William Shakespeare: All's Well That Ends Well

ACT IV. SCENE 3. The Florentine camp. (continued)

FIRST LORD.
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together:
our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and
our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our
virtues.--

[Enter a Servant.]

How now? where's your master?

SERVANT.
He met the duke in the street, sir; of whom he hath taken
a solemn leave: his lordship will next morning for France. The
duke hath offered him letters of commendations to the king.

SECOND LORD.
They shall be no more than needful there, if they were more than
they can commend.

FIRST LORD.
They cannot be too sweet for the king's tartness. Here's his
lordship now.

[Enter BERTRAM.]

How now, my lord, is't not after midnight?

BERTRAM.
I have to-night despatch'd sixteen businesses, a month's length
apiece; by an abstract of success: I have conge'd with the duke,
done my adieu with his nearest; buried a wife, mourned for her;
writ to my lady mother I am returning; entertained my convoy; and
between these main parcels of despatch effected many nicer needs:
the last was the greatest, but that I have not ended yet.

SECOND LORD.
If the business be of any difficulty and this morning your
departure hence, it requires haste of your lordship.

BERTRAM.
I mean the business is not ended, as fearing to hear of it
hereafter. But shall we have this dialogue between the fool and
the soldier?--Come, bring forth this counterfeit module has
deceived me like a double-meaning prophesier.

SECOND LORD.
Bring him forth.

[Exeunt Soldiers.]

Has sat i' the stocks all night, poor gallant knave.

BERTRAM.
No matter; his heels have deserved it, in usurping his
spurs so long. How does he carry himself?

FIRST LORD.
I have told your lordship already; the stocks carry him. But to
answer you as you would be understood: he weeps like a wench that
had shed her milk; he hath confessed himself to Morgan, whom he
supposes to be a friar, from the time of his remembrance to this
very instant disaster of his setting i' the stocks: and what
think you he hath confessed?