William Shakespeare - William Shakespeare - Complete Works

Therefore use thy discretion: I had as lief thou didst break his

neck as his finger. And thou wert best look to't; for if thou

dost him any slight disgrace, or if he do not mightily grace

himself on thee, he will practise against thee by poison, entrap

thee by some treacherous device, and never leave thee till he

hath ta'en thy life by some indirect means or other; for, I

assure thee, and almost with tears I speak it, there is not one

so young and so villainous this day living. I speak but brotherly

of him; but should I anatomize him to thee as he is, I must blush

and weep, and thou must look pale and wonder.

CHARLES. I am heartily glad I came hither to you. If he come

to-morrow I'll give him his payment. If ever he go alone again,

I'll never wrestle for prize more. And so, God keep your worship!

Exit

OLIVER. Farewell, good Charles. Now will I stir this gamester. I

hope I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why,

hates nothing more than he. Yet he's gentle; never school'd and

yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly

beloved; and, indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and

especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am

altogether misprised. But it shall not be so long; this wrestler

shall clear all. Nothing remains but that I kindle the boy

thither, which now I'll go about. Exit

Enter ROSALIND and CELIA

CELIA. I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry.

ROSALIND. Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of; and

would you yet I were merrier? Unless you could teach me to forget

a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any

extraordinary pleasure.

CELIA. Herein I see thou lov'st me not with the full weight that I

love thee. If my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy

uncle, the Duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me, I

could have taught my love to take thy father for mine; so wouldst

thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously temper'd

as mine is to thee.

ROSALIND. Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to

rejoice in yours.

CELIA. You know my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to

have; and, truly, when he dies thou shalt be his heir; for what

he hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee

again in affection. By mine honour, I will; and when I break that

oath, let me turn monster; therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear

Rose, be merry.

ROSALIND. From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports.

Let me see; what think you of falling in love?

CELIA. Marry, I prithee, do, to make sport withal; but love no man

in good earnest, nor no further in sport neither than with safety

of a pure blush thou mayst in honour come off again.

ROSALIND. What shall be our sport, then?

CELIA. Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her

wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.

ROSALIND. I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily

misplaced; and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her

gifts to women.

CELIA. 'Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes

honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very

ill-favouredly.

ROSALIND. Nay; now thou goest from Fortune's office to Nature's:

Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of

Nature.

Enter TOUCHSTONE

CELIA. No; when Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by

Fortune fall into the fire? Though Nature hath given us wit to

flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off

the argument?

ROSALIND. Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when

Fortune makes Nature's natural the cutter-off of Nature's wit.

CELIA. Peradventure this is not Fortune's work neither, but

Nature's, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of

such goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone; for

always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. How

now, wit! Whither wander you?

TOUCHSTONE. Mistress, you must come away to your father.

CELIA. Were you made the messenger?

TOUCHSTONE. No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you.

ROSALIND. Where learned you that oath, fool?

TOUCHSTONE. Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were

good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught.

Now I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and the mustard

was good, and yet was not the knight forsworn.

CELIA. How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge?

ROSALIND. Ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom.

TOUCHSTONE. Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear

by your beards that I am a knave.

CELIA. By our beards, if we had them, thou art.

TOUCHSTONE. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were. But if you

swear by that that not, you are not forsworn; no more was this

knight, swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he

had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancackes or

that mustard.

CELIA. Prithee, who is't that thou mean'st?

TOUCHSTONE. One that old Frederick, your father, loves.

CELIA. My father's love is enough to honour him. Enough, speak no

more of him; you'll be whipt for taxation one of these days.

TOUCHSTONE. The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise

men do foolishly.

CELIA. By my troth, thou sayest true; for since the little wit that

fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have

makes a great show. Here comes Monsieur Le Beau.

Enter LE BEAU

ROSALIND. With his mouth full of news.

CELIA. Which he will put on us as pigeons feed their young.

ROSALIND. Then shall we be news-cramm'd.

CELIA. All the better; we shall be the more marketable. Bon jour,

Monsieur Le Beau. What's the news?

LE BEAU. Fair Princess, you have lost much good sport.

CELIA. Sport! of what colour?

LE BEAU. What colour, madam? How shall I answer you?

ROSALIND. As wit and fortune will.

TOUCHSTONE. Or as the Destinies decrees.

CELIA. Well said; that was laid on with a trowel.

TOUCHSTONE. Nay, if I keep not my rank-

ROSALIND. Thou losest thy old smell.

LE BEAU. You amaze me, ladies. I would have told you of good

wrestling, which you have lost the sight of.

ROSALIND. Yet tell us the manner of the wrestling.

LE BEAU. I will tell you the beginning, and, if it please your

ladyships, you may see the end; for the best is yet to do; and

here, where you are, they are coming to perform it.

CELIA. Well, the beginning, that is dead and buried.

LE BEAU. There comes an old man and his three sons-

CELIA. I could match this beginning with an old tale.

LE BEAU. Three proper young men, of excellent growth and presence.

ROSALIND. With bills on their necks: 'Be it known unto all men by

these presents'-

LE BEAU. The eldest of the three wrestled with Charles, the Duke's

wrestler; which Charles in a moment threw him, and broke three of

his ribs, that there is little hope of life in him. So he serv'd

the second, and so the third. Yonder they lie; the poor old man,

their father, making such pitiful dole over them that all the

beholders take his part with weeping.

ROSALIND. Alas!

TOUCHSTONE. But what is the sport, monsieur, that the ladies have

lost?

LE BEAU. Why, this that I speak of.

TOUCHSTONE. Thus men may grow wiser every day. It is the first time