Emilia

You shall not

You shall not

write my praise

I am nothing but to

please his fantasy

They eat us hungerly, and when

they are full they belch us

I durst, my lord, to wager she is honest

lay down my soul at stake

I’ll be hanged if some eternal villain

[…] To get some office, have not devised this slander

Hath she forsook […] her father, and her country

and her friends, to be called whore?

The purest of their wives

Is foul as slander

And have not we affections, desires

for sport, and frailty, as men have?

Say that they slack their duties and

pour our treasures into foreign laps

Who would not make her husband

a cuckold to make him a monarch

the ills we do

their ills instruct us so

Thou has not half that power to do

me harm as I have to be hurt

Lay me by my

mistress’ side

So speaking as I

think, I die, I die

Let husbands know

their wives have sense like them

They are all but stomachs

and we are all but food;

I do think it is their husbands’

faults if wives do fall