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A Forest between Milan and Verona | |
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Enter certain Outlaws. | |
| First Out. Fellows, stand fast; I see a passenger. | |
| Sec. Out. If there be ten, shrink not, but down with ’em. | |
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Enter VALENTINE and SPEED. | 5 |
| Third Out. Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye; | |
| If not, we’ll make you sit and rifle you. | |
| Speed. Sir, we are undone: these are the villains | |
| That all the travellers do fear so much. | |
| Val. My friends,— | 10 |
| First Out. That’s not so, sir; we are your enemies. | |
| Sec. Out. Peace! we’ll hear him. | |
| Third Out. Ay, by my beard, will we, for he is a proper man. | |
| Val. Then know, that I have little wealth to lose. | |
| A man I am cross’d with adversity: | 15 |
| My riches are these poor habiliments, | |
| Of which if you should here disfurnish me, | |
| You take the sum and substance that I have. | |
| Sec. Out. Whither travel you? | |
| Val. To Verona. | 20 |
| First Out. Whence came you? | |
| Val. From Milan. | |
| Third Out. Have you long sojourn’d there? | |
| Val. Some sixteen months; and longer might have stay’d | |
| If crooked fortune had not thwarted me. | 25 |
| Sec. Out. What! were you banish’d thence? | |
| Val. I was. | |
| Sec. Out. For what offence? | |
| Val. For that which now torments me to rehearse. | |
| I kill’d a man, whose death I much repent; | 30 |
| But yet I slew him manfully, in fight, | |
| Without false vantage or base treachery. | |
| First Out. Why, ne’er repent it, if it were done so. | |
| But were you banish’d for so small a fault? | |
| Val. I was, and held me glad of such a doom. | 35 |
| Sec. Out. Have you the tongues? | |
| Val. My youthful travel therein made me happy, | |
| Or else I often had been miserable. | |
| Third Out. By the bare scalp of Robin Hood’s fat friar, | |
| This fellow were a king for our wild faction! | 40 |
| First Out. We’ll have him: Sirs, a word. | |
| Speed. Master, be one of them; | |
| It is an honourable kind of thievery. | |
| Val. Peace, villain! | |
| Sec. Out. Tell us this: have you anything to take to? | 45 |
| Val. Nothing, but my fortune. | |
| Third Out. Know then, that some of us are gentlemen, | |
| Such as the fury of ungovern’d youth | |
| Thrust from the company of awful men: | |
| Myself was from Verona banished | 50 |
| For practising to steal away a lady, | |
| An heir, and near allied unto the duke. | |
| Sec Out. And I from Mantua, for a gentleman, | |
| Who, in my mood, I stabb’d unto the heart. | |
| First Out. And I for such like petty crimes as these. | 55 |
| But to the purpose; for we cite our faults, | |
| That they may hold excus’d our lawless lives; | |
| And, partly, seeing you are beautified | |
| With goodly shape, and by your own report | |
| A linguist, and a man of such perfection | 60 |
| As we do in our quality much want— | |
| Sec. Out. Indeed, because you are a banish’d man, | |
| Therefore, above the rest, we parley to you. | |
| Are you content to be our general? | |
| To make a virtue of necessity | 65 |
| And live, as we do, in this wilderness? | |
| Third Out. What say’st thou? wilt thou be of our consort? | |
| Say ‘ay,’ and be the captain of us all: | |
| We’ll do thee homage and be rul’d by thee, | |
| Love thee as our commander and our king. | 70 |
| First Out. But if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest. | |
| Sec. Out. Thou shalt not live to brag what we have offer’d. | |
| Val. I take your offer and will live with you, | |
| Provided that you do no outrages | |
| On silly women, or poor passengers. | 75 |
| Third Out. No; we detest such vile, base practices. | |
| Come, go with us; we’ll bring thee to our crews, | |
| And show thee all the treasure we have got, | |
| Which, with ourselves, all rest at thy dispose. [Exeunt. | |
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