BEWARE OF SMOOTH WATER Essay Example For Students

BEWARE OF SMOOTH WATER Essay A monologue from the play by Pedro Calderon de la Barca NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from Eight Dramas of Calderon. Trans. Edward Fitzgerald. London: Macmillan Co., 1906. DONNA CLARA: Not to spareYour father even, Eugenia! For shame!Tis time to tie your roving tongue indeed.Consider, too, we are not in the country,Where tongue and eyes, Eugenia, may run wildWithout offence to uncensorious woods;But in a city, with its myriad eyesInquisitively turnd to watch, and tonguesAs free and more malicious than yoursTo tellwhere honours monument is wax,And shames of brass. I know, Eugenia,High spirits are not in themselves a crime;But if to men they seem so?thats the question.For it is almost better to do illWith a good outward grace than well without;Especially a woman; most of allOne not yet married; whose reputationOne breath of scandal, like a flake of snow,May melt away; one of those tenderest flowersWhose leaves evn the warm breath of flatteryWithers as fast as envys bitterest wind,That surely follows short-lived summer praise.Evn those who praise your beauty, grace, or wit,Will be the first, if you presume on them,To pull the idol down themselves set up,B eginning with malicious whispers first,Until they join the storm themselves have raised.And most if one be given oneself to laughAnd to make laugh: the world will doubly yearnTo turn ones idle giggle into tears.I say this all by way of warning, sister,Now we are launched upon this dangerous sea.Consider of it.