear: the time has been,

That, when the brains were out, the man would die,

And there an end; but now, they rise again,

With twenty mortal murthers on their crowns,

80

And push us from our stools. This is more strange

Than such a murther is.

LADY MACBETH     My worthy Lord,

Your noble friends do lack you.

MACBETH     I do forget. –

Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends,

I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing

85

To those that know me. Come, love and health to all;

Then, I’ll sit down. – Give me some wine: fill full: –

I drink to th’ general joy o’th’ whole table,

And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss;

Would he were here!

Re-enter ghost.

     To all, and him, we thirst,

90

And all to all.

LORDS     Our duties, and the pledge.

MACBETH     

Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!

Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;

Thou hast no speculation in those eyes,

Which thou dost glare with.

LADY MACBETH     Think of this, good Peers,

95

But as a thing of custom: ’tis no other;

Only it spoils the pleasure of the time.

MACBETH     What man dare, I dare:

Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,

The arm’d rhinoceros, or th’Hyrcan tiger;

100

Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves

Shall never tremble: or, be alive again,

And dare me to the desert with thy sword;

If trembling I inhabit then, protest me

The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow!

105

Unreal mock’ry, hence! –     Ghost disappears.

     Why, so; – being gone,

I am a man again. – Pray you, sit still.

LADY MACBETH     

You have displac’d the mirth, broke the good meeting

With most admir’d disorder.

MACBETH     Can such things be,

And overcome us like a summer’s cloud,

110

Without our special wonder? You make me strange

Even to the disposition that I owe,

When now I think you can behold such sights,

And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks,

When mine is blanch’d with fear.

ROSSE     What sights, my Lord?

115

LADY MACBETH     

I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse;

Question enrages him. At once, good night: –

Stand not upon the order of your going,

But go at once.

LENOX     Good night, and better health

Attend his Majesty!

LADY MACBETH     A kind good night to all!

120

     Exeunt Lords and attendants.

MACBETH     

It will have blood, they say: blood will have blood:

Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;

Augures, and understood relations, have

By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth

The secret’st man of blood. – What is the night?

125

LADY MACBETH     

Almost at odds with morning, which is which.

MACBETH     

How say’st thou, that Macduff denies his person,

At our great bidding?

LADY MACBETH     Did you send to him, Sir?

MACBETH     I heard it by the way; but I will send.

There’s not a one of them, but in his house

130

I keep a servant fee’d. I will to-morrow

(And betimes I will) to the Weïrd Sisters:

More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,

By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good,

All causes shall give way: I am in blood

135

Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

Strange things I have in head, that will to hand,

Which must be acted, ere they may be scann’d.

LADY MACBETH     You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

140

MACBETH     

Come, we’ll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse

Is the initiate fear, that wants hard use:

We are yet but young in deed.      Exeunt.

3.5 Thunder. Enter the three Witches, meeting HECATE.

1 WITCH     Why, how now, Hecate? you look angerly.

HECATE     Have I not reason, beldams as you are,

     Saucy, and overbold? How did you dare

     To trade and traffic with Macbeth,

     In riddles, and affairs of death;

5

     And I, the mistress of your charms,

     The close contriver of all harms,

     Was never call’d to bear my part,

     Or show the glory of our art?

     And, which is worse, all you have done

10

     Hath been but for a wayward son,

     Spiteful, and wrathful; who, as others do,

     Loves for his own ends, not for you.

     But make amends now: get you gone,

     And at the pit of Acheron

15

     Meet me i’th’ morning: thither he

     Will come to know his destiny.

     Your vessels, and your spells, provide,

     Your charms, and everything beside.

     I am for th’air; this night I’ll spend

20

     Unto a dismal and a fatal end:

     Great business must be wrought ere noon.

     Upon the corner of the moon

     There hangs a vap’rous drop profound;

     I’ll catch it ere it come to ground:

25

     And that, distill’d by magic sleights,

     Shall raise such artificial sprites,

     As, by the strength of their illusion,

     Shall draw him on to his confusion.

     He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear

30

     His hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear;

     And you all know, security

     Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.

        [Song within: ‘ Come away, come away,’ etc.]

     Hark! I am call’d: my little spirit, see,

     Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me.      Exit.

35

1 WITCH     

Come, let’s make haste: she’ll soon be back again.

Exeunt.

3.6 Enter LENOX and another Lord.

LENOX     My former speeches have but hit your thoughts, Which can interpret farther: only, I say,

Things have been strangely borne. The gracious Duncan

Was pitied of Macbeth: – marry, he was dead: –

And the right-valiant Banquo walk’d too late;

5

Whom, you may say (if’t please you) Fleance kill’d,

For Fleance fled. Men must not walk too late.

Who cannot want the thought, how monstrous

It was for Malcolm, and for Donalbain,

To kill their gracious father? damned fact!

10

How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight,

In pious rage, the two delinquents tear,

That were the slaves of drink, and thralls of sleep?

Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too;

For ’twould have anger’d any heart alive

15

To hear the men deny’t. So that, I say,

He has borne all things well: and I do think,

That, had he Duncan’s sons under his key

(As, and’t please Heaven, he shall not), they should find

What ’twere to kill a father; so should Fleance.

20

But, peace! – for from broad words, and ‘cause he fail’d

His presence at the tyrant’s feast, I hear,

Macduff lives in disgrace. Sir, can you tell

Where he bestows himself?

LORD     The son of Duncan,

From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth,

25

Lives in the English court; and is receiv’d

Of the most pious Edward with such grace,

That the malevolence of fortune nothing

Takes from his high respect. Thither Macduff

Is gone to pray the holy King, upon his aid

30

To wake Northumberland, and warlike Siward;

That, by the help of these (with Him above

To ratify the work), we may again

Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights,

Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives,

35

Do faithful homage, and receive free honours,

All which we pine for now. And this report

Hath so exasperate the King, that he

Prepares for some attempt of war.

LENOX     Sent he to Macduff?

LORD     He did: and with an absolute ‘Sir, not I,’

40

The cloudy messenger turns me his back,

And hums, as who should say, ‘You’ll rue the time

That clogs me with this answer.’

LENOX     And that well might

Advise him to a caution, t’hold what distance

His wisdom can provide. Some holy Angel

45

Fly to the court of England, and unfold

His message ere he come, that a swift blessing

May soon return to this our suffering country

Under a hand accurs’d!

LORD     I’ll send my prayers with him.

Exeunt.

4.1 Thunder. Enter the three Witches.

1 WITCH     Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.

2 WITCH     Thrice, and once the hedge-pig whin’d.

3 WITCH     Harpier cries: – ’Tis time, ’tis time.

1 WITCH     Round about the cauldron go;

     In the poison’d entrails throw. –

5

     Toad, that under cold stone

     Days and nights has thirty-one

     Swelter’d venom, sleeping got,

     Boil thou first i’th’ charmed pot.

ALL     Double, double toil and trouble:

10

     Fire, burn; and, cauldron, bubble.

2 WITCH     Fillet of a fenny snake,

     In the cauldron boil and bake;

     Eye of newt, and toe of frog,

     Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,

15

     Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,

     Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,

     For a charm of powerful trouble,

     Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL     Double, double toil and trouble:

20

     Fire, burn; and, cauldron, bubble.

3 WITCH     Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf;

     Witches’ mummy; maw, and gulf,

     Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark;

     Root of hemlock, digg’d i’th’ dark;

25

     Liver of blaspheming Jew;

     Gall of goat, and slips of yew,

     Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse;

     Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips;

     Finger of birth-strangled babe,

30

     Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,

     Make the gruel thick and slab:

     Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,

     For th’ingredience of our cauldron.

ALL     Double, double toil and trouble:

35

     Fire, burn; and, cauldron, bubble.

2 WITCH     Cool it with a baboon’s blood:

     Then the charm is firm and good.

     Enter HECATE, and the other three witches.

HECATE     O, well done! I commend your pains,

     And every one shall share i’th’ gains.

40

     And now about the cauldron sing,

     Like elves and fairies in a ring,

     Enchanting all that you put in.

     [Music and a song, ‘Black spirits,’etc.]

     [Exeunt Hecate and the three other witches.]

2 WITCH     By the pricking of my thumbs,

     Something wicked this way comes. –

45

     [knocking]

     Open, locks,

     Whoever knocks.

Enter MACBETH.

MACBETH     

How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!

What is’t you do?

ALL     A deed without a name.

MACBETH     I conjure you, by that which you profess,

50

Howe’er you come to know it, answer me:

Though you untie the winds, and let them fight

Against the Churches; though the yesty waves

Confound and swallow navigation up;

Though bladed corn be lodg’d, and trees blown down;

55

Though castles topple on their warders’ heads;

Though palaces, and pyramids, do slope

Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure

Of Nature’s germens tumble all together,

Even till destruction sicken, answer me

60

To what I ask you.

1 WITCH     Speak.

2 WITCH     Demand.

3 WITCH     We’ll answer.

1 WITCH     

Say, if thou’dst rather hear it from our mouths,

Or from our masters?

MACBETH     Call ‘em; let me see ‘em.

1 WITCH     Pour in sow’s blood, that hath eaten

     Her nine farrow; grease, that’s sweaten

65

     From the murderer’s gibbet, throw

     Into the flame.

ALL     Come, high, or low;

     Thyself and office deftly show.

     Thunder. First Apparition, an armed head.

MACBETH     Tell me, thou unknown power, –

1 WITCH     He knows thy thought:

Hear his speech, but say thou nought.

70

1 APPARITION

Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! beware Macduff;

Beware the Thane of Fife. – Dismiss me. – Enough.

Descends.

MACBETH     

Whate’er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks:

Thou hast harp’d my fear aright. – But one word more: –

1 WITCH     He will not be commanded. Here’s another,

75

More potent than the first.

     Thunder. Second Apparition, a bloody child.

2 APPARITION     Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! –

MACBETH     Had I three ears, I’d hear thee.

2 APPARITION

Be bloody, bold, and resolute: laugh to scorn

The power of man, for none of woman born

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Shall harm Macbeth.     Descends.

MACBETH     

Then live, Macduff: what need I fear of thee?

But yet I’ll make assurance double sure,

And take a bond of Fate: thou shalt not live;

That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies,

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And sleep in spite of thunder. –

Thunder. Third Apparition, a child crowned,
with a tree in his hand.

What is this,

That rises like the issue of a king;

And wears upon his baby brow the round

And top of sovereignty?

ALL     Listen, but speak not to’t.

3 APPARITION     Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care

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Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are:

Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be, until

Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill

Shall come against him.     Descends.

MACBETH     That will never be:

Who can impress the forest; bid the tree

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Unfix his earth-bound root? Sweet bodements! good!

Rebellious dead, rise never, till the wood

Of Birnam rise; and our high-plac’d Macbeth

Shall live the lease of Nature, pay his breath

To time, and mortal custom. – Yet my heart

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Throbs to know one thing: tell me (if your art

Can tell so much), shall Banquo’s issue ever

Reign in this kingdom?

ALL     Seek to know no more.

MACBETH     I will be satisfied: deny me this,

And an eternal curse fall on you! Let me know. –

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Why sinks that cauldron? and what noise is this?

[Hautboys.]

1 WITCH     Show!

2 WITCH     Show!

3 WITCH     Show!

ALL     Show his eyes, and grieve his heart;

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     Come like shadows, so depart.

A show of eight kings, the last with a glass in his hand;

     BANQUO     following.

MACBETH     

Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo: down!

Thy crown does sear mine eye-balls: – and thy hair,

Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first: –

A third is like the former: – filthy hags!

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Why do you show me this? – A fourth? – Start, eyes!

What! will the line stretch out to th’crack of doom?

Another yet? – A seventh? – I’ll see no more: –

And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass,

Which shows me many more; and some I see,

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That two-fold balls and treble sceptres carry.

Horrible sight! – Now, I see, ’tis true;

For the blood-bolter’d Banquo smiles upon me,

And points at them for his. – What! is this so?

1 WITCH     Ay, Sir, all this is so: – but why

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     Stands Macbeth thus amazedly? –

     Come, sisters, cheer we up his sprites,

     And show the best of our delights.

     I’ll charm the air to give a sound,

     While you perform your antic round;

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     That this great King may kindly say,

     Our duties did his welcome pay.

     Music. The Witches dance, and vanish.

MACBETH     

Where are they? Gone? – Let this pernicious hour

Stand aye accursed in the calendar! –

Come in, without there!

Enter LENOX.

LENOX     What’s your Grace’s will?

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MACBETH     Saw you the Weïrd Sisters?

LENOX     No, my Lord.

MACBETH     Came they not by you?

LENOX     No, indeed, my Lord.

MACBETH     Infected be the air whereon they ride;

And damn’d all those that trust them! – I did hear

The galloping of horse: who was’t came by?

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LENOX     

’Tis two or three, my Lord, that bring you word,

Macduff is fled to England.

MACBETH     Fled to England?

LENOX     Ay, my good Lord.

MACBETH [aside]

Time, thou anticipat’st my dread exploits:

The flighty purpose never is o’ertook,

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Unless the deed go with it. From this moment,

The very firstlings of my heart shall be

The firstlings of my hand. And even now,

To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:

The castle of Macduff I will surprise;

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Seize upon Fife; give to th’edge o’th’ sword

His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls

That trace him in his line. No boasting like a fool;

This deed I’ll do, before this purpose cool:

But no more sights! – Where are these gentlemen?

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Come, bring me where they are.     Exeunt.

4.2 Enter LADY MACDUFF, her Son and ROSSE.

LADY MACDUFF     

What had he done, to make him fly the land?

ROSSE     You must have patience, Madam.

LADY MACDUFF     He had none:

His flight was madness: when our actions do not,

Our fears do make us traitors.

ROSSE     You know not,

Whether it was his wisdom, or his fear.

5

LADY MACDUFF     

Wisdom! to leave his wife, to leave his babes,

His mansion, and his titles, in a place

From whence himself does fly? He loves us not:

He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,

The most diminitive of birds, will fight,

10

Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.

All is the fear, and nothing is the love;

As little is the wisdom, where the flight

So runs against all reason.

ROSSE     My dearest coz,

I pray you, school yourself: but, for your husband,

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He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows

The fits o’th’ season. I dare not speak much further:

But cruel are the times, when we are traitors,

And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumour

From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,

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But float upon a wild and violent sea

Each way, and move – I take my leave of you:

Shall not be long but I’ll be here again.

Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward

To what they were before. – My pretty cousin,

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Blessing upon you!

LADY MACDUFF     Father’d he is, and yet he’s fatherless.

ROSSE     I am so much a fool, should I stay longer,

It would be my disgrace, and your discomfort:

I take my leave at once.     Exit.

LADY MACDUFF     Sirrah, your father’s dead:

30

And what will you do now? How will you live?

SON As birds do, mother.

LADY MACDUFF     What, with worms and flies?

SON With what I get, I mean; and so do they.

LADY MACDUFF     

Poor bird! thou’dst never fear the net, nor lime,

The pit-fall, nor the gin.

SON     Why should I, mother?

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Poor birds they are not set for.

My father is not dead, for all your saying.

LADY MACDUFF     

Yes, he is dead: how wilt thou do for a father?

SON     Nay, how will you do for a husband?

LADY MACDUFF     

Why, I can buy me twenty at any market.

40

SON     Then you’ll buy ’em to sell again.

LADY MACDUFF     Thou speak’st with all thy wit;

And yet, i’faith, with wit enough for thee.

SON     Was my father a traitor, mother?

LADY MACDUFF     Ay, that he was.

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SON     What is a traitor?

LADY MACDUFF     Why, one that swears and lies.

SON     And be all traitors that do so?

LADY MACDUFF     Every one that does so is a traitor, and must be hang’d.

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SON     And must they all be hang’d that swear and lie?

LADY MACDUFF     Every one.

SON     Who must hang them?

LADY MACDUFF     Why, the honest men.

SON     Then the liars and swearers are fools; for there are

55

liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men, and

hang up them.

LADY MACDUFF     Now God help thee, poor monkey! But

how wilt thou do for a father?

SON     If he were dead, you’d weep for him: if you would

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not, it were a good sign that I should quickly have a

new father.

LADY MACDUFF     Poor prattler, how thou talk’st!

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     

Bless you, fair dame! I am not to you known,

Though in your state of honour I am perfect.

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I doubt, some danger does approach you nearly:

If you will take a homely man’s advice,

Be not found here; hence, with your little ones.

To fright you thus, methinks, I am too savage;

To do worse to you were fell cruelty,

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Which is too nigh your person. Heaven preserve you!

I dare abide no longer.     Exit.

LADY MACDUFF     Whither should I fly?

I have done no harm. But I remember now

I am in this earthly world, where, to do harm

Is often laudable; to do good, sometime

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Accounted dangerous folly: why then, alas!

Do I put up that womanly defence,

To say, I have done no harm? What are these faces!

Enter Murderers.

1 MURDERER     Where is your husband?

LADY MACDUFF     I hope, in no place so unsanctified,

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Where such as thou may’st find him.

1 MURDERER     He’s a traitor.

SON     Thou liest, thou shag-hair’d villain!

1 MURDERER     What, you egg!

[stabbing him] Young fry of treachery!

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SON     He has kill’d me, mother:

Run away, I pray you! [Dies.]

     Exit Lady Macduff, crying ‘ Murther! ’

     and pursued by the Murderers.

4.3 Enter MALCOLM and MACDUFF.

MALCOLM     

Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there

Weep our sad bosoms empty.

MACDUFF     Let us rather

Hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men

Bestride our downfall birthdom. Each new morn,

New widows howl, new orphans cry; new sorrows

5

Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds

As if it felt with Scotland, and yell’d out

Like syllable of dolour.

MALCOLM     What I believe, I’ll wail;

What know, believe; and what I can redress,

As I shall find the time to friend, I will.

10

What you have spoke, it may be so, perchance.

This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,

Was once thought honest: you have lov’d him well;

He hath not touch’d you yet. I am young; but something

You may deserve of him through me, and wisdom

15

To offer up a weak, poor, innocent lamb,

T’appease an angry god.

MACDUFF     I am not treacherous.

MALCOLM     But Macbeth is.

A good and virtuous nature may recoil,

In an imperial charge. But I shall crave your pardon:

20

That which you are my thoughts cannot transpose:

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell:

Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,

Yet Grace must still look so.

MACDUFF     I have lost my hopes.

MALCOLM     

Perchance even there where I did find my doubts.

25

Why in that rawness left you wife and child

(Those precious motives, those strong knots of love),

Without leave-taking? – I pray you,

Let not my jealousies be your dishonours,

But mine own safeties: you may be rightly just,

30

Whatever I shall think.

MACDUFF     Bleed, bleed, poor country!

Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,

For goodness dare not check thee! wear thou thy wrongs;

The title is affeer’d! – Fare thee well, Lord:

I would not be the villain that thou think’st

35

For the whole space that’s in the tyrant’s grasp,

And the rich East to boot.

MALCOLM     Be not offended:

I speak not as in absolute fear of you.

I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;

It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash

40

Is added to her wounds: I think, withal,

There would be hands uplifted in my right;

And here, from gracious England, have I offer

Of goodly thousands: but, for all this,

When I shall tread upon the tyrant’s head,

45

Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country

Shall have more vices than it had before,

More suffer, and more sundry ways than ever,

By him that shall succeed.

MACDUFF     What should he be?

MALCOLM     It is myself I mean; in whom I know

50

All the particulars of vice so grafted,

That, when they shall be open’d, black Macbeth

Will seem as pure as snow; and the poor State

Esteem him as a lamb, being compar’d

With my confineless harms.

MACDUFF     Not in the legions

55

Of horrid Hell can come a devil more damn’d

In evils, to top Macbeth.

MALCOLM     I grant him bloody,

Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,

Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin

That has a name; but there’s no bottom, none,

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In my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters,

Your matrons, and your maids, could not fill up

The cistern of my lust; and my desire

All continent impediments would o’erbear,

That did oppose my will: better Macbeth,

65

Than such an one to reign.

MACDUFF     Boundless intemperance

In nature is a tyranny; it hath been

Th’untimely emptying of the happy throne,

And fall of many kings. But fear not yet

To take upon you what is yours: you may

70

Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty,

And yet seem cold – the time you may so hoodwink:

We have willing dames enough; there cannot be

That vulture in you, to devour so many

As will to greatness dedicate themselves,

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Finding it so inclin’d.

MALCOLM     With this, there grows

In my most ill-compos’d affection such

A staunchless avarice, that, were I King,

I should cut off the nobles for their lands;

Desire his jewels, and this other’s house:

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And my more-having would be as a sauce

To make me hunger more; that I should forge

Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal,

Destroying them for wealth.

MACDUFF     This avarice

Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root

85

Than summer-seeming lust; and it hath been

The sword of our slain kings: yet do not fear;

Scotland hath foisons to fill up your will,

Of your mere own. All these are portable,

With other graces weigh’d.

90

MALCOLM     But I have none: the king-becoming graces,

As Justice, Verity, Temp’rance, Stableness,

Bounty, Perseverance, Mercy, Lowliness,

Devotion, Patience, Courage, Fortitude,

I have no relish of them; but abound

95

In the division of each several crime,

Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should

Pour the sweet milk of concord into Hell,

Uproar the universal peace, confound

All unity on earth.

MACDUFF     O Scotland! Scotland!

100

MALCOLM     If such a one be fit to govern, speak:

I am as I have spoken.

MACDUFF     Fit to govern?

No, not to live. – O nation miserable!

With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter’d,

When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again,

105

Since that the truest issue of thy throne

By his own interdiction stands accus’d,

And does blaspheme his breed? Thy royal father

Was a most sainted King: the Queen, that bore thee,

Oft’ner upon her knees than on her feet,

110

Died every day she liv’d. Fare thee well!

These evils thou repeat’st upon thyself

Hath banish’d me from Scotland. – O my breast,

Thy hope ends here!

MALCOLM     Macduff, this noble passion,

Child of integrity, hath from my soul

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Wip’d the black scruples, reconcil’d my thoughts

To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth

By many of these trains hath sought to win me

Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me

From over-credulous haste: but God above

120

Deal between thee and me! for even now

I put myself to thy direction, and

Unspeak mine own detraction; here abjure

The taints and blames I laid upon myself,

For strangers to my nature. I am yet

125

Unknown to woman; never was forsworn;

Scarcely have coveted what was mine own;

At no time broke my faith: would not betray

The Devil to his fellow; and delight

No less in truth, than life: my first false speaking

130

Was this upon myself. What I am truly,

Is thine, and my poor country’s, to command:

Whither, indeed, before thy here-approach,

Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike men,

Already at a point, was setting forth.

135

Now we’ll together, and the chance of goodness

Be like our warranted quarrel. Why are you silent?

MACDUFF     

Such welcome and unwelcome things at once,

’Tis hard to reconcile.

Enter a Doctor.

MALCOLM     Well, more anon.

Comes the King forth, I pray you?

140

DOCTOR     Aye, Sir; there are a crew of wretched souls,

That stay his cure: their malady convinces

The great assay of art; but at his touch,

Such sanctity hath Heaven given his hand,

They presently amend.

MALCOLM     I thank you, Doctor.

145

Exit Doctor.

MACDUFF     What’s the disease he means?

MALCOLM     ’Tis call’d the Evil:

A most miraculous work in this good King,

Which often, since my here-remain in England,

I have seen him do. How he solicits Heaven,

Himself best knows; but strangely-visited people,

150

All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,

The mere despair of surgery, he cures;

Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,

Put on with holy prayers: and ’tis spoken,

To the succeeding royalty he leaves

155

The healing benediction. With this strange virtue,

He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy;

And sundry blessings hang about his throne,

That speak him full of grace.

Enter ROSSE.

MACDUFF     See, who comes here.

MALCOLM     My countryman; but yet I know him not.

160

MACDUFF     My ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither.

MALCOLM     

I know him now. Good God, betimes remove

The means that makes us strangers!

ROSSE     Sir, amen.

MACDUFF     Stands Scotland where it did?

ROSSE     Alas, poor country!

Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot

165

Be call’d our mother, but our grave; where nothing,

But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;

Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks that rent the air

Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems

A modern ecstasy: the dead man’s knell

170

Is there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s lives

Expire before the flowers in their caps,

Dying or ere they sicken.

MACDUFF     O relation,

Too nice, and yet too true!

MALCOLM     What’s the newest grief?

ROSSE     That of an hour’s age doth hiss the speaker;

175

Each minute teems a new one.

MACDUFF     How does my wife?

ROSSE     Why, well.

MACDUFF     And all my children?

ROSSE     Well too.

MACDUFF     The tyrant has not batter’d at their peace?

ROSSE     

No; they were well at peace, when I did leave ‘em.

MACDUFF     

Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes’t?

180

ROSSE     When I came hither to transport the tidings,

Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumour

Of many worthy fellows that were out;

Which was to my belief witness’d the rather,

For that I saw the tyrant’s power afoot.

185

Now is the time of help. Your eye in Scotland

Would create soldiers, make our women fight,

To doff their dire distresses.

MALCOLM     Be’t their comfort,

We are coming thither. Gracious England hath

Lent us good Siward, and ten thousand men;

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An older, and a better soldier, none

That Christendom gives out.

ROSSE     Would I could answer

This comfort with the like! But I have words,

That would be howl’d out in the desert air,

Where hearing should not latch them.

MACDUFF     What concern they?

195

The general cause? or is it a free-grief,

Due to some single breast?

ROSSE     No mind that’s honest

But in it shares some woe, though the main part

Pertains to you alone.

MACDUFF     If it be mine,

Keep it not from me; quickly let me have it.

200

ROSSE     Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,

Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound,

That ever yet they heard.

MACDUFF     Humh! I guess at it.

ROSSE     Your castle is surpris’d; your wife, and babes,

Savagely slaughter’d: to relate the manner,

205

Were, on the quarry of these murther’d deer,

To add the death of you.

MALCOLM     Merciful Heaven! –

What, man! ne’er pull your hat upon your brows:

Give sorrow words; the grief, that does not speak,

Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.

210

MACDUFF     My children too?

ROSSE     Wife, children, servants, all

That could be found.

MACDUFF     And I must be from thence!

My wife kill’d too?

ROSSE     I have said.

MALCOLM     Be comforted:

Let’s make us med’cines of our great revenge,

To cure this deadly grief.

215

MACDUFF     He has no children. – All my pretty ones?

Did you say all? – O Hell-kite! – All?

What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam,

At one fell swoop?

MALCOLM     Dispute it like a man.

MACDUFF     I shall do so;

220

But I must also feel it as a man:

I cannot but remember such things were,

That were most precious to me. – Did Heaven look on,

And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff!

They were all struck for thee. Naught that I am,

225

Not for their own demerits, but for mine,

Fell slaughter on their souls: Heaven rest them now!

MALCOLM     

Be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief

Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.

MACDUFF     O! I could play the woman with mine eyes,

230

And braggart with my tongue. – But, gentle Heavens,

Cut short all intermission; front to front,

Bring thou this fiend of Scotland, and myself;

Within my sword’s length set him; if he ‘scape,

Heaven forgive him too!

MALCOLM     This tune goes manly.

235

Come, go we to the King: our power is ready;

Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth

Is ripe for shaking, and the Powers above

Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may;

The night is long that never finds the day.     Exeunt.

240

5.1 Enter a Doctor of Physic and a Waiting-Gentlewoman.

DOCTOR     I have two nights watch’d with you, but can

perceive no truth in your report. When was it she last walk’d?

GENTLEWOMAN     Since his Majesty went into the field, I

have seen her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown

5

upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it,

write upon’t, read it, afterwards seal it, and again

return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.

DOCTOR     A great perturbation in nature, to receive at

once the benefit of sleep, and do the effects of

10

watching! In this slumbery agitation, besides her

walking and other actual performances, what, at any

time, have you heard her say?

GENTLEWOMAN     That, Sir, which I will not report after her.

15

DOCTOR     You may, to me; and ’tis most meet you should.

GENTLEWOMAN     Neither to you, nor any one; having no witness to confirm my speech.

Enter LADY MACBETH, with a taper.

Lo you! here she comes. This is her very guise; and,

20

upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her: stand close.

DOCTOR     How came she by that light?

GENTLEWOMAN     Why, it stood by her: she has light by

her continually; ’tis her command.

DOCTOR     You see, her eyes are open.

25

GENTLEWOMAN     Ay, but their sense are shut.

DOCTOR     What is it she does now? Look, how she rubs her hands.

GENTLEWOMAN     It is an accustom’d action with her, to

seem thus washing her hands. I have known her

30

continue in this a quarter of an hour.

LADY MACBETH     Yet here’s a spot.

DOCTOR     Hark! she speaks. I will set down what comes

from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more

strongly.

35

LADY MACBETH     Out, damned spot! out, I say! – One;

two: why, then ’tis time to do’t. – Hell is murky. – Fie,

my Lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? – What need we

fear who knows it, when none can call our power to

accompt? – Yet who would have thought the old man

40

to have had so much blood in him?

DOCTOR     Do you mark that?

LADY MACBETH     The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is

she now? – What, will these hands ne’er be clean? –

No more o’that, my Lord, no more o’that: you mar all

45

with this starting.

DOCTOR     Go to, go to: you have known what you should not.

GENTLEWOMAN     She has spoke what she should not, I

am sure of that: Heaven knows what she has known.

50

LADY MACBETH     Here’s the smell of the blood still: all

the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! oh! oh!

DOCTOR     What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charg’d.

55

GENTLEWOMAN     I would not have such a heart in my

bosom, for the dignity of the whole body.

DOCTOR     Well, well, well.

GENTLEWOMAN     Pray God it be, sir.

DOCTOR     This disease is beyond my practice: yet I have

60

known those which have walk’d in their sleep, who

have died holily in their beds.

LADY MACBETH     Wash your hands, put on your night-

gown; look not so pale. – I tell you yet again, Banquo’s

buried: he cannot come out on’s grave.

65

DOCTOR     Even so?

LADY MACBETH     To bed, to bed: there’s knocking at the

gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand.

What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.     Exit.

70

DOCTOR     Will she go now to bed?

GENTLEWOMAN     Directly.

DOCTOR     Foul whisp’rings are abroad. Unnatural deeds

Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds

To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.

75

More needs she the divine than the physician. –

God, God forgive us all! Look after her;

Remove from her the means of all annoyance,

And still keep eyes upon her. – So, good night:

My mind she has mated, and amaz’d my sight.

80

I think, but dare not speak.

GENTLEWOMAN     Good night, good Doctor.

Exeunt.

5.2 Enter, with drums and colours, MENTETH, CATHNESS, ANGUS, LENOX and soldiers.

MENTETH

The English power is near, led on by Malcolm,

His uncle Siward, and the good Macduff.

Revenges burn in them; for their dear causes

Would, to the bleeding and the grim alarm,

Excite the mortified man.

ANGUS          Near Birnam wood

5

Shall we well meet them: That way are they coming.

CATHNESS

Who knows if Donalbain be with his brother?

LENOX     For certain, Sir, he is not. I have a file

Of all the gentry: there is Siward’s son,

And many unrough youths, that even now

10

Protest their first of manhood.

MENTETH     What does the tyrant?

CATHNESS     Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies.

Some say he’s mad; others, that lesser hate him,

Do call it valiant fury: but, for certain,

He cannot buckle his distemper’d cause

15

Within the belt of rule.

ANGUS     Now does he feel

His secret murthers sticking on his hands;

Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach:

Those he commands move only in command,

Nothing in love: now does he feel his title

20

Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe

Upon a dwarfish thief.

MENTETH     Who then shall blame

His pester’d senses to recoil and start,

When all that is within him does condemn

Itself, for being there?

CATHNESS     Well; march we on,

25

To give obedience where ’tis truly ow’d:

Meet we the med’cine of the sickly weal;

And with him pour we, in our country’s purge,

Each drop of us.

LENOX     Or so much as it needs

To dew the sovereign flower, and drown the weeds.

30

Make we our march towards Birnam.

Exeunt, marching.

5.3 Enter MACBETH, Doctor and attendants.

MACBETH     Bring me no more reports; let them fly all:

Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,

I cannot taint with fear. What’s the boy Malcolm?

Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know

All mortal consequence have pronounc’d me thus:

5

‘Fear not, Macbeth; no man that’s born of woman

Shall e’er have power upon thee.’ – Then fly, false Thanes,

And mingle with the English epicures:

The mind I sway by, and the heart I bear,

Shall never sag with doubt, nor shake with fear.

10

Enter a Servant.

The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac’d loon!

Where gott’st thou that goose look?

SERVANT     There is ten thousand –

MACBETH     Geese, villain?

SERVANT     Soldiers, Sir.

MACBETH     Go, prick thy face, and over-red thy fear,

Thou lily-liver’d boy. What soldiers, patch?

15

Death of thy soul! those linen cheeks of thine

Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face?

SERVANT     The English force, so please you.

MACBETH     Take thy face hence.     Exit Servant.

– Seyton! – I am sick at heart,

When I behold – Seyton, I say! – This push

20

Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now.

I have liv’d long enough: my way of life

Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf;

And that which should accompany old age,

As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,

25

I must not look to have; but in their stead,

Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath,

Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

Seyton! –

Enter SEYTON.

SEYTON What’s your gracious pleasure?

MACBETH     What news more?

30

SEYTON

All is confirm’d, my Lord, which was reported.

MACBETH     

I’ll fight, till from my bones my flesh be hack’d.

Give me my armour.

SEYTON ’Tis not needed yet.

MACBETH     I’ll put it on.

Send out moe horses, skirt the country round;

35

Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armour. –

How does your patient, Doctor?

DOCTOR     Not so sick, my Lord,

As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies,

That keep her from her rest.

MACBETH     Cure her of that:

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d,

40

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

Raze out the written troubles of the brain,

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the stuff‘d bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart?

DOCTOR     Therein the patient

45

Must minister to himself.

MACBETH     Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll none of it. –

Come, put mine armour on; give me my staff. –

Seyton, send out – Doctor, the Thanes fly from

me. –

Come, sir, despatch. – If thou couldst, Doctor, cast

50

The water of my land, find her disease,

And purge it to a sound and pristine health,

I would applaud thee to the very echo,

That should applaud again. – Pull’t off, I say. –

What rhubarb, cyme or what purgative drug,

55

Would scour these English hence? – Hear’st thou of

them?

DOCTOR     Ay, my good Lord: your royal preparation

Makes us hear something.

MACBETH     Bring it after me. –

I will not be afraid of death and bane,

Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane. Exit.

60

DOCTOR     [aside]

Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,

Profit again should hardly draw me here. Exeunt.

5.4 Enter, with drum and colours, MALCOLM,

OLD SIWARD and his son, MACDUFF, MENTETH,

CATHNESS, ANGUS, LENOX, ROSSE and Soldiers,

marching.

MALCOLM     Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand,

That chambers will be safe.

MENTETH     We doubt it nothing.

SIWARD What wood is this before us?

MENTETH     The wood of Birnam.

MALCOLM     Let every soldier hew him down a bough,

And bear’t before him: thereby shall we shadow

5

The numbers of our host, and make discovery

Err in report of us.

SOLDIER It shall be done.

SIWARD We learn no other but the confident tyrant

Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure

Our setting down before’t.

MALCOLM     ’Tis his main hope;

10

For where there is advantage to be gone,

Both more and less have given him the revolt,

And none serve with him but constrained things,

Whose hearts are absent too.

MACDUFF     Let our just censures

Attend the true event, and put we on

15

Industrious soldiership.

SIWARD     The time approaches,

That will with due decision make us know

What we shall say we have, and what we owe.

Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,

But certain issue strokes must arbitrate;

20

Towards which advance the war. Exeunt, marching.

5.5 Enter, with drum and colours, MACBETH, SEYTON and soldiers.

MACBETH     Hang out our banners on the outward walls;

The cry is still, ‘They come!’ Our castle’s strength

Will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lie,

Till famine and the ague eat them up.

Were they not forc’d with those that should be ours,

5

We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,

And beat them backward home. What is that noise?

[a cry within, of women]

SEYTON     It is the cry of women, my good Lord.     Exit.

MACBETH     I have almost forgot the taste of fears.

The time has been, my senses would have cool’d

10

To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir,

As life were in’t. I have supp’d full with horrors:

Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,

Cannot once start me.

Re-enter SEYTON.

Wherefore was that cry?

15

SEYTON     The Queen, my Lord, is dead.

MACBETH     She should have died hereafter:

There would have been a time for such a word. –

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

20

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

25

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Enter a Messenger.

Thou com’st to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.

MESSENGER     Gracious my Lord,

30

I should report that which I say I saw,

But know not how to do’t.

MACBETH     Well, say, sir.

MESSENGER     As I did stand my watch upon the hill,

I look’d toward Birnam, and anon, methought,

The wood began to move.

MACBETH     Liar, and slave!

35

MESSENGER     Let me endure your wrath, if ‘t be not so.

Within this three mile may you see it coming;

I say, a moving grove.

MACBETH     If thou speak’st false,

Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,

Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,

40

I care not if thou dost for me as much. –

I pull in resolution; and begin

To doubt th’equivocation of the fiend,

That lies like truth: ‘Fear not, till Birnam wood

Do come to Dunsinane’; – and now a wood

45

Comes toward Dunsinane. – Arm, arm, and out! –

If this which he avouches does appear,

There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here.

I ’gin to be aweary of the sun,

And wish th’estate o’th’ world were now undone. –

50

Ring the alarum bell! – Blow, wind! come, wrack!

At least we’ll die with harness on our back.     Exeunt.

5.6 Enter, with drum and colours, MALCOLM, OLD SIWARD, MACDUFF, etc., and their army, with boughs.

MALCOLM     

Now, near enough: your leavy screens throw down,

And show like those you are. – You, worthy uncle,

Shall, with my cousin, your right noble son,

Lead our first battle: worthy Macduff, and we,

Shall take upon’s what else remains to do,

5

According to our order.

SIWARD     Fare you well. –

Do we but find the tyrant’s power to-night,

Let us be beaten, if we cannot fight.

MACDUFF     

Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath,

Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.

10

Exeunt. Alarums continued.

5.7 Enter MACBETH.

MACBETH     They have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly,

But, bear-like, I must fight the course. – What’s he,

That was not born of woman? Such a one

Am I to fear, or none.

Enter YOUNG SIWARD.

YOUNG SIWARD     What is thy name?

MACBETH     Thou’lt be afraid to hear it.

5

YOUNG SIWARD

No; though thou call’st thyself a hotter name

Than any is in hell.

MACBETH     My name’s Macbeth.

YOUNG SIWARD

The devil himself could not pronounce a title

More hateful to mine ear.

MACBETH     No, nor more fearful.

YOUNG SIWARD

Thou liest, abhorred tyrant: with my sword

10

I’ll prove the lie thou speak’st.

[They fight, and Young Siward is slain.]

MACBETH     Thou wast born of woman: –

But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,

Brandish’d by man that’s of a woman born.     Exit.

Alarums. Enter MACDUFF.

MACDUFF     

That way the noise is. – Tyrant, show thy face:

If thou be’st slain, and with no stroke of mine,

15

My wife and children’s ghosts will haunt me still.

I cannot strike at wretched Kernes, whose arms

Are hir’d to bear their staves: either thou, Macbeth,

Or else my sword, with an unbatter’d edge,

I sheathe again undeeded. There thou shouldst be;

20

By this great clatter, one of greatest note

Seems bruited. Let me find him, Fortune!

And more I beg not.      Exit. Alarum.

Enter MALCOLM and OLD SIWARD.

SIWARD

This way, my Lord; – the castle’s gently render’d:

The tyrant’s people on both sides do fight;

25

The noble Thanes do bravely in the war.

The day almost itself professes yours,

And little is to do.

MALCOLM     We have met with foes

That strike beside us.

SIWARD     Enter, Sir, the castle.

     Exeunt. Alarum.

5.8 Enter MACBETH.

MACBETH     Why should I play the Roman fool, and die

On mine own sword? whiles I see lives, the gashes

Do better upon them.

Re-enter MACDUFF.

MACDUFF     Turn, Hell-hound, turn!

MACBETH     Of all men else I have avoided thee:

But get thee back, my soul is too much charg’d

5

With blood of thine already.

MACDUFF     I have no words;

My voice is in my sword: thou bloodier villain

Than terms can give thee out! [They fight.]

MACBETH     Thou losest labour:

As easy may’st thou the intrenchant air

With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed:

10

Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;

I bear a charmed life; which must not yield

To one of woman born.

MACDUFF     Despair thy charm;

And let the Angel, whom thou still hast serv’d,

Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb

15

Untimely ripp’d.

MACBETH     Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,

For it hath cow’d my better part of man:

And be these juggling fiends no more believ’d,

That palter with us in a double sense;

20

That keep the word of promise to our ear,

And break it to our hope. – I’ll not fight with thee.

MACDUFF     Then yield thee, coward,

And live to be the show and gaze o’th’ time:

We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,

25

Painted upon a pole, and underwrit,

‘Here may you see the tyrant.’

MACBETH     I will not yield,

To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet,

And to be baited with the rabble’s curse.

Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,

30

And thou oppos’d, being of no woman born,

Yet I will try the last: before my body

I throw my warlike shield: lay on, Macduff;

And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’

     Exeunt, fighting. Alarums.

     Re-enter fighting, and Macbeth slain.

5.9 Retreat. Flourish. Enter, with drum and colours, MALCOLM, OLD SIWARD, ROSSE, thanes and soldiers.

MALCOLM     

I would the friends we miss were safe arriv’d.

SIWARD     Some must go off; and yet, by these I see,

So great a day as this is cheaply bought.

MALCOLM     Macduff is missing, and your noble son.

ROSSE     Your son, my Lord, has paid a soldier’s debt:

5

He only liv’d but till he was a man;

The which no sooner had his prowess confirm’d,

In the unshrinking station where he fought,

But like a man he died.

SIWARD     Then he is dead?

ROSSE     

Ay, and brought off the field. Your cause of sorrow

10

Must not be measur’d by his worth, for then

It hath no end.

SIWARD     Had he his hurts before?

ROSSE     Ay, on the front.

SIWARD     Why then, God’s soldier be he!

Had I as many sons as I have hairs,

I would not wish them to a fairer death:

15

And so, his knell is knoll’d.

MALCOLM     He’s worth more sorrow,

And that I’ll spend for him.

SIWARD     He’s worth no more;

They say he parted well and paid his score:

And so, God be with him! – Here comes newer comfort.

Re-enter MACDUFF, with Macbeth’s head.

MACDUFF     

Hail, King! for so thou art. Behold, where stands

20

Th’usurper’s cursed head: the time is free.

I see thee compass’d with thy kingdom’s pearl,

That speak my salutation in their minds;

Whose voices I desire aloud with mine, –

Hail, King of Scotland!

ALL     Hail, King of Scotland!

25

     [Flourish.]

MALCOLM     We shall not spend a large expense of time,

Before we reckon with your several loves,

And make us even with you. My Thanes and kinsmen,

Henceforth be Earls; the first that ever Scotland

In such an honour nam’d. What’s more to do,

30

Which would be planted newly with the time, –

As calling home our exil’d friends abroad,

That fled the snares of watchful tyranny;

Producing forth the cruel ministers

Of this dead butcher, and his fiend-like Queen,

35

Who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands

Took off her life; – this, and what needful else

That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace,

We will perform in measure, time, and place.

So thanks to all at once, and to each one,

40

Whom we invite to see us crown’d at Scone.

     Flourish. Exeunt.

Measure for Measure

Measure for Measure was first printed in the First Folio in 1623 as the fourth of the comedies, but it was performed at the Court of James I on 26 December 1604; it had probably been written and acted at the Globe earlier that year. Possibly the first play Shakespeare wrote after the accession of James I, it deals with many moral and political issues discussed by James in his Basilicon Doron (1599, reprinted 1603). Composed later than most of the comedies and at a time when Shakespeare was turning increasingly to tragedy, it has been seen as having particular affinities with All’s Well That Ends Well, with which it is sometimes classified as a ‘problem comedy’. All’s Well is difficult to date, but it shares with Measure for Measure a darker tone than the other comedies, a strong, outspoken (and for some, dislikeable) heroine, and a plot resolved by a ‘bed-trick’ – the substitution of one woman for another in bed.

Shakespeare’s sources were Giraldi Cinthio and George Whetstone, both of whom wrote two versions of the story of the magistrate who demands sexual favours in return for mercy: Cinthio told the story first in his Hecatommithi (1565) and dramatized it as Epitia (1573); Whetstone wrote a two-part play Promos and Cassandra (1578) and a prose version in his Heptameron of Civil Discourses (1582). Promos and Cassandra seems to have been the main source, but Shakespeare also used the Hecatommithi for the source of Othello which was written close in time to Measure for Measure. In all the previous versions of the story the character who is the equivalent of Isabella does agree to have sex with the magistrate to save her brother’s (or in some versions her husband’s) life, but in none of them is she about to take vows as a nun; and Mariana is Shakespeare’s invention, though the bed-trick was familiar from folklore and romance. The presence throughout of the disguised ruler is also Shakespeare’s invention.

There are some anomalies and dislocations in the text which have been explained in various ways: some scholars have seen them as evidence of authorial revision, the Arden 2 editor ascribes them to oversights and changes of plan, while the editors of the Oxford Complete Works argue that the play was adapted after Shakespeare’s death, most likely by Thomas Middleton, who may also have had a hand in Macbeth and a larger one in Timon of Athens. The passages affected are the opening of 1.2, where there is a noticeable inconsistency over Mistress Overdone’s knowledge of Claudio’s arrest, and the Duke’s brief soliloquy at 4.1.60-5, which seems to have been transferred from his earlier speech at 3.2.179-82 in order to cover the conversation between Isabella and Mariana.

William Davenant adapted Measure for Measure in 1662 as The Law Against Lovers, a play which also took characters and situations from Much Ado About Nothing. Many people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries found its subject-matter distasteful and its conclusion arbitrary: Charlotte Lennox, for example, compared Shakespeare’s version with Cinthio’s and roundly condemned the former for altering the story for the worse and introducing ‘low contrivance, absurd intrigue and improbable incidents … in order to bring about three or four weddings instead of one good beheading’ (Shakespeare Illustrated, 1753). Coleridge called it ‘a hateful work’, and twentieth-century attempts to rehabilitate it by interpreting it as a Christian parable (with the Duke as ‘power divine’) have not convinced everyone. It has, however, appealed to modern performers and critics as a play about repressed desire and sexual decadence set, prophetically, in Freud’s city of Vienna, and some powerful productions have emphasized the claustrophobia of its containment within the walls of convent, brothel and prison. In the theatre there is often a degree of suspense as to how Isabella will react to the Duke’s proposal of marriage in the final scene: Shakespeare gives her no verbal response.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

Vincentio, the DUKE

of Vienna

ANGELO

the Deputy

ESCALUS

an ancient lord

CLAUDIO

a young gentleman

LUCIO

a fantastic

Two other like GENTLEMEN

PROVOST

FRIAR Thomas or FRIAR PETER

JUSTICE

ELBOW

a simple constable

FROTH

a foolish gentleman

POMPEY

servant to Mistress Overdone

ABHORSON

an executioner

BARNARDINE

a dissolute prisoner

Varrius

a gentleman, friend to the Duke

ISABELLA

sister to Claudio

MARIANA

betrothed to Angelo

JULIET

beloved of Claudio

Francisca, a NUN

MISTRESS OVERDONE

a bawd

Lords in attendance, Officers, Servants, Citizens and a Boy

1.1 Enter DUKE, ESCALUS, lords and attendants.

DUKE     Escalus.

ESCALUS     My lord.

DUKE     Of government the properties to unfold

Would seem in me t’affect speech and discourse,

Since I am put to know that your own science

5

Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice

My strength can give you. Then no more remains

But that, to your sufficiency, as your worth is able,

And let them work. The nature of our people,

Our city’s institutions, and the terms

10

For common justice, y’are as pregnant in

As art and practice hath enriched any

That we remember. There is our commission,

From which we would not have you warp. Call hither,

I say, bid come before us Angelo.     Exit an attendant.

15

What figure of us, think you, he will bear?

For you must know, we have with special soul

Elected him our absence to supply;

Lent him our terror, drest him with our love,

And given his deputation all the organs

20

Of our own power. What think you of it?

ESCALUS     If any in Vienna be of worth

To undergo such ample grace and honour,

It is Lord Angelo.

Enter ANGELO.

DUKE     Look where he comes.

ANGELO     Always obedient to your Grace’s will,

25

I come to know your pleasure.

DUKE     Angelo:

There is a kind of character in thy life

That to th’observer doth thy history

Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings

Are not thine own so proper as to waste

30

Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.

Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,

Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues

Did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike

As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch’d

35

But to fine issues; nor nature never lends

The smallest scruple of her excellence

But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines

Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use. But I do bend my speech

40

To one that can my part in him advertise:

Hold therefore, Angelo.

In our remove, be thou at full ourself.

Mortality and mercy in Vienna

Live in thy tongue, and heart. Old Escalus,

45

Though first in question, is thy secondary.

Take thy commission.

ANGELO     Now, good my lord,

Let there be some more test made of my metal,

Before so noble and so great a figure

Be stamp’d upon it.

DUKE     No more evasion.

50

We have with a leaven’d and prepared choice

Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours.

Our haste from hence is of so quick condition

That it prefers itself, and leaves unquestion’d

Matters of needful value. We shall write to you,

55

As time and our concernings shall importune,

How it goes with us; and do look to know

What doth befall you here. So, fare you well.

To th’hopeful execution do I leave you

Of your commissions.

ANGELO     Yet give leave, my lord,

60

That we may bring you something on the way.

DUKE     My haste may not admit it;

Nor need you, on mine honour, have to do

With any scruple. Your scope is as mine own,

So to enforce or qualify the laws

65

As to your soul seems good. Give me your hand;

I’ll privily away. I love the people,

But do not like to stage me to their eyes:

Though it do well, I do not relish well

Their loud applause and Aves vehement;

70

Nor do I think the man of safe discretion

That does affect it. Once more, fare you well.

ANGELO     The heavens give safety to your purposes!

ESCALUS     Lead forth and bring you back in happiness!

DUKE     I thank you; fare you well.     Exit.

75

ESCALUS     I shall desire you, sir, to give me leave

To have free speech with you; and it concerns me

To look into the bottom of my place.

A power I have, but of what strength and nature

I am not yet instructed.

80

ANGELO     ’Tis so with me. Let us withdraw together,

And we may soon our satisfaction have

Touching that point.

ESCALUS     I’ll wait upon your honour.

     Exeunt.

1.2 Enter LUCIO and two other Gentlemen.

LUCIO     If the Duke, with the other dukes, come not to

composition with the King of Hungary, why then all

the dukes fall upon the King.

1 GENTLEMAN     Heaven grant us its peace, but not the

King of Hungary’s!

5

2 GENTLEMAN     Amen.

LUCIO     Thou conclud’st like the sanctimonious pirate,

that went to sea with the Ten Commandments, but

scrap’d one out of the table.

2 GENTLEMAN     ‘Thou shalt not steal’?

10

LUCIO     Ay, that he raz’d.

1 GENTLEMAN     Why, ’twas a commandment to command

the captain and all the rest from their functions:

they put forth to steal. There’s not a soldier of us all

that, in the thanksgiving before meat, do relish the

15

petition well that prays for peace.

2 GENTLEMAN     I never heard any soldier dislike it.

LUCIO     I believe thee; for I think thou never wast where

grace was said.

2 GENTLEMAN     No? A dozen times at least.

20

1 GENTLEMAN     What, in metre?

LUCIO     In any proportion, or in any language.

1 GENTLEMAN     I think, or in any religion.

LUCIO     Ay, why not? Grace is grace, despite of all

controversy; as for example, thou thyself art a wicked

25

villain, despite of all grace.

1 GENTLEMAN     Well, there went but a pair of shears

between us.

LUCIO     I grant: as there may between the lists and the

velvet. Thou art the list.

30

1 GENTLEMAN     And thou the velvet; thou art good

velvet; thou’rt a three-piled piece, I warrant thee: I

had as lief be a list of an English kersey, as be piled, as

thou art pilled, for a French velvet. Do I speak

feelingly now?

35

LUCIO     I think thou dost: and indeed, with most painful

feeling of thy speech. I will, out of thine own

confession, learn to begin thy health; but whilst I live,

forget to drink after thee.

1 GENTLEMAN     I think I have done myself wrong, have I

40

not?

2 GENTLEMAN     Yes, that thou hast; whether thou art tainted or free.

Enter MISTRESS OVERDONE.

LUCIO     Behold, behold, where Madam Mitigation

comes! I have purchased as many diseases under her

45

roof as come to –

2 GENTLEMAN     To what, I pray?

LUCIO     Judge.

2 GENTLEMAN     To three thousand dolours a year.

1 GENTLEMAN     Ay, and more.

50

LUCIO     A French crown more.

1 GENTLEMAN     Thou art always figuring diseases in me;

but thou art full of error; I am sound.

LUCIO     Nay, not, as one would say, healthy: but so sound

as things that are hollow; thy bones are hollow;

55

impiety has made a feast of thee.

1 GENTLEMAN     How now, which of your hips has the most profound sciatica?

MISTRESS OVERDONE     Well, well! There’s one yonder

arrested and carried to prison, was worth five

60

thousand of you all.

2 GENTLEMAN     Who’s that, I prithee?

MISTRESS OVERDONE     Marry sir, that’s Claudio; Signior Claudio.

1 GENTLEMAN     Claudio to prison? ’Tis not so.

65

MISTRESS OVERDONE     Nay, but I know ’tis so. I saw him

arrested: saw him carried away: and which is more,

within these three days his head to be chopped off.

LUCIO     But, after all this fooling, I would not have it so.

Art thou sure of this?

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MISTRESS OVERDONE     I am too sure of it: and it is for getting Madam Julietta with child.

LUCIO     Believe me, this may be: he promised to meet me

two hours since, and he was ever precise in promise-keeping.

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2 GENTLEMAN     Besides, you know, it draws something

near to the speech we had to such a purpose.

1 GENTLEMAN     But most of all agreeing with the proclamation.

LUCIO     Away! Let’s go learn the truth of it.

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     Exeunt Lucio and Gentlemen.

MISTRESS OVERDONE     Thus, what with the war, what

with the sweat, what with the gallows, and what with

poverty, I am custom-shrunk.

Enter POMPEY.

How now? What’s the news with you?

POMPEY     Yonder man is carried to prison.

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MISTRESS OVERDONE     Well! What has he done?

POMPEY     A woman.

MISTRESS OVERDONE     But what’s his offence?

POMPEY     Groping for trouts, in a peculiar river.

MISTRESS OVERDONE     What? Is there a maid with child

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by him?

POMPEY     No: but there’s a woman with maid by him.

You have not heard of the proclamation, have you?

MISTRESS OVERDONE     What proclamation, man?

POMPEY     All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be

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plucked down.

MISTRESS OVERDONE     And what shall become of those in

the city?

POMPEY     They shall stand for seed: they had gone down

too, but that a wise burgher put in for them.

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MISTRESS OVERDONE     But shall all our houses of resort

in the suburbs be pulled down?

POMPEY     To the ground, mistress.

MISTRESS OVERDONE     Why, here’s a change indeed in

the commonwealth! What shall become of me?

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POMPEY     Come: fear not you: good counsellors lack no

clients: though you change your place, you need not

change your trade: I’ll be your tapster still; courage,

there will be pity taken on you; you that have worn

your eyes almost out in the service, you will be

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considered.

MISTRESS OVERDONE     What’s to do here, Thomas

tapster? Let’s withdraw!

POMPEY     Here comes Signior Claudio, led by the

Provost to prison: and there’s Madam Juliet.

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     Exeunt.

Enter Provost and officers with CLAUDIO and JULIET, LUCIO and the two gentlemen.

CLAUDIO

Fellow, why dost thou show me thus to th’ world?

Bear me to prison, where I am committed.

PROVOST     I do it not in evil disposition,

But from Lord Angelo by special charge.

CLAUDIO     Thus can the demi-god, Authority,

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Make us pay down for our offence by weight.

The words of heaven; on whom it will, it will;

On whom it will not, so; yet still ’tis just.

LUCIO

Why, how now, Claudio? Whence comes this restraint?

CLAUDIO     From too much liberty, my Lucio. Liberty,

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As surfeit, is the father of much fast;

So every scope by the immoderate use

Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue,

Like rats that ravin down their proper bane,

A thirsty evil; and when we drink, we die.

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LUCIO     If I could speak so wisely under an arrest, I

would send for certain of my creditors; and yet, to say

the truth, I had as lief have the foppery of freedom as

the morality of imprisonment. – What’s thy offence,

Claudio?

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CLAUDIO     What but to speak of would offend again.

LUCIO     What, is’t murder?

CLAUDIO     No.

LUCIO     Lechery?

CLAUDIO     Call it so.

PROVOST     Away, sir; you must go.

CLAUDIO

One word, good friend: Lucio, a word with you.

LUCIO     A hundred – if they’ll do you any good.

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Is lechery so look’d after?

CLAUDIO     Thus stands it with me: upon a true contract

I got possession of Julietta’s bed.

You know the lady; she is fast my wife,

Save that we do the denunciation lack

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Of outward order. This we came not to

Only for propagation of a dower

Remaining in the coffer of her friends,

From whom we thought it meet to hide our love

Till time had made them for us. But it chances

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The stealth of our most mutual entertainment

With character too gross is writ on Juliet.

LUCIO     With child, perhaps?

CLAUDIO     Unhappily, even so.

And the new deputy now for the Duke –

Whether it be the fault and glimpse of newness,

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Of whether that the body public be

A horse whereon the governor doth ride,

Who, newly in the seat, that it may know

He can command, lets it straight feel the spur;

Whether the tyranny be in his place,

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Or in his eminence that fills it up,

I stagger in – but this new governor

Awakes me all the enrolled penalties

Which have, like unscour’d armour, hung by th’ wall

So long, that nineteen zodiacs have gone round,

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And none of them been worn; and for a name

Now puts the drowsy and neglected act

Freshly on me: ’tis surely for a name.

LUCIO     I warrant it is: and thy head stands so tickle on

thy shoulders, that a milkmaid, if she be in love, may

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sigh it off. Send after the Duke, and appeal to him.

CLAUDIO     I have done so, but he’s not to be found.

I prithee, Lucio, do me this kind service:

This day my sister should the cloister enter,

And there receive her approbation.

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Acquaint her with the danger of my state:

Implore her, in my voice, that she make friends

To the strict deputy: bid herself assay him.

I have great hope in that. For in her youth

There is a prone and speechless dialect

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Such as move men; beside, she hath prosperous art

When she will play with reason and discourse,

And well she can persuade.

LUCIO     I pray she may: as well for the encouragement of

the like, which else would stand under grievous

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imposition, as for the enjoying of thy life, who I would

be sorry should be thus foolishly lost at a game of tick-

tack. – I’ll to her.

CLAUDIO     I thank you, good friend Lucio.

LUCIO     Within two hours.

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CLAUDIO     Come, officer, away.      Exeunt.

1.3 Enter DUKE and FRIAR THOMAS.

DUKE     No. Holy father, throw away that thought;

Believe not that the dribbling dart of love

Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee

To give me secret harbour hath a purpose

More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends

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Of burning youth.

FRIAR     May your Grace speak of it?

DUKE     My holy sir, none better knows than you

How I have ever lov’d the life remov’d,

And held in idle price to haunt assemblies,

Where youth, and cost, witless bravery keeps.

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I have deliver’d to Lord Angelo –

A man of stricture and firm abstinence –

My absolute power and place here in Vienna,

And he supposes me travell’d to Poland;

For so I have strew’d it in the common ear,

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And so it is receiv’d. Now, pious sir,

You will demand of me, why I do this.

FRIAR     Gladly, my lord.

DUKE     We have strict statutes and most biting laws,

The needful bits and curbs to headstrong jades,

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Which for this fourteen years we have let slip;

Even like an o’er-grown lion in a cave

That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers,

Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch,

Only to stick it in their children’s sight

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For terror, not to use, in time the rod

Becomes more mock’d than fear’d: so our decrees,

Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead,

And Liberty plucks Justice by the nose,

The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart

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Goes all decorum.

FRIAR     It rested in your Grace

To unloose this tied-up justice when you pleas’d;

And it in you more dreadful would have seem’d

Than in Lord Angelo.

DUKE     I do fear, too dreadful.

Sith ’twas my fault to give the people scope,

35

’Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them

For what I bid them do: for we bid this be done,

When evil deeds have their permissive pass,

And not the punishment. Therefore indeed, my father,

I have on Angelo impos’d the office;

40

Who may in th’ambush of my name strike home,

And yet my nature never in the fight

To do in slander. And to behold his sway,

I will, as ’twere a brother of your order,

Visit both prince and people. Therefore, I prithee,

45

Supply me with the habit, and instruct me

How I may formally in person bear

Like a true friar. Moe reasons for this action

At our more leisure shall I render you;

Only this one: Lord Angelo is precise;

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Stands at a guard with Envy; scarce confesses

That his blood flows; or that his appetite

Is more to bread than stone. Hence shall we see

If power change purpose, what our seemers be.

     Exeunt.

1.4 Enter ISABELLA and FRANCISCA, a Nun.

ISABELLA     And have you nuns no farther privileges?

NUN     Are not these large enough?

ISABELLA     Yes, truly; I speak not as desiring more,

But rather wishing a more strict restraint

Upon the sisters stood, the votarists of Saint Clare.

5

LUCIO [within] Hoa! Peace be in this place!

ISABELLA     Who’s that which calls?

NUN     It is a man’s voice! Gentle Isabella,

Turn you the key, and know his business of him;

You may, I may not; you are yet unsworn:

When you have vow’d, you must not speak with men

10

But in the presence of the prioress;

Then, if you speak, you must not show your face;

Or if you show your face, you must not speak.

He calls again: I pray you, answer him.     Retires.

ISABELLA     Peace and prosperity! Who is’t that calls?

15

Enter LUCIO.

LUCIO     Hail virgin, if you be – as those cheek-roses

Proclaim you are no less – can you so stead me

As bring me to the sight of Isabella,

A novice of this place, and the fair sister

To her unhappy brother Claudio?

20

ISABELLA     Why ‘her unhappy brother’? Let me ask,

The rather for I now must make you know

I am that Isabella, and his sister.

LUCIO     Gentle and fair. Your brother kindly greets you.

Not to be weary with you, he’s in prison.

25

ISABELLA     Woe me! For what?

LUCIO     For that which, if myself might be his judge,

He should receive his punishment in thanks:

He hath got his friend with child.

ISABELLA     Sir, make me not your story.

LUCIO     ’Tis true.

30

I would not, though ’tis my familiar sin,

With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest

Tongue far from heart, play with all virgins so.

I hold you as a thing enskied and sainted

By your renouncement, an immortal spirit,

35

And to be talk’d with in sincerity,

As with a saint.

ISABELLA     You do blaspheme the good, in mocking me.

LUCIO     Do not believe it. Fewness and truth; ’tis thus:

Your brother and his lover have embrac’d;

40

As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time

That from the seedness the bare fallow brings

To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb

Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry.

ISABELLA

Someone with child by him? My cousin Juliet?

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LUCIO     Is she your cousin?

ISABELLA

Adoptedly, as schoolmaids change their names

By vain though apt affection.

LUCIO     She it is.

ISABELLA     O, let him marry her!

LUCIO     This is the point.

The Duke is very strangely gone from hence;

50

Bore many gentlemen – myself being one –

In hand, and hope of action: but we do learn,

By those that know the very nerves of state,

His giving out were of an infinite distance

From his true-meant design. Upon his place,

55

And with full line of his authority,

Governs Lord Angelo; a man whose blood

Is very snow-broth; one who never feels

The wanton stings and motions of the sense;

But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge

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With profits of the mind, study and fast.

He, to give fear to use and liberty,

Which have for long run by the hideous law

As mice by lions, hath pick’d out an act

Under whose heavy sense your brother’s life

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Falls into forfeit: he arrests him on it,

And follows close the rigour of the statute

To make him an example. All hope is gone,

Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer

To soften Angelo. And that’s my pith of business

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’Twixt you and your poor brother.

ISABELLA     Doth he so,

Seek his life?

LUCIO     Has censur’d him already;

And, as I hear, the Provost hath a warrant

For’s execution.

ISABELLA     Alas, what poor ability’s in me

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To do him good!

LUCIO     Assay the power you have.

ISABELLA     My power? Alas, I doubt.

LUCIO     Our doubts are traitors,

And makes us lose the good we oft might win

By fearing to attempt. Go to Lord Angelo,

And let him learn to know, when maidens sue,

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Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel,

All their petitions are as freely theirs

As they themselves would owe them.

ISABELLA     I’ll see what I can do.

LUCIO     But speedily.

ISABELLA     I will about it straight;

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No longer staying but to give the Mother

Notice of my affair. I humbly thank you.

Commend me to my brother: soon at night

I’ll send him certain word of my success.

LUCIO     I take my leave of you.

ISABELLA     Good sir, adieu.

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     Exeunt severally.

2.1 Enter ANGELO, ESCALUS and servants, a Justice.

ANGELO     We must not make a scarecrow of the law,

Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,

And let it keep one shape till custom make it

Their perch, and not their terror.

ESCALUS     Ay, but yet

Let us be keen, and rather cut a little,

5

Than fall, and bruise to death. Alas, this gentleman,

Whom I would save, had a most noble father.

Let but your honour know –

Whom I believe to be most strait in virtue –

That in the working of your own affections,

10

Had time coher’d with place, or place with wishing,

Or that the resolute acting of your blood

Could have attain’d th’effect of your own purpose,

Whether you had not sometime in your life

Err’d in this point, which now you censure him,

15

And pull’d the law upon you.

ANGELO     ’Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,

Another thing to fall. I not deny

The jury passing on the prisoner’s life

May in the sworn twelve have a thief, or two,

20

Guiltier than him they try. What’s open made to justice,

That justice seizes. What knows the laws

That thieves do pass on thieves? ’Tis very pregnant,

The jewel that we find, we stoop and take’t,

Because we see it; but what we do not see,

25

We tread upon, and never think of it.

You may not so extenuate his offence

For I have had such faults; but rather tell me,

When I that censure him do so offend,

Let mine own judgement pattern out my death,

30

And nothing come in partial. Sir, he must die.

Enter PROVOST.

ESCALUS     Be it as your wisdom will.

ANGELO     Where is the Provost?

PROVOST     Here, if it like your honour.

ANGELO     See that Claudio

Be executed by nine tomorrow morning;

Bring him his confessor, let him be prepar’d,

35

For that’s the utmost of his pilgrimage.

     Exit Provost.

ESCALUS     Well, heaven forgive him; and forgive us all.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

Some run from brakes of ice and answer none,

And some condemned for a fault alone.

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Enter ELBOW and officers with FROTH and POMPEY.

ELBOW     Come, bring them away. If these be good people

in a commonweal, that do nothing but use their abuses

in common houses, I know no law. Bring them away.

ANGELO     How now sir, what’s your name? And what’s

the matter?

45

ELBOW     If it please your honour, I am the poor Duke’s

constable, and my name is Elbow. I do lean upon

justice, sir, and do bring in here before your good

honour two notorious benefactors.

ANGELO     Benefactors? Well, what benefactors are they?

50

Are they not malefactors?

ELBOW     If it please your honour, I know not well what

they are. But precise villains they are, that I am sure

of, and void of all profanation in the world, that good

Christians ought to have.

55

ESCALUS [to Angelo] This comes off well: here’s a wise

officer.

ANGELO     Go to. What quality are they of? Elbow is your

name? Why dost thou not speak, Elbow?

POMPEY     He cannot, sir: he’s out at elbow.

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ANGELO     What are you, sir?

ELBOW     He, sir? A tapster, sir; parcel bawd; one that

serves a bad woman; whose house, sir, was, as they say,

plucked down in the suburbs; and now she professes a

hot-house; which I think is a very ill house too.

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ESCALUS     How know you that?

ELBOW     My wife, sir, whom I detest before heaven and your honour –

ESCALUS     How? Thy wife?

ELBOW     Ay, sir: whom I thank heaven is an honest

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woman –

ESCALUS     Dost thou detest her therefore?

ELBOW     I say, sir, I will detest myself also, as well as she,

that this house, if it be not a bawd’s house, it is pity of

her life, for it is a naughty house.

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ESCALUS     How dost thou know that, constable?

ELBOW     Marry, sir, by my wife, who, if she had been a

woman cardinally given, might have been accused in

fornication, adultery, and all uncleanliness there.

ESCALUS     By the woman’s means?

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ELBOW     Ay, sir, by Mistress Overdone’s means; but as

she spit in his face, so she defied him.

POMPEY     Sir, if it please your honour, this is not so.

ELBOW     Prove it before these varlets here, thou

honourable man, prove it.

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ESCALUS [to Angelo] Do you hear how he misplaces?

POMPEY     Sir, she came in great with child; and longing,

saving your honours’ reverence, for stewed prunes; sir,

we had but two in the house, which at that very distant

time stood as it were in a fruit-dish, a dish of some

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three pence, your honours have seen such dishes, they

are not china dishes, but very good dishes, –

ESCALUS     Go to, go to: no matter for the dish, sir.

POMPEY     No indeed, sir, not of a pin: you are therein in

the right: but to the point. As I say, this Mistress

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Elbow being, as I say, with child, and being great-

bellied, and longing, as I said, for prunes; and having

but two in the dish, as I said, Master Froth here, this

very man, having eaten the rest, as I said, and, as I say,

paying for them very honestly; for, as you know,

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Master Froth, I could not give you three pence

again –

FROTH     No, indeed.

POMPEY     Very well: you being then, if you be

remembered, cracking the stones of the foresaid

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prunes –

FROTH     Ay, so I did indeed.

POMPEY     Why, very well: I telling you then, if you be

remembered, that such a one and such a one were past

cure of the thing you wot of, unless they kept very

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good diet, as I told you –

FROTH     All this is true.

POMPEY     Why, very well then –

ESCALUS     Come, you are a tedious fool. To the purpose:

what was done to Elbow’s wife that he hath cause to

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complain of? Come me to what was done to her.

POMPEY     Sir, your honour cannot come to that yet.

ESCALUS     No, sir, nor I mean it not.

POMPEY     Sir, but you shall come to it, by your honour’s

leave. And I beseech you, look into Master Froth here,

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sir; a man of fourscore pound a year; whose father died

at Hallowmas – was’t not at Hallowmas, Master

Froth?

FROTH     All-hallond Eve.

POMPEY     Why, very well: I hope here be truths. He, sir,

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sitting, as I say, in a lower chair, sir – ’twas in the

Bunch of Grapes, where indeed you have a delight to

sit, have you not?

FROTH     I have so, because it is an open room, and good

for winter.

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POMPEY     Why, very well then: I hope here be truths.

ANGELO     This will last out a night in Russia

When nights are longest there. I’ll take my leave,

And leave you to the hearing of the cause;

Hoping you’ll find good cause to whip them all.

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ESCALUS     I think no less: good morrow to your lordship.

     Exit Angelo.

Now, sir, come on. What was done to Elbow’s wife,

once more?

POMPEY     Once, sir? There was nothing done to her once.

ELBOW     I beseech you, sir, ask him what this man did to

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my wife.

POMPEY     I beseech your honour, ask me.

ESCALUS     Well, sir, what did this gentleman to her?

POMPEY     I beseech you, sir, look in this gentleman’s face.

Good Master Froth, look upon his honour; ’tis for a

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good purpose. – Doth your honour mark his face?

ESCALUS     Ay, sir, very well.

POMPEY     Nay, I beseech you, mark it well.

ESCALUS     Well, I do so.

POMPEY     Doth your honour see any harm in his face?

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ESCALUS     Why, no.

POMPEY     I’ll be supposed upon a book, his face is the

worst thing about him. – Good, then: if his face be the

worst thing about him, how could Master Froth do the

constable’s wife any harm? I would know that of your

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honour.

ESCALUS     He’s in the right, constable; what say you to it?

ELBOW     First, and it like you, the house is a respected

house; next, this is a respected fellow; and his mistress

is a respected woman.

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POMPEY     By this hand, sir, his wife is a more respected

person than any of us all.

ELBOW     Varlet, thou liest! Thou liest, wicked varlet! The

time is yet to come that she was ever respected with

man, woman, or child.

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POMPEY     Sir, she was respected with him, before he

married with her.

ESCALUS     Which is the wiser here, Justice or Iniquity? Is

this true?

ELBOW     O thou caitiff! O thou varlet! O thou wicked

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Hannibal! I respected with her, before I was married

to her? If ever I was respected with her, or she with

me, let not your worship think me the poor Duke’s

officer. Prove this, thou wicked Hannibal, or I’ll have

mine action of battery on thee.

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ESCALUS     If he took you a box o’th’ ear, you might have

your action of slander too.

ELBOW     Marry, I thank your good worship for it. What

is’t your worship’s pleasure I shall do with this wicked

caitiff?

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ESCALUS     Truly, officer, because he hath some offences

in him that thou wouldst discover if thou couldst, let

him continue in his courses till thou know’st what they are.

ELBOW     Marry, I thank your worship for it. – Thou

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seest, thou wicked varlet now, what’s come upon thee.

Thou art to continue now, thou varlet, thou art to

continue.

ESCALUS     Where were you born, friend?

FROTH     Here in Vienna, sir.

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ESCALUS     Are you of fourscore pounds a year?

FROTH     Yes, and ‘t please you, sir.

ESCALUS     So. [to Pompey] What trade are you of, sir?

POMPEY     A tapster, a poor widow’s tapster.

ESCALUS     Your mistress’ name?

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POMPEY     Mistress Overdone.

ESCALUS     Hath she had any more than one husband?

POMPEY     Nine, sir; Overdone by the last.

ESCALUS     Nine! – Come hither to me, Master Froth.

Master Froth, I would not have you acquainted with

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tapsters; they will draw you, Master Froth, and you

will hang them. Get you gone, and let me hear no

more of you.

FROTH     I thank your worship. For mine own part, I

never come into any room in a tap-house, but I am

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drawn in.

ESCALUS     Well: no more of it, Master Froth: farewell.

     Exit Froth.

Come you hither to me, Master tapster. What’s your

name, Master tapster?

POMPEY     Pompey.

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ESCALUS     What else?

POMPEY     Bum, sir.

ESCALUS     Troth, and your bum is the greatest thing

about you; so that, in the beastliest sense, you are

Pompey the Great. Pompey, you are partly a bawd,

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Pompey, howsoever you colour it in being a tapster, are

you not? Come, tell me true, it shall be the better for

you.

POMPEY     Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live.

ESCALUS     How would you live, Pompey? By being a

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bawd? What do you think of the trade, Pompey? Is it a

lawful trade?

POMPEY     If the law would allow it, sir.

ESCALUS     But the law will not allow it, Pompey; nor it

shall not be allowed in Vienna.

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POMPEY     Does your worship mean to geld and splay all

the youth of the city?

ESCALUS     No, Pompey.

POMPEY     Truly sir, in my poor opinion, they will to’t

then. If your worship will take order for the drabs and

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the knaves, you need not to fear the bawds.

ESCALUS     There is pretty orders beginning, I can tell

you. It is but heading and hanging.

POMPEY     If you head and hang all that offend that way

but for ten year together, you’ll be glad to give out a

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commission for more heads: if this law hold in Vienna

ten year, I’ll rent the fairest house in it after three

pence a bay. If you live to see this come to pass, say

Pompey told you so.

ESCALUS     Thank you, good Pompey; and, in requital of

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your prophecy, hark you: I advise you, let me not find

you before me again upon any complaint whatsoever;

no, not for dwelling where you do. If I do, Pompey, I

shall beat you to your tent, and prove a shrewd Caesar

to you: in plain dealing, Pompey, I shall have you

245

whipped. So for this time, Pompey, fare you well.

POMPEY     I thank your worship for your good counsel;

[aside] but I shall follow it as the flesh and fortune shall

better determine.

Whip me? No, no, let carman whip his jade;

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The valiant heart’s not whipt out of his trade.     Exit.

ESCALUS     Come hither to me, Master Elbow: come

hither, Master constable. How long have you been in

this place of constable?

ELBOW     Seven year and a half, sir.

255

ESCALUS     I thought, by the readiness in the office, you

had continued in it some time. – You say seven years

together?

ELBOW     And a half, sir.

ESCALUS     Alas, it hath been great pains to you: they do

260

you wrong to put you so oft upon’t. Are there not men

in your ward sufficient to serve it?

ELBOW     Faith, sir, few of any wit in such matters. As

they are chosen, they are glad to choose me for them;

I do it for some piece of money, and go through with

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all.

ESCALUS     Look you bring me in the names of some six

or seven, the most sufficient of your parish.

ELBOW     To your worship’s house, sir?

ESCALUS     To my house. Fare you well.     Exit Elbow.

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What’s o’clock, think you?

JUSTICE     Eleven, sir.

ESCALUS     I pray you home to dinner with me.

JUSTICE     I humbly thank you.

ESCALUS     It grieves me for the death of Claudio,

275

But there’s no remedy.

JUSTICE     Lord Angelo is severe.

ESCALUS     It is but needful.

Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so;

Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.

But yet, poor Claudio! There is no remedy.

280

Come, sir.     Exeunt.

2.2 Enter Provost and a Servant.

SERVANT

He’s hearing of a cause: he will come straight;

I’ll tell him of you.

PROVOST     Pray you, do.     Exit Servant.

     I’ll know

His pleasure, may be he will relent. Alas,

He hath but as offended in a dream;

All sects, all ages smack of this vice, and he

5

To die for’t!

Enter ANGELO.

ANGELO     Now, what’s the matter, Provost?

PROVOST     Is it your will Claudio shall die tomorrow?

ANGELO     Did I not tell thee yea? Hadst thou not order?

Why dost thou ask again?

PROVOST     Lest I might be too rash.

Under your good correction, I have seen

10

When, after execution, judgement hath

Repented o’er his doom.

ANGELO     Go to; let that be mine;

Do you your office, or give up your place,

And you shall well be spar’d.

PROVOST     I crave your honour’s pardon.

What shall be done, sir, with the groaning Juliet?

15

She’s very near her hour.

ANGELO     Dispose of her

To some more fitter place; and that with speed.

Enter Servant.

SERVANT     Here is the sister of the man condemn’d,

Desires access to you.

ANGELO     Hath he a sister?

PROVOST     Ay, my good lord, a very virtuous maid;

20

And to be shortly of a sisterhood,

If not already.

ANGELO     Well, let her be admitted.

     Exit Servant.

See you the fornicatress be remov’d;

Let her have needful, but not lavish means;

There shall be order for’t.

Enter LUCIO and ISABELLA.

PROVOST     Save your honour! [going]

25

ANGELO     Stay a little while.

[to Isabella]     Y’are welcome: what’s your will?

ISABELLA     I am a woeful suitor to your honour;

Please but your honour hear me.

ANGELO     Well: what’s your suit?

ISABELLA     There is a vice that most I do abhor,

And most desire should meet the blow of justice;

30

For which I would not plead, but that I must;

For which I must not plead, but that I am

At war ’twixt will and will not.

ANGELO     Well: the matter?

ISABELLA     I have a brother is condemn’d to die;

I do beseech you, let it be his fault,

35

And not my brother.

PROVOST [aside]     Heaven give thee moving graces!

ANGELO     Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?

Why, every fault’s condemn’d ere it be done:

Mine were the very cipher of a function

To fine the faults, whose find stands in record,

40

And let go by the actor.

ISABELLA     O just but severe law!

I had a brother, then: heaven keep your honour.

[going]

LUCIO [to Isabella]

Give’t not o’er so. – To him again, entreat him,

Kneel down before him, hang upon his gown;

You are too cold. If you should need a pin,

45

You could not with more tame a tongue desire it.

To him, I say.

ISABELLA     Must he needs die?

ANGELO     Maiden, no remedy.

ISABELLA     Yes: I do think that you might pardon him,

And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy.

50

ANGELO     I will not do’t.

ISABELLA     But can you if you would?

ANGELO     Look what I will not, that I cannot do.

ISABELLA

But might you do’t, and do the world no wrong,

If so your heart were touch’d with that remorse

As mine is to him?

ANGELO     He’s sentenc’d, ’tis too late.

55

LUCIO [to Isabella] You are too cold.

ISABELLA     Too late? Why, no. I that do speak a word

May call it again. – Well, believe this:

No ceremony that to great ones longs,

Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword,

60

The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe,

Become them with one half so good a grace

As mercy does.

If he had been as you, and you as he,

You would have slipp’d like him, but he like you

65

Would not have been so stern.

ANGELO     Pray you be gone.

ISABELLA     I would to heaven I had your potency,

And you were Isabel! Should it then be thus?

No; I would tell what ’twere to be a judge,

And what a prisoner.

LUCIO [to Isabella]     Ay, touch him: there’s the vein.

70

ANGELO     Your brother is a forfeit of the law,

And you but waste your words.

ISABELLA     Alas, alas!

Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once,

And He that might the vantage best have took

Found out the remedy. How would you be

75

If He, which is the top of judgement, should

But judge you as you are? O, think on that,

And mercy then will breathe within your lips,

Like man new made.

ANGELO     Be you content, fair maid;

It is the law, not I, condemn your brother;

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Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son,

It should be thus with him. He must die tomorrow.

ISABELLA     Tomorrow? O, that’s sudden.

Spare him, spare him!

He’s not prepar’d for death. Even for our kitchens

85

We kill the fowl of season: shall we serve heaven

With less respect than we do minister

To our gross selves? Good, good my lord, bethink you:

Who is it that hath died for this offence?

There’s many have committed it.

LUCIO [to Isabella]      Ay, well said.

90

ANGELO

The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept:

Those many had not dar’d to do that evil

If the first that did th’edict infringe

Had answer’d for his deed. Now ’tis awake,

Takes note of what is done, and like a prophet

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Looks in a glass that shows what future evils,

Either new, or by remissness new conceiv’d,

And so in progress to be hatch’d and born,

Are now to have no successive degrees,

But ere they live, to end.

ISABELLA     Yet show some pity.

100

ANGELO     I show it most of all when I show justice;

For then I pity those I do not know,

Which a dismiss’d offence would after gall,

And do him right that, answering one foul wrong,

Lives not to act another. Be satisfied;

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Your brother dies tomorrow; be content.

ISABELLA

So you must be the first that gives this sentence,

And he, that suffers. O, it is excellent

To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous

To use it like a giant.

110

LUCIO [to Isabella] That’s well said.

ISABELLA     Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne’er be quiet,

For every pelting petty officer

Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder.

Merciful Heaven,

115

Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt

Splits the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,

Than the soft myrtle. But man, proud man,

Dress’d in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d –

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His glassy essence – like an angry ape

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,

Would all themselves laugh mortal.

LUCIO [to Isabella]

O, to him, to him, wench! He will relent;

125

He’s coming: I perceive’t.

PROVOST [aside]     Pray heaven she win him.

ISABELLA     We cannot weigh our brother with ourself.

Great men may jest with saints: ’tis wit in them,

But in the less, foul profanation.

LUCIO [to Isabella] Thou’rt i’th’ right, girl; more o’ that.

130

ISABELLA     That in the captain’s but a choleric word,

Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

LUCIO [to Isabella] Art avis’d o’ that? More on’t.

ANGELO     Why do you put these sayings upon me?

ISABELLA     Because authority, though it err like others,

135

Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself

That skins the vice o’th’ top. Go to your bosom,

Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know

That’s like my brother’s fault. If it confess

A natural guiltiness, such as is his,

140

Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue

Against my brother’s life.

ANGELO [aside]     She speaks, and ’tis such sens

That my sense breeds with it. – Fare you well.

[going]

ISABELLA     Gentle my lord, turn back.

ANGELO     I will bethink me. Come again tomorrow.

145

[going]

ISABELLA

Hark, how I’ll bribe you: good my lord, turn back.

ANGELO     How! Bribe me?

ISABELLA

Ay, with such gifts that heaven shall share with you.

LUCIO [to Isabella] You had marr’d all else.

ISABELLA     Not with fond sickles of the tested gold,

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Or stones, whose rate are either rich or poor

As fancy values them: but with true prayers,

That shall be up at heaven and enter there

Ere sunrise: prayers from preserved souls,

From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate

155

To nothing temporal.

ANGELO     Well: come to me tomorrow.

LUCIO [to Isabella] Go to: ’tis well; away.

ISABELLA     Heaven keep your honour safe.

ANGELO [aside]     Amen.

For I am that way going to temptation,

Where prayer’s cross’d.

ISABELLA     At what hour tomorrow

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Shall I attend your lordship?

ANGELO     At any time ’fore noon.

ISABELLA     Save your honour.     Exeunt all but Angelo.

ANGELO     From thee: even from thy virtue!

What’s this? What’s this? Is this her fault, or mine?

The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most, ha?

Not she; nor doth she tempt; but it is I

165

That, lying by the violet in the sun,

Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,

Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be

That modesty may more betray our sense

Than woman’s lightness? Having waste ground enough,

170

Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary

And pitch our evils there? O fie, fie, fie!

What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?

Dost thou desire her foully for those things

That make her good? O, let her brother live!

175

Thieves for their robbery have authority,

When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,

That I desire to hear her speak again?

And feast upon her eyes? What is’t I dream on?

O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,

180

With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous

Is that temptation that doth goad us on

To sin in loving virtue. Never could the strumpet

With all her double vigour, art and nature,

Once stir my temper: but this virtuous maid

185

Subdues me quite. Ever till now

When men were fond, I smil’d, and wonder’d how.

     Exit.

2.3 Enter severally DUKE,
disguised as a friar, and Provost.

DUKE     Hail to you, Provost – so I think you are.

PROVOST

I am the Provost. What’s your will, good Friar?

DUKE     Bound by my charity, and my bless’d order,

I come to visit the afflicted spirits

Here in the prison. Do me the common right

5

To let me see them, and to make me know

The nature of their crimes, that I may minister

To them accordingly.

PROVOST

I would do more than that, if more were needful –

Enter JULIET.

Look, here comes one: a gentlewoman of mine,

10

Who, falling in the flaws of her own youth,

Hath blister’d her report. She is with child,

And he that got it, sentenc’d: a young man

More fit to do another such offence,

Than die for this.

15

DUKE     When must he die?

PROVOST     As I do think, tomorrow.

[to Juliet] I have provided for you; stay a while,

And you shall be conducted.

DUKE     Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry?

JULIET     I do; and bear the same most patiently.

20

DUKE

I’ll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience

And try your penitence, if it be sound,

Or hollowly put on.

JULIET     I’ll gladly learn.

DUKE     Love you the man that wrong’d you?

JULIET     Yes, as I love the woman that wrong’d him.

25

DUKE     So then it seems your most offenceful act

Was mutually committed?

JULIET     Mutually.

DUKE     Then was your sin of heavier kind than his.

JULIET     I do confess it, and repent it, father.

DUKE     ’Tis meet so, daughter; but lest you do repent,

30

As that the sin hath brought you to this shame,

Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven,

Showing we would not spare heaven as we love it,

But as we stand in fear –

JULIET     I do repent me as it is an evil,

35

And take the shame with joy.

DUKE     There rest.

Your partner, as I hear, must die tomorrow,

And I am going with instruction to him.

Grace go with you: Benedicite!     Exit.

JULIET     Must die to-morrow! O injurious love,

40

That respites me a life, whose very comfort

Is still a dying horror!

PROVOST     ’Tis pity of him.     Exeunt.

2.4 Enter ANGELO.

ANGELO

When I would pray and think, I think and pray

To several subjects: Heaven hath my empty words,

Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,

Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,

As if I did but only chew his name,

5

And in my heart the strong and swelling evil

Of my conception. The state whereon I studied

Is, like a good thing being often read,

Grown sere and tedious; yea, my gravity,

Wherein – let no man hear me – I take pride,

10

Could I with boot change for an idle plume

Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form,

How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,

Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls

To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood.

15

Let’s write good angel on the devil’s horn –

’Tis not the devil’s crest.

[knock]     How now! Who’s there?

Enter Servant.

SERVANT     One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you.

ANGELO     Teach her the way.     Exit Servant.

O heavens,

Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,

20

Making both it unable for itself

And dispossessing all my other parts

Of necessary fitness?

So play the foolish throngs with one that swounds,

Come all to help him, and so stop the air

25

By which he should revive; and even so

The general subject to a well-wish’d king

Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness

Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love

Must needs appear offence.

Enter ISABELLA.

     How now, fair maid?

30

ISABELLA     I am come to know your pleasure.

ANGELO [aside]

That you might know it, would much better please me,

Than to demand what ’tis. – Your brother cannot live.

ISABELLA     Even so. Heaven keep your honour.

ANGELO     Yet may he live a while; and, it may be,

35

As long as you or I; yet he must die.

ISABELLA     Under your sentence?

ANGELO     Yea.

ISABELLA     When, I beseech you? That in his reprieve,

Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted

40

That his soul sicken not.

ANGELO     Ha? Fie, these filthy vices! It were as good

To pardon him that hath from nature stolen

A man already made, as to remit

Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven’s image

45

In stamps that are forbid. ’Tis all as easy

Falsely to take away a life true made,

As to put mettle in restrained means

To make a false one.

ISABELLA     ’Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth.

50

ANGELO     Say you so? Then I shall pose you quickly.

Which had you rather, that the most just law

Now took your brother’s life; or, to redeem him,

Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness

As she that he hath stain’d?

ISABELLA     Sir, believe this:

55

I had rather give my body than my soul.

ANGELO     I talk not of your soul: our compell’d sins

Stand more for number than for accompt.

ISABELLA     How say you?

ANGELO     Nay, I’ll not warrant that: for I can speak

Against the thing I say. Answer to this:

60

I – now the voice of the recorded law –

Pronounce a sentence on your brother’s life:

Might there not be a charity in sin

To save this brother’s life?

ISABELLA     Please you to do’t,

I’ll take it as a peril to my soul;

65

It is no sin at all, but charity.

ANGELO     Pleas’d you to do’t, at peril of your soul,

Were equal poise of sin and charity.

ISABELLA     That I do beg his life, if it be sin,

Heaven let me bear it; you granting of my suit,

70

If that be sin, I’ll make it my morn prayer

To have it added to the faults of mine,

And nothing of your answer.

ANGELO     Nay, but hear me;

Your sense pursues not mine: either you are ignorant,

Or seem so, crafty; and that’s not good.

75

ISABELLA     Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,

But graciously to know I am no better.

ANGELO     Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright

When it doth tax itself: as these black masks

Proclaim an enciel’d beauty ten times louder

80

Than beauty could, display’d. But mark me;

To be received plain, I’ll speak more gross.

Your brother is to die.

ISABELLA     So.

ANGELO     And his offence is so, as it appears,

85

Accountant to the law upon that pain.

ISABELLA     True.

ANGELO     Admit no other way to save his life –

As I subscribe not that, nor any other,

But in the loss of question – that you, his sister,

90

Finding yourself desir’d of such a person

Whose credit with the judge, or own great place,

Could fetch your brother from the manacles

Of the all-binding law; and that there were

No earthly mean to save him, but that either

95

You must lay down the treasures of your body

To this suppos’d, or else to let him suffer:

What would you do?

ISABELLA     As much for my poor brother as myself;

That is, were I under the terms of death,

100

Th’impression of keen whips I’d wear as rubies,

And strip myself to death as to a bed

That longing have been sick for, ere I’d yield

My body up to shame.

ANGELO     Then must your brother die.

ISABELLA     And ’twere the cheaper way.

105

Better it were a brother died at once,

Than that a sister, by redeeming him,

Should die for ever.

ANGELO     Were you not then as cruel as the sentence

That you have slander’d so?

110

ISABELLA     Ignomy in ransom and free pardon

Are of two houses: lawful mercy

Is nothing kin to foul redemption.

ANGELO     You seem’d of late to make the law a tyrant,

And rather prov’d the sliding of your brother

115

A merriment than a vice.

ISABELLA     O pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out

To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean.

I something do excuse the thing I hate

For his advantage that I dearly love.

120

ANGELO     We are all frail.

ISABELLA     Else let my brother die,

If not a feodary but only he

Owe and succeed thy weakness.

ANGELO     Nay, women are frail too.

ISABELLA

Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves,

Which are as easy broke as they make forms.

125

Women? – Help, heaven! Men their creation mar

In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail;

For we are soft as our complexions are,

And credulous to false prints.

ANGELO     I think it well;

And from this testimony of your own sex –

130

Since I suppose we are made to be no stronger

Than faults may shake our frames – let me be bold.

I do arrest your words. Be that you are,

That is, a woman; if you be more, you’re none.

If you be one – as you are well express’d

135

By all external warrants – show it now,

By putting on the destin’d livery.

ISABELLA     I have no tongue but one; gentle my lord,

Let me entreat you speak the former language.

ANGELO     Plainly conceive, I love you.

140

ISABELLA     My brother did love Juliet,

And you tell me that he shall die for’t.

ANGELO     He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love.

ISABELLA     I know your virtue hath a licence in’t,

Which seems a little fouler than it is,

145

To pluck on others.

ANGELO     Believe me, on mine honour,

My words express my purpose.

ISABELLA     Ha? Little honour, to be much believ’d,

And most pernicious purpose! Seeming, seeming!

I will proclaim thee, Angelo, look for’t.

150

Sign me a present pardon for my brother,

Or with an outstretch’d throat I’ll tell the world aloud

What man thou art.

ANGELO     Who will believe thee, Isabel?

My unsoil’d name, th’austereness of my life,

My vouch against you, and my place i’th’ state

155

Will so your accusation overweigh,

That you shall stifle in your own report,

And smell of calumny. I have begun,

And now I give my sensual race the rein:

Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite;

160

Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes

That banish what they sue for. Redeem thy brother

By yielding up thy body to my will;

Or else he must not only die the death,

But thy unkindness shall his death draw out

165

To ling’ring sufferance. Answer me tomorrow,

Or, by the affection that now guides me most,

I’ll prove a tyrant to him. As for you,

Say what you can: my false o’erweighs your true.

     Exit.

ISABELLA     To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,

170

Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,

That bear in them one and the self-same tongue

Either of condemnation or approof,

Bidding the law make curtsey to their will,

Hooking both right and wrong to th’appetite,

175

To follow as it draws! I’ll to my brother.

Though he hath fall’n by prompture of the blood,

Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour,

That had he twenty heads to tender down

On twenty bloody blocks, he’d yield them up

180

Before his sister should her body stoop

To such abhorr’d pollution.

Then, Isabel live chaste, and brother, die:

More than our brother is our chastity.

I’ll tell him yet of Angelo’s request,

185

And fit his mind to death, for his soul’s rest.     Exit.

3.1 Enter DUKE, disguised, and Provost with CLAUDIO.

DUKE     So then you hope of pardon from Lord Angelo?

CLAUDIO     The miserable have no other medicine

But only hope:

I have hope to live, and am prepar’d to die.

DUKE     Be absolute for death: either death or life

5

Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep. A breath thou art,

Servile to all the skyey influences

That dost this habitation where thou keep’st

10

Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art Death’s fool;

For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun,

And yet run’st toward him still. Thou art not noble;

For all th’accommodations that thou bear’st

Are nurs’d by baseness. Thou’rt by no means valiant;

15

For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork

Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep;

And that thou oft provok’st, yet grossly fear’st

Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;

For thou exists on many a thousand grains

20

That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;

For what thou hast not, still thou striv’st to get,

And what thou hast, forget’st. Thou art not certain;

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects

After the moon. If thou art rich, thou’rt poor;

25

For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,

Thou bear’st thy heavy riches but a journey,

And Death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none;

For thine own bowels which do call thee sire,

The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

30

Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum

For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth, nor age,

But as it were an after-dinner’s sleep

Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

35

Of palsied eld: and when thou art old and rich,

Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty

To make thy riches pleasant. What’s yet in this

That bears the name of life? Yet in this life

Lie hid moe thousand deaths; yet death we fear

40

That makes these odds all even.

CLAUDIO     I humbly thank you.

To sue to live, I find I seek to die,

And seeking death, find life. Let it come on.

ISABELLA [within]

What hoa! Peace here; grace and good company!

PROVOST

Who’s there? Come in; the wish deserves a welcome.

45

DUKE     Dear sir, ere long I’ll visit you again.

CLAUDIO     Most holy sir, I thank you.

Enter ISABELLA.

ISABELLA     My business is a word or two with Claudio.

PROVOST

And very welcome. Look, signior, here’s your sister.

DUKE     Provost, a word with you.

50

PROVOST     As many as you please.

DUKE     Bring me to hear them speak, where I may be

conceal’d. [Duke and Provost retire.]

CLAUDIO     Now, sister, what’s the comfort?

ISABELLA     Why,

As all comforts are: most good, most good indeed.

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Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven,

Intends you for his swift ambassador,

Where you shall be an everlasting leiger.

Therefore your best appointment make with speed;

Tomorrow you set on.

CLAUDIO     Is there no remedy?

60

ISABELLA     None, but such remedy as, to save a head,

To cleave a heart in twain.

CLAUDIO     But is there any?

ISABELLA     Yes, brother, you may live;

There is a devilish mercy in the judge,

If you’ll implore it, that will free your life,

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But fetter you till death.

CLAUDIO     Perpetual durance?

ISABELLA     Ay, just, perpetual durance; a restraint,

Though all the world’s vastidity you had,

To a determin’d scope.

CLAUDIO     But in what nature?

ISABELLA     In such a one as, you consenting to’t,

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Would bark your honour from that trunk you bear,

And leave you naked.

CLAUDIO     Let me know the point.

ISABELLA     O, I do fear thee, Claudio, and I quake

Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain,

And six or seven winters more respect

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Than a perpetual honour. Dar’st thou die?

The sense of death is most in apprehension;

And the poor beetle that we tread upon

In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great

As when a giant dies.

CLAUDIO     Why give you me this shame?

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Think you I can a resolution fetch

From flowery tenderness? If I must die,

I will encounter darkness as a bride

And hug it in mine arms.

ISABELLA

There spake my brother: there my father’s grave

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Did utter forth a voice. Yes, thou must die.

Thou art too noble to conserve a life

In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy,

Whose settl’d visage and deliberate word

Nips youth i’th’ head and follies doth enew

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As falcon doth the fowl, is yet a devil:

His filth within being cast, he would appear

A pond as deep as hell.

CLAUDIO     The precise Angelo!

ISABELLA     O, ’tis the cunning livery of hell

The damnedst body to invest and cover

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In precise guards! Dost thou think, Claudio,

If I would yield him my virginity

Thou mightst be freed?

CLAUDIO     O heavens, it cannot be!

ISABELLA

Yes, he would give’t thee, from this rank offence,

So to offend him still. This night’s the time

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That I should do what I abhor to name;

Or else thou diest tomorrow.

CLAUDIO     Thou shalt not do’t.

ISABELLA     O, were it but my life,

I’d throw it down for your deliverance

As frankly as a pin.

CLAUDIO     Thanks, dear Isabel.

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ISABELLA     Be ready, Claudio, for your death tomorrow.

CLAUDIO     Yes. – Has he affections in him,

That thus can make him bite the law by th’nose

When he would force it? – Sure, it is no sin;

Or of the deadly seven it is the least.

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ISABELLA     Which is the least?

CLAUDIO     If it were damnable, he being so wise,

Why would he for the momentary trick

Be perdurably fin’d? – O Isabel!

ISABELLA     What says my brother?

CLAUDIO     Death is a fearful thing.

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ISABELLA     And shamed life a hateful.

CLAUDIO     Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

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To bath in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprison’d in the viewless winds

And blown with restless violence round about

The pendent world: or to be worse than worst

125

Of those that lawless and incertain thought

Imagine howling, – ’tis too horrible.

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

That age, ache, penury and imprisonment

Can lay on nature, is a paradise

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To what we fear of death.

ISABELLA     Alas, alas!

CLAUDIO     Sweet sister, let me live.

What sin you do to save a brother’s life,

Nature dispenses with the deed so far

That it becomes a virtue.

ISABELLA     O, you beast!

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O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!

Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?

Is’t not a kind of incest, to take life

From thine own sister’s shame? What should I think?

Heaven shield my mother play’d my father fair:

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For such a warped slip of wilderness

Ne’er issued from his blood. Take my defiance,

Die, perish! Might but my bending down

Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed.

I’ll pray a thousand prayers for thy death;

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No word to save thee.

CLAUDIO     Nay hear me, Isabel.

ISABELLA     O fie, fie, fie!

Thy sin’s not accidental, but a trade;

Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd;

’Tis best that thou diest quickly. [going]

CLAUDIO     O hear me, Isabella.

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DUKE [advancing]

Vouchsafe a word, young sister, but one word.

ISABELLA     What is your will?

DUKE     Might you dispense with your leisure, I would by

and by have some speech with you: the satisfaction I

would require is likewise your own benefit.

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ISABELLA     I have no superfluous leisure; my stay must

be stolen out of other affairs: but I will attend you a

while. [Waits behind.]

DUKE     Son, I have overheard what hath passed between

you and your sister. Angelo had never the purpose to

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corrupt her; only he hath made an assay of her virtue,

to practise his judgement with the disposition of

natures. She, having the truth of honour in her, hath

made him that gracious denial which he is most glad

to receive. I am confessor to Angelo, and I know this

165

to be true; therefore prepare yourself to death. Do not

satisfy your resolution with hopes that are fallible;

tomorrow you must die; go to your knees, and make

ready.

CLAUDIO     Let me ask my sister pardon; I am so out of

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love with life that I will sue to be rid of it.

DUKE     Hold you there: farewell. – [Claudio retires.]

Provost, a word with you.

PROVOST [advancing] What’s your will, father?

DUKE     That, now you are come, you will be gone. Leave

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me a while with the maid; my mind promises with my

habit no loss shall touch her by my company.

PROVOST     In good time.

     Exit with Claudio. Isabella comes forward.

DUKE     The hand that hath made you fair hath made you

good. The goodness that is cheap in beauty makes

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beauty brief in goodness; but grace, being the soul of

your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair.

The assault that Angelo hath made to you, fortune

hath conveyed to my understanding; and, but that

frailty hath examples for his falling, I should wonder

185

at Angelo. How will you do to content this substitute,

and to save your brother?

ISABELLA     I am now going to resolve him. I had rather

my brother die by the law, than my son should be

unlawfully born. But O, how much is the good Duke

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deceived in Angelo! If ever he return, and I can speak

to him, I will open my lips in vain, or discover his

government.

DUKE     That shall not be much amiss. Yet, as the matter

now stands, he will avoid your accusation – he made

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trial of you only. Therefore fasten your ear on my

advisings, to the love I have in doing good; a remedy

presents itself. I do make myself believe that you may

most uprighteously do a poor wronged lady a merited

benefit; redeem your brother from the angry law; do

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no stain to your own gracious person; and much please

the absent Duke, if peradventure he shall ever return

to have hearing of this business.

ISABELLA     Let me hear you speak farther. I have spirit to

do anything that appears not foul in the truth of my

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spirit.

DUKE     Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful. Have

you not heard speak of Mariana, the sister of

Frederick, the great soldier who miscarried at sea?

ISABELLA     I have heard of the lady, and good words went

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with her name.

DUKE     She should this Angelo have married: was

affianced to her oath, and the nuptial appointed.

Between which time of the contract and limit of the

solemnity, her brother Frederick was wracked at sea,

215

having in that perished vessel the dowry of his sister.

But mark how heavily this befell to the poor

gentlewoman. There she lost a noble and renowned

brother, in his love toward her ever most kind and

natural; with him, the portion and sinew of her

220

fortune, her marriage dowry; with both, her

combinate husband, this well-seeming Angelo.

ISABELLA     Can this be so? Did Angelo so leave her?

DUKE     Left her in her tears, and dried not one of them

with his comfort: swallowed his vows whole,

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pretending in her discoveries of dishonour: in few,

bestowed her on her own lamentation, which she yet

wears for his sake; and he, a marble to her tears, is

washed with them, but relents not.

ISABELLA     What a merit were it in death to take this poor

230

maid from the world! What corruption in this life, that

it will let this man live! But how out of this can she

avail?

DUKE     It is a rupture that you may easily heal: and the

cure of it not only saves your brother, but keeps you

235

from dishonour in doing it.

ISABELLA     Show me how, good father.

DUKE     This forenamed maid hath yet in her the

continuance of her first affection. His unjust

unkindness, that in all reason should have quenched

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her love, hath, like an impediment in the current,

made it more violent and unruly. Go you to Angelo;

answer his requiring with a plausible obedience; agree

with his demands to the point. Only refer yourself to

this advantage: first, that your stay with him may not

245

be long; that the place may have all shadow and silence

in it; and the time answer to convenience. This being

granted in course, and now follows all. We shall advise

this wronged maid to stead up your appointment, go

in your place. If the encounter acknowledge itself

250

hereafter, it may compel him to her recompense; and

hear, by this is your brother saved, your honour

untainted, the poor Mariana advantaged, and the

corrupt deputy scaled. The maid will I frame, and

make fit for his attempt. If you think well to carry this

255

as you may, the doubleness of the benefit defends the

deceit from reproof. What think you of it?

ISABELLA     The image of it gives me content already, and

I trust it will grow to a most prosperous perfection.

DUKE     It lies much in your holding up. Haste you

260

speedily to Angelo; if for this night he entreat you to

his bed, give him promise of satisfaction. I will

presently to Saint Luke’s; there at the moated grange

resides this dejected Mariana; at that place call upon

me; and dispatch with Angelo, that it may be quickly.

265

ISABELLA     I thank you for this comfort. Fare you well,

good father.     Exit Isabella.

3.2 Enter ELBOW and officers with POMPEY.

ELBOW     Nay, if there be no remedy for it, but that you

will needs buy and sell men and women like beasts, we

shall have all the world drink brown and white bastard.

DUKE     O heavens, what stuff is here!

POMPEY     ’Twas never merry world since, of two usuries,

5

the merriest was put down, and the worser allowed by

order of law; a furred gown to keep him warm; and

furred with fox on lambskins too, to signify that craft,

being richer than innocency, stands for the facing.

ELBOW     Come your way, sir. – Bless you, good father

10

friar.

DUKE     And you, good brother father. What offence hath

this man made you, sir?

ELBOW     Marry, sir, he hath offended the law; and, sir, we

take him to be a thief too, sir: for we have found upon

15

him, sir, a strange pick-lock, which we have sent to the

deputy.

DUKE     Fie, sirrah, a bawd, a wicked bawd;

The evil that thou causest to be done,

That is thy means to live. Do thou but think

20

What ’tis to cram a maw or clothe a back

From such a filthy vice. Say to thyself,

From their abominable and beastly touches

I drink, I eat, array myself, and live.

Canst thou believe thy living is a life,

25

So stinkingly depending? Go mend, go mend.

POMPEY

Indeed it does stink in some sort, sir. But yet, sir,

would prove –

DUKE     Nay, if the devil have given thee proofs for sin,

Thou wilt prove his. Take him to prison, officer:

30

Correction and instruction must both work

Ere this rude beast will profit.

ELBOW     He must before the deputy, sir; he has given him

warning. The deputy cannot abide a whoremaster. If

he be a whoremonger and comes before him, he were

35

as good go a mile on his errand.

DUKE     That we were all, as some would seem to be,

From our faults, as faults from seeming, free!

ELBOW     His neck will come to your waist – a cord, sir.

Enter LUCIO.

POMPEY     I spy comfort, I cry bail! Here’s a gentleman,

40

and a friend of mine.

LUCIO     How now, noble Pompey! What, at the wheels of

Caesar? Art thou led in triumph? What, is there none

of Pygmalion’s images newly made woman to be had

now, for putting the hand in the pocket and extracting

45

clutched? What reply, ha? What say’st thou to this

tune, matter and method? Is’t not drowned i’th’ last

rain? Ha? What say’st thou, trot? Is the world as it was,

man? Which is the way? Is it sad, and few words? Or

how? The trick of it?

50

DUKE     Still thus, and thus: still worse!

LUCIO     How doth my dear morsel, thy mistress?

Procures she still, ha?

POMPEY     Troth, sir, she hath eaten up all her beef, and

she is herself in the tub.

55

LUCIO     Why, ’tis good: it is the right of it: it must be so.

Ever your fresh whore, and your powdered bawd; an

unshunned consequence; it must be so. Art going to

prison, Pompey?

POMPEY     Yes, faith, sir.

60

LUCIO     Why, ’tis not amiss, Pompey. Farewell: go, say I

sent thee thither. – For debt, Pompey, or how?

POMPEY     For being a bawd, for being a bawd.

LUCIO     Well, then, imprison him. If imprisonment be

the due of a bawd, why, ’tis his right. Bawd is he

65

doubtless, and of antiquity, too: bawd born. Farewell,

good Pompey. Commend me to the prison, Pompey;

you will turn good husband now, Pompey; you will

keep the house.

POMPEY     I hope, sir, your good worship will be my bail?

70

LUCIO     No, indeed will I not, Pompey; it is not the wear.

I will pray, Pompey, to increase your bondage; if you

take it not patiently, why, your mettle is the more!

Adieu, trusty Pompey. – Bless you, friar.

DUKE     And you.

75

LUCIO     Does Bridget paint still, Pompey? Ha?

ELBOW [to Pompey] Come your ways, sir, come.

POMPEY     You will not bail me then, sir?

LUCIO     Then, Pompey, nor now. – What news abroad,

friar? What news?

80

ELBOW [to Pompey] Come your ways, sir, come.

LUCIO     Go to kennel, Pompey, go.

     Exeunt Elbow and officers with Pompey.

What news, friar, of the Duke?

DUKE     I know none: can you tell me of any?

LUCIO     Some say he is with the Emperor of Russia; other

85

some, he is in Rome: but where is he, think you?

DUKE     I know not where: but wheresoever, I wish him well.

LUCIO     It was a mad, fantastical trick of him to steal

from the state and usurp the beggary he was never

90

born to. Lord Angelo dukes it well in his absence: he

puts transgression to’t.

DUKE     He does well in’t.

LUCIO     A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm

in him. Something too crabbed that way, friar.

95

DUKE     It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it.

LUCIO     Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred;

it is well allied; but it is impossible to extirp it quite,

friar, till eating and drinking be put down. – They say

this Angelo was not made by man and woman, after

100

this downright way of creation: is it true, think you?

DUKE     How should he be made, then?

LUCIO     Some report, a sea-maid spawned him. Some,

that he was begot between two stockfishes. But it is

certain that when he makes water, his urine is

105

congealed ice; that I know to be true. And he is a

motion ungenerative; that’s infallible.

DUKE     You are pleasant, sir, and speak apace.

LUCIO     Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the

rebellion of a codpiece to take away the life of a man!

110

Would the Duke that is absent have done this? Ere he

would have hanged a man for the getting a hundred

bastards, he would have paid for the nursing a

thousand. He had some feeling of the sport; he knew

the service; and that instructed him to mercy.

115

DUKE     I have never heard the absent Duke much

detected for women; he was not inclined that way.

LUCIO     O sir, you are deceived.

DUKE     ’Tis not possible.

LUCIO     Who, not the Duke? Yes, your beggar of fifty;

120

and his use was to put a ducat in her clack-dish; the

Duke had crotchets in him. He would be drunk too,

that let me inform you.

DUKE     You do him wrong, surely.

LUCIO     Sir, I was an inward of his. A shy fellow was the

125

Duke; and I believe I know the cause of his

withdrawing.

DUKE     What, I prithee, might be the cause?

LUCIO     No, pardon: ’tis a secret must be locked within

the teeth and the lips. But this I can let you

130

understand: the greater file of the subject held the

Duke to be wise.

DUKE     Wise? Why, no question but he was.

LUCIO     A very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow –

DUKE     Either this is envy in you, folly, or mistaking. The

135

very stream of his life, and the business he hath

helmed, must upon a warranted need give him a better

proclamation. Let him be but testimonied in his own

bringings-forth, and he shall appear to the envious a

scholar, a statesman, and a soldier. Therefore you

140

speak unskilfully: or, if your knowledge be more, it is

much darkened in your malice.

LUCIO     Sir, I know him and I love him.

DUKE     Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge

with dearer love.

145

LUCIO     Come, sir, I know what I know.

DUKE     I can hardly believe that, since you know not

what you speak. But if ever the Duke return – as our

prayers are he may – let me desire you to make your

answer before him. If it be honest you have spoke, you

150

have courage to maintain it; I am bound to call upon

you, and I pray you your name.

LUCIO     Sir, my name is Lucio, well known to the Duke.

DUKE     He shall know you better, sir, if I may live to report you.

155

LUCIO     I fear you not.

DUKE     O, you hope the Duke will return no more; or

you imagine me too unhurtful an opposite. But

indeed, I can do you little harm. You’ll forswear this

again?

160

LUCIO     I’ll be hanged first. Thou art deceived in me,

friar. But no more of this. – Canst thou tell if Claudio

die tomorrow, or no?

DUKE     Why should he die, sir?

LUCIO     Why? For filling a bottle with a tun-dish. I

165

would the Duke we talk of were returned again: this

ungenitured agent will unpeople the province with

continency. Sparrows must not build in his house-

eaves, because they are lecherous. – The Duke yet

would have dark deeds darkly answered: he would

170

never bring them to light: would he were returned!

Marry, this Claudio is condemned for untrussing. –

Farewell, good friar, I prithee pray for me. The Duke,

I say to thee again, would eat mutton on Fridays. He’s

now past it; yet, and I say to thee, he would mouth

175

with a beggar though she smelt brown bread and

garlic, say that I said so. Farewell.     Exit.

DUKE     No might nor greatness in mortality

Can censure ‘scape. Back-wounding calumny

The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong

180

Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?

But who comes here?

Enter severally ESCALUS, Provost and officers with
MISTRESS OVERDONE.

ESCALUS     Go, away with her to prison.

MISTRESS OVERDONE     Good my lord, be good to me.

Your honour is accounted a merciful man. Good my

185

lord.

ESCALUS     Double and treble admonition, and still forfeit

in the same kind! This would make mercy swear and

play the tyrant.

PROVOST     A bawd of eleven years’ continuance, may it

190

please your honour.

MISTRESS OVERDONE     My lord, this is one Lucio’s

information against me, Mistress Kate Keep-down

was with child by him in the Duke’s time, he promised

her marriage. His child is a year and a quarter old

195

come Philip and Jacob. I have kept it myself; and see

how he goes about to abuse me.

ESCALUS     That fellow is a fellow of much license. Let

him be called before us. Away with her to prison. – Go

to, no more words.

200

     Exeunt officers with Mistress Overdone.

Provost, my brother Angelo will not be altered;

Claudio must die tomorrow. Let him be furnished

with divines, and have all charitable preparation. If my

brother wrought by my pity, it should not be so with

him.

205

PROVOST     So please you, this friar hath been with him,

and advised him for th’entertainment of death.

ESCALUS     Good even, good father.

DUKE     Bliss and goodness on you!

ESCALUS     Of whence are you?

210

DUKE     Not of this country, though my chance is now

To use it for my time. I am a brother

Of gracious order, late come from the See

In special business from his Holiness.

ESCALUS     What news abroad i’th’ world?

215

DUKE     None, but that there is so great a fever on

goodness that the dissolution of it must cure it.

Novelty is only in request, and it is as dangerous to be

aged in any kind of course as it is virtuous to be

constant in any undertaking. There is scarce truth

220

enough alive to make societies secure; but security

enough to make fellowships accurst. Much upon this

riddle runs the wisdom of the world. This news is old

enough, yet it is every day’s news. I pray you, sir, of

what disposition was the Duke?

225

ESCALUS     One that, above all other strifes, contended

especially to know himself.

DUKE     What pleasure was he given to?

ESCALUS     Rather rejoicing to see another merry, than

merry at anything which professed to make him

230

rejoice. A gentleman of all temperance. But leave we

him to his events, with a prayer they may prove

prosperous, and let me desire to know how you find

Claudio prepared. I am made to understand that you

have lent him visitation.

235

DUKE     He professes to have received no sinister measure

from his judge, but most willingly humbles himself to

the determination of justice. Yet had he framed to

himself, by the instruction of his frailty, many

deceiving promises of life, which I, by my good

240

leisure, have discredited to him; and now is he

resolved to die.

ESCALUS     You have paid the heavens your function, and

the prisoner the very debt of your calling. I have

laboured for the poor gentleman to the extremest

245

shore of my modesty, but my brother-justice have I

found so severe that he hath forced me to tell him he

is indeed Justice.

DUKE     If his own life answer the straitness of his

proceeding, it shall become him well: wherein if he

250

chance to fail, he hath sentenced himself.

ESCALUS     I am going to visit the prisoner; fare you well.

DUKE     Peace be with you. Exeunt Escalus and Provost.

He who the sword of heaven will bear

Should be as holy as severe:

255

Pattern in himself to know,

Grace to stand, and virtue, go:

More nor less to others paying

Than by self-offences weighing.

Shame to him whose cruel striking

260

Kills for faults of his own liking!

Twice treble shame on Angelo,

To weed my vice, and let his grow!

O, what may man within him hide,

Though angel on the outward side!

265

How may likeness made in crimes,

Making practice on the times

To draw with idle spiders’ strings

Most ponderous and substantial things!

Craft against vice I must apply.

270

With Angelo tonight shall lie

His old betrothed, but despised:

So disguise shall by th’disguised

Pay with falsehood false exacting,

And perform an old contracting. Exit.

275

4.1 Enter MARIANA, and a boy singing.
Song.

Take, o take those lips away

that so sweetly were forsworn,

And those eyes, the break of day

lights that do mislead the morn:

But my kisses bring again,

bring again;

5

Seals of love, but seal’d in vain,

seal’d in vain.

Enter DUKE, disguised.

MARIANA

Break off thy song, and haste thee quick away;

Here comes a man of comfort, whose advice

Hath often still’d my brawling discontent.     Exit boy.

I cry you mercy, sir, and well could wish

10

You had not found me here so musical.

Let me excuse me, and believe me so;

My mirth it much displeas’d, but pleas’d my woe.

DUKE     ’Tis good; though music oft hath such a charm

To make bad good, and good provoke to harm.

15

I pray you tell me, hath anybody enquired for me here

to-day? Much upon this time have I promised here to

meet.

MARIANA You have not been enquired after: I have

sat here all day.

20

Enter ISABELLA.

DUKE     I do constantly believe you: the time is come even

now. I shall crave your forbearance a little; may be I

will call upon you anon for some advantage to

yourself.

MARIANA I am always bound to you.     Exit.

25

DUKE [to Isabella] Very well met, and well come.

What is the news from this good deputy?

ISABELLA     He hath a garden circummur’d with brick,

Whose western side is with a vineyard back’d;

And to that vineyard is a planched gate,

30

That makes his opening with this bigger key.

This other doth command a little door

Which from the vineyard to the garden leads;

There have I made my promise

Upon the heavy middle of the night

35

To call upon him.

DUKE     But shall you on your knowledge find this way?

ISABELLA     I have ta’en a due and wary note upon’t;

With whispering and most guilty diligence,

In action all of precept, he did show me

40

The way twice o’er.

DUKE     Are there no other tokens

Between you ’greed, concerning her observance?

ISABELLA     No; none, but only a repair i’th’ dark;

And that I have possess’d him my most stay

Can be but brief: for I have made him know

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I have a servant comes with me along,

That stays upon me; whose persuasion is

I come about my brother.

DUKE     ’Tis well borne up.

I have not yet made known to Mariana

A word of this. – What hoa, within! Come forth.

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Enter MARIANA.

[to Mariana] I pray you be acquainted with this maid;

She comes to do you good.

ISABELLA     I do desire the like.

DUKE     Do you persuade yourself that I respect you?

MARIANA

Good friar, I know you do, and so have found it.

DUKE     Take, then, this your companion by the hand,

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Who hath a story ready for your ear.

I shall attend your leisure; but make haste,

The vaporous night approaches.

MARIANA [to Isabella]     Will’t please you walk aside?

     [Mariana and Isabella withdraw.]

DUKE     O place and greatness! Millions of false eyes

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Are stuck upon thee: volumes of report

Run with these false, and most contrarious quest

Upon thy doings: thousand escapes of wit

Make thee the father of their idle dream

And rack thee in their fancies.

     [Mariana and Isabella return.]

     Welcome; how agreed?

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ISABELLA     She’ll take the enterprise upon her, father,

If you advise it.

DUKE     It is not my consent,

But my entreaty too.

ISABELLA     Little have you to say

When you depart from him, but, soft and low,

‘Remember now my brother’.

MARIANA     Fear me not.

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DUKE     Nor, gentle daughter, fear you not at all.

He is your husband on a pre-contract:

To bring you thus together ’tis no sin,

Sith that the justice of your title to him

Doth flourish the deceit. – Come, let us go;

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Our corn’s to reap, for yet our tithe’s to sow. Exeunt.

4.2 Enter Provost and POMPEY.

PROVOST     Come hither, sirrah. Can you cut off a man’s

head?

POMPEY     If the man be a bachelor, sir, I can; but if he be

a married man, he’s his wife’s head; and I can never

cut off a woman’s head.

5

PROVOST     Come, sir, leave me your snatches, and yield

me a direct answer. Tomorrow morning are to die

Claudio and Barnardine. Here is in our prison a

common executioner, who in his office lacks a helper;

if you will take it on you to assist him, it shall redeem

10

you from your gyves: if not, you shall have your full

time of imprisonment, and your deliverance with an

unpitied whipping; for you have been a notorious

bawd.

POMPEY     Sir, I have been an unlawful bawd time out of

15

mind, but yet I will be content to be a lawful hangman.

I would be glad to receive some instruction from my

fellow-partner.

PROVOST     What hoa, Abhorson! Where’s Abhorson

there?

20

Enter ABHORSON.

ABHORSON     Do you call, sir?

PROVOST     Sirrah, here’s a fellow will help you tomorrow

in your execution. If you think it meet, compound

with him by the year, and let him abide here with you;

if not, use him for the present, and dismiss him. He

25

cannot plead his estimation with you: he hath been a bawd.

ABHORSON     A bawd, sir? Fie upon him, he will discredit

our mystery.

PROVOST     Go to, sir, you weigh equally: a feather will

30

turn the scale.     Exit.

POMPEY     Pray, sir, by your good favour – for surely, sir, a

good favour you have, but that you have a hanging look

– do you call, sir, your occupation a mystery?

ABHORSON     Ay, sir, a mystery.

35

POMPEY     Painting, sir, I have heard say, is a mystery; and

your whores, sir, being members of my occupation,

using painting, do prove my occupation a mystery. But

what mystery there should be in hanging, if I should

be hanged, I cannot imagine.

40

ABHORSON     Sir, it is a mystery.

POMPEY     Proof?

ABHORSON     Every true man’s apparel fits your thief. If it

be too little for your thief, your true man thinks it big

enough. If it be too big for your thief, your thief thinks

45

it little enough. So every true man’s apparel fits your

thief.

Enter Provost.

PROVOST     Are you agreed?

POMPEY     Sir, I will serve him; for I do find your

hangman is a more penitent trade than your bawd; he

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doth oftener ask forgiveness.

PROVOST     You, sirrah, provide your block and your axe

tomorrow four o’clock.

ABHORSON     Come on, bawd, I will instruct thee in my

trade. Follow.

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POMPEY     I do desire to learn, sir; and I hope, if you have

occasion to use me for your own turn, you shall find

me yare. For truly, sir, for your kindness I owe you a

good turn.

PROVOST     Call hither Barnardine and Claudio.

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     Exeunt Abhorson and Pompey.

Th’one has my pity; not a jot the other,

Being a murderer, though he were my brother.

Enter CLAUDIO.

Look, here’s the warrant, Claudio, for thy death;

’Tis now dead midnight, and by eight tomorrow

Thou must be made immortal. Where’s Barnardine?

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CLAUDIO     As fast lock’d up in sleep as guiltless labour

When it lies starkly in the traveller’s bones.

He will not wake.

PROVOST     Who can do good on him?

Well, go; prepare yourself.

[knocking within]     But hark, what noise?

Heaven give your spirits comfort!     Exit Claudio.

[knocking]      – By and by. –

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I hope it is some pardon or reprieve

For the most gentle Claudio.

Enter DUKE, disguised.

     Welcome, father.

DUKE     The best and wholesom’st spirits of the night

Envelop you, good Provost! Who call’d here of late?

PROVOST     None since the curfew rung.

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DUKE     Not Isabel?

PROVOST     No.

DUKE     They will then, ere’t be long.

PROVOST     What comfort is for Claudio?

DUKE     There’s some in hope.

PROVOST     It is a bitter deputy.

DUKE     Not so, not so; his life is parallel’d

Even with the stroke and line of his great justice.

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He doth with holy abstinence subdue

That in himself which he spurs on his power

To qualify in others: were he meal’d with that

Which he corrects, then were he tyrannous;

But this being so, he’s just.

[Knocking within. Provost goes to the door.]

     – Now are they come.

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This is a gentle provost; seldom when

The steeled gaoler is the friend of men. [knocking]

How now? What noise? That spirit’s possess’d with haste

That wounds th’unsisting postern with these strokes.

[Provost returns.]

PROVOST     There must he stay until the officer

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Arise to let him in. He is call’d up.

DUKE     Have you no countermand for Claudio yet,

But he must die tomorrow?

PROVOST     None, sir, none.

DUKE     As near the dawning, Provost, as it is,

You shall hear more ere morning.

PROVOST     Happily

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You something know: yet I believe there comes

No countermand. No such example have we.

Besides, upon the very siege of justice

Lord Angelo hath to the public ear

Profess’d the contrary.

Enter a Messenger.

     This is his lordship’s man.

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DUKE     And here comes Claudio’s pardon.

MESSENGER My lord hath sent you this note, and by me

this further charge: that you swerve not from the

smallest article of it, neither in time, matter, or other

circumstance. Good-morrow; for, as I take it, it is

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almost day.

PROVOST     I shall obey him.     Exit Messenger.

DUKE [aside] This is his pardon, purchas’d by such sin

For which the pardoner himself is in.

Hence hath offence his quick celerity,

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When it is borne in high authority.

When vice makes mercy, mercy’s so extended

That for the fault’s love is th’offender friended.

Now, sir, what news?

PROVOST     I told you: Lord Angelo, belike thinking me

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remiss in mine office, awakens me with this unwonted

putting-on; methinks strangely, for he hath not used it

before.

DUKE     Pray you, let’s hear.

PROVOST [Reads.] Whatsoever you may hear to the

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contrary, let Claudio be executed by four of the clock, and

in the afternoon, Barnardine. For my better satisfaction,

let me have Claudio’s head sent me by five. Let this be

duly performed, with a thought that more depends on it

than we must yet deliver. Thus fail not to do your office,

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as you will answer it at your peril.

What say you to this, sir?

DUKE     What is that Barnardine, who is to be executed in

th’afternoon?

PROVOST     A Bohemian born, but here nursed up and

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bred; one that is a prisoner nine years old.

DUKE     How came it that the absent Duke had not either

delivered him to his liberty, or executed him? I have

heard it was ever his manner to do so.

PROVOST     His friends still wrought reprieves for him;

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and indeed, his fact till now in the government of

Lord Angelo came not to an undoubtful proof.

DUKE     It is now apparent?

PROVOST     Most manifest, and not denied by himself.

DUKE     Hath he borne himself penitently in prison? How

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seems he to be touched?

PROVOST     A man that apprehends death no more

dreadfully but as a drunken sleep; careless, reckless,

and fearless of what’s past, present, or to come:

insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal.

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DUKE     He wants advice.

PROVOST     He will hear none. He hath evermore had the

liberty of the prison: give him leave to escape hence,

he would not. Drunk many times a day, if not many

days entirely drunk. We have very oft awaked him, as

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if to carry him to execution, and showed him a

seeming warrant for it; it hath not moved him at all.

DUKE     More of him anon. There is written in your brow,

Provost, honesty and constancy; if I read it not truly,

my ancient skill beguiles me. But in the boldness of

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my cunning, I will lay myself in hazard. Claudio,

whom here you have warrant to execute, is no greater

forfeit to the law than Angelo who hath sentenced

him. To make you understand this in a manifested

effect, I crave but four days’ respite: for the which, you

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are to do me both a present and a dangerous courtesy.

PROVOST     Pray sir, in what?

DUKE     In the delaying death.

PROVOST     Alack, how may I do it? Having the hour

limited, and an express command under penalty to

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deliver his head in the view of Angelo? I may make my

case as Claudio’s to cross this in the smallest.

DUKE     By the vow of mine order, I warrant you, if my

instructions may be your guide: let this Barnardine be

this morning executed, and his head borne to Angelo.

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PROVOST     Angelo hath seen them both, and will discover

the favour.

DUKE     O, death’s a great disguiser; and you may add to

it. Shave the head, and tie the beard, and say it was the

desire of the penitent to be so bared before his death:

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you know the course is common. If anything fall to

you upon this, more than thanks and good fortune, by

the saint whom I profess, I will plead against it with

my life.

PROVOST     Pardon me, good father; it is against my oath.

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DUKE     Were you sworn to the Duke, or to the Deputy?

PROVOST     To him, and to his substitutes.

DUKE     You will think you have made no offence if the

Duke avouch the justice of your dealing?

PROVOST     But what likelihood is in that?

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DUKE     Not a resemblance, but a certainty. Yet, since I

see you fearful, that neither my coat, integrity, nor

persuasion can with ease attempt you, I will go further

than I meant, to pluck all fears out of you. Look you,

sir, here is the hand and seal of the Duke: you know

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the character, I doubt not, and the signet is not strange to you?

PROVOST     I know them both.

DUKE     The contents of this is the return of the Duke:

you shall anon over-read it at your pleasure, where you

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shall find within these two days he will be here. This

is a thing that Angelo knows not; for he this very day

receives letters of strange tenour, perchance of the

Duke’s death, perchance entering into some

monastery; but, by chance, nothing of what is writ.

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Look, th’unfolding star calls up the shepherd. Put not

yourself into amazement how these things should be;

all difficulties are but easy when they are known. Call

your executioner, and off with Barnardine’s head. I

will give him a present shrift, and advise him for a

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better place. Yet you are amazed; but this shall

absolutely resolve you. Come away; it is almost clear

dawn.     Exeunt.

4.3 Enter POMPEY.

POMPEY     I am as well acquainted here as I was in our

house of profession: one would think it were Mistress

Overdone’s own house, for here be many of her old

customers. First, here’s young Master Rash; he’s in

for a commodity of brown paper and old ginger, nine

5

score and seventeen pounds; of which he made five

marks ready money: marry, then, ginger was not much

in request, for the old women were all dead. Then is

there here one Master Caper, at the suit of Master

Three-pile the mercer, for some four suits of peach-

10

coloured satin, which now peaches him a beggar.

Then have we here young Dizie, and young Master

Deep-vow, and Master Copperspur, and Master

Starve-Lackey the rapier and dagger man, and young

Drop-heir that killed lusty Pudding, and Master

15

Forthright the tilter, and brave Master Shoe-tie the

great traveller, and wild Half-can that stabbed pots,

and I think forty more, all great doers in our trade, and

are now ‘for the Lord’s sake’.

Enter ABHORSON.

ABHORSON     Sirrah, bring Barnardine hither.

20

POMPEY     Master Barnardine! You must rise and be

hanged, Master Barnardine.

ABHORSON     What hoa, Barnardine!

BARNARDINE [within] A pox o’ your throats! Who makes

that noise there? What are you?

25

POMPEY     Your friends, sir, the hangman. You must be so

good, sir, to rise and be put to death.

BARNARDINE [within] Away, you rogue, away; I am

sleepy.

ABHORSON     Tell him he must awake, and that quickly

30

too.

POMPEY     Pray, Master Barnardine, awake till you are

executed, and sleep afterwards.

ABHORSON     Go in to him and fetch him out.

POMPEY     He is coming, sir, he is coming. I hear his straw

35

rustle.

Enter BARNARDINE.

ABHORSON     Is the axe upon the block, sirrah?

POMPEY     Very ready, sir.

BARNARDINE     How now, Abhorson? What’s the news

with you?

40

ABHORSON     Truly, sir, I would desire you to clap into

your prayers; for look you, the warrant’s come.

BARNARDINE     You rogue, I have been drinking all night;

I am not fitted for’t.

POMPEY     O, the better, sir; for he that drinks all night,

45

and is hanged betimes in the morning, may sleep the

sounder all the next day.

Enter DUKE, disguised.

ABHORSON     Look you, sir, here comes your ghostly

father. Do we jest now, think you?

DUKE     Sir, induced by my charity, and hearing how

50

hastily you are to depart, I am come to advise you,

comfort you, and pray with you.

BARNARDINE     Friar, not I. I have been drinking hard all

night, and I will have more time to prepare me, or they

shall beat out my brains with billets. I will not consent

55

to die this day, that’s certain.

DUKE     O sir, you must; and therefore I beseech you

Look forward on the journey you shall go.

BARNARDINE     I swear I will not die today for any man’s

persuasion.

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DUKE     But hear you –

BARNARDINE     Not a word. If you have anything to say to

me, come to my ward: for thence will not I today.

     Exit.

Enter Provost.

DUKE     Unfit to live or die! O gravel heart.

PROVOST     After him, fellows, bring him to the block!

65

Exeunt Abhorson and Pompey.

Now sir, how do you find the prisoner?

DUKE     A creature unprepar’d, unmeet for death;

And to transport him in the mind he is

Were damnable.

PROVOST     Here in the prison, father,

There died this morning of a cruel fever

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One Ragozine, a most notorious pirate,

A man of Claudio’s years; his beard and head

Just of his colour. What if we do omit

This reprobate till he were well inclin’d,

And satisfy the deputy with the visage

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Of Ragozine, more like to Claudio?

DUKE     O, ’tis an accident that heaven provides.

Dispatch it presently; the hour draws on

Prefix’d by Angelo. See this be done,

And sent according to command, whiles I

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Persuade this rude wretch willingly to die.

PROVOST     This shall be done, good father, presently.

But Barnardine must die this afternoon;

And how shall we continue Claudio,

To save me from the danger that might come

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If he were known alive?

DUKE     Let this be done: put them in secret holds,

Both Barnardine and Claudio.

Ere twice the sun hath made his journal greeting

To yonder generation, you shall find

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Your safety manifested.

PROVOST     I am your free dependant.

DUKE     Quick, dispatch, and send the head to Angelo.

     Exit Provost.

Now will I write letters to Angelo,

The Provost, he shall bear them, whose contents

Shall witness to him I am near at home;

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And that by great injunctions I am bound

To enter publicly. Him I’ll desire

To meet me at the consecrated fount

A league below the city; and from thence,

By cold gradation and well-balanc’d form,

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We shall proceed with Angelo.

Enter Provost.

PROVOST     Here is the head; I’ll carry it myself.

DUKE     Convenient is it. Make a swift return;

For I would commune with you of such things

That want no ear but yours.

PROVOST     I’ll make all speed.     Exit.

105

ISABELLA [within] Peace, hoa, be here!

DUKE     The tongue of Isabel. She’s come to know

If yet her brother’s pardon be come hither;

But I will keep her ignorant of her good,

To make her heavenly comforts of despair

110

When it is least expected.

Enter ISABELLA.

ISABELLA     Hoa, by your leave!

DUKE

Good morning to you, fair and gracious daughter.

ISABELLA     The better, given me by so holy a man.

Hath yet the deputy sent my brother’s pardon?

DUKE     He hath releas’d him, Isabel, – from the world.

115

His head is off, and sent to Angelo.

ISABELLA     Nay, but it is not so!

DUKE     It is no other. Show your wisdom, daughter,

In your close patience.

ISABELLA     O, I will to him and pluck out his eyes!

120

DUKE     You shall not be admitted to his sight.

ISABELLA     Unhappy Claudio! wretched Isabel!

Injurious world! most damned Angelo!

DUKE     This nor hurts him, nor profits you a jot.

Forbear it therefore; give your cause to heaven.

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Mark what I say, which you shall find

By every syllable a faithful verity.

The Duke comes home tomorrow; – nay, dry your eyes –

One of our covent, and his confessor

Gives me this instance. Already he hath carried

130

Notice to Escalus and Angelo,

Who do prepare to meet him at the gates

There to give up their power. If you can pace your wisdom

In that good path that I would wish it go,

And you shall have your bosom on this wretch,

135

Grace of the Duke, revenges to your heart,

And general honour.

ISABELLA     I am directed by you.

DUKE     This letter then to Friar Peter give;

’Tis that he sent me of the Duke’s return.

Say, by this token I desire his company

140

At Mariana’s house tonight. Her cause and yours

I’ll perfect him withal, and he shall bring you

Before the Duke; and to the head of Angelo

Accuse him home and home. For my poor self,

I am combined by a sacred vow,

145

And shall be absent. Wend you with this letter.

Command these fretting waters from your eyes

With a light heart; trust not my holy order,

If I pervert your course. – Who’s here?

Enter LUCIO.

LUCIO     Good even.

Friar, where’s the Provost?

DUKE     Not within, sir.

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LUCIO     O pretty Isabella, I am pale at mine heart to see

thine eyes so red: thou must be patient. – I am fain to

dine and sup with water and bran: I dare not for my

head fill my belly: one fruitful meal would set me to’t.

– But they say the Duke will be here tomorrow. By my

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troth, Isabel, I loved thy brother; if the old fantastical

duke of dark corners had been at home, he had lived.

     Exit Isabella.

DUKE     Sir, the Duke is marvellous little beholding to

your reports; but the best is, he lives not in them.

LUCIO     Friar, thou knowest not the Duke so well as I do.

160

He’s a better woodman than thou tak’st him for.

DUKE     Well! you’ll answer this one day. Fare ye well.

[going]

LUCIO     Nay tarry, I’ll go along with thee: I can tell thee

pretty tales of the Duke.

DUKE     You have told me too many of him already, sir, if

165

they be true: if not true, none were enough.

LUCIO     I was once before him for getting a wench with

child.

DUKE     Did you such a thing?

LUCIO     Yes, marry, did I; but I was fain to forswear it;

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they would else have married me to the rotten medlar.

DUKE     Sir, your company is fairer than honest; rest you

well. [going]

LUCIO     By my troth, I’ll go with thee to the lane’s end.

If bawdy talk offend you, we’ll have very little of it.

175

Nay, friar, I am a kind of burr, I shall stick. Exeunt.

4.4 Enter ANGELO and ESCALUS.

ESCALUS     Every letter he hath writ hath disvouched

other.

ANGELO     In most uneven and distracted manner. His

actions show much like to madness; pray heaven his

wisdom be not tainted. And why meet him at the gates

5

and redeliver our authorities there?

ESCALUS     I guess not.

ANGELO     And why should we proclaim it in an hour

before his entering, that if any crave redress of

injustice, they should exhibit their petitions in the

10

street?

ESCALUS     He shows his reason for that: to have a

dispatch of complaints, and to deliver us from devices

hereafter, which shall then have no power to stand

against us.

15

ANGELO     Well, I beseech you, let it be proclaim’d

Betimes i’th’ morn: I’ll call you at your house.

Give notice to such men of sort and suit

As are to meet him.

ESCALUS     I shall, sir: fare you well.

ANGELO     Good night.     Exit Escalus.

20

This deed unshapes me quite; makes me unpregnant

And dull to all proceedings. A deflower’d maid;

And by an eminent body, that enforc’d

The law against it! But that her tender shame

Will not proclaim against her maiden loss,

25

How might she tongue me! Yet reason dares her no,

For my authority bears so credent bulk

That no particular scandal once can touch,

But it confounds the breather. He should have liv’d;

Save that his riotous youth, with dangerous sense,

30

Might in the times to come have ta’en revenge

By so receiving a dishonour’d life

With ransom of such shame. Would yet he had lived.

Alack, when once our grace we have forgot,

Nothing goes right; we would, and we would not.

35

     Exit.

4.5 Enter DUKE, in his own habit, and FRIAR PETER.

DUKE     These letters at fit time deliver me.

The Provost knows our purpose and our plot;

The matter being afoot, keep your instruction,

And hold you ever to our special drift,

Though sometimes you do blench from this to that

5

As cause doth minister. Go call at Flavius’ house,

And tell him where I stay. Give the like notice

To Valencius, Rowland, and to Crassus,

And bid them bring the trumpets to the gate:

But send me Flavius first.

FRIAR     PETER It shall be speeded well.

10

     Exit Friar.

Enter Varrius.

DUKE

I thank thee, Varrius, thou hast made good haste.

Come, we will walk. There’s other of our friends

Will greet us here anon. My gentle Varrius!     Exeunt.

4.6 Enter ISABELLA and MARIANA.

ISABELLA     To speak so indirectly I am loth;

I would say the truth, but to accuse him so

That is your part; yet I am advis’d to do it,

He says, to veil full purpose.

MARIANA     Be rul’d by him.

ISABELLA     Besides, he tells me that, if peradventure

5

He speak against me on the adverse side,

I should not think it strange, for ’tis a physic

That’s bitter to sweet end.

Enter FRIAR PETER.

MARIANA     I would Friar Peter –

ISABELLA     O peace, the friar is come.

FRIAR PETER

Come, I have found you out a stand most fit,

10

Where you may have such vantage on the Duke

He shall not pass you. Twice have the trumpets sounded.

The generous and gravest citizens

Have hent the gates, and very near upon

The Duke is ent’ring: therefore hence, away.     Exeunt.

15

5.1 Enter at several doors DUKE, in his own habit,
Varrius, lords and attendants; ANGELO,
ESCALUS, LUCIO and citizens.

DUKE     My very worthy cousin, fairly met.

Our old and faithful friend, we are glad to see you.

ANGELO, ESCALUS

Happy return be to your royal grace!

DUKE     Many and hearty thankings to you both.

We have made enquiry of you, and we hear

5

Such goodness of your justice that our soul

Cannot but yield you forth to public thanks,

Forerunning more requital.

ANGELO     You make my bonds still greater.

DUKE

O, but your desert speaks loud, and I should wrong it

10

To lock it in the wards of covert bosom,

When it deserves with characters of brass

A forted residence ’gainst the tooth of time

And razure of oblivion. Give we our hand,

And let the subject see, to make them know

15

That outward courtesies would fain proclaim

Favours that keep within. Come, Escalus,

You must walk by us on our other hand;

And good supporters are you.

Enter FRIAR PETER and ISABELLA.

FRIAR PETER

Now is your time: speak loud, and kneel before him.

20

ISABELLA     Justice, O royal Duke! Vail your regard

Upon a wrong’d – I would fain have said, a maid.

O worthy prince, dishonour not your eye

By throwing it on any other object,

Till you have heard me in my true complaint,

25

And given me justice! Justice! Justice! Justice!

DUKE

Relate your wrongs. In what? By whom? Be brief.

Here is Lord Angelo shall give you justice,

Reveal yourself to him.

ISABELLA     O worthy Duke,

You bid me seek redemption of the devil.

30

Hear me yourself: for that which I must speak

Must either punish me, not being believ’d,

Or wring redress from you.

Hear me! O hear me, hear!

ANGELO     My lord, her wits I fear me are not firm.

35

She hath been a suitor to me for her brother,

Cut off by course of justice.

ISABELLA     By course of justice!

ANGELO     And she will speak most bitterly and strange.

ISABELLA     Most strange: but yet most truly will I speak.

That Angelo’s forsworn, is it not strange?

40

That Angelo’s a murderer, is’t not strange?

That Angelo is an adulterous thief,

An hypocrite, a virgin-violator,

Is it not strange, and strange?

DUKE     Nay, it is ten times strange!

45

ISABELLA     It is not truer he is Angelo,

Than this is all as true as it is strange;

Nay, it is ten times true, for truth is truth

To th’end of reck’ning.

DUKE     Away with her. Poor soul,

She speaks this in th’infirmity of sense.

50

ISABELLA     O Prince, I conjure thee, as thou believ’st

There is another comfort than this world,

That thou neglect me not with that opinion

That I am touch’d with madness. Make not impossible

That which but seems unlike. ’Tis not impossible

55

But one, the wicked’st caitiff on the ground,

May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute,

As Angelo; even so may Angelo,

In all his dressings, caracts, titles, forms,

Be an arch-villain. Believe it, royal Prince,

60

If he be less, he’s nothing; but he’s more,

Had I more name for badness.

DUKE     By mine honesty,

If she be mad, as I believe no other,

Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense,

Such a dependency of thing on thing,

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As e’er I heard in madness.

ISABELLA     O gracious Duke,

Harp not on that; nor do not banish reason

For inequality; but let your reason serve

To make the truth appear where it seems hid,

And hide the false seems true.

DUKE     Many that are not mad

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Have, sure, more lack of reason. What would you say?

ISABELLA     I am the sister of one Claudio,

Condemn’d upon the act of fornication

To lose his head; condemn’d by Angelo.

I – in probation of a sisterhood –

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Was sent to by my brother; one Lucio

As then the messenger.

LUCIO     That’s I, and’t like your Grace.

I came to her from Claudio, and desir’d her

To try her gracious fortune with Lord Angelo

For her poor brother’s pardon.

ISABELLA     That’s he indeed.

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DUKE [to Lucio] You were not bid to speak.

LUCIO     No, my good lord,

Nor wish’d to hold my peace.

DUKE     I wish you now, then;

Pray you take note of it;

And when you have a business for yourself,

Pray heaven you then be perfect.

LUCIO     I warrant your honour.

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DUKE     The warrant’s for yourself: take heed to’t.

ISABELLA     This gentleman told somewhat of my tale.

LUCIO     Right.

DUKE     It may be right, but you are i’ the wrong

To speak before your time. – Proceed.

ISABELLA     I went

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To this pernicious caitiff Deputy.

DUKE     That’s somewhat madly spoken.

ISABELLA     Pardon it;

The phrase is to the matter.

DUKE     Mended again. The matter: proceed.

ISABELLA     In brief, to set the needless process by –

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How I persuaded, how I pray’d and kneel’d,

How he refell’d me, and how I replied

(For this was of much length) – the vile conclusion

I now begin with grief and shame to utter.

He would not, but by gift of my chaste body

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To his concupiscible intemperate lust,

Release my brother; and after much debatement,

My sisterly remorse confutes mine honour,

And I did yield to him. But the next morn betimes,

His purpose surfeiting, he sends a warrant

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For my poor brother’s head.

DUKE     This is most likely!

ISABELLA     O, that it were as like as it is true.

DUKE

By heaven, fond wretch, thou know’st not what thou speak’st,

Or else thou art suborn’d against his honour

In hateful practice. First, his integrity

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Stands without blemish; next, it imports no reason

That with such vehemency he should pursue

Faults proper to himself. If he had so offended,

He would have weigh’d thy brother by himself,

And not have cut him off. Someone hath set you on:

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Confess the truth, and say by whose advice

Thou cam’st here to complain.

ISABELLA     And is this all?

Then, O you blessed ministers above,

Keep me in patience, and with ripen’d time

Unfold the evil which is here wrapt up

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In countenance! Heaven shield your Grace from woe,

As I, thus wrong’d, hence unbelieved go.

DUKE     I know you’d fain be gone. An officer!

To prison with her! [Isabella is placed under guard.]

     Shall we thus permit

A blasting and a scandalous breath to fall

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On him so near us? This needs must be a practice.

Who knew of your intent and coming hither?

ISABELLA     One that I would were here, Friar Lodowick.

     Exit guarded.

DUKE

A ghostly father, belike. – Who knows that Lodowick?

LUCIO     My lord, I know him. ’Tis a meddling friar;

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I do not like the man; had he been lay, my lord,

For certain words he spake against your Grace

In your retirement, I had swing’d him soundly.

DUKE     Words against me! This’ a good friar belike.

And to set on this wretched woman here

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Against our substitute! Let this friar be found.

LUCIO     But yesternight, my lord, she and that friar,

I saw them at the prison: a saucy friar,

A very scurvy fellow.

FRIAR PETER     Bless’d be your royal Grace!

I have stood by, my lord, and I have heard

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Your royal ear abus’d. First hath this woman

Most wrongfully accus’d your substitute,

Who is as free from touch or soil with her

As she from one ungot.

DUKE     We did believe no less.

Know you that Friar Lodowick that she speaks of?

145

FRIAR PETER     I know him for a man divine and holy,

Not scurvy, nor a temporary meddler,

As he’s reported by this gentleman;

And, on my trust, a man that never yet

Did, as he vouches, misreport your Grace.

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LUCIO     My lord, most villainously; believe it.

FRIAR PETER

Well, he in time may come to clear himself;

But at this instant he is sick, my lord:

Of a strange fever. Upon his mere request,

Being come to knowledge that there was complaint

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Intended ‘gainst Lord Angelo, came I hither,

To speak, as from his mouth, what he doth know

Is true and false; and what he with his oath

And all probation will make up full clear

Whensoever he’s convented. First, for this woman,

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To justify this worthy nobleman

So vulgarly and personally accus’d,

Her shall you hear disproved to her eyes,

Till she herself confess it.

DUKE     Good friar, let’s hear it.

Do you not smile at this, Lord Angelo?

165

O heaven, the vanity of wretched fools!

Give us some seats. – Come, cousin Angelo,

In this I’ll be impartial: be you judge

Of your own cause.

Enter MARIANA, veiled.

          Is this the witness, friar?

First, let her show her face, and after, speak.

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MARIANA Pardon, my lord; I will not show my face

Until my husband bid me.

DUKE     What, are you married?

MARIANA No, my lord.

DUKE     Are you a maid?

MARIANA No, my lord.

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DUKE     A widow, then?

MARIANA Neither, my lord.

DUKE     Why, you are nothing then: neither maid, widow, nor wife!

LUCIO     My lord, she may be a punk; for many of them

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are neither maid, widow nor wife.

DUKE     Silence that fellow! I would he had some cause to

prattle for himself.

LUCIO     Well, my lord.

MARIANA My lord, I do confess I ne’er was married;

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And I confess besides, I am no maid.

I have known my husband; yet my husband

Knows not that ever he knew me.

LUCIO

He was drunk then, my lord; it can be no better.

DUKE

For the benefit of silence, would thou wert so too.

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LUCIO     Well, my lord.

DUKE     This is no witness for Lord Angelo.

MARIANA Now I come to’t, my lord.

She that accuses him of fornication

In self-same manner doth accuse my husband,

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And charges him, my lord, with such a time

When I’ll depose I had him in mine arms

With all th’effect of love.

ANGELO     Charges she moe than me?

MARIANA Not that I know.

DUKE     No? You say your husband.

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MARIANA Why just, my lord, and that is Angelo,

Who thinks he knows that he ne’er knew my body,

But knows, he thinks, that he knows Isabel’s.

ANGELO     This is a strange abuse. Let’s see thy face.

MARIANA [unveiling]

My husband bids me; now I will unmask.

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This is that face, thou cruel Angelo,

Which once thou swor’st was worth the looking on:

This is the hand which, with a vow’d contract,

Was fast belock’d in thine: this is the body

That took away the match from Isabel

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And did supply thee at thy garden-house,

In her imagin’d person.

DUKE     Know you this woman?

LUCIO     Carnally, she says.

DUKE     Sirrah, no more!

LUCIO     Enough, my lord.

ANGELO     My lord, I must confess I know this woman;

215

And five years since, there was some speech of marriage

Betwixt myself and her; which was broke off,

Partly for that her promised proportions

Came short of composition; but in chief

For that her reputation was disvalu’d

220

In levity: since which time of five years

I never spake with her, saw her, nor heard from her,

Upon my faith and honour.

MARIANA     Noble Prince,

As there comes light from heaven, and words from breath,

As there is sense in truth, and truth in virtue,

225

I am affianc’d this man’s wife, as strongly

As words could make up vows. And, my good lord,

But Tuesday night last gone, in’s garden house,

He knew me as a wife. As this is true

Let me in safety raise me from my knees,

230

Or else for ever be confixed here,

A marble monument.

ANGELO     I did but smile till now:

Now, good my lord, give me the scope of justice.

My patience here is touch’d: I do perceive

These poor informal women are no more

235

But instruments of some more mightier member

That sets them on. Let me have way, my lord,

To find this practice out.

DUKE     Ay, with my heart;

And punish them to your height of pleasure.

Thou foolish friar, and thou pernicious woman,

240

Compact with her that’s gone: think’st thou thy oaths,

Though they would swear down each particular saint,

Were testimonies against his worth and credit,

That’s seal’d in approbation? You, Lord Escalus,

Sit with my cousin; lend him your kind pains

245

To find out this abuse, whence ’tis deriv’d.

There is another friar that set them on;

Let him be sent for.

FRIAR PETER

Would he were here, my lord; for he indeed

Hath set the women on to this complaint.

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Your Provost knows the place where he abides,

And he may fetch him.

DUKE     Go, do it instantly.

     Exit an attendant.

And you, my noble and well-warranted cousin,

Whom it concerns to hear this matter forth,

Do with your injuries as seems you best

255

In any chastisement. I for a while will leave you;

But stir not you till you have well determin’d

Upon these slanderers.

ESCALUS     My lord, we’ll do it throughly.

     Exit Duke.

Signior Lucio, did not you say you knew that Friar

Lodowick to be a dishonest person?

260

LUCIO     Cucullus non facit monachum: honest in nothing

but in his clothes, and one that hath spoke most

villainous speeches of the Duke.

ESCALUS     We shall entreat you to abide here till he come,

and enforce them against him. We shall find this friar

265

a notable fellow.

LUCIO     As any in Vienna, on my word!

ESCALUS     Call that same Isabel here once again; I would

speak with her.     Exit an attendant.

Pray you, my lord, give me leave to question; you shall

270

see how I’ll handle her.

LUCIO     Not better than he, by her own report.

ESCALUS     Say you?

LUCIO     Marry, sir, I think if you handled her privately

she would sooner confess; perchance publicly she’ll be

275

ashamed.

Enter at several doors Provost with DUKE, in
disguise and hooded, and ISABELLA under guard.

ESCALUS     I will go darkly to work with her.

LUCIO     That’s the way; for women are light at midnight.

ESCALUS     Come on, mistress, here’s a gentlewoman

denies all that you have said.

280

LUCIO     My lord, here comes the rascal I spoke of, here with the Provost.

ESCALUS     In very good time. Speak not you to him till we call upon you.

LUCIO     Mum.

285

ESCALUS     Come, sir: did you set these women on to

slander Lord Angelo? They have confess’d you did.

DUKE     ’Tis false.

ESCALUS     How! Know you where you are?

DUKE     Respect to your great place; and let the devil

290

Be sometime honour’d for his burning throne.

Where is the Duke? ’Tis he should hear me speak.

ESCALUS

The Duke’s in us; and we will hear you speak;

Look you speak justly.

DUKE     Boldly, at least. But O, poor souls,

295

Come you to seek the lamb here of the fox?

Good-night to your redress! Is the Duke gone?

Then is your cause gone too. The Duke’s unjust

Thus to retort your manifest appeal,

And put your trial in the villain’s mouth

300

Which here you come to accuse.

LUCIO     This is the rascal: this is he I spoke of.

ESCALUS     Why, thou unreverend and unhallow’d friar!

Is’t not enough thou hast suborn’d these women

To accuse this worthy man, but in foul mouth,

305

And in the witness of his proper ear,

To call him villain? And then to glance from him

To th’ Duke himself, to tax him with injustice?

Take him hence! To th’ rack with him! – We’ll touse you

Joint by joint, but we will know his purpose.

310

What! Unjust!

DUKE     Be not so hot: the Duke

Dare no more stretch this finger of mine than he

Dare rack his own. His subject am I not,

Nor here provincial. My business in this state

Made me a looker-on here in Vienna,

315

Where I have seen corruption boil and bubble

Till it o’errun the stew: laws for all faults,

But faults so countenanc’d that the strong statutes

Stand like the forfeits in a barber’s shop,

As much in mock as mark.

ESCALUS     Slander to th’ state!

320

Away with him to prison!

ANGELO

What can you vouch against him, Signior Lucio?

Is this the man that you did tell us of?

LUCIO     ’Tis he, my lord. – Come hither, goodman

Baldpate, do you know me?

325

DUKE     I remember you, sir, by the sound of your voice;

I met you at the prison, in the absence of the Duke.

LUCIO     O, did you so? And do you remember what you

said of the Duke?

DUKE     Most notedly, sir.

330

LUCIO     Do you so, sir? And was the Duke a fleshmonger,

a fool, and a coward, as you then reported him to be?

DUKE     You must, sir, change persons with me, ere you

make that my report. You indeed spoke so of him, and

much more, much worse.

335

LUCIO     O, thou damnable fellow! Did not I pluck thee by

the nose for thy speeches?

DUKE     I protest, I love the Duke as I love myself.

ANGELO     Hark how the villain would close now, after his

treasonable abuses!

340

ESCALUS     Such a fellow is not to be talked withal. Away

with him to prison! Where is the Provost? Away with

him to prison! Lay bolts enough upon him: let him

speak no more. Away with those giglets too, and with

the other confederate companion!

345

[The Provost lays hands on the Duke.]

DUKE     Stay, sir, stay a while.

ANGELO     What, resists he? Help him, Lucio.

LUCIO     Come, sir! Come, sir! Come, sir! Foh, sir! Why,

you bald-pated, lying rascal! – You must be hooded,

must you? Show your knave’s visage, with a pox to

350

you! Show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an

hour! Will’t not off?

[Pulls off the friar’s hood and discovers the Duke.]

DUKE     Thou art the first knave that e’er mad’st a duke.

First, Provost, let me bail these gentle three.

[to Lucio] Sneak not away, sir, for the friar and you

355

Must have a word anon. – Lay hold on him.

LUCIO [aside] This may prove worse than hanging.

DUKE [to Escalus] What you have spoke, I pardon: sit you down.

We’ll borrow place of him.

[to Angelo]     Sir, by your leave.

Hast thou or word, or wit, or impudence,

360

That yet can do thee office? If thou hast,

Rely upon it till my tale be heard,

And hold no longer out.

ANGELO     O my dread lord,

I should be guiltier than my guiltiness

To think I can be undiscernible,

365

When I perceive your Grace, like power divine,

Hath looked upon my passes. Then, good prince,

No longer session hold upon my shame,

But let my trial be mine own confession.

Immediate sentence, then, and sequent death

370

Is all the grace I beg.

DUKE     Come hither, Mariana. –

Say: wast thou e’er contracted to this woman?

ANGELO     I was, my lord.

DUKE     Go, take her hence, and marry her instantly.

Do you the office, friar; which consummate,

375

Return him here again. Go with him, Provost.

     Exeunt Angelo, Mariana, Friar Peter and Provost.

ESCALUS     My lord, I am more amaz’d at his dishonour

Than at the strangeness of it.

DUKE     Come hither, Isabel.

Your friar is now your prince. As I was then,

Advertising and holy to your business,

380

Not changing heart with habit, I am still

Attorney’d at your service.

ISABELLA     O, give me pardon,

That I, your vassal, have employ’d and pain’d

Your unknown sovereignty.

DUKE     You are pardon’d, Isabel.

And now, dear maid, be you as free to us.

385

Your brother’s death, I know, sits at your heart:

And you may marvel why I obscur’d myself,

Labouring to save his life, and would not rather

Make rash remonstrance of my hidden power

Than let him so be lost. O most kind maid,

390

It was the swift celerity of his death,

Which I did think with slower foot came on,

That brain’d my purpose. But peace be with him.

That life is better life, past fearing death,

Than that which lives to fear. Make it your comfort,

395

So happy is your brother.

ISABELLA     I do, my lord.

Enter ANGELO, MARIANA, FRIAR PETER and Provost.

DUKE     For this new-married man approaching here,

Whose salt imagination yet hath wrong’d

Your well defended honour, you must pardon

For Mariana’s sake: but as he adjudg’d your brother,

400

Being criminal in double violation

Of sacred chastity and of promise-breach

Thereon dependent, for your brother’s life,

The very mercy of the law cries out

Most audible, even from his proper tongue:

405

‘An Angelo for Claudio; death for death.

Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;

Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.’

Then, Angelo, thy fault’s thus manifested,

Which, though thou would’st deny, denies thee vantage.

410

We do condemn thee to the very block

Where Claudio stoop’d to death, and with like haste.

Away with him.

MARIANA     O my most gracious lord,

I hope you will not mock me with a husband.

DUKE     It is your husband mock’d you with a husband.

415

Consenting to the safeguard of your honour,

I thought your marriage fit: else imputation,

For that he knew you, might reproach your life,

And choke your good to come. For his possessions,

Although by confiscation they are ours,

420

We do instate and widow you with all,

To buy you a better husband.

MARIANA     O my dear lord,

I crave no other, nor no better man.

DUKE     Never crave him; we are definitive.

MARIANA Gentle my liege –

DUKE     You do but lose your labour.

425

Away with him to death.

[to Lucio]     Now, sir, to you.

MARIANA [kneeling]

O my good lord – sweet Isabel, take my part;

Lend me your knees, and all my life to come

I’ll lend you all my life to do you service.

DUKE     Against all sense you do importune her.

430

Should she kneel down in mercy of this fact,

Her brother’s ghost his paved bed would break,

And take her hence in horror.

MARIANA     Isabel!

Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me;

Hold up your hands, say nothing: I’ll speak all.

435

They say best men are moulded out of faults,

And, for the most, become much more the better

For being a little bad. So may my husband.

O Isabel! Will you not lend a knee?

DUKE     He dies for Claudio’s death.

ISABELLA [kneeling]     Most bounteous sir:

440

Look, if it please you, on this man condemn’d

As if my brother liv’d. I partly think

A due sincerity govern’d his deeds

Till he did look on me. Since it is so,

Let him not die. My brother had but justice,

445

In that he did the thing for which he died:

For Angelo,

His act did not o’ertake his bad intent,

And must be buried but as an intent

That perish’d by the way. Thoughts are no subjects;

450

Intents, but merely thoughts.

MARIANA     Merely, my lord.

DUKE     Your suit’s unprofitable. Stand up, I say.

I have bethought me of another fault.

Provost, how came it Claudio was beheaded

At an unusual hour?

PROVOST     It was commanded so.

455

DUKE     Had you a special warrant for the deed?

PROVOST     No, my good lord: it was by private message.

DUKE     For which I do discharge you of your office.

Give up your keys.

PROVOST     Pardon me, noble lord;

I thought it was a fault, but knew it not;

460

Yet did repent me after more advice.

For testimony whereof, one in the prison

That should by private order else have died,

I have reserv’d alive.

DUKE     What’s he?

PROVOST     His name is Barnardine.

DUKE     I would thou hadst done so by Claudio.

465

Go, fetch him hither, let me look upon him.

     Exit Provost.

ESCALUS     I am sorry one so learned and so wise

As you, Lord Angelo, have still appear’d,

Should slip so grossly, both in the heat of blood

And lack of temper’d judgement afterward.

470

ANGELO     I am sorry that such sorrow I procure,

And so deep sticks it in my penitent heart

That I crave death more willingly than mercy;

’Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it.

Enter Provost with BARNARDINE, CLAUDIO,
muffled, and JULIET.

DUKE     Which is that Barnardine?

PROVOST     This, my lord.

475

DUKE     There was a friar told me of this man.

Sirrah, thou art said to have a stubborn soul

That apprehends no further than this world,

And squar’st thy life according. Thou’rt condemn’d;

But, for those earthly faults, I quit them all,

480

And pray thee take this mercy to provide

For better times to come. Friar, advise him;

I leave him to your hand. – What muffl’d fellow’s that?

PROVOST     This is another prisoner that I sav’d,

Who should have died when Claudio lost his head;

485

As like almost to Claudio as himself.

[Unmuffles Claudio.]

DUKE [to Isabella]

If he be like your brother, for his sake

Is he pardon’d; and for your lovely sake

Give me your hand and say you will be mine.

He is my brother too: but fitter time for that.

490

By this Lord Angelo perceives he’s safe;

Methinks I see a quickening in his eye.

Well, Angelo, your evil quits you well.

Look that you love your wife: her worth, worth yours.

I find an apt remission in myself.

495

And yet here’s one in place I cannot pardon.

[to Lucio] You, sirrah, that knew me for a fool, a coward,

One all of luxury, an ass, a madman:

Wherein have I so deserv’d of you

That you extol me thus?

500

LUCIO     Faith, my lord, I spoke it but according to the

trick: if you will hang me for it, you may: but I had

rather it would please you I might be whipped.

DUKE     Whipp’d first, sir, and hang’d after.

Proclaim it, Provost, round about the city,

505

If any woman wrong’d by this lewd fellow,

– As I have heard him swear himself there’s one

Whom he begot with child – let her appear,

And he shall marry her. The nuptial finish’d,

Let him be whipp’d and hang’d.

510

LUCIO     I beseech your Highness, do not marry me to a

whore. Your Highness said even now, I made you a

duke; good my lord, do not recompense me in making

me a cuckold.

DUKE     Upon mine honour, thou shalt marry her.

515

Thy slanders I forgive, and therewithal

Remit thy other forfeits. – Take him to prison,

And see our pleasure herein executed.

LUCIO     Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death,

Whipping, and hanging.

DUKE     Slandering a prince deserves it.

520

She, Claudio, that you wrong’d, look you restore.

Joy to you, Mariana; love her, Angelo:

I have confess’d her, and I know her virtue.

Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness;

There’s more behind that is more gratulate.

525

Thanks, Provost, for thy care and secrecy;

We shall employ thee in a worthier place.

Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home

The head of Ragozine for Claudio’s:

Th’offence pardons itself. Dear Isabel,

530

I have a motion much imports your good;

Whereto if you’ll a willing ear incline,

What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.

So bring us to our palace, where we’ll show

What’s yet behind that’s meet you all should know.

535

     Exeunt omnes.

The Merchant of Venice

This play first appeared in print as a Quarto entitled The Comical History of the Merchant of Venice in 1600. An alternative early title seems to have been The Jew of Venice, focusing attention on Shylock, a role which has proved to be popular with actors but controversial with readers and audiences. The Merchant of Venice is one of the six comedies by Shakespeare listed by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia (1598), and it is generally thought to have been written between 1596 and 1597, after Love’s Labour’s Lost and A Midsummer Night’s Dream but before Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. At much the same time Shakespeare was writing the King Henry IV plays, which also contain a character who threatens to upset their moral and aesthetic balance: Falstaff.

The main plot is very similar to one found in Il Pecorone, a fourteenth-century collection of stories first printed in Italian in 1598, in which a merchant called Ansaldo borrows money from a Jew on the surety of a pound of flesh so that his godson, Giannetto, can go to sea to seek his fortune. Instead, Giannetto courts and wins the Lady of Belmont, returning to find his godfather’s life at risk. The Lady disguises herself as a lawyer, defeats the Jew, and begs her own ring from Giannetto as payment. Scholars assume that Shakespeare must have known an English version of this story, now lost, and that he (or the author of the lost version) added the story of the three caskets which is found in various medieval sources including John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (late 1380s) and Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (1353). He was also influenced by Christopher Marlowe’s play The Jew of Malta (c. 1591), in which the Jew’s daughter elopes with a Christian. Officially, Jews had been expelled from England in the reign of Edward I, but if they conformed outwardly they were not persecuted. Officially, lending money for interest was condemned, but the Globe Theatre was built on borrowed money and Shakespeare himself lent money as a business practice.

The 1600 Quarto claims that The Merchant of Venice had been ‘divers times acted by the Lord Chamberlain his servants’, Shakespeare’s regular company, but there are no specific records of early performances apart from two at Court before James I in 1605. An adaptation by George Granville called The Jew of Venice displaced Shakespeare’s version on the stage from 1701 until 1741, when Charles Macklin restored The Merchant. Edmund Kean, who first played Shylock in 1814, broke with the tradition of presenting him as a comic villain and made him a sympathetic and ultimately tragic figure – an interpretation which was followed by actors from Henry Irving to Laurence Olivier. While Shylock generally dominated the play, several actresses triumphed as Portia, including Sarah Siddons, Helen Faucit, Ellen Terry and Peggy Ashcroft. In the many books and essays on Shakespeare’s heroines written by women in the nineteenth century (including Faucit’s memoirs) Portia receives pride of place, and is held up as a demonstration that a woman can (at least in fiction) be an intellectual and a professional without losing her attractiveness to men.

The Merchant of Venice became something of a problem play in the twentieth century, the systematic massacre of Jews in the Holocaust making it impossible for us to take the anti-semitism of the Christian characters lightly. Although many performers have aroused sympathy for Shylock, he cannot be sentimentalized beyond a certain point: he makes his claim for humanity (‘Hath not a Jew eyes?’ etc., in 3.1), but he does so as a sanction for vindictiveness and he remains a villain who seeks the life of his enemy. The play requires us to celebrate his defeat and to see his involuntary conversion as an opportunity for salvation.

The Arden text is based on the 1600 First Quarto.

LIST OF ROLES

The DUKE OF VENICE

suitors to Portia

The Prince of ARRAGON

ANTONIO

a Merchant of Venice

BASSANIO

his friend, and suitor to Portia

friends to Antonio and Bassanio

LORENZO

in love with Jessica

SHYLOCK

a Jew

TUBAL

a Jew his friend

LAUNCELOT GOBBO

a clown, servant to Shylock

Old GOBBO

father to Launcelot

Leonardo, SERVANT

to Bassanio

servants to Portia

STEPHANO

PORTIA

an heiress, of Belmont

NERISSA

her waiting-woman

JESSICA

daughter to Shylock

Magnificoes of Venice, Officers of the Court of Justice, a Gaoler, Servants and other Attendants

1.1 Enter ANTONIO, SALERIO and SOLANIO.

ANTONIO     In sooth I know not why I am so sad,

It wearies me, you say it wearies you;

But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,

What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,

I am to learn:

5

And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,

That I have much ado to know myself.

SALERIO     Your mind is tossing on the ocean,

There where your argosies with portly sail

Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,

10

Or as it were the pageants of the sea,

Do overpeer the petty traffickers

That cur’sy to them (do them reverence)

As they fly by them with their woven wings.

SOLANIO     Believe me sir, had I such venture forth,

15

The better part of my affections would

Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still

Plucking the grass to know where sits the wind,

Piring in maps for ports, and piers and roads:

And every object that might make me fear

20

Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt

Would make me sad.

SALERIO     My wind cooling my broth,

Would blow me to an ague when I thought

What harm a wind too great might do at sea.

I should not see the sandy hour-glass run

25

But I should think of shallows and of flats,

And see my wealthy Andrew dock’d in sand

Vailing her high top lower than her ribs

To kiss her burial; should I go to church

And see the holy edifice of stone

30

And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks,

Which touching but my gentle vessel’s side

Would scatter all her spices on the stream,

Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks,

And in a word, but even now worth this,

35

And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought

To think on this, and shall I lack the thought

That such a thing bechanc’d would make me sad?

But tell not me, I know Antonio

Is sad to think upon his merchandise.

40

ANTONIO     Believe me no, I thank my fortune for it –

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,

Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate

Upon the fortune of this present year:

Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad.

45

SOLANIO     Why then you are in love.

ANTONIO     Fie, fie!

SOLANIO

Not in love neither: then let us say you are sad

Because you are not merry; and ’twere as easy

For you to laugh and leap, and say you are merry

Because you are not sad. Now by two-headed Janus,

50

Nature hath fram’d strange fellows in her time:

Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,

And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper:

And other of such vinegar aspect,

That they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile

55

Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO and GRATIANO.

Here comes Bassanio your most noble kinsman,

Gratiano, and Lorenzo. Fare ye well,

We leave you now with better company.

SALERIO     I would have stay’d till I had made you merry,

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If worthier friends had not prevented me.

ANTONIO     Your worth is very dear in my regard.

I take it your own business calls on you,

And you embrace th’occasion to depart.

SALERIO     Good morrow my good lords.

65

BASSANIO

Good signiors both when shall we laugh? say, when?

You grow exceeding strange: must it be so?

SALERIO     We’ll make our leisures to attend on yours.

     Exeunt Salerio and Solanio.

LORENZO

My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio

We two will leave you, but at dinner-time

70

I pray you have in mind where we must meet.

BASSANIO     I will not fail you.

GRATIANO     You look not well Signior Antonio,

You have too much respect upon the world:

They lose it that do buy it with much care, –

75

Believe me you are marvellously chang’d.

ANTONIO     I hold the world but as the world Gratiano,

A stage, where every man must play a part,

And mine a sad one.

GRATIANO     Let me play the fool,

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,

80

And let my liver rather heat with wine

Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.

Why should a man whose blood is warm within,

Sit like his grandsire, cut in alablaster?

Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice

85

By being peevish? I tell thee what Antonio,

(I love thee, and ’tis my love that speaks):

There are a sort of men whose visages

Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,

And do a wilful stillness entertain,

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With purpose to be dress’d in an opinion

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,

As who should say, ‘I am Sir Oracle,

And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark.’

O my Antonio, I do know of these

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That therefore only are reputed wise

For saying nothing; when I am very sure

If they should speak, would almost damn those ears

Which (hearing them) would call their brothers fools, –

I’ll tell thee more of this another time.

100

But fish not with this melancholy bait

For this fool gudgeon, this opinion: –

Come good Lorenzo, – fare ye well a while,

I’ll end my exhortation after dinner.

LORENZO     Well, we will leave you then till dinner-time.

105

I must be one of these same dumb wise men,

For Gratiano never lets me speak.

GRATIANO     Well keep me company but two years moe

Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue.

ANTONIO     Fare you well, I’ll grow a talker for this gear.

110

GRATIANO

Thanks i’faith, for silence is only commendable

In a neat’s tongue dried, and a maid not vendible.

     Exeunt Gratiano and Lorenzo.

ANTONIO     It is that anything now.

BASSANIO     Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing

(more than any man in all Venice), his reasons are as

115

two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you

shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you

have them, they are not worth the search.

ANTONIO     Well, tell me now what lady is the same

To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage –

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That you to-day promis’d to tell me of?

BASSANIO     ’Tis not unknown to you Antonio

How much I have disabled mine estate,

By something showing a more swelling port

Than my faint means would grant continuance:

125

Nor do I now make moan to be abridg’d

From such a noble rate, but my chief care

Is to come fairly off from the great debts

Wherein my time (something too prodigal)

Hath left me gag’d: to you Antonio

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I owe the most in money and in love,

And from your love I have a warranty

To unburthen all my plots and purposes

How to get clear of all the debts I owe.

ANTONIO     I pray you good Bassanio let me know it,

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And if it stand as you yourself still do,

Within the eye of honour, be assur’d

My purse, my person, my extremest means

Lie all unlock’d to your occasions.

BASSANIO

In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,

140

I shot his fellow of the self-same flight

The self-same way, with more advised watch

To find the other forth, and by adventuring both,

I oft found both: I urge this childhood proof

Because what follows is pure innocence.

145

I owe you much, and (like a wilful youth)

That which I owe is lost, but if you please

To shoot another arrow that self way

Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt,

(As I will watch the aim) or to find both,

150

Or bring your latter hazard back again,

And thankfully rest debtor for the first.

ANTONIO

You know me well, and herein spend but time

To wind about my love with circumstance,

And out of doubt you do me now more wrong

155

In making question of my uttermost

Than if you had made waste of all I have:

Then do but say to me what I should do

That in your knowledge may by me be done,

And I am prest unto it: therefore speak.

160

BASSANIO     In Belmont is a lady richly left,

And she is fair, and (fairer than that word),

Of wondrous virtues, – sometimes from her eyes

I did receive fair speechless messages:

Her name is Portia, nothing undervalu’d

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To Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia,

Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth,

For the four winds blow in from every coast

Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks

Hang on her temples like a golden fleece,

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Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos’ strond,

And many Jasons come in quest of her.

O my Antonio, had I but the means

To hold a rival place with one of them,

I have a mind presages me such thrift

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That I should questionless be fortunate.

ANTONIO     Thou know’st that all my fortunes are at sea,

Neither have I money, nor commodity

To raise a present sum, therefore go forth

Try what my credit can in Venice do, –

180

That shall be rack’d even to the uttermost

To furnish thee to Belmont to fair Portia.

Go presently inquire (and so will I)

Where money is, and I no question make

To have it of my trust, or for my sake.     Exeunt.

185

1.2 Enter PORTIA with her waiting-woman NERISSA.

PORTIA     By my troth Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world.

NERISSA     You would be (sweet madam), if your miseries

were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are:

and yet for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with

5

too much, as they that starve with nothing; it is no

mean happiness therefore to be seated in the mean, –

superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but

competency lives longer.

PORTIA     Good sentences, and well pronounc’d.

10

NERISSA     They would be better if well followed.

PORTIA     If to do were as easy as to know what were good

to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s

cottages princes’ palaces, – it is a good divine that

follows his own instructions, – I can easier teach

15

twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the

twenty to follow mine own teaching: the brain may

devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a

cold decree, – such a hare is madness the youth, to

skip o’er the meshes of good counsel the cripple; but

20

this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a

husband, – O me the word ‘choose’! I may neither

choose who I would, nor refuse who I dislike, so is the

will of a living daughter curb’d by the will of a dead

father: is it not hard Nerissa, that I cannot choose one,

25

nor refuse none?

NERISSA     Your father was ever virtuous, and holy men at

their death have good inspirations, – therefore the

lott’ry that he hath devised in these three chests of

gold, silver, and lead, whereof who chooses his

30

meaning chooses you, will no doubt never be chosen

by any rightly, but one who you shall rightly love. But

what warmth is there in your affection towards any of

these princely suitors that are already come?

PORTIA     I pray thee over-name them, and as thou namest

35

them, I will describe them, and according to my

description level at my affection.

NERISSA     First there is the Neapolitan prince.

PORTIA     Ay that’s a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but

talk of his horse, and he makes it a great appropriation

40

to his own good parts that he can shoe him himself: I

am much afeard my lady his mother played false with

a smith.

NERISSA     Then is there the County Palatine.

PORTIA     He doth nothing but frown (as who should say,

45

‘and you will not have me, choose’), he hears merry

tales and smiles not, (I fear he will prove the weeping

philosopher when he grows old, being so full of

unmannerly sadness in his youth), I had rather be

married to a death’s-head with a bone in his mouth,

50

than to either of these: God defend me from these two.

NERISSA     How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le

Bon?

PORTIA     God made him, and therefore let him pass for a

man, – in truth I know it is a sin to be a mocker, but

55

he! why he hath a horse better than the Neapolitan’s, a

better bad habit of frowning than the Count Palatine,

he is every man in no man, if a throstle sing, he falls

straight a-cap’ring, he will fence with his own shadow.

If I should marry him, I should marry twenty

60

husbands: if he would despise me, I would forgive

him, for if he love me to madness, I shall never requite

him.

NERISSA     What say you then to Falconbridge, the young

baron of England?

65

PORTIA     You know I say nothing to him, for he

understands not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin,

French, nor Italian, and you will come into the court

and swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the

English: he is a proper man’s picture, but alas! who

70

can converse with a dumb-show? How oddly he is

suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round

hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his

behaviour everywhere.

NERISSA     What think you of the Scottish lord his

75

neighbour?

PORTIA     That he hath a neighbourly charity in him, for

he borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman, and

swore he would pay him again when he was able: I

think the Frenchman became his surety, and seal’d

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under for another.

NERISSA     How like you the young German, the Duke of

Saxony’s nephew?

PORTIA     Very vildly in the morning when he is sober,

and most vildly in the afternoon when he is drunk:

85

when he is best, he is a little worse than a man, and

when he is worst he is little better than a beast, – and

the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall make shift to

go without him.

NERISSA     If he should offer to choose, and choose the

90

right casket, you should refuse to perform your

father’s will, if you should refuse to accept him.

PORTIA     Therefore for fear of the worst, I pray thee set a

deep glass of Rhenish wine on the contrary casket, for

if the devil be within, and that temptation without, I

95

know he will choose it. I will do anything Nerissa ere

I will be married to a sponge.

NERISSA     You need not fear lady the having any of these

lords, they have acquainted me with their

determinations, which is indeed to return to their

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home, and to trouble you with no more suit, unless

you may be won by some other sort than your father’s

imposition, depending on the caskets.

PORTIA     If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as chaste

as Diana, unless I be obtained by the manner of my

105

father’s will: I am glad this parcel of wooers are so

reasonable, for there is not one among them but I dote

on his very absence: and I pray God grant them a fair

departure.

NERISSA     Do you not remember lady in your father’s

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time, a Venetian (a scholar and a soldier) that came

hither in company of the Marquis of Montferrat?

PORTIA     Yes, yes, it was Bassanio, as I think so was he call’d.

NERISSA     True madam, he of all the men that ever my

115

foolish eyes look’d upon, was the best deserving a fair

lady.

PORTIA     I remember him well, and I remember him

worthy of thy praise.

Enter a Servingman.

How now, what news?

120

SERVINGMAN     The four strangers seek for you madam to

take their leave: and there is a forerunner come from a

fifth, the Prince of Morocco, who brings word the

prince his master will be here to-night.

PORTIA     If I could bid the fifth welcome with so good

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heart as I can bid the other four farewell, I should be

glad of his approach: if he have the condition of a

saint, and the complexion of a devil, I had rather he

should shrive me than wive me.

Come Nerissa, sirrah go before:

130

Whiles we shut the gate upon one wooer, another knocks at the door.     Exeunt.

1.3 Enter BASSANIO with SHYLOCK the Jew.

SHYLOCK     Three thousand ducats, well.

BASSANIO     Ay sir, for three months.

SHYLOCK     For three months, well.

BASSANIO     For the which as I told you, Antonio shall be bound.

5

SHYLOCK     Antonio shall become bound, well.

BASSANIO     May you stead me? Will you pleasure me?

Shall I know your answer?

SHYLOCK     Three thousand ducats for three months, and Antonio bound.

10

BASSANIO     Your answer to that.

SHYLOCK     Antonio is a good man.

BASSANIO     Have you heard any imputation to the contrary?

SHYLOCK     Ho no, no, no, no: my meaning in saying he is

15

a good man, is to have you understand me that he is

sufficient, – yet his means are in supposition: he hath

an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies, I

understand moreover upon the Rialto, he hath a third

at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he

20

hath squand’red abroad, – but ships are but boards,

sailors but men, there be land-rats, and water-rats,

water-thieves, and land-thieves, (I mean pirates), and

then there is the peril of waters, winds, and rocks: the

man is notwithstanding sufficient, – three thousand

25

ducats, – I think I may take his bond.

BASSANIO     Be assur’d you may.

SHYLOCK     I will be assur’d I may: and that I may be

assured, I will bethink me, – may I speak with

Antonio?

30

BASSANIO     If it please you to dine with us.

SHYLOCK     Yes, to smell pork, to eat of the habitation

which your prophet the Nazarite conjured the devil

into: I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you,

walk with you, and so following: but I will not eat with

35

you, drink with you, nor pray with you. What news on

the Rialto? who is he comes here?

Enter ANTONIO.

BASSANIO     This is Signior Antonio.

SHYLOCK [aside] How like a fawning publican he looks!

I hate him for he is a Christian:

40

But more, for that in low simplicity

He lends out money gratis, and brings down

The rate of usance here with us in Venice.

If I can catch him once upon the hip,

I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.

45

He hates our sacred nation, and he rails

(Even there where merchants most do congregate)

On me, my bargains, and my well-won thrift,

Which he calls interest: cursed be my tribe

If I forgive him!

BASSANIO     Shylock, do you hear?

50

SHYLOCK     I am debating of my present store,

And by the near guess of my memory

I cannot instantly raise up the gross

Of full three thousand ducats: what of that?

Tubal (a wealthy Hebrew of my tribe)

55

Will furnish me; but soft! how many months

Do you desire?

[to Antonio] Rest you fair good signior,

Your worship was the last man in our mouths.

ANTONIO     Shylock, albeit I neither lend nor borrow

By taking nor by giving of excess,

60

Yet to supply the ripe wants of my friend,

I’ll break a custom:

[to Bassanio]     is he yet possess’d

How much ye would?

SHYLOCK     Ay, ay, three thousand ducats.

ANTONIO     And for three months.

SHYLOCK     I had forgot, – three months, –

[to Bassanio]     you told me so.

65

Well then, your bond: and let me see, – but hear you,

Me thoughts you said, you neither lend nor borrow

Upon advantage.

ANTONIO     I do never use it.

SHYLOCK     When Jacob graz’d his uncle Laban’s sheep, –

This Jacob from our holy Abram was

70

(As his wise mother wrought in his behalf)

The third possessor: ay, he was the third.

ANTONIO     And what of him? did he take interest?

SHYLOCK     No, not take interest, not as you would say

Directly int’rest, – mark what Jacob did, –

75

When Laban and himself were compromis’d

That all the eanlings which were streak’d and pied

Should fall as Jacob’s hire, the ewes being rank

In end of autumn turned to the rams,

And when the work of generation was

80

Between these woolly breeders in the act,

The skilful shepherd pill’d me certain wands,

And in the doing of the deed of kind

He stuck them up before the fulsome ewes,

Who then conceiving, did in eaning time

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Fall parti-colour’d lambs, and those were Jacob’s.

This was a way to thrive, and he was blest:

And thrift is blessing if men steal it not.

ANTONIO     This was a venture sir that Jacob serv’d for,

A thing not in his power to bring to pass,

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But sway’d and fashion’d by the hand of heaven.

Was this inserted to make interest good?

Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams?

SHYLOCK     I cannot tell, I make it breed as fast, –

But note me signior.

ANTONIO     Mark you this Bassanio,

95

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose, –

An evil soul producing holy witness

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,

A goodly apple rotten at the heart.

O what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

100

SHYLOCK

Three thousand ducats, ’tis a good round sum.

Three months from twelve, then let me see the rate.

ANTONIO

Well Shylock, shall we be beholding to you?

SHYLOCK     Signior Antonio, many a time and oft

In the Rialto you have rated me

105

About my moneys and my usances:

Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,

(For suff ’rance is the badge of all our tribe)

You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,

And spet upon my Jewish gaberdine,

110

And all for use of that which is mine own.

Well then, it now appears you need my help:

Go to then, you come to me, and you say,

‘Shylock, we would have moneys,’ you say so:

You that did void your rheum upon my beard,

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And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur

Over your threshold, moneys is your suit.

What should I say to you? Should I not say

‘Hath a dog money? is it possible

A cur can lend three thousand ducats?’ or

120

Shall I bend low, and in a bondman’s key

With bated breath, and whisp’ring humbleness

Say this:

‘Fair sir, you spet on me on Wednesday last,

You spurn’d me such a day, another time

125

You call’d me dog: and for these courtesies

I’ll lend you thus much moneys’?

ANTONIO     I am as like to call thee so again,

To spet on thee again, to spurn thee too.

If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not

130

As to thy friends, for when did friendship take

A breed for barren metal of his friend?

But lend it rather to thine enemy,

Who if he break, thou may’st with better face

Exact the penalty.

135

SHYLOCK     Why look you how you storm!

I would be friends with you, and have your love,

Forget the shames that you have stain’d me with,

Supply your present wants, and take no doit

Of usance for my moneys, and you’ll not hear me, –

140

This is kind I offer.

BASSANIO     This were kindness.

SHYLOCK     This kindness will I show,

Go with me to a notary, seal me there

Your single bond, and (in a merry sport)

If you repay me not on such a day

145

In such a place, such sum or sums as are

Express’d in the condition, let the forfeit

Be nominated for an equal pound

Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken

In what part of your body pleaseth me.

150

ANTONIO     Content in faith, I’ll seal to such a bond,

And say there is much kindness in the Jew.

BASSANIO     You shall not seal to such a bond for me,

I’ll rather dwell in my necessity.

ANTONIO     Why fear not man, I will not forfeit it, –

155

Within these two months, that’s a month before

This bond expires, I do expect return

Of thrice three times the value of this bond.

SHYLOCK     O father Abram, what these Christians are,

Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect

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The thoughts of others! Pray you tell me this, –

If he should break his day what should I gain

By the exaction of the forfeiture?

A pound of man’s flesh taken from a man,

Is not so estimable, profitable neither

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As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats, – I say

To buy his favour, I extend this friendship, –

If he will take it, so, – if not, adieu,

And for my love I pray you wrong me not.

ANTONIO     Yes Shylock, I will seal unto this bond.

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SHYLOCK     Then meet me forthwith at the notary’s,

Give him direction for this merry bond –

And I will go and purse the ducats straight,

See to my house left in the fearful guard

Of an unthrifty knave: and presently

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I’ll be with you.     Exit.

ANTONIO     Hie thee gentle Jew.

The Hebrew will turn Christian, he grows kind.

BASSANIO     I like not fair terms, and a villain’s mind.

ANTONIO     Come on, in this there can be no dismay,

My ships come home a month before the day.

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     Exeunt.

2.1 Flourish cornets. Enter the PRINCE OF MOROCCO (a tawny Moor all in white), and three or four followers accordingly, with PORTIA, NERISSA and their train.

MOROCCO     Mislike me not for my complexion,

The shadowed livery of the burnish’d sun,

To whom I am a neighbour, and near bred.

Bring me the fairest creature northward born,

Where Phoebus’ fire scarce thaws the icicles,

5

And let us make incision for your love,

To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.

I tell thee lady this aspect of mine

Hath fear’d the valiant, – by my love I swear,

The best-regarded virgins of our clime

10

Have lov’d it too: I would not change this hue,

Except to steal your thoughts my gentle queen.

PORTIA     In terms of choice I am not solely led

By nice direction of a maiden’s eyes:

Besides, the lott’ry of my destiny

15

Bars me the right of voluntary choosing:

But if my father had not scanted me,

And hedg’d me by his wit to yield myself

His wife, who wins me by that means I told you,

Your self (renowned prince) then stood as fair

20

As any comer I have look’d on yet

For my affection.

MOROCCO     Even for that I thank you,

Therefore I pray you lead me to the caskets

To try my fortune: by this scimitar

That slew the Sophy, and a Persian prince

25

That won three fields of Sultan Solyman,

I would o’erstare the sternest eyes that look:

Outbrave the heart most daring on the earth:

Pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear,

Yea, mock the lion when a roars for prey

30

To win thee lady. But alas the while!

If Hercules and Lichas play at dice

Which is the better man, the greater throw

May turn by fortune from the weaker hand:

So is Alcides beaten by his rage,

35

And so may I, blind Fortune leading me,

Miss that which one unworthier may attain,

And die with grieving.

PORTIA     You must take your chance,

And either not attempt to choose at all,

Or swear before you choose, if you choose wrong

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Never to speak to lady afterward

In way of marriage, – therefore be advis’d.

MOROCCO

Nor will not, – come bring me unto my chance.

PORTIA     First forward to the temple, after dinner

Your hazard shall be made.

MOROCCO     Good fortune then,

45

To make me blest or cursed’st among men!

     Cornets. Exeunt.

2.2 Enter LAUNCELOT GOBBO (the clown) alone.

LAUNCELOT     Certainly, my conscience will serve me to

run from this Jew my master: the fiend is at mine

elbow, and tempts me, saying to me, ‘Gobbo,

Launcelot Gobbo, good Launcelot,’ or ‘good Gobbo,’

or ‘good Launcelot Gobbo, use your legs, take the

5

start, run away.’ My conscience says ‘No; take heed

honest Launcelot, take heed honest Gobbo,’ or as

aforesaid ‘honest Launcelot Gobbo, do not run, scorn

running with thy heels.’ Well, the most courageous

fiend bids me pack, ‘Fia!’ says the fiend, ‘away!’ says

10

the fiend, ‘for the heavens rouse up a brave mind’ says

the fiend, ‘and run.’ Well, my conscience hanging

about the neck of my heart, says very wisely to me:

‘My honest friend Launcelot’ – being an honest man’s

son, or rather an honest woman’s son, for indeed my

15

father did something smack, something grow to; he

had a kind of taste; – well, my conscience says

‘Launcelot budge not!’ – ‘Budge!’ says the fiend, –

‘Budge not!’ says my conscience. ‘Conscience’ say I,

‘you counsel well, – Fiend’ say I, ‘you counsel well,’ –

20

to be rul’d by my conscience, I should stay with the

Jew my master, who (God bless the mark) is a kind of

devil; and to run away from the Jew I should be ruled

by the fiend, who (saving your reverence) is the devil

himself: certainly the Jew is the very devil incarnation,

25

and in my conscience, my conscience is but a kind of

hard conscience, to offer to counsel me to stay with the

Jew; the fiend gives the more friendly counsel: I will

run fiend, my heels are at your commandment, I will run.

30

Enter OLD GOBBO with a basket.

GOBBO     Master young man, you I pray you, which is the

way to Master Jew’s?

LAUNCELOT [aside] O heavens! this is my true-begotten

father, who being more than sand-blind, high gravel-

blind, knows me not, – I will try confusions with him.

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GOBBO     Master young gentleman, I pray you which is

the way to Master Jew’s?

LAUNCELOT     Turn up on your right hand at the next

turning, but at the next turning of all on your left;

marry at the very next turning turn of no hand, but

40

turn down indirectly to the Jew’s house.

GOBBO     Be God’s sonties ’twill be a hard way to hit, –

can you tell me whether one Launcelot that dwells

with him, dwell with him or no?

LAUNCELOT     Talk you of young Master Launcelot?

45

[aside] Mark me now, now will I raise the waters; – talk

you of young Master Launcelot?

GOBBO     No ‘master’ sir, but a poor man’s son, – his

father (though I say’t) is an honest exceeding poor

man, and (God be thanked) well to live.

50

LAUNCELOT     Well, let his father be what a will, we talk

of young Master Launcelot.

GOBBO     Your worship’s friend and Launcelot sir.

LAUNCELOT     But I pray you ergo old man, ergo I

beseech you, talk you of young Master Launcelot.

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GOBBO     Of Launcelot an’t please your mastership.

LAUNCELOT     Ergo Master Launcelot, – talk not of

Master Launcelot father, for the young gentleman

(according to fates and destinies, and such odd

sayings, the Sisters Three, and such branches of

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learning), is indeed deceased, or as you would say in

plain terms, gone to heaven.

GOBBO     Marry God forbid! the boy was the very staff of

my age, my very prop.

LAUNCELOT [aside] Do I look like a cudgel or a hovel-

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post, a staff, or a prop? – Do you know me father?

GOBBO     Alack the day! I know you not young gentleman,

but I pray you tell me, is my boy (God rest his soul)

alive or dead?

LAUNCELOT     Do you not know me father?

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GOBBO     Alack sir I am sand-blind, I know you not.

LAUNCELOT     Nay, indeed if you had your eyes you

might fail of the knowing me: it is a wise father that

knows his own child. Well, old man, I will tell you

news of your son, – [Kneels.] give me your blessing, –

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truth will come to light, murder cannot be hid long, a

man’s son may, but in the end truth will out.

GOBBO     Pray you sir stand up, I am sure you are not

Launcelot my boy.

LAUNCELOT     Pray you let’s have no more fooling about

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it, but give me your blessing: I am Launcelot your boy

that was, your son that is, your child that shall be.

GOBBO     I cannot think you are my son.

LAUNCELOT     I know not what I shall think of that: but I

am Launcelot the Jew’s man, and I am sure Margery

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your wife is my mother.

GOBBO     Her name is Margery indeed, – I’ll be sworn if

thou be Launcelot, thou art mine own flesh and blood:

Lord worshipp’d might he be, what a beard hast thou

got! thou hast got more hair on thy chin, than Dobbin

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my fill-horse has on his tail.

LAUNCELOT     It should seem then that Dobbin’s tail

grows backward. I am sure he had more hair of his tail

than I have of my face when I last saw him.

GOBBO     Lord how art thou chang’d! How dost thou and

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thy master agree? I have brought him a present; how

‘gree you now?

LAUNCELOT     Well, well, but for mine own part, as I have

set up my rest to run away, so I will not rest till I have

run some ground; my master’s a very Jew, – give him

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a present? give him a halter! – I am famish’d in his

service. You may tell every finger I have with my ribs:

father I am glad you are come, give me your present to

one Master Bassanio, who indeed gives rare new

liveries, – if I serve not him, I will run as far as God

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has any ground. O rare fortune! here comes the man,

to him father, for I am a Jew if I serve the Jew any longer.

Enter BASSANIO with LEONARDO and
a follower or two.

BASSANIO     You may do so, but let it be so hasted that

supper be ready at the farthest by five of the clock: see

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these letters delivered, put the liveries to making, and

desire Gratiano to come anon to my lodging.

     Exit one of his men.

LAUNCELOT     To him father.

GOBBO     God bless your worship.

BASSANIO     Gramercy, wouldst thou aught with me?

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GOBBO     Here’s my son sir, a poor boy.

LAUNCELOT     Not a poor boy sir, but the rich Jew’s man

that would sir as my father shall specify.

GOBBO     He hath a great infection sir, (as one would say)

to serve.

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LAUNCELOT     Indeed the short and the long is, I serve

the Jew, and have a desire as my father shall specify.

GOBBO     His master and he (saving your worship’s

reverence) are scarce cater-cousins, –

LAUNCELOT     To be brief, the very truth is, that the Jew

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having done me wrong, doth cause me as my father

(being I hope an old man) shall frutify unto you.

GOBBO     I have here a dish of doves that I would bestow

upon you worship, and my suit is –

LAUNCELOT     In very brief, the suit is impertinent to

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myself, as your worship shall know by this honest old

man, and though I say it, though old man, yet (poor man) my father.

BASSANIO     One speak for both, what would you?

LAUNCELOT     Serve you sir.

135

GOBBO     That is the very defect of the matter sir.

BASSANIO

I know thee well, thou hast obtain’d thy suit, –

Shylock thy master spoke with me this day,

And hath preferr’d thee, if it be preferment

To leave a rich Jew’s service, to become

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The follower of so poor a gentleman.

LAUNCELOT     The old proverb is very well parted be

tween my master Shylock and you sir, you have ‘the

grace of God’ sir, and he hath ‘enough’.

BASSANIO

Thou speak’st it well; go father with thy son –

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Take leave of thy old master, and inquire

My lodging out, –

[to his followers] give him a livery

More guarded than his fellows’: see it done.

LAUNCELOT     Father in, – I cannot get a service, no! I

have ne’er a tongue in my head: well, if any man in

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Italy have a fairer table which doth offer to swear upon

a book, I shall have good fortune; go to, here’s a simple

line of life, here’s a small trifle of wives, – alas! fifteen

wives is nothing, aleven widows and nine maids is a

simple coming-in for one man, and then to scape

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drowning thrice, and to be in peril of my life with the

edge of a feather-bed, here are simple scapes: well, if

Fortune be a woman she’s a good wench for this gear:

father come, I’ll take my leave of the Jew in the

twinkling.     Exit with Old Gobbo.

160

BASSANIO     I pray thee good Leonardo think on this, –

These things being bought and orderly bestowed

Return in haste, for I do feast to-night

My best-esteem’d acquaintance, hie thee go.

LEONARDO My best endeavours shall be done herein.

165

[He leaves Bassanio.]

Enter GRATIANO.

GRATIANO     Where’s your master?

LEONARDO     Yonder sir he walks. Exit.

GRATIANO     Signior Bassanio!

BASSANIO     Gratiano!

GRATIANO     I have suit to you.

BASSANIO     You have obtain’d it.

GRATIANO

You must not deny me, I must go with you to Belmont.

170

BASSANIO

Why then you must – but hear thee Gratiano,

Thou art too wild, too rude, and bold of voice,

Parts that become thee happily enough,

And in such eyes as ours appear not faults –

But where thou art not known; – why there they show

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Something too liberal, – pray thee take pain

To allay with some cold drops of modesty

Thy skipping spirit, lest through thy wild behaviour

I be misconst’red in the place I go to,

And lose my hopes.

GRATIANO     Signior Bassanio, hear me, –

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If I do not put on a sober habit,

Talk with respect, and swear but now and then,

Wear prayer-books in my pocket, look demurely,

Nay more, while grace is saying hood mine eyes

Thus with my hat, and sigh and say ‘amen’:

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Use all the observance of civility

Like one well studied in a sad ostent

To please his grandam, never trust me more.

BASSANIO     Well, we shall see your bearing.

GRATIANO

Nay but I bar to-night, you shall not gauge me

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By what we do to-night.

BASSANIO     No that were pity,

I would entreat you rather to put on

Your boldest suit of mirth, for we have friends

That purpose merriment: but fare you well,

I have some business.

195

GRATIANO     And I must to Lorenzo and the rest,

But we will visit you at supper-time.     Exeunt.

2.3 Enter JESSICA and LAUNCELOT the clown.

JESSICA     I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so,

Our house is hell, and thou (a merry devil)

Didst rob it of some taste of tediousness, –

But fare thee well, there is a ducat for thee,

And Launcelot, soon at supper shalt thou see

5

Lorenzo, who is thy new master’s guest,

Give him this letter, – do it secretly, –

And so farewell: I would not have my father

See me in talk with thee.

LAUNCELOT     Adieu! tears exhibit my tongue, most

10

beautiful pagan, most sweet Jew! – if a Christian do

not play the knave and get thee, I am much deceived;

but adieu! these foolish drops do something drown my

manly spirit: adieu!     Exit.

JESSICA     Farewell good Launcelot.

15

Alack, what heinous sin is it in me

To be ashamed to be my father’s child!

But though I am a daughter to his blood

I am not to his manners: O Lorenzo

If thou keep promise I shall end this strife,

20

Become a Christian and thy loving wife!     Exit.

2.4 Enter GRATIANO, LORENZO, SALERIO and SOLANIO.

LORENZO     Nay, we will slink away in supper-time,

Disguise us at my lodging, and return

All in an hour.

GRATIANO     We have not made good preparation.

SALERIO     We have not spoke us yet of torch-bearers, –

5

SOLANIO     ’Tis vile unless it may be quaintly ordered,

And better in my mind not undertook.

LORENZO

’Tis now but four of clock, we have two hours

To furnish us;

Enter LAUNCELOT, with a letter.

     friend Launcelot what’s the news?

LAUNCELOT     And it shall please you to break up this, it

10

shall seem to signify.

LORENZO     I know the hand, in faith ’tis a fair hand,

And whiter than the paper it writ on

Is the fair hand that writ.

GRATIANO     Love-news in faith.

LAUNCELOT     By your leave sir.

15

LORENZO     Whither goest thou?

LAUNCELOT

Marry sir to bid my old master the Jew to sup tonight

with my new master the Christian.

LORENZO     Hold here – take this, tell gentle Jessica

I will not fail her, – speak it privately. Exit Launcelot.

20

Go gentlemen,

Will you prepare you for this masque to-night?

I am provided of a torch-bearer.

SALERIO     Ay marry, I’ll be gone about it straight.

SOLANIO     And so will I.

LORENZO     Meet me and Gratiano

25

At Gratiano’s lodging some hour hence.

SALERIO     ’Tis good we do so.

     Exeunt Salerio and Solanio.

GRATIANO     Was not that letter from fair Jessica?

LORENZO     I must needs tell thee all, – she hath directed

How I shall take her from her father’s house,

30

What gold and jewels she is furnish’d with,

What page’s suit she hath in readiness, –

If e’er the Jew her father come to heaven,

It will be for his gentle daughter’s sake,

And never dare misfortune cross her foot,

35

Unless she do it under this excuse,

That she is issue to a faithless Jew:

Come go with me, peruse this as thou goest, –

Fair Jessica shall be my torch-bearer.     Exeunt.

2.5 Enter SHYLOCK the Jew and LAUNCELOT his man that was the clown.

SHYLOCK

Well, thou shalt see, thy eyes shall be thy judge,

The difference of old Shylock and Bassanio; –

What Jessica! – thou shalt not gormandize

As thou hast done with me: – what Jessica! –

And sleep, and snore, and rend apparel out.

5

Why Jessica I say!

LAUNCELOT     Why Jessica!

SHYLOCK     Who bids thee call? I do not bid thee call.

LAUNCELOT     Your worship was wont to tell me, I could

do nothing without bidding.

Enter JESSICA.

JESSICA     Call you? what is your will?

10

SHYLOCK     I am bid forth to supper Jessica,

There are my keys: – but wherefore should I go?

I am not bid for love, they flatter me,

But yet I’ll go in hate, to feed upon

The prodigal Christian. Jessica my girl,

15

Look to my house, – I am right loath to go,

There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest,

For I did dream of money-bags to-night.

LAUNCELOT     I beseech you sir go, my young master doth

expect your reproach.

20

SHYLOCK     So do I his.

LAUNCELOT     And they have conspired together, – I will

not say you shall see a masque, but if you do, then it

was not for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on

Black-Monday last, at six o’clock i’th’ morning, falling

25

out that year on Ash-Wednesday was four year in

th’afternoon.

SHYLOCK

What are there masques? Hear you me Jessica,

Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum

And the vile squealing of the wry-neck’d fife

30

Clamber not you up to the casements then

Nor thrust your head into the public street

To gaze on Christian fools with varnish’d faces:

But stop my house’s ears, I mean my casements,

Let not the sound of shallow fopp’ry enter

35

My sober house. By Jacob’s staff I swear

I have no mind of feasting forth to-night:

But I will go: go you before me sirrah,

Say I will come.

LAUNCELOT     I will go before sir.

Mistress look out at window for all this, –

40

There will come a Christian by

Will be worth a Jewes eye.     Exit.

SHYLOCK

What says that fool of Hagar’s offspring? ha?

JESSICA

His words were ‘Farewell mistress,’ nothing else.

SHYLOCK

The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder,

45

Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day

More than the wild-cat: drones hive not with me,

Therefore I part with him, and part with him

To one that I would have him help to waste

His borrowed purse. Well Jessica go in, –

50

Perhaps I will return immediately, –

Do as I bid you, shut doors after you,

Fast bind, fast find. –

A proverb never stale in thrifty mind.     Exit.

JESSICA     Farewell, – and if my fortune be not crost,

55

I have a father, you a daughter, lost.     Exit.

2.6 Enter the masquers, GRATIANO and SALERIO.

GRATIANO

This is the penthouse under which Lorenzo

Desired us to make stand.

SALERIO     His hour is almost past.

GRATIANO     And it is marvel he out-dwells his hour,

For lovers ever run before the clock.

SALERIO     O ten times faster Venus’ pigeons fly

5

To seal love’s bonds new-made, than they are wont

To keep obliged faith unforfeited!

GRATIANO     That ever holds: who riseth from a feast

With that keen appetite that he sits down?

Where is the horse that doth untread again

10

His tedious measures with the unbated fire

That he did pace them first? – all things that are,

Are with more spirit chased than enjoy’d.

How like a younger or a prodigal

The scarfed bark puts from her native bay –

15

Hugg’d and embraced by the strumpet wind!

How like the prodigal doth she return

With over-weather’d ribs and ragged sails –

Lean, rent, and beggar’d by the strumpet wind!

Enter LORENZO.

SALERIO     Here comes Lorenzo, more of this hereafter.

20

LORENZO

Sweet friends, your patience for my long abode

(Not I but my affairs have made you wait):

When you shall please to play the thieves for wives

I’ll watch as long for you then: approach –

Here dwells my father Jew. How! who’s within?

25

Enter JESSICA above, in boy’s clothes.

JESSICA     Who are you? – tell me for more certainty,

Albeit I’ll swear that I do know your tongue.

LORENZO     Lorenzo and thy love.

JESSICA     Lorenzo certain, and my love indeed,

For who love I so much? and now who knows

30

But you Lorenzo whether I am yours?

LORENZO

Heaven and thy thoughts are witness that thou art.

JESSICA     Here catch this casket, it is worth the pains.

I am glad ’tis night – you do not look on me, –

For I am much asham’d of my exchange:

35

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see

The pretty follies that themselves commit,

For if they could, Cupid himself would blush

To see me thus transformed to a boy.

LORENZO     Descend, for you must be my torch-bearer.

40

JESSICA     What, must I hold a candle to my shames? –

They in themselves (goodsooth) are too too light.

Why, ’tis an office of discovery (love),

And I should be obscur’d.

LORENZO     So are you (sweet)

Even in the lovely garnish of a boy.

45

But come at once,

For the close night doth play the runaway,

And we are stay’d for at Bassanio’s feast.

JESSICA     I will make fast the doors and gild myself

With some moe ducats, and be with you straight.

50

     Exit above.

GRATIANO     Now (by my hood) a gentle, and no Jew.

LORENZO     Beshrew me but I love her heartily,

For she is wise, if I can judge of her,

And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true,

And true she is, as she hath prov’d herself:

55

And therefore like herself, wise, fair, and true,

Shall she be placed in my constant soul.

Enter JESSICA.

What, art thou come? – on gentlemen, away!

Our masquing mates by this time for us stay.

     Exit with Jessica and Salerio;

     Gratiano is about to follow them.

Enter ANTONIO.

ANTONIO     Who’s there?

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GRATIANO     Signior Antonio?

ANTONIO     Fie, fie Gratiano! where are all the rest?

’Tis nine o’clock, our friends all stay for you, –

No masque to-night, – the wind is come about –

Bassanio presently will go aboard, –

65

I have sent twenty out to seek for you.

GRATIANO     I am glad on’t, – I desire no more delight

Than to be under sail, and gone to-night.     Exeunt.

2.7 Flourish cornets. Enter PORTIA with
MOROCCO and both their trains.

PORTIA     Go, draw aside the curtains and discover

The several caskets to this noble prince:

Now make your choice.

MOROCCO

This first of gold, who this inscription bears,

Who chooseth me, shall gain what many men desire.

5

The second silver, which this promise carries,

Who chooseth me, shall get as much as he deserves.

This third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt,

Who chooseth me, must give and hazard all he hath.

How shall I know if I do choose the right?

10

PORTIA     The one of them contains my picture prince,

If you choose that, then I am yours withal.

MOROCCO     Some god direct my judgment! let me see,

I will survey th’inscriptions back again, –

What says this leaden casket?

15

Who chooseth me, must give and hazard all he hath,

Must give, – for what? for lead, hazard for lead!

This casket threatens – men that hazard all

Do it in hope of fair advantages:

A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross,

20

I’ll then nor give nor hazard aught for lead.

What says the silver with her virgin hue?

Who chooseth me, shall get as much as he deserves.

As much as he deserves, – pause there Morocco,

And weigh thy value with an even hand, –

25

If thou be’st rated by thy estimation

Thou dost deserve enough, and yet enough

May not extend so far as to the lady:

And yet to be afeard of my deserving

Were but a weak disabling of myself.

30

As much as I deserve, – why that’s the lady.

I do in birth deserve her, and in fortunes,

In graces, and in qualities of breeding:

But more than these, in love I do deserve, –

What if I stray’d no further, but chose here?

35

Let’s see once more this saying grav’d in gold:

Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire:

Why that’s the lady, all the world desires her.

From the four corners of the earth they come

To kiss this shrine, this mortal breathing saint.

40

The Hyrcanian deserts, and the vasty wilds

Of wide Arabia are as throughfares now

For princes to come view fair Portia.

The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head

Spets in the face of heaven, is no bar

45

To stop the foreign spirits, but they come

As o’er a brook to see fair Portia.

One of these three contains her heavenly picture.

Is’t like that lead contains her? – ’twere damnation

To think so base a thought, it were too gross

50

To rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave, –

Or shall I think in silver she’s immur’d

Being ten times undervalued to try’d gold?

O sinful thought! never so rich a gem

Was set in worse than gold. They have in England

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A coin that bears the figure of an angel

Stamp’d in gold, but that’s insculp’d upon:

But here an angel in a golden bed

Lies all within. Deliver me the key:

Here do I choose, and thrive I as I may.

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PORTIA     There take it prince, and if my form lie there

Then I am yours! [He unlocks the golden casket.]

MOROCCO     O hell! what have we here?

A carrion Death, within whose empty eye

There is a written scroll, – I’ll read the writing.

[Reads.]

All that glisters is not gold,

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Often have you heard that told, –

Many a man his life hath sold

But my outside to behold, –

Gilded tombs do worms infold:

Had you been as wise as bold,

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Young in limbs, in judgment old,

Your answer had not been inscroll’d, –

Fare you well, your suit is cold.

Cold indeed and labour lost,

Then farewell heat, and welcome frost:

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Portia adieu! I have too griev’d a heart

To take a tedious leave: thus losers part.

     Exit with his train.

PORTIA     A gentle riddance, – draw the curtains, go, –

Let all of his complexion choose me so.     Exeunt.

2.8 Enter SALERIO and SOLANIO.

SALERIO     Why man I saw Bassanio under sail,

With him is Gratiano gone along;

And in their ship I am sure Lorenzo is not.

SOLANIO     The villain Jew with outcries rais’d the duke,

Who went with him to search Bassanio’s ship.

5

SALERIO     He came too late, the ship was under sail,

But there the duke was given to understand

That in a gondola were seen together

Lorenzo and his amorous Jessica.

Besides, Antonio certified the duke

10

They were not with Bassanio in his ship.

SOLANIO     I never heard a passion so confus’d,

So strange, outrageous, and so variable

As the dog Jew did utter in the streets, –

‘My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!

15

Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!

Justice, the law, my ducats, and my daughter!

A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats,

Of double ducats, stol’n from me by my daughter!

And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones,

20

Stol’n by my daughter! Justice! – find the girl,

She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats!’

SALERIO     Why all the boys in Venice follow him,

Crying his stones, his daughter, and his ducats.

SOLANIO     Let good Antonio look he keep his day

25

Or he shall pay for this.

SALERIO     Marry well rememb’red, –

I reason’d with a Frenchman yesterday,

Who told me, in the narrow seas that part

The French and English, there miscarried

A vessel of our country richly fraught:

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I thought upon Antonio when he told me,

And wish’d in silence that it were not his.

SOLANIO

You were best to tell Antonio what you hear, –

Yet do not suddenly, for it may grieve him.

SALERIO     A kinder gentleman treads not the earth, –

35

I saw Bassanio and Antonio part,

Bassanio told him he would make some speed

Of his return: he answered, ‘Do not so,

Slubber not business for my sake Bassanio,

But stay the very riping of the time,

40

And for the Jew’s bond which he hath of me –

Let it not enter in your mind of love:

Be merry, and employ your chiefest thoughts

To courtship, and such fair ostents of love

As shall conveniently become you there.’

45

And even there (his eye being big with tears),

Turning his face, he put his hand behind him,

And with affection wondrous sensible

He wrung Bassanio’s hand, and so they parted.

SOLANIO     I think he only loves the world for him, –

50

I pray thee let us go and find him out

And quicken his embraced heaviness

With some delight or other.

SALERIO     Do we so.     Exeunt.

2.9 Enter NERISSA and a servitor.

NERISSA

Quick, quick I pray thee, draw the curtain straight, –

The Prince of Arragon hath ta’en his oath,

And comes to his election presently.

Flourish cornets. Enter the PRINCE OF ARRAGON,
his train, and PORTIA.

PORTIA     Behold, there stand the caskets noble prince,

If you choose that wherein I am contain’d

5

Straight shall our nuptial rites be solemniz’d:

But if you fail, without more speech my lord

You must be gone from hence immediately.

ARRAGON

I am enjoin’d by oath to observe three things, –

First, never to unfold to any one

10

Which casket ’twas I chose; next, if I fail

Of the right casket, never in my life

To woo a maid in way of marriage:

Lastly,

If I do fail in fortune of my choice,

15

Immediately to leave you, and be gone.

PORTIA     To these injunctions every one doth swear

That comes to hazard for my worthless self.

ARRAGON     And so have I address’d me, – fortune now

To my heart’s hope! – gold, silver, and base lead.

20

Who chooseth me, must give and hazard all he hath.

You shall look fairer ere I give or hazard.

What says the golden chest? ha! let me see,

Who chooseth me, shall gain what many men desire,

What many men desire, – that ‘many’ may be meant

25

By the fool multitude that choose by show,

Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach,

Which pries not to th’ interior, but like the martlet

Builds in the weather on the outward wall,

Even in the force and road of casualty.

30

I will not choose what many men desire,

Because I will not jump with common spirits,

And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.

Why then to thee (thou silver treasure house),

Tell me once more what title thou dost bear;

35

Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves,

And well said too; for who shall go about

To cozen Fortune, and be honourable

Without the stamp of merit? – let none presume

To wear an undeserved dignity:

40

O that estates, degrees, and offices,

Were not deriv’d corruptly, and that clear honour

Were purchas’d by the merit of the wearer! –

How many then should cover that stand bare!

How many be commanded that command!

45

How much low peasantry would then be gleaned

From the true seed of honour! and how much honour

Pick’d from the chaff and ruin of the times,

To be new-varnish’d! – well, but to my choice.

Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves, –

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I will assume desert; give me a key for this,

And instantly unlock my fortunes here.

[He opens the silver casket.]

PORTIA

Too long a pause for that which you find there.

ARRAGON     What’s here? the portrait of a blinking idiot

Presenting me a schedule! I will read it:

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How much unlike art thou to Portia!

How much unlike my hopes and my deservings!

Who chooseth me, shall have as much as he deserves!

Did I deserve no more than a fool’s head?

Is that my prize? are my deserts no better?

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PORTIA     To offend and judge are distinct offices,

And of opposed natures.

ARRAGON     What is here?

The fire seven times tried this:

Seven times tried that judgment is,

That did never choose amiss.

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Some there be that shadows kiss,

Such have but a shadow’s bliss:

There be fools alive (Iwis)

Silver’d o’er, and so was this.

70

Take what wife you will to bed,

I will ever be your head:

So be gone, you are sped.

Still more fool I shall appear

By the time I linger here, –

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With one fool’s head I came to woo,

But I go away with two.

Sweet adieu! I’ll keep my oath,

Patiently to bear my wroth.

     Exit Arragon with his train.

PORTIA     Thus hath the candle sing’d the moth:

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O these deliberate fools! when they do choose,

They have the wisdom by their wit to lose.

NERISSA     The ancient saying is no heresy,

Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.

PORTIA     Come draw the curtain Nerissa.

Enter Messenger.

MESSENGER     Where is my lady?

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PORTIA     Here, what would my lord?

MESSENGER     Madam, there is alighted at your gate

A young Venetian, one that comes before

To signify th’approaching of his lord,

From whom he bringeth sensible regreets;

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To wit, (besides commends and courteous breath)

Gifts of rich value; yet I have not seen

So likely an ambassador of love.

A day in April never came so sweet

To show how costly summer was at hand,

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As this fore-spurrer comes before his lord.

PORTIA     No more I pray thee, I am half afeard

Thou wilt say anon he is some kin to thee,

Thou spend’st such high-day wit in praising him:

Come, come Nerissa, for I long to see

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Quick Cupid’s post that comes so mannerly.

NERISSA     Bassanio, Lord Love, if thy will it be! Exeunt.

3.1 Enter SOLANIO and SALERIO.

SOLANIO     Now what news on the Rialto?

SALERIO     Why yet it lives there uncheck’d, that Antonio

hath a ship of rich lading wrack’d on the narrow seas;

the Goodwins I think they call the place, a very

dangerous flat, and fatal, where the carcases of many a

5

tall ship lie buried, as they say, – if my gossip Report

be an honest woman of her word.

SOLANIO     I would she were as lying a gossip in that, as

ever knapp’d ginger, or made her neighbours believe

she wept for the death of a third husband: but it is

10

true, without any slips of prolixity, or crossing the

plain highway of talk, that the good Antonio, the

honest Antonio; – O that I had a title good enough to

keep his name company! –

SALERIO     Come, the full stop.

15

SOLANIO     Ha! what sayest thou? – why the end is, he hath lost a ship.

SALERIO     I would it might prove the end of his losses.

SOLANIO     Let me say ‘amen’ betimes, lest the devil cross

my prayer, for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew.

20

Enter SHYLOCK.

How now Shylock! what news among the merchants?

SHYLOCK     You knew, none so well, none so well as you,

of my daughter’s flight.

SALERIO     That’s certain, – I (for my part) knew the tailor

that made the wings she flew withal.

25

SOLANIO     And Shylock (for his own part) knew the bird

was flidge, and then it is the complexion of them all to

leave the dam.

SHYLOCK     She is damn’d for it.

SALERIO     That’s certain, if the devil may be her judge.

30

SHYLOCK     My own flesh and blood to rebel!

SOLANIO     Out upon it old carrion! rebels it at these

years?

SHYLOCK     I say my daughter is my flesh and my blood.

SALERIO     There is more difference between thy flesh

35

and hers, than between jet and ivory, more between

your bloods, than there is between red wine and

Rhenish: but tell us, do you hear whether Antonio

have had any loss at sea or no?

SHYLOCK     There I have another bad match, a bankrupt,

40

a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the

Rialto, a beggar that was us’d to come so smug upon

the mart: let him look to his bond! he was wont to call

me usurer, let him look to his bond! he was wont to

lend money for a Christian cur’sy, let him look to his

45

bond!

SALERIO     Why I am sure if he forfeit, thou wilt not take

his flesh, – what’s that good for?

SHYLOCK     To bait fish withal, – if it will feed nothing

else, it will feed my revenge; he hath disgrac’d me, and

50

hind’red me half a million, laugh’d at my losses,

mock’d at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my

bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, –

and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes?

hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses,

55

affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with

the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed

by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same

winter and summer as a Christian is? – if you prick us

do we not bleed? if you tickle us do we not laugh? if

60

you poison us do we not die? and if you wrong us shall

we not revenge? – if we are like you in the rest, we will

resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what

is his humility? revenge! If a Christian wrong a Jew,

what should his sufferance be by Christian example? –

65

why revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute,

and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Enter a Servingman from Antonio.

SERVINGMAN     Gentlemen, my master Antonio is at his

house, and desires to speak with you both.

SALERIO     We have been up and down to seek him.

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Enter TUBAL.

SOLANIO     Here comes another of the tribe, – a third

cannot be match’d, unless the devil himself turn Jew.

     Exeunt Solanio and Salerio with Servant.

SHYLOCK     How now Tubal! what news from Genoa?

hast thou found my daughter?

TUBAL I often came where I did hear of her, but cannot

75

find her.

SHYLOCK     Why there, there, there, there! a diamond

gone cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfort, – the

curse never fell upon our nation till now, I never felt it

till now, – two thousand ducats in that, and other

80

precious, precious jewels; I would my daughter were

dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear: would she

were hears’d at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin:

– no news of them? why so! – and I know not what’s

spent in the search: why thou – loss upon loss! the

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thief gone with so much, and so much to find the thief,

and no satisfaction, no revenge, nor no ill luck stirring

but what lights o’ my shoulders, no sighs but o’ my

breathing, no tears but o’ my shedding.

TUBAL     Yes, other men have ill luck too, – Antonio (as I

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heard in Genoa) –

SHYLOCK     What, what, what? ill luck, ill luck?

TUBAL     – hath an argosy cast away coming from Tripolis.

SHYLOCK     I thank God, I thank God! is it true, is it true?

95

TUBAL     I spoke with some of the sailors that escaped the wrack.

SHYLOCK     I thank thee good Tubal, good news, good news: ha ha! heard in Genoa!

TUBAL     Your daughter spent in Genoa, as I heard, one

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night, fourscore ducats.

SHYLOCK     Thou stick’st a dagger in me, – I shall never

see my gold again, – fourscore ducats at a sitting,

fourscore ducats!

TUBAL     There came divers of Antonio’s creditors in my

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company to Venice, that swear, he cannot choose but

break.

SHYLOCK     I am very glad of it, – I’ll plague him, I’ll

torture him, – I am glad of it.

TUBAL     One of them showed me a ring that he had of

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your daughter for a monkey.

SHYLOCK     Out upon her! – thou torturest me Tubal, – it

was my turquoise, I had it of Leah when I was a

bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of

monkeys.

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TUBAL     But Antonio is certainly undone.

SHYLOCK     Nay, that’s true, that’s very true, – go Tubal,

fee me an officer, bespeak him a fortnight before, – I

will have the heart of him if he forfeit, for were he out

of Venice I can make what merchandise I will: go

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Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue, – go good

Tubal, – at our synagogue Tubal.     Exeunt.

3.2 Enter BASSANIO, PORTIA, GRATIANO,
NERISSA and all their trains.

PORTIA     I pray you tarry, pause a day or two

Before you hazard, for in choosing wrong

I lose your company; therefore forbear a while, –

There’s something tells me (but it is not love)

I would not lose you, and you know yourself,

5

Hate counsels not in such a quality;

But lest you should not understand me well, –

And yet a maiden hath no tongue, but thought, –

I would detain you here some month or two

Before you venture for me. I could teach you

10

How to choose right, but then I am forsworn,

So will I never be, – so may you miss me, –

But if you do, you’ll make me wish a sin,

That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes,

They have o’erlook’d me and divided me,

15

One half of me is yours, the other half yours, –

Mine own I would say: but if mine then yours,

And so all yours; O these naughty times

Put bars between the owners and their rights!

And so though yours, not yours, – prove it so,

20

Let Fortune go to hell for it, not I.

I speak too long, but ’tis to peise the time,

To eche it, and to draw it out in length,

To stay you from election.

BASSANIO     Let me choose,

For as I am, I live upon the rack.

25

PORTIA     Upon the rack Bassanio? then confess

What treason there is mingled with your love.

BASSANIO     None but that ugly treason of mistrust,

Which makes me fear th’enjoying of my love, –

There may as well be amity and life

30

’Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love.

PORTIA     Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack

Where men enforced do speak any thing.

BASSANIO     Promise me life, and I’ll confess the truth.

PORTIA     Well then, confess and live.

BASSANIO     ‘Confess and love’

35

Had been the very sum of my confession:

O happy torment, when my torturer

Doth teach me answers for deliverance!

But let me to my fortune and the caskets.

PORTIA     Away then! I am lock’d in one of them, –

40

If you do love me, you will find me out.

Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof, –

Let music sound while he doth make his choice,

Then if he lose he makes a swan-like end,

Fading in music. That the comparison

45

May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream

And wat’ry death-bed for him: – he may win,

And what is music then? Then music is

Even as the flourish, when true subiects bow

To a new-crowned monarch: such it is,

50

As are those dulcet sounds in break of day,

That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear,

And summon him to marriage. Now he goes

With no less presence, but with much more love

Than young Alcides, when he did redeem

55

The virgin tribute, paid by howling Troy

To the sea-monster: I stand for sacrifice,

The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives,

With bleared visages come forth to view

The issue of th’exploit: go Hercules!

60

Live thou, I live – with much much more dismay,

I view the fight, than thou that mak’st the fray.

A song to music the whilst Bassanio comments on the
caskets to himself.

Tell me where is Fancy bred,

Or in the heart, or in the head?

How begot, how nourished?

65

ALL Reply, reply.

It is engend’red in the eyes,

With gazing fed, and Fancy dies

In the cradle where it lies:

Let us all ring Fancy’s knell.

70

I’ll begin it. Ding, dong, bell.

ALL     Ding, dong, bell.

BASSANIO

So may the outward shows be least themselves, –

The world is still deceiv’d with ornament –

In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,

75

But being season’d with a gracious voice,

Obscures the show of evil? In religion,

What damned error but some sober brow

Will bless it, and approve it with a text,

Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?

80

There is no vice so simple, but assumes

Some mark of virtue on his outward parts;

How many cowards whose hearts are all as false

As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins

The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars,

85

Who inward search’d, have livers white as milk? –

And these assume but valour’s excrement

To render them redoubted. Look on beauty,

And you shall see ’tis purchas’d by the weight,

Which therein works a miracle in nature,

90

Making them lightest that wear most of it:

So are those crisped snaky golden locks

Which make such wanton gambols with the wind

Upon supposed fairness, often known

To be the dowry of a second head,

95

The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.

Thus ornament is but the guiled shore

To a most dangerous sea: the beauteous scarf

Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word,

The seeming truth which cunning times put on

100

To entrap the wisest. Therefore thou gaudy gold,

Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee,

Nor none of thee thou pale and common drudge

’Tween man and man: but thou, thou meagre lead

Which rather threaten’st than dost promise aught,

105

Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence,

And here choose I, – joy be the consequence!

PORTIA [aside]     How all the other passions fleet to air:

As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac’d despair,

And shudd’ring fear, and green-eyed jealousy.

110

O love be moderate, allay thy extasy,

In measure rain thy joy, scant this excess!

I feel too much thy blessing, make it less

For fear I surfeit.

BASSANIO     What find I here?

[He opens the leaden casket.]

Fair Portia’s counterfeit! What demi-god

115

Hath come so near creation? move these eyes?

Or whether (riding on the balls of mine)

Seem they in motion? Here are sever’d lips

Parted with sugar breath, – so sweet a bar

Should sunder such sweet friends: here in her hairs

120

The painter plays the spider, and hath woven

A golden mesh t’entrap the hearts of men

Faster than gnats in cobwebs, – but her eyes!

How could he see to do them? having made one,

Methinks it should have power to steal both his

125

And leave itself unfurnish’d: yet look how far

The substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow

In underprizing it, so far this shadow

Doth limp behind the substance. Here’s the scroll,

The continent and summary of my fortune.

130

You that choose not by the view

Chance as fair, and choose as true:

Since this fortune falls to you,

Be content, and seek no new.

If you be well pleas’d with this,

135

And hold your fortune for your bliss,

Turn you where your lady is,

And claim her with a loving kiss.

A gentle scroll: fair lady, by your leave,

I come by note to give, and to receive, –

140

Like one of two contending in a prize

That thinks he hath done well in people’s eyes,

Hearing applause and universal shout,

Giddy in spirit, still gazing in a doubt

Whether those peals of praise be his or no,

145

So (thrice-fair lady) stand I even so,

As doubtful whether what I see be true,

Until confirm’d, sign’d, ratified by you.

PORTIA     You see me Lord Bassanio where I stand,

Such as I am; though for myself alone

150

I would not be ambitious in my wish

To wish myself much better, yet for you,

I would be trebled twenty times myself,

A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich,

That only to stand high in your account,

155

I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends

Exceed account: but the full sum of me

Is sum of something: which to term in gross,

Is an unlesson’d girl, unschool’d, unpractised,

Happy in this, she is not yet so old

160

But she may learn: happier than this,

She is not bred so dull but she can learn;

Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit

Commits itself to yours to be directed,

As from her lord, her governor, her king.

165

Myself, and what is mine, to you and yours

Is now converted. But now I was the lord

Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,

Queen o’er myself: and even now, but now.

This house, these servants, and this same myself

170

Are yours, – my lord’s! – I give them with this ring,

Which when you part from, lose, or give away,

Let it presage the ruin of your love,

And be my vantage to exclaim on you.

BASSANIO     Madam, you have bereft me of all words,

175

Only my blood speaks to you in my veins,

And there is such confusion in my powers,

As after some oration fairly spoke

By a beloved prince, there doth appear

Among the buzzing pleased multitude,

180

Where every something being blent together,

Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy

Express’d, and not express’d: but when this ring

Parts from this finger, then parts life from hence, –

O then be bold to say Bassanio’s dead!

185

NERISSA     My lord and lady, it is now our time

That have stood by and seen our wishes prosper,

To cry good joy, – good joy my lord and lady!

GRATIANO     My Lord Bassanio, and my gentle lady,

I wish you all the joy that you can wish:

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For I am sure you can wish none from me:

And when your honours mean to solemnize

The bargain of your faith, I do beseech you

Even at that time I may be married too.

BASSANIO     With all my heart, so thou canst get a wife.

195

GRATIANO     I thank your lordship, you have got me one.

My eyes my lord can look as swift as yours:

You saw the mistress, I beheld the maid:

You lov’d, I lov’d – for intermission

No more pertains to me my lord than you;

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Your fortune stood upon the caskets there,

And so did mine too as the matter falls:

For wooing here until I sweat again,

And swearing till my very roof was dry

With oaths of love, at last, (if promise last)

205

I got a promise of this fair one here

To have her love, provided that your fortune

Achiev’d her mistress.

PORTIA     Is this true Nerissa?

NERISSA     Madam it is, so you stand pleas’d withal.

BASSANIO     And do you Gratiano mean good faith?

210

GRATIANO     Yes – faith my lord.

BASSANIO

Our feast shall be much honoured in your marriage.

GRATIANO     We’ll play with them the first boy for a thousand ducats.

NERISSA     What! and stake down?

215

GRATIANO

No, we shall ne’er win at that sport and stake down.

But who comes here? Lorenzo and his infidel!

What! and my old Venetian friend Salerio?

Enter LORENZO, JESSICA and SALERIO
(a messenger from Venice).

BASSANIO     Lorenzo and Salerio, welcome hither,

If that the youth of my new int’rest here

220

Have power to bid you welcome: – by your leave

I bid my very friends and countrymen

(Sweet Portia) welcome.

PORTIA     So do I my lord,

They are entirely welcome.

LORENZO     I thank your honour, – for my part my lord

225

My purpose was not to have seen you here,

But meeting with Salerio by the way

He did entreat me (past all saying nay)

To come with him along.

SALERIO     I did my lord,

And I have reason for it, – Signior Antonio

230

Commends him to you. [Gives Bassanio a letter.]

BASSANIO     Ere I ope his letter

I pray you tell me how my good friend doth.

SALERIO     Not sick my lord, unless it be in mind,

Nor well, unless in mind: his letter there

Will show you his estate. [Bassanio opens the letter.]

235

GRATIANO

Nerissa, cheer yond stranger, bid her welcome.

Your hand Salerio, – what’s the news from Venice?

How doth that royal merchant good Antonio?

I know he will be glad of our success,

We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece.

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SALERIO

I would you had won the fleece that he hath lost.

PORTIA

There are some shrewd contents in yond same paper

That steals the colour from Bassanio’s cheek, –

Some dear friend dead, else nothing in the world

Could turn so much the constitution

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Of any constant man: what worse and worse?

With leave Bassanio, I am half yourself,

And I must freely have the half of anything

That this same paper brings you.

BASSANIO     O sweet Portia,

Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words

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That ever blotted paper! Gentle lady

When I did first impart my love to you,

I freely told you all the wealth I had

Ran in my veins, – I was a gentleman, –

And then I told you true: and yet dear lady

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Rating myself at nothing, you shall see

How much I was a braggart, – when I told you

My state was nothing, I should then have told you

That I was worse than nothing; for indeed

I have engag’d myself to a dear friend,

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Engag’d my friend to his mere enemy

To feed my means. Here is a letter lady,

The paper as the body of my friend,

And every word in it a gaping wound

Issuing life-blood. But is it true Salerio?

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Hath all his ventures fail’d? what not one hit?

From Tripolis, from Mexico and England,

From Lisbon, Barbary, and India,

And not one vessel scape the dreadful touch

Of merchant-marring rocks?

SALERIO     Not one my lord.

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Besides, it should appear, that if he had

The present money to discharge the Jew,

He would not take it: never did I know

A creature that did bear the shape of man

So keen and greedy to confound a man.

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He plies the duke at morning and at night,

And doth impeach the freedom of the state

If they deny him justice. Twenty merchants,

The duke himself, and the magnificoes

Of greatest port have all persuaded with him,

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But none can drive him from the envious plea

Of forfeiture, of justice, and his bond.

JESSICA     When I was with him, I have heard him swear

To Tubal and to Chus, his countrymen,

That he would rather have Antonio’s flesh

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Than twenty times the value of the sum

That he did owe him: and I know my lord,

If law, authority, and power deny not,

It will go hard with poor Antonio.

PORTIA     Is it your dear friend that is thus in trouble?

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BASSANIO     The dearest friend to me, the kindest man,

The best-condition’d and unwearied spirit

In doing courtesies: and one in whom

The ancient Roman honour more appears

Than any that draws breath in Italy.

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PORTIA     What sum owes he the Jew?

BASSANIO     For me three thousand ducats.

PORTIA     What no more?

Pay him six thousand, and deface the bond:

Double six thousand, and then treble that,

Before a friend of this description

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Shall lose a hair through Bassanio’s fault.

First go with me to church, and call me wife,

And then away to Venice to your friend:

For never shall you lie by Portia’s side

With an unquiet soul. You shall have gold

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To pay the petty debt twenty times over.

When it is paid, bring your true friend along, –

My maid Nerissa, and myself meantime

Will live as maids and widows; – come away!

For you shall hence upon your wedding day:

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Bid your friends welcome, show a merry cheer, –

Since you are dear bought, I will love you dear.

But let me hear the letter of your friend.

BASSANIO [Reads.] Sweet Bassanio, my ships have all

miscarried, my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low,

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my bond to the Jew is forfeit, and (since in paying it, it is

impossible I should live), all debts are clear’d between you

and I, if I might but see you at my death: notwithstanding,

use your pleasure, – if your love do not persuade you to

come, let not my letter.

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PORTIA     O love! – dispatch all business and be gone!

BASSANIO     Since I have your good leave to go away,

I will make haste; but till I come again,

No bed shall e’er be guilty of my stay,

Nor rest be interposer ’twixt us twain.     Exeunt.

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3.3 Enter SHYLOCK the Jew, SOLANIO,
ANTONIO and the gaoler.

SHYLOCK     Gaoler, look to him, – tell not me of mercy, –

This is the fool that lent out money gratis.

Gaoler, look to him.

ANTONIO     Hear me yet good Shylock.

SHYLOCK

I’ll have my bond, speak not against my bond, –

I have sworn an oath, that I will have my bond:

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Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause,

But since I am a dog, beware my fangs, –

The duke shall grant me justice, – I do wonder

(Thou naughty gaoler) that thou art so fond

To come abroad with him at his request.

10

ANTONIO     I pray thee hear me speak.

SHYLOCK     I’ll have my bond. I will not hear thee speak,

I’ll have my bond, and therefore speak no more.

I’ll not be made a soft and dull-ey’d fool,

To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield

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To Christian intercessors: follow not, –

I’ll have no speaking, I will have my bond.     Exit.

SOLANIO     It is the most impenetrable cur

That ever kept with men.

ANTONIO     Let him alone,

I’ll follow him no more with bootless prayers.

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He seeks my life, his reason well I know;

I oft deliver’d from his forfeitures

Many that have at times made moan to me,

Therefore he hates me.

SOLANIO     I am sure the duke

Will never grant this forfeiture to hold.

25

ANTONIO     The duke cannot deny the course of law:

For the commodity that strangers have

With us in Venice, if it be denied,

Will much impeach the justice of the state,

Since that the trade and profit of the city

30

Consisteth of all nations. Therefore go, –

These griefs and losses have so bated me

That I shall hardly spare a pound of flesh

To-morrow, to my bloody creditor.

Well gaoler, on, – pray God Bassanio come

35

To see me pay his debt, and then I care not.     Exeunt.

3.4 Enter PORTIA, NERISSA, LORENZO, JESSICA
and BALTHAZAR (a man of Portia’s).

LORENZO

Madam, although I speak it in your presence,

You have a noble and a true conceit

Of god-like amity, which appears most strongly

In bearing thus the absence of your lord.

But if you knew to whom you show this honour,

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How true a gentleman you send relief,

How dear a lover of my lord your husband,

I know you would be prouder of the work

Than customary bounty can enforce you.

PORTIA     I never did repent for doing good,

10

Nor shall not now: for in companions

That do converse and waste the time together,

Whose souls do bear an egall yoke of love,

There must be needs a like proportion

Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit;

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Which makes me think that this Antonio

Being the bosom lover of my lord,

Must needs be like my lord. If it be so,

How little is the cost I have bestowed

In purchasing the semblance of my soul,

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From out the state of hellish cruelty! –

This comes too near the praising of myself,

Therefore no more of it: hear other things –

Lorenzo I commit into your hands,

The husbandry and manage of my house,

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Until my lord’s return: for mine own part

I have toward heaven breath’d a secret vow,

To live in prayer and contemplation,

Only attended by Nerissa here,

Until her husband and my lord’s return, –

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There is a monast’ry two miles off,

And there we will abide. I do desire you

Not to deny this imposition,

The which my love and some necessity

Now lays upon you.

LORENZO     Madam, with all my heart,

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I shall obey you in all fair commands.

PORTIA     My people do already know my mind,

And will acknowledge you and Jessica

In place of Lord Bassanio and myself.

So fare you well till we shall meet again.

40

LORENZO     Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you!

JESSICA     I wish your ladyship all heart’s content.

PORTIA     I thank you for your wish, and am well pleas’d

To wish it back on you: fare you well Jessica.

     Exeunt Jessica and Lorenzo.

Now Balthazar,

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As I have ever found thee honest-true,

So let me find thee still: take this same letter,

And use thou all th’endeavour of a man

In speed to Padua, see thou render this

Into my cousin’s hand (Doctor Bellario),

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And look what notes and garments he doth give thee, –

Bring them (I pray thee) with imagin’d speed

Unto the traject, to the common ferry

Which trades to Venice; waste no time in words

But get thee gone, – I shall be there before thee.

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BALTHAZAR     Madam, I go with all convenient speed.

     Exit.

PORTIA     Come on Nerissa, I have work in hand

That you yet know not of; we’ll see our husbands

Before they think of us!

NERISSA     Shall they see us?

PORTIA     They shall Nerissa: but in such a habit,

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That they shall think we are accomplished

With that we lack; I’ll hold thee any wager

When we are both accoutered like young men,

I’ll prove the prettier fellow of the two,

And wear my dagger with the braver grace,

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And speak between the change of man and boy,

With a reed voice, and turn two mincing steps

Into a manly stride; and speak of frays

Like a fine bragging youth: and tell quaint lies

How honourable ladies sought my love,

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Which I denying, they fell sick and died:

I could not do withal: – then I’ll repent,

And wish for all that, that I had not kill’d them;

And twenty of these puny lies I’ll tell,

That men shall swear I have discontinued school

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Above a twelvemonth: I have within my mind

A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks,

Which I will practise.

NERISSA     Why, shall we turn to men?

PORTIA     Fie! what a question’s that,

If thou wert near a lewd interpreter!

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But come, I’ll tell thee all my whole device

When I am in my coach, which stays for us

At the park gate; and therefore haste away,

For we must measure twenty miles to-day.     Exeunt.

3.5 Enter LAUNCELOT the clown and JESSICA.

LAUNCELOT     Yes truly, for look you, the sins of the

father are to be laid upon the children, therefore (I

promise you), I fear you, – I was always plain with you,

and so now I speak my agitation of the matter:

therefore be o’ good cheer, for truly I think you are

5

damn’d, – there is but one hope in it that can do you

any good, and that is but a kind of bastard hope

neither.

JESSICA     And what hope is that I pray thee?

LAUNCELOT     Marry, you may partly hope that your

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father got you not, that you are not the Jew’s daughter.

JESSICA     That were a kind of bastard hope indeed, – so

the sins of my mother should be visited upon me.

LAUNCELOT     Truly then I fear you are damn’d both by

father and mother: thus when I shun Scylla (your

15

father), I fall into Charybdis (your mother); well, you

are gone both ways.

JESSICA     I shall be sav’d by my husband, – he hath made

me a Christian!

LAUNCELOT     Truly the more to blame he, we were

20

Christians enow before, e’en as many as could well live

one by another: this making of Christians will raise the

price of hogs, – if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we

shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money.

Enter LORENZO.

JESSICA     I’ll tell my husband (Launcelot) what you say,

25

– here he comes!

LORENZO     I shall grow jealous of you shortly Launcelot,

if you thus get my wife into corners!

JESSICA     Nay, you need not fear us Lorenzo, Launcelot

and I are out, – he tells me flatly there’s no mercy for

30

me in heaven, because I am a Jew’s daughter: and he

says you are no good member of the commonwealth,

for in converting Jews to Christians, you raise the

price of pork.

LORENZO     I shall answer that better to the

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commonwealth than you can the getting up of the

negro’s belly: the Moor is with child by you

Launcelot!

LAUNCELOT     It is much that the Moor should be more

than reason: but if she be less than an honest woman,

40

she is indeed more than I took her for.

LORENZO     How every fool can play upon the word! I

think the best grace of wit will shortly turn into

silence, and discourse grow commendable in none

only but parrots: go in sirrah, bid them prepare for

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dinner!

LAUNCELOT     That is done sir, they have all stomachs!

LORENZO     Goodly Lord, what a wit-snapper are you!

then bid them prepare dinner!

LAUNCELOT     That is done too sir, only ‘cover’ is the

50

word.

LORENZO     Will you cover then sir?

LAUNCELOT     Not so sir neither, I know my duty.

LORENZO     Yet more quarrelling with occasion! wilt thou

show the whole wealth of thy wit in an instant? I pray

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thee understand a plain man in his plain meaning: go

to thy fellows, bid them cover the table, serve in the

meat, and we will come in to dinner.

LAUNCELOT     For the table sir, it shall be serv’d in, – for

the meat sir, it shall be cover’d, – for your coming in to

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dinner sir, why let it be as humours and conceits shall

govern. Exit.

LORENZO     O dear discretion, how his words are suited!

The fool hath planted in his memory

An army of good words, and I do know

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A many fools that stand in better place,

Garnish’d like him, that for a tricksy word

Defy the matter: how cheer’st thou Jessica?

And now (good sweet) say thy opinion,

How dost thou like the Lord Bassanio’s wife?

70

JESSICA     Past all expressing, – it is very meet

The Lord Bassanio live an upright life

For having such a blessing in his lady,

He finds the joys of heaven here on earth,

And if on earth he do not merit it,

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In reason he should never come to heaven!

Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match,

And on the wager lay two earthly women,

And Portia one, there must be something else

Pawn’d with the other, for the poor rude world

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Hath not her fellow.

LORENZO     Even such a husband

Hast thou of me, as she is for a wife.

JESSICA     Nay, but ask my opinion too of that.

LORENZO     I will anon, – first let us go to dinner.

JESSICA     Nay, let me praise you while I have a stomach.

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LORENZO     No pray thee, let it serve for table-talk,

Then howsome’er thou speak’st, ‘mong other things

I shall digest it.

JESSICA     Well, I’ll set you forth.     Exeunt.

4.1 Enter the DUKE, the magnificoes, ANTONIO,
BASSANIO and GRATIANO, SALERIO and others.

DUKE     What, is Antonio here?

ANTONIO     Ready, so please your grace!

DUKE     I am sorry for thee, – thou art come to answer

A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch,

Uncapable of pity, void, and empty

5

From any dram of mercy.

ANTONIO     I have heard

Your grace hath ta’en great pains to qualify

His rigorous course; but since he stands obdurate,

And that no lawful means can carry me

Out of his envy’s reach, I do oppose

10

My patience to his fury, and am arm’d

To suffer with a quietness of spirit,

The very tyranny and rage of his.

DUKE     Go one and call the Jew into the court.

SALERIO

He is ready at the door, – he comes my lord.

15

Enter SHYLOCK.

DUKE     Make room, and let him stand before our face.

Shylock the world thinks, and I think so too,

That thou but leadest this fashion of thy malice

To the last hour of act, and then ’tis thought

Thou’lt show thy mercy and remorse more strange

20

Than is thy strange apparent cruelty;

And where thou now exacts the penalty,

Which is a pound of this poor merchant’s flesh,

Thou wilt not only loose the forfeiture,

But touch’d with human gentleness and love,

25

Forgive a moiety of the principal,

Glancing an eye of pity on his losses

That have of late so huddled on his back,

Enow to press a royal merchant down,

And pluck commiseration of his state

30

From brassy bosoms and rough hearts of flint,

From stubborn Turks, and Tartars never train’d

To offices of tender courtesy:

We all expect a gentle answer Jew!

SHYLOCK

I have possess’d your grace of what I purpose,

35

And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn

To have the due and forfeit of my bond, –

If you deny it, let the danger light

Upon your charter and your city’s freedom!

You’ll ask me why I rather choose to have

40

A weight of carrion flesh, than to receive

Three thousand ducats: I’ll not answer that!

But say it is my humour, – is it answer’d?

What if my house be troubled with a rat,

And I be pleas’d to give ten thousand ducats

45

To have it ban’d? what, are you answer’d yet?

Some men there are love not a gaping pig!

Some that are mad if they behold a cat!

And others when the bagpipe sings i’th’ nose,

Cannot contain their urine – for affection

50

(Master of passion) sways it to the mood

Of what it likes or loathes, – now for your answer:

As there is no firm reason to be rend’red

Why he cannot abide a gaping pig,

Why he a harmless necessary cat,

55

Why he a woollen bagpipe, but of force

Must yield to such inevitable shame,

As to offend himself being offended:

So can I give no reason, nor I will not,

More than a lodg’d hate, and a certain loathing

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I bear Antonio, that I follow thus

A losing suit against him! – are you answered?

BASSANIO     This is no answer thou unfeeling man,

To excuse the current of thy cruelty.

SHYLOCK

I am not bound to please thee with my answers!

65

BASSANIO     Do all men kill the things they do not love?

SHYLOCK     Hates any man the thing he would not kill?

BASSANIO     Every offence is not a hate at first!

SHYLOCK

What! wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?

ANTONIO     I pray you think you question with the Jew, –

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You may as well go stand upon the beach

And bid the main flood bate his usual height,

You may as well use question with the wolf,

Why he hath made the ewe bleak for the lamb:

You may as well forbid the mountain pines

75

To wag their high tops, and to make no noise

When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven:

You may as well do any thing most hard

As seek to soften that – than which what’s harder? –

His Jewish heart! Therefore (I do beseech you)

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Make no moe offers, use no farther means,

But with all brief and plain conveniency

Let me have judgment, and the Jew his will!

BASSANIO     For thy three thousand ducats here is six!

SHYLOCK     If every ducat in six thousand ducats

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Were in six parts, and every part a ducat,

I would not draw them, I would have my bond!

DUKE     How shalt thou hope for mercy rend’ring none?

SHYLOCK     What judgment shall I dread doing no wrong?

You have among you many a purchas’d slave,

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Which (like your asses, and your dogs and mules)

You use in abject and in slavish parts,

Because you bought them, – shall I say to you,

Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?

Why sweat they under burthens? let their beds

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Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates

Be season’d with such viands? you will answer

‘The slaves are ours,’ – so do I answer you:

The pound of flesh which I demand of him

Is dearly bought, ’tis mine and I will have it:

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If you deny me, fie upon your law!

There is no force in the decrees of Venice:

I stand for judgment, – answer, shall I have it?

DUKE     Upon my power I may dismiss this court,

Unless Bellario (a learned doctor,

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Whom I have sent for to determine this)

Come here to-day.

SALERIO     My lord, here stays without

A messenger with letters from the doctor,

New come from Padua.

DUKE     Bring us the letters! call the messenger!

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BASSANIO

Good cheer Antonio! what man, courage yet!

The Jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones and all,

Ere thou shalt lose for me one drop of blood.

ANTONIO     I am a tainted wether of the flock,

Meetest for death, – the weakest kind of fruit

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Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me;

You cannot better be employ’d Bassanio,

Than to live still and write mine epitaph.

Enter NERISSA, dressed like a lawyer’s clerk.

DUKE     Came you from Padua from Bellario?

NERISSA

From both, my lord. Bellario greets your grace.

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[She presents a letter.]

BASSANIO     Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?

SHYLOCK

To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there!

GRATIANO     Not on thy sole: but on thy soul (harsh Jew)

Thou mak’st thy knife keen: but no metal can, –

No, not the hangman’s axe – bear half the keenness

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Of thy sharp envy: can no prayers pierce thee?

SHYLOCK     No, none that thou hast wit enough to make.

GRATIANO     O be thou damn’d, inexecrable dog!

And for thy life let justice be accus’d;

Thou almost mak’st me waver in my faith,

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To hold opinion with Pythagoras,

That souls of animals infuse themselves

Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit

Govern’d a wolf, who hang’d for human slaughter –

Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,

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And whilst thou layest in thy unhallowed dam,

Infus’d itself in thee: for thy desires

Are wolvish, bloody, starv’d, and ravenous.

SHYLOCK

Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond,

Thou but offend’st thy lungs to speak so loud:

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Repair thy wit good youth, or it will fall

To cureless ruin. I stand here for law.

DUKE     This letter from Bellario doth commend

A young and learned doctor to our court:

Where is he?

NERISSA     He attendeth here hard by

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To know your answer – whether you’ll admit him.

DUKE     With all my heart: some three or four of you

Go give him courteous conduct to this place,

Meantime the court shall hear Bellario’s letter.

[Reads.] Your grace shall understand, that at the

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receipt of your letter I am very sick, but in the instant

that your messenger came, in loving visitation was with

me a young doctor of Rome, his name is Balthazar: I

acquainted him with the cause in controversy between the

Jew and Antonio the merchant, we turn’d o’er many

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books together, he is furnished with my opinion, which

(bettered with his own learning, the greatness whereof I

cannot enough commend), comes with him at my

importunity, to fill up your grace’s request in my stead. I

beseech you let his lack of years be no impediment to let

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him lack a reverend estimation, for I never knew so

young a body with so old a head: I leave him to your

gracious acceptance, whose trial shall better publish his

commendation.

Enter PORTIA, dressed like a doctor of laws.

You hear the learn’d Bellario what he writes,

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And here (I take it) is the doctor come.

Give me your hand, – come you from old Bellario?

PORTIA     I did my lord.

DUKE     You are welcome, take your place:

Are you acquainted with the difference

That holds this present question in the court?

170

PORTIA     I am informed throughly of the cause, –

Which is the merchant here? and which the Jew?

DUKE     Antonio and old Shylock, both stand forth.

PORTIA     Is your name Shylock?

SHYLOCK     Shylock is my name.

PORTIA     Of a strange nature is the suit you follow,

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Yet in such rule, that the Venetian law

Cannot impugn you as you do proceed.

You stand within his danger, do you not?

ANTONIO     Ay, so he says.

PORTIA     Do you confess the bond?

ANTONIO     I do.

PORTIA     Then must the Jew be merciful.

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SHYLOCK     On what compulsion must I? tell me that.

PORTIA     The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest,

It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes,

185

’Tis mightiest in the mightiest, it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown.

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings:

190

But mercy is above this sceptred sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God’s

When mercy seasons justice: therefore Jew,

195

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That in the course of justice, none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer, doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much

200

To mitigate the justice of thy plea,

Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice

Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.

SHYLOCK     My deeds upon my head! I crave the law,

The penalty and forfeit of my bond.

205

PORTIA     Is he not able to discharge the money?

BASSANIO     Yes, here I tender it for him in the court,

Yea, twice the sum, – if that will not suffice,

I will be bound to pay it ten times o’er

On forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart, –

210

If this will not suffice, it must appear

That malice bears down truth. And I beseech you

Wrest once the law to your authority, –

To do a great right, do a little wrong, –

And curb this cruel devil of his will.

215

PORTIA     It must not be, there is no power in Venice

Can alter a decree established:

’Twill be recorded for a precedent,

And many an error by the same example

Will rush into the state, – it cannot be.

220

SHYLOCK     A Daniel come to judgment: yea a Daniel!

O wise young judge how I do honour thee!

PORTIA     I pray you let me look upon the bond.

SHYLOCK     Here ’tis most reverend doctor, here it is.

PORTIA     Shylock there’s thrice thy money off ‘red thee.

225

SHYLOCK     An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven, –

Shall I lay perjury upon my soul?

No not for Venice.

PORTIA     Why this bond is forfeit,

And lawfully by this the Jew may claim

A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off

230

Nearest the merchant’s heart: be merciful,

Take thrice thy money, bid me tear the bond.

SHYLOCK     When it is paid, according to the tenour.

It doth appear you are a worthy judge,

You know the law, your exposition

235

Hath been most sound: I charge you by the law,

Whereof you are a well-deserving pillar,

Proceed to judgment: by my soul I swear,

There is no power in the tongue of man

To alter me, – I stay here on my bond.

240

ANTONIO     Most heartily I do beseech the court

To give the judgment.

PORTIA     Why then thus it is, –

You must prepare your bosom for his knife.

SHYLOCK     O noble judge! O excellent young man!

PORTIA     For the intent and purpose of the law

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Hath full relation to the penalty,

Which here appeareth due upon the bond.

SHYLOCK     ’Tis very true: O wise and upright judge,

How much more elder art thou than thy looks!

PORTIA     Therefore lay bare your bosom.

SHYLOCK     Ay, his breast,

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So says the bond, doth it not noble judge?

‘Nearest his heart,’ those are the very words.

PORTIA     It is so, – are there balance here to weigh The flesh?

SHYLOCK     I have them ready.

PORTIA

Have by some surgeon Shylock on your charge,

255

To stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to death.

SHYLOCK     Is it so nominated in the bond?

PORTIA     It is not so express’d, but what of that?

’Twere good you do so much for charity.

SHYLOCK     I cannot find it, ’tis not in the bond.

260

PORTIA     You merchant, have you any thing to say?

ANTONIO     But little; I am arm’d and well prepar’d, –

Give me your hand Bassanio, fare you well,

Grieve not that I am fall’n to this for you:

For herein Fortune shows herself more kind

265

Than is her custom: it is still her use

To let the wretched man outlive his wealth,

To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow

An age of poverty: from which ling’ring penance

Of such misery doth she cut me off.

270

Commend me to your honourable wife,

Tell her the process of Antonio’s end,

Say how I lov’d you, speak me fair in death:

And when the tale is told, bid her be judge

Whether Bassanio had not once a love:

275

Repent but you that you shall lose your friend

And he repents not that he pays your debt.

For if the Jew do cut but deep enough,

I’ll pay it instantly with all my heart.

BASSANIO     Antonio, I am married to a wife

280

Which is as dear to me as life itself,

But life itself, my wife, and all the world,

Are not with me esteem’d above thy life.

I would lose all, ay sacrifice them all

Here to this devil, to deliver you.

285

PORTIA     Your wife would give you little thanks for that

If she were by to hear you make the offer.

GRATIANO     I have a wife who I protest I love, –

I would she were in heaven, so she could

Entreat some power to change this currish Jew.

290

NERISSA     ’Tis well you offer it behind her back,

The wish would make else an unquiet house.

SHYLOCK [aside]

These be the Christian husbands! I have a daughter –

Would any of the stock of Barrabas

Had been her husband, rather than a Christian.

295

We trifle time, I pray thee pursue sentence.

PORTIA     A pound of that same merchant’s flesh is thine,

The court awards it, and the law doth give it.

SHYLOCK     Most rightful judge!

PORTIA     And you must cut this flesh from off his breast,

300

The law allows it, and the court awards it.

SHYLOCK

Most learned judge! a sentence, come prepare.

PORTIA     Tarry a little, there is something else, –

This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood,

The words expressly are ‘a pound of flesh’:

305

Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh,

But in the cutting it, if thou dost shed

One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods

Are (by the laws of Venice) confiscate

Unto the state of Venice.

GRATIANO     O upright judge! –

310

Mark Jew, – O learned judge!

SHYLOCK     Is that the law?

PORTIA     Thyself shalt see the act:

For as thou urgest justice, be assur’d

Thou shalt have justice more than thou desir’st.

GRATIANO

O learned judge! – mark Jew, a learned judge.

315

SHYLOCK     I take this offer then, – pay the bond thrice And let the Christian go.

BASSANIO     Here is the money.

PORTIA     Soft!

The Jew shall have all justice, – soft no haste!

He shall have nothing but the penalty.

320

GRATIANO     O Jew! an upright judge, a learned judge!

PORTIA     Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh, –

Shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more

But just a pound of flesh: if thou tak’st more

Or less than a just pound, be it but so much

325

As makes it light or heavy in the substance,

Or the division of the twentieth part

Of one poor scruple, nay if the scale do turn

But in the estimation of a hair,

Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.

330

GRATIANO     A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew! –

Now infidel I have you on the hip.

PORTIA     Why doth the Jew pause? take thy forfeiture.

SHYLOCK     Give me my principal, and let me go.

BASSANIO     I have it ready for thee, here it is.

335

PORTIA     He hath refus’d it in the open court,

He shall have merely justice and his bond.

GRATIANO     A Daniel still say I, a second Daniel! –

I thank thee Jew for teaching me that word.

SHYLOCK     Shall I not have barely my principal?

340

PORTIA     Thou shalt have nothing but the forfeiture

To be so taken at thy peril Jew.

SHYLOCK     Why then the devil give him good of it:

I’ll stay no longer question.

PORTIA     Tarry Jew,

The law hath yet another hold on you.

345

It is enacted in the laws of Venice,

If it be proved against an alien,

That by direct, or indirect attempts

He seek the life of any citizen,

The party ‘gainst the which he doth contrive,

350

Shall seize one half his goods, the other half

Comes to the privy coffer of the state,

And the offender’s life lies in the mercy

Of the Duke only, ‘gainst all other voice.

In which predicament I say thou stand’st:

355

For it appears by manifest proceeding,

That indirectly, and directly too,

Thou hast contrived against the very life

Of the defendant: and thou hast incurr’d

The danger formerly by me rehears’d.

360

Down therefore, and beg mercy of the duke.

GRATIANO

Beg that thou may’st have leave to hang thyself, –

And yet thy wealth being forfeit to the state,

Thou hast not left the value of a cord,

Therefore thou must be hang’d at the state’s charge.

365

DUKE     That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit

I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it:

For half thy wealth, it is Antonio’s,

The other half comes to the general state,

Which humbleness may drive unto a fine.

370

PORTIA     Ay for the state, not for Antonio.

SHYLOCK     Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that, –

You take my house, when you do take the prop

That doth sustain my house: you take my life

When you do take the means whereby I live.

375

PORTIA     What mercy can you render him Antonio?

GRATIANO     A halter gratis, nothing else for Godsake!

ANTONIO     So please my lord the duke, and all the court,

To quit the fine for one half of his goods,

I am content: so he will let me have

380

The other half in use, to render it

Upon his death unto the gentleman

That lately stole his daughter.

Two things provided more, that for this favour

He presently become a Christian:

385

The other, that he do record a gift

(Here in the court) of all he dies possess’d

Unto his son Lorenzo and his daughter.

DUKE     He shall do this, or else I do recant

The pardon that I late pronounced here.

390

PORTIA     Art thou contented Jew? what dost thou say?

SHYLOCK     I am content.

PORTIA     Clerk, draw a deed of gift.

SHYLOCK     I pray you give me leave to go from hence,

I am not well, – send the deed after me,

And I will sign it.

DUKE     Get thee gone, but do it.

395

GRATIANO

In christ’ning shalt thou have two godfathers, –

Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more,

To bring thee to the gallows, not to the font.

     Exit Shylock.

DUKE     Sir I entreat you home with me to dinner.

PORTIA     I humbly do desire your grace of pardon,

400

I must away this night toward Padua,

And it is meet I presently set forth.

DUKE     I am sorry that your leisure serves you not.

Antonio, gratify this gentleman,

For in my mind you are much bound to him.

405

     Exit Duke and his train.

BASSANIO     Most worthy gentleman, I and my friend

Have by your wisdom been this day acquitted

Of grievous penalties, in lieu whereof,

Three thousand ducats due unto the Jew

We freely cope your courteous pains withal.

410

ANTONIO     And stand indebted over and above

In love and service to you evermore.

PORTIA     He is well paid that is well satisfied,

And I delivering you, am satisfied,

And therein do account myself well paid, –

415

My mind was never yet more mercenary.

I pray you know me when we meet again,

I wish you well, and so I take my leave.

BASSANIO

Dear sir, of force I must attempt you further, –

Take some remembrance of us as a tribute,

420

Not as a fee: grant me two things I pray you, –

Not to deny me, and to pardon me.

PORTIA

You press me far, and therefore I will yield, –

Give me your gloves, I’ll wear them for your sake,

And (for your love) I’ll take this ring from you, –

425

Do not draw back your hand, I’ll take no more,

And you in love shall not deny me this!

BASSANIO

This ring good sir? alas it is a trifle,

I will not shame myself to give you this!

PORTIA     I will have nothing else but only this,

430

And now methinks I have a mind to it!

BASSANIO

There’s more depends on this than on the value, –

The dearest ring in Venice will I give you,

And find it out by proclamation,

Only for this I pray you pardon me!

435

PORTIA     I see sir you are liberal in offers, –

You taught me first to beg, and now methinks

You teach me how a beggar should be answer’d.

BASSANIO     Good sir, this ring was given me by my wife,

And when she put it on, she made me vow

440

That I should neither sell, nor give, nor lose it.

PORTIA

That scuse serves many men to save their gifts, –

And if your wife be not a mad-woman,

And know how well I have deserv’d this ring,

She would not hold out enemy for ever

445

For giving it to me: well, peace be with you!

     Exeunt Portia and Nerissa.

ANTONIO     My Lord Bassanio, let him have the ring,

Let his deservings and my love withal

Be valued ‘gainst your wife’s commandement.

BASSANIO     Go Gratiano, run and overtake him,

450

Give him the ring, and bring him if thou canst

Unto Antonio’s house, – away, make haste.

     Exit Gratiano.

Come, you and I will thither presently,

And in the morning early will we both

Fly toward Belmont, – come Antonio.     Exeunt.

455

4.2 Enter PORTIA and NERISSA.

PORTIA

Inquire the Jew’s house out, give him this deed,

And let him sign it, – we’ll away to-night,

And be a day before our husbands home:

This deed will be well welcome to Lorenzo!

Enter GRATIANO.

GRATIANO     Fair sir, you are well o’erta’en:

5

My Lord Bassanio upon more advice,

Hath sent you here this ring, and doth entreat

Your company at dinner.

PORTIA     That cannot be;

His ring I do accept most thankfully,

And so I pray you tell him: furthermore,

10

I pray you show my youth old Shylock’s house.

GRATIANO     That will I do.

NERISSA     Sir, I would speak with you:

[aside to Portia] I’ll see if I can get my husband’s ring

Which I did make him swear to keep for ever.

PORTIA

Thou may’st I warrant, – we shall have old swearing

15

That they did give the rings away to men;

But we’ll outface them, and outswear them too:

Away, make haste! thou know’st where I will tarry.

NERISSA

Come good sir, will you show me to this house?

     Exeunt.

5.1 Enter LORENZO and JESSICA.

LORENZO

The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,

When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,

And they did make no noise, in such a night

Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan walls,

And sigh’d his soul toward the Grecian tents

5

Where Cressid lay that night.

JESSICA     In such a night

Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew,

And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself,

And ran dismayed away.

LORENZO     In such a night

Stood Dido with a willow in her hand

10

Upon the wild sea banks, and waft her love

To come again to Carthage.

JESSICA     In such a night

Medea gathered the enchanted herbs

That did renew old Aeson.

LORENZO     In such a night

Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,

15

And with an unthrift love did run from Venice,

As far as Belmont.

JESSICA     In such a night

Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well,

Stealing her soul with many vows of faith,

And ne’er a true one.

LORENZO     In such a night

20

Did pretty Jessica (like a little shrew)

Slander her love, and he forgave it her.

JESSICA     I would out-night you did nobody come:

But hark, I hear the footing of a man.

Enter STEPHANO (a messenger).

LORENZO     Who comes so fast in silence of the night?

25

STEPHANO     A friend!

LORENZO

A friend! what friend? your name I pray you friend?

STEPHANO     Stephano is my name, and I bring word

My mistress will before the break of day

Be here at Belmont, – she doth stray about

30

By holy crosses where she kneels and prays

For happy wedlock hours.

LORENZO     Who comes with her?

STEPHANO     None but a holy hermit and her maid:

I pray you is my master yet return’d?

LORENZO

He is not, nor we have not heard from him, –

35

But go we in (I pray thee Jessica),

And ceremoniously let us prepare

Some welcome for the mistress of the house.

Enter LAUNCELOT, the clown.

LAUNCELOT     Sola, sola! wo ha, ho! sola, sola!

LORENZO     Who calls?

40

LAUNCELOT     Sola! did you see Master Lorenzo?

Master Lorenzo, sola, sola!

LORENZO     Leave hollowing man, – here!

LAUNCELOT     Sola! where, where?

LORENZO     Here!

45

LAUNCELOT     Tell him there’s a post come from my

master, with his horn full of good news, – my master

will be here ere morning.     Exit.

LORENZO

Sweet soul let’s in, and there expect their coming.

And yet no matter: why should we go in?

50

My friend Stephano, signify (I pray you)

Within the house, your mistress is at hand,

And bring your music forth into the air.

     Exit Stephano.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music

55

Creep in our ears – soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony:

Sit Jessica, – look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold,

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st

60

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-ey’d cherubins;

Such harmony is in immortal souls,

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it:

65

     Enter musicians.

Come ho! and wake Diana with a hymn,

With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear,

And draw her home with music.     [Music.]

JESSICA     I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

LORENZO     The reason is your spirits are attentive:

70

For do but note a wild and wanton herd

Or race of youthful and unhandled colts

Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,

Which is the hot condition of their blood, –

If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,

75

Or any air of music touch their ears,

You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,

Their savage eyes turn’d to a modest gaze,

By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet

Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods,

80

Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage,

But music for the time doth change his nature, –

The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils,

85

The motions of his spirit are dull as night,

And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted: – mark the music.

Enter PORTIA and NERISSA.

PORTIA     That light we see is burning in my hall:

How far that little candle throws his beams!

90

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

NERISSA

When the moon shone we did not see the candle.

PORTIA     So doth the greater glory dim the less, –

A substitute shines brightly as a king

Until a king be by, and then his state

95

Empties itself, as doth an inland brook

Into the main of waters: – music – hark!

NERISSA     It is your music (madam) of the house.

PORTIA     Nothing is good (I see) without respect, –

Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.

100

NERISSA     Silence bestows that virtue on it madam.

PORTIA     The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark

When neither is attended: and I think

The nightingale if she should sing by day

When every goose is cackling, would be thought

105

No better a musician than the wren!

How many things by season, season’d are

To their right praise, and true perfection!

Peace! – how the moon sleeps with Endymion,

And would not be awak’d!     [Music ceases.]

LORENZO     That is the voice,

110

Or I am much deceiv’d, of Portia.

PORTIA

He knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo –

By the bad voice!

LORENZO     Dear lady welcome home!

PORTIA

We have bin praying for our husbands’ welfare,

Which speed (we hope) the better for our words:

115

Are they return’d?

LORENZO     Madam, they are not yet:

But there is come a messenger before

To signify their coming.

PORTIA     Go in Nerissa.

Give order to my servants, that they take

No note at all of our being absent hence, –

120

Nor you Lorenzo, – Jessica nor you. [A tucket sounds.]

LORENZO

Your husband is at hand, I hear his trumpet, –

We are no tell-tales madam, fear you not.

PORTIA     This night methinks is but the daylight sick,

It looks a little paler, – ’tis a day,

125

Such as the day is when the sun is hid.

Enter BASSANIO, ANTONIO, GRATIANO
and their followers.

BASSANIO     We should hold day with the Antipodes,

If you would walk in absence of the sun.

PORTIA     Let me give light, but let me not be light,

For a light wife doth make a heavy husband,

130

And never be Bassanio so for me, –

But God sort all: you are welcome home my lord.

BASSANIO

I thank you madam, – give welcome to my friend, –

This is the man, this is Antonio,

To whom I am so infinitely bound.

135

PORTIA     You should in all sense be much bound to him,

For (as I hear) he was much bound for you.

ANTONIO     No more than I am well acquitted of.

PORTIA     Sir, you are very welcome to our house:

It must appear in other ways than words,

140

Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy.

GRATIANO [to Nerissa]

By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong,

In faith I gave it to the judge’s clerk, –

Would he were gelt that had it for my part,

Since you do take it (love) so much at heart.

145

PORTIA     A quarrel ho, already! what’s the matter?

GRATIANO     About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring

That she did give me, whose posy was

For all the world like cutler’s poetry

Upon a knife, ‘Love me, and leave me not.’

150

NERISSA     What talk you of the posy or the value?

You swore to me when I did give it you,

That you would wear it till your hour of death,

And that it should lie with you in your grave, –

Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths,

155

You should have been respective and have kept it.

Gave it a judge’s clerk! no – God’s my judge –

The clerk will ne’er wear hair on’s face that had it.

GRATIANO     He will, and if he live to be a man.

NERISSA     Ay, if a woman live to be a man.

160

GRATIANO     Now (by this hand) I gave it to a youth,

A kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy,

No higher than thyself, the judge’s clerk,

A prating boy that begg’d it as a fee, –

I could not for my heart deny it him.

165

PORTIA

You were to blame, – I must be plain with you, –

To part so slightly with your wife’s first gift,

A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger,

And so riveted with faith unto your flesh.

I gave my love a ring, and made him swear

170

Never to part with it, and here he stands:

I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it,

Nor pluck it from his finger, for the wealth

That the world masters. Now in faith Gratiano

You give your wife too unkind a cause of grief,

175

And ’twere to me I should be mad at it.

BASSANIO [aside]

Why I were best to cut my left hand off,

And swear I lost the ring defending it.

GRATIANO     My Lord Bassanio gave his ring away

Unto the judge that begg’d it, and indeed

180

Deserv’d it too: and then the boy (his clerk)

That took some pains in writing, he begg’d mine,

And neither man nor master would take aught

But the two rings.

PORTIA     What ring gave you my lord?

Not that (I hope) which you receiv’d of me.

185

BASSANIO     If I could add a lie unto a fault,

I would deny it: but you see my finger

Hath not the ring upon it, it is gone.

PORTIA     Even so void is your false heart of truth.

By heaven I will ne’er come in your bed

190

Until I see the ring!

NERISSA     Nor I in yours

Till I again see mine!

BASSANIO     Sweet Portia,

If you did know to whom I gave the ring,

If you did know for whom I gave the ring,

And would conceive for what I gave the ring,

195

And how unwillingly I left the ring,

When nought would be accepted but the ring,

You would abate the strength of your displeasure.

PORTIA     If you had known the virtue of the ring,

Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,

200

Or your own honour to contain the ring,

You would not then have parted with the ring:

What man is there so much unreasonable

(If you had pleas’d to have defended it

With any terms of zeal): – wanted the modesty

205

To urge the thing held as a ceremony?

Nerissa teaches me what to believe, –

I’ll die for’t, but some woman had the ring!

BASSANIO     No by my honour madam, by my soul

No woman had it, but a civil doctor,

210

Which did refuse three thousand ducats of me,

And begg’d the ring, – the which I did deny him,

And suffer’d him to go displeas’d away,

Even he that had held up the very life

Of my dear friend. What should I say sweet lady?

215

I was enforc’d to send it after him,

I was beset with shame and courtesy,

My honour would not let ingratitude

So much besmear it: pardon me good lady,

For by these blessed candles of the night,

220

Had you been there, I think you would have begg’d

The ring of me to give the worthy doctor.

PORTIA

Let not that doctor e’er come near my house –

Since he hath got the jewel that I loved,

And that which you did swear to keep for me,

225

I will become as liberal as you,

I’ll not deny him any thing I have,

No, not my body, nor my husband’s bed:

Know him I shall, I am well sure of it.

Lie not a night from home. Watch me like Argus, –

230

If you do not, if I be left alone,

Now by mine honour (which is yet mine own),

I’ll have that doctor for my bedfellow.

NERISSA     And I his clerk: therefore be well advis’d

How you do leave me to mine own protection.

235

GRATIANO     Well do you so: let not me take him then,

For if I do, I’ll mar the young clerk’s pen.

ANTONIO     I am th’unhappy subject of these quarrels.

PORTIA

Sir, grieve not you, – you are welcome notwithstanding.

BASSANIO     Portia, forgive me this enforced wrong,

240

And in the hearing of these many friends

I swear to thee, even by thine own fair eyes

Wherein I see myself –

PORTIA     Mark you but that!

In both my eyes he doubly sees himself:

In each eye one, – swear by your double self,

And there’s an oath of credit.

245

BASSANIO     Nay, but hear me.

Pardon this fault, and by my soul I swear

I never more will break an oath with thee.

ANTONIO     I once did lend my body for his wealth,

Which but for him that had your husband’s ring

250

Had quite miscarried. I dare be bound again,

My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord

Will never more break faith advisedly.

PORTIA     Then you shall be his surety: give him this,

And bid him keep it better than the other.

255

ANTONIO     Here Lord Bassanio, swear to keep this ring.

BASSANIO     By heaven it is the same I gave the doctor!

PORTIA     I had it of him: pardon me Bassanio,

For by this ring the doctor lay with me.

NERISSA     And pardon me my gentle Gratiano,

260

For that same scrubbed boy (the doctor’s clerk)

In lieu of this, last night did lie with me.

GRATIANO     Why this is like the mending of highways

In summer where the ways are fair enough!

What, are we cuckolds ere we have deserv’d it?

265

PORTIA     Speak not so grossly, – you are all amaz’d;

Here is a letter, read it at your leisure, –

It comes from Padua from Bellario, –

There you shall find that Portia was the doctor,

Nerissa there her clerk. Lorenzo here

270

Shall witness I set forth as soon as you,

And even but now return’d: I have not yet

Enter’d my house. Antonio you are welcome,

And I have better news in store for you

Than you expect: unseal this letter soon,

275

There you shall find three of your argosies

Are richly come to harbour suddenly.

You shall not know by what strange accident

I chanced on this letter.

ANTONIO     I am dumb!

BASSANIO     Were you the doctor, and I knew you not?

280

GRATIANO

Were you the clerk that is to make me cuckold?

NERISSA     Ay, but the clerk that never means to do it,

Unless he live until he be a man.

BASSANIO     Sweet doctor, you shall be my bedfellow, –

When I am absent then lie with my wife.

285

ANTONIO     Sweet lady, you have given me life and living;

For here I read for certain that my ships

Are safely come to road.

PORTIA     How now Lorenzo?

My clerk hath some good comforts too for you.

NERISSA     Ay, and I’ll give them him without a fee.

290

There do I give to you and Jessica

From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift

After his death, of all he dies possess’d of.

LORENZO     Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way

Of starved people.

PORTIA     It is almost morning,

295

And yet I am sure you are not satisfied

Of these events at full. Let us go in,

And charge us there upon inter’gatories,

And we will answer all things faithfully.

GRATIANO     Let it be so, – the first inter’gatory

300

That my Nerissa shall be sworn on, is,

Whether till the next night she had rather stay,

Or go to bed now (being two hours to day):

But were the day come, I should wish it dark

Till I were couching with the doctor’s clerk.

305

Well, while I live, I’ll fear no other thing

So sore, as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring.     Exeunt.

The Merry Wives of Windsor

The Merry Wives of Windsor, despite the fact that it uses some characters from the King Henry IV plays which are set in the early fifteenth century, seems to come as close as Shakespeare ever gets to depicting his own contemporary society. The tavern scenes in the histories are moving in this direction, but in Merry Wives the political context has disappeared altogether and the result feels more like the ‘city comedies’ written by Shakespeare’s contemporaries such as Jonson and Middleton than like his own usual style of romantic comedy with its more remote settings and upper-class characters. Shakespeare’s only comedy set in England (if we exclude Cymbeline with its setting in Ancient Britain) is very much a bourgeois play, with ‘Sir John’ having to adapt to his provincial environment. The main theme is still courtship, and the plot has many precedents in folklore, but the tone is very different from that of Shakespeare’s recent comedies, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice, or the possibly contemporaneous Much Ado About Nothing. Although jokes about cuckolds are a standard element in many plays, it is unusual to find the jealous husband treated as the figure of fun he is here: in Othello, The Winter’s Tale and Cymbeline Shakespeare treats him very differently. Merry Wives may date from 1597; if, however, it was written about 1599, as the most recent Arden editor, Giorgio Melchiori, argues, Shakespeare would have had a model in the comic Thorello in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour (1598), a play Shakespeare himself had acted in.

An early eighteenth-century story claims that Queen Elizabeth encouraged the composition of the play because she wanted to see ‘Falstaff in love’; modern scholars still relate this story while questioning its veracity. Certainly Merry Wives seems to be an Elizabethan play, written after the King Henry IV plays (1596-8) and having some direct connection with the installation of George Carey, the Lord Chamberlain and patron of Shakespeare’s company, as a Knight of the Garter in Windsor in 1597: the Garter ceremonies are referred to quite specifically in Mistress Quickly’s speech at 5.5.55-76. If Merry Wives is to be related to the chronology of the histories, Falstaff’s penury and the absence of Prince Hal might suggest the period of his reported disgrace between King Henry IV, Part 2 and his reported death in King Henry V. Its tone is of course much lighter: despite Falstaff’s attempts to win his way into the Wives’ favours and their husbands’ fortunes, we remain confident of the basic affability and good sense of most of the people of Windsor. Shakespeare does not seem to be aiming for strict consistency with the history plays: it is difficult, for example, to reconcile the Mistress Quickly here with the character in the Henry IV and Henry V plays.

The earliest published text of this play, the First Quarto of 1602 (Q1), is only about half the length of the version in the 1623 First Folio (F1) (where it is the third of the comedies), and has generally been dismissed as a ‘bad’ quarto, or, less judgementally, as a reported text put together from memory of an acting version of the play. The appearance of five further quartos during the seventeenth century (one based on Q1, the others on F1) attests to the popularity of the play. There are records of revivals in 1604, 1613, 1638, 1661 and 1667. Merry Wives continued to be popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although it was often abridged in performance. It has been used as the basis for the libretti of at least nine operas including Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff (1893) and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Sir John in Love (1929). Twentieth-century productions often revelled in the particularity of the Windsor setting which allowed them to celebrate a ‘merry England’ not otherwise notably associated with Shakespeare; the fact that the play was chosen for presentation at the Festival of Britain in 1951 testifies to this tendency.

The 1999 Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

AT THE GARTER INN

HOST

of the Garter Inn

Sir John FALSTAFF

a Crown pensioner, lodging at the Inn

ROBIN

his page-boy

‘Corporal’ BARDOLPH

Falstaff’s attendant, later a drawer in the Inn

Falstaff’s other attendants

Robert SHALLOW

a justice of the peace

Abraham SLENDER

a young gentleman, his relative

Peter SIMPLE

Slender’s servant

FENTON

a gentleman, former companion of the Prince of Wales

TOWNSPEOPLE

George PAGE

a citizen

MISTRESS Margaret (meg) PAGE

his wife

Anne (Nan) Page

their daughter

WILLIAM Page

a schoolboy, their son

Frank FORD

another citizen

MISTRESS Alice FORD

his wife

servants in Ford’s household

Sir Hugh EVANS

a Welsh parson

Doctor CAIUS

a French physician

Mistress QUICKLY

his housekeeper

John RUGBY

his servant

Children, disguised as Fairies, instructed by Parson Evans

1.1 Enter Justice SHALLOW, SLENDER and
Sir Hugh EVANS.

SHALLOW     Sir Hugh, persuade me not: I will make a

Star Chamber matter of it. If he were twenty Sir John

Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow esquire.

SLENDER     In the County of Gloucester, Justice of Peace

and Coram.

5

SHALLOW     Ay, cousin Slender, and Cust-a-lorum.

SLENDER     Ay, and Rato lorum too; and a gentleman

born, master parson, who writes himself Armigero, in

any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation – Armigero.

SHALLOW     Ay, that I do, and have done any time these

10

three hundred years.

SLENDER     All his successors – gone before him – hath

done’t; and all his ancestors – that come after him – may.

They may give the dozen white luces in their coat.

SHALLOW     It is an old coat.

15

EVANS     The dozen white louses do become an old coat

well. It agrees well passant. It is a familiar beast to

man, and signifies love.

SHALLOW     The luce is the fresh fish – the salt fish is an

old coat.

20

SLENDER     I may quarter, coz.

SHALLOW     You may, by marrying.

EVANS     It is marring indeed, if he quarter it.

SHALLOW     Not a whit.

EVANS     Yes, py’r lady: if he has a quarter of your coat,

25

there is but three skirts for yourself, in my simple

conjectures. But that is all one: if Sir John Falstaff

have committed disparagements unto you, I am of the

Church, and will be glad to do my benevolence, to

make atonements and compremises between you.

30

SHALLOW     The Council shall hear it, it is a riot.

EVANS     It is not meet the Council hear a riot. There is no

fear of Got in a riot. The Council, look you, shall

desire to hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot.

Take your vizaments in that.

35

SHALLOW     Ha, o’my life, if I were young again, the

sword should end it.

EVANS     It is petter that friends is the sword, and end it;

and there is also another device in my prain, which

peradventure prings goot discretions with it. There is

40

Anne Page, which is daughter to Master George Page

– which is pretty virginity.

SLENDER     Mistress Anne Page? She has brown hair, and

speaks small like a woman?

EVANS     It is that ferry person for all the ‘orld, as just as

45

you will desire, and seven hundred pounds of moneys,

and gold, and silver, is her grandsire upon his death’s-

bed – Got deliver to a joyful resurrections! – give,

when she is able to overtake seventeen years old. It

were a goot motion, if we leave our pribbles and

50

prabbles, and desire a marriage between Master

Abraham and Mistress Anne Page.

SLENDER     Did her grandsire leave her seven hundred

pound?

EVANS     Ay, and her father is make her a petter penny.

55

SHALLOW     I know the young gentlewoman, she has good

gifts.

EVANS     Seven hundred pounds, and possibilities, is goot

gifts.

SHALLOW     Well, let us see honest Master Page. Is

60

Falstaff there?

EVANS     Shall I tell you a lie? I do despise a liar, as I do

despise one that is false, or as I despise one that is not

true: the knight Sir John is there, and I beseech you be

ruled by your well-willers. I will peat the door for

65

Master Page. [Knocks.] What ho! Got pless your house

here!

PAGE [within] Who’s there?

Enter PAGE.

EVANS     Here is Got’s plessing and your friend, and

Justice Shallow, and here young Master Slender, that

70

peradventures shall tell you another tale, if matters

grow to your likings.

PAGE     I am glad to see your worships well. I thank you

for my venison, Master Shallow.

SHALLOW     Master Page, I am glad to see you, much good

75

do it your good heart. I wished your venison better, it

was ill killed. How doth good Mistress Page? And I

thank you always with my heart, la – with my heart.

PAGE     Sir, I thank you.

SHALLOW     Sir, I thank you; by yea and no I do.

80

PAGE     I am glad to see you, good Master Slender.

SLENDER     How does your fallow greyhound, sir? I heard

say he was outrun on Cotsall.

PAGE     It could not be judged, sir.

SLENDER     You’ll not confess, you’ll not confess!

85

SHALLOW     That he will not ’tis your fault, ’tis your fault.

’Tis a good dog.

PAGE     A cur, sir.

SHALLOW     Sir, he’s a good dog, and a fair dog, can there

be more said? He is good, and fair. – Is Sir John

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Falstaff here?

PAGE     Sir, he is within; and I would I could do a good

office between you.

EVANS     It is spoke as a Christians ought to speak.

SHALLOW     He hath wronged me, Master Page.

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PAGE     Sir, he doth in some sort confess it.

SHALLOW     If it be confessed, it is not redressed. Is not

that so, Master Page? He hath wronged me, indeed he

hath, at a word he hath. Believe me: Robert Shallow

esquire saith he is wronged.

100

PAGE     Here comes Sir John.

Enter Sir John FALSTAFF, PISTOL, BARDOLPH and NIM.

FALSTAFF     Now, Master Shallow, you’ll complain of me

to the King?

SHALLOW     Knight, you have beaten my men, killed my

deer and broke open my lodge.

105

FALSTAFF     But not kissed your keeper’s daughter!

SHALLOW     Tut, a pin! This shall be answered.

FALSTAFF     I will answer it straight: I have done all this.

That is now answered.

SHALLOW     The Council shall know this.

110

FALSTAFF     ’Twere better for you if it were known in

counsel: you’ll be laughed at.

EVANS     Pauca verba, Sir John, good worts.

FALSTAFF     Good worts? Good cabbage! – Slender, I

broke your head: what matter have you against me?

115

SLENDER     Marry, sir, I have matter in my head against

you, and against your cony-catching rascals, Bardolph,

Nim and Pistol. They carried me to the tavern and

made me drunk, and afterward picked my pocket.

BARDOLPH     You Banbury cheese!

120

SLENDER     Ay, it is no matter.

PISTOL     How now, Mephostophilus?

SLENDER     Ay, it is no matter.

NIM     Slice, I say! Pauca, pauca, slice, that’s my humour.

SLENDER     Where’s Simple, my man? Can you tell,

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cousin?

EVANS     Peace, I pray you! Now let us understand: there

is three umpires in this matter, as I understand. That

is, Master Page, fidelicet Master Page; and there is

myself, fidelicet myself; and the three party is, lastly

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and finally, mine host of the Garter.

PAGE     We three to hear it, and end it between them.

EVANS     Ferry goot, I will make a prief of it in my

notebook, and we will afterwards ‘ork upon the cause

with as great discreetly as we can.

135

FALSTAFF     Pistol!

PISTOL     He hears with ears.

EVANS     The tevil and his tam, what phrase is this? He

hears with ears! Why, it is affectations!

FALSTAFF     Pistol, did you pick Master Slender’s purse?

140

SLENDER     Ay, by these gloves did he, or I would I might

never come in mine own great chamber again else! Of

seven groats in mill-sixpences, and two Edward

shovel-boards, that cost me two shilling and two pence

a-piece of Ed miller – by these gloves!

145

FALSTAFF     Is this true, Pistol?

EVANS     No, it is false, if it is a pick-purse.

PISTOL     Ha, thou mountain-foreigner! –

Sir John and master mine,

I combat challenge of this latten bilbo. –

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Word of denial in thy labras here!

Word of denial! Froth and scum, thou liest!

SLENDER [Points at Nim.] By these gloves, then ’twas he.

NIM     Be advised, sir, and pass good humours. I will say

‘marry trap with you’, if you run the nuthook’s

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humour on me – that is the very note of it.

SLENDER     By this hat, then he in the red face had it. For,

though I cannot remember what I did when you made

me drunk, yet I am not altogether an ass.

FALSTAFF     What say you, Scarlet and John?

160

BARDOLPH     Why, sir, for my part, I say the gentleman

had drunk himself out of his five sentences.

EVANS     It is ‘his five senses’. Fie, what the ignorance is!

BARDOLPH     And being fap, sir, was, as they say, cashiered;

and so conclusions passed the careers.

165

SLENDER     Ay, you spake in Latin then too; but ’tis no

matter. I’ll ne’er be drunk whilst I live again, but in

honest, civil, godly company, for this trick. If I be

drunk, I’ll be drunk with those that have the fear of

God, and not with drunken knaves.

170

EVANS     So Got ‘udge me, that is a virtuous mind.

FALSTAFF     You hear all these matters denied, gentlemen;

you hear it.

Enter MISTRESS FORD, MISTRESS PAGE and her
daughter ANNE, with wine.

PAGE     Nay, daughter, carry the wine in, we’ll drink within.     Exit Anne Page.

175

SLENDER     O heaven, this is Mistress Anne Page.

PAGE     How now, Mistress Ford?

FALSTAFF     Mistress Ford, by my troth you are very well

met. By your leave, good mistress.     [Kisses her.]

PAGE     Wife, bid these gentlemen welcome. – Come, we

180

have a hot venison pasty to dinner. Come, gentlemen,

I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.

     Exeunt all except Slender.

SLENDER     I had rather than forty shillings I had my book

of Songs and Sonnets here.

Enter SIMPLE.

How now, Simple, where have you been? I must wait

185

on myself, must I? You have not the Book of Riddles

about you, have you?

SIMPLE     Book of Riddles? Why, did you not lend it to

Alice Shortcake upon Allhallowmas last, a fortnight

afore Michaelmas?

190

Enter SHALLOW and EVANS.

SHALLOW     Come, coz, come, coz, we stay for you. A

word with you, coz. Marry, this, coz: there is, as

’twere, a tender, a kind of tender, made afar off by Sir

Hugh here. Do you understand me?

SLENDER     Ay, sir, you shall find me reasonable. If it be

195

so, I shall do that that is reason.

SHALLOW     Nay, but understand me.

SLENDER     So I do, sir.

EVANS     Give ear to his motions. Master Slender, I will

description the matter to you, if you be capacity of it.

200

SLENDER     Nay, I will do as my cousin Shallow says. I

pray you pardon me, he’s a Justice of Peace in his

country, simple though I stand here.

EVANS     But that is not the question. The question is

concerning your marriage.

205

SHALLOW     Ay, there’s the point, sir.

EVANS     Marry, is it, the very point of it – to Mistress

Anne Page.

SLENDER     Why, if it be so, I will marry her upon any

reasonable demands.

210

EVANS     But can you affection the ‘oman? Let us

command to know that of your mouth, or of your lips

– for diverse philosophers hold that the lips is parcel

of the mouth. Therefore precisely, can you carry your

good will to the maid?

215

SHALLOW     Cousin Abraham Slender, can you love her?

SLENDER     I hope, sir, I will do as it shall become one that

would do reason.

EVANS     Nay, Got’s lords, and his ladies, you must speak

possitable if you can carry-her your desires towards

220

her.

SHALLOW     That you must: will you, upon good dowry,

marry her?

SLENDER     I will do a greater thing than that, upon your

request, cousin, in any reason.

225

SHALLOW     Nay, conceive me, conceive me, sweet coz.

What I do is to pleasure you, coz. Can you love the

maid?

SLENDER     I will marry her, sir, at your request. But if

there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven

230

may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we

are married, and have more occasion to know one

another. I hope upon familiarity will grow more

contempt. But if you say marry her, I will marry her –

that I am freely dissolved, and dissolutely.

235

EVANS     It is a fery discretion answer. Save the faul’ is in

the ‘ord ‘dissolutely’ – the ‘ort is, according to our

meaning, ‘resolutely’ – his meaning is good.

SHALLOW     Ay, I think my cousin meant well.

SLENDER     Ay, or else I would I might be hanged, la!

240

Enter ANNE Page.

SHALLOW     Here comes fair Mistress Anne. – Would I

were young for your sake, Mistress Anne.

ANNE The dinner is on the table, my father desires your

worships’ company.

SHALLOW     I will wait on him, fair Mistress Anne.

245

EVANS     ‘Od’s plessed will! I will not be absence at the

grace.     Exeunt Shallow and Evans.

ANNE     Will’t please your worship to come in, sir?

SLENDER     No, I thank you, forsooth, heartily; I am very

well.

250

ANNE     The dinner attends you, sir.

SLENDER     I am not a-hungry, I thank you, forsooth. [to

Simple] Go, sirrah, for all you are my man, go wait

upon my cousin Shallow.     Exit Simple.

A justice of peace sometime may be beholding to his

255

friend for a man. I keep but three men and a boy yet,

till my mother be dead. But what though, yet I live like

a poor gentleman born.

ANNE     I may not go in without your worship: they will

not sit till you come.

260

SLENDER     I’faith, I’ll eat nothing. I thank you as much as

though I did.

ANNE     I pray you, sir, walk in.

SLENDER     I had rather walk here, I thank you. I bruised

my shin th’other day with playing at sword and dagger

265

with a master of fence – three venues for a dish of

stewed prunes – and, by my troth, I cannot abide the

smell of hot meat since. – Why do your dogs bark so?

Be there bears i’the town?

270

ANNE     I think there are, sir; I heard them talked of.

SLENDER     I love the sport well, but I shall as soon

quarrel at it, as any man in England. You are afraid if

you see the bear loose, are you not?

ANNE     Ay indeed, sir.

275

SLENDER     That’s meat and drink to me now. I have seen

Sackerson loose twenty times, and have taken him by

the chain; but, I warrant you, the women have so cried

and shrieked at it that it passed. But women, indeed,

cannot abide ‘em: they are very ill-favoured rough

280

things.

Enter PAGE.

PAGE     Come, gentle Master Slender, come: we stay for

you.

SLENDER     I’ll eat nothing, I thank you, sir.

PAGE     By cock and pie, you shall not choose, sir. Come,

285

come.

SLENDER     Nay, pray you, lead the way.

PAGE     Come on, sir.

SLENDER     Mistress Anne, yourself shall go first.

ANNE     Not I, sir; pray you, keep on.

290

SLENDER     Truly, I will not go first; truly – la! I will not

do you that wrong.

ANNE     I pray you, sir.

SLENDER     I’ll rather be unmannerly than troublesome.

You do yourself wrong, indeed – la!

     Exeunt, Slender leading.

1.2 Enter Sir Hugh EVANS and SIMPLE, from dinner.

EVANS     Go your ways, and ask of Doctor Caius’ house,

which is the way. And there dwells one Mistress

Quickly, which is in the manner of his nurse, or his dry

nurse, or his cook, or his laundry, his washer and his

wringer.

5

SIMPLE     Well, sir.

EVANS     Nay, it is petter yet: give her this letter. For it is

a ‘oman that altogether’s acquaintance with Mistress

Anne Page, and the letter is to desire, and require her,

to solicit your master’s desires to Mistress Anne Page.

10

I pray you be gone; I will make an end of my dinner,

there’s pippins and cheese to come.     Exeunt.

1.3 Enter FALSTAFF, HOST, BARDOLPH, NIM, PISTOL and ROBIN.

FALSTAFF     Mine host of the Garter –

HOST What says my bully rook? Speak scholarly and

wisely.

FALSTAFF     Truly, mine host, I must turn away some of

my followers.

5

HOST Discard, bully Hercules, cashier! Let them wag;

trot, trot!

FALSTAFF     I sit at ten pounds a week.

HOST Thou’rt an emperor – Caesar, Kaiser and Vizier.

I will entertain Bardolph: he shall draw, he shall tap.

10

Said I well, bully Hector?

FALSTAFF     Do so, good mine host.

HOST     I have spoke, let him follow. – Let me see thee

froth and lime. I am at a word, follow.     Exit.

FALSTAFF     Bardolph, follow him. A tapster is a good

15

trade: an old cloak makes a new jerkin; a withered

servingman, a fresh tapster. Go, adieu.

BARDOLPH     It is a life that I have desired. I will thrive.

     Exit.

PISTOL     O base Hungarian wight, wilt thou the spigot

wield?

20

NIM     He was gotten in drink. Is not the humour

conceited?

FALSTAFF     I am glad I am so acquit of this tinderbox.

His thefts were too open: his filching was like an

unskilful singer, he kept not time.

25

NIM     The good humour is to steal at a minute’s rest.

PISTOL     ‘Convey’, the wise it call. ‘Steal’? Foh! A fico for

the phrase!

FALSTAFF     Well, sirs, I am almost out at heels.

PISTOL     Why then, let kibes ensue.

30

FALSTAFF     There is no remedy, I must cony-catch, I

must shift.

PISTOL     Young ravens must have food.

FALSTAFF     Which of you know Ford of this town?

PISTOL     I ken the wight, he is of substance good.

35

FALSTAFF     My honest lads, I will tell you what I am

about.

PISTOL     Two yards, and more.

FALSTAFF     No quips now, Pistol. – Indeed I am in the

waist two yards about, but I am now about no waste: I

40

am about thrift. Briefly, I do mean to make love to

Ford’s wife. I spy entertainment in her: she discourses,

she carves, she gives the leer of invitation. I can

construe the action of her familiar style, and the

hardest voice of her behaviour – to be Englished

45

rightly – is: ‘I am Sir John Falstaff ‘s’.

PISTOL     He hath studied her well, and translated her

will – out of honesty into English.

NIM     The anchor is deep: will that humour pass?

FALSTAFF     Now, the report goes she has all the rule of

50

her husband’s purse: he hath a legion of angels.

PISTOL     As many devils attend her! And ‘To her, boy!’

say I.

NIM     The humour rises: it is good. Humour me the

angels.

55

FALSTAFF     I have writ me here a letter to her; and here

another to Page’s wife, who even now gave me good

eyes too, examined my parts with most judicious

oeillades. Sometimes the beam of her view gilded my

foot, sometimes my portly belly.

60

PISTOL     Then did the sun on dunghill shine.

NIM     I thank thee for that humour.

FALSTAFF     O, she did so course o’er my exteriors, with

such a greedy intention, that the appetite of her eye

did seem to scorch me up like a burning glass. Here’s

65

another letter to her. She bears the purse too: she is a

region in Guiana, all gold and bounty. I will be

cheaters to them both, and they shall be exchequers to

me. They shall be my East and West Indies, and I will

trade to them both. [to Nim] Go, bear thou this letter

70

to Mistress Page; [to Pistol] and thou this to Mistress

Ford. – We will thrive, lads, we will thrive.

PISTOL     Shall I Sir Pandarus of Troy become,

And by my side wear steel? Then Lucifer take all!

NIM     I will run no base humour. Here, take the humour-

75

letter – I will keep the ‘haviour of reputation.

FALSTAFF [to Robin]

Hold, sirrah, bear you these letters titely,

Sail like my pinnace to these golden shores. –

Rogues, hence, avaunt! Vanish like hailstones, go!

Trudge, plod away o’th’ hoof, seek shelter, pack!

80

Falstaff will learn the humour of this age:

French thrift, you rogues – myself and skirted page!

     Exit with Robin.

PISTOL

Let vultures gripe thy guts! For gourd and fullam holds,

And high and low beguiles the rich and poor.

Tester I’ll have in pouch when thou shalt lack,

85

Base Phrygian Turk!

NIM     I have operations

In my head, which be humours of revenge.

PISTOL     Wilt thou revenge?

NIM          By welkin and her stars!

PISTOL     With wit, or steel?

NIM          With both the humours, I.

I will discuss the humour of this love to Ford.

90

PISTOL     And I to Page shall eke unfold

     How Falstaff, varlet vile,

     His dove will prove, his gold will hold,

And his soft couch defile.

NIM     My humour shall not cool: I will incense Ford to

95

deal with poison, I will possess him with yellowness,

for this revolt of mine is dangerous. That is my true

humour.

PISTOL     Thou art the Mars of malcontents. I second

thee – troop on.     Exeunt.

100

1.4 Enter Mistress QUICKLY and SIMPLE.

QUICKLY     What, John Rugby!

Enter RUGBY.

I pray thee go to the casement, and see if you can see my

master, Master Doctor Caius, coming. If he do, i’faith,

and find anybody in the house, here will be an old

abusing of God’s patience and the King’s English.

5

RUGBY     I’ll go watch.

QUICKLY     Go; and we’ll have a posset for’t soon at night,

in faith, at the latter end of a sea-coal fire.

     Exit Rugby.

An honest, willing, kind fellow, as ever servant shall

come in house withal; and I warrant you, no tell-tale,

10

nor no breed-bate. His worst fault is that he is given to

prayer; he is something peevish that way, but nobody

but has his fault. But let that pass. – Peter Simple, you

say your name is?

SIMPLE     Ay, for fault of a better.

15

QUICKLY     And Master Slender’s your master?

SIMPLE     Ay, forsooth.

quickly Does he not wear a great round beard, like a

glover’s paring-knife?

SIMPLE     No, forsooth, he hath but a little wee face, with

20

a little yellow beard: a Cain-coloured beard.

QUICKLY     A softly-sprighted man, is he not?

SIMPLE     Ay, forsooth. But he is as tall a man of his hands,

as any is between this and his head. He hath fought

with a warrener.

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QUICKLY     How, say you? – O, I should remember him:

does he not hold up his head, as it were, and strut in

his gait?

SIMPLE     Yes, indeed, does he.

QUICKLY     Well, heaven send Anne Page no worse

30

fortune. Tell Master Parson Evans I will do what I can

for your master. Anne is a good girl, and I wish –

Enter RUGBY.

RUGBY     Out, alas! Here comes my master! Exit.

QUICKLY     We shall all be shent. Run in here, good young

man, go into this closet – he will not stay long. [Simple

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steps into the closet.] What, John Rugby! John! What,

John, I say! Go, John, go inquire for my master. I

doubt he be not well, that he comes not home.

[Sings.] And down, down, adown-a (etc.)

Enter Doctor CAIUS.

CAIUS     Vat is you sing? I do not like dese toys. Pray you

40

go and vetch me in my closet une boîtine verte – a box,

a green-a-box. Do intend vat I speak? A green-a-box.

QUICKLY     Ay, forsooth, I’ll fetch it you. – [aside] I am

glad he went not in himself: if he had found the young

man he would have been horn-mad.

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CAIUS     Fe, fe, fe, fe, ma foi, il fait fort chaud. Je m’en vais

voir à la cour la grande affaire.

QUICKLY     Is it this, sir?

CAIUS     Oui, mette-le au mon pocket. Dépêche quickly.

Vere is dat knave Rugby?

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QUICKLY     What, John Rugby! John!

Enter RUGBY.

RUGBY     Here, sir.

CAIUS     You are John Rugby, and you are Jack Rugby.

Come take-a your rapier, and come after my heel to

the court.

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RUGBY     ’Tis ready, sir, here in the porch.

CAIUS     By my trot, I tarry too long. ‘Od’s me, qu’ai-je

oublié! Dere is some simples in my closet dat I will not

for the varld I shall leave behind.

QUICKLY     Ay me, he’ll find the young man there, and

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be mad!

CAIUS [Pulls Simple out.] O diable, diable, vat is in my

closet? Villainy, larron! – Rugby, my rapier!

QUICKLY     Good master, be content.

CAIUS     Wherefore shall I be content-a?

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QUICKLY     The young man is an honest man.

CAIUS     What shall de honest man do in my closet? Dere

is no honest man dat shall come in my closet.

QUICKLY     I beseech you, be not so phlegmatic, hear the

truth of it. He came of an errand to me, from Parson

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Hugh.

CAIUS     Vell?

SIMPLE     Ay, forsooth, to desire her to –

QUICKLY     Peace, I pray you.

CAIUS     Peace-a your tongue! [to Simple] Speak-a your

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tale.

SIMPLE     To desire this honest gentlewoman, your maid,

to speak a good word to Mistress Anne Page for my

master in the way of marriage.

QUICKLY     This is all indeed, la! But I’ll ne’er put my

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finger in the fire, an’t need not.

CAIUS     Sir Hugh send-a you? – Rugby, baille me some

paper. – Tarry you a little-a-while. [Writes.]

QUICKLY [aside to Simple] I am glad he is so quiet. If he

had been throughly moved, you should have heard

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him so loud and so melancholy. But notwithstanding,

man, I’ll do you your master what good I can; and the

very yea and the no is, the French doctor my master –

I may call him my master, look you, for I keep his

house, and I wash, wring, brew, bake, scour, dress meat

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and drink, make the beds and do all myself –

SIMPLE [aside to Mistress Quickly] ’Tis a great charge to

come under one body’s hand.

QUICKLY [aside to Simple] Are you avised o’that? You

shall find it a great charge, and to be up early and down

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late; but notwithstanding – to tell you in your ear, I

would have no words of it – my master himself is in love

with Mistress Anne Page; but notwithstanding that, I

know Anne’s mind – that’s neither here nor there.

CAIUS     You, Jack’nape: give-a this letter to Sir Hugh. By

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gar, it is a shallenge: I will cut his troat in de park, and

I will teach a scurvy jackanape priest to meddle or

make. – You may be gone, it is not good you tarry here.

– By gar, I will cut all his two stones. By gar, he shall

not have a stone to throw at his dog.     Exit Simple.

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QUICKLY     Alas, he speaks but for his friend.

CAIUS     It is no matter-a ver dat. Do not you tell-a-me

dat I shall have Anne Page for myself? By gar, I vill kill

de Jack-priest; and I have appointed mine host of de

Jarteer to measure our weapon. By gar, I will myself

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have Anne Page.

QUICKLY     Sir, the maid loves you, and all shall be well.

We must give folks leave to prate, what the good-year!

CAIUS     Rugby, come to the court with me. [to Mistress

Quickly] By gar, if I have not Anne Page, I shall turn

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your head out of my door. – Follow my heels, Rugby.

     Exit with Rugby.

QUICKLY     You shall have An – fool’s head of your own.

No, I know Anne’s mind for that. Never a woman in

Windsor knows more of Anne’s mind than I do, nor

can do more than I do with her, I thank heaven.

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FENTON [within] Who’s within there, ho?

QUICKLY     Who’s there, I trow? Come near the house, I

pray you.

Enter FENTON.

FENTON     How now, good woman, how dost thou?

QUICKLY     The better that it pleases your good worship

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to ask.

FENTON     What news? How does pretty Mistress Anne?

QUICKLY     In truth, sir, and she is pretty, and honest, and

gentle, and one that is your friend – I can tell you that

by the way, I praise heaven for it.

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FENTON     Shall I do any good, thinkst thou? Shall I not

lose my suit?

QUICKLY     Troth, sir, all is in His hands above. But

notwithstanding, Master Fenton, I’ll be sworn on a

book she loves you. Have not your worship a wart

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above your eye?

FENTON     Yes, marry, have I; what of that?

QUICKLY     Well, thereby hangs a tale. Good faith, it is

such another Nan – but, I detest, an honest maid as

ever broke bread. We had an hour’s talk of that wart. I

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shall never laugh but in that maid’s company. But,

indeed, she is given too much to allicholy and musing.

But for you – well – go to –

FENTON     Well, I shall see her today. Hold, there’s money

for thee: let me have thy voice in my behalf. If thou

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seest her before me, commend me –

QUICKLY     Will I? I’faith, that we will! And I will tell

your worship more of the wart the next time we have

confidence, and of other wooers.

FENTON     Well, farewell, I am in great haste now.

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QUICKLY     Farewell to your worship.      Exit Fenton.

Truly an honest gentleman – but Anne loves him not.

For I know Anne’s mind as well as another does. – Out

upon’t, what have I forgot?     Exit.

2.1 Enter MISTRESS PAGE reading of a letter.

MISTRESS PAGE     What, have I scaped love-letters in the

holiday-time of my beauty, and am I now a subject for

them? Let me see:

[Reads.] Ask me no reason why I love you, for, though

Love use Reason for his precisian, he admits him not for his

5

counsellor. You are not young, no more am I: go to, then,

there’s sympathy; you are merry, so am I: ha, ha, then

there’s more sympathy; you love sack, and so do I: would

you desire better sympathy? Let it suffice thee, Mistress

Page, at the least if the love of soldier can suffice, that I love

10

thee. I will not say ‘pity me’ – ’tis not a soldier-like phrase

– but I say ‘love me’.

By me, thine own true knight, by day or night,

Or any kind of light, with all his might,

For thee to fight. John Falstaff.

15

What a Herod of Jewry is this? O wicked, wicked world!

One that is well-nigh worn to pieces with age, to show

himself a young gallant? What an unweighed behaviour

hath this Flemish drunkard picked – with the devil’s

name! – out of my conversation, that he dares in this

20

manner assay me? Why, he hath not been thrice in my

company! What should I say to him? I was then frugal

of my mirth – heaven forgive me! – Why, I’ll exhibit a

bill in the parliament for the putting down of men. How

shall I be revenged on him? For revenged I will be, as

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sure as his guts are made of puddings.

Enter MISTRESS FORD.

MISTRESS FORD     Mistress Page, trust me, I was going to

your house.

MISTRESS PAGE     And trust me, I was coming to you. You

look very ill.

30

MISTRESS FORD     Nay, I’ll ne’er believe that. I have to

show to the contrary.

MISTRESS PAGE     ‘Faith, but you do, in my mind.

MISTRESS FORD     Well, I do, then. Yet I say I could show

you to the contrary. O, Mistress Page, give me some

35

counsel!

MISTRESS PAGE     What’s the matter, woman?

MISTRESS FORD     O, woman, if it were not for one trifling

respect, I could come to such honour!

MISTRESS PAGE     Hang the trifle, woman, take the

40

honour! What is it? Dispense with trifles: what is it?

MISTRESS FORD     If I would but go to hell for an eternal

moment or so, I could be knighted.

MISTRESS PAGE     What? Thou liest! Sir Alice Ford?

These knights will hack, and so thou shouldst not alter

45

the article of thy gentry.

MISTRESS FORD     We burn daylight. Here, read, read:

perceive how I might be knighted. I shall think the

worse of fat men as long as I have an eye to make

difference of men’s liking. And yet he would not swear,

50

praised women’s modesty, and gave such orderly and

well-behaved reproof to all uncomeliness, that I would

have sworn his disposition would have gone to the

truth of his words. But they do no more adhere and

keep place together than the hundred psalms to the

55

tune of ‘Greensleeves’. What tempest, I trow, threw

this whale, with so many tuns of oil in his belly, ashore

at Windsor? How shall I be revenged on him? I think

the best way were to entertain him with hope, till the

wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease.

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Did you ever hear the like?

MISTRESS PAGE     Letter for letter, but that the name of

Page and Ford differs! To thy great comfort in this

mystery of ill opinions, here’s the twin brother of thy

letter. But let thine inherit first, for I protest mine never

65

shall. I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters, writ

with blank space for different names – sure, more, and

these are of the second edition. He will print them, out

of doubt; for he cares not what he puts into the press,

when he would put us two. I had rather be a giantess,

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and lie under Mount Pelion. Well, I will find you

twenty lascivious turtles ere one chaste man.

MISTRESS FORD     Why, this is the very same – the very

hand, the very words! What doth he think of us?

MISTRESS PAGE     Nay, I know not. It makes me almost

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ready to wrangle with mine own honesty. I’ll entertain

myself like one that I am not acquainted withal. For,

sure, unless he know some strain in me that I know not

myself, he would never have boarded me in this fury.

MISTRESS FORD     Boarding, call you it? I’ll be sure to

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keep him above deck.

MISTRESS PAGE     So will I. If he come under my hatches,

I’ll never to sea again. Let’s be revenged on him. Let’s

appoint him a meeting, give him a show of comfort in

his suit, and lead him on with a fine-baited delay, till

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he hath pawned his horses to mine host of the Garter.

MISTRESS FORD     Nay, I will consent to act any villainy

against him, that may not sully the chariness of our

honesty. O, that my husband saw this letter! It would

give eternal food to his jealousy.

90

Enter FORD with PISTOL and PAGE with NIM.

MISTRESS PAGE     Why, look where he comes; and my

good man too – he’s as far from jealousy as I am from

giving him cause, and that, I hope, is an unmeasurable

distance.

MISTRESS FORD     You are the happier woman.

95

MISTRESS PAGE     Let’s consult together against this

greasy knight. Come hither.     [They withdraw.]

FORD Well, I hope it be not so.

PISTOL     Hope is a curtal dog in some affairs.

Sir John affects thy wife.

100

FORD     Why, sir, my wife is not young.

PISTOL     He woos both high and low, both rich and poor,

Both young and old, one with another, Ford.

He loves the gallimaufry, Ford: perpend.

FORD     Love my wife?

PISTOL     With liver burning hot.

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Prevent, or go thou like Sir Actaeon he,

With Ringwood at thy heels.

O, odious is the name!

FORD     What name, sir?

PISTOL     The horn, I say. Farewell.

110

Take heed, have open eye, for thieves do foot by night.

Take heed, ere summer comes, or cuckoo-birds do

sing. – Away, Sir Corporal Nim! – Believe it, Page, he

speaks sense.     Exit.

FORD [aside] I will be patient, I will find out this.

115

NIM [to Page] And this is true, I like not the humour of

lying. He hath wronged me in some humours. I should

have borne the humoured letter to her, but I have a

sword, and it shall bite upon my necessity. He loves

your wife, there’s the short and the long. My name is

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Corporal Nim. I speak, and I avouch ’tis true: my

name is Nim and Falstaff loves your wife. Adieu. I love

not the humour of bread and cheese. Adieu.     Exit.

PAGE     The humour of it, quoth ‘a! Here’s a fellow frights

English out of his wits.

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FORD [aside] I will seek out Falstaff.

PAGE [aside] I never heard such a drawling-affecting

rogue.

FORD [aside] If I do find it – well.

PAGE [aside] I will not believe such a Cathayan, though

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the priest o’the town commend him for a true man.

FORD [aside] ’Twas a good sensible fellow – well.

MISTRESS PAGE and MISTRESS FORD come forward.

PAGE     How now, Meg?

MISTRESS PAGE     Whither go you, George? Hark you.

MISTRESS FORD     How now, sweet Frank, why art thou

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melancholy?

FORD     I melancholy? I am not melancholy. Get you

home, go.

MISTRESS FORD     Faith, thou hast some crotchets in thy

head now. – Will you go, Mistress Page?

140

MISTRESS PAGE     Have with you. You’ll come to dinner,

George? [aside to Mistress Ford] Look who comes

yonder: she shall be our messenger to this paltry

knight.

MISTRESS FORD [aside to Mistress Page] Trust me, I

145

thought on her: she’ll fit it.

Enter Mistress QUICKLY.

MISTRESS PAGE     You are come to see my daughter Anne?

QUICKLY     Ay, forsooth. And I pray, how does good

Mistress Anne?

MISTRESS PAGE     Go in with us and see. We have an

150

hour’s talk with you.

Exeunt Mistress Ford, Mistress Page and Mistress Quickly.

PAGE     How now, Master Ford?

FORD     You heard what this knave told me, did you not?

PAGE     Yes, and you heard what the other told me?

FORD     Do you think there is truth in them?

155

PAGE     Hang ‘em, slaves! I do not think the knight would

offer it, but these that accuse him in his intent towards

our wives are a yoke of his discarded men – very

rogues, now they be out of service.

FORD     Were they his men?

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PAGE     Marry, were they.

FORD     I like it never the better for that. – Does he lie at

the Garter?

PAGE     Ay, marry, does he. If he should intend this voyage

toward my wife, I would turn her loose to him, and

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what he gets more of her than sharp words, let it lie on

my head.

FORD     I do not misdoubt my wife, but I would be loath

to turn them together. A man may be too confident. I

would have nothing lie on my head: I cannot be thus

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satisfied.

Enter HOST.

PAGE     Look where my ranting host of the Garter comes.

There is either liquor in his pate or money in his purse,

when he looks so merrily. – How now, mine host?

HOST     How now, bully rook? Thou’rt a gentleman. –

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Cavaliero Justice, I say!

Enter SHALLOW.

SHALLOW     I follow, mine host, I follow. – Good even and

twenty, good Master Page. Master Page, will you go

with us? We have sport in hand.

HOST     Tell him, Cavaliero Justice, tell him, bully rook!

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SHALLOW     Sir, there is a fray to be fought between Sir

Hugh the Welsh priest and Caius the French doctor.

FORD     Good mine host o’ the Garter, a word with you.

HOST     What sayst thou, my bully rook? [Ford and the

Host talk apart.]

SHALLOW     Will you go with us to behold it? My merry

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host hath had the measuring of their weapons, and, I

think, hath appointed them contrary places; for,

believe me, I hear the parson is no jester. Hark, I will

tell you what our sport shall be. [Shallow and Page talk

apart, Ford and Host come forward.]

HOST     Hast thou no suit against my knight, my guest

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cavaliero?

FORD     None, I protest. But I’ll give you a pottle of burnt

sack to give me recourse to him – and tell him my

name is Brook, only for a jest.

HOST     My hand, bully: thou shalt have egress and

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regress – said I well? – and thy name shall be Brook. It

is a merry knight. [to all] Will you go, myn-heers?

SHALLOW     Have with you, mine host.

PAGE     I have heard the Frenchman hath good skill in his

rapier.

200

SHALLOW     Tut, sir, I could have told you more. In these

times you stand on distance – your passes, stoccadoes,

and I know not what. ’Tis the heart, Master Page, ’tis

here, ’tis here. I have seen the time, with my long

sword, I would have made you four tall fellows skip

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like rats.

HOST     Here, boys, here, here! Shall we wag?

PAGE     Have with you; I had rather hear them scold than

fight.     Exeunt Host, Shallow and Page.

FORD     Though Page be a secure fool, and stands so

210

firmly on his wife’s frailty, yet I cannot put off my

opinion so easily. She was in his company at Page’s

house, and what they made there I know not. Well, I

will look further into’t, and I have a disguise to sound

Falstaff. If I find her honest I lose not my labour. If she

215

be otherwise, ’tis labour well bestowed.     Exit.

2.2 Enter FALSTAFF and PISTOL.

FALSTAFF     I will not lend thee a penny.

PISTOL     Why then, the world’s mine oyster,

Which I with sword will open.

FALSTAFF     Not a penny. I have been content, sir, you

should lay my countenance to pawn; I have grated upon

5

my good friends for three reprieves for you and your

coach-fellow Nim, or else you had looked through the

grate like a gemini of baboons. I am damned in hell for

swearing to gentlemen my friends you were good

soldiers and tall fellows. And when Mistress Bridget

10

lost the handle of her fan, I took’t upon mine honour

thou hadst it not.

PISTOL     Didst not thou share? Hadst thou not fifteen

pence?

FALSTAFF     Reason, you rogue, reason. Thinkst thou I’ll

15

endanger my soul gratis? At a word: hang no more

about me, I am no gibbet for you. Go – a short knife

and a throng – to your manor of Picked-hatch, go!

You’ll not bear a letter for me, you rogue? You stand

upon your honour! Why, thou unconfinable baseness,

20

it is as much as I can do to keep the terms of my

honour precise. Ay, ay, I myself, sometimes, leaving the

fear of God on the left hand, and hiding mine honour

in my necessity, am fain to shuffle, to hedge, and to

lurch; and yet, you rogue, will ensconce your rags, your

25

cat-a-mountain looks, your red-lattice phrases, and

your bold beating oaths, under the shelter of your

honour! You will not do it! You!

PISTOL     I do relent. What would thou more of man?

Enter ROBIN.

ROBIN     Sir, here’s a woman would speak with you.

30

FALSTAFF     Let her approach.

Enter Mistress QUICKLY.

QUICKLY     Give your worship good morrow.

FALSTAFF     Good morrow, goodwife.

QUICKLY     Not so, an’t please your worship.

FALSTAFF     Good maid, then.

35

QUICKLY     That I am, I’ll be sworn, as my mother was

the first hour I was born.

FALSTAFF     I do believe the swearer. What with me?

QUICKLY     Shall I vouchsafe your worship a word or two?

FALSTAFF     Two thousand, fair woman; and I’ll

40

vouchsafe thee the hearing.

QUICKLY     There is one Mistress Ford, sir – I pray come

a little nearer this ways – I myself dwell with Master

Doctor Caius –

FALSTAFF     Well, on; Mistress Ford, you say –

45

QUICKLY     Your worship says very true. – I pray your

worship come a little nearer this ways.

FALSTAFF     I warrant you, nobody hears. – Mine own

people, mine own people.

QUICKLY     Are they so? Now God bless them, and make

50

them his servants.

FALSTAFF     Well, Mistress Ford – What of her?

QUICKLY     Why, sir, she’s a good creature – Lord, Lord,

your worship’s a wanton! Well, God forgive you, and

all of us, I pray –

55

FALSTAFF     Mistress Ford, come, Mistress Ford.

QUICKLY     Marry, this is the short and the long of it: you

have brought her into such a canary as ’tis wonderful.

The best courtier of them all, when the court lay at

Windsor, could never have brought her to such a

60

canary – yet there has been knights, and lords, and

gentlemen, with their coaches, I warrant you – coach

after coach, letter after letter, gift after gift, smelling so

sweetly, all musk, and so rushling, I warrant you, in silk

and gold, and in such alligant terms, and in such wine

65

and sugar of the best and the fairest, that would have

won any woman’s heart; and, I warrant you, they could

never get an eye-wink of her. I had myself twenty

angels given me this morning, but I defy all angels in

any such sort, as they say, but in the way of honesty;

70

and, I warrant you, they could never get her so much

as sip on a cup with the proudest of them all – and yet

there has been earls – nay, which is more, pensioners –

but, I warrant you, all is one with her.

FALSTAFF     But what says she to me? Be brief, my good

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she-Mercury.

QUICKLY     Marry, she hath received your letter, for the

which she thanks you a thousand times; and she gives

you to notify that her husband will be absence from

his house between ten and eleven.

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FALSTAFF     Ten and eleven.

QUICKLY     Ay, forsooth; and then you may come and see

the picture, she says, that you wot of. Master Ford her

husband will be from home. Alas, the sweet woman

leads an ill life with him: he’s a very jealousy man; she

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leads a very frampold life with him, good heart.

FALSTAFF     Ten and eleven. Woman, commend me to

her; I will not fail her.

QUICKLY     Why, you say well. But I have another

messenger to your worship. Mistress Page hath her

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hearty commendations to you too; and let me tell you

in your ear she’s as fartuous a civil modest wife, and

one – I tell you – that will not miss you morning nor

evening prayer, as any is in Windsor, whoe’er be the

other; and she bade me tell your worship that her

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husband is seldom from home, but she hopes there will

come a time. I never knew a woman so dote upon a man

– surely I think you have charms, la; yes, in truth.

FALSTAFF     Not I, I assure thee. Setting the attraction of

my good parts aside, I have no other charms.

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QUICKLY     Blessing on your heart for’t.

FALSTAFF     But I pray thee, tell me this: has Ford’s wife

and Page’s wife acquainted each other how they love

me?

QUICKLY     O God, no, sir: that were a jest indeed! They

105

have not so little grace, I hope; that were a trick indeed!

But Mistress Page would desire you to send her your

little page, of all loves: her husband has a marvellous

infection to the little page; and truly Master Page is an

honest man – never a wife in Windsor leads a better life

110

than she does: do what she will, say what she will, take

all, pay all, go to bed when she list, rise when she list,

all is as she will, and truly she deserves it, for if there

be a kind woman in Windsor, she is one. You must send

her your page, no remedy.

115

FALSTAFF     Why, I will.

QUICKLY     Nay, but do so then, and, look you, he may

come and go between you both; and in any case have a

nay-word, that you may know one another’s mind, and

the boy never need to understand anything; for ’tis not

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good that children should know any wickedness. Old

folks, you know, have discretion, as they say, and know

the world.

FALSTAFF     Fare thee well, commend me to them both.

There’s my purse; I am yet thy debtor. – Boy, go along

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with this woman. – This news distracts me.

     Exeunt Mistress Quickly and Robin.

PISTOL     This punk is one of Cupid’s carriers.

Clap on more sails, pursue, up with your fights,

Give fire! She is my prize, or ocean whelm them all!

     Exit.

FALSTAFF     Sayst thou so, old Jack? Go thy ways, I’ll

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make more of thy old body than I have done. Will they

yet look after thee? Wilt thou, after the expense of so

much money, be now a gainer? Good body, I thank

thee. Let them say ’tis grossly done – so it be fairly

done, no matter.

135

Enter BARDOLPH.

BARDOLPH     Sir John, there’s one Master Brook below

would fain speak with you and be acquainted with you

– and hath sent your worship a morning’s draught of

sack.

FALSTAFF     Brook is his name?

140

BARDOLPH     Ay, sir.

FALSTAFF     Call him in.     Exit Bardolph.

Such brooks are welcome to me, that o’erflows such

liquor. Ah ha, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, have

I encompassed you? Go to, via!

145

Enter FORD as BROOK, introduced by BARDOLPH.

FORD     God bless you, sir.

FALSTAFF     And you, sir. Would you speak with me?

FORD     I make bold, to press with so little preparation

upon you.

FALSTAFF     You’re welcome. What’s your will? – Give us

150

leave, drawer.     Exit Bardolph.

FORD     Sir, I am a gentleman that have spent much; my

name is Brook.

FALSTAFF     Good Master Brook, I desire more

acquaintance of you.

155

FORD     Good Sir John, I sue for yours; not to charge you,

for I must let you understand I think myself in better

plight for a lender than you are, the which hath some-

thing emboldened me to this unseasoned intrusion; for

they say if money go before, all ways do lie open.

160

FALSTAFF     Money is a good soldier, sir, and will on.

FORD     Truth, and I have a bag of money here troubles

me. If you will help to bear it, Sir John, take all, or

half, for easing me of the carriage.

FALSTAFF     Sir, I know not how I may deserve to be your

165

porter.

FORD     I will tell you, sir, if you will give me the hearing.

FALSTAFF     Speak, good Master Brook; I shall be glad to

be your servant.

FORD     Sir, I hear you are a scholar – I will be brief with

170

you – and you have been a man long known to me,

though I had never so good means as desire to make

myself acquainted with you. I shall discover a thing to

you, wherein I must very much lay open mine own

imperfection. But, good Sir John, as you have one eye

175

upon my follies, as you hear them unfolded, turn

another into the register of your own, that I may pass

with a reproof the easier, sith you yourself know how

easy it is to be such an offender.

FALSTAFF     Very well, sir, proceed.

180

FORD     There is a gentlewoman in this town, her

husband’s name is Ford.

FALSTAFF     Well, sir.

FORD     I have long loved her, and, I protest to you,

bestowed much on her, followed her with a doting

185

observance, engrossed opportunities to meet her, fee’d

every slight occasion that could but niggardly give me

sight of her: not only bought many presents to give

her, but have given largely to many, to know what she

would have given. Briefly, I have pursued her as love

190

hath pursued me, which hath been on the wing of all

occasions. But whatsoever I have merited, either in my

mind or in my means, meed, I am sure, I have received

none – unless experience be a jewel, that I have

purchased at an infinite rate, and that hath taught me

195

to say this:

Love like a shadow flies, when substance love pursues,

Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.

FALSTAFF     Have you received no promise of satisfaction

at her hands?

200

FORD     Never.

FALSTAFF     Have you importuned her to such a purpose?

FORD     Never.

FALSTAFF     Of what quality was your love, then?

FORD     Like a fair house built on another man’s ground,

205

so that I have lost my edifice by mistaking the place

where I erected it.

FALSTAFF     To what purpose have you unfolded this to me?

FORD     When I have told you that I have told you all.

210

Some say that, though she appear honest to me, yet in

other places she enlargeth her mirth so far that there

is shrewd construction made of her. Now, Sir John,

here is the heart of my purpose: you are a gentleman

of excellent breeding, admirable discourse, of great

215

admittance, authentic in your place and person,

generally allowed for your many warlike, courtlike and

learned preparations –

FALSTAFF     O, sir!

FORD     Believe it, for you know it. [Points to the

220

bag.] There is money: spend it, spend it, spend more,

spend all I have; only give me so much of your time in

exchange of it, as to lay an amiable siege to the honesty

of this Ford’s wife. Use your art of wooing, win her to

consent to you: if any man may, you may as soon as

225

any.

FALSTAFF     Would it apply well to the vehemency of

your affection that I should win what you would

enjoy? Methinks you prescribe to yourself very

preposterously.

230

FORD     O, understand my drift. She dwells so securely on

the excellency of her honour, that the folly of my soul

dares not present itself; she is too bright to be looked

against. Now, could I come to her with any detection

in my hand, my desires had instance and argument to

235

commend themselves. I could drive her then from the

ward of her purity, her reputation, her marriage vow

and a thousand other her defences, which now are too

too strongly embattled against me. What say you to’t,

Sir John?

240

FALSTAFF     Master Brook, I will first make bold with your

money. Next, give me your hand. And last, as I am a

gentleman, you shall, if you will, enjoy Ford’s wife.

FORD     O good sir!

FALSTAFF     I say you shall.

245

FORD     Want no money, Sir John, you shall want none.

FALSTAFF     Want no Mistress Ford, Master Brook, you

shall want none. I shall be with her, I may tell you, by

her own appointment; even as you came in to me, her

assistant, or go-between, parted from me. I say I shall

250

be with her between ten and eleven, for at that time

the jealous rascally knave her husband will be forth.

Come you to me at night: you shall know how I speed.

FORD     I am blessed in your acquaintance. Do you know

Ford, sir?

255

FALSTAFF     Hang him, poor cuckoldly knave, I know him

not. Yet I wrong him to call him poor: they say the

jealous wittolly knave hath masses of money, for the

which his wife seems to me well-favoured. I will use

her as the key of the cuckoldly rogue’s coffer, and

260

there’s my harvest-home.

FORD     I would you knew Ford, sir, that you might avoid

him if you saw him.

FALSTAFF     Hang him, mechanical salt-butter rogue! I will

stare him out of his wits, I will awe him with my cudgel:

265

it shall hang like a meteor o’er the cuckold’s horns.

Master Brook, thou shalt know I will predominate over

the peasant, and thou shalt lie with his wife. Come to

me soon at night: Ford’s a knave, and I will aggravate

his style. Thou, Master Brook, shalt know him for

270

knave and cuckold. Come to me soon at night.

Exit.

FORD     What a damned epicurean rascal is this? My heart

is ready to crack with impatience. Who says this is

improvident jealousy? My wife hath sent to him, the

hour is fixed, the match is made: would any man have

275

thought this? See the hell of having a false woman: my

bed shall be abused, my coffers ransacked, my

reputation gnawn at; and I shall not only receive this

villainous wrong, but stand under the adoption of

abominable terms, and by him that does me this wrong.

280

Terms, names! Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer, well;

Barbason, well; yet they are devils’ additions, the names

of fiends. But cuckold? Wittol? Cuckold! The devil

himself hath not such a name! Page is an ass, a secure

ass; he will trust his wife, he will not be jealous. I will

285

rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the

Welshman with my cheese, an Irishman with my aqua-

vitae bottle, or a thief to walk my ambling gelding, than

my wife with herself. Then she plots, then she

ruminates, then she devises; and what they think in

290

their hearts they may effect – they will break their

hearts but they will effect. God be praised for _my

jealousy! Eleven o’clock the hour – I will prevent this,

detect my wife, be revenged on Falstaff and laugh at

Page. I will about it: better three hours too soon than a

295

minute too late. Fie, fie, fie! Cuckold, cuckold, cuckold!

Exit.

2.3 Enter Doctor CAIUS and RUGBY.

CAIUS     Jack Rugby!

RUGBY     Sir?

CAIUS     Vat is the clock, Jack?

RUGBY     ’Tis past the hour, sir, that Sir Hugh promised

to meet.

5

CAIUS     By gar, he has save his soul, dat he is no-come.

He has pray his Pible well, dat he is no-come. By gar,

Jack Rugby, he is dead already, if he be come.

RUGBY     He is wise, sir; he knew your worship would kill

him if he came.

10

CAIUS     By gar, de herring is no dead, so as I vill kill him.

Take your rapier, Jack; I vill tell you how I vill kill him.

RUGBY     Alas, sir, I cannot fence.

CAIUS     Villainy, take your rapier.

RUGBY     Forbear; here’s company.

15

Enter SHALLOW, PAGE, HOST and SLENDER.

HOST     God bless thee, bully Doctor.

SHALLOW     God save you, Master Doctor Caius.

PAGE     Now, good Master Doctor.

SLENDER     ‘Give you good morrow, sir.

CAIUS     Vat be all you one, two, tree, four, come for?

20

HOST     To see thee fight, to see thee foin, to see thee

traverse; to see thee here, to see thee there; to see thee

pass thy punto, thy stock, thy reverse, thy distance, thy

montant. Is he dead, my Ethiopian? Is he dead, my

François? Ha, bully? What says my Aesculapius, my

25

Galen, my heart of elder, ha? Is he dead, bully stale, is

he dead?

CAIUS     By gar, he is de coward Jack-priest of de vorld: he

is not show his face.

HOST     Thou art a castalian king urinal – Hector of

30

Greece, my boy!

CAIUS     I pray you bear witness that me have stay – six or

seven – two, tree hours for him, and he is no-come.

SHALLOW     He is the wiser man, Master Doctor: he is a

curer of souls and you a curer of bodies. If you should

35

fight, you go against the hair of your professions. Is it

not true, Master Page?

PAGE     Master Shallow, you have yourself been a great

fighter, though now a man of peace.

SHALLOW     Bodykins, Master Page, though I now be old,

40

and of the peace, if I see a sword out, my finger itches

to make one. Though we are justices and doctors and

churchmen, Master Page, we have some salt of our

youth in us – we are the sons of women, Master Page.

PAGE     ’Tis true, Master Shallow.

45

SHALLOW     It will be found so, Master Page. – Master

Doctor Caius, I am come to fetch you home. I am

sworn of the peace: you have showed yourself a wise

physician, and Sir Hugh hath shown himself a wise

and patient churchman. You must go with me, Master

50

Doctor.

HOST     Pardon, guest justice. – A word, Monsieur

Mockwater.

CAIUS     Mockvater? Vat is dat?

HOST     Mockwater, in our English tongue, is valour, bully.

55

CAIUS     By gar, then I have as much mockvater as de

Englishman. Scurvy Jack-dog priest! By gar, me vill

cut his ears.

HOST     He will clapper-claw thee titely, bully.

CAIUS     Clapper-de-claw? Vat is dat?

60

HOST     That is, he will make thee amends.

CAIUS     By gar, me do look he shall clapper-de-claw me,

for, by gar, me vill have it.

HOST     And I will provoke him to’t, or let him wag.

CAIUS     Me tank you for dat.

65

HOST     And moreover, bully – but first, Master guest and

Master Page, and eke Cavaliero Slender, go you

through the town to Frogmore.

PAGE [aside to Host] Sir Hugh is there, is he?

HOST [aside to Page] He is there. See what humour he

70

is in; and I will bring the Doctor about by the fields.

Will it do well?

SHALLOW [aside to Host] We will do it.

PAGE, SHALLOW, SLENDER     Adieu, good Master Doctor.

     Exeunt all but Host, Caius and Rugby.

CAIUS     By gar, me vill kill de priest, for he speak for a

75

jackanape to Anne Page.

HOST     Let him die. Sheathe thy impatience. Throw cold

water on thy choler. Go about the fields with me

through Frogmore. I will bring thee where Mistress

Anne Page is, at a farmhouse a-feasting, and thou shalt

80

woo her. Cried game; said I well?

CAIUS     By gar, me dank you vor dat; by gar, I love you;

and I shall procure-a you de good guest: de earl, de

knight, de lords, de gentlemen, my patients.

HOST     For the which I will be thy adversary toward

85

Anne Page. Said I well?

CAIUS     By gar, ’tis good; vell said.

HOST     Let us wag then.

CAIUS     Come at my heels, Jack Rugby.     Exeunt.

3.1 Enter EVANS and SIMPLE.

EVANS     I pray you now, good Master Slender’s

servingman, and friend Simple by your name, which

way have you looked for Master Caius, that calls

himself Doctor of Physic?

SIMPLE     Marry, sir, the Petty-ward, the Park-ward,

5

every way: Old Windsor way, and every way but the

town way.

EVANS     I most fehemently desire you, you will also look

that way.

SIMPLE     I will, sir. [Stands aside on the lookout.]

10

EVANS     Jeshu pless my soul, how full of cholers I am,

and trempling of mind. I shall be glad if he have

deceived me. How melancholies I am. I will knog his

urinals about his knave’s costard when I have good

opportunities for the ‘ork. Pless my soul!

15

[Sings.] To shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sings madrigals –

There will we make our peds of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies.

To shallow –

20

Mercy on me, I have a great dispositions to cry.

[Sings.] Melodious birds sing madrigals –

Whenas I sat in Pabylon –

And a thousand vagram posies.

To shallow, etc.

25

SIMPLE     Yonder he is coming, this way, Sir Hugh.

EVANS     He’s welcome.

[Sings.] To shallow rivers, to whose falls –

God prosper the right. What weapons is he?

SIMPLE     No weapons, sir. There comes my master,

30

Master Shallow, and another gentleman; from

Frogmore, over the stile, this way.

EVANS     Pray you, give me my gown – or else keep it in

your arms.

Enter PAGE, SHALLOW and SLENDER.

SHALLOW     How now, Master Parson? Good morrow,

35

good Sir Hugh. Keep a gamester from the dice and a

good student from his book, and it is wonderful.

SLENDER     Ah, sweet Anne Page!

PAGE     God save you, good Sir Hugh.

EVANS     God pless you from his mercy’s sake, all of you.

40

SHALLOW     What, the sword and the word? Do you study

them both, Master Parson?

PAGE     And youthful still – in your doublet and hose, this

raw-rheumatic day?

EVANS     There is reasons and causes for it.

45

PAGE     We are come to you to do a good office, Master

Parson.

EVANS     Fery well; what is it?

PAGE     Yonder is a most reverend gentleman who, belike,

having received wrong by some person, is at most odds

50

with his own gravity and patience that ever you saw.

SHALLOW     I have lived fourscore years and upward; I

never heard a man of his place, gravity and learning so

wide of his own respect.

EVANS     What is he?

55

PAGE     I think you know him: Master Doctor Caius, the

renowned French physician.

EVANS     Got’s will and his passion of my heart, I had as

lief you would tell me of a mess of porridge.

PAGE     Why?

60

EVANS     He has no more knowledge in Hibocrates and

Galen, and he is a knave besides – a cowardly knave as

you would desires to be acquainted withal.

PAGE     I warrant you, he’s the man should fight with him.

SLENDER     O sweet Anne Page!

65

SHALLOW     It appears so by his weapons.

Enter CAIUS and HOST followed by RUGBY.

Keep them asunder: here comes Doctor Caius. [They

offer to fight.]

PAGE     Nay, good Master Parson, keep in your weapon.

SHALLOW     So do you, good Master Doctor.

HOST     Disarm them, and let them question. Let them

70

keep their limbs whole and hack our English.

CAIUS     I pray you let-a me speak a word with your ear.

Vherefore vill you not meet-a me?

EVANS     Pray you, use your patience. In good time!

CAIUS     By gar, you are de coward, de Jack-dog, John ape.

75

EVANS [aside to Caius] Pray you, let us not be laughing

stocks to other men’s humours. I desire you in

friendship, and I will one way or other make you

amends. [aloud] By Jeshu, I will knog your urinal

about your knave’s cogscomb.

80

CAIUS     Diable! Jack Rugby, mine host de Jarteer, have I

not stay for him to kill him? Have I not, at de place I

did appoint.

EVANS     As I am a Christians soul, now look you: this is

the place appointed, I’ll be judgement by mine host of

85

the Garter.

HOST     Peace, I say, Gallia and Gaul, French and Welsh,

soul-curer and body-curer.

CAIUS     Ay, dat is very good, excellent.

HOST     Peace, I say, hear mine host of the Garter. Am I

90

politic? Am I subtle? Am I a Machiavel? Shall I lose my

doctor? No, he gives me the potions and the motions.

Shall I lose my parson? My priest? My Sir Hugh? No,

he gives me the proverbs and the no-verbs. [to Caius]

Give me thy hand, terrestrial; so. [to Evans] Give me

95

thy hand, celestial; so. – Boys of art, I have deceived you

both: I have directed you to wrong places. Your hearts

are mighty, your skins are whole, and let burnt sack be

the issue. – Come, lay their swords to pawn. Follow me,

lads of peace, follow, follow, follow.     Exit.

100

SHALLOW     Afore God, a mad host. Follow, gentlemen,

follow.

SLENDER     O sweet Anne Page!

     Exeunt Shallow, Slender and Page.

CAIUS     Ha, do I perceive dat? Have you make-a de sot of

us, ha, ha?

105

EVANS     This is well, he has made us his vlouting-stog. I

desire you that we may be friends, and let us knog our

prains together to be revenge on this same scall,

scurvy, cogging companion, the host of the Garter.

CAIUS     By gar, with all my heart. He promise to bring

110

me where is Anne Page; by gar, he deceive me too.

evans Well, I will smite his noddles. Pray you follow.

Exeunt.

3.2 Enter MISTRESS PAGE, following ROBIN.

MISTRESS PAGE     Nay, keep your way, little gallant; you

were wont to be a follower, but now you are a leader.

Whether had you rather, lead mine eyes or eye your

master’s heels?

ROBIN     I had rather, forsooth, go before you like a man

5

than follow him like a dwarf.

MISTRESS PAGE     O, you are a flattering boy: now I see

you’ll be a courtier.

Enter FORD.

FORD     Well met, Mistress Page. Whither go you?

MISTRESS PAGE     Truly, sir, to see your wife. Is she at

10

home?

FORD     Ay, and as idle as she may hang together, for want

of company. I think if your husbands were dead you

two would marry.

MISTRESS PAGE     Be sure of that – two other husbands.

15

FORD     Where had you this pretty weathercock?

MISTRESS PAGE     I cannot tell what the dickens his name

is my husband had him of. – What do you call your

knight’s name, sirrah?

ROBIN     Sir John Falstaff.

20

FORD     Sir John Falstaff?

MISTRESS PAGE     He, he; I can never hit on’s name. There

is such a league between my goodman and he! Is your

wife at home indeed?

FORD     Indeed she is.

25

MISTRESS PAGE     By your leave, sir, I am sick till I see her.

     Exit with Robin.

FORD     Hath Page any brains? Hath he any eyes? Hath he

any thinking? Sure they sleep, he hath no use of them.

Why, this boy will carry a letter twenty mile, as easy as

a cannon will shoot point-blank twelve score. He pieces

30

out his wife’s inclination, he gives her folly motion and

advantage. And now she’s going to my wife, and

Falstaff ‘s boy with her. A man may hear this shower

sing in the wind: and Falstaff ‘s boy with her! Good

plots they are laid, and our revolted wives share

35

damnation together. Well, I will take him, then torture

my wife, pluck the borrowed veil of modesty from the

so-seeming Mistress Page, divulge Page himself for a

secure and wilful Actaeon, and to these violent

proceedings all my neighbours shall cry aim. [Clock

40

strikes.] The clock gives me my cue, and my assurance

bids me search: there I shall find Falstaff. I shall be

rather praised for this than mocked, for it is as positive

as the earth is firm that Falstaff is there. I will go.

Enter SHALLOW, PAGE, HOST, SLENDER, CAIUS, EVANS and RUGBY.

SHALLOW, PAGE, etc. Well met, Master Ford.

45

FORD     Trust me, a good knot. I have good cheer at

home, and I pray you all go with me.

SHALLOW     I must excuse myself, Master Ford.

SLENDER     And so must I, sir. We have appointed to dine

with Mistress Anne, and I would not break with her

50

for more money than I’ll speak of.

SHALLOW     We have lingered about a match between

Anne Page and my cousin Slender, and this day we

shall have our answer.

SLENDER     I hope I have your good will, father Page.

55

PAGE     You have, Master Slender, I stand wholly for you.

– But my wife, Master Doctor, is for you altogether.

CAIUS     Ay, be-gar, and de maid is love-a me: my nursh-

a Quickly tell me so mush.

HOST     What say you to young Master Fenton? He capers,

60

he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he

speaks holiday, he smells April and May: he will carry’t,

he will carry’t – ’tis in his buttons he will carry’t.

PAGE     Not by my consent, I promise you. The gentleman

is of no having, he kept company with the wild Prince

65

and Poins. He is of too high a region, he knows too

much – no, he shall not knit a knot in his fortunes with

the finger of my substance. If he take her, let him take

her simply: the wealth I have waits on my consent, and

my consent goes not that way.

70

FORD     I beseech you heartily, some of you go home with

me to dinner. Besides your cheer you shall have sport:

I will show you a monster. Master Doctor, you shall

go; so shall you, Master Page, and you, Sir Hugh.

SHALLOW     Well, fare you well. We shall have the freer

75

wooing at Master Page’s. Exeunt Shallow and Slender.

CAIUS     Go home, John Rugby; I come anon.

Exit Rugby.

HOST     Farewell, my hearts. I will to my honest knight

Falstaff, and drink canary with him.     Exit.

FORD [aside] I think I shall drink in pipe-wine first with

80

him: I’ll make him dance. – Will you go, gentles?

ALL     Have with you to see this monster. Exeunt.

3.3 Enter MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE.

MISTRESS FORD     What, John! What, Robert!

MISTRESS PAGE     Quickly, quickly! Is the buck-basket –

MISTRESS FORD     I warrant. – What, Robert, I say!

Enter JOHN and ROBERT with a great buck-basket.

MISTRESS PAGE     Come, come, come.

MISTRESS FORD     Here, set it down.

5

MISTRESS PAGE     Give your men the charge; we must be

brief.

MISTRESS FORD     Marry, as I told you before, John and

Robert, be ready here hard by in the brew-house, and,

when I suddenly call you, come forth and, without any

10

pause or staggering, take this basket on your shoulders.

That done, trudge with it in all haste, and carry it

among the whitsters in Datchet Mead, and there empty

it in the muddy ditch close by the Thames side.

MISTRESS PAGE     You will do it?

15

MISTRESS FORD     I ha’ told them over and over, they lack

no direction. – Be gone, and come when you are called.

Exeunt John and Robert.

Enter ROBIN.

MISTRESS PAGE     Here comes little Robin.

MISTRESS FORD     How now, my eyas-musket, what news

with you?

20

ROBIN     My master, Sir John, is come in at your back

door, Mistress Ford, and requests your company.

MISTRESS PAGE     You little Jack-a-Lent, have you been

true to us?

ROBIN     Ay, I’ll be sworn. My master knows not of your

25

being here, and hath threatened to put me into

everlasting liberty if I tell you of it; for he swears he’ll

turn me away.

MISTRESS PAGE     Thou’rt a good boy. This secrecy of

thine shall be a tailor to thee, and shall make thee a

30

new doublet and hose. – I’ll go hide me.

MISTRESS FORD     Do so. – Go tell thy master I am alone.

Exit Robin.

Mistress Page, remember you your cue.

MISTRESS PAGE     I warrant thee: if I do not act it, hiss me.

MISTRESS FORD     Go to, then. We’ll use this unwholesome

35

humidity, this gross watery pumpion; we’ll teach him to

know turtles from jays.     Exit Mistress Page.

Enter FALSTAFF.

FALSTAFF     Have I caught thee, my heavenly jewel? Why,

now let me die, for I have lived long enough: this is the

period of my ambition. O this blessed hour!

40

MISTRESS FORD     O sweet Sir John!

FALSTAFF     Mistress Ford, I cannot cog, I cannot prate,

Mistress Ford; now shall I sin in my wish: I would thy

husband were dead – I’ll speak it before the best lord:

I would make thee my lady.

45

MISTRESS FORD     I your lady, Sir John? Alas, I should be

a pitiful lady.

FALSTAFF     Let the court of France show me such

another! I see how thine eye would emulate the

diamond: thou hast the right arched beauty of the

50

brow that becomes the ship-tire, the tire-valiant, or

any tire of Venetian admittance.

MISTRESS FORD     A plain kerchief, Sir John: my brows

become nothing else, nor that well neither.

FALSTAFF     By the Lord, thou art a tyrant to say so. Thou

55

wouldst make an absolute courtier, and the firm

fixture of thy foot would give an excellent motion to

thy gait, in a semi-circled farthingale. I see what thou

wert if Fortune thy foe were not, Nature thy friend.

Come, thou canst not hide it.

60

MISTRESS FORD     Believe me, there’s no such thing in me.

FALSTAFF     What made me love thee? Let that persuade

thee there’s something extraordinary in thee. Come, I

cannot cog and say thou art this and that, like a many

of these lisping hawthorn buds that come like women

65

in men’s apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in

simple time. I cannot – but I love thee, none but thee;

and thou deservest it.

MISTRESS FORD     Do not betray me, sir; I fear you love

Mistress Page.

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FALSTAFF     Thou mightst as well say I love to walk by the

Counter gate, which is as hateful to me as the reek of

a lime-kiln.

MISTRESS FORD     Well, heaven knows how I love you, and

you shall one day find it.

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FALSTAFF     Keep in that mind, I’ll deserve it.

MISTRESS FORD     Nay, I must tell you, so you do; or else

I could not be in that mind.

Enter ROBIN.

ROBIN     Mistress Ford, Mistress Ford, here’s Mistress

80

Page at the door, sweating, and blowing, and looking

wildly, and would needs speak with you presently.

FALSTAFF     She shall not see me; I will ensconce me

behind the arras.

MISTRESS FORD     Pray you do so; she’s a very tattling

woman. [Falstaff hides behind the arras.]

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Enter MISTRESS PAGE.

What’s the matter? How now?

MISTRESS PAGE     O Mistress Ford, what have you done?

You’re shamed, you’re overthrown, you’re undone for

ever!

MISTRESS FORD     What’s the matter, good Mistress Page?

90

MISTRESS PAGE     O well-a-day, Mistress Ford, having an

honest man to your husband, to give him such cause of

suspicion!

MISTRESS FORD     What cause of suspicion?

MISTRESS PAGE     What cause of suspicion? Out upon

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you: how am I mistook in you!

MISTRESS FORD     Why, alas, what’s the matter?

MISTRESS PAGE     Your husband’s coming hither, woman,

with all the officers in Windsor, to search for a gentleman

that he says is here now in the house, by your consent,

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to take an ill advantage of his absence. You are undone.

MISTRESS FORD     ’Tis not so, I hope.

MISTRESS PAGE     Pray heaven it be not so, that you have

such a man here. But ’tis most certain your husband’s

coming, with half Windsor at his heels, to search for

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such a one. I come before to tell you. If you know

yourself clear, why, I am glad of it; but if you have a

friend here, convey, convey him out. Be not amazed,

call all your senses to you, defend your reputation, or

bid farewell to your good life for ever.

110

MISTRESS FORD     What shall I do? There is a gentleman,

my dear friend; and I fear not mine own shame so

much as his peril. I had rather than a thousand pound

he were out of the house.

MISTRESS PAGE     For shame, never stand ‘you had rather

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and you had rather’! Your husband’s here at hand:

bethink you of some conveyance – in the house you

cannot hide him. – O, how have you deceived me! –

Look, here is a basket: if he be of any reasonable stature,

he may creep in here, and throw foul linen upon him, as

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if it were going to bucking; or – it is whiting time – send

him by your two men to Datchet Mead.

MISTRESS FORD     He’s too big to go in there. What shall

I do?

FALSTAFF [Comes out of hiding.] Let me see’t, let me

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see’t, O let me see’t! I’ll in, I’ll in. – Follow your

friend’s counsel. I’ll in.

MISTRESS PAGE     What, Sir John Falstaff? (aside to him)

Are these your letters, knight?

FALSTAFF [aside to her] I love thee, and none but thee.

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Help me away. Let me creep in here. I’ll never –

[Goes into the basket, they put clothes over him.]

MISTRESS PAGE     Help to cover your master, boy. – Call

your men, Mistress Ford. – You dissembling knight!

Exit Robin.

MISTRESS FORD     What, John! Robert, John!

Enter JOHN and ROBERT.

Go, take up these clothes here, quickly. Where’s the

135

cowl-staff? – Look how you drumble! Carry them to

the laundress in Datchet Mead; quickly, come.

Enter FORD, PAGE, CAIUS and EVANS.

FORD     Pray you, come near. If I suspect without cause,

why, then make sport at me, then let me be your jest,

I deserve it. – How now? Whither bear you this?

140

SERVANT     To the laundress, forsooth.

MISTRESS FORD     Why, what have you to do whither they

bear it? You were best meddle with buck-washing!

FORD     Buck? I would I could wash myself of the buck!

Buck, buck, buck! Ay, buck! I warrant you, buck – and

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of the season too, it shall appear.

     Exeunt John and Robert with the basket.

Gentlemen, I have dreamed tonight; I’ll tell you my

dream. Here, here, here be my keys: ascend my

chambers, search, seek, find out. I’ll warrant we’ll

unkennel the fox. Let me stop this way first. [Locks the

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door.] So, now escape!

PAGE     Good Master Ford, be contented; you wrong

yourself too much.

FORD     True, Master Page. – Up, gentlemen, you shall

see sport anon. Follow me, gentlemen.     Exit.

155

EVANS     By Jeshu, this is fery fantastical humours and

jealousies.

CAIUS     By gar, ’tis no the fashion of France; it is not

jealous in France.

PAGE     Nay, follow him, gentlemen; see the issue of his

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search.     Exeunt Page, Caius and Evans.

MISTRESS PAGE     Is there not a double excellency in this?

MISTRESS FORD     I know not which pleases me better,

that my husband is deceived, or Sir John.

MISTRESS PAGE     What a taking was he in, when your

165

husband asked who was in the basket!

MISTRESS FORD     I am half afraid he will have a need of

washing: so throwing him into the water will do him a

benefit.

MISTRESS PAGE     Hang him, dishonest rascal! I would all

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of the same strain were in the same distress.

MISTRESS FORD     I think my husband hath some special

suspicion of Falstaff ‘s being here, for I never saw him

so gross in his jealousy till now.

MISTRESS PAGE     I will lay a plot to try that, and we will

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yet have more tricks with Falstaff. His dissolute

disease will scarce obey this medicine.

MISTRESS FORD     Shall we send that foolish carrion

Mistress Quickly to him, and excuse his throwing into

the water, and give him another hope, to betray him to

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another punishment?

MISTRESS PAGE     We will do it: let him be sent for

tomorrow eight o’clock to have amends.

Enter FORD, PAGE, CAIUS and EVANS.

FORD     I cannot find him. Maybe the knave bragged of

that he could not compass.

185

MISTRESS PAGE [aside to Mistress Ford] Heard you that?

MISTRESS FORD     You use me well, Master Ford, do you?

FORD     Ay, I do so.

MISTRESS FORD     Heaven make you better than your

thoughts.

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FORD     Amen.

MISTRESS PAGE     You do yourself mighty wrong, Master

Ford.

FORD     Ay, ay; I must bear it.

EVANS     By Jeshu, if there be anypody in the house, and

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in the chambers, and in the coffers, and in the presses,

heaven forgive my sins at the day of judgement!

CAIUS     Be gar, nor I too; there is nobodies.

PAGE     Fie, fie, Master Ford, are you not ashamed? What

spirit, what devil, suggests this imagination? I would

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not ha’ your distemper in this kind, for the wealth of

Windsor Castle.

FORD     ’Tis my fault, Master Page, I suffer for it.

EVANS     You suffer for a pad conscience. Your wife is as

honest a ‘omans as I will desires among five thousand,

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and five hundred too.

CAIUS     By gar, I see ’tis an honest woman.

FORD     Well, I promised you a dinner. Come, come, walk

in the park, I pray you pardon me; I will hereafter

make known to you why I have done this. Come, wife,

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come, Mistress Page, I pray you pardon me, pray

heartily pardon me.

PAGE [to Caius and Evans] Let’s go in, gentlemen; but

trust me, we’ll mock him. [to all] I do invite you

tomorrow morning to my house to breakfast; after,

215

we’ll a-birding together, I have a fine hawk for the

bush. Shall it be so?

FORD     Anything.

EVANS     If there is one, I shall make two in the company.

CAIUS     If there be one or two, I shall make-a the turd.

220

FORD     Pray you go, Master Page.

     Exeunt all but Evans and Caius.

EVANS     I pray you now remembrance tomorrow on the

lousy knave, mine host.

CAIUS     Dat is good, by gar, with all my heart.

EVANS     A lousy knave, to have his gibes and his

225

mockeries!     Exeunt.

3.4 Enter FENTON and ANNE Page.

FENTON     I see I cannot get thy father’s love,

Therefore no more turn me to him, sweet Nan.

ANNE     Alas, how then?

FENTON     Why, thou must be thyself.

He doth object I am too great of birth,

And that, my state being galled with my expense,

5

I seek to heal it only by his wealth.

Besides these, other bars he lays before me:

My riots past, my wild societies –

And tells me ’tis a thing impossible

I should love thee, but as a property.

10

ANNE     Maybe he tells you true.

FENTON     No, God so speed me in my time to come!

Albeit I will confess thy father’s wealth

Was the first motive that I wooed thee, Anne,

Yet, wooing thee, I found thee of more value

15

Than stamps in gold or sums in sealed bags.

And ’tis the very riches of thyself

That now I aim at.

ANNE     Gentle Master Fenton,

Yet seek my father’s love, still seek it, sir.

If opportunity and humblest suit

20

Cannot attain it, why then – hark you hither –

[They talk apart.]

Enter SHALLOW, SLENDER and Mistress QUICKLY.

SHALLOW     Break their talk, Mistress Quickly. My

kinsman shall speak for himself.

SLENDER     I’ll make a shaft or a bolt on’t. ‘Slid, ’tis but

venturing.

25

SHALLOW     Be not dismayed.

SLENDER     No, she shall not dismay me: I care not for

that, but that I am afeard.

QUICKLY [to Anne] Hark ye, Master Slender would

speak a word with you.

30

ANNE     I come to him. – [aside] This is my father’s choice.

O, what a world of vile ill-favoured faults

Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!

QUICKLY     And how does good Master Fenton? Pray you,

a word with you. [Draws Fenton aside.]

35

SHALLOW [to Slender] She’s coming; to her, coz. O boy,

thou hadst a father!

SLENDER     I had a father, Mistress Anne, my uncle can

tell you good jests of him. – Pray you, uncle, tell

Mistress Anne the jest how my father stole two geese

40

out of a pen, good uncle.

SHALLOW     Mistress Anne, my cousin loves you.

SLENDER     Ay, that I do, as well as I love any woman in

Gloucestershire.

SHALLOW     He will maintain you like a gentlewoman.

45

SLENDER     Ay, that I will, come cut and long-tail, under

the degree of a squire.

SHALLOW     He will make you a hundred and fifty pounds

jointure.

ANNE     Good Master Shallow, let him woo for himself.

50

SHALLOW     Marry, I thank you for it, I thank you for that

good comfort. – She calls you, coz; I’ll leave you.

ANNE     Now, Master Slender.

SLENDER     Now, good Mistress Anne.

ANNE     What is your will?

55

SLENDER     My will? ‘Od’s heartlings, that’s a pretty jest

indeed! I ne’er made my will yet, I thank God: I am

not such a sickly creature, I give God praise.

ANNE     I mean, Master Slender, what would you with me?

SLENDER     Truly, for mine own part, I would little or

60

nothing with you. Your father and my uncle hath

made motions: if it be my luck, so; if not, happy man

be his dole. They can tell you how things go better

than I can. – You may ask your father: here he comes.

Enter PAGE and MISTRESS PAGE.

PAGE

Now, Master Slender, – love him, daughter Anne –

65

Why, how now? What does Master Fenton here?

You wrong me, sir, thus still to haunt my house.

I told you, sir, my daughter is disposed of.

FENTON     Nay, Master Page, be not impatient.

MISTRESS PAGE

Good Master Fenton, come not to my child.

70

PAGE     She is no match for you.

FENTON     Sir, will you hear me?

PAGE     No, good Master Fenton. –

Come, Master Shallow; come, son Slender, in. –

Knowing my mind, you wrong me, Master Fenton.

     Exit with Shallow and Slender.

QUICKLY [to Fenton] Speak to Mistress Page.

75

FENTON

Good Mistress Page, for that I love your daughter

In such a righteous fashion as I do,

Perforce, against all checks, rebukes and manners,

I must advance the colours of my love

And not retire. Let me have your good will.

80

ANNE     Good mother, do not marry me to yond fool.

MISTRESS PAGE     I mean it not, I seek you a better

husband.

QUICKLY [aside] That’s my master, Master Doctor.

ANNE     Alas, I had rather be set quick i’th’ earth,

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And bowled to death with turnips.

MISTRESS PAGE

Come, trouble not yourself, good Master Fenton,

I will not be your friend, nor enemy.

My daughter will I question how she loves you,

And as I find her, so am I affected.

90

Till then, farewell, sir; she must needs go in,

Her father will be angry.

FENTON     Farewell, gentle mistress; farewell, Nan.

     Exeunt Mistress Page and Anne.

QUICKLY     This is my doing, now. ‘Nay,’ said I, ‘will you

cast away your child on a fool, and a physician? Look

95

on Master Fenton!’ This is my doing.

FENTON     I thank thee, and I pray thee once tonight

Give my sweet Nan this ring. – There’s for thy pains.

QUICKLY     Now heaven send thee good fortune!

Exit Fenton.

A kind heart he hath: a woman would run through fire

100

and water for such a kind heart. But yet I would my

master had Mistress Anne, or I would Master Slender

had her; or, in sooth, I would Master Fenton had her.

I will do what I can for them all three, for so I have

promised and I’ll be as good as my word – but

105

speciously for Master Fenton. Well, I must of another

errand to Sir John Falstaff from my two mistresses –

what a beast am I to slack it!     Exit.

3.5 Enter FALSTAFF.

FALSTAFF     Bardolph, I say!

Enter BARDOLPH.

BARDOLPH     Here, sir.

FALSTAFF     Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in’t.

Exit Bardolph.

Have I lived to be carried in a basket like a barrow of

butcher’s offal, and to be thrown in the Thames? Well,

5

if I be served such another trick, I’ll have my brains

ta’en out and buttered, and give them to a dog for a

New Year’s gift. ‘Sblood, the rogues slighted me into

the river with as little remorse as they would have

drowned a blind bitch’s puppies, fifteen i’the litter; and

10

you may know by my size that I have a kind of alacrity

in sinking: if the bottom were as deep as hell, I should

down. I had been drowned, but that the shore was

shelvy and shallow – a death that I abhor, for the water

swells a man – and what a thing should I have been,

15

when I had been swelled? I should have been a

mountain of mummy!

Enter BARDOLPH with sack.

BARDOLPH     Here’s Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with

you.

FALSTAFF     Come, let me pour in some sack to the Thames

20

water, for my belly’s as cold as if I had swallowed

snowballs for pills to cool the reins. – Call her in.

BARDOLPH     Come in, woman.

Enter Mistress QUICKLY.

QUICKLY     By your leave, I cry you mercy! Give your

worship good morrow.

25

FALSTAFF     Take away these chalices. Go, brew me a

pottle of sack finely.

BARDOLPH     With eggs, sir?

FALSTAFF     Simple of itself. I’ll no pullet sperm in my

brewage.     Exit Bardolph.

30

How now?

QUICKLY     Marry, sir, I come to your worship from

Mistress Ford.

FALSTAFF     Mistress Ford? I have had ford enough. I was

thrown into the ford, I have my belly full of ford.

35

QUICKLY     Alas the day, good heart, that was not her

fault. She does so take on with her men: they mistook

their erection.

FALSTAFF     So did I mine, to build upon a foolish

woman’s promise.

40

QUICKLY     Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would

yearn your heart to see it. Her husband goes this

morning a-birding. She desires you once more to

come to her, between eight and nine. I must carry her

word quickly; she’ll make you amends, I warrant you.

45

FALSTAFF     Well, I will visit her; tell her so, and bid her

think what a man is. Let her consider his frailty, and

then judge of my merit.

QUICKLY     I will tell her.

FALSTAFF     Do so. Between nine and ten, sayst thou?

50

QUICKLY     Eight and nine, sir.

FALSTAFF     Well, be gone. I will not miss her.

QUICKLY     Peace be with you, sir.     Exit.

FALSTAFF     I marvel I hear not of Master Brook; he sent

me word to stay within. I like his money well. – By

55

the mass, here he comes.

Enter FORD as BROOK.

FORD     God save you, sir.

FALSTAFF     Now, Master Brook, you come to know what

hath passed between me and Ford’s wife.

FORD     That indeed, Sir John, is my business.

60

FALSTAFF     Master Brook, I will not lie to you. I was at

her house the hour she appointed me.

FORD     And how sped you, sir?

FALSTAFF     Very ill-favouredly, Master Brook.

FORD     How so, sir? Did she change her determination?

65

FALSTAFF     No, Master Brook, but the peaking cornuto

her husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual

‘larum of jealousy, comes me in the instant of our

encounter, after we had embraced, kissed, protested,

and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and

70

at his heels a rabble of his companions, thither

provoked and instigated by his distemper, and,

forsooth, to search his house for his wife’s love.

FORD     What, while you were there?

FALSTAFF     While I was there.

75

FORD     And did he search for you, and could not find

you?

FALSTAFF     You shall hear. As good luck would have it,

comes in one Mistress Page, gives intelligence of Ford’s

approach; and in her invention, and Ford’s wife’s

distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket.

80

FORD     A buck-basket?

FALSTAFF     By the Lord, a buck-basket! Rammed me in

with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings,

greasy napkins, that, Master Brook, there was the

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rankest compound of villainous smell that ever

offended nostril.

FORD     And how long lay you there?

FALSTAFF     Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have

suffered to bring this woman to evil for your good.

90

Being thus crammed in the basket, a couple of Ford’s

knaves, his hinds, were called forth by their mistress, to

carry me in the name of foul clothes to Datchet Lane.

They took me on their shoulders, met the jealous knave

their master in the door, who asked them once or twice

95

what they had in their basket. I quaked for fear lest the

lunatic knave would have searched it; but Fate,

ordaining he should be a cuckold, held his hand. Well,

on went he for a search, and away went I for foul

clothes. But mark the sequel, Master Brook. I suffered

100

the pangs of three several deaths: first, an intolerable

fright to be detected with a jealous rotten bell-wether;

next, to be compassed like a good bilbo in the

circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head; and

then, to be stopped in like a strong distillation with

105

stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease. Think

of that, a man of my kidney, think of that – that am as

subject to heat as butter – a man of continual

dissolution and thaw: it was a miracle to scape

suffocation. And in the height of this bath – when I was

110

more than half stewed in grease, like a Dutch dish – to

be thrown into the Thames and cooled, glowing hot, in

that surge like a horseshoe – think of that – hissing hot

– think of that, Master Brook.

FORD     In good sadness, sir, I am sorry that for my sake

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you have suffered all this. My suit, then, is desperate:

you’ll undertake her no more?

FALSTAFF     Master Brook, I will be thrown into Etna, as

I have been into Thames, ere I will leave her thus. Her

husband is this morning gone a-birding; I have

120

received from her another embassy of meeting: ’twixt

eight and nine is the hour, Master Brook.

FORD     ’Tis past eight already, sir.

FALSTAFF     Is it? I will then address me to my

appointment. Come to me at your convenient leisure,

125

and you shall know how I speed; and the conclusion

shall be crowned with your enjoying her. Adieu. You

shall have her, Master Brook. Master Brook, you shall

cuckold Ford.     Exit.

FORD     Hum – ha! Is this a vision? Is this a dream? Do I

130

sleep? Master Ford, awake; awake, Master Ford!

There’s a hole made in your best coat, Master Ford.

This ’tis to be married, this ’tis to have linen and buck-

baskets! Well, I will proclaim myself what I am. I will

now take the lecher. He is at my house, he cannot scape

135

me – ’tis impossible he should. He cannot creep into a

half-penny purse, nor into a pepperbox. But, lest the

devil that guides him should aid him, I will search

impossible places. Though what I am I cannot avoid,

yet to be what I would not shall not make me tame. If

140

I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with

me: I’ll be horn-mad.     Exit.

4.1 Enter MISTRESS PAGE, Mistress QUICKLY
and WILLIAM.

MISTRESS PAGE     Is he at Master Ford’s already, thinkst

thou?

QUICKLY     Sure he is by this, or will be presently. But truly

he is very courageous mad about his throwing into the

water. Mistress Ford desires you to come suddenly.

5

MISTRESS PAGE     I’ll be with her by and by: I’ll but bring

my young man here to school. Look where his master

comes; ’tis a playing day, I see.

Enter EVANS.

How now, Sir Hugh, no school today?

EVANS     No, Master Slender is let the boys leave to play.

10

QUICKLY     God’s blessing of his heart!

MISTRESS PAGE     Sir Hugh, my husband says my son

profits nothing in the world at his book. I pray you,

ask him some questions in his accidence.

EVANS     Come hither, William. Hold up your head, come.

15

MISTRESS PAGE     Come on, sirrah, hold up your head.

Answer your master, be not afraid.

EVANS     William, how many numbers is in nouns?

WILLIAM     Two.

QUICKLY     Truly, I thought there had been one number

20

more, because they say ‘‘Od’s nouns’.

EVANS     Peace your tattlings. What is ‘fair’, William?

WILLIAM     Pulcher.

QUICKLY     Polecats? There are fairer things than

polecats, sure.

25

evans You are a very simplicity ‘oman; I pray you,

peace. – What is lapis, William?

WILLIAM     A stone.

EVANS     And what is ‘a stone’, William?

WILLIAM     A pebble.

30

EVANS     No, it is lapis; I pray you remember in your prain.

WILLIAM     Lapis.

EVANS     That is a good William. What is he, William,

that does lend articles?

WILLIAM     Articles are borrowed of the pronoun, and be

35

thus declined: Singulariter nominativo hic, haec, hoc.

EVANS     Nominativo hig, haeg, hog, pray you mark.

Genitivo huius. Well, what is your accusative case?

WILLIAM     Accusativo hinc –

EVANS     I pray you have your remembrance, child:

40

accusativo hing, hang, hog.

QUICKLY     ‘Hang-hog’ is Latin for bacon, I warrant you.

EVANS     Leave your prabbles, ‘oman. – What is the

focative case, William?

WILLIAM     O – vocativo – O –

45

EVANS     Remember, William; focative is caret.

QUICKLY     And that’s a good root.

EVANS     ‘Oman, forbear.

MISTRESS PAGE     Peace.

EVANS     What is your genitive case plural, William?

50

WILLIAM     Genitive case?

EVANS     Ay.

WILLIAM     Genitivo horum, harum, horum.

QUICKLY     ‘Vengeance of Jenny’s case, fie on her! Never

name her, child, if she be a whore.

55

EVANS     For shame, ‘oman.

QUICKLY     You do ill to teach the child such words. – He

teaches him to hick and to hack, which they’ll do fast

enough of themselves, and to call ‘whore ‘m’! – Fie

upon you!

60

EVANS     ‘Oman, art thou lunatics? Hast thou no

understandings for thy cases, and the numbers of the

genders? Thou art as foolish Christian creatures as I

would desires.

MISTRESS PAGE [to Quickly] Prithee hold thy peace.

65

EVANS     Show me now, William, some declensions of

your pronouns.

WILLIAM     Forsooth, I have forgot.

EVANS     It is qui, quae, quod. If you forget your quis, your

quaes, and your quods, you must be preeches. Go your

70

ways and play, go.

MISTRESS PAGE     He is a better scholar than I thought he was.

EVANS     He is a good sprag memory. Farewell, Mistress

Page.

75

MISTRESS PAGE     Adieu, good Sir Hugh. [Exit Evans.]

Get you home, boy.     [Exit William.]

Come, we stay too long.     Exeunt.

4.2 Enter FALSTAFF and MISTRESS FORD.

FALSTAFF     Mistress Ford, your sorrow hath eaten up my

sufferance. I see you are obsequious in your love and I

profess requital to a hair’s breadth, not only, Mistress

Ford, in the simple office of love, but in all the

accoutrement, compliment and ceremony of it. But

5

are you sure of your husband now?

MISTRESS FORD     He’s a-birding, sweet Sir John.

MISTRESS PAGE [within] What ho, gossip Ford, what ho!

MISTRESS FORD     Step into the chamber, Sir John.

Exit Falstaff.

Enter MISTRESS PAGE.

MISTRESS PAGE     How now, sweetheart, who’s at home

10

besides yourself?

MISTRESS FORD     Why, none but mine own people.

MISTRESS PAGE     Indeed?

MISTRESS FORD     No, certainly. – [Whispers.] Speak

louder.

15

MISTRESS PAGE     Truly, I am so glad you have nobody

here.

MISTRESS FORD     Why?

MISTRESS PAGE     Why, woman, your husband is in his old

lines again: he so takes on yonder with my husband, so

20

rails against all married mankind, so curses all Eve’s

daughters, of what complexion soever, and so buffets

himself on the forehead, crying ‘peer out, peer out!’,

that any madness I ever yet beheld seemed but

tameness, civility and patience to this his distemper he

25

is in now. I am glad the fat knight is not here.

MISTRESS FORD     Why, does he talk of him?

MISTRESS PAGE     Of none but him, and swears he was

carried out, the last time he searched for him, in a

basket; protests to my husband he is now here, and

30

hath drawn him and the rest of their company from

their sport, to make another experiment of his

suspicion. But I am glad the knight is not here: now he

shall see his own foolery.

MISTRESS FORD     How near is he, Mistress Page?

35

MISTRESS PAGE     Hard by, at street end. He will be here

anon.

MISTRESS FORD     I am undone: the knight is here.

MISTRESS PAGE     Why, then you are utterly shamed and

he’s but a dead man. What a woman are you! Away

40

with him, away with him: better shame than murder.

MISTRESS FORD     Which way should he go? How should

I bestow him? Shall I put him into the basket again?

Enter FALSTAFF.

FALSTAFF     No, I’ll come no more i’the basket. May I not

go out ere he come?

45

MISTRESS PAGE     Alas, three of Master Ford’s brothers

watch the door with pistols, that none shall issue out,

otherwise you might slip away ere he came. – But what

make you here?

FALSTAFF     What shall I do? I’ll creep up into the

50

chimney.

MISTRESS FORD     There they always use to discharge

their birding-pieces.

MISTRESS PAGE     Creep into the kiln-hole.

FALSTAFF     Where is it?

55

MISTRESS FORD     He will seek there, on my word.

Neither press, coffer, chest, trunk, well, vault, but he

hath an abstract for the remembrance of such places

and goes to them by his note. There is no hiding you

in the house.

60

FALSTAFF     I’ll go out, then.

MISTRESS PAGE     If you go out in your own semblance

you die, Sir John – unless you go out disguised.

mistress ford How might we disguise him?

mistress page Alas the day, I know not: there is no

65

woman’s gown big enough for him. Otherwise he

might put on a hat, a muffler and a kerchief, and so

escape.

FALSTAFF     Good hearts, devise something; any

extremity rather than a mischief.

70

MISTRESS FORD     My maid’s aunt, the fat woman of

Brentford, has a gown above.

MISTRESS PAGE     On my word, it will serve him. She’s as

big as he is – and there’s her thrummed hat and her

muffler too. – Run up, Sir John.

75

MISTRESS FORD     Go, go, sweet Sir John. Mistress Page

and I will look some linen for your head.

MISTRESS PAGE     Quick, quick! We’ll come dress you

straight; put on the gown the while.     Exit Falstaff.

MISTRESS FORD     I would my husband would meet him

80

in this shape! He cannot abide the old woman of

Brentford; he swears she’s a witch, forbade her my

house and hath threatened to beat her.

MISTRESS PAGE     Heaven guide him to thy husband’s

cudgel and the devil guide his cudgel afterwards.

85

MISTRESS FORD     But is my husband coming?

MISTRESS PAGE     Ay, in good sadness is he, and talks of

the basket too, howsoever he hath had intelligence.

MISTRESS FORD     We’ll try that; for I’ll appoint my men

to carry the basket again to meet him at the door with

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it, as they did last time.

MISTRESS PAGE     Nay, but he’ll be here presently. Let’s

go dress him like the witch of Brentford.

MISTRESS FORD     I’ll first direct my men what they shall

do with the basket. Go up, I’ll bring linen for him

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straight.

MISTRESS PAGE     Hang him, dishonest varlet! We cannot

misuse him enough.     Exit Mistress Ford.

We’ll leave a proof, by that which we will do,

Wives may be merry and yet honest too.

100

We do not act that often jest and laugh;

’Tis old but true: ‘Still swine eats all the draff ‘. Exit.

Enter MISTRESS FORD with JOHN and ROBERT.

MISTRESS FORD     Go, sirs, take the basket again on your

shoulders. Your master is hard at door; if he bid you

set it down, obey him. Quickly, dispatch.     Exit.

105

JOHN     Come, come, take it up.

ROBERT     Pray heaven it be not full of knight again.

JOHN     I hope not, I had as lief bear so much lead.

Enter FORD, PAGE, SHALLOW, CAIUS and EVANS at
one door, and JOHN and ROBERT go and fetch in the
basket at another.

FORD     Ay, but if it prove true, Master Page, have you any

way then to unfool me again? – Set down the basket,

110

villains. Somebody call my wife. Youth in a basket! O

you panderly rascals, there’s a knot, a gin, a pack, a

conspiracy against me. Now shall the devil be shamed.

– What, wife, I say! Come, come forth: behold what

honest clothes you send forth to bleaching!

115

PAGE     Why, this passes, Master Ford! You are not to go

loose any longer, you must be pinioned.

EVANS     Why, this is lunatics, this is mad as a mad dog.

SHALLOW     Indeed, Master Ford, this is not well indeed.

FORD     So say I too, sir.

120

Enter MISTRESS FORD.

Come hither, Mistress Ford – Mistress Ford, the

honest woman, the modest wife, the virtuous creature

that hath the jealous fool to her husband! I suspect

without cause, mistress, do I?

MISTRESS FORD     God be my witness you do, if you

125

suspect me in any dishonesty.

FORD     Well said, brazen-face, hold it out! – Come forth,

sirrah! [Pulls clothes from the basket.]

PAGE     This passes.

MISTRESS FORD     Are you not ashamed? Let the clothes

130

alone.

FORD     I shall find you anon.

EVANS     ’Tis unreasonable! Will you take up your wife’s

clothes? Come, away!

FORD     Empty the basket, I say.

135

PAGE     Why, man, why?

FORD     Master Page, as I am a man, there was one

conveyed out of my house yesterday in this basket.

Why may not he be there again? In my house I am sure

he is: my intelligence is true, my jealousy is reasonable.

140

– Pluck me out all the linen.

MISTRESS FORD     If you find a man there, he shall die a

flea’s death. [They empty the basket.]

PAGE     Here’s no man.

SHALLOW     By my fidelity, this is not well, Master Ford,

145

this wrongs you.

EVANS     Master Ford, you must pray, and not follow the

imaginations of your own heart: this is jealousies.

FORD     Well, he’s not here I seek for.

PAGE     No, nor nowhere else but in your brain.

150

FORD     Help to search my house this one time. If I find

not what I seek, show no colour for my extremity, let

me for ever be your table-sport. Let them say of me

‘As jealous as Ford, that searched a hollow walnut for

his wife’s leman’. Satisfy me once more, once more

155

search with me. Exeunt John and Robert with basket.

MISTRESS FORD     What ho, Mistress Page, come you and

the old woman down; my husband will come into the

chamber.

FORD     Old woman? What old woman’s that?

160

MISTRESS FORD     Why, it is my maid’s aunt of Brentford.

FORD     A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean! Have I

not forbid her my house? She comes of errands, does

she? We are simple men, we do not know what’s

brought to pass under the profession of fortune-telling.

165

She works by charms, by spells, by the figure, and such

daubery as this is, beyond our element: we know

nothing. – Come down, you witch, you hag, you! Come

down, I say!

MISTRESS FORD     Nay, good sweet husband – good

170

gentlemen, let him not strike the old woman.

Enter FALSTAFF, disguised like an old woman,
and MISTRESS PAGE.

MISTRESS PAGE     Come, mother Prat, come, give me your

hand.

FORD     I’ll prat her! [Beats him.] Out of my door, you

witch, you rag, you baggage, you polecat, you runnion,

175

out, out! I’ll conjure you, I’ll fortune-tell you!

Exit Falstaff.

MISTRESS PAGE     Are you not ashamed? I think you have

killed the poor woman.

MISTRESS FORD     Nay, he will do it. ’Tis a goodly credit

for you!

180

FORD     Hang her, witch!

EVANS     By yea and no, I think the ‘oman is a witch

indeed. I like not when a ‘oman has a great peard – I

spy a great peard under her muffler.

FORD     Will you follow, gentlemen? I beseech you, follow,

185

see but the issue of my jealousy. If I cry out thus upon

no trail, never trust me when I open again.

PAGE     Let’s obey his humour a little further. Come,

gentlemen.

     Exeunt all but Mistress Ford and Mistress Page.

MISTRESS PAGE     By my troth, he beat him most pitifully.

190

MISTRESS FORD     Nay, by th’mass, that he did not: he

beat him most unpitifully, methought.

MISTRESS PAGE     I’ll have the cudgel hallowed and hung

o’er the altar: it hath done meritorious service.

MISTRESS FORD     What think you? May we, with the

195

warrant of womanhood and the witness of a good

conscience, pursue him with any further revenge?

MISTRESS PAGE     The spirit of wantonness is sure scared

out of him. If the devil have him not in fee-simple,

with fine and recovery, he will never, I think, in the

200

way of waste, attempt us again.

MISTRESS FORD     Shall we tell our husbands how we have

served him?

MISTRESS PAGE     Yes, by all means, if it be but to scrape

the figures out of your husband’s brains. If they can

205

find in their hearts the poor unvirtuous fat knight

shall be any further afflicted, we two will still be the

ministers.

MISTRESS FORD     I’ll warrant they’ll have him publicly

shamed, and methinks there would be no period to the

210

jest should he not be publicly shamed.

MISTRESS PAGE     Come, to the forge with it, then shape

it: I would not have things cool.     Exeunt.

4.3 Enter HOST and BARDOLPH.

BARDOLPH     Sir, the German desires to have three of

your horses. The Duke himself will be tomorrow at

court, and they are going to meet him.

HOST     What duke should that be comes so secretly? I

hear not of him in the court. Let me speak with the

5

gentlemen – they speak English?

BARDOLPH     Ay, sir. I’ll call him to you.

HOST     They shall have my horses, but I’ll make them

pay, I’ll sauce them. They have had my house a week

at command. I have turned away my other guests: they

10

must come off, I’ll sauce them. Come.     Exeunt.

4.4 Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE,
MISTRESS FORD and EVANS.

EVANS     ’Tis one of the best discretions of a ‘oman as ever

I did look upon.

PAGE     And did he send you both these letters at an

instant?

MISTRESS PAGE     Within a quarter of an hour.

5

FORD     Pardon me, wife. Henceforth do what thou wilt:

I rather will suspect the sun with cold

Than thee with wantonness. Now doth thy honour stand,

In him that was of late an heretic,

As firm as faith.

PAGE     ’Tis well, ’tis well, no more.

10

Be not as extreme in submission as in offence.

But let our plot go forward. Let our wives

Yet once again, to make us public sport,

Appoint a meeting with this old fat fellow,

Where we may take him and disgrace him for it.

15

FORD     There is no better way than that they spoke of.

PAGE     How? To send him word they’ll meet him in the

park at midnight? Fie, fie, he’ll never come.

EVANS     You say he has been thrown in the rivers, and has

been grievously peaten, as an old ‘oman. Methinks

20

there should be terrors in him, that he should not

come. Methinks his flesh is punished, he shall have no

desires.

PAGE     So think I too.

MISTRESS FORD

Devise but how you’ll use him when he comes

25

And let us two devise to bring him thither.

MISTRESS PAGE

There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter,

Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,

Doth, all the winter time, at still midnight,

Walk round about an oak, with great ragg’d horns,

30

And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle,

And makes milch-kine yield blood and shakes a chain

In a most hideous and dreadful manner.

You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know

The superstitious idle-headed eld

35

Received and did deliver to our age

This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth.

PAGE

Why, yet there want not many that do fear

In deep of night to walk by this Herne’s oak.

But what of this?

MISTRESS FORD     Marry, this is our device:

40

That Falstaff at that oak shall meet with us,

Disguised like Herne, with huge horns on his head.

PAGE     Well, let it not be doubted but he’ll come,

And in this shape; when you have brought him thither,

What shall be done with him? What is your plot?

45

MISTRESS PAGE

That likewise have we thought upon, and thus:

Nan Page my daughter, and my little son,

And three or four more of their growth, we’ll dress

Like urchins, oafs and fairies, green and white,

With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads

50

And rattles in their hands. Upon a sudden,

As Falstaff, she and I are newly met,

Let them from forth a sawpit rush at once

With some diffused song; upon their sight

We two in great amazedness will fly;

55

Then let them all encircle him about,

And fairy-like to pinch the unclean knight,

And ask him why, that hour of fairy revel,

In their so sacred paths he dares to tread

In shape profane.

MISTRESS FORD     And till he tell the truth

60

Let the supposed fairies pinch him sound

And burn him with their tapers.

MISTRESS PAGE     The truth being known,

We’ll all present ourselves, dishorn the spirit,

And mock him home to Windsor.

FORD     The children must

Be practised well to this, or they’ll ne’er do’t.

65

EVANS     I will teach the children their behaviours, and I

will be like a jackanapes also, to burn the knight with

my taber.

FORD     That will be excellent, I’ll go buy them vizards.

MISTRESS PAGE

My Nan shall be the queen of all the fairies,

70

Finely attired in a robe of white.

PAGE

That silk will I go buy – [aside] and in that time

Shall Master Slender steal my Nan away,

And marry her at Eton. – Go, send to Falstaff straight.

FORD     Nay, I’ll to him again in name of Brook:

75

He’ll tell me all his purpose. Sure, he’ll come.

MISTRESS PAGE     Fear not you that. Go get us properties

And tricking for our fairies.

EVANS     Let us about it. – It is admirable pleasures and

ferry honest knaveries. Exeunt Page, Ford and Evans.

80

MISTRESS PAGE     Go, Mistress Ford,

Send quickly to Sir John to know his mind.

Exit Mistress Ford.

I’ll to the Doctor: he hath my good will,

And none but he, to marry with Nan Page.

That Slender, though well landed, is an idiot –

85

And he my husband best of all affects.

The Doctor is well moneyed, and his friends

Potent at court: he, none but he, shall have her,

Though twenty thousand worthier come to crave her.

Exit.

4.5 Enter HOST and SIMPLE.

HOST     What wouldst thou have, boor? What, thick-skin?

Speak, breathe, discuss – brief, short, quick, snap.

SIMPLE     Marry, sir, I come to speak with Sir John

Falstaff from Master Slender.

HOST     There’s his chamber, his house, his castle, his

5

standing-bed, and truckle-bed: ’tis painted about with

the story of the Prodigal, fresh and new. Go, knock

and call: he’ll speak like an anthropophaginian unto

thee. Knock, I say.

SIMPLE     There’s an old woman, a fat woman, gone up

10

into his chamber. I’ll be so bold as stay, sir, till she

come down. I come to speak with her indeed.

HOST     Ha? A fat woman? The knight may be robbed, I’ll

call. – Bully knight, bully Sir John! Speak from thy

lungs military: art thou there? It is thine host, thine

15

Ephesian, calls.

FALSTAFF [above] How now, mine host?

HOST     Here’s a Bohemian-Tartar tarries the coming

down of thy fat woman. Let her descend, bully, let her

descend. My chambers are honourable. Fie! Privacy?

20

Fie!

Enter FALSTAFF.

FALSTAFF     There was, mine host, an old fat woman even

now with me, but she’s gone.

SIMPLE     Pray you, sir, was’t not the wise woman of

Brentford?

25

FALSTAFF     Ay, marry, was it, mussel-shell. What would

you with her?

SIMPLE     My master, sir, my master, Master Slender, sent

to her, seeing her go thorough the streets, to know, sir,

whether one Nim, sir, that beguiled him of a chain,

30

had the chain, or no.

FALSTAFF     I spake with the old woman about it.

SIMPLE     And what says she, I pray, sir?

FALSTAFF     Marry, she says that the very same man that

beguiled Master Slender of his chain – cozened him of

35

it.

SIMPLE     I would I could have spoken with the woman

herself. I had other things to have spoken with her too,

from him.

FALSTAFF     What are they? Let us know.

40

HOST     Ay, come. Quick!

SIMPLE     I may not conceal them, sir.

HOST     Conceal them, or thou diest.

SIMPLE     Why, sir, they were nothing but about Mistress

Anne Page, to know if it were my master’s fortune to

45

have her, or no.

FALSTAFF     ’Tis, ’tis his fortune.

SIMPLE     What, sir?

FALSTAFF     To have her, or no. Go, say the woman told

me so.

50

SIMPLE     May I be bold to say so, sir?

FALSTAFF     Ay, sir Tike; who more bold?

SIMPLE     I thank your worship; I shall make my master

glad with these tidings.     Exit.

HOST     Thou art clerkly, thou art clerkly, Sir John. Was

55

there a wise woman with thee?

FALSTAFF     Ay, that there was, mine host; one that hath

taught me more wit than ever I learnt before in my

life; and I paid nothing for it neither, but was paid for

my learning.

60

Enter BARDOLPH.

BARDOLPH     Out alas, sir: cozenage, mere cozenage!

HOST     Where be my horses? Speak well of them, varletto.

BARDOLPH     Run away with the cozeners: for so soon as I

came beyond Eton, they threw me off from behind one

of them, in a slough of mire, and set spurs and away, like

65

three German devils, three Doctor Faustasses.

HOST     They are gone but to meet the Duke, villain, do

not say they be fled. Germans are honest men.

Enter EVANS.

EVANS     Where is mine host?

HOST     What is the matter, sir?

70

EVANS     Have a care of your entertainments. There is a

friend of mine come to town tells me there is three sorts

of Cozen-Garmombles, that has cozened all the hosts of

Readings, of Maidenhead, of Colebrook, of horses and

money. I tell you for good will, look you: you are wise,

75

and full of gibes and vlouting-stocks, and ’tis not

convenient you should be cozened. Fare you well.

Exit.

Enter CAIUS.

CAIUS     Vere is mine host de Jarteer?

HOST     Here, master Doctor, in perplexity and doubtful

dilemma.

80

CAIUS     I cannot tell vat is dat, but, by gar, it is tell-a me

dat you make grand preparation for a Duke de

Jarmany. By my trot, der is no Duke that the court is

know to come. By gar, I tell you for good will. Adieu.

Exit.

HOST     Hue and cry, villain, go! – Assist me, knight, I am

85

undone! – Fly, run, hue and cry, villain, I am undone!

Exit with Bardolph.

FALSTAFF     I would all the world might be cozened, for I

have been cozened and beaten too. If it should come to

the ear of the court how I have been transformed, and

how my transformation hath been washed and

90

cudgelled, they would melt me out of my fat drop by

drop, and liquor fishermen’s boots with me. I warrant

they would whip me with their fine wits till I were as

crestfallen as a dried pear. I never prospered since I

forswore myself at primero. Well, if my wind were but

95

long enough, I would repent.

Enter Mistress QUICKLY.

Now, whence come you?

QUICKLY     From the two parties, forsooth.

FALSTAFF     The devil take one party and his dam the

other, and so they shall be both bestowed. I have

100

suffered more for their sakes, more than the villainous

inconstancy of man’s disposition is able to bear.

QUICKLY     And have not they suffered? Yes, I warrant,

speciously one of them. Mistress Ford, good heart, is

beaten black and blue, that you cannot see a white spot

105

about her.

FALSTAFF     What tellst thou me of black and blue?

I was beaten myself into all the colours of the rainbow,

and I was like to be apprehended for the witch of

Brentford. But that my admirable dexterity of wit, my

110

counterfeiting the action of an old woman, delivered

me, the knave constable had set me i’the stocks, i’the

common stocks, for a witch.

QUICKLY     Sir, let me speak with you in your chamber,

you shall hear how things go, and, I warrant, to your

115

content. Here is a letter will say somewhat – good

hearts, what ado is here to bring you together! Sure,

one of you does not serve heaven well, that you are so

crossed.

FALSTAFF     Come up into my chamber.     Exeunt.

120

4.6 Enter HOST and FENTON.

HOST     Master Fenton, talk not to me: my mind is heavy

– I will give over all.

FENTON     Yet hear me speak. Assist me in my purpose,

And, as I am a gentleman, I’ll give thee

A hundred pound in gold more than your loss.

5

HOST     I will hear you, Master Fenton, and I will, at the

least, keep your counsel.

FENTON     From time to time I have acquainted you

With the dear love I bear to fair Anne Page,

Who mutually hath answered my affection –

10

So far forth as herself might be her chooser –

Even to my wish. I have a letter from her

Of such contents as you will wonder at,

The mirth whereof so larded with my matter

That neither singly can be manifested

15

Without the show of both, wherein fat Falstaff

Hath a great scene; the image of the jest

I’ll show you here at large. Hark, good mine host:

Tonight at Herne’s oak, just ’twixt twelve and one,

Must my sweet Nan present the Fairy Queen –

20

The purpose why is here – in which disguise,

While other jests are something rank on foot,

Her father hath commanded her to slip

Away with Slender, and with him at Eton

Immediately to marry – she hath consented. Now, sir,

25

Her mother – ever strong against that match

And firm for Doctor Caius – hath appointed

That he shall likewise shuffle her away

While other sports are tasking of their minds,

And at the dean’ry, where a priest attends,

30

Straight marry her: to this her mother’s plot

She, seemingly obedient, likewise hath

Made promise to the Doctor. Now thus it rests:

Her father means she shall be all in white

And, in that habit, when Slender sees his time

35

To take her by the hand and bid her go,

She shall go with him. Her mother hath intended –

The better to denote her to the Doctor,

For they must all be masked and vizarded –

That quaint in green she shall be loose enrobed,

40

With ribbons pendant flaring ‘bout her head;

And when the Doctor spies his vantage ripe,

To pinch her by the hand, and on that token

The maid hath given consent to go with him.

HOST     Which means she to deceive, father or mother?

45

FENTON     Both, my good host, to go along with me.

And here it rests: that you’ll procure the vicar

To stay for me at church, ’twixt twelve and one,

And, in the lawful name of marrying,

To give our hearts united ceremony.

50

HOST     Well, husband your device; I’ll to the vicar.

Bring you the maid, you shall not lack a priest.

FENTON     So shall I evermore be bound to thee;

Besides, I’ll make a present recompense.     Exeunt.

5.1 Enter FALSTAFF and Mistress QUICKLY.

FALSTAFF     Prithee, no more prattling. Go, I’ll hold: this

is the third time – I hope good luck lies in odd

numbers. Away, go! They say there is divinity in odd

numbers, either in nativity, chance or death. Away!

QUICKLY     I’ll provide you a chain, and I’ll do what I can

5

to get you a pair of horns.

FALSTAFF     Away, I say; time wears. Hold up your head,

and mince.     Exit Mistress Quickly.

Enter FORD as BROOK.

How now, Master Brook? Master Brook, the matter

will be known tonight or never. Be you in the park

10

about midnight, at Herne’s oak, and you shall see

wonders.

FORD     Went you not to her yesterday, sir, as you told me

you had appointed?

FALSTAFF     I went to her, Master Brook, as you see, like a

15

poor old man, but I came from her, Master Brook, like

a poor old woman. That same knave, Ford her husband,

hath the finest mad devil of jealousy in him, Master

Brook, that ever governed frenzy. I will tell you he beat

me grievously, in the shape of a woman; for in the shape

20

of man, Master Brook, I fear not Goliath with a

weaver’s beam, because I know also life is a shuttle. I am

in haste: go along with me, I’ll tell you all, Master

Brook. Since I plucked geese, played truant and

whipped top, I knew not what ’twas to be beaten till

25

lately. Follow me, I’ll tell you strange things of this

knave Ford, on whom tonight I will be revenged, and I

will deliver his wife into your hand. Follow – strange

things in hand, Master Brook! – Follow.     Exeunt.

5.2 Enter PAGE, SHALLOW and SLENDER.

PAGE     Come, come: we’ll couch i’the castle ditch till we

see the lights of our fairies. Remember, son Slender,

my daughter –

SLENDER     Ay, forsooth. I have spoke with her and we

have a nay-word how to know one another. I come to

5

her in white, and cry ‘mum’; she cries ‘budget’; and by

that we know one another.

SHALLOW     That’s good too. But what needs either your

‘mum’ or her ‘budget’? The white will decipher her

well enough. – It hath struck ten o’clock.

10

PAGE     The night is dark: lights and spirits will become it

well. God prosper our sport. No man means evil but

the devil, and we shall know him by his horns. Let’s

away; follow me.     Exeunt.

5.3 Enter MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD and CAIUS.

MISTRESS PAGE     Master Doctor, my daughter is in

green: when you see your time, take her by the hand,

away with her to the deanery and dispatch it quickly.

Go before into the park. – We two must go together.

CAIUS     I know vat I have to do. Adieu.

5

MISTRESS PAGE     Fare you well, sir.      Exit Caius.

My husband will not rejoice so much at the abuse of

Falstaff as he will chafe at the Doctor’s marrying my

daughter. But ’tis no matter: better a little chiding

than a great deal of heartbreak.

10

MISTRESS FORD     Where is Nan now, and her troop of

fairies? And the Welsh devil Hugh?

MISTRESS PAGE     They are all couched in a pit hard by

Herne’s oak, with obscured lights, which, at the very

instant of Falstaff ‘s and our meeting, they will at once

15

display to the night.

MISTRESS FORD     That cannot choose but amaze him.

MISTRESS PAGE     If he be not amazed, he will be mocked;

if he be amazed, he will every way be mocked.

MISTRESS FORD     We’ll betray him finely.

20

MISTRESS PAGE

Against such lewdsters and their lechery

Those that betray them do no treachery.

MISTRESS FORD     The hour draws on. To the oak, to the

oak!     Exeunt.

5.4 Enter EVANS, disguised, and children as fairies.

EVANS     Trib, trib, fairies. Come, and remember your

parts: be pold, I pray you, follow me into the pit, and

when I give the watch-’ords do as I pid you. Come,

come, trib, trib.     Exeunt.

5.5 Enter FALSTAFF with buck’s horns on his head.

FALSTAFF     The Windsor bell hath struck twelve, the

minute draws on. Now the hot-blooded gods assist me!

Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa: love

set on thy horns. O powerful love, that in some respects

makes a beast a man, in some other a man a beast! You

5

were also, Jupiter, a swan for the love of Leda: O

omnipotent love, how near the god drew to the

complexion of a goose! A fault done first in the form of

a beast – O Jove, a beastly fault! – and then another fault

in the semblance of a fowl: think on’t, Jove, a foul fault!

10

When gods have hot backs, what shall poor men do? For

me, I am here a Windsor stag, and the fattest, I think,

i’the forest. Send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or who can

blame me to piss my tallow? – Who comes here? My

doe?

15

Enter MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE.

MISTRESS FORD     Sir John, art thou there, my deer, my

male deer?

FALSTAFF     My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain

potatoes, let it thunder to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’,

hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes. Let there

20

come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.

MISTRESS FORD     Mistress Page is come with me,

sweetheart.

FALSTAFF     Divide me like a bribed buck, each a haunch.

I will keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the

25

fellow of this walk, – and my horns I bequeath your

husbands. Am I a woodman, ha? Speak I like Herne

the hunter? Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience:

he makes restitution. As I am a true spirit, welcome!

     [A noise of horns within.]

MISTRESS PAGE     Alas, what noise?

30

MISTRESS FORD     Heaven forgive our sins!

FALSTAFF     What should this be?

MISTRESS FORD, MISTRESS PAGE     Away, away!

     They run away.

FALSTAFF     I think the devil will not have me damned,

lest the oil that’s in me should set hell on fire; he

35

would never else cross me thus.

Enter EVANS as a Satyr, ANNE and children as
fairies, Mistress QUICKLY as the Queen of Fairies,
PISTOL as Hobgoblin.

QUICKLY     Fairies black, grey, green and white,

You moonshine revellers and shades of night,

You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,

Attend your office and your quality.

40

Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyez.

PISTOL     Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys.

Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap:

Where fires thou find’st unraked and hearths unswept,

There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry –

45

Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery.

FALSTAFF

They are fairies, he that speaks to them shall die.

I’ll wink and couch: no man their works must eye.

EVANS

Where’s Pead? Go you, and where you find a maid

That ere she sleep has thrice her prayers said,

50

Raise up the organs of her fantasy:

Sleep she as sound as careless infancy.

But those as sleep and think not on their sins,

Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides and

shins.

QUICKLY     About, about!

55

Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out.

Strew good luck, oafs, on every sacred room,

That it may stand till the perpetual doom

In state as wholesome as in state ’tis fit,

Worthy the owner and the owner it.

60

The several chairs of Order look you scour

With juice of balm and every precious flower;

Each fair instalment, coat and several crest,

With loyal blazon, evermore be blest.

And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,

65

Like to the Garter compass, in a ring.

Th’expressure that it bears, green let it be,

More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;

And Honi soit qui mal y pense write

In em’rald tufts, flowers purple, blue and white,

70

Like sapphire, pearl and rich embroidery,

Buckled below fair knighthood’s bending knee:

Fairies use flowers for their charactery.

Away, disperse. But till ’tis one o’clock,

Our dance of custom round about the oak

75

Of Herne the hunter let us not forget.

EVANS

Pray you, lock hand in hand, yourselves in order set;

And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be

To guide our measure round about the tree. –

But stay, I smell a man of middle earth.

80

FALSTAFF     Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy,

lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!

PISTOL

Vile worm, thou wast o’erlooked even in thy birth.

QUICKLY     With trial fire touch me his finger end:

If he be chaste, the flame will back descend

85

And turn him to no pain; but if he start,

It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.

PISTOL     A trial, come.

EVANS     Come, will this wood take fire?

[They put the tapers to his fingers, and he starts.]

FALSTAFF     O, o, o!

QUICKLY     Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!

90

About him, fairies, sing a scornful rhyme,

And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.

     The fairies’ song.

Fie on sinful fantasy,

Fie on lust and luxury!

Lust is but a bloody fire,

95

Kindled with unchaste desire,

Fed in heart, whose flames aspire,

As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.

Pinch him, fairies, mutually,

Pinch him for his villainy.

100

Pinch him and burn him and turn him about,

Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.

During the song they pinch him, and CAIUS comes one

way and steals away a boy in green, and SLENDER

another way takes a boy in white; FENTON comes in and

steals Mistress Anne. A noise of hunting is heard within,

and all the fairies run away. Falstaff pulls off his buck’s

head, and rises up.

Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE and MISTRESS FORD.

PAGE

Nay, do not fly – I think we have watched you now.

Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn?

MISTRESS PAGE

I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher. –

105

Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives?

See you these, husband? [Points to the horns.]

     Do not these fair yokes

Become the forest better than the town?

FORD     Now, sir, who’s a cuckold now? Master Brook,

Falstaff ‘s a knave, a cuckoldly knave. Here are his

110

horns, Master Brook. And, Master Brook, he hath

enjoyed nothing of Ford’s but his buck-basket, his

cudgel and twenty pounds of money, which must be

paid to Master Brook. His horses are arrested for it,

Master Brook.

115

MISTRESS FORD     Sir John, we have had ill luck, we could

never meet. I will never take you for my love again, but

I will always count you my deer.

FALSTAFF     I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass.

FORD     Ay, and an ox too: both the proofs are extant.

120

FALSTAFF     And these are not fairies. I was three or four

times in the thought they were not fairies, and yet the

guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my

powers, drove the grossness of the foppery into a

received belief, in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and

125

reason, that they were fairies. See now how wit may be

made a Jack-a-Lent when ’tis upon ill employment!

EVANS     Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your

desires, and fairies will not pinse you.

FORD     Well said, fairy Hugh.

130

EVANS     And leave you your jealousies too, I pray you.

FORD     I will never mistrust my wife again, till thou art

able to woo her in good English.

FALSTAFF     Have I laid my brain in the sun and dried it,

that it wants matter to prevent so gross o’erreaching as

135

this? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? Shall I have

a coxcomb of frieze? ’Tis time I were choked with a

piece of toasted cheese.

EVANS     Seese is not good to give putter – your belly is all

putter.

140

FALSTAFF     ‘Seese’ and ‘putter’? Have I lived to stand at

the taunt of one that makes fritters of English? This is

enough to be the decay of lust and late-walking

through the realm.

MISTRESS PAGE     Why, Sir John, do you think, though we

145

would have thrust virtue out of our hearts by the head

and shoulders, and have given ourselves without

scruple to hell, that ever the devil could have made

you our delight?

FORD     What, a hodge-pudding? A bag of flax?

150

MISTRESS PAGE     A puffed man?

PAGE     Old, cold, withered and of intolerable entrails?

FORD     And one that is as slanderous as Satan?

PAGE     And as poor as Job?

FORD     And as wicked as his wife?

155

EVANS     And given to fornication, and to taverns, and

sack, and wine, and metheglins, and to drinkings, and

swearings, and starings; pribbles and prabbles?

FALSTAFF     Well, I am your theme: you have the start of

me. I am dejected, I am not able to answer the Welsh

160

flannel, ignorance itself is a plummet o’er me. Use me

as you will.

FORD     Marry, sir, we’ll bring you to Windsor to one

Master Brook that you have cozened of money, to

whom you should have been a pander. Over and above

165

that you have suffered, I think to repay that money

will be a biting affliction.

PAGE     Yet be cheerful, knight: thou shalt eat a posset

tonight at my house, where I will desire thee to laugh

at my wife that now laughs at thee. Tell her Master

170

Slender hath married her daughter.

MISTRESS PAGE [aside] Doctors doubt that: if Anne Page

be my daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius’s wife.

Enter SLENDER.

SLENDER     Whoa, ho, ho, father Page!

PAGE     Son, how now? How now, son, have you

175

dispatched?

SLENDER     Dispatched? I’ll make the best in

Gloucestershire know on’t – would I were hanged, la,

else!

PAGE     Of what, son?

SLENDER     I came yonder at Eton to marry Mistress

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Anne Page – and she’s a great lubberly boy! If it had

not been i’the church, I would have swinged him – or

he should have swinged me. If I did not think it had

been Anne Page, would I might never stir. – And ’tis a

185

postmaster’s boy.

PAGE     Upon my life, then, you took the wrong.

SLENDER     What need you tell me that? I think so, when

I took a boy for a girl! If I had been married to him, for

all he was in woman’s apparel, I would not have had

190

him.

PAGE     Why, this is your own folly. Did not I tell you how

you should know my daughter by her garments?

SLENDER     I went to her in white, and cried ‘mum’, and

she cried ‘budget’, as Anne and I had appointed. –

195

And yet it was not Anne, but a postmaster’s boy.

MISTRESS PAGE     Good George, be not angry: I knew of

your purpose, turned my daughter into green, and

indeed she is now with the Doctor at the deanery, and

there married.

200

Enter CAIUS.

CAIUS     Vere is Mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened, I ha’

married un garçon, a boy, un paysan, by gar! A boy it is

not Anne Page. By gar, I am cozened.

MISTRESS PAGE     Why, did you take her in green?

CAIUS     Ay, by gar, and ’tis a boy! By gar, I’ll raise all Windsor.

205

FORD     This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne?

Enter FENTON and ANNE PAGE.

PAGE     My heart misgives me. – Here comes Master

Fenton. – How now, Master Fenton?

ANNE     Pardon, good father – good my mother, pardon.

210

PAGE     Now, mistress, how chance you went not with

Master Slender?

MISTRESS PAGE

Why went you not with Master Doctor, maid?

FENTON     You do amaze her. Hear the truth of it:

You would have married her most shamefully

Where there was no proportion held in love.

215

The truth is, she and I, long since contracted,

Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us.

Th’offence is holy that she hath committed,

And this deceit loses the name of craft,

Of disobedience, and unduteous title,

220

Since therein she doth evitate and shun

A thousand irreligious cursed hours

Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.

FORD     Stand not amazed, here is no remedy.

225

In love the heavens themselves do guide the state:

Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.

FALSTAFF     I am glad, though you have ta’en a special

stand to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanced.

PAGE     Well, what remedy? Fenton, God give thee joy!

230

What cannot be eschewed must be embraced.

FALSTAFF

When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chased.

MISTRESS PAGE

Well, I will muse no further. – Master Fenton,

God give you many, many merry days!

Good husband, let us every one go home,

235

And laugh this sport o’er by a country fire,

Sir John and all.

FORD     Let it be so, Sir John.

To Master Brook you yet shall hold your word,

For he tonight shall lie with Mistress Ford.     Exeunt.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This play first appeared in print in 1600 in a text which may possibly be based on an authorial manuscript, since it contains a number of spellings which have been identified as Shakespearean and which might have been normalized by a scribe making a copy. The First Quarto was followed by a second in 1619 (an illicit edition, falsely dated 1600) and then by the First Folio in 1623. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is listed amongst Shakespeare’s comedies by Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia (1598) and it is generally thought to date from 1594 or 1595, putting it probably after Love’s Labour’s Lost and more certainly before The Merchant of Venice in the chronology of the comedies. It seems to have been written very close in time to Romeo and Juliet; the play-within-the-play of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ provides a parody of the ending of that love-tragedy. More surprisingly, perhaps, its lyrical language has stylistic affinities with that of Richard II, also written around this time.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is relatively unusual in the Shakespeare canon in not having a readily identifiable main source; rather it assembles heterogeneous materials and links them narratively and thematically. Shakespeare could have read about Theseus in Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (1579), as well as in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale (c. 1385), which he also adapted loosely for the plot of the four young lovers. (He was to use this poem again for The Two Noble Kinsmen at the very end of his career.) He probably used Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1565) for the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and he drew on folklore for Puck (Robin Goodfellow) and the fairies. He seems in this play to be thinking about the nature of artistic illusion itself, notably in Theseus’ speech about ‘The lunatic, the lover, and the poet’ in 5.1 and in the courtiers’ comments on the mechanicals’ performance. This final scene has parallels with the show of the Nine Worthies at the end of Love’s Labour’s Lost, though Bottom and his colleagues are less perturbed by their unsympathetic audience.

Many scholars and editors have supposed that the play was written to celebrate some aristocratic marriage and performed privately, but there is no external evidence to support this theory, and the title-page of the 1600 Quarto claims that A Midsummer Night’s Dream had been ‘sundry times publicly acted’ by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Shakespeare’s regular company. There are few records of pre-Restoration performances, but it became popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, usually in adapted form with the addition of music and dancing. It has inspired two operas: Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen (1692) and Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960); Felix Mendelssohn wrote extensive music for it (1842). The Victorian tradition encumbered the play with lavish spectacle; twentiethcentury productions have been less elaborate and have included the revolutionary 1970 version directed by Peter Brook for the Royal Shakespeare Company with its ‘white box’ set, gymnastic actors and rediscovery of the play’s darker side. Films have included a 1935 Hollywood version directed by Max Reinhardt with James Cagney as Bottom, and Woody Allen’s more recent adaptation, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982), which combined the Shakespearean source with influences from Ingmar Bergman’s film Smiles of a Summer Night (1955).

The Arden text is based on the 1600 First Quarto.

LIST OF ROLES

THESEUS

Duke of Athens

HIPPOLYTA

Queen of the Amazons, betrothed to Theseus

young courtiers in love with Hermia

HERMIA

In love with Lysander

HELENA

In love with Demetrius

EGEUS

Hermia’s father

PHILOSTRATE

Theseus’ Master of the Revels

OBERON

King of the Fairies

TITANIA

Queen of the Fairies

FAIRY

in Titania’s service

PUCK

or Robin Goodfellow, Oberon’s jester and lieutenant

fairies, in Titania’s service

Peter QUINCE

a carpenter; PROLOGUE in the Interlude

Nick BOTTOM

a weaver; PYRAMUS in the Interlude

Francis FLUTE

a bellows-mender; THISBE in the Interlude

Tom SNOUT

a tinker; WALL in the Interlude

SNUG

a joiner; LION in the Interlude

Robin STARVELING

a tailor; MOONSHINE in the Interlude

Other Fairies attending on Oberon and Titania

Lords and Attendants to Theseus and Hippolyta

1.1 Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA and PHILOSTRATE,
with attendants.

THESEUS     Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour

Draws on apace; four happy days bring in

Another moon: but O, methinks, how slow

This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires,

Like to a step-dame or a dowager

5

Long withering out a young man’s revenue.

HIPPOLYTA

Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;

Four nights will quickly dream away the time;

And then the moon, like to a silver bow

New bent in heaven, shall behold the night

10

Of our solemnities.

THESEUS     Go, Philostrate,

Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments;

Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth;

Turn melancholy forth to funerals;

The pale companion is not for our pomp.

15

     Exit Philostrate.

Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword,

And won thy love doing thee injuries;

But I will wed thee in another key,

With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.

Enter EGEUS and his daughter HERMIA,
and LYSANDER and DEMETRIUS.

EGEUS     Happy be Theseus, our renowned Duke!

20

THESEUS

Thanks, good Egeus. What’s the news with thee?

EGEUS     Full of vexation come I, with complaint

Against my child, my daughter Hermia.

Stand forth Demetrius. My noble lord,

This man hath my consent to marry her.

25

Stand forth Lysander. And, my gracious Duke,

This hath bewitch’d the bosom of my child.

Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,

And interchang’d love-tokens with my child:

Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung

30

With faining voice verses of feigning love,

And stol’n the impression of her fantasy

With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gauds, conceits,

Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats (messengers

Of strong prevailment in unharden’d youth):

35

With cunning hast thou filch’d my daughter’s heart,

Turn’d her obedience (which is due to me)

To stubborn harshness. And, my gracious Duke,

Be it so she will not here, before your Grace,

Consent to marry with Demetrius,

40

I beg the ancient privilege of Athens:

As she is mine, I may dispose of her;

Which shall be either to this gentleman,

Or to her death, according to our law

Immediately provided in that case.

45

THESEUS

What say you, Hermia? Be advis’d, fair maid.

To you your father should be as a god:

One that compos’d your beauties, yea, and one

To whom you are but as a form in wax

By him imprinted, and within his power

50

To leave the figure, or disfigure it.

Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.

HERMIA     So is Lysander.

THESEUS     In himself he is;

But in this kind, wanting your father’s voice,

The other must be held the worthier.

55

HERMIA     I would my father look’d but with my eyes.

THESEUS

Rather your eyes must with his judgement look.

HERMIA     I do entreat your Grace to pardon me.

I know not by what power I am made bold,

Nor how it may concern my modesty

60

In such a presence here to plead my thoughts,

But I beseech your Grace that I may know

The worst that may befall me in this case,

If I refuse to wed Demetrius.

THESEUS     Either to die the death, or to abjure

65

For ever the society of men.

Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires,

Know of your youth, examine well your blood,

Whether, if you yield not to your father’s choice,

You can endure the livery of a nun,

70

For aye to be in shady cloister mew’d,

To live a barren sister all your life,

Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.

Thrice blessed they that master so their blood

To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;

75

But earthlier happy is the rose distill’d

Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn,

Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness.

HERMIA     So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,

Ere I will yield my virgin patent up

80

Unto his lordship whose unwished yoke

My soul consents not to give sovereignty.

THESEUS

Take time to pause; and by the next new moon,

The sealing-day betwixt my love and me

For everlasting bond of fellowship,

85

Upon that day either prepare to die

For disobedience to your father’s will,

Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would,

Or on Diana’s altar to protest,

For aye, austerity and single life.

90

DEMETRIUS     Relent, sweet Hermia; and Lysander, yield

Thy crazed title to my certain right.

LYSANDER     You have her father’s love, Demetrius:

Let me have Hermia’s; do you marry him.

EGEUS     Scornful Lysander, true, he hath my love;

95

And what is mine my love shall render him;

And she is mine, and all my right of her

I do estate unto Demetrius.

LYSANDER     I am, my lord, as well deriv’d as he,

As well possess’d; my love is more than his;

100

My fortunes every way as fairly rank’d,

If not with vantage, as Demetrius’;

And, which is more than all these boasts can be,

I am belov’d of beauteous Hermia.

Why should not I then prosecute my right?

105

Demetrius, I’ll avouch it to his head,

Made love to Nedar’s daughter, Helena,

And won her soul: and she, sweet lady, dotes,

Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,

Upon this spotted and inconstant man.

110

THESEUS     I must confess that I have heard so much,

And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof;

But, being over-full of self-affairs,

My mind did lose it. But, Demetrius, come,

And come, Egeus; you shall go with me:

115

I have some private schooling for you both.

For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself

To fit your fancies to your father’s will;

Or else the law of Athens yields you up

(Which by no means we may extenuate)

120

To death, or to a vow of single life.

Come, my Hippolyta; what cheer, my love?

Demetrius and Egeus, go along;

I must employ you in some business

Against our nuptial, and confer with you

125

Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.

EGEUS     With duty and desire we follow you.

     Exeunt all but Lysander and Hermia.

LYSANDER

How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale?

How chance the roses there do fade so fast?

HERMIA     Belike for want of rain, which I could well

130

Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.

LYSANDER     Ay me! For aught that I could ever read,

Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth;

But either it was different in blood –

135

HERMIA     O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low.

LYSANDER     Or else misgraffed in respect of years –

HERMIA     O spite! too old to be engag’d to young.

LYSANDER

Or else it stood upon the choice of friends –

HERMIA     O hell! to choose love by another’s eyes.

140

LYSANDER     Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,

War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,

Making it momentany as a sound,

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,

Brief as the lightning in the collied night,

145

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,

And, ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold!’,

The jaws of darkness do devour it up:

So quick bright things come to confusion.

HERMIA     If then true lovers have been ever cross’d,

150

It stands as an edict in destiny.

Then let us teach our trial patience,

Because it is a customary cross,

As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,

Wishes and tears, poor fancy’s followers.

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LYSANDER

A good persuasion; therefore hear me, Hermia.

I have a widow aunt, a dowager

Of great revenue, and she hath no child –

From Athens is her house remote seven leagues –

And she respects me as her only son.

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There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee,

And to that place the sharp Athenian law

Cannot pursue us. If thou lov’st me then,

Steal forth thy father’s house tomorrow night;

And in the wood, a league without the town

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(Where I did meet thee once with Helena

To do observance to a morn of May),

There will I stay for thee.

HERMIA     My good Lysander,

I swear to thee by Cupid’s strongest bow,

By his best arrow with the golden head,

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By the simplicity of Venus’ doves,

By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves,

And by that fire which burn’d the Carthage queen

When the false Trojan under sail was seen;

By all the vows that ever men have broke

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(In number more than ever women spoke),

In that same place thou hast appointed me,

Tomorrow truly will I meet with thee.

LYSANDER

Keep promise, love. Look, here comes Helena.

Enter HELENA.

HERMIA     God speed fair Helena! Whither away?

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HELENA     Call you me fair? That fair again unsay!

Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair!

Your eyes are lode-stars, and your tongue’s sweet air

More tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear,

When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.

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Sickness is catching; O were favour so,

Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go:

My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,

My tongue should catch your tongue’s sweet melody.

Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,

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The rest I’d give to be to you translated.

O, teach me how you look, and with what art

You sway the motion of Demetrius’ heart.

HERMIA     I frown upon him; yet he loves me still.

HELENA

O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!

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HERMIA     I give him curses; yet he gives me love.

HELENA     O that my prayers could such affection move!

HERMIA     The more I hate, the more he follows me.

HELENA     The more I love, the more he hateth me.

HERMIA     His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.

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HELENA

None but your beauty; would that fault were mine!

HERMIA     Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;

Lysander and myself will fly this place.

Before the time I did Lysander see,

Seem’d Athens as a paradise to me.

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O then what graces in my love do dwell,

That he hath turn’d a heaven unto a hell!

LYSANDER     Helen, to you our minds we will unfold:

Tomorrow night, when Phoebe doth behold

Her silver visage in the wat’ry glass,

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Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass

(A time that lovers’ flights doth still conceal),

Through Athens’ gates have we devis’d to steal.

HERMIA     And in the wood, where often you and I

Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie,

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Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet,

There my Lysander and myself shall meet;

And thence from Athens turn away our eyes,

To seek new friends, and stranger companies.

Farewell, sweet playfellow; pray thou for us,

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And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius!

Keep word, Lysander; we must starve our sight

From lovers’ food, till morrow deep midnight.

     Exit Hermia.

LYSANDER     I will, my Hermia. Helena, adieu;

As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!

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     Exit Lysander.

HELENA     How happy some o’er other some can be!

Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.

But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;

He will not know what all but he do know;

And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,

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So I, admiring of his qualities.

Things base and vile, holding no quantity,

Love can transpose to form and dignity:

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,

And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind;

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Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgement taste:

Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.

And therefore is Love said to be a child,

Because in choice he is so oft beguil’d.

As waggish boys, in game, themselves forswear,

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So the boy Love is perjur’d everywhere;

For, ere Demetrius look’d on Hermia’s eyne,

He hail’d down oaths that he was only mine;

And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,

So he dissolv’d and show’rs of oaths did melt.

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I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight:

Then to the wood will he, tomorrow night,

Pursue her; and for this intelligence

If I have thanks, it is a dear expense.

But herein mean I to enrich my pain,

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To have his sight thither and back again.     Exit.

1.2 Enter QUINCE, the carpenter; and SNUG,
the joiner; and BOTTOM, the weaver; and FLUTE,
the bellows-mender; and SNOUT, the tinker;
and STARVELING, the tailor.

QUINCE     Is all our company here?

BOTTOM     You were best to call them generally, man by

man, according to the scrip.

QUINCE     Here is the scroll of every man’s name which is

thought fit through all Athens to play in our interlude

5

before the Duke and the Duchess, on his wedding-day

at night.

BOTTOM     First, good Peter Quince, say what the play

treats on; then read the names of the actors; and so

grow to a point.

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QUINCE     Marry, our play is ‘The most lamentable

comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and

Thisbe’.

BOTTOM     A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a

merry. Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your

15

actors by the scroll. Masters, spread yourselves.

QUINCE     Answer as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver?

BOTTOM     Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.

QUINCE     You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.

BOTTOM     What is Pyramus? A lover, or a tyrant?

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QUINCE     A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love.

BOTTOM     That will ask some tears in the true

performing of it. If I do it, let the audience look to

their eyes: I will move storms, I will condole in some

measure. To the rest – yet my chief humour is for a

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tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat

in, to make all split.

     The raging rocks,

     And shivering shocks,

     Shall break the locks

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     Of prison-gates;

     And Phibbus’ car

     Shall shine from far

     And make and mar

     The foolish fates.

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This was lofty. Now name the rest of the players.

This is Ercles’ vein, a tyrant’s vein: a lover is more

condoling.

QUINCE     Francis Flute, the bellows-mender?

FLUTE     Here, Peter Quince.

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QUINCE     Flute, you must take Thisbe on you.

FLUTE     What is Thisbe? A wandering knight?

QUINCE     It is the lady that Pyramus must love.

FLUTE     Nay, faith, let not me play a woman: I have a

beard coming.

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QUINCE     That’s all one: you shall play it in a mask; and

you may speak as small as you will.

BOTTOM     And I may hide my face, let me play Thisbe

too. I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice: ‘Thisne,

Thisne!’ – ‘Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear! thy Thisbe

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dear, and lady dear!’

QUINCE     No, no, you must play Pyramus; and Flute, you

Thisbe.

BOTTOM     Well, proceed.

QUINCE     Robin Starveling, the tailor?

55

STARVELING     Here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE     Robin Starveling, you must play Thisbe’s

mother. Tom Snout, the tinker?

SNOUT     Here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE     You, Pyramus’ father; myself, Thisbe’s father;

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Snug the joiner, you the lion’s part. And I hope here is

a play fitted.

SNUG     Have you the lion’s part written? Pray you, if it

be, give it me; for I am slow of study.

QUINCE     You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but

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roaring.

BOTTOM     Let me play the lion too. I will roar, that I will

do any man’s heart good to hear me. I will roar, that I

will make the Duke say: ‘Let him roar again; let him

roar again!’

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QUINCE     And you should do it too terribly, you would

fright the Duchess and the ladies, that they would

shriek: and that were enough to hang us all.

ALL     That would hang us, every mother’s son.

BOTTOM     I grant you, friends, if you should fright the

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ladies out of their wits, they would have no more

discretion but to hang us. But I will aggravate my

voice so, that I will roar you as gently as any sucking

dove; I will roar you and ’twere any nightingale.

QUINCE     You can play no part but Pyramus: for Pyramus

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is a sweet-faced man; a proper man as one shall see in

a summer’s day; a most lovely, gentleman-like man:

therefore you must needs play Pyramus.

BOTTOM     Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I

best to play it in?

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QUINCE     Why, what you will.

BOTTOM     I will discharge it in either your straw-colour

beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain

beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your

perfect yellow.

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QUINCE     Some of your French crowns have no hair at all,

and then you will play bare-faced. But, masters,

here are your parts; and I am to entreat you, request

you, and desire you, to con them by tomorrow night;

and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the

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town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse, for if we

meet in the city, we shall be dogged with company, and

our devices known. In the meantime I will draw a bill

of properties, such as our play wants. I pray you fail

me not.

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BOTTOM     We will meet, and there we may rehearse most

obscenely and courageously. Take pains, be perfect:

adieu!

QUINCE     At the Duke’s oak we meet.

BOTTOM     Enough: hold, or cut bow-strings. Exeunt.

105

2.1 Enter a Fairy at one door, and PUCK at another.

PUCK     How now, spirit! Whither wander you?

FAIRY     Over hill, over dale,

     Thorough bush, thorough briar,

Over park, over pale,

     Thorough flood, thorough fire,

5

     I do wander everywhere,

     Swifter than the moon’s sphere;

     And I serve the Fairy Queen,

     To dew her orbs upon the green.

     The cowslips tall her pensioners be,

10

     In their gold coats spots you see;

     Those be rubies, fairy favours,

     In those freckles live their savours.

     I must go seek some dew-drops here,

     And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.

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Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I’ll be gone;

Our Queen and all her elves come here anon.

PUCK     The King doth keep his revels here tonight;

Take heed the Queen come not within his sight;

For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,

20

Because that she as her attendant hath

A lovely boy, stol’n from an Indian king –

She never had so sweet a changeling;

And jealous Oberon would have the child

Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild:

25

But she perforce withholds the loved boy,

Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy.

And now they never meet in grove or green,

By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,

But they do square; that all their elves for fear

30

Creep into acorn-cups, and hide them there.

FAIRY     Either I mistake your shape and making quite,

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite

Call’d Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he

That frights the maidens of the villagery,

35

Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern,

And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,

And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,

Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?

Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,

40

You do their work, and they shall have good luck.

Are not you he?

PUCK     Thou speak’st aright;

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

I jest to Oberon, and make him smile

When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,

45

Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;

And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl

In very likeness of a roasted crab,

And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,

And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.

50

The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,

Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;

Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,

And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough;

And then the whole quire hold their hips and loffe

55

And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear

A merrier hour was never wasted there.

But room, fairy! Here comes Oberon.

FAIRY

And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!

Enter OBERON, the King of Fairies, at one door, with his
train; and TITANIA, the Queen, at another, with hers.

OBERON     Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

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TITANIA     What, jealous Oberon? Fairies, skip hence;

I have forsworn his bed and company.

OBERON     Tarry, rash wanton; am not I thy lord?

TITANIA     Then I must be thy lady; but I know

When thou hast stol’n away from fairy land,

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And in the shape of Corin, sat all day

Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love

To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here,

Come from the farthest step of India,

But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,

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Your buskin’d mistress and your warrior love,

To Theseus must be wedded, and you come

To give their bed joy and prosperity?

OBERON     How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania,

Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,

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Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?

Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night

From Perigouna, whom he ravished;

And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,

With Ariadne and Antiopa?

80

TITANIA     These are the forgeries of jealousy:

And never, since the middle summer’s spring,

Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,

By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,

Or in the beached margent of the sea,

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To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

But with thy brawls thou has disturb’d our sport.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge have suck’d up from the sea

Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land,

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Hath every pelting river made so proud

That they have overborne their continents.

The ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard;

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The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;

The nine-men’s-morris is fill’d up with mud,

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green

For lack of tread are undistinguishable.

100

The human mortals want their winter cheer:

No night is now with hymn or carol blest.

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger, washes all the air,

That rheumatic diseases do abound.

105

And thorough this distemperature we see

The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;

And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown,

An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

110

Is, as in mockery, set; the spring, the summer,

The childing autumn, angry winter, change

Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,

By their increase, now knows not which is which.

And this same progeny of evils comes

115

From our debate, from our dissension;

We are their parents and original.

OBERON     Do you amend it then: it lies in you.

Why should Titania cross her Oberon?

I do but beg a little changeling boy

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To be my henchman.

TITANIA     Set your heart at rest:

The fairy land buys not the child of me.

His mother was a votress of my order;

And in the spiced Indian air, by night,

Full often hath she gossip’d by my side;

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And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands,

Marking th’embarked traders on the flood:

When we have laugh’d to see the sails conceive

And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;

Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait

130

Following (her womb then rich with my young squire),

Would imitate, and sail upon the land

To fetch me trifles, and return again

As from a voyage rich with merchandise.

But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;

135

And for her sake do I rear up her boy;

And for her sake I will not part with him.

OBERON     How long within this wood intend you stay?

TITANIA     Perchance till after Theseus’ wedding-day.

If you will patiently dance in our round,

140

And see our moonlight revels, go with us;

If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.

OBERON     Give me that boy, and I will go with thee.

TITANIA     Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away!

We shall chide downright if I longer stay.

145

     Exeunt Titania and her train.

OBERON

Well, go thy way; thou shalt not from this grove

Till I torment thee for this injury.

My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb’rest

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back

150

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath

That the rude sea grew civil at her song

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres

To hear the sea-maid’s music?

PUCK     I remember.

OBERON     That very time I saw (but thou couldst not),

155

Flying between the cold moon and the earth,

Cupid all arm’d: a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal, throned by the west,

And loos’d his love-shaft smartly from his bow

As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts.

160

But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft

Quench’d in the chaste beams of the watery moon;

And the imperial votress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell:

165

It fell upon a little western flower,

Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound:

And maidens call it ‘love-in-idleness’.

Fetch me that flower; the herb I show’d thee once.

The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid,

170

Will make or man or woman madly dote

Upon the next live creature that it sees.

Fetch me this herb, and be thou here again

Ere the leviathan can swim a league.

PUCK     I’ll put a girdle round about the earth

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In forty minutes.      Exit.

OBERON     Having once this juice,

I’ll watch Titania when she is asleep,

And drop the liquor of it in her eyes:

The next thing then she waking looks upon

(Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull,

180

On meddling monkey, or on busy ape)

She shall pursue it with the soul of love.

And ere I take this charm from off her sight

(As I can take it with another herb)

I’ll make her render up her page to me.

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But who comes here? I am invisible;

And I will overhear their conference.

Enter DEMETRIUS, HELENA following him.

DEMETRIUS     I love thee not, therefore pursue me not.

Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?

The one I’ll slay, the other slayeth me.

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Thou told’st me they were stol’n unto this wood;

And here am I, and wood within this wood

Because I cannot meet my Hermia.

Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.

HELENA     You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant –

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But yet you draw not iron, for my heart

Is true as steel. Leave you your power to draw,

And I shall have no power to follow you.

DEMETRIUS     Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair?

Or rather do I not in plainest truth

200

Tell you I do not, nor I cannot love you?

HELENA     And even for that do I love you the more.

I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,

The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.

Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,

205

Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,

Unworthy as I am, to follow you.

What worser place can I beg in your love –

And yet a place of high respect with me –

Than to be used as you use your dog?

210

DEMETRIUS     Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit;

For I am sick when I do look on thee.

HELENA     And I am sick when I look not on you.

DEMETRIUS     You do impeach your modesty too much

To leave the city and commit yourself

215

Into the hands of one that loves you not,

To trust the opportunity of night

And the ill counsel of a desert place

With the rich worth of your virginity.

HELENA     Your virtue is my privilege: for that

It is not night when I do see your face,

220

Therefore I think I am not in the night;

Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,

For you, in my respect, are all the world;

Then how can it be said I am alone,

225

When all the world is here to look on me?

DEMETRIUS

I’ll run from thee and hide me in the brakes,

And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.

HELENA     The wildest hath not such a heart as you.

Run when you will; the story shall be chang’d:

230

Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase;

The dove pursues the griffin, the mild hind

Makes speed to catch the tiger – bootless speed,

When cowardice pursues and valour flies!

DEMETRIUS     I will not stay thy questions; let me go,

235

Or if thou follow me, do not believe

But I shall do thee mischief in the wood.

HELENA     Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field,

You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius!

Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex.

240

We cannot fight for love, as men may do;

We should be woo’d, and were not made to woo.

     Exit Demetrius.

I’ll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell,

To die upon the hand I love so well.     Exit.

OBERON

Fare thee well, nymph; ere he do leave this grove

245

Thou shalt fly him, and he shall seek thy love.

Enter PUCK.

Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer.

PUCK     Ay, there it is.

OBERON     I pray thee give it me.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

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Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.

There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,

Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;

And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,

255

Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in;

And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes,

And make her full of hateful fantasies.

Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove:

A sweet Athenian lady is in love

260

With a disdainful youth; anoint his eyes;

But do it when the next thing he espies

May be the lady. Thou shalt know the man

By the Athenian garments he hath on.

Effect it with some care, that he may prove

265

More fond on her than she upon her love:

And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow.

PUCK     Fear not, my lord, your servant shall do so.

     Exeunt.

2.2 Enter TITANIA, Queen of Fairies, with her train.

TITANIA     Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;

Then for the third part of a minute, hence:

Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds;

Some war with reremice for their leathern wings,

To make my small elves coats; and some keep back

5

The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders

At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep;

Then to your offices, and let me rest.

[The Fairies sing.]

1 FAIRY     You spotted snakes with double tongue,

Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;

10

Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong,

Come not near our fairy queen.

CHORUS     Philomel, with melody,

     Sing in our sweet lullaby;

Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby;

15

     Never harm, nor spell, nor charm,

     Come our lovely lady nigh;

     So goodnight, with lullaby.

1 FAIRY     Weaving spiders, come not here;

Hence, you long-legg’d spinners, hence!

20

Beetles black, approach not near;

Worm nor snail, do no offence.

CHORUS     Philomel, with melody, etc.

[Titania sleeps.]

2 FAIRY     Hence, away! Now all is well;

One aloof stand sentinel.     Exeunt Fairies.

25

Enter OBERON, and squeezes the juice on
Titania’s eyelids.

OBERON     What thou seest when thou dost wake,

Do it for thy true love take;

Love and languish for his sake.

Be it ounce, or cat, or bear,

Pard, or boar with bristled hair,

30

In thy eye that shall appear

When thou wak’st, it is thy dear.

Wake when some vile thing is near. Exit.

Enter LYSANDER and HERMIA.

LYSANDER

Fair love, you faint with wand’ring in the wood,

And, to speak troth, I have forgot our way.

35

We’ll rest us, Hermia, if you think it good,

And tarry for the comfort of the day.

HERMIA     Be it so, Lysander: find you out a bed,

For I upon this bank will rest my head.

LYSANDER     One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;

40

One heart, one bed, two bosoms, and one troth.

HERMIA     Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear,

Lie further off yet; do not lie so near.

LYSANDER     O take the sense, sweet, of my innocence!

Love takes the meaning in love’s conference.

45

I mean that my heart unto yours is knit,

So that but one heart we can make of it:

Two bosoms interchained with an oath,

So then, two bosoms and a single troth.

Then by your side no bed-room me deny;

50

For lying so, Hermia, I do not lie.

HERMIA     Lysander riddles very prettily.

Now much beshrew my manners and my pride,

If Hermia meant to say Lysander lied!

But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy,

55

Lie further off, in human modesty;

Such separation as may well be said

Becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid,

So far be distant; and good night, sweet friend:

Thy love ne’er alter till thy sweet life end!

60

LYSANDER     Amen, amen, to that fair prayer say I;

And then end life when I end loyalty!

Here is my bed; sleep give thee all his rest.

HERMIA

With half that wish the wisher’s eyes be press’d.

[They sleep.]

Enter PUCK.

PUCK     Through the forest have I gone;

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But Athenian found I none

On whose eyes I might approve

This flower’s force in stirring love.

Night and silence – Who is here?

Weeds of Athens he doth wear:

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This is he my master said

Despised the Athenian maid;

And here the maiden, sleeping sound,

On the dank and dirty ground.

Pretty soul, she durst not lie

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Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.

Churl, upon thy eyes I throw

All the power this charm doth owe:

When thou wak’st, let love forbid

Sleep his seat on thy eyelid.

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So awake when I am gone;

For I must now to Oberon. Exit.

Enter DEMETRIUS and HELENA, running.

HELENA     Stay, though thou kill me, sweet Demetrius!

DEMETRIUS

I charge thee, hence, and do not haunt me thus.

HELENA     O wilt thou darkling leave me? Do not so.

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DEMETRIUS     Stay, on thy peril; I alone will go.     Exit.

HELENA     O, I am out of breath in this fond chase!

The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace.

Happy is Hermia, wheresoe’er she lies,

For she hath blessed and attractive eyes.

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How came her eyes so bright? Not with salt tears;

If so, my eyes are oftener wash’d than hers.

No, no; I am as ugly as a bear,

For beasts that meet me run away for fear:

Therefore no marvel though Demetrius

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Do, as a monster, fly my presence thus.

What wicked and dissembling glass of mine

Made me compare with Hermia’s sphery eyne?

But who is here? Lysander, on the ground?

Dead, or asleep? I see no blood, no wound.

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Lysander, if you live, good sir, awake!

LYSANDER [waking]

And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake!

Transparent Helena! Nature shows art,

That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart.

Where is Demetrius? O how fit a word

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Is that vile name to perish on my sword!

HELENA     Do not say so, Lysander, say not so.

What though he love your Hermia? Lord, what though?

Yet Hermia still loves you; then be content.

LYSANDER     Content with Hermia? No. I do repent

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The tedious minutes I with her have spent.

Not Hermia, but Helena I love:

Who will not change a raven for a dove?

The will of man is by his reason sway’d,

And reason says you are the worthier maid.

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Things growing are not ripe until their season:

So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason;

And, touching now the point of human skill,

Reason becomes the marshal to my will,

And leads me to your eyes, where I o’erlook

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Love’s stories, written in love’s richest book.

HELENA     Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born?

When at your hands did I deserve this scorn?

Is’t not enough, is’t not enough, young man,

That I did never, no, nor never can

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Deserve a sweet look from Demetrius’ eye,

But you must flout my insufficiency?

Good troth, you do me wrong, good sooth, you do,

In such disdainful manner me to woo.

But fare you well; perforce I must confess

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I thought you lord of more true gentleness.

O that a lady, of one man refus’d,

Should of another therefore be abus’d!     Exit.

LYSANDER

She sees not Hermia. Hermia, sleep thou there,

And never mayst thou come Lysander near!

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For, as a surfeit of the sweetest things

The deepest loathing to the stomach brings;

Or as the heresies that men do leave

Are hated most of those they did deceive;

So thou, my surfeit and my heresy,

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Of all be hated, but the most of me!

And, all my powers, address your love and might

To honour Helen, and to be her knight!     Exit.

HERMIA [starting]

Help me, Lysander, help me! Do thy best

To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast!

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Ay me, for pity! What a dream was here!

Lysander, look how I do quake with fear.

Methought a serpent ate my heart away,

And you sat smiling at his cruel prey.

Lysander! What, remov’d? Lysander! lord!

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What, out of hearing? Gone? No sound, no word?

Alack, where are you? Speak, and if you hear;

Speak, of all loves I swoon almost with fear.

No? Then I well perceive you are not nigh.

Either death or you I’ll find immediately.     Exit.

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[Titania remains lying asleep.]

3.1 Titania still lying asleep. Enter QUINCE, BOTTOM,
SNUG, FLUTE, SNOUT and STARVELING.

BOTTOM     Are we all met?

QUINCE     Pat, pat; and here’s a marvellous convenient

place for our rehearsal. This green plot shall be our

stage, this hawthorn-brake our tiring-house; and we

will do it in action, as we will do it before the Duke.

5

BOTTOM     Peter Quince!

QUINCE     What sayest thou, bully Bottom?

BOTTOM     There are things in this comedy of Pyramus

and Thisbe that will never please. First, Pyramus must

draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies cannot

10

abide. How answer you that?

SNOUT     Byrlakin, a parlous fear.

STARVELING#160;     I believe we must leave the killing out,

when all is done.

BOTTOM     Not a whit; I have a device to make all well.

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Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say

we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus

is not killed indeed; and for the more better assurance,

tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but

Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.

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QUINCE     Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall

be written in eight and six.

BOTTOM     No, make it two more; let it be written in eight

and eight.

SNOUT     Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion?

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STARVELING#160;     I fear it, I promise you.

BOTTOM     Masters, you ought to consider with yourself;

to bring in (God shield us!) a lion among ladies is a

most dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful

wild-fowl than your lion living; and we ought to look

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to’t.

SNOUT     Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion.

BOTTOM     Nay, you must name his name, and half his

face must be seen through the lion’s neck; and he

35

himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the

same defect: ‘Ladies,’ or ‘Fair ladies, I would wish

you,’ or ‘I would request you,’ or ‘l would entreat you,

not to fear, not to tremble: my life for yours! If you

think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life.

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No, I am no such thing; I am a man, as other men

are’: and there, indeed, let him name his name, and

tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.

QUINCE     Well, it shall be so. But there is two hard things:

that is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber; for you

45

know, Pyramus and Thisbe meet by moonlight.

SNOUT     Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?

BOTTOM     A calendar, a calendar! Look in the almanac;

find out moonshine, find out moonshine!

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QUINCE     Yes, it doth shine that night.

BOTTOM     Why, then may you leave a casement of the

great chamber window, where we play, open; and the

moon may shine in at the casement.

QUINCE     Ay; or else one must come in with a bush of

55

thorns and a lantern, and say he comes to disfigure or

to present the person of Moonshine. Then there is

another thing: we must have a wall in the great

chamber; for Pyramus and Thisbe, says the story, did

talk through the chink of a wall.

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SNOUT     You can never bring in a wall. What say you,

Bottom?

BOTTOM     Some man or other must present Wall; and let

him have some plaster, or some loam, or some

roughcast about him, to signify wall; and let him hold

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his fingers thus, and through that cranny shall

Pyramus and Thisbe whisper.

QUINCE     If that may be, then all is well. Come sit down,

every mother’s son, and rehearse your parts. Pyramus,

you begin: when you have spoken your speech, enter

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into that brake; and so every one according to his cue.

Enter PUCK behind.

PUCK

What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here,

So near the cradle of the Fairy Queen?

What, a play toward? I’ll be an auditor;

An actor too perhaps, if I see cause.

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QUINCE     Speak, Pyramus; Thisbe, stand forth.

BOTTOM     Thisbe, the flowers of odious savours sweet –

QUINCE     ‘Odorous’! ‘odorous’!

BOTTOM     Odorous savours sweet;

So hath thy breath, my dearest Thisbe dear.

But hark, a voice! Stay thou but here awhile,

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And by and by I will to thee appear.     Exit.

PUCK     A stranger Pyramus than e’er played here!      Exit.

FLUTE     Must I speak now?

QUINCE     Ay, marry, must you; for you must understand

he goes but to see a noise that he heard, and is to come

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again.

FLUTE     Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue,

Of colour like the red rose on triumphant briar,

Most brisky juvenal, and eke most lovely Jew,

As true as truest horse that yet would never tire;

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I’ll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny’s tomb.

QUINCE     ‘Ninus’ tomb’, man! Why, you must not speak

that yet; that you answer to Pyramus. You speak all

your part at once, cues and all. Pyramus, enter! Your

cue is past; it is ‘never tire’.

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FLUTE

O – As true as truest horse that yet would never tire.

Enter PUCK, and BOTTOM with the ass-head on.

BOTTOM     If I were fair, Thisbe, I were only thine.

QUINCE     O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted! Pray,

masters! Fly, masters! Help!

     Exeunt Quince, Snug, Flute, Snout and Starveling.

PUCK     I’ll follow you: I’ll lead you about a round!

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Through bog, through bush, through brake, through briar;

Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound,

A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;

And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,

Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. Exit.

105

BOTTOM     Why do they run away? This is a knavery of

them to make me afeard.

Enter SNOUT.

SNOUT     O Bottom, thou art changed! What do I see on

thee?

BOTTOM     What do you see? You see an ass-head of your

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own, do you?     Exit Snout.

Enter QUINCE.

QUINCE     Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee! Thou art trans lated.     Exit.

BOTTOM     I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of

me, to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from

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this place, do what they can; I will walk up and down

here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not

afraid.

[Sings.]     The ousel cock, so black of hue,

     With orange-tawny bill,

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The throstle, with his note so true,

     The wren with little quill –

[The singing awakens Titania.]

TITANIA     What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?

BOTTOM [Sings.]

The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,

     The plain-song cuckoo gray,

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Whose note full many a man doth mark,

     And dares not answer nay –

for indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird?

Who would give a bird the lie, though he cry ‘cuckoo’

never so?

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TITANIA     I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again:

Mine ear is much enamour’d of thy note;

So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;

And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me

On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.

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BOTTOM     Methinks, mistress, you should have little

reason for that. And yet, to say the truth, reason and

love keep little company together nowadays. The more

the pity that some honest neighbours will not make

them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon occasion.

140

TITANIA     Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.

BOTTOM     Not so neither; but if I had wit enough to get

out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.

TITANIA     Out of this wood do not desire to go:

Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.

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I am a spirit of no common rate;

The summer still doth tend upon my state;

And I do love thee: therefore go with me.

I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee;

And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,

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And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep:

And I will purge thy mortal grossness so,

That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.

Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!

Enter four fairies: PEASEBLOSSOM, COBWEB,

MOTH     and MUSTARDSEED.

PEASEBLOSSOM     Ready.

COBWEB               And I.

MOTH                    And I.

MUSTARDSEED     And I.

ALL     Where shall we go?

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TITANIA     Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;

Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes;

Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,

With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;

The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees,

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And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs,

And light them at the fiery glow-worms’ eyes,

To have my love to bed, and to arise;

And pluck the wings from painted butterflies

To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.

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Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.

PEASEBLOSSOM     Hail, mortal!

COBWEB     Hail!

MOTH     Hail!

MUSTARDSEED     Hail!

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BOTTOM     I cry your worships mercy, heartily. I beseech

your worship’s name?

COBWEB     Cobweb.

BOTTOM     I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good

Master Cobweb: if I cut my finger, I shall make bold

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with you. Your name, honest gentleman?

PEASEBLOSSOM     Peaseblossom.

BOTTOM     I pray you, commend me to Mistress Squash,

your mother, and to Master Peascod, your father.

Good Master Peaseblossom, I shall desire you of more

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acquaintance too. Your name, I beseech you sir?

MUSTARDSEED     Mustardseed.

BOTTOM     Good Master Mustardseed, I know your

patience well. That same cowardly giant-like ox-beef

hath devoured many a gentleman of your house: I

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promise you, your kindred hath made my eyes water

ere now. I desire you of more acquaintance, good

Master Mustardseed.

TITANIA     Come, wait upon him; lead him to my bower.

The moon, methinks, looks with a watery eye,

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And when she weeps, weeps every little flower,

Lamenting some enforced chastity.

Tie up my love’s tongue, bring him silently. Exeunt.

3.2 Enter OBERON, King of Fairies.

OBERON     I wonder if Titania be awak’d;

Then, what it was that next came in her eye,

Which she must dote on in extremity.

Enter PUCK.

Here comes my messenger. How now, mad spirit?

What night-rule now about this haunted grove?

5

PUCK     My mistress with a monster is in love.

Near to her close and consecrated bower,

While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,

A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,

That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,

10

Were met together to rehearse a play

Intended for great Theseus’ nuptial day.

The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort,

Who Pyramus presented in their sport,

Forsook his scene, and enter’d in a brake,

15

When I did him at this advantage take:

An ass’s nole I fixed on his head.

Anon, his Thisbe must be answered,

And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy –

As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,

20

Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,

Rising and cawing at the gun’s report,

Sever themselves, and madly sweep the sky

So, at his sight, away his fellows fly;

And at our stamp, here o’er and o’er one falls;

25

He murder cries, and help from Athens calls.

Their sense thus weak, lost with their fears thus

     strong,

Made senseless things begin to do them wrong:

For briars and thorns at their apparel snatch;

Some sleeves, some hats, from yielders all things

     catch.

30

I led them on in this distracted fear,

And left sweet Pyramus translated there;

When in that moment, so it came to pass,

Titania wak’d, and straightway lov’d an ass.

OBERON     This falls out better than I could devise.

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But hast thou yet latch’d the Athenian’s eyes

With the love-juice, as I did bid thee do?

PUCK     I took him sleeping – that is finish’d too –

And the Athenian woman by his side,

That when he wak’d, of force she must be ey’d.

40

Enter DEMETRIUS and HERMIA.

OBERON     Stand close: this is the same Athenian.

PUCK     This is the woman, but not this the man.

[They stand apart.]

DEMETRIUS     O why rebuke you him that loves you so?

Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.

HERMIA     Now I but chide, but I should use thee worse,

45

For thou, I fear, hast given me cause to curse.

If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep,

Being o’er shoes in blood, plunge in the deep,

And kill me too.

The sun was not so true unto the day

50

As he to me. Would he have stol’n away

From sleeping Hermia? I’ll believe as soon

This whole earth may be bor’d, and that the moon

May through the centre creep, and so displease

Her brother’s noon-tide with th’Antipodes.

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It cannot be but thou hast murder’d him:

So should a murderer look, so dead, so grim.

DEMETRIUS

So should the murder’d look, and so should I,

Pierc’d through the heart with your stern cruelty;

Yet you, the murderer, look as bright, as clear,

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As yonder Venus in her glimmering sphere.

HERMIA     What’s this to my Lysander? Where is he?

Ah, good Demetrius, wilt thou give him me?

DEMETRIUS

I had rather give his carcase to my hounds.

HERMIA

Out, dog! Out, cur! Thou driv’st me past the bounds

65

Of maiden’s patience. Hast thou slain him then?

Henceforth be never number’d among men!

O once tell true; tell true, even for my sake!

Durst thou have look’d upon him, being awake,

And hast thou kill’d him sleeping? O brave touch!

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Could not a worm, an adder, do so much?

An adder did it; for with doubler tongue

Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung!

DEMETRIUS

You spend your passion on a mispris’d mood:

I am not guilty of Lysander’s blood;

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Nor is he dead, for aught that I can tell.

HERMIA     I pray thee tell me then that he is well.

DEMETRIUS     And if I could, what should I get therefor?

HERMIA     A privilege, never to see me more.

And from thy hated presence part I so:

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See me no more, whether he be dead or no.     Exit.

DEMETRIUS

There is no following her in this fierce vein;

Here therefore for a while I will remain.

So sorrow’s heaviness doth heavier grow

For debt that bankrupt sleep doth sorrow owe;

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Which now in some slight measure it will pay,

If for his tender here I make some stay.

[Lies down and sleeps. Oberon and Puck come forward.]

OBERON

What hast thou done? Thou hast mistaken quite,

And laid the love-juice on some true love’s sight;

Of thy misprision must perforce ensue

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Some true love turn’d, and not a false turn’d true.

PUCK

Then fate o’er-rules, that, one man holding troth,

A million fail, confounding oath on oath.

OBERON     About the wood go swifter than the wind,

And Helena of Athens look thou find;

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All fancy-sick she is, and pale of cheer

With sighs of love, that costs the fresh blood dear.

By some illusion see thou bring her here;

I’ll charm his eyes against she do appear.

PUCK     I go, I go, look how I go!

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Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow. Exit.

OBERON [squeezing the juice on Demetrius’ eyelids.]

Flower of this purple dye,

Hit with Cupid’s archery,

Sink in apple of his eye.

When his love he doth espy,

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Let her shine as gloriously

As the Venus of the sky.

When thou wak’st, if she be by,

Beg of her for remedy.

Enter PUCK.

PUCK     Captain of our fairy band,

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Helena is here at hand;

And the youth, mistook by me,

Pleading for a lover’s fee.

Shall we their fond pageant see?

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

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OBERON     Stand aside. The noise they make

Will cause Demetrius to awake.

PUCK     Then will two at once woo one:

That must needs be sport alone;

And those things do best please me

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That befall prepost’rously.

[They stand aside.]

Enter LYSANDER and HELENA.

LYSANDER

Why should you think that I should woo in scorn?

Scorn and derision never come in tears.

Look when I vow, I weep; and vows so born,

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In their nativity all truth appears.

How can these things in me seem scorn to you,

Bearing the badge of faith to prove them true?

HELENA     You do advance your cunning more and more.

When truth kills truth, O devilish-holy fray!

These vows are Hermia’s: will you give her o’er?

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Weigh oath with oath, and you will nothing weigh:

Your vows to her and me, put in two scales,

Will even weigh; and both as light as tales.

LYSANDER     I had no judgement when to her I swore.

HELENA     Nor none, in my mind, now you give her o’er.

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LYSANDER     Demetrius loves her, and he loves not you.

DEMETRIUS [waking]

O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!

To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?

Crystal is muddy. O how ripe in show

Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!

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That pure congealed white, high Taurus’ snow,

Fann’d with the eastern wind, turns to a crow

When thou hold’st up thy hand. O let me kiss

This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss!

HELENA     O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent

145

To set against me for your merriment.

If you were civil, and knew courtesy,

You would not do me thus much injury.

Can you not hate me, as I know you do,

But you must join in souls to mock me too?

150

If you were men, as men you are in show,

You would not use a gentle lady so:

To vow, and swear, and superpraise my parts,

When I am sure you hate me with your hearts.

You both are rivals, and love Hermia;

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And now both rivals to mock Helena.

A trim exploit, a manly enterprise,

To conjure tears up in a poor maid’s eyes

With your derision! None of noble sort

Would so offend a virgin, and extort

160

A poor soul’s patience, all to make you sport.

LYSANDER     You are unkind, Demetrius; be not so,

For you love Hermia; this you know I know:

And here, with all good will, with all my heart,

In Hermia’s love I yield you up my part;

165

And yours of Helena to me bequeath,

Whom I do love, and will do till my death.

HELENA     Never did mockers waste more idle breath.

DEMETRIUS     Lysander, keep thy Hermia; I will none.

If ere I lov’d her, all that love is gone.

170

My heart to her but as guest-wise sojourn’d,

And now to Helen is it home return’d,

There to remain.

LYSANDER     Helen, it is not so.

DEMETRIUS

Disparage not the faith thou dost not know,

Lest to thy peril thou aby it dear.

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Look where thy love comes; yonder is thy dear.

Enter HERMIA.

HERMIA

Dark night, that from the eye his function takes,

The ear more quick of apprehension makes;

Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense,

It pays the hearing double recompense.

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Thou art not by mine eye, Lysander, found;

Mine ear, I thank it, brought me to thy sound.

But why unkindly didst thou leave me so?

LYSANDER

Why should he stay whom love doth press to go?

HERMIA

What love could press Lysander from my side?

185

LYSANDER

Lysander’s love, that would not let him bide –

Fair Helena, who more engilds the night

Than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light.

Why seek’st thou me? Could not this make thee know

The hate I bare thee made me leave thee so?

190

HERMIA     You speak not as you think; it cannot be!

HELENA     Lo, she is one of this confederacy!

Now I perceive they have conjoin’d all three

To fashion this false sport in spite of me.

Injurious Hermia! Most ungrateful maid!

195

Have you conspir’d, have you with these contriv’d,

To bait me with this foul derision?

Is all the counsel that we two have shar’d,

The sisters’ vows, the hours that we have spent

When we have chid the hasty-footed time

200

For parting us – O, is all forgot?

All school-days’ friendship, childhood innocence?

We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,

Have with our needles created both one flower,

Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,

205

Both warbling of one song, both in one key,

As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds,

Had been incorporate. So we grew together,

Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,

But yet an union in partition,

210

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;

So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;

Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,

Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.

And will you rent our ancient love asunder

215

To join with men in scorning your poor friend?

It is not friendly, ’tis not maidenly;

Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,

Though I alone do feel the injury.

HERMIA     I am amazed at your passionate words:

220

I scorn you not; it seems that you scorn me.

HELENA     Have you not set Lysander, as in scorn,

To follow me, and praise my eyes and face;

And made your other love, Demetrius,

Who even but now did spurn me with his foot,

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To call me goddess, nymph, divine and rare,

Precious, celestial? Wherefore speaks he this

To her he hates? And wherefore doth Lysander

Deny your love, so rich within his soul,

And tender me, forsooth, affection,

230

But by your setting on, by your consent?

What though I be not so in grace as you,

So hung upon with love, so fortunate,

But miserable most, to love unlov’d?

This you should pity rather than despise.

235

HERMIA     I understand not what you mean by this.

HELENA     Ay, do! Persever: counterfeit sad looks,

Make mouths upon me when I turn my back,

Wink each at other; hold the sweet jest up;

This sport, well carried, shall be chronicled.

240

If you have any pity, grace, or manners,

You would not make me such an argument.

But fare ye well; ’tis partly my own fault,

Which death, or absence, soon shall remedy.

LYSANDER     Stay, gentle Helena; hear my excuse;

245

My love, my life, my soul, fair Helena!

HELENA     O excellent!

HERMIA     Sweet, do not scorn her so.

DEMETRIUS     If she cannot entreat, I can compel.

LYSANDER

Thou canst compel no more than she entreat;

Thy threats have no more strength than her weak

     prayers.

250

Helen, I love thee, by my life I do;

I swear by that which I will lose for thee

To prove him false that says I love thee not.

DEMETRIUS     I say I love thee more than he can do.

LYSANDER     If thou say so, withdraw and prove it too.

255

DEMETRIUS     Quick, come!

HERMIA     Lysander, whereto tends all this?

LYSANDER     Away, you Ethiope!

DEMETRIUS     No, no; he’ll

Seem to break loose –

[to Lysander]     take on as you would follow,

But yet come not! You are a tame man, go!

LYSANDER

Hang off, thou cat, thou burr! Vile thing, let loose,

260

Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent.

HERMIA

Why are you grown so rude? What change is this,

Sweet love?

LYSANDER     Thy love? Out, tawny Tartar, out!

Out, loathed medicine! O hated potion, hence!

HERMIA     Do you not jest?

HELENA     Yes sooth, and so do you.

265

LYSANDER     Demetrius, I will keep my word with thee.

DEMETRIUS     I would I had your bond, for I perceive

A weak bond holds you; I’ll not trust your word.

LYSANDER

What, should I hurt her, strike her, kill her dead?

Although I hate her, I’ll not harm her so.

270

HERMIA     What, can you do me greater harm than hate?

Hate me? Wherefor? O me! what news, my love?

Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander?

I am as fair now as I was erewhile.

Since night you lov’d me; yet since night you left me.

275

Why, then you left me – O the gods forbid! –

In earnest, shall I say?

LYSANDER     Ay, by my life!

And never did desire to see thee more.

Therefore, be out of hope, of question, of doubt;

Be certain, nothing truer; ’tis no jest

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That I do hate thee, and love Helena.

HERMIA     O me!

[to Helena] You juggler! You canker-blossom!

You thief of love! What, have you come by night

And stol’n my love’s heart from him?

HELENA     Fine, i’faith!

Have you no modesty, no maiden shame,

285

No touch of bashfulness? What, will you tear

Impatient answers from my gentle tongue?

Fie, fie, you counterfeit! You puppet you!

HERMIA

‘Puppet’! Why, so? Ay, that way goes the game!

Now I perceive that she hath made compare

290

Between our statures; she hath urg’d her height;

And with her personage, her tall personage,

Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail’d with him.

And are you grown so high in his esteem

Because I am so dwarfish and so low?

295

How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak:

How low am I? I am not yet so low

But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.

HELENA     I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen,

Let her not hurt me. I was never curst;

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I have no gift at all in shrewishness;

I am a right maid for my cowardice;

Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think,

Because she is something lower than myself,

That I can match her.

HERMIA     ‘Lower’? Hark, again!

305

HELENA     Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me.

I evermore did love you, Hermia,

Did ever keep your counsels, never wrong’d you,

Save that, in love unto Demetrius,

I told him of your stealth unto this wood.

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He follow’d you; for love I follow’d him;

But he hath chid me hence, and threaten’d me

To strike me, spurn me, nay, to kill me too:

And now, so you will let me quiet go,

To Athens will I bear my folly back,

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And follow you no further. Let me go:

You see how simple and how fond I am.

HERMIA     Why, get you gone! Who is’t that hinders you?

HELENA     A foolish heart that I leave here behind.

HERMIA     What! with Lysander?

HELENA     With Demetrius.

320

LYSANDER

Be not afraid; she shall not harm thee, Helena.

DEMETRIUS

No sir, she shall not, though you take her part.

HELENA     O, when she is angry, she is keen and shrewd;

She was a vixen when she went to school,

And though she be but little, she is fierce.

325

HERMIA     ‘Little’ again? Nothing but ‘low’ and ‘little’?

Why will you suffer her to flout me thus?

Let me come to her!

LYSANDER     Get you gone, you dwarf;

You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made;

You bead, you acorn.

DEMETRIUS     You are too officious

330

In her behalf that scorns your services.

Let her alone; speak not of Helena;

Take not her part; for if thou dost intend

Never so little show of love to her,

Thou shalt aby it.

LYSANDER     Now she holds me not:

335

Now follow, if thou dar’st, to try whose right,

Of thine or mine, is most in Helena.

DEMETRIUS

Follow? Nay, I’ll go with thee, cheek by jowl.

     Exeunt Lysander and Demetrius.

HERMIA     You, mistress, all this coil is long of you.

Nay, go not back.

HELENA     I will not trust you, I,

340

Nor longer stay in your curst company.

Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray:

My legs are longer though, to run away.     Exit.

HERMIA     I am amaz’d, and know not what to say.      Exit.

[Oberon and Puck come forward.]

OBERON     This is thy negligence: still thou mistak’st,

345

Or else committ’st thy knaveries wilfully.

PUCK     Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook.

Did not you tell me I should know the man

By the Athenian garments he had on?

And so far blameless proves my enterprise

350

That I have ‘nointed an Athenian’s eyes:

And so far am I glad it so did sort,

As this their jangling I esteem a sport.

OBERON     Thou seest these lovers seek a place to fight.

Hie therefore, Robin, overcast the night;

355

The starry welkin cover thou anon

With drooping fog, as black as Acheron,

And lead these testy rivals so astray

As one come not within another’s way.

Like to Lysander sometime frame thy tongue,

360

Then stir Demetrius up with bitter wrong;

And sometime rail thou like Demetrius:

And from each other look thou lead them thus,

Till o’er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep

With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep.

365

Then crush this herb into Lysander’s eye,

Whose liquor hath this virtuous property,

To take from thence all error with his might,

And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight.

When they next wake, all this derision

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Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision;

And back to Athens shall the lovers wend,

With league whose date till death shall never end.

Whiles I in this affair do thee employ,

I’ll to my queen, and beg her Indian boy;

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And then I will her charmed eye release

From monster’s view, and all things shall be peace.

PUCK     My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,

For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast;

And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger,

380

At whose approach, ghosts wandering here and there

Troop home to churchyards. Damned spirits all,

That in cross-ways and floods have burial,

Already to their wormy beds are gone,

For fear lest day should look their shames upon:

385

They wilfully themselves exil’d from light,

And must for aye consort with black-brow’d night.

OBERON     But we are spirits of another sort:

I with the Morning’s love have oft made sport;

And like a forester the groves may tread

390

Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red,

Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,

Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.

But notwithstanding, haste, make no delay;

We may effect this business yet ere day.     Exit.

395

PUCK         Up and down, up and down,

     I will lead them up and down;

     I am fear’d in field and town:

     Goblin, lead them up and down.

Here comes one.

400

Enter LYSANDER.

LYSANDER

Where art thou, proud Demetrius? Speak thou now.

PUCK     Here, villain, drawn and ready. Where art thou?

LYSANDER     I will be with thee straight.

PUCK     Follow me then

To plainer ground.

     Exit Lysander, as following the voice.

Enter DEMETRIUS.

DEMETRIUS     Lysander, speak again.

Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled?

405

Speak! In some bush? Where dost thou hide thy head?

PUCK     Thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars,

Telling the bushes that thou look’st for wars,

And wilt not come? Come, recreant, come thou child!

I’ll whip thee with a rod; he is defil’d

410

That draws a sword on thee.

DEMETRIUS     Yea, art thou there?

PUCK     Follow my voice; we’ll try no manhood here.

Exeunt.

Enter LYSANDER.

LYSANDER     He goes before me, and still dares me on;

When I come where he calls, then he is gone.

The villain is much lighter-heel’d than I:

415

I follow’d fast; but faster he did fly,

That fallen am I in dark uneven way,

And here will rest me. [Lies down.]

     Come thou gentle day:

For if but once thou show me thy grey light,

I’ll find Demetrius, and revenge this spite. [Sleeps.]

420

Enter PUCK and DEMETRIUS.

PUCK     Ho, ho, ho! Coward, why com’st thou not?

[They dodge about the stage.]

DEMETRIUS     Abide me if thou dar’st, for well I wot

Thou runn’st before me, shifting every place,

And dar’st not stand, nor look me in the face.

Where art thou now?

PUCK     Come hither; I am here.

425

DEMETRIUS

Nay, then, thou mock’st me; thou shalt buy this dear

If ever I thy face by daylight see:

Now go thy way. Faintness constraineth me

To measure out my length on this cold bed.

[Lies down.]

By day’s approach look to be visited. [Sleeps.]

430

Enter HELENA.

HELENA     O weary night, O long and tedious night,

Abate thy hours! Shine, comforts, from the east,

That I may back to Athens by daylight,

From these that my poor company detest.

And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye,

435

Steal me awhile from mine own company.

[Lies down and sleeps.]

PUCK     Yet but three? Come one more,

     Two of both kinds makes up four.

     Here she comes, curst and sad:

     Cupid is a knavish lad

440

     Thus to make poor females mad!

Enter HERMIA.

HERMIA     Never so weary, never so in woe,

Bedabbled with the dew, and torn with briars,

I can no further crawl, no further go;

My legs can keep no pace with my desires.

445

Here will I rest me till the break of day. [Lies down.]

Heavens shield Lysander, if they mean a fray! [Sleeps.]

PUCK             On the ground

     Sleep sound;

     I’ll apply

450

     To your eye,

     Gentle lover, remedy.

[Squeezes the juice on Lysander’s eyelids.]

     When thou wak’st,

     Thou tak’st

     True delight

455

     In the sight

     Of thy former lady’s eye;

And the country proverb known,

That every man should take his own,

In your waking shall be shown:

460

     Jack shall have Jill,

     Nought shall go ill;

The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be

well.     Exit.

4.1 Lysander, Demetrius, Helena and Hermia, still
lying asleep. Enter TITANIA, Queen of Fairies, and
BOTTOM; PEASEBLOSSOM, COBWEB, MOTH,
MUSTARDSEED and other fairies; OBERON, the King,
behind, unseen.

TITANIA     Come sit thee down upon this flowery bed,

While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,

And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head,

And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.

BOTTOM     Where’s Peaseblossom?

5

PEASEBLOSSOM     Ready.

BOTTOM     Scratch my head, Peaseblossom. Where’s

Mounsieur Cobweb?

COBWEB     Ready.

BOTTOM     Mounsieur Cobweb, good mounsieur, get you

10

your weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped

humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and good

mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret

yourself too much in the action, mounsieur; and good

mounsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not; I

15

would be loath to have you overflowen with a honey-

bag, signior. Where’s Mounsieur Mustardseed?

MUSTARDSEED     Ready.

BOTTOM     Give me your neaf, Mounsieur Mustardseed.

Pray you, leave your courtesy, good mounsieur.

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MUSTARDSEED     What’s your will?

BOTTOM     Nothing, good mounsieur, but to help

Cavalery Cobweb to scratch. I must to the barber’s,

mounsieur, for methinks I am marvellous hairy about

the face; and I am such a tender ass, if my hair do but

25

tickle me, I must scratch.

TITANIA

What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?

BOTTOM     I have a reasonable good ear in music. Let’s

have the tongs and the bones.

TITANIA     Or say, sweet love, what thou desir’st to eat?

30

BOTTOM     Truly, a peck of provender; I could munch

your good dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a

bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.

TITANIA     I have a venturous fairy that shall seek

The squirrel’s hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.

35

BOTTOM     

I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas.

But I pray you, let none of your people stir me:

I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.

TITANIA     Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.

Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away. Exeunt Fairies.

40

So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle

Gently entwist; the female ivy so

Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.

O how I love thee! How I dote on thee! [They sleep.]

Enter PUCK

OBERON [advancing]

Welcome, good Robin. Seest thou this sweet sight.

45

Her dotage now I do begin to pity;

For, meeting her of late behind the wood

Seeking sweet favours for this hateful fool,

I did upbraid her and fall out with her:

For she his hairy temples then had rounded

50

With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers;

And that same dew, which sometime on the buds

Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls,

Stood now within the pretty flowerets’ eyes

Like tears, that did their own disgrace bewail.

55

When I had at my pleasure taunted her,

And she in mild terms begg’d my patience,

I then did ask of her her changeling child;

Which straight she gave me, and her fairy sent

To bear him to my bower in fairy land.

60

And now I have the boy, I will undo

This hateful imperfection of her eyes.

And gentle Puck, take this transformed scalp

From off the head of this Athenian swain,

That he awaking when the other do,

65

May all to Athens back again repair,

And think no more of this night’s accidents

But as the fierce vexation of a dream.

But first I will release the fairy queen.

[Squeezes the juice on her eyelids.]

Be as thou wast wont to be;

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See as thou wont to see:

Dian’s bud o’er Cupid’s flower

Hath such force and blessed power.

Now my Titania, wake you, my sweet queen.

TITANIA [waking]

My Oberon! What visions have I seen!

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Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.

OBERON     There lies your love.

TITANIA     How came these things to pass?

O how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!

OBERON     Silence awhile. Robin, take off this head.

Titania, music call; and strike more dead

80

Than common sleep, of all these five the sense.

TITANIA     Music ho, music, such as charmeth sleep!

     [Soft music.]

PUCK [taking the ass-head off Bottom]

Now when thou wak’st, with thine own fool’s eyes peep.

OBERON     Sound, music!      [Music strikes into a dance.]

     Come my queen, take hands with me,

And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.

85

[Oberon and Titania dance.]

Now thou and I are new in amity,

And will to-morrow midnight, solemnly,

Dance in Duke Theseus’ house triumphantly,

And bless it to all fair prosperity.

There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be

90

Wedded, with Theseus, all in jollity.

PUCK           Fairy king, attend and mark:

  I do hear the morning lark.

OBERON     Then my queen, in silence sad,

  Trip we after night’s shade:

95

  We the globe can compass soon,

  Swifter than the wandering moon.

TITANIA     Come my lord, and in our flight

  Tell me how it came this night

  That I sleeping here was found

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  With these mortals on the ground.

     Exeunt. The four lovers and Bottom still lie asleep.

To the winding of horns within, enter THESEUS,
HIPPOLYTA, EGEUS and train.

THESEUS     Go one of you, find out the forester;

For now our observation is perform’d,

And since we have the vaward of the day,

My love shall hear the music of my hounds.

105

Uncouple in the western valley; let them go;

Dispatch I say, and find the forester.

     Exit an attendant.

We will, fair queen, up to the mountain’s top,

And mark the musical confusion

Of hounds and echo in conjunction.

110

HIPPOLYTA     I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,

When in a wood of Crete they bay’d the bear

With hounds of Sparta; never did I hear

Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves,

The skies, the fountains, every region near

115

Seem’d all one mutual cry; I never heard

So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

THESEUS     My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,

So flew’d, so sanded; and their heads are hung

With ears that sweep away the morning dew;

120

Crook-knee’d and dewlapp’d like Thessalian bulls;

Slow in pursuit, but match’d in mouth like bells,

Each under each: a cry more tuneable

Was never holla’d to, nor cheer’d with horn,

In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly.

125

Judge when you hear. But soft, what nymphs are

     these?

EGEUS     My lord, this is my daughter here asleep,

And this Lysander; this Demetrius is,

This Helena, old Nedar’s Helena.

I wonder of their being here together.

130

THESEUS     No doubt they rose up early, to observe

The rite of May; and hearing our intent,

Came here in grace of our solemnity.

But speak, Egeus; is not this the day

That Hermia should give answer of her choice?

135

EGEUS     It is, my lord.

THESEUS

Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.

[Shout within; winding of horns.]

[The lovers wake and start up.]

Good-morrow friends. Saint Valentine is past:

Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?

LYSANDER     Pardon, my lord. [The lovers kneel.]

THESEUS     I pray you all, stand up.

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I know you two are rival enemies:

How comes this gentle concord in the world,

That hatred is so far from jealousy

To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity?

LYSANDER     My lord, I shall reply amazedly,

145

Half sleep, half waking; but as yet, I swear,

I cannot truly say how I came here.

But as I think – for truly would I speak –

And now I do bethink me, so it is:

I came with Hermia hither; our intent

150

Was to be gone from Athens, where we might,

Without the peril of the Athenian law –

EGEUS     Enough, enough, my lord; you have enough!

I beg the law, the law upon his head!

They would have stol’n away, they would,

     Demetrius,

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Thereby to have defeated you and me:

You of your wife, and me of my consent,

Of my consent that she should be your wife.

DEMETRIUS

My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth,

Of this their purpose hither to this wood;

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And I in fury hither follow’d them,

Fair Helena in fancy following me.

But my good lord, I wot not by what power –

But by some power it is – my love to Hermia,

Melted as the snow, seems to me now

165

As the remembrance of an idle gaud

Which in my childhood I did dote upon;

And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,

The object and the pleasure of mine eye,

Is only Helena. To her, my lord,

170

Was I betroth’d ere I saw Hermia;

But like a sickness did I loathe this food:

But as in health, come to my natural taste,

Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,

And will for evermore be true to it.

175

THESEUS     Fair lovers, you are fortunately met;

Of this discourse we more will hear anon.

Egeus, I will overbear your will;

For in the temple, by and by, with us,

These couples shall eternally be knit.

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And, for the morning now is something worn,

Our purpos’d hunting shall be set aside.

Away, with us, to Athens: three and three,

We’ll hold a feast in great solemnity.

Come, Hippolyta.

185

     Exeunt Theseus, Hippolyta, Egeus and train.

DEMETRIUS

These things seem small and undistinguishable,

Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.

HERMIA     Methinks I see these things with parted eye,

When everything seems double.

HELENA     So methinks;

And I have found Demetrius like a jewel,

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Mine own, and not mine own.

DEMETRIUS     Are you sure

That we are awake? It seems to me

That yet we sleep, we dream. Do not you think

The Duke was here, and bid us follow him?

HERMIA     Yea, and my father.

HELENA     And Hippolyta.

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LYSANDER     And he did bid us follow to the temple.

DEMETRIUS     Why then, we are awake: let’s follow him,

And by the way let us recount our dreams.     Exeunt.

BOTTOM [waking] When my cue comes, call me and I

will answer. My next is ‘Most fair Pyramus’. Heigh-

200

ho! Peter Quince? Flute, the bellows-mender? Snout,

the tinker? Starveling? God’s my life! Stolen hence,

and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have

had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it

was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this

205

dream. Methought I was – there is no man can tell

what. Methought I was – and methought I had – but

man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what

methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the

ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to

210

taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report,

what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a

ballad of this dream: it shall be called ‘Bottom’s

Dream’, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it

in the latter end of a play, before the Duke.

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Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall

sing it at her death.     Exit.

4.2 Enter QUINCE, FLUTE, SNOUT and STARVELING.

QUINCE     Have you sent to Bottom’s house? Is he come

home yet?

STARVELING     He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is

transported.

FLUTE     If he come not, then the play is marred: it goes

5

not forward, doth it?

QUINCE     It is not possible. You have not a man in all

Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he.

FLUTE     No, he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft

man in Athens.

10

QUINCE     Yea, and the best person too; and he is a very

paramour for a sweet voice.

FLUTE     You must say paragon. A paramour is, God bless

us, a thing of naught.

Enter SNUG the joiner.

SNUG     Masters, the Duke is coming from the temple,

15

and there is two or three lords and ladies more

married. If our sport had gone forward, we had all

been made men.

FLUTE     O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost

sixpence a day during his life; he could not have

20

‘scaped sixpence a day. And the Duke had not given

him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I’ll be

hanged. He would have deserved it: sixpence a day in

Pyramus, or nothing.

Enter BOTTOM.

BOTTOM     Where are these lads? Where are these hearts?

25

QUINCE     Bottom! O most courageous day! O most happy

hour!

BOTTOM     Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but ask

me not what; for if I tell you, I am not true Athenian.

I will tell you everything, right as it fell out.

30

QUINCE     Let us hear, sweet Bottom.

BOTTOM     Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is,

that the Duke hath dined. Get your apparel together,

good strings to your beards, new ribbons to your

pumps; meet presently at the palace; every man look

35

o’er his part: for the short and the long is, our play is

preferred. In any case, let Thisbe have clean linen; and

let not him that plays the lion pare his nails, for they

shall hang out for the lion’s claws. And most dear

actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter

40

sweet breath; and I do not doubt but to hear them say,

it is a sweet comedy. No more words. Away! Go, away!

Exeunt.

5.1 Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA; lords and
attendants, among them PHILOSTRATE.

HIPPOLYTA

’Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.

THESEUS     More strange than true. I never may believe

These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

5

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;

That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

10

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

15

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy:

20

Or, in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush suppos’d a bear!

HIPPOLYTA     But all the story of the night told over,

And all their minds transfigur’d so together,

More witnesseth than fancy’s images,

25

And grows to something of great constancy;

But howsoever, strange and admirable.

Enter the lovers: LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HERMIA and HELENA.

THESEUS     Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.

Joy, gentle friends, joy and fresh days of love

Accompany your hearts!

LYSANDER     More than to us

30

Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed!

THESEUS

Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have,

To wear away this long age of three hours

Between our after-supper and bed-time?

Where is our usual manager of mirth?

35

What revels are in hand? Is there no play

To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?

Call Philostrate.

PHILOSTRATE [advancing] Here, mighty Theseus.

THESEUS

Say, what abridgement have you for this evening,

What masque, what music? How shall we beguile

40

The lazy time, if not with some delight?

PHILOSTRATE

There is a brief how many sports are ripe:

Make choice of which your Highness will see first.

[giving a paper]

THESEUS [Reads.]

The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung

By an Athenian eunuch to the harp?

45

We’ll none of that; that have I told my love

In glory of my kinsman Hercules.

[Reads.] The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,

Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage?

That is an old device, and it was play’d

50

When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.

[Reads.] The thrice three Muses mourning for the death

Of learning, late deceas’d in beggary?

That is some satire, keen and critical,

Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.

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[Reads.] A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus

And his love Thisbe, very tragical mirth?

Merry and tragical? Tedious and brief?

That is hot ice, and wondrous strange snow!

How shall we find the concord of this discord?

60

PHILOSTRATE

A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,

Which is as brief as I have known a play;

But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,

Which makes it tedious; for in all the play

There is not one word apt, one player fitted.

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And tragical, my noble lord, it is,

For Pyramus therein doth kill himself;

Which, when I saw rehears’d, I must confess

Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears

The passion of loud laughter never shed.

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THESEUS     What are they that do play it?

PHILOSTRATE

Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,

Which never labour’d in their minds till now;

And now have toil’d their unbreath’d memories

With this same play, against your nuptial.

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THESEUS     And we will hear it.

PHILOSTRATE     No, my noble lord,

It is not for you: I have heard it over,

And it is nothing, nothing in the world;

Unless you can find sport in their intents,

Extremely stretch’d and conn’d with cruel pain

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To do you service.

THESEUS     I will hear that play;

For never anything can be amiss

When simpleness and duty tender it.

Go bring them in; and take your places, ladies.

Exit Philostrate.

HIPPOLYTA     I love not to see wretchedness o’er-charg’d,

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And duty in his service perishing.

THESEUS     Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing.

HIPPOLYTA     He says they can do nothing in this kind.

THESEUS

The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.

Our sport shall be to take what they mistake:

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And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect

Takes it in might, not merit.

Where I have come, great clerks have purposed

To greet me with premeditated welcomes;

Where I have seen them shiver and look pale,

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Make periods in the midst of sentences,

Throttle their practis’d accent in their fears,

And, in conclusion, dumbly have broke off,

Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet,

Out of this silence yet I pick’d a welcome,

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And in the modesty of fearful duty

I read as much as from the rattling tongue

Of saucy and audacious eloquence.

Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity

In least speak most, to my capacity.

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Enter PHILOSTRATE.

PHILOSTRATE

So please your grace, the Prologue is address’d.

THESEUS     Let him approach.

[Flourish of trumpets.]

Enter QUINCE for the PROLOGUE.

PROLOGUE     If we offend, it is with our good will.

That you should think, we come not to offend,

But with good will. To show our simple skill,

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That is the true beginning of our end.

Consider then, we come but in despite.

We do not come, as minding to content you,

Our true intent is. All for your delight,

We are not here. That you should here repent you,

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The actors are at hand; and by their show,

You shall know all, that you are like to know.

THESEUS     This fellow doth not stand upon points.

LYSANDER     He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; he

knows not the stop. A good moral, my lord: it is not

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enough to speak, but to speak true.

HIPPOLYTA     Indeed he hath played on this prologue like

a child on a recorder; a sound, but not in government.

THESEUS     His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing

impaired, but all disordered. Who is next?

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Enter, with a trumpeter before them, BOTTOM as PYRAMUS,
FLUTE as THISBE, SNOUT as WALL,
STARVELING as MOONSHINE and SNUG as LION.

PROLOGUE     Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show;

But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.

This man is Pyramus, if you would know;

This beauteous lady Thisbe is certain.

This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present

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Wall, that vile wall which did these lovers sunder;

And through Wall’s chink, poor souls, they are content

To whisper. At the which let no man wonder.

This man, with lantern, dog, and bush of thorn,

Presenteth Moonshine; for, if you will know,

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By moonshine did these lovers think no scorn

To meet at Ninus’ tomb, there, there to woo.

This grisly beast, which Lion hight by name,

The trusty Thisbe, coming first by night,

Did scare away, or rather did affright;

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And as she fled, her mantle she did fall,

Which Lion vile with bloody mouth did stain.

Anon comes Pyramus, sweet youth and tall,

And finds his trusty Thisbe’s mantle slain;

Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade,

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He bravely broach’d his boiling bloody breast;

And Thisbe, tarrying in mulberry shade,

His dagger drew, and died. For all the rest.

Let Lion, Moonshine, Wall, and lovers twain

At large discourse, while here they do remain.

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Exeunt Prologue, Pyramus, Thisbe, Lion
     and Moonshine.

THESEUS     I wonder if the lion be to speak?

DEMETRIUS     No wonder, my lord; one lion may when many asses do.

WALL     In this same interlude it doth befall

That I, one Snout by name, present a wall;

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And such a wall as I would have you think

That had in it a crannied hole, or chink,

Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe,

Did whisper often, very secretly.

This loam, this rough-cast, and this stone doth show

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That I am that same wall; the truth is so:

And this the cranny is, right and sinister,

Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper.

THESEUS     Would you desire lime and hair to speak better?

DEMETRIUS     It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard

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discourse, my lord.

Enter PYRAMUS.

THESEUS     Pyramus draws near the wall; silence!

PYRAMUS     O grim-look’d night! O night with hue so black!

O night, which ever art when day is not!

O night, O night, alack, alack, alack,

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I fear my Thisbe’s promise is forgot!

And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,

That stand’st between her father’s ground and mine;

Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,

Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne.

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[Wall stretches out his fingers.]

Thanks, courteous wall: Jove shield thee well for this!

But what see I? No Thisbe do I see.

O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss,

Curs’d thy stones for thus deceiving me!

THESEUS     The wall, methinks, being sensible, should

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curse again.

PYRAMUS     No, in truth sir, he should not. ‘Deceiving

me’ is Thisbe’s cue: she is to enter now, and I am to

spy her through the wall. You shall see it will fall pat

as I told you: yonder she comes.

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Enter THISBE.

THISBE     O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans,

For parting my fair Pyramus and me!

My cherry lips have often kiss’d thy stones,

Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.

PYRAMUS     I see a voice; now will I to the chink,

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To spy and I can hear my Thisbe’s face.

Thisbe?

THISBE     My love thou art, my love I think!

PYRAMUS     Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover’s grace;

And like Limander am I trusty still.

THISBE     And I like Helen, till the Fates me kill.

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PYRAMUS     Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true.

THISBE     As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.

PYRAMUS     O kiss me through the hole of this vile wall.

THISBE     I kiss the wall’s hole, not your lips at all.

PYRAMUS     Wilt thou at Ninny’s tomb meet me straightway?

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THISBE     ‘Tide life, ‘tide death, I come without delay.

Exeunt Pyramus and Thisbe, severally.

WALL     Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;

And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.     Exit.

THESEUS     Now is the mure rased between the two

neighbours.

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DEMETRIUS     No remedy my lord, when walls are so

wilful to hear without warning.

HIPPOLYTA     This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.

THESEUS     The best in this kind are but shadows; and the

worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.

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HIPPOLYTA     It must be your imagination then, and not

theirs.

THESEUS     If we imagine no worse of them than they of

themselves, they may pass for excellent men. Here

come two noble beasts in, a man and a lion.

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Enter LION and MOONSHINE.

LION You ladies, you whose gentle hearts do fear

The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,

May now, perchance, both quake and tremble here,

When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.

Then know that I as Snug the joiner am

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A lion fell, nor else no lion’s dam;

For if I should as lion come in strife

Into this place, ’twere pity on my life.

THESEUS     A very gentle beast, and of a good conscience.

DEMETRIUS     The very best at a beast, my lord, that e’er

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I saw.

LYSANDER     This lion is a very fox for his valour.

THESEUS     True; and a goose for his discretion.

DEMETRIUS     Not so, my lord, for his valour cannot carry

his discretion; and the fox carries the goose.

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THESEUS     His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his

valour; for the goose carries not the fox. It is well: leave

it to his discretion, and let us listen to the moon.

MOONSHINE     This lantern doth the horned moon present –

DEMETRIUS     He should have worn the horns on his head.

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THESEUS     He is no crescent, and his horns are invisible

within the circumference.

MOONSHINE     This lantern doth the horned moon present;

Myself the Man i’th’ Moon do seem to be.

THESEUS     This is the greatest error of all the rest; the

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man should be put into the lantern. How is it else the

Man i’the Moon?

DEMETRIUS     He dares not come there for the candle; for

you see it is already in snuff.

HIPPOLYTA     I am aweary of this moon. Would he would

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change!

THESEUS     It appears by his small light of discretion that

he is in the wane; but yet in courtesy, in all reason, we

must stay the time.

LYSANDER     Proceed, Moon.

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MOONSHINE     All that I have to say is, to tell you that the

lantern is the moon; I the Man i’th’ Moon; this thorn-

bush my thorn-bush; and this dog my dog.

DEMETRIUS     Why, all these should be in the lantern, for

all these are in the moon. But silence: here comes

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Thisbe.

Enter THISBE.

THISBE     This is old Ninny’s tomb. Where is my love?

LION     O –!     The Lion roars. Thisbe,

     dropping her mantle, runs off.

DEMETRIUS     Well roared, Lion!

THESEUS     Well run, Thisbe!

260

HIPPOLYTA     Well shone, Moon! Truly, the moon shines

with a good grace.

     The Lion worries the mantle, and exit.

THESEUS     Well moused, Lion!

DEMETRIUS     And then came Pyramus –

LYSANDER     And so the lion vanished.

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Enter PYRAMUS.

PYRAMUS     Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams;

I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright;

For by thy gracious, golden, glittering gleams,

I trust to take of truest Thisbe sight.

     But stay! O spite!

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     But mark, poor knight,

     What dreadful dole is here?

     Eyes, do you see?

     How can it be?

     O dainty duck! O dear!

275

     Thy mantle good,

     What! Stain’d with blood?

     Approach, ye Furies fell!

     O Fates, come, come!

     Cut thread and thrum:

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     Quail, crush, conclude, and quell.

THESEUS     This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.

HIPPOLYTA     Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man.

PYRAMUS     O wherefore, Nature, didst thou lions frame,

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Since lion vile hath here deflower’d my dear?

Which is – no, no – which was the fairest dame

That liv’d, that lov’d, that lik’d, that look’d with cheer.

     Come tears, confound!

     Out sword, and wound

290

     The pap of Pyramus;

     Ay, that left pap,

     Where heart doth hop: [Stabs himself.]

     Thus die I, thus, thus, thus!

     Now am I dead,

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     Now am I fled;

     My soul is in the sky.

     Tongue, lose thy light;

     Moon, take thy flight!

Exit Moonshine.

     Now die, die, die, die, die.[Dies.]

300

DEMETRIUS     No die, but an ace for him; for he is but

one.

LYSANDER     Less than an ace, man; for he is dead, he is

nothing.

THESEUS     With the help of a surgeon he might yet

305

recover, and prove an ass.

HIPPOLYTA     How chance Moonshine is gone, before

Thisbe comes back and finds her lover?

THESEUS     She will find him by starlight.

Enter THISBE.

Here she comes, and her passion ends the play.

310

HIPPOLYTA     Methinks she should not use a long one for

such a Pyramus; I hope she will be brief.

DEMETRIUS     A mote will turn the balance, which

Pyramus, which Thisbe, is the better: he for a man,

God warrant us; she for a woman, God bless us!

315

LYSANDER     She hath spied him already with those sweet

eyes.

DEMETRIUS     And thus she means, videlicet –

THISBE     Asleep, my love?

What, dead, my dove?

320

O Pyramus, arise!

Speak, speak! Quite dumb?

Dead, dead? A tomb

Must cover thy sweet eyes.

These lily lips,

325

This cherry nose,

These yellow cowslip cheeks,

Are gone, are gone!

Lovers, make moan;

His eyes were green as leeks.

330

O Sisters Three,

Come, come to me,

With hands as pale as milk;

Lay them in gore,

Since you have shore

335

With shears his thread of silk.

Tongue, not a word:

Come, trusty sword,

Come, blade, my breast imbrue! [Stabs herself.]

And farewell, friends;

340

Thus Thisbe ends:

Adieu, adieu, adieu! [Dies.]

THESEUS     Moonshine and Lion are left to bury the

dead.

DEMETRIUS     Ay, and Wall too.

345

BOTTOM [starting up] No, I assure you; the wall is down

that parted their fathers. [Flute rises.] Will it please you

to see the epilogue, or to hear a Bergomask dance

between two of our company?

THESEUS     No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs

350

no excuse. Never excuse; for when the players are all

dead, there need none to be blamed. Marry, if he that

writ it had played Pyramus, and hanged himself in

Thisbe’s garter, it would have been a fine tragedy –

and so it is, truly, and very notably discharged. But

355

come, your Bergomask; let your epilogue alone.

Enter QUINCE, SNUG, SNOUT and STARVELING
two of whom dance a bergamask. Then exeunt
handicraftsmen, including Flute and Bottom.

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve.

Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time.

I fear we shall outsleep the coming morn

As much as we this night have overwatch’d.

360

This palpable-gross play hath well beguil’d

The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed.

A fortnight hold we this solemnity

In nightly revels and new jollity.     Exeunt.

Enter PUCK.

PUCK     Now the hungry lion roars,

365

And the wolf behowls the moon;

Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,

All with weary task fordone.

Now the wasted brands do glow,

Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud,

370

Puts the wretch that lies in woe

In remembrance of a shroud.

Now it is the time of night

That the graves, all gaping wide,

Every one lets forth his sprite

375

In the church-way paths to glide.

And we fairies, that do run

By the triple Hecate’s team

From the presence of the sun,

Following darkness like a dream,

380

Now are frolic; not a mouse

Shall disturb this hallow’d house.

I am sent with broom before

To sweep the dust behind the door.

Enter OBERON and TITANIA, the King and
Queen of Fairies, with all their train.

OBERON     Through the house give glimmering light

385

By the dead and drowsy fire;

Every elf and fairy sprite

Hop as light as bird from briar;

And this ditty after me

Sing, and dance it trippingly.

390

TITANIA     First rehearse your song by rote,

To each word a warbling note;

Hand in hand, with fairy grace,

Will we sing, and bless this place.

[Oberon leading, the Fairies sing and dance.]

OBERON     Now, until the break of day,

395

Through this house each fairy stray.

To the best bride-bed will we,

Which by us shall blessed be;

And the issue there create

Ever shall be fortunate.

400

So shall all the couples three

Ever true in loving be;

And the blots of Nature’s hand

Shall not in their issue stand:

Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar,

405

Nor mark prodigious, such as are

Despised in nativity,

Shall upon their children be.

With this field-dew consecrate,

Every fairy take his gait,

410

And each several chamber bless

Through this palace with sweet peace;

And the owner of it blest,

Ever shall in safety rest.

Trip away; make no stay;

415

Meet me all by break of day.

     Exeunt all but Puck.

PUCK [to the audience]

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumber’d here

While these visions did appear.

420

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend:

If you pardon, we will mend.

And, as I am an honest Puck,

425

If we have unearned luck

Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,

We will make amends ere long;

Else the Puck a liar call.

So, goodnight unto you all.

430

Give me your hands, if we be friends,

And Robin shall restore amends.     Exit.

Much Ado About Nothing

A Quarto edition of Much Ado About Nothing appeared in 1600, and the play was not reprinted until it was included in the First Folio in 1623 in a text based on the Quarto. A number of relatively minor inconsistencies in the text have been variously explained as errors in transmission or authorial loose ends. The title-page of the Quarto claims that the play had been ‘sundry times publicly acted’ by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Shakespeare’s regular company. Unless it is identified with the mysterious Love’s Labour’s Won, it does not occur in Francis Meres’s list of Shakespeare’s comedies in 1598; this has caused scholars to believe that it was written in the second half of 1598 or 1599. It cannot have been written later than 1599 as the Quarto sometimes uses the name of Will Kemp instead of Dogberry in speech-headings, and this famous comic actor left the company in that year. It probably came after A Midsummer Night’s Dream and before As You Like It and Twelfth Night. Although we do not have records of early performances of the play, allusions to it indicate that it must have been well known, and it was revived for a Court performance at Whitehall before King James I’s daughter Princess Elizabeth and her husband the Elector Palatine in May 1613.

The plot of the play combines the tragicomic story of the courtship of Hero and Claudio (in scenes written mainly in verse) with the witty sparring of Beatrice and Benedick (in scenes written mainly in prose). The latter pair are tricked into acknowledging that their posture of disliking each other conceals their love. Leonard Digges referred to the popularity of Beatrice and Benedick in his prefatory tribute to the 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s poems, and King Charles I wrote ‘Benedik and Betrice’ as a kind of alternative title in his copy of the 1632 Second Folio; the ‘merry war’ between these two characters (reminiscent of that between Berowne and Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost) usually dominates productions. Much Ado is also, however, of particular interest in that it contains Shakespeare’s earliest version of the more serious story of the man who mistakenly believes his partner has been unfaithful to him. This story is an ancient one, and Shakespeare could have used a number of Renaissance versions as his source(s). The triangle of Don John (deceiving villain), Claudio (credulous lover or husband) and Hero (slandered fiancée or wife) reappears in Iago, Othello and Desdemona and again in Iachimo, Posthumus and Imogen (in Cymbeline). Like Othello and Posthumus, Claudio is held responsible for the death (or apparent death) of the woman, although he at least does not mean to kill her. Not surprisingly recent critics, especially feminists, have found it difficult to forgive such behaviour.

In the Restoration William Davenant amalgamated parts of Much Ado with parts of Measure for Measure to produce an adaptation called The Law Against Lovers (1662), and Shakespeare’s play was performed only sporadically until David Garrick’s acclaimed revival in 1748. Thereafter it continued to be popular on stage with actors such as Charles Kemble, Henry Irving and John Gielgud starring as Benedick, partnered respectively by Helen Faucit, Ellen Terry and Peggy Ashcroft as Beatrice. Not a text which had previously attracted many film-makers, it received a boost in its recent fortunes with the 1993 version directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Branagh and Emma Thompson.

The Arden text is based on the 1600 Quarto.

LIST OF ROLES

DON PEDRO

Prince of Aragon

DON JOHN

his bastard brother

CLAUDIO

a young lord of Florence

BENEDICK

a young lord of Padua

LEONATO

governor of Messina

ANTONIO

his brother

BALTHASAR

a singer, attendant on Don Pedro

followers of Don John

FRIAR FRANCIS

DOGBERRY

master constable

VERGES

a headborough

FIRST WATCHMAN

SECOND WATCHMAN

SEXTON

BOY

LORD

HERO

daughter to Leonato

BEATRICE

niece to Leonato

gentlewoman attending on Hero

Messengers, Musicians, Watchmen, Attendants, etc.

1.1 Enter LEONATO, Governor of Messina, HERO, his
daughter, and BEATRICE, his niece, with a Messenger.

LEONATO     I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of

Aragon comes this night to Messina.

MESSENGER     He is very near by this, he was not three

leagues off when I left him.

LEONATO     How many gentlemen have you lost in this

5

action?

MESSENGER     But few of any sort, and none of name.

LEONATO     A victory is twice itself when the achiever

brings home full numbers. I find here that Don Pedro

hath bestowed much honour on a young Florentine

10

called Claudio.

MESSENGER     Much deserved on his part, and equally

remembered by Don Pedro. He hath borne himself

beyond the promise of his age, doing, in the figure of

a lamb, the feats of a lion: he hath indeed better

15

bettered expectation than you must expect of me to

tell you how.

LEONATO     He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very

much glad of it.

MESSENGER     I have already delivered him letters, and

20

there appears much joy in him, even so much that joy

could not show itself modest enough without a

badge of bitterness.

LEONATO     Did he break out into tears?

MESSENGER     In great measure.

25

LEONATO     A kind overflow of kindness: there are no

faces truer than those that are so washed. How much

better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!

BEATRICE     I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned

from the wars or no?

30

MESSENGER     I know none of that name, lady, there was

none such in the army of any sort.

LEONATO     What is he that you ask for, niece?

HERO     My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua.

MESSENGER     O, he’s returned, and as pleasant as ever he was.

35

BEATRICE     He set up his bills here in Messina and

challenged Cupid at the flight; and my uncle’s fool,

reading the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, and

challenged him at the bird-bolt. I pray you, how many

40

hath he killed and eaten in these wars? But how many

hath he killed? For indeed I promised to eat all of his

killing.

LEONATO     Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too

much, but he’ll be meet with you, I doubt it not.

45

MESSENGER     He hath done good service, lady, in these

wars.

BEATRICE     You had musty victual, and he hath holp to

eat it: he is a very valiant trencher-man; he hath an

excellent stomach.

50

MESSENGER     And a good soldier too, lady.

BEATRICE     And a good soldier to a lady; but what is he to

a lord?

MESSENGER     A lord to a lord, a man to a man, stuffed with all honourable virtues.

55

BEATRICE     It is so indeed, he is no less than a stuffed

man; but for the stuffing – well, we are all mortal.

LEONATO     You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is

a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and

her: they never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit

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between them.

BEATRICE     Alas, he gets nothing by that. In our last

conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now

is the whole man governed with one: so that if he have

wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a

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difference between himself and his horse, for it is all

the wealth that he hath left, to be known a reasonable

creature. Who is his companion now? He hath every

month a new sworn brother.

MESSENGER     Is’t possible?

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BEATRICE     Very easily possible: he wears his faith but as

the fashion of his hat, it ever changes with the next

block.

MESSENGER     I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your

books.

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BEATRICE     No; and he were, I would burn my study. But

I pray you, who is his companion? Is there no young

squarer now that will make a voyage with him to the

devil?

MESSENGER     He is most in the company of the right

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noble Claudio.

BEATRICE     O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease;

he is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker

runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! If he

have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousand

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pound ere a be cured.

MESSENGER     I will hold friends with you, lady.

BEATRICE     Do, good friend.

LEONATO     You will never run mad, niece.

BEATRICE     No, not till a hot January.

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MESSENGER     Don Pedro is approached.

Enter DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK, BALTHASAR and
DON JOHN the Bastard.

DON PEDRO     Good Signior Leonato, are you come to

meet your trouble? The fashion of the world is to avoid

cost, and you encounter it.

LEONATO     Never came trouble to my house in the

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likeness of your Grace, for trouble being gone,

comfort should remain; but when you depart from me,

sorrow abides, and happiness takes his leave.

DON PEDRO     You embrace your charge too willingly. I

think this is your daughter.

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LEONATO     Her mother hath many times told me so.

BENEDICK     Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her?

LEONATO     Signior Benedick, no, for then were you a child.

DON PEDRO     You have it full, Benedick; we may guess by

this what you are, being a man. Truly the lady

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fathers herself. Be happy, lady, for you are like an

honourable father.

BENEDICK     If Signior Leonato be her father, she would

not have his head on her shoulders for all Messina, as

like him as she is. [Don Pedro and Leonato talk aside.]

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BEATRICE     I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior

Benedick: nobody marks you.

BENEDICK     What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet

living?

BEATRICE     Is it possible disdain should die, while she

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hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?

Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come in

her presence.

BENEDICK     Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain

I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted; and I would

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I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart, for

truly I love none.

BEATRICE     A dear happiness to women, they would else

have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank

God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that;

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I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man

swear he loves me.

BENEDICK     God keep your ladyship still in that mind, so

some gentleman or other shall scape a predestinate

scratched face.

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BEATRICE     Scratching could not make it worse, and

’twere such a face as yours were.

BENEDICK     Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.

BEATRICE     A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of

yours.

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BENEDICK     I would my horse had the speed of your

tongue, and so good a continuer. But keep your way, a

God’s name, I have done.

BEATRICE     You always end with a jade’s trick, I know you

of old.

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DON PEDRO     That is the sum of all, Leonato. [turning to

the company] Signior Claudio and Signior Benedick,

my dear friend Leonato hath invited you all. I tell him

we shall stay here at the least a month, and he heartily

prays some occasion may detain us longer: I dare

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swear he is no hypocrite, but prays from his heart.

LEONATO     If you swear, my lord, you shall not be

forsworn. [to Don John] Let me bid you welcome, my

lord, being reconciled to the Prince your brother: I

owe you all duty.

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DON JOHN     I thank you: I am not of many words, but I thank you.

LEONATO     Please it your Grace lead on?

DON PEDRO     Your hand, Leonato, we will go together.

Exeunt all but Benedick and Claudio.

CLAUDIO     Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of

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Signior Leonato?

BENEDICK     I noted her not, but I looked on her.

CLAUDIO     Is she not a modest young lady?

BENEDICK     Do you question me as an honest man

should do, for my simple true judgement, or would

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you have me speak after my custom, as being a

professed tyrant to their sex?

CLAUDIO     No, I pray thee speak in sober judgement.

BENEDICK     Why, i’faith, methinks she’s too low for a

high praise, too brown for a fair praise, and too little

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for a great praise: only this commendation I can afford

her, that were she other than she is, she were

unhandsome, and being no other but as she is, I do

not like her.

CLAUDIO     Thou thinkest I am in sport: I pray thee tell

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me truly how thou lik’st her.

BENEDICK     Would you buy her, that you inquire after her?

CLAUDIO     Can the world buy such a jewel?

BENEDICK     Yea, and a case to put it into. But speak you

this with a sad brow, or do you play the flouting Jack,

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to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder, and Vulcan a

rare carpenter? Come, in what key shall a man take

you to go in the song?

CLAUDIO     In mine eye, she is the sweetest lady that ever

I looked on.

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BENEDICK     I can see yet without spectacles, and I see no

such matter: there’s her cousin, and she were not

possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty

as the first of May doth the last of December. But I

hope you have no intent to turn husband, have you?

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CLAUDIO     I would scarce trust myself, though I had

sworn the contrary, if Hero would be my wife.

BENEDICK     Is’t come to this? In faith, hath not the world

one man but he will wear his cap with suspicion? Shall

I never see a bachelor of threescore again? Go to, i’

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faith, and thou wilt needs thrust thy neck into a yoke,

wear the print of it and sigh away Sundays. Look, Don

Pedro is returned to seek you.

Enter DON PEDRO.

DON PEDRO     What secret hath held you here, that you

followed not to Leonato’s?

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BENEDICK     I would your Grace would constrain me to tell.

DON PEDRO     I charge thee on thy allegiance.

BENEDICK     You hear, Count Claudio: I can be secret as a

dumb man, I would have you think so; but on my

allegiance, mark you this, on my allegiance – he is in

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love. With who? Now that is your Grace’s part.

Mark how short his answer is: with Hero, Leonato’s

short daughter.

CLAUDIO     If this were so, so were it uttered.

BENEDICK     Like the old tale, my lord: ‘It is not so, nor

205

’twas not so: but indeed, God forbid it should be so!’

CLAUDIO     If my passion change not shortly, God forbid

it should be otherwise.

DON PEDRO     Amen, if you love her, for the lady is very

well worthy.

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CLAUDIO     You speak this to fetch me in, my lord.

DON PEDRO     By my troth, I speak my thought.

CLAUDIO     And in faith, my lord, I spoke mine.

BENEDICK     And by my two faiths and troths, my lord, I

spoke mine.

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CLAUDIO     That I love her, I feel.

DON PEDRO     That she is worthy, I know.

BENEDICK     That I neither feel how she should be loved,

nor know how she should be worthy, is the opinion that

fire cannot melt out of me; I will die in it at the stake.

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DON PEDRO     Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the

despite of beauty.

CLAUDIO     And never could maintain his part, but in the

force of his will.

BENEDICK     That a woman conceived me, I thank her:

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that she brought me up, I likewise give her most

humble thanks: but that I will have a recheat winded

in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible

baldrick, all women shall pardon me. Because I will

not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do

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myself the right to trust none: and the fine is, for the

which I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor.

DON PEDRO     I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love.

BENEDICK     With anger, with sickness, or with hunger,

my lord, not with love: prove that ever I lose more

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blood with love than I will get again with drinking,

pick out mine eyes with a ballad-maker’s pen, and

hang me up at the door of a brothel-house for the

sign of blind Cupid.

DON PEDRO     Well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith,

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thou wilt prove a notable argument.

BENEDICK     If I do, hang me in a bottle like a cat and

shoot at me, and he that hits me, let him be clapped on

the shoulder and called Adam.

DON PEDRO     Well, as time shall try. ‘In time the savage

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bull doth bear the yoke.’

BENEDICK     The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible

Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull’s horns and set

them in my forehead, and let me be vilely painted, and

in such great letters as they write, ‘Here is good

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horse to hire,’ let them signify under my sign, ‘Here

you may see Benedick, the married man.’

CLAUDIO     If this should ever happen, thou wouldst be

horn-mad.

DON PEDRO     Nay, if Cupid have not spent all his quiver

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in Venice, thou wilt quake for this shortly.

BENEDICK     I look for an earthquake too, then.

DON PEDRO     Well, you will temporize with the hours. In

the meantime, good Signior Benedick, repair to

Leonato’s, commend me to him, and tell him I will

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not fail him at supper; for indeed he hath made great

preparation.

BENEDICK     I have almost matter enough in me for such

an embassage; and so I commit you –

CLAUDIO     To the tuition of God. From my house, if I

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had it –

DON PEDRO     The sixth of July. Your loving friend, Benedick.

BENEDICK     Nay, mock not, mock not; the body of your

discourse is sometime guarded with fragments, and

the guards are but slightly basted on neither. Ere you

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flout old ends any further, examine your conscience;

and so I leave you. Exit.

CLAUDIO     My liege, your Highness now may do me good.

DON PEDRO     My love is thine to teach: teach it but how,

And thou shalt see how apt it is to learn

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Any hard lesson that may do thee good.

CLAUDIO     Hath Leonato any son, my lord?

DON PEDRO     No child but Hero, she’s his only heir.

Dost thou affect her, Claudio?

CLAUDIO     O my lord,

When you went onward on this ended action,

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I look’d upon her with a soldier’s eye,

That lik’d, but had a rougher task in hand

Than to drive liking to the name of love:

But now I am return’d, and that war-thoughts

Have left their places vacant, in their rooms

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Come thronging soft and delicate desires,

All prompting me how fair young Hero is,

Saying I lik’d her ere I went to wars.

DON PEDRO     Thou wilt be like a lover presently,

And tire the hearer with a book of words.

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If thou dost love fair Hero, cherish it,

And I will break with her, and with her father,

And thou shalt have her. Was’t not to this end

That thou began’st to twist so fine a story?

CLAUDIO     How sweetly you do minister to love

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That know love’s grief by his complexion!

But lest my liking might too sudden seem,

I would have salv’d it with a longer treatise.

DON PEDRO

What need the bridge much broader than the flood?

The fairest grant is the necessity.

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Look what will serve is fit: ’tis once, thou lovest,

And I will fit thee with the remedy.

I know we shall have revelling tonight:

I will assume thy part in some disguise,

And tell fair Hero I am Claudio,

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And in her bosom I’ll unclasp my heart,

And take her hearing prisoner with the force

And strong encounter of my amorous tale:

Then after to her father will I break,

And the conclusion is, she shall be thine.

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In practice let us put it presently.      Exeunt.

1.2 Enter LEONATO and an old man, ANTONIO, brother
to Leonato, meeting.

LEONATO     How now, brother, where is my cousin, your

son? Hath he provided this music?

ANTONIO     He is very busy about it. But brother, I can

tell you strange news that you yet dreamt not of.

LEONATO     Are they good?

5

ANTONIO     As the event stamps them, but they have a

good cover; they show well outward. The Prince and

Count Claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley in

mine orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of

mine: the Prince discovered to Claudio that he loved

10

my niece your daughter, and meant to acknowledge it

this night in a dance; and if he found her accordant, he

meant to take the present time by the top and instantly

break with you of it.

LEONATO     Hath the fellow any wit that told you this?

15

ANTONIO     A good sharp fellow; I will send for him, and

question him yourself.

LEONATO     No, no, we will hold it as a dream till it appear

itself: but I will acquaint my daughter withal, that

she may be the better prepared for an answer, if

20

peradventure this be true. Go you and tell her of it.

Exit Antonio.

Enter Antonio’s Son, with a Musician and others.

Cousins, you know what you have to do. [to the

musician] O, I cry you mercy, friend, go you with me

and I will use your skill. Good cousin, have a care this

busy time.     Exeunt.

25

1.3 Enter DON JOHN the Bastard and CONRADE, his
companion.

CONRADE     What the good-year, my lord, why are you

thus out of measure sad?

DON JOHN     There is no measure in the occasion that

breeds, therefore the sadness is without limit.

CONRADE     You should hear reason.

5

DON JOHN     And when I have heard it, what blessing

brings it?

CONRADE     If not a present remedy, at least a patient

sufferance.

DON JOHN     I wonder that thou – being, as thou say’st

10

thou art, born under Saturn – goest about to apply a

moral medicine to a mortifying mischief. I cannot

hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause,

and smile at no man’s jests; eat when I have stomach,

and wait for no man’s leisure; sleep when I am drowsy,

15

and tend on no man’s business; laugh when I am

merry, and claw no man in his humour.

CONRADE     Yea, but you must not make the full show of

this till you may do it without controlment. You have

of late stood out against your brother, and he hath

20

ta’en you newly into his grace, where it is impossible

you should take true root but by the fair weather that

you make yourself. It is needful that you frame the

season for your own harvest.

DON JOHN     I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose

25

in his grace, and it better fits my blood to be disdained

of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any: in

this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest

man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing

villain. I am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised

30

with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my

cage. If I had my mouth I would bite; if I had my

liberty I would do my liking: in the meantime, let me

be that I am, and seek not to alter me.

CONRADE     Can you make no use of your discontent?

35

DON JOHN     I make all use of it, for I use it only. Who comes here?

Enter BORACHIO.

What news, Borachio?

BORACHIO     I came yonder from a great supper. The

Prince your brother is royally entertained by Leonato;

40

and I can give you intelligence of an intended marriage.

DON JOHN     Will it serve for any model to build mischief

on? What is he for a fool that betroths himself to

unquietness?

BORACHIO     Marry, it is your brother’s right hand.

45

DON JOHN     Who, the most exquisite Claudio?

BORACHIO     Even he.

DON JOHN     A proper squire! And who, and who? Which

way looks he?

BORACHIO     Marry, on Hero, the daughter and heir of

50

Leonato.

DON JOHN     A very forward March-chick! How came you to this?

BORACHIO     Being entertained for a perfumer, as I was

smoking a musty room, comes me the Prince and

55

Claudio, hand in hand in sad conference. I whipped

me behind the arras, and there heard it agreed upon

that the Prince should woo Hero for himself, and

having obtained her, give her to Count Claudio.

DON JOHN     Come, come, let us thither; this may prove

60

food to my displeasure; that young start-up hath all

the glory of my overthrow. If I can cross him any

way, I bless myself every way. You are both sure, and

will assist me?

CONRADE     To the death, my lord.

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DON JOHN     Let us to the great supper; their cheer is the

greater that I am subdued. Would the cook were o’ my

mind! Shall we go prove what’s to be done?

BORACHIO     We’ll wait upon your lordship.     Exeunt.

2.1 Enter LEONATO, ANTONIO, his brother, HERO, his
daughter, and BEATRICE, his niece, MARGARET and URSULA.

LEONATO     Was not Count John here at supper?

ANTONIO     I saw him not.

BEATRICE     How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can

see him but I am heart-burned an hour after.

HERO     He is of a very melancholy disposition.

5

BEATRICE     He were an excellent man that were made just

in the mid-way between him and Benedick: the one is

too like an image and says nothing, and the other too

like my lady’s eldest son, evermore tattling.

LEONATO     Then half Signior Benedick’s tongue in Count

10

John’s mouth, and half Count John’s melancholy in

Signior Benedick’s face –

BEATRICE     With a good leg and a good foot, uncle, and

money enough in his purse, such a man would win any

woman in the world – if a could get her good will.

15

LEONATO     By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a

husband, if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue.

ANTONIO     In faith, she’s too curst.

BEATRICE     Too curst is more than curst: I shall lessen

God’s sending that way, for it is said, ‘God sends a curst

20

cow short horns’, but to a cow too curst he sends none.

LEONATO     So, by being too curst, God will send you no

horns.

BEATRICE     Just, if he send me no husband, for the which

blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning

25

and evening. Lord, I could not endure a husband

with a beard on his face! I had rather lie in the

woollen.

LEONATO     You may light on a husband that hath no beard.

BEATRICE     What should I do with him? Dress him in my

30

apparel and make him my waiting-gentlewoman?

He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he

that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is

more than a youth is not for me; and he that is less

than a man I am not for him: therefore I will even take

35

sixpence in earnest of the bearward and lead his apes

into hell.

LEONATO     Well then, go you into hell?

BEATRICE     No, but to the gate, and there will the Devil

meet me like an old cuckold with horns on his head,

40

and say, ‘Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to

heaven, here’s no place for you maids.’ So deliver I up

my apes, and away to Saint Peter, for the heavens; he

shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we

as merry as the day is long.

45

ANTONIO     [to Hero] Well, niece, I trust you will be ruled

by your father.

BEATRICE     Yes, faith, it is my cousin’s duty to make

curtsy and say, ‘Father, as it please you’: but yet for all

that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make

50

another curtsy and say, ‘Father, as it please me’.

LEONATO     Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted

with a husband.

BEATRICE     Not till God make men of some other metal

than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be over-

55

mastered with a piece of valiant dust, to make an

account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No,

uncle, I’ll none: Adam’s sons are my brethren, and

truly I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.

LEONATO     Daughter, remember what I told you: if the

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Prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your

answer.

BEATRICE     The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you

be not wooed in good time. If the Prince be too

important, tell him there is measure in everything, and

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so dance out the answer. For hear me, Hero: wooing,

wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure,

and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty like a

Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding

mannerly-modest as a measure, full of state and

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ancientry; and then comes repentance and, with his

bad legs, falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster,

till he sink into his grave.

LEONATO     Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly.

BEATRICE     I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by

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daylight.

LEONATO     The revellers are entering, brother; make

good room. [Leonato and the men of his company mask.]

Enter DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK, BALTHASAR,
BORACHIO, DON JOHN and others, masked, with a drum.

DON PEDRO     Lady, will you walk a bout with your friend?

HERO     So you walk softly, and look sweetly, and say

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nothing, I am yours for the walk; and especially when I walk away.

DON PEDRO     With me in your company?

HERO     I may say so, when I please.

DON PEDRO     And when please you to say so?

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HERO     When I like your favour, for God defend the lute

should be like the case!

DON PEDRO     My visor is Philemon’s roof;

     Within the house is Jove.

HERO     Why then your visor should be thatch’d.

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DON PEDRO     Speak low, if you speak love.

[They step aside.]

BALTHASAR     Well, I would you did like me.

MARGARET     So would not I for your own sake, for I have

many ill qualities.

BALTHASAR     Which is one?

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MARGARET     I say my prayers aloud.

BALTHASAR     I love you the better; the hearers may cry Amen.

MARGARET     God match me with a good dancer!

BALTHASAR     Amen.

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MARGARET     And God keep him out of my sight when

the dance is done! Answer, clerk.

BALTHASAR     No more words; the clerk is answered.

[They step aside.]

URSULA     I know you well enough, you are Signior

Antonio.

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ANTONIO     At a word, I am not.

URSULA     I know you by the waggling of your head.

ANTONIO     To tell you true, I counterfeit him.

URSULA     You could never do him so ill-well, unless you

were the very man. Here’s his dry hand up and down:

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you are he, you are he.

ANTONIO     At a word, I am not.

URSULA     Come, come, do you think I do not know you

by your excellent wit? Can virtue hide itself? Go to,

mum, you are he: graces will appear, and there’s an

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end. [They step aside.]

BEATRICE     Will you not tell me who told you so?

BENEDICK     No, you shall pardon me.

BEATRICE     Nor will you not tell me who you are?

BENEDICK     Not now.

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BEATRICE     That I was disdainful, and that I had my good

wit out of the ‘Hundred Merry Tales’ – well, this was

Signior Benedick that said so.

BENEDICK     What’s he?

BEATRICE     I am sure you know him well enough.

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BENEDICK     Not I, believe me.

BEATRICE     Did he never make you laugh?

BENEDICK     I pray you, what is he?

BEATRICE     Why, he is the Prince’s jester, a very dull fool;

only his gift is in devising impossible slanders. None

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but libertines delight in him, and the commendation

is not in his wit, but in his villainy; for he both pleases

men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and

beat him. I am sure he is in the fleet; I would he had

boarded me.

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BENEDICK     When I know the gentleman, I’ll tell him

what you say.

BEATRICE     Do, do, he’ll but break a comparison or two

on me, which peradventure not marked, or not

laughed at, strikes him into melancholy, and then

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there’s a partridge wing saved, for the fool will eat no

supper that night. [Music.] We must follow the

leaders.

BENEDICK     In every good thing.

BEATRICE     Nay, if they lead to any ill, I will leave them

145

at the next turning.

Dance. Exeunt all but Don John, Borachio and Claudio.

DON JOHN     Sure my brother is amorous on Hero, and

hath withdrawn her father to break with him about it.

The ladies follow her, and but one visor remains.

BORACHIO     And that is Claudio: I know him by his

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bearing.

DON JOHN     Are not you Signior Benedick?

CLAUDIO     You know me well, I am he.

DON JOHN     Signior, you are very near my brother in his

love. He is enamoured on Hero; I pray you, dissuade

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him from her, she is no equal for his birth. You may do

the part of an honest man in it.

CLAUDIO     How know you he loves her?

DON JOHN     I heard him swear his affection.

BORACHIO     So did I too, and he swore he would marry

160

her tonight.

DON JOHN     Come, let us to the banquet.

Exeunt Don John and Borachio.

CLAUDIO     Thus answer I in name of Benedick,

But hear these ill news with the ears of Claudio.

’Tis certain so; the Prince woos for himself.

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Friendship is constant in all other things

Save in the office and affairs of love:

Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;

Let every eye negotiate for itself,

And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch

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Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.

This is an accident of hourly proof,

Which I mistrusted not. Farewell, therefore, Hero!

Enter BENEDICK.

BENEDICK     Count Claudio?

CLAUDIO     Yea, the same.

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BENEDICK     Come, will you go with me?

CLAUDIO     Whither?

BENEDICK     Even to the next willow, about your own

business, County. What fashion will you wear the

garland of? About your neck, like an usurer’s chain?

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Or under your arm, like a lieutenant’s scarf? You must

wear it one way, for the Prince hath got your Hero.

CLAUDIO     I wish him joy of her.

BENEDICK     Why, that’s spoken like an honest drover: so

they sell bullocks. But did you think the Prince would

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have served you thus?

CLAUDIO     I pray you, leave me.

BENEDICK     Ho, now you strike like the blind man! ’Twas

the boy that stole your meat, and you’ll beat the post.

CLAUDIO     If it will not be, I’ll leave you. Exit.

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BENEDICK     Alas, poor hurt fowl, now will he creep into

sedges. But that my Lady Beatrice should know me,

and not know me! The Prince’s fool! Ha, it may be I

go under that title because I am merry. Yea, but so I

am apt to do myself wrong. I am not so reputed: it is

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the base, though bitter, disposition of Beatrice that

puts the world into her person, and so gives me out.

Well, I’ll be revenged as I may.

Enter the Prince, DON PEDRO, HERO, LEONATO.

DON PEDRO     Now, signior, where’s the Count? Did you

see him?

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BENEDICK     Troth, my lord, I have played the part of

Lady Fame. I found him here as melancholy as a lodge

in a warren. I told him, and I think I told him true,

that your Grace had got the good will of this young

lady, and I offered him my company to a willow-tree,

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either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to

bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped.

DON PEDRO     To be whipped? What’s his fault?

BENEDICK     The flat transgression of a schoolboy, who,

being overjoyed with finding a bird’s nest, shows it his

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companion, and he steals it.

DON PEDRO     Wilt thou make a trust a transgression? The

transgression is in the stealer.

BENEDICK     Yet it had not been amiss the rod had been

made, and the garland too; for the garland he might

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have worn himself, and the rod he might have bestowed

on you, who, as I take it, have stolen his bird’s nest.

DON PEDRO     I will but teach them to sing, and restore

them to the owner.

BENEDICK     If their singing answer your saying, by my

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faith you say honestly.

DON PEDRO     The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you:

the gentleman that danced with her told her she is

much wronged by you.

BENEDICK     O, she misused me past the endurance of a

225

block! An oak but with one green leaf on it would have

answered her: my very visor began to assume life and

scold with her. She told me, not thinking I had been

myself, that I was the Prince’s jester, that I was duller

than a great thaw, huddling jest upon jest with such

230

impossible conveyance upon me that I stood like a

man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me. She

speaks poniards, and every word stabs: if her breath

were as terrible as her terminations, there were no

living near her, she would infect to the North Star. I

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would not marry her, though she were endowed with

all that Adam had left him before he transgressed. She

would have made Hercules have turned spit, yea, and

have cleft his club to make the fire too. Come, talk not

of her, you shall find her the infernal Ate in good

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apparel. I would to God some scholar would conjure

her, for certainly, while she is here, a man may live as

quiet in hell as in a sanctuary, and people sin upon

purpose, because they would go thither; so indeed all

disquiet, horror, and perturbation follows her.

245

Enter CLAUDIO and BEATRICE.

DON PEDRO     Look, here she comes.

BENEDICK     Will your Grace command me any service to

the world’s end? I will go on the slightest errand now

to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on; I

will fetch you a toothpicker now from the furthest

250

inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John’s

foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham’s beard; do

you any embassage to the Pygmies, rather than hold

three words’ conference with this harpy. You have no

employment for me?

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DON PEDRO     None, but to desire your good company.

BENEDICK     O God, sir, here’s a dish I love not! I cannot

endure my Lady Tongue.     Exit.

DON PEDRO     Come, lady, come, you have lost the heart of

Signior Benedick.

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BEATRICE     Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile, and I

gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one.

Marry, once before he won it of me with false dice,

therefore your Grace may well say I have lost it.

DON PEDRO     You have put him down, lady, you have put

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him down.

BEATRICE     So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest

I should prove the mother of fools. I have brought

Count Claudio, whom you sent me to seek.

DON PEDRO     Why, how now, Count? Wherefore are you

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sad?

CLAUDIO     Not sad, my lord.

DON PEDRO     How then? Sick?

CLAUDIO     Neither, my lord.

BEATRICE     The Count is neither sad, nor sick, nor

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merry, nor well; but civil Count, civil as an orange, and

something of that jealous complexion.

DON PEDRO     I’faith, lady, I think your blazon to be true,

though I’ll be sworn, if he be so, his conceit is false.

Here, Claudio, I have wooed in thy name, and fair

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Hero is won. I have broke with her father, and his

good will obtained. Name the day of marriage, and

God give thee joy!

LEONATO     Count, take of me my daughter, and with her

my fortunes; his Grace hath made the match, and all

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grace say Amen to it.

BEATRICE     Speak, Count, ’tis your cue.

CLAUDIO     Silence is the perfectest herald of joy; I were

but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as you

are mine, I am yours; I give away myself for you and

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dote upon the exchange.

BEATRICE     Speak, cousin, or, if you cannot, stop his

mouth with a kiss, and let not him speak neither.

DON PEDRO     In faith, lady, you have a merry heart.

BEATRICE     Yea, my lord, I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on

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the windy side of care. My cousin tells him in his ear

that he is in her heart.

CLAUDIO     And so she doth, cousin.

BEATRICE     Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes everyone

to the world but I, and I am sunburnt. I may sit in a

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corner and cry ‘Heigh-ho for a husband!’

DON PEDRO     Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.

BEATRICE     I would rather have one of your father’s

getting. Hath your Grace ne’er a brother like you?

Your father got excellent husbands, if a maid could

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come by them.

DON PEDRO     Will you have me, lady?

BEATRICE     No, my lord, unless I might have another for

working days: your Grace is too costly to wear every

day. But I beseech your Grace pardon me, I was born

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to speak all mirth and no matter.

DON PEDRO     Your silence most offends me, and to be

merry best becomes you, for out o’ question, you were

born in a merry hour.

BEATRICE     No, sure, my lord, my mother cried, but then

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there was a star danced, and under that was I born.

Cousins, God give you joy!

LEONATO     Niece, will you look to those things I told you

of?

BEATRICE     I cry you mercy, uncle. By your Grace’s

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pardon.     Exit.

DON PEDRO     By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady.

LEONATO     There’s little of the melancholy element in

her, my lord; she is never sad but when she sleeps, and

not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say

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she hath often dreamt of unhappiness and waked

herself with laughing.

DON PEDRO She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.

LEONATO O, by no means, she mocks all her wooers out

of suit.

330

DON PEDRO She were an excellent wife for Benedick.

LEONATO O Lord, my lord, if they were but a week

married, they would talk themselves mad.

DON PEDRO County Claudio, when mean you to go to

church?

335

CLAUDIO Tomorrow, my lord: time goes on crutches till

love have all his rites.

LEONATO Not till Monday, my dear son, which is hence

a just seven-night, and a time too brief, too, to have

all things answer my mind.

340

DON PEDRO Come, you shake the head at so long a

breathing, but I warrant thee, Claudio, the time shall

not go dully by us. I will, in the interim, undertake one

of Hercules’ labours, which is, to bring Signior

BENEDICK and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of

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affection th’one with th’other. I would fain have it a

match, and I doubt not but to fashion it, if you three

will but minister such assistance as I shall give you

direction.

LEONATO     My lord, I am for you, though it cost me ten

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nights’ watchings.

CLAUDIO     And I, my lord.

DON PEDRO     And you too, gentle Hero?

HERO     I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my

cousin to a good husband.

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DON PEDRO     And Benedick is not the unhopefullest

husband that I know. Thus far can I praise him: he is

of a noble strain, of approved valour, and confirmed

honesty. I will teach you how to humour your cousin

that she shall fall in love with Benedick; and I, [to

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Leonato and Claudio] with your two helps, will so

practise on Benedick that, in despite of his quick wit

and his queasy stomach, he shall fall in love with

Beatrice. If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an

archer; his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-

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gods. Go in with me, and I will tell you my drift.

Exeunt.

2.2 Enter DON JOHN and BORACHIO.

DON JOHN     It is so, the Count Claudio shall marry the

daughter of Leonato.

BORACHIO     Yea, my lord, but I can cross it.

DON JOHN     Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be

medicinable to me. I am sick in displeasure to him, and

5

whatsoever comes athwart his affection ranges

evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this marriage?

BORACHIO     Not honestly, my lord, but so covertly that

no dishonesty shall appear in me.

DON JOHN     Show me briefly how.

10

BORACHIO     I think I told your lordship, a year since, how

much I am in the favour of Margaret, the waiting-

gentlewoman to Hero.

DON JOHN     I remember

BORACHIO     I can, at any unseasonable instant of the

15

night, appoint her to look out at her lady’s chamber-

window.

DON JOHN     What life is in that, to be the death of this

marriage?

BORACHIO     The poison of that lies in you to temper. Go

20

you to the Prince your brother; spare not to tell him

that he hath wronged his honour in marrying the

renowned Claudio – whose estimation do you

mightily hold up – to a contaminated stale, such a one

as Hero.

25

DON JOHN     What proof shall I make of that?

BORACHIO     Proof enough to misuse the Prince, to vex

Claudio, to undo Hero, and kill Leonato. Look you for

any other issue?

DON JOHN     Only to despite them I will endeavour any-

30

thing.

BORACHIO     Go then, find me a meet hour to draw Don

Pedro and the Count Claudio alone: tell them that you

know that Hero loves me; intend a kind of zeal both to

the Prince and Claudio – as in love of your brother’s

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honour, who hath made this match, and his friend’s

reputation, who is thus like to be cozened with the

semblance of a maid – that you have discovered thus.

They will scarcely believe this without trial: offer

them instances, which shall bear no less likelihood

than to see me at her chamber-window, hear me call

40

Margaret Hero, hear Margaret term me Claudio; and

bring them to see this the very night before the

intended wedding – for in the meantime I will so

fashion the matter that Hero shall be absent – and

there shall appear such seeming truth of Hero’s

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disloyalty that jealousy shall be called assurance and

all the preparation overthrown.

DON JOHN     Grow this to what adverse issue it can, I will

put it in practice. Be cunning in the working this, and

thy fee is a thousand ducats.

50

BORACHIO     Be you constant in the accusation, and my

cunning shall not shame me.

DON JOHN     I will presently go learn their day of marriage.

Exeunt.

2.3 Enter BENEDICK alone.

BENEDICK     Boy!

Enter Boy.

BOY Signior?

BENEDICK     In my chamber-window lies a book; bring it

hither to me in the orchard.

BOY I am here already, sir.

5

BENEDICK     I know that, but I would have thee hence and

here again.     Exit Boy.

I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much

another man is a fool when he dedicates his

behaviours to love, will, after he hath laughed at such

10

shallow follies in others, become the argument of his

own scorn by falling in love: and such a man is Claudio.

I have known when there was no music with him but

the drum and the fife, and now had he rather hear the

tabor and the pipe. I have known when he would have

15

walked ten mile afoot to see a good armour, and now

will he lie ten nights awake carving the fashion of a new

doublet. He was wont to speak plain and to the

purpose, like an honest man and a soldier, and now is

he turned orthography – his words are a very

20

fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes. May I

be so converted and see with these eyes? I cannot tell; I

think not. I will not be sworn but love may transform

me to an oyster, but I’ll take my oath on it, till he have

made an oyster of me, he shall never make me such a

25

fool. One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise,

yet I am well; another virtuous, yet I am well; but till

all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come

in my grace. Rich she shall be, that’s certain; wise, or

I’ll none; virtuous, or I’ll never cheapen her; fair, or

30

I’ll never look on her; mild, or come not near me;

noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse, an

excellent musician, and her hair shall be – of what

colour it please God. Ha! the Prince and Monsieur

Love! I will hide me in the arbour. [Withdraws.]

35

Enter DON PEDRO, LEONATO, CLAUDIO and BALTHASAR with music.

DON PEDRO     Come, shall we hear this music?

CLAUDIO     Yea, my good lord. How still the evening is,

As hush’d on purpose to grace harmony!

DON PEDRO     See you where Benedick hath hid himself?

CLAUDIO     O, very well, my lord. The music ended,

40

We’ll fit the kid-fox with a pennyworth.

DON PEDRO

Come, Balthasar, we’ll hear that song again.

BALTHASAR     O good my lord, tax not so bad a voice

To slander music any more than once.

DON PEDRO     It is the witness still of excellency

45

To put a strange face on his own perfection.

I pray thee sing, and let me woo no more.

BALTHASAR     Because you talk of wooing, I will sing,

Since many a wooer doth commence his suit

To her he thinks not worthy, yet he woos,

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Yet will he swear he loves.

DON PEDRO Nay pray thee, come,

Or if thou wilt hold longer argument,

Do it in notes.

BALTHASAR Note this before my notes;

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

DON PEDRO

Why, these are very crotchets that he speaks!

55

Note notes, forsooth, and nothing! [Music.]

BENEDICK [aside] Now, divine air! Now is his soul

ravished! Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale

souls out of men’s bodies? Well, a horn for my money,

when all’s done.

60

The Song.

BALTHASAR     Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever:

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

To one thing constant never.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

65

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,

Of dumps so dull and heavy:

70

The fraud of men was ever so,

Since summer first was leavy.

Then sigh not so, etc.

DON PEDRO     By my troth, a good song.

BALTHASAR     And an ill singer, my lord.

75

DON PEDRO     Ha, no, no, faith; thou sing’st well enough

for a shift.

BENEDICK [aside]     And he had been a dog that should

have howled thus, they would have hanged him, and I

pray God his bad voice bode no mischief. I had as lief

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have heard the night-raven, come what plague could

have come after it.

DON PEDRO     Yea, marry, dost thou hear, Balthasar? I

pray thee get us some excellent music; for tomorrow

night we would have it at the Lady Hero’s chamber-

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window.

BALTHASAR     The best I can, my lord.

DON PEDRO     Do so: farewell.      Exit Balthasar.

Come hither, Leonato. What was it you told me of

today, that your niece Beatrice was in love with Signior

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Benedick?

CLAUDIO     O, ay! [aside to Don Pedro] Stalk on, stalk on,

the fowl sits. – I did never think that lady would have

loved any man.

LEONATO     No, nor I neither, but most wonderful that

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she should so dote on Signior Benedick, whom she

hath in all outward behaviours seemed ever to abhor.

BENEDICK [aside]     Is’t possible? Sits the wind in that

corner?

LEONATO     By my troth my lord, I cannot tell what to

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think of it, but that she loves him with an enraged

affection, it is past the infinite of thought.

DON PEDRO     Maybe she doth but counterfeit.

CLAUDIO     Faith, like enough.

LEONATO     O God! Counterfeit? There was never

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counterfeit of passion came so near the life of passion

as she discovers it.

DON PEDRO     Why, what effects of passion shows she?

CLAUDIO [aside]     Bait the hook well, this fish will bite.

LEONATO     What effects, my lord? She will sit you – you

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heard my daughter tell you how.

CLAUDIO     She did indeed.

DON PEDRO     How, how, I pray you? You amaze me, I

would have thought her spirit had been invincible

against all assaults of affection.

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LEONATO     I would have sworn it had, my lord, especially

against Benedick.

BENEDICK [aside]     I should think this a gull, but that the

white-bearded fellow speaks it. Knavery cannot sure

hide himself in such reverence.

120

CLAUDIO [aside]     He hath ta’en th’infection; hold it up.

DON PEDRO     Hath she made her affection known to

Benedick?

LEONATO     No, and swears she never will: that’s her

torment.

125

CLAUDIO     ’Tis true indeed, so your daughter says: ‘Shall

I,’ says she, ‘that have so oft encountered him with

scorn, write to him that I love him?’

LEONATO     This says she now when she is beginning to

write to him, for she’ll be up twenty times a night, and

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there will she sit in her smock till she have writ a sheet

of paper: my daughter tells us all.

CLAUDIO     Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember

a pretty jest your daughter told us of.

LEONATO     O, when she had writ it, and was reading it

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over, she found ‘Benedick’ and ‘Beatrice’ between the

sheet?

CLAUDIO     That.

LEONATO     O, she tore the letter into a thousand

halfpence; railed at herself, that she should be so

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immodest to write to one that she knew would flout

her. ‘I measure him’, says she, ‘by my own spirit, for I

should flout him, if he writ to me, yea, though I love

him, I should.’

CLAUDIO     Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps,

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sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses: ‘O

sweet Benedick! God give me patience!’

LEONATO     She doth indeed, my daughter says so, and

the ecstasy hath so much overborne her that my

daughter is sometime afeard she will do a desperate

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outrage to herself: it is very true.

DON PEDRO     It were good that Benedick knew of it by

some other, if she will not discover it.

CLAUDIO     To what end? He would make but a sport of it

and torment the poor lady worse.

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DON PEDRO     And he should, it were an alms to hang

him. She’s an excellent sweet lady, and, out of all

suspicion, she is virtuous.

CLAUDIO     And she is exceeding wise.

DON PEDRO     In everything but in loving Benedick.

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LEONATO     O my lord, wisdom and blood combating in

so tender a body, we have ten proofs to one that blood

hath the victory. I am sorry for her, as I have just

cause, being her uncle and her guardian.

DON PEDRO     I would she had bestowed this dotage on

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me, I would have daffed all other respects and made

her half myself. I pray you tell Benedick of it and hear

what a will say.

LEONATO     Were it good, think you?

CLAUDIO     Hero thinks surely she will die; for she says

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she will die if he love her not, and she will die ere she

make her love known, and she will die if he woo her,

rather than she will bate one breath of her accustomed

crossness.

DON PEDRO     She doth well: if she should make tender of

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her love, ’tis very possible he’ll scorn it, for the man,

as you know all, hath a contemptible spirit.

CLAUDIO     He is a very proper man.

DON PEDRO     He hath indeed a good outward happiness.

CLAUDIO     Before God, and, in my mind, very wise.

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DON PEDRO     He doth indeed show some sparks that are

like wit.

CLAUDIO     And I take him to be valiant.

DON PEDRO     As Hector, I assure you: and in the

managing of quarrels you may say he is wise; for either

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he avoids them with great discretion, or undertakes

them with a most Christian-like fear.

LEONATO     If he do fear God, a must necessarily keep

peace: if he break the peace, he ought to enter into a

quarrel with fear and trembling.

190

DON PEDRO     And so will he do, for the man doth fear

God, howsoever it seems not in him by some large

jests he will make. Well, I am sorry for your niece.

Shall we go seek Benedick, and tell him of her love?

CLAUDIO     Never tell him, my lord, let her wear it out

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with good counsel.

LEONATO     Nay, that’s impossible, she may wear her

heart out first.

DON PEDRO     Well, we will hear further of it by your

daughter; let it cool the while. I love Benedick well,

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and I could wish he would modestly examine himself,

to see how much he is unworthy so good a lady.

LEONATO     My lord, will you walk? Dinner is ready.

CLAUDIO [aside]     If he do not dote on her upon this, I

will never trust my expectation.

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DON PEDRO [aside]     Let there be the same net spread for

her, and that must your daughter and her gentle-

women carry. The sport will be when they hold one an

opinion of another’s dotage, and no such matter: that’s

the scene that I would see, which will be merely a

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dumb-show. Let us send her to call him in to dinner.

     Exeunt Don Pedro, Claudio and Leonato.

BENEDICK [coming forward]     This can be no trick: the

conference was sadly borne; they have the truth of

this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady: it seems

her affections have their full bent. Love me? Why, it

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must be requited. I hear how I am censured: they say

I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive the love come

from her; they say too that she will rather die than

give any sign of affection. I did never think to marry:

I must not seem proud: happy are they that hear their

220

detractions and can put them to mending. They say

the lady is fair – ’tis a truth, I can bear them witness;

and virtuous – ’tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise,

but for loving me – by my troth, it is no addition to

her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for I will

225

be horribly in love with her. I may chance have some

odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me because

I have railed so long against marriage: but doth not

the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth

that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and

230

sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a

man from the career of his humour? No, the world

must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor,

I did not think I should live till I were married. Here

comes Beatrice. By this day, she’s a fair lady! I do spy

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some marks of love in her.

Enter BEATRICE.

BEATRICE     Against my will I am sent to bid you come in

to dinner.

BENEDICK     Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.

BEATRICE     I took no more pains for those thanks than

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you take pains to thank me; if it had been painful, I

would not have come.

BENEDICK     You take pleasure then in the message?

BEATRICE     Yea, just so much as you may take upon a

knife’s point and choke a daw withal. You have no

245

stomach, signior, fare you well.     Exit.

BENEDICK     Ha! ‘Against my will I am sent to bid you

come in to dinner’ – there’s a double meaning in that.

‘I took no more pains for those thanks than you took

pains to thank me’ – that’s as much as to say, ‘Any

250

pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks’. If I do

not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her,

I am a Jew. I will go get her picture.     Exit.

3.1 Enter HERO and two gentlewomen, MARGARET and URSULA.

HERO     Good Margaret, run thee to the parlour;

There shalt thou find my cousin Beatrice

Proposing with the Prince and Claudio.

Whisper her ear, and tell her I and Ursley

Walk in the orchard, and our whole discourse

5

Is all of her; say that thou overheard’st us,

And bid her steal into the pleached bower

Where honeysuckles, ripen’d by the sun,

Forbid the sun to enter, like favourites,

Made proud by princes, that advance their pride

10

Against that power that bred it. There will she hide her

To listen our propose. This is thy office;

Bear thee well in it, and leave us alone.

MARGARET

I’ll make her come, I warrant you, presently.      Exit.

HERO     Now, Ursula, when Beatrice doth come,

15

As we do trace this alley up and down,

Our talk must only be of Benedick.

When I do name him, let it be thy part

To praise him more than ever man did merit:

My talk to thee must be how Benedick

20

Is sick in love with Beatrice. Of this matter

Is little Cupid’s crafty arrow made,

That only wounds by hearsay.

Enter BEATRICE into the arbour.

     Now begin;

For look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs

Close by the ground, to hear our conference.

25

URSULA     The pleasant’st angling is to see the fish

Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,

And greedily devour the treacherous bait:

So angle we for Beatrice, who even now

Is couched in the woodbine coverture.

30

Fear you not my part of the dialogue.

HERO     Then go we near her, that her ear lose nothing

Of the false sweet bait that we lay for it.

[approaching the arbour] No, truly, Ursula, she is too

disdainful;

I know her spirits are as coy and wild

35

As haggards of the rock.

URSULA     But are you sure

That Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?

HERO     So says the Prince and my new-trothed lord.

URSULA     And did they bid you tell her of it, madam?

HERO     They did entreat me to acquaint her of it;

40

But I persuaded them, if they lov’d Benedick,

To wish him wrestle with affection,

And never to let Beatrice know of it.

URSULA     Why did you so? Doth not the gentleman

Deserve as full as fortunate a bed

45

As ever Beatrice shall couch upon?

HERO     O god of love! I know he doth deserve

As much as may be yielded to a man:

But Nature never fram’d a woman’s heart

Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice.

50

Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,

Misprising what they look on, and her wit

Values itself so highly that to her

All matter else seems weak. She cannot love,

Nor take no shape nor project of affection,

55

She is so self-endeared.

URSULA     Sure, I think so;

And therefore certainly it were not good

She knew his love, lest she’ll make sport at it.

HERO     Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man,

How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur’d,

60

But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac’d,

She would swear the gentleman should be her sister;

If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antic,

Made a foul blot; if tall, a lance ill-headed;

If low, an agate very vilely cut;

65

If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds;

If silent, why, a block moved with none.

So turns she every man the wrong side out,

And never gives to truth and virtue that

Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.

70

URSULA     Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable.

HERO     No, not to be so odd and from all fashions

As Beatrice is, cannot be commendable:

But who dare tell her so? If I should speak,

She would mock me into air; O, she would laugh me

75

Out of myself, press me to death with wit!

Therefore let Benedick, like cover’d fire,

Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly.

It were a better death than die with mocks,

Which is as bad as die with tickling.

80

URSULA     Yet tell her of it; hear what she will say.

HERO     No; rather I will go to Benedick

And counsel him to fight against his passion;

And truly I’ll devise some honest slanders

To stain my cousin with: one doth not know

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How much an ill word may empoison liking.

URSULA     O, do not do your cousin such a wrong!

She cannot be so much without true judgement –

Having so swift and excellent a wit

As she is priz’d to have – as to refuse

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So rare a gentleman as Signior Benedick.

HERO     He is the only man of Italy,

Always excepted my dear Claudio.

URSULA     I pray you be not angry with me, madam,

Speaking my fancy: Signior Benedick,

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For shape, for bearing, argument, and valour,

Goes foremost in report through Italy.

HERO     Indeed he hath an excellent good name.

URSULA     His excellence did earn it ere he had it.

When are you married, madam?

100

HERO     Why, every day, tomorrow! Come, go in;

I’ll show thee some attires, and have thy counsel

Which is the best to furnish me tomorrow.

URSULA [aside]

She’s lim’d, I warrant you! We have caught her, madam.

HERO [aside] If it prove so, then loving goes by haps:

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Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.

Exeunt Hero and Ursula.

BEATRICE [coming forward]

What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?

Stand I condemn’d for pride and scorn so much?

Contempt, farewell, and maiden pride, adieu!

No glory lives behind the back of such.

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And, Benedick, love on, I will requite thee,

Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand.

If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee

To bind our loves up in a holy band;

For others say thou dost deserve, and I

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Believe it better than reportingly.     Exit.

3.2 Enter DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK and LEONATO.

DON PEDRO     I do but stay till your marriage be con-

summate, and then go I toward Aragon.

CLAUDIO     I’ll bring you thither, my lord, if you’ll vouchsafe me.

DON PEDRO     Nay, that would be as great a soil in the new

5

gloss of your marriage as to show a child his new

coat and forbid him to wear it. I will only be bold

with Benedick for his company, for from the crown

of his head to the sole of his foot he is all mirth. He

hath twice or thrice cut Cupid’s bow-string, and the

10

little hangman dare not shoot at him. He hath a

heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper;

for what his heart thinks his tongue speaks.

BENEDICK     Gallants, I am not as I have been.

LEONATO     So say I; methinks you are sadder.

15

CLAUDIO     I hope he be in love.

DON PEDRO     Hang him, truant! There’s no true drop of

blood in him to be truly touched with love. If he be

sad, he wants money.

BENEDICK     I have the toothache.

20

DON PEDRO     Draw it.

BENEDICK     Hang it!

CLAUDIO     You must hang it first, and draw it afterwards.

DON PEDRO     What? Sigh for the toothache?

LEONATO     Where is but a humour or a worm.

25

BENEDICK     Well, every one can master a grief but he that

has it.

CLAUDIO     Yet say I, he is in love.

DON PEDRO     There is no appearance of fancy in him,

unless it be a fancy that he hath to strange disguises –

30

as to be a Dutchman today, a Frenchman tomorrow, or

in the shape of two countries at once, as a German

from the waist downward, all slops, and a Spaniard

from the hip upward, no doublet. Unless he have a

fancy to this foolery, as it appears he hath, he is no fool

35

for fancy, as you would have it appear he is.

CLAUDIO     If he be not in love with some woman, there is

no believing old signs; a brushes his hat o’ mornings,

what should that bode?

DON PEDRO     Hath any man seen him at the barber’s?

40

CLAUDIO     No, but the barber’s man hath been seen with

him, and the old ornament of his cheek hath already

stuffed tennis-balls.

LEONATO     Indeed he looks younger than he did, by the

loss of a beard.

45

DON PEDRO     Nay, a rubs himself with civet; can you

smell him out by that?

CLAUDIO     That’s as much as to say the sweet youth’s in

love.

DON PEDRO     The greatest note of it is his melancholy.

50

CLAUDIO     And when was he wont to wash his face?

DON PEDRO     Yea, or to paint himself? For the which I

hear what they say of him.

CLAUDIO     Nay, but his jesting spirit, which is now crept

into a lute-string, and now governed by stops.

55

DON PEDRO     Indeed that tells a heavy tale for him:

conclude, conclude he is in love.

CLAUDIO     Nay, but I know who loves him.

DON PEDRO     That would I know too: I warrant, one that

knows him not.

60

CLAUDIO     Yes, and his ill conditions, and in despite of

all, dies for him.

DON PEDRO     She shall be buried with her face upwards.

BENEDICK     Yet is this no charm for the toothache. Old

signior, walk aside with me; I have studied eight or

65

nine wise words to speak to you, which these hobby-

horses must not hear.     Exeunt Benedick and Leonato.

DON PEDRO     For my life, to break with him about

Beatrice.

CLAUDIO     ’Tis even so. Hero and Margaret have by this

70

played their parts with Beatrice, and then the two

bears will not bite one another when they meet.

Enter DON JOHN the Bastard.

DON JOHN     My lord and brother, God save you!

DON PEDRO     Good den, brother.

DON JOHN     If your leisure served, I would speak with you.

75

DON PEDRO     In private?

DON JOHN     If it please you; yet Count Claudio may hear,

for what I would speak of concerns him.

DON PEDRO     What’s the matter?

DON JOHN [to Claudio] Means your lordship to be

80

married tomorrow?

DON PEDRO     You know he does.

DON JOHN     I know not that, when he knows what I know.

CLAUDIO     If there be any impediment, I pray you

discover it.

85

DON JOHN     You may think I love you not: let that appear

hereafter, and aim better at me by that I now will

manifest. For my brother, I think he holds you well,

and in dearness of heart hath holp to effect your

ensuing marriage – surely suit ill spent, and labour ill

90

bestowed.

DON PEDRO     Why, what’s the matter?

DON JOHN     I came hither to tell you; and, circumstances

shortened – for she has been too long a-talking of – the

lady is disloyal.

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CLAUDIO     Who, Hero?

DON JOHN     Even she – Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every

man’s Hero.

CLAUDIO     Disloyal?

DON JOHN     The word is too good to paint out her

100

wickedness. I could say she were worse; think you of a

worse title and I will fit her to it. Wonder not till

further warrant: go but with me tonight, you shall

see her chamber-window entered, even the night

before her wedding-day. If you love her then,

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tomorrow wed her; but it would better fit your

honour to change your mind.

CLAUDIO     May this be so?

DON PEDRO     I will not think it.

DON JOHN     If you dare not trust that you see, confess not

110

that you know. If you will follow me, I will show you

enough; and when you have seen more, and heard

more, proceed accordingly.

CLAUDIO     If I see anything tonight why I should not

marry her tomorrow, in the congregation, where I

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should wed, there will I shame her.

DON PEDRO     And as I wooed for thee to obtain her, I will

join with thee to disgrace her.

DON JOHN     I will disparage her no farther till you are my

witnesses. Bear it coldly but till midnight, and let the

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issue show itself.

DON PEDRO     O day untowardly turned!

CLAUDIO     O mischief strangely thwarting!

DON JOHN     O plague right well prevented! So will you

say when you have seen the sequel.     Exeunt.

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3.3 Enter DOGBERRY and his compartner VERGES, with the Watch.

DOGBERRY     Are you good men and true?

VERGES     Yea, or else it were pity but they should suffer

salvation, body and soul.

DOGBERRY     Nay, that were a punishment too good for

them, if they should have any allegiance in them,

5

being chosen for the Prince’s watch.

VERGES     Well, give them their charge, neighbour Dogberry.

DOGBERRY     First, who think you the most desartless

man to be constable?

10

1WATCHMAN Hugh Oatcake, sir, or George Seacoal, for

they can write and read.

DOGBERRY     Come hither, neighbour Seacoal. God hath

blest you with a good name: to be a well-favoured man

is the gift of fortune, but to write and read comes by

15

nature.

2 WATCHMAN Both which, Master Constable –

DOGBERRY     You have: I knew it would be your answer.

Well, for your favour, sir, why, give God thanks, and

make no boast of it; and for your writing and reading,

20

let that appear when there is no need of such vanity.

You are thought here to be the most senseless and fit

man for the constable of the watch; therefore bear you

the lantern. This is your charge: you shall

comprehend all vagrom men; you are to bid any man

25

stand, in the Prince’s name.

2 WATCHMAN     How if a will not stand?

DOGBERRY     Why then, take no note of him, but let him

go, and presently call the rest of the watch together,

and thank God you are rid of a knave.

30

VERGES     If he will not stand when he is bidden, he is

none of the Prince’s subjects.

DOGBERRY     True, and they are to meddle with none but

the Prince’s subjects. You shall also make no noise in

the streets: for, for the watch to babble and to talk is

35

most tolerable, and not to be endured.

A WATCHMAN     We will rather sleep than talk; we know

what belongs to a watch.

DOGBERRY     Why, you speak like an ancient and most

quiet watchman, for I cannot see how sleeping should

40

offend: only have a care that your bills be not stolen.

Well, you are to call at all the ale-houses, and bid those

that are drunk get them to bed.

A WATCHMAN     How if they will not?

DOGBERRY     Why then, let them alone till they are sober:

45

if they make you not then the better answer, you may

say they are not the men you took them for.

A WATCHMAN     Well, sir.

DOGBERRY     If you meet a thief, you may suspect him, by

virtue of your office, to be no true man; and for such

50

kind of men, the less you meddle or make with them,

why, the more is for your honesty.

A WATCHMAN     If we know him to be a thief, shall we not

lay hands on him?

DOGBERRY     Truly, by your office you may, but I think they

55

that touch pitch will be defiled. The most peaceable

way for you, if you do take a thief, is to let him show

himself what he is, and steal out of your company.

VERGES     You have been always called a merciful man,

partner.

60

DOGBERRY     Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will,

much more a man who hath any honesty in him.

VERGES     If you hear a child cry in the night, you must

call to the nurse and bid her still it.

A WATCHMAN     How if the nurse be asleep and will not

65

hear us?

DOGBERRY     Why then, depart in peace, and let the child

wake her with crying, for the ewe that will not hear her

lamb when it baas will never answer a calf when he bleats.

VERGES     ’Tis very true.

70

DOGBERRY     This is the end of the charge: you, constable,

are to present the Prince’s own person; if you meet the

Prince in the night, you may stay him.

VERGES     Nay, by’r lady, that I think a cannot.

DOGBERRY     Five shillings to one on’t, with any man that

75

knows the statutes, he may stay him: marry, not

without the Prince be willing, for indeed the watch

ought to offend no man, and it is an offence to stay a

man against his will.

VERGES     By’r lady, I think it be so.

80

DOGBERRY     Ha, ah ha! Well, masters, good night: and

there be any matter of weight chances, call up me:

keep your fellows’ counsels and your own, and good

night. Come, neighbour.

2 WATCHMAN     Well, masters, we hear our charge: let us

85

go sit here upon the church-bench till two, and then

all to bed.

DOGBERRY     One word more, honest neighbours. I pray

you watch about Signior Leonato’s door, for the

wedding being there tomorrow, there is a great coil

90

tonight. Adieu! Be vigitant, I beseech you.

Exeunt Dogberry and Verges.

Enter BORACHIO and CONRADE.

BORACHIO     What, Conrade!

2 WATCHMAN [aside] Peace! Stir not.

BORACHIO     Conrade, I say!

CONRADE     Here, man, I am at thy elbow.

95

BORACHIO     Mass, and my elbow itched; I thought there

would a scab follow.

CONRADE     I will owe thee an answer for that: and now

forward with thy tale.

BORACHIO     Stand thee close then under this penthouse,

100

for it drizzles rain, and I will, like a true drunkard,

utter all to thee.

2 WATCHMAN [aside] Some treason, masters; yet stand

close.

BORACHIO     Therefore know, I have earned of Don John

105

a thousand ducats.

CONRADE     Is it possible that any villainy should be so

dear?

BORACHIO     Thou shouldst rather ask if it were possible

any villainy should be so rich; for when rich villains

110

have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what

price they will.

CONRADE     I wonder at it.

BORACHIO     That shows thou art unconfirmed. Thou

knowest that the fashion of a doublet, or a hat, or a

115

cloak, is nothing to a man.

CONRADE     Yes, it is apparel.

BORACHIO     I mean, the fashion.

CONRADE     Yes, the fashion is the fashion.

BORACHIO     Tush! I may as well say the fool’s the fool. But

120

seest thou not what a deformed thief this fashion is?

2 WATCHMAN [aside] I know that Deformed; a has been

a vile thief this seven year; a goes up and down like a

gentleman: I remember his name.

BORACHIO     Didst thou not hear somebody?

125

CONRADE     No, ’twas the vane on the house.

BORACHIO     Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief

this fashion is, how giddily a turns about all the hot

bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty,

sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh’s soldiers in

130

the reechy painting, sometime like god Bel’s priests in

the old church-window, sometime like the shaven

Hercules in the smirched worm-eaten tapestry, where

his codpiece seems as massy as his club?

CONRADE     All this I see, and I see that the fashion wears

135

out more apparel than the man. But art not thou

thyself giddy with the fashion too, that thou hast

shifted out of thy tale into telling me of the fashion?

BORACHIO     Not so, neither; but know that I have tonight

wooed Margaret, the Lady Hero’s gentlewoman, by

140

the name of Hero; she leans me out at her mistress’

chamber-window, bids me a thousand times good

night – I tell this tale vilely – I should first tell thee

how the Prince, Claudio, and my master, planted and

placed and possessed by my master Don John, saw afar

145

off in the orchard this amiable encounter.

CONRADE     And thought they Margaret was Hero?

BORACHIO     Two of them did, the Prince and Claudio,

but the devil my master knew she was Margaret; and

partly by his oaths, which first possessed them, partly

150

by the dark night, which did deceive them, but chiefly

by my villainy, which did confirm any slander that

Don John had made, away went Claudio enraged;

swore he would meet her as he was appointed next

morning at the temple, and there, before the whole

155

congregation, shame her with what he saw o’ernight,

and send her home again without a husband.

2 WATCHMAN     We charge you in the Prince’s name,

stand!

1WATCHMAN     Call up the right Master Constable; we

160

have here recovered the most dangerous piece of

lechery that ever was known in the commonwealth.

2 WATCHMAN     And one Deformed is one of them; I

know him, a wears a lock.

CONRADE     Masters, masters –

165

1WATCHMAN     You’ll be made bring Deformed forth, I

warrant you.

CONRADE     Masters –

2 WATCHMAN     Never speak, we charge you, let us obey

you to go with us.

170

BORACHIO     We are like to prove a goodly commodity,

being taken up of these men’s bills.

CONRADE     A commodity in question, I warrant you.

Come, we’ll obey you.     Exeunt.

3.4 Enter HERO, MARGARET and URSULA.

HERO     Good Ursula, wake my cousin Beatrice, and

desire her to rise.

URSULA     I will, lady.

HERO     And bid her come hither.

URSULA Well.     Exit.

5

MARGARET     Troth, I think your other rebato were better.

HERO     No, pray thee good Meg, I’ll wear this.

MARGARET     By my troth’s not so good, and I warrant

your cousin will say so.

HERO     My cousin’s a fool, and thou art another; I’ll wear

10

none but this.

MARGARET     I like the new tire within excellently, if the

hair were a thought browner; and your gown’s a most

rare fashion, i’faith. I saw the Duchess of Milan’s

gown that they praise so.

15

HERO     O, that exceeds, they say.

MARGARET     By my troth’s but a night-gown in respect

of yours – cloth o’ gold, and cuts, and laced with

silver, set with pearls, down sleeves, side sleeves,

and skirts, round underborne with a bluish tinsel: but

20

for a fine, quaint, graceful, and excellent fashion,

yours is worth ten on’t.

HERO     God give me joy to wear it, for my heart is

exceeding heavy.

MARGARET     ’Twill be heavier soon by the weight of a

25

man.

HERO     Fie upon thee, art not ashamed?

MARGARET     Of what, lady? Of speaking honourably? Is

not marriage honourable in a beggar? Is not your lord

honourable without marriage? I think you would

30

have me say, saving your reverence, ‘a husband’. And

bad thinking do not wrest true speaking, I’ll offend

nobody. Is there any harm in ‘the heavier for a

husband’? None, I think, and it be the right

husband, and the right wife; otherwise ’tis light, and

35

not heavy. Ask my Lady Beatrice else; here she comes.

Enter BEATRICE.

HERO     Good morrow, coz.

BEATRICE     Good morrow, sweet Hero.

HERO     Why, how now? Do you speak in the sick tune?

BEATRICE     I am out of all other tune, methinks.

40

MARGARET     Clap’s into ‘Light o’ Love’; that goes

without a burden. Do you sing it, and I’ll dance it.

BEATRICE     Ye light o’ love with your heels! Then, if your

husband have stables enough, you’ll see he shall lack

no barns.

45

MARGARET     O illegitimate construction! I scorn that

with my heels.

BEATRICE     ’Tis almost five o’clock, cousin, ’tis time you

were ready. By my troth, I am exceeding ill – heigh-ho!

MARGARET     For a hawk, a horse, or a husband?

50

BEATRICE     For the letter that begins them all, H.

MARGARET     Well, and you be not turned Turk, there’s

no more sailing by the star.

BEATRICE     What means the fool, trow?

MARGARET     Nothing I, but God send everyone their

55

heart’s desire!

HERO     These gloves the Count sent me, they are an

excellent perfume.

BEATRICE     I am stuffed, cousin, I cannot smell.

MARGARET     A maid, and stuffed! There’s goodly

60

catching of cold.

BEATRICE     O, God help me, God help me, how long have

you professed apprehension?

MARGARET     Ever since you left it. Doth not my wit

become me rarely?

65

BEATRICE     It is not seen enough, you should wear it in

your cap. By my troth, I am sick.

MARGARET     Get you some of this distilled carduus

benedictus, and lay it to your heart; it is the only thing

for a qualm.

70

HERO     There thou prick’st her with a thistle.

BEATRICE     Benedictus! Why benedictus? You have some

moral in this benedictus.

MARGARET     Moral? No, by my troth I have no moral

meaning, I meant plain holy-thistle. You may think

75

perchance that I think you are in love, nay by’r lady I

am not such a fool to think what I list, nor I list not to

think what I can, nor indeed I cannot think, if I would

think my heart out of thinking, that you are in love, or

that you will be in love, or that you can be in love. Yet

80

BENEDICK     was such another and now is he become a

man: he swore he would never marry, and yet now in

despite of his heart he eats his meat without grudging:

and how you may be converted I know not, but

methinks you look with your eyes as other women do.

85

BEATRICE     What pace is this that thy tongue keeps?

MARGARET     Not a false gallop.

Enter URSULA.

URSULA     Madam, withdraw! The Prince, the Count,

Signior Benedick, Don John, and all the gallants of the

town are come to fetch you to church.

90

HERO     Help to dress me, good coz, good Meg, good

Ursula.     Exeunt.

3.5 Enter LEONATO and the constable DOGBERRY and the headborough VERGES.

LEONATO     What would you with me, honest neighbour?

DOGBERRY     Marry, sir, I would have some confidence

with you, that decerns you nearly.

LEONATO     Brief, I pray you, for you see it is a busy time

with me.

5

DOGBERRY     Marry, this it is, sir.

VERGES     Yes, in truth it is, sir.

LEONATO     What is it, my good friends?

DOGBERRY     Goodman Verges, sir, speaks a little off the

matter: an old man, sir, and his wits are not so blunt as,

10

God help, I would desire they were, but, in faith,

honest as the skin between his brows.

VERGES     Yes, I thank God, I am as honest as any man

living, that is an old man, and no honester than I.

DOGBERRY     Comparisons are odorous: palabras, neighbour Verges.

15

LEONATO     Neighbours, you are tedious.

DOGBERRY     It pleases your worship to say so, but we are

the poor Duke’s officers; but truly, for mine own part,

if I were as tedious as a king, I could find in my heart

20

to bestow it all of your worship.

LEONATO     All thy tediousness on me, ah?

DOGBERRY     Yea, and ’twere a thousand pound more than

’tis, for I hear as good exclamation on your worship as

of any man in the city, and though I be but a poor man,

25

I am glad to hear it.

VERGES     And so am I.

LEONATO     I would fain know what you have to say.

VERGES     Marry, sir, our watch tonight, excepting your

worship’s presence, ha’ ta’en a couple of as arrant

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knaves as any in Messina.

DOGBERRY     A good old man, sir, he will be talking; as

they say, ‘When the age is in, the wit is out’, God help

us, it is a world to see! Well said, i’faith, neighbour

Verges; well, God’s a good man, and two men ride of

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a horse, one must ride behind. An honest soul, i’faith,

sir, by my troth he is, as ever broke bread; but God is

to be worshipped, all men are not alike, alas, good

neighbour!

LEONATO     Indeed, neighbour, he comes too short of you.

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DOGBERRY     Gifts that God gives.

LEONATO     I must leave you.

DOGBERRY     One word, sir: our watch, sir, have indeed

comprehended two aspicious persons, and we would

have them this morning examined before your worship.

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LEONATO     Take their examination yourself, and bring it

me; I am now in great haste, as it may appear unto you.

DOGBERRY     It shall be suffigance.

LEONATO     Drink some wine ere you go. Fare you well!

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER     My lord, they stay for you to give your

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daughter to her husband.

LEONATO     I’ll wait upon them; I am ready.

     Exit with Messenger.

DOGBERRY     Go, good partner, go, get you to Francis

Seacoal, bid him bring his pen and inkhorn to the

gaol: we are now to examination these men.

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VERGES     And we must do it wisely.

DOGBERRY     We will spare for no wit, I warrant you;

here’s that shall drive some of them to a non-come.

Only get the learned writer to set down our excom-

munication, and meet me at the gaol.     Exeunt.

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4.1 Enter DON PEDRO, DON JOHN the Bastard, LEONATO, FRIAR FRANCIS, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK, HERO BEATRICE and attendants.

LEONATO     Come, Friar Francis, be brief: only to the

plain form of marriage, and you shall recount their

particular duties afterwards.

FRIAR     You come hither, my lord, to marry this lady?

CLAUDIO     No.

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LEONATO     To be married to her, friar: you come to

marry her.

FRIAR     Lady, you come hither to be married to this Count?

HERO     I do.

FRIAR     If either of you know any inward impediment

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why you should not be conjoined, I charge you on

your souls to utter it.

CLAUDIO     Know you any, Hero?

HERO     None, my lord.

FRIAR     Know you any, Count?

15

LEONATO     I dare make his answer, None.

CLAUDIO     O, what men dare do! What men may do!

What men daily do, not knowing what they do!

BENEDICK     How now? Interjections? Why then, some be

of laughing, as ah, ha, he!

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CLAUDIO     Stand thee by, friar. Father, by your leave:

Will you with free and unconstrained soul

Give me this maid, your daughter?

LEONATO     As freely, son, as God did give her me.

CLAUDIO     And what have I to give you back whose worth

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May counterpoise this rich and precious gift?

DON PEDRO     Nothing, unless you render her again.

CLAUDIO

Sweet Prince, you learn me noble thankfulness.

There, Leonato, take her back again.

Give not this rotten orange to your friend;

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She’s but the sign and semblance of her honour.

Behold how like a maid she blushes here!

O, what authority and show of truth

Can cunning sin cover itself withal!

Comes not that blood as modest evidence

35

To witness simple virtue? Would you not swear,

All you that see her, that she were a maid,

By these exterior shows? But she is none:

She knows the heat of a luxurious bed:

Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.

40

LEONATO     What do you mean, my lord?

CLAUDIO     Not to be married, not to knit my soul

To an approved wanton.

LEONATO     Dear my lord, if you, in your own proof,

Have vanquish’d the resistance of her youth,

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And made defeat of her virginity –

CLAUDIO

I know what you would say: if I have known her,

You will say she did embrace me as a husband,

And so extenuate the ’forehand sin.

No, Leonato.

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I never tempted her with word too large,

But, as a brother to his sister, show’d

Bashful sincerity and comely love.

HERO     And seem’d I ever otherwise to you?

CLAUDIO     Out on thee, seeming! I will write against it.

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You seem to me as Dian in her orb,

As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown;

But you are more intemperate in your blood

Than Venus, or those pamper’d animals

That rage in savage sensuality.

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HERO     Is my lord well that he doth speak so wide?

LEONATO     Sweet Prince, why speak not you?

DON PEDRO     What should I speak?

I stand dishonour’d, that have gone about

To link my dear friend to a common stale.

LEONATO     Are these things spoken, or do I but dream?

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DON JOHN

Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true.

BENEDICK     This looks not like a nuptial!

HERO     ‘True’? O God!

CLAUDIO     Leonato, stand I here?

Is this the Prince? Is this the Prince’s brother?

Is this face Hero’s? Are our eyes our own?

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LEONATO     All this is so, but what of this, my lord?

CLAUDIO

Let me but move one question to your daughter,

And by that fatherly and kindly power

That you have in her, bid her answer truly.

LEONATO     I charge thee do so, as thou art my child.

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HERO     O God defend me, how am I beset!

What kind of catechizing call you this?

CLAUDIO     To make you answer truly to your name.

HERO     Is it not Hero? Who can blot that name

With any just reproach?

CLAUDIO     Marry, that can Hero;

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HERO     itself can blot out Hero’s virtue.

What man was he talk’d with you yesternight,

Out at your window betwixt twelve and one?

Now if you are a maid, answer to this.

HERO     I talk’d with no man at that hour, my lord.

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DON PEDRO     Why, then are you no maiden. Leonato,

I am sorry you must hear: upon mine honour,

Myself, my brother, and this grieved Count

Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night,

Talk with a ruffian at her chamber-window,

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Who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain,

Confess’d the vile encounters they have had

A thousand times in secret.

DON JOHN     Fie, fie, they are not to be nam’d, my lord,

Not to be spoke of!

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There is not chastity enough in language

Without offence to utter them. Thus, pretty lady,

I am sorry for thy much misgovernment.

CLAUDIO     O Hero! What a Hero hadst thou been,

If half thy outward graces had been plac’d

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About thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart!

But fare thee well, most foul, most fair! Farewell,

Thou pure impiety and impious purity!

For thee I’ll lock up all the gates of love,

And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang,

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To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm,

And never shall it more be gracious.

LEONATO     Hath no man’s dagger here a point for me?

[Hero swoons.]

BEATRICE

Why, how now, cousin! Wherefore sink you down?

DON JOHN

Come, let us go. These things, come thus to light,

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Smother her spirits up.

Exeunt Don Pedro, Don John and Claudio.

BENEDICK     How doth the lady?

BEATRICE     Dead, I think. Help, uncle!

HERO     ! Why, Hero! Uncle! Signior Benedick! Friar!

LEONATO     O Fate, take not away thy heavy hand!

Death is the fairest cover for her shame

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That may be wish’d for.

BEATRICE     How now, cousin Hero?

FRIAR     Have comfort, lady.

LEONATO     Dost thou look up?

FRIAR     Yea, wherefore should she not?

LEONATO

Wherefore? Why, doth not every earthly thing

Cry shame upon her? Could she here deny

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The story that is printed in her blood?

Do not live, Hero, do not ope thine eyes;

For did I think thou wouldst not quickly die,

Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames,

Myself would on the rearward of reproaches

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Strike at thy life. Griev’d I, I had but one?

Chid I for that at frugal Nature’s frame?

O, one too much by thee! Why had I one?

Why ever wast thou lovely in my eyes?

Why had I not with charitable hand

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Took up a beggar’s issue at my gates,

Who smirched thus, and mir’d with infamy,

I might have said, ‘No part of it is mine;

This shame derives itself from unknown loins’?

But mine, and mine I lov’d, and mine I prais’d,

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And mine that I was proud on – mine so much

That I myself was to myself not mine,

Valuing of her – why, she, O, she is fall’n

Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea

Hath drops too few to wash her clean again,

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And salt too little which may season give

To her foul-tainted flesh!

BENEDICK     Sir, sir, be patient.

For my part I am so attir’d in wonder,

I know not what to say.

BEATRICE     O, on my soul my cousin is belied!

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BENEDICK     Lady, were you her bedfellow last night?

BEATRICE     No, truly, not; although until last night,

I have this twelvemonth been her bedfellow.

LEONATO

Confirm’d, confirm’d! O, that is stronger made

Which was before barr’d up with ribs of iron.

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Would the two princes lie, and Claudio lie,

Who lov’d her so, that, speaking of her foulness,

Wash’d it with tears? Hence from her, let her die!

FRIAR     Hear me a little;

For I have only been silent so long,

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And given way unto this course of fortune,

By noting of the lady. I have mark’d

A thousand blushing apparitions

To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames

In angel whiteness beat away those blushes,

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And in her eye there hath appear’d a fire

To burn the errors that these princes hold

Against her maiden truth. Call me a fool;

Trust not my reading nor my observations,

Which with experimental seal doth warrant

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The tenor of my book; trust not my age,

My reverence, calling, nor divinity,

If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here

Under some biting error.

LEONATO     Friar, it cannot be.

Thou seest that all the grace that she hath left

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Is that she will not add to her damnation

A sin of perjury: she not denies it.

Why seek’st thou then to cover with excuse

That which appears in proper nakedness?

FRIAR     Lady, what man is he you are accus’d of?

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HERO     They know that do accuse me; I know none.

If I know more of any man alive

Than that which maiden modesty doth warrant,

Let all my sins lack mercy! O my father,

Prove you that any man with me convers’d

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At hours unmeet, or that I yesternight

Maintain’d the change of words with any creature,

Refuse me, hate me, torture me to death!

FRIAR

There is some strange misprision in the princes.

BENEDICK     Two of them have the very bent of honour;

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And if their wisdoms be misled in this,

The practice of it lives in John the bastard,

Whose spirits toil in frame of villainies.

LEONATO     I know not. If they speak but truth of her,

These hands shall tear her: if they wrong her honour,

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The proudest of them shall well hear of it.

Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine,

Nor age so eat up my invention,

Nor fortune made such havoc of my means,

Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends,

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But they shall find, awak’d in such a kind,

Both strength of limb and policy of mind,

Ability in means and choice of friends,

To quit me of them throughly.

FRIAR     Pause awhile,

And let my counsel sway you in this case.

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Your daughter here the princes left for dead,

Let her awhile be secretly kept in,

And publish it that she is dead indeed;

Maintain a mourning ostentation,

And on your family’s old monument

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Hang mournful epitaphs, and do all rites

That appertain unto a burial.

LEONATO

What shall become of this? What will this do?

FRIAR     Marry, this well carried shall on her behalf

Change slander to remorse; that is some good:

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But not for that dream I on this strange course,

But on this travail look for greater birth.

She dying, as it must be so maintain’d,

Upon the instant that she was accus’d,

Shall be lamented, pitied, and excus’d

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Of every hearer; for it so falls out

That what we have we prize not to the worth

Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack’d and lost,

Why then we rack the value, then we find

The virtue that possession would not show us

220

Whiles it was ours: so will it fare with Claudio.

When he shall hear she died upon his words,

Th’idea of her life shall sweetly creep

Into his study of imagination,

And every lovely organ of her life

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Shall come apparell’d in more precious habit,

More moving-delicate and full of life,

Into the eye and prospect of his soul

Than when she liv’d indeed: then shall he mourn –

If ever love had interest in his liver –

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And wish he had not so accused her:

No, though he thought his accusation true.

Let this be so, and doubt not but success

Will fashion the event in better shape

Than I can lay it down in likelihood.

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But if all aim but this be levell’d false,

The supposition of the lady’s death

Will quench the wonder of her infamy:

And if it sort not well, you may conceal her,

As best befits her wounded reputation.

240

In some reclusive and religious life,

Out of all eyes, tongues, minds, and injuries.

BENEDICK     Signior Leonato, let the friar advise you;

And though you know my inwardness and love

Is very much unto the Prince and Claudio,

245

Yet, by mine honour, I will deal in this

As secretly and justly as your soul

Should with your body.

LEONATO     Being that I flow in grief,

The smallest twine may lead me.

FRIAR     ’Tis well consented. Presently away;

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For to strange sores strangely they strain the cure.

Come, lady, die to live; this wedding-day

Perhaps is but prolong’d; have patience and endure.

     Exeunt all but Benedick and Beatrice.

BENEDICK     Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?

BEATRICE     Yea, and I will weep a while longer.

255

BENEDICK     I will not desire that.

BEATRICE     You have no reason, I do it freely.

BENEDICK     Surely I do believe your fair cousin is

wronged.

BEATRICE     Ah, how much might the man deserve of me

260

that would right her!

BENEDICK     Is there any way to show such friendship?

BEATRICE     A very even way, but no such friend.

BENEDICK     May a man do it?

BEATRICE     It is a man’s office, but not yours.

265

BENEDICK     I do love nothing in the world so well as you

– is not that strange?

BEATRICE     As strange as the thing I know not. It were as

possible for me to say I loved nothing so well as you,

but believe me not; and yet I lie not; I confess nothing,

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nor I deny nothing. I am sorry for my cousin.

BENEDICK     By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me.

BEATRICE     Do not swear and eat it.

BENEDICK     I will swear by it that you love me, and I will

make him eat it that says I love not you.

275

BEATRICE     Will you not eat your word?

BENEDICK     With no sauce that can be devised to it. I

protest I love thee.

BEATRICE     Why then, God forgive me!

BENEDICK     What offence, sweet Beatrice?

280

BEATRICE     You have stayed me in a happy hour, I was

about to protest I loved you.

BENEDICK     And do it with all thy heart.

BEATRICE     I love you with so much of my heart that none

is left to protest.

285

BENEDICK     Come, bid me do anything for thee.

BEATRICE     Kill Claudio!

BENEDICK     Ha, not for the wide world!

BEATRICE     You kill me to deny it. Farewell.

BENEDICK     Tarry, sweet Beatrice.

290

BEATRICE     I am gone, though I am here; there is no love

in you; nay I pray you let me go.

BENEDICK     Beatrice –

BEATRICE     In faith, I will go.

BENEDICK     We’ll be friends first.

295

BEATRICE     You dare easier be friends with me than fight

with mine enemy.

BENEDICK     Is Claudio thine enemy?

BEATRICE     Is a not approved in the height a villain, that

hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman?

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O that I were a man! What, bear her in hand until

they come to take hands, and then with public

accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour

– O God that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the

market-place.

305

BENEDICK     Hear me, Beatrice –

BEATRICE     Talk with a man out at a window! A proper

saying!

BENEDICK     Nay, but Beatrice –

BEATRICE     Sweet Hero! She is wronged, she is

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slandered, she is undone.

BENEDICK     Beat –

BEATRICE     Princes and counties! Surely a princely

testimony, a goodly count, Count Comfect, a sweet

gallant surely! O that I were a man for his sake, or that

315

I had any friend would be a man for my sake! But

manhood is melted into curtsies, valour into

compliment, and men are only turned into tongue,

and trim ones too: he is now as valiant as Hercules that

only tells a lie and swears it. I cannot be a man with

320

wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.

BENEDICK     Tarry, good Beatrice. By this hand I love

thee.

BEATRICE     Use it for my love some other way than

swearing by it.

325

BENEDICK     Think you in your soul the Count Claudio

hath wronged Hero?

BEATRICE     Yea, as sure as I have a thought, or a soul.

BENEDICK     Enough! I am engaged, I will challenge him.

I will kiss your hand, and so I leave you. By this hand,

330

CLAUDIO     shall render me a dear account. As you hear of

me, so think of me. Go comfort your cousin; I must

say she is dead: and so farewell.     Exeunt.

4.2 Enter the constables, DOGBERRY and VERGES, and the SEXTON as town clerk in gowns, BORACHIO, CONRADE and the WATCH.

DOGBERRY     Is our whole dissembly appeared?

VERGES     O, a stool and a cushion for the sexton.

SEXTON     Which be the malefactors?

DOGBERRY     Marry, that am I and my partner.

VERGES     Nay, that’s certain, we have the exhibition to

5

examine.

SEXTON     But which are the offenders that are to be

examined? Let them come before Master Constable.

DOGBERRY     Yea, marry, let them come before me. What

is your name, friend?

10

BORACHIO     Borachio.

DOGBERRY     Pray write down ‘Borachio’. Yours, sirrah?

CONRADE     I am a gentleman, sir, and my name is Conrade.

DOGBERRY     Write down ‘Master gentleman Conrade’.

15

Masters, do you serve God?

CONRADE, BORACHIO     Yea, sir, we hope.

DOGBERRY     Write down that they hope they serve God:

and write ‘God’ first, for God defend but God should

go before such villains! Masters, it is proved already

20

that you are little better than false knaves, and it will

go near to be thought so shortly. How answer you for

yourselves?

CONRADE     Marry, sir, we say we are none.

DOGBERRY     A marvellous witty fellow, I assure you, but

25

I will go about with him. Come you hither, sirrah, a

word in your ear, sir; I say to you, it is thought you are

false knaves.

BORACHIO     Sir, I say to you we are none.

DOGBERRY     Well, stand aside. ’Fore God, they are both

30

in a tale. Have you writ down that they are none?

SEXTON     Master Constable, you go not the way to

examine; you must call forth the watch that are their

accusers.

DOGBERRY     Yea, marry, that’s the eftest way. Let the

35

watch come forth. Masters, I charge you in the

Prince’s name, accuse these men.

1 WATCHMAN     This man said, sir, that Don John the

Prince’s brother was a villain.

DOGBERRY     Write down ‘Prince John a villain’. Why, this

40

is flat perjury, to call a prince’s brother villain.

BORACHIO     Master Constable –

DOGBERRY     Pray thee, fellow, peace, I do not like thy

look, I promise thee.

SEXTON     What heard you him say else?

45

2 WATCHMAN     Marry, that he had received a thousand

ducats of Don John for accusing the Lady Hero

wrongfully.

DOGBERRY     Flat burglary as ever was committed.

VERGES     Yea, by mass, that it is.

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SEXTON     What else, fellow?

1 WATCHMAN     And that Count Claudio did mean, upon

his words, to disgrace Hero before the whole

assembly, and not marry her.

DOGBERRY     O villain! Thou wilt be condemned into

55

everlasting redemption for this.

SEXTON     What else?

A WATCHMAN     This is all.

SEXTON     And this is more, masters, than you can deny.

Prince John is this morning secretly stolen away:

60

Hero was in this manner accused, in this very

manner refused, and upon the grief of this suddenly

died. Master Constable, let these men be bound and

brought to Leonato’s; I will go before and show him

their examination.     Exit.

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DOGBERRY     Come, let them be opinioned.

VERGES     Let them be in the hands –

CONRADE     Off, coxcomb!

DOGBERRY     God’s my life, where’s the sexton? Let him

write down ‘the Prince’s officer coxcomb’. Come, bind

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them. Thou naughty varlet!

CONRADE     Away! You are an ass, you are an ass.

DOGBERRY     Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou

not suspect my years? O that he were here to write me

down an ass! But masters, remember that I am an

75

ass: though it be not written down, yet forget not

that I am an ass. No, thou villain, thou art full of piety,

as shall be proved upon thee by good witness. I am a

wise fellow, and which is more, an officer, and which is

more, a householder, and which is more, as pretty a

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piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and one that knows

the law, go to, and a rich fellow enough, go to, and a

fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two

gowns, and everything handsome about him. Bring

him away! O that I had been writ down an ass!

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Exeunt.

5.1 Enter LEONATO and ANTONIO.

ANTONIO     If you go on thus, you will kill yourself,

And ’tis not wisdom thus to second grief

Against yourself.

LEONATO     I pray thee cease thy counsel,

Which falls into mine ears as profitless

As water in a sieve. Give not me counsel,

5

Nor let no comforter delight mine ear

But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine.

Bring me a father that so lov’d his child,

Whose joy of her is overwhelm’d like mine,

And bid him speak of patience;

10

Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine,

And let it answer every strain for strain,

As thus for thus, and such a grief for such,

In every lineament, branch, shape, and form.

If such a one will smile and stroke his beard,

15

Bid sorrow wag, cry ‘Hem!’ when he should groan,

Patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk

With candle-wasters, bring him yet to me,

And I of him will gather patience.

But there is no such man: for, brother, men

20

Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief

Which they themselves not feel; but tasting it,

Their counsel turns to passion, which before

Would give preceptial medicine to rage,

Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,

25

Charm ache with air, and agony with words.

No, no, ’tis all men’s office to speak patience

To those that wring under the load of sorrow,

But no man’s virtue nor sufficiency

To be so moral when he shall endure

30

The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel:

My griefs cry louder than advertisement.

ANTONIO

Therein do men from children nothing differ.

LEONATO     I pray thee peace, I will be flesh and blood;

For there was never yet philosopher

35

That could endure the toothache patiently,

However they have writ the style of gods,

And made a push at chance and sufferance.

ANTONIO Yet bend not all the harm upon yourself;

Make those that do offend you suffer too.

40

LEONATO     There thou speak’st reason: nay, I will do so.

My soul doth tell me Hero is belied;

And that shall Claudio know, so shall the Prince,

And all of them that thus dishonour her.

Enter DON PEDRO and CLAUDIO.

ANTONIO     Here comes the Prince and Claudio hastily.

45

DON PEDRO     Good den, good den.

CLAUDIO     Good day to both of you.

LEONATO     Hear you, my lords –

DON PEDRO     We have some haste, Leonato.

LEONATO     

Some haste, my lord? Well, fare you well, my lord!

Are you so hasty now? Well, all is one.

DON PEDRO     

Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man.

50

ANTONIO     If he could right himself with quarrelling,

Some of us would lie low.

CLAUDIO     Who wrongs him?

LEONATO     

Marry, thou dost wrong me, thou dissembler, thou!

Nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword,

I fear thee not.

CLAUDIO     Marry, beshrew my hand

55

If it should give your age such cause of fear.

In faith, my hand meant nothing to my sword.

LEONATO     Tush, tush, man, never fleer and jest at me!

I speak not like a dotard nor a fool,

As under privilege of age to brag

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What I have done being young, or what would do

Were I not old. Know, Claudio, to thy head,

Thou hast so wrong’d mine innocent child and me,

That I am forc’d to lay my reverence by,

And with grey hairs and bruise of many days

65

Do challenge thee to trial of a man.

I say thou hast belied mine innocent child;

Thy slander hath gone through and through her heart,

And she lies buried with her ancestors –

O, in a tomb where never scandal slept,

70

Save this of hers, fram’d by thy villainy!

CLAUDIO     My villainy?

LEONATO     Thine, Claudio; thine, I say.

DON PEDRO     You say not right, old man.

LEONATO     My lord, my lord,

I’ll prove it on his body if he dare,

Despite his nice fence and his active practice,

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His May of youth and bloom of lustihood.

CLAUDIO     Away! I will not have to do with you.

LEONATO     

Canst thou so daff me? Thou hast kill’d my child;

If thou kill’st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man.

ANTONIO He shall kill two of us, and men indeed:

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But that’s no matter, let him kill one first.

Win me and wear me, let him answer me.

Come follow me, boy, come, sir boy, come follow me,

Sir boy, I’ll whip you from your foining fence,

Nay, as I am a gentleman, I will.

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LEONATO     Brother –

ANTONIO

Content yourself. God knows I lov’d my niece,

And she is dead, slander’d to death by villains,

That dare as well answer a man indeed

As I dare take a serpent by the tongue.

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Boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks, milksops!

LEONATO     Brother Antony –

ANTONIO

Hold you content. What, man! I know them, yea,

And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple,

Scambling, outfacing, fashion-monging boys,

That lie, and cog, and flout, deprave, and slander,

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Go anticly, and show outward hideousness,

And speak off half a dozen dang’rous words,

How they might hurt their enemies, if they durst,

And this is all.

LEONATO     But brother Antony –

ANTONIO Come, ’tis no matter;

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Do not you meddle, let me deal in this.

DON PEDRO     

Gentlemen both, we will not wake your patience.

My heart is sorry for your daughter’s death;

But on my honour she was charg’d with nothing

But what was true, and very full of proof.

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LEONATO     My lord, my lord –

DON PEDRO     I will not hear you.

LEONATO     No? Come, brother, away! I will be heard.

ANTONIO     And shall, or some of us will smart for it.

Exeunt Leonato and Antonio.

Enter BENEDICK.

DON PEDRO     See, see! Here comes the man we went to seek.

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CLAUDIO     Now, signior, what news?

BENEDICK     Good day, my lord.

DON PEDRO     Welcome, signior; you are almost come to

part almost a fray.

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CLAUDIO     We had like to have had our two noses

snapped off with two old men without teeth.

DON PEDRO     Leonato and his brother. What think’st

thou? Had we fought, I doubt we should have been too

young for them.

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BENEDICK     In a false quarrel there is no true valour. I

came to seek you both.

CLAUDIO     We have been up and down to seek thee, for

we are high-proof melancholy, and would fain have it

beaten away. Wilt thou use thy wit?

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BENEDICK     It is in my scabbard; shall I draw it?

DON PEDRO     Dost thou wear thy wit by thy side?

CLAUDIO     Never any did so, though very many have

been beside their wit. I will bid thee draw, as we do the

minstrels – draw to pleasure us.

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DON PEDRO     As I am an honest man, he looks pale. Art

thou sick, or angry?

CLAUDIO     What, courage, man! What though care killed

a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.

BENEDICK     Sir, I shall meet your wit in the career, and

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you charge it against me. I pray you choose another

subject.

CLAUDIO     Nay then, give him another staff; this last was

broke cross.

DON PEDRO     By this light, he changes more and more; I

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think he be angry indeed.

CLAUDIO     If he be, he knows how to turn his girdle.

BENEDICK     Shall I speak a word in your ear?

CLAUDIO     God bless me from a challenge!

BENEDICK     [aside to Claudio] You are a villain. I jest not;

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I will make it good how you dare, with what you dare,

and when you dare. Do me right, or I will protest

your cowardice. You have killed a sweet lady, and her

death shall fall heavy on you. Let me hear from you.

CLAUDIO     Well, I will meet you, so I may have good cheer.

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DON PEDRO     What, a feast, a feast?

CLAUDIO     I’faith I thank him, he hath bid me to a calf ’s

head and a capon, the which if I do not carve most

curiously, say my knife’s naught. Shall I not find a

woodcock too?

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BENEDICK     Sir, your wit ambles well; it goes easily.

DON PEDRO     I’ll tell thee how Beatrice praised thy wit

the other day. I said thou hadst a fine wit. ‘True,’ said

she, ‘a fine little one.’ ‘No,’ said I, ‘a great wit.’

‘Right,’ says she, ‘a great gross one.’ ‘Nay,’ said I, ‘a

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good wit.’ ‘Just,’ said she, ‘it hurts nobody.’ ‘Nay,’ said

I, ‘the gentleman is wise.’ ‘Certain,’ said she, ‘a wise

gentleman.’ ‘Nay,’ said I, ‘he hath the tongues.’ ‘That

I believe,’ said she, ‘for he swore a thing to me on

Monday night, which he forswore on Tuesday

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morning; there’s a double tongue; there’s two

tongues.’ Thus did she an hour together transshape

thy particular virtues: yet at last she concluded with a

sigh, thou wast the properest man in Italy.

CLAUDIO     For the which she wept heartily and said she

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cared not.

DON PEDRO     Yea, that she did; but yet for all that, and if

she did not hate him deadly, she would love him

dearly – the old man’s daughter told us all.

CLAUDIO     All, all; and moreover, God saw him when he

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was hid in the garden.

DON PEDRO     But when shall we set the savage bull’s

horns on the sensible Benedick’s head?

CLAUDIO     Yea, and text underneath, ‘Here dwells

Benedick, the married man’?

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BENEDICK     Fare you well, boy, you know my mind: I will

leave you now to your gossip-like humour. You break

jests as braggarts do their blades, which God be

thanked hurt not. My lord, for your many courtesies I

thank you: I must discontinue your company. Your

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brother the bastard is fled from Messina. You have

among you killed a sweet and innocent lady. For my

Lord Lackbeard there, he and I shall meet; and till

then, peace be with him.     Exit.

DON PEDRO     He is in earnest.

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CLAUDIO     In most profound earnest, and, I’ll warrant

you, for the love of Beatrice.

DON PEDRO     And hath challenged thee.

CLAUDIO     Most sincerely.

DON PEDRO     What a pretty thing man is when he goes in

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his doublet and hose and leaves off his wit!

CLAUDIO     He is then a giant to an ape; but then is an ape

a doctor to such a man.

DON PEDRO     But, soft you, let me be: pluck up, my heart,

and be sad. Did he not say my brother was fled?

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Enter constables DOGBERRY and VERGES, and the Watch, with CONRADE and BORACHIO.

DOGBERRY     Come you, sir, if justice cannot tame you she

shall ne’er weigh more reasons in her balance. Nay, and

you be a cursing hypocrite once, you must be looked to.

DON PEDRO     How now? Two of my brother’s men

bound? Borachio one?

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CLAUDIO     Hearken after their offence, my lord.

DON PEDRO     Officers, what offence have these men done?

DOGBERRY     Marry, sir, they have committed false report,

moreover they have spoken untruths, secondarily they

are slanders, sixth and lastly they have belied a lady,

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thirdly they have verified unjust things, and to

conclude, they are lying knaves.

DON PEDRO     First I ask thee what they have done,

thirdly I ask thee what’s their offence, sixth and lastly

why they are committed, and to conclude, what you

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lay to their charge.

CLAUDIO     Rightly reasoned, and in his own division; and

by my troth there’s one meaning well suited.

DON PEDRO     Who have you offended, masters, that you

are thus bound to your answer? This learned constable

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is too cunning to be understood. What’s your offence?

BORACHIO     Sweet Prince, let me go no farther to mine

answer. Do you hear me, and let this Count kill me. I

have deceived even your very eyes: what your wisdoms

could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to

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light, who in the night overheard me confessing to this

man, how Don John your brother incensed me to

slander the Lady Hero, how you were brought into the

orchard and saw me court Margaret in Hero’s

garments, how you disgraced her when you should

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marry her. My villainy they have upon record, which

I had rather seal with my death than repeat over to my

shame. The lady is dead upon mine and my master’s

false accusation; and briefly, I desire nothing but the

reward of a villain.

235

DON PEDRO     Runs not this speech like iron through your

blood?

CLAUDIO     I have drunk poison whiles he utter’d it.

DON PEDRO     But did my brother set thee on to this?

BORACHIO     Yea, and paid me richly for the practice of it.

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DON PEDRO     He is compos’d and fram’d of treachery,

And fled he is upon this villainy.

CLAUDIO     Sweet Hero! Now thy image doth appear

In the rare semblance that I lov’d it first.

DOGBERRY     Come, bring away the plaintiffs. By this time

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our sexton hath reformed Signior Leonato of the

matter: and masters, do not forget to specify, when

time and place shall serve, that I am an ass.

VERGES     Here, here comes Master Signior Leonato, and

the sexton too.

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Enter LEONATO, ANTONIO and the Sexton.

LEONATO     Which is the villain? Let me see his eyes,

That when I note another man like him

I may avoid him. Which of these is he?

BORACHIO     

If you would know your wronger, look on me.

LEONATO     

Art thou the slave that with thy breath hast kill’d

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Mine innocent child?

BORACHIO     Yea, even I alone.

LEONATO     No, not so, villain, thou beliest thyself.

Here stand a pair of honourable men –

A third is fled – that had a hand in it.

I thank you, Princes, for my daughter’s death;

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Record it with your high and worthy deeds;

’Twas bravely done, if you bethink you of it.

CLAUDIO     I know not how to pray your patience,

Yet I must speak. Choose your revenge yourself,

Impose me to what penance your invention

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Can lay upon my sin; yet sinn’d I not

But in mistaking.

DON PEDRO     By my soul, nor I:

And yet, to satisfy this good old man,

I would bend under any heavy weight

That he’ll enjoin me to.

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LEONATO     I cannot bid you bid my daughter live –

That were impossible – but I pray you both,

Possess the people in Messina here

How innocent she died; and if your love

Can labour aught in sad invention,

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Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb,

And sing it to her bones, sing it tonight.

Tomorrow morning come you to my house,

And since you could not be my son-in-law,

Be yet my nephew. My brother hath a daughter,

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Almost the copy of my child that’s dead,

And she alone is heir to both of us.

Give her the right you should have giv’n her cousin,

And so dies my revenge.

CLAUDIO     O noble sir,

Your overkindness doth wring tears from me!

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I do embrace your offer, and dispose

For henceforth of poor Claudio.

LEONATO     Tomorrow then I will expect your coming;

Tonight I take my leave. This naughty man

Shall face to face be brought to Margaret,

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Who I believe was pack’d in all this wrong,

Hir’d to it by your brother.

BORACHIO     No, by my soul she was not,

Nor knew not what she did when she spoke to me,

But always hath been just and virtuous

In anything that I do know by her.

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DOGBERRY     Moreover, sir, which indeed is not under

white and black, this plaintiff here, the offender, did

call me ass; I beseech you let it be remembered in his

punishment. And also the watch heard them talk of

one Deformed; they say he wears a key in his ear and a

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lock hanging by it, and borrows money in God’s name,

the which he hath used so long, and never paid, that

now men grow hard-hearted and will lend nothing for

God’s sake: pray you examine him upon that point.

LEONATO     I thank thee for thy care and honest pains.

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DOGBERRY     Your worship speaks like a most thankful

and reverent youth, and I praise God for you.

LEONATO     There’s for thy pains.

DOGBERRY     God save the foundation!

LEONATO     Go, I discharge thee of thy prisoner, and I

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thank thee.

DOGBERRY     I leave an arrant knave with your worship,

which I beseech your worship to correct yourself, for

the example of others. God keep your worship! I

wish your worship well. God restore you to health! I

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humbly give you leave to depart, and if a merry

meeting may be wished, God prohibit it! Come,

neighbour.     Exeunt Dogberry and Verges.

LEONATO     Until tomorrow morning, lords, farewell.

ANTONIO     Farewell, my lords, we look for you tomorrow.

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DON PEDRO     We will not fail.

CLAUDIO     Tonight I’ll mourn with Hero.

LEONATO     [to the Watch]

Bring you these fellows on. We’ll talk with Margaret,

How her acquaintance grew with this lewd fellow.

Exeunt.

5.2 Enter BENEDICK and MARGARET, meeting.

BENEDICK     Pray thee, sweet Mistress Margaret, deserve

well at my hands, by helping me to the speech of

Beatrice.

MARGARET     Will you then write me a sonnet in praise of

my beauty?

5

BENEDICK     In so high a style, Margaret, that no man

living shall come over it, for in most comely truth thou

deservest it.

MARGARET     To have no man come over me? Why, shall I

always keep below stairs?

10

BENEDICK     Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound’s

mouth, it catches.

MARGARET     And yours as blunt as the fencer’s foils,

which hit, but hurt not.

BENEDICK     A most manly wit, Margaret, it will not hurt

15

a woman. And so I pray thee call Beatrice; I give thee

the bucklers.

MARGARET     Give us the swords, we have bucklers of our own.

BENEDICK     If you use them, Margaret, you must put in

20

the pikes with a vice, and they are dangerous weapons for maids.

MARGARET     Well, I will call Beatrice to you, who I think

hath legs.     Exit.

BENEDICK     And therefore will come.

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[Sings.]            The god of love,

        That sits above,

And knows me, and knows me,

        How pitiful I deserve –

I mean in singing; but in loving, Leander the good

30

swimmer, Troilus the first employer of pandars, and a

whole bookful of these quondam carpet-mongers,

whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a

blank verse, why, they were never so truly turned

over and over as my poor self in love. Marry, I

35

cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried. I can find out no

rhyme to ‘lady’ but ‘baby’ – an innocent rhyme; for

‘scorn’, ‘horn’ – a hard rhyme; for ‘school’, ‘fool’ – a

babbling rhyme; very ominous endings! No, I was not

born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in

40

festival terms.

Enter BEATRICE

Sweet Beatrice, wouldst thou come when I called thee?

BEATRICE     Yea, signior, and depart when you bid me.

BENEDICK     O, stay but till then!

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BEATRICE     ‘Then’ is spoken; fare you well now. And yet

ere I go, let me go with that I came, which is, with

knowing what hath passed between you and Claudio.

BENEDICK     Only foul words – and thereupon I will kiss

thee.

50

BEATRICE     Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is

but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore

I will depart unkissed.

BENEDICK     Thou hast frighted the word out of his right

sense, so forcible is thy wit. But I must tell thee plainly,

55

CLAUDIO     undergoes my challenge, and either I must

shortly hear from him, or I will subscribe him a

coward. And I pray thee now tell me, for which of

my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?

BEATRICE     For them all together, which maintained so

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politic a state of evil that they will not admit any good

part to intermingle with them. But for which of my

good parts did you first suffer love for me?

BENEDICK     ‘Suffer love’ – a good epithet! I do suffer love

indeed, for I love thee against my will.

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BEATRICE     In spite of your heart, I think. Alas, poor

heart! If you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for

yours, for I will never love that which my friend hates.

BENEDICK     Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.

BEATRICE     It appears not in this confession; there’s not

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one wise man among twenty that will praise himself.

BENEDICK     An old, an old instance, Beatrice, that lived in

the time of good neighbours. If a man do not erect in

this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer

in monument than the bell rings, and the widow weeps.

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BEATRICE     And how long is that, think you?

BENEDICK     Question: why, an hour in clamour and a

quarter in rheum. Therefore is it most expedient for

the wise, if Don Worm, his conscience, find no

impediment to the contrary, to be the trumpet of his

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own virtues, as I am to myself. So much for praising

myself, who I myself will bear witness is praiseworthy.

And now tell me, how doth your cousin?

BEATRICE     Very ill.

BENEDICK     And how do you?

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BEATRICE     Very ill too.

BENEDICK     Serve God, love me, and mend. There will I

leave you too, for here comes one in haste.

Enter URSULA.

URSULA     Madam, you must come to your uncle –

yonder’s old coil at home. It is proved my Lady Hero

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hath been falsely accused, the Prince and Claudio

mightily abused, and Don John is the author of all,

who is fled and gone. Will you come presently?

BEATRICE     Will you go hear this news, signior?

BENEDICK     I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be

95

buried in thy eyes; and moreover, I will go with thee to

thy uncle’s.     Exeunt.

5.3 Enter CLAUDIO, DON PEDRO and three or four with tapers, followed by BALTHASAR and musicians.

CLAUDIO     Is this the monument of Leonato?

LORD     It is, my lord.

Epitaph.

CLAUDIO     [reading from a scroll]

‘Done to death by slanderous tongues

Was the Hero that here lies:

Death, in guerdon of her wrongs,

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Gives her fame which never dies:

So the life that died with shame

Lives in death with glorious fame.’

[Hangs up the scroll.]

Hang thou there upon the tomb,

Praising her when I am dumb.

10

Now, music, sound, and sing your solemn hymn.

Song.

BALTHASAR     

     Pardon, goddess of the night,

     Those that slew thy virgin knight;

     For the which, with songs of woe,

     Round about her tomb they go.

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           Midnight, assist our moan,

           Help us to sigh and groan,

                 Heavily, heavily:

           Graves, yawn and yield your dead,

           Till death be uttered,

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                 Heavily, heavily.

CLAUDIO     Now unto thy bones good night!

Yearly will I do this rite.

DON PEDRO     

Good morrow, masters; put your torches out.

The wolves have prey’d, and look, the gentle day,

25

Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about

Dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey.

Thanks to you all, and leave us. Fare you well.

CLAUDIO     

Good morrow, masters – each his several way.

DON PEDRO     

Come let us hence, and put on other weeds,

30

And then to Leonato’s we will go.

CLAUDIO     And Hymen now with luckier issue speed’s

Than this for whom we render’d up this woe!

Exeunt.

5.4 Enter LEONATO, BENEDICK, BEATRICE, MARGARET,
URSULA, ANTONIO, FRIAR FRANCIS and HERO.

FRIAR     Did I not tell you she was innocent?

LEONATO     

So are the Prince and Claudio, who accus’d her

Upon the error that you heard debated.

But Margaret was in some fault for this,

Although against her will, as it appears

5

In the true course of all the question.

ANTONIO     Well, I am glad that all things sort so well.

BENEDICK     And so am I, being else by faith enforc’d

To call young Claudio to a reckoning for it.

LEONATO     Well, daughter, and you gentlewomen all,

10

Withdraw into a chamber by yourselves,

And when I send for you, come hither mask’d.

Exeunt Ladies.

The Prince and Claudio promis’d by this hour

To visit me. You know your office, brother:

You must be father to your brother’s daughter,

15

And give her to young Claudio.

ANTONIO

Which I will do with confirm’d countenance.

BENEDICK     Friar, I must entreat your pains, I think.

FRIAR     To do what, signior?

BENEDICK     To bind me, or undo me – one of them.

20

Signior Leonato, truth it is, good signior,

Your niece regards me with an eye of favour.

LEONATO     

That eye my daughter lent her, ’tis most true.

BENEDICK     And I do with an eye of love requite her.

LEONATO     The sight whereof I think you had from me,

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From Claudio and the Prince. But what’s your will?

BENEDICK     Your answer, sir, is enigmatical:

But for my will, my will is, your good will

May stand with ours, this day to be conjoin’d

In the state of honourable marriage;

30

In which, good friar, I shall desire your help.

LEONATO     My heart is with your liking.

FRIAR     And my help.

Here comes the Prince and Claudio.

Enter DON PEDRO and CLAUDIO, and two or three others.

DON PEDRO     Good morrow to this fair assembly.

LEONATO     

Good morrow, Prince; good morrow, Claudio;

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We here attend you. Are you yet determin’d

Today to marry with my brother’s daughter?

CLAUDIO     I’ll hold my mind were she an Ethiope.

LEONATO     

Call her forth, brother; here’s the friar ready.

Exit Antonio.

DON PEDRO     

Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what’s the matter,

40

That you have such a February face,

So full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness?

CLAUDIO     I think he thinks upon the savage bull.

Tush, fear not, man, we’ll tip thy horns with gold,

And all Europa shall rejoice at thee,

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As once Europa did at lusty Jove,

When he would play the noble beast in love.

BENEDICK     Bull Jove, sir, had an amiable low,

And some such strange bull leap’d your father’s cow,

And got a calf in that same noble feat

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Much like to you, for you have just his bleat.

Enter ANTONIO, HERO, BEATRICE, MARGARET and URSULA, the ladies masked.

CLAUDIO     

For this I owe you: here comes other reck’nings.

Which is the lady I must seize upon?

ANTONIO     This same is she, and I do give you her.

CLAUDIO     

Why then she’s mine. Sweet, let me see your face.

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LEONATO     No, that you shall not till you take her hand,

Before this friar, and swear to marry her.

CLAUDIO     Give me your hand before this holy friar.

I am your husband if you like of me.

HERO     [unmasking]

And when I liv’d, I was your other wife;

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And when you lov’d, you were my other husband.

CLAUDIO     Another Hero!

HERO     Nothing certainer:

One Hero died defil’d, but I do live,

And surely as I live, I am a maid.

DON PEDRO     The former Hero! Hero that is dead!

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LEONATO     

She died, my lord, but whiles her slander liv’d.

FRIAR     All this amazement can I qualify,

When after that the holy rites are ended

I’ll tell you largely of fair Hero’s death.

Meantime let wonder seem familiar,

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And to the chapel let us presently.

BENEDICK     Soft and fair, friar. Which is Beatrice?

BEATRICE     [unmasking]

I answer to that name. What is your will?

BENEDICK     Do not you love me?

BEATRICE     Why, no, no more than reason.

BENEDICK     

Why then, your uncle, and the Prince, and Claudio

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Have been deceiv’d – they swore you did.

BEATRICE     Do not you love me?

BENEDICK     Troth, no, no more than reason.

BEATRICE     Why then, my cousin, Margaret, and Ursula

Are much deceiv’d, for they did swear you did.

BENEDICK     

They swore that you were almost sick for me.

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BEATRICE     

They swore that you were well-nigh dead for me.

BENEDICK     

’Tis no such matter. Then you do not love me?

BEATRICE     No, truly, but in friendly recompense.

LEONATO     

Come, cousin, I am sure you love the gentleman.

CLAUDIO     And I’ll be sworn upon’t that he loves her,

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For here’s a paper written in his hand,

A halting sonnet of his own pure brain,

Fashion’d to Beatrice.

HERO     And here’s another,

Writ in my cousin’s hand, stol’n from her pocket,

Containing her affection unto Benedick.

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BENEDICK     A miracle! Here’s our own hands against our

hearts. Come, I will have thee, but by this light I take

thee for pity.

BEATRICE     I would not deny you, but by this good day I

yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your

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life, for I was told you were in a consumption.

BENEDICK     Peace! I will stop your mouth. [Kisses her.]

DON PEDRO     

How dost thou, ‘Benedick, the married man’?

BENEDICK     I’ll tell thee what, Prince; a college of wit-

crackers cannot flout me out of my humour. Dost thou

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think I care for a satire or an epigram? No: if a man

will be beaten with brains, a shall wear nothing

handsome about him. In brief, since I do purpose to

marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the

world can say against it; and therefore never flout at

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me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy

thing, and this is my conclusion. For thy part,

CLAUDIO     , I did think to have beaten thee, but in that

thou art like to be my kinsman, live unbruised, and

love my cousin.

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CLAUDIO     I had well hoped thou wouldst have denied

BEATRICE     , that I might have cudgelled thee out of thy

single life, to make thee a double-dealer; which out of

question thou wilt be, if my cousin do not look

exceeding narrowly to thee.

115

BENEDICK     Come, come, we are friends. Let’s have a

dance ere we are married, that we may lighten our own

hearts and our wives’ heels.

LEONATO     We’ll have dancing afterward.

BENEDICK     First, of my word! Therefore play, music.

120

Prince, thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife!

There is no staff more reverend than one tipped with

horn.

Enter Messenger.

MESSENGER     

My lord, your brother John is ta’en in flight,

And brought with armed men back to Messina.

125

BENEDICK     Think not on him till tomorrow; I’ll devise

thee brave punishments for him. Strike up, pipers!

Dance. Exeunt.

Othello

The traditional date for the composition of Othello is 1603-4, though the editor of the 1997 Arden 3 text would put it slightly earlier, in 1601-2, mainly on the basis of some echoes of Othello in the 1603 ‘bad’ quarto of Hamlet. It was performed in the Banqueting House at Whitehall before James I on 1 November 1604 and had presumably been performed earlier at the Globe. Two early texts of the play were both published after Shakespeare’s death, the Quarto in 1622 and the First Folio in 1623 (as the ninth of the tragedies). They differ from each other in many hundreds of readings - in single-word variants and in longer passages, in spelling, verse lineation and punctuation. The Folio text is about 160 lines longer than the Quarto; it alone contains Desdemona’s willow song (4.3), and it has a more extensive role for Emilia in the final scenes. Editors have generally assumed that both versions are ‘authorial’ and have chosen readings from both, blending them together as they saw fit; the 1997 Arden 3 editor argues that the Quarto broadly represents Shakespeare’s first thoughts and the Folio his second thoughts, but that some variants can be ascribed to textual corruption rather than to authorial revision.

Whatever the precise date, it is generally agreed that Othello is one of a sequence of tragedies Shakespeare wrote between 1599 and 1608, coming after Julius Caesar and Hamlet and before King Lear and Macbeth. The main narrative source is a short story in Giraldi Cinthio’s Hecatommithi (1565), a collection Shakespeare also drew on for the plot of Measure for Measure. For Othello he seems also to have used John Pory’s 1600 translation of John Leo’s A Geographical History of Africa, Philemon Holland’s 1601 translation of Pliny’s History of the World and Lewis Lewkenor’s 1599 The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, mainly translated from a Latin text by Cardinal Contarini. Despite its exotic setting and central character, it is more of a domestic tragedy than Hamlet, Lear or Macbeth, concentrating on the destruction of Othello’s marriage and his murder of his wife rather than on affairs of state and the deaths of kings. In the past this narrower focus has sometimes resulted in the relative devaluing of Othello, but modern critics have found a lot to say about its foregrounding of issues of race, gender and sexuality.

The play has been one of Shakespeare’s most popular tragedies on stage where, from the first performances by Richard Burbage until very recently, the title role has been played by a white actor in ‘black’ make-up; scholars have disagreed as to whether the ‘Moor of Venice’ should be a dark-skinned African or a light-skinned Arab. References in the play itself do not resolve the question, and while Shakespeare may have seen the light-skinned Moorish Ambassador to Elizabeth I in London in 1601-2, he was also familiar with the stage stereotype of the ‘coal-black’ Moor with ‘woolly hair’ and ‘thick lips’ which he drew on for Aaron in Titus Andronicus. The role of Iago is almost as important as that of Othello and some leading actors have preferred to play it; Iago has the soliloquies in this play and a good actor can steal the show from the hero. There has also been something of a stage tradition of two ‘stars’ alternating in the roles; this was most famously done by Henry Irving and Edwin Booth in 1881. The appalling speed with which the action unfolds (notoriously, there seems not literally to be time for Desdemona’s supposed adultery to have taken place) makes it an exciting - almost unbearable - play to watch.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio but adopts readings from the 1622 Quarto.

LIST OF ROLES

OTHELLO

the Moor, a general in the service of Venice

BRABANTIO

father to Desdemona, a Venetian senator

CASSIO

an honourable lieutenant, who serves under Othello

IAGO

a villain, Othello’s ancient or ensign

RODERIGO

a gulled gentleman, of Venice

DUKE

of Venice

SENATORS

of Venice

MONTANO

governor of Cyprus, replaced by Othello

GENTLEMEN

of Cyprus

two noble Venetians, Desdemona’s cousin and uncle

GRATIANO

SAILOR

CLOWN

DESDEMONA

wife to Othello, and Brabantio’s daughter

EMILIA

wife to Iago

BIANCA

a courtesan, and Cassio’s mistress

Messenger, Herald, Officers, Gentlemen, Musicians and Attendants

Othello

1.1 Enter RODERIGO and IAGO.

RODERIGO

Tush, never tell me, I take it much unkindly

That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse

As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.

IAGO

’Sblood, but you’ll not hear me. If ever I did dream

Of such a matter, abhor me.

RODERIGO     Thou told’st me

5

Thou didst hold him in thy hate.

IAGO     Despise me

If I do not. Three great ones of the city,

In personal suit to make me his lieutenant,

Off-capped to him, and by the faith of man

I know my price, I am worth no worse a place.

10

But he, as loving his own pride and purposes,

Evades them, with a bombast circumstance

Horribly stuffed with epithets of war,

And in conclusion

Nonsuits my mediators. For ‘Certes,’ says he,

15

‘I have already chose my officer.’

And what was he?

Forsooth, a great arithmetician,

One Michael Cassio, a Florentine,

A fellow almost damned in a fair wife

20

That never set a squadron in the field

Nor the division of a battle knows

More than a spinster – unless the bookish theoric,

Wherein the toged consuls can propose

As masterly as he. Mere prattle without practice

25

Is all his soldiership – but he, sir, had th’election

And I, of whom his eyes had seen the proof

At Rhodes, at Cyprus and on other grounds,

Christian and heathen, must be be-leed and calmed

By debitor and creditor. This counter-caster

30

He, in good time, must his lieutenant be

And I, God bless the mark, his Moorship’s ancient!

RODERIGO

By heaven, I rather would have been his hangman.

IAGO

Why, there’s no remedy, ’tis the curse of service:

Preferment goes by letter and affection

35

And not by old gradation, where each second

Stood heir to th’ first. Now sir, be judge yourself

Whether I in any just term am affined

To love the Moor.

RODERIGO     I would not follow him then.

IAGO     O sir, content you!

40

I follow him to serve my turn upon him.

We cannot all be masters, nor all masters

Cannot be truly followed. You shall mark

Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave

That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,

45

Wears out his time much like his master’s ass

For nought but provender, and, when he’s old, cashiered.

Whip me such honest knaves! Others there are

Who, trimmed in forms and visages of duty,

Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves

50

And, throwing but shows of service on their lords,

Do well thrive by them, and, when they have lined their coats,

Do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul

And such a one do I profess myself. For, sir,

It is as sure as you are Roderigo,

55

Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago.

In following him I follow but myself:

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty

But seeming so, for my peculiar end,

For when my outward action doth demonstrate

60

The native act and figure of my heart

In complement extern, ’tis not long after

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

RODERIGO     What a full fortune does the thicklips owe

65

If he can carry’t thus!

IAGO     Call up her father,

Rouse him, make after him, poison his delight,

Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen,

And, though he in a fertile climate dwell,

Plague him with flies! Though that his joy be joy

70

Yet throw such changes of vexation on’t

As it may lose some colour.

RODERIGO     Here is her father’s house, I’ll call aloud.

IAGO     Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell

As when by night and negligence the fire

75

Is spied in populous cities.

RODERIGO     What ho! Brabantio, Signior Brabantio ho!

IAGO

Awake, what ho, Brabantio! thieves, thieves, thieves!

Look to your house, your daughter and your bags!

Thieves, thieves!

80

BRABANTIO appears above at a window.

BRABANTIO

What is the reason of this terrible summons?

What is the matter there?

RODERIGO     Signior, is all your family within?

IAGO     Are your doors locked?

BRABANTIO Why? Wherefore ask you this?

IAGO

Zounds, sir, you’re robbed, for shame put on your gown!

85

Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul,

Even now, now, very now, an old black ram

Is tupping your white ewe! Arise, arise,

Awake the snorting citizens with the bell

Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you,

90

Arise I say!

BRABANTIO     What, have you lost your wits?

RODERIGO

Most reverend signior, do you know my voice?

BRABANTIO     Not I, what are you?

RODERIGO     My name is Roderigo.

BRABANTIO     The worser welcome!

I have charged thee not to haunt about my doors:

95

In honest plainness thou hast heard me say

My daughter is not for thee; and now in madness,

Being full of supper and distempering draughts,

Upon malicious bravery dost thou come

To start my quiet?

100

RODERIGO     Sir, sir, sir –

BRABANTIO     But thou must needs be sure

My spirit and my place have in them power

To make this bitter to thee.

RODERIGO     Patience, good sir!

BRABANTIO

What tell’st thou me of robbing? This is Venice:

My house is not a grange.

RODERIGO     Most grave Brabantio,

105

In simple and pure soul I come to you –

IAGO     Zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not

serve God, if the devil bid you. Because we come to do

you service, and you think we are ruffians, you’ll have

your daughter covered with a Barbary horse; you’ll

110

have your nephews neigh to you, you’ll have coursers

for cousins and jennets for germans!

BRABANTIO     What profane wretch art thou?

IAGO     I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter

and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.

115

BRABANTIO

Thou art a villain!

IAGO     You are a senator!

BRABANTIO

This thou shalt answer. I know thee, Roderigo!

RODERIGO

Sir, I will answer anything. But I beseech you,

If ’t be your pleasure and most wise consent,

As partly I find it is, that your fair daughter

120

At this odd-even and dull watch o’th’ night,

Transported with no worse nor better guard

But with a knave of common hire, a gondolier,

To the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor –

If this be known to you, and your allowance,

125

We then have done you bold and saucy wrongs.

But if you know not this, my manners tell me

We have your wrong rebuke. Do not believe

That from the sense of all civility

I thus would play and trifle with your reverence.

130

Your daughter, if you have not given her leave,

I say again, hath made a gross revolt,

Tying her duty, beauty, wit and fortunes

In an extravagant and wheeling stranger

Of here and everywhere. Straight satisfy yourself:

135

If she be in her chamber or your house

Let loose on me the justice of the state

For thus deluding you.

BRABANTIO     Strike on the tinder, ho!

Give me a taper, call up all my people.

This accident is not unlike my dream,

140

Belief of it oppresses me already.

Light, I say, light!     Exit above.

IAGO     Farewell, for I must leave you.

It seems not meet, nor wholesome to my place,

To be produced, as, if I stay, I shall,

Against the Moor. For I do know the state,

145

However this may gall him with some check,

Cannot with safety cast him, for he’s embarked

With such loud reason to the Cyprus wars,

Which even now stands in act, that for their souls

Another of his fathom they have none

150

To lead their business – in which regard,

Though I do hate him as I do hell-pains,

Yet for necessity of present life

I must show out a flag and sign of love,

Which is indeed but sign. That you shall surely find him,

155

Lead to the Sagittary the raised search,

And there will I be with him. So farewell. Exit.

EnterBRABANTIO in his night-gown and servants with torches.

BRABANTIO     It is too true an evil, gone she is,

And what’s to come of my despised time

Is nought but bitterness. Now Roderigo,

160

Where didst thou see her? – O unhappy girl! –

With the Moor, say’st thou? – Who would be a father? –

How didst thou know ’twas she? – O, she deceives me

Past thought! – What said she to you? – Get more tapers,

Raise all my kindred. Are they married, think you?

165

RODERIGO     Truly I think they are.

BRABANTIO

O heaven, how got she out? O treason of the blood!

– Fathers, from hence trust not your daughters’ minds

By what you see them act. – Is there not charms

By which the property of youth and maidhood

170

May be abused? Have you not read, Roderigo,

Of some such thing?

RODERIGO     Yes sir, I have indeed.

BRABANTIO

Call up my brother. – O, would you had had her!

Some one way, some another. – Do you know

Where we may apprehend her and the Moor?

175

RODERIGO     I think I can discover him, if you please

To get good guard and go along with me.

BRABANTIO     Pray you lead on. At every house I’ll call,

I may command at most: get weapons, ho!

And raise some special officers of night.

180

On, good Roderigo, I’ll deserve your pains. Exeunt.

1.2 Enter OTHELLO, IAGO and attendants with torches.

IAGO     Though in the trade of war I have slain men

Yet do I hold it very stuff o’th’ conscience

To do no contrived murder: I lack iniquity

Sometimes to do me service. Nine or ten times

I had thought t’have yerked him here, under the ribs.

5

OTHELLO     ’Tis better as it is.

IAGO     Nay, but he prated

And spoke such scurvy and provoking terms

Against your honour,

That with the little godliness I have

I did full hard forbear him. But I pray, sir,

10

Are you fast married? Be assured of this,

That the magnifico is much beloved

And hath in his effect a voice potential

As double as the duke’s: he will divorce you

Or put upon you what restraint or grievance

15

The law, with all his might to enforce it on,

Will give him cable.

OTHELLO     Let him do his spite;

My services, which I have done the signiory,

Shall out-tongue his complaints. ’Tis yet to know –

Which, when I know that boasting is an honour,

20

I shall promulgate – I fetch my life and being

From men of royal siege, and my demerits

May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune

As this that I have reached. For know, Iago,

But that I love the gentle Desdemona

25

I would not my unhoused free condition

Put into circumscription and confine

For the sea’s worth. But look, what lights come yond?

EnterCASSIO, with officers and torches.

IAGO     Those are the raised father and his friends,

You were best go in.

OTHELLO     Not I, I must be found.

30

My parts, my title and my perfect soul

Shall manifest me rightly. Is it they?

IAGO     By Janus, I think no.

OTHELLO

The servants of the Duke? and my lieutenant?

The goodness of the night upon you, friends.

35

What is the news?

CASSIO     The duke does greet you, general,

And he requires your haste-post-haste appearance,

Even on the instant.

OTHELLO     What’s the matter, think you?

CASSIO     Something from Cyprus, as I may divine;

It is a business of some heat. The galleys

40

Have sent a dozen sequent messengers

This very night, at one another’s heels,

And many of the consuls, raised and met,

Are at the duke’s already. You have been hotly called for,

When, being not at your lodging to be found,

45

The Senate hath sent about three several quests

To search you out.

OTHELLO     ’Tis well I am found by you:

I will but spend a word here in the house

And go with you.     Exit.

CASSIO     Ancient, what makes he here?

IAGO     Faith, he tonight hath boarded a land carrack:

50

If it prove lawful prize, he’s made for ever.

CASSIO     I do not understand.

IAGO     He’s married.

CASSIO     To whom?

IAGO     Marry, to –

EnterOTHELLO.

Come, captain, will you go?

OTHELLO     Ha’ with you.

CASSIO     Here comes another troop to seek for you.

Enter BRABANTIO, RODERIGO, with officers and torches and weapons.

IAGO     It is Brabantio: general, be advised,

55

He comes to bad intent.

OTHELLO     Holla, stand there!

RODERIGO     Signior, it is the Moor.

BRABANTIO     Down with him, thief!

[They draw on both sides.]

IAGO     You, Roderigo! come sir, I am for you.

OTHELLO

Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.

Good signior, you shall more command with years

60

Than with your weapons.

BRABANTIO

O thou foul thief, where hast thou stowed my daughter?

Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her,

For I’ll refer me to all things of sense,

If she in chains of magic were not bound,

65

Whether a maid so tender, fair and happy,

So opposite to marriage that she shunned

The wealthy, curled darlings of our nation,

Would ever have, t’incur a general mock,

Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom

70

Of such a thing as thou? to fear, not to delight.

Judge me the world if ’tis not gross in sense

That thou hast practised on her with foul charms,

Abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals

That weakens motion: I’ll have’t disputed on,

75

’Tis probable and palpable to thinking.

I therefore apprehend and do attach thee

For an abuser of the world, a practiser

Of arts inhibited and out of warrant.

Lay hold upon him; if he do resist

80

Subdue him at his peril!

OTHELLO     Hold your hands,

Both you of my inclining and the rest:

Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it

Without a prompter. Where will you that I go

To answer this your charge?

BRABANTIO     To prison, till fit time

85

Of law, and course of direct session

Call thee to answer.

OTHELLO     What if I do obey?

How may the duke be therewith satisfied,

Whose messengers are here about my side

Upon some present business of the state,

90

To bring me to him?

OFFICER     ’Tis true, most worthy signior,

The duke’s in council, and your noble self

I am sure is sent for.

BRABANTIO     How? the duke in council?

In this time of the night? Bring him away:

Mine’s not an idle cause, the duke himself,

95

Or any of my brothers of the state,

Cannot but feel this wrong as ’twere their own.

For if such actions may have passage free

Bond-slaves and pagans shall our statesmen be.

Exeunt.

1.3 Enter DUKE and Senators, set at a table, with lights and attendants.

DUKE     There is no composition in these news

That gives them credit.

1 SENATOR     Indeed, they are disproportioned.

My letters say a hundred and seven galleys.

DUKE     And mine a hundred forty.

2 SENATOR     And mine two hundred.

But though they jump not on a just account –

5

As in these cases, where the aim reports,

’Tis oft with difference – yet do they all confirm

A Turkish fleet, and bearing up to Cyprus.

DUKE     Nay, it is possible enough to judgement:

I do not so secure me in the error

10

But the main article I do approve

In fearful sense.

SAILOR [within]     What ho, what ho, what ho!

Enter Sailor.

OFFICER     A messenger from the galleys.

DUKE     Now? what’s the business?

SAILOR The Turkish preparation makes for Rhodes,

15

So was I bid report here to the state

By Signior Angelo.

DUKE     How say you by this change?

1 SENATOR     This cannot be,

By no assay of reason: ’tis a pageant

To keep us in false gaze. When we consider

20

Th’importancy of Cyprus to the Turk,

And let ourselves again but understand

That as it more concerns the Turk than Rhodes

So may he with more facile question bear it,

For that it stands not in such warlike brace

25

But altogether lacks th’abilities

That Rhodes is dressed in. If we make thought of this

We must not think the Turk is so unskilful

To leave that latest which concerns him first,

Neglecting an attempt of ease and gain

30

To wake and wage a danger profitless.

DUKE     Nay, in all confidence, he’s not for Rhodes.

OFFICER     Here is more news.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER The Ottomites, reverend and gracious,

Steering with due course toward the isle of Rhodes,

35

Have there injointed with an after fleet –

1 SENATOR     Ay, so I thought; how many, as you guess?

MESSENGER Of thirty sail; and now they do re-stem

Their backward course, bearing with frank appearance

Their purposes toward Cyprus. Signior Montano,

40

Your trusty and most valiant servitor,

With his free duty recommends you thus

And prays you to relieve him.

DUKE     ’Tis certain then for Cyprus.

Marcus Luccicos, is not he in town?

45

1 SENATOR     He’s now in Florence.

DUKE     Write from us to him; post-post-haste, dispatch.

1 SENATOR

Here comes Brabantio and the valiant Moor.

EnterBRABANTIO, OTHELLO, CASSIO, IAGO, RODERIGO and officers.

DUKE     Valiant Othello, we must straight employ you

Against the general enemy Ottoman.

50

[to Brabantio] I did not see you: welcome, gentle signior,

We lacked your counsel and your help tonight.

BRABANTIO

So did I yours. Good your grace, pardon me,

Neither my place nor aught I heard of business

Hath raised me from my bed, nor doth the general care

55

Take hold on me, for my particular grief

Is of so flood-gate and o’erbearing nature

That it engluts and swallows other sorrows

And it is still itself.

DUKE     Why? What’s the matter?

BRABANTIO

My daughter, O my daughter!

1 SENATOR     Dead?

BRABANTIO     Ay, to me:

60

She is abused, stolen from me and corrupted

By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks,

For nature so preposterously to err

Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense,

Sans witchcraft could not.

65

DUKE     Whoe’er he be, that in this foul proceeding

Hath thus beguiled your daughter of herself,

And you of her, the bloody book of law

You shall yourself read, in the bitter letter,

After your own sense, yea, though our proper son

70

Stood in your action.

BRABANTIO     Humbly I thank your grace.

Here is the man, this Moor, whom now it seems

Your special mandate for the state affairs

Hath hither brought.

ALL We are very sorry for’t.

DUKE     [to Othello]

What in your own part can you say to this?

75

BRABANTIO     Nothing, but this is so.

OTHELLO     Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors,

My very noble and approved good masters:

That I have ta’en away this old man’s daughter

It is most true; true, I have married her.

80

The very head and front of my offending

Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in my speech

And little blest with the soft phrase of peace,

For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith

Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used

85

Their dearest action in the tented field,

And little of this great world can I speak

More than pertains to feats of broil and battle,

And therefore little shall I grace my cause

In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience,

90

I will a round unvarnished tale deliver

Of my whole course of love, what drugs, what charms,

What conjuration and what mighty magic –

For such proceeding I am charged withal –

I won his daughter.

BRABANTIO     A maiden never bold,

95

Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion

Blushed at herself; and she, in spite of nature,

Of years, of country, credit, everything,

To fall in love with what she feared to look on?

It is a judgement maimed and most imperfect

100

That will confess perfection so could err

Against all rules of nature, and must be driven

To find out practices of cunning hell

Why this should be. I therefore vouch again

That with some mixtures powerful o’er the blood

105

Or with some dram conjured to this effect

He wrought upon her.

DUKE     To vouch this is no proof,

Without more certain and more overt test

Than these thin habits and poor likelihoods

Of modern seeming do prefer against him.

110

1 SENATOR     But, Othello, speak:

Did you by indirect and forced courses

Subdue and poison this young maid’s affections?

Or came it by request and such fair question

As soul to soul affordeth?

OTHELLO     I do beseech you,

115

Send for the lady to the Sagittary,

And let her speak of me before her father.

If you do find me foul in her report

The trust, the office I do hold of you

Not only take away, but let your sentence

120

Even fall upon my life.

DUKE     Fetch Desdemona hither.

OTHELLO

Ancient, conduct them, you best know the place.

And till she come, as truly as to heaven

Exeunt Iago and two or three.

I do confess the vices of my blood

125

So justly to your grave ears I’ll present

How I did thrive in this fair lady’s love

And she in mine.

DUKE     Say it, Othello.

OTHELLO     Her father loved me, oft invited me,

Still questioned me the story of my life

130

From year to year – the battles, sieges, fortunes

That I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days

To th’ very moment that he bade me tell it,

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,

135

Of moving accidents by flood and field,

Of hair-breadth scapes i’th’ imminent deadly breach,

Of being taken by the insolent foe

And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence

And portance in my travailous history;

140

Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven

It was my hint to speak – such was my process –

And of the cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

145

Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear

Would Desdemona seriously incline,

But still the house affairs would draw her thence,

Which ever as she could with haste dispatch

She’d come again, and with a greedy ear

150

Devour up my discourse; which I, observing,

Took once a pliant hour and found good means

To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart

That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,

Whereof by parcels she had something heard

155

But not intentively. I did consent,

And often did beguile her of her tears

When I did speak of some distressful stroke

That my youth suffered. My story being done

She gave me for my pains a world of sighs,

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She swore in faith ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange,

’Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful;

She wished she had not heard it, yet she wished

That heaven had made her such a man. She thanked me

And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,

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I should but teach him how to tell my story

And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:

She loved me for the dangers I had passed

And I loved her that she did pity them.

This only is the witchcraft I have used:

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EnterDESDEMONA, IAGO, attendants.

Here comes the lady, let her witness it.

DUKE     I think this tale would win my daughter too.

Good Brabantio, take up this mangled matter at the best:

Men do their broken weapons rather use

Than their bare hands.

BRABANTIO     I pray you, hear her speak.

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If she confess that she was half the wooer,

Destruction on my head if my bad blame

Light on the man. Come hither, gentle mistress:

Do you perceive, in all this noble company,

Where most you owe obedience?

DESDEMONA My noble father,

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I do perceive here a divided duty.

To you I am bound for life and education:

My life and education both do learn me

How to respect you; you are the lord of duty,

I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband:

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And so much duty as my mother showed

To you, preferring you before her father,

So much I challenge that I may profess

Due to the Moor my lord.

BRABANTIO     God be with you, I have done.

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Please it your grace, on to the state affairs;

I had rather to adopt a child than get it.

Come hither, Moor:

I here do give thee that with all my heart

Which, but thou hast already, with all my heart

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I would keep from thee. For your sake, jewel,

I am glad at soul I have no other child,

For thy escape would teach me tyranny

To hang clogs on them. I have done, my lord.

DUKE     Let me speak like yourself, and lay a sentence

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Which as a grise or step may help these lovers

Into your favour.

When remedies are past the griefs are ended

By seeing the worst which late on hopes depended.

To mourn a mischief that is past and gone

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Is the next way to draw new mischief on.

What cannot be preserved when fortune takes,

Patience her injury a mockery makes.

The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief,

He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.

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BRABANTIO     So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile,

We lose it not so long as we can smile;

He bears the sentence well that nothing bears

But the free comfort which from thence he hears.

But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow

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That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow.

These sentences to sugar or to gall,

Being strong on both sides, are equivocal.

But words are words: I never yet did hear

That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear.

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I humbly beseech you, proceed to th’affairs of state.

DUKE     The Turk with a most mighty preparation makes

for Cyprus. Othello, the fortitude of the place is best

known to you, and, though we have there a substitute

of most allowed sufficiency, yet opinion, a sovereign

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mistress of effects, throws a more safer voice on you.

You must therefore be content to slubber the gloss of

your new fortunes with this more stubborn and

boisterous expedition.

OTHELLO     The tyrant custom, most grave senators,

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Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war

My thrice-driven bed of down. I do agnize

A natural and prompt alacrity

I find in hardness, and do undertake

This present war against the Ottomites.

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Most humbly therefore, bending to your state,

I crave fit disposition for my wife,

Due reverence of place, and exhibition,

With such accommodation and besort

As levels with her breeding.

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DUKE     Why, at her father’s.

BRABANTIO     I’ll not have it so.

OTHELLO     Nor I.

DESDEMONA     Nor would I there reside

To put my father in impatient thoughts

By being in his eye. Most gracious duke,

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To my unfolding lend your prosperous ear

And let me find a charter in your voice

T’assist my simpleness.

DUKE     What would you, Desdemona?

DESDEMONA     That I did love the Moor to live with him

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My downright violence and scorn of fortunes

May trumpet to the world. My heart’s subdued

Even to the very quality of my lord:

I saw Othello’s visage in his mind,

And to his honours and his valiant parts

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Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate,

So that, dear lords, if I be left behind,

A moth of peace, and he go to the war,

The rites for which I love him are bereft me,

And I a heavy interim shall support

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By his dear absence. Let me go with him.

OTHELLO     Let her have your voice.

Vouch with me, heaven, I therefore beg it not

To please the palate of my appetite,

Nor to comply with heat, the young affects

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In me defunct, and proper satisfaction,

But to be free and bounteous to her mind.

And heaven defend your good souls that you think

I will your serious and great business scant

When she is with me. No, when light-winged toys

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Of feathered Cupid seel with wanton dullness

My speculative and officed instrument,

That my disports corrupt and taint my business,

Let housewives make a skillet of my helm

And all indign and base adversities

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Make head against my estimation.

DUKE     Be it as you shall privately determine,

Either for her stay or going: th’affair cries haste

And speed must answer it.

1 SENATOR     You must away tonight.

DESDEMONA     Tonight, my lord?

DUKE     This night.

OTHELLO     With all my heart.

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DUKE     At nine i’th’ morning here we’ll meet again.

Othello, leave some officer behind

And he shall our commission bring to you,

And such things else of quality and respect

As doth import you.

OTHELLO     So please your grace, my ancient:

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A man he is of honesty and trust.

To his conveyance I assign my wife,

With what else needful your good grace shall think

To be sent after me.

DUKE     Let it be so.

Good-night to everyone. And, noble signior,

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If virtue no delighted beauty lack

Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.

1 SENATOR     Adieu, brave Moor, use Desdemona well.

BRABANTIO

Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:

She has deceived her father, and may thee.

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Exeunt Duke, Brabantio, Senators, officers.

OTHELLO     My life upon her faith. Honest Iago,

My Desdemona must I leave to thee:

I prithee, let thy wife attend on her

And bring them after in the best advantage.

Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour

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Of love, of worldly matter and direction

To spend with thee. We must obey the time.

Exeunt Othello and Desdemona.

RODERIGO     Iago!

IAGO     What sayst thou, noble heart?

RODERIGO     What will I do, think’st thou?

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IAGO     Why, go to bed and sleep.

RODERIGO     I will incontinently drown myself.

IAGO     If thou dost, I shall never love thee after. Why,

thou silly gentleman?

RODERIGO     It is silliness to live when to live is torment;

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and then have we a prescription to die, when death is

our physician.

IAGO     O villainous! I have looked upon the world for

four times seven years, and since I could distinguish

betwixt a benefit and an injury I never found a man

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that knew how to love himself. Ere I would say I would

drown myself for the love of a guinea-hen I would

change my humanity with a baboon.

RODERIGO     What should I do? I confess it is my shame

to be so fond, but it is not in my virtue to amend it.

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IAGO     Virtue? a fig! ’tis in ourselves that we are thus, or

thus. Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills

are gardeners. So that if we will plant nettles or sow

lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with

one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to

325

have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry

– why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in

our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale

of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and

baseness of our natures would conduct us to most

330

preposterous conclusions. But we have reason to cool

our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted

lusts; whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a sect

or scion.

RODERIGO     It cannot be.

335

IAGO     It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of

the will. Come, be a man! drown thyself? drown cats

and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and

I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of

perdurable toughness. I could never better stead thee

340

than now. Put money in thy purse, follow thou the

wars, defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say,

put money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona

should long continue her love to the Moor – put

money in thy purse – nor he his to her. It was a violent

345

commencement in her, and thou shalt see an

answerable sequestration – put but money in thy

purse. These Moors are changeable in their wills – fill

thy purse with money. The food that to him now is as

luscious as locusts shall be to him shortly acerb as

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coloquintida. She must change for youth; when she is

sated with his body she will find the error of her

choice: she must have change, she must. Therefore,

put money in thy purse. If thou wilt needs damn

thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning –

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make all the money thou canst. If sanctimony, and a

frail vow betwixt an erring Barbarian and a super-

subtle Venetian, be not too hard for my wits and all the

tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her – therefore make

money. A pox of drowning thyself, it is clean out of the

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way: seek thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy

joy than to be drowned and go without her.

RODERIGO     Wilt thou be fast to my hopes, if I depend on

the issue?

IAGO     Thou art sure of me – go, make money. I have told

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thee often, and I re-tell thee again and again, I hate the

Moor. My cause is hearted, thine hath no less reason:

let us be conjunctive in our revenge against him. If

thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure,

me a sport. There are many events in the womb of

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time, which will be delivered. Traverse, go, provide thy

money: we will have more of this tomorrow. Adieu!

RODERIGO     Where shall we meet i’th’ morning?

IAGO     At my lodging.

RODERIGO     I’ll be with thee betimes.

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IAGO     Go to, farewell. – Do you hear, Roderigo?

RODERIGO     What say you?

IAGO     No more of drowning, do you hear?

RODERIGO     I am changed. I’ll sell all my land.     Exit.

IAGO     Go to, farewell, put money enough in your purse.

380

Thus do I ever make my fool my purse:

For I mine own gained knowledge should profane

If I would time expend with such a snipe

But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor

And it is thought abroad that ’twixt my sheets

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He’s done my office. I know not if ’t be true,

But I for mere suspicion in that kind

Will do as if for surety. He holds me well,

The better shall my purpose work on him.

Cassio’s a proper man: let me see now,

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To get his place, and to plume up my will

In double knavery. How? How? let’s see:

After some time to abuse Othello’s ear

That he is too familiar with his wife.

He hath a person and a smooth dispose

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To be suspected, framed to make women false.

The Moor is of a free and open nature

That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,

And will as tenderly be led by th’ nose

As asses are.

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I have’t, it is engendered! Hell and night

Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.

Exit.

2.1 Enter MONTANO and two Gentlemen.

MONTANO What from the cape can you discern at sea?

1 GENTLEMAN Nothing at all, it is a high-wrought flood:

I cannot ’twixt the haven and the main

Descry a sail.

MONTANO Methinks the wind hath spoke aloud at land,

5

A fuller blast ne’er shook our battlements:

If it hath ruffianed so upon the sea

What ribs of oak, when mountains melt on them,

Can hold the mortise? What shall we hear of this?

2 GENTLEMAN A segregation of the Turkish fleet:

10

For do but stand upon the foaming shore,

The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds,

The wind-shaked surge, with high and monstrous mane,

Seems to cast water on the burning bear

And quench the guards of th’ever-fired pole.

15

I never did like molestation view

On the enchafed flood.

MONTANO If that the Turkish fleet

Be not ensheltered and embayed, they are drowned.

It is impossible to bear it out.

Enter a Third Gentleman.

3 GENTLEMAN News, lads: our wars are done!

20

The desperate tempest hath so banged the Turks

That their designment halts. A noble ship of Venice

Hath seen a grievous wrack and sufferance

On most part of their fleet.

MONTANO How? Is this true?

3 GENTLEMAN The ship is here put in,

25

A Veronessa; Michael Cassio,

Lieutenant to the warlike Moor, Othello,

Is come on shore; the Moor himself at sea,

And is in full commission here for Cyprus.

MONTANO I am glad on’t, ’tis a worthy governor.

30

3 GENTLEMAN

But this same Cassio, though he speak of comfort

Enter CASSIO.

Touching the turkish loss, yet he looks sadly

And prays the Moor be safe, for they were parted

With foul and violent tempest.

MONTANO Pray heavens he be,

For I have served him, and the man commands

35

Like a full soldier. Let’s to the seaside, ho!

As well to see the vessel that’s come in

As to throw out our eyes for brave Othello,

Even till we make the main and th’aerial blue

An indistinct regard.

3 GENTLEMAN Come, let’s do so,

40

For every minute is expectancy

Of more arrivance.

CASSIO     Thanks, you the valiant of this warlike isle

That so approve the Moor. O, let the heavens

Give him defence against the elements,

45

For I have lost him on a dangerous sea.

MONTANO Is he well shipped?

CASSIO     His bark is stoutly timbered, and his pilot

Of very expert and approved allowance,

Therefore my hopes, not surfeited to death,

50

Stand in bold cure.

A VOICE [within] A sail! a sail! a sail!

CASSIO     What noise?

2 GENTLEMAN

The town is empty: on the brow o’th’ sea

Stand ranks of people, and they cry ‘A sail!’

CASSIO

My hopes do shape him for the governor. [a shot.]

55

2 GENTLEMAN

They do discharge their shot of courtesy,

Our friends at least.

CASSIO     I pray you sir, go forth

And give us truth who ’tis that is arrived.

2 GENTLEMAN I shall.     Exit.

MONTANO But, good lieutenant, is your general wived?

60

CASSIO     Most fortunately: he hath achieved a maid

That paragons description and wild fame;

One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens

And in th’essential vesture of creation

Does tire the inginer.

Enter Second Gentleman.

How now? Who has put in?

65

2 GENTLEMAN

’Tis one Iago, ancient to the general.

CASSIO     He’s had most favourable and happy speed.

Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds,

The guttered rocks and congregated sands,

Traitors ensteeped to clog the guiltless keel,

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As having sense of beauty, do omit

Their mortal natures, letting go safely by

The divine Desdemona.

MONTANO What is she?

CASSIO

She that I spake of, our great captain’s captain,

Left in the conduct of the bold Iago,

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Whose footing here anticipates our thoughts

A se’nnight’s speed. Great Jove, Othello guard,

And swell his sail with thine own powerful breath

That he may bless this bay with his tall ship,

Make love’s quick pants in Desdemona’s arms,

80

Give renewed fire to our extincted spirits

And bring all Cyprus comfort! –

Enter DESDEMONA, IAGO, RODERIGO and EMILIA.

O, behold,

The riches of the ship is come on shore:

You men of Cyprus, let her have your knees!

Hail to thee, lady, and the grace of heaven,

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Before, behind thee, and on every hand

Enwheel thee round!

DESDEMONA     I thank you, valiant Cassio.

What tidings can you tell me of my lord?

CASSIO

He is not yet arrived, nor know I aught

But that he’s well, and will be shortly here.

90

DESDEMONA     O, but I fear … how lost you company?

CASSIO     The great contention of the sea and skies

Parted our fellowship.

[A voice within: ‘A sail! a sail!’]

But hark! a sail!

[A shot is heard.]

2 GENTLEMAN

They give their greeting to the citadel:

This likewise is a friend.

CASSIO     See for the news.

95

Exit Gentleman.

Good ancient, you are welcome.

[to Emilia]     Welcome, mistress.

Let it not gall your patience, good Iago,

That I extend my manners; ’tis my breeding

That gives me this bold show of courtesy.

[He kisses Emilia.]

IAGO     Sir, would she give you so much of her lips

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As of her tongue she oft bestows on me

You’d have enough.

DESDEMONA     Alas! she has no speech.

IAGO     In faith, too much!

I find it still when I have list to sleep.

Marry, before your ladyship, I grant,

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She puts her tongue a little in her heart

And chides with thinking.

EMILIA     You have little cause to say so.

IAGO

Come on, come on, you are pictures out of doors,

Bells in your parlours, wild-cats in your kitchens,

110

Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,

Players in your housewifery, and housewives in …

Your beds!

DESDEMONA     O, fie upon thee, slanderer!

IAGO     Nay, it is true, or else I am a Turk:

You rise to play, and go to bed to work.

115

EMILIA     You shall not write my praise.

IAGO     No, let me not.

DESDEMONA

What wouldst thou write of me, if thou shouldst praise me?

IAGO     O, gentle lady, do not put me to’t,

For I am nothing if not critical.

DESDEMONA

Come on, assay. There’s one gone to the harbour?

120

IAGO     Ay, madam.

DESDEMONA     I am not merry, but I do beguile

The thing I am by seeming otherwise.

Come, how wouldst thou praise me?

IAGO     I am about it, but indeed my invention

125

Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frieze,

It plucks out brains and all; but my muse labours

And thus she is delivered:

If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit,

The one’s for use, the other useth it.

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DESDEMONA

Well praised. How if she be black and witty?

IAGO     If she be black, and thereto have a wit,

She’ll find a white that shall her blackness fit.

DESDEMONA     Worse and worse.

EMILIA     How if fair and foolish?

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IAGO     She never yet was foolish that was fair,

For even her folly helped her to an heir.

DESDEMONA     These are old fond paradoxes to make

fools laugh i’th’ alehouse. What miserable praise hast

thou for her that’s foul and foolish?

140

IAGO     There’s none so foul, and foolish thereunto,

But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do.

DESDEMONA     O heavy ignorance, thou praisest the worst

best. But what praise couldst thou bestow on a

deserving woman indeed? One that in the authority of

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her merit did justly put on the vouch of very malice

itself?

IAGO     She that was ever fair and never proud,

Had tongue at will, and yet was never loud,

Never lacked gold, and yet went never gay,

150

Fled from her wish, and yet said ‘now I may’,

She that, being angered, her revenge being nigh,

Bade her wrong stay, and her displeasure fly,

She that in wisdom never was so frail

To change the cod’s head for the salmon’s tail,

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She that could think, and ne’er disclose her mind,

See suitors following, and not look behind,

She was a wight, if ever such wights were –

DESDEMONA     To do what?

IAGO     To suckle fools, and chronicle small beer.

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DESDEMONA     O, most lame and impotent conclusion!

Do not learn of him, Emilia, though he be thy

husband. How say you, Cassio, is he not a most

profane and liberal counsellor?

CASSIO     He speaks home, madam, you may relish him

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more in the soldier than in the scholar.

IAGO     [aside] He takes her by the palm; ay, well said,

whisper. With as little a web as this will I ensnare as

great a fly as Cassio. Ay, smile upon her, do: I will gyve

thee in thine own courtesies. You say true, ’tis so

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indeed. If such tricks as these strip you out of your

lieutenantry, it had been better you had not kissed

your three fingers so oft, which now again you are

most apt to play the sir in. Very good, well kissed, and

excellent courtesy: ’tis so indeed! Yet again, your

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fingers to your lips? would they were clyster-pipes for

your sake!     [Trumpets within]

The Moor! I know his trumpet!

CASSIO     ’Tis truly so.

DESDEMONA

Let’s meet him and receive him.

Enter OTHELLO and attendants.

CASSIO     Lo, where he comes!

OTHELLO     O my fair warrior!

DESDEMONA     My dear Othello!

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OTHELLO     It gives me wonder great as my content

To see you here before me! O my soul’s joy,

If after every tempest come such calms

May the winds blow till they have wakened death,

And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas,

185

Olympus-high, and duck again as low

As hell’s from heaven. If it were now to die

’Twere now to be most happy, for I fear

My soul hath her content so absolute

That not another comfort like to this

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Succeeds in unknown fate.

DESDEMONA     The heavens forbid

But that our loves and comforts should increase

Even as our days do grow.

OTHELLO     Amen to that, sweet powers!

I cannot speak enough of this content,

It stops me here, it is too much of joy.

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And this, and this the greatest discords be [They kiss.]

That e’er our hearts shall make.

IAGO     [aside]

O, you are well tuned now: but I’ll set down

The pegs that make this music, as honest

As I am.

OTHELLO     Come, let us to the castle.

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News, friends, our wars are done, the Turks are drowned.

How does my old acquaintance of this isle?

Honey, you shall be well desired in Cyprus,

I have found great love amongst them. O my sweet,

I prattle out of fashion, and I dote

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In mine own comforts. I prithee, good Iago,

Go to the bay and disembark my coffers.

Bring thou the master to the citadel,

He is a good one, and his worthiness

Does challenge much respect. Come, Desdemona;

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Once more, well met at Cyprus.

Exeunt all but Iago and Roderigo.

IAGO     Do thou meet me presently at the harbour. Come

hither: if thou be’st valiant – as, they say, base men

being in love have then a nobility in their natures,

more than is native to them – list me. The lieutenant

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tonight watches on the court of guard. First I must tell

thee this: Desdemona is directly in love with him.

RODERIGO     With him? why, ’tis not possible.

IAGO     Lay thy finger thus, and let thy soul be instructed.

Mark me with what violence she first loved the Moor,

220

but for bragging and telling her fantastical lies – and

will she love him still for prating? let not thy discreet

heart think it. Her eye must be fed, and what delight

shall she have to look on the devil? When the blood is

made dull with the act of sport, there should be, again

225

to inflame it, and to give satiety a fresh appetite,

loveliness in favour, sympathy in years, manners and

beauties, all which the Moor is defective in. Now for

want of these required conveniences, her delicate

tenderness will find itself abused, begin to heave the

230

gorge, disrelish and abhor the Moor – very nature will

instruct her in it and compel her to some second

choice. Now sir, this granted – as it is a most pregnant

and unforced position – who stands so eminent in the

degree of this fortune as Cassio does? a knave very

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voluble, no farther conscionable than in putting on the

mere form of civil and humane seeming, for the better

compassing of his salt and most hidden loose affection.

Why none, why none: a slipper and subtle knave, a

finder out of occasions, that has an eye, can stamp and

240

counterfeit advantages, though true advantage never

present itself – a devilish knave; besides, the knave is

handsome, young, and hath all those requisites in him

that folly and green minds look after. A pestilent

complete knave, and the woman hath found him

245

already.

RODERIGO     I cannot believe that in her, she’s full of most

blest condition.

IAGO     Blest fig’s-end! The wine she drinks is made of

grapes. If she had been blest she would never have

250

loved the Moor. Blest pudding! Didst thou not see her

paddle with the palm of his hand? Didst not mark

that?

RODERIGO     Yes, that I did, but that was but courtesy.

IAGO     Lechery, by this hand: an index and obscure

255

prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts. They

met so near with their lips that their breaths embraced

together. Villainous thoughts, Roderigo: when these

mutualities so marshal the way, hard at hand comes

the master and main exercise, th’incorporate

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conclusion. Pish! But, sir, be you ruled by me. I have

brought you from Venice: watch you tonight. For the

command, I’ll lay’t upon you. Cassio knows you not,

I’ll not be far from you, do you find some occasion to

anger Cassio, either by speaking too loud or tainting

265

his discipline, or from what other cause you please

which the time shall more favourably minister.

RODERIGO     Well.

IAGO     Sir, he’s rash and very sudden in choler, and haply

with his truncheon may strike at you: provoke him

270

that he may, for even out of that will I cause these of

Cyprus to mutiny, whose qualification shall come into

no true trust again but by the displanting of Cassio. So

shall you have a shorter journey to your desires, by the

means I shall then have to prefer them, and the

275

impediment most profitably removed, without the

which there were no expectation of our prosperity.

RODERIGO     I will do this, if you can bring it to any

opportunity.

IAGO     I warrant thee. Meet me by and by at the citadel:

280

I must fetch his necessaries ashore. Farewell.

RODERIGO     Adieu. Exit.

IAGO     That Cassio loves her, I do well believe it,

That she loves him, ’tis apt and of great credit.

The Moor, howbeit that I endure him not,

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Is of a constant, loving, noble nature,

And I dare think he’ll prove to Desdemona

A most dear husband. Now I do love her too,

Not out of absolute lust – though peradventure

I stand accountant for as great a sin –

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But partly led to diet my revenge,

For that I do suspect the lusty Moor

Hath leaped into my seat, the thought whereof

Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards …

And nothing can or shall content my soul

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Till I am evened with him, wife for wife …

Or, failing so, yet that I put the Moor

At least into a jealousy so strong

That judgement cannot cure; which thing to do,

If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trash

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For his quick hunting, stand the putting on,

I’ll have our Michael Cassio on the hip,

Abuse him to the Moor in the rank garb –

For I fear Cassio with my night-cap too –

Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me

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For making him egregiously an ass,

And practising upon his peace and quiet

Even to madness. ’Tis here, but yet confused:

Knavery’s plain face is never seen, till used.     Exit.

2.2 Enter Othello’s Herald, with a proclamation.

HERALD     [Reads.]     It is Othello’s pleasure, our noble and

valiant general, that, upon certain tidings now arrived,

importing the mere perdition of the Turkish fleet, every

man put himself into triumph: some to dance, some to

make bonfires, each man to what sport and revels his

5

addiction leads him. For besides these beneficial news, it is

the celebration of his nuptial.– So much was his

pleasure should be proclaimed. All offices are open,

and there is full liberty of feasting from this present

hour of five till the bell have told eleven. Heaven bless

10

the isle of Cyprus and our noble general Othello!

Exit.

2.3 Enter OTHELLO, CASSIO and DESDEMONA.

OTHELLO

Good Michael, look you to the guard tonight.

Let’s teach ourselves that honourable stop

Not to outsport discretion.

CASSIO     Iago hath direction what to do,

But notwithstanding with my personal eye

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Will I look to’t.

OTHELLO     Iago is most honest.

Michael, good night. Tomorrow with your earliest

Let me have speech with you. Come, my dear love,

The purchase made, the fruits are to ensue:

That profit’s yet to come ’tween me and you.

10

Good-night. Exeunt Othello and Desdemona.

Enter IAGO.

CASSIO     Welcome, Iago, we must to the watch.

IAGO     Not this hour, lieutenant, ’tis not yet ten o’th’

clock. Our general cast us thus early for the love of his

Desdemona – whom let us not therefore blame; he

15

hath not yet made wanton the night with her, and she

is sport for Jove.

CASSIO     She’s a most exquisite lady.

IAGO     And I’ll warrant her full of game.

CASSIO     Indeed she’s a most fresh and delicate creature.

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IAGO     What an eye she has! methinks it sounds a parley

to provocation.

CASSIO     An inviting eye; and yet methinks right modest.

IAGO     And when she speaks is it not an alarum to love?

CASSIO     She is indeed perfection.

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IAGO     Well: happiness to their sheets! Come, lieutenant,

I have a stoup of wine, and here without are a brace of

Cyprus gallants that would fain have a measure to the

health of black Othello.

CASSIO     Not tonight, good Iago, I have very poor and

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unhappy brains for drinking. I could well wish courtesy

would invent some other custom of entertainment.

IAGO     O, they are our friends. But one cup, I’ll drink for

you.

CASSIO     I have drunk but one cup tonight, and that was

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craftily qualified too, and behold what innovation it

makes here! I am unfortunate in the infirmity, and

dare not task my weakness with any more.

IAGO     What, man, ’tis a night of revels, the gallants

desire it.

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CASSIO     Where are they?

IAGO     Here, at the door, I pray you call them in.

CASSIO     I’ll do’t, but it dislikes me.     Exit.

IAGO     If I can fasten but one cup upon him,

With that which he hath drunk tonight already

45

He’ll be as full of quarrel and offence

As my young mistress’ dog. Now my sick fool, Roderigo,

Whom love hath turned almost the wrong side out,

To Desdemona hath tonight caroused

Potations pottle-deep, and he’s to watch.

50

Three else of Cyprus, noble swelling spirits

That hold their honours in a wary distance,

The very elements of this warlike isle,

Have I tonight flustered with flowing cups,

And the watch too. Now ’mongst this flock of drunkards

55

Am I to put our Cassio in some action

That may offend the isle.

Enter CASSIO, MONTANO and Gentlemen.

But here they come.

If consequence do but approve my dream

My boat sails freely, both with wind and stream.

CASSIO     ’Fore God, they have given me a rouse already.

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MONTANO     Good faith, a little one, not past a pint, as

I am a soldier.

IAGO     Some wine, ho!

[Sings.]

And let me the cannikin clink, clink,

And let me the cannikin clink.

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A soldier’s a man,

O, man’s life’s but a span,

Why then let a soldier drink!

Some wine, boys!

CASSIO     ’Fore God, an excellent song!

70

IAGO     I learned it in England, where indeed they are

most potent in potting. Your Dane, your German, and

your swag-bellied Hollander – drink, ho! – are nothing

to your English.

CASSIO     Is your Englishman so exquisite in his drinking?

75

IAGO     Why, he drinks you with facility your Dane dead

drunk; he sweats not to overthrow your Almain; he

gives your Hollander a vomit ere the next pottle can be

filled.

CASSIO     To the health of our general!

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MONTANO     I am for it, lieutenant, and I’ll do you justice.

IAGO     O sweet England!

[Sings.]

King Stephen was and-a worthy peer,

His breeches cost him but a crown,

He held them sixpence all too dear,

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With that he called the tailor lown.

He was a wight of high renown

And thou art but of low degree,

’Tis pride that pulls the country down,

Then take thine auld cloak about thee.

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Some wine, ho!

CASSIO     ’Fore God, this is a more exquisite song than

the other!

IAGO     Will you hear’t again?

CASSIO     No, for I hold him to be unworthy of his place

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that does … those things. Well, God’s above all, and

there be souls must be saved, and there be souls must

not be saved.

IAGO     It’s true, good lieutenant.

CASSIO     For mine own part, no offence to the general

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nor any man of quality, I hope to be saved.

IAGO     And so do I too, lieutenant.

CASSIO     Ay, but, by your leave, not before me. The

lieutenant is to be saved before the ancient. Let’s have

no more of this, let’s to our affairs. God forgive us our

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sins! Gentlemen, let’s look to our business. Do not

think, gentlemen, I am drunk: this is my ancient, this

is my right hand, and this is my left. I am not drunk

now: I can stand well enough, and I speak well enough.

GENTLEMAN     Excellent well.

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CASSIO     Why, very well then; you must not think then

that I am drunk.     Exit.

MONTANO

To th’ platform, masters, come, let’s set the watch.

IAGO     You see this fellow that is gone before,

He is a soldier fit to stand by Caesar

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And give direction. And do but see his vice,

’Tis to his virtue a just equinox,

The one as long as th’other. ’Tis pity of him:

I fear the trust Othello puts him in

On some odd time of his infirmity

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Will shake this island.

MONTANO     But is he often thus?

IAGO     ’Tis evermore the prologue to his sleep:

He’ll watch the horologe a double set

If drink rock not his cradle.

MONTANO     It were well

The general were put in mind of it.

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Perhaps he sees it not, or his good nature

Prizes the virtue that appears in Cassio

And looks not on his evils: is not this true?

Enter RODERIGO.

IAGO     [aside] How now, Roderigo?

I pray you, after the lieutenant, go!     Exit Roderigo.

130

MONTANO     And ’tis great pity that the noble Moor

Should hazard such a place as his own second

With one of an ingraft infirmity.

It were an honest action to say so

To the Moor.

IAGO     Not I, for this fair island.

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I do love Cassio well, and would do much

[A cry within: ‘Help! help!’]

To cure him of this evil. But hark, what noise?

Enter CASSIO pursuing RODERIGO.

CASSIO     Zounds, you rogue! you rascal!

MONTANO     What’s the matter, lieutenant?

CASSIO     A knave teach me my duty? I’ll beat the knave

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into a twiggen bottle!

RODERIGO     Beat me?

CASSIO     Dost thou prate, rogue?

MONTANO     Nay, good lieutenant! I pray you, sir, hold

your hand.

145

CASSIO     Let me go, sir, or I’ll knock you o’er the mazzard.

MONTANO     Come, come, you’re drunk.

CASSIO     Drunk? [They fight.]

IAGO     [aside to Roderigo]

Away, I say, go out and cry a mutiny. Exit Roderigo.

Nay, good lieutenant! God’s will, gentlemen –

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Help ho! Lieutenant! sir – Montano – sir –

Help, masters, here’s a goodly watch indeed.

[A bell rings.]

Who’s that which rings the bell? Diablo, ho!

The town will rise, God’s will, lieutenant, hold,

You will be shamed for ever!

155

Enter OTHELLO and attendants.

OTHELLO     What is the matter here?

MONTANO     Zounds, I bleed still;

I am hurt to th’ death: he dies! [Lunges at Cassio.]

OTHELLO     Hold, for your lives!

IAGO

Hold, ho! Lieutenant! sir – Montano – gentlemen –

Have you forgot all sense of place and duty?

Hold, the general speaks to you: hold, for shame!

160

OTHELLO

Why, how now, ho? From whence ariseth this?

Are we turned Turks? and to ourselves do that

Which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?

For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl;

He that stirs next, to carve for his own rage,

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Holds his soul light: he dies upon his motion.

Silence that dreadful bell, it frights the isle

From her propriety. What is the matter, masters?

Honest Iago, that look’st dead with grieving,

Speak: who began this? on thy love I charge thee.

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IAGO

I do not know, friends all, but now, even now,

In quarter and in terms like bride and groom

Divesting them for bed; and then, but now,

As if some planet had unwitted men,

Swords out, and tilting one at other’s breasts

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In opposition bloody. I cannot speak

Any beginning to this peevish odds,

And would in action glorious I had lost

Those legs that brought me to a part of it.

OTHELLO     How comes it, Michael, you are thus forgot?

180

CASSIO     I pray you pardon me, I cannot speak.

OTHELLO     Worthy Montano, you were wont to be civil:

The gravity and stillness of your youth

The world hath noted, and your name is great

In mouths of wisest censure. What’s the matter

185

That you unlace your reputation thus

And spend your rich opinion for the name

Of a night-brawler? Give me answer to it.

MONTANO     Worthy Othello, I am hurt to danger:

Your officer Iago can inform you,

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While I spare speech, which something now offends

me,

Of all that I do know; nor know I aught

By me that’s said or done amiss this night

Unless self-charity be sometimes a vice,

And to defend ourselves it be a sin

195

When violence assails us.

OTHELLO     Now, by heaven,

My blood begins my safer guides to rule

And passion, having my best judgement collied,

Assays to lead the way. Zounds, if I once stir,

Or do but lift this arm, the best of you

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Shall sink in my rebuke. Give me to know

How this foul rout began, who set it on,

And he that is approved in this offence,

Though he had twinned with me, both at a birth,

Shall lose me. What, in a town of war

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Yet wild, the people’s hearts brimful of fear,

To manage private and domestic quarrel?

In night, and on the court and guard of safety?

’Tis monstrous. Iago, who began’t?

MONTANO     If partially affined or leagued in office

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Thou dost deliver more or less than truth

Thou art no soldier.

IAGO     Touch me not so near.

I had rather have this tongue cut from my mouth

Than it should do offence to Michael Cassio,

Yet I persuade myself to speak the truth

215

Shall nothing wrong him. Thus it is, general:

Montano and myself being in speech,

There comes a fellow crying out for help

And Cassio following him with determined sword

To execute upon him. Sir, this gentleman

220

Steps in to Cassio and entreats his pause,

Myself the crying fellow did pursue

Lest by his clamour, as it so fell out,

The town might fall in fright. He, swift of foot,

Outran my purpose, and I returned the rather

225

For that I heard the clink and fall of swords

And Cassio high in oath, which till tonight

I ne’er might say before. When I came back,

For this was brief, I found them close together

At blow and thrust, even as again they were

230

When you yourself did part them.

More of this matter cannot I report.

But men are men, the best sometimes forget;

Though Cassio did some little wrong to him,

As men in rage strike those that wish them best,

235

Yet surely Cassio, I believe, received

From him that fled some strange indignity

Which patience could not pass.

OTHELLO     I know, Iago,

Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter,

Making it light to Cassio. Cassio, I love thee,

240

Enter DESDEMONA, attended.

But never more be officer of mine.

Look if my gentle love be not raised up!

I’ll make thee an example.

DESDEMONA     What is the matter, dear?

OTHELLO     All’s well now, sweeting,

Come away to bed. – Sir, for your hurts

245

Myself will be your surgeon. Lead him off.

Montano is led off.

IAGO, look with care about the town

And silence those whom this vile brawl distracted.

Come, Desdemona: ’tis the soldier’s life

To have their balmy slumbers waked with strife.

250

Exeunt all but Iago and Cassio.

IAGO     What, are you hurt, lieutenant?

CASSIO     Ay, past all surgery.

IAGO     Marry, God forbid!

CASSIO     Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have

lost my reputation, I have lost the immortal part of

255

myself – and what remains is bestial. My reputation,

Iago, my reputation!

IAGO     As I am an honest man I thought you had received

some bodily wound; there is more of sense in that than

in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false

260

imposition, oft got without merit and lost without

deserving. You have lost no reputation at all, unless you

repute yourself such a loser. What, man, there are ways

to recover the general again. You are but now cast in his

mood, a punishment more in policy than in malice,

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even so as one would beat his offenceless dog to affright

an imperious lion. Sue to him again, and he’s yours.

CASSIO     I will rather sue to be despised, than to deceive

so good a commander with so slight, so drunken, and

so indiscreet an officer. Drunk? and speak parrot? and

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squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse fustian with

one’s own shadow? O thou invisible spirit of wine, if

thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee

devil!

IAGO     What was he that you followed with your sword?

275

What had he done to you?

CASSIO     I know not.

IAGO     Is’t possible?

CASSIO     I remember a mass of things, but nothing

distinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O God,

280

that men should put an enemy in their mouths, to steal

away their brains! that we should with joy, pleasance,

revel and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!

IAGO     Why, but you are now well enough: how came

you thus recovered?

285

CASSIO     It hath pleased the devil drunkenness to give

place to the devil wrath; one unperfectness shows me

another, to make me frankly despise myself.

IAGO     Come, you are too severe a moraler. As the time,

the place and the condition of this country stands, I

290

could heartily wish this had not befallen; but since it is

as it is, mend it for your own good.

CASSIO     I will ask him for my place again, he shall tell me

I am a drunkard: had I as many mouths as Hydra, such

an answer would stop them all. To be now a sensible

295

man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast! O

strange! – Every inordinate cup is unblest, and the

ingredience is a devil.

IAGO     Come, come, good wine is a good familiar crea-

ture, if it be well used: exclaim no more against it.

300

And, good lieutenant, I think you think I love you.

CASSIO     I have well approved it, sir. I drunk?

IAGO     You, or any man living, may be drunk at some

time, man. I’ll tell you what you shall do. Our

general’s wife is now the general. I may say so in this

305

respect, for that he hath devoted and given up himself

to the contemplation, mark and denotement of her

parts and graces. Confess yourself freely to her,

importune her help to put you in your place again.

She is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blest a disposition

310

that she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more

than she is requested. This broken joint between you

and her husband entreat her to splinter – and my

fortunes against any lay worth naming, this crack of

your love shall grow stronger than it was before.

315

CASSIO     You advise me well.

IAGO     I protest, in the sincerity of love and honest

kindness.

CASSIO     I think it freely, and betimes in the morning I will

beseech the virtuous Desdemona to undertake for me. I

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am desperate of my fortunes if they check me here.

IAGO     You are in the right. Good-night, lieutenant, I

must to the watch.

CASSIO     Good-night, honest Iago. Exit.

IAGO     And what’s he then that says I play the villain?

325

When this advice is free I give and honest,

Probal to thinking and indeed the course

To win the Moor again? For ’tis most easy

Th’inclining Desdemona to subdue

In any honest suit. She’s framed as fruitful

330

As the free elements: and then for her

To win the Moor, were’t to renounce his baptism,

All seals and symbols of redeemed sin,

His soul is so enfettered to her love

That she may make, unmake, do what she list,

335

Even as her appetite shall play the god

With his weak function. How am I then a villain

To counsel Cassio to this parallel course

Directly to his good? Divinity of hell!

When devils will the blackest sins put on

340

They do suggest at first with heavenly shows

As I do now. For whiles this honest fool

Plies Desdemona to repair his fortune,

And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor,

I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear:

345

That she repeals him for her body’s lust.

And by how much she strives to do him good

She shall undo her credit with the Moor –

So will I turn her virtue into pitch

And out of her own goodness make the net

350

That shall enmesh them all.

Enter RODERIGO.

How now, Roderigo?

RODERIGO     I do follow here in the chase not like a hound

that hunts, but one that fills up the cry. My money is

almost spent, I have been tonight exceedingly well

cudgelled, and I think the issue will be I shall have so

355

much experience for my pains: and so, with no money

at all, and a little more wit, return again to Venice.

IAGO     How poor are they that have not patience!

What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

Thou know’st we work by wit and not by witchcraft,

360

And wit depends on dilatory time.

Does’t not go well? Cassio hath beaten thee

And thou by that small hurt hast cashiered Cassio.

Though other things grow fair against the sun

Yet fruits that blossom first will first be ripe;

365

Content thyself a while. By the mass, ’tis morning:

Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.

Retire thee, go where thou art billeted,

Away, I say, thou shalt know more hereafter:

Nay, get thee gone.     Exit Roderigo.

Two things are to be done:

370

My wife must move for Cassio to her mistress,

I’ll set her on.

Myself the while to draw the Moor apart

And bring him jump when he may Cassio find

Soliciting his wife: ay, that’s the way!

375

Dull not device by coldness and delay!     Exit.

3.1 Enter CASSIO and some Musicians.

CASSIO     Masters, play here, I will content your pains;

Something that’s brief, and bid ‘Good morrow, general.’

They play. Enter Clown.

CLOWN     Why, masters, have your instruments been in

Naples, that they speak i’th’ nose thus?

1 MUSICIAN     How, sir? how?

5

CLOWN     Are these, I pray you, wind instruments?

1 MUSICIAN     Ay marry are they, sir.

CLOWN     O, thereby hangs a tail.

1 MUSICIAN     Whereby hangs a tail, sir?

CLOWN     Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I

10

know. But, masters, here’s money for you, and the

general so likes your music that he desires you, for

love’s sake, to make no more noise with it.

1 MUSICIAN     Well, sir, we will not.

CLOWN     If you have any music that may not be heard,

15

to’t again. But, as they say, to hear music the general

does not greatly care.

1 MUSICIAN     We have none such, sir.

CLOWN     Then put up your pipes in your bag, for I’ll

away. Go, vanish into air, away! Exeunt Musicians.

20

CASSIO     Dost thou hear, mine honest friend?

CLOWN     No, I hear not your honest friend, I hear you.

CASSIO     Prithee keep up thy quillets; there’s a poor piece

of gold for thee – if the gentlewoman that attends the

general’s wife be stirring, tell her there’s one Cassio

25

entreats her a little favour of speech. Wilt thou do this?

CLOWN     She is stirring, sir; if she will stir hither, I shall

seem to notify unto her.

Enter IAGO.

CASSIO     Do, good my friend.     Exit Clown.

In happy time, Iago.

IAGO     You have not been a-bed then?

30

CASSIO     Why no, the day had broke before we parted.

I have made bold, Iago, to send in

To your wife: my suit to her is that she will

To virtuous Desdemona procure me

Some access.

IAGO     I’ll send her to you presently,

35

And I’ll devise a mean to draw the Moor

Out of the way, that your converse and business

May be more free.

CASSIO     I humbly thank you for’t.     Exit Iago.

I never knew

A Florentine more kind and honest.

40

Enter EMILIA.

EMILIA     Good morrow, good lieutenant. I am sorry

For your displeasure, but all will sure be well.

The general and his wife are talking of it,

And she speaks for you stoutly; the Moor replies

That he you hurt is of great fame in Cyprus

45

And great affinity,

And that in wholesome wisdom he might not but

Refuse you; but he protests he loves you

And needs no other suitor but his likings

To take the safest occasion by the front

50

To bring you in again.

CASSIO     Yet I beseech you,

If you think fit, or that it may be done,

Give me advantage of some brief discourse

With Desdemon alone.

EMILIA     Pray you come in,

I will bestow you where you shall have time

55

To speak your bosom freely.

CASSIO     I am much bound to you.

Exeunt.

3.2 Enter OTHELLO, IAGO and Gentlemen.

OTHELLO     These letters give, Iago, to the pilot,

And by him do my duties to the Senate;

That done, I will be walking on the works,

Repair there to me.

IAGO     Well, my good lord, I’ll do’t.

OTHELLO     This fortification, gentlemen, shall we see’t?

5

1 GENTLEMAN     We’ll wait upon your lordship.     Exeunt.

3.3 Enter DESDEMONA, CASSIO and Emilia.

DESDEMONA     Be thou assured, good Cassio, I will do

All my abilities in thy behalf.

EMILIA

Good madam, do, I warrant it grieves my husband

As if the cause were his.

DESDEMONA

O, that’s an honest fellow. Do not doubt, Cassio,

5

But I will have my lord and you again

As friendly as you were.

CASSIO     Bounteous madam,

Whatever shall become of Michael Cassio,

He’s never anything but your true servant.

DESDEMONA

I know’t, I thank you. You do love my lord,

10

You have known him long, and be you well assured

He shall in strangeness stand no farther off

Than in a politic distance.

CASSIO     Ay, but, lady,

That policy may either last so long,

Or feed upon such nice and waterish diet,

15

Or breed itself so out of circumstance,

That, I being absent and my place supplied,

My general will forget my love and service.

DESDEMONA     Do not doubt that: before Emilia here

I give thee warrant of thy place. Assure thee,

20

If I do vow a friendship I’ll perform it

To the last article. My lord shall never rest,

I’ll watch him tame and talk him out of patience,

His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift,

I’ll intermingle everything he does

25

With Cassio’s suit: therefore be merry, Cassio,

For thy solicitor shall rather die

Than give thy cause away.

Enter OTHELLO and IAGO.

EMILIA     Madam, here comes my lord.

CASSIO     Madam, I’ll take my leave.

30

DESDEMONA     Why, stay and hear me speak.

CASSIO     Madam, not now; I am very ill at ease,

Unfit for mine own purposes.

DESDEMONA     Well, do your discretion.     Exit Cassio.

IAGO     Ha, I like not that.

OTHELLO     What dost thou say?

35

IAGO     Nothing, my lord; or if – I know not what.

OTHELLO     Was not that Cassio parted from my wife?

IAGO     Cassio, my lord? no, sure, I cannot think it

That he would steal away so guilty-like

Seeing you coming.

OTHELLO     I do believe ’twas he.

40

DESDEMONA     How now, my lord?

I have been talking with a suitor here,

A man that languishes in your displeasure.

OTHELLO     Who is’t you mean?

DESDEMONA

Why, your lieutenant, Cassio. Good my lord,

45

If I have any grace or power to move you

His present reconciliation take:

For if he be not one that truly loves you,

That errs in ignorance and not in cunning,

I have no judgement in an honest face.

50

I prithee, call him back.

OTHELLO     Went he hence now?

DESDEMONA     Yes, faith, so humbled

That he hath left part of his grief with me

To suffer with him. Good love, call him back.

OTHELLO     Not now, sweet Desdemon, some other time.

55

DESDEMONA     But shall’t be shortly?

OTHELLO     The sooner, sweet, for you.

DESDEMONA     Shall’t be tonight, at supper?

OTHELLO     No, not tonight.

DESDEMONA     Tomorrow dinner then?

OTHELLO     I shall not dine at home.

I meet the captains at the citadel.

DESDEMONA

Why then, tomorrow night, or Tuesday morn;

60

On Tuesday, noon or night; on Wednesday morn!

I prithee name the time, but let it not

Exceed three days: i’faith, he’s penitent,

And yet his trespass, in our common reason

– Save that they say the wars must make examples

65

Out of their best – is not, almost, a fault

T’incur a private check. When shall he come?

Tell me, Othello. I wonder in my soul

What you would ask me that I should deny

Or stand so mamm’ring on? What, Michael Cassio

70

That came a-wooing with you? and so many a time

When I have spoke of you dispraisingly

Hath ta’en your part, to have so much to do

To bring him in? By’r lady, I could do much! –

OTHELLO

Prithee, no more. Let him come when he will,

75

I will deny thee nothing.

DESDEMONA     Why, this is not a boon,

’Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves,

Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm,

Or sue to you to do a peculiar profit

To your own person. Nay, when I have a suit

80

Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed

It shall be full of poise and difficult weight

And fearful to be granted.

OTHELLO     I will deny thee nothing.

Whereon I do beseech thee, grant me this,

To leave me but a little to myself.

85

DESDEMONA     Shall I deny you? No, farewell, my lord.

OTHELLO

Farewell, my Desdemona, I’ll come to thee straight.

DESDEMONA

Emilia, come. – Be as your fancies teach you:

Whate’er you be, I am obedient.

Exeunt Desdemona and Emilia.

OTHELLO     Excellent wretch! perdition catch my soul

90

But I do love thee! and when I love thee not

Chaos is come again.

IAGO     My noble lord –

OTHELLO     What dost thou say, Iago?

IAGO     Did Michael Cassio, when you wooed my lady,

Know of your love?

OTHELLO     He did, from first to last.

95

Why dost thou ask?

IAGO     But for a satisfaction of my thought,

No further harm.

OTHELLO     Why of thy thought, Iago?

IAGO     I did not think he had been acquainted with her.

OTHELLO     O yes, and went between us very oft.

100

IAGO     Indeed?

OTHELLO

Indeed? Ay, indeed. Discern’st thou aught in that?

Is he not honest?

IAGO     Honest, my lord?

OTHELLO     Honest? Ay, honest.

105

IAGO     My lord, for aught I know.

OTHELLO     What dost thou think?

IAGO     Think, my lord?

OTHELLO     Think, my lord! By heaven, thou echo’st me

As if there were some monster in thy thought

110

Too hideous to be shown. Thou dost mean something,

I heard thee say even now thou lik’st not that

When Cassio left my wife: what didst not like?

And when I told thee he was of my counsel

In my whole course of wooing, thou criedst ‘Indeed?’

115

And didst contract and purse thy brow together

As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain

Some horrible conceit. If thou dost love me

Show me thy thought.

IAGO     My lord, you know I love you.

OTHELLO     I think thou dost.

120

And for I know thou’rt full of love and honesty

And weigh’st thy words before thou giv’st them breath,

Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more.

For such things in a false disloyal knave

Are tricks of custom, but in a man that’s just

125

They’re close delations, working from the heart,

That passion cannot rule.

IAGO     For Michael Cassio,

I dare be sworn, I think, that he is honest.

OTHELLO     I think so too.

IAGO     Men should be what they seem,

Or those that be not, would they might seem none.

130

OTHELLO     Certain, men should be what they seem.

IAGO     Why then I think Cassio’s an honest man.

OTHELLO     Nay, yet there’s more in this:

I prithee speak to me, as to thy thinkings,

As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts

135

The worst of words.

IAGO     Good my lord, pardon me;

Though I am bound to every act of duty

I am not bound to that all slaves are free to –

Utter my thoughts? Why, say they are vile and false?

As where’s that palace whereinto foul things

140

Sometimes intrude not? Who has a breast so pure

But some uncleanly apprehensions

Keep leets and law-days and in session sit

With meditations lawful?

OTHELLO     Thou dost conspire against thy friend, Iago,

145

If thou but think’st him wronged and mak’st his ear

A stranger to thy thoughts.

IAGO     I do beseech you,

Though I perchance am vicious in my guess

– As I confess it is my nature’s plague

To spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy

150

Shapes faults that are not – that your wisdom

From one that so imperfectly conceits

Would take no notice, nor build yourself a trouble

Out of his scattering and unsure observance:

It were not for your quiet nor your good

155

Nor for my manhood, honesty and wisdom

To let you know my thoughts.

OTHELLO     Zounds! What dost thou mean?

IAGO     Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls:

Who steals my purse steals trash – ’tis something-nothing,

160

’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands –

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him

And makes me poor indeed.

OTHELLO     By heaven, I’ll know thy thoughts!

IAGO     You cannot, if my heart were in your hand,

165

Nor shall not whilst ’tis in my custody.

OTHELLO     Ha!

IAGO     O beware, my lord, of jealousy!

It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock

The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss

Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger,

170

But O, what damned minutes tells he o’er

Who dotes yet doubts, suspects yet strongly loves!

OTHELLO     O misery!

IAGO     Poor and content is rich, and rich enough,

But riches fineless is as poor as winter

175

To him that ever fears he shall be poor.

Good God, the souls of all my tribe defend

From jealousy.

OTHELLO     Why – why is this?

Think’st thou I’d make a life of jealousy

180

To follow still the changes of the moon

With fresh suspicions? No: to be once in doubt

Is once to be resolved. Exchange me for a goat

When I shall turn the business of my soul

To such exsufflicate and blown surmises,

185

Matching thy inference. ’Tis not to make me jealous

To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,

Is free of speech, sings, plays and dances well:

Where virtue is, these are more virtuous.

Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw

190

The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt,

For she had eyes and chose me. No, Iago,

I’ll see before I doubt, when I doubt, prove,

And on the proof there is no more but this:

Away at once with love or jealousy!

195

IAGO     I am glad of this, for now I shall have reason

To show the love and duty that I bear you

With franker spirit: therefore, as I am bound,

Receive it from me. I speak not yet of proof:

Look to your wife, observe her well with Cassio.

200

Wear your eyes thus, not jealous nor secure;

I would not have your free and noble nature

Out of self-bounty be abused: look to’t.

I know our country disposition well –

In Venice they do let God see the pranks

205

They dare not show their husbands; their best conscience

Is not to leave’t undone, but keep’t unknown.

OTHELLO     Dost thou say so?

IAGO     She did deceive her father, marrying you,

And when she seemed to shake, and fear your looks,

210

She loved them most.

OTHELLO     And so she did.

IAGO     Why, go to then:

She that so young could give out such a seeming

To seel her father’s eyes up, close as oak –

He thought ’twas witchcraft. But I am much to blame,

I humbly do beseech you of your pardon

215

For too much loving you.

OTHELLO     I am bound to thee for ever.

IAGO     I see this hath a little dashed your spirits.

OTHELLO     Not a jot, not a jot.

IAGO     I’faith, I fear it has.

I hope you will consider what is spoke

220

Comes from my love. But I do see you’re moved;

I am to pray you not to strain my speech

To grosser issues nor to larger reach

Than to suspicion.

OTHELLO     I will not.

IAGO     Should you do so, my lord,

225

My speech should fall into such vile success

As my thoughts aimed not at: Cassio’s my worthy

friend.

My lord, I see you’re moved.

OTHELLO     No, not much moved.

I do not think but Desdemona’s honest.

IAGO     Long live she so; and long live you to think so.

230

OTHELLO     And yet how nature, erring from itself –

IAGO     Ay, there’s the point: as, to be bold with you,

Not to affect many proposed matches

Of her own clime, complexion and degree,

Whereto we see, in all things, nature tends –

235

Foh! one may smell in such a will most rank,

Foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural.

But pardon me, I do not in position

Distinctly speak of her, though I may fear

Her will, recoiling to her better judgement,

240

May fall to match you with her country forms,

And happily repent.

OTHELLO     Farewell, farewell.

If more thou dost perceive, let me know more:

Set on thy wife to observe. Leave me, Iago.

IAGO     My lord, I take my leave.

OTHELLO     Why did I marry?

245

This honest creature doubtless

Sees and knows more – much more – than he unfolds.

IAGO     My lord, I would I might entreat your honour

To scan this thing no farther. Leave it to time;

Although ’tis fit that Cassio have his place,

250

For sure he fills it up with great ability,

Yet if you please to hold him off a while

You shall by that perceive him, and his means:

Note if your lady strain his entertainment

With any strong or vehement importunity,

255

Much will be seen in that. In the meantime

Let me be thought too busy in my fears

– As worthy cause I have to fear I am –

And hold her free, I do beseech your honour.

OTHELLO     Fear not my government.

260

IAGO     I once more take my leave.     Exit.

OTHELLO

This fellow’s of exceeding honesty

And knows all qualities, with a learned spirit,

Of human dealings. If I do prove her haggard,

Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings,

265

I’d whistle her off and let her down the wind

To prey at fortune. Haply for I am black

And have not those soft parts of conversation

That chamberers have, or for I am declined

Into the vale of years – yet that’s not much –

270

She’s gone, I am abused, and my relief

Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage

That we can call these delicate creatures ours

And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad

And live upon the vapour of a dungeon

275

Than keep a corner in the thing I love

For others’ uses. Yet ’tis the plague of great ones,

Prerogatived are they less than the base;

’Tis destiny unshunnable, like death –

Even then this forked plague is fated to us

280

When we do quicken.

Enter DESDEMONA and EMILIA.

Look where she comes:

If she be false, O then heaven mocks itself,

I’ll not believe’t.

DESDEMONA     How now, my dear Othello?

Your dinner, and the generous islanders

By you invited, do attend your presence.

285

OTHELLO     I am to blame.

DESDEMONA     Why do you speak so faintly?

Are you not well?

OTHELLO     I have a pain upon my forehead, here.

DESDEMONA

Faith, that’s with watching, ’twill away again.

Let me but bind it hard, within this hour

290

It will be well.

OTHELLO     Your napkin is too little.

[She drops her handkerchief.]

Let it alone. Come, I’ll go in with you.

DESDEMONA

I am very sorry that you are not well.

Exeunt Othello and Desdemona.

EMILIA

I am glad I have found this napkin,

This was her first remembrance from the Moor.

295

My wayward husband hath a hundred times

Wooed me to steal it, but she so loves the token

– For he conjured her she should ever keep it –

That she reserves it evermore about her

To kiss and talk to. I’ll have the work ta’en out

300

And give’t Iago: what he will do with it

Heaven knows, not I,

I nothing, but to please his fantasy.

Enter IAGO.

IAGO     How now! What do you here alone?

EMILIA     Do not you chide, I have a thing for you –

305

IAGO     You have a thing for me? it is a common thing –

EMILIA     Ha?

IAGO     To have a foolish wife.

EMILIA     O, is that all? What will you give me now

For that same handkerchief?

IAGO     What handkerchief?

310

EMILIA     What handkerchief?

Why, that the Moor first gave to Desdemona,

That which so often you did bid me steal.

IAGO     Hast stolen it from her?

EMILIA     No, faith, she let it drop by negligence

315

And, to th’advantage, I being here, took’t up.

Look, here it is.

IAGO     A good wench, give it me.

EMILIA

What will you do with’t, that you have been so

earnest

To have me filch it?

IAGO     [snatching it] Why, what’s that to you?

EMILIA     If it be not for some purpose of import

320

Give’t me again. Poor lady, she’ll run mad

When she shall lack it.

IAGO     Be not acknown on’t,

I have use for it. Go, leave me.     Exit Emilia.

I will in Cassio’s lodging lose this napkin

And let him find it. Trifles light as air

325

Are to the jealous confirmations strong

As proofs of holy writ. This may do something.

The Moor already changes with my poison:

Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons

Which at the first are scarce found to distaste

330

But with a little art upon the blood

Burn like the mines of sulphur.

Enter OTHELLO.

I did say so:

Look where he comes. Not poppy nor mandragora

Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world

Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep

335

Which thou owedst yesterday.

OTHELLO     Ha! Ha! false to me?

IAGO     Why, how now, general? No more of that.

OTHELLO

Avaunt, be gone, thou hast set me on the rack!

I swear ’tis better to be much abused

Than but to know’t a little.

IAGO     How now, my lord?

340

OTHELLO

What sense had I of her stolen hours of lust?

I saw’t not, thought it not, it harmed not me,

I slept the next night well, fed well, was free and

merry;

I found not Cassio’s kisses on her lips;

He that is robbed, not wanting what is stolen,

345

Let him not know’t, and he’s not robbed at all.

IAGO     I am sorry to hear this.

OTHELLO     I had been happy if the general camp,

Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body,

So I had nothing known. O now for ever

350

Farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content!

Farewell the plumed troops and the big wars

That makes ambition virtue! O farewell,

Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,

The spirit-stirring drum, th’ear-piercing fife,

355

The royal banner, and all quality,

Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war!

And, O you mortal engines whose rude throats

Th’immortal Jove’s dread clamours counterfeit,

Farewell: Othello’s occupation’s gone.

360

IAGO     Is’t possible? my lord?

OTHELLO     Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore,

Be sure of it, give me the ocular proof,

[catching hold of him]

Or by the worth of man’s eternal soul

Thou hadst been better have been born a dog

365

Than answer my waked wrath!

IAGO     Is’t come to this?

OTHELLO     Make me to see’t, or at the least so prove it

That the probation bear no hinge nor loop

To hang a doubt on, or woe upon thy life!

IAGO     My noble lord –

370

OTHELLO     If thou dost slander her and torture me

Never pray more, abandon all remorse;

On horror’s head horrors accumulate,

Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amazed,

For nothing canst thou to damnation add

375

Greater than that!

IAGO     O grace! O heaven forgive me!

Are you a man? have you a soul, or sense?

God buy you, take mine office. O wretched fool

That lov’st to make thine honesty a vice!

O monstrous world! Take note, take note, O world,

380

To be direct and honest is not safe.

I thank you for this profit, and from hence

I’ll love no friend, sith love breeds such offence.

OTHELLO     Nay, stay, thou shouldst be honest.

IAGO     I should be wise, for honesty’s a fool

385

And loses that it works for.

OTHELLO     By the world,

I think my wife be honest, and think she is not,

I think that thou art just, and think thou art not.

I’ll have some proof. Her name, that was as fresh

As Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black

390

As mine own face. If there be cords or knives,

Poison, or fire, or suffocating streams,

I’ll not endure it. Would I were satisfied!

IAGO     I see, sir, you are eaten up with passion.

I do repent me that I put it to you.

395

You would be satisfied?

OTHELLO     Would? nay, and I will!

IAGO     And may – but how? how satisfied, my lord?

Would you, the supervisor, grossly gape on?

Behold her topped?

OTHELLO     Death and damnation! O!

IAGO     It were a tedious difficulty, I think,

400

To bring them to that prospect. Damn them then

If ever mortal eyes do see them bolster

More than their own. What then? how then?

What shall I say? where’s satisfaction?

It is impossible you should see this

405

Were they as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys,

As salt as wolves in pride, and fools as gross

As ignorance made drunk. But yet, I say,

If imputation and strong circumstances

Which lead directly to the door of truth

410

Will give you satisfaction, you may have’t.

OTHELLO     Give me a living reason she’s disloyal.

IAGO     I do not like the office.

But sith I am entered in this cause so far,

Pricked to’t by foolish honesty and love,

415

I will go on. I lay with Cassio lately

And being troubled with a raging tooth

I could not sleep. There are a kind of men

So loose of soul that in their sleeps will mutter

Their affairs – one of this kind is Cassio.

420

In sleep I heard him say ‘Sweet Desdemona,

Let us be wary, let us hide our loves,’

And then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand,

Cry ‘O sweet creature!’ and then kiss me hard

As if he plucked up kisses by the roots

425

That grew upon my lips, lay his leg o’er my thigh,

And sigh, and kiss, and then cry ‘Cursed fate

That gave thee to the Moor!’

OTHELLO     O monstrous! monstrous!

IAGO     Nay, this was but his dream.

OTHELLO     But this denoted a foregone conclusion.

430

IAGO     ’Tis a shrewd doubt, though it be but a dream,

And this may help to thicken other proofs

That do demonstrate thinly.

OTHELLO     I’ll tear her all to pieces!

IAGO     Nay, yet be wise, yet we see nothing done,

435

She may be honest yet. Tell me but this,

Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief

Spotted with strawberries, in your wife’s hand?

OTHELLO     I gave her such a one, ’twas my first gift.

IAGO     I know not that, but such a handkerchief,

440

I am sure it was your wife’s, did I today

See Cassio wipe his beard with.

OTHELLO     If it be that –

IAGO     If it be that, or any that was hers,

It speaks against her with the other proofs.

OTHELLO     O that the slave had forty thousand lives!

445

One is too poor, too weak for my revenge.

Now do I see ’tis true. Look here, Iago,

All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven:

’Tis gone!

Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell,

450

Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne

To tyrannous hate! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught,

For ’tis of aspics’ tongues!

IAGO     Yet be content!

OTHELLO     O blood, blood, blood! [Othello kneels.]

IAGO     Patience, I say, your mind perhaps may change.

455

OTHELLO     Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic sea

Whose icy current and compulsive course

Ne’er keeps retiring ebb but keeps due on

To the Propontic and the Hellespont:

Even so my bloody thoughts with violent pace

460

Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love

Till that a capable and wide revenge

Swallow them up. Now by yond marble heaven

In the due reverence of a sacred vow

I here engage my words.

IAGO     Do not rise yet. [Iago kneels.]

465

Witness, you ever-burning lights above,

You elements that clip us round about,

Witness that here Iago doth give up

The execution of his wit, hands, heart,

To wronged Othello’s service. Let him command

470

And to obey shall be in me remorse

What bloody business ever.

OTHELLO     I greet thy love

Not with vain thanks but with acceptance bounteous,

And will upon the instant put thee to’t.

Within these three days let me hear thee say

475

That Cassio’s not alive.

IAGO     My friend is dead,

’Tis done – at your request. But let her live.

OTHELLO

Damn her, lewd minx: O damn her, damn her!

Come, go with me apart; I will withdraw

To furnish me with some swift means of death

480

For the fair devil. Now art thou my lieutenant.

IAGO     I am your own for ever.     Exeunt.

3.4 Enter DESDEMONA, EMILIA and Clown.

DESDEMONA     Do you know, sirrah, where lieutenant

CASSIO     lies?

CLOWN     I dare not say he lies anywhere.

DESDEMONA     Why, man?

CLOWN     He’s a soldier, and for me to say a soldier lies,

’tis stabbing.

5

DESDEMONA     Go to, where lodges he?

CLOWN     To tell you where he lodges is to tell you where

I lie.

DESDEMONA     Can anything be made of this?

10

CLOWN     I know not where he lodges, and for me to

devise a lodging and say he lies here, or he lies there,

were to lie in mine own throat.

DESDEMONA     Can you enquire him out and be edified by

report?

15

CLOWN     I will catechize the world for him, that is, make

questions and by them answer.

DESDEMONA     Seek him, bid him come hither, tell him I

have moved my lord on his behalf, and hope all will be

well.

20

CLOWN     To do this is within the compass of man’s wit,

and therefore I will attempt the doing it. Exit.

DESDEMONA

Where should I lose that handkerchief, Emilia?

EMILIA     I know not, madam.

DESDEMONA

Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse

25

Full of crusadoes; and but my noble Moor

Is true of mind, and made of no such baseness

As jealous creatures are, it were enough

To put him to ill-thinking.

EMILIA     Is he not jealous?

DESDEMONA

Who, he? I think the sun where he was born

30

Drew all such humours from him.

EMILIA     Look where he comes.

Enter OTHELLO.

DESDEMONA     I will not leave him now till Cassio

Be called to him. How is’t with you, my lord?

OTHELLO

Well, my good lady. [aside] O hardness to dissemble! –

How do you, Desdemona?

DESDEMONA     Well, my good lord.

35

OTHELLO

Give me your hand. This hand is moist, my lady.

DESDEMONA

It yet hath felt no age, nor known no sorrow.

OTHELLO     This argues fruitfulness and liberal heart:

Hot, hot, and moist. This hand of yours requires

A sequester from liberty, fasting and prayer,

40

Much castigation, exercise devout,

For here’s a young and sweating devil, here,

That commonly rebels. ’Tis a good hand,

A frank one.

DESDEMONA     You may indeed say so,

For ’twas that hand that gave away my heart.

45

OTHELLO     A liberal hand. The hearts of old gave hands

But our new heraldry is hands, not hearts.

DESDEMONA

I cannot speak of this. Come, now, your promise.

OTHELLO     What promise, chuck?

DESDEMONA

I have sent to bid Cassio come speak with you.

50

OTHELLO     I have a salt and sullen rheum offends me,

Lend me thy handkerchief.

DESDEMONA     Here, my lord.

OTHELLO     That which I gave you.

DESDEMONA     I have it not about me.

55

OTHELLO     Not?

DESDEMONA     No, faith, my lord.

OTHELLO     That’s a fault. That handkerchief

Did an Egyptian to my mother give,

She was a charmer and could almost read

The thoughts of people. She told her, while she kept it

60

’Twould make her amiable and subdue my father

Entirely to her love; but if she lost it

Or made a gift of it, my father’s eye

Should hold her loathed and his spirits should hunt

After new fancies. She, dying, gave it me

65

And bid me, when my fate would have me wive,

To give it her. I did so, and – take heed on’t!

Make it a darling, like your precious eye! –

To lose’t or give’t away were such perdition

As nothing else could match.

DESDEMONA     Is’t possible?

70

OTHELLO

’Tis true, there’s magic in the web of it.

A sibyl that had numbered in the world

The sun to course two hundred compasses,

In her prophetic fury sewed the work;

The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk,

75

And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful

Conserved of maidens’ hearts.

DESDEMONA     I’faith, is’t true?

OTHELLO     Most veritable, therefore look to’t well.

DESDEMONA

Then would to God that I had never seen’t!

OTHELLO     Ha! wherefore?

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DESDEMONA     Why do you speak so startingly and rash?

OTHELLO     Is’t lost? Is’t gone? Speak, is’t out o’the way?

DESDEMONA     Heaven bless us!

OTHELLO     Say you?

DESDEMONA     It is not lost, but what an if it were?

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OTHELLO     How?

DESDEMONA     I say it is not lost.

OTHELLO     Fetch’t, let me see’t.

DESDEMONA     Why, so I can, sir; but I will not now.

This is a trick to put me from my suit.

Pray you, let Cassio be received again.

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OTHELLO

Fetch me the handkerchief, my mind misgives.

DESDEMONA     Come, come,

You’ll never meet a more sufficient man.

OTHELLO     The handkerchief!

DESDEMONA     I pray, talk me of Cassio.

OTHELLO     The handkerchief!

DESDEMONA     A man that all his time

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Hath founded his good fortunes on your love,

Shared dangers with you –

OTHELLO     The handkerchief!

DESDEMONA     I’faith, you are to blame.

OTHELLO     Zounds!     Exit.

EMILIA     Is not this man jealous?

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DESDEMONA     I ne’er saw this before,

Sure there’s some wonder in this handkerchief;

I am most unhappy in the loss of it.

EMILIA     ’Tis not a year or two shows us a man.

They are all but stomachs, and we all but food:

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They eat us hungerly, and when they are full

They belch us.

Enter IAGO and CASSIO.

Look you, Cassio and my husband.

IAGO     There is no other way, ’tis she must do’t,

And lo, the happiness! go and importune her.

DESDEMONA

How now, good Cassio, what’s the news with you?

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CASSIO     Madam, my former suit. I do beseech you

That by your virtuous means I may again

Exist, and be a member of his love

Whom I, with all the office of my heart

Entirely honour. I would not be delayed:

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If my offence be of such mortal kind

That nor my service past nor present sorrows

Nor purposed merit in futurity

Can ransom me into his love again,

But to know so must be my benefit;

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So shall I clothe me in a forced content

And shut myself up in some other course

To fortune’s alms.

DESDEMONA     Alas, thrice-gentle Cassio,

My advocation is not now in tune;

My lord is not my lord, nor should I know him

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Were he in favour as in humour altered.

So help me every spirit sanctified

As I have spoken for you all my best

And stood within the blank of his displeasure

For my free speech. You must awhile be patient:

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What I can do I will, and more I will

Than for myself I dare. Let that suffice you.

IAGO     Is my lord angry?

EMILIA     He went hence but now,

And certainly in strange unquietness.

IAGO     Can he be angry? I have seen the cannon

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When it hath blown his ranks into the air

And like the devil, from his very arm,

Puffed his own brother – and can he be angry?

Something of moment then. I will go meet him,

There’s matter in’t indeed, if he be angry.

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DESDEMONA

I prithee do so.     [Exit Iago.]

Something sure of state

Either from Venice, or some unhatched practice

Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him,

Hath puddled his clear spirit, and in such cases

Men’s natures wrangle with inferior things

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Though great ones are their object. ’Tis even so,

For let our finger ache and it indues

Our other healthful members even to that sense

Of pain. Nay, we must think men are not gods

Nor of them look for such observancy

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As fits the bridal. Beshrew me much, Emilia,

I was, unhandsome warrior as I am,

Arraigning his unkindness with my soul,

But now I find I had suborned the witness

And he’s indicted falsely.

EMILIA     Pray heaven it be

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State matters, as you think, and no conception

Nor no jealous toy, concerning you.

DESDEMONA     Alas the day, I never gave him cause.

EMILIA     But jealous souls will not be answered so:

They are not ever jealous for the cause,

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But jealous for they’re jealous. It is a monster

Begot upon itself, born on itself.

DESDEMONA

Heaven keep that monster from Othello’s mind!

EMILIA     Lady, amen.

DESDEMONA

I will go seek him. Cassio, walk here about,

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If I do find him fit I’ll move your suit

And seek to effect it to my uttermost.

CASSIO     I humbly thank your ladyship.

Exeunt Desdemona and Emilia.

Enter BIANCA.

BIANCA     Save you, friend Cassio!

CASSIO     What make you from home?

How is’t with you, my most fair Bianca?

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I’faith, sweet love, I was coming to your house.

BIANCA     And I was going to your lodging, Cassio.

What, keep a week away? seven days and nights?

Eight score eight hours? and lovers’ absent hours

More tedious than the dial, eight score times!

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O weary reckoning!

CASSIO     Pardon me, Bianca,

I have this while with leaden thoughts been pressed,

But I shall in a more continuate time

Strike off this score of absence. Sweet Bianca,

[giving her Desdemona’s handkerchief]

Take me this work out.

BIANCA     O Cassio, whence came this?

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This is some token from a newer friend!

To the felt absence now I feel a cause:

Is’t come to this? Well, well.

CASSIO     Go to, woman,

Throw your vile guesses in the devil’s teeth

From whence you have them! You are jealous now

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That this is from some mistress, some remembrance:

No, by my faith, Bianca.

BIANCA     Why, whose is it?

CASSIO     I know not neither, I found it in my chamber.

I like the work well: ere it be demanded,

As like enough it will, I’d have it copied.

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Take it, and do’t, and leave me for this time.

BIANCA     Leave you? Wherefore?

CASSIO     I do attend here on the general

And think it no addition, nor my wish,

To have him see me womaned.

BIANCA     Why, I pray you?

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CASSIO     Not that I love you not.

BIANCA     But that you do not love me.

I pray you, bring me on the way a little,

And say if I shall see you soon at night.

CASSIO     ’Tis but a little way that I can bring you

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For I attend here, but I’ll see you soon.

BIANCA ’Tis very good: I must be circumstanced.

Exeunt.

4.1 Enter OTHELLO and IAGO.

IAGO     Will you think so?

OTHELLO     Think so, Iago?

IAGO     What,

To kiss in private?

OTHELLO     An unauthorized kiss!

IAGO     Or to be naked with her friend in bed

An hour or more, not meaning any harm?

OTHELLO     Naked in bed, Iago, and not mean harm?

5

It is hypocrisy against the devil:

They that mean virtuously, and yet do so,

The devil their virtue tempts, and they tempt heaven.

IAGO     So they do nothing, ’tis a venial slip;

But if I give my wife a handkerchief –

10

OTHELLO     What then?

IAGO     Why, then ’tis hers, my lord, and being hers

She may, I think, bestow’t on any man.

OTHELLO     She is protectress of her honour too:

May she give that?

15

IAGO     Her honour is an essence that’s not seen,

They have it very oft that have it not.

But for the handkerchief –

OTHELLO

By heaven, I would most gladly have forgot it!

Thou said’st – O, it comes o’er my memory

20

As doth the raven o’er the infectious house

Boding to all – he had my handkerchief.

IAGO     Ay, what of that?

OTHELLO     That’s not so good now.

IAGO

What if I had said I had seen him do you wrong?

Or heard him say – as knaves be such abroad

25

Who, having by their own importunate suit

Or voluntary dotage of some mistress

Convinced or supplied them, cannot choose

But they must blab –

OTHELLO     Hath he said anything?

IAGO     He hath, my lord, but be you well assured

30

No more than he’ll unswear.

OTHELLO     What hath he said?

IAGO

Faith, that he did – I know not what. He did –

OTHELLO     What? what?

IAGO     Lie.

OTHELLO     With her?

IAGO     With her, on her, what you will.

OTHELLO     Lie with her? lie on her? We say lie on her

35

when they belie her! Lie with her, zounds, that’s

fulsome! – Handkerchief! confessions! handkerchief!

– To confess, and be hanged for his labour! First to be

hanged, and then to confess: I tremble at it. Nature

would not invest herself in such shadowing passion

40

without some instruction. It is not words that shakes

me thus. Pish! Noses, ears, and lips. Is’t possible?

Confess! handkerchief! O devil! [He falls in a trance].

IAGO     Work on,

My medicine, work! Thus credulous fools are caught,

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And many worthy and chaste dames even thus,

All guiltless, meet reproach. – What ho! my lord!

My lord, I say! Othello!

Enter CASSIO.

How now, Cassio?

CASSIO     What’s the matter?

IAGO     My lord is fallen into an epilepsy;

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This is his second fit, he had one yesterday.

CASSIO     Rub him about the temples.

IAGO     No, forbear:

The lethargy must have his quiet course,

If not, he foams at mouth, and by and by

Breaks out to savage madness. Look, he stirs;

55

Do you withdraw yourself a little while,

He will recover straight. When he is gone

I would on great occasion speak with you.

Exit Cassio.

How is it, general? have you not hurt your head?

OTHELLO     Dost thou mock me?

IAGO     I mock you? no, by heaven!

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Would you would bear your fortune like a man!

OTHELLO     A horned man’s a monster, and a beast.

IAGO     There’s many a beast then in a populous city,

And many a civil monster.

OTHELLO     Did he confess it?

IAGO     Good sir, be a man,

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Think every bearded fellow that’s but yoked

May draw with you. There’s millions now alive

That nightly lie in those unproper beds

Which they dare swear peculiar: your case is better.

O, ’tis the spite of hell, the fiend’s arch-mock,

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To lip a wanton in a secure couch

And to suppose her chaste. No, let me know,

And, knowing what I am, I know what she shall be.

OTHELLO     O, thou art wise, ’tis certain.

IAGO     Stand you a while apart,

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Confine yourself but in a patient list.

Whilst you were here o’erwhelmed with your grief

– A passion most unsuiting such a man –

Cassio came hither. I shifted him away

And laid good ’scuse upon your ecstasy,

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Bade him anon return and here speak with me,

The which he promised. Do but encave yourself

And mark the fleers, the gibes and notable scorns

That dwell in every region of his face;

For I will make him tell the tale anew

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Where, how, how oft, how long ago, and when

He hath and is again to cope your wife.

I say, but mark his gesture; marry, patience,

Or I shall say you’re all in all in spleen

And nothing of a man.

OTHELLO     Dost thou hear, Iago?

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I will be found most cunning in my patience

But – dost thou hear? – most bloody.

IAGO     That’s not amiss,

But yet keep time in all. Will you withdraw?

[Othello withdraws.]

Now will I question Cassio of Bianca,

A housewife that by selling her desires

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Buys herself bread and clothes: it is a creature

That dotes on Cassio – as ’tis the strumpet’s plague

To beguile many and be beguiled by one.

He, when he hears of her, cannot refrain

From the excess of laughter. Here he comes.

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Enter CASSIO.

As he shall smile, Othello shall go mad.

And his unbookish jealousy must construe

Poor Cassio’s smiles, gestures and light behaviour

Quite in the wrong. How do you now, lieutenant?

CASSIO     The worser, that you give me the addition

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Whose want even kills me.

IAGO     Ply Desdemona well, and you are sure on’t.

[speaking lower] Now if this suit lay in Bianca’s power

How quickly should you speed!

CASSIO     Alas, poor caitiff!

OTHELLO     Look how he laughs already!

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IAGO     I never knew a woman love man so.

CASSIO     Alas, poor rogue, I think i’faith she loves me.

OTHELLO     Now he denies it faintly, and laughs it out.

IAGO     Do you hear, Cassio?

OTHELLO     Now he importunes him

To tell it o’er; go to, well said, well said.

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IAGO     She gives it out that you shall marry her;

Do you intend it?

CASSIO     Ha, ha, ha!

OTHELLO     Do ye triumph, Roman, do you triumph?

CASSIO     I marry! What, a customer! prithee bear some

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charity to my wit, do not think it so unwholesome. Ha,

ha, ha!

OTHELLO     So, so, so, so: they laugh that win.

IAGO     Faith, the cry goes that you shall marry her.

CASSIO     Prithee say true!

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IAGO     I am a very villain else.

OTHELLO     Have you stored me? Well.

CASSIO     This is the monkey’s own giving out. She is

persuaded I will marry her, out of her own love and

flattery, not out of my promise.

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OTHELLO     Iago beckons me: now he begins the story.

CASSIO     She was here even now, she haunts me in every

place. I was the other day talking on the sea-bank with

certain Venetians, and thither comes the bauble and,

by this hand, falls me thus about my neck –

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OTHELLO     Crying ‘O dear Cassio!’ as it were: his gesture

imports it.

CASSIO     So hangs and lolls and weeps upon me, so

shakes and pulls me! Ha, ha, ha!

OTHELLO     Now he tells how she plucked him to my

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chamber. O, I see that nose of yours, but not that dog

I shall throw it to.

CASSIO     Well, I must leave her company.

IAGO     Before me! look where she comes!

Enter BIANCA.

CASSIO     ’Tis such another fitchew; marry, a perfumed

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one. What do you mean by this haunting of me?

BIANCA     Let the devil and his dam haunt you! What did

you mean by that same handkerchief you gave me even

now? I was a fine fool to take it – I must take out the

work! A likely piece of work, that you should find it in

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your chamber and know not who left it there! This is

some minx’s token, and I must take out the work?

There, give it your hobby-horse; wheresoever you had

it, I’ll take out no work on’t!

CASSIO     How now, my sweet Bianca, how now, how now?

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OTHELLO     By heaven, that should be my handkerchief!

BIANCA     If you’ll come to supper tonight, you may; if

you will not, come when you are next prepared for.

Exit.

IAGO     After her, after her!

CASSIO     Faith, I must, she’ll rail in the streets else.

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IAGO     Will you sup there?

CASSIO     Faith, I intend so.

IAGO     Well, I may chance to see you, for I would very

fain speak with you.

CASSIO     Prithee come, will you?

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IAGO     Go to, say no more.     Exit Cassio.

OTHELLO     How shall I murder him, Iago?

IAGO     Did you perceive how he laughed at his vice?

OTHELLO     O Iago!

IAGO     And did you see the handkerchief?

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OTHELLO     Was that mine?

IAGO     Yours, by this hand: and to see how he prizes the

foolish woman your wife! She gave it him, and he hath

given it his whore.

OTHELLO     I would have him nine years a-killing. A fine

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woman, a fair woman, a sweet woman!

IAGO     Nay, you must forget that.

OTHELLO     Ay, let her rot and perish and be damned

tonight, for she shall not live. No, my heart is turned

to stone: I strike it, and it hurts my hand. O, the world

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hath not a sweeter creature: she might lie by an

emperor’s side and command him tasks.

IAGO     Nay, that’s not your way.

OTHELLO     Hang her, I do but say what she is: so delicate

with her needle, an admirable musician. O, she will

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sing the savageness out of a bear! of so high and

plenteous wit and invention!

IAGO     She’s the worse for all this.

OTHELLO     O, a thousand, a thousand times: and then of

so gentle a condition.

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IAGO     Ay, too gentle.

OTHELLO     Nay, that’s certain. But yet the pity of it, Iago

– O, Iago, the pity of it, Iago!

IAGO     If you are so fond over her iniquity, give her

patent to offend, for if it touch not you it comes near

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nobody.

OTHELLO     I will chop her into messes! Cuckold me!

IAGO     O, ’tis foul in her.

OTHELLO     With mine officer!

IAGO     That’s fouler.

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OTHELLO     Get me some poison, Iago, this night. I’ll not

expostulate with her, lest her body and beauty

unprovide my mind again. This night, Iago.

IAGO     Do it not with poison, strangle her in her bed –

even the bed she hath contaminated.

205

OTHELLO     Good, good, the justice of it pleases; very

good!

IAGO     And for Cassio, let me be his undertaker. You shall

hear more by midnight.

OTHELLO     Excellent good. [A trumpet within.] What

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trumpet is that same?

IAGO     I warrant something from Venice.

Enter LODOVICO, DESDEMONA and attendants.

’Tis Lodovico, this, comes from the duke.

See, your wife’s with him.

LODOVICO     God save you, worthy general.

215

OTHELLO     With all my heart, sir.

LODOVICO

The duke and senators of Venice greet you.

[Gives him a letter.]

OTHELLO     I kiss the instrument of their pleasures.

[Opens the letter and reads.]

DESDEMONA

And what’s the news, good cousin Lodovico?

IAGO     I am very glad to see you, signior.

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Welcome to Cyprus.

LODOVICO     I thank you. How does Lieutenant Cassio?

IAGO     Lives, sir.

DESDEMONA

Cousin, there’s fallen between him and my lord

An unkind breach, but you shall make all well –

225

OTHELLO     Are you sure of that?

DESDEMONA     My lord?

OTHELLO     [Reads.] This fail you not to do, as you will –

LODOVICO     He did not call, he’s busy in the paper.

Is there division ’twixt my lord and Cassio?

230

DESDEMONA     A most unhappy one: I would do much

T’atone them, for the love I bear to Cassio.

OTHELLO     Fire and brimstone!

DESDEMONA     My lord?

OTHELLO     Are you wise?

DESDEMONA     What, is he angry?

LODOVICO     Maybe the letter moved him.

For, as I think, they do command him home,

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Deputing Cassio in his government.

DESDEMONA     By my troth, I am glad on’t.

OTHELLO     Indeed!

DESDEMONA     My lord?

OTHELLO     I am glad … to see you mad.

DESDEMONA     Why, sweet Othello?

OTHELLO     Devil! [striking her]

DESDEMONA     I have not deserved this.

240

LODOVICO

My lord, this would not be believed in Venice

Though I should swear I saw’t. ’Tis very much;

Make her amends, she weeps.

OTHELLO     O devil, devil!

If that the earth could teem with woman’s tears

Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile:

245

Out of my sight!

DESDEMONA     I will not stay to offend you.

LODOVICO     Truly, an obedient lady.

I do beseech your lordship, call her back.

OTHELLO     Mistress!

DESDEMONA     My lord?

250

OTHELLO     What would you with her, sir?

LODOVICO     Who, I, my lord?

OTHELLO

Ay, you did wish that I would make her turn.

Sir, she can turn, and turn, and yet go on

And turn again. And she can weep, sir, weep.

And she’s obedient: as you say, obedient,

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Very obedient. – Proceed you in your tears. –

Concerning this, sir – O well-painted passion! –

I am commanded home. – Get you away.

I’ll send for you anon. – Sir, I obey the mandate

And will return to Venice. – Hence, avaunt! –

260

Exit Desdemona.

Cassio shall have my place. And, sir, tonight

I do entreat that we may sup together.

You are welcome, sir, to Cyprus. Goats and monkeys!

Exit.

LODOVICO

Is this the noble Moor whom our full senate

Call all in all sufficient? This the nature

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Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue

The shot of accident nor dart of chance

Could neither graze nor pierce?

IAGO     He is much changed.

LODOVICO     Are his wits safe? Is he not light of brain?

IAGO     He’s that he is: I may not breathe my censure

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What he might be; if what he might, he is not,

I would to heaven he were!

LODOVICO     What! strike his wife!

IAGO     Faith, that was not so well; yet would I knew

That stroke would prove the worst.

LODOVICO     Is it his use?

Or did the letters work upon his blood

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And new-create this fault?

IAGO     Alas, alas!

It is not honesty in me to speak

What I have seen and known. You shall observe him,

And his own courses will denote him so

That I may save my speech. Do but go after

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And mark how he continues.

LODOVICO

I am sorry that I am deceived in him.     Exeunt.

4.2 Enter OTHELLO and EMILIA.

OTHELLO     You have seen nothing, then?

EMILIA     Nor ever heard, nor ever did suspect.

OTHELLO

Yes, you have seen Cassio and … she together.

EMILIA     But then I saw no harm, and then I heard

Each syllable that breath made up between them.

5

OTHELLO     What, did they never whisper?

EMILIA     Never, my lord.

OTHELLO     Nor send you out o’th’ way?

EMILIA     Never.

OTHELLO

To fetch her fan, her gloves, her mask, nor nothing?

EMILIA     Never, my lord.

10

OTHELLO     That’s strange.

EMILIA     I durst, my lord, to wager she is honest,

Lay down my soul at stake: if you think other

Remove your thought, it doth abuse your bosom.

If any wretch have put this in your head

15

Let heaven requite it with the serpent’s curse,

For if she be not honest, chaste and true

There’s no man happy: the purest of their wives

Is foul as slander.

OTHELLO     Bid her come hither; go.

Exit Emilia.

She says enough; yet she’s a simple bawd

20

That cannot say as much. This is a subtle whore,

A closet, lock and key, of villainous secrets;

And yet she’ll kneel and pray, I have seen her do’t.

Enter DESDEMONA and EMILIA.

DESDEMONA     My lord, what is your will?

OTHELLO     Pray, chuck, come hither.

DESDEMONA     What is your pleasure?

OTHELLO     Let me see your eyes.

25

Look in my face.

DESDEMONA     What horrible fancy’s this?

OTHELLO     [to Emilia]     Some of your function, mistress,

Leave procreants alone and shut the door;

Cough, or cry hem, if anybody come.

Your mystery, your mystery: nay, dispatch!

30

Exit Emilia.

DESDEMONA

Upon my knees, what doth your speech import?

I understand a fury in your words

But not the words.

OTHELLO     Why, what art thou?

DESDEMONA

Your wife, my lord: your true and loyal wife.

35

OTHELLO     Come, swear it, damn thyself,

Lest, being like one of heaven, the devils themselves

Should fear to seize thee: therefore be double-damned,

Swear thou art honest!

DESDEMONA     Heaven doth truly know it.

OTHELLO

Heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell.

40

DESDEMONA

To whom, my lord? with whom? how am I false?

OTHELLO     Ah, Desdemon, away, away, away!

DESDEMONA     Alas the heavy day, why do you weep?

Am I the motive of these tears, my lord?

If haply you my father do suspect

45

An instrument of this your calling back,

Lay not your blame on me: if you have lost him

Why, I have lost him too.

OTHELLO     Had it pleased heaven

To try me with affliction, had they rained

All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head,

50

Steeped me in poverty to the very lips,

Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes,

I should have found in some place of my soul

A drop of patience; but, alas, to make me

The fixed figure for the time of scorn

55

To point his slow and moving finger at!

Yet could I bear that too, well, very well:

But there where I have garnered up my heart,

Where either I must live or bear no life,

The fountain from the which my current runs

60

Or else dries up – to be discarded thence!

Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads

To knot and gender in! Turn thy complexion there,

Patience, thou young and rose-lipped cherubin,

Ay, here look, grim as hell!

65

DESDEMONA     I hope my noble lord esteems me honest.

OTHELLO     O, ay, as summer flies are in the shambles,

That quicken even with blowing. O thou weed

Who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet

That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne’er

been born!

70

DESDEMONA

Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?

OTHELLO     Was this fair paper, this most goodly book

Made to write ‘whore’ upon? What committed!

Committed? O thou public commoner!

I should make very forges of my cheeks

75

That would to cinders burn up modesty

Did I but speak thy deeds. What committed!

Heaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks,

The bawdy wind that kisses all it meets

Is hushed within the hollow mine of earth

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And will not hear’t. What committed!

Impudent strumpet!

DESDEMONA     By heaven, you do me wrong.

OTHELLO     Are not you a strumpet?

DESDEMONA     No, as I am a Christian.

If to preserve this vessel for my lord

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From any hated foul unlawful touch

Be not to be a strumpet, I am none.

OTHELLO     What, not a whore?

DESDEMONA     No, as I shall be saved.

OTHELLO     Is’t possible?

DESDEMONA     O heaven, forgive us!

OTHELLO     I cry you mercy then,

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I took you for that cunning whore of Venice

That married with Othello. You! Mistress!

Enter EMILIA.

That have the office opposite to Saint Peter

And keep the gates of hell – you, you, ay you!

We have done our course, there’s money for your pains,

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I pray you turn the key and keep our counsel.     Exit.

EMILIA     Alas, what does this gentleman conceive?

How do you, madam? how do you, my good lady?

DESDEMONA     Faith, half asleep.

EMILIA     Good madam, what’s the matter with my lord?

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DESDEMONA     With whom?

EMILIA     Why, with my lord, madam.

DESDEMONA     Who is thy lord?

EMILIA     He that is yours, sweet lady.

DESDEMONA     I have none. Do not talk to me, Emilia;

I cannot weep, nor answers have I none

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But what should go by water. Prithee, tonight

Lay on my bed my wedding sheets; remember,

And call thy husband hither.

EMILIA     Here’s a change indeed!

Exit.

DESDEMONA     ’Tis meet I should be used so, very meet.

How have I been behaved that he might stick

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The small’st opinion on my greatest misuse?

Enter IAGO and EMILIA.

IAGO

What is your pleasure, madam? How is’t with you?

DESDEMONA

I cannot tell. Those that do teach young babes

Do it with gentle means and easy tasks.

He might have chid me so, for, in good faith,

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I am a child to chiding.

IAGO     What is the matter, lady?

EMILIA     Alas, Iago, my lord hath so bewhored her,

Thrown such despite and heavy terms upon her

That true hearts cannot bear it.

DESDEMONA     Am I that name, Iago?

IAGO     What name, fair lady?

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DESDEMONA     Such as she said my lord did say I was.

EMILIA     He called her whore. A beggar in his drink

Could not have laid such terms upon his callat.

IAGO     Why did he so?

DESDEMONA     I do not know; I am sure I am none such.

125

IAGO     Do not weep, do not weep: alas the day!

EMILIA     Hath she forsook so many noble matches,

Her father, and her country, and her friends,

To be called whore? would it not make one weep?

DESDEMONA     It is my wretched fortune.

IAGO     Beshrew him for’t,

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How comes this trick upon him?

DESDEMONA     Nay, heaven doth know.

EMILIA     I will be hanged if some eternal villain

Some busy and insinuating rogue,

Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,

Have not devised this slander, I’ll be hanged else!

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IAGO     Fie, there is no such man, it is impossible.

DESDEMONA     If any such there be, heaven pardon him.

EMILIA     A halter pardon him, and hell gnaw his bones!

Why should he call her whore? who keeps her company?

What place, what time, what form, what likelihood?

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The Moor’s abused by some most villainous knave,

Some base notorious knave, some scurvy fellow.

O heaven, that such companions thou’dst unfold

And put in every honest hand a whip

To lash the rascals naked through the world

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Even from the east to th’ west.

IAGO     Speak within doors.

EMILIA     O fie upon them! some such squire he was

That turned your wit the seamy side without

And made you to suspect me with the Moor.

IAGO     You are a fool, go to.

DESDEMONA     O God, Iago,

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What shall I do to win my lord again?

Good friend, go to him, for, by this light of heaven,

I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel:

If e’er my will did trespass ’gainst his love

Either in discourse of thought or actual deed,

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Or that mine eyes, mine ears or any sense

Delighted them in any other form,

Or that I do not yet, and ever did,

And ever will – though he do shake me off

To beggarly divorcement – love him dearly,

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Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much,

And his unkindness may defeat my life

But never taint my love. I cannot say whore:

It does abhor me now I speak the word;

To do the act that might the addition earn

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Not the world’s mass of vanity could make me.

IAGO     I pray you, be content, ’tis but his humour;

The business of the state does him offence

And he does chide with you.

DESDEMONA     If ’twere no other –

IAGO     ’Tis but so, I warrant.

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[Trumpets.]

Hark how these instruments summon to supper:

The messengers of Venice stay the meat,

Go in, and weep not; all things shall be well.

Exeunt Desdemona and Emilia.

Enter RODERIGO.

How now, Roderigo?

RODERIGO     I do not find that thou deal’st justly with me.

175

IAGO     What in the contrary?

RODERIGO     Every day thou doff ’st me with some device,

Iago, and rather, as it seems to me now, keep’st from

me all conveniency than suppliest me with the least

advantage of hope. I will indeed no longer endure it;

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nor am I yet persuaded to put up in peace what already

I have foolishly suffered.

IAGO     Will you hear me, Roderigo?

RODERIGO     Faith, I have heard too much; and your

words and performances are no kin together.

185

IAGO     You charge me most unjustly.

RODERIGO     With nought but truth. I have wasted myself

out of my means. The jewels you have had from me to

deliver to Desdemona would half have corrupted a

votarist. You have told me she hath received them, and

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returned me expectations and comforts of sudden

respect and acquittance, but I find none.

IAGO     Well, go to; very well.

RODERIGO     ‘Very well,’ ‘go to’! I cannot go to, man, nor

’tis not very well. By this hand, I think it is scurvy, and

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begin to find myself fopped in it.

IAGO     Very well.

RODERIGO     I tell you, ’tis not very well! I will make

myself known to Desdemona: if she will return me my

jewels I will give over my suit and repent my unlawful

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solicitation; if not, assure yourself I will seek

satisfaction of you.

IAGO     You have said now.

RODERIGO     Ay, and said nothing but what I protest

intendment of doing.

205

IAGO     Why, now I see there’s mettle in thee, and even

from this instant do build on thee a better opinion

than ever before. Give me thy hand, Roderigo. Thou

hast taken against me a most just exception – but yet I

protest I have dealt most directly in thy affair.

210

RODERIGO     It hath not appeared.

IAGO     I grant indeed it hath not appeared, and your

suspicion is not without wit and judgement. But,

Roderigo, if thou hast that in thee indeed which I have

greater reason to believe now than ever – I mean

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purpose, courage, and valour – this night show it. If

thou the next night following enjoy not Desdemona,

take me from this world with treachery and devise

engines for my life.

RODERIGO     Well – what is it? Is it within reason and

220

compass?

IAGO     Sir, there is especial commission come from

Venice to depute Cassio in Othello’s place.

RODERIGO     Is that true? Why, then Othello and

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Desdemona return again to Venice.

IAGO     O no, he goes into Mauretania and taketh away

with him the fair Desdemona, unless his abode be

lingered here by some accident – wherein none can be

so determinate as the removing of Cassio.

RODERIGO     How do you mean, removing of him?

230

IAGO     Why, by making him uncapable of Othello’s place:

knocking out his brains.

RODERIGO     And that you would have me to do!

IAGO     Ay, if you dare do yourself a profit and a right. He

sups tonight with a harlotry, and thither will I go to

235

him. He knows not yet of his honourable fortune: if

you will watch his going thence – which I will fashion

to fall out between twelve and one – you may take him

at your pleasure. I will be near to second your attempt,

and he shall fall between us. Come, stand not amazed

240

at it, but go along with me: I will show you such a

necessity in his death that you shall think yourself

bound to put it on him. It is now high supper time,

and the night grows to waste: about it.

RODERIGO     I will hear further reason for this.

245

IAGO     And you shall be satisfied.     Exeunt.

4.3 Enter OTHELLO, LODOVICO, DESDEMONA, EMILIA and attendants.

LODOVICO

I do beseech you, sir, trouble yourself no further.

OTHELLO     O, pardon me, ’twill do me good to walk.

LODOVICO

Madam, good night: I humbly thank your ladyship.

DESDEMONA     Your honour is most welcome.

OTHELLO     Will you walk, sir?

O, Desdemona –

DESDEMONA     My lord?

OTHELLO     Get you to bed

5

On th’instant, I will be returned forthwith.

Dismiss your attendant there: look’t be done.

DESDEMONA     I will, my lord.

Exeunt Othello, Lodovico and attendants.

EMILIA

How goes it now? He looks gentler than he did.

DESDEMONA     He says he will return incontinent,

10

And hath commanded me to go to bed

And bid me to dismiss you.

EMILIA     Dismiss me?

DESDEMONA

It was his bidding; therefore, good Emilia,

Give me my nightly wearing, and adieu.

We must not now displease him.

15

EMILIA     Ay. – Would you had never seen him!

DESDEMONA

So would not I: my love doth so approve him

That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns

– Prithee unpin me – have grace and favour.

EMILIA

I have laid those sheets you bade me on the bed.

20

DESDEMONA

All’s one. Good faith, how foolish are our minds!

If I do die before thee, prithee shroud me

In one of these same sheets.

EMILIA     Come, come, you talk.

DESDEMONA

My mother had a maid called Barbary,

She was in love, and he she loved proved mad

25

And did forsake her. She had a song of ‘willow’,

An old thing ’twas, but it expressed her fortune

And she died singing it. That song tonight

Will not go from my mind. I have much to do

But to go hang my head all at one side

30

And sing it like poor Barbary. Prithee dispatch.

EMILIA     Shall I go fetch your night-gown?

DESDEMONA     No, unpin me here.

EMILIA     This Lodovico is a proper man. A very

handsome man.

35

DESDEMONA     He speaks well.

EMILIA     I know a lady in Venice would have walked

barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip.

DESDEMONA     [Sings.]

The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,

Sing all a green willow:

40

Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,

Sing willow, willow, willow.

The fresh streams ran by her and murmured her moans,

Sing willow, willow, willow:

Her salt tears fell from her and softened the stones,

45

Sing willow, willow, willow.

[Speaks.] Lay by these.

Willow, willow –

[Speaks.] Prithee hie thee: he’ll come anon.

Sing all a green willow must be my garland.

50

Let nobody blame him, his scorn I approve –

[Speaks.] Nay, that’s not next. Hark, who is’t that knocks?

EMILIA     It’s the wind.

DESDEMONA     [Sings.]

I called my love false love; but what said he then? Sing willow, willow, willow:

55

If I court moe women, you’ll couch with moe men.

[Speaks.] So, get thee gone; good night. Mine eyes do itch,

Doth that bode weeping?

EMILIA     ’Tis neither here nor there.

DESDEMONA

I have heard it said so. O, these men, these men!

Dost thou in conscience think – tell me, Emilia –

60

That there be women do abuse their husbands

In such gross kind?

EMILIA     There be some such, no question.

DESDEMONA

Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?

EMILIA     Why, would not you?

DESDEMONA     No, by this heavenly light!

EMILIA     Nor I neither, by this heavenly light:

65

I might do’t as well i’th’ dark.

DESDEMONA

Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?

EMILIA     The world’s a huge thing: it is a great price

For a small vice.

DESDEMONA     Good troth, I think thou wouldst not.

EMILIA     By my troth, I think I should, and undo’t when

70

I had done. Marry, I would not do such a thing for a

joint-ring, nor for measures of lawn, nor for gowns,

petticoats, nor caps, nor any petty exhibition. But for

all the whole world? ud’s pity, who would not make

her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch? I

75

should venture purgatory for’t.

DESDEMONA     Beshrew me, if I would do such a wrong

For the whole world!

EMILIA     Why, the wrong is but a wrong i’th’ world; and

having the world for your labour, ’tis a wrong in your

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own world, and you might quickly make it right.

DESDEMONA     I do not think there is any such woman.

EMILIA     Yes, a dozen, and as many to th’ vantage as

would store the world they played for.

But I do think it is their husbands’ faults

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If wives do fall. Say that they slack their duties

And pour our treasures into foreign laps;

Or else break out in peevish jealousies,

Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us,

Or scant our former having in despite,

90

Why, we have galls: and though we have some grace

Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know

Their wives have sense like them: they see, and smell,

And have their palates both for sweet and sour

As husbands have. What is it that they do

95

When they change us for others? Is it sport?

I think it is. And doth affection breed it?

I think it doth. Is’t frailty that thus errs?

It is so too. And have not we affections?

Desires for sport? and frailty, as men have?

100

Then let them use us well: else let them know,

The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.

DESDEMONA

Good night, good night. God me such usage send

Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend!

Exeunt.

5.1 Enter IAGO and RODERIGO.

IAGO

Here, stand behind this bulk, straight will he come.

Wear thy good rapier bare, and put it home;

Quick, quick, fear nothing, I’ll be at thy elbow.

It makes us or it mars us, think on that

And fix most firm thy resolution.

5

RODERIGO     Be near at hand, I may miscarry in’t.

IAGO     Here, at thy hand: be bold, and take thy stand.

[Retires.]

RODERIGO     I have no great devotion to the deed

And yet he hath given me satisfying reasons:

’Tis but a man gone. Forth, my sword: he dies.

10

IAGO

I have rubbed this young quat almost to the sense

And he grows angry. Now, whether he kill Cassio

Or Cassio him, or each do kill the other,

Every way makes my gain. Live Roderigo,

He calls me to a restitution large

15

Of gold and jewels that I bobbed from him

As gifts to Desdemona:

It must not be. If Cassio do remain

He hath a daily beauty in his life

That makes me ugly; and besides, the Moor

20

May unfold me to him – there stand I in much peril.

No, he must die. Be’t so! I hear him coming.

Enter CASSIO.

RODERIGO     I know his gait, ’tis he. Villain, thou diest!

[Makes a thrust at Cassio.]

CASSIO     That thrust had been mine enemy indeed

But that my coat is better than thou know’st:

25

I will make proof of thine.

[Draws, and wounds Roderigo.]

RODERIGO     O, I am slain!

[Iago from behind wounds Cassio in the leg, and exit.]

CASSIO

I am maimed for ever! Help, ho! murder! murder!

Enter OTHELLO.

OTHELLO     The voice of Cassio. Iago keeps his word.

RODERIGO     O, villain that I am!

OTHELLO     It is even so.

CASSIO     O, help ho! light! a surgeon!

30

OTHELLO     ’Tis he. O brave Iago, honest and just,

That hast such noble sense of thy friend’s wrong!

Thou teachest me. Minion, your dear lies dead,

And your unblest fate hies; strumpet, I come.

Forth of my heart those charms, thine eyes, are

blotted,

35

Thy bed, lust-stained, shall with lust’s blood be

spotted. Exit.

Enter LODOVICO and GRATIANO.

CASSIO

What ho, no watch, no passage? murder, murder!

GRATIANO

’Tis some mischance, the voice is very direful.

CASSIO     O help!

LODOVICO     Hark!

40

RODERIGO     O wretched villain!

LODOVICO     Two or three groan. It is a heavy night;

These may be counterfeits, let’s think’t unsafe

To come in to the cry without more help.

RODERIGO     Nobody come? then shall I bleed to death.

45

Enter IAGO, with a light.

LODOVICO     Hark!

GRATIANO

Here’s one comes in his shirt, with light and weapons.

IAGO

Who’s there? Whose noise is this that cries on murder?

LODOVICO     We do not know.

IAGO     Did not you hear a cry?

CASSIO     Here, here! for heaven’s sake help me!

IAGO     What’s the matter?

50

GRATIANO     This is Othello’s ancient, as I take it.

LODOVICO     The same indeed, a very valiant fellow.

IAGO     What are you here that cry so grievously?

CASSIO     Iago? O, I am spoiled, undone by villains!

Give me some help.

55

IAGO     O me, lieutenant! What villains have done this?

CASSIO     I think that one of them is hereabout

And cannot make away.

IAGO     O treacherous villains!

What are you there? Come in, and give some help.

RODERIGO     O, help me here!

60

CASSIO     That’s one of them.

IAGO     O murderous slave! O villain!

[Stabs Roderigo.]

RODERIGO     O damned Iago! O inhuman dog!

IAGO

Kill men i’th’ dark? Where be these bloody thieves?

How silent is this town! Ho, murder, murder!

What may you be? Are you of good or evil?

65

LODOVICO     As you shall prove us, praise us.

IAGO     Signior Lodovico?

LODOVICO     He, sir.

IAGO     I cry you mercy: here’s Cassio hurt by villains.

GRATIANO     Cassio?

70

IAGO     How is’t, brother?

CASSIO     My leg is cut in two.

IAGO     Marry, heaven forbid!

Light, gentlemen, I’ll bind it with my shirt.

Enter BIANCA.

BIANCA     What is the matter, ho? who is’t that cried?

IAGO     Who is’t that cried?

BIANCA     O my dear Cassio!

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My sweet Cassio! O Cassio, Cassio, Cassio!

IAGO     O notable strumpet! Cassio, may you suspect

Who they should be that have thus mangled you?

CASSIO     No.

GRATIANO     I am sorry to find you thus;

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I have been to seek you.

IAGO     Lend me a garter. So. – O for a chair

To bear him easily hence!

BIANCA     Alas, he faints! O Cassio, Cassio, Cassio!

IAGO     Gentlemen all, I do suspect this trash

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To be a party in this injury.

Patience awhile, good Cassio. Come, come,

Lend me a light. Know we this face, or no?

Alas, my friend and my dear countryman,

Roderigo? No – yes sure! – O heaven, Roderigo!

90

GRATIANO     What, of Venice?

IAGO     Even he, sir. Did you know him?

GRATIANO     Know him? Ay.

IAGO     Signior Gratiano? I cry you gentle pardon:

These bloody accidents must excuse my manners

That so neglected you.

GRATIANO     I am glad to see you.

95

IAGO     How do you, Cassio? O, a chair, a chair!

GRATIANO     Roderigo?

IAGO

He, he, ’tis he. [A chair is brought in.]

O, that’s well said, the chair.

Some good man bear him carefully from hence,

I’ll fetch the general’s surgeon. [to Bianca.]

For you, mistress,

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Save you your labour. – He that lies slain here, Cassio,

Was my dear friend. What malice was between you?

CASSIO     None in the world, nor do I know the man.

IAGO     [to Bianca]

What, look you pale? – O, bear him out o’th’ air.

– Stay you, good gentlemen. – Look you pale,

mistress?

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– Do you perceive the gastness of her eye?

– Nay, if you stare we shall hear more anon.

– Behold her well, I pray you, look upon her:

Do you see, gentlemen? nay, guiltiness will speak

Though tongues were out of use.

Enter EMILIA.

EMILIA     ’Las, what’s the matter?

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What’s the matter, husband?

IAGO     Cassio hath here been set on in the dark

By Roderigo and fellows that are ’scaped:

He’s almost slain, and Roderigo dead.

EMILIA     Alas, good gentleman! alas, good Cassio!

115

IAGO     This is the fruits of whoring. Prithee, Emilia,

Go know of Cassio where he supped tonight.

What, do you shake at that?

BIANCA

He supped at my house, but I therefore shake not.

IAGO     O, did he so? I charge you, go with me.

120

EMILIA     O fie upon thee, strumpet!

BIANCA     I am no strumpet

But of life as honest as you, that thus

Abuse me.

EMILIA     As I? Foh, fie upon thee!

IAGO

Kind gentlemen, let’s go see poor Cassio dressed.

Come, mistress, you must tell’s another tale.

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Emilia, run you to the citadel

And tell my lord and lady what hath happed.

– Will you go on afore? – This is the night

That either makes me or fordoes me quite.     Exeunt.

5.2 Enter OTHELLO, with a light. DESDEMONA in her bed asleep

OTHELLO     It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul!

Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars,

It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood

Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow

And smooth as monumental alabaster:

5

Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.

Put out the light, and then put out the light!

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,

I can again thy former light restore

Should I repent me. But once put out thy light,

10

Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,

I know not where is that Promethean heat

That can thy light relume: when I have plucked the rose

I cannot give it vital growth again,

It needs must wither. I’ll smell thee on the tree;

15

O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade

Justice to break her sword! Once more, once more:

Be thus when thou art dead and I will kill thee

And love thee after. Once more, and that’s the last.

[He smells, then kisses her.]

So sweet was ne’er so fatal. I must weep,

20

But they are cruel tears. This sorrow’s heavenly,

It strikes where it doth love. She wakes.

DESDEMONA     Who’s there? Othello?

OTHELLO     Ay, Desdemona.

DESDEMONA     Will you come to bed, my lord?

OTHELLO     Have you prayed tonight, Desdemon?

DESDEMONA     Ay, my lord.

25

OTHELLO     If you bethink yourself of any crime

Unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace,

Solicit for it straight.

DESDEMONA

Alack, my lord, what may you mean by that?

OTHELLO

Well, do it, and be brief; I will walk by.

30

I would not kill thy unprepared spirit,

No, heaven forfend, I would not kill thy soul.

DESDEMONA     Talk you of killing?

OTHELLO     Ay, I do.

DESDEMONA     Then, heaven,

Have mercy on me!

OTHELLO     Amen, with all my heart.

DESDEMONA     If you say so, I hope you will not kill me.

35

OTHELLO     Hum!

DESDEMONA     And yet I fear you, for you’re fatal then

When your eyes roll so. Why I should fear I know not,

Since guiltiness I know not. But yet I feel I fear.

OTHELLO     Think on thy sins.

DESDEMONA     They are loves I bear to you.

40

OTHELLO     Ay, and for that thou diest.

DESDEMONA

That death’s unnatural that kills for loving.

Alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip?

Some bloody passion shakes your very frame,

These are portents: but yet I hope, I hope

45

They do not point on me.

OTHELLO     Peace, and be still.

DESDEMONA     I will. So: what’s the matter?

OTHELLO     That handkerchief

Which I so loved and gave thee, thou gavest

To Cassio.

DESDEMONA     No, by my life and soul:

Send for the man and ask him.

OTHELLO     Sweet soul, take heed,

50

Take heed of perjury. Thou art on thy death-bed.

DESDEMONA     I? – but not yet to die!

OTHELLO     Yes, presently.

Therefore confess thee freely of thy sin,

For to deny each article with oath

Cannot remove nor choke the strong conception

55

That I do groan withal. Thou art to die.

DESDEMONA     Then Lord have mercy on me.

OTHELLO     I say amen.

DESDEMONA     And have you mercy too. I never did

Offend you in my life, never loved Cassio

But with such general warranty of heaven

60

As I might love: I never gave him token.

OTHELLO     By heaven, I saw my handkerchief in’s hand!

O perjured woman, thou dost stone my heart

And makest me call what I intend to do

A murder, which I thought a sacrifice!

65

I saw the handkerchief.

DESDEMONA     He found it then,

I never gave it him. Send for him hither,

Let him confess the truth.

OTHELLO     He hath confessed.

DESDEMONA     What, my lord?

OTHELLO     That he hath – ud’s death! – used thee.

DESDEMONA     How? unlawfully?

OTHELLO     Ay.

DESDEMONA     He will not say so.

70

OTHELLO     No, his mouth is stopped. Honest Iago

Hath ta’en order for’t.

DESDEMONA     O, my fear interprets!

What, is he dead?

OTHELLO     Had all his hairs been lives

My great revenge had stomach for them all.

DESDEMONA     Alas, he is betrayed, and I undone.

75

OTHELLO

Out, strumpet, weep’st thou for him to my face?

DESDEMONA     O, banish me, my lord, but kill me not!

OTHELLO     Down, strumpet!

DESDEMONA     Kill me tomorrow, let me live tonight!

OTHELLO     Nay, if you strive –

80

DESDEMONA     But half an hour!

OTHELLO     Being done, there is no pause –

DESDEMONA     But while I say one prayer!

OTHELLO     It is too late.

DESDEMONA     O Lord! Lord! Lord! [He smothers her.]

EMILIA     [within]

My lord, my lord! what ho, my lord, my lord!

OTHELLO

What noise is this? Not dead? not yet quite dead?

85

I that am cruel am yet merciful,

I would not have thee linger in thy pain.

So, so.

EMILIA     [within] What ho! my lord! my lord!

OTHELLO     Who’s there?

EMILIA     [within]

O good my lord, I’d speak a word with you.

90

OTHELLO     Yes. ’Tis Emilia. –

[to Emilia]     By and by. – She’s dead.

’Tis like she comes to speak of Cassio’s death,

The noise was high. Ha, no more moving?

Still as the grave. Shall she come in? were’t good?

I think she stirs again. No – what’s best to do?

95

If she come in, she’ll sure speak to my wife.

My wife, my wife! what wife? I have no wife.

O insupportable, O heavy hour!

Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse

Of sun and moon, and that th’affrighted globe

100

Should yawn at alteration.

EMILIA     [within] I do beseech you

That I may speak with you! O good my lord!

OTHELLO     I had forgot thee: O come in, Emilia.

Soft, by and by. Let me the curtains draw.

Where art thou? What’s the matter with thee now?

105

[He unlocks the door.]

Enter EMILIA.

EMILIA     O my good lord, yonder’s foul murders done!

OTHELLO     What? Now?

EMILIA     But now, my lord.

OTHELLO     It is the very error of the moon,

She comes more nearer earth than she was wont

110

And makes men mad.

EMILIA     Cassio, my lord, hath killed

A young Venetian, called Roderigo.

OTHELLO     Roderigo killed? and Cassio killed?

EMILIA     No, Cassio is not killed.

OTHELLO     Not Cassio killed?

Then murder’s out of tune, and sweet revenge

115

Grows harsh.

DESDEMONA     O falsely, falsely murdered!

EMILIA     O lord, what cry is that?

OTHELLO     That? what?

EMILIA

Out and alas, that was my lady’s voice:

[She draws the bed-curtains.]

Help, help, ho, help! O lady, speak again,

120

Sweet Desdemona, O sweet mistress, speak!

DESDEMONA     A guiltless death I die.

EMILIA     O, who hath done

This deed?

DESDEMONA     Nobody. I myself. Farewell.

Commend me to my kind lord – O, farewell!

125

[She dies.]

OTHELLO     Why, how should she be murdered?

EMILIA     Alas, who knows?

OTHELLO     You heard her say herself it was not I.

EMILIA     She said so; I must needs report the truth.

OTHELLO     She’s like a liar gone to burning hell:

’Twas I that killed her.

EMILIA     O, the more angel she,

130

And you the blacker devil!

OTHELLO     She turned to folly, and she was a whore.

EMILIA     Thou dost belie her, and thou art a devil.

OTHELLO     She was false as water.

EMILIA     Thou art rash as fire to say

That she was false. O, she was heavenly true!

135

OTHELLO     Cassio did top her: ask thy husband else.

O, I were damned beneath all depth in hell

But that I did proceed upon just grounds

To this extremity. Thy husband knew it all.

EMILIA     My husband?

OTHELLO     Thy husband.

EMILIA     That she was false?

140

To wedlock?

OTHELLO     Ay, with Cassio. Had she been true,

If heaven would make me such another world

Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,

I’d not have sold her for it.

EMILIA     My husband?

OTHELLO

Ay, ’twas he that told me on her first;

145

An honest man he is, and hates the slime

That sticks on filthy deeds.

EMILIA     My husband!

OTHELLO     What needs

This iterance, woman? I say thy husband.

EMILIA

O mistress, villainy hath made mocks with love!

My husband say she was false?

OTHELLO     He, woman;

150

I say thy husband: dost understand the word?

My friend thy husband, honest, honest Iago.

EMILIA     If he say so, may his pernicious soul

Rot half a grain a day! he lies to th’ heart:

She was too fond of her most filthy bargain!

155

OTHELLO     Ha!

EMILIA     Do thy worst:

This deed of thine is no more worthy heaven

Than thou wast worthy her.

OTHELLO     Peace, you were best!

EMILIA

Thou hast not half that power to do me harm.

160

As I have to be hurt. O gull, O dolt,

As ignorant as dirt! Thou hast done a deed

[He threatens her with his sword.]

– I care not for thy sword, I’ll make thee known

Though I lost twenty lives. Help, help, ho, help!

The Moor hath killed my mistress! Murder, murder!

165

Enter MONTANO, GRATIANO and IAGO.

MONTANO     What is the matter? How now, general?

EMILIA     O, are you come, Iago? you have done well

That men must lay their murders on your neck.

GRATIANO     What is the matter?

EMILIA     Disprove this villain, if thou be’st a man;

170

He says thou told’st him that his wife was false,

I know thou didst not, thou’rt not such a villain.

Speak, for my heart is full.

IAGO     I told him what I thought, and told no more

Than what he found himself was apt and true.

175

EMILIA     But did you ever tell him she was false?

IAGO     I did.

EMILIA     You told a lie, an odious, damned lie!

Upon my soul, a lie, a wicked lie!

She false with Cassio? Did you say with Cassio?

180

IAGO     With Cassio, mistress. Go to, charm your tongue.

EMILIA

I will not charm my tongue, I am bound to speak:

My mistress here lies murdered in her bed.

ALL O heavens forfend!

EMILIA     And your reports have set the murder on.

185

OTHELLO     Nay, stare not, masters, it is true indeed.

GRATIANO     ’Tis a strange truth.

MONTANO     O monstrous act!

EMILIA     Villainy, villainy, villainy!

I think upon’t, I think I smell’t, O villainy!

190

I thought so then: I’ll kill myself for grief!

O villainy, villainy!

IAGO     What, are you mad? I charge you, get you home.

EMILIA

Good gentlemen, let me have leave to speak.

’Tis proper I obey him – but not now.

195

Perchance, Iago, I will ne’er go home.

OTHELLO     O! O! O! [Othello falls on the bed.]

EMILIA     Nay, lay thee down and roar

For thou hast killed the sweetest innocent

That e’er did lift up eye.

OTHELLO     O, she was foul.

200

I scarce did know you, uncle: there lies your niece

Whose breath, indeed, these hands have newly

stopped;

I know this act shows horrible and grim.

GRATIANO

Poor Desdemon, I am glad thy father’s dead;

Thy match was mortal to him, and pure grief

205

Shore his old thread in twain. Did he live now

This sight would make him do a desperate turn,

Yea, curse his better angel from his side

And fall to reprobance.

OTHELLO     ’Tis pitiful; but yet Iago knows

210

That she with Cassio hath the act of shame

A thousand times committed. Cassio confessed it,

And she did gratify his amorous works

With that recognizance and pledge of love

Which I first gave her: I saw it in his hand,

215

It was a handkerchief, an antique token

My father gave my mother.

EMILIA     O God, O heavenly God!

IAGO     Zounds, hold your peace!

EMILIA     ’Twill out, ’twill out! I peace?

No, I will speak as liberal as the north.

220

Let heaven and men and devils, let them all,

All, all cry shame against me, yet I’ll speak.

IAGO     Be wise, and get you home.

EMILIA     I will not. [Iago tries to stab Emilia.]

GRATIANO     Fie! Your sword upon a woman?

EMILIA

O thou dull Moor, that handkerchief thou speak’st of

225

I found by fortune and did give my husband,

For often, with a solemn earnestness

– More than indeed belonged to such a trifle –

He begged of me to steal’t.

IAGO     Villainous whore!

EMILIA She give it Cassio? No, alas, I found it

And I did give’t my husband.

230

IAGO     Filth, thou liest!

EMILIA By heaven I do not, I do not, gentlemen!

O murderous coxcomb, what should such a fool

Do with so good a wife?

[Othello runs at Iago. Iago stabs his wife.]

OTHELLO     Are there no stones in heaven

But what serves for the thunder? Precious villain!

235

GRATIANO

The woman falls, sure he hath killed his wife.

EMILIA

Ay, ay; O lay me by my mistress’ side. Exit Iago.

GRATIANO     He’s gone, but his wife’s killed.

MONTANO

’Tis a notorious villain. Take you this weapon

Which I have here recovered from the Moor;

240

Come, guard the door without, let him not pass

But kill him rather. I’ll after that same villain,

For ’tis a damned slave.

Exeunt Montano and Gratiano.

OTHELLO     I am not valiant neither,

But every puny whipster gets my sword.

But why should honour outlive honesty?

245

Let it go all.

EMILIA What did thy song bode, lady?

Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan

And die in music. [Sings.] Willow, willow, willow.

– Moor, she was chaste, she loved thee, cruel Moor,

So come my soul to bliss as I speak true!

250

So speaking as I think, alas, I die. [She dies.]

OTHELLO     I have another weapon in this chamber,

It is a sword of Spain, the ice-brook’s temper;

O, here it is. Uncle, I must come forth.

GRATIANO     [within]

If thou attempt it it will cost thee dear;

255

Thou hast no weapon, and perforce must suffer.

OTHELLO

Look in upon me then, and speak with me,

Or, naked as I am, I will assault thee.

Enter GRATIANO.

GRATIANO     What is the matter?

OTHELLO     Behold, I have a weapon,

A better never did itself sustain

260

Upon a soldier’s thigh. I have seen the day

That with this little arm and this good sword

I have made my way through more impediments

Than twenty times your stop: but, O vain boast,

Who can control his fate? ’Tis not so now.

265

Be not afraid, though you do see me weaponed:

Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt

And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.

Do you go back dismayed? ’tis a lost fear:

Man but a rush against Othello’s breast

270

And he retires. Where should Othello go?

Now: how dost thou look now? O ill-starred wench,

Pale as thy smock. When we shall meet at compt

This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven

And fiends will snatch at it. Cold, cold, my girl,

275

Even like thy chastity. O cursed, cursed slave!

Whip me, ye devils,

From the possession of this heavenly sight!

Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulphur,

Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!

280

O Desdemon! dead, Desdemon. Dead! O, O!

Enter LODOVICO, MONTANO, officers with IAGO, prisoner, and CASSIO in a chair

LODOVICO

Where is this rash and most unfortunate man?

OTHELLO     That’s he that was Othello? here I am.

LODOVICO     Where is that viper? bring the villain forth.

OTHELLO

I look down towards his feet, but that’s a fable.

285

If that thou be’st a devil, I cannot kill thee.

[Wounds Iago.]

LODOVICO     Wrench his sword from him.

IAGO     I bleed, sir, but not killed.

OTHELLO     I am not sorry neither, I’d have thee live:

For in my sense ’tis happiness to die.

LODOVICO

O thou Othello, that wert once so good,

290

Fallen in the practice of a cursed slave,

What shall be said to thee?

OTHELLO     Why, anything;

An honourable murderer, if you will,

For nought I did in hate, but all in honour.

LODOVICO

This wretch hath part confessed his villainy.

295

Did you and he consent in Cassio’s death?

OTHELLO     Ay.

CASSIO     Dear general, I never gave you cause.

OTHELLO     I do believe it, and I ask your pardon.

Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil

300

Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body?

IAGO

Demand me nothing. What you know, you know.

From this time forth I never will speak word.

LODOVICO     What, not to pray?

GRATIANO     Torments will ope your lips.

OTHELLO     Well, thou dost best.

305

LODOVICO

Sir, you shall understand what hath befallen,

Which, as I think, you know not. Here is a letter

Found in the pocket of the slain Roderigo,

And here another: the one of them imports

The death of Cassio, to be undertook

310

By Roderigo.

OTHELLO     O villain!

CASSIO     Most heathenish and most gross!

LODOVICO     Now here’s another discontented paper

Found in his pocket too, and this, it seems,

RODERIGO     meant t’have sent this damned villain

315

But that, belike, Iago in the nick

Came in, and satisfied him.

OTHELLO

O thou pernicious caitiff!

How came you, Cassio, by that handkerchief

That was my wife’s?

320

CASSIO     I found it in my chamber,

And he himself confessed but even now

That there he dropped it for a special purpose

Which wrought to his desire.

OTHELLO     O fool, fool, fool!

CASSIO     There is besides in Roderigo’s letter

How he upbraids Iago, that he made him

325

Brave me upon the watch, whereon it came

That I was cast; and even but now he spake,

After long seeming dead, Iago hurt him,

IAGO     set him on.

LODOVICO     [to Othello]

You must forsake this room and go with us.

330

Your power and your command is taken off

And Cassio rules in Cyprus. For this slave,

If there be any cunning cruelty

That can torment him much and hold him long,

It shall be his. You shall close prisoner rest

335

Till that the nature of your fault be known

To the Venetian state. Come, bring him away.

OTHELLO

Soft you, a word or two before you go.

I have done the state some service, and they know’t:

No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,

340

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,

Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate,

Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak

Of one that loved not wisely, but too well;

Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,

345

Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,

Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees

350

Their medicinable gum. Set you down this,

And say besides that in Aleppo once,

Where a malignant and a turbanned Turk

Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,

I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog

355

And smote him – thus! [He stabs himself.]

LODOVICO     O bloody period!

GRATIANO     All that’s spoke is marred.

OTHELLO

I kissed thee ere I killed thee: no way but this,

Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.

[Kisses Desdemona, and dies.]

CASSIO

This did I fear, but thought he had no weapon,

360

For he was great of heart.

LODOVICO     [to Iago] O Spartan dog,

More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea,

Look on the tragic loading of this bed:

This is thy work. The object poisons sight,

Let it be hid. Gratiano, keep the house

365

And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor

For they succeed to you. To you, lord governor,

Remains the censure of this hellish villain,

The time, the place, the torture: O, enforce it!

Myself will straight aboard, and to the state

370

This heavy act with heavy heart relate.     Exeunt.

Pericles

Pericles, Prince of Tyre had been performed before 20 May 1608, when Edward Blount entered it for publication in the Register of the Stationers’ Company. The earliest two known Quartos are both dated 1609 and it reached a sixth edition by 1635. It remains unclear why Pericles was not included in the First Folio in 1623: perhaps it was known to be of collaborative authorship (favoured candidates as part-author include George Wilkins); perhaps no better text was readily available to replace the unsatisfactory and in places garbled text printed in 1609. In 1664, Pericles was the first of seven plays attributed to Shakespeare which were added as a supplement to a reissue of the 1663 Third Folio. Alone of the seven, it was gradually accepted into the Shakespeare canon, because of unmistakable signs of Shakespeare’s late style in acts 3–5, but also because of other resemblances to the late romances, especially The Winter’s Tale. Apparently a great success in its own time (Ben Jonson could complain, as late as 1629, of the continued popularity of such a ‘mouldy tale’), Pericles is now the least performed of the romances.

In his opening speech, the Chorus, in the person of the fourteenth-century poet John Gower, introduces the story with the claim that ‘bonum quo antiquius eo melius’, the older a good thing is the better it is. The romance of Apollonius of Tyre is indeed old, originating in the eastern Mediterranean in the fifth century AD. Its many English retellings stretch from a fragmentary Old English translation, by way of Gower’s Confessio Amantis (late 1380s), to a prose novel by Laurence Twyne, The Pattern of Painful Adventures … that Befell unto Prince Apollonius, written in the 1570s. In the play – and in a prose narrative by George Wilkins published in 1608 and apparently influenced by seeing the play in performance – the protagonist becomes Pericles, a name which may recall the great Athenian statesman but which is more directly derived from ‘Pyrocles’, one of the two heroes of Sir Philip Sidney’s vastly popular and much imitated romance, Arcadia (1590).

Pericles tells its old story with great directness and with remarkable fidelity to the sequence of events in Gower and Twyne. The travels and tribulations of Pericles are echoed, fourteen years later, by those of his lost (and supposedly dead) daughter, Marina, so named because she was born in a storm at sea in which her mother Thaisa died. The name Marina also originates in the play, and strikingly resembles those of other heroines of late Shakespearean romance – Perdita, ‘the lost one’, and Miranda, ‘wonderful’. The Job-like despair and catatonic withdrawal of Pericles are cured, in the play’s climactic scene, by reunion with his daughter, a cure effected both by the example of her patience in extremity and by their discovery of each other’s identity. As a bonus, a vision of the goddess Diana leads Pericles and Marina to Ephesus where the family reunion is completed by the discovery of Thaisa, long supposed dead but providentially resuscitated by the sage Cerimon and preserved as a nun in the temple of Diana (circumstances which recall the dénouement of The Comedy of Errors, written some fourteen years earlier).

The Arden text is based on the 1609 First Quarto.

LIST OF ROLES

ANTIOCHUS

King of Antioch

PERICLES

Prince of Tyre

SIMONIDES

King of Pentapolis

CLEON

governor of Tharsus

LYSIMACHUS

governor of Mytilene

CERIMON

a lord of Ephesus

THALIARD

a lord of Antioch

PHILEMON

a servant to Cerimon

LEONINE

a servant to Dionyza

MARSHAL

PANDAR

BOULT

his servant

DAUGHTER

of Antiochus

DIONYZA

wife to Cleon

THAISA

daughter to Simonides

MARINA

daughter to Pericles and Thaisa

LYCHORIDA

nurse to Marina

BAWD

Lords, Ladies, Knights, Gentlemen, Sailors, Pirates, Fishermen and Messengers

DIANA

GOWER

as Chorus

1.Ch. Enter GOWER.

GOWER     To sing a song that old was sung,

From ashes ancient Gower is come,

Assuming man’s infirmities,

To glad your ear, and please your eyes.

It hath been sung at festivals,

5

On ember-eves and holy-ales;

And lords and ladies in their lives

Have read it for restoratives:

The purchase is to make men glorious,

Et bonum quo antiquius eo melius.

10

If you, born in these latter times,

When wit’s more ripe, accept my rimes,

And that to hear an old man sing

May to your wishes pleasure bring,

I life would wish, and that I might

15

Waste it for you like taper-light.

This Antioch, then, Antiochus the Great

Built up, this city, for his chiefest seat,

The fairest in all Syria –

I tell you what mine authors say.

20

This king unto him took a peer,

Who died and left a female heir,

So buxom, blithe and full of face

As heaven had lent her all his grace;

With whom the father liking took,

25

And her to incest did provoke.

Bad child, worse father, to entice his own

To evil should be done by none.

But custom what they did begin

Was with long use account’d no sin.

30

The beauty of this sinful dame

Made many princes thither frame,

To seek her as a bed-fellow,

In marriage-pleasures play-fellow;

Which to prevent he made a law,

35

To keep her still, and men in awe;

That whoso ask’d her for his wife,

His riddle told not, lost his life.

So for her many a wight did die,

As yon grim looks do testify.

40

[pointing to the heads]

What now ensues, to the judgement of your eye

I give my cause, who best can justify.     Exit.

1.1 Enter ANTIOCHUS, PRINCE PERICLES and attendants.

ANTIOCHUS

Young prince of Tyre, you have at large receiv’d

The danger of the task you undertake.

PERICLES     I have, Antiochus, and, with a soul

Embolden’d with the glory of her praise,

5

Think death no hazard in this enterprise.

ANTIOCHUS     Music!     [Music.]

Bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride,

For the embracements even of Jove himself;

At whose conception, till Lucina reign’d,

Nature this dowry gave: to glad her presence,

10

The senate-house of planets all did sit

To knit in her their best perfections.

Enter Antiochus’ Daughter.

PERICLES

See, where she comes apparell’d like the spring,

Graces her subjects, and her thoughts the king

Of every virtue gives renown to men!

15

Her face the book of praises, where is read

Nothing but curious pleasures, as from thence

Sorrow were ever raz’d, and testy wrath

Could never be her mild companion.

You gods, that made me man, and sway in love,

20

That have inflam’d desire in my breast

To taste the fruit of yon celestial tree

Or die in the adventure, be my helps,

As I am son and servant to your will,

To compass such a boundless happiness!

25

ANTIOCHUS     Prince Pericles –

PERICLES     That would be son to great Antiochus.

ANTIOCHUS     Before thee stands this fair Hesperides,

With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touch’d;

For death-like dragons here affright thee hard.

30

Her face, like heaven, enticeth thee to view

Her countless glory, which desert must gain;

And which, without desert because thine eye

Presumes to reach, all the whole heap must die.

Yon sometimes famous princes, like thyself,

35

Drawn by report, advent’rous by desire,

Tell thee, with speechless tongues and semblance

pale,

That without covering save yon field of stars,

Here they stand martyrs slain in Cupid’s wars;

And with dead cheeks advise thee to desist

40

For going on death’s net, whom none resist.

PERICLES     Antiochus, I thank thee, who hath taught

My frail mortality to know itself,

And by those fearful objects to prepare

This body, like to them, to what I must;

45

For death remember’d should be like a mirror,

Who tells us life’s but breath, to trust it error.

I’ll make my will then; and, as sick men do,

Who know the world, see heaven, but feeling woe

Gripe not at earthly joys as erst they did:

50

So I bequeath a happy peace to you

And all good men, as every prince should do;

My riches to the earth from whence they came;

[to the Princess] But my unspotted fire of love to you.

Thus ready for the way of life or death,

55

I wait the sharpest blow, Antiochus.

ANTIOCHUS     Scorning advice, read the conclusion then:

[Angrily throws down the riddle.]

Which read and not expounded, ’tis decreed,

As these before thee thou thyself shalt bleed.

DAUGHTER

Of all, ’say’d yet, may’st thou prove prosperous!

60

Of all, ’say’d yet, I wish thee happiness.

PERICLES     Like a bold champion I assume the lists,

Nor ask advice of any other thought

But faithfulness and courage. [He reads the riddle.]

I am no viper, yet I feed

65

On mother’s flesh which did me breed.

I sought a husband, in which labour

I found that kindness in a father.

He’s father, son, and husband mild;

I mother, wife, and yet his child:

70

How they may be, and yet in two,

As you will live, resolve it you.

[aside] Sharp physic is the last: but, O you powers

That gives heaven countless eyes to view men’s acts:

Why cloud they not their sights perpetually,

75

If this be true, which makes me pale to read it?

Fair glass of light, I lov’d you, and could still,

Were not this glorious casket stor’d with ill.

But I must tell you, now my thoughts revolt;

For he’s no man on whom perfections wait

80

That, knowing sin within, will touch the gate.

You are a fair viol, and your sense the strings,

Who, finger’d to make man his lawful music,

Would draw heaven down and all the gods to hearken;

But being play’d upon before your time,

85

Hell only danceth at so harsh a chime.

[turning towards the Princess]

Good sooth, I care not for you.

ANTIOCHUS     Prince Pericles, touch not, upon thy life,

For that’s an article within our law

As dangerous as the rest. Your time’s expir’d:

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Either expound now or receive your sentence.

PERICLES     Great king,

Few love to hear the sins they love to act;

’Twould braid yourself too near for me to tell it.

Who has a book of all that monarchs do,

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He’s more secure to keep it shut than shown;

For vice repeated is like the wand’ring wind,

Blows dust in others’ eyes, to spread itself;

And yet the end of all is bought thus dear,

The breath is gone, and the sore eyes see clear

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To stop the air would hurt them. The blind mole casts

Copp’d hills towards heaven, to tell the earth is throng’d

By man’s oppression; and the poor worm doth die for’t.

Kings are earth’s gods; in vice their law’s their will;

And if Jove stray, who dares say Jove doth ill?

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It is enough you know; and it is fit,

What being more known grows worse, to smother it.

All love the womb that their first being bred,

Then give my tongue like leave to love my head.

ANTIOCHUS     [aside]

Heaven, that I had thy head! he has found the meaning;

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But I will gloze with him.

[aloud]     Young prince of Tyre,

Though by the tenour of our strict edict,

Your exposition misinterpreting,

We might proceed to cancel of your days,

Yet hope, succeeding from so fair a tree

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As your fair self, doth tune us otherwise:

Forty days longer we do respite you;

If by which time our secret be undone,

This mercy shows we’ll joy in such a son;

And until then your entertain shall be

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As doth befit our honour and your worth.

Exeunt all but Pericles.

PERICLES     How courtesy would seem to cover sin,

When what is done is like an hypocrite,

The which is good in nothing but in sight!

If it be true that I interpret false,

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Then were it certain you were not so bad

As with foul incest to abuse your soul;

Where now you’re both a father and a son,

By your uncomely claspings with your child, –

Which pleasures fits a husband, not a father;

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And she an eater of her mother’s flesh,

By the defiling of her parent’s bed;

And both like serpents are, who though they feed

On sweetest flowers, yet they poison breed.

Antioch, farewell! for wisdom sees, those men

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Blush not in actions blacker than the night,

Will shew no course to keep them from the light.

One sin, I know, another doth provoke;

Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke.

Poison and treason are the hands of sin,

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Ay, and the targets, to put off the shame:

Then, lest my life be cropp’d to keep you clear,

By flight I’ll shun the danger which I fear.     Exit.

Enter ANTIOCHUS.

ANTIOCHUS     He hath found the meaning,

For which we mean to have his head. He must

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Not live to trumpet forth my infamy,

Nor tell the world Antiochus doth sin

In such a loathed manner;

And therefore instantly this prince must die;

For by his fall my honour must keep high.

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Who attends us there?

Enter THALIARD.

THALIARD     Doth your highness call?

ANTIOCHUS     Thaliard,

You are of our chamber, Thaliard, and our mind

partakes

Her private actions to your secrecy;

And for your faithfulness we will advance you.

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Thaliard, behold here’s poison, and here’s gold;

We hate the prince of Tyre, and thou must kill him:

It fits thee not to ask the reason why:

Because we bid it. Say, is it done?

THALIARD     My lord, ’tis done.

ANTIOCHUS     Enough.

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Enter a Messenger.

Let your breath cool yourself, telling your haste.

MESSENGER     My lord, prince Pericles is fled. Exit.

ANTIOCHUS     As thou wilt live, fly after; and like an

arrow shot from a well-experienc’d archer hits the

mark his eye doth level at, so thou never return unless

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thou say ‘Prince Pericles is dead’.

THALIARD     My lord, if I can get him within my pistol’s

length, I’ll make him sure enough: so, farewell to your

highness.

ANTIOCHUS     Thaliard, adieu!     Exit Thaliard.

Till Pericles be dead

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My heart can lend no succour to my head.     Exit.

1.2 Enter PERICLES with his Lords.

PERICLES     Let none disturb us.     The Lords withdraw.

Why should this change of thoughts,

The sad companion, dull-ey’d melancholy,

Be my so us’d a guest, as not an hour

In the day’s glorious walk or peaceful night,

5

The tomb where grief should sleep, can breed me

quiet?

Here pleasures court mine eyes, and mine eyes shun

them,

And danger, which I fear’d, is at Antioch,

Whose arm seems far too short to hit me here;

Yet neither pleasure’s art can joy my spirits,

10

Nor yet the other’s distance comfort me.

Then it is thus: the passions of the mind,

That have their first conception by mis-dread,

Have after-nourishment and life by care;

And what was first but fear what might be done,

15

Grows elder now and cares it be not done.

And so with me: the great Antiochus,

’Gainst whom I am too little to contend,

Since he’s so great can make his will his act,

Will think me speaking, though I swear to silence;

20

Nor boots it me to say I honour him,

If he suspect I may dishonour him;

And what may make him blush in being known,

He’ll stop the course by which it might be known.

With hostile forces he’ll o’erspread the land,

25

And with th’ostent of war will look so huge,

Amazement shall drive courage from the state,

Our men be vanquish’d ere they do resist,

And subjects punish’d that ne’er thought offence:

Which care of them, not pity of myself, –

30

Who am no more but as the tops of trees

Which fence the roots they grow by and defend

them –

Makes both my body pine and soul to languish,

And punish that before that he would punish.

Enter HELICANUS and all the Lords to Pericles.

1 LORD     Joy and all comfort in your sacred breast!

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2 LORD     And keep your mind, till you return to us,

Peaceful and comfortable!

HELICANUS     Peace, peace, and give experience tongue.

They do abuse the king that flatter him,

For flattery is the bellows blows up sin;

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The thing the which is flatter’d but a spark,

To which that blast gives heat and stronger glowing;

Whereas reproof, obedient and in order,

Fits kings, as they are men, for they may err.

When Signior Sooth here does proclaim a peace,

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He flatters you, makes war upon your life.

Prince, pardon me, or strike me, if you please;

I cannot be much lower than my knees. [He kneels.]

PERICLES     All leave us else; but let your cares o’erlook

What shipping and what lading’s in our haven,

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And then return to us.     Exeunt Lords.

Helicanus,

Thou hast mov’d us; what seest thou in our looks?

HELICANUS     An angry brow, dread lord.

PERICLES     If there be such a dart in princes’ frowns,

How durst thy tongue move anger to our face?

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HELICANUS

How dares the plants look up to heaven, from

whence

They have their nourishment?

PERICLES     Thou know’st I have power

To take thy life from thee.

HELICANUS     I have ground the axe myself;

Do but you strike the blow.

PERICLES     Rise, prithee, rise;

Sit down; thou art no flatterer;

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I thank thee for’t; and heaven forbid

That kings should let their ears hear their faults hid!

Fit counsellor and servant for a prince,

Who by thy wisdom makes a prince thy servant,

What would’st thou have me do?

HELICANUS     To bear with patience

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Such griefs as you do lay upon yourself.

PERICLES     Thou speak’st like a physician, Helicanus,

That ministers a potion unto me

That thou wouldst tremble to receive thyself.

Attend me then: I went to Antioch,

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Whereas thou know’st, against the face of death

I sought the purchase of a glorious beauty,

From whence an issue I might propagate,

Are arms to princes and bring joys to subjects.

Her face was to mine eye beyond all wonder;

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The rest, hark in thine ear, as black as incest;

Which by my knowledge found, the sinful father

Seem’d not to strike, but smooth; but thou know’st this:

’Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.

Which fear so grew in me, I hither fled,

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Under the covering of a careful night,

Who seem’d my good protector; and, being here,

Bethought me what was past, what might succeed.

I knew him tyrannous; and tyrants’ fears

Decrease not, but grow faster than the years.

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And should he doubt, as no doubt he doth,

That I should open to the list’ning air

How many worthy princes’ bloods were shed,

To keep his bed of blackness unlaid ope,

To lop that doubt he’ll fill his land with arms,

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And make pretence of wrong that I have done him;

When all, for mine if I may call offence,

Must feel war’s blow, who spares not innocence:

Which love to all, of which thyself art one,

Who now reprov’dst me for’t, –

HELICANUS     Alas, sir!

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PERICLES

Drew sleep out of mine eyes, blood from my cheeks,

Musings into my mind, with thousand doubts

How I might stop this tempest ere it came;

And finding little comfort to relieve them,

I thought it princely charity to grieve them.

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HELICANUS

Well, my lord, since you have given me leave to speak,

Freely will I speak. Antiochus you fear,

And justly too, I think, you fear the tyrant,

Who either by public war or private treason

Will take away your life.

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Therefore, my lord, go travel for a while,

Till that his rage and anger be forgot,

Or till the Destinies do cut his thread of life.

Your rule direct to any; if to me,

Day serves not light more faithful than I’ll be.

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PERICLES     I do not doubt thy faith;

But should he wrong my liberties in my absence?

HELICANUS

We’ll mingle our bloods together in the earth,

From whence we had our being and our birth.

PERICLES

Tyre, I now look from thee then, and to Tharsus

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Intend my travel, where I’ll hear from thee,

And by whose letters I’ll dispose myself.

The care I had and have of subjects’ good

On thee I lay, whose wisdom’s strength can bear it.

I’ll take thy word for faith, not ask thine oath;

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Who shuns not to break one will crack both.

But in our orbs we’ll live so round and safe,

That time of both this truth shall ne’er convince,

Thou show’dst a subject’s shine, I a true prince’.

Exeunt.

1.3 Enter THALIARD alone.

THALIARD     So this is Tyre, and this the court. Here

must I kill King Pericles; and if I do it not, I am

sure to be hang’d at home: ’tis dangerous. Well, I

perceive he was a wise fellow and had good

discretion that, being bid to ask what he would of

5

the king, desir’d he might know none of his secrets:

now do I see he had some reason for’t; for if a king

bid a man be a villain, he’s bound by the indenture

of his oath to be one. Husht! here comes the lords

of Tyre.

10

Enter HELICANUS and ESCANES with other lords.

HELICANUS     You shall not need, my fellow peers of Tyre,

Further to question of your king’s departure.

His seal’d commission, left in trust with me,

Doth speak sufficiently he’s gone to travel.

THALIARD     [aside]     How? the king gone?

15

HELICANUS     If further yet you will be satisfied

Why, as it were unlicens’d of your loves,

He would depart, I’ll give some light unto you.

Being at Antioch –

THALIARD     [aside]     What from Antioch?

HELICANUS

Royal Antiochus, on what cause I know not,

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Took some displeasure at him; at least he judg’d so;

And doubting lest he had err’d or sinn’d,

To show his sorrow he’d correct himself;

So puts himself unto the shipman’s toil,

With whom each minute threatens life or death.

25

THALIARD     [aside]     Well, I perceive I shall not be hang’d

now, although I would.

But since he’s gone, the king’s ears it must please,

He ’scap’d the land, to perish at the seas.

I’ll present myself. [aloud] Peace to the lords of Tyre!

30

HELICANUS     Lord Thaliard from Antiochus is welcome.

THALIARD     From him I come

With message unto princely Pericles;

But since my landing I have understood

Your lord has betook himself to unknown travels,

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My message must return from whence it came.

HELICANUS We have no reason to desire it,

Commended to our master, not to us;

Yet ere you shall depart, this we desire,

As friends to Antioch, we may feast in Tyre. Exeunt.

40

1.4 Enter CLEON, the governor of Tharsus, with his wife DIONYZA and attendants.

CLEON     My Dionyza, shall we rest us here,

And by relating tales of others’ griefs,

See if ’twill teach us to forget our own?

DIONYZA     That were to blow at fire in hope to quench it;

For who digs hills because they do aspire

5

Throws down one mountain to cast up a higher.

O my distressed lord, even such our griefs are;

Here they are but felt, and seen with mischief’s eyes,

But like to groves, being topp’d, they higher rise.

CLEON     O Dionyza,

10

Who wanteth food, and will not say he wants it,

Or can conceal his hunger till he famish?

Our tongues and sorrows to sound deep?

Our woes into the air, our eyes to weep,

Till lungs fetch breath that may proclaim them louder?

That, if heaven slumber while their creatures want,

They may awake their helps to comfort them.

I’ll then discourse our woes, felt several years,

And wanting breath to speak help me with tears.

DIONYZA     I’ll do my best, sir.

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CLEON

This Tharsus, o’er which I have the government,

A city on whom plenty held full hand,

For riches strew’d herself even in her streets;

Whose towers bore heads so high they kiss’d the clouds,

And strangers ne’er beheld but wond’red at;

25

Whose men and dames so jetted and adorn’d,

Like one another’s glass to trim them by –

Their tables were stor’d full to glad the sight,

And not so much to feed on as delight:

All poverty was scorn’d, and pride so great,

30

The name of help grew odious to repeat.

DIONYZA     O, ’tis too true.

CLEON     But see what heaven can do by this our change:

These mouths, who but of late earth, sea and air,

Were all too little to content and please,

35

Although they gave their creatures in abundance,

As houses are defil’d for want of use,

They are now starv’d for want of exercise;

Those palates who, not yet two summers younger,

Must have inventions to delight the taste,

40

Would now be glad of bread, and beg for it;

Those mothers who, to nuzzle up their babes

Thought nought too curious, are ready now

To eat those little darlings whom they lov’d.

So sharp are hunger’s teeth, that man and wife

45

Draw lots who first shall die to lengthen life.

Here stands a lord, and there a lady weeping;

Here many sink, yet those which see them fall

Have scarce strength left to give them burial.

Is not this true?

50

DIONYZA     Our cheeks and hollow eyes do witness it.

CLEON     O, let those cities that of plenty’s cup

And her prosperities so largely taste,

With their superfluous riots, hear these tears!

The misery of Tharsus may be theirs.

55

Enter a Lord.

LORD     Where’s the lord governor?

CLEON     Here.

Speak out thy sorrows which thou bring’st in haste,

For comfort is too far for us to expect.

LORD     We have descried, upon our neighbouring shore,

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A portly sail of ships make hitherward.

CLEON     I thought as much.

One sorrow never comes but brings an heir

That may succeed as his inheritor;

And so in ours: some neighbouring nation,

65

Taking advantage of our misery,

Hath stuff’d the hollow vessels with their power,

To beat us down, the which are down already,

And make a conquest of unhappy men,

Whereas no glory’s got to overcome.

70

LORD That’s the least fear; for, by the semblance

Of their white flags display’d, they bring us peace,

And come to us as favourers, not as foes.

CLEON     Thou speak’st like him’s untutor’d to repeat:

Who makes the fairest show means most deceit.

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But bring they what they will and what they can,

What need we fear?

Our ground’s the lowest, and we are half-way here.

Go tell their general we attend him here, to know for

what he comes, and whence he comes, and what he

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craves.

LORD     I go, my lord.     Exit.

CLEON     Welcome is peace, if he on peace consist;

If wars, we are unable to resist.

Enter Lord, with PERICLES and attendants.

PERICLES     Lord governor, for so we hear you are,

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Let not our ships and number of our men

Be like a beacon fir’d t’amaze your eyes.

We have heard your miseries as far as Tyre,

And seen the desolation of your streets;

Nor come we to add sorrow to your tears,

90

But to relieve them of their heavy load;

And these our ships, you happily may think

Are like the Trojan horse was stuff’d within

With bloody veins expecting overthrow,

Are stor’d with corn to make your needy bread,

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And give them life whom hunger starv’d half dead.

ALL     The gods of Greece protect you!

[Cleon, Dionyza and lords of Tharsus kneel.]

And we’ll pray for you.

PERICLES     Arise, I pray you, rise;

We do not look for reverence, but for love

And harbourage for ourself, our ships and men.

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CLEON     The which when any shall not gratify,

Or pay you with unthankfulness in thought,

Be it our wives, our children, or ourselves,

The curse of heaven and men succeed their evils!

Till when, – the which I hope shall ne’er be seen –

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Your grace is welcome to our town and us.

PERICLES

Which welcome we’ll accept; feast here awhile,

Until our stars that frown lend us a smile.        Exeunt.

2.Ch. Enter GOWER

GOWER

Here have you seen a mighty king

His child, I wis, to incest bring;

A better prince and benign lord

That will prove awful both in deed and word.

Be quiet then, as men should be

5

Till he hath pass’d necessity.

I’ll show you those in troubles reign,

Losing a mite, a mountain gain.

The good in conversation,

10

To whom I give my benison,

Is still at Tharsus, where each man

Thinks all is writ he spoken can;

And, to remember what he does,

Build his statue to make him glorious.

15

But tidings to the contrary

Are brought your eyes; what need speak I?

Dumb Show.

Enter, at one door, PERICLES, talking with CLEON; all the train with them. Enter, at another door, a gentleman, with a letter to Pericles; Pericles shows the letter to Cleon; Pericles gives the messenger a reward and knights him.

Exit Pericles at one door, and Cleon at another.

Good Helicane hath stay’d at home,

Not to eat honey like a drone

From others’ labours; for he strives

20

To killen bad, keep good alive;

And to fulfil his prince’ desire,

Sends word of all that haps in Tyre:

How Thaliard came full bent with sin

And hid intent to murder him;

25

And that in Tharsus was not best

Longer for him to make his rest.

He, doing so, put forth to seas,

Where when men been, there’s seldom ease;

For now the wind begins to blow;

30

Thunder above and deeps below

Makes such unquiet that the ship

Should house him safe is wrack’d and split;

And he, good prince, having all lost,

By waves from coast to coast is toss’d.

35

All perishen of men, of pelf,

Ne aught escapend but himself;

Till fortune, tir’d with doing bad,

Threw him ashore, to give him glad:

And here he comes. What shall be next,

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Pardon old Gower, – this ’longs the text.     Exit.

2.1 Enter PERICLES, wet.

PERICLES     Yet cease your ire, you angry stars of heaven!

Wind, rain, and thunder, remember, earthly man

Is but a substance that must yield to you;

And I, as fits my nature, do obey you.

5

Alas, the seas hath cast me on the rocks,

Wash’d me from shore to shore, and left me breath

Nothing to think on but ensuing death.

Let it suffice the greatness of your powers

To have bereft a prince of all his fortunes;

10

And having thrown him from your wat’ry grave,

Here to have death in peace is all he’ll crave.

Enter three Fishermen.

1 FISHERMAN     What, ho, Pilch!

2 FISHERMAN     Ha, come and bring away the nets!

1 FISHERMAN     What, Patch-breech, I say!

3 FISHERMAN     What say you, master?

15

1 FISHERMAN     Look how thou stirr’st now! come away,

or I’ll fetch’th with a wanion.

3 FISHERMAN     Faith, master, I am thinking of the poor

men that were cast away before us even now.

1 FISHERMAN     Alas, pour souls, it griev’d my heart to

20

hear what pitiful cries they made to us to help them,

when, well-a-day, we could scarce help ourselves.

3 FISHERMAN     Nay, master, said not I as much when I

saw the porpoise, how he bounc’d and tumbled? they

say they’re half fish, half flesh; a plague on them, they

25

ne’er come but I look to be wash’d! Master, I marvel

how the fishes live in the sea.

1 FISHERMAN     Why, as men do a-land: the great ones eat

up the little ones. I can compare our rich misers to

nothing so fitly as to a whale: ’a plays and tumbles,

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driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours

them all at a mouthful. Such whales have I heard on

a’th’ land, who never leave gaping till they swallow’d

the whole parish, church, steeple, bells, and all.

PERICLES [aside]     A pretty moral.

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3 FISHERMAN     But, master, if I had been the sexton, I

would have been that day in the belfry.

2 FISHERMAN     Why, man?

3 FISHERMAN     Because he should have swallow’d me too;

and when I had been in his belly, I would have kept

40

such a jangling of the bells, that he should never have

left till he cast bells, steeple, church, and parish up

again. But if the good King Simonides were of my

mind –

PERICLES [aside]     Simonides?

45

3 FISHERMAN     We would purge the land of these drones,

that rob the bee of her honey.

PERICLES [aside]     How from the finny subject of the sea

These fishers tell the infirmities of men;

And from their wat’ry empire recollect

50

All that may men approve or men detect! –

Peace be at your labour, honest fishermen.

2 FISHERMAN

Honest! good fellow, what’s that? If it be a day fits you,

search out of the calendar, and nobody look after it.

PERICLES     May see the sea hath cast upon your coast –

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2 FISHERMAN

What a drunken knave was the sea to cast thee in our

way!

PERICLES     A man whom both the waters and the wind,

In that vast tennis-court, hath made the ball

For them to play upon, entreats you pity him;

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He asks of you, that never us’d to beg.

1 FISHERMAN     No, friend, cannot you beg? here’s them

in our country of Greece gets more with begging than

we can do with working.

2 FISHERMAN     Canst thou catch any fishes then?

65

PERICLES     I never practis’d it.

2 FISHERMAN     Nay, then thou wilt starve, sure; for here’s

nothing to be got now-a-days, unless thou canst fish

for’t.

PERICLES     What I have been I have forgot to know;

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But what I am, want teaches me to think on:

A man throng’d up with cold. My veins are chill,

And have no more of life than may suffice

To give my tongue that heat to ask your help;

Which if you shall refuse, when I am dead,

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For that I am a man, pray you see me buried.

1 FISHERMAN     Die, quoth-a? Now gods forbid’t, and I

have a gown here, come, put it on; keep thee warm.

Now, afore me, a handsome fellow! come, thou shalt go

home, and we’ll have flesh for holidays, fish for

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fasting-days, and moreo’er puddings and flap-jacks;

and thou shalt be welcome.

PERICLES     I thank you, sir.

2 FISHERMAN     Hark you, my friend; you said you could

not beg.

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PERICLES     I did but crave.

2 FISHERMAN     But crave? then I’ll turn craver too, and so

I shall ’scape whipping.

PERICLES     Why, are your beggars whipp’d then?

2 FISHERMAN     O, not all, my friend, not all; for if all your

90

beggars were whipp’d, I would wish no better office

than to be beadle. But, master, I’ll go draw up the net.

Exeunt Second and Third Fishermen.

PERICLES     [aside] How well this honest mirth becomes

their labour!

1 FISHERMAN     Hark you, sir; do you know where ye are?

95

PERICLES     Not well.

1 FISHERMAN     Why, I’ll tell you: this is call’d Pentapolis,

and our king, the good Simonides.

PERICLES     The good Simonides, do you call him?

1 FISHERMAN     Ay, sir; and he deserves so to be call’d for

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his peacable reign and good government.

PERICLES     He is a happy king, since he gains from his

subjects the name of good by his government. How far

is his court distant from this shore?

1 FISHERMAN     Marry, sir, half a day’s journey. And I’ll

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tell you, he hath a fair daughter, and to-morrow is her

birthday; and there are princes and knights come

from all parts of the world to joust and tourney for

her love.

PERICLES     Were my fortunes equal to my desires, I could

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wish to make one there.

1 FISHERMAN     O, sir, things must be as they may; and

what a man cannot get, he may lawfully deal for his

wife’s soul.

Enter Second and Third Fishermen, drawing up a net.

2 FISHERMAN     Help, master, help! here’s a fish hangs in

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the net, like a poor man’s right in the law; ’twill hardly

come out. Ha, bots on’t, ’tis come at last, and ’tis

turn’d to a rusty armour.

PERICLES     An armour, friends! I pray you, let me see it.

Thanks, Fortune, yet, that after all thy crosses

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Thou giv’st me somewhat to repair myself;

And though it was mine own, part of mine heritage,

Which my dead father did bequeath to me,

With this strict charge, even as he left his life:

‘Keep it, my Pericles; it hath been a shield

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’Twixt me and death;’ – and pointed to his brace –

‘For that it sav’d me, keep it; in like necessity,

The which the gods protect thee from, may defend thee!’

It kept where I kept – I so dearly lov’d it –

Till the rough seas, that spares not any man,

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Took it in rage, though calm’d hath given’t again.

I thank thee for’t; my shipwreck now’s no ill,

Since I have here my father gave in his will.

1 FISHERMAN     What mean you, sir?

PERICLES

To beg of you, kind friends, this coat of worth,

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For it was sometime target to a king;

I know it by this mark. He lov’d me dearly,

And for his sake I wish the having of it;

And that you’d guide me to your sovereign’s court,

Where with it I may appear a gentleman;

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And if that ever my low fortunes better,

I’ll pay your bounties; till then rest your debtor.

1 FISHERMAN     Why, wilt thou tourney for the lady?

PERICLES     I’ll show the virtue I have borne in arms.

1 FISHERMAN     Why, di’e take it; and the gods give thee

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good on’t!

2 FISHERMAN     Ay, but hark you, my friend; ’twas we that

made up this garment through the rough seams of the

waters: there are certain condolements, certain vails. I

hope, sir, if you thrive, you’ll remember from whence

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you had them.

PERICLES     Believe’t, I will.

By your furtherance I am cloth’d in steel;

And spite of all the rapture of the sea

This jewel holds his building on my arm.

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Unto thy value I will mount myself

Upon a courser, whose delightful steps

Shall make the gazer joy to see him tread.

Only, my friend, I yet am unprovided of a pair of

bases.

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2 FISHERMAN     We’ll sure provide; thou shalt have my

best gown to make thee a pair, and I’ll bring thee to the

court myself.

PERICLES     Then honour be but equal to my will,

This day I’ll rise, or else add ill to ill.     Exeunt.

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2.2 Enter SIMONIDES, with Lords and attendants and THAISA.

SIMONIDES

Are the knights ready to begin the triumph?

1 LORD     They are, my liege,

And stay your coming to present themselves.

SIMONIDES

Return them we are ready; and our daughter,

In honour of whose birth these triumphs are,

5

Sits here like Beauty’s child, whom Nature gat

For men to see, and seeing wonder at.     Exit a Lord.

[Simonides and Thaisa take seats in the pavilion, facing

the public way.]

THAISA     It pleaseth you, my royal father, to express

My commendations great, whose merit’s less.

SIMONIDES     It’s fit it should be so; for princes are

10

A model which heaven makes like to itself:

As jewels lose their glory if neglected,

So princes their renowns if not respected.

’Tis now your honour, daughter, to entertain

The labour of each knight in his device.

15

THAISA     Which, to preserve mine honour, I’ll perform.

[The first knight passes by, and his squire presents

his shield to the Princess.]

SIMONIDES     Who is the first that doth prefer himself?

THAISA     A knight of Sparta, my renowned father;

And the device he bears upon his shield

Is a black Ethiop reaching at the sun;

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The word, Lux tua vita mihi.

[She hands the shield to Simonides who returns it

through her to the page.]

SIMONIDES     He loves you well that holds his life of you.

[The second knight passes.]

Who is the second that presents himself?

THAISA     A prince of Macedon, my royal father;

And the device he bears upon his shield

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Is an arm’d knight that’s conquer’d by a lady;

The motto thus, in Spanish, Più per dolcezza che per forza.

[The third knight passes.]

SIMONIDES     And what’s the third?

THAISA     The third of Antioch;

And his device, a wreath of chivalry;

The word, Me pompae provexit apex.

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[The fourth knight passes.]

SIMONIDES     What is the fourth?

THAISA     A burning torch that’s turned upside down;

The word, Qui me alit, me extinguit.

SIMONIDES

Which shows that beauty hath his power and will,

Which can as well inflame as it can kill.

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[The fifth knight passes.]

THAISA     The fifth, an hand environed with clouds,

Holding out gold that’s by the touchstone tried;

The motto thus, Sic spectanda fides.

[The sixth knight, Pericles, passes in rusty armour,

without shield, and unaccompanied. He presents his

device directly to Thaisa.]

SIMONIDES

And what’s the sixth and last, the which the knight himself

With such a graceful courtesy deliver’d?

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THAISA     He seems to be a stranger; but his present is

A wither’d branch, that’s only green at top;

The motto, In hac spe vivo.

SIMONIDES     A pretty moral;

From the dejected state wherein he is,

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He hopes by you his fortunes yet may flourish.

1 LORD

He had need mean better than his outward show

Can any way speak in his just commend;

For by his rusty outside he appears

To have practis’d more the whipstock than the lance.

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2 LORD     He well may be a stranger, for he comes

To an honour’d triumph strangely furnished.

3 LORD     And on set purpose let his armour rust

Until this day, to scour it in the dust.

SIMONIDES     Opinion’s but a fool, that makes us scan

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The outward habit by the inward man.

But stay, the knights are coming;

We will withdraw into the gallery.     Exeunt.

[Great shouts and all cry, ‘The mean knight! ’]

2.3 Enter SIMONIDES, THAISA, Marshal, ladies, lords, Knights from tilting and attendants.

SIMONIDES     Knights,

To say you’re welcome were superfluous.

To place upon the volume of your deeds,

As in a title-page, your worth in arms,

Were more than you expect, or more than’s fit,

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Since every worth in show commends itself.

Prepare for mirth, for mirth becomes a feast.

You are princes and my guests.

THAISA     But you, my knight and guest;

To whom this wreath of victory I give,

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And crown you king of this day’s happiness.

PERICLES     ’Tis more by fortune, lady, than my merit.

SIMONIDES     Call it by what you will, the day is yours;

And here, I hope, is none that envies it.

In framing an artist, art hath thus decreed:

15

To make some good, but others to exceed;

And you are her labour’d scholar. Come, queen o’th’ feast –

For, daughter, so you are – here take your place;

Marshal, the rest, as they deserve their grace.

KNIGHTS     We are honour’d much by good Simonides.

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SIMONIDES

Your presence glads our days; honour we love,

For who hates honour hates the gods above.

MARSHAL     Sir, yonder is your place.

PERICLES     Some other is more fit.

1 KNIGHT     Contend not, sir; for we are gentlemen

Have neither in our hearts nor outward eyes

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Envied the great nor shall the low despise.

PERICLES     You are right courteous knights.

SIMONIDES     Sit, sir, sit.

[aside] By Jove, I wonder, that is king of thoughts,

These cates resist me, he not thought upon.

THAISA     [aside] By Juno, that is queen of marriage,

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All viands that I eat do seem unsavoury,

Wishing him my meat.

[to Simonides]      Sure he’s a gallant gentleman.

SIMONIDES[to Thaisa]      He’s but a country gentleman;

Has done no more than other knights have done;

Has broken a staff or so; so let it pass.

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THAISA     [aside] To me he seems like diamond to glass.

PERICLES     [aside]

Yon king’s to me like to my father’s picture,

Which tells me in that glory once he was;

Had princes sit like stars about his throne,

And he the sun, for them to reverence.

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None that beheld him but, like lesser lights,

Did vail their crowns to his supremacy;

Where now his son’s like a glow-worm in the night,

The which hath fire in darkness, none in light:

Whereby I see that Time’s the king of men;

45

He’s both their parent, and he is their grave,

And gives them what he will, not what they crave.

SIMONIDES     What, are you merry, knights?

1 KNIGHT     Who can be other in this royal presence?

SIMONIDES

Here, with a cup that’s stor’d unto the brim, –

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As you do love, fill to your mistress’ lips, –

We drink this health to you.

KNIGHTS     We thank your grace.

SIMONIDES     Yet pause awhile;

Yon knight doth sit too melancholy,

As if the entertainment in our court

55

Had not a show might countervail his worth.

Note it not you, Thaisa?

THAISA     What is’t to me, my father?

SIMONIDES     O attend, my daughter:

Princes, in this, should live like gods above,

60

Who freely give to every one that come to honour them;

And princes not doing so are like to gnats

Which make a sound, but kill’d are wonder’d at.

Therefore to make his entrance more sweet,

Here say we drink this standing-bowl of wine to him.

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THAISA     Alas, my father, it befits not me

Unto a stranger knight to be so bold;

He may my proffer take for an offence,

Since men take women’s gifts for impudence.

SIMONIDES     How?

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Do as I bid you, or you’ll move me else!

THAISA     [aside]

Now, by the gods, he could not please me better.

SIMONIDES     Furthermore tell him, we desire to know

Of whence he is, his name and parentage.

THAISA     The king my father, sir, has drunk to you.

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PERICLES     I thank him.

THAISA     Wishing it so much blood unto your life.

PERICLES

I thank both him and you, and pledge him freely.

THAISA     And further he desires to know of you

Of whence you are, your name and parentage.

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PERICLES     A gentleman of Tyre; my name, Pericles;

My education been in arts and arms;

Who, looking for adventures in the world,

Was by the rough seas reft of ships and men,

And after shipwreck driven upon this shore.

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THAISA     He thanks your grace; names himself Pericles,

A gentleman of Tyre,

Who only by misfortune of the seas

Bereft of ships and men, cast on this shore.

SIMONIDES     Now, by the gods, I pity his misfortune,

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And will awake him from his melancholy.

Come, gentlemen, we sit too long on trifles,

And waste the time, which looks for other revels.

Even in your armours, as you are address’d,

Will well become a soldier’s dance.

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I will not have excuse with saying this:

Loud music is too harsh for ladies’ heads,

Since they love men in arms as well as beds.

[The Knights dance.]

So this was well ask’d, ’twas so well perform’d.

Come, sir, here’s a lady that wants breathing too;

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And I have heard, you knights of Tyre

Are excellent in making ladies trip,

And that their measures are as excellent.

PERICLES     In those that practise them they are, my lord.

SIMONIDES     O, that’s as much as you would be denied

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Of your fair courtesy.

[The Knights and ladies dance.]

Unclasp, unclasp!

Thanks, gentlemen, to all; all have done well,

[to Pericles] But you the best. Pages and lights, to conduct

These knights unto their several lodgings!

Yours, sir, we have given order be next our own.

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PERICLES     I am at your grace’s pleasure.

SIMONIDES     Princes, it is too late to talk of love,

And that’s the mark I know you level at.

Therefore each one betake him to his rest;

To-morrow all for speeding do their best.     Exeunt.

2.4 Enter HELICANUS and ESCANES.

HELICANUS     No, Escanes, know this of me,

Antiochus from incest liv’d not free;

For which, the most high gods not minding longer

To withhold the vengeance that they had in store,

Due to this heinous capital offence,

5

Even in the height and pride of all his glory,

When he was seated in a chariot

Of an inestimable value, and his daughter with him,

A fire from heaven came and shrivell’d up

Their bodies, even to loathing; for they so stunk,

10

That all those eyes ador’d them ere their fall

Scorn now their hand should give them burial.

ESCANES     ’Twas very strange.

HELICANUS     And yet but justice; for though

This king were great, his greatness was no guard

To bar heaven’s shaft, but sin had his reward.

15

ESCANES     ’Tis very true.

Enter three Lords.

1 LORD     See, not a man in private conference

Or council has respect with him but he.

2 LORD     It shall no longer grieve without reproof.

3 LORD     And curs’d be he that will not second it.

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1 LORD     Follow me then. Lord Helicane, a word.

HELICANUS

With me? and welcome; happy day, my lords.

1 LORD     Know that our griefs are risen to the top,

And now at length they overflow their banks.

HELICANUS

Your griefs! for what? wrong not your prince you love.

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1 LORD     Wrong not yourself then, noble Helicane;

But if the prince do live, let us salute him,

Or know what ground’s made happy by his breath.

If in the world he live, we’ll seek him out;

If in his grave he rest, we’ll find him there;

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And be resolv’d he lives to govern us,

Or dead, gives cause to mourn his funeral

And leaves us to our free election,

2 LORD

Whose death indeed the strongest in our censure,

And knowing this kingdom is without a head –

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Like goodly buildings left without a roof

Soon fall to ruin – your noble self,

That best know how to rule and how to reign,

We thus submit unto – our sovereign.

ALL     Live, noble Helicane!

40

HELICANUS     By honour’s cause, forbear your suffrages;

If that you love Prince Pericles, forbear.

Take I your wish, I leap into the seas,

Where’s hourly trouble for a minute’s ease.

A twelvemonth longer, let me entreat you

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To forbear the absence of your king;

If in which time expir’d he not return,

I shall with aged patience bear your yoke.

But if I cannot win you to this love,

Go search like nobles, like noble subjects,

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And in your search spend your adventurous worth;

Whom if you find and win unto return,

You shall like diamonds sit about his crown.

1 LORD     To wisdom he’s a fool that will not yield;

And since Lord Helicane enjoineth us,

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We with our travels will endeavour it.

HELICANUS

Then you love us, we you, and we’ll clasp hands:

When peers thus knit, a kingdom ever stands.

Exeunt.

2.5 Enter SIMONIDES, reading of a letter at one door; the Knights meet him.

1 KNIGHT     Good morrow to the good Simonides.

SIMONIDES

Knights, from my daughter this I let you know,

That for this twelvemonth she’ll not undertake

A married life.

Her reason to herself is only known,

5

Which from her by no means can I get.

2 KNIGHT     May we not get access to her, my lord?

SIMONIDES     Faith, by no means; she has so strictly tied

Her to her chamber that ’tis impossible.

One twelve moons more she’ll wear Diana’s livery;

10

This by the eye of Cynthia hath she vow’d,

And on her virgin honour will not break it.

3 KNIGHT Loath to bid farewell, we take our leaves.

Exeunt Knights.

SIMONIDES     So,

They are well dispatch’d; now to my daughter’s letter:

15

She tells me here, she’ll wed the stranger knight,

Or never more to view nor day nor light.

’Tis well, mistress; your choice agrees with mine;

I like that well: nay, how absolute she’s in’t,

Not minding whether I dislike or no!

20

Well, I do commend her choice,

And will no longer have it be delay’d.

Soft, here he comes: I must dissemble it.

Enter PERICLES.

PERICLES     All fortune to the good Simonides!

SIMONIDES     To you as much: sir, I am beholding to you

25

For your sweet music this last night. I do

Protest my ears were never better fed

With such delightful pleasing harmony.

PERICLES     It is your grace’s pleasure to commend;

Not my desert.

SIMONIDES     Sir, you are music’s master.

30

PERICLES     The worst of all her scholars, my good lord.

SIMONIDES     Let me ask you one thing:

What do you think of my daughter, sir?

PERICLES     A most virtuous princess.

SIMONIDES     And she is fair too, is she not?

35

PERICLES     As a fair day in summer, wondrous fair.

SIMONIDES     Sir, my daughter thinks very well of you;

Ay, so well, that you must be her master,

And she will be your scholar: therefore look to it.

PERICLES     I am unworthy for her schoolmaster.

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SIMONIDES     She thinks not so; peruse this writing else.

PERICLES     [aside] What’s here?

A letter that she loves the knight of Tyre!

’Tis the king’s subtlety to have my life. –

[Kneels.] O, seek not to entrap me, gracious lord,

45

A stranger and distressed gentleman,

That never aim’d so high to love your daughter,

But bent all offices to honour her.

SIMONIDES

Thou hast bewitch’d my daughter, and thou art

A villain.

PERICLES     By the gods, I have not:

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Never did thought of mine levy offence;

Nor never did my actions yet commence

A deed might gain her love or your displeasure.

SIMONIDES     Traitor, thou liest.

PERICLES     Traitor?

SIMONIDES     Ay, traitor.

PERICLES     Even in his throat – unless it be the king –

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That calls me traitor, I return the lie.

SIMONIDES     [aside]

Now, by the gods, I do applaud his courage.

PERICLES     My actions are as noble as my thoughts,

That never relish’d of a base descent.

I came unto your court for honour’s cause,

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And not to be a rebel to her state;

And he that otherwise accounts of me,

This sword shall prove he’s honour’s enemy.

SIMONIDES     No?

Here comes my daughter, she can witness it.

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Enter THAISA.

PERICLES     Then, as you are as virtuous as fair,

Resolve your angry father, if my tongue

Did e’er solicit, or my hand subscribe

To any syllable that made love to you.

THAISA     Why, sir, say if you had, who takes offence

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At that would make me glad?

SIMONIDES     Yea, mistress, are you so peremptory?

[aside] I am glad on’t with all my heart. –

I’ll tame you, I’ll bring you in subjection.

Will you, not having my consent,

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Bestow your love and your affections

Upon a stranger? [aside] who, for aught I know,

May be (nor can I think the contrary)

As great in blood as I myself. –

Therefore hear you, mistress: either frame

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Your will to mine; and you, sir, hear you:

Either be rul’d by me, or I’ll make you –

Man and wife.

Nay, come, your hands and lips must seal it too;

And being join’d, I’ll thus your hopes destroy,

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And for further grief, – God give you joy!

What, are you both pleas’d?

THAISA     Yes, if you love me, sir.

PERICLES     Even as my life my blood that fosters it.

SIMONIDES     What, are you both agreed?

BOTH     Yes, if ’t please your majesty.

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SIMONIDES

It pleaseth me so well, that I will see you wed;

And then, with what haste you can, get you to bed.

Exeunt.

3.Ch.     Enter GOWER.

GOWER

Now sleep y-slacked hath the rout;

No din but snores the house about,

Made louder by the o’er-fed breast

Of this most pompous marriage-feast.

The cat, with eyne of burning coal,

5

Now couches ’fore the mouse’s hole;

And crickets at the oven’s mouth

Sing the blither for their drouth.

Hymen hath brought the bride to bed,

Where by the loss of maidenhead

10

A babe is moulded. Be attent,

And time that is so briefly spent

With your fine fancies quaintly eche;

What’s dumb in show I’ll plain with speech.

Dumb Show

Enter PERICLES and SIMONIDES at one door, with

attendants; a messenger meets them, kneels, and gives

Pericles a letter; Pericles shows it to Simonides; the lords

kneel to him. Then enter THAISA with child, with

LYCHORIDA, a nurse; the King shows her the letter; she

rejoices; she and Pericles take leave of her father, and

depart with Lychorida and their attendants. Then exeunt

Simonides and the rest.

By many a dern and painful perch

15

Of Pericles the careful search,

By the four opposing coigns

Which the world together joins,

Is made with all due diligence

That horse and sail and high expense

20

Can stead the quest. At last from Tyre,

Fame answering the most strange inquire,

To th’ court of King Simonides

Are letters brought, the tenour these:

Antiochus and his daughter dead,

25

The men of Tyrus on the head

Of Helicanus would set on

The crown of Tyre, but he will none;

The mutiny he there hastes t’appease;

Says to ’em, if King Pericles

30

Come not home in twice six moons,

He, obedient to their dooms,

Will take the crown. The sum of this,

Brought hither to Pentapolis,

Y-ravished the regions round,

35

And every one with claps can sound,

‘Our heir-apparent is a king!

Who dream’d, who thought of such a thing?’

Brief, he must hence depart to Tyre.

His queen with child makes her desire –

40

Which who shall cross? – along to go.

Omit we all their dole and woe.

Lychorida, her nurse, she takes,

And so to sea. Their vessel shakes

On Neptune’s billow; half the flood

45

Hath their keel cut; but fortune’s mood

Varies again; the grisled north

Disgorges such a tempest forth,

That, as a duck for life that dives,

So up and down the poor ship drives.

50

The lady shrieks and well-a-near

Does fall in travail with her fear;

And what ensues in this fell storm

Shall for itself itself perform.

I nill relate, action may

55

Conveniently the rest convey;

Which might not what by me is told.

In your imagination hold

This stage the ship, upon whose deck

The sea-tost Pericles appears to speak.     Exit.

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3.1 Enter PERICLES, on shipboard.

PERICLES

The god of this great vast, rebuke these surges,

Which wash both heaven and hell; and thou that hast

Upon the winds command, bind them in brass,

Having call’d them from the deep! O, still

Thy deaf ’ning, dreadful thunders; gently quench

5

Thy nimble sulphurous flashes! O, how, Lychorida,

How does my queen? Thou stormest venomously;

Wilt thou spit all thyself? The seaman’s whistle

Is as a whisper in the ears of death,

Unheard. Lychorida! – Lucina, O

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Divinest patroness, and midwife gentle

To those that cry by night, convey thy deity

Aboard our dancing boat; make swift the pangs

Of my queen’s travails! Now, Lychorida!

Enter LYCHORIDA, with an infant.

LYCHORIDA Here is a thing too young for such a place,

15

Who, if it had conceit, would die, as I

Am like to do. Take in your arms this piece

Of your dead queen.

PERICLES     How? how, Lychorida?

LYCHORIDA     Patience, good sir; do not assist the storm.

Here’s all that is left living of your queen,

20

A little daughter: for the sake of it,

Be manly, and take comfort.

PERICLES     O you gods!

Why do you make us love your goodly gifts,

And snatch them straight away? We here below

Recall not what we give, and therein may

25

Use honour with you.

LYCHORIDA     Patience, good sir,

Even for this charge.

PERICLES     Now, mild may be thy life!

For a more blusterous birth had never babe;

Quiet and gentle thy conditions! for

Thou art the rudeliest welcome to this world

30

That e’er was prince’s child. Happy what follows!

Thou hast as chiding a nativity

As fire, air, water, earth, and heaven can make,

To herald thee from the womb. Poor inch of nature!

Even at the first thy loss is more than can

35

Thy portage quit, with all thou canst find here.

Now the good gods throw their best eyes upon’t!

Enter two Sailors.

1 SAILOR     What courage, sir? God save you!

PERICLES     Courage enough: I do not fear the flaw;

It hath done to me the worst. Yet for the love

40

Of this poor infant, this fresh-new seafarer,

I would it would be quiet.

1 SAILOR     Slack the bolins there! Thou wilt not, wilt

thou? Blow, and split thyself.

2 SAILOR     But sea-room, and the brine and cloudy billow

45

kiss the moon, I care not.

1 SAILOR     Sir, your queen must overboard; the sea works

high, the wind is loud, and will not lie till the ship be

clear’d of the dead.

PERICLES     That’s your superstition.

50

1 SAILOR     Pardon us, sir; with us at sea it hath been still

observ’d; and we are strong in custom. Therefore

briefly yield ’er, for she must overboard straight.

PERICLES     As you think meet. Most wretched queen!

LYCHORIDA     Here she lies, sir.

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PERICLES     A terrible childbed hast thou had, my dear;

No light, no fire: th’unfriendly elements

Forgot thee utterly; nor have I time

To give thee hallow’d to thy grave, but straight

Must cast thee, scarcely coffin’d, in the ooze;

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Where, for a monument upon thy bones,

And e’er-remaining lamps, the belching whale

And humming water must o’erwhelm thy corpse,

Lying with simple shells. O Lychorida,

Bid Nestor bring me spices, ink and paper,

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My casket and my jewels; and bid Nicander

Bring me the satin coffer; lay the babe

Upon the pillow; hie thee, whiles I say

A priestly farewell to her: suddenly, woman.

Exit Lychorida.

2 SAILOR     Sir, we have a chest beneath the hatches,

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caulked and bitumed ready.

PERICLES     I thank thee. Mariner, say what coast is this?

2 SAILOR     We are near Tharsus.

PERICLES     Thither, gentle mariner,

Alter thy course from Tyre. When canst thou reach it?

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2 SAILOR     By break of day, if the wind cease.

PERICLES     O, make for Tharsus!

There will I visit Cleon, for the babe

Cannot hold out to Tyrus; there I’ll leave it

At careful nursing. Go thy ways, good mariner;

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I’ll bring the body presently.     Exeunt.

3.2 Enter Lord CERIMON, with a Servant and another poor man, both storm-beaten.

CERIMON     Philemon, ho!

Enter PHILEMON.

PHILEMON     Doth my lord call?

CERIMON     Get fire and meat for these poor men;

’T has been a turbulent and stormy night.

Exit Philemon.

SERVANT     I have been in many; but such a night as this,

5

Till now, I ne’er endur’d.

CERIMON     Your master will be dead ere you return;

There’s nothing can be minister’d to nature

That can recover him.

[to poor man]     Give this to the ’pothecary

And tell me how it works.

10

Exeunt Servant and poor man.

Enter two Gentlemen.

1 GENTLEMAN     Good morrow.

2 GENTLEMAN     Good morrow to your lordship.

CERIMON     Gentlemen, why do you stir so early?

1 GENTLEMAN     Sir,

Our lodgings, standing bleak upon the sea,

15

Shook as th’earth did quake. The very principals

Did seem to rend and all to topple. Pure

Surprise and fear made me to quit the house.

2 GENTLEMAN     

That is the cause we trouble you so early;

’Tis not our husbandry.

CERIMON     O, you say well.

20

1 GENTLEMAN     

But I much marvel that your lordship, having

Rich tire about you, should at these early hours

Shake off the golden slumber of repose.

’Tis most strange,

Nature should be so conversant with pain,

25

Being thereto not compell’d.

CERIMON     I hold it ever,

Virtue and cunning were endowments greater

Than nobleness and riches; careless heirs

May the two latter darken and expend,

But immortality attends the former,

30

Making a man a god. ’Tis known I ever

Have studied physic, through which secret art,

By turning o’er authorities, I have,

Together with my practice, made familiar

To me and to my aid the blest infusions

35

That dwells in vegetives, in metals, stones;

And can speak of the disturbances that

Nature works, and of her cures; which doth give me

A more content in course of true delight

Than to be thirsty after tottering honour,

40

Or tie my treasure up in silken bags,

To please the fool and death.

2 GENTLEMAN     

Your honour has through Ephesus pour’d forth

Your charity, and hundreds call themselves

Your creatures, who by you have been restor’d;

45

And not your knowledge, your personal pain, but even

Your purse, still open, hath built Lord Cerimon

Such strong renown as time shall never raze.

Enter two or three Servants with a chest.

1 SERVANT     So; lift there.

CERIMON     What’s that?

1 SERVANT     Sir, even now

Did the sea toss up upon our shore this chest;

50

’Tis of some wreck.

CERIMON     Set’t down; let’s look upon’t.

2 GENTLEMAN     ’Tis like a coffin, sir.

CERIMON     Whate’er it be,

’Tis wondrous heavy. Wrench it open straight.

If the sea’s stomach be o’ercharg’d with gold,

’Tis a good constraint of fortune

55

It belches upon us.

2 GENTLEMAN     ’Tis so, my lord.

CERIMON     How close ’tis caulked and bitumed! Did the

sea cast it up?

1 SERVANT     I never saw so huge a billow, sir, as tossed it

upon shore.

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CERIMON     Wrench it open: soft! it smells most sweetly in

my sense.

2 GENTLEMAN     A delicate odour.

CERIMON     As ever hit my nostril. So, up with it.

O you most potent gods! what’s here? a corse!

65

1 GENTLEMAN     Most strange!

CERIMON     Shrouded in cloths of state; balmed and

entreasured with full bags of spices! A passport too!

Apollo, perfect me in the characters!

[Reads from a scroll.]

Here I give to understand,

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If e’er this coffin drives a-land,

I, King Pericles, have lost

This queen, worth all our mundane cost.

Who finds her, give her burying;

She was the daughter of a king.

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Besides this treasure for a fee,

The gods requite his charity!

If thou livest, Pericles, thou hast a heart

That even cracks for woe! This chanc’d to-night.

2 GENTLEMAN     Most likely, sir.

CERIMON     Nay, certainly to-night;

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For look how fresh she looks! They were too rough

That threw her in the sea. Make a fire within;

Fetch hither all my boxes in my closet.

Exit a Servant.

Death may usurp on nature many hours,

And yet the fire of life kindle again

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The o’erpress’d spirits. I heard of an Egyptian

That had nine hours lien dead,

Who was by good appliance recovered.

Enter Servant, with boxes, napkins, and fire.

Well said, well said; the fire and cloths.

The still and woeful music that we have,

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Cause it to sound, beseech you.           [Music.]

The viol once more; how thou stirr’st, thou block!

The music there!                             [Music.]

I pray you, give her air.

Gentlemen, this queen will live.

Nature awakes a warm breath out of her.

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She hath not been entranc’d above five hours;

See, how she ’gins to blow into life’s flower again!

1 GENTLEMAN     

The heavens, through you, increase our wonder,

And set up your fame forever.

CERIMON     She is alive!

Behold, her eyelids, cases to those

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Heavenly jewels which Pericles hath lost,

Begin to part their fringes of bright gold.

The diamonds of a most praised water

Doth appear to make the world twice rich. Live,

And make us weep to hear your fate, fair creature,

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Rare as you seem to be. [She moves.]

THAISA     O dear Diana,

Where am I? Where’s my lord? What world is this?

2 GENTLEMAN     Is not this strange?

1 GENTLEMAN     Most rare.

CERIMON     Hush, my gentle neighbours!

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Lend me your hands; to the next chamber bear her;

Get linen: now this matter must be look’d to,

For her relapse is mortal. Come, come;

And Aesculapius guide us!

Exeunt, carrying Thaisa away.

3.3 Enter PERICLES with CLEON and DIONYZA, and LYCHORIDA with MARINA in her arms.

PERICLES     Most honour’d Cleon, I must needs be gone;

My twelve months are expir’d, and Tyrus stands

In a litigious peace. You and your lady,

Take from my heart all thankfulness! the gods

Make up the rest upon you!

CLEON     Your strokes of fortune,

5

Though they hurt you mortally, yet glance

Full woundingly on us.

DIONYZA     O your sweet queen!

That the strict fates had pleas’d you had brought her hither,

To have bless’d mine eyes with her!

PERICLES     We cannot but obey

The powers above us. Could I rage and roar

10

As doth the sea she lies in, yet the end

Must be as ’tis. My gentle babe Marina,

Whom, for she was born at sea, I have nam’d so, here

I charge your charity withal; leaving her

The infant of your care; beseeching you

15

To give her princely training, that she may

Be manner’d as she is born.

CLEON     Fear not, my lord, but think

Your grace, that fed my country with your corn,

For which the people’s prayers still fall upon you,

Must in your child be thought on. If neglection

20

Should therein make me vile, the common body,

By you reliev’d, would force me to my duty.

But if to that my nature need a spur,

The gods revenge it upon me and mine,

To the end of generation!

PERICLES     I believe you;

25

Your honour and your goodness teach me to’t,

Without your vows. Till she be married, madam,

By bright Diana, whom we honour, all

Unscissor’d shall this hair of mine remain,

Though I show ill in’t. So I take my leave.

30

Good madam, make me blessed in your care

In bringing up my child.

DIONYZA     I have one myself,

Who shall not be more dear to my respect

Than yours, my lord.

PERICLES     Madam, my thanks and prayers.

CLEON

We’ll bring your grace e’en to the edge o’th’ shore,

35

Then give you up to the mask’d Neptune and

The gentlest winds of heaven.

PERICLES     I will embrace

Your offer. Come, dearest madam. O, no tears,

Lychorida, no tears;

Look to your little mistress, on whose grace

40

You may depend hereafter. Come, my lord.     Exeunt.

3.4 Enter CERIMON and THAISA.

CERIMON     Madam, this letter and some certain jewels

Lay with you in your coffer; which are

At your command. Know you the character?

THAISA     It is my lord’s. That I was shipp’d at sea

I well remember, even on my eaning time;

5

But whether there deliver’d, by the holy gods,

I cannot rightly say. But since King Pericles,

My wedded lord, I ne’er shall see again,

A vestal livery will I take me to,

And never more have joy.

10

CERIMON     Madam, if this you purpose as ye speak,

Diana’s temple is not distant far,

Where you may abide till your date expire.

Moreover, if you please, a niece of mine

Shall there attend you.

15

THAISA     My recompense is thanks, that’s all;

Yet my good will is great, though the gift small.

Exeunt.

4.Ch.     Enter GOWER.

GOWER

Imagine Pericles arriv’d at Tyre,

Welcom’d and settled to his own desire.

His woeful queen we leave at Ephesus,

Unto Diana there’s a votaress.

Now to Marina bend your mind,

5

Whom our fast-growing scene must find

At Tharsus, and by Cleon train’d

In music’s letters; who hath gain’d

Of education all the grace,

Which makes her both the heart and place

10

Of general wonder. But, alack,

That monster envy, oft the wrack

Of earned praise, Marina’s life

Seeks to take off by treason’s knife;

And in this kind hath our Cleon

15

One daughter and a wench full-grown,

Even ripe for marriage-rite. This maid

Hight Philoten; and it is said

For certain in our story, she

Would ever with Marina be:

20

Be’t when she weav’d the sleided silk

With fingers long, small, white as milk;

Or when she would with sharp neele wound

The cambric, which she made more sound

By hurting it; or when to th’ lute

25

She sung, and made the night-bird mute

That still records with moan; or when

She would with rich and constant pen

Vail to her mistress Dian; still

This Philoten contends in skill

30

With absolute Marina: so

With dove of Paphos might the crow

Vie feathers white. Marina gets

All praises, which are paid as debts,

And not as given. This so darks

35

In Philoten all graceful marks,

That Cleon’s wife with envy rare

A present murderer does prepare

For good Marina, that her daughter

Might stand peerless by this slaughter.

40

The sooner her vile thoughts to stead,

Lychorida, our nurse, is dead;

And cursed Dionyza hath

The pregnant instrument of wrath

Prest for this blow. The unborn event

45

I do commend to your content;

Only I carried winged time

Post on the lame feet of my rime;

Which never could I so convey,

Unless your thoughts went on my way.

50

Dionyza does appear,

With Leonine, a murtherer.      Exit.

4.1           Enter DIONYZA with LEONINE.

DIONYZA     Thy oath remember; thou hast sworn to do’t.

’Tis but a blow, which never shall be known.

Thou canst not do a thing in the world so soon,

To yield thee so much profit. Let not conscience,

Which is but cold, or flaming love thy bosom

5

Enslave too nicely; nor let pity, which

Even women have cast off, melt thee, but be

A soldier to thy purpose.

LEONINE     I will do’t; but yet she is a goodly creature.

DIONYZA     The fitter then the gods should have her.

10

Here she comes weeping for her only mistress’ death.

Thou art resolv’d?

LEONINE     I am resolv’d.

Enter MARINA, with a basket of flowers.

MARINA No, I will rob Tellus of her weed,

To strew thy green with flowers; the yellows, blues,

The purple violets, and marigolds,

15

Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave,

While summer-days doth last. Ay me! poor maid,

Born in a tempest, when my mother died,

This world to me is as a lasting storm,

Whirring me from my friends.

20

DIONYZA     How now, Marina! why do you keep alone?

How chance my daughter is not with you?

Do not consume your blood with sorrowing:

Have you a nurse of me! Lord, how your favour’s

Chang’d with this unprofitable woe!

25

Come, give me your flowers. On the sea-margent

Walk with Leonine; the air is quick there,

And it pierces and sharpens the stomach.

Come, Leonine, take her by the arm, walk with her.

MARINA

No, I pray you; I’ll not bereave you of your servant.

30

DIONYZA     Come, come;

I love the king your father and yourself

With more than foreign heart. We every day

Expect him here; when he shall come and find

Our paragon to all reports thus blasted,

35

He will repent the breadth of his great voyage;

Blame both my lord and me, that we have taken

No care to your best courses. Go, I pray you,

Walk, and be cheerful once again; reserve

That excellent complexion, which did steal

40

The eyes of young and old. Care not for me;

I can go home alone.

MARINA     Well, I will go;

But yet I have no desire to it.

DIONYZA     Come, come, I know ’tis good for you.

Walk half an hour, Leonine, at the least.

45

Remember what I have said.

LEONINE               I warrant you, madam.

DIONYZA     I’ll leave you, my sweet lady, for a while.

Pray, walk softly, do not heat your blood.

What! I must have care of you.

MARINA               My thanks, sweet madam.

Exit Dionyza.

Is this wind westerly that blows?

LEONINE     South-west.

50

MARINA     When I was born, the wind was north.

LEONINE               Was’t so?

MARINA     My father, as nurse says, did never fear,

But cried ‘Good seamen!’ to the sailors, galling

His kingly hands, haling ropes;

And, clasping to the mast, endur’d a sea

55

That almost burst the deck.

LEONINE     When was this?

MARINA     When I was born.

Never was waves nor wind more violent;

And from the ladder-tackle washes off

60

A canvas-climber. ‘Ha!’ says one, ‘wolt out?’

And with a dropping industry they skip

From stem to stern; the boatswain whistles, and

The master calls and trebles their confusion.

LEONINE     Come, say your prayers.

65

MARINA     What mean you?

LEONINE     If you require a little space for prayer,

I grant it. Pray, but be not tedious;

For the gods are quick of ear, and I am sworn

To do my work with haste.

MARINA          Why will you kill me?

70

LEONINE     To satisfy my lady.

MARINA     Why would she have me kill’d?

Now, as I can remember, by my troth,

I never did her hurt in all my life.

I never spake bad word, nor did ill turn

75

To any living creature; believe me la,

I never kill’d a mouse, nor hurt a fly;

I trod upon a worm against my will,

But I wept for’t. How have I offended,

Wherein my death might yield her any profit,

80

Or my life imply her any danger?

LEONINE     My commission

Is not to reason of the deed, but do’t.

MARINA     You will not do’t for all the world, I hope.

You are well favour’d, and your looks foreshow

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You have a gentle heart. I saw you lately,

When you caught hurt in parting two that fought.

Good sooth, it show’d well in you. Do so now.

Your lady seeks my life; come you between,

And save poor me, the weaker.

LEONINE          I am sworn,

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And will dispatch. [Seizes her.]

Enter Pirates.

1 PIRATE     Hold, villain!           Leonine runs away.

2 PIRATE     A prize! a prize!

3 PIRATE     Half-part, mates, half-part! Come, let’s have

her aboard suddenly.      Exeunt Pirates with Marina.

95

Enter LEONINE.

LEONINE

These roguing thieves serve the great pirate Valdes;

And they have seiz’d Marina. Let her go;

There’s no hope she’ll return. I’ll swear she’s dead

And thrown into the sea. But I’ll see further;

Perhaps they will but please themselves upon her,

100

Not carry her aboard. If she remain,

Whom they have ravish’d must by me be slain.     Exit.

4.2 Enter Pandar, Bawd and BOULT.

PANDAR     Boult!

BOULT     Sir?

PANDAR     Search the market narrowly; Mytilene is full of

gallants. We lost too much money this mart by being

too wenchless.

5

BAWD     We were never so much out of creatures. We have

but poor three, and they can do no more than they can

do; and they with continual action are even as good as

rotten.

PANDAR     Therefore let’s have fresh ones, whate’er we

10

pay for them. If there be not a conscience to be us’d in

every trade, we shall never prosper.

BAWD     Thou say’st true; ’tis not our bringing up of poor

bastards, as I think I have brought up some eleven –

BOULT     Ay, to eleven; and brought them down again.

15

But shall I search the market?

BAWD     What else, man? The stuff we have, a strong wind

will blow it to pieces, they are so pitifully sodden.

PANDAR     Thou sayest true; there’s two unwholesome, a’

conscience. The poor Transylvanian is dead, that lay

20

with the little baggage.

BOULT     Ay, she quickly poop’d him; she made him

roast-meat for worms. But I’ll go search the market.

Exit.

PANDAR     Three or four thousand chequins were as

pretty a proportion to live quietly, and so give over.

25

BAWD     Why to give over, I pray you? is it a shame to get

when we are old?

PANDAR     O, our credit comes not in like the commodity,

nor the commodity wages not with the danger;

therefore, if in our youths we could pick up some

30

pretty estate, ’twere not amiss to keep our door

hatch’d. Besides, the sore terms we stand upon with

the gods will be strong with us for giving o’er.

BAWD     Come, other sorts offend as well as we.

PANDAR     As well as we? ay, and better too; we offend

35

worse. Neither is our profession any trade; it’s no

calling. But here comes Boult.

Enter BOULT, with the Pirates and MARINA.

BOULT     Come your ways, my masters; you say she’s a

virgin?

1 PIRATE     O, sir, we doubt it not.

40

BOULT     Master, I have gone through for this piece you

see. If you like her, so; if not, I have lost my earnest.

BAWD     Boult, has she any qualities?

BOULT     She has a good face, speaks well, and has

excellent good clothes; there’s no farther necessity of

45

qualities can make her be refus’d.

BAWD     What’s her price, Boult?

BOULT     I cannot be bated one doit of a thousand pieces.

PANDAR     Well, follow me, my masters; you shall have

your money presently. Wife, take her in; instruct her

50

what she has to do, that she may not be raw in her

entertainment.      Exeunt Pandar and Pirates.

BAWD     Boult, take you the marks of her, the colour of her

hair, complexion, height, her age, with warrant of

her virginity, and cry ‘He that will give most shall have

55

her first.’ Such a maidenhead were no cheap thing, if

men were as they have been. Get this done as I

command you.

BOULT     Performance shall follow.                Exit.

MARINA     Alack that Leonine was so slack, so slow!

60

He should have struck, not spoke; or that these pirates

Not enough barbarous, had not o’erboard

Thrown me for to seek my mother!

BAWD     Why lament you, pretty one?

MARINA     That I am pretty.

65

BAWD     Come, the gods have done their part in you.

MARINA     I accuse them not.

BAWD     You are light into my hands, where you are like

to live.

MARINA     The more my fault

70

To ’scape his hands where I was like to die.

BAWD     Ay, and you shall live in pleasure.

MARINA     No.

BAWD     Yes, indeed shall you, and taste gentlemen of all

fashions. You shall fare well; you shall have the

75

difference of all complexions. What do you stop your

ears?

MARINA     Are you a woman?

BAWD     What would you have me be, and I be not a

woman?

80

MARINA     An honest woman, or not a woman.

BAWD     Marry, whip thee, gosling; I think I shall have

something to do with you. Come, you’re a young

foolish sapling, and must be bow’d as I would have

you.

85

MARINA     The gods defend me!

BAWD     If it please the gods to defend you by men, then

men must comfort you, men must feed you, men stir

you up. Boult’s return’d.

Enter BOULT.

Now, sir, hast thou cried her through the market?

90

BOULT     I have cried her almost to the number of her

hairs; I have drawn her picture with my voice.

BAWD     And I prithee tell me, how dost thou find the

inclination of the people, especially of the younger

sort?

95

BOULT     Faith, they listen’d to me as they would have

hearken’d to their father’s testament. There was a

Spaniard’s mouth water’d and he went to bed to her

very description.

BAWD     We shall have him here to-morrow with his best

100

ruff on.

BOULT     To-night, to-night. But, mistress, do you know

the French knight that cowers i’the hams?

BAWD     Who? Monsieur Verolles?

BOULT     Ay, he; he offer’d to cut a caper at the

105

proclamation; but he made a groan at it, and swore he

would see her to-morrow.

BAWD     Well, well; as for him, he brought his disease

hither: here he does but repair it. I know he will

come in our shadow, to scatter his crowns in the sun.

110

BOULT     Well, if we had of every nation a traveller, we

should lodge them with this sign.

BAWD     [to Marina] Pray you, come hither awhile. You

have fortunes coming upon you. Mark me: you must

seem to do that fearfully which you commit willingly;

115

despise profit where you have most gain. To weep that

you live as ye do makes pity in your lovers: seldom but

that pity begets you a good opinion, and that opinion

a mere profit.

MARINA     I understand you not.

120

BOULT     O, take her home, mistress, take her home; these

blushes of hers must be quench’d with some present

practice.

BAWD     Thou sayest true, i’faith, so they must; for your

bride goes to that with shame which is her way to go

125

with warrant.

BOULT     Faith, some do, and some do not. But, mistress,

if I have bargain’d for the joint, –

BAWD     Thou mayst cut a morsel off the spit.

BOULT     I may so?

130

BAWD     Who should deny it? Come, young one, I like

the manner of your garments well.

BOULT     Ay, by my faith, they shall not be chang’d yet.

BAWD     Boult, spend thou that in the town; report what a

sojourner we have; you’ll lose nothing by custom.

135

When nature fram’d this piece, she meant thee a good

turn; therefore say what a paragon she is, and thou

hast the harvest out of thine own report.

BOULT     I warrant you, mistress, thunder shall not so

awake the bed of eels as my giving out her beauty

140

stirs up the lewdly inclin’d. I’ll bring home some

to-night.

BAWD     Come your ways; follow me.

MARINA     If fires be hot, knives sharp, or waters deep,

Untied I still my virgin knot will keep.

145

Diana, aid my purpose!

BAWD     What have we to do with Diana? Pray you, will

you go with us?               Exeunt.

4.3 Enter CLEON and DIONYZA.

DIONYZA     Why are you foolish? Can it be undone?

CLEON     O Dionyza, such a piece of slaughter

The sun and moon ne’er look’d upon!

DIONYZA     I think you’ll turn child again.

CLEON     Were I chief lord of all this spacious world,

5

I’d give it to undo the deed. A lady,

Much less in blood than virtue, yet a princess

To equal any single crown o’th’ earth

I’th’ justice of compare! O villain Leonine!

Whom thou hast poison’d too.

10

If thou hadst drunk to him, ’t had been a kindness

Becoming well thy fact. What canst thou say

When noble Pericles shall demand his child?

DIONYZA     That she is dead. Nurses are not the fates,

To foster it, not ever to preserve.

15

She died at night; I’ll say so. Who can cross it?

Unless you play the pious innocent,

And for an honest attribute cry out

‘She died by foul play.’

CLEON     O, go to. Well, well.

Of all the faults beneath the heavens, the gods

20

Do like this worst.

DIONYZA     Be one of those that thinks

The petty wrens of Tharsus will fly hence,

And open this to Pericles. I do shame

To think of what a noble strain you are,

And of how coward a spirit.

CLEON     To such proceeding

25

Who ever but his approbation added,

Though not his prime consent, he did not flow

From honourable sources.

DIONYZA     Be it so, then.

Yet none does know but you how she came dead,

Nor none can know, Leonine being gone.

30

She did distain my child, and stood between

Her and her fortunes. None would look on her,

But cast their gazes on Marina’s face,

Whilst ours was blurted at and held a malkin

Not worth the time of day. It pierc’d me through;

35

And though you call my course unnatural, –

You not your child well loving – yet I find

It greets me as an enterprise of kindness

Perform’d to your sole daughter.

CLEON     Heavens forgive it!

DIONYZA     And as for Pericles,

40

What should he say? we wept after her hearse,

And yet we mourn. Her monument

Is almost finish’d, and her epitaphs

In glitt’ring golden characters express

A general praise to her, and care in us

45

At whose expense ’tis done.

CLEON     Thou art like the harpy,

Which, to betray, dost with thine angel’s face,

Seize with thine eagle’s talons.

DIONYZA     Ye’re like one that superstitiously

Do swear to th’ gods that winter kills the flies;

50

But yet I know you’ll do as I advise.      Exeunt.

4.4      Enter GOWER.

GOWER

Thus time we waste, and long leagues make short;

Sail seas in cockles, have and wish but for’t;

Making, to take our imagination,

From bourn to bourn, region to region.

By you being pardon’d, we commit no crime

5

To use one language in each several clime

Where our scene seems to live. I do beseech you

To learn of me, who stand i’th’ gaps to teach you

The stages of our story. Pericles

Is now again thwarting the wayward seas,

10

Attended on by many a lord and knight,

To see his daughter, all his life’s delight.

Old Helicanus goes along. Behind

Is left to govern it, you bear in mind,

Old Escanes, whom Helicanus late

15

Advanc’d in time to great and high estate.

Well-sailing ships and bounteous winds have brought

This king to Tharsus – think his pilot thought;

So with his steerage shall your thoughts grow on –

To fetch his daughter home, who first is gone.

20

Like motes and shadows see them move awhile;

Your ears unto your eyes I’ll reconcile.

Dumb Show.

Enter PERICLES at one door, with all his train; CLEON and DIONYZA at the other. Cleon shows Pericles the tomb; whereat Pericles makes lamentation, puts on sackcloth, and in a mighty passion departs. Then exeunt Cleon, Dionyza and the rest.

See how belief may suffer by foul show!

This borrow’d passion stands for true-ow’d woe;

And Pericles, in sorrow all devour’d,

25

With sighs shot through and biggest tears o’ershower’d,

Leaves Tharsus and again embarks. He swears

Never to wash his face, nor cut his hairs.

He puts on sackcloth, and to sea. He bears

A tempest, which his mortal vessel tears,

30

And yet he rides it out. Now please you wit

The epitaph is for Marina writ

By wicked Dionyza.

[Reads the inscription on Marina’s monument.]

The fairest, sweet’st and best, lies here,

Who wither’d in her spring of year.

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She was of Tyrus the king’s daughter,

On whom foul death hath made this slaughter.

Marina was she call’d; and at her birth,

Thetis, being proud, swallow’d some part o’th’ earth.

Therefore the earth, fearing to be o’erflow’d,

40

Hath Thetis’ birth-child on the heavens bestow’d;

Wherefore she does, and swears she’ll never stint,

Make raging battery upon shores of flint.

No visor does become black villainy

So well as soft and tender flattery.

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Let Pericles believe his daughter’s dead,

And bear his courses to be ordered

By Lady Fortune; while our scene must play

His daughter’s woe and heavy well-a-day

In her unholy service. Patience, then,

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And think you now are all in Mytilen.      Exit.

4.5      Enter, from the brothel, two Gentlemen.

1 GENTLEMAN     Did you ever hear the like?

2 GENTLEMAN     No, nor never shall do in such a place as

this, she being once gone.

1 GENTLEMAN     But to have divinity preach’d there! did

you ever dream of such a thing?

5

2 GENTLEMAN     No, no. Come, I am for no more bawdy-

houses. Shall’s go hear the vestals sing?

1 GENTLEMAN     I’ll do anything now that is virtuous; but

I am out of the road of rutting for ever.      Exeunt.

4.6      Enter Pandar, Bawd and BOULT.

PANDAR     Well, I had rather than twice the worth of her

she had ne’er come here.

BAWD     Fie, fie upon her! she’s able to freeze the god

Priapus, and undo a whole generation. We must

either get her ravish’d or be rid of her. When she

5

should do for clients her fitment and do me the

kindness of our profession, she has me her quirks, her

reasons, her master-reasons, her prayers, her knees;

that she would make a puritan of the devil, if he would

cheapen a kiss of her.

10

BOULT     Faith, I must ravish her, or she’ll disfurnish us

of all our cavalleria, and make our swearers priests.

PANDAR     Now, the pox upon her green-sickness for me!

BAWD     Faith, there’s no way to be rid on’t but by the way

to the pox. Here comes the Lord Lysimachus, dis-

15

guis’d.

BOULT     We should have both lord and lown, if the

peevish baggage would but give way to customers.

Enter LYSIMACHUS.

LYSIMACHUS     How now! How a dozen of virginities?

BAWD     Now, the gods to bless your honour!

20

BOULT     I am glad to see your honour in good health.

LYSIMACHUS     You may so; ’tis the better for you that

your resorters stand upon sound legs. How now,

wholesome iniquity, have you that a man may deal

withal, and defy the surgeon?

25

BAWD     We have here one, sir, if she would – but there

never came her like in Mytilene.

LYSIMACHUS     If she’d do the deeds of darkness, thou

wouldst say.

BAWD     Your honour knows what ’tis to say well enough.

30

LYSIMACHUS     Well, call forth, call forth.

BOULT     For flesh and blood, sir, white and red, you shall

see a rose; and she were a rose indeed, if she had but –

LYSIMACHUS     What, prithee?

BOULT     O, sir, I can be modest.

35

LYSIMACHUS     That dignifies the renown of a bawd no

less than it gives a good report to a number to be

chaste.      Exit Boult.

BAWD     Here comes that which grows to the stalk; never

pluck’d yet, I can assure you.

40

Enter BOULT with MARINA.

Is she not a fair creature?

LYSIMACHUS     Faith, she would serve after a long voyage

at sea. Well, there’s for you; leave us.

BAWD     I beseech your honour, give me leave a word, and

I’ll have done presently.

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LYSIMACHUS     I beseech you, do.

BAWD     [to Marina] First, I would have you note, this is

an honourable man.

MARINA     I desire to find him so, that I may worthily note

him.

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BAWD     Next, he’s the governor of this country, and a

man whom I am bound to.

MARINA     If he govern the country, you are bound to him

indeed; but how honourable he is in that I know not.

BAWD     Pray you, without any more virginal fencing, will

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you use him kindly? he will line your apron with gold.

MARINA     What he will do graciously, I will thankfully

receive.

LYSIMACHUS     Ha’ you done?

BAWD     My lord, she’s not pac’d yet; you must take some

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pains to work her to your manage. Come, we will leave

his honour and her together. Go thy ways.

Exeunt Bawd, Pandar, and Boult.

LYSIMACHUS     Now, pretty one, how long have you been

at this trade?

MARINA     What trade, sir?

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LYSIMACHUS     Why, I cannot name’t but I shall offend.

MARINA     I cannot be offended with my trade. Please you

to name it.

LYSIMACHUS     How long have you been of this profession?

MARINA     E’er since I can remember.

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LYSIMACHUS     Did you go to’t so young? Were you a

gamester at five or at seven?

MARINA     Earlier too, sir, if now I be one.

LYSIMACHUS     Why, the house you dwell in proclaims

you to be a creature of sale.

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MARINA     Do you know this house to be a place of such

resort, and will come into’t? I hear say you’re of

honourable parts and are the governor of this place.

LYSIMACHUS     Why, hath your principal made known

unto you who I am?

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MARINA     Who is my principal?

LYSIMACHUS     Why, your herb woman; she that sets

seeds and roots of shame and iniquity. O, you have

heard something of my power, and so stand aloof for

more serious wooing. But I protest to thee, pretty one,

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my authority shall not see thee, or else look friendly

upon thee. Come, bring me to some private place;

come, come.

MARINA     If you were born to honour, show it now;

If put upon you, make the judgement good

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That thought you worthy of it.

LYSIMACHUS

How’s this? how’s this? Some more; be sage.

MARINA     For me,

That am a maid, though most ungentle fortune

Have plac’d me in this sty, where, since I came,

Diseases have been sold dearer than physic –

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That the gods

Would set me free from this unhallow’d place,

Though they did change me to the meanest bird

That flies i’th’ purer air!

LYSIMACHUS     I did not think

Thou couldst have spoke so well; ne’er dreamt thou couldst.

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Had I brought hither a corrupted mind,

Thy speech had alter’d it. Hold, here’s gold for thee.

Persever in that clear way thou goest,

And the gods strengthen thee!

MARINA     The good gods preserve you!

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LYSIMACHUS     For me, be you thoughten

That I came with no ill intent; for to me

The very doors and windows savour vilely.

Fare thee well. Thou art a piece of virtue, and

I doubt not but thy training hath been noble.

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Hold, here’s more gold for thee.

A curse upon him, die he like a thief,

That robs thee of thy goodness! If thou dost

Hear from me, it shall be for thy good.

Enter BOULT.

BOULT     I beseech your honour, one piece for me.

115

LYSIMACHUS

Avaunt thou damned door-keeper! Your house,

But for this virgin that doth prop it,

Would sink and overwhelm you. Away!      Exit.

BOULT     How’s this? We must take another course with

you. If your peevish chastity, which is not worth a

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breakfast in the cheapest country under the cope, shall

undo a whole household, let me be gelded like a

spaniel. Come your ways.

MARINA     Whither would you have me?

BOULT     I must have your maidenhead taken off, or the

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common hangman shall execute it. Come your ways.

We’ll have no more gentlemen driven away. Come

your ways, I say.

Enter Bawd and Pandar.

BAWD     How now! what’s the matter?

BOULT     Worse and worse, mistress; she has here spoken

130

holy words to the Lord Lysimachus.

BAWD     O abominable!

BOULT     She makes our profession as it were to stink

afore the face of the gods.

BAWD     Marry, hang her up for ever!

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BOULT     The nobleman would have dealt with her like a

nobleman, and she sent him away as cold as a

snowball; saying his prayers too.

BAWD     Boult, take her away; use her at thy pleasure.

Crack the glass of her virginity, and make the rest

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malleable.

BOULT     And if she were a thornier piece of ground than

she is, she shall be plough’d.

MARINA     Hark, hark, you gods!

BAWD     She conjures: away with her! Would she had

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never come within my doors! Marry, hang you! She’s

born to undo us. Will you not go the way of women-

kind? Marry, come up, my dish of chastity with

rosemary and bays! Exeunt Bawd and Pandar.

BOULT     Come, mistress; come your ways with me.

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MARINA     Whither wilt thou have me?

BOULT     To take from you the jewel you hold so dear.

MARINA     Prithee, tell me one thing first.

BOULT     Come now, your one thing.

MARINA     What canst thou wish thine enemy to be?

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BOULT     Why, I could wish him to be my master, or

rather, my mistress.

MARINA     Neither of these are so bad as thou art,

Since they do better thee in their command.

Thou hold’st a place, for which the pained’st fiend

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Of hell would not in reputation change;

Thou art the damned door-keeper to every

Coistrel that comes inquiring for his Tib;

To the choleric fisting of every rogue

Thy ear is liable; thy food is such

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As hath been belch’d on by infected lungs.

BOULT     What would you have me do? go to the wars,

would you? where a man may serve seven years for the

loss of a leg, and have not money enough in the end to

buy him a wooden one?

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MARINA     Do any thing but this thou doest. Empty

Old receptacles, or common shores, of filth;

Serve by indenture to the common hangman:

Any of these ways are yet better than this;

For what thou professest, a baboon, could he speak,

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Would own a name too dear. That the gods

Would safely deliver me from this place!

Here, here’s gold for thee.

If that thy master would gain by me,

Proclaim that I can sing, weave, sew, and dance,

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With other virtues, which I’ll keep from boast;

And will undertake all these to teach.

I doubt not but this populous city will

Yield many scholars.

BOULT     But can you teach all this you speak of?

185

MARINA     Prove that I cannot, take me home again,

And prostitute me to the basest groom

That doth frequent your house.

BOULT     Well, I will see what I can do for thee; if I can

place thee, I will.

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MARINA     But amongst honest women.

BOULT     Faith, my acquaintance lies little amongst them.

But since my master and mistress hath bought you,

there’s no going but by their consent; therefore I will

make them acquainted with your purpose, and I doubt

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not but I shall find them tractable enough. Come, I’ll

do for thee what I can; come your ways.      Exeunt.

5.Ch. Enter GOWER.

GOWER

Marina thus the brothel ’scapes, and chances

Into an honest house, our story says.

She sings like one immortal, and she dances

As goddess-like to her admired lays.

Deep clerks she dumbs, and with her neele composes

5

Nature’s own shape, of bud, bird, branch, or berry,

That even her art sisters the natural roses;

Her inkle, silk, twin with the rubied cherry:

That pupils lacks she none of noble race,

Who pour their bounty on her; and her gain

10

She gives the cursed bawd. Here we her place,

And to her father turn our thoughts again,

Where we left him on the sea. We there him lost,

Whence, driven before the winds, he is arriv’d

Here where his daughter dwells; and on this coast

15

Suppose him now at anchor. The city striv’d

God Neptune’s annual feast to keep; from whence

Lysimachus our Tyrian ship espies,

His banners sable, trimm’d with rich expense;

And to him in his barge with fervour hies.

20

In your supposing once more put your sight;

Of heavy Pericles, think this his bark,

Where what is done in action, more, if might,

Shall be discover’d; please you sit and hark.     Exit.

5.1     Enter HELICANUS, to him two Sailors, one belonging to the Tyrian vessel, the other to the barge.

TYRIAN SAILOR

Where is Lord Helicanus? he can resolve you.

O, here he is.

[to Helicanus] Sir, there is a barge put off from Mytilene,

And in it is Lysimachus the governor,

Who craves to come aboard. What is your will?

5

HELICANUS     That he have his. Call up some gentlemen.

TYRIAN SAILOR     Ho, gentlemen! my lord calls.

Enter two or three Gentlemen.

1 GENTLEMAN     Doth your lordship call?

HELICANUS     Gentlemen, there is some of worth would

come aboard; I pray, greet him fairly.

10

[Gentlemen and Sailors descend, and go on board the barge.]

Enter from thence LYSIMACHUS and Lords; with them the gentlemen and sailors.

TYRIAN SAILOR     Sir,

This is the man that can, in aught you would,

Resolve you.

LYSIMACHUS     Hail, reverend sir! the gods preserve you!

HELICANUS     And you, to outlive the age I am,

15

And die as I would do.

LYSIMACHUS     You wish me well.

Being on shore, honouring of Neptune’s triumphs,

Seeing this goodly vessel ride before us,

I made to it to know of whence you are.

HELICANUS     First, what is your place?

20

LYSIMACHUS

I am the governor of this place you lie before.

HELICANUS     Sir,

Our vessel is of Tyre, in it the king;

A man who for this three months hath not spoken

To any one, nor taken sustenance

25

But to prorogue his grief.

LYSIMACHUS     Upon what ground is his distemperature?

HELICANUS     ’Twould be too tedious to repeat;

But the main grief springs from the loss

Of a beloved daughter and a wife.

30

LYSIMACHUS     May we not see him?

HELICANUS     You may;

But bootless is your sight; he will not speak

To any.

LYSIMACHUS     Yet let me obtain my wish.

35

HELICANUS     Behold him.

PERICLES discovered.

This was a goodly person,

Till the disaster that, one mortal night,

Drove him to this.

LYSIMACHUS     Sir king, all hail! the gods preserve you!

Hail, royal sir!

40

HELICANUS     It is in vain; he will not speak to you.

1 LORD     Sir,

We have a maid in Mytilene, I durst wager,

Would win some words of him.

LYSIMACHUS     ’Tis well bethought.

She, questionless, with her sweet harmony

45

And other chosen attractions, would allure,

And make a batt’ry through his deafen’d ports,

Which now are midway stopp’d.

She is all happy as the fairest of all,

And with her fellow maids is now upon

50

The leavy shelter that abuts against

The island’s side.

[Whispers a Lord, who goes off in the barge of

Lysimachus.]

HELICANUS     Sure, all effectless; yet nothing we’ll omit

That bears recovery’s name. But, since your kindness

We have stretch’d thus far, let us beseech you

55

That for our gold we may provision have,

Wherein we are not destitute for want,

But weary for the staleness.

LYSIMACHUS     O, sir, a courtesy

Which, if we should deny, the most just God

For every graff would send a caterpillar,

60

And so inflict our province. Yet once more

Let me entreat to know at large the cause

Of your king’s sorrow.

HELICANUS     Sit, sir, I will recount it to you.

But see, I am prevented.

Enter Lord from the barge, with MARINA and one of her companions.

LYSIMACHUS     O, here’s the lady that I sent for.

65

Welcome, fair one! Is’t not a goodly presence?

HELICANUS     She’s a gallant lady.

LYSIMACHUS     She’s such a one that, were I well assur’d

Came of gentle kind and noble stock,

I’d wish no better choice, and think me rarely wed.

70

Fair one, all goodness that consists in beauty,

Expect even here, where is a kingly patient,

If that thy prosperous and artificial feat

Can draw him but to answer thee in aught,

Thy sacred physic shall receive such pay

75

As thy desires can wish.

MARINA     Sir, I will use

My utmost skill in his recovery, provided

That none but I and my companion maid

Be suffer’d to come near him.

LYSIMACHUS     Come, let us leave her;

And the gods make her prosperous!

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[They withdraw. Marina sings.]

Mark’d he your music?

MARINA     No, nor look’d on us.

LYSIMACHUS     See, she will speak to him.

MARINA     Hail, sir! my lord, lend ear.

PERICLES     Hum, ha! [pushing her back.]

MARINA     I am a maid,

85

My lord, that ne’er before invited eyes,

But have been gaz’d on like a comet; she speaks,

My lord, that, may be, hath endur’d a grief

Might equal yours, if both were justly weigh’d.

Though wayward fortune did malign my state,

90

My derivation was from ancestors

Who stood equivalent with mighty kings;

But time hath rooted out my parentage,

And to the world and awkward casualties

Bound me in servitude. [aside] I will desist;

95

But there is something glows upon my cheek,

And whispers in mine ear ‘Go not till he speak’.

PERICLES     My fortunes – parentage – good parentage –

To equal mine – was it not thus? what say you?

MARINA     I said, my lord, if you did know my parentage,

100

You would not do me violence.

PERICLES

I do think so. Pray you, turn your eyes upon me.

You’re like something that – What countrywoman?

Here of these shores?

MARINA     No, nor of any shores;

Yet I was mortally brought forth, and am

105

No other than I appear.

PERICLES     I am great with woe

And shall deliver weeping. My dearest wife

Was like this maid, and such a one

My daughter might have been: my queen’s square brows;

Her stature to an inch; as wand-like straight;

110

As silver-voic’d; her eyes as jewel-like

And cas’d as richly; in pace another Juno;

Who starves the ears she feeds, and makes them hungry

The more she gives them speech. Where do you live?

MARINA     Where I am but a stranger; from the deck

115

You may discern the place.

PERICLES     Where were you bred?

And how achiev’d you these endowments which

You make more rich to owe?

MARINA     If I should tell my history, ’twould seem

Like lies, disdain’d in the reporting.

PERICLES     Prithee, speak;

120

Falseness cannot come from thee, for thou look’st

Modest as Justice, and thou seem’st a palace

For the crown’d Truth to dwell in. I will believe thee,

And make my senses credit thy relation

To points that seem impossible; for thou look’st

125

Like one I lov’d indeed. What were thy friends?

Didst thou not say when I did push thee back,

Which was when I perceiv’d thee, that thou cam’st

From good descending?

MARINA     So indeed I did.

PERICLES     Report thy parentage. I think thou said’st

130

Thou hadst been toss’d from wrong to injury,

And that thou thought’st thy griefs might equal mine,

If both were open’d.

MARINA     Some such thing I said,

And said no more but what my thoughts

Did warrant me was likely.

PERICLES     Tell thy story;

135

If thine consider’d prove the thousandth part

Of my endurance, thou art a man, and I

Have suffer’d like a girl; yet thou dost look

Like Patience gazing on kings’ graves, and smiling

Extremity out of act. What were thy friends?

140

How lost thou them? Thy name, my most kind virgin?

Recount, I do beseech you. Come, sit by me.

MARINA     My name is Marina.

PERICLES     O, I am mock’d,

And thou by some incensed god sent hither

To make the world to laugh at me.

MARINA     Patience, good sir,

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Or here I’ll cease.

PERICLES     Nay, I’ll be patient.

Thou little know’st how thou dost startle me,

To call thyself Marina.

MARINA     The name

Was given me by one that had some power,

My father and a king.

PERICLES     How, a king’s daughter?

150

And call’d Marina?

MARINA     You said you would believe me;

But, not to be a troubler of your peace,

I will end here.

PERICLES     But are you flesh and blood?

Have you a working pulse, and are no fairy

Motion? Well, speak on. Where were you born,

155

And wherefore call’d Marina?

MARINA     Call’d Marina

For I was born at sea.

PERICLES     At sea! what mother?

MARINA     My mother was the daughter of a king;

Who died the minute I was born,

As my good nurse Lychorida hath oft

160

Deliver’d weeping.

PERICLES     O, stop there a little!

This is the rarest dream that e’er dull’d sleep

Did mock sad fools withal; this cannot be

My daughter, buried; well; where were you bred?

I’ll hear you more, to th’ bottom of your story,

165

And never interrupt you.

MARINA

You scorn; believe me, ’twere best I did give o’er.

PERICLES     I will believe you by the syllable

Of what you shall deliver. Yet, give me leave:

How came you in these parts? where were you bred?

170

MARINA     The king my father did in Tharsus leave me,

Till cruel Cleon, with his wicked wife,

Did seek to murder me; and having woo’d

A villain to attempt it, who having drawn to do’t,

A crew of pirates came and rescu’d me;

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Brought me to Mytilene. But, good sir,

Whither will you have me? Why do you weep? It may be

You think me an impostor: no, good faith;

I am the daughter to King Pericles,

If good King Pericles be.

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PERICLES     Ho, Helicanus!

HELICANUS     Calls my lord?

PERICLES     Thou art a grave and noble counsellor,

Most wise in general. Tell me, if thou canst,

What this maid is, or what is like to be,

185

That thus hath made me weep?

HELICANUS     I know not;

But here’s the regent, sir, of Mytilene,

Speaks nobly of her.

LYSIMACHUS     She never would tell

Her parentage; being demanded that,

She would sit still and weep.

190

PERICLES     O Helicanus, strike me, honour’d sir!

Give me a gash, put me to present pain,

Lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me

O’erbear the shores of my mortality,

And drown me with their sweetness. O, come hither,

195

Thou that beget’st him that did thee beget;

Thou that wast born at sea, buried at Tharsus,

And found at sea again. O Helicanus,

Down on thy knees! thank the holy gods as loud

As thunder threatens us: this is Marina.

200

What was thy mother’s name? tell me but that,

For truth can never be confirm’d enough,

Though doubts did ever sleep.

MARINA     First, sir, I pray, what is your title?

PERICLES     I am Pericles of Tyre: but tell me now

205

My drown’d queen’s name, as in the rest you said

Thou hast been godlike perfect, the heir of kingdoms,

And another life to Pericles thy father.

MARINA     Is it no more to be your daughter than

To say my mother’s name was Thaisa?

210

Thaisa was my mother, who did end

The minute I began.

PERICLES     Now, blessing on thee! rise; thou art my child.

Give me fresh garments. Mine own, Helicanus,

She is not dead at Tharsus, as she should have been,

215

By savage Cleon; she shall tell thee all,

When thou shalt kneel, and justify in knowledge

She is thy very princess. Who is this?

HELICANUS     Sir, ’tis the governor of Mytilene,

Who, hearing of your melancholy state,

220

Did come to see you.

PERICLES     I embrace you.

Give me my robes; I am wild in my beholding.

O heavens bless my girl! But hark, what music?

Tell Helicanus, my Marina, tell him

O’er point by point, for yet he seems to doubt,

225

How sure you are my daughter.     [Music.]

But what music?

HELICANUS     My lord, I hear none.

PERICLES     None?

The music of the spheres! List, my Marina.

LYSIMACHUS     It is not good to cross him; give him way.

230

PERICLES     Rarest sounds! Do ye not hear?

LYSIMACHUS     Music, my Lord? I hear.

PERICLES     Most heavenly music!

It nips me unto list’ning, and thick slumber

Hangs upon mine eyes; let me rest. [Sleeps.]

LYSIMACHUS     A pillow for his head. So, leave him all.

235

Well, my companion friends,

If this but answer to my just belief,

I’ll well remember you.     Exeunt all but Pericles.

DIANA appears to Pericles in a vision.

DIANA     My temple stands in Ephesus; hie thee thither,

And do upon mine altar sacrifice.

240

There, when my maiden priests are met together,

[     ] before the people all,

Reveal how thou at sea didst lose thy wife.

To mourn thy crosses, with thy daughter’s, call

And give them repetition to the life.

245

Or perform my bidding, or thou liv’st in woe;

Do’t, and happy; by my silver bow!

Awake, and tell thy dream.     Disappears.

PERICLES     Celestial Dian, goddess argentine,

I will obey thee. Helicanus!

Enter LYSIMACHUS, HELICANUS and MARINA.

HELICANUS     Sir?

250

PERICLES     My purpose was for Tharsus, there to strike

The inhospitable Cleon; but I am

For other service first; toward Ephesus

Turn our blown sails: eftsoons I’ll tell thee why.

Shall we refresh us, sir, upon your shore,

255

And give you gold for such provision

As our intents will need?

LYSIMACHUS     Sir,

With all my heart; and when you come ashore,

I have another suit.

PERICLES     You shall prevail,

260

Were it to woo my daughter; for it seems

You have been noble towards her.

LYSIMACHUS     Sir, lend me your arm.

PERICLES     Come, my Marina.

Exeunt.

5.2     Enter GOWER.

The temple of Diana at Ephesus; THAISA standing near the altar, as high priestess; a number of virgins on each side; CERIMON and other inhabitants of Ephesus attending.

GOWER     Now our sands are almost run;

More a little, and then dumb.

This, my last boon, give me,

For such kindness must relieve me,

That you aptly will suppose

5

What pageantry, what feats, what shows,

What minstrelsy and pretty din,

The regent made in Mytilin

To greet the king. So he thriv’d,

That he is promis’d to be wiv’d

10

To fair Marina; but in no wise

Till he had done his sacrifice,

As Dian bade: whereto being bound,

The interim, pray you, all confound.

In feather’d briefness sails are fill’d,

15

And wishes fall out as they’re will’d.

At Ephesus the temple see

Our king and all his company.

That he can hither come so soon,

Is by your fancies’ thankful doom.     Exit.

20

5.3     Enter PERICLES, with his train; LYSIMACHUS, HELICANUS and MARINA.

PERICLES     Hail, Dian! to perform thy just command,

I here confess myself the king of Tyre;

Who, frighted from my country, did wed

At Pentapolis the fair Thaisa.

At sea in childbed died she, but brought forth

5

A maid-child call’d Marina; who, O goddess,

Wears yet thy silver livery. She at Tharsus

Was nurs’d with Cleon, who at fourteen years

He sought to murder; but her better stars

Brought her to Mytilene; ‘gainst whose shore

10

Riding, her fortunes brought the maid aboard us,

Where, by her own most clear remembrance, she

Made known herself my daughter.

THAISA     Voice and favour!

You are, you are – O royal Pericles! [Faints.]

PERICLES

What means the nun? she dies, help, gentlemen!

15

CERIMON     Noble sir,

If you have told Diana’s altar true,

This is your wife.

PERICLES     Reverend appearer, no:

I threw her overboard with these very arms.

CERIMON     Upon this coast, I warrant you.

PERICLES     ’Tis most certain.

20

CERIMON     Look to the lady. O, she’s but o’erjoy’d.

Early one blustering morn this lady was

Thrown upon this shore. I op’d the coffin,

Found there rich jewels; recover’d her, and plac’d her

Here in Diana’s temple.

PERICLES     May we see them?

25

CERIMON

Great sir, they shall be brought you to my house,

Whither I invite you. Look, Thaisa is

Recovered.

THAISA     O, let me look!

If he be none of mine, my sanctity

Will to my sense bend no licentious ear,

30

But curb it, spite of seeing. O, my lord,

Are you not Pericles? Like him you spake,

Like him you are. Did you not name a tempest,

A birth and death?

PERICLES     The voice of dead Thaisa!

THAISA     That Thaisa am I, supposed dead

35

And drown’d.

PERICLES     Immortal Dian!

THAISA     Now I know you better.

When we with tears parted Pentapolis,

The king my father gave you such a ring.

[Points to his ring.]

PERICLES

This, this: no more. You gods, your present kindness

40

Makes my past miseries sports. You shall do well,

That on the touching of her lips I may

Melt and no more be seen. O come, be buried

A second time within these arms.

MARINA     My heart

Leaps to be gone into my mother’s bosom.

45

[Kneels to Thaisa.]

PERICLES

Look, who kneels here, flesh of thy flesh, Thaisa;

Thy burden at the sea, and call’d Marina

For she was yielded there.

THAISA     Bless’d, and mine own!

HELICANUS     Hail, madam, and my queen!

THAISA     I know you not.

PERICLES

You have heard me say, when I did fly from Tyre,

50

I left behind an ancient substitute;

Can you remember what I call’d the man?

I have nam’d him oft.

THAISA     ’Twas Helicanus then.

PERICLES     Still confirmation!

Embrace him, dear Thaisa; this is he.

55

Now do I long to hear how you were found,

How possibly preserv’d, and who to thank,

Besides the gods, for this great miracle.

THAISA     Lord Cerimon, my lord; this man,

Through whom the gods have shown their power; that can

60

From first to last resolve you.

PERICLES     Reverend sir,

The gods can have no mortal officer

More like a god than you. Will you deliver

How this dead queen re-lives?

CERIMON     I will, my lord.

Beseech you, first go with me to my house,

65

Where shall be shown you all was found with her;

How she came plac’d here in the temple;

No needful thing omitted.

PERICLES     Pure Dian,

I bless thee for thy vision, and will offer

Night-oblations to thee. Thaisa,

70

This prince, the fair betrothed of your daughter,

Shall marry her at Pentapolis. And now

[     ] this ornament

Makes me look dismal will I clip to form;

And what this fourteen years no razor touch’d

75

To grace thy marriage-day I’ll beautify.

THAISA     Lord Cerimon hath letters of good credit, sir,

My father’s dead.

PERICLES

Heavens make a star of him! Yet there, my queen,

We’ll celebrate their nuptials, and ourselves

80

Will in that kingdom spend our following days.

Our son and daughter shall in Tyrus reign.

Lord Cerimon, we do our longing stay

To hear the rest untold: sir, lead’s the way.     Exeunt.

EPILOGUE

Enter GOWER.

GOWER

In Antiochus and his daughter you have heard

Of monstrous lust the due and just reward.

In Pericles, his queen and daughter, seen,

Although assail’d with fortune fierce and keen,

Virtue preserv’d from fell destruction’s blast,

5

Led on by heaven, and crown’d with joy at last.

In Helicanus may you well descry

A figure of truth, of faith, of loyalty.

In reverend Cerimon there well appears

The worth that learned charity aye wears.

10

For wicked Cleon and his wife, when fame

Had spread his cursed deed to th’ honour’d name

Of Pericles, to rage the city turn,

That him and his they in his palace burn:

The gods for murder seemed so content

15

To punish; although not done, but meant.

So on your patience evermore attending,

New joy wait on you! Here our play has ending.

Exit.

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet was among the first plays Shakespeare wrote as a leading member of the Chamberlain’s Men, of which he was a founder-member in 1594. A drastically abbreviated text, printed in Quarto in 1597, was superseded in 1599 by a Quarto representing the play, ‘newly corrected, augmented, and amended’, much as we know it and in the form in which it was reprinted in the 1623 First Folio. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, written in 1594-5, is usually thought of as following Romeo, mainly on the grounds that the mechanicals’ play of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ parodies the tragic theme of feuding families and star-crossed lovers.

Unlike most of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Romeo and Juliet (in common with Othello) is based on a fiction, a novella written in Italy in the late fifteenth century, that he knew in English versions including Arthur Brooke’s pedestrian verse narrative, Romeus and Juliet (1562), which Shakespeare transformed into an unrivalled tragedy of young love. The transformation involved abbreviation, increasing sympathy for the lovers by decreasing their ages, building up the contrasting roles of the Nurse and the Friar, inventing that of Mercutio and reducing the element of explicit moralizing. The play is one of several in which Shakespeare openly challenges neoclassical assumptions about genre. It might almost be described as setting its tragic action in the world of comedy.

The celebrity of Romeo and Juliet derives largely from the love scenes, but the play which contains them is not confined to lyricism. It includes a wide spectrum of views on love, sex and marriage, so that impulsive adolescent passion gains sympathy by contrast with the prudential arguments of the parents and of Friar Laurence, the obscenity and homosocial jealousy of Mercutio and the Nurse’s moral relativism. The involvement of love in the family feud intensifies both love and danger: despite an emphasis on the lovers’ disaster as fated, the outcome of the action as constructed by Shakespeare is as much the result of their own impulsiveness in marrying and in believing the worst as it is of the unexplained feud into which they were born.

Romeo and Juliet is the earliest of Shakespeare’s plays to have imparted mythic status to its characters, to the extent that ‘Juliet’s balcony’ (itself an eighteenth-century substitution for the window required by Shakespeare’s text) is among the tourist sites of modern Verona. Also in the eighteenth century, David Garrick adapted the ending to allow the revived Juliet a final dialogue with the dying Romeo before her suicide. Nineteenth-century sensibilities were protected by removal of the play’s pervasive sexual jesting and by suppression of Romeo’s initial love for Rosaline. Famous Romeos of that time included the American actress Charlotte Cushman.

The play was a powerful inspiration to composers of the romantic period and since, and is now widely known in the form of Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet (1935), or as the source of orchestral compositions by Hector Berlioz (1839) and Peter Ilitsch Tchaikovsky (1869). It has been reworked in countless other plays, novels and films –most famously in Leonard Bernstein’s musical West Side Story (1957) – and its theme of love destroyed by irrational inherited hate remains painfully familiar in the events of our own time.

The Arden text is based on the 1599 Second Quarto, with the addition of some stage directions from the 1597 First Quarto.

LIST OF ROLES

Escalus, PRINCE of Verona

MERCUTIO

a young gentleman and kinsman to the Prince, friend of Romeo

PARIS

a noble young kinsman to the Prince

PAGE

to Paris

MONTAGUE

head of a Veronese family at feud with the Capulets

LADY MONTAGUE

ROMEO

Montague’s son

BENVOLIO

Montague’s nephew and friend of Romeo and Mercutio

ABRAM

a servant to Montague

BALTHASAR

Romeo’s servant

CAPULET

head of a Veronese family at feud with the Montagues

LADY CAPULET

JULIET

Capulet’s daughter

TYBALT

Lady Capulet’s nephew

COUSIN CAPULET

an old gentleman

NURSE

a Capulet servant, Juliet’s foster-mother

PETER

a Capulet servant attending on the nurse

of the Capulet household

of the Franciscan Order

APOTHECARY

of Mantua

THREE MUSICIANS

(Simon Catling, Hugh Rebeck, James Soundpost)

CHORUS

Members of the Watch, Citizens of Verona, Masquers, Torchbearers, Pages, Servants

PROLOGUE

Enter CHORUS.

CHORUS     Two households both alike in dignity

(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene)

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

5

A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life,

Whose misadventur’d piteous overthrows

Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.

The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love

And the continuance of their parents’ rage,

10

Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,

Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;

The which, if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Exit.

1.1     Enter SAMPSON and GREGORY, with swords and bucklers, of the house of Capulet.

SAMPSON     Gregory, on my word we’ll not carry coals.

GREGORY     No, for then we should be colliers.

SAMPSON     I mean, and we be in choler, we’ll draw.

GREGORY     Ay, while you live, draw your neck out of

collar.

5

SAMPSON     I strike quickly being moved.

GREGORY     But thou art not quickly moved to strike.

SAMPSON     A dog of the house of Montague moves me.

GREGORY     To move is to stir, and to be valiant is to

stand: therefore if thou art moved thou runn’st away.

10

SAMPSON     A dog of that house shall move me to stand. I

will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague’s.

GREGORY     That shows thee a weak slave, for the weakest

goes to the wall.

SAMPSON     ’Tis true, and therefore women, being the

15

weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall; therefore I

will push Montague’s men from the wall, and thrust

his maids to the wall.

GREGORY     The quarrel is between our masters and us

their men.

20

SAMPSON     ’Tis all one. I will show myself a tyrant: when

I have fought with the men I will be civil with the

maids, I will cut off their heads.

GREGORY     The heads of the maids?

SAMPSON     Ay, the heads of the maids, or their

25

maidenheads; take it in what sense thou wilt.

GREGORY     They must take it in sense that feel it.

SAMPSON     Me they shall feel while I am able to stand,

and ’tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.

GREGORY     ’Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou

30

hadst been Poor John. Draw thy tool – here comes of

the house of Montagues.

Enter two other servingmen, ABRAM and BALTHASAR.

SAMPSON     My naked weapon is out. Quarrel, I will back

thee.

GREGORY     How, turn thy back and run?

35

SAMPSON     Fear me not.

GREGORY     No, marry! I fear thee!

SAMPSON     Let us take the law of our sides: let them

begin.

GREGORY     I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it

40

as they list.

SAMPSON     Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at

them, which is disgrace to them if they bear it.

ABRAM     Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

SAMPSON     I do bite my thumb, sir.

45

ABRAM     Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

SAMPSON     Is the law of our side if I say ay?

GREGORY     No.

SAMPSON     No sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but

I bite my thumb, sir.

50

GREGORY     Do you quarrel, sir?

ABRAM     Quarrel, sir? No, sir.

SAMPSON     But if you do, sir, I am for you. I serve as good

a man as you.

ABRAM     No better.

55

SAMPSON     Well, sir.

Enter BENVOLIO.

GREGORY     Say ‘better’, here comes one of my master’s

kinsmen.

SAMPSON     Yes, better, sir.

ABRAM     You lie.

60

SAMPSON     Draw if you be men. Gregory, remember thy

washing blow. [They fight.]

BENVOLIO     Part, fools, put up your swords, you know

not what you do.

Enter TYBALT.

TYBALT

What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?

65

Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death.

BENVOLIO     I do but keep the peace, put up thy sword,

Or manage it to part these men with me.

TYBALT

What, drawn, and talk of peace? I hate the word,

As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee:

70

Have at thee, coward. [They fight.]

Enter three or four Citizens with clubs or partisans.

CITIZENS     Clubs, bills and partisans! Strike! Beat them

down! Down with the Capulets! Down with the

Montagues!

Enter old CAPULET in his gown, and LADY CAPULET.

CAPULET

What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!

75

LADY CAPULET

A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword?

Enter old MONTAGUE and LADY MONTAGUE.

CAPULET     My sword I say! Old Montague is come,

And flourishes his blade in spite of me.

MONTAGUE

Thou villain Capulet! Hold me not! Let me go!

LADY MONTAGUE

Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.

80

Enter Prince ESCALUS with his train.

PRINCE     Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,

Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel –

Will they not hear? What ho! You men, you beasts!

That quench the fire of your pernicious rage

With purple fountains issuing from your veins,

85

On pain of torture from those bloody hands

Throw your mistemper’d weapons to the ground

And hear the sentence of your moved prince.

Three civil brawls bred of an airy word

By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,

90

Have thrice disturb’d the quiet of our streets

And made Verona’s ancient citizens

Cast by their grave-beseeming ornaments

To wield old partisans, in hands as old,

Canker’d with peace, to part your canker’d hate.

95

If ever you disturb our streets again

Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.

For this time all the rest depart away;

You, Capulet, shall go along with me,

And Montague, come you this afternoon,

100

To know our farther pleasure in this case,

To old Freetown, our common judgement-place.

Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.

Exeunt all but Montague, Lady Montague

and Benvolio.

MONTAGUE     Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?

Speak, nephew, were you by when it began?

105

BENVOLIO     Here were the servants of your adversary

And yours, close fighting ere I did approach.

I drew to part them; in the instant came

The fiery Tybalt, with his sword prepar’d,

Which, as he breath’d defiance to my ears

110

He swung about his head and cut the winds,

Who nothing hurt withal, hiss’d him in scorn.

While we were interchanging thrusts and blows

Came more and more, and fought on part and part,

Till the Prince came, who parted either part.

115

LADY MONTAGUE

O where is Romeo, saw you him today?

Right glad I am he was not at this fray.

BENVOLIO     Madam, an hour before the worshipp’d sun

Peer’d forth the golden window of the east

A troubled mind drive me to walk abroad,

120

Where underneath the grove of sycamore

That westward rooteth from this city side

So early walking did I see your son.

Towards him I made, but he was ware of me,

And stole into the covert of the wood.

125

I, measuring his affections by my own,

Which then most sought, where most might not be found,

Being one too many by my weary self,

Pursu’d my humour, not pursuing his,

And gladly shunn’d who gladly fled from me.

130

MONTAGUE

Many a morning hath he there been seen,

With tears augmenting the fresh morning’s dew,

Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs;

But all so soon as the all-cheering sun

Should in the farthest east begin to draw

135

The shady curtains from Aurora’s bed,

Away from light steals home my heavy son

And private in his chamber pens himself,

Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out

And makes himself an artificial night.

140

Black and portentous must this humour prove

Unless good counsel may the cause remove.

BENVOLIO     My noble uncle, do you know the cause?

MONTAGUE     I neither know it nor can learn of him.

BENVOLIO     Have you importun’d him by any means?

145

MONTAGUE     Both by myself and many other friends.

But he, his own affections’ counsellor,

Is to himself – I will not say how true –

But to himself so secret and so close,

So far from sounding and discovery,

150

As is the bud bit with an envious worm

Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air

Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.

Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow,

We would as willingly give cure as know.

155

Enter ROMEO.

BENVOLIO

See where he comes. So please you step aside;

I’ll know his grievance or be much denied.

MONTAGUE     I would thou wert so happy by thy stay

To hear true shrift. Come, madam, let’s away.

Exeunt Montague and Lady Montague.

BENVOLIO     Good morrow, cousin.

ROMEO     Is the day so young?

160

BENVOLIO     But new struck nine.

ROMEO     Ay me, sad hours seem long.

Was that my father that went hence so fast?

BENVOLIO

It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo’s hours?

ROMEO

Not having that which, having, makes them short.

BENVOLIO     In love?

165

ROMEO     Out.

BENVOLIO     Of love?

ROMEO     Out of her favour where I am in love.

BENVOLIO     Alas that love so gentle in his view

Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof.

170

ROMEO     Alas that love whose view is muffled still

Should without eyes see pathways to his will.

Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?

Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.

Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.

175

Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,

O anything of nothing first create!

O heavy lightness, serious vanity,

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,

180

Still-waking sleep that is not what it is!

This love feel I that feel no love in this.

Dost thou not laugh?

BENVOLIO     No coz, I rather weep.

ROMEO     Good heart, at what?

BENVOLIO     At thy good heart’s oppression.

ROMEO     Why such is love’s transgression.

185

Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,

Which thou wilt propagate to have it press’d

With more of thine. This love that thou hast shown

Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs;

190

Being purg’d, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;

Being vex’d, a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears;

What is it else? A madness most discreet,

A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

Farewell, my coz.

BENVOLIO     Soft, I will go along;

195

And if you leave me so, you do me wrong.

ROMEO     Tut, I have lost myself, I am not here.

This is not Romeo, he’s some other where.

BENVOLIO     Tell me in sadness who is that you love?

ROMEO     What, shall I groan and tell thee?

200

BENVOLIO     Groan? Why no, but sadly tell me who.

ROMEO     Bid a sick man in sadness make his will?

A word ill-urg’d to one that is so ill.

In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.

BENVOLIO     I aim’d so near when I suppos’d you lov’d.

205

ROMEO     A right good markman; and she’s fair I love.

BENVOLIO     A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.

ROMEO     Well, in that hit you miss; she’ll not be hit

With Cupid’s arrow, she hath Dian’s wit,

And in strong proof of chastity well arm’d

210

From love’s weak childish bow she lives uncharm’d.

She will not stay the siege of loving terms

Nor bide th’encounter of assailing eyes

Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold;

O she is rich in beauty, only poor

215

That when she dies, with beauty dies her store.

BENVOLIO

Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?

ROMEO

She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste.

For beauty starv’d with her severity

Cuts beauty off from all posterity.

220

She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,

To merit bliss by making me despair.

She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow

Do I live dead, that live to tell it now.

BENVOLIO     Be rul’d by me, forget to think of her.

225

ROMEO     O teach me how I should forget to think.

BENVOLIO     By giving liberty unto thine eyes:

Examine other beauties.

ROMEO     ’Tis the way

To call hers, exquisite, in question more.

These happy masks that kiss fair ladies’ brows,

230

Being black, puts us in mind they hide the fair.

He that is strucken blind cannot forget

The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.

Show me a mistress that is passing fair;

What doth her beauty serve but as a note

235

Where I may read who pass’d that passing fair?

Farewell, thou canst not teach me to forget.

BENVOLIO     I’ll pay that doctrine or else die in debt.

Exeunt.

1.2     Enter CAPULET, PARIS and a Servant.

CAPULET     But Montague is bound as well as I,

In penalty alike, and ’tis not hard I think

For men so old as we to keep the peace.

PARIS     Of honourable reckoning are you both,

And pity ’tis you lived at odds so long.

5

But now my lord, what say you to my suit?

CAPULET     But saying o’er what I have said before.

My child is yet a stranger in the world,

She hath not seen the change of fourteen years.

Let two more summers wither in their pride

10

Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.

PARIS     Younger than she are happy mothers made.

CAPULET

And too soon marr’d are those so early made.

Earth hath swallow’d all my hopes but she;

She is the hopeful lady of my earth.

15

But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart,

My will to her consent is but a part,

And she agreed, within her scope of choice

Lies my consent and fair according voice.

This night I hold an old accustom’d feast

20

Whereto I have invited many a guest

Such as I love, and you among the store:

One more, most welcome, makes my number more.

At my poor house look to behold this night

Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light.

25

Such comfort as do lusty young men feel

When well-apparell’d April on the heel

Of limping winter treads, even such delight

Among fresh female buds shall you this night

Inherit at my house. Hear all, all see,

30

And like her most whose merit most shall be;

Which, on more view of many, mine, being one,

May stand in number, though in reckoning none.

Come go with me.

[To servant]     Go sirrah, trudge about

Through fair Verona, find those persons out

35

Whose names are written there, and to them say,

My house and welcome on their pleasure stay.

Exeunt Capulet and Paris.

SERVANT     Find them out whose names are written here.

It is written that the shoemaker should meddle with

his yard, and the tailor with his last, the fisher with his

40

pencil, and the painter with his nets, but I am sent to

find those persons whose names are here writ, and can

never find what names the writing person hath here

writ. I must to the learned. In good time.

Enter BENVOLIO and ROMEO.

BENVOLIO

Tut man, one fire burns out another’s burning,

45

One pain is lessen’d by another’s anguish;

Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning.

One desperate grief cures with another’s languish;

Take thou some new infection to thy eye

And the rank poison of the old will die.

50

ROMEO     Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.

BENVOLIO     For what, I pray thee?

ROMEO     For your broken shin.

BENVOLIO     Why, Romeo, art thou mad?

ROMEO     Not mad, but bound more than a madman is:

Shut up in prison, kept without my food,

55

Whipp’d and tormented and – good e’en, good fellow.

SERVANT     God gi’ good e’en; I pray, sir, can you read?

ROMEO     Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.

SERVANT     Perhaps you have learned it without book.

But I pray can you read anything you see?

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ROMEO     Ay, if I know the letters and the language.

SERVANT     Ye say honestly; rest you merry.

ROMEO     Stay, fellow, I can read. [He reads the letter.]

Signor Martino and his wife and daughters;

County Anselm and his beauteous sisters;

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The lady widow of Utruvio;

Signor Placentio and his lovely nieces;

Mercutio and his brother Valentine;

Mine uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters;

My fair niece Rosaline and Livia;

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Signor Valentio and his cousin Tybalt;

Lucio and the lively Helena.

A fair assembly. Whither should they come?

SERVANT     Up.

ROMEO     Whither to supper?

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SERVANT     To our house.

ROMEO     Whose house?

SERVANT     My master’s.

ROMEO     Indeed I should have asked you that before.

SERVANT     Now I’ll tell you without asking. My master is

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the great rich Capulet, and if you be not of the house

of Montagues I pray come and crush a cup of wine.

Rest you merry.     Exit.

BENVOLIO     At this same ancient feast of Capulet’s

Sups the fair Rosaline, whom thou so loves,

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With all the admired beauties of Verona.

Go thither and with unattainted eye

Compare her face with some that I shall show

And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.

ROMEO     When the devout religion of mine eye

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Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fire,

And these who, often drown’d, could never die,

Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars.

One fairer than my love! The all-seeing sun

Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.

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BENVOLIO     Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by:

Herself pois’d with herself in either eye.

But in that crystal scales let there be weigh’d

Your lady’s love against some other maid

That I will show you shining at this feast,

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And she shall scant show well that now seems best.

ROMEO     I’ll go along, no such sight to be shown,

But to rejoice in splendour of mine own.     Exeunt.

1.3     Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse.

LADY CAPULET

Nurse, where’s my daughter? Call her forth to me.

NURSE     Now by my maidenhead at twelve year old,

I bade her come. What, lamb. What, ladybird.

God forbid. Where’s this girl? What, Juliet!

Enter JULIET.

JULIET     How now, who calls?

NURSE     Your mother.

5

JULIET     Madam, I am here, what is your will?

LADY CAPULET

This is the matter. Nurse, give leave awhile,

We must talk in secret. Nurse, come back again,

I have remember’d me, thou’s hear our counsel.

Thou knowest my daughter’s of a pretty age.

10

NURSE     Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.

LADY CAPULET     She’s not fourteen.

NURSE     I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth –

And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four –

She’s not fourteen. How long is it now

To Lammas-tide?

LADY CAPULET     A fortnight and odd days.

15

NURSE     Even or odd, of all days in the year,

Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.

Susan and she – God rest all Christian souls –

Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God;

She was too good for me. But as I said,

20

On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.

That shall she; marry, I remember it well.

’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years,

And she was wean’d – I never shall forget it –

Of all the days of the year upon that day.

25

For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,

Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall.

My lord and you were then at Mantua –

Nay I do bear a brain. But as I said,

When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple

30

Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,

To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug.

Shake! quoth the dovehouse. ’Twas no need, I trow,

To bid me trudge.

And since that time it is eleven years.

35

For then she could stand high-lone, nay, by th’rood,

She could have run and waddled all about;

For even the day before she broke her brow,

And then my husband – God be with his soul,

A was a merry man – took up the child,

40

‘Yea’, quoth he, ‘dost thou fall upon thy face?

Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit,

Wilt thou not, Jule?’ And by my holidame,

The pretty wretch left crying and said ‘Ay’.

To see now how a jest shall come about.

45

I warrant, and I should live a thousand years

I never should forget it. ‘Wilt thou not, Jule?’ quoth he,

And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said ‘Ay’.

LADY CAPULET     Enough of this, I pray thee, hold thy peace.

NURSE     Yes, madam, yet I cannot choose but laugh

50

To think it should leave crying and say ‘Ay’;

And yet I warrant it had upon it brow

A bump as big as a young cockerel’s stone,

A perilous knock, and it cried bitterly.

‘Yea’, quoth my husband, ‘fall’st upon thy face?

55

Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age,

Wilt thou not, Jule?’ It stinted, and said ‘Ay’.

JULIET     And stint thou too, I pray thee, Nurse, say I.

NURSE     Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace,

Thou wast the prettiest babe that e’er I nurs’d.

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And I might live to see thee married once,

I have my wish.

LADY CAPULET     Marry, that marry is the very theme

I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet,

How stands your dispositions to be married?

65

JULIET     It is an honour that I dream not of.

NURSE     An honour. Were not I thine only nurse

I would say thou hadst suck’d wisdom from thy teat.

LADY CAPULET

Well, think of marriage now. Younger than you

Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,

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Are made already mothers. By my count

I was your mother much upon these years

That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief:

The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.

NURSE     A man, young lady. Lady, such a man

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As all the world – why, he’s a man of wax.

LADY CAPULET

Verona’s summer hath not such a flower.

NURSE     Nay, he’s a flower, in faith a very flower.

LADY CAPULET

What say you, can you love the gentleman?

This night you shall behold him at our feast;

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Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face

And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen.

Examine every married lineament

And see how one another lends content;

And what obscur’d in this fair volume lies,

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Find written in the margent of his eyes.

This precious book of love, this unbound lover,

To beautify him only lacks a cover.

The fish lives in the sea; and ’tis much pride

For fair without the fair within to hide.

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That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory

That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.

So shall you share all that he doth possess,

By having him, making yourself no less.

NURSE     No less, nay bigger. Women grow by men.

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LADY CAPULET

Speak briefly, can you like of Paris’ love?

JULIET     I’ll look to like if looking liking move,

But no more deep will I endart mine eye

Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.

Enter a Servingman.

SERVINGMAN     Madam, the guests are come, supper

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served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the

Nurse cursed in the pantry, and everything in

extremity. I must hence to wait, I beseech you follow

straight.     Exit.

LADY CAPULET

We follow thee; Juliet, the County stays.

NURSE     Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.

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Exeunt.

1.4     Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with five or six other masquers and torchbearers.

ROMEO

What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?

Or shall we on without apology?

BENVOLIO     The date is out of such prolixity.

We’ll have no Cupid hoodwink’d with a scarf,

Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath,

5

Scaring the ladies like a crowkeeper,

Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke

After the prompter, for our entrance.

But let them measure us by what they will,

We’ll measure them a measure and be gone.

10

ROMEO     Give me a torch, I am not for this ambling.

Being but heavy I will bear the light.

MERCUTIO

Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.

ROMEO     Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes

With nimble soles, I have a soul of lead

15

So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.

MERCUTIO     You are a lover, borrow Cupid’s wings

And soar with them above a common bound.

ROMEO     I am too sore enpierced with his shaft

To soar with his light feathers, and so bound

20

I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.

Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.

MERCUTIO

And, to sink in it, should you burden love –

Too great oppression for a tender thing.

ROMEO     Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,

25

Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

MERCUTIO

If love be rough with you, be rough with love;

Prick love for pricking and you beat love down.

Give me a case to put my visage in:

A visor for a visor. What care I

30

What curious eye doth quote deformities?

Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.

BENVOLIO     Come, knock and enter, and no sooner in

But every man betake him to his legs.

ROMEO     A torch for me. Let wantons light of heart

35

Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels,

For I am proverb’d with a grandsire phrase –

I’ll be a candle-holder and look on.

The game was ne’er so fair, and I am done.

MERCUTIO

Tut, dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word.

40

If thou art dun, we’ll draw thee from the mire

Of – save your reverence – love, wherein thou stickest

Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho.

ROMEO     Nay, that’s not so.

MERCUTIO     I mean sir, in delay

We waste our lights in vain, light lights by day.

45

Take our good meaning, for our judgement sits

Five times in that ere once in our five wits.

ROMEO     And we mean well in going to this masque,

But ’tis no wit to go.

MERCUTIO     Why, may one ask?

ROMEO     I dreamt a dream tonight.

MERCUTIO     And so did I.

50

ROMEO     Well what was yours?

MERCUTIO     That dreamers often lie.

ROMEO     In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.

MERCUTIO

O then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes

In shape no bigger than an agate stone

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On the forefinger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomi

Over men’s noses as they lie asleep.

Her chariot is an empty hazelnut

Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,

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Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers;

Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs,

The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,

Her traces of the smallest spider web,

Her collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,

65

Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,

Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,

Not half so big as a round little worm

Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid;

And in this state she gallops night by night

70

Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;

O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight;

O’er lawyers’ fingers who straight dream on fees;

O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream,

Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues

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Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.

Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose

And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;

And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail,

Tickling a parson’s nose as a lies asleep;

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Then dreams he of another benefice.

Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck

And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,

Of breaches, ambuscados, Spanish blades,

Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon

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Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,

And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two

And sleeps again. This is that very Mab

That plaits the manes of horses in the night

And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,

90

Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.

This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,

That presses them and learns them first to bear,

Making them women of good carriage.

This is she –

ROMEO     Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace.

95

Thou talk’st of nothing.

MERCUTIO     True, I talk of dreams,

Which are the children of an idle brain,

Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,

Which is as thin of substance as the air

And more inconstant than the wind, who woos

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Even now the frozen bosom of the north

And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence

Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.

BENVOLIO

This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves:

Supper is done and we shall come too late.

105

ROMEO     I fear too early, for my mind misgives

Some consequence yet hanging in the stars

Shall bitterly begin his fearful date

With this night’s revels, and expire the term

Of a despised life clos’d in my breast

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By some vile forfeit of untimely death.

But he that hath the steerage of my course

Direct my suit. On, lusty gentlemen.

BENVOLIO     Strike, drum.

1.5     They march about the stage, and Servingmen come forth with napkins.

1 SERVINGMAN     Where’s Potpan that he helps not to take

away? He shift a trencher! He scrape a trencher!

2 SERVINGMAN     When good manners shall lie all in one

or two men’s hands, and they unwashed too, ’tis a foul

thing.

5

1 SERVINGMAN     Away with the joint-stools, remove the

court- cupboard, look to the plate. Good thou, save me

a piece of marchpane, and as thou loves me, let the

porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell – Anthony,

and Potpan!

10

3 SERVINGMAN     Ay boy, ready.

1 SERVINGMAN     You are looked for and called for, asked

for and sought for, in the great chamber.

4 SERVINGMAN     We cannot be here and there too.

Cheerly, boys! Be brisk awhile, and the longer liver

15

take all.     Exeunt servingmen.

Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, JULIET, TYBALT, Nurse and all the guests and gentlewomen to the masquers.

CAPULET

Welcome, gentlemen, ladies that have their toes

Unplagu’d with corns will walk a bout with you.

Ah my mistresses, which of you all

Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty,

20

She I’ll swear hath corns. Am I come near ye now?

Welcome, gentlemen. I have seen the day

That I have worn a visor and could tell

A whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear,

Such as would please. ’Tis gone, ’tis gone, ’tis gone,

25

You are welcome, gentlemen: come, musicians, play.

A hall, a hall, give room! And foot it girls!

[Music plays and they dance.]

More light, you knaves, and turn the tables up.

And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.

Ah sirrah, this unlook’d-for sport comes well.

30

Nay sit, nay sit, good cousin Capulet,

For you and I are past our dancing days.

How long is’t now since last yourself and I

Were in a masque?

COUSIN CAPULET     By’r Lady, thirty years.

CAPULET

What, man, ’tis not so much, ’tis not so much.

35

’Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio,

Come Pentecost as quickly as it will,

Some five and twenty years: and then we masqu’d.

COUSIN CAPULET

’Tis more, ’tis more, his son is elder, sir:

His son is thirty.

CAPULET     Will you tell me that?

40

His son was but a ward two years ago.

ROMEO     What lady’s that which doth enrich the hand

Of yonder knight?

SERVANT     I know not, sir.

ROMEO     O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright.

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

45

As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear –

Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.

So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows

As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.

The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,

50

And touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.

Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight.

For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.

TYBALT     This by his voice should be a Montague.

Fetch me my rapier, boy.     Exit boy.

What, dares the slave

55

Come hither, cover’d with an antic face,

To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?

Now by the stock and honour of my kin,

To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.

CAPULET

Why how now, kinsman, wherefore storm you so?

60

TYBALT     Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe:

A villain that is hither come in spite

To scorn at our solemnity this night.

CAPULET     Young Romeo is it?

TYBALT     ’Tis he, that villain Romeo.

CAPULET     Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone,

65

A bears him like a portly gentleman;

And, to say truth, Verona brags of him

To be a virtuous and well-govern’d youth.

I would not for the wealth of all this town

Here in my house do him disparagement.

70

Therefore be patient, take no note of him.

It is my will, the which if thou respect,

Show a fair presence and put off these frowns,

An ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.

TYBALT     It fits when such a villain is a guest:

75

I’ll not endure him.

CAPULET     He shall be endur’d.

What, goodman boy! I say he shall! Go to,

Am I the master here or you? Go to.

You’ll not endure him! God shall mend my soul,

You’ll make a mutiny among my guests,

80

You will set cock-a-hoop, you’ll be the man!

TYBALT     Why, uncle, ’tis a shame.

CAPULET     Go to, go to.

You are a saucy boy. Is’t so indeed?

This trick may chance to scathe you. I know what.

You must contrary me. Marry, ’tis time –

85

Well said, my hearts – You are a princox, go

Be quiet, or – More light! More light! – For shame,

I’ll make you quiet. What, cheerly, my hearts!

TYBALT     Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting

Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting.

90

I will withdraw; but this intrusion shall

Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt’rest gall.     Exit.

ROMEO     If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

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To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,

And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.

100

ROMEO     Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET     Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO     O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do:

They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET

Saints do not move, though grant for prayer’s sake.

105

ROMEO

Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.

[He kisses her.]

Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purg’d.

JULIET     Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

ROMEO     Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg’d.

Give me my sin again. [He kisses her.]

JULIET     You kiss by th’ book.

110

NURSE     Madam, your mother craves a word with you.

ROMEO     What is her mother?

NURSE     Marry bachelor,

Her mother is the lady of the house,

And a good lady, and a wise and virtuous.

I nurs’d her daughter that you talk’d withal.

115

I tell you, he that can lay hold of her

Shall have the chinks.

ROMEO     Is she a Capulet?

O dear account. My life is my foe’s debt.

BENVOLIO     Away, be gone, the sport is at the best.

ROMEO     Ay, so I fear; the more is my unrest.

120

CAPULET     Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone,

We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.

[They whisper in his ear.]

Is it e’en so? Why then, I thank you all;

I thank you honest gentlemen, good night.

More torches here. Come on then, let’s to bed.

125

Ah sirrah, by my fay, it waxes late,

I’ll to my rest.     Exeunt Capulet, Lady Capulet guests, gentlewomen and masquers,

JULIET     Come hither Nurse. What is yond gentleman?

NURSE     The son and heir of old Tiberio.

JULIET     What’s he that now is going out of door?

130

NURSE     Marry, that I think be young Petruchio.

JULIET

What’s he that follows here, that would not dance?

NURSE     I know not.

JULIET     Go ask his name. If he be married,

My grave is like to be my wedding bed.

135

NURSE     His name is Romeo, and a Montague,

The only son of your great enemy.

JULIET     My only love sprung from my only hate.

Too early seen unknown, and known too late.

Prodigious birth of love it is to me

140

That I must love a loathed enemy.

NURSE     What’s this? What’s this?

JULIET     A rhyme I learn’d even now

Of one I danc’d withal. [One calls within: ‘Juliet’.]

NURSE     Anon, anon!

Come let’s away, the strangers all are gone.     Exeunt.

2.Ch.     Enter CHORUS.

CHORUS     Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie

And young affection gapes to be his heir;

That fair for which love groan’d for and would die,

With tender Juliet match’d, is now not fair.

Now Romeo is belov’d and loves again,

5

Alike bewitched by the charm of looks,

But to his foe suppos’d he must complain

And she steal love’s sweet bait from fearful hooks.

Being held a foe, he may not have access

To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear;

10

And she as much in love, her means much less

To meet her new beloved anywhere.

But passion lends them power, time means, to meet,

Tempering extremities with extreme sweet.     Exit.

2.1     Enter ROMEO alone.

ROMEO     Can I go forward when my heart is here?

Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out.

[Withdraws.]

Enter BENVOLIO with MERCUTIO.

BENVOLIO     Romeo! My cousin Romeo! Romeo!

MERCUTIO     He is wise,

And on my life hath stol’n him home to bed.

BENVOLIO     He ran this way and leapt this orchard wall.

5

Call, good Mercutio.

MERCUTIO     Nay, I’ll conjure too:

Romeo! Humours! Madman! Passion! Lover!

Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh,

Speak but one rhyme and I am satisfied.

Cry but ‘Ay me!’ Pronounce but ‘love’ and ‘dove’,

10

Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word,

One nickname for her purblind son and heir,

Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so trim

When King Cophetua lov’d the beggar maid.

He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not:

15

The ape is dead and I must conjure him.

I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes,

By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,

By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh,

And the demesnes that there adjacent lie,

20

That in thy likeness thou appear to us.

BENVOLIO     And if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him.

MERCUTIO     This cannot anger him. ’Twould anger him

To raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle

Of some strange nature, letting it there stand

25

Till she had laid it and conjur’d it down:

That were some spite. My invocation

Is fair and honest; in his mistress’ name

I conjure only but to raise up him.

BENVOLIO

Come, he hath hid himself among these trees

30

To be consorted with the humorous night.

Blind is his love, and best befits the dark.

MERCUTIO     If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.

Now will he sit under a medlar tree

And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit

35

As maids call medlars when they laugh alone.

O Romeo, that she were, O that she were

An open-arse and thou a poperin pear!

Romeo, good night. I’ll to my truckle-bed.

This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep.

40

Come, shall we go?

BENVOLIO     Go then, for ’tis in vain

To seek him here that means not to be found.

Exeunt Benvolio and Mercutio.

2.2

[Romeo comes forward.]

ROMEO     He jests at scars that never felt a wound.

Enter JULIET above.

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east and Juliet is the sun!

Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon

Who is already sick and pale with grief

5

That thou her maid art far more fair than she.

Be not her maid since she is envious,

Her vestal livery is but sick and green

And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off.

It is my lady, O it is my love!

10

O that she knew she were!

She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?

Her eye discourses, I will answer it.

I am too bold. ’Tis not to me she speaks.

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,

15

Having some business, do entreat her eyes

To twinkle in their spheres till they return.

What if her eyes were there, they in her head?

The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars

As daylight doth a lamp. Her eyes in heaven

20

Would through the airy region stream so bright

That birds would sing and think it were not night.

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.

O that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek.

JULIET               Ay me.

ROMEO               She speaks.

25

O speak again bright angel, for thou art

As glorious to this night, being o’er my head,

As is a winged messenger of heaven

Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes

Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him

30

When he bestrides the lazy-puffing clouds

And sails upon the bosom of the air.

JULIET     O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse thy name.

Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love

35

And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

ROMEO     Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

JULIET     ’Tis but thy name that is my enemy:

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.

What’s Montague? It is nor hand nor foot

40

Nor arm nor face nor any other part

Belonging to a man. O be some other name.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other word would smell as sweet;

So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,

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Retain that dear perfection which he owes

Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,

And for thy name, which is no part of thee,

Take all myself.

ROMEO     I take thee at thy word.

Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptis’d:

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Henceforth I never will be Romeo.

JULIET

What man art thou that thus bescreen’d in night

So stumblest on my counsel?

ROMEO               By a name

I know not how to tell thee who I am:

My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself

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Because it is an enemy to thee.

Had I it written, I would tear the word.

JULIET     My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words

Of thy tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound.

Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?

60

ROMEO     Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.

JULIET

How cam’st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?

The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,

And the place death, considering who thou art,

If any of my kinsmen find thee here.

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ROMEO

With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls,

For stony limits cannot hold love out,

And what love can do, that dares love attempt:

Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.

JULIET     If they do see thee, they will murder thee.

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ROMEO     Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye

Than twenty of their swords. Look thou but sweet

And I am proof against their enmity.

JULIET     I would not for the world they saw thee here.

ROMEO     I have night’s cloak to hide me from their eyes,

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And but thou love me, let them find me here.

My life were better ended by their hate

Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.

JULIET

By whose direction found’st thou out this place?

ROMEO     By love, that first did prompt me to enquire.

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He lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes.

I am no pilot, yet wert thou as far

As that vast shore wash’d with the farthest sea,

I should adventure for such merchandise.

JULIET     Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,

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Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek

For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight.

Fain would I dwell on form; fain, fain deny

What I have spoke. But farewell, compliment.

Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say ‘Ay’,

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And I will take thy word. Yet, if thou swear’st,

Thou mayst prove false. At lovers’ perjuries,

They say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,

If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.

Or, if thou think’st I am too quickly won,

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I’ll frown and be perverse and say thee nay,

So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world.

In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,

And therefore thou mayst think my haviour light,

But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true

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Than those that have more cunning to be strange.

I should have been more strange, I must confess,

But that thou overheard’st, ere I was ware,

My true-love passion; therefore pardon me,

And not impute this yielding to light love

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Which the dark night hath so discovered.

ROMEO     Lady, by yonder blessed moon I vow,

That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops –

JULIET     O swear not by the moon, th’inconstant moon,

That monthly changes in her circled orb,

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Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

ROMEO     What shall I swear by?

JULIET               Do not swear at all.

Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,

Which is the god of my idolatry,

And I’ll believe thee.

ROMEO               If my heart’s dear love –

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JULIET     Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee,

I have no joy of this contract tonight:

It is too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden,

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be

Ere one can say ‘It lightens’. Sweet, good night.

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This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,

May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

Good night, good night. As sweet repose and rest

Come to thy heart as that within my breast.

ROMEO     O wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?

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JULIET     What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?

ROMEO

Th’exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine.

JULIET     I gave thee mine before thou didst request it,

And yet I would it were to give again.

ROMEO

Wouldst thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love?

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JULIET     But to be frank and give it thee again;

And yet I wish but for the thing I have.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep: the more I give to thee

The more I have, for both are infinite.

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I hear some noise within. Dear love, adieu.

[Nurse calls within.]

Anon, good Nurse – Sweet Montague be true.

Stay but a little, I will come again.          Exit Juliet.

ROMEO     O blessed blessed night. I am afeard,

Being in night, all this is but a dream,

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Too flattering sweet to be substantial.

Enter JULIET above.

JULIET

Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed.

If that thy bent of love be honourable,

Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow

By one that I’ll procure to come to thee,

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Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite,

And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay,

And follow thee my lord throughout the world.

NURSE     [within] Madam.

JULIET     I come, anon – But if thou meanest not well

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I do beseech thee –

NURSE     [within] Madam.

JULIET     By and by I come –

To cease thy strife and leave me to my grief.

Tomorrow will I send.

ROMEO     So thrive my soul –

JULIET     A thousand times good night.     Exit Juliet.

ROMEO     A thousand times the worse, to want thy light.

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Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books,

But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.

Enter JULIET above again.

JULIET     Hist! Romeo, hist! O for a falconer’s voice

To lure this tassel-gentle back again.

Bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud,

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Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies

And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine

With repetition of my Romeo’s name.

ROMEO     It is my soul that calls upon my name.

How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night,

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Like softest music to attending ears.

JULIET     Romeo.

ROMEO     My nyas.

JULIET     What o’clock tomorrow

Shall I send to thee?

ROMEO     By the hour of nine.

JULIET     I will not fail. ’Tis twenty year till then.

I have forgot why I did call thee back.

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ROMEO     Let me stand here till thou remember it.

JULIET     I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,

Remembering how I love thy company.

ROMEO     And I’ll still stay to have thee still forget,

Forgetting any other home but this.

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JULIET     ’Tis almost morning, I would have thee gone,

And yet no farther than a wanton’s bird,

That lets it hop a little from his hand

Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,

And with a silken thread plucks it back again,

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So loving-jealous of his liberty.

ROMEO     I would I were thy bird.

JULIET     Sweet, so would I:

Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.

Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow

That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

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Exit Juliet.

ROMEO

Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast.

Would I were sleep and peace so sweet to rest.

The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night,

Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light;

And darkness fleckled like a drunkard reels

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From forth day’s pathway, made by Titan’s wheels.

Hence will I to my ghostly Sire’s close cell,

His help to crave and my dear hap to tell.     Exit.

2.3     Enter FRIAR LAURENCE alone with a basket.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye

The day to cheer, and night’s dank dew to dry,

I must upfill this osier cage of ours

With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.

The earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb:

5

What is her burying grave, that is her womb;

And from her womb children of divers kind

We sucking on her natural bosom find.

Many for many virtues excellent,

None but for some, and yet all different.

10

O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies

In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities.

For naught so vile that on the earth doth live

But to the earth some special good doth give;

Nor aught so good but, strain’d from that fair use,

15

Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.

Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied,

And vice sometime’s by action dignified.

Enter ROMEO.

Within the infant rind of this weak flower

Poison hath residence, and medicine power:

20

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;

Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.

Two such opposed kings encamp them still

In man as well as herbs: grace and rude will;

And where the worser is predominant

25

Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

ROMEO     Good morrow, father.

FRIAR LAURENCE     Benedicite.

What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?

Young son, it argues a distemper’d head

So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed.

30

Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,

And where care lodges sleep will never lie,

But where unbruised youth with unstuff ‘d brain

Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.

Therefore thy earliness doth me assure

35

Thou art uprous’d with some distemperature;

Or, if not so, then here I hit it right:

Our Romeo hath not been in bed tonight.

ROMEO     That last is true. The sweeter rest was mine.

FRIAR LAURENCE

God pardon sin. Wast thou with Rosaline?

40

ROMEO     With Rosaline! My ghostly father, no.

I have forgot that name, and that name’s woe.

FRIAR LAURENCE

That’s my good son. But where hast thou been then?

ROMEO     I’ll tell thee ere thou ask it me again.

I have been feasting with mine enemy,

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Where on a sudden one hath wounded me

That’s by me wounded. Both our remedies

Within thy help and holy physic lies.

I bear no hatred, blessed man, for lo,

My intercession likewise steads my foe.

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FRIAR LAURENCE

Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;

Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.

ROMEO     Then plainly know my heart’s dear love is set

On the fair daughter of rich Capulet.

As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine,

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And all combin’d save what thou must combine

By holy marriage. When, and where, and how

We met, we woo’d, and made exchange of vow

I’ll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,

That thou consent to marry us today.

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FRIAR LAURENCE

Holy Saint Francis! What a change is here!

Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear,

So soon forsaken? Young men’s love then lies

Not truly in their hearts but in their eyes.

Jesu Maria! What a deal of brine

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Hath wash’d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline.

How much salt water thrown away in waste

To season love, that of it doth not taste.

The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,

Thy old groans yet ring in mine ancient ears.

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Lo here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit

Of an old tear that is not wash’d off yet.

If ere thou wast thyself, and these woes thine,

Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline.

And art thou chang’d? Pronounce this sentence then:

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Women may fall when there’s no strength in men.

ROMEO     Thou chid’st me oft for loving Rosaline.

FRIAR LAURENCE

For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.

ROMEO     And bad’st me bury love.

FRIAR LAURENCE     Not in a grave

To lay one in, another out to have.

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ROMEO     I pray thee chide me not, her I love now

Doth grace for grace and love for love allow.

The other did not so.

FRIAR LAURENCE     O, she knew well

Thy love did read by rote that could not spell.

But come young waverer, come, go with me,

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In one respect I’ll thy assistant be.

For this alliance may so happy prove

To turn your households’ rancour to pure love.

ROMEO     O let us hence: I stand on sudden haste.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.     Exeunt.

90

2.4     Enter BENVOLIO and MERCUTIO.

MERCUTIO     Where the devil should this Romeo be?

Came he not home tonight?

BENVOLIO     Not to his father’s; I spoke with his man.

MERCUTIO     Why, that same pale hard-hearted wench,

that Rosaline, torments him so that he will sure run

5

mad.

BENVOLIO     Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet, hath

sent a letter to his father’s house.

MERCUTIO A challenge, on my life.

BENVOLIO     Romeo will answer it.

10

MERCUTIO     Any man that can write may answer a letter.

BENVOLIO     Nay, he will answer the letter’s master, how

he dares, being dared.

MERCUTIO     Alas poor Romeo, he is already dead,

stabbed with a white wench’s black eye, run through

15

the ear with a love song, the very pin of his heart cleft

with the blind bow-boy’s butt-shaft. And is he a man

to encounter Tybalt?

BENVOLIO     Why, what is Tybalt?

MERCUTIO     More than Prince of Cats. O, he’s the

20

courageous captain of compliments: he fights as you

sing pricksong, keeps time, distance and proportion.

He rests his minim rests, one, two, and the third in

your bosom: the very butcher of a silk button – a

duellist, a duellist, a gentleman of the very first house,

25

of the first and second cause. Ah, the immortal

passado, the punto reverso, the hay!

BENVOLIO     The what?

MERCUTIO     The pox of such antic lisping affecting

phantasimes, these new tuners of accent. By Jesu, a

30

very good blade, a very tall man, a very good whore!

Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we

should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these

fashion-mongers, these ‘pardon-me’s’, who stand so

much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on

35

the old bench? O their bones, their bones!

Enter ROMEO.

BENVOLIO     Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo!

MERCUTIO     Without his roe, like a dried herring. O

flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified. Now is he for the

numbers that Petrarch flowed in. Laura, to his lady,

40

was a kitchen wench – marry, she had a better love to

berhyme her – Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a gypsy,

Helen and Hero hildings and harlots, Thisbe a grey

eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signor Romeo,

bonjour. There’s a French salutation to your French

45

slop. You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.

ROMEO     Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit

did I give you?

MERCUTIO     The slip sir, the slip. Can you not conceive?

ROMEO     Pardon, good Mercutio, my business was great,

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and in such a case as mine a man may strain courtesy.

MERCUTIO     That’s as much as to say, such a case as yours

constrains a man to bow in the hams.

ROMEO     Meaning to curtsy.

MERCUTIO     Thou hast most kindly hit it.

55

ROMEO     A most courteous exposition.

MERCUTIO     Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.

ROMEO     Pink for flower.

MERCUTIO     Right.

ROMEO     Why, then is my pump well flowered.

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MERCUTIO     Sure wit, follow me this jest now, till thou

hast worn out thy pump, that when the single sole of

it is worn, the jest may remain after the wearing solely

singular.

ROMEO     O single-soled jest, solely singular for the

65

singleness.

MERCUTIO     Come between us, good Benvolio, my wits

faints.

ROMEO     Switch and spurs, switch and spurs, or I’ll cry a

match!

70

MERCUTIO     Nay, if our wits run the wild-goose chase I

am done. For thou hast more of the wild-goose in one

of thy wits than I am sure I have in my whole five. Was

I with you there for the goose?

ROMEO     Thou wast never with me for anything, when

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thou wast not there for the goose.

MERCUTIO     I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.

ROMEO     Nay, good goose, bite not.

MERCUTIO     Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting, it is a most

sharp sauce.

80

ROMEO     And is it not then well served in to a sweet

goose?

MERCUTIO     O here’s a wit of cheveril, that stretches

from an inch narrow to an ell broad.

ROMEO     I stretch it out for that word ‘broad’, which,

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added to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad

goose.

MERCUTIO     Why, is not this better now than groaning

for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo;

now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature.

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For this drivelling love is like a great natural that runs

lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole.

BENVOLIO     Stop there, stop there.

MERCUTIO     Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against

the hair.

95

BENVOLIO     Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large.

MERCUTIO     O, thou art deceived; I would have made it

short; for I was come to the whole depth of my tale

and meant indeed to occupy the argument no longer.

ROMEO     Here’s goodly gear.

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Enter Nurse and her man PETER.

A sail! A sail!

MERCUTIO     Two. Two. A shirt and a smock.

NURSE     Peter.

PETER     Anon.

NURSE     My fan, Peter.

105

MERCUTIO     Good Peter, to hide her face, for her fan’s

the fairer face.

NURSE     God ye good morrow, gentlemen.

MERCUTIO     God ye good e’en, fair gentlewoman.

NURSE     Is it good e’en?

110

MERCUTIO     ’Tis no less, I tell ye; for the bawdy hand of

the dial is now upon the prick of noon.

NURSE     Out upon you. What a man are you?

ROMEO     One, gentlewoman, that God hath made,

himself to mar.

115

NURSE     By my troth it is well said; ‘for himself to mar’

quoth a? Gentlemen, can any of you tell me where I

may find the young Romeo?

ROMEO     I can tell you; but young Romeo will be older

when you have found him than he was when you

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sought him. I am the youngest of that name, for fault

of a worse.

NURSE     You say well.

MERCUTIO     Yea, is the worst well? Very well took i’faith.

Wisely, wisely.

125

NURSE     If you be he sir, I desire some confidence with

you.

BENVOLIO     She will endite him to some supper.

MERCUTIO A bawd! A bawd! A bawd! So ho.

ROMEO     What hast thou found?

130

MERCUTIO     No hare, sir, unless a hare, sir, in a lenten

pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent.

[He walks by them and sings.]

An old hare hoar,

And an old hare hoar,

Is very good meat in Lent.

135

But a hare that is hoar

Is too much for a score

When it hoars ere it be spent.

Romeo, will you come to your father’s? We’ll to

dinner thither.

140

ROMEO     I will follow you.

MERCUTIO     Farewell, ancient lady, farewell, lady, lady,

lady.     Exeunt Mercutio and Benvolio.

NURSE     I pray you, sir, what saucy merchant was this,

that was so full of his ropery?

145

ROMEO     A gentleman, Nurse, that loves to hear himself

talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will

stand to in a month.

NURSE     And a speak anything against me I’ll take him

down, and a were lustier than he is, and twenty such

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jacks. And if I cannot, I’ll find those that shall. Scurvy

knave! I am none of his flirt-gills, I am none of his

skains-mates. [She turns to Peter her man.] And thou

must stand by too and suffer every knave to use me at

his pleasure!

155

PETER     I saw no man use you at his pleasure; if I had, my

weapon should quickly have been out. I warrant you,

I dare draw as soon as another man, if I see occasion in

a good quarrel, and the law on my side.

NURSE     Now afore God I am so vexed that every part

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about me quivers. Scurvy knave. Pray you, sir, a word

– and as I told you, my young lady bid me enquire you

out. What she bid me say, I will keep to myself. But

first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her in a fool’s

paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of

165

behaviour, as they say; for the gentlewoman is young.

And therefore, if you should deal double with her,

truly it were an ill thing to be offered to any

gentlewoman, and very weak dealing.

ROMEO     Nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress. I

170

protest unto thee –

NURSE     Good heart, and i’faith I will tell her as much.

Lord, Lord, she will be a joyful woman.

ROMEO     What wilt thou tell her, Nurse? Thou dost not

mark me.

175

NURSE     I will tell her, sir, that you do protest – which, as

I take it, is a gentlemanlike offer.

ROMEO     Bid her devise

Some means to come to shrift this afternoon,

And there she shall at Friar Laurence’ cell

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Be shriv’d and married. Here is for thy pains.

NURSE     No truly, sir; not a penny.

ROMEO     Go to, I say you shall.

NURSE     This afternoon, sir? Well, she shall be there.

ROMEO     And stay, good Nurse, behind the abbey wall.

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Within this hour my man shall be with thee,

And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair,

Which to the high topgallant of my joy

Must be my convoy in the secret night.

Farewell, be trusty, and I’ll quit thy pains;

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Farewell. Commend me to thy mistress.

NURSE     Now God in heaven bless thee. Hark you, sir.

ROMEO     What say’st thou, my dear Nurse?

NURSE     Is your man secret? Did you ne’er hear say,

Two may keep counsel, putting one away?

195

ROMEO     I warrant thee my man’s as true as steel.

NURSE     Well, sir, my mistress is the sweetest lady. Lord,

Lord! When ’twas a little prating thing – O, there is a

nobleman in town, one Paris, that would fain lay knife

aboard; but she, good soul, had as lief see a toad, a very

200

toad, as see him. I anger her sometimes and tell her

that Paris is the properer man, but I’ll warrant you,

when I say so she looks as pale as any clout in the

versal world. Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin

both with a letter?

205

ROMEO     Ay, Nurse, what of that? Both with an ‘R’.

NURSE     Ah, mocker! That’s the dog’s name, ‘R’ is for the

– No, I know it begins with some other letter; and she

hath the prettiest sententious of it, of you and

rosemary, that it would do you good to hear it.

210

ROMEO     Commend me to thy lady.     Exit Romeo.

NURSE     Ay, a thousand times. Peter!

PETER     Anon.

NURSE     Before, and apace.          Exeunt.

2.5     Enter JULIET.

JULIET

The clock struck nine when I did send the Nurse,

In half an hour she promis’d to return.

Perchance she cannot meet him. That’s not so.

O, she is lame. Love’s heralds should be thoughts

Which ten times faster glides than the sun’s beams

5

Driving back shadows over lowering hills.

Therefore do nimble-pinion’d doves draw Love,

And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.

Now is the sun upon the highmost hill

Of this day’s journey, and from nine till twelve

10

Is three long hours, yet she is not come.

Had she affections and warm youthful blood

She would be as swift in motion as a ball:

My words would bandy her to my sweet love,

And his to me.

15

But old folks, many feign as they were dead –

Unwieldy, slow, heavy, and pale as lead.

Enter Nurse and PETER.

O God she comes. O honey Nurse, what news?

Hast thou met with him? Send thy man away.

NURSE

Peter, stay at the gate.     Exit Peter.

20

JULIET

Now good sweet Nurse – O Lord why look’st thou sad?

Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily,

If good, thou sham’st the music of sweet news

By playing it to me with so sour a face.

NURSE     I am aweary, give me leave awhile.

25

Fie, how my bones ache. What a jaunce have I!

JULIET     I would thou hadst my bones and I thy news.

Nay come, I pray thee, speak: good, good Nurse, speak.

NURSE     Jesu, what haste. Can you not stay awhile?

Do you not see that I am out of breath?

30

JULIET

How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath

To say to me that thou art out of breath?

The excuse that thou dost make in this delay

Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse.

Is thy news good or bad? Answer to that,

35

Say either, and I’ll stay the circumstance.

Let me be satisfied: is’t good or bad?

NURSE     Well, you have made a simple choice. You know

not how to choose a man. Romeo? No, not he. Though

his face be better than any man’s, yet his leg excels all

40

men’s, and for a hand and a foot and a body, though

they be not to be talked on, yet they are past compare.

He is not the flower of courtesy, but I’ll warrant him

as gentle as a lamb. Go thy ways, wench, serve God.

What, have you dined at home?

45

JULIET     No, no. But all this did I know before.

What says he of our marriage? What of that?

NURSE     Lord, how my head aches! What a head have I:

It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.

My back o’ t’other side – ah, my back, my back!

50

Beshrew your heart for sending me about

To catch my death with jauncing up and down.

JULIET     I’faith I am sorry that thou art not well.

Sweet, sweet, sweet Nurse, tell me, what says my love?

NURSE     Your love says like an honest gentleman,

55

And a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome,

And I warrant a virtuous – Where is your mother?

JULIET     Where is my mother? Why, she is within.

Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest.

‘Your love says, like an honest gentleman,

60

“Where is your mother?”‘

O God’s lady dear,

Are you so hot? Marry, come up, I trow.

Is this the poultice for my aching bones?

Henceforward do your messages yourself.

JULIET     Here’s such a coil. Come, what says Romeo?

65

NURSE     Have you got leave to go to shrift today?

JULIET     I have.

NURSE     Then hie you hence to Friar Laurence’ cell.

There stays a husband to make you a wife.

Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks.

70

They’ll be in scarlet straight at any news.

Hie you to church. I must another way

To fetch a ladder by the which your love

Must climb a bird’s nest soon when it is dark.

I am the drudge, and toil in your delight,

75

But you shall bear the burden soon at night.

Go. I’ll to dinner. Hie you to the cell.

JULIET     Hie to high fortune! Honest Nurse, farewell.

Exeunt.

2.6     Enter FRIAR LAURENCE and ROMEO.

FRIAR LAURENCE

So smile the heavens upon this holy act

That after-hours with sorrow chide us not.

ROMEO     Amen, amen, but come what sorrow can,

It cannot countervail the exchange of joy

That one short minute gives me in her sight.

5

Do thou but close our hands with holy words,

Then love-devouring death do what he dare:

It is enough I may but call her mine.

FRIAR LAURENCE

These violent delights have violent ends

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,

10

Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey

Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,

And in the taste confounds the appetite.

Therefore love moderately; long love doth so.

Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

15

Enter JULIET somewhat fast and embraces Romeo.

Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot

Will ne’er wear out the everlasting flint.

A lover may bestride the gossamers

That idles in the wanton summer air

And yet not fall; so light is vanity.

20

JULIET     Good even to my ghostly confessor.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both.

JULIET     As much to him, else is his thanks too much.

ROMEO     Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy

Be heap’d like mine, and that thy skill be more

25

To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath

This neighbour air, and let rich music’s tongue

Unfold the imagin’d happiness that both

Receive in either by this dear encounter.

JULIET     Conceit more rich in matter than in words

30

Brags of his substance, not of ornament.

They are but beggars that can count their worth,

But my true love is grown to such excess

I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Come, come with me and we will make short work

35

For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone

Till holy church incorporate two in one.     Exeunt.

3.1     Enter MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO and men.

BENVOLIO     I pray thee, good Mercutio, let’s retire;

The day is hot, the Capels are abroad,

And if we meet we shall not ‘scape a brawl,

For now these hot days is the mad blood stirring.

MERCUTIO     Thou art like one of these fellows that, when

5

he enters the confines of a tavern, claps me his sword

upon the table and says ‘God send me no need of

thee!’ and by the operation of the second cup draws

him on the drawer, when indeed there is no need.

BENVOLIO     Am I like such a fellow?

10

MERCUTIO     Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy

mood as any in Italy; and as soon moved to be moody,

and as soon moody to be moved.

BENVOLIO     And what to?

MERCUTIO     Nay, and there were two such, we should

15

have none shortly, for one would kill the other. Thou?

Why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair

more or a hair less in his beard than thou hast. Thou

wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no

other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes. What

20

eye but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel? Thy

head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, and

yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for

quarrelling. Thou hast quarrelled with a man for

coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy

25

dog that hath lain asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall

out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before

Easter; with another for tying his new shoes with old

riband? And yet thou wilt tutor me from quarrelling!

BENVOLIO     And I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any

30

man should buy the fee simple of my life for an hour

and a quarter.

MERCUTIO     The fee simple! O simple!

Enter TYBALT, PETRUCHIO and others.

BENVOLIO     By my head, here comes the Capulets.

MERCUTIO     By my heel, I care not.

35

TYBALT     Follow me close, for I will speak to them.

Gentlemen, good e’en: a word with one of you.

MERCUTIO     And but one word with one of us? Couple it

with something, make it a word and a blow.

TYBALT     You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, and

40

you will give me occasion.

MERCUTIO     Could you not take some occasion without

giving?

TYBALT     Mercutio, thou consortest with Romeo.

MERCUTIO     us

45

minstrels? And thou make minstrels of us, look to hear

nothing but discords. Here’s my fiddlestick, here’s

that shall make you dance. Zounds, consort!

BENVOLIO     We talk here in the public haunt of men.

Either withdraw unto some private place,

50

Or reason coldly of your grievances,

Or else depart. Here all eyes gaze on us.

MERCUTIO

Men’s eyes were made to look, and let them gaze.

I will not budge for no man’s pleasure, I.

Enter ROMEO.

TYBALT

Well, peace be with you, sir, here comes my man.

55

MERCUTIO

But I’ll be hang’d, sir, if he wear your livery.

Marry, go before to field, he’ll be your follower.

Your worship in that sense may call him ‘man’.

TYBALT     Romeo, the love I bear thee can afford

No better term than this: thou art a villain.

60

ROMEO     Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee

Doth much excuse the appertaining rage

To such a greeting: villain am I none,

Therefore farewell. I see thou knowest me not.

TYBALT     Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries

65

That thou hast done me, therefore turn and draw.

ROMEO     I do protest I never injuried thee,

But love thee better than thou canst devise

Till thou shalt know the reason of my love.

And so, good Capulet, which name I tender

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As dearly as mine own, be satisfied.

MERCUTIO     O calm, dishonourable, vile submission:

Alla stoccata carries it away! [He draws.]

Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?

TYBALT     What wouldst thou have with me?

75

MERCUTIO     Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your

nine lives. That I mean to make bold withal, and, as

you shall use me hereafter, dry-beat the rest of the

eight. Will you pluck your sword out of his pilcher by

the ears? Make haste, lest mine be about your ears ere

80

it be out.

TYBALT     I am for you. [He draws.]

ROMEO     Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.

MERCUTIO     Come sir, your passado. [They fight.]

ROMEO     Draw, Benvolio, beat down their weapons.

85

Gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage.

Tybalt, Mercutio! The Prince expressly hath

Forbid this bandying in Verona streets.

Hold, Tybalt! Good Mercutio!

[Tybalt under Romeo’s arm thrusts Mercutio in.]

A FOLLOWER     Away Tybalt.

90

Exit Tybalt with his followers.

MERCUTIO     I am hurt.

A plague o’ both your houses. I am sped.

Is he gone, and hath nothing?

BENVOLIO     What, art thou hurt?

MERCUTIO

Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch. Marry, ’tis enough.

Where is my page? Go villain, fetch a surgeon.

95

Exit Page.

ROMEO     Courage, man, the hurt cannot be much.

MERCUTIO     No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as

a church door, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve. Ask for

me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man. I am

peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o’ both

100

your houses. Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to

scratch a man to death. A braggart, a rogue, a villain,

that fights by the book of arithmetic – why the devil

came you between us? I was hurt under your arm.

ROMEO     I thought all for the best.

105

MERCUTIO     Help me into some house, Benvolio,

Or I shall faint. A plague o’ both your houses,

They have made worms’ meat of me.

I have it, and soundly too. Your houses!

Exit Mercutio with Benvolio.

ROMEO     This gentleman, the Prince’s near ally,

110

My very friend, hath got this mortal hurt

In my behalf – my reputation stain’d

With Tybalt’s slander – Tybalt that an hour

Hath been my cousin. O sweet Juliet,

Thy beauty hath made me effeminate

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And in my temper soften’d valour’s steel.

Enter BENVOLIO.

BENVOLIO     O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio is dead,

That gallant spirit hath aspir’d the clouds

Which too untimely here did scorn the earth.

ROMEO     This day’s black fate on mo days doth depend:

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This but begins the woe others must end.

Enter TYBALT.

BENVOLIO     Here comes the furious Tybalt back again.

ROMEO     Again, in triumph, and Mercutio slain.

Away to heaven respective lenity,

And fire-ey’d fury be my conduct now!

125

Now, Tybalt, take the ‘villain’ back again

That late thou gav’st me, for Mercutio’s soul

Is but a little way above our heads,

Staying for thine to keep him company.

Either thou, or I, or both must go with him.

130

TYBALT

Thou wretched boy, that didst consort him here,

Shalt with him hence.

ROMEO     This shall determine that.

[They fight. Tybalt falls.]

BENVOLIO     Romeo, away, be gone,

The citizens are up, and Tybalt slain!

Stand not amaz’d. The Prince will doom thee death

135

If thou art taken. Hence, be gone, away!

ROMEO     O, I am fortune’s fool.

BENVOLIO     Why dost thou stay?

Exit Romeo.

Enter Citizens.

CITIZEN     Which way ran he that kill’d Mercutio?

Tybalt, that murderer, which way ran he?

BENVOLIO     There lies that Tybalt.

CITIZEN     Up, sir, go with me.

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I charge thee in the Prince’s name obey.

Enter PRINCE, MONTAGUE, CAPULET, their wives and all.

PRINCE     Where are the vile beginners of this fray?

BENVOLIO     O noble Prince, I can discover all

The unlucky manage of this fatal brawl.

There lies the man, slain by young Romeo,

145

That slew thy kinsman brave Mercutio.

LADY CAPULET

Tybalt, my cousin, O my brother’s child!

O Prince, O husband, O, the blood is spill’d

Of my dear kinsman. Prince, as thou art true,

For blood of ours shed blood of Montague.

150

O cousin, cousin.

PRINCE     Benvolio, who began this bloody fray?

BENVOLIO

Tybalt, here slain, whom Romeo’s hand did slay.

Romeo, that spoke him fair, bid him bethink

How nice the quarrel was, and urg’d withal

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Your high displeasure. All this uttered

With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bow’d,

Could not take truce with the unruly spleen

Of Tybalt, deaf to peace, but that he tilts

With piercing steel at bold Mercutio’s breast,

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Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point

And, with a martial scorn, with one hand beats

Cold death aside, and with the other sends

It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity

Retorts it. Romeo, he cries aloud

165

‘Hold, friends! Friends part!’ and swifter than his tongue

His agile arm beats down their fatal points

And ’twixt them rushes; underneath whose arm

An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life

Of stout Mercutio; and then Tybalt fled,

170

But by and by comes back to Romeo,

Who had but newly entertain’d revenge,

And to’t they go like lightning: for, ere I

Could draw to part them, was stout Tybalt slain,

And as he fell did Romeo turn and fly.

175

This is the truth, or let Benvolio die.

LADY CAPULET     He is a kinsman to the Montague.

Affection makes him false. He speaks not true.

Some twenty of them fought in this black strife

And all those twenty could but kill one life.

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I beg for justice, which thou, Prince, must give.

Romeo slew Tybalt. Romeo must not live.

PRINCE     Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio.

Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?

MONTAGUE

Not Romeo, Prince, he was Mercutio’s friend;

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His fault concludes but what the law should end,

The life of Tybalt.

PRINCE     And for that offence

Immediately we do exile him hence.

I have an interest in your hearts’ proceeding;

My blood for your rude brawls doth lie a-bleeding.

190

But I’ll amerce you with so strong a fine

That you shall all repent the loss of mine.

I will be deaf to pleading and excuses;

Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses.

Therefore use none. Let Romeo hence in haste,

195

Else, when he is found, that hour is his last.

Bear hence this body, and attend our will.

Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.

Exeunt.

3.2     Enter JULIET alone.

JULIET     Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,

Towards Phoebus’ lodging. Such a waggoner

As Phaeton would whip you to the west

And bring in cloudy night immediately.

Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,

5

That runaway’s eyes may wink, and Romeo

Leap to these arms untalk’d-of and unseen.

Lovers can see to do their amorous rites

By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,

It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,

10

Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,

And learn me how to lose a winning match

Play’d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.

Hood my unmann’d blood, bating in my cheeks,

With thy black mantle, till strange love grow bold,

15

Think true love acted simple modesty.

Come night, come Romeo, come thou day in night,

For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night

Whiter than new snow upon a raven’s back.

Come gentle night, come loving black-brow’d night,

20

Give me my Romeo; and when I shall die

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night,

And pay no worship to the garish sun.

25

O, I have bought the mansion of a love

But not possess’d it, and though I am sold,

Not yet enjoy’d. So tedious is this day

As is the night before some festival

To an impatient child that hath new robes

30

And may not wear them. O, here comes my Nurse.

Enter Nurse with cords, wringing her hands.

And she brings news, and every tongue that speaks

But Romeo’s name speaks heavenly eloquence.

Now, Nurse, what news? What hast thou there?

The cords that Romeo bid thee fetch?

NURSE     Ay, ay, the cords.

35

JULIET

Ay me, what news? Why dost thou wring thy hands?

NURSE     Ah weraday, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead!

We are undone, lady, we are undone.

Alack the day, he’s gone, he’s kill’d, he’s dead.

JULIET     Can heaven be so envious?

NURSE     Romeo can,

40

Though heaven cannot. O Romeo, Romeo,

Who ever would have thought it? Romeo!

JULIET     What devil art thou that dost torment me thus?

This torture should be roar’d in dismal hell.

Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but ‘Ay’

45

And that bare vowel ‘I’ shall poison more

Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.

I am not I if there be such an ‘I’,

Or those eyes shut that makes thee answer ‘Ay’.

If he be slain say ‘Ay’, or if not, ‘No’.

50

Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.

NURSE     I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes

– God save the mark – here on his manly breast.

A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse,

Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub’d in blood,

55

All in gore-blood. I swounded at the sight.

JULIET

O break, my heart. Poor bankrupt, break at once.

To prison, eyes, ne’er look on liberty.

Vile earth to earth resign, end motion here,

And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier.

60

NURSE     O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had.

O courteous Tybalt, honest gentleman.

That ever I should live to see thee dead.

JULIET     What storm is this that blows so contrary?

Is Romeo slaughter’d and is Tybalt dead?

65

My dearest cousin and my dearer lord?

Then dreadful trumpet sound the general doom,

For who is living if those two are gone?

NURSE     Tybalt is gone and Romeo banished.

Romeo that kill’d him, he is banished.

70

JULIET

O God! Did Romeo’s hand shed Tybalt’s blood?

NURSE     It did, it did, alas the day, it did.

JULIET     O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face.

Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?

Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical,

75

Dove-feather’d raven, wolvish-ravening lamb!

Despised substance of divinest show!

Just opposite to what thou justly seem’st!

A damned saint, an honourable villain!

O nature what hadst thou to do in hell

80

When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend

In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?

Was ever book containing such vile matter

So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell

In such a gorgeous palace.

NURSE     There’s no trust,

85

No faith, no honesty in men. All perjur’d,

All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.

Ah, where’s my man? Give me some aqua vitae.

These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old.

Shame come to Romeo.

JULIET     Blister’d be thy tongue

90

For such a wish. He was not born to shame.

Upon his brow shame is asham’d to sit,

For ’tis a throne where honour may be crown’d

Sole monarch of the universal earth.

O, what a beast was I to chide at him.

95

NURSE

Will you speak well of him that kill’d your cousin?

JULIET     Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?

Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name

When I thy three-hours wife have mangled it?

But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?

100

That villain cousin would have kill’d my husband.

Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring,

Your tributary drops belong to woe

Which you mistaking offer up to joy.

My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain,

105

And Tybalt’s dead, that would have slain my husband.

All this is comfort. Wherefore weep I then?

Some word there was, worser than Tybalt’s death,

That murder’d me. I would forget it fain,

But O, it presses to my memory

110

Like damned guilty deeds to sinners’ minds.

Tybalt is dead and Romeo – banished.

That ‘banished’, that one word ‘banished’,

Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts: Tybalt’s death

Was woe enough, if it had ended there.

115

Or if sour woe delights in fellowship

And needly will be rank’d with other griefs,

Why follow’d not, when she said ‘Tybalt’s dead’,

Thy father or thy mother, nay or both,

Which modern lamentation might have mov’d?

120

But with a rearward following Tybalt’s death,

‘Romeo is banished’: to speak that word

Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,

All slain, all dead. Romeo is banished,

There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,

125

In that word’s death. No words can that woe sound.

Where is my father and my mother, Nurse?

NURSE     Weeping and wailing over Tybalt’s corse.

Will you go to them? I will bring you thither.

JULIET

Wash they his wounds with tears? Mine shall be spent

130

When theirs are dry, for Romeo’s banishment.

Take up those cords. Poor ropes, you are beguil’d,

Both you and I, for Romeo is exil’d.

He made you for a highway to my bed,

But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed.

135

Come, cords, come, Nurse, I’ll to my wedding bed,

And death, not Romeo take my maidenhead.

NURSE     Hie to your chamber. I’ll find Romeo

To comfort you. I wot well where he is.

Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night.

140

I’ll to him. He is hid at Laurence’ cell.

JULIET     O find him, give this ring to my true knight

And bid him come to take his last farewell.     Exeunt.

3.3     Enter FRIAR LAURENCE.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Romeo, come forth, come forth, thou fearful man.

Affliction is enamour’d of thy parts

And thou art wedded to calamity.

Enter ROMEO.

ROMEO     Father, what news? What is the Prince’s doom?

What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand

5

That I yet know not?

FRIAR LAURENCE     Too familiar

Is my dear son with such sour company.

I bring thee tidings of the Prince’s doom.

ROMEO

What less than doomsday is the Prince’s doom?

FRIAR LAURENCE

A gentler judgement vanish’d from his lips:

10

Not body’s death but body’s banishment.

ROMEO     Ha! Banishment! Be merciful, say ‘death’.

For exile hath more terror in his look,

Much more than death. Do not say ‘banishment’.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Hence from Verona art thou banished.

15

Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.

ROMEO     There is no world without Verona walls

But purgatory, torture, hell itself;

Hence ‘banished’ is banish’d from the world,

And world’s exile is death. Then ‘banished’

20

Is death, misterm’d. Calling death ‘banished’

Thou cut’st my head off with a golden axe

And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.

FRIAR LAURENCE     O deadly sin, O rude unthankfulness.

Thy fault our law calls death, but the kind Prince,

25

Taking thy part, hath rush’d aside the law

And turn’d that black word ‘death’ to banishment.

This is dear mercy and thou seest it not.

ROMEO     ’Tis torture and not mercy. Heaven is here

Where Juliet lives, and every cat and dog

30

And little mouse, every unworthy thing,

Live here in heaven and may look on her,

But Romeo may not. More validity,

More honourable state, more courtship lives

In carrion flies than Romeo. They may seize

35

On the white wonder of dear Juliet’s hand

And steal immortal blessing from her lips,

Who, even in pure and vestal modesty

Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.

But Romeo may not, he is banished.

40

Flies may do this, but I from this must fly.

They are free men but I am banished.

And say’st thou yet that exile is not death?

Hadst thou no poison mix’d, no sharp-ground knife,

No sudden mean of death, though ne’er so mean,

45

But ‘banished’ to kill me? ‘Banished’?

O Friar, the damned use that word in hell.

Howling attends it. How hast thou the heart,

Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,

A sin-absolver, and my friend profess’d,

50

To mangle me with that word ‘banished’?

FRIAR LAURENCE

Thou fond mad man, hear me a little speak.

ROMEO     O, thou wilt speak again of banishment.

FRIAR LAURENCE

I’ll give thee armour to keep off that word,

Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy,

55

To comfort thee though thou art banished.

ROMEO     Yet ‘banished’? Hang up philosophy.

Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,

Displant a town, reverse a Prince’s doom,

It helps not, it prevails not. Talk no more.

60

FRIAR LAURENCE

O, then I see that mad men have no ears.

ROMEO

How should they when that wise men have no eyes?

FRIAR LAURENCE

Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.

ROMEO

Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel.

Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,

65

An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,

Doting like me, and like me banished,

Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair

And fall upon the ground as I do now,

Taking the measure of an unmade grave. [knock]

70

FRIAR LAURENCE

Arise, one knocks. Good Romeo, hide thyself.

ROMEO     Not I, unless the breath of heartsick groans

Mist-like infold me from the search of eyes. [knock]

FRIAR LAURENCE

Hark how they knock. – Who’s there? – Romeo, arise,

Thou wilt be taken. – Stay awhile. – Stand up.

75

[knock]

Run to my study. – By and by. – God’s will,

What simpleness is this? – I come, I come. [knock]

Who knocks so hard?

Whence come you, what’s your will?

NURSE [within]

Let me come in and you shall know my errand.

80

I come from Lady Juliet.

FRIAR LAURENCE     Welcome then.

Enter Nurse.

NURSE     O holy Friar, O, tell me, holy Friar,

Where is my lady’s lord, where’s Romeo?

FRIAR LAURENCE

There on the ground, with his own tears made

drunk.

NURSE     O, he is even in my mistress’ case,

85

Just in her case. O woeful sympathy,

Piteous predicament. Even so lies she,

Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering.

Stand up, stand up. Stand, and you be a man.

For Juliet’s sake, for her sake, rise and stand.

90

Why should you fall into so deep an O? [He rises.]

ROMEO     Nurse.

NURSE     Ah sir, ah sir, death’s the end of all.

ROMEO     Spak’st thou of Juliet? How is it with her?

Doth not she think me an old murderer

Now I have stain’d the childhood of our joy

95

With blood remov’d but little from her own?

Where is she? And how doth she? And what says

My conceal’d lady to our cancell’d love?

NURSE     O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps,

And now falls on her bed, and then starts up,

100

And Tybalt calls, and then on Romeo cries,

And then down falls again.

ROMEO     As if that name,

Shot from the deadly level of a gun,

Did murder her, as that name’s cursed hand

Murder’d her kinsman. O, tell me, Friar, tell me,

105

In what vile part of this anatomy

Doth my name lodge? Tell me that I may sack

The hateful mansion.

FRIAR LAURENCE     Hold thy desperate hand.

Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art.

Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote

110

The unreasonable fury of a beast.

Unseemly woman in a seeming man,

And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!

Thou hast amaz’d me. By my holy order,

I thought thy disposition better temper’d.

115

Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself?

And slay thy lady that in thy life lives,

By doing damned hate upon thyself?

Why rail’st thou on thy birth, the heaven and earth?

Since birth, and heaven, and earth all three do meet

120

In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose.

Fie, fie, thou sham’st thy shape, thy love, thy wit,

Which, like a usurer, abound’st in all,

And usest none in that true use indeed

Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit.

125

Thy noble shape is but a form of wax

Digressing from the valour of a man;

Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,

Killing that love which thou hast vow’d to cherish;

Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,

130

Misshapen in the conduct of them both,

Like powder in a skilless soldier’s flask

Is set afire by thine own ignorance,

And thou dismember’d with thine own defence.

What, rouse thee, man. Thy Juliet is alive,

135

For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead.

There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,

But thou slew’st Tybalt. There art thou happy.

The law that threaten’d death becomes thy friend

And turns it to exile. There art thou happy.

140

A pack of blessings light upon thy back;

Happiness courts thee in her best array;

But like a mishav’d and a sullen wench

Thou pouts upon thy fortune and thy love.

Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.

145

Go, get thee to thy love as was decreed,

Ascend her chamber – hence, and comfort her.

But look thou stay not till the Watch be set,

For then thou canst not pass to Mantua,

Where thou shalt live till we can find a time

150

To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,

Beg pardon of the Prince and call thee back,

With twenty hundred thousand times more joy

Than thou wentst forth in lamentation.

Go before, Nurse. Commend me to thy lady

155

And bid her hasten all the house to bed,

Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto.

Romeo is coming.

NURSE     O lord, I could have stay’d here all the night

To hear good counsel. O, what learning is.

160

My lord, I’ll tell my lady you will come.

ROMEO     Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.

[Nurse offers to go in and turns again.]

NURSE     Here sir, a ring she bid me give you, sir.

Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.     Exit.

ROMEO     How well my comfort is reviv’d by this.

165

FRIAR LAURENCE

Go hence, good night, and here stands all your state:

Either be gone before the Watch be set,

Or by the break of day disguis’d from hence.

Sojourn in Mantua. I’ll find out your man,

And he shall signify from time to time

170

Every good hap to you that chances here.

Give me thy hand. ’Tis late. Farewell. Good night.

ROMEO     But that a joy past joy calls out on me,

It were a grief so brief to part with thee.

Farewell.     Exeunt.

175

3.4     Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET and PARIS.

CAPULET     Things have fallen out, sir, so unluckily

That we have had no time to move our daughter.

Look you, she lov’d her kinsman Tybalt dearly,

And so did I. Well, we were born to die.

’Tis very late. She’ll not come down tonight.

5

I promise you, but for your company,

I would have been abed an hour ago.

PARIS     These times of woe afford no times to woo.

Madam, good night. Commend me to your daughter.

LADY CAPULET

I will, and know her mind early tomorrow.

10

Tonight she’s mew’d up to her heaviness.

[Paris offers to go in and Capulet calls him again.]

CAPULET     Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender

Of my child’s love. I think she will be rul’d

In all respects by me; nay, more, I doubt it not.

Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed,

15

Acquiant her here of my son Paris’ love,

And bid her – mark you me? – on Wednesday next –

But soft – what day is this?

PARIS     Monday, my lord.

CAPULET

Monday! Ha ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon.

A Thursday let it be, a’ Thursday, tell her,

20

She shall be married to this noble earl.

Will you be ready? Do you like this haste?

We’ll keep no great ado – a friend or two.

For, hark you, Tybalt being slain so late,

It may be thought we held him carelessly,

25

Being our kinsman, if we revel much.

Therefore we’ll have some half a dozen friends

And there an end. But what say you to Thursday?

PARIS

My lord, I would that Thursday were tomorrow.

CAPULET     Well, get you gone. A’ Thursday be it then.

30

Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed,

Prepare her, wife, against this wedding day.

Farewell, my lord. – Light to my chamber, ho!

Afore me, it is so very late that we

May call it early by and by. Good night.     Exeunt.

35

3.5     Enter ROMEO and JULIET aloft at the window.

JULIET     Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.

It was the nightingale and not the lark

That pierc’d the fearful hollow of thine ear.

Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree.

Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

5

ROMEO     It was the lark, the herald of the morn,

No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.

Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

10

I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

JULIET     Yond light is not daylight, I know it, I.

It is some meteor that the sun exhales

To be to thee this night a torchbearer

And light thee on thy way to Mantua.

15

Therefore stay yet: thou need’st not to be gone.

ROMEO     Let me be ta’en, let me be put to death,

I am content, so thou wilt have it so.

I’ll say yon grey is not the morning’s eye,

’Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow.

20

Nor that is not the lark whose notes do beat

The vaulty heaven so high above our heads.

I have more care to stay than will to go.

Come death, and welcome. Juliet wills it so.

How is’t, my soul? Let’s talk. It is not day.

25

JULIET     It is, it is. Hie hence, begone, away.

It is the lark that sings so out of tune,

Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.

Some say the lark makes sweet division.

This doth not so, for she divideth us.

30

Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes.

O, now I would they had chang’d voices too,

Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,

Hunting thee hence with hunt’s-up to the day.

O now be gone, more light and light it grows.

35

ROMEO

More light and light: more dark and dark our woes.

Enter Nurse hastily.

NURSE     Madam.

JULIET     Nurse?

NURSE     Your lady mother is coming to your chamber.

The day is broke, be wary, look about.     Exit.

40

JULIET     Then, window, let day in and let life out.

ROMEO     Farewell, farewell, one kiss and I’ll descend.

[He goes down.]

JULIET

Art thou gone so? Love, lord, ay husband, friend,

I must hear from thee every day in the hour,

For in a minute there are many days.

45

O, by this count I shall be much in years

Ere I again behold my Romeo.

ROMEO     Farewell.

I will omit no opportunity

That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.

50

JULIET     O think’st thou we shall ever meet again?

ROMEO     I doubt it not, and all these woes shall serve

For sweet discourses in our times to come.

JULIET     O God, I have an ill-divining soul!

Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low,

55

As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.

Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale.

ROMEO     And trust me, love, in my eye so do you.

Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu.     Exit.

JULIET     O Fortune, Fortune! All men call thee fickle;

60

If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him

That is renown’d for faith? Be fickle, Fortune,

For then I hope thou wilt not keep him long,

But send him back.

Enter LADY CAPULET.

LADY CAPULET     Ho, daughter, are you up?

JULIET     Who is’t that calls? It is my lady mother.

65

Is she not down so late, or up so early?

What unaccustom’d cause procures her hither?

[She goeth down from the window.]

LADY CAPULET     Why, how now Juliet?

Enter JULIET.

JULIET     Madam, I am not well.

LADY CAPULET

Evermore weeping for your cousin’s death?

What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?

70

And if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live.

Therefore have done: some grief shows much of love,

But much of grief shows still some want of wit.

JULIET     Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.

LADY CAPULET

So shall you feel the loss but not the friend

75

Which you weep for.

JULIET     Feeling so the loss,

I cannot choose but ever weep the friend.

LADY CAPULET

Well, girl, thou weepst not so much for his death

As that the villain lives which slaughter’d him.

JULIET     What villain, madam?

LADY CAPULET     That same villain Romeo.

80

JULIET     Villain and he be many miles asunder.

God pardon him. I do with all my heart.

And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.

LADY CAPULET

That is because the traitor murderer lives.

JULIET

Ay madam, from the reach of these my hands.

85

Would none but I might venge my cousin’s death.

LADY CAPULET

We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not.

Then weep no more. I’ll send to one in Mantua,

Where that same banish’d runagate doth live,

Shall give him such an unaccustom’d dram

90

That he shall soon keep Tybalt company;

And then I hope thou wilt be satisfied.

JULIET     Indeed I never shall be satisfied

With Romeo, till I behold him – dead –

Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vex’d.

95

Madam, if you could find out but a man

To bear a poison, I would temper it –

That Romeo should upon receipt thereof

Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors

To hear him nam’d, and cannot come to him

100

To wreak the love I bore my cousin

Upon his body that hath slaughter’d him.

LADY CAPULET

Find thou the means and I’ll find such a man.

But now I’ll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.

JULIET     And joy comes well in such a needy time.

105

What are they, I beseech your ladyship?

LADY CAPULET

Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child;

One who to put thee from thy heaviness

Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy,

That thou expects not, nor I look’d not for.

110

JULIET     Madam, in happy time. What day is that?

LADY CAPULET

Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn

The gallant, young, and noble gentleman,

The County Paris, at Saint Peter’s Church,

Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.

115

JULIET     Now by Saint Peter’s Church, and Peter too,

He shall not make me there a joyful bride.

I wonder at this haste, that I must wed

Ere he that should be husband comes to woo.

I pray you tell my lord and father, madam,

120

I will not marry yet. And when I do, I swear

It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate,

Rather than Paris. These are news indeed.

LADY CAPULET

Here comes your father, tell him so yourself,

And see how he will take it at your hands.

125

Enter CAPULET and Nurse.

CAPULET

When the sun sets the earth doth drizzle dew,

But for the sunset of my brother’s son

It rains downright.

How now, a conduit, girl? What, still in tears?

Evermore showering? In one little body

130

Thou counterfeits a bark, a sea, a wind.

For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,

Do ebb and flow with tears. The bark thy body is,

Sailing in this salt flood, the winds thy sighs,

Who raging with thy tears and they with them,

135

Without a sudden calm will overset

Thy tempest-tossed body. How now, wife?

Have you deliver’d to her our decree?

LADY CAPULET

Ay sir, but she will none, she gives you thanks.

I would the fool were married to her grave.

140

CAPULET

Soft. Take me with you, take me with you, wife.

How? Will she none? Doth she not give us thanks?

Is she not proud? Doth she not count her blest,

Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought

So worthy a gentleman to be her bride?

145

JULIET

Not proud you have, but thankful that you have.

Proud can I never be of what I hate,

But thankful even for hate that is meant love.

CAPULET

How, how, how, how? Chopp’d logic? What is this?

‘Proud’ and ‘I thank you’ and ‘I thank you not’

150

And yet ‘not proud’? Mistress minion you,

Thank me no thankings nor proud me no prouds,

But fettle your fine joints ‘gainst Thursday next

To go with Paris to Saint Peter’s Church,

Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.

155

Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage!

You tallow-face!

LADY CAPULET     Fie, fie. What, are you mad?

JULIET     Good father, I beseech you on my knees.

[She kneels down.]

Hear me with patience but to speak a word.

CAPULET

Hang thee young baggage, disobedient wretch!

160

I tell thee what – get thee to church a’ Thursday

Or never after look me in the face.

Speak not, reply not, do not answer me.

My fingers itch. Wife, we scarce thought us blest

That God had lent us but this only child;

165

But now I see this one is one too much,

And that we have a curse in having her.

Out on her, hilding.

NURSE     God in heaven bless her.

You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.

CAPULET

And why, my Lady Wisdom? Hold your tongue,

170

Good Prudence! Smatter with your gossips, go.

NURSE     I speak no treason.

CAPULET     O God ‘i’ good e’en!

NURSE     May not one speak?

CAPULET     Peace, you mumbling fool!

Utter your gravity o’er a gossip’s bowl,

For here we need it not.

LADY CAPULET     You are too hot.

175

CAPULET

God’s bread, it makes me mad! Day, night, work, play,

Alone, in company, still my care hath been

To have her match’d. And having now provided

A gentleman of noble parentage,

Of fair demesnes, youthful and nobly lign’d,

180

Stuff ‘d, as they say, with honourable parts,

Proportion’d as one’s thought would wish a man –

And then to have a wretched puling fool,

A whining mammet, in her fortune’s tender,

To answer ‘I’ll not wed, I cannot love,

185

I am too young, I pray you pardon me!’

But, and you will not wed, I’ll pardon you!

Graze where you will, you shall not house with me.

Look to’t, think on’t, I do not use to jest.

Thursday is near. Lay hand on heart. Advise.

190

And you be mine I’ll give you to my friend;

And you be not, hang! Beg! Starve! Die in the streets!

For by my soul I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee,

Nor what is mine shall never do thee good.

Trust to’t, bethink you. I’ll not be forsworn.     Exit.

195

JULIET     Is there no pity sitting in the clouds

That sees into the bottom of my grief?

O sweet my mother, cast me not away,

Delay this marriage for a month, a week,

Or if you do not, make the bridal bed

200

In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.

LADY CAPULET

Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word.

Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.     Exit.

JULIET     O God, O Nurse, how shall this be prevented?

My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven.

205

How shall that faith return again to earth

Unless that husband send it me from heaven

By leaving earth? Comfort me, counsel me.

Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems

Upon so soft a subject as myself.

210

What sayst thou? Hast thou not a word of joy?

Some comfort, Nurse.

NURSE     Faith, here it is.

Romeo is banish’d, and all the world to nothing

That he dares ne’er come back to challenge you.

Or if he do, it needs must be by stealth.

215

Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,

I think it best you married with the County.

O, he’s a lovely gentleman.

Romeo’s a dishclout to him. An eagle, madam,

Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye

220

As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,

I think you are happy in this second match,

For it excels your first; or, if it did not,

Your first is dead, or ’twere as good he were

As living here and you no use of him.

225

JULIET     Speakest thou from thy heart?

NURSE     And from my soul too, else beshrew them both.

JULIET     Amen.

NURSE     What?

JULIET

230

Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much.

Go in, and tell my lady I am gone,

Having displeas’d my father, to Laurence’ cell,

To make confession and to be absolv’d.

NURSE     Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.     Exit.

JULIET     Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend,

235

Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn,

Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue

Which she hath prais’d him with above compare

So many thousand times? Go, counsellor.

Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.

240

I’ll to the Friar to know his remedy.

If all else fail, myself have power to die.     Exit.

4.1     Enter FRIAR LAURENCE and PARIS.

FRIAR LAURENCE

On Thursday, sir? The time is very short.

PARIS     My father Capulet will have it so,

And I am nothing slow to slack his haste.

FRIAR LAURENCE

You say you do not know the lady’s mind.

Uneven is the course. I like it not.

5

PARIS     Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt’s death,

And therefore have I little talk’d of love,

For Venus smiles not in a house of tears.

Now sir, her father counts it dangerous

That she do give her sorrow so much sway,

10

And in his wisdom hastes our marriage

To stop the inundation of her tears

Which, too much minded by herself alone,

May be put from her by society.

Now do you know the reason of this haste.

15

FRIAR LAURENCE

I would I knew not why it should be slow’d –

Look sir, here comes the lady toward my cell.

Enter JULIET.

PARIS     Happily met, my lady and my wife.

JULIET     That may be, sir, when I may be a wife.

PARIS     That may be, must be, love, on Thursday next.

20

JULIET     What must be, shall be.

FRIAR LAURENCE     That’s a certain text.

PARIS     Come you to make confession to this father?

JULIET     To answer that, I should confess to you.

PARIS     Do not deny to him that you love me.

JULIET     I will confess to you that I love him.

25

PARIS     So will ye, I am sure, that you love me.

JULIET     If I do so, it will be of more price

Being spoke behind your back than to your face.

PARIS     Poor soul, thy face is much abus’d with tears.

JULIET     The tears have got small victory by that,

30

For it was bad enough before their spite.

PARIS

Thou wrong’st it more than tears with that report.

JULIET     That is no slander, sir, which is a truth,

And what I spake, I spake it to my face.

PARIS     Thy face is mine, and thou hast slander’d it.

35

JULIET     It may be so, for it is not mine own. –

Are you at leisure, holy father, now,

Or shall I come to you at evening mass?

FRIAR LAURENCE

My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now. –

My lord, we must entreat the time alone.

40

PARIS     God shield I should disturb devotion.

Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse ye;

Till then, adieu, and keep this holy kiss.     Exit.

JULIET     O shut the door, and when thou hast done so,

Come weep with me, past hope, past cure, past help!

45

FRIAR LAURENCE     O Juliet, I already know thy grief;

It strains me past the compass of my wits.

I hear thou must – and nothing may prorogue it –

On Thursday next be married to this County.

JULIET     Tell me not, Friar, that thou hearest of this,

50

Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it.

If in thy wisdom thou canst give no help,

Do thou but call my resolution wise,

And with this knife I’ll help it presently.

God join’d my heart and Romeo’s, thou our hands;

55

And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo’s seal’d,

Shall be the label to another deed,

Or my true heart with treacherous revolt

Turn to another, this shall slay them both.

Therefore, out of thy long-experienc’d time

60

Give me some present counsel, or behold:

’Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife

Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that

Which the commission of thy years and art

Could to no issue of true honour bring.

65

Be not so long to speak. I long to die

If what thou speak’st speak not of remedy.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Hold, daughter. I do spy a kind of hope

Which craves as desperate an execution

As that is desperate which we would prevent.

70

If, rather than to marry County Paris,

Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,

Then is it likely thou wilt undertake

A thing like death to chide away this shame,

That cop’st with death himself to scape from it.

75

And if thou dar’st, I’ll give thee remedy.

JULIET

O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,

From off the battlements of any tower,

Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk

Where serpents are. Chain me with roaring bears,

80

Or hide me nightly in a charnel-house

O’ercover’d quite with dead men’s rattling bones,

With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls.

Or bid me go into a new-made grave,

And hide me with a dead man in his shroud –

85

Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble –

And I will do it without fear or doubt,

To live an unstain’d wife to my sweet love.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Hold then. Go home, be merry, give consent

To marry Paris. Wednesday is tomorrow;

90

Tomorrow night look that thou lie alone.

Let not the Nurse lie with thee in thy chamber.

Take thou this vial, being then in bed,

And this distilling liquor drink thou off;

When presently through all thy veins shall run

95

A cold and drowsy humour, for no pulse

Shall keep his native progress, but surcease:

No warmth, no breath shall testify thou livest,

The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade

To wanny ashes, thy eyes’ windows fall

100

Like death when he shuts up the day of life.

Each part depriv’d of supple government

Shall stiff and stark and cold appear, like death,

And in this borrow’d likeness of shrunk death

Thou shalt continue two and forty hours

105

And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.

Now when the bridegroom in the morning comes

To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou, dead.

Then as the manner of our country is,

In thy best robes, uncover’d on the bier

110

Thou shall be borne to that same ancient vault

Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.

In the meantime, against thou shalt awake,

Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift

And hither shall he come, and he and I

115

Will watch thy waking, and that very night

Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua,

And this shall free thee from this present shame,

If no inconstant toy nor womanish fear

Abate thy valour in the acting it.

120

JULIET     Give me, give me! O tell not me of fear.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Hold. Get you gone. Be strong and prosperous

In this resolve. I’ll send a friar with speed

To Mantua with my letters to thy lord.

JULIET

Love give me strength, and strength shall help afford.

125

Farewell, dear father.     Exeunt.

4.2     Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, Nurse and two or three Servingmen.

CAPULET     So many guests invite as here are writ.

Exit Servingman.

Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.

SERVINGMAN

You shall have none ill, sir, for I’ll try if they can lick

their fingers.

CAPULET     How! Canst thou try them so?

5

SERVINGMAN

Marry sir, ’tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own

fingers; therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes

not with me.

CAPULET     Exit Servingman.

We shall be much unfurnish’d for this time.

10

What, is my daughter gone to Friar Laurence?

NURSE     Ay, forsooth.

CAPULET     Well, he may chance to do some good on her.

A peevish self-will’d harlotry it is.

Enter JULIET

NURSE

See where she comes from shrift with merry look.

15

CAPULET

How now, my headstrong: where have you been gadding?

JULIET     Where I have learnt me to repent the sin

Of disobedient opposition

To you and your behests, and am enjoin’d

By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here,

20

To beg your pardon. Pardon, I beseech you.

Henceforward I am ever rul’d by you.

[She kneels down.]

CAPULET     Send for the County, go tell him of this.

I’ll have this knot knit up tomorrow morning.

JULIET     I met the youthful lord at Laurence’ cell,

25

And gave him what becomed love I might,

Not stepping o’er the bounds of modesty.

CAPULET     Why, I am glad on’t. This is well. Stand up.

This is as’t should be. Let me see the County.

Ay, marry. Go, I say, and fetch him hither.

30

Now afore God, this reverend holy Friar,

All our whole city is much bound to him.

JULIET     Nurse, will you go with me into my closet,

To help me sort such needful ornaments

As you think fit to furnish me tomorrow?

35

LADY CAPULET

No, not till Thursday. There is time enough.

CAPULET

Go, Nurse, go with her. We’ll to church tomorrow.

Exeunt Juliet and Nurse.

LADY CAPULET     We shall be short in our provision,

’Tis now near night.

CAPULET     Tush I will stir about,

And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife.

40

Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her.

I’ll not to bed tonight, let me alone.

I’ll play the housewife for this once. – What ho! –

They are all forth. Well, I will walk myself

To County Paris, to prepare up him

45

Against tomorrow. My heart is wondrous light

Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim’d.

Exeunt.

4.3     Enter JULIET and NURSE.

JULIET     Ay, those attires are best. But, gentle Nurse,

I pray thee leave me to myself tonight,

For I have need of many orisons

To move the heavens to smile upon my state,

Which, well thou know’st, is cross and full of sin.

5

Enter LADY CAPULET.

LADY CAPULET

What, are you busy, ho? Need you my help?

JULIET     No madam, we have cull’d such necessaries

As are behoveful for our state tomorrow.

So please you, let me now be left alone

And let the Nurse this night sit up with you,

10

For I am sure you have your hands full all

In this so sudden business.

LADY CAPULET     Good night.

Get thee to bed and rest, for thou hast need.

Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse.

JULIET

Farewell. God knows when we shall meet again.

I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins

15

That almost freezes up the heat of life.

I’ll call them back again to comfort me.

– Nurse! – What should she do here?

My dismal scene I needs must act alone.

Come, vial.

20

What if this mixture do not work at all?

Shall I be married then tomorrow morning?

No! No! This shall forbid it. Lie thou there.

[She lays down a knife.]

What if it be a poison which the Friar

Subtly hath minister’d to have me dead,

25

Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour’d,

Because he married me before to Romeo?

I fear it is. And yet methinks it should not,

For he hath still been tried a holy man.

How if, when I am laid into the tomb,

30

I wake before the time that Romeo

Come to redeem me? There’s a fearful point!

Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,

To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,

And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?

35

Or, if I live, is it not very like,

The horrible conceit of death and night

Together with the terror of the place,

As in a vault, an ancient receptacle

Where for this many hundred years the bones

40

Of all my buried ancestors are pack’d,

Where bloody Tybalt yet but green in earth

Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,

At some hours in the night spirits resort –

Alack, alack! Is it not like that I

45

So early waking, what with loathsome smells,

And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,

That living mortals, hearing them, run mad –

O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,

Environed with all these hideous fears,

50

And madly play with my forefathers’ joints,

And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud,

And, in this rage, with some great kinsman’s bone

As with a club dash out my desperate brains?

O look, methinks I see my cousin’s ghost

55

Seeking out Romeo that did spit his body

Upon a rapier’s point! Stay, Tybalt, stay!

Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, here’s drink! I drink to thee!

[She falls upon her bed within the curtains.]

4.4     Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse.

LADY CAPULET

Hold, take these keys and fetch more spices, Nurse.

NURSE     They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.

Enter CAPULET.

CAPULET

Come, stir, stir, stir, the second cock hath crow’d!

The curfew bell hath rung, ’tis three o’clock.

Look to the bak’d meats, good Angelica:

5

Spare not for cost.

NURSE     Go, you cot-quean, go,

Get you to bed. Faith, you’ll be sick tomorrow

For this night’s watching.

CAPULET

No, not a whit. What, I have watch’d ere now

All night for lesser cause, and ne’er been sick.

10

LADY CAPULET

Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time;

But I will watch you from such watching now.

Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse.

CAPULET     A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!

Enter three or four Servingmen with spits and logs and baskets.

Now fellow, what is there?

1 SERVINGMAN

Things for the cook, sir, but I know not what.

CAPULET     Make haste, make haste!

Exit First Servingman.

– Sirrah, fetch drier logs!

15

Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.

2 SERVINGMAN     I have a head, sir, that will find out logs

And never trouble Peter for the matter.

CAPULET

Mass and well said! A merry whoreson, ha.

Thou shalt be loggerhead!Exit Second Servingman.

– Good faith! ’Tis day!

20

[Play music.]

The County will be here with music straight,

For so he said he would. I hear him near.

Nurse! Wife! What ho! What, Nurse I say!

Enter Nurse.

Go waken Juliet, go, and trim her up.

I’ll go and chat with Paris. Hie, make haste,

25

Make haste! The bridegroom he is come already.

Make haste I say.     Exeunt Capulet and servingmen.

4.5

[Nurse goes to curtains.]

NURSE

Mistress! What, mistress! Juliet! Fast, I warrant her, she.

Why, lamb, why, lady, fie! You slug-abed!

Why, love I say! Madam! Sweetheart! Why, bride!

What, not a word? You take your pennyworths now.

Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant,

5

The County Paris hath set up his rest

That you shall rest but little! God forgive me!

Marry and amen. How sound is she asleep!

I needs must wake her. Madam, madam, madam!

Ay, let the County take you in your bed,

10

He’ll fright you up, i’faith. Will it not be?

What, dress’d, and in your clothes, and down again?

I must needs wake you. Lady! Lady! Lady!

Alas, alas! Help, help! My lady’s dead!

O weraday that ever I was born.

15

Some aqua vitae, ho! My lord! My lady!

Enter LADY CAPULET.

LADY CAPULET     What noise is here?

NURSE     O lamentable day!

LADY CAPULET     What is the matter?

NURSE     Look, look! O heavy day!

LADY CAPULET     O me, O me! My child, my only life.

Revive, look up, or I will die with thee.

20

Help, help! Call help!

Enter CAPULET.

CAPULET

For shame, bring Juliet forth, her lord is come.

NURSE

She’s dead, deceas’d! She’s dead! Alack the day!

LADY CAPULET

Alack the day! She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead!

CAPULET     Ha! Let me see her. Out alas. She’s cold,

25

Her blood is settled and her joints are stiff.

Life and these lips have long been separated.

Death lies on her like an untimely frost

Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.

NURSE     O lamentable day!

LADY CAPULET     O woeful time!

30

CAPULET

Death, that hath ta’en her hence to make me wail

Ties up my tongue and will not let me speak.

Enter FRIAR LAURENCE and PARIS and Musicians.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Come, is the bride ready to go to church?

CAPULET     Ready to go, but never to return.

O son, the night before thy wedding day

35

Hath Death lain with thy wife. There she lies,

Flower as she was, deflowered by him.

Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir.

My daughter he hath wedded. I will die,

And leave him all: life, living, all is Death’s.

40

PARIS     Have I thought long to see this morning’s face,

And doth it give me such a sight as this?

LADY CAPULET

Accurs’d, unhappy, wretched, hateful day.

Most miserable hour that e’er time saw

In lasting labour of his pilgrimage.

45

But one, poor one, one poor and loving child,

But one thing to rejoice and solace in,

And cruel Death hath catch’d it from my sight.

NURSE     O woe! O woeful, woeful, woeful day.

Most lamentable day. Most woeful day

50

That ever, ever I did yet behold.

O day, O day, O day, O hateful day.

Never was seen so black a day as this.

O woeful day, O woeful day.

PARIS     Beguil’d, divorced, wronged, spited, slain.

55

Most detestable Death, by thee beguil’d,

By cruel, cruel thee quite overthrown.

O love! O life! Not life, but love in death!

CAPULET     Despis’d, distressed, hated, martyr’d, kill’d.

Uncomfortable time, why cam’st thou now

60

To murder, murder our solemnity?

O child, O child! My soul and not my child,

Dead art thou. Alack, my child is dead,

And with my child my joys are buried.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Peace, ho, for shame. Confusion’s cure lives not

65

In these confusions. Heaven and yourself

Had part in this fair maid, now heaven hath all,

And all the better is it for the maid.

Your part in her you could not keep from death,

But heaven keeps his part in eternal life.

70

The most you sought was her promotion,

For ’twas your heaven she should be advanc’d,

And weep ye now, seeing she is advanc’d

Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?

O, in this love you love your child so ill

75

That you run mad, seeing that she is well.

She’s not well married that lives married long,

But she’s best married that dies married young.

Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary

On this fair corse, and, as the custom is,

80

All in her best array bear her to church.

For though fond nature bids us all lament,

Yet nature’s tears are reason’s merriment.

CAPULET     All things that we ordained festival

Turn from their office to black funeral:

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Our instruments to melancholy bells,

Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast;

Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,

Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,

And all things change them to the contrary.

90

FRIAR LAURENCE

Sir, go you in, and madam, go with him,

And go, Sir Paris. Every one prepare

To follow this fair corse unto her grave.

The heavens do lour upon you for some ill;

Move them no more by crossing their high will.

95

Exeunt all but the Nurse and Musicians, casting

rosemary on Juliet and shutting the curtains.

1 MUSICIAN     Faith, we may put up our pipes and be gone.

NURSE     Honest good fellows, ah put up, put up,

For well you know this is a pitiful case.

1 MUSICIAN     Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended.

Exit Nurse.

Enter PETER.

PETER     Musicians, O musicians, ‘Heart’s ease’, ‘Heart’s

100

ease’! O, and you will have me live, play ‘Heart’s ease’.

1 MUSICIAN     Why ‘Heart’s ease’?

PETER     O musicians, because my heart itself plays ‘My

heart is full’. O play me some merry dump to comfort

me.

105

1 MUSICIAN     Not a dump we! ’Tis no time to play now.

PETER     You will not then?

1 MUSICIAN     No.

PETER     I will then give it you soundly.

1 MUSICIAN     What will you give us?

110

PETER     No money, on my faith, but the gleek! I will give

you the minstrel.

1 MUSICIAN     Then will I give you the serving-creature.

PETER     Then will I lay the serving-creature’s dagger on

your pate. I will carry no crotchets. I’ll re you, I’ll fa

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you. Do you note me?

1 MUSICIAN     And you re us and fa us, you note us.

2 MUSICIAN     Pray you put up your dagger and put out

your wit.

PETER     Then have at you with my wit. I will dry-beat

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you with an iron wit, and put up my iron dagger.

Answer me like men.

‘When griping griefs the heart doth wound,

And doleful dumps the mind oppress,

Then music with her silver sound’ –

125

Why ‘silver sound’? Why ‘music with her silver

sound’? What say you, Simon Catling?

1 MUSICIAN

Marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound.

PETER     Prates. What say you, Hugh Rebeck?

2 MUSICIAN     I say ‘silver sound’ because musicians

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sound for silver.

PETER     Prates too. What say you, James Soundpost?

3 MUSICIAN     Faith, I know not what to say.

PETER     O, I cry you mercy, you are the singer. I will say

for you. It is ‘music with her silver sound’ because

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musicians have no gold for sounding.

‘Then music with her silver sound

With speedy help doth lend redress.’Exit.

1 MUSICIAN     What a pestilent knave is this same.

2 MUSICIAN     Hang him, Jack. Come, we’ll in here, tarry

140

for the mourners, and stay dinner.     Exeunt.

5.1     Enter ROMEO.

ROMEO     If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep

My dreams presage some joyful news at hand.

My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne

And all this day an unaccustom’d spirit

Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.

5

I dreamt my lady came and found me dead –

Strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think! –

And breath’d such life with kisses in my lips

That I reviv’d and was an emperor.

Ah me, how sweet is love itself possess’d

10

When but love’s shadows are so rich in joy.

Enter BALTHASAR, Romeo’s man, booted.

News from Verona! How now, Balthasar,

Dost thou not bring me letters from the Friar?

How doth my lady? Is my father well?

How doth my Juliet? That I ask again,

15

For nothing can be ill if she be well.

BALTHASAR

Then she is well and nothing can be ill.

Her body sleeps in Capels’ monument,

And her immortal part with angels lives.

I saw her laid low in her kindred’s vault

20

And presently took post to tell it you.

O pardon me for bringing these ill news,

Since you did leave it for my office, sir.

ROMEO     Is it e’en so? Then I defy you, stars!

Thou know’st my lodging. Get me ink and paper,

25

And hire posthorses. I will hence tonight.

BALTHASAR     I do beseech you sir, have patience.

Your looks are pale and wild and do import

Some misadventure.

ROMEO     Tush, thou art deceiv’d.

Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do.

30

Hast thou no letters to me from the Friar?

BALTHASAR     No, my good lord.

ROMEO     No matter. Get thee gone.

And hire those horses. I’ll be with thee straight.

Exit Balthasar.

Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight.

Let’s see for means. O mischief thou art swift

35

To enter in the thoughts of desperate men.

I do remember an apothecary –

And hereabouts ‘a dwells – which late I noted

In tatter’d weeds, with overwhelming brows,

Culling of simples. Meagre were his looks,

40

Sharp misery had worn him to the bones,

And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,

An alligator stuff ‘d, and other skins

Of ill-shap’d fishes; and about his shelves

A beggarly account of empty boxes,

45

Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,

Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses

Were thinly scatter’d to make up a show.

Noting this penury, to myself I said,

‘And if a man did need a poison now,

50

Whose sale is present death in Mantua,

Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him’.

O, this same thought did but forerun my need,

And this same needy man must sell it me.

As I remember, this should be the house.

55

Being holiday, the beggar’s shop is shut.

What ho! Apothecary!

Enter Apothecary.

APOTHECARY     Who calls so loud?

ROMEO     Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor.

Hold, there is forty ducats. Let me have

A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear

60

As will disperse itself through all the veins,

That the life-weary taker may fall dead,

And that the trunk may be discharg’d of breath

As violently as hasty powder fir’d

Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb.

65

APOTHECARY

Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua’s law

Is death to any he that utters them.

ROMEO     Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,

And fear’st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks,

Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes,

70

Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back.

The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law;

The world affords no law to make thee rich;

Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.

APOTHECARY     My poverty, but not my will consents.

75

ROMEO     I pay thy poverty and not thy will.

APOTHECARY     Put this in any liquid thing you will

And drink it off and if you had the strength

Of twenty men it would dispatch you straight.

ROMEO

There is thy gold – worse poison to men’s souls,

80

Doing more murder in this loathsome world

Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.

I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none.

Farewell, buy food, and get thyself in flesh.

Come, cordial, and not poison, go with me

85

To Juliet’s grave, for there must I use thee.     Exeunt.

5.2 Enter FRIAR JOHN. FRIAR JOHN Holy Franciscan Friar, Brother, ho!

Enter FRIAR LAURENCE.

FRIAR LAURENCE

This same should be the voice of Friar John.

Welcome from Mantua. What says Romeo?

Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter.

FRIAR JOHN     Going to find a barefoot brother out,

5

One of our order, to associate me,

Here in this city visiting the sick,

And finding him, the searchers of the town,

Suspecting that we both were in a house

Where the infectious pestilence did reign,

10

Seal’d up the doors and would not let us forth,

So that my speed to Mantua there was stay’d.

FRIAR LAURENCE     Who bare my letter then to Romeo?

FRIAR JOHN     I could not send it – here it is again –

Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,

15

So fearful were they of infection.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Unhappy fortune! By my brotherhood,

The letter was not nice but full of charge,

Of dear import, and the neglecting it

May do much danger. Friar John, go hence,

20

Get me an iron crow and bring it straight

Unto my cell.

FRIAR JOHN     Brother, I’ll go and bring it thee.      Exit.

FRIAR LAURENCE     Now must I to the monument alone.

Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake.

She will beshrew me much that Romeo

25

Hath had no notice of these accidents,

But I will write again to Mantua,

And keep her at my cell till Romeo come.

Poor living corse, clos’d in a dead man’s tomb.     Exit.

5.3 Enter PARIS and his Page, with flowers and sweet water.

PARIS     Give me thy torch, boy. Hence and stand aloof.

Yet put it out, for I would not be seen.

Under yond yew trees lay thee all along,

Holding thy ear close to the hollow ground;

So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread,

5

Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves,

But thou shalt hear it. Whistle then to me

As signal that thou hear’st something approach.

Give me those flowers. Do as I bid thee. Go.

PAGE     I am almost afraid to stand alone

10

Here in the churchyard. Yet I will adventure.

[Retires. Paris strews the tomb with flowers.]

PARIS

Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew.

O woe, thy canopy is dust and stones

Which with sweet water nightly I will dew,

Or wanting that, with tears distill’d by moans.

15

The obsequies that I for thee will keep

Nightly shall be to strew thy grave and weep.

[Page whistles.]

The boy gives warning something doth approach.

What cursed foot wanders this way tonight,

To cross my obsequies and true love’s rite?

20

What, with a torch? Muffle me, night, awhile.

[Paris retires.]

Enter ROMEO and BALTHASAR with a torch, a mattock and a crow of iron.

ROMEO     Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron.

Hold, take this letter. Early in the morning

See thou deliver it to my lord and father.

Give me the light. Upon thy life I charge thee,

25

Whate’er thou hear’st or seest, stand all aloof

And do not interrupt me in my course.

Why I descend into this bed of death

Is partly to behold my lady’s face

But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger

30

A precious ring, a ring that I must use

In dear employment. Therefore hence, be gone.

But if thou jealous dost return to pry

In what I farther shall intend to do,

By heaven I will tear thee joint by joint,

35

And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs.

The time and my intents are savage-wild,

More fierce and more inexorable far

Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.

BALTHASAR     I will be gone, sir, and not trouble ye.

40

ROMEO

So shalt thou show me friendship. Take thou that.

Live, and be prosperous, and farewell, good fellow.

BALTHASAR     For all this same, I’ll hide me hereabout.

His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.

[Balthasar retires.]

ROMEO     Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death

45

Gorg’d with the dearest morsel of the earth,

Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,

And in despite I’ll cram thee with more food.

[Romeo opens the tomb.]

PARIS     This is that banish’d haughty Montague

That murder’d my love’s cousin – with which grief

50

It is supposed the fair creature died –

And here is come to do some villainous shame

To the dead bodies. I will apprehend him.

Stop thy unhallow’d toil, vile Montague.

Can vengeance be pursu’d further than death?

55

Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee.

Obey, and go with me, for thou must die.

ROMEO     I must indeed, and therefore came I hither.

Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man.

Fly hence and leave me. Think upon these gone.

60

Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth,

Put not another sin upon my head

By urging me to fury. O be gone.

By heaven I love thee better than myself,

For I come hither arm’d against myself.

65

Stay not, be gone, live, and hereafter say

A mad man’s mercy bid thee run away.

PARIS     I do defy thy conjuration

And apprehend thee for a felon here.

ROMEO     Wilt thou provoke me? Then have at thee, boy!

70

[They fight.]

PAGE     O Lord, they fight! I will go call the Watch.

Exit Page.

PARIS     O, I am slain! If thou be merciful,

Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet. [Paris dies.]

ROMEO     In faith I will. Let me peruse this face.

Mercutio’s kinsman, noble County Paris!

75

What said my man, when my betossed soul

Did not attend him, as we rode? I think

He told me Paris should have married Juliet.

Said he not so? Or did I dream it so?

Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet,

80

To think it was so? O, give me thy hand,

One writ with me in sour misfortune’s book.

I’ll bury thee in a triumphant grave.

A grave? O no, a lantern, slaughter’d youth.

For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes

85

This vault a feasting presence, full of light.

Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr’d.

How oft when men are at the point of death

Have they been merry! Which their keepers call

A lightning before death. O how may I

90

Call this a lightning? O my love, my wife,

Death that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath

Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.

Thou art not conquer’d. Beauty’s ensign yet

Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,

95

And Death’s pale flag is not advanced there.

Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?

O, what more favour can I do to thee

Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain

To sunder his that was thine enemy?

100

Forgive me, cousin. Ah, dear Juliet,

Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe

That unsubstantial Death is amorous,

And that the lean abhorred monster keeps

Thee here in dark to be his paramour?

105

For fear of that I still will stay with thee,

And never from this palace of dim night

Depart again. Here, here, will I remain

With worms that are thy chambermaids. O here

Will I set up my everlasting rest

110

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last.

Arms, take your last embrace! And lips, O you

The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss

A dateless bargain to engrossing Death.

115

Come, bitter conduct, come unsavoury guide,

Thou desperate pilot now at once run on

The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark.

Here’s to my love! [He drinks.] O true apothecary,

Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.

120

[He falls.]

Enter FRIAR LAURENCE with lantern, crow and spade.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Saint Francis be my speed. How oft tonight

Have my old feet stumbled at graves. Who’s there?

BALTHASAR

Here’s one, a friend, and one that knows you well.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Bliss be upon you. Tell me, good my friend,

What torch is yond that vainly lends his light

125

To grubs and eyeless skulls? As I discern,

It burneth in the Capels’ monument.

BALTHASAR

It doth so, holy sir, and there’s my master,

One that you love.

FRIAR LAURENCE     Who is it?

BALTHASAR               Romeo.

FRIAR LAURENCE     How long hath he been there?

BALTHASAR     Full half an hour.

130

FRIAR LAURENCE   Go with me to the vault.

BALTHASAR     I dare not, sir.

My master knows not but I am gone hence,

And fearfully did menace me with death

If I did stay to look on his intents.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Stay then, I’ll go alone. Fear comes upon me.

135

O, much I fear some ill unthrifty thing.

BALTHASAR     As I did sleep under this yew tree here

I dreamt my master and another fought,

And that my master slew him.

FRIAR LAURENCE               Romeo!

[Friar stoops and looks on the blood and weapons.]

Alack, alack, what blood is this which stains

140

The stony entrance of this sepulchre?

What mean these masterless and gory swords

To lie discolour’d by this place of peace?

Romeo! O, pale! Who else? What, Paris too?

And steep’d in blood? Ah what an unkind hour

145

Is guilty of this lamentable chance?

The lady stirs.

JULIET rises.

JULIET     O comfortable Friar, where is my lord?

I do remember well where I should be,

And there I am. Where is my Romeo?

150

FRIAR LAURENCE

I hear some noise. Lady, come from that nest

Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep.

A greater power than we can contradict

Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away.

Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead,

155

And Paris too. Come, I’ll dispose of thee

Among a sisterhood of holy nuns.

Stay not to question, for the Watch is coming.

Come, go, good Juliet. I dare no longer stay.

JULIET     Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.

160

Exit Friar Laurence.

What’s here? A cup clos’d in my true love’s hand?

Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.

O churl. Drunk all, and left no friendly drop

To help me after? I will kiss thy lips.

Haply some poison yet doth hang on them

165

To make me die with a restorative. [She kisses him.]

Thy lips are warm!

WATCHMAN [within]     Lead, boy. Which way?

JULIET     Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger.

This is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die.

[She stabs herself and falls.]

     Enter Page and Watchmen.

PAGE

This is the place. There, where the torch doth burn.

170

1 WATCHMAN

The ground is bloody. Search about the churchyard.

Go, some of you: whoe’er you find, attach.

Exeunt some watchmen.

Pitiful sight! Here lies the County slain

And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,

Who here hath lain this two days buried.

175

Go tell the Prince. Run to the Capulets.

Raise up the Montagues. Some others search.

Exeunt some watchmen.

We see the ground whereon these woes do lie,

But the true ground of all these piteous woes

We cannot without circumstance descry.

180

Enter several Watchmen with BALTHASAR.

2 WATCHMAN   Here’s Romeo’s man. We found him in the churchyard.

1 WATCHMAN

Hold him in safety till the Prince come hither.

Enter another Watchman with FRIAR LAURENCE.

3 WATCHMAN

Here is a friar that trembles, sighs and weeps.

We took this mattock and this spade from him

185

As he was coming from this churchyard’s side.

1 WATCHMAN   A great suspicion. Stay the friar too.

Enter the PRINCE and attendants.

PRINCE     What misadventure is so early up,

That calls our person from our morning rest?

Enter CAPULET and LADY CAPULET and servants.

CAPULET     What should it be that is so shriek’d abroad?

190

LADY CAPULET     O, the people in the street cry ‘Romeo’,

Some ‘Juliet’, and some ‘Paris’, and all run

With open outcry toward our monument.

PRINCE     What fear is this which startles in our ears?

1 WATCHMAN

Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain,

195

And Romeo dead, and Juliet, dead before,

Warm, and new kill’d.

PRINCE

Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.

1 WATCHMAN

Here is a friar, and slaughter’d Romeo’s man,

With instruments upon them fit to open

200

These dead men’s tombs.

CAPULET

O heavens! O wife, look how our daughter bleeds!

This dagger hath mista’en, for lo, his house

Is empty on the back of Montague,

And it mis-sheathed in my daughter’s bosom.

205

LADY CAPULET

O me! This sight of death is as a bell

That warns my old age to a sepulchre.

Enter MONTAGUE and servants.

PRINCE     Come, Montague, for thou art early up

To see thy son and heir now early down.

MONTAGUE     Alas, my liege, my wife is dead tonight.

210

Grief of my son’s exile hath stopp’d her breath.

What further woe conspires against mine age?

PRINCE     Look, and thou shalt see.

MONTAGUE     O thou untaught! What manners is in this,

To press before thy father to a grave?

215

PRINCE     Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while

Till we can clear these ambiguities

And know their spring, their head, their true descent,

And then will I be general of your woes

And lead you, even to death. Meantime forbear,

220

And let mischance be slave to patience.

Bring forth the parties of suspicion.

FRIAR LAURENCE     I am the greatest, able to do least,

Yet most suspected, as the time and place

Doth make against me, of this direful murder.

225

And here I stand, both to impeach and purge

Myself condemned and myself excus’d.

PRINCE     Then say at once what thou dost know in this.

FRIAR LAURENCE

I will be brief, for my short date of breath

Is not so long as is a tedious tale.

230

Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet,

And she, there dead, that Romeo’s faithful wife.

I married them, and their stol’n marriage day

Was Tybalt’s doomsday, whose untimely death

Banish’d the new-made bridegroom from this city;

235

For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin’d.

You, to remove that siege of grief from her,

Betroth’d and would have married her perforce

To County Paris. Then comes she to me

And with wild looks bid me devise some mean

240

To rid her from this second marriage,

Or in my cell there would she kill herself.

Then gave I her – so tutor’d by my art –

A sleeping potion, which so took effect

As I intended, for it wrought on her

245

The form of death. Meantime I writ to Romeo

That he should hither come as this dire night

To help to take her from her borrow’d grave,

Being the time the potion’s force should cease.

But he which bore my letter, Friar John,

250

Was stay’d by accident, and yesternight

Return’d my letter back. Then all alone

At the prefixed hour of her waking

Came I to take her from her kindred’s vault,

Meaning to keep her closely at my cell

255

Till I conveniently could send to Romeo.

But when I came, some minute ere the time

Of her awakening, here untimely lay

The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.

She wakes; and I entreated her come forth

260

And bear this work of heaven with patience,

But then a noise did scare me from the tomb

And she, too desperate, would not go with me

But, as it seems, did violence on herself.

All this I know; and to the marriage

265

Her Nurse is privy; and if aught in this

Miscarried by my fault, let my old life

Be sacrific’d some hour before his time

Unto the rigour of severest law.

PRINCE     We still have known thee for a holy man.

270

Where’s Romeo’s man? What can he say to this?

BALTHASAR

I brought my master news of Juliet’s death,

And then in post he came from Mantua

To this same place, to this same monument.

This letter he early bid me give his father

275

And threaten’d me with death, going in the vault,

If I departed not and left him there.

PRINCE     Give me the letter, I will look on it.

Where is the County’s Page that rais’d the Watch?

Sirrah, what made your master in this place?

280

PAGE     He came with flowers to strew his lady’s grave

And bid me stand aloof, and so I did.

Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb

And by and by my master drew on him,

And then I ran away to call the Watch.

285

PRINCE     This letter doth make good the Friar’s words:

Their course of love, the tidings of her death,

And here he writes that he did buy a poison

Of a poor pothecary, and therewithal

Came to this vault to die and lie with Juliet.

290

Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague,

See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love;

And I, for winking at your discords too,

Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punish’d.

295

CAPULET     O brother Montague, give me thy hand.

This is my daughter’s jointure, for no more

Can I demand.

MONTAGUE     But I can give thee more,

For I will raise her statue in pure gold,

That whiles Verona by that name is known,

300

There shall no figure at such rate be set

As that of true and faithful Juliet.

CAPULET     As rich shall Romeo’s by his lady’s lie,

Poor sacrifices of our enmity.

PRINCE     A glooming peace this morning with it brings:

305

The sun for sorrow will not show his head.

Go hence to have more talk of these sad things.

Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished,

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.     Exeunt.

310

The Taming of the Shrew

The text of The Taming of the Shrew printed in the First Folio in 1623 as the eleventh of the comedies stands in close, but ill-defined, relation to a play printed in 1594 with the similar title of The Taming of a Shrew. Once regarded as Shakespeare’s source for The Shrew, A Shrew is perhaps better understood as a garbled and abbreviated adaptation of it in which the ‘taming’ plot follows very similar lines and includes verbal reminiscences, the ‘Bianca’plot is radically rewritten and draws heavily on quotations from Marlowe’s plays, and the framing device of Sly is sustained to the end of the play, where it affords an ironic epilogue in which Sly, sober, sets off home to tame his wife too. The likely period of composition of The Shrew is between about 1590 and 1594.

Shrew-taming stories and ballads, originating in folk-tales, were widely known in the sixteenth century and no single original for the play has been identified. Similarly, the device of gulling a beggar into the belief that he is a king or lord is an ancient and widespread narrative motif, best known today from The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment. The story of Bianca and her suitors has an immediate dramatic source in Supposes (1566), George Gascoigne’s English version of a prose comedy, I Suppositi (1509), by Lodovico Ariosto. The skilful weaving of these three into a complex action is among the play’s notable achievements.

The Taming of the Shrew has had a long and successful stage history, both in its full form and in successive adaptations and abridgements, of which David Garrick’s Catherine and Petruchio (1756) had the longest life. The play shares with The Merchant of Venice the unhappy distinction of giving general offence to modern sensibilities. However, Shakespeare’s portrayal of the ‘taming’ of Katherina tones down the coarseness and physicalviolence of contemporary analogues, substituting a course of psychological homeopathy to cure her of her shrewishness. A feminist repartee was delivered as early as 1611 by John Fletcher in his comedy The Woman’s Prize, or the Tamer Tamed. In it, Petruchio is subjected to four acts of frustration and humiliation by a second wife, Maria (who is evidently acquainted with the Lysistrata of Aristophanes), before wounded male pride is restored at the end by her voluntary reversion to wifely good behav-iour.

The modern response of indignation at the taming plot is understandable – even inevitable – but it runs the risk of ignoring the wholly speculative and fictional scheme of things in which Shakespeare’s ‘supposes’ –hypothetical propositions about men and women as much as disguised or substituted characters – are presented for the entertainment of Sly and of ourselves. Katherina and Petruchio are at once differentiated from the rest of the characters by force of personality and by an evident emotional compatibility: the roles have been relished by generations of star performers, among them Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor on film. Their interchanges anticipate the ‘merry war’ of Beatrice and Benedick, both in their witty surface and in the underlying seriousness of the tussle for power in marriage. Sly’s disappearance at the end of the first act of the Folio text is perplexing: some modern productions have made effective use of his later interventions borrowed from A Shrew. The disappearance of Sly leaves the end of the play more open to the various reactions of an audience, whereas his epilogue can increase a sense of that ending as no more than a male fantasy of unattainable control.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

INDUCTION

Christopher SLY

a tinker

HOSTESS

LORD

PAGE, HUNTSMEN and SERVANTS

attending on the lord

A company of PLAYERS

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

BAPTISTA Minola

a rich citizen of Padua

KATHERINA

the Shrew, elder daughter of Baptista

PETRUCHIO

a gentleman of Verona, suitor to Katherina

GRUMIO

Petruchio’s personal servant

CURTIS

Petruchio’s chief servant at his country house

TAILOR

HABERDASHER

Five other SERVANTS of Petruchio

BIANCA

younger daughter of Baptista

GREMIO

rich old citizen of Padua, suitor to Bianca

HORTENSIO

a gentleman of Padua, suitor to Bianca

LUCENTIO

a gentleman of Pisa, suitor to Bianca

TRANIO

personal servant to Lucentio

BIONDELLO

servant to Lucentio

VINCENTIO

rich citizen of Pisa, father of Lucentio

PEDANT

of Mantua

WIDOW

SERVANTS

attending on Baptista

Ind.1 Enter CHRISTOPHER SLY and the Hostess.

SLY     I’ll feeze you, in faith.

HOSTESS     A pair of stocks, you rogue.

SLY     Y’are a baggage, the Slys are no rogues. Look in the

Chronicles, we came in with Richard Conqueror.

Therefore paucas pallabris, let the world slide. Sessa!

5

HOSTESS     You will not pay for the glasses you have burst?

SLY     No, not a denier. Go by, Saint Jeronimy, go to thy cold bed and warm thee.

HOSTESS     I know my remedy, I must go fetch the thirdborough.     Exit.

10

SLY     Third, or fourth, or fifth borough, I’ll answer him

by law. I’ll not budge an inch, boy. Let him come, and

kindly. [Falls asleep.]

Wind horns. Enter a Lord from hunting, with his train.

LORD

Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds.

15

Breathe Merriman, the poor cur is emboss’d,

And couple Clowder with the deep-mouth’d brach.

Saw’st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good

At the hedge corner, in the coldest fault?

I would not lose the dog for twenty pound.

20

1 HUNTSMAN

Why, Belman is as good as he, my lord.

He cried upon it at the merest loss,

And twice today pick’d out the dullest scent.

Trust me, I take him for the better dog.

LORD     Thou art a fool. If Echo were as fleet,

25

I would esteem him worth a dozen such.

But sup them well, and look unto them all.

Tomorrow I intend to hunt again.

1 HUNTSMAN     I will, my lord.

LORD

What’s here? One dead, or drunk? See, doth he breathe?

30

2 HUNTSMAN

He breathes, my lord. Were he not warm’d with ale,

This were a bed but cold to sleep so soundly.

LORD     O monstrous beast, how like a swine he lies!

Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!

Sirs, I will practise on this drunken man.

35

What think you, if he were convey’d to bed,

Wrapp’d in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers,

A most delicious banquet by his bed,

And brave attendants near him when he wakes,

Would not the beggar then forget himself?

40

1 HUNTSMAN

Believe me, lord, I think he cannot choose.

2 HUNTSMAN

It would seem strange unto him when he wak’d.

LORD     Even as a flatt’ring dream or worthless fancy.

Then take him up, and manage well the jest.

Carry him gently to my fairest chamber,

45

And hang it round with all my wanton pictures.

Balm his foul head in warm distilled waters,

And burn sweet wood to make the lodging sweet.

Procure me music ready when he wakes,

To make a dulcet and a heavenly sound.

50

And if he chance to speak, be ready straight

And with a low submissive reverence

Say ‘What is it your honour will command?’

Let one attend him with a silver basin

Full of rose-water and bestrew’d with flowers,

55

Another bear the ewer, the third a diaper,

And say ‘Will’t please your lordship cool your hands?’

Some one be ready with a costly suit,

And ask him what apparel he will wear.

Another tell him of his hounds and horse,

60

And that his lady mourns at his disease.

Persuade him that he hath been lunatic,

And when he says he is, say that he dreams,

For he is nothing but a mighty lord.

This do, and do it kindly, gentle sirs.

65

It will be pastime passing excellent,

If it be husbanded with modesty.

1 HUNTSMAN

My lord, I warrant you we will play our part

As he shall think by our true diligence

He is no less than what we say he is.

70

LORD     Take him up gently, and to bed with him,

And each one to his office when he wakes.

Sly is carried off. Sound trumpets.

Sirrah, go see what trumpet ’tis that sounds –

Exit Servingman.

Belike some noble gentleman that means,

Travelling some journey, to repose him here.

75

Enter Servingman.

How now? Who is it?

SERVINGMAN     An’t please your honour, players

That offer service to your lordship.

LORD     Bid them come near.

Enter Players.

Now, fellows, you are welcome.

PLAYERS     We thank your honour.

LORD     Do you intend to stay with me tonight?

80

1 PLAYER

So please your lordship to accept our duty.

LORD     With all my heart. This fellow I remember

Since once he play’d a farmer’s eldest son.

’Twas where you woo’d the gentlewoman so well.

I have forgot your name; but, sure, that part

85

Was aptly fitted and naturally perform’d.

2 PLAYER

I think ’twas Soto that your honour means.

LORD     ’Tis very true, thou didst it excellent.

Well, you are come to me in happy time,

The rather for I have some sport in hand

90

Wherein your cunning can assist me much.

There is a lord will hear you play tonight;

But I am doubtful of your modesties,

Lest over-eyeing of his odd behaviour–

For yet his honour never heard a play–

95

You break into some merry passion

And so offend him; for I tell you, sirs,

If you should smile, he grows impatient.

1 PLAYER

Fear not, my lord, we can contain ourselves,

Were he the veriest antic in the world.

100

LORD     Go, sirrah, take them to the buttery,

And give them friendly welcome every one.

Let them want nothing that my house affords.

Exit one with the Players.

Sirrah, go you to Barthol’mew my page,

And see him dress’d in all suits like a lady.

105

That done, conduct him to the drunkard’s chamber,

And call him ‘madam’, do him obeisance.

Tell him from me, as he will win my love,

He bear himself with honourable action,

Such as he hath observ’d in noble ladies

110

Unto their lords, by them accomplished.

Such duty to the drunkard let him do,

With soft low tongue and lowly courtesy,

And say ‘What is’t your honour will command,

Wherein your lady and your humble wife

115

May show her duty and make known her love?’

And then with kind embracements, tempting kisses,

And with declining head into his bosom,

Bid him shed tears, as being overjoy’d

To see her noble lord restor’d to health,

120

Who for this seven years hath esteemed him

No better than a poor and loathsome beggar.

And if the boy have not a woman’s gift

To rain a shower of commanded tears,

An onion will do well for such a shift,

125

Which in a napkin being close convey’d,

Shall in despite enforce a watery eye.

See this dispatch’d with all the haste thou canst,

Anon I’ll give thee more instructions.

Exit a Servingman.

I know the boy will well usurp the grace,

130

Voice, gait, and action of a gentlewoman.

I long to hear him call the drunkard husband,

And how my men will stay themselves from laughter

When they do homage to this simple peasant.

I’ll in to counsel them. Haply my presence

135

May well abate the over-merry spleen

Which otherwise would grow into extremes.     Exeunt.

Ind.2 Enter aloft SLY, with attendants; some with apparel, basin and ewer, and other appurtenances; and Lord.

SLY     For God’s sake, a pot of small ale.

1 SERVINGMAN     Will’t please your lordship drink a cup

of sack?

2 SERVINGMAN     Will’t please your honour taste of these

conserves?

5

3 SERVINGMAN     What raiment will your honour wear

today?

SLY     I am Christophero Sly, call not me ‘honour’ nor

‘lordship’. I ne’er drank sack in my life. And if you

give me any conserves, give me conserves of beef.

10

Ne’er ask me what raiment I’ll wear, for I have no

more doublets than backs, no more stockings than

legs, nor no more shoes than feet – nay, sometime

more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look

through the overleather.

15

LORD     Heaven cease this idle humour in your honour!

O, that a mighty man of such descent,

Of such possessions, and so high esteem,

Should be infused with so foul a spirit!

SLY     What, would you make me mad? Am not I

20

Christopher Sly, old Sly’s son of Burton-heath, by

birth a pedlar, by education a cardmaker, by

transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present

profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-

wife of Wincot, if she know me not. If she say I am not

25

fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up

for the lying’st knave in Christendom. [A Servant

brings him a pot of ale.] What! I am not bestraught.

Here’s – [He drinks.]

3 SERVINGMAN

O, this it is that makes your lady mourn.

30

2 SERVINGMAN

O, this is it that makes your servants droop.

LORD

Hence comes it that your kindred shuns your house,

As beaten hence by your strange lunacy.

O noble lord, bethink thee of thy birth,

Call home thy ancient thoughts from banishment,

35

And banish hence these abject lowly dreams.

Look how thy servants do attend on thee,

Each in his office ready at thy beck.

Wilt thou have music? Hark, Apollo plays,      [Music.]

And twenty caged nightingales do sing.

40

Or wilt thou sleep? We’ll have thee to a couch

Softer and sweeter than the lustful bed

On purpose trimm’d up for Semiramis.

Say thou wilt walk; we will bestrew the ground.

Or wilt thou ride? Thy horses shall be trapp’d,

45

Their harness studded all with gold and pearl.

Dost thou love hawking? Thou hast hawks will soar

Above the morning lark. Or wilt thou hunt?

Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them

And fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth.

50

1 SERVINGMAN

Say thou wilt course, thy greyhounds are as swift

As breathed stags, ay, fleeter than the roe.

2 SERVINGMAN

Dost thou love pictures? We will fetch thee straight

Adonis painted by a running brook,

And Cytherea all in sedges hid,

55

Which seem to move and wanton with her breath

Even as the waving sedges play with wind.

LORD     We’ll show thee Io as she was a maid,

And how she was beguiled and surpris’d,

As lively painted as the deed was done.

60

3 SERVINGMAN

Or Daphne roaming through a thorny wood,

Scratching her legs that one shall swear she bleeds,

And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep,

So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn.

LORD     Thou art a lord, and nothing but a lord.

65

Thou hast a lady far more beautiful

Than any woman in this waning age.

1 SERVINGMAN

And till the tears that she hath shed for thee

Like envious floods o’er-run her lovely face,

She was the fairest creature in the world;

70

And yet she is inferior to none.

SLY     Am I a lord, and have I such a lady?

Or do I dream? Or have I dream’d till now?

I do not sleep. I see, I hear, I speak.

I smell sweet savours and I feel soft things.

75

Upon my life, I am a lord indeed,

And not a tinker nor Christophero Sly.

Well, bring our lady hither to our sight,

And once again a pot o’th’ smallest ale.

2 SERVINGMAN

Will’t please your mightiness to wash your hands?

80

O, how we joy to see your wit restor’d!

O, that once more you knew but what you are!

These fifteen years you have been in a dream,

Or when you wak’d, so wak’d as if you slept.

SLY     These fifteen years! By my fay, a goodly nap.

85

But did I never speak of all that time?

1 SERVINGMAN O yes, my lord, but very idle words,

For though you lay here in this goodly chamber,

Yet would you say ye were beaten out of door,

And rail upon the hostess of the house,

90

And say you would present her at the leet,

Because she brought stone jugs and no seal’d quarts.

Sometimes you would call out for Cicely Hacket.

SLY     Ay, the woman’s maid of the house.

3 SERVINGMAN

Why, sir, you know no house, nor no such maid,

95

Nor no such men as you have reckon’d up,

As Stephen Sly, and old John Naps of Greece,

And Peter Turph, and Henry Pimpernell,

And twenty more such names and men as these,

Which never were nor no man ever saw.

100

SLY     Now Lord be thanked for my good amends.

ALL     Amen.

Enter Page as a lady, with attendants.

One gives Sly a pot of ale.

SLY     I thank thee, thou shalt not lose by it.

PAGE   How fares my noble lord?

SLY     Marry, I fare well, for here is cheer enough.

105

Where is my wife?

PAGE   Here, noble lord, what is thy will with her?

SLY     

Are you my wife, and will not call me husband?

My men should call me ‘lord’, I am your goodman.

PAGE

My husband and my lord, my lord and husband;

110

I am your wife in all obedience.

SLY     I know it well. What must I call her?

LORD     Madam.

SLY     Alice madam, or Joan madam?

LORD     Madam and nothing else, so lords call ladies.

115

SLY     Madam wife, they say that I have dream’d

And slept above some fifteen year or more.

PAGE   Ay, and the time seems thirty unto me,

Being all this time abandon’d from your bed.

SLY     ’Tis much. Servants, leave me and her alone.

120

Exeunt attendants.

Madam, undress you and come now to bed.

PAGE     Thrice noble lord, let me entreat of you

To pardon me yet for a night or two;

Or, if not so, until the sun be set.

For your physicians have expressly charg’d,

125

In peril to incur your former malady,

That I should yet absent me from your bed.

I hope this reason stands for my excuse.

SLY     Ay, it stands so that I may hardly tarry so long. But

I would be loath to fall into my dreams again. I will

130

therefore tarry in despite of the flesh and the blood.

Enter a Messenger.

MESSENGER

Your honour’s players, hearing your amendment,

Are come to play a pleasant comedy;

For so your doctors hold it very meet,

Seeing too much sadness hath congeal’d your blood,

135

And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy.

Therefore they thought it good you hear a play

And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,

Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.

SLY     Marry, I will. Let them play it. Is not a comonty

140

A Christmas gambol or a tumbling-trick?

PAGE     No, my good lord, it is more pleasing stuff.

SLY     What, household stuff?

PAGE     It is a kind of history.

SLY

Well, we’ll see’t. Come, madam wife, sit by my side

And let the world slip, we shall ne’er be younger.

145

1.1 Flourish. Enter LUCENTIO and his man TRANIO.

LUCENTIO

Tranio, since for the great desire I had

To see fair Padua, nursery of arts,

I am arriv’d for fruitful Lombardy,

The pleasant garden of great Italy,

And by my father’s love and leave am arm’d

5

With his good will and thy good company,

My trusty servant well approv’d in all,

Here let us breathe and haply institute

A course of learning and ingenious studies.

Pisa renowned for grave citizens

10

Gave me my being and my father first,

A merchant of great traffic through the world,

Vincentio, come of the Bentivolii.

Vincentio’s son, brought up in Florence,

It shall become to serve all hopes conceiv’d

15

To deck his fortune with his virtuous deeds.

And therefore, Tranio, for the time I study

Virtue, and that part of philosophy

Will I apply that treats of happiness

By virtue specially to be achiev’d.

20

Tell me thy mind, for I have Pisa left

And am to Padua come as he that leaves

A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep,

And with satiety seeks to quench his thirst.

TRANIO     Mi perdonato, gentle master mine.

25

I am in all affected as yourself,

Glad that you thus continue your resolve

To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy.

Only, good master, while we do admire

This virtue and this moral discipline,

30

Let’s be no stoics nor no stocks, I pray,

Or so devote to Aristotle’s checks

As Ovid be an outcast quite abjur’d.

Balk logic with acquaintance that you have,

And practise rhetoric in your common talk,

35

Music and poesy use to quicken you,

The mathematics and the metaphysics

Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you.

No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en.

In brief, sir, study what you most affect.

40

LUCENTIO     Gramercies, Tranio, well dost thou advise.

If, Biondello, thou wert come ashore,

We could at once put us in readiness,

And take a lodging fit to entertain

Such friends as time in Padua shall beget.

45

But stay awhile, what company is this?

TRANIO     Master, some show to welcome us to town.

Lucentio and Tranio stand by.

Enter BAPTISTA with his two daughters KATHERINA and BIANCA, GREMIO, a pantaloon, HORTENSIO, suitor to Bianca.

BAPTISTA     Gentlemen, importune me no farther,

For how I firmly am resolv’d you know;

That is, not to bestow my youngest daughter

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Before I have a husband for the elder.

If either of you both love Katherina,

Because I know you well and love you well,

Leave shall you have to court her at your pleasure.

GREMIO     To cart her rather. She’s too rough for me.

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There, there, Hortensio, will you any wife?

KATHERINA     I pray you, sir, is it your will

To make a stale of me amongst these mates?

HORTENSIO

Mates, maid, how mean you that? No mates for you

Unless you were of gentler, milder mould.

60

KATHERINA     I’faith, sir, you shall never need to fear.

Iwis it is not half way to her heart.

But if it were, doubt not her care should be

To comb your noddle with a three-legg’d stool,

And paint your face, and use you like a fool.

65

HORTENSIO     From all such devils, good Lord deliver us!

GREMIO     And me too, good Lord!

TRANIO

Husht, master, here’s some good pastime toward.

That wench is stark mad or wonderful froward.

LUCENTIO     But in the other’s silence do I see

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Maid’s mild behaviour and sobriety.

Peace, Tranio.

TRANIO     Well said, master. Mum! and gaze your fill.

BAPTISTA     Gentlemen, that I may soon make good

What I have said – Bianca, get you in.

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And let it not displease thee, good Bianca,

For I will love thee ne’er the less, my girl.

KATHERINA     A pretty peat! it is best put finger in the

eye, and she knew why.

BIANCA     Sister, content you in my discontent.

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Sir, to your pleasure humbly I subscribe.

My books and instruments shall be my company,

On them to look and practise by myself.

LUCENTIO

Hark, Tranio, thou may’st hear Minerva speak.

HORTENSIO     Signor Baptista, will you be so strange?

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Sorry am I that our good will effects

Bianca’s grief.

GREMIO     Why, will you mew her up,

Signor Baptista, for this fiend of hell,

And make her bear the penance of her tongue?

BAPTISTA     Gentlemen, content ye. I am resolv’d.

90

Go in, Bianca.     Exit Bianca.

And for I know she taketh most delight

In music, instruments, and poetry,

Schoolmasters will I keep within my house

Fit to instruct her youth. If you, Hortensio,

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Or Signor Gremio, you, know any such,

Prefer them hither; for to cunning men

I will be very kind, and liberal

To mine own children in good bringing-up.

And so farewell. Katherina, you may stay,

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For I have more to commune with Bianca.     Exit.

KATHERINA     Why, and I trust I may go too, may I not?

What, shall I be appointed hours, as though, belike, I

knew not what to take and what to leave? Ha?     Exit.

GREMIO     You may go to the devil’s dam. Your gifts are so

good here’s none will hold you. Their love is not so

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great, Hortensio, but we may blow our nails together,

and fast it fairly out. Our cake’s dough on both sides.

Farewell. Yet, for the love I bear my sweet Bianca, if I

can by any means light on a fit man to teach her that

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wherein she delights, I will wish him to her father.

HORTENSIO     So will I, Signor Gremio. But a word, I

pray. Though the nature of our quarrel yet never

brooked parle, know now, upon advice, it toucheth us

both – that we may yet again have access to our fair

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mistress and be happy rivals in Bianca’s love – to

labour and effect one thing specially.

GREMIO     What’s that, I pray?

HORTENSIO     Marry, sir, to get a husband for her sister.

GREMIO     A husband? A devil.

120

HORTENSIO     I say a husband.

GREMIO     I say a devil. Thinkest thou, Hortensio, though

her father be very rich, any man is so very a fool to be

married to hell?

HORTENSIO     Tush, Gremio. Though it pass your

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patience and mine to endure her loud alarums, why,

man, there be good fellows in the world, and a man

could light on them, would take her with all faults, and

money enough.

GREMIO     I cannot tell. But I had as lief take her dowry

130

with this condition, to be whipped at the high cross

every morning.

HORTENSIO     Faith, as you say, there’s small choice in

rotten apples. But come, since this bar in law makes us

friends, it shall be so far forth friendly maintained

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till by helping Baptista’s eldest daughter to a husband

we set his youngest free for a husband, and then have

to’t afresh. Sweet Bianca! Happy man be his dole. He

that runs fastest gets the ring. How say you, Signor

Gremio?

140

GREMIO     I am agreed, and would I had given him the

best horse in Padua to begin his wooing that would

thoroughly woo her, wed her, and bed her, and rid

the house of her. Come on.

Exeunt Gremio and Hortensio.

TRANIO     I pray, sir, tell me, is it possible

145

That love should of a sudden take such hold?

LUCENTIO     O Tranio, till I found it to be true,

I never thought it possible or likely.

But see, while idly I stood looking on,

I found the effect of love in idleness,

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And now in plainness do confess to thee,

That art to me as secret and as dear

As Anna to the Queen of Carthage was,

Tranio, I burn, I pine, I perish, Tranio,

If I achieve not this young modest girl.

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Counsel me, Tranio, for I know thou canst.

Assist me, Tranio, for I know thou wilt.

TRANIO     Master, it is no time to chide you now;

Affection is not rated from the heart.

If love have touch’d you, naught remains but so,

160

Redime te captum quam queas minimo.

LUCENTIO     Gramercies, lad. Go forward, this contents.

The rest will comfort, for thy counsel’s sound.

TRANIO     Master, you look’d so longly on the maid,

Perhaps you mark’d not what’s the pith of all.

165

LUCENTIO     O yes. I saw sweet beauty in her face,

Such as the daughter of Agenor had,

That made great Jove to humble him to her hand,

When with his knees he kiss’d the Cretan strand.

TRANIO

Saw you no more? Mark’d you not how her sister

170

Began to scold and raise up such a storm

That mortal ears might hardly endure the din?

LUCENTIO     Tranio, I saw her coral lips to move,

And with her breath she did perfume the air.

Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her.

175

TRANIO     Nay, then ’tis time to stir him from his trance.

I pray, awake, sir. If you love the maid,

Bend thoughts and wits to achieve her. Thus it stands:

Her elder sister is so curst and shrewd

That till the father rid his hands of her,

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Master, your love must live a maid at home,

And therefore has he closely mew’d her up,

Because she will not be annoy’d with suitors.

LUCENTIO     Ah, Tranio, what a cruel father’s he!

But art thou not advis’d he took some care

185

To get her cunning schoolmasters to instruct her?

TRANIO     Ay, marry, am I, sir – and now ’tis plotted.

LUCENTIO     I have it, Tranio.

TRANIO     Master, for my hand,

Both our inventions meet and jump in one.

LUCENTIO     Tell me thine first.

TRANIO     You will be schoolmaster,

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And undertake the teaching of the maid.

That’s your device.

LUCENTIO     It is. May it be done?

TRANIO     Not possible. For who shall bear your part

And be in Padua here Vincentio’s son,

Keep house and ply his book, welcome his friends,

195

Visit his countrymen and banquet them?

LUCENTIO     Basta, content thee, for I have it full.

We have not yet been seen in any house,

Nor can we be distinguish’d by our faces

For man or master. Then it follows thus:

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Thou shalt be master, Tranio, in my stead,

Keep house, and port, and servants, as I should;

I will some other be, some Florentine,

Some Neapolitan, or meaner man of Pisa.

’Tis hatch’d, and shall be so. Tranio, at once

205

Uncase thee, take my colour’d hat and cloak.

When Biondello comes, he waits on thee,

But I will charm him first to keep his tongue.

TRANIO     So had you need.

In brief, sir, sith it your pleasure is,

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And I am tied to be obedient –

For so your father charg’d me at our parting,

‘Be serviceable to my son’ quoth he,

Although I think ’twas in another sense –

I am content to be Lucentio,

215

Because so well I love Lucentio.

LUCENTIO     Tranio, be so, because Lucentio loves;

And let me be a slave, t’achieve that maid

Whose sudden sight hath thrall’d my wounded eye.

Enter BIONDELLO.

Here comes the rogue. Sirrah, where have you been?

220

BIONDELLO

Where have I been? Nay, how now, where are you?

Master, has my fellow Tranio stol’n your clothes,

Or you stol’n his, or both? Pray, what’s the news?

LUCENTIO     Sirrah, come hither. ’Tis no time to jest,

And therefore frame your manners to the time.

225

Your fellow Tranio here, to save my life,

Puts my apparel and my countenance on,

And I for my escape have put on his.

For in a quarrel since I came ashore

I kill’d a man, and fear I was descried.

230

Wait you on him, I charge you, as becomes,

While I make way from hence to save my life.

You understand me?

BIONDELLO     I, sir? Ne’er a whit.

LUCENTIO     And not a jot of Tranio in your mouth.

Tranio is chang’d into Lucentio.

235

BIONDELLO     The better for him. Would I were so too.

TRANIO

So could I, faith, boy, to have the next wish after,

That Lucentio indeed had Baptista’s youngest daughter.

But, sirrah, not for my sake but your master’s I advise

You use your manners discreetly in all kind of companies.

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When I am alone, why then I am Tranio,

But in all places else your master Lucentio.

LUCENTIO     Tranio, let’s go.

One thing more rests, that thyself execute,

To make one among these wooers. If thou ask me why,

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Sufficeth my reasons are both good and weighty.

Exeunt.

[The presenters above speak.]

1 SERVINGMAN

My lord, you nod, you do not mind the play.

SLY     Yes, by Saint Anne, do I. A good matter, surely.

Comes there any more of it?

PAGE     My lord, ’tis but begun.

250

SLY     ’Tis a very excellent piece of work, madam lady.

Would ’twere done. [They sit and mark.]

1.2 Enter PETRUCHIO and his man GRUMIO.

PETRUCHIO     Verona, for a while I take my leave,

To see my friends in Padua, but of all

My best beloved and approved friend,

Hortensio; and I trow this is his house.

Here, sirrah Grumio, knock, I say.

5

GRUMIO     Knock, sir? Whom should I knock? Is there

any man has rebused your worship?

PETRUCHIO     Villain, I say, knock me here soundly.

GRUMIO     Knock you here, sir? Why, sir, what am I, sir,

that I should knock you here, sir?

10

PETRUCHIO     Villain, I say, knock me at this gate,

And rap me well, or I’ll knock your knave’s pate.

GRUMIO

My master is grown quarrelsome. I should knock you first,

And then I know after who comes by the worst.

PETRUCHIO     Will it not be?

15

Faith, sirrah, and you’ll not knock, I’ll ring it.

I’ll try how you can solfa and sing it.

[He wrings him by the ears.]

GRUMIO     Help, masters, help! My master is mad.

PETRUCHIO     Now knock when I bid you, sirrah villain.

Enter HORTENSIO.

HORTENSIO     How now, what’s the matter? My old friend

20

Grumio, and my good friend Petruchio? How do you

all at Verona?

PETRUCHIO

Signor Hortensio, come you to part the fray?

Con tutto il cuore ben trovato, may I say.

HORTENSIO     Alla nostra casa ben venuto, molto honorato

25

signor mio Petrucio.

Rise, Grumio, rise. We will compound this quarrel.

GRUMIO     Nay, ’tis no matter, sir, what he ‘leges in Latin.

If this be not a lawful cause for me to leave his service,

look you, sir. He bid me knock him and rap him

30

soundly, sir. Well, was it fit for a servant to use his

master so, being perhaps, for aught I see, two and

thirty, a pip out?

Whom would to God I had well knock’d at first,

Then had not Grumio come by the worst.

35

PETRUCHIO     A senseless villain. Good Hortensio,

I bade the rascal knock upon your gate,

And could not get him for my heart to do it.

GRUMIO     Knock at the gate? O heavens! Spake you not

these words plain, ‘Sirrah, knock me here, rap me

40

here, knock me well, and knock me soundly’? And

come you now with ‘knocking at the gate’?

PETRUCHIO     Sirrah, be gone, or talk not, I advise you.

HORTENSIO     Petruchio, patience, I am Grumio’s pledge.

Why, this a heavy chance ’twixt him and you,

45

Your ancient, trusty, pleasant servant Grumio.

And tell me now, sweet friend, what happy gale

Blows you to Padua here from old Verona?

PETRUCHIO

Such wind as scatters young men through the world

To seek their fortunes farther than at home,

50

Where small experience grows. But in a few,

Signor Hortensio, thus it stands with me:

Antonio, my father, is deceas’d,

And I have thrust myself into this maze,

Haply to wive and thrive as best I may.

55

Crowns in my purse I have, and goods at home,

And so am come abroad to see the world.

HORTENSIO

Petruchio, shall I then come roundly to thee,

And wish thee to a shrewd ill-favour’d wife?

Thou’dst thank me but a little for my counsel,

60

And yet I’ll promise thee she shall be rich,

And very rich. But th’art too much my friend,

And I’ll not wish thee to her.

PETRUCHIO

Signor Hortensio, ’twixt such friends as we

Few words suffice; and therefore, if thou know

65

One rich enough to be Petruchio’s wife –

As wealth is burden of my wooing dance –

Be she as foul as was Florentius’ love,

As old as Sibyl, and as curst and shrewd

As Socrates’ Xanthippe, or a worse,

70

She moves me not, or not removes at least

Affection’s edge in me, were she as rough

As are the swelling Adriatic seas.

I come to wive it wealthily in Padua;

If wealthily, then happily in Padua.

75

GRUMIO     Nay, look you, sir, he tells you flatly what his

mind is. Why, give him gold enough and marry him to

a puppet or an aglet-baby, or an old trot with ne’er a

tooth in her head, though she have as many diseases as

two and fifty horses. Why, nothing comes amiss, so

80

money comes withal.

HORTENSIO     Petruchio, since we are stepp’d thus far in,

I will continue that I broach’d in jest.

I can, Petruchio, help thee to a wife

With wealth enough, and young and beauteous,

85

Brought up as best becomes a gentlewoman.

Her only fault, and that is faults enough,

Is that she is intolerable curst,

And shrewd, and froward, so beyond all measure

That, were my state far worser than it is,

90

I would not wed her for a mine of gold.

PETRUCHIO

HORTENSIO     , peace. Thou know’st not gold’s effect.

Tell me her father’s name and ’tis enough.

For I will board her though she chide as loud

As thunder when the clouds in autumn crack.

95

HORTENSIO     Her father is Baptista Minola,

An affable and courteous gentleman.

Her name is Katherina Minola,

Renown’d in Padua for her scolding tongue.

PETRUCHIO     I know her father, though I know not her,

100

And he knew my deceased father well.

I will not sleep, Hortensio, till I see her,

And therefore let me be thus bold with you

To give you over at this first encounter,

Unless you will accompany me thither.

105

GRUMIO     I pray you, sir, let him go while the humour

lasts. O’ my word, and she knew him as well as I do,

she would think scolding would do little good upon

him. She may perhaps call him half a score knaves or

so. Why, that’s nothing; and he begin once, he’ll rail in

110

his rope-tricks. I’ll tell you what, sir, and she stand

him but a little, he will throw a figure in her face, and

so disfigure her with it that she shall have no more

eyes to see withal than a cat. You know him not, sir.

HORTENSIO     Tarry, Petruchio, I must go with thee,

115

For in Baptista’s keep my treasure is.

He hath the jewel of my life in hold,

His youngest daughter, beautiful Bianca,

And her withholds from me and other more,

Suitors to her and rivals in my love,

120

Supposing it a thing impossible,

For those defects I have before rehears’d,

That ever Katherina will be woo’d.

Therefore this order hath Baptista ta’en,

That none shall have access unto Bianca

125

Till Katherine the curst have got a husband.

GRUMIO     Katherine the curst,

A title for a maid of all titles the worst.

HORTENSIO     

Now shall my friend Petruchio do me grace,

And offer me disguis’d in sober robes

130

To old Baptista as a schoolmaster

Well seen in music, to instruct Bianca,

That so I may by this device at least

Have leave and leisure to make love to her,

And unsuspected court her by herself.

135

GRUMIO     Here’s no knavery. See, to beguile the old folks,

how the young folks lay their heads together.

Enter GREMIO, and LUCENTIO disguised.

Master, master, look about you. Who goes there, ha?

HORTENSIO     Peace, Grumio. It is the rival of my love.

Petruchio, stand by awhile.

140

GRUMIO     A proper stripling and an amorous.

GREMIO     O, very well; I have perus’d the note.

Hark you, sir, I’ll have them very fairly bound –

All books of love, see that at any hand –

And see you read no other lectures to her.

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You understand me. Over and beside

Signor Baptista’s liberality,

I’ll mend it with a largess. Take your paper too,

And let me have them very well perfum’d,

For she is sweeter than perfume itself

150

To whom they go to. What will you read to her?

LUCENTIO     Whate’er I read to her, I’ll plead for you

As for my patron, stand you so assur’d,

As firmly as yourself were still in place,

Yea, and perhaps with more successful words

155

Than you, unless you were a scholar, sir.

GREMIO     O this learning, what a thing it is!

GRUMIO     O this woodcock, what an ass it is!

PETRUCHIO     Peace, sirrah.

HORTENSIO     

Grumio, mum! God save you, Signor Gremio.

160

GREMIO     And you are well met, Signor Hortensio.

Trow you whither I am going? To Baptista Minola.

I promis’d to enquire carefully

About a schoolmaster for the fair Bianca,

And by good fortune I have lighted well

165

On this young man, for learning and behaviour

Fit for her turn, well read in poetry

And other books, good ones, I warrant ye.

HORTENSIO     ’Tis well. And I have met a gentleman

Hath promis’d me to help me to another,

170

A fine musician to instruct our mistress.

So shall I no whit be behind in duty

To fair Bianca, so belov’d of me.

GREMIO     Belov’d of me, and that my deeds shall prove.

GRUMIO     And that his bags shall prove.

175

HORTENSIO     Gremio, ’tis now no time to vent our love.

Listen to me, and if you speak me fair,

I’ll tell you news indifferent good for either.

Here is a gentleman whom by chance I met,

Upon agreement from us to his liking,

180

Will undertake to woo curst Katherine,

Yea, and to marry her, if her dowry please.

GREMIO     So said, so done, is well.

HORTENSIO     , have you told him all her faults?

PETRUCHIO     I know she is an irksome brawling scold.

185

If that be all, masters, I hear no harm.

GREMIO     

No, say’st me so, friend? What countryman?

PETRUCHIO     Born in Verona, old Antonio’s son.

My father dead, my fortune lives for me,

And I do hope good days and long to see.

190

GREMIO

O sir, such a life with such a wife were strange.

But if you have a stomach, to’t a God’s name,

You shall have me assisting you in all.

But will you woo this wildcat?

PETRUCHIO     Will I live?

GRUMIO     Will he woo her? Ay, or I’ll hang her.

195

PETRUCHIO     Why came I hither but to that intent?

Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?

Have I not in my time heard lions roar?

Have I not heard the sea, puff ‘d up with winds,

Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?

200

Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,

And heaven’s artillery thunder in the skies?

Have I not in a pitched battle heard

Loud ‘larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets’ clang?

And do you tell me of a woman’s tongue,

205

That gives not half so great a blow to hear

As will a chestnut in a farmer’s fire?

Tush, tush, fear boys with bugs!

GRUMIO     For he fears none.

GREMIO     Hortensio, hark.

This gentleman is happily arriv’d,

210

My mind presumes, for his own good and yours.

HORTENSIO     I promis’d we would be contributors

And bear his charge of wooing, whatsoe’er.

GREMIO     And so we will, provided that he win her.

GRUMIO     I would I were as sure of a good dinner.

215

Enter TRANIO brave, and BIONDELLO.

TRANIO     Gentlemen, God save you. If I may be bold,

Tell me, I beseech you, which is the readiest way

To the house of Signor Baptista Minola?

BIONDELLO     

He that has the two fair daughters, is’t he you mean?

TRANIO     Even he, Biondello.

220

GREMIO     Hark you, sir, you mean not her too?

TRANIO

Perhaps him and her, sir. What have you to do?

PETRUCHIO     

Not her that chides, sir, at any hand, I pray.

TRANIO     I love no chiders, sir. Biondello, let’s away.

LUCENTIO     

Well begun, Tranio.

HORTENSIO     Sir, a word ere you go.

225

Are you a suitor to the maid you talk of, yea or no?

TRANIO     And if I be, sir, is it any offence?

GREMIO     

No, if without more words you will get you hence.

TRANIO     Why, sir, I pray, are not the streets as free

For me as for you?

GREMIO     But so is not she.

230

TRANIO     For what reason, I beseech you?

GREMIO     For this reason, if you’ll know,

That she’s the choice love of Signor Gremio.

HORTENSIO     That she’s the chosen of Signor Hortensio.

TRANIO     Softly, my masters. If you be gentlemen,

Do me this right; hear me with patience.

235

Baptista is a noble gentleman,

To whom my father is not all unknown,

And were his daughter fairer than she is,

She may more suitors have, and me for one.

Fair Leda’s daughter had a thousand wooers,

240

Then well one more may fair Bianca have.

And so she shall. Lucentio shall make one,

Though Paris came, in hope to speed alone.

GREMIO     What, this gentleman will out-talk us all!

LUCENTIO

Sir, give him head, I know he’ll prove a jade.

245

PETRUCHIO     Hortensio, to what end are all these words?

HORTENSIO     Sir, let me be so bold as ask you,

Did you yet ever see Baptista’s daughter?

TRANIO     No, sir, but hear I do that he hath two:

The one as famous for a scolding tongue

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As is the other for beauteous modesty.

PETRUCHIO     Sir, sir, the first’s for me, let her go by.

GREMIO     Yea, leave that labour to great Hercules,

And let it be more than Alcides’ twelve.

PETRUCHIO     Sir, understand you this of me in sooth,

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The youngest daughter whom you hearken for

Her father keeps from all access of suitors,

And will not promise her to any man

Until the elder sister first be wed.

The younger then is free, and not before.

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TRANIO     If it be so, sir, that you are the man

Must stead us all and me amongst the rest,

And if you break the ice and do this feat,

Achieve the elder, set the younger free

For our access, whose hap shall be to have her

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Will not so graceless be to be ingrate.

HORTENSIO

Sir, you say well, and well you do conceive.

And since you do profess to be a suitor,

You must, as we do, gratify this gentleman,

To whom we all rest generally beholding.

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TRANIO     Sir, I shall not be slack. In sign whereof,

Please ye we may contrive this afternoon,

And quaff carouses to our mistress’ health,

And do as adversaries do in law,

Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.

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GRUMIO     , BIONDELLO

O excellent motion! Fellows, let’s be gone.

HORTENSIO     The motion’s good indeed, and be it so.

Petruchio, I shall be your ben venuto.     Exeunt.

2.1 Enter KATHERINA and BIANCA.

BIANCA

Good sister, wrong me not, nor wrong yourself,

To make a bondmaid and a slave of me.

That I disdain. But for these other gawds,

Unbind my hands, I’ll pull them off myself,

Yea, all my raiment, to my petticoat,

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Or what you will command me will I do,

So well I know my duty to my elders.

KATHERINA     Of all thy suitors here I charge thee tell

Whom thou lov’st best. See thou dissemble not.

BIANCA     Believe me, sister, of all the men alive

10

I never yet beheld that special face

Which I could fancy more than any other.

KATHERINA     Minion, thou liest. Is’t not Hortensio?

BIANCA     If you affect him, sister, here I swear

I’ll plead for you myself but you shall have him.

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KATHERINA     O then belike you fancy riches more.

You will have Gremio to keep you fair.

BIANCA     Is it for him you do envy me so?

Nay then you jest, and now I well perceive

You have but jested with me all this while.

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I prithee, sister Kate, untie my hands.

KATHERINA     If that be jest, then all the rest was so.

[Strikes her.]

Enter BAPTISTA.

BAPTISTA

Why, how now, dame, whence grows this insolence?

Bianca, stand aside. Poor girl, she weeps.

Go ply thy needle; meddle not with her.

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For shame, thou hilding of a devilish spirit,

Why dost thou wrong her that did ne’er wrong thee?

When did she cross thee with a bitter word?

KATHERINA     Her silence flouts me, and I’ll be reveng’d.

[Flies after Bianca.]

BAPTISTA     What, in my sight? Bianca, get thee in.

30

Exit Bianca.

KATHERINA

What, will you not suffer me? Nay, now I see

She is your treasure, she must have a husband,

I must dance barefoot on her wedding-day,

And for your love to her lead apes in hell.

Talk not to me, I will go sit and weep,

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Till I can find occasion of revenge. Exit.

BAPTISTA     Was ever gentleman thus griev’d as I?

But who comes here?

Enter GREMIO, LUCENTIO disguised as Cambio in the habit of a mean man; PETRUCHIO, with HORTENSIO disguised as Litio; and TRANIO disguised as Lucentio, with his boy BIONDELLO, bearing a lute and books.

GREMIO     Good morrow, neighbour Baptista.

BAPTISTA     Good morrow, neighbour Gremio. God save

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you, gentlemen.

PETRUCHIO     

And you, good sir. Pray, have you not a daughter

Call’d Katherina, fair and virtuous?

BAPTISTA     I have a daughter, sir, call’d Katherina.

GREMIO     You are too blunt, go to it orderly.

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PETRUCHIO

You wrong me, Signor Gremio, give me leave.

I am a gentleman of Verona, sir,

That hearing of her beauty and her wit,

Her affability and bashful modesty,

Her wondrous qualities and mild behaviour,

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Am bold to show myself a forward guest

Within your house, to make mine eye the witness

Of that report which I so oft have heard.

And for an entrance to my entertainment

I do present you with a man of mine,

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[Presents Hortensio.]

Cunning in music and the mathematics,

To instruct her fully in those sciences,

Whereof I know she is not ignorant.

Accept of him, or else you do me wrong.

His name is Litio, born in Mantua.

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BAPTISTA

Y’are welcome, sir, and he for your good sake.

But for my daughter Katherine, this I know,

She is not for your turn, the more my grief.

PETRUCHIO     I see you do not mean to part with her,

Or else you like not of my company.

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BAPTISTA     Mistake me not, I speak but as I find.

Whence are you, sir? What may I call your name?

PETRUCHIO     Petruchio is my name, Antonio’s son,

A man well known throughout all Italy.

BAPTISTA

I know him well. You are welcome for his sake.

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GREMIO     Saving your tale, Petruchio, I pray

Let us that are poor petitioners speak too.

Baccare! You are marvellous forward.

PETRUCHIO     O pardon me, Signor Gremio, I would fain

be doing.

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GREMIO     I doubt it not, sir, but you will curse your

wooing. Neighbour, this is a gift very grateful, I am

sure of it. To express the like kindness, myself, that

have been more kindly beholding to you than any,

freely give unto you this young scholar [Presents

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Lucentio.], that hath been long studying at Rheims; as

cunning in Greek, Latin, and other languages, as the

other in music and mathematics. His name is

Cambio. Pray accept his service.

BAPTISTA     A thousand thanks, Signor Gremio.

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Welcome, good Cambio. [to Tranio] But, gentle sir,

methinks you walk like a stranger. May I be so bold to

know the cause of your coming?

TRANIO     Pardon me, sir, the boldness is mine own,

That, being a stranger in this city here,

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Do make myself a suitor to your daughter,

Unto Bianca, fair and virtuous.

Nor is your firm resolve unknown to me

In the preferment of the eldest sister.

This liberty is all that I request,

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That, upon knowledge of my parentage,

I may have welcome ‘mongst the rest that woo,

And free access and favour as the rest.

And toward the education of your daughters

I here bestow a simple instrument,

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And this small packet of Greek and Latin books.

If you accept them, then their worth is great.

BAPTISTA     Lucentio is your name? Of whence, I pray?

TRANIO     Of Pisa, sir, son to Vincentio.

BAPTISTA     A mighty man of Pisa. By report

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I know him well. You are very welcome, sir.

[to Hortensio] Take you the lute,

[to Lucentio]     and you the set of books.

You shall go see your pupils presently.

Holla, within!

Enter a Servant.

Sirrah, lead these gentlemen

To my daughters, and tell them both

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These are their tutors. Bid them use them well.

Exeunt Servant, Hortensio, Lucentio, Biondello.

We will go walk a little in the orchard,

And then to dinner. You are passing welcome,

And so I pray you all to think yourselves.

PETRUCHIO     Signor Baptista, my business asketh haste,

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And every day I cannot come to woo.

You knew my father well, and in him me,

Left solely heir to all his lands and goods,

Which I have better’d rather than decreas’d.

Then tell me, if I get your daughter’s love,

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What dowry shall I have with her to wife?

BAPTISTA     After my death the one half of my lands,

And in possession twenty thousand crowns.

PETRUCHIO     And for that dowry I’ll assure her of

Her widowhood, be it that she survive me,

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In all my lands and leases whatsoever.

Let specialties be therefore drawn between us,

That covenants may be kept on either hand.

BAPTISTA     Ay, when the special thing is well obtain’d,

That is, her love; for that is all in all.

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PETRUCHIO     Why, that is nothing. For I tell you, father,

I am as peremptory as she proud-minded;

And where two raging fires meet together,

They do consume the thing that feeds their fury.

Though little fire grows great with little wind,

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Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all.

So I to her, and so she yields to me,

For I am rough and woo not like a babe.

BAPTISTA

Well mayst thou woo, and happy be thy speed.

But be thou arm’d for some unhappy words.

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PETRUCHIO

Ay, to the proof, as mountains are for winds,

That shakes not, though they blow perpetually.

Enter HORTENSIO with his head broke.

BAPTISTA

How now, my friend, why dost thou look so pale?

HORTENSIO     For fear, I promise you, if I look pale.

BAPTISTA

What, will my daughter prove a good musician?

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HORTENSIO     I think she’ll sooner prove a soldier.

Iron may hold with her, but never lutes.

BAPTISTA     

Why then, thou canst not break her to the lute?

HORTENSIO     Why no, for she hath broke the lute to me.

I did but tell her she mistook her frets,

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And bow’d her hand to teach her fingering,

When, with a most impatient devilish spirit,

‘Frets, call you these?’ quoth she, ‘I’ll fume with them.’

And with that word she struck me on the head,

And through the instrument my pate made way,

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And there I stood amazed for a while,

As on a pillory, looking through the lute,

While she did call me rascal fiddler

And twangling Jack, with twenty such vile terms,

As had she studied to misuse me so.

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PETRUCHIO     Now, by the world, it is a lusty wench.

I love her ten times more than e’er I did.

O, how I long to have some chat with her.

BAPTISTA     Well, go with me, and be not so discomfited.

Proceed in practice with my younger daughter;

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She’s apt to learn and thankful for good turns.

Signor Petruchio, will you go with us,

Or shall I send my daughter Kate to you?

PETRUCHIO     I pray you do.

Exeunt all except Petruchio.

I’ll attend her here,

And woo her with some spirit when she comes.

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Say that she rail, why then I’ll tell her plain

She sings as sweetly as a nightingale.

Say that she frown, I’ll say she looks as clear

As morning roses newly wash’d with dew.

Say she be mute and will not speak a word,

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Then I’ll commend her volubility,

And say she uttereth piercing eloquence.

If she do bid me pack, I’ll give her thanks,

As though she bid me stay by her a week.

If she deny to wed, I’ll crave the day

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When I shall ask the banns, and when be married.

But here she comes, and now, Petruchio, speak.

Enter KATHERINA.

Good morrow, Kate, for that’s your name, I hear.

KATHERINA

Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing;

They call me Katherine that do talk of me.

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PETRUCHIO

You lie, in faith, for you are call’d plain Kate,

And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst;

But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom,

Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate,

For dainties are all Kates, and therefore, Kate,

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Take this of me, Kate of my consolation,

Hearing thy mildness prais’d in every town,

Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded,

Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs,

Myself am mov’d to woo thee for my wife.

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KATHERINA

Mov’d, in good time! Let him that mov’d you hither

Remove you hence. I knew you at the first

You were a movable.

PETRUCHIO     Why, what’s a movable?

KATHERINA     A joint-stool.

PETRUCHIO     Thou hast hit it. Come, sit on me.

KATHERINA     Asses are made to bear, and so are you.

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PETRUCHIO     Women are made to bear, and so are you.

KATHERINA     No such jade as you, if me you mean.

PETRUCHIO     Alas, good Kate, I will not burden thee!

For, knowing thee to be but young and light –

KATHERINA     Too light for such a swain as you to catch,

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And yet as heavy as my weight should be.

PETRUCHIO     Should be? Should – buzz!

KATHERINA     Well ta’en, and like a buzzard.

PETRUCHIO

O slow-wing’d turtle, shall a buzzard take thee?

KATHERINA     Ay, for a turtle, as he takes a buzzard.

PETRUCHIO

Come, come, you wasp; i’faith, you are too angry.

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KATHERINA     If I be waspish, best beware my sting.

PETRUCHIO     My remedy is then to pluck it out.

KATHERINA     Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies.

PETRUCHIO     

Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting?

In his tail.

KATHERINA     In his tongue.

PETRUCHIO     Whose tongue?

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KATHERINA     Yours, if you talk of tales, and so farewell.

PETRUCHIO

What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again,

Good Kate. I am a gentleman –

KATHERINA     That I’ll try.

[She strikes him.]

PETRUCHIO     I swear I’ll cuff you, if you strike again.

KATHERINA     So may you lose your arms.

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If you strike me, you are no gentleman,

And if no gentleman, why then no arms.

PETRUCHIO     A herald, Kate? O, put me in thy books.

KATHERINA     What is your crest, a coxcomb?

PETRUCHIO     A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen.

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KATHERINA

No cock of mine, you crow too like a craven.

PETRUCHIO

Nay, come, Kate, come; you must not look so sour.

KATHERINA     It is my fashion when I see a crab.

PETRUCHIO

Why, here’s no crab, and therefore look not sour.

KATHERINA     There is, there is.

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PETRUCHIO     Then show it me.

KATHERINA     Had I a glass, I would.

PETRUCHIO     What, you mean my face?

KATHERINA     Well aim’d of such a young one.

PETRUCHIO

Now, by Saint George, I am too young for you.

KATHERINA     Yet you are wither’d.

PETRUCHIO     ’Tis with cares.

KATHERINA     I care not.

PETRUCHIO

Nay, hear you, Kate – in sooth, you scape not so.

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KATHERINA     I chafe you, if I tarry. Let me go.

PETRUCHIO     No, not a whit. I find you passing gentle.

’Twas told me you were rough, and coy, and sullen,

And now I find report a very liar;

For thou art pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous,

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But slow in speech, yet sweet as spring-time flowers.

Thou canst not frown, thou canst not look askance,

Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will,

Nor hast thou pleasure to be cross in talk.

But thou with mildness entertain’st thy wooers,

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With gentle conference, soft and affable.

Why does the world report that Kate doth limp?

O slanderous world! Kate like the hazel-twig

Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue

As hazel-nuts and sweeter than the kernels.

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O, let me see thee walk. Thou dost not halt.

KATHERINA

Go, fool, and whom thou keep’st command.

PETRUCHIO     Did ever Dian so become a grove

As Kate this chamber with her princely gait?

O be thou Dian, and let her be Kate,

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And then let Kate be chaste and Dian sportful.

KATHERINA

Where did you study all this goodly speech?

PETRUCHIO     It is extempore, from my mother-wit.

KATHERINA     A witty mother, witless else her son.

PETRUCHIO     Am I not wise?

KATHERINA     Yes, keep you warm.

260

PETRUCHIO

Marry, so I mean, sweet Katherine, in thy bed.

And therefore, setting all this chat aside,

Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented

That you shall be my wife; your dowry ‘greed on;

And will you, nill you, I will marry you.

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Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn,

For by this light, whereby I see thy beauty,

Thy beauty that doth make me like thee well,

Thou must be married to no man but me.

For I am he am born to tame you, Kate,

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And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate

Conformable as other household Kates.

Enter BAPTISTA, GREMIO and TRANIO.

Here comes your father. Never make denial;

I must and will have Katherine to my wife.

BAPTISTA

Now, Signor Petruchio, how speed you with my daughter?

275

PETRUCHIO     How but well, sir? How but well?

It were impossible I should speed amiss.

BAPTISTA

Why, how now, daughter Katherine? In your dumps?

KATHERINA     Call you me daughter? Now I promise you

You have show’d a tender fatherly regard

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To wish me wed to one half lunatic,

A madcap ruffian and a swearing Jack,

That thinks with oaths to face the matter out.

PETRUCHIO     Father, ’tis thus: yourself and all the world

That talk’d of her have talk’d amiss of her.

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If she be curst it is for policy,

For she’s not froward, but modest as the dove.

She is not hot, but temperate as the morn.

For patience she will prove a second Grissel,

And Roman Lucrece for her chastity.

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And to conclude, we have ‘greed so well together

That upon Sunday is the wedding-day.

KATHERINA     I’ll see thee hang’d on Sunday first.

GREMIO

Hark, Petruchio, she says she’ll see thee hang’d first.

TRANIO

Is this your speeding? Nay then, good night our part.

295

PETRUCHIO

Be patient, gentlemen, I choose her for myself.

If she and I be pleas’d, what’s that to you?

’Tis bargain’d ’twixt us twain, being alone,

That she shall still be curst in company.

I tell you ’tis incredible to believe

300

How much she loves me. O, the kindest Kate!

She hung about my neck, and kiss on kiss

She vied so fast, protesting oath on oath,

That in a twink she won me to her love.

O, you are novices. ’Tis a world to see

305

How tame, when men and women are alone,

A meacock wretch can make the curstest shrew.

Give me thy hand, Kate, I will unto Venice,

To buy apparel ‘gainst the wedding-day.

Provide the feast, father, and bid the guests.

310

I will be sure my Katherine shall be fine.

BAPTISTA

I know not what to say, but give me your hands.

God send you joy, Petruchio, ’tis a match.

GREMIO, TRANIO     Amen, say we. We will be witnesses.

PETRUCHIO     Father, and wife, and gentlemen, adieu,

315

I will to Venice; Sunday comes apace.

We will have rings, and things, and fine array,

And kiss me, Kate, we will be married o’ Sunday.

Exeunt Petruchio and Katherina.

GREMIO     Was ever match clapp’d up so suddenly?

BAPTISTA

Faith, gentlemen, now I play a merchant’s part,

320

And venture madly on a desperate mart.

TRANIO     ’Twas a commodity lay fretting by you,

’Twill bring you gain, or perish on the seas.

BAPTISTA     The gain I seek is quiet in the match.

GREMIO     No doubt but he hath got a quiet catch.

325

But now, Baptista, to your younger daughter;

Now is the day we long have looked for.

I am your neighbour, and was suitor first.

TRANIO     And I am one that love Bianca more

Than words can witness or your thoughts can guess.

330

GREMIO     Youngling, thou canst not love so dear as I.

TRANIO     Greybeard, thy love doth freeze.

GREMIO     But thine doth fry.

Skipper, stand back, ’tis age that nourisheth.

TRANIO     But youth in ladies’ eyes that flourisheth.

BAPTISTA

Content you, gentlemen, I will compound this strife.

335

’Tis deeds must win the prize, and he of both

That can assure my daughter greatest dower

Shall have my Bianca’s love.

Say, Signor Gremio, what can you assure her?

GREMIO     First, as you know, my house within the city

340

Is richly furnished with plate and gold,

Basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands,

My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry.

In ivory coffers I have stuff ‘d my crowns,

In cypress chests my arras counterpoints,

345

Costly apparel, tents, and canopies,

Fine linen, Turkey cushions boss’d with pearl,

Valance of Venice gold in needlework,

Pewter and brass, and all things that belongs

To house or housekeeping. Then at my farm

350

I have a hundred milch-kine to the pail,

Six score fat oxen standing in my stalls,

And all things answerable to this portion.

Myself am struck in years, I must confess,

And if I die tomorrow this is hers,

355

If whilst I live she will be only mine.

TRANIO     That ‘only’ came well in. Sir, list to me:

I am my father’s heir and only son.

If I may have your daughter to my wife,

I’ll leave her houses three or four as good,

360

Within rich Pisa walls, as any one

Old Signor Gremio has in Padua,

Besides two thousand ducats by the year

Of fruitful land, all which shall be her jointure.

What, have I pinch’d you, Signor Gremio?

365

GREMIO     Two thousand ducats by the year of land!

[aside] My land amounts not to so much in all. –

That she shall have, besides an argosy

That now is lying in Marseilles road.

What, have I chok’d you with an argosy?

370

TRANIO     Gremio, ’tis known my father hath no less

Than three great argosies, besides two galliasses

And twelve tight galleys. These I will assure her,

And twice as much whate’er thou off ‘rest next.

GREMIO     Nay, I have offer’d all, I have no more,

375

And she can have no more than all I have.

If you like me, she shall have me and mine.

TRANIO     Why, then the maid is mine from all the world

By your firm promise. Gremio is outvied.

BAPTISTA     I must confess your offer is the best,

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And let your father make her the assurance,

She is your own; else, you must pardon me,

If you should die before him, where’s her dower?

TRANIO     That’s but a cavil. He is old, I young.

GREMIO     And may not young men die as well as old?

385

BAPTISTA     Well, gentlemen,

I am thus resolv’d: on Sunday next you know

My daughter Katherine is to be married;

Now, on the Sunday following shall Bianca

Be bride to you, if you make this assurance;

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If not, to Signor Gremio.

And so I take my leave, and thank you both.

GREMIO     Adieu, good neighbour.     Exit Baptista.

Now, I fear thee not.

Sirrah, young gamester, your father were a fool

To give thee all, and in his waning age

395

Set foot under thy table. Tut, a toy!

An old Italian fox is not so kind, my boy.     Exit.

TRANIO     A vengeance on your crafty wither’d hide!

Yet I have fac’d it with a card of ten.

’Tis in my head to do my master good.

400

I see no reason but suppos’d Lucentio

Must get a father, call’d suppos’d Vincentio.

And that’s a wonder. Fathers commonly

Do get their children; but in this case of wooing

A child shall get a sire, if I fail not of my cunning.

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Exit.

3.1 Enter LUCENTIO, HORTENSIO and BIANCA.

LUCENTIO     Fiddler, forbear. You grow too forward, sir.

Have you so soon forgot the entertainment

Her sister Katherine welcom’d you withal?

HORTENSIO     But, wrangling pedant, this is

The patroness of heavenly harmony.

5

Then give me leave to have prerogative,

And when in music we have spent an hour,

Your lecture shall have leisure for as much.

LUCENTIO     Preposterous ass, that never read so far

To know the cause why music was ordain’d!

10

Was it not to refresh the mind of man

After his studies or his usual pain?

Then give me leave to read philosophy,

And while I pause serve in your harmony.

HORTENSIO

Sirrah, I will not bear these braves of thine.

15

BIANCA     Why, gentlemen, you do me double wrong

To strive for that which resteth in my choice.

I am no breeching scholar in the schools,

I’ll not be tied to hours nor ‘pointed times,

But learn my lessons as I please myself.

20

And, to cut off all strife, here sit we down.

Take you your instrument, play you the whiles;

His lecture will be done ere you have tun’d.

HORTENSIO     You’ll leave his lecture when I am in tune?

LUCENTIO     That will be never. Tune your instrument.

25

BIANCA     Where left we last?

LUCENTIO     Here, madam:

Hic ibat Simois, hic est Sigeia tellus,

Hic steterat Priami regia celsa senis.

BIANCA     Construe them.

30

LUCENTIO     Hic ibat, as I told you before – Simois, I am

LUCENTIO     – hic est, son unto Vincentio of Pisa – Sigeia

tellus, disguised thus to get your love – Hic steterat,

and that Lucentio that comes a-wooing – Priami, is my

man Tranio – regia, bearing my port – celsa senis, that

35

we might beguile the old pantaloon.

HORTENSIO     Madam, my instrument’s in tune.

BIANCA     Let’s hear. O fie! The treble jars.

LUCENTIO     Spit in the hole, man, and tune again.

BIANCA     Now let me see if I can construe it: Hic ibat

40

Simois, I know you not – hic est Sigeia tellus, I trust you

not – Hic steterat Priami, take heed he hear us not –

regia, presume not – celsa senis, despair not.

HORTENSIO     Madam, ’tis now in tune.

LUCENTIO     All but the bass.

HORTENSIO

The bass is right, ’tis the base knave that jars.

45

[aside] How fiery and forward our pedant is.

Now, for my life, the knave doth court my love.

Pedascule, I’ll watch you better yet.

BIANCA     In time I may believe, yet I mistrust.

LUCENTIO     Mistrust it not – for, sure, Aeacides

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Was Ajax, call’d so from his grandfather.

BIANCA     I must believe my master, else, I promise you,

I should be arguing still upon that doubt.

But let it rest. Now, Litio, to you.

Good master, take it not unkindly, pray,

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That I have been thus pleasant with you both.

HORTENSIO     [to Lucentio]

You may go walk, and give me leave a while.

My lessons make no music in three parts.

LUCENTIO     Are you so formal, sir? Well, I must wait –

[aside] And watch, withal, for, but I be deceiv’d,

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Our fine musician groweth amorous.

HORTENSIO     Madam, before you touch the instrument

To learn the order of my fingering,

I must begin with rudiments of art,

To teach you gamut in a briefer sort,

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More pleasant, pithy, and effectual,

Than hath been taught by any of my trade.

And there it is in writing fairly drawn.

BIANCA     Why, I am past my gamut long ago.

HORTENSIO     Yet read the gamut of Hortensio.

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BIANCA     Gamut I am, the ground of all accord –

A re, to plead Hortensio’s passion –

B mi, Bianca, take him for thy lord –

C fa ut, that loves with all affection –

D sol re, one clef, two notes have I –

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E la mi, show pity or I die.

Call you this gamut? Tut, I like it not!

Old fashions please me best. I am not so nice

To change true rules for odd inventions.

Enter a Servant.

SERVANT

Mistress, your father prays you leave your books,

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And help to dress your sister’s chamber up.

You know tomorrow is the wedding-day.

BIANCA     Farewell, sweet masters both, I must be gone.

Exeunt Bianca and Servant.

LUCENTIO     Faith, mistress, then I have no cause to stay.

Exit.

HORTENSIO     But I have cause to pry into this pedant.

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Methinks he looks as though he were in love.

Yet if thy thoughts, Bianca, be so humble

To cast thy wandering eyes on every stale,

Seize thee that list. If once I find thee ranging,

HORTENSIO     will be quit with thee by changing.      Exit.

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3.2 Enter BAPTISTA, GREMIO, TRANIO, KATHERINA, BIANCA, LUCENTIO and others, attendants.

BAPTISTA     Signor Lucentio, this is the ‘pointed day

That Katherine and Petruchio should be married,

And yet we hear not of our son-in-law.

What will be said? What mockery will it be

To want the bridegroom when the priest attends

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To speak the ceremonial rites of marriage!

What says Lucentio to this shame of ours?

KATHERINA

No shame but mine. I must forsooth be forc’d

To give my hand, oppos’d against my heart,

Unto a mad-brain rudesby, full of spleen,

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Who woo’d in haste and means to wed at leisure.

I told you, I, he was a frantic fool,

Hiding his bitter jests in blunt behaviour.

And to be noted for a merry man

He’ll woo a thousand, ‘point the day of marriage,

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Make feast, invite friends, and proclaim the banns,

Yet never means to wed where he hath woo’d.

Now must the world point at poor Katherine,

And say ‘Lo, there is mad Petruchio’s wife,

If it would please him come and marry her.’

20

TRANIO     Patience, good Katherine, and Baptista too.

Upon my life, Petruchio means but well,

Whatever fortune stays him from his word.

Though he be blunt, I know him passing wise;

Though he be merry, yet withal he’s honest.

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KATHERINA

Would Katherine had never seen him though.

Exit weeping followed by Bianca and attendants.

BAPTISTA     Go, girl, I cannot blame thee now to weep,

For such an injury would vex a saint,

Much more a shrew of thy impatient humour.

Enter BIONDELLO.

BIONDELLO     Master, master, news! And such old news as

30

you never heard of.

BAPTISTA     Is it new and old too? How may that be?

BIONDELLO     Why, is it not news to hear of Petruchio’s

coming?

BAPTISTA     Is he come?

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BIONDELLO     Why, no, sir.

BAPTISTA     What then?

BIONDELLO     He is coming.

BAPTISTA     When will he be here?

BIONDELLO     When he stands where I am and sees you

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there.

TRANIO     But say, what to thine old news?

BIONDELLO     Why, Petruchio is coming in a new hat and

an old jerkin; a pair of old breeches thrice turned; a

pair of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled,

45

another laced; an old rusty sword ta’en out of the

town armoury, with a broken hilt, and chapeless; with

two broken points; his horse hipped – with an old

mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred – besides,

possessed with the glanders and like to mose in the

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chine, troubled with the lampass, infected with the

fashions, full of windgalls, sped with spavins, rayed

with the yellows, past cure of the fives, stark spoiled

with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, swayed in

the back and shoulder-shotten, near-legged before,

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and with a half-cheeked bit and a headstall of sheep’s

leather, which, being restrained to keep him from

stumbling, hath been often burst and new-repaired

with knots; one girth six times pieced, and a woman’s

crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her name

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fairly set down in studs, and here and there pieced

with pack-thread.

BAPTISTA     Who comes with him?

BIONDELLO     O sir, his lackey, for all the world

caparisoned like the horse; with a linen stock on one

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leg, and a kersey boot-hose on the other, gartered with

a red and blue list; an old hat, and the humour of forty

fancies pricked in’t for a feather; a monster, a very

monster in apparel, and not like a Christian footboy or

a gentleman’s lackey.

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TRANIO

’Tis some odd humour pricks him to this fashion.

Yet oftentimes he goes but mean-apparell’d.

BAPTISTA     I am glad he’s come, howsoe’er he comes.

BIONDELLO     Why, sir, he comes not.

BAPTISTA     Didst thou not say he comes?

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BIONDELLO     Who? That Petruchio came?

BAPTISTA     Ay, that Petruchio came.

BIONDELLO     No, sir. I say his horse comes, with him on

his back.

BAPTISTA     Why, that’s all one.

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BIONDELLO     Nay, by Saint Jamy,

     I hold you a penny,

     A horse and a man

     Is more than one,

     And yet not many.

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Enter PETRUCHIO and GRUMIO.

PETRUCHIO

Come, where be these gallants? Who’s at home?

BAPTISTA     You are welcome, sir.

PETRUCHIO     And yet I come not well.

BAPTISTA     And yet you halt not.

TRANIO     Not so well apparell’d as I wish you were.

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PETRUCHIO     Were it not better I should rush in thus?

But where is Kate? Where is my lovely bride?

How does my father? Gentles, methinks you frown.

And wherefore gaze this goodly company,

As if they saw some wondrous monument,

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Some comet, or unusual prodigy?

BAPTISTA     Why, sir, you know this is your wedding-day.

First were we sad, fearing you would not come,

Now sadder that you come so unprovided.

Fie, doff this habit, shame to your estate,

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An eyesore to our solemn festival!

TRANIO     And tell us what occasion of import

Hath all so long detain’d you from your wife

And sent you hither so unlike yourself.

PETRUCHIO     Tedious it were to tell, and harsh to hear.

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Sufficeth I am come to keep my word,

Though in some part enforced to digress,

Which at more leisure I will so excuse

As you shall well be satisfied withal.

But where is Kate? I stay too long from her.

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The morning wears, ’tis time we were at church.

TRANIO     See not your bride in these unreverent robes,

Go to my chamber, put on clothes of mine.

PETRUCHIO     Not I, believe me. Thus I’ll visit her.

BAPTISTA     But thus, I trust, you will not marry her.

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PETRUCHIO

Good sooth, even thus. Therefore ha’ done with words;

To me she’s married, not unto my clothes.

Could I repair what she will wear in me

As I can change these poor accoutrements,

’Twere well for Kate and better for myself.

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But what a fool am I to chat with you,

When I should bid good morrow to my bride,

And seal the title with a lovely kiss.

Exeunt Petruchio and Grumio.

TRANIO     He hath some meaning in his mad attire.

We will persuade him, be it possible,

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To put on better ere he go to church.

BAPTISTA     I’ll after him and see the event of this.

Exeunt Baptista, Gremio, Biondello, attendants.

TRANIO     But, sir, to love concerneth us to add

Her father’s liking, which to bring to pass,

As I before imparted to your worship,

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I am to get a man – whate’er he be

It skills not much, we’ll fit him to our turn –

And he shall be Vincentio of Pisa,

And make assurance here in Padua

Of greater sums than I have promised.

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So shall you quietly enjoy your hope

And marry sweet Bianca with consent.

LUCENTIO     Were it not that my fellow schoolmaster

Doth watch Bianca’s steps so narrowly,

’Twere good methinks to steal our marriage,

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Which once perform’d, let all the world say no,

I’ll keep mine own despite of all the world.

TRANIO     That by degrees we mean to look into,

And watch our vantage in this business.

We’ll overreach the greybeard Gremio,

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The narrow-prying father Minola,

The quaint musician, amorous Litio;

All for my master’s sake, Lucentio.

Enter GREMIO.

Signor Gremio, came you from the church?

GREMIO     As willingly as e’er I came from school.

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TRANIO

And is the bride and bridegroom coming home?

GREMIO     A bridegroom, say you? ’Tis a groom indeed,

A grumbling groom, and that the girl shall find.

TRANIO     Curster than she? Why, ’tis impossible.

GREMIO     Why, he’s a devil, a devil, a very fiend.

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TRANIO     Why, she’s a devil, a devil, the devil’s dam.

GREMIO     Tut! She’s a lamb, a dove, a fool to him.

I’ll tell you, Sir Lucentio, when the priest

Should ask if Katherine should be his wife,

‘Ay, by gogs-wouns,’ quoth he, and swore so loud

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That all amaz’d the priest let fall the book,

And as he stoop’d again to take it up,

The mad-brain’d bridegroom took him such a cuff

That down fell priest and book, and book and priest.

‘Now take them up,’ quoth he, ‘if any list.’

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TRANIO     What said the wench when he rose up again?

GREMIO

Trembled and shook. For why, he stamp’d and swore

As if the vicar meant to cozen him.

But after many ceremonies done

He calls for wine. ‘A health!’ quoth he, as if

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He had been aboard, carousing to his mates

After a storm; quaff ‘d off the muscadel,

And threw the sops all in the sexton’s face,

Having no other reason

But that his beard grew thin and hungerly

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And seem’d to ask him sops as he was drinking.

This done, he took the bride about the neck,

And kiss’d her lips with such a clamorous smack

That at the parting all the church did echo.

And I, seeing this, came thence for very shame,

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And after me, I know, the rout is coming.

Such a mad marriage never was before.

Hark, hark! I hear the minstrels play.     [Music plays.]

Enter PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, BIANCA, BAPTISTA, HORTENSIO with GRUMIO and attendants.

PETRUCHIO

Gentlemen and friends, I thank you for your pains.

I know you think to dine with me today,

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And have prepar’d great store of wedding cheer,

But so it is, my haste doth call me hence,

And therefore here I mean to take my leave.

BAPTISTA     Is’t possible you will away tonight?

PETRUCHIO     I must away today before night come.

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Make it no wonder. If you knew my business,

You would entreat me rather go than stay.

And honest company, I thank you all

That have beheld me give away myself

To this most patient, sweet, and virtuous wife.

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Dine with my father, drink a health to me,

For I must hence, and farewell to you all.

TRANIO     Let us entreat you stay till after dinner.

PETRUCHIO     It may not be.

GREMIO     Let me entreat you.

PETRUCHIO     It cannot be.

KATHERINA     Let me entreat you.

PETRUCHIO     I am content.

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KATHERINA     Are you content to stay?

PETRUCHIO     I am content you shall entreat me stay;

But yet not stay, entreat me how you can.

KATHERINA     Now if you love me, stay.

PETRUCHIO     Grumio, my horse.

GRUMIO

Ay, sir, they be ready; the oats have eaten the horses.

205

KATHERINA     Nay then,

Do what thou canst, I will not go today,

No, nor tomorrow, not till I please myself.

The door is open, sir, there lies your way,

You may be jogging whiles your boots are green.

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For me, I’ll not be gone till I please myself.

’Tis like you’ll prove a jolly surly groom,

That take it on you at the first so roundly.

PETRUCHIO     O Kate, content thee, prithee be not angry.

KATHERINA     I will be angry; what hast thou to do?

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Father, be quiet; he shall stay my leisure.

GREMIO     Ay, marry, sir, now it begins to work.

KATHERINA     Gentlemen, forward to the bridal dinner.

I see a woman may be made a fool

If she had not a spirit to resist.

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PETRUCHIO

They shall go forward, Kate, at thy command.

Obey the bride, you that attend on her.

Go to the feast, revel and domineer,

Carouse full measure to her maidenhead,

Be mad and merry, or go hang yourselves.

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But for my bonny Kate, she must with me.

Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret;

I will be master of what is mine own.

She is my goods, my chattels, she is my house,

My household stuff, my field, my barn,

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My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing,

And here she stands. Touch her whoever dare!

I’ll bring mine action on the proudest he

That stops my way in Padua. Grumio,

Draw forth thy weapon, we are beset with thieves,

235

Rescue thy mistress if thou be a man.

Fear not, sweet wench, they shall not touch thee, Kate.

I’ll buckler thee against a million.

Exeunt Petruchio, Katherina and Grumio.

BAPTISTA     Nay, let them go, a couple of quiet ones.

GREMIO

Went they not quickly, I should die with laughing.

240

TRANIO     Of all mad matches never was the like.

LUCENTIO

Mistress, what’s your opinion of your sister?

BIANCA     That being mad herself, she’s madly mated.

GREMIO     I warrant him, Petruchio is Kated.

BAPTISTA

Neighbours and friends, though bride and

bridegroom wants

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For to supply the places at the table,

You know there wants no junkets at the feast.

LUCENTIO     , you shall supply the bridegroom’s place,

And let Bianca take her sister’s room.

TRANIO     Shall sweet Bianca practise how to bride it?

250

BAPTISTA

She shall, Lucentio. Come, gentlemen, let’s go.

Exeunt.

4.1 Enter GRUMIO.

GRUMIO     Fie, fie on all tired jades, on all mad masters,

and all foul ways! Was ever man so beaten? Was ever

man so rayed? Was ever man so weary? I am sent

before to make a fire, and they are coming after to

warm them. Now, were I not a little pot and soon hot,

5

my very lips might freeze to my teeth, my tongue to

the roof of my mouth, my heart in my belly, ere I

should come by a fire to thaw me. But I with blowing

the fire shall warm myself, for, considering the

weather, a taller man than I will take cold. Holla, ho!

10

Curtis!

Enter CURTIS.

CURTIS     Who is that calls so coldly?

GRUMIO     A piece of ice. If thou doubt it, thou mayst

slide from my shoulder to my heel with no greater a

run but my head and my neck. A fire, good Curtis.

15

CURTIS     Is my master and his wife coming, Grumio?

GRUMIO     O ay, Curtis, ay – and therefore fire, fire, cast

on no water.

CURTIS     Is she so hot a shrew as she’s reported?

GRUMIO     She was, good Curtis, before this frost. But

20

thou know’st winter tames man, woman, and beast; for

it hath tamed my old master, and my new mistress,

and myself, fellow Curtis.

CURTIS     Away, you three-inch fool! I am no beast.

GRUMIO     Am I but three inches? Why, thy horn is a foot,

25

and so long am I at the least. But wilt thou make a fire,

or shall I complain on thee to our mistress, whose

hand, she being now at hand, thou shalt soon feel, to

thy cold comfort, for being slow in thy hot office?

CURTIS I prithee, good Grumio, tell me how goes the

30

world?

GRUMIO     A cold world, Curtis, in every office but thine;

and therefore fire. Do thy duty, and have thy duty, for

my master and mistress are almost frozen to death.

CURTIS     There’s fire ready, and therefore, good Grumio,

35

the news.

GRUMIO     Why, ‘Jack, boy, ho, boy!’ and as much news as

wilt thou.

CURTIS     Come, you are so full of cony-catching.

GRUMIO     Why, therefore, fire, for I have caught extreme

40

cold. Where’s the cook? Is supper ready, the house

trimmed, rushes strewed, cobwebs swept, the

servingmen in their new fustian, their white

stockings, and every officer his wedding-garment

on? Be the Jacks fair within, the Jills fair without, the

45

carpets laid, and everything in order?

CURTIS     All ready; and therefore, I pray thee, news.

GRUMIO     First know my horse is tired, my master and

mistress fallen out.

CURTIS     How?

50

GRUMIO     Out of their saddles into the dirt, and thereby

hangs a tale.

CURTIS     Let’s ha’t, good Grumio.

GRUMIO     Lend thine ear.

CURTIS     Here.

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GRUMIO     There. [Strikes him.]

CURTIS     This ’tis to feel a tale, not to hear a tale.

GRUMIO     And therefore ’tis called a sensible tale; and

this cuff was but to knock at your ear and beseech

listening. Now I begin. Imprimis, we came down a

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foul hill, my master riding behind my mistress –

CURTIS     Both of one horse?

GRUMIO     What’s that to thee?

CURTIS     Why, a horse.

GRUMIO     Tell thou the tale. But hadst thou not crossed

65

me, thou shouldst have heard how her horse fell, and

she under her horse; thou shouldst have heard in how

miry a place, how she was bemoiled, how he left her

with the horse upon her, how he beat me because her

horse stumbled, how she waded through the dirt to

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pluck him off me, how he swore, how she prayed that

never prayed before, how I cried, how the horses ran

away, how her bridle was burst, how I lost my crupper,

with many things of worthy memory, which now shall

die in oblivion, and thou return unexperienced to thy

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grave.

CURTIS     By this reckoning he is more shrew than she.

GRUMIO     Ay, and that thou and the proudest of you all

shall find when he comes home. But what talk I of

this? Call forth Nathaniel, Joseph, Nicholas, Philip,

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Walter, Sugarsop, and the rest. Let their heads be

slickly combed, their blue coats brushed, and their

garters of an indifferent knit. Let them curtsy with

their left legs, and not presume to touch a hair of my

master’s horse-tail till they kiss their hands. Are they

85

all ready?

CURTIS     They are.

GRUMIO     Call them forth.

CURTIS     Do you hear, ho? You must meet my master to

countenance my mistress.

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GRUMIO     Why, she hath a face of her own.

CURTIS     Who knows not that?

GRUMIO     Thou, it seems, that calls for company to

countenance her.

CURTIS I call them forth to credit her.

95

GRUMIO     Why, she comes to borrow nothing of them.

Enter four or five Servingmen.

NATHANIEL     Welcome home, Grumio.

PHILIP     How now, Grumio.

JOSEPH     What, Grumio.

NICHOLAS     Fellow Grumio.

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NATHANIEL     How now, old lad.

GRUMIO     Welcome, you. How now, you. What, you.

Fellow, you. And thus much for greeting. Now, my

spruce companions, is all ready, and all things neat?

NATHANIEL     All things is ready. How near is our master?

105

GRUMIO

E’en at hand, alighted by this. And therefore be not

– Cock’s passion, silence! I hear my master.

Enter PETRUCHIO and KATHERINA.

PETRUCHIO

Where be these knaves? What, no man at door

To hold my stirrup nor to take my horse?

Where is Nathaniel, Gregory, Philip?

110

ALL SERVINGMEN Here, here sir, here sir.

PETRUCHIO     Here sir, here sir, here sir, here sir!

You logger-headed and unpolish’d grooms!

What, no attendance? No regard? No duty?

Where is the foolish knave I sent before?

115

GRUMIO     Here sir, as foolish as I was before.

PETRUCHIO

You peasant swain! You whoreson malt-horse drudge!

Did I not bid thee meet me in the park,

And bring along these rascal knaves with thee?

GRUMIO     Nathaniel’s coat, sir, was not fully made,

120

And Gabriel’s pumps were all unpink’d i’ th’ heel;

There was no link to colour Peter’s hat,

And Walter’s dagger was not come from sheathing.

There were none fine but Adam, Rafe, and Gregory,

The rest were ragged, old, and beggarly;

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Yet, as they are, here are they come to meet you.

PETRUCHIO     Go, rascals, go, and fetch my supper in.

Exeunt Servingmen.

[Sings.]     Where is the life that late I led?

     Where are those –

Sit down, Kate, and welcome. Food, food, food, food!

130

Enter servants with supper.

Why, when, I say? Nay, good sweet Kate, be merry.

Off with my boots, you rogues! You villains, when?

[Sings.]     It was the friar of orders grey,

     As he forth walked on his way –

Out, you rogue! You pluck my foot awry.

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Take that, and mend the plucking off the other.

[Strikes him.]

Be merry, Kate. Some water here. What ho!

Enter one with water.

Where’s my spaniel Troilus? Sirrah, get you hence,

And bid my cousin Ferdinand come hither.

One, Kate, that you must kiss and be acquainted with.

140

Where are my slippers? Shall I have some water?

Come, Kate, and wash, and welcome heartily.

You whoreson villain, will you let it fall?

[Strikes servant.]

KATHERINA

Patience, I pray you, ’twas a fault unwilling.

PETRUCHIO     

A whoreson beetle-headed, flap-ear’d knave!

145

Come, Kate, sit down, I know you have a stomach.

Will you give thanks, sweet Kate, or else shall I?

What’s this? Mutton?

1 SERVINGMAN     Ay.

PETRUCHIO     Who brought it?

PETER I.

PETRUCHIO     ’Tis burnt, and so is all the meat.

What dogs are these! Where is the rascal cook?

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How durst you, villains, bring it from the dresser

And serve it thus to me that love it not?

There, take it to you, trenchers, cups, and all.

[He throws the food and dishes at them.]

You heedless joltheads and unmanner’d slaves!

What, do you grumble? I’ll be with you straight.

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Exeunt servants.

KATHERINA     I pray you, husband, be not so disquiet.

The meat was well, if you were so contented.

PETRUCHIO

I tell thee, Kate, ’twas burnt and dried away,

And I expressly am forbid to touch it,

For it engenders choler, planteth anger;

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And better ’twere that both of us did fast,

Since, of ourselves, ourselves are choleric,

Than feed it with such over-roasted flesh.

Be patient, tomorrow ‘t shall be mended,

And for this night we’ll fast for company.

165

Come, I will bring thee to thy bridal chamber.

Exeunt.

Enter Servants severally.

NATHANIEL     Peter, didst ever see the like?

PETER     He kills her in her own humour.

Enter CURTIS.

GRUMIO     Where is he?

CURTIS     In her chamber,

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Making a sermon of continency to her,

And rails, and swears, and rates, that she, poor soul,

Knows not which way to stand, to look, to speak,

And sits as one new risen from a dream.

Away, away, for he is coming hither. Exeunt.

175

Enter PETRUCHIO.

PETRUCHIO     Thus have I politicly begun my reign,

And ’tis my hope to end successfully.

My falcon now is sharp and passing empty,

And till she stoop she must not be full-gorg’d,

For then she never looks upon her lure.

180

Another way I have to man my haggard,

To make her come and know her keeper’s call,

That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites

That bate and beat and will not be obedient.

She ate no meat today, nor none shall eat;

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Last night she slept not, nor tonight she shall not.

As with the meat, some undeserved fault

I’ll find about the making of the bed,

And here I’ll fling the pillow, there the bolster,

This way the coverlet, another way the sheets.

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Ay, and amid this hurly I intend

That all is done in reverend care of her.

And in conclusion she shall watch all night,

And if she chance to nod I’ll rail and brawl,

And with the clamour keep her still awake.

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This is a way to kill a wife with kindness,

And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humour.

He that knows better how to tame a shrew,

Now let him speak: ’tis charity to show.     Exit.

4.2 Enter TRANIO and HORTENSIO.

TRANIO     Is’t possible, friend Litio, that Mistress Bianca

Doth fancy any other but Lucentio?

I tell you, sir, she bears me fair in hand.

HORTENSIO     Sir, to satisfy you in what I have said,

Stand by and mark the manner of his teaching.

5

Enter BIANCA and LUCENTIO.

LUCENTIO     Now, mistress, profit you in what you read?

BIANCA     What, master, read you? First resolve me that.

LUCENTIO     I read that I profess, The Art to Love.

BIANCA     And may you prove, sir, master of your art.

LUCENTIO

While you, sweet dear, prove mistress of my heart.

10

HORTENSIO

Quick proceeders, marry! Now tell me, I pray,

You that durst swear that your mistress Bianca

Lov’d none in the world so well as Lucentio.

TRANIO     O despiteful love, unconstant womankind!

I tell thee, Litio, this is wonderful.

15

HORTENSIO     Mistake no more, I am not Litio,

Nor a musician as I seem to be,

But one that scorn to live in this disguise,

For such a one as leaves a gentleman

And makes a god of such a cullion.

20

Know, sir, that I am call’d Hortensio.

TRANIO     Signor Hortensio, I have often heard

Of your entire affection to Bianca,

And since mine eyes are witness of her lightness,

I will with you, if you be so contented,

25

Forswear Bianca and her love for ever.

HORTENSIO

See how they kiss and court! Signor Lucentio,

Here is my hand, and here I firmly vow

Never to woo her more, but do forswear her,

As one unworthy all the former favours

30

That I have fondly flatter’d her withal.

TRANIO     And here I take the like unfeigned oath,

Never to marry with her though she would entreat.

Fie on her! See how beastly she doth court him.

HORTENSIO

Would all the world but he had quite forsworn!

35

For me, that I may surely keep mine oath,

I will be married to a wealthy widow

Ere three days pass, which hath as long lov’d me

As I have lov’d this proud disdainful haggard.

And so farewell, Signor Lucentio.

40

Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks,

Shall win my love; and so I take my leave,

In resolution as I swore before.     Exit.

TRANIO     Mistress Bianca, bless you with such grace

As ‘longeth to a lover’s blessed case!

45

Nay, I have ta’en you napping, gentle love,

And have forsworn you with Hortensio.

BIANCA

TRANIO     , you jest. But have you both forsworn me?

TRANIO     Mistress, we have.

LUCENTIO     Then we are rid of Litio.

TRANIO     I’faith, he’ll have a lusty widow now,

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That shall be woo’d and wedded in a day.

BIANCA     God give him joy.

TRANIO     Ay, and he’ll tame her.

BIANCA     He says so, Tranio.

TRANIO     Faith, he is gone unto the taming-school.

BIANCA

The taming-school? What, is there such a place?

55

TRANIO     Ay, mistress, and Petruchio is the master,

That teacheth tricks eleven and twenty long,

To tame a shrew and charm her chattering tongue.

Enter BIONDELLO.

BIONDELLO     O master, master, I have watch’d so long

That I am dog-weary, but at last I spied

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An ancient angel coming down the hill

Will serve the turn.

TRANIO     What is he, Biondello?

BIONDELLO     Master, a mercatante, or a pedant,

I know not what; but formal in apparel,

In gait and countenance surely like a father.

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LUCENTIO     And what of him, Tranio?

TRANIO     If he be credulous and trust my tale,

I’ll make him glad to seem Vincentio,

And give assurance to Baptista Minola

As if he were the right Vincentio.

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Take in your love, and then let me alone.

Exeunt Lucentio and Bianca.

Enter a Pedant.

PEDANT     God save you, sir.

TRANIO     And you, sir. You are welcome.

Travel you far on, or are you at the farthest?

PEDANT     Sir, at the farthest for a week or two,

But then up farther, and as far as Rome,

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And so to Tripoli, if God lend me life.

TRANIO     What countryman, I pray?

PEDANT     Of Mantua.

TRANIO     Of Mantua, sir? Marry, God forbid!

And come to Padua, careless of your life?

PEDANT     My life, sir? How, I pray? For that goes hard.

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TRANIO     ’Tis death for any one in Mantua

To come to Padua. Know you not the cause?

Your ships are stay’d at Venice, and the Duke,

For private quarrel ’twixt your Duke and him,

Hath publish’d and proclaim’d it openly.

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’Tis marvel, but that you are but newly come,

You might have heard it else proclaim’d about.

PEDANT     Alas, sir, it is worse for me than so!

For I have bills for money by exchange

From Florence, and must here deliver them.

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TRANIO     Well, sir, to do you courtesy,

This will I do, and this I will advise you:

First tell me, have you ever been at Pisa?

PEDANT     Ay, sir, in Pisa have I often been,

Pisa renowned for grave citizens.

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TRANIO     Among them know you one Vincentio?

PEDANT I know him not, but I have heard of him,

A merchant of incomparable wealth.

TRANIO     He is my father, sir, and sooth to say,

In countenance somewhat doth resemble you.

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BIONDELLO [aside]

As much as an apple doth an oyster, and all one.

TRANIO     To save your life in this extremity,

This favour will I do you for his sake,

And think it not the worst of all your fortunes

That you are like to Sir Vincentio:

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His name and credit shall you undertake,

And in my house you shall be friendly lodg’d.

Look that you take upon you as you should.

You understand me, sir. So shall you stay

Till you have done your business in the city.

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If this be courtesy, sir, accept of it.

PEDANT O sir, I do, and will repute you ever

The patron of my life and liberty.

TRANIO     Then go with me to make the matter good.

This, by the way, I let you understand;

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My father is here look’d for every day

To pass assurance of a dower in marriage

’Twixt me and one Baptista’s daughter here.

In all these circumstances I’ll instruct you.

Go with me to clothe you as becomes you.     Exeunt.

120

4.3 Enter KATHERINA and GRUMIO.

GRUMIO     No, no, forsooth, I dare not for my life.

KATHERINA

The more my wrong, the more his spite appears.

What, did he marry me to famish me?

Beggars that come unto my father’s door

Upon entreaty have a present alms,

5

If not, elsewhere they meet with charity.

But I, who never knew how to entreat,

Nor never needed that I should entreat,

Am starv’d for meat, giddy for lack of sleep,

With oaths kept waking, and with brawling fed.

10

And that which spites me more than all these wants,

He does it under name of perfect love,

As who should say, if I should sleep or eat,

’Twere deadly sickness or else present death.

I prithee go and get me some repast,

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I care not what, so it be wholesome food.

GRUMIO     What say you to a neat’s foot?

KATHERINA     ’Tis passing good, I prithee let me have it.

GRUMIO     I fear it is too choleric a meat.

How say you to a fat tripe finely broil’d?

20

KATHERINA     I like it well. Good Grumio, fetch it me.

GRUMIO     I cannot tell, I fear ’tis choleric.

What say you to a piece of beef and mustard?

KATHERINA     A dish that I do love to feed upon.

GRUMIO     Ay, but the mustard is too hot a little.

25

KATHERINA

Why then, the beef, and let the mustard rest.

GRUMIO

Nay then, I will not. You shall have the mustard,

Or else you get no beef of Grumio.

KATHERINA     Then both, or one, or anything thou wilt.

GRUMIO     Why then, the mustard without the beef.

30

KATHERINA

Go, get thee gone, thou false deluding slave,

[Beats him.]

That feed’st me with the very name of meat.

Sorrow on thee and all the pack of you

That triumph thus upon my misery!

Go, get thee gone, I say.

35

Enter PETRUCHIO and HORTENSIO, with meat.

PETRUCHIO

How fares my Kate? What, sweeting, all amort?

HORTENSIO     Mistress, what cheer?

KATHERINA     Faith, as cold as can be.

PETRUCHIO     

Pluck up thy spirits, look cheerfully upon me.

Here, love, thou seest how diligent I am

To dress thy meat myself and bring it thee.

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I am sure, sweet Kate, this kindness merits thanks.

What, not a word? Nay then, thou lov’st it not,

And all my pains is sorted to no proof.

Here, take away this dish.

KATHERINA     I pray you, let it stand.

PETRUCHIO     The poorest service is repaid with thanks,

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And so shall mine before you touch the meat.

KATHERINA     I thank you, sir.

HORTENSIO     Signor Petruchio, fie! You are to blame.

Come, Mistress Kate, I’ll bear you company.

PETRUCHIO     [aside]

Eat it up all, Hortensio, if thou lov’st me. –

50

Much good do it unto thy gentle heart.

Kate, eat apace. And now, my honey love,

We will return unto thy father’s house,

And revel it as bravely as the best,

With silken coats and caps, and golden rings,

55

With ruffs and cuffs and farthingales and things,

With scarfs and fans, and double change of bravery,

With amber bracelets, beads, and all this knavery.

What, hast thou din’d? The tailor stays thy leisure,

To deck thy body with his ruffling treasure.

60

Enter Tailor.

Come, tailor, let us see these ornaments.

Lay forth the gown.

Enter Haberdasher.

What news with you, sir?

HABERDASHER

Here is the cap your worship did bespeak.

PETRUCHIO     Why, this was moulded on a porringer!

A velvet dish! Fie, fie! ’Tis lewd and filthy.

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Why, ’tis a cockle or a walnut-shell,

A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby’s cap.

Away with it! Come, let me have a bigger.

KATHERINA     I’ll have no bigger. This doth fit the time,

And gentlewomen wear such caps as these.

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PETRUCHIO

When you are gentle, you shall have one too,

And not till then.

HORTENSIO [aside]     That will not be in haste.

KATHERINA     Why, sir, I trust I may have leave to speak,

And speak I will. I am no child, no babe.

Your betters have endur’d me say my mind,

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And if you cannot, best you stop your ears.

My tongue will tell the anger of my heart,

Or else my heart concealing it will break,

And rather than it shall, I will be free

Even to the uttermost, as I please, in words.

80

PETRUCHIO     Why, thou say’st true. It is a paltry cap,

A custard-coffin, a bauble, a silken pie.

I love thee well in that thou lik’st it not.

KATHERINA     Love me or love me not, I like the cap,

And it I will have, or I will have none.

85

PETRUCHIO     

Thy gown? Why, ay. Come, tailor, let us see’t.

Exit Haberdasher.

O mercy, God! What masquing stuff is here?

What’s this? A sleeve? ’Tis like a demi-cannon.

What, up and down, carv’d like an apple tart?

Here’s snip and nip and cut and slish and slash,

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Like to a censer in a barber’s shop.

Why, what a devil’s name, tailor, call’st thou this?

HORTENSIO [aside]

I see she’s like to have neither cap nor gown.

TAILOR     You bid me make it orderly and well,

According to the fashion and the time.

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PETRUCHIO     Marry, and did. But if you be remember’d,

I did not bid you mar it to the time.

Go, hop me over every kennel home,

For you shall hop without my custom, sir.

I’ll none of it. Hence, make your best of it.

100

KATHERINA     I never saw a better-fashion’d gown,

More quaint, more pleasing, nor more commendable.

Belike you mean to make a puppet of me.

PETRUCHIO

Why, true, he means to make a puppet of thee.

TAILOR     She says your worship means to make a puppet

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of her.

PETRUCHIO

O monstrous arrogance! Thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble,

Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail,

Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket thou!

Brav’d in mine own house with a skein of thread?

110

Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant,

Or I shall so bemete thee with thy yard

As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv’st.

I tell thee, I, that thou hast marr’d her gown.

TAILOR     Your worship is deceiv’d; the gown is made

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Just as my master had direction.

Grumio gave order how it should be done.

GRUMIO     I gave him no order, I gave him the stuff.

TAILOR     But how did you desire it should be made?

GRUMIO     Marry, sir, with needle and thread.

120

TAILOR     But did you not request to have it cut?

GRUMIO     Thou hast faced many things.

TAILOR I have.

GRUMIO     Face not me. Thou hast braved many men,

brave not me. I will neither be faced nor braved. I say

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unto thee, I bid thy master cut out the gown, but I did

not bid him cut it to pieces. Ergo, thou liest.

TAILOR     Why, here is the note of the fashion to testify.

PETRUCHIO     Read it.

GRUMIO     The note lies in’s throat if he say I said so.

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TAILOR [Reads.] Imprimis, a loose-bodied gown.

GRUMIO     Master, if ever I said loose-bodied gown, sew

me in the skirts of it, and beat me to death with a

bottom of brown thread. I said a gown.

PETRUCHIO     Proceed.

135

TAILOR With a small compassed cape.

GRUMIO     I confess the cape.

TAILOR With a trunk sleeve.

GRUMIO     I confess two sleeves.

TAILOR The sleeves curiously cut.

140

PETRUCHIO     Ay, there’s the villainy.

GRUMIO     Error i’th’ bill, sir, error i’th’ bill! I

commanded the sleeves should be cut out, and sewed

up again; and that I’ll prove upon thee, though thy

little finger be armed in a thimble.

145

TAILOR     This is true that I say; and I had thee in place

where, thou shouldst know it.

GRUMIO     I am for thee straight. Take thou the bill, give

me thy mete-yard, and spare not me.

HORTENSIO     God-a-mercy, Grumio, then he shall have

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no odds.

PETRUCHIO     Well sir, in brief, the gown is not for me.

GRUMIO     You are i’th’ right, sir, ’tis for my mistress.

PETRUCHIO     Go, take it up unto thy master’s use.

GRUMIO     Villain, not for thy life! Take up my mistress’

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gown for thy master’s use!

PETRUCHIO     Why sir, what’s your conceit in that?

GRUMIO     O sir, the conceit is deeper than you think for.

Take up my mistress’ gown to his master’s use! O fie,

fie, fie!

160

PETRUCHIO     [aside] Hortensio, say thou wilt see the

tailor paid. – Go take it hence, be gone, and say no

more.

HORTENSIO [aside]

Tailor, I’ll pay thee for thy gown tomorrow.

Take no unkindness of his hasty words.

165

Away, I say, commend me to thy master.     Exit Tailor.

PETRUCHIO

Well, come, my Kate, we will unto your father’s

Even in these honest mean habiliments.

Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor,

For ’tis the mind that makes the body rich,

170

And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,

So honour peereth in the meanest habit.

What, is the jay more precious than the lark

Because his feathers are more beautiful?

Or is the adder better than the eel

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Because his painted skin contents the eye?

O no, good Kate; neither art thou the worse

For this poor furniture and mean array.

If thou account’st it shame, lay it on me.

And therefore frolic. We will hence forthwith,

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To feast and sport us at thy father’s house.

[to Grumio] Go call my men, and let us straight to him;

And bring our horses unto Long-lane end,

There will we mount, and thither walk on foot.

Let’s see, I think ’tis now some seven o’clock,

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And well we may come there by dinner-time.

KATHERINA     I dare assure you, sir, ’tis almost two,

And ’twill be supper-time ere you come there.

PETRUCHIO     It shall be seven ere I go to horse.

Look what I speak, or do, or think to do,

190

You are still crossing it. Sirs, let ‘t alone,

I will not go today, and ere I do,

It shall be what o’clock I say it is.

HORTENSIO

Why, so this gallant will command the sun.     Exeunt.

4.4 Enter TRANIO, and the Pedant dressed like VINCENTIO.

TRANIO     Sir, this is the house. Please it you that I call?

PEDANT     Ay, what else? And but I be deceiv’d

Signor Baptista may remember me

Near twenty years ago in Genoa,

Where we were lodgers at the Pegasus.

5

TRANIO     ’Tis well, and hold your own, in any case,

With such austerity as ‘longeth to a father.

PEDANT I warrant you.

Enter BIONDELLO.

But sir, here comes your boy.

’Twere good he were school’d.

TRANIO     Fear you not him. Sirrah Biondello,

10

Now do your duty thoroughly, I advise you.

Imagine ’twere the right Vincentio.

BIONDELLO     Tut, fear not me.

TRANIO     But hast thou done thy errand to Baptista?

BIONDELLO     I told him that your father was at Venice,

15

And that you look’d for him this day in Padua.

TRANIO     Th’art a tall fellow. Hold thee that to drink.

Here comes Baptista. Set your countenance, sir.

Enter BAPTISTA and LUCENTIO.

Signor Baptista, you are happily met. –

Sir, this is the gentleman I told you of.

20

I pray you stand good father to me now,

Give me Bianca for my patrimony.

PEDANT     Soft, son.

Sir, by your leave, having come to Padua

To gather in some debts, my son Lucentio

25

Made me acquainted with a weighty cause

Of love between your daughter and himself.

And, for the good report I hear of you,

And for the love he beareth to your daughter,

And she to him, to stay him not too long,

30

I am content, in a good father’s care,

To have him match’d; and, if you please to like

No worse than I, upon some agreement

Me shall you find ready and willing

With one consent to have her so bestow’d.

35

For curious I cannot be with you,

Signor Baptista, of whom I hear so well.

BAPTISTA     Sir, pardon me in what I have to say.

Your plainness and your shortness please me well.

Right true it is your son Lucentio here

40

Doth love my daughter, and she loveth him,

Or both dissemble deeply their affections.

And therefore if you say no more than this,

That like a father you will deal with him,

And pass my daughter a sufficient dower,

45

The match is made, and all is done,

Your son shall have my daughter with consent.

TRANIO     I thank you, sir. Where then do you know best

We be affied and such assurance ta’en

As shall with either part’s agreement stand?

50

BAPTISTA     Not in my house, Lucentio, for you know

Pitchers have ears, and I have many servants.

Besides, old Gremio is hearkening still,

And happily we might be interrupted.

TRANIO     Then at my lodging, and it like you.

55

There doth my father lie; and there this night

We’ll pass the business privately and well.

Send for your daughter by your servant here.

My boy shall fetch the scrivener presently.

The worst is this, that at so slender warning

60

You are like to have a thin and slender pittance.

BAPTISTA     It likes me well. Cambio, hie you home,

And bid Bianca make her ready straight.

And, if you will, tell what hath happened:

LUCENTIO     ’s father is arriv’d in Padua,

65

And how she’s like to be Lucentio’s wife.

Exit Lucentio.

BIONDELLO     I pray the gods she may with all my heart.

TRANIO     Dally not with the gods, but get thee gone.

Exit Biondello.

Enter PETER, a servingman.

Signor Baptista, shall I lead the way?

Welcome. One mess is like to be your cheer.

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Come sir, we will better it in Pisa.

BAPTISTA     I follow you.     Exeunt.

Enter LUCENTIO and BIONDELLO.

BIONDELLO     Cambio.

LUCENTIO     What sayest thou, Biondello?

BIONDELLO     You saw my master wink and laugh upon

you?

75

LUCENTIO     Biondello, what of that?

BIONDELLO     Faith, nothing. But ‘has left me here

behind to expound the meaning or moral of his signs

and tokens.

LUCENTIO     I pray thee moralize them.

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BIONDELLO     Then thus: Baptista is safe, talking with the

deceiving father of a deceitful son.

LUCENTIO     And what of him?

BIONDELLO     His daughter is to be brought by you to the

supper.

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LUCENTIO     And then?

BIONDELLO     The old priest at Saint Luke’s church is at

your command at all hours.

LUCENTIO     And what of all this?

BIONDELLO     I cannot tell, except they are busied about a

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counterfeit assurance. Take you assurance of her, cum

privilegio ad imprimendum solum. To th’ church! Take

the priest, clerk, and some sufficient honest witnesses.

If this be not that you look for, I have no more to say,

But bid Bianca farewell for ever and a day.

95

LUCENTIO     Hear’st thou, Biondello –

BIONDELLO     I cannot tarry. I knew a wench married in

an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to

stuff a rabbit. And so may you, sir; and so adieu, sir.

My master hath appointed me to go to Saint Luke’s,

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to bid the priest be ready to come against you come

with your appendix. Exit.

LUCENTIO     I may and will, if she be so contented.

She will be pleas’d, then wherefore should I doubt?

Hap what hap may, I’ll roundly go about her:

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It shall go hard if Cambio go without her.     Exit.

4.5 Enter PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, HORTENSIO and servants.

PETRUCHIO

Come on, a God’s name, once more toward our

father’s.

Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon!

KATHERINA

The moon? The sun! It is not moonlight now.

PETRUCHIO     I say it is the moon that shines so bright.

KATHERINA     I know it is the sun that shines so bright.

5

PETRUCHIO

Now by my mother’s son, and that’s myself,

It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,

Or e’er I journey to your father’s house. –

[to servants] Go on, and fetch our horses back again. –

Evermore cross’d and cross’d, nothing but cross’d.

10

HORTENSIO     Say as he says, or we shall never go.

KATHERINA     Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,

And be it moon, or sun, or what you please.

And if you please to call it a rush-candle,

Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.

15

PETRUCHIO     I say it is the moon.

KATHERINA     I know it is the moon.

PETRUCHIO     Nay, then you lie. It is the blessed sun.

KATHERINA     Then, God be blest, it is the blessed sun.

But sun it is not, when you say it is not,

And the moon changes even as your mind.

20

What you will have it nam’d, even that it is,

And so it shall be so for Katherine.

HORTENSIO     Petruchio, go thy ways, the field is won.

PETRUCHIO     

Well forward, forward. Thus the bowl should run,

And not unluckily against the bias.

25

But soft, company is coming here.

Enter VINCENTIO.

[to Vincentio] Good morrow, gentle mistress, where away?

Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too,

Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman?

Such war of white and red within her cheeks!

30

What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty

As those two eyes become that heavenly face?

Fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee.

Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty’s sake.

HORTENSIO

’A will make the man mad, to make the woman of

him.

35

KATHERINA

Young budding virgin, fair, and fresh, and sweet,

Whither away, or where is thy abode?

Happy the parents of so fair a child,

Happier the man whom favourable stars

Allots thee for his lovely bedfellow.

40

PETRUCHIO

Why, how now, Kate, I hope thou art not mad.

This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither’d,

And not a maiden, as thou say’st he is.

KATHERINA     Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes,

That have been so bedazzled with the sun

45

That everything I look on seemeth green.

Now I perceive thou art a reverend father.

Pardon, I pray thee, for my mad mistaking.

PETRUCHIO

Do, good old grandsire, and withal make known

Which way thou travellest: if along with us,

50

We shall be joyful of thy company.

VINCENTIO     Fair sir, and you my merry mistress,

That with your strange encounter much amaz’d me,

My name is call’d Vincentio, my dwelling Pisa,

And bound I am to Padua, there to visit

55

A son of mine, which long I have not seen.

PETRUCHIO     What is his name?

VINCENTIO     Lucentio, gentle sir.

PETRUCHIO     Happily met; the happier for thy son.

And now by law, as well as reverend age,

I may entitle thee my loving father.

60

The sister to my wife, this gentlewoman,

Thy son by this hath married. Wonder not,

Nor be not griev’d, she is of good esteem,

Her dowry wealthy, and of worthy birth;

Beside, so qualified as may beseem

65

The spouse of any noble gentleman.

Let me embrace with old Vincentio,

And wander we to see thy honest son,

Who will of thy arrival be full joyous.

VINCENTIO     But is this true, or is it else your pleasure,

70

Like pleasant travellers, to break a jest

Upon the company you overtake?

HORTENSIO     I do assure thee, father, so it is.

PETRUCHIO     Come, go along and see the truth hereof,

For our first merriment hath made thee jealous.

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Exeunt all but Hortensio.

HORTENSIO     Well, Petruchio, this has put me in heart.

Have to my widow! And if she be froward,

Then hast thou taught Hortensio to be untoward.

Exit.

5.1 Enter BIONDELLO, LUCENTIO and BIANCA. GREMIO is out before.

BIONDELLO     Softly and swiftly, sir, for the priest is

ready.

LUCENTIO     I fly, Biondello. But they may chance to need

thee at home, therefore leave us.     Exit with Bianca.

BIONDELLO     Nay, faith, I’ll see the church a’ your back,

5

and then come back to my master’s as soon as I can.

Exit.

GREMIO     I marvel Cambio comes not all this while.

Enter PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, VINCENTIO, GRUMIO, with

attendants.

PETRUCHIO

Sir, here’s the door, this is Lucentio’s house.

My father’s bears more toward the market-place.

Thither must I, and here I leave you, sir.

10

VINCENTIO

You shall not choose but drink before you go.

I think I shall command your welcome here,

And by all likelihood some cheer is toward. [Knocks.]

GREMIO

They’re busy within. You were best knock louder.

Pedant looks out of the window.

PEDANT     What’s he that knocks as he would beat down

15

the gate?

VINCENTIO     Is Signor Lucentio within, sir?

PEDANT     He’s within, sir, but not to be spoken withal.

VINCENTIO     What if a man bring him a hundred pound

or two to make merry withal?

20

PEDANT     Keep your hundred pounds to yourself. He

shall need none so long as I live.

PETRUCHIO     Nay, I told you your son was well beloved in

Padua. Do you hear, sir? To leave frivolous

circumstances, I pray you tell Signor Lucentio that his

25

father is come from Pisa, and is here at the door to

speak with him.

PEDANT     Thou liest. His father is come from Mantua,

and here looking out at the window.

VINCENTIO     Art thou his father?

30

PEDANT     Ay, sir, so his mother says, if I may believe her.

PETRUCHIO     [to Vincentio] Why, how now, gentleman!

Why, this is flat knavery, to take upon you another

man’s name.

PEDANT     Lay hands on the villain. I believe a means to

35

cozen somebody in this city under my countenance.

Enter BIONDELLO.

BIONDELLO     I have seen them in the church together.

God send ’em good shipping! But who is here? Mine

old master Vincentio! Now we are undone and

brought to nothing.

40

VINCENTIO [to Biondello] Come hither, crack-hemp.

BIONDELLO     I hope I may choose, sir.

VINCENTIO     Come hither, you rogue. What, have you

forgot me?

BIONDELLO     Forgot you? No, sir. I could not forget you,

45

for I never saw you before in all my life.

VINCENTIO     What, you notorious villain, didst thou

never see thy master’s father, Vincentio?

BIONDELLO     What, my old worshipful old master? Yes,

marry, sir. See where he looks out of the window.

50

VINCENTIO     Is’t so, indeed? [He beats Biondello.]

BIONDELLO     Help, help, help! Here’s a madman will

murder me.     Exit.

PEDANT     Help, son! Help, Signor Baptista!

Exit from the window.

PETRUCHIO     Prithee, Kate, let’s stand aside and see the

55

end of this controversy.

Enter Pedant with servants, BAPTISTA, TRANIO.

TRANIO     Sir, what are you that offer to beat my servant?

VINCENTIO     What am I, sir? Nay, what are you, sir? O

immortal gods! O fine villain! A silken doublet, a

velvet hose, a scarlet cloak, and a copatain hat! O, I am

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undone, I am undone! While I play the good husband

at home, my son and my servant spend all at the

university.

TRANIO     How now, what’s the matter?

BAPTISTA     What, is the man lunatic?

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TRANIO     Sir, you seem a sober ancient gentleman by

your habit, but your words show you a madman. Why,

sir, what ‘cerns it you if I wear pearl and gold? I

thank my good father, I am able to maintain it.

VINCENTIO     Thy father? O villain! He is a sail-maker in

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Bergamo.

BAPTISTA     You mistake, sir, you mistake, sir. Pray, what

do you think is his name?

VINCENTIO     His name? As if I knew not his name! I have

brought him up ever since he was three years old, and

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his name is Tranio.

PEDANT     Away, away, mad ass! His name is Lucentio,

and he is mine only son, and heir to the lands of me,

Signor Vincentio.

VINCENTIO     Lucentio? O, he hath murdered his master!

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Lay hold on him, I charge you, in the Duke’s name. O,

my son, my son! Tell me, thou villain, where is my

son Lucentio?

TRANIO     Call forth an officer.

Enter an officer.

Carry this mad knave to the gaol. Father Baptista, I

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charge you see that he be forthcoming.

VINCENTIO     Carry me to the gaol?

GREMIO     Stay, officer. He shall not go to prison.

BAPTISTA     Talk not, Signor Gremio. I say he shall go to

prison.

90

GREMIO     Take heed, Signor Baptista, lest you be

cony-catched in this business. I dare swear this is the right

Vincentio.

PEDANT     Swear, if thou dar’st.

GREMIO     Nay, I dare not swear it.

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TRANIO     Then thou wert best say that I am not

Lucentio.

GREMIO     Yes, I know thee to be Signor Lucentio.

BAPTISTA     Away with the dotard, to the gaol with him!

VINCENTIO     Thus strangers may be haled and abused. O

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monstrous villain!

Enter BIONDELLO, LUCENTIO and BIANCA.

BIONDELLO     O, we are spoiled, and yonder he is. Deny

him, forswear him, or else we are all undone.

LUCENTIO     [Kneels.] Pardon, sweet father.

VINCENTIO     Lives my sweet son?

Exeunt Biondello, Tranio and Pedant, as fast as may be.

BIANCA     Pardon, dear father.

BAPTISTA     How hast thou offended?

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Where is Lucentio?

LUCENTIO     Here’s Lucentio,

Right son to the right Vincentio,

That have by marriage made thy daughter mine,

While counterfeit supposes blear’d thine eyne.

GREMIO

Here’s packing, with a witness, to deceive us all.

110

VINCENTIO     Where is that damned villain Tranio,

That fac’d and brav’d me in this matter so?

BAPTISTA     Why, tell me, is not this my Cambio?

BIANCA     Cambio is chang’d into Lucentio.

LUCENTIO     Love wrought these miracles. Bianca’s love

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Made me exchange my state with Tranio,

While he did bear my countenance in the town,

And happily I have arriv’d at the last

Unto the wished haven of my bliss.

What Tranio did, myself enforc’d him to;

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Then pardon him, sweet father, for my sake.

VINCENTIO I’ll slit the villain’s nose that would have

sent me to the gaol.

BAPTISTA     But do you hear, sir? Have you married my

daughter without asking my good will?

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VINCENTIO     Fear not, Baptista, we will content you, go

to. But I will in, to be revenged for this villainy. Exit.

BAPTISTA     And I, to sound the depth of this knavery.

Exit.

LUCENTIO

Look not pale, Bianca; thy father will not frown.

Exeunt Lucentio and Bianca.

GREMIO

My cake is dough, but I’ll in among the rest,

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Out of hope of all, but my share of the feast. Exit.

KATHERINA

Husband, let’s follow to see the end of this ado.

PETRUCHIO     First kiss me, Kate, and we will.

KATHERINA     What, in the midst of the street?

PETRUCHIO     What, art thou ashamed of me?

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KATHERINA     No, sir, God forbid; but ashamed to kiss.

PETRUCHIO     

Why, then, let’s home again. Come, sirrah, let’s away.

KATHERINA

Nay, I will give thee a kiss. Now pray thee, love, stay.

PETRUCHIO     Is not this well? Come, my sweet Kate.

Better once than never, for never too late.     Exeunt.

140

5.2 Enter BAPTISTA, VINCENTIO, GREMIO, the Pedant, LUCENTIO and BIANCA, PETRUCHIO and KATHERINA, HORTENSIO and Widow; the servingmen, with TRANIO, BIONDELLO, GRUMIO, bringing in a banquet.

LUCENTIO

At last, though long, our jarring notes agree,

And time it is, when raging war is done,

To smile at scapes and perils overblown.

My fair Bianca, bid my father welcome,

While I with self-same kindness welcome thine.

5

Brother Petruchio, sister Katherina,

And thou, Hortensio, with thy loving widow,

Feast with the best, and welcome to my house.

My banquet is to close our stomachs up

After our great good cheer. Pray you, sit down,

10

For now we sit to chat as well as eat.

PETRUCHIO     Nothing but sit and sit, and eat and eat!

BAPTISTA     Padua affords this kindness, son Petruchio.

PETRUCHIO     Padua affords nothing but what is kind.

HORTENSIO

For both our sakes I would that word were true.

15

PETRUCHIO

Now, for my life, Hortensio fears his widow.

WIDOW     Then never trust me if I be afeard.

PETRUCHIO     

You are very sensible, and yet you miss my sense.

I mean Hortensio is afeard of you.

WIDOW     He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

20

PETRUCHIO     Roundly replied.

KATHERINA     Mistress, how mean you that?

WIDOW     Thus I conceive by him.

PETRUCHIO

Conceives by me! How likes Hortensio that?

HORTENSIO

My widow says thus she conceives her tale.

PETRUCHIO

Very well mended. Kiss him for that, good widow.

25

KATHERINA

‘He that is giddy thinks the world turns round’ –

I pray you tell me what you meant by that.

WIDOW     Your husband, being troubled with a shrew,

Measures my husband’s sorrow by his woe.

And now you know my meaning.

30

KATHERINA     A very mean meaning.

WIDOW     Right, I mean you.

KATHERINA     And I am mean, indeed, respecting you.

PETRUCHIO     To her, Kate!

HORTENSIO     To her, widow!

PETRUCHIO

A hundred marks, my Kate does put her down.

35

HORTENSIO     That’s my office.

PETRUCHIO     Spoke like an officer. Ha’ to thee, lad.

[Drinks to Hortensio.]

BAPTISTA     How likes Gremio these quick-witted folks?

GREMIO     Believe me, sir, they butt together well.

BIANCA     Head and butt! An hasty-witted body

40

Would say your head and butt were head and horn.

VINCENTIO     Ay, mistress bride, hath that awaken’d you?

BIANCA

Ay, but not frighted me, therefore I’ll sleep again.

PETRUCHIO

Nay, that you shall not. Since you have begun,

Have at you for a bitter jest or two.

45

BIANCA     Am I your bird? I mean to shift my bush,

And then pursue me as you draw your bow.

You are welcome all.

Exeunt Bianca and Katherina and Widow.

PETRUCHIO

She hath prevented me. Here, Signor Tranio,

This bird you aim’d at, though you hit her not;

50

Therefore a health to all that shot and miss’d.

TRANIO     O sir, Lucentio slipp’d me like his greyhound,

Which runs himself, and catches for his master.

PETRUCHIO

A good swift simile, but something currish.

TRANIO     ’Tis well, sir, that you hunted for yourself.

55

’Tis thought your deer does hold you at a bay.

BAPTISTA     O, O, Petruchio! Tranio hits you now.

LUCENTIO     I thank thee for that gird, good Tranio.

HORTENSIO     Confess, confess, hath he not hit you here?

PETRUCHIO     ‘A has a little gall’d me, I confess;

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And as the jest did glance away from me,

’Tis ten to one it maim’d you two outright.

BAPTISTA     Now, in good sadness, son Petruchio,

I think thou hast the veriest shrew of all.

PETRUCHIO     Well, I say no. And therefore for assurance

65

Let’s each one send unto his wife,

And he whose wife is most obedient,

To come at first when he doth send for her,

Shall win the wager which we will propose.

HORTENSIO     Content. What’s the wager?

LUCENTIO     Twenty crowns.

70

PETRUCHIO     Twenty crowns?

I’ll venture so much of my hawk or hound,

But twenty times so much upon my wife.

LUCENTIO     A hundred then.

HORTENSIO     Content.

PETRUCHIO     A match! ’Tis done.

HORTENSIO     Who shall begin?

75

LUCENTIO     That will I.

Go, Biondello, bid your mistress come to me.

BIONDELLO     I go.      Exit.

BAPTISTA     Son, I’ll be your half Bianca comes.

LUCENTIO     I’ll have no halves. I’ll bear it all myself.

80

Enter BIONDELLO.

How now, what news?

BIONDELLO     Sir, my mistress sends you word

That she is busy and she cannot come.

PETRUCHIO     How? She’s busy, and she cannot come?

Is that an answer?

GREMIO     Ay, and a kind one too.

Pray God, sir, your wife send you not a worse.

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PETRUCHIO     I hope better.

HORTENSIO     Sirrah Biondello, go and entreat my wife

To come to me forthwith.     Exit Biondello.

PETRUCHIO     O ho, entreat her!

Nay, then she must needs come.

HORTENSIO     I am afraid, sir,

Do what you can, yours will not be entreated.

90

Enter BIONDELLO.

Now, where’s my wife?

BIONDELLO

She says you have some goodly jest in hand.

She will not come. She bids you come to her.

PETRUCHIO

Worse and worse, she will not come! O vile,

Intolerable, not to be endur’d!

95

Sirrah Grumio, go to your mistress,

Say I command her come to me.     Exit Grumio.

HORTENSIO     I know her answer.

PETRUCHIO     What?

HORTENSIO     She will not.

PETRUCHIO     The fouler fortune mine, and there an end.

Enter KATHERINA.

BAPTISTA

Now, by my holidame, here comes Katherina.

100

KATHERINA

What is your will, sir, that you send for me?

PETRUCHIO     Where is your sister, and Hortensio’s wife?

KATHERINA     They sit conferring by the parlour fire.

PETRUCHIO

Go fetch them hither. If they deny to come,

Swinge me them soundly forth unto their husbands.

105

Away, I say, and bring them hither straight.

Exit Katherina.

LUCENTIO     Here is a wonder, if you talk of a wonder.

HORTENSIO     And so it is. I wonder what it bodes.

PETRUCHIO

Marry, peace it bodes, and love, and quiet life,

An awful rule, and right supremacy,

110

And, to be short, what not that’s sweet and happy.

BAPTISTA     Now fair befall thee, good Petruchio!

The wager thou hast won, and I will add

Unto their losses twenty thousand crowns,

Another dowry to another daughter,

115

For she is chang’d, as she had never been.

PETRUCHIO     Nay, I will win my wager better yet,

And show more sign of her obedience,

Her new-built virtue and obedience.

Enter KATHERINA, BIANCA and Widow.

See where she comes, and brings your froward wives

120

As prisoners to her womanly persuasion.

Katherine, that cap of yours becomes you not.

Off with that bauble, throw it under foot. [She obeys.]

WIDOW     Lord, let me never have a cause to sigh

Till I be brought to such a silly pass.

125

BIANCA     Fie, what a foolish duty call you this?

LUCENTIO     I would your duty were as foolish too.

The wisdom of your duty, fair Bianca,

Hath cost me a hundred crowns since supper-time.

BIANCA     The more fool you for laying on my duty.

130

PETRUCHIO

Katherine, I charge thee, tell these headstrong women

What duty they do owe their lords and husbands.

WIDOW

Come, come, you’re mocking. We will have no telling.

PETRUCHIO     Come on, I say, and first begin with her.

WIDOW     She shall not.

135

PETRUCHIO     I say she shall. And first begin with her.

KATHERINA

Fie, fie! Unknit that threatening unkind brow,

And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,

To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.

It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,

140

Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,

And in no sense is meet or amiable.

A woman mov’d is like a fountain troubled,

Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty,

And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty

145

Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,

Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,

And for thy maintenance; commits his body

To painful labour both by sea and land,

150

To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,

Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;

And craves no other tribute at thy hands

But love, fair looks, and true obedience;

Too little payment for so great a debt.

155

Such duty as the subject owes the prince

Even such a woman oweth to her husband.

And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,

And not obedient to his honest will,

What is she but a foul contending rebel,

160

And graceless traitor to her loving lord?

I am asham’d that women are so simple

To offer war where they should kneel for peace,

Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,

When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.

165

Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,

Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,

But that our soft conditions and our hearts

Should well agree with our external parts?

Come, come, you froward and unable worms,

170

My mind hath been as big as one of yours,

My heart as great, my reason haply more,

To bandy word for word and frown for frown.

But now I see our lances are but straws,

Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,

175

That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.

Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,

And place your hands below your husband’s foot.

In token of which duty, if he please,

My hand is ready, may it do him ease.

180

PETRUCHIO

Why, there’s a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate.

LUCENTIO

Well, go thy ways, old lad, for thou shalt ha’t.

VINCENTIO

’Tis a good hearing, when children are toward.

LUCENTIO

But a harsh hearing, when women are froward.

PETRUCHIO     Come, Kate, we’ll to bed.

185

We three are married, but you two are sped.

[to Lucentio] ’Twas I won the wager, though you hit the white,

And being a winner, God give you good night!

Exeunt Petruchio and Katherina.

HORTENSIO

Now go thy ways, thou hast tam’d a curst shrew.

LUCENTIO

’Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tam’d so.

190

Exeunt.

The Tempest

The Tempest was printed as the first comedy, and consequently the first play, in the Folio of 1623. It may have been granted such prominence as the last non-collaborative play Shakespeare wrote, but it must in any event have been highly regarded by the publishers of the Folio, and by his former colleagues John Hemmings and Henry Condell, who vouched for the authority and completeness of the volume, to appear first in it. Its full, descriptive stage directions may have been amplified by the scribe Ralph Crane, who transcribed the manuscript copy used by the printer. Its date of composition is fixed as 1610–11 by a performance at Court on 1 November 1611 and by its use of William Strachey’s account (dated from Virginia on 15 July 1610 and known to have reached London no earlier than September) of the shipwreck of Sir William Somers on Bermuda in the summer of 1609. The play may have been designed for the Blackfriars playhouse, but no record of performance there or at the Globe has survived.

Like other plays from Hamlet onwards, The Tempest reflects Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Essays of Montaigne, in John Florio’s English version (1602). The essay ‘Of the Cannibals’ underlies Gonzalo’s vision of an ideal commonwealth, raises questions about the distinction between civilization and barbarism and probably suggested Caliban’s name. Virgil’s Aeneid is a further influence, while Prospero’s renunciation of magic, 5.1.33–57, is closely modelled on Medea’s invocation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 7.179–219.

The Tempest, in which Shakespeare observed the unities of place and time for the first time since The Comedy of Errors, is a work of synthesis and retrospection. The controlling role of Prospero may recall the Duke in Measure for Measure, who also prefers forgiveness to vindictive justice at the end. His magic harks back to Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, just as Ariel’s role recalls that of Puck. Its presentation of the pursuit of political power is equally reminiscent of the English histories and political tragedies. Stephano is the last, and most sinister, of Shakespeare’s comic drunkards.

The Tempest was among the first of Shakespeare’s plays to be adapted for the changed theatrical conditions of the Restoration. The version of it by Dryden and Davenant (1667) supplied it with a busier action, which introduced sisters for Miranda and Caliban, a female counterpart for Ariel, and Hippolyto, a man who has never seen a woman (a travesty role for an actress). The dreamlike quality of its action and the mythic symmetries of its cast have led to a wide and increasingly various array of interpretations of The Tempest. Nineteenth-century interest found its focus in Prospero, who was increasingly identified with Shakespeare; in the late twentieth century, attention shifted towards Caliban and colonialism, or towards Miranda and the oppressions of patriarchy. The play has inspired many later literary and musical compositions, among them Hector Berlioz’s symphonic fantasy Lélio (1832), Robert Browning’s ‘Caliban upon Setebos’ (1864), Jean Sibelius’s incidental music for the play, W. H. Auden’s The Sea and the Mirror (1944) and Sir Michael Tippett’s opera The Knot Garden (1969).

The 1999 Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

ALONSO

King of Naples

SEBASTIAN

his brother

PROSPERO

the right Duke of Milan

ANTONIO

his brother, the usurping Duke of Milan

FERDINAND

son to the King of Naples

GONZALO

an honest old councillor

ADRIAN and FRANCISCO

lords

CALIBAN

a savage and deformed slave

TRINCULO

a jester

STEPHANO

a drunken butler

MASTER

of a ship

BOATSWAIN

MARINERS

MIRANDA

daughter to Prospero

ARIEL

an airy spirit

The Tempest

1.1 A tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard; enter a Shipmaster and a Boatswain.

MASTER     Boatswain!

BOATSWAIN     Here master. What cheer?

MASTER     Good, speak to th’ mariners. Fall to’t yarely

or we run ourselves aground. Bestir, bestir!     Exit.

Enter Mariners.

BOATSWAIN     Heigh, my hearts; cheerly, cheerly, my

5

hearts! Yare! Yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the

master’s whistle! [to the storm] Blow till thou burst thy

wind, if room enough.

Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, FERDINAND, GONZALO     and others.

ALONSO     Good boatswain, have care. Where’s the

master? Play the men!

10

BOATSWAIN     I pray now, keep below!

ANTONIO     Where is the master, boatswain?

BOATSWAIN     Do you not hear him? You mar our labour.

Keep your cabins! You do assist the storm.

GONZALO     Nay, good, be patient.

15

BOATSWAIN     When the sea is! Hence. What cares these

roarers for the name of king? To cabin! Silence!

Trouble us not.

GONZALO     Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.

BOATSWAIN     None that I more love than myself. You are

20

a councillor; if you can command these elements to

silence and work the peace of the present, we will not

hand a rope more. Use your authority! If you cannot,

give thanks you have lived so long and make yourself

ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it

25

so hap. – Cheerly, good hearts. – Out of our way, I say!     Exit.

GONZALO     I have great comfort from this fellow.

Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him – his

complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good fate, to

his hanging; make the rope of his destiny our cable, for

30

our own doth little advantage. If he be not born to be

hanged, our case is miserable.     Exit.

Enter Boatswain.

BOATSWAIN     Down with the topmast! Yare! Lower,

lower! Bring her to try with main course. [A cry

within.] A plague upon this howling. They are louder

35

than the weather or our office.

Enter SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO and GONZALO.

Yet again? What do you here? Shall we give o’er and

drown? Have you a mind to sink?

SEBASTIAN     A pox o’your throat, you bawling,

blasphemous, incharitable dog.

40

BOATSWAIN     Work you, then.

ANTONIO     Hang, cur! Hang, you whoreson, insolent

noise-maker! We are less afraid to be drowned than

thou art.

GONZALO     I’ll warrant him for drowning, though the

45

ship were no stronger than a nutshell and as leaky as

an unstanched wench.

BOATSWAIN     Lay her a-hold, a-hold! Set her two courses

off to sea again! Lay her off!

Enter Mariners, wet.

MARINERS     All lost! To prayers, to prayers! All lost!

50

BOATSWAIN     What, must our mouths be cold?

GONZALO     The King and prince at prayers, let’s assist

them, for our case is as theirs.

SEBASTIAN     I’m out of patience.

ANTONIO     We are merely cheated of our lives by

55

drunkards. This wide-chopped rascal – would thou

mightst lie drowning the washing of ten tides!

GONZALO     He’ll be hanged yet, though every drop of

water swear against it and gape at widest to glut him.

[A confused noise within] Mercy on us! – We split, we

60

split! – Farewell my wife and children! – Farewell

brother! – We split, we split, we split!

ANTONIO     Let’s all sink wi’th’ King.

SEBASTIAN     Let’s take leave of him.     Exit with Antonio.

GONZALO     Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea

65

for an acre of barren ground – long heath, brown

furze, anything. The wills above be done, but I would

fain die a dry death.     Exit.

1.2 Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA.

MIRANDA     If by your art, my dearest father, you have

Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.

The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch

But that the sea, mounting to th’ welkin’s cheek,

Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered

5

With those that I saw suffer – a brave vessel

(Who had no doubt some noble creature in her)

Dashed all to pieces. O, the cry did knock

Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished.

Had I been any god of power, I would

10

Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere

It should the good ship so have swallowed and

The fraughting souls within her.

PROSPERO     Be collected;

No more amazement. Tell your piteous heart

There’s no harm done.

MIRANDA     O woe the day.

PROSPERO     No harm!

15

I have done nothing but in care of thee,

Of thee, my dear one, thee my daughter, who

Art ignorant of what thou art, naught knowing

Of whence I am, nor that I am more better

Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,

20

And thy no greater father.

MIRANDA     More to know

Did never meddle with my thoughts.

PROSPERO     ’Tis time

I should inform thee further. Lend thy hand

And pluck my magic garment from me. So,

Lie there my art. Wipe thou thine eyes, have comfort;

25

The direful spectacle of the wreck which touched

The very virtue of compassion in thee,

I have with such provision in mine art

So safely ordered, that there is no soul –

No, not so much perdition as an hair,

30

Betid to any creature in the vessel

Which thou heard’st cry, which thou sawst sink.

Sit down,

For thou must now know further.

MIRANDA     You have often

Begun to tell me what I am, but stopped

And left me to a bootless inquisition,

35

Concluding, ‘Stay, not yet’.

PROSPERO     The hour’s now come;

The very minute bids thee ope thine ear.

Obey and be attentive. Canst thou remember

A time before we came unto this cell?

I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not

40

Out three years old.

MIRANDA     Certainly, sir, I can.

PROSPERO     By what? By any other house or person?

Of any thing the image, tell me, that

Hath kept with thy remembrance.

MIRANDA     ’Tis far off,

And rather like a dream than an assurance

45

That my remembrance warrants. Had I not

Four or five women once, that tended me?

PROSPERO

Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it

That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else

In the dark backward and abysm of time?

50

If thou rememb’rest aught ere thou cam’st here,

How thou cam’st here thou mayst.

MIRANDA     But that I do not.

PROSPERO     Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since,

Thy father was the Duke of Milan and

A prince of power.

MIRANDA     Sir, are not you my father?

55

PROSPERO     Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and

She said thou wast my daughter; and thy father

Was Duke of Milan, and his only heir

And princess, no worse issued.

MIRANDA     O, the heavens!

What foul play had we that we came from thence?

60

Or blessed wast we did?

PROSPERO     Both, both, my girl.

By foul play, as thou sayst, were we heaved thence,

But blessedly holp hither.

MIRANDA     O, my heart bleeds

To think o’th’ teen that I have turned you to,

Which is from my remembrance. Please you, farther.

65

PROSPERO     My brother and thy uncle, called Antonio –

I pray thee mark me, that a brother should

Be so perfidious – he, whom next thyself

Of all the world I loved, and to him put

The manage of my state, as at that time

70

Through all the signories it was the first,

And Prospero the prime Duke, being so reputed

In dignity, and for the liberal arts

Without a parallel; those being all my study,

The government I cast upon my brother

75

And to my state grew stranger, being transported

And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle –

Dost thou attend me?

MIRANDA     Sir, most heedfully.

PROSPERO     Being once perfected how to grant suits,

How to deny them, who t’advance and who

80

To trash for overtopping, new created

The creatures that were mine, I say, or changed ’em,

Or else new formed ’em; having both the key

Of officer and office, set all hearts i’th’ state

To what tune pleased his ear, that now he was

85

The ivy which had hid my princely trunk

And sucked my verdure out on’t. Thou attend’st not!

MIRANDA     O, good sir, I do.

PROSPERO     I pray thee, mark me.

I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated

To closeness and the bettering of my mind

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With that which, but by being so retired,

O’er-prized all popular rate, in my false brother

Awaked an evil nature, and my trust,

Like a good parent, did beget of him

A falsehood in its contrary as great

95

As my trust was, which had indeed no limit,

A confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded,

Not only with what my revenue yielded

But what my power might else exact, like one

Who, having into truth by telling of it,

100

Made such a sinner of his memory

To credit his own lie, he did believe

He was indeed the duke, out o’th’ substitution

And executing th’outward face of royalty

With all prerogative. Hence his ambition growing –

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Dost thou hear?

MIRANDA     Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.

PROSPERO

To have no screen between this part he played

And him he played it for, he needs will be

Absolute Milan. Me, poor man, my library

Was dukedom large enough. Of temporal royalties

110

He thinks me now incapable; confederates,

So dry he was for sway, wi’th’ King of Naples

To give him annual tribute, do him homage,

Subject his coronet to his crown, and bend

The dukedom yet unbowed (alas, poor Milan)

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To most ignoble stooping.

MIRANDA     O, the heavens!

PROSPERO

Mark his condition and th’event, then tell me

If this might be a brother.

MIRANDA     I should sin

To think but nobly of my grandmother;

Good wombs have borne bad sons.

PROSPERO     Now the condition.

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This King of Naples, being an enemy

To me inveterate, hearkens my brother’s suit,

Which was that he, in lieu o’th’ premises

Of homage, and I know not how much tribute,

Should presently extirpate me and mine

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Out of the dukedom and confer fair Milan,

With all the honours, on my brother. Whereon –

A treacherous army levied – one midnight

Fated to th’ purpose did Antonio open

The gates of Milan and i’th’ dead of darkness

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The ministers for th’ purpose hurried thence

Me and thy crying self.

MIRANDA     Alack, for pity.

I, not rememb’ring how I cried out then,

Will cry it o’er again. It is a hint

That wrings mine eyes to’t.

PROSPERO     Hear a little further,

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And then I’ll bring thee to the present business

Which now’s upon’s, without the which this story

Were most impertinent.

MIRANDA     Wherefore did they not

That hour destroy us?

PROSPERO     Well demanded, wench:

My tale provokes that question. Dear, they durst not,

140

So dear the love my people bore me, nor set

A mark so bloody on the business, but

With colours fairer painted their foul ends.

In few, they hurried us aboard a bark,

Bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared

145

A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged,

Nor tackle, sail, nor mast – the very rats

Instinctively have quit it. There they hoist us

To cry to th’ sea that roared to us, to sigh

To th’ winds, whose pity, sighing back again,

150

Did us but loving wrong.

MIRANDA     Alack, what trouble

Was I then to you?

PROSPERO     O, a cherubin

Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile,

Infused with a fortitude from heaven,

When I have decked the sea with drops full salt,

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Under my burden groaned, which raised in me

An undergoing stomach to bear up

Against what should ensue.

MIRANDA     How came we ashore?

PROSPERO     By providence divine.

Some food we had, and some fresh water, that

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A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,

Out of his charity – who, being then appointed

Master of this design – did give us, with

Rich garments, linens, stuffs and necessaries,

Which since have steaded much; so of his gentleness,

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Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me

From mine own library with volumes that

I prize above my dukedom.

MIRANDA     Would I might

But ever see that man!

PROSPERO     Now I arise.

Sit still and hear the last of our sea-sorrow.

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Here in this island we arrived, and here

Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit

Than other princes can that have more time

For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful.

MIRANDA

Heavens thank you for’t. And now I pray you, sir,

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For still ’tis beating in my mind, your reason

For raising this sea-storm?

PROSPERO     Know thus far forth:

By accident most strange, bountiful fortune

(Now, my dear lady) hath mine enemies

Brought to this shore; and by my prescience

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I find my zenith doth depend upon

A most auspicious star, whose influence

If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes

Will ever after droop. Here cease more questions.

Thou art inclined to sleep; ’tis a good dullness,

185

And give it way. I know thou canst not choose.

[to Ariel] Come away, servant, come; I am ready now.

Approach, my Ariel. Come.

Enter ARIEL.

ARIEL     All hail, great master; grave sir, hail! I come

To answer thy best pleasure, be’t to fly,

190

To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride

On the curled clouds. To thy strong bidding, task

Ariel and all his quality.

PROSPERO     Hast thou, spirit,

Performed to point the tempest that I bade thee?

ARIEL     To every article.

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I boarded the King’s ship: now on the beak,

Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin

I flamed amazement. Sometime I’d divide

And burn in many places – on the topmast,

The yards and bowsprit would I flame distinctly,

200

Then meet and join. Jove’s lightning, the precursors

O’th’ dreadful thunderclaps, more momentary

And sight-outrunning were not; the fire and cracks

Of sulphurous roaring, the most mighty Neptune

Seem to besiege and make his bold waves tremble,

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Yea, his dread trident shake.

PROSPERO     My brave spirit,

Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil

Would not infect his reason?

ARIEL     Not a soul

But felt a fever of the mad and played

Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners

210

Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel;

Then all afire with me, the King’s son Ferdinand,

With hair up-staring (then like reeds, not hair),

Was the first man that leapt, cried ‘Hell is empty,

And all the devils are here’.

PROSPERO     Why, that’s my spirit!

215

But was not this nigh shore?

ARIEL     Close by, my master.

PROSPERO     But are they, Ariel, safe?

ARIEL     Not a hair perished;

On their sustaining garments not a blemish,

But fresher than before; and, as thou bad’st me,

In troops I have dispersed them ’bout the isle.

220

The King’s son have I landed by himself,

Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs,

In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting,

His arms in this sad knot.

PROSPERO     Of the King’s ship,

The mariners, say how thou hast disposed,

225

And all the rest o’th’ fleet?

ARIEL     Safely in harbour

Is the King’s ship, in the deep nook where once

Thou called’st me up at midnight to fetch dew

From the still-vexed Bermudas; there she’s hid,

The mariners all under hatches stowed,

230

Who, with a charm joined to their suffered labour,

I have left asleep. And for the rest o’th’ fleet,

Which I dispersed, they all have met again,

And are upon the Mediterranean float,

Bound sadly home for Naples,

235

Supposing that they saw the King’s ship wrecked

And his great person perish.

PROSPERO     Ariel, thy charge

Exactly is performed; but there’s more work.

What is the time o’th’ day?

ARIEL     Past the mid-season.

PROSPERO

At least two glasses. The time ’twixt six and now

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Must by us both be spent most preciously.

ARIEL

Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains,

Let me remember thee what thou hast promised,

Which is not yet performed me.

PROSPERO     How now? Moody?

What is’t thou canst demand?

ARIEL     My liberty.

245

PROSPERO     Before the time be out? No more!

ARIEL     I prithee

Remember I have done thee worthy service,

Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served

Without or grudge or grumblings. Thou did promise

To bate me a full year.

PROSPERO     Dost thou forget

250

From what a torment I did free thee?

ARIEL     No.

PROSPERO

Thou dost, and think’st it much to tread the ooze

Of the salt deep,

To run upon the sharp wind of the north,

To do me business in the veins o’th’ earth

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When it is baked with frost.

ARIEL     I do not, sir.

PROSPERO

Thou liest, malignant thing; hast thou forgot

The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy

Was grown into a hoop? Hast thou forgot her?

ARIEL     No, sir.

PROSPERO     Thou hast! Where was she born? Speak; tell

me.

260

ARIEL     Sir, in Algiers.

PROSPERO     O, was she so? I must

Once in a month recount what thou hast been,

Which thou forget’st. This damned witch Sycorax,

For mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible

To enter human hearing, from Algiers,

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Thou knowst, was banished. For one thing she did

They would not take her life; is not this true?

ARIEL     Ay, sir.

PROSPERO

This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child,

And here was left by th’ sailors. Thou, my slave,

270

As thou report’st thyself, was then her servant,

And – for thou wast a spirit too delicate

To act her earthy and abhorred commands,

Refusing her grand hests – she did confine thee,

By help of her more potent ministers

275

And in her most unmitigable rage,

Into a cloven pine, within which rift

Imprisoned thou didst painfully remain

A dozen years, within which space she died

And left thee there, where thou didst vent thy groans

280

As fast as millwheels strike. Then was this island

(Save for the son that she did litter here,

A freckled whelp, hag-born) not honoured with

A human shape.

ARIEL     Yes, Caliban, her son.

PROSPERO     Dull thing, I say so – he, that Caliban,

285

Whom now I keep in service. Thou best knowst

What torment I did find thee in: thy groans

Did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts

Of ever-angry bears. It was a torment

To lay upon the damned, which Sycorax

290

Could not again undo. It was mine art,

When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape

The pine and let thee out.

ARIEL     I thank thee, master.

PROSPERO     If thou more murmur’st, I will rend an oak

And peg thee in his knotty entrails till

295

Thou hast howled away twelve winters.

ARIEL     Pardon, master,

I will be correspondent to command

And do my spriting gently.

PROSPERO     Do so, and after two days

I will discharge thee.

ARIEL     That’s my noble master.

300

What shall I do? Say what? What shall I do?

PROSPERO     Go make thyself like a nymph o’th’ sea;

Be subject to no sight but thine and mine, invisible

To every eyeball else. Go take this shape

And hither come in’t. Go! Hence with diligence.

305

Exit Ariel.

[to Miranda] Awake, dear heart, awake; thou hast slept

well.

Awake.

MIRANDA     The strangeness of your story put

Heaviness in me.

PROSPERO     Shake it off. Come on,

We’ll visit Caliban, my slave, who never

Yields us kind answer.

MIRANDA     ’Tis a villain, sir,

310

I do not love to look on.

PROSPERO     But as ’tis,

We cannot miss him; he does make our fire,

Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices

That profit us. – What ho, slave! Caliban,

Thou earth, thou: speak!

CALIBAN [within]     There’s wood enough within.

315

PROSPERO

Come forth I say, there’s other business for thee.

Come, thou tortoise, when?

Enter ARIEL, like a water nymph.

Fine apparition, my quaint Ariel,

Hark in thine ear.

ARIEL     My lord, it shall be done.     Exit.

PROSPERO

Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself

320

Upon thy wicked dam; come forth!

Enter CALIBAN.

CALIBAN     As wicked dew as ere my mother brushed

With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen

Drop on you both. A southwest blow on ye

And blister you all o’er.

325

PROSPERO

For this, be sure, tonight thou shalt have cramps,

Side-stitches, that shall pen thy breath up; urchins

Shall forth at vast of night that they may work

All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinched

As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging

330

Than bees that made ’em.

CALIBAN     I must eat my dinner.

This island’s mine by Sycorax, my mother,

Which thou tak’st from me. When thou cam’st first

Thou strok’st me and made much of me; wouldst

give me

Water with berries in’t, and teach me how

335

To name the bigger light and how the less

That burn by day and night. And then I loved thee

And showed thee all the qualities o’th’ isle:

The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place and fertile.

Cursed be I that did so! All the charms

340

Of Sycorax – toads, beetles, bats – light on you,

For I am all the subjects that you have,

Which first was mine own king; and here you sty me

In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest o’th’ island.

PROSPERO     Thou most lying slave,

345

Whom stripes may move, not kindness; I have used thee

(Filth as thou art) with humane care and lodged thee

In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate

The honour of my child.

CALIBAN     O ho, O ho! Would’t had been done;

350

Thou didst prevent me, I had peopled else

This isle with Calibans.

MIRANDA     Abhorred slave,

Which any print of goodness wilt not take,

Being capable of all ill; I pitied thee,

Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour

355

One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage,

Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like

A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes With

words that made them known. But thy vile race

(Though thou didst learn) had that in’t which good natures

360

Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou

Deservedly confined into this rock,

Who hadst deserved more than a prison.

CALIBAN     You taught me language, and my profit on’t

Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you

365

For learning me your language.

PROSPERO     Hag-seed, hence:

Fetch us in fuel, and be quick – thou’rt best –

To answer other business. Shrug’st thou, malice?

If thou neglect’st, or dost unwillingly

What I command, I’ll rack thee with old cramps,

370

Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar,

That beasts shall tremble at thy din.

CALIBAN     No, pray thee.

[aside] I must obey; his art is of such power

It would control my dam’s god Setebos,

And make a vassal of him.

PROSPERO     So, slave, hence.

375

     Exit Caliban.

Enter FERDINAND, and ARIEL, invisible, playing and singing.

ARIEL     [Sings.]

Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands;

And then take hands;

Curtsied when you have, and kissed The wild waves whist;

The wild waves whist;

Foot it featly here and there,

380

And sweet sprites bear

The burden.

     [Burden dispersedly]

SPIRITS     Hark, hark! Bow-wow,

The watch dogs bark, bow-wow.

ARIEL     Hark hark, I hear,

385

The strain of strutting chanticleer

Cry cock a diddle dow.

FERDINAND

Where should this music be? I’th’ air, or th’earth?

It sounds no more, and sure it waits upon

Some god o’th’ island. Sitting on a bank,

390

Weeping again the King my father’s wreck,

This music crept by me upon the waters,

Allaying both their fury and my passion

With its sweet air. Thence I have followed it

(Or it hath drawn me, rather) but ’tis gone.

395

No, it begins again.

ARIEL     [Sings.]

Full fathom five thy father lies,

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes,

Nothing of him that doth fade

400

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell.

SPIRITS     Ding dong.

ARIEL     Hark, now I hear them.

SPIRITS     Ding dong bell.

405

FERDINAND

The ditty does remember my drowned father;

This is no mortal business nor no sound

That the earth owes. I hear it now above me.

PROSPERO     [to Miranda]

The fringed curtains of thine eye advance, And say what thou seest yond.

And say what thou seest yond.

MIRANDA     What is’t, a spirit?

410

Lord, how it looks about. Believe me, sir,

It carries a brave form. But ’tis a spirit.

PROSPERO

No, wench, it eats and sleeps and hath such senses

As we have – such. This gallant which thou seest

Was in the wreck, and but he’s something stained

415

With grief (that’s beauty’s canker) thou mightst call him

A goodly person. He hath lost his fellows

And strays about to find ’em.

MIRANDA     I might call him

A thing divine, for nothing natural I ever saw so noble.

PROSPERO     [aside] It goes on, I see,

420

As my soul prompts it. [to Ariel] Spirit, fine spirit,

I’ll free thee

Within two days for this.

FERDINAND     Most sure the goddess

On whom these airs attend! – Vouchsafe my prayer

May know if you remain upon this island,

And that you will some good instruction give

425

How I may bear me here. My prime request,

Which I do last pronounce, is (O, you wonder!)

If you be maid or no?

MIRANDA     No wonder, sir,

But certainly a maid.

FERDINAND     My language? Heavens!

I am the best of them that speak this speech,

430

Were I but where ’tis spoken.

PROSPERO     How? The best?

What wert thou if the King of Naples heard thee?

FERDINAND     A single thing, as I am now, that wonders

To hear thee speak of Naples. He does hear me,

And that he does, I weep. Myself am Naples,

435

Who, with mine eyes, never since at ebb, beheld

The King my father wrecked.

MIRANDA     Alack, for mercy!

FERDINAND

Yes, faith, and all his lords – the Duke of Milan

And his brave son being twain.

PROSPERO [aside]     The Duke of Milan

And his more braver daughter could control thee

440

If now ’twere fit to do’t. At the first sight

They have changed eyes. [to Ariel] Delicate Ariel,

I’ll set thee free for this. [to Ferdinand] A word, good sir;

I fear you have done yourself some wrong. A word.

MIRANDA [aside]     

Why speaks my father so ungently? This

445

Is the third man that e’er I saw, the first

That e’er I sighed for. Pity move my father

To be inclined my way.

FERDINAND     O, if a virgin,

And your affection not gone forth, I’ll make you

The Queen of Naples.

PROSPERO     Soft, sir, one word more.

450

[aside] They are both in either’s powers, but this

swift business

I must uneasy make, lest too light winning

Make the prize light. [to Ferdinand] One word more.

I charge thee

That thou attend me. Thou dost here usurp

The name thou ow’st not and hast put thyself

455

Upon this island as a spy, to win it

From me, the lord on’t.

FERDINAND     No, as I am a man.

MIRANDA

There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple.

If the ill spirit have so fair a house,

Good things will strive to dwell with’t.

PROSPERO [to Ferdinand]      Follow me. –

460

Speak not you for him; he’s a traitor. – Come,

I’ll manacle thy neck and feet together;

Sea water shalt thou drink; thy food shall be

The fresh-brook mussels, withered roots, and husks

Wherein the acorn cradled. Follow!

FERDINAND     No,

465

I will resist such entertainment till

Mine enemy has more power.

[He draws and is charmed from moving.]

MIRANDA     O dear father,

Make not too rash a trial of him, for

He’s gentle and not fearful.

PROSPERO     What, I say,

My foot my tutor? Put thy sword up, traitor,

470

Who mak’st a show but dar’st not strike, thy conscience

Is so possessed with guilt. Come from thy ward,

For I can here disarm thee with this stick

And make thy weapon drop.

MIRANDA     Beseech you, father –

PROSPERO     Hence; hang not on my garments.

MIRANDA     Sir, have pity;

475

I’ll be his surety.

PROSPERO     Silence! One word more

Shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. What,

An advocate for an impostor? Hush.

Thou think’st there is no more such shapes as he,

Having seen but him and Caliban. Foolish wench,

480

To th’ most of men, this is a Caliban,

And they to him are angels.

MIRANDA     My affections

Are then most humble. I have no ambition

To see a goodlier man.

PROSPERO     [to Ferdinand] Come on, obey:

Thy nerves are in their infancy again

485

And have no vigour in them.

FERDINAND     So they are!

My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.

My father’s loss, the weakness which I feel,

The wreck of all my friends, nor this man’s threats

(To whom I am subdued) are but light to me,

490

Might I but through my prison once a day

Behold this maid. All corners else o’th’ earth

Let liberty make use of; space enough

Have I in such a prison.

PROSPERO     [aside] It works. [to Ferdinand] Come on. –

Thou hast done well, fine Ariel. – Follow me; –

495

Hark what thou else shalt do me.

MIRANDA     [to Ferdinand] Be of comfort;

My father’s of a better nature, sir,

Than he appears by speech. This is unwonted

Which now came from him.

PROSPERO     [to Ariel] Thou shalt be as free

As mountain winds, but then exactly do

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All points of my command.

ARIEL     To th’ syllable.

PROSPERO     [to Ferdinand]

Come, follow; – speak not for him.

Exeunt.

2.1 Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO and others.

GONZALO     Beseech you, sir, be merry. You have cause

(So have we all) of joy, for our escape

Is much beyond our loss. Our hint of woe

Is common: every day some sailor’s wife,

The masters of some merchant, and the merchant,

5

Have just our theme of woe. But for the miracle,

I mean our preservation, few in millions

Can speak like us. Then wisely, good sir, weigh

Our sorrow with our comfort.

ALONSO     Prithee, peace.

SEBASTIAN     [to Antonio] He receives comfort like cold

10

porridge.

ANTONIO     [to Sebastian] The visitor will not give him

o’er so.

SEBASTIAN     Look, he’s winding up the watch of his wit;

by and by it will strike –

15

GONZALO     [to Alonso] Sir –

SEBASTIAN     One. Tell.

GONZALO     When every grief is entertained that’s

offered, comes to th’entertainer –

SEBASTIAN     A dollar.

20

GONZALO     Dolour comes to him, indeed. You have

spoken truer than you purposed.

SEBASTIAN     You have taken it wiselier than I meant you

should.

GONZALO     Therefore, my lord –

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ANTONIO     Fie, what a spendthrift is he of his tongue!

ALONSO     I prithee, spare.

GONZALO     Well, I have done; but yet –

SEBASTIAN     He will be talking.

ANTONIO     Which, of he or Adrian, for a good wager,

30

first begins to crow?

SEBASTIAN     The old cock.

ANTONIO     The cockerel.

SEBASTIAN     Done! The wager?

ANTONIO     A laughter.

35

SEBASTIAN     A match!

ADRIAN     Though this island seem to be desert –

ANTONIO     Ha, ha, ha.

SEBASTIAN     So, you’re paid.

ADRIAN     Uninhabitable and almost inaccessible –

40

SEBASTIAN     Yet –

ADRIAN     Yet –

ANTONIO     He could not miss’t.

ADRIAN     It must needs be of subtle, tender and delicate

temperance.

45

ANTONIO     Temperance was a delicate wench.

SEBASTIAN     Ay, and a subtle, as he most learnedly

delivered.

ADRIAN     The air breathes upon us here most sweetly.

SEBASTIAN     As if it had lungs, and rotten ones.

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ANTONIO     Or, as ’twere perfumed by a fen.

GONZALO     Here is everything advantageous to life.

ANTONIO     True, save means to live.

SEBASTIAN     Of that there’s none, or little.

GONZALO     How lush and lusty the grass looks! How green!

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ANTONIO     The ground indeed is tawny.

SEBASTIAN     With an eye of green in’t.

ANTONIO     He misses not much.

SEBASTIAN     No; he doth but mistake the truth totally.

GONZALO     But the rarity of it is, which is indeed almost

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beyond credit –

SEBASTIAN     As many vouched rarities are.

GONZALO     That our garments being, as they were,

drenched in the sea, hold notwithstanding their

freshness and gloss, being rather new-dyed than

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stained with salt water.

ANTONIO     If but one of his pockets could speak, would it

not say he lies?

SEBASTIAN     Ay, or very falsely pocket up his report.

GONZALO     Methinks our garments are now as fresh as

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when we put them on first in Africa, at the marriage of

the King’s fair daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis.

SEBASTIAN     ’Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper

well in our return.

ADRIAN     Tunis was never graced before with such a

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paragon to their queen.

GONZALO     Not since widow Dido’s time.

ANTONIO     Widow? A pox o’that. How came that widow

in? Widow Dido!

SEBASTIAN     What if he had said widower Aeneas too?

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Good lord, how you take it!

ADRIAN     Widow Dido, said you? You make me study of

that. She was of Carthage, not of Tunis.

GONZALO     This Tunis, sir, was Carthage.

ADRIAN     Carthage?

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GONZALO     I assure you, Carthage.

ANTONIO     His word is more than the miraculous harp.

SEBASTIAN     He hath raised the wall, and houses too.

ANTONIO     What impossible matter will he make easy

next?

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SEBASTIAN     I think he will carry this island home in his

pocket and give it his son for an apple.

ANTONIO     And sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring

forth more islands!

GONZALO     I –

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ANTONIO     Why, in good time.

GONZALO     Sir, we were talking that our garments seem

now as fresh as when we were at Tunis at the marriage

of your daughter, who is now Queen.

ANTONIO     And the rarest that e’er came there.

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SEBASTIAN     Bate, I beseech you, widow Dido.

ANTONIO     O, widow Dido? Ay, widow Dido.

GONZALO     Is not, sir, my doublet as fresh as the first

day I wore it? I mean, in a sort.

ANTONIO     That sort was well fished for.

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GONZALO     When I wore it at your daughter’s marriage.

ALONSO     You cram these words into mine ears, against

The stomach of my sense. Would I had never

Married my daughter there, for coming thence

My son is lost and (in my rate) she too,

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Who is so far from Italy removed

I ne’er again shall see her. O thou mine heir

Of Naples and of Milan, what strange fish

Hath made his meal on thee?

FRANCISCO     Sir, he may live.

I saw him beat the surges under him

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And ride upon their backs. He trod the water,

Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted

The surge most swoll’n that met him. His bold head

’Bove the contentious waves he kept and oared

Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke

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To th’ shore, that o’er his wave-worn basis bowed,

As stooping to relieve him. I not doubt

He came alive to land.

ALONSO     No, no, he’s gone.

SEBASTIAN

Sir, you may thank yourself for this great loss,

That would not bless our Europe with your daughter

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But rather loose her to an African,

Where she at least is banished from your eye,

Who hath cause to wet the grief on’t.

ALONSO     Prithee, peace.

SEBASTIAN

You were kneeled to and importuned otherwise

By all of us, and the fair soul herself

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Weighed between loathness and obedience, at

Which end o’th’ beam should bow. We have lost your son,

I fear, for ever. Milan and Naples have

More widows in them of this business’ making

Than we bring men to comfort them.

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The fault’s your own.

ALONSO     So is the dear’st o’th’ loss.

GONZALO     My lord Sebastian,

The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness,

And time to speak it in. You rub the sore

When you should bring the plaster.

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SEBASTIAN     Very well.

ANTONIO     And most chirurgeonly!

GONZALO     It is foul weather in us all, good sir,

When you are cloudy.

SEBASTIAN     Foul weather?

ANTONIO     Very foul.

GONZALO     Had I plantation of this isle, my lord –

ANTONIO     He’d sow’t with nettle-seed.

SEBASTIAN     Or docks, or mallows.

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GONZALO     And were the king on’t, what would I do?

SEBASTIAN     ’Scape being drunk, for want of wine.

GONZALO     I’th’ commonwealth I would by contraries

Execute all things, for no kind of traffic

Would I admit; no name of magistrate;

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Letters should not be known; riches, poverty

And use of service, none; contract, succession,

Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard – none;

No use of metal, corn, or wine or oil;

No occupation, all men idle, all;

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And women, too, but innocent and pure;

No sovereignty –

SEBASTIAN     Yet he would be king on’t.

ANTONIO     The latter end of his commonwealth forgets

the beginning.

GONZALO

All things in common nature should produce

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Without sweat or endeavour; treason, felony,

Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine

Would I not have; but nature should bring forth

Of its own kind all foison, all abundance,

To feed my innocent people.

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SEBASTIAN     No marrying ’mong his subjects?

ANTONIO     None, man, all idle – whores and knaves.

GONZALO     I would with such perfection govern, sir,

T’excel the Golden Age.

SEBASTIAN     ’Save his majesty!

ANTONIO     Long live Gonzalo!

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GONZALO     And – do you mark me, sir? –

ALONSO     Prithee, no more.

Thou dost talk nothing to me.

GONZALO     I do well believe your highness, and did it to

minister occasion to these gentlemen, who are of such

sensible and nimble lungs that they always use to

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laugh at nothing.

ANTONIO     ’Twas you we laughed at.

GONZALO     Who, in this kind of merry fooling, am

nothing to you, so you may continue and laugh at

nothing still.

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ANTONIO     What a blow was there given!

SEBASTIAN     An it had not fallen flat-long.

GONZALO     You are gentlemen of brave mettle. You

would lift the moon out of her sphere, if she would

continue in it five weeks without changing.

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Enter ARIEL playing solemn music.

SEBASTIAN     We would so, and then go a bat-fowling.

ANTONIO     Nay, good my lord, be not angry.

GONZALO     No, I warrant you, I will not adventure my

discretion so weakly. Will you laugh me asleep, for I

am very heavy.

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ANTONIO     Go sleep, and hear us.

[All sleep except Alonso, Sebastian and Antonio.]

ALONSO     What, all so soon asleep? I wish mine eyes

Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts. I find

They are inclined to do so.

SEBASTIAN     Please you, sir,

Do not omit the heavy offer of it.

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It seldom visits sorrow; when it doth,

It is a comforter.

ANTONIO     We two, my lord,

Will guard your person while you take your rest,

And watch your safety.

ALONSO     Thank you. Wondrous heavy.

[Alonso sleeps. Exit Ariel.]

SEBASTIAN     What a strange drowsiness possesses them!

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ANTONIO     It is the quality o’th’ climate.

SEBASTIAN     Why

Doth it not then our eyelids sink? I find not

Myself disposed to sleep.

ANTONIO     Nor I. My spirits are nimble.

They fell together all, as by consent;

They dropped, as by a thunderstroke. What might,

205

Worthy Sebastian, O, what might –? No more;

And yet, methinks I see it in thy face

What thou shouldst be. Th’occasion speaks thee, and

My strong imagination sees a crown

Dropping upon thy head.

SEBASTIAN     What, art thou waking?

210

ANTONIO     Do you not hear me speak?

SEBASTIAN     I do, and surely

It is a sleepy language, and thou speak’st

Out of thy sleep. What is it thou didst say?

This is a strange repose, to be asleep

With eyes wide open – standing, speaking, moving,

215

And yet so fast asleep.

ANTONIO     Noble Sebastian,

Thou let’st thy fortune sleep – die rather; wink’st

Whiles thou art waking.

SEBASTIAN     Thou dost snore distinctly.

220

There’s meaning in thy snores.

ANTONIO     I am more serious than my custom. You

Must be so too, if heed me, which to do

Trebles thee o’er.

SEBASTIAN     Well, I am standing water.

ANTONIO     I’ll teach you how to flow.

SEBASTIAN     Do so. To ebb

Hereditary sloth instructs me.

ANTONIO     O,

If you but knew how you the purpose cherish

225

Whiles thus you mock it, how in stripping it

You more invest it. Ebbing men, indeed,

Most often do so near the bottom run

By their own fear or sloth.

SEBASTIAN     Prithee, say on;

The setting of thine eye and cheek proclaim

230

A matter from thee, and a birth, indeed,

Which throes thee much to yield.

ANTONIO     Thus, sir:

Although this lord of weak remembrance – this

Who shall be of as little memory

When he is earthed – hath here almost persuaded

235

(For he’s a spirit of persuasion, only

Professes to persuade) the King his son’s alive,

’Tis as impossible that he’s undrowned

As he that sleeps here swims.

SEBASTIAN     I have no hope

That he’s undrowned.

ANTONIO     O, out of that ‘no hope’,

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What great hope have you! No hope that way is

Another way so high a hope that even

Ambition cannot pierce a wink beyond,

But doubt discovery there. Will you grant with me

That Ferdinand is drowned?

SEBASTIAN     He’s gone.

ANTONIO     Then tell me,

245

Who’s the next heir of Naples?

SEBASTIAN     Claribel.

ANTONIO     She that is Queen of Tunis; she that dwells

Ten leagues beyond man’s life; she that from Naples

Can have no note unless the sun were post –

The man i’th’ moon’s too slow – till newborn chins

250

Be rough and razorable; she that from whom

We all were sea-swallowed, though some cast again,

And by that destiny to perform an act

Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come

In yours and my discharge!

255

SEBASTIAN     What stuff is this? How say you?

’Tis true my brother’s daughter’s Queen of Tunis,

So is she heir of Naples, ’twixt which regions

There is some space.

ANTONIO     A space whose every cubit

Seems to cry out, ‘How shall that Claribel

260

Measure us back to Naples? Keep in Tunis,

And let Sebastian wake.’ Say this were death

That now hath seized them; why, they were no worse

Than now they are. There be that can rule Naples

As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate

265

As amply and unnecessarily

As this Gonzalo. I myself could make

A chough of as deep chat. O that you bore

The mind that I do! What a sleep were this

For your advancement! Do you understand me?

270

SEBASTIAN     Methinks I do.

ANTONIO     And how does your content

Tender your own good fortune?

SEBASTIAN     I remember

You did supplant your brother Prospero.

ANTONIO     True:

And look how well my garments sit upon me

Much feater than before. My brother’s servants

275

Were then my fellows; now they are my men.

SEBASTIAN     But for your conscience?

ANTONIO     Ay, sir, where lies that? If ’twere a kibe

’Twould put me to my slipper, but I feel not

This deity in my bosom. Twenty consciences

280

That stand ’twixt me and Milan, candied be they

And melt ere they molest! Here lies your brother,

No better than the earth he lies upon.

If he were that which now he’s like (that’s dead)

Whom I with this obedient steel – three inches of it –

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Can lay to bed forever (whiles you, doing thus,

To the perpetual wink for aye might put

This ancient morsel, this Sir Prudence, who

Should not upbraid our course) – for all the rest

They’ll take suggestion as a cat laps milk;

290

They’ll tell the clock to any business that

We say befits the hour.

SEBASTIAN     Thy case, dear friend,

Shall be my precedent. As thou got’st Milan,

I’ll come by Naples. Draw thy sword! One stroke

Shall free thee from the tribute which thou payest,

295

And I the king shall love thee.

ANTONIO     Draw together,

And when I rear my hand, do you the like

To fall it on Gonzalo.

SEBASTIAN     O, but one word –

Enter ARIEL with music and song.

ARIEL

My master through his art foresees the danger

That you, his friend, are in, and sends me forth

300

(For else his project dies) to keep them living.

     [Sings in Gonzalo’s ear.]

While you here do snoring lie,

Open-eyed conspiracy

His time doth take.

If of life you keep a care,

Shake off slumber and beware.

305

Awake, awake!

ANTONIO     Then let us both be sudden.

GONZALO     [Wakes.]

Now, good angels preserve the King!

ALONSO     [Wakes.]

Why, how now, ho! Awake! Why are you drawn?

Wherefore this ghastly looking?

310

GONZALO     What’s the matter?

SEBASTIAN     Whiles we stood here securing your repose,

Even now we heard a hollow burst of bellowing,

Like bulls, or rather lions. Did’t not wake you?

It struck mine ear most terribly.

ALONSO     I heard nothing.

315

ANTONIO     O, ’twas a din to fright a monster’s ear –

To make an earthquake! Sure it was the roar

Of a whole herd of lions.

ALONSO     Heard you this, Gonzalo?

GONZALO     Upon mine honour, sir, I heard a humming,

And that a strange one too, which did awake me.

320

I shaked you, sir, and cried. As mine eyes opened,

I saw their weapons drawn. There was a noise,

That’s verily. ’Tis best we stand upon our guard,

Or that we quit this place. Let’s draw our weapons.

ALONSO

Lead off this ground, and let’s make further search

325

For my poor son.

GONZALO     Heavens keep him from these beasts,

For he is, sure, i’th’ island.

ALONSO     Lead away.

ARIEL     Prospero, my lord, shall know what I have done;

So, King, go safely on to seek thy son.     Exeunt.

2.2 Enter CALIBAN, with a burden of wood; a noise of thunder heard.

CALIBAN     All the infections that the sun sucks up

From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him

By inchmeal a disease! His spirits hear me,

And yet I needs must curse. But they’ll nor pinch,

Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i’th’ mire,

5

Nor lead me, like a firebrand in the dark,

Out of my way unless he bid ’em. But

For every trifle are they set upon me:

Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me

And after bite me, then like hedgehogs which

10

Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount

Their pricks at my footfall. Sometime am I

All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues

Do hiss me into madness. Lo now, lo,

Enter TRINCULO

Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me

15

For bringing wood in slowly. I’ll fall flat;

Perchance he will not mind me.

TRINCULO     Here’s neither bush nor shrub to bear off any

weather at all, and another storm brewing; I hear it sing

i’th’ wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one,

20

looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If

it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to

hide my head. Yond same cloud cannot choose but fall

by pailfuls. [Sees Caliban.] What have we here, a man

or a fish? Dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish, a

25

very ancient and fish-like smell, a kind of – not of the

newest – poor-John. A strange fish! Were I in England

now (as once I was) and had but this fish painted, not

a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver.

There would this monster make a man; any strange

30

beast there makes a man. When they will not give a

doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to

see a dead Indian. Legged like a man and his fins like

arms! Warm, o’my troth! I do now let loose my

opinion, hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an

35

islander that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt.

Alas, the storm is come again. My best way is to creep

under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter

hereabout. Misery acquaints a man with strange

bedfellows! I will here shroud till the dregs of the

40

storm be past.

Enter STEPHANO singing.

STEPHANO     I shall no more to sea, to sea,

Here shall I die ashore.

This is a very scurvy tune to sing at a man’s funeral.

Well, here’s my comfort. [Drinks and then sings.]

45

The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I;

The gunner and his mate,

Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery,

But none of us cared for Kate.

For she had a tongue with a tang,

50

Would cry to a sailor, ‘Go hang!’

She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch,

Yet a tailor might scratch her where’er she did itch.

Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang!

This is a scurvy tune too, but here’s my comfort.

55

[Drinks.]

CALIBAN     Do not torment me! O!

STEPHANO     What’s the matter? Have we devils here? Do

you put tricks upon’s with savages and men of Ind?

Ha! I have not ’scaped drowning to be afeard now of

your four legs; for it hath been said, ‘As proper a man

60

as ever went on four legs cannot make him give

ground’. And it shall be said so again while Stephano

breathes at’ nostrils.

CALIBAN     The spirit torments me! O!

STEPHANO     This is some monster of the isle, with four

65

legs, who hath got, as I take it, an ague. Where the devil

should he learn our language? I will give him some

relief, if it be but for that. If I can recover him and keep

him tame, and get to Naples with him, he’s a present for

any emperor that ever trod on neat’s leather.

70

CALIBAN     Do not torment me, prithee. I’ll bring my

wood home faster.

STEPHANO     He’s in his fit now and does not talk after the

wisest. He shall taste of my bottle; if he have never

drunk wine afore, it will go near to remove his fit. If I

75

can recover him and keep him tame, I will not take too

much for him! He shall pay for him that hath him, and

that soundly.

CALIBAN     Thou dost me yet but little hurt. Thou wilt

anon, I know it by thy trembling. Now Prosper works

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upon thee.

STEPHANO     Come on your ways; open your mouth. Here

is that which will give language to you, cat. Open your

mouth! This will shake your shaking, I can tell you,

and that soundly. [Pours into Caliban’s mouth.] You

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cannot tell who’s your friend. Open your chaps again.

TRINCULO     I should know that voice. It should be – but

he is drowned, and these are devils. O, defend me!

STEPHANO     Four legs and two voices – a most delicate

monster! His forward voice now is to speak well of his

90

friend; his backward voice is to utter foul speeches and

to detract. If all the wine in my bottle will recover him,

I will help his ague. Come. Amen! I will pour some in

thy other mouth.

TRINCULO     Stephano!

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STEPHANO     Doth thy other mouth call me? Mercy,

mercy! This is a devil and no monster. I will leave him;

I have no long spoon.

TRINCULO     Stephano? If thou be’st Stephano, touch me

and speak to me, for I am Trinculo! Be not afeard – thy

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good friend Trinculo.

STEPHANO     If thou be’st Trinculo, come forth. I’ll pull

thee by the lesser legs. If any be Trinculo’s legs, these

are they. [Pulls him from under the cloak.] Thou art very

Trinculo indeed! How cam’st thou to be the siege of

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this mooncalf? Can he vent Trinculos?

TRINCULO     I took him to be killed with a thunderstroke.

But art thou not drowned, Stephano? I hope now thou

art not drowned. Is the storm overblown? I hid me

under the dead mooncalf’s gaberdine for fear of the

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storm. And art thou living, Stephano? O Stephano,

two Neapolitans ’scaped?

STEPHANO     Prithee, do not turn me about; my stomach

is not constant.

CALIBAN

These be fine things, an if they be not sprites;

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That’s a brave god and bears celestial liquor.

I will kneel to him.

STEPHANO     How didst thou scape? How cam’st thou

hither? Swear by this bottle how thou cam’st hither. I

escaped upon a butt of sack, which the sailors heaved

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o’erboard – by this bottle, which I made of the bark of

a tree with mine own hands since I was cast ashore.

CALIBAN     I’ll swear upon that bottle to be thy true

subject, for the liquor is not earthly.

STEPHANO     Here, swear then how thou escaped’st.

125

TRINCULO     Swum ashore, man, like a duck. I can swim

like a duck, I’ll be sworn.

STEPHANO     Here, kiss the book. [Trinculo drinks.]

Though thou canst swim like a duck, thou art made

like a goose.

130

TRINCULO     O Stephano, hast any more of this?

STEPHANO     The whole butt, man. My cellar is in a rock

by th’ seaside, where my wine is hid. How now,

mooncalf, how does thine ague?

CALIBAN     Hast thou not dropped from heaven?

135

STEPHANO     Out o’th’ moon, I do assure thee. I was the

man i’th’ moon when time was.

CALIBAN

I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee!

My mistress showed me thee, and thy dog and thy

bush.

STEPHANO     Come, swear to that. Kiss the book. I will

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furnish it anon with new contents. Swear!

     [Caliban drinks.]

TRINCULO     By this good light, this is a very shallow

monster. I afeard of him? A very weak monster. The

man i’th’ moon? A most poor credulous monster! Well

drawn, monster, in good sooth.

145

CALIBAN     I’ll show thee every fertile inch o’th’ island,

And I will kiss thy foot. I prithee, be my god.

TRINCULO     By this light, a most perfidious and drunken

monster; when’s god’s asleep, he’ll rob his bottle.

CALIBAN     I’ll kiss thy foot. I’ll swear myself thy subject.

150

STEPHANO     Come on, then, down and swear.

TRINCULO     I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-

headed monster. A most scurvy monster. I could find

in my heart to beat him –

STEPHANO     Come, kiss.

155

TRINCULO     But that the poor monster’s in drink. An

abominable monster!

CALIBAN

I’ll show thee the best springs; I’ll pluck thee berries;

I’ll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough.

A plague upon the tyrant that I serve!

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I’ll bear him no more sticks but follow thee,

Thou wondrous man.

TRINCULO     A most ridiculous monster – to make a

wonder of a poor drunkard!

CALIBAN     I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow,

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And I with my long nails will dig thee pignuts,

Show thee a jay’s nest, and instruct thee how

To snare the nimble marmoset. I’ll bring thee

To clust’ring filberts, and sometimes I’ll get thee

Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?

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STEPHANO     I prithee, now, lead the way without any more

talking. Trinculo, the King and all our company else

being drowned, we will inherit here. Here, bear my

bottle. Fellow Trinculo, we’ll fill him by and by again.

CALIBAN     [Sings drunkenly.]

Farewell, master; farewell, farewell!

175

TRINCULO     A howling monster, a drunken monster!

CALIBAN     No more dams I’ll make for fish,

Nor fetch in firing at requiring,

Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish.

Ban’ ban’ Ca-caliban,

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Has a new master, get a new man.

Freedom, high-day; high-day freedom; freedom high-

day, freedom.

STEPHANO     O brave monster, lead the way. Exeunt.

3.1 Enter FERDINAND, bearing a log.

FERDINAND

There be some sports are painful, and their labour

Delight in them sets off. Some kinds of baseness

Are nobly undergone; and most poor matters

Point to rich ends. This my mean task

Would be as heavy to me as odious, but

5

The mistress which I serve quickens what’s dead,

And makes my labours pleasures. O, she is

Ten times more gentle than her father’s crabbed,

And he’s composed of harshness. I must remove

Some thousands of these logs and pile them up,

10

Upon a sore injunction. My sweet mistress

Weeps when she sees me work and says such baseness

Had never like executor. I forget;

But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours

Most busilest when I do it.

Enter MIRANDA, and PROSPERO at a distance, unseen.

MIRANDA     Alas now, pray you,

15

Work not so hard. I would the lightning had

Burnt up those logs that you are enjoined to pile!

Pray set it down and rest you. When this burns,

’Twill weep for having wearied you. My father

Is hard at study; pray now, rest yourself.

20

He’s safe for these three hours.

FERDINAND     O most dear mistress,

The sun will set before I shall discharge

What I must strive to do.

MIRANDA     If you’ll sit down,

I’ll bear your logs the while. Pray give me that;

I’ll carry it to the pile.

FERDINAND     No, precious creature,

25

I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,

Than you should such dishonour undergo

While I sit lazy by.

MIRANDA     It would become me

As well as it does you, and I should do it

With much more ease, for my good will is to it,

30

And yours it is against.

PROSPERO     [aside] Poor worm, thou art infected!

This visitation shows it.

MIRANDA     You look wearily.

FERDINAND

No, noble mistress, ’tis fresh morning with me

When you are by at night. I do beseech you –

Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers –

35

What is your name?

MIRANDA     Miranda. – O my father,

I have broke your hest to say so!

FERDINAND     Admired Miranda!

Indeed the top of admiration, worth

What’s dearest to the world! Full many a lady

I have eyed with best regard, and many a time

40

Th’ harmony of their tongues hath into bondage

Brought my too diligent ear. For several virtues

Have I liked several women; never any

With so full soul but some defect in her

Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed

45

And put it to the foil. But you, O you,

So perfect and so peerless, are created

Of every creature’s best.

MIRANDA     I do not know

One of my sex, no woman’s face remember –

Save, from my glass, mine own. Nor have I seen

50

More that I may call men than you, good friend,

And my dear father. How features are abroad

I am skilless of, but by my modesty

(The jewel in my dower), I would not wish

Any companion in the world but you,

55

Nor can imagination form a shape,

Besides yourself, to like of. But I prattle

Something too wildly, and my father’s precepts

I therein do forget.

FERDINAND     I am, in my condition,

A prince, Miranda; I do think a king

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(I would not so!) and would no more endure

This wooden slavery than to suffer

The flesh-fly blow my mouth! Hear my soul speak:

The very instant that I saw you did

My heart fly to your service, there resides

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To make me slave to it, and for your sake

Am I this patient log-man.

MIRANDA     Do you love me?

FERDINAND

O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound,

And crown what I profess with kind event

If I speak true; if hollowly, invert

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What best is boded me to mischief! I,

Beyond all limit of what else i’th’ world,

Do love, prize, honour you.

MIRANDA     I am a fool

To weep at what I am glad of.

PROSPERO     [aside] Fair encounter

Of two most rare affections! Heavens rain grace

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On that which breeds between ’em.

FERDINAND     Wherefore weep you?

MIRANDA     At mine unworthiness that dare not offer

What I desire to give, and much less take

What I shall die to want. But this is trifling,

And all the more it seeks to hide itself,

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The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning,

And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!

I am your wife, if you will marry me;

If not, I’ll die your maid. To be your fellow

You may deny me, but I’ll be your servant

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Whether you will or no.

FERDINAND     My mistress, dearest,

And I thus humble ever.

MIRANDA     My husband, then?

FERDINAND     Ay, with a heart as willing

As bondage e’er of freedom. Here’s my hand.

MIRANDA

And mine, with my heart in’t. And now farewell

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Till half an hour hence.

FERDINAND     A thousand thousand!

     Exeunt Miranda and Ferdinand.

PROSPERO     So glad of this as they I cannot be,

Who are surprised withal, but my rejoicing

At nothing can be more. I’ll to my book,

For yet ere suppertime must I perform

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Much business appertaining.     Exit.

3.2 Enter CALIBAN, STEPHANO and TRINCULO.

STEPHANO     Tell not me. When the butt is out, we will

drink water; not a drop before. Therefore bear up and

board ’em. Servant monster, drink to me.

TRINCULO     Servant monster? The folly of this island!

They say there’s but five upon this isle; we are three of

5

them. If th’other two be brained like us, the state totters.

STEPHANO     Drink, servant monster, when I bid thee.

Thy eyes are almost set in thy head.

TRINCULO     Where should they be set else? He were a

10

brave monster, indeed, if they were set in his tail.

STEPHANO     My man-monster hath drowned his tongue

in sack. For my part, the sea cannot drown me. I

swam, ere I could recover the shore, five and thirty

leagues off and on. By this light, thou shalt be my

15

lieutenant, monster, or my standard.

TRINCULO     Your lieutenant, if you list; he’s no standard.

STEPHANO     We’ll not run, Monsieur Monster.

TRINCULO     Nor go, neither; but you’ll lie like dogs and

yet say nothing, neither.

20

STEPHANO     Mooncalf, speak once in thy life, if thou

be’st a good mooncalf.

CALIBAN     How does thy honour? Let me lick thy shoe.

I’ll not serve him; he is not valiant.

TRINCULO     Thou liest, most ignorant monster. I am in

25

case to jostle a constable. Why thou deboshed fish,

thou, was there ever man a coward that hath drunk so

much sack as I today? Wilt thou tell a monstrous lie,

being but half a fish and half a monster?

CALIBAN     Lo, how he mocks me. Wilt thou let him, my lord?

30

TRINCULO     ‘Lord’, quoth he? That a monster should be

such a natural!

CALIBAN     Lo, lo again! Bite him to death, I prithee.

STEPHANO     Trinculo, keep a good tongue in your head. If

you prove a mutineer – the next tree! The poor

35

monster’s my subject, and he shall not suffer indignity.

CALIBAN     I thank my noble lord. Wilt thou be pleased to

hearken once again to the suit I made to thee?

STEPHANO     Marry, will I. Kneel and repeat it; I will

stand, and so shall Trinculo.

40

Enter ARIEL, invisible.

CALIBAN     As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant,

A sorcerer, that by his cunning hath

Cheated me of the island.

ARIEL     [in Trinculo’s voice] Thou liest.

CALIBAN     Thou liest, thou jesting monkey, thou.

I would my valiant master would destroy thee.

45

I do not lie.

STEPHANO     Trinculo, if you trouble him any more in’s

tale, by this hand, I will supplant some of your teeth.

TRINCULO     Why, I said nothing.

STEPHANO     Mum, then, and no more. Proceed.

50

CALIBAN     I say, by sorcery he got this isle.

From me he got it. If thy greatness will

Revenge it on him – for I know thou dar’st,

But this thing dare not –

STEPHANO     That’s most certain.

55

CALIBAN     Thou shalt be lord of it, and I’ll serve thee.

STEPHANO     How now shall this be compassed? Canst

thou bring me to the party?

CALIBAN     Yea, yea, my lord, I’ll yield him thee asleep,

Where thou mayst knock a nail into his head.

60

ARIEL     [in Trinculo’s voice] Thou liest, thou canst not.

CALIBAN

What a pied ninny’s this? Thou scurvy patch!

I do beseech thy greatness, give him blows,

And take his bottle from him. When that’s gone,

He shall drink nought but brine, for I’ll not show him

65

Where the quick freshes are.

STEPHANO     Trinculo, run into no further danger.

Interrupt the monster one word further, and by this

hand I’ll turn my mercy out o’doors and make a

stockfish of thee.

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TRINCULO     Why, what did I? I did nothing. I’ll go farther off.

STEPHANO     Didst thou not say he lied?

ARIEL     [in Trinculo’s voice] Thou liest.

STEPHANO     Do I so? Take thou that! [Hits Trinculo.] As

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you like this, give me the lie another time!

TRINCULO     I did not give thee the lie. Out o’your wits

and hearing too? A pox o’your bottle! This can sack

and drinking do. A murrain on your monster, and the

devil take your fingers.

80

CALIBAN     Ha, ha, ha!

STEPHANO     Now, forward with your tale. [to Trinculo]

Prithee, stand farther off.

CALIBAN     Beat him enough; after a little time,

I’ll beat him too.

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STEPHANO     [to Trinculo] Stand farther. [to Caliban]

Come, proceed.

CALIBAN     Why, as I told thee, ’tis a custom with him

I’th’ afternoon to sleep. There thou mayst brain him,

Having first seized his books, or with a log

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Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake,

Or cut his wezand with thy knife. Remember

First to possess his books, for without them

He’s but a sot, as I am, nor hath not

One spirit to command. They all do hate him

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As rootedly as I. Burn but his books.

He has brave utensils (for so he calls them)

Which, when he has a house, he’ll deck withal.

And that most deeply to consider is

The beauty of his daughter; he himself

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Calls her a nonpareil. I never saw a woman

But only Sycorax, my dam, and she;

But she as far surpasseth Sycorax

As great’st does least.

STEPHANO     Is it so brave a lass?

CALIBAN     Ay, lord, she will become thy bed, I warrant,

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And bring thee forth brave brood.

STEPHANO     Monster, I will kill this man. His daughter

and I will be king and queen – save our graces – and

Trinculo and thyself shall be viceroys. Dost thou like

the plot, Trinculo?

110

TRINCULO     Excellent.

STEPHANO     Give me thy hand. I am sorry I beat thee,

but while thou livest, keep a good tongue in thy head.

CALIBAN     Within this half hour will he be asleep.

Wilt thou destroy him then?

STEPHANO     Ay, on mine honour.

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ARIEL     [aside] This will I tell my master.

CALIBAN     Thou mak’st me merry; I am full of pleasure.

Let us be jocund. Will you troll the catch

You taught me but whilere?

STEPHANO     At thy request, monster. I will do reason,

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any reason. Come on, Trinculo, let us sing.

[Sings.] Flout ’em and scout ’em,

And scout ’em and flout ’em,

Thought is free.

CALIBAN     That’s not the tune.

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[Ariel plays the tune on a tabor and pipe.]

STEPHANO     What is this same?

TRINCULO     This is the tune of our catch, played by the

picture of Nobody.

STEPHANO     If thou be’st a man, show thyself in thy

likeness. If thou be’st a devil, take’t as thou list.

130

TRINCULO     O, forgive me my sins!

STEPHANO     He that dies pays all debts. I defy thee.

Mercy upon us!

CALIBAN     Art thou afeard?

STEPHANO     No, monster, not I.

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CALIBAN     Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,

That if I then had waked after long sleep,

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Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,

The clouds, methought, would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked

I cried to dream again.

STEPHANO     This will prove a brave kingdom to me,

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where I shall have my music for nothing.

CALIBAN     When Prospero is destroyed.

STEPHANO     That shall be by and by. I remember the story.

TRINCULO     The sound is going away. Let’s follow it, and

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after do our work.

STEPHANO     Lead, monster, we’ll follow. I would I could

see this taborer; he lays it on.

TRINCULO     [to Caliban] Wilt come? I’ll follow Stephano.     Exeunt.

3.3 Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO and others.

GONZALO     By’r lakin, I can go no further, sir;

My old bones aches. Here’s a maze trod, indeed,

Through forthrights and meanders! By your patience,

I needs must rest me.

ALONSO     Old lord, I cannot blame thee,

Who am myself attached with weariness

5

To th’ dulling of my spirits. Sit down and rest.

Even here I will put off my hope and keep it

No longer for my flatterer. He is drowned

Whom thus we stray to find, and the sea mocks

Our frustrate search on land. Well, let him go.

10

ANTONIO     [aside to Sebastian]

I am right glad that he’s so out of hope.

Do not, for one repulse, forgo the purpose

That you resolved t’effect.

SEBASTIAN     [aside to Antonio] The next advantage

Will we take throughly.

ANTONIO     Let it be tonight,

For now they are oppressed with travail; they

15

Will not, nor cannot, use such vigilance

As when they are fresh.

SEBASTIAN     I say tonight. No more.

Solemn and strange music, and PROSPERO on the top,

invisible. Enter several strange shapes, bringing in a

banquet, and dance about it with gentle actions of

salutations, and inviting the King etc. to eat, they depart.

ALONSO

What harmony is this? My good friends, hark!

GONZALO     Marvellous sweet music!

ALONSO

Give us kind keepers, heavens! What were these?

20

SEBASTIAN     A living drollery! Now I will believe

That there are unicorns; that in Arabia

There is one tree, the phoenix’ throne, one phoenix

At this hour reigning there.

ANTONIO     I’ll believe both;

And what does else want credit, come to me

25

And I’ll be sworn ’tis true. Travellers ne’er did lie,

Though fools at home condemn ’em.

GONZALO     If in Naples

I should report this now, would they believe me?

If I should say I saw such islanders

(For certes, these are people of the island),

30

Who, though they are of monstrous shape, yet note

Their manners are more gentle, kind, than of

Our human generation you shall find

Many – nay, almost any.

PROSPERO     [aside] Honest lord,

Thou hast said well, for some of you there present

35

Are worse than devils.

ALONSO     I cannot too much muse

Such shapes, such gesture and such sound, expressing

(Although they want the use of tongue) a kind

Of excellent dumb discourse.

PROSPERO     [aside] Praise in departing.

FRANCISCO     They vanished strangely!

SEBASTIAN     No matter, since

40

They have left their viands behind, for we have

stomachs.

Will’t please you taste of what is here?

ALONSO     Not I.

GONZALO

Faith, sir, you need not fear. When we were boys,

Who would believe that there were mountaineers

Dewlapped like bulls, whose throats had hanging at ’em

45

Wallets of flesh? Or that there were such men

Whose heads stood in their breasts, which now we find

Each putter-out of five for one will bring us

Good warrant of?

ALONSO     I will stand to and feed,

Although my last; no matter, since I feel

50

The best is past. Brother, my lord the Duke,

Stand to and do as we.

Thunder and lightning. Enter ARIEL, like a harpy, claps his wings upon the table, and with a quaint device the banquet vanishes.

ARIEL     You are three men of sin, whom destiny,

That hath to instrument this lower world

And what is in’t, the never-surfeited sea

55

Hath caused to belch up you, and on this island

Where man doth not inhabit – you ’mongst men

Being most unfit to live – I have made you mad;

And even with such-like valour, men hang and drown

Their proper selves.

[Alonso, Sebastian and Antonio draw their swords.]

                                You fools! I and my fellows

60

Are ministers of fate. The elements

Of whom your swords are tempered may as well

Wound the loud winds, or with bemocked-at stabs

Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish

One dowl that’s in my plume. My fellow ministers

65

Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt,

Your swords are now too massy for your strengths

And will not be uplifted. But remember

(For that’s my business to you) that you three

From Milan did supplant good Prospero,

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Exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it,

Him and his innocent child; for which foul deed,

The powers delaying, not forgetting, have

Incensed the seas and shores – yea, all the creatures –

Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso,

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They have bereft, and do pronounce by me

Ling’ring perdition, worse than any death

Can be at once, shall step by step attend

You and your ways, whose wraths to guard you from –

Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls

80

Upon your heads – is nothing but heart’s sorrow

And a clear life ensuing.

He vanishes in thunder. Then, to soft music, enter the shapes again and dance with mocks and mows, and carry out the table.

PROSPERO     Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou

Performed, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring.

Of my instruction hast thou nothing bated

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In what thou hadst to say. So, with good life

And observation strange, my meaner ministers

Their several kinds have done. My high charms work,

And these, mine enemies, are all knit up

In their distractions. They now are in my power;

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And in these fits I leave them while I visit

Young Ferdinand (whom they suppose is drowned)

And his, and mine, loved darling.     Exit.

GONZALO

I’th’ name of something holy, sir, why stand you

In this strange stare?

ALONSO     O, it is monstrous, monstrous!

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Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;

The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder –

That deep and dreadful organpipe – pronounced

The name of Prosper. It did bass my trespass.

Therefore my son i’th’ ooze is bedded, and

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I’ll seek him deeper than e’er plummet sounded,

And with him there lie mudded.     Exit.

SEBASTIAN     But one fiend at a time,

I’ll fight their legions o’er.

ANTONIO     I’ll be thy second.

Exeunt Sebastian and Antonio.

GONZALO

All three of them are desperate: their great guilt,

105

Like poison given to work a great time after,

Now ’gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you

That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly,

And hinder them from what this ecstasy

May now provoke them to.

ADRIAN     Follow, I pray you.

     Exeunt omnes.

4.1 Enter PROSPERO, FERDINAND and MIRANDA.

PROSPERO     [to Ferdinand]

If I have too austerely punished you,

Your compensation makes amends, for I

Have given you here a third of mine own life,

Or that for which I live, who once again

I tender to thy hand. All thy vexations

5

Were but my trials of thy love, and thou

Hast strangely stood the test. Here, afore heaven,

I ratify this my rich gift. O Ferdinand,

Do not smile at me that I boast her off,

For thou shalt find she will outstrip all praise

10

And make it halt behind her.

FERDINAND     I do believe it

Against an oracle.

PROSPERO     Then as my gift and thine own acquisition

Worthily purchased, take my daughter. But

If thou dost break her virgin-knot before

15

All sanctimonious ceremonies may

With full and holy rite be ministered,

No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall

To make this contract grow; but barren hate,

Sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew

20

The union of your bed with weeds so loathly

That you shall hate it both. Therefore take heed,

As Hymen’s lamps shall light you.

FERDINAND     As I hope

For quiet days, fair issue and long life,

With such love as ’tis now, the murkiest den,

25

The most opportune place, the strong’st suggestion

Our worser genius can, shall never melt

Mine honour into lust to take away

The edge of that day’s celebration,

When I shall think or Phoebus’ steeds are foundered

30

Or night kept chained below.

PROSPERO     Fairly spoke.

Sit then and talk with her; she is thine own.

What, Ariel! My industrious servant Ariel!

Enter ARIEL.

ARIEL     What would my potent master? Here I am.

PROSPERO

Thou and thy meaner fellows your last service

35

Did worthily perform, and I must use you

In such another trick. Go bring the rabble

(O’er whom I give thee power) here to this place.

Incite them to quick motion, for I must

Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple

40

Some vanity of mine art. It is my promise,

And they expect it from me.

ARIEL     Presently?

PROSPERO     Ay, with a twink.

ARIEL     Before you can say ‘come’ and ‘go’,

And breathe twice and cry ‘so, so’,

45

Each one tripping on his toe,

Will be here with mop and mow.

Do you love me, master? No?

PROSPERO     Dearly, my delicate Ariel. Do not approach

Till thou dost hear me call.

ARIEL     Well, I conceive.     Exit.

50

PROSPERO     [to Ferdinand]

Look thou be true. Do not give dalliance

Too much the rein. The strongest oaths are straw

To th’ fire i’th’ blood. Be more abstemious

Or else good night your vow!

FERDINAND     I warrant you, sir,

The white cold virgin snow upon my heart

55

Abates the ardour of my liver.

PROSPERO     Well! –

Now come, my Ariel; bring a corollary

Rather than want a spirit. Appear, and pertly.

[Soft music.]

No tongue, all eyes. Be silent!

Enter IRIS.

IRIS     Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas

60

Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats and peas;

Thy turfy mountains where live nibbling sheep,

And flat meads thatched with stover them to keep;

Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims,

Which spongy April at thy hest betrims

65

To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy

broomgroves

Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,

Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipped vineyard,

And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard,

Where thou thyself dost air – the queen o’th’ sky,

70

Whose watery arch and messenger am I,

Bids thee leave these, and with her sovereign grace,

JUNO     descends.

Here on this grass-plot, in this very place,

To come and sport. Her peacocks fly amain.

Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain.

75

Enter CERES.

CERES     Hail, many-coloured messenger, that ne’er

Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter;

Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers

Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers,

And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown

80

My bosky acres and my unshrubbed down,

Rich scarf to my proud earth. Why hath thy queen

Summoned me hither to this short-grassed green?

IRIS     A contract of true love to celebrate,

And some donation freely to estate

85

On the blessed lovers.

CERES     Tell me, heavenly bow,

If Venus or her son, as thou dost know,

Do now attend the queen? Since they did plot

The means that dusky Dis my daughter got,

Her and her blind boy’s scandaled company

90

I have forsworn.

IRIS     Of her society

Be not afraid. I met her deity

Cutting the clouds towards Paphos, and her son

Dove-drawn with her. Here thought they to have done

Some wanton charm upon this man and maid,

95

Whose vows are that no bed-right shall be paid

Till Hymen’s torch be lighted, but in vain.

Mars’s hot minion is returned again;

Her waspish-headed son has broke his arrows,

Swears he will shoot no more, but play with sparrows

100

And be a boy right out.

CERES     Highest queen of state,

Great Juno comes; I know her by her gait.

JUNO     How does my bounteous sister? Go with me

To bless this twain that they may prosperous be,

And honoured in their issue.

105

     [They sing.]

JUNO     Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,

Long continuance and increasing,

Hourly joys be still upon you;

Juno sings her blessings on you.

CERES     Earth’s increase, foison plenty,

110

Barns and garners never empty.

Vines with clustering bunches growing,

Plants with goodly burden bowing;

Spring come to you at the farthest,

In the very end of harvest.

115

Scarcity and want shall shun you,

Ceres’ blessing so is on you.

FERDINAND     This is a most majestic vision, and

Harmonious charmingly. May I be bold

To think these spirits?

PROSPERO     Spirits, which by mine art

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I have from their confines called to enact

My present fancies.

FERDINAND     Let me live here ever!

So rare a wondered father and a wise

Makes this place paradise.

[Juno and Ceres whisper, and send Iris on employment.]

PROSPERO     Sweet now, silence!

Juno and Ceres whisper seriously.

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There’s something else to do. Hush and be mute,

Or else our spell is marred.

IRIS

You nymphs, called naiads, of the windring brooks,

With your sedged crowns and ever-harmless looks,

Leave your crisp channels, and on this green land

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Answer your summons; Juno does command.

Come, temperate nymphs, and help to celebrate

A contract of true love. Be not too late.

Enter certain nymphs.

You sunburned sicklemen, of August weary,

Come hither from the furrow and be merry;

135

Make holiday! Your rye-straw hats put on,

And these fresh nymphs encounter every one

In country footing.

Enter certain reapers, properly habited. They join with the

nymphs in a graceful dance, towards the end whereof

Prospero starts suddenly and speaks; after which, to a

strange hollow and confused noise, they heavily vanish.

PROSPERO     [aside] I had forgot that foul conspiracy

Of the beast Caliban and his confederates

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Against my life. The minute of their plot

Is almost come. [to the spirits] Well done. Avoid, no

more!     [Spirits depart.]

FERDINAND     [to Miranda]

This is strange. Your father’s in some passion

That works him strongly.

MIRANDA     Never till this day

Saw I him touched with anger so distempered!

145

PROSPERO     You do look, my son, in a moved sort,

As if you were dismayed. Be cheerful, sir.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air;

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And – like the baseless fabric of this vision –

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And like this insubstantial pageant faded,

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Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vexed;

Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled.

Be not disturbed with my infirmity.

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If you be pleased, retire into my cell

And there repose. A turn or two I’ll walk

To still my beating mind.

FERDINAND, MIRANDA We wish your peace.     Exeunt.

PROSPERO

Come with a thought, I thank thee, Ariel. Come!

Enter ARIEL.

ARIEL

Thy thoughts I cleave to. What’s thy pleasure?

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PROSPERO

Spirit, we must prepare to meet with Caliban.

ARIEL     Ay, my commander. When I presented Ceres,

I thought to have told thee of it, but I feared

Lest I might anger thee.

PROSPERO

Say again, where didst thou leave these varlets?

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ARIEL

I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking,

So full of valour that they smote the air

For breathing in their faces, beat the ground

For kissing of their feet, yet always bending

Towards their project. Then I beat my tabor,

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At which like unbacked colts they pricked their ears,

Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses

As they smelt music; so I charmed their ears

That calf-like they my lowing followed, through

Toothed briars, sharp furzes, pricking gorse and thorns,

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Which entered their frail shins. At last I left them

I’th’ filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell,

There dancing up to th’ chins, that the foul lake

O’erstunk their feet.

PROSPERO     This was well done, my bird.

Thy shape invisible retain thou still.

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The trumpery in my house: go bring it hither,

For stale to catch these thieves.

ARIEL     I go, I go.     Exit.

PROSPERO     A devil, a born devil, on whose nature

Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains

Humanely taken – all, all lost, quite lost!

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And, as with age his body uglier grows,

So his mind cankers. I will plague them all,

Even to roaring. Come, hang them on this line.

Enter ARIEL, loaden with glistering apparel, etc.

Enter CALIBAN, STEPHANO and TRINCULO, all wet.

CALIBAN     Pray you tread softly, that the blind mole may

Not hear a footfall. We now are near his cell.

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STEPHANO     Monster, your fairy, which you say is a

harmless fairy, has done little better than played the

jack with us.

TRINCULO     Monster, I do smell all horse piss, at which

my nose is in great indignation.

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STEPHANO     So is mine. Do you hear, monster? If I

should take a displeasure against you, look you!

TRINCULO     Thou wert but a lost monster.

CALIBAN     Good my lord, give me thy favour still.

Be patient, for the prize I’ll bring thee to

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Shall hoodwink this mischance. Therefore speak softly;

All’s hushed as midnight yet.

TRINCULO     Ay, but to lose our bottles in the pool –

STEPHANO     There is not only disgrace and dishonour in

that, monster, but an infinite loss.

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TRINCULO     That’s more to me than my wetting, yet this

is your harmless fairy, monster.

STEPHANO     I will fetch off my bottle, though I be o’er

ears for my labour.

CALIBAN     Prithee, my king, be quiet. Seest thou here;

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This is the mouth o’th’ cell. No noise, and enter.

Do that good mischief which may make this island

Thine own forever, and I, thy Caliban,

For aye thy foot-licker.

STEPHANO     Give me thy hand. I do begin to have bloody

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thoughts.

TRINCULO     [Sees the clothes.] O King Stephano! O peer!

O worthy Stephano! Look what a wardrobe here is for

thee!

CALIBAN     Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash.

225

TRINCULO     O ho, monster; we know what belongs to a

frippery! O King Stephano! [Puts on a garment.]

STEPHANO     Put off that gown, Trinculo. By this hand,

I’ll have that gown.

TRINCULO     Thy grace shall have it.

230

CALIBAN

The dropsy drown this fool! What do you mean

To dote thus on such luggage? Let’t alone

And do the murder first. If he awake,

From toe to crown he’ll fill our skins with pinches,

Make us strange stuff.

235

STEPHANO     Be you quiet, monster. Mistress Line, is not

this my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line! Now

jerkin you are like to lose your hair and prove a bald

jerkin.

TRINCULO     Do, do. We steal by line and level, an’t like

240

your grace.

STEPHANO     I thank thee for that jest; here’s a garment

for’t. Wit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of

this country. ‘Steal by line and level’ is an excellent

pass of pate. There’s another garment for’t.

245

TRINCULO     Monster, come put some lime upon your

fingers and away with the rest.

CALIBAN     I will have none on’t. We shall lose our time,

And all be turned to barnacles, or to apes

With foreheads villainous low.

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STEPHANO     Monster, lay to your fingers. Help to bear

this away where my hogshead of wine is, or I’ll turn

you out of my kingdom! Go to; carry this.

TRINCULO     And this.

STEPHANO     Ay, and this.

255

A noise of hunters heard. Enter diverse spirits in shape of dogs and hounds, hunting them about, Prospero and Ariel setting them on.

PROSPERO     Hey, Mountain, hey!

ARIEL     Silver! There it goes, Silver!

PROSPERO

Fury, Fury! There, Tyrant, there! Hark, hark!

[The spirits chase Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo off stage.]

Go, charge my goblins that they grind their joints

With dry convulsions, shorten up their sinews

260

With aged cramps, and more pinch-spotted make them

Than pard or cat o’mountain.

ARIEL     Hark, they roar!

PROSPERO     Let them be hunted soundly. At this hour

Lies at my mercy all mine enemies.

Shortly shall all my labours end, and thou

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Shalt have the air at freedom. For a little,

Follow and do me service.     Exeunt.

5.1 Enter PROSPERO, in his magic robes, and ARIEL.

PROSPERO     Now does my project gather to a head.

My charms crack not; my spirits obey; and time

Goes upright with his carriage. How’s the day?

ARIEL     On the sixth hour, at which time, my lord,

You said our work should cease.

PROSPERO     I did say so,

5

When first I raised the tempest. Say, my spirit,

How fares the King and’s followers?

ARIEL     Confined together

In the same fashion as you gave in charge,

Just as you left them; all prisoners, sir,

In the line grove which weather-fends your cell.

10

They cannot budge till your release. The King,

His brother and yours abide all three distracted,

And the remainder mourning over them,

Brimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly

Him that you termed, sir, the good old Lord Gonzalo.

15

His tears run down his beard like winter’s drops

From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works ’em

That, if you now beheld them, your affections

Would become tender.

PROSPERO     Dost thou think so, spirit?

ARIEL     Mine would, sir, were I human.

PROSPERO     And mine shall.

20

Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling

Of their afflictions, and shall not myself

(One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,

Passion as they) be kindlier moved than thou art?

Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th’ quick,

25

Yet with my nobler reason ’gainst my fury

Do I take part. The rarer action is

In virtue than in vengeance. They being penitent,

The sole drift of my purpose doth extend

Not a frown further. Go, release them, Ariel.

30

My charms I’ll break; their senses I’ll restore;

And they shall be themselves.

ARIEL     I’ll fetch them, sir.     Exit.

PROSPERO     [Traces a circle.]

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,

And ye that on the sands with printless foot

Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him

35

When he comes back; you demi-puppets that

By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,

Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime

Is to make midnight-mushrooms, that rejoice

To hear the solemn curfew, by whose aid –

40

Weak masters though ye be – I have bedimmed

The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,

And ’twixt the green sea and the azured vault

Set roaring war; to the dread-rattling thunder

Have I given fire and rifted Jove’s stout oak

45

With his own bolt: the strong-based promontory

Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up

The pine and cedar; graves at my command

Have waked their sleepers, ope’d and let ’em forth

By my so potent art. But this rough magic

50

I here abjure; and when I have required

Some heavenly music (which even now I do)

To work mine end upon their senses that

This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,

Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

55

And deeper than did ever plummet sound

I’ll drown my book.              [Solemn music.]

Here enters ARIEL before; then ALONSO with a frantic gesture, attended by GONZALO; SEBASTIAN and ANTONIO in like manner, attended by ADRIAN and FRANCISCO. They all enter the circle which Prospero had made and there stand charmed, which Prospero observing, speaks:

A solemn air and the best comforter

To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains

(Now useless) boiled within thy skull. There stand,

60

For you are spell-stopped. –

Holy Gonzalo, honourable man,

Mine eyes, ev’n sociable to the show of thine,

Fall fellowly drops. [aside] The charm dissolves apace,

And as the morning steals upon the night,

65

Melting the darkness, so their rising senses

Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle

Their clearer reason. – O good Gonzalo,

My true preserver and a loyal sir

To him thou follow’st, I will pay thy graces

70

Home, both in word and deed. – Most cruelly

Didst thou, Alonso, use me and my daughter.

Thy brother was a furtherer in the act. –

Thou art pinched for’t now, Sebastian! – Flesh and blood,

You, brother mine, that entertained ambition,

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Expelled remorse and nature, whom with Sebastian

(Whose inward pinches therefore are most strong)

Would here have killed your king, I do forgive thee,

Unnatural though thou art. [aside] Their understanding

Begins to swell, and the approaching tide

80

Will shortly fill the reasonable shore

That now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them

That yet looks on me or would know me. – Ariel,

Fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell;

Exit Ariel and returns immediately.

I will discase me and myself present

85

As I was sometime Milan. Quickly, spirit,

Thou shalt ere long be free.

ARIEL     [Sings and helps to attire him.]

Where the bee sucks, there suck I,

In a cowslip’s bell I lie;

There I couch when owls do cry.

90

On the bat’s back I do fly

After summer merrily.

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

PROSPERO

Why, that’s my dainty Ariel! I shall miss thee,

95

But yet thou shalt have freedom. – So, so, so. –

To the King’s ship, invisible as thou art;

There shalt thou find the mariners asleep

Under the hatches. The master and the boatswain

Being awake, enforce them to this place,

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And presently, I prithee.

ARIEL     I drink the air before me and return

Or ere your pulse twice beat.     Exit.

GONZALO

All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement

Inhabits here. Some heavenly power guide us

105

Out of this fearful country.

PROSPERO     Behold, sir King,

The wronged Duke of Milan, Prospero!

For more assurance that a living prince

Does now speak to thee, I embrace thy body,

And to thee and thy company I bid

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A hearty welcome.

ALONSO     Whe’er thou be’st he or no,

Or some enchanted trifle to abuse me

(As late I have been), I not know. Thy pulse

Beats as of flesh and blood; and since I saw thee,

Th’affliction of my mind amends, with which

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I fear a madness held me. This must crave –

An if this be at all – a most strange story.

Thy dukedom I resign and do entreat

Thou pardon me my wrongs. But how should Prospero

Be living, and be here?

120

PROSPERO     [to Gonzalo] First, noble friend,

Let me embrace thine age, whose honour cannot

Be measured or confined.

GONZALO     Whether this be

Or be not, I’ll not swear.

PROSPERO     You do yet taste

Some subtleties o’th’ isle that will not let you

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Believe things certain. Welcome, my friends all;

[aside to Sebastian and Antonio] But you, my brace of

lords, were I so minded,

I here could pluck his highness’ frown upon you

And justify you traitors! At this time

I will tell no tales.

SEBASTIAN     The devil speaks in him.

130

PROSPERO     No.

For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother

Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive

Thy rankest fault – all of them; and require

My dukedom of thee, which perforce I know

Thou must restore.

ALONSO     If thou be’st Prospero,

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Give us particulars of thy preservation,

How thou hast met us here, whom three hours since

Were wrecked upon this shore, where I have lost

(How sharp the point of this remembrance is!)

My dear son Ferdinand.

PROSPERO     I am woe for’t, sir.

140

ALONSO     Irreparable is the loss, and patience

Says it is past her cure.

PROSPERO     I rather think

You have not sought her help, of whose soft grace

For the like loss I have her sovereign aid

And rest myself content.

ALONSO     You the like loss?

145

PROSPERO     As great to me as late; and supportable

To make the dear loss have I means much weaker

Than you may call to comfort you, for I

Have lost my daughter.

ALONSO     A daughter?

O heavens, that they were living both in Naples,

150

The king and queen there! That they were, I wish

Myself were mudded in that oozy bed

Where my son lies. When did you lose your daughter?

PROSPERO     In this last tempest. – I perceive these lords

At this encounter do so much admire

155

That they devour their reason and scarce think

Their eyes do offices of truth, their words

Are natural breath. – But howsoe’er you have

Been jostled from your senses, know for certain

That I am Prospero and that very duke

160

Which was thrust forth of Milan, who most strangely

Upon this shore where you were wrecked, was

landed

To be the lord on’t. No more yet of this,

For ’tis a chronicle of day by day,

Not a relation for a breakfast, nor

165

Befitting this first meeting. – Welcome, sir.

This cell’s my court; here have I few attendants,

And subjects none abroad. Pray you, look in.

My dukedom since you have given me again,

I will requite you with as good a thing,

170

At least bring forth a wonder to content ye

As much as me my dukedom.

Here Prospero discovers Ferdinand and Miranda, playing at chess.

MIRANDA     Sweet lord, you play me false.

FERDINAND     No, my dearest love,

I would not for the world.

MIRANDA

Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle,

175

And I would call it fair play.

ALONSO     If this prove

A vision of the island, one dear son

Shall I twice lose.

SEBASTIAN     A most high miracle!

FERDINAND     [Sees Alonso and the others.]

Though the seas threaten, they are merciful.

I have cursed them without cause. [Kneels.]

ALONSO     Now all the blessings

180

Of a glad father compass thee about!

Arise and say how thou cam’st here.

MIRANDA     O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world

That has such people in’t.

PROSPERO     ’Tis new to thee.

185

ALONSO

What is this maid with whom thou wast at play?

Your eld’st acquaintance cannot be three hours.

Is she the goddess that hath severed us

And brought us thus together?

FERDINAND     Sir, she is mortal,

But by immortal providence she’s mine;

190

I chose her when I could not ask my father

For his advice, nor thought I had one. She

Is daughter to this famous Duke of Milan –

Of whom so often I have heard renown

But never saw before – of whom I have

195

Received a second life; and second father

This lady makes him to me.

ALONSO     I am hers.

But O, how oddly will it sound that I

Must ask my child forgiveness.

PROSPERO     There, sir, stop.

Let us not burden our remembrances with

200

A heaviness that’s gone.

GONZALO     I have inly wept,

Or should have spoke ere this. Look down, you gods,

And on this couple drop a blessed crown,

For it is you that have chalked forth the way

Which brought us hither.

ALONSO     I say ‘amen’, Gonzalo.

205

GONZALO     Was Milan thrust from Milan that his issue

Should become kings of Naples? O, rejoice

Beyond a common joy, and set it down

With gold on lasting pillars: in one voyage

Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis;

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And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife

Where he himself was lost; Prospero his dukedom

In a poor isle; and all of us ourselves,

When no man was his own.

ALONSO     [to Ferdinand and Miranda]

Give me your hands.

Let grief and sorrow still embrace his heart

215

That doth not wish you joy.

GONZALO     Be it so; amen.

Enter ARIEL, with the Master and Boatswain amazedly following.

O look, sir, look, sir; here is more of us!

I prophesied, if a gallows were on land

This fellow could not drown. [to Boatswain] Now, blasphemy,

That swear’st grace o’erboard, not an oath on shore?

220

Hast thou no mouth by land? What is the news?

BOATSWAIN     The best news is that we have safely found

Our King and company. The next: our ship,

Which but three glasses since we gave out split,

Is tight and yare and bravely rigged as when

225

We first put out to sea.

ARIEL     [to Prospero] Sir, all this service

Have I done since I went.

PROSPERO     My tricksy spirit!

ALONSO

These are not natural events; they strengthen

From strange to stranger. Say, how came you hither?

BOATSWAIN     If I did think, sir, I were well awake,

230

I’d strive to tell you. We were dead of sleep

And – how we know not – all clapped under hatches,

Where but even now with strange and several noises

Of roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains

And more diversity of sounds, all horrible,

235

We were awaked; straightway at liberty,

Where we, in all our trim, freshly beheld

Our royal, good and gallant ship; our master

Cap’ring to eye her. On a trice, so please you,

Even in a dream, were we divided from them

240

And were brought moping hither.

ARIEL     [to Prospero] Was’t well done?

PROSPERO     Bravely, my diligence. Thou shalt be free.

ALONSO     This is as strange a maze as e’er men trod,

And there is in this business more than nature

Was ever conduct of. Some oracle

245

Must rectify our knowledge.

PROSPERO     Sir, my liege,

Do not infest your mind with beating on

The strangeness of this business. At picked leisure,

Which shall be shortly, single I’ll resolve you

(Which to you shall seem probable) of every

250

These happened accidents. Till when, be cheerful

And think of each thing well.

[aside to Ariel]     Come hither, spirit.

Set Caliban and his companions free;

Untie the spell.     Exit Ariel.

[to Alonso]     How fares my gracious sir?

There are yet missing of your company

255

Some few odd lads that you remember not.

Enter ARIEL, driving in CALIBAN, STEPHANO and TRINCULO in their stolen apparel.

STEPHANO     Every man shift for all the rest, and let no

man take care for himself, for all is but fortune.

Coraggio, bully monster, coraggio.

TRINCULO     If these be true spies which I wear in my

260

head, here’s a goodly sight.

CALIBAN     O Setebos, these be brave spirits indeed!

How fine my master is! I am afraid

He will chastise me.

SEBASTIAN     Ha, ha!

What things are these, my lord Antonio?

265

Will money buy ’em?

ANTONIO     Very like. One of them

Is a plain fish and no doubt marketable.

PROSPERO

Mark but the badges of these men, my lords,

Then say if they be true. This misshapen knave,

His mother was a witch, and one so strong

270

That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs,

And deal in her command without her power.

These three have robbed me, and this demi-devil

(For he’s a bastard one) had plotted with them

To take my life. Two of these fellows you

275

Must know and own; this thing of darkness I

Acknowledge mine.

CALIBAN     I shall be pinched to death.

ALONSO     Is not this Stephano, my drunken butler?

SEBASTIAN     He is drunk now. Where had he wine?

ALONSO

And Trinculo is reeling ripe! Where should they

280

Find this grand liquor that hath gilded ’em?

How cam’st thou in this pickle?

TRINCULO     I have been in such a pickle since I saw you

last, that I fear me will never out of my bones. I shall

not fear fly-blowing.

285

SEBASTIAN     Why, how now, Stephano?

STEPHANO     O touch me not; I am not Stephano, but a

cramp!

PROSPERO     You’d be king o’the isle, sirrah?

STEPHANO     I should have been a sore one then.

290

ALONSO     This is a strange thing as e’er I looked on.

PROSPERO     He is as disproportioned in his manners

As in his shape. Go, sirrah, to my cell;

Take with you your companions. As you look

To have my pardon, trim it handsomely.

295

CALIBAN     Ay, that I will; and I’ll be wise hereafter

And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass

Was I to take this drunkard for a god,

And worship this dull fool!

PROSPERO     Go to, away.

ALONSO [to Stephano and Trinculo]

Hence, and bestow your luggage where you found it.

300

SEBASTIAN     Or stole it, rather.

[Exeunt Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo.]

PROSPERO     Sir, I invite your highness and your train

To my poor cell, where you shall take your rest

For this one night, which (part of it) I’ll waste

With such discourse as, I not doubt, shall make it

305

Go quick away – the story of my life,

And the particular accidents gone by

Since I came to this isle – and in the morn

I’ll bring you to your ship, and so to Naples,

Where I have hope to see the nuptial

310

Of these our dear-beloved solemnized;

And thence retire me to my Milan, where

Every third thought shall be my grave.

ALONSO     I long

To hear the story of your life, which must

Take the ear strangely.

PROSPERO     I’ll deliver all,

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And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales

And sail so expeditious that shall catch

Your royal fleet far off. [aside to Ariel] My Ariel, chick,

That is thy charge. Then to the elements

Be free, and fare thou well! [to the others]

320

Please you, draw near.

Exeunt omnes.

EPILOGUE
spoken by PROSPERO

Now my charms are all o’erthrown,

And what strength I have’s mine own,

Which is most faint. Now, ’tis true

I must be here confined by you,

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

5

Since I have my dukedom got

And pardoned the deceiver, dwell

In this bare island by your spell;

But release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands.

10

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Must fill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;

And my ending is despair,

15

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself, and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardoned be,

Let your indulgence set me free.     Exit.

20

Timon of Athens

No reference to The Life of Timon of Athens is known to have survived from the years before its inclusion as the fourth of the tragedies in the First Folio of 1623. It is even questionable whether it would have been included in the Folio at all, had not need arisen to fill, at short notice, a gap in the sequence between Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar, created by the removal of Troilus and Cressida from that position after printing of it had started.

This is only the first of a succession of questions surrounding Timon. Others are: When was it written? Is it all by Shakespeare? Is it finished? Was it acted in Shakespeare’s time? Orthodox arguments for dating would place it either around 1604–5, on the basis of linguistic and thematic links with King Lear, of which Coleridge described it as the ‘stillborn twin’, or about 1606–7, as a companion piece to the Plutarchan tragedies on Shakespeare’s ‘tragic frontier’, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, but dates as late as 1613 have also been seriously proposed. Shakespeare’s sole authorship was much questioned in the later nineteenth century, at a time of general doubt and undisciplined speculation about dramatic authorship. Work on the plays of Thomas Middleton since the 1960s and Middleton’s marginal connection with Macbeth are currently leading to more substantial claims for Middleton as co-author of Timon (where his hand is most confidently identified in 1.2, 3.1–6, and in sections of 4.2 and 4.3, including those involving the steward Flavius). Act 1, scene 2 and the third act of Timon are close in tone and technique to the satirical comedies Middleton wrote for the boys’ companies in the early years of James I. The unfinished nature of Timon is variously defined, either on the evidence of such internal loose ends as confusion of names and the inconsistent epitaphs for Timon, or in terms of lack of development of some areas of the action, notably the role of Alcibiades in the first three acts. Ever since Thomas Shadwell wrote his own version of the subject in 1678, stagings of Timon have tended to entail major or minor reshaping and supplementation of the Folio text.

The story of ‘critic Timon’, as Shakespeare calls him in Love’s Labour’s Lost, is not the likeliest of tragic subjects. In 1605 Ben Jonson’s treatment of the social and economic manifestations of greed took the form of a dark comedy in Volpone. Timon of Athens combines anecdotes about Timon from Plutarch’s life of Mark Antony and more substantial matter from his life of Alcibiades (parallel to that of Coriolanus) with the satirical tradition originating in Lucian’s dialogue, Timon the Man-hater, (as represented in English by the Inns of Court comedy of Timon (c. 1602)). Shakespeare is alone and innovative in laying equal emphasis on the two phases of Timon’s career – as Lord Timon, the prodigal bankrupt, and as Timon misanthropos, the naked hermit ironically in command of a new store of gold. Timon begins as a mordant social satire and ends as a philosophical and political tragedy of pessimism. Like the character, described by the cynic philosopher Apemantus as lacking experience of ‘the middle of humanity’, the play itself seems to divide into two balancing and antithetical halves and to lack the expected enrichment of significance that might have arisen from more sustained development of human relationships. Even Timon’s own awareness shows no signs of cumulative development and his death, from unexplained causes, is presented merely as his final negation of human value.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

TIMON of Athens

flattering lords

VENTIDIUS

one of Timon’s false friends

ALCIBIADES

an Athenian captain

APEMANTUS

a churlish philosopher

STEWARD

to Timon

servants to Timon

several servants to usurers

SERVANTS

to Varro, Isidore and Lucius, usurers and Timon’s creditors

POET, PAINTER, JEWELLER, MERCHANT

HOSTILIUS and two other STRANGERS

OLD ATHENIAN

PAGE

FOOL

mistress to Alcibiades

Lords, Senators, Soldiers, Bandits and Attendants Cupid and the Amazons in the Masque

Timon of Athens

1.1 Enter Poet, Painter, Jeweller, Merchant at several doors.

POET     Good day, sir.

PAINTER     I am glad y’are well.

POET     I have not seen you long; how goes the world?

PAINTER     It wears, sir, as it grows.

POET     Ay, that’s well known.

But what particular rarity, what strange,

Which manifold record not matches? See,

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Magic of bounty, all these spirits thy power

Hath conjur’d to attend! I know the merchant.

PAINTER     I know them both: th’other’s a jeweller.

MERCHANT     O, ’tis a worthy lord.

JEWELLER     Nay, that’s most fix’d.

MERCHANT

A most incomparable man, breath’d, as it were,

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To an untirable and continuate goodness.

He passes.

JEWELLER     I have a jewel here –

MERCHANT

O pray, let’s see’t. For the Lord Timon, sir?

JEWELLER     If he will touch the estimate. But for that –

POET [aside to Painter]

When we for recompense have prais’d the vild,

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It stains the glory in that happy verse

Which aptly sings the good.

MERCHANT     [looking at the jewel] ’Tis a good form.

JEWELLER     And rich. Here is a water, look ye.

PAINTER

You are rapt, sir, in some work, some dedication

To the great lord.

POET     A thing slipp’d idly from me.

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Our poesy is as a gum which oozes

From whence ’tis nourish’d; the fire i’th’ flint

Shows not till it be struck: our gentle flame

Provokes itself, and like the current flies

Each bound it chases. What have you there?

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PAINTER     A picture, sir. When comes your book forth?

POET     Upon the heels of my presentment, sir.

Let’s see your piece.

PAINTER     ’Tis a good piece.

POET     So ’tis; this comes off well and excellent.

PAINTER     Indifferent.

POET     Admirable. How this grace

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Speaks his own standing! What a mental power

This eye shoots forth! How big imagination

Moves in this lip! To th’ dumbness of the gesture

One might interpret.

PAINTER     It is a pretty mocking of the life.

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Here is a touch: is’t good?

POET     I will say of it,

It tutors nature; artificial strife

Lives in these touches, livelier than life.

Enter certain senators, who go in to Timon.

PAINTER     How this lord is followed!

POET     The senators of Athens, happy men.

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PAINTER     Look, moe!

POET

You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors.

I have in this rough work shap’d out a man,

Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug

With amplest entertainment. My free drift

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Halts not particularly, but moves itself

In a wide sea of wax: no levell’d malice

Infects one comma in the course I hold,

But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,

Leaving no tract behind.

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PAINTER     How shall I understand you?

POET     I will unbolt to you.

You see how all conditions, how all minds,

As well of glib and slipp’ry creatures as

Of grave and austere quality, tender down

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Their services to Lord Timon: his large fortune,

Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,

Subdues and properties to his love and tendance

All sorts of hearts; yea, from the glass-fac’d flatterer

To Apemantus, that few things loves better

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Than to abhor himself – even he drops down

The knee before him, and returns in peace

Most rich in Timon’s nod.

PAINTER     I saw them speak together.

POET     Sir,

I have upon a high and pleasant hill

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Feign’d Fortune to be thron’d. The base o’th’ mount

Is rank’d with all deserts, all kind of natures

That labour on the bosom of this sphere

To propagate their states. Amongst them all,

Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fix’d,

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One do I personate of Lord Timon’s frame,

Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her,

Whose present grace to present slaves and servants

Translates his rivals.

PAINTER     ’Tis conceiv’d to scope.

This throne, this Fortune, and this hill, methinks,

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With one man beckon’d from the rest below,

Bowing his head against the steepy mount

To climb his happiness, would be well express’d

In our condition.

POET     Nay, sir, but hear me on: –

All those which were his fellows but of late,

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Some better than his value, on the moment

Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance,

Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear,

Make sacred even his stirrup, and through him

Drink the free air.

PAINTER     Ay marry, what of these?

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POET     When Fortune in her shift and change of mood

Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants

Which labour’d after him to the mountain’s top

Even on their knees and hands, let him sit down,

Not one accompanying his declining foot.

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PAINTER     ’Tis common.

A thousand moral paintings I can show

That shall demonstrate these quick blows of

    Fortune’s

More pregnantly than words. Yet you do well

To show Lord Timon that mean eyes have seen

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The foot above the head.

Trumpets sound. Enter LORD TIMON, addressing himself courteously to every suitor; a Messenger from Ventidius, talking with him; LUCILIUS and other servants.

TIMON     Imprison’d is he, say you?

MESSENGER     Ay, my good lord. Five talents is his debt;

His means most short, his creditors most strait.

Your honourable letter he desires

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To those have shut him up, which failing

Periods his comfort.

TIMON     Noble Ventidius. Well,

I am not of that feather to shake off

My friend when he must need me. I do know him

A gentleman that well deserves a help,

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Which he shall have: I’ll pay the debt, and free him.

MESSENGER     Your lordship ever binds him.

TIMON     Commend me to him; I will send his ransom;

And being enfranchis’d, bid him come to me.

’Tis not enough to help the feeble up,

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But to support him after. Fare you well.

MESSENGER     All happiness to your honour!     Exit.

Enter an Old Athenian.

OLD     ATHENIAN Lord Timon, hear me speak.

TIMON     Freely, good father.

OLD     ATHENIAN Thou hast a servant nam’d Lucilius.

TIMON     I have so. What of him?

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OLD     ATHENIAN

Most noble Timon, call the man before thee.

TIMON     Attends he here or no? Lucilius!

LUCILIUS     Here, at your lordship’s service.

OLD ATHENIAN

This fellow here, Lord Timon, this thy creature,

By night frequents my house. I am a man

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That from my first have been inclin’d to thrift,

And my estate deserves an heir more rais’d

Than one which holds a trencher.

TIMON     Well; what further?

OLD ATHENIAN     One only daughter have I, no kin else,

On whom I may confer what I have got.

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The maid is fair, o’th’ youngest for a bride,

And I have bred her at my dearest cost

In qualities of the best. This man of thine

Attempts her love. I prithee, noble lord,

Join with me to forbid him her resort;

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Myself have spoke in vain.

TIMON     The man is honest.

OLD ATHENIAN     Therefore he will be, Timon.

His honesty rewards him in itself;

It must not bear my daughter.

TIMON     Does she love him?

OLD ATHENIAN     She is young and apt:

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Our own precedent passions do instruct us

What levity’s in youth.

TIMON     [to Lucilius] Love you the maid?

LUCILIUS     Ay, my good lord, and she accepts of it.

OLD ATHENIAN

If in her marriage my consent be missing,

I call the gods to witness, I will choose

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Mine heir from forth the beggars of the world,

And dispossess her all.

TIMON     How shall she be endow’d

If she be mated with an equal husband?

OLD ATHENIAN

Three talents on the present; in future, all.

TIMON

This gentleman of mine hath serv’d me long.

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To build his fortune I will strain a little,

For ’tis a bond in men. Give him thy daughter;

What you bestow, in him I’ll counterpoise,

And make him weigh with her.

OLD ATHENIAN     Most noble lord,

Pawn me to this your honour, she is his.

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TIMON     My hand to thee; mine honour on my promise.

LUCILIUS     Humbly I thank your lordship. Never may

That state or fortune fall into my keeping

Which is not owed to you.     Exit.

POET

Vouchsafe my labour, and long live your lordship!

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TIMON     I thank you; you shall hear from me anon.

Go not away. What have you there, my friend?

PAINTER     A piece of painting, which I do beseech

Your lordship to accept.

TIMON     Painting is welcome.

The painting is almost the natural man:

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For since dishonour traffics with man’s nature,

He is but out-side; these pencill’d figures are

Even such as they give out. I like your work,

And you shall find I like it. Wait attendance

Till you hear further from me.

PAINTER     The gods preserve ye!

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TIMON     Well fare you, gentleman. Give me your hand;

We must needs dine together. Sir, your jewel

Hath suffer’d under praise.

JEWELLER     What, my lord, dispraise?

TIMON     A mere satiety of commendations.

If I should pay you for’t as ’tis extoll’d,

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It would unclew me quite.

JEWELLER     My lord, ’tis rated

As those which sell would give; but you well know,

Things of like value, differing in the owners,

Are prized by their masters. Believe’t, dear lord,

You mend the jewel by the wearing it.

TIMON     Well mock’d.

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Enter APEMANTUS.

MERCHANT

No, my good lord; he speaks the common tongue,

Which all men speak with him.

TIMON     Look who comes here: will you be chid?

JEWELLER     We’ll bear, with your lordship.

MERCHANT     He’ll spare none.

TIMON     Good morrow to thee, gentle Apemantus.

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APEMANTUS

Till I be gentle, stay thou for thy good morrow,

When thou art Timon’s dog, and these knaves

    honest.

TIMON

Why dost thou call them knaves, thou know’st them

     not?

APEMANTUS     Are they not Athenians?

TIMON     Yes.

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APEMANTUS     Then I repent not.

JEWELLER     You know me, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS     Thou know’st I do, I call’d thee by thy

name.

TIMON     Thou art proud, Apemantus.

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APEMANTUS     Of nothing so much as that I am not like

Timon.

TIMON     Whither art going?

APEMANTUS     To knock out an honest Athenian’s brains.

TIMON     That’s a deed thou’lt die for.

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APEMANTUS     Right, if doing nothing be death by th’ law.

TIMON     How lik’st thou this picture, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS     The best, for the innocence.

TIMON     Wrought he not well that painted it?

APEMANTUS     He wrought better that made the painter,

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and yet he’s but a filthy piece of work.

PAINTER     Y’are a dog.

APEMANTUS     Thy mother’s of my generation. What’s

she, if I be a dog?

TIMON     Wilt dine with me, Apemantus?

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APEMANTUS     No; I eat not lords.

TIMON     And thou shouldst, thou’dst anger ladies.

APEMANTUS     O they eat lords; so they come by great

bellies.

TIMON     That’s a lascivious apprehension.

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APEMANTUS     So thou apprehend’st it; take it for thy

labour.

TIMON     How dost thou like this jewel, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS     Not so well as plain-dealing, which will

not cast a man a doit.

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TIMON     What dost thou think ’tis worth?

APEMANTUS     Not worth my thinking. How now Poet?

POET     How now Philosopher?

APEMANTUS     Thou liest.

POET     Art not one?

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APEMANTUS     Yes.

POET     Then I lie not.

APEMANTUS     Art not a poet?

POET     Yes.

APEMANTUS     Then thou liest. Look in thy last work,

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where thou hast feign’d him a worthy fellow.

POET     That’s not feign’d, he is so.

APEMANTUS     Yes, he is worthy of thee, and to pay thee

for thy labour. He that loves to be flattered is worthy

o’th’ flatterer. Heavens, that I were a lord!

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TIMON     What wouldst do then, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS     E’en as Apemantus does now: hate a lord

with my heart.

TIMON     What, thyself?

APEMANTUS     Ay.

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TIMON     Wherefore?

APEMANTUS     That I had no angry wit to be a lord. Art

not thou a merchant?

MERCHANT     Ay, Apemantus.

APEMANTUS     Traffic confound thee, if the gods will not!

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MERCHANT     If traffic do it, the gods do it.

APEMANTUS     Traffic’s thy god, and thy god confound thee!

Trumpet sounds. Enter a Messenger.

TIMON     What trumpet’s that?

MESSENGER     ’Tis Alcibiades, and some twenty horse,

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All of companionship.

TIMON     Pray entertain them, give them guide to us.

     Exeunt some attendants.

You must needs dine with me. Go not you hence

Till I have thank’d you. When dinner’s done

Show me this piece. I am joyful of your sights.

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Enter ALCIBIADES, and attendants.

Most welcome, sir!

APEMANTUS     So, so, there!

Aches contract and starve your supple joints!

That there should be small love amongst these sweet knaves,

And all this courtesy! The strain of man’s bred out

Into baboon and monkey.

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ALCIBIADES     Sir, you have sav’d my longing, and I feed

Most hungerly on your sight.

TIMON     Right welcome, sir.

Ere we depart, we’ll share a bounteous time

In different pleasures. Pray you, let us in.

     Exeunt all but Apemantus.

Enter two Lords.

1 LORD What time o’ day is’t, Apemantus?

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APEMANTUS     Time to be honest.

1 LORD That time serves still.

APEMANTUS     The most accursed thou that still omitt’st it.

2 LORD Thou art going to Lord Timon’s feast?

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APEMANTUS     Ay, to see meat fill knaves and wine heat fools.

2 LORD Fare thee well, fare thee well.

APEMANTUS     Thou art a fool to bid me farewell twice.

2 LORD Why, Apemantus?

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APEMANTUS     Shouldst have kept one to thyself, for I

mean to give thee none.

1 LORD Hang thyself!

APEMANTUS     No, I will do nothing at thy bidding. Make

thy requests to thy friend.

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2 LORD Away, unpeaceable dog, or I’ll spurn thee hence!

APEMANTUS     I will fly, like a dog, the heels o’th’ ass.

Exit.

1 LORD He’s opposite to humanity. Come, shall we in

And taste Lord Timon’s bounty? He out-goes

The very heart of kindness.

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2 LORD He pours it out. Plutus the god of gold

Is but his steward. No meed but he repays

Seven-fold above itself: no gift to him

But breeds the giver a return exceeding

All use of quittance.

1 LORD The noblest mind he carries

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That ever govern’d man.

2 LORD Long may he live in fortunes. Shall we in?

I’ll keep you company.     Exeunt.

1.2 Hautboys playing loud music. A great banquet serv’d in; and then enter LORD TIMON, Athenian lords and senators; VENTIDIUS which Timon redeem’d from prison; LUCULLUS and ALCIBIADES. Steward and others in attendance. Then comes, dropping after all, APEMANTUS, discontentedly, like himself.

VENTIDIUS     Most honoured Timon,

It hath pleas’d the gods to remember my father’s age,

And call him to long peace.

He is gone happy, and has left me rich.

Then as in grateful virtue I am bound

5

To your free heart, I do return those talents,

Doubled with thanks and service, from whose help

I deriv’d liberty.

TIMON     O by no means,

Honest Ventidius. You mistake my love;

I gave it freely ever, and there’s none

10

Can truly say he gives, if he receives.

If our betters play at that game, we must not dare

To imitate them; faults that are rich are fair.

VENTIDIUS     A noble spirit!

TIMON

Nay, my lords, ceremony was but devis’d at first

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To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes,

Recanting goodness, sorry ere ’tis shown;

But where there is true friendship, there needs none.

Pray, sit; more welcome are ye to my fortunes

Than my fortunes to me.

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1 LORD My lord, we always have confess’d it.

APEMANTUS

Ho, ho, confess’d it? Hang’d it, have you not?

TIMON     O Apemantus, you are welcome.

APEMANTUS     No, you shall not make me welcome:

I come to have thee thrust me out of doors.

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TIMON     Fie, th’art a churl, y’have got a humour there

Does not become a man; ’tis much to blame.

They say, my lords, Ira furor brevis est,

But yond man is very angry.

Go, let him have a table by himself,

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For he does neither affect company,

Nor is he fit for’t, indeed.

APEMANTUS     Let me stay at thine apperil, Timon;

I come to observe: I give thee warning on’t.

TIMON     I take no heed of thee; th’art an Athenian, there-

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fore welcome. I myself would have no power; prithee

let my meat make thee silent.

APEMANTUS     I scorn thy meat; ’twould choke me, for I

should ne’er flatter thee. O you gods! What a number

of men eats Timon, and he sees ’em not! It grieves me

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to see so many dip their meat in one man’s blood; and

all the madness is, he cheers them up too. I wonder

men dare trust themselves with men. Methinks they

should invite them without knives: Good for their

meat, and safer for their lives. There’s much example

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for’t; the fellow that sits next him, now parts bread

with him, pledges the breath of him in a divided

draught, is the readiest man to kill him. ’T’as been

proved. If I were a huge man, I should fear to drink at

meals,

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Lest they should spy my windpipe’s dangerous notes,

Great men should drink with harness on their

     throats.

TIMON     My lord, in heart; and let the health go round.

2 LORD Let it flow this way, my good lord.

APEMANTUS     Flow this way? A brave fellow. He keeps

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his tides well. Those healths will make thee and thy

state look ill, Timon.

Here’s that which is too weak to be a sinner,

Honest water, which ne’er left man i’th’ mire.

This and my food are equals, there’s no odds;

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Feasts are too proud to give thanks to the gods.

Apemantus’ Grace.

Immortal gods, I crave no pelf;

I pray for no man but myself.

Grant I may never prove so fond,

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To trust man on his oath or bond;

Or a harlot for her weeping,

Or a dog that seems a-sleeping,

Or a keeper with my freedom,

Or my friends, if I should need ’em.

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Amen. So fall to’t:

Rich men sin, and I eat root.

[Eats and drinks.]

Much good dich thy good heart, Apemantus.

TIMON     Captain Alcibiades, your heart’s in the field

now.

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ALCIBIADES     My heart is ever at your service, my lord.

TIMON     You had rather be at a breakfast of enemies than

a dinner of friends.

ALCIBIADES     So they were bleeding new, my lord, there’s

no meat like ’em; I could wish my best friend at such

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a feast.

APEMANTUS     Would all those flatterers were thine

enemies then, that then thou mightst kill ’em – and

bid me to ’em.

1 LORD Might we but have that happiness, my lord,

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that you would once use our hearts, whereby we

might express some part of our zeals, we should

think ourselves for ever perfect.

TIMON     O no doubt, my good friends, but the gods

themselves have provided that I shall have much help

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from you: how had you been my friends else? Why

have you that charitable title from thousands, did

not you chiefly belong to my heart? I have told more

of you to myself than you can with modesty speak in

your own behalf; and thus far I confirm you. O you

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gods, think I, what need we have any friends, if we

should ne’er have need of ’em? They were the most

needless creatures living should we ne’er have use for

’em, and would most resemble sweet instruments

hung up in cases, that keeps their sounds to

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themselves. Why, I have often wish’d myself poorer

that I might come nearer to you. We are born to do

benefits; and what better or properer can we call our

own than the riches of our friends? O what a precious

comfort ’tis to have so many like brothers

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commanding one another’s fortunes. O joy’s e’en

made away ere’t can be born! Mine eyes cannot hold

out water, methinks. To forget their faults, I drink to

you.

APEMANTUS     Thou weep’st to make them drink,

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Timon.

2 LORD Joy had the like conception in our eyes, And at

that instant like a babe sprung up.

APEMANTUS

Ho, ho: I laugh to think that babe a bastard.

3 LORD I promise you, my lord, you mov’d me much.

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APEMANTUS     Much. [Tucket sounded.]

TIMON     What means that trump? How now?

Enter Servant.

SERVANT     Please you, my lord, there are certain ladies

most desirous of admittance.

TIMON     Ladies? What are their wills?

SERVANT     There comes with them a forerunner, my lord,

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which bears that office to signify their pleasures.

TIMON     I pray let them be admitted.

Enter CUPID.

CUPID     Hail to thee, worthy Timon, and to all that of his

bounties taste! The five best senses acknowledge thee

their patron, and come freely to gratulate thy

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plenteous bosom.

There, taste, touch, all, pleas’d from thy table rise;

They only now come but to feast thine eyes.

TIMON

They’re welcome all; let ’em have kind admittance.

Music, make their welcome!     Exit Cupid.

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LUCULLUS     You see, my lord, how ample y’are belov’d.

Music. Re-enter CUPID, with a masque of ladies as Amazons, with lutes in their hands, dancing and playing.

APEMANTUS     Hoy-day!

What a sweep of vanity comes this way.

They dance? They are madwomen.

Like madness is the glory of this life,

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As this pomp shows to a little oil and root.

We make ourselves fools, to disport ourselves,

And spend our flatteries to drink those men

Upon whose age we void it up again

With poisonous spite and envy.

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Who lives that’s not depraved or depraves?

Who dies that bears not one spurn to their graves

Of their friends’ gift?

I should fear those that dance before me now

Would one day stamp upon me. ’T’as been done.

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Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

The Lords rise from table, with much adoring of Timon,

and to show their loves each single out an Amazon, and

all dance, men with women, a lofty strain or two to the

hautboys, and cease.

TIMON

You have done our pleasures much grace, fair ladies,

Set a fair fashion on our entertainment,

Which was not half so beautiful and kind;

You have added worth unto’t and lustre,

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And entertain’d me with mine own device.

I am to thank you for’t.

1 LADY My lord, you take us even at the best.

APEMANTUS     Faith, for the worst is filthy; and would

not hold taking, I doubt me.

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TIMON     Ladies, there is an idle banquet attends you;

Please you to dispose yourselves.

ALL LADIES     Most thankfully, my lord.

Exeunt Cupid and Ladies.

TIMON     Flavius!

STEWARD     My lord?

TIMON     The little casket bring me hither.

STEWARD     Yes, my lord. [aside] More jewels yet!

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There is no crossing him in’s humour,

Else I should tell him well, i’faith, I should,

When all’s spent, he’d be cross’d then, and he could.

’Tis pity bounty had not eyes behind,

That man might ne’er be wretched for his mind.

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Exit.

1 LORD Where be our men?

SERVANT     Here, my lord, in readiness.

2 LORD Our horses!

Re-enter Steward, with the casket.

TIMON     O my friends, I have one word

To say to you: look you, my good lord,

I must entreat you honour me so much

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As to advance this jewel; accept it and wear it,

Kind my lord.

1 LORD I am so far already in your gifts –

ALL     So are we all.

Enter a Servant.

SERVANT     My lord, there are certain nobles of the senate

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newly alighted, and come to visit you.

TIMON     They are fairly welcome.     Exit Servant.

STEWARD     I beseech your honour, vouchsafe me a word;

it does concern you near.

TIMON     Near? Why, then, another time I’ll hear thee. I

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prithee, let’s be provided to show them entertainment.

STEWARD     [aside] I scarce know how.

Enter another Servant.

2 SERVANT

May it please your honour, Lord Lucius,

Out of his free love, hath presented to you

Four milk-white horses, trapp’d in silver.

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TIMON     I shall accept them fairly. Let the presents

Be worthily entertain’d.     Exit Servant.

Enter a third Servant.

                                 How now? What news?

3 SERVANT

Please you, my lord, that honourable gentleman Lord

Lucullus entreats your company tomorrow, to hunt

with him, and has sent your honour two brace of

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greyhounds.

TIMON     I’ll hunt with him; and let them be receiv’d,

Not without fair reward.

STEWARD     [aside] What will this come to?

He commands us to provide, and give great gifts,

And all out of an empty coffer;

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Nor will he know his purse, or yield me this,

To show him what a beggar his heart is,

Being of no power to make his wishes good.

His promises fly so beyond his state

That what he speaks is all in debt; he owes for ev’ry

      word:

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He is so kind that he now pays interest for’t;

His land’s put to their books. Well, would I were

Gently put out of office before I were forc’d out!

Happier is he that has no friend to feed

Than such that do e’en enemies exceed.

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I bleed inwardly for my lord.     Exit.

TIMON     You do yourselves much wrong,

You bate too much of your own merits.

Here, my lord, a trifle of our love.

2 LORD With more than common thanks I will receive

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it.

3 LORD O he’s the very soul of bounty.

TIMON     And now I remember, my lord, you gave good

words the other day of a bay courser I rode on. ’Tis

yours, because you lik’d it.

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3 LORD O I beseech you pardon me, my lord, in that.

TIMON

You may take my word, my lord, I know no man

Can justly praise but what he does affect.

I weigh my friend’s affection with mine own,

I’ll tell you true. I’ll call to you.

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ALL LORDS     O none so welcome.

TIMON     I take all and your several visitations

So kind to heart, ’tis not enough to give:

Methinks I could deal kingdoms to my friends,

And ne’er be weary. Alcibiades,

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Thou art a soldier, therefore seldom rich;

It comes in charity to thee: for all thy living

Is ’mongst the dead, and all the lands thou hast

Lie in a pitch’d field.

ALCIBIADES     Ay, defil’d land, my lord.

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1 LORD We are so virtuously bound –

TIMON     And so am I to you.

2 LORD So infinitely endear’d –

TIMON     All to you. Lights, more lights!

1 LORD The best of happiness, honour and fortunes,

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Keep with you, Lord Timon!

TIMON     Ready for his friends.

Exeunt all but Timon, Apemantus.

APEMANTUS     What a coil’s here,

Serving of becks and jutting-out of bums!

I doubt whether their legs be worth the sums

That are given for ’em. Friendship’s full of dregs;

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Methinks false hearts should never have sound legs.

Thus honest fools lay out their wealth on curtsies.

TIMON     Now Apemantus, if thou wert not sullen,

I would be good to thee.

APEMANTUS     No, I’ll nothing; for if I should be brib’d

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too, there would be none left to rail upon thee, and

then thou wouldst sin the faster. Thou giv’st so long,

Timon, I fear me thou wilt give away thyself in paper

shortly. What needs these feasts, pomps, and

vainglories?

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TIMON     Nay, and you begin to rail on society once, I am

sworn not to give regard to you. Farewell, and come

with better music.

Exit.

APEMANTUS     So. Thou wilt not hear me now; thou shalt

not then. I’ll lock thy heaven from thee.

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O that men’s ears should be

To counsel deaf, but not to flattery.     Exit.

2.1     Enter a Senator.

SENATOR

And late, five thousand; to Varro and to Isidore

He owes nine thousand, besides my former sum,

Which makes it five and twenty. Still in motion

Of raging waste? It cannot hold, it will not.

If I want gold, steal but a beggar’s dog

5

And give it Timon – why, the dog coins gold;

If I would sell my horse and buy twenty moe

Better than he – why, give my horse to Timon;

Ask nothing, give it him, it foals me straight

And able horses. No porter at his gate,

10

But rather one that smiles and still invites

All that pass by. It cannot hold; no reason

Can sound his state in safety. Caphis, ho!

Caphis, I say!

Enter CAPHIS.

CAPHIS     Here, sir, what is your pleasure?

SENATOR

Get on your cloak, and haste you to Lord Timon;

15

Importune him for my moneys; be not ceas’d

With slight denial, nor then silenc’d when

‘Commend me to your master’ and the cap

Plays in the right hand, thus – but tell him,

My uses cry to me; I must serve my turn

20

Out of mine own; his days and times are past,

And my reliances on his fracted dates

Have smit my credit. I love and honour him,

But must not break my back to heal his finger.

Immediate are my needs, and my relief

25

Must not be toss’d and turn’d to me in words,

But find supply immediate. Get you gone;

Put on a most importunate aspect,

A visage of demand: for I do fear,

When every feather sticks in his own wing,

30

Lord Timon will be left a naked gull,

Which flashes now a phoenix. Get you gone.

CAPHIS     I go, sir.

SENATOR     Ay, go sir! Take the bonds along with you,

And have the dates in. Come.

CAPHIS     I will, sir.

SENATOR     Go. Exeunt.

35

2.2     Enter Steward, with many bills in his hand.

STEWARD     No care, no stop; so senseless of expense,

That he will neither know how to maintain it,

Nor cease his flow of riot. Takes no accompt

How things go from him, nor resumes no care

Of what is to continue. Never mind

5

Was to be so unwise, to be so kind.

What shall be done? He will not hear, till feel.

I must be round with him, now he comes from

      hunting.

Fie, fie, fie, fie!

Enter CAPHIS and the Servants of Isidore and Varro.

CAPHIS     Good even, Varro; what, you come for money?

10

VARRO’S SERVANT Is’t not your business too?

CAPHIS     It is; and yours too, Isidore?

ISIDORE’S SERVANT It is so.

CAPHIS     Would we were all discharg’d!

VARRO’S SERVANT I fear it.

15

CAPHIS     Here comes the lord.

Enter TIMON and his train, and ALCIBIADES.

TIMON     So soon as dinner’s done, we’ll forth again,

My Alcibiades.

[to Caphis] With me? What is your will?

CAPHIS     My lord, here is a note of certain dues.

TIMON     Dues? Whence are you?

CAPHIS     Of Athens here, my lord.

20

TIMON     Go to my steward.

CAPHIS     Please it your lordship, he hath put me off

To the succession of new days this month.

My master is awak’d by great occasion

To call upon his own, and humbly prays you

25

That with your other noble parts you’ll suit,

In giving him his right.

TIMON     Mine honest friend,

I prithee but repair to me next morning.

CAPHIS     Nay, good my lord –

TIMON     Contain thyself, good friend.

VARRO’S SERVANT One Varro’s servant, my good lord –

30

ISIDORE’S SERVANT From Isidore; he humbly prays your

speedy payment.

CAPHIS     If you did know, my lord, my master’s wants –

VARRO’S SERVANT ’Twas due on forfeiture, my lord, six

weeks and past.

35

ISIDORE’S SERVANT Your steward puts me off, my lord,

and I am sent expressly to your lordship.

TIMON

Give me breath.

I do beseech you, good my lords, keep on;

I’ll wait upon you instantly.

Exeunt Alcibiades and Lords.

[to Steward] Come hither. Pray you,

40

How goes the world, that I am thus encounter’d

With clamorous demands of debt, broken bonds,

And the detention of long since due debts

Against my honour?

STEWARD     [to Caphis and other Servants]

Please you, gentlemen,

The time is unagreeable to this business.

45

Your importunacy cease till after dinner,

That I may make his lordship understand

Wherefore you are not paid.

TIMON     Do so, my friends.

See them well entertain’d.     Exit.

STEWARD     Pray draw near.     Exit.

Enter APEMANTUS and Fool.

CAPHIS     Stay, stay; here comes the fool with Apemantus:

50

let’s ha’ some sport with ’em.

VARRO’S SERVANT Hang him, he’ll abuse us!

ISIDORE’S SERVANT A plague upon him, dog!

VARRO’S SERVANT How dost, fool?

APEMANTUS     Dost dialogue with thy shadow?

55

VARRO’S SERVANT I speak not to thee.

APEMANTUS     No, ’tis to thyself. [to the Fool] Come

away.

ISIDORE’S SERVANT [to Varro’s Servant] There’s the fool

hangs on your back already.

60

APEMANTUS     No, thou stand’st single; th’art not on him

yet.

CAPHIS     Where’s the fool now?

APEMANTUS     He last ask’d the question. Poor rogues,

and usurers’ men, bawds between gold and want!

65

ALL     SERVANTS What are we, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS     Asses.

ALL SERVANTS     Why?

APEMANTUS     That you ask me what you are, and do not

know yourselves. Speak to ’em, fool.

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FOOL     How do you, gentlemen?

ALL SERVANTS     Gramercies, good fool. How does your

mistress?

FOOL     She’s e’en setting on water to scald such chickens

as you are. Would we could see you at Corinth!

75

APEMANTUS     Good! Gramercy.

Enter Page.

FOOL     Look you, here comes my master’s page.

PAGE     [to the Fool] Why, how now, captain? What do

you in this wise company? How dost thou,

Apemantus?

80

APEMANTUS     Would I had a rod in my mouth, that I

might answer thee profitably.

PAGE     Prithee, Apemantus, read me the superscription

of these letters: I know not which is which.

APEMANTUS     Canst not read?

85

PAGE     No.

APEMANTUS     There will little learning die then that day

thou art hang’d. This is to Lord Timon; this to

Alcibiades. Go, thou wast born a bastard, and thou’lt

die a bawd.

90

PAGE     Thou wast whelp’d a dog, and thou shalt famish a

dog’s death. Answer not; I am gone. Exit.

APEMANTUS     E’en so thou outrun’st grace. Fool, I will

go with you to Lord Timon’s.

FOOL     Will you leave me there?

95

APEMANTUS     If Timon stay at home. You three serve

three usurers?

ALL SERVANTS     Ay; would they serv’d us.

APEMANTUS     So would I – as good a trick as ever

hangman serv’d thief.

100

FOOL     Are you three usurers’ men?

ALL SERVANTS     Ay, fool.

FOOL     I think no usurer but has a fool to his servant; my

mistress is one, and I am her fool. When men come

to borrow of your masters, they approach sadly, and go

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away merry; but they enter my master’s house merrily,

and go away sadly. The reason of this?

VARRO’S SERVANT I could render one.

APEMANTUS     Do it then, that we may account thee a

whoremaster and a knave; which notwithstanding,

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thou shalt be no less esteemed.

VARRO’S SERVANT What is a whoremaster, fool?

FOOL     A fool in good clothes, and something like thee.

’Tis a spirit; sometime ’t appears like a lord, sometime

like a lawyer, sometime like a philosopher, with two

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stones moe than’s artificial one. He is very often like a

knight; and generally in all shapes that man goes up

and down in, from fourscore to thirteen, this spirit

walks in.

VARRO’S SERVANT Thou art not altogether a fool.

120

FOOL     Nor thou altogether a wise man. As much foolery

as I have, so much wit thou lack’st.

APEMANTUS     That answer might have become Apemantus.

ALL SERVANTS     Aside, aside; here comes Lord Timon.

Re-enter TIMON and Steward.

APEMANTUS     Come with me, fool, come.

125

FOOL     I do not always follow lover, elder brother and

woman; sometime the philosopher.

STEWARD

Pray you, walk near: I’ll speak with you anon.

Exeunt Apemantus, Fool and Servants.

TIMON

You make me marvel wherefore ere this time

Had you not fully laid my state before me,

130

That I might so have rated my expense

As I had leave of means.

STEWARD     You would not hear me.

At many leisures I propos’d –

TIMON     Go to.

Perchance some single vantages you took,

When my indisposition put you back,

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And that unaptness made your minister

Thus to excuse yourself.

STEWARD     O my good lord,

At many times I brought in my accompts,

Laid them before you; you would throw them off,

And say you found them in mine honesty.

140

When for some trifling present you have bid me

Return so much, I have shook my head and wept:

Yea, ’gainst th’authority of manners, pray’d you

To hold your hand more close. I did endure

Not seldom, nor no slight checks, when I have

145

Prompted you in the ebb of your estate

And your great flow of debts. My lov’d lord,

Though you hear now, too late, yet now’s a time:

The greatest of your having lacks a half

To pay your present debts.

TIMON     Let all my land be sold.

150

STEWARD     ’Tis all engag’d, some forfeited and gone,

And what remains will hardly stop the mouth

Of present dues. The future comes apace.

What shall defend the interim, and at length

How goes our reck’ning?

155

TIMON     To Lacedaemon did my land extend.

STEWARD     O my good lord, the world is but a word:

Were it all yours, to give it in a breath,

How quickly were it gone!

TIMON     You tell me true.

STEWARD     If you suspect my husbandry or falsehood,

160

Call me before th’exactest auditors,

And set me on the proof. So the gods bless me,

When all our offices have been oppress’d

With riotous feeders, when our vaults have wept

With drunken spilth of wine, when every room

165

Hath blaz’d with lights and bray’d with minstrelsy,

I have retir’d me to a wasteful cock

And set mine eyes at flow.

TIMON     Prithee no more.

STEWARD     Heavens, have I said, the bounty of this lord!

How many prodigal bits have slaves and peasants

170

This night englutted! Who is not Timon’s?

What heart, head, sword, force, means, but is Lord

Timon’s,

Great Timon, noble, worthy, royal Timon?

Ah, when the means are gone that buy this praise,

The breath is gone whereof this praise is made.

175

Feast-won, fast-lost; one cloud of winter show’rs,

These flies are couch’d.

TIMON     Come, sermon me no further.

No villainous bounty yet hath pass’d my heart;

Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given.

Why dost thou weep? Canst thou the conscience

       lack,

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To think I shall lack friends? Secure thy heart.

If I would broach the vessels of my love,

And try the arguments of hearts by borrowing,

Men and men’s fortunes could I frankly use

As I can bid thee speak.

STEWARD     Assurance bless your thoughts.

185

TIMON

And in some sort these wants of mine are crown’d,

That I account them blessings; for by these

Shall I try friends. You shall perceive how you

Mistake my fortunes; I am wealthy in my friends.

Within there! Flaminius! Servilius!

190

Enter FLAMINIUS, SERVILIUS and another Servant.

ALL SERVANTS     My lord, my lord.

TIMON     I will dispatch you severally: [to Servilius] you

to Lord Lucius; [to Flaminius] to Lord Lucullus you

(I hunted with his honour to-day); [to Third Servant]

you, to Sempronius. Commend me to their loves;

195

and I am proud, say, that my occasions have found

time to use ’em toward a supply of money. Let the

request be fifty talents.

FLAMINIUS     As you have said, my lord.

Exeunt Servants.

STEWARD     [aside] Lord Lucius and Lucullus? Humh!

200

TIMON     [to Steward] Go you, sir, to the senators,

Of whom, even to the state’s best health, I have

Deserv’d this hearing: bid ’em send o’th’ instant

A thousand talents to me.

STEWARD     I have been bold,

For that I knew it the most general way,

205

To them to use your signet and your name;

But they do shake their heads, and I am here

No richer in return.

TIMON     Is’t true? can’t be?

STEWARD     They answer in a joint and corporate voice

That now they are at fall, want treasure, cannot

210

Do what they would, are sorry; you are honourable,

But yet they could have wish’d – they know not;

Something hath been amiss – a noble nature

May catch a wrench – would all were well – ’tis pity –

And so, intending other serious matters,

215

After distasteful looks, and these hard fractions,

With certain half-caps, and cold-moving nods,

They froze me into silence.

TIMON     You gods reward them!

Prithee, man, look cheerly. These old fellows

Have their ingratitude in them hereditary;

220

Their blood is cak’d, ’tis cold, it seldom flows;

’Tis lack of kindly warmth they are not kind;

And nature, as it grows again toward earth,

Is fashion’d for the journey, dull and heavy.

Go to Ventidius. Prithee, be not sad,

225

Thou art true and honest; ingeniously I speak,

No blame belongs to thee. Ventidius lately

Buried his father, by whose death he’s stepp’d

Into a great estate. When he was poor,

Imprison’d, and in scarcity of friends,

230

I clear’d him with five talents. Greet him from me,

Bid him suppose some good necessity

Touches his friend, which craves to be remember’d

With those five talents. That had, give’t these fellows

To whom ’tis instant due. Ne’er speak or think

235

That Timon’s fortunes ’mong his friends can sink.

STEWARD     I would I could not think it.

That thought is bounty’s foe;

Being free itself, it thinks all others so.     Exeunt.

3.1 FLAMINIUS waiting to speak with Lucullus from his master. Enter a Servant to him.

SERVANT     I have told my lord of you; he is coming down

to you.

FLAMINIUS     I thank you, sir.

Enter LUCULLUS.

SERVANT     Here’s my lord.

LUCULLUS     [aside] One of Lord Timon’s men? A gift, I

5

warrant. Why, this hits right: I dreamt of a silver basin

and ewer to-night. – Flaminius, honest Flaminius, you

are very respectively welcome, sir. Fill me some

wine. [Exit Servant.]

And how does that honourable, complete, free-

10

hearted gentleman of Athens, thy very bountiful good

lord and master?

FLAMINIUS     His health is well, sir.

LUCULLUS     I am right glad that his health is well, sir.

And what hast thou there under thy cloak, pretty

15

Flaminius?

FLAMINIUS     Faith, nothing but an empty box, sir, which,

in my lord’s behalf, I come to entreat your honour to

supply; who, having great and instant occasion to

use fifty talents, hath sent to your lordship to furnish

20

him, nothing doubting your present assistance

therein.

LUCULLUS     La, la, la, la: ‘nothing doubting’, says he?

Alas, good lord; a noble gentleman ’tis, if he would not

keep so good a house. Many a time and often I ha’

25

din’d with him, and told him on’t, and come again to

supper to him of purpose to have him spend less; and

yet he would embrace no counsel, take no warning by

my coming. Every man has his fault, and honesty is

his. I ha’told him on’t, but I could ne’er get him

30

from’t.

Re-enter Servant, with wine.

SERVANT     Please your lordship, here is the wine.

LUCULLUS     Flaminius, I have noted thee always wise.

Here’s to thee.

FLAMINIUS     Your lordship speaks your pleasure.

35

LUCULLUS     I have observed thee always for a towardly

prompt spirit, give thee thy due, and one that knows

what belongs to reason; and canst use the time well, if

the time use thee well. Good parts in thee. [to the

Servant] Get you gone, sirrah.     [Exit Servant.]

40

Draw nearer, honest Flaminius. Thy lord’s a bountiful

gentleman: but thou art wise, and thou know’st well

enough, although thou com’st to me, that this is no

time to lend money, especially upon bare friendship,

without security. Here’s three solidares for thee; good

45

boy, wink at me, and say thou saw’st me not. Fare thee

well.

FLAMINIUS

Is’t possible the world should so much differ,

And we alive that lived? Fly, damned baseness,

To him that worships thee!

50

[throwing the money back at Lucullus]

LUCULLUS

Ha? Now I see thou art a fool, and fit for thy master.

Exit.

FLAMINIUS

May these add to the number that may scald thee!

Let molten coin be thy damnation,

Thou disease of a friend, and not himself!

Has friendship such a faint and milky heart

55

It turns in less than two nights? O you gods!

I feel my master’s passion. This slave unto his

       honour

Has my lord’s meat in him:

Why should it thrive and turn to nutriment

When he is turn’d to poison?

60

O may diseases only work upon’t,

And when he’s sick to death, let not that part of

nature

Which my lord paid for, be of any power

To expel sickness, but prolong his hour!          Exit.

3.2 Enter LUCIUS, with HOSTILIUS and two other Strangers.

LUCIUS     Who, the Lord Timon? He is my very good

friend and an honourable gentleman.

1 STRANGER We know him for no less, though we are

but strangers to him. But I can tell you one thing, my

lord, and which I hear from common rumours: now

5

Lord Timon’s happy hours are done and past, and his

estate shrinks from him.

LUCIUS     Fie, no, do not believe it; he cannot want for

money.

HOSTILIUS     But believe you this, my lord, that not long

10

ago, one of his men was with the Lord Lucullus, to

borrow so many talents, nay, urg’d extremely for’t, and

showed what necessity belong’d to’t, and yet was

denied.

LUCIUS     How?

15

HOSTILIUS     I tell you, denied, my lord.

LUCIUS     What a strange case was that! Now before the

gods, I am asham’d on’t. Denied that honourable man?

There was very little honour show’d in’t. For my own

part, I must needs confess I have received some small

20

kindnesses from him, as money, plate, jewels, and such

like trifles – nothing comparing to his; yet had he

mistook him, and sent to me, I should ne’er have

denied his occasion so many talents.

Enter SERVILIUS.

SERVILIUS     See, by good hap, yonder’s my lord; I have

25

sweat to see his honour. My honour’d lord!

LUCIUS     Servilius? You are kindly met, sir. Fare thee

well; commend me to thy honourable virtuous lord,

my very exquisite friend.

SERVILIUS     May it please your honour, my lord hath

30

sent –

LUCIUS     Ha? What has he sent? I am so much endeared

to that lord; he’s ever sending. How shall I thank him,

think’st thou? And what has he sent now?

SERVILIUS     H’as only sent his present occasion now, my

35

lord: requesting your lordship to supply his instant

use with so many talents.

LUCIUS     I know his lordship is but merry with me,

He cannot want fifty – five hundred talents.

SERVILIUS

But in the meantime he wants less, my lord.

40

If his occasion were not virtuous,

I should not urge it half so faithfully.

LUCIUS

Dost thou speak seriously, Servilius?

SERVILIUS

Upon my soul, ’tis true, sir.

LUCIUS     What a wicked beast was I to disfurnish myself

45

against such a good time, when I might ha’shown

myself honourable! How unluckily it happen’d, that I

should purchase the day before for a little part, and

undo a great deal of honour! Servilius, now before

the gods, I am not able to do (the more beast, I say!)

50

– I was sending to use Lord Timon myself, these

gentlemen can witness; but I would not, for the

wealth of Athens, I had done’t now. Commend me

bountifully to his good lordship; and I hope his

honour will conceive the fairest of me, because I have

55

no power to be kind. And tell him this from me: I

count it one of my greatest afflictions, say, that I

cannot pleasure such an honourable gentleman. Good

Servilius, will you befriend me so far as to use mine

own words to him?

60

SERVILIUS     Yes, sir, I shall.     Exit.

LUCIUS     [calling out after him] I’ll look you out a good

turn, Servilius.

[to the others] True, as you said, Timon is shrunk

     indeed;

And he that’s once denied will hardly speed.     Exit.

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1 STRANGER Do you observe this, Hostilius?

HOSTILIUS     Ay, too well.

1 STRANGER     Why, this is the world’s soul,

And just of the same piece

Is every flatterer’s sport. Who can call him his friend

That dips in the same dish? For in my knowing

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Timon has been this lord’s father,

And kept his credit with his purse;

Supported his estate; nay, Timon’s money

Has paid his men their wages. He ne’er drinks

But Timon’s silver treads upon his lip;

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And yet – O see the monstrousness of man,

When he looks out in an ungrateful shape! –

He does deny him, in respect of his,

What charitable men afford to beggars.

2 STRANGER Religion groans at it.

1 STRANGER For mine own part,

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I never tasted Timon in my life,

Nor came any of his bounties over me,

To mark me for his friend. Yet I protest,

For his right noble mind, illustrious virtue,

And honourable carriage,

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Had his necessity made use of me,

I would have put my wealth into donation,

And the best half should have return’d to him,

So much I love his heart. But I perceive

Men must learn now with pity to dispense,

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For policy sits above conscience.     Exeunt.

3.3 Enter Timon’s third Servant with SEMPRONIUS, another of Timon’s friends.

SEMPRONIUS     Must he needs trouble me in’t? Humh!

’Bove all others?

He might have tried Lord Lucius, or Lucullus;

And now Ventidius is wealthy too,

Whom he redeem’d from prison. All these

5

Owes their estates unto him.

3 SERVANT           My lord,

They have all been touch’d and found base metal,

For they have all denied him.

SEMPRONIUS     How? Have they denied him?

Has Ventidius and Lucullus denied him?

10

And does he send to me? Three? Humh?

It shows but little love or judgment in him.

Must I be his last refuge? His friends, like physicians,

Thrive, give him over; must I take th’ cure upon me?

H’as much disgrac’d me in’t; I’m angry at him

15

That might have known my place. I see no sense for’t

But his occasions might have wooed me first:

For, in my conscience, I was the first man

That e’er received gift from him.

And does he think so backwardly of me now,

20

That I’ll requite it last? No:

So it may prove an argument of laughter

To th’ rest, and ’mongst lords I be thought a fool.

I’d rather than the worth of thrice the sum,

H’ad sent to me first, but for my mind’s sake;

25

I’d such a courage to do him good. But now return,

And with their faint reply this answer join:

Who bates mine honour shall not know my coin.

Exit.

3 SERVANT Excellent: your lordship’s a goodly villain.

The devil knew not what he did when he made man

30

politic; he crossed himself by’t: and I cannot think but

in the end the villainies of man will set him clear. How

fairly this lord strives to appear foul! Takes virtuous

copies to be wicked, like those that under hot ardent

zeal would set whole realms on fire: of such a nature is

35

his politic love.

This was my lord’s best hope; now all are fled

Save only the gods. Now his friends are dead,

Doors that were ne’er acquainted with their wards

Many a bounteous year, must be employ’d

40

Now to guard sure their master.

And this is all a liberal course allows:

Who cannot keep his wealth must keep his house.

Exit.

3.4 Enter VARRO’S two Servants, meeting other servants of Timon’s creditors, to wait for his coming out. Then enter Lucius’ Servant; then TITUS and HORTENSIUS.

VARRO’S 1 SERVANT

Well met; good morrow, Titus and Hortensius.

TITUS     The like to you, kind Varro.

HORTENSIUS     Lucius!

What, do we meet together?

LUCIUS’ SERVANT Ay, and I think

One business does command us all; for mine

Is money.

TITUS     So is theirs and ours.

5

Enter PHILOTUS.

LUCIUS’ SERVANT And, sir, Philotus too!

PHILOTUS     Good day at once.

LUCIUS’ SERVANT Welcome, good brother.

What do you think the hour?

PHILOTUS     Labouring for nine.

LUCIUS’ SERVANT So much?

PHILOTUS     Is not my lord seen yet?

LUCIUS’ SERVANT     Not yet.

PHILOTUS

I wonder on’t; he was wont to shine at seven.

10

LUCIUS’ SERVANT

Ay, but the days are wax’d shorter with him:

You must consider that a prodigal course

Is like the sun’s,

But not, like his, recoverable. I fear

’Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon’s purse;

15

That is, one may reach deep enough, and yet

Find little.

PHILOTUS     I am of your fear, for that.

TITUS

I’ll show you how t’observe a strange event.

Your lord sends now for money?

HORTENSIUS     Most true, he does.

TITUS     And he wears jewels now of Timon’s gift,

20

For which I wait for money.

HORTENSIUS     It is against my heart.

LUCIUS’ SERVANT Mark how strange it shows,

Timon in this should pay more than he owes:

And e’en as if your lord should wear rich jewels,

And send for money for ’em.

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HORTENSIUS

I’m weary of this charge, the gods can witness;

I know my lord hath spent of Timon’s wealth,

And now ingratitude makes it worse than stealth.

VARRO’S 1 SERVANT

Yes, mine’s three thousand crowns;

What’s yours?

LUCIUS’ SERVANT Five thousand mine.

30

VARRO’S 1 SERVANT

’Tis much deep: and it should seem by th’ sum,

Your master’s confidence was above mine,

Else, surely, his had equall’d.

Enter FLAMINIUS.

TITUS     One of Lord Timon’s men.

LUCIUS’ SERVANT Flaminius? Sir, a word. Pray is my

35

lord ready to come forth?

FLAMINIUS     No, indeed he is not.

TITUS     We attend his lordship; pray signify so much.

FLAMINIUS     I need not tell him that; he knows you are

too diligent. Exit.

40

Enter Steward in a cloak, muffled.

LUCIUS’ SERVANT

Ha, is not that his steward muffled so?

He goes away in a cloud: call him, call him.

TITUS     Do you hear, sir?

VARRO’S 2 SERVANT By your leave, sir –

STEWARD     What do ye ask of me, my friend?

45

TITUS     We wait for certain money here, sir.

STEWARD     Ay,

If money were as certain as your waiting,

’Twere sure enough.

Why then preferr’d you not your sums and bills

When your false masters eat of my lord’s meat?

50

Then they could smile, and fawn upon his debts,

And take down th’int’rest into their glutt’nous

    maws.

You do yourselves but wrong, to stir me up;

Let me pass quietly.

Believe’t, my lord and I have made an end;

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I have no more to reckon, he to spend.

LUCIUS’ SERVANT Ay, but this answer will not serve.

STEWARD     If ’twill not serve, ’tis not so base as you,

For you serve knaves.     Exit.

VARRO’S 1 SERVANT How? What does his cashier’d

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worship mutter?

VARRO’S 2 SERVANT No matter what; he’s poor, and

that’s revenge enough. Who can speak broader than he

that has no house to put his head in? Such may rail

against great buildings.

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Enter SERVILIUS.

TITUS     O, here’s Servilius; now we shall know some

answer.

SERVILIUS     If I might beseech you, gentlemen, to repair

some other hour, I should derive much from’t; for,

take’t of my soul, my lord leans wondrously to

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discontent. His comfortable temper has forsook him,

he’s much out of health, and keeps his chamber.

LUCIUS’ SERVANT

Many do keep their chambers are not sick;

And if it be so far beyond his health,

Methinks he should the sooner pay his debts,

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And make a clear way to the gods.

SERVILIUS     Good gods!

TITUS     We cannot take this for answer, sir.

FLAMINIUS     [within] Servilius, help! My lord, my lord!

Enter TIMON, in a rage.

TIMON

What, are my doors oppos’d against my passage?

Have I been ever free, and must my house

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Be my retentive enemy, my gaol?

The place which I have feasted, does it now,

Like all mankind, show me an iron heart?

LUCIUS’ SERVANT Put in now, Titus.

TITUS     My lord, here is my bill.

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LUCIUS’ SERVANT Here’s mine.

HORTENSIUS     And mine, my lord.

1, 2 VARRO’S SERVANTS And ours, my lord.

PHILOTUS     All our bills.

TIMON     Knock me down with ’em: cleave me to the

girdle.

90

LUCIUS’ SERVANT Alas, my lord –

TIMON     Cut my heart in sums.

TITUS     Mine, fifty talents.

TIMON     Tell out my blood.

LUCIUS’ SERVANT Five thousand crowns, my lord.

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TIMON

Five thousand drops pays that. What yours? And yours?

VARRO’S 1 SERVANT My lord –

VARRO’S 2 SERVANT My lord –

TIMON     Tear me, take me, and the gods fall upon you!

Exit.

HORTENSIUS     Faith, I perceive our masters may throw

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their caps at their money; these debts may well be

call’d desperate ones, for a madman owes ’em.

Exeunt.

Re-enter TIMON and Steward.

TIMON

They have e’en put my breath from me, the slaves.

Creditors? Devils!

STEWARD     My dear lord –

TIMON     What if it should be so?

STEWARD     My lord –

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TIMON     I’ll have it so. My steward?

STEWARD     Here, my lord.

TIMON     So fitly? Go, bid all my friends again,

Lucius, Lucullus and Sempronius: all.

I’ll once more feast the rascals.

STEWARD     O my lord,

You only speak from your distracted soul;

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There’s not so much left to furnish out

A moderate table.

TIMON     Be it not in thy care.

Go, I charge thee, invite them all, let in the tide

Of knaves once more; my cook and I’ll provide.

Exeunt.

3.5 Enter three Senators at one door, ALCIBIADES meeting them with attendants.

1 SENATOR

My lord, you have my voice to’t; the fault’s

Bloody; ’tis necessary he should die;

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.

2 SENATOR Most true; the law shall bruise ’em.

ALCIBIADES

Honour, health and compassion to the Senate!

5

1 SENATOR Now, captain?

ALCIBIADES     I am an humble suitor to your virtues;

For pity is the virtue of the law,

And none but tyrants use it cruelly.

It pleases time and fortune to lie heavy

10

Upon a friend of mine, who in hot blood

Hath stepp’d into the law, which is past depth

To those that, without heed, do plunge into’t.

He is a man, setting his fate aside,

Of comely virtues;

15

Nor did he soil the fact with cowardice

(An honour in him which buys out his fault)

But with a noble fury and fair spirit,

Seeing his reputation touch’d to death,

He did oppose his foe;

20

And with such sober and unnoted passion

He did behove his anger, ere ’twas spent,

As if he had but prov’d an argument.

1 SENATOR You undergo too strict a paradox,

Striving to make an ugly deed look fair.

25

Your words have took such pains as if they labour’d

To bring manslaughter into form, and set quarrelling

Upon the head of valour; which indeed

Is valour misbegot, and came into the world

When sects and factions were newly born.

30

He’s truly valiant that can wisely suffer

The worst that man can breathe,

And make his wrongs his outsides,

To wear them like his raiment, carelessly,

And ne’er prefer his injuries to his heart,

35

To bring it into danger.

If wrongs be evils and enforce us kill,

What folly ’tis to hazard life for ill!

ALCIBIADES     My lord –

1 SENATOR You cannot make gross sins look clear;

40

To revenge is no valour, but to bear.

ALCIBIADES     My lords, then, under favour, pardon me,

If I speak like a captain.

Why do fond men expose themselves to battle,

And not endure all threats? Sleep upon’t,

45

And let the foes quietly cut their throats

Without repugnancy? If there be

Such valour in the bearing, what make we

Abroad? Why then, women are more valiant

That stay at home, if bearing carry it,

50

And the ass more captain than the lion,

The fellow loaden with irons wiser than the judge,

If wisdom be in suffering. O my lords,

As you are great, be pitifully good.

Who cannot condemn rashness in cold blood?

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To kill, I grant, is sin’s extremest gust,

But in defence, by mercy, ’tis most just.

To be in anger is impiety;

But who is man that is not angry?

Weigh but the crime with this.

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2 SENATOR You breathe in vain.

ALCIBIADES     In vain? His service done

At Lacedaemon and Byzantium

Were a sufficient briber for his life.

1 SENATOR What’s that?

ALCIBIADES     Why I say, my lords, h’as done fair service,

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And slain in fight many of your enemies.

How full of valour did he bear himself

In the last conflict, and made plenteous wounds!

2 SENATOR He has made too much plenty with ’em;

He’s a sworn rioter; he has a sin

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That often drowns him and takes his valour prisoner.

If there were no foes, that were enough

To overcome him. In that beastly fury

He has been known to commit outrages

And cherish factions; ’tis inferr’d to us,

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His days are foul and his drink dangerous.

1 SENATOR He dies.

ALCIBIADES     Hard fate! He might have died in war.

My lords, if not for any parts in him –

Though his right arm might purchase his own time,

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And be in debt to none – yet, more to move you,

Take my deserts to his, and join ’em both;

And for I know your reverend ages love

Security, I’ll pawn my victories, all

My honour to you, upon his good returns.

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If by this crime he owes the law his life,

Why, let the war receive ’t in valiant gore,

For law is strict, and war is nothing more.

1 SENATOR

We are for law; he dies: urge it no more,

On height of our displeasure. Friend or brother,

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He forfeits his own blood that spills another.

ALCIBIADES     Must it be so? It must not be.

My lords, I do beseech you know me.

2 SENATOR         How?

ALCIBIADES     Call me to your remembrances.

3 SENATOR            What!

ALCIBIADES     I cannot think but your age has forgot me;

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It could not else be I should prove so base,

To sue and be denied such common grace.

My wounds ache at you.

1 SENATOR                 Do you dare our anger?

’Tis in few words, but spacious in effect:

We banish thee for ever.

ALCIBIADES     Banish me?

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Banish your dotage, banish usury,

That makes the Senate ugly!

1 SENATOR

If after two days’ shine Athens contain thee,

Attend our weightier judgment.

And, not to swell our spirit,

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He shall be executed presently.     Exeunt Senators.

ALCIBIADES

Now the gods keep you old enough, that you may

    live

Only in bone, that none may look on you!

I’m worse than mad: I have kept back their foes,

While they have told their money, and let out

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Their coin upon large interest; I myself

Rich only in large hurts. All those, for this?

Is this the balsam that the usuring Senate

Pours into captains’ wounds? Banishment!

It comes not ill. I hate not to be banish’d;

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It is a cause worthy my spleen and fury,

That I may strike at Athens. I’ll cheer up

My discontented troops, and lay for hearts.

’Tis honour with most lands to be at odds;

Soldiers should brook as little wrongs as gods.

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  Exit.

3.6 Enter divers of Timon’s Friends and senators at several doors.

1 LORD The good time of day to you, sir.

2 LORD I also wish it to you. I think this honourable lord

did but try us this other day.

1 LORD Upon that were my thoughts tiring when we

encounter’d. I hope it is not so low with him as he

5

made it seem in the trial of his several friends.

2 LORD It should not be, by the persuasion of his new

feasting.

1 LORD I should think so. He hath sent me an earnest

inviting, which many my near occasions did urge me

10

to put off; but he hath conjur’d me beyond them, and

I must needs appear.

2 LORD In like manner was I in debt to my importunate

business, but he would not hear my excuse. I am sorry,

when he sent to borrow of me, that my provision was

15

out.

1 LORD I am sick of that grief too, as I understand how

all things go.

2 LORD Every man here’s so. What would he have

borrowed of you?

20

1 LORD A thousand pieces.

2 LORD A thousand pieces?

1 LORD What of you?

2 LORD He sent to me, sir – Here he comes.

Enter TIMON and attendants.

TIMON     With all my heart, gentlemen both; and how

25

fare you?

1 LORD Ever at the best, hearing well of your lordship.

2 LORD The swallow follows not summer more willing

than we your lordship.

TIMON     [aside] Nor more willingly leaves winter; such

30

summer birds are men. – Gentlemen, our dinner will

not recompense this long stay. Feast your ears with the

music awhile, if they will fare so harshly o’th’

trumpet’s sound; we shall to’t presently.

1 LORD I hope it remains not unkindly with your

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lordship that I return’d you an empty messenger.

TIMON     O sir, let it not trouble you.

2 LORD My noble lord –

TIMON     Ah my good friend, what cheer?

[The banquet brought in.]

2 LORD My most honourable lord, I am e’en sick of

40

shame, that when your lordship this other day sent to

me I was so unfortunate a beggar.

TIMON     Think not on’t, sir.

2 LORD If you had sent but two hours before –

TIMON     Let it not cumber your better remembrance. –

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Come, bring in all together.

2 LORD     All cover’d dishes.

1 LORD     Royal cheer, I warrant you.

3 LORD     Doubt not that, if money and the season can

yield it.

50

1 LORD     How do you? What’s the news?

3 LORD     Alcibiades is banish’d: hear you of it?

1 AND 2 LORDS     Alcibiades banish’d?

3 LORD     ’Tis so, be sure of it.

1 LORD How? How?

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2 LORD     I pray you, upon what?

TIMON     My worthy friends, will you draw near?

3 LORD     I’ll tell you more anon. Here’s a noble feast

toward.

2 LORD This is the old man still.

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3 LORD Will’t hold? Will’t hold?

2 LORD It does; but time will – and so –

3 LORD I do conceive.

TIMON     Each man to his stool, with that spur as he

would to the lip of his mistress. Your diet shall be in all

65

places alike. Make not a City feast of it, to let the meat

cool ere we can agree upon the first place. Sit, sit. The

gods require our thanks.

You great benefactors, sprinkle our society with

thankfulness. For your own gifts, make yourselves

70

prais’d; but reserve still to give, lest your deities be

despis’d. Lend to each man enough, that one need not

lend to another; for were your godheads to borrow of

men, men would forsake the gods. Make the meat be

belov’d, more than the man that gives it. Let no assembly

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of twenty be without a score of villains. If there sit twelve

women at the table, let a dozen of them be as they are.

The rest of your fees, O gods, the Senators of Athens,

together with the common leg of people – what is amiss

in them, you gods, make suitable for destruction. For

80

these my present friends, as they are to me nothing, so in

nothing bless them, and to nothing are they welcome.

Uncover, dogs, and lap.

[The dishes are uncovered and seen to be full of warm water.]

SOME     What does his lordship mean?

OTHERS     I know not.

TIMON     May you a better feast never behold,

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You knot of mouth-friends! Smoke and lukewarm

   water

Is your perfection. This is Timon’s last;

Who, stuck and spangled with your flatteries,

Washes it off, and sprinkles in your faces

Your reeking villainy. [throwing the water in their faces]

Live loath’d, and long,

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Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites,

Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears,

You fools of fortune, trencher-friends, time’s flies,

Cap-and-knee slaves, vapours, and minute-jacks!

Of man and beast the infinite malady

95

Crust you quite o’er! What, dost thou go?

Soft, take thy physic first – thou too – and thou!

Stay, I will lend thee money, borrow none.

Drives them out.

What? All in motion? Henceforth be no feast,

Whereat a villain’s not a welcome guest.

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Burn, house! Sink, Athens! Henceforth hated be

Of Timon, man and all humanity!                 Exit.

Re-enter the Lords and senators.

1 LORD How now, my lords?

2 LORD Know you the quality of Lord Timon’s fury?

3 LORD Push, did you see my cap?

105

4 LORD I have lost my gown.

1 LORD He’s but a mad lord, and nought but humours

sways him. He gave me a jewel th’other day, and now

he has beat it out of my hat. Did you see my jewel?

3 LORD Did you see my cap?

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2 LORD Here ’tis.

4 LORD Here lies my gown.

1 LORD Let’s make no stay.

2 LORD Lord Timon’s mad.

3 LORD     I feel’t upon my bones.

4 LORD

One day he gives us diamonds, next day stones.

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Exeunt.

4.1 Enter TIMON.

TIMON     Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall

That girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth

And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent!

Obedience fail in children! Slaves and fools,

Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench,

5

And minister in their steads! To general filths

Convert, o’th’ instant, green virginity!

Do’t in your parents’ eyes! Bankrupts, hold fast;

Rather than render back, out with your knives,

And cut your trusters’ throats! Bound servants, steal!

10

Large-handed robbers your grave masters are,

And pill by law. Maid, to thy master’s bed;

Thy mistress is o’th’ brothel! Son of sixteen,

Pluck the lin’d crutch from thy old limping sire;

With it beat out his brains! Piety and fear,

15

Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,

Domestic awe, night-rest and neighbourhood,

Instruction, manners, mysteries and trades,

Degrees, observances, customs and laws,

Decline to your confounding contraries;

20

And yet confusion live! Plagues incident to men,

Your potent and infectious fevers heap

On Athens ripe for stroke! Thou cold sciatica,

Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt

As lamely as their manners! Lust and liberty

25

Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth,

That ’gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,

And drown themselves in riot! Itches, blains,

Sow all th’Athenian bosoms, and their crop

Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath,

30

That their society, as their friendship, may

Be merely poison! Nothing I’ll bear from thee

But nakedness, thou detestable town!

Take thou that too, with multiplying bans!

Timon will to the woods, where he shall find

35

Th’unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.

The gods confound – hear me, you good gods all –

Th’Athenians both within and out that wall;

And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow

To the whole race of mankind, high and low!

40

Amen.         Exit.

4.2 Enter Steward, with two or three Servants.

1 SERVANT

Hear you, master steward, where’s our master?

Are we undone, cast off, nothing remaining?

STEWARD     Alack, my fellows, what should I say to you?

Let me be recorded by the righteous gods,

I am as poor as you.

1 SERVANT Such a house broke?

5

So noble a master fall’n, all gone, and not

One friend to take his fortune by the arm,

And go along with him.

2 SERVANT              As we do turn our backs

5

From our companion thrown into his grave,

So his familiars to his buried fortunes

10

Slink all away, leave their false vows with him,

Like empty purses pick’d; and his poor self,

A dedicated beggar to the air,

With his disease of all-shunn’d poverty,

Walks like contempt, alone. More of our fellows.

15

Enter other Servants.

STEWARD     All broken implements of a ruin’d house.

3 SERVANT Yet do our hearts wear Timon’s livery,

That see I by our faces; we are fellows still,

Serving alike in sorrow. Leak’d is our bark,

And we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck,

20

Hearing the surges threat; we must all part

Into this sea of air.

STEWARD     Good fellows all,

The latest of my wealth I’ll share amongst you.

Wherever we shall meet, for Timon’s sake

Let’s yet be fellows. Let’s shake our heads, and say,

25

As ’twere a knell unto our master’s fortunes,

‘We have seen better days’. Let each take some;

[giving them money]

Nay, put out all your hands. Not one word more;

Thus part we rich in sorrow, parting poor.

Embrace, and part several ways.

O the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us!

30

Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt,

Since riches point to misery and contempt?

Who would be so mock’d with glory, or to live

But in a dream of friendship,

To have his pomp and all what state compounds

35

But only painted like his varnish’d friends?

Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart,

Undone by goodness; strange, unusual blood,

When man’s worst sin is he does too much good!

Who then dares to be half so kind again?

40

For bounty, that makes gods, do still mar men.

My dearest lord, bless’d to be most accurs’d,

Rich only to be wretched – thy great fortunes

Are made thy chief afflictions. Alas, kind lord,

He’s flung in rage from this ingrateful seat

45

Of monstrous friends;

Nor has he with him to supply his life,

Or that which can command it.

I’ll follow and enquire him out.

I’ll ever serve his mind, with my best will;

50

Whilst I have gold I’ll be his steward still.           Exit.

4.3 Enter TIMON.

TIMON     O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth

Rotten humidity; below thy sister’s orb

Infect the air! Twinn’d brothers of one womb,

Whose procreation, residence and birth

Scarce is dividant – touch them with several

      fortunes,

5

The greater scorns the lesser. Not nature,

To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune,

But by contempt of nature.

Raise me this beggar, and deny’t that lord,

The senators shall bear contempt hereditary,

10

The beggar native honour.

It is the pasture lards the brother’s sides,

The want that makes him lean. Who dares, who

      dares,

In purity of manhood stand upright,

And say this man’s a flatterer? If one be,

15

So are they all, for every grise of fortune

Is smooth’d by that below: the learned pate

Ducks to the golden fool; all’s obliquy;

There’s nothing level in our cursed natures

But direct villainy. Therefore be abhorr’d

20

All feasts, societies, and throngs of men!

His semblable, yea himself, Timon disdains.

Destruction fang mankind! Earth, yield me roots.

[digging]

Who seeks for better of thee, sauce his palate

With thy most operant poison. What is here?

25

Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold?

No, gods, I am no idle votarist.

Roots, you clear heavens! Thus much of this will

      make

Black, white; foul, fair; wrong, right;

Base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant.

30

Ha, you gods! Why this? What this, you gods? Why,

     this

Will lug your priests and servants from your sides,

Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads.

This yellow slave

Will knit and break religions, bless th’accurs’d,

35

Make the hoar leprosy ador’d, place thieves,

And give them title, knee and approbation

With senators on the bench. This is it

That makes the wappen’d widow wed again:

She whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores

40

Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices

To th’April day again. Come, damn’d earth,

Thou common whore of mankind, that puts odds

Among the rout of nations, I will make thee

Do thy right nature.          [March afar off.]

Ha? A drum? Th’art quick,

45

But yet I’ll bury thee. Thou’lt go, strong thief,

When gouty keepers of thee cannot stand.

Nay, stay thou out for earnest. [keeping some gold]

Enter ALCIBIADES, with drum and fife, in warlike manner; and PHRYNIA and TIMANDRA.

ALCIBIADES     What art thou there? Speak.

TIMON

A beast as thou art. The canker gnaw thy heart,

50

For showing me again the eyes of man!

ALCIBIADES

What is thy name? Is man so hateful to thee

That art thyself a man?

TIMON     I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind.

For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog,

55

That I might love thee something.

ALCIBIADES     I know thee well;

But in thy fortunes am unlearn’d and strange.

TIMON

I know thee too, and more than that I know thee

I not desire to know. Follow thy drum;

With man’s blood paint the ground, gules, gules.

60

Religious canons, civil laws are cruel;

Then what should war be? This fell whore of thine

Hath in her more destruction than thy sword,

For all her cherubin look.

PHRYNIA     Thy lips rot off!

TIMON     I will not kiss thee; then the rot returns

65

To thine own lips again.

ALCIBIADES

How came the noble Timon to this change?

TIMON     As the moon does, by wanting light to give.

But then renew I could not like the moon;

There were no suns to borrow of.

70

ALCIBIADES

Noble Timon, what friendship may I do thee?

TIMON     None, but to maintain my opinion.

ALCIBIADES     What is it, Timon?

TIMON     Promise me friendship, but perform none. If

thou wilt not promise, the gods plague thee, for thou

75

art a man! If thou dost perform, confound thee, for

thou art a man!

ALCIBIADES     I have heard in some sort of thy miseries.

TIMON     Thou saw’st them when I had prosperity.

ALCIBIADES     I see them now; then was a blessed time.

80

TIMON     As thine is now, held with a brace of harlots.

TIMANDRA     Is this th’Athenian minion whom the world

Voic’d so regardfully?

TIMON     Art thou Timandra?

TIMANDRA     Yes.

TIMON

Be a whore still. They love thee not that use thee.

Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust.

85

Make use of thy salt hours; season the slaves

For tubs and baths; bring down rose-cheek’d youth

To the tub-fast and the diet.

TIMANDRA     Hang thee, monster!

ALCIBIADES     Pardon him, sweet Timandra, for his wits

Are drown’d and lost in his calamities.

90

I have but little gold of late, brave Timon,

The want whereof doth daily make revolt

In my penurious band. I have heard and griev’d

How cursed Athens, mindless of thy worth,

Forgetting thy great deeds, when neighbour states,

95

But for thy sword and fortune, trod upon them –

TIMON     I prithee beat thy drum, and get thee gone.

ALCIBIADES     I am thy friend, and pity thee, dear Timon.

TIMON

How dost thou pity him whom thou dost trouble?

I had rather be alone.

ALCIBIADES     Why, fare thee well:

100

Here is some gold for thee.

TIMON     Keep it, I cannot eat it.

ALCIBIADES     When I have laid proud Athens on a heap –

TIMON     Warr’st thou ’gainst Athens?

ALCIBIADES     Ay, Timon, and have cause.

TIMON     The gods confound them all in thy conquest,

105

And thee after, when thou hast conquer’d!

ALCIBIADES     Why me, Timon?

TIMON     That by killing of villains

Thou wast born to conquer my country.

Put up thy gold. Go on. Here’s gold. Go on.

Be as a planetary plague, when Jove

110

Will o’er some high-vic’d city hang his poison

In the sick air. Let not thy sword skip one.

Pity not honour’d age for his white beard:

He is an usurer. Strike me the counterfeit matron:

It is her habit only that is honest,

115

Herself’s a bawd. Let not the virgin’s cheek

Make soft thy trenchant sword: for those milk-paps,

That through the window-bars bore at men’s eyes,

Are not within the leaf of pity writ,

But set them down horrible traitors. Spare not the

    babe

120

Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their

    mercy:

Think it a bastard, whom the oracle

Hath doubtfully pronounc’d the throat shall cut,

And mince it sans remorse. Swear against objects.

Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes

125

Whose proof nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes,

Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding

Shall pierce a jot. There’s gold to pay thy soldiers.

Make large confusion; and, thy fury spent,

Confounded be thyself! Speak not, be gone.

130

ALCIBIADES

Hast thou gold yet? I’ll take the gold thou givest me,

Not all thy counsel.

TIMON

Dost thou, or dost thou not, heaven’s curse upon thee!

PHRYNIA, TIMANDRA

Give us some gold, good Timon: hast thou more?

TIMON

Enough to make a whore forswear her trade,

135

And to make whores a bawd. Hold up, you sluts,

Your aprons mountant. You are not oathable,

Although I know you’ll swear, terribly swear

Into strong shudders and to heavenly agues

Th’immortal gods that hear you. Spare your oaths:

140

I’ll trust to your conditions. Be whores still;

And he whose pious breath seeks to convert you,

Be strong in whore, allure him, burn him up;

Let your close fire predominate his smoke,

And be no turncoats: yet may your pains, six months,

145

Be quite contrary. And thatch

Your poor thin roofs with burthens of the dead –

Some that were hang’d, no matter;

Wear them, betray with them. Whore still;

Paint till a horse may mire upon your face:

150

A pox of wrinkles!

PHRYNIA, TIMANDRA Well, more gold. What then?

Believe’t that we’ll do anything for gold.

TIMON     Consumptions sow

In hollow bones of man; strike their sharp shins,

155

And mar men’s spurring. Crack the lawyer’s voice,

That he may never more false title plead,

Nor sound his quillets shrilly. Hoar the flamen,

That scolds against the quality of flesh,

And not believes himself. Down with the nose,

160

Down with it flat, take the bridge quite away

Of him that, his particular to foresee,

Smells from the general weal. Make curl’d-pate

     ruffians bald,

And let the unscarr’d braggarts of the war

Derive some pain from you. Plague all,

165

That your activity may defeat and quell

The source of all erection. There’s more gold.

Do you damn others, and let this damn you,

And ditches grave you all!

PHRYNIA, TIMANDRA

More counsel with more money, bounteous Timon.

170

TIMON

More whore, more mischief first; I have given you

     earnest.

ALCIBIADES

Strike up the drum towards Athens! Farewell,

     TIMON:

If I thrive well, I’ll visit thee again.

TIMON     If I hope well, I’ll never see thee more.

ALCIBIADES     I never did thee harm.

175

TIMON     Yes, thou spok’st well of me.

ALCIBIADES     Call’st thou that harm?

TIMON     Men daily find it. Get thee away, and take

Thy beagles with thee.

ALCIBIADES     We but offend him. Strike!

Drum beats. Exeunt Alcibiades, Phrynia and Timandra.

TIMON     That nature, being sick of man’s unkindness,

Should yet be hungry! Common mother, thou

180

[digging]

Whose womb unmeasurable and infinite breast

Teems and feeds all; whose self-same mettle,

Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puff’d,

Engenders the black toad and adder blue,

The gilded newt and eyeless venom’d worm,

185

With all th’abhorred births below crisp heaven

Whereon Hyperion’s quick’ning fire doth shine:

Yield him, who all the human sons do hate,

From forth thy plenteous bosom, one poor root.

Ensear thy fertile and conceptious womb;

190

Let it no more bring out ingrateful man.

Go great with tigers, dragons, wolves and bears;

Teem with new monsters, whom thy upward face

Hath to the marbled mansion all above

Never presented. O, a root; dear thanks!

195

Dry up thy marrows, vines and plough-torn leas,

Whereof ingrateful man, with liquorish draughts

And morsels unctuous, greases his pure mind,

That from it all consideration slips –

Enter APEMANTUS.

More man? Plague, plague!

200

APEMANTUS     I was directed hither. Men report

Thou dost affect my manners, and dost use them.

TIMON     ’Tis then because thou dost not keep a dog

Whom I would imitate. Consumption catch thee!

APEMANTUS     This is in thee a nature but infected,

205

A poor unmanly melancholy sprung

From change of future. Why this spade? This place?

This slave-like habit, and these looks of care?

Thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft,

Hug their diseas’d perfumes, and have forgot

210

That ever Timon was. Shame not these woods

By putting on the cunning of a carper.

Be thou a flatterer now, and seek to thrive

By that which has undone thee. Hinge thy knee,

And let his very breath whom thou’lt observe

215

Blow off thy cap; praise his most vicious strain,

And call it excellent. Thou wast told thus.

Thou gav’st thine ears, like tapsters that bade

     welcome,

To knaves, and all approachers. ’Tis most just

That thou turn rascal; hadst thou wealth again,

220

Rascals should have’t. Do not assume my likeness.

TIMON     Were I like thee I’d throw away myself.

APEMANTUS

Thou hast cast away thyself, being like thyself

A madman so long, now a fool. What, think’st

That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,

225

Will put thy shirt on warm? Will these moist trees,

That have outliv’d the eagle, page thy heels

And skip when thou point’st out? Will the cold

      brook,

Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste

To cure thy o’er-night’s surfeit? Call the creatures

230

Whose naked natures live in all the spite

Of wreakful heaven, whose bare unhoused trunks,

To the conflicting elements expos’d,

Answer mere nature; bid them flatter thee.

O thou shalt find –

TIMON     A fool of thee. Depart.

235

APEMANTUS     I love thee better now than e’er I did.

TIMON     I hate thee worse.

APEMANTUS     Why?

TIMON     Thou flatter’st misery.

APEMANTUS     I flatter not, but say thou art a caitiff.

TIMON     Why dost thou seek me out?

APEMANTUS     To vex thee.

TIMON     Always a villain’s office, or a fool’s.

240

Dost please thyself in’t?

APEMANTUS     Ay.

TIMON     What, a knave too?

APEMANTUS     If thou didst put this sour cold habit on

To castigate thy pride ’twere well; but thou

Dost it enforcedly. Thou’dst courtier be again

Wert thou not beggar. Willing misery

245

Outlives incertain pomp, is crown’d before;

The one is filling still, never complete,

The other, at high wish. Best state, contentless,

Hath a distracted and most wretched being,

Worse than the worst, content.

250

Thou shouldst desire to die, being miserable.

TIMON     Not by his breath that is more miserable.

Thou art a slave, whom Fortune’s tender arm

With favour never clasp’d, but bred a dog.

Hadst thou like us from our first swath proceeded

255

The sweet degrees that this brief world affords

To such as may the passive drugs of it

Freely command, thou wouldst have plung’d thyself

In general riot, melted down thy youth

In different beds of lust, and never learn’d

260

The icy precepts of respect, but followed

The sugar’d game before thee. But myself –

Who had the world as my confectionary,

The mouths, the tongues, the eyes and hearts of men

At duty, more than I could frame employment:

265

That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves

Do on the oak, have with one winter’s brush

Fell from their boughs and left me open, bare,

For every storm that blows – I, to bear this,

That never knew but better, is some burthen.

270

Thy nature did commence in sufferance, time

Hath made thee hard in’t. Why shouldst thou hate

     men?

They never flatter’d thee. What hast thou given?

If thou wilt curse, thy father (that poor rag)

Must be thy subject, who in spite put stuff

275

To some she-beggar and compounded thee

Poor rogue hereditary. Hence, be gone!

If thou hadst not been born the worst of men,

Thou hadst been a knave and flatterer.

APEMANTUS     Art thou proud yet?

TIMON     Ay, that I am not thee.

APEMANTUS     I, that I was

280

No prodigal.

TIMON     I, that I am one now.

Were all the wealth I have shut up in thee,

I’ld give thee leave to hang it. Get thee gone.

That the whole life of Athens were in this!

Thus would I eat it. [eating a root]

APEMANTUS     Here, I will mend thy feast.

285

[offering food]

TIMON     First mend my company, take away thyself.

APEMANTUS

So I shall mend mine own, by th’ lack of thine.

TIMON     ’Tis not well mended so, it is but botch’d;

If not, I would it were.

APEMANTUS     What wouldst thou have to Athens?

290

TIMON     Thee thither in a whirlwind. If thou wilt,

Tell them there I have gold; look, so I have.

APEMANTUS     Here is no use for gold.

TIMON     The best and truest;

For here it sleeps, and does no hired harm.

APEMANTUS     Where liest a nights, Timon?

TIMON     Under that’s above me.

295

Where feed’st thou a days, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS     Where my stomach finds meat; or, rather,

where I eat it.

TIMON     Would poison were obedient and knew my mind!

APEMANTUS     Where wouldst thou send it?

300

TIMON     To sauce thy dishes.

APEMANTUS     The middle of humanity thou never

knewest, but the extremity of both ends. When thou

wast in thy gilt and thy perfume, they mock’d thee for

too much curiosity; in thy rags thou know’st none, but

305

art despis’d for the contrary. There’s a medlar for thee;

eat it.

TIMON     On what I hate I feed not.

APEMANTUS     Dost hate a medlar?

TIMON     Ay, though it look like thee.

310

APEMANTUS     And th’ hadst hated meddlers sooner, thou

shouldst have loved thyself better now. What man

didst thou ever know unthrift that was beloved after

his means?

TIMON     Who, without those means thou talk’st of, didst

315

thou ever know belov’d?

APEMANTUS     Myself.

TIMON     I understand thee; thou hadst some means to

keep a dog.

APEMANTUS     What things in the world canst thou

320

nearest compare to thy flatterers?

TIMON     Women nearest, but men – men are the things

themselves. What wouldst thou do with the world,

APEMANTUS, if it lay in thy power?

APEMANTUS     Give it the beasts, to be rid of the men.

325

TIMON     Wouldst thou have thyself fall in the confusion

of men, and remain a beast with the beasts?

APEMANTUS     Ay, Timon.

TIMON     A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee

t’attain to. If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile

330

thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat thee; if

thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee, when

peradventure thou wert accus’d by the ass; if thou wert

the ass, thy dulness would torment thee, and still thou

liv’dst but as a breakfast to the wolf; if thou wert the

335

wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou

shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner; wert thou the

unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee and

make thine own self the conquest of thy fury; wert

thou a bear, thou wouldst be kill’d by the horse; wert

340

thou a horse, thou wouldst be seiz’d by the leopard;

wert thou a leopard, thou wert germane to the lion,

and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life. All

thy safety were remotion, and thy defence absence.

What beast couldst thou be that were not subject to a

345

beast? And what a beast art thou already, that seest not

thy loss in transformation!

APEMANTUS     If thou couldst please me with speaking to

me, thou mightst have hit upon it here; the

commonwealth of Athens is become a forest of beasts.

350

TIMON     How has the ass broke the wall, that thou art out

of the city?

APEMANTUS     Yonder comes a poet and a painter. The

plague of company light upon thee! I will fear to catch

it, and give way. When I know not what else to do, I’ll

355

see thee again.

TIMON     When there is nothing living but thee, thou

shalt be welcome. I had rather be a beggar’s dog than

Apemantus.

APEMANTUS     Thou art the cap of all the fools alive.

360

TIMON     Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!

APEMANTUS     A plague on thee, thou art too bad to curse.

TIMON     All villains that do stand by thee are pure.

APEMANTUS

There is no leprosy but what thou speak’st.

TIMON     If I name thee.

365

I’ll beat thee, but I should infect my hands.

APEMANTUS     I would my tongue could rot them off!

TIMON     Away, thou issue of a mangy dog!

Choler does kill me that thou art alive;

I swound to see thee.

370

APEMANTUS     Would thou wouldst burst!

TIMON

Away, thou tedious rogue, I am sorry I shall lose a

stone by thee. [throwing a stone at him]

APEMANTUS     Beast!

TIMON     Slave!

375

APEMANTUS     Toad!

TIMON     Rogue, rogue, rogue!

I am sick of this false world, and will love nought

But even the mere necessities upon’t.

Then, Timon, presently prepare thy grave;

380

Lie where the light foam of the sea may beat

Thy grave-stone daily: make thine epitaph,

That death in me at others’ lives may laugh.

[looking on the gold]

O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce

’Twixt natural son and sire, thou bright defiler

385

Of Hymen’s purest bed, thou valiant Mars,

Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer,

Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow

That lies on Dian’s lap! Thou visible god,

That sold’rest close impossibilities,

390

And mak’st them kiss; that speak’st with every

       tongue,

To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts,

Think thy slave Man rebels, and by thy virtue

Set them into confounding odds, that beasts

May have the world in empire!

APEMANTUS     Would ’twere so!

395

But not till I am dead. I’ll say th’ hast gold.

Thou wilt be throng’d to shortly.

TIMON     Throng’d to?

APEMANTUS     Ay.

TIMON     Thy back, I prithee.

APEMANTUS     Live, and love thy misery.

TIMON     Long live so, and so die! I am quit.

APEMANTUS

Moe things like men! Eat, Timon, and abhor them.

400

Exit.

Enter the Banditti.

1 BANDIT Where should he have this gold? It is some

poor fragment, some slender ort of his remainder. The

mere want of gold, and the falling-from of his friends,

drove him into this melancholy.

2 BANDIT It is nois’d he hath a mass of treasure.

405

3 BANDIT Let us make the assay upon him. If he care

not for’t, he will supply us easily; if he covetously

reserve it, how shall’s get it?

2 BANDIT True; for he bears it not about him: ’tis hid.

1 BANDIT Is not this he?

410

ALL     Where?

2 BANDIT ’Tis his description.

3 BANDIT He; I know him.

ALL     Save thee, Timon.

TIMON     Now, thieves?

415

ALL     Soldiers, not thieves.

TIMON     Both too; and women’s sons.

ALL     We are not thieves, but men that much do want.

TIMON     Your greatest want is, you want much of meat.

Why should you want? Behold the earth hath roots;

Within this mile break forth a hundred springs;

420

The oaks bear mast, the briers scarlet hips;

The bounteous housewife nature on each bush

Lays her full mess before you. Want? Why want?

1 BANDIT We cannot live on grass, on berries, water,

As beasts and birds and fishes.

425

TIMON

Nor on the beasts themselves, the birds and fishes;

You must eat men. Yet thanks I must you con

That you are thieves profess’d, that you work not

In holier shapes; for there is boundless theft

In limited professions. Rascal thieves,

430

Here’s gold. Go, suck the subtle blood o’th’ grape,

Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth,

And so ’scape hanging. Trust not the physician;

His antidotes are poison, and he slays

Moe than you rob. Take wealth and lives together.

435

Do villainy, do, since you protest to do’t,

Like workmen. I’ll example you with thievery:

The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction

Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief,

And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;

440

The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves

The moon into salt tears; the earth’s a thief,

That feeds and breeds by a composture stol’n

From gen’ral excrement; each thing’s a thief.

The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power

445

Has uncheck’d theft. Love not yourselves; away,

Rob one another. There’s more gold. Cut throats.

All that you meet are thieves. To Athens go;

Break open shops: nothing can you steal

But thieves do lose it. Steal less for this I give you,

450

And gold confound you howsoe’er! Amen.

Withdraws.

3 BANDIT H’as almost charm’d me from my

profession, by persuading me to it.

1 BANDIT ’Tis in the malice of mankind that he thus

advises us; not to have us thrive in our mystery.

455

2 BANDIT I’ll believe him as an enemy, and give over my

trade.

1 BANDIT Let us first see peace in Athens. There is no

time so miserable but a man may be true.

Exeunt Bandits.

Enter Steward.

STEWARD     O you gods!

460

Is yond despis’d and ruinous man my lord?

Full of decay and failing? O monument

And wonder of good deeds evilly bestow’d!

What an alteration of honour has desp’rate want

     made!

What vilder thing upon the earth than friends

465

Who can bring noblest minds to basest ends!

How rarely does it meet with this time’s guise,

When man was wish’d to love his enemies!

Grant I may ever love, and rather woo

Those that would mischief me than those that do!

470

H’as caught me in his eye: I will present

My honest grief unto him; and, as my lord,

Still serve him with my life. My dearest master!

TIMON comes forward.

TIMON     Away! What art thou?

STEWARD     Have you forgot me, sir?

TIMON     Why dost ask that? I have forgot all men.

475

Then, if thou grant’st th’art a man,

I have forgot thee.

STEWARD     An honest poor servant of yours.

TIMON     Then I know thee not.

I never had honest man about me, I; all

480

I kept were knaves, to serve in meat to villains.

STEWARD     The gods are witness,

Ne’er did poor steward wear a truer grief

For his undone lord than mine eyes for you.

TIMON

What, dost thou weep? Come nearer; then I love

    thee,

485

Because thou art a woman, and disclaim’st

Flinty mankind, whose eyes do never give

But thorough lust and laughter. Pity’s sleeping.

Strange times, that weep with laughing, not with

    weeping!

STEWARD     I beg of you to know me, good my lord,

490

T’accept my grief and whilst this poor wealth lasts

To entertain me as your steward still.

TIMON     Had I a steward

So true, so just, and now so comfortable?

It almost turns my dangerous nature mild.

495

Let me behold thy face. Surely this man

Was born of woman.

Forgive my general and exceptless rashness,

You perpetual-sober gods! I do proclaim

One honest man. Mistake me not, but one.

500

No more, I pray – and he’s a steward.

How fain would I have hated all mankind,

And thou redeem’st thyself. But all, save thee,

I fell with curses.

Methinks thou art more honest now than wise;

505

For, by oppressing and betraying me,

Thou mightst have sooner got another service;

For many so arrive at second masters

Upon their first lord’s neck. But tell me true –

For I must ever doubt, though ne’er so sure –

510

Is not thy kindness subtle, covetous,

A usuring kindness, and as rich men deal gifts,

Expecting in return twenty for one?

STEWARD     No, my most worthy master, in whose breast

Doubt and suspect, alas, are plac’d too late!

515

You should have fear’d false times when you did

       feast;

Suspect still comes where an estate is least.

That which I show, heaven knows, is merely love,

Duty and zeal to your unmatched mind,

Care of your food and living; and believe it,

520

My most honour’d lord,

For any benefit that points to me,

Either in hope, or present, I’d exchange

For this one wish, that you had power and wealth

To requite me, by making rich yourself.

525

TIMON     Look thee, ’tis so. Thou singly honest man,

Here, take: the gods out of my misery

Has sent thee treasure. Go, live rich and happy,

But thus condition’d: thou shalt build from men;

Hate all, curse all, show charity to none,

530

But let the famish’d flesh slide from the bone

Ere thou relieve the beggar; give to dogs

What thou deniest to men; let prisons swallow ’em,

Debts wither ’em to nothing; be men like blasted

     woods;

And may diseases lick up their false bloods!

535

And so farewell, and thrive.

STEWARD     O let me stay and comfort you, my master.

TIMON     If thou hat’st curses

Stay not; fly, whilst thou art bless’d and free:

Ne’er see thou man, and let me ne’er see thee.

540

Exit Steward; Timon withdraws.

5.1 Enter Poet and Painter.

PAINTER     As I took note of the place, it cannot be far

where he abides.

POET     What’s to be thought of him? Does the rumour

hold for true that he’s so full of gold?

PAINTER     Certain. Alcibiades reports it; Phrynia and

5

Timandra had gold of him. He likewise enrich’d poor

straggling soldiers with great quantity. ’Tis said he

gave unto his steward a mighty sum.

POET     Then this breaking of his has been but a try for

his friends.

10

PAINTER     Nothing else. You shall see him a palm in

Athens again, and flourish with the highest. Therefore

’tis not amiss we tender our loves to him, in this

suppos’d distress of his: it will show honestly in us,

and is very likely to load our purposes with what they

15

travail for, if it be a just and true report that goes of his

having.

POET     What have you now to present unto him?

PAINTER     Nothing at this time but my visitation; only I

will promise him an excellent piece.

20

POET     I must serve him so too, tell him of an intent that’s

coming toward him.

PAINTER     Good as the best. Promising is the very air o’

th’ time; it opens the eyes of expectation. Performance

is ever the duller for his act; and, but in the plainer

25

and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite

out of use. To promise is most courtly and fashionable;

performance is a kind of will or testament which

argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it.

Enter TIMON from his cave.

TIMON     [aside] Excellent workman, thou canst not paint

30

a man so bad as is thyself.

POET     I am thinking what I shall say I have provided for

him. It must be a personating of himself; a satire

against the softness of prosperity, with a discovery of

the infinite flatteries that follow youth and opulency.

35

TIMON     [aside] Must thou needs stand for a villain in

thine own work? Wilt thou whip thine own faults in

other men? Do so, I have gold for thee.

POET     Nay, let’s seek him:

Then do we sin against our own estate,

40

When we may profit meet, and come too late.

PAINTER     True.

When the day serves, before black-corner’d night

Find what thou want’st, by free and offer’d light.

Come.

45

TIMON     [aside]

I’ll meet you at the turn. What a god’s gold,

That he is worshipp’d in a baser temple

Than where swine feed?

’Tis thou that rigg’st the bark and plough’st the

     foam,

Settlest admired reverence in a slave:

50

To thee be worship; and thy saints for aye

Be crown’d with plagues, that thee alone obey!

Fit I meet them. [coming forward]

POET     Hail, worthy Timon!

PAINTER     Our late noble master!

TIMON     Have I once liv’d to see two honest men?

55

POET     Sir,

Having often of your open bounty tasted,

Hearing you were retir’d, your friends fall’n off,

Whose thankless natures (O abhorred spirits!)

Not all the whips of heaven are large enough –

60

What, to you,

Whose star-like nobleness gave life and influence

To their whole being! I am rapt, and cannot cover

The monstrous bulk of this ingratitude

With any size of words.

65

TIMON     Let it go naked, men may see’t the better.

You that are honest, by being what you are,

Make them best seen and known.

PAINTER     He and myself

Have travail’d in the great show’r of your gifts,

And sweetly felt it.

TIMON     Ay, you are honest men.

70

PAINTER     We are hither come to offer you our service.

TIMON

Most honest men! Why, how shall I requite you?

Can you eat roots and drink cold water, no?

BOTH     What we can do, we’ll do, to do you service.

TIMON

Y’are honest men. Y’ have heard that I have gold;

75

I am sure you have; speak truth, y’are honest men.

PAINTER     So it is said, my noble lord; but therefore

Came not my friend nor I.

TIMON     Good honest men! Thou draw’st a counterfeit

Best in all Athens: th’art indeed the best;

80

Thou counterfeit’st most lively.

PAINTER     So, so, my lord.

TIMON     E’en so, sir, as I say. And, for thy fiction,

Why, thy verse swells with stuff so fine and smooth

That thou art even natural in thine art.

But, for all this, my honest-natur’d friends,

85

I must needs say you have a little fault;

Marry, ’tis not monstrous in you, neither wish I

You take much pains to mend.

BOTH     Beseech your honour

To make it known to us.

TIMON     You’ll take it ill.

BOTH     Most thankfully, my lord.

TIMON     Will you indeed?

90

BOTH     Doubt it not, worthy lord.

TIMON     There’s never a one of you but trusts a knave,

That mightily deceives you.

BOTH     Do we, my lord?

TIMON     Ay, and you hear him cog, see him dissemble,

Know his gross patchery, love him, feed him,

95

Keep in your bosom; yet remain assur’d

That he’s a made-up villain.

PAINTER     I know none such, my lord.

POET     Nor I.

TIMON     Look you, I love you well; I’ll give you gold,

Rid me these villains from your companies;

100

Hang them or stab them, drown them in a draught,

Confound them by some course, and come to me,

I’ll give you gold enough.

BOTH     Name them, my lord; let’s know them.

TIMON

You that way and you this, but two in company;

105

Each man apart, all single and alone,

Yet an arch-villain keeps him company.

[to one] If, where thou art, two villains shall not be,

Come not near him.

[to the other] If thou wouldst not reside

110

But where one villain is, then him abandon.

Hence, pack! There’s gold; you came for gold, ye

      slaves.

[to Poet] You have work for me, there’s payment:

      hence!

[to Painter] You are an alchemist, make gold of that!

Out, rascal dogs! Drives them out and then retires.

115

Enter Steward and two Senators.

STEWARD     It is vain that you would speak with Timon;

For he is set so only to himself,

That nothing but himself, which looks like man,

Is friendly with him.

1 SENATOR      Bring us to his cave.

It is our part and promise to th’Athenians

120

To speak with Timon.

2 SENATOR      At all times alike

Men are not still the same. ’Twas time and griefs

That fram’d him thus: time with his fairer hand

Offering the fortunes of his former days

The former man may make him. Bring us to him,

125

And chance it as it may.

STEWARD     Here is his cave.

Peace and content be here! Lord Timon! Timon!

Look out, and speak to friends. Th’Athenians

By two of their most reverend senate greet thee.

Speak to them, noble Timon.

130

Re-enter TIMON from his cave.

TIMON

Thou sun, that comforts, burn! Speak and be hang’d;

For each true word, a blister; and each false

Be as a cauterizing to the root o’th’ tongue,

Consuming it with speaking!

1 SENATOR     Worthy Timon –

TIMON     Of none but such as you, and you of Timon.

135

1 SENATOR The senators of Athens greet thee, Timon.

TIMON

I thank them; and would send them back the plague,

Could I but catch it for them.

1 SENATOR     O forget

What we are sorry for ourselves in thee.

The senators, with one consent of love,

140

Entreat thee back to Athens, who have thought

On special dignities which vacant lie

For thy best use and wearing.

2 SENATOR     They confess

Toward thee forgetfulness too general gross;

Which now the public body, which doth seldom

145

Play the recanter, feeling in itself

A lack of Timon’s aid, hath sense withal

Of it own fall, restraining aid to Timon,

And send forth us, to make their sorrowed render

Together with a recompense more fruitful

150

Than their offence can weigh down by the dram –

Ay, even such heaps and sums of love and wealth

As shall to thee blot out what wrongs were theirs,

And write in thee the figures of their love,

Ever to read them thine.

TIMON     You witch me in it;

155

Surprise me to the very brink of tears.

Lend me a fool’s heart and a woman’s eyes,

And I’ll beweep these comforts, worthy senators.

1 SENATOR     Therefore so please thee to return with us,

And of our Athens, thine and ours, to take

160

The captainship, thou shalt be met with thanks,

Allowed with absolute power, and thy good name

Live with authority. So soon we shall drive back

Of Alcibiades th’approaches wild,

Who like a boar too savage doth root up

165

His country’s peace.

2 SENATOR     And shakes his threat’ning sword

Against the walls of Athens.

1 SENATOR     Therefore Timon –

TIMON     Well, sir, I will; therefore, I will, sir, thus:

If Alcibiades kill my countrymen,

Let Alcibiades know this of Timon,

170

That Timon cares not. But if he sack fair Athens,

And take our goodly aged men by th’ beards,

Giving our holy virgins to the stain

Of contumelious, beastly, mad-brain’d war,

Then let him know (and tell him Timon speaks it,

175

In pity of our aged and our youth)

I cannot choose but tell him, that I care not,

And let him take’t at worst – for their knives care not

While you have throats to answer. For myself,

There’s not a whittle in th’unruly camp

180

But I do prize it at my love before

The reverend’st throat in Athens. So I leave you

To the protection of the prosperous gods,

As thieves to keepers.

STEWARD     Stay not; all’s in vain.

TIMON     Why, I was writing of my epitaph;

185

It will be seen to-morrow. My long sickness

Of health and living now begins to mend,

And nothing brings me all things. Go, live still;

Be Alcibiades your plague, you his,

And last so long enough.

1 SENATOR     We speak in vain.

190

TIMON     But yet I love my country, and am not

One that rejoices in the common wrack,

As common bruit doth put it.

1 SENATOR     That’s well spoke.

TIMON     Commend me to my loving countrymen.

1 SENATOR

These words become your lips as they pass through them.

195

2 SENATOR And enter in our ears like great triumphers

In their applauding gates.

TIMON     Commend me to them,

And tell them that, to ease them of their griefs,

Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses,

Their pangs of love, with other incident throes

200

That nature’s fragile vessel doth sustain

In life’s uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them:

I’ll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades’ wrath.

1 SENATOR I like this well; he will return again.

TIMON     I have a tree which grows here in my close,

205

That mine own use invites me to cut down,

And shortly must I fell it; tell my friends,

Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree,

From high to low throughout, that whoso please

To stop affliction, let him take his haste,

210

Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe,

And hang himself. I pray you, do my greeting.

STEWARD

Trouble him no further; thus you still shall find him.

TIMON     Come not to me again; but say to Athens,

Timon hath made his everlasting mansion

215

Upon the beached verge of the salt flood,

Who once a day with his embossed froth

The turbulent surge shall cover. Thither come,

And let my grave-stone be your oracle.

Lips, let four words go by and language end:

220

What is amiss, plague and infection mend!

Graves only be men’s works and death their gain;

Sun, hide thy beams, Timon hath done his reign.

Exit.

1SENATOR     His discontents are unremoveably

Coupled to nature.

225

2SENATOR     Our hope in him is dead. Let us return,

And strain what other means is left unto us

In our dear peril.

1SENATOR     It requires swift foot.     Exeunt.

5.2 Enter two other Senators with a Messenger.

3 SENATOR     Thou hast painfully discover’d; are his files

As full as thy report?

MESSENGER     I have spoke the least;

Besides, his expedition promises

Present approach.

4 SENATOR

We stand much hazard if they bring not Timon.

5

MESSENGER     I met a courier, one mine ancient friend,

Whom, though in general part we were oppos’d,

Yet our old love made a particular force,

And made us speak like friends. This man was riding

From Alcibiades to Timon’s cave,

10

With letters of entreaty, which imported

His fellowship i’th’ cause against your city,

In part for his sake mov’d.

Enter the two other Senators.

3 SENATOR     Here come our brothers.

1SENATOR     No talk of Timon, nothing of him expect.

The enemy’s drum is heard, and fearful scouring

15

Doth choke the air with dust. In, and prepare.

Ours is the fall, I fear; our foes’ the snare.     Exeunt.

5.3 Enter a Soldier.

SOLDIER     By all description this should be the place.

Who’s here? Speak, ho! No answer? What is this?

Timon is dead, who hath outstretch’d his span:

Some beast read this; there does not live a man.

Dead, sure; and this his grave. What’s on this tomb

5

I cannot read. The character I’ll take with wax;

Our captain hath in every figure skill,

An ag’d interpreter, though young in days.

Before proud Athens he’s set down by this,

Whose fall the mark of his ambition is.     Exit.

10

5.4     Trumpets sound. Enter ALCIBIADES with his powers.

ALCIBIADES     Sound to this coward and lascivious town

Our terrible approach.     [Sounds a parley.]

The Senators appear upon the walls.

Till now you have gone on, and fill’d the time

With all licentious measure, making your wills

The scope of justice; till now, myself and such

5

As slept within the shadow of your power

Have wander’d with our travers’d arms, and breath’d

Our sufferance vainly. Now the time is flush,

When crouching marrow, in the bearer strong,

Cries, of itself, ‘No more’. Now breathless wrong

10

Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease,

And pursy insolence shall break his wind

With fear and horrid flight.

1SENATOR     Noble, and young:

When thy first griefs were but a mere conceit,

Ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear,

15

We sent to thee, to give thy rages balm,

To wipe out our ingratitude, with loves

Above their quantity.

2SENATOR     So did we woo

Transformed Timon to our city’s love

By humble message and by promis’d means.

20

We were not all unkind, nor all deserve

The common stroke of war.

1SENATOR     These walls of ours

Were not erected by their hands from whom

You have receiv’d your grief; nor are they such

That these great tow’rs, trophies, and schools should fall

25

For private faults in them.

2SENATOR     Nor are they living

Who were the motives that you first went out;

Shame, that they wanted cunning in excess,

Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord,

Into our city with thy banners spread;

30

By decimation and a tithed death,

If thy revenges hunger for that food

Which nature loathes, take thou the destin’d tenth,

And by the hazard of the spotted die

Let die the spotted.

1SENATOR     All have not offended.

35

For those that were, it is not square to take

On those that are, revenge: crimes, like lands,

Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman,

Bring in thy ranks, but leave without thy rage;

Spare thy Athenian cradle and those kin

40

Which in the bluster of thy wrath must fall

With those that have offended; like a shepherd,

Approach the fold and cull th’infected forth,

But kill not all together.

2SENATOR     What thou wilt,

Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile

45

Than hew to’t with thy sword.

1SENATOR     Set but thy foot

Against our rampir’d gates, and they shall ope,

So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before,

To say thou’lt enter friendly.

2SENATOR     Throw thy glove,

Or any token of thine honour else,

50

That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress

And not as our confusion, all thy powers

Shall make their harbour in our town, till we

Have seal’d thy full desire.

ALCIBIADES     Then there’s my glove.

Descend, and open your uncharged ports.

55

Those enemies of Timon’s and mine own

Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof

Fall, and no more; and, to atone your fears

With my more noble meaning, not a man

Shall pass his quarter or offend the stream

60

Of regular justice in your city’s bounds

But shall be remedied to your public laws

At heaviest answer.

BOTH     ’Tis most nobly spoken.

ALCIBIADES     Descend, and keep your words.

Enter a Soldier.

SOLDIER     My noble general, Timon is dead,

65

Entomb’d upon the very hem o’th’ sea;

And on his grave-stone this insculpture which

With wax I brought away, whose soft impression

Interprets for my poor ignorance.

ALCIBIADES     [reading the Epitaph]

Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft:

70

Seek not my name. A plague consume you, wicked caitiffs left!

Here lie I, Timon, who, alive, all living men did hate.

Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here thy gait.

These well express in thee thy latter spirits.

Though thou abhorr’dst in us our human griefs,

75

Scorn’dst our brains’ flow and those our droplets which

From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit

Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye

On thy low grave, of faults forgiven. Dead

Is noble Timon, of whose memory

80

Hereafter more. Bring me into your city,

And I will use the olive with my sword,

Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each

Prescribe to other, as each other’s leech.

Let our drums strike.     Exeunt

85

Titus Andronicus

The only recorded copy of a 1594 Quarto edition of The Most Lamentable Roman Tragedy of Titus Andronicus was found in Sweden in 1904. It survives from the earliest known printed edition of any of Shakespeare’s plays and is now a treasured item in the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Before its discovery the play was known from the Quartos of 1600 and 1611 and from the First Folio of 1623, where it is the second of the tragedies and gains a whole scene, 3.2, not present in the Quartos. This scene, which appears to be authentic, may well have been added at some date later than 1594. The 1594 title-page records performance by the Earl of Derby, Earl of Pembroke and Earl of Sussex’s Men, whether consecutively or in combination (the play makes heavy casting demands). Five performances at the Rose playhouse between 23 January and 12 June 1594 are recorded in Philip Henslowe’s accounts, three by Sussex’s Men, two by the Lord Chamberlain’s (i.e. Derby’s) Men. Proposed dates of composition range from 1589 to 1593–4: the Arden 3 editor puts forward arguments for the later date. Long regarded as a play of dubious authorship, Titus is now generally accepted as Shakespeare’s, despite continuing claims that act 1, which shows signs of revision to incorporate the killings of Alarbus and Mutius, was originally the work of George Peele. A drawing of characters from the play by Henry Peacham (see p. 6) appears to combine moments from different scenes, if indeed it relates directly to performance at all. Once dated 1595, this well-known drawing may in fact have been made as late as 1615 (the date on it admitting of more than one interpretation).

Despite the presence of many motifs familiar from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (a book used in its action), Seneca’s tragedies and the plays of Marlowe, the plot of Titus appears to be original. A ballad and prose history once identified as its sources are better accounted for as derivative spin-offs, occasioned by the sustained success of the play (whose continued popularity Ben Jonson mocked as late as 1614).

A long period of infrequent revival and generally low esteem followed the attempt of Edward Ravenscroft to rewrite Titus for audiences in the Restoration. Modern theatrical interest began in the 1920s and received much stimulus from the worldwide success of Peter Brook’s production starring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, which was first presented at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1955. Recent productions have used a less thoroughly rearranged text than that of Brook, who cut it heavily and reordered its action to inhibit intrusive laughter.

It is easy to caricature Titus as violent melodrama, but it exercises great power in the theatre and shows Shakespeare already engaged with tragic characters and situations to which he would return as late as Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus (alluded to at 4.4.62–7), which again dramatize the opposition of the values of an ostensibly civilized and honourable Rome to those of threatening barbarians. Titus adumbrates both the crafty madness of Hamlet and the passionate madness of Lear; the villainous Moor, Aaron, combines qualities which were to separate into Othello and Iago; but it is supremely Lavinia, mutilated and mute, who first realizes the pathos of female victims of violence which is so distinctive a feature of Shakespeare’s tragic writing.

The 1995 Arden text is based on the unique copy of the 1594 First Quarto, with a few corrections from the 1600 Second Quarto and the addition of 3.2 from the 1623 First Folio. Passages unique to the Second Quarto and the First Folio are designated by superscript Q2 or F at the beginning and end of them.

LIST OF ROLES

ROMANS

SATURNINUS

eldest son of the recently deceased Emperor of Rome,

later Emperor

BASSIANUS

younger brother of Saturninus

TITUS Andronicus

a Roman nobleman, general against the Goths

MARCUS Andronicus

a tribune of the people, brother of Titus

the surviving sons of Titus Andronicus (in descending order of age)

LAVINIA

only daughter of Titus Andronicus, betrothed to Bassianus

Young Lucius, a BOY

son of Lucius

PUBLIUS

son of Marcus Andronicus

kinsmen of the Andronici

EMILLIUS

a Roman

CAPTAIN

MESSENGER

NURSE

CLOWN

Other ROMANS

including senators, tribunes, soldiers and attendants

GOTHS

TAMORA

Queen of the Goths and later Empress of Rome by

marriage to Saturninus

AARON

a Moor in the service of Tamora, her lover

Other GOTHS

forming an army

Titus Andronicus

1.1 Flourish. Enter the Tribunes including MARCUS Andronicus and Senators aloft. And then enter below SATURNINUS     and his followers at one door, and BASSIANUS and his followers at the other, with drums and colours.

SATURNINUS     Noble patricians, patrons of my right,

Defend the justice of my cause with arms.

And countrymen, my loving followers,

Plead my successive title with your swords.

I am his first-born son that was the last

5

That wore the imperial diadem of Rome:

Then let my father’s honours live in me,

Nor wrong mine age with this indignity.

BASSIANUS

Romans, friends, followers, favourers of my right,

If ever Bassianus, Caesar’s son,

10

Were gracious in the eyes of royal Rome,

Keep then this passage to the Capitol,

And suffer not dishonour to approach

The imperial seat, to virtue consecrate,

To justice, continence and nobility;

15

But let desert in pure election shine,

And, Romans, fight for freedom in your choice.

MARCUS     [aloft, with the crown]

Princes, that strive by factions and by friends

Ambitiously for rule and empery,

Know that the people of Rome, for whom we stand

20

A special party, have by common voice

In election for the Roman empery

Chosen Andronicus, surnamed Pius

For many good and great deserts to Rome.

A nobler man, a braver warrior,

25

Lives not this day within the city walls.

He by the senate is accited home

From weary wars against the barbarous Goths,

That with his sons, a terror to our foes,

Hath yoked a nation strong, trained up in arms.

30

Ten years are spent since first he undertook

This cause of Rome and chastised with arms

Our enemies’ pride; five times he hath returned

Bleeding to Rome, bearing his valiant sons

In coffins from the field Q2and at this day

35

To the monument of the Andronici

Done sacrifice of expiation,

And slain the noblest prisoner of the GothsQ2.

And now at last, laden with honour’s spoils,

Returns the good Andronicus to Rome,

40

Renowned Titus, flourishing in arms.

Let us entreat, by honour of his name

Whom worthily you would have now succeed,

And in the Capitol and senate’s right,

Whom you pretend to honour and adore,

45

That you withdraw you and abate your strength,

Dismiss your followers and, as suitors should,

Plead your deserts in peace and humbleness.

SATURNINUS

How fair the tribune speaks to calm my thoughts.

BASSIANUS     Marcus Andronicus, so I do affy

50

In thy uprightness and integrity,

And so I love and honour thee and thine,

Thy noble brother Titus and his sons,

And her to whom my thoughts are humbled all,

Gracious Lavinia, Rome’s rich ornament,

55

That I will here dismiss my loving friends

And to my fortune’s and the people’s favour

Commit my cause in balance to be weighed.

Exeunt his soldiers.

SATURNINUS

Friends that have been thus forward in my right,

I thank you all and here dismiss you all,

60

And to the love and favour of my country

Commit myself, my person and the cause.

Exeunt his soldiers.

Rome, be as just and gracious unto me

As I am confident and kind to thee.

Open the gates and let me in.

65

BASSIANUS     Tribunes, and me, a poor competitor.

Flourish. They go up into the Senate House.

Enter a Captain.

CAPTAIN     Romans, make way: the good Andronicus,

Patron of virtue, Rome’s best champion,

Successful in the battles that he fights,

With honour and with fortune is returned

70

From where he circumscribed with his sword

And brought to yoke the enemies of Rome.

Sound drums and trumpets, and then enter two of Titus’ sons, and then two men bearing a coffin covered with black, then two other sons, then TITUS ANDRONICUS, and then, as prisoners, TAMORA, the Queen of Goths, and her three sons, ALARBUS, CHIRON and DEMETRIUS, with AARON the Moor, and others as many as can be. Then set down the coffin and Titus speaks.

TITUS     Hail, Rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds!

Lo, as the bark that hath discharged his freight

Returns with precious lading to the bay

75

From whence at first she weighed her anchorage,

Cometh Andronicus, bound with laurel boughs,

To resalute his country with his tears,

Tears of true joy for his return to Rome.

Thou great defender of this Capitol,

80

Stand gracious to the rites that we intend.

Romans, of five-and-twenty valiant sons,

Half of the number that King Priam had,

Behold the poor remains, alive and dead:

These that survive, let Rome reward with love;

85

These that I bring unto their latest home,

With burial amongst their ancestors.

Here Goths have given me leave to sheathe my sword.

Titus, unkind and careless of thine own,

Why suffer’st thou thy sons unburied yet

90

To hover on the dreadful shore of Styx?

Make way to lay them by their brethren.

[They open the tomb.]

There greet in silence, as the dead are wont,

And sleep in peace, slain in your country’s wars.

O sacred receptacle of my joys,

95

Sweet cell of virtue and nobility,

How many sons hast thou of mine in store

That thou wilt never render to me more!

LUCIUS     Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths,

That we may hew his limbs and on a pile

100

Ad manes fratrum sacrifice his flesh

Before this earthly prison of their bones,

That so the shadows be not unappeased,

Nor we disturbed with prodigies on earth.

TITUS     I give him you, the noblest that survives,

105

The eldest son of this distressed queen.

TAMORA     [kneeling]

Stay, Roman brethren, gracious conqueror,

Victorious Titus, rue the tears I shed,

A mother’s tears in passion for her son!

And if thy sons were ever dear to thee,

110

O, think my son to be as dear to me.

Sufficeth not that we are brought to Rome

To beautify thy triumphs, and return

Captive to thee and to thy Roman yoke?

But must my sons be slaughtered in the streets

115

For valiant doings in their country’s cause?

O, if to fight for king and commonweal

Were piety in thine, it is in these.

Andronicus, stain not thy tomb with blood.

Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods?

120

Draw near them then in being merciful.

Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge:

Thrice noble Titus, spare my first-born son.

TITUS     Patient yourself, madam, and pardon me.

These are their brethren whom your Goths beheld

125

Alive and dead, and for their brethren slain,

Religiously they ask a sacrifice.

To this your son is marked, and die he must,

T’appease their groaning shadows that are gone.

LUCIUS     Away with him, and make a fire straight,

130

And with our swords upon a pile of wood

Let’s hew his limbs till they be clean consumed.

Exeunt Titus’ sons with Alarbus.

TAMORA     [rising] O cruel, irreligious piety!

CHIRON     Was never Scythia half so barbarous!

DEMETRIUS     Oppose not Scythia to ambitious Rome.

135

Alarbus goes to rest and we survive

To tremble under Titus’ threatening look.

Then, madam, stand resolved, but hope withal

The self-same gods that armed the queen of Troy

With opportunity of sharp revenge

140

Upon the Thracian tyrant in his tent

May favour Tamora, the queen of Goths

(When Goths were Goths and Tamora was queen),

To quit the bloody wrongs upon her foes.

Enter the Sons of Andronicus again.

LUCIUS     See, lord and father, how we have performed

145

Our Roman rites: Alarbus’ limbs are lopped

And entrails feed the sacrificing fire,

Whose smoke like incense doth perfume the sky.

Remaineth nought but to inter our brethren

And with loud ’larums welcome them to Rome.

150

TITUS     Let it be so, and let Andronicus

Make this his latest farewell to their souls.

[Sound trumpets, and lay the coffin in the tomb.]

In peace and honour rest you here, my sons;

Rome’s readiest champions, repose you here in rest,

Secure from worldly chances and mishaps.

155

Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,

Here grow no damned drugs, here are no storms,

No noise, but silence and eternal sleep:

In peace and honour rest you here, my sons.

Enter LAVINIA.

LAVINIA     In peace and honour, live Lord Titus long:

160

My noble lord and father, live in fame!

Lo, at this tomb my tributary tears

I render for my brethren’s obsequies,

[kneeling] And at thy feet I kneel with tears of joy

Shed on this earth for thy return to Rome.

165

O bless me here with thy victorious hand,

Whose fortunes Rome’s best citizens applaud.

TITUS     Kind Rome, that hast thus lovingly reserved

The cordial of mine age to glad my heart.

Lavinia live, outlive thy father’s days

170

And fame’s eternal date, for virtue’s praise.

[Lavinia rises.]

Enter MARCUS below.

MARCUS     Long live Lord Titus, my beloved brother,

Gracious triumpher in the eyes of Rome!

TITUS     Thanks, gentle tribune, noble brother Marcus.

MARCUS

And welcome, nephews, from successful wars,

175

You that survive and you that sleep in fame.

Fair lords, your fortunes are alike in all

That in your country’s service drew your swords;

But safer triumph is this funeral pomp

That hath aspired to Solon’s happiness

180

And triumphs over chance in honour’s bed.

Titus Andronicus, the people of Rome,

Whose friend in justice thou hast ever been,

Send thee by me, their tribune and their trust,

This palliament of white and spotless hue,

185

And name thee in election for the empire

With these our late-deceased emperor’s sons.

Be candidatus then and put it on,

And help to set a head on headless Rome.

[Offers robe.]

TITUS     A better head her glorious body fits

190

Than his that shakes for age and feebleness.

What, should I don this robe and trouble you?

Be chosen with proclamations today,

Tomorrow yield up rule, resign my life

And set abroad new business for you all?

195

Rome, I have been thy soldier forty years,

And led my country’s strength successfully,

And buried one-and-twenty valiant sons,

Knighted in field, slain manfully in arms

In right and service of their noble country:

200

Give me a staff of honour for mine age,

But not a sceptre to control the world.

Upright he held it, lords, that held it last.

MARCUS     Titus, thou shalt obtain and ask the empery.

SATURNINUS     [aloft]

Proud and ambitious tribune, canst thou tell?

205

TITUS     Patience, prince Saturninus.

SATURNINUS     [aloft] Romans, do me right.

Patricians, draw your swords and sheathe them not

Till Saturninus be Rome’s emperor.

Andronicus, would thou were shipped to hell

210

Rather than rob me of the people’s hearts.

LUCIUS     Proud Saturnine, interrupter of the good

That noble-minded Titus means to thee.

TITUS     Content thee, prince, I will restore to thee

The people’s hearts, and wean them from

    themselves.

215

BASSIANUS     [aloft] Andronicus, I do not flatter thee,

But honour thee, and will do till I die.

My faction if thou strengthen with thy friends,

I will most thankful be, and thanks to men

Of noble minds is honourable meed.

220

TITUS     People of Rome, and people’s tribunes here,

I ask your voices and your suffrages.

Will ye bestow them friendly on Andronicus?

TRIBUNES     [aloft] To gratify the good Andronicus

And gratulate his safe return to Rome,

225

The people will accept whom he admits.

TITUS     Tribunes, I thank you, and this suit I make,

That you create our emperor’s eldest son,

Lord Saturnine, whose virtues will, I hope,

Reflect on Rome as Titan’s rays on earth,

230

And ripen justice in this commonweal –

Then if you will elect by my advice,

Crown him and say, ‘Long live our emperor!’

MARCUS     With voices and applause of every sort,

Patricians and plebeians, we create

235

Lord Saturninus Rome’s great emperor,

And say, ‘Long live our emperor Saturnine!’

[A long flourish till they come down.]

SATURNINUS     Titus Andronicus, for thy favours done

To us in our election this day,

I give thee thanks in part of thy deserts,

240

And will with deeds requite thy gentleness.

And for an onset, Titus, to advance

Thy name and honourable family,

Lavinia will I make my empress,

Rome’s royal mistress, mistress of my heart,

245

And in the sacred Pantheon her espouse.

Tell me, Andronicus, doth this motion please thee?

TITUS     It doth, my worthy lord, and in this match

I hold me highly honoured of your grace,

And here in sight of Rome to Saturnine,

250

King and commander of our commonweal,

The wide world’s emperor, do I consecrate

My sword, my chariot and my prisoners,

Presents well worthy Rome’s imperious lord:

Receive them then, the tribute that I owe,

255

Mine honour’s ensigns humbled at thy feet.

[Titus’ sword and prisoners are handed over to Saturninus.]

SATURNINUS     Thanks, noble Titus, father of my life.

How proud I am of thee and of thy gifts,

Rome shall record, and when I do forget

The least of these unspeakable deserts,

260

Romans forget your fealty to me.

TITUS     [to Tamora]

Now, madam, are you prisoner to an emperor,

To him that for your honour and your state

Will use you nobly and your followers.

SATURNINUS     A goodly lady, trust me, of the hue

265

That I would choose were I to choose anew.

[to Tamora] Clear up, fair queen, that cloudy

countenance:

Though chance of war hath wrought this change of

    cheer,

Thou com’st not to be made a scorn in Rome;

Princely shall be thy usage every way.

270

Rest on my word, and let not discontent

Daunt all your hopes; madam, he comforts you

Can make you greater than the queen of Goths.

Lavinia, you are not displeased with this?

LAVINIA     Not I, my lord, sith true nobility

275

Warrants these words in princely courtesy.

SATURNINUS     Thanks, sweet Lavinia. Romans, let us go.

Ransomless here we set our prisoners free;

Proclaim our honours, lords, with trump and drum.

     [Sound drums and trumpets.

Tamora, Chiron, Demetrius and Aaron are released.]

BASSIANUS     [seizing Lavinia]

Lord Titus, by your leave, this maid is mine.

280

TITUS     How, sir? Are you in earnest then, my lord?

BASSIANUS     Ay, noble Titus, and resolved withal

To do myself this reason and this right.

MARCUS     Suum cuique is our Roman justice:

This prince in justice seizeth but his own.

285

LUCIUS     [joining Bassianus]

And that he will, and shall, if Lucius live.

TITUS     Traitors, avaunt! Where is the emperor’s guard?

Treason, my lord – Lavinia is surprised.

SATURNINUS     Surprised? By whom?

BASSIANUS     By him that justly may

Bear his betrothed from all the world away.

290

MUTIUS     Brothers, help to convey her hence away,

And with my sword I’ll keep this door safe.

Bassianus, Marcus and Titus’ sons

bear Lavinia out of one door.

TITUS     Follow, my lord, and I’ll soon bring her back.

     Saturninus does not follow, but exit at the other

door with Tamora, her two sons and Aaron the Moor.

MUTIUS     My lord, you pass not here.

TITUS     What, villain boy, barr’st me my way in Rome?

295

[He kills him.]

MUTIUS     Help, Lucius, help!

LUCIUS     [returning]

My lord, you are unjust, and more than so:

In wrongful quarrel you have slain your son.

TITUS     Nor thou, nor he, are any sons of mine:

My sons would never so dishonour me.

300

Traitor, restore Lavinia to the emperor.

LUCIUS     Dead if you will, but not to be his wife

That is another’s lawful promised love.     Exit.

Enter aloft the Emperor with TAMORA and her two sons and AARON the Moor.

SATURNINUS     [aloft]

No, Titus, no, the emperor needs her not,

Nor her, nor thee, nor any of thy stock.

305

I’ll trust by leisure him that mocks me once,

Thee never, nor thy traitorous haughty sons,

Confederates all thus to dishonour me.

Was none in Rome to make a stale

But Saturnine? Full well, Andronicus,

310

Agree these deeds with that proud brag of thine

That saidst I begged the empire at thy hands.

TITUS

O monstrous! What reproachful words are these?

SATURNINUS     [aloft]

But go thy ways, go give that changing piece

To him that flourished for her with his sword.

315

A valiant son-in-law thou shalt enjoy,

One fit to bandy with thy lawless sons,

To ruffle in the commonwealth of Rome.

TITUS     These words are razors to my wounded heart.

SATURNINUS     [aloft]

And therefore, lovely Tamora, queen of Goths,

320

That like the stately Phoebe ’mongst her nymphs

Dost overshine the gallant’st dames of Rome,

If thou be pleased with this my sudden choice,

Behold, I choose thee, Tamora, for my bride,

And will create thee empress of Rome.

325

Speak, queen of Goths, dost thou applaud my

    choice?

And here I swear by all the Roman gods,

Sith priest and holy water are so near,

And tapers burn so bright, and everything

In readiness for Hymenaeus stand,

330

I will not resalute the streets of Rome,

Or climb my palace, till from forth this place

I lead espoused my bride along with me.

TAMORA     [aloft]

And here in sight of heaven to Rome I swear,

If Saturnine advance the queen of Goths,

335

She will a handmaid be to his desires,

A loving nurse, a mother to his youth.

SATURNINUS     [aloft]

Ascend, fair queen, Pantheon. Lords, accompany

Your noble emperor and his lovely bride,

Sent by the heavens for prince Saturnine,

340

Whose wisdom hath her fortune conquered.

There shall we consummate our spousal rites.

     Exeunt omnes except Titus.

TITUS     I am not bid to wait upon this bride.

Titus, when wert thou wont to walk alone,

Dishonoured thus and challenged of wrongs?

345

Enter MARCUS and Titus’ three remaining Sons.

MARCUS     O Titus, see! O see what thou hast done!

In a bad quarrel slain a virtuous son.

TITUS     No, foolish tribune, no. No son of mine,

Nor thou, nor these, confederates in the deed

That hath dishonoured all our family –

350

Unworthy brother and unworthy sons.

LUCIUS     But let us give him burial as becomes;

Give Mutius burial with our brethren.

TITUS     Traitors, away! He rests not in this tomb.

This monument five hundred years hath stood,

355

Which I have sumptuously re-edified.

Here none but soldiers and Rome’s servitors

Repose in fame; none basely slain in brawls.

Bury him where you can, he comes not here.

MARCUS     My lord, this is impiety in you;

360

My nephew Mutius’ deeds do plead for him,

He must be buried with his brethren.

2, 3 SONS And shall, or him we will accompany.

TITUS     And shall? What villain was it spake that word?

2 SON He that would vouch it in any place but here.

365

TITUS     What, would you bury him in my despite?

MARCUS     No, noble Titus, but entreat of thee

To pardon Mutius and to bury him.

TITUS     Marcus, even thou hast struck upon my crest,

And with these boys mine honour thou hast

    wounded.

370

My foes I do repute you every one,

So trouble me no more, but get you gone.

3 SON He is not with himself, let us withdraw.

2 SON Not I, till Mutius’ bones be buried.

[The brother and the sons kneel.]

MARCUS

Brother, for in that name doth nature plead –

375

2 SON Father, and in that name doth nature speak –

TITUS     Speak thou no more, if all the rest will speed.

MARCUS     Renowned Titus, more than half my soul –

LUCIUS     Dear father, soul and substance of us all –

MARCUS     Suffer thy brother Marcus to inter

380

His noble nephew here in virtue’s nest,

That died in honour and Lavinia’s cause.

Thou art a Roman, be not barbarous.

The Greeks upon advice did bury Ajax

That slew himself, and wise Laertes’ son

385

Did graciously plead for his funerals:

Let not young Mutius then, that was thy joy,

Be barred his entrance here.

TITUS     Rise, Marcus, rise. [They rise.]

The dismall’st day is this that e’er I saw:

To be dishonoured by my sons in Rome!

390

Well, bury him, and bury me the next.

[They put him in the tomb.]

LUCIUS

There lie thy bones, sweet Mutius, with thy friends’,

Till we with trophies do adorn thy tomb.

MARCUS& TITUS’ SONS [kneeling]

No man shed tears for noble Mutius:

He lives in fame that died in virtue’s cause.

395

Exeunt all but Marcus and Titus.

MARCUS My lord – to step out of these dreary dumps –

How comes it that the subtle queen of Goths

Is of a sudden thus advanced in Rome?

TITUS I know not, Marcus, but I know it is –

Whether by device or no, the heavens can tell.

400

Is she not then beholden to the man

That brought her for this high good turn so far?

FMARCUS Yes – and will nobly him remunerateF.

Flourish. Enter the Emperor, TAMORA and her two sons, with the Moor at one door. Enter at the other door BASSIANUS     and LAVINIA, with Titus’ three Sons.

SATURNINUS

So, Bassianus, you have played your prize.

God give you joy, sir, of your gallant bride.

405

BASSIANUS And you of yours, my lord. I say no more,

Nor wish no less, and so I take my leave.

SATURNINUS

Traitor, if Rome have law or we have power,

Thou and thy faction shall repent this rape.

BASSIANUS

‘Rape’ call you it, my lord, to seize my own,

410

My true betrothed love, and now my wife?

But let the laws of Rome determine all;

Meanwhile am I possessed of that is mine.

SATURNINUS ’Tis good, sir. You are very short with us.

But if we live we’ll be as sharp with you.

415

BASSIANUS My lord, what I have done, as best I may,

Answer I must, and shall do with my life.

Only thus much I give your grace to know:

By all the duties that I owe to Rome,

This noble gentleman, Lord Titus here,

420

Is in opinion and in honour wronged,

That in the rescue of Lavinia

With his own hand did slay his youngest son

In zeal to you, and highly moved to wrath

To be controlled in that he frankly gave.

425

Receive him then to favour, Saturnine,

That hath expressed himself in all his deeds

A father and a friend to thee and Rome.

TITUS     Prince Bassianus, leave to plead my deeds;

’Tis thou and those that have dishonoured me.

430

[He kneels.]

Rome and the righteous heavens be my judge

How I have loved and honoured Saturnine!

TAMORA     [to Saturninus] My worthy lord, if ever Tamora

Were gracious in those princely eyes of thine,

Then hear me speak indifferently for all,

435

And at my suit, sweet, pardon what is past.

SATURNINUS     What, madam, be dishonoured openly,

And basely put it up without revenge?

TAMORA     Not so, my lord. The gods of Rome forfend

I should be author to dishonour you.

440

But on mine honour dare I undertake

For good Lord Titus’ innocence in all,

Whose fury not dissembled speaks his griefs.

Then at my suit look graciously on him;

Lose not so noble a friend on vain suppose,

445

Nor with sour looks afflict his gentle heart.

[aside to Saturninus]

My lord, be ruled by me, be won at last,

Dissemble all your griefs and discontents.

You are but newly planted in your throne;

Lest then the people, and patricians too,

450

Upon a just survey take Titus’ part,

And so supplant you for ingratitude,

Which Rome reputes to be a heinous sin,

Yield at entreats – and then let me alone:

I’ll find a day to massacre them all,

455

And raze their faction and their family,

The cruel father and his traitorous sons

To whom I sued for my dear son’s life,

And make them know what ’tis to let a queen

Kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain.

460

[aloud] Come, come, sweet emperor – come,

    Andronicus –

Take up this good old man, and cheer the heart

That dies in tempest of thy angry frown.

SATURNINUS

Rise, Titus, rise: my empress hath prevailed.

TITUS     [rising] I thank your majesty and her, my lord;

465

These words, these looks, infuse new life in me.

TAMORA     Titus, I am incorporate in Rome,

A Roman now adopted happily,

And must advise the emperor for his good.

This day all quarrels die, Andronicus;

470

And let it be mine honour, good my lord,

That I have reconciled your friends and you.

For you, Prince Bassianus, I have passed

My word and promise to the emperor

That you will be more mild and tractable.

475

And fear not, lords, and you, Lavinia:

By my advice, all humbled on your knees,

You shall ask pardon of his majesty.

[Titus’ sons kneel.]

LUCIUS     We do, and vow to heaven and to his highness

That what we did was mildly as we might,

480

Tendering our sister’s honour and our own.

MARCUS     [kneeling]

That on mine honour here do I protest.

SATURNINUS     Away, and talk not; trouble us no more.

TAMORA

Nay, nay, sweet emperor, we must all be friends;

The tribune and his nephews kneel for grace;

485

I will not be denied: sweet heart, look back.

SATURNINUS

Marcus, for thy sake, and thy brother’s here,

And at my lovely Tamora’s entreats,

I do remit these young men’s heinous faults.

[Marcus and Titus’ sons stand up.]

Lavinia, though you left me like a churl,

490

I found a friend, and sure as death I swore

I would not part a bachelor from the priest.

Come, if the emperor’s court can feast two brides,

You are my guest, Lavinia, and your friends.

This day shall be a love-day, Tamora.

495

TITUS     Tomorrow, and it please your majesty

To hunt the panther and the hart with me,

With horn and hound we’ll give your grace bonjour.

SATURNINUS     Be it so, Titus, and gramercy too.

Sound trumpets. Exeunt all except the Moor.

[2.1]

AARON     Now climbeth Tamora Olympus’ top,

500

Safe out of fortune’s shot, and sits aloft,

Secure of thunder’s crack or lightning flash,

Advanced above pale envy’s threatening reach.

As when the golden sun salutes the morn

[5]

And, having gilt the ocean with his beams,

505

Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach

And overlooks the highest-peering hills,

So Tamora.

Upon her wit doth earthly honour wait,

[10]

And virtue stoops and trembles at her frown.

510

Then, Aaron, arm thy heart and fit thy thoughts

To mount aloft with thy imperial mistress,

And mount her pitch whom thou in triumph long

Hast prisoner held, fettered in amorous chains

[15]

And faster bound to Aaron’s charming eyes

515

Than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus.

Away with slavish weeds and servile thoughts!

I will be bright, and shine in pearl and gold

To wait upon this new-made empress.

[20]

To wait, said I? – to wanton with this queen,

520

This goddess, this Semiramis, this nymph,

This siren that will charm Rome’s Saturnine

And see his shipwreck and his commonweal’s.

Hallo, what storm is this?

[25]

Enter CHIRON and DEMETRIUS, braving.

DEMETRIUS

Chiron, thy years want wit, thy wits want edge

525

And manners to intrude where I am graced

And may, for aught thou knowest, affected be.

CHIRON     Demetrius, thou dost overween in all,

And so in this, to bear me down with braves.

[30]

’Tis not the difference of a year or two

530

Makes me less gracious, or thee more fortunate:

I am as able and as fit as thou

To serve, and to deserve my mistress’ grace,

And that my sword upon thee shall approve,

[35]

And plead my passions for Lavinia’s love.

535

AARON     [aside]

Clubs, clubs! These lovers will not keep the peace.

DEMETRIUS

Why, boy, although our mother, unadvised,

Gave you a dancing-rapier by your side,

Are you so desperate grown to threat your friends?

[40]

Go to, have your lath glued within your sheath

540

Till you know better how to handle it.

CHIRON     Meanwhile, sir, with the little skill I have,

Full well shalt thou perceive how much I dare.

DEMETRIUS     Ay boy, grow ye so brave? [They draw.]

AARON     Why, how now, lords?

[45]

So near the emperor’s palace dare ye draw

545

And maintain such a quarrel openly?

Full well I wot the ground of all this grudge.

I would not for a million of gold

The cause were known to them it most concerns,

[50]

Nor would your noble mother for much more

550

Be so dishonoured in the court of Rome.

For shame, put up.

DEMETRIUS     Not I, till I have sheathed

My rapier in his bosom, and withal

Thrust those reproachful speeches down his throat

[55]

That he hath breathed in my dishonour here.

555

CHIRON     For that I am prepared and full resolved,

Foul-spoken coward, that thunderest with thy

tongue,

And with thy weapon nothing dar’st perform.

AARON     Away, I say.

[60]

Now, by the gods that warlike Goths adore,

560

This petty brabble will undo us all.

Why, lords, and think you not how dangerous

It is to jet upon a prince’s right?

What, is Lavinia then become so loose,

[65]

Or Bassianus so degenerate,

565

That for her love such quarrels may be broached

Without controlment, justice, or revenge?

Young lords, beware – and should the empress know

This discord’s ground, the music would not please.

[70]

CHIRON     I care not, I, knew she and all the world:

570

I love Lavinia more than all the world.

DEMETRIUS

Youngling, learn thou to make some meaner choice;

Lavinia is thine elder brother’s hope.

AARON     Why, are ye mad? Or know ye not in Rome

[75]

How furious and impatient they be,

575

And cannot brook competitors in love?

I tell you, lords, you do but plot your deaths

By this device.

CHIRON     Aaron, a thousand deaths would I propose

[80]

T’achieve her whom I love.

AARON     T’achieve her how?

580

DEMETRIUS     Why makes thou it so strange?

She is a woman, therefore may be wooed;

She is a woman, therefore may be won;

She is Lavinia, therefore must be loved.

[85]

What, man, more water glideth by the mill

585

Than wots the miller of, and easy it is

Of a cut loaf to steal a shive, we know.

Though Bassianus be the emperor’s brother,

Better than he have worn Vulcan’s badge.

[90]

AARON     [aside] Ay, and as good as Saturninus may.

590

DEMETRIUS

Then why should he despair that knows to court it

With words, fair looks and liberality?

What, hast not thou full often struck a doe

And borne her cleanly by the keeper’s nose?

[95]

AARON     Why then, it seems some certain snatch or so

595

Would serve your turns.

CHIRON     Ay, so the turn were served.

DEMETRIUS     Aaron, thou hast hit it.

AARON     Would you had hit it too,

Then should not we be tired with this ado.

Why, hark ye, hark ye, and are you such fools

[100]

To square for this? Would it offend you then

600

That both should speed?

CHIRON     Faith, not me.

DEMETRIUS     Nor me, so I were one.

AARON     For shame, be friends, and join for that you jar.

’Tis policy and stratagem must do

[105]

That you affect, and so must you resolve

605

That what you cannot as you would achieve,

You must perforce accomplish as you may.

Take this of me: Lucrece was not more chaste

Than this Lavinia, Bassianus’ love.

[110]

A speedier course than lingering languishment

610

Must we pursue, and I have found the path.

My lords, a solemn hunting is in hand;

There will the lovely Roman ladies troop.

The forest walks are wide and spacious,

[115]

And many unfrequented plots there are,

615

Fitted by kind for rape and villainy.

Single you thither then this dainty doe,

And strike her home by force, if not by words:

This way or not at all stand you in hope.

[120]

Come, come, our empress, with her sacred wit

620

To villainy and vengeance consecrate,

Will we acquaint withal what we intend,

And she shall file our engines with advice

That will not suffer you to square yourselves,

[125]

But to your wishes’ height advance you both.

625

The emperor’s court is like the house of Fame,

The palace full of tongues, of eyes and ears;

The woods are ruthless, dreadful, deaf and dull:

There speak and strike, brave boys, and take your

    turns;

[130]

There serve your lust, shadowed from heaven’s eye,

630

And revel in Lavinia’s treasury.

CHIRON     Thy counsel, lad, smells of no cowardice.

DEMETRIUS     Sit fas aut nefas, till I find the stream

To cool this heat, a charm to calm these fits,

[135]

Per Stygia, per manes vehor. Exeunt.

635

2.1 [2.2] Enter TITUS ANDRONICUS and his three sons, and MARCUS, making a noise with hounds and horns.

TITUS     The hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey,

The fields are fragrant and the woods are green.

Uncouple here, and let us make a bay

And wake the emperor and his lovely bride,

And rouse the prince, and ring a hunter’s peal,

5

That all the court may echo with the noise.

Sons, let it be your charge, as it is ours,

To attend the emperor’s person carefully.

I have been troubled in my sleep this night,

But dawning day new comfort hath inspired.

10

Here a cry of hounds, and wind horns in a peal; then enter SATURNINUS, TAMORA, BASSIANUS, LAVINIA, CHIRON, DEMETRIUS     and their attendants.

Many good morrows to your majesty;

Madam, to you as many and as good.

I promised your grace a hunter’s peal.

SATURNINUS     And you have rung it lustily, my lords,

Somewhat too early for new-married ladies.

15

BASSIANUS     Lavinia, how say you?

LAVINIA     I say no:

I have been broad awake two hours and more.

SATURNINUS

Come on then, horse and chariots let us have,

And to our sport.

[to Tamora]     Madam, now shall ye see

Our Roman hunting.

MARCUS     I have dogs, my lord,

20

Will rouse the proudest panther in the chase

And climb the highest promontory top.

TITUS     And I have horse will follow where the game

Makes way and runs like swallows o’er the plain.

DEMETRIUS     [aside]

Chiron, we hunt not, we, with horse nor hound,

25

But hope to pluck a dainty doe to ground. Exeunt.

2.2 [2.3] Enter AARON alone, with a money-bag.

AARON     He that had wit would think that I had none,

To bury so much gold under a tree

And never after to inherit it.

Let him that thinks of me so abjectly

Know that this gold must coin a stratagem

5

Which, cunningly effected, will beget

A very excellent piece of villainy.

And so repose, sweet gold, for their unrest

That have their alms out of the empress’ chest.

[Hides the money-bag.]

Enter TAMORA alone, to the Moor.

TAMORA     My lovely Aaron, wherefore look’st thou sad

10

When everything doth make a gleeful boast?

The birds chant melody on every bush,

The snakes lies rolled in the cheerful sun,

The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind

And make a chequered shadow on the ground.

15

Under their sweet shade, Aaron, let us sit,

And whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds,

Replying shrilly to the well-tuned horns

As if a double hunt were heard at once,

Let us sit down and mark their yellowing noise;

20

And after conflict such as was supposed

The wandering prince and Dido once enjoyed,

When with a happy storm they were surprised

And curtained with a counsel-keeping cave,

We may, each wreathed in the other’s arms,

25

Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber,

Whiles hounds and horns and sweet melodious birds

Be unto us as is a nurse’s song

Of lullaby to bring her babe asleep.

AARON     Madam, though Venus govern your desires,

30

Saturn is dominator over mine.

What signifies my deadly-standing eye,

My silence and my cloudy melancholy,

My fleece of woolly hair that now uncurls

Even as an adder when she doth unroll

35

To do some fatal execution?

No, madam, these are no venereal signs;

Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,

Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.

Hark, Tamora, the empress of my soul,

40

Which never hopes more heaven than rests in thee,

This is the day of doom for Bassianus,

His Philomel must lose her tongue today,

Thy sons make pillage of her chastity

And wash their hands in Bassianus’ blood.

45

Seest thou this letter? Take it up, I pray thee,

[Gives letter.]

And give the king this fatal-plotted scroll.

Now question me no more: we are espied.

Here comes a parcel of our hopeful booty,

Which dreads not yet their lives’ destruction.

50

Enter BASSIANUS and LAVINIA.

TAMORA     Ah, my sweet Moor, sweeter to me than life!

AARON     No more, great empress: Bassianus comes.

Be cross with him, and I’ll go fetch thy sons

To back thy quarrels, whatsoe’er they be.     Exit.

BASSIANUS     Who have we here? Rome’s royal empress,

55

Unfurnished of her well-beseeming troop?

Or is it Dian, habited like her,

Who hath abandoned her holy groves

To see the general hunting in this forest?

TAMORA     Saucy controller of my private steps,

60

Had I the power that some say Dian had,

Thy temples should be planted presently

With horns, as was Actaeon’s, and the hounds

Should drive upon thy new-transformed limbs,

Unmannerly intruder as thou art.

65

LAVINIA     Under your patience, gentle empress,

’Tis thought you have a goodly gift in horning,

And to be doubted that your Moor and you

Are singled forth to try experiments.

Jove shield your husband from his hounds today:

70

’Tis pity they should take him for a stag.

BASSIANUS     Believe me, queen, your swart Cimmerian

Doth make your honour of his body’s hue,

Spotted, detested and abominable.

Why are you sequestered from all your train,

75

Dismounted from your snow-white goodly steed,

And wandered hither to an obscure plot,

Accompanied but with a barbarous Moor,

If foul desire had not conducted you?

LAVINIA     And being intercepted in your sport,

80

Great reason that my noble lord be rated

For sauciness. [to Bassianus] I pray you, let us hence,

And let her joy her raven-coloured love.

This valley fits the purpose passing well.

BASSIANUS     The king my brother shall have note of this.

85

LAVINIA     Ay, for these slips have made him noted long:

Good king, to be so mightily abused!

TAMORA     Why, I have patience to endure all this.

Enter CHIRON and DEMETRIUS.

DEMETRIUS

How now, dear sovereign and our gracious mother,

Why doth your highness look so pale and wan?

90

TAMORA     Have I not reason, think you, to look pale?

These two have ’ticed me hither to this place:

A barren detested vale you see it is;

The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,

O’ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe;

95

Here never shines the sun, here nothing breeds

Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven.

And when they showed me this abhorred pit,

They told me here at dead time of the night

A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,

100

Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,

Would make such fearful and confused cries

As any mortal body hearing it

Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly.

No sooner had they told this hellish tale,

105

But straight they told me they would bind me here

Unto the body of a dismal yew

And leave me to this miserable death.

And then they called me foul adulteress,

Lascivious Goth, and all the bitterest terms

110

That ever ear did hear to such effect.

And had you not by wondrous fortune come,

This vengeance on me had they executed.

Revenge it as you love your mother’s life,

Or be ye not henceforth called my children.

115

DEMETRIUS     This is a witness that I am thy son.

[Stabs him.]

CHIRON

And this for me, struck home to shew my strength.

[He also stabs Bassianus, who dies.]

LAVINIA     Ay, come, Semiramis, nay, barbarous Tamora,

For no name fits thy nature but thy own.

TAMORA

Give me the poniard. You shall know, my boys,

120

Your mother’s hand shall right your mother’s wrong.

DEMETRIUS     Stay, madam, here is more belongs to her:

First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw.

This minion stood upon her chastity,

Upon her nuptial vow, her loyalty,

125

And with that quaint hope braves your mightiness.

And shall she carry this unto her grave?

CHIRON     And if she do, I would I were an eunuch.

Drag hence her husband to some secret hole

And make his dead trunk pillow to our lust.

130

TAMORA     But when ye have the honey we desire,

Let not this wasp outlive, us both to sting.

CHIRON     I warrant you, madam, we will make that sure.

Come, mistress, now perforce we will enjoy

That nice-preserved honesty of yours.

135

LAVINIA     O Tamora, thou bearest a woman’s face –

TAMORA     I will not hear her speak; away with her!

LAVINIA     Sweet lords, entreat her hear me but a word.

DEMETRIUS     [to Tamora]

Listen, fair madam, let it be your glory

To see her tears, but be your heart to them

140

As unrelenting flint to drops of rain.

LAVINIA

When did the tiger’s young ones teach the dam?

O, do not learn her wrath: she taught it thee.

The milk thou suckst from her did turn to marble;

Even at thy teat thou hadst thy tyranny.

145

Yet every mother breeds not sons alike:

[to Chiron] Do thou entreat her show a woman’s pity.

CHIRON

What, wouldst thou have me prove myself a bastard?

LAVINIA     ’Tis true, the raven doth not hatch a lark.

Yet have I heard – O, could I find it now –

150

The lion, moved with pity, did endure

To have his princely paws pared all away.

Some say that ravens foster forlorn children

The whilst their own birds famish in their nests.

O be to me, though thy hard heart say no,

155

Nothing so kind, but something pitiful.

TAMORA     I know not what it means; away with her!

LAVINIA     O, let me teach thee for my father’s sake,

That gave thee life when well he might have slain thee.

Be not obdurate, open thy deaf ears.

160

TAMORA     Hadst thou in person ne’er offended me,

Even for his sake am I pitiless.

Remember, boys, I poured forth tears in vain

To save your brother from the sacrifice,

But fierce Andronicus would not relent.

165

Therefore away with her and use her as you will:

The worse to her, the better loved of me.

LAVINIA     [clinging to Tamora]

O Tamora, be called a gentle queen,

And with thine own hands kill me in this place.

For ’tis not life that I have begged so long;

170

Poor I was slain when Bassianus died.

TAMORA

What begg’st thou then, fond woman? Let me go!

LAVINIA     ’Tis present death I beg, and one thing more

That womanhood denies my tongue to tell.

O, keep me from their worse-than-killing lust,

175

And tumble me into some loathsome pit

Where never man’s eye may behold my body.

Do this, and be a charitable murderer.

TAMORA     So should I rob my sweet sons of their fee.

No, let them satisfy their lust on thee.

180

DEMETRIUS     [to Lavinia]

Away, for thou hast stayed us here too long.

LAVINIA

No grace? No womanhood? Ah, beastly creature,

The blot and enemy to our general name,

Confusion fall –

CHIRON     Nay then, I’ll stop your mouth.

[Grabs her, covering her mouth.]

[to Demetrius] Bring thou her husband:

185

This is the hole where Aaron bid us hide him.

     Demetrius throws Bassianus’ body into the pit,

     he and Chiron then exeunt, dragging Lavinia.

TAMORA

Farewell, my sons; see that you make her sure.

Ne’er let my heart know merry cheer indeed

Till all the Andronici be made away.

Now will I hence to seek my lovely Moor,

190

And let my spleenful sons this trull deflower.     Exit.

Enter AARON with two of Titus’ sons, QUINTUS and MARTIUS.

AARON     Come on, my lords, the better foot before.

Straight will I bring you to the loathsome pit

Where I espied the panther fast asleep.

QUINTUS     My sight is very dull, whate’er it bodes.

195

MARTIUS

And mine, I promise you; were it not for shame,

Well could I leave our sport to sleep awhile.

[Falls into the pit.]

QUINTUS

What, art thou fallen? What subtle hole is this,

Whose mouth is covered with rude-growing briers

Upon whose leaves are drops of new-shed blood

200

As fresh as morning dew distilled on flowers?

A very fatal place it seems to me.

Speak, brother, hast thou hurt thee with the fall?

MARTIUS     [from below]

O brother, with the dismall’st object hurt

That ever eye with sight made heart lament.

205

AARON     [aside]

Now will I fetch the king to find them here,

That he thereby may have a likely guess

How these were they that made away his brother.     Exit.

MARTIUS     [from below]

Why dost not comfort me and help me out

From this unhallowed and bloodstained hole?

210

QUINTUS     I am surprised with an uncouth fear;

A chilling sweat o’erruns my trembling joints;

My heart suspects more than mine eye can see.

MARTIUS     [from below]

To prove thou hast a true-divining heart,

Aaron and thou look down into this den,

215

And see a fearful sight of blood and death.

QUINTUS     Aaron is gone and my compassionate heart

Will not permit mine eyes once to behold

The thing whereat it trembles by surmise.

O tell me who it is, for ne’er till now

220

Was I a child to fear I know not what.

MARTIUS     [from below]

Lord Bassianus lies berayed in blood

All on a heap, like to a slaughtered lamb,

In this detested, dark, blood-drinking pit.

QUINTUS     If it be dark, how dost thou know ’tis he?

225

MARTIUS     [from below]

Upon his bloody finger he doth wear

A precious ring that lightens all this hole,

Which like a taper in some monument

Doth shine upon the dead man’s earthy cheeks

And shows the ragged entrails of this pit.

230

So pale did shine the moon on Pyramus

When he by night lay bathed in maiden blood.

O brother, help me with thy fainting hand –

If fear hath made thee faint, as me it hath –

Out of this fell devouring receptacle,

235

As hateful as Cocytus’ misty mouth.

QUINTUS     [Reaches into pit.]

Reach me thy hand that I may help thee out

Or, wanting strength to do thee so much good,

I may be plucked into the swallowing womb

Of this deep pit, poor Bassianus’ grave.

240

I have no strength to pluck thee to the brink –

MARTIUS     [from below]

Nor I no strength to climb without thy help.

QUINTUS     Thy hand once more; I will not loose again

Till thou art here aloft or I below.

Thou canst not come to me – I come to thee.

245

[Falls into the pit.]

Enter the Emperor and AARON the Moor, with attendants.

SATURNINUS     Along with me! I’ll see what hole is here

And what he is that now is leapt into it.

[Speaks into the pit.]

Say, who art thou that lately didst descend

Into this gaping hollow of the earth?

MARTIUS     [from below]

The unhappy sons of old Andronicus,

250

Brought hither in a most unlucky hour

To find thy brother Bassianus dead.

SATURNINUS

My brother dead? I know thou dost but jest;

He and his lady both are at the lodge

Upon the north side of this pleasant chase.

255

’Tis not an hour since I left them there.

MARTIUS     [from below]

We know not where you left them all alive,

But, out alas, here have we found him dead.

Enter TAMORA, TITUS ANDRONICUS and LUCIUS.

TAMORA     Where is my lord the king?

SATURNINUS

Here, Tamora, though gride with killing grief.

260

TAMORA     Where is thy brother Bassianus?

SATURNINUS

Now to the bottom dost thou search my wound:

Poor Bassianus here lies murdered.

TAMORA     Then all too late I bring this fatal writ,

The complot of this timeless tragedy,

265

And wonder greatly that man’s face can fold

In pleasing smiles such murderous tyranny.

[She giveth Saturnine a letter.]

SATURNINUS     [Reads.]

And if we miss to meet him handsomely,

Sweet huntsman – Bassianus ’tis we mean –

Do thou so much as dig the grave for him.

270

Thou know’st our meaning. Look for thy reward

Among the nettles at the elder tree

Which overshades the mouth of that same pit

Where we decreed to bury Bassianus.

Do this, and purchase us thy lasting friends.

275

O Tamora, was ever heard the like?

This is the pit and this the elder tree.

Look, sirs, if you can find the huntsman out

That should have murdered Bassianus here.

AARON     [finding the money-bag]

My gracious lord, here is the bag of gold.

280

SATURNINUS     [to Titus]

Two of thy whelps, fell curs of bloody kind,

Have here bereft my brother of his life.

Sirs, drag them from the pit unto the prison.

There let them bide until we have devised

Some never-heard-of torturing pain for them.

285

TAMORA     What, are they in this pit? O wondrous thing!

How easily murder is discovered.

[Attendants pull Quintus, Martius and

Bassianus’ body from the pit.]

TITUS     [kneeling] High emperor, upon my feeble knee

I beg this boon with tears not lightly shed:

That this fell fault of my accursed sons,

290

Accursed if the fault be proved in them –

SATURNINUS     If it be proved? You see it is apparent.

Who found this letter? Tamora, was it you?

TAMORA     Andronicus himself did take it up.

TITUS     I did, my lord, yet let me be their bail,

295

For by my fathers’ reverend tomb I vow

They shall be ready at your highness’ will

To answer their suspicion with their lives.

SATURNINUS

Thou shalt not bail them. See thou follow me.

Some bring the murdered body, some the murderers.

300

Let them not speak a word: the guilt is plain;

For, by my soul, were there worse end than death

That end upon them should be executed.

TAMORA     Andronicus, I will entreat the king;

Fear not thy sons, they shall do well enough.

305

TITUS     [rising]

Come, Lucius, come; stay not to talk with them.

Exeunt, some taking the body, some guarding the prisoners.

2.3 [2.4] Enter the Empress’ Sons with LAVINIA, her hands cut off and her tongue cut out, and ravished.

DEMETRIUS     So, now go tell, and if thy tongue can speak,

Who ’twas that cut thy tongue and ravished thee.

CHIRON     Write down thy mind, bewray thy meaning so,

And if thy stumps will let thee, play the scribe.

DEMETRIUS

See how with signs and tokens she can scrawl.

5

CHIRON     Go home, call for sweet water, wash thy hands.

DEMETRIUS

She hath no tongue to call, nor hands to wash,

And so let’s leave her to her silent walks.

CHIRON     And ’twere my cause, I should go hang myself.

DEMETRIUS

If thou hadst hands to help thee knit the cord.

10

     Exeunt Chiron and Demetrius.

Wind horns. Enter MARCUS from hunting.

Lavinia runs away.

MARCUS     Who is this – my niece that flies away so fast?

Cousin, a word. Where is your husband?

[Lavinia turns.]

If I do dream, would all my wealth would wake me;

If I do wake, some planet strike me down

That I may slumber an eternal sleep.

15

Speak, gentle niece, what stern ungentle hands

Hath lopped and hewed and made thy body bare

Of her two branches, those sweet ornaments

Whose circling shadows kings have sought to sleep in

And might not gain so great a happiness

20

As half thy love. Why dost not speak to me?

[Lavinia opens her mouth.]

Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,

Like to a bubbling fountain stirred with wind,

Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips,

Coming and going with thy honey breath.

25

But sure some Tereus hath deflowered thee

And, lest thou shouldst detect him, cut thy tongue.

Ah, now thou turn’st away thy face for shame,

And notwithstanding all this loss of blood,

As from a conduit with three issuing spouts,

30

Yet do thy cheeks look red as Titan’s face,

Blushing to be encountered with a cloud.

Shall I speak for thee? Shall I say ’tis so?

O that I knew thy heart, and knew the beast,

That I might rail at him to ease my mind!

35

Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopped,

Doth burn the heart to cinders where it is.

Fair Philomela, why she but lost her tongue,

And in a tedious sampler sewed her mind;

But, lovely niece, that mean is cut from thee.

40

A craftier Tereus, cousin, hast thou met,

And he hath cut those pretty fingers off,

That could have better sewed than Philomel.

O, had the monster seen those lily hands

Tremble like aspen leaves upon a lute

45

And make the silken strings delight to kiss them,

He would not then have touched them for his life.

Or had he heard the heavenly harmony

Which that sweet tongue hath made,

He would have dropped his knife and fell asleep,

50

As Cerberus at the Thracian poet’s feet.

Come, let us go and make thy father blind,

For such a sight will blind a father’s eye.

One hour’s storm will drown the fragrant meads:

What will whole months of tears thy father’s eyes?

55

Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee;

O, could our mourning ease thy misery!     Exeunt.

3.1 Enter the Tribunes as judges and the senators, with Titus’ two sons QUINTUS and MARTIUS bound, passing to the place of execution, and TITUS going before pleading.

TITUS     Hear me, grave fathers; noble tribunes, stay!

For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent

In dangerous wars whilst you securely slept;

For all my blood in Rome’s great quarrel shed,

For all the frosty nights that I have watched,

5

And for these bitter tears which now you see

Filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks,

Be pitiful to my condemned sons,

Whose souls is not corrupted as ’tis thought.

For two-and-twenty sons I never wept,

10

Because they died in honour’s lofty bed.

[Andronicus lieth down, and the judges pass by him.]

For these two, tribunes, in the dust I write

My heart’s deep languor and my soul’s sad tears.

Let my tears staunch the earth’s dry appetite;

My sons’ sweet blood will make it shame and blush.

15

     Exeunt all but Titus.

O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain

That shall distil from these two ancient ruins

Than youthful April shall with all his showers.

In summer’s drought I’ll drop upon thee still;

In winter with warm tears I’ll melt the snow

20

And keep eternal springtime on thy face,

So thou refuse to drink my dear sons’ blood.

Enter LUCIUS with his weapon drawn.

O reverend tribunes, O gentle aged men,

Unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death,

And let me say, that never wept before,

25

My tears are now prevailing orators.

LUCIUS     O noble father, you lament in vain:

The tribunes hear you not, no man is by,

And you recount your sorrows to a stone.

TITUS     Ah Lucius, for thy brothers let me plead.

30

Grave tribunes, once more I entreat of you –

LUCIUS     My gracious lord, no tribune hears you speak.

TITUS     Why, ’tis no matter, man: if they did hear,

They would not mark me, or if they did mark,

They would not pity me; yet plead I must,

35

And bootless unto them.

Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones,

Who, though they cannot answer my distress,

Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes

For that they will not intercept my tale.

40

When I do weep, they humbly at my feet

Receive my tears and seem to weep with me,

And were they but attired in grave weeds

Rome could afford no tribunes like to these.

A stone is soft as wax, tribunes more hard than

    stones;

45

A stone is silent and offendeth not,

And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.

But wherefore stand’st thou with thy weapon drawn?

LUCIUS     To rescue my two brothers from their death,

For which attempt the judges have pronounced

50

My everlasting doom of banishment.

TITUS     [rising]

O happy man, they have befriended thee!

Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive

That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers?

Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey

55

But me and mine. How happy art thou then

From these devourers to be banished.

But who comes with our brother Marcus here?

Enter MARCUS with LAVINIA.

MARCUS     Titus, prepare thy aged eyes to weep,

Or if not so, thy noble heart to break:

60

I bring consuming sorrow to thine age.

TITUS     Will it consume me? Let me see it then.

MARCUS     This was thy daughter.

TITUS     Why, Marcus, so she is.

LUCIUS     [falling to his knees] Ay me, this object kills me.

65

TITUS     Faint-hearted boy, arise and look upon her.

[Lucius rises.]

Speak, Lavinia, what accursed hand

Hath made thee handless in thy father’s sight?

What fool hath added water to the sea?

Or brought a faggot to bright-burning Troy?

70

My grief was at the height before thou cam’st,

And now like Nilus it disdaineth bounds.

Give me a sword, I’ll chop off my hands too,

For they have fought for Rome, and all in vain;

And they have nursed this woe in feeding life;

75

In bootless prayer have they been held up,

And they have served me to effectless use.

Now all the service I require of them

Is that the one will help to cut the other.

’Tis well, Lavinia, that thou hast no hands,

80

For hands to do Rome service is but vain.

LUCIUS     Speak, gentle sister: who hath martyred thee?

MARCUS     O, that delightful engine of her thoughts,

That blabbed them with such pleasing eloquence,

Is torn from forth that pretty hollow cage

85

Where, like a sweet melodious bird, it sung

Sweet varied notes, enchanting every ear.

LUCIUS     O, say thou for her: who hath done this deed?

MARCUS     O, thus I found her, straying in the park,

Seeking to hide herself, as doth the deer

90

That hath received some unrecuring wound.

TITUS     It was my dear, and he that wounded her

Hath hurt me more than had he killed me dead.

For now I stand as one upon a rock,

Environed with a wilderness of sea,

95

Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave,

Expecting ever when some envious surge

Will in his brinish bowels swallow him.

This way to death my wretched sons are gone;

Here stands my other son, a banished man,

100

And here my brother, weeping at my woes.

But that which gives my soul the greatest spurn

Is dear Lavinia, dearer than my soul.

Had I but seen thy picture in this plight,

It would have madded me; what shall I do

105

Now I behold thy lively body so?

Thou hast no hands to wipe away thy tears,

Nor tongue to tell me who hath martyred thee;

Thy husband he is dead, and for his death

Thy brothers are condemned, and dead by this.

110

Look, Marcus, ah, son Lucius, look on her!

When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears

Stood on her cheeks, as doth the honey-dew

Upon a gathered lily almost withered.

MARCUS

Perchance she weeps because they killed her

husband,

115

Perchance because she knows them innocent.

TITUS     If they did kill thy husband, then be joyful,

Because the law hath ta’en revenge on them.

No, no, they would not do so foul a deed:

Witness the sorrow that their sister makes.

120

Gentle Lavinia, let me kiss thy lips

Or make some sign how I may do thee ease.

Shall thy good uncle and thy brother Lucius

And thou and I sit round about some fountain,

Looking all downwards to behold our cheeks,

125

How they are stained like meadows yet not dry,

With miry slime left on them by a flood?

And in the fountain shall we gaze so long

Till the fresh taste be taken from that clearness

And made a brine pit with our bitter tears?

130

Or shall we cut away our hands like thine?

Or shall we bite our tongues and in dumb shows

Pass the remainder of our hateful days?

What shall we do? Let us that have our tongues

Plot some device of further misery

135

To make us wondered at in time to come.

LUCIUS     Sweet father, cease your tears, for at your grief

See how my wretched sister sobs and weeps.

MARCUS

Patience, dear niece; good Titus, dry thine eyes.

[Gives handkerchief.]

TITUS     Ah Marcus, Marcus, brother, well I wot

140

Thy napkin cannot drink a tear of mine,

For thou, poor man, hast drowned it with thine own.

LUCIUS     Ah, my Lavinia, I will wipe thy cheeks.

TITUS     Mark, Marcus, mark! I understand her signs:

Had she a tongue to speak, now would she say

145

That to her brother which I said to thee.

His napkin with his true tears all bewet

Can do no service on her sorrowful cheeks.

O, what a sympathy of woe is this;

As far from help as limbo is from bliss.

150

Enter AARON the Moor alone.

AARON     Titus Andronicus, my lord the emperor

Sends thee this word: that if thou love thy sons,

Let Marcus, Lucius, or thyself, old Titus,

Or any one of you, chop off your hand

And send it to the king, he for the same

155

Will send thee hither both thy sons alive –

And that shall be the ransom for their fault.

TITUS     O gracious emperor, O gentle Aaron!

Did ever raven sing so like a lark

That gives sweet tidings of the sun’s uprise?

160

With all my heart I’ll send the emperor my hand.

Good Aaron, wilt thou help to chop it off?

LUCIUS     Stay, father, for that noble hand of thine

That hath thrown down so many enemies

Shall not be sent. My hand will serve the turn.

165

My youth can better spare my blood than you,

And therefore mine shall save my brothers’ lives.

MARCUS

Which of your hands hath not defended Rome

And reared aloft the bloody battleaxe,

Writing destruction on the enemy’s casque?

170

O, none of both but are of high desert.

My hand hath been but idle: let it serve

To ransom my two nephews from their death,

Then have I kept it to a worthy end.

AARON     Nay, come, agree whose hand shall go along,

175

For fear they die before their pardon come.

MARCUS     My hand shall go.

LUCIUS     By heaven it shall not go.

TITUS

Sirs, strive no more. Such withered herbs as these

Are meet for plucking up – and therefore mine.

LUCIUS     Sweet father, if I shall be thought thy son,

180

Let me redeem my brothers both from death.

MARCUS     And for our father’s sake and mother’s care,

Now let me show a brother’s love to thee.

TITUS     Agree between you: I will spare my hand.

LUCIUS     Then I’ll go fetch an axe.

185

MARCUS     But I will use the axe.

Exeunt Lucius and Marcus.

TITUS     Come hither, Aaron. I’ll deceive them both:

Lend me thy hand and I will give thee mine.

AARON     [aside] If that be called deceit, I will be honest

And never whilst I live deceive men so.

190

But I’ll deceive you in another sort,

And that you’ll say ere half an hour pass.

[He cuts off Titus’ hand.]

Enter LUCIUS and MARCUS again.

TITUS

Now stay your strife; what shall be is dispatched.

Good Aaron, give his majesty my hand.

Tell him it was a hand that warded him

195

From thousand dangers, bid him bury it:

More hath it merited; that let it have.

As for my sons, say I account of them

As jewels purchased at an easy price,

And yet dear too, because I bought mine own.

200

AARON     I go, Andronicus, and for thy hand

Look by and by to have thy sons with thee.

[aside] Their heads I mean. O, how this villainy

Doth fat me with the very thoughts of it.

Let fools do good and fair men call for grace,

205

Aaron will have his soul black like his face.     Exit.

TITUS     O, here I lift this one hand up to heaven

And bow this feeble ruin to the earth. [Kneels.]

If any power pities wretched tears,

To that I call. [Lavinia kneels.]

What, wouldst thou kneel with me?

210

Do then, dear heart, for heaven shall hear our

prayers,

Or with our sighs we’ll breathe the welkin dim

And stain the sun with fog, as sometime clouds

When they do hug him in their melting bosoms.

MARCUS     O brother, speak with possibility,

215

And do not break into these deep extremes.

TITUS     Is not my sorrows deep, having no bottom?

Then be my passions bottomless with them.

MARCUS     But yet let reason govern thy lament.

TITUS     If there were reason for these miseries,

220

Then into limits could I bind my woes.

When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o’erflow?

If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad,

Threatening the welkin with his big-swollen face?

And wilt thou have a reason for this coil?

225

I am the sea. Hark how her sighs doth blow.

She is the weeping welkin, I the earth.

Then must my sea be moved with her sighs,

Then must my earth with her continual tears

Become a deluge overflowed and drowned,

230

For why my bowels cannot hide her woes,

But like a drunkard must I vomit them.

Then give me leave, for losers will have leave

To ease their stomachs with their bitter tongues.

Enter a Messenger with two heads and a hand.

[Titus and Lavinia may rise here.]

MESSENGER     Worthy Andronicus, ill art thou repaid

235

For that good hand thou sent’st the emperor.

Here are the heads of thy two noble sons,

And here’s thy hand in scorn to thee sent back:

Thy grief their sports, thy resolution mocked,

That woe is me to think upon thy woes

240

More than remembrance of my father’s death.

     Sets down heads and hand, exit.

MARCUS     Now let hot Etna cool in Sicily,

And be my heart an ever-burning hell!

These miseries are more than may be borne.

To weep with them that weep doth ease some deal,

245

But sorrow flouted at is double death.

LUCIUS

Ah, that this sight should make so deep a wound

And yet detested life not shrink thereat!

That ever death should let life bear his name,

Where life hath no more interest but to breathe!

250

[Lavinia kisses the heads.]

MARCUS     Alas, poor heart, that kiss is comfortless

As frozen water to a starved snake.

TITUS     When will this fearful slumber have an end?

MARCUS     Now farewell flattery, die Andronicus.

Thou dost not slumber. See thy two sons’ heads,

255

Thy warlike hand, thy mangled daughter here,

Thy other banished son with this dear sight

Struck pale and bloodless, and thy brother, I,

Even like a stony image, cold and numb.

Ah, now no more will I control thy griefs:

260

Rend off thy silver hair, thy other hand

Gnawing with thy teeth, and be this dismal sight

The closing up of our most wretched eyes.

Now is a time to storm. Why art thou still?

TITUS     Ha, ha, ha!

265

MARCUS     Why dost thou laugh? It fits not with this hour.

TITUS     Why? I have not another tear to shed.

Besides, this sorrow is an enemy

And would usurp upon my watery eyes

And make them blind with tributary tears.

270

Then which way shall I find Revenge’s cave?

For these two heads do seem to speak to me

And threat me I shall never come to bliss

Till all these mischiefs be returned again

Even in their throats that hath committed them.

275

Come, let me see what task I have to do.

You heavy people, circle me about,

That I may turn me to each one of you

And swear unto my soul to right your wrongs.

[They make a vow.]

The vow is made. Come, brother, take a head,

280

And in this hand the other will I bear.

And, Lavinia, thou shalt be employed:

Bear thou my hand, sweet wench, between thy teeth.

As for thee, boy, go get thee from my sight:

Thou art an exile and thou must not stay;

285

Hie to the Goths and raise an army there,

And if ye love me, as I think you do,

Let’s kiss and part, for we have much to do.

     They kiss. Exeunt. Lucius remains.

LUCIUS Farewell, Andronicus, my noble father,

The woefull’st man that ever lived in Rome.

290

Farewell, proud Rome, till Lucius come again;

He loves his pledges dearer than his life.

Farewell, Lavinia, my noble sister,

O would thou wert as thou tofore hast been!

But now nor Lucius nor Lavinia lives

295

But in oblivion and hateful griefs.

If Lucius live, he will requite your wrongs

And make proud Saturnine and his empress

Beg at the gates like Tarquin and his queen.

Now will I to the Goths and raise a power,

300

To be revenged on Rome and Saturnine. Exit Lucius.

F3.2 A banquet. Enter TITUS ANDRONICUS, MARCUS, LAVINIA     and the Boy, Young Lucius.

TITUS     So, so, now sit, and look you eat no more

Than will preserve just so much strength in us

As will revenge these bitter woes of ours. [They sit.]

MARCUS, unknit that sorrow-wreathen knot.

Thy niece and I, poor creatures, want our hands

5

And cannot passionate our tenfold grief

With folded arms. This poor right hand of mine

Is left to tyrannize upon my breast,

Who, when my heart, all mad with misery,

Beats in this hollow prison of my flesh,

10

Then thus I thump it down.

[to Lavinia]

Thou map of woe, that thus dost talk in signs,

When thy poor heart beats with outrageous beating,

Thou canst not strike it thus to make it still.

Wound it with sighing, girl, kill it with groans,

15

Or get some little knife between thy teeth

And just against thy heart make thou a hole,

That all the tears that thy poor eyes let fall

May run into that sink and, soaking in,

Drown the lamenting fool in sea-salt tears.

20

MARCUS Fie, brother, fie! Teach her not thus to lay

Such violent hands upon her tender life.

TITUS How now, has sorrow made thee dote already?

Why, Marcus, no man should be mad but I.

What violent hands can she lay on her life?

25

Ah, wherefore dost thou urge the name of hands

To bid Aeneas tell the tale twice o’er

How Troy was burnt and he made miserable?

O handle not the theme, to talk of hands,

Lest we remember still that we have none.

30

Fie, fie, how franticly I square my talk,

As if we should forget we had no hands

If Marcus did not name the word of hands.

Come, let’s fall to, and, gentle girl, eat this.

Here is no drink! Hark, Marcus, what she says:

35

I can interpret all her martyred signs –

She says she drinks no other drink but tears,

Brewed with her sorrow, mashed upon her cheeks.

Speechless complainer, I will learn thy thought.

In thy dumb action will I be as perfect

40

As begging hermits in their holy prayers.

Thou shalt not sigh, nor hold thy stumps to heaven,

Nor wink, nor nod, nor kneel, nor make a sign,

But I of these will wrest an alphabet

And by still practice learn to know thy meaning.

45

BOY     Good grandsire, leave these bitter deep laments;

Make my aunt merry with some pleasing tale.

MARCUS     Alas, the tender boy in passion moved

Doth weep to see his grandsire’s heaviness.

TITUS     Peace, tender sapling, thou art made of tears,

50

And tears will quickly melt thy life away.

[Marcus strikes the dish with a knife.]

What dost thou strike at, Marcus, with thy knife?

MARCUS     At that that I have killed, my lord – a fly.

TITUS     Out on thee, murderer. Thou kill’st my heart.

Mine eyes are cloyed with view of tyranny;

55

A deed of death done on the innocent

Becomes not Titus’ brother. Get thee gone;

I see thou art not for my company.

MARCUS     Alas, my lord, I have but killed a fly.

TITUS     ‘But’?

60

How if that fly had a father and a mother?

How would he hang his slender gilded wings

And buzz lamenting doings in the air.

Poor harmless fly,

That with his pretty buzzing melody

65

Came here to make us merry, and thou hast killed him.

MARCUS     Pardon me, sir, it was a black ill-favoured fly,

Like to the empress’ Moor. Therefore I killed him.

TITUS     Oh, Oh, Oh!

Then pardon me for reprehending thee,

70

For thou hast done a charitable deed.

Give me thy knife; I will insult on him,

Flattering myself as if it were the Moor

Come hither purposely to poison me.

[Takes knife and strikes.]

There’s for thyself, and that’s for Tamora.

75

Ah, sirrah!

Yet I think we are not brought so low

But that between us we can kill a fly

That comes in likeness of a coal-black Moor.

MARCUS     Alas, poor man! Grief has so wrought on him

80

He takes false shadows for true substances.

TITUS     Come, take away. Lavinia, go with me;

I’ll to thy closet and go read with thee

Sad stories chanced in the times of old.

Come, boy, and go with me; thy sight is young,

85

And thou shalt read when mine begin to dazzle.

     Exeunt.F

4.1 Enter Lucius’ son YOUNG LUCIUS and LAVINIA running after him, and the BOY flies from her with his books under his arm. He drops the books. Enter TITUS and MARCUS.

BOY     Help, grandsire, help! My aunt Lavinia

Follows me everywhere, I know not why.

Good uncle Marcus, see how swift she comes.

Alas, sweet aunt, I know not what you mean.

MARCUS     Stand by me, Lucius; do not fear thine aunt.

5

TITUS     She loves thee, boy, too well to do thee harm.

BOY     Ay, when my father was in Rome she did.

MARCUS     What means my niece Lavinia by these signs?

TITUS

Fear her not, Lucius – somewhat doth she mean.

MARCUS     See, Lucius, see how much she makes of thee;

10

Somewhither would she have thee go with her.

Ah, boy, Cornelia never with more care

Read to her sons than she hath read to thee

Sweet poetry and Tully’s Orator.

Canst thou not guess wherefore she plies thee thus?

15

BOY     My lord, I know not, I, nor can I guess,

Unless some fit or frenzy do possess her.

For I have heard my grandsire say full oft

Extremity of griefs would make men mad,

And I have read that Hecuba of Troy

20

Ran mad for sorrow. That made me to fear,

Although, my lord, I know my noble aunt

Loves me as dear as e’er my mother did,

And would not but in fury fright my youth,

Which made me down to throw my books and fly,

25

Causeless perhaps. But pardon me, sweet aunt,

And, madam, if my uncle Marcus go,

I will most willingly attend your ladyship.

MARCUS     Lucius, I will. [Lavinia turns over the books.]

TITUS     How now, Lavinia? Marcus, what means this?

30

Some book there is that she desires to see.

Which is it, girl, of these? Open them, boy.

[to Lavinia]

But thou art deeper read and better skilled:

Come and take choice of all my library,

And so beguile thy sorrow till the heavens

35

Reveal the damned contriver of this deed.

Why lifts she up her arms in sequence thus?

MARCUS

I think she means that there were more than one

Confederate in the fact. Ay, more there was –

Or else to heaven she heaves them for revenge.

40

TITUS     Lucius, what book is that she tosseth so?

BOY     Grandsire, ’tis Ovid’s Metamorphosis;

My mother gave it me.

MARCUS     For love of her that’s gone,

Perhaps she culled it from among the rest.

TITUS     Soft, so busily she turns the leaves! [Helps her.]

45

What would she find? Lavinia, shall I read?

This is the tragic tale of Philomel,

And treats of Tereus’ treason and his rape –

And rape, I fear, was root of thy annoy.

MARCUS

See, brother, see: note how she quotes the leaves.

50

TITUS     Lavinia, wert thou thus surprised, sweet girl,

Ravished and wronged as Philomela was,

Forced in the ruthless, vast and gloomy woods?

[Lavinia nods.] See, see!

Ay, such a place there is where we did hunt –

55

O, had we never, never hunted there! –

Patterned by that the poet here describes,

By nature made for murders and for rapes.

MARCUS     O, why should nature build so foul a den,

Unless the gods delight in tragedies?

60

TITUS

Give signs, sweet girl – for here are none but friends –

What Roman lord it was durst do the deed.

Or slunk not Saturnine, as Tarquin erst,

That left the camp to sin in Lucrece’ bed?

MARCUS

Sit down, sweet niece. Brother, sit down by me.

65

[They sit.] Apollo, Pallas, Jove or Mercury

Inspire me, that I may this treason find.

My lord, look here; look here, Lavinia.

[He writes his name with his staff, and guides it with feet and mouth.]

This sandy plot is plain. Guide, if thou canst,

This after me. I here have writ my name

70

Without the help of any hand at all.

Cursed be that heart that forced us to this shift.

Write thou, good niece, and here display at last

What God will have discovered for revenge.

Heaven guide thy pen to print thy sorrows plain,

75

That we may know the traitors and the truth.

[She takes the staff in her mouth, and guides it with her stumps, and writes.]

O do ye read, my lord, what she hath writ?

TITUS     Stuprum – Chiron – Demetrius.

MARCUS     What, what? The lustful sons of Tamora

Performers of this heinous bloody deed?

80

TITUS     Magni dominator poli,

Tam lentus audis scelera, tam lentus vides?

MARCUS     O calm thee, gentle lord, although I know

There is enough written upon this earth

To stir a mutiny in the mildest thoughts

85

And arm the minds of infants to exclaims.

My lord, kneel down with me; Lavinia, kneel;

And kneel, sweet boy, the Roman Hector’s hope,

[They kneel.]

And swear with me – as, with the woeful fere

And father of that chaste dishonoured dame,

90

Lord Junius Brutus swore for Lucrece’ rape –

That we will prosecute by good advice

Mortal revenge upon these traitorous Goths,

And see their blood, or die with this reproach.

[They rise.]

TITUS     ’Tis sure enough, and you knew how.

95

But if you hunt these bear-whelps, then beware:

The dam will wake, and if she wind ye once

She’s with the lion deeply still in league,

And lulls him whilst she playeth on her back,

And when he sleeps will she do what she list.

100

You are a young huntsman, Marcus. Let alone,

And come, I will go get a leaf of brass

And with a gad of steel will write these words,

And lay it by. The angry northern wind

Will blow these sands like Sibyl’s leaves abroad,

105

And where’s our lesson then? Boy, what say you?

BOY     I say, my lord, that if I were a man

Their mother’s bedchamber should not be safe

For these base bondmen to the yoke of Rome.

MARCUS     Ay, that’s my boy! Thy father hath full oft

110

For his ungrateful country done the like.

BOY     And, uncle, so will I, and if I live.

TITUS     Come, go with me into mine armoury:

LUCIUS, I’ll fit thee, and withal my boy

Shall carry from me to the empress’ sons

115

Presents that I intend to send them both.

Come, come, thou’lt do my message, wilt thou not?

BOY     Ay, with my dagger in their bosoms, grandsire.

TITUS     No, boy, not so; I’ll teach thee another course.

LAVINIA, come; Marcus, look to my house;

120

LUCIUS and I’ll go brave it at the court.

Ay, marry, will we, sir, and we’ll be waited on.

     Exeunt all but Marcus.

MARCUS     O heavens, can you hear a good man groan

And not relent or not compassion him?

MARCUS, attend him in his ecstasy

125

That hath more scars of sorrow in his heart

Than foemen’s marks upon his battered shield,

But yet so just that he will not revenge.

Revenge the heavens for old Andronicus!     Exit.

4.2 Enter AARON, CHIRON and DEMETRIUS at one door, and at the other door YOUNG LUCIUS and another, with a bundle of weapons, and verses writ upon them.

CHIRON     Demetrius, here’s the son of Lucius:

He hath some message to deliver us.

AARON

Ay, some mad message from his mad grandfather.

BOY     My lords, with all the humbleness I may,

I greet your honours from Andronicus –

5

[aside] And pray the Roman gods confound you both.

DEMETRIUS

Gramercy, lovely Lucius. What’s the news?

BOY     [aside]

That you are both deciphered, that’s the news,

For villains marked with rape.

[to them]     May it please you,

My grandsire, well advised, hath sent by me

10

The goodliest weapons of his armoury

To gratify your honourable youth,

The hope of Rome, for so he bid me say,

And so I do, and with his gifts present

Your lordships that, whenever you have need,

15

You may be armed and appointed well.

[Attendant presents the weapons.]

And so I leave you both [aside] like bloody villains.

     Exit with attendant.

DEMETRIUS

What’s here? A scroll, and written round about?

Let’s see:

[Reads.] Integer vitae, scelerisque purus,

20

Non eget Mauri iaculis, nec arcu.

CHIRON     O, ’tis a verse in Horace, I know it well:

I read it in the grammar long ago.

AARON     Ay, just – a verse in Horace, right, you have it.

[aside] Now what a thing it is to be an ass.

25

Here’s no sound jest! The old man hath found their guilt,

And sends them weapons wrapped about with lines

That wound beyond their feeling to the quick.

But were our witty empress well afoot

She would applaud Andronicus’ conceit.

30

But let her rest in her unrest awhile.

[to them] And now, young lords, was’t not a happy star

Led us to Rome, strangers and, more than so,

Captives, to be advanced to this height?

It did me good before the palace gate

35

To brave the tribune in his brother’s hearing.

DEMETRIUS     But me more good to see so great a lord

Basely insinuate and send us gifts.

AARON     Had he not reason, Lord Demetrius?

Did you not use his daughter very friendly?

40

DEMETRIUS     I would we had a thousand Roman dames

At such a bay, by turn to serve our lust.

CHIRON     A charitable wish, and full of love.

AARON     Here lacks but your mother for to say amen.

CHIRON

And that would she, for twenty thousand more.

45

DEMETRIUS     Come, let us go and pray to all the gods

For our beloved mother in her pains.

AARON     Pray to the devils; the gods have given us over.

[Trumpets sound.]

DEMETRIUS

Why do the emperor’s trumpets flourish thus?

CHIRON     Belike for joy the emperor hath a son.

50

DEMETRIUS     Soft, who comes here?

Enter Nurse with a blackamoor child.

NURSE     Good morrow, lords.

O tell me, did you see Aaron the Moor?

AARON     Well, more or less, or ne’er a whit at all:

Here Aaron is, and what with Aaron now?

55

NURSE     O gentle Aaron, we are all undone.

Now help, or woe betide thee evermore!

AARON     Why, what a caterwauling dost thou keep!

What dost thou wrap and fumble in thy arms?

NURSE     O, that which I would hide from heaven’s eye,

60

Our empress’ shame and stately Rome’s disgrace:

She is delivered, lords, she is delivered.

AARON     To whom?

NURSE     I mean she is brought abed.

AARON

Well, God give her good rest. What hath he sent her?

65

NURSE     A devil.

AARON     Why then, she is the devil’s dam: a joyful issue.

NURSE     A joyless, dismal, black and sorrowful issue.

Here is the babe, as loathsome as a toad

Amongst the fair-faced breeders of our clime.

70

The empress sends it thee, thy stamp, thy seal,

And bids thee christen it with thy dagger’s point.

AARON     Zounds, ye whore, is black so base a hue?

[to the baby] Sweet blowze, you are a beauteous

    blossom, sure.

DEMETRIUS     Villain, what hast thou done?

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AARON     That which thou canst not undo.

CHIRON     Thou hast undone our mother.

AARON     Villain, I have done thy mother.

DEMETRIUS

And therein, hellish dog, thou hast undone her.

Woe to her chance and damned her loathed choice,

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Accursed the offspring of so foul a fiend.

CHIRON     It shall not live.

AARON     It shall not die.

NURSE     Aaron, it must: the mother wills it so.

AARON     What, must it, nurse? Then let no man but I

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Do execution on my flesh and blood.

DEMETRIUS

I’ll broach the tadpole on my rapier’s point.

Nurse, give it me; my sword shall soon dispatch it.

AARON     Sooner this sword shall plough thy bowels up.

[Draws his sword and takes the child.]

Stay, murderous villains, will you kill your brother?

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Now, by the burning tapers of the sky

That shone so brightly when this boy was got,

He dies upon my scimitar’s sharp point

That touches this, my first-born son and heir.

I tell you, younglings, not Enceladus

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With all his threatening band of Typhon’s brood,

Nor great Alcides, nor the god of war,

Shall seize this prey out of his father’s hands.

What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys,

Ye white-limed walls, ye alehouse painted signs!

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Coal-black is better than another hue

In that it scorns to bear another hue;

For all the water in the ocean

Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white,

Although she lave them hourly in the flood.

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Tell the empress from me I am of age

To keep mine own, excuse it how she can.

DEMETRIUS     Wilt thou betray thy noble mistress thus?

AARON     My mistress is my mistress, this myself,

The vigour and the picture of my youth.

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This before all the world do I prefer,

This maugre all the world will I keep safe,

Or some of you shall smoke for it in Rome.

DEMETRIUS     By this our mother is for ever shamed.

CHIRON     Rome will despise her for this foul escape.

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NURSE     The emperor in his rage will doom her death.

CHIRON     I blush to think upon this ignomy.

AARON     Why, there’s the privilege your beauty bears.

Fie, treacherous hue, that will betray with blushing

The close enacts and counsels of thy heart.

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Here’s a young lad framed of another leer:

Look how the black slave smiles upon the father,

As who should say, ‘Old lad, I am thine own.’

He is your brother, lords, sensibly fed

Of that self blood that first gave life to you,

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And from that womb where you imprisoned were

He is enfranchised and come to light.

Nay, he is your brother by the surer side,

Although my seal be stamped in his face.

NURSE     Aaron, what shall I say unto the empress?

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DEMETRIUS     Advise thee, Aaron, what is to be done

And we will all subscribe to thy advice.

Save thou the child, so we may all be safe.

AARON     Then sit we down and let us all consult.

My son and I will have the wind of you.

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Keep there. [They sit.]

Now talk at pleasure of your safety.

DEMETRIUS     [to the Nurse]

How many women saw this child of his?

AARON     Why, so, brave lords, when we join in league

I am a lamb – but if you brave the Moor,

The chafed boar, the mountain lioness,

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The ocean, swells not so as Aaron storms.

[to the Nurse] But say again, how many saw the child?

NURSE     Cornelia the midwife, and myself,

And no one else but the delivered empress.

AARON     The empress, the midwife and yourself.

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Two may keep counsel when the third’s away.

Go to the empress, tell her this I said: [He kills her.]

‘Wheak, wheak!’ – so cries a pig prepared to the spit. [All stand up.]

DEMETRIUS

What mean’st thou, Aaron? Wherefore didst thou

this?

AARON     O Lord, sir, ’tis a deed of policy:

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Shall she live to betray this guilt of ours?

A long-tongued, babbling gossip? No, lords, no.

And now be it known to you, my full intent.

Not far one Muly lives, my countryman:

His wife but yesternight was brought to bed;

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His child is like to her, fair as you are.

Go pack with him and give the mother gold,

And tell them both the circumstance of all,

And how by this their child shall be advanced

And be received for the emperor’s heir,

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And substituted in the place of mine,

To calm this tempest whirling in the court;

And let the emperor dandle him for his own.

Hark ye, lords, you see I have given her physic,

And you must needs bestow her funeral;

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The fields are near and you are gallant grooms.

This done, see that you take no longer days,

But send the midwife presently to me.

The midwife and the nurse well made away,

Then let the ladies tattle what they please.

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CHIRON     Aaron, I see thou wilt not trust the air With secrets.

DEMETRIUS     For this care of Tamora,

Herself and hers are highly bound to thee.

     Exeunt Chiron and Demetrius, with the Nurse’s body.

AARON     Now to the Goths, as swift as swallow flies,

There to dispose this treasure in mine arms

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And secretly to greet the empress’ friends.

Come on, you thick-lipped slave, I’ll bear you hence,

For it is you that puts us to our shifts.

I’ll make you feed on berries and on roots,

And fat on curds and whey, and suck the goat,

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And cabin in a cave, and bring you up

To be a warrior and command a camp. Exit.

4.3 Enter TITUS, OLD MARCUS, YOUNG LUCIUS, and other gentlemen, Marcus’ son PUBLIUS; kinsmen of the Andronici, CAIUS and SEMPRONIUS with bows; and Titus bears the arrows with letters on the ends of them.

TITUS     Come, Marcus, come; kinsmen, this is the way.

Sir Boy, let me see your archery.

Look ye draw home enough, and ’tis there straight.

Terras Astraea reliquit: be you remembered, Marcus,

She’s gone, she’s fled. Sirs, take you to your tools.

5

You, cousins, shall go sound the ocean

And cast your nets:

Happily you may catch her in the sea;

Yet there’s as little justice as at land.

No, Publius and Sempronius, you must do it,

10

’Tis you must dig with mattock and with spade,

And pierce the inmost centre of the earth.

Then, when you come to Pluto’s region,

I pray you deliver him this petition.

Tell him it is for justice and for aid,

15

And that it comes from old Andronicus,

Shaken with sorrows in ungrateful Rome.

Ah, Rome! Well, well, I made thee miserable

What time I threw the people’s suffrages

On him that thus doth tyrannize o’er me.

20

Go, get you gone, and pray be careful all,

And leave you not a man-of-war unsearched:

This wicked emperor may have shipped her hence,

And, kinsmen, then we may go pipe for justice.

MARCUS     O Publius, is not this a heavy case,

25

To see thy noble uncle thus distract?

PUBLIUS     Therefore, my lords, it highly us concerns

By day and night t’attend him carefully

And feed his humour kindly as we may,

Till time beget some careful remedy.

30

MARCUS     Kinsmen, his sorrows are past remedy,

But let us live in hope that Lucius will

Join with the Goths and with revengeful war

Take wreak on Rome for this ingratitude,

And vengeance on the traitor Saturnine.

35

TITUS     Publius, how now? How now, my masters?

What, have you met with her?

PUBLIUS     No, my good lord, but Pluto sends you word

If you will have Revenge from hell, you shall.

Marry, for Justice, she is so employed,

40

He thinks with Jove in heaven or somewhere else,

So that perforce you must needs stay a time.

TITUS     He doth me wrong to feed me with delays.

I’ll dive into the burning lake below

And pull her out of Acheron by the heels.

45

MARCUS, we are but shrubs, no cedars we,

No big-boned men framed of the Cyclops’ size,

But metal, Marcus, steel to the very back,

Yet wrung with wrongs more than our backs can bear.

And sith there’s no justice in earth nor hell,

50

We will solicit heaven and move the gods

To send down Justice for to wreak our wrongs.

Come, to this gear. You are a good archer, Marcus:

[He gives them the arrows.]

‘Ad Jovem’, that’s for you; here, ‘ad Apollinem’;

‘Ad Martem’, that’s for myself;

55

Here, boy, ‘to Pallas’; here, ‘to Mercury’;

‘To Saturn’, Caius – not to Saturnine:

You were as good to shoot against the wind.

To it, boy; Marcus, loose when I bid.

Of my word, I have written to effect:

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There’s not a god left unsolicited.

MARCUS     Kinsmen, shoot all your shafts into the court;

We will afflict the emperor in his pride.

TITUS     Now, masters, draw. [They shoot.]

     O, well said, Lucius,

Good boy: in Virgo’s lap! Give it Pallas.

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MARCUS     My lord, I aimed a mile beyond the moon:

Your letter is with Jupiter by this.

TITUS     Ha, ha! Publius, Publius, what hast thou done?

See, see, thou hast shot off one of Taurus’ horns.

MARCUS

This was the sport, my lord: when Publius shot,

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The Bull, being galled, gave Aries such a knock

That down fell both the Ram’s horns in the court,

And who should find them but the empress’ villain!

She laughed and told the Moor he should not choose

But give them to his master for a present.

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TITUS

Why, there it goes; God give his lordship joy.

Enter the Clown with a basket and two pigeons in it.

News, news, from heaven! Marcus, the post is come.

Sirrah, what tidings? Have you any letters?

Shall I have justice? What says Jupiter?

CLOWN     Ho, the gibbet-maker? He says that he hath

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taken them down again, for the man must not be

hanged till the next week.

TITUS     But what says Jupiter, I ask thee?

CLOWN

Alas, sir, I know not Jubiter, I never drank with him in all my life.

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TITUS     Why, villain, art not thou the carrier?

CLOWN     Ay, of my pigeons, sir – nothing else.

TITUS     Why, didst thou not come from heaven?

CLOWN     From heaven? Alas, sir, I never came there. God

forbid I should be so bold to press to heaven in my

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young days. Why, I am going with my pigeons to the

tribunal plebs to take up a matter of brawl betwixt my

uncle and one of the emperal’s men.

MARCUS     [to Titus] Why, sir, that is as fit as can be to

serve for your oration, and let him deliver the pigeons

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to the emperor from you.

TITUS     Tell me, can you deliver an oration to the

emperor with a grace?

CLOWN     Nay, truly, sir, I could never say grace in all

my life.

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TITUS     Sirrah, come hither; make no more ado,

But give your pigeons to the emperor.

By me thou shalt have justice at his hands.

Hold, hold – meanwhile here’s money for thy charges.

Give me pen and ink. [Writes.]

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Sirrah, can you with a grace deliver up a supplication?

CLOWN     Ay, sir.

TITUS     [Gives letter.] Then here is a supplication for

you, and when you come to him, at the first approach

you must kneel, then kiss his foot, then deliver up your

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pigeons, and then look for your reward. I’ll be at hand,

sir; see you do it bravely.

CLOWN     I warrant you, sir, let me alone.

TITUS     Sirrah, hast thou a knife? Come, let me see it.

Here, Marcus, fold it in the oration;

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[to the Clown] For thou must hold it like an humble suppliant,

And when thou hast given it to the emperor,

Knock at my door and tell me what he says.

CLOWN     God be with you, sir. I will.     Exit.

TITUS     Come, Marcus, let us go; Publius, follow me.

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     Exeunt.

4.4 Enter Emperor and Empress and her two sons, and attendants. The Emperor brings the arrows in his hand that Titus shot at him.

SATURNINUS

Why, lords, what wrongs are these! Was ever seen

An emperor in Rome thus overborne,

Troubled, confronted thus, and for the extent

Of equal justice used in such contempt?

My lords, you know, as know the mightful gods,

5

However these disturbers of our peace

Buzz in the people’s ears, there nought hath passed

But even with law against the wilful sons

Of old Andronicus. And what and if

His sorrows have so overwhelmed his wits?

10

Shall we be thus afflicted in his wreaks,

His fits, his frenzy and his bitterness?

And now he writes to heaven for his redress.

See, here’s ‘to Jove’, and this ‘to Mercury’,

This ‘to Apollo’, this ‘to the god of war’:

15

Sweet scrolls to fly about the streets of Rome!

What’s this but libelling against the senate

And blazoning our injustice everywhere?

A goodly humour, is it not, my lords?

As who would say, in Rome no justice were.

20

But if I live, his feigned ecstasies

Shall be no shelter to these outrages,

But he and his shall know that justice lives

In Saturninus’ health, whom, if she sleep,

He’ll so awake as she in fury shall

25

Cut off the proud’st conspirator that lives.

TAMORA     My gracious lord, my lovely Saturnine,

Lord of my life, commander of my thoughts,

Calm thee and bear the faults of Titus’ age,

Th’effects of sorrow for his valiant sons

30

Whose loss hath pierced him deep and scarred his heart;

And rather comfort his distressed plight

Than prosecute the meanest or the best

For these contempts.

[aside] Why, thus it shall become

High-witted Tamora to gloze withal.

35

But, Titus, I have touched thee to the quick;

Thy life-blood out, if Aaron now be wise,

Then is all safe, the anchor in the port.

Enter Clown.

How now, good fellow, wouldst thou speak with us?

CLOWN

Yea, forsooth, and your mistress-ship be emperial.

40

TAMORA     Empress I am, but yonder sits the emperor.

CLOWN     ’Tis he. God and Saint Stephen give you good

e’en. I have brought you a letter and a couple of

pigeons here. [Saturninus reads the letter.]

SATURNINUS     Go, take him away and hang him presently!

45

CLOWN     How much money must I have?

TAMORA     Come, sirrah, you must be hanged.

CLOWN     Hanged, by’Lady? Then I have brought up a

neck to a fair end. Exit under guard.

SATURNINUS     Despiteful and intolerable wrongs!

50

Shall I endure this monstrous villainy?

I know from whence this same device proceeds.

May this be borne as if his traitorous sons,

That died by law for murder of our brother,

Have by my means been butchered wrongfully?

55

Go, drag the villain hither by the hair:

Nor age nor honour shall shape privilege.

For this proud mock I’ll be thy slaughterman,

Sly frantic wretch that holp’st to make me great

In hope thyself should govern Rome and me.

60

Enter EMILLIUS, a messenger.

What news with thee, Emillius?

EMILLIUS

Arm, arm, my lords! Rome never had more cause:

The Goths have gathered head, and with a power

Of high-resolved men bent to the spoil

They hither march amain under conduct

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Of Lucius, son to old Andronicus,

Who threats in course of this revenge to do

As much as ever Coriolanus did.

SATURNINUS

Is warlike Lucius general of the Goths?

These tidings nip me and I hang the head

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As flowers with frost or grass beat down with storms.

Ay, now begins our sorrows to approach.

’Tis he the common people love so much;

Myself hath often heard them say,

When I have walked like a private man,

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That Lucius’ banishment was wrongfully,

And they have wished that Lucius were their emperor.

TAMORA     Why should you fear? Is not your city strong?

SATURNINUS     Ay, but the citizens favour Lucius

And will revolt from me to succour him.

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TAMORA

King, be thy thoughts imperious like thy name.

Is the sun dimmed, that gnats do fly in it?

The eagle suffers little birds to sing,

And is not careful what they mean thereby,

Knowing that with the shadow of his wings

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He can at pleasure stint their melody:

Even so mayst thou the giddy men of Rome.

Then cheer thy spirit, for know thou, emperor,

I will enchant the old Andronicus

With words more sweet and yet more dangerous

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Than baits to fish or honey-stalks to sheep,

When as the one is wounded with the bait,

The other rotted with delicious feed.

SATURNINUS     But he will not entreat his son for us.

TAMORA     If Tamora entreat him, then he will,

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For I can smooth and fill his aged ears

With golden promises that, were his heart

Almost impregnable, his old ears deaf,

Yet should both ear and heart obey my tongue.

[to Emillius] Go thou before to be our ambassador:

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Say that the emperor requests a parley

Of warlike Lucius, and appoint the meeting

Even at his father’s house, the old Andronicus.

SATURNINUS     Emillius, do this message honourably,

And if he stand in hostage for his safety,

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Bid him demand what pledge will please him best.

EMILLIUS     Your bidding shall I do effectually.     Exit.

TAMORA     Now will I to that old Andronicus,

And temper him with all the art I have

To pluck proud Lucius from the warlike Goths.

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And now, sweet emperor, be blithe again

And bury all thy fear in my devices.

SATURNINUS     Then go incessantly and plead to him.

     Exeunt by different doors.

5.1 Flourish. Enter LUCIUS with an army of Goths with drums and soldiers.

LUCIUS     Approved warriors and my faithful friends,

I have received letters from great Rome

Which signifies what hate they bear their emperor,

And how desirous of our sight they are.

Therefore, great lords, be as your titles witness,

5

Imperious, and impatient of your wrongs,

And wherein Rome hath done you any scath

Let him make treble satisfaction.

1GOTH Brave slip sprung from the great Andronicus,

Whose name was once our terror, now our comfort,

10

Whose high exploits and honourable deeds

Ingrateful Rome requites with foul contempt,

Be bold in us. We’ll follow where thou lead’st,

Like stinging bees in hottest summer’s day

Led by their master to the flowered fields,

15

And be avenged on cursed Tamora.

ALL GOTHS     And as he saith, so say we all with him.

LUCIUS     I humbly thank him, and I thank you all.

But who comes here, led by a lusty Goth?

Enter a Goth, leading of AARON with his child in his arms.

2GOTH Renowned Lucius, from our troops I strayed

20

To gaze upon a ruinous monastery,

And as I earnestly did fix mine eye

Upon the wasted building, suddenly

I heard a child cry underneath a wall.

I made unto the noise, when soon I heard

25

The crying babe controlled with this discourse:

‘Peace, tawny slave, half me and half thy dame!

Did not thy hue bewray whose brat thou art,

Had nature lent thee but thy mother’s look,

Villain, thou mightst have been an emperor.

30

But where the bull and cow are both milk-white,

They never do beget a coal-black calf.

Peace, villain, peace,’ – even thus he rates the babe –

‘For I must bear thee to a trusty Goth

Who, when he knows thou art the empress’ babe,

35

Will hold thee dearly for thy mother’s sake.’

With this my weapon drawn, I rushed upon him,

Surprised him suddenly, and brought him hither

To use as you think needful of the man.

LUCIUS     O worthy Goth, this is the incarnate devil

40

That robbed Andronicus of his good hand;

This is the pearl that pleased your empress’ eye,

And here’s the base fruit of her burning lust.

[to Aaron] Say, wall-eyed slave, whither wouldst thou convey

This growing image of thy fiend-like face?

45

Why dost not speak? What, deaf? Not a word?

A halter, soldiers! Hang him on this tree,

And by his side his fruit of bastardy.

AARON     Touch not the boy, he is of royal blood.

LUCIUS     Too like the sire for ever being good.

50

First hang the child, that he may see it sprawl:

A sight to vex the father’s soul withal.

Get me a ladder.

[A Goth brings a ladder, which Aaron is made to climb; another Goth takes the child.]

AARON     Lucius, save the child,

And bear it from me to the empress.

If thou do this, I’ll show thee wondrous things

55

That highly may advantage thee to hear.

If thou wilt not, befall what may befall,

I’ll speak no more but ‘Vengeance rot you all!’

LUCIUS

Say on, and if it please me which thou speak’st,

Thy child shall live and I will see it nourished.

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AARON     And if it please thee? Why, assure thee, Lucius,

’Twill vex thy soul to hear what I shall speak:

For I must talk of murders, rapes and massacres,

Acts of black night, abominable deeds,

Complots of mischief, treasons, villainies,

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Ruthful to hear yet piteously performed;

And this shall all be buried in my death

Unless thou swear to me my child shall live.

LUCIUS     Tell on thy mind; I say thy child shall live.

AARON     Swear that he shall and then I will begin.

70

LUCIUS

Who should I swear by? Thou believest no god.

That granted, how canst thou believe an oath?

AARON     What if I do not? as indeed I do not –

Yet for I know thou art religious

And hast a thing within thee called conscience,

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With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies

Which I have seen thee careful to observe,

Therefore I urge thy oath; for that I know

An idiot holds his bauble for a god,

And keeps the oath which by that god he swears,

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To that I’ll urge him, therefore thou shalt vow

By that same god, what god soe’er it be

That thou adorest and hast in reverence,

To save my boy, to nurse and bring him up,

Or else I will discover nought to thee.

85

LUCIUS     Even by my god I swear to thee I will.

AARON     First know thou I begot him on the empress.

LUCIUS     O most insatiate and luxurious woman!

AARON     Tut, Lucius, this was but a deed of charity

To that which thou shalt hear of me anon.

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’Twas her two sons that murdered Bassianus;

They cut thy sister’s tongue and ravished her

And cut her hands and trimmed her as thou sawest.

LUCIUS

O detestable villain, call’st thou that trimming?

AARON

Why, she was washed and cut and trimmed, and ’twas

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Trim sport for them which had the doing of it.

LUCIUS     O barbarous, beastly villains, like thyself!

AARON     Indeed, I was their tutor to instruct them.

That codding spirit had they from their mother,

As sure a card as ever won the set.

100

That bloody mind I think they learned of me,

As true a dog as ever fought at head.

Well, let my deeds be witness of my worth:

I trained thy brethren to that guileful hole

Where the dead corpse of Bassianus lay;

105

I wrote the letter that thy father found,

And hid the gold within that letter mentioned,

Confederate with the queen and her two sons;

And what not done that thou hast cause to rue

Wherein I had no stroke of mischief in it?

110

I played the cheater for thy father’s hand,

And when I had it, drew myself apart

And almost broke my heart with extreme laughter;

I pried me through the crevice of a wall

When for his hand he had his two sons’ heads,

115

Beheld his tears and laughed so heartily

That both mine eyes were rainy like to his;

And when I told the empress of this sport,

She sounded almost at my pleasing tale

And for my tidings gave me twenty kisses.

120

1GOTH What, canst thou say all this and never blush?

AARON     Ay, like a black dog, as the saying is.

LUCIUS     Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?

AARON     Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.

Even now I curse the day – and yet I think

125

Few come within the compass of my curse –

Wherein I did not some notorious ill,

As kill a man or else devise his death,

Ravish a maid or plot the way to do it,

Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,

130

Set deadly enmity between two friends,

Make poor men’s cattle break their necks,

Set fire on barns and haystacks in the night

And bid the owners quench them with their tears.

Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves

135

And set them upright at their dear friends’ door,

Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,

And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,

Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,

‘Let not your sorrow die though I am dead’.

140

Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things

As willingly as one would kill a fly,

And nothing grieves me heartily indeed

But that I cannot do ten thousand more.

LUCIUS     Bring down the devil, for he must not die

145

So sweet a death as hanging presently.

[Aaron is made to climb down.]

AARON     If there be devils, would I were a devil,

To live and burn in everlasting fire,

So I might have your company in hell

But to torment you with my bitter tongue.

150

LUCIUS

Sirs, stop his mouth and let him speak no more.

[Aaron is gagged.]

Enter EMILLIUS.

A GOTH My lord, there is a messenger from Rome

Desires to be admitted to your presence.

LUCIUS     Let him come near.

Welcome, Emillius: what’s the news from Rome?

155

EMILLIUS     Lord Lucius and you princes of the Goths,

The Roman emperor greets you all by me,

And for he understands you are in arms,

He craves a parley at your father’s house,

Willing you to demand your hostages

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And they shall be immediately delivered.

1GOTH What says our general?

LUCIUS     Emillius, let the emperor give his pledges

Unto my father and my uncle Marcus,

And we will come.     Flourish. They march away.

165

5.2 Enter TAMORA and her two Sons, disguised.

TAMORA     Thus, in this strange and sad habiliment,

I will encounter with Andronicus

And say I am Revenge, sent from below

To join with him and right his heinous wrongs.

Knock at his study, where they say he keeps

5

To ruminate strange plots of dire revenge;

Tell him Revenge is come to join with him

And work confusion on his enemies.

They knock, and TITUS aloft with papers, opens his study door.

TITUS     [aloft] Who doth molest my contemplation?

Is it your trick to make me ope the door,

10

That so my sad decrees may fly away

And all my study be to no effect?

You are deceived, for what I mean to do

See here in bloody lines I have set down,

And what is written shall be executed.

15

TAMORA     Titus, I am come to talk with thee.

TITUS     [aloft] No, not a word. How can I grace my talk,

Wanting a hand to give it action?

Thou hast the odds of me, therefore no more.

TAMORA

If thou didst know me, thou wouldst talk with me.

20

TITUS     [aloft] I am not mad, I know thee well enough:

Witness this wretched stump, witness these crimson lines,

Witness these trenches made by grief and care,

Witness the tiring day and heavy night,

Witness all sorrow, that I know thee well

25

For our proud empress, mighty Tamora.

Is not thy coming for my other hand?

TAMORA     Know, thou sad man, I am not Tamora:

She is thy enemy and I thy friend.

I am Revenge, sent from th’infernal kingdom

30

To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind

By working wreakful vengeance on thy foes.

Come down and welcome me to this world’s light,

Confer with me of murder and of death.

There’s not a hollow cave or lurking place,

35

No vast obscurity or misty vale

Where bloody murder or detested rape

Can couch for fear, but I will find them out,

And in their ears tell them my dreadful name,

Revenge, which makes the foul offender quake.

40

TITUS     [aloft]

Art thou Revenge? And art thou sent to me

To be a torment to mine enemies?

TAMORA     I am, therefore come down and welcome me.

TITUS     [aloft] Do me some service ere I come to thee.

Lo by thy side where Rape and Murder stands;

45

Now give some surance that thou art Revenge:

Stab them or tear them on thy chariot wheels,

And then I’ll come and be thy waggoner,

And whirl along with thee about the globe,

Provide thee two proper palfreys, black as jet,

50

To hale thy vengeful waggon swift away

And find out murderers in their guilty caves;

And when thy car is loaden with their heads,

I will dismount and by thy waggon wheel

Trot like a servile footman all day long,

55

Even from Hyperion’s rising in the east

Until his very downfall in the sea.

And day by day I’ll do this heavy task,

So thou destroy Rapine and Murder there.

TAMORA     These are my ministers, and come with me.

60

TITUS     [aloft]

Are these thy ministers? What are they called?

TAMORA     Rape and Murder, therefore called so

’Cause they take vengeance of such kind of men.

TITUS     [aloft]

Good Lord, how like the empress’ sons they are,

And you the empress! But we worldly men

65

Have miserable, mad, mistaking eyes.

O sweet Revenge, now do I come to thee,

And if one arm’s embracement will content thee,

I will embrace thee in it by and by.     Exit aloft.

TAMORA     This closing with him fits his lunacy.

70

Whate’er I forge to feed his brainsick humours

Do you uphold and maintain in your speeches,

For now he firmly takes me for Revenge,

And, being credulous in this mad thought,

I’ll make him send for Lucius his son,

75

And whilst I at a banquet hold him sure,

I’ll find some cunning practice out of hand

To scatter and disperse the giddy Goths,

Or at the least make them his enemies.

See, here he comes, and I must ply my theme.

80

Enter TITUS, below.

TITUS     Long have I been forlorn, and all for thee.

Welcome, dread Fury, to my woeful house;

Rapine and Murder, you are welcome too.

How like the empress and her sons you are!

Well are you fitted, had you but a Moor;

85

Could not all hell afford you such a devil?

For well I wot the empress never wags

But in her company there is a Moor,

And would you represent our queen aright

It were convenient you had such a devil.

90

But welcome as you are. What shall we do?

TAMORA     What wouldst thou have us do, Andronicus?

DEMETRIUS     Show me a murderer, I’ll deal with him.

CHIRON     Show me a villain that hath done a rape,

And I am sent to be revenged on him.

95

TAMORA

Show me a thousand that hath done thee wrong,

And I will be revenged on them all.

TITUS     [to Demetrius]

Look round about the wicked streets of Rome,

And when thou find’st a man that’s like thyself,

Good Murder, stab him: he’s a murderer.

100

[to Chiron] Go thou with him, and when it is thy hap

To find another that is like to thee,

Good Rapine, stab him: he is a ravisher.

[to Tamora] Go thou with them, and in the emperor’s court,

There is a queen attended by a Moor –

105

Well shalt thou know her by thine own proportion,

For up and down she doth resemble thee –

I pray thee, do on them some violent death:

They have been violent to me and mine.

TAMORA     Well hast thou lessoned us; this shall we do.

110

But would it please thee, good Andronicus,

To send for Lucius, thy thrice-valiant son,

Who leads towards Rome a band of warlike Goths,

And bid him come and banquet at thy house?

When he is here, even at thy solemn feast,

115

I will bring in the empress and her sons,

The emperor himself and all thy foes,

And at thy mercy shall they stoop and kneel,

And on them shalt thou ease thy angry heart.

What says Andronicus to this device?

120

TITUS     Marcus, my brother! ’Tis sad Titus calls.

Enter MARCUS.

Go, gentle Marcus, to thy nephew Lucius;

Thou shalt enquire him out among the Goths.

Bid him repair to me and bring with him

Some of the chiefest princes of the Goths.

125

Bid him encamp his soldiers where they are.

Tell him the emperor and the empress too

Feast at my house, and he shall feast with them.

This do thou for my love, and so let him,

As he regards his aged father’s life.

130

MARCUS     This will I do, and soon return again.     Exit.

TAMORA     Now will I hence about thy business,

And take my ministers along with me.

TITUS     Nay, nay, let Rape and Murder stay with me –

Or else I’ll call my brother back again

135

And cleave to no revenge but Lucius.

TAMORA     [aside to her sons]

What say you, boys, will you abide with him

Whiles I go tell my lord the emperor

How I have governed our determined jest?

Yield to his humour, smooth and speak him fair,

140

And tarry with him till I turn again.

TITUS     [aside]

I knew them all, though they supposed me mad,

And will o’erreach them in their own devices –

A pair of cursed hellhounds and their dam.

DEMETRIUS     Madam, depart at pleasure, leave us here.

145

TAMORA     Farewell, Andronicus: Revenge now goes

To lay a complot to betray thy foes.

TITUS     I know thou dost – and sweet Revenge, farewell.

     Exit Tamora.

CHIRON     Tell us, old man, how shall we be employed?

TITUS     Tut, I have work enough for you to do.

150

Publius, come hither; Caius and Valentine.

Enter PUBLIUS, CAIUS and VALENTINE.

PUBLIUS     What is your will?

TITUS     Know you these two?

PUBLIUS

The empress’ sons I take them: Chiron, Demetrius.

TITUS     Fie, Publius, fie, thou art too much deceived.

155

The one is Murder and Rape is the other’s name,

And therefore bind them, gentle Publius;

Caius and Valentine, lay hands on them.

Oft have you heard me wish for such an hour,

And now I find it; therefore bind them sure,

160

And stop their mouths if they begin to cry.     Exit.

CHIRON     Villains, forbear! We are the empress’ sons.

PUBLIUS

And therefore do we what we are commanded.

[They bind and gag them.]

Stop close their mouths; let them not speak a word.

Is he sure bound? Look that you bind them fast.

165

Enter TITUS ANDRONICUS with a knife, and LAVINIA with a basin.

TITUS     Come, come, Lavinia: look, thy foes are bound.

Sirs, stop their mouths; let them not speak to me,

But let them hear what fearful words I utter.

O villains, Chiron and Demetrius,

Here stands the spring whom you have stained with mud,

170

This goodly summer with your winter mixed.

You killed her husband, and for that vile fault

Two of her brothers were condemned to death,

My hand cut off and made a merry jest,

Both her sweet hands, her tongue, and that more dear

175

Than hands or tongue, her spotless chastity,

Inhuman traitors, you constrained and forced.

What would you say if I should let you speak?

Villains, for shame you could not beg for grace.

Hark, wretches, how I mean to martyr you:

180

This one hand yet is left to cut your throats,

Whiles that Lavinia ’tween her stumps doth hold

The basin that receives your guilty blood.

You know your mother means to feast with me,

And calls herself Revenge and thinks me mad.

185

Hark, villains, I will grind your bones to dust,

And with your blood and it I’ll make a paste,

And of the paste a coffin I will rear,

And make two pasties of your shameful heads,

And bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam,

190

Like to the earth swallow her own increase.

This is the feast that I have bid her to,

And this the banquet she shall surfeit on:

For worse than Philomel you used my daughter,

And worse than Progne I will be revenged.

195

And now, prepare your throats. Lavinia, come,

Receive the blood, and when that they are dead

Let me go grind their bones to powder small,

And with this hateful liquor temper it,

And in that paste let their vile heads be baked.

200

Come, come, be everyone officious

To make this banquet, which I wish may prove

More stern and bloody than the Centaurs’ feast.

[He cuts their throats.]

So, now bring them in, for I’ll play the cook,

And see them ready against their mother comes.

205

     Exeunt with the bodies.

5.3 Enter LUCIUS, MARCUS and the Goths, with AARON     prisoner and one carrying his child.

LUCIUS     Uncle Marcus, since ’tis my father’s mind

That I repair to Rome, I am content.

1GOTH And ours with thine, befall what fortune will.

LUCIUS     Good uncle, take you in this barbarous Moor,

This ravenous tiger, this accursed devil;

5

Let him receive no sustenance, fetter him

Till he be brought unto the empress’ face

For testimony of her foul proceedings.

And see the ambush of our friends be strong:

I fear the emperor means no good to us.

10

AARON     Some devil whisper curses in my ear,

And prompt me that my tongue may utter forth

The venomous malice of my swelling heart.

LUCIUS     Away, inhuman dog, unhallowed slave!

Sirs, help our uncle to convey him in.

15

     Exit Aaron under guard. Sound trumpets.

The trumpets show the emperor is at hand.

Enter Emperor and Empress, with tribunes and others including EMILLIUS.

SATURNINUS

What, hath the firmament more suns than one?

LUCIUS     What boots it thee to call thyself a sun?

MARCUS

Rome’s emperor, and nephew, break the parle;

These quarrels must be quietly debated.

20

The feast is ready which the careful Titus

Hath ordained to an honourable end,

For peace, for love, for league and good to Rome,

Please you therefore, draw nigh and take your places.

SATURNINUS     Marcus, we will.

25

Trumpets sounding, a table brought in. They sit. Enter TITUS     like a cook, placing the dishes, and LAVINIA with a veil over her face and YOUNG LUCIUS.

TITUS

Welcome, my gracious lord; welcome, dread queen;

Welcome, ye warlike Goths; welcome, Lucius;

And welcome, all. Although the cheer be poor,

’Twill fill your stomachs. Please you, eat of it.

SATURNINUS     Why art thou thus attired, Andronicus?

30

TITUS     Because I would be sure to have all well

To entertain your highness and your empress.

TAMORA     We are beholden to you, good Andronicus.

TITUS     And if your highness knew my heart you were.

My lord the emperor, resolve me this:

35

Was it well done of rash Virginius

To slay his daughter with his own right hand,

Because she was enforced, stained and deflowered?

SATURNINUS     It was, Andronicus.

TITUS     Your reason, mighty lord?

SATURNINUS

Because the girl should not survive her shame,

40

And by her presence still renew his sorrows.

TITUS     A reason mighty, strong, and effectual;

A pattern, precedent, and lively warrant

For me, most wretched, to perform the like.

[Unveils Lavinia.]

Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee,

45

And with thy shame thy father’s sorrow die.

[He kills her.]

SATURNINUS

What hast thou done, unnatural and unkind?

TITUS

Killed her for whom my tears have made me blind.

I am as woeful as Virginius was,

And have a thousand times more cause than he

50

To do this outrage, and it now is done.

SATURNINUS

What, was she ravished? Tell who did the deed.

TITUS

Will’t please you eat? Will’t please your highness feed?

TAMORA

Why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus?

TITUS     Not I, ’twas Chiron and Demetrius:

55

They ravished her and cut away her tongue,

And they, ’twas they, that did her all this wrong.

SATURNINUS

Go, fetch them hither to us presently.

TITUS     Why, there they are, both baked in this pie,

Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,

60

Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.

’Tis true, ’tis true, witness my knife’s sharp point.

[He stabs the Empress.]

SATURNINUS     Die, frantic wretch, for this accursed deed.

[He kills Titus.]

LUCIUS     Can the son’s eye behold his father bleed?

There’s meed for meed, death for a deadly deed.

65

[He kills Saturninus. Uproar. The Goths protect the Andronici, who go aloft.]

MARCUS     [aloft]

You sad-faced men, people and sons of Rome,

By uproars severed, as a flight of fowl

Scattered by winds and high tempestuous gusts,

O let me teach you how to knit again

This scattered corn into one mutual sheaf,

70

These broken limbs again into one body.

A ROMAN LORD Let Rome herself be bane unto herself,

And she whom mighty kingdoms curtsy to,

Like a forlorn and desperate castaway,

Do shameful execution on herself!

75

But if my frosty signs and chaps of age,

Grave witnesses of true experience,

Cannot induce you to attend my words,

Speak, Rome’s dear friend, as erst our ancestor

When with his solemn tongue he did discourse

80

To lovesick Dido’s sad-attending ear

The story of that baleful burning night

When subtle Greeks surprised King Priam’s Troy.

Tell us what Sinon hath bewitched our ears,

Or who hath brought the fatal engine in

85

That gives our Troy, our Rome, the civil wound.

MARCUS     [aloft]

My heart is not compact of flint nor steel,

Nor can I utter all our bitter grief,

But floods of tears will drown my oratory

And break my utterance even in the time

90

When it should move ye to attend me most,

And force you to commiseration.

Here’s Rome’s young captain: let him tell the tale,

While I stand by and weep to hear him speak.

LUCIUS     [aloft]

Then, gracious auditory, be it known to you

95

That Chiron and the damned Demetrius

Were they that murdered our emperor’s brother,

And they it were that ravished our sister;

For their fell faults our brothers were beheaded,

Our father’s tears despised and basely cozened

100

Of that true hand that fought Rome’s quarrel out

And sent her enemies unto the grave;

Lastly myself, unkindly banished,

The gates shut on me, and turned weeping out

To beg relief among Rome’s enemies,

105

Who drowned their enmity in my true tears

And oped their arms to embrace me as a friend.

I am the turned-forth, be it known to you,

That have preserved her welfare in my blood,

And from her bosom took the enemy’s point,

110

Sheathing the steel in my adventurous body.

Alas, you know I am no vaunter, I;

My scars can witness, dumb although they are,

That my report is just and full of truth.

But soft, methinks I do digress too much,

115

Citing my worthless praise. O pardon me,

For when no friends are by, men praise themselves.

MARCUS     [aloft] Now is my turn to speak.

[Points to Aaron’s baby.]     Behold the child:

Of this was Tamora delivered,

The issue of an irreligious Moor,

120

Chief architect and plotter of these woes.

The villain is alive in Titus’ house,

And as he is to witness this is true,

Now judge what cause had Titus to revenge

These wrongs unspeakable, past patience,

125

Or more than any living man could bear.

Now have you heard the truth: what say you, Romans?

Have we done aught amiss, show us wherein,

And from the place where you behold us pleading,

The poor remainder of Andronici

130

Will hand in hand all headlong hurl ourselves

And on the ragged stones beat forth our souls

And make a mutual closure of our house.

Speak, Romans, speak, and if you say, we shall,

Lo, hand in hand, Lucius and I will fall.

135

EMILLIUS     Come, come, thou reverend man of Rome,

And bring our emperor gently in thy hand,

LUCIUS, our emperor, for well I know

The common voice do cry it shall be so.

MARCUS     [aloft] Lucius, all hail, Rome’s royal emperor!

140

[to others] Go, go into old Titus’ sorrowful house

And hither hale that misbelieving Moor

To be adjudged some direful slaughtering death

As punishment for his most wicked life.

[Exeunt some into the house. A long flourish till the Andronici come down.]

ALL ROMANS     Lucius, all hail, Rome’s gracious governor!

145

LUCIUS     Thanks, gentle Romans. May I govern so

To heal Rome’s harms and wipe away her woe.

But, gentle people, give me aim awhile,

For nature puts me to a heavy task.

Stand all aloof, but, uncle, draw you near

150

To shed obsequious tears upon this trunk.

[Kisses Titus.]

O, take this warm kiss on thy pale cold lips,

These sorrowful drops upon thy bloodstained face,

The last true duties of thy noble son.

MARCUS     [Kisses Titus.]

Tear for tear and loving kiss for kiss,

155

Thy brother Marcus tenders on thy lips.

O, were the sum of these that I should pay

Countless and infinite, yet would I pay them.

LUCIUS     [to his son]

Come hither, boy, come, come and learn of us

To melt in showers. Thy grandsire loved thee well:

160

Many a time he danced thee on his knee,

Sung thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow;

Many a story hath he told to thee,

And bid thee bear his pretty tales in mind

And talk of them when he was dead and gone.

165

MARCUS

How many thousand times hath these poor lips,

When they were living, warmed themselves on thine!

O now, sweet boy, give them their latest kiss:

Bid him farewell, commit him to the grave;

Do them that kindness and take leave of them.

170

BOY     [Kisses Titus.]

O grandsire, grandsire, e’en with all my heart

Would I were dead, so you did live again.

O Lord, I cannot speak to him for weeping,

My tears will choke me if I ope my mouth.

Enter AARON under guard.

A ROMAN You sad Andronici, have done with woes,

175

Give sentence on this execrable wretch

That hath been breeder of these dire events.

LUCIUS     Set him breast-deep in earth and famish him;

There let him stand and rave and cry for food.

If anyone relieves or pities him,

180

For the offence he dies. This is our doom;

Some stay to see him fastened in the earth.

AARON

Ah, why should wrath be mute and fury dumb?

I am no baby, I, that with base prayers

I should repent the evils I have done.

185

Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did

Would I perform if I might have my will.

If one good deed in all my life I did

I do repent it from my very soul.

LUCIUS

Some loving friends convey the emperor hence,

190

And give him burial in his fathers’ grave;

My father and Lavinia shall forthwith

Be closed in our household’s monument;

As for that ravenous tiger, Tamora,

No funeral rite, nor man in mourning weed,

195

No mournful bell shall ring her burial,

But throw her forth to beasts and birds to prey:

Her life was beastly and devoid of pity,

And being dead, let birds on her take pity.

     Exeunt with the bodies.

Troilus and Cressida

Published in quarto in 1609 as The Famous History of Troilus and Cressida, the play was to have followed Romeo and Juliet as the fourth of the tragedies in the First Folio of 1623, and its first three pages had been printed before it was removed and replaced by Timon of Athens. It does not appear in the table of contents, and some copies of the Folio had already gone on sale without it before it was hastily printed and inserted between King Henry VIII, last of the histories, and Coriolanus, first of the tragedies, in a text which adds the Prologue and shows minor but frequent variation of word or phrase from that of the Quarto, of which the version printed in the Folio is possibly a revision. The play was written about 1601–2, in the aftermath of the abortive rising of the Earl of Essex and his execution in February 1601. It may be in part the Chamberlain’s Men’s response to an earlier play on the subject by Thomas Dekker and Henry Chettle performed by the rival Admiral’s Men in 1599 (now known only from a damaged stage ‘plot’).

A first setting of the title-page of the 1609 Quarto claimed that the play had been acted by the King’s Men at the Globe – a claim retracted when that title-page was cancelled and replaced, deleting all reference to performance, and an epistle ‘from a never writer to an ever reader’ was added, in which the play, ‘never clapper-clawed by the palms of the vulgar’, is praised as a comedy which readers are lucky to see in print, contrary to the will of its ‘grand possessors’. This epistle has given rise to the hypothesis that the play was written for a private occasion, although no positive evidence exists for such a performance. The Epilogue, which may not have been included in all performances, has struck some scholars as more appropriate to an audience of lawyers at one of the Inns of Court than to public performance at the Globe. This chequered history of publication may result from disputes over copyright, or it may reflect the political sensitivity of its subject at a time when the association of Essex with Achilles was commonplace.

Many English plays (now lost) had been written on the ‘matter of Troy’ before Troilus and Cressida, which presents a sour, minor-key variation on familiar themes and characters. Shakespeare himself had often alluded to Troy in earlier works, notably Lucrece, which contains a lengthy discourse on a painting of the Fall of Troy, The Merchant of Venice, which alludes to the separation of Troilus and Cressida, and Hamlet, where it supplies apt and familiar material for the Player’s tragic speech. Medieval mythology derived the British people from the Trojan line of Aeneas, and London could still be popularly referred to as Troynovant or New Troy. The Troy story reached Shakespeare in part through George Chapman’s translation of seven books of the Iliad (1598) but more importantly through medieval retellings and expansions. The play makes use of at least two of them. For the love story, itself a medieval addition to the ‘matter of Troy’, he adapted Chaucer’s Troylus and Criseyde (c. 1385) (earlier a minor source for Romeo and Juliet, whose love story is sourly parodied by that of Troilus and Cressida) and, for the war plot, William Caxton’s Recuyell of the Histories of Troy (1474). Shakespeare was the first to balance the war story against the love story, although unevenly, as the war story occupies two thirds of his action and the love story only one third. Whether history, tragedy or comedy, the play offers a destructive analysis of chivalric honour and romantic love which culminates in the double shock to Troilus of the infidelity of Cressida with Diomedes and of the murder of Hector by Achilles’ Myrmidons.

After an adaptation by John Dryden which attempted to turn it into an exemplary tragedy, Troilus and Cressida disappeared from the stage for some two hundred years. Its disillusioned tone and inconclusive action recommended it to the twentieth century and it has been regularly revived in productions many of which have urged its topicality by setting it in the historical periods of all the major wars since the Crimean War and the American Civil War.

The 1998 Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio, supplemented and corrected from the 1609 Quarto.

LIST OF ROLES

PROLOGUE

THE TROJANS

PRIAM

King of Troy

CASSANDRA

Priam’s daughter, a prophetess

ANDROMACHE

Hector’s wife

CRESSIDA

Calchas’daughter

CALCHAS

Cressida’s father, a Trojan priest, a defector to the Greeks

PANDARUS

a lord, Cressida’s uncle

ALEXANDER

Cressida’s servant

BOY

Troilus’ servant

SERVANT

attending on Paris

Attendants, Soldiers, Musicians, Torchbearers

THE GREEKS

AGAMEMNON

general commander of the Greeks

MENELAUS

King of Sparta, his brother

HELEN

Menelaus’ wife, living with Paris in Troy

PATROCLUS

Achilles’ companion

THERSITES

a deformed and scurrilous Greek

SERVANT

attending on Diomedes

MYRMIDONS

Attendants, Soldiers, Trumpeter

Troilus and Cressida

PROLOGUE

Enter Speaker of the Prologue, in armour.

PROLOGUE

In Troy there lies the scene. From isles of Greece

The princes orgulous, their high blood chafed,

Have to the port of Athens sent their ships

Fraught with the ministers and instruments

Of cruel war. Sixty and nine, that wore

5

Their crownets regal, from th’Athenian bay

Put forth toward Phrygia, and their vow is made

To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures

The ravished Helen, Menelaus’ queen,

With wanton Paris sleeps; and that’s the quarrel.

10

To Tenedos they come,

And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge

Their warlike freightage. Now on Dardan plains

The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch

Their brave pavilions. Priam’s six-gated city –

15

Dardan and Timbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien

And Antenorides – with massy staples

And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts,

Spar up the sons of Troy.

Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits

20

On one and other side, Trojan and Greek,

Sets all on hazard. And hither am I come,

A Prologue armed, but not in confidence

Of author’s pen or actor’s voice, but suited

In like conditions as our argument,

25

To tell you, fair beholders, that our play

Leaps o’er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils,

Beginning in the middle, starting thence away

To what may be digested in a play.

Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are;

30

Now good or bad, ’tis but the chance of war.     Exit.

1.1 Enter PANDARUS and TROILUS.

TROILUS     Call here my varlet; I’ll unarm again.

Why should I war without the walls of Troy,

That find such cruel battle here within?

Each Trojan that is master of his heart,

Let him to field; Troilus, alas, hath none.

5

PANDARUS     Will this gear ne’er be mended?

TROILUS

The Greeks are strong, and skilful to their strength,

Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant;

But I am weaker than a woman’s tear,

Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance,

10

Less valiant than the virgin in the night,

And skilless as unpractised infancy.

PANDARUS     Well, I have told you enough of this; for my

part, I’ll not meddle nor make no farther. He that will

have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding.

15

TROILUS     Have I not tarried?

PANDARUS     Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the

bolting.

TROILUS     Have I not tarried?

PANDARUS     Ay, the bolting; but you must tarry the

20

leavening.

TROILUS     Still have I tarried.

PANDARUS     Ay, to the leavening; but here’s yet in the

word hereafter the kneading, the making of the cake,

the heating the oven, and the baking. Nay, you must

25

stay the cooling too, or ye may chance burn your lips.

TROILUS     Patience herself, what goddess e’er she be,

Doth lesser blench at suff ’rance than I do.

At Priam’s royal table do I sit,

And when fair Cressid comes into my thoughts –

30

So, traitor! ‘When she comes’! When is she thence?

PANDARUS     Well, she looked yesternight fairer than ever

I saw her look, or any woman else.

TROILUS     I was about to tell thee – when my heart,

As wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain,

35

Lest Hector or my father should perceive me,

I have, as when the sun doth light a-scorn,

Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile;

But sorrow that is couched in seeming gladness

Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness.

40

PANDARUS     An her hair were not somewhat darker than

Helen’s – well, go to – there were no more comparison

between the women. But, for my part, she is my

kinswoman; I would not, as they term it, praise her. But

I would somebody had heard her talk yesterday, as I did.

45

I will not dispraise your sister Cassandra’s wit, but –

TROILUS     O Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus –

When I do tell thee there my hopes lie drowned,

Reply not in how many fathoms deep

They lie indrenched. I tell thee I am mad

50

In Cressid’s love. Thou answer’st ‘She is fair’,

Pour’st in the open ulcer of my heart

Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;

Handlest in thy discourse, O, that her hand,

In whose comparison all whites are ink

55

Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure

The cygnet’s down is harsh, and spirit of sense

Hard as the palm of ploughman. This thou tell’st me –

As true thou tell’st me – when I say I love her;

But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm,

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Thou lay’st in every gash that love hath given me

The knife that made it.

PANDARUS     I speak no more than truth.

TROILUS     Thou dost not speak so much.

PANDARUS     Faith, I’ll not meddle in it. Let her be as she

65

is. If she be fair, ’tis the better for her; an she be not,

she has the mends in her own hands.

TROILUS     Good Pandarus – how now, Pandarus?

PANDARUS     I have had my labour for my travail, ill

thought on of her, and ill thought on of you; gone

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between and between, but small thanks for my labour.

TROILUS     What, art thou angry, Pandarus? What, with me?

PANDARUS     Because she’s kin to me, therefore she’s not

so fair as Helen; an she were not kin to me, she would

be as fair o’ Friday as Helen is on Sunday. But what

75

care I? I care not an she were a blackamoor; ’tis all one

to me.

TROILUS     Say I she is not fair?

PANDARUS     I do not care whether you do or no. She’s a

fool to stay behind her father; let her to the Greeks,

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and so I’ll tell her the next time I see her. For my part,

I’ll meddle nor make no more i’th’ matter.

TROILUS     Pandarus –

PANDARUS     Not I.

TROILUS     Sweet Pandarus –

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PANDARUS     Pray you, speak no more to me; I will leave all

as I found it, and there an end.     Exit. Sound alarum.

TROILUS

Peace, you ungracious clamours! Peace, rude sounds!

Fools on both sides! Helen must needs be fair,

When with your blood you daily paint her thus.

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I cannot fight upon this argument;

It is too starved a subject for my sword.

But Pandarus – O gods, how do you plague me!

I cannot come to Cressid but by Pandar,

And he’s as tetchy to be wooed to woo

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As she is stubborn-chaste against all suit.

Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne’s love,

What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we?

Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl.

Between our Ilium and where she resides,

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Let it be called the wild and wand’ring flood,

Ourself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar

Our doubtful hope, our convoy and our bark.

Alarum. Enter AENEAS.

AENEAS

How now, Prince Troilus, wherefore not afield?

TROILUS

Because not there. This woman’s answer sorts,

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For womanish it is to be from thence.

What news, Aeneas, from the field today?

AENEAS     That Paris is returned home, and hurt.

TROILUS     By whom, Aeneas?

AENEAS     Troilus, by Menelaus.

TROILUS     Let Paris bleed. ’Tis but a scar to scorn;

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Paris is gored with Menelaus’ horn.     [Alarum.]

AENEAS     Hark, what good sport is out of town today!

TROILUS

Better at home, if ‘would I might’ were ‘may’.

But to the sport abroad. Are you bound thither?

AENEAS     In all swift haste.

TROILUS     Come, go we then together.

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     Exeunt.

1.2 Enter CRESSIDA and her man ALEXANDER.

CRESSIDA     Who were those went by?

ALEXANDER     Queen Hecuba and Helen.

CRESSIDA     And whither go they?

ALEXANDER     Up to the eastern tower,

Whose height commands as subject all the vale,

To see the battle. Hector, whose patience

Is as a virtue fixed, today was moved.

5

He chid Andromache and struck his armourer;

And, like as there were husbandry in war,

Before the sun rose he was harnessed light,

And to the field goes he, where every flower

Did as a prophet weep what it foresaw

10

In Hector’s wrath.

CRESSIDA     What was his cause of anger?

ALEXANDER

The noise goes, this: there is among the Greeks

A lord of Trojan blood, nephew to Hector;

They call him Ajax.

CRESSIDA     Good, and what of him?

ALEXANDER     They say he is a very man per se,

15

And stands alone.

CRESSIDA     So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or

have no legs.

ALEXANDER     This man, lady, hath robbed many beasts of

their particular additions. He is as valiant as the lion,

20

churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant; a man into

whom nature hath so crowded humours that his valour

is crushed into folly, his folly sauced with discretion.

There is no man hath a virtue that he hath not a glimpse

of, nor any man an attaint but he carries some stain of

25

it. He is melancholy without cause, and merry against

the hair; he hath the joints of everything, but everything

so out of joint that he is a gouty Briareus, many hands

and no use, or purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight.

CRESSIDA     But how should this man, that makes me

30

smile, make Hector angry?

ALEXANDER     They say he yesterday coped Hector in the

battle and struck him down, the disdain and shame

whereof hath ever since kept Hector fasting and waking.

Enter PANDARUS.

CRESSIDA     Who comes here?

35

ALEXANDER     Madam, your uncle Pandarus.

CRESSIDA     Hector’s a gallant man.

ALEXANDER     As may be in the world, lady.

PANDARUS     What’s that? What’s that?

CRESSIDA     Good morrow, uncle Pandarus.

40

PANDARUS     Good morrow, cousin Cressid. What do you

talk of? – Good morrow, Alexander. – How do you,

cousin? When were you at Ilium?

CRESSIDA     This morning, uncle.

PANDARUS     What were you talking of when I came? Was

45

Hector armed and gone ere ye came to Ilium? Helen

was not up, was she?

CRESSIDA     Hector was gone, but Helen was not up?

PANDARUS     E’en so. Hector was stirring early.

CRESSIDA     That were we talking of, and of his anger.

50

PANDARUS     Was he angry?

CRESSIDA     So he says here.

PANDARUS     True, he was so. I know the cause too. He’ll

lay about him today, I can tell them that; and there’s

TROILUS will not come far behind him; let them take

55

heed of Troilus, I can tell them that too.

CRESSIDA     What, is he angry too?

PANDARUS     Who, Troilus? Troilus is the better man of

the two.

CRESSIDA     O Jupiter, there’s no comparison.

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PANDARUS     What, not between Troilus and Hector? Do

you know a man if you see him?

CRESSIDA     Ay, if I ever saw him before and knew him.

PANDARUS     Well, I say Troilus is Troilus.

CRESSIDA     Then you say as I say, for I am sure he is not

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Hector.

PANDARUS     No, nor Hector is not Troilus in some

degrees.

CRESSIDA     ’Tis just to each of them; he is himself.

PANDARUS     Himself? Alas, poor Troilus, I would he

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were.

CRESSIDA     So he is.

PANDARUS     Condition I had gone barefoot to India!

CRESSIDA     He is not Hector.

PANDARUS     Himself? No, he’s not himself, would ’a were

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himself! Well, the gods are above; time must friend or

end. Well, Troilus, well, I would my heart were in her

body. No, Hector is not a better man than Troilus.

CRESSIDA     Excuse me.

PANDARUS     He is elder.

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CRESSIDA     Pardon me, pardon me.

PANDARUS     Th’other’s not come to’t; you shall tell me

another tale when th’other’s come to’t. Hector shall

not have his wit this year.

CRESSIDA     He shall not need it, if he have his own.

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PANDARUS     Nor his qualities.

CRESSIDA     No matter.

PANDARUS     Nor his beauty.

CRESSIDA     ’Twould not become him; his own’s better.

PANDARUS     You have no judgement, niece. Helen herself

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swore th’other day that Troilus, for a brown favour –

for so ’tis, I must confess – not brown neither –

CRESSIDA     No, but brown.

PANDARUS     Faith, to say truth, brown and not brown.

CRESSIDA     To say the truth, true and not true.

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PANDARUS     She praised his complexion above Paris’.

CRESSIDA     Why, Paris hath colour enough.

PANDARUS     So he has.

CRESSIDA     Then Troilus should have too much. If she

praised him above, his complexion is higher than his;

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he having colour enough, and the other higher, is too

flaming a praise for a good complexion. I had as lief

Helen’s golden tongue had commended Troilus for a

copper nose.

PANDARUS     I swear to you, I think Helen loves him

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better than Paris.

CRESSIDA     Then she’s a merry Greek indeed.

PANDARUS     Nay, I am sure she does. She came to him

th’other day into the compassed window – and you

know he has not past three or four hairs on his chin –

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CRESSIDA     Indeed, a tapster’s arithmetic may soon bring

his particulars therein to a total.

PANDARUS     Why, he is very young, and yet will he within

three pound lift as much as his brother Hector.

CRESSIDA     Is he so young a man, and so old a lifter?

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PANDARUS     But to prove to you that Helen loves him: she

came and puts me her white hand to his cloven chin –

CRESSIDA     Juno have mercy, how came it cloven?

PANDARUS     Why, you know ’tis dimpled. I think his

smiling becomes him better than any man in all Phrygia.

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CRESSIDA     O, he smiles valiantly.

PANDARUS     Does he not?

CRESSIDA     O, yes, an ’twere a cloud in autumn.

PANDARUS     Why, go to, then. But to prove to you that

Helen loves Troilus –

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CRESSIDA     Troilus will stand to the proof, if you’ll prove

it so.

PANDARUS     Troilus? Why, he esteems her no more than

I esteem an addle egg.

CRESSIDA     If you love an addle egg as well as you love an

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idle head, you would eat chickens i’th’ shell.

PANDARUS     I cannot choose but laugh, to think how she

tickled his chin. Indeed, she has a marvellous white

hand, I must needs confess –

CRESSIDA     Without the rack.

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PANDARUS     And she takes upon her to spy a white hair

on his chin.

CRESSIDA     Alas, poor chin! Many a wart is richer.

PANDARUS     But there was such laughing! Queen Hecuba

laughed that her eyes ran o’er –

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CRESSIDA     With millstones.

PANDARUS     And Cassandra laughed –

CRESSIDA     But there was a more temperate fire under

the pot of her eyes. Did her eyes run o’er too?

PANDARUS     And Hector laughed.

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CRESSIDA     At what was all this laughing?

PANDARUS     Marry, at the white hair that Helen spied on

TROILUS’ chin.

CRESSIDA     An ’t had been a green hair I should have

laughed too.

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PANDARUS     They laughed not so much at the hair as at

his pretty answer.

CRESSIDA     What was his answer?

PANDARUS     Quoth she, ‘Here’s but two-and-fifty hairs

on your chin, and one of them is white’.

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CRESSIDA     This is her question.

PANDARUS     That’s true, make no question of that. ’Two-

and-fifty hairs’, quoth he, ‘and one white: that white

hair is my father, and all the rest are his sons.’

‘Jupiter!’, quoth she, ‘which of these hairs is Paris, my

160

husband?’ ‘The forked one’, quoth he; ‘pluck’t out,

and give it him.’ But there was such laughing, and

Helen so blushed, and Paris so chafed, and all the rest

so laughed, that it passed.

CRESSIDA     So let it now, for it has been a great while

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going by.

PANDARUS     Well, cousin, I told you a thing yesterday.

Think on’t.

CRESSIDA     So I do.

PANDARUS     I’ll be sworn ’tis true. He will weep you an

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’twere a man born in April.

CRESSIDA     And I’ll spring up in his tears, an ’twere a

nettle against May. [Sound a retreat.]

PANDARUS     Hark, they are coming from the field. Shall

we stand up here and see them as they pass toward

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Ilium? Good niece, do, sweet niece Cressida.

CRESSIDA     At your pleasure.

PANDARUS     Here, here, here’s an excellent place; here we

may see most bravely. I’ll tell you them all by their

names as they pass by, but mark Troilus above the rest.

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Enter AENEAS and passes over the stage.

CRESSIDA     Speak not so loud.

PANDARUS     That’s Aeneas; is not that a brave man? He’s

one of the flowers of Troy, I can tell you, but mark

TROILUS; you shall see anon.

Enter Antenor and passes over the stage.

CRESSIDA     Who’s that?

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PANDARUS     That’s Antenor. He has a shrewd wit, I can

tell you, and he’s a man good enough; he’s one o’th’

soundest judgements in Troy whosoever, and a proper

man of person. When comes Troilus? I’ll show you

TROILUS anon; if he see me, you shall see him nod at me.

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CRESSIDA     Will he give you the nod?

PANDARUS     You shall see.

CRESSIDA     If he do, the rich shall have more.

Enter HECTOR and passes over the stage.

PANDARUS     That’s Hector, that, that, look you, that;

there’s a fellow! Go thy way, Hector! There’s a brave

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man, niece. O brave Hector! Look how he looks!

There’s a countenance! Is’t not a brave man?

CRESSIDA     O, a brave man!

PANDARUS     Is ’a not? It does a man’s heart good. Look you

what hacks are on his helmet, look you yonder, do you

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see? Look you there, there’s no jesting; there’s laying on,

take’t off who will, as they say; there be hacks.

CRESSIDA     Be those with swords?

PANDARUS     Swords, anything, he cares not; an the devil

come to him, it’s all one. By God’s lid, it does one’s

205

heart good. Yonder comes Paris, yonder comes Paris!

Enter PARIS and passes over the stage.

Look ye yonder, niece, is’t not a gallant man too, is’t

not? Why, this is brave now. Who said he came hurt

home today? He’s not hurt. Why, this will do Helen’s

heart good now, ha? Would I could see Troilus now.

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You shall see Troilus anon.

Enter HELENUS and passes over the stage.

CRESSIDA     Who’s that?

PANDARUS     That’s Helenus. I marvel where Troilus is.

That’s Helenus. I think he went not forth today.

That’s Helenus.

215

CRESSIDA     Can Helenus fight, uncle?

PANDARUS     Helenus? No – yes, he’ll fight indifferent

well. I marvel where Troilus is. Hark, do you not hear

the people cry ‘Troilus’? Helenus is a priest.

CRESSIDA     What sneaking fellow comes yonder?

220

Enter TROILUS and passes over the stage.

PANDARUS     Where? Yonder? That’s Deiphobus. – ’Tis

TROILUS! There’s a man, niece! Hem! Brave Troilus,

the prince of chivalry!

CRESSIDA     Peace, for shame, peace!

PANDARUS     Mark him, note him. O brave Troilus! Look

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well upon him, niece, look you how his sword is

bloodied, and his helm more hacked than Hector’s,

and how he looks, and how he goes! O admirable

youth! He ne’er saw three-and-twenty. Go thy way,

TROILUS, go thy way! Had I a sister were a grace, or a

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daughter a goddess, he should take his choice. O

admirable man! Paris? Paris is dirt to him, and I

warrant Helen, to change, would give money to boot.

Enter common soldiers and pass over the stage.

CRESSIDA     Here comes more.

235

PANDARUS     Asses, fools, dolts; chaff and bran, chaff and

bran; porridge after meat. I could live and die i’th’ eyes

of Troilus. Ne’er look, ne’er look, the eagles are gone;

crows and daws, crows and daws! I had rather be such a

man as Troilus than Agamemnon and all Greece.

CRESSIDA     There is among the Greeks Achilles, a better

240

man than Troilus.

PANDARUS     Achilles? A drayman, a porter, a very camel.

CRESSIDA     Well, well.

PANDARUS     ‘Well, well’! Why, have you any discretion?

Have you any eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is not

245

birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood,

learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality and so

forth the spice and salt that season a man?

CRESSIDA     Ay, a minced man; and then to be baked with

no date in the pie, for then the man’s date is out.

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PANDARUS     You are such another woman! One knows

not at what ward you lie.

CRESSIDA     Upon my back to defend my belly, upon my

wit to defend my wiles, upon my secrecy to defend

mine honesty, my mask to defend my beauty, and you

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to defend all these; and at all these wards I lie, at a

thousand watches.

PANDARUS     Say one of your watches.

CRESSIDA     Nay, I’ll watch you for that; and that’s one of

the chiefest of them too. If I cannot ward what I would

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not have hit, I can watch you for telling how I took the

blow – unless it swell past hiding, and then it’s past

watching.

PANDARUS     You are such another!

Enter Troilus’ Boy.

BOY     Sir, my lord would instantly speak with you.

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PANDARUS     Where?

BOY     At your own house. There he unarms him.

PANDARUS     Good boy, tell him I come.     Exit Boy.

I doubt he be hurt. Fare ye well, good niece.

CRESSIDA     Adieu, uncle.

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PANDARUS     I’ll be with you, niece, by and by.

CRESSIDA     To bring, uncle?

PANDARUS     Ay, a token from Troilus.

CRESSIDA     By the same token, you are a bawd.

     Exit Pandarus.

Words, vows, gifts, tears and love’s full sacrifice

275

He offers in another’s enterprise;

But more in Troilus thousandfold I see

Than in the glass of Pandar’s praise may be.

Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing;

Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.

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That she beloved knows naught that knows not this:

Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.

That she was never yet that ever knew

Love got so sweet as when desire did sue.

Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:

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‘Achievement is command; ungained, beseech’.

Then, though my heart’s contents firm love doth bear,

Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.

     Exit with Alexander.

1.3 Sennet. Enter AGAMEMNON, NESTOR, ULYSSES, DIOMEDES, MENELAUS, with others.

AGAMEMNON     Princes,

What grief hath set the jaundice on your cheeks?

The ample proposition that hope makes

In all designs begun on earth below

Fails in the promised largeness. Checks and disasters

5

Grow in the veins of actions highest reared,

As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,

Infects the sound pine and diverts his grain

Tortive and errant from his course of growth.

Nor, princes, is it matter new to us

10

That we come short of our suppose so far

That after seven years’ siege yet Troy walls stand,

Sith every action that hath gone before,

Whereof we have record, trial did draw

Bias and thwart, not answering the aim

15

And that unbodied figure of the thought

That gave’t surmised shape. Why then, you princes,

Do you with cheeks abashed behold our works

And think them shames, which are indeed naught else

But the protractive trials of great Jove

20

To find persistive constancy in men?

The fineness of which metal is not found

In Fortune’s love; for then the bold and coward,

The wise and fool, the artist and unread,

The hard and soft, seem all affined and kin.

25

But in the wind and tempest of her frown,

Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,

Puffing at all, winnows the light away,

And what hath mass or matter by itself

Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.

30

NESTOR     With due observance of thy godly seat,

Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply

Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance

Lies the true proof of men. The sea being smooth,

How many shallow bauble boats dare sail

35

Upon her patient breast, making their way

With those of nobler bulk!

But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage

The gentle Thetis, and anon behold

The strong-ribbed bark through liquid mountains cut,

40

Bounding between the two moist elements

Like Perseus’ horse. Where’s then the saucy boat

Whose weak untimbered sides but even now

Co-rivalled greatness? Either to harbour fled

Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so

45

Doth valour’s show and valour’s worth divide

In storms of fortune. For in her ray and brightness

The herd hath more annoyance by the breese

Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind

Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks

50

And flies flee under shade, why then the thing of courage,

As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathize,

And with an accent tuned in selfsame key

Retorts to chiding fortune.

ULYSSES     Agamemnon,

Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece,

55

Heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit,

In whom the tempers and the minds of all

Should be shut up: hear what Ulysses speaks.

Besides th’applause and approbation

The which, [to Agamemnon] most mighty for thy

    place and sway,

60

[to Nestor] And thou most reverend for thy

    stretched-out life,

I give to both your speeches, which were such

As, Agamemnon, every hand of Greece

Should hold up high in brass; and such again

As venerable Nestor, hatched in silver,

65

Should with a bond of air, strong as the axletree

On which the heavens ride, knit all Greeks’ ears

To his experienced tongue, yet let it please both,

Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak.

AGAMEMNON

Speak, Prince of Ithaca; and be’t of less expect

70

That matter needless, of importless burden,

Divide thy lips, than we are confident,

When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws,

We shall hear music, wit and oracle.

ULYSSES     Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,

75

And the great Hector’s sword had lacked a master,

But for these instances:

The specialty of rule hath been neglected;

And look how many Grecian tents do stand

Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.

80

When that the general is not like the hive

To whom the foragers shall all repair,

What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,

Th’unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.

The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre

85

Observe degree, priority and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office and custom, in all line of order.

And therefore is the glorious planet Sol

In noble eminence enthroned and sphered

90

Amidst the other, whose med’cinable eye

Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil

And posts, like the commandment of a king,

Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets

In evil mixture to disorder wander,

95

What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,

What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,

Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,

Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

The unity and married calm of states

100

Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shaked,

Which is the ladder to all high designs,

The enterprise is sick. How could communities,

Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

105

The primogeneity and due of birth,

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,

But by degree stand in authentic place?

Take but degree away, untune that string,

And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets

110

In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters

Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores

And make a sop of all this solid globe;

Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead;

115

Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,

Between whose endless jar justice resides,

Should lose their names, and so should justice too.

Then everything includes itself in power,

Power into will, will into appetite;

120

And appetite, an universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,

Must make perforce an universal prey

And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,

This chaos, when degree is suffocate,

125

Follows the choking.

And this neglection of degree it is

That by a pace goes backward in a purpose

It hath to climb. The general’s disdained

By him one step below, he by the next,

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That next by him beneath; so every step,

Exampled by the first pace that is sick

Of his superior, grows to an envious fever

Of pale and bloodless emulation.

And ’tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,

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Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,

Troy in our weakness lives, not in her strength.

NESTOR     Most wisely hath Ulysses here discovered

The fever whereof all our power is sick.

AGAMEMNON

The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,

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What is the remedy?

ULYSSES     The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns

The sinew and the forehand of our host,

Having his ear full of his airy fame,

Grows dainty of his worth and in his tent

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Lies mocking our designs. With him Patroclus,

Upon a lazy bed, the livelong day

Breaks scurril jests,

And with ridiculous and awkward action –

Which, slanderer, he imitation calls –

150

He pageants us. Sometime, great Agamemnon,

Thy topless deputation he puts on,

And, like a strutting player, whose conceit

Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich

To hear the wooden dialogue and sound

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’Twixt his stretched footing and the scaffoldage,

Such to-be-pitied and o’erwrested seeming

He acts thy greatness in; and when he speaks,

’Tis like a chime a-mending, with terms unsquared,

Which from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropped

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Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff

The large Achilles, on his pressed bed lolling,

From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause,

Cries ‘Excellent! ’Tis Agamemnon just.

Now play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard,

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As he being dressed to some oration.’

That’s done, as near as the extremest ends

Of parallels, as like as Vulcan and his wife;

Yet god Achilles still cries, ‘Excellent!

’Tis Nestor right. Now play him me, Patroclus,

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Arming to answer in a night-alarm.’

And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age

Must be the scene of mirth; to cough and spit,

And with a palsy fumbling on his gorget

Shake in and out the rivet. And at this sport

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Sir Valour dies; cries, ‘O, enough, Patroclus,

Or give me ribs of steel! I shall split all

In pleasure of my spleen.’ And in this fashion,

All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,

Severals and generals of grace exact,

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Achievements, plots, orders, preventions,

Excitements to the field, or speech for truce,

Success or loss, what is or is not, serves

As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.

NESTOR     And in the imitation of these twain,

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Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns

With an imperial voice, many are infect.

Ajax is grown self-willed and bears his head

In such a rein, in full as proud a place

As broad Achilles; keeps his tent like him,

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Makes factious feasts, rails on our state of war,

Bold as an oracle, and sets Thersites –

A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint –

To match us in comparisons with dirt,

To weaken and discredit our exposure,

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How rank soever rounded in with danger.

ULYSSES     They tax our policy and call it cowardice,

Count wisdom as no member of the war,

Forestall prescience, and esteem no act

But that of hand. The still and mental parts,

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That do contrive how many hands shall strike,

When fitness calls them on, and know by measure

Of their observant toil the enemy’s weight –

Why, this hath not a finger’s dignity.

They call this bed-work, mapp’ry, closet war;

205

So that the ram that batters down the wall,

For the great swinge and rudeness of his poise,

They place before his hand that made the engine

Or those that with the fineness of their souls

By reason guide his execution.

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NESTOR     Let this be granted, and Achilles’ horse

Makes many Thetis’ sons.     [Tucket.]

AGAMEMNON     What trumpet? Look, Menelaus.

MENELAUS     From Troy.

Enter AENEAS with a trumpeter.

AGAMEMNON     What would you ’fore our tent?

215

AENEAS     Is this great Agamemnon’s tent, I pray you?

AGAMEMNON     Even this.

AENEAS     May one that is a herald and a prince

Do a fair message to his kingly ears?

AGAMEMNON     With surety stronger than Achilles’ arm

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’Fore all the Greekish lords, which with one voice

Call Agamemnon head and general.

AENEAS     Fair leave and large security. How may

A stranger to those most imperial looks

Know them from eyes of other mortals?

AGAMEMNON     How?

225

AENEAS     Ay.

I ask, that I might waken reverence,

And bid the cheek be ready with a blush

Modest as morning when she coldly eyes

The youthful Phoebus.

230

Which is that god in office, guiding men?

Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon?

AGAMEMNON     [to the Greeks]

This Trojan scorns us, or the men of Troy

Are ceremonious courtiers.

AENEAS     Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarmed,

235

As bending angels – that’s their fame in peace.

But when they would seem soldiers, they have galls,

Good arms, strong joints, true swords, and – Jove’s

accord –

Nothing so full of heart. But peace, Aeneas,

Peace, Trojan; lay thy finger on thy lips!

240

The worthiness of praise distains his worth

If that the praised himself bring the praise forth.

But what the repining enemy commends,

That breath Fame blows; that praise, sole pure,

transcends.

AGAMEMNON     Sir, you of Troy, call you yourself Aeneas?

245

AENEAS     Ay, Greek, that is my name.

AGAMEMNON     What’s your affair, I pray you?

AENEAS     Sir, pardon, ’tis for Agamemnon’s ears.

AGAMEMNON

He hears naught privately that comes from Troy.

AENEAS     Nor I from Troy come not to whisper him.

250

I bring a trumpet to awake his ear,

To set his sense on the attentive bent,

And then to speak.

AGAMEMNON     Speak frankly as the wind;

It is not Agamemnon’s sleeping hour.

That thou shalt know, Trojan, he is awake,

255

He tells thee so himself.

AENEAS     Trumpet, blow loud!

Send thy brass voice through all these lazy tents;

And every Greek of mettle, let him know

What Troy means fairly shall be spoke aloud.

     [The trumpet sounds.]

We have, great Agamemnon, here in Troy

260

A prince called Hector – Priam is his father –

Who in this dull and long-continued truce

Is resty grown. He bade me take a trumpet,

And to this purpose speak: ‘Kings, princes, lords,

If there be one among the fair’st of Greece

265

That holds his honour higher than his ease,

That seeks his praise more than he fears his peril,

That knows his valour and knows not his fear,

That loves his mistress more than in confession

With truant vows to her own lips he loves,

270

And dare avow her beauty and her worth

In other arms than hers; to him this challenge:

Hector, in view of Trojans and of Greeks,

Shall make it good, or do his best to do it,

He hath a lady, wiser, fairer, truer,

275

Than ever Greek did compass in his arms;

And will tomorrow with his trumpet call,

Midway between your tents and walls of Troy,

To rouse a Grecian that is true in love.

If any come, Hector shall honour him;

280

If none, he’ll say in Troy when he retires,

The Grecian dames are sunburnt, and not worth

The splinter of a lance.’ Even so much.

AGAMEMNON

This shall be told our lovers, Lord Aeneas.

If none of them have soul in such a kind,

285

We left them all at home; but we are soldiers,

And may that soldier a mere recreant prove

That means not, hath not, or is not in love.

If then one is, or hath, or means to be,

That one meets Hector; if none else, I’ll be he.

290

NESTOR     [to Aeneas]

Tell him of Nestor, one that was a man

When Hector’s grandsire sucked. He is old now;

But if there be not in our Grecian mould

One noble man that hath one spark of fire

To answer for his love, tell him from me,

295

I’ll hide my silver beard in a gold beaver

And in my vambrace put this withered brawn;

And, meeting him, will tell him that my lady

Was fairer than his grandam and as chaste

As may be in the world. His youth in flood,

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I’ll prove this truth with my three drops of blood.

AENEAS     Now heavens forfend such scarcity of youth!

ULYSSES     Amen.

AGAMEMNON

Fair Lord Aeneas, let me touch your hand;

To our pavilion shall I lead you first.

305

Achilles shall have word of this intent;

So shall each lord of Greece, from tent to tent.

Yourself shall feast with us before you go

And find the welcome of a noble foe.

     [As all are leaving, Ulysses detains Nestor.]

ULYSSES     Nestor!

310

NESTOR     What says Ulysses?

ULYSSES     I have a young conception in my brain;

Be you my time to bring it to some shape.

NESTOR     What is’t?

ULYSSES     This ’tis:

315

Blunt wedges rive hard knots; the seeded pride

That hath to this maturity blown up

In rank Achilles must or now be cropped

Or, shedding, breed a nursery of like evil

To overbulk us all.

320

NESTOR     Well, and how?

ULYSSES     This challenge that the gallant Hector sends,

However it is spread in general name,

Relates in purpose only to Achilles.

NESTOR     The purpose is perspicuous even as substance

325

Whose grossness little characters sum up;

And in the publication make no strain

But that Achilles, were his brain as barren

As banks of Libya – though, Apollo knows,

’Tis dry enough – will with great speed of judgement,

330

Ay, with celerity, find Hector’s purpose

Pointing on him.

ULYSSES     And wake him to the answer, think you?

NESTOR     Yes, ’tis most meet. Who may you else oppose,

That can from Hector bring his honour off,

325

If not Achilles? Though’t be a sportful combat,

Yet in this trial much opinion dwells;

For here the Trojans taste our dear’st repute

With their fin’st palate. And trust to me, Ulysses,

Our imputation shall be oddly poised

340

In this wild action; for the success,

Although particular, shall give a scantling

Of good or bad unto the general,

And in such indexes, although small pricks

To their subsequent volumes, there is seen

345

The baby figure of the giant mass

Of things to come at large. It is supposed

He that meets Hector issues from our choice;

And choice, being mutual act of all our souls,

Makes merit her election and doth boil,

350

As ’twere from forth us all, a man distilled

Out of our virtues; who miscarrying,

What heart from hence receives the conqu’ring part,

To steel a strong opinion to themselves!

Which entertained, limbs are his instruments,

355

In no less working than are swords and bows

Directive by the limbs.

ULYSSES     Give pardon to my speech:

Therefore ’tis meet Achilles meet not Hector.

Let us, like merchants, show our foulest wares,

360

And think perchance they’ll sell; if not,

The lustre of the better yet to show

Shall show the better. Do not consent

That ever Hector and Achilles meet,

For both our honour and our shame in this

365

Are dogged with two strange followers.

NESTOR

I see them not with my old eyes. What are they?

ULYSSES     What glory our Achilles shares from Hector,

Were he not proud, we all should wear with him.

But he already is too insolent;

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And we were better parch in Afric sun

Than in the pride and salt scorn of his eyes

Should he scape Hector fair. If he were foiled,

Why then we did our main opinion crush

In taint of our best man. No, make a lott’ry,

375

And by device let blockish Ajax draw

The sort to fight with Hector; among ourselves

Give him allowance as the worthier man,

For that will physic the great Myrmidon,

Who broils in loud applause, and make him fall

380

His crest that prouder than blue Iris bends.

If the dull brainless Ajax come safe off,

We’ll dress him up in voices; if he fail,

Yet go we under our opinion still

That we have better men. But, hit or miss,

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Our project’s life this shape of sense assumes:

Ajax employed plucks down Achilles’ plumes.

NESTOR     Now, Ulysses, I begin to relish thy advice,

And I will give a taste of it forthwith

To Agamemnon. Go we to him straight.

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Two curs shall tame each other; pride alone

Must tar the mastiffs on, as ’twere their bone.

     Exeunt.

2.1 Enter THERSITES, followed by AJAX. Ajax is having trouble getting the attention of Thersites, who is no doubt pretending not to hear.

AJAX     Thersites!

THERSITES     Agamemnon –- how if he had boils, full, all

over, generally?

AJAX     Thersites!

THERSITES     And those boils did run (say so), did not the

5

general run, then? Were not that a botchy core?

AJAX     Dog!

THERSITES     Then there would come some matter from

him. I see none now.

AJAX     Thou bitch-wolf’s son, canst thou not hear? Feel,

10

then. [Strikes him.]

THERSITES     The plague of Greece upon thee, thou

mongrel beef-witted lord!

AJAX     Speak, then, thou vinewed’st leaven, speak. I will

beat thee into handsomeness.

15

THERSITES     I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness;

but I think thy horse will sooner con an oration than

thou learn a prayer without book. Thou canst strike,

canst thou? A red murrain o’thy jade’s tricks!

AJAX     Toadstool, learn me the proclamation.

20

THERSITES     Dost thou think I have no sense, thou

strik’st me thus?

AJAX     The proclamation!

THERSITES     Thou art proclaimed a fool, I think.

AJAX     Do not, porcupine, do not. My fingers itch.

25

THERSITES     I would thou didst itch from head to foot.

An I had the scratching of thee, I would make thee the

loathsomest scab in Greece. When thou art forth in

the incursions, thou strikest as slow as another.

AJAX     I say, the proclamation!

30

THERSITES     Thou grumblest and railest every hour on

Achilles, and thou art as full of envy at his greatness as

Cerberus is at Proserpina’s beauty, ay, that thou

bark’st at him.

AJAX     Mistress Thersites!

35

THERSITES     Thou shouldst strike him –

AJAX     Cobloaf!

THERSITES     He would pun thee into shivers with his fist,

as a sailor breaks a biscuit.

AJAX     [Beats him.] You whoreson cur!

40

THERSITES     Do, do.

AJAX     Thou stool for a witch!

THERSITES     Ay, do, do! Thou sodden-witted lord, thou

hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows; an

asinico may tutor thee. Thou scurvy-valiant ass, thou

45

art here but to thrash Trojans, and thou art bought

and sold among those of any wit, like a barbarian slave.

If thou use to beat me, I will begin at thy heel and tell

what thou art by inches, thou thing of no bowels, thou!

AJAX     You dog!

50

THERSITES     You scurvy lord!

AJAX     [Beats him.] You cur!

THERSITES     Mars his idiot! Do, rudeness, do, camel; do,

do!

Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS.

ACHILLES

Why, how now, Ajax, wherefore do ye thus? –

55

How now, Thersites, what’s the matter, man?

THERSITES     You see him there, do you?

ACHILLES     Ay, what’s the matter?

THERSITES     Nay, look upon him.

ACHILLES     So I do. What’s the matter?

60

THERSITES     Nay, but regard him well.

ACHILLES     Well, why, I do so.

THERSITES     But yet you look not well upon him; for,

whosomever you take him to be, he is Ajax.

ACHILLES     I know that, fool.

65

THERSITES     Ay, but that fool knows not himself.

AJAX     Therefore I beat thee.

THERSITES     Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he

utters! His evasions have ears thus long. I have bobbed

his brain more than he has beat my bones. I will buy

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nine sparrows for a penny, and his pia mater is not

worth the ninth part of a sparrow. This lord, Achilles

– Ajax, who wears his wit in his belly and his guts in

his head – I’ll tell you what I say of him.

ACHILLES     What?

75

THERSITES     I say, this Ajax –

[Ajax threatens to beat him; Achilles intervenes.]

ACHILLES     Nay, good Ajax.

THERSITES     Has not so much wit –

ACHILLES     [to Ajax] Nay, I must hold you.

THERSITES     As will stop the eye of Helen’s needle, for

80

whom he comes to fight.

ACHILLES     Peace, fool!

THERSITES     I would have peace and quietness, but the

fool will not – he there, that he. Look you there.

AJAX     O thou damned cur, I shall –

85

ACHILLES     [to Ajax] Will you set your wit to a fool’s?

THERSITES     No, I warrant you, for a fool’s will shame it.

PATROCLUS     Good words, Thersites.

ACHILLES     What’s the quarrel?

AJAX     I bade the vile owl go learn me the tenor of the

90

proclamation, and he rails upon me.

THERSITES     I serve thee not.

AJAX     Well, go to, go to.

THERSITES     I serve here voluntary.

ACHILLES     Your last service was sufferance, ’twas not

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voluntary; no man is beaten voluntary. Ajax was here

the voluntary, and you as under an impress.

THERSITES     E’en so. A great deal of your wit, too, lies in

your sinews, or else there be liars. Hector shall have a

great catch an ’a knock out either of your brains. ’A

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were as good crack a fusty nut with no kernel.

ACHILLES     What, with me too, Thersites?

THERSITES     There’s Ulysses and old Nestor – whose wit

was mouldy ere your grandsires had nails on their toes

– yoke you like draught-oxen and make you plough up

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the war.

ACHILLES     What? What?

THERSITES     Yes, good sooth. To, Achilles! To, Ajax, to!

AJAX     I shall cut out your tongue.

THERSITES     ’Tis no matter. I shall speak as much as thou

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afterwards.

PATROCLUS     No more words, Thersites. Peace!

THERSITES     I will hold my peace when Achilles’ brach

bids me, shall I?

ACHILLES     There’s for you, Patroclus.

115

THERSITES     I will see you hanged like clotpolls ere I

come any more to your tents. I will keep where there

is wit stirring and leave the faction of fools.

Exit.

PATROCLUS     A good riddance.

ACHILLES     [to Ajax]

Marry, this, sir, is proclaimed through all our host:

120

That Hector, by the fifth hour of the sun,

Will with a trumpet ’twixt our tents and Troy

Tomorrow morning call some knight to arms

That hath a stomach, and such a one that dare

Maintain – I know not what; ’tis trash. Farewell.

125

AJAX     Farewell. Who shall answer him?

ACHILLES     I know not. ’Tis put to lottery. Otherwise

He knew his man.

AJAX     O, meaning you? I will go learn more of it.

     Exeunt.

2.2 Enter PRIAM, HECTOR, TROILUS, PARIS and HELENUS.

PRIAM     After so many hours, lives, speeches spent,

Thus once again says Nestor from the Greeks:

‘Deliver Helen, and all damage else –

As honour, loss of time, travail, expense,

Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consumed

5

In hot digestion of this cormorant war –

Shall be struck off ’. Hector, what say you to’t?

HECTOR     Though no man lesser fears the Greeks than I

As far as toucheth my particular,

Yet, dread Priam,

10

There is no lady of more softer bowels,

More spongy to suck in the sense of fear,

More ready to cry out ‘Who knows what follows?’

Than Hector is. The wound of peace is surety,

Surety secure; but modest doubt is called

15

The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches

To th’ bottom of the worst. Let Helen go.

Since the first sword was drawn about this question,

Every tithe soul ’mongst many thousand dismes

Hath been as dear as Helen – I mean, of ours.

20

If we have lost so many tenths of ours

To guard a thing not ours, nor worth to us

(Had it our name) the value of one ten,

What merit’s in that reason which denies

The yielding of her up?

TROILUS     Fie, fie, my brother!

25

Weigh you the worth and honour of a king

So great as our dread father in a scale

Of common ounces? Will you with counters sum

The past-proportion of his infinite

And buckle in a waist most fathomless

30

With spans and inches so diminutive

As fears and reasons? Fie, for godly shame!

HELENUS

No marvel though you bite so sharp at reasons,

You are so empty of them. Should not our father

Bear the great sway of his affairs with reason,

35

Because your speech hath none that tell him so?

TROILUS

You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest;

You fur your gloves with reason. Here are your reasons:

You know an enemy intends you harm;

You know a sword employed is perilous,

40

And reason flies the object of all harm.

Who marvels, then, when Helenus beholds

A Grecian and his sword, if he do set

The very wings of reason to his heels,

And fly like chidden Mercury from Jove,

45

Or like a star disorbed? Nay, if we talk of reason,

Let’s shut our gates and sleep. Manhood and honour

Should have hare hearts, would they but fat their

thoughts

With this crammed reason; reason and respect

Make livers pale and lustihood deject.

50

HECTOR

Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost

The holding.

TROILUS     What’s aught but as ’tis valued?

HECTOR     But value dwells not in particular will;

It holds his estimate and dignity

As well wherein ’tis precious of itself

55

As in the prizer. ’Tis mad idolatry

To make the service greater than the god;

And the will dotes that is inclinable

To what infectiously itself affects,

Without some image of th’affected merit.

60

TROILUS     I take today a wife, and my election

Is led on in the conduct of my will,

My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears,

Two traded pilots ’twixt the dangerous shores

Of will and judgement. How may I avoid,

65

Although my will distaste what it elected,

The wife I chose? There can be no evasion

To blench from this, and to stand firm by honour.

We turn not back the silks upon the merchant

When we have soiled them; nor the remainder viands

70

We do not throw in unrespective sieve

Because we now are full. It was thought meet

Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks.

Your breath of full consent bellied his sails;

The seas and winds, old wranglers, took a truce,

75

And did him service; he touched the ports desired;

And for an old aunt whom the Greeks held captive

He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness

Wrinkles Apollo’s, and makes stale the morning.

Why keep we her? The Grecians keep our aunt.

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Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl

Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships

And turned crowned kings to merchants.

If you’ll avouch ’twas wisdom Paris went –

As you must needs, for you all cried ‘Go, go!’;

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If you’ll confess he brought home noble prize –

As you must needs, for you all clapped your hands

And cried ‘Inestimable!’ – why do you now

The issue of your proper wisdoms rate

And do a deed that never Fortune did,

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Beggar the estimation which you prized

Richer than sea and land? O theft most base,

That we have stol’n what we do fear to keep!

But thieves unworthy of a thing so stol’n,

That in their country did them that disgrace

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We fear to warrant in our native place!

Enter CASSANDRA, with her hair about her ears.

CASSANDRA     Cry, Trojans, cry!

PRIAM     What noise? What shriek is this?

TROILUS     ’Tis our mad sister. I do know her voice.

CASSANDRA     Cry, Trojans!

HECTOR     It is Cassandra.

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CASSANDRA

Cry, Trojans, cry! Lend me ten thousand eyes,

And I will fill them with prophetic tears.

HECTOR     Peace, sister, peace!

CASSANDRA

Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled old,

Soft infancy, that nothing canst but cry,

105

Add to my clamour! Let us pay betimes

A moiety of that mass of moan to come.

Cry, Trojans, cry! Practise your eyes with tears!

Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilium stand;

Our firebrand brother Paris burns us all.

110

Cry, Trojans, cry! A Helen and a woe!

Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go.

Exit.

HECTOR

Now, youthful Troilus, do not these high strains

Of divination in our sister work

Some touches of remorse? Or is your blood

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So madly hot that no discourse of reason,

Nor fear of bad success in a bad cause,

Can qualify the same?

TROILUS     Why, brother Hector,

We may not think the justness of each act

Such and no other than th’event doth form it,

120

Nor once deject the courage of our minds

Because Cassandra’s mad. Her brain-sick raptures

Cannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel

Which hath our several honours all engaged

To make it gracious. For my private part,

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I am no more touched than all Priam’s sons;

And Jove forbid there should be done amongst us

Such things as might offend the weakest spleen

To fight for and maintain.

PARIS     Else might the world convince of levity

130

As well my undertakings as your counsels.

But I attest the gods, your full consent

Gave wings to my propension, and cut off

All fears attending on so dire a project.

For what, alas, can these my single arms?

135

What propugnation is in one man’s valour

To stand the push and enmity of those

This quarrel would excite? Yet I protest,

Were I alone to pass the difficulties

And had as ample power as I have will,

140

Paris should ne’er retract what he hath done

Nor faint in the pursuit.

PRIAM     Paris, you speak

Like one besotted on your sweet delights.

You have the honey still, but these the gall;

So to be valiant is no praise at all.

145

PARIS     Sir, I propose not merely to myself

The pleasures such a beauty brings with it;

But I would have the soil of her fair rape

Wiped off in honourable keeping her.

What treason were it to the ransacked queen,

150

Disgrace to your great worths, and shame to me,

Now to deliver her possession up

On terms of base compulsion! Can it be

That so degenerate a strain as this

Should once set footing in your generous bosoms?

155

There’s not the meanest spirit on our party

Without a heart to dare, or sword to draw,

When Helen is defended, nor none so noble

Whose life were ill bestowed, or death unfamed,

Where Helen is the subject. Then, I say,

160

Well may we fight for her whom, we know well,

The world’s large spaces cannot parallel.

HECTOR     Paris and Troilus, you have both said well

And on the cause and question now in hand

Have glozed – but superficially, not much

165

Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought

Unfit to hear moral philosophy.

The reasons you allege do more conduce

To the hot passion of distempered blood

Than to make up a free determination

170

’Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge

Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice

Of any true decision. Nature craves

All dues be rendered to their owners. Now,

What nearer debt in all humanity

175

Than wife is to the husband? If this law

Of nature be corrupted through affection,

And that great minds, of partial indulgence

To their benumbed wills, resist the same,

There is a law in each well-ordered nation

180

To curb those raging appetites that are

Most disobedient and refractory.

If Helen then be wife to Sparta’s king,

As it is known she is, these moral laws

Of nature and of nations speak aloud

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To have her back returned. Thus to persist

In doing wrong extenuates not wrong,

But makes it much more heavy. Hector’s opinion

Is this in way of truth; yet, ne’ertheless,

My sprightly brethren, I propend to you

190

In resolution to keep Helen still;

For ’tis a cause that hath no mean dependence

Upon our joint and several dignities.

TROILUS

Why, there you touched the life of our design!

Were it not glory that we more affected

195

Than the performance of our heaving spleens,

I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood

Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector,

She is a theme of honour and renown,

A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds,

200

Whose present courage may beat down our foes

And fame in time to come canonize us.

For I presume brave Hector would not lose

So rich advantage of a promised glory

As smiles upon the forehead of this action

205

For the wide world’s revenue.

HECTOR     I am yours,

You valiant offspring of great Priamus.

I have a roisting challenge sent amongst

The dull and factious nobles of the Greeks

Will strike amazement to their drowsy spirits.

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I was advertised their great general slept,

Whilst emulation in the army crept.

This, I presume, will wake him. Exeunt.

2.3 Enter THERSITES, alone.

THERSITES     How now, Thersites? What, lost in the

labyrinth of thy fury? Shall the elephant Ajax carry it

thus? He beats me, and I rail at him. O worthy

satisfaction! Would it were otherwise – that I could beat

him whilst he railed at me. ’Sfoot, I’ll learn to conjure

5

and raise devils but I’ll see some issue of my spiteful

execrations. Then there’s Achilles – a rare engineer! If

Troy be not taken till these two undermine it, the walls

will stand till they fall of themselves. O thou great

thunder-darter of Olympus, forget that thou art Jove,

10

the king of gods; and Mercury, lose all the serpentine

craft of thy caduceus, if ye take not that little, little, less

than little wit from them that they have! – which short-

armed ignorance itself knows is so abundant scarce it

will not in circumvention deliver a fly from a spider

15

without drawing their massy irons and cutting the web.

After this, the vengeance on the whole camp! Or rather,

the Neapolitan bone-ache! For that, methinks, is the

curse dependent on those that war for a placket. I have

said my prayers, and devil Envy say ‘Amen’. – What ho!

20

My Lord Achilles!

Enter PATROCLUS at the entrance of Achilles’ tent.

PATROCLUS     Who’s there? Thersites? Good Thersites,

come in and rail. [Disappears briefly.]

THERSITES     If I could ha’ remembered a gilt counterfeit,

thou wouldst not have slipped out of my contemplation;

25

but it is no matter. Thyself upon thyself! The common

curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great

revenue! Heaven bless thee from a tutor, and discipline

come not near thee! Let thy blood be thy direction till

thy death; then if she that lays thee out says thou art a

30

fair corpse, I’ll be sworn and sworn upon’t she never

shrouded any but lazars.

PATROCLUS     reappears.

Amen. – Where’s Achilles?

PATROCLUS     What, art thou devout? Wast thou in

prayer?

35

THERSITES     Ay. The heavens hear me!

PATROCLUS     Amen.

Enter ACHILLES.

ACHILLES     Who’s there?

PATROCLUS     Thersites, my lord.

ACHILLES     Where? Where? O, where? – Art thou come?

40

Why, my cheese, my digestion, why hast thou not

served thyself in to my table so many meals? Come,

what’s Agamemnon?

THERSITES     Thy commander, Achilles. Then tell me,

Patroclus, what’s Achilles?

45

PATROCLUS     Thy lord, Thersites. Then tell me, I pray

thee, what’s thyself?

THERSITES     Thy knower, Patroclus. Then tell me,

Patroclus, what art thou?

PATROCLUS     Thou mayst tell that knowest.

50

ACHILLES     O, tell, tell.

THERSITES     I’ll decline the whole question.

AGAMEMNON commands Achilles, Achilles is my lord,

I am Patroclus’ knower, and Patroclus is a fool.

PATROCLUS     You rascal!

55

THERSITES     Peace, fool, I have not done.

ACHILLES     He is a privileged man. – Proceed, Thersites.

THERSITES     Agamemnon is a fool, Achilles is a fool,

Thersites is a fool, and, as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool.

ACHILLES     Derive this. Come.

60

THERSITES     Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command

ACHILLES, Achilles is a fool to be commanded of

AGAMEMNON, Thersites is a fool to serve such a fool,

and Patroclus is a fool positive.

PATROCLUS     Why am I a fool?

65

THERSITES     Make that demand to the creator; it suffices

me thou art. Look you, who comes here?

Enter at a distance AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, NESTOR, DIOMEDES, AJAX and CALCHAS.

ACHILLES     Patroclus, I’ll speak with nobody. – Come in

with me, Thersites.

Exit.

THERSITES     Here is such patchery, such juggling and

70

such knavery! All the argument is a whore and a

cuckold; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and

bleed to death upon. Now the dry serpigo on the

subject, and war and lechery confound all!

Exit.

AGAMEMNON     [to Patroclus] Where is Achilles?

75

PATROCLUS     Within his tent, but ill-disposed, my lord.

AGAMEMNON     Let it be known to him that we are here.

He shent our messengers, and we lay by

Our appertainments, visiting of him.

Let him be told so, lest perchance he think

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We dare not move the question of our place

Or know not what we are.

PATROCLUS     I shall so say to him.

Exit.

ULYSSES     We saw him at the opening of his tent.

He is not sick.

85

AJAX     Yes, lion-sick, sick of proud heart. You may call it

melancholy, if you will favour the man, but, by my

head, ’tis pride. But why, why? Let him show us the

cause. – A word, my lord. [Takes Agamemnon aside.]

NESTOR     What moves Ajax thus to bay at him?

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ULYSSES     Achilles hath inveigled his fool from him.

NESTOR     Who? Thersites?

ULYSSES     He.

NESTOR     Then will Ajax lack matter, if he have lost his

argument.

95

ULYSSES     No. You see, he is his argument that has his

argument: Achilles.

NESTOR     All the better; their fraction is more our wish

than their faction. But it was a strong composure a fool

could disunite.

100

ULYSSES     The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may

easily untie.

Enter PATROCLUS.

Here comes Patroclus.

NESTOR     No Achilles with him.

ULYSSES

The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy;

105

His legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.

PATROCLUS     Achilles bids me say he is much sorry

If anything more than your sport and pleasure

Did move your greatness, and this noble state,

To call upon him; he hopes it is no other

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But for your health and your digestion sake,

An after-dinner’s breath.

AGAMEMNON     Hear you, Patroclus:

We are too well acquainted with these answers;

But his evasion, winged thus swift with scorn,

Cannot outfly our apprehensions.

115

Much attribute he hath, and much the reason

Why we ascribe it to him; yet all his virtues,

Not virtuously on his own part beheld,

Do in our eyes begin to lose their gloss,

Yea, like fair fruit in an unwholesome dish,

120

Are like to rot untasted. Go and tell him

We come to speak with him. And you shall not sin

If you do say we think him over-proud

And under-honest, in self-assumption greater

Than in the note of judgement; and worthier than himself

125

Here tend the savage strangeness he puts on,

Disguise the holy strength of their command,

And underwrite in an observing kind

His humorous predominance – yea, watch

His pettish lunes, his ebbs, his flows, as if

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The passage and whole carriage of this action

Rode on his tide. Go tell him this, and add

That if he overhold his price so much,

We’ll none of him, but let him, like an engine

Not portable, lie under this report:

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‘Bring action hither; this cannot go to war’.

A stirring dwarf we do allowance give

Before a sleeping giant. Tell him so.

PATROCLUS     I shall, and bring his answer presently.

AGAMEMNON     In second voice we’ll not be satisfied;

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We come to speak with him. – Ulysses, enter you.

     Exit Ulysses following Patroclus.

AJAX     What is he more than another?

AGAMEMNON     No more than what he thinks he is.

AJAX     Is he so much? Do you not think he thinks himself

a better man than I am?

145

AGAMEMNON     No question.

AJAX     Will you subscribe his thought, and say he is?

AGAMEMNON     No, noble Ajax. You are as strong, as

valiant, as wise, no less noble, much more gentle, and

altogether more tractable.

150

AJAX     Why should a man be proud? How doth pride

grow? I know not what pride is.

AGAMEMNON     Your mind is the clearer, Ajax, and your

virtues the fairer. He that is proud eats up himself.

Pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own

155

chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the deed

devours the deed in the praise.

Enter ULYSSES.

AJAX     I do hate a proud man as I hate the engendering of

toads.

NESTOR     [aside] Yet he loves himself. Is’t not strange?

160

ULYSSES     Achilles will not to the field tomorrow.

AGAMEMNON     What’s his excuse?

ULYSSES     He doth rely on none,

But carries on the stream of his dispose,

Without observance or respect of any,

In will peculiar and in self-admission.

165

AGAMEMNON     Why, will he not, upon our fair request,

Untent his person and share the air with us?

ULYSSES

Things small as nothing, for request’s sake only,

He makes important. Possessed he is with greatness

And speaks not to himself but with a pride

170

That quarrels at self-breath. Imagined worth

Holds in his blood such swoll’n and hot discourse

That ’twixt his mental and his active parts

Kingdomed Achilles in commotion rages

And batters down himself. What should I say?

175

He is so plaguy proud that the death-tokens of it

Cry ‘No recovery’.

AGAMEMNON     Let Ajax go to him. –

Dear lord, go you and greet him in his tent.

’Tis said he holds you well and will be led,

At your request, a little from himself.

180

ULYSSES     O Agamemnon, let it not be so!

We’ll consecrate the steps that Ajax makes

When they go from Achilles. Shall the proud lord

That bastes his arrogance with his own seam

And never suffers matter of the world

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Enter his thoughts, save such as doth revolve

And ruminate himself – shall he be worshipped

Of that we hold an idol more than he?

No; this thrice-worthy and right valiant lord

Must not so stale his palm, nobly acquired,

190

Nor, by my will, assubjugate his merit,

As amply titled as Achilles’ is,

By going to Achilles.

That were to enlard his fat-already pride,

And add more coals to Cancer when he burns

195

With entertaining great Hyperion.

This lord go to him? Jupiter forbid,

And say in thunder: ‘Achilles, go to him’.

NESTOR     [aside to Diomedes]

O, this is well. He rubs the vein of him.

DIOMEDES     [aside to Nestor]

And how his silence drinks up this applause!

200

AJAX     If I go to him, with my armed fist

I’ll pash him o’er the face.

AGAMEMNON     O, no, you shall not go.

AJAX     An ’a be proud with me, I’ll feeze his pride.

Let me go to him.

205

ULYSSES

Not for the worth that hangs upon our quarrel.

AJAX     A paltry, insolent fellow!

NESTOR     [aside] How he describes himself!

AJAX     Can he not be sociable?

ULYSSES     [aside] The raven chides blackness.

210

AJAX     I’ll let his humorous blood.

AGAMEMNON     [aside] He will be the physician that

should be the patient.

AJAX     An all men were o’ my mind –

ULYSSES     [aside] Wit would be out of fashion.

215

AJAX     – ’a should not bear it so. ’A should eat swords

first. Shall pride carry it?

NESTOR     [aside] An ’twould, you’d carry half.

ULYSSES     [aside] ’A would have ten shares.

AJAX     I will knead him; I’ll make him supple.

220

NESTOR     [aside] He’s not yet through warm. Farce him

with praises. Pour in, pour in! His ambition is dry.

ULYSSES     [to Agamemnon]

My lord, you feed too much on this dislike.

NESTOR     [to Agamemnon]

Our noble general, do not do so.

DIOMEDES     [to Agamemnon]

You must prepare to fight without Achilles.

225

ULYSSES     Why, ’tis this naming of him does him harm.

Here is a man – but ’tis before his face;

I will be silent.

NESTOR     Wherefore should you so?

He is not emulous, as Achilles is.

ULYSSES     Know the whole world, he is as valiant –

230

AJAX     A whoreson dog, that shall palter thus with us!

Would he were a Trojan!

NESTOR     What a vice were it in Ajax now –

ULYSSES     If he were proud –

DIOMEDES     Or covetous of praise –

ULYSSES     Ay, or surly borne –

DIOMEDES     Or strange, or self-affected.

235

ULYSSES     [to Ajax]

Thank the heavens, lord, thou art of sweet composure.

Praise him that got thee, she that gave thee suck;

Famed be thy tutor, and thy parts of nature

Thrice-famed beyond, beyond all erudition!

But he that disciplined thine arms to fight,

240

Let Mars divide eternity in twain

And give him half; and for thy vigour,

Bull-bearing Milo his addition yield

To sinewy Ajax! I will not praise thy wisdom,

Which, like a bourn, a pale, a shore, confines

245

Thy spacious and dilated parts. Here’s Nestor,

Instructed by the antiquary times;

He must, he is, he cannot but be wise.

But pardon, father Nestor, were your days

As green as Ajax’ and your brain so tempered,

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You should not have the eminence of him,

But be as Ajax.

AJAX     Shall I call you father?

ULYSSES     Ay, my good son.

DIOMEDES     Be ruled by him, Lord Ajax.

ULYSSES     There is no tarrying here; the hart Achilles

Keeps thicket. Please it our great general

255

To call together all his state of war.

Fresh kings are come to Troy; tomorrow

We must with all our main of power stand fast.

And here’s a lord – come knights from east to west,

And cull their flower, Ajax shall cope the best.

260

AGAMEMNON     Go we to council. Let Achilles sleep.

Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep.

     Exeunt.

3.1 Music sounds within. Enter PANDARUS and a Servant.

PANDARUS     Friend, you, pray you, a word. Do not you

follow the young Lord Paris?

SERVANT     Ay, sir, when he goes before me.

PANDARUS     You depend upon him, I mean.

SERVANT     Sir, I do depend upon the Lord.

5

PANDARUS     You depend upon a notable gentleman; I

must needs praise him.

SERVANT     The Lord be praised!

PANDARUS     You know me, do you not?

     SERVANT    Faith, sir, superficially.

10

PANDARUS     Friend, know me better: I am the Lord

Pandarus.

SERVANT     I hope I shall know your honour better.

PANDARUS     I do desire it.

SERVANT     You are in the state of grace?

15

PANDARUS     Grace? Not so, friend. ‘Honour’ and

‘lordship’ are my titles. What music is this?

SERVANT     I do but partly know, sir: it is music in parts.

PANDARUS     Know you the musicians?

SERVANT     Wholly, sir.

20

PANDARUS     Who play they to?

SERVANT     To the hearers, sir.

PANDARUS     At whose pleasure, friend?

SERVANT     At mine, sir, and theirs that love music.

PANDARUS     ‘Command’, I mean, friend.

25

SERVANT     Who shall I command, sir?

PANDARUS     Friend, we understand not one another: I am

too courtly and thou too cunning. At whose request do

these men play?

SERVANT     That’s to’t indeed, sir. Marry, sir, at the

30

request of Paris my lord, who is there in person; with

him, the mortal Venus, the heart-blood of beauty,

love’s visible soul –

PANDARUS     Who, my cousin Cressida?

SERVANT     No, sir, Helen. Could not you find out that by

35

her attributes?

PANDARUS     It should seem, fellow, thou hast not seen the

Lady Cressid. I come to speak with Paris from the

Prince Troilus. I will make a complimental assault

upon him, for my business seethes.

40

SERVANT     Sodden business! There’s a stewed phrase

indeed.

Enter PARIS and HELEN attended by musicians.

PANDARUS     Fair be to you, my lord, and to all this fair

company! Fair desires, in all fair measure, fairly guide

them! – especially to you, fair queen. Fair thoughts be

45

your fair pillow!

HELEN     Dear lord, you are full of fair words.

PANDARUS     You speak your fair pleasure, sweet queen.

[to Paris] Fair prince, here is good broken music.

PARIS     You have broke it, cousin, and, by my life, you shall

50

make it whole again; you shall piece it out with a piece

of your performance. – Nell, he is full of harmony.

PANDARUS     Truly, lady, no.

HELEN     O, sir!

PANDARUS     Rude, in sooth; in good sooth, very rude.

55

PARIS     Well said, my lord. Well, you say so in fits.

PANDARUS     I have business to my lord, dear queen. – My

lord, will you vouchsafe me a word?

HELEN     Nay, this shall not hedge us out. We’ll hear you

sing, certainly.

60

PANDARUS     Well, sweet queen, you are pleasant with me.

– But, marry, thus, my lord: my dear lord and most

esteemed friend, your brother Troilus –

HELEN     My Lord Pandarus, honey-sweet lord –

PANDARUS     Go to, sweet queen, go to – commends

65

himself most affectionately to you.

HELEN     You shall not bob us out of our melody. If you

do, our melancholy upon your head!

PANDARUS     Sweet queen, sweet queen, that’s a sweet

queen, i’faith –

70

HELEN     And to make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence.

PANDARUS     Nay, that shall not serve your turn, that shall

it not, in truth, la. Nay, I care not for such words, no,

no. – And, my lord, he desires you that if the King call

for him at supper, you will make his excuse.

75

HELEN     My Lord Pandarus –

PANDARUS     What says my sweet queen, my very very

sweet queen?

PARIS     What exploit’s in hand? Where sups he tonight?

HELEN     Nay, but, my lord –

80

PANDARUS     What says my sweet queen? My cousin will

fall out with you.

HELEN     [to Paris] You must not know where he sups.

PARIS     I’ll lay my life, with my disposer Cressida.

PANDARUS     No, no, no such matter, you are wide. Come,

85

your disposer is sick.

PARIS     Well, I’ll make’s excuse.

PANDARUS     Ay, good my lord. Why should you say

Cressida? No, your poor disposer’s sick.

PARIS     I spy.

90

PANDARUS     You spy? What do you spy? – Come, give me

an instrument. [He is handed a musical instrument.]

Now, sweet queen.

HELEN     Why, this is kindly done.

PANDARUS     My niece is horribly in love with a thing you

95

have, sweet queen.

HELEN     She shall have it, my lord, if it be not my Lord

Paris.

PANDARUS     He? No, she’ll none of him. They two are

twain.

100

HELEN     Falling in after falling out may make them three.

PANDARUS     Come, come, I’ll hear no more of this. I’ll

sing you a song now.

HELEN     Ay, ay, prithee. Now by my troth, sweet lord,

thou hast a fine forehead.

105

PANDARUS     Ay, you may, you may.

HELEN     Let thy song be love. ‘This love will undo us all.’

O Cupid, Cupid, Cupid!

PANDARUS     Love? Ay, that it shall, i’faith.

PARIS     Ay, good now, ‘Love, love, nothing but love’.

110

PANDARUS     In good truth, it begins so. [Sings.]

Love, love, nothing but love, still love, still more!

For, O, love’s bow

Shoots buck and doe.

The shaft confounds

115

Not that it wounds,

But tickles still the sore.

These lovers cry, ‘O! O!’, they die!

Yet that which seems the wound to kill

Doth turn ‘O! O!’ to ‘Ha, ha, he!’

120

So dying love lives still.

‘O! O!’ a while, but ‘Ha, ha, ha!’

‘O! O!’ groans out for ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ –

Heigh-ho!

HELEN     In love, i’faith, to the very tip of the nose.

125

PARIS     He eats nothing but doves, love, and that breeds

hot blood, and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot

thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love.

PANDARUS     Is this the generation of love? Hot blood, hot

thoughts and hot deeds? Why, they are vipers. Is love a

130

generation of vipers? – Sweet lord, who’s afield today?

PARIS     Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor and all the

gallantry of Troy. I would fain have armed today, but

my Nell would not have it so. How chance my brother

    TROILUS went not?

135

HELEN     He hangs the lip at something. – You know all,

Lord Pandarus.

PANDARUS     Not I, honey-sweet queen. I long to hear

how they sped today. – You’ll remember your

brother’s excuse?

140

PARIS     To a hair.

PANDARUS     Farewell, sweet queen.

HELEN     Commend me to your niece.

PANDARUS     I will, sweet queen. Exit. Sound a retreat.

PARIS     They’re come from field. Let us to Priam’s hall

145

To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you

To help unarm our Hector. His stubborn buckles,

With these your white enchanting fingers touched,

Shall more obey than to the edge of steel

Or force of Greekish sinews. You shall do more

150

Than all the island kings: disarm great Hector.

HELEN     ’Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris.

Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty

Gives us more palm in beauty than we have,

Yea, overshines ourself.

155

PARIS     Sweet, above thought I love thee.     Exeunt.

3.2 Enter PANDARUS and Troilus’ Boy, meeting.

PANDARUS     How now, where’s thy master? At my cousin

Cressida’s?

BOY     No, sir, he stays for you to conduct him thither.

Enter TROILUS.

PANDARUS     O, here he comes. – How now, how now?

TROILUS     [to his Boy] Sirrah, walk off.     Exit Boy.

5

PANDARUS     Have you seen my cousin?

TROILUS     No, Pandarus. I stalk about her door

Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks

Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon,

And give me swift transportance to those fields

10

Where I may wallow in the lily-beds

Proposed for the deserver! O gentle Pandar,

From Cupid’s shoulder pluck his painted wings

And fly with me to Cressid!

PANDARUS     Walk here i’th’ orchard. I’ll bring her straight.

15

Exit.

TROILUS     I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.

Th’imaginary relish is so sweet

That it enchants my sense. What will it be,

When that the wat’ry palates taste indeed

Love’s thrice-repured nectar? Death, I fear me,

20

Swooning destruction, or some joy too fine,

Too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness,

For the capacity of my ruder powers.

I fear it much; and I do fear besides

That I shall lose distinction in my joys,

25

As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps

The enemy flying.

Enter PANDARUS.

PANDARUS     She’s making her ready; she’ll come straight.

You must be witty now. She does so blush, and fetches

her wind so short, as if she were frayed with a sprite.

30

I’ll fetch her. It is the prettiest villain! She fetches her

breath as short as a new-ta’en sparrow.

Exit.

TROILUS     Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom.

My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse,

And all my powers do their bestowing lose,

35

Like vassalage at unawares encount’ring

The eye of majesty.

Enter PANDARUS, and CRESSIDA veiled.

PANDARUS     Come, come, what need you blush? Shame’s

a baby. [to Troilus] Here she is now. Swear the oaths

now to her that you have sworn to me. [Cressida draws

40

back.] What, are you gone again? You must be watched

ere you be made tame, must you? Come your ways,

come your ways; an you draw backward, we’ll put you

i’th’ thills. [to Troilus] Why do you not speak to her?

[to Cressida] Come, draw this curtain, and let’s see

45

your picture. [She is unveiled.] Alas the day, how

loath you are to offend daylight! An ’twere dark, you’d

close sooner. [to Troilus] So, so, rub on, and kiss the

mistress. [They kiss.] How now, a kiss in fee-farm?

Build there, carpenter, the air is sweet. Nay, you shall

50

fight your hearts out ere I part you. The falcon as the

tercel, for all the ducks i’the river. Go to, go to.

TROILUS     You have bereft me of all words, lady.

PANDARUS     Words pay no debts; give her deeds. But

she’ll bereave you o’the deeds too, if she call your

55

activity in question. [They kiss.] What, billing again?

Here’s ‘In witness whereof the parties inter-

changeably’. Come in, come in. I’ll go get a fire.

Exit.

CRESSIDA     Will you walk in, my lord?

TROILUS     O Cressida, how often have I wished me thus!

60

CRESSIDA     Wished, my lord? The gods grant – O my

lord!

TROILUS     What should they grant? What makes this

pretty abruption? What too-curious dreg espies my

sweet lady in the fountain of our love?

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CRESSIDA     More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.

TROILUS     Fears make devils of cherubims; they never

see truly.

CRESSIDA     Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds

safer footing than blind reason, stumbling without

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fear. To fear the worst oft cures the worse.

TROILUS     O, let my lady apprehend no fear. In all

Cupid’s pageant there is presented no monster.

CRESSIDA     Nor nothing monstrous neither?

TROILUS     Nothing but our undertakings, when we vow

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to weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers,

thinking it harder for our mistress to devise imposition

enough than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed.

This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will is

infinite and the execution confined; that the desire is

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boundless and the act a slave to limit.

CRESSIDA     They say all lovers swear more performance

than they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they

never perform, vowing more than the perfection of ten

and discharging less than the tenth part of one. They

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that have the voice of lions and the act of hares, are

they not monsters?

TROILUS     Are there such? Such are not we. Praise us as

we are tasted, allow us as we prove. Our head shall go

bare till merit crown it. No perfection in reversion shall

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have a praise in present. We will not name desert before

his birth, and, being born, his addition shall be humble.

Few words to fair faith. Troilus shall be such to Cressid

as what envy can say worst shall be a mock for his truth,

and what truth can speak truest not truer than Troilus.

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CRESSIDA     Will you walk in, my lord?

Enter PANDARUS.

PANDARUS     What, blushing still? Have you not done

talking yet?

CRESSIDA     Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate

to you.

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PANDARUS     I thank you for that. If my lord get a boy of

you, you’ll give him me. Be true to my lord. If he

flinch, chide me for it.

TROILUS     [to Cressida] You know now your hostages:

your uncle’s word and my firm faith.

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PANDARUS     Nay, I’ll give my word for her too. Our

kindred, though they be long ere they be wooed, they

are constant being won. They are burs, I can tell you;

they’ll stick where they are thrown.

CRESSIDA

Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart.

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Prince Troilus, I have loved you night and day

For many weary months.

TROILUS     Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?

CRESSIDA     Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord,

With the first glance that ever – pardon me;

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If I confess much, you will play the tyrant.

I love you now, but till now not so much

But I might master it. In faith, I lie;

My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown

Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!

120

Why have I blabbed? Who shall be true to us

When we are so unsecret to ourselves?

But though I loved you well, I wooed you not;

And yet, good faith, I wished myself a man,

Or that we women had men’s privilege

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Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue,

For in this rapture I shall surely speak

The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,

Cunning in dumbness, in my weakness draws

My soul of counsel from me! Stop my mouth.

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TROILUS

And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.

     [Kisses her.]

PANDARUS     Pretty, i’faith.

CRESSIDA     [to Troilus]

My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me;

’Twas not my purpose thus to beg a kiss.

I am ashamed. O heavens, what have I done?

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For this time will I take my leave, my lord.

TROILUS     Your leave, sweet Cressid?

PANDARUS     Leave? An you take leave till tomorrow morning –

CRESSIDA     Pray you, content you.

TROILUS     What offends you, lady?

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CRESSIDA     Sir, mine own company.

TROILUS     You cannot shun yourself.

CRESSIDA     Let me go and try.

I have a kind of self resides with you,

But an unkind self that itself will leave

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To be another’s fool. Where is my wit?

I would be gone. I speak I know not what.

TROILUS

Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely.

CRESSIDA

Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love

And fell so roundly to a large confession

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To angle for your thoughts. But you are wise,

Or else you love not, for to be wise and love

Exceeds man’s might; that dwells with gods above.

TROILUS     O, that I thought it could be in a woman –

As, if it can, I will presume in you –

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To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love,

To keep her constancy in plight and youth,

Outliving beauty’s outward, with a mind

That doth renew swifter than blood decays!

Or that persuasion could but thus convince me

160

That my integrity and truth to you

Might be affronted with the match and weight

Of such a winnowed purity in love;

How were I then uplifted! But alas,

I am as true as truth’s simplicity,

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And simpler than the infancy of truth.

CRESSIDA     In that I’ll war with you.

TROILUS     O virtuous fight,

When right with right wars who shall be most right!

True swains in love shall in the world to come

Approve their truth by Troilus. When their rhymes,

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Full of protest, of oath and big compare,

Wants similes, truth tired with iteration –

‘As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,

As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,

As iron to adamant, as earth to th’ centre’ –

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Yet, after all comparisons of truth,

As truth’s authentic author to be cited,

‘As true as Troilus’ shall crown up the verse

And sanctify the numbers.

CRESSIDA     AProphet may you be!

If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,

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When time is old and hath forgot itself,

When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,

And blind oblivion swallowed cities up,

And mighty states characterless are grated

To dusty nothing, yet let memory,

185

From false to false, among false maids in love,

Upbraid my falsehood! When they’ve said ‘As false

As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,

As fox to lamb, or wolf to heifer’s calf,

Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son’,

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Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,

‘As false as Cressid’.

PANDARUS     Go to, a bargain made. Seal it, seal it; I’ll be

the witness. Here I hold your hand, here my cousin’s.

If ever you prove false one to another, since I have

195

taken such pains to bring you together, let all pitiful

goers-between be called to the world’s end after my

name: call them all panders. Let all constant men be

TROILUS     es, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-

between panders! Say ‘Amen’.

200

TROILUS     Amen.

CRESSIDA     Amen.

PANDARUS     Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber

with a bed; which bed, because it shall not speak of your

pretty encounters, press it to death. Away!

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     Exeunt Troilus and Cressida.

And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here

Bed, chamber, pander to provide this gear! Exit.

3.3 Flourish. Enter ULYSSES, DIOMEDES, NESTOR, AGAMEMNON, AJAX, MENELAUS and CALCHAS.

CALCHAS

Now, princes, for the service I have done you,

Th’advantage of the time prompts me aloud

To call for recompense. Appear it to your mind

That, through the sight I bear in things to come,

I have abandoned Troy, left my possessions,

5

Incurred a traitor’s name, exposed myself,

From certain and possessed conveniences,

To doubtful fortunes, sequest’ring from me all

That time, acquaintance, custom and condition

Made tame and most familiar to my nature;

10

And here, to do you service, am become

As new into the world, strange, unacquainted.

I do beseech you, as in way of taste,

To give me now a little benefit

Out of those many registered in promise

15

Which, you say, live to come in my behalf.

AGAMEMNON

What wouldst thou of us, Trojan, make demand?

CALCHAS     You have a Trojan prisoner, called Antenor,

Yesterday took. Troy holds him very dear.

Oft have you – often have you thanks therefor –

20

Desired my Cressid in right great exchange,

Whom Troy hath still denied; but this Antenor,

I know, is such a wrest in their affairs

That their negotiations all must slack,

Wanting his manage; and they will almost

25

Give us a prince of blood, a son of Priam,

In change of him. Let him be sent, great princes,

And he shall buy my daughter; and her presence

Shall quite strike off all service I have done

In most accepted pain.

AGAMEMNON     Let Diomedes bear him,

30

And bring us Cressid hither; Calchas shall have

What he requests of us. Good Diomed,

Furnish you fairly for this interchange;

Withal, bring word if Hector will tomorrow

Be answered in his challenge. Ajax is ready.

35

DIOMEDES     This shall I undertake, and ’tis a burden

Which I am proud to bear.     Exit with Calchas.

ACHILLES     and PATROCLUS stand in their tent.

ULYSSES     Achilles stands i’th’ entrance of his tent.

Please it our general pass strangely by him,

As if he were forgot; and, princes all,

40

Lay negligent and loose regard upon him.

I will come last. ’Tis like he’ll question me

Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turned on him.

If so, I have derision medicinable

To use between your strangeness and his pride,

45

Which his own will shall have desire to drink.

It may do good. Pride hath no other glass

To show itself but pride; for supple knees

Feed arrogance, and are the proud man’s fees.

AGAMEMNON     We’ll execute your purpose, and put on

50

A form of strangeness as we pass along.

So do each lord, and either greet him not

Or else disdainfully, which shall shake him more

Than if not looked on. I will lead the way.

[They proceed in turn past Achilles’ tent.]

ACHILLES     What, comes the general to speak with me?

55

You know my mind: I’ll fight no more ’gainst Troy.

AGAMEMNON     [to Nestor]

What says Achilles? Would he aught with us?

NESTOR     [to Achilles]

Would you, my lord, aught with the general?

ACHILLES     No.

NESTOR     [to Agamemnon] Nothing, my lord.

60

AGAMEMNON     The better.

     Exeunt Agamemnon and Nestor.

ACHILLES     [to Menelaus] Good day, good day.

MENELAUS     How do you? How do you?

Exit.

ACHILLES     [to Patroclus] What, does the cuckold scorn

me?

65

AJAX     How now, Patroclus?

ACHILLES     Good morrow, Ajax.

AJAX     Ha?

ACHILLES     Good morrow.

AJAX     Ay, and good next day too.     Exit.

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[Ulysses remains behind, reading.]

ACHILLES     [to Patroclus]

What mean these fellows? Know they not Achilles?

PATROCLUS

They pass by strangely. They were used to bend,

To send their smiles before them to Achilles,

To come as humbly as they use to creep

To holy altars.

ACHILLES     What, am I poor of late?

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’Tis certain, greatness, once fall’n out with fortune,

Must fall out with men too. What the declined is

He shall as soon read in the eyes of others

As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies,

Show not their mealy wings but to the summer,

80

And not a man, for being simply man,

Hath any honour, but honour for those honours

That are without him – as place, riches and favour,

Prizes of accident as oft as merit;

Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,

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The love that leaned on them as slippery too

Doth one pluck down another and together

Die in the fall. But ’tis not so with me;

Fortune and I are friends. I do enjoy

At ample point all that I did possess,

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Save these men’s looks, who do, methinks, find out

Something not worth in me such rich beholding

As they have often given. Here is Ulysses;

I’ll interrupt his reading. – How now, Ulysses?

ULYSSES     Now, great Thetis’ son!

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ACHILLES     What are you reading?

ULYSSES     A strange fellow here

Writes me that man, how dearly ever parted,

How much in having, or without or in,

Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,

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Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;

As when his virtues, shining upon others,

Heat them, and they retort that heat again

To the first givers.

ACHILLES     This is not strange, Ulysses.

The beauty that is borne here in the face

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The bearer knows not, but commends itself

To others’ eyes; nor doth the eye itself,

That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself,

Not going from itself, but eye to eye opposed

Salutes each other with each other’s form.

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For speculation turns not to itself

Till it hath travelled and is mirrored there

Where it may see itself. This is not strange at all.

ULYSSES     I do not strain at the position –

It is familiar – but at the author’s drift,

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Who in his circumstance expressly proves

That no man is the lord of anything,

Though in and of him there be much consisting,

Till he communicate his parts to others;

Nor doth he of himself know them for aught

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Till he behold them formed in th’applause

Where they’re extended – who, like an arch, reverb’rate

The voice again, or, like a gate of steel

Fronting the sun, receives and renders back

His figure and his heat. I was much rapt in this,

125

And apprehended here immediately

Th’unknown Ajax. Heavens, what a man is there!

A very horse, that has he knows not what.

Nature, what things there are

Most abject in regard and dear in use!

130

What things again most dear in the esteem

And poor in worth! Now shall we see tomorrow

An act that very chance doth throw upon him.

Ajax renowned? O heavens, what some men do,

135

While some men leave to do!

How some men creep in skittish Fortune’s hall,

Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!

How one man eats into another’s pride,

While pride is fasting in his wantonness!

To see these Grecian lords! Why, even already

140

They clap the lubber Ajax on the shoulder,

As if his foot were on brave Hector’s breast,

And great Troy shrinking.

ACHILLES     I do believe it; for they passed by me

As misers do by beggars, neither gave to me

145

Good word nor look. What, are my deeds forgot?

ULYSSES     Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.

Those scraps are good deeds past, which are

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Devoured as fast as they are made, forgot

As soon as done. Perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honour bright; to have done is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mock’ry. Take the instant way,

155

For honour travels in a strait so narrow

Where one but goes abreast. Keep then the path,

For emulation hath a thousand sons,

That one by one pursue. If you give way,

Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,

160

Like to an entered tide they all rush by

And leave you hindmost;

Or, like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank,

Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,

O’er-run and trampled on. Then what they do in present,

165

Though less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours;

For Time is like a fashionable host

That slightly shakes his parting guest by th’ hand,

And, with his arms outstretched as he would fly,

Grasps in the comer. Welcome ever smiles,

170

And Farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek

Remuneration for the thing it was;

For beauty, wit,

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

175

To envious and calumniating Time.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,

That all with one consent praise new-born gauds,

Though they are made and moulded of things past,

And give to dust that is a little gilt

180

More laud than gilt o’er-dusted.

The present eye praises the present object.

Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,

That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax,

Since things in motion sooner catch the eye

185

Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee,

And still it might, and yet it may again,

If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive

And case thy reputation in thy tent,

Whose glorious deeds but in these fields of late

190

Made emulous missions ’mongst the gods themselves

And drave great Mars to faction.

ACHILLES     Of this my privacy

I have strong reasons.

ULYSSES     But ’gainst your privacy

The reasons are more potent and heroical.

’Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love

195

With one of Priam’s daughters.

ACHILLES     Ha? Known?

ULYSSES     Is that a wonder?

The providence that’s in a watchful state

Knows almost every grain of Pluto’s gold,

200

Finds bottom in th’uncomprehensive deeps,

Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods,

Do thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.

There is a mystery – with whom relation

Durst never meddle – in the soul of state,

205

Which hath an operation more divine

Than breath or pen can give expressure to.

All the commerce that you have had with Troy

As perfectly is ours as yours, my lord;

And better would it fit Achilles much

210

To throw down Hector than Polyxena.

But it must grieve young Pyrrhus now at home,

When Fame shall in our islands sound her trump

And all the Greekish girls shall tripping sing:

‘Great Hector’s sister did Achilles win,

215

But our great Ajax bravely beat down him’.

Farewell, my lord. I as your lover speak;

The fool slides o’er the ice that you should break.

Exit.

PATROCLUS     To this effect, Achilles, have I moved you.

A woman impudent and mannish grown

220

Is not more loathed than an effeminate man

In time of action. I stand condemned for this;

They think my little stomach to the war,

And your great love to me, restrains you thus.

Sweet, rouse yourself, and the weak wanton Cupid

225

Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold

And, like a dew-drop from the lion’s mane,

Be shook to air.

ACHILLES     Shall Ajax fight with Hector?

PATROCLUS

Ay, and perhaps receive much honour by him.

ACHILLES     I see my reputation is at stake.

230

My fame is shrewdly gored.

PATROCLUS     O, then, beware!

Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves.

Omission to do what is necessary

Seals a commission to a blank of danger,

And danger, like an ague, subtly taints

235

Even then when we sit idly in the sun.

ACHILLES     Go call Thersites hither, sweet Patroclus.

I’ll send the fool to Ajax and desire him

T’invite the Trojan lords after the combat

To see us here unarmed. I have a woman’s longing,

240

An appetite that I am sick withal,

To see great Hector in his weeds of peace,

Enter THERSITES.

To talk with him, and to behold his visage

Even to my full of view. – A labour saved.

THERSITES     A wonder!

245

ACHILLES     What?

THERSITES     Ajax goes up and down the field, asking for

himself.

ACHILLES     How so?

THERSITES     He must fight singly tomorrow with Hector,

250

and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling

that he raves in saying nothing.

ACHILLES     How can that be?

THERSITES     Why, ’a stalks up and down like a peacock –

a stride and a stand; ruminates like an hostess that hath

255

no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning;

bites his lip with a politic regard, as who should say,

‘There were wit in this head, an ’twould out’ – and so

there is, but it lies as coldly in him as fire in a flint,

which will not show without knocking. The man’s

260

undone for ever, for if Hector break not his neck i’th’

combat, he’ll break’t himself in vainglory. He knows not

me. I said, ‘Good morrow, Ajax’, and he replies,

‘Thanks, Agamemnon’. What think you of this man,

that takes me for the general? He’s grown a very land-

265

fish, languageless, a monster. A plague of opinion! A

man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin.

ACHILLES     Thou must be my ambassador to him,

Thersites.

THERSITES     Who, I? Why, he’ll answer nobody. He

270

professes not-answering; speaking is for beggars. He

wears his tongue in’s arms. I will put on his presence.

Let Patroclus make demands to me. You shall see the

pageant of Ajax.

ACHILLES     To him, Patroclus. Tell him I humbly desire

275

the valiant Ajax to invite the most valorous Hector to

come unarmed to my tent, and to procure safe-conduct

for his person of the magnanimous and most illustrious

six-or-seven-times-honoured captain-general of the

Grecian army, Agamemnon, et cetera. Do this.

280

PATROCLUS     [to Thersites, as though addressing Ajax] Jove

bless great Ajax!

THERSITES     [Mimics Ajax’ manner.] H’m!

PATROCLUS     I come from the worthy Achilles –

THERSITES     Ha?

285

PATROCLUS     Who most humbly desires you to invite

HECTOR to his tent –

THERSITES     H’m!

PATROCLUS     And to procure safe-conduct from

AGAMEMNON.

290

THERSITES     Agamemnon?

PATROCLUS     Ay, my lord.

THERSITES     Ha!

PATROCLUS     What say you to’t?

THERSITES     God b’wi’ you, with all my heart.

295

PATROCLUS     Your answer, sir.

THERSITES     If tomorrow be a fair day, by eleven o’clock

it will go one way or other. Howsoever, he shall pay for

me ere he has me.

PATROCLUS     Your answer, sir.

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THERSITES     Fare ye well, with all my heart.

[A pretended exit. Achilles applauds their concluded pantomime.]

ACHILLES     Why, but he is not in this tune, is he?

THERSITES     No, but he’s out o’ tune thus. What music

will be in him when Hector has knocked out his

brains, I know not; but I am sure, none, unless the

305

fiddler Apollo get his sinews to make catlings on.

ACHILLES     Come, thou shalt bear a letter to him straight.

THERSITES     Let me carry another to his horse, for that’s

the more capable creature.

ACHILLES     My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirred,

310

And I myself see not the bottom of it.

     Exeunt Achilles and Patroclus.

THERSITES     Would the fountain of your mind were clear

again, that I might water an ass at it! I had rather be a

tick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance. Exit.

4.1 Enter, at one door, AENEAS and a torchbearer with a torch; at another, PARIS, DEIPHOBUS, ANTENOR, DIOMEDES     the Grecian and others with torches.

PARIS     See, ho! Who is that there?

DEIPHOBUS     It is the Lord Aeneas.

AENEAS     Is the prince there in person?

Had I so good occasion to lie long

As you, Prince Paris, nothing but heavenly business

5

Should rob my bed-mate of my company.

DIOMEDES

That’s my mind too. – Good morrow, Lord Aeneas.

PARIS     A valiant Greek, Aeneas; take his hand.

Witness the process of your speech, wherein

You told how Diomed, e’en a whole week by days,

10

Did haunt you in the field.

AENEAS     Health to you, valiant sir,

During all question of the gentle truce;

But when I meet you armed, as black defiance

As heart can think or courage execute.

15

DIOMEDES     The one and other Diomed embraces.

Our bloods are now in calm; and, so long, health;

But when contention and occasion meet,

By Jove, I’ll play the hunter for thy life

With all my force, pursuit and policy.

20

AENEAS     And thou shalt hunt a lion that will fly

With his face backward. – In human gentleness,

Welcome to Troy! Now by Anchises’ life,

Welcome indeed! By Venus’ hand I swear,

No man alive can love in such a sort

25

The thing he means to kill more excellently.

DIOMEDES     We sympathize. Jove, let Aeneas live,

If to my sword his fate be not the glory,

A thousand complete courses of the sun!

But in mine emulous honour let him die,

30

With every joint a wound, and that tomorrow!

AENEAS     We know each other well.

DIOMEDES     We do, and long to know each other worse.

PARIS     This is the most despiteful’st gentle greeting,

The noblest hateful love, that e’er I heard of.

35

[to Aeneas] What business, lord, so early?

AENEAS

I was sent for to the King; but why, I know not.

PARIS

His purpose meets you. ’Twas to bring this Greek

To Calchas’ house and there to render him,

For the enfreed Antenor, the fair Cressid.

40

Let’s have your company, or, if you please,

Haste there before us.

[aside to Aeneas] I constantly do think –

Or rather, call my thought a certain knowledge –

My brother Troilus lodges there tonight.

Rouse him and give him note of our approach,

45

With the whole quality wherefore. I fear

We shall be much unwelcome.

AENEAS     [aside to Paris] That I assure you.

Troilus had rather Troy were borne to Greece

Than Cressid borne from Troy.

PARIS     [aside to Aeneas] There is no help.

The bitter disposition of the time

50

Will have it so. – On, lord; we’ll follow you.

AENEAS     Good morrow, all.     Exit with torchbearer.

PARIS     And tell me, noble Diomed, faith, tell me true,

Even in the soul of sound good fellowship,

Who, in your thoughts, merits fair Helen most,

55

Myself or Menelaus?

DIOMEDES     Both alike.

He merits well to have her that doth seek her,

Not making any scruple of her soilure,

With such a hell of pain and world of charge;

And you as well to keep her that defend her,

60

Not palating the taste of her dishonour,

With such a costly loss of wealth and friends.

He, like a puling cuckold, would drink up

The lees and dregs of a flat ’tamed piece;

You, like a lecher, out of whorish loins

65

Are pleased to breed out your inheritors.

Both merits poised, each weighs nor less nor more,

But he as he. Which heavier for a whore?

PARIS     You are too bitter to your countrywoman.

DIOMEDES     She’s bitter to her country. Hear me, Paris:

70

For every false drop in her bawdy veins

A Grecian’s life hath sunk; for every scruple

Of her contaminated carrion weight

A Trojan hath been slain. Since she could speak,

She hath not given so many good words breath

75

As for her Greeks and Trojans suffered death.

PARIS     Fair Diomed, you do as chapmen do,

Dispraise the thing that you desire to buy.

But we in silence hold this virtue well:

We’ll not commend what we intend to sell.

80

Here lies our way. Exeunt.

4.2 Enter TROILUS and CRESSIDA.

TROILUS     Dear, trouble not yourself. The morn is cold.

CRESSIDA

Then, sweet my lord, I’ll call mine uncle down.

He shall unbolt the gates.

TROILUS     Trouble him not.

To bed, to bed! Sleep kill those pretty eyes

And give as soft attachment to thy senses

5

As infants’ empty of all thought!

CRESSIDA     Good morrow, then.

TROILUS     I prithee now, to bed.

CRESSIDA     Are you aweary of me?

TROILUS     O Cressida! But that the busy day,

Waked by the lark, hath roused the ribald crows,

10

And dreaming night will hide our joys no longer,

I would not from thee.

CRESSIDA     Night hath been too brief.

TROILUS

Beshrew the witch! With venomous wights she stays

As tediously as hell, but flies the grasps of love

With wings more momentary-swift than thought.

15

You will catch cold and curse me.

CRESSIDA     Prithee, tarry. You men will never tarry.

O foolish Cressid, I might have still held off,

And then you would have tarried! – Hark, there’s

one up.

PANDARUS     [within] What’s all the doors open here?

20

TROILUS     It is your uncle.

Enter PANDARUS.

CRESSIDA

A pestilence on him! Now will he be mocking.

I shall have such a life!

PANDARUS     How now, how now, how go maidenheads?

Here, you maid! Where’s my cousin Cressid?

25

CRESSIDA

Go hang yourself, you naughty mocking uncle!

You bring me to do – and then you flout me too.

PANDARUS     To do what, to do what? – Let her say what.

– What have I brought you to do?

CRESSIDA

Come, come, beshrew your heart! You’ll ne’er be good,

30

Nor suffer others.

PANDARUS     Ha, ha! Alas, poor wretch! Ah, poor

capocchia, has ’t not slept tonight? Would he not – ah,

naughty man – let it sleep? A bugbear take him!

CRESSIDA     [to Troilus]

Did not I tell you? Would he were knocked i’th’ head!

35

[One knocks.]

Who’s that at door? Good uncle, go and see. –

My lord, come you again into my chamber.

You smile and mock me, as if I meant naughtily.

TROILUS     Ha, ha!

CRESSIDA

Come, you are deceived. I think of no such thing.

40

[Knock.]

How earnestly they knock! Pray you, come in.

I would not for half Troy have you seen here.

     Exeunt Troilus and Cressida.

PANDARUS     Who’s there? What’s the matter? Will you

beat down the door? [Opens the door.] How now,

what’s the matter?

45

Enter AENEAS.

AENEAS     Good morrow, lord, good morrow.

PANDARUS     Who’s there? My Lord Aeneas? By my troth,

I knew you not. What news with you so early?

AENEAS     Is not Prince Troilus here?

PANDARUS     Here? What should he do here?

50

AENEAS     Come, he is here, my lord. Do not deny him.

It doth import him much to speak with me.

PANDARUS     Is he here, say you? It’s more than I know, I’ll

be sworn. For my own part, I came in late. What

should he do here?

55

AENEAS

Ho, nay, then! Come, come, you’ll do him wrong

Ere you are ware. You’ll be so true to him

To be false to him. Do not you know of him,

But yet go fetch him hither. Go.

Enter TROILUS.

TROILUS     How now, what’s the matter?

60

AENEAS     My lord, I scarce have leisure to salute you,

My matter is so rash. There is at hand

Paris your brother and Deiphobus,

The Grecian Diomed, and our Antenor

Delivered to us; and for him forthwith,

65

Ere the first sacrifice, within this hour,

We must give up to Diomedes’ hand

The Lady Cressida.

TROILUS     Is it concluded so?

AENEAS     By Priam and the general state of Troy.

They are at hand and ready to effect it.

70

TROILUS     How my achievements mock me! –

I will go meet them. And, my Lord Aeneas,

We met by chance; you did not find me here.

AENEAS     Good, good my lord, the secrets of nature

Have not more gift in taciturnity.

75

     Exeunt Troilus and Aeneas.

PANDARUS     Is’t possible? No sooner got but lost? The

devil take Antenor! The young prince will go mad. A

plague upon Antenor! I would they had broke’s neck!

Enter CRESSIDA.

CRESSIDA

How now? What’s the matter? Who was here?

PANDARUS     Ah, ah!

80

CRESSIDA

Why sigh you so profoundly? Where’s my lord?

Gone? Tell me, sweet uncle, what’s the matter?

PANDARUS     Would I were as deep under the earth as I am

above!

CRESSIDA     O the gods! What’s the matter?

85

PANDARUS     Pray thee, get thee in. Would thou hadst

ne’er been born! I knew thou wouldst be his death. O,

poor gentleman! A plague upon Antenor!

CRESSIDA     Good uncle, I beseech you, on my knees I

beseech you, what’s the matter?

90

PANDARUS     Thou must be gone, wench, thou must be

gone. Thou art changed for Antenor. Thou must to

thy father and be gone from Troilus. ’Twill be his

death, ’twill be his bane; he cannot bear it.

CRESSIDA     O you immortal gods! I will not go.

95

PANDARUS     Thou must.

CRESSIDA     I will not, uncle. I have forgot my father.

I know no touch of consanguinity;

No kin, no love, no blood, no soul so near me

As the sweet Troilus. O you gods divine,

100

Make Cressid’s name the very crown of falsehood

If ever she leave Troilus! Time, force and death,

Do to this body what extremes you can;

But the strong base and building of my love

Is as the very centre of the earth,

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Drawing all things to it. I’ll go in and weep –

PANDARUS     Do, do.

CRESSIDA

Tear my bright hair and scratch my praised cheeks,

Crack my clear voice with sobs, and break my heart

With sounding ‘Troilus’. I will not go from Troy.

110

     Exeunt.

4.3 Enter PARIS, TROILUS, AENEAS, DEIPHOBUS, Antenor and DIOMEDES.

PARIS     It is great morning, and the hour prefixed

Of her delivery to this valiant Greek

Comes fast upon. Good my brother Troilus,

Tell you the lady what she is to do

And haste her to the purpose.

TROILUS     Walk into her house.

5

I’ll bring her to the Grecian presently;

And to his hand when I deliver her,

Think it an altar and thy brother Troilus

A priest, there off ’ring to it his own heart.

PARIS     I know what ’tis to love;

10

And would, as I shall pity, I could help!

Please you walk in, my lords.     Exeunt.

4.4 Enter PANDARUS and CRESSIDA.

PANDARUS     Be moderate, be moderate.

CRESSIDA     Why tell you me of moderation?

The grief is fine, full, perfect that I taste,

And violenteth in a sense as strong

As that which causeth it. How can I moderate it?

5

If I could temporize with my affection,

Or brew it to a weak and colder palate,

The like allayment could I give my grief.

My love admits no qualifying dross;

No more my grief, in such a precious loss.

10

Enter TROILUS.

PANDARUS     Here, here, here he comes. Ah, sweet ducks!

CRESSIDA     [Embraces Troilus.] O Troilus! Troilus!

PANDARUS     What a pair of spectacles is here! Let me

embrace, too. ‘O heart’, as the goodly saying is,

‘O heart, heavy heart,

15

Why sigh’st thou without breaking?’

where he answers again:

‘Because thou canst not ease thy smart

By friendship nor by speaking.’

There was never a truer rhyme. Let us cast away

20

nothing, for we may live to have need of such a verse.

We see it, we see it. How now, lambs?

TROILUS     Cressid, I love thee in so strained a purity

That the blest gods, as angry with my fancy –

More bright in zeal than the devotion which

25

Cold lips blow to their deities – take thee from me.

CRESSIDA     Have the gods envy?

PANDARUS     Ay, ay, ay, ay, ’tis too plain a case.

CRESSIDA     And is it true that I must go from Troy?

TROILUS     A hateful truth.

CRESSIDA     What, and from Troilus too?

30

TROILUS     From Troy and Troilus.

CRESSIDA     Is’t possible?

TROILUS     And suddenly, where injury of chance

Puts back leave-taking, jostles roughly by

All time of pause, rudely beguiles our lips

Of all rejoindure, forcibly prevents

35

Our locked embrasures, strangles our dear vows

Even in the birth of our own labouring breath.

We two, that with so many thousand sighs

Did buy each other, must poorly sell ourselves

With the rude brevity and discharge of one.

40

Injurious Time now with a robber’s haste

Crams his rich thiev’ry up, he knows not how.

As many farewells as be stars in heaven,

With distinct breath and consigned kisses to them,

He fumbles up into a loose adieu

45

And scants us with a single famished kiss,

Distasted with the salt of broken tears.

AENEAS     [within] My lord, is the lady ready?

TROILUS

Hark, you are called. Some say the Genius so

Cries ‘Come!’ to him that instantly must die. –

50

Bid them have patience. She shall come anon.

PANDARUS     Where are my tears? Rain, to lay this wind,

or my heart will be blown up by the root.

Exit.

CRESSIDA     I must, then, to the Grecians?

TROILUS     No remedy.

CRESSIDA     A woeful Cressid ’mongst the merry Greeks!

55

When shall we see again?

TROILUS     Hear me, my love. Be thou but true of heart –

CRESSIDA     I true? How now, what wicked deem is this?

TROILUS     Nay, we must use expostulation kindly,

For it is parting from us.

60

I speak not ‘Be thou true’ as fearing thee,

For I will throw my glove to Death himself

That there’s no maculation in thy heart;

But ‘Be thou true’, say I, to fashion in

My sequent protestation: Be thou true,

65

And I will see thee.

CRESSIDA     O, you shall be exposed, my lord, to dangers

As infinite as imminent! But I’ll be true.

TROILUS

And I’ll grow friend with danger. Wear this sleeve.

CRESSIDA     [as they exchange favours]

And you this glove. When shall I see you?

70

TROILUS     I will corrupt the Grecian sentinels,

To give thee nightly visitation.

But yet, be true.

CRESSIDA     O heavens! ‘Be true’ again?

TROILUS     Hear why I speak it, love.

The Grecian youths are full of quality;

75

Their loving well composed with gifts of nature,

And flowing o’er with arts and exercise.

How novelty may move and parts with person,

Alas, a kind of godly jealousy –

Which, I beseech you, call a virtuous sin –

80

Makes me afeard.

CRESSIDA     O heavens, you love me not!

TROILUS     Die I a villain then!

In this I do not call your faith in question

So mainly as my merit. I cannot sing,

Nor heel the high lavolt, nor sweeten talk,

85

Nor play at subtle games – fair virtues all,

To which the Grecians are most prompt and

pregnant.

But I can tell that in each grace of these

There lurks a still and dumb-discoursive devil

That tempts most cunningly. But be not tempted.

90

CRESSIDA     Do you think I will?

TROILUS     No.

But something may be done that we will not;

And sometimes we are devils to ourselves,

When we will tempt the frailty of our powers,

95

Presuming on their changeful potency.

AENEAS     [within] Nay, good my lord –

TROILUS     Come, kiss, and let us part.

PARIS     [within] Brother Troilus!

TROILUS     [Calls out.] Good brother, come you hither,

And bring Aeneas and the Grecian with you.

CRESSIDA     My lord, will you be true?

100

TROILUS     Who, I? Alas, it is my vice, my fault.

Whiles others fish with craft for great opinion,

I with great truth catch mere simplicity;

Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns,

With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.

105

Enter AENEAS, PARIS, Antenor, DEIPHOBUS     and DIOMEDES.

Fear not my truth. The moral of my wit

Is ‘plain and true’; there’s all the reach of it. –

Welcome, Sir Diomed. Here is the lady

Which for Antenor we deliver you.

At the port, lord, I’ll give her to thy hand

110

And by the way possess thee what she is.

Entreat her fair and, by my soul, fair Greek,

If e’er thou stand at mercy of my sword,

Name Cressid, and thy life shall be as safe

As Priam is in Ilium.

DIOMEDES     Fair Lady Cressid,

115

So please you, save the thanks this prince expects.

The lustre in your eye, heaven in your cheek,

Pleads your fair usage; and to Diomed

You shall be mistress and command him wholly.

TROILUS     Grecian, thou dost not use me courteously,

120

To shame the zeal of my petition to thee

In praising her. I tell thee, lord of Greece,

She is as far high-soaring o’er thy praises

As thou unworthy to be called her servant.

I charge thee use her well, even for my charge;

125

For, by the dreadful Pluto, if thou dost not,

Though the great bulk Achilles be thy guard,

I’ll cut thy throat.

DIOMEDES     O, be not moved, Prince Troilus.

Let me be privileged by my place and message

To be a speaker free. When I am hence,

130

I’ll answer to my lust. And know you, lord,

I’ll nothing do on charge. To her own worth

She shall be prized; but that you say ‘Be’t so’,

I’ll speak it in my spirit and honour: ‘No’.

TROILUS     Come, to the port. – I’ll tell thee, Diomed,

135

This brave shall oft make thee to hide thy head. –

Lady, give me your hand and, as we walk,

To our own selves bend we our needful talk.

     Exeunt Troilus, Cressida and Diomedes.

     Sound trumpet within.

PARIS     Hark, Hector’s trumpet!

AENEAS     How have we spent this morning!

The prince must think me tardy and remiss,

140

That swore to ride before him in the field.

PARIS

’Tis Troilus’ fault. Come, come, to field with him.

DEIPHOBUS     Let us make ready straight.

AENEAS     Yea, with a bridegroom’s fresh alacrity,

Let us address to tend on Hector’s heels.

145

The glory of our Troy doth this day lie

On his fair worth and single chivalry. Exeunt.

4.5 Enter AJAX, armed, ACHILLES, PATROCLUS, AGAMEMNON, MENELAUS, ULYSSES, NESTOR, etc. and trumpeter.

AGAMEMNON     [to Ajax]

Here art thou in appointment fresh and fair,

Anticipating time with starting courage.

Give with thy trumpet a loud note to Troy,

Thou dreadful Ajax, that the appalled air

May pierce the head of the great combatant

5

And hale him hither.

AJAX     [Gives money.] Thou, trumpet, there’s my purse.

Now crack thy lungs and split thy brazen pipe.

Blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek

Outswell the colic of puffed Aquilon.

Come, stretch thy chest, and let thy eyes spout blood;

10

Thou blowest for Hector.     [Trumpet sounds.]

ULYSSES     No trumpet answers.

ACHILLES     ’Tis but early days.

Enter DIOMEDES with CRESSIDA.

AGAMEMNON

Is not yond Diomed, with Calchas’ daughter?

ULYSSES     ’Tis he. I ken the manner of his gait;

15

He rises on the toe. That spirit of his

In aspiration lifts him from the earth.

AGAMEMNON     Is this the Lady Cressid?

DIOMEDES     Even she.

AGAMEMNON

Most dearly welcome to the Greeks, sweet lady.

[Kisses her.]

NESTOR     Our general doth salute you with a kiss.

20

ULYSSES     Yet is the kindness but particular;

’Twere better she were kissed in general.

NESTOR

And very courtly counsel. I’ll begin. [Kisses her.]

So much for Nestor.

ACHILLES     I’ll take that winter from your lips, fair lady.

25

ACHILLES bids you welcome. [Kisses her.]

MENELAUS     I had good argument for kissing once.

PATROCLUS     But that’s no argument for kissing now;

For thus popped Paris in his hardiment,

And parted thus you and your argument. [Kisses her.]

30

ULYSSES     O deadly gall and theme of all our scorns,

For which we lose our heads to gild his horns!

PATROCLUS     The first was Menelaus’ kiss; this, mine.

PATROCLUS kisses you. [Kisses her again.]

MENELAUS     O, this is trim!

PATROCLUS     Paris and I kiss evermore for him.

35

MENELAUS     I’ll have my kiss, sir. – Lady, by your leave.

CRESSIDA     In kissing, do you render or receive?

MENELAUS     Both take and give.

CRESSIDA     I’ll make my match to live,

The kiss you take is better than you give;

Therefore no kiss.

40

MENELAUS

I’ll give you boot; I’ll give you three for one.

CRESSIDA     You are an odd man; give even, or give none.

MENELAUS     An odd man, lady? Every man is odd.

CRESSIDA     No, Paris is not, for you know ’tis true

That you are odd, and he is even with you.

45

MENELAUS     You fillip me o’th’ head.

CRESSIDA     No, I’ll be sworn.

ULYSSES     It were no match, your nail against his horn.

May I, sweet lady, beg a kiss of you?

CRESSIDA     You may.

ULYSSES     I do desire it.

CRESSIDA     Why, beg too.

ULYSSES     Why then, for Venus’ sake, give me a kiss,

50

When Helen is a maid again, and his –

CRESSIDA     I am your debtor; claim it when ’tis due.

ULYSSES     Never’s my day, and then a kiss of you.

DIOMEDES

Lady, a word. I’ll bring you to your father.

[They talk apart.]

NESTOR     A woman of quick sense.

ULYSSES     Fie, fie upon her!

55

There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,

Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out

At every joint and motive of her body.

O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue,

That give accosting welcome ere it comes,

60

And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts

To every tickling reader! Set them down

For sluttish spoils of opportunity

And daughters of the game.

     Exeunt Diomedes and Cressida.

Flourish. Enter all of Troy: HECTOR armed, PARIS, AENEAS, HELENUS, TROILUS and attendants.

ALL     The Trojan’s trumpet.

AGAMEMNON     Yonder comes the troop.

65

AENEAS

Hail, all you state of Greece! What shall be done

To him that victory commands? Or do you purpose

A victor shall be known? Will you the knights

Shall to the edge of all extremity

Pursue each other, or shall they be divided

70

By any voice or order of the field?

HECTOR bade ask.

AGAMEMNON     Which way would Hector have it?

AENEAS     He cares not; he’ll obey conditions.

AGAMEMNON     ’Tis done like Hector.

ACHILLES     But securely done,

A little proudly, and great deal disprizing

75

The knight opposed.

AENEAS     If not Achilles, sir,

What is your name?

ACHILLES     If not Achilles, nothing.

AENEAS     Therefore Achilles. But whate’er, know this:

In the extremity of great and little,

Valour and pride excel themselves in Hector,

80

The one almost as infinite as all,

The other blank as nothing. Weigh him well,

And that which looks like pride is courtesy.

This Ajax is half made of Hector’s blood,

In love whereof half Hector stays at home;

85

Half heart, half hand, half Hector comes to seek

This blended knight, half Trojan and half Greek.

ACHILLES     A maiden battle, then? O, I perceive you.

Enter DIOMEDES.

AGAMEMNON     Here is Sir Diomed. – Go, gentle knight;

Stand by our Ajax. As you and Lord Aeneas

90

Consent upon the order of their fight,

So be it, either to the uttermost

Or else a breath. The combatants being kin

Half stints their strife before their strokes begin.

[Hector and Ajax enter the lists.]

ULYSSES     They are opposed already.

95

AGAMEMNON     [to Ulysses]

What Trojan is that same that looks so heavy?

ULYSSES     The youngest son of Priam, a true knight,

Not yet mature, yet matchless firm of word,

Speaking in deeds and deedless in his tongue;

Not soon provoked, nor being provoked soon calmed;

100

His heart and hand both open and both free.

For what he has he gives; what thinks, he shows;

Yet gives he not till judgement guide his bounty,

Nor dignifies an impair thought with breath;

Manly as Hector, but more dangerous,

105

For Hector in his blaze of wrath subscribes

To tender objects, but he in heat of action

Is more vindicative than jealous love.

They call him Troilus, and on him erect

A second hope, as fairly built as Hector.

110

Thus says Aeneas, one that knows the youth

Even to his inches, and with private soul

Did in great Ilium thus translate him to me.

     [Alarum. Hector and Ajax fight.]

AGAMEMNON     They are in action.

NESTOR     Now, Ajax, hold thine own!

115

TROILUS     Hector, thou sleep’st. Awake thee!

AGAMEMNON

His blows are well disposed. – There, Ajax!

     [Trumpets cease.]

DIOMEDES     You must no more.

AENEAS     Princes, enough, so please you.

AJAX     I am not warm yet. Let us fight again.

DIOMEDES     As Hector pleases.

HECTOR     Why, then will I no more.

120

Thou art, great lord, my father’s sister’s son,

A cousin-german to great Priam’s seed.

The obligation of our blood forbids

A gory emulation ’twixt us twain.

Were thy commixtion Greek and Trojan so

125

That thou couldst say, ‘This hand is Grecian all,

And this is Trojan; the sinews of this leg

All Greek, and this all Troy; my mother’s blood

Runs on the dexter cheek, and this sinister

Bounds in my father’s’, by Jove multipotent,

130

Thou shouldst not bear from me a Greekish member

Wherein my sword had not impressure made

Of our rank feud. But the just gods gainsay

That any drop thou borrowed’st from thy mother,

My sacred aunt, should by my mortal sword

135

Be drained. Let me embrace thee, Ajax.

By him that thunders, thou hast lusty arms!

HECTOR would have them fall upon him thus.

Cousin, all honour to thee! [They embrace.]

AJAX     I thank thee, Hector.

Thou art too gentle and too free a man.

140

I came to kill thee, cousin, and bear hence

A great addition earned in thy death.

HECTOR     Not Neoptolemus so mirable,

On whose bright crest Fame with her loud’st ‘Oyez’

Cries, ‘This is he’, could promise to himself

145

A thought of added honour torn from Hector.

AENEAS     There is expectance here from both the sides

What further you will do.

HECTOR     We’ll answer it:

The issue is embracement. – Ajax, farewell.

[They embrace again.]

AJAX     If I might in entreaties find success –

150

As seld I have the chance – I would desire

My famous cousin to our Grecian tents.

DIOMEDES     ’Tis Agamemnon’s wish; and great Achilles

Doth long to see unarmed the valiant Hector.

HECTOR     Aeneas, call my brother Troilus to me,

155

And signify this loving interview

To the expecters of our Trojan part;

Desire them home. [to Ajax] Give me thy hand, my cousin.

I will go eat with thee, and see your knights.

[Agamemnon and the rest come forward.]

AJAX     Great Agamemnon comes to meet us here.

160

HECTOR     [to Aeneas]

The worthiest of them tell me name by name;

But for Achilles, mine own searching eyes

Shall find him by his large and portly size.

AGAMEMNON     Worthy of arms! As welcome as to one

That would be rid of such an enemy –

165

But that’s no welcome. Understand more clear:

What’s past and what’s to come is strewed with husks

And formless ruin of oblivion;

But in this extant moment, faith and troth,

Strained purely from all hollow bias-drawing,

170

Bids thee, with most divine integrity,

From heart of very heart, great Hector, welcome.

HECTOR     I thank thee, most imperious Agamemnon.

AGAMEMNON     [to Troilus]

My well-famed lord of Troy, no less to you.

MENELAUS

Let me confirm my princely brother’s greeting.

175

You brace of warlike brothers, welcome hither.

[Embraces Hector and Troilus.]

HECTOR     [to Aeneas] Who must we answer?

AENEAS     The noble Menelaus.

HECTOR     O, you, my lord? By Mars his gauntlet, thanks!

Mock not that I affect th’untraded oath;

Your quondam wife swears still by Venus’ glove.

180

She’s well, but bade me not commend her to you.

MENELAUS     Name her not now, sir; she’s a deadly theme.

HECTOR     O, pardon! I offend.

NESTOR     I have, thou gallant Trojan, seen thee oft,

Labouring for destiny, make cruel way

185

Through ranks of Greekish youth; and I have seen thee,

As hot as Perseus, spur thy Phrygian steed,

And seen thee scorning forfeits and subduements,

When thou hast hung thy advanced sword i’th’ air,

Not letting it decline on the declined,

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That I have said to some my standers-by:

‘Lo, Jupiter is yonder, dealing life!’

And I have seen thee pause and take thy breath,

When that a ring of Greeks have hemmed thee in,

Like an Olympian, wrestling. This have I seen;

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But this thy countenance, still locked in steel,

I never saw till now. I knew thy grandsire,

And once fought with him. He was a soldier good,

But by great Mars, the captain of us all,

Never like thee. Let an old man embrace thee;

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And, worthy warrior, welcome to our tents.

     [They embrace.]

AENEAS     [to Hector] ’Tis the old Nestor.

HECTOR     Let me embrace thee, good old chronicle,

That hast so long walked hand in hand with time.

Most reverend Nestor, I am glad to clasp thee.

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NESTOR

I would my arms could match thee in contention

As they contend with thee in courtesy.

HECTOR     I would they could.

NESTOR

Ha! By this white beard, I’d fight with thee tomorrow.

Well, welcome, welcome. I have seen the time!

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ULYSSES     I wonder now how yonder city stands

When we have here her base and pillar by us.

HECTOR     I know your favour, Lord Ulysses, well.

Ah, sir, there’s many a Greek and Trojan dead

Since first I saw yourself and Diomed

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In Ilium, on your Greekish embassy.

ULYSSES     Sir, I foretold you then what would ensue.

My prophecy is but half his journey yet;

For yonder walls, that pertly front your town,

Yon towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds,

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Must kiss their own feet.

HECTOR     I must not believe you.

There they stand yet, and modestly I think

The fall of every Phrygian stone will cost

A drop of Grecian blood. The end crowns all,

And that old common arbitrator, Time,

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Will one day end it.

ULYSSES     So to him we leave it.

Most gentle and most valiant Hector, welcome.

After the general, I beseech you next

To feast with me and see me at my tent.

ACHILLES     I shall forestall thee, Lord Ulysses, thou!

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Now, Hector, I have fed mine eyes on thee;

I have with exact view perused thee, Hector,

And quoted joint by joint.

HECTOR     Is this Achilles?

ACHILLES     I am Achilles.

HECTOR     Stand fair, I pray thee. Let me look on thee.

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ACHILLES     Behold thy fill.

HECTOR     Nay, I have done already.

ACHILLES     Thou art too brief. I will the second time,

As I would buy thee, view thee limb by limb.

HECTOR     O, like a book of sport thou’lt read me o’er;

But there’s more in me than thou understand’st.

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Why dost thou so oppress me with thine eye?

ACHILLES

Tell me, you heavens, in which part of his body

Shall I destroy him? Whether there, or there, or there?

That I may give the local wound a name

And make distinct the very breach whereout

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HECTOR’s great spirit flew. Answer me, heavens!

HECTOR     It would discredit the blest gods, proud man,

To answer such a question. Stand again.

Think’st thou to catch my life so pleasantly

As to prenominate in nice conjecture

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Where thou wilt hit me dead?

ACHILLES     I tell thee, yea.

HECTOR     Wert thou the oracle to tell me so,

I’d not believe thee. Henceforth guard thee well;

For I’ll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there,

But, by the forge that stithied Mars his helm,

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I’ll kill thee everywhere, yea, o’er and o’er. –

You wisest Grecians, pardon me this brag;

His insolence draws folly from my lips.

But I’ll endeavour deeds to match these words,

Or may I never –

AJAX     Do not chafe thee, cousin.

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And you, Achilles, let these threats alone,

Till accident or purpose bring you to’t.

You may have every day enough of Hector,

If you have stomach. The general state, I fear,

Can scarce entreat you to be odd with him.

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HECTOR     [to Achilles]

I pray you, let us see you in the field.

We have had pelting wars since you refused

The Grecians’ cause.

ACHILLES     Dost thou entreat me, Hector?

Tomorrow do I meet thee, fell as death;

Tonight all friends.

HECTOR     Thy hand upon that match.

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AGAMEMNON

First, all you peers of Greece, go to my tent;

There in the full convive we. Afterwards,

As Hector’s leisure and your bounties shall

Concur together, severally entreat him.

Beat loud the taborins, let the trumpets blow,

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That this great soldier may his welcome know.

     Flourish. Exeunt all but Troilus and Ulysses.

TROILUS     My Lord Ulysses, tell me, I beseech you,

In what place of the field doth Calchas keep?

ULYSSES     At Menelaus’ tent, most princely Troilus.

There Diomed doth feast with him tonight,

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Who neither looks on heaven nor on earth,

But gives all gaze and bent of amorous view

On the fair Cressid.

TROILUS     Shall I, sweet lord, be bound to you so much,

After we part from Agamemnon’s tent,

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To bring me thither?

ULYSSES     You shall command me, sir.

As gentle tell me, of what honour was

This Cressida in Troy? Had she no lover there

That wails her absence?

TROILUS     O sir, to such as boasting show their scars

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A mock is due. Will you walk on, my lord?

She was beloved, she loved; she is, and doth;

But still sweet love is food for Fortune’s tooth.

     Exeunt.

5.1 Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS.

ACHILLES

I’ll heat his blood with Greekish wine tonight,

Which with my scimitar I’ll cool tomorrow.

PATROCLUS, let us feast him to the height.

PATROCLUS     Here comes Thersites.

Enter THERSITES.

ACHILLES     How now, thou core of envy?

Thou crusty batch of nature, what’s the news?

5

THERSITES     Why, thou picture of what thou seemest and

idol of idiot-worshippers, here’s a letter for thee.

ACHILLES     From whence, fragment?

THERSITES     Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy.

[Gives a letter. Achilles stands aside to read it.]

PATROCLUS     Who keeps the tent now?

10

THERSITES     The surgeon’s box, or the patient’s wound.

PATROCLUS     Well said, adversity. And what need these

tricks?

THERSITES     Prithee, be silent, boy. I profit not by thy

talk. Thou art thought to be Achilles’ male varlet.

15

PATROCLUS     Male varlet, you rogue? What’s that?

THERSITES     Why, his masculine whore. Now, the rotten

diseases of the south, guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs,

loads o’ gravel i’th’ back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw

eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of

20

imposthume, sciaticas, limekilns i’th’ palm, incurable

bone-ache and the rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take

and take again such preposterous discoveries!

PATROCLUS     Why, thou damnable box of envy, thou,

what mean’st thou to curse thus?

25

THERSITES     Do I curse thee?

PATROCLUS     Why, no, you ruinous butt, you whoreson

indistinguishable cur, no.

THERSITES     No? Why art thou then exasperate, thou

idle immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green

30

sarsenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal’s

purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered with

such waterflies, diminutives of nature!

PATROCLUS     Out, gall!

THERSITES     Finch egg!

35

ACHILLES     My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite

From my great purpose in tomorrow’s battle.

Here is a letter from Queen Hecuba,

A token from her daughter, my fair love,

Both taxing me and gaging me to keep

40

An oath that I have sworn. I will not break it.

Fall, Greeks; fail, fame; honour, or go or stay;

My major vow lies here; this I’ll obey.

Come, come, Thersites, help to trim my tent;

This night in banqueting must all be spent.

45

Away, Patroclus!     Exit with Patroclus.

THERSITES     With too much blood and too little brain,

these two may run mad; but if with too much brain and

too little blood they do, I’ll be a curer of madmen.

Here’s Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough, and one

50

that loves quails, but he has not so much brain as ear-

wax. And the goodly transformation of Jupiter there,

his brother, the bull – the primitive statue and oblique

memorial of cuckolds, a thrifty shoeing-horn in a

chain, hanging at his brother’s leg – to what form but

55

that he is should wit larded with malice and malice

farced with wit turn him to? To an ass were nothing; he

is both ass and ox. To an ox were nothing; he is both ox

and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a

lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I

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would not care; but to be Menelaus! I would conspire

against destiny. Ask me not what I would be, if I were

not Thersites, for I care not to be the louse of a lazar so

I were not Menelaus. – Heyday! Sprites and fires!

Enter HECTOR, TROILUS, AJAX, AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, NESTOR, MENELAUS and DIOMEDES, with lights.

AGAMEMNON     We go wrong, we go wrong.

AJAX     No, yonder ’tis –

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There, where we see the light.

HECTOR     I trouble you.

AJAX     No, not a whit.

Enter ACHILLES.

ULYSSES     Here comes himself to guide you.

ACHILLES

Welcome, brave Hector. Welcome, princes all.

AGAMEMNON

So now, fair prince of Troy, I bid good night.

Ajax commands the guard to tend on you.

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HECTOR

Thanks, and good night to the Greeks’ general.

MENELAUS     Good night, my lord.

HECTOR     Good night, sweet Lord Menelaus.

THERSITES     [aside] Sweet draught. ‘Sweet’, quoth ’a?

Sweet sink, sweet sewer.

ACHILLES

Good night and welcome both at once to those

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That go or tarry.

AGAMEMNON     Good night.

     Exeunt Agamemnon and Menelaus.

ACHILLES     Old Nestor tarries; and you too, Diomed,

Keep Hector company an hour or two.

DIOMEDES     I cannot, lord. I have important business,

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The tide whereof is now. – Good night, great Hector.

HECTOR     Give me your hand.

ULYSSES     [aside to Troilus]

Follow his torch; he goes to Calchas’ tent.

I’ll keep you company.

TROILUS     [aside to Ulysses] Sweet sir, you honour me.

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HECTOR     And so, good night.

     Exit Diomedes; Ulysses and Troilus following.

ACHILLES     Come, come, enter my tent.

     Exeunt Achilles, Hector, Ajax and Nestor.

THERSITES     That same Diomed’s a false-hearted rogue,

a most unjust knave. I will no more trust him when he

leers than I will a serpent when he hisses. He will

spend his mouth and promise, like Brabbler the

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hound, but when he performs, astronomers foretell it;

it is prodigious, there will come some change. The sun

borrows of the moon when Diomed keeps his word. I

will rather leave to see Hector than not to dog him.

They say he keeps a Trojan drab, and uses the traitor

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CALCHAS his tent. I’ll after. Nothing but lechery! All

incontinent varlets!

Exit.

5.2 Enter DIOMEDES.

DIOMEDES     What, are you up here, ho? Speak.

CALCHAS     [within] Who calls?

DIOMEDES     Diomed. Calchas, I think? Where’s your

daughter?

CALCHAS     [within] She comes to you.

5

Enter TROILUS and ULYSSES at a distance, and, separate from them, THERSITES.

ULYSSES     [aside to Troilus]

Stand where the torch may not discover us.

Enter CRESSIDA.

TROILUS     [aside to Ulysses]

Cressid comes forth to him.

DIOMEDES     [to Cressida] How now, my charge?

CRESSIDA

Now, my sweet guardian. Hark, a word with you.

[Whispers to him.]

TROILUS     [aside] Yea, so familiar?

ULYSSES     [aside to Troilus] She will sing any man at first

10

sight.

THERSITES     [aside] And any man may sing her, if he can

take her clef. She’s noted.

DIOMEDES     Will you remember?

CRESSIDA     Remember? Yes.

15

DIOMEDES     Nay, but do, then,

And let your mind be coupled with your words.

TROILUS     [aside] What should she remember?

ULYSSES     [aside to Troilus] List!

CRESSIDA

Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly.

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THERSITES     [aside] Roguery!

DIOMEDES     Nay then –

CRESSIDA     I’ll tell you what –

DIOMEDES

Foh, foh, come, tell a pin! You are forsworn.

CRESSIDA

In faith, I cannot. What would you have me do?

25

THERSITES     [aside] A juggling trick: to be secretly open.

DIOMEDES

What did you swear you would bestow on me?

CRESSIDA     I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath.

Bid me do anything but that, sweet Greek.

DIOMEDES     Good night. [Starts to leave.]

30

TROILUS     [aside] Hold, patience!

ULYSSES     [aside to Troilus] How now, Trojan?

CRESSIDA     Diomed –

DIOMEDES

No, no, good night. I’ll be your fool no more.

TROILUS     [aside] Thy better must.

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CRESSIDA     Hark, one word in your ear.

     [Whispers to him.]

TROILUS     [aside] O plague and madness!

ULYSSES     [aside to Troilus]

You are moved, Prince. Let us depart, I pray you,

Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself

To wrathful terms. This place is dangerous,

40

The time right deadly. I beseech you, go.

TROILUS     [aside to Ulysses]

Behold, I pray you.

ULYSSES     [aside to Troilus] Nay, good my lord, go off.

You flow to great distraction. Come, my lord.

TROILUS     [aside to Ulysses]

I prithee, stay.

ULYSSES     [aside to Troilus] You have not patience. Come.

TROILUS     [aside to Ulysses]

I pray you, stay. By hell and all hell’s torments,

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I will not speak a word.

DIOMEDES     [Starts to leave.]

And so, good night.

CRESSIDA     Nay, but you part in anger.

TROILUS     [aside]

Doth that grieve thee? O withered truth!

ULYSSES     [aside to Troilus]

Why, how now, lord?

TROILUS     [aside to Ulysses] By Jove, I will be patient.

CRESSIDA     Guardian! Why, Greek!

DIOMEDES     Foh, foh! Adieu. You palter.

50

CRESSIDA     In faith, I do not. Come hither once again.

ULYSSES     [aside to Troilus]

You shake, my lord, at something. Will you go?

You will break out.

TROILUS     [aside] She strokes his cheek!

ULYSSES     [aside to Troilus] Come, come.

TROILUS     [aside to Ulysses]

Nay, stay. By Jove, I will not speak a word.

There is between my will and all offences

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A guard of patience. Stay a little while.

THERSITES     [aside] How the devil Luxury, with his fat

rump and potato finger, tickles these together! Fry,

lechery, fry.

DIOMEDES     [to Cressida] But will you, then?

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CRESSIDA     In faith I will, la. Never trust me else.

DIOMEDES     Give me some token for the surety of it.

CRESSIDA     I’ll fetch you one.

Exit.

ULYSSES     [aside to Troilus]

You have sworn patience.

TROILUS     [aside to Ulysses] Fear me not, sweet lord.

I will not be myself, nor have cognition

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Of what I feel. I am all patience.

Enter CRESSIDA with Troilus’ sleeve.

THERSITES     [aside] Now the pledge; now, now, now!

CRESSIDA     Here, Diomed, keep this sleeve.

[Gives him the sleeve.]

TROILUS     [aside] O beauty, where is thy faith?

ULYSSES     [aside to Troilus] My lord –

70

TROILUS     [aside to Ulysses]

I will be patient; outwardly I will.

CRESSIDA     You look upon that sleeve? Behold it well.

He loved me – O false wench! – Give’t me again.

[Snatches the sleeve.]

DIOMEDES     Whose was’t?

CRESSIDA     It is no matter, now I have’t again.

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I will not meet with you tomorrow night.

I prithee, Diomed, visit me no more.

THERSITES     [aside] Now she sharpens. Well said,

whetstone!

DIOMEDES     I shall have it.

80

CRESSIDA     What, this?

DIOMEDES     Ay, that.

CRESSIDA     O all you gods! – O pretty, pretty pledge!

Thy master now lies thinking on his bed

Of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove,

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And gives memorial dainty kisses to it –

As I kiss thee.

[He grabs the sleeve; she tries to get it back.]

DIOMEDES     Nay, do not snatch it from me.

CRESSIDA

He that takes that doth take my heart withal.

DIOMEDES     I had your heart before. This follows it.

TROILUS     [aside] I did swear patience.

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CRESSIDA

You shall not have it, Diomed, faith, you shall not.

I’ll give you something else.

DIOMEDES     I will have this. Whose was it?

CRESSIDA     It is no matter.

DIOMEDES     Come, tell me whose it was.

95

CRESSIDA

’Twas one’s that loved me better than you will.

But now you have it, take it.

DIOMEDES     Whose was it?

CRESSIDA     By all Diana’s waiting-women yond,

And by herself, I will not tell you whose.

DIOMEDES     Tomorrow will I wear it on my helm

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And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.

TROILUS     [aside]

Wert thou the devil, and wor’st it on thy horn,

It should be challenged.

CRESSIDA

Well, well, ’tis done, ’tis past. And yet it is not;

I will not keep my word.

DIOMEDES     Why then, farewell.

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Thou never shalt mock Diomed again.

     [Starts to leave.]

CRESSIDA     You shall not go. One cannot speak a word

But it straight starts you.

DIOMEDES     I do not like this fooling.

TROILUS     [aside]

Nor I, by Pluto; but that that likes not you

Pleases me best.

DIOMEDES     What, shall I come? The hour?

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CRESSIDA

Ay, come. – O Jove! – Do, come. – I shall be plagued.

DIOMEDES     Farewell till then.    Exit.

CRESSIDA     Good night. I prithee, come. –

TROILUS, farewell! One eye yet looks on thee,

But with my heart the other eye doth see.

Ah, poor our sex! This fault in us I find:

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The error of our eye directs our mind.

What error leads must err. O, then conclude:

Minds swayed by eyes are full of turpitude.    Exit.

THERSITES     [aside]

A proof of strength she could not publish more,

Unless she said, ‘My mind is now turned whore’.

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ULYSSES     All’s done, my lord.

TROILUS     It is.

ULYSSES     Why stay we, then?

TROILUS     To make a recordation to my soul

Of every syllable that here was spoke.

But if I tell how these two did co-act,

Shall I not lie in publishing a truth?

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Sith yet there is a credence in my heart,

An esperance so obstinately strong,

That doth invert th’attest of eyes and ears,

As if those organs had deceptious functions,

Created only to calumniate.

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Was Cressid here?

ULYSSES     I cannot conjure, Trojan.

TROILUS     She was not, sure.

ULYSSES     Most sure she was.

TROILUS     Why, my negation hath no taste of madness.

ULYSSES

Nor mine, my lord. Cressid was here but now.

TROILUS     Let it not be believed, for womanhood!

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Think, we had mothers. Do not give advantage

To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme

For depravation, to square the general sex

By Cressid’s rule. Rather think this not Cressid.

ULYSSES

What hath she done, Prince, that can soil our mothers?

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TROILUS     Nothing at all, unless that this were she.

THERSITES     [aside] Will ’a swagger himself out on’s own

eyes?

TROILUS     This she? No, this is Diomed’s Cressida.

If beauty have a soul, this is not she;

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If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies,

If sanctimony be the gods’ delight,

If there be rule in unity itself,

This is not she. O, madness of discourse,

That cause sets up with and against itself!

150

Bifold authority, where reason can revolt

Without perdition, and loss assume all reason

Without revolt! This is and is not Cressid.

Within my soul there doth conduce a fight

Of this strange nature, that a thing inseparate

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Divides more wider than the sky and earth,

And yet the spacious breadth of this division

Admits no orifex for a point as subtle

As Ariachne’s broken woof to enter.

Instance, O instance, strong as Pluto’s gates,

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Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven;

Instance, O instance, strong as heaven itself,

The bonds of heaven are slipped, dissolved and loosed,

And with another knot, five-finger-tied,

The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,

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The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics

Of her o’ereaten faith, are bound to Diomed.

ULYSSES     May worthy Troilus be half attached

With that which here his passion doth express?

TROILUS     Ay, Greek, and that shall be divulged well

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In characters as red as Mars his heart

Inflamed with Venus. Never did young man fancy

With so eternal and so fixed a soul.

Hark, Greek: as much as I do Cressid love,

So much by weight hate I her Diomed.

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That sleeve is mine that he’ll bear in his helm.

Were it a casque composed by Vulcan’s skill,

My sword should bite it. Not the dreadful spout

Which shipmen do the hurricano call,

Constringed in mass by the almighty sun,

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Shall dizzy with more clamour Neptune’s ear

In his descent than shall my prompted sword

Falling on Diomed.

THERSITES     [aside] He’ll tickle it for his concupy.

TROILUS     O Cressid! O false Cressid! False, false, false!

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Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,

And they’ll seem glorious.

ULYSSES     O, contain yourself.

Your passion draws ears hither.

Enter AENEAS.

AENEAS     [to Troilus]

I have been seeking you this hour, my lord.

HECTOR, by this, is arming him in Troy.

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Ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home.

TROILUS

Have with you, Prince. – My courteous lord, adieu. –

Farewell, revolted fair! – And, Diomed,

Stand fast, and wear a castle on thy head!

ULYSSES     I’ll bring you to the gates.

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TROILUS     Accept distracted thanks.

     Exeunt Troilus, Aeneas and Ulysses.

THERSITES     Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I

would croak like a raven; I would bode, I would

bode. Patroclus will give me anything for the

intelligence of this whore. The parrot will not do

200

more for an almond than he for a commodious drab.

Lechery, lechery, still wars and lechery; nothing

else holds fashion. A burning devil take them!

Exit.

5.3 Enter HECTOR, armed and ANDROMACHE.

ANDROMACHE

When was my lord so much ungently tempered

To stop his ears against admonishment?

Unarm, unarm, and do not fight today.

HECTOR     You train me to offend you. Get you in.

By all the everlasting gods, I’ll go!

5

ANDROMACHE

My dreams will sure prove ominous to the day.

HECTOR     No more, I say.

Enter CASSANDRA.

CASSANDRA     Where is my brother Hector?

ANDROMACHE

Here, sister, armed, and bloody in intent.

Consort with me in loud and dear petition;

Pursue we him on knees. For I have dreamt

10

Of bloody turbulence, and this whole night

Hath nothing been but shapes and forms of slaughter.

CASSANDRA     O, ’tis true.

HECTOR[Calls out.]    Ho! Bid my trumpet sound!

CASSANDRA

No notes of sally, for the heavens, sweet brother.

HECTOR     Begone, I say. The gods have heard me swear.

15

CASSANDRA

The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows.

They are polluted off ’rings, more abhorred

Than spotted livers in the sacrifice.

ANDROMACHE [to Hector]

O, be persuaded! Do not count it holy

To hurt by being just. It is as lawful,

20

For we would give much, to use violent thefts,

And rob in the behalf of charity.

CASSANDRA

It is the purpose that makes strong the vow,

But vows to every purpose must not hold.

Unarm, sweet Hector.

HECTOR     Hold you still, I say.

25

Mine honour keeps the weather of my fate.

Life every man holds dear, but the dear man

Holds honour far more precious-dear than life.

Enter TROILUS armed.

How now, young man, mean’st thou to fight today?

ANDROMACHE     Cassandra, call my father to persuade.

30

     Exit Cassandra.

HECTOR

No, faith, young Troilus, doff thy harness, youth.

I am today i’th’ vein of chivalry.

Let grow thy sinews till their knots be strong,

And tempt not yet the brushes of the war.

Unarm thee, go, and doubt thou not, brave boy,

35

I’ll stand today for thee and me and Troy.

TROILUS     Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you,

Which better fits a lion than a man.

HECTOR

What vice is that? Good Troilus, chide me for it.

TROILUS     When many times the captive Grecian falls,

40

Even in the fan and wind of your fair sword,

You bid them rise and live.

HECTOR     O, ’tis fair play.

TROILUS     Fool’s play, by heaven, Hector.

HECTOR     How now, how now?

TROILUS     For th’ love of all the gods,

Let’s leave the hermit Pity with our mothers,

45

And when we have our armours buckled on,

The venomed vengeance ride upon our swords,

Spur them to ruthful work, rein them from ruth.

HECTOR     Fie, savage, fie!

TROILUS     Hector, then ’tis wars.

HECTOR     Troilus, I would not have you fight today.

50

TROILUS     Who should withhold me?

Not fate, obedience, nor the hand of Mars

Beck’ning with fiery truncheon my retire;

Not Priamus and Hecuba on knees,

Their eyes o’ergalled with recourse of tears;

55

Nor you, my brother, with your true sword drawn

Opposed to hinder me, should stop my way,

But by my ruin.

Enter PRIAM and CASSANDRA.

CASSANDRA     Lay hold upon him, Priam, hold him fast;

He is thy crutch. Now if thou loose thy stay,

60

Thou on him leaning, and all Troy on thee,

Fall all together.

PRIAM     Come, Hector, come. Go back.

Thy wife hath dreamt, thy mother hath had visions,

CASSANDRA doth foresee, and I myself

Am like a prophet suddenly enrapt

65

To tell thee that this day is ominous.

Therefore, come back.

HECTOR     Aeneas is afield,

And I do stand engaged to many Greeks,

Even in the faith of valour, to appear

This morning to them.

PRIAM     Ay, but thou shalt not go.

70

HECTOR     I must not break my faith.

You know me dutiful; therefore, dear sir,

Let me not shame respect, but give me leave

To take that course by your consent and voice

Which you do here forbid me, royal Priam.

75

CASSANDRA     O Priam, yield not to him!

ANDROMACHE     Do not, dear father.

HECTOR     Andromache, I am offended with you.

Upon the love you bear me, get you in.

     Exit Andromache.

TROILUS     This foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl

Makes all these bodements.

CASSANDRA     O, farewell, dear Hector!

80

Look how thou diest! Look how thy eye turns pale!

Look how thy wounds do bleed at many vents!

Hark, how Troy roars, how Hecuba cries out,

How poor Andromache shrills her dolour forth!

Behold, distraction, frenzy and amazement,

85

Like witless antics, one another meet,

And all cry, ‘Hector! Hector’s dead! O, Hector!’

TROILUS     Away! Away!

CASSANDRA     Farewell. Yet soft! Hector, I take my leave.

Thou dost thyself and all our Troy deceive.     Exit.

90

HECTOR     [to Priam]

You are amazed, my liege, at her exclaim.

Go in and cheer the town. We’ll forth and fight,

Do deeds of praise, and tell you them at night.

PRIAM

Farewell. The gods with safety stand about thee!

     Exeunt Priam and Hector at different doors. Alarum.

TROILUS

They are at it, hark! – Proud Diomed, believe,

95

I come to lose my arm or win my sleeve.

Enter PANDARUS with a letter.

PANDARUS     Do you hear, my lord? Do you hear?

TROILUS     What now?

PANDARUS     Here’s a letter come from yond poor girl.

TROILUS     Let me read. [Reads.]

100

PANDARUS     A whoreson phthisic, a whoreson rascally

phthisic so troubles me, and the foolish fortune of this

girl, and what one thing, what another, that I shall leave

you one o’these days. And I have rheum in mine eyes

too, and such an ache in my bones that, unless a man

105

were cursed, I cannot tell what to think on’t. – What

says she there?

TROILUS

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart;

Th’effect doth operate another way.

[Tears the letter and tosses it away.]

Go, wind, to wind! There turn and change together.

110

My love with words and errors still she feeds,

But edifies another with her deeds. Exeunt severally.

5.4 Alarum; excursions. Enter THERSITES.

THERSITES     Now they are clapper-clawing one another.

I’ll go look on. That dissembling abominable varlet,

Diomed, has got that same scurvy doting foolish

young knave’s sleeve of Troy there in his helm. I

would fain see them meet, that that same young

5

Trojan ass that loves the whore there might send that

Greekish whoremasterly villain with the sleeve back to

the dissembling luxurious drab, of a sleeveless errand.

O’th’ t’other side, the policy of those crafty swearing

rascals – that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese,

10

NESTOR, and that same dog-fox, Ulysses – is proved not

worth a blackberry. They set me up, in policy, that

mongrel cur, Ajax, against that dog of as bad a kind,

ACHILLES. And now is the cur Ajax prouder than the cur

ACHILLES, and will not arm today, whereupon the

15

Grecians began to proclaim barbarism, and policy

grows into an ill opinion.

Enter DIOMEDES, wearing Cressida’s sleeve on his helmet, and TROILUS following.

Soft! Here comes sleeve and t’other. [Stands aside.]

TROILUS     [to Diomedes]

Fly not, for shouldst thou take the river Styx

I would swim after.

DIOMEDES     Thou dost miscall retire.

20

I do not fly, but advantageous care

Withdrew me from the odds of multitude.

Have at thee! [They fight.]

THERSITES     Hold thy whore, Grecian! Now for thy

whore, Trojan! Now the sleeve, now the sleeve!

25

     Exeunt Troilus and Diomedes, fighting.

Enter HECTOR.

HECTOR

What art thou, Greek? Art thou for Hector’s match?

Art thou of blood and honour?

THERSITES     No, no, I am a rascal, a scurvy railing knave,

a very filthy rogue.

HECTOR     I do believe thee. Live.     Exit.

30

THERSITES     God-a-mercy, that thou wilt believe me; but

a plague break thy neck for frighting me! What’s

become of the wenching rogues? I think they have

swallowed one another. I would laugh at that miracle –

yet, in a sort, lechery eats itself. I’ll seek them.     Exit.

35

5.5 Enter DIOMEDES and Servant.

DIOMEDES

Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilus’ horse;

Present the fair steed to my Lady Cressid.

Fellow, commend my service to her beauty;

Tell her I have chastised the amorous Trojan

And am her knight by proof.

SERVANT     I go, my lord.     Exit.

5

Enter AGAMEMNON.

AGAMEMNON     Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamas

Hath beat down Menon; bastard Margareton

Hath Doreus prisoner,

And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam

Upon the pashed corpses of the kings

10

Epistrophus and Cedius. Polyxenes is slain,

Amphimachus and Thoas deadly hurt,

PATROCLUS ta’en or slain, and Palamedes

Sore hurt and bruised. The dreadful Sagittary

Appals our numbers. Haste we, Diomed,

15

To reinforcement, or we perish all.

Enter NESTOR with soldiers bearing Patroclus’ body.

NESTOR     [to his soldiers]

Go, bear Patroclus’ body to Achilles,

And bid the snail-paced Ajax arm for shame.

     Exeunt some soldiers with the body.

There is a thousand Hectors in the field.

Now here he fights on Galathe his horse,

20

And there lacks work; anon he’s there afoot,

And there they fly or die, like scaled schools

Before the belching whale; then is he yonder,

And there the strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge,

Fall down before him, like the mower’s swath.

25

Here, there and everywhere he leaves and takes,

Dexterity so obeying appetite

That what he will he does, and does so much

That proof is called impossibility.

Enter ULYSSES.

ULYSSES     O, courage, courage, princes! Great Achilles

30

Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance.

PATROCLUS’ wounds have roused his drowsy blood,

Together with his mangled Myrmidons,

That noseless, handless, hacked and chipped, come to him,

Crying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend

35

And foams at mouth, and he is armed and at it,

Roaring for Troilus, who hath done today

Mad and fantastic execution,

Engaging and redeeming of himself

With such a careless force and forceless care

40

As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,

Bade him win all.

Enter AJAX.

AJAX     Troilus! Thou coward Troilus!

Exit.

DIOMEDES     Ay, there, there!

Exit.

NESTOR     So, so, we draw together.

45

Enter ACHILLES.

ACHILLES     Where is this Hector?

Come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face!

Know what it is to meet Achilles angry.

HECTOR! Where’s Hector? I will none but Hector.

     Exit with others.

5.6 Enter AJAX.

AJAX     Troilus, thou coward Troilus, show thy head!

Enter DIOMEDES.

DIOMEDES     Troilus, I say! Where’s Troilus?

AJAX     What wouldst thou?

DIOMEDES     I would correct him.

AJAX

Were I the general, thou shouldst have my office

5

Ere that correction. – Troilus, I say! What, Troilus!

Enter TROILUS.

TROILUS

O traitor Diomed! Turn thy false face, thou traitor,

And pay the life thou owest me for my horse!

DIOMEDES     Ha, art thou there?

10

AJAX     I’ll fight with him alone. Stand, Diomed.

DIOMEDES     He is my prize. I will not look upon.

TROILUS

Come, both you cogging Greeks. Have at you both!

Enter HECTOR.

     Exit Troilus fighting with Ajax and Diomedes.

HECTOR

Yea, Troilus? O, well fought, my youngest brother!

Enter ACHILLES.

ACHILLES

Now do I see thee. Ha! Have at thee, Hector!

[They fight.]

HECTOR     Pause, if thou wilt.

15

ACHILLES     I do disdain thy courtesy, proud Trojan.

Be happy that my arms are out of use.

My rest and negligence befriends thee now,

But thou anon shalt hear of me again;

Till when, go seek thy fortune.    Exit.

HECTOR     Fare thee well.

20

I would have been much more a fresher man,

Had I expected thee.

Enter TROILUS.

     How now, my brother!

TROILUS     Ajax hath ta’en Aeneas. Shall it be?

No, by the flame of yonder glorious heaven,

He shall not carry him. I’ll be ta’en too,

25

Or bring him off. Fate, hear me what I say!

I reck not though thou end my life today.    Exit.

Enter one in Greek armour.

HECTOR

Stand, stand, thou Greek! Thou art a goodly mark.

No? Wilt thou not? I like thy armour well;

I’ll frush it and unlock the rivets all,

30

But I’ll be master of it.     Exit one in armour.

     Wilt thou not, beast, abide?

Why then, fly on. I’ll hunt thee for thy hide.

     Exit in pursuit.

5.7 Enter ACHILLES, with Myrmidons.

ACHILLES     Come here about me, you my Myrmidons;

Mark what I say. Attend me where I wheel.

Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath,

And when I have the bloody Hector found,

Empale him with your weapons round about;

5

In fellest manner execute your arms.

Follow me, sirs, and my proceedings eye.

It is decreed Hector the great must die.     Exeunt.

5.8 Enter THERSITES; MENELAUS and PARIS fighting.

THERSITES     The cuckold and the cuckold-maker are at it.

Now, bull! Now, dog! ’Loo, Paris, ’loo! Now, my double-

horned Spartan! ’Loo, Paris, ’loo! – The bull

has the game. Ware horns, ho!

     Exeunt Paris and Menelaus.

Enter Bastard MARGARETON.

MARGARETON     Turn, slave, and fight.

5

THERSITES     What art thou?

MARGARETON     A bastard son of Priam’s.

THERSITES     I am a bastard too; I love bastards. I am

bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind,

bastard in valour, in everything illegitimate. One bear

10

will not bite another, and wherefore should one

bastard? Take heed, the quarrel’s most ominous to us.

If the son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts

judgement. Farewell, bastard.

Exit.

MARGARETON     The devil take thee, coward!     Exit.

15

5.9 Enter HECTOR dragging the Greek in armour.

HECTOR     Most putrefied core, so fair without,

Thy goodly armour thus hath cost thy life.

Now is my day’s work done. I’ll take good breath.

Rest, sword; thou hast thy fill of blood and death.

[Starts to disarm.]

Enter ACHILLES and his Myrmidons.

ACHILLES     Look, Hector, how the sun begins to set,

5

How ugly night comes breathing at his heels.

Even with the vail and dark’ning of the sun

To close the day up, Hector’s life is done.

HECTOR     I am unarmed. Forgo this vantage, Greek.

ACHILLES

Strike, fellows, strike! This is the man I seek.

10

[They fall upon Hector and kill him.]

So, Ilium, fall thou! Now, Troy, sink down!

Here lies thy heart, thy sinews and thy bone. –

On, Myrmidons, and cry you all amain,

‘Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain’.

     [Retreat sounded from both sides.]

Hark! A retire upon our Grecian part.

15

MYRMIDON

The Trojan trumpets sound the like, my lord.

ACHILLES

The dragon wing of night o’erspreads the earth

And, stickler-like, the armies separates.

My half-supped sword, that frankly would have fed,

Pleased with this dainty bait, thus goes to bed.

20

[Sheathes his sword.]

Come, tie his body to my horse’s tail;

Along the field I will the Trojan trail.

     Exeunt with the bodies.

5.10 Sound retreat. Enter AGAMEMNON, AJAX, MENELAUS, NESTOR, DIOMEDES and the rest, marching to the sound of drums. Shout within.

AGAMEMNON     Hark, hark, what shout is that?

NESTOR     Peace, drums!     [Drums cease.]

SOLDIERS     [within]

ACHILLES! Achilles! Hector’s slain! Achilles!

DIOMEDES

The bruit is, Hector’s slain, and by Achilles.

AJAX     If it be so, yet bragless let it be;

5

Great Hector was as good a man as he.

AGAMEMNON     March patiently along. Let one be sent

To pray Achilles see us at our tent.

If in his death the gods have us befriended,

Great Troy is ours, and our sharp wars are ended.

10

     Exeunt marching.

5.11 Enter AENEAS, PARIS, Antenor and DEIPHOBUS.

AENEAS     Stand, ho! Yet are we masters of the field.

Never go home; here starve we out the night.

Enter TROILUS.

TROILUS     Hector is slain.

ALL     Hector! The gods forbid!

TROILUS     He’s dead, and at the murderer’s horse’s tail,

In beastly sort, dragged through the shameful field.

5

Frown on, you heavens, effect your rage with speed!

Sit, gods, upon your thrones and smite at Troy!

I say at once: let your brief plagues be mercy,

And linger not our sure destructions on!

AENEAS     My lord, you do discomfort all the host.

10

TROILUS     You understand me not that tell me so.

I do not speak of flight, of fear, of death,

But dare all imminence that gods and men

Address their dangers in. Hector is gone.

Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba?

15

Let him that will a screech-owl aye be called

Go into Troy, and say their Hector’s dead.

There is a word will Priam turn to stone,

Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives,

Cold statues of the youth, and, in a word,

20

Scare Troy out of itself. But march away.

HECTOR is dead. There is no more to say.

Stay yet. – You vile abominable tents,

Thus proudly pitched upon our Phrygian plains,

Let Titan rise as early as he dare,

25

I’ll through and through you! And, thou great-sized coward,

No space of earth shall sunder our two hates.

I’ll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still,

That mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy’s thoughts.

Strike a free march to Troy! With comfort go.

30

Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe.

Enter PANDARUS.

PANDARUS     But hear you, hear you!

TROILUS     Hence, broker-lackey! Ignomy and shame

Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name!

     Exeunt all but Pandarus.

PANDARUS     A goodly medicine for my aching bones! O

35

world, world, world! Thus is the poor agent despised.

O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work

and how ill requited! Why should our endeavour be so

desired and the performance so loathed? What verse

for it? What instance for it? Let me see:

40

Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing,

Till he hath lost his honey and his sting;

And being once subdued in armed tail,

Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail.

Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted

45

cloths:

As many as be here of Panders’ hall,

Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar’s fall;

Or if you cannot weep, yet give some groans,

Though not for me, yet for your aching bones.

50

Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade,

Some two months hence my will shall here be made.

It should be now, but that my fear is this:

Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss.

Till then I’ll sweat and seek about for eases,

55

And at that time bequeath you my diseases.

Exit.

Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night, or What You Will was first printed in 1623 as the thirteenth of the comedies in the First Folio. Probably written in 1601, it was acted in the hall of the Middle Temple on 2 February 1602, Candlemas Day, the end of the Christmas season of revels. A law student, John Manningham, noted approvingly in his diary that it was ‘much like the Comedy of Errors, or Menaechmi in Plautus, but most like and near to that in Italian called Inganni’. Gl’Ingannati (The Deceived Ones), an Italian comedy acted in Siena (1531) and printed in Venice (1537), provides the main lines of the love plot, whether directly or through sixteenth-century imitations and rewritings, one of which, the tale of Apolonius and Silla in Barnaby Rich’s Rich his Farewell to Military Profession (1581), Shakespeare knew. Manningham applauded the gulling of the steward Malvolio into believing his mistress, the countess Olivia, to be in love with him as ‘a good practice’. No source for this element in the plot has been identified, but its intrigue resembles the comic method of Ben Jonson. The play was revived at Court, under the title of ‘Malvolio’, on Candlemas Day 1623 and has that title substituted by hand in a copy of the Second Folio once in the library of Charles I.

Twelfth Night everywhere recalls Shakespeare’s own earlier comedies: if the twins recall The Comedy of Errors, then the plight of ‘Cesario’ (the only name by which Viola is known until the final scene) echoes the disguise of Julia as ‘Sebastian’, and her predicament as servant to the man she loves, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The love of Antonio for Sebastian parallels the equally self-sacrificing love of another Antonio for Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice. The gulling of Malvolio resembles that of Ajax in Troilus and Cressida, while Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are models for the more lethal relationship between Iago and Roderigo in Othello. The clown, Feste, has a line in logic-chopping and verbal dexterity which links him with Touchstone in As You Like It as well as with the sourer clowning of Thersites in Troilus, of Lavatch in All’s Well That Ends Well and of Lear’s Fool, whose paradoxes about wisdom and folly he anticipates. It is often claimed that these roles were all written for Robert Armin, from 1599 the company’s leading comic actor.

Twelfth Night remains among Shakespeare’s best loved and most frequently revived plays. Its peculiar mood, poised between broad comedy and pathos, has led to a variety of emphasis in performance. The most praised modern productions have endeavoured to ‘sound all the notes that are there’ (to quote the director John Barton). The play pushes its multiple deceptions beyond safe laughter to an awareness of the real pain and damage to which the games could lead. Its ending epitomizes the precariousness of the action’s holiday licence: two couples of near strangers are married or betrothed, while Maria wins a marriage above her station, an aspiration thwarted in Malvolio. Malvolio departs with an impotent threat of future vengeance and he – like Sir Andrew, Antonio and Feste – stands apart from the final celebration, whose focus is on the mutual recognition of Viola and her brother rather than the resolution of tangled loves. Feste’s last song is an epilogue which serves the usual function of returning the audience from the holiday mood of drama to the workaday world – a return doubly unwelcome at the end of the Christmas festivities to which the title alludes.

In the eighteenth century Twelfth Night was enjoyed mainly for its comic scenes, especially those of Malvolio, but the nineteenth century saw the restoration to favour of the romantic side of the play. An influential production was Granville Barker’s at the Savoy Theatre in London in 1912, which simplified the setting in the interests of pace and clarity of performance of the full text and rejected the Victorian practice of scenic elaboration. Among many fine modern productions, John Barton’s for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1969–71, with Judi Dench as Viola and Donald Sinden as Malvolio, was memorable for its strong cast and its sensitivity to the play’s shifting moods and opalescent tones.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

ORSINO

Duke of Illyria

gentlemen attending on the Duke

in the service of the Duke

VIOLA

later disguised as Cesario

SEBASTIAN

her twin brother

CAPTAIN

of the wrecked ship, befriending Viola

ANTONIO

another sea-captain, befriending Sebastian

OLIVIA

a countess

MARIA

Olivia’s waiting-gentlewoman

SIR TOBY Belch

Olivia’s kinsman

SIR ANDREW Aguecheek

Sir Toby’s companion

MALVOLIO

Olivia’s steward

FABIAN

a member of Olivia’s household

CLOWN (Feste)

jester to Olivia

SERVANT

to Olivia

PRIEST

Musicians, Lords, Sailors, Attendants

Twelfth Night

1.1 Music. Enter ORSINO, Duke of Illyria, CURIO and other lords.

ORSINO     If music be the food of love, play on,

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.

That strain again, it had a dying fall:

O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound

5

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour. Enough, no more;

’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.

O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou,

That notwithstanding thy capacity

10

Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,

Of what validity and pitch soe’er,

But falls into abatement and low price,

Even in a minute! So full of shapes is fancy,

That it alone is high fantastical.

15

CURIO     Will you go hunt, my lord?

ORSINO     What, Curio?

CURIO     The hart.

ORSINO     Why so I do, the noblest that I have.

O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,

Methought she purg’d the air of pestilence;

20

That instant was I turn’d into a hart,

And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,

E’er since pursue me.

Enter VALENTINE.

     How now? what news from her?

VALENTINE

So please my lord, I might not be admitted,

But from her handmaid do return this answer:

25

The element itself, till seven years’ heat,

Shall not behold her face at ample view;

But like a cloistress she will veiled walk,

And water once a day her chamber round

With eye-offending brine: all this to season

30

A brother’s dead love, which she would keep fresh

And lasting, in her sad remembrance.

ORSINO     O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame

To pay this debt of love but to a brother,

How will she love, when the rich golden shaft

35

Hath kill’d the flock of all affections else

That live in her; when liver, brain, and heart,

These sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill’d

Her sweet perfections with one self king!

Away before me to sweet beds of flowers!

40

Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers.

     Exeunt.

1.2 Enter VIOLA, a Captain and sailors.

VIOLA     What country, friends, is this?

CAPTAIN     This is Illyria, lady.

VIOLA     And what should I do in Illyria?

My brother he is in Elysium.

Perchance he is not drown’d: what think you, sailors?

5

CAPTAIN     It is perchance that you yourself were sav’d.

VIOLA

O my poor brother! and so perchance may he be.

CAPTAIN

True, madam, and to comfort you with chance,

Assure yourself, after our ship did split,

When you and those poor number sav’d with you

10

Hung on our driving boat, I saw your brother,

Most provident in peril, bind himself

(Courage and hope both teaching him the practice)

To a strong mast that liv’d upon the sea;

Where, like Arion on the dolphin’s back,

15

I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves

So long as I could see.

VIOLA     For saying so, there’s gold:

Mine own escape unfoldeth to my hope,

Whereto thy speech serves for authority,

20

The like of him. Know’st thou this country?

CAPTAIN     Ay, madam, well, for I was bred and born

Not three hours’ travel from this very place.

VIOLA     Who governs here?

CAPTAIN     A noble duke, in nature as in name.

25

VIOLA     What is his name?

CAPTAIN     Orsino.

VIOLA     Orsino! I have heard my father name him.

He was a bachelor then.

CAPTAIN     And so is now, or was so very late;

30

For but a month ago I went from hence,

And then ’twas fresh in murmur (as, you know,

What great ones do, the less will prattle of)

That he did seek the love of fair Olivia.

VIOLA     What’s she?

35

CAPTAIN     A virtuous maid, the daughter of a count

That died some twelvemonth since; then leaving her

In the protection of his son, her brother,

Who shortly also died; for whose dear love

(They say) she hath abjur’d the company

40

And sight of men.

VIOLA     O that I serv’d that lady,

And might not be deliver’d to the world,

Till I had made mine own occasion mellow,

What my estate is.

CAPTAIN     That were hard to compass,

Because she will admit no kind of suit,

45

No, not the Duke’s.

VIOLA     There is a fair behaviour in thee, Captain;

And though that nature with a beauteous wall

Doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee

I will believe thou hast a mind that suits

50

With this thy fair and outward character.

I prithee (and I’ll pay thee bounteously)

Conceal me what I am, and be my aid

For such disguise as haply shall become

The form of my intent. I’ll serve this duke;

55

Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him.

It may be worth thy pains; for I can sing,

And speak to him in many sorts of music,

That will allow me very worth his service.

What else may hap, to time I will commit;

60

Only shape thou thy silence to my wit.

CAPTAIN     Be you his eunuch, and your mute I’ll be:

When my tongue blabs, then let mine eyes not see.

VIOLA     I thank thee. Lead me on.     Exeunt.

1.3 Enter SIR TOBY BELCH and MARIA.

SIR TOBY     What a plague means my niece to take the

death of her brother thus? I am sure care’s an enemy

to life.

MARIA     By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier

o’ nights: your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions

5

to your ill hours.

SIR TOBY     Why, let her except, before excepted.

MARIA     Ay, but you must confine yourself within the

modest limits of order.

SIR TOBY     Confine? I’ll confine myself no finer than I

10

am. These clothes are good enough to drink in, and so

be these boots too: and they be not, let them hang

themselves in their own straps.

MARIA     That quaffing and drinking will undo you: I

heard my lady talk of it yesterday; and of a foolish

15

knight that you brought in one night here to be her

wooer.

SIR TOBY     Who, Sir Andrew Aguecheek?

MARIA     Ay, he.

SIR TOBY     He’s as tall a man as any’s in Illyria.

20

MARIA     What’s that to th’ purpose?

SIR TOBY     Why, he has three thousand ducats a year.

MARIA     Ay, but he’ll have but a year in all these ducats.

He’s a very fool, and a prodigal.

SIR TOBY     Fie, that you’ll say so! he plays o’th’ viol-de-

25

gamboys, and speaks three or four languages word for

word without book, and hath all the good gifts of

nature.

MARIA     He hath indeed all, most natural: for besides that

he’s a fool, he’s a great quarreller; and but that he hath

30

the gift of a coward to allay the gust he hath in

quarrelling, ’tis thought among the prudent he would

quickly have the gift of a grave.

SIR TOBY     By this hand, they are scoundrels and

substractors that say so of him. Who are they?

35

MARIA     They that add, moreover, he’s drunk nightly in

your company.

SIR TOBY     With drinking healths to my niece: I’ll drink

to her as long as there is a passage in my throat, and

drink in Illyria: he’s a coward and a coistrel that will

40

not drink to my niece till his brains turn o’th’ toe, like

a parish top. What, wench! Castiliano vulgo: for here

comes Sir Andrew Agueface.

Enter SIR ANDREW AGUECHEEK.

SIR ANDREW     Sir Toby Belch! How now, Sir Toby Belch?

SIR TOBY     Sweet Sir Andrew!

45

SIR ANDREW     Bless you, fair shrew.

MARIA     And you too, sir.

SIR TOBY     Accost, Sir Andrew, accost.

SIR ANDREW     What’s that?

SIR TOBY     My niece’s chambermaid.

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SIR ANDREW     Good Mistress Accost, I desire better

acquaintance.

MARIA     My name is Mary, sir.

SIR ANDREW     Good Mistress Mary Accost –

SIR TOBY     You mistake, knight. ‘Accost’ is front her,

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board her, woo her, assail her.

SIR ANDREW     By my troth, I would not undertake her in

this company. Is that the meaning of ‘accost’?

MARIA     Fare you well, gentlemen.

SIR TOBY     And thou let part so, Sir Andrew, would thou

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might’st never draw sword again!

SIR ANDREW     And you part so, mistress, I would I might

never draw sword again. Fair lady, do you think you

have fools in hand?

MARIA     Sir, I have not you by th’ hand.

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SIR ANDREW     Marry, but you shall have, and here’s my

hand.

MARIA     Now, sir, thought is free. I pray you bring your

hand to th’ buttery bar and let it drink.

SIR ANDREW     Wherefore, sweetheart? What’s your

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metaphor?

MARIA     It’s dry, sir.

SIR ANDREW     Why, I think so: I am not such an ass but I

can keep my hand dry. But what’s your jest?

MARIA     A dry jest, sir.

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SIR ANDREW     Are you full of them?

MARIA     Ay, sir, I have them at my fingers’ ends: marry,

now I let go your hand, I am barren.     Exit Maria.

SIR TOBY     O knight, thou lack’st a cup of canary: when

did I see thee so put down?

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SIR ANDREW     Never in your life, I think, unless you see

canary put me down. Methinks sometimes I have no

more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man has: but

I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm

to my wit.

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SIR TOBY     No question.

SIR ANDREW     And I thought that, I’d forswear it. I’ll ride

home to-morrow, Sir Toby.

SIR TOBY     Pourquoi, my dear knight?

SIR ANDREW     What is pourquoi? Do, or not do? I would I

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had bestowed that time in the tongues that I have in

fencing, dancing, and bear-baiting. O, had I but

followed the arts!

SIR TOBY     Then hadst thou had an excellent head of hair.

SIR ANDREW     Why, would that have mended my hair?

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SIR TOBY     Past question, for thou seest it will not curl by

nature.

SIR ANDREW

But it becomes me well enough, does’t not?

SIR TOBY     Excellent, it hangs like flax on a distaff; and I

hope to see a housewife take thee between her legs,

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and spin it off.

SIR ANDREW     Faith, I’ll home to-morrow, Sir Toby; your

niece will not be seen, or if she be, it’s four to one

she’ll none of me: the Count himself here hard by

woos her.

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SIR TOBY     She’ll none o’th’ Count; she’ll not match

above her degree, neither in estate, years, nor wit; I

have heard her swear’t. Tut, there’s life in’t, man.

SIR ANDREW     I’ll stay a month longer. I am a fellow o’th’

strangest mind i’th’ world: I delight in masques and

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revels sometimes altogether.

SIR TOBY     Art thou good at these kickshawses, knight?

SIR ANDREW     As any man in Illyria, whatsoever he be,

under the degree of my betters; and yet I will not

compare with an old man.

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SIR TOBY     What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight?

SIR ANDREW     Faith, I can cut a caper.

SIR TOBY     And I can cut the mutton to’t.

SIR ANDREW     And I think I have the back-trick simply as

strong as any man in Illyria.

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SIR TOBY     Wherefore are these things hid? Wherefore

have these gifts a curtain before ’em? Are they like to

take dust, like Mistress Mall’s picture? Why dost thou

not go to church in a galliard, and come home in a

coranto? My very walk should be a jig; I would not so

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much as make water but in a sink-a-pace. What dost

thou mean? Is it a world to hide virtues in? I did think,

by the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was formed

under the star of a galliard.

SIR ANDREW     Ay, ’tis strong, and it does indifferent well

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in a damned coloured stock. Shall we set about some

revels?

SIR TOBY     What shall we do else? were we not born

under Taurus?

SIR ANDREW     Taurus? That’s sides and heart.

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SIR TOBY     No, sir, it is legs and thighs. Let me see thee

caper. Ha, higher! Ha, ha, excellent!     Exeunt.

1.4 Enter VALENTINE, and VIOLA in man’s attire.

VALENTINE     If the Duke continue these favours towards

you, Cesario, you are like to be much advanced: he

hath known you but three days, and already you are no

stranger.

VIOLA     You either fear his humour, or my negligence,

5

that you call in question the continuance of his love. Is

he inconstant, sir, in his favours?

VALENTINE     No, believe me.

Enter DUKE, CURIO and attendants.

VIOLA     I thank you. Here comes the Count.

ORSINO     Who saw Cesario, ho?

10

VIOLA     On your attendance, my lord, here.

ORSINO     [to Curio and attendants]

Stand you awhile aloof. [to Viola] Cesario,

Thou know’st no less but all: I have unclasp’d

To thee the book even of my secret soul.

Therefore, good youth, address thy gait unto her,

15

Be not denied access, stand at her doors,

And tell them, there thy fixed foot shall grow

Till thou have audience.

VIOLA     Sure, my noble lord,

If she be so abandon’d to her sorrow

As it is spoke, she never will admit me.

20

ORSINO     Be clamorous, and leap all civil bounds,

Rather than make unprofited return.

VIOLA     Say I do speak with her, my lord, what then?

ORSINO     O then unfold the passion of my love,

Surprise her with discourse of my dear faith;

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It shall become thee well to act my woes:

She will attend it better in thy youth,

Than in a nuncio’s of more grave aspect.

VIOLA     I think not so, my lord.

ORSINO     Dear lad, believe it;

For they shall yet belie thy happy years,

30

That say thou art a man; Diana’s lip

Is not more smooth and rubious: thy small pipe

Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound,

And all is semblative a woman’s part.

I know thy constellation is right apt

35

For this affair. Some four or five attend him;

All, if you will: for I myself am best

When least in company. Prosper well in this,

And thou shalt live as freely as thy lord,

To call his fortunes thine.

VIOLA     I’ll do my best

40

To woo your lady: [aside] yet, a barful strife!

Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife. Exeunt.

1.5 Enter MARIA and Clown.

MARIA     Nay, either tell me where thou hast been, or I

will not open my lips so wide as a bristle may enter, in

way of thy excuse: my lady will hang thee for thy

absence.

CLOWN     Let her hang me: he that is well hanged in this

5

world needs to fear no colours.

MARIA     Make that good.

CLOWN     He shall see none to fear.

MARIA     A good lenten answer. I can tell thee where that

saying was born, of ‘I fear no colours.’

10

CLOWN     Where, good Mistress Mary?

MARIA     In the wars, and that may you be bold to say in

your foolery.

CLOWN     Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and

those that are fools, let them use their talents.

15

MARIA     Yet you will be hanged for being so long absent;

or to be turned away – is not that as good as a hanging

to you?

CLOWN     Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage:

and for turning away, let summer bear it out.

20

MARIA     You are resolute then?

CLOWN     Not so, neither, but I am resolved on two

points.

MARIA     That if one break, the other will hold: or if both

break, your gaskins fall.

25

CLOWN     Apt, in good faith, very apt. Well, go thy way: if

Sir Toby would leave drinking, thou wert as witty a

piece of Eve’s flesh as any in Illyria.

MARIA     Peace, you rogue, no more o’ that. Here comes

my lady: make your excuse wisely, you were best.

30

Exit.

Enter Lady OLIVIA, with MALVOLIO and attendants.

CLOWN     Wit, and’t be thy will, put me into good fooling!

Those wits that think they have thee, do very oft prove

fools: and I that am sure I lack thee, may pass for a

wise man. For what says Quinapalus? ‘Better a witty

fool than a foolish wit.’ God bless thee, lady!

35

OLIVIA     Take the fool away.

CLOWN     Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the lady.

OLIVIA     Go to, y’are a dry fool: I’ll no more of you.

Besides, you grow dishonest.

CLOWN     Two faults, madonna, that drink and good

40

counsel will amend: for give the dry fool drink, then is

the fool not dry: bid the dishonest man mend himself,

if he mend, he is no longer dishonest; if he cannot, let

the botcher mend him. Anything that’s mended is but

patched: virtue that transgresses is but patched with

45

sin, and sin that amends is but patched with virtue. If

that this simple syllogism will serve, so: if it will not,

what remedy? As there is no true cuckold but calamity,

so beauty’s a flower. The lady bade take away the fool,

therefore I say again, take her away.

50

OLIVIA     Sir, I bade them take away you.

CLOWN     Misprision in the highest degree! Lady, cucullus

non facit monachum: that’s as much to say, as I wear not

motley in my brain. Good madonna, give me leave to

prove you a fool.

55

OLIVIA     Can you do it?

CLOWN     Dexteriously, good madonna.

OLIVIA     Make your proof.

CLOWN     I must catechise you for it, madonna. Good my

mouse of virtue, answer me.

60

OLIVIA     Well sir, for want of other idleness, I’ll bide

your proof.

CLOWN     Good madonna, why mourn’st thou?

OLIVIA     Good fool, for my brother’s death.

CLOWN     I think his soul is in hell, madonna.

65

OLIVIA     I know his soul is in heaven, fool.

CLOWN     The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your

brother’s soul, being in heaven. Take away the fool,

gentlemen.

OLIVIA     What think you of this fool, Malvolio, doth he

70

not mend?

MALVOLIO     Yes, and shall do, till the pangs of death

shake him. Infirmity, that decays the wise, doth ever

make the better fool.

CLOWN     God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the

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better increasing your folly! Sir Toby will be sworn

that I am no fox, but he will not pass his word for

twopence that you are no fool.

OLIVIA     How say you to that, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO     I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such

80

a barren rascal: I saw him put down the other day

with an ordinary fool, that has no more brain than a

stone. Look you now, he’s out of his guard already:

unless you laugh and minister occasion to him, he is

gagged. I protest I take these wise men, that crow so at

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these set kind of fools, no better than the fools’ zanies.

OLIVIA     O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste

with a distempered appetite. To be generous, guiltless,

and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-

bolts that you deem cannon-bullets. There is no

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slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but

rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he

do nothing but reprove.

CLOWN     Now Mercury endue thee with leasing, for thou

speak’st well of fools!

95

Enter MARIA.

MARIA     Madam, there is at the gate a young gentleman

much desires to speak with you.

OLIVIA     From the Count Orsino, is it?

MARIA     I know not, madam: ’tis a fair young man, and

well attended.

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OLIVIA     Who of my people hold him in delay?

MARIA     Sir Toby, madam, your kinsman.

OLIVIA     Fetch him off, I pray you: he speaks nothing but

madman. Fie on him!     Exit Maria.

Go you, Malvolio. If it be a suit from the Count, I am

105

sick, or not at home. What you will, to dismiss it.

Exit Malvolio.

Now you see, sir, how your fooling grows old, and

people dislike it.

CLOWN     Thou hast spoke for us, madonna, as if thy

eldest son should be a fool: whose skull Jove cram with

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brains, for here he comes, one of thy kin has a most

weak pia mater.

Enter SIR TOBY.

OLIVIA     By mine honour, half drunk. What is he at the

gate, cousin?

SIR TOBY     A gentleman.

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OLIVIA     A gentleman? What gentleman?

SIR TOBY     ’Tis a gentleman here – [Belches.] A plague o’

these pickle-herring! How now, sot?

CLOWN     Good Sir Toby!

OLIVIA     Cousin, cousin, how have you come so early by

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this lethargy?

SIR TOBY     Lechery? I defy lechery. There’s one at the

gate.

OLIVIA     Ay, marry, what is he?

SIR TOBY     Let him be the devil and he will, I care not:

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give me faith, say I. Well, it’s all one.     Exit.

OLIVIA     What’s a drunken man like, fool?

CLOWN     Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman: one

draught above heat makes him a fool, the second mads

him, and a third drowns him.

130

OLIVIA     Go thou and seek the crowner, and let him sit o’

my coz: for he’s in the third degree of drink; he’s

drowned. Go look after him.

CLOWN     He is but mad yet, madonna, and the fool shall

look to the madman.     Exit.

135

Enter MALVOLIO.

MALVOLIO     Madam, yond young fellow swears he will

speak with you. I told him you were sick; he takes on

him to understand so much, and therefore comes to

speak with you. I told him you were asleep; he seems

to have a foreknowledge of that too, and therefore

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comes to speak with you. What is to be said to him,

lady? He’s fortified against any denial.

OLIVIA     Tell him, he shall not speak with me.

MALVOLIO     ’Has been told so: and he says he’ll stand at

your door like a sheriff’s post, and be the supporter to

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a bench, but he’ll speak with you.

OLIVIA     What kind o’ man is he?

MALVOLIO     Why, of mankind.

OLIVIA     What manner of man?

MALVOLIO     Of very ill manner: he’ll speak with you, will

150

you or no.

OLIVIA     Of what personage and years is he?

MALVOLIO     Not yet old enough for a man, nor young

enough for a boy: as a squash is before ’tis a peascod,

or a codling when ’tis almost an apple. ’Tis with him

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in standing water, between boy and man. He is very

well-favoured, and he speaks very shrewishly. One

would think his mother’s milk were scarce out of him.

OLIVIA     Let him approach. Call in my gentlewoman.

MALVOLIO     Gentlewoman, my lady calls.     Exit.

160

Enter MARIA.

OLIVIA     Give me my veil: come, throw it o’er my face.

We’ll once more hear Orsino’s embassy.

Enter VIOLA.

VIOLA     The honourable lady of the house, which is she?

OLIVIA     Speak to me, I shall answer for her. Your will?

VIOLA     Most radiant, exquisite, and unmatchable beauty

165

– I pray you tell me if this be the lady of the house, for

I never saw her. I would be loath to cast away my

speech: for besides that it is excellently well penned, I

have taken great pains to con it. Good beauties, let me

sustain no scorn; I am very comptible, even to the least

170

sinister usage.

OLIVIA     Whence came you, sir?

VIOLA     I can say little more than I have studied, and that

question’s out of my part. Good gentle one, give me

modest assurance if you be the lady of the house, that

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I may proceed in my speech.

OLIVIA     Are you a comedian?

VIOLA     No, my profound heart: and yet, by the very

fangs of malice I swear, I am not that I play. Are you

the lady of the house?

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OLIVIA     If I do not usurp myself, I am.

VIOLA     Most certain, if you are she, you do usurp

yourself: for what is yours to bestow is not yours to

reserve. But this is from my commission. I will on

with my speech in your praise, and then show you the

185

heart of my message.

OLIVIA     Come to what is important in’t: I forgive you the

praise.

VIOLA     Alas, I took great pains to study it, and ’tis

poetical.

190

OLIVIA     It is the more like to be feigned; I pray you keep

it in. I heard you were saucy at my gates, and allowed

your approach rather to wonder at you than to hear

you. If you be mad, be gone: if you have reason, be

brief: ’tis not that time of moon with me to make one

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in so skipping a dialogue.

MARIA     Will you hoist sail, sir? Here lies your way.

VIOLA     No, good swabber, I am to hull here a little

longer. Some mollification for your giant, sweet lady!

Tell me your mind, I am a messenger.

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OLIVIA     Sure you have some hideous matter to deliver,

when the courtesy of it is so fearful. Speak your office.

VIOLA     It alone concerns your ear. I bring no overture of

war, no taxation of homage; I hold the olive in my

hand: my words are as full of peace, as matter.

205

OLIVIA     Yet you began rudely. What are you? What

would you?

VIOLA     The rudeness that hath appeared in me have I

learned from my entertainment. What I am, and what

I would, are as secret as maidenhead: to your ears,

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divinity; to any other’s, profanation.

OLIVIA     Give us the place alone: we will hear this

divinity.     Exeunt Maria and attendants.

Now, sir, what is your text?

VIOLA     Most sweet lady –

215

OLIVIA     A comfortable doctrine, and much may be said

of it. Where lies your text?

VIOLA     In Orsino’s bosom.

OLIVIA     In his bosom? In what chapter of his bosom?

VIOLA     To answer by the method, in the first of his

220

heart.

OLIVIA     O, I have read it: it is heresy. Have you no more

to say?

VIOLA     Good madam, let me see your face.

OLIVIA     Have you any commission from your lord to

225

negotiate with my face? You are now out of your text:

but we will draw the curtain and show you the picture.

[unveiling] Look you, sir, such a one I was this present.

Is’t not well done?

VIOLA     Excellently done, if God did all.

230

OLIVIA     ’Tis in grain, sir, ’twill endure wind and

weather.

VIOLA     ’Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white

Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on.

Lady, you are the cruell’st she alive

235

If you will lead these graces to the grave

And leave the world no copy.

OLIVIA     O sir, I will not be so hard-hearted: I will give

out divers schedules of my beauty. It shall be

inventoried, and every particle and utensil labelled to

240

my will. As, item, two lips indifferent red; item, two

grey eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin,

and so forth. Were you sent hither to praise me?

VIOLA     I see you what you are, you are too proud:

But if you were the devil, you are fair.

245

My lord and master loves you: O, such love

Could be but recompens’d, though you were crown’d

The nonpareil of beauty!

OLIVIA     How does he love me?

VIOLA     a     With adorations, fertile tears,

With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.

250

OLIVIA

Your lord does know my mind, I cannot love him.

Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,

Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;

In voices well divulg’d, free, learn’d, and valiant,

And in dimension, and the shape of nature,

255

A gracious person. But yet I cannot love him:

He might have took his answer long ago.

VIOLA     If I did love you in my master’s flame,

With such a suff ’ring, such a deadly life,

In your denial I would find no sense,

260

I would not understand it.

OLIVIA     Why, what would you?

VIOLA     Make me a willow cabin at your gate,

And call upon my soul within the house;

Write loyal cantons of contemned love,

And sing them loud even in the dead of night;

265

Halloo your name to the reverberate hills,

And make the babbling gossip of the air

Cry out ‘Olivia!’ O, you should not rest

Between the elements of air and earth,

But you should pity me.

OLIVIA     You might do much.

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What is your parentage?

VIOLA     Above my fortunes, yet my state is well:

I am a gentleman.

OLIVIA     Get you to your lord:

I cannot love him: let him send no more,

Unless, perchance, you come to me again,

275

To tell me how he takes it. Fare you well:

I thank you for your pains: spend this for me.

VIOLA     I am no fee’d post, lady; keep your purse;

My master, not myself, lacks recompense.

Love make his heart of flint that you shall love,

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And let your fervour like my master’s be,

Plac’d in contempt. Farewell, fair cruelty.     Exit.

OLIVIA     ‘What is your parentage?’

‘Above my fortunes, yet my state is well;

I am a gentleman.’ I’ll be sworn thou art:

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Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit

Do give thee five-fold blazon. Not too fast: soft! soft!

Unless the master were the man. How now?

Even so quickly may one catch the plague?

Methinks I feel this youth’s perfections

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With an invisible and subtle stealth

To creep in at mine eyes. Well, let it be.

What ho, Malvolio!

Enter MALVOLIO.

MALVOLIO     Here, madam, at your service.

OLIVIA     Run after that same peevish messenger

The County’s man: he left this ring behind him,

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Would I or not; tell him, I’ll none of it.

Desire him not to flatter with his lord,

Nor hold him up with hopes: I am not for him.

If that the youth will come this way to-morrow,

I’ll give him reasons for’t. Hie thee, Malvolio.

300

MALVOLIO     Madam, I will.     Exit.

OLIVIA     I do I know not what, and fear to find

Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.

Fate, show thy force; ourselves we do not owe.

What is decreed, must be: and be this so.     Exit.

305

2.1 Enter ANTONIO and SEBASTIAN.

ANTONIO     Will you stay no longer? nor will you not that

I go with you?

SEBASTIAN     By your patience, no: my stars shine darkly

over me; the malignancy of my fate might perhaps

distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your

5

leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad

recompense for your love, to lay any of them on you.

ANTONIO     Let me yet know of you whither you are

bound.

SEBASTIAN     No, sooth, sir: my determinate voyage is

10

mere extravagancy. But I perceive in you so excellent

a touch of modesty, that you will not extort from me

what I am willing to keep in: therefore it charges me in

manners the rather to express myself. You must know

of me then, Antonio, my name is Sebastian, which I

15

called Roderigo; my father was that Sebastian of

Messaline whom I know you have heard of. He left

behind him myself and a sister, both born in an hour:

if the heavens had been pleased, would we had so

ended! But you, sir, altered that, for some hour before

20

you took me from the breach of the sea was my sister

drowned.

ANTONIO     Alas the day!

SEBASTIAN     A lady, sir, though it was said she much

resembled me, was yet of many accounted beautiful:

25

but though I could not with such estimable wonder

overfar believe that, yet thus far I will boldly publish

her, she bore a mind that envy could not but call fair.

She is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I

seem to drown her remembrance again with more.

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ANTONIO     Pardon me, sir, your bad entertainment.

SEBASTIAN     O good Antonio, forgive me your trouble.

ANTONIO     If you will not murder me for my love, let me

be your servant.

SEBASTIAN     If you will not undo what you have done,

35

that is, kill him whom you have recovered, desire it

not. Fare ye well at once; my bosom is full of kindness,

and I am yet so near the manners of my mother, that

upon the least occasion more mine eyes will tell tales

of me. I am bound to the Count Orsino’s court:

40

farewell.     Exit.

ANTONIO     The gentleness of all the gods go with thee!

I have many enemies in Orsino’s court,

Else would I very shortly see thee there:

But come what may, I do adore thee so,

45

That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.     Exit.

2.2 Enter VIOLA and MALVOLIO, at several doors.

MALVOLIO     Were not you ev’n now with the Countess

OLIVIA?

VIOLA     Even now, sir; on a moderate pace, I have since

arrived but hither.

MALVOLIO     She returns this ring to you, sir: you might

5

have saved me my pains, to have taken it away yourself.

She adds, moreover, that you should put your lord

into a desperate assurance she will none of him.

And one thing more, that you be never so hardy to

come again in his affairs, unless it be to report your

10

lord’s taking of this. Receive it so.

VIOLA     She took the ring of me, I’ll none of it.

MALVOLIO     Come sir, you peevishly threw it to her: and

her will is, it should be so returned. If it be worth

stooping for, there it lies, in your eye: if not, be it his

15

that finds it.     Exit.

VIOLA     I left no ring with her: what means this lady?

Fortune forbid my outside have not charm’d her!

She made good view of me, indeed so much,

That methought her eyes had lost her tongue,

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For she did speak in starts distractedly.

She loves me, sure; the cunning of her passion

Invites me in this churlish messenger.

None of my lord’s ring? Why, he sent her none.

I am the man: if it be so, as ’tis,

25

Poor lady, she were better love a dream.

Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness,

Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.

How easy is it for the proper false

In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms!

30

Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we,

For such as we are made of, such we be.

How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly,

And I, poor monster, fond as much on him,

And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me:

35

What will become of this? As I am man,

My state is desperate for my master’s love:

As I am woman (now alas the day!)

What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe?

O time, thou must untangle this, not I,

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It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.     Exit.

2.3 Enter SIR TOBY and SIR ANDREW.

SIR TOBY     Approach, Sir Andrew; not to be abed after

midnight, is to be up betimes; and diluculo surgere,

thou know’st –

SIR ANDREW     Nay, by my troth, I know not: but I know,

to be up late, is to be up late.

5

SIR TOBY     A false conclusion: I hate it as an unfilled can.

To be up after midnight, and to go to bed then, is

early: so that to go to bed after midnight, is to go to

bed betimes. Does not our life consist of the four

elements?

10

SIR ANDREW     Faith, so they say, but I think it rather

consists of eating and drinking.

SIR TOBY     Th’art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink.

Marian, I say! a stoup of wine!

Enter CLOWN.

SIR ANDREW     Here comes the fool, i’faith.

15

CLOWN     How now, my hearts? Did you never see the

picture of ‘we three’?

SIR TOBY     Welcome, ass. Now let’s have a catch.

SIR ANDREW     By my troth, the fool has an excellent

breast. I had rather than forty shillings I had such a

20

leg, and so sweet a breath to sing, as the fool has. In

sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night,

when thou spok’st of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians

passing the equinoctial of Queubus: ’twas very good,

i’faith: I sent thee sixpence for thy leman: hadst it?

25

CLOWN     I did impeticos thy gratillity: for Malvolio’s

nose is no whipstock, my lady has a white hand, and

the Myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses.

SIR ANDREW     Excellent! Why, this is the best fooling,

when all is done. Now a song!

30

SIR TOBY     Come on, there is sixpence for you. Let’s have

a song.

SIR ANDREW     There’s a testril of me too: if one knight

give a –

CLOWN     Would you have a love-song, or a song of good

35

life?

SIR TOBY     A love-song, a love-song.

SIR ANDREW     Ay, ay. I care not for good life.

CLOWN     [Sings.]

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O stay and hear, your true love’s coming,

40

That can sing both high and low.

Trip no further, pretty sweeting:

Journeys end in lovers meeting,

Every wise man’s son doth know.

SIR ANDREW     Excellent good, i’faith.

45

SIR TOBY     Good, good.

CLOWN

What is love? ’Tis not hereafter,

Present mirth hath present laughter: What’s to come is still unsure.

In delay there lies no plenty,

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Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty:

Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

SIR ANDREW     A mellifluous voice, as I am a true knight.

SIR TOBY     A contagious breath.

SIR ANDREW     Very sweet and contagious, i’faith.

55

SIR TOBY     To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion.

But shall we make the welkin dance indeed? Shall we

rouse the night-owl in a catch that will draw three

souls out of one weaver? Shall we do that?

SIR ANDREW     And you love me, let’s do’t: I am dog at a

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catch.

CLOWN     By’r lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well.

SIR ANDREW     Most certain. Let our catch be, ‘Thou

knave’.

CLOWN     ‘Hold thy peace, thou knave’, knight? I shall be

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constrained in’t to call thee knave, knight.

SIR ANDREW     ’Tis not the first time I have constrained

one to call me knave. Begin, fool: it begins, ‘Hold thy

peace’.

CLOWN     I shall never begin if I hold my peace.

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SIR ANDREW     Good, i’faith. Come, begin. [Catch sung.]

Enter MARIA.

MARIA     What a caterwauling do you keep here? If my

lady have not called up her steward Malvolio and bid

him turn you out of doors, never trust me.

SIR TOBY     My lady’s a Cataian, we are politicians,

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Malvolio’s a Peg-a-Ramsey, and [Sings.] ‘ Three merry

men be we.’ Am not I consanguineous? Am I not of

her blood? Tilly-vally! Lady! [Sings.] ‘ There dwelt a

man in Babylon, Lady, Lady’.

CLOWN     Beshrew me, the knight’s in admirable fooling.

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SIR ANDREW     Ay, he does well enough, if he be disposed,

and so do I too: he does it with a better grace, but I do

it more natural.

TOBYSIR     [Sings.] ‘O’the twelfth day of December –’

MARIA     For the love o’ God, peace!

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Enter MALVOLIO.

MALVOLIO     My masters, are you mad? Or what are you?

Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like

tinkers at this time of night? Do ye make an ale-house of

my lady’s house, that ye squeak out your coziers’ catches

without any mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no

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respect of place, persons, nor time in you?

SIR TOBY     We did keep time, sir, in our catches. Sneck up!

MALVOLIO     Sir Toby, I must be round with you. My lady

bade me tell you, that though she harbours you as her

kinsman, she’s nothing allied to your disorders. If you

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can separate yourself and your misdemeanours, you

are welcome to the house: if not, and it would please

you to take leave of her, she is very willing to bid you

farewell.

SIR TOBY     [Sings.] Farewell, dear heart, since I must

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needs be gone.

MARIA     Nay, good Sir Toby.

CLOWN     [Sings.] His eyes do show his days are almost done.

MALVOLIO     Is’t even so?

SIR TOBY     [Sings.] But I will never die.

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CLOWN     [Sings.] Sir Toby, there you lie.

MALVOLIO     This is much credit to you.

SIR TOBY     [Sings.] Shall I bid him go?

CLOWN     [Sings.] What and if you do?

SIR     TOBY [Sings.] Shall I bid him go, and spare not?

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CLOWN     [Sings.] O no, no, no, no, you dare not.

SIR TOBY     Out o’ time, sir? ye lie! Art any more than a

steward? Dost thou think because thou art virtuous,

there shall be no more cakes and ale?

CLOWN     Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i’th’

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mouth too.     Exit.

SIR TOBY     Th’art i’th’ right. Go sir, rub your chain with

crumbs. A stoup of wine, Maria!

MALVOLIO     Mistress Mary, if you prized my lady’s

favour at anything more than contempt, you would

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not give means for this uncivil rule; she shall know of

it, by this hand.     Exit.

MARIA     Go shake your ears.

SIR ANDREW     ’Twere as good a deed as to drink when a

man’s a-hungry, to challenge him the field, and then to

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break promise with him and make a fool of him.

SIR TOBY     Do’t, knight. I’ll write thee a challenge; or I’ll

deliver thy indignation to him by word of mouth.

MARIA     Sweet Sir Toby, be patient for to-night. Since

the youth of the Count’s was today with my lady, she

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is much out of quiet. For Monsieur Malvolio, let me

alone with him. If I do not gull him into a nayword,

and make him a common recreation, do not think I

have wit enough to lie straight in my bed: I know I can

do it.

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SIR TOBY     Possess us, possess us, tell us something of

him.

MARIA     Marry sir, sometimes he is a kind of Puritan.

SIR ANDREW     O, if I thought that, I’d beat him like a dog.

SIR TOBY     What, for being a Puritan? Thy exquisite

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reason, dear knight?

SIR ANDREW     I have no exquisite reason for’t, but I have

reason good enough.

MARIA     The devil a Puritan that he is, or anything

constantly, but a time-pleaser, an affectioned ass, that

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cons state without book, and utters it by great swarths:

the best persuaded of himself, so crammed (as he

thinks) with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith

that all that look on him love him: and on that vice in

him will my revenge find notable cause to work.

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SIR TOBY     What wilt thou do?

MARIA     I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of

love, wherein by the colour of his beard, the shape of

his leg, the manner of his gait, the expressure of his

eye, forehead, and complexion, he shall find himself

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most feelingly personated. I can write very like my

lady your niece; on a forgotten matter we can hardly

make distinction of our hands.

SIR TOBY     Excellent, I smell a device.

SIR ANDREW     I have’t in my nose too.

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SIR TOBY     He shall think by the letters that thou wilt

drop that they come from my niece, and that she’s in

love with him.

MARIA     My purpose is indeed a horse of that colour.

SIR ANDREW     And your horse now would make him an

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ass.

MARIA     Ass, I doubt not.

SIR ANDREW     O, ’twill be admirable!

MARIA     Sport royal, I warrant you: I know my physic

will work with him. I will plant you two, and let the

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fool make a third, where he shall find the letter:

observe his construction of it. For this night, to bed,

and dream on the event. Farewell.     Exit.

SIR TOBY     Good night, Penthesilea.

SIR ANDREW     Before me, she’s a good wench.

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SIR TOBY     She’s a beagle, true-bred, and one that adores

me: what o’ that?

SIR ANDREW     I was adored once too.

SIR TOBY     Let’s to bed, knight. Thou hadst need send

for more money.

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SIR ANDREW     If I cannot recover your niece, I am a foul

way out.

SIR TOBY     Send for money, knight; if thou hast her not

i’th’ end, call me cut.

SIR ANDREW     If I do not, never trust me, take it how you

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will.

SIR TOBY     Come, come, I’ll go burn some sack, ’tis too

late to go to bed now. Come, knight, come, knight.

Exeunt.

2.4 Enter DUKE, VIOLA, CURIO and others.

ORSINO

Give me some music. Now good morrow, friends.

Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song,

That old and antic song we heard last night;

Methought it did relieve my passion much,

More than light airs and recollected terms

5

Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.

Come, but one verse.

CURIO     He is not here, so please your lordship, that

should sing it.

ORSINO     Who was it?

10

CURIO     Feste the jester, my lord, a fool that the Lady

OLIVIA’s father took much delight in. He is about the

house.

ORSINO     Seek him out, and play the tune the while.

     Exit Curio. Music plays.

Come hither, boy. If ever thou shalt love,

15

In the sweet pangs of it remember me:

For such as I am, all true lovers are,

Unstaid and skittish in all motions else,

Save in the constant image of the creature

That is belov’d. How dost thou like this tune?

20

VIOLA     It gives a very echo to the seat

Where love is thron’d.

ORSINO     Thou dost speak masterly.

My life upon’t, young though thou art, thine eye

Hath stay’d upon some favour that it loves.

Hath it not, boy?

VIOLA     A little, by your favour.

25

ORSINO     What kind of woman is’t?

VIOLA     Of your complexion.

ORSINO     She is not worth thee then. What years, i’faith?

VIOLA     About your years, my lord.

ORSINO     Too old, by heaven! Let still the woman take

An elder than herself; so wears she to him,

30

So sways she level in her husband’s heart:

For boy, however we do praise ourselves,

Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,

More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn

Than women’s are.

VIOLA     I think it well, my lord.

35

ORSINO     Then let thy love be younger than thyself,

Or thy affection cannot hold the bent:

For women are as roses, whose fair flower

Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour.

VIOLA     And so they are: alas, that they are so:

40

To die, even when they to perfection grow!

Enter CURIO and Clown.

ORSINO     O, fellow, come, the song we had last night.

Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain;

The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,

And the free maids that weave their thread with

    bones

45

Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth,

And dallies with the innocence of love,

Like the old age.

CLOWN     Are you ready, sir?

ORSINO     Ay, prithee sing.     [Music.]

50

The Clown’s Song

CLOWN

Come away, come away death,

And in sad cypress let me be laid.

Fie away, fie away breath,

I am slain by a fair cruel maid:

My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,

55

O prepare it.

My part of death no one so true

Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet,

On my black coffin let there be strewn:

60

Not a friend, not a friend greet

My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:

A thousand thousand sighs to save,

Lay me, O where

Sad true lover never find my grave,

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To weep there.

ORSINO     There’s for thy pains. [giving him money]

CLOWN     No pains, sir, I take pleasure in singing, sir.

ORSINO     I’ll pay thy pleasure then.

CLOWN     Truly sir, and pleasure will be paid, one time or

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another.

ORSINO     Give me now leave to leave thee.

CLOWN     Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the

tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy

mind is a very opal. I would have men of such

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constancy put to sea, that their business might be

everything, and their intent everywhere, for that’s it

that always makes a good voyage of nothing.

Farewell.     Exit.

ORSINO

Let all the rest give place.     Exeunt Curio and others.

     Once more, Cesario,

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Get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty.

Tell her my love, more noble than the world,

Prizes not quantity of dirty lands;

The parts that fortune hath bestow’d upon her,

Tell her I hold as giddily as fortune:

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But ’tis that miracle and queen of gems

That nature pranks her in, attracts my soul.

VIOLA     But if she cannot love you, sir?

ORSINO     I cannot be so answer’d.

VIOLA     Sooth, but you must.

Say that some lady, as perhaps there is,

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Hath for your love as great a pang of heart

As you have for Olivia: you cannot love her:

You tell her so. Must she not then be answer’d?

ORSINO     There is no woman’s sides

Can bide the beating of so strong a passion

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As love doth give my heart; no woman’s heart

So big, to hold so much: they lack retention.

Alas, their love may be call’d appetite,

No motion of the liver, but the palate,

That suffers surfeit, cloyment, and revolt;

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But mine is all as hungry as the sea,

And can digest as much. Make no compare

Between that love a woman can bear me

And that I owe Olivia.

VIOLA     Ay, but I know –

ORSINO     What dost thou know?

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VIOLA     Too well what love women to men may owe:

In faith, they are as true of heart as we.

My father had a daughter lov’d a man,

As it might be perhaps, were I a woman,

I should your lordship.

ORSINO     And what’s her history?

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VIOLA     A blank, my lord: she never told her love,

But let concealment like a worm i’th’ bud

Feed on her damask cheek: she pin’d in thought,

And with a green and yellow melancholy

She sat like Patience on a monument,

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Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

We men may say more, swear more, but indeed

Our shows are more than will: for still we prove

Much in our vows, but little in our love.

ORSINO     But died thy sister of her love, my boy?

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VIOLA     I am all the daughters of my father’s house,

And all the brothers too: and yet I know not.

Sir, shall I to this lady?

ORSINO     Ay, that’s the theme.

To her in haste; give her this jewel; say

My love can give no place, bide no denay.     Exeunt.

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2.5 Enter SIR TOBY, SIR ANDREW and FABIAN.

SIR TOBY     Come thy ways, Signior Fabian.

FABIAN     Nay, I’ll come: if I lose a scruple of this sport,

let me be boiled to death with melancholy.

SIR TOBY     Would’st thou not be glad to have the

niggardly rascally sheep-biter come by some notable

5

shame?

FABIAN     I would exult, man: you know he brought me

out o’ favour with my lady, about a bear-baiting here.

SIR TOBY     To anger him we’ll have the bear again, and

we will fool him black and blue – shall we not, Sir

10

Andrew?

SIR ANDREW     And we do not, it is pity of our lives.

Enter MARIA.

SIR TOBY     Here comes the little villain. How now, my

metal of India?

MARIA     Get ye all three into the box-tree. Malvolio’s

15

coming down this walk; he has been yonder i’the sun

practising behaviour to his own shadow this half hour:

observe him, for the love of mockery; for I know this

letter will make a contemplative idiot of him. Close, in

the name of jesting! [As the men hide, she drops a letter.]

20

Lie thou there: for here comes the trout that must be

caught with tickling.     Exit.

Enter MALVOLIO.

MALVOLIO     ’Tis but fortune, all is fortune. Maria once

told me she did affect me, and I have heard herself

come thus near, that should she fancy, it should be one

25

of my complexion. Besides, she uses me with a more

exalted respect than any one else that follows her.

What should I think on’t?

SIR TOBY     Here’s an overweening rogue!

FABIAN     O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-

30

cock of him: how he jets under his advanced plumes!

SIR ANDREW     ’Slight, I could so beat the rogue!

SIR TOBY     Peace, I say!

MALVOLIO     To be Count Malvolio!

SIR TOBY     Ah, rogue!

35

SIR ANDREW     Pistol him, pistol him!

SIR TOBY     Peace, peace!

MALVOLIO     There is example for’t. The Lady of the

Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe.

SIR ANDREW     Fie on him, Jezebel!

40

FABIAN     O peace! now he’s deeply in: look how

imagination blows him.

MALVOLIO     Having been three months married to her,

sitting in my state –

SIR TOBY     O for a stone-bow to hit him in the eye!

45

MALVOLIO     Calling my officers about me, in my

branched velvet gown, having come from a day-bed,

where I have left Olivia sleeping –

SIR TOBY     Fire and brimstone!

FABIAN     O peace, peace!

50

MALVOLIO     And then to have the humour of state; and

after a demure travel of regard, telling them I know

my place, as I would they should do theirs, to ask for

my kinsman Toby.

SIR TOBY     Bolts and shackles!

55

FABIAN     O peace, peace, peace! Now, now!

MALVOLIO     Seven of my people, with an obedient start,

make out for him. I frown the while, and perchance wind

up my watch, or play with my [touching his chain] – some

rich jewel. Toby approaches; curtsies there to me –

60

SIR TOBY     Shall this fellow live?

FABIAN     Though our silence be drawn from us with cars,

yet peace!

MALVOLIO     I extend my hand to him thus, quenching

my familiar smile with a austere regard of control –

65

SIR TOBY     And does not Toby take you a blow o’the lips

then?

MALVOLIO     Saying, ‘Cousin Toby, my fortunes having

cast me on your niece give me this prerogative of

speech’ –

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SIR TOBY     What, what?

MALVOLIO     ‘You must amend your drunkenness.’

SIR TOBY     Out, scab!

FABIAN     Nay, patience, or we break the sinews of our plot.

MALVOLIO     ‘Besides, you waste the treasure of your time

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with a foolish knight’ –

SIR ANDREW     That’s me, I warrant you.

MALVOLIO     ‘One Sir Andrew.’

SIR ANDREW     I knew ’twas I, for many do call me fool.

MALVOLIO     [seeing the letter] What employment have we

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here?

FABIAN     Now is the woodcock near the gin.

SIR TOBY     O peace! and the spirit of humours intimate

reading aloud to him!

MALVOLIO     [taking up the letter] By my life, this is my

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lady’s hand: these be her very C’s, her U’s, and her

T’s, and thus makes she her great P’s. It is in contempt

of question her hand.

SIR     ANDREW Her C’s, her U’s, and her T’s: why that?

MALVOLIO     [Reads.] To the unknown beloved, this, and my

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good wishes. Her very phrases! By your leave, wax.

Soft! and the impressure her Lucrece, with which she

uses to seal: ’tis my lady! To whom should this be?

[He opens the letter.]

FABIAN     This wins him, liver and all.

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MALVOLIO     [Reads.] Jove knows I love;

But who?

Lips, do not move,

No man must know.

‘No man must know’! What follows? The numbers

altered! ‘No man must know’! – If this should be thee,

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Malvolio!

SIR TOBY     Marry, hang thee, brock!

MALVOLIO     [Reads.]

I may command where I adore;

But silence, like a Lucrece knife,

With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore;

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M.O.A.I. doth sway my life.

FABIAN     A fustian riddle!

SIR TOBY     Excellent wench, say I.

MALVOLIO     ‘M.O.A.I. doth sway my life.’ – Nay, but first

let me see, let me see, let me see.

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FABIAN     What dish o’ poison has she dressed him!

SIR TOBY     And with what wing the staniel checks at it!

MALVOLIO     ‘I may command where I adore.’ Why, she

may command me: I serve her, she is my lady. Why,

this is evident to any formal capacity. There is no

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obstruction in this. And the end: what should that

alphabetical position portend? If I could make that

resemble something in me! Softly! ‘M.O.A.I.’ –

SIR TOBY     O ay, make up that! He is now at a cold scent.

FABIAN     Sowter will cry upon’t for all this, though it be

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as rank as a fox.

MALVOLIO     ‘M’ – Malvolio! ‘M’! Why, that begins my

name!

FABIAN     Did not I say he would work it out? the cur is

excellent at faults.

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MALVOLIO     ‘M’ – But then there is no consonancy in the

sequel; that suffers under probation: ‘A’ should follow,

but ‘O’ does.

FABIAN     And ‘O’ shall end, I hope.

SIR TOBY     Ay, or I’ll cudgel him, and make him cry ‘O’!

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MALVOLIO     And then ‘I’ comes behind.

FABIAN     Ay, and you had any eye behind you, you might

see more detraction at your heels than fortunes before

you.

MALVOLIO     ‘M.O.A.I.’ This simulation is not as the

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former: and yet, to crush this a little, it would bow to

me, for every one of these letters are in my name.

Soft! here follows prose. [Reads.] If this fall into thy

hand, revolve. In my stars I am above thee, but be not

afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve

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greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em. Thy

fates open their hands, let thy blood and spirit embrace

them, and to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast

thy humble slough, and appear fresh. Be opposite with a

kinsman, surly with servants. Let thy tongue tang

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arguments of state; put thyself into the trick of singularity.

She thus advises thee, that sighs for thee. Remember who

commended thy yellow stockings, and wished to see thee

ever cross-gartered: I say, remember. Go to, thou art

made, if thou desir’st to be so. If not, let me see thee a

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steward still, the fellow of servants, and not worthy to

touch Fortune’s fingers. Farewell. She that would alter

services with thee,

     The Fortunate Unhappy.

Daylight and champaign discovers not more!

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This is open. I will be proud, I will read politic

authors, I will baffle Sir Toby, I will wash off gross

acquaintance, I will be point-device the very man. I do

not now fool myself, to let imagination jade me; for

every reason excites to this, that my lady loves me. She

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did commend my yellow stockings of late, she did

praise my leg being cross-gartered, and in this she

manifests herself to my love, and with a kind of

injunction drives me to these habits of her liking. I

thank my stars, I am happy. I will be strange, stout, in

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yellow stockings, and cross-gartered, even with the

swiftness of putting on. Jove and my stars be

praised! – Here is yet a postscript. [Reads.] Thou

canst not choose but know who I am. If thou entertain’st

my love, let it appear in thy smiling, thy smiles become

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thee well. Therefore in my presence still smile, dear my

sweet, I prithee. Jove, I thank thee, I will smile, I will

do every thing that thou wilt have me.     Exit.

FABIAN     I will not give my part of this sport for a pension

of thousands to be paid from the Sophy.

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SIR TOBY     I could marry this wench for this device.

SIR ANDREW     So could I too.

SIR TOBY     And ask no other dowry with her but such

another jest.

Enter MARIA.

SIR ANDREW     Nor I neither.

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FABIAN     Here comes my noble gull-catcher.

SIR TOBY     Wilt thou set thy foot o’ my neck?

SIR ANDREW     Or o’ mine either?

SIR TOBY     Shall I play my freedom at tray-trip, and

become thy bond-slave?

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SIR ANDREW     I’faith, or I either?

SIR TOBY     Why, thou hast put him in such a dream, that

when the image of it leaves him he must run mad.

MARIA     Nay, but say true, does it work upon him?

SIR TOBY     Like aqua-vitae with a midwife.

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MARIA     If you will then see the fruits of the sport, mark

his first approach before my lady: he will come to her

in yellow stockings, and ’tis a colour she abhors, and

cross-gartered, a fashion she detests: and he will smile

upon her, which will now be so unsuitable to her

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disposition, being addicted to a melancholy as she is,

that it cannot but turn him into a notable contempt. If

you will see it, follow me.

SIR TOBY     To the gates of Tartar, thou most excellent

devil of wit!

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SIR ANDREW     I’ll make one too.     Exeunt.

3.1 Enter VIOLA, and Clown playing on pipe and tabor.

VIOLA     Save thee, friend, and thy music! Dost thou live

by thy tabor?

CLOWN     No, sir, I live by the church.

VIOLA     Art thou a churchman?

CLOWN     No such matter, sir. I do live by the church, for

5

I do live at my house, and my house doth stand by the

church.

VIOLA     So thou may’st say the king lies by a beggar, if a

beggar dwell near him; or the church stands by thy

tabor, if thy tabor stand by the church.

10

CLOWN     You have said, sir. To see this age! A sentence is

but a chev’ril glove to a good wit – how quickly the

wrong side may be turned outward!

VIOLA     Nay, that’s certain: they that dally nicely with

words may quickly make them wanton.

15

CLOWN     I would therefore my sister had had no name,

sir.

VIOLA     Why, man?

CLOWN     Why, sir, her name’s a word, and to dally with

that word might make my sister wanton. But indeed,

20

words are very rascals, since bonds disgraced them.

VIOLA     Thy reason, man?

CLOWN     Troth, sir, I can yield you none without words,

and words are grown so false, I am loath to prove

reason with them.

25

VIOLA     I warrant thou art a merry fellow, and car’st for

nothing.

CLOWN     Not so, sir, I do care for something; but in my

conscience, sir, I do not care for you: if that be to

care for nothing, sir, I would it would make you

30

invisible.

VIOLA     Art not thou the Lady Olivia’s fool?

CLOWN     No indeed sir, the Lady Olivia has no folly. She

will keep no fool, sir, till she be married, and fools are

as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings, the

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husband’s the bigger. I am indeed not her fool, but her

corrupter of words.

VIOLA     I saw thee late at the Count Orsino’s.

CLOWN     Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the

sun, it shines everywhere. I would be sorry, sir, but the

40

fool should be as oft with your master as with my

mistress: I think I saw your wisdom there.

VIOLA     Nay, and thou pass upon me, I’ll no more with

thee. Hold, there’s expenses for thee. [giving a coin]

CLOWN     Now Jove, in his next commodity of hair, send

45

thee a beard!

VIOLA     By my troth, I’ll tell thee, I am almost sick for

one, [aside] though I would not have it grow on my

chin. – Is thy lady within?

CLOWN     Would not a pair of these have bred, sir?

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VIOLA     Yes, being kept together, and put to use.

CLOWN     I would play Lord Pandarus of Phrygia, sir, to

bring a Cressida to this Troilus.

VIOLA     I understand you, sir, ’tis well begged.

[giving another coin]

CLOWN     The matter, I hope, is not great, sir, begging but

55

a beggar: Cressida was a beggar. My lady is within, sir.

I will conster to them whence you come; who you are

and what you would are out of my welkin. I might say

‘element’, but the word is overworn.     Exit.

VIOLA     This fellow is wise enough to play the fool,

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And to do that well, craves a kind of wit:

He must observe their mood on whom he jests,

The quality of persons, and the time,

And like the haggard, check at every feather

That comes before his eye. This is a practice

65

As full of labour as a wise man’s art:

For folly that he wisely shows is fit;

But wise men, folly-fall’n, quite taint their wit.

Enter SIR TOBY and SIR ANDREW.

SIR TOBY     Save you, gentleman.

VIOLA     And you, sir.

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SIR ANDREW     Dieu vous garde, monsieur.

VIOLA     Et vous aussi: votre serviteur.

SIR ANDREW     I hope, sir, you are, and I am yours.

SIR TOBY     Will you encounter the house? My niece is

desirous you should enter, if your trade be to her.

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VIOLA     I am bound to your niece, sir; I mean, she is the

list of my voyage.

SIR TOBY     Taste your legs, sir, put them to motion.

VIOLA     My legs do better understand me, sir, than I

understand what you mean by bidding me taste my

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legs.

SIR TOBY     I mean, to go, sir, to enter.

VIOLA     I will answer you with gait and entrance; but we

are prevented.

Enter OLIVIA and MARIA.

Most excellent accomplished lady, the heavens rain

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odours on you!

SIR ANDREW     That youth’s a rare courtier: ‘rain odours’

– well.

VIOLA     My matter hath no voice, lady, but to your own

most pregnant and vouchsafed ear.

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SIR ANDREW     ‘Odours’, ‘pregnant’, and ‘vouchsafed’: I’ll

get ’em all three all ready.

OLIVIA     Let the garden door be shut, and leave me to my

hearing.     Exeunt Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Maria.

Give me your hand, sir.

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VIOLA     My duty, madam, and most humble service.

OLIVIA     What is your name?

VIOLA     Cesario is your servant’s name, fair princess.

OLIVIA     My servant, sir? ’Twas never merry world

Since lowly feigning was call’d compliment:

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Y’are servant to the Count Orsino, youth.

VIOLA     And he is yours, and his must needs be yours:

Your servant’s servant is your servant, madam.

OLIVIA     For him, I think not on him: for his thoughts,

Would they were blanks, rather than fill’d with me.

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VIOLA     Madam, I come to whet your gentle thoughts

On his behalf.

OLIVIA     O, by your leave, I pray you!

I bade you never speak again of him;

But would you undertake another suit,

I had rather hear you to solicit that,

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Than music from the spheres.

VIOLA     Dear lady –

OLIVIA     Give me leave, beseech you. I did send,

After the last enchantment you did here,

A ring in chase of you. So did I abuse

Myself, my servant, and, I fear me, you.

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Under your hard construction must I sit,

To force that on you in a shameful cunning

Which you knew none of yours. What might you think?

Have you not set mine honour at the stake,

And baited it with all th’unmuzzled thoughts

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That tyrannous heart can think? To one of your

receiving

Enough is shown; a cypress, not a bosom,

Hides my heart: so, let me hear you speak.

VIOLA     I pity you.

OLIVIA     That’s a degree to love.

VIOLA     No, not a grize: for ’tis a vulgar proof

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That very oft we pity enemies.

OLIVIA     Why then methinks ’tis time to smile again.

O world, how apt the poor are to be proud!

If one should be a prey, how much the better

To fall before the lion than the wolf! [Clock strikes.]

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The clock upbraids me with the waste of time.

Be not afraid, good youth, I will not have you,

And yet when wit and youth is come to harvest,

Your wife is like to reap a proper man.

There lies your way, due west.

VIOLA     Then westward ho!

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Grace and good disposition attend your ladyship!

You’ll nothing, madam, to my lord, by me?

OLIVIA     Stay:

I prithee tell me what thou think’st of me.

VIOLA     That you do think you are not what you are.

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OLIVIA     If I think so, I think the same of you.

VIOLA     Then think you right; I am not what I am.

OLIVIA     I would you were as I would have you be.

VIOLA     Would it be better, madam, than I am?

I wish it might, for now I am your fool.

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OLIVIA     [aside] O what a deal of scorn looks beautiful

In the contempt and anger of his lip!

A murd’rous guilt shows not itself more soon

Than love that would seem hid. Love’s night is noon. –

Cesario, by the roses of the spring,

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By maidhood, honour, truth, and everything,

I love thee so, that maugre all thy pride,

Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.

Do not extort thy reasons from this clause,

For that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause;

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But rather reason thus with reason fetter:

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

VIOLA     By innocence I swear, and by my youth,

I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth,

And that no woman has; nor never none

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Shall mistress be of it, save I alone.

And so adieu, good madam; never more

Will I my master’s tears to you deplore.

OLIVIA     Yet come again: for thou perhaps mayst move

That heart which now abhors, to like his love.     Exeunt.

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3.2 Enter SIR TOBY, SIR ANDREW and FABIAN.

SIR ANDREW     No, faith, I’ll not stay a jot longer.

SIR TOBY     Thy reason, dear venom, give thy reason.

FABIAN     You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew.

SIR ANDREW     Marry, I saw your niece do more favours to

the Count’s serving-man than ever she bestowed upon

5

me: I saw’t i’th’ orchard.

SIR TOBY     Did she see thee the while, old boy, tell me that?

SIR ANDREW     As plain as I see you now.

FABIAN     This was a great argument of love in her toward

10

you.

SIR ANDREW     ’Slight! will you make an ass o’ me?

FABIAN     I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of

judgment and reason.

SIR TOBY     And they have been grand-jurymen since

15

before Noah was a sailor.

FABIAN     She did show favour to the youth in your sight

only to exasperate you, to awake your dormouse

valour, to put fire in your heart, and brimstone in your

liver. You should then have accosted her, and with

20

some excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you

should have banged the youth into dumbness. This

was looked for at your hand, and this was balked: the

double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off,

and you are now sailed into the north of my lady’s

25

opinion, where you will hang like an icicle on a

Dutchman’s beard, unless you do redeem it by some

laudable attempt, either of valour or policy.

SIR ANDREW     And’t be any way, it must be with valour,

for policy I hate: I had as lief be a Brownist as a

30

politician.

SIR TOBY     Why then, build me thy fortunes upon the

basis of valour. Challenge me the Count’s youth to

fight with him, hurt him in eleven places: my niece

shall take note of it; and assure thyself there is no love-

35

broker in the world can more prevail in man’s

commendation with woman than report of valour.

FABIAN     There is no way but this, Sir Andrew.

SIR ANDREW     Will either of you bear me a challenge to

him?

40

SIR TOBY     Go, write it in a martial hand, be curst and

brief: it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent and

full of invention. Taunt him with the licence of ink. If

thou thou’st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss, and

as many lies as will lie in thy sheet of paper, although

45

the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in

England, set ’em down. Go, about it. Let there be gall

enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-

pen, no matter: about it.

SIR ANDREW     Where shall I find you?

50

SIR TOBY     We’ll call thee at thy cubiculo. Go!

Exit Sir Andrew.

FABIAN     This is a dear manikin to you, Sir Toby.

SIR TOBY     I have been dear to him, lad, some two

thousand strong, or so.

FABIAN     We shall have a rare letter from him; but you’ll

55

not deliver’t.

SIR TOBY     Never trust me then: and by all means stir on

the youth to an answer. I think oxen and wainropes

cannot hale them together. For Andrew, if he were

opened and you find so much blood in his liver as

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will clog the foot of a flea, I’ll eat the rest of th’

anatomy.

FABIAN     And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage

no great presage of cruelty.

Enter MARIA.

SIR TOBY     Look where the youngest wren of nine comes.

65

MARIA     If you desire the spleen, and will laugh

yourselves into stitches, follow me. Yond gull Malvolio

is turned heathen, a very renegado; for there is no

Christian that means to be saved by believing rightly

can ever believe such impossible passages of

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grossness. He’s in yellow stockings!

SIR TOBY     And cross-gartered?

MARIA     Most villainously; like a pedant that keeps a

school i’th’ church. I have dogged him like his

murderer. He does obey every point of the letter that I

75

dropped to betray him: he does smile his face into

more lines than is in the new map with the

augmentation of the Indies: you have not seen such a

thing as ’tis. I can hardly forbear hurling things at him.

I know my lady will strike him: if she do, he’ll smile,

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and take’t for a great favour.

SIR TOBY     Come bring us, bring us where he is.

Exeunt omnes.

3.3 Enter SEBASTIAN and ANTONIO.

SEBASTIAN     I would not by my will have troubled you,

But since you make your pleasure of your pains,

I will no further chide you.

ANTONIO     I could not stay behind you: my desire,

More sharp than filed steel, did spur me forth:

5

And not all love to see you (though so much

As might have drawn one to a longer voyage)

But jealousy what might befall your travel,

Being skilless in these parts: which to a stranger,

Unguided and unfriended, often prove

10

Rough and unhospitable. My willing love,

The rather by these arguments of fear,

Set forth in your pursuit.

SEBASTIAN     My kind Antonio,

I can no other answer make, but thanks,

And thanks, and ever thanks; and oft good turns

15

Are shuffled off with such uncurrent pay:

But were my worth, as is my conscience, firm,

You should find better dealing. What’s to do?

Shall we go see the relics of this town?

ANTONIO     To-morrow, sir; best first go see your lodging.

20

SEBASTIAN     I am not weary, and ’tis long to night.

I pray you, let us satisfy our eyes

With the memorials and the things of fame

That do renown this city.

ANTONIO     Would you’d pardon me:

I do not without danger walk these streets.

25

Once in a sea-fight ’gainst the Count his galleys,

I did some service, of such note indeed,

That were I ta’en here it would scarce be answer’d.

SEBASTIAN     Belike you slew great number of his people.

ANTONIO     Th’offence is not of such a bloody nature,

30

Albeit the quality of the time and quarrel

Might well have given us bloody argument.

It might have since been answer’d in repaying

What we took from them, which for traffic’s sake

Most of our city did. Only myself stood out,

35

For which, if I be lapsed in this place,

I shall pay dear.

SEBASTIAN     Do not then walk too open.

ANTONIO     It doth not fit me. Hold, sir, here’s my purse.

In the south suburbs, at the Elephant,

Is best to lodge: I will bespeak our diet,

40

Whiles you beguile the time, and feed your

knowledge

With viewing of the town: there shall you have me.

SEBASTIAN     Why I your purse?

ANTONIO     Haply your eye shall light upon some toy

You have desire to purchase: and your store,

45

I think, is not for idle markets, sir.

SEBASTIAN     I’ll be your purse-bearer, and leave you for

An hour.

ANTONIO     To th’Elephant.

SEBASTIAN     I do remember.     Exeunt separately.

3.4 Enter OLIVIA and MARIA.

OLIVIA     [aside] I have sent after him, he says he’ll come:

How shall I feast him? What bestow of him?

For youth is bought more oft than begg’d or

    borrow’d.

I speak too loud. –

Where’s Malvolio? He is sad and civil,

5

And suits well for a servant with my fortunes:

Where is Malvolio?

MARIA     He’s coming, madam, but in very strange

manner. He is sure possessed, madam.

OLIVIA     Why, what’s the matter? Does he rave?

10

MARIA     No, madam, he does nothing but smile: your

ladyship were best to have some guard about you if he

come, for sure the man is tainted in’s wits.

OLIVIA     Go call him hither.     Exit Maria.

I am as mad as he

If sad and merry madness equal be.

15

Enter MALVOLIO with MARIA.

How now, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO     Sweet Lady, ho, ho!

OLIVIA     Smil’st thou? I sent for thee upon a sad occasion.

MALVOLIO     Sad, lady? I could be sad: this does make

some obstruction in the blood, this cross-gartering; but

20

what of that? If it please the eye of one, it is with me as

the very true sonnet is: ‘Please one, and please all’.

OLIVIA     Why, how dost thou, man? What is the matter

with thee?

MALVOLIO     Not black in my mind, though yellow in my

25

legs. It did come to his hands, and commands shall be

executed. I think we do know the sweet Roman hand.

OLIVIA     Wilt thou go to bed, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO     To bed? Ay, sweetheart, and I’ll come to

thee.

30

OLIVIA     God comfort thee! Why dost thou smile so, and

kiss thy hand so oft?

MARIA     How do you, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO     At your request? Yes, nightingales answer

daws!

35

MARIA     Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness

before my lady?

MALVOLIO     ‘Be not afraid of greatness’: ’twas well writ.

OLIVIA     What mean’st thou by that, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO     ‘Some are born great’ –

40

OLIVIA     Ha?

MALVOLIO     ‘Some achieve greatness’ –

OLIVIA     What say’st thou?

MALVOLIO     ‘And some have greatness thrust upon

them.’

45

OLIVIA     Heaven restore thee!

MALVOLIO     ‘Remember who commended thy yellow

stockings’ –

OLIVIA     Thy yellow stockings?

MALVOLIO     ‘And wished to see thee cross-gartered.’

50

OLIVIA     Cross-gartered?

MALVOLIO     ‘Go to, thou art made, if thou desir’st to be

so:’ –

OLIVIA     Am I made?

MALVOLIO     ‘If not, let me see thee a servant still.’

55

OLIVIA     Why, this is very midsummer madness.

Enter Servant.

SERVANT     Madam, the young gentleman of the Count

ORSINO’s is returned; I could hardly entreat him back.

He attends your ladyship’s pleasure.

OLIVIA     I’ll come to him.     Exit Servant.

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Good Maria, let this fellow be looked to. Where’s my

cousin Toby? Let some of my people have a special

care of him; I would not have him miscarry for the half

of my dowry.

Exeunt Olivia and Maria different ways.

MALVOLIO     O ho, do you come near me now? No worse

65

man than Sir Toby to look to me! This concurs

directly with the letter: she sends him on purpose, that

I may appear stubborn to him; for she incites me to

that in the letter. ‘Cast thy humble slough,’ says she;

‘be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants, let

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thy tongue tang arguments of state, put thyself into

the trick of singularity’: and consequently sets down

the manner how: as, a sad face, a reverend carriage, a

slow tongue, in the habit of some sir of note, and so

forth. I have limed her, but it is Jove’s doing, and Jove

75

make me thankful! And when she went away now, ‘Let

this fellow be looked to’ – ‘fellow’! – not Malvolio, nor

after my degree, but ‘fellow’. Why, everything adheres

together, that no dram of a scruple, no scruple of a

scruple, no obstacle, no incredulous or unsafe

80

circumstance – what can be said? – nothing that can

be can come between me and the full prospect of my

hopes. Well, Jove, not I, is the doer of this, and he is

to be thanked.

Enter SIR TOBY, FABIAN and MARIA.

SIR TOBY     Which way is he, in the name of sanctity? If all

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the devils of hell be drawn in little, and Legion himself

possessed him, yet I’ll speak to him.

FABIAN     Here he is, here he is. How is’t with you, sir?

How is’t with you, man?

MALVOLIO     Go off, I discard you. Let me enjoy my

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private. Go off.

MARIA     Lo, how hollow the fiend speaks within him!

Did not I tell you? Sir Toby, my lady prays you to have

a care of him.

MALVOLIO     [aside] Ah ha! does she so?

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SIR TOBY     Go to, go to: peace, peace, we must deal gently

with him. Let me alone. How do you, Malvolio? How

is’t with you? What, man, defy the devil! Consider,

he’s an enemy to mankind.

MALVOLIO     Do you know what you say?

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MARIA     La you, and you speak ill of the devil, how he

takes it at heart! Pray God he be not betwitched!

FABIAN     Carry his water to th’ wise woman.

MARIA     Marry, and it shall be done to-morrow morning,

if I live. My lady would not lose him for more than I’ll

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say.

MALVOLIO     How now, mistress?

MARIA     O Lord!

SIR TOBY     Prithee hold thy peace, this is not the way. Do

you not see you move him? Let me alone with him.

110

FABIAN     No way but gentleness, gently, gently: the fiend

is rough, and will not be roughly used.

SIR TOBY     Why, how now, my bawcock? How dost thou,

chuck?

MALVOLIO     Sir!

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SIR TOBY     Ay, biddy, come with me. What, man, ’tis not

for gravity to play at cherry-pit with Satan. Hang him,

foul collier!

MARIA     Get him to say his prayers, good Sir Toby, get

him to pray.

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MALVOLIO     My prayers, minx!

MARIA     No, I warrant you, he will not hear of godliness.

MALVOLIO     Go hang yourselves all: you are idle, shallow

things, I am not of your element: you shall know more

hereafter.     Exit.

125

SIR TOBY     Is’t possible?

FABIAN     If this were played upon a stage now, I could

condemn it as an improbable fiction.

SIR TOBY     His very genius hath taken the infection of the

device, man.

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MARIA     Nay, pursue him now, lest the device take air,

and taint.

FABIAN     Why, we shall make him mad indeed.

MARIA     The house will be the quieter.

SIR TOBY     Come, we’ll have him in a dark room and

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bound. My niece is already in the belief that he’s mad:

we may carry it thus for our pleasure, and his penance,

till our very pastime, tired out of breath, prompt us to

have mercy on him; at which time we will bring the

device to the bar, and crown thee for a finder of

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madmen. But see, but see!

Enter SIR ANDREW.

FABIAN     More matter for a May morning!

SIR ANDREW     Here’s the challenge, read it: I warrant

there’s vinegar and pepper in’t.

FABIAN     Is’t so saucy?

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SIR ANDREW     Ay, is’t, I warrant him: do but read.

SIR TOBY     Give me. [Reads.] Youth, whatsoever thou art,

thou art but a scurvy fellow.

FABIAN     Good, and valiant.

SIR TOBY     Wonder not, nor admire not in thy mind, why I

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do call thee so, for I will show thee no reason for’t.

FABIAN     A good note; that keeps you from the blow of

the law.

SIR TOBY     Thou com’st to the Lady Olivia, and in my sight

she uses thee kindly: but thou liest in thy throat; that is

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not the matter I challenge thee for.

FABIAN     Very brief, and to exceeding good sense [aside]

-less.

SIR TOBY     I will waylay thee going home, where if it be thy

chance to kill me –

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FABIAN     Good.

SIR TOBY     Thou kill’st me like a rogue and a villain.

FABIAN     Still you keep o’ th’ windy side of the law:

good.

SIR TOBY     Fare thee well, and God have mercy upon one of

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our souls! He may have mercy upon mine, but my hope is

better, and so look to thyself. Thy friend, as thou usest

him, and thy sworn enemy,

     Andrew Aguecheek.

If this letter move him not, his legs cannot. I’ll give’t

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him.

MARIA     You may have very fit occasion for’t: he is now in

some commerce with my lady, and will by and by

depart.

SIR TOBY     Go, Sir Andrew: scout me for him at the

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corner of the orchard, like a bum-baily. So soon as ever

thou see’st him, draw, and as thou draw’st, swear

horrible: for it comes to pass oft, that a terrible oath,

with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives

manhood more approbation than ever proof itself

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would have earned him. Away!

SIR ANDREW     Nay, let me alone for swearing.     Exit.

SIR TOBY     Now will not I deliver his letter: for the

behaviour of the young gentleman gives him out to

be of good capacity and breeding: his employment

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between his lord and my niece confirms no less.

Therefore this letter, being so excellently ignorant,

will breed no terror in the youth: he will find it comes

from a clodpole. But, sir, I will deliver his challenge by

word of mouth, set upon Aguecheek a notable report

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of valour, and drive the gentleman (as I know his youth

will aptly receive it) into a most hideous opinion of his

rage, skill, fury, and impetuosity. This will so fright

them both that they will kill one another by the look,

like cockatrices.

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Enter OLIVIA and VIOLA.

FABIAN     Here he comes with your niece: give them way

till he take leave, and presently after him.

SIR TOBY     I will meditate the while upon some horrid

message for a challenge.

Exeunt Sir Toby, Fabian and Maria.

OLIVIA     I have said too much unto a heart of stone,

200

And laid mine honour too unchary out:

There’s something in me that reproves my fault:

But such a headstrong potent fault it is,

That it but mocks reproof.

VIOLA     With the same ’haviour that your passion bears

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Goes on my master’s griefs.

OLIVIA     Here, wear this jewel for me, ’tis my picture:

Refuse it not, it hath no tongue to vex you:

And I beseech you come again to-morrow.

What shall you ask of me that I’ll deny,

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That honour sav’d may upon asking give?

VIOLA     Nothing but this, your true love for my master.

OLIVIA     How with mine honour may I give him that

Which I have given to you?

VIOLA     I will acquit you.

OLIVIA     Well, come again to-morrow. Fare thee well;

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A fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell.

Exit.

Enter SIR TOBY and FABIAN.

SIR TOBY     Gentleman, God save thee.

VIOLA     And you, sir.

SIR TOBY     That defence thou hast, betake thee to’t. Of

what nature the wrongs are thou hast done him, I

220

know not: but thy intercepter, full of despite, bloody as

the hunter, attends thee at the orchard-end. Dismount

thy tuck, be yare in thy preparation, for thy assailant is

quick, skilful, and deadly.

VIOLA     You mistake, sir; I am sure no man hath any

225

quarrel to me: my remembrance is very free and clear

from any image of offence done to any man.

SIR TOBY     You’ll find it otherwise, I assure you.

Therefore, if you hold your life at any price, betake

you to your guard: for your opposite hath in him what

230

youth, strength, skill, and wrath, can furnish man

withal.

VIOLA     I pray you, sir, what is he?

SIR TOBY     He is knight, dubbed with unhatched rapier,

and on carpet consideration, but he is a devil in private

235

brawl. Souls and bodies hath he divorced three, and

his incensement at this moment is so implacable that

satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and

sepulchre. Hob, nob, is his word: give’t or take’t.

VIOLA     I will return again into the house, and desire

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some conduct of the lady. I am no fighter. I have heard

of some kind of men that put quarrels purposely on

others to taste their valour: belike this is a man of that

quirk.

SIR TOBY     Sir, no: his indignation derives itself out of a

245

very competent injury; therefore get you on, and give

him his desire. Back you shall not to the house, unless

you undertake that with me which with as much safety

you might answer him; therefore on, or strip your

sword stark naked: for meddle you must, that’s

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certain, or forswear to wear iron about you.

VIOLA     This is as uncivil as strange. I beseech you, do

me this courteous office, as to know of the knight what

my offence to him is: it is something of my negligence,

nothing of my purpose.

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SIR TOBY     I will do so. Signior Fabian, stay you by this

gentleman till my return.     Exit Sir Toby.

VIOLA     Pray you, sir, do you know of this matter?

FABIAN     I know the knight is incensed against you, even

to a mortal arbitrement, but nothing of the

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circumstance more.

VIOLA     I beseech you, what manner of man is he?

FABIAN     Nothing of that wonderful promise, to read him

by his form, as you are like to find him in the proof of

his valour. He is indeed, sir, the most skilful, bloody,

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and fatal opposite that you could possibly have found

in any part of Illyria. Will you walk towards him, I will

make your peace with him if I can.

VIOLA     I shall be much bound to you for’t. I am one that

had rather go with sir priest than sir knight: I care not

270

who knows so much of my mettle.     Exeunt.

Enter SIR TOBY and SIR ANDREW.

SIR TOBY     Why, man, he’s a very devil, I have not seen

such a firago. I had a pass with him, rapier, scabbard,

and all: and he gives me the stuck in with such a

mortal motion that it is inevitable; and on the answer,

275

he pays you as surely as your feet hits the ground they

step on. They say he has been fencer to the Sophy.

SIR ANDREW     Pox on’t, I’ll not meddle with him.

SIR TOBY     Ay, but he will not now be pacified: Fabian

can scarce hold him yonder.

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SIR ANDREW     Plague on’t, and I thought he had been

valiant, and so cunning in fence, I’d have seen him

damned ere I’d have challenged him. Let him let the

matter slip, and I’ll give him my horse, grey Capilet.

SIR TOBY     I’ll make the motion. Stand here, make a good

285

show on’t: this shall end without the perdition of

souls. [aside] Marry, I’ll ride your horse as well as I

ride you.

Enter FABIAN and VIOLA.

[to Fabian] I have his horse to take up the quarrel. I

have persuaded him the youth’s a devil.

290

FABIAN     He is as horribly conceited of him, and pants

and looks pale, as if a bear were at his heels.

SIR TOBY     [to Viola] There’s no remedy, sir, he will fight

with you for’s oath sake. Marry, he hath better

bethought him of his quarrel, and he finds that now

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scarce to be worth talking of. Therefore draw for the

supportance of his vow; he protests he will not hurt

you.

VIOLA     [aside] Pray God defend me! A little thing would

make me tell them how much I lack of a man.

300

FABIAN     [to Sir Andrew] Give ground if you see him

furious.

SIR TOBY     Come, Sir Andrew, there’s no remedy, the

gentleman will for his honour’s sake have one bout

with you; he cannot by the duello avoid it: but he has

305

promised me, as he is a gentleman and a soldier, he will

not hurt you. Come on, to’t.

SIR ANDREW     Pray God he keep his oath!

Enter ANTONIO.

VIOLA     I do assure you, ’tis against my will.

[Sir Andrew and Viola draw.]

ANTONIO     [drawing]

Put up your sword! If this young gentleman

310

Have done offence, I take the fault on me:

If you offend him, I for him defy you.

SIR TOBY     You, sir? Why, what are you?

ANTONIO     One, sir, that for his love dares yet do more

Than you have heard him brag to you he will.

315

SIR TOBY     Nay, if you be an undertaker, I am for you.

[Draws.]

Enter Officers.

FABIAN     O good Sir Toby, hold! here come the officers.

SIR TOBY     [to Antonio] I’ll be with you anon.

VIOLA     [to Sir Andrew] Pray sir, put your sword up, if

you please.

320

SIR ANDREW     Marry, will I, sir: and for that I promised

you, I’ll be as good as my word. He will bear you easily,

and reins well.

1OFFICER This is the man; do thy office.

2OFFICER Antonio, I arrest thee at the suit

325

Of Count Orsino.

ANTONIO     You do mistake me, sir.

1OFFICER No, sir, no jot: I know your favour well,

Though now you have no sea-cap on your head.

Take him away, he knows I know him well.

ANTONIO     I must obey.

[to Viola]     This comes with seeking you;

330

But there’s no remedy, I shall answer it.

What will you do, now my necessity

Makes me to ask you for my purse? It grieves me

Much more for what I cannot do for you,

Than what befalls myself. You stand amaz’d,

335

But be of comfort.

2OFFICER Come, sir, away.

ANTONIO     I must entreat of you some of that money.

VIOLA     What money, sir?

For the fair kindness you have show’d me here,

340

And part being prompted by your present trouble,

Out of my lean and low ability

I’ll lend you something. My having is not much;

I’ll make division of my present with you.

Hold, there’s half my coffer. [Offers Antonio money.]

345

ANTONIO     Will you deny me now? [Refuses it.]

Is’t possible that my deserts to you

Can lack persuasion? Do not tempt my misery,

Lest that it make me so unsound a man

As to upbraid you with those kindnesses

350

That I have done for you.

VIOLA     I know of none,

Nor know I you by voice or any feature.

I hate ingratitude more in a man

Than lying, vainness, babbling drunkenness,

Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption

355

Inhabits our frail blood.

ANTONIO     O heavens themselves!

2OFFICER Come sir, I pray you go.

ANTONIO

Let me speak a little. This youth that you see here

I snatch’d one half out of the jaws of death,

Reliev’d him with such sanctity of love;

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And to his image, which methought did promise

Most venerable worth, did I devotion.

1OFFICER What’s that to us? The time goes by. Away!

ANTONIO     But O how vile an idol proves this god!

Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame.

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In nature there’s no blemish but the mind:

None can be call’d deform’d but the unkind.

Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil

Are empty trunks, o’er-flourish’d by the devil.

1OFFICER

The man grows mad, away with him! Come, come, sir.

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ANTONIO     Lead me on.     Exit with officers.

VIOLA     Methinks his words do from such passion fly

That he believes himself; so do not I:

Prove true, imagination, O prove true,

That I, dear brother, be now ta’en for you!

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SIR TOBY     Come hither, knight, come hither, Fabian.

We’ll whisper o’er a couplet or two of most sage saws.

VIOLA     He nam’d Sebastian. I my brother know

Yet living in my glass; even such and so

In favour was my brother, and he went

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Still in this fashion, colour, ornament,

For him I imitate. O if it prove,

Tempests are kind, and salt waves fresh in love!

Exit.

SIR TOBY     A very dishonest paltry boy, and more a

coward than a hare; his dishonesty appears in leaving

385

his friend here in necessity, and denying him; and for

his cowardship, ask Fabian.

FABIAN     A coward, a most devout coward, religious in it.

SIR ANDREW     ’Slid, I’ll after him again, and beat him.

SIR TOBY     Do, cuff him soundly, but never draw thy

390

sword.

SIR ANDREW     And I do not –      Exit.

FABIAN     Come, let’s see the event.

SIR TOBY     I dare lay any money ’twill be nothing yet.

Exeunt

4.1 Enter SEBASTIAN and Clown.

CLOWN     Will you make me believe that I am not sent for

you?

SEBASTIAN     Go to, go to, thou art a foolish fellow,

Let me be clear of thee.

CLOWN     Well held out, i’faith! No, I do not know you,

5

nor I am not sent to you by my lady, to bid you come

speak with her; nor your name is not Master Cesario;

nor this is not my nose neither. Nothing that is so, is so.

SEBASTIAN     I prithee vent thy folly somewhere else,

Thou know’st not me.

10

CLOWN     Vent my folly! He has heard that word of some

great man, and now applies it to a fool. Vent my folly!

I am afraid this great lubber, the world, will prove a

cockney. I prithee now, ungird thy strangeness, and

tell me what I shall vent to my lady. Shall I vent to her

15

that thou art coming?

SEBASTIAN     I prithee, foolish Greek, depart from me.

There’s money for thee: if you tarry longer,

I shall give worse payment.

CLOWN     By my troth, thou hast an open hand. These

20

wise men that give fools money get themselves a good

report – after fourteen years’ purchase.

Enter SIR ANDREW, SIR TOBY and FABIAN.

SIR ANDREW     Now sir, have I met you again? There’s for

you! [Strikes Sebastian.]

SEBASTIAN     Why, there’s for thee, and there, and there!

25

[Beats Sir Andrew.] Are all the people mad?

SIR TOBY     Hold, sir, or I’ll throw your dagger o’er the

house.

CLOWN     This will I tell my lady straight: I would not be

in some of your coats for twopence.     Exit.

30

SIR TOBY     Come on, sir, hold!

SIR ANDREW     Nay, let him alone, I’ll go another way to

work with him: I’ll have an action of battery against

him, if there be any law in Illyria; though I struck him

first, yet it’s no matter for that.

35

SEBASTIAN     Let go thy hand!

SIR TOBY     Come, sir, I will not let you go. Come, my

young soldier, put up your iron: you are well fleshed.

Come on!

SEBASTIAN     I will be free from thee. What would’st thou

40

now?

If thou dar’st tempt me further, draw thy sword.

[Draws.]

SIR TOBY     What, what! Nay, then, I must have an ounce

or two of this malapert blood from you. [Draws.]

Enter OLIVIA.

OLIVIA     Hold, Toby! on thy life I charge thee, hold!

45

SIR TOBY     Madam!

OLIVIA     Will it be ever thus? Ungracious wretch,

Fit for the mountains and the barbarous caves,

Where manners ne’er were preach’d! Out of my sight!

Be not offended, dear Cesario.

50

Rudesby, be gone!

Exeunt Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Fabian.

     I prithee, gentle friend,

Let thy fair wisdom, not thy passion, sway

In this uncivil and unjust extent

Against thy peace. Go with me to my house,

And hear thou there how many fruitless pranks

55

This ruffian hath botch’d up, that thou thereby

May’st smile at this. Thou shalt not choose but go:

Do not deny. Beshrew his soul for me,

He started one poor heart of mine, in thee.

SEBASTIAN     What relish is in this? How runs the stream?

60

Or I am mad, or else this is a dream:

Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep;

If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!

OLIVIA

Nay, come, I prithee; would thou’dst be rul’d by me!

SEBASTIAN     Madam, I will.

OLIVIA     O, say so, and so be.     Exeunt.

65

4.2 Enter MARIA and Clown.

MARIA     Nay, I prithee put on this gown, and this beard;

make him believe thou art Sir Topas the curate; do it

quickly. I’ll call Sir Toby the whilst.     Exit.

CLOWN     Well, I’ll put it on, and I will dissemble myself

in’t, and I would I were the first that ever dissembled

5

in such a gown. I am not tall enough to become the

function well, nor lean enough to be thought a good

student; but to be said an honest man and a good

housekeeper goes as fairly as to say a careful man and

a great scholar. The competitors enter.

10

Enter SIR TOBY and MARIA.

SIR TOBY     Jove bless thee, Master Parson.

CLOWN     Bonos dies, Sir Toby: for as the old hermit of

Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to

a niece of King Gorboduc, ‘That that is, is’: so I, being

Master Parson, am Master Parson; for what is ‘that’

15

but ‘that’? and ‘is’ but ‘is’?

SIR TOBY     To him, Sir Topas.

CLOWN     What ho, I say! Peace in this prison!

SIR TOBY     The knave counterfeits well: a good knave.

MALVOLIO     within.

MALVOLIO     Who calls there?

20

CLOWN     Sir Topas the curate, who comes to visit

Malvolio the lunatic.

MALVOLIO     Sir Topas, Sir Topas, good Sir Topas, go to

my lady.

CLOWN     Out, hyperbolical fiend! how vexest thou this

25

man! Talkest thou nothing but of ladies?

SIR TOBY     Well said, Master Parson.

MALVOLIO     Sir Topas, never was man thus wronged.

Good Sir Topas, do not think I am mad. They have

laid me here in hideous darkness.

30

CLOWN     Fie, thou dishonest Satan! (I call thee by the

most modest terms, for I am one of those gentle ones

that will use the devil himself with courtesy.) Say’st

thou that house is dark?

MALVOLIO     As hell, Sir Topas.

35

CLOWN     Why, it hath bay-windows transparent as

barricadoes, and the clerestories toward the south-

north are as lustrous as ebony: and yet complainest

thou of obstruction?

MALVOLIO     I am not mad, Sir Topas. I say to you, this

40

house is dark.

CLOWN     Madman, thou errest. I say there is no darkness

but ignorance, in which thou art more puzzled than

the Egyptians in their fog.

MALVOLIO     I say this house is as dark as ignorance,

45

though ignorance were as dark as hell; and I say there

was never man thus abused. I am no more mad than

you are: make the trial of it in any constant question.

CLOWN     What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning

wildfowl?

50

MALVOLIO     That the soul of our grandam might haply

inhabit a bird.

CLOWN     What think’st thou of his opinion?

MALVOLIO     I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve

his opinion.

55

CLOWN     Fare thee well: remain thou still in darkness.

Thou shalt hold th’ opinion of Pythagoras ere I will

allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou

dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well.

MALVOLIO     Sir Topas, Sir Topas!

60

SIR TOBY     My most exquisite Sir Topas!

CLOWN     Nay, I am for all waters.

MARIA     Thou might’st have done this without thy beard

and gown, he sees thee not.

SIR TOBY     To him in thine own voice, and bring me word

65

how thou find’st him: I would we were well rid of this

knavery. If he may be conveniently delivered, I would

he were, for I am now so far in offence with my niece

that I cannot pursue with any safety this sport to the

upshot. Come by and by to my chamber.

70

Exit with Maria.

CLOWN     [singing]

Hey Robin, jolly Robin,

Tell me how thy lady does.

MALVOLIO     Fool!

CLOWN     My lady is unkind, perdie.

MALVOLIO     Fool!

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CLOWN     Alas, why is she so?

MALVOLIO     Fool, I say!

CLOWN     She loves another –

Who calls, ha?

MALVOLIO     Good fool, as ever thou wilt deserve well at

80

my hand, help me to a candle, and pen, ink, and paper:

as I am a gentleman, I will live to be thankful to thee

for’t.

CLOWN     Master Malvolio?

MALVOLIO     Ay, good fool.

85

CLOWN     Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?

MALVOLIO     Fool, there was never man so notoriously

abused: I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art.

CLOWN     But as well? Then you are mad indeed, if you be

no better in your wits than a fool.

90

MALVOLIO     They have here propertied me: keep me in

darkness, send ministers to me, asses, and do all they

can to face me out of my wits.

CLOWN     Advise you what you say: the minister is here.

[as Sir Topas] Malvolio, Malvolio, thy wits the heavens

95

restore: endeavour thyself to sleep, and leave thy vain

bibble babble.

MALVOLIO     Sir Topas!

CLOWN     [as Sir Topas] Maintain no words with him,

good fellow! [as himself] Who, I, sir? not I, sir! God

100

buy you, good Sir Topas! [as Sir Topas] Marry, amen!

[as himself] I will, sir, I will.

MALVOLIO     Fool, fool, fool, I say!

CLOWN     Alas, sir, be patient. What say you, sir? I am

shent for speaking to you.

105

MALVOLIO     Good fool, help me to some light and some

paper: I tell thee I am as well in my wits as any man in

Illyria.

CLOWN     Well-a-day that you were, sir!

MALVOLIO     By this hand, I am! Good fool, some ink,

110

paper, and light, and convey what I will set down to

my lady. It shall advantage thee more than ever the

bearing of letter did.

CLOWN     I will help you to’t. But tell me true, are you not

mad indeed? or do you but counterfeit?

115

MALVOLIO     Believe me, I am not, I tell thee true.

CLOWN     Nay, I’ll ne’er believe a madman till I see his

brains. I will fetch you light, and paper, and ink.

MALVOLIO     Fool, I’ll requite it in the highest degree: I

prithee, be gone.

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CLOWN     [singing]

I am gone, sir, and anon, sir,

I’ll be with you again,

In a trice, like to the old Vice,

Your need to sustain;

Who, with dagger of lath, in his rage and his wrath,

125

Cries, ‘Ah, ha!’ to the devil:

Like a mad lad, ‘Pare thy nails, dad.

Adieu, goodman devil!’      Exit.

4.3 Enter SEBASTIAN.

SEBASTIAN     This is the air, that is the glorious sun,

This pearl she gave me, I do feel’t, and see’t,

And though ’tis wonder that enwraps me thus,

Yet ’tis not madness. Where’s Antonio then?

I could not find him at the Elephant,

5

Yet there he was, and there I found this credit,

That he did range the town to seek me out.

His counsel now might do me golden service:

For though my soul disputes well with my sense

That this may be some error, but no madness,

10

Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune

So far exceed all instance, all discourse,

That I am ready to distrust mine eyes,

And wrangle with my reason that persuades me

To any other trust but that I am mad,

15

Or else the lady’s mad; yet if ’twere so,

She could not sway her house, command her followers,

Take and give back affairs and their dispatch,

With such a smooth, discreet, and stable bearing

As I perceive she does. There’s something in’t

20

That is deceivable. But here the lady comes.

Enter OLIVIA and Priest.

OLIVIA     Blame not this haste of mine. If you mean well,

Now go with me, and with this holy man,

Into the chantry by: there before him,

And underneath that consecrated roof,

25

Plight me the full assurance of your faith,

That my most jealous and too doubtful soul

May live at peace. He shall conceal it,

Whiles you are willing it shall come to note,

What time we will our celebration keep

30

According to my birth. What do you say?

SEBASTIAN     I’ll follow this good man, and go with you,

And having sworn truth, ever will be true.

OLIVIA

Then lead the way, good father, and heavens so shine,

That they may fairly note this act of mine!     Exeunt.

35

5.1 Enter Clown and FABIAN.

FABIAN     Now as thou lov’st me, let me see his letter.

CLOWN     Good Master Fabian, grant me another request.

FABIAN     Anything.

CLOWN     Do not desire to see this letter.

FABIAN     This is to give a dog, and in recompense desire

5

my dog again.

Enter DUKE, VIOLA, CURIO and lords.

ORSINO     Belong you to the Lady Olivia, friends?

CLOWN     Ay, sir, we are some of her trappings.

ORSINO     I know thee well. How dost thou, my good

fellow?

10

CLOWN     Truly, sir, the better for my foes, and the worse

for my friends.

ORSINO     Just the contrary: the better for thy friends.

CLOWN     No, sir, the worse.

ORSINO     How can that be?

15

CLOWN     Marry, sir, they praise me, and make an ass of

me. Now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass: so that

by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself, and

by my friends I am abused. So that, conclusions to

be as kisses, if your four negatives make your two

20

affirmatives, why then the worse for my friends, and

the better for my foes.

ORSINO     Why, this is excellent.

CLOWN     By my troth, sir, no: though it please you to be

one of my friends.

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ORSINO     Thou shalt not be the worse for me: there’s gold.

CLOWN     But that it would be double-dealing, sir, I would

you could make it another.

ORSINO     O, you give me ill counsel.

CLOWN     Put your grace in your pocket, sir, for this once,

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and let your flesh and blood obey it.

ORSINO     Well, I will be so much a sinner to be a double-

dealer: there’s another.

CLOWN     Primo, secundo, tertio, is a good play, and the old

saying is ‘The third pays for all’; the triplex, sir, is a

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good tripping measure; or the bells of Saint Bennet,

sir, may put you in mind – one, two, three.

ORSINO     You can fool no more money out of me at this

throw. If you will let your lady know I am here to speak

with her, and bring her along with you, it may awake

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my bounty further.

CLOWN     Marry, sir, lullaby to your bounty till I come

again. I go, sir, but I would not have you to think that

my desire of having is the sin of covetousness: but as

you say, sir, let your bounty take a nap, I will awake it

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anon.     Exit.

Enter ANTONIO and Officers.

VIOLA     Here comes the man, sir, that did rescue me.

ORSINO     That face of his I do remember well;

Yet when I saw it last, it was besmear’d

As black as Vulcan, in the smoke of war.

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A baubling vessel was he captain of,

For shallow draught and bulk unprizable,

With which such scathful grapple did he make

With the most noble bottom of our fleet,

That very envy and the tongue of loss

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Cried fame and honour on him. What’s the matter?

1OFFICER Orsino, this is that Antonio

That took the Phoenix and her fraught from Candy,

And this is he that did the Tiger board,

When your young nephew Titus lost his leg.

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Here in the streets, desperate of shame and state,

In private brabble did we apprehend him.

VIOLA     He did me kindness, sir, drew on my side,

But in conclusion put strange speech upon me,

I know not what ’twas, but distraction.

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ORSINO     Notable pirate, thou salt-water thief,

What foolish boldness brought thee to their mercies,

Whom thou in terms so bloody and so dear

Hast made thine enemies?

ANTONIO     Orsino, noble sir,

Be pleas’d that I shake off these names you give me:

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ANTONIO never yet was thief, or pirate,

Though I confess, on base and ground enough,

ORSINO’s enemy. A witchcraft drew me hither:

That most ingrateful boy there by your side,

From the rude sea’s enrag’d and foamy mouth

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Did I redeem. A wrack past hope he was.

His life I gave him, and did thereto add

My love, without retention or restraint,

All his in dedication. For his sake

Did I expose myself (pure for his love)

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Into the danger of this adverse town;

Drew to defend him, when he was beset;

Where being apprehended, his false cunning

(Not meaning to partake with me in danger)

Taught him to face me out of his acquaintance,

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And grew a twenty years’ removed thing

While one would wink; denied me mine own purse,

Which I had recommended to his use

Not half an hour before.

VIOLA     How can this be?

ORSINO     When came he to this town?

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ANTONIO     Today, my lord: and for three months before

No int’rim, not a minute’s vacancy,

Both day and night did we keep company.

Enter OLIVIA and attendants.

ORSINO

Here comes the Countess: now heaven walks on earth.

But for thee, fellow – fellow, thy words are madness.

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Three months this youth hath tended upon me;

But more of that anon. Take him aside.

OLIVIA

What would my lord, but that he may not have,

Wherein Olivia may seem serviceable?

Cesario, you do not keep promise with me.

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VIOLA     [speaking together] Madam

ORSINO     Gracious Olivia –

OLIVIA     What do you say, Cesario? Good my lord –

VIOLA     My lord would speak, my duty hushes me.

OLIVIA     If it be aught to the old tune, my lord,

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It is as fat and fulsome to mine ear

As howling after music.

ORSINO     Still so cruel?

OLIVIA     Still so constant, lord.

ORSINO     What, to perverseness? You uncivil lady,

To whose ingrate and unauspicious altars

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My soul the faithfull’st off ’rings hath breath’d out

That e’er devotion tender’d – What shall I do?

OLIVIA

Even what it please my lord that shall become him.

ORSINO     Why should I not, had I the heart to do it,

Like to th’Egyptian thief at point of death,

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Kill what I love? – a savage jealousy

That sometime savours nobly. But hear me this:

Since you to non-regardance cast my faith,

And that I partly know the instrument

That screws me from my true place in your favour,

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Live you the marble-breasted tyrant still.

But this your minion, whom I know you love,

And whom, by heaven, I swear I tender dearly,

Him will I tear out of that cruel eye

Where he sits crowned in his master’s spite.

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Come, boy, with me; my thoughts are ripe in mischief:

I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love,

To spite a raven’s heart within a dove.

VIOLA     And I most jocund, apt, and willingly,

To do you rest, a thousand deaths would die.

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OLIVIA     Where goes Cesario?

VIOLA     After him I love

More than I love these eyes, more than my life,

More, by all mores, than e’er I shall love wife.

If I do feign, you witnesses above

Punish my life, for tainting of my love.

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OLIVIA     Ay me detested! how am I beguil’d!

VIOLA

Who does beguile you? Who does do you wrong?

OLIVIA     Hast thou forgot thyself? Is it so long?

Call forth the holy father.     Exit an attendant.

ORSINO     Come, away!

OLIVIA     Whither, my lord? Cesario, husband, stay!

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ORSINO     Husband?

OLIVIA     Ay, husband. Can he that deny?

ORSINO     Her husband, sirrah?

VIOLA     No, my lord, not I.

OLIVIA     Alas, it is the baseness of thy fear

That makes thee strangle thy propriety.

Fear not, Cesario, take thy fortunes up,

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Be that thou know’st thou art, and then thou art

As great as that thou fear’st.

Enter Priest.

     O welcome, father!

Father, I charge thee by thy reverence

Here to unfold – though lately we intended

To keep in darkness what occasion now

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Reveals before ’tis ripe – what thou dost know

Hath newly pass’d between this youth and me.

PRIEST     A contract of eternal bond of love,

Confirm’d by mutual joinder of your hands,

Attested by the holy close of lips,

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Strengthen’d by interchangement of your rings,

And all the ceremony of this compact

Seal’d in my function, by my testimony;

Since when, my watch hath told me, toward my grave

I have travell’d but two hours.

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ORSINO     O thou dissembling cub! What wilt thou be

When time hath sow’d a grizzle on thy case?

Or will not else thy craft so quickly grow

That thine own trip shall be thine overthrow?

Farewell, and take her, but direct thy feet

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Where thou and I henceforth may never meet.

VIOLA     My lord, I do protest –

OLIVIA     O do not swear!

Hold little faith, though thou hast too much fear.

Enter SIR ANDREW.

SIR ANDREW     For the love of God, a surgeon! Send one

presently to Sir Toby.

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OLIVIA     What’s the matter?

SIR ANDREW     ’Has broke my head across, and has given Sir

Toby a bloody coxcomb too. For the love of God, your

help! I had rather than forty pound I were at home.

OLIVIA     Who has done this, Sir Andrew?

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SIR ANDREW     The Count’s gentleman, one Cesario. We

took him for a coward, but he’s the very devil in-

cardinate.

ORSINO     My gentleman, Cesario?

SIR ANDREW     ’Od’s lifelings, here he is! You broke my

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head for nothing; and that that I did, I was set on to

do’t by Sir Toby.

VIOLA     Why do you speak to me? I never hurt you:

You drew your sword upon me without cause,

But I bespake you fair, and hurt you not.

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Enter SIR TOBY and Clown.

SIR ANDREW     If a bloody coxcomb be a hurt, you have

hurt me: I think you set nothing by a bloody coxcomb.

Here comes Sir Toby halting, you shall hear more: but

if he had not been in drink, he would have tickled you

othergates than he did.

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ORSINO     How now, gentleman? How is’t with you?

SIR TOBY     That’s all one, ’has hurt me, and there’s th’

end on’t. Sot, didst see Dick Surgeon, sot?

CLOWN     O, he’s drunk, Sir Toby, an hour agone; his eyes

were set at eight i’th’ morning.

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SIR TOBY     Then he’s a rogue, and a passy measures

pavin: I hate a drunken rogue.

OLIVIA     Away with him! Who hath made this havoc with

them?

SIR ANDREW     I’ll help you, Sir Toby, because we’ll be

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dressed together.

SIR TOBY     Will you help? An ass-head, and a coxcomb,

and a knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull?

OLIVIA     Get him to bed, and let his hurt be looked to.

Exeunt Clown, Fabian, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew.

Enter SEBASTIAN.

SEBASTIAN

I am sorry, madam, I have hurt your kinsman:

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But had it been the brother of my blood,

I must have done no less with wit and safety.

You throw a strange regard upon me, and by that

I do perceive it hath offended you:

Pardon me, sweet one, even for the vows

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We made each other but so late ago.

ORSINO

One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons!

A natural perspective, that is, and is not!

SEBASTIAN     Antonio! O my dear Antonio,

How have the hours rack’d and tortur’d me,

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Since I have lost thee!

ANTONIO     Sebastian are you?

SEBASTIAN     Fear’st thou that, Antonio?

ANTONIO     How have you made division of yourself?

An apple cleft in two is not more twin

Than these two creatures. Which is Sebastian?

220

OLIVIA     Most wonderful!

SEBASTIAN     Do I stand there? I never had a brother;

Nor can there be that deity in my nature

Of here and everywhere. I had a sister,

Whom the blind waves and surges have devour’d:

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Of charity, what kin are you to me?

What countryman? What name? What parentage?

VIOLA     Of Messaline: Sebastian was my father;

Such a Sebastian was my brother too:

So went he suited to his watery tomb.

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If spirits can assume both form and suit,

You come to fright us.

SEBASTIAN     A spirit I am indeed,

But am in that dimension grossly clad

Which from the womb I did participate.

Were you a woman, as the rest goes even,

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I should my tears let fall upon your cheek,

And say, ‘Thrice welcome, drowned Viola.’

VIOLA     My father had a mole upon his brow.

SEBASTIAN     And so had mine.

VIOLA     And died that day when Viola from her birth

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Had number’d thirteen years.

SEBASTIAN     O, that record is lively in my soul!

He finished indeed his mortal act

That day that made my sister thirteen years.

VIOLA     If nothing lets to make us happy both,

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But this my masculine usurp’d attire,

Do not embrace me, till each circumstance

Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump

That I am Viola; which to confirm,

I’ll bring you to a captain in this town,

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Where lie my maiden weeds; by whose gentle help

I was preserv’d to serve this noble count:

All the occurrence of my fortune since

Hath been between this lady and this lord.

SEBASTIAN     [to Olivia] So comes it, lady, you have been mistook.

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But nature to her bias drew in that.

You would have been contracted to a maid;

Nor are you therein, by my life, deceiv’d:

You are betroth’d both to a maid and man.

ORSINO     Be not amaz’d, right noble is his blood.

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If this be so, as yet the glass seems true,

I shall have share in this most happy wreck.

[to Viola] Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times

Thou never should’st love woman like to me.

VIOLA     And all those sayings will I over-swear,

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And all those swearings keep as true in soul

As doth that orbed continent the fire

That severs day from night.

ORSINO     Give me thy hand,

And let me see thee in thy woman’s weeds.

VIOLA     The captain that did bring me first on shore

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Hath my maid’s garments; he upon some action

Is now in durance, at Malvolio’s suit,

A gentleman and follower of my lady’s.

OLIVIA     He shall enlarge him: fetch Malvolio hither.

And yet alas! now I remember me,

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They say, poor gentleman, he’s much distract.

Enter Clown with a letter, and FABIAN.

A most extracting frenzy of mine own

From my remembrance clearly banish’d his.

How does he, sirrah?

CLOWN     Truly, Madam, he holds Belzebub at the

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stave’s end as well as a man in his case may do; ’has

here writ a letter to you. I should have given’t you

to-day morning, but as a madman’s epistles are no

gospels, so it skills not much when they are

delivered.

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OLIVIA     Open’t, and read it.

CLOWN     Look then to be well edified, when the fool

delivers the madman. [Reads.] By the Lord, madam, –

OLIVIA     How now, art thou mad?

CLOWN     No, madam, I do but read madness: and your

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ladyship will have it as it ought to be, you must allow vox.

OLIVIA     Prithee, read i’thy right wits.

CLOWN     So I do, madonna. But to read his right wits is to

read thus: therefore, perpend, my princess, and give ear.

OLIVIA     [to Fabian] Read it you, sirrah.

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FABIAN     [Reads.] By the Lord, madam, you wrong me, and

the world shall know it. Though you have put me into

darkness, and given your drunken cousin rule over me, yet

have I the benefit of my senses as well as your ladyship. I

have your own letter, that induced me to the semblance I put

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on; with the which I doubt not but to do myself much right,

or you much shame. Think of me as you please. I leave my

duty a little unthought of, and speak out of my injury.

     The madly-used Malvolio.

OLIVIA     Did he write this?

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CLOWN     Ay, madam.

ORSINO     This savours not much of distraction.

OLIVIA     See him deliver’d, Fabian, bring him hither.

Exit Fabian.

My lord, so please you, these things further thought on,

To think me as well a sister, as a wife,

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One day shall crown th’alliance on’t, so please you,

Here at my house, and at my proper cost.

ORSINO     Madam, I am most apt t’embrace your offer.

[to Viola] Your master quits you; and for your service done him,

So much against the mettle of your sex,

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So far beneath your soft and tender breeding,

And since you call’d me master for so long,

Here is my hand; you shall from this time be

Your master’s mistress.

OLIVIA     A sister! you are she.

Enter FABIAN with MALVOLIO.

ORSINO     Is this the madman?

OLIVIA     Ay, my lord, this same.

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How now, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO     Madam, you have done me wrong,

Notorious wrong.

OLIVIA     Have I, Malvolio? No.

MALVOLIO     Lady, you have. Pray you, peruse that letter.

You must not now deny it is your hand:

Write from it, if you can, in hand, or phrase,

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Or say ’tis not your seal, not your invention:

You can say none of this. Well, grant it then,

And tell me, in the modesty of honour,

Why you have given me such clear lights of favour,

Bade me come smiling and cross-garter’d to you,

330

To put on yellow stockings, and to frown

Upon Sir Toby, and the lighter people;

And acting this in an obedient hope,

Why have you suffer’d me to be imprison’d,

Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,

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And made the most notorious geck and gull

That e’er invention play’d on? Tell me, why?

OLIVIA     Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing,

Though I confess much like the character:

But, out of question, ’tis Maria’s hand.

340

And now I do bethink me, it was she

First told me thou wast mad; then cam’st in smiling,

And in such forms which here were presuppos’d

Upon thee in the letter. Prithee, be content;

This practice hath most shrewdly pass’d upon thee.

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But when we know the grounds and authors of it,

Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge

Of thine own cause.

FABIAN     Good madam, hear me speak,

And let no quarrel, nor no brawl to come,

Taint the condition of this present hour,

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Which I have wonder’d at. In hope it shall not,

Most freely I confess, myself and Toby

Set this device against Malvolio here,

Upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts

We had conceiv’d against him. Maria writ

355

The letter, at Sir Toby’s great importance,

In recompense whereof he hath married her.

How with a sportful malice it was follow’d

May rather pluck on laughter than revenge,

If that the injuries be justly weigh’d

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That have on both sides pass’d.

OLIVIA     Alas, poor fool, how have they baffled thee!

CLOWN     Why, ‘Some are born great, some achieve

greatness, and some have greatness thrown upon

them’. I was one, sir, in this interlude, one Sir Topas,

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sir, but that’s all one. ‘By the Lord, fool, I am not mad.’

But do you remember, ‘Madam, why laugh you at such

a barren rascal, and you smile not, he’s gagged’? And

thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

MALVOLIO     I’ll be reveng’d on the whole pack of you!

370

Exit.

OLIVIA     He hath been most notoriously abus’d.

ORSINO     Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace:

He hath not told us of the captain yet.     Exit Fabian.

When that is known, and golden time convents,

A solemn combination shall be made

375

Of our dear souls. Meantime, sweet sister,

We will not part from hence. Cesario, come;

For so you shall be while you are a man;

But when in other habits you are seen,

ORSINO’s mistress, and his fancy’s queen.

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Exeunt all except Clown.

CLOWN     [Sings.]

When that I was and a little tiny boy,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came to man’s estate,

385

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

’Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,

For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came, alas, to wive,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

390

By swaggering could I never thrive,

For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came unto my beds,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

With toss-pots still ’had drunken heads,

395

For the rain it raineth every day.

A great while ago the world begun,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

But that’s all one, our play is done,

And we’ll strive to please you every day.     Exit.

400

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Although first printed in 1623 as the second (after The Tempest) of the comedies in the First Folio, The Two Gentlemen of Verona is thought to be among the earliest of Shakespeare’s plays, perhaps even his first comedy, and to have been written no later than 1594. Details in it may come from Arthur Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet (1562) but its plot is adapted from the Spanish romance Diana by George of Montemayor, translated into English by Bartholomew Yong, whose version Shakespeare must have read some years before its publication in 1598.

Shakespeare opened Montemayor’s tragicomic love-triangle of two women and a faithless man out into a rectangle: his addition of Valentine allowed for a formal comic ending with a double wedding in prospect. His other illuminating change – germane to the play’s comic scrutiny of the myth of the Petrarchan lover as servant to a cruel mistress – was the invention of the servants Speed and Launce, and of Launce’s scapegrace dog, Crab, the only animal role in Shakespeare and an important source of the play’s theatrical appeal. Julia is the first of Shakespeare’s heroines in male disguise, a device whose usefulness to boy players Shakespeare would continue to exploit in later plays. Julia’s predicament as the servant of the man she loves, employed by him to woo another woman, anticipates that of Viola in Twelfth Night, and the name she adopts in disguise, ‘Sebastian’, is that of Viola’s twin brother.

The psychological implausibility of Proteus’ sudden reform and, still more, of Valentine’s real or apparent offer to cede Silvia to the penitent friend who has just attempted to rape her, has been a stumbling-block to appreciation of the play and has motivated attempts to rewrite the ending for performance, or to read it as a sustained satire on the stock Renaissance debate between the rival claims of love and friendship (which Shakespeare would later treat more obliquely in The Merchant of Venice and more directly in The Two Noble Kinsmen). The ending may as likely be perfunctory as satirical: at least it is evident that the major interest of the play lies in creating and complicating the predicaments of its characters rather than in resolving them. The open-eyed duplicity of Proteus is an adolescent premonition of the more dangerous insincerities of later lovers equally devoid of self-knowledge such as Bertram in All’s Well that Ends Well or Angelo in Measure for Measure.

Franz Schubert’s setting of ‘Who is Silvia?’ (1826) and Holman Hunt’s painting of the play’s dénouement (1851) testify to its favour in the nineteenth century. Revivals have taken place with some regularity since middle of the eighteenth century, but seldom with marked success. Although among the least performed of the comedies in recent times, The Two Gentlemen of Verona was chosen, in the summer of 1996, as the first play to be staged at the reconstructed Globe in London, and it has succeeded as a musical with additional songs imported from the 1920s and 1930s.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

DUKE

father to Silvia

two gentlemen

ANTONIO

father to Proteus

THURIO

a foolish rival to Valentine

EGLAMOUR

agent for Silvia in her escape

HOST

where Julia lodges

OUTLAWS

with Valentine

SPEED

page to Valentine

LAUNCE

a clownish servant to Proteus

PANTHINO

servant to Antonio

JULIA

beloved of Proteus

SILVIA

beloved of Valentine

LUCETTA

waiting-woman to Julia

SERVANT

attending the Duke

Musicians

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

1.1 Enter VALENTINE and PROTEUS.

VALENTINE     Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus;

Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.

Were’t not affection chains thy tender days

To the sweet glances of thy honour’d love,

I rather would entreat thy company

5

To see the wonders of the world abroad

Than (living dully sluggardis’d at home)

Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.

But since thou lov’st, love still, and thrive therein,

Even as I would, when I to love begin.

10

PROTEUS     Wilt thou be gone? Sweet Valentine, adieu;

Think on thy Proteus, when thou (haply) seest

Some rare noteworthy object in thy travel.

Wish me partaker in thy happiness,

When thou dost meet good hap; and in thy danger

15

(If ever danger do environ thee)

Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers,

For I will be thy beadsman, Valentine.

VALENTINE     And on a love-book pray for my success?

PROTEUS     Upon some book I love, I’ll pray for thee.

20

VALENTINE     That’s on some shallow story of deep love,

How young Leander cross’d the Hellespont.

PROTEUS     That’s a deep story, of a deeper love,

For he was more than over shoes in love.

VALENTINE     ’Tis true; for you are over boots in love,

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And yet you never swum the Hellespont.

PROTEUS     Over the boots? Nay, give me not the boots.

VALENTINE     No, I will not; for it boots thee not.

PROTEUS     What?

VALENTINE

To be in love; where scorn is bought with groans;

Coy looks, with heart-sore sighs; one fading moment’s mirth,

30

With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights;

If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain;

If lost, why then a grievous labour won;

How ever, but a folly bought with wit,

Or else a wit by folly vanquished.

35

PROTEUS     So, by your circumstance, you call me fool.

VALENTINE

So, by your circumstance, I fear you’ll prove.

PROTEUS     ’Tis Love you cavil at, I am not Love.

VALENTINE     Love is your master, for he masters you;

And he that is so yoked by a fool

40

Methinks should not be chronicled for wise.

PROTEUS     Yet writers say: as in the sweetest bud

The eating canker dwells, so eating Love

Inhabits in the finest wits of all.

VALENTINE     And writers say: as the most forward bud

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Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,

Even so by Love the young and tender wit

Is turn’d to folly, blasting in the bud,

Losing his verdure, even in the prime,

And all the fair effects of future hopes.

50

But wherefore waste I time to counsel thee

That art a votary to fond desire?

Once more adieu: my father at the road

Expects my coming, there to see me shipp’d.

PROTEUS     And thither will I bring thee, Valentine.

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VALENTINE

Sweet Proteus, no; now let us take our leave.

To Milan let me hear from thee by letters

Of thy success in love; and what news else

Betideth here in absence of thy friend;

And I likewise will visit thee with mine.

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PROTEUS     All happiness bechance to thee in Milan.

VALENTINE     As much to you at home; and so farewell.

Exit.

PROTEUS     He after honour hunts, I after love;

He leaves his friends, to dignify them more;

I leave myself, my friends, and all, for love:

65

Thou, Julia, thou hast metamorphos’d me;

Made me neglect my studies, lose my time,

War with good counsel, set the world at nought;

Made wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought.

Enter SPEED.

SPEED     Sir Proteus, ’save you; saw you my master?

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PROTEUS

But now he parted hence to embark for Milan.

SPEED     Twenty to one, then, he is shipp’d already,

And I have play’d the sheep in losing him.

PROTEUS     Indeed a sheep doth very often stray,

And if the shepherd be awhile away.

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SPEED     You conclude that my master is a shepherd,

then, and I a sheep?

PROTEUS     I do.

SPEED     Why, then my horns are his horns, whether I

wake or sleep.

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PROTEUS     A silly answer, and fitting well a sheep.

SPEED     This proves me still a sheep.

PROTEUS     True; and thy master a shepherd.

SPEED     Nay, that I can deny by a circumstance.

PROTEUS     It shall go hard but I’ll prove it by another.

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SPEED     The shepherd seeks the sheep, and not the sheep

the shepherd; but I seek my master, and my master

seeks not me: therefore I am no sheep.

PROTEUS     The sheep for fodder follow the shepherd, the

shepherd for food follows not the sheep; thou for

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wages followest thy master, thy master for wages

follows not thee: therefore thou art a sheep.

SPEED     Such another proof will make me cry ‘baa’.

PROTEUS     But dost thou hear? Gavest thou my letter to

Julia?

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SPEED     Ay, sir; I (a lost mutton) gave your letter to her

(a laced mutton) and she (a laced mutton) gave me

(a lost mutton) nothing for my labour.

PROTEUS     Here’s too small a pasture for such store of

muttons.

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SPEED     If the ground be over-charged, you were best

stick her.

PROTEUS     Nay, in that you are astray; ’twere best pound

you.

SPEED     Nay, sir, less than a pound shall serve me for

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carrying your letter.

PROTEUS     You mistake; I mean the pound, a pinfold.

SPEED     From a pound to a pin? Fold it over and over,

’Tis threefold too little for carrying a letter to your

lover.

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PROTEUS     But what said she?

SPEED     [first nodding] Ay.

PROTEUS     Nod – ay: why, that’s ‘noddy’.

SPEED     You mistook, sir: I say she did nod; and you ask

me if she did nod, and I say ‘Ay’.

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PROTEUS     And that set together is ‘noddy’.

SPEED     Now you have taken the pains to set it together,

take it for your pains.

PROTEUS     No, no, you shall have it for bearing the letter.

SPEED     Well, I perceive I must be fain to bear with you.

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PROTEUS     Why, sir, how do you bear with me?

SPEED     Marry, sir, the letter very orderly, having nothing

but the word ‘noddy’ for my pains.

PROTEUS     Beshrew me, but you have a quick wit.

SPEED     And yet it cannot overtake your slow purse.

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PROTEUS     Come, come, open the matter in brief: what

said she?

SPEED     Open your purse, that the money and the matter

may be both at once delivered.

PROTEUS     [giving money] Well, sir; here is for your pains.

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What said she?

SPEED     Truly, sir, I think you’ll hardly win her.

PROTEUS     Why, couldst thou perceive so much from

her?

SPEED     Sir, I could perceive nothing at all from her; no,

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not so much as a ducat for delivering your letter; and

being so hard to me that brought your mind, I fear

she’ll prove as hard to you in telling your mind. Give

her no token but stones, for she’s as hard as steel.

PROTEUS     What said she? Nothing?

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SPEED     No, not so much as ‘Take this for thy pains’. To

testify your bounty, I thank you, you have testerned

me; in requital whereof, henceforth carry your

letters yourself; and so, sir, I’ll commend you to my

master.     Exit.

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PROTEUS

Go, go, be gone, to save your ship from wrack,

Which cannot perish having thee aboard,

Being destin’d to a drier death on shore.

I must go send some better messenger:

I fear my Julia would not deign my lines

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Receiving them from such a worthless post.     Exit.

1.2 Enter JULIA and LUCETTA.

JULIA     But say, Lucetta, now we are alone,

Wouldst thou then counsel me to fall in love?

LUCETTA     Ay, madam, so you stumble not unheedfully.

JULIA     Of all the fair resort of gentlemen

That every day with parle encounter me,

5

In thy opinion which is worthiest love?

LUCETTA

Please you repeat their names, I’ll show my mind,

According to my shallow simple skill.

JULIA     What think’st thou of the fair Sir Eglamour?

LUCETTA     As of a knight well-spoken, neat, and fine;

10

But were I you, he never should be mine.

JULIA     What think’st thou of the rich Mercatio?

LUCETTA     Well of his wealth; but of himself, so so.

JULIA     What think’st thou of the gentle Proteus?

LUCETTA     Lord, Lord! to see what folly reigns in us!

15

JULIA

How now? What means this passion at his name?

LUCETTA     Pardon, dear madam, ’tis a passing shame

That I (unworthy body as I am)

Should censure thus on lovely gentlemen.

JULIA     Why not on Proteus, as of all the rest?

20

LUCETTA     Then thus: of many good, I think him best.

JULIA     Your reason?

LUCETTA     I have no other but a woman’s reason:

I think him so, because I think him so.

JULIA     And wouldst thou have me cast my love on him?

25

LUCETTA     Ay; if you thought your love not cast away.

JULIA     Why, he, of all the rest, hath never mov’d me.

LUCETTA     Yet he, of all the rest, I think best loves ye.

JULIA     His little speaking shows his love but small.

LUCETTA     Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all.

30

JULIA     They do not love that do not show their love.

LUCETTA

O, they love least that let men know their love.

JULIA     I would I knew his mind.

LUCETTA     Peruse this paper, madam.

JULIA     ‘To Julia’: say, from whom?

35

LUCETTA     That the contents will show.

JULIA     Say, say: who gave it thee?

LUCETTA

Sir Valentine’s page; and sent I think from Proteus.

He would have given it you, but I being in the way

Did in your name receive it: pardon the fault, I pray.

40

JULIA     Now, by my modesty, a goodly broker!

Dare you presume to harbour wanton lines?

To whisper, and conspire against my youth?

Now trust me, ’tis an office of great worth,

And you an officer fit for the place.

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There: take the paper; see it be return’d,

Or else return no more into my sight.

LUCETTA

To plead for love deserves more fee than hate.

[She drops the letter.]

JULIA     Will ye be gone?

LUCETTA     That you may ruminate.     Exit.

JULIA     And yet I would I had o’erlook’d the letter.

50

It were a shame to call her back again,

And pray her to a fault for which I chid her.

What fool is she, that knows I am a maid,

And would not force the letter to my view!

Since maids, in modesty, say ‘no’ to that

55

Which they would have the profferer construe ‘ay’.

Fie, fie; how wayward is this foolish love,

That (like a testy babe) will scratch the nurse,

And presently all humbled kiss the rod!

How churlishly I chid Lucetta hence,

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When willingly I would have had her here!

How angerly I taught my brow to frown,

When inward joy enforc’d my heart to smile!

My penance is to call Lucetta back

And ask remission for my folly past.

65

What ho! Lucetta!

Enter LUCETTA.

LUCETTA     What would your ladyship?

JULIA     Is ’t near dinner time?

LUCETTA     I would it were,

That you might kill your stomach on your meat,

And not upon your maid.

[She takes up Proteus’ letter.]

JULIA     What is ’t that you took up so gingerly?

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LUCETTA     Nothing.

JULIA     Why didst thou stoop then?

LUCETTA     To take a paper up that I let fall.

JULIA     And is that paper nothing?

LUCETTA     Nothing concerning me.

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JULIA     Then let it lie, for those that it concerns.

LUCETTA     Madam, it will not lie where it concerns,

Unless it have a false interpreter.

JULIA     Some love of yours hath writ to you in rhyme.

LUCETTA     That I might sing it, madam, to a tune.

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Give me a note; your ladyship can set.

JULIA     As little by such toys as may be possible:

Best sing it to the tune of ‘Light o’ Love’.

LUCETTA     It is too heavy for so light a tune.

JULIA     Heavy? Belike it hath some burden then?

85

LUCETTA

Ay; and melodious were it, would you sing it.

JULIA     And why not you?

LUCETTA     I cannot reach so high.

JULIA     [taking the letter]

Let’s see your song. How now, minion?

LUCETTA     Keep tune there still: so you will sing it out.

[Julia strikes her.]

And yet methinks I do not like this tune.

90

JULIA     You do not?

LUCETTA     No, madam, ’tis too sharp.

JULIA     You, minion, are too saucy.

LUCETTA     Nay, now you are too flat;

And mar the concord with too harsh a descant:

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There wanteth but a mean to fill your song.

JULIA     The mean is drown’d with your unruly bass.

LUCETTA     Indeed I bid the base for Proteus.

JULIA     This babble shall not henceforth trouble me.

Here is a coil with protestation. [She tears the letter.]

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Go, get you gone; and let the papers lie.

You would be fing’ring them, to anger me.

LUCETTA

She makes it strange, but she would be best pleas’d

To be so anger’d with another letter.     Exit.

JULIA     [gathering up pieces of the letter]

Nay, would I were so anger’d with the same!

105

O hateful hands, to tear such loving words;

Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey,

And kill the bees that yield it, with your stings!

I’ll kiss each several paper, for amends.

Look, here is writ ‘kind Julia’: unkind Julia!

110

As in revenge of thy ingratitude,

I throw thy name against the bruising stones,

Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain.

And here is writ ‘love-wounded Proteus’.

Poor wounded name: my bosom, as a bed,

115

Shall lodge thee till thy wound be throughly heal’d;

And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss.

But twice, or thrice, was ‘Proteus’ written down:

Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away,

Till I have found each letter, in the letter,

120

Except mine own name: that some whirlwind bear

Unto a ragged, fearful, hanging rock,

And throw it thence into the raging sea.

Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ:

‘Poor forlorn Proteus’, ‘passionate Proteus’.

125

‘To the sweet Julia’: that I’ll tear away.

And yet I will not, sith so prettily

He couples it to his complaining names.

Thus will I fold them, one upon another:

Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will.

130

Enter LUCETTA.

LUCETTA

Madam, dinner is ready; and your father stays.

JULIA     Well, let us go.

LUCETTA

What, shall these papers lie, like tell-tales here?

JULIA     If you respect them, best to take them up.

LUCETTA     Nay, I was taken up, for laying them down.

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Yet here they shall not lie, for catching cold.

[She gathers up the letter.]

JULIA     I see you have a month’s mind to them.

LUCETTA

Ay, madam, you may say what sights you see;

I see things too, although you judge I wink.

JULIA     Come, come, will’t please you go?     Exeunt.

140

1.3 Enter ANTONIO and PANTHINO.

ANTONIO     Tell me, Panthino, what sad talk was that

Wherewith my brother held you in the cloister?

PANTHINO     ’Twas of his nephew Proteus, your son.

ANTONIO     Why, what of him?

PANTHINO     He wonder’d that your lordship

Would suffer him to spend his youth at home,

5

While other men, of slender reputation,

Put forth their sons, to seek preferment out:

Some to the wars, to try their fortune there;

Some, to discover islands far away;

Some, to the studious universities.

10

For any, or for all these exercises,

He said that Proteus, your son, was meet,

And did request me to importune you

To let him spend his time no more at home;

Which would be great impeachment to his age,

15

In having known no travel in his youth.

ANTONIO

Nor need’st thou much importune me to that

Whereon this month I have been hammering.

I have consider’d well his loss of time,

And how he cannot be a perfect man,

20

Not being tried and tutor’d in the world:

Experience is by industry achiev’d,

And perfected by the swift course of time.

Then tell me, whither were I best to send him?

PANTHINO     I think your lordship is not ignorant

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How his companion, youthful Valentine,

Attends the Emperor in his royal court.

ANTONIO     I know it well.

PANTHINO

’Twere good, I think, your lordship sent him thither:

There shall he practise tilts and tournaments,

30

Hear sweet discourse, converse with noblemen,

And be in eye of every exercise

Worthy his youth and nobleness of birth.

ANTONIO     I like thy counsel: well hast thou advis’d.

And that thou mayst perceive how well I like it,

35

The execution of it shall make known.

Even with the speediest expedition,

I will dispatch him to the Emperor’s court.

PANTHINO

To-morrow, may it please you, Don Alphonso

With other gentlemen of good esteem

40

Are journeying to salute the Emperor,

And to commend their service to his will.

ANTONIO     Good company: with them shall Proteus go.

Enter PROTEUS.

And in good time, now will we break with him.

PROTEUS     [aside] Sweet love, sweet lines, sweet life!

45

Here is her hand, the agent of her heart;

Here is her oath for love, her honour’s pawn.

O that our fathers would applaud our loves

To seal our happiness with their consents!

O heavenly Julia!

50

ANTONIO

How now? What letter are you reading there?

PROTEUS

May ’t please your lordship, ’tis a word or two

Of commendations sent from Valentine,

Deliver’d by a friend that came from him.

ANTONIO     Lend me the letter: let me see what news.

55

PROTEUS     There is no news, my lord, but that he writes

How happily he lives, how well-belov’d,

And daily graced by the Emperor;

Wishing me with him, partner of his fortune.

ANTONIO     And how stand you affected to his wish?

60

PROTEUS     As one relying on your lordship’s will,

And not depending on his friendly wish.

ANTONIO     My will is something sorted with his wish.

Muse not that I thus suddenly proceed,

For what I will, I will, and there an end.

65

I am resolv’d that thou shalt spend some time

With Valentinus, in the Emperor’s court:

What maintenance he from his friends receives,

Like exhibition thou shalt have from me.

To-morrow be in readiness to go.

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Excuse it not, for I am peremptory.

PROTEUS     My lord, I cannot be so soon provided:

Please you deliberate a day or two.

ANTONIO

Look what thou want’st shall be sent after thee.

No more of stay; to-morrow thou must go.

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Come on, Panthino; you shall be employ’d

To hasten on his expedition.

     Exeunt Antonio and Panthino.

PROTEUS

Thus have I shunn’d the fire, for fear of burning,

And drench’d me in the sea, where I am drown’d.

I fear’d to show my father Julia’s letter,

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Lest he should take exceptions to my love,

And with the vantage of mine own excuse

Hath he excepted most against my love.

O, how this spring of love resembleth

The uncertain glory of an April day,

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Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,

And by and by a cloud takes all away.

Enter PANTHINO.

PANTHINO     Sir Proteus, your father calls for you,

He is in haste, therefore I pray you go.

PROTEUS     Why, this it is: my heart accords thereto,

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And yet a thousand times it answers ‘no’.     Exeunt

2.1 Enter VALENTINE and SPEED.

SPEED     Sir, your glove.

VALENTINE     Not mine: my gloves are on.

SPEED     Why, then this may be yours; for this is but one.

VALENTINE     Ha! Let me see; ay, give it me, it’s mine.

Sweet ornament, that decks a thing divine!

5

Ah, Silvia, Silvia!

SPEED     Madam Silvia! Madam Silvia!

VALENTINE     How now, sirrah?

SPEED     She is not within hearing, sir.

VALENTINE     Why, sir, who bade you call her?

10

SPEED     Your worship, sir, or else I mistook.

VALENTINE     Well, you’ll still be too forward.

SPEED     And yet I was last chidden for being too slow.

VALENTINE

Go to, sir, tell me: do you know Madam Silvia?

SPEED     She that your worship loves?

15

VALENTINE     Why, how know you that I am in love?

SPEED     Marry, by these special marks: first, you have

learned (like Sir Proteus) to wreathe your arms like a

malcontent; to relish a love-song, like a robin-

redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the

20

pestilence; to sigh, like a schoolboy that had lost his

ABC; to weep, like a young wench that had buried

her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; to

watch, like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like

a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you

25

laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk

like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was

presently after dinner; when you looked sadly, it was

for want of money. And now you are metamorphosed

with a mistress, that when I look on you, I can hardly

30

think you my master.

VALENTINE     Are all these things perceived in me?

SPEED     They are all perceived without ye.

VALENTINE     Without me? They cannot.

SPEED     Without you? Nay, that’s certain. For without

35

you were so simple, none else would. But you are so

without these follies that these follies are within you,

and shine through you like the water in an urinal; that

not an eye that sees you but is a physician to

comment on your malady.

40

VALENTINE     But tell me: dost thou know my lady Silvia?

SPEED     She that you gaze on so, as she sits at supper?

VALENTINE     Hast thou observed that? Even she I mean.

SPEED     Why, sir, I know her not.

VALENTINE     Dost thou know her by my gazing on her,

45

and yet know’st her not?

SPEED     Is she not hard-favoured, sir?

VALENTINE     Not so fair, boy, as well-favoured.

SPEED     Sir, I know that well enough.

VALENTINE     What dost thou know?

50

SPEED     That she is not so fair as, of you, well-favoured.

VALENTINE     I mean that her beauty is exquisite, but her

favour infinite.

SPEED     That’s because the one is painted, and the other

out of all count.

55

VALENTINE     How painted? And how out of count?

SPEED     Marry, sir, so painted to make her fair that no

man counts of her beauty.

VALENTINE     How esteem’st thou me? I account of her

beauty.

60

SPEED     You never saw her since she was deformed.

VALENTINE     How long hath she been deformed?

SPEED     Ever since you loved her.

VALENTINE     I have loved her ever since I saw her, and

still I see her beautiful.

65

SPEED     If you love her, you cannot see her.

VALENTINE     Why?

SPEED     Because Love is blind. O that you had mine eyes,

or your own eyes had the lights they were wont to

have, when you chid at Sir Proteus, for going

70

ungartered.

VALENTINE     What should I see then?

SPEED     Your own present folly, and her passing

deformity: for he, being in love, could not see to garter

his hose; and you, being in love, cannot see to put on

75

your hose.

VALENTINE     Belike, boy, then you are in love, for last

morning you could not see to wipe my shoes.

SPEED     True, sir: I was in love with my bed. I thank you,

you swinged me for my love, which makes me the

80

bolder to chide you for yours.

VALENTINE     In conclusion, I stand affected to her.

SPEED     I would you were set, so your affection would

cease.

VALENTINE     Last night she enjoined me to write some

85

lines to one she loves.

SPEED     And have you?

VALENTINE     I have.

SPEED     Are they not lamely writ?

VALENTINE     No, boy, but as well as I can do them.

90

Enter SILVIA.

Peace, here she comes.

SPEED     [aside] O excellent motion! O exceeding puppet!

Now will he interpret to her.

VALENTINE     Madam and mistress, a thousand good-

morrows.

95

SPEED     [aside] O, ’give-ye-good-ev’n! Here’s a million of

manners.

SILVIA     Sir Valentine, and servant, to you two thousand.

SPEED     [aside] He should give her interest; and she gives

it him.

100

VALENTINE     As you enjoin’d me, I have writ your letter

Unto the secret, nameless friend of yours.

Which I was much unwilling to proceed in,

But for my duty to your ladyship. [Gives her a letter.]

SILVIA

I thank you, gentle servant. ’Tis very clerkly done.

105

VALENTINE     Now trust me, madam, it came hardly off.

For being ignorant to whom it goes,

I writ at random, very doubtfully.

SILVIA

Perchance you think too much of so much pains?

VALENTINE     No, madam; so it stead you, I will write

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(Please you command) a thousand times as much.

And yet –

SILVIA     A pretty period. Well, I guess the sequel;

And yet I will not name it; and yet I care not.

And yet take this again; and yet I thank you,

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Meaning henceforth to trouble you no more.

SPEED     [aside] And yet you will; and yet another ‘yet’.

VALENTINE

What means your ladyship? Do you not like it?

SILVIA     Yes, yes; the lines are very quaintly writ,

But (since unwillingly) take them again.

120

Nay, take them.

VALENTINE     Madam, they are for you.

SILVIA     Ay, ay. You writ them, sir, at my request,

But I will none of them: they are for you.

I would have had them writ more movingly.

125

VALENTINE     [taking the letter]

Please you, I’ll write your ladyship another.

SILVIA     And when it’s writ, for my sake read it over,

And if it please you, so; if not, why, so.

VALENTINE     If it please me, madam? What then?

SILVIA     Why, if it please you, take it for your labour;

130

And so good-morrow, servant.     Exit.

SPEED     O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible,

As a nose on a man’s face, or a weathercock on a

steeple!

My master sues to her; and she hath taught her

suitor,

He being her pupil, to become her tutor.

135

O excellent device, was there ever heard a better?

That my master being scribe, to himself should write

the letter?

VALENTINE     How now, sir? What are you reasoning with

yourself?

SPEED     Nay, I was rhyming; ’tis you that have the reason.

140

VALENTINE     To do what?

SPEED     To be a spokesman from Madam Silvia.

VALENTINE     To whom?

SPEED     To yourself. Why, she woos you by a figure.

VALENTINE     What figure?

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SPEED     By a letter, I should say.

VALENTINE     Why, she hath not writ to me.

SPEED     What need she, when she hath made you write to

yourself? Why, do you not perceive the jest?

VALENTINE     No, believe me.

150

SPEED     No believing you indeed, sir. But did you

perceive her earnest?

VALENTINE     She gave me none, except an angry word.

SPEED     Why, she hath given you a letter.

VALENTINE     That’s the letter I writ to her friend.

155

SPEED     And that letter hath she delivered, and there an

end.

VALENTINE     I would it were no worse.

SPEED     I’ll warrant you, ’tis as well.

For often have you writ to her, and she in modesty,

160

Or else for want of idle time, could not again reply,

Or fearing else some messenger, that might her mind discover,

Herself hath taught her love himself to write unto her lover.

All this I speak in print, for in print I found it.

Why muse you, sir? ’Tis dinner time.

165

VALENTINE     I have dined.

SPEED

Ay, but hearken, sir: though the chameleon Love

can feed on the air, I am one that am nourished by

my victuals; and would fain have meat. O, be not

like your mistress, be moved, be moved.     Exeunt.

170

2.2 Enter PROTEUS and JULIA.

PROTEUS     Have patience, gentle Julia.

JULIA     I must where is no remedy.

PROTEUS     When possibly I can, I will return.

JULIA     If you turn not, you will return the sooner;

5

Keep this remembrance for thy Julia’s sake.

[She gives Proteus a ring.]

PROTEUS

Why then we’ll make exchange; here, take you this.

[He gives Julia a ring.]

JULIA     And seal the bargain with a holy kiss.

PROTEUS     Here is my hand, for my true constancy.

And when that hour o’erslips me in the day

10

Wherein I sigh not, Julia, for thy sake,

The next ensuing hour some foul mischance

Torment me for my love’s forgetfulness.

My father stays my coming. Answer not.

The tide is now; nay, not thy tide of tears,

15

That tide will stay me longer than I should.

Julia, farewell.     Exit Julia.

What, gone without a word?

Ay, so true love should do: it cannot speak,

For truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.

Enter PANTHINO.

PANTHINO     Sir Proteus, you are stay’d for.

PROTEUS     Go; I come, I come.

20

Alas, this parting strikes poor lovers dumb.     Exeunt.

2.3 Enter LAUNCE with his dog Crab.

LAUNCE     Nay, ’twill be this hour ere I have done

weeping. All the kind of the Launces have this very

fault. I have received my proportion, like the

prodigious son, and am going with Sir Proteus to the

Imperial’s court. I think Crab my dog be the sourest-

5

natured dog that lives: my mother weeping; my father

wailing; my sister crying; our maid howling; our cat

wringing her hands, and all our house in a great

perplexity; yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one

tear. He is a stone, a very pebble stone, and has no

10

more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would have wept

to have seen our parting. Why, my grandam, having no

eyes, look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay,

I’ll show you the manner of it. This shoe is my father.

No, this left shoe is my father; no, no, this left shoe is

15

my mother; nay, that cannot be so neither. Yes, it is so,

it is so: it hath the worser sole. This shoe with the hole

in it is my mother; and this my father. A vengeance

on’t, there ’tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister; for, look

you, she is as white as a lily, and as small as a wand.

20

This hat is Nan our maid. I am the dog. No, the dog is

himself, and I am the dog. O, the dog is me, and I am

myself. Ay; so, so. Now come I to my father: ‘Father,

your blessing.’ Now should not the shoe speak a word

for weeping; now should I kiss my father; well, he

25

weeps on; now come I to my mother. O that she could

speak now, like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her. Why,

there ’tis: here’s my mother’s breath up and down.

Now come I to my sister: mark the moan she makes.

Now the dog all this while sheds not a tear; nor speaks

30

a word; but see how I lay the dust with my tears.

Enter PANTHINO.

PANTHINO     Launce, away, away; aboard; thy master is

shipped, and thou art to post after with oars. What’s

the matter? Why weep’st thou, man? Away, ass, you’ll

lose the tide, if you tarry any longer.

35

LAUNCE     It is no matter if the tied were lost, for it is the

unkindest tied that ever any man tied.

PANTHINO     What’s the unkindest tide?

LAUNCE     Why, he that’s tied here, Crab my dog.

PANTHINO     Tut, man. I mean thou’lt lose the flood, and

40

in losing the flood, lose thy voyage, and in losing thy

voyage, lose thy master, and in losing thy master, lose

thy service, and in losing thy service – why dost thou

stop my mouth?

LAUNCE     For fear thou shouldst lose thy tongue.

45

PANTHINO     Where should I lose my tongue?

LAUNCE     In thy tale.

PANTHINO     In my tail?

LAUNCE     Lose the tide, and the voyage, and the master,

and the service, and the tied? Why, man, if the river

50

were dry, I am able to fill it with my tears; if the wind

were down, I could drive the boat with my sighs.

PANTHINO     Come; come away, man, I was sent to call

thee.

LAUNCE     Sir, call me what thou dar’st.

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PANTHINO     Wilt thou go?

LAUNCE     Well, I will go.     Exeunt.

2.4 Enter VALENTINE, SILVIA, THURIO and SPEED.

SILVIA     Servant, –

VALENTINE     Mistress?

SPEED     Master, Sir Thurio frowns on you.

VALENTINE     Ay, boy, it’s for love.

SPEED     Not of you.

5

VALENTINE     Of my mistress, then.

SPEED     ’Twere good you knocked him.

SILVIA     Servant, you are sad.

VALENTINE     Indeed, madam, I seem so.

THURIO     Seem you that you are not?

10

VALENTINE     Haply I do.

THURIO     So do counterfeits.

VALENTINE     So do you.

THURIO     What seem I that I am not?

VALENTINE     Wise.

15

THURIO     What instance of the contrary?

VALENTINE     Your folly.

THURIO     And how quote you my folly?

VALENTINE     I quote it in your jerkin.

THURIO     My jerkin is a doublet.

20

VALENTINE     Well, then, I’ll double your folly.

THURIO     How!

SILVIA     What, angry, Sir Thurio? Do you change

colour?

VALENTINE     Give him leave, madam, he is a kind of

25

chameleon.

THURIO     That hath more mind to feed on your blood

than live in your air.

VALENTINE     You have said, sir.

THURIO     Ay, sir, and done too for this time.

30

VALENTINE     I know it well, sir, you always end ere you

begin.

SILVIA     A fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly

shot off.

VALENTINE     ’Tis indeed, madam: we thank the giver.

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SILVIA     Who is that, servant?

VALENTINE     Yourself, sweet lady, for you gave the fire.

Sir Thurio borrows his wit from your ladyship’s looks,

and spends what he borrows kindly in your company.

THURIO     Sir, if you spend word for word with me, I shall

40

make your wit bankrupt.

VALENTINE     I know it well, sir. You have an exchequer of

words, and I think no other treasure to give your

followers; for it appears by their bare liveries that they

live by your bare words.

45

SILVIA     No more, gentlemen, no more. Here comes my

father.

Enter DUKE.

DUKE     Now, daughter Silvia, you are hard beset.

Sir Valentine, your father is in good health.

What say you to a letter from your friends

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Of much good news?

VALENTINE     My lord, I will be thankful

To any happy messenger from thence.

DUKE     Know ye Don Antonio, your countryman?

VALENTINE     Ay, my good lord, I know the gentleman

To be of worth, and worthy estimation,

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And not without desert so well reputed.

DUKE     Hath he not a son?

VALENTINE     Ay, my good lord, a son that well deserves

The honour and regard of such a father.

DUKE     You know him well?

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VALENTINE     I knew him as myself; for from our infancy

We have convers’d, and spent our hours together,

And though myself have been an idle truant,

Omitting the sweet benefit of time

To clothe mine age with angel-like perfection,

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Yet hath Sir Proteus (for that’s his name)

Made use and fair advantage of his days:

His years but young, but his experience old;

His head unmellow’d, but his judgment ripe;

And in a word (for far behind his worth

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Comes all the praises that I now bestow)

He is complete in feature and in mind,

With all good grace to grace a gentleman.

DUKE     Beshrew me, sir, but if he make this good

He is as worthy for an empress’ love

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As meet to be an emperor’s counsellor.

Well, sir; this gentleman is come to me

With commendation from great potentates,

And here he means to spend his time awhile:

I think ’tis no unwelcome news to you.

80

VALENTINE

Should I have wish’d a thing, it had been he.

DUKE     Welcome him then according to his worth.

SILVIA, I speak to you, and you, Sir Thurio;

For Valentine, I need not cite him to it.

I will send him hither to you presently.     Exit.

85

VALENTINE     This is the gentleman I told your ladyship

Had come along with me, but that his mistress

Did hold his eyes lock’d in her crystal looks.

SILVIA     Belike that now she hath enfranchis’d them

Upon some other pawn for fealty.

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VALENTINE

Nay, sure, I think she holds them prisoners still.

SILVIA     Nay, then he should be blind, and being blind

How could he see his way to seek out you?

VALENTINE     Why, lady, Love hath twenty pair of eyes.

THURIO     They say that Love hath not an eye at all.

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VALENTINE     To see such lovers, Thurio, as yourself:

Upon a homely object, Love can wink.

Enter PROTEUS.

SILVIA

Have done, have done: here comes the gentleman.

VALENTINE

Welcome, dear Proteus. Mistress, I beseech you

Confirm his welcome, with some special favour.

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SILVIA     His worth is warrant for his welcome hither,

If this be he you oft have wish’d to hear from.

VALENTINE     Mistress, it is; sweet lady, entertain him

To be my fellow-servant to your ladyship.

SILVIA     Too low a mistress for so high a servant.

105

PROTEUS     Not so, sweet lady, but too mean a servant

To have a look of such a worthy mistress.

VALENTINE     Leave off discourse of disability.

Sweet lady, entertain him for your servant.

PROTEUS     My duty will I boast of, nothing else.

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SILVIA     And duty never yet did want his meed.

Servant, you are welcome to a worthless mistress.

PROTEUS     I’ll die on him that says so but yourself.

SILVIA     That you are welcome?

PROTEUS     That you are worthless.

Enter a Servant.

SERVANT

Madam, my lord your father would speak with you.

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SILVIA     I wait upon his pleasure. Come, Sir Thurio,

Go with me. Once more, new servant, welcome;

I’ll leave you to confer of home affairs.

When you have done, we look to hear from you.

PROTEUS     We’ll both attend upon your ladyship.

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     Exeunt Silvia, Thurio, Speed and Servant.

VALENTINE

Now tell me: how do all from whence you came?

PROTEUS

Your friends are well, and have them much

commended.

VALENTINE     And how do yours?

PROTEUS     I left them all in health.

VALENTINE

How does your lady? And how thrives your love?

PROTEUS     My tales of love were wont to weary you:

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I know you joy not in a love-discourse.

VALENTINE     Ay, Proteus, but that life is alter’d now:

I have done penance for contemning Love,

Whose high imperious thoughts have punish’d me

With bitter fasts, with penitential groans,

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With nightly tears, and daily heart-sore sighs,

For in revenge of my contempt of Love,

Love hath chas’d sleep from my enthralled eyes,

And made them watchers of mine own heart’s sorrow.

O gentle Proteus, Love’s a mighty lord,

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And hath so humbled me, as I confess

There is no woe to his correction,

Nor, to his service, no such joy on earth.

Now, no discourse, except it be of love;

Now can I break my fast, dine, sup, and sleep

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Upon the very naked name of Love.

PROTEUS     Enough: I read your fortune in your eye.

Was this the idol that you worship so?

VALENTINE     Even she; and is she not a heavenly saint?

PROTEUS     No; but she is an earthly paragon.

145

VALENTINE     Call her divine.

PROTEUS     I will not flatter her.

VALENTINE     O flatter me; for love delights in praises.

PROTEUS     When I was sick, you gave me bitter pills,

And I must minister the like to you.

VALENTINE     Then speak the truth by her: if not divine,

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Yet let her be a principality,

Sovereign to all the creatures on the earth.

PROTEUS     Except my mistress.

VALENTINE     Sweet, except not any,

Except thou wilt except against my love.

PROTEUS     Have I not reason to prefer mine own?

155

VALENTINE     And I will help thee to prefer her too:

She shall be dignified with this high honour,

To bear my lady’s train, lest the base earth

Should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss,

And of so great a favour growing proud,

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Disdain to root the summer-swelling flower,

And make rough winter everlastingly.

PROTEUS     Why, Valentine, what braggardism is this?

VALENTINE     Pardon me, Proteus, all I can is nothing

To her whose worth makes other worthies nothing:

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She is alone.

PROTEUS     Then let her alone.

VALENTINE

Not for the world. Why, man, she is mine own,

And I as rich in having such a jewel

As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,

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The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.

Forgive me that I do not dream on thee,

Because thou seest me dote upon my love.

My foolish rival that her father likes

(Only for his possessions are so huge)

175

Is gone with her along, and I must after,

For love, thou know’st, is full of jealousy.

PROTEUS     But she loves you?

VALENTINE

Ay, and we are betroth’d; nay more, our marriage hour,

With all the cunning manner of our flight,

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Determin’d of: how I must climb her window,

The ladder made of cords, and all the means

Plotted, and ’greed on for my happiness.

Good Proteus, go with me to my chamber,

In these affairs to aid me with thy counsel.

185

PROTEUS     Go on before; I shall enquire you forth.

I must unto the road, to disembark

Some necessaries that I needs must use,

And then I’ll presently attend you.

VALENTINE     Will you make haste?

190

PROTEUS     I will.     Exit Valentine.

Even as one heat another heat expels,

Or as one nail by strength drives out another,

So the remembrance of my former love

Is by a newer object quite forgotten.

195

Is it mine eye, or Valentinus’ praise,

Her true perfection, or my false transgression,

That makes me reasonless, to reason thus?

She is fair; and so is Julia that I love –

That I did love, for now my love is thaw’d,

200

Which like a waxen image ’gainst a fire

Bears no impression of the thing it was.

Methinks my zeal to Valentine is cold,

And that I love him not as I was wont.

O, but I love his lady too-too much,

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And that’s the reason I love him so little.

How shall I dote on her with more advice,

That thus without advice begin to love her?

’Tis but her picture I have yet beheld,

And that hath dazzled my reason’s light;

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But when I look on her perfections,

There is no reason but I shall be blind.

If I can check my erring love, I will;

If not, to compass her I’ll use my skill.     Exit.

2.5 Enter SPEED and LAUNCE with his dog.

SPEED     Launce, by mine honesty, welcome to Padua.

LAUNCE     Forswear not thyself, sweet youth, for I am not

welcome. I reckon this always, that a man is never

undone till he be hanged, nor never welcome to a place

till some certain shot be paid, and the hostess say

5

‘welcome’.

SPEED     Come on, you madcap: I’ll to the ale-house with

you presently; where, for one shot of five pence, thou

shalt have five thousand welcomes. But, sirrah, how

did thy master part with Madam Julia?

10

LAUNCE     Marry, after they closed in earnest, they parted

very fairly in jest.

SPEED     But shall she marry him?

LAUNCE     No.

SPEED     How then? Shall he marry her?

15

LAUNCE     No, neither.

SPEED     What, are they broken?

LAUNCE     No; they are both as whole as a fish.

SPEED     Why then, how stands the matter with them?

LAUNCE     Marry, thus: when it stands well with him, it

20

stands well with her.

SPEED     What an ass art thou, I understand thee not.

LAUNCE     What a block art thou, that thou canst not! My

staff understands me.

SPEED     What thou say’st?

25

LAUNCE     Ay, and what I do too: look thee, I’ll but lean,

and my staff understands me.

SPEED     It stands under thee indeed.

LAUNCE     Why, stand under and understand is all one.

SPEED     But tell me true, will’t be a match?

30

LAUNCE     Ask my dog: if he say ‘ay’, it will; if he say ‘no’,

it will; if he shake his tail, and say nothing, it will.

SPEED     The conclusion is, then, that it will.

LAUNCE     Thou shalt never get such a secret from me but

by a parable.

35

SPEED     ’Tis well that I get it so. But, Launce, how say’st

thou that my master is become a notable lover?

LAUNCE     I never knew him otherwise.

SPEED     Than how?

LAUNCE     A notable lubber; as thou reportest him to be.

40

SPEED     Why, thou whoreson ass, thou mistak’st me.

LAUNCE     Why, fool, I meant not thee, I meant thy

master.

SPEED     I tell thee, my master is become a hot lover.

LAUNCE     Why, I tell thee, I care not, though he burn

45

himself in love. If thou wilt, go with me to the ale-

house; if not, thou art an Hebrew, a Jew, and not worth

the name of a Christian.

SPEED     Why?

LAUNCE     Because thou hast not so much charity in thee

50

as to go to the ale with a Christian. Wilt thou go?

SPEED     At thy service.     Exeunt.

2.6 Enter PROTEUS alone.

PROTEUS     To leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn;

To love fair Silvia, shall I be forsworn;

To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn.

And ev’n that power which gave me first my oath

Provokes me to this threefold perjury.

5

Love bade me swear, and Love bids me forswear.

O sweet-suggesting Love, if thou hast sinn’d,

Teach me (thy tempted subject) to excuse it.

At first I did adore a twinkling star,

But now I worship a celestial sun:

10

Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken,

And he wants wit that wants resolved will

To learn his wit t’exchange the bad for better.

Fie, fie, unreverend tongue, to call her bad

Whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferr’d,

15

With twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths.

I cannot leave to love; and yet I do;

But there I leave to love, where I should love.

Julia I lose, and Valentine I lose;

If I keep them, I needs must lose myself;

20

If I lose them, thus find I by their loss:

For Valentine, myself; for Julia, Silvia.

I to myself am dearer than a friend,

For love is still most precious in itself,

And Silvia (witness heaven that made her fair)

25

Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope.

I will forget that Julia is alive,

Rememb’ring that my love to her is dead.

And Valentine I’ll hold an enemy,

Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend.

30

I cannot now prove constant to myself,

Without some treachery us’d to Valentine.

This night he meaneth with a corded ladder

To climb celestial Silvia’s chamber-window,

Myself in counsel, his competitor.

35

Now presently I’ll give her father notice

Of their disguising and pretended flight;

Who, all enrag’d, will banish Valentine,

For Thurio he intends shall wed his daughter.

But Valentine being gone, I’ll quickly cross,

40

By some sly trick, blunt Thurio’s dull proceeding.

Love, lend me wings to make my purpose swift

As thou hast lent me wit to plot this drift.     Exit.

2.7 Enter JULIA and LUCETTA.

JULIA     Counsel, Lucetta; gentle girl, assist me,

And ev’n in kind love I do conjure thee,

Who art the table wherein all my thoughts

Are visibly character’d and engrav’d,

To lesson me, and tell me some good mean

5

How with my honour I may undertake

A journey to my loving Proteus.

LUCETTA     Alas, the way is wearisome and long.

JULIA     A true-devoted pilgrim is not weary

To measure kingdoms with his feeble steps,

10

Much less shall she that hath Love’s wings to fly,

And when the flight is made to one so dear,

Of such divine perfection as Sir Proteus.

LUCETTA     Better forbear, till Proteus make return.

JULIA

O, know’st thou not his looks are my soul’s food?

15

Pity the dearth that I have pined in,

By longing for that food so long a time.

Didst thou but know the inly touch of love,

Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow

As seek to quench the fire of love with words.

20

LUCETTA     I do not seek to quench your love’s hot fire,

But qualify the fire’s extreme rage,

Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason.

JULIA

The more thou damm’st it up, the more it burns:

The current that with gentle murmur glides,

25

Thou know’st, being stopp’d impatiently doth rage;

But when his fair course is not hindered,

He makes sweet music with th’ enamell’d stones,

Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage.

30

And so by many winding nooks he strays

With willing sport to the wild ocean.

Then let me go, and hinder not my course.

I’ll be as patient as a gentle stream,

And make a pastime of each weary step,

35

Till the last step have brought me to my love,

And there I’ll rest, as after much turmoil

A blessed soul doth in Elysium.

LUCETTA     But in what habit will you go along?

JULIA     Not like a woman, for I would prevent

40

The loose encounters of lascivious men:

Gentle Lucetta, fit me with such weeds

As may beseem some well-reputed page.

LUCETTA     Why, then your ladyship must cut your hair.

JULIA     No, girl, I’ll knit it up in silken strings,

45

With twenty odd-conceited true-love knots:

To be fantastic may become a youth

Of greater time than I shall show to be.

LUCETTA

What fashion, madam, shall I make your breeches?

JULIA     That fits as well as ‘Tell me, good my lord,

50

What compass will you wear your farthingale?’

Why, ev’n what fashion thou best likes, Lucetta.

LUCETTA

You must needs have them with a cod-piece, madam.

JULIA     Out, out, Lucetta, that will be ill-favour’d.

LUCETTA

A round hose, madam, now’s not worth a pin

55

Unless you have a cod-piece to stick pins on.

JULIA     Lucetta, as thou lov’st me let me have

What thou think’st meet, and is most mannerly.

But tell me, wench, how will the world repute me

For undertaking so unstaid a journey?

60

I fear me it will make me scandalis’d.

LUCETTA

If you think so, then stay at home, and go not.

JULIA     Nay, that I will not.

LUCETTA     Then never dream on infamy, but go.

If Proteus like your journey, when you come,

65

No matter who’s displeas’d, when you are gone.

I fear me he will scarce be pleas’d withal.

JULIA     That is the least, Lucetta, of my fear:

A thousand oaths, an ocean of his tears,

And instances of infinite of love,

70

Warrant me welcome to my Proteus.

LUCETTA     All these are servants to deceitful men.

JULIA     Base men, that use them to so base effect;

But truer stars did govern Proteus’ birth,

His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles,

75

His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate,

His tears pure messengers sent from his heart,

His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.

LUCETTA

Pray heav’n he prove so when you come to him.

JULIA     Now, as thou lov’st me, do him not that wrong,

80

To bear a hard opinion of his truth.

Only deserve my love, by loving him,

And presently go with me to my chamber

To take a note of what I stand in need of,

To furnish me upon my longing journey.

85

All that is mine I leave at thy dispose,

My goods, my lands, my reputation,

Only, in lieu thereof, dispatch me hence.

Come; answer not; but to it presently,

I am impatient of my tarriance.     Exeunt.

90

3.1 Enter DUKE, THURIO and PROTEUS.

DUKE     Sir Thurio, give us leave, I pray, awhile,

We have some secrets to confer about.     Exit Thurio.

Now tell me, Proteus, what’s your will with me?

PROTEUS

My gracious lord, that which I would discover

The law of friendship bids me to conceal,

5

But when I call to mind your gracious favours

Done to me, undeserving as I am,

My duty pricks me on to utter that

Which else no worldly good should draw from me.

Know, worthy prince, Sir Valentine my friend

10

This night intends to steal away your daughter;

Myself am one made privy to the plot.

I know you have determin’d to bestow her

On Thurio, whom your gentle daughter hates,

And should she thus be stol’n away from you,

15

It would be much vexation to your age.

Thus, for my duty’s sake, I rather chose

To cross my friend in his intended drift,

Than, by concealing it, heap on your head

A pack of sorrows, which would press you down,

20

Being unprevented, to your timeless grave.

DUKE     Proteus, I thank thee for thine honest care,

Which to requite command me while I live.

This love of theirs myself have often seen,

Haply when they have judg’d me fast asleep,

25

And oftentimes have purpos’d to forbid

Sir Valentine her company and my court.

But fearing lest my jealous aim might err,

And so (unworthily) disgrace the man

(A rashness that I ever yet have shunn’d)

30

I gave him gentle looks, thereby to find

That which thyself hast now disclos’d to me.

And that thou mayst perceive my fear of this,

Knowing that tender youth is soon suggested,

I nightly lodge her in an upper tower,

35

The key whereof myself have ever kept,

And thence she cannot be convey’d away.

PROTEUS     Know, noble lord, they have devis’d a mean

How he her chamber-window will ascend,

And with a corded ladder fetch her down;

40

For which the youthful lover now is gone,

And this way comes he with it presently,

Where, if it please you, you may intercept him.

But, good my lord, do it so cunningly

That my discovery be not aimed at;

45

For love of you, not hate unto my friend,

Hath made me publisher of this pretence.

DUKE     Upon mine honour, he shall never know

That I had any light from thee of this.

PROTEUS     Adieu, my lord, Sir Valentine is coming.

50

Exit.

Enter VALENTINE.

DUKE     Sir Valentine, whither away so fast?

VALENTINE     Please it your grace, there is a messenger

That stays to bear my letters to my friends,

And I am going to deliver them.

DUKE     Be they of much import?

55

VALENTINE     The tenor of them doth but signify

My health, and happy being at your court.

DUKE     Nay then, no matter. Stay with me awhile;

I am to break with thee of some affairs

That touch me near; wherein thou must be secret.

60

’Tis not unknown to thee that I have sought

To match my friend Sir Thurio to my daughter.

VALENTINE

I know it well, my lord, and sure the match

Were rich and honourable. Besides, the gentleman

Is full of virtue, bounty, worth, and qualities

65

Beseeming such a wife as your fair daughter.

Cannot your grace win her to fancy him?

DUKE     No, trust me, she is peevish, sullen, froward,

Proud, disobedient, stubborn, lacking duty,

Neither regarding that she is my child,

70

Nor fearing me as if I were her father.

And may I say to thee, this pride of hers

(Upon advice) hath drawn my love from her,

And where I thought the remnant of mine age

Should have been cherish’d by her child-like duty,

75

I now am full resolv’d to take a wife,

And turn her out to who will take her in.

Then let her beauty be her wedding-dower;

For me and my possessions she esteems not.

VALENTINE

What would your grace have me to do in this?

80

DUKE     There is a lady in Verona here

Whom I affect; but she is nice, and coy,

And nought esteems my aged eloquence.

Now therefore would I have thee to my tutor

(For long agone I have forgot to court,

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Besides the fashion of the time is chang’d)

How and which way I may bestow myself

To be regarded in her sun-bright eye.

VALENTINE

Win her with gifts, if she respect not words:

Dumb jewels often in their silent kind,

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More than quick words, do move a woman’s mind.

DUKE     But she did scorn a present that I sent her.

VALENTINE

A woman sometime scorns what best contents her.

Send her another; never give her o’er,

For scorn at first makes after-love the more.

95

If she do frown, ’tis not in hate of you,

But rather to beget more love in you.

If she do chide, ’tis not to have you gone,

For why, the fools are mad, if left alone.

Take no repulse, whatever she doth say,

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For ‘get you gone’ she doth not mean ‘away!’.

Flatter, and praise, commend, extol their graces;

Though ne’er so black, say they have angels’ faces;

That man that hath a tongue, I say is no man,

If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.

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DUKE     But she I mean is promis’d by her friends

Unto a youthful gentleman of worth,

And kept severely from resort of men,

That no man hath access by day to her.

VALENTINE     Why, then I would resort to her by night.

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DUKE     Ay, but the doors be lock’d, and keys kept safe,

That no man hath recourse to her by night.

VALENTINE

What lets but one may enter at her window?

DUKE     Her chamber is aloft, far from the ground,

And built so shelving that one cannot climb it

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Without apparent hazard of his life.

VALENTINE     Why, then a ladder quaintly made of cords

To cast up, with a pair of anchoring hooks,

Would serve to scale another Hero’s tower,

So bold Leander would adventure it.

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DUKE     Now, as thou art a gentleman of blood,

Advise me where I may have such a ladder.

VALENTINE

When would you use it? Pray, sir, tell me that.

DUKE     This very night; for Love is like a child

That longs for every thing that he can come by.

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VALENTINE     By seven o’clock I’ll get you such a ladder.

DUKE     But hark thee: I will go to her alone;

How shall I best convey the ladder thither?

VALENTINE

It will be light, my lord, that you may bear it

Under a cloak that is of any length.

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DUKE     A cloak as long as thine will serve the turn?

VALENTINE     Ay, my good lord.

DUKE     Then let me see thy cloak,

I’ll get me one of such another length.

VALENTINE

Why, any cloak will serve the turn, my lord.

DUKE     How shall I fashion me to wear a cloak?

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I pray thee let me feel thy cloak upon me.

[He takes Valentine’s cloak, and finds with it a letter and a corded ladder.]

What letter is this same? What’s here? ‘To Silvia’!

And here an engine fit for my proceeding.

I’ll be so bold to break the seal for once.

[Reads.]

My thoughts do harbour with my Silvia nightly,

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And slaves they are to me that send them flying.

O, could their master come and go as lightly,

Himself would lodge where (senseless) they are lying.

My herald thoughts in thy pure bosom rest them,

While I, their king, that thither them importune,

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Do curse the grace that with such grace hath blest them,

Because myself do want my servants’ fortune.

I curse myself for they are sent by me,

That they should harbour where their lord should be.

What’s here?

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Silvia, this night I will enfranchise thee.

’Tis so; and here’s the ladder for the purpose.

Why, Phaëton, for thou art Merops’ son

Wilt thou aspire to guide the heavenly car?

And with thy daring folly burn the world?

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Wilt thou reach stars, because they shine on thee?

Go, base intruder, overweening slave,

Bestow thy fawning smiles on equal mates,

And think my patience (more than thy desert)

Is privilege for thy departure hence.

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Thank me for this, more than for all the favours

Which (all too much) I have bestowed on thee.

But if thou linger in my territories

Longer than swiftest expedition

Will give thee time to leave our royal court,

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By heaven, my wrath shall far exceed the love

I ever bore my daughter, or thyself.

Be gone, I will not hear thy vain excuse,

But as thou lov’st thy life, make speed from hence.

Exit.

VALENTINE

And why not death, rather than living torment?

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To die is to be banish’d from myself,

And Silvia is myself: banish’d from her

Is self from self. A deadly banishment.

What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?

What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?

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Unless it be to think that she is by

And feed upon the shadow of perfection.

Except I be by Silvia in the night,

There is no music in the nightingale.

Unless I look on Silvia in the day,

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There is no day for me to look upon.

She is my essence, and I leave to be,

If I be not by her fair influence

Foster’d, illumin’d, cherish’d, kept alive.

I fly not death, to fly his deadly doom:

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Tarry I here, I but attend on death,

But fly I hence, I fly away from life.

Enter PROTEUS and LAUNCE.

PROTEUS     Run, boy, run, run, and seek him out.

LAUNCE     So-ho, so-ho –

PROTEUS     What seest thou?

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LAUNCE     Him we go to find. There’s not a hair on’s head

but ’tis a Valentine.

PROTEUS     Valentine?

VALENTINE     No.

PROTEUS     Who then? His spirit?

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VALENTINE     Neither.

PROTEUS     What then?

VALENTINE     Nothing.

LAUNCE     Can nothing speak? Master, shall I strike?

PROTEUS     Who wouldst thou strike?

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LAUNCE     Nothing.

PROTEUS     Villain, forbear.

LAUNCE     Why, sir, I’ll strike nothing. I pray you –

PROTEUS

Sirrah, I say forbear. Friend Valentine, a word.

VALENTINE

My ears are stopp’d, and cannot hear good news,

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So much of bad already hath possess’d them.

PROTEUS     Then in dumb silence will I bury mine,

For they are harsh, untunable, and bad.

VALENTINE     Is Silvia dead?

PROTEUS     No, Valentine.

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VALENTINE     No Valentine indeed for sacred Silvia.

Hath she forsworn me?

PROTEUS     No, Valentine.

VALENTINE     No Valentine if Silvia have forsworn me.

What is your news?

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LAUNCE

Sir, there is a proclamation that you are vanished.

PROTEUS

That thou art banish’d – O, that’s the news –

From hence, from Silvia, and from me thy friend.

VALENTINE     O, I have fed upon this woe already,

And now excess of it will make me surfeit.

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Doth Silvia know that I am banished?

PROTEUS     Ay, ay; and she hath offered to the doom

(Which unrevers’d stands in effectual force)

A sea of melting pearl, which some call tears;

Those at her father’s churlish feet she tender’d,

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With them, upon her knees, her humble self,

Wringing her hands, whose whiteness so became them

As if but now they waxed pale for woe.

But neither bended knees, pure hands held up,

Sad sighs, deep groans, nor silver-shedding tears

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Could penetrate her uncompassionate sire;

But Valentine, if he be ta’en, must die.

Besides, her intercession chaf’d him so,

When she for thy repeal was suppliant,

That to close prison he commanded her,

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With many bitter threats of biding there.

VALENTINE

No more; unless the next word that thou speak’st

Have some malignant power upon my life.

If so, I pray thee breathe it in mine ear,

As ending anthem of my endless dolour.

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PROTEUS     Cease to lament for that thou canst not help,

And study help for that which thou lament’st.

Time is the nurse and breeder of all good.

Here, if thou stay, thou canst not see thy love;

Besides, thy staying will abridge thy life.

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Hope is a lover’s staff: walk hence with that

And manage it, against despairing thoughts.

Thy letters may be here, though thou art hence,

Which, being writ to me, shall be deliver’d

Even in the milk-white bosom of thy love.

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The time now serves not to expostulate.

Come, I’ll convey thee through the city-gate,

And ere I part with thee, confer at large

Of all that may concern thy love-affairs.

As thou lov’st Silvia (though not for thyself)

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Regard thy danger, and along with me.

VALENTINE

I pray thee, Launce, and if thou seest my boy,

Bid him make haste, and meet me at the North Gate.

PROTEUS     Go, sirrah, find him out. Come, Valentine.

VALENTINE     O my dear Silvia! Hapless Valentine!

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     Exeunt Proteus and Valentine.

LAUNCE     I am but a fool, look you, and yet I have the wit

to think my master is a kind of a knave; but that’s all

one, if he be but one knave. He lives not now that

knows me to be in love, yet I am in love, but a team

of horse shall not pluck that from me; nor who ’tis I

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love; and yet ’tis a woman; but what woman I will

not tell myself; and yet ’tis a milk-maid; yet ’tis not a

maid, for she hath had gossips; yet ’tis a maid, for

she is her master’s maid, and serves for wages. She

hath more qualities than a water-spaniel, which is

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much in a bare Christian. [taking out a paper] Here is

the cate-log of her conditions. ‘Imprimis, she can

fetch and carry’: why, a horse can do no more; nay, a

horse cannot fetch, but only carry, therefore is she

better than a jade. ‘Item, she can milk’: look you, a

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sweet virtue in a maid with clean hands.

Enter SPEED.

SPEED     How now, Signor Launce! What news with your

mastership?

LAUNCE     With my master’s ship? Why, it is at sea.

SPEED     Well, your old vice still: mistake the word. What

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news, then, in your paper?

LAUNCE     The black’st news that ever thou heard’st.

SPEED     Why, man, how black?

LAUNCE     Why, as black as ink.

SPEED     Let me read them.

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LAUNCE     Fie on thee, jolt-head, thou canst not read.

SPEED     Thou lyest; I can.

LAUNCE     I will try thee. Tell me this: who begot thee?

SPEED     Marry, the son of my grandfather.

LAUNCE     O illiterate loiterer! It was the son of thy

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grandmother. This proves that thou canst not read.

SPEED     Come, fool, come; try me in thy paper.

LAUNCE     [giving him the paper] There; and Saint

Nicholas be thy speed.

SPEED     Imprimis, she can milk.

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LAUNCE     Ay, that she can.

SPEED     Item, she brews good ale.

LAUNCE     And thereof comes the proverb: ‘Blessing of

your heart, you brew good ale.’

SPEED     Item, she can sew.

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LAUNCE     That’s as much as to say, ‘Can she so?’

SPEED     Item, she can knit.

LAUNCE     What need a man care for a stock with a

wench, when she can knit him a stock?

SPEED     Item, she can wash and scour.

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LAUNCE     A special virtue; for then she need not be

washed and scoured.

SPEED     Item, she can spin.

LAUNCE     Then may I set the world on wheels, when she

can spin for her living.

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SPEED     Item, she hath many nameless virtues.

LAUNCE     That’s as much as to say ‘bastard virtues’; that

indeed know not their fathers; and therefore have no

names.

SPEED     Here follow her vices.

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LAUNCE     Close at the heels of her virtues.

SPEED     Item, she is not to be kissed fasting in respect of her

breath.

LAUNCE     Well; that fault may be mended with a

breakfast. Read on.

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SPEED     Item, she hath a sweet mouth.

LAUNCE     That makes amends for her sour breath.

SPEED     Item, she doth talk in her sleep.

LAUNCE     It’s no matter for that; so she sleep not in her

talk.

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SPEED     Item, she is slow in words.

LAUNCE     O villain, that set this down among her vices!

To be slow in words is a woman’s only virtue. I pray

thee out with ’t, and place it for her chief virtue.

SPEED     Item, she is proud.

330

LAUNCE     Out with that too: it was Eve’s legacy, and

cannot be ta’en from her.

SPEED     Item, she hath no teeth.

LAUNCE     I care not for that neither; because I love

crusts.

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SPEED     Item, she is curst.

LAUNCE     Well; the best is, she hath no teeth to bite.

SPEED     Item, she will often praise her liquor.

LAUNCE     If her liquor be good, she shall; if she will not,

I will; for good things should be praised.

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SPEED     Item, she is too liberal.

LAUNCE     Of her tongue she cannot, for that’s writ down

she is slow of; of her purse she shall not, for that I’ll

keep shut. Now, of another thing she may, and that

cannot I help. Well, proceed.

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SPEED     Item, she hath more hair than wit, and more faults

than hairs, and more wealth than faults.

LAUNCE     Stop there. I’ll have her. She was mine, and not

mine, twice or thrice in that last article. Rehearse

that once more.

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SPEED     Item, she hath more hair than wit.

LAUNCE     More hair than wit: it may be. I’ll prove it: the

cover of the salt hides the salt, and therefore it is

more than the salt; the hair that covers the wit is

more than the wit; for the greater hides the less.

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What’s next?

SPEED     And more faults than hairs.

LAUNCE     That’s monstrous: O that were out!

SPEED     And more wealth than faults.

LAUNCE     Why, that word makes the faults gracious.

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Well, I’ll have her. And if it be a match, as nothing is

impossible –

SPEED     What then?

LAUNCE     Why, then will I tell thee that thy master stays

for thee at the North Gate.

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SPEED     For me?

LAUNCE     For thee? Ay, who art thou? He hath stayed for

a better man than thee.

SPEED     And must I go to him?

LAUNCE     Thou must run to him; for thou hast stayed so

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long that going will scarce serve the turn.

SPEED     Why didst not tell me sooner? ’Pox of your love-

letters!     Exit.

LAUNCE     Now will he be swinged for reading my letter;

an unmannerly slave, that will thrust himself into

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secrets. I’ll after, to rejoice in the boy’s correction.

Exit.

3.2 Enter DUKE and THURIO.

DUKE     Sir Thurio, fear not but that she will love you

Now Valentine is banish’d from her sight.

THURIO     Since his exile she hath despis’d me most,

Forsworn my company, and rail’d at me,

That I am desperate of obtaining her.

5

DUKE     This weak impress of love is as a figure

Trenched in ice, which with an hour’s heat

Dissolves to water, and doth lose his form.

A little time will melt her frozen thoughts,

And worthless Valentine shall be forgot.

10

Enter PROTEUS.

How now, Sir Proteus, is your countryman,

According to our proclamation, gone?

PROTEUS     Gone, my good lord.

DUKE     My daughter takes his going grievously?

PROTEUS     A little time, my lord, will kill that grief.

15

DUKE     So I believe; but Thurio thinks not so.

PROTEUS, the good conceit I hold of thee

(For thou hast shown some sign of good desert)

Makes me the better to confer with thee.

PROTEUS     Longer than I prove loyal to your grace

20

Let me not live to look upon your grace.

DUKE     Thou know’st how willingly I would effect

The match between Sir Thurio and my daughter?

PROTEUS     I do, my lord.

DUKE     And also, I think, thou art not ignorant

25

How she opposes her against my will?

PROTEUS     She did, my lord, when Valentine was here.

DUKE     Ay, and perversely she persevers so.

What might we do to make the girl forget

The love of Valentine, and love Sir Thurio?

30

PROTEUS     The best way is to slander Valentine,

With falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent:

Three things that women highly hold in hate.

DUKE     Ay, but she’ll think that it is spoke in hate.

PROTEUS     Ay, if his enemy deliver it.

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Therefore it must with circumstance be spoken

By one whom she esteemeth as his friend.

DUKE     Then you must undertake to slander him.

PROTEUS     And that, my lord, I shall be loath to do:

’Tis an ill office for a gentleman,

40

Especially against his very friend.

DUKE     Where your good word cannot advantage him,

Your slander never can endamage him;

Therefore the office is indifferent,

Being entreated to it by your friend.

45

PROTEUS     You have prevail’d, my lord: if I can do it

By aught that I can speak in his dispraise,

She shall not long continue love to him.

But say this wind her love from Valentine,

It follows not that she will love Sir Thurio.

50

THURIO     Therefore, as you unwind her love from him,

Lest it should ravel, and be good to none,

You must provide to bottom it on me;

Which must be done by praising me as much

As you in worth dispraise Sir Valentine.

55

DUKE     And, Proteus, we dare trust you in this kind,

Because we know (on Valentine’s report)

You are already Love’s firm votary,

And cannot soon revolt, and change your mind.

Upon this warrant shall you have access

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Where you with Silvia may confer at large.

For she is lumpish, heavy, melancholy,

And, for your friend’s sake, will be glad of you;

Where you may temper her, by your persuasion,

To hate young Valentine, and love my friend.

65

PROTEUS     As much as I can do, I will effect.

But you, Sir Thurio, are not sharp enough:

You must lay lime, to tangle her desires

By wailful sonnets, whose composed rhymes

Should be full-fraught with serviceable vows.

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DUKE     Ay, much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.

PROTEUS     Say that upon the altar of her beauty

You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart.

Write till your ink be dry; and with your tears

Moist it again; and frame some feeling line

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That may discover such integrity.

For Orpheus’ lute was strung with poets’ sinews,

Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,

Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans

Forsake unsounded deeps, to dance on sands.

80

After your dire-lamenting elegies,

Visit by night your lady’s chamber-window

With some sweet consort; to their instruments

Tune a deploring dump: the night’s dead silence

Will well become such sweet complaining grievance.

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This, or else nothing, will inherit her.

DUKE     This discipline shows thou hast been in love.

THURIO     And thy advice, this night, I’ll put in practice:

Therefore, sweet Proteus, my direction-giver,

Let us into the city presently

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To sort some gentlemen, well skill’d in music.

I have a sonnet that will serve the turn

To give the onset to thy good advice.

DUKE     About it, gentlemen.

PROTEUS     We’ll wait upon your grace till after supper,

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And afterward determine our proceedings.

DUKE     Even now about it. I will pardon you.     Exeunt.

4.1 Enter certain Outlaws.

1  OUTLAW  Fellows, stand fast: I see a passenger.

2    OUTLAW

If there be ten, shrink not, but down with ’em.

Enter VALENTINE and SPEED.

3  OUTLAW

Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye.

If not, we’ll make you sit, and rifle you.

SPEED     Sir, we are undone; these are the villains

5

That all the travellers do fear so much.

VALENTINE     My friends –

1  OUTLAW That’s not so, sir: we are your enemies.

2OUTLAW Peace; we’ll hear him.

3  OUTLAW

Ay, by my beard will we; for he is a proper man.

10

VALENTINE     Then know that I have little wealth to lose;

A man I am, cross’d with adversity:

My riches are these poor habiliments,

Of which if you should here disfurnish me,

You take the sum and substance that I have.

15

2  OUTLAW Whither travel you?

VALENTINE     To Verona.

1  OUTLAW Whence came you?

VALENTINE     From Milan.

3  OUTLAW Have you long sojourned there?

20

VALENTINE

Some sixteen months, and longer might have stay’d,

If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.

1  OUTLAW What, were you banished thence?

VALENTINE     I was.

2  OUTLAW For what offence?

25

VALENTINE

For that which now torments me to rehearse:

I kill’d a man, whose death I much repent,

But yet I slew him manfully, in fight,

Without false vantage, or base treachery.

1  OUTLAW Why, ne’er repent it, if it were done so;

30

But were you banish’d for so small a fault?

VALENTINE     I was, and held me glad of such a doom.

2  OUTLAW Have you the tongues?

VALENTINE

My youthful travel therein made me happy,

Or else I often had been miserable.

35

3  OUTLAW By the bare scalp of Robin Hood’s fat friar,

This fellow were a king for our wild faction.

1  OUTLAW We’ll have him. Sirs, a word.

SPEED     Master, be one of them: it’s an honourable kind

of thievery.

40

VALENTINE     Peace, villain.

2  OUTLAW Tell us this: have you anything to take to?

VALENTINE     Nothing but my fortune.

3  OUTLAW Know, then, that some of us are gentlemen,

Such as the fury of ungovern’d youth

45

Thrust from the company of awful men.

Myself was from Verona banished,

For practising to steal away a lady,

An heir, and near allied unto the Duke.

2  OUTLAW And I from Mantua, for a gentleman,

50

Who, in my mood, I stabb’d unto the heart.

1  OUTLAW And I, for such like petty crimes as these.

But to the purpose: for we cite our faults,

That they may hold excus’d our lawless lives;

And partly seeing you are beautified

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With goodly shape, and by your own report

A linguist, and a man of such perfection

As we do in our quality much want –

2  OUTLAW Indeed because you are a banish’d man,

Therefore, above the rest, we parley to you:

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Are you content to be our general?

To make a virtue of necessity,

And live as we do in this wilderness?

3  OUTLAW

What say’st thou? Wilt thou be of our consort?

Say ‘ay’, and be the captain of us all:

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We’ll do thee homage, and be rul’d by thee,

Love thee, as our commander, and our king.

1  OUTLAW But if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest.

2  OUTLAW

Thou shalt not live to brag what we have offer’d.

VALENTINE     I take your offer, and will live with you,

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Provided that you do no outrages

On silly women or poor passengers.

3  OUTLAW No, we detest such vile base practices.

Come, go with us, we’ll bring thee to our crews,

And show thee all the treasure we have got;

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Which, with ourselves, all rest at thy dispose. Exeunt.

4.2 Enter PROTEUS.

PROTEUS     Already have I been false to Valentine,

And now I must be as unjust to Thurio:

Under the colour of commending him,

I have access my own love to prefer.

But Silvia is too fair, too true, too holy,

5

To be corrupted with my worthless gifts.

When I protest true loyalty to her,

She twits me with my falsehood to my friend;

When to her beauty I commend my vows,

She bids me think how I have been forsworn

10

In breaking faith with Julia, whom I lov’d.

And notwithstanding all her sudden quips,

The least whereof would quell a lover’s hope,

Yet, spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love,

The more it grows, and fawneth on her still.

15

Enter THURIO and Musicians.

But here comes Thurio; now must we to her window,

And give some evening music to her ear.

THURIO

How now, Sir Proteus, are you crept before us?

PROTEUS     Ay, gentle Thurio, for you know that love

Will creep in service where it cannot go.

20

THURIO     Ay, but I hope, sir, that you love not here.

PROTEUS     Sir, but I do; or else I would be hence.

THURIO     Who? Silvia?

PROTEUS     Ay, Silvia, for your sake.

THURIO

I thank you for your own. Now, gentlemen,

Let’s tune; and to it lustily awhile.

25

Enter Host, and JULIA in boy’s clothes.

HOST     Now, my young guest, methinks you’re allycholy.

I pray you, why is it?

JULIA     Marry, mine host, because I cannot be merry.

HOST     Come, we’ll have you merry: I’ll bring you where

you shall hear music, and see the gentleman that you

30

asked for.

JULIA     But shall I hear him speak?

HOST     Ay, that you shall.

JULIA     That will be music. [Music plays.]

HOST     Hark, hark!

35

JULIA     Is he among these?

HOST     Ay; but peace, let’s hear ’em.

Song.

Who is Silvia? What is she

That all our swains commend her?

Holy, fair, and wise is she,

40

The heaven such grace did lend her,

That she might admired be.

Is she kind as she is fair?

For beauty lives with kindness.

Love doth to her eyes repair,

45

To help him of his blindness;

And, being help’d, inhabits there.

Then to Silvia let us sing,

That Silvia is excelling;

She excels each mortal thing

50

Upon the dull earth dwelling.

To her let us garlands bring.

HOST     How now? Are you sadder than you were before?

How do you, man? The music likes you not.

JULIA     You mistake: the musician likes me not.

55

HOST     Why, my pretty youth?

JULIA     He plays false, father.

HOST     How, out of tune on the strings?

JULIA     Not so; but yet so false that he grieves my very

heart-strings.

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HOST     You have a quick ear.

JULIA     Ay, I would I were deaf: it makes me have a slow

heart.

HOST     I perceive you delight not in music.

JULIA     Not a whit, when it jars so.

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HOST     Hark, what fine change is in the music!

JULIA     Ay; that change is the spite.

HOST     You would have them always play but one thing?

JULIA     I would always have one play but one thing.

But, host, doth this Sir Proteus, that we talk on,

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Often resort unto this gentlewoman?

HOST     I tell you what Launce his man told me, he loved

her out of all nick.

JULIA     Where is Launce?

HOST     Gone to seek his dog, which to-morrow, by his

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master’s command, he must carry for a present to his

lady. [Music ceases.]

JULIA     Peace, stand aside, the company parts.

PROTEUS     Sir Thurio, fear not you, I will so plead,

That you shall say my cunning drift excels.

80

THURIO     Where meet we?

PROTEUS     At Saint Gregory’s well.

THURIO     Farewell.

     Exeunt Thurio and Musicians.

Enter SILVIA, above.

PROTEUS     Madam; good even to your ladyship.

SILVIA     I thank you for your music, gentlemen.

Who is that that spake?

PROTEUS     One, lady, if you knew his pure heart’s truth,

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You would quickly learn to know him by his voice.

SILVIA     Sir Proteus, as I take it.

PROTEUS     Sir Proteus, gentle lady, and your servant.

SILVIA     What’s your will?

PROTEUS     That I may compass yours.

SILVIA     You have your wish: my will is even this,

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That presently you hie you home to bed.

Thou subtle, perjur’d, false, disloyal man,

Think’st thou I am so shallow, so conceitless,

To be seduced by thy flattery,

That hast deceiv’d so many with thy vows?

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Return, return, and make thy love amends.

For me, by this pale queen of night I swear,

I am so far from granting thy request,

That I despise thee for thy wrongful suit;

And by and by intend to chide myself,

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Even for this time I spend in talking to thee.

PROTEUS     I grant, sweet love, that I did love a lady,

But she is dead.

JULIA     [aside] ’Twere false, if I should speak it;

For I am sure she is not buried.

SILVIA     Say that she be; yet Valentine thy friend

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Survives; to whom (thyself art witness)

I am betroth’d; and art thou not asham’d

To wrong him with thy importunacy?

PROTEUS     I likewise hear that Valentine is dead.

SILVIA     And so suppose am I; for in his grave,

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Assure thyself, my love is buried.

PROTEUS     Sweet lady, let me rake it from the earth.

SILVIA     Go to thy lady’s grave and call hers thence,

Or, at the least, in hers sepulchre thine.

JULIA     [aside] He heard not that.

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PROTEUS     Madam: if your heart be so obdurate,

Vouchsafe me yet your picture for my love,

The picture that is hanging in your chamber:

To that I’ll speak, to that I’ll sigh and weep;

For since the substance of your perfect self

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Is else devoted, I am but a shadow;

And to your shadow will I make true love.

JULIA     [aside]

If ’twere a substance, you would sure deceive it,

And make it but a shadow, as I am.

SILVIA     I am very loath to be your idol, sir;

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But, since your falsehood shall become you well

To worship shadows, and adore false shapes,

Send to me in the morning, and I’ll send it.

And so, good rest.

PROTEUS     As wretches have o’ernight

That wait for execution in the morn.

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     Exeunt Proteus and Silvia.

JULIA     Host, will you go?

HOST     By my halidom, I was fast asleep.

JULIA     Pray you, where lies Sir Proteus?

HOST     Marry, at my house. Trust me, I think ’tis almost

day.

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JULIA     Not so; but it hath been the longest night

That e’er I watch’d, and the most heaviest.     Exeunt.

4.3 Enter EGLAMOUR.

EGLAMOUR     This is the hour that Madam Silvia

Entreated me to call, and know her mind:

There’s some great matter she’d employ me in.

Madam, madam!

Enter SILVIA, above.

SILVIA     Who calls?

EGLAMOUR     Your servant, and your friend;

One that attends your ladyship’s command.

5

SILVIA     Sir Eglamour, a thousand times good morrow.

EGLAMOUR     As many, worthy lady, to yourself.

According to your ladyship’s impose,

I am thus early come, to know what service

It is your pleasure to command me in.

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SILVIA     O Eglamour, thou art a gentleman

(Think not I flatter, for I swear I do not)

Valiant, wise, remorseful, well accomplish’d.

Thou art not ignorant what dear good will

I bear unto the banish’d Valentine;

15

Nor how my father would enforce me marry

Vain Thurio, whom my very soul abhorr’d.

Thyself hast lov’d, and I have heard thee say

No grief did ever come so near thy heart

As when thy lady and thy true love died,

20

Upon whose grave thou vow’dst pure chastity.

Sir Eglamour: I would to Valentine,

To Mantua, where I hear he makes abode;

And for the ways are dangerous to pass,

I do desire thy worthy company,

25

Upon whose faith and honour I repose.

Urge not my father’s anger, Eglamour,

But think upon my grief, a lady’s grief,

And on the justice of my flying hence,

To keep me from a most unholy match,

30

Which heaven and fortune still rewards with plagues.

I do desire thee, even from a heart

As full of sorrows as the sea of sands,

To bear me company, and go with me;

If not, to hide what I have said to thee,

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That I may venture to depart alone.

EGLAMOUR     Madam, I pity much your grievances,

Which, since I know they virtuously are plac’d,

I give consent to go along with you,

Recking as little what betideth me,

40

As much I wish all good befortune you.

When will you go?

SILVIA     This evening coming.

EGLAMOUR     Where shall I meet you?

SILVIA     At Friar Patrick’s cell,

Where I intend holy confession.

EGLAMOUR     I will not fail your ladyship. Good morrow,

45

gentle lady.

SILVIA     Good morrow, kind Sir Eglamour.     Exeunt.

4.4 Enter LAUNCE with his dog.

LAUNCE     When a man’s servant shall play the cur with

him, look you, it goes hard: one that I brought up of a

puppy; one that I saved from drowning, when three

or four of his blind brothers and sisters went to it. I

have taught him, even as one would say precisely

5

‘Thus I would teach a dog’. I was sent to deliver him

as a present to Mistress Silvia, from my master; and

I came no sooner into the dining-chamber, but he

steps me to her trencher, and steals her capon’s leg. O,

’tis a foul thing, when a cur cannot keep himself in all

10

companies: I would have (as one should say) one that

takes upon him to be a dog indeed, to be, as it were, a

dog at all things. If I had not had more wit than he, to

take a fault upon me that he did, I think verily he had

been hanged for’t; sure as I live he had suffered for’t.

15

You shall judge: he thrusts me himself into the

company of three or four gentleman-like dogs, under

the Duke’s table; he had not been there (bless the

mark) a pissing while, but all the chamber smelt him.

‘Out with the dog’, says one; ‘What cur is that?’ says

20

another; ‘Whip him out’, says the third; ‘Hang him

up’, says the Duke. I, having been acquainted with the

smell before, knew it was Crab; and goes me to the

fellow that whips the dogs: ‘Friend’, quoth I, ‘you

mean to whip the dog?’ ‘Ay, marry do I’, quoth he.

25

‘You do him the more wrong,’ quoth I; ‘’twas I did the

thing you wot of.’ He makes me no more ado, but

whips me out of the chamber. How many masters

would do this for his servant? Nay, I’ll be sworn I have

sat in the stocks, for puddings he hath stolen,

30

otherwise he had been executed; I have stood on the

pillory for geese he hath killed, otherwise he had

suffered for’t. Thou think’st not of this now. Nay, I

remember the trick you served me, when I took my

leave of Madam Silvia: did not I bid thee still mark me,

35

and do as I do? When didst thou see me heave up my

leg, and make water against a gentlewoman’s

farthingale? Didst thou ever see me do such a trick?

Enter PROTEUS and JULIA.

PROTEUS     Sebastian is thy name? I like thee well,

And will employ thee in some service presently.

40

JULIA     In what you please; I’ll do what I can.

PROTEUS     I hope thou wilt.

[to Launce] How now, you whoreson peasant,

Where have you been these two days loitering?

LAUNCE     Marry, sir, I carried Mistress Silvia the dog

you bade me.

45

PROTEUS     And what says she to my little jewel?

LAUNCE     Marry, she says your dog was a cur, and tells

you currish thanks is good enough for such a present.

PROTEUS     But she received my dog?

LAUNCE     No, indeed did she not: here have I brought

50

him back again.

PROTEUS     What, didst thou offer her this from me?

LAUNCE     Ay, sir, the other squirrel was stolen from me

by the hangman boys in the market-place, and then I

offered her mine own, who is a dog as big as ten of

55

yours, and therefore the gift the greater.

PROTEUS     Go, get thee hence, and find my dog again,

Or ne’er return again into my sight.

Away, I say: stayest thou to vex me here?

A slave, that still an end turns me to shame!

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Exit Launce.

SEBASTIAN, I have entertained thee,

Partly that I have need of such a youth,

That can with some discretion do my business:

For ’tis no trusting to yond foolish lout;

But chiefly for thy face, and thy behaviour,

65

Which (if my augury deceive me not)

Witness good bringing up, fortune, and truth.

Therefore, know thou, for this I entertain thee.

Go presently, and take this ring with thee,

Deliver it to Madam Silvia;

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She lov’d me well deliver’d it to me.

[He gives her a ring.]

JULIA     It seems you lov’d not her, to leave her token:

She is dead belike?

PROTEUS     Not so: I think she lives.

JULIA     Alas!

PROTEUS     Why dost thou cry ‘Alas’?

75

JULIA     I cannot choose but pity her.

PROTEUS     Wherefore shouldst thou pity her?

JULIA     Because methinks that she lov’d you as well

As you do love your lady Silvia:

She dreams on him that has forgot her love,

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You dote on her that cares not for your love.

’Tis pity love should be so contrary;

And thinking on it makes me cry ‘Alas’.

PROTEUS     Well; give her that ring, and therewithal

This letter. [He gives her a letter.] That’s her chamber. Tell my lady,

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I claim the promise for her heavenly picture.

Your message done, hie home unto my chamber,

Where thou shalt find me sad, and solitary.     Exit.

JULIA     How many women would do such a message?

Alas, poor Proteus, thou hast entertain’d

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A fox, to be the shepherd of thy lambs.

Alas, poor fool, why do I pity him

That with his very heart despiseth me?

Because he loves her, he despiseth me,

Because I love him, I must pity him.

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This ring I gave him, when he parted from me,

To bind him to remember my good will;

And now am I (unhappy messenger)

To plead for that which I would not obtain;

To carry that which I would have refus’d;

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To praise his faith which I would have disprais’d.

I am my master’s true confirmed love,

But cannot be true servant to my master,

Unless I prove false traitor to myself.

Yet will I woo for him, but yet so coldly,

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As (heaven it knows) I would not have him speed.

Enter SILVIA.

Gentlewoman, good day. I pray you be my mean

To bring me where to speak with Madam Silvia.

SILVIA     What would you with her, if that I be she?

JULIA     If you be she, I do entreat your patience

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To hear me speak the message I am sent on.

SILVIA     From whom?

JULIA     From my master, Sir Proteus, madam.

SILVIA     O, he sends you for a picture?

JULIA     Ay, madam.

SILVIA     [calling] Ursula, bring my picture there.

[The picture is brought.]

Go, give your master this. Tell him from me,

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One Julia, that his changing thoughts forget,

Would better fit his chamber than this shadow.

JULIA     Madam, please you peruse this letter.

[She gives her a letter.]

Pardon me, madam, I have unadvis’d

Deliver’d you a paper that I should not;

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This is the letter to your ladyship.

[She gives another letter and takes back the first.]

SILVIA     I pray thee let me look on that again.

JULIA     It may not be: good madam, pardon me.

SILVIA     There, hold.

I will not look upon your master’s lines:

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I know they are stuff’d with protestations,

And full of new-found oaths, which he will break

As easily as I do tear his paper.

[She tears the second letter.]

JULIA     Madam, he sends your ladyship this ring.

[She offers the ring.]

SILVIA     The more shame for him, that he sends it me;

130

For I have heard him say a thousand times

His Julia gave it him at his departure:

Though his false finger have profan’d the ring,

Mine shall not do his Julia so much wrong.

JULIA     She thanks you.

135

SILVIA     What say’st thou?

JULIA     I thank you, madam, that you tender her:

Poor gentlewoman, my master wrongs her much.

SILVIA     Dost thou know her?

JULIA     Almost as well as I do know myself.

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To think upon her woes, I do protest

That I have wept a hundred several times.

SILVIA     Belike she thinks that Proteus hath forsook her?

JULIA     I think she doth; and that’s her cause of sorrow.

SILVIA     Is she not passing fair?

145

JULIA     She hath been fairer, madam, than she is:

When she did think my master lov’d her well,

She, in my judgment, was as fair as you.

But since she did neglect her looking-glass,

And threw her sun-expelling mask away,

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The air hath starv’d the roses in her cheeks,

And pinch’d the lily-tincture of her face,

That now she is become as black as I.

SILVIA     How tall was she?

JULIA     About my stature: for at Pentecost,

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When all our pageants of delight were play’d,

Our youth got me to play the woman’s part,

And I was trimm’d in Madam Julia’s gown,

Which served me as fit, by all men’s judgments,

As if the garment had been made for me;

160

Therefore I know she is about my height.

And at that time I made her weep agood,

For I did play a lamentable part.

Madam, ’twas Ariadne, passioning

For Theseus’ perjury, and unjust flight;

165

Which I so lively acted with my tears,

That my poor mistress, moved therewithal,

Wept bitterly; and would I might be dead,

If I in thought felt not her very sorrow.

SILVIA     She is beholding to thee, gentle youth.

170

Alas, poor lady, desolate, and left;

I weep myself to think upon thy words.

Here, youth: there is my purse; I give thee this

For thy sweet mistress’ sake, because thou lov’st her.

[She gives her a purse.]

Farewell.     Exit.

175

JULIA

And she shall thank you for’t, if e’er you know her.

A virtuous gentlewoman, mild, and beautiful.

I hope my master’s suit will be but cold,

Since she respects my mistress’ love so much.

Alas, how love can trifle with itself!

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Here is her picture: let me see; I think

If I had such a tire, this face of mine

Were full as lovely as is this of hers;

And yet the painter flatter’d her a little,

Unless I flatter with myself too much.

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Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow:

If that be all the difference in his love,

I’ll get me such a colour’d periwig.

Her eyes are grey as glass, and so are mine;

Ay, but her forehead’s low, and mine’s as high.

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What should it be that he respects in her,

But I can make respective in myself,

If this fond Love were not a blinded god?

Come, shadow, come, and take this shadow up,

For ’tis thy rival. O thou senseless form,

195

Thou shalt be worshipp’d, kiss’d, lov’d, and ador’d;

And were there sense in his idolatry,

My substance should be statue in thy stead.

I’ll use thee kindly, for thy mistress’ sake

That us’d me so; or else, by Jove I vow,

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I should have scratch’d out your unseeing eyes,

To make my master out of love with thee.     Exit.

5.1 Enter EGLAMOUR.

EGLAMOUR     The sun begins to gild the western sky,

And now it is about the very hour

That Silvia at Friar Patrick’s cell should meet me.

She will not fail; for lovers break not hours,

Unless it be to come before their time,

5

So much they spur their expedition.

Enter SILVIA.

See where she comes. Lady, a happy evening.

SILVIA     Amen, amen; go on, good Eglamour,

Out at the postern by the abbey wall;

I fear I am attended by some spies.

10

EGLAMOUR     Fear not: the forest is not three leagues off;

If we recover that, we are sure enough.     Exeunt.

5.2 Enter THURIO, PROTEUS and JULIA.

THURIO     Sir Proteus, what says Silvia to my suit?

PROTEUS     O sir, I find her milder than she was,

And yet she takes exceptions at your person.

THURIO     What? That my leg is too long?

PROTEUS     No, that it is too little.

5

THURIO     I’ll wear a boot, to make it somewhat rounder.

JULIA     [aside]

But love will not be spurr’d to what it loathes.

THURIO     What says she to my face?

PROTEUS     She says it is a fair one.

THURIO     Nay, then the wanton lies: my face is black.

10

PROTEUS     But pearls are fair; and the old saying is,

Black men are pearls, in beauteous ladies’ eyes.

JULIA     [aside]

’Tis true, such pearls as put out ladies’ eyes,

For I had rather wink than look on them.

THURIO     How likes she my discourse?

15

PROTEUS     Ill, when you talk of war.

THURIO     But well, when I discourse of love and peace?

JULIA     [aside]

But better, indeed, when you hold your peace.

THURIO     What says she to my valour?

PROTEUS     O sir, she makes no doubt of that.

20

JULIA     [aside]

She needs not, when she knows it cowardice.

THURIO     What says she to my birth?

PROTEUS     That you are well derived.

JULIA     [aside] True: from a gentleman, to a fool.

THURIO     Considers she my possessions?

25

PROTEUS     O, ay; and pities them.

THURIO     Wherefore?

JULIA     [aside] That such an ass should owe them.

PROTEUS     That they are out by lease.

JULIA     Here comes the Duke.

30

Enter DUKE.

DUKE     How now, Sir Proteus! How now, Thurio!

Which of you saw Sir Eglamour of late?

THURIO     Not I.

PROTEUS     Nor I.

DUKE     Saw you my daughter?

PROTEUS     Neither.

DUKE

Why, then, she’s fled unto that peasant, Valentine;

And Eglamour is in her company.

35

’Tis true: for Friar Laurence met them both

As he in penance wander’d through the forest.

Him he knew well; and guess’d that it was she,

But, being mask’d, he was not sure of it.

Besides, she did intend confession

40

At Patrick’s cell this even, and there she was not.

These likelihoods confirm her flight from hence;

Therefore, I pray you, stand not to discourse,

But mount you presently, and meet with me

Upon the rising of the mountain foot

45

That leads toward Mantua, whither they are fled.

Dispatch, sweet gentlemen, and follow me.     Exit.

THURIO     Why, this it is to be a peevish girl,

That flies her fortune when it follows her.

I’ll after; more to be reveng’d on Eglamour

50

Than for the love of reckless Silvia.     Exit.

PROTEUS     And I will follow, more for Silvia’s love

Than hate of Eglamour that goes with her.     Exit.

JULIA     And I will follow, more to cross that love

Than hate for Silvia, that is gone for love.     Exit.

55

5.3 Enter SILVIA and Outlaws.

1OUTLAW

Come, come, be patient; we must bring you to our

CAPTAIN.

SILVIA     A thousand more mischances than this one

Have learn’d me how to brook this patiently.

2OUTLAW Come, bring her away.

1OUTLAW Where is the gentleman that was with her?

5

3OUTLAW Being nimble-footed, he hath outrun us,

But Moyses and Valerius follow him.

Go thou with her to the west end of the wood,

There is our captain. We’ll follow him that’s fled;

The thicket is beset, he cannot ’scape.

10

     Exeunt Second and Third Outlaws.

1OUTLAW

Come, I must bring you to our captain’s cave.

Fear not: he bears an honourable mind,

And will not use a woman lawlessly.

SILVIA     O Valentine! This I endure for thee.     Exeunt.

5.4 Enter VALENTINE.

VALENTINE     How use doth breed a habit in a man!

This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,

I better brook than flourishing peopled towns:

Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,

And to the nightingale’s complaining notes

5

Tune my distresses, and record my woes.

O thou that dost inhabit in my breast,

Leave not the mansion so long tenantless,

Lest growing ruinous, the building fall,

And leave no memory of what it was.

10

Repair me, with thy presence, Silvia:

Thou gentle nymph, cherish thy forlorn swain.

[Shouts within.]

What halloing, and what stir is this to-day?

These are my mates, that make their wills their law,

Have some unhappy passenger in chase.

15

They love me well; yet I have much to do

To keep them from uncivil outrages.

Withdraw thee, Valentine; who’s this comes here?

[Withdraws.]

Enter PROTEUS, SILVIA and JULIA.

PROTEUS     Madam, this service I have done for you

(Though you respect not aught your servant doth)

20

To hazard life, and rescue you from him

That would have forc’d your honour and your love.

Vouchsafe me for my meed but one fair look:

A smaller boon than this I cannot beg,

And less than this I am sure you cannot give.

25

VALENTINE     [aside]

How like a dream is this! I see, and hear:

Love, lend me patience to forbear awhile.

SILVIA     O miserable, unhappy that I am!

PROTEUS     Unhappy were you, madam, ere I came;

But by my coming I have made you happy.

30

SILVIA     By thy approach thou mak’st me most unhappy.

JULIA     [aside]

And me, when he approacheth to your presence.

SILVIA     Had I been seized by a hungry lion,

I would have been a breakfast to the beast,

Rather than have false Proteus rescue me.

35

O heaven be judge how I love Valentine,

Whose life’s as tender to me as my soul,

And full as much (for more there cannot be)

I do detest false perjur’d Proteus:

Therefore be gone, solicit me no more.

40

PROTEUS     What dangerous action, stood it next to death,

Would I not undergo, for one calm look?

O ’tis the curse in love, and still approv’d,

When women cannot love where they’re belov’d.

SILVIA     When Proteus cannot love where he’s belov’d:

45

Read over Julia’s heart, thy first best love,

For whose dear sake thou didst then rend thy faith

Into a thousand oaths; and all those oaths

Descended into perjury, to love me.

Thou hast no faith left now, unless thou’dst two,

50

And that’s far worse than none: better have none

Than plural faith, which is too much by one.

Thou counterfeit to thy true friend!

PROTEUS     In love,

Who respects friend?

SILVIA     All men but Proteus.

PROTEUS     Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words

55

Can no way change you to a milder form,

I’ll woo you like a soldier, at arm’s end,

And love you ’gainst the nature of love: force ye.

SILVIA     O heaven!

PROTEUS     I’ll force thee yield to my desire.

VALENTINE     [coming forward]

Ruffian! Let go that rude uncivil touch,

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Thou friend of an ill fashion.

PROTEUS     Valentine!

VALENTINE

Thou common friend, that’s without faith or love,

For such is a friend now. Treacherous man,

Thou hast beguil’d my hopes; nought but mine eye

Could have persuaded me: now I dare not say

65

I have one friend alive; thou wouldst disprove me.

Who should be trusted now, when one’s right hand

Is perjured to the bosom? Proteus,

I am sorry I must never trust thee more,

But count the world a stranger for thy sake.

70

The private wound is deepest: O time most accurst,

’Mongst all foes that a friend should be the worst!

PROTEUS     My shame and guilt confounds me.

Forgive me, Valentine: if hearty sorrow

Be a sufficient ransom for offence,

75

I tender’t here; I do as truly suffer,

As e’er I did commit.

VALENTINE     Then I am paid;

And once again I do receive thee honest.

Who by repentance is not satisfied,

Is nor of heaven, nor earth; for these are pleas’d:

80

By penitence th’Eternal’s wrath’s appeas’d.

And that my love may appear plain and free,

All that was mine in Silvia I give thee.

JULIA     O me unhappy! [She swoons.]

PROTEUS     Look to the boy.

VALENTINE     Why, boy!

Why, wag; how now? What’s the matter? Look up;

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speak.

JULIA     O good sir, my master charged me to deliver a

ring to Madam Silvia; which (out of my neglect) was

never done.

PROTEUS     Where is that ring, boy?

JULIA     Here ’tis: this is it.

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[She gives him a ring.]

PROTEUS     How! Let me see.

Why, this is the ring I gave to Julia.

JULIA     O, cry you mercy, sir, I have mistook:

This is the ring you sent to Silvia.

[She shows another ring.]

PROTEUS

But how cam’st thou by this ring? At my depart

95

I gave this unto Julia.

JULIA     And Julia herself did give it me,

And Julia herself hath brought it hither.

[She reveals herself.]

PROTEUS     How! Julia!

JULIA     Behold her that gave aim to all thy oaths,

100

And entertain’d ’em deeply in her heart.

How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root!

O Proteus, let this habit make thee blush.

Be thou asham’d that I have took upon me

Such an immodest raiment; if shame live

105

In a disguise of love!

It is the lesser blot modesty finds,

Women to change their shapes, than men their minds.

PROTEUS

Than men their minds? ’Tis true: O heaven, were man

But constant, he were perfect. That one error

110

Fills him with faults; makes him run through all th’ sins;

Inconstancy falls off, ere it begins.

What is in Silvia’s face but I may spy

More fresh in Julia’s, with a constant eye?

VALENTINE     Come, come; a hand from either;

115

Let me be blest to make this happy close:

’Twere pity two such friends should be long foes.

PROTEUS     Bear witness, heaven, I have my wish for ever.

JULIA     And I mine.

Enter Outlaws, DUKE and THURIO.

OUTLAW     A prize, a prize, a prize!

VALENTINE

Forbear, forbear, I say: it is my lord the Duke.

120

Your grace is welcome to a man disgrac’d,

Banish’d Valentine.

DUKE     Sir Valentine!

THURIO     Yonder is Silvia; and Silvia’s mine.

VALENTINE

THURIO, give back; or else embrace thy death;

Come not within the measure of my wrath;

125

Do not name Silvia thine. If once again,

Verona shall not hold thee. Here she stands,

Take but possession of her with a touch:

I dare thee but to breathe upon my love.

THURIO     Sir Valentine, I care not for her, I:

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I hold him but a fool that will endanger

His body for a girl that loves him not.

I claim her not, and therefore she is thine.

DUKE     The more degenerate and base art thou

To make such means for her, as thou hast done,

135

And leave her on such slight conditions.

Now, by the honour of my ancestry,

I do applaud thy spirit, Valentine,

And think thee worthy of an empress’ love:

Know then, I here forget all former griefs,

140

Cancel all grudge, repeal thee home again,

Plead a new state in thy unrivall’d merit,

To which I thus subscribe: Sir Valentine,

Thou art a gentleman, and well deriv’d,

Take thou thy Silvia, for thou hast deserv’d her.

145

VALENTINE

I thank your grace; the gift hath made me happy.

I now beseech you, for your daughter’s sake,

To grant one boon that I shall ask of you.

DUKE     I grant it, for thine own, whate’er it be.

VALENTINE     These banish’d men, that I have kept withal,

150

Are men endu’d with worthy qualities:

Forgive them what they have committed here,

And let them be recall’d from their exile:

They are reformed, civil, full of good,

And fit for great employment, worthy lord.

155

DUKE     Thou hast prevail’d, I pardon them and thee:

Dispose of them as thou know’st their deserts.

Come, let us go, we will include all jars,

With triumphs, mirth, and rare solemnity.

VALENTINE     And as we walk along, I dare be bold

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With our discourse to make your grace to smile.

What think you of this page, my lord?

DUKE     I think the boy hath grace in him, he blushes.

VALENTINE

I warrant you, my lord, more grace than boy.

DUKE     What mean you by that saying?

165

VALENTINE     Please you, I’ll tell you, as we pass along,

That you will wonder what hath fortuned.

Come, Proteus, ’tis your penance but to hear

The story of your loves discovered.

That done, our day of marriage shall be yours,

170

One feast, one house, one mutual happiness.     Exeunt.

The Two Noble Kinsmen

The Two Noble Kinsmen was printed in 1634 as the joint work of ‘those memorable worthies of their time’ John Fletcher and William Shakespeare, performed by the King’s Men at the Blackfriars Theatre. These claims fit the likely date of composition, 1613–14, making it the latest surviving play in which Shakespeare had a hand. A dance from The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn, by Fletcher’s regular collaborator Francis Beaumont, which was presented at Court on 20 February 1613 during the wedding celebrations of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick, Prince Palatine, supplied the characters (and presumably the costumes) for the morris dance in 3.5. Fletcher’s major share in the authorship meant that until the nineteenth century the play remained within the printed canon of ‘Beaumont and Fletcher’ rather than Shakespeare. Interest in The Two Noble Kinsmen revived after collaborative authorship of King Henry VIII began to be seriously proposed in the mid-nineteenth century, and since the 1970s it has regularly appeared in collected editions of Shakespeare. The mode of collaboration is uncertain but the scenes in which Shakespeare’s hand is most evident are mainly in the first and last acts (1.1–5; 2.1, 3[?]; 3.1–2; 4.3[?]; 5.1, 3–4), leaving to Fletcher the bulk of the central action and almost all of the subplot of the Jailer’s daughter.

Though the story of the siege of Thebes is pervasive in classical Greek and Latin literature, the playwrights relied on a medieval accretion to it. Chaucer’s version of the perplexities of the Theban cousins Palamon and Arcite in their rivalry for the love of Emilia, sister of the Amazon queen Hippolyta, bride of Theseus, is assigned to the Knight in The Canterbury Tales (c. 1385). Chaucer got the story from the Teseida of Giovanni Boccaccio (?late 1340s), behind which lies the Thebaid of Statius. Shakespeare had earlier used The Knight’s Tale for his treatment of Theseus and Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Like Chaucer’s tale, the play sets up a series of moral and emotional dilemmas for its characters. Should Theseus proceed with his wedding, or postpone it until he has avenged the widowed queens? Should Palamon and Arcite fight for their native Thebes, or flee from the corruptions of its king, their uncle Creon? Should their friendship prevail over their rivalry in love for Emilia? Should the Jailer’s daughter free Palamon at the risk of her father’s life? Should Emilia choose between marriage and virginity – or between her equally unknown and unwelcome suitors? The struggles of the characters to resolve these dilemmas culminate in a scene, adapted from Chaucer, in which Arcite, Palamon and Emilia in turn invoke their tutelary gods, Mars, Venus and Diana. Thereafter, we increasingly see them as pawns in a divine chess-game. The outcome, in which accidental death robs Arcite of his victory in combat and leaves Emilia to the disconsolate Palamon, is well characterized by Emilia’s cry, ‘Is this winning?’ Meanwhile the destructive passion of the Jailer’s daughter for Palamon moves through suicidal despair and madness to the apparent possibility of transference to her faithful Wooer by a therapy involving sexual relations with him under the pretence that he is Palamon. It is unclear how fully audiences are invited to endorse the statement of Theseus that ‘in the passage / The gods have been most equal’, or his determinist conclusion,

Let us be thankful

For that which is, and with you leave dispute

That are above our question.

The tone of the play varies sharply between elegaic solemnity and a brittle, even cynical, detachment. Since the 1970s, stage productions have proliferated after centuries of relative neglect. The play offers a powerful portrayal of the predicaments of women in a male-dominated world, and its unhappy open-endedness is congruous with the chastened mood of the turn of the century.

The 1997 Arden text is based on the 1634 Quarto.

LIST OF ROLES

Speaker of the PROLOGUE

BOY

singer in the wedding procession

figures in the wedding procession

ATHENIANS

THESEUS

Duke of Athens

PIRITHOUS

friend of Theseus

HIPPOLYTA

bride of Theseus, an Amazon

EMILIA

sister of Hippolyta

OFFICER     (Artesius)

officer of Theseus

HERALD

WAITING WOMAN

to Emilia

JAILER

DAUGHTER

to Jailer

WOOER

to Jailer’s Daughter

BROTHER

to Jailer

Two FRIENDS

of Jailer

DOCTOR

MAID

companion to Jailer’s Daughter

SCHOOLMASTER     (Gerald)

Five COUNTRYMEN

(among them Arcas, Rycas, Sennois)

TABORER     (Timothy)

Actor playing BAVIAN

Five COUNTRYWOMEN

Barbary, Friz, Luce, Maudlin, Nell

GENTLEMEN

EXECUTIONER

Two MESSENGERS

THEBANS

Three QUEENS

widows of besiegers of Thebes

cousins, nephews to Creon, King of Thebes

VALERIUS

Three KNIGHTS

supporters of Arcite

Three KNIGHTS

supporters of Palamon

Speaker of the EPILOGUE

Servants, Guards, Attendants, etc.

The Two Noble Kinsmen

PROLOGUE

Flourish. Enter Speaker of the Prologue.

New plays and maidenheads are near akin:

Much followed both, for both much money gi’en,

If they stand sound and well. And a good play,

Whose modest scenes blush on his marriage day

And shake to lose his honour, is like her

5

That after holy tie and first night’s stir

Yet still is Modesty and still retains

More of the maid, to sight, than husband’s pains.

We pray our play may be so, for I am sure

It has a noble breeder and a pure,

10

A learned, and a poet never went

More famous yet ’twixt Po and silver Trent.

Chaucer, of all admired, the story gives;

There, constant to eternity, it lives.

If we let fall the nobleness of this

15

And the first sound this child hear be a hiss,

How will it shake the bones of that good man

And make him cry from under ground, ‘Oh, fan

From me the witless chaff of such a writer

That blasts my bays and my famed works makes lighter

20

Than Robin Hood!’ This is the fear we bring;

For, to say truth, it were an endless thing

And too ambitious to aspire to him,

Weak as we are, and, almost breathless, swim

In this deep water. Do but you hold out

25

Your helping hands and we shall tack about

And something do to save us. You shall hear

Scenes, though below his art, may yet appear

Worth two hours’ travel. To his bones sweet sleep;

Content to you. If this play do not keep

30

A little dull time from us, we perceive

Our losses fall so thick, we must needs leave.

Flourish. Exit.

1.1 Music. Enter Hymen with a torch burning; a Boy, in a white robe, before, singing and strewing flowers; after Hymen, a Nymph encompassed in her tresses, bearing a wheaten garland. Then THESEUS between two other nymphs with wheaten chaplets on their heads. Then HIPPOLYTA the bride, led by PIRITHOUS and another holding a garland over her head (her tresses likewise hanging). After her, EMILIA, holding up her train; Artesius; attendants; musicians.

BOY     [Sings.]

Roses, their sharp spines being gone,

Not royal in their smells alone

But in their hue;

Maiden pinks of odour faint,

Daisies smell-less yet most quaint,

5

And sweet thyme true;

Primrose, first-born child of Ver,

Merry springtime’s harbinger,

With harebells dim,

Oxlips in their cradles growing,

10

Marigolds on deathbeds blowing,

Lark’s-heels trim: [Strews flowers.]

All dear Nature’s children sweet

Lie ’fore bride and bridegroom’s feet,

Blessing their sense.

15

Not an angel of the air,

Bird melodious, or bird fair,

Is absent hence.

The crow, the sland’rous cuckoo, nor

The boding raven, nor chough hoar,

20

Nor chatt’ring ’pie,

May on our bride-house perch or sing,

Or with them any discord bring,

But from it fly.

Enter three Queens in black, with veils stained, with imperial crowns. The First Queen falls down at the foot of Theseus; the Second falls down at the foot of Hippolyta; the Third before Emilia.

1QUEEN [to Theseus]

For pity’s sake and true gentility’s,

25

Hear and respect me.

2QUEEN [to Hippolyta] For your mother’s sake

And as you wish your womb may thrive with fair ones,

Hear and respect me.

3QUEEN [to Emilia]

Now, for the love of him whom Jove hath marked

The honour of your bed and for the sake

30

Of clear virginity, be advocate

For us and our distresses. This good deed

Shall raze you out o’th’ book of trespasses

All you are set down there.

THESEUS     Sad lady, rise.

HIPPOLYTA     Stand up.

EMILIA     No knees to me!

35

What woman I may stead that is distressed

Does bind me to her.

THESEUS

What’s your request?

[to First Queen] Deliver you for all.

1QUEEN

We are three queens whose sovereigns fell before

The wrath of cruel Creon, who endure

40

The beaks of ravens, talons of the kites

And pecks of crows, in the foul fields of Thebes.

He will not suffer us to burn their bones,

To urn their ashes, nor to take th’offence

Of mortal loathsomeness from the blest eye

45

Of holy Phoebus, but infects the winds

With stench of our slain lords. O pity, Duke;

Thou purger of the earth, draw thy feared sword

That does good turns to th’ world; give us the bones

Of our dead kings that we may chapel them;

50

And of thy boundless goodness take some note

That for our crowned heads we have no roof,

Save this which is the lion’s and the bear’s

And vault to every thing.

THESEUS     Pray you, kneel not:

I was transported with your speech and suffered

55

Your knees to wrong themselves. I have heard the fortunes

Of your dead lords, which gives me such lamenting

As wakes my vengeance and revenge for ’em.

[to First Queen] King Capaneus was your lord. The day

That he should marry you, at such a season

60

As now it is with me, I met your groom.

By Mars’s altar, you were that time fair!

Not Juno’s mantle fairer than your tresses

Nor in more bounty spread her. Your wheaten wreath

Was then nor threshed nor blasted; Fortune at you

65

Dimpled her cheek with smiles. Hercules our kinsman,

Then weaker than your eyes, laid by his club;

He tumbled down upon his Nemean hide

And swore his sinews thawed. O, grief and time,

Fearful consumers, you will all devour!

70

1QUEEN O, I hope some god,

Some god hath put his mercy in your manhood,

Whereto he’ll infuse power, and press you forth

Our undertaker.

THESEUS     O, no knees, none, widow.

Unto the helmeted Bellona use them,

75

And pray for me, your soldier.

Troubled I am. [Turns away.]

2QUEEN Honoured Hippolyta,

Most dreaded Amazonian, that hast slain

The scythe-tusked boar; that with thy arm, as strong

As it is white, wast near to make the male

80

To thy sex captive, but that this thy lord,

Born to uphold creation in that honour

First nature styled it in, shrunk thee into

The bound thou wast o’erflowing, at once subduing

Thy force and thy affection; soldieress,

85

That equally canst poise sternness with pity,

Whom now I know hast much more power on him

Than ever he had on thee, who ow’st his strength

And his love too, who is a servant for

The tenor of thy speech; dear glass of ladies:

90

Bid him that we, whom flaming war doth scorch,

Under the shadow of his sword may cool us.

Require him he advance it o’er our heads.

Speak’t in a woman’s key; like such a woman

As any of us three; weep ere you fail.

95

Lend us a knee;

But touch the ground for us no longer time

Than a dove’s motion, when the head’s plucked off.

Tell him, if he i’th’ blood-sized field lay swollen,

Showing the sun his teeth, grinning at the moon,

100

What you would do.

HIPPOLYTA     Poor lady, say no more.

I had as lief trace this good action with you

As that whereto I am going, and never yet

Went I so willing way. My lord is taken

Heart-deep with your distress. Let him consider:

105

I’ll speak anon. [Second Queen rises.]

3QUEEN     O, my petition was

Set down in ice, which by hot grief uncandied

Melts into drops; so sorrow, wanting form,

Is pressed with deeper matter.

EMILIA     Pray, stand up;

Your grief is written in your cheek.

3QUEEN     O, woe,

110

You cannot read it there. [Rises.]

     There, through my tears,

Like wrinkled pebbles in a glassy stream,

You may behold ’em. Lady, lady, alack,

He that will all the treasure know o’th’ earth

Must know the centre too; he that will fish

115

For my least minnow, let him lead his line

To catch one at my heart. O, pardon me;

Extremity, that sharpens sundry wits, Makes me a fool.

EMILIA     Pray you, say nothing, pray you:

Who cannot feel nor see the rain, being in’t,

120

Knows neither wet nor dry. If that you were

The ground-piece of some painter, I would buy you

T’instruct me ’gainst a capital grief, indeed

Such heart-pierced demonstration; but, alas,

Being a natural sister of our sex,

125

Your sorrow beats so ardently upon me

That it shall make a counter-reflect ’gainst

My brother’s heart and warm it to some pity,

Though it were made of stone. Pray, have good comfort.

THESEUS     Forward to th’ temple! Leave not out a jot

130

O’th’ sacred ceremony.

1QUEEN     O, this celebration

Will longer last and be more costly than

Your suppliants’ war! Remember that your fame

Knolls in the ear o’th’ world: what you do quickly

Is not done rashly; your first thought is more

135

Than others’ laboured meditance; your premeditating

More than their actions; but, O Jove, your actions,

Soon as they move, as ospreys do the fish,

Subdue before they touch. Think, dear Duke, think

What beds our slain kings have!

2QUEEN     What griefs our beds,

140

That our dear lords have none!

3QUEEN     None fit for th’ dead.

Those that with cords, knives, drams’ precipitance,

Weary of this world’s light, have to themselves

Been death’s most horrid agents, human grace

Affords them dust and shadow –

1QUEEN     But our lords

145

Lie blistering ’fore the visitating sun,

And were good kings when living.

THESEUS     It is true.

And I will give you comfort,

To give your dead lords graves – the which to do,

Must make some work with Creon.

1QUEEN     And that work

150

Presents itself to th’ doing.

Now ’twill take form; the heats are gone tomorrow.

Then, bootless toil must recompense itself

With its own sweat; now, he’s secure,

Nor dreams we stand before your puissance

155

Rinsing our holy begging in our eyes

To make petition clear.

2QUEEN     Now you may take him,

Drunk with his victory –

3QUEEN     And his army full

Of bread and sloth.

THESEUS     [to officer] Artesius, that best knowest

How to draw out fit to this enterprise

160

The prim’st for this proceeding and the number

To carry such a business – forth and levy

Our worthiest instruments, whilst we dispatch

This grand act of our life, this daring deed

Of fate in wedlock.

1QUEEN [to Second and Third Queens]

     Dowagers, take hands.

165

Let us be widows to our woes; delay

Commends us to a famishing hope.

QUEENS     Farewell!

2QUEEN

We come unseasonably; but when could grief

Cull forth, as unpanged judgement can, fitt’st time

For best solicitation?

THESEUS     Why, good ladies,

170

This is a service, whereto I am going,

Greater than any war; it more imports me

Than all the actions that I have foregone,

Or futurely can cope.

1QUEEN     The more proclaiming

Our suit shall be neglected when her arms,

175

Able to lock Jove from a synod, shall

By warranting moonlight corslet thee. O, when

Her twinning cherries shall their sweetness fall

Upon thy taste-full lips, what wilt thou think

Of rotten kings or blubbered queens? What care

180

For what thou feel’st not, what thou feel’st being able

To make Mars spurn his drum? O, if thou couch

But one night with her, every hour in’t will

Take hostage of thee for a hundred and

Thou shalt remember nothing more than what

185

That banquet bids thee to.

HIPPOLYTA     Though much unlike

You should be so transported, as much sorry

I should be such a suitor, yet I think,

Did I not, by th’abstaining of my joy

Which breeds a deeper longing, cure their surfeit

190

That craves a present med’cine, I should pluck

All ladies’ scandal on me. Therefore, sir, [Kneels.]

As I shall here make trial of my prayers,

Either presuming them to have some force,

Or sentencing for aye their vigour dumb,

195

Prorogue this business we are going about and hang

Your shield afore your heart, about that neck

Which is my fee and which I freely lend

To do these poor queens service.

QUEENS [to Emilia]     Oh, help now.

Our cause cries for your knee.

EMILIA [Kneels, to Theseus]     If you grant not

200

My sister her petition in that force,

With that celerity and nature, which

She makes it in, from henceforth I’ll not dare

To ask you anything nor be so hardy

Ever to take a husband.

THESEUS     Pray, stand up.

205

I am entreating of my self to do

That which you kneel to have me. [They rise.] Pirithous,

Lead on the bride; get you and pray the gods

For success and return; omit not anything

In the pretended celebration. – Queens,

210

Follow your soldier.

[to officer]     As before – hence, you,

And at the banks of Aulis meet us with

The forces you can raise, where we shall find

The moiety of a number for a business

More bigger-looked.     Exit officer.

[to Hippolyta]     Since that our theme is haste,

215

I stamp this kiss upon thy current lip;

Sweet, keep it as my token. Set you forward,

For I will see you gone.

[Procession moves toward the temple.]

– Farewell, my beauteous sister. – Pirithous,

Keep the feast full; bate not an hour on’t.

PIRITHOUS     Sir,

220

I’ll follow you at heels; the feast’s solemnity

Shall want till your return.

THESEUS     Cousin, I charge you,

Budge not from Athens. We shall be returning

Ere you can end this feast, of which I pray you

Make no abatement. Once more, farewell all.

225

     Exeunt all except Theseus and Queens.

1QUEEN

Thus dost thou still make good the tongue o’th’ world –

2QUEEN And earn’st a deity equal with Mars –

3QUEEN If not above him, for

Thou, being but mortal, mak’st affections bend

To godlike honours; they themselves, some say,

230

Groan under such a mast’ry.

THESEUS     As we are men,

Thus should we do; being sensually subdued,

We lose our human title. Good cheer, ladies:

Now turn we towards your comforts.

Flourish. Exeunt.

1.2 Enter PALAMON and ARCITE.

ARCITE     Dear Palamon, dearer in love than blood

And our prime cousin: yet unhardened in

The crimes of nature, let us leave the city

Thebes and the temptings in’t, before we further

Sully our gloss of youth

5

And here to keep in abstinence we shame

As in incontinence; for not to swim

I’th’ aid o’th’ current, were almost to sink,

At least to frustrate striving, and to follow

The common stream, ’twould bring us to an eddy

10

Where we should turn or drown; if labour through,

Our gain but life and weakness.

PALAMON     Your advice

Is cried up with example. What strange ruins,

Since first we went to school, may we perceive

Walking in Thebes! Scars and bare weeds

15

The gain o’th’ martialist, who did propound

To his bold ends honour and golden ingots,

Which, though he won, he had not – and now flurted

By Peace for whom he fought! Who then shall offer

To Mars’s so scorned altar? I do bleed

20

When such I meet and wish great Juno would

Resume her ancient fit of jealousy

To get the soldier work, that Peace might purge

For her repletion and retain anew

Her charitable heart, now hard and harsher

25

Than strife or war could be.

ARCITE     Are you not out?

Meet you no ruin but the soldier in

The cranks and turns of Thebes? You did begin

As if you met decays of many kinds.

Perceive you none that do arouse your pity

30

But th’unconsidered soldier?

PALAMON     Yes, I pity

Decays where’er I find them, but such most

That, sweating in an honourable toil,

Are paid with ice to cool ’em.

ARCITE     ’Tis not this

I did begin to speak of. This is virtue

35

Of no respect in Thebes. I spake of Thebes –

How dangerous, if we will keep our honours,

It is for our residing, where every evil

Hath a good colour; where every seeming good’s

A certain evil; where not to be e’en jump

40

As they are here were to be strangers, and,

Such things to be, mere monsters.

PALAMON     ’Tis in our power,

Unless we fear that apes can tutor’s, to

Be masters of our manners. What need I

Affect another’s gait, which is not catching

45

Where there is faith, or to be fond upon

Another’s way of speech when by mine own

I may be reasonably conceived, saved too,

Speaking it truly? Why am I bound

By any generous bond to follow him

50

Follows his tailor, haply so long until

The followed make pursuit? Or let me know

Why mine own barber is unblessed, with him

My poor chin too, for ’tis not scissored just

To such a favourite’s glass? What canon is there

55

That does command my rapier from my hip

To dangle’t in my hand, or to go tiptoe

Before the street be foul? Either I am

The fore-horse in the team or I am none

That draw i’th’ sequent trace. These poor slight sores

60

Need not a plantain; that which rips my bosom

Almost to th’ heart’s –

ARCITE     Our uncle Creon.

PALAMON     He.

A most unbounded tyrant, whose successes

Makes heaven unfeared and villainy assured

Beyond its power there’s nothing; almost puts

65

Faith in a fever and deifies alone

Voluble Chance; who only attributes

The faculties of other instruments

To his own nerves and act; commands men service

And what they win in’t, boot and glory; one

70

That fears not to do harm; good, dares not. Let

The blood of mine that’s sib to him be sucked

From me with leeches, let them break and fall

Off me with that corruption.

ARCITE     Clear-spirited cousin,

Let’s leave his court, that we may nothing share

75

Of his loud infamy; for our milk

Will relish of the pasture and we must

Be vile or disobedient: not his kinsmen

In blood unless in quality.

PALAMON     Nothing truer:

I think the echoes of his shames have deafed

80

The ears of heavenly Justice. Widows’ cries

Descend again into their throats and have not

Due audience of the gods.

Enter VALERIUS.

Valerius!

VALERIUS     The king calls for you; yet be leaden-footed

Till his great rage be off him. Phoebus, when

85

He broke his whipstock and exclaimed against

The horses of the sun, but whispered to

The loudness of his fury.

PALAMON     Small winds shake him.

But what’s the matter?

VALERIUS

THESEUS, who, where he threats, appals, hath sent

90

Deadly defiance to him and pronounces

Ruin to Thebes, who is at hand to seal

The promise of his wrath.

ARCITE     Let him approach.

But that we fear the gods in him, he brings not

A jot of terror to us. Yet what man

95

Thirds his own worth (the case is each of ours)

When that his action’s dregged with mind assured

’Tis bad he goes about?

PALAMON     Leave that unreasoned.

Our services stand now for Thebes, not Creon.

Yet to be neutral to him were dishonour,

100

Rebellious to oppose; therefore we must

With him stand to the mercy of our fate,

Who hath bounded our last minute.

ARCITE     So we must.

[to Valerius] Is’t said this war’s afoot, or, it shall be,

On fail of some condition?

VALERIUS     ’Tis in motion.

105

The intelligence of state came in the instant

With the defier.

PALAMON     Let’s to the king – who, were he

A quarter-carrier of that honour which

His enemy come in, the blood we venture

Should be as for our health, which were not spent,

110

Rather laid out for purchase; but, alas,

Our hands advanced before our hearts, what will

The fall o’th’ stroke do damage?

ARCITE     Let th’event,

That never-erring arbitrator, tell us

When we know all ourselves – and let us follow

115

The becking of our chance.     Exeunt.

1.3 Enter PIRITHOUS, HIPPOLYTA and EMILIA.

PIRITHOUS     No further.

HIPPOLYTA     Sir, farewell; repeat my wishes

To our great lord, of whose success I dare not

Make any timorous question; yet I wish him

Excess and overflow of power, an’t might be

To dure ill-dealing fortune. Speed to him!

5

Store never hurts good governors.

PIRITHOUS     Though I know

His ocean needs not my poor drops, yet they

Must yield their tribute there.

[to Emilia]     My precious maid,

Those best affections that the heavens infuse

In their best-tempered pieces keep enthroned

10

In your dear heart.

EMILIA     Thanks, sir. Remember me

To our all-royal brother, for whose speed

The great Bellona I’ll solicit; and,

Since in our terrene state petitions are not

Without gifts understood, I’ll offer to her

15

What I shall be advised she likes. Our hearts

Are in his army, in his tent –

HIPPOLYTA     In’s bosom.

We have been soldiers and we cannot weep

When our friends don their helms, or put to sea,

Or tell of babes broached on the lance, or women

20

That have sod their infants in (and after eat them)

The brine they wept at killing ’em. Then, if

You stay to see of us such spinsters, we

Should hold you here forever.

PIRITHOUS     Peace be to you

As I pursue this war, which shall be then

25

Beyond further requiring.     Exit.

EMILIA     How his longing

Follows his friend! Since his depart, his sports,

Though craving seriousness and skill, passed slightly

His careless execution, where nor gain

Made him regard or loss consider, but,

30

Playing one business in his hand, another

Directing in his head, his mind nurse equal

To these so-differing twins. Have you observed him,

Since our great lord departed?

HIPPOLYTA     With much labour,

And I did love him for’t. They two have cabined

35

In many as dangerous as poor a corner,

Peril and want contending; they have skiffed

Torrents whose roaring tyranny and power

I’th’ least of these was dreadful; and they have

Sought out together where Death’s self was lodged;

40

Yet fate hath brought them off. Their knot of love,

Tied, weaved, entangled, with so true, so long,

And with a finger of so deep a cunning,

May be outworn, never undone. I think

theseus cannot be umpire to himself,

45

Cleaving his conscience into twain and doing

Each side like justice, which he loves best.

EMILIA     Doubtless,

There is a best and reason has no manners

To say it is not you. I was acquainted

Once with a time when I enjoyed a play-fellow.

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You were at wars when she the grave enriched,

Who made too proud the bed – took leave o’th’ moon

(Which then looked pale at parting) when our count

Was each eleven.

HIPPOLYTA     ’Twas Flavina.

EMILIA     Yes.

You talk of Pirithous’ and Theseus’ love.

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Theirs has more ground, is more maturely seasoned,

More buckled with strong judgement, and their needs

The one of th’other may be said to water

Their intertangled roots of love – but I

And she I sigh and spoke of were things innocent,

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Loved for we did and like the elements

That know not what nor why, yet do effect

Rare issues by their operance; our souls

Did so to one another. What she liked

Was then of me approved; what not, condemned –

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No more arraignment. The flower that I would pluck

And put between my breasts (then but beginning

To swell about the blossom), O, she would long

Till she had such another, and commit it

To the like innocent cradle, where phoenix-like

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They died in perfume. On my head no toy

But was her pattern; her affections – pretty,

Though happily her careless wear – I followed

For my most serious decking; had mine ear

Stol’n some new air or at adventure hummed one

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From musical coinage, why, it was a note

Whereon her spirits would sojourn – rather, dwell on,

And sing it in her slumbers. This rehearsal,

Which fury-innocent wots well, comes in

Like old importment’s bastard, has this end:

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That the true love ’tween maid and maid may be

More than in sex dividual.

HIPPOLYTA     You’re out of breath!

And this high-speeded pace is but to say

That you shall never, like the maid Flavina,

Love any that’s called man.

EMILIA     I am sure I shall not.

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HIPPOLYTA     Now, alack, weak sister,

I must no more believe thee in this point,

Though in’t I know thou dost believe thy self,

Than I will trust a sickly appetite

That loathes even as it longs. But sure, my sister,

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If I were ripe for your persuasion, you

Have said enough to shake me from the arm

Of the all-noble Theseus – for whose fortunes

I will now in and kneel, with great assurance

That we, more than his Pirithous, possess

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The high throne in his heart.

EMILIA     I am not

Against your faith, yet I continue mine.     Exeunt.

1.4 Cornets. A battle struck within; then a retreat. Flourish. Then enter THESEUS as victor, with a Herald, other lords, and soldiers, PALAMON and ARCITE on hearses The three Queens meet him and fall on their faces before him.

1QUEEN To thee no star be dark!

2QUEEN     Both heaven and earth

Friend thee forever!

3QUEEN     All the good that may

Be wished upon thy head, I cry ‘Amen’ to’t!

THESEUS

Th’impartial gods, who from the mounted heavens

View us, their mortal herd, behold who err

5

And, in their time, chastise. Go and find out

The bones of your dead lords and honour them

With treble ceremony, rather than a gap

Should be in their dear rites. We would supply’t,

But those we will depute, which shall invest

10

You in your dignities and even each thing

Our haste does leave imperfect. So adieu,

And heaven’s good eyes look on you.     Exeunt Queens.

[Theseus notices the two hearses.]     What are those?

HERALD     Men of great quality, as may be judged

By their appointment. Some of Thebes have told’s

15

They are sisters’ children, nephews to the King.

THESEUS     By th’ helm of Mars, I saw them in the war,

Like to a pair of lions, smeared with prey,

Make lanes in troops aghast. I fixed my note

Constantly on them, for they were a mark

20

Worth a god’s view. What prisoner was’t that told me

When I enquired their names?

HERALD     Wi’ leave, they’re called

Arcite and Palamon.

THESEUS     ’Tis right; those, those.

They are not dead?

HERALD     Nor in a state of life. Had they been taken

25

When their last hurts were given, ’twas possible

They might have been recovered; yet they breathe

And have the name of men.

THESEUS     Then like men use ’em.

The very lees of such, millions of rates,

Exceed the wine of others. All our surgeons

30

Convent in their behoof; our richest balms,

Rather than niggard, waste; their lives concern us

Much more than Thebes is worth. Rather than have ’em

Freed of this plight and in their morning state,

Sound and at liberty, I would ’em dead;

35

But forty-thousandfold we had rather have ’em

Prisoners to us than death. Bear ’em speedily

From our kind air, to them unkind, and minister

What man to man may do, for our sake – more,

Since I have known frights, fury, friends’ behests,

40

Love’s provocations, zeal, a mistress’ task,

Desire of liberty, a fever, madness,

Hath set a mark which nature could not reach to

Without some imposition, sickness in will

O’er-wrestling strength in reason. For our love

45

And great Apollo’s mercy, all our best

Their best skill tender. Lead into the city,

Where having bound things scattered, we will post

To Athens ’fore our army.     Flourish. Exeunt.

1.5 Music. Enter the Queens with the hearses of their knights, in a funeral solemnity.

The Dirge.

Urns and odours bring away;

Vapours, sighs, darken the day;

Our dole more deadly looks than dying –

Balms and gums and heavy cheers,

Sacred vials fill’d with tears,

5

And clamours through the wild air flying.

Come, all sad and solemn shows

That are quick-eyed Pleasure’s foes;

We convent naught else but woes.

We convent naught else but woes.

10

3QUEEN

This funeral path brings to your household’s grave:

Joy seize on you again; peace sleep with him.

2QUEEN And this to yours.

1QUEEN     Yours this way. Heavens lend

A thousand differing ways to one sure end.

3QUEEN This world’s a city full of straying streets,

15

And death’s the market-place where each one meets.

Exeunt severally.

2.1 Enter Jailer and Wooer.

JAILER     I may depart with little while I live; something I

may cast to you, not much. Alas, the prison I keep,

though it be for great ones, yet they seldom come;

before one salmon, you shall take a number of

minnows. I am given out to be better lined than it can

5

appear to me report is a true speaker. I would I were

really that I am delivered to be. Marry, what I have, be

it what it will, I will assure upon my daughter at the

day of my death.

WOOER     Sir, I demand no more than your own offer and

10

I will estate your daughter in what I have promised.

JAILER     Well, we will talk more of this when the

solemnity is past. But have you a full promise of her?

Enter the Jailer’s Daughter carrying rushes.

When that shall be seen, I tender my consent.

WOOER     I have, Sir. Here she comes.

15

JAILER     [to his Daughter] Your friend and I have chanced

to name you here, upon the old business. But no more

of that now; so soon as the court hurry is over, we will

have an end of it. I’th’ meantime, look tenderly to the

two prisoners. I can tell you, they are princes.

20

DAUGHTER     These strewings are for their chamber. ’Tis

pity they are in prison and ’twere pity they should be

out. I do think they have patience to make any

adversity ashamed. The prison itself is proud of ’em

and they have all the world in their chamber.

25

JAILER     They are famed to be a pair of absolute men.

DAUGHTER     By my troth, I think Fame but stammers

’em; they stand a grise above the reach of report.

JAILER     I heard them reported in the battle to be the only

doers.

30

DAUGHTER     Nay, most likely, for they are noble

sufferers. I marvel how they would have looked had

they been victors, that with such a constant nobility

enforce a freedom out of bondage, making misery

their mirth and affliction a toy to jest at.

35

JAILER     Do they so?

DAUGHTER     It seems to me they have no more sense of

their captivity than I of ruling Athens. They eat well,

look merrily, discourse of many things, but nothing of

their own restraint and disasters. Yet sometime a

40

divided sigh, martyred, as ’twere, i’th’ deliverance,

will break from one of them – when the other

presently gives it so sweet a rebuke that I could wish

myself a sigh to be so chid, or at least a sigher to be

comforted.

45

WOOER     I never saw ’em.

JAILER     The Duke himself came privately in the night

and so did they.

Enter PALAMON and ARCITE, above.

What the reason of it is, I know not. Look, yonder they

are; that’s Arcite looks out.

50

DAUGHTER     No, sir, no, that’s Palamon. Arcite is the

lower of the twain; you may perceive a part of him.

JAILER     Go to, leave your pointing; they would not make

us their object. Out of their sight.

DAUGHTER     It is a holiday to look on them. Lord, the

55

difference of men!     Exeunt.

2.2 Enter PALAMON and ARCITE in prison.

PALAMON     How do you, noble cousin?

ARCITE     How do you, sir?

PALAMON     Why, strong enough to laugh at misery

And bear the chance of war; yet we are prisoners,

I fear, forever, cousin.

ARCITE     I believe it

And to that destiny have patiently

5

Laid up my hour to come.

PALAMON     O, cousin Arcite,

Where is Thebes now? Where is our noble country?

Where are our friends and kindreds? Never more

Must we behold those comforts, never see

The hardy youths strive for the games of honour,

10

Hung with the painted favours of their ladies,

Like tall ships under sail – then start amongst ’em,

And as an east wind leave ’em all behind us,

Like lazy clouds, whilst Palamon and Arcite,

Even in the wagging of a wanton leg,

15

Outstripped the people’s praises, won the garlands,

Ere they have time to wish ’em ours. O, never

Shall we two exercise, like twins of honour,

Our arms again and feel our fiery horses

Like proud seas under us; our good swords now

20

(Better the red-eyed god of war ne’er wore),

Ravished our sides, like age must run to rust

And deck the temples of those gods that hate us.

These hands shall never draw ’em out like lightning

To blast whole armies more.

ARCITE     No, Palamon,

25

Those hopes are prisoners with us. Here we are,

And here the graces of our youths must wither

Like a too-timely spring; here age must find us

And, which is heaviest, Palamon, unmarried.

The sweet embraces of a loving wife,

30

Loaden with kisses, armed with thousand Cupids,

Shall never clasp our necks; no issue know us;

No figures of ourselves shall we e’er see,

To glad our age, and like young eagles teach ’em

Boldly to gaze against bright arms and say,

35

‘Remember what your fathers were, and conquer!’

The fair-eyed maids shall weep our banishments

And in their songs curse ever-blinded Fortune

Till she for shame see what a wrong she has done

To youth and nature. This is all our world.

40

We shall know nothing here but one another,

Hear nothing but the clock that tells our woes.

The vine shall grow but we shall never see it;

Summer shall come and with her all delights,

But dead-cold winter must inhabit here still.

45

PALAMON     ’Tis too true, Arcite. To our Theban hounds

That shook the aged forest with their echoes

No more now must we hallow, no more shake

Our pointed javelins whilst the angry swine

Flies like a Parthian quiver from our rages,

50

Struck with our well-steeled darts. All valiant uses,

The food and nourishment of noble minds,

In us two here shall perish; we shall die,

Which is the curse of honour, lastly,

Children of grief and ignorance.

ARCITE     Yet, cousin,

55

Even from the bottom of these miseries,

From all that Fortune can inflict upon us,

I see two comforts rising, two mere blessings,

If the gods please: to hold here a brave patience

And the enjoying of our griefs together.

60

While Palamon is with me, let me perish

If I think this our prison!

PALAMON     Certainly,

’Tis a main goodness, cousin, that our fortunes

Were twined together; ’tis most true, two souls

Put in two noble bodies, let ’em suffer

65

The gall of hazard, so they grow together,

Will never sink; they must not, say they could.

A willing man dies sleeping and all’s done.

ARCITE     Shall we make worthy uses of this place

That all men hate so much?

PALAMON     How, gentle cousin?

70

ARCITE     Let’s think this prison holy sanctuary,

To keep us from corruption of worse men.

We are young and yet desire the ways of honour,

That liberty and common conversation,

The poison of pure spirits, might, like women,

75

Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing

Can be but our imaginations

May make it ours? And here being thus together,

We are an endless mine to one another;

We are one another’s wife, ever begetting

80

New births of love; we are father, friends, acquaintance,

We are, in one another, families;

I am your heir and you are mine. This place

Is our inheritance; no hard oppressor

Dare take this from us; here, with a little patience,

85

We shall live long and loving. No surfeits seek us;

The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas

Swallow their youth. Were we at liberty,

A wife might part us lawfully, or business;

Quarrels consume us; envy of ill men

90

Crave our acquaintance. I might sicken, cousin,

Where you should never know it, and so perish

Without your noble hand to close mine eyes,

Or prayers to the gods. A thousand chances,

Were we from hence, would sever us.

PALAMON     You have made me –

95

I thank you, cousin Arcite – almost wanton

With my captivity: what a misery

It is to live abroad and everywhere!

’Tis like a beast, methinks. I find the court here –

I am sure, a more content; and all those pleasures

100

That woo the wills of men to vanity,

I see through now and am sufficient

To tell the world ’tis but a gaudy shadow

That old Time as he passes by takes with him.

What had we been, old in the court of Creon,

105

Where sin is justice, lust and ignorance

The virtues of the great ones? Cousin Arcite,

Had not the loving gods found this place for us,

We had died as they do, ill old men, unwept,

And had their epitaphs, the people’s curses.

110

Shall I say more?

ARCITE     I would hear you still.

PALAMON     You shall.

Is there record of any two that loved

Better than we do, Arcite?

ARCITE     Sure there cannot.

PALAMON     I do not think it possible our friendship

Should ever leave us.

ARCITE     Till our deaths it cannot.

115

Enter EMILIA and her Woman.

And after death our spirits shall be led

To those that love eternally. [Palamon sees Emilia.]

     Speak on, sir.

EMILIA     This garden has a world of pleasures in’t.

What flower is this?

WOMAN     ’Tis called narcissus, madam.

EMILIA     That was a fair boy, certain, but a fool

120

To love himself. Were there not maids enough?

ARCITE     [to Palamon] Pray, forward.

PALAMON     Yes –

EMILIA     Or were they all hard-hearted?

WOMAN     They could not be to one so fair.

EMILIA     Thou wouldst not.

WOMAN     I think I should not, madam.

EMILIA     That’s a good wench.

But take heed to your kindness, though.

WOMAN     Why, madam?

125

EMILIA     Men are mad things.

ARCITE     Will ye go forward, cousin?

EMILIA

Canst not thou work such flowers in silk, wench?

WOMAN     Yes.

EMILIA     I’ll have a gown full o’ ’em, and of these.

This is a pretty colour; will’t not do

Rarely upon a skirt, wench?

WOMAN     Dainty, madam.

130

ARCITE

Cousin, cousin! how do you, sir? Why, Palamon!

PALAMON     Never till now was I in prison, Arcite.

ARCITE     Why, what’s the matter, man?

PALAMON     [Indicates Emilia.] Behold, and wonder!

By heaven, she is a goddess.

ARCITE     [Sees Emilia.]     Ha!

PALAMON     Do reverence.

She is a goddess, Arcite.

EMILIA     Of all flowers

135

Methinks a rose is best.

WOMAN     Why, gentle madam?

EMILIA     It is the very emblem of a maid.

For, when the west wind courts her gently,

How modestly she blows and paints the sun

With her chaste blushes! When the north comes near her,

140

Rude and impatient, then, like chastity,

She locks her beauties in her bud again

And leaves him to base briars.

WOMAN     Yet, good madam,

Sometimes her modesty will blow so far

She falls for’t. A maid,

145

If she have any honour, would be loath

To take example by her.

EMILIA     Thou art wanton.

ARCITE     She is wondrous fair.

PALAMON     She is all the beauty extant.

EMILIA

The sun grows high; let’s walk in. Keep these flowers.

We’ll see how near art can come near their colours.

150

I am wondrous merry-hearted; I could laugh now.

WOMAN     I could lie down, I am sure.

EMILIA     And take one with you?

WOMAN     That’s as we bargain, madam.

EMILIA     Well, agree then.

     Exeunt Emilia and Woman.

PALAMON     What think you of this beauty?

ARCITE     ’Tis a rare one.

PALAMON     Is’t but a rare one?

ARCITE     Yes, a matchless beauty.

155

PALAMON

Might not a man well lose himself and love her?

ARCITE     I cannot tell what you have done; I have,

Beshrew mine eyes for’t; now I feel my shackles.

PALAMON     You love her then?

ARCITE     Who would not?

PALAMON     And desire her?

ARCITE     Before my liberty.

PALAMON     I saw her first.

160

ARCITE     That’s nothing.

PALAMON     But it shall be.

ARCITE     I saw her too.

PALAMON          Yes, but you must not love her.

ARCITE     I will not as you do, to worship her

As she is heavenly and a blessed goddess.

I love her as a woman, to enjoy her:

165

So both may love.

PALAMON     You shall not love at all.

ARCITE     Not love at all!

Who shall deny me?

PALAMON     I that first saw her, I that took possession

First with mine eye of all those beauties in her

170

Revealed to mankind! If thou lovest her,

Or entertain’st a hope to blast my wishes,

Thou art a traitor, Arcite, and a fellow

False as thy title to her. Friendship, blood,

And all the ties between us, I disclaim,

175

If thou once think upon her.

ARCITE     Yes, I love her

And, if the lives of all my name lay on it,

I must do so; I love her with my soul:

If that will lose ye, farewell, Palamon.

I say again,

180

I love her and in loving her maintain

I am as worthy and as free a lover,

And have as just a title to her beauty,

As any Palamon, or any living

That is a man’s son.

PALAMON     Have I called thee friend?

185

ARCITE

Yes, and have found me so; why are you moved thus?

Let me deal coldly with you: am not I

Part of your blood, part of your soul? you have told me

That I was Palamon and you were Arcite.

PALAMON     Yes.

ARCITE     Am not I liable to those affections,

190

Those joys, griefs, angers, fears, my friend shall

suffer?

PALAMON     Ye may be.

ARCITE     Why then would you deal so cunningly,

So strangely, so unlike a noble kinsman,

To love alone? Speak truly: do you think me

Unworthy of her sight?

PALAMON     No, but unjust

195

If thou pursue that sight.

ARCITE     Because another

First sees the enemy, shall I stand still

And let mine honour down, and never charge?

PALAMON     Yes, if he be but one.

ARCITE     But say that one

Had rather combat me?

PALAMON     Let that one say so,

200

And use thy freedom. Else, if thou pursuest her,

Be as that cursed man that hates his country,

A branded villain.

ARCITE     You are mad.

PALAMON     I must be,

Till thou art worthy, Arcite; it concerns me.

And, in this madness, if I hazard thee

205

And take thy life, I deal but truly.

ARCITE     Fie, sir!

You play the child extremely. I will love her;

I must, I ought, to do so, and I dare,

And all this justly.

PALAMON     O that now, that now,

Thy false self and thy friend had but this fortune:

210

To be one hour at liberty and grasp

Our good swords in our hands! I would quickly teach thee

What ’twere to filch affection from another;

Thou art baser in it than a cutpurse.

Put but thy head out of this window more

215

And, as I have a soul, I’ll nail thy life to’t.

ARCITE

Thou dar’st not, fool, thou canst not, thou art feeble.

Put my head out? I’ll throw my body out

And leap the garden, when I see her next,

And pitch between her arms, to anger thee.

220

Enter Jailer.

PALAMON     No more; the keeper’s coming. I shall live

To knock thy brains out with my shackles.

ARCITE     Do!

JAILER     By your leave, gentlemen.

PALAMON     Now, honest keeper?

JAILER     Lord Arcite, you must presently to th’ Duke;

The cause I know not yet.

ARCITE     I am ready, keeper.

225

JAILER     Prince Palamon, I must awhile bereave you

Of your fair cousin’s company.

     Exeunt Arcite and Jailer.

PALAMON     And me too,

Even when you please, of life. – Why is he sent for?

It may be he shall marry her; he’s goodly

And like enough the Duke hath taken notice

230

Both of his blood and body. But his falsehood –

Why should a friend be treacherous? If that

Get him a wife so noble and so fair,

Let honest men ne’er love again. Once more

I would but see this fair one. Blessed garden

235

And fruit and flowers more blessed that still blossom

As her bright eyes shine on ye: would I were

For all the fortune of my life hereafter

Yon little tree, yon blooming apricock!

How I would spread and fling my wanton arms

240

In at her window! I would bring her fruit

Fit for the gods to feed on; youth and pleasure

Still as she tasted should be doubled on her

And, if she be not heavenly, I would make her

So near the gods in nature, they should fear her,

245

Enter Jailer.

And then I am sure she would love me. – How now, keeper?

Where’s Arcite?

JAILER     Banished. Prince Pirithous

Obtained his liberty, but never more

Upon his oath and life must he set foot

Upon this kingdom.

PALAMON     He’s a blessed man.

250

He shall see Thebes again and call to arms

The bold young men that, when he bids ’em charge,

Fall on like fire. Arcite shall have a fortune,

If he dare make himself a worthy lover,

Yet in the field to strike a battle for her

255

And, if he lose her then, he’s a cold coward;

How bravely may he bear himself to win her

If he be noble Arcite – thousand ways!

Were I at liberty, I would do things

Of such a virtuous greatness that this lady,

260

This blushing virgin, should take manhood to her

And seek to ravish me.

JAILER     My lord, for you

I have this charge to –

PALAMON     To discharge my life.

JAILER

No, but from this place to remove your lordship;

The windows are too open.

PALAMON     Devils take ’em

265

That are so envious to me! Prithee, kill me.

JAILER     And hang for’t afterward!

PALAMON     By this good light,

Had I a sword I would kill thee.

JAILER     Why, my lord?

PALAMON

Thou bringst such pelting, scurvy news continually,

Thou art not worthy life. I will not go.

270

JAILER     Indeed you must, my lord.

PALAMON     May I see the garden?

JAILER     No.

PALAMON     Then I am resolved; I will not go.

JAILER

I must constrain you then and, for you are dangerous,

I’ll clap more irons on you.

PALAMON     Do, good keeper!

I’ll shake ’em so, ye shall not sleep;

275

I’ll make ye a new morris. – Must I go?

JAILER     There is no remedy.

PALAMON     Farewell, kind window.

May rude winds never hurt thee! – O, my lady,

If ever thou hast felt what sorrow was,

Dream how I suffer! – Come, now bury me.

280

     Exeunt Palamon and Jailer.

2.3 Enter ARCITE.

ARCITE     Banished the kingdom? ’Tis a benefit,

A mercy I must thank ’em for; but banished

The free enjoying of that face I die for –

Oh, ’twas a studied punishment, a death

Beyond imagination, such a vengeance

5

That, were I old and wicked, all my sins

Could never pluck upon me. Palamon,

Thou hast the start now; thou shalt stay and see

Her bright eyes break each morning ’gainst thy window

And let in life into thee; thou shalt feed

10

Upon the sweetness of a noble beauty

That nature ne’er exceeded nor ne’er shall.

Good gods, what happiness has Palamon!

Twenty to one, he’ll come to speak to her

And, if she be as gentle as she’s fair,

15

I know she’s his; he has a tongue will tame

Tempests and make the wild rocks wanton.

Come what can come,

The worst is death; I will not leave the kingdom.

I know mine own is but a heap of ruins

20

And no redress there. If I go, he has her.

I am resolved another shape shall make me

Or end my fortunes. Either way I am happy:

I’ll see her and be near her, or no more.

Enter four Countrymen, and one with a garland before them. ARCITE stands aside.

1COUNTRYMAN     My masters, I’ll be there, that’s certain.

25

2COUNTRYMAN     And I’ll be there.

3COUNTRYMAN     And I.

4COUNTRYMAN

Why then, have with ye, boys. ’Tis but a chiding.

Let the plough play today; I’ll tickl’t out

Of the jades’ tails tomorrow.

1COUNTRYMAN     I am sure

30

To have my wife as jealous as a turkey –

But that’s all one: I’ll go through; let her mumble.

2COUNTRYMAN

Clap her aboard tomorrow night and stow her,

And all’s made up again.

3COUNTRYMAN     Ay, do but put

A fescue in her fist and you shall see her

35

Take a new lesson out and be a good wench.

Do we all hold against the Maying?

4COUNTRYMAN     Hold?

What should ail us?

3COUNTRYMAN Arcas will be there.

2COUNTRYMAN     And Sennois

And Rycas – and three better lads ne’er danced

40

Under green tree – and ye know what wenches, ha?

But will the dainty dominie, the schoolmaster,

Keep touch, do you think? For he does all, ye know.

3COUNTRYMAN     He’ll eat a hornbook ere he fail. Go to;

The matter’s too far driven between him

45

And the tanner’s daughter to let slip now;

And she must see the Duke and she must dance too.

4COUNTRYMAN Shall we be lusty?

2COUNTRYMAN     All the boys in Athens

Blow wind i’th’ breech on’s. And here I’ll be,

And there I’ll be for our town and here again,

50

And there again – ha, boys, hey for the weavers!

1COUNTRYMAN     This must be done i’th’ woods.

4COUNTRYMAN     O, pardon me.

2COUNTRYMAN

By any means; our thing of learning says so –

Where he himself will edify the Duke

Most parlously in our behalfs. He’s excellent i’th’

woods;

55

Bring him to th’ plains, his learning makes no cry.

3COUNTRYMAN

We’ll see the sports, then every man to’s tackle;

And, sweet companions, let’s rehearse, by any means,

Before the ladies see us and do sweetly

And God knows what may come on’t.

60

4COUNTRYMAN

Content; the sports once ended, we’ll perform.

Away, boys – and hold. [Arcite comes forward.]

ARCITE     By your leaves, honest friends:

Pray you, whither go you?

4COUNTRYMAN     Whither?

Why, what a question’s that?

ARCITE     Yes, ’tis a question,

To me that know not.

3COUNTRYMAN     To the games, my friend.

65

2COUNTRYMAN

Where were you bred, you know it not?

ARCITE     Not far, sir;

Are there such games today?

1COUNTRYMAN     Yes, marry, are there

And such as you never saw; the Duke himself

Will be in person there.

ARCITE     What pastimes are they?

2COUNTRYMAN

Wrestling and running. – ’Tis a pretty fellow.

70

3COUNTRYMAN Thou wilt not go along?

ARCITE     Not yet, sir.

4COUNTRYMAN     Well, sir,

Take your own time. Come, boys.

1COUNTRYMAN [aside to the others]

     My mind misgives me,

This fellow has a vengeance trick o’th’ hip;

Mark how his body’s made for’t.

2COUNTRYMAN     I’ll be hanged, though,

If he dare venture. Hang him, plum porridge!

75

He wrestle? He roast eggs! Come, let’s be gone, lads.

     Exeunt Countrymen.

ARCITE     This is an offered opportunity

I durst not wish for. Well I could have wrestled –

The best men called it excellent – and run

Swifter than wind upon a field of corn,

80

Curling the wealthy ears, never flew. I’ll venture

And in some poor disguise be there; who knows

Whether my brows may not be girt with garlands

And happiness prefer me to a place,

Where I may ever dwell in sight of her?     Exit.

85

2.4 Enter Jailer’s Daughter alone.

DAUGHTER

Why should I love this gentleman? ’Tis odds

He never will affect me: I am base,

My father the mean keeper of his prison,

And he a prince. To marry him is hopeless;

To be his whore is witless. Out upon’t,

5

What pushes are we wenches driven to

When fifteen once has found us! – First, I saw him;

I, seeing, thought he was a goodly man;

He has as much to please a woman in him,

If he please to bestow it so, as ever

10

These eyes yet looked on. Next, I pitied him –

And so would any young wench, o’ my conscience,

That ever dreamed, or vowed her maidenhead

To a young handsome man. Then, I loved him,

Extremely loved him, infinitely loved him!

15

And yet he had a cousin fair as he too,

But in my heart was Palamon and there,

Lord, what a coil he keeps! To hear him

Sing in an evening, what a heaven it is!

And yet his songs are sad ones. Fairer spoken

20

Was never gentleman. When I come in

To bring him water in a morning, first

He bows his noble body, then salutes me, thus:

‘Fair, gentle maid, good morrow; may thy goodness

Get thee a happy husband.’ Once, he kissed me.

25

I loved my lips the better ten days after:

Would he would do so every day! He grieves much –

And me as much to see his misery.

What should I do to make him know I love him?

For I would fain enjoy him. Say I ventured

30

To set him free? What says the law then?

Thus much for law or kindred! I will do it!

And this night, or tomorrow, he shall love me.     Exit.

2.5 A short flourish of cornets and shouts within.

Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PIRITHOUS, EMILIA; ARCITE, disguised as a countryman, with a garland; attendants and spectators.

THESEUS     You have done worthily; I have not seen,

Since Hercules, a man of tougher sinews.

Whate’er you are, you run the best and wrestle,

That these times can allow.

ARCITE     I am proud to please you.

THESEUS     What country bred you?

ARCITE     This; but far off, Prince.

5

THESEUS     Are you a gentleman?

ARCITE     My father said so

And to those gentle uses gave me life.

THESEUS     Are you his heir?

ARCITE     His youngest, sir.

THESEUS     Your father

Sure is a happy sire then. What profess you?

ARCITE     A little of all noble qualities.

10

I could have kept a hawk and well have hallowed

To a deep cry of dogs. I dare not praise

My feat in horsemanship, yet they that knew me

Would say it was my best piece; last and greatest,

I would be thought a soldier.

THESEUS     You are perfect.

15

PIRITHOUS     [to Emilia] Upon my soul, a proper man.

EMILIA     He is so.

PIRITHOUS     [to Hippolyta] How do you like him, lady?

HIPPOLYTA     I admire him.

I have not seen so young a man so noble,

If he say true, of his sort.

EMILIA     Believe,

His mother was a wondrous handsome woman;

20

His face, methinks, goes that way.

HIPPOLYTA     But his body

And fiery mind illustrate a brave father.

PIRITHOUS     Mark how his virtue, like a hidden sun,

Breaks through his baser garments.

HIPPOLYTA     He’s well got, sure.

THESEUS     [to Arcite] What made you seek this place, sir?

ARCITE     Noble Theseus,

To purchase name and do my ablest service

25

To such a well-found wonder as thy worth,

For only in thy court, of all the world,

Dwells fair-eyed Honour.

PIRITHOUS     All his words are worthy.

THESEUS     [to Arcite]

Sir, we are much indebted to your travel,

30

Nor shall you lose your wish. Pirithous,

Dispose of this fair gentleman.

PIRITHOUS     Thanks, Theseus.

[to Arcite] Whate’er you are, you’re mine, and I shall give you

To a most noble service: to this lady,

[Leads him to Emilia.]

This bright young virgin; pray observe her goodness.

35

You have honoured her fair birthday with your virtues

And, as your due, you’re hers; kiss her fair hand, sir.

ARCITE     Sir, you’re a noble giver. – Dearest beauty,

Thus let me seal my vowed faith. [Kisses her hand.]

     When your servant,

Your most unworthy creature, but offends you,

40

Command him die: he shall.

EMILIA     That were too cruel.

If you deserve well, sir, I shall soon see’t.

You’re mine and somewhat better than your rank I’ll

use you.

PIRITHOUS     I’ll see you furnished and, because you say

You are a horseman, I must needs entreat you

45

This afternoon to ride, but ’tis a rough one.

ARCITE     I like him better, Prince; I shall not then

Freeze in my saddle.

THESEUS     [to Hippolyta] Sweet, you must be ready,

And you, Emelia, and

[to Pirithous]     you, friend, and all,

Tomorrow by the sun, to do observance

50

To flowery May, in Dian’s wood.

[to Arcite]     Wait well, sir,

Upon your mistress. – Emily, I hope

He shall not go afoot.

EMILIA     That were a shame, sir,

While I have horses.

[to Arcite]     Take your choice and what

You want at any time, let me but know it;

55

If you serve faithfully, I dare assure you

You’ll find a loving mistress.

ARCITE     If I do not,

Let me find that my father ever hated,

Disgrace and blows.

THESEUS     Go lead the way; you have won it

It shall be so: you shall receive all dues

60

Fit for the honour you have won; ’twere wrong else.

– Sister, beshrew my heart, you have a servant,

That, if I were a woman, would be a master.

But you are wise.

EMILIA     I hope, too wise for that, sir.

Flourish. Exeunt.

2.6 Enter Jailer’s Daughter alone.

DAUGHTER     Let all the dukes and all the devils roar,

He is at liberty! I have ventured for him

And out I have brought him; to a little wood

A mile hence I have sent him, where a cedar

Higher than all the rest spreads like a plane

5

Fast by a brook, and there he shall keep close

Till I provide him files and food, for yet

His iron bracelets are not off. O, Love,

What a stout-hearted child thou art! My father

Durst better have endured cold iron than done it.

10

I love him beyond love and beyond reason,

Or wit, or safety; I have made him know it;

I care not, I am desperate. If the law

Find me and then condem me for’t, some wenches,

Some honest-hearted maids, will sing my dirge

15

And tell to memory my death was noble,

Dying almost a martyr. That way he takes,

I purpose, is my way too. Sure he cannot

Be so unmanly as to leave me here;

If he do, maids will not so easily

20

Trust men again. And yet he has not thanked me

For what I have done, no, not so much as kissed me,

And that methinks is not so well; nor scarcely

Could I persuade him to become a free man,

He made such scruples of the wrong he did

25

To me and my father. Yet I hope,

When he considers more, this love of mine

Will take more root within him. Let him do

What he will with me, so he use me kindly –

For use me so he shall, or I’ll proclaim him,

30

And to his face, no man. I’ll presently

Provide him necessaries and pack my clothes up

And where there is a path of ground I’ll venture,

So he be with me; by him, like a shadow,

I’ll ever dwell. Within this hour the hubbub

35

Will be all o’er the prison: I am then

Kissing the man they look for. Farewell, father!

Get many more such prisoners and such daughters

And shortly you may keep yourself. Now to him.

Exit.

3.1 Cornets in sundry places. Noise and hallooing as people a-Maying. Enter ARCITE alone.

ARCITE     The Duke has lost Hippolyta; each took

A several laund. This is a solemn rite

They owe bloomed May and the Athenians pay it

To th’ heart of ceremony. O, Queen Emilia,

Fresher than May, sweeter

5

Than her gold buttons on the boughs, or all

Th’enamelled knacks o’th’ mead, or garden – yea,

We challenge too the bank of any nymph

That makes the stream seem flowers: thou, oh jewel

O’th’ wood, o’th’ world, hast likewise blest a pace

10

With thy sole presence. In thy rumination,

That I, poor man, might eftsoons come between

And chop on some cold thought! Thrice blessed chance

To drop on such a mistress, expectation

Most guiltless on’t! Tell me, O Lady Fortune

15

(Next, after Emily, my sovereign), how far

I may be proud. She takes strong note of me,

Hath made me near her and, this beauteous morn,

The prim’st of all the year, presents me with

A brace of horses: two such steeds might well

20

Be by a pair of kings backed, in a field

That their crowns’ titles tried. Alas, alas,

Poor cousin Palamon, poor prisoner, thou

So little dream’st upon my fortune, that

Thou thinkst thyself the happier thing, to be

25

So near Emilia; me thou deem’st at Thebes,

And therein wretched, although free. But if

Thou knew’st my mistress breathed on me, and that

I eared her language, lived in her eye; O, coz,

What passion would enclose thee!

Enter PALAMON as out of a bush, with his shackles; he bends his fist at Arcite.

PALAMON     Traitor kinsman,

30

Thou shouldst perceive my passion, if these signs

Of prisonment were off me and this hand

But owner of a sword! By all oaths in one,

I and the justice of my love would make thee

A confessed traitor! O, thou most perfidious

35

That ever gently looked, the void’st of honour

That e’er bore gentle token, falsest cousin

That ever blood made kin: call’st thou her thine?

I’ll prove it in my shackles, with these hands,

Void of appointment, that thou liest, and art

40

A very thief in love, a chaffy lord

Not worth the name of villain. Had I a sword

And these house-clogs away –

ARCITE     Dear cousin Palamon –

PALAMON     Cosener Arcite, give me language such

As thou hast showed me feat.

ARCITE     a     Not finding in

45

The circuit of my breast any gross stuff

To form me like your blazon holds me to

This gentleness of answer. ’Tis your passion

That thus mistakes, the which to you being enemy,

Cannot to me be kind: honour and honesty

50

I cherish and depend on, howsoe’er

You skip them in me, and with them, fair coz,

I’ll maintain my proceedings. Pray be pleased

To show in generous terms your griefs, since that

Your question’s with your equal, who professes

55

To clear his own way with the mind and sword

Of a true gentlemen.

PALAMON     That thou durst, Arcite!

ARCITE     My coz, my coz, you have been well advertised

How much I dare; you’ve seen me use my sword

Against th’advice of fear. Sure, of another

60

You would not hear me doubted, but your silence

Should break out, though i’th’ sanctuary.

PALAMON     Sir,

I have seen you move in such a place, which well

Might justify your manhood; you were called

A good knight and a bold. But the whole week’s not fair

65

If any day it rain: their valiant temper

Men lose when they incline to treachery

And then they fight like compelled bears, would fly

Were they not tied.

ARCITE     Cousin, you might as well

Speak this and act it in your glass as to

70

His ear which now disdains you.

PALAMON     Come up to me;

Quit me of those cold gyves; give me a sword,

Though it be rusty, and the charity

Of one meal lend me. Come before me then,

A good sword in thy hand, and do but say

75

That Emily is thine – I will forgive

The trespass thou hast done me, yea, my life,

If then thou carry’t, and brave souls in shades

That have died manly, which will seek of me

Some news from earth, they shall get none but this:

80

That thou art brave and noble.

ARCITE     Be content.

Again betake you to your hawthorn house.

With counsel of the night, I will be here

With wholesome viands. These impediments

Will I file off; you shall have garments and

85

Perfumes to kill the smell o’th’ prison. After,

When you shall stretch yourself and say but, ‘Arcite,

I am in plight’, there shall be at your choice

Both sword and armour.

PALAMON     O you heavens, dares any

So nobly bear a guilty business? None

90

But only Arcite; therefore none but Arcite

In this kind but so bold.

ARCITE     Sweet Palamon. [Offers to embrace him.]

PALAMON

I do embrace you and your offer; for

Your offer do’t I only, sir; your person

Without hypocrisy I may not wish

95

More than my sword’s edge on’t.

ARCITE     You hear the horns; [Horns.]

Enter your musit, lest this match between’s

Be crossed ere met. Give me your hand; farewell.

I’ll bring you every needful thing. I pray you

Take comfort and be strong.

PALAMON     Pray hold your promise

100

And do the deed with a bent brow. Most certain

You love me not; be rough with me and pour

This oil out of your language. By this air,

I could for each word give a cuff, my stomach

Not reconciled by reason.

ARCITE     Plainly spoken.

105

Yet pardon me hard language. When I spur

My horse I chide him not; content and anger

In me have but one face.     [Horns again.]

     Hark, sir, they call

The scattered to the banquet. You must guess

I have an office there.

PALAMON     Sir, your attendance

110

Cannot please heaven and I know your office

Unjustly is achieved.

ARCITE     ’Tis a good title.

I am persuaded, this question, sick between ’s,

By bleeding must be cured. I am a suitor

That to your sword you will bequeath this plea

115

And talk of it no more.

PALAMON     But this one word:

You are going now to gaze upon my mistress –

For, note you, mine she is –

ARCITE     Nay, then –

PALAMON     Nay, pray you!

You talk of feeding me to breed me strength.

You are going now to look upon a sun

120

That strengthens what it looks on; there

You have a vantage on me. But enjoy’t till

I may enforce my remedy. Farewell.     Exeunt.

3.2 Enter Jailer’s Daughter alone.

DAUGHTER

He has mistook the brake I meant, is gone

After his fancy. ’Tis now well-nigh morning.

No matter: would it were perpetual night,

And darkness lord o’th’ world! – Hark, ’tis a wolf!

In me hath grief slain fear and but for one thing

5

I care for nothing and that’s Palamon.

I reck not if the wolves would jaw me, so

He had this file. What if I hallooed for him?

I cannot hallow. If I whooped – what then?

If he not answered, I should call a wolf,

10

And do him but that service. I have heard

Strange howls this livelong night; why may’t not be

They have made prey of him? He has no weapons;

He cannot run: the jangling of his gyves

Might call fell things to listen, who have in them

15

A sense to know a man unarmed and can

Smell where resistance is. I’ll set it down,

He’s torn to pieces; they howled many together

And then they fed on him. So much for that:

Be bold to ring the bell. How stand I then?

20

All’s chared when he is gone – no, no, I lie.

My father’s to be hanged for his escape,

Myself to beg, if I prized life so much

As to deny my act – but that I would not,

Should I try death by dozens. I am moped.

25

Food took I none these two days;

Sipped some water. I have not closed mine eyes,

Save when my lids scoured off their brine. Alas,

Dissolve, my life! Let not my sense unsettle,

Lest I should drown, or stab, or hang myself.

30

Oh, state of nature, fail together in me,

Since thy best props are warped! – So, which way now?

The best way is the next way to a grave:

Each errant step beside is torment. Lo,

The moon is down, the crickets chirp, the screech-owl

35

Calls in the dawn; all offices are done

Save what I fail in. But the point is this:

An end, and that is all.     Exit.

3.3 Enter ARCITE with meat, wine and files.

ARCITE

I should be near the place. Ho! Cousin Palamon?

PALAMON     [from the bush]

ARCITE?

ARCITE     The same. I have brought you food and files.

Come forth and fear not; here’s no Theseus.

Enter PALAMON.

PALAMON     Nor none so honest, Arcite.

ARCITE     That’s no matter.

We’ll argue that hereafter. Come, take courage!

5

You shall not die thus beastly; here, sir, drink –

I know you are faint – then I’ll talk further with you.

PALAMON     Arcite, thou mightst now poison me.

ARCITE     I might,

But I must fear you first. Sit down and, good now,

No more of these vain parleys; let us not,

10

Having our ancient reputation with us,

Make talk for fools and cowards. To your health –

[Drinks.]

PALAMON     Do!

ARCITE     Pray sit down then, and let me entreat you,

By all the honesty and honour in you,

15

No mention of this woman; ’twill disturb us.

We shall have time enough.

PALAMON     Well, sir, I’ll pledge you. [Drinks.]

ARCITE     Drink a good hearty draught: it breeds good blood, man.

Do not you feel it thaw you?

PALAMON     Stay, I’ll tell you

After a draught or two more.

ARCITE          Spare it not;

20

The Duke has more, coz. Eat now.

PALAMON     Yes.

ARCITE     I am glad

You have so good a stomach.

PALAMON     I am gladder

I have so good meat to’t.

ARCITE     Is’t not mad lodging,

Here in the wild woods, cousin?

PALAMON     Yes, for them

That have wild consciences.

ARCITE     How tastes your victuals?

25

Your hunger needs no sauce, I see.

PALAMON     Not much.

But if it did, yours is too tart, sweet cousin.

What is this?

ARCITE     Venison.

PALAMON     ’Tis a lusty meat.

Give me more wine. – Here, Arcite, to the wenches

We have known in our days. The Lord Steward’s daughter –

30

Do you remember her?

ARCITE     After you, coz.

PALAMON     She loved a black-haired man –

ARCITE     She did so; well, sir?

PALAMON     And I have heard some call him Arcite, and –

ARCITE     Out with’t, faith.

PALAMON     She met him in an arbour.

What did she there, coz? play o’th’ virginals?

35

ARCITE     Something she did, sir –

PALAMON     Made her groan a month for’t.

Or two, or three, or ten.

ARCITE     The Marshall’s sister

Had her share too, as I remember, cousin;

Else there be tales abroad. You’ll pledge her?

PALAMON     Yes.

ARCITE     A pretty brown wench ’tis. There was a time

40

When young men went a-hunting, and a wood,

And a broad beech; and thereby hangs a tale –

Hey ho.

PALAMON     For Emily, upon my life! Fool,

Away with this strained mirth! I say again,

That sigh was breathed for Emily; base cousin,

45

Dar’st thou break first?

ARCITE     You are wide.

PALAMON     By heaven and earth,

There’s nothing in thee honest.

ARCITE     Then I’ll leave you;

You are a beast now.

PALAMON     As thou mak’st me, traitor.

ARCITE

There’s all things needful – files and shirts, and perfumes;

I’ll come again some two hours hence, and bring

50

That that shall quiet all –

PALAMON     A sword and armour.

ARCITE     Fear me not. You are now too foul; farewell.

Get off your trinkets. You shall want nought.

PALAMON     Sirrah –

ARCITE     I’ll hear no more.     Exit.

PALAMON     If he keep touch, he dies for’t.     Exit.

3.4 Enter Jailer’s Daughter.

DAUGHTER     I am very cold and all the stars are out too,

The little stars and all, that look like aglets;

The sun has seen my folly. – Palamon! –

Alas, no, he’s in heaven; where am I now?

Yonder’s the sea and there’s a ship; how’t tumbles!

5

And there’s a rock lies watching under water;

Now, now, it beats upon it; now, now, now!

There’s a leak sprung, a sound one! How they cry!

Run her before the wind, you’ll lose all else.

Up with a course or two and tack about, boys!

10

Good night, good night, you’re gone. – I am very hungry.

Would I could find a fine frog; he would tell me

News from all parts o’th’ world. Then would I make

A carrack of a cockle shell and sail

By east and north-east to the king of pygmies,

15

For he tells fortunes rarely. Now, my father

Twenty to one is trussed up in a trice

Tomorrow morning; I’ll say never a word.

[Sings.]

For I’ll cut my green coat, a foot above my knee

And I’ll clip my yellow locks, an inch below mine eye.

20

Hey, nonny, nonny, nonny,

He’s buy me a white cut, forth for to ride,

And I’ll go seek him through the world that is so wide,

Hey, nonny, nonny, nonny.

O, for a prick now, like a nightingale,

25

To put my breast against. I shall sleep like a top else.

Exit.

3.5 Enter Schoolmaster GERALD and five Countrymen.

SCHOOLMASTER     Fie, fie,

What tediosity and disinsanity

Is here among ye! Have my rudiments

Been laboured so long with ye, milked unto ye

And, by a figure, even the very plum-broth

5

And marrow of my understanding laid upon ye,

And do ye still cry ‘Where?’ and ‘How?’ and ‘Wherefore?’

You most coarse-frieze capacities, ye jean judgments,

Have I said, ‘Thus let be’ and ‘There let be’

And ‘Then let be’, and no man understand me?

10

Proh Deum! Medius Fidius! Ye are all dunces.

For why?

Here stand I. Here the Duke comes; there are you,

Close in the thicket; the Duke appears; I meet him

And unto him I utter learned things

15

And many figures; he hears and nods and hums

And then cries, ‘Rare!’ and I go forward. At length,

I fling my cap up – mark there! Then do you,

As once did Meleager and the boar,

Break comely out before him; like true lovers,

20

Cast yourselves in a body decently

And sweetly, by a figure, trace and turn, boys.

1COUNTRYMAN

And sweetly we will do it, Master Gerald.

2COUNTRYMAN

Draw up the company. Where’s the taborer?

3COUNTRYMAN Why, Timothy!

Enter Taborer.

TABORER     Here, my mad boys, have at ye!

25

SCHOOLMASTER     But, I say, where’s these women?

4COUNTRYMAN     Here’s Friz and Maudlin.

Enter five Countrywomen.

2COUNTRYMAN

And little Luce with the white legs and bouncing Barbary.

1COUNTRYMAN

And freckled Nell that never failed her master.

SCHOOLMASTER

Where be your ribbons, maids? Swim with your bodies

And carry it sweetly and deliverly

30

And now and then a favour and a frisk.

NELL     Let us alone, sir.

SCHOOLMASTER     Where’s the rest o’th’ music?

3COUNTRYMAN Dispersed, as you commanded.

SCHOOLMASTER     Couple then

And see what’s wanting; where’s the Bavian?

– My friend, carry your tail without offence

35

Or scandal to the ladies and be sure

You tumble with audacity and manhood

And, when you bark, do it with judgment.

BAVIAN     Yes, sir.

SCHOOLMASTER

Quo usque tandem! Here’s a woman wanting.

4COUNTRYMAN

We may go whistle; all the fat’s i’th’ fire.

40

SCHOOLMASTER

We have, as learned authors utter, washed a tile.

We have been fatuus and laboured vainly.

2COUNTRYMAN

This is that scornful piece, that scurvy hilding

That gave her promise faithfully, she would be here –

Cicely, the sempster’s daughter.

45

The next gloves that I give her shall be dogskin!

Nay, an she fail me once – you can tell, Arcas,

She swore by wine and bread, she would not break.

SCHOOLMASTER     An eel and woman,

A learned poet says, unless by th’ tail

50

And with thy teeth thou hold, will either fail.

In manners this was false position.

1COUNTRYMAN A fire ill take her; does she flinch now?

3COUNTRYMAN     What

Shall we determine, sir?

SCHOOLMASTER     Nothing.

Our business is become a nullity,

55

Yea, and a woeful and a piteous nullity.

4COUNTRYMAN

Now, when the credit of our town lay on it,

Now to be frampul, now to piss o’th’ nettle!

Go thy ways, I’ll remember thee, I’ll fit thee.

Enter the Jailer’s Daughter.

DAUGHTER     [Sings.]

The George Alow came from the south

60

From the coast of Barbary-a

And there he met with brave gallants of war,

By one, by two, by three-a.

‘Well hailed, well hailed, you jolly gallants,

And whither now are you bound-a?

65

O let me have your company

Till we come to the sound-a.’

There was three fools fell out about an howlet:

The one he said it was an owl,

The other he said nay,

70

The third he said it was a hawk,

And her bells were cut away.

3COUNTRYMAN

There’s a dainty madwoman, Master,

Comes i’th’ nick, as mad as a March hare.

If we can get her dance, we are made again;

75

I warrant her, she’ll do the rarest gambols.

1COUNTRYMAN A madwoman? We are made, boys.

SCHOOLMASTER     And are you mad, good woman?

DAUGHTER     I would be sorry else.

Give me your hand.

SCHOOLMASTER     Why?

DAUGHTER     I can tell your fortune.

You are a fool. Tell ten. – I have posed him. Buzz!

80

– Friend, you must eat no white bread; if you do,

Your teeth will bleed extremely. – Shall we dance, ho?

– I know you, you’re a tinker; sirrah tinker,

Stop no more holes but what you should.

SCHOOLMASTER     Dii boni,

A tinker, damsel?

DAUGHTER     Or a conjurer.

85

Raise me a devil now and let him play

Chi passa o’th’ bells and bones.

SCHOOLMASTER     Go take her

And fluently persuade her to a peace.

Et opus exegi quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis –

Strike up and lead her in. [Taborer plays.]

2COUNTRYMAN     Come, lass, let’s trip it.

90

DAUGHTER     I’ll lead. [Dances.]

3COUNTRYMAN     Do, do! [Horns.]

SCHOOLMASTER     Persuasively and cunningly.

Away, boys; I hear the horns. Give me some meditation –

And mark your cue.     Exeunt all but Schoolmaster.

     Pallas inspire me!

Enter THESEUS, PIRITHOUS, HIPPOLYTA, EMILIA and train.

THESEUS     This way the stag took.

SCHOOLMASTER     Stay and edify!

THESEUS     What have we here?

95

PIRITHOUS     Some country sport, upon my life, sir.

THESEUS     [to Schoolmaster]

Well, sir, go forward; we will ‘edify’.

[Chair and stools brought out.]

Ladies, sit down; we’ll stay it.

[Theseus, Hippolyta and Emilia sit.]

SCHOOLMASTER

Then, doughty Duke, all hail; all hail, sweet ladies –

THESEUS     This is a cold beginning.

100

SCHOOLMASTER

If you but favour, our country pastime made is.

We are a few of those collected here

That ruder tongues distinguish ‘villager’.

And to say verity, and not to fable,

We are a merry rout, or else a rable,

105

Or company, or, by a figure, chorus,

That ’fore thy dignity will dance a morris.

And I that am the rectifier of all,

By title pedagogus, that let fall

The birch upon the breeches of the small ones

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And humble with a ferula the tall ones,

Do here present this machine, or this frame,

And, dainty Duke, whose doughty dismal fame

From Dis to Daedalus, from post to pillar,

Is blown abroad, help me, thy poor well-willer,

115

And with thy twinkling eyes look right and straight

Upon this mighty ‘Moor’ of mickle weight.

‘Is’ now comes in, which, being glued together,

Makes ‘Morris’ and the cause that we came hither:

The body of our sport, of no small study.

120

I first appear, though rude and raw and muddy,

To speak before thy noble grace this tenor:

At whose great feet I offer up my penner.

The next the Lord of May and Lady bright;

The Chambermaid and Servingman, by night

125

That seek out silent hanging; then mine Host

And his fat Spouse that welcomes to their cost

The galled traveller and with a beck’ning

Informs the tapster to inflame the reck’ning.

Then the beest-eating Clown and next the Fool,

130

The Bavian with long tail and eke long tool,

Cum multis aliis that make a dance.

Say, ‘Ay,’ and all shall presently advance.

THESEUS     Ay, ay, by any means, dear Domine.

PIRITHOUS     Produce.

135

SCHOOLMASTER     Intrate filii! Come forth and foot it.

[Music. The villagers, with the Jailer’s Daughter, perform a morris dance.]

SCHOOLMASTER

Ladies, if we have been merry

And have pleased ye with a derry,

And a derry, and a down,

Say the schoolmaster’s no clown;

140

Duke, if we have pleased thee too

And have done as good boys should do,

Give us but a tree or twain

For a Maypole and again,

Ere another year run out,

145

We’ll make thee laugh and all this rout.

THESEUS

Take twenty, Domine. – How does my sweetheart?

HIPPOLYTA     Never so pleased, sir.

EMILIA     ’Twas an excellent dance

And, for a preface, I never heard a better.

THESEUS

SCHOOLMASTER, I thank you. One see ’em all rewarded.

150

PIRITHOUS

And here’s something to paint your pole withall.

[Gives Schoolmaster money.]

THESEUS     Now to our sports again.

SCHOOLMASTER

May the stag thou hunt’st stand long,

And thy dogs be swift and strong;

May they kill him without lets

155

And the ladies eat his dowsets.

Theseus and his party depart. Horns.

Come, we are all made, dii deaeque omnes. Ye have

danced rarely, wenches.     Exeunt.

3.6 Enter PALAMON from the bush.

PALAMON     About this hour my cousin gave his faith

To visit me again and with him bring

Two swords and two good armours. If he fail

He’s neither man nor soldier. When he left me

I did not think a week could have restored

5

My lost strength to me, I was grown so low

And crest-fall’n with my wants. I thank thee, Arcite:

Thou art yet a fair foe; and I feel myself,

With this refreshing, able once again

To outdure danger. To delay it longer

10

Would make the world think, when it comes to hearing,

That I lay fatting like a swine to fight

And not a soldier. Therefore this blest morning

Shall be the last and that sword he refuses,

If it but hold, I kill him with: ’tis justice.

15

So love and fortune for me!

Enter ARCITE with armours and swords.

     O, good morrow.

ARCITE     Good morrow, noble kinsman.

PALAMON     I have put you

To too much pains, sir.

ARCITE     That too much, fair cousin,

Is but a debt to honour, and my duty.

PALAMON

Would you were so in all, sir; I could wish ye

20

As kind a kinsman as you force me find

A beneficial foe, that my embraces

Might thank ye, not my blows.

ARCITE     I shall think either,

Well done, a noble recompense.

PALAMON     Then I shall quit you.

ARCITE     Defy me in these fair terms, and you show

25

More than a mistress to me. No more anger,

As you love anything that’s honourable!

We were not bred to talk, man; when we are armed

And both upon our guards, then let our fury,

Like meeting of two tides, fly strongly from us;

30

And then to whom the birthright of this beauty

Truly pertains (without upbraidings, scorns,

Despisings of our persons, and such poutings

Fitter for girls and schoolboys) will be seen

And quickly, yours or mine. Will’t please you arm, sir?

35

Or, if you feel yourself not fitting yet

And furnished with your old strength, I’ll stay, cousin,

And every day discourse you into health,

As I am spared. Your person I am friends with

And I could wish I had not said I loved her,

40

Though I had died; but, loving such a lady

And justifying my love, I must not fly from’t.

PALAMON     Arcite, thou art so brave an enemy

That no man but thy cousin’s fit to kill thee.

I am well and lusty; choose your arms.

ARCITE     Choose you, sir.

45

PALAMON     Wilt thou exceed in all, or dost thou do it

To make me spare thee?

ARCITE     If you think so, cousin,

You are deceived, for, as I am a soldier,

I will not spare you.

PALAMON     That’s well said.

ARCITE     You’ll find it.

PALAMON     Then, as I am an honest man and love,

50

With all the justice of affection

I’ll pay thee soundly.

[Chooses armour.]     This I’ll take.

ARCITE     [Takes the other.] That’s mine then.

I’ll arm you first.

PALAMON     Do. [Arcite begins to arm him.]

     Pray thee tell me, cousin,

Where got’st thou this good armour?

ARCITE     ’Tis the Duke’s

And, to say true, I stole it. Do I pinch you?

PALAMON     No.

55

ARCITE     Is’t not too heavy?

PALAMON     I have worn a lighter,

But I shall make it serve.

ARCITE     I’ll buckl’t close.

PALAMON     By any means.

ARCITE     You care not for a grand guard?

PALAMON     No, no, we’ll use no horses; I perceive

You would fain be at that fight.

ARCITE     I am indifferent.

60

PALAMON

Faith, so am I. Good cousin, thrust the buckle

Through far enough.

ARCITE     I warrant you.

PALAMON     My casque now.

ARCITE     Will you fight bare-armed?

PALAMON     We shall be the nimbler.

ARCITE

But use your gauntlets, though. Those are o’th’ least;

Prithee take mine, good cousin.

PALAMON     Thank you, Arcite.

65

How do I look? Am I fall’n much away?

ARCITE     Faith, very little; love has used you kindly.

PALAMON     I’ll warrant thee, I’ll strike home.

ARCITE     Do and spare not.

I’ll give you cause, sweet cousin.

PALAMON     Now to you, sir. [Begins to arm Arcite.]

Methinks this armour’s very like that, Arcite,

70

Thou wor’st that day the three kings fell, but lighter.

ARCITE     That was a very good one. And that day,

I well remember, you outdid me, cousin;

I never saw such valour. When you charged

Upon the left wing of the enemy,

75

I spurred hard to come up and under me

I had a right good horse.

PALAMON     You had indeed:

A bright bay, I remember.

ARCITE     Yes, but all

Was vainly laboured in me; you outwent me,

Nor could my wishes reach you. Yet a little

80

I did by imitation.

PALAMON     More by virtue.

You are modest, cousin.

ARCITE     When I saw you charge first,

Methought I heard a dreadful clap of thunder

Break from the troop.

PALAMON     But still before that flew

The lightning of your valour. – Stay a little:

85

Is not this piece too strait?

ARCITE     No, no, ’tis well.

PALAMON

I would have nothing hurt thee but my sword:

A bruise would be dishonour.

ARCITE     Now I am perfect.

PALAMON     Stand off then.

ARCITE     Take my sword; I hold it better.

PALAMON     I thank ye, no; keep it, your life lies on it.

90

Here’s one: if it but hold, I ask no more

For all my hopes. My cause and honour guard me!

ARCITE     And me my love!

[They bow several ways, then advance and stand.]

     Is there aught else to say?

PALAMON

This only, and no more. Thou art mine aunt’s son

And that blood we desire to shed is mutual,

95

In me thine and in thee mine; my sword

Is in my hand and if thou killest me

The gods and I forgive thee. If there be

A place prepared for those that sleep in honour,

I wish his weary soul that falls may win it.

100

Fight bravely, cousin; give me thy noble hand.

ARCITE     Here, Palamon. This hand shall never more

Come near thee with such friendship.

PALAMON     I commend thee.

ARCITE     If I fall, curse me, and say I was a coward,

For none but such dare die in these just trials.

105

Once more farewell, my cousin.

PALAMON     Farewell, Arcite.

[They fight. Horns within. They stand.]

ARCITE     Lo, cousin, lo, our folly has undone us!

PALAMON     Why?

ARCITE     This is the Duke, a-hunting as I told you;

If we be found, we are wretched. O, retire,

For honour’s sake and safety, presently no

110

Into your bush again. Sir, we shall find

Too many hours to die in! Gentle cousin,

If you be seen you perish instantly

For breaking prison and I, if you reveal me,

For my contempt. Then all the world will scorn us

115

And say we had a noble difference,

But base disposers of it.

PALAMON     No, no, cousin:

I will no more be hidden, nor put off

This great adventure to a second trial;

I know your cunning and I know your cause.

120

He that faints now, shame take him! Put thyself

Upon thy present guard –

ARCITE     You are not mad?

PALAMON     Or I will make the advantage of this hour

Mine own, and what to come shall threaten me

I fear less than my fortune. Know, weak cousin,

125

I love Emilia and in that I’ll bury

Thee and all crosses else.

ARCITE     Then come what can come.

Thou shalt know, Palamon, I dare as well

Die as discourse or sleep. Only this fears me:

The law will have the honour of our ends.

130

Have at thy life!

PALAMON     Look to thine own well, Arcite.

[They fight again.]

Horns. Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, EMILIA, PIRITHOUS and train.

THESEUS     What ignorant and mad malicious traitors

Are you, that ’gainst the tenor of my laws

Are making battle, thus like knights appointed,

Without my leave and officers of arms?

135

By Castor, both shall die!

PALAMON     Hold thy word, Theseus.

We are certainly both traitors, both despisers

Of thee and of thy goodness. I am Palamon

That cannot love thee, he that broke thy prison –

Think well what that deserves – and this is Arcite:

140

A bolder traitor never trod thy ground;

A falser ne’er seemed friend. This is the man

Was begged and banished; this is he contemns thee

And what thou dar’st do and in this disguise

Against thine own edict follows thy sister,

145

That fortunate bright star, the fair Emilia –

Whose servant, if there be a right in seeing

And first bequeathing of the soul to, justly

I am – and, which is more, dares think her his.

This treachery, like a most trusty lover,

150

I called him now to answer. If thou be’st

As thou art spoken, great and virtuous,

The true decider of all injuries,

Say, ‘Fight again’ and thou shalt see me, Theseus,

Do such a justice thou thyself wilt envy.

155

Then take my life; I’ll woo thee to’t.

PIRITHOUS     O heaven,

What more than man is this!

THESEUS     I have sworn.

ARCITE     We seek not

Thy breath of mercy, Theseus; ’tis to me

A thing as soon to die as thee to say it

And no more moved. Where this man calls me traitor,

160

Let me say thus much: if in love be treason,

In service of so excellent a beauty,

As I love most, and in that faith will perish,

As I have brought my life here to confirm it,

As I have served her truest, worthiest,

165

As I dare kill this cousin that denies it,

So let me be most traitor and ye please me.

For scorning thy edict, Duke: ask that lady

Why she is fair, and why her eyes command me

Stay here to love her and, if she say ‘traitor’,

170

I am a villain fit to lie unburied.

PALAMON     Thou shalt have pity of us both, O Theseus,

If unto neither thou show mercy. Stop,

As thou art just, thy noble ear against us;

As thou art valiant – for thy cousin’s soul,

175

Whose twelve strong labours crown his memory –

Let’s die together, at one instant, Duke.

Only a little let him fall before me,

That I may tell my soul, he shall not have her.

THESEUS

I grant your wish, for, to say true, your cousin

180

Has ten times more offended, for I gave him

More mercy than you found, sir, your offences

Being no more than his. None here speak for ’em,

For, ere the sun set, both shall sleep for ever.

HIPPOLYTA     Alas the pity! Now or never, sister,

185

Speak not to be denied. That face of yours

Will bear the curses else of after ages

For these lost cousins.

EMILIA     In my face, dear sister,

I find no anger to ’em, nor no ruin;

The misadventure of their own eyes kill ’em.

190

Yet that I will be woman and have pity,

My knees shall grow to th’ ground but I’ll get mercy.

Help me, dear sister; in a deed so virtuous,

The powers of all women will be with us. [Kneels.]

Most royal brother –

HIPPOLYTA     [Kneels.] Sir, by our tie of marriage –

195

EMILIA     By your own spotless honour –

HIPPOLYTA     By that faith,

That fair hand and that honest heart you gave me –

EMILIA     By that you would have pity in another,

By your own virtues infinite –

HIPPOLYTA     By valour,

By all the chaste nights I have ever pleased you –

200

THESEUS     These are strange conjurings.

PIRITHOUS     Nay, then, I’ll in too. [Kneels.]

By all our friendship, sir, by all our dangers,

By all you love most: wars, and this sweet lady –

EMILIA     By that you would have trembled to deny

A blushing maid –

HIPPOLYTA     By your own eyes, by strength,

205

In which you swore I went beyond all women,

Almost all men, and yet I yielded, Theseus –

PIRITHOUS     To crown all this, by your most noble soul,

Which cannot want due mercy, I beg first –

HIPPOLYTA     Next hear my prayers –

EMILIA     Last, let me entreat, sir –

210

PIRITHOUS     For mercy!

HIPPOLYTA     Mercy!

EMILIA     Mercy on these princes!

THESEUS     Ye make my faith reel. Say I felt

Compassion to ’em both, how would you place it?

[Emilia, Hippolyta and Pirithous rise.]

EMILIA     Upon their lives. But with their banishments.

THESEUS     You are a right woman, sister: you have pity

215

But want the understanding where to use it.

If you desire their lives, invent a way

Safer than banishment. Can these two live

And have the agony of love about ’em

And not kill one another? Every day

220

They’d fight about you; hourly bring your honour

In public question with their swords. Be wise then

And here forget ’em; it concerns your credit

And my oath equally. I have said they die.

Better they fall by th’ law than one another.

225

Bow not my honour.

EMILIA     O, my noble brother,

That oath was rashly made and in your anger.

Your reason will not hold it; if such vows

Stand for express will, all the world must perish.

Besides, I have another oath ’gainst yours,

230

Of more authority, I am sure more love,

Not made in passion neither but good heed.

THESEUS     What is it, sister?

PIRITHOUS     Urge it home, brave lady.

EMILIA     That you would ne’er deny me anything

Fit for my modest suit and your free granting.

235

I tie you to your word now; if ye fail in’t,

Think how you maim your honour. Tell me not

(For now I am set a-begging, sir, I am deaf

To all but your compassion) how their lives

Might breed the ruin of my name. Opinion!

240

Shall anything that loves me perish for me?

That were a cruel wisdom. Do men prune

The straight young boughs that blush with thousand blossoms,

Because they may be rotten? O, Duke Theseus,

The goodly mothers that have groaned for these

245

And all the longing maids that ever loved,

If your vow stand, shall curse me and my beauty

And in their funeral songs for these two cousins

Despise my cruelty and cry woe worth me,

Till I am nothing but the scorn of women.

250

For heaven’s sake, save their lives and banish ’em.

THESEUS     On what conditions?

EMILIA     Swear ’em never more

To make me their contention, or to know me,

To tread upon thy dukedom, and to be,

Wherever they shall travel, ever strangers

255

To one another.

PALAMON     I’ll be cut a-pieces

Before I take this oath! Forget I love her?

O, all ye gods, despise me then! Thy banishment

I not mislike, so we may fairly carry

Our swords and cause along; else, never trifle,

260

But take our lives, Duke; I must love and will

And, for that love, must and dare kill this cousin

On any piece the earth has.

THESEUS     Will you, Arcite,

Take these conditions?

PALAMON     He’s a villain then.

PIRITHOUS     These are men!

265

ARCITE

No, never, Duke. ’Tis worse to me than begging

To take my life so basely. Though I think

I never shall enjoy her, yet I’ll preserve

The honour of affection and die for her,

Make death a devil.

270

THESEUS

What may be done? For now I feel compassion.

PIRITHOUS     Let it not fall again, sir.

THESEUS     Say, Emilia,

If one of them were dead, as one must, are you

Content to take the other as your husband?

They cannot both enjoy you. They are princes

275

As goodly as your own eyes and as noble

As ever fame yet spoke of. Look upon ’em

And, if you can love, end this difference;

I give consent. Are you content too, princes?

PALAMON, ARCITE With all our hearts.

THESEUS     He that she refuses

280

Must die then.

PALAMON, ARCITE

     Any death thou canst invent, Duke.

PALAMON     If I fall from that mouth, I fall with favour

And lovers yet unborn shall bless my ashes.

ARCITE     If she refuse me, yet my grave will wed me

And soldiers sing my epitaph.

THESEUS [to Emilia]     Make choice, then.

285

EMILIA     I cannot, sir; they are both too excellent;

For me, a hair shall never fall of these men.

HIPPOLYTA     What will become of ’em?

THESEUS     Thus I ordain it

And by mine honour, once again, it stands,

Or both shall die. You shall both to your country

290

And each, within this month, accompanied

With three fair knights, appear again in this place,

In which I’ll plant a pyramid; and whether,

Before us that are here, can force his cousin,

By fair and knightly strength, to touch the pillar,

295

He shall enjoy her; th’other lose his head,

And all his friends. Nor shall he grudge to fall,

Nor think he dies with interest in this lady.

Will this content ye?

PALAMON     Yes. There, cousin Arcite,

[Offers his hand.]

I am friends again, till that hour.

ARCITE     I embrace ye.

300

THESEUS     Are you content, sister?

EMILIA     Yes, I must, sir,

Else both miscarry.

THESEUS     Come, shake hands again, then,

And take heed, as you are gentlemen, this quarrel

Sleep till the hour prefixed, and hold your course.

[Palamon and Arcite shake hands.]

PALAMON     We dare not fail thee, Theseus.

THESEUS     Come, I’ll give ye

305

Now usage like to princes and to friends.

When ye return, who wins, I’ll settle here;

Who loses, yet I’ll weep upon his bier.     Exeunt.

4.1 Enter Jailer and First Friend.

JAILER     Heard you no more? Was nothing said of me

Concerning the escape of Palamon?

Good sir, remember!

1FRIEND     Nothing that I heard,

For I came home before the business

Was fully ended. Yet I might perceive,

5

Ere I departed, a great likelihood

Of both their pardons. For Hippolyta

And fair-eyed Emily, upon their knees,

Begged with such handsome pity that the Duke

Methought stood staggering whether he should follow

10

His rash oath or the sweet compassion

Of those two ladies; and, to second them,

That truly noble Prince Pirithous,

Half his own heart, set in too, that I hope

All shall be well. Neither heard I one question

15

Of your name or his ’scape.

Enter Second Friend.

JAILER     Pray heaven it hold so.

2FRIEND     Be of good comfort, man; I bring you news,

Good news!

JAILER     They are welcome.

2FRIEND     Palamon has cleared you,

And got your pardon, and discovered how

And by whose means he ’scaped – which was your Daughter’s,

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Whose pardon is procured too; and the prisoner,

Not to be held ungrateful to her goodness,

Has given a sum of money to her marriage:

A large one, I’ll assure you.

JAILER     You’re a good man

And ever bring good news.

1FRIEND     How was it ended?

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2FRIEND

Why, as it should be. They that never begged

But they prevailed had their suits fairly granted:

The prisoners have their lives.

1FRIEND     I knew ’twould be so.

2FRIEND

But there be new conditions, which you’ll hear of

At better time.

JAILER     I hope they are good.

2FRIEND     They are honourable;

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How good they’ll prove, I know not.

Enter Wooer.

1FRIEND     ’Twill be known.

WOOER     [to Jailer] Alas, sir, where’s your daughter?

JAILER     Why do you ask?

WOOER     O, sir, when did you see her?

2FRIEND     How he looks!

JAILER     This morning.

WOOER     Was she well? Was she in health? Sir,

When did she sleep?

1FRIEND     These are strange questions.

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JAILER     I do not think she was very well, for now

You make me mind her: but this very day

I asked her questions, and she answered me

So far from what she was, so childishly,

So sillily, as if she were a fool,

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An innocent, and I was very angry.

But what of her, sir?

WOOER     Nothing but my pity.

But you must know it, and as good by me

As by another that less loves her.

JAILER     Well, sir?

1FRIEND     Not right?

2FRIEND     Not well?

WOOER     No sir, not well:

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’Tis too true: she is mad.

1FRIEND     It cannot be!

WOOER     Believe, you’ll find it so.

JAILER     I half suspected

What you have told me. The gods comfort her!

Either this was her love to Palamon,

Or fear of my miscarrying on his ’scape, Or both.

WOOER     ’Tis likely.

JAILER     But why all this haste, sir?

WOOER     I’ll tell you quickly. As I late was angling

In the great lake that lies behind the palace,

From the far shore, thick set with reeds and sedges,

As patiently I was attending sport,

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I heard a voice, a shrill one, and attentive

I gave my ear, when I might well perceive

’Twas one that sung and, by the smallness of it,

A boy or woman. I then left my angle

To his own skill, came near, but yet perceived not

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Who made the sound, the rushes and the reeds

Had so encompassed it. I laid me down

And listened to the words she sung, for then,

Through a small glade cut by the fishermen,

I saw it was your daughter.

JAILER     Pray go on, sir.

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WOOER     She sung much, but no sense; only I heard her

Repeat this often: ‘Palamon is gone,

Is gone to th’ wood to gather mulberries;

I’ll find him out tomorrow.’

1FRIEND     Pretty soul!

WOOER     ‘His shackles will betray him, he’ll be taken;

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And what shall I do then? I’ll bring a bevy,

A hundred black-eyed maids that love as I do,

With chaplets on their heads of daffadillies,

With cherry-lips and cheeks of damask roses,

And all we’ll dance an antic ’fore the Duke

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And beg his pardon.’ Then she talked of you, sir:

That you must lose your head tomorrow morning,

And she must gather flowers to bury you,

And see the house made handsome. Then she sung

Nothing but ‘Willow, willow, willow’ and, between,

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Ever was ‘Palamon, fair Palamon’

And ‘Palamon was a tall young man’. The place

Was knee-deep where she sat; her careless tresses

A wreath of bullrush rounded; about her stuck

Thousand fresh water-flowers of several colours,

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That methought she appeared like the fair nymph

That feeds the lake with waters, or as Iris

Newly dropped down from heaven. Rings she made

Of rushes that grew by and to ’em spoke

The prettiest posies: ‘Thus our true love’s tied’,

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‘This you may loose, not me,’ and many a one.

And then she wept, and sung again, and sighed,

And with the same breath smiled and kissed her hand.

2FRIEND Alas, what pity it is!

WOOER     I made in to her.

She saw me, and straight sought the flood; I saved her,

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And set her safe to land, when presently

She slipped away and to the city made,

With such a cry and swiftness that, believe me,

She left me far behind her. Three or four

I saw from far off cross her – one of ’em

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I knew to be your brother – where she stayed

And fell, scarce to be got away. I left them with her,

Enter Jailer’s Brother, Jailer’s Daughter and others.

And hither came to tell you. Here they are.

DAUGHTER     [Sings.]

     May you never more enjoy the light etc.

Is not this a fine song?

BROTHER     O, a very fine one.

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DAUGHTER     I can sing twenty more.

BROTHER     I think you can.

DAUGHTER     Yes, truly, can I. I can sing ‘The Broom’

And ‘Bonny Robin’. Are not you a tailor?

BROTHER     Yes.

DAUGHTER     Where’s my wedding gown?

BROTHER     I’ll bring it tomorrow.

DAUGHTER     Do, very early. I must be abroad else

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To call the maids and pay the minstrels,

For I must lose my maidenhead by cocklight;

’Twill never thrive else.

[Sings.]     O fair, O sweet etc.

BROTHER     [to Jailer]

You must e’en take it patiently.

JAILER     ’Tis true.

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DAUGHTER

Good ev’n, good men; pray, did you ever hear

Of one young Palamon?

JAILER     Yes, wench, we know him.

DAUGHTER     Is’t not a fine young gentleman?

JAILER     ’Tis, love.

BROTHER

By no means cross her, she is then distempered

Far worse than now she shows.

1FRIEND [to Daughter]     Yes, he’s a fine man.

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DAUGHTER     O, is he so? You have a sister.

1FRIEND     Yes.

DAUGHTER     But she shall never have him – tell her so –

For a trick that I know; you’d best look to her,

For if she see him once, she’s gone; she’s done,

And undone, in an hour. All the young maids

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Of our town are in love with him, but I laugh at ’em

And let ’em all alone; is’t not a wise course?

1FRIEND     Yes.

DAUGHTER

There is at least two hundred now with child by him –

There must be four – yet I keep close for all this,

Close as a cockle; and all these must be boys

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(He has the trick on’t) and at ten years old

They must be all gelt for musicians

And sing the wars of Theseus.

2FRIEND     This is strange.

DAUGHTER     As ever you heard, but say nothing.

1FRIEND     No.

DAUGHTER

They come from all parts of the dukedom to him.

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I’ll warrant ye, he had not so few last night

As twenty to dispatch – he’ll tickle’t up

In two hours, if his hand be in.

JAILER     She’s lost

Past all cure.

BROTHER     Heaven forbid, man!

DAUGHTER [to Jailer]     Come hither!

You are a wise man.

1FRIEND [aside] Does she know him?

2FRIEND [aside]     No.

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Would she did!

DAUGHTER     You are master of a ship?

JAILER     Yes.

DAUGHTER     Where’s your compass?

JAILER     Here.

DAUGHTER     Set it to th’ north.

And now direct your course to th’ wood, where Palamon

Lies longing for me. For the tackling,

Let me alone; come, weigh, my hearts, cheerily!

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ALL     [severally]

Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!

’Tis up! – The wind’s fair! – Top the bowline! –

Out with the mainsail! – Where’s your whistle, master?

BROTHER     Let’s get her in.

JAILER     Up to the top, boy.

BROTHER     Where’s the pilot?

1FRIEND     Here.

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DAUGHTER     What kenn’st thou?

2FRIEND     A fair wood.

DAUGHTER     Bear for it, master;

Tack about!

[Sings.] When Cynthia with her borrowed light etc.

Exeunt.

4.2 Enter EMILIA alone, with two pictures.

EMILIA

Yet I may bind those wounds up, that must open

And bleed to death for my sake else; I’ll choose,

And end their strife. Two such young, handsome men

Shall never fall for me; their weeping mothers,

Following the dead cold ashes of their sons,

5

Shall never curse my cruelty.

[Looks at one of the pictures.] Good heaven,

What a sweet face has Arcite! If wise Nature,

With all her best endowments, all those beauties

She sows into the births of noble bodies,

Were here a mortal woman and had in her

10

The coy denials of young maids, yet, doubtless,

She would run mad for this man. What an eye,

Of what a fiery sparkle and quick sweetness,

Has this young prince! Here Love himself sits smiling;

Just such another wanton Ganymede

15

Set Jove afire with, and enforced the god

Snatch up the goodly boy and set him by him,

A shining constellation. What a brow,

Of what a spacious majesty, he carries,

Arched like the great-eyed Juno’s, but far sweeter,

20

Smoother than Pelops’ shoulder! Fame and Honour,

Methinks, from hence, as from a promontory

Pointed in heaven, should clap their wings and sing,

To all the under-world, the loves and fights

Of gods and such men near ’em.

[Looks at the other picture.] Palamon

25

Is but his foil; to him, a mere dull shadow;

He’s swart and meagre, of an eye as heavy

As if he had lost his mother; a still temper;

No stirring in him, no alacrity;

Of all this sprightly sharpness, not a smile.

30

Yet these that we count errors may become him:

Narcissus was a sad boy, but a heavenly.

– ‘O, who can find the bent of woman’s fancy?’

I am a fool, my reason is lost in me,

I have no choice, and I have lied so lewdly

35

That women ought to beat me. On my knees,

I ask thy pardon, Palamon: thou art alone

And only beautiful, and these the eyes,

These the bright lamps of beauty, that command

And threaten love, and what young maid dare cross ’em?

40

What a bold gravity, and yet inviting,

Has this brown manly face! O Love, this only,

From this hour, is complexion!

[Lays Arcite’s picture down.] Lie there, Arcite;

Thou art a changeling to him, a mere gypsy,

And this the noble body. – I am sotted,

45

Utterly lost. My virgin’s faith has fled me.

For if my brother but even now had asked me

Whether I loved, I had run mad for Arcite;

Now, if my sister, more for Palamon.

Stand both together. Now, come ask me, brother.

50

‘Alas, I know not!’ Ask me now, sweet sister.

‘I may go look.’ What a mere child is Fancy,

That, having two fair gauds of equal sweetness,

Cannot distinguish, but must cry for both!

Enter Gentleman.

How now, sir?

GENTLEMAN     From the noble Duke your brother,

55

Madam, I bring you news. The knights are come.

EMILIA     To end the quarrel?

GENTLEMAN     Yes.

EMILIA     Would I might end first!

What sins have I committed, chaste Diana,

That my unspotted youth must now be soiled

With blood of princes, and my chastity

60

Be made the altar where the lives of lovers –

Two greater and two better never yet

Made mothers joy – must be the sacrifice

To my unhappy beauty?

Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PIRITHOUS and attendants.

THESEUS     Bring ’em in

Quickly, by any means; I long to see ’em.

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[to Emilia] Your two contending lovers are returned,

And with them their fair knights. Now, my fair sister,

You must love one of them.

EMILIA     I had rather both;

So neither for my sake should fall untimely.

THESEUS     Who saw ’em?

PIRITHOUS     I a while.

GENTLEMAN     And I.

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Enter Messenger.

THESEUS     From whence come you, sir?

MESSENGER     From the knights.

THESEUS     Pray speak,

You that have seen them, what they are.

MESSENGER     I will, sir,

And truly what I think. Six braver spirits

Than these they have brought, if we judge by the outside,

I never saw nor read of. He that stands

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In the first place with Arcite, by his seeming

Should be a stout man, by his face a prince,

His very looks so say him: his complexion

Nearer a brown than black, stern, and yet noble,

Which shows him hardy, fearless, proud of dangers.

80

The circles of his eyes show fire within him,

And as a heated lion so he looks.

His hair hangs long behind him, black and shining

Like ravens’ wings; his shoulders broad and strong;

Armed long and round, and on his thigh a sword,

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Hung by a curious baldrick, when he frowns,

To seal his will with. Better o’ my conscience

Was never soldier’s friend.

THESEUS     Thou hast well described him.

PIRITHOUS     Yet a great deal short,

Methinks, of him that’s first with Palamon.

90

THESEUS     Pray, speak him, friend.

PIRITHOUS     I guess he is a prince too,

And, if it may be, greater; for his show

Has all the ornament of honour in’t.

He’s somewhat bigger than the knight he spoke of,

But of a face far sweeter. His complexion

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Is, as a ripe grape, ruddy; he has felt

Without doubt what he fights for, and so apter

To make this cause his own. In’s face appears

All the fair hopes of what he undertakes

And, when he’s angry, then a settled valour,

100

Not tainted with extremes, runs through his body

And guides his arm to brave things. Fear he cannot;

He shows no such soft temper. His head’s yellow,

Hard-haired, and curled, thick-twined like ivy tods,

Not to undo with thunder. In his face

105

The livery of the warlike maid appears,

Pure red and white, for yet no beard has blessed him;

And in his rolling eyes sits Victory,

As if she ever meant to court his valour.

His nose stands high, a character of honour;

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His red lips, after fights, are fit for ladies.

EMILIA     Must these men die too?

PIRITHOUS     When he speaks, his tongue

Sounds like a trumpet. All his lineaments

Are as a man would wish ’em, strong and clean;

He wears a well-steeled axe, the staff of gold;

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His age some five-and-twenty.

MESSENGER     There’s another,

A little man, but of a tough soul, seeming

As great as any; fairer promises

In such a body yet I never looked on.

PIRITHOUS     O, he that’s freckle-faced?

MESSENGER     The same, my lord.

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Are they not sweet ones?

PIRITHOUS     Yes, they are well.

MESSENGER     Methinks,

Being so few and well disposed, they show

Great and fine art in nature. He’s white-haired,

Not wanton white, but such a manly colour,

Next to an auburn; tough and nimble set,

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Which shows an active soul; his arms are brawny,

Lined with strong sinews. To the shoulder piece,

Gently they swell, like women new-conceived,

Which speaks him prone to labour, never fainting

Under the weight of arms; stout-hearted, still,

130

But when he stirs, a tiger. He’s grey-eyed,

Which yields compassion where he conquers; sharp

To spy advantages and, where he finds ’em,

He’s swift to make ’em his. He does no wrongs,

Nor takes none; he’s round-faced and when he smiles

135

He shows a lover; when he frowns, a soldier.

About his head he wears the winner’s oak

And in it stuck the favour of his lady.

His age, some six-and-thirty. In his hand

He bears a charging-staff, embossed with silver.

140

THESEUS     Are they all thus?

PIRITHOUS     They are all the sons of honour.

THESEUS     Now, as I have a soul, I long to see ’em.

[to Hippolyta] Lady, you shall see men fight now.

HIPPOLYTA     I wish it,

But not the cause, my lord. They would show bravely

Fighting about the titles of two kingdoms.

145

’Tis pity love should be so tyrannous.

– O, my soft-hearted sister, what think you?

Weep not, till they weep blood. Wench, it must be.

THESEUS

You have steeled ’em with your beauty.

[to Pirithous]     Honoured friend,

To you I give the field; pray order it

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Fitting the persons that must use it.

PIRITHOUS     Yes, sir.

THESEUS     Come, I’ll go visit ’em! I cannot stay –

Their fame has fir’d me so; till they appear,

Good friend, be royal.

PIRITHOUS     There shall want no bravery.

     Exeunt all but Emilia.

EMILIA     Poor wench, go weep, for whosoever wins

155

Loses a noble cousin, for thy sins.     Exit.

4.3 Enter Jailer, Wooer and Doctor.

DOCTOR     Her distraction is more at some time of the

moon than at other some, is it not?

JAILER     She is continually in a harmless distemper:

sleeps little; altogether without appetite, save often

drinking; dreaming of another world and a better; and,

5

what broken piece of matter soe’er she’s about, the

name Palamon lards it, that she farces every business

withall, fits it to every question.

Enter Jailer’s Daughter.

Look where she comes; you shall perceive her

behaviour.

10

DAUGHTER     I have forgot it quite. The burden on’t was

‘Down-a, down-a’ and penned by no worse man than

Giraldo, Emilia’s Schoolmaster; he’s as fantastical too

as ever he may go upon’s legs – for in the next world

will Dido see Palamon, and then will she be out of love

15

with Aeneas.

DOCTOR     What stuff’s here? Poor soul!

JAILER     Even thus all day long.

DAUGHTER     Now for this charm that I told you of: you

must bring a piece of silver on the tip of your tongue,

20

or no ferry. Then if it be your chance to come where

the blessed spirits are, there’s a sight now! We maids

that have our livers perished, cracked to pieces with

love, we shall come there and do nothing all day long

but pick flowers with Proserpine. Then will I make

25

PALAMON a nosegay; then let him mark me – then.

DOCTOR     How prettily she’s amiss! Note her a little

further.

DAUGHTER     Faith, I’ll tell you, sometime we go to

barley-break, we of the blessed. Alas, ’tis a sore life

30

they have i’th’ other place – such burning, frying,

boiling, hissing, howling, chattering, cursing: oh, they

have shrewd measure; take heed! If one be mad, or

hang or drown themselves, there they go – Jupiter

bless us! – and there shall we be put in a cauldron of

35

lead and usurers’ grease, amongst a whole million of

cutpurses, and there boil like a gammon of bacon that

will never be enough.

DOCTOR     How her brain coins!

DAUGHTER     Lords and courtiers that have got maids

40

with child, they are in this place. They shall stand in

fire up to the navel and in ice up to the heart, and there

th’offending part burns and the deceiving part freezes.

In troth, a very grievous punishment, as one would

think, for such a trifle. Believe me, one would marry a

45

leprous witch to be rid on’t, I’ll assure you.

DOCTOR     How she continues this fancy! ’Tis not an

engrafted madness but a most thick and profound

melancholy.

DAUGHTER     To hear there a proud lady and a proud city

50

wife, howl together! I were a beast an I’d call it good

sport. One cries, ‘O, this smoke!’, another, ‘This fire!’

One cries, ‘O, that ever I did it behind the arras!’ and

then howls; th’other curses a suing fellow and her

garden house.

55

Sings. I will be true, my stars, my fate etc.     Exit.

JAILER     What think you of her, sir?

DOCTOR     I think she has a perturbed mind, which I

cannot minister to.

JAILER     Alas, what then?

60

DOCTOR     Understand you she ever affected any man ere

she beheld Palamon?

JAILER     I was once, sir, in great hope she had fixed her

liking on this gentleman, my friend.

WOOER     I did think so too, and would account I had a

65

great penn’orth on’t, to give half my state that both

she and I at this present stood unfeignedly on the same

terms.

DOCTOR     That intemperate surfeit of her eye hath

distempered the other senses; they may return and

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settle again to execute their preordained faculties, but

they are now in a most extravagant vagary. This you

must do. Confine her to a place where the light may

rather seem to steal in than be permitted. Take upon

you, young sir her friend, the name of Palamon; say

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you come to eat with her and to commune of love.

This will catch her attention, for this her mind beats

upon; other objects that are inserted ’tween her mind

and eye become the pranks and friskins of her

madness. Sing to her such green songs of love as she

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says Palamon hath sung in prison. Come to her stuck

in as sweet flowers as the season is mistress of and

thereto make an addition of some other compounded

odours which are grateful to the sense. All this shall

become Palamon, for Palamon can sing, and Palamon

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is sweet and every good thing. Desire to eat with her,

carve her, drink to her and, still among, intermingle

your petition of grace and acceptance into her favour.

Learn what maids have been her companions and

play-feres and let them repair to her with Palamon in

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their mouths, and appear with tokens, as if they

suggested for him. It is a falsehood she is in, which is

with falsehoods to be combated. This may bring her to

eat, to sleep, and reduce what’s now out of square in

her into their former law and regiment. I have seen it

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approved, how many times I know not, but to make

the number more I have great hope in this. I will,

between the passages of this project, come in with my

appliance. Let us put it in execution and hasten the

success, which, doubt not, will bring forth comfort.

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Exeunt.

5.1 Flourish. Enter THESEUS, PIRITHOUS, HIPPOLYTA, attendants.

THESEUS     Now let ’em enter and before the gods

Tender their holy prayers. Let the temples

Burn bright with sacred fires and the altars

In hallowed clouds commend their swelling incense

To those above us. Let no due be wanting.

5

They have a noble work in hand, will honour

The very powers that love ’em.

Flourish of cornets. Enter PALAMON and ARCITE and their knights.

PIRITHOUS     Sir, they enter.

THESEUS     You valiant and strong-hearted enemies,

You royal german foes, that this day come

To blow that nearness out that flames between ye:

10

Lay by your anger for an hour and, dove-like,

Before the holy altars of your helpers,

The all-feared gods, bow down your stubborn bodies.

Your ire is more than mortal; so your help be;

And, as the gods regard ye, fight with justice.

15

I’ll leave you to your prayers and betwixt ye

I part my wishes.

PIRITHOUS     Honour crown the worthiest.

     Exeunt Theseus and his train.

PALAMON     The glass is running now that cannot finish

Till one of us expire. Think you but thus:

That were there aught in me which strove to show

20

Mine enemy in this business, were’t one eye

Against another, arm oppressed by arm,

I would destroy th’offender, coz, I would,

Though parcel of myself. Then from this gather

How I should tender you.

ARCITE     I am in labour

25

To push your name, your ancient love, our kindred

Out of my memory and i’th’ selfsame place

To seat something I would confound. So hoist we

The sails that must these vessels port, even where

The heavenly limiter pleases.

PALAMON     You speak well.

30

Before I turn, let me embrace thee, cousin.

This I shall never do again.

ARCITE     One farewell.

PALAMON     Why, let it be so. Farewell, coz.

ARCITE     Farewell, sir.

     Exeunt Palamon and his knights.

[Arcite addresses his three knights.]

Knights, kinsmen, lovers – yea, my sacrifices –

True worshippers of Mars, whose spirit in you

35

Expels the seeds of fear and th’apprehension

Which still is father of it: go with me

Before the god of our profession; there

Require of him the hearts of lions and

The breath of tigers, yea the fierceness too,

40

Yea, the speed also – to go on, I mean:

Else wish we to be snails. You know my prize

Must be dragged out of blood; force and great feat

Must put my garland on, where she sticks

The queen of flowers. Our intercession then

45

Must be to him that makes the camp a cistern

Brimmed with the blood of men. Give me your aid

And bend your spirits towards him.

[They prostrate themselves before the altar, then kneel.]

Thou mighty one, that with thy power hast turned

Green Neptune into purple; whose approach

50

Comets prewarn; whose havoc in vast field

Unearthed skulls proclaim; whose breath blows down

The teeming Ceres’ foison; who dost pluck

With hand armipotent from forth blue clouds

The masoned turrets; that both mak’st and break’st

55

The stony girths of cities: me thy pupil,

Youngest follower of thy drum, instruct this day

With military skill, that to thy laud

I may advance my streamer and by thee

Be styled the lord o’th’ day. Give me, great Mars,

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Some token of thy pleasure.

[Here they fall on their faces, as formerly, and there is heard clanging of armour, with a short thunder, as the burst of a battle, whereupon they all rise and bow to the altar.]

O great corrector of enormous times;

Shaker of o’er-rank states; thou grand decider

Of dusty and old titles, that heal’st with blood

The earth when it is sick and cur’st the world

65

O’th’ pleurisy of people: I do take

Thy signs auspiciously and in thy name

To my design march boldly. Let us go.

     Exeunt Arcite and his knights.

Enter PALAMON and his knights, with the former observance.

PALAMON     Our stars must glister with new fire or be

Today extinct. Our argument is love,

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Which, if the goddess of it grant, she gives

Victory too; then blend your spirits with mine,

You whose free nobleness do make my cause

Your personal hazard. To the goddess Venus

Commend we our proceeding and implore

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Her power unto our party.

[Here they kneel as formerly.]

Hail, sovereign queen of secrets, who hast power

To call the fiercest tyrant from his rage

And weep unto a girl; that hast the might,

Even with an eye-glance, to choke Mars’s drum

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And turn th’alarm to whispers; that canst make

A cripple flourish with his crutch and cure him

Before Apollo; that mayst force the king

To be his subject’s vassal and induce

Stale gravity to dance! The polled bachelor –

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Whose youth, like wanton boys through bonfires,

Have skipped thy flame – at seventy, thou canst catch

And make him, to the scorn of his hoarse throat,

Abuse young lays of love. What godlike power

Hast thou not power upon? To Phoebus thou

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Add’st flames hotter than his: the heavenly fires

Did scorch his mortal son, thine him; the huntress

All moist and cold, some say, began to throw

Her bow away and sigh. Take to thy grace

Me thy vowed soldier, who do bear thy yoke

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As ’twere a wreath of roses, yet is heavier

Than lead itself, stings more than nettles.

I have never been foul-mouthed against thy law;

Ne’er revealed secret, for I knew none – would not,

Had I kenned all there were. I never practised

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Upon man’s wife nor would the libels read

Of liberal wits. I never at great feasts

Sought to betray a beauty, but have blushed

At simpering sirs that did. I have been harsh

To large confessors and have hotly asked them

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If they had mothers – I had one, a woman,

And women ’twere they wronged. I knew a man

Of eighty winters, this I told them, who

A lass of fourteen brided. ’Twas thy power

To put life into dust: the aged cramp

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Had screwed his square foot round;

The gout had knit his fingers into knots;

Torturing convulsions from his globy eyes

Had almost drawn their spheres, that what was life

In him seemed torture. This anatomy

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Had by his young fair fere a boy, and I

Believed it was his, for she swore it was –

And who would not believe her? Brief, I am,

To those that prate and have done, no companion;

To those that boast and have not, a defier;

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To those that would and cannot, a rejoicer.

Yea, him I do not love that tells close offices

The foulest way nor names concealments in

The boldest language. Such a one I am

And vow that lover never yet made sigh

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Truer than I. O, then, most soft sweet goddess,

Give me the victory of this question, which

Is true love’s merit, and bless me with a sign

Of thy great pleasure.

[Here music is heard; doves are seen to flutter. They fall

again upon their faces, then rise to their knees.]

O thou that from eleven to ninety reign’st

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In mortal bosoms, whose chase is this world

And we in herds thy game: I give thee thanks

For this fair token, which, being laid unto

Mine innocent true heart, arms in assurance

My body to this business. Let us rise

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And bow before the goddess. [They rise and bow.]

     Time comes on.

     Exeunt Palamon and his knights.

Still music of recorders. Enter EMILIA in white, her hair about her shoulders, wearing a wheaten wreath. One maid in white holding up her train, her hair stuck with flowers.

One maid before her carrying a silver hind, in which is conveyed incense and sweet odours, which being set upon the altar, her maids standing aloof, she sets fire to it. Then they curtsey and kneel.

EMILIA     O sacred, shadowy, cold and constant queen,

Abandoner of revels, mute contemplative,

Sweet, solitary, white as chaste, and pure

As wind-fanned snow, who to thy female knights

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Allow’st no more blood than will make a blush,

Which is their order’s robe: I here, thy priest,

Am humbled ’fore thine altar. O, vouchsafe

With that thy rare green eye, which never yet

Beheld thing maculate, look on thy virgin;

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And, sacred silver mistress, lend thine ear,

Which ne’er heard scurrile term, into whose port

Ne’er entered wanton sound, to my petition

Seasoned with holy fear. This is my last

Of vestal office. I am bride-habited,

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But maiden-hearted; a husband I have ’pointed,

But do not know him. Out of two, I should

Choose one and pray for his success, but I

Am guiltless of election. Of mine eyes,

Were I to lose one, they are equal precious;

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I could doom neither: that which perished should

Go to’t unsentenced. Therefore, most modest Queen,

He of the two pretenders that best loves me

And has the truest title in’t, let him

Take off my wheaten garland, or else grant

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The file and quality I hold I may

Continue in thy band.

[Here the hind vanishes under the altar and in the place

ascends a rose tree, having one rose upon it.]

See what our general of ebbs and flows,

Out from the bowels of her holy altar,

With sacred art advances: but one rose!

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If well inspired, this battle shall confound

Both these brave knights and I, a virgin flower,

Must grow alone, unplucked.

[Here is heard a sudden twang of instruments, and the

rose falls from the tree, which then descends.]

The flower is fall’n; the tree descends. O, mistress,

Thou here dischargest me; I shall be gathered –

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I think so – but I know not thine own will;

Unclasp thy mystery! – I hope she’s pleased;

Her signs were gracious.     They curtsey and exeunt.

5.2 Enter Doctor, Jailer and Wooer in the habit of Palamon.

DOCTOR

Has this advice I told you done any good upon her?

WOOER

O, very much. The maids that kept her company

Have half persuaded her that I am Palamon.

Within this half hour she came smiling to me

And asked me what I would eat and when I would kiss her.

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I told her, ‘Presently!’ and kissed her twice.

DOCTOR

’Twas well done. Twenty times had been far better,

For there the cure lies mainly.

WOOER     Then she told me

She would watch with me tonight, for well she knew

What hour my fit would take me.

DOCTOR     Let her do so.

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And, when your fit comes, fit her home, and presently.

WOOER     She would have me sing.

DOCTOR     You did so?

WOOER     No.

DOCTOR     ’     Twas very ill-done then;

You should observe her every way.

WOOER     Alas,

I have no voice, sir, to confirm her that way.

15

DOCTOR     That’s all one, if ye make a noise.

If she entreat again, do anything.

Lie with her if she ask you.

JAILER     Whoa there, Doctor!

DOCTOR     Yes, in the way of cure.

JAILER     But first, by your leave,

I’th’ way of honesty.

DOCTOR     That’s but a niceness.

20

Ne’er cast your child away for honesty.

Cure her first this way; then if she will be honest,

She has the path before her.

JAILER     Thank ye, Doctor.

DOCTOR     Pray bring her in and let’s see how she is.

JAILER     I will, and tell her

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Her Palamon stays for her. But, Doctor,

Methinks you are i’th’ wrong still.     Exit Jailer.

DOCTOR     Go, go,

You fathers are fine fools. Her honesty?

An we should give her physic till we find that!

WOOER     Why, do you think she is not honest, sir?

30

DOCTOR     How old is she?

WOOER     She’s eighteen.

DOCTOR     She may be,

But that’s all one, ’tis nothing to our purpose.

Whate’er her father says, if you perceive

Her mood inclining that way that I spoke of,

Videlicet, the ‘way of flesh’ – you have me?

35

WOOER     Yes, very well, sir.

DOCTOR     Please her appetite

And do it home, it cures her, ipso facto,

The melancholy humour that infects her.

WOOER     I am of your mind, Doctor.

Enter Jailer, Daughter and maid.

DOCTOR     You’ll find it so. She comes; pray, humour her.

40

JAILER     Come, your love Palamon stays for you, child,

And has done this long hour, to visit you.

DAUGHTER     I thank him for his gentle patience;

He’s a kind gentleman and I am much bound to him.

Did you ne’er see the horse he gave me?

JAILER     Yes.

45

DAUGHTER     How do you like him?

JAILER     He’s a very fair one.

DAUGHTER     You never saw him dance?

JAILER     No.

DAUGHTER     I have, often.

He dances very finely, very comely,

And for a jig, come cut and long tail to him,

He turns ye like a top.

JAILER     That’s fine indeed.

50

DAUGHTER

He’ll dance the morris twenty mile an hour –

And that will founder the best hobby-horse,

If I have any skill, in all the parish –

And gallops to the tune of ‘Light o’ love’.

What think you of this horse?

JAILER     Having these virtues,

55

I think he might be brought to play at tennis.

DAUGHTER     Alas, that’s nothing.

JAILER     Can he read and write too?

DAUGHTER

A very fair hand, and casts himself th’accounts

Of all his hay and provender. That ostler

Must rise betimes that cozens him. You know

60

The chestnut mare the Duke has?

JAILER     Very well.

DAUGHTER

She is horribly in love with him, poor beast!

But he is like his master, coy and scornful.

JAILER     What dowry has she?

DAUGHTER     Some two hundred bottles

And twenty strike of oats – but he’ll ne’er have her.

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He lisps in’s neighing, able to entice

A miller’s mare. He’ll be the death of her.

DOCTOR     What stuff she utters!

JAILER     Make curtsey, here your love comes.

[Wooer comes forward and bows.]

WOOER     Pretty soul,

How do ye? [She curtseys.]

     That’s a fine maid! There’s a curtsey!

70

DAUGHTER     Yours to command i’th’ way of honesty.

How far is’t now to th’end o’th’ world, my masters?

DOCTOR     Why, a day’s journey, wench.

DAUGHTER [to Wooer]     Will you go with me?

WOOER     What shall we do there, wench?

DAUGHTER     Why, play at stool-ball;

What is there else to do?

WOOER     I am content,

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If we shall keep our wedding there.

DAUGHTER     ’Tis true,

For there, I will assure you, we shall find

Some blind priest for the purpose, that will venture

To marry us, for here they are nice and foolish.

Besides, my father must be hanged tomorrow

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And that would be a blot i’th’ business.

Are not you Palamon?

WOOER     Do not you know me?

DAUGHTER     Yes, but you care not for me. I have nothing

But this poor petticoat and two coarse smocks.

WOOER     That’s all one; I will have you.

DAUGHTER     Will you surely?

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WOOER     Yes, by this fair hand, will I. [Takes her hand.]

DAUGHTER     We’ll to bed then.

WOOER     E’en when you will. [Kisses her.]

DAUGHTER     [Rubs off the kiss.]

     O, sir, you would fain be nibbling.

WOOER     Why do you rub my kiss off?

DAUGHTER     ’Tis a sweet one

And will perfume me finely against the wedding.

Is not this your cousin Arcite? [Indicates the Doctor.]

DOCTOR     Yes, sweetheart,

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And I am glad my cousin Palamon

Has made so fair a choice.

DAUGHTER [to Doctor]     Do you think he’ll have me?

DOCTOR     Yes, without doubt.

DAUGHTER     [to Jailer] Do you think so too?

JAILER     Yes.

DAUGHTER     We shall have many children.

[to Doctor]     Lord, how you’re grown!

My Palamon, I hope, will grow too, finely,

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Now he’s at liberty. Alas, poor chicken,

He was kept down with hard meat and ill lodging!

But I’ll kiss him up again.

Enter Messenger.

MESSENGER

What do you here? You’ll lose the noblest sight

That e’er was seen.

JAILER     Are they i’th’ field?

MESSENGER     They are.

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You bear a charge there too.

JAILER     I’ll away straight.

I must e’en leave you here.

DOCTOR     Nay, we’ll go with you;

I will not lose the sight.

JAILER [to Doctor]     How did you like her?

DOCTOR

I’ll warrant you, within these three or four days

I’ll make her right again.     Exit Jailer with Messenger.

[to Wooer]     You must not from her,

105

But still preserve her in this way.

WOOER     I will.

DOCTOR     Let’s get her in.

WOOER     [to Daughter] Come, sweet, we’ll go to dinner

And then we’ll play at cards.

DAUGHTER     And shall we kiss too?

WOOER     An hundred times.

DAUGHTER     And twenty?

WOOER     Ay, and twenty.

DAUGHTER     And then we’ll sleep together.

DOCTOR     Take her offer.

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WOOER     [to Daughter] Yes, marry, will we.

DAUGHTER     But you shall not hurt me.

WOOER     I will not, sweet.

DAUGHTER     If you do, love, I’ll cry. Exeunt.

5.3 Flourish. Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, EMILIA, PIRITHOUS and attendants.

EMILIA     I’ll no step further.

PIRITHOUS     Will you lose this sight?

EMILIA     I had rather see a wren hawk at a fly

Than this decision. Every blow that falls

Threats a brave life; each stroke laments

The place whereon it falls and sounds more like

5

A bell than blade. I will stay here.

It is enough my hearing shall be punished

With what shall happen, ’gainst the which there is

No deafing, but to hear, not taint mine eye

With dread sights it may shun.

PIRITHOUS [to Theseus]      Sir, my good lord,

10

Your sister will no further.

THESEUS     O, she must.

She shall see deeds of honour in their kind,

Which sometime show well, pencilled. Nature now

Shall make and act the story, the belief

Both sealed with eye and ear.

[to Emilia]     You must be present:

15

You are the victor’s meed, the prize and garland

To crown the question’s title.

EMILIA     Pardon me;

If I were there, I’d wink.

THESEUS     You must be there:

This trial is as ’twere i’th’ night, and you

The only star to shine.

EMILIA     I am extinct.

20

There is but envy in that light which shows

The one the other. Darkness, which ever was

The dam of horror, who does stand accursed

Of many mortal millions, may even now,

By casting her black mantle over both

25

That neither could find other, get herself

Some part of a good name and many a murder

Set off whereto she’s guilty.

HIPPOLYTA     You must go.

EMILIA     In faith, I will not.

THESEUS     Why, the knights must kindle

Their valour at your eye. Know, of this war

30

You are the treasure and must needs be by

To give the service pay.

EMILIA     Sir, pardon me;

The title of a kingdom may be tried

Out of itself.

THESEUS     Well, well, then, at your pleasure.

Those that remain with you could wish their office

35

To any of their enemies.

HIPPOLYTA     Farewell, sister.

I am like to know your husband ’fore yourself

By some small start of time; he whom the gods

Do of the two know best, I pray them he

Be made your lot.     Exeunt all but Emilia.

40

EMILIA     Arcite is gently visaged, yet his eye

Is like an engine bent, or a sharp weapon

In a soft sheath; mercy and manly courage

Are bedfellows in his visage. Palamon

Has a most menacing aspect; his brow

45

Is graved and seems to bury what it frowns on,

Yet sometime ’tis not so, but alters to

The quality of his thoughts. Long time his eye

Will dwell upon his object. Melancholy

Becomes him nobly. So does Arcite’s mirth.

50

But Palamon’s sadness is a kind of mirth,

So mingled as if mirth did make him sad

And sadness merry. Those darker humours that

Stick misbecomingly on others, on them

Live in fair dwelling.

55

     [Cornets. Trumpets sound as to a charge.]

Hark how yon spurs to spirit do incite

The princes to their proof! Arcite may win me

And yet may Palamon wound Arcite to

The spoiling of his figure. O, what pity

Enough for such a chance? If I were by

60

I might do hurt, for they would glance their eyes

Toward my seat and in that motion might

Omit a ward or forfeit an offence

Which craved that very time. It is much better

I am not there.

     [Cornets; a great cry and noise within, crying, ‘ A Palamon!’]

O, better never born

65

Than minister to such harm!

Enter Servant.

     What is the chance?

SERVANT     The cry’s ‘A Palamon!’

EMILIA     Then he has won.

’Twas ever likely.

He looked all grace and success and he is

Doubtless the prim’st of men. I prithee, run

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And tell me how it goes.

     [Shout, and cornets; cries of ‘ A Palamon!’]

SERVANT     Still ‘Palamon’!

EMILIA     Run and enquire.     Exit Servant.

     Poor servant, thou hast lost.

Upon my right side still I wore thy picture,

PALAMON’s on the left. Why so, I know not;

I had no end in’t else; chance would have it so.

75

On the sinister side the heart lies. Palamon

Had the best-boding chance.

     [Another cry and shout within, and cornets.]

     This burst of clamour

Is sure th’end o’th’ combat.

Enter Servant.

SERVANT     They said that Palamon had Arcite’s body

Within an inch o’th’ pyramid, that the cry

80

Was general, ‘A Palamon!’ But anon

Th’assistants made a brave redemption and

The two bold titlers at this instant are

Hand to hand at it.

EMILIA     Were they metamorphosed

Both into one! – O, why? There were no woman

85

Worth so composed a man: their single share,

Their nobleness peculiar to them, gives

The prejudice of disparity, value’s shortness,

To any lady breathing.

     [Cornets. Cry within, ‘ Arcite! Arcite!’]

     More exulting?

‘Palamon’ still?

SERVANT          Nay, now the sound is ‘Arcite!’

90

EMILIA     I prithee, lay attention to the cry.

     [Cornets; a great shout and cry, ‘ Arcite! Victory!’]

Set both thine ears to th’ business.

SERVANT     The cry is

‘Arcite and victory!’ Hark! ‘Arcite! Victory!’

The combat’s consummation is proclaim’d

By the wind instruments.

EMILIA     Half-sights saw

95

That Arcite was no babe. God’s lid, his richness

And costliness of spirit looked through him; it could

No more be hid in him than fire in flax,

Than humble banks can go to law with waters

That drift winds force to raging. I did think

100

Good Palamon would miscarry, yet I knew not

Why I did think so. Our reasons are not prophets

When oft our fancies are.     [Cornets.]

     They are coming off.

Alas, poor Palamon!

Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PIRITHOUS, ARCITE (as victor) and attendants.

THESEUS     Lo, where our sister is in expectation,

105

Yet quaking and unsettled. – Fairest Emily,

The gods by their divine arbitrament

Have given you this knight; he is a good one

As ever struck at head. Give me your hands:

Receive you her, you him, be plighted with

110

A love that grows as you decay.

ARCITE     Emilia,

To buy you, I have lost what’s dearest to me,

Save what is bought; and yet I purchase cheaply,

As I do rate your value.

THESEUS     O, loved sister,

He speaks now of as brave a knight as e’er

115

Did spur a noble steed. Surely the gods

Would have him die a bachelor, lest his race

Should show i’th world too godlike. His behaviour

So charmed me that methought Alcides was

To him a sow of lead. If I could praise

120

Each part of him to th’all I have spoke, your Arcite

Did not lose by’t. For he that was thus good

Encountered yet his better. I have heard

Two emulous Philomels beat the ear o’th’ night

With their contentious throats, now one the higher,

125

Anon the other, then again the first,

And by and by out-breasted, that the sense

Could not be judge between ’em. So it fared

Good space between these kinsmen, till heavens did

Make hardly one the winner.

[to Arcite]     Wear the garland

130

With joy that you have won. – For the subdued,

Give them our present justice, since I know

Their lives but pinch ’em. Let it here be done.

The scene’s not for our seeing; go we hence,

Right joyful, with some sorrow.

[to Arcite]     Arm your prize;

135

I know you will not loose her. – Hippolyta,

I see one eye of yours conceives a tear,

The which it will deliver. [Flourish.]

EMILIA     Is this winning?

O, all you heavenly powers, where is your mercy?

But that your wills have said it must be so,

140

And charge me live to comfort this unfriended,

This miserable prince, that cuts away

A life more worthy from him than all women,

I should and would die too.

HIPPOLYTA     Infinite pity

That four such eyes should be so fixed on one

145

That two must needs be blind for’t.

THESEUS     So it is.     Exeunt.

5.4 Enter PALAMON and his Knights, pinioned; Jailer, executioner, guard and others, carrying a block and axe.

PALAMON     There’s many a man alive that has outlived

The love o’th’ people; yea, i’th’ selfsame state

Stands many a father with his child. Some comfort

We have by so considering. We expire

And not without men’s pity; to live still,

5

Have their good wishes. We prevent

The loathsome misery of age, beguile

The gout and rheum that in lag hours attend

For grey approachers; we come towards the gods

Young and unwappered, not halting under crimes

10

Many and stale. That sure shall please the gods,

Sooner than such, to give us nectar with ’em,

For we are more clear spirits.

[to Knights]     My dear kinsmen,

Whose lives for this poor comfort are laid down,

You have sold ’em too, too cheap.

1KNIGHT     What ending could be

15

Of more content? O’er us the victors have

Fortune, whose title is as momentary

As to us death is certain. A grain of honour

They not o’erweigh us.

2KNIGHT     Let us bid farewell

And with our patience anger tottering Fortune,

20

Who at her certain’st reels. [They embrace.]

3KNIGHT     Come, who begins?

PALAMON     E’en he that led you to this banquet shall

Taste to you all. [to Jailer] Aha, my friend, my friend,

Your gentle daughter gave me freedom once;

You’ll see’t done now forever. Pray, how does she?

25

I heard she was not well; her kind of ill

Gave me some sorrow.

JAILER     Sir, she’s well restored

And to be married shortly.

PALAMON     By my short life,

I am most glad on’t. ’Tis the latest thing

I shall be glad of; prithee, tell her so.

30

Commend me to her and, to piece her portion,

Tender her this. [Gives him his purse.]

1KNIGHT     Nay, let’s be offerers all.

2KNIGHT Is it a maid?

PALAMON     Verily I think so.

A right good creature, more to me deserving

Than I can ’quite or speak of.

THE KNIGHTS [to Jailer]     Commend us to her.

35

[They give their purses.]

JAILER

The gods requite you all and make her thankful.

PALAMON     Adieu; and let my life be now as short

As my leave-taking. [He lays his head on the block.]

1KNIGHT     Lead, courageous cousin.

2, 3 KNIGHT We’ll follow cheerfully.

[A great noise within, crying, ‘ Run, save, hold!’]

Enter in haste a Messenger.

MESSENGER     Hold, hold! O, hold, hold, hold!

40

Enter PIRITHOUS in haste.

PIRITHOUS     Hold, ho! It is a cursed haste you made

If you have done so quickly! – Noble Palamon,

The gods will show their glory in a life

That thou art yet to lead.

PALAMON     Can that be,

When Venus, I have said, is false? How do things fare?

45

PIRITHOUS     Arise, great sir, and give the tidings ear

That are most rarely sweet and bitter.

PALAMON     What

Hath waked us from our dream?

PIRITHOUS     List, then. Your cousin,

Mounted upon a steed that Emily

Did first bestow on him, a black one, owing

50

Not a hair-worth of white, which some will say

Weakens his price and many will not buy

His goodness with this note – which superstition

Here finds allowance – on this horse is Arcite

Trotting the stones of Athens, which the calkins

55

Did rather tell than trample; for the horse

Would make his length a mile, if ’t pleased his rider

To put pride in him. As he thus went counting

The flinty pavement, dancing as ’twere to th’ music

His own hoofs made (for, as they say, from iron

60

Came music’s origin), what envious flint,

Cold as old Saturn and, like him, possessed

With fire malevolent, darted a spark,

Or what fierce sulphur else, to this end made,

I comment not. The hot horse, hot as fire,

65

Took toy at this and fell to what disorder

His power could give his will; bounds, comes on end,

Forgets school-doing, being therein trained

And of kind manage; pig-like he whines

At the sharp rowell, which he frets at rather

70

Than any jot obeys; seeks all foul means

Of boist’rous and rough jad’ry to disseat

His lord, that kept it bravely. When nought served –

When neither curb would crack, girth break, nor diff ’ring plunges

Disroot his rider whence he grew, but that

75

He kept him ’tween his legs – on his hind hoofs

On end he stands,

That Arcite’s legs, being higher than his head,

Seemed with strange art to hang. His victor’s wreath

Even then fell off his head and presently

80

Backward the jade comes o’er and his full poise

Becomes the rider’s load. Yet is he living,

But such a vessel ’tis, that floats but for

The surge that next approaches. He much desires

To have some speech with you. Lo, he appears.

85

Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, EMILIA, ARCITE carried in a chair.

PALAMON     O miserable end of our alliance!

The gods are mighty. Arcite, if thy heart,

Thy worthy, manly heart, be yet unbroken,

Give me thy last words. I am Palamon,

One that yet loves thee dying.

ARCITE     Take Emilia

90

And, with her, all the world’s joy. Reach thy hand;

Farewell. I have told my last hour. I was false

Yet never treacherous. Forgive me, cousin.

One kiss from fair Emilia. [Emilia kisses Arcite.]

     ’Tis done.

Take her. I die.

PALAMON     Thy brave soul seek Elysium!

95

[Arcite dies.]

EMILIA

I’ll close thine eyes, Prince; blessed souls be with thee.

Thou art a right good man and, while I live,

This day I give to tears.

PALAMON     And I to honour.

THESEUS     In this place first you fought: e’en very here

I sundered you. Acknowledge to the gods

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Our thanks that you are living.

His part is played and, though it were too short,

He did it well; your day is lengthened and

The blissful dew of heaven does arrose you.

The powerful Venus well hath graced her altar

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And given you your love. Our master Mars

Hath vouched his oracle and to Arcite gave

The grace of the contention. So the deities

Have showed due justice. Bear this hence.

PALAMON     O, cousin!

That we should things desire, which do cost us

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The loss of our desire! That nought could buy

Dear love, but loss of dear love!

[Arcite’s body is carried out.]

THESEUS     Never Fortune

Did play a subtler game. The conquered triumphs;

The victor has the loss; yet in the passage

The gods have been most equal. – Palamon,

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Your kinsman hath confessed the right o’th’ lady

Did lie in you, for you first saw her and

Even then proclaimed your fancy. He restored her

As your stol’n jewel and desired your spirit

To send him hence forgiven. The gods my justice

120

Take from my hand and they themselves become

The executioners. Lead your lady off

And call your lovers from the stage of death,

Whom I adopt my friends. A day or two

Let us look sadly and give grace unto

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The funeral of Arcite, in whose end

The visages of bridegrooms we’ll put on

And smile with Palamon – for whom an hour,

But one hour since, I was as dearly sorry

As glad of Arcite, and am now as glad

130

As for him sorry. O, you heavenly charmers,

What things you make of us! For what we lack

We laugh, for what we have are sorry, still

Are children in some kind. Let us be thankful

For that which is, and with you leave dispute

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That are above our question. Let’s go off

And bear us like the time.     Flourish. Exeunt.

EPILOGUE

Enter Speaker of the Epilogue.

I would now ask ye how ye like the play,

But, as it is with schoolboys, cannot say.

I am cruel fearful! Pray yet, stay a while,

And let me look upon ye. No man smile?

Then it goes hard, I see. He that has

5

Loved a young handsome wench, then, show his face –

’Tis strange if none be here – and, if he will,

Against his conscience let him hiss, and kill

Our market. ’Tis in vain, I see, to stay ye:

Have at the worst can come then! Now, what say ye?

10

And yet mistake me not: I am not bold;

We have no such cause. If the tale we have told

(For ’tis no other) any way content ye –

For to that honest purpose it was meant ye –

We have our end; and ye shall have ere long,

15

I dare say, many a better, to prolong

Your old loves to us. We, and all our might,

Rest at your service. Gentlemen, goodnight!

     Flourish. Exit.

The Winter’s Tale

Shakespeare began his career in London as actor-dramatist in time to be denounced for his success by a rival playwright, the dying Robert Greene, in the autumn of 1592. Some eighteen years later, Greene’s popular romance, Pandosto, or The Triumph of Time (1587) supplied Shakespeare with the plot of The Winter’s Tale, while the roguery of Autolycus (among Shakespeare’s main additions to the story) drew on anecdotes from Greene’s popular pamphlets about the London underworld of the 1580s and 1590s. Shakespeare wrote The Winter’s Tale and Cymbeline about 1609–10, perhaps during a lengthy closure of the theatres caused by the plague. No consensus exists about which came first, and both were seen at the Globe in the spring of 1611 by Simon Forman, whose notes surprisingly make reference neither to the bear that pursues Antigonus nor to the final scene of Hermione’s resurrection.

In the First Folio The Winter’s Tale appears as the last of the fourteen comedies, Cymbeline as the last of the tragedies (and so the last play in the book). Both are now commonly referred to as romances, or late plays, and attempts have been made to associate them with Jacobean politics and with the royal family. What is certain is that their tragicomic actions, like that of Pericles, make nostalgic reference to the romantic plays of the 1570s and 1580s derided by Sidney in his Defence of Poetry as ‘mongrel tragicomedy’.

A winter’s tale was the sort of story told round the fire to while away a long winter evening, hence simply an implausible romantic or fairytale fiction. The passage of time, human and seasonal, destructive and restorative, is among the major motifs of the play, whose cast includes characters of all ages from a newborn baby to a man of eighty. In The Winter’s Tale Shakespeare simultaneously asserts the implausible conventionality of his story and invests it with a poetic and emotional power that transcends convention. The jealous Leontes may recall Othello, but the violence and irrational suddenness of passion launch the action at a high pitch of tension. Time, as chorus, divides the play into balancing and antithetical halves when he turns his hourglass exactly in the middle of his speech. The sixteen-year gap in time between acts 3 and 4, more sharply defined than the fourteen years in the middle of Pericles, reflects the passage the human seasons from the winter guilt and sadness Leontes’ court to the springtime innocence of his lost daughter Perdita and her lover Florizel. As in The Comedy of Errors and Pericles, the family reunion (promised by the oracle of Apollo) is capped by the reappearance of the supposedly dead mother, with the difference that this time the audience too have been persuaded of her death. The first half of the play ends with the pursuit of Antigonus by a bear, the second with the descent of the statue of Hermione from its plinth to reunited with husband and daughter. Both are Shakespeare’s additions to Greene’s story, as is Paulina, the agent Hermione’s survival and the penitence of Leontes.

The Winter’s Tale has had a long and successful stage

history. An influential twentieth-century production was that by Harley Granville Barker at the Savoy Theatre London in 1912, which restored the full text and simplified the setting in the interests of pace and clarity of performance. Today The Winter’s Tale is, after The Tempest, the most frequently revived of the romances.

The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.

LIST OF ROLES

LEONTES

King of Sicilia

MAMILLIUS

young Prince of Sicilia

four lords of Sicilia

POLIXENES

King of Bohemia

FLORIZEL

Prince of Bohemia

ARCHIDAMUS

a lord of Bohemia

Old SHEPHERD

reputed father of Perdita

CLOWN

his son

AUTOLYCUS

a rogue

MARINER

GAOLER

HERMIONE

Queen to Leontes

PERDITA

daughter to Leontes and Hermione

PAULINA

wife to Antigonus

EMILIA

a lady attending on Hermione

shepherdesses

Other Lords and Gentlemen, Ladies, Officers, and Servants, Shepherds and Shepherdesses TIME, as Chorus

The Winter’s Tale

1.1 Enter CAMILLO and ARCHIDAMUS.

ARCHIDAMUS     If you shall chance, Camillo, to visit

Bohemia, on the like occasion whereon my services are

now on foot, you shall see, as I have said, great

difference betwixt our Bohemia and your Sicilia.

CAMILLO     I think, this coming summer, the King of

5

Sicilia means to pay Bohemia the visitation which he

justly owes him.

ARCHIDAMUS     Wherein our entertainment shall shame

us: we will be justified in our loves: for indeed –

CAMILLO     Beseech you –

10

ARCHIDAMUS     Verily I speak it in the freedom of my

knowledge: we cannot with such magnificence – in so

rare – I know not what to say – We will give you sleepy

drinks, that your senses (unintelligent of our

insufficience) may, though they cannot praise us, as

15

little accuse us.

CAMILLO     You pay a great deal too dear for what’s given

freely.

ARCHIDAMUS     Believe me, I speak as my understanding

instructs me, and as mine honesty puts it to utterance.

20

CAMILLO     Sicilia cannot show himself over-kind to

Bohemia. They were trained together in their

childhoods, and there rooted betwixt them then such

an affection which cannot choose but branch now.

Since their more mature dignities and royal necessities

25

made separation of their society, their encounters,

though not personal, have been royally attorneyed

with interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies,

that they have seemed to be together, though absent;

shook hands, as over a vast; and embraced, as it were,

30

from the ends of opposed winds. The heavens

continue their loves!

ARCHIDAMUS     I think there is not in the world either

malice or matter to alter it. You have an unspeakable

comfort of your young prince Mamillius: it is a

35

gentleman of the greatest promise that ever came into

my note.

CAMILLO     I very well agree with you in the hopes of him:

it is a gallant child; one that, indeed, physics the

subject, makes old hearts fresh: they that went on

40

crutches ere he was born desire yet their life to see him

a man.

ARCHIDAMUS     Would they else be content to die?

CAMILLO     Yes; if there were no other excuse why they

should desire to live.

45

ARCHIDAMUS     If the king had no son, they would desire

to live on crutches till he had one. Exeunt.

1.2 Enter LEONTES, HERMIONE, MAMILLIUS, POLIXENES, CAMILLO and attendants.

POLIXENES     Nine changes of the watery star hath been

The shepherd’s note since we have left our throne

Without a burden. Time as long again

Would be fill’d up, my brother, with our thanks;

And yet we should, for perpetuity,

5

Go hence in debt: and therefore, like a cipher

(Yet standing in rich place) I multiply

With one ‘We thank you’ many thousands moe

That go before it.

LEONTES     Stay your thanks a while,

And pay them when you part.

POLIXENES     Sir, that’s to-morrow.

10

I am question’d by my fears, of what may chance

Or breed upon our absence; that may blow

No sneaping winds at home, to make us say

‘This is put forth too truly’. Besides, I have stay’d

To tire your royalty.

LEONTES     We are tougher, brother,

15

Than you can put us to’t.

POLIXENES     No longer stay.

LEONTES     One seve’night longer.

POLIXENES     Very sooth, to-morrow.

LEONTES

We’ll part the time between’s then: and in that

I’ll no gainsaying.

POLIXENES     Press me not, beseech you, so.

There is no tongue that moves, none, none i’th’ world,

20

So soon as yours, could win me: so it should now,

Were there necessity in your request, although

’Twere needful I denied it. My affairs

Do even drag me homeward: which to hinder

Were (in your love) a whip to me; my stay,

25

To you a charge and trouble: to save both,

Farewell, our brother.

LEONTES     Tongue-tied our queen? speak you.

HERMIONE

I had thought, sir, to have held my peace until

You had drawn oaths from him not to stay. You, sir,

Charge him too coldly. Tell him, you are sure

30

All in Bohemia’s well: this satisfaction

The by-gone day proclaim’d: say this to him,

He’s beat from his best ward.

LEONTES     Well said, Hermione.

HERMIONE

To tell, he longs to see his son, were strong:

But let him say so then, and let him go;

35

But let him swear so, and he shall not stay,

We’ll thwack him hence with distaffs.

Yet of your royal presence I’ll adventure

The borrow of a week. When at Bohemia

You take my lord, I’ll give him my commission

40

To let him there a month behind the gest

Prefix’d for’s parting: yet, good deed, Leontes

I love thee not a jar o’th’ clock behind

What lady she her lord. You’ll stay?

POLIXENES     No, madam.

HERMIONE     Nay, but you will?

POLIXENES     I may not, verily.

45

HERMIONE     Verily!

You put me off with limber vows; but I,

Though you would seek t’unsphere the stars with oaths,

Should yet say ‘Sir, no going’. Verily,

You shall not go: a lady’s Verily’s

50

As potent as a lord’s. Will you go yet?

Force me to keep you as a prisoner,

Not like a guest: so you shall pay your fees

When you depart, and save your thanks? How say you?

My prisoner? or my guest? By your dread ‘Verily’,

55

One of them you shall be.

POLIXENES     Your guest then, madam:

To be your prisoner should import offending;

Which is for me less easy to commit

Than you to punish.

HERMIONE     Not your gaoler then,

But your kind hostess. Come, I’ll question you

60

Of my lord’s tricks, and yours, when you were boys.

You were pretty lordings then?

POLIXENES     We were, fair queen,

Two lads that thought there was no more behind,

But such a day to-morrow as to-day,

And to be boy eternal.

HERMIONE     Was not my lord

65

The verier wag o’th’ two?

POLIXENES

We were as twinn’d lambs that did frisk i’th’ sun,

And bleat the one at th’other: what we chang’d

Was innocence for innocence: we knew not

The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream’d

70

That any did. Had we pursu’d that life,

And our weak spirits ne’er been higher rear’d

With stronger blood, we should have answer’d heaven

Boldly ‘not guilty’, the imposition clear’d

Hereditary ours.

HERMIONE     By this we gather

75

You have tripp’d since.

POLIXENES     O my most sacred lady,

Temptations have since then been born to ’s: for

In those unfledg’d days was my wife a girl;

Your precious self had then not cross’d the eyes

Of my young play-fellow.

HERMIONE     Grace to boot!

80

Of this make no conclusion, lest you say

Your queen and I are devils. Yet go on;

Th’offences we have made you do, we’ll answer,

If you first sinn’d with us, and that with us

You did continue fault, and that you slipp’d not

85

With any but with us.

LEONTES     Is he won yet?

HERMIONE     He’ll stay, my lord.

LEONTES     At my request he would not.

HERMIONE, my dearest, thou never spok’st

To better purpose.

HERMIONE     Never?

LEONTES     Never but once.

HERMIONE

What! have I twice said well? when was’t before?

90

I prithee tell me: cram’s with praise, and make’s

As fat as tame things: one good deed, dying tongueless,

Slaughters a thousand, waiting upon that.

Our praises are our wages. You may ride’s

With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere

95

With spur we heat an acre. But to th’ goal:

My last good deed was to entreat his stay:

What was my first? It has an elder sister,

Or I mistake you: O, would her name were Grace!

But once before I spoke to th’ purpose? when?

100

Nay, let me have’t: I long!

LEONTES     Why, that was when

Three crabbed months had sour’d themselves to death,

Ere I could make thee open thy white hand,

And clap thyself my love; then didst thou utter

‘I am yours for ever.’

HERMIONE     ’Tis Grace indeed.

105

Why lo you now; I have spoke to th’ purpose twice:

The one, for ever earn’d a royal husband;

Th’other, for some while a friend.

[giving her hand to Polixenes]

LEONTES [aside]     Too hot, too hot!

To mingle friendship far, is mingling bloods.

I have tremor cordis on me: my heart dances,

110

But not for joy – not joy. This entertainment

May a free face put on, derive a liberty

From heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom,

And well become the agent: ’t may, I grant:

But to be paddling palms, and pinching fingers,

115

As now they are, and making practis’d smiles

As in a looking-glass; and then to sigh, as ’twere

The mort o’th’ deer – O, that is entertainment

My bosom likes not, nor my brows. Mamillius,

Art thou my boy?

MAMILLIUS     Ay, my good lord.

LEONTES     I’fecks:

120

Why that’s my bawcock. What! hast smutch’d thy nose?

They say it is a copy out of mine. Come, captain,

We must be neat; not neat, but cleanly, captain:

And yet the steer, the heifer and the calf

Are all call’d neat. – Still virginalling

125

Upon his palm! – How now, you wanton calf!

Art thou my calf?

MAMILLIUS     Yes, if you will, my lord.

LEONTES

Thou want’st a rough pash and the shoots that I have

To be full like me: yet they say we are

Almost as like as eggs; women say so,

130

(That will say any thing): but were they false

As o’er-dy’d blacks, as wind, as waters; false

As dice are to be wish’d by one that fixes

No bourn ’twixt his and mine, yet were it true

To say this boy were like me. Come, sir page,

135

Look on me with your welkin eye: sweet villain!

Most dear’st, my collop! Can thy dam? – may’t be? –

Affection! thy intention stabs the centre:

Thou dost make possible things not so held,

Communicat’st with dreams; – how can this be? –

140

With what’s unreal thou coactive art,

And fellow’st nothing: then ’tis very credent

Thou may’st co-join with something; and thou dost,

(And that beyond commission) and I find it,

(And that to the infection of my brains

145

And hard’ning of my brows).

POLIXENES     What means Sicilia?

HERMIONE     He something seems unsettled.

POLIXENES     How, my lord?

What cheer? how is’t with you, best brother?

HERMIONE     You look

As if you held a brow of much distraction:

Are you mov’d, my lord?

LEONTES     No, in good earnest.

150

How sometimes nature will betray its folly,

Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime

To harder bosoms! Looking on the lines

Of my boy’s face, methoughts I did recoil

Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreech’d,

155

In my green velvet coat; my dagger muzzl’d

Lest it should bite its master, and so prove,

As ornaments oft do, too dangerous:

How like, methought, I then was to this kernel,

This squash, this gentleman. Mine honest friend,

160

Will you take eggs for money?

MAMILLIUS     No, my lord, I’ll fight.

LEONTES

You will? Why, happy man be’s dole! My brother,

Are you so fond of your young prince, as we

Do seem to be of ours?

POLIXENES     If at home, sir,

165

He’s all my exercise, my mirth, my matter:

Now my sworn friend, and then mine enemy;

My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all.

He makes a July’s day short as December;

And with his varying childness cures in me

170

Thoughts that would thick my blood.

LEONTES     So stands this squire

Offic’d with me: we two will walk, my lord,

And leave you to your graver steps. Hermione,

How thou lov’st us, show in our brother’s welcome;

Let what is dear in Sicily be cheap:

175

Next to thyself, and my young rover, he’s

Apparent to my heart.

HERMIONE     If you would seek us,

We are yours i’th’ garden: shall’s attend you there?

LEONTES

To your own bents dispose you: you’ll be found,

Be you beneath the sky. [aside] I am angling now,

180

Though you perceive me not how I give line.

Go to, go to!

How she holds up the neb, the bill to him!

And arms her with the boldness of a wife

To her allowing husband!

     Exeunt Polixenes, Hermione and attendants.

     Gone already!

185

Inch-thick, knee-deep; o’er head and ears a fork’d one.

Go, play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and I

Play too; but so disgrac’d a part, whose issue

Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour

Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play. There havec been,

190

(Or I am much deceiv’d) cuckolds ere now,

And many a man there is (even at this present,

Now, while I speak this) holds his wife by th’ arm,

That little thinks she has been sluic’d in’s absence

And his pond fish’d by his next neighbour, by

195

Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there’s comfort in’t,

Whiles other men have gates, and those gates open’d,

As mine, against their will. Should all despair

That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind

Would hang themselves. Physic for’t there’s none;

200

It is a bawdy planet, that will strike

Where ’tis predominant; and ’tis powerful, think it,

From east, west, north, and south; be it concluded,

No barricado for a belly. Know’t,

It will let in and out the enemy,

205

With bag and baggage: many thousand on’s

Have the disease, and feel’t not. How now, boy?

MAMILLIUS     I am like you, they say.

LEONTES     Why, that’s some comfort.

What, Camillo there?

CAMILLO     Ay, my good lord.

210

LEONTES     Go play, Mamillius; thou’rt an honest man.

     Exit Mamillius.

Camillo, this great Sir will yet stay longer.

CAMILLO     You had much ado to make his anchor hold:

When you cast out, it still came home.

LEONTES     Didst note it?

CAMILLO     He would not stay at your petitions; made

215

His business more material.

LEONTES     Didst perceive it?

[aside] They’re here with me already; whisp’ring, rounding

‘Sicilia is a so-forth’: ’tis far gone,

When I shall gust it last. – How cam’t, Camillo,

That he did stay?

CAMILLO     At the good queen’s entreaty.

220

LEONTES

At the queen’s be’t: ‘good’ should be pertinent,

But so it is, it is not. Was this taken

By any understanding pate but thine?

For thy conceit is soaking, will draw in

More than the common blocks: not noted, is’t,

225

But of the finer natures? by some severals

Of head-piece extraordinary? lower messes

Perchance are to this business purblind? say!

CAMILLO     Business, my lord? I think most understand

Bohemia stays here longer.

LEONTES     Ha?

CAMILLO     Stays here longer.

230

LEONTES     Ay, but why?

CAMILLO     To satisfy your highness, and the entreaties

Of our most gracious mistress.

LEONTES     Satisfy?

Th’entreaties of your mistress? satisfy?

Let that suffice. I have trusted thee, Camillo,

235

With all the nearest things to my heart, as well

My chamber-counsels, wherein, priest-like, thou

Hast cleans’d my bosom: I from thee departed

Thy penitent reform’d. But we have been

Deceiv’d in thy integrity, deceiv’d

240

In that which seems so.

CAMILLO     Be it forbid, my lord!

LEONTES     To bide upon’t: thou art not honest: or,

If thou inclin’st that way, thou art a coward,

Which hoxes honesty behind, restraining

From course requir’d: or else thou must be counted

245

A servant grafted in my serious trust,

And therein negligent; or else a fool,

That seest a game play’d home, the rich stake drawn,

And tak’st it all for jest.

CAMILLO     My gracious lord,

I may be negligent, foolish, and fearful;

250

In every one of these no man is free,

But that his negligence, his folly, fear,

Among the infinite doings of the world,

Sometime puts forth. In your affairs, my lord,

If ever I were wilful-negligent,

255

It was my folly: if industriously

I play’d the fool, it was my negligence,

Not weighing well the end: if ever fearful

To do a thing, where I the issue doubted,

Whereof the execution did cry out

260

Against the non-performance, ’twas a fear

Which oft infects the wisest: these, my lord,

Are such allow’d infirmities that honesty

Is never free of. But, beseech your Grace,

Be plainer with me; let me know my trespass

265

By its own visage: if I then deny it,

’Tis none of mine.

LEONTES     Ha’ not you seen, Camillo?

(But that’s past doubt: you have, or your eye-glass

Is thicker than a cuckold’s horn) or heard?

(For to a vision so apparent rumour

270

Cannot be mute) or thought? (for cogitation

Resides not in that man that does not think)

My wife is slippery? If thou wilt confess,

Or else be impudently negative,

To have nor eyes, nor ears, nor thought, then say

275

My wife’s a hobby-horse, deserves a name

As rank as any flax-wench that puts to

Before her troth-plight: say’t and justify’t!

CAMILLO     I would not be a stander-by, to hear

My sovereign mistress clouded so, without

280

My present vengeance taken: ’shrew my heart,

You never spoke what did become you less

Than this; which to reiterate were sin

As deep as that, though true.

LEONTES     Is whispering nothing?

Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?

285

Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career

Of laughter with a sigh (a note infallible

Of breaking honesty)? horsing foot on foot?

Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?

Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes

290

Blind with the pin and web, but theirs; theirs only.

That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing?

Why then the world, and all that’s in’t, is nothing,

The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing,

My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings,

295

If this be nothing.

CAMILLO     Good my lord, be cur’d

Of this diseas’d opinion, and betimes,

For ’tis most dangerous.

LEONTES     Say it be, ’tis true.

CAMILLO     No, no, my lord.

LEONTES     It is: you lie, you lie:

I say thou liest, Camillo, and I hate thee,

300

Pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave,

Or else a hovering temporizer that

Canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil,

Inclining to them both: were my wife’s liver

Infected, as her life, she would not live

305

The running of one glass.

CAMILLO     Who does infect her?

LEONTES

Why, he that wears her like her medal, hanging

About his neck, Bohemia; who, if I

Had servants true about me, that bare eyes

To see alike mine honour as their profits,

310

Their own particular thrifts, they would do that

Which should undo more doing: ay, and thou

His cupbearer, – whom I from meaner form

Have bench’d and rear’d to worship, who may’st see

Plainly as heaven sees earth and earth sees heaven,

315

How I am gall’d, – might’st bespice a cup,

To give mine enemy a lasting wink;

Which draught to me were cordial.

CAMILLO     Sir, my lord,

I could do this, and that with no rash potion,

But with a ling’ring dram, that should not work

320

Maliciously, like poison: but I cannot

Believe this crack to be in my dread mistress

(So sovereignly being honourable).

I have lov’d thee, –

LEONTES     Make that thy question, and go rot!

Dost think I am so muddy, so unsettled,

325

To appoint myself in this vexation; sully

The purity and whiteness of my sheets,

(Which to preserve is sleep, which being spotted

Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps)

Give scandal to the blood o’th’ prince, my son,

330

(Who I do think is mine and love as mine)

Without ripe moving to’t? Would I do this?

Could man so blench?

CAMILLO     I must believe you, sir:

I do; and will fetch off Bohemia for’t;

Provided, that when he’s removed, your highness

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Will take again your queen, as yours at first,

Even for your son’s sake, and thereby for sealing

The injury of tongues in courts and kingdoms

Known and allied to yours.

LEONTES     Thou dost advise me

Even so as I mine own course have set down:

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I’ll give no blemish to her honour, none.

CAMILLO     My lord,

Go then; and with a countenance as clear

As friendship wears at feasts, keep with Bohemia,

And with your queen. I am his cupbearer:

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If from me he have wholesome beverage,

Account me not your servant.

LEONTES     This is all:

Do’t, and thou hast the one half of my heart;

Do’t not, thou splitt’st thine own.

CAMILLO     I’ll do’t, my lord.

LEONTES     I will seem friendly, as thou hast advis’d me.

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Exit.

CAMILLO     O miserable lady! But, for me,

What case stand I in? I must be the poisoner

Of good Polixenes, and my ground to do’t

Is the obedience to a master; one

Who, in rebellion with himself, will have

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All that are his, so too. To do this deed,

Promotion follows. If I could find example

Of thousands that had struck anointed kings

And flourish’d after, I’d not do’t: but since

Nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment bears not one,

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Let villainy itself forswear’t. I must

Forsake the court: to do’t, or no, is certain

To me a break-neck. Happy star reign now!

Here comes Bohemia.

Enter POLIXENES.

POLIXENES     This is strange: methinks

My favour here begins to warp. Not speak?

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Good day, Camillo.

CAMILLO     Hail, most royal sir!

POLIXENES     What is the news i’th’ court?

CAMILLO     None rare, my lord.

POLIXENES     The king hath on him such a countenance

As he had lost some province, and a region

Lov’d as he loves himself: even now I met him

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With customary compliment, when he,

Wafting his eyes to th’ contrary, and falling

A lip of much contempt, speeds from me, and

So leaves me, to consider what is breeding

That changes thus his manners.

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CAMILLO     I dare not know, my lord.

POLIXENES

How, dare not? do not? Do you know, and dare not?

Be intelligent to me: ’tis thereabouts:

For, to yourself, what you do know, you must,

And cannot say you dare not. Good Camillo,

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Your chang’d complexions are to me a mirror

Which shows me mine chang’d too; for I must be

A party in this alteration, finding

Myself thus alter’d with’t.

CAMILLO     There is a sickness

Which puts some of us in distemper, but

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I cannot name the disease, and it is caught

Of you, that yet are well.

POLIXENES     How caught of me?

Make me not sighted like the basilisk.

I have look’d on thousands, who have sped the better

By my regard, but kill’d none so. Camillo, –

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As you are certainly a gentleman, thereto

Clerk-like experienc’d, which no less adorns

Our gentry than our parents’ noble names,

In whose success we are gentle, – I beseech you,

If you know aught which does behove my knowledge

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Thereof to be inform’d, imprison’t not

In ignorant concealment.

CAMILLO     I may not answer.

POLIXENES     A sickness caught of me, and yet I well?

I must be answer’d. Dost thou hear, Camillo?

I conjure thee, by all the parts of man

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Which honour does acknowledge, whereof the least

Is not this suit of mine, that thou declare

What incidency thou dost guess of harm

Is creeping toward me; how far off, how near,

Which way to be prevented, if to be:

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If not, how best to bear it.

CAMILLO     Sir, I will tell you;

Since I am charg’d in honour, and by him

That I think honourable. Therefore mark my counsel,

Which must be ev’n as swiftly follow’d as

I mean to utter it, or both yourself and me

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Cry lost, and so good night!

POLIXENES     On, good Camillo.

CAMILLO     I am appointed him to murder you.

POLIXENES     By whom, Camillo?

CAMILLO     By the king.

POLIXENES     For what?

CAMILLO

He thinks, nay, with all confidence he swears,

As he had seen’t, or been an instrument

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To vice you to’t, that you have touch’d his queen

Forbiddenly.

POLIXENES     O then, my best blood turn

To an infected jelly, and my name

Be yok’d with his that did betray the Best!

Turn then my freshest reputation to

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A savour that may strike the dullest nostril

Where I arrive, and my approach be shunn’d,

Nay, hated too, worse than the great’st infection

That e’er was heard or read!

CAMILLO     Swear his thought over

By each particular star in heaven, and

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By all their influences; you may as well

Forbid the sea for to obey the moon,

As or by oath remove or counsel shake

The fabric of his folly, whose foundation

Is pil’d upon his faith, and will continue

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The standing of his body.

POLIXENES     How should this grow?

CAMILLO     I know not: but I am sure ’tis safer to

Avoid what’s grown than question how ’tis born.

If therefore you dare trust my honesty,

That lies enclosed in this trunk; which you

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Shall bear along impawn’d, away to-night!

Your followers I will whisper to the business,

And will by twos and threes, at several posterns,

Clear them o’th’ city. For myself, I’ll put

My fortunes to your service, which are here

440

By this discovery lost. Be not uncertain,

For by the honour of my parents, I

Have utter’d truth: which if you seek to prove,

I dare not stand by; nor shall you be safer

Than one condemned by the king’s own mouth,

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Thereon his execution sworn.

POLIXENES     I do believe thee:

I saw his heart in’s face. Give me thy hand,

Be pilot to me, and thy places shall

Still neighbour mine. My ships are ready, and

My people did expect my hence departure

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Two days ago. This jealousy

Is for a precious creature: as she’s rare,

Must it be great; and, as his person’s mighty,

Must it be violent; and, as he does conceive

He is dishonour’d by a man which ever

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Profess’d to him; why, his revenges must

In that be made more bitter. Fear o’ershades me:

Good expedition be my friend, and comfort

The gracious queen, part of his theme, but nothing

Of his ill-ta’en suspicion! Come, Camillo,

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I will respect thee as a father if

Thou bear’st my life off. Hence! let us avoid.

CAMILLO     It is in mine authority to command

The keys of all the posterns: please your highness

To take the urgent hour. Come sir, away.     Exeunt.

465

2.1 Enter HERMIONE, MAMILLIUS and Ladies.

HERMIONE     Take the boy to you: he so troubles me,

’Tis past enduring.

1LADY     Come, my gracious lord,

Shall I be your play-fellow?

MAMILLIUS     No, I’ll none of you.

1LADY Why, my sweet lord?

MAMILLIUS     You’ll kiss me hard, and speak to me as if

5

I were a baby still. I love you better.

2LADY And why so, my lord?

MAMILLIUS     Not for because

Your brows are blacker; yet black brows, they say,

Become some women best, so that there be not

Too much hair there, but in a semicircle,

10

Or a half-moon, made with a pen.

2LADY     Who taught’ this!

MAMILLIUS

I learn’d it out of women’s faces. Pray now,

What colour are your eyebrows?

1LADY     Blue, my lord.

MAMILLIUS

Nay, that’s a mock: I have seen a lady’s nose

That has been blue, but not her eyebrows.

1LADY     Hark ye,

15

The queen your mother rounds apace: we shall

Present our services to a fine new prince

One of these days, and then you’d wanton with us,

If we would have you.

2LADY     She is spread of late

Into a goodly bulk: good time encounter her!

20

HERMIONE

What wisdom stirs amongst you? Come, sir, now

I am for you again: ’pray you, sit by us,

And tell’s a tale.

MAMILLIUS     Merry, or sad, shall’t be?

HERMIONE     As merry as you will.

MAMILLIUS     A sad tale’s best for winter: I have one

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Of sprites and goblins.

HERMIONE     Let’s have that, good sir.

Come on, sit down, come on, and do your best

To fright me with your sprites: you’re powerful at it.

MAMILLIUS     There was a man –

HERMIONE     Nay, come sit down: then on.

MAMILLIUS     Dwelt by a churchyard: I will tell it softly,

30

Yond crickets shall not hear it.

HERMIONE     Come on then,

And giv’t me in mine ear.

Enter LEONTES, with ANTIGONUS, Lords and others.

LEONTES

Was he met there? his train? Camillo with him?

A LORD     Behind the tuft of pines I met them, never

Saw I men scour so on their way: I ey’d them

35

Even to their ships.

LEONTES     How blest am I

In my just censure! in my true opinion!

Alack, for lesser knowledge! how accurs’d

In being so blest! There may be in the cup

A spider steep’d, and one may drink, depart,

40

And yet partake no venom (for his knowledge

Is not infected); but if one present

Th’abhorr’d ingredient to his eye, make known

How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,

With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider.

45

CAMILLO was his help in this, his pandar:

There is a plot against my life, my crown;

All’s true that is mistrusted: that false villain,

Whom I employ’d, was pre-employ’d by him:

He has discover’d my design, and I

50

Remain a pinch’d thing; yea, a very trick

For them to play at will. How came the posterns

So easily open?

A LORD     By his great authority,

Which often hath no less prevail’d than so

On your command.

LEONTES     I know’t too well.

55

Give me the boy: I am glad you did not nurse him:

Though he does bear some signs of me, yet you

Have too much blood in him.

HERMIONE     What is this? sport?

LEONTES

Bear the boy hence, he shall not come about her,

Away with him, and let her sport herself

60

With that she’s big with; for ’tis Polixenes

Has made thee swell thus.

     Exit Mamillius, with a Lady.

HERMIONE     But I’d say he had not;

And I’ll be sworn you would believe my saying,

How e’er you lean to th’ nay-ward.

LEONTES     You, my lords,

Look on her, mark her well: be but about

65

To say ‘she is a goodly lady’, and

The justice of your hearts will thereto add

‘’Tis pity she’s not honest, honourable’:

Praise her but for this her without-door form

(Which on my faith deserves high speech) and straight

70

The shrug, the hum or ha, these petty brands

That calumny doth use – O, I am out,

That mercy does; for calumny will sear

Virtue itself – these shrugs, these hum’s and ha’s,

When you have said ‘she’s goodly’, come between,

75

Ere you can say ‘she’s honest’: but be’t known,

From him that has most cause to grieve it should be,

She’s an adultress!

HERMIONE     Should a villain say so

(The most replenish’d villain in the world)

He were as much more villain: you, my lord,

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Do but mistake.

LEONTES     You have mistook, my lady,

POLIXENES for Leontes. O thou thing –

Which I’ll not call a creature of thy place,

Lest barbarism, making me the precedent,

Should a like language use to all degrees,

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And mannerly distinguishment leave out

Betwixt the prince and beggar. I have said

She’s an adultress; I have said with whom:

More; she’s a traitor, and Camillo is

A federary with her, and one that knows,

90

What she should shame to know herself

But with her most vile principal, that she’s

A bed-swerver, even as bad as those

That vulgars give bold’st titles; ay, and privy

To this their late escape.

HERMIONE     No, by my life,

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Privy to none of this. How will this grieve you,

When you shall come to clearer knowledge, that

You thus have publish’d me! Gentle my lord,

You scarce can right me throughly, then, to say

You did mistake.

LEONTES     No: if I mistake

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In those foundations which I build upon,

The centre is not big enough to bear

A school-boy’s top. Away with her, to prison!

He who shall speak for her is afar off guilty

But that he speaks.

HERMIONE     There’s some ill planet reigns:

105

I must be patient till the heavens look

With an aspect more favourable. Good my lords,

I am not prone to weeping, as our sex

Commonly are; the want of which vain dew

Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have

110

That honourable grief lodg’d here which burns

Worse than tears drown: beseech you all, my lords,

With thoughts so qualified as your charities

Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so

The king’s will be perform’d.

LEONTES     Shall I be heard?

115

HERMIONE

Who is’t that goes with me? Beseech your highness,

My women may be with me, for you see

My plight requires it. Do not weep, good fools,

There is no cause: when you shall know your mistress

Has deserv’d prison, then abound in tears

120

As I come out: this action I now go on

Is for my better grace. Adieu, my lord:

I never wish’d to see you sorry; now

I trust I shall. My women, come; you have leave.

LEONTES     Go, do our bidding: hence!

125

     Exit Queen, guarded; with Ladies.

A LORD Beseech your highness, call the queen again.

ANTIGONUS

Be certain what you do, sir, lest your justice

Prove violence, in the which three great ones suffer,

Yourself, your queen, your son.

A LORD     For her, my lord,

I dare my life lay down, and will do’t, sir,

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Please you t’accept it, that the queen is spotless

I’th’ eyes of heaven, and to you – I mean

In this which you accuse her.

ANTIGONUS     If it prove

She’s otherwise, I’ll keep my stables where

I lodge my wife; I’ll go in couples with her;

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Than when I feel and see her no farther trust her:

For every inch of woman in the world,

Ay, every dram of woman’s flesh is false,

If she be.

LEONTES     Hold your peaces.

A LORD     Good my lord, –

ANTIGONUS     It is for you we speak, not for ourselves:

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You are abus’d, and by some putter-on

That will be damn’d for’t: would I knew the villain,

I would land-damn him. Be she honour-flaw’d,

I have three daughters: the eldest is eleven;

The second and the third, nine and some five:

145

If this prove true, they’ll pay for’t. By mine honour

I’ll geld ’em all; fourteen they shall not see

To bring false generations: they are co-heirs,

And I had rather glib myself, than they

Should not produce fair issue.

LEONTES     Cease; no more.

150

You smell this business with a sense as cold

As is a dead man’s nose: but I do see’t and feel’t,

As you feel doing thus; and see withal

The instruments that feel.

ANTIGONUS     If it be so,

We need no grave to bury honesty:

155

There’s not a grain of it the face to sweeten

Of the whole dungy earth.

LEONTES     What! lack I credit?

A LORD I had rather you did lack than I, my lord,

Upon this ground: and more it would content me

To have her honour true than your suspicion,

160

Be blam’d for’t how you might.

LEONTES     Why, what need we

Commune with you of this, but rather follow

Our forceful instigation? Our prerogative

Calls not your counsels, but our natural goodness

Imparts this; which if you, or stupefied,

165

Or seeming so, in skill, cannot or will not

Relish a truth, like us, inform yourselves

We need no more of your advice: the matter,

The loss, the gain, the ord’ring on’t, is all

Properly ours.

ANTIGONUS     And I wish, my liege,

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You had only in your silent judgement tried it,

Without more overture.

LEONTES     How could that be?

Either thou art most ignorant by age,

Or thou wert born a fool. Camillo’s flight,

Added to their familiarity,

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(Which was as gross as ever touch’d conjecture,

That lack’d sight only, nought for approbation

But only seeing, all other circumstances

Made up to th’ deed) doth push on this proceeding.

Yet, for a greater confirmation

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(For in an act of this importance, ’twere

Most piteous to be wild), I have dispatch’d in post

To sacred Delphos, to Apollo’s temple,

Cleomenes and Dion, whom you know

Of stuff’d sufficiency: now from the Oracle

185

They will bring all; whose spiritual counsel had,

Shall stop or spur me. Have I done well?

A LORD Well done, my lord.

LEONTES     Though I am satisfied, and need no more

Than what I know, yet shall the Oracle

190

Give rest to th’ minds of others; such as he

Whose ignorant credulity will not

Come up to th’ truth. So have we thought it good

From our free person she should be confined,

Lest that the treachery of the two fled hence

195

Be left her to perform. Come, follow us;

We are to speak in public; for this business

Will raise us all.

ANTIGONUS     [aside] To laughter, as I take it,

If the good truth were known.     Exeunt.

2.2 Enter PAULINA, a Gentleman and attendants.

PAULINA     The keeper of the prison, call to him;

Let him have knowledge who I am. Good lady,

No court in Europe is too good for thee;

What dost thou then in prison?

Enter Gaoler.

     Now good sir,

You know me, do you not?

GAOLER     For a worthy lady

5

And one who much I honour.

PAULINA     Pray you then,

Conduct me to the queen.

GAOLER     I may not, madam:

To the contrary I have express commandment.

PAULINA     Here’s ado,

To lock up honesty and honour from

10

Th’access of gentle visitors! Is’t lawful, pray you,

To see her women? any of them? Emilia?

GAOLER     So please you, madam,

To put apart these your attendants, I

Shall bring Emilia forth.

PAULINA     I pray now, call her.

15

Withdraw yourselves.

     Exeunt Gentleman and attendants.

GAOLER     And, madam,

I must be present at your conference.

PAULINA     Well: be’t so: prithee.      Exit Gaoler.

Here’s such ado to make no stain a stain

As passes colouring.

Enter Gaoler, with EMILIA.

     Dear gentlewoman,

20

How fares our gracious lady?

EMILIA     As well as one so great and so forlorn

May hold together: on her frights and griefs

(Which never tender lady hath borne greater)

She is, something before her time, deliver’d.

25

PAULINA     A boy?

EMILIA     A daughter; and a goodly babe,

Lusty, and like to live: the queen receives

Much comfort in’t; says, ‘My poor prisoner,

I am innocent as you.’

PAULINA     I dare be sworn:

These dangerous, unsafe lunes i’th’ king, beshrew them!

30

He must be told on’t, and he shall: the office

Becomes a woman best. I’ll take’t upon me:

If I prove honey-mouth’d, let my tongue blister,

And never to my red-look’d anger be

The trumpet any more. Pray you, Emilia,

35

Commend my best obedience to the queen:

If she dares trust me with her little babe,

I’ll show’t the king, and undertake to be

Her advocate to th’ loud’st. We do not know

How he may soften at the sight o’th’ child:

40

The silence often of pure innocence

Persuades, when speaking fails.

EMILIA     Most worthy madam,

Your honour and your goodness is so evident,

That your free undertaking cannot miss

A thriving issue: there is no lady living

45

So meet for this great errand. Please your ladyship

To visit the next room, I’ll presently

Acquaint the queen of your most noble offer,

Who but to-day hammer’d of this design,

But durst not tempt a minister of honour,

50

Lest she should be denied.

PAULINA     Tell her, Emilia,

I’ll use that tongue I have: if wit flow from’t

As boldness from my bosom, let’t not be doubted

I shall do good.

EMILIA     Now be you blest for it!

I’ll to the queen: please you, come something nearer.

55

GAOLER

Madam, if ’t please the queen to send the babe,

I know not what I shall incur to pass it,

Having no warrant.

PAULINA     You need not fear it, sir:

This child was prisoner to the womb, and is

By law and process of great nature, thence

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Free’d and enfranchis’d; not a party to

The anger of the king, nor guilty of

(If any be) the trespass of the queen.

GAOLER     I do believe it.

PAULINA     Do not you fear: upon mine honour, I

65

Will stand betwixt you and danger.     Exeunt.

2.3 LEONTES discovered.

LEONTES

Nor night, nor day, no rest: it is but weakness

To bear the matter thus: mere weakness. If

The cause were not in being, – part o’th’ cause,

She th’adultress: for the harlot king

Is quite beyond mine arm, out of the blank

5

And level of my brain: plot-proof: but she

I can hook to me: say that she were gone,

Given to the fire, a moiety of my rest

Might come to me again.

Enter Servant.

     Who’s there?

SERVANT     My Lord!

LEONTES     How does the boy?

SERVANT     He took good rest to-night;

10

’Tis hop’d his sickness is discharg’d.

LEONTES     To see his nobleness,

Conceiving the dishonour of his mother!

He straight declin’d, droop’d, took it deeply,

Fasten’d and fix’d the shame on’t in himself,

15

Threw off his spirit, his appetite, his sleep,

And downright languish’d. Leave me solely: go,

See how he fares.     Exit Servant.

     Fie, fie! no thought of him:

The very thought of my revenges that way

Recoil upon me: in himself too mighty,

20

And in his parties, his alliance; let him be

Until a time may serve. For present vengeance,

Take it on her. Camillo and Polixenes

Laugh at me; make their pastime at my sorrow:

They should not laugh if I could reach them, nor

25

Shall she, within my power.

Enter PAULINA, carrying a baby, with ANTIGONUS, Lords and servants, who try to prevent her.

A LORD     You must not enter.

PAULINA     Nay rather, good my lords, be second to me:

Fear you his tyrannous passion more, alas,

Than the queen’s life? a gracious innocent soul,

More free than he is jealous.

ANTIGONUS     That’s enough.

30

SERVANT

Madam, he hath not slept to-night, commanded

None should come at him.

PAULINA     Not so hot, good sir;

I come to bring him sleep. ’Tis such as you,

That creep like shadows by him, and do sigh

At each his needless heavings; such as you

35

Nourish the cause of his awaking. I

Do come with words as medicinal as true,

Honest, as either, to purge him of that humour

That presses him from sleep.

LEONTES     What noise there, ho?

PAULINA     No noise, my lord; but needful conference

40

About some gossips for your highness.

LEONTES     How!

Away with that audacious lady! Antigonus,

I charg’d thee that she should not come about me.

I knew she would.

ANTIGONUS     I told her so, my lord,

On your displeasure’s peril and on mine,

45

She should not visit you.

LEONTES     What! canst not rule her?

PAULINA     From all dishonesty he can: in this –

Unless he take the course that you have done,

Commit me for committing honour – trust it,

He shall not rule me.

ANTIGONUS     La you now, you hear:

50

When she will take the rein I let her run;

But she’ll not stumble.

PAULINA     Good my liege, I come, –

And, I beseech you hear me, who professes

Myself your loyal servant, your physician,

Your most obedient counsellor, yet that dares

55

Less appear so, in comforting your evils,

Than such as most seem yours; – I say, I come

From your good queen.

LEONTES     Good queen!

PAULINA

Good queen, my lord, good queen: I say good queen,

And would by combat make her good, so were I

60

A man, the worst about you.

LEONTES     Force her hence.

PAULINA     Let him that makes but trifles of his eyes

First hand me: on mine own accord I’ll off;

But first, I’ll do my errand. The good queen

(For she is good) hath brought you forth a daughter;

65

Here ’tis: [laying down the child]

     commends it to your blessing.

LEONTES     Out!

A mankind witch! Hence with her, out o’ door:

A most intelligencing bawd!

PAULINA     Not so:

I am as ignorant in that, as you

In so entitling me: and no less honest

70

Than you are mad; which is enough, I’ll warrant,

As this world goes, to pass for honest.

LEONTES     Traitors!

Will you not push her out? Give her the bastard,

Thou dotard! thou art woman-tir’d, unroosted

By thy dame Partlet here. Take up the bastard,

75

Take’t up, I say; give’t to thy crone.

PAULINA     For ever

Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou

Tak’st up the princess, by that forced baseness

Which he has put upon’t!

LEONTES     He dreads his wife.

PAULINA

So I would you did; then ’twere past all doubt

80

You’d call your children yours.

LEONTES     A nest of traitors!

ANTIGONUS     I am none, by this good light.

PAULINA     Nor I; nor any

But one that’s here, and that’s himself; for he,

The sacred honour of himself, his queen’s,

His hopeful son’s, his babe’s, betrays to slander,

85

Whose sting is sharper than the sword’s; and will not

(For, as the case now stands, it is a curse

He cannot be compell’d to’t) once remove

The root of his opinion, which is rotten

As ever oak or stone was sound.

LEONTES     A callat

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Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband,

And now baits me! This brat is none of mine;

It is the issue of Polixenes.

Hence with it, and together with the dam

Commit them to the fire!

PAULINA     It is yours;

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And, might we lay th’ old proverb to your charge,

So like you, ’tis the worse. Behold, my lords,

Although the print be little, the whole matter

And copy of the father: eye, nose, lip;

The trick of’s frown; his forehead; nay, the valley,

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The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles;

The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger:

And thou, good goddess Nature, which hast made

So like to him that got it, if thou hast

The ordering of the mind too, ’mongst all colours

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No yellow in’t, lest she suspect, as he does,

Her children not her husband’s!

LEONTES     A gross hag!

And, lozel, thou art worthy to be hang’d,

That wilt not stay her tongue.

ANTIGONUS     Hang all the husbands

That cannot do that feat, you’ll leave yourself

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Hardly one subject.

LEONTES     Once more, take her hence.

PAULINA     A most unworthy and unnatural lord

Can do no more.

LEONTES     I’ll ha’ thee burnt.

PAULINA     I care not:

It is an heretic that makes the fire,

Not she which burns in’t. I’ll not call you tyrant;

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But this most cruel usage of your queen –

Not able to produce more accusation

Than your own weak-hing’d fancy – something savours

Of tyranny, and will ignoble make you,

Yea, scandalous to the world.

LEONTES     On your allegiance,

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Out of the chamber with her! Were I a tyrant,

Where were her life? she durst not call me so,

If she did know me one. Away with her!

PAULINA

I pray you, do not push me; I’ll be gone.

Look to your babe, my lord: ’tis yours: Jove send her

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A better guiding spirit! What needs these hands?

You, that are thus so tender o’er his follies,

Will never do him good, not one of you.

So, so: farewell; we are gone.     Exit.

LEONTES

Thou, traitor, hast set on thy wife to this.

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My child? away with’t! Even thou, that hast

A heart so tender o’er it, take it hence

And see it instantly consum’d with fire;

Even thou, and none but thou. Take it up straight:

Within this hour bring me word ’tis done,

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And by good testimony, or I’ll seize thy life,

With what thou else call’st thine. If thou refuse

And wilt encounter with my wrath, say so;

The bastard brains with these my proper hands

Shall I dash out. Go, take it to the fire;

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For thou set’st on thy wife.

ANTIGONUS     I did not, sir:

These lords, my noble fellows, if they please,

Can clear me in’t.

LORDS     We can: my royal liege,

He is not guilty of her coming hither.

LEONTES     You’re liars all.

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A LORD Beseech your highness, give us better credit:

We have always truly serv’d you; and beseech’

So to esteem of us: and on our knees we beg

(As recompense of our dear services

Past and to come) that you do change this purpose,

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Which being so horrible, so bloody, must

Lead on to some foul issue. We all kneel.

LEONTES     I am a feather for each wind that blows:

Shall I live on to see this bastard kneel

And call me father? better burn it now

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Than curse it then. But be it: let it live.

It shall not neither. You sir, come you hither,

You that have been so tenderly officious

With Lady Margery, your midwife there,

To save this bastard’s life – for ’tis a bastard,

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So sure as this beard’s grey – what will you adventure

To save this brat’s life?

ANTIGONUS     Anything, my lord,

That my ability may undergo,

And nobleness impose: at least thus much –

I’ll pawn the little blood which I have left

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To save the innocent: anything possible.

LEONTES     It shall be possible. Swear by this sword

Thou wilt perform my bidding.

ANTIGONUS     I will, my lord.

LEONTES     Mark and perform it: seest thou? for the fail

Of any point in’t shall not only be

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Death to thyself, but to thy lewd-tongu’d wife

(Whom for this time we pardon). We enjoin thee,

As thou art liege-man to us, that thou carry

This female bastard hence, and that thou bear it

To some remote and desert place, quite out

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Of our dominions; and that there thou leave it

(Without more mercy) to it own protection

And favour of the climate. As by strange fortune

It came to us, I do in justice charge thee,

On thy soul’s peril and thy body’s torture,

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That thou commend it strangely to some place

Where chance may nurse or end it. Take it up

ANTIGONUS     I swear to do this; though a present death

Had been more merciful. Come on, poor babe:

Some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens

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To be thy nurses! Wolves and bears, they say,

Casting their savageness aside, have done

Like offices of pity. Sir, be prosperous

In more than this deed does require; and blessing

Against this cruelty, fight on thy side,

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Poor thing, condemn’d to loss!     Exit with the child.

LEONTES     No: I’ll not rear

Another’s issue.

Enter a Servant.

SERVANT     Please your highness, posts

From those you sent to th’Oracle, are come

An hour since: Cleomenes and Dion,

Being well arriv’d from Delphos, are both landed,

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Hasting to th’court.

A LORD     So please you, sir, their speed

Hath been beyond account.

LEONTES     Twenty-three days

They have been absent: ’tis good speed; foretells

The great Apollo suddenly will have

The truth of this appear. Prepare you, lords;

Summon a session, that we may arraign

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Our most disloyal lady; for, as she hath

Been publicly accus’d, so shall she have

A just and open trial. While she lives

My heart will be a burden to me. Leave me.

And think upon my bidding.     Exeunt.

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3.1 Enter CLEOMENES and DION.

CLEOMENES     The climate’s delicate, the air most sweet,

Fertile the isle, the temple much surpassing

The common praise it bears.

DION     I shall report,

For most it caught me, the celestial habits

(Methinks I so should term them), and the reverence

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Of the grave wearers. O, the sacrifice!

How ceremonious, solemn and unearthly

It was i’th’ offering!

CLEOMENES     But of all, the burst

And the ear-deaf ’ning voice o’th’ Oracle,

Kin to Jove’s thunder, so surpris’d my sense,

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That I was nothing.

DION     If th’event o’th’ journey

Prove as successful to the queen, – O be’t so! –

As it hath been to us, rare, pleasant, speedy,

The time is worth the use on’t.

CLEOMENES     Great Apollo

Turn all to th’ best! These proclamations,

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So forcing faults upon Hermione,

I little like.

DION     The violent carriage of it

Will clear or end the business: when the Oracle

(Thus by Apollo’s great divine seal’d up)

Shall the contents discover, something rare

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Even then will rush to knowledge. Go: fresh horses!

And gracious be the issue.     Exeunt.

3.2 Enter LEONTES, Lords and Officers.

LEONTES

This sessions (to our great grief we pronounce)

Even pushes ’gainst our heart: the party tried

The daughter of a king, our wife, and one

Of us too much belov’d. Let us be clear’d

Of being tyrannous, since we so openly

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Proceed in justice, which shall have due course,

Even to the guilt or the purgation.

Produce the prisoner.

OFFICER     It is his highness’ pleasure that the queen

Appear in person, here in court. Silence!

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Enter HERMIONE guarded; PAULINA and ladies attending.

LEONTES     Read the indictment.

OFFICER     [Reads.] Hermione, queen to the worthy Leontes,

king of Sicilia, thou art here accused and arraigned of

high treason, in committing adultery with Polixenes, king

of Bohemia, and conspiring with Camillo to take away

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the life of our sovereign lord the king, thy royal husband:

the pretence whereof being by circumstances partly laid

open, thou, Hermione, contrary to the faith and allegiance

of a true subject, didst counsel and aid them, for their

better safety, to fly away by night.

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HERMIONE     Since what I am to say, must be but that

Which contradicts my accusation, and

The testimony on my part, no other

But what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me

To say ‘not guilty’: mine integrity,

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Being counted falsehood, shall, as I express it,

Be so receiv’d. But thus, if powers divine

Behold our human actions (as they do),

I doubt not then but innocence shall make

False accusation blush, and tyranny

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Tremble at patience. You, my lord, best know

(Who least will seem to do so) my past life

Hath been as continent, as chaste, as true,

As I am now unhappy; which is more

Than history can pattern, though devis’d

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And play’d to take spectators. For behold me,

A fellow of the royal bed, which owe

A moiety of the throne, a great king’s daughter,

The mother to a hopeful prince, here standing

To prate and talk for life and honour ’fore

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Who please to come and hear. For life, I prize it

As I weigh grief (which I would spare): for honour,

’Tis a derivative from me to mine,

And only that I stand for. I appeal

To your own conscience, sir, before Polixenes

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Came to your court, how I was in your grace,

How merited to be so; since he came,

With what encounter so uncurrent I

Have strain’d t’appear thus: if one jot beyond

The bound of honour, or in act or will

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That way inclining, harden’d be the hearts

Of all that hear me, and my near’st of kin

Cry fie upon my grave!

LEONTES     I ne’er heard yet

That any of these bolder vices wanted

Less impudence to gainsay what they did

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Than to perform it first.

HERMIONE     That’s true enough,

Though ’tis a saying, sir, not due to me.

LEONTES     You will not own it.

HERMIONE     More than mistress of

Which comes to me in name of fault, I must not

At all acknowledge. For Polixenes,

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With whom I am accus’d, I do confess

I lov’d him as in honour he requir’d,

With such a kind of love as might become

A lady like me; with a love, even such,

So, and no other, as yourself commanded:

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Which, not to have done, I think had been in me

Both disobedience and ingratitude

To you, and toward your friend, whose love had spoke,

Even since it could speak, from an infant, freely,

That it was yours. Now, for conspiracy,

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I know not how it tastes, though it be dish’d

For me to try how: all I know of it,

Is that Camillo was an honest man;

And why he left your court, the gods themselves

(Wotting no more than I) are ignorant.

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LEONTES     You knew of his departure, as you know

What you have underta’en to do in’s absence.

HERMIONE     Sir,

You speak a language that I understand not:

My life stands in the level of your dreams,

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Which I’ll lay down.

LEONTES     Your actions are my dreams.

You had a bastard by Polixenes,

And I but dream’d it! As you were past all shame

(Those of your fact are so) so past all truth,

Which to deny, concerns more than avails; for as

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Thy brat hath been cast out, like to itself,

No father owning it (which is, indeed,

More criminal in thee than it), so thou

Shalt feel our justice; in whose easiest passage

Look for no less than death.

HERMIONE     Sir, spare your threats:

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The bug which you would fright me with, I seek.

To me can life be no commodity;

The crown and comfort of my life, your favour,

I do give lost, for I do feel it gone,

But know not how it went. My second joy,

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And first-fruits of my body, from his presence

I am barr’d, like one infectious. My third comfort

(Starr’d most unluckily) is from my breast

(The innocent milk in it most innocent mouth)

Hal’d out to murder; myself on every post

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Proclaim’d a strumpet, with immodest hatred

The child-bed privilege denied, which ’longs

To women of all fashion; lastly, hurried

Here, to this place, i’th’ open air, before

I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege,

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Tell me what blessings I have here alive,

That I should fear to die? Therefore proceed.

But yet hear this: mistake me not: no life,

I prize it not a straw, but for mine honour,

Which I would free: if I shall be condemn’d

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Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else

But what your jealousies awake, I tell you

’Tis rigour and not law. Your honours all,

I do refer me to the Oracle:

Apollo be my judge!

A LORD     This your request

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Is altogether just: therefore bring forth,

And in Apollo’s name, his Oracle.

     Exeunt certain Officers.

HERMIONE     The Emperor of Russia was my father:

O that he were alive, and here beholding

His daughter’s trial! that he did but see

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The flatness of my misery, yet with eyes

Of pity, not revenge!

Enter Officers, with CLEOMENES and DION.

OFFICER

You here shall swear upon this sword of justice,

That you, Cleomenes and Dion, have

Been both at Delphos, and from thence have brought

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This seal’d-up Oracle, by the hand deliver’d

Of great Apollo’s priest; and that since then

You have not dared to break the holy seal,

Nor read the secrets in’t.

CLEOMENES, DION     All this we swear.

LEONTES     Break up the seals and read.

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OFFICER     [Reads.] Hermione is chaste; Polixenes

blameless; Camillo a true subject; Leontes a jealous

tyrant; his innocent babe truly begotten; and the king shall

live without an heir, if that which is lost be not found.

LORDS     Now blessed be the great Apollo!

HERMIONE     Praised!

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LEONTES     Hast thou read truth?

OFFICER     Ay, my lord, even so

As it is here set down.

LEONTES     There is no truth at all i’th’ Oracle:

The sessions shall proceed: this is mere falsehood.

Enter Servant.

SERVANT     My lord the king, the king!

LEONTES     What is the business?

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SERVANT     O sir, I shall be hated to report it!

The prince your son, with mere conceit and fear

Of the queen’s speed, is gone.

LEONTES     How! gone?

SERVANT     Is dead.

LEONTES     Apollo’s angry, and the heavens themselves

Do strike at my injustice.

[Hermione faints.]     How now there?

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PAULINA     This news is mortal to the queen: look down

And see what death is doing.

LEONTES     Take her hence:

Her heart is but o’ercharg’d: she will recover.

I have too much believ’d mine own suspicion:

Beseech you, tenderly apply to her

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Some remedies for life.

Exeunt Paulina and Ladies, with Hermione.

Apollo, pardon

My great profaneness ’gainst thine Oracle!

I’ll reconcile me to Polixenes,

New woo my queen, recall the good Camillo,

Whom I proclaim a man of truth, of mercy:

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For being transported by my jealousies

To bloody thoughts and to revenge, I chose

CAMILLO for the minister to poison

My friend Polixenes: which had been done,

But that the good mind of Camillo tardied

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My swift command; though I with death, and with

Reward, did threaten and encourage him,

Not doing it, and being done. He (most humane

And fill’d with honour) to my kingly guest

Unclasp’d my practice, quit his fortunes here

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(Which you knew great) and to the certain hazard

Of all incertainties, himself commended,

No richer than his honour: how he glisters

Thorough my rust! and how his piety

Does my deeds make the blacker!

Enter PAULINA.

PAULINA     Woe the while!

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O cut my lace, lest my heart, cracking it,

Break too!

A LORD     What fit is this, good lady?

PAULINA     What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?

What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling?

In leads or oils? What old or newer torture

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Must I receive, whose every word deserves

To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny,

Together working with thy jealousies

(Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle

For girls of nine), O think what they have done,

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And then run mad indeed: stark mad! for all

Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it.

That thou betray’dst Polixenes, ’twas nothing;

That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant

And damnable ingrateful: nor was’t much,

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Thou would’st have poison’d good Camillo’s honour,

To have him kill a king; poor trespasses,

More monstrous standing by: whereof I reckon

The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter,

To be or none or little; though a devil

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Would have shed water out of fire, ere done’t:

Nor is’t directly laid to thee the death

Of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts

(Thoughts high for one so tender) cleft the heart

That could conceive a gross and foolish sire

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Blemish’d his gracious dam: this is not, no,

Laid to thy answer: but the last – O lords,

When I have said, cry ‘woe!’ – the queen, the queen,

The sweet’st, dear’st creature’s dead: and vengeance for’t

Not dropp’d down yet.

A LORD     The higher powers forbid!

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PAULINA

I say she’s dead: I’ll swear’t. If word nor oath

Prevail not, go and see: if you can bring

Tincture, or lustre in her lip, her eye,

Heat outwardly or breath within, I’ll serve you

As I would do the gods. But, O thou tyrant!

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Do not repent these things, for they are heavier

Than all thy woes can stir: therefore betake thee

To nothing but despair. A thousand knees

Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting,

Upon a barren mountain, and still winter

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In storm perpetual, could not move the gods

To look that way thou wert.

LEONTES     Go on, go on:

Thou canst not speak too much; I have deserv’d

All tongues to talk their bitt’rest.

A LORD     Say no more:

Howe’er the business goes, you have made fault

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I’th’ boldness of your speech.

PAULINA     I am sorry for’t:

All faults I make, when I shall come to know them,

I do repent. Alas! I have show’d too much

The rashness of a woman: he is touch’d

To th’ noble heart. What’s gone and what’s past help

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Should be past grief. Do not receive affliction

At my petition; I beseech you, rather

Let me be punish’d, that have minded you

Of what you should forget. Now, good my liege,

Sir, royal sir, forgive a foolish woman:

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The love I bore your queen – lo, fool again!

I’ll speak of her no more, nor of your children:

I’ll not remember you of my own lord

(Who is lost too): take your patience to you,

And I’ll say nothing.

LEONTES     Thou didst speak but well

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When most the truth: which I receive much better

Than to be pitied of thee. Prithee, bring me

To the dead bodies of my queen and son:

One grave shall be for both: upon them shall

The causes of their death appear, unto

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Our shame perpetual. Once a day I’ll visit

The chapel where they lie, and tears shed there

Shall be my recreation. So long as nature

Will bear up with this exercise, so long

I daily vow to use it. Come, and lead me

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To these sorrows.     Exeunt.

3.3 Enter ANTIGONUS with the babe, and a Mariner.

ANTIGONUS

Thou art perfect, then, our ship hath touch’d upon

The deserts of Bohemia?

MARINER     Ay, my lord, and fear

We have landed in ill time: the skies look grimly,

And threaten present blusters. In my conscience,

The heavens with that we have in hand are angry,

5

And frown upon’s.

ANTIGONUS

Their sacred wills be done! Go, get aboard;

Look to thy bark: I’ll not be long before

I call upon thee.

MARINER     Make your best haste, and go not

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Too far i’th’ land: ’tis like to be loud weather;

Besides, this place is famous for the creatures

Of prey that keep upon’t.

ANTIGONUS     Go thou away:

I’ll follow instantly.

MARINER     I am glad at heart

To be so rid o’th’ business.     Exit.

ANTIGONUS     Come, poor babe:

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I have heard, but not believ’d, the spirits o’th’ dead

May walk again: if such thing be, thy mother

Appear’d to me last night; for ne’er was dream

So like a waking. To me comes a creature,

Sometimes her head on one side, some another;

20

I never saw a vessel of like sorrow,

So fill’d, and so becoming: in pure white robes,

Like very sanctity, she did approach

My cabin where I lay: thrice bow’d before me,

And, gasping to begin some speech, her eyes

25

Became two spouts; the fury spent, anon

Did this break from her: ‘Good Antigonus,

Since fate, against thy better disposition,

Hath made thy person for the thrower-out

Of my poor babe, according to thine oath,

30

Places remote enough are in Bohemia,

There weep, and leave it crying: and, for the babe

Is counted lost for ever, Perdita,

I prithee, call’t. For this ungentle business,

Put on thee by my lord, thou ne’er shalt see

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Thy wife Paulina more.’ And so, with shrieks,

She melted into air. Affrighted much,

I did in time collect myself, and thought

This was so, and no slumber. Dreams are toys:

Yet for this once, yea, superstitiously,

40

I will be squar’d by this. I do believe

HERMIONE hath suffer’d death; and that

Apollo would, this being indeed the issue

Of King Polixenes, it should here be laid,

Either for life or death, upon the earth

45

Of its right father. Blossom, speed thee well!

There lie, and there thy character: there these,

Which may, if fortune please, both breed thee, pretty,

And still rest thine. The storm begins: poor wretch,

That for thy mother’s fault art thus expos’d

50

To loss and what may follow! Weep I cannot,

But my heart bleeds; and most accurs’d am I

To be by oath enjoin’d to this. Farewell!

The day frowns more and more: thou’rt like to have

A lullaby too rough: I never saw

55

The heavens so dim by day. A savage clamour!

Well may I get aboard! This is the chase:

I am gone for ever!     Exit, pursued by a bear.

Enter a Shepherd.

SHEPHERD     I would there were no age between ten and

three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the

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rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting

wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing,

fighting – Hark you now! Would any but these boiled-

brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this

weather? They have scared away two of my best sheep,

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which I fear the wolf will sooner find than the

master: if anywhere I have them, ’tis by the sea-side,

browzing of ivy. [seeing the babe] Good luck, and’t be

thy will, what have we here? Mercy on’s, a barne! A

very pretty barne! A boy or a child, I wonder? A pretty

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one; a very pretty one. Sure, some scape: though I am

not bookish, yet I can read waiting-gentlewoman in

the scape. This has been some stair-work, some trunk-

work, some behind-door-work: they were warmer that

got this than the poor thing is here. I’ll take it up for

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pity: yet I’ll tarry till my son come; he hallooed but

even now. Whoa-ho-hoa!

Enter Clown.

CLOWN     Hilloa, loa!

SHEPHERD     What, art so near? If thou’lt see a thing to

talk on when thou art dead and rotten, come hither.

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What ail’st thou man?

CLOWN     I have seen two such sights, by sea and by land!

But I am not to say it is a sea, for it is now the sky:

betwixt the firmament and it you cannot thrust a

bodkin’s point.

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SHEPHERD     Why, boy, how is it?

CLOWN     I would you did but see how it chafes, how it

rages, how it takes up the shore! But that’s not to the

point. O, the most piteous cry of the poor souls!

sometimes to see ’em, and not to see ’em: now the ship

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boring the moon with her main-mast, and anon

swallowed with yest and froth, as you’d thrust a cork

into a hogs-head. And then for the land-service, to see

how the bear tore out his shoulder-bone, how he cried

to me for help and said his name was Antigonus, a

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nobleman. But to make an end of the ship, to see how

the sea flap-dragoned it: but first, how the poor souls

roared, and the sea mocked them: and how the poor

gentleman roared, and the bear mocked him, both

roaring louder than the sea or weather.

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SHEPHERD     Name of mercy, when was this, boy?

CLOWN     Now, now: I have not winked since I saw these

sights: the men are not yet cold under water, nor the

bear half dined on the gentleman: he’s at it now.

SHEPHERD     Would I had been by, to have helped the old

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man!

CLOWN     I would you had been by the ship side, to have

helped her: there your charity would have lacked

footing.

SHEPHERD     Heavy matters! heavy matters! But look thee

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here, boy. Now bless thyself: thou met’st with things

dying, I with things new-born. Here’s a sight for thee;

look thee, a bearing-cloth for a squire’s child! look thee

here; take up, take up, boy; open’t. So, let’s see: it was

told me I should be rich by the fairies. This is some

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changeling: open’t. What’s within, boy?

CLOWN     You’re a made old man: if the sins of your youth

are forgiven you, you’re well to live. Gold! all gold!

SHEPHERD     This is fairy gold, boy, and ’twill prove so;

up with’t, keep it close: home, home, the next way. We

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are lucky, boy; and to be so still requires nothing but

secrecy. Let my sheep go: come, good boy, the next

way home.

CLOWN     Go you the next way with your findings. I’ll go

see if the bear be gone from the gentleman, and how

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much he hath eaten; they are never curst but when

they are hungry: if there be any of him left, I’ll bury it.

SHEPHERD     That’s a good deed. If thou mayest discern

by that which is left of him what he is, fetch me to th’

sight of him.

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CLOWN     Marry, will I; and you shall help to put him i’th’

ground.

SHEPHERD     ’Tis a lucky day, boy, and we’ll do good

deeds on’t.     Exeunt.

4.1 Enter TIME, the Chorus.

TIME     I that please some, try all: both joy and terror

Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error,

Now take upon me, in the name of Time,

To use my wings. Impute it not a crime

To me, or my swift passage, that I slide

5

O’er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried

Of that wide gap, since it is in my power

To o’erthrow law, and in one self-born hour

To plant and o’erwhelm custom. Let me pass

The same I am, ere ancient’st order was,

10

Or what is now receiv’d. I witness to

The times that brought them in; so shall I do

To th’ freshest things now reigning, and make stale

The glistering of this present, as my tale

Now seems to it. Your patience this allowing,

15

I turn my glass, and give my scene such growing

As you had slept between: Leontes leaving,

Th’effects of his fond jealousies so grieving

That he shuts up himself, imagine me,

Gentle spectators, that I now may be

20

In fair Bohemia, and remember well

I mentioned a son o’th’ king’s, which Florizel

I now name to you; and with speed so pace

To speak of Perdita, now grown in grace

Equal with wond’ring. What of her ensues

25

I list not prophesy; but let Time’s news

Be known when ’tis brought forth. A shepherd’s daughter,

And what to her adheres, which follows after,

Is th’argument of Time. Of this allow,

If ever you have spent time worse ere now;

30

If never, yet that Time himself doth say,

He wishes earnestly you never may.     Exit.

4.2 Enter POLIXENES and CAMILLO.

POLIXENES     I pray thee, good Camillo, be no more

importunate: ’tis a sickness denying thee anything; a

death to grant this.

CAMILLO     It is fifteen years since I saw my country:

though I have, for the most part, been aired abroad, I

5

desire to lay my bones there. Besides, the penitent

king, my master, hath sent for me; to whose feeling

sorrows I might be some allay (or I o’erween to think

so), which is another spur to my departure.

POLIXENES     As thou lov’st me, Camillo, wipe not out the

10

rest of thy services by leaving me now: the need I have

of thee, thine own goodness hath made; better not to

have had thee than thus to want thee. Thou, having

made me businesses, which none without thee can

sufficiently manage, must either stay to execute them

15

thyself, or take away with thee the very services thou

hast done: which if I have not enough considered (as

too much I cannot), to be more thankful to thee shall

be my study; and my profit therein, the heaping

friendships. Of that fatal country, Sicilia, prithee

20

speak no more; whose very naming punishes me with

the remembrance of that penitent (as thou call’st him)

and reconciled king, my brother; whose loss of his

most precious queen and children are even now to be

afresh lamented. Say to me, when sawest thou the

25

Prince Florizel, my son? Kings are no less unhappy,

their issue not being gracious, than they are in losing

them when they have approved their virtues.

CAMILLO     Sir, it is three days since I saw the prince.

What his happier affairs may be, are to me unknown:

30

but I have (missingly) noted, he is of late much retired

from court, and is less frequent to his princely

exercises than formerly he hath appeared.

POLIXENES     I have considered so much, Camillo, and

with some care; so far that I have eyes under my

35

service which look upon his removedness; from whom

I have this intelligence, that he is seldom from the

house of a most homely shepherd; a man, they say, that

from very nothing, and beyond the imagination of his

neighbours, is grown into an unspeakable estate.

40

CAMILLO     I have heard, sir, of such a man, who hath a

DAUGHTER of most rare note: the report of her is

extended more than can be thought to begin from

such a cottage.

POLIXENES     That’s likewise part of my intelligence: but,

45

I fear, the angle that plucks our son thither. Thou shalt

accompany us to the place, where we will (not

appearing what we are) have some question with the

shepherd; from whose simplicity I think it not uneasy

to get the cause of my son’s resort thither. Prithee, be

50

my present partner in this business, and lay aside the

thoughts of Sicilia.

CAMILLO     I willingly obey your command.

POLIXENES     My best Camillo! We must disguise

ourselves.     Exeunt.

55

4.3 Enter AUTOLYCUS, singing.

When daffodils begin to peer,

With heigh! the doxy over the dale,

Why then comes in the sweet o’the year,

For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.

The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,

5

With hey! the sweet birds, O how they sing!

Doth set my pugging tooth an edge;

For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.

The lark, that tirra-lirra chants,

With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay,

10

Are summer songs for me and my aunts,

While we lie tumbling in the hay.

I have served Prince Florizel, and in my time wore

three-pile, but now I am out of service.

But shall I go mourn for that, my dear?

15

The pale moon shines by night:

And when I wander here and there,

I then do most go right.

If tinkers may have leave to live,

And bear the sow-skin budget,

20

Then my account I well may give,

And in the stocks avouch it.

My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to

lesser linen. My father named me Autolycus; who,

being as I am, littered under Mercury, was likewise a

25

snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. With die and

drab I purchased this caparison, and my revenue is

the silly cheat. Gallows and knock are too powerful on

the highway: beating and hanging are terrors to me:

for the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it. A

30

prize! a prize!

Enter Clown.

CLOWN     Let me see: every ’leven wether tods; every tod

yields pound and odd shilling: fifteen hundred

shorn, what comes the wool to?

AUTOLYCUS     [aside] If the springe hold, the cock’s mine.

35

CLOWN     I cannot do ’t without counters. Let me see;

what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three

pound of sugar, five pound of currants, rice – what

will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father

hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on.

40

She hath made me four-and-twenty nosegays for the

shearers, three-man song-men all, and very good ones;

but they are most of them means and basses but one

puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to horn-

pipes. I must have saffron to colour the warden pies;

45

mace; dates, none – that’s out of my note; nutmegs,

seven; a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg;

four pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o’th’

sun.

AUTOLYCUS     O that ever I was born!

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[grovelling on the ground]

CLOWN     I’th’ name of me!

AUTOLYCUS     O, help me, help me! pluck but off these

rags; and then, death, death!

CLOWN     Alack, poor soul! thou hast need of more rags to

lay on thee, rather than have these off.

55

AUTOLYCUS     O sir, the loathsomeness of them offends

me more than the stripes I have received, which are

mighty ones and millions.

CLOWN     Alas, poor man! a million of beating may come

to a great matter.

60

AUTOLYCUS     I am robbed, sir, and beaten; my money

and apparel ta’en from me, and these detestable things

put upon me.

CLOWN     What, by a horseman, or a footman?

AUTOLYCUS     A footman, sweet sir, a footman.

65

CLOWN     Indeed, he should be a footman by the

garments he has left with thee: if this be a horseman’s

coat, it hath seen very hot service. Lend me thy hand,

I’ll help thee: come, lend me thy hand.

AUTOLYCUS     O, good sir, tenderly, O!

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CLOWN     Alas, poor soul!

AUTOLYCUS     O, good sir, softly, good sir! I fear, sir, my

shoulder-blade is out.

CLOWN     How now? canst stand?

AUTOLYCUS     Softly, dear sir [Picks his pocket.]; good sir,

75

softly. You ha’ done me a charitable office.

CLOWN     Dost lack any money? I have a little money for

thee.

AUTOLYCUS     No, good sweet sir; no, I beseech you, sir: I

have a kinsman not past three-quarters of a mile

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hence, unto whom I was going: I shall there have

money, or anything I want: offer me no money, I pray

you; that kills my heart.

CLOWN     What manner of fellow was he that robbed you?

AUTOLYCUS     A fellow, sir, that I have known to go about

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with troll-my-dames: I knew him once a servant of the

prince: I cannot tell, good sir, for which of his virtues

it was, but he was certainly whipped out of the court.

CLOWN     His vices, you would say; there’s no virtue

whipped out of the court: they cherish it to make it

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stay there; and yet it will no more but abide.

AUTOLYCUS     Vices I would say, sir. I know this man well;

he hath been since an ape-bearer, then a process-

server (a bailiff), then he compassed a motion of the

Prodigal Son, and married a tinker’s wife within a

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mile where my land and living lies; and, having flown

over many knavish professions, he settled only in

rogue. Some call him Autolycus.

CLOWN     Out upon him! prig, for my life, prig: he haunts

wakes, fairs, and bear-baitings.

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AUTOLYCUS     Very true, sir; he, sir, he: that’s the rogue

that put me into this apparel.

CLOWN     Not a more cowardly rogue in all Bohemia: if

you had but looked big and spit at him, he’d have run.

AUTOLYCUS     I must confess to you, sir, I am no fighter:

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I am false of heart that way; and that he knew, I

warrant him.

CLOWN     How do you now?

AUTOLYCUS     Sweet sir, much better than I was: I can

stand, and walk: I will even take my leave of you, and

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pace softly towards my kinsman’s.

CLOWN     Shall I bring thee on the way?

AUTOLYCUS     No, good-faced sir; no, sweet sir.

CLOWN     Then fare-thee-well: I must go buy spices for

our sheep-shearing.     Exit.

115

AUTOLYCUS     Prosper you, sweet sir! Your purse is not

hot enough to purchase your spice. I’ll be with you at

your sheep-shearing too: if I make not this cheat bring

out another, and the shearers prove sheep, let me be

unrolled, and my name put in the book of virtue!

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Song.

Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,

And merrily hent the stile-a:

A merry heart goes all the day,

Your sad tires in a mile-a.     Exit.

4.4 Enter FLORIZEL and PERDITA followed, at a little distance, by Shepherd, Clown; POLIXENES, CAMILLO, disguised; MOPSA, DORCAS, servants, shepherds and shepherdesses.

FLORIZEL

These your unusual weeds, to each part of you

Do give a life: no shepherdess, but Flora

Peering in April’s front. This your sheep-shearing

Is as a meeting of the petty gods,

And you the queen on’t.

PERDITA     Sir: my gracious lord,

5

To chide at your extremes, it not becomes me –

O pardon, that I name them! Your high self,

The gracious mark o’th’ land, you have obscur’d

With a swain’s wearing, and me, poor lowly maid,

Most goddess-like prank’d up: but that our feasts

10

In every mess have folly, and the feeders

Digest it with a custom, I should blush

To see you so attir’d; swoon, I think,

To show myself a glass.

FLORIZEL     I bless the time

When my good falcon made her flight across

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Thy father’s ground.

PERDITA     Now Jove afford you cause!

To me the difference forges dread (your greatness

Hath not been us’d to fear): even now I tremble

To think your father, by some accident

Should pass this way, as you did: O the Fates!

20

How would he look, to see his work, so noble,

Vilely bound up? What would he say? Or how

Should I, in these my borrowed flaunts, behold

The sternness of his presence?

FLORIZEL     Apprehend

Nothing but jollity. The gods themselves,

25

Humbling their deities to love, have taken

The shapes of beasts upon them: Jupiter

Became a bull, and bellow’d; the green Neptune

A ram, and bleated; and the fire-rob’d god,

Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain,

30

As I seem now. Their transformations

Were never for a piece of beauty rarer,

Nor in a way so chaste, since my desires

Run not before mine honour, nor my lusts

Burn hotter than my faith.

PERDITA     O, but sir,

35

Your resolution cannot hold when ’tis

Oppos’d, as it must be, by th’ power of the king:

One of these two must be necessities,

Which then will speak, that you must change this purpose,

Or I my life.

FLORIZEL     Thou dearest Perdita,

40

With these forc’d thoughts, I prithee, darken not

The mirth o’th’ feast. Or I’ll be thine, my fair,

Or not my father’s. For I cannot be

Mine own, nor anything to any, if

I be not thine. To this I am most constant,

45

Though destiny say no. Be merry, gentle,

Strangle such thoughts as these with anything

That you behold the while. Your guests are coming:

Lift up your countenance, as it were the day

Of celebration of that nuptial which

50

We two have sworn shall come.

PERDITA     O lady Fortune,

Stand you auspicious!

[Shepherd, Clown, Mopsa, Dorcas and others come

forward, with the disguised Polixenes and Camillo.]

FLORIZEL     See, your guests approach:

Address yourself to entertain them sprightly,

And let’s be red with mirth.

SHEPHERD

Fie, daughter! when my old wife liv’d, upon

55

This day she was both pantler, butler, cook,

Both dame and servant; welcom’d all, serv’d all;

Would sing her song and dance her turn; now here

At upper end o’th’ table, now i’th’ middle;

On his shoulder, and his; her face o’fire

60

With labour, and the thing she took to quench it

She would to each one sip. You are retired,

As if you were a feasted one, and not

The hostess of the meeting: pray you, bid

These unknown friends to’s welcome; for it is

65

A way to make us better friends, more known.

Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself

That which you are, Mistress o’th’ Feast. Come on,

And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing,

As your good flock shall prosper.

PERDITA [to Polixenes]     Sir, welcome:

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It is my father’s will I should take on me

The hostess-ship o’th’ day.

[to Camillo]     You’re welcome, sir.

Give me those flowers there, Dorcas. Reverend sirs,

For you, there’s rosemary, and rue; these keep

Seeming and savour all the winter long:

75

Grace and remembrance be to you both,

And welcome to our shearing!

POLIXENES     Shepherdess –

A fair one are you – well you fit our ages

With flowers of winter.

PERDITA     Sir, the year growing ancient,

Not yet on summer’s death nor on the birth

80

Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o’th’ season

Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors,

Which some call nature’s bastards: of that kind

Our rustic garden’s barren; and I care not

To get slips of them.

POLIXENES     Wherefore, gentle maiden,

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Do you neglect them?

PERDITA     For I have heard it said

There is an art which, in their piedness, shares

With great creating nature.

POLIXENES     Say there be;

Yet nature is made better by no mean

But nature makes that mean: so, over that art,

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Which you say adds to nature, is an art

That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry

A gentler scion to the wildest stock,

And make conceive a bark of baser kind

By bud of nobler race. This is an art

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Which does mend nature – change it rather – but

The art itself is nature.

PERDITA     So it is.

POLIXENES     Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,

And do not call them bastards.

PERDITA     I’ll not put

The dibble in earth to set one slip of them;

100

No more than, were I painted, I would wish

This youth should say ’twere well, and only therefore

Desire to breed by me. Here’s flowers for you:

Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram,

The marigold, that goes to bed wi’th’ sun

105

And with him rises, weeping: these are flowers

Of middle summer, and I think they are given

To men of middle age. Y’are very welcome.

[She gives them flowers.]

CAMILLO     I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,

And only live by gazing.

PERDITA     Out, alas!

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You’d be so lean that blasts of January

Would blow you through and through.

[to Florizel]     Now, my fair’st friend,

I would I had some flowers o’th’ spring, that might

Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,

[to Mopsa and the other girls] That wear upon your virgin branches yet

115

Your maidenheads growing: O Proserpina,

For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let’st fall

From Dis’s waggon! daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,

120

But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes

Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses,

That die unmarried, ere they can behold

Bright Phoebus in his strength (a malady

Most incident to maids); bold oxlips and

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The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,

The flower-de-luce being one. O, these I lack,

To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend,

To strew him o’er and o’er!

FLORIZEL     What, like a corpse?

PERDITA     No, like a bank, for love to lie and play on:

130

Not like a corpse; or if – not to be buried,

But quick, and in mine arms. Come, take your flowers:

Methinks I play as I have seen them do

In Whitsun pastorals: sure this robe of mine

Does change my disposition.

FLORIZEL     What you do,

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Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,

I’d have you do it ever: when you sing,

I’d have you buy and sell so, so give alms,

Pray so, and, for the ord’ring your affairs,

To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you

140

A wave o’th’ sea, that you might ever do

Nothing but that, move still, still so,

And own no other function. Each your doing,

So singular in each particular,

Crowns what you are doing, in the present deeds,

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That all your acts are queens.

PERDITA     O Doricles,

Your praises are too large: but that your youth,

And the true blood which peeps fairly through’t,

Do plainly give you out an unstain’d shepherd,

With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles,

150

You woo’d me the false way.

FLORIZEL     I think you have

As little skill to fear as I have purpose

To put you to’t. But come; our dance, I pray,

Your hand, my Perdita: so turtles pair

That never mean to part.

PERDITA     I’ll swear for ’em.

155

POLIXENES     This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever

Ran on the green-sward: nothing she does or seems

But smacks of something greater than herself,

Too noble for this place.

CAMILLO     He tells her something

That makes her blood look out: good sooth, she is

160

The queen of curds and cream.

CLOWN     Come on, strike up!

DORCAS     Mopsa must be your mistress: marry, garlic to

mend her kissing with!

MOPSA     Now, in good time!

165

CLOWN     Not a word, a word; we stand upon our

manners. Come, strike up!

[Music. Here a dance of shepherds and shepherdesses.]

POLIXENES     Pray, good shepherd, what fair swain is this

Which dances with your daughter?

SHEPHERD     They call him Doricles; and boasts himself

170

To have a worthy feeding: but I have it

Upon his own report and I believe it;

He looks like sooth. He says he loves my daughter:

I think so too; for never gaz’d the moon

Upon the water as he’ll stand and read

175

As ’twere my daughter’s eyes: and, to be plain,

I think there is not half a kiss to choose

Who loves another best.

POLIXENES     She dances featly.

SHEPHERD     So she does any thing, though I report it

That should be silent. If young Doricles

180

Do light upon her, she shall bring him that

Which he not dreams of.

Enter Servant.

SERVANT     O master! if you did but hear the pedlar at the

door, you would never dance again after a tabor and

pipe; no, the bagpipe could not move you: he sings

185

several tunes, faster than you’ll tell money; he utters

them as he had eaten ballads, and all men’s ears grew

to his tunes.

CLOWN     He could never come better: he shall come in. I

love a ballad but even too well, if it be doleful matter

190

merrily set down; or a very pleasant thing indeed,

and sung lamentably.

SERVANT     He hath songs for man or woman, of all sizes:

no milliner can so fit his customers with gloves: he has

the prettiest love-songs for maids, so without bawdry

195

(which is strange); with such delicate burdens of

dildoes and fadings, jump her and thump her; and

where some stretch-mouthed rascal would, as it were,

mean mischief and break a foul gap into the matter, he

makes the maid to answer ‘Whoop, do me no harm,

200

good man;’ puts him off, slights him, with ‘Whoop,

do me no harm, good man.’

POLIXENES     This is a brave fellow.

CLOWN     Believe me, thou talkest of an admirable

conceited fellow. Has he any unbraided wares?

205

SERVANT     He hath ribbons of all the colours i’th’

rainbow; points, more than all the lawyers in Bohemia

can learnedly handle, though they come to him by th’

gross; inkles, caddisses, cambrics, lawns: why, he

sings ’em over as they were gods or goddesses; you

210

would think a smock were a she-angel, he so chants

to the sleeve-hand and the work about the square on’t.

CLOWN     Prithee bring him in; and let him approach

singing.

PERDITA     Forewarn him, that he use no scurrilous words

215

in’s tunes.     Exit Servant.

CLOWN     You have of these pedlars that have more in

them than you’d think, sister.

PERDITA     Ay, good brother, or go about to think.

Enter AUTOLYCUS, singing.

Lawn as white as driven snow,

220

Cypress black as e’er was crow,

Gloves as sweet as damask roses,

Masks for faces and for noses:

Bugle-bracelet, necklace amber,

Perfume for a lady’s chamber:

225

Golden quoifs and stomachers

For my lads to give their dears:

Pins, and poking-sticks of steel,

What maids lack from head to heel:

Come buy of me, come! come buy! come buy!

230

Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry.

Come buy!

CLOWN     If I were not in love with Mopsa, thou shouldst

take no money of me; but being enthralled as I am, it

will also be the bondage of certain ribbons and gloves.

235

MOPSA     I was promised them against the feast; but they

come not too late now.

DORCAS     He hath promised you more than that, or there

be liars.

MOPSA     He hath paid you all he promised you: may be

240

he has paid you more, which will shame you to give

him again.

CLOWN     Is there no manners left among maids? Will

they wear their plackets where they should bear their

faces? Is there not milking-time, when you are going

245

to bed, or kiln-hole, to whistle of these secrets, but you

must be tittle-tattling before all our guests? ’Tis well

they are whispering: clamor your tongues, and not a

word more.

MOPSA     I have done. Come, you promised me a tawdry-

250

lace and a pair of sweet gloves.

CLOWN     Have I not told thee how I was cozened by the

way and lost all my money?

AUTOLYCUS     And indeed, sir, there are cozeners abroad;

therefore it behoves men to be wary.

255

CLOWN     Fear not thou, man, thou shalt lose nothing

here.

AUTOLYCUS     I hope so, sir; for I have about me many

parcels of charge.

CLOWN     What hast here? ballads?

260

MOPSA     Pray now, buy some: I love a ballad in print, a

life, for then we are sure they are true.

AUTOLYCUS     Here’s one, to a very doleful tune, how a

usurer’s wife was brought to bed of twenty money-

bags at a burden, and how she longed to eat adders’

265

heads and toads carbonadoed.

MOPSA     Is it true, think you?

AUTOLYCUS     Very true, and but a month old.

DORCAS     Bless me from marrying a usurer!

AUTOLYCUS     Here’s the midwife’s name to’t, one

270

Mistress Tale-porter, and five or six honest wives that

were present. Why should I carry lies abroad?

MOPSA     Pray you now, buy it.

CLOWN     Come on, lay it by: and let’s first see moe

ballads: we’ll buy the other things anon.

275

AUTOLYCUS     Here’s another ballad of a fish that

appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore

of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sung

this ballad against the hard hearts of maids: it was

thought she was a woman, and was turned into a cold

280

fish for she would not exchange flesh with one that

loved her. The ballad is very pitiful, and as true.

DORCAS     Is it true too, think you?

AUTOLYCUS     Five justices’ hands at it, and witnesses

more than my pack will hold.

285

CLOWN     Lay it by too: another.

AUTOLYCUS     This is a merry ballad, but a very pretty

one.

MOPSA     Let’s have some merry ones.

AUTOLYCUS     Why, this is a passing merry one and goes

290

to the tune of ’Two maids wooing a man’: there’s

scarce a maid westward but she sings it; ’tis in request,

I can tell you.

MOPSA     We can both sing it: if thou’lt bear a part, thou

shalt hear; ’tis in three parts.

295

DORCAS     We had the tune on’t a month ago.

AUTOLYCUS     I can bear my part; you must know ’tis my

occupation: have at it with you:

Song.

AUTOLYCUS     Get you hence, for I must go

Where it fits not you to know.

300

D. Whither? M. O whither? D. Whither?

MOPSA     It becomes thy oath full well,

Thou to me thy secrets tell:

D. Me too: let me go thither.

MOPSA     Or thou goest to th’ grange or mill:

305

DORCAS     If to either, thou dost ill.

A. Neither. D. What neither? A. Neither.

DORCAS     Thou hast sworn my love to be;

MOPSA     Thou hast sworn it more to me:

Then whither goest? say whither?

310

CLOWN     We’ll have this song out anon by ourselves: my

father and the gentlemen are in sad talk, and we’ll

not trouble them. Come, bring away thy pack after

me. Wenches, I’ll buy for you both. Pedlar, let’s have

the first choice. Follow me, girls.

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     Exit with Dorcas and Mopsa.

AUTOLYCUS     And you shall pay well for ’em.

Song.

Will you buy any tape,

Or lace for your cape,

My dainty duck, my dear-a?

Any silk, any thread,

320

Any toys for your head,

Of the new’st, and fin’st, fin’st wear-a?

Come to the pedlar;

Money’s a meddler,

That doth utter all men’s ware-a.     Exit.

325

Enter Servant.

SERVANT     Master, there is three carters, three shepherds,

three neat-herds, three swine-herds, that have made

themselves all men of hair, they call themselves

Saltiers, and they have a dance which the wenches say

is a gallimaufry of gambols, because they are not in’t:

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but they themselves are o’the mind (if it be not too

rough for some that know little but bowling) it will

please plentifully.

SHEPHERD     Away! we’ll none on’t: here has been too

much homely foolery already. I know, sir, we weary

335

you.

POLIXENES     You weary those that refresh us: pray, let’s

see these four threes of herdsmen.

SERVANT     One three of them, by their own report, sir,

hath danced before the king; and not the worst of the

340

three but jumps twelve foot and a half by th’ square.

SHEPHERD     Leave your prating: since these good men

are pleased, let them come in; but quickly now.

SERVANT     Why, they stay at door, sir.

[Here a dance of twelve Satyrs.]

POLIXENES

O, father, you’ll know more of that hereafter.

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[to Camillo] Is it not too far gone? ’Tis time to part them.

He’s simple and tells much.

[to Florizel]     How now, fair shepherd!

Your heart is full of something that does take

Your mind from feasting. Sooth, when I was young

And handed love, as you do, I was wont

350

To load my she with knacks: I would have ransack’d

The pedlar’s silken treasury, and have pour’d it

To her acceptance: you have let him go,

And nothing marted with him. If your lass

Interpretation should abuse, and call this

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Your lack of love or bounty, you were straited

For a reply, at least if you make a care

Of happy holding her.

FLORIZEL     Old sir, I know

She prizes not such trifles as these are:

The gifts she looks from me are pack’d and lock’d

360

Up in my heart, which I have given already,

But not deliver’d. O hear me breathe my life

Before this ancient sir, who, it should seem,

Hath sometime lov’d. I take thy hand, this hand,

As soft as dove’s down and as white as it,

365

Or Ethiopian’s tooth, or the fann’d snow that’s bolted

By th’ northern blasts twice o’er.

POLIXENES     What follows this?

How prettily the young swain seems to wash

The hand was fair before! I have put you out:

But to your protestation: let me hear

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What you profess.

FLORIZEL     Do, and be witness to ’t.

POLIXENES     And this my neighbour too?

FLORIZEL     And he, and more

Than he, and men, the earth, the heavens, and all;

That were I crown’d the most imperial monarch

Thereof most worthy, were I the fairest youth

375

That ever made eye swerve, had force and knowledge

More than was ever man’s, I would not prize them

Without her love; for her, employ them all;

Commend them and condemn them to her service,

Or to their own perdition.

POLIXENES     Fairly offer’d.

380

CAMILLO     This shows a sound affection.

SHEPHERD     But my daughter,

Say you the like to him?

PERDITA     I cannot speak

So well, nothing so well; no, nor mean better:

By th’ pattern of mine own thoughts I cut out

The purity of his.

SHEPHERD     Take hands, a bargain!

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And, friends unknown, you shall bear witness to ’t.

I give my daughter to him, and will make

Her portion equal his.

FLORIZEL     O, that must be

I’th’ virtue of your daughter: one being dead,

I shall have more than you can dream of yet;

390

Enough then for your wonder. But come on,

Contract us ’fore these witnesses.

SHEPHERD     Come, your hand;

And, daughter, yours.

POLIXENES     Soft, swain, awhile, beseech you;

Have you a father?

FLORIZEL     I have: but what of him?

POLIXENES     Knows he of this?

FLORIZEL     He neither does nor shall.

395

POLIXENES     Methinks a father

Is at the nuptial of his son a guest

That best becomes the table. Pray you once more,

Is not your father grown incapable

Of reasonable affairs? is he not stupid

400

With age and alt’ring rheums? can he speak? hear?

Know man from man? dispute his own estate?

Lies he not bed-rid? and again does nothing

But what he did being childish?

FLORIZEL     No, good sir;

He has his health, and ampler strength indeed

405

Than most have of his age.

POLIXENES     By my white beard,

You offer him, if this be so, a wrong

Something unfilial: reason my son

Should choose himself a wife, but as good reason

The father (all whose joy is nothing else

410

But fair posterity) should hold some counsel

In such a business.

FLORIZEL     I yield all this;

But for some other reasons, my grave sir,

Which ’tis not fit you know, I not acquaint

My father of this business.

POLIXENES     Let him know’t.

415

FLORIZEL     He shall not.

POLIXENES     Prithee, let him.

FLORIZEL     No, he must not.

SHEPHERD

Let him, my son: he shall not need to grieve

At knowing of thy choice.

FLORIZEL     Come, come, he must not.

Mark our contract.

POLIXENES     Mark your divorce, young sir,

[discovering himself]

Whom son I dare not call; thou art too base

420

To be acknowledg’d: thou a sceptre’s heir,

That thus affects a sheep-hook! Thou, old traitor,

I am sorry that by hanging thee I can

But shorten thy life one week. And thou, fresh piece

Of excellent witchcraft, who, of force, must know

425

The royal fool thou cop’st with, –

SHEPHERD     O, my heart!

POLIXENES

I’ll have thy beauty scratch’d with briers and made

More homely than thy state. For thee, fond boy,

If I may ever know thou dost but sigh

That thou no more shalt see this knack (as never

430

I mean thou shalt), we’ll bar thee from succession;

Not hold thee of our blood, no, not our kin,

Farre than Deucalion off: mark thou my words!

Follow us to the court. Thou churl, for this time,

Though full of our displeasure, yet we free thee

435

From the dead blow of it. And you, enchantment, –

Worthy enough a herdsman; yea, him too,

That makes himself, but for our honour therein,

Unworthy thee. If ever henceforth thou

These rural latches to his entrance open,

440

Or hoop his body more with thy embraces,

I will devise a death as cruel for thee

As thou art tender to’t.     Exit.

PERDITA     Even here, undone,

I was not much afeard; for once or twice

I was about to speak, and tell him plainly,

445

The selfsame sun that shines upon his court

Hides not his visage from our cottage, but

Looks on alike. Will’t please you, sir, be gone?

I told you what would come of this: beseech you,

Of your own state take care: this dream of mine –

450

Being now awake, I’ll queen it no inch farther,

But milk my ewes, and weep.

CAMILLO     Why, how now, father!

Speak ere thou diest.

SHEPHERD     I cannot speak, nor think,

Nor dare to know that which I know. O sir!

You have undone a man of fourscore three,

455

That thought to fill his grave in quiet; yea,

To die upon the bed my father died,

To lie close by his honest bones: but now

Some hangman must put on my shroud and lay me

Where no priest shovels in dust. O cursed wretch,

460

That knew’st this was the prince, and wouldst adventure

To mingle faith with him! Undone! undone!

If I might die within this hour, I have liv’d

To die when I desire.     Exit.

FLORIZEL     Why look you so upon me?

I am but sorry, not afeard; delay’d,

465

But nothing alter’d: what I was, I am;

More straining on for plucking back; not following

My leash unwillingly.

CAMILLO     Gracious my lord,

You know your father’s temper: at this time

He will allow no speech (which, I do guess,

470

You do not purpose to him) and as hardly

Will he endure your sight as yet, I fear:

Then, till the fury of his highness settle,

Come not before him.

FLORIZEL     I not purpose it.

I think – Camillo?

CAMILLO     Even he, my lord.

475

PERDITA     How often have I told you ’twould be thus!

How often said, my dignity would last

But till ’twere known!

FLORIZEL     It cannot fail, but by

The violation of my faith; and then

Let nature crush the sides o’th’ earth together,

480

And mar the seeds within! Lift up thy looks:

From my succession wipe me, father; I

Am heir to my affection.

CAMILLO     Be advis’d.

FLORIZEL     I am: and by my fancy. If my reason

Will thereto be obedient, I have reason;

485

If not, my senses, better pleas’d with madness,

Do bid it welcome.

CAMILLO     This is desperate, sir.

FLORIZEL     So call it: but it does fulfill my vow;

I needs must think it honesty. Camillo,

Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp that may

490

Be thereat glean’d: for all the sun sees, or

The close earth wombs, or the profound seas hides

In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath

To this my fair belov’d. Therefore, I pray you,

As you have ever been my father’s honour’d friend,

495

When he shall miss me, – as, in faith, I mean not

To see him any more, – cast your good counsels

Upon his passion: let myself and fortune

Tug for the time to come. This you may know,

And so deliver, I am put to sea

500

With her whom here I cannot hold on shore;

And most opportune to our need, I have

A vessel rides fast by, but not prepar’d

For this design. What course I mean to hold

Shall nothing benefit your knowledge, nor

505

Concern me the reporting.

CAMILLO     O my lord,

I would your spirit were easier for advice,

Or stronger for your need.

FLORIZEL     Hark, Perdita. [drawing her aside]

[to Camillo] I’ll hear you by and by.

CAMILLO     He’s irremoveable,

Resolv’d for flight. Now were I happy, if

510

His going I could frame to serve my turn,

Save him from danger, do him love and honour,

Purchase the sight again of dear Sicilia

And that unhappy king, my master, whom

I so much thirst to see.

FLORIZEL     Now good Camillo;

515

I am so fraught with curious business that

I leave out ceremony.

CAMILLO     Sir, I think

You have heard of my poor services, i’th’ love

That I have borne your father?

FLORIZEL     Very nobly

Have you deserv’d: it is my father’s music

520

To speak your deeds, not little of his care

To have them recompens’d as thought on.

CAMILLO     Well, my lord,

If you may please to think I love the king,

And through him what’s nearest to him, which is

Your gracious self, embrace but my direction,

525

If your more ponderous and settled project

May suffer alteration. On mine honour,

I’ll point you where you shall have such receiving

As shall become your highness; where you may

Enjoy your mistress; from the whom, I see,

530

There’s no disjunction to be made, but by –

As heavens forefend! – your ruin. Marry her,

And with my best endeavours in your absence

Your discontenting father strive to qualify

And bring him up to liking.

FLORIZEL     How, Camillo,

535

May this, almost a miracle, be done?

That I may call thee something more than man

And after that trust to thee.

CAMILLO     Have you thought on

A place whereto you’ll go?

FLORIZEL     Not any yet:

But as th’ unthought-on accident is guilty

540

To what we wildly do, so we profess

Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies

Of every wind that blows.

CAMILLO     Then list to me:

This follows, if you will not change your purpose,

But undergo this flight; make for Sicilia,

545

And there present yourself and your fair princess

(For so I see she must be) ’fore Leontes:

She shall be habited as it becomes

The partner of your bed. Methinks I see

Leontes opening his free arms and weeping

550

His welcomes forth; asks thee there ‘Son, forgiveness!’

As ’twere i’th’ father’s person; kisses the hands

Of your fresh princess; o’er and o’er divides him

’Twixt his unkindness and his kindness; th’one

He chides to hell, and bids the other grow

555

Faster than thought or time.

FLORIZEL     Worthy Camillo,

What colour for my visitation shall I

Hold up before him?

CAMILLO     Sent by the king your father

To greet him and to give him comforts. Sir,

The manner of your bearing towards him, with

560

What you (as from your father) shall deliver,

Things known betwixt us three, I’ll write you down:

The which shall point you forth at every sitting

What you must say; that he shall not perceive

But that you have your father’s bosom there

565

And speak his very heart.

FLORIZEL     I am bound to you:

There is some sap in this.

CAMILLO     A course more promising

Than a wild dedication of yourselves

To unpath’d waters, undream’d shores; most certain

To miseries enough: no hope to help you,

570

But as you shake off one, to take another:

Nothing so certain as your anchors, who

Do their best office if they can but stay you

Where you’ll be loath to be. Besides, you know

Prosperity’s the very bond of love,

575

Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together

Affliction alters.

PERDITA     One of these is true:

I think affliction may subdue the cheek,

But not take in the mind.

CAMILLO     Yea? say you so?

There shall not, at your father’s house, these seven years

580

Be born another such.

FLORIZEL     My good Camillo,

She is as forward of her breeding as

She is i’th’ rear ’our birth.

CAMILLO     I cannot say ’tis pity

She lacks instructions, for she seems a mistress

To most that teach.

PERDITA     Your pardon, sir; for this

585

I’ll blush you thanks.

FLORIZEL     My prettiest Perdita!

But O, the thorns we stand upon! Camillo,

Preserver of my father, now of me,

The medicine of our house, how shall we do?

We are not furnish’d like Bohemia’s son,

590

Nor shall appear in Sicilia.

CAMILLO     My lord,

Fear none of this. I think you know my fortunes

Do all lie there: it shall be so my care

To have you royally appointed, as if

The scene you play were mine. For instance, sir,

595

That you may know you shall not want, – one word.

[They talk aside.]

Enter AUTOLYCUS.

AUTOLYCUS     Ha, ha! what a fool Honesty is! and Trust,

his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman! I have

sold all my trumpery: not a counterfeit stone, not a

ribbon, glass, pomander, brooch, table-book, ballad,

600

knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet, horn-ring, to keep

my pack from fasting: they throng who should buy

first, as if my trinkets had been hallowed and brought

a benediction to the buyer: by which means I saw

whose purse was best in picture; and what I saw, to my

605

good use I remembered. My clown (who wants but

something to be a reasonable man) grew so in love

with the wenches’ song, that he would not stir his

pettitoes till he had both tune and words; which so

drew the rest of the herd to me, that all their other

610

senses stuck in ears: you might have pinched a placket,

it was senseless; ’twas nothing to geld a codpiece of a

purse; I would have filed keys off that hung in chains:

no hearing, no feeling, but my sir’s song, and admiring

the nothing of it. So that in this time of lethargy I

615

picked and cut most of their festival purses; and had

not the old man come in with a whoo-bub against his

DAUGHTER and the king’s son, and scared my choughs

from the chaff, I had not left a purse alive in the

whole army.

620

[Camillo, Florizel and Perdita come forward.]

CAMILLO

Nay, but my letters, by this means being there

So soon as you arrive, shall clear that doubt.

FLORIZEL

And those that you’ll procure from King Leontes?

CAMILLO     Shall satisfy your father.

PERDITA     Happy be you!

All that you speak shows fair.

CAMILLO [seeing Autolycus]     Who have we here?

625

We’ll make an instrument of this; omit

Nothing may give us aid.

AUTOLYCUS     If they have overheard me now, – why,

hanging.

CAMILLO     How now, good fellow! why shakest thou so?

630

Fear not, man; here’s no harm intended to thee.

AUTOLYCUS     I am a poor fellow, sir.

CAMILLO     Why, be so still; here’s nobody will steal that

from thee: yet for the outside of thy poverty we must

make an exchange; therefore discase thee instantly,

635

– thou must think there’s a necessity in’t – and change

garments with this gentleman: though the

pennyworth on his side be the worst, yet hold thee,

there’s some boot.

AUTOLYCUS     I am a poor fellow, sir. [aside] I know ye

640

well enough.

CAMILLO     Nay, prithee, dispatch: the gentleman is half

flayed already.

AUTOLYCUS     Are you in earnest, sir? [aside] I smell the

trick on’t.

645

FLORIZEL     Dispatch, I prithee.

AUTOLYCUS     Indeed, I have had earnest; but I cannot

with conscience take it.

CAMILLO     Unbuckle, unbuckle.

[Florizel and Autolycus exchange garments.]

Fortunate mistress, – let my prophecy

650

Come home to ye! – you must retire yourself

Into some covert: take your sweetheart’s hat

And pluck it o’er your brows, muffle your face,

Dismantle you, and (as you can) disliken

The truth of your own seeming; that you may

655

(For I do fear eyes over) to shipboard

Get undescried.

PERDITA     I see the play so lies

That I must bear a part.

CAMILLO     No remedy.

Have you done there?

FLORIZEL     Should I now meet my father

He would not call me son.

CAMILLO     Nay, you shall have no hat.

660

[giving it to Perdita]

Come, lady, come. Farewell, my friend.

AUTOLYCUS     Adieu, sir.

FLORIZEL     O Perdita, what have we twain forgot?

Pray you, a word. [They draw aside.]

CAMILLO     What I do next, shall be to tell the king

Of this escape and whither they are bound;

665

Wherein my hope is I shall so prevail

To force him after: in whose company

I shall re-view Sicilia, for whose sight

I have a woman’s longing.

FLORIZEL     Fortune speed us!

Thus we set on, Camillo, to th’ sea-side.

670

CAMILLO     The swifter speed, the better.

     Exeunt Florizel, Perdita and Camillo.

AUTOLYCUS     I understand the business, I hear it. To

have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is

necessary for a cut-purse; a good nose is requisite also,

to smell out work for the other senses. I see this is the

675

time that the unjust man doth thrive. What an

exchange had this been without boot! What a boot is

here, with this exchange! Sure the gods do this year

connive at us, and we may do any thing extempore.

The prince himself is about a piece of iniquity

680

(stealing away from his father with his clog at his

heels): if I thought it were a piece of honesty to

acquaint the king withal, I would not do’t: I hold it

the more knavery to conceal it; and therein am I

constant to my profession.

685

Enter Clown and Shepherd.

Aside, aside; here is more matter for a hot brain:

every lane’s end, every shop, church, session, hanging,

yields a careful man work.

CLOWN     See, see; what a man you are now! There is no

other way but to tell the king she’s a changeling, and

690

none of your flesh and blood.

SHEPHERD     Nay, but hear me.

CLOWN     Nay, but hear me.

SHEPHERD     Go to, then.

CLOWN     She being none of your flesh and blood, your

695

flesh and blood has not offended the king; and so your

flesh and blood is not to be punished by him. Show

those things you found about her (those secret

things, all but what she has with her): this being

done, let the law go whistle: I warrant you.

700

SHEPHERD     I will tell the king all, every word, yea, and

his son’s pranks too; who, I may say, is no honest man,

neither to his father nor to me, to go about to make

me the king’s brother-in-law.

CLOWN     Indeed, brother-in-law was the farthest off you

705

could have been to him and then your blood had

been the dearer by I know how much an ounce.

AUTOLYCUS     [aside] Very wisely, puppies!

SHEPHERD     Well, let us to the king: there is that in this

fardel will make him scratch his beard.

710

AUTOLYCUS     [aside] I know not what impediment this

complaint may be to the flight of my master.

CLOWN     Pray heartily he be at’ palace.

AUTOLYCUS     [aside] Though I am not naturally honest, I

am so sometimes by chance; let me pocket up my

715

pedlar’s excrement. [Takes off his false beard.] How

now, rustics! whither are you bound?

SHEPHERD     To th’ palace, and it like your worship.

AUTOLYCUS     Your affairs there, what, with whom, the

condition of that fardel, the place of your dwelling,

720

your names, your ages, of what having, breeding, and

any thing that is fitting to be known, discover!

CLOWN     We are but plain fellows, sir.

AUTOLYCUS     A lie; you are rough and hairy. Let me have

no lying: it becomes none but tradesmen, and they

725

often give us soldiers the lie; but we pay them for it

with stamped coin, not stabbing steel; therefore they

do not give us the lie.

CLOWN     Your worship had like to have given us one, if

you had not taken yourself with the manner.

730

SHEPHERD     Are you a courtier, and’t like you, sir?

AUTOLYCUS     Whether it like me or no, I am a courtier.

Seest thou not the air of the court in these enfoldings?

hath not my gait in it the measure of the court?

receives not thy nose court-odour from me? reflect I

735

not on thy baseness, court-contempt? Think’st thou,

for that I insinuate, or toaze from thee thy business, I

am therefore no courtier? I am courtier cap-a-pe; and

one that will either push on or pluck back thy business

there: whereupon I command thee to open thy affair.

740

SHEPHERD     My business, sir, is to the king.

AUTOLYCUS     What advocate hast thou to him?

SHEPHERD     I know not, and’t like you.

CLOWN     Advocate’s the court-word for a pheasant: say

you have none.

745

SHEPHERD     None, sir; I have no pheasant, cock nor hen.

AUTOLYCUS

How blessed are we that are not simple men!

Yet nature might have made me as these are;

Therefore I will not disdain.

CLOWN     This cannot be but a great courtier.

750

SHEPHERD     His garments are rich, but he wears them

not handsomely.

CLOWN     He seems to be the more noble in being

fantastical: a great man, I’ll warrant; I know by the

picking on’s teeth.

755

AUTOLYCUS     The fardel there? What’s i’th’ fardel? Where-

fore that box?

SHEPHERD     Sir, there lies such secrets in this fardel and

box, which none must know but the king; and which

he shall know within this hour, if I may come to th’

760

speech of him.

AUTOLYCUS     Age, thou hast lost thy labour.

SHEPHERD     Why, sir?

AUTOLYCUS     The king is not at the palace; he is gone

aboard a new ship to purge melancholy and air

765

himself: for, if thou be’st capable of things serious,

thou must know the king is full of grief.

SHEPHERD     So ’tis said, sir; about his son, that should

have married a shepherd’s daughter.

AUTOLYCUS     If that shepherd be not in hand-fast, let

770

him fly: the curses he shall have, the tortures he shall

feel, will break the back of man, the heart of monster.

CLOWN     Think you so, sir?

AUTOLYCUS     Not he alone shall suffer what wit can

make heavy and vengeance bitter; but those that are

775

germane to him, though removed fifty times, shall all

come under the hangman: which, though it be great

pity, yet it is necessary. An old sheep-whistling rogue,

a ram-tender, to offer to have his daughter come into

grace! Some say he shall be stoned; but that death is

780

too soft for him, say I. Draw our throne into a

sheepcote! All deaths are too few, the sharpest too easy.

CLOWN     Has the old man e’er a son, sir, do you hear,

and’t like you, sir?

785

AUTOLYCUS     He has a son, who shall be flayed alive,

then ’nointed over with honey, set on the head of a

wasps’ nest, then stand till he be three quarters and a

dram dead; then recovered again with aqua-vitae or

some other hot infusion; then, raw as he is, and in the

790

hottest day prognostication proclaims, shall he be set

against a brick wall, the sun looking with a

southward eye upon him, where he is to behold him,

with flies blown to death. But what talk we of these

traitorly rascals, whose miseries are to be smiled at,

795

their offences being so capital? Tell me (for you seem

to be honest plain men) what you have to the king:

being something gently considered, I’ll bring you

where he is aboard, tender your persons to his

presence, whisper him in your behalfs; and if it be in

800

man, besides the king, to effect your suits, here is man

shall do it.

CLOWN     He seems to be of great authority: close with

him, give him gold; and though authority be a

stubborn bear, yet he is oft led by the nose with gold:

805

show the inside of your purse to the outside of his

hand, and no more ado. Remember ‘stoned’, and

‘flayed alive’!

SHEPHERD     And’t please you, sir, to undertake the

business for us, here is that gold I have: I’ll make it as

810

much more and leave this young man in pawn till I

bring it you.

AUTOLYCUS     After I have done what I promised?

SHEPHERD     Ay, sir.

AUTOLYCUS     Well, give me the moiety. Are you a party

815

in this business?

CLOWN     In some sort, sir: but though my case be a

pitiful one, I hope I shall not be flayed out of it.

AUTOLYCUS     O, that’s the case of the shepherd’s son:

hang him, he’ll be made an example.

820

CLOWN     Comfort, good comfort! We must to the king

and show our strange sights: he must know ’tis none of

your daughter nor my sister; we are gone else. Sir, I

will give you as much as this old man does when the

business is performed, and remain, as he says, your

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pawn till it be brought you.

AUTOLYCUS     I will trust you. Walk before toward the

sea-side; go on the right hand: I will but look upon the

hedge and follow you.

CLOWN     We are blest in this man, as I may say, even

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blest.

SHEPHERD     Let’s before, as he bids us: he was provided

to do us good.     Exeunt Shepherd and Clown.

AUTOLYCUS     If I had a mind to be honest, I see Fortune

would not suffer me: she drops booties in my mouth.

835

I am courted now with a double occasion – gold, and a

means to do the prince my master good; which who

knows how that may turn back to my advancement? I

will bring these two moles, these blind ones, aboard

him: if he think it fit to shore them again and that the

840

complaint they have to the king concerns him nothing,

let him call me rogue for being so far officious; for I

am proof against that title and what shame else

belongs to’t. To him will I present them: there may be

matter in it.     Exit.

845

5.1 Enter LEONTES, CLEOMENES, DION, PAULINA and servants.

CLEOMENES

Sir, you have done enough, and have perform’d

A saint-like sorrow: no fault could you make,

Which you have not redeem’d; indeed, paid down

More penitence than done trespass: at the last,

Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil;

5

With them, forgive yourself.

LEONTES     Whilst I remember

Her, and her virtues, I cannot forget

My blemishes in them, and so still think of

The wrong I did myself: which was so much,

That heirless it hath made my kingdom, and

10

Destroy’d the sweet’st companion that e’er man

Bred his hopes out of.

PAULINA     True, too true, my lord:

If, one by one, you wedded all the world,

Or from the all that are took something good,

To make a perfect woman, she you kill’d

15

Would be unparallel’d.

LEONTES     I think so. Kill’d!

She I kill’d! I did so: but thou strik’st me

Sorely, to say I did: it is as bitter

Upon thy tongue as in my thought. Now, good now,

Say so but seldom.

CLEOMENES     Not at all, good lady:

20

You might have spoken a thousand things that would

Have done the time more benefit and grac’d

Your kindness better.

PAULINA     You are one of those

Would have him wed again.

DION     If you would not so,

You pity not the state, nor the remembrance

25

Of his most sovereign name; consider little,

What dangers, by his highness’ fail of issue,

May drop upon his kingdom, and devour

Incertain lookers on. What were more holy

Than to rejoice the former queen is well?

30

What holier than, for royalty’s repair,

For present comfort, and for future good,

To bless the bed of majesty again

With a sweet fellow to’t?

PAULINA     There is none worthy,

Respecting her that’s gone. Besides, the gods

35

Will have fulfill’d their secret purposes;

For has not the divine Apollo said,

Is’t not the tenor of his Oracle,

That King Leontes shall not have an heir,

Till his lost child be found? which, that it shall,

40

Is all as monstrous to our human reason

As my Antigonus to break his grave

And come again to me; who, on my life,

Did perish with the infant. ’Tis your counsel

My lord should to the heavens be contrary,

45

Oppose against their wills.

[to Leontes]     Care not for issue;

The crown will find an heir. Great Alexander

Left his to th’ worthiest; so his successor

Was like to be the best.

LEONTES     Good Paulina,

Who hast the memory of Hermione,

50

I know, in honour, – O, that ever I

Had squar’d me to thy counsel! Then, even now,

I might have look’d upon my queen’s full eyes,

Have taken treasure from her lips, –

PAULINA     And left them

More rich for what they yielded.

LEONTES     Thou speak’st truth.

55

No more such wives; therefore, no wife: one worse,

And better us’d, would make her sainted spirit

Again possess her corpse, and on this stage

(Were we offenders now) appear soul-vex’d,

And begin, ‘Why to me?’

PAULINA     Had she such power,

60

She had just cause.

LEONTES     She had; and would incense me

To murder her I married.

PAULINA     I should so:

Were I the ghost that walk’d, I’d bid you mark

Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in’t

You chose her: then I’d shriek, that even your ears

65

Should rift to hear me; and the words that follow’d

Should be ‘Remember mine.’

LEONTES     Stars, stars,

And all eyes else, dead coals! Fear thou no wife;

I’ll have no wife, Paulina.

PAULINA     Will you swear

Never to marry, but by my free leave?

70

LEONTES     Never, Paulina; so be blest my spirit!

PAULINA

Then, good my lords, bear witness to his oath.

CLEOMENES     You tempt him over-much.

PAULINA     Unless another,

As like Hermione as is her picture,

Affront his eye.

CLEOMENES     Good madam, –

PAULINA     I have done.

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Yet, if my lord will marry, – if you will, sir;

No remedy but you will, – give me the office

To choose you a queen: she shall not be so young

As was your former, but she shall be such

As, walk’d your first queen’s ghost, it should take joy

80

To see her in your arms.

LEONTES     My true Paulina,

We shall not marry till thou bid’st us.

PAULINA     That

Shall be when your first queen’s again in breath:

Never till then.

Enter a Servant.

SERVANT     One that gives out himself Prince Florizel,

85

Son of Polixenes, with his princess (she

The fairest I have yet beheld) desires access

To your high presence.

LEONTES     What with him? he comes not

Like to his father’s greatness: his approach

(So out of circumstance, and sudden) tells us

90

’Tis not a visitation fram’d, but forc’d

By need and accident. What train?

SERVANT     But few,

And those but mean.

LEONTES     His princess, say you, with him?

SERVANT     Ay, the most peerless piece of earth, I think,

That e’er the sun shone bright on.

PAULINA     O Hermione,

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As every present time doth boast itself

Above a better gone, so must thy grave

Give way to what’s seen now! Sir, you yourself

Have said, and writ so; but your writing now

Is colder than that theme: ‘She had not been,

100

Nor was not to be equall’d’; – thus your verse

Flow’d with her beauty once: ’tis shrewdly ebb’d,

To say you have seen a better.

SERVANT     Pardon, madam:

The one I have almost forgot, – your pardon, –

The other, when she has obtain’d your eye,

105

Will have your tongue too. This is a creature,

Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal

Of all professors else; make proselytes

Of who she but bid follow.

PAULINA     How! not women?

SERVANT     Women will love her, that she is a woman

110

More worth than any man; men, that she is

The rarest of all women.

LEONTES     Go, Cleomenes;

Yourself, assisted with your honour’d friends,

Bring them to our embracement.

     Exeunt Cleomenes and others.

     Still, ’tis strange

He thus should steal upon us.

PAULINA     Had our prince

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(Jewel of children) seen this hour, he had pair’d

Well with this lord: there was not full a month

Between their births.

LEONTES     Prithee, no more; cease; thou know’st

He dies to me again, when talk’d of: sure,

When I shall see this gentleman, thy speeches

120

Will bring me to consider that which may

Unfurnish me of reason. They are come.

Enter FLORIZEL, PERDITA, CLEOMENES and others.

Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince;

For she did print your royal father off,

Conceiving you. Were I but twenty-one,

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Your father’s image is so hit in you,

His very air, that I should call you brother,

As I did him, and speak of something wildly

By us perform’d before. Most dearly welcome!

And your fair princess, – goddess! – O, alas!

130

I lost a couple, that ’twixt heaven and earth

Might thus have stood, begetting wonder, as

You, gracious couple, do: and then I lost –

All mine own folly – the society,

Amity too, of your brave father, whom

135

(Though bearing misery) I desire my life

Once more to look on him.

FLORIZEL     By his command

Have I here touch’d Sicilia, and from him

Give you all greetings that a king (at friend)

Can send his brother: and, but infirmity

140

(Which waits upon worn times) hath something seiz’d

His wish’d ability, he had himself

The lands and waters ’twixt your throne and his

Measur’d, to look upon you; whom he loves

(He bade me say so) more than all the sceptres

145

And those that bear them living.

LEONTES     O my brother, –

Good gentleman! – the wrongs I have done thee stir

Afresh within me; and these thy offices,

So rarely kind, are as interpreters

Of my behind-hand slackness! Welcome hither,

150

As is the spring to th’earth. And hath he too

Expos’d this paragon to th’ fearful usage

(At least ungentle) of the dreadful Neptune,

To greet a man not worth her pains, much less

Th’adventure of her person?

FLORIZEL     Good my lord,

155

She came from Libya.

LEONTES     Where the warlike Smalus,

That noble honour’d lord, is fear’d and lov’d?

FLORIZEL

Most royal sir, from thence; from him, whose Daughter

His tears proclaim’d his, parting with her: thence,

A prosperous south-wind friendly, we have cross’d,

160

To execute the charge my father gave me

For visiting your highness: my best train

I have from your Sicilian shores dismiss’d;

Who for Bohemia bend, to signify

Not only my success in Libya, sir,

165

But my arrival, and my wife’s, in safety

Here, where we are.

LEONTES     The blessed gods

Purge all infection from our air whilst you

Do climate here! You have a holy father,

A graceful gentleman; against whose person

170

(So sacred as it is) I have done sin,

For which, the heavens (taking angry note)

Have left me issueless: and your father’s blest

(As he from heaven merits it) with you,

Worthy his goodness. What might I have been,

175

Might I a son and daughter now have look’d on,

Such goodly things as you!

Enter a Lord.

LORD     Most noble sir,

That which I shall report will bear no credit,

Were not the proof so nigh. Please you, great sir,

Bohemia greets you from himself, by me;

180

Desires you to attach his son, who has –

His dignity and duty both cast off –

Fled from his father, from his hopes, and with

A shepherd’s daughter.

LEONTES     Where’s Bohemia? speak.

LORD

Here in your city; I now came from him.

185

I speak amazedly, and it becomes

My marvel and my message. To your court

Whiles he was hast’ning – in the chase, it seems,

Of this fair couple – meets he on the way

The father of this seeming lady and

190

Her brother, having both their country quitted

With this young prince.

FLORIZEL     Camillo has betray’d me;

Whose honour and whose honesty till now

Endur’d all weathers.

LORD     Lay’t so to his charge:

He’s with the king your father.

LEONTES     Who? Camillo?

195

LORD     Camillo, sir; I spake with him; who now

Has these poor men in question. Never saw I

Wretches so quake: they kneel, they kiss the earth;

Forswear themselves as often as they speak.

Bohemia stops his ears, and threatens them

200

With divers deaths in death.

PERDITA     O my poor father!

The heaven sets spies upon us, will not have

Our contract celebrated.

LEONTES     You are married?

FLORIZEL     We are not, sir, nor are we like to be:

The stars, I see, will kiss the valleys first:

205

The odds for high and low’s alike.

LEONTES     My lord.

Is this the daughter of a king?

FLORIZEL     She is,

When once she is my wife.

LEONTES

That ‘once’, I see, by your good father’s speed,

Will come on very slowly. I am sorry,

210

Most sorry, you have broken from his liking,

Where you were tied in duty; and as sorry

Your choice is not so rich in worth as beauty,

That you might well enjoy her.

FLORIZEL     Dear, look up:

Though Fortune, visible an enemy,

215

Should chase us, with my father, power no jot

Hath she to change our loves. Beseech you, sir,

Remember since you ow’d no more to time

Than I do now: with thought of such affections,

Step forth mine advocate: at your request,

220

My father will grant precious things as trifles.

LEONTES

Would he do so, I’d beg your precious mistress,

Which he counts but a trifle.

PAULINA     Sir, my liege,

Your eye hath too much youth in ’t; not a month

’Fore your queen died, she was more worth such gazes

225

Than what you look on now.

LEONTES     I thought of her,

Even as these looks I made.

[to Florizel]     But your petition

Is yet unanswer’d. I will to your father:

Your honour not o’erthrown by your desires,

I am friend to them and you: upon which errand

230

I now go toward him; therefore follow me

And mark what way I make. Come, good my lord.

     Exeunt.

5.2 Enter AUTOLYCUS and a Gentleman.

AUTOLYCUS     Beseech you, sir, were you present at this

relation?

1GENTLEMAN I was by at the opening of the fardel,

heard the old shepherd deliver the manner how he

found it: whereupon, after a little amazedness, we

5

were all commanded out of the chamber; only this,

methought I heard the shepherd say he found the

child.

AUTOLYCUS     I would most gladly know the issue of it.

1GENTLEMAN I make a broken delivery of the business;

10

but the changes I perceived in the king and Camillo

were very notes of admiration: they seemed almost,

with staring on one another, to tear the cases of their

eyes: there was speech in their dumbness, language in

their very gesture; they looked as they had heard of a

15

world ransomed, or one destroyed: a notable passion

of wonder appeared in them; but the wisest beholder,

that knew no more but seeing, could not say if th’

importance were joy or sorrow; but in the extremity of

the one it must needs be.

20

Enter another Gentleman.

Here comes a gentleman that haply knows more. The

news, Rogero?

2GENTLEMAN Nothing but bonfires: the Oracle is

fulfilled; the king’s daughter is found: such a deal of

wonder is broken out within this hour, that ballad-

25

makers cannot be able to express it.

Enter a third Gentleman.

Here comes the Lady Paulina’s steward: he can deliver

you more. How goes it now, sir? This news, which is

called true, is so like an old tale that the verity of it is

in strong suspicion. Has the king found his heir?

30

3GENTLEMAN Most true, if ever truth were pregnant

by circumstance: that which you hear you’ll swear you

see, there is such unity in the proofs. The mantle of

Queen Hermione’s, her jewel about the neck of it, the

letters of Antigonus found with it, which they know to

35

be his character; the majesty of the creature in

resemblance of the mother, the affection of nobleness

which nature shows above her breeding, and many

other evidences proclaim her, with all certainty, to be

the king’s daughter. Did you see the meeting of the

40

two kings?

2GENTLEMAN No.

3GENTLEMAN Then have you lost a sight which was to

be seen, cannot be spoken of. There might you have

beheld one joy crown another, so and in such manner

45

that it seemed sorrow wept to take leave of them, for

their joy waded in tears. There was casting up of eyes,

holding up of hands, with countenance of such

distraction, that they were to be known by garment,

not by favour. Our king, being ready to leap out of

50

himself for joy of his found daughter, as if that joy

were now become a loss, cries ‘O, thy mother, thy

mother!’ then asks Bohemia forgiveness; then

embraces his son-in-law; then again worries he his

DAUGHTER     with clipping her; now he thanks the old

55

Shepherd, which stands by, like a weather-bitten

conduit of many kings’ reigns. I never heard of such

another encounter, which lames report to follow it,

and undoes description to do it.

2GENTLEMAN     What, pray you, became of Antigonus,

60

that carried hence the child?

3GENTLEMAN     Like an old tale still, which will have

matter to rehearse, though credit be asleep and not an

ear open. He was torn to pieces with a bear: this

avouches the shepherd’s son; who has not only his

65

innocence, which seems much, to justify him, but a

handkerchief and rings of his that Paulina knows.

1GENTLEMAN     What became of his bark and his

followers?

3GENTLEMAN     Wrecked the same instant of their

70

master’s death, and in the view of the shepherd: so

that all the instruments which aided to expose the

child were even then lost when it was found. But O,

the noble combat that ’twixt joy and sorrow was

fought in Paulina! She had one eye declined for the

75

loss of her husband, another elevated that the Oracle

was fulfilled: she lifted the princess from the earth,

and so locks her in embracing as if she would pin her

to her heart, that she might no more be in danger of

losing.

80

1GENTLEMAN     The dignity of this act was worth the

audience of kings and princes; for by such was it acted.

3GENTLEMAN     One of the prettiest touches of all, and

that which angled for mine eyes (caught the water

though not the fish) was, when at the relation of the

85

queen’s death (with the manner how she came to’t

bravely confessed and lamented by the king) how

attentiveness wounded his daughter; till, from one

sign of dolour to another, she did, with an ‘Alas,’ I

would fain say, bleed tears, for I am sure my heart wept

90

blood. Who was most marble, there changed colour;

some swooned, all sorrowed: if all the world could

have seen’t, the woe had been universal.

1GENTLEMAN     Are they returned to the court?

3GENTLEMAN     No: the princess hearing of her mother’s

95

statue, which is in the keeping of Paulina, – a piece

many years in doing and now newly performed by that

rare Italian master, Julio Romano, who, had he himself

eternity and could put breath into his work, would

beguile Nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her

100

ape: he so near to Hermione hath done Hermione,

that they say one would speak to her and stand in hope

of answer. Thither with all greediness of affection are

they gone, and there they intend to sup.

2 GENTLEMAN     I thought she had some great matter

105

there in hand; for she hath privately twice or thrice a

day, ever since the death of Hermione, visited that

removed house. Shall we thither, and with our

company piece the rejoicing?

1GENTLEMAN Who would be thence that has the

110

benefit of access? Every wink of an eye, some new

grace will be born: our absence makes us unthrifty to

our knowledge. Let’s along.     Exeunt Gentlemen.

AUTOLYCUS     Now, had I not the dash of my former life

in me, would preferment drop on my head. I brought

115

the old man and his son aboard the prince; told him I

heard them talk of a fardel and I know not what: but

he at that time overfond of the shepherd’s daughter

(so he then took her to be), who began to be much sea-

sick, and himself little better, extremity of weather

120

continuing, this mystery remained undiscovered. But

’tis all one to me; for had I been the finder out of this

secret, it would not have relished among my other

discredits.

Enter Shepherd and Clown.

Here come those I have done good to against my

125

will, and already appearing in the blossoms of their

fortune.

SHEPHERD     Come, boy; I am past moe children, but thy

sons and daughters will be all gentlemen born.

CLOWN     You are well met, sir. You denied to fight with

130

me this other day, because I was no gentleman born.

See you these clothes? say you see them not and

think me still no gentleman born: you were best say

these robes are not gentleman born: give me the lie;

do; and try whether I am not now a gentleman born.

135

AUTOLYCUS     I know you are now, sir, a gentleman born.

CLOWN     Ay, and have been so any time these four hours.

SHEPHERD     And so have I, boy.

CLOWN     So you have: but I was a gentleman born before

my father; for the king’s son took me by the hand, and

140

called me brother; and then the two kings called my

father brother; and then the prince, my brother, and

the princess, my sister, called my father father; and so

we wept; and there was the first gentleman-like tears

that ever we shed.

145

SHEPHERD     We may live, son, to shed many more.

CLOWN     Ay; or else ’twere hard luck, being in so

preposterous estate as we are.

AUTOLYCUS     I humbly beseech you, sir, to pardon me all

the faults I have committed to your worship, and to

150

give me your good report to the prince my master.

SHEPHERD     Prithee, son, do; for we must be gentle, now

we are gentlemen.

CLOWN     Thou wilt amend thy life?

AUTOLYCUS     Ay, and it like your good worship.

155

CLOWN     Give me thy hand: I will swear to the prince

thou art as honest a true fellow as any is in Bohemia.

SHEPHERD     You may say it, but not swear it.

CLOWN     Not swear it, now I am a gentleman? Let boors

and franklins say it, I’ll swear it.

160

SHEPHERD     How if it be false, son?

CLOWN     If it be ne’er so false, a true gentleman may

swear it in the behalf of his friend: and I’ll swear to the

prince thou art a tall fellow of thy hands and that

thou wilt not be drunk; but I know thou art no tall

165

fellow of thy hands and that thou wilt be drunk: but

I’ll swear it, and I would thou would’st be a tall

fellow of thy hands.

AUTOLYCUS     I will prove so, sir, to my power.

CLOWN     Ay, by any means prove a tall fellow: if I do not

170

wonder how thou dar’st venture to be drunk, not

being a tall fellow, trust me not. Hark! the kings and

the princes, our kindred, are going to see the queen’s

picture. Come, follow us: we’ll be thy good masters.

     Exeunt.

5.3 Enter LEONTES, POLIXENES, FLORIZEL, PERDITA, CAMILLO, PAULINA, lords and attendants.

LEONTES

O grave and good Paulina, the great comfort

That I have had of thee!

PAULINA     What, sovereign sir,

I did not well, I meant well. All my services

You have paid home: but that you have vouchsaf’d,

With your crown’d brother and these your contracted

5

Heirs of your kingdoms, my poor house to visit,

It is a surplus of your grace, which never

My life may last to answer.

LEONTES     O Paulina,

We honour you with trouble: but we came

To see the statue of our queen: your gallery

10

Have we pass’d through, not without much content

In many singularities; but we saw not

That which my daughter came to look upon,

The statue of her mother.

PAULINA     As she liv’d peerless,

So her dead likeness, I do well believe,

15

Excels whatever yet you look’d upon,

Or hand of man hath done; therefore I keep it

Lonely, apart. But here it is: prepare

To see the life as lively mock’d as ever

Still sleep mock’d death: behold, and say ’tis well.

20

[Paulina draws a curtain, and discovers Hermione

standing like a statue.]

I like your silence, it the more shows off

Your wonder: but yet speak; first you, my liege.

Comes it not something near?

LEONTES     Her natural posture!

Chide me, dear stone, that I may say indeed

Thou art Hermione; or rather, thou art she

25

In thy not chiding; for she was as tender

As infancy and grace. But yet, Paulina,

HERMIONE     was not so much wrinkled, nothing

So aged as this seems.

POLIXENES     O, not by much.

PAULINA     So much the more our carver’s excellence,

30

Which lets go by some sixteen years and makes her

As she liv’d now.

LEONTES     As now she might have done,

So much to my good comfort as it is

Now piercing to my soul. O, thus she stood,

Even with such life of majesty, warm life,

35

As now it coldly stands, when first I woo’d her!

I am asham’d: does not the stone rebuke me

For being more stone than it? O royal piece!

There’s magic in thy majesty, which has

My evils conjur’d to remembrance, and

40

From thy admiring daughter took the spirits,

Standing like stone with thee.

PERDITA     And give me leave,

And do not say ’tis superstition, that

I kneel, and then implore her blessing. Lady,

Dear queen, that ended when I but began,

45

Give me that hand of yours to kiss.

PAULINA     O patience!

The statue is but newly fix’d, the colour’s

Not dry.

CAMILLO     My lord, your sorrow was too sore laid on,

Which sixteen winters cannot blow away,

50

So many summers dry: scarce any joy

Did ever so long live; no sorrow

But kill’d itself much sooner.

POLIXENES     Dear my brother,

Let him that was the cause of this have power

To take off so much grief from you as he

55

Will piece up in himself.

PAULINA     Indeed, my lord,

If I had thought the sight of my poor image

Would thus have wrought you – for the stone is mine –

I’d not have show’d it.

LEONTES     Do not draw the curtain.

PAULINA

No longer shall you gaze on’t, lest your fancy

60

May think anon it moves.

LEONTES     Let be, let be!

Would I were dead, but that methinks already –

What was he that did make it? – See, my lord,

Would you not deem it breath’d? and that those veins

Did verily bear blood?

POLIXENES     Masterly done:

65

The very life seems warm upon her lip.

LEONTES     The fixure of her eye has motion in’t,

As we are mock’d with art.

PAULINA     I’ll draw the curtain:

My lord’s almost so far transported that

He’ll think anon it lives.

LEONTES     O sweet Paulina,

70

Make me to think so twenty years together!

No settled senses of the world can match

The pleasure of that madness. Let’t alone.

PAULINA     I am sorry, sir, I have thus far stirr’d you: but

I could afflict you farther.

LEONTES     Do, Paulina;

75

For this affliction has a taste as sweet

As any cordial comfort. Still methinks

There is an air comes from her. What fine chisel

Could ever yet cut breath? Let no man mock me,

For I will kiss her.

PAULINA     Good my lord, forbear:

80

The ruddiness upon her lip is wet;

You’ll mar it if you kiss it, stain your own

With oily painting. Shall I draw the curtain?

LEONTES     No: not these twenty years.

PERDITA     So long could I

Stand by, a looker on.

PAULINA     Either forbear,

85

Quit presently the chapel, or resolve you

For more amazement. If you can behold it,

I’ll make the statue move indeed; descend,

And take you by the hand: but then you’ll think

(Which I protest against) I am assisted

90

By wicked powers.

LEONTES     What you can make her do,

I am content to look on: what to speak,

I am content to hear; for ’tis as easy

To make her speak as move.

PAULINA     It is requir’d

You do awake your faith. Then all stand still:

95

Or – those that think it is unlawful business

I am about, let them depart.

LEONTES     Proceed:

No foot shall stir.

PAULINA     Music, awake her; strike! [Music.]

’Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach;

Strike all that look upon with marvel. Come!

100

I’ll fill your grave up: stir, nay, come away:

Bequeath to death your numbness; for from him

Dear life redeems you. You perceive she stirs:

[Hermione comes down.]

Start not; her actions shall be holy as

You hear my spell is lawful.

[to Leontes]     Do not shun her

105

Until you see her die again; for then

You kill her double. Nay, present your hand:

When she was young you woo’d her; now, in age,

Is she become the suitor?

LEONTES     O, she’s warm!

If this be magic, let it be an art

110

Lawful as eating.

POLIXENES     She embraces him!

CAMILLO     She hangs about his neck!

If she pertain to life, let her speak too!

POLIXENES

Ay, and make it manifest where she has liv’d,

Or how stolen from the dead!

PAULINA     That she is living,

115

Were it but told you, should be hooted at

Like an old tale: but it appears she lives,

Though yet she speak not. Mark a little while.

[to Perdita] Please you to interpose, fair madam, kneel

And pray your mother’s blessing.

[to Hermione]     Turn, good lady,

120

Our Perdita is found.

HERMIONE     You gods, look down,

And from your sacred vials pour your graces

Upon my daughter’s head! Tell me, mine own,

Where hast thou been preserv’d? where liv’d? how found

Thy father’s court? for thou shalt hear that I,

125

Knowing by Paulina that the Oracle

Gave hope thou wast in being, have preserv’d

Myself to see the issue.

PAULINA     There’s time enough for that;

Lest they desire (upon this push) to trouble

Your joys with like relation. Go together,

130

You precious winners all; your exultation

Partake to every one. I, an old turtle,

Will wing me to some wither’d bough, and there

My mate (that’s never to be found again)

Lament, till I am lost.

LEONTES     O, peace, Paulina!

135

Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent,

As I by thine a wife: this is a match,

And made between’s by vows. Thou hast found mine;

But how, is to be question’d; for I saw her,

As I thought, dead; and have in vain said many

140

A prayer upon her grave. I’ll not seek far –

For him, I partly know his mind – to find thee

An honourable husband. Come, Camillo,

And take her by the hand; whose worth and honesty

Is richly noted; and here justified

145

By us, a pair of kings. Let’s from this place.

[to Hermione] What! look upon my brother: both your pardons,

That e’er I put between your holy looks

My ill suspicion. This your son-in-law,

And son unto the king, whom, heavens directing,

150

Is troth-plight to your daughter. Good Paulina,

Lead us from hence, where we may leisurely

Each one demand, and answer to his part

Perform’d in this wide gap of time, since first

We were dissever’d: hastily lead away.     Exeunt.

155

Bibliography

SHAKESPEARE’S LIFE

Bentley, G.E., Shakespeare: A Biographical Handbook, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961.

Chambers, E.K., William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930.

Duncan-Jones, Katherine, Ungentle Shakespeare: A Life, London: Thomson Learning, 2001.

Dutton, Richard, William Shakespeare: A Literary Life, Basingstoke, Hants: Macmillan, 1989.

Eccles, Mark, Shakespeare in Warwickshire, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961.

Fraser, Russell, Shakespeare, the Later Years, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.

Fraser, Russell, Young Shakespeare, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Honan, Park, Shakespeare: A Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Schoenbaum, Samuel, Shakespeare’s Lives, new edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Schoenbaum, Samuel, William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life, rev. edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Schoenbaum, Samuel, William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1975.

Schoenbaum, Samuel, William Shakespeare: Records and Images, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.

SHAKESPEARE IN PERFORMANCE

Bate, Jonathan, Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Beckerman, Bernard, Shakespeare at the Globe, 1599–1609, New York: Macmillan, 1962.

Berry, Herbert, Shakespeare’s Playhouses, New York: AMS Press, 1987.

Berry, Ralph, ed., On Directing Shakespeare: Interviews with Contemporary Directors, London and New York: Hamish Hamilton, 1989.

Bevington, David, Action Is Eloquence: Shakespeare’s Language of Gesture, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Bulman, J.C., and H.R. Coursen, eds, Shakespeare on Television, Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1988.

Cook, Ann Jennalie, The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare’s London, 1576–1642, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Dessen, Alan C. Recovering Shakespeare’s Theatrical Vocabulary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Gurr, Andrew, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Gurr, Andrew, Shakespearian Playing Companies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

Gurr, Andrew, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642, 3rd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Gurr, Andrew, and John Orrell, Rebuilding Shakespeare’s Globe, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.

Hodges, C. Walter, Enter the Whole Army: A Pictorial Study of Shakespearean Staging, 1576–1616, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Hogan, Charles B. Shakespeare in the Theater, 1701–1800, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952–7.

Howard, Jean E., Shakespeare’s Art of Orchestration: Stage Technique and Audience Response, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.

Jorgens, Jack J., Shakespeare on Film, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976.

Joseph, Bertram, Acting Shakespeare, rev. edn, New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1969.

Kiernan, Pauline, Staging Shakespeare at the New Globe, London: Macmillan, 1999.

King, T.J., Shakespearean Staging, 1599–1642, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971.

King, T.J., Casting Shakespeare’s Plays: London Actors and Their Roles, 1590–1642, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Knutson, Roslyn L., The Repertory of Shakespeare’s Company, 1594–1613, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991.

Mulryne, J.R., and Margaret Shewing, eds, Shakespeare’s Globe Rebuilt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Nungezer, Edwin, A Dictionary of Actors and Other Persons Associated with Public Representation of Plays in England before 1642, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929.

Odell, George C., Shakespeare: From Betterton to Irving, 2 vols, 2nd edn, New York: B. Blom, 1963.

Orrell, John, The Quest for Shakespeare’s Globe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Shattuck, Charles H., Shakespeare on the American Stage: From the Hallams to Edwin Booth, Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1976.

Speaight, Robert, Shakespeare on the Stage: An Illustrated History of Shakespearean Performance, Boston: Little, Brown, 1973.

Sprague, Arthur Colby, Shakespeare and the Actors: The Stage Business in His Plays, 1660–1905, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1944.

Styan, J.L., Shakespeare’s Stagecraft, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.

Thomson, Peter, Shakespeare’s Theatre, 2nd edn, London: Routledge, 1992.

Trewin, J.C., Shakespeare on the English Stage, 1900–1964, London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1964.

Wiles, David, Shakespeare’s Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Worthen, W.B., Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

THE EARLY TEXTS

Allen, Michael J.B., and Kenneth Muir, Shakespeare’s Plays in Quarto: A Facsimile Edition of Copies Primarily in the Henry E. Huntington Library, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981.

Hinman, Charlton, ed., Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare, 2nd edn, New York: Norton, 1996.

TEXTUAL STUDIES

Blayney, Peter W.M., The First Folio of Shakespeare, Washington: Folger Library Publications, 1991.

Blayney, Peter W.M., The Texts of King Lear and Their Origins, Vol. 1: Nicholas Okes and the First Quarto, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Bowers, Fredson, On Editing Shakespeare, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1966.

Brooks, Douglas A., From Playhouse to Printing House: Drama and Authorship in Early Modern England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

De Grazia, Margreta, Shakespeare Verbatim: The Reproduction of Authenticity and the 1790 Apparatus, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Greg, W.W., The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare, 3rd edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954.

Greg, W.W., The Shakespeare First Folio: Its Bibliographical and Textual History, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955.

Hinman, Charlton, The Printing and Proof-reading of First Folio Shakespeare, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.

Honigmann, E.A.J., The Stability of Shakespeare’s Text, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965.

Honigmann, E.A.J., The Texts of ‘Othello’ and Shakespearian Revision, London; New York: Routledge, 1996.

Ioppolo, Grace, Revising Shakespeare, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Kastan, David Scott, Shakespeare and the Book, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Maguire, Laurie, Shakespearean Suspect Texts: The ‘Bad’ Quartos and Their Contexts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Pollard, Alfred W., Shakespeare Folios and Quartos: A Study in the Bibliography of Shakespeare’s Plays, 1594–1685, London: Methuen, 1909.

Taylor, Gary, and John Jowett, Shakespeare Reshaped 1606–1623, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.

Walker, Alice, Textual Problems of the First Folio, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953.

Wells, Stanley, and Gary Taylor, eds, Modernizing Shakespeare’s Spelling: With Three Studies in the Text of ‘Henry V’, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.

Wells, Stanley, and Gary Taylor, eds, Re-editing Shakespeare for the Modern Reader, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.

Wells, Stanley, and Gary Taylor, eds, William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

Wilson, F.P., Shakespeare and the New Bibliography, ed. Helen Gardner, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.

LANGUAGE AND STYLE

Dictionaries and concordances

Dent, R.W., Shakespeare’s Proverbial Language: An Index, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981.

Onions, Charles T., Shakespeare Glossary, 3rd edn, ed. Robert D. Eagleson, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.

Partridge, Eric, Shakespeare’s Bawdy: A Literary and Psychological Essay and a Comprehensive Glossary, 3rd edn, London and New York: Routledge, 1991.

Schmidt, Alexander, Shakespeare Lexicon: A Complete Dictionary of All the English Words, Phrases and Constructions in the Work of the Poet, 2 vols, 3rd edn, rev. and enl. by Gregor Sarrazin, New York: Dover, 1971.

Spevack, Marvin, ed., A Complete and Systematic Concordance to the Works of Shakespeare, 9 vols, Hildesheim, Germany: George Olms, 1968–80.

Spevack, Martin, The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1974.

Williams, Gordon, The Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespeare and Stuart Literature, 3 vols, London: Athlone Press, 1994.

Studies

Abbott, E.A., A Shakespearian Grammar, New York: Dover, 1966.

Adamson, Sylvia, Lynette Hunter, Lynne Magnusson, Ann Thompson and Katie Wales, eds, Reading Shakespeare’s Dramatic Language: A Guide, London: Thomson Learning, 2000.

Blake, N.F., Shakespeare’s Language: An Introduction, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1983.

Cercignani, Fausto, Shakespeare’s Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.

Clemen, Wolfgang H., The Development of Shakespeare’s Imagery, 2nd edn, London: Methuen, 1977.

Donawerth, Jane, Shakespeare and the Sixteenth-Century Study of Language, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.

Doran, Madeleine, Shakespeare’s Dramatic Language, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976.

Edwards, Philip, Inga-Stina Ewbank, and G.K. Hunter, Shakespeare’s Styles: Essays in Honor of Kenneth Muir, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Hulme, Hilda H., Explorations in Shakespeare’s Language, London: Longman, 1962.

Hussey, S.S., The Literary Language of Shakespeare, 2nd edn, London and New York: Longman, 1992.

Kermode, Frank, Shakespeare’s Language, London: Allen Lane, 2000.

Kökeritz, Helge, Shakespeare’s Names: A Pronouncing Dictionary, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959.

Kökeritz, Helge, Shakespeare’s Pronunciation, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953.

Mahood, M.M., Shakespeare’s Wordplay, London: Methuen, 1957.

Miriam Joseph, Sister, Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language, New York: Columbia University Press, 1947.

Thompson, Ann, and John O. Thompson, Shakespeare: Meaning and Metaphor, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987.

Vickers, Brian, The Artistry of Shakespeare’s Prose, London: Methuen, 1968.

Wright, George T., Shakespeare’s Metrical Art, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988.

SHAKESPEARE’S SOURCES

Bullough, Geoffrey, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 8 vols, New York: Columbia University Press, 1957–75.

Donaldson, E. Talbot, The Swan at the Well: Shakespeare Reading Chaucer, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Hart, Alfred, Shakespeare and the Homilies, 1934, New York: Octagon Books, 1970.

Martindale, Charles, and Michelle Martindale, Shakespeare and the Uses of Antiquity: An Introductory Essay on Shakespeare and English Renaissance Classicism, London and New York: Routledge, 1990.

Milward, Peter, Shakespeare’s Religious Background, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973.

Miola, Robert S., Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy: The Influence of Seneca, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.

Miola, Robert S., Shakespeare’s Reading, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Muir, Kenneth, The Sources of Shakespeare’s Plays, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978.

Noble, Richmond S., Shakespeare’s Biblical Knowledge and Use of the Book of Common Prayer, 1935, New York: Octagon Books, 1970.

Pinciss, Gerald M., and Roger Lockyer, eds, Shakespeare’s World: Background Readings in the English Renaissance, New York: Continuum, 1989.

Shaheen, Naseeb, Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Comedies, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1993.

Shaheen, Naseeb, Biblical References in Shakespeare’s History Plays, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989.

Shaheen, Naseeb, Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Tragedies, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987.

Spencer, T.J., ed., Shakespeare’s Plutarch, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964.

Thompson, Ann, Shakespeare’s Chaucer: A Study in Literary Origins, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1978.

Thomson, J.A.K., Shakespeare and the Classics, London: Allen and Unwin, 1952.

GENERAL CRITICISM

Anthologies of criticism

Calderwood, James L., and Harold E. Toliver, eds, Essays in Shakespearean Criticism, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Desmet, Christy, and Robert Sawyer, eds, Shakespeare and Appropriation, London: Routledge, 2000.

Dollimore, Jonathan, and Alan Sinfield, eds, Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985.

Drakikis, John, ed., Alternative Shakespeares, London and New York: Methuen, 1985.

Hawkes, Terence, ed., Alternative Shakespeares, Vol. 2, London and New York: Methuen, 1996.

Howard, Jean E., and Marion O’Connor, eds, Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, London and New York: Methuen, 1987.

Joughin, John, ed., Shakespeare and National Culture, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.

Lenz, Carolyn, Ruth Swift, Gayle Greene and Carol Thomas Neely, eds, The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980.

Parker, Patricia, and Geoffrey Hartman, eds, Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, London and New York: Methuen, 1985.

Schwartz, Murray M., and Coppélia Kahn, eds, Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Individual critical studies

Adelman, Janet, Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays, ‘Hamlet’ to ‘The Tempest’, New York: Routledge, 1992.

Barroll, Leeds, Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare’s Theater: The Stuart Years, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991.

Berger, Harry, Jr, Making Trifles of Terrors: Redistributing Complicities in Shakespeare, ed. Peter Erickson, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1977.

Bristol, Michael D., Big-time Shakespeare, London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

Burckhardt, Sigurd, Shakespearean Meanings, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968.

Chedzgoy, Kate, Shakespeare’s Queer Children: Sexual Politics and Contemporary Culture, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Shakespearean Criticism, 2 vols, ed. T.M. Raysor, Totowa, N.J.: Biblio Distribution Center, 1974, 1980.

Dusinberre, Juliet, Shakespeare and the Nature of Women, 2nd edn, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996.

Eagleton, Terry, William Shakespeare, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.

Frye, Northrop, Northrop Frye on Shakespeare, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

Garber, Marjorie, Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny Causality, New York: Methuen, 1987.

Goldman, Michael, Shakespeare and the Enemies of Drama, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972.

Greenblatt, Stephen, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988.

Hawkes, Terence, That Shakespeherian Rag: Essays on a Critical Practice, London and New York: Methuen, 1986.

Jardine, Lisa, Reading Shakespeare Historically, London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

Jardine, Lisa, Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.

Johnson, Samuel, Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. H.R. Woudhuysen, New York: Penguin, 1989.

Kahn, Coppélia, Man’s Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981.

Kastan, David Scott, Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time, Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1982.

Kastan, David Scott, Shakespeare After Theory, New York: Routledge, 1999.

Kernan, Alvin B., The Playwright as Magician: Shakespeare’s Image of the Poet in the English Public Theater, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.

Kernan, Alvin B., Shakespeare, the King’s Playwright: Theater in the Stuart Court, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Kott, Jan, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, trans. Boleslaw Taborski, Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Doubleday, 1966.

Marcus, Leah, Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and Its Discontents, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988.

Mullaney, Steven, The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Neely, Carol Thomas, Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare’s Plays, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Orgel, Stephen, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Parker, Patricia, Shakespeare from the Margins: Language, Culture, Context, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996.

Patterson, Annabel, Shakespeare and the Popular Voice, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989.

Rossiter, A.P., Angel with Horns, ed. Graham Storey, 1961, New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1974.

Shapiro, James, Shakespeare and the Jews, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Shaw, George Bernard, Shaw on Shakespeare, ed. Edwin Wilson, New York: Dutton, 1961.

Traub, Valerie, Desire and Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama, London; New York: Routledge, 1992.

Weimann, Robert, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function, trans. Robert

Schwartz, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.

Weimann, Robert, Author’s Pen and Actor’s Voice: Playing and Writing in Shakespeare’s Theatre, ed. Helen Higbee and William West, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Criticism of the comedies and romances

Barber, C.L., Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957.

Bradbrook, M.C., The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy, new edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

Carroll, William, The Metamorphoses of Shakespeare’s Comedy, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Gay, Penny, As She Likes It: Shakespeare’s Unruly Women, London: Routledge, 1994.

Frye, Northrop, The Myth of Deliverance: Reflections on Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983.

Frye, Northrop, A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance, New York: Columbia University Press, 1965.

Hunter, Robert Grams, Shakespeare and the Comedy of Forgiveness, New York: Columbia University Press, 1965.

Leggatt, Alexander, Shakespeare’s Comedy of Love, London: Methuen, 1974.

Mowat, Barbara, The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s Romances, Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1976.

Newman, Karen, Shakespeare’s Rhetoric of Comic Character, New York: Methuen, 1985.

Palfrey, Simon, Late Shakespeare: A New World of Words, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.

Richards, Jennifer, and James Knowles, eds, Shakespeare’s Late Plays, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1999.

Rutter, Carol, Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare’s Women Today, London: Women’s Press, 1988.

Salinger, Leo, Shakespeare and the Traditions of Comedy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974.

Wheeler, Richard P., Shakespeare’s Development and the Problem Comedies: Turn and Counter-Turn, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981.

Williamson, Marilyn, The Patriarchy of Shakespeare’s Comedies, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986.

Criticism of the history plays

Berry, Edward I., Patterns of Decay: Shakespeare’s Early Histories, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Calderwood, James L., Metadrama in Shakespeare’s Henriad: ‘Richard II’ to ‘Henry V’, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979.

Campbell, Lily B., Shakespeare’s Histories: Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy, San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1947.

Hodgdon, Barbara, The End Crowns All: Closure and Contradiction in Shakespeare’s History, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Holderness, Graham, Shakespeare’s History, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1985.

Howard, Jean E., and Phyllis Rackin, Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories, London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

Rackin, Phyllis, Stages of History: Shakespeare’s English Chronicles, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990.

Ribner, Irving, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957. Saccio, Peter, Shakespeare’s English Kings, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Sprague, Arthur Colby, Shakespeare’s Histories: Plays for the Stage, London: Society for Theatre Research, 1964.

Tillyard, E.M.W., Shakespeare’s History Plays, London: Chatto and Windus, 1944.

Criticism of the tragedies

Berry, Philippa, Shakespeare’s Feminine Endings, London: Routledge, 1999.

Booth, Stephen, ‘King Lear,’ ‘Macbeth,’ Indefinition, and Tragedy, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

Bradley, A.C., Shakespearean Tragedy, 3rd edn, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992.

Brooke, Nicholas, Shakespeare’s Early Tragedies, London: Methuen, 1968.

Danson, Lawrence, Tragic Alphabet: Shakespeare’s Drama of Language, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974.

Dollimore, Jonathan, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology, and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Everett, Barbara, Young Hamlet: Essays on Shakespeare’s Tragedies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

Felperin, Howard, Shakespearean Representation: Mimesis and Modernity in Elizabethan Tragedy, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977.

Frye, Northrop, Fools of Time: Studies of Shakespearean Tragedy, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967.

Goldman, Michael, Acting and Action in Shakespearean Tragedy, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Knight, G. Wilson, The Wheel of Fire: Interpretation of Shakespeare’s Tragedies, 4th edn, London: Methuen, 1956.

Liebler, Naomi Conn, Shakespeare’s Festive Tragedy, London: Routledge, 1995.

Moila, Robert, Shakespeare’s Rome, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Muir, Kenneth, Shakespeare’s Tragic Sequence, London: Hutchinson, 1972.

Sprengnether, Madelon, and Shirley Nelson Garner, eds, Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Hamlet criticism

Alexander, Nigel, Poison, Play, and Duel: A Study in ‘Hamlet’, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971.

Calderwood, James L., To Be and Not to Be: Negation and Metadrama in ‘Hamlet’, New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.

Clayton, Thomas, ed., The ‘Hamlet’ First Published (Q1, 1603): Origins, Form, Intertextuality, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992.

Charney, Maurice, Style in ‘Hamlet’, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969.

Frye, Roland Mushat, The Renaissance ‘Hamlet’: Issues and Responses in 1600, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Kastan, David Scott, ed., Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, New York: G.K. Hall, 1995.

Levin, Harry, The Question of Hamlet, 1959, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Prosser, Eleanor, Hamlet and Revenge, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1971.

Rosenberg, Marvin, The Masks of ‘Hamlet’, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992.

Othello criticism

Adamson, Jane, ‘Othello’ as Tragedy: Some Problems of Judgment and Feeling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Calderwood, James L., The Properties of ‘Othello’, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989.

Heilman, Robert B., Magic in the Web: Action and Language in ‘Othello’, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1956.

Jones, Eldred, Othello’s Countrymen: The African in English Renaissance Drama, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965.

Rosenberg, Marvin, The Masks of ‘Othello’: The Search for the Identity of Othello, Iago, and Desdemona by Three Centuries of Actors and Critics, 1961, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992.

Vaughan, Virginia, Othello: A Contextual History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

King Lear criticism

Colie, Rosalie L., and F.T. Flahiff, eds, Some Facets of ‘King Lear’: Essays in Prismatic Criticism, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974.

Elton, William R., ‘King Lear’ and the Gods, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1988.

Heilman, Robert B., This Great Stage: Image and Structure in ‘King Lear’, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1948.

Kronefeld, Judy, ‘King Lear’ and The Naked Truth: Rethinking the Language of Religion and Resistance, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998.

Lusardi, James P., and June Schuleter, Reading Shakespeare in Performance: ‘King Lear’, Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson, 1991.

Mack, Maynard, ‘King Lear’ in Our Time, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965.

Rosenberg, Marvin, The Masks of ‘King Lear’, 1972, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992.

Taylor, Gary, and Michael Warren, eds, Division of the Kingdoms: Shakespeare’s Two Versions of ‘King Lear’, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.

Urkowitz, Steven, Shakespeare’s Revision of ‘King Lear’, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Macbeth criticism

Bartholomeusz, Dennis, ‘Macbeth’ and the Players, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Brown, John Russell, ed., Focus on ‘Macbeth’, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.

Calderwood, James L., If It Were Done: ‘Macbeth’ and Tragic Action, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986.

Jorgensen, Paul, Our Naked Fantasies: Sensational Art and Meaning in ‘Macbeth’, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971.

Paul, Henry P., The Royal Play of ‘Macbeth’, New York: Macmillan, 1950.

Rosenberg, Marvin, The Masks of ‘Macbeth’, 1978, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992.

Criticism of nondramatic poetry

Baldwin, T.W., On the Literary Genetics of Shakespeare’s Poems and Sonnets, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1950.

Booth, Stephen, An Essay on Shakespeare’s Sonnets, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.

Bush, Douglas, Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition in English Literature, rev. edn, New York: Norton, 1963.

Dubrow, Heather, Captive Victors: Shakespeare’s Narrative Poems and Sonnets, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Fineman, Joel, Shakespeare’s Perjured Eye: The Invention of Poetic Subjectivity in the Sonnets, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986.

Hulse, Clarke, Metaphoric Verse: The Elizabethan Minor Epic, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Knight, G. Wilson, The Mutual Flame: On Shakespeare’s Sonnets and ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’, Macmillan, 1955.

Kreiger, Murray, A Window to Criticism: Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Modern Poetics, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964.

Leishman, J.B., Themes and Variations in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 1961, New York: Harper and Row, 1966.

Muir, Kenneth, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, London: Allen and Unwin, 1979.

Vendler, Helen, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Glossary

Abbreviations

?

possible meaning

adj.

adjective

adv.

adverb

cf.

compare

dial.

dialect

esp.

especially

Fr.

French

Gr.

Greek

int.

interjection

Ital.

Italian

Lat.

Latin

OE

Old English

prep.

preposition

sb.

substantive

Sp.

Spanish

v.

verb

’a, a he

a life on (my) life (an oath)

abate blunt; beat; shorten; deprive; except

abatement diminished amount; depreciation

Abel see Cain

abhor disgust; reject

abide stay temporarily; withstand, stand up to; pay the penalty for (cf. aby)

abject sb. servile person; adj. base, servile

able empower

abode sb. staying; v. forebode

abortivesb. premature birth; adj. deformed, horrible

abram auburn

abridgement shortening; passing of time, entertainment

abroad on the move; apart

abrook bear, tolerate

abruption interruption of speech

Absey book introductory book, primer

absolute perfect, complete, without limitation; determined

abuse sb. deception; v. deceive

aby pay the penalty for (cf. abide)

abysm abyss

accident incident

accite cite, call up; excite

accommodate equip

accommodation provision, delicacy

accomplice colleague

accomplish equip

accountant responsible

accoutred dressed

accusativo‘in the accusative case’ (Lat.)

acerb bitter

ache see H

Acheron a river of the underworld

achieve win

Achilles’ spear spear able both to wound and to cure those wounds with its rust

acknown aware, in the know

aconitum wolf’s bane, a poisonous plant

acquit pay back; free

Actaeon hunter in myth who, seeing Diana bathing, was turned by her into a stag (creating connotations of cuckoldry, see horn) and hunted to death by his hounds

action-taking taking legal action, litigious

acture action

Ad manes fratrum to our brothers’ spirits (Lat.)

Adam fallen man, wickedness; Adam Bell, an archer in folklore

adamant exceedingly hard metal; magnet

adder’s sense see sense

addiction propensity

addition title granted in honour of some excellence

address prepare

admiral flagship

admiration amazement, wonder

admire wonder

admittance admissibility, fashion

adoptious bestowed

Adsum here I am (Lat.)

advantagesb. addition; interest; v. help, benefit

adventure sb. risk; v. take a risk

advertise make known, notify

advertisement advice, admonition; news

advice thought, reflection

advised careful

aedile Roman public officer

Aeneas Trojan prince who carried his father, Anchises, out of burning Troy and became the lover of Dido (see Dido) before abandoning her to found the Roman state

Aeolus god of the winds

aery see eyrie

Aesculapius god of healing

affect sb. passion, appetite; affection; v. admire, have affection for, favour; impersonate, put on

affectedly affectionately

affection feeling, disposition, propensity; passion; affectation

affeer’d assured

affiance trust

affined connected, bound

affront sb. attack; v. come face to face with, meet

affy affiance, betroth; place trust

after in the manner of

after-eye look after

again back, reciprocally

against before;in preparation for (when)

agate jewel sometimes carved with a small figure

Agenor father of Europa (see Europa)

aglet-baby (?) baby dressed with aglets (tags attached to clothes); (?) aglet in the shape of a small figure

agnize acknowledge

a-hold close to the wind

aidance help

aim sb. conjecture, idea; v. conjecture; cry aim = applaud, cheer; give aim = observe an archer’s shots

Aio te, Aeacida, Romanos vincere posse the ambiguous answer Apollo gave Pyrrhus when he enquired whether he would vanquish Rome (Lat.= ‘I affirm that thou, descendant of Aeacus, canst conquer the Romans’ or ‘I affirm that the Romans can vanquish thee, descendant of Aeacus’)

Ajax Greek hero in the Trojan war

alarm noise; attack; see alarum

alarum call to arms

Alcides Hercules (see Hercules)

alderliefest dearest of all

Alecto one of the Furies, mythological hags with serpents in their hair

all amort downcast

all hid the game of hide and seek

all to altogether, utterly

Alla nostra casa ben venuto, molto honorato signor mio Petrucio ‘Welcome to our house, my much-honoured Signor Petruchio’ (Ital.)

Alla stoccato at the thrust (Ital.)

allay sb. calming influence; v. detract from

allegiant loyal

All-hallond Eve Hallowe’en (31 October)

All-hallowmas All Saints’ Day (1 November)

All-hallown summer late season of fine weather

allicholy, allycholy melancholy

alligant Quickly’s word for either ‘elegant’ or ‘eloquent’

allons‘let’s go’ (Fr.)

allottery something allotted, share

allowance acknowledgement; approval, praise; permission

All-Souls’ day 2 November

all-thing entirely

Almain German

alms-drink drink taken as charity

alow see ’loo

alter exchange

Althaea Queen of Calydon who killed her son, Meleager, by burning a firebrand reserved for him by the Fates

amain aloud; at speed

amerce penalize

ames-ace two aces thrown at dice, the lowest score

an see and

anatomize open up for inspection, dissect

anatomy skeleton

Anchises father of Aeneas (see Aeneas)

anchor religious recluse

ancient standard; standard- bearer; Ensign

and if

andirons props to support burning logs over a hearth

angel spirit; English gold coin depicting the archangel Michael

Anna sister of Dido (see Dido)

annexment addition, appendage

annothanize (?) see anatomize; (?) annotate

annoy sb. torment, pain, injury; v. injure

anon in a moment; till anon = until a little later

Anthropophagi cannibals

anthropophaginian cannibal

antic sb. grotesque figure, fool; grotesque pageant; adj. in grotesque disguise, masked; v. make grotesque

antre cave

ape mimic; fool; leading apes in hell = traditional punishment of old maids

Apollo god of song and music, of the sun, of healing and of the oracle at Delphi; he fell in love with Daphne who was transformed into a laurel as he chased her

appaid satisfied

apparently in open view

appeach impeach, accuse

appeal sb. formal challenge, accusation; v. impeach

appellant formal challenger

apple-john type of apple kept until shrivelled

appliance compliance; service; treatment

appointed equipped, armed

appointment equipment; resolution; direction

apprehensive possessing reason

approof proof, proving; sanction

approve prove; put to proof; be to one’s credit

apt ready, inclined; probable, likely; impressionable

aqua-vitae strong spirits

Aquilon the North wind

Arabian bird the phoenix, a mythical bird supposed to be unique

arbitrament, arbitrement arbitration, decision

arch lord

argal see ergo

argo see ergo

argosy large trading vessel

argument theme, subject of controversy; proof, demonstration

Ariachne = Arachne, a weaver in mythology, metamorphosed to a spider

Ariadne beloved of Theseus, who abandoned her

Arion poet who charmed a dolphin into carrying him over the waves

arm bear, carry

arm-gaunt lean from bearing arms

Armigero from the title ‘Armiger’ (Lat.), signifying entitlement to a coat of arms

armipotent mighty in arms

aroint thee, aroynt thee be off with you

arras curtain of woven tapestry

arrose sprinkle

Arthur’s show an exhibition of archery given by an Arthurian society

articulate negotiate terms; set forth in detail

artificial relating to or skilled in any of the ‘arts’ (painting, medicine, witchcraft, etc.)

artist learned man

Ascanius son of Aeneas (see Aeneas)

asinico little ass (Sp.)

aspect gaze; image; (in astrology) planetary position

aspersion sprinkling, with connotations of benediction

aspicious Dogberry’s word for ‘suspicious’

assay sb. attempt; challenge; trial; v. try, test out, make trial of

assubjugate subdue

assurance transfer of property; guarantee, security; betrothal

assure betroth

Astraea goddess of justice

Atalanta maiden who outsprinted her suitors and put them to death

Ate goddess of confusion and strife

atomy atom, tiny particle; Quickly’s word for ‘anatomy’ (see anatomy)

atone agree; set in agreement

atonement agreement

Atropos one of the Fates (see Fates)

attach arrest

attachment arrest

attainder accusation, taint, disgrace

attaint sb. disgrace; infection; weariness; v. condemn; stain

attasked taken to task

attribute esteem, character, reputation

attribution praise

aught anything

aunt old woman, crony; female beggar; prostitute

auricular relating to the ear, heard

avise advise

avoid leave; expel, get rid of; (in law) invalidate

awkward oblique, adverse

baby girl’s doll

baccare stand back (pseudo-Lat.)

back saddle or ride (a horse)

back-friend false friend; police officer

backsword man fencer (backsword = single-stick, used in fencing)

back-trick backward step in dancing

baffle (of a knight) publicly disgrace

bait sb. light meal; v. harrass, terrorize, as with dogs; offer bait to, tempt, lure

baldrick belt, girdle

bale sorrow, misfortune

balk miss; lay up; balk logic = chop logic

baille bring (Fr.)

ban sb. curse; v. curse

Banbury cheese proverbially thin cheese

ban-dog fierce dog

bandy toss, exchange; contend, brawl

bane poison; death, destruction

bank sb. shore; v. sail along the shore

banquet light refreshment; running banquet = light refreshment; whipping

Barbary breed of horse

Barbason a devil

barbed (of a horse) armed

barber-monger someone always at the barber’s shop, vain person

barful full of difficulties

bark sb. ship; v. strip bark from

barley-break rustic chasing game in which the base was called ‘hell’

barm yeast, head of froth

barne child

barnacle shellfish supposed to metamorphose into a goose

Barrabas murderer whose release from prison the Jews demanded instead of Christ’s

Barson Barston or Barcheston (Warwickshire towns)

Bartholomew boar-pig roast pig eaten at Bartholomew Fair (see Bartholomew-tide)

Bartholomew-tide St Bartholomew’s day (24 August), date of a popular fair

Basan biblical mountain famous for its bulls

base a chasing game; bid a base = challenge to a chase

base-court lower courtyard

bases knight’s pleated skirt

Basilisco-like like Basilisco, a boastful knight in the play Soliman and Perseda (1592)

basilisk cockatrice(see cockatrice); large cannon

bass-viol stringed instrument, an early cello

basta enough (Ital.)

bastard sweet wine from Spain

bastinado cudgelling, hefty wallop

bate sb. strife; v. flutter the wings; abate, diminish; let off; lose; modify

bate-breeding mischief-making

bateless sharp

bat-fowling bird-catching at night by means of a strong light and sticks

batler paddle used to beat clothes being washed

batten gorge and grow fat

bauble toy, thing of trifling value; fool; fool’s stick

baubling like a bauble, trifling

bavian baboon

bavin brushwood

bawcock fine chap

bawd hare; pimp

bay sb. space under the gable of a building; barking; adj.(of horses) reddish brown; v. chase with barking; trap, corner; at bay = cornered

bays poet’s laurel wreath

beached of the beach

beachy see beached

beadle parish constable

beadsman person hired to pray for others

beam large piece of wood, mentioned by Christ as a metaphor for grave sinfulness (Matt. vii.3-5; Luke vi.41-2) (cf. mote)

bear win; bear in hand = lead on, deceive

bear-herd, bearherd see bearward

bearing-cloth cloth in which a child was carried to be christened

bearward bear-keeper

beated beaten

beaver helmet’s visor

beck sb. beckoning; v. beckon

become be appropriate for, suit

bedded lying down

Bedlam hospital for the insane

bedlam sb. insane person; adj. insane, frantic

bed-swerver adulterous person

beest the unpalatable milk of a cow that has just given birth

beetle sb. sledge-hammer; v. jut out

beldam grandmother; crone

be-leed left without wind, high and dry

bell, book, and candle formula used in the ceremony of excommunication

Bellona goddess of war

bell-wether sheep at the head of a flock

belock’d locked

bemadding causing madness

be-met met

bemete measure out

bemoiled covered with dirt

be-monster make hideous

bench sb. authority; v. raise to or occupy a position of authority

bench-hole hole in a privy

bend sb. look; obeisance; knot; v. turn; crease; tense

benetted netted, trapped

benevolence obligatory loan to the sovereign

benison blessing

bent limit, strain; direction, disposition; arch; sight

berayed stained, sullied

Bergomask from Bergamo in Italy, rustic

Bermoothes Bermudas

beshrew curse

besom brush, broom

Besonian ignoramus, beggarly person

besort sb. appropriate company; v. be appropriate for

beteem grant, allow

betid happened

betime soon, early

bevel oblique, zigzag

Bevis Bevis of Southampton, a legendary hero renowned for feats of arms

bewray betray, reveal, divulge

bezonian see Besonian

bias adj. convex; adv. crookedly; of bias = oblique, roundabout

bias-drawing deceit

bide stay, linger; endure

bifold twofold

bigamy marriage with someone previously married

biggen coarse nightcap

bilbo sword with a flexible blade

bilboes shackles used for prisoners on a ship

bill pike or halberd, painted brown to prevent rust; officer carrying a bill; written note; notice

bird-bolt flat-headed arrow for shooting birds

birding-piece gun for shooting birds

bis coctus cooked twice (Lat.)

bisson blind; obscuring the sight

bite the thumb make an insulting gesture

bitumed smeared with bitumen, made watertight

Black-Monday Easter Monday

blame blameworthy (in the phrase ‘too blame’)

blank sb. range, focus, target; v. make pale, drain of colour; blank charter = blank cheque

blastment blight

blazon sb. coat of arms; proclamation; description; v. proclaim; describe

blear dim or blur, especially with weeping

blench sb. sidelong glance; v. flinch, turn aside

blind-worm slow-worm

blister’d, blistered padded

block mould for shaping a hat; mounting-block (for mounting horses)

blood family; gallant man; character, disposition; appetite, passion; in blood = active, healthy

blood-bolter’d having hair caked and matted with blood

blood-sized glazed with blood (cf.size)

blow swell; (of plants) blossom; (of flies) lay eggs (on); blow wind i’th’ breech = be unable to keep pace (with); break wind

blowse stocky, rosy-cheeked girl

blubbered with tear-stained face

bluebottle beadle, parish constable

blue-cap Scot

blurt scoff

board draw up alongside; attack

bob sb. jest; v. beat; cheat, diddle

bodement foreboding

bodkin short dagger; hair-pin; God’s bodkin = by the Eucharist (God’s little body) (an oath)

bodykins seebodkin (God’s bodkin)

boggle take fright, swerve uncertainly

bolins bow-lines on a ship

boll’n swollen

bolt sb. arrow; shackle; v. sift, refine; shackle

bolter cloth for sifting meal

bolting-hutch sifting-bin

bombard wine vessel

bombast sb. cotton padding; adj. padded; bombastic, verbally over-elaborate

bona terra, mala gens a good land but bad people (Lat.)

bona-roba better class of prostitute (Ital.)

bones rustic musical instrument accompanied by bells or tongs; bone bobbins for lace-making

book-man scholar

boot sb. booty, spoil; something extra; advantage, help; v. give as something extra; help; give the boots = make a laughing-stock of

boot-hose long over-stocking

bootless useless, pointless

Boreas north wind

borrow sb. loan; v. take, adopt

borrowed taken, feigned, not genuine

bosky shrubby, woody

botcher one who patches old clothes

botchy carbuncular, ulcerous

bots maggot infection in horses

bottom sb. valley; ship’s hold, ship; bobbin for winding thread; v. wind

bought and sold tricked, betrayed

bounce bang

bounden bound, obliged

bourn limit; burn, brook

bow-hand left-hand side of an archer

boy endow with the characteristics of a boy

brabble brawl

brace pair; armour to protect the arm; defensive position

brach bitch-hound

bragless without bragging

braid adj. false, deceitful v. upbraid, reproach

brainish deluded, frenzied

brain-pan skull

brake clump of bushes

branched bearing a pattern of leafy branches

brave sb. vaunt, boast; adj. fine, admirable; finely dressed; fearless, insolent; v. make brave, adorn; defy; brave it = swagger

bravery finery; flamboyance; defiant attitude

brawl French dance

brawn fattened boar; arm or leg muscle

break break up, disband; communicate; discipline; break across, break cross = (of a knight’s lance) break awkwardly or unfairly; break up = open

break-neck disaster

breast singing voice

breathe talk, talk of; train, condition, accustom; allow to take a breath

breathing voice; excercise, activity; interval

breech breeches, trousers; i’th’ breech on = behind, following breed-bate trouble-maker (cf. bate)

breese, breeze gadfly

brewage brew

Briareus giant with a hundred arms and fifty heads

bribed (?) stolen; (?) obtained through bribery

bride-house house where a wedding takes place

brief sb. letter; list, summary; brief in hand = in need of attention

brinded patterned with streaks

bring off rescue

broach pierce; tap

brock badger

brogues heavy shoes

broke trade

broken fragmented; missing teeth; broken music = music played by instruments of different families

broker go-between, pimp

brooch sb. ornament; v. decorate

brooded brooding

Brownist member of an English Puritan sect founded by Robert Browne

bruit sb. rumour; v. announce, report bubuncle Fluellen’s confusion of ‘bubo’ (Lat.= ‘abscess’) and ‘carbuncle’

buck stag; linen in the wash; buck of the first head = fully grown stag

bucking laundry

buckler sb. shield; v. protect, shield; give the bucklers = acknowledge defeat

Bucklersbury London street known for its apothecaries

buckram tough, stiff linen

buck-washing washing of linen

budget tinker’s bag

buff hard-wearing leather worn by constables

bug bugbear, bogeyman

bugle black glass bead

bulk display stall at the front of a shop

bully fine man, friend

bum-baily bailiff

bung pickpocket

burden load; undersong; refrain; at a burden = at one birth

burgonet close-fitting helmet

burn heat up; light up; burn daylight = waste time

burthen see burden

buss sb. kiss; v. kiss

buttery bar hatch of a buttery (store room) where beer was served

butt-shaft strong, heavy arrow

buzzard insect; fool

by and by immediately; in due course

by-drinkings drinks between meals

by-peeping glancing sidelong

by’r lady by our Lady (an oath)

by’r lakin, byrlakin by our little Lady (an oath)

cabin sb. hut; den, cave; v. dwell, rest

cabinet small lodging

cacodemon malignant spirit

caddis ribbon for a garter

cade large barrel

cadent falling

Cadmus legendary founder of Thebes

caduceus Mercury’s staff, wound about with two serpents

cage prison

Cain son of Adam and Eve, who murdered his brother Abel; Cain-coloured = red, the imagined colour of Cain’s beard

caitiff, caitive sb. wretch; adj. captive; wretched

cake (of roses) compressed block used as perfume; cake is dough = plan has failed

calculate forecast by means of a horoscope; speculate upon the future

Caleno custore me Elizabethan version of ‘cailin og a’ stor’, the refrain of a popular Irish song, for Pistol a specimen of an incomprehensible foreign language

Calipolis character in Peele’s Battle of Alcazar (1594), there presented with a lioness to eat

caliver light musket

calkins parts of a horse-shoe

call decoy

callat, callet slut

Cambyses a Persian king, subject of an early Elizabethan tragedy

can began

canary wine from the Canaries; Spanish dance

candidatus‘clad in a white robe’, hence candidate (Lat.)

candied frosted, as if with sugar

candle-mine load of tallow

candle-waster book-worm

canker sore; wild rose; parasitic caterpillar

cannikin small drinking can

canon Church law, hence law, edict

cantle segment of a circle

canton song

canvas, canvass toss about

canzonet canzonetta, short song

capable responsive, appreciative; capacious; qualified to inherit

capacity mental capacity, mind

cap-a-pe, cap-à-pe‘head to foot’ (OldFr.)

capital mortal, fatal; chief, main

Capitol temple of Jupiter in Rome

capitulate come to terms

capocchia fool, simple person (Ital.)

capriccio caprice, fancy (Ital.)

captious capacious; deceitful

car cart, chariot

caract official marking

carbonado sb. fish or meat scored and grilled; v. score, slash

carcanet jewelled necklace

card sb. playing card; toothed instrument for combing out wool; compass; model; v. adulterate, dilute; by the card = correctly; card of ten = playing card worth ten points; cooling card = playing card that dashes an opponent’s hopes; pack cards with = shuffle playing cards in favour of

cardecue small French coin (quart d’écu)

cardinally Elbow’s word for ‘carnally’

cardmaker maker of cards for wool (seecard)

carduus benedictus‘holy thistle’ (Lat.), a plant credited with healing properties

caret‘it is missing’ (Lat.); interpreted by Quickly as ‘carrot’ (penis)

carl churl, rustic person

carlot rustic person

carnation rosy-pink

carpet sb. cover for chests and tables; on carpet consideration = at court rather than on the battle-field

carpet-monger knight more at home at court than in battle

carrack galleon, treasure ship

carriage carrying; ability to carry; conduct; deportment; purport

carry coals endure insults without retaliation

carry out a side fulfil a side of an agreement

carry-tale spy

carve v. compliment; be one’s own carver, carve for oneself = be independent

case sb. question; body, skin or clothes; v. clothe, mask; skin; in case = in a position or mood; on the case = for some particular offence

cashiered discarded; (?) robbed

cast adj. cast off; v. vomit; discharge; examine; calculate; cast the gorge = vomit

casted seecast (adj.)

Castiliano vulgo Sir Toby’s attempt to refer in Spanish and (?) Latin to (?) wine, (?) the devil

casual accidental; subject to misfortune

cat o’ mountain, cat-a-mountain leopard

Cataian Cathaian (Chinese), used insultingly

cataplasm plaster

catastrophe final phase of action in classical drama

catch tune for several voices

cater-cousins close friends

caterpillar parasite

cates choice provisions, delicacies

catling catgut for stringed instruments

cautel wile, deception

cautelous deceitful

censer ornamental vessel for burning perfume

censure sb. judgement; opinion; v. judge; express an opinion

centre the earth’s mid-point

century one hundred soldiers

Cerberus three-headed dog at the gate of the underworld, fought with by Hercules and charmed to sleep by Orpheus

cerecloth shroud

cerements shroud

Ceres goddess of agriculture and plenty

’cerns concerns

certes truly

cess ceasing, decease; out of cess = excessively

cesse cease

chair-days time of rest

chairs of order stalls in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, for the Knights of the Order of the Garter

challenge sb. claim; legal objection; v. claim as due

chamberer wooer

chamber-lye urine

chambers small cannon

chamblet rich cloth of silk and goat’s hair

champaign open countryside

champion challenge to fight

changeling turncoat; fairy child swapped for a human one (or vice versa)

chanson song

chanticleer cock

chape metal cap on the end of a scabbard

chapless with the lower jaw gone

chaplets garlands

chapman merchant

chaps chops, jaws

character sb. handwriting; v. write

charactery writing

chare sb. chore; v. accomplish, finish

charge-house school

charging-staff knight’s lance

Charles’ wain constellation of the Plough

charneco sweet wine

Charon ferryman of the underworld

chase hunt; (in tennis) bouncing ball

chat gossip about

chaudron entrails

che I; che vor ye = I warrant you; ch’ill = I will; ch’ud = I had (dial.)

cheapen bargain for

cheater officer in charge of estates forfeited to the crown

check sb. rebuke; v. come to a stop; rebuke

chequin gold coin

cherry-pit children’s game of throwing cherry stones into a hole

cherubin cherub

cheval volant … qui a les narines de feu, le ‘the flying horse … who has fiery nostrils’ (Fr.)

cheveril, chev’ril kid leather, known for its stretching capacity

chewet jackdaw; minced-meat pie

Chi passa name of a popular dance tune (Ital.= ‘Who is passing?’)

chiding din

chien est retourné à son propre vomissement, et la truie lavée au bourbier, le ‘The dog has returned to his own vomit and the washed sow to her mud’ (Fr., 2 Peter ii.22)

child girl

childe title used by young nobles aspiring to knighthood

childed having children

childing generative, fertile

ch’ill seeche

chirurgeonly in the expert manner of a surgeon

choler one of the four humours (seehumour); anger

chop sb. crack; v. crack; chop on = burst in on

chopine fashionable platform shoe

chopless seechapless

chough jackdaw

christom newly christened

chrysolite white or green gem

ch’ud seeche

cicatrice mark, scar

cinque-pace quick dance

Cinque-ports five English ports; the barons of these places

ciphersb. the figure nought, zero; v. decipher; represent

Circe sorceress in Homer’s Odyssey who transformed men into beasts

circummur’d walled round

cite summon, as to court; incite

citizen city-bred

cittern guitar with a carved head

civet perfume derived from a civet cat’s anal glands

civil of citizens, urban; well-behaved; civil doctor = doctor of civil law

clack-dish begging bowl

clap pledge with a clasping of hands; clap aboard = board (a ship); clap into = begin promptly; clap i’th’ clout = hit the bull’s-eye (cf.clout); clap up = agree promptly

clapper-claw handle roughly

clepe call

clept called

clerestories upper windows in halls and churches

clerk cleric, scholar

clew ball of twine

climate sb. region of the earth or sky; v. live in a particular region

climatures inhabitants of a particular region

cling shrink up, wither

clinquant glittering

clip encircle, embrace

clipper one who trims coins for the metal

close sb. encounter; (in music) cadence; adj. confined; secret; secretive; adv. secretly; v. come to agreement

closure containment; conclusion

cloth o’ gold, cloth-of-gold sumptuous, top-quality cloth

clothier’s yard a ‘cloth-yard’ length, the length of an arrow (cf.yard)

cloud (of horses) facial blemish

clout target in archery; cloth, rag; babe of clouts = rag doll; idiot

clouted patched; hobnailed

clown person from the country

clubs traditional cry for assistance in breaking up a brawl

clyster-pipe syringe inserted into the rectum or vagina

coat coat of arms

cobloaf small loaf

cock rowing boat towed behind a larger ship; weathercock; tap; (in oaths) God; by cock and pie = by God and pie (an oath) (cf.pie)

cockatrice legendary creature with a fatal stare

cockle cockleshell; weed; cockle hat = pilgrim’s hat

cocklight first light, dawn

cockney person of affected manners

cock’red pampered

cockshut twilight

Cocytus a river of the underworld

cod husk

codding lascivious

codpiece prominent pouch at the front of a man’s breeches to hold his genitals

coffin pie-crust

cog cheat

cognizance emblem worn by retainers

coif cap

coign corner

coil commotion, fuss

coistrel base person, scoundrel

Colbrand Danish giant in the English romance of Guy of Warwick

collect infer, learn

collection piecing together, understanding

collied darkened

collop slice of flesh

Colme-kill Iona

coloquintida colocynth, a bitter apple

Colossus gigantic statue of Apollo at Rhodes that stood over the harbour entrance

colour sb. appearance; pretext; sort, type; v. disguise

colourable plausible

colours military colours, banner

colt sb. young and foolish person; v. play the fool with, trick; colt’s tooth = friskiness

combinate bound by pledge

come off withdraw; pay up

coming-on compliant

commeddled mingled

commit commit sins

commodity supply of merchandise; benefit, advantage; pledge against a loan

commoner prostitute

comonty Sly’s word for ‘comedy’

companion fellow, used insultingly

comparative sb. dealer in insults; adj. skilled at (insulting) comparisons

compeer sb. peer, companion; v. be the peer of, equal

competitor partner

complain bewail

complement outward appearance

complexion constitution, nature; face

complot sb. design, conspiracy; v. conspire

comply behave formally

compose reach agreement

compt account, reckoning; the Day of Judgement

comptible sensitive

con study, memorize; con thanks = acknowledge gratitude

Con tutto il cuore ben trovato ‘With all my heart well met’ (Ital.)

conceit sb. mental, imaginative or artistic conception; wit, intelligence; fancy article; v. conceive

conceited witty, inventive; be conceited of = conceive of

conceptious conceiving, fertile

concernancy relevance

conclusion experiment; judgement; riddle

concolinel (?) title of a song; (?) singer’s preparatory warble

concupiscible concupiscent, lustful

concupy (?) concupiscence; (?) concubine

condition rank; disposition; compact, contract

condolement grieving; (?) confused with dole, portion

conference conversation, debate

confessors boasters

confiners inhabitants

congee, congie bow, take one’s leave

congree agree together

conscience matter of conscience; mind, thoughts

conscionable governed by conscience

consider reward; (?) appreciate

consign subscribe, endorse

consist stand firm, insist

consolate console

conspectuity power of vision

constring’d drawn together, compressed

contain retain

contestation contention

continent sb. container, vessel; sum, summary; adj. restraining

contraction solemn agreement

control sb. compulsion; v. contradict; overpower

controller steward; critic

convenient fit, suitable

convent call together

conventicle secret assembly

conversation dealing; social conduct

converse associate, be in company (with)

conversion promotion; conversation

convert change

convertite penitent

convey manage discreetly; steal

conveyance dishonest dealing; (in law) transfer of property; escort

convict convicted

convince overpower; prove; prove guilty, convict

convive feast together

convoy means of transport

cony rabbit

cony-catch dupe, cheat

copatain hat hat with a high crown

cope sb. sky; v. encounter; have dealings; requite

copesmate companion

copp’d peaked

copy theme, copiously discussed; exemplar, model; copyhold, tenure

coragio courage (Ital.)

coram for ‘quorum’, justice whose particular presence was necessary for some cases

coranto dance with a running step

Corinth ancient city know for its licentiousness and partying

Corinthian one from Corinth (seeCorinth)

corky dry, withered

Cornelia mother of the Gracchi (famous early Roman republicans)

cornet body of cavalry

cornuto horned beast, cuckold (Ital.) (cf.horn)

corollary excessive amount

corporal of the body, physical

correctioner one from the ‘House of Correction’

corrigible corrective; susceptible of punishment

corroborate strengthened; Pistol’s word for ‘ruined’

corslet piece of body armour

costard large apple; the head

costermonger fruit seller, petty trader

cote sb. cottage; v. overtake

cot-quean man who meddles in domestic affairs

Cotsall the Cotswold hills

couch lie hidden; cause to shrink back

counsel reflection; secrets

countenance sb. face, outward appearance, demeanour; approval, patronage; v. behold; suit

counter sb. coin of negligible value; debtors’ prison; adv.(in hunting) backwards, off course

counterchange exchange, reciprocation

counterfeit sb. image, reproduction; fake money; adj. painted, not real

Counter-gate gate of the Counter prison (cf.counter)

countermand contradict; prohibit

counterpoint counterpane, tapestry

countervail counterbalance, be equal to

county count

Couple a gorge Pistol’s version of ‘coupe la gorge’ (Fr.= ‘cut the throat’)

courage disposition

course sail of a ship

courser horse; courser’s hair = horse’s hair, supposed to turn into a serpent in water

court of guard guard room; body of soldiers on guard

court-cupboard sideboard

courthand handwriting used for legal contracts

cousin any near relation

coverture covering, shelter

cowish cowardly

cowl-staff wooden rod for carrying a cowl (tub)

cox cock’s (God’s) (seecock)

coxcomb jester’s cap; the head

coy caress; show reluctance

coz cousin (seecousin)

cozen cheat

cozier cobbler

crab crab apple

crack sb. lad, rascal; partial fracture; v. boast; cracked within the ring = (of coins) nicked past the ring around the sovereign’s head, and so no longer legal tender

crack-hemp one deserving to be hanged

crak’d cracked (seecrack)

crank sb. winding passage; v. twist and turn

crants garland

craven sb. cock; coward; v. make cowardly

craze break, damage

credent believing; believable, plausible

credit credibility; belief, current opinion

crescive growing, having the power of growth

cressets fire-baskets, beacons

crestless not bearing a heraldic crest, not aristocratic

critic fault-finder, satirist

cross sb. an Elizabethan coin; adj. quarrelsome, thwarting; (of lightning) forked

cross’d, crossed freed from debts

cross-gartered wearing garters above and below the knee (and so crossed behind)

cross-row the alphabet

crow-flower the ragged robin flower

crow-keeper, crowkeeper scarecrow; boy employed to shoo birds off crops

crown imperial the fritillary plant

crudy thick

crupper strap fixing the saddle to the horse’s back end

crusado Portuguese coin

cry sb. barking pack of hounds; rumour; v. proclaim; cried in the top of = loudly exceeded; cry aim seeaim; cry out of = cry out against; cry up = applaud

cubiculo bedroom

Cucullus non facit monachum ‘The hood does not make the monk’ (Lat., proverbial)

cullion rascal

culverin small cannon

cum privilegio‘with privilege (i.e. immunity)’ (Lat.); cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum = ‘with the privilege for printing only’ (i.e. ‘with the sole right to print’)

cunning sb. knowledge; skill; adj. skilful; ingenious

Cupid son of Venus, a winged boy, sometimes thought of as blind, whose arrows caused people to fall in (and out of) love; Cupid’s flower = pansy

curate parish priest

curdied congealed

curiosity delicacy, scrupulousness

curious scrupulous, careful; elaborate, exquisite; anxious

currence flowing

curst fierce, cantankerous

curtal with a docked tail

curtle-axe short broadsword

cushes thigh-armour

Custalorum for ‘Custos Rotulorum’ (Lat.= ‘keeper of the rolls’), the highest justiciary office in a county

customer prostitute; prostitute’s client

cut docked or gelded horse; female genitals; cut and long- tail = every kind; in any event; draw cuts = draw lots

cut-purse, cutpurse petty thief who snips purses from people’s belts

cuttle (?) thief

Cyclops = Cyclopes, one-eyed giants who assisted in the manufacture of armour for the gods

cyme a medicinal plant

cynic foul-mouthed philosopher

Cynthia the goddess Diana when represented as the moon

cypress cypress wood; crape, linen

Cytherea the goddess Venus

Daedalus father of Icarus (seeIcarus)

daff seedoff

Dagonet King Arthur’s fool

Daintry Daventry

dainty adj. particular, finicky; make dainty = hesitate primly

dam mother

Damascus traditional scene of Abel’s murder (seeCain)

dan sir

dancing horse a famous Elizabethan performing horse

dancing-rapier ornamental sword worn when dancing

danger power to harm

Dansker Dane

Daphne seeApollo

dare (in bird-catching) dazzle, daze

darkling in the dark

darraign set in order, prepare

dash sb. mark, sign; v. crush, dishearten; at first dash = at the outset

date fixed term or limit

daub it put on a false show

daubery false pretence, trickery

day-bed couch

day-woman dairymaid

dear important; intense, ardent; grievous

dearth scarcity, hence high value

death-practised whose death has been plotted

deathsman executioner

death-token sign of the plague

debate sb. struggle, contention; v. contend; contend about

debile feeble

debitor and creditor account book; book-keeper

Deborah Israelite judge who incited an attack on Sisera, the general of the Canaanite king Jabin

deboshed debauched

decerns Dogberry’s word for ‘concerns’

decimation execution of one man in ten

deck sb. deck of cards; v. adorn, cover

decoct boil up

deed performance, doing; contract; deed of saying = keeping promises

deep-fet fetched from deep down

deer animals

default fault, offence; in the default = (?) when necessary; (?) when you fail

defeat mar, destroy; defraud

defeature disfigurement

defence armour; fencing, swordplay

defend forbid

definement definition, description

defunct extinct, dead

defunction death

defunctive relating to death, funereal

degree order, hierarchy; step, stage

delations narrations, accusations

delicates luxuries, delicacies

deliverly nimbly

demean conduct, behave

demerit merit; deficiency, sin

demi-cannon large gun

demure adj. solemn, modest; v. look thoughtfully

denay sb. denial; v. deny

denier small copper coin

denunciation public announcement

depend be dependent; lean; hang, impend

dependency dependants; logical sequence; submissiveness

deplore talk woefully

depose take an oath; examine on oath

deputation appointment or office of a deputy (usually in high office)

deracinate uproot

derived descended

dern dark, wild

derogate adj. degenerate, debased; derogatory; v. degrade oneself

descant sb. sung variations; v. sing variations

descension descent

descry sb. discovery; v. discover

design sb. purpose, enterprise; v. designate, refer to

designment purpose, enterprise

determinate adj. at an end; decisive; planned; v. put an end to

determination end, expiry; decision

determine end, conclude; put an end to

Deucalion with his wife, the sole survivors of a great flood sent by Jupiter

deuce-ace a low score at dice

dewlap loose flesh around a cow’s throat

dexter right

dey-woman dairy woman

Di faciant laudis summa sit ista tuae ‘The gods grant that this may be the peak of thy glory’ (Lat., Ovid)

diable devil (Fr.)

diablo devil (Sp.)

dial clock; sundial

Dian, Diana goddess of chastity, hunting and the moon (cf. Cynthia)

diapason bass accompaniment to a melody

diaper towel

dich (?) do it

Dickon Dick (Richard)

Dido Queen of Carthage, loved and abandoned by Aeneas (seeAeneas)

diet sb. prescribed course; food; v. prescribe a course for, condition

difference distinguishing mark in heraldry; distinction; variety; variance, strife

diffidence doubt, mistrust

digression deviation (from right)

dilate extend; relate or set out extensively

dildo artificial phallus, frequently mentioned in ballads

dilemma argument which always catches an opponent out

diluculo surgere‘to rise early [is very healthy]’ (Lat., proverbial)

dint impression, force

directitude mistake for (?) discreditude (disrepute); (?) dejectitude (misfortune)

Dis Pluto (seePluto)

disable disqualify, disparage

disanimate dishearten

disappointed unprepared

disaster sign of ill-omen, as seen in the stars

disbranch break off, as from a tree trunk

discandy melt, thaw (cf.candied)

discase undress (cf.case)

discernings intellect

discomfortable having no word of comfort

discommend disapprove of

discontent discontented person, malcontent

discourse sb. talk, conversation; process or faculty of reasoning; v. talk

discover expose, reveal; distinguish

discovery revelation; exploration, reconnaissance

disdained disdainful

disease sb. unease, distress; v. make uneasy, trouble

disedg’d satisfied, with respect to appetite

disfurnish deprive, leave with nothing

disgracious lacking grace, unpleasant

disguise masque; wild drunkenness

dishabited dislodged, stripped

dishonest immodest

dishonesty unchastity

dislike displease; disapprove

disliken disguise

dislimn break up, smudge

disme tenth part

dismission dismissal

dismount (of swords) unsheathe; (of guns) lower

disorbed dislocated from its sphere

dispark put (parkland) to other uses

dispatch settle, conclude; kill; bereave, deprive

dispiteous merciless

disponge be sponged, drip

dispose sb. disposal; disposition; v. compose, make terms

disposer one who can do what he or she will with another

disposition arrangements

dispropertied dispossessed

dispursed disbursed, distributed

disputable disputatious, argumentative

dissembly Dogberry’s word for ‘assembly’

distain make colourless; stain, defile

distance (in fencing) correct space between the opponents

distaste be distasteful; make distasteful; find distasteful

distemper sb. lack of even temper, lack of balance; v. upset, disturb

distemperature constitutional disorder in the mind or body

distinctly separately, individually

distinguishment distinction

distract adj. separate; deranged, confused; v. divide; derange, confuse

distrain confiscate

distressful gained by misery and toil

dive-dapper dabchick, little grebe

divers several, various, different; perverse, evil

dividant separable, different

divided unfinished, broken

dividual separable

division musical notes that elaborate upon a basic melody; military arrangement

divulge openly proclaim

do him dead kill him

doctrine lesson

document lesson

doff take off; put off, dismiss

dog-apes baboons

dogged dog-like, cruel

doit small coin

dole grief; share; happy man be his dole = may his lot be that of a happy man (i.e. good luck to him)

dollar silver coin

domineer revel, feast

dominical red letter used to mark Sundays in almanacs

dominie schoolmaster

doom sb. judgement; day of judgement; v. judge, sentence

dotant senile person

double voucher testimony given by two independent parties

double-fatal fatal in two ways, as with the yew which was both poisonous and used for making bows

double-man supernatural apparition

doublet and hose vest and breeches (basic Elizabethan male dress)

doubt sb. suspicion; fear; v. suspect; fear

dout extinguish

dowlas coarse linen from Brittany

dowl one of the filaments or fibres of a feather

down-gyved fallen down and resembling gyves (fetters)

down-roping falling in long strings

dowsets testicles

doxy female beggar

drab strumpet

drachma silver coin

draff pig-swill

draught sink, privy

draw withdraw; receive; drain; draw dry-foot = hunt by the scent

drawer tapster, waiter

dress prepare; adorn, cultivate

dribbling (in archery) weakly shot, ineffective

drift sb. intention, purpose; shower; adj. driving

drollery puppet show; comic painting

drum rallying-point

drumble be sluggish, lag

dry-beat bruise, beat

ducat gold coin

ducdame ostensibly nonsense but possibly Cymric (‘Come to me’) or Italian (‘Lead him from me’)

dudgeon haft, handle

due endue, grace

duello correct practice of duelling (Ital.)

dumb-discoursive quietly seductive

dump tune, usually melancholy

dumps low spirits

dun sb. horse; log dragged out of an imaginary mire as a Christmas game; adj. dull grey- brown; dun’s the mouse = be still

dung earth, the physical world

dupp’d opened

durance durable cloth or nature; imprisonment

each, at end to end

eager sharp, bitter

ean (of sheep) give birth

eanling new-born lamb

ear v. hear; plough; by th’ears = at odds; in the ear = in earshot; shake your ears = behave like the ass you are

earing ploughing

earn grieve

earnest initial payment of money as a deposit

earthed laid in a grave

easy easily won over; small, light

eche augment, increase

ecstasy deranged mental state; unconsciousness

Edward shovel-board shilling from the reign of Edward VI later used in shovel-board (see shove-groat)

effectual conclusive

effigies likeness

effuse effusion

eftest Dogberry’s word for ‘aptest’

eftsoons afterwards

egall equal

egg worthless thing or person

egma Costard’s word for ‘enigma’

Ego et Rex meus I and my king (Lat.)

egregious outstanding, remarkable

eisel, eisell vinegar

eke also

elbow thrust back; rub the elbow = express pleasure

eld old age; people of a previous time

elder-gun pop-gun used for firing paper pellets

elect sb. people specially chosen; v. choose, accept

element one of the four universal substances (earth, water, air, fire); sky

elf sb. fairy, spirit; v. tangle or mat together

elf-locks hair tangled or matted together

Elizium, Elysium abode of the virtuous after death in the ancient world

elm tree used to train vines

emballing taking up the orb, a symbol of royalty

embare make bare

embarquements embargos, hindrances

embattail, embattle prepare for battle

embayed sheltered in a bay

emblaze set forth, as in heraldry

embossed hunted down, exhausted; bulging, swollen

embounded enclosed

embowel disembowel

embrasure embrace

eminence superiority, high rank

Emmanuel‘God with us’, formula used to begin letters and documents

empale surround, encircle

empatron be patron to

emperial imperial

empery empire, sovereignty

empiric quack doctor

empiricutic characteristic of quack medicine

emulation envious rivalry

emulator petty rival, disparager

emulous envious

enciel’d screened

encompassment roundabout course

enew (in falconry) drive (the bird) into water

enfeoff surrender (property)

engage bind; pledge as security

engine plot, device; instrument; military machine

engineer, enginer military engineer, sapper

englut devour

engraffed, engrafted attached; ingrained

engross fatten; amass, gather; monopolize; write large

enlard fatten

enlarge set free

enlargement liberty; liberation

enormous monstrous

enow enough

enround encircle

ensconce hide, tuck away

enseamed greasy (cf.seam)

ensear dry up, wither

enskied placed in heaven

ensteeped under water

entertain sb. entertainment; v. treat; employ; maintain

entertainment treatment; employment

entitled, entituled called; having a claim

entreat sb. entertainment; v. negotiate, ask; treat

entreatment negotiation

envy sb. malice, spite; v. bear ill will towards

enwheel encircle

Ephesian revelling companion

epicurism gluttony

epithet, epitheton adjective, expression

equal balanced, just, fair

equinox time of the year when day and night are of equal length

Ercles Hercules (seeHercules)

Erebus place of darkness on the way to the underworld

erection Quickly’s word for

‘direction’ (instruction)

ergo therefore (Lat.)

eringo root of the sea-holly, a delicacy and aphrodisiac

erst once, formerly

escot provide for

esperance hope; the motto of the Percy family

espial spy

essay seeassay

estimable esteemed, valuable; esteeming, admiring

estimation rate of esteem, worth; esteemed or valued object; reputation; valuation

estridge ostrich; goshawk

Et bonum quo antiquius eo melius ‘And the older a good thing is, the better it is’ (Lat., proverbial)

eternize immortalize

Europa daughter of Agenor and loved by Jupiter, who transformed himself into a bull and carried her off to Crete

even sb. the level truth; v. make even; keep up with; even o’er = make sense of; go even = agree

even-Christen fellow Christians

event outcome

ever always; not ever = not always; ever among = all the while

Evil, the the King’s Evil (scrofula), supposed to be cured by the King’s touch

evil (?) privy; (?) brothel

evitate avoid

exactly expressly

examine question

except take exception to; set aside; except, before excepted = legal phrase common in leases (i.e. ‘with the aforesaid exceptions’)

exception disapproval, objection

excitement exhortation

exclaim exclamation, outcry

exclamation reproach

excrement outgrowth from the body, particularly hair

excursion (in stage directions) skirmish

exempt separated, far away

exequies funeral ceremonies

exercise devotional exercise; homily

exhalation meteor, falling star

exhale draw out

exhaust draw out, elicit

exhibit submit, introduce; Gobbo’s word for ‘inhibit’

exhibition gift; allowance, maintenance; Verges’ word for ‘commission’ (authority)

exigent critical moment

exion Quickly’s word for ‘action’

exorcise conjure up evil spirits

expectancy expectation, hope

expedience speed, expedition

expedient swift

expense expenditure

experimental of experience

expiate adj. terminated; v. extinguish

expostulate discuss, inquire into, argue

exposture exposure

express adj. well formed, well executed; v. show forth, make known

expressure expression; impression

exsufflicate (?) inflated, far- fetched

extemporal extempore

extend seize in satisfaction for a debt

extent behaviour; exercise; seizure (cf.extend)

extenuate mitigate, weaken the force of

extirp extirpate, root out

extracting drawing everything else away with it, absorbing

extraught extracted, derived

extravagancy vagrancy

extravagant straying beyond its proper bounds, vagrant

eyases young hawks, noted for their clamour

eyas-musket young sparrow- hawk

eye sb. spot; hole in a bowling ball; v. appear; in the eye = in sight

eye-glass lens of the eye

eye-strings muscles or tendons of the eye

eyne eyes

eyrie nest of a bird of prey

face sb. outward show; v.(of garments) trim with braid or velvet; bully; deceive; (in cards) call an opponent’s bluff; face down = swear blind; face out = brazen out, intimidate, bluff

face-royal head depicted on a coin

Facile precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra Ruminat Holofernes’s misquotation from a pastoral poem by Mantuanus (Lat.= ‘[Faustus], I pray, while all the herd chews the cud in the cold shade …’)

facinerious facinorous, wicked

fact deed, crime; in the fact = red-handed

factious of or forming a faction, rebellious

factor agent, representative

faculty power; quality, nature

fadge turn out, succeed

fading word used in contemporary songs

fail sb. failure; failure to produce a son; death; v. fail in; die

fain adj. glad, well pleased, content; adv. gladly

fairings gifts bought at a fair

faithed believed

falchion curved broadsword

fall sb. cadence in music; v. let fall, bring down; befall; happen, turn out; waste away; at fall = at ebb; fall from = desert; fall off = revolt

falling-sickness epilepsy

falsing deceptive

fame sb. public image or opinion; v. make famous

familiar sb. spirit or demon; close friend; adj. native, accustomed

fan sift (e.g. grain) by means of an air current

fanatical frantic, outlandish

fancy sb. love; short piece of poetry or music, fantasia; v. love

fancy-free free from love

fancy-monger dealer in love

fangled pretentiously fashionable

fantastic sb. person given to flights of fancy; fop, gallant; adj. of the mind; given to or produced by extravagant flights of fancy, crazy

fantastical seefantastic (adj.)

fantasy imagination; imagining, fancy; self-delusion

fap drunk

farborough Sly’s word for ‘thirdborough’ (seethirdborough)

farce stuff

fardel pack

fare travel; feed; be, feel

far-fet far-fetched, highly cunning

farm rent; lease out profits from taxes in return for an immediate sum of cash; in farm = leased out

farrow pigs of a litter

farthingale petticoat stretched over whalebone hoops

fashions farcy, a disease in horses

fat stuffy; (?) sweating

Fates three deities who span the threads of human lives

fatigate fatigued, weary

faucet-seller seller of taps for wine-barrels

fault sin; misfortune; (in hunting) lost or ‘cold’ scent; for fault of = for want of

favour appearance, face, feature; charm; token of good will

fay faith

fazed tattered, frayed

feat adj. graceful; adv. gracefully, neatly; v.(?) make or render graceful

feature appearance of the body

federary seefeodary

fee livestock; estate of a feudal lord; reward for services to a lord; in fee = outright; in fee- farm = permanent

feeder servant; parasite

fee-grief particular grief, suggesting a large estate rented by a single tenant (cf.fee)

feeze beat

felicitate made happy

fell sb. skin, fleece; adj. terrible, savage

fellies parts of a wheel that form the rim

fence sb. defence; swordsmanship; v. shut in, defend

feodary confederate

fere companion; husband or wife

fern-seed seed supposed both to possess and to impart invisibility

ferret torment; search thoroughly

ferula teacher’s cane for beating

fescue teacher’s stick for pointing

festinate hurried, hasty

fetch sb. trick, evasion; v. make; strike; fetch about = change tack; fetch in = surround, catch; fetch off = rescue; get the better of, kill

fettle groom, prepare

few, in in short

fewness and truth the truth in short

fia seevia

fico fig (Ital.) (seefig)

fidelicet Evans’s word for ‘videlicet’ (seevidelicet)

field-bed camp bed

fielded in the battle field

fifteens fifteenths (seefifteenth)

fifteenth tax of one-fifteenth levied on personal property

fig sb. contemptuous exclamation; obscene gesture sometimes called the ‘fig of Spain’; v. make the ‘fig’ gesture

fights protective screens used on warships

fig’s-end seefig

figure sb. numeral or letter; esoteric diagram; rhetorical device; imagining; v. express, represent; imagine

file sb. body of men, especially soldiers; list; v. defile; keep pace, as in marching

fill-horse horse used to draw a cart

film gossamer

find find out; find forth = locate

fine sb. end; adj. refined; v. conclude; undertake to pay; make beautiful; fine and recovery = transfer of property

fineless boundless

firago virago, female warrior

fire-drake meteor

fire-new brand-new, as if fresh from the forge

firk beat, perhaps with connotations of ‘fuck’

firstling first offspring

fisnomy physiognomy, face

fit sb. spasm; section of poetry or music; v. be appropriate (for)

fitchew polecat, known for its foul stench and sexual appetite

fitchook seefitchew

fitment that which is fitting; device

fives avives, a disease in horses

flamen ancient Roman priest

flap-dragon small fruit, floating in liquor, set alight and swallowed as a Christmas game

flap-jack pancake

flatness (?) completeness; (?) unrelieved expanse

flaunts fine clothes

flaw sb. fragment; gust or blast of wind; outburst; v. crack, break

fleckled spotted, blotchy

fledge fledged

fleer sb. sneer; v. grin, sneer

flesh (in hunting) awaken an appetite for bloodshed

fleshment first success

fleur-de-luce seeflower-de-luce

flew’d, flewed big-jowled

flidge see fledge

flirt-gill easy woman

float sea

flourish sb. fanfare; decoration; v. sound a fanfare; decorate, embellish

flower-de-luce fleur-de-lis (iris), French heraldic device also used later by English kings

flurted scorned

flush ripe, full of vigour

flushing redness caused by weeping

flux something that flows

fluxive flowing, fluid

flying at the brook hunting for water-fowl with hawks

foil sb. defeat, disgrace; complementary setting or background; v. defeat, overthrow

foin sb. thrust of a sword; v. thrust or parry with a sword

foison plenty, abundance

fond adj. foolish; v. dote

fondling foolish person

fool jester; fool’s bolt = allusion to the proverb ‘a fool’s bolt is soon shot’; shrieve’s fool = penniless idiot in the custody of the sherrif (cf. shrieve)

fool-begg’d so idiotic that one might request custody of it from the courts

foot be or go on foot; kick; (of an eagle) snatch with the talons

foot-cloth sb. horse’s decorative saddle-cloth; adj. equipped with a foot-cloth

foot-landrakers vagabond highwaymen

fop sb. fool; v. see fub

foppery, fopp'ry folly, foolery; cheating, trickery

foppish foolish

for for lack of; for fear of

forbid under a curse

force strengthen; care; urge, enforce; stuff; force a straw = care a straw for; force perforce =in spite of opposition, necessarily; of force = of importance; of necessity

fordo ruin, destroy

fordone tired out

forecast forethought

fore-end earlier part

foregone done previously

fore-hand, forehand leading position; forehand shaft = arrow shot with the target seen above the bow hand; ’forehand sin = sin of acting prematurely

forehorse leading horse

fore-past previous

foresay determine, decree

forestall prevent, deny in advance

foreward vanguard

forgetive inventive

fork snake’s tongue; arrow’s head; leg or legs (where the body forks)

forked barbed; horned, cuckolded (cf. horn)

formal rational, sane; conventional, regular

former foremost

forsake give up; deny, decline

forslow delay

forspent wearied, exhausted

fortitude strength

fortuna de la guerra the chance of war (Sp.?)

foutre (Fr.) ruder version of ‘fig’(cf. fig)

fox sword

foxship qualities of a fox, supposedly ingratitude and cunning

fracted broken

fraction breach, estrangement, quarrel; fragment

frame sb. systematic form; design; v. form, contrive, execute

frampold, frampul bad- tempered, full of peevishness

franchis’d free

franchise freedom from servitude

frank sb. sty for hogs; adj. generous; free from restraint; v. shut in a sty

franklin freeholder, rich yeoman

fraught sb. freight, cargo; adj. laden, supplied; v. burden

fraughtage freight, cargo

frayed frightened

French crown French gold coin; head bald through syphilis

frequent familiar, in company (with)

fresh freshwater spring

fret chafe, wear away; rot; ferment; adorn, ornament; equip with frets (see frets)

frets ridges on a lute to guide the fingering

fretten fretted, chafed

friend sb. family member; lover; v. befriend; at friend, to friend friendly, as a friend

frieze coarse cloth

frippery old clothes shop

friskins leapings about

front sb. forehead, face; v. face, oppose; march in front

frontier rampart; border fortress

froward recalcitrant, awkward

frush beat, hammer

fub rob, cheat; fub off = fob off

fullam kind of false dice

fulsome full, abundant; foul

fumiter the fumitory plant, a weed

Furies mythological fiends who punished crimes

furnishings decorations, trimmings

furniture equipment; horse’s gear

fury transcendental state; poetic inspiration

fury-innocent (?) one innocent of fury

fust become musty

fustian sb. coarse cloth; nonsense; adj. bombastic, highflown

fustilarian (?) fustilugs (a gross woman)

gaberdine cloak

gad spike; upon the gad = suddenly (as if pricked with a spike)

gage sb. pledge, especially to fight; v. pledge, engage, bind

gaingiving misgiving

gainsay deny, forbid

Galen famous Greek physician and author of medical textbooks

gall sb. suffering; indignation; v. vex, hurt

Gallian Gallic, French

galliard dance punctuated by capers (little leaps)

galliass large ship

gallimaufry jumble, mixture

gallow scare

Gallowglasses axe-wielding Irish soldiers

gallows person who will or should be hanged

gamut musical scale

Ganymede beautiful youth whom an enamoured Jupiter transported to heaven to be the cupbearer of the gods

garboil uproar, disturbance

Gargantua giant from French folklore, made famous by the work of Rabelais

garland crown; hero

Garmombles Evans’s version of ‘German nobles’, close to ‘geremumble’, an obscure term of abuse; with probable allusion to Count Mömpelgard, a German noble who aspired to be elected Knight of the Garter

garnish sb. clothes; v. clothe, decorate

gaskins wide breeches

gastness dread; ghastliness

gaud showy ornament, triviality

gaudy bright, ornate, festive

gaze thing gazed at; (in hunting) at gaze = distracted

gear purpose; matter, business

geck dupe

gemini pair, as of twins

gender sb. genus, sort; v. procreate, breed

generosity those of noble birth

generous of noble birth

genitivo‘in the genitive case’ (Lat.)

genius spirit, especially a person’s guardian spirit

gentility good birth and breeding; good manners

gentle sb. gentleman or gentlewoman; adj. noble, well bred; adv. nobly; v. ennoble

gentry nobility; noble behaviour

George badge of St George worn by Knights of the Order of the Garter

german, germane sb. close relative; adj. closely related

germen seed

gest stage in a journey, especially a royal progress; great deed, usually chivalric

get beget, sire

ghasted frightened

ghost sb. corpse; v. haunt

gib male cat

gift giving

gig spinning-top

giglet, giglot dizzy woman; strumpet

gillyvors gillyflowers

gimmaled made with gimmals (see gimmer)

gimmer gimmal, mechanical joint

gin snare, trap

gird sb. taunt, reproof; v. sneer or scoff (at)

glance sb. innuendo; v. rebound; make an oblique, usually disparaging, hint

glass sb. mirror; hour-glass; glass eyes = spectacles

glaze glare

gleek sb. scoff, gesture of contempt; v. scoff

glib geld, castrate

globe head; name of Shakespeare’s theatre

glose, gloze sb. marginal comment; superficial word-play; v. interpret or comment as if with scholastic glosses; use false, attractive language

gloss attractive external appearance

glut swallow hungrily

go walk; go to = expression of scorn or disbelief (cf. go on, get away)

goatish lecherous, as goats were supposed to be

gobbet chunk of flesh

God dig-you-den, God gi’ good e’en, God ’i’ good e’en, God ye good e’en, God-den, good den (God give you) good evening

God ’ild (may) God yield (reward)

God’s lid see ’Slid

good good for credit, wealthy

good dild see God ’ild

goodly handsome

goodman title for people below the rank of gentleman; husband

good-year, what the exclamation of surprise

goose tailor’s iron; short for Winchester goose (= prostitute); sore caused by veneral disease

gorbellied bigbellied

Gordian knot according to legend, an impossibly complex knot to be untied only by he who would go on to rule Asia; Alexander the Great cut it with his sword

gore-blood clotted blood

gorge vomit

gorget throat armour

Gorgon one of three monsters, the most famous being Medusa, whose look turned the viewer to stone

gospell’d instructed in the precepts of the gospel

gossip sb. godparent; merry, talkative woman; v. stand as a godparent; be merry in company

gourd kind of false dice

gout drop of liquid

government self-discipline, self- control; in government = under control

graceful blessed; favourable

graff, graft sb. grafted (i.e. hybrid) plant; v. graft, cross- breed by implanting a shoot into a plant of a different kind

grafter plant from which the shoot is taken for grafting (see graff)

grain, in fast dyed, ingrained; purple-in-grain = red

grained ingrained; bearing or displaying the grains found in timber

gramercy great thanks

grand guard heavy armour worn on horseback

grange farm house sometimes belonging to a religious estabishment

grate vex, annoy

grateful pleasing

gratify reward; make pleasant

gratulate adj. gratifying; v. greet; gratify, satisfy

grave bury, entomb; carve, engrave

greasily obscenely

great morning broad daylight

’gree agree

greeing suitable

Greek reveller, person with relaxed moral standards

Greensleeves popular English ballad about an inconstant woman

grievance distress, trauma

grieve sorrow; offend

gripe sb. clutch; vulture or eagle; v. grip, clutch

grise, grize stair, step

groat coin; ten groats = an attorney’s fee

ground (in heraldry) coloured background; (in music) air on which variations are sung or played

groundlings theatregoers who stood in front of the stage

ground-piece (?) exemplary painting

grow (of a sum of money) grow due; grow to a point = come to a stop; grow upon = encroach on

guardant guard; Jack guardant = petty official (cf. Jack)

guards trimmings of a garment; stars in the Ursa Minor constellation used for navigation

guidon pennant, flag

guilder gold coin

guiled deceitful, full of guile

guinea-hen (?) cunning woman; (?) prostitute

guise usual practice

gules (in heraldry) red

gull sb. nestling; credulous fool; hoax; v. trick, fool

gummed treated with gum, glossy

gurnet small fish considered a delicacy

gust sb. taste, appetite; v. get a taste of, realize

Guy, Sir Guy of Warwick, hero of an early English romance

gyve sb. fetter; v. fetter

H letter of the alphabet pronounced ‘aitch’, so sounding like the Elizabethan pronunciation of the word ‘ache’

habiliment attire, dress

habit clothing, garments; bearing, disposition

habited dressed

habitude character, disposition

hack (?) associate with loose women

hackney prostitute

hade land part of the field where the plough turns around, and so planted last

haggard sb. wild hawk; adj. wild

haggled hacked

hag-seed offspring of a hag

hair sort, kind, nature; against the hair = against the grain

halberd battle-axe on a long pole; one armed with a halberd

halcyon kingfisher, supposed when hung up to turn its beak with the wind; halcyon’s days = period of calm

half partner, wife

half-blooded having only one parent of noble blood

half-caps caps taken only half off, slight salutations

half-cheek profile

half-cheeked (of a horse’s bit) giving insufficient control

half-face profile

half-faced showing a face in profile; pinched-faced

half-kirtle skirt portion of a kirtle (see kirtle)

half-sword very close quarters

halidom state of being holy; anything regarded as holy

halloo, hallow call, shout

Hallowmas All Saints’ Day (1 November)

hand-fast custody; marriage contract

handsaw small saw; (?) heron

handy-dandy take your choice (from a children’s game)

hanger straps attaching the sword to the girdle

haply by chance

happiness handsomeness

harbinger one who runs on ahead

hard-haired with tightly curled hair

hardiment valour; deeds of valour

hardness difficulty

harlot sb. person of loose life; beggar; adj. lewd

harlotry good-for-nothing

Harry ten shillings half-sovereign coined under Henry VII

hatch lower half of a divided door

hatchment tablet displaying a coat of arms

haud credo‘I do not believe’ (Lat.)

haught haughty, arrogant

haughty high-pitched, ambitious

hautboy oboe

havoc signal for indiscriminate slaughter

hay country dance; (in fencing) thrust reaching the antagonist

hazard sb. dice game; risk; stake; v. risk

head sb. headland, promontory; subdivision; armed force, advance; v. behead; head and front = height

headstall part of the bridle that fits round the head

heady-rash impetuously violent

heap great company, crowd; on a heap = prostrate

heavy serious, grievous; sad; tiresome

hebenon poison

Hecate goddess of witchcraft

hectic fever

Hector Trojan hero

Hecuba Queen of Troy

hedge-pig hedgehog

hefts heavings, retchings

hempseed one deserving to be hanged

hent sb. seized opportunity; v. seize; reach

herb of grace rue

herblet small herb

Hercules legendary hero, supposedly a kinsman of Theseus; Hercules and his load = Hercules bearing the world on his shoulders, perhaps the sign at the Globe Theatre

Hero lover of Leander (see Leander)

Herod biblical tyrant

he’s he shall

Hesperus the planet Venus

hest behest, command

hey-day, heyday exclamation of surprise or joy

Hic et ubique‘Here and everywhere’ (Lat.)

Hic ibat Simois, hic est Sigeia tellus, / Hic steterat Priami regia celsa senis ‘Here ran the river Simois; here is the Sigeian land; here stood old Priam’s lofty palace’ (Lat., Ovid)

hic jacet‘here lies’ (Lat.)

Hiems Winter

high and low false dice

high-day see hey-day

high-lone alone, without support

high-proof in the highest degree

high-stomached high-spirited, haughty, stubborn

hight is called

hild held

hilding contemptible person of either sex, coward

hind female deer; rustic servant; boor

hint occasion, opportunity

hipped having a dislocated hip- bone

Hiren seductive woman (from the name of a character in a play by Peele)

hit agree; hit of = hit on

hive hat

hoar adj. mouldy; whitish; v. become mouldy; whiten (with disease)

hobby-horse character in the morris-dance; buffoon; loose woman

hodge-pudding pudding or sausage made of hodge (pigs’ entrails)

holding consistency; refrain of a song

holidame see halidom

holp helped

holy-ales rural festivals on saints’ days

holy-rood day feast of the Holy Cross (14 September)

holy-thistle see carduus benedictus

home thoroughly

honest worthy, decent; truthful; chaste

honesty uprightness, decency; chastity; generosity

honey-stalks clover flowers

honorificabilitudinitatibus stock comic example of a long (Latin) word

honour honourable deed

hood (of a hawk) blindfold

hoodman-blind blind man’s buff

horn deer; sign of a cuckold

horn-book, hornbook child’s primer (the alphabet on a leaf of paper protected by a translucent plate of horn)

horn-mad like a furious bull, with connotations of cuckoldry (cf. horn)

horologe clock

hose breeches; French hose = loose-fitting hose

host lodge

hot-house brothel

house-clogs shackles

housekeeper domestic woman; guard dog

housewife hussy, prostitute

howlet owlet or owl

hox hamstring

hoy small coasting vessel

hoy-day, hoyday see hey-day

hugger-mugger secrecy

hull float with sails furled

humorous damp; temperamental, capricious, whimsical (see humour)

humour dampness; one of the four physiological ‘elements’ (melancholy, blood, choler, phlegm) governing disposition, hence temperament, mood, inclination

Humphrey Hower (?) meal-time (‘to dine with Duke Humphrey’ = to solicit dinner invitations);(?) name of an unidentified contemporary individual

Hungarian needy, hungry

hunt’s up morning song to awaken a newly married wife

hurricano waterspout

hurry commotion

husband sb. one who manages a household, accounts, etc.; v. cultivate; marry

husbandry management (cf.husband), thrift; farming, cultivation

huswife see housewife

Hybla mountain in Sicily famous for honey

Hydra legendary snake with many heads which grew back sevenfold when they were cut off

hyen hyena

Hymen, Hymenaeus god of marriage

hyperbole figure of speech used for exaggeration

Hyperion Phoebus, the sun god

Hyrcan, Hyrcanian from Hyrcania, a region on the shore of the Caspian sea famous for tigers

Hysterica passio type of hysteria in women (Lat.)

Icarus son of Daedalus who, with his father, used artificial wings to fly from Crete, where King Minos had imprisoned them; flying too near the sun, he melted the wax in his wings and so fell to his death in the sea

ice-brook stream of icy water, used in the tempering of sword blades

Iceland dog lap-dog from Iceland

idea image

ides of March 15 March in the Roman dating system

ignis fatuus (Lat.) will o’the wisp

ignominy, ignomy disgrace

Ilion, Ilium Troy; palace of Priam in Troy

ill-favoured ugly, unpleasant (cf.favour)

illness evil nature

ill-tempered (of the humours in the blood) badly balanced (see humour)

illustrous not lustrous, lack- lustre

image archetypal image, perfect example

imaginary imagining, imaginative

imbecility feebleness

imbrue pierce; spill blood

imitari to imitate (Lat.)

immanity barbarity, ferocity

immediacy the position of being next in authority

immediate direct; next in succession

imminence impending danger

immoment of no moment, insignificant

immures enclosing walls

imp sb. young offshoot, hence child; v. repair (a wing) by grafting on new feathers

impale see empale

impare inappropriate, unworthy

impart say, reveal; provide

impartment speech, communication

impasted formed into a crust

impawn pledge, stake

impeach sb. charge, reproach; v. undermine, discredit

impeachment charge; impediment, hindrance

imperseverant (?) stubborn; (?) imperceptive

impertinency irrelevance, nonsense

impertinent Gobbo’s word for ‘pertinent’

impeticos (?) pocket

implorators implorers, beseechers

import sb. weighty significance; v. signify; involve, concern

importance significance, meaning; importunity, urgent request; question at issue

importancy significance, importance

important importunate, urgent

importless without significance, trivial

importment importance, significance

importune demand, urge

imposition command; accusation; penalty, burden

imposthume, impostume abscess

imprese allegorical representations used in heraldic decoration (Ital.)

impress sb. conscription; v. press into military service

imputation attribution, reputation

in capite‘at the head’ (Lat.), used of tenants holding land direct from the king

In hac spe vivo‘In this hope I live’ (Lat.)

incapable unable to take in; unable to understand, unaware

incardinate Aguecheek’s word for ‘incarnate’

incarnadine turn red

incarnation Gobbo’s word for ‘incarnate’

inch island; Saint Colme’s Inch = Inchcomb, an island in the Firth of Forth

inchmeal, by inch by inch

inclining sb. inclination, side; adj. ready to be persuaded

income gathering in

incomprehensible limitless

incontinent adj. lacking self- restraint; adv. immediately

incony darling; delicate

incorporate united in one body

incorps’d united into a single body

incorrect uncorrected, incorrigible

incredulous incredible, unbelievable

Ind, Inde India

indent sb. indentation; v. make an agreement; dart about

index table of contents at the beginning or end of a book

indifferency impartiality; unremarkable nature

indifferent impartial, lacking prejudice or interest; mediocre, moderate; identical

indigest sb. that which is amorphous; adj. crude, amorphous

indign disgraceful

indirect devious, wrongful

indirection injustice; oblique method

indirectly wrongly; obliquely; nonchalantly

indisposition unwillingness

indistinguishable of no recognized kind or function

indistinguished indistinguishable; limitless

individable (?) conforming to the dramatic unity of place; (?) not to be identified by divisions and subdivisions of genre

indrench’d drenched, overwhelmed

induction first step; opening scene

infamonize Armado’s word for ‘infamize’ (make infamous, defame)

infect infected

infection Quickly’s and Old Gobbo’s word for ‘affection’ (see affection)

infer bring in; allege; imply

influence planetary emanation supposed to exert a determining effect upon people

inform take on a form; give form to, fashion, direct; report

informal deranged

infuse pour into or onto

ingenious mentally alert, responsive; crafty; crafted; appropriate

ingeniously ingenuously, candidly

inginer see engineer

ingling fondling, caressing

ingraft see engraffed

inhabitable uninhabitable

inherit possess; put in possession of; take possession of

inhibited prohibited

inhibition prohibition, ban

initiate belonging to a beginner

injurious abusive, offensive

ink-horn small vessel for containing ink; inkhorn mate = bookish person

inkle tape or yarn

inland sb. interior of a land, especially its urban and prosperous parts

innocent sb. idiot, fool; adj. simple, foolish

inoculate graft a new shoot into (a plant)

insane causing insanity

insconce see ensconce

insensible unable to be sensed

insinuate flatter, wheedle; hint to

insinuation flattery, worming a way in

insisture (?) persistence; (?) moment of stasis

instalment installation; stall

instance proof, sign, evidence; motive

instruction information

insuppressive unable to be suppressed or contained

Integer vitae, scelerisque purus, / Non eget Mauri iaculis, nec arcu ‘The man of upright life and free from crime does not need the javelins or bows of the Moor’ (Lat., Horace)

intellect message, meaning

intelligence communication; secret information; spies

intelligencer messenger; spy

intelligencing carrying information

intelligent carrying information; intelligible

intendment intention

intentively attentively

intercept interrupt

interessed given a right to or share in

interest right to or share in

interlude short comedy

intervallum interval, pause

intitled, intituled see entitled

intreat see entreat

intrenchant unable to be cut

intrince intricate

intrinsicate intricate

investments robes; seiges

Invitis nubibus‘in spite of the opposition of the clouds’ (Lat.)

ipso facto‘by that very act’ (Lat.)

Ira furor brevis est‘Anger is a brief madness’ (Lat., Horace)

Iris messenger of Juno, represented as a rainbow

irreconciled unreconciled (to God)

irregular lawless, unruly

irregulous see irregular

iterance repetition

iwis truly

Jack, jack term of contempt, meaning fool, knave, trickster, also used in combinations, e.g. Jack-priest, Jack-slave

jack mechanized human figure that strikes a clock bell; small wooden block in a keyboard (wrongly used of the keys themselves); (in bowls) small bowl aimed at by the players; soldier’s padded jacket; drinking vessel

Jack-a-Lent brightly dressed puppet stoned by fun-seeking children during Lent

jack-a-nape, jack-an-ape, jackanape, jackanapes, jack'nape performing monkey; fool

jade sb. mangy or difficult horse; contemptuous term, usually for a woman; v. trick; harrass

jad’ry a horse’s difficult behaviour (cf. jade)

jakes latrine

jaunce sb.(?) tiring business; v. prance

jaw devour

jay glamorous, immoral woman

jealous anxious; suspicious, doubtful

jealous-hood (?) jealous woman

jealousy anxiety; suspicion

jean kind of twilled cotton

jennet Spanish horse

jerk stroke, as of wit

jerkin jacket

jesses straps fastening a hawk’s legs to the falconer’s wrist

jet strut self-importantly; jut (see jut)

jig sb. merry tune or dance; v. sing or move in the manner of a jig

Jockey Jack (John)

John Drum’s entertainment a good beating

jointress widow who inherits her husband’s estate

joint-ring ring formed of two interlocking halves

joint-stool stool that has been properly crafted

jollity extravagant clothes

jolt-head, jolthead fool

jordan piss-pot

journal daily

Jove Jupiter (see Jupiter)

Jovial of Jupiter, hence kingly, liberal, etc.; Jovial star = the planet Jupiter

jowl strike, knock

Judas (Iscariot) apostle who betrayed Christ, identifying him to the authorities by kissing him; popular legend gave him red hair and says he hanged himself

Judas Maccabeus great Jewish warrior and freedom-fighter

Jug Joan

jump sb. risky move; adv. just, exactly; v. risk, chance; coincide, agree

junkets sweetmeats, dainties

Juno sister and wife of Jupiter, sometimes associated with marriage, otherwise imagined as formidably jealous and prone to anger

Jupiter principal god in classical mythology, brother and husband of Juno but given to affairs with mortals (see Europa, Leda)

just sb. jousting tournament; adj. precise; adv. precisely, indeed;just distance = half-way

justicer judge

justify verify; vindicate

jut overhang, encroach

jutty sb. part of a building that projects beyond the wall; v. overhang

kam awry, perverse

kecksies kexes, hollow stalks

keech rolled lump of fat

keel cool

ken sb. sight; v. see; know

Kendal green coarse cloth

kennel gutter, open drain

kern, Kerne Irish foot-soldier

kernel little seed

kersey plain, coarse cloth

kettle kettle-drum

key key for tuning a stringed instrument

kibe chilblain, sore on the heel

kickshaws fancy extra, trifle

kicky-wicky (?) wife

killen kill

kiln-hole opening of a kiln

kind sb. nature; lineage, family; way, manner; adj. natural; gracious

kindle incite; bring forth young

kindless unnatural

kindly adj. natural, in accordance with one’s nature; adv. naturally; graciously; exactly

kirtle gown consisting of a bodice and skirt

kiss (in bowls) brush (the jack) with one’s bowl

kissing-comfits sweetmeats (dried fruits, etc.) for sweetening the breath

kite bird of prey; whore

knack knick-knack, pretty artefact

knap knock; bite

knoll toll

knot gang, small group; folded arms; flower-bed

knot-grass plant supposed to inhibit growth

knotted laid with flower-beds (cf.knot)

knotty-pated block-headed

La fin couronne les oeuvres‘The end crowns the deeds’ (Fr., proverbial)

label append, as a codicil

labour’d, laboured employed in labour; accomplished with labour

laboursome finely worked; persistent

labras Pistol’s word for ‘labra’(Lat.= ‘lips’)

lace interlace, embroider; laced mutton see mutton

lackey sb. page, footman; v. run around after, like a page

lade drain, bale out

lady-smock (?) cuckoo-flower

lag late, behind

Lammas-tide 1 August, an old harvest festival

lampass a disease in horses

land-damn (?) thrash; (?) scold

lank become thin

lantern turret with windows

lap wrap, clad

lapse sb. fall; v. slip, hence sin

lapsed (?) fallen; (?) apprehended;laps’d in = (?) having let slip by

lard baste, enrich; garnish

large liberal, unrestrained; at large = in full; full-size

lark’s-heels larkspur

’larum, larum see alarum

latch catch, grasp; moisten

latest final

lath cheap wood

latten brass or tinplate

laud song of praise

laund cleared space in a wood

lavolt, lavolta dance involving high leaps

law-days court sessions

lay sb. wager; song; lay aboard = board (a ship); lay by the heels = put in fetters or stocks; lay for = waylay, beset

lazar leper

lead sb. lining of a wooden coffin; v. weight (a fishing line)

leading command

leads roof of a building

leaguer camp

Leander lover of Hero; every night he swam across the Hellespont and climbed up to her window to visit her

leaping-house brothel

learn teach

leash sb.(of hounds) group of three; v. keep (three hounds) on a leash

leasing falsehood, lying

leather-coats russet apples

lecture lesson

Leda maiden loved by Jupiter, who turned himself into a swan to visit her, and the mother of Helen of Troy

leer cheek, complexion

lees sediment

leese loose

leet court held by a lord of the manor

Legion name of a host of evil spirits in the Bible (Mark v.9)

legitimation legitimacy

leiger resident ambassador

leman lover, sweetheart

lendings clothes; advance payment for soldiers

Lent in the Christian calendar, forty days before Easter marked by fasting and abstinence from meat (the slaughter of animals required a special licence)

lenten of Lent, hence thin, frugal

l’envoy epilogue of a poem

let sb. hindrance; v. hinder; forbear; (of blood) drain off; let slip = let (hounds) loose

Lethe a river of the underworld; its water caused drinkers to forget their past

letter, affect the resort to alliteration

lettered learned

level sb. line of fire, range; adj. unimpeded; v. aim; guess; by line and level see line; level with = equal

lewd base, wicked

lewdster rake, lecherous person

liable subject; suitable

liberal refined; unrestrained

liberty right, prerogative; licence, licentiousness

lie live, lodge; lie along = lie stretched out

lief dear; have as lief = hold as dear, be as willing

liege lord

lieger see leiger

lifter thief

light sb. inkling; v. alight, descend, fall

lighten flash, as lightning; enlighten

like adj. likely; adv. alike, identically; v. please; liken; thrive

liking physique

limbeck alembic, a gourd-shaped vessel used in distillation

limber limp, flabby

Limbo region occupied by the souls of the virtuous who died before Christ (Limbo Patrum) or of unbaptized babies; prison

lime sb. birdlime, a kind of glue used to trap small birds; v. flavour with lime; smear or catch with birdlime; bind with mortar

limit sb. territory, precinct; appointed time; v. appoint;strength of limit = recovery after childbirth

limitation time allotted

line sb. equator; category; v. picture, draw; strengthen;by line and level = according to rule

lined padded; financially provided for

line-grove grove of lime trees

linger protract

link torch, flare

linsey-woolsey mixture of wool and flax

linstock stick which held the lighted match for detonating a cannon

list sb. inclination; boundary; edge of a piece of cloth; see lists; v. desire; listen; hear

lists arena for a contest

lither unresisting

little, in in miniature

little, in a in brief

livelihood life, liveliness

lively living; lifelike

liver dweller; organ supposedly responsible for intense feeling, especially love; liver vein = vein or style of love

livery (in law) delivery or transfer of property

lob sb. lout, rustic; v. droop

lockram linen fabric

lode-star the Pole star

lodge flatten, beat down

loggets game of throwing pieces of wood at a target

London Stone a rounded block of stone in Cannon Street, London

’long, long belong

long purples kind of wild orchis

long-staffsixpenny strikers robbers who attack their victims with long poles

’loo, loo a shout of encouragement to dogs or hounds (cf. halloo)

loofed (?) aloof, at a distance

look before certain words is an idiomatic equivalent of adding ‘ever’, e.g. look how = however;look what = whatever

look upon stand by and watch

loon rogue, low-bred person

looped full of holes

loose sb. firing of an arrow; adj. unattached, independent; v. fire (an arrow); let loose, release

lop cuttings from a tree

Lord’s sake, for the begging cry of prisoners at their windows

lose cause to lose; bring to ruin; let slip, forget

lots to blanks, it is (?) ‘the chances are’

love-in-idleness pansy

lover friend

lown see loon

lozel rogue

lubber oaf; Quickly’s word for ‘leopard’ (cf. libbard)

luce pike

Lucina goddess of childbirth, properly a surname of Juno (see Juno)

lucre gain, acquisition

Lud’s town London, after King Lud, Cymbeline’s grandfather

luggage baggage, encumbrance

lunes lunatic fits

Lupercal = Lupercalia, an ancient Roman festival at which participants ran around striking the citizens with animal skins

lurch rob

lure apparatus used by a falconer to recall his bird

lust pleasure

lustihood vigorous health

lustique in sprightly fashion

lusty cheerful; lustful

Lux tua vita mihi‘Thy light is life to me’ (Lat.)

luxurious lecherous

luxury lechery

Ma foi‘(by) my faith’ (Fr., an oath); ma foi, il fait fort chaud. Je m’en vais voir à la court la grande affaire = ‘by my faith, it’s very hot. I’m going to court, the great business’

Machiavel amoral intriguer, after the Italian politician, Niccolò Machiavelli

maculate spotted, blemished

maculation spot, blemish

madrigal song

magnanimious, magnanimous great-hearted, noble

Magni dominator poli, / Tam lentus audis scelera, tam lentus vides? ‘Ruler of the great heavens, are you so slow to hear crimes, so slow to see?’ (Lat., after Seneca)

magnifico Venetian of high social standing

magot-pies magpies

Maid Marian a bawdy role in the morris-dance

mail sb. suit of armour; small bag; v. dress in armour; wrap (a hawk) in cloth

main sb. main part; sea; mainland; army; stake in a dice game; adj. strong; important; v. maim

main-course mainsail

mainly mightily; greatly

major basic premise in an argument

majority distinction, preeminence

make sb. partner; v. do; make fast, shut; make one’s way, move;make one = join in

making bodily form

malapert insolent

malicho iniquity

malkin wench

malmsey strong, sweet wine

malt-horse, malthorse brewer’s horse

malt-worms, maltworms beer drinkers

mammet doll

mammock tear into shreds

mamm’ring hestitating, stuttering

man tame; use as a weapon

manage sb. management; (of a horse) training, exercise; v. take control of (a horse)

mandragora the mandrake plant (see mandrake)

mandrake poisonous plant supposed to issue a fatal shriek when uprooted

man-enter’d entered like a man

manhood manliness, masculinity

mankind masculine, savage

manner, taken with the caught red-handed

mansionry dwelling

mantle scum resting on the surface of stagnant water

manu cita with ready hand (Lat.)

map image

mapp’ry map-reading

Marches, marches Welsh or Scottish borders

marchpane marzipan

margent margin, hence notes, accompanying explanation

mark marking, observation; quantity of money; (in archery) something aimed at

market profit

marry a mild oath, from the name of the Virgin Mary

Mars god of war and lover of Venus (see Venus)

Martial of Mars, hence warlike, etc.

Martin’s summer, Saint good weather late in the year (St Martin’s day = 11 November)

martlemas St Martin’s day (cf.Martin’s summer, Saint)

martlet swift or house-martin

Mary-buds marigolds

mast acorns, chestnuts and similar

mastic violently abusive

mate match; check, put at a loss

material of matter, substantial

maugre despite

maund basket

mazard, mazzard head

Me pompae provexit apex‘The crown of the triumph has led me on’ (Lat.)

meacock tame, spiritless

meal’d, mealed mixed, of a piece

mean sb. middle position or course; middle voice in vocal or instrumental music; v. moan, lament

measurable fit, suitable

measure sb. dance or piece of music; punishment; v. tread, cross

mechanic, mechanical sb. manual labourer, artisan; adj. performing manual labour, common

Medea enchantress who rejuvenated her father-in-law Aeson and murdered her brother Absyrtus

Medice, teipsum physician, (heal) thyself (Lat.)

med’cinable, medicinable medicinal, curative

med’cine, medicine sb. doctor; drug, potion; (in alchemy) the elixir reputed to turn base metals into gold; v. heal;med’cine potable = drug containing gold

meditance meditating

medlar fruit eaten when almost rotten; prostitute

meed merit; payment

meetly fair, not bad

Mehercle by Hercules (Lat.)

meinie, meiny multitude; retinue

melancholy depression, associated with a thickening of the blood

Meleager Calydonian prince who, with Theseus and others, hunted down a local boar

mell associate, have intercourse

memorize make memorable

memory memorial, souvenir

mercatante merchant (Ital.)

Mercurial of Mercury, hence fleet of foot, etc.

Mercury the messenger god, associated with eloquence; he was depicted with winged sandals

mere utter, total

mered defined, marked out

merit reward, desert

mess serving of food; group of diners occupying a ranked position at table

metaphysical supernatural

mete judge; aim or level

metheglin potent spiced mead

method, by the in the same style

mew confine (a bird) in a cage

Mi perdonato excuse me (Ital.)

micher one who plays truant

miching lurking, stealthy

mickle great

microcosm man as the universe in miniature; map ofmy microcosm = my face

milch in milk, lactating

Mile-End Green drill-ground east of London for citizens under training and a place for fairs and shows

milk-livered chicken-hearted

milliner seller of gloves and fancy apparel

mill-sixpences silver sixpences

mince trivialize; walk or talk in an affected, gamesome manner

mind have in mind, mean; call to mind; notice

mineral poison; mine

Minerva goddess of wisdom and of arts and crafts

minikin high-pitched

minim basic short note-value in Tudor music

minime not in the least (Lat.)

minimus tiny creature

minion favourite or mistress; slut

Minotaur a monster, half bull and half man, placed in a labyrinth by Minos, King of Crete

minute-jacks clock figures (cf. jack)

minutely very frequent, by the minute

mirable admirable, marvellous

mirror pattern, example

Misanthropos man-hater (Gr.)

mischief sb. evil; misfortune; disease; v. harm

mis-dread fear of evil

miser wretched person

misgoverned unrestrained, rebellious

misgovernment misconduct

misgraffed ill-matched

misprision misunderstanding, blunder; disdain; false imprisonment

misproud arrogant, inappropriately proud

missive messenger

mistake take wrongly; misunderstand, misjudge

misthink think badly of, misjudge

mistress (in bowls) the jack

mo see moe

mobbled with face muffled

mockery, mock’ry semblance, imitation

model pattern; mould

modern trite, commonplace

modest moderate, sober

modestly moderately, restrainedly

modesty moderation

module pattern, image

moe more

moiety portion, sometimes a half

moldwarp mole

mome fool, ass

momentany momentary

Monarcho the name used by a famously vain contemporary Italian at the English court

Monmouth cap soldier’s cap

monster make monstrous

monstruosity monstrosity

montant (in fencing) upward thrust (Fr.)

monument sign, omen

monumental serving as a sign or token (of identity, etc.)

mood anger; expression of feelings; (in music) scale, mode

mooncalf creature born deformed

Moor-ditch a notoriously filthy ditch in London

mop sb. grimace; v. grimace like a monkey

mope be or wander about in a daze, lack awareness

moralise, moralize expound morally or symbolically

Morisco morris-dancer

morris morris-dance

mort call of the hunting-horn announcing the death of the deer

mortified insensate, subdued

mortifying life-depriving

mortise part of a joint in carpentry

mose in the chine (?) display the symptoms of glanders (a disease in horses) in its final stages

mot motto, device

mote speck, mentioned by Christ as a metaphor for trivial sinfulness (cf. beam)

mother tenderness; see Hysterica passio

motion sb. puppet or puppet- show; appeal, proposal; impulse, feeling; v. move, propose; upon the foot of motion = at the stage of being expressed

motive mover, cause or instrument

motley pied garments of a jester

mould earth, clay, the mortal human body

moulten having moulted

mountebank swindle in the manner of a mountebank (a pedlar of quack medicines)

mouse sb. term of affection for a woman; v. treat as a cat treats a mouse

mouse-hunt one who hunts women, rake (cf. mouse)

mow sb. grimace; v. grimace mockingly

mulled dulled

mummer performer in a dumb- show

mummy dried human flesh used as the basis for a medicinal liquid

muniments military supplies or defences

murd’ring-piece cannon with a spraying shot

mure wall

murrain, murrion sb. plague in cattle or other animals; adj. infected

muscadel sweet wine

muse marvel (at); complain

musit hole in a hedge; hiding place

musk-cat musk-deer

muss game in which children scramble for objects thrown on the ground

mutine sb. mutineer; v. mutiny

mutiny sb. dispute; v. riot

mutton prostitute; laced mutton = prostitute

mutual shared, common; intimate

mutuality familiarity, intimacy

mutually together; reciprocally

myn-heers gentlemen (Dutch)

Myrmidons followers of Achilles in the Trojan war; the great Myrmidon = Achilles (see Achilles)

mystery art or craft, calling

Nabuchadnezzar = Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonian king whom God punished by driving him into the wilderness where he ate grass like an ox

nail one-sixteenth of a yard

naked unarmed; in naked bed = undressed and in bed

napless worn, threadbare

Naso family name of the poet Ovid, from nasus (Lat.= ‘nose’)

native sb. natural source; adj. innate, natural; naturally connected

natural sb. congenital idiot; adj. idiotic

naturalize familiarize

naught sb. wrongdoing; adj. bad, worthless; all to naught = worthless; be naught awhile = petty insult

naughty bad, worthless

nave hub or boss of a wheel; navel

nay-ward direction of disbelief

nay-word, nayword password; byword

Nazarite Nazarene, i.e. Christ

ne intelligis domine?‘do you understand, sir?’ (Lat.)

neaf fist (dial.)

Neapolitan bone-ache syphilis

near-legged knock-kneed

neat sb. ox; adj. trim, fancy

neb beak, nose or mouth

neeze sneeze

neglect cause to be neglected

Nemean of Nemea, where lived a fearsome lion; Hercules slew it and wore its hide

nephew cousin; descendant

Neptune god of the sea

Nereides benevolent sea-nymphs

Nero Roman emperor who had his mother murdered and was supposed to have played a harp while Rome burned

nerve nerve or sinew

nervy courageous; sinewy

Nessus centaur killed with a poisoned arrow by Hercules for abducting his wife; the bloodied shirt was later worn by Hercules who was driven to suicide by its residual poison

Nestor Hellenic king famed for his advanced age and wisdom

nether-stocks stockings for the lower legs

next closest

nice easy-going; delicate, particular; refined; slight

nicely subtly; strictly, particularly; daintily

niceness daintiness

nicety scruples

Nicholas, Saint patron saint of scholars; Saint Nicholas’ clerks = highway robbers

nick v.(?) cut short; (?) emasculate; in the nick = at that point; out of all nick = beyond measure

nickname miscall; find new names for

niggard act meanly; stint

night-gown dressing-gown

night-rule affairs of the night

nimble-pinion’d swift-winged

nine-men’s-morris rustic game played on a diagram cut in turf

Niobe mother of fourteen children slain by Apollo and Diana, transformed into stone as she wept

noble gold coin

noise sb. concert or small company of musicians; report, rumour; v. report, rumour;noise it = cry out

nole noddle, head

nonce, for the for the occasion, as the occasion requires

non-come Dogberry’s word for ‘non plus’ (Lat. = ‘bewilderment’), confused with ‘non compos’ (Lat. = ‘mentally defective’)

nonpareil unrivalled paragon

nonsuit reject, with respect to a suit

nook-shotten full of nooks and corners, misshapen

nose-herbs scented plants

note sb. mark of disgrace; mark, characteristic; notice, apprehension; record; v. mark with disgrace

notedly assuredly

nothing able to be pronounced ‘noting’ (= observing, tune, etc.); sb. triviality; adv. in no way

notion intellect, awareness

Novi hominem tanquam te‘I know the man as well as I know you’ (Lat.)

novum dice game at which nine and five were high scores and perhaps interchangeable

noyance annoyance, harm

nuncio messenger

nursery care, nurturing

nut-hook, nuthook beadle

O spot; spangle, star; the Globe Theatre; vagina; sigh; prayer

oafs children of elves or fairies

oathable able to be placed under oath

ob. for ‘obolus’ (Lat.), used in England of a half-penny

objection accusation or criminal charge

obligation contract

obliged bound by contract

obliquy (?) obliquity, perversity; (?) seeobloquy

oblivious causing oblivion or forgetfulness

obloquy slander, shame

obsequious of obsequies or funeral rites; loyal

observance observation; deference, respect; ritual

observant fawning attendant

observation performance of a rite; respectful attention

observe court; pay due respect to

obstruction lack of movement

occasion matter; need; fault; opportunity, proverbially represented as bearing a forelock (or ‘front’) which should be seized

occident the west

occulted concealed, secret

occupation labour, trade

occupy have sex

occurrents occurrences

oddly unevenly

’Od’s, Od’s‘God’s’ or ‘God save’ (in oaths)

oeillades meaningful, amorous looks

o’erblow blow away

o’ercount outnumber

o’ercrow triumph over

o’er-dy’d weak with overdyeing

o’er-eaten gnawed at and bitten

o’er-flourish’d elaborately carved or ornamented

o’er-galled made excessively sore

o’erlook, overlook look over, examine, read; curse, bewitch

o’ermaster make oneself master of

o’erparted assigned a theatrical part above one’s capabilities

o’erpeer, over-peer, overpeer look down upon

o’erpicturing outdoing in pictorial qualities

o’er-posting passing over

o’er-raught, o’erraught o’erreached (seeo’erreach)

o’erreach cheat; overtake

o’ersized smeared over, as with size (seesize)

o’erteemed exhausted by bearing children

o’er-watch’d, o’erwatched exhausted through lack of sleep

o’erwhelm hang over

o’er-wrested overdone

off-cap take off one’s cap or hat out of respect

offend trouble, injure

offer attempt; threaten violence

office sb. duty; official or body of officials; v. act as a servant; deter by means of one’s station

offices servants’ quarters, pantry, etc.

old plenty of; ‘fine old’

omit neglect, disregard; forbear to use

omittance omission

omne bene all’s well (Lat.)

onyers a grand-sounding title, possibly sherrifs owing debts to the king

ope open

open-arse the medlar fruit (seemedlar)

operant working, effective

operation effective power

opinion reputation; general opinion; (adverse) judgement; (high) opinion of oneself

opposeless unable to be opposed

opposite sb. opponent; adj. opposed, antagonistic

opposition combat

oppress distress

oppression distress

oppugnancy antagonism, opposition

or ere, before; or … or = either … or

orb ring; earth; seesphere

ordinance that which is ordained by God, providence, tradition, etc.; order; ordnance, artillery

ordinant ordaining, directing

ordinary supper, as served in a tavern

orgulous haughty

orifex orifice, opening

orison prayer

ort left-over, scrap

orthography correct spelling, hence pedantic style of speaking

ostent appearance, show

ostentation public display, formal show

ostler groom, stable-boy

othergates in another way

Ottomite Ottoman, Turk

ouches gems, brooches

ought owed

ounce lynx

ousel blackbird

outbrave outdo in bravery or splendour (cf.brave)

out-crafty outdo in craftiness

outdure outlast

out-peer excel

outvied outbidden

outward sb. outside, exterior; adj. on the outside of secret affairs

ovator one who receives ovations

overhear hear over

overhold value too highly

overlook seeo’erlook

over-peer, overpeer seeo’erpeer

overscutched worn out

overture opening, disclosure, declaration

Ovid Roman poet, author of Metamorphoses, a long poem telling stories of transformation, and erotic verse which may have contributed to his exile among the Getae (Goths)

owe own; bear

oyez (Fr.) ‘hear ye’, a call for order before a public announcement

pace sb. horse’s trained walk; way, passage; v. train or exercise (a horse) in walking

pack sb. conspiracy; v. conspire; be in league; pack off, go; pack cards with seecard

packing intrigue

paddock toad

pageant sb. spectacular show or float; v. mimic, as in a pageant

pain sb. penalty; labour, pains; v. put to pains

painful involving labour; undergoing labour

painted hollow, false; painted cloth = decorative wall hanging painted with familiar figures

pair-taunt like as if holding a better hand (at cards)

pajock (?) peacock, supposed to be lecherous; (?) patchock (rogue)

palabras seepaucas pallabris

pale sb. pallor; fence; rail; enclosure; v. make pale; enclose

palfrey small horse

palisadoes iron-pointed stakes

pall lose force; wrap

Pallas Greek goddess associated with law and wisdom

pallet basic bed

palliament candidate’s gown

palmer pilgrim

palmy flourishing, victorious

palter equivocate, use deceit

pandar, pander sb. pimp, go- between; v. serve, as a pandar

Pandion father of Philomel and Progne (seePhilomel)

pantaloon stock figure of the foolish old man in Italian comedy

Pantheon a temple in Rome

pantler servant in charge of the pantry

paper sb. statement of one’s crime worn as a public penance; v. send a note to

Paracelsus innovative Swiss physician

paradox improbable or unusual proposition

paragon put forward as a paragon; surpass; parallel

Parca one of the Parcae, the Latin name for the Fates (seeFates)

parcel sb. group, band; item, part, bit; v. particularise

parcel-gilt partly gilded

pard leopard

Paris-balls tennis-balls

Parish top large spinning-top

Parish-garden Paris Garden in London where bear-baiting took place

paritor officer of the Ecclesiastical Courts

parle parley, talk

parlous perilous, dangerous

parmacity spermaceti, used as a medicinal treatment

part sb. ability, accompishment; quality; action; v. depart; in part = in part-payment

partake take sides; partake to = share with

partaker confederate

parted gifted, accomplished; (of the eyes) unfocused

partial of partiality

partialize make partial

partially by or with partiality

particular regard; personal concern, duty or motive

partisan pike-like weapon

Partlet traditional name for a hen

parti-coated dressed in a fool’s outfit (cf.motley)

party-verdict share in a joint decision

pash sb. head; v. bash

passado forward lunge with a sword

passant (in heraldry) walking position

passenger traveller

passion sb. strong emotion; suffering, esp. the final sufferings of Christ; passionate speech; v. suffer; express passion

passionate adj. compassionate; v. express passionately

passy measures pavin = passe- measure pavan, a stately dance

patch sb. jester, clown; v. make, as from patches

patchery fool’s play, cheating

paten shallow metal dish, as used in Holy Communion

patent entitlement, licence

patience sufferance, permission

patronage patronise, defend

pattern sb. example, model; v. set a precedent (for)

paucas pallabris Sly’s version of ‘pocas palabras’ (Sp.= ‘few words’)

pauca verba few words (Lat.)

Paul’s St Paul’s Cathedral, London, a centre for trade and the hiring of servingmen

paunch rip or stab the belly

pax representation of Christ kissed by worshippers at Mass

peach seeappeach

peak languish, become emaciated

pearl cataract

peat pet, sweetheart

peck sb. reasonable-sized vessel; v. seepick

peculiar own, personal, private

pedant schoolmaster

pedascule from ‘pedasculus’ (pseudo-Lat. = little pedant)

peeled tonsured

Pegasus winged horse associated with the hero Perseus

peise weigh (down); balance

pelf possessions, booty

pelican bird supposed to feed its young with its own blood

Pelion like Ossa and Olympus, a famous mountain from Greek antiquity

Pelops boy to whom the gods gave an ivory shoulder

pelt scold

pelting trivial, petty, worthless

pencil paintbrush

pencilled painted

pendulous overhanging

Pene gelidus timor occupat artus ‘Cold fear almost seizes the limbs’ (Lat.)

penner pen-holder

penn’orth, pennyworth bargain (often in a bad sense)

pensioner royal attendant

Penthesilea an Amazon queen

Pepin French king of the eighth century

Per Stygia, per manes vehor‘I am carried through the Stygian regions, through the realm of shades’ (Lat., after Seneca) (cf. Styx)

peradventure perhaps

perdie by God (an oath)

perdition loss; ruin

perdu sentinel placed in a fatally exposed position

perdurable everlasting, imperishable

perdy seeperdie

peregrinate like one who travels abroad

peremptory determined, obstinate, high-handed

perfect adj. matured; ripe, prepared; learned; v. finish; enlighten, instruct

perfection achievement, fulfilment

perfumer one who fumigates rooms with pleasant scents

perge continue (Lat.)

periapts amulets, charms

period sb. end-point, goal; full- stop, pause at the end of sentence; v. end

perjure sb. perjurer; v. force into perjury

perniciously fatally, to the point of death

peroration oration, speech

perpend weigh, consider

persistive persistent

perspective optical illusion or a glass device for producing one

pert quick, sharp

pervert divert

pester obstruct, trouble

petard bomb

pettish peevish

pew-fellow companion at church

Phaëthon, Phaeton, Phaëton son of Phoebus (seePhoebus) and stepson of Merops; attempting to drive Phoebus’ sun chariot, he failed to control its horses and almost crashed into the earth, whereupon Jupiter killed him with a lightning bolt

phantasma nightmare

phantisime person given to flights of fancy

Philip traditional name for a sparrow; Philip and Jacob = feast of SS. Philip and James (1 May)

Philippan from the Battle of Philippi, where Antony and Octavius defeated the republicans

Philomel, Philomela daughter of King Pandion, she was raped and mutilated by her brother-in- law Tereus but revealed her ordeal by depicting it in a tapestry; she was subsequently transformed into a nightingale (cf.Progne)

philosopher’s stone means of transforming base metal into gold

Phoebe the goddess Diana when represented as the moon

Phoebus the god Apollo in his role as sun god and father of Phaeton (seePhaëthon)

phoenix fabulous bird supposed to be one of a kind and to rise again from its ashes

phraseless that defies the power of language

phthisic consumptive cough

physic sb. medicine; v. mend, heal

physical healthy, therapeutic

pia mater membrane in the brain, hence brain

pick hurl

picked select; dandified, refined

pickers and stealers hands

pickthanks flatterers

Picked-hatch seedy district of London

’pie magpie

pie church service book; see’pie

piece sb. coin; wine cask; masterpiece, paragon; insulting term for a woman; v. supplement; piece out, piece up = add to, increase

pigeon-liver’d incapable of anger

pight pitched; set, determined

pike pitchfork; spike set in the centre of shield

pilcher scabbard

pill pillage, take by force; peel, strip

Pillicock penis; Pillicock Hill = female genitals

pin nothing, an irrelevance; (in archery) bullseye; pin and web = cataracts

pinch sb. nip; v. vex, irritate; (of an animal) nip with the teeth

pinfold pound for stray animals

pinioned bound

pinked with small holes or slits cut (in material or finished garment)

pioned (?) covered in flowers; (?) dug out

pip spot on a playing card, hence one point

pipe-wine wine from a cask

Pippen seePepin

pismire ant

pitch sb. height; Pitch and pay = ‘cash only’

Più per dolcezza che per forza ‘More by gentleness than by force’ (Ital.)

place sb. safe place; (in falconry) a hawk’s highest pitch; v. employ; take place = become respectable

placket skirt or slit in a skirt

plain-song basic melody

planched made of planks

plant sole of a foot

plantage plant growing

plantain plant used for basic first aid

plantation planting; colonization

plash puddle

plate sb. coin; v. dress in armour

plausible worthy of applause

plausibly with applause

plausive approved, worthy of applause; plausible

Plautus Roman writer of comedies

pleached intertwined, as the branches of a hedge; hedged

pleasant jesting

please-man flatterer

pleurisy inflamed excess

plight sb. pledge, promise; v. pledge, swear; in plight = physically fit

plume up (?) make a show of, as a bird ruffles its feathers

Pluto god of the underworld

Plutus personification of wealth, sometimes imagined as its god

point sb. lace for tying garments; sword; signal; pinnacle; v. appoint, assign; at point = ready, prepared; in every detail; about

point-device, point-devise adj. neat, exact; adv. exactly

poise sb. weight; v. weigh, consider; counterpoise

poke large bag

poking-sticks rods used for the stiffening of ruffs

Polack sb. Pole; adj. Polish

pole star; standard

polecat whore

policy politics; wisdom; strategy; stratagem

politic political

politician plotter, schemer

pole-clipped hedged in by tall stakes (?); pruned short

polled lopped, cleared; bald

pomander perfume ball

pomewater popular type of apple

Pomgarnet‘Pomegranate’, the name of a room

pompous characterized by pomp, magnificent, stately

poop overcome

Poor-John, poor-John dried, salted hake

popinjay parrot

popular common, of the people

popularity the people

porpentine porcupine

porridge soup, broth

porringer fancy hat, shaped like a dish

port sb. portal, gate; (high) position in life; attitude, behaviour; v. bring to port

portable supportable

portage voyage (through life); porthole

portance attitude, behaviour

portion dowry

posied engraved with a posy (seeposy)

position proposition, tenet advanced

possess give possession; tell, give to understand

posset sb. drink made by curdling hot milk with wine; v. curdle

post sb. messenger; horse; adv. quickly; v. hurry; in post = quickly; post off = defer

poster one who travels quickly

postern small side-gate

post-post-haste urgently

posy short motto engraved on a ring

potable seemed’cine

potato supposed to be an aphrodisiac

potch jab, poke

potency power, authority

potential potent, commanding

potents potentates, rulers

pother uproar, riot

potting drinking

pottle half-gallon tankard

pouncet-box box containing perfume

powder pickle in salt

powdering-tub pickling barrel; Pistol’s reference to the sweating tub (seetub)

power military force; person in authority; faculty

pox syphilis

practic practical

practice trick, machination; doing, performance

practisants accomplices

practise plot

praemunire writ issued against one who prefers papal to sovereign authority

praetor Roman magistrate

praise sb. virtue, merit; v. appraise; praise in departing = do not praise too soon

prank offensive act

preambulate walk before

precedence that which has preceded

precedent sb. example; sign; original; adj. earlier, previous

preceptial of precepts or moral instruction

precipitation precipitousness, sharpness of a drop

precise morally scrupulous, puritanical

precisian puritanical guide in religious matters

pre-contract future contract of marriage

precurrer precursor

precurse that which precedes by way of an omen

predicament category; situation

predominance ascendency, predominant influence (seeinfluence)

predominant in the ascendent, a powerful planetary position

prefer bring forward; bring to attention, recommend; promote

pregnancy sharpness of intellect

pregnant skilful; ready, open; clear

prejudicate judge in advance

prejudice sb. detriment, disadvantage; v. harm

premeditation meditation on the future

premised predestined

prenominate adj. aforenamed; v. say in advance

pre-ordinance established rule

preparation military force; quality, gift

preposterous topsy-turvy, perverse

prerogative privilege, precedence

presage prediction, omen

prescript sb. order, instruction; adj. prescribed

prescription claim based on long standing possession

presence presence chamber, where royalty entertains visitors

present sb. present moment; document; adj. sudden, immediate; ready; v. act; lay before a court

presentation representation, image

presently at once

presentment presentation; representation

press sb. licence for conscription; cupboard; v. conscript; torture with crushing weights

pressure image, as if impressed on wax

Prester John legendary ruler of a medieval Eastern kingdom

presuppos’d previously laid down

pretence intention

pretend intend; claim; propose; show

prevent anticipate, pre-empt

prevention anticipation, forestalling

price value

prick sb. mark; point aimed at in archery; v. mark; urge; clothe

pricket two-year-old male deer

pricksong singing from printed music

pride highest pitch; splendour; lust

prig tinker, thief

prime sb. spring; adj. first, principal; sexually aroused

primero a card game

primogeneity primogeniture, the inheritance rights of the oldest son

principal accomplice; corner- post of a house

principality one of the orders of angels

princox impertinent youth

Priscian Roman grammarian

pristine original, of old

prithee‘(I) pray thee’, please

private privacy; common subject; private communication

privilege sb. something that bestows a privilege; advantage; v. sanction, permit

prize sb. fight, bout; privilege; v. esteem, care for

prizer prizefighter

probal reasonable

probation proof; testing, trial

proceeders scholars

process sequence of events; relation, story; mandate, summons

procurator proxy, substitute

prodigious ominous; unnatural; Launce’s word for ‘prodigal’

proditor betrayer

proface an expression of welcome

profit sb. learning, advancement; v. learn, advance

progeny ancestry, lineage

Progne wife of Tereus and sister of Philomel (seePhilomel); after learning of Philomel’s rape she obtained revenge by serving Tereus the flesh of their son at dinner

prognostication prophecy; weather forecast

Proh Deum! Medius Fidius!‘By God! Holy Fidius (i.e. Jupiter) [help] me!’ (Lat.)

project sb. thought, anticipation; v. present

projection scale

prolixious time-wasting

prolong’d postponed

Promethean of Prometheus (seePrometheus)

Prometheus legendary figure who stole fire from the gods to give to man and was punished by being shackled to a mountain where an eagle pecked at his liver

promulgate make publicly known

prone prostrate; eager, headstrong

proof testing, trial; tried and tested armour; success

propend incline

propension propensity, desire

proper personal, own; decent, fine

property sb. individual quality; instrument; v. obtain; exploit, treat as an object

proportion fortune; number, magnitude; lay the proportions = estimate the numbers needed

propose sb. talk; v. hold forth, talk

propriety true nature or identity

propugnation protection

prorogue postpone, put off; prolong

prosecution pursuit, attack

Proserpina, Proserpine maiden abducted by Pluto while she gathered flowers and then imprisoned in the underworld

prosperous favourable, leading to a desirable outcome

Proteus mythological figure able to change his shape

protractive delaying

proud resplendent, luxurious

provand seeprovender

prove test, try out, put on trial; ascertain

provender food, fodder

provincial subject to provincial jurisdiction; Provincial rose = (Provençal) rose with many petals

prune preen

psaltery stringed musical instrument

publish proclaim; publicly represent

pudder seepother

pudding stuffed intestine, sausage

pudency modesty

pueritia boyhood (Lat.)

pugging thieving

puissance strength; troops

puissant strong, overpowering

puke-stocking (wearing) heavy dark woollen stockings

pumpion pumpkin

punk whore, slut

punto (in fencing) thrust (Ital.); punto reverso = back-handed thrust (Ital.)

purblind blind or weak-sighted

purchase plunder; marketable value of a property, equal to twelve years’ rent

purgation acquittal; confession and absolution

purl curl

purlieus vicinity of a forest

purpose talk; proposal

pursuivant herald’s attendant

pursy flabby, short of breath

purveyor one who travels ahead of a party on the move to prepare for its arrival

push sb. crisis; action; int.‘pish’; stand the push = stand up to, tolerate

push-pin a children’s game

pussel obsolete spelling of pucelle (Fr., virgin), but with a derogatory sense of ‘prostitute’

putter-off investor who is repaid five-fold upon returning from a foreign voyage

putter-on one who instigates or incites

puttock kite

puzzel slut

pyramid obelisk, pillar

quail sb. whore; v. overpower; slacken

quaint skilful; ingenious, artful; dainty, pretty

qualify pacify; moderate; dilute

quality nature; accomplishment; rank; profession; company

quare why (Lat.)

quarry game killed in hunting

quarter military location, watch; relations

quat pimple

quatch (?) plump

quean slut

queasy dangerous; easily upset; sickened

quench cool down

quern (?) handmill; (?) churn

quest sb. jury, inquest; search; v. bark

question sb. conversation; trial, examination, consideration; v. talk (to), discuss; in the loss of question = for the sake of argument; on the top of question = with the maximum of contention

questionable which invites questioning

questrist seeker

Qui me alit, me extinguit‘Who feeds me extinguishes me’ (Lat.)

quick living; pregnant; lively; fresh

quicken bring to life, fertilize; come to life, be conceived; make lively

quiddities quibbles

quietus clearing of accounts

quill, in the (?) in a body; (?) in order

quillets, quillities quibbles

quintain post for tilting practice

quis who (Lat.)

quit release from service; acquit; remit; pay; reward, requite

quite seequit

quiver nimble

Quo usque tandem‘How long?’ (Lat.), expression of impatience

quoif seecoif

quondam former (Lat.)

quoniam because (Lat.)

quote note; observe; set down

quotidian daily fever; quotidian tertian = (?) Quickly’s confusion of two types of fever; (?) a severe fever of more than one strain

R letter meant to sound like the growling of a dog

rabbit-sucker baby rabbit

race hereditary nature; course; (of horses) stud; (of ginger) seeraze (sb.)

rack sb. cloud or bank of clouds; v. stretch, as on a rack; tax at an extortionate rate

racker torturer (cf.rack)

rage sb. poetic inspiration (cf. fury); v. enrage

raging-wood crazy with anger

raisins o’th’ sun grapes dried naturally in the open air

ramp slut

rampallian rogue

ramping as heraldic ‘rampant’, rearing up in an aggressive stance

rampir’d barricaded or protected by ramparts

rangers gamekeepers

rank sb. journey; adj. excessively grown or swollen, bloated; sexually excited; v. tier

rankle make sore, aggravate

rankness excessive growth or swelling

ransack’d stolen, taken as plunder

rap possess, overcome

rapture violent seizure; paroxysm

rascal sb. young, skinny deer; adj. common

rash adj. sudden, hasty, violent; adv. hastily

rate sb. estimation, value; manner, style; v. berate, revile; estimate, evaluate; be valued at; give (a share)

rather, the all the sooner, all the more so

ratified brought into ‘rate’ or proportion

raught reached

ravel tangle; untangle

raven seeravin (v.)

ravin adj. ravenous; v. gulp, swallow eagerly

ravin’d (?) ravenous; (?) having gorged itself

ravish violate; seize, tear; enthrall

ravished seized from

rawness unprotected condition

rayed soiled

raze sb.(of ginger) root; v. scrape, cut

razure erasure, destruction

reach range of understanding

read lecture, tutor

re-answer repay

reason sb. something reasonable; talk, discourse; way of thinking; just cause; v. talk; ask, plead; argue rationally about; explain; no reason = nothing for it

reasonable of reason

reave deprive

rebate dampen

rebato type of stiff collar or ruff

rebeck an early ancestor of the violin

receipt something received; receptacle; volume; recipe

receiving apprehension, perception

recheat call on a hunting horn

reck care, take account of

reckless thoughtless, having no care for

reclaim overcome; domesticate (an animal)

recognizance bond acknowledging a debt; badge

recoil fall back, give way

recollect collect

recomforted comforted, reassured

recommend commend, entrust; report to

record sing

recordation record, memorial

Recorder civil magistrate of a city

recourse access; repeated flowing

recover revive, restore; obtain, reach; recover the wind = allow the hunted quarry to smell the hunt on the wind (cf.wind)

recoverable able to be recovered or retraced

recreation repast, refreshment

rector priest; ruler

rectorship sovereignty

recure cure, heal, repair

rede guidance, instruction

Redime te captum quam queas minimo ‘Ransom yourself from captivity as cheaply as you can’ (Lat.)

red-lattice an alternative to glass windows found in taverns

reduce bring or lead back

reechy grimy with smoke or grease

reed voice breaking, adolescent voice

re-edify rebuild

reek sb. smoke, fumes; v. be exhaled in the form of smoke or fumes

refel reject

reflect shine; look; rebound, throw back

refuge sb.(last) resort; v. screen, comfort

regard sb. face, expression, look; sight; consideration; heed; v. respect, pay attention to; tend

regiment authority

region stratum of the atmosphere, sky

regreet sb. greeting; reciprocal greeting; v. greet again

reguerdon sb. reward; v. reward

rehearsal account, repetition

rehearse tell, repeat

reins kidneys

rejoicer (?) encourager

rejoindure union; reunion

rejourn postpone

relation report

relative cogent, material

religion dutifulness, keen attention; superstition

religious dutiful, conscientious, assiduous

relinquish dismiss, abandon

relish sb. taste, quality; v. taste; flavour; please; sing elaborately

relume reignite

remainder someone remaining; money yet to be paid

remediate acting as a remedy

remember commemorate; remind; mention

remission pardon for an offence, hence desire or power to pardon; release from an obligation

remit give up

remonstrance manifestation

remorse compassion, sensitivity; (?) obligation

remorseful sensitive, compassionate

remotion relocation

remove raising of a siege

removedness withdrawal, absence

remover person who changes or withdraws

render sb. surrender; confession; (?) due service; v. surrender; report

rendezvous meeting place; home, refuge

renege deny; abandon

renew renew a battle

repair sb. act of making one’s way; v. make one’s way

repairing resilient

repasture food

repeal sb. recall (from exile); v. recall (from exile)

repetition utterance, narration; repetitive talk; talk of former events

repine fretting, vexation

repining grudging

replenished total, consummate

replication reply; repetition for the purposes of elaboration or illustration

reprisal booty

reprobance damnation

reprobate sinful

reproof condemnation; disproof

reprove deny, disprove

repugn repel, reject

repugnancy fighting back

repugnant recalcitrant, rebellious

repured refined

repute judge, hold; make a reputation (of), broadcast

requiring stern commands

requit requited

reremice bats

rescue forcible retrieval of a person or goods from custody

resemblance seeming

resist (?) repel, disgust

resolution certainty

resolve dissolve; solve, provide an answer; satisfy

resolvedly with clarification

respect sb. consideration; respectablity, worth; v. consider; value; without respect = absolutely

respective respectful; careful; equivalent, parallel

respectively respectfully

respice finem‘think on your end’ (Lat.)

respite end of a period of respite

responsive appropriate, matching

’rest arrest

rest sb. stay, sojourn; v. remain; above the rest = above all; in rest = under arrest, detained; set up one’s rest = resolve, stake all (from a card game)

resting changeless

restrain restrict, withold

restrained tightly drawn

resty lethargic, idle

retention detention; record, notebook; holding capacity

retentive restraining, detaining

retire sb. retreat; v. retreat; withdraw; make retire = withdraw

retort reject, throw back

retrograde (of a planet) moving backwards, hence contrary

return sb. reply; v. reply

reverb sound as a reverberation

reverberate reverberating, echoing

reverse‘punto reverso’ (see punto)

reversion inheritance or restoration of property to an original owner viewed as a future event

re-view, review see once more

revolt change or transfer (of allegiance); disgust; rebel

revolution turn, as of Fortune’s or Time’s wheel; turning of the thoughts

revolve consider, dwell on

rhapsody confused heap

Rhenish Rhine wine

rheum catarrhal or lachrymal discharge, seen in chronic cases as a morbid condition and sometimes linked with venereal disease

ribaudred (?) ribald (licentious); (?) ‘ribald-rid’ (ridden by a ribald man); (?) knackered with ribaldry

riggish licentious

right adv. straight; correctly; justly; in right of = in the name of

right-hand file aristocracy

rigol circle

rim peritoneum, abdominal membrane

ring, cracked within the see crack

ring-carrier bawd

ringlet fairy ring; fairy dance

riot revelling, partying

ripe adj. ready; urgent; of marriageable age; v. ripen

rivage shore

rival sb. fellow, colleague; v. compete

rivality equality

rive burst, crack

rivelled wrinkled

rivo a cheer at drinking (Sp.)

road raid, inroad; leg of a journey; anchorage, harbour

robustious turbulent

rogue vagrant

roguing roving, vagrant

roguish vagabond’s

roisting wild, boisterous

Roman (of handwriting) italic

rondure circle, sphere (cf.roundure)

ronyon mangy animal; term of abuse for a woman

rook crouch

ropery lewd jesting

Roscius great Roman actor

roted acquired or learnt by rote

round sb. earth; ring-dance; circular journey; rung; adj. direct; adv. thoroughly; v. surround; grow round; whisper mysteriously

roundel ring-dance

roundly without fuss or ceremony, directly; fluently; completely

roundure ring, circle (cf.rondure)

rouse sb. drink or drinking session; v.(in hunting) drive from cover

rowell spur

royal sb. coin worth ten shillings; royal merchant = successful merchant

royalty right granted to a subject by the king; crown

roynish scabby, dirty

rub sb.(in bowls) something that impedes or deflects the bowl from its course; v. sidetrack; rub on = roll on

rubious ruby-red

ruddock robin

rude rough, unskilled, unsophisticated

rudeness roughness, lack of skill or sophistication

rudesby ruffian

rue pity

ruffle sb. hectic activity and quarrels; v. brag; handle roughly; fight; ruffle up = enrage

rugged bristling

rug-headed having long, wild hair

ruinous in ruins, damaged

rummage busy activity, as on a ship

rumour confused din; rumoured character

rump-fed (?) fed on choice cuts; (?) having fat buttocks

runagate renegade, apostate

runnion see ronyon

russet reddish-brown, the colour of a coarse cloth worn by peasants

ruth repentance; pity

Saba the Queen of Sheba

sable sb. blackness; adj. black

sables magnificent dark furs

sack white wine, often sherry

sackbut brass instrument resembling the trombone

Sackerson a famous bear from the London bear-baiting scene

sacring bell small bell used in Protestant times to summon parishoners to prayers

sad serious, solemn; dark- coloured

sadly seriously, soberly

sadness seriousness; in sadness = in earnest, truly

safe adj. well, sound; adv. with regard to security; v. make safe

safety custody

saffron a dye used in both clothing and food

Sagittary a centaur that fought against the Greeks in the Trojan war

sail fleet

sain said

salad days youth

salamander species of lizard supposedly able to live in fire

sale-work ready-made goods

Salic law French law blocking females and their descendants from succession to the crown

sallet salad; light piece of armour for the head

salt sb. salt tears; adj. bitter; salacious, lustful; (of fish) salt- water

saltiers (?) woodland creatures that leap about, like satyrs

salute cheer, excite

sample example

sanctimonious holy

sanctimony holiness; something holy

sanctuarize provide with sanctuary or immunity from punishment

sand-blind partially blind

sanded sandy-coloured

sandy of sand, as used in an hour-glass

sanguine red, ruddy (the colour of blood); full-blooded

sans without (Fr.)

sapient wise

sarcenet, sarsenet thin, delicate silk

Sarum ancient city near Camelot

sate ignored

Satis quid sufficit Holofernes’s version of ‘satis quod sufficit’ (Lat.= ‘enough is as good as a feast’)

Saturn (in astrology) planet associated with old age, coldness, melancholy and evil

sauce season, spice, make hot

saucy highly seasoned; impudent; sexually bold or carefree

savagery profuse vegetation

savour sb. smell; nature; v. smack, smell; sense or relish

Savoy a great house on the Strand in London

saw wise saying

say sb. assay, evidence; kind of silk cloth; v. speak; speak truly or aptly

’say’d assayed, tried

’Sblood (by God)’s blood (an oath)

scab rogue

scaffoldage stage

scald scabby, scurvy

scale sb. mark used for measuring distance, height, etc.; v. weigh, judge

scamble scramble

scamels an unidentified type of bird

scandalis’d, scandaliz’d slandered; disgraced

scantling degree of capacity or ability; sample, specimen

scantly resentfully

’scape, scape sb. escape; escapade, transgression; v. escape

scarf sling; sash used to indicate rank in the army

scarre (?) snare

scathe sb. injury, damage; v. injure

scattering scattered, disordered

schedule paper, often a list or summary

school sb. university; v. teach (a lesson); govern, control

science (theoretical) knowledge

scion shoot or cutting from a plant

sconce small round fort; protective screen; head

scope target, purpose, aim; permission, opportunity; scope of nature = an event permitted by nature, a natural event

scorch cut, gash

score notch on a stick or post to mark an account, hence account; v. cut a notch, hence mark on an account

scorn, take scorn

scot small payment; scot and lot = in full

scotch sb. gash; v. gash

scour clean out (a pistol) with a ramrod; hurry

scrimers fencers

scrip script; shepherd’s bag

scrippage Touchstone’s coinage for ‘shepherd’s baggage’ (cf.scrip)

scriptures (written) words

scroyles scabby scoundrels

scrubbed dwarfish

scruple doubt; a third of a dram

scrupulous full of scruples, hesitant

scullion kitchen servant of either sex

sculls schools (of fish)

scurril, scurrile scurrilous, filthy

scut tail of a rabbit or deer; female genitals

scutcheon cheap coat of arms used at funerals

’Sdeath (by God)’s death (an oath)

se offendendo Grave-digger’s version of ‘se defendendo’ (Lat.= ‘in self-defence’)

sea-coal superior type of coal transported to London by sea

seam grease

sea-maid mermaid

sea-monster creature to whom Laomedon, King of Troy, attempted to sacrifice his daughter Hesione; Hercules rescued her thinking to obtain some horses in payment

seamy showing the seams; seamy side = inner side (of a garment or glove)

sear sb. part of a gunlock; v. wrap in a cerecloth (shroud); brand; tickle a’th’ sear = liable to go off (cf. tickle)

searchers public health officers similar to modern coroners

searching sharp, strong

second sb. supporter, as in a duel; adj. representative

seconds second-rate material

sect cutting; class, profession; political faction; sex

sectary adherent of a sect, disciple; sectary astronomical = disciple of astrologers

secure adj. over-confident; v. comfort; make over-confident; protect

securely with (false) confidence

security over-confidence

See, the the Holy See, the diocese of the Pope

seeded grown, matured

seedness state of being sown

seeing what one sees, appearance

seel sew up (the eyelids of a hawk in training)

seeming sb. appearance; likelihood; deception, falseness; adj. apparent; adv. in a seemly manner

seen qualified

seld seldom

self selfsame; relating to oneself, one’s own

semblable sb. likeness; adj. matching

semblative similar in appearance to

Seneca Roman Stoic philosopher and writer of tragedies

sennet fanfare of trumpets or cornets

se’nnight, seve’night, seven- night, sev’n-night week

sense senses; sexual awareness; mind; adder’s sense = senses ‘as deaf as an adder’ (proverbial); to the sense = to the quick

senseless insensate, unresponsive; unconscious

sensible able to sense, having sensation; able to be sensed, material, evident

sensibly perceptibly; being alive and sensitive; with feeling

sentence opinion; decision, ruling; memorable saying

sententious memorable, using choice words; the Nurse’s word for ‘sentence’

Septentrion north

sequel that which follows

sequent sb. follower; adj. following, subsequent; successive

sequester sb. sequestration, removal; v. remove, divorce

sequestration removal, isolation; loss of property; (?) sequel, result

sere sb. dried-up condition; adj. dry

sergeant arresting officer

serpigo a skin disease popularly linked with venereal disease

servant lover

servanted to in the service of

service food served at table

set sb. twelve hours on a clock face; adj. seated; (of eyes) closed; lacking spontaneous wit; v. sit; put up a stake (in gambling); compose music for words; close (the eyes of the dead); set a match = plan a robbery; set hand = formal handwriting

setter thieves’ informant

several sb. individual; particular; adj. different, various; individual, distinct; personal, (one’s) own

severally individually

sewer chief servant, in charge of setting the table

’Sfoot (by God)’s foot (an oath)

shadow shade or shady spot; illusory image, picture; actor; spirit; ghost

shaft or a bolt on’t, make a do it somehow

shag rough, untrimmed

shales husks, pods

shame natural modesty

shame-fac’d, shamefaced shy; full of shame

shard piece of broken pottery; cow-pat

shark up snatch indiscriminately, as a shark its food

shearman one involved in the manufacture of cloth

sheaved composed of sheaves (of straw)

sheep-biter dog or wolf that bites sheep, hence dangerous, sanctimonious person

sheep-biting dangerous, sanctimonious (cf. sheep-biter)

sheer pure

shent rebuked, scolded

sherris sherry

shift sb. expedient, trick; trickery; smock; v. make do, improvise, live on one’s wits; change (clothing); make shift = use tricks or resourcefulness to achieve a purpose

ship-tire elaborate head-dress shaped like a ship or sails

shive slice

shoal area of shallow water

shock throw into confusion, meet force with force

shog be going; shog off = come away

shoon shoes

shot payment; account, bill; marksman, gunner

shotten (of a fish) having shot its roe (shed its eggs), lank

shoughs shag-haired dogs

shoulder-shotten having dislocated shoulders

shove-groat shovel-board, a game of propelling coins across a smooth board

shrewd sharp; cunning, mischievous, wicked

shrewdly sharply; sorely

shrieve sheriff; shrieve’s fool see fool

shrift sacrament of Confession, hence confession, absolution or confessional

shrill-gorged shrill-sounding

shrine statue, icon

shrive hear confession and grant absolution

shroud sb. guard, protection; ropes of a ship’s mast; v. hide, take cover

shuffle shift, make do; smuggle; cheat

Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta see Si fortune (etc.)

Si fortune me tormente sperato me contento Pistol’s expression, in a mixture of European languages, of the motto ‘If fortune torments me, hope contents me’

Sic spectanda fides‘Thus is faithfulness to be shown’ (Lat.)

sickle shekel, a Hebrew coin

siege seat, esp. of office or high rank; rank, status; excrement

sight aperture at the front of helmet; of one’s sight = seeing one

sightless invisible; unpleasant to look at

silly simple; defenceless; meagre, trifling

simple sb. herb used as a medicine; ingredient; adj. unadulterated, pure

simpleness stupidity, nonsense; plain honesty; purity, state of being unadulterated

simplicity stupidity

simular sb. simulator, false representative; adj. specious

sinfully in a state of sin; sinfully miscarry = die without the last rites

single adj. alone, unaided; honest, direct; weak; v.(in hunting) select and pursue (an animal from the herd); single bond = (?) a contract without conditions; single ten = ten at cards

Singulariter nominativo‘in the nominative singular’ (Lat.)

singularity personal qualities; odd behaviour; remarkable object

singuled singled out

sinister left; irregular, wrong

sink sb. cesspit; v. go down to hell

sink-a-pace see cinque-pace

Sinon Greek who tricked the Trojans into receiving a wooden horse containing soldiers who went on to capture Troy

sirrah term of address to a social inferior

sir-reverence phrase used to apologize for foul talk; a euphemism for dung

sister v. closely resemble; neighbour; Sisters Three = the Fates (see Fates)

Sit fas aut nefas‘be it right or wrong’ (Lat.)

sith since

sithence since

size a gelatinous glaze; allowance of food and drink

skains-mates cut-throat companions

skiffed travelled in a skiff (a light boat)

skill sb. discernment; need, reason; v. matter

skilless ignorant

skillet cooking pot

skimble-skamble incoherent, wild

skipper light-brained, skipping person

skirr run hastily

slab thick and slimy

slander sb. accusation; disgrace; disgraceful person; v. charge, accuse; disgrace, abuse

slanderous of accusation; bringing disgrace; ill-reputed

slave enslave

sleave a coarse silk

sledded riding in sledges

sleeve-hand cuff of a sleeve

sleided separated into loose threads

’Slid (by God)’s (eye-)lid (an oath)

sliding sin

’Slight (by God)’s light (an oath)

slip sb. cutting or graft from a plant; counterfeit coin; leash; v. unleash (a greyhound)

slipper slippery

slippery unstable, treacherous

slipshod wearing slippers

sliver split off

slobbery muddy, slimy

slop, slops large baggy breeches

slough old snake-skin

slovenry slovenliness, dirty untidiness

slubber smear, stain; carelessly hurry

smatch smack, whiff

smatter prattle, chat

smock petticoat; woman

smoke sb. fog; v. steam; smoke out, as in fox hunting; beat; disinfect

smooth sb. flatter, indulge; gloss over; adj. flattering

smug spruced-up; smooth, unruffled

sneap sb. snub, reprimand; v. bite, chill

sneck up an offensive insult

snipp’d-taffeta jagged silk (slashed to display the lining underneath)

snuff resentment; in snuff = (of candles) needing to be snuffed;take in snuff = take offence

sob rest, breather

sod sodden, boiled

soiled lively or skittish

soilure sullying, staining

sole singular

solely wholly

solemnity festal occasion, celebration (often of marriage)

solicit sb. suit, petition; v. urge, excite

solidares (?) solidi (Roman coins)

sometime, sometimes adj. former; adv. formerly, once

sonance sonorous sound

sonties, be God’s by God’s saints (an oath)

sooth sb. truth; appeasement, flattery; adv. truly

soothe flatter; play along with, indulge

soothers flatterers

sop hunk of bread soaked in wine

sophister clever arguer

sophisticated adulterated, no longer simple or natural

Sophy Shah (king) of Persia

sore four-year-old male deer

sorel three-year-old male deer

sort sb. rank; dress; lot; v. accord; find; conclude; keep company (with)

sortance accordance; hold sortance = accord

sotted made a sot (a fool)

sound faint; fathom

souse strike; (in hawking) swoop (upon)

soused pickled

South Sea the Pacific; South Sea of discovery = a long, frustrating voyage

sow ingot, block

sowl seize rougly, drag

Sowter‘Cobbler’, a dog’s name

span-counter a children’s game like marbles

spavin tumour on a horse’s leg- joint

specialty contract; particular distinction

spectacles spyglasses (telescopes); eyes

speculation sight, observation

speculative of sight

sped ruined; see speed

speed sb. fate, lot; v. fare; meet with success; favour; be one’s speed = bring one good fortune; have the speed of = match in speed; overtake; speed you = God speed (favour) you

speeding sb. fate, lot; success; adj. successful

spend speak; use up; spend the mouth = be in full cry, as a hunting hound

sphere (in Ptolomaic astronomy) one of the massive crystalline spheres around the earth in which the planets, stars, etc. were believed fixed; they revolved, generating harmonious music, inaudible on earth

spherical of a planet

spigot part of a tap on a barrel

spill destroy

spilth spilling

spin spurt

spines thorns

spinners (?) spiders; (?) craneflies

spinster woman spinning flax or wool

spital hospital, esp. for the lower classes

spleen organ supposedly responsible for fierce passion, laughter and melancholy, hence the abstract condition or a fit or bout of any of these moods

splinted splintered (see splinter)

splinter apply splints to (a broken limb)

spoil sb. sacking, carrying off booty; bloody end of a hunt; v. sack, rob, steal

spongy watery, dripping; full of drink

spot piece of embroidery; mark on a list; blemish

sprag smart, quick

spring bud, shoot, sapling

springe snare for catching birds

springhalt muscular disorder in horses causing them to jerk back their legs

spurn sb. blow, rude rejection; v. kick fiercely

square sb. measuring rule; breast- piece of a dress; adj. just, fair; v. measure; regulate, direct; square up, adopt a hostile stance; by the square = precisely; square of sense = (?) part of the body or mind

squarer one who squares for a fight, brawler

squash unripe pea-pod

squier square (measuring rule)

squiny squint

staff quarterstaff, spear or lance; stanza; set in one’s staff = take up residence

stagger falter, be unsure

staggers disease in horses causing staggering; reeling state

stain sb. blemish; tincture, hint; one whose superiority casts a shadow (stain) on others; v. eclipse

stair-work furtive business on the back stairs

stale sb. urine; decoy; whore; laughing-stock, esp. a risible lover; stalemate; v. make stale; cheapen, debase

stall enthrone; lodge, as in an animal’s stall; stall together = (?) tolerate each other’s presence

stamp sb. something created or minted; seal, official mark; v. create, manufacture, (of coins) mint; seal, authenticate

stand stand about; stand still; stand up to; stand in an action = be a party in a legal action

standard standard-bearer

standing-bed bed with legs

standing-bowl bowl with a foot or pedestal

staniel kestrel

staple U-shaped rod into which a bolt is shot; pillar (?); fibre from which a thread is made

stare sb. staring state; v. stand up stiffly

start sb. outburst; v.(in hunting) drive from cover; frighten

starting-hole bolt-hole, hiding place

starve destroy, esp. with cold, freeze; suffer or perish with cold

state standing position, stance; estate (property, condition or social position); chair of state, throne; court

states men of rank

station standing (still), posture

statist politician, man of affairs

statute document providing security to a creditor

statute-caps (?) academic caps; (?) apprentices’ caps

stave’s staff’s (see staff)

staves staffs (see staff)

stay sb. support; ongoing condition; check, interruption; v. support, hold (up); stay by’t = stand up to things, stand one’s ground

stead help, serve the needs of; stead up = stand in for

stelled stellar, starry; fixed; (?) portrayed

stern helm

stew brothel

stick stick out; stickle, scruple; pierce, kill

stickler-like in the manner of a moderator, usher or umpire

stigmatic someone criminal (branded) or deformed

stigmatical deformed

still adj. constant; adv. always, constantly; still an end = constantly

stillitory apparatus used for distilling perfumes, etc.

stilly quietly

sting passionate urge

stint stop

stithy sb. smithy, forge; v. forge

stoccado (in fencing) thrust with the swordpoint

stock family; dowry; stocking; idiot; stoccado (see stoccado)

stock-fish, stockfish dried cod, haddock, etc.

stockish inanimate, insensible

stole robe, sometimes of religious significance

stomach sb. part of the body supposedly the seat ofpride, ambition and courage; appetite; inclination; v. feel indignant (at)

stomacher piece of ladies’ clothing worn over the breast

stone sb. testicle; thunderbolt; translucent stone used as a mirror; v. turn to stone

stone-bow catapult

stool-ball bat and ball game

stoop bow, bend over; (of a bird of prey) swoop down upon prey

stop (in horseriding) rapid switch from a gallop to a halt; point where the finger determines a note on a musical instrument

store sb. plenty; v. fill up

stoup flagon, tankard

stout proud; courageous

stoutness pride; courage

stover winter food for cattle

Strachy, The Lady of the (?) an unidentified lady of the day

straight-pight standing straight, upright

strain sb. inherited character; pitch, level; v. embrace; transgress; pervert; make no strain = do not doubt; strain courtesy = be unceremonious; hang back

strait narrow; severe

straited hard pushed

strange alien, foreign, unfamiliar; remarkable

strange-achieved (?) got by curious means; (?) got in distant lands

strangely like a foreigner or stranger; remarkably

strangeness aloofness

strappado a form of torture that involves breaking the arms

stratagem trick, plot; violent act

stray men wandering aimlessly; make a stray = stray, deviate

strength body of soldiers

strewments strewed flowers

stricture repression; strictness, rigour strike sb. quantity of bushels; v. strike (lower) sail; (of a planet) ruin with evil influence; fight; strike vessels = (?) chink cups, as in a toast; (?) tap casks

strossers trousers

stubborn hard, rigid

stuck see stoccado

stuffed congested; full (of qualities or accomplishments)

stuprum rape (Lat.)

Stygian of the Styx (see Styx)

style appellation, title

Styx a river of the underworld

subduements men conquered

subjection allegiance, as required of a subject

submission confession

subscribe sign; proclaim; agree; admit

subscription support, allegiance

substractors subtractors, Sir Toby’s word for ‘detractors’ (critics)

subtle deceptive, false

subtleties elaborate sugar sculptures

succeed follow; proceed; inherit; pass by succession

success outcome, upshot, result; succession

successfully potentially successful

succession that which follows; inheritors

successive hereditary

successively through succession or inheritance

sue make a petition, ask; woo

sufferance, suffrance suffering; patience, endurance; permission

suffice feed, nourish; satisfy

sufficient competent; prosperous, well off; qualified to act as a guarantor

suggest tempt, woo, persuade (into sin or discontent)

suggestion prompting; temptation; craftiness

sumless countless

summoner officer who cited people to appear in an ecclesiastical court

sumpter horse used for carrying baggage

superflux unnecessary luxuries

supernal celestial, heavenly

superscript superscription, address at the head of a letter

super-serviceable anxious to do any kind of service

superstitious loving, in the manner of a religious worshipper

supervise sb. inspection, reading; v. look over, inspect

suppliance filling-up, occupation

supply military reinforcement

supposal idea, notion

suppose sb. notion, estimate; v. guess at

supposition, in potential, unconfirmed

surcease sb. end, hence death; v. cease

sure safe; loyal; make sure = dispose of, kill; surer side = mother’s side

surety sb. guarantor; guaranteeing; certainty; v. act as guarantor for

sur-reined overworked, exhausted

suspect suspicion

suspiration sighing

suspire respire, breath

sutler seller of provisions

Suum cuique ‘To each his own’ (Lat.)

swabber sailor in charge of keeping the ship clean

swaddling-clouts see swathing-clothes

swagger act like a bragging ruffian

swaggerer bragging ruffian

swart swarthy, dark

swarth see swath

swashers swashbucklers, loud ruffians

swashing swashbuckling, rough

swath swathe, heap (of mown grass); see swathing-clothes

swathing-clothes, swathling clothes baby clothes

sway sb. rule, authority, control; v. rule, exert influence; control oneself

swayed broken, deformed

swear make swear, exact an oath from; swear out = give up; swear over = attempt to repudiate with oaths

sweat sb. plague; v. use a sweating tub (see tub)

sweet sb. scent; flower; adj. scented

sweeting sweet apple, used as a term of affection

swim sail

swindg’d swinged (see swinge)

swinge beat

swinge-bucklers swashbucklers

Swithold (?) St Withold

swoopstake in the manner of a sweepstake (one who takes all the stakes in a game)

sword-and-buckler swashbuckling, boisterous

sworder soldier

swounded fainted (cf. sound)

’Swounds (by God)’s wounds (an oath)

sympathise, sympathize agree with or resemble (another) in some quality; share; represent accurately

synod gathering, conference

table sb. wooden board for painting on; writing-tablet; palm (of the hand); v. write down

table-book book of writing-tablets

tables backgammon

tabor type of drum, usually played together with a pipe

taborins military drums, similar to tabors

tack about change direction (at sea)

tackled stair rope-ladder on a ship

taffeta, taffety type of silk

tag common people

tailor traditional exclamation when, upon going to sit down, one falls; (?) penis

taint sb. fault; discredit; adj. tainted; v. lose freshness; speak badly of

take take on (a role), feign; take fire; make an impression; encounter; enchant, possess; take head = rush away; take on = show anger; take out = copy; take the heat = show anger; act quickly

taking sb. panic; infection; adj. noxious, infectious

tale penis (cf. tailor); in a tale = agreed upon the same story

talent ancient unit of currency; talon

tall courageous; good-looking, dashing; tall stockings = long stockings

tally stick notched to keep an account

tamed exposed to the air

tang clang forth, as a bell

Tanta est erga te mentis integritas Regina serenissima ‘Such is the honesty of mind towards you, fairest queen’ (Lat.)

Tantaene animis coelestibus irae? ‘Can heavenly spirits such great resentments feel?’ (Lat., Virgil)

tar see tarre

tardy off, come executed inadequately

targe shield

tarre urge (a dog) to fight

tarriance waiting

tarry await

Tartar Tartarus, the deepest region of the underworld; Mongol, an archer warrior from the East

task challenge; tax

tasking challenging

tassel-gentle see tercel

tawdry-lace coloured neckcloth

tax sb. charge; v. charge, reproach, condemn

taxation critical attacks; requirement

teem breed, esp. abundantly

teen misery, pain

tell count, count up to

temper sb. character as defined by the humours (see humour); stability of character, as from a balance of the humours; v. mix, concoct; dilute

Temperance a Christian name popular with Puritans

temperate well-tempered, balanced, modest

temporary temporal (rather than spiritual)

tempt attempt, make trial of

tenant someone dependent on a lord

tend attend

tendance attendance

tender sb. offer, token; concern; v. attend to; offer, lay (down); cherish; treat;

tender-hefted soft and gentle

tent sb. probe for a wound; canopy over a bed; v. probe (a wound) to clean or explore it

tercel male falcon

Tereus see Philomel and Progne

Termagant a blustering, villainous role in the Mystery plays

terminations terms, language

termless that defies the power of language (terms)

Terras Astraea reliquit‘Astraea has left the earth’ (Lat., Ovid) (see Astraea)

tester, testril small coin

tetchy touchy, irritable

tetter sb. disfiguring skin complaint; v. disfigure on the skin

text motto; sermon; text B = ‘B’ in formal script

Thane Scottish nobleman of middling rank

thankful deserving thanks

theoric (military) theory

therefor for that

Thessaly region of Greece terrorized by a fierce boar

Thetis sea-goddess and mother of Achilles

thews sinews, strength

thick adj. dull; numerous; adv. in a hectic manner, hurriedly

thills shafts of a cart or wagon

thin-belly having a thin waist

thing, a something

think be gloomily introspective

third achieve a third of

thirdborough officer similar to a constable

thought melancholy contemplation; with a thought = quick as a thought

Thracian from Thrace; Thracian poet = Orpheus, killed by followers of Bacchus; Thracian tyrant = Polymestor, blinded by Hecuba for murdering her son

thrasonical like Thraso, a braggart soldier in a comedy by the Roman dramatist Terence

three-farthings coin featuring a rose behind the sovereign’s ear

three-man song-men singers of music for three male voices

three-nooked divided into three, as a map of the world divided into Asian, European and African segments

three-pile thick, costly velvet

Threne threnos (Gr.= ‘lament for the dead’)

thrice-crowned queen the moon

thrift profit

thriftless unprofitable

throe (of giving birth) pain

thrum tuft of unwoven yarn

thunder-stone thunderbolt, believed to be a stone

thwart adj. churlish, obstreperous; adv. sideways; v. cross

tickle adj. unsteady; v. flatter; entertain; tickle’t up = give sexual pleasure, bring to orgasm

tick-tack board game involving pegs and holes

tide full flood, chance for action; high tides = holidays

tidy well-fed

tight water-tight; skilful

tike mongrel

tile, washed a wasted time, as one would by washing an oven tile (proverbial)

tilt spar, thrust

timeless untimely; taking no time, speedy

timely in good time, early

tinct alchemists’ potion (see med’cine); colouring

tincture colour, esp. in heraldry; scent

tire sb. attire, esp. for the head; v. (of birds of prey) feed by pulling the flesh apart

tiring-house attiring-house, green-room

tisick phthisic, a cough associated with lung disease

Titan the sun

titely quickly, speedily

tithe sb. a tenth of one’s produce or income paid to the church; v. take tithes

tithing parish

title entitlement, claim

titlers claimants

tittles little dots and dashes in writing

to cry of encouragement

toast fragment of toasted bread taken in wine

toaze tease

tod sb. unit of weight in wool- dealing; bush; v. amount to a tod of wool

tofore before

toge toga, gown

toil sb. hunter’s snare or net; v. exercise, put to work

tokens, the Lord’s skin blemishes caused by the plague

toll for put up for sale

tomboys harlots, whores

tool blade; penis

top sb. height; v. mount, have sex with (cf. tup); take time by the top see occasion

topgallant platform on a ship’s mast

topless supreme

tortive contorted

toss carry impaled on a pike; (of a book) (?) leaf through; (?) throw about

tottering swaying; ragged

touch sb. touchstone; brushstroke; facial feature; v. test, as a touchstone tests gold; refer to; keep touch = keep one’s promise

touse dislocate

toy something trivial or imaginary; take toy = be seized by a mad impulse

trace succeed; attend, keep up with; roam

tract track, route; trace

trade traffic, business

traded skilled

trade-fallen out of work

train sb. bait, snare; v. lure, as towards a trap

traject an Italian ferry

trammel up entangle, as in a net

transfix pierce, impale; fix, imprint

translate convert, metamorphose; explain

transpose alter

trash keep (an eager hound) in check

travail, travel sb. labour; journey; v. labour

traverse (in fencing) dodge and weave; march

tray-trip a dice game (cf. trey)

treatise words, account, story

treble-dated long-living

tremor cordis ‘trembling of the heart’ (Lat.), palpitations

trench dig (a trench), gouge, cut

trencher wooden plate

trencher-friends friends won by feeding

trenchering trenchers (see trencher)

trencher-knight one who is brave only at the dinner table

trey winning throw of three at dice

tribunal platform for Roman magistrates; tribunal plebs = Clown’s mistake for ‘tribuni plebis’ (Lat.= ‘tribunes of the people’ (see tribune))

tribune Roman magistrate representing the interests of ordinary citizens

trick sb. trifle; knack; distinctive feature; v.(in heraldry) colour; dress

tricking adornments

Trigon triplicity, grouping of three zodiacal signs by element (e.g. fire)

trill roll

triple third

triple-turned three times unfaithful

tristful sorrowful

triumph pageant of processions and tournaments

triumphant of a triumph, triumphal

triumphantly in the spirit of a triumph

triumvirate a ruling coalition formed on two occasions in Roman history, first between Julius Caesar, Crassus and Pompey, subsequently between Octavius, Antony and Lepidus

triumviry see triumvirate

Trojan lad, bloke

troll sing heartily

troll-my-dames game taken round fairs

trophy monument, esp. of a battle; ornament; token

tropically metaphorically

trot crone, hag

troth truth; faith

trow suppose, believe; know; wish to know, wonder

Troyan see Trojan

truckle-bed small bed on wheels stored under a normal bed

truepenny good lad

trull whore

truncheon baton, symbol of military command

trundle-tail curly-tailed dog

trunk sleave large, wide sleave

try sb. test; v. test, prove; try with main-course = (of a ship) lie stationary

tub pickling barrel; sweating tub, for the treatment of venereal disease

tuck rapier; standing tuck = blade that has lost its resilience

tucket trumpet-call

tuition care

Tully (Marcus Tullius) Cicero, Roman politician, orator and writer of books on oratory

tun-dish type of funnel

tup (of a ram) mount, penetrate

turtle turtle dove, known for its faithfulness

tushes tusks

twiggen made of twigs, wicker- work

twire twinkle, glint

type mark, badge, title

tyrannically fiercely

tyranny violence, fierceness

tyrant fierce; fowl of tyrant wing = bird of prey

umber brown earth

umbrage shadow

unable powerless

unaccommodated not provided with the usual clothes or comforts

unacquainted unfamiliar

unadvised adj. unintentional; adv. carelessly, without thinking

unagreeable inappropriate

unanel’d not anointed with the holy oil of the last rites

unapproved false

unaptness unwillingness

unattainted not infected

unattempted unassailed

unavoided unable to be avoided, inevitable

unbarbed uncovered

unbated not blunted; lacking the protective ‘button’ normally used on the tip of a fencing weapon

unbent not frowning; not prepared, as the slack bow of an archer

unbid not asked for or invited

unbitted unrestrained

unblow’d cut before fully grown

unbolt open up

unbolted impure; (?) without a penis

unbonneted without one’s hat; without having removed one’s hat

unbookish ill-informed

unbraided still in good condition

unbreath’d unpractised

uncape uncover (? a fox)

uncase take off one’s outer garments

uncharge exonerate, remove from suspicion

uncharged unassailed, still standing

unchary unsparingly, lavishly

uncheck’d not denied or refuted

unclasp open up, reveal

unclew undo, be the end of (cf. clew)

uncoined in its natural state, like gold bullion

uncomprehensive unimaginable; unfathomable

unconfirmed inexperienced; (?) not having had the sacrament of Confirmation

uncouth unfamiliar, unknown

uncovered without a hat; barefaced

uncross’d with debts not crossed off

unction ointment

uncurrent out of the ordinary

undeeded not having performed any deeds

under beneath the sun, worldly; of the underworld; go under = bear; seem, be called

underbear suffer under

underborne edged

undercrest have (a title) above one as one would a crest

undergo go under, bear, be subject to

underhand discreet

underskinker junior tapster (one who serves drink in an inn)

undertake take on; take in one’s charge; take responsibility

undertaker one who takes on (a challenge)

undervalued of less value

underwrite accept

underwrought undermined

undeserving (?) sb. that which is undeserving; (?) adj. undeserved

undistinguished see indistinguished

undoubted free from doubt or fear

uneared unsown, as with ears of corn

uneath not easily, hardly

unexperient person without experience

unexpressive unable to be expressed

unfair make no longer fair

unfashionable lacking finished form

unfenced unbounded; unprotected

unfold open up, expose, reveal

unfolding star star at whose rising shepherds let their sheep out of the folds

unfurnished unprovided for, solitary, naked; unprepared

ungalled unwounded, safe

ungenitured sterile; (?) without genitals

ungor’d unwounded

unguem nail (Lat.), as used in the phrase ‘ad unguem’ (‘to the nail, exactly’)

unhair’d without (facial) hair

unhandsome unskilful; (?) unsoldierly

unhappily, unhapp’ly unfortunately; adversely; with malice

unhappy unlucky, cursed

unhatched not yet hatched, embryonic

unhoused not occupying or used to occupying a house

unhousel’d not having received the eucharist in the last rites

unimproved unchecked, unrestrained

union pearl of fine quality; marriage

unjust false

unkennel unearth, uncover

unkind acting against one’s family or the natural order

unlimited observing no dramatic unities

unluckily ominously

unmann’d (of a hawk) untrained

unmeet unsuitable

unnerved enfeebled in sinew, strengthless

unow’d unowned

unpaved castrated

unpink’d with the decorative holes (pinks) either unfinished or worn out

unpitied merciless

unplausive disapproving

unpolicied lacking or outmanoeuvred in political skill

unpregnant slack, unresponsive

unprevailing pointless

unprizable of little value; of great value

unprized unvalued; priceless

unproper shared; indecent

unproportion’d unruly, unrestrained

unprovide disarm

unqualitied robbed of one’s nature, unmanned

unquestionable irritable when spoken to

unquietness disquiet, perturbation

unraked (of a fire) not kept smouldering overnight

unrecalling irrevocable

unreclaimed untamed

unrecuring past curing, fatal

unrespective confused, without distinction or order; heedless

unrolled dismissed from a fraternity

unroosted knocked off the roost, henpecked

unrough without facial hair, adolescent; of good family

unscann’d unconsidered, rash

unseasoned raw, unready; untimely

unsecret open, forthcoming

unseminared seedless, castrated

unset unsown

unshape unsettle

unshaped fragmentary, incoherent

unsifted untried, inexperienced

unsisting (?) unresting; (?) insisting; (?) unassisting

unsorted inappropriate

unspeaking speechless, dumbfounded

unsphere knock from a sphere or spheres (see sphere)

unsquar’d unsuitable

unstanched see unstaunched

unstate rid of wealth and status

unstaunched leaking; unquenched

unsur’d unsure, uncertain

untainted untouched; uninjured; uncharged

untempering unable to melt or soften

untented too deep to be tented (see tent)

untoward perverse, unruly

untraded little used, unfamiliar

untrimmed sexually intact; stripped; set off balance

untrussing undoing laces

unvalu’d of no value; of inestimable value

unwappered unexhausted

unwarily unsuspectingly

unweighed unconsidered; light

unwitted made mad

unwrung not chafed by the saddle

unyok’d unbridled

up up in arms; imprisoned; game is up = game is afoot; kill up = kill off; up and down = absolutely, entirely

upcast (in bowls) throw

uproar turn to uproar or chaos

upshoot (in archery) the best shot until subsequently beaten

upspring wild dance

up-till up against

urchin hedgehog; goblin or elf, esp. in the shape of a hedgehog

urinal glass phial used to examine urine; (?) testicle

usance usury

use sb. custom, habit, way; interest; profit; v. be accustomed (to); keep company with; in use = in trust

utis holiday merriment; noise, din

utter advertise, sell

utterance furthest point

uttermost, to the (of a fight) to the death

vacancy spare time; air; the vacuum created by a removal of air

vade go away, fade

vagary wandering or erring state

vagrom Dogberry’s word for ‘vagrant’

vail sb. setting; v. lower, abase (oneself)

vails leftovers given to servants, tips

vain sb. vanity; adj. foolish; flattering

valanced decoratively draped

validity value, worth; strength, efficacy

valu’d, valued discriminating, listing individual qualities

value evaluate, consider; compare; merit, be worth

vambrace defensive armour for the arms

Vanity a female role in the morality plays

vantage advantage; opportunity; of vantage = also, in addition

vara very (dial.)

varlet servant, page; often a term of abuse with occasional sexual overtones

varletry common people (cf. varlet)

vastidity vastness

vaulty vaulted, arched

vaunt sb. first part; v. rejoice

vaunt-couriers forerunners

vaward vanguard, front of an army

vein spirit, style; rub the vein of = encourage, flatter

velure velvet

velvet-guards those wearing fine clothes (cf. guards)

Venetia, Venetia, Chi non ti vede, non ti pretia ‘Venice, Venice, he who does not see you does not prize you’ (Ital., proverbial)

veney see venue

vengeance adj. terrific; adv. terrifically

vent venting, discharge; (in hunting) scent, such as makes the hounds bark

ventages holes

ventricle chamber in the brain

venue (in fencing) round, assault

Venus goddess of love and lover of Mars (see Mars)

Ver spring

verbatim in speech

verge rim; area surrounding the court

Veronessa ship from Verona

vestal sb. virgin or nun, as the Roman virgins who tended the fire in the temple of Vesta; adj. relating to Vesta or virginity

via an expression of encouragement or impatience (Ital.)

viands food

Vice a comic villain in sixteenth- century moral interludes

vice sb. grasp; screw; v. force

vicegerent deputy (a royal title)

vicious wicked; blameworthy; mistaken

videlicet ‘that is to say’ (Lat.)

Videsne quis venit? Video, et gaudeo ‘Do you see who comes? I see and rejoice’ (Lat.)

vie vie with, rival; multiply; (at cards) put down a stake

vigil evening before a feast-day

Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo / Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua ‘Let the common folk marvel at the everyday: golden Apollo shall serve me cups filled from the Castalian spring’ (Lat., Ovid)

villain, villein person of low birth, servant

villiago villain, rascal

vinewed’st mouldiest

viol stringed instrument, an early violin

viol-de-gamboys see bass-viol

violenteth rages

vir sapit qui pauca loquitur ‘he is wise who says little’ (Lat., proverbial)

virginalling pressing with the fingers, as one would the keys of a virginal (an early keyboard)

virtue masculine virtue, courage; power; essence

virtuous fertile, breeding; powerful, effective; inherent, lying within

visitation infection

visited punished by God; infected

visitor one who visits the sick and distressed

visor, vizor mask

viva voce orally; speaking out loud (Lat.)

vizaments Evans’s word for ‘advisements’; take your vizaments in that = consider that

vizard see visor

vocativo ‘in the vocative case’ (Lat.)

vocatur ‘(it) is called’ (Lat.)

voice sb. determining say, vote; v. vote, choose; in voices = reportedly

voiding lobby corridor for entrance or exit

Volquessen Rouen and district

voluble moving smoothly and swiftly, fluent

voluntary volunteer

votaress female votary (cf. votarist)

votarist, votary one under a vow, esp. in a religious order

vouch sb. allegation, evidence; v. testify

voyage enterprise

Vulcan god of fire and cuckolded husband of Venus, represented as a smith

vulgar sb. vernacular, native tongue; adj. of or among the ordinary people, common

waft wave; turn; carry by boat

waftage passage by boat

wafture waving gesture

wag go, go away, move

wage pay (a wage to); risk; stake; struggle, vie

wainropes waggon-ropes

waist middle of a ship’s upper deck; garment for the waist

wake sb. parish festival; v. not sleep, stay up

wall-eyed glowering

wanion, with a a phrase used to emphasize a statement

wann’d became wan, paled

want lack; feel the lack of

wanton sb. exuberant joker; delicate youth; adj. vibrant, skittish; delicate; v. play

wappen’d sexually exhausted

ward sb. defence, defensive position; room in a prison; lock mechanism; v. defend

warden type of pear or apple

warder umpire’s baton

ware adj. aware; wary; v. take heed of, beware

warp turn; change

war-proof, of experienced in war

warrant sb. licence; assurance; v. approve, license; assure, guarantee

warrantise, warrantize guarantee, pledge

warranty sanction, licence

warren enclosure for rabbits and other game

warrener one who protects rabbits from poachers

washing see swashing

wassail drinking session; wassail candle = thick candle

waste sb. damage done to a property by a tenant; v. consume, destroy

Wat traditional name for a hare

watch sb. fixed period of time; candle; watchword; v. catch by lying in wait for; train (a hawk) through sleep deprivation

watchful sleepless, of sleeplessness

water transparency in diamonds, used to grade their quality

water-galls minor types of rainbow

watering drinking

water-rugs rough-haired water dogs

waters, for all versatile, multi- talented

water-standing full of tears

waterwork painted imitation tapestry

wave waver

waxen adj. soft as wax; v. wax, increase

ways, come your come on your way, come

weal prosperity, well-being; state, society

wealsmen politicians

wealth prosperity, well-being (cf. weal)

wear sb. thing worn, fashion; v. wear out; be in fashion; adapt

weather, keep the be upwind, in a superior position

weather-fends defends from the weather

web and pin see pin (pin and web)

weed piece of clothing

week, in by the trapped, imprisoned

ween think

weet know, recognize

Weïrd Sisters goddesses of wyrd (OE= ‘fate’)

welkin sb. sky; adj. blue as the sky

well to live well off, well to do

well-a-day sb. saying ‘alas’, lament; int. alas

well-a-near alas (cf. well-a-day)

well-breath’d (?) well-trained; (?) breathing well

well-favoured good-looking, attractive

well-liking heavy

well-respected properly considered, not rash

Welsh hook a type of bill-hook or pike (without the ‘cross’ of a sword)

weraday see well-a-day

westward ho! Thames watermen’s call for passengers heading west

wezand windpipe, throat

wharf river bank

wheel sb. sung refrain; v. move in an arc; on wheels = giddily; easily; turn i’th’ wheel = (of dogs) tread a wheel to turn a spit

Wheeson Whitsun (dial.)

whelk boil

whelked resembling the shellfish, twisting round

when a cry of impatience

whether which (of two)

whey-face one blanching with fear

whiffler one who clears the path of an approaching procession

while until

whileere a short time ago

whiles while (see while)

whilst while (see while)

whipping-cheer a bellyful of whipping

whipster whipper-snapper, boy

whip-stock, whipstock whip handle

whirligig spinning-top

whist silent, still

white sb.(in archery) bullseye; adj. afraid, cowardly

white-limed daubed with lime

whiting-time time for bleaching clothes

whitsters professional bleachers

whittle carving-knife

whoo-bub hubbub

whoreson bastard, used technically, offensively or affectionately

wide failing to hit, off course, wrong

widow provide (the widow) with the estate of the deceased

wight creature, person

Wild, the the Weald, an area of southern England

wild sb. desert, wasteland; adj. headstrong, unthinking; wild mare = boys’ game of jumping on each other’s backs

wilderness wildness, wild stock

wild-goose chase a type of horse race

wildly chaotically, haphazardly

wildness madness, distraction

wilful-blame blamable for too much self-will

will sexual organ

wimpled muffled, blindfolded

wince kick out

winch wince

Winchester goose see goose

Wincot a hamlet near Stratford- upon-Avon

wind sb. breath; (in hunting) direction of the wind and thus of scent; v. get wind of; wheedle; wind up = fill; tune (a stringed instrument) by tightening its pegs

windgalls tumours on the legs of horses

windlasses deviations

window-bars square patterns on a woman’s bodice

windring both winding and wandering

wink sb. shutting the eyes; v. shut the eyes

winking with closed eyes

winnow sift, refine

winter’d, wintered during winter

winter-ground (?) sb. ground in winter; (?) v. insulate, keep warm

wipe branded stigma

wise sb. way, fashion; adj. in one’s right mind; wise woman = expert in herbal medicine, witchcraft, etc.

wishtly wishfully and/or wistly (see wistly)

wisp of straw traditional target of a shrewish woman’s hectoring

wistly earnestly, eagerly

wit sb. mind, intelligence, cleverness; v. know; five wits = five mental faculties; wit, wither wilt? = catchphrase used to shut someone up

wit-crackers teasers, jibers

withal, prep. with; adv. therewith, with (something specified); do withal = do anything about it

withers ridge between a horse’s shoulders

withhold hold back, keep

without outside, beyond

without-door exterior

witting knowing

wittol husband who accepts his being cuckolded

witty mentally sound, intelligent, clever

wold open country

woman-tir’d prey to a woman (see tire)

wondered to be wondered at; capable of producing wonders

wond’ring wondering at

wood wild, frantic

woodbine honeysuckle or similar plant

woodcock a stupid, easily trapped bird

woodman hunter; hunter of women

woollen adj. dressed in coarse wool; in the woollen = in scratchy blankets

woolward wearing a woollen shirt without a vest to stop it scratching

woosel see ousel

woo’t wilt (will you)

working sb. mental working, perception; deed; adj. moving

world sb. body (cf. microcosm); go to the world = reject the cloister, get married

worm snake

worn worn out

worship dignity

worshipped dignified

wort a plant of the cabbage family; unfermented beer

worthy v. make seem a hero; the Worthies = nine heroes from history and legend

wot know (cf. wit); wilt (cf. woo’t)

wrack sb. wreck; wrecking; victim of a wreck; v. wreck

wrangler quarreller

wrath sb. raging passion; adj. wroth, furious

wreak sb. revenge; v. revenge

wrest tuning-key; peg for tightening a surgical ligature

wring twist, writhe

writ holy writ, scripture; any document or paper

writhled shrivelled, wrinkled

wroth misfortune, grief

wrying going astray

wry-neck’d with neck twisted, as was characteristic of fifers

Xanthippe notoriously bad- tempered wife of the philosopher Socrates

yard stick for measuring a yard; penis

yare light; quick; ready

Yaughan (?) for ‘Johan’, an unidentifed alehouse-keeper of the day

yaw sail unsteadily

y-clad clad, clothed

ycleped cleped, called

Yead Ed (cf. Yedward)

yea-forsooth given to using mild oaths in a servile manner

yearn grieve

Yedward Edward

yellowness jealousy

yellows jaundice in horses

yerk strike; kick

yest yeast, foam

yield bring forth; report; reward

yoke-devils devils working together

younger younger son, prodigal

younker young man, prodigal

y-ravished ravished, enraptured

y-slacked slacked, reduced to inactivity

zany clown’s assistant

’zounds, zounds see ’Swounds

zwaggered swaggered (dial.) (see swagger)

The editors and publisher would like to thank Jane Armstrong, Project
Manager; Tom Adair, who compiled the glossary; and Christine Ames
and her colleagues at Multiplex Techniques.

Picture research by Image Select.

The general editors of the Arden Shakespeare have been
W.J. Craig and R.H. Case (first series 1899-1944)
Una Ellis-Fermor, Harold F. Brooks, Harold Jenkins and
Brian Morris (second series 1946-82)

Present general editors (third series)
Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan

The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
first published 1998 by Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd

Revised edition published 2001 by The Arden Shakespeare

Arden Shakespeare is an imprint of Thomson Learning

Thomson Learning
Berkshire House
168–173 High Holborn
London WC1V 7AA

Editorial matter © 1998, 2001 Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson,
David Scott Kastan

Typeset by Multiplex Techniques
Printed in China

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record has been applied for

ISBN 1-903436-61-3

NPN 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1