And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop! 190
What! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
A woman, that is like a German clock,
Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,
And never going aright, being a watch,

But being watch'd that it may still go right! 195
Nay, to be perjur'd, which is worst of all;
And, among three, to love the worst of all,
A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,
With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes;
Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed
Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard.
And I to sigh for her! to watch for her!
To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague
That Cupid will impose for my neglect
Of his almighty dreadful little might.

202

206

Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, groan: Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.

ACT IV

[SCENE I. The same.]

[Exit.]

Against the steep uprising of the hill?

For. I know not, but I think it was not he. Prin. Whoe'er 'a was, 'a show'd a mounting mind.

Well, lords, to-day we shall have our dispatch; 5 On Saturday we will return to France.

Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush That we must stand and play the murderer in? For. Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice;

A stand where you may make the fairest shoot. 10 Prin. I thank my beauty, I am fair that shoot,

And thereupon thou speak'st the fairest shoot. For. Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so. Prin. What, what? First praise me, and again say no?

O short-liv'd pride! Not fair? Alack for woe!

15

For. Yes, madam, fair. Prin. Nay, never paint me now; Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow. Here, good my glass, take this for telling true. [Gives money.] Fair payment for foul words is more than due. For. Nothing but fair is that which you inherit.

20

Prin. See, see, my beauty will be sav'd by merit!

We bend to that the working of the heart;
As I for praise alone now seek to spill

The poor deer's blood, that my heart means no ill.

35

Cost. Which is the greatest lady, the highest?
Prin. The thickest and the tallest.
Cost. The thickest and the tallest! It is so;
truth is true.

An your waist, mistress, were as slender as my

IV. i.

Veni, vidi, vici; which to annothanize in the vulgar, O base and obscure vulgar ! - videlicet, He came, saw, and overcame : he came, one; [70 saw, two; overcame, three. Who came? The king. Why did he come? To see. Why did To whom came he? he see? To overcome. To the beggar. What saw he? The beggar. Who overcame he? The beggar. The conclusion is victory; on whose side? The king's. [75 The captive is enriched; on whose side? The beggar's. The catastrophe is a nuptial; on whose side? The king's; no, on both in one, or one in both. I am the king, for so stands the comparison; thou the beggar, for so wit- [80 nesseth thy lowliness. Shall I command thy love? I may. Shall I enforce thy love? I could. Shall I entreat thy love? I will. What shalt thou exchange for rags? robes; for tittles? titles; for thyself? me. Thus, expecting thy reply, I profane my lips on thy [85 foot, my eyes on thy picture, and my heart on thy every part. Thine, in the dearest design of industry,

DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO." Thus dost thou hear the Nemean lion roar 'Gainst thee, thou lamb, that standest as his

prey.

Submissive fall his princely feet before,

And he from forage will incline to play.

90

But if thou strive, poor soul, what art thou then?

Food for his rage, repasture for his den.

95

Prin. What plume of feathers is he that indited this letter?

What vane? What weathercock? Did you ever hear better?

Boyet. I am much deceived but I remember the style.

Prin. Else your memory is bad, going o'er it erewhile.

Boyet. This Armado is a Spaniard, that keeps here in court;

100

Prin.

Finely put off!

thou marry,

Mar. You still wrangle with her, Boyet, and she strikes at the brow.

Boyet. But she herself is hit lower. Have I hit her now?

120

Ros. Shall I come upon thee with an old saying, that was a man when King Pepin of France was a little boy, as touching the hit it?

Boyet. So I may answer thee with one as old, that was a woman when Queen Guinever of [128 Britain was a little wench, as touching the hit it.

Ros. Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it,
Thou canst not hit it, my good man.
[Exit [Ros.]

Boyet. An I cannot, cannot, cannot,
An I cannot, another can.

130

Boyet. I fear too much rubbing. Good night, my good owl. [Exeunt Boyet and Maria.] Cost. By my soul, a swain! a most simple clown!

Lord, Lord, how the ladies and I have put him down!

O' my troth, most sweet jests! most incony vulgar wit!

When it comes so smoothly off, so obscenely, as it were, so fit.

145

Armado o' the one side, -0, a most dainty man!

To see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan!

To see him kiss his hand! and how most sweetly 'a will swear!

And his page o' t' other side, that handful of wit!

Ah, heavens, it is a most pathetical nit!
Sola, sola!

150

[Exit [Costard]. Shoot within.

[SCENE II. The same.] Enter DULL, HOLOFERNES the Pedant, and NATHANIEL.

Nath. Very reverend sport, truly, and done in the testimony of a good conscience.

Hol. The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like [3 a crab on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth.

Nath. Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least; but, sir, I assure ye, it was a buck of the first head.

Hol. Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.

10

Dull. 'T was not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket.

Hol. Most barbarous intimation! yet a kind of insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were, replication, or rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his incli- [15 nation, after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather, unlettered, or ratherest, unconfirmed fashion, to assert again my haud credo for a deer.

20

Dull. I said the deer was not a haud credo; 't was a pricket.

Hol. Twice-sod simplicity, bis coctus!

O thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!

Nath. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book;

25

Hol. Sir Nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal epitaph on the death of the deer? And, to humour the ignorant, call I the deer the Princess killed a pricket.

Nath. Perge, good Master Holofernes. perge; so it shall please you to abrogate [as scurrility.

Hol. I will something affect the letter, for it argues facility.

"The preyful princess pierc'd and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket;

Some say a sore; but not a sore, till now made sore with shooting.

The dogs did yell: put L to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket;

Or pricket sore, or else sorel; the people fall a-hooting.

If sore be sore, then L to sore make fifty sores one sorel.

Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but

Hol. This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions. These are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb [70 of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.

Nath. Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my parishioners; for their sons are [75 well tutor d by you, and their daughters profit very greatly under you. You are a good member of the commonwealth.

Hol. Mehercle, if their sons be ingenious, [80 they shall want no instruction; if their daughters be capable, I will put it to them: but vir sapit qui pauca loquitur; a soul feminine saluteth us.

Enter JAQUENETTA and the Clown [COSTARD]. Jaq. God give you good morrow, master Parson.

Hol. Master Parson, quasi pers-on. An if [85 one should be pierc'd, which is the one?

Cost. Marry, master schoolmaster, he that is likest to a hogshead.

Hol. Of piercing a hogshead! a good lustre of conceit in a tuft of earth; fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine; 't is pretty; [20 it is well.

Jaq. Good master Parson, be so good as read me this letter. It was given me by Costard, and sent me from Don Armado. I beseech you, read it.

Hol. Fauste, precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra ruminat. -and so forth. Ah, [as

Celestial as thou art, O, pardon love this wrong, That sings heaven's praise with such an earthly tongue."

Hol. You find not the apostrophas, and so miss the accent: let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified; but, for the [125 elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret. Ovidius Naso was the man; and why, indeed, Naso, but for smelling out the odoriferons flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention ? Imitari is nothing: so doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his [180 rider. But, damosella virgin, was this directed to you?

Jaq. Ay, sir, from one Monsieur Biron, one of the strange queen's lords.

Hol. I will overglance the superscript: "To [135 the snow-white hand of the most beauteous Lady Rosaline." I will look again on the intellect of the letter, for the nomination of the party writing to the person written unto: Your ladyship's in all desired employment, BIRON." Sir Nathaniel, this Biron is one of the vota- [140 ries with the King; and here he hath framed a letter to a sequent of the stranger queen's, which accidentally, or by the way of progression, hath miscarried. Trip and go, my sweet; deliver this paper into the royal hand of the [145 King; it may concern much. Stay not thy compliment; I forgive thy duty. Adieu.

[Exeunt Cost. and Jaq.] Nath. Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very religiously; and, as a certain father saith,

Hol. Sir, tell not me of the father; I do fear colourable colours. But to return to the [155 verses did they please you, Sir Nathaniel? Nath. Marvellous well for the pen.

161

Hol. I do dine to-day at the father's of a certain pupil of mine; where, if, before repast, it shall please you to gratify the table with a grace, I will, on my privilege I have with the parents of the foresaid child or pupil, undertake your ben venuto; where I will prove those verses to be very unlearned, neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention. I beseech your so- [185 ciety.

Nath. And thank you too; for society, saith the text, is the happiness of life.

Hol. And, certes, the text most infallibly concludes it. [To Dull.] Sir, I do invite you [170 too; you shall not say me nay: pauca verba. Away! the gentles are at their game, and we will to our recreation. [Exeunt.

[SCENE III. The same.]

Enter BIRON, with a paper in his hand, alone.

Bir. The King he is hunting the deer, I am coursing myself; they have pitched a toil, I am toiling in a pitch, - pitch that defiles;defile! a foul word. Well, "set thee down, sorrow!" for so they say the fool said, and so say I, and I the fool: well proved, wit! By the [ Lord, this love is as mad as Ajax. It kills sheep; it kills me, I a sheep: well proved again o' my side! I will not love; if I do, hang me; i' faith, I will not. O, but her eye, by this light, but for her eye, I would not love her; yes, for [10 her two eyes. Well, I do nothing in the world but lie, and lie in my throat. By heaven, I do love; and it hath taught me to rhyme and to be melancholy; and here is part of my rhyme, and here my melancholy. Well, she hath one o' (15 my sonnets already; the clown bore it, the fool sent it, and the lady hath it: sweet clown, sweeter fool, sweetest lady! By the world, Í would not care a pin, if the other three were in. Here comes one with a paper; God give him [20 grace to groan! [He stands aside.

Enter the KING [with a paper].

A green goose a goddess; pure, pure idolatry. God amend us, God amend! We are much out o' the way.

Enter DUMAIN [with a paper].

Long. By whom shall I send this?-Company! stay. [Steps aside.] Bir. All hid, all hid; "an old infant play. Like a demigod here sit I in the sky,

And wretched fools' secrets heedfully o'er-eye. More sacks to the mill! O heavens, I have my wish!

Dumain transform'd! four woodcocks in a dish! Dum. O most divine Kate!

Bir. O most profane coxcomb!

Dum. By heaven, the wonder in a mortal eye! Bir. By earth, she is not, corporal; there you lie.

Dum. Her amber hairs for foul hath amber quoted.

Bir. An amber-colour'd raven was well noted.

Dum. As upright as the cedar.
Bir.

Her shoulder is with child.
Dum.

Stoop, I say;

As fair as day.

Bir. Ay, as some days; but then no sun must

shine.