The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia

by Philip Sidney

But this courtesy was worse than a bastinado to Zelmane: so that again with rageful eyes she bade him defend himself, for no less than his life should answer it. “A hard case,” said he, “to teach my sword that lesson, which hath ever used to turn itself to a shield in a lady’s presence.” But Zelmane hearkening to no more words, began with such witty fury to pursue him with blows and thrusts, that nature and virtue commanded the gentleman to look to his safety. Yet still courtesy, that seemed incorporate in his heart, would not be persuaded by danger to offer any offence, but only to stand upon the best defensive guard he could; sometimes going back, being content in that respect to take on the figure of cowardice; sometimes with strong and well-met wards, sometimes cunning avoidings of his body; and sometimes feigning some blows, which himself pull’d back before they needed to be withstood. And so with play did he a good while fight against the fight of Zelmane, who, more spited with that courtesy, that one that did nothing should be able to resist her, burned away with choler any motions which might grow out of her own sweet disposition, determined to kill him if he fought no better and so redoubling her blows, drove the stranger to no other shift than to ward and go back; at that time seeming the image of innocency against violence. But at length he found, that both in public and private respects, who stands only upon defence, stands upon no defence: for Zelmane seeming to strike at his head, and he going toward it, withal stepped back as he was accustomed: she stopped her blow in the air, and suddenly turning the point, ran full at his breast, so as he was driven with the pommel of his sword, having no other weapon of defence, to beat it down: but the thrust was so strong that he could not so wholly beat it away, but that it met with his thigh, through which it ran. But Zelmane retiring her sword, and seeing his blood, victorious anger was conquered by the before conquering pity; and heartily sorry, and even ashamed with herself she was, considering how little he had done, who well she found could have done more. Insomuch that she said, “Truly I am sorry for your hurt, but yourself gave the cause, both in refusing to deliver the glove, and yet not fighting as I know you could have done. But,” said she, “because I perceive you disdain to fight with a woman, it may be before a year come about, you shall meet with a near kinsman of mine, Pyrocles prince of Macedon, and I give you my word, he for me shall maintain this quarrel against you.” “I would” answered Amphialus, “I had many more such hurts to meet and know that worthy prince, whose virtue I love and admire, though my good destiny hath not been to see his person.”

But as they were so speaking, the young ladies came, to whom, Mopsa, curious in anything but her own good behaviour, having followed and seen Zelmane fighting, had cried, what she had seen, while they were drying themselves: and the water, with some drops, seemed to weep, that it should pass from such bodies. But they careful of Zelmane, assuring themselves that any Arcadian would bear reverence to them, Pamela with a noble mind, and Philoclea with a loving, hastily, hiding the beauties, whereof nature was proud, and they ashamed, they made quick work to come to save Zelmane. But already they found them in talk, and Zelmane careful of his wound. But when they saw him, they knew it was their cousin-german, the famous Amphialus, whom yet with a sweet graced bitterness they blamed for breaking their father’s commandment, especially while themselves were in such sort retired. But he craved pardon, protesting unto them that he had only been to seek solitary places, by an extreme melancholy that had a good while possessed him, and guided to that place by his spaniel, where while the dog hunted in the river, he had withdrawn himself to pacify with sleep his over watched eyes, till a dream waked him, and made him see that whereof he had dreamed, and withal not obscurely signified, that he felt the smart of his own doings. But Philoclea, that was even jealous of herself for Zelmane, would needs have her glove, and not without so mighty a lower as that face could yield. As for Zelmane when she knew it was Amphialus; “Lord Amphialus,” said she, “I have long desired to know you heretofore, I must confess, with more goodwill, but still with honouring your virtue, though I love not your person: and at this time I pray you let us take care of your wound, upon condition you shall hereafter promise that a more knightly combat shall be performed between us.” Amphialus answered in honourable sort, but with such excusing himself, that more and more accused his love to Philoclea, and provoked more hate in Zelmane. But Mopsa had already called certain shepherds not far off, who knew and well observed their limits, to come and help to carry away Amphialus, whose wound suffered him not without danger to strain it: and so he leaving himself with them, departed from them, faster bleeding in his heart than at his wound, which bound up by the sheets, wherewith Philoclea had been wrapped, made him thank the wound, and bless the sword for that favour.

He being gone, the ladies, with merry anger talking, in what naked simplicity their cousin had seen them, returned to the lodge-ward; yet thinking it too early, as long as they had any day, to break off so pleasing a company with going to perform a cumbersome obedience, Zelmane invited them to the little arbour, only reserved for her, which they willingly did: and there sitting, Pamela having a while made the lute in his language show how glad it was to be touched by her fingers, Zelmane delivered up the paper which Amphialus had at first yielded unto her, and seeing written upon the backside of it the complaint of Plangus, remembering what Dorus had told her, and desiring to know how much Philoclea knew of her estate, she took occasion in presenting of it, to ask whether it were any secret or no. “No truly,” answered Philoclea, “it is but even an exercise of my father’s writing, upon this occasion: he was one day, somewhile before your coming hither, walking abroad, having us two with him, almost a mile hence, and crossing a highway, which comes from the city of Megalopolis, he saw this gentleman, whose name is there written, one of the properest and best graced men that ever I saw, being of middle age and of a mean stature. He lay as then under a tree, while his servants were getting fresh post-horses for him. It might seem he was tired with the extreme travel he had taken, and yet not so tired that he forced to take any rest, so hasty he was upon his journey: and withal so sorrowful that the very face thereof was painted in his face, which with pitiful motions, even groans, tears, and passionate talking to himself, moved my father to fall in talk with him, who at first not knowing him, answered him in such a desperate phrase of grief that my father afterward took a delight to set it down in such a form as you see: which if you read, what you doubt of, my sister and I are able to declare unto you, Zelmane willingly opened the leaves, and read it being written dialogue-wise in this manner.”

PLANGUS and BASILIUS

PLANGUS

Alas, how long this pilgrimage doth last?

What greater ills have now the heavens in store,

To couple coming harms with sorrows past?

Long since my voice is hoarse, and throat is sore,

With cries to skies, and courses to the ground,

But more I plain, I feel my woes the more.

Ah, where was first that cruel cunning found,

To frame of earth, a vessel of the mind,

Where it should be to self-destruction bound?

What needed so high spirits, such mansions blind?

Or wrapped in flesh what do they here obtain.

But glorious name of wretched human kind?

Balls to the stars, and thralls to Fortune’s reign;

Turn’d from themselves, infected with their rage,

Where death is fear’d, and life is held with pain,

Like players plac’d to fill a filthy stage,

Where change of thoughts one fool to other shows,

And all but jests, save only sorrow’s rage.

The child feels that, the man that feeling knows,

Which cries first born, the presage of his life,

Where wit but serves, to have true taste of woes.

A shop of shame, a book where blots be rife,

This body is, this body so compos’d,

As in itself to nourish mortal strife:

So divers be the elements dispos’d.

In this weak work, that it can never be

Made uniform to any state repos’d.

Grief only makes his wretched state to see

(Even like a top which nought but whipping moves)

This man, this talking beast, this walking tree,

Grief is the stone which finest judgments proves:

For who grieves not, hath but a blockish brain,

Since cause of grief no cause from life removes.

BASILIUS

How long wilt thou with mournful music stain

The cheerful notes those pleasant places yield,

Where all good haps a perfect state maintain?

PLANGUS

Cursed be good haps, and cursed be they that build

Their hopes on haps, and do not make despair

For all those certain blows the surest shield.

Shall I that saw Erona’s shining hair,

Torn with her hands, and those same hands of snow

With loss of purest blood themselves to tear?

Shall I that saw those breasts, where beauties flow,

Swelling with sighs, made pale with mind’s disease,

And saw those eyes, those suns, such showers to show?

Shall I whose ears her mournful words did seize,

Her words in syrup laid of sweetest breath,

Relent those thoughts which then did so displease?

No, no: despair my daily lesson faith,

And faith, although I seek my life to fly,

Plangus must live to see Erona’s death.

Plangus must live some help for her to try

(Though in despair) for love so forceth me,

Plangus doth live, and shall Erona die?

Erona die? O heaven, if heaven there be,

Hath all thy whirling course so small effect?

Serve all thy starry eyes this shame to see?

Let dolts in haste some altars fair erect

To those high powers, which idly sit above,

And virtue do in greatest need neglect.

BASILIUS

O man, take heed, how thou the gods do move

To causeful wrath, which thou can’st not resist.

Blasphemous words the speaker vain do prove.

Alas while we are wrapped in foggy mist

Of our self-love, so passions do deceive,

We think they hurt, when most they do assist.

To harm us worms should that high justice leave

His nature? nay himself? for so it is.

What glory from our loss can he receive?

But still our dazzled eyes their way do miss,

While that we do at his sweet scourge repine,

The kindly way do beat us on to bliss.

If she must die then hath she passed the line

Of loathsome days, whose loss how can’st thou moan,

That dost so well their miseries define?

But such we are with inward tempest blown

Of winds quite contrary in waves of will:

We moan that lost, which had we did bemoan.

PLANGUS

And shall she die? shall cruel fire spill

Those beams that set so many hearts on fire?

Hath she not force even death with love to kill:

Nay, even cold death inflam’d with hot desire

Her to enjoy where joy itself is thrall,

Will spoil the earth of his most rich attire:

Thus death becomes a rival to us all,

And hopes with foul embracements her to get,

In whose decay virtue’s fair shrine must fall.

O virtue weak, shall death his triumph set

Upon thy spoils, which never should lie waste?

Let death first die; be thou his worthy let.

By what eclipse shall that sun be defac’d?

What mine hath erst thrown down so fair a tower?

What sacrilege hath such a saint disgrac’d?

The world the garden is, she is the flower

That sweetens all the place; she is the guest

Of rarest price, both heaven and earth her bower.

And shall, O me! all this in ashes rest?

Alas if you a Phoenix new will have

Burnt by the sun, she first must build her nest.

But well you know, the gentle sun would save

Such beams so like his own, which might have might

In him the thoughts of Phaeton’s dam to grave,

Therefore, alas, you use vile Vulcan’s spite,

Which nothing spares, to melt that virgin wax,

Which while it is, it is all Asia’s light.

O Mars, for what doth serve thy armed ax?

To let that wit-old beast consume in flames

Thy Venus child, whose beauty Venus lacks?

O Venus, if her praise no envy frames

In thy high mind, get her thy husband’s grace

Sweet speaking oft a currish heart reclaims.

O eyes of mine, where once she saw her face,

Her face which was more lively in my heart:

O brain, where thought of her hath only place;

O hand, which touch’d her hand when we did part;

O lips that kiss’d that hand with my tears spent;

O tongue, then dumb, not daring tell my smart;

O soul, whose love in her is only spent,

What ere you see, think, touch, kiss, speak, or love,

Let all for her, and unto her be bent.

BASILIUS

Thy wailing words do much my spirits move,

They uttered are in such a feeling fashion,

That sorrow’s work against my will I prove.

Methinks I am partaker of thy passion,

And in thy case do glass mine own debility:

Self-guilty folk most prone to feel compassion.

Yet reason faith, “Reason should have ability

To hold those worldly things in such proportion,

As let them come or go with even facility.”

But our desire’s tyrannical extortion

Doth force us there to set our chief delightfulness

Where but a baiting place is all our portion.

But still although we fail of perfect rightfulness,

Seek we to tame those childish superfluities:

Let us not wink though void of purest sightfulness

For what can breed more peevish incongruities,

Than man to yield to female lamentations:

Let us some grammar learn of more congruities.

PLANGUS

If through mine ears pierce any consolations,

By wise discourse, sweet tunes, or poets’ fiction;

If aught I cease those hideous exclamations;

While that my soul, she, lives in affliction;

Then let my life long time on earth maintained be,

To wretched me, the last worst malediction.

Can I that knew her sacred parts, restrained be

From any joy? know fortunes vile displacing her,

In mortal rules let raging woes contained be?

Can I forget, when they in prison placing her,

With swelling heart in spite and due disdainfulness

She lay for dead, till I help’d with unlacing her?

Can I forget from how much mourning painfulness

With diamond in window-glass she grav’d

“Erona die, and end this ugly painfulness”?

Can I forget in how strange phrase she crav’d

That quickly they would her burn, drown or smother,

As if by death she only might be sav’d?

Then let me eke forget one hand from other:

Let me forget that Plangus I am called:

Let me forget I am son to my mother:

But if my memory must thus be thralled

To that strange stroke which conquered all my senses.

Can thoughts still thinking, so rest unappalled?

BASILIUS

Who still doth seek against himself offences,

What pardon can avail? or who employs him

To hurt himself, what shields can be defences?

Woe to poor man; each outward thing annoys him

In divers kinds; yet as he were not filled,

He heaps in outward grief, that most destroys him.

Thus is our thought with pain for thistles tilled:

Thus be our noblest parts dried up with sorrow:

Thus is our mind with too much minding spilled.

One day lays up store of grief for the morrow:

And whose good haps do leave him unprovided,

Condoling cause of friendship he will borrow:

Betwixt the good and shade of good divided,

We pity deem that which but weakness is:

So are we from our high creation slided.

But Plangus, lest I may your sickness miss,

Or rubbing, hurt the sore, I here do end.

The ass did hurt when he did think to kiss.

When Zelmane had read it over, marvelling very much of the speech of Erona’s death, and therefore desirous to know further of it, but more desirous to hear Philoclea speak, “Most excellent lady,” said she, “one may be little the wiser for reading this dialogue, since it neither sets forth what this Plangus is, nor what Erona is, nor what the cause should be which threatens her with death, and him with sorrow; therefore I would humbly crave to understand the particular discourse thereof, because, I must confess, something in my travel I have heard of this strange matter, which I would be glad to find by so sweet an authority confirmed.” “The truth is,” answered Philoclea, “that after he knew my father to be prince of this country, while he hoped to prevail something with him in a great request he made unto him, he was content to open fully the estate both of himself, and of that lady; which with my sister’s help,” said she, “who remembers it better than I, I will declare unto you. And first of Erona, being the chief subject of this discourse, this story, with more tears and exclamations than I list to spend about it, he recounted.”

“Of late there reigned a king in Lydia, who had, for the blessing of his marriage, this only daughter of his, Erona, a princess worthy for her beauty, as much praise, as beauty may be praise-worthy. This princess Erona, being nineteen years of age, seeing the country of Lydia so much devoted to Cupid, as that in every place his naked pictures and images were superstitiously adored (either moved thereunto by the esteeming that it could be no god-head, which could breed wickedness, or the shamefaced consideration of such nakedness) procured so much of her father, as utterly to pull down, and deface all those statutes and pictures: which how terribly he punished, for to that the Lydians impute it, quickly after appeared.

“For she had not lived a year longer, when she was stricken with most obstinate love to a young man but of mean parentage, in her father’s court, named Antiphilus: so mean, as that he was but the son of her nurse, and by that means, without other desert, became known of her. Now so evil could she conceal her fire, and so wilfully persevered she in it that her father offering her the marriage of the great Tiridates, king of Armenia, who desired her more than the joys of heaven, she for Antiphilus’s sake refused it. Many ways her father sought to withdraw her from it, sometimes by persuasions, sometimes by threatenings; once, hiding Antiphilus, and giving her to understand that he was fled the country, lastly, making a solemn execution to be done of another under the name of Antiphilus, whom he kept in prison. But neither she liked persuasions, nor feared threatenings, nor changed for absence: and when she thought him dead, she sought all means, as well by poison as knife, to send her soul, at least to be married in the eternal church with him. This so broke the tender father’s heart, that, leaving things as he found them, he shortly after died. Then forthwith Erona, being seized of the crown, and arming her will with authority, sought to advance her affection to the holy title of matrimony.

“But before she could accomplish all the solemnities, she was overtaken with a war the King Tiridates made upon her, only for her person, towards whom, for her ruin, love had kindled his cruel heart, indeed cruel and tyrannous; for being far too strong in the field, he spared no man, woman, nor child; but, as though there could be found no foil to set forth the extremity of his love, but extremity of hatred, wrote, as it were, the sonnets of his love in the blood, and turned them in the cries of her subjects; although his fair sister Artaxia, who would accompany him in the army, sought all means to appease his fury: till lastly, he besieged Erona in her best city, vowing to win her, or lose his life. And now had he brought her to the point either of a woeful consent, or a ruinous denial, when there came thither, following the course which virtue and fortune led them, two excellent young princes, Pyrocles and Musidorus, the one prince of Macedon, the other of Thessalia: two princes as Plangus said, and he witnessed his saying with sighs and tears, the most accomplished both in body and mind that the sun ever looked upon.” While Philoclea spoke those words; O sweet words, thought Zelmane to herself, which are not only a praise to me, but a praise to praise herself, which out of that mouth issueth.

“Those two princes,” said Philoclea, “as well to help the weaker, especially being a lady as to save a Greek people from being ruined by such whom we call and count barbarous, gathering together such of the honestest Lycians as would venture their lives to succour their princess; giving order by a secret message, they sent into the city that they should issue with all force at an appointed time: they set upon Tiridates’s camp with so well guided a fierceness that being on both sides assaulted, he was like to be overthrown, but that this Plangus, being general of Tiridates’s horsemen, especially aided by the two mighty men Euardes and Barzanes, rescued the footmen, even almost defeated: but yet could not bar the princes, with their succours both of men and victual, to enter the city.

“Which when Tiridates found would make the war long, which length seemed to him worse than a languishing consumption, he made a challenge of three princes in his retinue, against those two princes and Antiphilus: and that thereupon the quarrel should be decided, with compact that neither side should help his fellow, but of whose side the more overcame, with him the victory should remain. Antiphilus (though Erona chose rather to bide the brunt of war, than venture him, yet) could not for shame refuse the offer, especially since the two strangers that had no interest in it, did willingly accept it: besides that, he saw it like enough, that the people, weary of the miseries of war, would rather give him up, if they saw him shrink, than for his sake venture their ruin, considering that the challengers were of far greater worthiness than himself. So it was agreed upon; and against Pyrocles was Euardes king of Bithynia; Barzanes of Hyrcania against Musidorus, two men, that thought the world scarce able to resist them; and against Antiphilus he placed this same Plangus, being his own cousin-german, and son to the king of Iberia. Now so it fell out, that Musidorus slew Barzanes, and Pyrocles Euardes, which victory those princes esteemed above all that ever they had: but of the other side Plangus took Antiphilus prisoner: under which colour, as if the matter had been equal, though indeed it was not, the greater part being overcome of his side, Tiridates continued his war: and to bring Erona to a compelled yielding, sent her word that he would the third morrow after, before the walls of the town, strike off Antiphilus’s head, without his suit in that space were granted, adding, withal, because he had heard of her desperate affection, that, if in the meantime she did herself any hurt, what tortures could be devised should be lain upon Antiphilus.