The Complete Works of William ShakespeareShakespeare, William
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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare, William
English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600
POSTHUMUS.
Is there no way for men to be, but women
Must be half-workers? We are all bastards,
And that most venerable man which I
Did call my father was I know not where
When I was stamp’d. Some coiner with his tools
Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seem’d
The Dian of that time. So doth my wife
The nonpareil of this. O, vengeance, vengeance!
Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain’d,
And pray’d me oft forbearance; did it with
A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on’t
Might well have warm’d old Saturn; that I thought her
As chaste as unsunn’d snow. O, all the devils!
This yellow Iachimo in an hour, was’t not?
Or less; at first? Perchance he spoke not, but,
Like a full-acorn’d boar, a German one,
Cried “O!” and mounted; found no opposition
But what he look’d for should oppose and she
Should from encounter guard. Could I find out
The woman’s part in me! For there’s no motion
That tends to vice in man but I affirm
It is the woman’s part. Be it lying, note it,
The woman’s; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;
Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;
Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,
Nice longing, slanders, mutability,
All faults that man may name, nay, that hell knows,
Why, hers, in part or all; but rather all;
For even to vice
They are not constant, but are changing still
One vice but of a minute old for one
Not half so old as that. I’ll write against them,
Detest them, curse them. Yet ’tis greater skill
In a true hate to pray they have their will:
The very devils cannot plague them better.
[_Exit._]
ACT III
SCENE I. Britain. A hall in Cymbeline’s palace.
Enter in state Cymbeline, Queen, Cloten and Lords at one door, and at
another Caius Lucius and Attendants.
CYMBELINE.
Now say, what would Augustus Cæsar with us?
LUCIUS.
When Julius Cæsar, (whose remembrance yet
Lives in men’s eyes, and will to ears and tongues
Be theme and hearing ever) was in this Britain,
And conquer’d it, Cassibelan, thine uncle,
Famous in Cæsar’s praises no whit less
Than in his feats deserving it, for him
And his succession granted Rome a tribute,
Yearly three thousand pounds, which by thee lately
Is left untender’d.
QUEEN.
And, to kill the marvel,
Shall be so ever.
CLOTEN.
There be many Cæsars ere such another Julius. Britain is a world by
itself, and we will nothing pay for wearing our own noses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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