Page 1424 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

HIPPOLYTA

Farewell, sister;
I am like to know your husband ’fore yourself
By some small start of time. He whom the gods

Do of the two know best, I pray them he
Be made your lot. [40]
All go out except Emilia and her attendants.

EMILIA
Arcite is gently visaged, yet his eye
Is like an engine bent or a sharp weapon

In a soft sheath; mercy and manly courage
Are bedfellows in his visage. Palamon
Has a most menacing aspect; his brow [45]
Is graved, and seems to bury what it frowns on.

Yet sometime ’tis not so, but alters to
The quality of his thoughts; long time his eye
Will dwell upon his object. Melancholy
Becomes him nobly; so does Arcite’s mirth, [50]

But Palamon’s sadness is a kind of mirth,
So mingled as if mirth did make him sad,
And sadness merry. Those darker humours that
Stick misbecomingly on others, on him

Live in fair dwelling. [55]
Cornets. Trumpets sound as to a charge.
Hark how yon spurs to spirit do incite
The princes to their proof! Arcite may win me,

And yet may Palamon wound Arcite to
The spoiling of his figure. O, what pity
Enough for such a chance? If I were by, [60]
I might do hurt, for they would glance their eyes

Toward my seat, and in that motion might
Omit a ward or forfeit an offence
Which craved that very time. It is much better
I am not there − O, better never born, [65]

Than minister to such harm!
Cornets. A great cry and noise within, crying ‘A Palamon!’. Enter a Servant.
What is the chance?