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

Or have acquaintance with mine own desires;

If that I do not dream, or be not frantic

(As I do trust I am not), then, dear uncle,

Never so much as in a thought unborn

Did I offend your Highness.

Duke F.

Thus do all traitors:

If their purgation did consist in words,

They are as innocent as grace itself.

Let it suffice thee that I trust thee not.

Ros.

Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor.

Tell me whereon the [likelihood] depends.

Duke F.

Thou art thy father’s daughter, there’s enough.

Ros.

So was I when your Highness took his dukedom,

So was I when your Highness banish’d him.

Treason is not inherited, my lord,

Or if we did derive it from our friends,

What’s that to me? my father was no traitor.

Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much

To think my poverty is treacherous.

Cel.

Dear sovereign, hear me speak.

Duke F.

Ay, Celia, we stay’d her for your sake,

Else had she with her father rang’d along.

Cel.

I did not then entreat to have her stay,

It was your pleasure and your own remorse.

I was too young that time to value her,

But now I know her. If she be a traitor,

Why, so am I. We still have slept together,

Rose at an instant, learn’d, play’d, eat together,

And wheresoe’er we went, like Juno’s swans,

Still we went coupled and inseparable.

Duke F.

She is too subtile for thee, and her smoothness,

Her very silence, and her patience

Speak to the people, and they pity her.

Thou art a fool; she robs thee of thy name,

And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous

When she is gone. Then open not thy lips:

Firm and irrevocable is my doom

Which I have pass’d upon her; she is banish’d.

Cel.

Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege,

I cannot live out of her company.

Duke F.

You are a fool. You, niece, provide yourself;

If you outstay the time, upon mine honor,

And in the greatness of my word, you die.

Exit Duke [with Lords].

Cel.

O my poor Rosalind, whither wilt thou go?

Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine.

I charge thee be not thou more griev’d than I am.

Ros.

I have more cause.

Cel.

Thou hast not, cousin,

Prithee be cheerful. Know’st thou not the Duke

Hath banish’d me, his daughter?

Ros.

That he hath not.

Cel.

No, hath not? Rosalind lacks then the love

Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one.

Shall we be sund’red? shall we part, sweet girl?

No, let my father seek another heir.

Therefore devise with me how we may fly,

Whither to go, and what to bear with us,

And do not seek to take your change upon you,

To bear your griefs yourself, and leave me out;

For by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale,

Say what thou canst, I’ll go along with thee.

Ros.

Why, whither shall we go?

Cel.

To seek my uncle in the forest of Arden.

Ros.

Alas, what danger will it be to us,

Maids as we are, to travel forth so far!

Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.

Cel.

I’ll put myself in poor and mean attire,

And with a kind of umber smirch my face;

The like do you. So shall we pass along

And never stir assailants.

Ros.

Were it not better,

Because that I am more than common tall,

That I did suit me all points like a man?

A gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh,

A boar-spear in my hand, and—in my heart

Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will—

We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside,

As many other mannish cowards have

That do outface it with their semblances.

Cel.

What shall I call thee when thou art a man?

Ros.

I’ll have no worse a name than Jove’s own page,

And therefore look you call me Ganymed.

But what will you [be] call’d?

Cel.

Something that hath a reference to my state:

No longer Celia, but Aliena.

Ros.

But, cousin, what if we assay’d to steal

The clownish fool out of your father’s court?

Would he not be a comfort to our travel?

Cel.

He’ll go along o’er the wide world with me;

Leave me alone to woo him. Let’s away,

And get our jewels and our wealth together,

Devise the fittest time and safest way

To hide us from pursuit that will be made

After my flight. Now go [we in] content

To liberty, and not to banishment.

Exeunt.

¶

Enter Duke Senior, Amiens, and two or three Lords, like foresters.

Duke S.

Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?

Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,

The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang

And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,

Which when it bites and blows upon my body

Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say,

“This is no flattery: these are counsellors

That feelingly persuade me what I am.”

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

Ami.

I would not change it. Happy is your Grace,

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune

Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

Duke S.

Come, shall we go and kill us venison?

And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,

Being native burghers of this desert city,

Should in their own confines with forked heads

Have their round haunches gor’d.

1. Lord.

Indeed, my lord,

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,

And in that kind swears you do more usurp

Than doth your brother that hath banish’d you.

To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself

Did steal behind him as he lay along

Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out

Upon the brook that brawls along this wood,

To the which place a poor sequest’red stag,

That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt,

Did come to languish; and indeed, my lord,

The wretched animal heav’d forth such groans

That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat

Almost to bursting, and the big round tears

Cours’d one another down his innocent nose

In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,

Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,

Stood on th’ extremest verge of the swift brook,

Augmenting it with tears.

Duke S.

But what said Jaques?

Did he not moralize this spectacle?

1. Lord.

O yes, into a thousand similes.

First, for his weeping into the needless stream:

“Poor deer,” quoth he, “thou mak’st a testament

As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more

To that which had too [much].” Then being there alone,

Left and abandoned of his velvet [friends]

“’Tis right,” quoth he, “thus misery doth part

The flux of company.” Anon a careless herd,

Full of the pasture, jumps along by him

And never stays to greet him. “Ay,” quoth Jaques,