Knowledge house - The Complete Works of Shakespeare

Cor. Besides, our hands are hard.

Touch. Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow again. A more sounder instance, come.

Cor. And they are often tarr’d over with the surgery of our sheep; and would you have us kiss tar? The courtier’s hands are perfum’d with civet.

Touch. Most shallow man! thou worm’s-meat, in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed! Learn of the wise, and perpend: civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd.

Cor. You have too courtly a wit for me, I’ll rest.

Touch. Wilt thou rest damn’d? God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee, thou art raw.

Cor. Sir, I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm, and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.

Touch. That is another simple sin in you, to bring the ewes and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether, and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to a crooked-pated old cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou beest not damn’d for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how thou shouldst scape.

Cor. Here comes young Master Ganymed, my new mistress’s brother.

Enter Rosalind [with a paper, reading].

Ros.

“From the east to western Inde,

No jewel is like Rosalind.

Her worth, being mounted on the wind,

Through all the world bears Rosalind.

All the pictures fairest lin’d

Are but black to Rosalind.

Let no face be kept in mind

But the fair of Rosalind.”

Touch. I’ll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners and suppers and sleeping-hours excepted. It is the right butter-women’s rank to market.

Ros. Out, fool!

Touch. For a taste:

If a hart do lack a hind,

Let him seek out Rosalind.

If the cat will after kind,

So be sure will Rosalind.

Wint’red garments must be lin’d,

So must slender Rosalind.

They that reap must sheaf and bind,

Then to cart with Rosalind.

Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,

Such a nut is Rosalind.

He that sweetest rose will find,

Must find love’s prick and Rosalind.

This is the very false gallop of verses; why do you infect yourself with them?

Ros. Peace, you dull fool, I found them on a tree.

Touch. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit.

Ros. I’ll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar. Then it will be the earliest fruit i’ th’ country; for you’ll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that’s the right virtue of the medlar.

Touch. You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge.

Enter Celia with a writing.

Ros.

Peace,

Here comes my sister reading, stand aside.

Cel. [Reads.]

“Why should this [a] desert be?

For it is unpeopled? No!

Tongues I’ll hang on every tree,

That shall civil sayings show:

Some, how brief the life of man

Runs his erring pilgrimage,

That the stretching of a span

Buckles in his sum of age;

Some, of violated vows

’Twixt the souls of friend and friend;

But upon the fairest boughs,

Or at every sentence end,

Will I ‘Rosalinda’ write,

Teaching all that read to know

The quintessence of every sprite

Heaven would in little show.

Therefore heaven Nature charg’d

That one body should be fill’d

With all graces wide-enlarg’d.

Nature presently distill’d

Helen’s cheek, but not [her] heart,

Cleopatra’s majesty,

Atalanta’s better part,

Sad Lucretia’s modesty.

Thus Rosalind of many parts

By heavenly synod was devis’d,

Of many faces, eyes, and hearts,

To have the touches dearest priz’d.

Heaven would that she these gifts should have,

And I to live and die her slave.”

Ros. O most gentle Jupiter, what tedious homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried, “Have patience, good people!”

Cel. How now? back, friends! Shepherd, go off a little. Go with him, sirrah.

Touch. Come, shepherd, let us make an honorable retreat, though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.

Exit [with Corin].

Cel. Didst thou hear these verses?

Ros. O yes, I heard them all, and more too, for some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear.

Cel. That’s no matter; the feet might bear the verses.

Ros. Ay, but the feet were lame, and could not bear themselves without the verse, and therefore stood lamely in the verse.

Cel. But didst thou hear without wondering how thy name should be hang’d and carv’d upon these trees?

Ros. I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you came; for look here what I found on a palm tree. I was never so berhym’d since Pythagoras’ time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember.

Cel. Trow you who hath done this?

Ros. Is it a man?

Cel. And a chain, that you once wore, about his neck. Change you color?

Ros. I prithee who?

Cel. O Lord, Lord, it is a hard matter for friends to meet; but mountains may be remov’d with earthquakes, and so encounter.

Ros. Nay, but who is it?

Cel. Is it possible?

Ros. Nay, I prithee now, with most petitionary vehemence, tell me who it is.

Cel. O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping!

Ros. Good my complexion, dost thou think, though I am caparison’d like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition? One inch of delay more is a South-sea of discovery. I prithee tell me who is it quickly, and speak apace. I would thou couldst stammer, that thou mightst pour this conceal’d man out of thy mouth, as wine comes out of a narrow- mouth’d bottle, either too much at once, or none at all. I prithee take the cork out of thy mouth that I may drink thy tidings.

Cel. So you may put a man in your belly.

Ros. Is he of God’s making? What manner of man? Is his head worth a hat? or his chin worth a beard?

Cel. Nay, he hath but a little beard.

Ros. Why, God will send more, if the man will be thankful. Let me stay the growth of his beard, if thou delay me not the knowledge of his chin.

Cel. It is young Orlando, that tripp’d up the wrastler’s heels, and your heart, both in an instant.

Ros. Nay, but the devil take mocking. Speak sad brow and true maid.

Cel. I’ faith, coz, ’tis he.

Ros. Orlando?

Cel. Orlando.

Ros. Alas the day, what shall I do with my doublet and hose? What did he when thou saw’st him? What said he? How look’d he? Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where remains he? How parted he with thee? And when shalt thou see him again? Answer me in one word.

Cel. You must borrow me Gargantua’s mouth first; ’tis a word too great for any mouth of this age’s size. To say ay and no to these particulars is more than to answer in a catechism.

Ros. But doth he know that I am in this forest and in man’s apparel? Looks he as freshly as he did the day he wrastled?

Cel. It is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the propositions of a lover. But take a taste of my finding him, and relish it with good observance. I found him under a tree, like a dropp’d acorn.