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Cymbeline - Act 2, scene 5
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Cymbeline - Act 2, scene 5Act 2, scene 5
⌜Scene 5⌝
Synopsis:
Posthumus, in soliloquy, attacks women as the embodiment of all that is vicious.
Enter Posthumus.POSTHUMUS
1332 Is there no way for men to be, but women
1333 Must be half-workers? We are all bastards,
1334 And that most venerable man which I
p.
97
1335
Did call my father was I know not where1336 5 When I was stamped. Some coiner with his tools
1337 Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seemed
1338 The Dian of that time; so doth my wife
1339 The nonpareil of this. O, vengeance, vengeance!
1340 Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained
1341 10 And prayed me oft forbearance; did it with
1342 A pudency so rosy the sweet view on ’t
1343 Might well have warmed old Saturn, that I thought
1344 her
1345 As chaste as unsunned snow. O, all the devils!
1346 15 This yellow Iachimo in an hour, was ’t not?
1347 Or less? At first? Perchance he spoke not, but,
1348 Like a full-acorned boar, a German one,
1349 Cried “O!” and mounted; found no opposition
1350 But what he looked for should oppose and she
1351 20 Should from encounter guard. Could I find out
1352 The woman’s part in me—for there’s no motion
1353 That tends to vice in man but I affirm
1354 It is the woman’s part: be it lying, note it,
1355 The woman’s; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;
1356 25 Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;
1357 Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,
1358 Nice longing, slanders, mutability,
1359 All faults that ⌜have a⌝ name, nay, that hell knows,
1360 Why, hers, in part or all, but rather all.
1361 30 For even to vice
1362 They are not constant, but are changing still
1363 One vice but of a minute old for one
1364 Not half so old as that. I’ll write against them,
1365 Detest them, curse them. Yet ’tis greater skill
1366 35 In a true hate to pray they have their will;
1367 The very devils cannot plague them better.
He exits.