Act 2, Scene 5

Another room in Philario's house.

[Enter POSTHUMUS LEONATUS]
Posthumus
1295 Is there no way for men to be but women
1296 Must be half-workers? We are all bastards;
1297 And that most venerable man which I
1298 Did call my father, was I know not where
1299 When I was stamp'd; some coiner with his tools
1300 Made me a counterfeit: yet my mother seem'd
1301 The Dian of that time so doth my wife
1302 The nonpareil of this. O, vengeance, vengeance!
1303 Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain'd
1304 And pray'd me oft forbearance; did it with
1305 A pudency so rosy the sweet view on't
1306 Might well have warm'd old Saturn; that I thought her
1307 As chaste as unsunn'd snow. O, all the devils!
1308 This yellow Iachimo, in an hour,—wast not?—
1309 Or less,—at first?—perchance he spoke not, but,
1310 Like a full-acorn'd boar, a German one,
1311 Cried 'O!' and mounted; found no opposition
1312 But what he look'd for should oppose and she
1313 Should from encounter guard. Could I find out
1314 The woman's part in me! For there's no motion
1315 That tends to vice in man, but I affirm
1316 It is the woman's part: be it lying, note it,
1317 The woman's; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;
1318 Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;
1319 Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,
1320 Nice longing, slanders, mutability,
1321 All faults that may be named, nay, that hell knows,
1322 Why, hers, in part or all; but rather, all;
1323 For even to vice
1324 They are not constant but are changing still
1325 One vice, but of a minute old, for one
1326 Not half so old as that. I'll write against them,
1327 Detest them, curse them: yet 'tis greater skill
1328 In a true hate, to pray they have their will:
1329 The very devils cannot plague them better.
[Exit]

Notes

TLN 1299rhetorical device
“some coiner with his tools Made me a counterfeit”
Posthumus extends a coinage metaphor across two lines: a 'coiner' is a minter of money, and to be 'stamp'd' is to have the official die pressed onto a coin. He means that his father was absent when he was conceived, so some unknown man ('some coiner') used the tools of sex to produce Posthumus — a counterfeit, a bastard coin bearing a false mark of legitimacy. The metaphor equates paternity with the royal authorization stamped on currency.
TLN 1301classical allusion
“The Dian of that time so doth my wife The nonpareil of this”
Posthumus compares his mother to 'Dian' — Diana, the Roman goddess of the moon and the hunt, who was the supreme emblem of chastity — then names Imogen 'the nonpareil of this' age, meaning her unmatched equal in the present. The bitterness is immediate: he has just been given 'proof' that Imogen slept with Iachimo, and so the woman he considered a living Diana has, he believes, shown it was all a false appearance.
classical Diana, virgin goddess of the moon
TLN 1305archaic vocab
“A pudency so rosy the sweet view on't Might well have warm'd old Saturn”
'Pudency' means modesty or chastity-shame — the blush of a woman who resists a sexual advance. Posthumus is remembering that when he pressed his conjugal rights Imogen refused him with such a rosy, blushing modesty that even 'old Saturn' — the frozen, aged planet-god, a byword for cold and age — could have been warmed by the sight. The compliment sharpens the betrayal: the very shame that looked like proof of her chastity was, he now believes, a performance.
TLN 1314rhetorical device
“The woman's part in me! For there's no motion That tends to vice in man”
Posthumus launches a rhetorical catalogue — an anaphora, a repeated hammering of the phrase 'the woman's part' — in which he assigns every human vice to women. 'The woman's part in me' first means a literal anatomical wish: he wants to cut out whatever in him derives from female inheritance. Then it shifts to a broad misogynist claim: lying, flattering, deceiving, lust, revenge, ambition, 'nice longing' (foolish craving), slander, mutability — all hers. 'Nice' here means wanton or foolish, not pleasant.