The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

A badge of fame to slander’s livery,

  A dying life to living infamy:

  1055

  Poor helpless help, the treasure stol’n away,

  To burn the guiltless casket where it lay!

  ‘Well well, dear Collatine, thou shalt not know

  The stained taste of violated troth;

  I will not wrong thy true affection so,

  1060

  To flatter thee with an infringed oath.

  This bastard graff shall never come to growth:

  He shall not boast who did thy stock pollute,

  That thou art doting father of his fruit.

  ‘Nor shall he smile at thee in secret thought,

  1065

  Nor laugh with his companions at thy state;

  But thou shalt know thy int’rest was not bought

  Basely with gold, but stol’n from forth thy gate.

  For me, I am the mistress of my fate,

  And with my trespass never will dispense,

  1070

  Till life to death acquit my forc’d offence.

  ‘I will not poison thee with my attaint,

  Nor fold my fault in cleanly-coin’d excuses;

  My sable ground of sin I will not paint,

  To hide the truth of this false night’s abuses.

  1075

  My tongue shall utter all, mine eyes like sluices,

  As from a mountain-spring that feeds a dale,

  Shall gush pure streams to purge my impure tale.’

  By this, lamenting Philomel had ended

  The well-tun’d warble of her nightly sorrow,

  1080

  And solemn night with slow sad gait descended

  To ugly hell; when lo, the blushing morrow

  Lends light to all fair eyes that light will borrow;

  But cloudy Lucrece shames herself to see,

  And therefore still in night would cloister’d be.

  1085

  Revealing day through every cranny spies,

  And seems to point her out where she sits weeping;

  To whom she sobbing speaks, ‘O eye of eyes,

  Why pry’st thou through my window? leave thy peeping,

  Mock with thy tickling beams eyes that are sleeping;

  1090

  Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light,

  For day hath naught to do what’s done by night.’

  Thus cavils she with every thing she sees.

  True grief is fond and testy as a child,

  Who wayward once, his mood with naught agrees;

  1095

  Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild.

  Continuance tames the one; the other wild,

  Like an unpractis’d swimmer plunging still,

  With too much labour drowns for want of skill.

  So she deep-drenched in a sea of care,

  1100

  Holds disputation with each thing she views,

  And to herself all sorrow doth compare;

  No object but her passion’s strength renews,

  And as one shifts another straight ensues.

  Sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words,

  1105

  Sometime ’tis mad and too much talk affords.

  The little birds that tune their morning’s joy

  Make her moans mad with their sweet melody,

  For mirth doth search the bottom of annoy;

  Sad souls are slain in merry company,

  1110

  Grief best is pleas’d with grief’s society:

  True sorrow then is feelingly suffic’d

  When with like semblance it is sympathis’d.

  ’Tis double death to drown in ken of shore;

  He ten times pines that pines beholding food;

  1115

  To see the salve doth make the wound ache more;

  Great grief grieves most at that would do it good;

  Deep woes roll forward like a gentle flood,

  Who being stopp’d, the bounding bank o’erflows;

  Grief dallied with, nor law nor limit knows.

  1120

  ‘You mocking birds,’ quoth she, ‘your tunes entomb

  Within your hollow swelling feather’d breasts,

  And in my hearing be you mute and dumb;

  My restless discord loves no stops nor rests.

  A woeful hostess brooks not merry guests.

  1125

  Relish your nimble notes to pleasing ears;

  Distress likes dumps, when time is kept with tears.

  ‘Come Philomel, that sing’st of ravishment,

  Make thy sad grove in my dishevel’d hair;

  As the dank earth weeps at thy languishment,

  1130

  So I at each sad strain will strain a tear

  And with deep groans the diapason bear;

  For burden-wise I’ll hum on Tarquin still,

  While thou on Tereus descants better skill.

  ‘And whiles against a thorn thou bear’st thy part

  1135

  To keep thy sharp woes waking, wretched I

  To imitate thee well, against my heart

  Will fix a sharp knife to affright mine eye,

  Who if it wink shall thereon fall and die:

  These means as frets upon an instrument

  1140

  Shall tune our heart-strings to true languishment.

  ‘And for, poor bird, thou sing’st not in the day,

  As shaming any eye should thee behold,

  Some dark deep desert seated from the way,

  That knows not parching heat nor freezing cold,

  1145

  Will we find out; and there we will unfold

  To creatures stern, sad tunes to change their kinds:

  Since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds.’

  As the poor frighted deer that stands at gaze,

  Wildly determining which way to fly,

  1150

  Or one encompass’d with a winding maze,

  That cannot tread the way out readily;

  So with herself is she in mutiny,

  To live or die which of the twain were better,

  When life is sham’d and death reproach’s debtor.

  1155

  ‘To kill myself,’ quoth she, ‘alack what were it,

  But with my body my poor soul’s pollution?

  They that lose half with greater patience bear it

  Than they whose whole is swallowed in confusion.

  That mother tries a merciless conclusion,

  1160

  Who having two sweet babes, when death takes one,

  Will slay the other and be nurse to none.

  ‘My body or my soul, which was the dearer,

  When the one pure, the other made divine?

  Whose love of either to myself was nearer,

  1165

  When both were kept for heaven and Collatine?

  Ay me, the bark pill’d from the lofty pine,

  His leaves will wither and his sap decay;

  So must my soul, her bark being pill’d away.

  ‘Her house is sack’d, her quiet interrupted,

  1170

  Her mansion batter’d by the enemy,

  Her sacred temple spotted, spoil’d, corrupted,

  Grossly engirt with daring infamy.

  Then let it not be call’d impiety,

  If in this blemish’d fort I make some hole,

  1175

  Through which I may convey this troubled soul.

  ‘Yet die I will not, till my Collatine

  Have heard the cause of my untimely death,

  That he may vow in that sad hour of mine

  Revenge on him that made me stop my breath.

  1180

  My stained blood to Tarquin I’ll bequeath,

  Which by him tainted shall for him be spent,

  And as his due writ in my testament.

  ‘My honour I’ll bequeath unto
the knife

  That wounds my body so dishonoured.

  1185

  ’Tis honour to deprive dishonour’d life;

  The one will live, the other being dead.

  So of shame’s ashes shall my fame be bred,

  For in my death I murder shameful scorn:

  My shame so dead, mine honour is new born.

  1190

  ‘Dear lord of that dear jewel I have lost,

  What legacy shall I bequeath to thee?

  My resolution, love, shall be thy boast,

  By whose example thou reveng’d mayst be.

  How Tarquin must be us’d, read it in me:

  1195

  Myself thy friend will kill myself thy foe,

  And for my sake serve thou false Tarquin so.

  ‘This brief abridgement of my will I make:

  My soul and body to the skies and ground;

  My resolution, husband, do thou take;

  1200

  Mine honour be the knife’s that makes my wound;

  My shame be his that did my fame confound;

  And all my fame that lives disbursed be

  To those that live and think no shame of me.

  ‘Thou Collatine, shalt oversee this will;

  1205

  How was I overseen that thou shalt see it!

  My blood shall wash the slander of mine ill;

  My life’s foul deed my life’s fair end shall free it.

  Faint not, faint heart, but stoutly say “So be it”;

  Yield to my hand, my hand shall conquer thee:

  1210

  Thou dead, both die, and both shall victors be.’

  This plot of death when sadly she had laid,

  And wip’d the brinish pearl from her bright eyes,

  With untun’d tongue she hoarsely calls her maid,

  Whose swift obedience to her mistress hies;

  1215

  For fleet-wing’d duty with thought’s feathers flies.

  Poor Lucrece’ cheeks unto her maid seem so

  As winter meads when sun doth melt their snow.

  Her mistress she doth give demure good-morrow,

  With soft slow tongue, true mark of modesty,

  1220

  And sorts a sad look to her lady’s sorrow,

  For why her face wore sorrow’s livery;

  But durst not ask of her audaciously

  Why her two suns were cloud-eclipsed so,

  Nor why her fair cheeks over-wash’d with woe.

  1225

  But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set,

  Each flower moisten’d like a melting eye,

  Even so the maid with swelling drops ’gan wet

  Her circled eyne, enforc’d by sympathy

  Of those fair suns set in her mistress’ sky,

  1230

  Who in a salt-way’d ocean quench their light;

  Which makes the maid weep like the dewy night.

  A pretty while these pretty creatures stand,

  Like ivory conduits coral cisterns filling.

  One justly weeps, the other takes in hand

  1235

  No cause, but company, of her drops’ spilling;

  Their gentle sex to weep are often willing,

  Grieving themselves to guess at others’ smarts,

  And then they drown their eyes or break their hearts.

  For men have marble, women waxen, minds,

  1240

  And therefore are they form’d as marble will;

  The weak oppress’d, th’ impression of strange kinds

  Is form’d in them by force, by fraud, or skill.

  Then call them not the authors of their ill,

  No more than wax shall be accounted evil,

  1245

  Wherein is stamp’d the semblance of a devil.

  Their smoothness, like a goodly champaign plain,

  Lays open all the little worms that creep;

  In men as in a rough-grown grove remain

  Cave-keeping evils that obscurely sleep;

  1250

  Through crystal walls each little mote will peep;

  Though men can cover them with bold stern looks,

  Poor women’s faces are their own faults’ books.

  No man inveigh against the withered flower,

  But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill’d;

  1255

  Not that devour’d, but that which doth devour

  Is worthy blame; O let it not be hild

  Poor women’s faults, that they are so fulfill’d

  With men’s abuses! those proud lords to blame

  Make weak-made women tenants to their shame.

  1260

  The precedent whereof in Lucrece view,

  Assail’d by night with circumstances strong

  Of present death, and shame that might ensue

  By that her death, to do her husband wrong;

  Such danger to resistance did belong,

  1265

  That dying fear through all her body spread;

  And who cannot abuse a body dead?

  By this, mild patience bid fair Lucrece speak