FIRST QUEEN
The more proclaiming
Our suit shall be neglected when her arms,
Able to lock Jove from a synod, shall
By warranting moonlight corslet thee! O when
Her twinning cherries shall their sweetness fall
Upon thy tasteful lips, what wilt thou think
Of rotten kings or blubbered queens? What care
For what thou feel’st not, what thou feel’st being able
To make Mars spurn his drum? O, if thou couch
But one night with her, every hour in’t will
Take hostage of thee for a hundred, and
Thou shalt remember nothing more than what
That banquet bids thee to.
HIPPOLYTA (to Theseus)
Though much unlike
You should be so transported, as much sorry
I should be such a suitor—yet I think
Did I not by th’abstaining of my joy,
Which breeds a deeper longing, cure their surfeit
That craves a present medicine, I should pluck
All ladies’ scandal on me. ⌈Kneels⌉ Therefore, sir,
As I shall here make trial of my prayers,
Either presuming them to have some force,
Or sentencing for aye their vigour dumb,
Prorogue this business we are going about, and hang
Your shield afore your heart—about that neck
Which is my fee, and which I freely lend
To do these poor queens service.
ALL THREE QUEENS (to Emilia)
O, help now,
Our cause cries for your knee.
EMILIA (kneels to Theseus)
If you grant not
My sister her petition in that force
With that celerity and nature which
She makes it in, from henceforth I’ll not dare
To ask you anything, nor be so hardy
Ever to take a husband.
THESEUS
Pray stand up.
⌈They rise⌉
I am entreating of myself to do
That which you kneel to have me.—Pirithous,
Lead on the bride: get you and pray the gods
For success and return; omit not anything
In the pretended celebration.—Queens,
Follow your soldier. (To Artesius) As before, hence you,
And at the banks of Aulis meet us with
The forces you can raise, where we shall find
The moiety of a number for a business
More bigger looked.
Exit Artesius
(To Hippolyta) Since that our theme is haste,
I stamp this kiss upon thy current lip—
Sweet, keep it as my token. (To the wedding party) Set
you forward,
For I will see you gone.
(To Emilia) Farewell, my beauteous sister.—Pirithous,
Keep the feast full: bate not an hour on’t.
PIRITHOUS
Sir,
I’ll follow you at heels. The feast’s solemnity
Shall want till your return.
THESEUS
Cousin, I charge you
Budge not from Athens. We shall be returning
Ere you can end this feast, of which, I pray you,
Make no abatement.—Once more, farewell all.
Exeunt Hippolyta, Emilia, Pirithous, and train towards the temple
FIRST QUEEN
Thus dost thou still make good the tongue o’th’ world.
SECOND QUEEN
And earn’st a deity equal with Mars—
THIRD QUEEN
If not above him, for Thou being but mortal mak’st affections bend
To godlike honours; they themselves, some say,
Groan under such a mast’ry.
THESEUS
As we are men,
Thus should we do; being sensually subdued
We lose our human title. Good cheer, ladies.
Now turn we towards your comforts.
⌈Flourish.⌉ Exeunt
1.2 Enter Palamon and Arcite
ARCITE
Dear Palamon, dearer in love than blood,
And our prime cousin, yet unhardened in
The crimes of nature, let us leave the city,
Thebes, and the temptings in’t, before we further
Sully our gloss of youth.
And here to keep in abstinence we shame
As in incontinence; for not to swim
I’th’ aid o’th’ current were almost to sink—
At least to frustrate striving; and to follow
The common stream ’twould bring us to an eddy
Where we should turn or drown; if labour through,
Our gain but life and weakness.
PALAMON
Your advice
Is cried up with example. What strange ruins
Since first we went to school may we perceive
Walking in Thebes? Scars and bare weeds
The gain o’th’ martialist who did propound
To his bold ends honour and golden ingots,
Which though he won, he had not; and now flirted
By peace for whom he fought. Who then shall offer
To Mars’s so-scorned altar? I do bleed
When such I meet, and wish great Juno would
Resume her ancient fit of jealousy
To get the soldier work, that peace might purge
For her repletion and retain anew
Her charitable heart, now hard and harsher
Than strife or war could be.
ARCITE
Are you not out?
Meet you no ruin but the soldier in
The cranks and turns of Thebes? You did begin
As if you met decays of many kinds.
Perceive you none that do arouse your pity
But th’unconsidered soldier?
PALAMON
Yes, I pity
Decays where’er I find them, but such most
That, sweating in an honourable toil,
Are paid with ice to cool ’em.
ARCITE
’Tis not this
I did begin to speak of. This is virtue,
Of no respect in Thebes. I spake of Thebes,
How dangerous, if we will keep our honours,
It is for our residing where every evil
Hath a good colour, where every seeming good’s
A certain evil, where not to be ev’n jump
As they are here were to be strangers, and
Such things to be, mere monsters.
PALAMON
’Tis in our power,
Unless we fear that apes can tutor’s, to
Be masters of our manners. What need I
Affect another’s gait, which is not catching
Where there is faith? Or to be fond upon
Another’s way of speech, when by mine own
I may be reasonably conceived—saved, too—
Speaking it truly? Why am I bound
By any generous bond to follow him
Follows his tailor, haply so long until
The followed make pursuit? Or let me know
Why mine own barber is unblest—with him
My poor chin, too—for ’tis not scissored just
To such a favourite’s glass? What canon is there
That does command my rapier from my hip
To dangle’t in my hand? Or to go tiptoe
Before the street be foul? Either I am
The fore-horse in the team or I am none
That draw i’th’ sequent trace. These poor slight
sores
Need not a plantain. That which rips my bosom
Almost to th’ heart’s—
ARCITE
Our uncle Creon.
PALAMON
He,
A most unbounded tyrant, whose successes
Makes heaven unfeared and v
illainy assured
Beyond its power there’s nothing; almost puts
Faith in a fever, and deifies alone
Voluble chance; who only attributes
The faculties of other instruments
To his own nerves and act; commands men’s service,
And what they win in’t, boot and glory; one
That fears not to do harm, good dares not. Let
The blood of mine that’s sib to him be sucked
From me with leeches. Let them break and fall
Off me with that corruption.
ARCITE
Clear-spirited cousin,
Let’s leave his court that we may nothing share
Of his loud infamy: for our milk
Will relish of the pasture, and we must
Be vile or disobedient; not his kinsmen
In blood unless in quality.
PALAMON
Nothing truer.
I think the echoes of his shames have deafed
The ears of heav’nly justice. Widows’ cries
Descend again into their throats and have not
Enter Valerius
Due audience of the gods—Valerius.
VALERIUS
The King calls for you; yet be leaden-footed
Till his great rage be off him. Phoebus, when
He broke his whipstock and exclaimed against
The horses of the sun, but whispered to
The loudness of his fury.
PALAMON
Small winds shake him.
But what’s the matter?
VALERIUS
Theseus, who where he threats, appals, hath sent
Deadly defiance to him and pronounces
Ruin to Thebes, who is at hand to seal
The promise of his wrath.
ARCITE
Let him approach.
But that we fear the gods in him, he brings not
A jot of terror to us. Yet what man
Thirds his own worth—the case is each of ours—
When that his action’s dregged with mind assured
’Tis bad he goes about.
PALAMON
Leave that unreasoned.
Our services stand now for Thebes, not Creon,
Yet to be neutral to him were dishonour,
Rebellious to oppose. Therefore we must
With him stand to the mercy of our fate,
Who hath bounded our last minute.
ARCITE
So we must.
Is’t said this war’s afoot? Or it shall be
On fail of some condition?
VALERIUS
’Tis in motion,
The intelligence of state came in the instant
With the defier.
PALAMON
Let’s to the King, who, were he A quarter carrier of that honour which
His enemy come in, the blood we venture
Should be as for our health, which were not spent,
Rather laid out for purchase. But, alas,
Our hands advanced before our hearts, what will
The fall o’th’ stroke do damage?
ARCITE
Let th’event—That never-erring arbitrator—tell us
When we know all ourselves, and let us follow
The becking of our chance.
Exeunt
1.3 Enter Pirithous, Hippolyta, and Emilia
PIRITHOUS
No further.
HIPPOLYTA
Sir, farewell. Repeat my wishes To our great lord, of whose success I dare not
Make any timorous question; yet I wish him
Excess and overflow of power, an’t might be,
To dure ill-dealing fortune. Speed to him;
Store never hurts good governors.
PIRITHOUS
Though I know His ocean needs not my poor drops, yet they
Must yield their tribute there. (To Emilia) My precious
maid,
Those best affections that the heavens infuse
In their best-tempered pieces keep enthroned
In your dear heart.
EMILIA
Thanks, sir. Remember me To our all-royal brother, for whose speed
The great Bellona I’ll solicit; and
Since in our terrene state petitions are not
Without gifts understood, I’ll offer to her
What I shall be advised she likes. Our hearts
Are in his army, in his tent.
HIPPOLYTA
In’s bosom.
We have been soldiers, and we cannot weep
When our friends don their helms, or put to sea,
Or tell of babes broached on the lance, or women
That have sod their infants in—and after eat them—
The brine they wept at killing ’em: then if
You stay to see of us such spinsters, we
Should hold you here forever.
PIRITHOUS
Peace be to you As I pursue this war, which shall be then
Beyond further requiring.
Exit Pirithous
EMILIA
How his longing Follows his friend! Since his depart, his sports,
Though craving seriousness and skill, passed slightly
His careless execution, where nor gain
Made him regard or loss consider, but
Playing one business in his hand, another
Directing in his head, his mind nurse equal
To these so diff’ring twins. Have you observed him
Since our great lord departed?
HIPPOLYTA
With much labour; And I did love him for’t. They two have cabined
In many as dangerous as poor a corner,
Peril and want contending; they have skiffed
Torrents whose roaring tyranny and power
I’th’ least of these was dreadful, and they have
Fought out together where death’s self was lodged;
Yet fate hath brought them off. Their knot of love,
Tied, weaved, entangled with so true, so long,
And with a finger of so deep a cunning,
May be outworn, never undone. I think
Theseus cannot be umpire to himself,
Cleaving his conscience into twain and doing
Each side like justice, which he loves best.
EMILIA
Doubtless There is a best, and reason has no manners
To say it is not you. I was acquainted
Once with a time when I enjoyed a playfellow;
You were at wars when she the grave enriched,
Who made too proud the bed; took leave o’th’
moon—
Which then looked pale at parting—when our count
Was each eleven.
HIPPOLYTA
’Twas Flavina.
EMILIA
Yes.
You talk of Pirithous’ and Theseus’ love:
Theirs has more ground, is more maturely seasoned,
More buckled with strong judgement, and their needs
The one of th‘other may be said to water
Their intertangled roots of love; but I
And she I sigh and spoke of were things innocent,
Loved for we did, and like the elements,
That know not what, nor why, yet do effect
Rare issues by their operance, our souls
Did so to one another. What she liked
Was then of me approved; what not, condemned—
No more arraignment. The flower that I would pluck
And put between my breasts—O then but beginning
To swell about the blossom—she would long
Till she had such another, and commit it
To the like innocent cradle, where, phoenix-like,
They died in perfume. On my head no toy
But was her pattern. Her affections—pretty,
Though happily her careless wear—I followed
; For my most serious decking. Had mine ear
Stol’n some new air, or at adventure hummed one,
From musical coinage, why, it was a note
Whereon her spirits would sojourn—rather dwell on—
And sing it in her slumbers. This rehearsal—
Which, seely innocence wots well, comes in
Like old emportment’s bastard—has this end:
That the true love ’tween maid and maid may be
More than in sex dividual.
HIPPOLYTA
You’re out of breath, And this high-speeded pace is but to say
That you shall never, like the maid Flavina,
Love any that’s called man.
EMILIA I am sure I shall not.
HIPPOLYTA
Now alack, weak sister, I must no more believe thee in this point—
Though in’t I know thou dost believe thyself—
Than I will trust a sickly appetite
That loathes even as it longs. But sure, my sister,
If I were ripe for your persuasion, you
Have said enough to shake me from the arm
Of the all-noble Theseus, for whose fortunes
I will now in and kneel, with great assurance
That we more than his Pirithous possess
The high throne in his heart.
EMILIA
I am not
Against your faith, yet I continue mine.
Exeunt
1.4 Cornetts. A battle struck within. Then a retreat. Flourish. Then enter Theseus, victor. The three Queens meet him and fall on their faces before him. Also enter a Herald, and attendants bearing Palamon and Arcite on two hearses
FIRST QUEEN (to Theseus)
To thee no star be dark.
SECOND QUEEN (to Theseus) Both heaven and earth
Friend thee for ever.
THIRD QUEEN (to Theseus) All the good that may Be wished upon thy head, I cry ‘Amen’ to’t.
THESEUS
Th’impartial gods, who from the mounted heavens
View us their mortal herd, behold who err
And in their time chastise. Go and find out
The bones of your dead lords and honour them
With treble ceremony: rather than a gap
Should be in their dear rites we would supply’t.
But those we will depute which shall invest
You in your dignities, and even each thing
Our haste does leave imperfect. So adieu,
And heaven’s good eyes look on you.
Exeunt the Queens
What are those?
HERALD
Men of great quality, as may be judged
By their appointment. Some of Thebes have told’s
They are sisters’ children, nephews to the King.
THESEUS
By th’ helm of Mars I saw them in the war,
Like to a pair of lions smeared with prey,
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 412
