Should yield the world this ass! a woman that
Bears all down with her brain; and this her son
Cannot take two from twenty, for his heart,
And leave eighteen. Alas, poor Princess,
Thou divine Imogen, what thou endurest,
Betwixt a father by thy step-dame govern'd,
A mother hourly coining plots, a wooer
More hateful than the foul expulsion is

Of thy dear husband, than that horrid act

Of the divorce he'd make! The Heavens hold firm
The walls of thy dear honour; keep unshaked
That temple, thy fair mind; that thou mayst stand,
T' enjoy thy banish'd lord and this great land!

[Exit.

SCENE II.

The Same. IMOGEN'S bedchamber in CYMBE-
LINE'S Palace: a trunk in one corner of it.
IMOGEN in bed, reading; a Lady attending.

Imo. Who's there? my woman Helen?
Lady.

Imo. What hour is it?

Lady.

Please you, madam.

Almost midnight, madam.

Imo. I have read three hours, then; mine eyes are weak:

Fold down the leaf where I have left. To bed:

Take not away the taper, leave it burning;

And, if thou canst awake by four o' the clock,

I pr'ythee, call me. Sleep hath seized me wholly. —

To your protection I commend me, gods!
From fairies, and the tempters of the night,
Guard me, beseech ye!

[Exit Lady.

[Sleeps. IACHIMO comes from the trunk. lach. The crickets sing, and man's o'er-labour'd sense

Repairs itself by rest. Our Tarquin thus
Did softly press the rushes, ere he waken'd
The chastity he wounded. Cytherea,

How bravely thou becomest thy bed! fresh lily!
And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch!
But kiss; one kiss! Rubies unparagon'd,
How dearly they do't! 'Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o' the taper
Bows toward her; and would under-peep her lids,
To see th' enclosed lights, now canopied
Under these windows 2- white and azure - laced
With blue of heaven's own tinct.3 But my design's
To note the chamber. I will write all down :
Such and such pictures; there the windows; such
Th' adornment of her bed; the arras, figures,
Why, such and such; and the contents o' the story.
Ah, but some natural notes about her body,
Above ten thousand meaner movables,

Would testify, t' enrich mine inventory.

O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her!
And be her sense but as a monument,4

1 That is, how dearly do her ruby lips kiss each other. Iachimo of course does not venture to kiss the lips that are so tempting.

2 The windows of the eyes are the eyelids. So in Romeo and Juliet: "Thy eyes' windows fall, like death when he shuts up the day of life." And in Venus and Adonis:

The night of sorrow now is turn'd to day;

Her two blue windows faintly she up-heaveth.

8 This is an exact description of the eyelid of a fair beauty, which is white, laced with veins of blue. Observe, laced agrees with windows, not with white and azure; for the azure is the "blue of heaven's own tinct." Perhaps the sense would be clearer thus: "white with azure laced, the blue," &c. Drayton seems to have had this passage in his mind:

And these sweet veins by nature rightly placed,
Wherewith she seems the white skin to have laced.

4 Monument for statue, image, or any monumental figure.

Thus in a chapel lying!— Come off, come off;

[Taking off her bracelet.

As slippery as the Gordian knot was hard!
'Tis mine; and this will witness outwardly,
As strongly as the conscience 5 does within,
To th' madding of her lord. On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip: here's a voucher
Stronger than ever law could make this secret
Will force him think I've pick'd the lock, and ta'en
The treasure of her honour. No more. To what end?

Why should I write this down, that's riveted,

Screw'd to my memory? She hath been reading late
The tale of Tereus: 7 here the leaf's turn'd down

Where Philomel gave up. I have enough:

To th' trunk again, and shut the spring of it.

Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning
May bare the raven's eye!9 I lodge in fear;

Though this a heavenly angel, Hell is here. [Clock strikes.
One, two, three, Time, time! 10

[Goes into the trunk. Scene closes.

5 Conscience has no reference to Posthumus. As strongly as the conscience of any guilty person witnesses to the fact of his guilt.

6 Some readers may like to be told that cinque means five.

Tereus and Progne is the second tale in A Petite Palace of Pettie his Pleasure, 1576. The story is related in Ovid, Metam. 1. vi.; and by Gower in his Confessio Amantis. See vol. xiii, page 44, note 3.

8 The task of drawing the chariot of Night was assigned to dragons, on account of their supposed watchfulness. See vol. iii. page 61, note 36.

9 May make bare or open the raven's eye. The raven, being a very early stirrer, is here referred to as having its eye opened by the dawn.

10 The inexpressible purity and delicacy of this scene has been often commended. The description of Imogen would almost engage our respect upon the describer, but that we already know lachimo to be one of those passionless minds in which gross thoughts are most apt to lodge; and that the unaccustomed awe of virtue, which Imogen struck into him at their first interview, chastises down his tendencies to gross-thoughtedness while in her

SCENE III. The Same. An Ante-chamber adjoining IMOGEN'S Apartments in the Palace.

Enter CLOTEN and Lords.

1 Lord. Your lordship is the most patient man in loss, the most coldest that ever turn'd up ace.

Clo. It would make any man cold to lose.

I Lord. But not every man patient after the noble temper of your lordship. You are most hot and furious when you win. Clo. Winning will put any man into courage. If I could get this foolish Imogen, I should have gold enough. It's almost morning, is't not?

I Lord. Day, my lord.

Clo. I would this music would come! I am advised to give her music o' mornings; they say it will penetrate.

Enter Musicians.

Come on; tune. If you can penetrate her with your fingering, so; we'll try with tongue too: if none will do, let her remain; but I'll never give o'er. First, a very excellent good-conceited1 thing; after, a wonderful sweet air, with admirable rich words to it; and then let her consider.

SONG.

Hark, hark! the lark at Heaven's gate sings,2

presence. Thus his delicacy of speech only goes to heighten our impression of Imogen's character, inasmuch as it seems to come, not from him, but from her through him; and as something that must be divine indeed, not to be strangled in passing through such a medium.

1 Good-conceited is the same as well-conceived or well-imagined.

2 A similar figure occurs in Paradise Lost, v. 197: "Ye birds, that singing up to heaven-gate ascend, bear on your wings and in your notes His praise." And in Shakespeare's 29th Sonnet:

Haply, I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate.

And Phabus 'gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies; 3
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes:
With every thing that pretty is,

My lady sweet, arise;

Arise, arise!

Clo. So, get you gone. If this penetrate, I will consider your music the better: 4 if it do not, it is a vice in her ears, which horse-hairs and calves'-guts, nor the voice of unpaved 5 eunuch to boot, can never amend. [Exeunt Musicians.

2 Lord. Here comes the King.

Clo. I am glad I was up so late, for that's the reason I was up so early: he cannot choose but take this service I have done fatherly.

Enter CYMBELINE and the Queen.

Good morrow to your Majesty and to my gracious mother.

The whole song may have been suggested by a passage in Lyly's Alexander and Campaspe:

Who is't now we hear?

None but the lark so shrill and clear:
Now at heaven's gate she claps her wings,
The morn not waking till she sings.

Hark, hark! with what a pretty throat

Poor robin red-breast tunes his note.

8 The morning dries up the dew which lies in the cups of flowers called calices or chalices. The marigold is one of those flowers which close themselves up at sunset. So in the 25th Sonnet: "Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread, but as the marigold at the Sun's eye." — Such instances of false concord as lies were common with the older poets, and were not then breaches of grammar.

4 Meaning, "I will pay you the more liberally for it."

5 The word unpaved is superfluous here. An unpaved man is an eunuch. -The phrase calves'-guts is not meant as a Clotenism; but was used for catgut, which has no more to do with any thing belonging to a cat than with what belongs to a calf.