Imogen. Talk thy tongue weary, speak;
I have heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear,
Therein false struck, can take no greater wound,
Nor tent to bottom that."
When Pisanio, who had been charged to kill his mistress, puts her in a way to live, she says,
Why, good fellow,
What shall I do the while? Where bide? How live?
Or in my life what comfort, when I am
Dead to my husband?"
Yet when he advises her to disguise herself in boy's clothes, and suggests "a course pretty and full in view," by which she may "happily be near the residence of Posthumus," she exclaims,
"Oh, for such means,
Though peril to my modesty, not death on't,
I would adventure."
And when Pisanio, enlarging on the consequences, tells her she must change
"Fear and niceness,
The handmaids of all women, or more truly,
Woman its pretty self, into a waggish courage,
Ready in gibes, quick answer'd, saucy, and
As quarrellous as the weazel"
she interrupts him hastily:
"Nay, be brief;
I see into thy end, and am almost
A man already."
