William Shakespeare - The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

LONGAVILLE.

O! some authority how to proceed;

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

DUMAINE.

Some salve for perjury.

BEROWNE.

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 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 sinewy vigour 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 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,

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 practisers,

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

Than are the tender horns of cockled snails:

Love’s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.

For valour, is not Love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?

Subtle 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 temper’d 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 fulfils the law;

And who can sever love from charity?

KING.

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

BEROWNE.

Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;

Pellmell, down with them! be first advis’d,

In conflict that you get the sun of them.

LONGAVILLE.

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.

BEROWNE.

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 betime, and may by us be fitted.

BEROWNE.

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.]

ACT V.

SCENE I. The King of Navarre’s park.

[Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL.]

HOLOFERNES.

Satis quod sufficit.

NATHANIEL. 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.

HOLOFERNES. Novi hominem tanquam te: his humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.

NATHANIEL.

A most singular and choice epithet.

[Draws out his table-book.]

HOLOFERNES. 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 orthography, 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; neighbour vocatur nebour, neigh abbreviated ne. This is abhominable, which he would call abominable,—it insinuateth me of insanie: anne intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.

NATHANIEL.

Laus Deo, bone intelligo.

HOLOFERNES.

Bone? bone for bene: Priscian a little scratch’d; ‘twill serve.

[Enter ARMADO, MOTH, and COSTARD.]

NATHANIEL.

Videsne quis venit?

HOLOFERNES.

Video, et gaudeo.

ARMADO.

[To MOTH] Chirrah!

HOLOFERNES.

Quare chirrah, not sirrah?

ARMADO.

Men of peace, well encountered.

HOLOFERNES.

Most military sir, salutation.

MOTH. [Aside to COSTARD.] They have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps.

COSTARD. O! they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou are not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus; thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.

MOTH.

Peace! the peal begins.

ARMADO.

[To HOLOFERNES.] Monsieur, are you not lettered?

MOTH. Yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook. What is a, b, spelt backward with the horn on his head?

HOLOFERNES.

Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

MOTH.

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

HOLOFERNES.

Quis, quis, thou consonant?

MOTH. The third of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or the fifth, if I.

HOLOFERNES.

I will repeat them,—a, e, i,—

MOTH.

The sheep; the other two concludes it,—o, u.

ARMADO. 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!