--
When Pisanio, who had been charged to kill his mistress, puts her in
a way to live, she says:
Why, good fellow,
What shall I do the while? Where bide? How live?
Or in my life what comfort, when I am
Dead to my husband?
Yet when he advises her to disguise herself in boy's clothes, and
suggests 'a course pretty and full in view', by which she may
'happily be near the residence of Posthumus', she exclaims:
Oh, for such means,
Though peril to my modesty, not death on't,
I would adventure.
And when Pisanio, enlarging on the consequences, tells her she must
change
--Fear and niceness,
The handmaids of all women, or more truly,
Woman its pretty self, into a waggish courage,
Ready in gibes, quick answer'd, saucy, and
As quarrellous as the weasel--
she interrupts him hastily;
Nay, be brief;
I see into thy end, and am almost
A man already.
In her journey thus disguised to Milford Haven, she loses her guide
and her way; and unbosoming her complaints, says beautifully:
--My dear Lord,
Thou art one of the false ones; now I think on thee,
My hunger's gone; but even before, I was
At point to sink for food.
She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of Posthumus, and
engages herself as a foot-boy to serve a Roman officer, when she has
done all due obsequies to him whom she calls her former master:
--And when
With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha' strew'd his grave,
And on it said a century of pray'rs,
Such as I can, twice o'er, I'll weep and sigh,
And leaving so his service, follow you,
So please you entertain me.
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