All's Well That Ends Well

by William Shakespeare

SCENE III. The Florentine camp.

Enter the two French Lords and two or three Soldiers.

FIRST LORD.
You have not given him his mother’s letter?

SECOND LORD.
I have deliv’red it an hour since; there is something in’t that stings his nature; for on the reading it, he chang’d almost into another man.

FIRST LORD.
He has much worthy blame laid upon him for shaking off so good a wife and so sweet a lady.

SECOND LORD.
Especially he hath incurred the everlasting displeasure of the king, who had even tun’d his bounty to sing happiness to him. I will tell you a thing, but you shall let it dwell darkly with you.

FIRST LORD.
When you have spoken it, ’tis dead, and I am the grave of it.

SECOND LORD.
He hath perverted a young gentlewoman here in Florence, of a most chaste renown, and this night he fleshes his will in the spoil of her honour; he hath given her his monumental ring, and thinks himself made in the unchaste composition.

FIRST LORD.
Now, God delay our rebellion! As we are ourselves, what things are we!

SECOND LORD.
Merely our own traitors. And as in the common course of all treasons, we still see them reveal themselves till they attain to their abhorr’d ends; so he that in this action contrives against his own nobility, in his proper stream, o’erflows himself.