Enter the Jailer’s Daughter, carrying rushes.
WOOER.
I have sir. Here she comes.
JAILER.
Your friend and I have chanced to name you here, upon the old business. But no more of that now; so soon as the court hurry is over, we will have an end of it. I’ th’ meantime, look tenderly to the two prisoners. I can tell you they are princes.
DAUGHTER.
These strewings are for their chamber. ’Tis pity they are in prison, and ’twere pity they should be out. I do think they have patience to make any adversity ashamed. The prison itself is proud of ’em, and they have all the world in their chamber.
JAILER.
They are famed to be a pair of absolute men.
DAUGHTER.
By my troth, I think fame but stammers ’em; they stand a grise above the reach of report.
JAILER.
I heard them reported in the battle to be the only doers.
DAUGHTER.
Nay, most likely, for they are noble sufferers. I marvel how they would have looked had they been victors, that with such a constant nobility enforce a freedom out of bondage, making misery their mirth and affliction a toy to jest at.
JAILER.
Do they so?
DAUGHTER.
It seems to me they have no more sense of their captivity than I of ruling Athens. They eat well, look merrily, discourse of many things, but nothing of their own restraint and disasters. Yet sometime a divided sigh, martyred as ’twere i’ th’ deliverance, will break from one of them—when the other presently gives it so sweet a rebuke that I could wish myself a sigh to be so chid, or at least a sigher to be comforted.