SCAR.  No; though we heard the words of ceremony,
But had hands knit, as felons that wear fetters
Forc’d upon them.  For tell me, woman,
Did e’er my love with sighs entreat thee mine? 
Did ever I in willing conference
Speak words, made half with tears, that I did love thee? 
Or was I ever but glad to see thee, as all lovers are? 
No, no, thou know’st I was not.

KATH.  O me!

BUT.  The more’s the pity.

SCAR.  But when I came to church, I did there stand,
As water, whose forc’d breach[427] had drown’d my land. 
Are you my wife, or these my children? 
Why, ’tis impossible; for like the skies
Without the sun’s light, so look all your eyes;
Dark, cloudy, thick, and full of heaviness;
Within my country there was hope to see
Me and my issue to be like our fathers,
Upholders of our country all our life,
Which should have been if I had wed a wife: 
Where now,
As dropping leaves in autumn you look all,
And I, that should uphold you, like to fall.

KATH.  ’Twas nor shall be my fault, heaven bear me witness.

SCAR.  Thou liest, strumpet, thou liest!

BUT.  O sir!

SCAR.  Peace, saucy Jack! strumpet, I say thou liest,
For wife of mine thou art not, and these thy bastards
Whom I begot of thee with this unrest,
That bastards born are born not to be blest.

KATH.  On me pour all your wrath, but not on them.

SCAR.  On thee and them, for ’tis the end of lust
To scourge itself, heaven lingering to be just: 
Harlot!

KATH.  Husband!

SCAR.  Bastards!

CHIL.  Father!

BUT.  What heart not pities this?

SCAR.  Even in your cradle, you were accurs’d of heaven,
Thou an adultress in my married arms. 
And they that made the match, bawds to thy lust: 
Ay, now you hang the head; shouldst have done so before,
Then these had not been bastards, thou a whore.

BUT.  I can brook’t no longer:  sir, you do not well in this.

SCAR.  Ha, slave!

BUT.  ’Tis not the aim of gentry to bring forth
Such harsh unrelish’d fruit unto their wines[428],
And to their pretty—­pretty children by my troth.

SCAR.  How, rascal!

BUT.  Sir, I must tell you, your progenitors,
Two of the which these years were servant to,
Had not such mists before their understanding,
Thus to behave themselves.

SCAR.  And you’ll control me, sir!

BUT.  Ay, I will.

SCAR.  You rogue!

BUT.  Ay, ’tis I will tell ’tis ungently done
Thus to defame your wife, abuse your children: 
Wrong them, you wrong yourself; are they not yours?

SCAR.  Pretty—­pretty impudence, in faith.

BUT.  Her whom you are bound to love, to rail against! 
Those whom you are bound to keep, to spurn like dogs! 
And you were not my master, I would tell you—­