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

Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.

Love’s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.

For valor, is not Love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?

Subtile as Sphinx, as sweet and musical

As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair.

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods

Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.

Never durst poet touch a pen to write

Until his ink were temp’red with Love’s sighs:

O then his lines would ravish savage ears

And plant in tyrants mild humility.

From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:

They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;

They are the books, the arts, the academes,

That show, contain, and nourish all the world,

Else none at all in aught proves excellent.

Then fools you were these women to forswear,

Or keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.

For wisdom’s sake, a word that all men love,

Or for love’s sake, a word that loves all men,

Or for men’s sake, the [authors] of these women,

Or women’s sake, by whom we men are men,

[Let] us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,

Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.

It is religion to be thus forsworn:

For charity itself fulfills the law,

And who can sever love from charity?

King.

Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!

Ber.

Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;

Pell-mell, down with them! but be first advis’d,

In conflict that you get the sun of them.

Long.

Now to plain-dealing, lay these glozes by:

Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?

King.

And win them too; therefore let us devise

Some entertainment for them in their tents.

Ber.

First, from the park let us conduct them thither;

Then homeward every man attach the hand

Of his fair mistress. In the afternoon

We will with some strange pastime solace them,

Such as the shortness of the time can shape,

For revels, dances, masks, and merry hours

Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.

King.

Away, away, no time shall be omitted

That will be time, and may by us be fitted.

Ber. [Allons! allons!]

Sow’d cockle reap’d no corn,

And justice always whirls in equal measure:

Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn;

If so, our copper buys no better treasure.

[Exeunt.]

¶

Enter the Pedant [Holofernes], the Curate [Sir Nathaniel], and Dull.

Hol. Satis quid sufficit.

Nath. I praise God for you, sir. Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious: pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the King’s, who is intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.

Hol. Novi [hominem] tanquam te. His humor is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behavior vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.

Nath. A most singular and choice epithet.

Draw out his table-book.

Hol. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-devise companions, such rackers of ortography, as to speak ‘dout,’ fine, when he should say ‘doubt’; ‘det,’ when he should pronounce ‘debt’—d, e, b, t, not d, e, t: he clepeth a calf, ‘cauf’; half, ‘hauf’; neighbor vocatur ‘nebor’; neigh abbreviated ‘ne.’ This is abhominable—which he would call ‘abbominable’; it insinuateth me of [insanie]: ne intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.

Nath. Laus Deo, [bone] intelligo.

Hol. [Bone? bone for bene,] Priscian a little scratch’d, ’twill serve.

Enter Braggart [Armado], Boy [Moth, and Costard].

Nath. Videsne quis venit?

Hol. Video, et gaudeo.

Arm. [To Moth.] Chirrah!

Hol. [Quare.] chirrah, not sirrah?

Arm. Men of peace, well encount’red.

Hol. Most military sir, salutation.

Moth [Aside to Costard.] They have been at a great feast of languages, and stol’n the scraps.

Cost. O, they have liv’d long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallow’d than a flap-dragon.

Moth. Peace, the peal begins.

Arm. [To Holofernes.] Monsieur, are you not lett’red?

Moth. Yes, yes, he teaches boys the horn-book. What is a, b, spell’d backward, with the horn on his head?

Hol. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

Moth. Ba, most silly sheep, with a horn. You hear his learning.

Hol. Quis, quis, thou consonant?

Moth. The last of the five vowels, if ‘you’ repeat them; or the fift, if I.

Hol. I will repeat them—a, e, I—

Moth. The sheep: the other two concludes it—o, U.

Arm. Now by the salt [wave] of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit—snip, snap, quick and home. It rejoiceth my intellect. True wit!

Moth. Offer’d by a child to an old man: which is wit-old.

Hol. What is the figure? What is the figure?

Moth. Horns.

Hol. Thou disputes like an infant; go whip thy gig.

Moth. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy, [manu] cita—a gig of a cuckold’s horn.

Cost. And I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread. Hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discretion. O, and the heavens were so pleas’d that thou wert but my bastard, what a joyful father wouldest thou make me! Go to, thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers’ ends, as they say.

Hol. O, I smell false Latin, ‘dunghill’ for unguem.

Arm. Arts-man, preambulate, we will be singuled from the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the top of the mountain?

Hol. Or mons, the hill.

Arm. At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.

Hol. I do, sans question.

Arm. Sir, it is the King’s most sweet pleasure and affection to congratulate the Princess at her pavilion in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.

Hol. The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable, congruent, and measurable for the afternoon. The word is well cull’d, chose, sweet, and apt, I do assure you, sir, I do assure.

Arm. Sir, the King is a noble gentleman, and my familiar, I do assure ye, very good friend; for what is inward between us, let it pass. I do beseech thee remember thy courtesy; I beseech thee apparel thy head; and among other [importunate] and most serious designs, and of great import indeed too—but let that pass; for I must tell thee it will please his Grace (by the world) sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder, and with his royal finger, thus, dally with my excrement, with my mustachio; but, sweet heart, let that pass. By the world, I recount no fable: some certain special honors it pleaseth his greatness to impart to Armado, a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world; but let that pass. The very all of all is—but, sweet heart, I do implore secrety—that the King would have me present the Princess (sweet chuck) with some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antic, or firework. Now, understanding that the curate and your sweet self are good at such eruptions and sudden breaking out of mirth (as it were), I have acquainted you withal, to the end to crave your assistance.