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.

Sir, I demand no more than your own offer, and I will estate your daughter in what I have promised.

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.

I have sir. Here she comes.

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.

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.

They are famed to be a pair of absolute men.

By my troth, I think fame but stammers ’em; they stand a grise above the reach of report.

I heard them reported in the battle to be the only doers.

Nay, most likely, for they are noble sufferers. 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.

Do they so?

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 sometime 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.

I never saw ’em.

The Duke himself came privately in the night, and so did they.

No, sir, no, that’s Palamon. Arcite is the lower of the twain; you may perceive a part of him.

Go to, leave your pointing; they would not make us their object. Out of their sight.

It is a holiday to look on them. Lord, the difference of men!