SCENE III. Wales: a mountainous country with a cave. Cymbeline  Shakespeare homepage  |  Cymbeline  | Act 3, Scene 3 

 Previous scene  |  Next scene  SCENE III. Wales: a mountainous country with a cave. 

 Enter, from the cave, BELARIUS; GUIDERIUS, and ARVIRAGUS following  BELARIUS  A goodly day not to keep house, with such 

 Whose roof's as low as ours! Stoop, boys; this gate 

 Instructs you how to adore the heavens and bows you 

 To a morning's holy office: the gates of monarchs 

 Are arch'd so high that giants may jet through 

 And keep their impious turbans on, without 

 Good morrow to the sun. Hail, thou fair heaven! 

 We house i' the rock, yet use thee not so hardly 

 As prouder livers do. 

 GUIDERIUS  Hail, heaven! 

 ARVIRAGUS  Hail, heaven! 

 BELARIUS  Now for our mountain sport: up to yond hill; 

 Your legs are young; I'll tread these flats. Consider, 

 When you above perceive me like a crow, 

 That it is place which lessens and sets off; 

 And you may then revolve what tales I have told you 

 Of courts, of princes, of the tricks in war: 

 This service is not service, so being done, 

 But being so allow'd: to apprehend thus, 

 Draws us a profit from all things we see; 

 And often, to our comfort, shall we find 

 The sharded beetle in a safer hold 

 Than is the full-wing'd eagle. O, this life 

 Is nobler than attending for a cheque, 

 Richer than doing nothing for a bauble, 

 Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk: 

 Such gain the cap of him that makes 'em fine, 

 Yet keeps his book uncross'd: no life to ours. 

 GUIDERIUS  Out of your proof you speak: we, poor unfledged, 

 Have never wing'd from view o' the nest, nor know not 

 What air's from home. Haply this life is best, 

 If quiet life be best; sweeter to you 

 That have a sharper known; well corresponding 

 With your stiff age: but unto us it is 

 A cell of ignorance; travelling a-bed; 

 A prison for a debtor, that not dares 

 To stride a limit. 

 ARVIRAGUS  What should we speak of 

 When we are old as you? when we shall hear 

 The rain and wind beat dark December, how, 

 In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse 

 The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing; 

 We are beastly, subtle as the fox for prey, 

 Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat; 

 Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage 

 We make a quire, as doth the prison'd bird, 

 And sing our bondage freely. 

 BELARIUS  How you speak! 

 Did you but know the city's usuries 

 And felt them knowingly; the art o' the court 

 As hard to leave as keep; whose top to climb 

 Is certain falling, or so slippery that 

 The fear's as bad as falling; the toil o' the war, 

 A pain that only seems to seek out danger 

 I' the name of fame and honour; which dies i' 

 the search, 

 And hath as oft a slanderous epitaph 

 As record of fair act; nay, many times, 

 Doth ill deserve by doing well; what's worse, 

 Must court'sy at the censure:--O boys, this story 

 The world may read in me: my body's mark'd 

 With Roman swords, and my report was once 

 First with the best of note: Cymbeline loved me, 

 And when a soldier was the theme, my name 

 Was not far off: then was I as a tree 

 Whose boughs did bend with fruit: but in one night, 

 A storm or robbery, call it what you will, 

 Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves, 

 And left me bare to weather. 

 GUIDERIUS  Uncertain favour! 

 BELARIUS  My fault being nothing--as I have told you oft-- 

 But that two villains, whose false oaths prevail'd 

 Before my perfect honour, swore to Cymbeline 

 I was confederate with the Romans: so 

 Follow'd my banishment, and this twenty years 

 This rock and these demesnes have been my world; 

 Where I have lived at honest freedom, paid 

 More pious debts to heaven than in all 

 The fore-end of my time. But up to the mountains! 

 This is not hunters' language: he that strikes 

 The venison first shall be the lord o' the feast; 

 To him the other two shall minister; 

 And we will fear no poison, which attends 

 In place of greater state. I'll meet you in the valleys. 



 Exeunt GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS  How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature! 

 These boys know little they are sons to the king; 

 Nor Cymbeline dreams that they are alive. 

 They think they are mine; and though train'd 

 up thus meanly 

 I' the cave wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit 

 The roofs of palaces, and nature prompts them 

 In simple and low things to prince it much 

 Beyond the trick of others. This Polydore, 

 The heir of Cymbeline and Britain, who 

 The king his father call'd Guiderius,--Jove! 

 When on my three-foot stool I sit and tell 

 The warlike feats I have done, his spirits fly out 

 Into my story: say 'Thus, mine enemy fell, 

 And thus I set my foot on 's neck;' even then 

 The princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats, 

 Strains his young nerves and puts himself in posture 

 That acts my words. The younger brother, Cadwal, 

 Once Arviragus, in as like a figure, 

 Strikes life into my speech and shows much more 

 His own conceiving.--Hark, the game is roused! 

 O Cymbeline! heaven and my conscience knows 

 Thou didst unjustly banish me: whereon, 

 At three and two years old, I stole these babes; 

 Thinking to bar thee of succession, as 

 Thou reft'st me of my lands. Euriphile, 

 Thou wast their nurse; they took thee for 

 their mother, 

 And every day do honour to her grave: 

 Myself, Belarius, that am Morgan call'd, 

 They take for natural father. The game is up. 



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