William Shakespeare: All's Well That Ends Well

ACT III. SCENE 6. Camp before Florence.

[Enter BERTRAM, and the two French Lords.]

FIRST LORD.
Nay, good my lord, put him to't; let him have his way.

SECOND LORD.
If your lordship find him not a hilding, hold me no more in your
respect.

FIRST LORD.
On my life, my lord, a bubble.

BERTRAM.
Do you think I am so far deceived in him?

FIRST LORD.
Believe it, my lord, in mine own direct knowledge, without any
malice, but to speak of him as my kinsman, he's a most notable
coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker,
the owner of no one good quality worthy your lordship's
entertainment.

SECOND LORD.
It were fit you knew him; lest, reposing too far in his virtue,
which he hath not, he might at some great and trusty business, in
a main danger fail you.

BERTRAM.
I would I knew in what particular action to try him.

SECOND LORD.
None better than to let him fetch off his drum, which you hear
him so confidently undertake to do.

FIRST LORD.
I with a troop of Florentines will suddenly surprise him; such I
will have whom I am sure he knows not from the enemy; we will
bind and hoodwink him so that he shall suppose no other but that
he is carried into the leaguer of the adversaries when we bring
him to our own tents. Be but your lordship present at his
examination; if he do not, for the promise of his life, and in
the highest compulsion of base fear, offer to betray you, and
deliver all the intelligence in his power against you, and that
with the divine forfeit of his soul upon oath, never trust my
judgment in anything.

SECOND LORD.
O, for the love of laughter, let him fetch his drum; he says he
has a stratagem for't: when your lordship sees the bottom of his
success in't, and to what metal this counterfeit lump of ore will
be melted, if you give him not John Drum's entertainment, your
inclining cannot be removed. Here he comes.