This grand act of our life, this daring deed
Of fate in wedlock.
1QUEEN [to Second and Third Queens]
Dowagers, take hands.
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Let us be widows to our woes; delay
Commends us to a famishing hope.
QUEENS Farewell!
2QUEEN
We come unseasonably; but when could grief
Cull forth, as unpanged judgement can, fitt’st time
For best solicitation?
THESEUS Why, good ladies,
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This is a service, whereto I am going,
Greater than any war; it more imports me
Than all the actions that I have foregone,
Or futurely can cope.
1QUEEN The more proclaiming
Our suit shall be neglected when her arms,
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Able to lock Jove from a synod, shall
By warranting moonlight corslet thee. O, when
Her twinning cherries shall their sweetness fall
Upon thy taste-full lips, what wilt thou think
Of rotten kings or blubbered queens? What care
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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
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That banquet bids thee to.
HIPPOLYTA 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
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That craves a present med’cine, I should pluck
All ladies’ scandal on me. Therefore, sir, [Kneels.]
As I shall here make trial of my prayers,
Either presuming them to have some force,
Or sentencing for aye their vigour dumb,
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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.
QUEENS [to Emilia] Oh, help now.
Our cause cries for your knee.
EMILIA [Kneels, to Theseus] If you grant not
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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.
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I am entreating of my self to do
That which you kneel to have me. [They rise.] Pirithous,
Lead on the bride; get you and pray the gods
For success and return; omit not anything
In the pretended celebration. – Queens,
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Follow your soldier.
[to officer] 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 officer.
[to Hippolyta] Since that our theme is haste,
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I stamp this kiss upon thy current lip;
Sweet, keep it as my token. Set you forward,
For I will see you gone.
[Procession moves toward the temple.]
– Farewell, my beauteous sister. – Pirithous,
Keep the feast full; bate not an hour on’t.
PIRITHOUS Sir,
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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.
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Exeunt all except Theseus and Queens.
1QUEEN
Thus dost thou still make good the tongue o’th’ world –
2QUEEN And earn’st a deity equal with Mars –
3QUEEN If not above him, for
Thou, being but mortal, mak’st affections bend
To godlike honours; they themselves, some say,
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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
5
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
10
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
15
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 flurted
By Peace for whom he fought! Who then shall offer
To Mars’s so scorned altar? I do bleed
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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
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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
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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
35
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 e’en jump
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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
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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
5
0
Follows his tailor, haply so long until
The followed make pursuit? Or let me know
Why mine own barber is unblessed, with him
My poor chin too, for ’tis not scissored just
To such a favourite’s glass? What canon is there
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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
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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 villainy assured
Beyond its power there’s nothing; almost puts
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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 service
And what they win in’t, boot and glory; one
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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
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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
80
The ears of heavenly Justice. Widows’ cries
Descend again into their throats and have not
Due audience of the gods.
Enter VALERIUS.
Valerius!
VALERIUS The king calls for you; yet be leaden-footed
Till his great rage be off him. Phoebus, when
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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
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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
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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,
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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.
[to Valerius] Is’t said this war’s afoot, or, it shall be,
On fail of some condition?
VALERIUS ’Tis in motion.
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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,
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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
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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!
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 547