After long absence, such is yours: most welcome!
Be sprightly, for you fall 'mongst friends.
'Mongst friends,
If brothers.
Would it had been so, that they
Had been my father's sons! then had my prize
Been less, and so more equal ballasting
To thee, Posthumus.
He wrings at some distress.
Would I could free't!
Or I, whate'er it be,
What pain it cost, what danger. God's!
Hark, boys.
Great men,
That had a court no bigger than this cave,
That did attend themselves and had the virtue
Which their own conscience seal'd them--laying by
That nothing-gift of differing multitudes--
Could not out-peer these twain. Pardon me, gods!
I'd change my sex to be companion with them,
Since Leonatus's false.
It shall be so.
Boys, we'll go dress our hunt. Fair youth, come in:
Discourse is heavy, fasting; when we have supp'd,
We'll mannerly demand thee of thy story,
So far as thou wilt speak it.
Pray, draw near.
The night to the owl and morn to the lark
less welcome.
Thanks, sir.
I pray, draw near.
This is the tenor of the emperor's writ:
That since the common men are now in action
'Gainst the Pannonians and Dalmatians,
And that the legions now in Gallia are
Full weak to undertake our wars against
The fall'n-off Britons, that we do incite
The gentry to this business. He creates
Lucius preconsul: and to you the tribunes,
For this immediate levy, he commends
His absolute commission. Long live Caesar!
Is Lucius general of the forces?
Ay.
Remaining now in Gallia?
With those legions
Which I have spoke of, whereunto your levy
Must be supplyant: the words of your commission
Will tie you to the numbers and the time
Of their dispatch.
We will discharge our duty.
I am near to the place where they should meet, if
Pisanio have mapped it truly. How fit his garments
serve me! Why should his mistress, who was made by
him that made the tailor, not be fit too? the
rather--saving reverence of the word--for 'tis said
a woman's fitness comes by fits. Therein I must
play the workman. I dare speak it to myself--for it
is not vain-glory for a man and his glass to confer
in his own chamber--I mean, the lines of my body are
as well drawn as his; no less young, more strong,
not beneath him in fortunes, beyond him in the
advantage of the time, above him in birth, alike
conversant in general services, and more remarkable
in single oppositions: yet this