William Shakespeare - The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

BEROWNE.

Will you prick’t with your eye?

ROSALINE.

No point, with my knife.

BEROWNE.

Now, God save thy life!

ROSALINE.

And yours from long living!

BEROWNE.

I cannot stay thanksgiving.

[Retiring.]

DUMAINE.

Sir, I pray you, a word: what lady is that same?

BOYET.

The heir of Alencon, Katharine her name.

DUMAINE.

A gallant lady! Monsieur, fare you well.

[Exit.]

LONGAVILLE.

I beseech you a word: what is she in the white?

BOYET.

A woman sometimes, an you saw her in the light.

LONGAVILLE.

Perchance light in the light. I desire her name.

BOYET.

She hath but one for herself; to desire that were a shame.

LONGAVILLE.

Pray you, sir, whose daughter?

BOYET.

Her mother’s, I have heard.

LONGAVILLE.

God’s blessing on your beard!

BOYET.

Good sir, be not offended.

She is an heir of Falconbridge.

LONGAVILLE.

Nay, my choler is ended.

She is a most sweet lady.

BOYET.

Not unlike, sir; that may be.

[Exit LONGAVILLE.]

BEROWNE.

What’s her name in the cap?

BOYET.

Rosaline, by good hap.

BEROWNE.

Is she wedded or no?

BOYET.

To her will, sir, or so.

BEROWNE.

You are welcome, sir. Adieu!

BOYET.

Farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you.

[Exit BEROWNE.—LADIES unmask.]

MARIA.

That last is Berowne, the merry mad-cap lord;

Not a word with him but a jest.

BOYET.

And every jest but a word.

PRINCESS.

It was well done of you to take him at his word.

BOYET.

I was as willing to grapple as he was to board.

MARIA.

Two hot sheeps, marry!

BOYET.

And wherefore not ships?

No sheep, sweet lamb, unless we feed on your lips.

MARIA.

You sheep and I pasture: shall that finish the jest?

BOYET.

So you grant pasture for me.

[Offering to kiss her.]

MARIA.

Not so, gentle beast.

My lips are no common, though several they be.

BOYET.

Belonging to whom?

MARIA.

To my fortunes and me.

PRINCESS.

Good wits will be jangling; but, gentles, agree;

This civil war of wits were much better us’d

On Navarre and his book-men, for here ‘tis abus’d.

BOYET.

If my observation,—which very seldom lies,

By the heart’s still rhetoric disclosed with eyes,

Deceive me not now, Navarre is infected.

PRINCESS.

With what?

BOYET.

With that which we lovers entitle affected.

PRINCESS.

Your reason.

BOYET.

Why, all his behaviours did make their retire

To the court of his eye, peeping thorough desire;

His heart, like an agate, with your print impress’d,

Proud with his form, in his eye pride express’d;

His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see,

Did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be;

All senses to that sense did make their repair,

To feel only looking on fairest of fair.

Methought all his senses were lock’d in his eye,

As jewels in crystal for some prince to buy;

Who, tend’ring their own worth from where they were glass’d,

Did point you to buy them, along as you pass’d.

His face’s own margent did quote such amazes

That all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes.

I’ll give you Aquitaine, and all that is his,

An you give him for my sake but one loving kiss.

PRINCESS.

Come, to our pavilion: Boyet is dispos’d.

BOYET.

But to speak that in words which his eye hath disclos’d.

I only have made a mouth of his eye,

By adding a tongue which I know will not lie.

ROSALINE.

Thou art an old love-monger, and speak’st skilfully.

MARIA.

He is Cupid’s grandfather, and learns news of him.

ROSALINE.

Then was Venus like her mother; for her father is but grim.

BOYET.

Do you hear, my mad wenches?

MARIA.

No.

BOYET.

What, then, do you see?

ROSALINE.

Ay, our way to be gone.

BOYET.

You are too hard for me.

[Exeunt.]

ACT III.

SCENE I. The King of Navarre’s park.

[Enter ARMADO and MOTH.]

ARMADO.

Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.

MOTH [Singing.]

Concolinel,—

ARMADO. Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years; take this key, give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately hither; I must employ him in a letter to my love.

MOTH.

Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?

ARMADO.

How meanest thou? brawling in French?

MOTH. No, my complete master; but to jig off a tune at the tongue’s end, canary to it with your feet, humour it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you swallowed love with singing love, sometime through the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling love; with your hat penthouse-like o’er the shop of your eyes, with your arms crossed on your thin-belly doublet, like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in your pocket, like a man after the old painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away. These are complements, these are humours; these betray nice wenches, that would be betrayed without these; and make them men of note,—do you note me?—that most are affected to these.

ARMADO.

How hast thou purchased this experience?

MOTH.

By my penny of observation.

ARMADO.

But O—but O,—

MOTH.

‘The hobby-horse is forgot.’

ARMADO.

Call’st thou my love ‘hobby-horse’?

MOTH. No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love perhaps, a hackney. But have you forgot your love?

ARMADO.

Almost I had.

MOTH.

Negligent student! learn her by heart.

ARMADO.

By heart and in heart, boy.

MOTH.

And out of heart, master: all those three I will prove.

ARMADO.

What wilt thou prove?

MOTH. A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, upon the instant: by heart you love her, because your heart cannot come by her; in heart you love her, because your heart is in love with her; and out of heart you love her, being out of heart that you cannot enjoy her.

ARMADO.

I am all these three.

MOTH.

And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.

ARMADO.

Fetch hither the swain: he must carry me a letter.

MOTH. A message well sympathized; a horse to be ambassador for an ass.

ARMADO.

Ha, ha! what sayest thou?

MOTH. Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse, for he is very slow-gaited. But I go.

ARMADO.

The way is but short: away!

MOTH.

As swift as lead, sir.

ARMADO.

The meaning, pretty ingenious?

Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?

MOTH.

Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.

ARMADO.

I say lead is slow.

MOTH.

You are too swift, sir, to say so:

Is that lead slow which is fir’d from a gun?

ARMADO.

Sweet smoke of rhetoric!

He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that’s he;

I shoot thee at the swain.

MOTH.

Thump then, and I flee.

[Exit.]

ARMADO.

A most acute juvenal; volable and free of grace!

By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face:

Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.

My herald is return’d.

[Re-enter MOTH with COSTARD.]

MOTH.

A wonder, master! here’s a costard broken in a shin.

ARMADO.

Some enigma, some riddle: come, thy l’envoy; begin.

COSTARD.

No egma, no riddle, no l’envoy; no salve in the mail, sir.

O! sir, plantain, a plain plantain; no l’envoy, no l’envoy; no