by Garneta on Wed Apr 22, 2009 7:31 am
Acting exercise time! I'm gonna attempt to type out my final line...the script is in my bedroom. I'm NOT going to look at it. Correct punctuation be damned. Here goes:
Fie, fie! Unknit that threatening unkind brow, and dart not scornful glances from those eyes to wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor! It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads, confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds, and in no sense is meet or amiable! A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled; muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty, and while it is so, none so dry or thirsty will deign to sip or touch one drop from it! Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, thy head, thy sovereign...one who cares for thee and for thy maintenance commits his body to painful labor both by sea and land, to watch the night in storms, the day in cold, while thou liest warm at home, safe and secure, and craves no other tribute at thy hands than love, fair looks, and true obedience...too little a price to pay for so great a debt. Such duty as the subject owes the prince, even such a woman oweth to her husband. And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, and not obedient to his honest will, then what is she but a foul contending rebel and graceless traitor to her loving lord? I am asham'd that women are so simple to offer war where they should kneel for peace, or to seek for rule, supremacy, and sway when they are bound to serve, love, and obey. Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth, unapt to toll and trouble on this world, but that our soft conditions and our hearts should well agree with our external parts? Come, come you froward and unable worins! My mind hath been as big as yours, my heart as great, my reason haply more to bandy word for word and frown for frown! But now I see our lances are but straws, our strength as weak, our weakness past compare that seeming to be most what we indeed least are! Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot, and place your hands below your husbands foot, in token of which duty, if he please. My hand is ready, may it do him ease.
Damn...I didn't go over that line yesterday at all, and that took longer than it should've. Actually, have no idea if I got it all right or not (I'm a stickler for, where applicable, saying the lines word for word, exactly as the playwright wrote them)...don't really feel like retrieving my script to check, either.