Overview
- Female: 1
- Male: 2
Context
At a jail in Athens, a young man has come to the jailer to request his daughter’s hand in marriage. The wooer is quite eager, and insists that he and the jailer’s daughter have already made promises to each other, but the jailer puts him off. When the jailer’s daughter arrives, she describes in glowing terms the newest prisoners in the jail: Arcite and Palamon, nobles who have been taken prisoners of war in the recent battle at Thebes. The wooer stands by jealously as his bride-to-be gushes
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JAILER I may depart with little while I live; something I may cast to you, not much. Alas, the prison I keep, though it be for great ones, yet they seldom come; before one salmon you shall take a number of minnows. I am given out to be better lined than it can appear to me report is a true speaker. I would I were really that I am delivered to be. Marry, what I have, be it what it will, I will assure upon my daughter at the day of my death.
WOOER Sir, I demand no more than your own offer, and I will estate your daughter in what I have Promised.
JAILER Well, we will talk more of this when the solemnity is past. But have you a full promise of her? When that shall be seen, I tender my consent.
Enter the Jailer’s Daughter, carrying rushes.
WOOER I have sir. Here she comes.
JAILER to Daughter 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 suff’rers. 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 sometimes 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.
WOOER I never saw ’em.
JAILER The Duke himself came privately in the night, and so did they.
Enter Palamon and Arcite, in shackles, above.
What the reason of it is, I know not. Look, yonder they are; that’s Arcite looks out.
DAUGHTER No, sir, no, that’s Palamon. Arcite is the lower of the twain; you may perceive a part of Him.
JAILER Go to, leave your pointing; they would not make us their object. Out of their sight.
DAUGHTER It is a holiday to look on them. Lord, the diff’rence of men!
Jailer, Daughter, and Wooer exit.
Shakespeare, William, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Act 2, Sc. 1
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