You’ll find a loving mistress.

ARCITE

If I do not, Let me find that my father ever hated—

Disgrace and blows.

THESEUS

Go, lead the way—you have won it. It shall be so: you shall receive all dues

Fit for the honour you have won. ’Twere wrong else.

(To Emilia) Sister, beshrew my heart, you have a

servant

That, if I were a woman, would be master.

But you are wise.

EMILIA

I hope too wise for that, sir.

Flourish. Exeunt

2.6 Enter the jailer’s Daughter

JAILER’S DAUGHTER

Let all the dukes and all the devils roar—

He is at liberty! I have ventured for him,

And out I have brought him. To a little wood

A mile hence I have sent him, where a cedar

Higher than all the rest spreads like a plane,

Fast by a brook—and there he shall keep close

Till I provide him files and food, for yet

His iron bracelets are not off. O Love,

What a stout-hearted child thou art! My father

Durst better have endured cold iron than done it.

I love him beyond love and beyond reason

Or wit or safety. I have made him know it—

I care not, I am desperate. If the law

Find me and then condemn me for‘t, some wenches,

Some honest-hearted maids, will sing my dirge

And tell to memory my death was noble,

Dying almost a martyr. That way he takes,

I purpose, is my way too. Sure, he cannot

Be so unmanly as to leave me here.

If he do, maids will not so easily

Trust men again. And yet, he has not thanked me

For what I have done—no, not so much as kissed me—

And that, methinks, is not so well. Nor scarcely

Could I persuade him to become a free man,

He made such scruples of the wrong he did

To me and to my father. Yet, I hope

When he considers more, this love of mine

Will take more root within him. Let him do

What he will with me—so he use me kindly.

For use me, so he shall, or I’ll proclaim him,

And to his face, no man. I’ll presently

Provide him necessaries and pack my clothes up,

And where there is a patch of ground I’ll venture,

So he be with me. By him, like a shadow,

I’ll ever dwell. Within this hour the hubbub

Will be all o’er the prison—I am then

Kissing the man they look for. Farewell, father:

Get many more such prisoners and such daughters,

And shortly you may keep yourself. Now to him.

Exit

3.1 A bush in place.⌉ Cornetts in sundry places. Noise and hollering as of people a-Maying. Enter Arcite

ARCITE

The Duke has lost Hippo)yta—each took

A several laund. This is a solemn rite

They owe bloomed May, and the Athenians pay it

To th’ heart of ceremony. O, Queen Emilia,

Fresher than May, sweeter

Than her gold buttons on the boughs, or all

Th’enamelled knacks o’th’ mead or garden—yea,

We challenge too the bank of any nymph

That makes the stream seem flowers; thou, O jewel

O’th’ wood, o’th’ world, hast likewise blessed a pace

With thy sole presence in thy ⌈

⌉ rumination

That I, poor man, might eftsoons come between

And chop on some cold thought. Thrice blessèd

chance

To drop on such a mistress, expectation

Most guiltless on‘t! Tell me, O Lady Fortune,

Next after Emily my sovereign, how far

I may be proud. She takes strong note of me,

Hath made me near her, and this beauteous morn,

The prim’st of all the year, presents me with

A brace of horses—two such steeds might well

Be by a pair of kings backed, in a field

That their crowns’ titles tried. Alas, alas,

Poor cousin Palamon, poor prisoner—thou

So little dream’st upon my fortune that

Thou think’st thyself the happier thing to be

So near Emilia. Me thou deem’st at Thebes,

And therein wretched, although free. But if

Thou knew’st my mistress breathed on me, and that

I eared her language, lived in her eye-O, coz,

What passion would enclose thee!

Enter Palamon as out of a bush with his shackles. He bends his fist at Arcite

PALAMON

Traitor kinsman, Thou shouldst perceive my passion if these signs

Of prisonment were off me, and this hand

But owner of a sword. By all oaths in one,

I and the justice of my love would make thee

A confessed traitor. O thou most perfidious

That ever gently looked, the void’st of honour

That e’er bore gentle token, falsest cousin

That ever blood made kin—call’st thou her thine?

I’ll prove it in my shackles, with these hands,

Void of appointment, that thou liest and art

A very thief in love, a chaffy lord