Cymbeline by William Shakespeare
Act 3 - Scene 3
Wales: a mountainous country with a cave.
Belarius : A goodly day not to keep house, with such
[p]Whose roof's as low as
ours! Stoop, boys; this gate
[p]Instructs you how to adore the heavens
and bows you
[p]To a morning's holy office: the gates of
monarchs
[p]Are arch'd so high that giants may jet through
[p]And keep
their impious turbans on, without
[p]Good morrow to the sun. Hail,
thou fair heaven!
[p]We house i' the rock, yet use thee not so
hardly
[p]As prouder livers do.
Guiderius : Hail, heaven!
Arviragus : Hail, heaven!
Belarius : Now for our mountain sport: up to yond hill;
[p]Your legs are young;
I'll tread these flats. Consider,
[p]When you above perceive me like a
crow,
[p]That it is place which lessens and sets off;
[p]And you may
then revolve what tales I have told you
[p]Of courts, of princes, of
the tricks in war:
[p]This service is not service, so being
done,
[p]But being so allow'd: to apprehend thus,
[p]Draws us a profit
from all things we see;
[p]And often, to our comfort, shall we
find
[p]The sharded beetle in a safer hold
[p]Than is the full-wing'd
eagle. O, this life
[p]Is nobler than attending for a
cheque,
[p]Richer than doing nothing for a bauble,
[p]Prouder than
rustling in unpaid-for silk:
[p]Such gain the cap of him that makes
'em fine,
[p]Yet keeps his book uncross'd: no life to ours.
Guiderius : Out of your proof you speak: we, poor unfledged,
[p]Have never wing'd
from view o' the nest, nor know not
[p]What air's from home. Haply
this life is best,
[p]If quiet life be best; sweeter to you
[p]That
have a sharper known; well corresponding
[p]With your stiff age: but
unto us it is
[p]A cell of ignorance; travelling a-bed;
[p]A prison
for a debtor, that not dares
[p]To stride a limit.
Arviragus : What should we speak of
[p]When we are old as you? when we shall
hear
[p]The rain and wind beat dark December, how,
[p]In this our
pinching cave, shall we discourse
[p]The freezing hours away? We have
seen nothing;
[p]We are beastly, subtle as the fox for prey,
[p]Like
warlike as the wolf for what we eat;
[p]Our valour is to chase what
flies; our cage
[p]We make a quire, as doth the prison'd bird,
[p]And
sing our bondage freely.
Belarius : How you speak!
[p]Did you but know the city's usuries
[p]And felt them
knowingly; the art o' the court
[p]As hard to leave as keep; whose top
to climb
[p]Is certain falling, or so slippery that
[p]The fear's as
bad as falling; the toil o' the war,
[p]A pain that only seems to seek
out danger
[p]I' the name of fame and honour; which dies i'
[p]the
search,
[p]And hath as oft a slanderous epitaph
[p]As record of fair
act; nay, many times,
[p]Doth ill deserve by doing well; what's
worse,
[p]Must court'sy at the censure:--O boys, this story
[p]The
world may read in me: my body's mark'd
[p]With Roman swords, and my
report was once
[p]First with the best of note: Cymbeline loved
me,
[p]And when a soldier was the theme, my name
[p]Was not far off:
then was I as a tree
[p]Whose boughs did bend with fruit: but in one
night,
[p]A storm or robbery, call it what you will,
[p]Shook down my
mellow hangings, nay, my leaves,
[p]And left me bare to weather.
Guiderius : Uncertain favour!
Belarius : My fault being nothing--as I have told you oft--
[p]But that two
villains, whose false oaths prevail'd
[p]Before my perfect honour,
swore to Cymbeline
[p]I was confederate with the Romans:
so
[p]Follow'd my banishment, and this twenty years
[p]This rock and
these demesnes have been my world;
[p]Where I have lived at honest
freedom, paid
[p]More pious debts to heaven than in all
[p]The
fore-end of my time. But up to the mountains!
[p]This is not hunters'
language: he that strikes
[p]The venison first shall be the lord o'
the feast;
[p]To him the other two shall minister;
[p]And we will fear
no poison, which attends
[p]In place of greater state. I'll meet you
in the valleys.
[p][Exeunt GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS]
[p]How hard it is
to hide the sparks of nature!
[p]These boys know little they are sons
to the king;
[p]Nor Cymbeline dreams that they are alive.
[p]They
think they are mine; and though train'd
[p]up thus meanly
[p]I' the
cave wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit
[p]The roofs of palaces,
and nature prompts them
[p]In simple and low things to prince it
much
[p]Beyond the trick of others. This Polydore,
[p]The heir of
Cymbeline and Britain, who
[p]The king his father call'd
Guiderius,--Jove!
[p]When on my three-foot stool I sit and tell
[p]The
warlike feats I have done, his spirits fly out
[p]Into my story: say
'Thus, mine enemy fell,
[p]And thus I set my foot on 's neck;' even
then
[p]The princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats,
[p]Strains
his young nerves and puts himself in posture
[p]That acts my words.
The younger brother, Cadwal,
[p]Once Arviragus, in as like a
figure,
[p]Strikes life into my speech and shows much more
[p]His own
conceiving.--Hark, the game is roused!
[p]O Cymbeline! heaven and my
conscience knows
[p]Thou didst unjustly banish me: whereon,
[p]At
three and two years old, I stole these babes;
[p]Thinking to bar thee
of succession, as
[p]Thou reft'st me of my lands. Euriphile,
[p]Thou
wast their nurse; they took thee for
[p]their mother,
[p]And every day
do honour to her grave:
[p]Myself, Belarius, that am Morgan
call'd,
[p]They take for natural father. The game is up.
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Next: Act 3 - Scene 4
