Posthumus

1 - 35

1. Is there no way for men to be, but women
2. Must be half-workers? We are all bastards,
3. And that most venerable man which I
4. Did call my father, was I know not where
5. When I was stamp’d. Some coiner with his tools
6. Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seem’d
7. The Dian of that time. So doth my wife
8. The nonpareil of this. O vengeance, vengeance!
9. Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain’d,
10. And pray’d me oft forbearance; did it with
11. A pudency so rosy the sweet view on’t
12. Might well have warm’d old Saturn; that I thought her
13. As chaste as unsunn’d snow. O, all the devils!
14. This yellow Jachimo, in an hour—was’t not?—
15. Or less—at first? Perchance he spoke not, but
16. Like a full-acorn’d boar, a German one,
17. Cried “O!” and mounted; found no opposition
18. But what he look’d for should oppose and she
19. Should from encounter guard. Could I find out
20. The woman’s part in me—for there’s no motion
21. That tends to vice in man, but I affirm
22. It is the woman’s part: be it lying, note it,
23. The woman’s; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;
24. Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;
25. Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,
26. Nice longing, slanders, mutability,
27. All faults that name, nay, that hell knows,
28. Why, hers, in part or all; but rather, all;
29. For even to vice
30. They are not constant, but are changing still:
31. One vice but of a minute old, for one
32. Not half so old as that. I’ll write against them,
33. Detest them, curse them; yet ’tis greater skill
34. In a true hate, to pray they have their will:
35. The very devils cannot plague them better.