Oph. 'Tis brief, my lord. 165
Ham. As woman's love.
Enter two Players, King and Queen.[a 1]
P. King. Full thirty times hath Phœbus' cart[b 1] gone round
Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed[a 2] ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been, 170
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.
P. Queen. So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o'er ere love be done!
But, woe is me I you are so sick of late, 175
So far from cheer and from your[a 3] former state,
That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must;[b 2]
For[a 4] women's fear and love holds quantity,[b 3]
In neither aught,[a 5][b 4] or in extremity. 180
Now, what my love[a 6] is, proof hath made you know,
And as my love is sized, my fear is so;
- ↑ 166. Enter . . . Queen] Globe, Enter King and Queene Q, Enter King and his Queene F, Enter the Duke and Dutchesse Q 1.
- ↑ 168. orbed] F, orb'd the Q.
- ↑ 176. your] F, our Q.
- ↑ 179. For] F, And Q, preceded by the following unrhymed line: "For women feare too much, even as they love"; holds] F, hold Q.
- ↑ 180. In neither aught] F (with spelling ought), Eyther none, in neither ought Q.
- ↑ 181. love] F, Lord Q.
- ↑ 167. cart] chariot. Spenser, Faerie Queene, V. viii. 34: "On every side of his embatteld cart." These lines resemble lines beginning "Thrice ten times Phœbus," near the opening of Act IV, Greene's Alphonsus.
- ↑ 178. must] Perhaps a line, rhyming with that given in Q, has been lost; perhaps the Q line had been cancelled and was printed by mistake.
- ↑ 179. holds quantity] keep proportion to each other. See Midsummer Night's Dream, I. i. 232.
- ↑ 180. In neither aught] Ingleby proposed "In either naught." Hunter would punctuate "hold quantity In neither:—aught." Capell explains: "They either feel none of these passions, or feel them both in extremity."
