BEROWNE.
Let’s see the penalty. [Reads.] On pain of losing her tongue. Who devised this penalty?
LONGAVILLE.
Marry, that did I.
BEROWNE.
Sweet lord, and why?
LONGAVILLE.
To fright them hence with that dread penalty.
BEROWNE.
A dangerous law against gentility.
[Reads.] Item, If any man be seen to talk with a woman within the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the rest of the court can possibly devise.
This article, my liege, yourself must break,
For well you know here comes in embassy
The French King’s daughter, with yourself to speak—
A mild of grace and complete majesty—
About surrender up of Aquitaine
To her decrepit, sick, and bedrid father.
Therefore this article is made in vain,
Or vainly comes th’ admired Princess hither.
KING.
What say you, lords? Why, this was quite forgot.
BEROWNE.
So study evermore is overshot.
While it doth study to have what it would,
It doth forget to do the thing it should;
And when it hath the thing it hunteth most,
’Tis won as towns with fire: so won, so lost.
KING.
We must of force dispense with this decree.
She must lie here on mere necessity.
BEROWNE.
Necessity will make us all forsworn
Three thousand times within this three years’ space;
For every man with his affects is born,
Not by might mastered, but by special grace.
If I break faith, this word shall speak for me:
I am forsworn on mere necessity.
So to the laws at large I write my name,
And he that breaks them in the least degree
Stands in attainder of eternal shame.
Suggestions are to other as to me;
But I believe, although I seem so loath,
I am the last that will last keep his oath.
[He signs.]