PALAMON.
How, gentle cousin?
ARCITE.
Let’s think this prison holy sanctuary,
To keep us from corruption of worse men.
We are young and yet desire the ways of honour;
That liberty and common conversation,
The poison of pure spirits, might like women,
Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing
Can be but our imaginations
May make it ours? And here being thus together,
We are an endless mine to one another;
We are one another’s wife, ever begetting
New births of love; we are father, friends, acquaintance;
We are, in one another, families;
I am your heir, and you are mine. This place
Is our inheritance; no hard oppressor
Dare take this from us; here with a little patience
We shall live long and loving. No surfeits seek us;
The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas
Swallow their youth. Were we at liberty,
A wife might part us lawfully, or business;
Quarrels consume us; envy of ill men
Crave our acquaintance. I might sicken, cousin,
Where you should never know it, and so perish
Without your noble hand to close mine eyes,
Or prayers to the gods. A thousand chances,
Were we from hence, would sever us.
PALAMON.
You have made me—
I thank you, cousin Arcite—almost wanton
With my captivity. What a misery
It is to live abroad and everywhere!
’Tis like a beast, methinks. I find the court here,
I am sure, a more content; and all those pleasures
That woo the wills of men to vanity
I see through now, and am sufficient
To tell the world ’tis but a gaudy shadow
That old Time as he passes by takes with him.
What had we been, old in the court of Creon,
Where sin is justice, lust and ignorance
The virtues of the great ones? Cousin Arcite,
Had not the loving gods found this place for us,
We had died as they do, ill old men, unwept,
And had their epitaphs, the people’s curses.
Shall I say more?
ARCITE.
I would hear you still.
PALAMON.
Ye shall.
Is there record of any two that loved
Better than we do, Arcite?
ARCITE.
Sure, there cannot.
PALAMON.
I do not think it possible our friendship
Should ever leave us.
ARCITE.
Till our deaths it cannot;
Enter Emilia and her Woman, below.
And after death our spirits shall be led
To those that love eternally. Speak on, sir.