Cannot amend me. Society is no comfort
To one not sociable. I am not very sick,
Since I can reason of it. Pray you, trust me here.
I’ll rob none but myself; and let me die,
Stealing so poorly.
GUIDERIUS
I love thee: I have spoke it;
How much the quantity, the weight as much,
As I do love my father.
BELARIUS
What, how, how?
ARVIRAGUS
If it be sin to say so, sir, I yoke me
In my good brother’s fault. I know not why
I love this youth, and I have heard you say
Love’s reason’s without reason. The bier at door
And a demand who is’t shall die, I’d say
‘My father, not this youth’.
BELARIUS (aside)
O noble strain!
O worthiness of nature, breed of greatness!
Cowards father cowards, and base things sire base.
Nature hath meal and bran, contempt and grace.
I’m not their father, yet who this should be
Doth miracle itself, loved before me.
(Aloud) ‘Tis the ninth hour o’th’ morn.
ARVIRAGUS (to Innogen)
Brother, farewell.
INNOGEN
I wish ye sport.
ARVIRAGUS
You health.—So please you, sir.
INNOGEN (aside)
These are kind creatures. Gods, what lies I have heard!
Our courtiers say all’s savage but at court.
Experience, O thou disprov‘st report!
Th’imperious seas breeds monsters; for the dish
Poor tributary rivers as sweet fish.
I am sick still, heart-sick. Pisanio,
I’ll now taste of thy drug.
⌈She swallows the drug.⌉ The men speak apart
GUIDERIUS
I could not stir him.
He said he was gentle but unfortunate,
Dishonestly afflicted but yet honest.
ARVIRAGUS
Thus did he answer me, yet said hereafter
I might know more.
BELARIUS
To th’ field, to th’ field!
(To Innogen) We’ll leave you for this time. Go in and rest.
ARVIRAGUS (to Innogen)
We’ll not be long away.
BELARIUS (to Innogen)
Pray be not sick,
For you must be our housewife.
INNOGEN Well or ill,
I am bound to you.
Exit
BELARIUS And shalt be ever.
This youth, howe’er distressed, appears hath had
Good ancestors.
ARVIRAGUS How angel-like he sings!
GUIDERIUS But his neat cookery!
⌈BELARIUS⌉
He cut our roots in characters,
And sauced our broths as Juno had been sick
And he her dieter.
ARVIRAGUS
Nobly he yokes
A smiling with a sigh, as if the sigh
Was that it was for not being such a smile;
The smile mocking the sigh that it would fly
From so divine a temple to commix
With winds that sailors rail at.
GUIDERIUS
I do note
That grief and patience, rooted in him both,
Mingle their spurs together.
ARVIRAGUS
Grow patience,
And let the stinking elder, grief, untwine
His perishing root with the increasing vine.
RELARIUS
It is great morning. Come away. Who’s there?
Enter Cloten in Posthumus’ suit
CLOTEN
I cannot find those runagates. That villain
Hath mocked me. I am faint.
BELARIUS (aside to Arviragus and Guiderius)
‘Those runagates’?
Means he not us? I partly know him; ‘tis
Cloten, the son o’th’ Queen. I fear some ambush.
I saw him not these many years, and yet
I know ’tis he. We are held as outlaws. Hence!
GUIDERIUS (aside to Arviragus and Belarius)
He is but one. You and my brother search
What companies are near. Pray you, away.
Let me alone with him.
Exeunt Arviragus and Belarius
CLOTEN
Soft, what are you
That fly me thus? Some villain mountaineers?
I have heard of such. What slave art thou?
GUIDERIUS A thing
More slavish did I ne’er than answering
A slave without a knock.
CLOTEN Thou art a robber,
A law-breaker, a villain. Yield thee, thief.
GUIDERIUS
To who? To thee? What art thou? Have not I
An arm as big as thine, a heart as big?
Thy words, I grant, are bigger, for I wear not
My dagger in my mouth. Say what thou art,
Why I should yield to thee.
CLOTEN
Thou villain base,
Know’st me not by my clothes?
GUIDERIUS
No, nor thy tailor, rascal,
Who is thy grandfather. He made those clothes,
Which, as it seems, make thee.
CLOTEN
Thou precious varlet,
My tailor made them not.
GUIDERIUS
Hence, then, and thank
The man that gave them thee. Thou art some fool.
I am loath to beat thee.
CLOTEN
Thou injurious thief,
Hear but my name and tremble.
GUlDERIUS
What’s thy name?
CLOTEN Cloten, thou villain.
GUIDERIUS
Cloten, thou double villain, be thy name,
I cannot tremble at it. Were it toad or adder, spider,
’Twould move me sooner.
CLOTEN
To thy further fear,
Nay, to thy mere confusion, thou shalt know
I am son to th’ Queen.
GUIDERIUS
I am sorry for’t, not seeming
So worthy as thy birth.
CLOTEN
Art not afeard?
GUIDERIUS
Those that I reverence, those I fear, the wise.
At fools I laugh, not fear them.
CLOTEN Die the death.
When I have slain thee with my proper hand
I’ll follow those that even now fled hence,
And on the gates of Lud’s town set your heads.
Yield, rustic mountaineer.
Fight and exeunt
Enter Belarius and Arviragus
BELARIUS
No company’s abroad?
ARVIRAGUS
None in the world. You did mistake him, sure.
BELARIUS
I cannot tell. Long is it since I saw him,
But time hath nothing blurred those lines of favour
Which then he wore. The snatches in his voice
And burst of speaking were as his. I am absolute
’Twas very Cloten.
ARVIRAGUS
In this place we left them.
I wish my brother make good time with him,
You say he is so fell.
BELARIUS
Being scarce made up,
I mean to man, he had not apprehension
Of roaring terrors; for defect of judgement
Is oft the cause of fear.
Enter Guiderius with Cloten’s head
But see, thy brother.
GUIDERIUS
This Cloten was a fool, an empty purse,
There was no money in’t. Not Hercules
Could have knocked out his brains, for he had none.
Yet I not doing this, the fool had borne
My head as I do his.
BELARIUS
What hast thou done?
GUIDERIUS
I am perfect what: cut off one Cloten’s head,
Son to the Queen after his own report,
Who called me traitor, mountaineer, and swore
With his own single hand he’d take us in,
Displace our heads where—thanks, ye gods—they
grow,
And set them on Lud’s town.
BELARIUS
We are all undone.
GUIDERIUS
Why, worthy father, what have we to lose
But that he swore to take, our lives? The law
Protects not us: then why should we be tender
To let an arrogant piece of flesh threat us,
Play judge and executioner all himself,
For we do fear the law? What company
Discover you abroad?
BELARIUS
No single soul
Can we set eye on, but in all safe reason
He must have some attendants. Though his humour
Was nothing but mutation, ay, and that
From one bad thing to worse, not frenzy,
Not absolute madness, could so far have raved
To bring him here alone. Although perhaps
It may be heard at court that such as we
Cave here, hunt here, are outlaws, and in time
May make some stronger head, the which he
hearing—
As it is like him—might break out, and swear
He’d fetch us in, yet is’t not probable
To come alone, either he so undertaking,
Or they so suffering. Then on good ground we fear
If we do fear this body hath a tail
More perilous than the head.
ARVIRAGUS
Let ord’nance
Come as the gods foresay it; howsoe’er,
My brother hath done well.
BELARIUS
I had no mind
To hunt this day. The boy Fidele’s sickness
Did make my way long forth.
GUIDERlUS
With his own sword,
Which he did wave against my throat, I have ta’en
His head from him. I’ll throw’t into the creek
Behind our rock, and let it to the sea
And tell the fishes he’s the Queen’s son, Cloten.
That’s all I reck.
Exit with Cloten’s head
BELARIUS
I fear ’twill be revenged.
Would, Polydore, thou hadst not done’t, though
valour
Becomes thee well enough.
ARVIRAGUS
Would I had done’t,
So the revenge alone pursued me. Polydore,
I love thee brotherly, but envy much
Thou hast robbed me of this deed. I would revenges
That possible strength might meet would seek us
through
And put us to our answer.
BELARIUS
Well, ’tis done.
We’ll hunt no more today, nor seek for danger
Where there’s no profit. I prithee, to our rock.
You and Fidele play the cooks. I’ll stay
Till hasty Polydore return, and bring him
To dinner presently.
ARVIRAGUS
Poor sick Fidele!
I’ll willingly to him. To gain his colour
I’d let a parish of such Clotens blood,
And praise myself for charity.
Exit into the cave
BELARIUS
O thou goddess,
Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon‘st
In these two princely boys! They are as gentle
As zephyrs blowing below the violet,
Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough,
Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud’st wind
That by the top doth take the mountain pine
And make him stoop to th’ vale. ’Tis wonder
That an invisible instinct should frame them
To royalty unlearned, honour untaught,
Civility not seen from other, valour
That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop
As if it had been sowed. Yet still it’s strange
What Cloten’s being here to us portends,
Or what his death will bring us.
Enter Guiderius
GUIDERIUS
Where’s my brother?
I have sent Cloten’s clotpoll down the stream
In embassy to his mother. His body’s hostage
For his return.
Solemn music
BELARIUS
My ingenious instrument!—
Hark, Polydore, it sounds. But what occasion
Hath Cadwal now to give it motion? Hark!
GUIDERIUS
Is he at home?
BELARIUS
He went hence even now.
GUIDERIUS
What does he mean? Since death of my dear’st mother
It did not speak before. All solemn things
Should answer solemn accidents. The matter?
Triumphs for nothing and lamenting toys
Is jollity for apes and grief for boys.
Is Cadwal mad?
Enter from the cave Arviragus with Innogen, dead, bearing her in his arms
BELARIUS
Look, here he comes,
And brings the dire occasion in his arms
Of what we blame him for.
ARVIRAGUS
The bird is dead
That we have made so much on. I had rather
Have skipped from sixteen years of age to sixty,
To have turned my leaping time into a crutch,
Than have seen this.
GUIDERIUS (to Innogen) O sweetest, fairest lily!
My brother wears thee not one half so well
As when thou grew’st thyself.
BELARIUS O melancholy,
Who ever yet could sound thy bottom, find
The ooze to show what coast thy sluggish crare
Might easiliest harbour in? Thou blessèd thing,
Jove knows what man thou mightst have made;
but I,
Thou diedst a most rare boy, of melancholy.
(To Arviragus) How found you him?
ARVIRAGUS
Stark, as you see,
Thus smiling as some fly had tickled slumber,
Not as death’s dart being laughed at; his right cheek
Reposing on a cushion.
GUIDERIUS
Where?
ARVIRAGUS
O’th’ floor,
His arms thus leagued. I thought he slept, and put
My clouted brogues from off my feet, whose rudeness
Answered my steps too loud.
GUIDERIUS
Why, he but sleeps.
If he be gone he’ll make his grave a bed.
With female fairies will his tomb be haunted,
(To Innogen) And worms will not come to thee.
ARVIRAGUS (to Innogen) With fairest flowers
Whilst summer lasts and I live here, Fidele,
I’ll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack
The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azured harebell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander
Outsweetened not thy breath. The ruddock would
With charitable bill—O bill sore shaming
Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie
Without a monument!—bring thee all this,
Yea, and furred moss besides, when flowers are none,
To winter-gown thy corpse.
GUIDERIUS
Prithee, have done,
And do not play in wench-like words with that
Which is so serious. Let us bury him,
And not protract with admiration what
Is now due debt. To th’ grave.
ARVIRAGUS
Say, where shall ’s lay him?
GUIDERIUS
By good Euriphile, our mother.
ARVIRAGUS
Be’t SO,
And let us, Polydore, though now our voices
Have got the mannish crack, sing him to th’ ground
As once our mother; use like note and words,
Save that ‘Euriphile’ must be ‘Fidele’.
GUIDERIUS Cadwal,
I cannot sing. I’ll weep, and word it with thee,
For notes of sorrow out of tune are worse
Than priests and fanes that lie.
ARVIRAGUS
We’ll speak it then.
BELARIUS
Great griefs, I see, medicine the less, for Cloten
Is quite forgot. He was a queen’s son, boys,
And though he came our enemy, remember
He was paid for that. Though mean and mighty
rotting
Together have one dust, yet reverence,
That angel of the world, doth make distinction
Of place ’tween high and low. Our foe was princely,
And though you took his life as being our foe,
Yet bury him as a prince.
GUIDERIUS
Pray you, fetch him hither.
Thersites’ body is as good as Ajax’
When neither are alive.
ARVIRAGUS (to Belarius) If you’ll go fetch him,
We’ll say our song the whilst.
Exit Belarius
Brother, begin.
GUIDERIUS
Nay, Cadwal, we must lay his head to th’east.
My father hath a reason for’t.
ARVIRAGUS
’Tis true.
GUIDERIUS
Come on, then, and remove him.
ARVIRAGUS
So, begin.
GUIDERIUS
Fear no more the heat o‘th’ sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages.
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta’en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
ARVIRAGUS
Fear no more the frown o’th’ great,
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke.
Care no more to clothe and eat,
To thee the reed is as the oak.
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust.
GUIDERIUS
Fear no more the lightning flash,
ARVIRAGUS Nor th’all-dreaded thunder-stone.
GUIDERIUS
Fear not slander, censure rash.
ARVIRAGUS Thou hast finished joy and moan.
GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee and come to dust.
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 388
