Cymbeline
Act III, Scene 3
Wales. A mountainous country with a cave.
Guiderius
From costume designs for the Viola Allen production of Cymbeline
Tom Heslewood, circa 1906
- Enter from their cave Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus.
Belarius
1 - 9- A goodly day not to keep house with such
- Whose roof’s as low as ours! Stoop, boys, this gate
- Instructs you how t’ adore the heavens, and bows you
- To a morning’s holy office. The gates of monarchs
- Are arch’d so high that giants may jet through
- And keep their impious turbands on without
- Good morrow to the sun. Hail, thou fair heaven!
- We house i’ th’ rock, yet use thee not so hardly
- As prouder livers do.
Guiderius
10- Hail, heaven!
Arviragus
11- Hail, heaven!
Belarius
12 - 28- Now for our mountain sport: up to yond hill,
- Your legs are young; I’ll tread these flats. Consider,
- When you above perceive me like a crow,
- That it is place which lessens and sets off,
- And you may then revolve what tales I have told you
- Of courts, of princes, of the tricks in war.
- This service is not service, so being done,
- But being so allowed. To apprehend thus
- Draws us a profit from all things we see;
- And often, to our comfort, shall we find
- The sharded beetle in a safer hold
- Than is the full-wing’d eagle. O, this life
- Is nobler than attending for a check;
- Richer than doing nothing for a bable;
- Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk:
- Such gain the cap of him that makes him fine,
- Yet keeps his book uncross’d. No life to ours.
Guiderius
29 - 37- Out of your proof you speak; we poor unfledg’d
- Have never wing’d from view o’ th’ nest, nor know not
- What air’s from home. Happ’ly this life is best,
- If quiet life be best; sweeter to you
- That have a sharper known; well corresponding
- With your stiff age; but unto us it is
- A cell of ignorance, traveling a-bed,
- A prison, or a debtor that not dares
- To stride a limit.
Arviragus
38 - 47- What should we speak of
- When we are old as you? When we shall hear
- The rain and wind beat dark December, how,
- In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse
- The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing.
- We are beastly: subtle as the fox for prey,
- Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat;
- Our valor is to chase what flies. Our cage
- We make a choir, as doth the prison’d bird,
- And sing our bondage freely.
Belarius
48 - 68- How you speak!
- Did you but know the city’s usuries,
- And felt them knowingly; the art o’ th’ court,
- As hard to leave as keep; whose top to climb
- Is certain falling, or so slipp’ry that
- The fear’s as bad as falling; the toil o’ th’ war,
- A pain that only seems to seek out danger
- I’ th’ name of fame and honor which dies i’ th’ search,
- And hath as oft a sland’rous epitaph
- As record of fair act; nay, many times
- Doth ill deserve by doing well; what’s worse,
- Must curtsy at the censure. O boys, this story
- The world may read in me: my body’s mark’d
- With Roman swords, and my report was once
- First with the best of note. Cymbeline lov’d me,
- And when a soldier was the theme, my name
- Was not far off. Then was I as a tree
- Whose boughs did bend with fruit; but in one night,
- A storm or robbery (call it what you will)
- Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves,
- And left me bare to weather.
Hail, thou fair heaven! We house i’ th’ rock, yet use thee not so hardly as prouder livers do.
From: Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare
Charles Cowden Clarke, Mary Cowden Clarke, 1866
Guiderius
69- Uncertain favor!
Belarius
70 - 112- My fault being nothing (as I have told you oft)
- But that two villains, whose false oaths prevail’d
- Before my perfect honor, swore to Cymbeline
- I was confederate with the Romans. So
- Followed my banishment, and this twenty years
- This rock and these demesnes have been my world,
- Where I have liv’d at honest freedom, paid
- More pious debts to heaven than in all
- The fore-end of my time. But up to th’ mountains!
- This is not hunters’ language. He that strikes
- The venison first shall be the lord o’ th’ feast,
- To him the other two shall minister,
- And we will fear no poison, which attends
- In place of greater state. I’ll meet you in the valleys.
- Exeunt Guiderius and Arviragus.
- How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature!
- These boys know little they are sons to th’ King,
- Nor Cymbeline dreams that they are alive.
- They think they are mine, and though train’d up thus meanly
- I’ th’ cave wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit
- The roofs of palaces, and nature prompts them
- In simple and low things to prince it much
- Beyond the trick of others. This Polydore,
- The heir of Cymbeline and Britain, who
- The King his father call’d Guiderius—Jove!
- When on my three-foot stool I sit and tell
- The warlike feats I have done, his spirits fly out
- Into my story; say, “Thus mine enemy fell,
- And thus I set my foot on ’s neck,” even then
- The princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats,
- Strains his young nerves, and puts himself in posture
- That acts my words. The younger brother, Cadwal,
- Once Arviragus, in as like a figure
- Strikes life into my speech, and shows much more
- His own conceiving.—Hark, the game is rous’d!—
- O Cymbeline, heaven and my conscience knows
- Thou didst unjustly banish me; whereon,
- At three and two years old, I stole these babes,
- Thinking to bar thee of succession, as
- Thou refts me of my lands. Euriphile,
- Thou wast their nurse; they took thee for their mother,
- And every day do honor to her grave.
- Myself, Belarius, that am Morgan call’d,
- They take for natural father.—The game is up.
- Exit.
Hail, heaven!
Edwin Austin Abbey, circa 1903