Part 7

BIANCA. It is so much thy habit to buy love, Or that which is for sale and labelled love, Hardly couldst thou conceive a priceless love. But though my love has never been for sale I have been in a market bought and sold.

GUIDO. This is some riddle which thy sweet wit reads To baffle mine and mock me yet again.

BIANCA. My marriage, sir, I speak of marriage now, That common market where my husband went And prides himself he made a bargain then.

GUIDO. The wretched chapman, how I hate his soul.

BIANCA. He was a better bidder than thyself, And knew with whom to deal . . . he did not speak Of gold to me, but in my father’s ear He made it clink: to me he spoke of love, Honest and free and open without price.

GUIDO. O white Bianca, lovely as the moon, The light of thy pure soul and shining wit Shows me my shame, and makes the thing I was Slink like a shadow from the thing I am.

BIANCA. Let that which casts the shadow act, my lord, And waste no thought on what its shadow does Or has done. Are youth, and strength, and love Balked by mere shadows, so that they forget Themselves so far they cannot be recalled?

GUIDO. Nobility is here, not in the court. There are the tinsel stars, here is the moon, Whose tranquil splendour makes a day of night. I have been starved by ladies, specks of light, And glory drowns me now I see the moon.

BIANCA. I have refused round sums of solid gold And shall not be by tinsel phrases bought.

GUIDO. Dispute no more, witty, divine Bianca; Dispute no more. See I have brought my lute! Close lock the door. We will sup with the moon Like Persian princes, that, in Babylon Sup in the hanging gardens of the king. I know an air that can suspend the soul As high in heaven as those towered-gardens hang.

BIANCA. My husband may return, we are not safe.

GUIDO. Didst thou not say that he would sleep from home?

BIANCA. He was not sure, he said it might be so. He was not sure—and he would send my aunt To sleep with me, if he did so decide, And she has not yet come.

GUIDO [starting] Hark, what’s that?

BIANCA. It is Maria scolds some gossip crone.

GUIDO. I thought the other voice had been a man’s.

BIANCA. All still again, old crones are often gruff. You should be gone, my lord.

GUIDO. O, sweet Bianca! How can I leave thee now! Thy beauty made Two captives of my eyes, and they were mad To feast them on thy form, but now thy wit, The liberated perfume of a bud, Which while a bud seemed perfect, but now is That which can make its former self forgot: How can I leave the flower who loved the leaf? Till now I was the richest prince in Florence, I am a lover now would shun its throngs, And put away all state and seek retreat At Bellosguardo or Fiesole, Where roses in their fin’st profusion hide Some marble villa whose cool walls have rung A laughing echo to Decameron, And where thy laughter shall as gaily sound. Say thou canst love or with a silent kiss Instil that balmy knowledge on my soul.

BIANCA. Canst tell me what love is?

GUIDO. It is consent, The union of two minds, two souls, two hearts, In all they think and hope and feel.

BIANCA. Such lovers might as well be dumb, for those Who think and hope and feel alike can never Have anything for one another’s ear.

GUIDO. Love is? Love is the meeting of two worlds In never-ending change and counter-change.

BIANCA. Thus will my husband praise the mercer’s mart, Where the two worlds of East and West exchange.

GUIDO. Come. Love is love, a kiss, a close embrace. It is . . .

BIANCA. My husband calls that love When he hath slammed his weekly ledger to.

GUIDO. I find my wit no better match for thine Than thou art match for an old crabbed man; But I am sure my youth and strength and blood Keep better tune with beauty gay and bright As thine is, than lean age and miser toil.

BIANCA. Well said, well said, I think he would not dare To face thee, more than owls dare face the sun; He’s the bent shadow such a form as thine Might cast upon a dung heap by the road, Though should it fall upon a proper floor Twould be at once a better man than he.

GUIDO. Your merchant living in the dread of loss Becomes perforce a coward, eats his heart. Dull souls they are, who, like caged prisoners watch And envy others’ joy; they taste no food But what its cost is present to their thought.