Scene + 

VI + 

Athens. Before the prison. + 

Enter Gaoler’s Daughter. + 

Daughter + 

Let all the dukes and all the devils roar, + 

He is at liberty: I’ve ventur’d for him; + 

And out I’ve 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 endur’d 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 thank’d me + 

For what I’ve done; no, not so much as kiss’d me; + 

And that, methinks, is not so well; nor scarcely + 

Could I persuade him to become a freeman, + 

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 whoobub + 

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. + 