Books and Characters - French and English by Giles Lytton Strachey
page 48 of 264 (18%)
page 48 of 264 (18%)
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says Posthumus when he hears of Imogen's guilt. We are all bastards; And that most venerable man, which I Did call my father, was I know not where When I was stamped. Some coiner with his tools Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seemed The Dian of that time; so doth my wife The nonpareil of this--O vengeance, vengeance! Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained And prayed me, oft, forbearance; did it with A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't Might well have warmed old Saturn, that I thought her As chaste as unsunned snow--O, all the devils!-- This yellow Iachimo, in an hour,--was't not? Or less,--at first: perchance he spoke not; but, Like a full-acorned boar, a German one, Cried, oh! and mounted: found no opposition But what he looked for should oppose, and she Should from encounter guard. And Leontes, in a similar situation, expresses himself in images no less to the point. There have been, Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now, And many a man there is, even at this present, Now, while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm, That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence |
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