FIRST CITIZEN
Ay! so it is,
Nothing but chaff.
DUKE
And very good food too,
I give it to my horses.
DUCHESS
[restraining herself]
They say the water,
Set in the public cisterns for their use,
[Has, through the breaking of the aqueduct,]
To stagnant pools and muddy puddles turned.
DUKE
They should drink wine; water is quite unwholesome.
SECOND CITIZEN
Alack, your Grace, the taxes which the customs
Take at the city gate are grown so high
We cannot buy wine.
DUKE
Then you should bless the taxes
Which make you temperate.
DUCHESS
Think, while we sit
In gorgeous pomp and state, gaunt poverty
Creeps through their sunless lanes, and with sharp knives
Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily
And no word said.
THIRD CITIZEN
Ay! marry, that is true,
My little son died yesternight from hunger;
He was but six years old; I am so poor,
I cannot bury him.
DUKE
If you are poor,
Are you not blessed in that? Why, poverty
Is one of the Christian virtues,
[Turns to the CARDINAL.]
Is it not?
I know, Lord Cardinal, you have great revenues,
Rich abbey-lands, and tithes, and large estates
For preaching voluntary poverty.
DUCHESS
Nay but, my lord the Duke, be generous;
While we sit here within a noble house
[With shaded porticoes against the sun,
And walls and roofs to keep the winter out],
There are many citizens of Padua
Who in vile tenements live so full of holes,
That the chill rain, the snow, and the rude blast,
Are tenants also with them; others sleep
Under the arches of the public bridges
All through the autumn nights, till the wet mist
Stiffens their limbs, and fevers come, and so -
DUKE
And so they go to Abraham's bosom, Madam.
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