Is so from word to word, and then you cannot,

By the good aid that I of you shall borrow,

Err in bestowing it.

WIDOW

I should believe you,

For you have showed me that which well approves

You’re great in fortune.

HELEN

Take this purse of gold,

And let me buy your friendly help thus far,

Which I will over-pay, and pay again

When I have found it. The Count he woos your

daughter,

Lays down his wanton siege before her beauty,

Resolved to carry her. Let her in fine consent,

As we’ll direct her how ‘tis best to bear it.

Now his important blood will naught deny

That she’ll demand. A ring the County wears,

That downward hath succeeded in his house

From son to son some four or five descents

Since the first father wore it. This ring he holds

In most rich choice; yet in his idle fire

To buy his will it would not seem too dear,

Howe’er repented after.

WIDOW

Now I see the bottom of your purpose.

HELEN

You see it lawful then. It is no more

But that your daughter ere she seems as won

Desires this ring; appoints him an encounter;

In fine, delivers me to fill the time,

Herself most chastely absent. After,

To marry her I’ll add three thousand crowns

To what is passed already.

WIDOW

I have yielded.

Instruct my daughter how she shall persever,

That time and place with this deceit so lawful

May prove coherent. Every night he comes

With musics of all sorts, and songs composed

To her unworthiness. It nothing steads us

To chide him from our eaves, for he persists

As if his life lay on’t.

HELEN

Why then tonight

Let us essay our plot, which if it speed

Is wicked meaning in a lawful deed

And lawful meaning in a wicked act,

Where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact.

But let’s about it. Exeunt

4.1 Enter ⌈Second Lord Dumaine⌉, with five or six other soldiers, in ambush

⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE He can come no other way but by this hedge corner. When you sally upon him, speak what terrible language you will. Though you understand it not yourselves, no matter, for we must not seem to understand him, unless some one among us, whom we must produce for an interpreter. 6

INTERPRETER Good captain, let me be th’interpreter.

⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE Art not acquainted with him? Knows he not thy voice?

INTERPRETER No, sir, I warrant you.

⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE But what linsey-woolsey hast thou to speak to us again?

INTERPRETER E’en such as you speak to me.

⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE He must think us some band of strangers i’th’ adversary’s entertainment. Now he hath a smack of all neighbouring languages, therefore we must every one be a man of his own fancy. Not to know what we speak one to another, so we seem to know, is to know straight our purpose: choughs’ language, gabble enough and good enough. As for you, interpreter, you must seem very politic. But couch, ho! Here he comes, to beguile two hours in a sleep, and then to return and swear the lies he forges.

They hide. Enter Paroles. ⌈Clock strikes⌉

PAROLES Ten o‘clock. Within these three hours ’twill be time enough to go home. What shall I say I have done? It must be a very plausive invention that carries it. They begin to smoke me, and disgraces have of late knocked too often at my door. I find my tongue is too foolhardy, but my heart hath the fear of Mars before it, and of his creatures, not daring the reports of my tongue. 31

⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE (aside) This is the first truth that e’er thine own tongue was guilty of.

PAROLES What the devil should move me to undertake the recovery of this drum, being not ignorant of the impossibility, and knowing I had no such purpose? I must give myself some hurts, and say I got them in exploit. Yet slight ones will not carry it. They will say, ‘Came you off with so little?’ And great ones I dare not give. Wherefore, what’s the instance? Tongue, I must put you into a butter-woman’s mouth, and buy myself another of Bajazet’s mute, if you prattle me into these perils.

⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE (aside) Is it possible he should know what he is, and be that he is?

PAROLES I would the cutting of my garments would serve the turn, or the breaking of my Spanish sword.

⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE (aside) We cannot afford you so.

PAROLES Or the baring of my beard, and to say it was in stratagem.

⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE (aside) ’Twould not do.

PAROLES Or to drown my clothes, and say I was stripped.

⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE (aside) Hardly serve.

PAROLES Though I swore I leapt from the window of the citadel? 55 ⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE (aside) How deep?

PAROLES Thirty fathom.

⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE (aside) Three great oaths would scarce make that be believed.

PAROLES I would I had any drum of the enemy’s. I would swear I recovered it.

⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE (aside) You shall hear one anon.

PAROLES A drum now of the enemy’s—Alarum within. ⌈The ambush rushes forth⌉

⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE Throca movousus, cargo, cargo, cargo.

⌈SOLDIERS⌉ (severally) Cargo, cargo, cargo, villianda par corbo, cargo.

⌈They seize and blindfold him⌉

PAROLES

O ransom, ransom, do not hide mine eyes.

INTERPRETER Boskos thromuldo boskos.

PAROLES

I know you are the Moscows regiment,

And I shall lose my life for want of language.

If there be here German or Dane, Low Dutch,

Italian, or French, let him speak to me,

I’ll discover that which shall undo the Florentine.

INTERPRETER Boskos vauvado.—

I understand thee, and can speak thy tongue.—

Kerelybonto.—Sir,

Betake thee to thy faith, for seventeen poniards

Are at thy bosom.

PAROLES

O!

INTERPRETER

O pray, pray, pray!—

Manka revania dulche? 80

⌈SECOND⌉ LORD DUMAINE

Oscorbidulchos volivorco.

INTERPRETER

The general is content to spare thee yet,

And, hoodwinked as thou art, will lead thee on

To gather from thee. Haply thou mayst inform

Something to save thy life.

PAROLES