Читать книгу The Complete Works of Shakespeare онлайн

199 страница из 942

Val.

’Tis true; for you are over boots in love,

And yet you never swom the Hellespont.

Pro.

Over the boots? nay, give me not the boots.

Val.

No, I will not; for it boots thee not.

Pro.

What?

Val.

To be in love—where scorn is bought with groans;

Coy looks with heart-sore sighs; one fading moment’s mirth

With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights:

If happ’ly won, perhaps a hapless gain;

If lost, why then a grievous labor won;

However—but a folly bought with wit,

Or else a wit by folly vanquished.

Pro.

So, by your circumstance, you call me fool.

Val.

So, by your circumstance, I fear you’ll prove.

Pro.

’Tis love you cavil at, I am not Love.

Val.

Love is your master, for he masters you;

And he that is so yoked by a fool,

Methinks should not be chronicled for wise.

Pro.

Yet writers say: as in the sweetest bud

The eating canker dwells, so eating love

Inhabits in the finest wits of all.

Val.

And writers say: as the most forward bud

Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,

Even so by love the young and tender wit