ARIADNE:
I love Theseus, and thus
his death do dread - the lighter
torment were to die first, no longer
to fear for his life's threats.
A thousand times does terror brandish
its icy steel against my throat;
just so many soft deaths I know
in imagining he might perish.
But this brings not the greatest harm, in honesty -
to be embattled by so many menaces;
another must I fear with more intensity:
To think - O my soul is so perfidious! -
that he could at any moment murder me,
to whom I've so oft made my life the gift...