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Mar. You sheep, and I pasture; Shall that finish the jest?

Boyet. So you grant pasture for me.

Mar.

[Offering to kiss her. Not so, gentle beast;

11

My lips are no common, though several 11 they be. Boyet. Belonging to whom?

Mar.

Το my fortunes and me. Prin. Good wits will be jangling; but, gentles,

agree:

The civil war of wits were much better used
On Navarre and his book-men; for here 'tis abused.
Boyet. If my observation (which very seldom

lies),

12

By the heart's still rhetorick, disclosed with eyes 1o, Navarre is infected.

Deceive me not now.

Prin. With what?

Boyet. With that which we lovers entitle, affected. Prin. 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 impressed, Proud with his form, in his eye pride expressed:

One

11 A quibble is here intended upon the word several, which besides its ordinary signification of separate, distinct, signified also an enclosed pasture as opposed to an open field or common. Bacon and others used it in this sense. Dr. James has given a different explanation of the term, which may be its local signification, but the above is the general sense in old writers. example may suffice. There was a lord that was leane of visage, but immediately after his marriage he grew fat. One said to him "Your Lordship doth contrary to other married men; for they first wax lean, and you wax fat." Sir Walter Raleigh stood by, and said "Why there is no beast, that if you take him from the common, and put him into the several, but he will wax fat." -Bacon's Apothegms, 1625, p. 296.

12 So in Daniel's Complaint of Rosamond, 1594:

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Sweet silent rhetoric of persuading eyes
Dumb eloquence.'

13

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His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see
Did stumble with haste in his eye-sight 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 14 did quote such amazes,
That all eyes saw his enchanted with gazes;
eyes
I'll give you Aquitain, and all that is his,

An you give him for my sake but one loving kiss.
Prin. 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. Ros. Thou art an old love-monger, and speak'st skilfully.

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

Ros. Then was Venus like her mother; for her

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13 Although the expression in the text is extremely odd, yet the sense appears to be, that his tongue envied the quickness of his eyes, and strove to be as rapid in its utterance, as they in their perception.

14 In Shakspeare's time notes, quotations, &c. were usually printed in the exterior margin of books.

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Enter ARMADO and MOTH.

Arm. Warble, child, make passionate my sense

of hearing.

Moth. Concolinel1

[Singing. Arm. 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.

2

Moth. Master, will you win your love with a French brawl3?

Arm. How mean'st 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 eye-lids; 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 penthouselike o'er the shop

1 A song is apparently lost here. In old comedies the songs are frequently omitted. On this occasion the stage direction is generally Here they sing-or Cantant.

2 i. e. hastily. So in Lear: Advise the Duke where you are going to a most festinate preparation.'

3 A kind of dance; spelt bransle by some authors: being the French name for the same dance. There is the figure of it set down in Marston's Malcontent. It appears that several persons united hands in a circle, and gave each other continual shakes, the steps changing with the tune. It usually consisted of three pas, and a pied-joint to the time of four strokes of the bow; which being repeated, was termed a double brawl.

4 Canary was the name of a sprightly dance, sometimes accompanied by the castanets.

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 5, these are humours; these betray nice wenches-that would be betrayed without these; and make them men of note, (do you note, men?) that most are affected to these.

Arm. How hast thou purchased this experience?
Moth. By my penny of observation7.
Arm. But 0,-but 0,-

Moth. the hobby-horse is forgot.

Arm. Callest 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?

Arm. Almost I had.

Moth. Negligent student! learn her by heart.
Arm. By heart, and in heart, boy.

Moth. And out of heart, master: all those three

I will prove.

Arm. What wilt thou prove?

Moth. A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and

5 i. e. accomplishments.

6 One of the modern editors, with great plausibility, proposes to read do you note me?"

7 The allusion is probably to the old popular pamphlet ‘A Pennyworth of Wit.'

8 The Hobby-horse was a personage belonging to the ancient Morris dance, when complete. It was the figure of a horse fastened round the waist of a man, his own legs going through the body of the horse, and enabling him to walk, but concealed by a long footcloth; while false legs appeared where those of the man should be at the sides of the horse. Latterly the Hobby-horse was frequently omitted, which appears to have occasioned a popular ballad, in which was this line, or burden. It had become almost a proverbial expression, and occurs again in Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 2.

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.

Arm. I am all these three.

Moth. And three times as much more, nothing at all.

and yet

Arm. Fetch hither the swain; he must carry me a letter.

Moth. A message well sympathised; a horse to be embassador for an ass!

Arm. 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. Arm. The is but short; away.

way

Moth. As swift as lead, sir.

Arm. Thy meaning, pretty ingenious?

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

Moth. Minimè, honest master; or rather, master, no. Arm. I say, lead is slow.

Moth.

You are too swift9, sir, to say so:

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

Arm. Sweet smoke of rhetorick!

He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that's he :I shoot thee at the swain.

Moth.

Thump then, and I flee.

[Exit.

Arm. A most acute juvenal: voluble 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.

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