William Shakespeare - William Shakespeare The Complete Works (37 plays, 160 sonnets and 5 Poetry Books With Active Table of Contents)

King.

Where hadst thou it?

Cost.

Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio.

[Berowne tears the letter.]

King.

How now, what is in you? Why dost thou tear it?

Ber.

A toy, my liege, a toy; your Grace needs not fear it.

Long.

It did move him to passion, and therefore let’s hear it.

Dum. [Gathering up the pieces.]

It is Berowne’s writing, and here is his name.

Ber. [To Costard.]

Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, you were born to do me shame.

Guilty, my lord, guilty! I confess, I confess.

King.

What?

Ber.

That you three fools lack’d me fool to make up the mess.

He, he, and you—and you, my liege!—and I,

Are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die.

O, dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you more.

Dum.

Now the number is even.

Ber.

True, true, we are four.

Will these turtles be gone?

King.

Hence, sirs, away!

Cost.

Walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay.

[Exeunt Costard and Jaquenetta.]

Ber.

Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O, let us embrace!

As true we are as flesh and blood can be.

The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face;

Young blood doth not obey an old decree.

We cannot cross the cause why we were born;

Therefore of all hands must we be forsworn.

King.

What, did these rent lines show some love of thine?

Ber.

Did they, quoth you? Who sees the heavenly Rosaline,

That (like a rude and savage man of Inde),

At the first op’ning of the gorgeous east,

Bows not his vassal head, and strooken blind,

Kisses the base ground with obedient breast?

What peremptory eagle-sighted eye

Dares look upon the heaven of her brow,

That is not blinded by her majesty?

King.

What zeal, what fury, hath inspir’d thee now?

My love (her mistress) is a gracious moon,

She (an attending star) scarce seen a light.

Ber.

My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Berowne.

O, but for my love, day would turn to night!

Of all complexions the cull’d sovereignty

Do meet as at a fair in her fair cheek,

Where several worthies make one dignity,

Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek.

Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues—

Fie, painted rhetoric! O, she needs it not.

To things of sale a seller’s praise belongs:

She passes praise, then praise too short doth blot.

A wither’d hermit, fivescore winters worn,

Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye:

Beauty doth varnish age, as if new born,

And gives the crutch the cradle’s infancy.

O, ’tis the sun that maketh all things shine!

King.

By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.

Ber.

Is ebony like her? O [wood] divine!

A wife of such wood were felicity.

O, who can give an oath? Where is a book?

That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack,

If that she learn not of her eye to look:

No face is fair that is not full so black.

King.

O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,

The hue of dungeons, and the school of night;

And beauty’s crest becomes the heavens well.

Ber.

Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of

O, if in black my lady’s brows be deck’d,

It mourns that painting [and] usurping hair

Should ravish doters with a false aspect:

And therefore is she born to make black fair.

Her favor turns the fashion of the days,

For native blood is counted painting now;

And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise,

Paints itself black, to imitate her brow.

Dum.

To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.

Long.

And since her time are colliers counted bright.

King.

And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack.

Dum.

Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.

Ber.

Your mistresses dare never come in rain,

For fear their colors should be wash’d away.

King.

’Twere good yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain,

I’ll find a fairer face not wash’d to-day.

Ber.

I’ll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.

King.

No devil will fright thee then so much as she.

Dum.

I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear.

Long.

Look, here’s thy love [showing his boot], my foot and her face see.

Ber.

O, if the streets were paved with thine eyes,

Her feet were much too dainty for such tread!

Dum.

O vile! then as she goes what upward lies

The street should see as she walk’d overhead.

King.

But what of this, are we not all in love?

Ber.

O, nothing so sure, and thereby all forsworn.

King.

Then leave this chat, and, good Berowne, now prove

Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn.

Dum.

Ay marry, there—some flattery for this evil.

Long.

O, some authority how to proceed;

Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil.

Dum.

Some salve for perjury.

Ber.

O, ’tis more than need.

Have at you then, affection’s men-at-arms.

Consider what you first did swear unto:

To fast, to study, and to see no woman—

Flat treason ’gainst the kingly state of youth.

Say, can you fast? Your stomachs are too young,

And abstinence engenders maladies.

(And where that you have vow’d to study, lords,

In that each of you have forsworn his book,

Can you still dream and pore and thereon look?

For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,

Have found the ground of study’s excellence

Without the beauty of a woman’s face?

From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:

They are the ground, the books, the academes,

From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.

Why, universal plodding poisons up

The nimble spirits in the arteries,

As motion and long-during action tires

The sinowy vigor of the traveller.

Now for not looking on a woman’s face,

You have in that forsworn the use of eyes,

And study too, the causer of your vow.

For where is any author in the world

Teaches such beauty as a woman’s eye?

Learning is but an adjunct to ourself,

And where we are, our learning likewise is.

Then when ourselves we see in ladies’ eyes,

With ourselves,

Do we not likewise see our learning there?)

O, we have made a vow to study, lords,

And in that vow we have forsworn our books.

For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,

In leaden contemplation have found out

Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes

Of beauty’s tutors have enrich’d you with?

Other slow arts entirely keep the brain;

And therefore, finding barren practicers,

Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil;

But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes,

Lives not alone immured in the brain,

But with the motion of all elements,

Courses as swift as thought in every power,

And gives to every power a double power,

Above their functions and their offices.

It adds a precious seeing to the eye:

A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind.

A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound,

When the suspicious head of theft is stopp’d.

Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible