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The Two Noble Kinsmen: Act II, Scene 1

The Two Noble Kinsmen
Act II, Scene 1

Athens. A garden, with a prison in the background.

  1. Enter Jailer and Wooer.

Jailer

1 - 8
  1. I may depart with little, while I live; something I may cast
  2. to you, not much. Alas, the prison I keep, though it be for
  3. great ones, yet they seldom come: before one salmon, you
  4. shall take a number of minnows. I am given out to be better
  5. lin’d than it can appear to me report is a true speaker. I
  6. would I were really that I am deliver’d to be. Marry, what I
  7. have (be it what it will) I will assure upon my daughter at
  8. the day of my death.

Wooer

9 - 10
  1. Sir, I demand no more than your own offer, and I will estate
  2. your daughter in what I have promis’d.

Jailer

11 - 13
  1. Well, we will talk more of this when the solemnity is past.
  2. But have you a full promise of her? When that shall be seen,
  3. I tender my consent.
  1. Enter Daughter with strewings.

Wooer

14
  1. I have, sir. Here she comes.

Jailer

15 - 19
  1. Your friend and I have chanc’d to name you here, upon the
  2. old business. But no more of that now; so soon as the court
  3. hurry is over, we will have an end of it. I’ th’ mean time,
  4. look tenderly to the two prisoners. I can tell you they are
  5. princes.

Daughter

20 - 24
  1. These strewings are for their chamber. ’Tis pity they are in
  2. prison, and ’twere pity they should be out. I do think they
  3. have patience to make any adversity asham’d. The prison
  4. itself is proud of ’em; and they have all the world in their
  5. chamber.

Jailer

25
  1. They are fam’d to be a pair of absolute men.

Daughter

26 - 27
  1. By my troth, I think fame but stammers ’em, they stand a
  2. grise above the reach of report.

Jailer

28
  1. I heard them reported in the battle to be the only doers.

Daughter

29 - 32
  1. Nay, most likely, for they are noble suff’rers. I marvel how
  2. they would have look’d had they been victors, that with such
  3. a constant nobility enforce a freedom out of bondage, making
  4. misery their mirth, and affliction a toy to jest at.

Jailer

33
  1. Do they so?

Daughter

34 - 41
  1. It seems to me they have no more sense of their captivity
  2. than I of ruling Athens. They eat well, look merrily,
  3. discourse of many things, but nothing of their own restraint
  4. and disasters. Yet sometime a divided sigh, martyr’d as
  5. ’twere i’ th’ deliverance, will break from one of them; when
  6. the other presently gives it so sweet a rebuke that I could
  7. wish myself a sigh to be so chid, or at least a sigher to be
  8. comforted.

Wooer

42
  1. I never saw ’em.

Jailer

43 - 45
  1. The Duke himself came privately in the night, and so did
  2. they. What the reason of it is, I know not.
  3. Enter Palamon and Arcite above.
  4. Look yonder they are! That’s Arcite looks out.

Daughter

46 - 47
  1. No, sir, no, that’s Palamon. Arcite is the lower of the
  2. twain; you may perceive a part of him.

Jailer

48 - 49
  1. Go to, leave your pointing. They would not make us their
  2. object. Out of their sight.

Daughter

50 - 51
  1. It is a holiday to look on them. Lord, the diff’rence of
  2. men!
  1. Exeunt Jailer, Wooer, and Daughter.
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