Act 3, Scene VI

SCENE VI. Camp before Florence.

Enter BERTRAM and the two French Lords
Second Lord
Nay, good my lord, put him to't; let him have his
way.

First Lord
If your lordship find him not a hilding, hold me no
more in your respect.

Second Lord
On my life, my lord, a bubble.

BERTRAM
Do you think I am so far deceived in him?

Second Lord
Believe it, my lord, in mine own direct knowledge,
without any malice, but to speak of him as my
kinsman, he's a most notable coward, an infinite and
endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner
of no one good quality worthy your lordship's
entertainment.

First Lord
It were fit you knew him; lest, reposing too far in
his virtue, which he hath not, he might at some
great and trusty business in a main danger fail you.

BERTRAM
I would I knew in what particular action to try him.

First Lord
None better than to let him fetch off his drum,
which you hear him so confidently undertake to do.

Second Lord
I, with a troop of Florentines, will suddenly
surprise him; such I will have, whom I am sure he
knows not from the enemy: we will bind and hoodwink
him so, that he shall suppose no other but that he
is carried into the leaguer of the adversaries, when
we bring him to our own tents. Be but your lordship
present at his examination: if he do not, for the
promise of his life and in the highest compulsion of
base fear, offer to betray you and deliver all the
intelligence in his power against you, and that with
the divine forfeit of his soul upon oath, never
trust my judgment in any thing.

First Lord
O, for the love of laughter, let him fetch his drum;
he says he has a stratagem for't: when your
lordship sees the bottom of his success in't, and to
what metal this counterfeit lump of ore will be
melted, if you give him not John Drum's
entertainment, your inclining cannot be removed.
Here he comes.

Enter PAROLLES

Second Lord
[Aside to BERTRAM] O, for the love of laughter,
hinder not the honour of his design: let him fetch
off his drum in any hand.

BERTRAM
How now, monsieur! this drum sticks sorely in your
disposition.

First Lord
A pox on't, let it go; 'tis but a drum.

PAROLLES
'But a drum'! is't 'but a drum'? A drum so lost!
There was excellent command,--to charge in with our
horse upon our own wings, and to rend our own soldiers!

First Lord
That was not to be blamed in the command of the
service: it was a disaster of war that Caesar
himself could not have prevented, if he had been
there to command.

BERTRAM
Well, we cannot greatly condemn our