Speeches (Lines) for Three QUEENS in "The Two Noble Kinsmen"

FIRST QUEEN. [to Second and Third Queens]
Dowagers, take hands.
Let us be widows to our woes. Delay
Commends us to a famishing hope.

Three QUEENS. Farewell.

PROLOGUE. New plays and maidenheads are near akin:
Much followed both, for both much money giv'n,
If they stand sound and well. And a good play,
Whose modest scenes blush on his marriage day
And shake to lose his honor, is like her
That after holy tie and first night's stir
Yet still is modesty, and still retains
More of the maid, to sight, than husband's pains.
We pray our play may be so, for I am sure
It has a noble breeder and a pure,
A learned, and a poet never went
More famous yet 'twixt Po and silver Trent.
Chaucer, of all admired, the story gives;
There, constant to eternity, it lives.
If we let fall the nobleness of this,
And the first sound this child hear be a hiss,
How will it shake the bones of that good man
And make him cry from underground "O, fan
From me the witless chaff of such a writer
That blasts my bays and my famed works makes
lighter
Than Robin Hood!" This is the fear we bring;
For, to say truth, it were an endless thing
And too ambitious, to aspire to him,
Weak as we are, and, almost breathless, swim
In this deep water. Do but you hold out
Your helping hands, and we shall tack about
And something do to save us. You shall hear
Scenes, though below his art, may yet appear
Worth two hours' travel. To his bones sweet sleep;
Content to you. If this play do not keep
A little dull time from us, we perceive
Our losses fall so thick we must needs leave.
[Flourish. He exits.]

Three QUEENS. [to Emilia]
O, help now!
Our cause cries for your knee.

JAILER. There is no remedy.

Three QUEENS. Farewell, kind window.
May rude wind never hurt thee. O, my lady,
If ever thou hast felt what sorrow was,
Dream how I suffer.--Come; now bury me.

[Palamon and Jailer exit.]

PIRITHOUS. Produce!

Three QUEENS. SCHOOLMASTER
Intrate, filii. Come forth and foot it.

[Music. Enter the Countrymen, Countrywomen, and
Jailer's Daughter; they perform a morris dance.]

Ladies, if we have been merry
And have pleased ye with a derry,
And a derry and a down,
Say the Schoolmaster's no clown.--
Duke, if we have pleased thee too
And have done as good boys should do,
Give us but a tree or twain
For a Maypole, and again,
Ere another year run out,
We'll make thee laugh, and all this rout.

DAUGHTER. Some two hundred bottles,
And twenty strike of oats, but he'll ne'er have her.
He lisps in 's neighing able to entice
A miller's mare. He'll be the death of her.

Three QUEENS. [aside]
What stuff she utters!

[Wooer and Doctor come forward.]