Athens (Greece); Knights and knighthood -- Drama; Tragicomedy
_Come, all sad and solemn shows
That are quick-eyed Pleasure’s foes;
We convent naught else but woes.
We convent naught else but woes._
THIRD QUEEN.
This funeral path brings to your household’s grave.
Joy seize on you again; peace sleep with him.
SECOND QUEEN.
And this to yours.
FIRST QUEEN.
Yours this way. Heavens lend
A thousand differing ways to one sure end.
THIRD QUEEN.
This world’s a city full of straying streets,
And death’s the market-place where each one meets.
[_Exeunt severally._]
ACT II
SCENE I. Athens. A garden, with a castle in the background
Enter Jailer and Wooer.
JAILER.
I may depart with little while I live; something I may cast to you, not
much. Alas, the prison I keep, though it be for great ones, yet they
seldom come; before one salmon, you shall take a number of minnows. I
am given out to be better lined than it can appear to me report is a
true speaker. I would I were really that I am delivered to be. Marry,
what I have, be it what it will, I will assure upon my daughter at the
day of my death.
WOOER.
Sir, I demand no more than your own offer, and I will estate your
daughter in what I have promised.
JAILER.
Well, we will talk more of this when the solemnity is past. But have
you a full promise of her? When that shall be seen, I tender my
consent.
Enter the Jailer’s Daughter, carrying rushes.
WOOER.
I have sir. Here she comes.
JAILER.
Your friend and I have chanced to name you here, upon the old business.
But no more of that now; so soon as the court hurry is over, we will
have an end of it. I’ th’ meantime, look tenderly to the two prisoners.
I can tell you they are princes.
DAUGHTER.
These strewings are for their chamber. ’Tis pity they are in prison,
and ’twere pity they should be out. I do think they have patience to
make any adversity ashamed. The prison itself is proud of ’em, and they
have all the world in their chamber.
JAILER.
They are famed to be a pair of absolute men.
DAUGHTER.
By my troth, I think fame but stammers ’em; they stand a grise above
the reach of report.
JAILER.
I heard them reported in the battle to be the only doers.
DAUGHTER.
Nay, most likely, for they are noble sufferers. I marvel how they would
have looked had they been victors, that with such a constant nobility
enforce a freedom out of bondage, making misery their mirth and
affliction a toy to jest at.
JAILER.
Do they so?
DAUGHTER.
It seems to me they have no more sense of their captivity than I of
ruling Athens. They eat well, look merrily, discourse of many things,
but nothing of their own restraint and disasters. Yet sometime a
divided sigh, martyred as ’twere i’ th’ deliverance, will break from
one of them—when the other presently gives it so sweet a rebuke that I
could wish myself a sigh to be so chid, or at least a sigher to be
comforted.
WOOER.
I never saw ’em.
JAILER.
The Duke himself came privately in the night, and so did they.
Enter Palamon and Arcite, above.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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