Internet Shakespeare Editions

Author: John Lyly
Editor: David Bevington
Peer Reviewed

Galathea (Modern)

1140The Epilogue
[Galathea comes forward as the rest leave.]
Galathea
Go all, 'tis I only that conclude all. You ladies may see that Venus can make constancy fickleness, courage cowardice, modesty lightness, working things impossible in your sex and tempering hardest hearts like softest wool. Yield, ladies, yield to love, ladies, which lurketh under your eyelids whilst 1145you sleep and playeth with your heartstrings whilst you wake; whose sweetness never breedeth satiety, labor weariness, nor grief bitterness. Cupid was begotten in a mist, nursed in clouds, and sucking only upon conceits. Confess him a conqueror, whom ye ought to regard, sith it is unpossible to resist; for this is infallible, that love conquereth all things but itself, and ladies all hearts but their own.
[Exit.]