Scene
I
Athens. A garden, with a castle in the background.
Enter Gaoler and Wooer.
Gaoler
I may depart with little, while I live; something I may cast to you, not much. Alas! the prison I keep, though it be for great ones, yet they seldom come: before one salmon, you shall take a number of minnows. I am given out to be better lined than it can appear to me report is a true speaker: I would I were really that I am delivered to be. Marry, what I have—be it what it will—I will assure upon my daughter at the day of my death.
Wooer
Sir, I demand no more than your own offer; and I will estate your daughter in what I have promised.
Gaoler
Well, we will talk more of this when the solemnity is past. But have you a full promise of her? when that shall be seen, I tender my consent.
Wooer
I have, sir. Here she comes.
Enter Gaoler’s Daughter.
Gaoler
Your friend and I have chanced to name you here, upon the old business; but no more of that now: so soon as the court-hurry is over, we will have an end of it: i’ the meantime, look tenderly to the two prisoners; I can tell you they are princes.
Daughter
These strewings are for their chamber. ’Tis pity they are in prison, and ’twere pity they should be out. I do think they have patience to make any adversity ashamed: the prison itself is proud of ’em; and they have all the world in their chamber.
Gaoler
They are famed to be a pair of absolute men.
Daughter
By my troth, I think fame but stammers ’em; they stand a greise above the reach of report.
Gaoler
I heard them reported in the battle to be the only doers.
Daughter
Nay, most likely; for they are noble sufferers. I marvel how they would have looked, had they been victors, that with such a constant nobility enforce a freedom out of bondage, making misery their mirth, and affliction a toy to jest at.
Gaoler
Do they so?
Daughter
It seems to me they have no more sense of their captivity than I of ruling Athens: they eat well, look merrily, discourse of many things, but nothing of their own restraint and disasters. Yet sometime a divided sigh, martyred as ’twere i’ the deliverance, will break from one of them; when the other presently gives it so sweet a rebuke, that I could wish myself a sigh to be so chid, or at least a sigher to be comforted.
Wooer
I never saw ’em.
Gaoler
The duke himself came privately in the night, and so did they: what the reason of it is, I know not.
Enter Palamon and Arcite, above.
Look, yonder they are! that’s Arcite looks out.
Daughter
No, sir, no; that’s Palamon: Arcite is the lower of the twain; you may perceive a part of him.
Gaoler
Go to! leave your pointing: they would not make us their object: out of their sight!
Daughter
It is a holiday to look on them. Lord, the diffrence of men! Exeunt.