CYMBELINE
A monologue from the
play by William
Shakespeare
- POSTHUMUS: Is there no way for men to be, but women
- Must be half-workers? We are all bastards,
- And that most venerable man which I
- Did call my father was I know not where
- When I was stamped. Some coiner with his tools
- Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seemed
- The Dian of that time. So doth my wife
- The nonpareil of this. O, vengeance, vengeance!
- Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained
- And prayed me oft forbearance -- did it with
- A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't
- Might well have warmed old Saturn -- that I thought her
- As chaste as unsunned snow. O, all the devils!
- This yellow Iachimo in an hour, was't not?
- Or less? At first? Perchance he spoke not, but,
- Like a full-acorned boar, a German one,
- Cried 'O!' and mounted; found no opposition
- But what he looked for should oppose and she
- Should from encounter guard. Could I find out
- The woman's part in me! For there's no motion
- That tends to vice in man but I affirm
- It is the woman's part. Be it lying, note it,
- The woman's; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;
- Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;
- Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,
- Nice longings, slanders, mutability,
- All faults that man may name, nay, that hell knows,
- Why, hers, in part or all, but rather all.
- For even to vice
- They are not constant, but are changing still
- One vice but of a minute old for one
- Not half so old as that. I'll write against them,
- Detest them, curse them. Yet 'tis greater skill
- In a true hate to pray they have their will;
- The very devils cannot plague them better.
MORE MONOLOGUES BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE |
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