William Shakespeare - The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Those heavenly eyes that look into these faults

Suggested us to make. Therefore, ladies,

Our love being yours, the error that love makes

Is likewise yours: we to ourselves prove false,

By being once false for ever to be true

To those that make us both,—fair ladies, you:

And even that falsehood, in itself a sin,

Thus purifies itself and turns to grace.

PRINCESS.

We have receiv’d your letters, full of love;

Your favours, the ambassadors of love;

And, in our maiden council, rated them

At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy,

As bombast and as lining to the time;

But more devout than this in our respects

Have we not been; and therefore met your loves

In their own fashion, like a merriment.

DUMAINE.

Our letters, madam, show’d much more than jest.

LONGAVILLE.

So did our looks.

ROSALINE.

We did not quote them so.

KING.

Now, at the latest minute of the hour,

Grant us your loves.

PRINCESS.

A time, methinks, too short

To make a world-without-end bargain in.

No, no, my lord, your Grace is perjur’d much,

Full of dear guiltiness; and therefore this:

If for my love,—as there is no such cause,—

You will do aught, this shall you do for me:

Your oath I will not trust; but go with speed

To some forlorn and naked hermitage,

Remote from all the pleasures of the world;

There stay until the twelve celestial signs

Have brought about the annual reckoning.

If this austere insociable life

Change not your offer made in heat of blood,

If frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds,

Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,

But that it bear this trial, and last love,

Then, at the expiration of the year,

Come, challenge me, challenge me by these deserts;

And, by this virgin palm now kissing thine,

I will be thine; and, till that instant, shut

My woeful self up in a mournful house,

Raining the tears of lamentation

For the remembrance of my father’s death.

If this thou do deny, let our hands part,

Neither intitled in the other’s heart.

KING.

If this, or more than this, I would deny,

To flatter up these powers of mine with rest,

The sudden hand of death close up mine eye!

Hence ever then my heart is in thy breast.

BEROWNE.

And what to me, my love? and what to me?

ROSALINE.

You must he purged too, your sins are rack’d;

You are attaint with faults and perjury;

Therefore, if you my favour mean to get,

A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest,

But seek the weary beds of people sick.

DUMAINE.

But what to me, my love? but what to me?

KATHARINE.

A wife! A beard, fair health, and honesty;

With threefold love I wish you all these three.

DUMAINE.

O! shall I say I thank you, gentle wife?

KATHARINE.

No so, my lord; a twelvemonth and a day

I’ll mark no words that smooth-fac’d wooers say.

Come when the King doth to my lady come;

Then, if I have much love, I’ll give you some.

DUMAINE.

I’ll serve thee true and faithfully till then.

KATHARINE.

Yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again.

LONGAVILLE.

What says Maria?

MARIA.

At the twelvemonth’s end

I’ll change my black gown for a faithful friend.

LONGAVILLE.

I’ll stay with patience; but the time is long.

MARIA.

The liker you; few taller are so young.

BEROWNE.

Studies my lady? mistress, look on me;

Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,

What humble suit attends thy answer there.

Impose some service on me for thy love.

ROSALINE.

Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Berowne,

Before I saw you; and the world’s large tongue

Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks;

Full of comparisons and wounding flouts,

Which you on all estates will execute

That lie within the mercy of your wit:

To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain,

And therewithal to win me, if you please,—

Without the which I am not to be won,—

You shall this twelvemonth term, from day to day,

Visit the speechless sick, and still converse

With groaning wretches; and your task shall be,

With all the fierce endeavour of your wit

To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

BEROWNE.

To move wild laughter in the throat of death?

It cannot be; it is impossible:

Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

ROSALINE.

Why, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit,

Whose influence is begot of that loose grace

Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools.

A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it, never in the tongue

Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears,

Deaf’d with the clamours of their own dear groans,

Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,

And I will have you and that fault withal;

But if they will not, throw away that spirit,

And I shall find you empty of that fault,

Right joyful of your reformation.

BEROWNE.

A twelvemonth! well, befall what will befall,

I’ll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.

PRINCESS.

[To the King.] Ay, sweet my lord; and so I take my leave.

KING.

No, madam; we will bring you on your way.

BEROWNE.

Our wooing doth not end like an old play:

Jack hath not Jill; these ladies’ courtesy

Might well have made our sport a comedy.

KING.

Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day,

And then ‘twill end.

BEROWNE.

That’s too long for a play.

[Enter ARMADO.]

ARMADO.

Sweet Majesty, vouchsafe me,—

PRINCESS.

Was not that not Hector?

DUMAINE.

The worthy knight of Troy.

ARMADO. I will kiss thy royal finger, and take leave. I am a votary: I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three yeasr. But, most esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? It should have followed in the end of our show.

KING.

Call them forth quickly; we will do so.

ARMADO.

Holla! approach.

[Enter HOLOFERNES, NATHANIEL, MOTH, COSTARD, and others.]

This side is Hiems, Winter; this Ver, the Spring; the one maintained by the owl, the other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin.

SPRING

I.

When daisies pied and violets blue

And lady-smocks all silver-white

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then on every tree

Mocks married men, for thus sings he,

Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo: O, word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear!

II.

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks,

When turtles tread, and rooks and daws,

And maidens bleach their summer smocks,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he:

Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo: O, word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear!

WINTER

III.

When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,

When blood is nipp’d, and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl:

Tu-who;

Tu-whit, tu-who—a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

IV.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,

And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,