GAOLER.
I’ll be hang’d then.
POSTHUMUS.
Thou shalt be then freer than a gaoler; no bolts for the dead.
[Exeunt Posthumus and Messenger.]
GAOLER.
Unless a man would marry a gallows and beget young gibbets, I never saw one so prone. Yet, on my conscience, there are verier knaves desire to live, for all he be a Roman; and there be some of them too that die against their wills; so should I, if I were one. I would we were all of one mind, and one mind good. O, there were desolation of gaolers and gallowses! I speak against my present profit, but my wish hath a preferment in’t.
[Exit.]
SCENE V. Britain. Cymbeline’s tent.
Enter Cymbeline, Belarius, Guiderius, Arviragus, Pisanio, Lords, Officers and Attendants.
CYMBELINE.
Stand by my side, you whom the gods have made
Preservers of my throne. Woe is my heart
That the poor soldier that so richly fought,
Whose rags sham’d gilded arms, whose naked breast
Stepp’d before targes of proof, cannot be found.
He shall be happy that can find him, if
Our grace can make him so.
BELARIUS.
I never saw
Such noble fury in so poor a thing;
Such precious deeds in one that promis’d nought
But beggary and poor looks.
CYMBELINE.
No tidings of him?