O, call me not to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;
Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue;
Use power with power and slay me not by art:
Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere, but in my sight
Dear heart! forbear to glance thine eye aside :
What need'st thou wound with cunning, when thy might
Is more than my o'erpressed defence can bide?
Let me excuse thee: ah! my Love well knows
Her pretty looks have been my enemies;
And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:
Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,
Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain.
Be wise as thou art cruel! do not press
My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;
Lest Sorrow lend me words, and words express
The manner of my pity-wanting pain:
If I might teach thee wit, better it were,
Tho' not to love, yet, Love, to tell me so;
thus threatens that treatment and torture which Herbert acknowledges in the beautiful tyrant's own words, and humbly accepts in very deed.
'How I would make him fawn, and beg, and seek,
And wait the season, and observe the times,
And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes,
And shape his service wholly to my hests,
And make him proud to make me proud, that jests!
So potently would I o'ersway his state
That he should be my fool, and I his fate.'
Love's Labour's Lost, act v., sc. 2.
I elect to use this word in place of the perttaunt like,' or 'pertaunt like,' of Quarto and Folio. It may have been 'potent like,' meaning like a potentate; but I more than doubt if Shakspeare arrested his thought mid-swing, lamed his expression, and checked the coming climax of the lines by a simile conveyed in that way. Neither do I think the Poet wrote 'you equal potents in King John,' but you equal-potent, fiery-kindled spirits,' as he used 'subtle-potent' in 'Troilus and Cressida.' 'Potently' points the emphasis on the 'so' with far more simple force. The whole word was bungled by the printers, who would find it equally easy to make the lie into like,' as to convert potent' into 'perttaunt.' That it was not 'portent-like,' may be gathered from a line in 'Coriolanus:
A place of potency, and sway o' the state.'
Thus read and illustrated, the lines quoted prove the changeful potency' of 'Troilus and Cressida' (act ii., sc. 2) to be the right lection.
As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,
No news but health from their Physicians know;
For if I should despair, I should grow mad,
And in my madness might speak ill of thee:
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,
Mad slanderers by mad ears believéd be:
That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
Bear thine eyes straight, tho' thy proud heart go wide.
(140.)
Cans't thou, O cruel! say I love thee not,
When I against myself with thee partake?
Do I not think on thee when I forgot
Am of myself, all tyrant for thy sake?
Who hateth thee that I do call my friend?
On whom frown'st thou that I do fawn upon?
Nay, if thou lower'st on me, do I not spend
Revenge upon myself with present moan?
What merit do I in myself respect,
That is so proud thy service to despise,
When all my best doth worship thy defect,
Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?
But Love, hate on, for now I know thy mind;
Those that can see thou lov'st, and I am blind.
Thou blind fool, love, what dost thou to mine eyes,
That they behold, and see not what they see?
They know what beauty is, see where it lies,
Yet what the best is take the worst to be:
If eyes, corrupt by over-partial looks,
Be anchored in the bay where all men ride,
Why of eyes' falsehood hast thou forgéd hooks,
Whereto the judgement of my heart is tied?
Why should my heart think that a several plot,
Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?
Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not,
To put fair truth upon so foul a face?
In things right true my heart and eyes have erred,
And to this false plague are they now transferred.
O me! what eyes hath love put in my head,
Which have no correspondence with true sight?
Or if they have, where is my judgement fled,
That censures falsely what they see aright?
If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote,
Love's eye is not so true as all men's!1 no,
How can it? O, how can love's eye be true,
That is so vext with watching and with tears?
No marvel then, tho' I mistake my view;
The sun itself sees not till heaven clears:
O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find!
In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
But tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who in despite of view is pleased to dote:
Nor are my ears with thy tongue's tune delighted;
Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast with thee alone:
But my five wits, nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
Who leaves, unswayed, the likeness of a man,
Thy proud heart's slave and vassal-wretch to be:
Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
That she that makes me sin awards me pain.
(141.).
1 'Love's eye is not so true as all men's.' It has been suggested by the Editor of 'Walker's Examination,' that a pun was intended in this line on the 'eye' and I, ie. 'ay.' And the editors of the 'Globe' and 'Gem' editions have adopted it, and read 'Love's "eye" is not so true as all men's "No." But I cannot bring myself to believe that Shakspeare thus snapped the continuity and maimed the sense to catch at a quibbling sound. His point is that the eye of one cannot see so truly as the eye of all men, and this is lost if we accept the pun and alter the punctuation. Singleness of expression is absolutely demanded by the nature of the thought, and for the carrying on of the argument. Shakspeare did not make all the puns that were possible to him.
O, from what power has thou this powerful might
With insufficiency my heart to sway?
To make me give the lie to my true sight,
And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?
Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
That in the very refuse of thy deeds
There is such strength and warrantise of skill
That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more
The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
O, tho' I love what others do abhor,
With others thou should'st not abhor my state!
If thy unworthiness raised love in me,
More worthy I to be beloved of thee.
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please:
My Reason, the Physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which Physic did except:
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantie-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse, as madmen's, are
At random from the truth vainly expressed;
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing,
In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn
In vowing new hate after new love bearing:
But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,
When I break twenty? I am perjured most;
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,
And all my honest faith in thee is lost :
For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy;
And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,
Or made them swear against the thing they see;
For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured I,
To swear, against the truth, so foul a lie.
Love is too young to know what conscience is!
Yet who knows not, conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:
For thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body's treason;
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason;
But rising at thy name, doth point out thee
As his triumphant prize: proud of this pride
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side:
No want of conscience hold it that I call
Her-Love! for whose dear love I rise and fall.
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despiséd straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit and in possession so:
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed! behind, a dream!
All this the world well knows, yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
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