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

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Sir, he dined with her there, at the Porcupine.

COURTESAN

He did, and from my finger snatched that ring.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

’Tis true, my liege, this ring I had of her.

DUKE (to Courtesan)

Saw’st thou him enter at the abbey here?

COURTESAN

As sure, my liege, as I do see your grace.

DUKE

Why, this is strange. Go call the Abbess hither.

I think you are all mated, or stark mad.

Exit one to the priory

EGEON (coming forward)

Most mighty Duke, vouchsafe me speak a word.

Haply I see a friend will save my life,

And pay the sum that may deliver me.

DUKE

Speak freely, Syracusian, what thou wilt.

EGEON (to Antipholus)

Is not your name, sir, called Antipholus?

And is not that your bondman Dromio?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

Within this hour I was his bondman, sir,

But he, I thank him, gnawed in two my cords.

Now am I Dromio, and his man, unbound.

EGEON

I am sure you both of you remember me.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

Ourselves we do remember, sir, by you;

For lately we were bound as you are now.

You are not Pinch’s patient, are you, sir?

EGEON

Why look you strange on me? You know me well.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

I never saw you in my life till now.

EGEON

O, grief hath changed me since you saw me last,

And careful hours with time’s deformed hand

Have written strange defeatures in my face.

But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice?

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS Neither.

EGEON Dromio, nor thou?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS No, trust me sir, nor I.

EGEON I am sure thou dost.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS Ay, sir, but I am sure I do not, and whatsoever a man denies, you are now bound to believe him.

EGEON

Not know my voice ? O time’s extremity,

Hast thou so cracked and splitted my poor tongue

In seven short years that here my only son

Knows not my feeble key of untuned cares?

Though now this grained face of mine be hid

In sap-consuming winter’s drizzled snow,

And all the conduits of my blood froze up,

Yet hath my night of life some memory,

My wasting lamps some fading glimmer left,

My dull deaf ears a little use to hear.

All these old witnesses, I cannot err,

Tell me thou art my son Antipholus.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

I never saw my father in my life.

EGEON

But seven years since, in Syracusa bay,

Thou know‘st we parted. But perhaps, my son,

Thou sham’st to acknowledge me in misery.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

The Duke, and all that know me in the city,

Can witness with me that it is not so.

I ne’er saw Syracusa in my life.

DUKE (to Egeon)

I tell thee, Syracusian, twenty years

Have I been patron to Antipholus,

During which time he ne’er saw Syracusa.

I see thy age and dangers make thee dote.

Enter ⌈from the priory⌉ the Abbess, with Antipholus of Syracuse, wearing the chain, and Dromio of Syracuse

ABBESS

Most mighty Duke, behold a man much wronged.

All gather to see them

ADRIANA

I see two husbands, or mine eyes deceive me.

DUKE

One of these men is genius to the other:

And so of these, which is the natural man,

And which the spirit? Who deciphers them?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

I, sir, am Dromio. Command him away.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

I, sir, am Dromio. Pray let me stay.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Egeon, art thou not? Or else his ghost.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

O, my old master, who hath bound him here?

ABBESS

Whoever bound him, I will loose his bonds,

And gain a husband by his liberty.

Speak, old Egeon, if thou beest the man

That hadst a wife once called Emilia,

That bore thee at a burden two fair sons.

O, if thou beest the same Egeon, speak,

And speak unto the same Emilia.

DUKE

Why, here begins his morning story right:

These two Antipholus’, these two so like,

And these two Dromios, one in semblance—

Besides his urging of her wreck at sea.

These are the parents to these children,

Which accidentally are met together.

EGEON

If I dream not, thou art Emilia.

If thou art she, tell me, where is that son

That floated with thee on the fatal raft?

ABBESS

By men of Epidamnum he and I

And the twin Dromio all were taken up.

But, by and by, rude fishermen of Corinth

By force took Dromio and my son from them,

And me they left with those of Epidamnum.

What then became of them I cannot tell;

I, to this fortune that you see me in.

DUKE (to Antipholus of Syracuse)

Antipholus, thou cam’st from Corinth first.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

No, sir, not I. I came from Syracuse.

DUKE

Stay, stand apart. I know not which is which.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

I came from Corinth, my most gracious lord.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS And I with him.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

Brought to this town by that most famous warrior,

Duke Menaphon, your most renowned uncle.

ADRIANA

Which of you two did dine with me today?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE I, gentle mistress.

ADRIANA And are not you my husband?

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS No, I say nay to that.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

And so do I. Yet did she call me so;

And this fair gentlewoman, her sister here,

Did call me brother. (To Luciana) What I told you then

I hope I shall have leisure to make good,

If this be not a dream I see and hear.

ANGELO

That is the chain, sir, which you had of me.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

I think it be, sir. I deny it not.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS (to Angelo)

And you, sir, for this chain arrested me.

ANGELO

I think I did, sir. I deny it not.

ADRIANA (to Antipholus of Ephesus)

I sent you money, sir, to be your bail,

By Dromio, but I think he brought it not.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS No, none by me.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE (to Adriana)

This purse of ducats I received from you,

And Dromio my man did bring them me.

I see we still did meet each other’s man,

And I was ta’en for him, and he for me,

And thereupon these errors are arose.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

These ducats pawn I for my father here.

DUKE

It shall not need. Thy father hath his life.

COURTESAN

Sir, I must have that diamond from you.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

There, take it, and much thanks for my good cheer.

ABBESS

Renowned Duke, vouchsafe to take the pains

To go with us into the abbey here,

And hear at large discoursed all our fortunes,

And all that are assembled in this place,

That by this sympathized one day’s error

Have suffered wrong. Go, keep us company,

And we shall make full satisfaction.

Thirty-three years have I but gone in travail

Of you, my sons, and till this present hour

My heavy burden ne’er delivered.

The Duke, my husband, and my children both,

And you the calendars of their nativity,

Go to a gossips’ feast, and joy with me.

After so long grief, such festivity!

DUKE

With all my heart I’ll gossip at this feast.

Exeunt ⌈into the priory⌉ all but the two Dromios and two brothers Antipholus

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE (to Antipholus of Ephesus)

Master, shall I fetch your stuff from shipboard?

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

Dromio, what stuff of mine hast thou embarked?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Your goods that lay at host, sir, in the Centaur.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

He speaks to me.—I am your master, Dromio.

Come, go with us. We’ll look to that anon.

Embrace thy brother there; rejoice with him.

Exeunt the brothers Antipholus

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

There is a fat friend at your master’s house,

That kitchened me for you today at dinner.

She now shall be my sister, not my wife.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

Methinks you are my glass and not my brother.

I see by you I am a sweet-faced youth.

Will you walk in to see their gossiping?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE Not I, sir, you are my elder.

DROMIO or EPHESUS That’s a question. How shall we try it?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE We’ll draw cuts for the senior. Till then, lead thou first.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS Nay, then thus:

We came into the world like brother and brother,

And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.

Exeunt ⌈to the priory⌉

LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST

THE first, 1598 edition of Love’s Labour’s Lost is the earliest play text to carry Shakespeare’s name on the title-page, which also refers to performance before the Queen ‘this last Christmas’. The play is said to be ‘Newly corrected and augmented’, so perhaps an earlier edition has failed to survive. Even so, the text shows every sign of having been printed from Shakespeare’s working papers, since it includes some passages in draft as well as in revised form. We print the drafts as Additional Passages. The play was probably written some years before publication, in 1594 or 1595.

The setting is Navarre—a kingdom straddling the border between Spain and France—where the young King and three of his friends vow to devote the following three years to austere self-improvement, forgoing the company of women. But they have forgotten the imminent arrival on a diplomatic mission of the Princess of France with, as it happens, three of her ladies; much comedy derives from, first, the men’s embarrassed attempts to conceal from one another that they are falling in love, and second, the girls’ practical joke in exchanging identities when the men, disguised as Russians, come to entertain and to woo them. Shakespeare seems to have picked up the King’s friends’ names—Biron, Dumaine, and Longueville—from leading figures in contemporary France, but to have invented the plot himself. He counterpoints the main action with events involving characters based in part on the type-figures of Italian commedia dell‘arte who reflect facets of the lords’ personalities. Costard, an unsophisticated, open-hearted yokel, and his girl-friend Jaquenetta are sexually uninhibited; Don Adriano de Armado, ‘a refinèd traveller of Spain’ who also, though covertly, loves Jaquenetta, is full of pompous affectation; and Holofernes, a schoolmaster (seen always with his doting companion, the curate Sir Nathaniel), demonstrates the avid pedantry into which the young men’s verbal brilliance could degenerate. Much of the play’s language is highly sophisticated (this is, as the title-page claims, a ‘conceited comedy’), in keeping with its subject matter. But the action reaches its climax when a messenger brings news which is communicated entirely without verbal statement. This is a theatrical masterstroke which also signals Shakespeare’s most daring experiment with comic form. ‘The scene begins to cloud’; in the play’s closing minutes the lords and ladies seek to readjust themselves to the new situation, and the play ends in subdued fashion with a third entertainment, the songs of the owl and the cuckoo.

Love’s Labour’s Lost was for long regarded as a play of excessive verbal sophistication, of interest mainly because of a series of supposed topical allusions; but a number of distinguished twentieth-century productions revealed its theatrical mastery.

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

Ferdinand, KING of Navarre

Don Adriano de ARMADO, an affected Spanish braggart

MOTE, his page

PRINCESS of France

COSTARD, a Clown

JAQUENETTA, a country wench

Sir NATHANIEL, a curate

HOLOFERNES, a schoolmaster

Anthony DULL, a constable

MERCADE, a messenger

A FORESTER

Love’s Labour’s Lost

1.1 Enter Ferdinand, King of Navarre, Biron, Longueville, and Dumaine

KING

Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,

Live registered upon our brazen tombs,

And then grace us in the disgrace of death

When, spite of cormorant devouring time,

Th’endeavour of this present breath may buy

That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge

And make us heirs of all eternity.

Therefore, brave conquerors—for so you are,

That war against your own affections

And the huge army of the world’s desires—

Our late edict shall strongly stand in force.

Navarre shall be the wonder of the world.

Our court shall be a little academe,

Still and contemplative in living art.

You three—Biron, Dumaine, and Longueville—

Have sworn for three years’ term to live with me

My fellow scholars, and to keep those statutes

That are recorded in this schedule here.

Your oaths are passed; and now subscribe your names,

That his own hand may strike his honour down

That violates the smallest branch herein.

If you are armed to do as sworn to do,

Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it, too.

LONGUEVILLE

I am resolved. ‘Tis but a three years’ fast.

The mind shall banquet, though the body pine.

Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits

Make rich the ribs but bankrupt quite the wits.

He signs

DUMAINE

My loving lord, Dumaine is mortified.

The grosser manner of these world’s delights

He throws upon the gross world’s baser slaves.

To love, to wealth, to pomp I pine and die,

With all these living in philosophy.

He signs

BIRON

I can but say their protestation over.

So much, dear liege, I have already sworn:

That is, to live and study here three years.

But there are other strict observances,

As not to see a woman in that term,

Which I hope well is not enrolled there;

And one day in a week to touch no food,

And but one meal on every day beside,

The which I hope is not enrolled there;

And then to sleep but three hours in the night,

And not be seen to wink of all the day,

When I was wont to think no harm all night,

And make a dark night too of half the day,

Which I hope well is not enrolled there.

O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep—

Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep.

KING

Your oath is passed to pass away from these.

BIRON

Let me say no, my liege, an if you please.

I only swore to study with your grace,

And stay here in your court, for three years’ space.

LONGUEVILLE

You swore to that, Biron, and to the rest.

BIRON

By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest.

What is the end of study, let me know?

KING

Why, that to know which else we should not know.

BIRON

Things hid and barred, you mean, from common sense.

KING

Ay, that is study’s god-like recompense.

BIRON

Come on, then, I will swear to study so

To know the thing I am forbid to know,

As thus: to study where I well may dine

When I to feast expressly am forbid,

Or study where to meet some mistress fine

When mistresses from common sense are hid;

Or having sworn too hard a keeping oath,

Study to break it and not break my troth.

If study’s gain be thus, and this be so,

Study knows that which yet it doth not know.

Swear me to this, and I will ne’er say no.

KING

These be the stops that hinder study quite,

And train our intellects to vain delight.

BIRON

Why, all delights are vain, but that most vain

Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain;

As painfully to pore upon a book

To seek the light of truth while truth the while

Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.

Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile;

So ere you find where light in darkness lies

Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.

Study me how to please the eye indeed

By fixing it upon a fairer eye,

Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed,

And give him light that it was blinded by.

Study is like the heavens’ glorious sun,

That will not be deep searched with saucy looks.

Small have continual plodders ever won

Save base authority from others’ books.

These earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights,

That give a name to every fixed star,

Have no more profit of their shining nights

Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

Too much to know is to know naught but fame,

And every godfather can give a name.

KING

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

DUMAINE

Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding.

LONGUEVILLE

He weeds the corn and still lets grow the weeding.

BIRON

The spring is near when green geese are a-breeding.

DUMAINE

How follows that?

BIRON

Fit in his place and time.

DUMAINE

In reason nothing.

BIRON

Something then in rhyme.

KING

Biron is like an envious sneaping frost,

That bites the first-born infants of the spring.

BIRON

Well, say I am! Why should proud summer boast

Before the birds have any cause to sing?

Why should I joy in any abortive birth?

At Christmas I no more desire a rose

Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled shows,

But like of each thing that in season grows.

So you to study, now it is too late,

Climb o’er the house to unlock the little gate.

KING

Well, sit you out. Go home, Biron. Adieu.

BIRON

No, my good lord, I have sworn to stay with you.

And though I have for barbarism spoke more

Than for that angel knowledge you can say,

Yet confident I’ll keep what I have sworn,

And bide the penance of each three years’ day.

Give me the paper. Let me read the same,

And to the strict’st decrees I’ll write my name.

KING (giving a paper)

How well this yielding rescues thee from shame!

BIRON (reads) ‘Item: that no woman shall come within a mile of my court.’ Hath this been proclaimed?

LONGUEVILLE Four days ago.

BIRON Let’s see the penalty. ‘On pain of losing her tongue.’ Who devised this penalty?

LONGUEVILLE Marry, that did I.

BIRON Sweet lord, and why?

LONGUEVILLE

To fright them hence with that dread penalty.

BIRON

A dangerous law against gentility.

‘Item: if any man be seen to talk with a woman within

the term of three years, he shall endure such public

shame as the rest of the court can possible devise.’

This article, my liege, yourself must break;

For well you know here comes in embassy

The French King’s daughter with yourself to speak—

A maid of grace and complete majesty—

About surrender-up of Aquitaine

To her decrepit, sick, and bedrid father.

Therefore this article is made in vain,

Or vainly comes th’admirèd Princess hither.

KING

What say you, lords? Why, this was quite forgot.

BIRON

So study evermore is overshot.

While it doth study to have what it would,

It doth forget to do the thing it should;

And when it hath the thing it hunteth most,

’Tis won as towns with fire—so won, so lost.

KING

We must of force dispense with this decree.

She must lie here, on mere necessity.

BIRON

Necessity will make us all forsworn

Three thousand times within this three years’ space;

For every man with his affects is born,

Not by might mastered, but by special grace.

If I break faith, this word shall speak for me:

I am forsworn on mere necessity.

So to the laws at large I write my name,

And he that breaks them in the least degree

Stands in attainder of eternal shame.

He signs

Suggestions are to other as to me,

But I believe, although I seem so loath,

I am the last that will last keep his oath.

But is there no quick recreation granted?

KING

Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted

With a refined traveller of Spain,

A man in all the world’s new fashion planted,

That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.

One who the music of his own vain tongue

Doth ravish like enchanting harmony;

A man of complements, whom right and wrong

Have chose as umpire of their mutiny.

This child of fancy, that Armado hight,

For interim to our studies shall relate

In high-borne words the worth of many a knight

From tawny Spain lost in the world’s debate.

How you delight, my lords, I know not, I;

But I protest I love to hear him lie,

And I will use him for my minstrelsy.

BIRON

Armado is a most illustrious wight,

A man of fire-new words, fashion’s own knight.

LONGUEVILLE

Costard the swain and he shall be our sport,

And so to study three years is but short.

Enter a constable, Anthony Dull, with Costard with a letter

DULL Which is the Duke’s own person?

BIRON This, fellow. What wouldst?

DULL I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his grace’s farborough. But I would see his own person in flesh and blood.

BIRON This is he.

DULL Senor Arm—Arm—commends you. There’s villainy abroad. This letter will tell you more.

COSTARD Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me. KING A letter from the magnificent Armado.

BIRON How low soever the matter, I hope in God for high words.

LONGUEVILLE A high hope for a low heaven. God grant us patience.

BIRON To hear, or forbear laughing?

LONGUEVILLE To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately, or to forbear both.

BIRON Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb in the merriness.

COSTARD The matter is to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta. The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner.

BIRON In what manner?

COSTARD In manner and form following, sir—all those three. I was seen with her in the manor house, sitting with her upon the form, and taken following her into the park; which put together is ‘in manner and form following’. Now, sir, for the manner: it is the manner of a man to speak to a woman. For the form: in some form.

BIRON For the ‘following’, sir?

COSTARD As it shall follow in my correction; and God defend the right.

KING Will you hear this letter with attention?

BIRON As we would hear an oracle.

COSTARD Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.

KING (reads) ‘Great deputy, the welkin’s vicegerent and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul’s earth’s god, and body’s fostering patron’—

COSTARD Not a word of Costard yet.

KING ‘So it is’—

COSTARD It may be so; but if he say it is so, he is, in telling true, but so.

KING Peace!

COSTARD Be to me and every man that dares not fight.

KING No words!

COSTARD Of other men’s secrets, I beseech you.

KING ‘So it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air, and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About the sixth hour, when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper. So much for the time when. Now for the ground which—which, I mean, I walked upon. It is yclept thy park. Then for the place where—where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest. But to the place where. It standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted garden. There did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth’—

COSTARD Me?

KING ‘That unlettered, small-knowing sout’—

COSTARD Me?

KING ‘That shallow vassal’—

COSTARD Still me?

KING ‘Which, as I remember, hight Costard’—

COSTARD O, me!

KING ‘Sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established proclaimed edict and continent canon, with, with, O with—but with this I passion to say wherewith’—COSTARD With a wench.

KING ‘With a child of our grandmother Eve, a female, or for thy more sweet understanding a woman. Him I, as my ever-esteemed duty pricks me on, have sent to thee, to receive the meed of punishment, by thy sweet grace’s officer Anthony Dull, a man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation.’

DULL Me, an’t shall please you. I am Anthony Dull.

KING ‘For Jaquenetta—so is the weaker vessel called—which I apprehended with the aforesaid swain, I keep her as a vessel of thy law’s fury, and shall at the least of thy sweet notice bring her to trial. Thine in all compliments of devoted and heartburning heat of duty,

Don Adriano de Armado.’

BIRON This is not so well as I looked for, but the best that ever I heard.

KING Ay, the best for the worst. (To Costard) But, sirrah, what say you to this?

COSTARD Sir, I confess the wench.

KING Did you hear the proclamation?

COSTARD I do confess much of the hearing it, but little of the marking of it.

KING It was proclaimed a year’s imprisonment to be taken with a wench.

COSTARD I was taken with none, sir. I was taken with a damsel.

KING Well, it was proclaimed ‘damsel’.

COSTARD This was no damsel, neither, sir. She was a virgin.

⌈KING⌉ It is so varied, too, for it was proclaimed ‘virgin’.

COSTARD If it were, I deny her virginity. I was taken with a maid.

KING This ‘maid’ will not serve your turn, sir.

COSTARD This maid will serve my turn, sir.

KING Sir, I will pronounce your sentence. You shall fast a week with bran and water.

COSTARD I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge.

KING

And Don Armado shall be your keeper.

My lord Biron, see him delivered o’er,

And go we, lords, to put in practice that

Which each to other hath so strongly sworn.

Exeunt the King, Longueville, and Dumaine

BIRON

I’ll lay my head to any good man’s hat

These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn.

Sirrah, come on.

COSTARD I suffer for the truth, sir; for true it is I was taken with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl, and therefore, welcome the sour cup of prosperity, affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow. Exeunt