log out

Double Falsehood: Act I, Scene 3

Double Falsehood
Act I, Scene 3

Outside an apartment.

  1. Enter Henriquez, Gerald, and servants with lights.

Henriquez

1
  1. Bear the lights closewhere is the music, sirs?

Gerald

2
  1. Coming, my lord.

Henriquez

3 - 27
  1. Let ’em not come too near. This maid,
  2. For whom my sighs ride on the night’s chill vapor,
  3. Is born most humbly, though she be as fair
  4. As nature’s richest mould and skill can make her,
  5. Mended with strong imagination.
  6. But what of that? Th’ obscureness of her birth
  7. Cannot eclipse the lustre of her eyes,
  8. Which make her all one light.—Strike up, my masters;
  9. But touch the strings with a religious softness;
  10. Teach sound to languish through the night’s dull ear,
  11. ’Till melancholy start from her lazy couch,
  12. And carelessness grow convert to attention.
  13. Music plays.
  14. She drives me into wonder, when I sometimes
  15. Hear her discourse; the court, whereof report,
  16. And guess alone inform her, she will rave at,
  17. As if she there sev’n reigns had slander’d time.
  18. Then, when she reasons on her country state,
  19. Health, virtue, plainness, and simplicity,
  20. On beauties true in title, scorning art,
  21. Freedom as well to do, as think, what’s good;
  22. My heart grows sick of birth and empty rank,
  23. And I become a villager in wish.
  24. Play onshe sleeps too soundbe still, and vanish:
  25. A gleam of day breaks sudden from her window:
  26. O taper, graced by that midnight hand!
  1. Violante appears above at her window.

Violante

28
  1. Who is’t, that woos at this late hour? What are you?

Henriquez

29
  1. One, who for your dear sake

Violante

30 - 38
  1.                              Watches the starless night!
  2. My lord Henriquez, or my ear deceives me.
  3. You’ve had my answer, and ’tis more than strange
  4. You’ll combat these repulses. Good my lord!
  5. Be friend to your own health; and give me leave,
  6. Securing my poor fame, nothing to pity
  7. What pangs you swear you suffer. ’Tis impossible
  8. To plant your choice affections in my shade,
  9. At least, for them to grow there.

Henriquez

39
  1.                                   Why, Violante?

Violante

40 - 48
  1. Alas! Sir, there are reasons numberless
  2. To bar your aims. Be warn’d to hours more wholesome;
  3. For, these you watch in vain. I have read stories,
  4. (I fear, too true ones) how young lords, like you,
  5. Have thus besung mean windows, rhymed their suff’rings
  6. Ev’n to th’ abuse of things divine, set up
  7. Plain girls, like me, the idols of their worship,
  8. Then left them to bewail their easie faith,
  9. And stand the world’s contempt.

Henriquez

49 - 51
  1.                                 Your memory,
  2. Too faithful to the wrongs of few lost maids,
  3. Makes fear too general.

Violante

52 - 60
  1.                         Let us be homely,
  2. And let us too be chaste, doing you lords no wrong;
  3. But crediting your oaths with such a spirit,
  4. As you profess them: so no party trusted
  5. Shall make a losing bargain. Home, my lord!
  6. What you can say, is most unseasonable; what sing,
  7. Most absonant and harsh: nay, your perfume,
  8. Which I smell hither, cheers not my sense
  9. Like our field-violet’s breath.

Henriquez

61 - 62
  1.                                 Why this dismission
  2. Does more invite my staying.

Violante

63 - 67
  1.                              Men of your temper
  2. Make ev’ry thing their bramble. But I wrong
  3. That which I am preserving, my maid’s name,
  4. To hold so long discourse. Your virtues guide you
  5. T’ effect some nobler purpose!
  1. Exit Violante.

Henriquez

68 - 84
  1.                                Stay, bright maid!
  2. Come back, and leave me with a fairer hope.
  3. She’s gone. Who am I, that am thus contemn’d?
  4. The second son to a prince? Yes, well, what then?
  5. Why, your great birth forbids you to descend
  6. To a low alliance. Her’s is the self-same stuff,
  7. Whereof we Dukes are made; but clay more pure!
  8. And take away my title, which is acquir’d
  9. Not by myself, but thrown by fortune on me,
  10. Or by the merit of some ancestor
  11. Of singular quality, she doth inherit
  12. Deserts t’ outweigh me. I must stoop to gain her;
  13. Throw all my gay comparisons aside,
  14. And turn my proud additions out of service,
  15. Rather than keep them to become my masters.
  16. The dignities we wear, are gifts of pride;
  17. And laugh’d at by the wise, as mere outside.
  1. Exit.
© 2021 Unotate.comcontactprivacy policyCreative Commons text from PlayShakespeare.comAll illustrations are public domain or Creative Commons