To Imogen. You are not well: remain here in the cave;
We’ll come to you after hunting.
To Imogen. Brother, stay here:
Are we not brothers?
So man and man should be;
But clay and clay differs in dignity,
Whose dust is both alike. I am very sick.
So sick I am not, yet I am not well;
But not so citizen a wanton as
To seem to die ere sick: so please you, leave me;
Stick to your journal course: the breach of custom
Is breach of all. I am ill, but your being by me
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.
I love thee; I have spoke it:
How much the quantity, the weight as much,
As I do love my father.
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’ld say
“My father, not this youth.”
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.
’Tis the ninth hour o’ the morn.
Aside. These are kind creatures. Gods, what lies I have heard!
Our courtiers say all’s savage but at court:
Experience, O, thou disprovest report!
The imperious seas breed monsters, for the dish
Poor tributary rivers as sweet fish.
I am sick still; heart-sick. Pisanio,
I’ll now taste of thy drug. Swallows some.
I could not stir him:
He said he was gentle, but unfortunate;
Dishonestly afflicted, but yet honest.
Thus did he answer me: yet said, hereafter
I might know more.
To the field, to the field!
We’ll leave you for this time: go in and rest.
Pray, be not sick,
For you must be our housewife.
Well or ill,
I am bound to you.
And shalt be ever. Exit Imogen, to the cave.
This youth, how’er distress’d, appears he hath had
Good ancestors.
But his neat cookery! he cut our roots
In characters,
And sauced our broths, as Juno had been sick
And he her dieter.
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.
I do note
That grief and patience, rooted in him both,
Mingle their spurs together.
Grow, patience!
And let the stinking elder, grief, untwine
His perishing root with the increasing vine!
I cannot find those runagates; that villain
Hath mock’d me. I am faint.
“Those runagates!”
Means he not us? I partly know him: ’tis
Cloten, the son o’ the queen. I fear some ambush.
I saw him not these many years, and yet
I know ’tis he. We are held as outlaws: hence!
He is but one: you and my brother search
What companies are near: pray you, away;
Let me alone with him. Exeunt Belarius and Arviragus.
Soft! What are you
That fly me thus? some villain mountaineers?
I have heard of such. What slave art thou?
A thing
More slavish did I ne’er than answering
A slave without a knock.
Thou art a robber,
A law-breaker, a villain: yield thee, thief.
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?
Thou villain base,
Know’st me not by my clothes?
No, nor thy tailor, rascal,
Who is thy grandfather: he made those clothes,
Which, as it seems, make thee.
Thou precious varlet,
My tailor made them not.
Hence, then, and thank
The man that gave them thee. Thou art some fool;
I am loath to beat thee.
Thou injurious thief,
Hear but my name, and tremble.
Cloten, thou double villain, be thy name,
I cannot tremble at it: were it Toad, or Adder, Spider,
’Twould move me sooner.
To thy further fear,
Nay, to thy mere confusion, thou shalt know
I am son to the queen.
I am sorry for’t; not seeming
So worthy as thy birth.
Those that I reverence those I fear, the wise:
At fools I laugh, not fear them.
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. Exeunt, fighting.
I cannot tell: long is it since I saw him,
But time hath nothing blurr’d 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.
In this place we left them:
I wish my brother make good time with him,
You say he is so fell.
Being scarce made up,
I mean, to man, he had not apprehension
Of roaring terrors; for the effect of judgment
Is oft the cause of fear. But, see, thy brother.
This Cloten was a fool, an empty purse;
There was no money in’t: not Hercules
Could have knock’d out his brains, for he had none:
Yet I not doing this, the fool had borne
My head as I do his.
I am perfect what: cut off one Cloten’s head,
Son
