Phil.  Where, and please your majesty?  Methinks ’tis very well.

Queen.  Do not you see it?  Oh how blind is love!

Cand.  And how quick-sighted malice! [Aside.

Queen.  But yet, methinks, those knots of sky do not So well with the dead colour of her face.

Ast.  Your majesty mistakes, she wants no red.

[The Queen here plucks out her glass, and looks sometimes on herself, sometimes on her rival.

Queen.  How do I look to-day, Asteria?  Methinks, not well.

Ast.  Pardon me, madam, most victoriously.

Queen.  What think you, Philocles? come, do not flatter.

Phil.  Paris was a bold man, who presumed, To judge the beauty of a goddess.

Cand.  Your majesty has given the reason why He cannot judge; his love has blinded him.

Queen.  Methinks, a long patch here, beneath her eye, Might hide that dismal hollowness.  What think you, Philocles?

Cand.  Beseech you, madam, ask not his opinion:  What my faults are it is no matter; He loves me with them all.

Queen.  Ay, he may love; but when he marries you, Your bridal shall be kept in some dark dungeon.  Farewell, and think of that, too easy maid!  I blush, thou sharest my blood.

[Exeunt Queen and ASTERIA.

Cand.  Inhuman queen! 
Thou canst not be more willing to resign
Thy part in me, than I to give up mine.

Phil.  Love, how few subjects do thy laws fulfil, And yet those few, like us, thou usest ill!

Cand.  The greatest slaves, in monarchies, are they,
Whom birth sets nearest to imperial sway;
While jealous power does sullenly o’erspy,
We play, like deer, within the lion’s eye. 
’Would I for you some shepherdess had been,
And, but each May, ne’er heard the name of queen!

Phil.  If you were so, might I some monarch be,
Then, you should gain what now you lose by me;
Then, you in all my glories should have part,
And rule my empire, as you rule my heart.

Cand.  How much our golden wishes are in vain!  When they are past, we are ourselves again.

Enter Queen and ASTERIA above.

Queen.  Look, look, Asteria, yet they are not gone.  Hence we may hear what they discourse alone.

Phil.  My love inspires me with a generous thought,
Which you, unknowing in those wishes, taught. 
Since happiness may out of courts be found,
Why stay we here on this enchanted ground;
And chuse not rather with content to dwell
(If love and joy can find it) in a cell?

Cand.  Those who, like you, have once in courts been great,
May think they wish, but wish not, to retreat. 
They seldom go, but when they cannot stay;
As losing gamesters throw the dice away. 
Even in that cell, where you repose would find,
Visions of court will haunt your restless mind;
And glorious dreams stand ready to restore
The pleasing shapes of all you had before.