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Pisanio. What cheer, Madam?

Imogen. False to his bed! What is it to be false?

To lie in watch there, and to think on him?

To weep 'twixt clock and clock? If sleep charge nature,

To break it with a fearful dream of him,

And cry myself awake?

That's false to's bed, is it?

Pisanio. Alas, good lady!

Imogen. I false? thy conscience witness, Iachimo,

Thou didst accuse him of incontinency,

Thou then look'dst like a villain: now methinks,

Thy favour's good enough. Some jay of Italy,

Whose mother was her painting, hath betrayed him:

Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion,

And for I am richer than to hang by th' walls,

I must be ript; to pieces with me. Oh,

Men's vows are women's traitors. All good seeming,

By thy revolt, oh husband, shall be thought

Put on for villany: not born where't grows,

But worn a bait for ladies.

Pisanio. Good madam, hear me—

Imogen. Talk thy tongue weary, speak:

I have heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear,

Therein false struck, can take no greater wound,

Nor tent to bottom that.—

When Pisanio, who had been charged to kill his mistress, puts her in a way to live, she says:

Why, good fellow,

What shall I do the while? Where bide? How live?

Or in my life what comfort, when I am

Dead to my husband?

Yet when he advises her to disguise herself in boy's clothes, and suggests 'a course pretty and full in view', by which she may 'happily be near the residence of Posthumus', she exclaims:

Oh, for such means,

Though peril to my modesty, not death on't,

I would adventure.

And when Pisanio, enlarging on the consequences, tells her she must change

—Fear and niceness,

The handmaids of all women, or more truly,

Woman its pretty self, into a waggish courage,

Ready in gibes, quick answer'd, saucy, and

As quarrellous as the weasel—

she interrupts him hastily;

Nay, be brief;

I see into thy end, and am almost

A man already.

In her journey thus disguised to Milford Haven, she loses her guide and her way; and unbosoming her complaints, says beautifully:

—My dear Lord,

Thou art one of the false ones; now I think on thee,

My hunger's gone; but even before, I was

At point to sink for food.

She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of Posthumus, and engages herself as a foot-boy to serve a Roman officer, when she has done all due obsequies to him whom she calls her former master:

—And when

With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha' strew'd his grave,

And on it said a century of pray'rs,

Such as I can, twice o'er, I'll weep and sigh,

And leaving so his service, follow you,

So please you entertain me.

Now this is the very religion of love. She all along relies little on her personal charms, which she fears may have been eclipsed by some painted jay of Italy; she relies on her merit, and her merit is in the depth of her love, her truth and constancy. Our admiration of her beauty is excited with as little consciousness as possible on her part. There are two delicious descriptions given of her, one when she is asleep, and one when she is supposed dead. Arviragus thus addresses her:

—With fairest flowers,

While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,

I'll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack

The flow'r that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor

The azur'd hare-bell, like thy veins, no, nor

The leaf of eglantine, which not to slander,

Out-sweeten'd not thy breath.

The yellow Iachimo gives another thus, when he steals into her bed-chamber:

—Cytherea,

How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! Fresh lily,

And whiter than the sheets I That I might touch—

But kiss, one kiss—Tis her breathing that

Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o' th' taper

Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids,

To see th' enclosed lights now canopied

Under the windows, white and azure, laced

With blue of Heav'ns own tinct—on her left breast

A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops

I' the bottom of a cowslip.

There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of this last image, a rich surfeit of the fancy,—as that well—known