Drama  |  William Shakespeare  |  Cymbeline  |  Scene 2.

Cymbeline — Scene 2. (Part 2 of 12)

ARVIRAGUS

You health. So please you, sir.

IMOGEN

[Aside] These are kind creatures. Gods, what lies
I have heard!
Our courtiers say all's savage but at court:
Experience, O, thou disprovest report!
The imperious seas breed monsters, for the dish
Poor tributary rivers as sweet fish.
I am sick still; heart-sick. Pisanio,
I'll now taste of thy drug.

Swallows some

GUIDERIUS

I could not stir him:
He said he was gentle, but unfortunate;
Dishonestly afflicted, but yet honest.

ARVIRAGUS

Thus did he answer me: yet said, hereafter
I might know more.

BELARIUS

To the field, to the field!
We'll leave you for this time: go in and rest.

ARVIRAGUS

We'll not be long away.

BELARIUS

Pray, be not sick,
For you must be our housewife.

IMOGEN

Well or ill,
I am bound to you.

BELARIUS

And shalt be ever.
Exit IMOGEN, to the cave
This youth, how'er distress'd, appears he hath had
Good ancestors.

ARVIRAGUS

How angel-like he sings!

GUIDERIUS

But his neat cookery! he cut our roots
In characters,
And sauced our broths, as Juno had been sick
And he her dieter.

ARVIRAGUS

Nobly he yokes
A smiling with a sigh, as if the sigh
Was that it was, for not being such a smile;
The smile mocking the sigh, that it would fly
From so divine a temple, to commix
With winds that sailors rail at.