Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 250 страниц)

5.1 Enter Sir Eglamour

EGLAMOUR

The sun begins to gild the western sky,

And now it is about the very hour

That Silvia at Friar Patrick’s cell should meet me.

She will not fail; for lovers break not hours,

Unless it be to come before their time,

So much they spur their expedition.

Enter Silvia

See where she comes. Lady, a happy evening!

SILVIA

Amen, amen. Go on, good Eglamour,

Out at the postern by the abbey wall.

I fear I am attended by some spies.

EGLAMOUR

Fear not. The forest is not three leagues off.

If we recover that, we are sure enough.

Exeunt

5.2 Enter Thurio, Proteus, and Julia dressed as a pageboy

THURIO

Sir Proteus, what says Silvia to my suit?

PROTEUS

O sir, I find her milder than she was,

And yet she takes exceptions at your person.

THURIO

What? That my leg is too long?

PROTEUS

No, that it is too little.

THURIO

I’ll wear a boot, to make it somewhat rounder.

JULIA (aside)

But love will not be spurred to what it loathes.

THURIO

What says she to my face?

PROTEUS

She says it is a fair one.

THURIO

Nay, then, the wanton lies. My face is black.

PROTEUS

But pearls are fair; and the old saying is,

‘Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies’ eyes’.

JULIA (aside)

’Tis true, such pearls as put out ladies’ eyes,

For I had rather wink than look on them.

THURIO

How likes she my discourse?

PROTEUS

Ill, when you talk of war.

THURIO

But well when I discourse of love and peace.

JULIA (aside)

But better indeed when you hold your peace.

THURIO

What says she to my valour?

PROTEUS

O sir, she makes no doubt of that.

JULIA (aside)

She needs not, when she knows it cowardice.

THURIO

What says she to my birth?

PROTEUS

That you are well derived.

JULIA (aside)

True: from a gentleman to a fool.

THURIO

Considers she my possessions?

PROTEUS

O ay, and pities them.

THURIO Wherefore?

JULIA (aside)

That such an ass should owe them.

PROTEUS

That they are out by lease.

JULIA Here comes the Duke.

Enter the Duke

DUKE

How now, Sir Proteus. How now, Thurio.

Which of you saw Eglamour of late?

THURIO

Not I.

PROTEUS Nor I.

DUKE Saw you my daughter?

PROTEUS Neither.

DUKE

Why then, she’s fled unto that peasant Valentine,

And Eglamour is in her company.

’Tis true, for Friar Laurence met them both

As he in penance wandered through the forest.

Him he knew well, and guessed that it was she,

But being masked, he was not sure of it.

Besides, she did intend confession

At Patrick’s cell this even, and there she was not.

These likelihoods confirm her flight from hence;

Therefore I pray you stand not to discourse,

But mount you presently, and meet with me

Upon the rising of the mountain foot

That leads toward Mantua, whither they are fled.

Dispatch, sweet gentlemen, and follow me.

Exit

THURIO

Why, this it is to be a peevish girl,

That flies her fortune when it follows her.

I’ll after, more to be revenged on Eglamour

Than for the love of reckless Silvia.

[exit]

PROTEUS

And I will follow, more for Silvia’s love

Than hate of Eglamour that goes with her.

[Exit]

JULIA

And I will follow, more to cross that love

Than hate for Silvia, that is gone for love.

[Exit]

5.3 Enter the Outlaws with Silvia captive

FIRST OUTLAW

Come, come, be patient. We must bring you to our captain.

SILVIA

A thousand more mischances than this one

Have learned me how to brook this patiently.

SECOND OUTLAW Come, bring her away.

FIRST OUTLAW

Where is the gentleman that was with her?

THIRD OUTLAW

Being nimble-footed he hath outrun us;

But Moses and Valerius follow him.

Go thou with her to the west end of the wood.

There is our captain. We’ll follow him that’s fled.

The thicket is beset, he cannot scape.

Exeunt the Second and Third Outlaws

FIRST OUTLAW (to Silvia)

Come, I must bring you to our captain’s cave.

Fear not. He bears an honourable mind,

And will not use a woman lawlessly.

SILVIA (aside)

O Valentine! This I endure for thee.

Exeunt

5.4 Enter Valentine

VALENTINE

How use doth breed a habit in a man!

This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods

I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.

Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,

And to the nightingale’s complaining notes

Tune my distresses and record my woes.

O thou that dost inhabit in my breast,

Leave not the mansion so long tenantless

Lest, growing ruinous, the building fall

And leave no memory of what it was.

Repair me with thy presence, Silvia.

Thou gentle nymph, cherish thy forlorn swain.

What hallooing and what stir is this today?

These are my mates, that make their wills their law,

Have some unhappy passenger in chase.

They love me well, yet I have much to do

To keep them from uncivil outrages.

Withdraw thee, Valentine. Who’s this comes here?

He stands aside.

Enter Proteus, Silvia, and Julia dressed as a pageboy

PROTEUS

Madam, this service I have done for you—

Though you respect not aught your servant doth—

To hazard life, and rescue you from him

That would have forced your honour and your love.

Vouchsafe me for my meed but one fair look.

A smaller boon than this I cannot beg,

And less than this I am sure you cannot give.

VALENTINE (aside)

How like a dream is this I see and hear!

Love lend me patience to forbear awhile.

SILVIA

O miserable, unhappy that I am!

PROTEUS

Unhappy were you, madam, ere I came.

But by my coming I have made you happy.

SILVIA

By thy approach thou mak’st me most unhappy.

JULIA (aside)

And me, when he approacheth to your presence.

SILVIA

Had I been seized by a hungry lion

I would have been a breakfast to the beast

Rather than have false Proteus rescue me.

O heaven be judge how I love Valentine,

Whose life’s as tender to me as my soul.

And full as much, for more there cannot be,

I do detest false perjured Proteus.

Therefore be gone, solicit me no more.

PROTEUS

What dangerous action, stood it next to death,

Would I not undergo for one calm look!

O, ’tis the curse in love, and still approved,

When women cannot love where they’re beloved.

SILVIA

When Proteus cannot love where he’s beloved.

Read over Julia’s heart, thy first, best love,

For whose dear sake thou didst then rend thy faith

Into a thousand oaths, and all those oaths

Descended into perjury to love me.

Thou hast no faith left now, unless thou’dst two,

And that’s far worse than none. Better have none

Than plural faith, which is too much by one,

Thou counterfeit to thy true friend.

PROTEUS

In love

Who respects friend?

SILVIA All men but Proteus.

PROTEUS

Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words

Can no way change you to a milder form

I’ll woo you like a soldier, at arm’s end,

And love you ’gainst the nature of love: force ye.

SILVIA

O heaven!

PROTEUS (assailing her) I’ll force thee yield to my desire.

VALENTINE (coming forward)

Ruffian, let go that rude uncivil touch,

Thou friend of an ill fashion.

PROTEUS Valentine!

VALENTINE

Thou common friend, that’s without faith or love,

For such is a friend now. Treacherous man,

Thou hast beguiled my hopes. Naught but mine eye

Could have persuaded me. Now I dare not say

I have one friend alive. Thou wouldst disprove me.

Who should be trusted, when one’s right hand

Is perjured to the bosom? Proteus,

I am sorry I must never trust thee more,

But count the world a stranger for thy sake.

The private wound is deepest. O time most accursed,

’Mongst all foes that a friend should be the worst!

PROTEUS My shame and guilt confounds me.

Forgive me, Valentine. If hearty sorrow

Be a sufficient ransom for offence,

I tender’t here. I do as truly suffer

As e’er I did commit.

VALENTINE Then I am paid,

And once again I do receive thee honest.

Who by repentance is not satisfied

Is nor of heaven nor earth. For these are pleased;

By penitence th’ Eternal’s wrath’s appeased.

And that my love may appear plain and free,

All that was mine in Silvia I give thee.

JULIA

O me unhappy!

She faints

PROTEUS

Look to the boy.

VALENTINE Why, boy!

Why wag, how now? What’s the matter? Look up. Speak.

JULIA O good sir, my master charged me to deliver a ring to Madam Silvia, which out of my neglect was never done.

PROTEUS Where is that ring, boy?

JULIA Here ’tis. This is it.

She gives Proteus the ring

PROTEUS How, let me see!

Why, this is the ring I gave to Julia.

JULIA

O, cry you mercy, sir, I have mistook.

She offers Proteus another ring

This is the ring you sent to Silvia.

PROTEUS

But how cam’st thou by this ring? At my depart

I gave this unto Julia.

JULIA

And Julia herself did give it me,

And Julia herself hath brought it hither.

PROTEUS How? Julia?

JULIA

Behold her that gave aim to all thy oaths

And entertained ’em deeply in her heart.

How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root?

O Proteus, let this habit make thee blush.

Be thou ashamed that I have took upon me

Such an immodest raiment, if shame live

In a disguise of love.

It is the lesser blot, modesty finds,

Women to change their shapes than men their minds.

PROTEUS

Than men their minds! ‘Tis true. O heaven, were man

But constant, he were perfect. That one error

Fills him with faults, makes him run through all th’

sins;

Inconstancy falls off ere it begins.

What is in Silvia’s face but I may spy

More fresh in Julia’s, with a constant eye?

VALENTINE Come, come, a hand from either.

Let me be blessed to make this happy close.

’Twere pity two such friends should be long foes.

Julia and Proteus join hands

PROTEUS

Bear witness, heaven, I have my wish for ever.

JULIA

And I mine.

Enter the Outlaws with the Duke and Thurio as captives

OUTLAWS

A prize, a prize, a prize!

VALENTINE

Forbear, forbear, I say. It is my lord the Duke.

The Outlaws release the Duke and Thurio

(To the Duke) Your grace is welcome to a man

disgraced,

Banished Valentine.

DUKE Sir Valentine!

THURIO

Yonder is Silvia, and Silvia’s mine.

VALENTINE

Thurio, give back, or else embrace thy death.

Come not within the measure of my wrath.

Do not name Silvia thine. If once again,

Verona shall not hold thee. Here she stands.

Take but possession of her with a touch—

I dare thee but to breathe upon my love.

THURIO

Sir Valentine, I care not for her, I.

I hold him but a fool that will endanger

His body for a girl that loves him not.

I claim her not, and therefore she is thine.

DUKE

The more degenerate and base art thou

To make such means for her as thou hast done,

And leave her on such slight conditions.

Now by the honour of my ancestry

I do applaud thy spirit, Valentine,

And think thee worthy of an empress’ love.

Know then I here forget all former griefs,

Cancel all grudge, repeal thee home again,

Plead a new state in thy unrivalled merit,

To which I thus subscribe: Sir Valentine,

Thou art a gentleman, and well derived.

Take thou thy Silvia, for thou hast deserved her.

VALENTINE

I thank your grace. The gift hath made me happy.

I now beseech you, for your daughter’s sake,

To grant one boon that I shall ask of you.

DUKE

I grant it, for thine own, whate’er it be.

VALENTINE

These banished men that I have kept withal

Are men endowed with worthy qualities.

Forgive them what they have committed here,

And let them be recalled from their exile.

They are reformed, civil, full of good,

And fit for great employment, worthy lord.

DUKE

Thou hast prevailed. I pardon them and thee.

Dispose of them as thou know’st their deserts.

Come, let us go. We will include all jars

With triumphs, mirth, and rare solemnity.

VALENTINE

And as we walk along I dare be bold

With our discourse to make your grace to smile.

What think you of this page, my lord?

DUKE

I think the boy hath grace in him. He blushes.

VALENTINE

I warrant you, my lord, more grace than boy.

DUKE What mean you by that saying?

VALENTINE

Please you, I’ll tell you as we pass along,

That you will wonder what hath fortunèd.

Come, Proteus, ’tis your penance but to hear

The story of your loves discovered.

That done, our day of marriage shall be yours,

One feast, one house, one mutual happiness.

Exeunt

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

The Taming of the Shrew was first published in the 1623 Folio, but a related play, shorter and simpler, with the title The Taming of a Shrew, had appeared in print in 1594. The exact relationship of these plays is disputed. A Shrew has sometimes been regarded as the source for The Shrew; some scholars have believed that both plays derive independently from an earlier play, now lost; it has even been suggested that Shakespeare wrote both plays. In our view Shakespeare’s play was written first, not necessarily on the foundation of an earlier play, and A Shrew is an anonymous imitation, written in the hope of capitalizing on the success of Shakespeare’s play. The difference between the titles is probably no more significant than the fact that The Winter’s Tale is even now often loosely referred to as A Winter’s Tale, or The Comedy of Errors as A Comedy of Errors.

The plot of The Taming of the Shrew has three main strands. First comes the Induction showing how a drunken tinker, Christopher Sly, is made to believe himself a lord for whose entertainment a play is to be presented. This resembles an episode in The Arabian Nights, in which Caliph Haroun al Raschid plays a similar trick on Abu Hassan. A Latin version of this story was known in Shakespeare’s England; it may also have circulated by word of mouth. Second comes the principal plot of the play performed for Sly, in which the shrewish Katherine is wooed, won, and tamed by the fortune-hunting Petruccio. This is a popular narrative theme; Shakespeare may have known a ballad called ‘A merry jest of a shrewd and curst wife lapped in morel’s skin for her good behaviour’, printed around 1550. The third strand of the play involves Lucentio, Gremio, and Hortensio, all of them suitors for the hand of Katherine’s sister, Bianca. This is based on the first English prose comedy, George Gascoigne’s Supposes, translated from Ludovico Ariosto’s I Suppositi (1509), acted in 1566, and published in 1573. In The Taming of the Shrew as printed in the 1623 Folio Christopher Sly fades out after Act 1, Scene 1, in A Shrew he makes other appearances, and rounds off the play. These episodes may derive from a version of Shakespeare’s play different from that preserved in the Folio; we print them as Additional Passages.

The adapting of Shakespeare’s play that seems to have occurred early in its career foreshadows its later history on the stage. Seven versions appeared during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, culminating in David Garrick’s Catharine and Petruchio, first performed in 1754. This version, omitting Christopher Sly and concentrating on the taming story, held the stage almost unchallenged until late in the nineteenth century. In various incarnations The Taming of the Shrew has always been popular on the stage, but its reputation as a robust comedy verging on farce has often obscured its more subtle and imaginative aspects, brutalizing Petruccio and trivializing Kate. The Induction, finely written, establishes a fundamentally serious concern with the powers of persuasion to change not merely appearance but reality, and this theme is acted out at different levels in both strands of the subsequent action.

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

In the Induction

CHRISTOPHER SLY, beggar and tinker

A HOSTESS

A LORD

BARTHOLOMEW, his page

HUNTSMEN

SERVANTS

PLAYERS

In the play-within-the-play

BAPTISTA Minola, a gentleman of Padua

KATHERINE, his elder daughter

BIANCA, his younger daughter

PETRUCCIO, a gentleman of Verona, suitor of Katherine

GREMIO, a rich old man of Padua, suitor of Bianca

HORTENSIO, another suitor, who disguises himself as Licio, a

teacher

LUCENTIO, from Pisa, who disguises himself as Cambio, a teacher

VINCENTIO, Lucentio’s father

A PEDANT (schoolmaster), from Mantua

A WIDOW

A TAILOR

A HABERDASHER

An OFFICER

SERVINGMEN, including NATHANIEL, PHILIP, JOSEPH, and PETER

Other servants of Baptista and Petruccio

The Taming of the Shrew

Induction 1 Enter Christopher Sly the beggar, and the Hostess

SLY I’ll feeze you, in faith.

HOSTESS A pair of stocks, you rogue.

SLY You’re a baggage. The Slys are no rogues. Look in the Chronicles—we came in with Richard Conqueror, therefore paucas palabras, let the world slide. Sessa!

HOSTESS You will not pay for the glasses you have burst?

SLY No, not a denier. Go by, Saint Jeronimy! Go to thy cold bed and warm thee.

HOSTESS I know my remedy, I must go fetch the headborough. Exit

SLY Third or fourth or fifth borough, I’ll answer him by law. I’ll not budge an inch, boy. Let him come, and kindly.

He falls asleep.

Horns sound. Enter a Lord from hunting, with his train

LORD

Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds.

Breathe Merriman—the poor cur is embossed—

And couple Clowder with the deep-mouthed brach.

Saw’st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good

At the hedge corner, in the coldest fault?

I would not lose the dog for twenty pound.

FIRST HUNTSMAN

Why, Belman is as good as he, my lord.

He cried upon it at the merest loss,

And twice today picked out the dullest scent.

Trust me, I take him for the better dog.

LORD

Thou art a fool. If Echo were as fleet

I would esteem him worth a dozen such.

But sup them well, and look unto them all.

Tomorrow I intend to hunt again.

FIRST HUNTSMAN I will, my lord.

LORD (seeing Sly)

What’s here? One dead, or drunk? See, doth he breathe?

SECOND HUNTSMAN

He breathes, my lord. Were he not warmed with ale

This were a bed but cold to sleep so soundly.

LORD

O monstrous beast! How like a swine he lies.

Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image.

Sirs, I will practise on this drunken man.

What think you: if he were conveyed to bed,

Wrapped in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers,

A most delicious banquet by his bed,

And brave attendants near him when he wakes—

Would not the beggar then forget himself?

FIRST HUNTSMAN

Believe me, lord, I think he cannot choose.

SECOND HUNTSMAN

It would seem strange unto him when he waked.

LORD

Even as a flatt‘ring dream or worthless fancy.

Then take him up, and manage well the jest.

Carry him gently to my fairest chamber,

And hang it round with all my wanton pictures.

Balm his foul head in warm distilled waters,

And burn sweet wood to make the lodging sweet.

Procure me music ready when he wakes

To make a dulcet and a heavenly sound,

And if he chance to speak be ready straight,

And with a low submissive reverence

Say ‘What is it your honour will command?

Let one attend him with a silver basin

Full of rose-water and bestrewed with flowers;

Another bear the ewer, the third a diaper,

And say ‘Will’t please your lordship cool your hands?’

Someone be ready with a costly suit,

And ask him what apparel he will wear.

Another tell him of his hounds and horse,

And that his lady mourns at his disease.

Persuade him that he hath been lunatic,

And when he says he is, say that he dreams,

For he is nothing but a mighty lord.

This do, and do it kindly, gentle sirs.

It will be pastime passing excellent,

If it be husbanded with modesty.

FIRST HUNTSMAN

My lord, I warrant you we will play our part

As he shall think by our true diligence

He is no less than what we say he is.

LORD

Take him up gently, and to bed with him;

And each one to his office when he wakes.

Servingmen carry Sly out

Trumpets sound

Sirrah, go see what trumpet ’tis that sounds.

Exit a Servingman

Belike some noble gentleman that means,

Travelling some journey, to repose him here.

Enter a Servingman

How now? Who is it?

SERVINGMAN An’t please your honour, players That offer service to your lordship.

Enter Players

LORD

Bid them come near. Now fellows, you are welcome.

PLAYERS We thank your honour.

LORD

Do you intend to stay with me tonight?

A PLAYER

So please your lordship to accept our duty.

LORD

With all my heart. This fellow I remember

Since once he played a farmer’s eldest son.

’Twas where you wooed the gentlewoman so well.

I have forgot your name, but sure that part

Was aptly fitted and naturally performed.

ANOTHER PLAYER

I think ’twas Soto that your honour means.

LORD

‘Tis very true. Thou didst it excellent.

Well, you are come to me in happy time,

The rather for I have some sport in hand

Wherein your cunning can assist me much.

There is a lord will hear you play tonight;

But I am doubtful of your modesties

Lest, over-eyeing of his odd behaviour—

For yet his honour never heard a play—

You break into some merry passion,

And so offend him; for I tell you, sirs,

If you should smile he grows impatient.

A PLAYER

Fear not, my lord, we can contain ourselves

Were he the veriest antic in the world.

LORD (to a Servingman)

Go, sirrah, take them to the buttery

And give them friendly welcome every one.

Let them want nothing that my house affords.

Exit one with the Players

(To a Servingman) Sirrah, go you to Barthol‘mew, my

page,

And see him dressed in all suits like a lady.

That done, conduct him to the drunkard’s chamber

And call him ‘madam’, do him obeisance.

Tell him from me, as he will win my love,

He bear himself with honourable action

Such as he hath observed in noble ladies

Unto their lords by them accomplished.

Such duty to the drunkard let him do

With soft low tongue and lowly courtesy,

And say ‘What is’t your honour will command

Wherein your lady and your humble wife

May show her duty and make known her love?’

And then with kind embracements, tempting kisses,

And with declining head into his bosom

Bid him shed tears, as being overjoyed

To see her noble lord restored to health,

Who for this seven years hath esteemed him

No better than a poor and loathsome beggar.

And if the boy have not a woman’s gift

To rain a shower of commanded tears,

An onion will do well for such a shift,

Which, in a napkin being close conveyed,

Shall in despite enforce a watery eye.

See this dispatched with all the haste thou canst.

Anon I’ll give thee more instructions.

Exit a Servingman

I know the boy will well usurp the grace,

Voice, gait, and action of a gentlewoman.

I long to hear him call the drunkard husband,

And how my men will stay themselves from laughter

When they do homage to this simple peasant.

I’ll in to counsel them. Haply my presence

May well abate the over-merry spleen

Which otherwise would grow into extremes.

Exeunt

Induction 2 Enter aloft Sly, the drunkard, with attendants, some with apparel, basin, and ewer, and other appurtenances; and Lord

SLY For God’s sake, a pot of small ale!

FIRST SERVINGMAN

Will’t please your lordship drink a cup of sack?

SECOND SERVINGMAN

Will’t please your honour taste of these conserves?

THIRD SERVINGMAN

What raiment will your honour wear today?

SLY I am Christophero Sly. Call not me ‘honour’ nor ‘lordship’. I ne’er drank sack in my life, and if you give me any conserves, give me conserves of beef. Ne’er ask me what raiment I’ll wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet—nay, sometime more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the over-leather.

LORD

Heaven cease this idle humour in your honour.

O that a mighty man of such descent,

Of such possessions and so high esteem,

Should be infused with so foul a spirit.

SLY What, would you make me mad? Am not I Christopher Sly—old Sly’s son of Burton Heath, by birth a pedlar, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bearherd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know me not. If she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying‘st knave in Christendom. What, I am not bestraught; here’s—

THIRD SERVINGMAN

O, this it is that makes your lady mourn.

SECOND SERVINGMAN

O, this is it that makes your servants droop.

LORD

Hence comes it that your kindred shuns your house,

As beaten hence by your strange lunacy.

O noble lord, bethink thee of thy birth.

Call home thy ancient thoughts from banishment,

And banish hence these abject lowly dreams.

Look how thy servants do attend on thee,

Each in his office, ready at thy beck.

Wilt thou have music?

Music

Hark, Apollo plays,

And twenty caged nightingales do sing.

Or wilt thou sleep? We’ll have thee to a couch

Softer and sweeter than the lustful bed

On purpose trimmed up for Semiramis.

Say thou wilt walk, we will bestrew the ground.

Or wilt thou ride, thy horses shall be trapped,

Their harness studded all with gold and pearl.

Dost thou love hawking? Thou hast hawks will soar

Above the morning lark. Or wilt thou hunt,

Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them

And fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth.

FIRST SERVINGMAN

Say thou wilt course, thy greyhounds are as swift

As breathed stags, ay, fleeter than the roe.

SECOND SERVINGMAN

Dost thou love pictures? We will fetch thee straight

Adonis painted by a running brook,

And Cytherea all in sedges hid,

Which seem to move and wanton with her breath

Even as the waving sedges play wi’th’ wind.

LORD

We’ll show thee Io as she was a maid,

And how she was beguiled and surprised,

As lively painted as the deed was done.

THIRD SERVINGMAN

Or Daphne roaming through a thorny wood,

Scratching her legs that one shall swear she bleeds,

And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep,

So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn.

LORD

Thou art a lord, and nothing but a lord.

Thou hast a lady far more beautiful

Than any woman in this waning age.

FIRST SERVINGMAN

And till the tears that she hath shed for thee

Like envious floods o’errun her lovely face

She was the fairest creature in the world;

And yet she is inferior to none.

SLY

Am I a lord, and have I such a lady?

Or do I dream? Or have I dreamed till now?

I do not sleep. I see, I hear, I speak.

I smell sweet savours, and I feel soft things.

Upon my life, I am a lord indeed,

And not a tinker, nor Christopher Sly.

Well, bring our lady hither to our sight,

And once again a pot o’th’ smallest ale.

SECOND SERVINGMAN

Will’t please your mightiness to wash your hands?

O, how we joy to see your wit restored!

O that once more you knew but what you are!

These fifteen years you have been in a dream,

Or when you waked, so waked as if you slept.

SLY

These fifteen years—by my fay, a goodly nap.

But did I never speak of all that time?

FIRST SERVINGMAN

O yes, my lord, but very idle words,

For though you lay here in this goodly chamber

Yet would you say ye were beaten out of door,

And rail upon the hostess of the house,

And say you would present her at the leet

Because she brought stone jugs and no sealed quarts.

Sometimes you would call out for Cicely Hacket.

SLY Ay, the woman’s maid of the house.

THIRD SERVINGMAN

Why, sir, you know no house, nor no such maid,

Nor no such men as you have reckoned up,

As Stephen Sly, and old John Naps of Greet,

And Peter Turf, and Henry Pimpernel,

And twenty more such names and men as these,

Which never were, nor no man ever saw.

SLY

Now Lord be thankèd for my good amends.

ALL Amen.

SLY I thank thee. Thou shalt not lose by it.

Enter Bartholomew the Page, as Lady, with attendants

BARTHOLOMEW

How fares my noble lord?

SLY

Marry, I fare well,

For here is cheer enough. Where is my wife?

BARTHOLOMEW

Here, noble lord. What is thy will with her?

SLY

Are you my wife, and will not call me husband?

My men should call me lord. I am your goodman.

BARTHOLOMEW

My husband and my lord, my lord and husband;

I am your wife in all obedience.

SLY

I know it well. (To the Lord) What must I call her?

LORD Madam.

SLY Al’ce Madam or Joan Madam?

LORD

Madam, and nothing else. So lords call ladies.

SLY

Madam wife, they say that I have dreamed,

And slept above some fifteen year or more.

BARTHOLOMEW

Ay, and the time seems thirty unto me,

Being all this time abandoned from your bed.

SLY

Tis much. Servants, leave me and her alone.

Exeunt [Lord and] attendants

Madam, undress you and come now to bed.

BARTHOLOMEW

Thrice-noble lord, let me entreat of you

To pardon me yet for a night or two,

Or if not so, until the sun be set,

For your physicians have expressly charged,

In peril to incur your former malady,

That I should yet absent me from your bed.

I hope this reason stands for my excuse.

SLY Ay, it stands so that I may hardly tarry so long. But I would be loath to fall into my dreams again. I will therefore tarry in despite of the flesh and the blood.

Enter a Messenger

MESSENGER

Your honour’s players, hearing your amendment,

Are come to play a pleasant comedy,

For so your doctors hold it very meet,

Seeing too much sadness hath congealed your blood,

And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy.

Therefore they thought it good you hear a play

And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,

Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.

SLY

Marry, I will let them play it. Is not a comonty

A Christmas gambol, or a tumbling trick?

BARTHOLOMEW

No, my good lord, it is more pleasing stuff.

SLY

What, household stuff?

BARTHOLOMEW

It is a kind of history.

SLY

Well, we’ll see’t. Come, madam wife, sit by my side

And let the world slip. We shall ne’er be younger.

Bartholomew sits