GUIDO. Thou art my reason, peerless, perfect, thou, The reason I am here and my life’s goal, For I was born to love the fairest things . . . BIANCA. To buy the fairest things that can be bought. GUIDO. Cruel Bianca! Cover me with scorn, I answer born to love thy priceless self, That never to a market could be brought, No more than winged souls that sail and soar Among the planets or about the moon. BIANCA. It is so much thy habit to buy love, Or that which is for sale and labelled love, Hardly couldst thou conceive a priceless love. But though my love has never been for sale I have been in a market bought and sold. GUIDO. This is some riddle which thy sweet wit reads To baffle mine and mock me yet again. BIANCA. My marriage, sir, I speak of marriage now, That common market where my husband went And prides himself he made a bargain then. GUIDO. The wretched chapman, how I hate his soul. BIANCA. He was a better bidder than thyself, And knew with whom to deal . . . he did not speak Of gold to me, but in my father’s ear He made it clink: to me he spoke of love, Honest and free and open without price. GUIDO. O white Bianca, lovely as the moon, The light of thy pure soul and shining wit Shows me my shame, and makes the thing I was Slink like a shadow from the thing I am. BIANCA. Let that which casts the shadow act, my lord, And waste no thought on what its shadow does Or has done. Are youth, and strength, and love Balked by mere shadows, so that they forget Themselves so far they cannot be recalled? GUIDO. Nobility is here, not in the court. There are the tinsel stars, here is the moon, Whose tranquil splendour makes a day of night. I have been starved by ladies, specks of light, And glory drowns me now I see the moon. BIANCA. I have refused round sums of solid gold And shall not be by tinsel phrases bought. GUIDO. Dispute no more, witty, divine Bianca; Dispute no more. See I have brought my lute! Close lock the door. We will sup with the moon Like Persian princes, that, in Babylon Sup in the hanging gardens of the king. I know an air that can suspend the soul As high in heaven as those towered-gardens hang. BIANCA. My husband may return, we are not safe. GUIDO. Didst thou not say that he would sleep from home? BIANCA. He was not sure, he said it might be so. He was not sure—and he would send my aunt To sleep with me, if he did so decide, And she has not yet come. GUIDO [_starting_] Hark, what’s that? [_They listen_, _the sound of_ MARIA’S _voice in anger with some one is faintly heard_.] BIANCA. It is Maria scolds some gossip crone. GUIDO. I thought the other voice had been a man’s. BIANCA. All still again, old crones are often gruff. You should be gone, my lord.