LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST

LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST THE first, 1598 edition of Love’s Labour’s Lost is the earliest play text to carry Shakespeare’s name on the title-page, which also refers to performance before the Queen ‘this last Christmas’. The play is said to be ‘Newly corrected and augmented’, so perhaps an earlier edition has failed to survive. Even so, the text shows every sign of having been printed from Shakespeare’s working papers, since it includes some passages in draft as well as in revised form. We print the drafts as Additional Passages. The play was probably written some years before publication, in 1594 or 1595. The setting is Navarre—a kingdom straddling the border between Spain and France—where the young King and three of his friends vow to devote the following three years to austere self-improvement, forgoing the company of women. But they have forgotten the imminent arrival on a diplomatic mission of the Princess of France with, as it happens, three of her ladies; much comedy derives from, first, the men’s embarrassed attempts to conceal from one another that they are falling in love, and second, the girls’ practical joke in exchanging identities when the men, disguised as Russians, come to entertain and to woo them. Shakespeare seems to have picked up the King’s friends’ names—Biron, Dumaine, and Longueville—from leading figures in contemporary France, but to have invented the plot himself. He counterpoints the main action with events involving characters based in part on the type-figures of Italian commedia dell‘arte who reflect facets of the lords’ personalities. Costard, an unsophisticated, open-hearted yokel, and his girl-friend Jaquenetta are sexually uninhibited; Don Adriano de Armado, ‘a refinèd traveller of Spain’ who also, though covertly, loves Jaquenetta, is full of pompous affectation; and Holofernes, a schoolmaster (seen always with his doting companion, the curate Sir Nathaniel), demonstrates the avid pedantry into which the young men’s verbal brilliance could degenerate. Much of the play’s language is highly sophisticated (this is, as the title-page claims, a ‘conceited comedy’), in keeping with its subject matter. But the action reaches its climax when a messenger brings news which is communicated entirely without verbal statement. This is a theatrical masterstroke which also signals Shakespeare’s most daring experiment with comic form. ‘The scene begins to cloud’; in the play’s closing minutes the lords and ladies seek to readjust themselves to the new situation, and the play ends in subdued fashion with a third entertainment, the songs of the owl and the cuckoo. Love’s Labour’s Lost was for long regarded as a play of excessive verbal sophistication, of interest mainly because of a series of supposed topical allusions; but a number of distinguished twentieth-century productions revealed its theatrical mastery. THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY Ferdinand, KING of Navarre Don Adriano de ARMADO, an affected Spanish braggart MOTE, his page

PRINCESS of France COSTARD, a Clown JAQUENETTA, a country wench

Sir NATHANIEL, a curate HOLOFERNES, a schoolmaster Anthony DULL, a constable

MERCADE, a messenger

A FORESTER

Love’s Labour’s Lost

Atto 1, Scena 1

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter Ferdinand, King of Navarre, Biron, Longueville, and Dumaine
KING	Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live registered upon our brazen tombs, And then grace us in the disgrace of death When, spite of cormorant devouring time, Th’endeavour of this present breath may buy That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge And make us heirs of all eternity. Therefore, brave conquerors—for so you are, That war against your own affections And the huge army of the world’s desires— Our late edict shall strongly stand in force. Navarre shall be the wonder of the world. Our court shall be a little academe, Still and contemplative in living art. You three—Biron, Dumaine, and Longueville— Have sworn for three years’ term to live with me My fellow scholars, and to keep those statutes That are recorded in this schedule here. Your oaths are passed; and now subscribe your names, That his own hand may strike his honour down That violates the smallest branch herein. If you are armed to do as sworn to do, Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it, too.
LONGUEVILLE	I am resolved. ‘Tis but a three years’ fast. The mind shall banquet, though the body pine. Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits Make rich the ribs but bankrupt quite the wits. He signs
DUMAINE	My loving lord, Dumaine is mortified. The grosser manner of these world’s delights He throws upon the gross world’s baser slaves. To love, to wealth, to pomp I pine and die, With all these living in philosophy. He signs
BIRON	I can but say their protestation over. So much, dear liege, I have already sworn: That is, to live and study here three years. But there are other strict observances, As not to see a woman in that term, Which I hope well is not enrolled there; And one day in a week to touch no food, And but one meal on every day beside, The which I hope is not enrolled there; And then to sleep but three hours in the night, And not be seen to wink of all the day, When I was wont to think no harm all night, And make a dark night too of half the day, Which I hope well is not enrolled there. O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep— Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep.
KING	Your oath is passed to pass away from these.
BIRON	Let me say no, my liege, an if you please. I only swore to study with your grace, And stay here in your court, for three years’ space.
LONGUEVILLE	You swore to that, Biron, and to the rest.
BIRON	By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest. What is the end of study, let me know?
KING	Why, that to know which else we should not know.
BIRON	Things hid and barred, you mean, from common sense.
KING	Ay, that is study’s god-like recompense.
BIRON	Come on, then, I will swear to study so To know the thing I am forbid to know, As thus: to study where I well may dine When I to feast expressly am forbid, Or study where to meet some mistress fine When mistresses from common sense are hid; Or having sworn too hard a keeping oath, Study to break it and not break my troth. If study’s gain be thus, and this be so, Study knows that which yet it doth not know. Swear me to this, and I will ne’er say no.
KING	These be the stops that hinder study quite, And train our intellects to vain delight.
BIRON	Why, all delights are vain, but that most vain Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain; As painfully to pore upon a book To seek the light of truth while truth the while Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look. Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile; So ere you find where light in darkness lies Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes. Study me how to please the eye indeed By fixing it upon a fairer eye, Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed, And give him light that it was blinded by. Study is like the heavens’ glorious sun, That will not be deep searched with saucy looks. Small have continual plodders ever won Save base authority from others’ books. These earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights, That give a name to every fixed star, Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk and wot not what they are. Too much to know is to know naught but fame, And every godfather can give a name.
KING	How well he’s read, to reason against reading!
DUMAINE	Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding.
LONGUEVILLE	He weeds the corn and still lets grow the weeding.
BIRON	The spring is near when green geese are a-breeding.
DUMAINE	How follows that?
BIRON	Fit in his place and time.
DUMAINE	In reason nothing.
BIRON	Something then in rhyme.
KING	Biron is like an envious sneaping frost, That bites the first-born infants of the spring.
BIRON	Well, say I am! Why should proud summer boast Before the birds have any cause to sing? Why should I joy in any abortive birth? At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled shows, But like of each thing that in season grows. So you to study, now it is too late, Climb o’er the house to unlock the little gate.
KING	Well, sit you out. Go home, Biron. Adieu.
BIRON	No, my good lord, I have sworn to stay with you. And though I have for barbarism spoke more Than for that angel knowledge you can say, Yet confident I’ll keep what I have sworn, And bide the penance of each three years’ day. Give me the paper. Let me read the same, And to the strict’st decrees I’ll write my name.
KING	(giving a paper) How well this yielding rescues thee from shame!
BIRON	(reads) ‘Item: that no woman shall come within a mile of my court.’ Hath this been proclaimed?
LONGUEVILLE	Four days ago.
BIRON	Let’s see the penalty. ‘On pain of losing her tongue.’ Who devised this penalty?
LONGUEVILLE	Marry, that did I.
BIRON	Sweet lord, and why?
LONGUEVILLE	To fright them hence with that dread penalty.
BIRON	A dangerous law against gentility. ‘Item: if any man be seen to talk with a woman within the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the rest of the court can possible devise.’ This article, my liege, yourself must break; For well you know here comes in embassy The French King’s daughter with yourself to speak— A maid of grace and complete majesty— About surrender-up of Aquitaine To her decrepit, sick, and bedrid father. Therefore this article is made in vain, Or vainly comes th’admirèd Princess hither.
KING	What say you, lords? Why, this was quite forgot.
BIRON	So study evermore is overshot. While it doth study to have what it would, It doth forget to do the thing it should; And when it hath the thing it hunteth most, ’Tis won as towns with fire—so won, so lost.
KING	We must of force dispense with this decree. She must lie here, on mere necessity.
BIRON	Necessity will make us all forsworn Three thousand times within this three years’ space; For every man with his affects is born, Not by might mastered, but by special grace. If I break faith, this word shall speak for me: I am forsworn on mere necessity. So to the laws at large I write my name, And he that breaks them in the least degree Stands in attainder of eternal shame. He signs Suggestions are to other as to me, But I believe, although I seem so loath, I am the last that will last keep his oath. But is there no quick recreation granted?
KING	Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted With a refined traveller of Spain, A man in all the world’s new fashion planted, That hath a mint of phrases in his brain. One who the music of his own vain tongue Doth ravish like enchanting harmony; A man of complements, whom right and wrong Have chose as umpire of their mutiny. This child of fancy, that Armado hight, For interim to our studies shall relate In high-borne words the worth of many a knight From tawny Spain lost in the world’s debate. How you delight, my lords, I know not, I; But I protest I love to hear him lie, And I will use him for my minstrelsy.
BIRON	Armado is a most illustrious wight, A man of fire-new words, fashion’s own knight.
LONGUEVILLE	Costard the swain and he shall be our sport, And so to study three years is but short.
(didascalia)	Enter a constable, Anthony Dull, with Costard with a letter
DULL	Which is the Duke’s own person?
BIRON	This, fellow. What wouldst?
DULL	I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his grace’s farborough. But I would see his own person in flesh and blood.
BIRON	This is he.
DULL	Senor Arm—Arm—commends you. There’s villainy abroad. This letter will tell you more.
COSTARD	Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me. KING A letter from the magnificent Armado.
BIRON	How low soever the matter, I hope in God for high words.
LONGUEVILLE	A high hope for a low heaven. God grant us patience.
BIRON	To hear, or forbear laughing?
LONGUEVILLE	To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately, or to forbear both.
BIRON	Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb in the merriness.
COSTARD	The matter is to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta. The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner.
BIRON	In what manner?
COSTARD	In manner and form following, sir—all those three. I was seen with her in the manor house, sitting with her upon the form, and taken following her into the park; which put together is ‘in manner and form following’. Now, sir, for the manner: it is the manner of a man to speak to a woman. For the form: in some form.
BIRON	For the ‘following’, sir?
COSTARD	As it shall follow in my correction; and God defend the right.
KING	Will you hear this letter with attention?
BIRON	As we would hear an oracle.
COSTARD	Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.
KING	(reads) ‘Great deputy, the welkin’s vicegerent and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul’s earth’s god, and body’s fostering patron’—
COSTARD	Not a word of Costard yet.
KING	‘So it is’—
COSTARD	It may be so; but if he say it is so, he is, in telling true, but so.
KING	Peace!
COSTARD	Be to me and every man that dares not fight.
KING	No words!
COSTARD	Of other men’s secrets, I beseech you.
KING	‘So it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air, and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About the sixth hour, when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper. So much for the time when. Now for the ground which—which, I mean, I walked upon. It is yclept thy park. Then for the place where—where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest. But to the place where. It standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted garden. There did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth’—
COSTARD	Me?
KING	‘That unlettered, small-knowing sout’—
COSTARD	Me?
KING	‘That shallow vassal’—
COSTARD	Still me?
KING	‘Which, as I remember, hight Costard’—
COSTARD	O, me!
KING	‘Sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established proclaimed edict and continent canon, with, with, O with—but with this I passion to say wherewith’—COSTARD With a wench.
KING	‘With a child of our grandmother Eve, a female, or for thy more sweet understanding a woman. Him I, as my ever-esteemed duty pricks me on, have sent to thee, to receive the meed of punishment, by thy sweet grace’s officer Anthony Dull, a man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation.’
DULL	Me, an’t shall please you. I am Anthony Dull.
KING	‘For Jaquenetta—so is the weaker vessel called—which I apprehended with the aforesaid swain, I keep her as a vessel of thy law’s fury, and shall at the least of thy sweet notice bring her to trial. Thine in all compliments of devoted and heartburning heat of duty, Don Adriano de Armado.’
BIRON	This is not so well as I looked for, but the best that ever I heard.
KING	Ay, the best for the worst. (To Costard) But, sirrah, what say you to this?
COSTARD	Sir, I confess the wench.
KING	Did you hear the proclamation?
COSTARD	I do confess much of the hearing it, but little of the marking of it.
KING	It was proclaimed a year’s imprisonment to be taken with a wench.
COSTARD	I was taken with none, sir. I was taken with a damsel.
KING	Well, it was proclaimed ‘damsel’.
COSTARD	This was no damsel, neither, sir. She was a virgin.
(didascalia)	KING It is so varied, too, for it was proclaimed ‘virgin’.
COSTARD	If it were, I deny her virginity. I was taken with a maid.
KING	This ‘maid’ will not serve your turn, sir.
COSTARD	This maid will serve my turn, sir.
KING	Sir, I will pronounce your sentence. You shall fast a week with bran and water.
COSTARD	I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge.
KING	And Don Armado shall be your keeper. My lord Biron, see him delivered o’er, And go we, lords, to put in practice that Which each to other hath so strongly sworn.
(didascalia)	Exeunt the King, Longueville, and Dumaine
BIRON	I’ll lay my head to any good man’s hat These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn. Sirrah, come on.
COSTARD	I suffer for the truth, sir; for true it is I was taken with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl, and therefore, welcome the sour cup of prosperity, affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow. Exeunt

Atto 1, Scena 2

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter Armado and Mote, his page
ARMADO	Boy, what sign is it when a man of great spirit grows melancholy?
MOTE	A great sign, sir, that he will look sad.
ARMADO	Why, sadness is one and the selfsame thing, dear imp.
MOTE	No, no, O Lord, sir, no.
ARMADO	How canst thou part sadness and melancholy, my tender juvenal?
MOTE	By a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough señor.
ARMADO	Why ‘tough señor’? Why ‘tough señor’?
MOTE	Why ‘tender juvenal’? Why ‘tender juvenal’?
ARMADO	I spoke it, tender juvenal, as a congruent epitheton appertaining to thy young days, which we may nominate ‘tender’.
MOTE	And I, tough señor, as an appertinent title to your old time, which we may name ‘tough’.
ARMADO	Pretty and apt.
MOTE	How mean you, sir? I ‘pretty’ and my saying ‘apt’? Or I ‘apt’ and my saying ‘pretty’?
ARMADO	Thou ‘pretty’, because little.
MOTE	Little pretty, because little. Wherefore ‘apt’?
ARMADO	And therefore ‘apt’ because quick.
MOTE	Speak you this in my praise, master?
ARMADO	In thy condign praise.
MOTE	I will praise an eel with the same praise.
ARMADO	What—that an eel is ingenious?
MOTE	That an eel is quick.
ARMADO	I do say thou art quick in answers. Thou heatest my blood.
MOTE	I am answered, sir.
ARMADO	I love not to be crossed.
MOTE	(aside) He speaks the mere contrary-crosses love not him.
ARMADO	I have promised to study three years with the Duke.
MOTE	You may do it in an hour, sir.
ARMADO	Impossible. - MOTE How many is one, thrice told?
ARMADO	I am ill at reckoning; it fitteth the spirit of a tapster.
MOTE	You are a gentleman and a gamester, sir. ARMADO I confess both. They are both the varnish of a complete man.
MOTE	Then I am sure you know how much the gross sum of deuce-ace amounts to.
ARMADO	It doth amount to one more than two.
MOTE	Which the base vulgar do call three.
ARMADO	True.
MOTE	Why, sir, is this such a piece of study ? Now here is ‘three’ studied ere ye’ll thrice wink, and how easy it is to put ‘years’ to the word ‘three’ and study ‘three years’ in two words, the dancing horse will tell you. ARMADO A most fine figure.
MOTE	(aside) To prove you a cipher.
ARMADO	I will hereupon confess I am in love; and as it is base for a soldier to love, so am I in love with a base wench. If drawing my sword against the humour of affection would deliver me from the reprobate thought of it, I would take desire prisoner and ransom him to any French courtier for a new-devised curtsy. I think scorn to sigh. Methinks I should outswear Cupid. Comfort me, boy. What great men have been in love?
MOTE	Hercules, master.
ARMADO	Most sweet Hercules! More authority, dear boy. Name more—and, sweet my child, let them be men of good repute and carriage.
MOTE	Samson, master; he was a man of good carriage, great carriage, for he carried the town-gates on his back like a porter, and he was in love.
ARMADO	O well-knit Samson, strong-jointed Samson! I do excel thee in my rapier as much as thou didst me in carrying gates. I am in love, too. Who was Samson’s love, my dear Mote?
MOTE	A woman, master.
ARMADO	Of what complexion ?
MOTE	Of all the four, or the three, or the two, or one of the four.
ARMADO	Tell me precisely of what complexion?
MOTE	Of the sea-water green, sir.
ARMADO	Is that one of the four complexions?
MOTE	As I have read, sir; and the best of them, too.
ARMADO	Green indeed is the colour of lovers, but to have a love of that colour, methinks Samson had small reason for it. He surely affected her for her wit.
MOTE	It was so, sir, for she had a green wit.
ARMADO	My love is most immaculate white and red.
MOTE	Most maculate thoughts, master, are masked under such colours.
ARMADO	Define, define, well-educated infant.
MOTE	My father’s wit and my mother’s tongue assist me!
ARMADO	Sweet invocation of a child!—most pretty and pathetical.
MOTE	If she be made of white and red Her faults will ne’er be known, For blushing cheeks by faults are bred And fears by pale white shown. Then if she fear or be to blame, By this you shall not know; For still her cheeks possess the same Which native she doth owe. A dangerous rhyme, master, against the reason of white and red.
ARMADO	Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?
MOTE	The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since, but I think now ’tis not to be found; or if it were, it would neither serve for the writing nor the tune.
ARMADO	I will have that subject newly writ o’er, that I may example my digression by some mighty precedent. Boy, I do love that country girl that I took in the park with the rational hind Costard. She deserves well.
MOTE	(aside) To be whipped—and yet a better love than my master.
ARMADO	Sing, boy. My spirit grows heavy in love.
MOTE	And that’s great marvel, loving a light wench. ARMADO I say, sing.
MOTE	Forbear till this company be past. Enter Costard the clown, Constable Dull, and Jaquenetta, a wench
DULL	(to Armado) Sir, the Duke’s pleasure is that you keep Costard safe, and you must suffer him to take no delight, nor no penance, but a must fast three days a week. For this damsel, I must keep her at the park. She is allowed for the dey-woman. Fare you well.
ARMADO	(aside) I do betray myself with blushing.—Maid.
JAQUENETTA	Man.
ARMADO	I will visit thee at the lodge.
JAQUENETTA	That’s hereby.
ARMADO	I know where it is situate.
JAQUENETTA	Lord, how wise you are!
ARMADO	I will tell thee wonders.
JAQUENETTA	With that face?
ARMADO	I love thee.
JAQUENETTA	So I heard you say.
ARMADO	And so farewell.
JAQUENETTA	Fair weather after you.
(didascalia)	DULL Come, Jaquenetta, away.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Dull and Jaquenetta
ARMADO	Villain, thou shalt fast for thy offences ere thou be pardoned.
COSTARD	Well, sir, I hope when I do it I shall do it on a full stomach.
ARMADO	Thou shalt be heavily punished.
COSTARD	I am more bound to you than your fellows, for they are but lightly rewarded.
ARMADO	Take away this villain. Shut him up.
MOTE	Come, you transgressing slave. Away!
COSTARD	Let me not be pent up, sir. I will fast, being loose.
MOTE	No, sir. That were fast and loose. Thou shalt to prison.
COSTARD	Well, if ever I do see the merry days of desolation that I have seen, some shall see.
MOTE	What shall some see?
COSTARD	Nay, nothing, Master Mote, but what they look upon. It is not for prisoners to be too silent in their words, and therefore I will say nothing. I thank God I have as little patience as another man, and therefore I can be quiet.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Mote and Costard
ARMADO	I do affect the very ground—which is base-where her shoe—which is baser—guided by her foot—which is basest—doth tread. I shall be forsworn—which is a great argument of falsehood-if I love. And how can that be true love which is falsely attempted? Love is a familiar; love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love. Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an excellent strength. Yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit. Cupid’s butt-shaft is too hard for Hercules’ club, and therefore too much odds for a Spaniard’s rapier. The first and second cause will not serve my turn: the passado he respects not, the duello he regards not. His disgrace is to be called boy, but his glory is to subdue men. Adieu, valour; rust, rapier; be still, drum: for your manager is in love; yea, he loveth. Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise wit, write pen, for I am for whole volumes, in folio. Exit

Atto 2, Scena 1

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter the Princess of France with three attending ladies-Maria, Catherine, and Rosaline-and three lords, one named Boyet
BOYET	Now, madam, summon up your dearest spirits. Consider who the King your father sends, To whom he sends, and what’s his embassy: Yourself, held precious in the world’s esteem, To parley with the sole inheritor Of all perfections that a man may owe, Matchless Navarre; the plea of no less weight Than Aquitaine, a dowry for a queen. Be now as prodigal of all dear grace As nature was in making graces dear When she did starve the general world beside And prodigally gave them all to you.
PRINCESS	Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean, Needs not the painted flourish of your praise. Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye, Not uttered by base sale of chapmen’s tongues. I am less proud to hear you tell my worth Than you much willing to be counted wise In spending your wit in the praise of mine. But now to task the tasker: good Boyet, You are not ignorant all-telling fame Doth noise abroad Navarre hath made a vow Till painful study shall outwear three years No woman may approach his silent court. Therefore to’s seemeth it a needful course, Before we enter his forbidden gates, To know his pleasure; and in that behalf, Bold of your worthiness, we single you As our best-moving fair solicitor. Tell him the daughter of the King of France On serious business, craving quick dispatch, Importunes personal conference with his grace. Haste, signify so much while we attend, Like humble-visaged suitors, his high will.
BOYET	Proud of employment, willingly I go.
PRINCESS	All pride is willing pride, and yours is so. Exit Boyet Who are the votaries, my loving lords, That are vow-fellows with this virtuous duke? A LORD Lord Longueville is one.
PRINCESS	Know you the man?
MARIA	I know him, madam. At a marriage feast Between Lord Perigord and the beauteous heir Of Jaques Fauconbridge solemnized In Normandy saw I this Longueville. A man of sovereign parts he is esteemed, Well fitted in arts, glorious in arms. Nothing becomes him ill that he would well. The only soil of his fair virtue’s gloss- If virtue’s gloss will stain with any soil- Is a sharp wit matched with too blunt a will, Whose edge hath power to cut, whose will still wills It should none spare that come within his power.
PRINCESS	Some merry mocking lord, belike-is’t so?
MARIA	They say so most that most his humours know.
PRINCESS	Such short-lived wits do wither as they grow. Who are the rest?
CATHERINE	The young Dumaine, a well-accomplished youth, Of all that virtue love for virtue loved. Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill, For he hath wit to make an ill shape good, And shape to win grace, though he had no wit. I saw him at the Duke Alençon’s once, And much too little of that good I saw Is my report to his great worthiness.
ROSALINE	Another of these students at that time Was there with him, if I have heard a truth. Biron they call him, but a merrier man,
(didascalia)	Within the limit of becoming mirth,
ROSALINE	I never spent an hour’s talk withal. His eye begets occasion for his wit, For every object that the one doth catch The other turns to a mirth-moving jest, Which his fair tongue, conceit’s expositor, Delivers in such apt and gracious words That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished, So sweet and voluble is his discourse.
PRINCESS	God bless my ladies, are they all in love, That every one her own hath garnished With such bedecking ornaments of praise? A LORD Here comes Boyet.
(didascalia)	Enter Boyet
PRINCESS	Now, what admittance, lord?
BOYET	Navarre had notice of your fair approach, And he and his competitors in oath Were all addressed to meet you, gentle lady, Before I came. Marry, thus much I have learnt: He rather means to lodge you in the field, Like one that comes here to besiege his court, Than seek a dispensation for his oath To let you enter his unpeopled house.
(didascalia)	Enter Navarre, Longueville, Dumaine, and Biron
BOYET	Here comes Navarre.
KING	Fair Princess, welcome to the court of Navarre.
PRINCESS	‘Fair’ I give you back again, and welcome I have not yet. The roof of this court is too high to be yours, and welcome to the wide fields too base to be mine.
KING	You shall be welcome, madam, to my court.
PRINCESS	I will be welcome, then. Conduct me thither.
KING	Hear me, dear lady. I have sworn an oath—
PRINCESS	Our Lady help my lord He’ll be forsworn.
KING	Not for the world, fair madam, by my will.
PRINCESS	Why, will shall break it—will and nothing else.
KING	Your ladyship is ignorant what it is.
PRINCESS	Were my lord so his ignorance were wise, Where now his knowledge must prove ignorance. I hear your grace hath sworn out housekeeping. ’Tis deadly sin to keep that oath, my lord, And sin to break it. But pardon me, I am too sudden-bold. To teach a teacher ill beseemeth me. Vouchsafe to read the purpose of my coming, And suddenly resolve me in my suit. She gives him a paper
KING	Madam, I will, if suddenly I may.
PRINCESS	You will the sooner that I were away, For you’ll prove perjured if you make me stay. Navarre reads the paper
BIRON	(to Rosaline) Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?
(didascalia)	FROSALINE
BIRON	Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?
BIRON	I know you did.
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BIRON	How needless was it then To ask the question!
BIRON	You must not be so quick.
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BIRON	‘Tis ’long of you, that spur me with such questions.
BIRON	Your wit’s too hot, it speeds too fast, ’twill tire.
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BIRON	Not till it leave the rider in the mire.
BIRON	What time o’ day?
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BIRON	The hour that fools should ask.
BIRON	Now fair befall your mask.
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BIRON	Fair fall the face it covers.
BIRON	And send you many lovers.
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BIRON	Amen, so you be none.
BIRON	Nay, then will I be gone.
KING	(to the Princess) Madam, your father here doth intimate The payment of a hundred thousand crowns, Being but the one-half of an entire sum Disbursed by my father in his wars. But say that he or we—as neither have— Received that sum, yet there remains unpaid A hundred thousand more, in surety of the which One part of Aquitaine is bound to us, Although not valued to the money’s worth. If then the King your father will restore But that one half which is unsatisfied, We will give up our right in Aquitaine And hold fair friendship with his majesty. But that, it seems, he little purposeth, For here he doth demand to have repaid A hundred thousand crowns, and not demands, On payment of a hundred thousand crowns, To have his title live in Aquitaine, Which we much rather had depart withal, And have the money by our father lent, Than Aquitaine, so gelded as it is. Dear Princess, were not his requests so far From reason’s yielding, your fair self should make A yielding ’gainst some reason in my breast, And go well satisfied to France again.
PRINCESS	You do the King my father too much wrong, And wrong the reputation of your name, In so unseeming to confess receipt Of that which hath so faithfully been paid.
KING	I do protest I never heard of it, And if you prove it I’ll repay it back Or yield up Aquitaine.
PRINCESS	We arrest your word. Boyet, you can produce acquittances For such a sum from special officers Of Charles, his father.
KING	Satisfy me so.
BOYET	So please your grace, the packet is not come Where that and other specialties are bound. Tomorrow you shall have a sight of them.
KING	It shall suffice me, at which interview All liberal reason I will yield unto. Meantime receive such welcome at my hand As honour, without breach of honour, may Make tender of to thy true worthiness. You may not come, fair princess, within my gates, But here without you shall be so received As you shall deem yourself lodged in my heart, Though so denied fair harbour in my house. Your own good thoughts excuse me, and farewell. Tomorrow shall we visit you again.
PRINCESS	Sweet health and fair desires consort your grace.
KING	Thy own wish wish I thee in every place.
(didascalia)	Exit with Longueville and Dumaine
BIRON	(to Rosaline) Lady, I will commend you to mine own heart.
ROSALINE	Pray you, do my commendations. I would be glad to see it.
BIRON	I would you heard it groan.
ROSALINE	Is the fool sick?
BIRON	Sick at the heart.
ROSALINE	Alack, let it blood.
BIRON	Would that do it good?
ROSALINE	My physic says ‘Ay’.
BIRON	Will you prick’t with your eye?
ROSALINE	Non point, with my knife.
BIRON	Now God save thy life.
ROSALINE	And yours, from long living.
BIRON	I cannot stay thanksgiving. Exit
(didascalia)	Enter Dumaine
DUMAINE	(to Boyet) Sir, I pray you a word. What lady is that same?
BOYET	The heir of Alençon, Catherine her name.
DUMAINE	A gallant lady. Monsieur, fare you well. Exit
(didascalia)	Enter Longueville
LONGUEVILLE	(to Boyet) I beseech you a word, what is she in the white?
BOYET	A woman sometimes, an you saw her in the light.
LONGUEVILLE	Perchance light in the light. I desire her name.
BOYET	She hath but one for herself; to desire that were a shame.
LONGUEVILLE	Pray you, sir, whose daughter?
BOYET	Her mother’s, I have heard.
LONGUEVILLE	God’s blessing on your beard !
BOYET	Good sir, be not offended. She is an heir of Fauconbridge.
LONGUEVILLE	Nay, my choler is ended. She is a most sweet lady.
BOYET	Not unlike, sir. That may be.
(didascalia)	Exit Longueville
(didascalia)	Enter Biron
BIRON	What’s her name in the cap?
BOYET	Rosaline, by good hap.
BIRON	Is she wedded or no?
BOYET	To her will, sir, or so.
BIRON	O, you are welcome, sir. Adieu.
BOYET	Farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you.
(didascalia)	Exit Biron
MARIA	That last is Biron, the merry madcap 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.
(didascalia)	CATHERINE
BOYET	Two hot sheeps, marry.
BOYET	And wherefore not ships? No sheep, sweet lamb, unless we feed on your lips.
(didascalia)	CATHERINE
BOYET	You sheep and I pasture—shall that finish the jest?
BOYET	So you grant pasture for me.
(didascalia)	CATHERINE
BOYET	Not so, gentle beast. My lips are no common, though several they be.
BOYET	Belonging to whom?
(didascalia)	CATHERINE
BOYET	To my fortunes and me.
PRINCESS	Good wits will be jangling; but, gentles, agree. This civil war of wits were much better used On Navarre and his bookmen, for here ’tis abused.
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 impressed, Proud with his form, in his eye pride expressed. 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 locked in his eye, As jewels in crystal, for some prince to buy, Who, tendering their own worth from where they were glassed, Did point you to buy them along as you passed. His face’s own margin 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 disposed.
BOYET	But to speak that in words which his eye hath disclosed. I only have made a mouth of his eye By adding a tongue, which I know will not lie.
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BOYET	Thou art an old love-monger, and speak’st skilfully.
(didascalia)	MARIA
BOYET	He is Cupid’s grandfather, and learns news of him.
(didascalia)	CATHERINE
BOYET	Then was Venus like her mother, for her father is but grim.
BOYET	Do you hear, my mad wenches?
(didascalia)	MARIA
BOYET	No.
BOYET	What then, do you see?
(didascalia)	CATHERINE
BOYET	Ay—our way to be gone.
BOYET	You are too hard for me.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 3, Scena 1

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter Armado the braggart, and Mote his boy
ARMADO	Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.
MOTE	(sings) 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.
MOTE	Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?
ARMADO	How meanest thou—brawling in French?
MOTE	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? men—that most are affected to these.
ARMADO	How hast thou purchased this experience?
MOTE	By my penny of observation.
ARMADO	But O, but O-
MOTE	‘The hobby-horse is forgot.’
ARMADO	Call’st thou my love hobby-horse ?
MOTE	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.
MOTE	Negligent student, learn her by heart.
ARMADO	By heart and in heart, boy.
MOTE	And out of heart, master. All those three I will prove. 36
ARMADO	What wilt thou prove?
MOTE	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.
MOTE	(aside) And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.
ARMADO	Fetch hither the swain. He must carry me a letter.
MOTE	(aside) A message well sympathized—a horse to be ambassador for an ass.
ARMADO	Ha, ha! What sayst thou?
MOTE	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!
MOTE	As swift as lead, sir. 55
ARMADO	The meaning, pretty ingenious? Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow ?
MOTE	Minime, honest master—or rather, master, no.
ARMADO	I say lead is slow.
MOTE	You are too swift, sir, to say so. Is that lead slow which is fired 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.
MOTE	Thump, then, and I flee.
(didascalia)	Exit
ARMADO	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 returned.
(didascalia)	Enter Mote the page, and Costard the clown
MOTE	A wonder, master—here’s a costard broken in a shin.
ARMADO	Some enigma, some riddle; come, thy l’envoi. Begin.
COSTARD	No egma, no riddle, no l‘envoi, no salve in the mail, sir. O sir, plantain, a plain plantain—no l’envoi, no l’envoi, no salve, sir, but a plantain.
ARMADO	By virtue, thou enforcest laughter—thy silly thought my spleen. The heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous smiling. O pardon me, my stars! Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l‘envoi, and the word l’envoi for a salve?
MOTE	Do the wise think them other? Is not l’envoi a salve ?
ARMADO	No, page, it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain. I will example it. so The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee Were still at odds, being but three. There’s the moral. Now the /’envoi.
MOTE	I will add the l’envoi. Say the moral again.
ARMADO	The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee Were still at odds, being but three.
MOTE	Until the goose came out of door And stayed the odds by adding four. Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l’envoi. The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee Were still at odds, being but three.
ARMADO	Until the goose came out of door, Staying the odds by adding four.
MOTE	A good l’envoi, ending in the goose. Would you desire more?
COSTARD	The boy hath sold him a bargain—a goose, that’s flat. Sir, your pennyworth is good an your goose be fat. To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose. Let me see, a fat l’envoi-ay, that’s a fat goose.
ARMADO	Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin?
MOTE	By saying that a costard was broken in a shin. Then called you for the l’envoi.
COSTARD	True, and I for a plantain. Thus came your argument in. Then the boy’s fat l’envoi, the goose that you bought, and he ended the market.
ARMADO	But tell me, how was there a costard broken in a shin?
MOTE	I will tell you sensibly.
COSTARD	Thou hast no feeling of it. Mote, I will speak that l’envoi. I, Costard, running out, that was safely within, Fell over the threshold and broke my shin.
ARMADO	We will talk no more of this matter.
COSTARD	Till there be more matter in the shin.
ARMADO	Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.
COSTARD	O, marry me to one Frances! I smell some l’envoi, some goose, in this.
ARMADO	By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty, enfreedoming thy person. Thou wert immured, restrained, captivated, bound.
COSTARD	True, true, and now you will be my purgation and let me loose.
ARMADO	I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance, and in lieu thereof impose on thee nothing but this: bear this significant to the country maid, Jaquenetta. (Giving him a letter) There is remuneration (giving him money), for the best ward of mine honour is rewarding my dependants. Mote, follow. Exit
MOTE	Like the sequel, I. Signor Costard, adieu. Exit
COSTARD	My sweet ounce of man’s flesh, my incony Jew! Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration— O, that’s the Latin word for three-farthings. Three farthings—remuneration. ‘What’s the price of this inkle?’ ‘One penny.’ ‘No, I’ll give you a remuneration.’ Why, it carries it! Remuneration! Why, it is a fairer name than French crown. I will never buy and sell out of this word.
(didascalia)	Enter Biron
BIRON	My good knave Costard, exceedingly well met.
COSTARD	Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man buy for a remuneration?
BIRON	What is a remuneration?
COSTARD	Marry, sir, halfpenny-farthing.
BIRON	Why, then, three-farthing-worth of silk.
COSTARD	I thank your worship. God be wi’ you.
BIRON	Stay, slave, I must employ thee. As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave, Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.
COSTARD	When would you have it done, sir?
BIRON	This afternoon.
CUSTARD	Well, I will do it, sir. Fare you well.
BIRON	Thou knowest not what it is.
CUSTARD	I shall know, sir, when I have done it.
BIRON	Why, villain, thou must know first.
COSTARD	I will come to your worship tomorrow morning.
BIRON	It must be done this afternoon. Hark, slave, It is but this: The Princess comes to hunt here in the park, And in her train there is a gentle lady. When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name, And Rosaline they call her. Ask for her, And to her white hand see thou do commend This sealed-up counsel. There’s thy guerdon (giving him a letter and money), go.
COSTARD	Guerdon! O sweet guerdon!—better than remuneration, elevenpence-farthing better—most sweet guerdon! I will do it, sir, in print. Guerdon—remuneration. Exit
BIRON	And I, forsooth, in love—I that have been love’s whip, A very beadle to a humorous sigh, A critic, nay, a night-watch constable, A domineering pedant o‘er the boy, Than whom no mortal so magnificent. This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy, This Signor Junior, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid, Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms, Th’anointed sovereign of sighs and groans, Liege of all loiterers and malcontents, Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces, Sole imperator and great general Of trotting paritors—O my little heart! And I to be a corporal of his field, And wear his colours like a tumbler’s hoop! 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 watched that it may still go right. Nay, to be perjured, 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. Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, groan: Some men must love my lady, and some Joan. Exit

Atto 4, Scena 1

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter the Princess, a Forester, her ladies-Rosaline, Maria, and Catherine—and her lords, among them Boyet
PRINCESS	Was that the King that spurred his horse so hard Against the steep uprising of the hill?
(didascalia)	BOYET
PRINCESS	I know not, but I think it was not he.
PRINCESS	Whoe’er a was, a showed a mounting mind. Well, lords, today we shall have our dispatch. Ere Saturday we will return to France. Then, forester my friend, where is the bush That we must stand and play the murderer in?
FORESTER	Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice— A stand where you may make the fairest shoot.
PRINCESS	I thank my beauty, I am fair that shoot, And thereupon thou speak’st ‘the fairest shoot’.
FORESTER	Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so.
PRINCESS	What, what? First praise me, and again say no? O short-lived pride! Not fair? Alack, for woe !
FORESTER	Yes, madam, fair.
PRINCESS	Nay, never paint me now. Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow. Here, good my glass, take this for telling true. She gives him money Fair payment for foul words is more than due.
FORESTER	Nothing but fair is that which you inherit.
PRINCESS	See, see, my beauty will be saved by merit! O heresy in fair, fit for these days— A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise. But come, the bow. Now mercy goes to kill, And shooting well is then accounted ill. Thus will I save my credit in the shoot, Not wounding—pity would not let me do’t. If wounding, then it was to show my skill, That more for praise than purpose meant to kill. And, out of question, so it is sometimes— Glory grows guilty of detested crimes When for fame’s sake, for praise, an outward part, 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.
BOYET	Do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty Only for praise’ sake when they strive to be Lords o’er their lords?
PRINCESS	Only for praise, and praise we may afford To any lady that subdues a lord.
(didascalia)	Enter Costard the clown
BOYET	Here comes a member of the commonwealth.
COSTARD	God dig-you-de’en, all. Pray you, which is the head lady?
PRINCESS	Thou shalt know her, fellow, by the rest that have no heads.
COSTARD	Which is the greatest lady, the highest?
PRINCESS	The thickest and the tallest.
COSTARD	The thickest and the tallest—it is so, truth is truth. An your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit One o’ these maids’ girdles for your waist should be fit. Are not you the chief woman? You are the thickest here.
PRINCESS	What’s your will, sir? What’s your will?
COSTARD	I have a letter from Monsieur Biron to one Lady Rosaline.
PRINCESS	O, thy letter, thy letter! (She takes it) He’s a good friend of mine. (To Costard) Stand aside, good bearer. Boyet, you can carve. Break up this capon. She gives the letter to Boyet
BOYET	I am bound to serve. This letter is mistook. It importeth none here. It is writ to Jaquenetta.
PRINCESS	We will read it, I swear. Break the neck of the wax, and everyone give ear.
BOYET	(reads) ‘By heaven, that thou art fair is most infallible, true that thou art beauteous, truth itself that thou art lovely. More fairer than fair, beautiful than beauteous, truer than truth itself, have commiseration on thy heroical vassal. The magnanimous and most illustrate King Cophetua set’s eye upon the penurious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon, and he it was that might rightly say “Veni, vidi, vicí”, which to annothanize in the vulgar—O base and obscure vulgar!—videlicet “He came, see, and overcame.” He came, one; see, two; overcame, three. Who came? The King. Why did he come? To see. Why did he see? To overcome. To whom came he? To the beggar. What saw he? The beggar. Who overcame he? The beggar. The conclusion is victory. On whose side? The King’s. 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 witnesseth 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 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. But if thou strive, poor soul, what art thou then? Food for his rage, repasture for his den.’
PRINCESS	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.
PRINCESS	Else your memory is bad, going o’er it erewhile.
BOYET	This Armado is a Spaniard that keeps here in court, A phantasim, a Monarcho, and one that makes sport To the Prince and his bookmates.
PRINCESS	(to Costard) Thou, fellow, a word. Who gave thee this letter?
COSTARD	I told you—my lord.
PRINCESS	To whom shouldst thou give it?
COSTARD	From my lord to my lady.
PRINCESS	From which lord to which lady?
COSTARD	From my lord Biron, a good master of mine, To a lady of France that he called Rosaline.
PRINCESS	Thou hast mistaken his letter. Come, lords, away. (To Rosaline, giving her the letter) Here, sweet, put up this, ‘twill be thine another day.
(didascalia)	Exit attended
BOYET	Who is the suitor? Who is the suitor?
ROSALINE	Shall I teach you to know?
BOYET	Ay, my continent of beauty.
ROSALINE	Why, she that bears the bow. Finely put off.
BOYET	My lady goes to kill horns, but if thou marry, Hang me by the neck if horns that year miscarry. Finely put on.
ROSALINE	Well then, I am the shooter.
BOYET	And who is your deer?
ROSALINE	If we choose by the horns, yourself come not near. Finely put on indeed!
MARIA	You still wrangle with her, Boyet, and she strikes at the brow.
BOYET	But she herself is hit tower—have I hit her now?
ROSALINE	Shall I come upon thee with an old saying that was a man when King Pépin 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 Guinevere of Britain was a little wench, as touching the hit it.
ROSALINE	(sings) Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it, Thou canst not hit it, my good man.
BOYET	(sings) An I cannot, cannot, cannot, An I cannot, another can.
(didascalia)	Exit Rosaline
COSTARD	By my troth, most pleasant How both did fit it!
MARIA	A mark marvellous well shot, for they both did hit it.
BOYET	A mark—O mark but that mark! A mark, says my lady. Let the mark have a prick in’t to mete at, if it may be.
MARIA	Wide o’ the bow hand—i’faith, your hand is out.
COSTARD	Indeed, a must shoot nearer, or he’ll ne’er hit the clout.
BOYET	An if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in.
COSTARD	Then will she get the upshoot by cleaving the pin.
MARIA	Come, come, you talk greasily, your lips grow foul.
COSTARD	She’s too hard for you at pricks, sir. Challenge her to bowl.
BOYET	I fear too much rubbing. Goodnight, my good owl.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Boyet, Maria, and Catherine
COSTARD	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! Armado o‘th’ t’other side—O, 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!
(didascalia)	Shout within
COSTARD	Sola, sola!
(didascalia)	Exit

Atto 4, Scena 2

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter Dull, Holofernes the pedant, and Nathaniel the curate
NATHANIEL	Very reverend sport, truly, and done in the testimony of a good conscience.
HOLOFERNES	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 a crab on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth.
NATHANIEL	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.
HOLOFERNES	Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.
DULL	‘Twas not a ‘auld grey doe’, ’twas a pricket.
HOLOFERNES	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 inclination after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather unlettered, or ratherest unconfirmed, fashion, to insert again my ‘haud credo’ for a deer.
DULL	I said the deer was not a ‘auld grey doe’, ‘twas a pricket.
HOLOFERNES	Twice-sod simplicity, bis coctus! O thou monster ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!
NATHANIEL	Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book. He hath not eat paper, as it were, he hath not drunk ink. His intellect is not replenished, he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts, And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should be, Which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts that do fructify in us more than he. For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool, So were there a patch set on learning to see him in a school. But omne bene say I, being of an old father’s mind: ‘Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.’
DULL	You two are bookmen. Can you tell me by your wit What was a month old at Cain’s birth that’s not five weeks old as yet?
HOLOFERNES	Dictynna, Goodman Dull, Dictynna, Goodman Dull.
DULL	What is ‘Dictima’?
NATHANIEL	A title to Phoebe, to luna, to the moon.
HOLOFERNES	The moon was a month old when Adam was no more, And raught not to five weeks when he came to five score. Th’allusion holds in the exchange.
DULL	’Tis true, indeed, the collusion holds in the exchange.
HOLOFERNES	God comfort thy capacity, I say th’allusion holds in the exchange.
DULL	And I say the pollution holds in the exchange, for the moon is never but a month old—and I say beside that ’twas a pricket that the Princess killed.
HOLOFERNES	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.
NATHANIEL	Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge, so it shall please you to abrogate scurrility.
HOLOFERNES	I will something affect the letter, for it argues facility. The preyful Princess pierced and pricked a pretty pleasing pricket. Some say a sore, but not a sore till now made sore with shooting. The dogs did yell; put ‘I’ to ‘sore‘, then ‘sorel’ jumps from thicket— Or pricket sore, or else sorel. The people fall a- hooting. If sore be sore, then ‘I’ to ‘sore’ makes fifty sores—O sore ‘I’! Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but one more ‘I’.
NATHANIEL	A rare talent!
DULL	If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent.
HOLOFERNES	This is a gift that I have, simple, simpte—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 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.
NATHANIEL	Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my parishioners; for their sons are well tutored by you, and their daughters profit very greatly under you. You are a good member of the commonwealth.
HOLOFERNES	Mehercle, if their sons be ingenious 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 Costard the clown
JAQUENETTA	God give you good-morrow, Master Parson.
HOLOFERNES	Master Parson, quasi ‘pierce one’ ? And if one should be pierced, which is the one?
COSTARD	Marry, Master Schoolmaster, he that is likeliest to a hogshead.
HOLOFERNES	‘Of piercing a hogshead’—a good lustre of conceit in a turf of earth, fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine—‘tis pretty, it is well.
JAQUENETTA	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. She gives the letter to Nathaniel, who reads it
HOLOFERNES	(to himself) ‘Facile precor gelida quando pecas omnia sub umbra ruminat’, and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan! I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice: Venezia, Venezia, Chi non ti vede, chi non ti prezia. Old Mantuan, old Mantuan—who understandeth thee not, loves thee not. (He sings) Ut, re, Sol, la, mi, fa. (To Nathaniel) Under pardon, sir, what are the contents? Or rather, as Horace says in his—what, my soul—verses?
NATHANIEL	Ay, sir, and very learned.
HOLOFERNES	Let me hear a staff, a stanza, a verse. Lege, domine.
NATHANIEL	(reads) ‘If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love? Ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vowed. Though to myself forsworn, to thee I’ll faithful prove. Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed. Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes, Where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend. If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice. Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend; All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder; Which is to me some praise that I thy parts admire. Thy eye Jove’s lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder, Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire. Celestial as thou art, O pardon, love, this wrong, That singeth heaven’s praise with such an earthly tongue.’
HOLOFERNES	You find not the apostrophus, and so miss the accent. Let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified, but for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy—caret. Ovidius Naso was the man. And why indeed ‘Naso’ but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention? Imitari is nothing. So doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider. But domicella— virgin—was this directed to you?
JAQUENETTA	Ay, Sir.
HOLOFERNES	I will overglance the superscript. ‘To 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 votaries 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. (To Jaquenetta) Trip and go, my sweet, deliver this paper into the royal hand of the King. It may concern much. Stay not thy compliment, I forgive thy duty. Adieu.
JAQUENETTA	Good Costard, go with me.—Sir, God save your life.
CUSTARD	Have with thee, my girl. Exit with Jaquenetta
NATHANIEL	Sir, you have done this in the fear of God very religiously, and, as a certain father saith—
HOLOFERNES	Sir, tell not me of the father; I do fear colourable colours. But to return to the verses—did they please you, Sir Nathaniel?
NATHANIEL	Marvellous well for the pen.
HOLOFERNES	I do dine today 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 society.
NATHANIEL	And thank you too, for society, saith the text, is the happiness of life.
HOLOFERNES	And certes the text most infallibly concludes it. (To Dull) Sir, I do invite you too. You shall not say me nay. Pauca verba. Away, the gentles are at their game, and we will to our recreation. Exeunt

Atto 4, Scena 3

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter Biron with a paper in his hand, alone
BIRON	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. Denle—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 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 (showing a paper) is part of my rhyme, and here (touching his breast) my melancholy. Well, she hath one o’ 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, I would not care a pin if the other three were in. Here comes one with a paper. God give him grace to groan. He stands aside. The King entereth with a paper
KING	Ay me!
BIRON	(aside) Shot, by heaven! Proceed, sweet Cupid, thou hast thumped him with thy birdbolt under the left pap. In faith, secrets.
KING	(reads) ‘So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not To those fresh morning drops upon the rose As thy eyebeams when their fresh rays have smote The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows. Nor shines the silver moon one-half so bright Through the transparent bosom of the deep As doth thy face through tears of mine give light. Thou shin’st in every tear that I do weep. No drop but as a coach doth carry thee, So ridest thou triumphing in my woe. Do but behold the tears that swell in me And they thy glory through my grief will show. But do not love thyself; then thou wilt keep My tears for glasses, and still make me weep. O Queen of queens, how far dost thou excel, No thought can think nor tongue of mortal tell.’ How shall she know my griefs? I’ll drop the paper. Sweet leaves, shade folly. Who is he comes here?
(didascalia)	Enter Longueville with papers. The King steps aside
KING	What, Longueville, and reading—listen, ear!
BIRON	(aside) Now in thy likeness one more fool appear!
LONGUEVILLE	Ay me! I am forsworn.
BIRON	(aside) Why, he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers.
KING	(aside) In love, I hope! Sweet fellowship in shame.
BIRON	(aside) One drunkard loves another of the name.
LONGUEVILLE	Am I the first that have been perjured so?
BIRON	(aside) I could put thee in comfort, not by two that I know. Thou makest the triumviry, the corner-cap of society, The shape of love’s Tyburn, that hangs up simplicity.
LONGUEVILLE	I fear these stubborn lines lack power to move. O sweet Maria, empress of my love, These numbers will I tear, and write in prose.
BIRON	(aside) O, rhymes are guards on wanton Cupid’s hose, Disfigure not his slop.
LONGUEVILLE	This same shall go. He reads the sonnet ‘Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye, ’Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument, Persuade my heart to this false perjury? Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment. A woman I forswore, but I will prove, Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee. My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love. Thy grace being gained cures all disgrace in me. Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is. Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine, Exhal‘st this vapour-vow; in thee it is. If broken then, it is no fault of mine. If by me broke, what fool is not so wise To lose an oath to win a paradise?’
BIRON	(aside) This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity, A green goose a goddess, pure, pure idolatry. God amend us, God amend: we are much out o’th’ way.
(didascalia)	Enter Dumaine with a paper
LONGUEVILLE	(aside) By whom shall I send this? Company? Stay. He steps aside
BIRON	(aside) 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. Dumaine transformed—four woodcocks in a dish!
DUMAINE	O most divine Kate!
BIRON	(aside) O most profane coxcomb!
DUMAINE	By heaven, the wonder in a mortal eye!
BIRON	(aside) By earth, she is not, corporal; there you lie.
DUMAINE	Her amber hairs for foul hath amber quoted.
BIRON	(aside) An amber-coloured raven was well noted.
DUMAINE	As upright as the cedar.
BIRON	(aside) Stoop, I say. Her shoulder is with child.
DUMAINE	As fair as day.
BIRON	(aside) Ay, as some days; but then no sun must shine.
DUMAINE	O that I had my wishl
LONGUEVILLE	(aside) And I had mine!
KING	(aside) And I mine too, good Lord!
BIRON	(aside) Amen, so I had mine. Is not that a good word?
DUMAINE	I would forget her, but a fever she Reigns in my blood and will remembered be.
BIRON	(aside) A fever in your blood—why then, incision Would let her out in saucers—sweet misprision.
DUMAINE	Once more I’ll read the ode that I have writ.
BIRON	(aside) Once more I’ll mark how love can vary wit. Dumaine reads his sonnet
DUMAINE	‘On a day—atack the day— Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom passing fair Playing in the wanton air. Through the velvet leaves the wind All unseen can passage find, That the lover, sick to death, Wished himself the heavens’ breath. “Air”, quoth he, “thy cheeks may blow; Air, would I might triumph so. But, alack, my hand is sworn Ne’er to pluck thee from thy thorn— Vow, alack, for youth unmeet, Youth so apt to pluck a sweet. Do not call it sin in me That I am forsworn for thee, Thou for whom great Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiop were, And deny himself for Jove, Turning mortal for thy love.”’ This will I send, and something else more plain, That shall express my true love’s fasting pain. O, would the King, Biron, and Longueville Were lovers too! Ill to example ill Would from my forehead wipe a perjured note, For none offend where all alike do dote.
LONGUEVILLE	(coming forward) Dumaine, thy love is far from charity, That in love’s grief desir‘st society. You may look pale, but I should blush, I know, To be o’erheard and taken napping so.
KING	(coming forward) Come, sir, you blush. As his, your case is such. You chide at him, offending twice as much. You do not love Maria? Longueville Did never sonnet for her sake compile, Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart His loving bosom to keep down his heart? I have been closely shrouded in this bush, And marked you both, and for you both did blush. I heard your guilty rhymes, observed your fashion, Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion. ‘Ay me!’ says one, ‘O jovel’ the other cries. One, her hairs were gold; crystal the other’s eyes. (To Longueville) You would for paradise break faith and troth, (To Dumaine) And Jove for your love would infringe an oath. What will Biron say when that he shall hear Faith so infringed, which such zeal did swear? How will he scorn, how will he spend his wit! How will he triumph, leap, and laugh at it! For all the wealth that ever I did see I would not have him know so much by me.
BIRON	(coming forward) Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy. Ah, good my liege, I pray thee pardon me. Good heart, what grace hast thou thus to reprove These worms for loving, that art most in love? Your eyes do make no coaches. In your tears There is no certain princess that appears. You’ll not be perjured, ‘tis a hateful thing; Tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting! But are you not ashamed, nay, are you not, All three of you, to be thus much o’ershot? (To Longueville) You found his mote, the King your mote did see, But I a beam do find in each of three. O, what a scene of fool’ry have I seen, Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow, and of teen! O me, with what strict patience have I sat, To see a king transformed to a gnat! To see great Hercules whipping a gig, And profound Solomon to tune a jig, And Nestor play at pushpin with the boys, And critic Timon laugh at idle toys! Where lies thy grief, O tell me, good Dumaine? And, gentle Longueville, where lies thy pain? And where my liege’s? All about the breast. A caudle, ho!
KING	Too bitter is thy jest. Are we betrayed thus to thy over-view?
BIRON	Not you to me, but I betrayed by you. I that am honest, I that hold it sin To break the vow I am engaged in. I am betrayed by keeping company With men like you, men of inconstancy. When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme, Or groan for Joan, or spend a minute’s time In pruning me? When shall you hear that I Will praise a hand, a foot, a face, an eye, A gait, a state, a brow, a breast, a waist, A leg, a limb?
KING	Soft, whither away so fast? A true man or a thief, that gallops so?
BIRON	I post from love; good lover, let me go.
(didascalia)	Enter aquenetta with a letter, and Costard the clown
JAQUENETTA	God bless the King!
KING	What present hast thou there?
COSTARD	Some certain treason.
KING	What makes treason here?
COSTARD	Nay, it makes nothing, sir.
KING	If it mar nothing neither, The treason and you go in peace away together!
JAQUENETTA	I beseech your grace, let this letter be read. Our parson misdoubts it; ’twas treason, he said.
KING	Biron, read it over. Biron takes and reads the letter (To Jaquenetta) Where hadst thou it?
JAQUENETTA	Of Costard.
KING	(to Costard) Where hadst thou it?
COSTARD	Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio. Biron tears the letter
KING	(to Biron) How now, what is in you? Why dost thou tear it?
BIRON	A toy, my liege, a toy. Your grace needs not fear it.
LONGUEVILLE	It did move him to passion, and therefore let’s hear it.
DUMAINE	(taking up a piece of the letter) It is Biron’s writing, and here is his name.
BIRON	(to Costard) Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, you were born to do me shamel Guilty, my lord, guilty! I confess, I confess.
KING	What?
BIRON	That you three fools lacked me fool to make up the mess. He, he, and you-e’en you, my liege-and I Are pickpurses in love, and we deserve to die. O, dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you more.
DUMAINE	Now the number is even.
BIRON	True, true; we are four. Will these turtles be gone?
KING	Hence, sirs; away.
COSTARD	Walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Costard and Jaquenetta
BIRON	Sweet lords, sweet tovers!—O, let us embrace. As true we are as flesh and blood can be. The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face. Young blood doth not obey an old decree. We cannot cross the cause why we were born, Therefore of all hands must we be forsworn.
KING	What, did these rent lines show some love of thine?
BIRON	‘Did they’, quoth you? Who sees the heavenly Rosaline That, like a rude and savage man of Ind At the first op’ning of the gorgeous east, Bows not his vassal head and, strucken blind, Kisses the base ground with obedient breast? What peremptory eagle-sighted eye Dares look upon the heaven of her brow That is not blinded by her majesty?
KING	What zeal, what fury hath inspired thee now? My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon, She an attending star, scarce seen a light.
BIRON	My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Biron. O, but for my love, day would turn to night. Of all complexions the culled sovereignty Do meet as at a fair in her fair cheek, Where several worthies make one dignity, Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek. Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues— Fie, painted rhetoric! O, she needs it not. To things of sale a seller’s praise belongs. She passes praise—then praise too short doth blot. A withered hermit fivescore winters worn Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye. Beauty doth varnish age as if new-born, And gives the crutch the cradle’s infancy. O, ’tis the sun that maketh all things shine.
KING	By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.
BIRON	Is ebony like her? O word divine! A wife of such wood were felicity. O, who can give an oath? Where is a book, That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack If that she learn not of her eye to look? No face is fair that is not full so black.
KING	O paradox ! Black is the badge of hell, The hue of dungeons and the style of night, And beauty’s crest becomes the heavens well.
BIRON	Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light. O, if in black my lady’s brows be decked, It mourns that painting and usurping hair Should ravish doters with a false aspect, And therefore is she born to make black fair. Her favour turns the fashion of the days, For native blood is counted painting now, And therefore red that would avoid dispraise Paints itself black to imitate her brow.
DUMAINE	To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.
LONGUEVILLE	And since her time are colliers counted bright.
KING	And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack.
DUMAINE	Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.
BIRON	Your mistresses dare never come in rain, For fear their colours should be washed away.
KING	‘Twere good yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain, I’ll find a fairer face not washed today.
BIRON	I’ll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.
KING	No devil will fright thee then so much as she.
DUMAINE	I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear.
LONGUEVILLE	(showing his foot) Look, here’s thy love—my foot and her face see.
BIRON	O, if the streets were paved with thine eyes Her feet were much too dainty for such tread.
DUMAINE	O vile! Then as she goes, what upward lies The street should see as she walked overhead.
KING	But what of this? Are we not all in love?
BIRON	Nothing so sure, and thereby all forsworn.
KING	Then leave this chat and, good Biron, now prove Our loving lawful and our faith not torn.
DUMAINE	Ay, marry there, some flattery for this evil.
LONGUEVILLE	O, some authority how to proceed, Some tricks, some quillets how to cheat the devil.
DUMAINE	Some salve for perjury.
BIRON	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. 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 enriched 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 stopped. 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 tempered 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!
BIRON	Advance your standards, and upon them, lords. Pell-mell, down with them; but be first advised In conflict that you get the sun of them.
LONGUEVILLE	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.
BIRON	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, masques, and merry hours Forerun fair love, strewing her way with flowers.
KING	Away, away, no time shall be omitted That will be time, and may by us be fitted.
BIRON	Allons, allons! Sowed cockle reaped 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

Atto 5, Scena 1

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter Holofernes the pedant, Nathaniel the curate, and Anthony Dull
HOLOFERNES	Satis quid sufficit.
NATHANIEL	I praise Good for you, sir. Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious, pleasant without scurrility, witty without affections, 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 hominum 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. He 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 phantasims, such insociable and point-device companions, such rackers of orthography as to speak ‘dout’, sine ‘b’, when he should say ‘doubt’; ‘det’ when he should pronounce ‘debt’—‘d, e, b, t’, not ‘d, e, t’. He clepeth a calf ‘caul’, half ‘haul’, neighbour vocatur ‘nebour’—‘neigh’ abbreviated ‘ne’. This is abhominaMe—which he would call ‘abominable’. It insinuateth me of insanire—ne intelligis, domine?—to make frantic, lunatic.
NATHANIEL	Laus deo, bone intelligo.
HOLOFERNES	Bone? Bon, fort bon—Priscian a little scratched-‘twill serve.
(didascalia)	Enter Armado the braggart, Mote his boy, and Costard the clown
NATHANIEL	Videsne quis venit? xoLOFeRrrss Video, et gaudio.
ARMADO	(to Mote) Chirrah. xoLOVExNES (to Nathaniel) Quare ‘chirrah’, not ‘sirrah’?
ARMADO	Men of peace, well encountered.
HOLOFERNES	Most military sir, salutation!
MOTE	(aside to Costard) They have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps.
COSTARD	(aside to Mote) O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus. Thou art easier swallowed than a flapdragon.
MOTE	(aside to Costard) Peace, the peal begins.
ARMADO	(to Holofernes) Monsieur, are you not lettered?
MOTE	Yes, yes, he teaches boys the horn-book. What is ‘a, b’ spelled backward, with the horn on his head?
HOLOFERNES	Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.
MOTE	Ba, most silly sheep, with a horn! You hear his learning.
HOLOFERNES	Quis, quis, thou consonant?
MOTE	The last of the five vowels if you repeat them, or the fifth if I.
HOLOFERNES	I will repeat them: a, e, i—
MOTE	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.
MOTE	Offered by a child to an old man, which is ‘wit-old’.
HOLOFERNES	What is the figure? What is the figure?
MOTE	Horns.
HOLOFERNES	Thou disputes like an infant. Go whip thy gig.
MOTE	Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy circum circa—a gig of a cuckold’s horn.
CUSTARD	An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread. (Giving money) Hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discretion. O, an the heavens were so pleased that thou wert but my bastard, what a joyful father wouldst thou make me! Go to, thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers’ ends, as they say.
HOLOFERNES	O, I smell false Latin—‘dunghill’ for unguem.
ARMADO	Arts-man, preambulate. We will be singled from the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the top of the mountain?
HOLOFERNES	Or mons, the hill.
ARMADO	At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.
HOLOFERNES	I do, sans question.
ARMADO	Sir, it is the King’s most sweet pleasure and affection to congratulate the Princess at her pavilion in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.
HOLOFERNES	The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable, congruent, and measurable for the afternoon. The word is well culled, choice, sweet, and apt, I do assure you, sir, I do assure.
ARMADO	Sir, the King is a noble gentleman, and my familiar, I do assure ye, very good friend. For what is inward between us, let it pass. I do beseech thee, remember thy courtesy. I beseech thee, apparel thy head. And, among other important and most serious designs, and of great import indeed, too—but let that pass, for I must tell thee it will please his grace, by the world, sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder and with his royal finger thus dally with my excrement, with my mustachio. But, sweetheart, let that pass. By the world, I recount no fable. Some certain special honours it pleaseth his greatness to impart to Armado, a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world. But let that pass. The very all of all is—but, sweetheart, I do implore secrecy—that the King would have me present the Princess-sweet chuck-with some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antic, or firework. Now, understanding that the curate and your sweet self are good at such eruptions and sudden breaking-out of mirth, as it were, I have acquainted you withal to the end to crave your assistance.
HOLOFERNES	Sir, you shall present before her the Nine Worthies. Sir Nathaniel, as concerning some entertainment of time, some show in the posterior of this day to be rendered by our assistance, the King’s command, and this most gallant, illustrate, and learned gentleman before the Princess, I say none so fit as to present the Nine Worthies.
NATHANIEL	Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?
HOLOFERNES	Joshua, yourself; myself, Judas Maccabeus; and this gallant gentleman, Hector. This swain, because of his great limb or joint, shall pass Pompey the Great; the page, Hercules.
ARMADO	Pardon, sir, error! He is not quantity enough for that Worthy’s thumb. He is not so big as the end of his club.
HOLOFERNES	Shall I have audience? He shall present Hercules in minority. His enter and exit shall be strangling a snake, and I will have an apology for that purpose.
MOTE	An excellent device! So, if any of the audience hiss, you may cry ‘Well done, Hercules, now thou crushest the snake!’—that is the way to make an offence gracious, though few have the grace to do it.
ARMADO	For the rest of the Worthies?
HOLOFERNES	I will play three myself.
MOTE	Thrice-worthy gentleman!
ARMADO	Shall I tell you a thing?
HOLOFERNES	We attend.
ARMADO	We will have, if this fadge not, an antic. I beseech you, follow.
HOLOFERNES	Via, goodman Dull! Thou hast spoken no word all this while.
DULL	Nor understood none neither, sir.
HOLOFERNES	Allons! We will employ thee.
DULL	I’ll make one in a dance or so, or I will play on the tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay.
HOLOPERNES	Most dull, honest Dull! To our sport, away.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 5, Scena 2

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter the Princess and her ladies: Rosaline, Maria, and Catherine
PRINCESS	Sweethearts, we shall be rich ere we depart, If fairings come thus plentifully in. A lady walled about with diamonds— Look you what I have from the loving King.
ROSALINE	Madam, came nothing else along with that?
PRINCESS	Nothing but this?—yes, as much love in rhyme As would be crammed up in a sheet of paper Writ o’ both sides the leaf, margin and all, That he was fain to seal on Cupid’s name.
ROSALINE	That was the way to make his godhead wax, For he hath been five thousand year a boy.
CATHERINE	Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows, too.
ROSALINE	You’ll ne’er be friends with him, a killed your sister.
CATHERINE	He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy, And so she died. Had she been light like you, Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit, She might ha’ been a grandam ere she died; And so may you, for a light heart lives long.
ROSALINE	What’s your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?
CATHERINE	A light condition in a beauty dark.
ROSALINE	We need more light to find your meaning out.
CATHERINE	You’ll mar the light by taking it in snuff, Therefore I’ll darkly end the argument.
ROSALINE	Look what you do, you do it still i’th’ dark.
CATHERINE	So do not you, for you are a light wench.
ROSALINE	Indeed I weigh not you, and therefore light.
CATHERINE	You weigh me not? O, that’s you care not for me.
ROSALINE	Great reason, for past care is still past cure.
PRINCESS	Well bandied, both; a set of wit well played. But Rosaline, you have a favour, too. Who sent it? And what is it?
ROSALINE	I would you knew. An if my face were but as fair as yours My favour were as great, be witness this. Nay, I have verses, too, I thank Biron, The numbers true, and were the numb’ring, too, I were the fairest goddess on the ground. I am compared to twenty thousand fairs. O, he hath drawn my picture in his letter.
PRINCESS	Anything like?
ROSALINE	Much in the letters, nothing in the praise.
PRINCESS	Beauteous as ink—a good conclusion.
CATHERINE	Fair as a text B in a copy-book.
ROSALINE	Ware pencils, ho! Let me not die your debtor, My red dominical, my golden letter. O, that your face were not so full of O’s !
PRINCESS	A pox of that jest; I beshrew all shrews. But Catherine, what was sent to you from fair Dumaine ?
CATHERINE	Madam, this glove.
PRINCESS	Did he not send you twain ?
CATHERINE	Yes, madam; and moreover, Some thousand verses of a faithful lover. A huge translation of hypocrisy Vilely compiled, profound simplicity.
MARIA	This and these pearls to me sent Longueville. The letter is too long by half a mile.
PRINCESS	I think no less. Dost thou not wish in heart The chain were longer and the letter short?
MARIA	Ay, or I would these hands might never part.
PRINCESS	We are wise girls to mock our lovers so.
ROSALINE	They are worse fools to purchase mocking so. That same Biron I’ll torture ere I go. O that I knew he were but in by th’ week!— How I would make him fawn, and beg, and seek, And wait the season, and observe the times, And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes, And shape his service wholly to my hests, And make him proud to make me proud that jests! So pursuivant-like would I o’ersway his state That he should be my fool, and I his fate.
PRINCESS	None are so surely caught when they are catched As wit turned fool. Folly in wisdom hatched Hath wisdom’s warrant, and the help of school, And wit’s own grace, to grace a learned fool.
ROSALINE	The blood of youth burns not with such excess As gravity’s revolt to wantonness.
MARIA	Folly in fools bears not so strong a note As fool’ry in the wise when wit doth dote, Since all the power thereof it doth apply To prove, by wit, worth in simplicity.
(didascalia)	Enter Boyet
PRINCESS	Here comes Boyet, and mirth is in his face.
BOYET	O, I am stabbed with laughter! Where’s her grace?
PRINCESS	Thy news, Boyet?
BOYET	Prepare, madam, prepare. Arm, wenches, arm. Encounters mounted are Against your peace. Love doth approach disguised, Armed in arguments. You’ll be surprised. Muster your wits, stand in your own defence, Or hide your heads like cowards and fly hence.
PRINCESS	Saint Denis to Saint Cupid! What are they That charge their breath against us? Say, scout, say.
BOYET	Under the cool shade of a sycamore I thought to close mine eyes some half an hour When lo, to interrupt my purposed rest Toward that shade I might behold addressed The King and his companions. Warily I stole into a neighbour thicket by And overheard what you shall overhear: That by and by disguised they will be here. Their herald is a pretty knavish page That well by heart hath conned his embassage. Action and accent did they teach him there. ‘Thus must thou speak’, and ‘thus thy body bear’. And ever and anon they made a doubt Presence majestical would put him out, ‘For’, quoth the King, ‘an angel shalt thou see, Yet fear not thou, but speak audaciously.’ The boy replied, ‘An angel is not evil. I should have feared her had she been a devil.’ With that all laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, Making the bold wag by their praises bolder. One rubbed his elbow thus, and fleered, and swore A better speech was never spoke before. Another with his finger and his thumb Cried ‘Via, we will do’t, come what will come!’ The third he capered and cried ‘All goes welll’ The fourth turned on the toe and down he fell. With that they all did tumble on the ground With such a zealous laughter, so profound, That in this spleen ridiculous appears, To check their folly, passion’s solemn tears.
PRINCESS	But what, but what—come they to visit us?
BOYET	They do, they do, and are apparelled thus
(didascalia)
BOYET	Like Muscovites or Russians, as I guess. Their purpose is to parley, to court and dance, And every one his love-suit will advance Unto his several mistress, which they’ll know By favours several which they did bestow.
PRINCESS	And will they so ? The gallants shall be tasked, For, ladies, we will every one be masked, And not a man of them shall have the grace, Despite of suit, to see a lady’s face. (To Rosaline) Hold, take thou this, my sweet, and give me thine. So shall Biron take me for Rosaline. She changes favours with Rosaline (To Catherine and Maria) And change you favours, too. So shall your loves Woo contrary, deceived by these removes. Catherine and Maria change favours
ROSALINE	Come on, then, wear the favours most in sight.
CATHERINE	But in this changing what is your intent?
PRINCESS	The effect of my intent is to cross theirs. They do it but in mockery-merriment, And mock for mock is only my intent. Their several counsels they unbosom shall To loves mistook, and so be mocked withal Upon the next occasion that we meet With visages displayed to talk and greet.
ROSALINE	But shall we dance if they desire us to’t?
PRINCESS	No, to the death we will not move a foot, Nor to their penned speech render we no grace, But while ’tis spoke each turn away her face.
BOYET	Why, that contempt will kill the speaker’s heart, And quite divorce his memory from his part.
PRINCESS	Therefore I do it; and I make no doubt The rest will ne‘er come in if he be out. There’s no such sport as sport by sport o’erthrown, To make theirs ours, and ours none but our own. So shall we stay, mocking intended game, And they well mocked depart away with shame. A trumpet sounds
BOYET	The trumpet sounds, be masked, the masquers come. The ladies mask.
(didascalia)	Enter blackamoors with music; the boy Mote with
BOYET	a speech ; the King and his lords, disguised as Russians
MOTE	All hail, the richest beauties on the earth!
BIRON	(aside) Beauties no richer than rich taffeta.
MOTE	A holy parcel of the fairest dames— The ladies turn their backs to him That ever turned their—backs to mortal views.
BIRON	‘Their eyes’, villain, ‘their eyes’!
MOTE	That ever turned their eyes to mortal views. Out …
BOYET	True, out indeed!
MOTE	Out of your favours, heavenly spirits, vouchsafe Not to behold—
BIRON	‘Once to behold’, rogue!
MOTE	Once to behold with your sun-beamèd eyes— With your sun-beamèd eyes—
BOYET	They will not answer to that epithet. You were best call it ‘daughter-beamèd’ eyes.
MOTE	They do not mark me, and that brings me out.
BIRON	Is this your perfectness? Be gone, you rogue!
(didascalia)	Exit Mote
ROSALINE	(as the Princess) What would these strangers ? Know their minds, Boyet. If they do speak our language, ‘tis our will That some plain man recount their purposes. Know what they would.
BOYET	What would you with the Princess?
BIRON	Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.
ROSALINE	What would they, say they?
BOYET	Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.
ROSALINE	Why, that they have, and bid them so be gone.
BOYET	She says you have it, and you may be gone.
KING	Say to her we have measured many miles To tread a measure with her on this grass.
BOYET	They say that they have measured many a mile To tread a measure with you on this grass.
ROSALINE	It is not so. Ask them how many inches Is in one mile. If they have measured many, The measure then of one is easily told.
BOYET	If to come hither you have measured miles, And many miles, the Princess bids you tell How many inches doth fill up one mile.
BIRON	Tell her we measure them by weary steps.
BOYET	She hears herself.
ROSALINE	How many weary steps Of many weary miles you have o’ergone Are numbered in the travel of one mile?
BIRON	We number nothing that we spend for you. Our duty is so rich, so infinite, That we may do it still without account. Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face That we, like savages, may worship it.
ROSALINE	My face is but a moon, and clouded, too.
KING	Blessed are clouds to do as such clouds do. Vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine, Those clouds removed, upon our watery eyne.
ROSALINE	O vain petitioner, beg a greater matter. Thou now requests but moonshine in the water.
KING	Then in our measure do but vouchsafe one change. Thou bid’st me beg; this begging is not strange.
ROSALINE	Play, music, then.
(didascalia)	Music plays
ROSALINE	Nay, you must do it soon. Not yet?—no dance! Thus change I like the moon.
KING	Will you not dance? How come you thus estranged?
ROSALINE	You took the moon at full, but now she’s changed.
KING	Yet still she is the moon, and I the man.
(didascalia)	215
KING	The music plays, vouchsafe some motion to it.
ROSALINE	Our ears vouchsafe it.
KING	But your legs should do it.
ROSALINE	Since you are strangers and come here by chance We’ll not be nice. Take hands. We will not dance.
KING	Why take we hands, then?
ROSALINE	Only to part friends. Curtsy, sweethearts, and so the measure ends.
KING	More measure of this measure, be not nice.
ROSALINE	We can afford no more at such a price.
KING	Price you yourselves. What buys your company?
ROSALINE	Your absence only.
KING	That can never be.
ROSALINE	Then cannot we be bought, and so adieu— Twice to your visor, and half once to you.
KING	If you deny to dance, let’s hold more chat.
ROSALINE	In private, then.
KING	I am best pleased with that. The King and Rosaline talk apart
BIRON	(to the Princess, taking her for Rosaline) White-handed mistress, one sweet word with thee.
PRINCESS	Honey and milk and sugar—there is three.
BIRON	Nay then, two treys, an if you grow so nice— Metheglin, wort, and malmsey—well run, dice! There’s half-a-dozen sweets.
PRINCESS	Seventh sweet, adieu. Since you can cog, I’ll play no more with you.
BIRON	One word in secret.
PRINCESS	Let it not be sweet.
BIRON	Thou griev’st my gall.
PRINCESS	Gall—bitter!
BIRON	Therefore meet. Biron and the Princess talk apart
DUMAINE	(to Maria, taking her for Catherine) Will you vouchsafe with me to change a word?
MARIA	Name it.
DUMAINE	Fair lady—
MARIA	Say you so? Fair lord- Take that for your ‘fair lady’.
DUMAINE	Please it you, As much in private, and I’ll bid adieu. Dumaine and Maria talk apart
CATHERINE	What, was your visor made without a tongue?
LONGUEVILLE	(taking Catherine for Maria) I know the reason, lady, why you ask.
CATHERINE	O, for your reason ! Quickly, sir, I long.
LONGUEVILLE	You have a double tongue within your mask, And would afford my speechless visor half.
CATHERINE	‘Veal’, quoth the Dutchman. Is not veal a calf?
LONGUEVILLE	A calf, fair lady?
CATHERINE	No, a fair lord calf.
LONGUEVILLE	Let’s part the word.
CATHERINE	No, I’ll not be your half. Take all and wean it, it may prove an ox.
LONGUEVILLE	Look how you butt yourself in these sharp mocks ! Will you give horns, chaste lady? Do not so.
CATHERINE	Then die a calf before your horns do grow.
LONGUEVILLE	One word in private with you ere I die.
CATHERINE	Bleat softly, then. The butcher hears you cry. Longueville and Catherine talk apart
BOYET	The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen As is the razor’s edge invisible, Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen, Above the sense of sense; so sensible Seemeth their conference. Their conceits have wings Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things.
ROSALINE	Not one word more, my maids. Break off, break off.
BIRON	By heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff!
KING	Farewell, mad wenches, you have simple wits.
(didascalia)	Exeunt the King, lords, and blackamoors
(didascalia)	The ladies unmask
PRINCESS	Twenty adieus, my frozen Muscovites. Are these the breed of wits so wondered at?
BOYET	Tapers they are, with your sweet breaths puffed out.
ROSALINE	Well-liking wits they have; gross, gross; fat, fat.
PRINCESS	O poverty in wit, kingly-poor flout ! Will they not, think you, hang themselves tonight, Or ever but in visors show their faces? This pert Biron was out of count’nance quite.
ROSALINE	Ah, they were all in lamentable cases. The King was weeping-ripe for a good word.
PRINCESS	Biron did swear himself out of all suit.
MARIA	Dumaine was at my service, and his sword. ‘Non point,’ quoth I. My servant straight was mute.
CATHERINE	Lord Longueville said I came o’er his heart, And trow you what he called me?
PRINCESS	‘Qualm’, perhaps.
CATHERINE	Yes, in good faith.
PRINCESS	Go, sickness as thou art.
ROSALINE	Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps. But will you hear? The King is my love sworn.
PRINCESS	And quick Biron hath plighted faith to me.
CATHERINE	And Longueville was for my service born.
MARIA	Dumaine is mine, as sure as bark on tree.
BOYET	Madam, and pretty mistresses, give ear. Immediately they will again be here In their own shapes, for it can never be They will digest this harsh indignity.
PRINCESS	Will they return?
BOYET	They will, they will, God knows, And leap for joy, though they are lame with blows. Therefore change favours, and when they repair, Blow like sweet roses in this summer air.
PRINCESS	How ‘blow’ ? How ‘blow’ ? Speak to be understood.
BOYET	Fair ladies masked are roses in their bud; Dismasked, their damask sweet commixture shown, Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown.
PRINCESS	Avaunt, perplexity! What shall we do If they return in their own shapes to woo?
ROSALINE	Good madam, if by me you’ll be advised, Let’s mock them still, as well known as disguised. Let us complain to them what fools were here, Disguised like Muscovites in shapeless gear, And wonder what they were, and to what end Their shallow shows, and prologue vilely penned, And their rough carriage so ridiculous, Should be presented at our tent to us.
BOYET	Ladies, withdraw. The gallants are at hand.
PRINCESS	Whip, to our tents, as roes run over land!
(didascalia)	Exeunt the ladies
(didascalia)	Enter the King, Biron, Dumaine, and Longueville, as themselves
KING	Fair sir, God save you. Where’s the Princess?
BOYET	Gone to her tent. Please it your majesty Command me any service to her thither?
KING	That she vouchsafe me audience for one word.
BOYET	I will, and so will she, I know, my lord. Exit
BIRON	This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons peas, And utters it again when God doth please. He is wit’s pedlar, and retails his wares At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs. And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know, Have not the grace to grace it with such show. This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve. Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve. A can carve too, and lisp, why, this is he That kissed his hand away in courtesy. This is the ape of form, Monsieur the Nice, That when he plays at tables chides the dice In honourable terms. Nay, he can sing A mean most meanly, and in ushering Mend him who can. The ladies call him sweet. The stairs as he treads on them kiss his feet. This is the flower that smiles on everyone To show his teeth as white as whales bone, And consciences that will not die in debt Pay him the due of ‘honey-tongued’ Boyet.
KING	A blister on his sweet tongue with my heart, That put Armado’s page out of his part!
(didascalia)	Enter the ladies and Boyet
BIRON	See where it comes. Behaviour, what wert thou Till this madman showed thee, and what art thou now ?
KING	All hail, sweet madam, and fair time of day!
PRINCESS	‘Fair’ in ‘all hail’ is foul, as I conceive.
KING	Construe my speeches better, if you may.
PRINCESS	Then wish me better. I will give you leave.
KING	We came to visit you, and purpose now To lead you to our court. Vouchsafe it, then.
PRINCESS	This field shall hold me, and so hold your vow. Nor God nor I delights in perjured men.
KING	Rebuke me not for that which you provoke. The virtue of your eye must break my oath.
PRINCESS	You nickname virtue. ‘Vice’ you should have spoke, For virtue’s office never breaks men’s troth. Now by my maiden honour, yet as pure As the unsullied lily, I protest, A world of torments though I should endure, I would not yield to be your house’s guest, So much I hate a breaking cause to be Of heavenly oaths, vowed with integrity.
KING	O, you have lived in desolation here, Unseen, unvisited, much to our shame.
PRINCESS	Not so, my lord. It is not so, I swear. We have had pastimes here, and pleasant game. A mess of Russians left us but of late.
KING	How, madam? Russians?
PRINCESS	Ay, in truth, my lord. Trim gallants, full of courtship and of state.
ROSALINE	Madam, speak true.—It is not so, my lord. My lady, to the manner of the days, In courtesy gives undeserving praise. We four indeed confronted were with four In Russian habit. Here they stayed an hour, And talked apace, and in that hour, my lord, They did not bless us with one happy word. I dare not call them fools, but this I think: When they are thirsty, fools would fain have drink.
BIRON	This jest is dry to me. Gentle sweet, Your wits makes wise things foolish. When we greet, With eyes’ best seeing, heaven’s fiery eye, By light we lose light. Your capacity Is of that nature that to your huge store Wise things seem foolish, and rich things but poor.
ROSALINE	This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye—
BIRON	I am a fool, and full of poverty.
ROSALINE	But that you take what doth to you belong It were a fault to snatch words from my tongue.
BIRON	O, I am yours, and all that I possess.
ROSALINE	All the fool mine!
BIRON	I cannot give you less.
ROSALINE	Which of the visors was it that you wore?
BIRON	Where? When? What visor? Why demand you this?
ROSALINE	There, then, that visor, that superfluous case, That hid the worse and showed the better face.
KING	(aside to the lords) We were descried. They’ll mock us now, downright.
DUMAINE	(aside to the King) Let us confess, and turn it to a jest.
PRINCESS	Amazed, my lord? Why looks your highness sad?
ROSALINE	Help, hold his brows, he’ll swoon. Why look you pale? Seasick, I think, coming from Muscovy.
BIRON	Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury. Can any face of brass hold longer out? Here stand I, lady. Dart thy skill at me— Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout, Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance, Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit, And I will wish thee nevermore to dance, Nor nevermore in Russian habit wait. O, never will I trust to speeches penned, Nor to the motion of a schoolboy’s tongue, Nor never come in visor to my friend, Nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper’s song. Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, Figures pedantical-these summer flies Have blown me full of maggot ostentation. I do forswear them, and I here protest, By this white glove—how white the hand, God knows!— Henceforth my wooing mind shall be expressed In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes. And to begin, wench, so God help me, law! My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.
ROSALINE	Sans ‘sans’, I pray you.
BIRON	Yet I have a trick Of the old rage. Bear with me, I am sick. I’ll leave it by degrees. Soft, let us see. Write ‘Lord have mercy on us’ on those three. They are infected, in their hearts it lies. They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes. These lords are visited, you are not free; For the Lord’s tokens on you do I see.
PRINCESS	No, they are free that gave these tokens to us.
BIRON	Our states are forfeit. Seek not to undo us.
ROSALINE	It is not so, for how can this be true, That you stand forfeit, being those that sue?
BIRON	Peace, for I will not have to do with you.
ROSALINE	Nor shall not, if I do as I intend.
BIRON	(to the lords) Speak for yourselves. My wit is at an end.
KING	Teach us, sweet madam, for our rude transgression Some fair excuse.
PRINCESS	The fairest is confession. Were not you here but even now disguised?
KING	Madam, I was.
PRINCESS	And were you well advised?
KING	I was, fair madam.
PRINCESS	When you then were here, What did you whisper in your lady’s ear?
KING	That more than all the world I did respect her.
PRINCESS	When she shall challenge this, you will reject her.
KING	Upon mine honour, no.
PRINCESS	Peace, peace,forbear. Your oath once broke, you force not to forswear.
KING	Despise me when I break this oath of mine.
PRINCESS	I will, and therefore keep it. Rosaline, What did the Russian whisper in your ear?
ROSALINE	Madam, he swore that he did hold me dear As precious eyesight, and did value me Above this world, adding thereto moreover That he would wed me, or else die my lover.
PRINCESS	God give thee joy of him! The noble lord Most honourably doth uphold his word.
KING	What mean you, madam? By my life, my troth, I never swore this lady such an oath.
ROSALINE	By heaven, you did, and to confirm it plain, You gave me this. But take it, sir, again.
KING	My faith and this the Princess I did give. I knew her by this jewel on her sleeve.
PRINCESS	Pardon me, sir, this jewel did she wear, And Lord Biron, I thank him, is my dear. (To Biron) What, will you have me, or your pearl again?
BIRON	Neither of either. I remit both twain. I see the trick on’t. Here was a consent, Knowing aforehand of our merriment, To dash it like a Christmas comedy. Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany, Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick That smiles his cheek in years, and knows the trick To make my lady laugh when she’s disposed, Told our intents before, which once disclosed, The ladies did change favours, and then we, Following the signs, wooed but the sign of she. Now, to our perjury to add more terror, We are again forsworn, in will and error. Much upon this ’tis, (to Boyet) and might not you Forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue? Do not you know my lady’s foot by th’ square, And laugh upon the apple of her eye, And stand between her back, sir, and the fire, Holding a trencher, jesting merrily? You put our page out. Go, you are allowed. Die when you will, a smock shall be your shroud. You leer upon me, do you? There’s an eye Wounds like a leaden sword.
BOYET	Full merrily Hath this brave manège, this career been run.
BIRON	Lo, he is tilting straight. Peace, I have done.
(didascalia)	Enter Costard the clown
BIRON	Welcome, pure wit. Thou partest a fair fray.
COSTARD	O Lord, sir, they would know 485 Whether the three Worthies shall come in or no.
BIRON	What, are there but three?
COSTARD	No, sir, but it is vara fine, For everyone pursents three.
BIRON	And three times thrice is nine.
COSTARD	Not so, sir, under correction, sir, I hope it is not so. You cannot beg us, sir. I can assure you, sir, we know what we know. I hope, sir, three times thrice, sir—
BIRON	Is not nine?
COSTARD	Under correction, sir, we know whereuntil it doth amount.
BIRON	By Jove, I always took three threes for nine.
COSTARD	O Lord, sir, it were pity you should get your living by reck’ning, sir. BIRON How much is it?
COSTARD	O Lord, sir, the parties themselves, the actors, sir, will show whereuntil it doth amount. For mine own part, I am, as they say, but to parfect one man in one poor man, Pompion the Great, sir.
BIRON	Art thou one of the Worthies?
COSTARD	It pleased them to think me worthy of Pompey the Great. For mine own part, I know not the degree of the Worthy, but I am to stand for him.
BIRON	Go, bid them prepare.
COSTARD	We will turn it finely off, sir. We will take some care.
(didascalia)	Exit
KING	Biron, they will shame us. Let them not approach.
BIRON	We are shame-proof, my lord, and ‘tis some policy To have one show worse than the King’s and his company.
KING	I say they shall not come.
PRINCESS	Nay, my good lord, let me o’errule you now. That sport best pleases that doth least know how. Where zeal strives to content, and the contents
(didascalia)	Dies in the zeal of that which it presents,
PRINCESS	There form confounded makes most form in mirth, When great things labouring perish in their birth.
BIRON	A right description of our sport, my lord.
(didascalia)	Enter Armado the braggart
ARMADO	(to the King) Anointed, I implore so much expense of thy royal sweet breath as will utter a brace of words.
(didascalia)	Armado and the King speak apart
PRINCESS	Doth this man serve God?
BIRON	Why ask you?
PRINCESS	A speaks not like a man of God his making.
ARMADO	That is all one, my fair sweet honey monarch, for, I protest, the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical, too-too vain, too-too vain. But we will put it, as they say, to fortuna de la guerra. I wish you the peace of mind, most royal couplement.
(didascalia)	Exit
KING	Here is like to be a good presence of Worthies. He presents Hector of Troy, the swain Pompey the Great, the parish curate Alexander, Armado’s page Hercules, the pedant Judas Maccabeus, And if these four Worthies in their first show thrive, These four will change habits and present the other five.
BIRON	There is five in the first show.
KING	You are deceived, ’tis not so.
BIRON	The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool, and the boy, Abate throw at novum and the whole world again Cannot pick out five such, take each one in his vein.
KING	The ship is under sail, and here she comes amain.
(didascalia)	Enter Costard the clown as Pompey
COSTARD	(as Pompey) I Pompey am—
BIRON	You lie, you are not he.
COSTARD	(as Pompey) I Pompey am—
BOYET	With leopard’s head on knee.
BIRON	Well said, old mocker. I must needs be friends with thee.
COSTARD	(as Pompey) I Pompey am, Pompey surnamed the Big.
DUMAINE	‘The Great’.
COSTARD	It is ‘Great’, sir— (As Pompey) Pompey surnamed the Great, That oft in field with targe and shield did make my foe to sweat, And travelling along this coast I here am come by chance, And lay my arms before the legs of this sweet lass of France.— If your ladyship would say ‘Thanks, Pompey’, I had done.
(didascalia)	PRTNCESS Great thanks, great Pompey.
COSTARD	‘Tis not so much worth, but I hope I was perfect. I made a little fault in ‘great’.
BIRON	My hat to a halfpenny Pompey proves the best Worthy. Costard stands aside.
(didascalia)	Enter Nathaniel the curate as Alexander
NATHANIEL	(as Alexander) When in the world I lived I was the world’s commander. By east, west, north, and south, I spread my conquering might. My scutcheon plain declares that I am Alisander.
BOYET	Your nose says no, you are not, for it stands too right.
BIRON	(to Boyet) Your nose smells ‘no’ in this, most tender-smelling knight.
PRINCESS	The conqueror is dismayed. Proceed, good Alexander.
NATHANIEL	(as Alexander) When in the world I lived I was the world’s commander.
BOYET	Most true, ’tis right, you were so, Alisander.
BIRON	(to Costard) Pompey the Great.
COSTARD	Your servant, and Costard.
BIRON	Take away the conqueror, take away Alisander.
COSTARD	(to Nathaniel) O, sir, you have overthrown Alisander the Conqueror. You will be scraped out of the painted cloth for this. Your lion that holds his poleaxe sitting on a close-stool will be given to Ajax. He will be the ninth Worthy. A conqueror and afeard to speak? Run away for shame, Alisander.
(didascalia)	Exit Nathaniel the curate
COSTARD	There, an’t shall please you, a foolish mild man, an honest man, look you, and soon dashed. He is a marvellous good neighbour, faith, and a very good bowler, but for Alisander—alas, you see how ‘tis—a little o’erparted. But there are Worthies a-coming will speak their mind in some other sort.
PRINCESS	Stand aside, good Pompey.
(didascalia)	Enter Holofernes the pedant as Judas, and the boy Mote as Hercules
HOLOFERNES	Great Hercules is presented by this imp, Whose club killed Cerberus, that three-headed canus, And when he was a babe, a child, a shrimp, Thus did he strangle serpents in his manus. Quoniam he seemeth in minority, Ergo I come with this apology. (To Mote) Keep some state in thy exit, and vanish.
(didascalia)	Exit Mote
HOLOFERNES	(as Judas) Judas I am—
DUMAINE	A Judas?
HOLOFERNES	Not Iscariot, sir. (As Judas) Judas I am, yclept Maccabeus.
DUMAINE	Judas Maccabeus clipped is plain Judas.
BIRON	A kissing traitor. How art thou proved Judas ?
HOLOFERNES	(as Judas) Judas I am—
DUMAINE	The more shame for you, Judas.
HOLOFERNES	What mean you, sir?
BOYET	To make Judas hang himself.
HOLOFERNES	Begin, sir. You are my elder.
BIRON	Well followed—Judas was hanged on an elder.
HOLOFERNES	I will not be put out of countenance. 601
BIRON	Because thou hast no face.
HOLOFERNES	What is this?
BOYET	A cittern-head.
DUMAINE	The head of a bodkin.
BIRON	A death’s face in a ring.
LONGUEVILLE	The face of an old Roman coin, scarce seen.
BOYET	The pommel of Caesar’s falchion.
DUMAINE	The carved-bone face on a flask.
BIRON	Saint George’s half-cheek in a brooch.
DUMAINE	Ay, and in a brooch of lead.
BIRON	Ay, and worn in the cap of a tooth-drawer. And now forward, for we have put thee in countenance.
HOLOFERNES	You have put me out of countenance.
BIRON	False, we have given thee faces.
HOLOFERNES	But you have outfaced them all.
BIRON	An thou wert a lion, we would do so.
BOYET	Therefore, as he is an ass, let him go. And so adieu, sweet Jude. Nay, why dost thou stay?
DUMAINE	For the latter end of his name.
BIRON	For the ass to the Jude. Give it him. Jud-as, away.
HOLOFERNES	This is not generous, not gentle, not humble.
BOYET	A light for Monsieur Judas. It grows dark, he may stumble.
(didascalia)	Exit Holofernes
PRINCESS	Alas, poor Maccabeus, how hath he been baited !
(didascalia)	Enter Armado the braggart as Hector
BIRON	Hide thy head, Achilles, here comes Hector in arms.
DUMAINE	Though my mocks come home by me, I will now be merry.
KING	Hector was but a Trojan in respect of this.
BOYET	But is this Hector?
KING	I think Hector was not so clean-timbered.
LONGUEVILLE	His leg is too big for Hector’s.
DUMAINE	More calf, certain.
BOYET	No, he is best endowed in the small.
BIRON	This cannot be Hector.
DUMAINE	He’s a god, or a painter, for he makes faces.
ARMADO	(as Hector) The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, Gave Hector a gift—
DUMAINE	A gilt nutmeg.
BIRON	A lemon.
LONGUEVILLE	Stuck with cloves.
DUMAINE	NO, cloven.
ARMADO	Peace I (As Hector) The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, Gave Hector a gift, the heir of Ilion, A man so breathed that certain he would fight, yea, From morn till night, out of his pavilion. I am that flower—
DUMAINE	That mint.
LONGUEVILLE	That colombine.
ARMADO	Sweet Lord Longueville, rein thy tongue.
LONGUEVILLE	I must rather give it the rein, for it runs against Hector.
DUMAINE	Ay, and Hector’s a greyhound.
ARMADO	The sweet war-man is dead and rotten. Sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the buried. When he breathed he was a man. But I will forward with my device. (To the Princess) Sweet royalty, bestow on me the sense of hearing. Biron steps forth
PRINCESS	Speak, brave Hector, we are much delighted.
ARMADO	I do adore thy sweet grace’s slipper.
BOYET	Loves her by the foot.
DUMAINE	He may not by the yard.
ARMADO	(as Hector) This Hector far surmounted Hannibal.
(didascalia)
ARMADO	The party is gone.
COSTARD	Fellow Hector, she is gone, she is two months on her way.
ARMADO	What meanest thou?
COSTARD	Faith, unless you play the honest Trojan the poor wench is cast away. She’s quick. The child brags in her belly already. ’Tis yours.
ARMADO	Dost thou infamonize me among potentates? Thou shalt die.
COSTARD	Then shall Hector be whipped for Jaquenetta that is quick by him, and hanged for Pompey that is dead by him. 675
DUMAINE	Most rare Pompey!
BOYET	Renowned Pompey!
BIRON	Greater than great—great, great, great Pompey, Pompey the Huge.
DUMAINE	Hector trembles.
BIRON	Pompey is moved. More Ates, more Ates—stir them on, stir them on!
DUMAINE	Hector will challenge him.
BIRON	Ay, if a have no more man’s blood in his belly than will sup a flea.
ARMADO	By the North Pole, I do challenge thee.
COSTARD	I will not fight with a pole, like a northern man. I’ll slash, I’ll do it by the sword. I bepray you, let me borrow my arms again.
DUMAINE	Room for the incensed Worthies.
COSTARD	I’ll do it in my shirt.
DUMAINE	Most resolute Pompey.
MOTE	(aside to Armado) Master, let me take you a buttonhole lower. Do you not see Pompey is uncasing for the combat? What mean you? You will lose your reputation.
ARMADO	Gentlemen and soldiers, pardon me. I will not combat in my shirt.
DUMAINE	You may not deny it, Pompey hath made the challenge.
ARMADO	Sweet bloods, I both may and will.
BIRON	What reason have you for’t?
ARMADO	The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt. I go woolward for penance.
(didascalia)	MOTE True, and it was enjoined him in Rome for want of linen, since when I’ll be sworn he wore none but a dish-clout of Jaquenetta’s, and that a wears next his heart, for a favour.
(didascalia)	Enter a messenger, Monsieur Mercadé
ARMADO	MERCADÉ God save you, madam.
PRINCESS	Welcome, Mercadé, But that thou interrupt’st our merriment. MERCADÉ I am sorry, madam, for the news I bring Is heavy in my tongue. The King your father—
PRINCESS	Dead, for my life. MERCADÉ Even so. My tale is told.
BIRON	Worthies, away. The scene begins to cloud.
ARMADO	For mine own part, I breathe free breath. I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion, and I will right myself like a soldier.
(didascalia)	Exeunt the Worthies
KING	How fares your majesty ?
QUEEN	Boyet, prepare. I will away tonight.
KING	Madam, not so, I do beseech you stay.
QUEEN	Prepare, I say. I thank you, gracious lords, For all your fair endeavours, and entreat, Out of a new-sad soul, that you vouchsafe In your rich wisdom to excuse or hide The liberal opposition of our spirits. If overboldly we have borne ourselves In the converse of breath, your gentleness Was guilty of it. Farewell, worthy lord. A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue. Excuse me so coming too short of thanks, For my great suit so easily obtained.
KING	The extreme parts of time extremely forms All causes to the purpose of his speed, And often at his very loose decides That which long process could not arbitrate. And though the mourning brow of progeny Forbid the smiling courtesy of love The holy suit which fain it would convince, Yet since love’s argument was first on foot, Let not the cloud of sorrow jostle it From what it purposed, since to wail friends lost Is not by much so wholesome-profitable As to rejoice at friends but newly found.
QUEEN	I understand you not. My griefs are double.
BIRON	Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief, And by these badges understand the King. For your fair sakes have we neglected time, Played foul play with our oaths. Your beauty, ladies, Hath much deformed us, fashioning our humours Even to the opposed end of our intents, And what in us hath seemed ridiculous— As love is full of unbefitting strains, All wanton as a child, skipping and vain, Formed by the eye and therefore like the eye, Full of strange shapes, of habits and of forms, Varying in subjects as the eye doth roll To every varied object in his glance; Which parti-coated presence of loose love Put on by us, if in your heavenly eyes Have misbecomed our oaths and gravities, Those heavenly eyes that look into these faults Suggested us to make them. 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.
QUEEN	We have received 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, showed much more than jest.
LONGUEVILLE	So did our looks.
ROSALINE	We did not quote them so.
KING	Now, at the latest minute of the hour, Grant us your loves.
QUEEN	A time, methinks, too short To make a world-without-end bargain in. No, no, my lord, your grace is perjured 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 instance shut My woeful self up in a mourning house, Raining the tears of lamentation For the remembrance of my father’s death. If this thou do deny, let our hands part, Neither entitled 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, hermit, then. My heart is in thy breast. They talk apart
DUMAINE	(to Catherine) But what to me, my love? But what to me? A wife?
CATHERINE	A beard, fair health, and honesty. With three-fold love I wish you all these three.
DUMAINE	O, shall I say ‘I thank you, gentle wife’?
CATHERINE	Not so, my lord. A twelvemonth and a day I’ll mark no words that smooth-faced 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.
CATHERINE	Yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again. They talk apart
LONGUEVILLE	What says Maria?
MARIA	At the twelvemonth’s end I’ll change my black gown for a faithful friend.
LONGUEVILLE	I’ll stay with patience; but the time is long.
MARIA	The liker you—few taller are so young. They talk apart
BIRON	(to Rosaline) 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 Biron, 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.
BIRON	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, Deafed 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.
BIRON	A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall, I’ll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.
QUEEN	(to the King) Ay, sweet my lord, and so I take my leave.
KING	No, madam, we will bring you on your way.
BIRON	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 an’ a day, And then ’twill end.
BIRON	That’s too long for a play.
(didascalia)	Enter Armado the braggart
ARMADO	(to the King) Sweet majesty, vouchsafe me.
QUEEN	Was not that 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 year. 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!
(didascalia)	Enter Holofernes, Nathaniel, Costard, Mote, Dull, Jaquenetta, and others
ARMADO	This side is Hiems, winter, This Ver, the spring, the one maintained by the owl, The other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin.
SPRING	(sings) 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. 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	(sings) 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 nipped, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl: Tu-whit, tu-whoo!—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. 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, Then nightly sings the staring owl: Tu-whit, tu-whoo!—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
(didascalia)	ARMADO The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You that way, we this way. Exeunt, severally
ADDITIONAL PASSAGES	A. The following lines found after 4.3.293 in the First Quarto represent an unrevised version of parts of Biron’s long speech, 4.3.287-341. The first six lines form the basis of 4.3.294-9; the next three are revised at 4.3.326- 30; the next four at 4.3.300-2; the last nine are less directly related to the revised version. And where that you have vowed 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 any 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 With ourselves. Do we not likewise see our learning there? B. The following two lines, spoken by the Princess and found after 5.2.130 in the First Quarto, seem to represent a first draft of 5.2.131-2. Hold, Rosaline. This favour thou shalt wear, And then the King will court thee for his dear. C. The following lines found after 5.2.809 in the First Quarto represent a draft version of 5.2.824-41.
BIRON	And what to me, my love? And what to me?
ROSALINE	You must be purged, too. Your sins are rank. 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.
LOVE’S LABOUR’S WON	A BRIEF ACCOUNT
IN	1598, Francis Meres called as witnesses to Shakespeare’s excellence in comedy ‘his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labour’s Lost, his Love Labour’s Wone, his Midsummer’s Night Dream, and his Merchant of Venice’. This was the only evidence that Shakespeare wrote a play called Love’s Labour’s Won until the discovery in 1953 of a fragment of a bookseller’s list that had been used in the binding of a volume published in 1637/8. The fragment itself appears to record titles sold from 9 to 17 August 1603 by a book dealer in the south of England. Among items headed ‘[inte]rludes & tragedyes’ are marchant of vennis taming of a shrew knak to know a knave knak to know an honest man loves labor lost loves labor won No author is named for any of the items. All the plays named in the list except Love’s Labour’s Won are known to have been printed by 1600; all were written by 1596-7. Taken together, Meres’s reference in 1598 and the 1603 fragment appear to demonstrate that a play by Shakespeare called Love’s Labour’s Won had been performed by the time Meres wrote and was in print by August 1603. Conceivably the phrase served as an alternative title for one of Shakespeare’s other comedies, though the only one believed to have been written by 1598 but not listed by Meres is The Taming of the Shrew, which is named (as The Taming of A Shrew) in the bookseller’s fragment. Otherwise we must suppose that Love’s Labour’s Won is the title of a lost play by Shakespeare, that no copy of the edition mentioned in the bookseller’s list is extant, and that Heminges and Condell failed to include it in the 1623 Folio. None of these suppositions is implausible. We know of at least one other lost play attributed to Shakespeare (see Cardenio, below), and of many lost works by contemporary playwrights. No copy of the first edition of Titus Andronicus was known until 1904; for I Henry IV and The Passionate Pilgrim only a fragment of the first edition survives. And we now know that Troilus and Cressida was almost omitted from the 1623 Folio (probably for copyright reasons) despite its evident authenticity. It is also possible that, like most of the early editions of Shakespeare’s plays, the lost edition of Love’s Labour’s Won did not name him on the title-page, and this omission might go some way to explaining the failure of the edition to survive, or (if it does) to be noticed. Love’s Labour’s Won stands a much better chance of having survived, somewhere, than Cardenio: because it was printed, between 500 and 1,500 copies were once in circulation, whereas for Cardenio we know of only a single manuscript. The evidence for the existence of the lost play (unlike that for Cardenio) gives us little indication of its content. Meres explicitly states, and the title implies, that it was a comedy. Its titular pairing with Love’s Labour’s Lost suggests that they may have been written at about the same time. Both Meres and the bookseller’s catalogue place it after Love’s Labour’s Lost; although neither list is necessarily chronological, Meres’s does otherwise agree with our own view of the order of composition of Shakespeare’s comedies.

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter Ferdinand, King of Navarre, Biron, Longueville, and Dumaine
KING	Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live registered upon our brazen tombs, And then grace us in the disgrace of death When, spite of cormorant devouring time, Th’endeavour of this present breath may buy That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge And make us heirs of all eternity. Therefore, brave conquerors—for so you are, That war against your own affections And the huge army of the world’s desires— Our late edict shall strongly stand in force. Navarre shall be the wonder of the world. Our court shall be a little academe, Still and contemplative in living art. You three—Biron, Dumaine, and Longueville— Have sworn for three years’ term to live with me My fellow scholars, and to keep those statutes That are recorded in this schedule here. Your oaths are passed; and now subscribe your names, That his own hand may strike his honour down That violates the smallest branch herein. If you are armed to do as sworn to do, Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it, too.
LONGUEVILLE	I am resolved. ‘Tis but a three years’ fast. The mind shall banquet, though the body pine. Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits Make rich the ribs but bankrupt quite the wits. He signs
DUMAINE	My loving lord, Dumaine is mortified. The grosser manner of these world’s delights He throws upon the gross world’s baser slaves. To love, to wealth, to pomp I pine and die, With all these living in philosophy. He signs
BIRON	I can but say their protestation over. So much, dear liege, I have already sworn: That is, to live and study here three years. But there are other strict observances, As not to see a woman in that term, Which I hope well is not enrolled there; And one day in a week to touch no food, And but one meal on every day beside, The which I hope is not enrolled there; And then to sleep but three hours in the night, And not be seen to wink of all the day, When I was wont to think no harm all night, And make a dark night too of half the day, Which I hope well is not enrolled there. O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep— Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep.
KING	Your oath is passed to pass away from these.
BIRON	Let me say no, my liege, an if you please. I only swore to study with your grace, And stay here in your court, for three years’ space.
LONGUEVILLE	You swore to that, Biron, and to the rest.
BIRON	By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest. What is the end of study, let me know?
KING	Why, that to know which else we should not know.
BIRON	Things hid and barred, you mean, from common sense.
KING	Ay, that is study’s god-like recompense.
BIRON	Come on, then, I will swear to study so To know the thing I am forbid to know, As thus: to study where I well may dine When I to feast expressly am forbid, Or study where to meet some mistress fine When mistresses from common sense are hid; Or having sworn too hard a keeping oath, Study to break it and not break my troth. If study’s gain be thus, and this be so, Study knows that which yet it doth not know. Swear me to this, and I will ne’er say no.
KING	These be the stops that hinder study quite, And train our intellects to vain delight.
BIRON	Why, all delights are vain, but that most vain Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain; As painfully to pore upon a book To seek the light of truth while truth the while Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look. Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile; So ere you find where light in darkness lies Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes. Study me how to please the eye indeed By fixing it upon a fairer eye, Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed, And give him light that it was blinded by. Study is like the heavens’ glorious sun, That will not be deep searched with saucy looks. Small have continual plodders ever won Save base authority from others’ books. These earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights, That give a name to every fixed star, Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk and wot not what they are. Too much to know is to know naught but fame, And every godfather can give a name.
KING	How well he’s read, to reason against reading!
DUMAINE	Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding.
LONGUEVILLE	He weeds the corn and still lets grow the weeding.
BIRON	The spring is near when green geese are a-breeding.
DUMAINE	How follows that?
BIRON	Fit in his place and time.
DUMAINE	In reason nothing.
BIRON	Something then in rhyme.
KING	Biron is like an envious sneaping frost, That bites the first-born infants of the spring.
BIRON	Well, say I am! Why should proud summer boast Before the birds have any cause to sing? Why should I joy in any abortive birth? At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled shows, But like of each thing that in season grows. So you to study, now it is too late, Climb o’er the house to unlock the little gate.
KING	Well, sit you out. Go home, Biron. Adieu.
BIRON	No, my good lord, I have sworn to stay with you. And though I have for barbarism spoke more Than for that angel knowledge you can say, Yet confident I’ll keep what I have sworn, And bide the penance of each three years’ day. Give me the paper. Let me read the same, And to the strict’st decrees I’ll write my name.
KING	(giving a paper) How well this yielding rescues thee from shame!
BIRON	(reads) ‘Item: that no woman shall come within a mile of my court.’ Hath this been proclaimed?
LONGUEVILLE	Four days ago.
BIRON	Let’s see the penalty. ‘On pain of losing her tongue.’ Who devised this penalty?
LONGUEVILLE	Marry, that did I.
BIRON	Sweet lord, and why?
LONGUEVILLE	To fright them hence with that dread penalty.
BIRON	A dangerous law against gentility. ‘Item: if any man be seen to talk with a woman within the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the rest of the court can possible devise.’ This article, my liege, yourself must break; For well you know here comes in embassy The French King’s daughter with yourself to speak— A maid of grace and complete majesty— About surrender-up of Aquitaine To her decrepit, sick, and bedrid father. Therefore this article is made in vain, Or vainly comes th’admirèd Princess hither.
KING	What say you, lords? Why, this was quite forgot.
BIRON	So study evermore is overshot. While it doth study to have what it would, It doth forget to do the thing it should; And when it hath the thing it hunteth most, ’Tis won as towns with fire—so won, so lost.
KING	We must of force dispense with this decree. She must lie here, on mere necessity.
BIRON	Necessity will make us all forsworn Three thousand times within this three years’ space; For every man with his affects is born, Not by might mastered, but by special grace. If I break faith, this word shall speak for me: I am forsworn on mere necessity. So to the laws at large I write my name, And he that breaks them in the least degree Stands in attainder of eternal shame. He signs Suggestions are to other as to me, But I believe, although I seem so loath, I am the last that will last keep his oath. But is there no quick recreation granted?
KING	Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted With a refined traveller of Spain, A man in all the world’s new fashion planted, That hath a mint of phrases in his brain. One who the music of his own vain tongue Doth ravish like enchanting harmony; A man of complements, whom right and wrong Have chose as umpire of their mutiny. This child of fancy, that Armado hight, For interim to our studies shall relate In high-borne words the worth of many a knight From tawny Spain lost in the world’s debate. How you delight, my lords, I know not, I; But I protest I love to hear him lie, And I will use him for my minstrelsy.
BIRON	Armado is a most illustrious wight, A man of fire-new words, fashion’s own knight.
LONGUEVILLE	Costard the swain and he shall be our sport, And so to study three years is but short.
(didascalia)	Enter a constable, Anthony Dull, with Costard with a letter
DULL	Which is the Duke’s own person?
BIRON	This, fellow. What wouldst?
DULL	I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his grace’s farborough. But I would see his own person in flesh and blood.
BIRON	This is he.
DULL	Senor Arm—Arm—commends you. There’s villainy abroad. This letter will tell you more.
COSTARD	Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me. KING A letter from the magnificent Armado.
BIRON	How low soever the matter, I hope in God for high words.
LONGUEVILLE	A high hope for a low heaven. God grant us patience.
BIRON	To hear, or forbear laughing?
LONGUEVILLE	To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately, or to forbear both.
BIRON	Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb in the merriness.
COSTARD	The matter is to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta. The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner.
BIRON	In what manner?
COSTARD	In manner and form following, sir—all those three. I was seen with her in the manor house, sitting with her upon the form, and taken following her into the park; which put together is ‘in manner and form following’. Now, sir, for the manner: it is the manner of a man to speak to a woman. For the form: in some form.
BIRON	For the ‘following’, sir?
COSTARD	As it shall follow in my correction; and God defend the right.
KING	Will you hear this letter with attention?
BIRON	As we would hear an oracle.
COSTARD	Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.
KING	(reads) ‘Great deputy, the welkin’s vicegerent and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul’s earth’s god, and body’s fostering patron’—
COSTARD	Not a word of Costard yet.
KING	‘So it is’—
COSTARD	It may be so; but if he say it is so, he is, in telling true, but so.
KING	Peace!
COSTARD	Be to me and every man that dares not fight.
KING	No words!
COSTARD	Of other men’s secrets, I beseech you.
KING	‘So it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air, and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About the sixth hour, when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper. So much for the time when. Now for the ground which—which, I mean, I walked upon. It is yclept thy park. Then for the place where—where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest. But to the place where. It standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted garden. There did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth’—
COSTARD	Me?
KING	‘That unlettered, small-knowing sout’—
COSTARD	Me?
KING	‘That shallow vassal’—
COSTARD	Still me?
KING	‘Which, as I remember, hight Costard’—
COSTARD	O, me!
KING	‘Sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established proclaimed edict and continent canon, with, with, O with—but with this I passion to say wherewith’—COSTARD With a wench.
KING	‘With a child of our grandmother Eve, a female, or for thy more sweet understanding a woman. Him I, as my ever-esteemed duty pricks me on, have sent to thee, to receive the meed of punishment, by thy sweet grace’s officer Anthony Dull, a man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation.’
DULL	Me, an’t shall please you. I am Anthony Dull.
KING	‘For Jaquenetta—so is the weaker vessel called—which I apprehended with the aforesaid swain, I keep her as a vessel of thy law’s fury, and shall at the least of thy sweet notice bring her to trial. Thine in all compliments of devoted and heartburning heat of duty, Don Adriano de Armado.’
BIRON	This is not so well as I looked for, but the best that ever I heard.
KING	Ay, the best for the worst. (To Costard) But, sirrah, what say you to this?
COSTARD	Sir, I confess the wench.
KING	Did you hear the proclamation?
COSTARD	I do confess much of the hearing it, but little of the marking of it.
KING	It was proclaimed a year’s imprisonment to be taken with a wench.
COSTARD	I was taken with none, sir. I was taken with a damsel.
KING	Well, it was proclaimed ‘damsel’.
COSTARD	This was no damsel, neither, sir. She was a virgin.
(didascalia)	KING It is so varied, too, for it was proclaimed ‘virgin’.
COSTARD	If it were, I deny her virginity. I was taken with a maid.
KING	This ‘maid’ will not serve your turn, sir.
COSTARD	This maid will serve my turn, sir.
KING	Sir, I will pronounce your sentence. You shall fast a week with bran and water.
COSTARD	I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge.
KING	And Don Armado shall be your keeper. My lord Biron, see him delivered o’er, And go we, lords, to put in practice that Which each to other hath so strongly sworn.
(didascalia)	Exeunt the King, Longueville, and Dumaine
BIRON	I’ll lay my head to any good man’s hat These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn. Sirrah, come on.
COSTARD	I suffer for the truth, sir; for true it is I was taken with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl, and therefore, welcome the sour cup of prosperity, affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow. Exeunt

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter Armado and Mote, his page
ARMADO	Boy, what sign is it when a man of great spirit grows melancholy?
MOTE	A great sign, sir, that he will look sad.
ARMADO	Why, sadness is one and the selfsame thing, dear imp.
MOTE	No, no, O Lord, sir, no.
ARMADO	How canst thou part sadness and melancholy, my tender juvenal?
MOTE	By a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough señor.
ARMADO	Why ‘tough señor’? Why ‘tough señor’?
MOTE	Why ‘tender juvenal’? Why ‘tender juvenal’?
ARMADO	I spoke it, tender juvenal, as a congruent epitheton appertaining to thy young days, which we may nominate ‘tender’.
MOTE	And I, tough señor, as an appertinent title to your old time, which we may name ‘tough’.
ARMADO	Pretty and apt.
MOTE	How mean you, sir? I ‘pretty’ and my saying ‘apt’? Or I ‘apt’ and my saying ‘pretty’?
ARMADO	Thou ‘pretty’, because little.
MOTE	Little pretty, because little. Wherefore ‘apt’?
ARMADO	And therefore ‘apt’ because quick.
MOTE	Speak you this in my praise, master?
ARMADO	In thy condign praise.
MOTE	I will praise an eel with the same praise.
ARMADO	What—that an eel is ingenious?
MOTE	That an eel is quick.
ARMADO	I do say thou art quick in answers. Thou heatest my blood.
MOTE	I am answered, sir.
ARMADO	I love not to be crossed.
MOTE	(aside) He speaks the mere contrary-crosses love not him.
ARMADO	I have promised to study three years with the Duke.
MOTE	You may do it in an hour, sir.
ARMADO	Impossible. - MOTE How many is one, thrice told?
ARMADO	I am ill at reckoning; it fitteth the spirit of a tapster.
MOTE	You are a gentleman and a gamester, sir. ARMADO I confess both. They are both the varnish of a complete man.
MOTE	Then I am sure you know how much the gross sum of deuce-ace amounts to.
ARMADO	It doth amount to one more than two.
MOTE	Which the base vulgar do call three.
ARMADO	True.
MOTE	Why, sir, is this such a piece of study ? Now here is ‘three’ studied ere ye’ll thrice wink, and how easy it is to put ‘years’ to the word ‘three’ and study ‘three years’ in two words, the dancing horse will tell you. ARMADO A most fine figure.
MOTE	(aside) To prove you a cipher.
ARMADO	I will hereupon confess I am in love; and as it is base for a soldier to love, so am I in love with a base wench. If drawing my sword against the humour of affection would deliver me from the reprobate thought of it, I would take desire prisoner and ransom him to any French courtier for a new-devised curtsy. I think scorn to sigh. Methinks I should outswear Cupid. Comfort me, boy. What great men have been in love?
MOTE	Hercules, master.
ARMADO	Most sweet Hercules! More authority, dear boy. Name more—and, sweet my child, let them be men of good repute and carriage.
MOTE	Samson, master; he was a man of good carriage, great carriage, for he carried the town-gates on his back like a porter, and he was in love.
ARMADO	O well-knit Samson, strong-jointed Samson! I do excel thee in my rapier as much as thou didst me in carrying gates. I am in love, too. Who was Samson’s love, my dear Mote?
MOTE	A woman, master.
ARMADO	Of what complexion ?
MOTE	Of all the four, or the three, or the two, or one of the four.
ARMADO	Tell me precisely of what complexion?
MOTE	Of the sea-water green, sir.
ARMADO	Is that one of the four complexions?
MOTE	As I have read, sir; and the best of them, too.
ARMADO	Green indeed is the colour of lovers, but to have a love of that colour, methinks Samson had small reason for it. He surely affected her for her wit.
MOTE	It was so, sir, for she had a green wit.
ARMADO	My love is most immaculate white and red.
MOTE	Most maculate thoughts, master, are masked under such colours.
ARMADO	Define, define, well-educated infant.
MOTE	My father’s wit and my mother’s tongue assist me!
ARMADO	Sweet invocation of a child!—most pretty and pathetical.
MOTE	If she be made of white and red Her faults will ne’er be known, For blushing cheeks by faults are bred And fears by pale white shown. Then if she fear or be to blame, By this you shall not know; For still her cheeks possess the same Which native she doth owe. A dangerous rhyme, master, against the reason of white and red.
ARMADO	Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?
MOTE	The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since, but I think now ’tis not to be found; or if it were, it would neither serve for the writing nor the tune.
ARMADO	I will have that subject newly writ o’er, that I may example my digression by some mighty precedent. Boy, I do love that country girl that I took in the park with the rational hind Costard. She deserves well.
MOTE	(aside) To be whipped—and yet a better love than my master.
ARMADO	Sing, boy. My spirit grows heavy in love.
MOTE	And that’s great marvel, loving a light wench. ARMADO I say, sing.
MOTE	Forbear till this company be past. Enter Costard the clown, Constable Dull, and Jaquenetta, a wench
DULL	(to Armado) Sir, the Duke’s pleasure is that you keep Costard safe, and you must suffer him to take no delight, nor no penance, but a must fast three days a week. For this damsel, I must keep her at the park. She is allowed for the dey-woman. Fare you well.
ARMADO	(aside) I do betray myself with blushing.—Maid.
JAQUENETTA	Man.
ARMADO	I will visit thee at the lodge.
JAQUENETTA	That’s hereby.
ARMADO	I know where it is situate.
JAQUENETTA	Lord, how wise you are!
ARMADO	I will tell thee wonders.
JAQUENETTA	With that face?
ARMADO	I love thee.
JAQUENETTA	So I heard you say.
ARMADO	And so farewell.
JAQUENETTA	Fair weather after you.
(didascalia)	DULL Come, Jaquenetta, away.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Dull and Jaquenetta
ARMADO	Villain, thou shalt fast for thy offences ere thou be pardoned.
COSTARD	Well, sir, I hope when I do it I shall do it on a full stomach.
ARMADO	Thou shalt be heavily punished.
COSTARD	I am more bound to you than your fellows, for they are but lightly rewarded.
ARMADO	Take away this villain. Shut him up.
MOTE	Come, you transgressing slave. Away!
COSTARD	Let me not be pent up, sir. I will fast, being loose.
MOTE	No, sir. That were fast and loose. Thou shalt to prison.
COSTARD	Well, if ever I do see the merry days of desolation that I have seen, some shall see.
MOTE	What shall some see?
COSTARD	Nay, nothing, Master Mote, but what they look upon. It is not for prisoners to be too silent in their words, and therefore I will say nothing. I thank God I have as little patience as another man, and therefore I can be quiet.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Mote and Costard
ARMADO	I do affect the very ground—which is base-where her shoe—which is baser—guided by her foot—which is basest—doth tread. I shall be forsworn—which is a great argument of falsehood-if I love. And how can that be true love which is falsely attempted? Love is a familiar; love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love. Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an excellent strength. Yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit. Cupid’s butt-shaft is too hard for Hercules’ club, and therefore too much odds for a Spaniard’s rapier. The first and second cause will not serve my turn: the passado he respects not, the duello he regards not. His disgrace is to be called boy, but his glory is to subdue men. Adieu, valour; rust, rapier; be still, drum: for your manager is in love; yea, he loveth. Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise wit, write pen, for I am for whole volumes, in folio. Exit

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter the Princess of France with three attending ladies-Maria, Catherine, and Rosaline-and three lords, one named Boyet
BOYET	Now, madam, summon up your dearest spirits. Consider who the King your father sends, To whom he sends, and what’s his embassy: Yourself, held precious in the world’s esteem, To parley with the sole inheritor Of all perfections that a man may owe, Matchless Navarre; the plea of no less weight Than Aquitaine, a dowry for a queen. Be now as prodigal of all dear grace As nature was in making graces dear When she did starve the general world beside And prodigally gave them all to you.
PRINCESS	Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean, Needs not the painted flourish of your praise. Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye, Not uttered by base sale of chapmen’s tongues. I am less proud to hear you tell my worth Than you much willing to be counted wise In spending your wit in the praise of mine. But now to task the tasker: good Boyet, You are not ignorant all-telling fame Doth noise abroad Navarre hath made a vow Till painful study shall outwear three years No woman may approach his silent court. Therefore to’s seemeth it a needful course, Before we enter his forbidden gates, To know his pleasure; and in that behalf, Bold of your worthiness, we single you As our best-moving fair solicitor. Tell him the daughter of the King of France On serious business, craving quick dispatch, Importunes personal conference with his grace. Haste, signify so much while we attend, Like humble-visaged suitors, his high will.
BOYET	Proud of employment, willingly I go.
PRINCESS	All pride is willing pride, and yours is so. Exit Boyet Who are the votaries, my loving lords, That are vow-fellows with this virtuous duke? A LORD Lord Longueville is one.
PRINCESS	Know you the man?
MARIA	I know him, madam. At a marriage feast Between Lord Perigord and the beauteous heir Of Jaques Fauconbridge solemnized In Normandy saw I this Longueville. A man of sovereign parts he is esteemed, Well fitted in arts, glorious in arms. Nothing becomes him ill that he would well. The only soil of his fair virtue’s gloss- If virtue’s gloss will stain with any soil- Is a sharp wit matched with too blunt a will, Whose edge hath power to cut, whose will still wills It should none spare that come within his power.
PRINCESS	Some merry mocking lord, belike-is’t so?
MARIA	They say so most that most his humours know.
PRINCESS	Such short-lived wits do wither as they grow. Who are the rest?
CATHERINE	The young Dumaine, a well-accomplished youth, Of all that virtue love for virtue loved. Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill, For he hath wit to make an ill shape good, And shape to win grace, though he had no wit. I saw him at the Duke Alençon’s once, And much too little of that good I saw Is my report to his great worthiness.
ROSALINE	Another of these students at that time Was there with him, if I have heard a truth. Biron they call him, but a merrier man,
(didascalia)	Within the limit of becoming mirth,
ROSALINE	I never spent an hour’s talk withal. His eye begets occasion for his wit, For every object that the one doth catch The other turns to a mirth-moving jest, Which his fair tongue, conceit’s expositor, Delivers in such apt and gracious words That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished, So sweet and voluble is his discourse.
PRINCESS	God bless my ladies, are they all in love, That every one her own hath garnished With such bedecking ornaments of praise? A LORD Here comes Boyet.
(didascalia)	Enter Boyet
PRINCESS	Now, what admittance, lord?
BOYET	Navarre had notice of your fair approach, And he and his competitors in oath Were all addressed to meet you, gentle lady, Before I came. Marry, thus much I have learnt: He rather means to lodge you in the field, Like one that comes here to besiege his court, Than seek a dispensation for his oath To let you enter his unpeopled house.
(didascalia)	Enter Navarre, Longueville, Dumaine, and Biron
BOYET	Here comes Navarre.
KING	Fair Princess, welcome to the court of Navarre.
PRINCESS	‘Fair’ I give you back again, and welcome I have not yet. The roof of this court is too high to be yours, and welcome to the wide fields too base to be mine.
KING	You shall be welcome, madam, to my court.
PRINCESS	I will be welcome, then. Conduct me thither.
KING	Hear me, dear lady. I have sworn an oath—
PRINCESS	Our Lady help my lord He’ll be forsworn.
KING	Not for the world, fair madam, by my will.
PRINCESS	Why, will shall break it—will and nothing else.
KING	Your ladyship is ignorant what it is.
PRINCESS	Were my lord so his ignorance were wise, Where now his knowledge must prove ignorance. I hear your grace hath sworn out housekeeping. ’Tis deadly sin to keep that oath, my lord, And sin to break it. But pardon me, I am too sudden-bold. To teach a teacher ill beseemeth me. Vouchsafe to read the purpose of my coming, And suddenly resolve me in my suit. She gives him a paper
KING	Madam, I will, if suddenly I may.
PRINCESS	You will the sooner that I were away, For you’ll prove perjured if you make me stay. Navarre reads the paper
BIRON	(to Rosaline) Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?
(didascalia)	FROSALINE
BIRON	Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?
BIRON	I know you did.
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BIRON	How needless was it then To ask the question!
BIRON	You must not be so quick.
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BIRON	‘Tis ’long of you, that spur me with such questions.
BIRON	Your wit’s too hot, it speeds too fast, ’twill tire.
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BIRON	Not till it leave the rider in the mire.
BIRON	What time o’ day?
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BIRON	The hour that fools should ask.
BIRON	Now fair befall your mask.
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BIRON	Fair fall the face it covers.
BIRON	And send you many lovers.
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BIRON	Amen, so you be none.
BIRON	Nay, then will I be gone.
KING	(to the Princess) Madam, your father here doth intimate The payment of a hundred thousand crowns, Being but the one-half of an entire sum Disbursed by my father in his wars. But say that he or we—as neither have— Received that sum, yet there remains unpaid A hundred thousand more, in surety of the which One part of Aquitaine is bound to us, Although not valued to the money’s worth. If then the King your father will restore But that one half which is unsatisfied, We will give up our right in Aquitaine And hold fair friendship with his majesty. But that, it seems, he little purposeth, For here he doth demand to have repaid A hundred thousand crowns, and not demands, On payment of a hundred thousand crowns, To have his title live in Aquitaine, Which we much rather had depart withal, And have the money by our father lent, Than Aquitaine, so gelded as it is. Dear Princess, were not his requests so far From reason’s yielding, your fair self should make A yielding ’gainst some reason in my breast, And go well satisfied to France again.
PRINCESS	You do the King my father too much wrong, And wrong the reputation of your name, In so unseeming to confess receipt Of that which hath so faithfully been paid.
KING	I do protest I never heard of it, And if you prove it I’ll repay it back Or yield up Aquitaine.
PRINCESS	We arrest your word. Boyet, you can produce acquittances For such a sum from special officers Of Charles, his father.
KING	Satisfy me so.
BOYET	So please your grace, the packet is not come Where that and other specialties are bound. Tomorrow you shall have a sight of them.
KING	It shall suffice me, at which interview All liberal reason I will yield unto. Meantime receive such welcome at my hand As honour, without breach of honour, may Make tender of to thy true worthiness. You may not come, fair princess, within my gates, But here without you shall be so received As you shall deem yourself lodged in my heart, Though so denied fair harbour in my house. Your own good thoughts excuse me, and farewell. Tomorrow shall we visit you again.
PRINCESS	Sweet health and fair desires consort your grace.
KING	Thy own wish wish I thee in every place.
(didascalia)	Exit with Longueville and Dumaine
BIRON	(to Rosaline) Lady, I will commend you to mine own heart.
ROSALINE	Pray you, do my commendations. I would be glad to see it.
BIRON	I would you heard it groan.
ROSALINE	Is the fool sick?
BIRON	Sick at the heart.
ROSALINE	Alack, let it blood.
BIRON	Would that do it good?
ROSALINE	My physic says ‘Ay’.
BIRON	Will you prick’t with your eye?
ROSALINE	Non point, with my knife.
BIRON	Now God save thy life.
ROSALINE	And yours, from long living.
BIRON	I cannot stay thanksgiving. Exit
(didascalia)	Enter Dumaine
DUMAINE	(to Boyet) Sir, I pray you a word. What lady is that same?
BOYET	The heir of Alençon, Catherine her name.
DUMAINE	A gallant lady. Monsieur, fare you well. Exit
(didascalia)	Enter Longueville
LONGUEVILLE	(to Boyet) I beseech you a word, what is she in the white?
BOYET	A woman sometimes, an you saw her in the light.
LONGUEVILLE	Perchance light in the light. I desire her name.
BOYET	She hath but one for herself; to desire that were a shame.
LONGUEVILLE	Pray you, sir, whose daughter?
BOYET	Her mother’s, I have heard.
LONGUEVILLE	God’s blessing on your beard !
BOYET	Good sir, be not offended. She is an heir of Fauconbridge.
LONGUEVILLE	Nay, my choler is ended. She is a most sweet lady.
BOYET	Not unlike, sir. That may be.
(didascalia)	Exit Longueville
(didascalia)	Enter Biron
BIRON	What’s her name in the cap?
BOYET	Rosaline, by good hap.
BIRON	Is she wedded or no?
BOYET	To her will, sir, or so.
BIRON	O, you are welcome, sir. Adieu.
BOYET	Farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you.
(didascalia)	Exit Biron
MARIA	That last is Biron, the merry madcap 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.
(didascalia)	CATHERINE
BOYET	Two hot sheeps, marry.
BOYET	And wherefore not ships? No sheep, sweet lamb, unless we feed on your lips.
(didascalia)	CATHERINE
BOYET	You sheep and I pasture—shall that finish the jest?
BOYET	So you grant pasture for me.
(didascalia)	CATHERINE
BOYET	Not so, gentle beast. My lips are no common, though several they be.
BOYET	Belonging to whom?
(didascalia)	CATHERINE
BOYET	To my fortunes and me.
PRINCESS	Good wits will be jangling; but, gentles, agree. This civil war of wits were much better used On Navarre and his bookmen, for here ’tis abused.
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 impressed, Proud with his form, in his eye pride expressed. 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 locked in his eye, As jewels in crystal, for some prince to buy, Who, tendering their own worth from where they were glassed, Did point you to buy them along as you passed. His face’s own margin 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 disposed.
BOYET	But to speak that in words which his eye hath disclosed. I only have made a mouth of his eye By adding a tongue, which I know will not lie.
(didascalia)	ROSALINE
BOYET	Thou art an old love-monger, and speak’st skilfully.
(didascalia)	MARIA
BOYET	He is Cupid’s grandfather, and learns news of him.
(didascalia)	CATHERINE
BOYET	Then was Venus like her mother, for her father is but grim.
BOYET	Do you hear, my mad wenches?
(didascalia)	MARIA
BOYET	No.
BOYET	What then, do you see?
(didascalia)	CATHERINE
BOYET	Ay—our way to be gone.
BOYET	You are too hard for me.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter Armado the braggart, and Mote his boy
ARMADO	Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.
MOTE	(sings) 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.
MOTE	Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?
ARMADO	How meanest thou—brawling in French?
MOTE	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? men—that most are affected to these.
ARMADO	How hast thou purchased this experience?
MOTE	By my penny of observation.
ARMADO	But O, but O-
MOTE	‘The hobby-horse is forgot.’
ARMADO	Call’st thou my love hobby-horse ?
MOTE	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.
MOTE	Negligent student, learn her by heart.
ARMADO	By heart and in heart, boy.
MOTE	And out of heart, master. All those three I will prove. 36
ARMADO	What wilt thou prove?
MOTE	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.
MOTE	(aside) And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.
ARMADO	Fetch hither the swain. He must carry me a letter.
MOTE	(aside) A message well sympathized—a horse to be ambassador for an ass.
ARMADO	Ha, ha! What sayst thou?
MOTE	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!
MOTE	As swift as lead, sir. 55
ARMADO	The meaning, pretty ingenious? Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow ?
MOTE	Minime, honest master—or rather, master, no.
ARMADO	I say lead is slow.
MOTE	You are too swift, sir, to say so. Is that lead slow which is fired 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.
MOTE	Thump, then, and I flee.
(didascalia)	Exit
ARMADO	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 returned.
(didascalia)	Enter Mote the page, and Costard the clown
MOTE	A wonder, master—here’s a costard broken in a shin.
ARMADO	Some enigma, some riddle; come, thy l’envoi. Begin.
COSTARD	No egma, no riddle, no l‘envoi, no salve in the mail, sir. O sir, plantain, a plain plantain—no l’envoi, no l’envoi, no salve, sir, but a plantain.
ARMADO	By virtue, thou enforcest laughter—thy silly thought my spleen. The heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous smiling. O pardon me, my stars! Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l‘envoi, and the word l’envoi for a salve?
MOTE	Do the wise think them other? Is not l’envoi a salve ?
ARMADO	No, page, it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain. I will example it. so The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee Were still at odds, being but three. There’s the moral. Now the /’envoi.
MOTE	I will add the l’envoi. Say the moral again.
ARMADO	The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee Were still at odds, being but three.
MOTE	Until the goose came out of door And stayed the odds by adding four. Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l’envoi. The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee Were still at odds, being but three.
ARMADO	Until the goose came out of door, Staying the odds by adding four.
MOTE	A good l’envoi, ending in the goose. Would you desire more?
COSTARD	The boy hath sold him a bargain—a goose, that’s flat. Sir, your pennyworth is good an your goose be fat. To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose. Let me see, a fat l’envoi-ay, that’s a fat goose.
ARMADO	Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin?
MOTE	By saying that a costard was broken in a shin. Then called you for the l’envoi.
COSTARD	True, and I for a plantain. Thus came your argument in. Then the boy’s fat l’envoi, the goose that you bought, and he ended the market.
ARMADO	But tell me, how was there a costard broken in a shin?
MOTE	I will tell you sensibly.
COSTARD	Thou hast no feeling of it. Mote, I will speak that l’envoi. I, Costard, running out, that was safely within, Fell over the threshold and broke my shin.
ARMADO	We will talk no more of this matter.
COSTARD	Till there be more matter in the shin.
ARMADO	Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.
COSTARD	O, marry me to one Frances! I smell some l’envoi, some goose, in this.
ARMADO	By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty, enfreedoming thy person. Thou wert immured, restrained, captivated, bound.
COSTARD	True, true, and now you will be my purgation and let me loose.
ARMADO	I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance, and in lieu thereof impose on thee nothing but this: bear this significant to the country maid, Jaquenetta. (Giving him a letter) There is remuneration (giving him money), for the best ward of mine honour is rewarding my dependants. Mote, follow. Exit
MOTE	Like the sequel, I. Signor Costard, adieu. Exit
COSTARD	My sweet ounce of man’s flesh, my incony Jew! Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration— O, that’s the Latin word for three-farthings. Three farthings—remuneration. ‘What’s the price of this inkle?’ ‘One penny.’ ‘No, I’ll give you a remuneration.’ Why, it carries it! Remuneration! Why, it is a fairer name than French crown. I will never buy and sell out of this word.
(didascalia)	Enter Biron
BIRON	My good knave Costard, exceedingly well met.
COSTARD	Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man buy for a remuneration?
BIRON	What is a remuneration?
COSTARD	Marry, sir, halfpenny-farthing.
BIRON	Why, then, three-farthing-worth of silk.
COSTARD	I thank your worship. God be wi’ you.
BIRON	Stay, slave, I must employ thee. As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave, Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.
COSTARD	When would you have it done, sir?
BIRON	This afternoon.
CUSTARD	Well, I will do it, sir. Fare you well.
BIRON	Thou knowest not what it is.
CUSTARD	I shall know, sir, when I have done it.
BIRON	Why, villain, thou must know first.
COSTARD	I will come to your worship tomorrow morning.
BIRON	It must be done this afternoon. Hark, slave, It is but this: The Princess comes to hunt here in the park, And in her train there is a gentle lady. When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name, And Rosaline they call her. Ask for her, And to her white hand see thou do commend This sealed-up counsel. There’s thy guerdon (giving him a letter and money), go.
COSTARD	Guerdon! O sweet guerdon!—better than remuneration, elevenpence-farthing better—most sweet guerdon! I will do it, sir, in print. Guerdon—remuneration. Exit
BIRON	And I, forsooth, in love—I that have been love’s whip, A very beadle to a humorous sigh, A critic, nay, a night-watch constable, A domineering pedant o‘er the boy, Than whom no mortal so magnificent. This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy, This Signor Junior, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid, Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms, Th’anointed sovereign of sighs and groans, Liege of all loiterers and malcontents, Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces, Sole imperator and great general Of trotting paritors—O my little heart! And I to be a corporal of his field, And wear his colours like a tumbler’s hoop! 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 watched that it may still go right. Nay, to be perjured, 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. Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, groan: Some men must love my lady, and some Joan. Exit

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter the Princess, a Forester, her ladies-Rosaline, Maria, and Catherine—and her lords, among them Boyet
PRINCESS	Was that the King that spurred his horse so hard Against the steep uprising of the hill?
(didascalia)	BOYET
PRINCESS	I know not, but I think it was not he.
PRINCESS	Whoe’er a was, a showed a mounting mind. Well, lords, today we shall have our dispatch. Ere Saturday we will return to France. Then, forester my friend, where is the bush That we must stand and play the murderer in?
FORESTER	Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice— A stand where you may make the fairest shoot.
PRINCESS	I thank my beauty, I am fair that shoot, And thereupon thou speak’st ‘the fairest shoot’.
FORESTER	Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so.
PRINCESS	What, what? First praise me, and again say no? O short-lived pride! Not fair? Alack, for woe !
FORESTER	Yes, madam, fair.
PRINCESS	Nay, never paint me now. Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow. Here, good my glass, take this for telling true. She gives him money Fair payment for foul words is more than due.
FORESTER	Nothing but fair is that which you inherit.
PRINCESS	See, see, my beauty will be saved by merit! O heresy in fair, fit for these days— A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise. But come, the bow. Now mercy goes to kill, And shooting well is then accounted ill. Thus will I save my credit in the shoot, Not wounding—pity would not let me do’t. If wounding, then it was to show my skill, That more for praise than purpose meant to kill. And, out of question, so it is sometimes— Glory grows guilty of detested crimes When for fame’s sake, for praise, an outward part, 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.
BOYET	Do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty Only for praise’ sake when they strive to be Lords o’er their lords?
PRINCESS	Only for praise, and praise we may afford To any lady that subdues a lord.
(didascalia)	Enter Costard the clown
BOYET	Here comes a member of the commonwealth.
COSTARD	God dig-you-de’en, all. Pray you, which is the head lady?
PRINCESS	Thou shalt know her, fellow, by the rest that have no heads.
COSTARD	Which is the greatest lady, the highest?
PRINCESS	The thickest and the tallest.
COSTARD	The thickest and the tallest—it is so, truth is truth. An your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit One o’ these maids’ girdles for your waist should be fit. Are not you the chief woman? You are the thickest here.
PRINCESS	What’s your will, sir? What’s your will?
COSTARD	I have a letter from Monsieur Biron to one Lady Rosaline.
PRINCESS	O, thy letter, thy letter! (She takes it) He’s a good friend of mine. (To Costard) Stand aside, good bearer. Boyet, you can carve. Break up this capon. She gives the letter to Boyet
BOYET	I am bound to serve. This letter is mistook. It importeth none here. It is writ to Jaquenetta.
PRINCESS	We will read it, I swear. Break the neck of the wax, and everyone give ear.
BOYET	(reads) ‘By heaven, that thou art fair is most infallible, true that thou art beauteous, truth itself that thou art lovely. More fairer than fair, beautiful than beauteous, truer than truth itself, have commiseration on thy heroical vassal. The magnanimous and most illustrate King Cophetua set’s eye upon the penurious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon, and he it was that might rightly say “Veni, vidi, vicí”, which to annothanize in the vulgar—O base and obscure vulgar!—videlicet “He came, see, and overcame.” He came, one; see, two; overcame, three. Who came? The King. Why did he come? To see. Why did he see? To overcome. To whom came he? To the beggar. What saw he? The beggar. Who overcame he? The beggar. The conclusion is victory. On whose side? The King’s. 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 witnesseth 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 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. But if thou strive, poor soul, what art thou then? Food for his rage, repasture for his den.’
PRINCESS	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.
PRINCESS	Else your memory is bad, going o’er it erewhile.
BOYET	This Armado is a Spaniard that keeps here in court, A phantasim, a Monarcho, and one that makes sport To the Prince and his bookmates.
PRINCESS	(to Costard) Thou, fellow, a word. Who gave thee this letter?
COSTARD	I told you—my lord.
PRINCESS	To whom shouldst thou give it?
COSTARD	From my lord to my lady.
PRINCESS	From which lord to which lady?
COSTARD	From my lord Biron, a good master of mine, To a lady of France that he called Rosaline.
PRINCESS	Thou hast mistaken his letter. Come, lords, away. (To Rosaline, giving her the letter) Here, sweet, put up this, ‘twill be thine another day.
(didascalia)	Exit attended
BOYET	Who is the suitor? Who is the suitor?
ROSALINE	Shall I teach you to know?
BOYET	Ay, my continent of beauty.
ROSALINE	Why, she that bears the bow. Finely put off.
BOYET	My lady goes to kill horns, but if thou marry, Hang me by the neck if horns that year miscarry. Finely put on.
ROSALINE	Well then, I am the shooter.
BOYET	And who is your deer?
ROSALINE	If we choose by the horns, yourself come not near. Finely put on indeed!
MARIA	You still wrangle with her, Boyet, and she strikes at the brow.
BOYET	But she herself is hit tower—have I hit her now?
ROSALINE	Shall I come upon thee with an old saying that was a man when King Pépin 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 Guinevere of Britain was a little wench, as touching the hit it.
ROSALINE	(sings) Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it, Thou canst not hit it, my good man.
BOYET	(sings) An I cannot, cannot, cannot, An I cannot, another can.
(didascalia)	Exit Rosaline
COSTARD	By my troth, most pleasant How both did fit it!
MARIA	A mark marvellous well shot, for they both did hit it.
BOYET	A mark—O mark but that mark! A mark, says my lady. Let the mark have a prick in’t to mete at, if it may be.
MARIA	Wide o’ the bow hand—i’faith, your hand is out.
COSTARD	Indeed, a must shoot nearer, or he’ll ne’er hit the clout.
BOYET	An if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in.
COSTARD	Then will she get the upshoot by cleaving the pin.
MARIA	Come, come, you talk greasily, your lips grow foul.
COSTARD	She’s too hard for you at pricks, sir. Challenge her to bowl.
BOYET	I fear too much rubbing. Goodnight, my good owl.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Boyet, Maria, and Catherine
COSTARD	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! Armado o‘th’ t’other side—O, 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!
(didascalia)	Shout within
COSTARD	Sola, sola!
(didascalia)	Exit

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter Dull, Holofernes the pedant, and Nathaniel the curate
NATHANIEL	Very reverend sport, truly, and done in the testimony of a good conscience.
HOLOFERNES	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 a crab on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth.
NATHANIEL	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.
HOLOFERNES	Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.
DULL	‘Twas not a ‘auld grey doe’, ’twas a pricket.
HOLOFERNES	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 inclination after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather unlettered, or ratherest unconfirmed, fashion, to insert again my ‘haud credo’ for a deer.
DULL	I said the deer was not a ‘auld grey doe’, ‘twas a pricket.
HOLOFERNES	Twice-sod simplicity, bis coctus! O thou monster ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!
NATHANIEL	Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book. He hath not eat paper, as it were, he hath not drunk ink. His intellect is not replenished, he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts, And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should be, Which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts that do fructify in us more than he. For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool, So were there a patch set on learning to see him in a school. But omne bene say I, being of an old father’s mind: ‘Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.’
DULL	You two are bookmen. Can you tell me by your wit What was a month old at Cain’s birth that’s not five weeks old as yet?
HOLOFERNES	Dictynna, Goodman Dull, Dictynna, Goodman Dull.
DULL	What is ‘Dictima’?
NATHANIEL	A title to Phoebe, to luna, to the moon.
HOLOFERNES	The moon was a month old when Adam was no more, And raught not to five weeks when he came to five score. Th’allusion holds in the exchange.
DULL	’Tis true, indeed, the collusion holds in the exchange.
HOLOFERNES	God comfort thy capacity, I say th’allusion holds in the exchange.
DULL	And I say the pollution holds in the exchange, for the moon is never but a month old—and I say beside that ’twas a pricket that the Princess killed.
HOLOFERNES	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.
NATHANIEL	Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge, so it shall please you to abrogate scurrility.
HOLOFERNES	I will something affect the letter, for it argues facility. The preyful Princess pierced and pricked a pretty pleasing pricket. Some say a sore, but not a sore till now made sore with shooting. The dogs did yell; put ‘I’ to ‘sore‘, then ‘sorel’ jumps from thicket— Or pricket sore, or else sorel. The people fall a- hooting. If sore be sore, then ‘I’ to ‘sore’ makes fifty sores—O sore ‘I’! Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but one more ‘I’.
NATHANIEL	A rare talent!
DULL	If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent.
HOLOFERNES	This is a gift that I have, simple, simpte—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 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.
NATHANIEL	Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my parishioners; for their sons are well tutored by you, and their daughters profit very greatly under you. You are a good member of the commonwealth.
HOLOFERNES	Mehercle, if their sons be ingenious 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 Costard the clown
JAQUENETTA	God give you good-morrow, Master Parson.
HOLOFERNES	Master Parson, quasi ‘pierce one’ ? And if one should be pierced, which is the one?
COSTARD	Marry, Master Schoolmaster, he that is likeliest to a hogshead.
HOLOFERNES	‘Of piercing a hogshead’—a good lustre of conceit in a turf of earth, fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine—‘tis pretty, it is well.
JAQUENETTA	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. She gives the letter to Nathaniel, who reads it
HOLOFERNES	(to himself) ‘Facile precor gelida quando pecas omnia sub umbra ruminat’, and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan! I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice: Venezia, Venezia, Chi non ti vede, chi non ti prezia. Old Mantuan, old Mantuan—who understandeth thee not, loves thee not. (He sings) Ut, re, Sol, la, mi, fa. (To Nathaniel) Under pardon, sir, what are the contents? Or rather, as Horace says in his—what, my soul—verses?
NATHANIEL	Ay, sir, and very learned.
HOLOFERNES	Let me hear a staff, a stanza, a verse. Lege, domine.
NATHANIEL	(reads) ‘If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love? Ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vowed. Though to myself forsworn, to thee I’ll faithful prove. Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed. Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes, Where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend. If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice. Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend; All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder; Which is to me some praise that I thy parts admire. Thy eye Jove’s lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder, Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire. Celestial as thou art, O pardon, love, this wrong, That singeth heaven’s praise with such an earthly tongue.’
HOLOFERNES	You find not the apostrophus, and so miss the accent. Let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified, but for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy—caret. Ovidius Naso was the man. And why indeed ‘Naso’ but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention? Imitari is nothing. So doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider. But domicella— virgin—was this directed to you?
JAQUENETTA	Ay, Sir.
HOLOFERNES	I will overglance the superscript. ‘To 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 votaries 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. (To Jaquenetta) Trip and go, my sweet, deliver this paper into the royal hand of the King. It may concern much. Stay not thy compliment, I forgive thy duty. Adieu.
JAQUENETTA	Good Costard, go with me.—Sir, God save your life.
CUSTARD	Have with thee, my girl. Exit with Jaquenetta
NATHANIEL	Sir, you have done this in the fear of God very religiously, and, as a certain father saith—
HOLOFERNES	Sir, tell not me of the father; I do fear colourable colours. But to return to the verses—did they please you, Sir Nathaniel?
NATHANIEL	Marvellous well for the pen.
HOLOFERNES	I do dine today 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 society.
NATHANIEL	And thank you too, for society, saith the text, is the happiness of life.
HOLOFERNES	And certes the text most infallibly concludes it. (To Dull) Sir, I do invite you too. You shall not say me nay. Pauca verba. Away, the gentles are at their game, and we will to our recreation. Exeunt

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter Biron with a paper in his hand, alone
BIRON	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. Denle—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 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 (showing a paper) is part of my rhyme, and here (touching his breast) my melancholy. Well, she hath one o’ 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, I would not care a pin if the other three were in. Here comes one with a paper. God give him grace to groan. He stands aside. The King entereth with a paper
KING	Ay me!
BIRON	(aside) Shot, by heaven! Proceed, sweet Cupid, thou hast thumped him with thy birdbolt under the left pap. In faith, secrets.
KING	(reads) ‘So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not To those fresh morning drops upon the rose As thy eyebeams when their fresh rays have smote The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows. Nor shines the silver moon one-half so bright Through the transparent bosom of the deep As doth thy face through tears of mine give light. Thou shin’st in every tear that I do weep. No drop but as a coach doth carry thee, So ridest thou triumphing in my woe. Do but behold the tears that swell in me And they thy glory through my grief will show. But do not love thyself; then thou wilt keep My tears for glasses, and still make me weep. O Queen of queens, how far dost thou excel, No thought can think nor tongue of mortal tell.’ How shall she know my griefs? I’ll drop the paper. Sweet leaves, shade folly. Who is he comes here?
(didascalia)	Enter Longueville with papers. The King steps aside
KING	What, Longueville, and reading—listen, ear!
BIRON	(aside) Now in thy likeness one more fool appear!
LONGUEVILLE	Ay me! I am forsworn.
BIRON	(aside) Why, he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers.
KING	(aside) In love, I hope! Sweet fellowship in shame.
BIRON	(aside) One drunkard loves another of the name.
LONGUEVILLE	Am I the first that have been perjured so?
BIRON	(aside) I could put thee in comfort, not by two that I know. Thou makest the triumviry, the corner-cap of society, The shape of love’s Tyburn, that hangs up simplicity.
LONGUEVILLE	I fear these stubborn lines lack power to move. O sweet Maria, empress of my love, These numbers will I tear, and write in prose.
BIRON	(aside) O, rhymes are guards on wanton Cupid’s hose, Disfigure not his slop.
LONGUEVILLE	This same shall go. He reads the sonnet ‘Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye, ’Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument, Persuade my heart to this false perjury? Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment. A woman I forswore, but I will prove, Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee. My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love. Thy grace being gained cures all disgrace in me. Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is. Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine, Exhal‘st this vapour-vow; in thee it is. If broken then, it is no fault of mine. If by me broke, what fool is not so wise To lose an oath to win a paradise?’
BIRON	(aside) This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity, A green goose a goddess, pure, pure idolatry. God amend us, God amend: we are much out o’th’ way.
(didascalia)	Enter Dumaine with a paper
LONGUEVILLE	(aside) By whom shall I send this? Company? Stay. He steps aside
BIRON	(aside) 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. Dumaine transformed—four woodcocks in a dish!
DUMAINE	O most divine Kate!
BIRON	(aside) O most profane coxcomb!
DUMAINE	By heaven, the wonder in a mortal eye!
BIRON	(aside) By earth, she is not, corporal; there you lie.
DUMAINE	Her amber hairs for foul hath amber quoted.
BIRON	(aside) An amber-coloured raven was well noted.
DUMAINE	As upright as the cedar.
BIRON	(aside) Stoop, I say. Her shoulder is with child.
DUMAINE	As fair as day.
BIRON	(aside) Ay, as some days; but then no sun must shine.
DUMAINE	O that I had my wishl
LONGUEVILLE	(aside) And I had mine!
KING	(aside) And I mine too, good Lord!
BIRON	(aside) Amen, so I had mine. Is not that a good word?
DUMAINE	I would forget her, but a fever she Reigns in my blood and will remembered be.
BIRON	(aside) A fever in your blood—why then, incision Would let her out in saucers—sweet misprision.
DUMAINE	Once more I’ll read the ode that I have writ.
BIRON	(aside) Once more I’ll mark how love can vary wit. Dumaine reads his sonnet
DUMAINE	‘On a day—atack the day— Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom passing fair Playing in the wanton air. Through the velvet leaves the wind All unseen can passage find, That the lover, sick to death, Wished himself the heavens’ breath. “Air”, quoth he, “thy cheeks may blow; Air, would I might triumph so. But, alack, my hand is sworn Ne’er to pluck thee from thy thorn— Vow, alack, for youth unmeet, Youth so apt to pluck a sweet. Do not call it sin in me That I am forsworn for thee, Thou for whom great Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiop were, And deny himself for Jove, Turning mortal for thy love.”’ This will I send, and something else more plain, That shall express my true love’s fasting pain. O, would the King, Biron, and Longueville Were lovers too! Ill to example ill Would from my forehead wipe a perjured note, For none offend where all alike do dote.
LONGUEVILLE	(coming forward) Dumaine, thy love is far from charity, That in love’s grief desir‘st society. You may look pale, but I should blush, I know, To be o’erheard and taken napping so.
KING	(coming forward) Come, sir, you blush. As his, your case is such. You chide at him, offending twice as much. You do not love Maria? Longueville Did never sonnet for her sake compile, Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart His loving bosom to keep down his heart? I have been closely shrouded in this bush, And marked you both, and for you both did blush. I heard your guilty rhymes, observed your fashion, Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion. ‘Ay me!’ says one, ‘O jovel’ the other cries. One, her hairs were gold; crystal the other’s eyes. (To Longueville) You would for paradise break faith and troth, (To Dumaine) And Jove for your love would infringe an oath. What will Biron say when that he shall hear Faith so infringed, which such zeal did swear? How will he scorn, how will he spend his wit! How will he triumph, leap, and laugh at it! For all the wealth that ever I did see I would not have him know so much by me.
BIRON	(coming forward) Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy. Ah, good my liege, I pray thee pardon me. Good heart, what grace hast thou thus to reprove These worms for loving, that art most in love? Your eyes do make no coaches. In your tears There is no certain princess that appears. You’ll not be perjured, ‘tis a hateful thing; Tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting! But are you not ashamed, nay, are you not, All three of you, to be thus much o’ershot? (To Longueville) You found his mote, the King your mote did see, But I a beam do find in each of three. O, what a scene of fool’ry have I seen, Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow, and of teen! O me, with what strict patience have I sat, To see a king transformed to a gnat! To see great Hercules whipping a gig, And profound Solomon to tune a jig, And Nestor play at pushpin with the boys, And critic Timon laugh at idle toys! Where lies thy grief, O tell me, good Dumaine? And, gentle Longueville, where lies thy pain? And where my liege’s? All about the breast. A caudle, ho!
KING	Too bitter is thy jest. Are we betrayed thus to thy over-view?
BIRON	Not you to me, but I betrayed by you. I that am honest, I that hold it sin To break the vow I am engaged in. I am betrayed by keeping company With men like you, men of inconstancy. When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme, Or groan for Joan, or spend a minute’s time In pruning me? When shall you hear that I Will praise a hand, a foot, a face, an eye, A gait, a state, a brow, a breast, a waist, A leg, a limb?
KING	Soft, whither away so fast? A true man or a thief, that gallops so?
BIRON	I post from love; good lover, let me go.
(didascalia)	Enter aquenetta with a letter, and Costard the clown
JAQUENETTA	God bless the King!
KING	What present hast thou there?
COSTARD	Some certain treason.
KING	What makes treason here?
COSTARD	Nay, it makes nothing, sir.
KING	If it mar nothing neither, The treason and you go in peace away together!
JAQUENETTA	I beseech your grace, let this letter be read. Our parson misdoubts it; ’twas treason, he said.
KING	Biron, read it over. Biron takes and reads the letter (To Jaquenetta) Where hadst thou it?
JAQUENETTA	Of Costard.
KING	(to Costard) Where hadst thou it?
COSTARD	Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio. Biron tears the letter
KING	(to Biron) How now, what is in you? Why dost thou tear it?
BIRON	A toy, my liege, a toy. Your grace needs not fear it.
LONGUEVILLE	It did move him to passion, and therefore let’s hear it.
DUMAINE	(taking up a piece of the letter) It is Biron’s writing, and here is his name.
BIRON	(to Costard) Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, you were born to do me shamel Guilty, my lord, guilty! I confess, I confess.
KING	What?
BIRON	That you three fools lacked me fool to make up the mess. He, he, and you-e’en you, my liege-and I Are pickpurses in love, and we deserve to die. O, dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you more.
DUMAINE	Now the number is even.
BIRON	True, true; we are four. Will these turtles be gone?
KING	Hence, sirs; away.
COSTARD	Walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Costard and Jaquenetta
BIRON	Sweet lords, sweet tovers!—O, let us embrace. As true we are as flesh and blood can be. The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face. Young blood doth not obey an old decree. We cannot cross the cause why we were born, Therefore of all hands must we be forsworn.
KING	What, did these rent lines show some love of thine?
BIRON	‘Did they’, quoth you? Who sees the heavenly Rosaline That, like a rude and savage man of Ind At the first op’ning of the gorgeous east, Bows not his vassal head and, strucken blind, Kisses the base ground with obedient breast? What peremptory eagle-sighted eye Dares look upon the heaven of her brow That is not blinded by her majesty?
KING	What zeal, what fury hath inspired thee now? My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon, She an attending star, scarce seen a light.
BIRON	My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Biron. O, but for my love, day would turn to night. Of all complexions the culled sovereignty Do meet as at a fair in her fair cheek, Where several worthies make one dignity, Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek. Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues— Fie, painted rhetoric! O, she needs it not. To things of sale a seller’s praise belongs. She passes praise—then praise too short doth blot. A withered hermit fivescore winters worn Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye. Beauty doth varnish age as if new-born, And gives the crutch the cradle’s infancy. O, ’tis the sun that maketh all things shine.
KING	By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.
BIRON	Is ebony like her? O word divine! A wife of such wood were felicity. O, who can give an oath? Where is a book, That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack If that she learn not of her eye to look? No face is fair that is not full so black.
KING	O paradox ! Black is the badge of hell, The hue of dungeons and the style of night, And beauty’s crest becomes the heavens well.
BIRON	Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light. O, if in black my lady’s brows be decked, It mourns that painting and usurping hair Should ravish doters with a false aspect, And therefore is she born to make black fair. Her favour turns the fashion of the days, For native blood is counted painting now, And therefore red that would avoid dispraise Paints itself black to imitate her brow.
DUMAINE	To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.
LONGUEVILLE	And since her time are colliers counted bright.
KING	And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack.
DUMAINE	Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.
BIRON	Your mistresses dare never come in rain, For fear their colours should be washed away.
KING	‘Twere good yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain, I’ll find a fairer face not washed today.
BIRON	I’ll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.
KING	No devil will fright thee then so much as she.
DUMAINE	I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear.
LONGUEVILLE	(showing his foot) Look, here’s thy love—my foot and her face see.
BIRON	O, if the streets were paved with thine eyes Her feet were much too dainty for such tread.
DUMAINE	O vile! Then as she goes, what upward lies The street should see as she walked overhead.
KING	But what of this? Are we not all in love?
BIRON	Nothing so sure, and thereby all forsworn.
KING	Then leave this chat and, good Biron, now prove Our loving lawful and our faith not torn.
DUMAINE	Ay, marry there, some flattery for this evil.
LONGUEVILLE	O, some authority how to proceed, Some tricks, some quillets how to cheat the devil.
DUMAINE	Some salve for perjury.
BIRON	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. 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 enriched 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 stopped. 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 tempered 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!
BIRON	Advance your standards, and upon them, lords. Pell-mell, down with them; but be first advised In conflict that you get the sun of them.
LONGUEVILLE	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.
BIRON	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, masques, and merry hours Forerun fair love, strewing her way with flowers.
KING	Away, away, no time shall be omitted That will be time, and may by us be fitted.
BIRON	Allons, allons! Sowed cockle reaped 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

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter Holofernes the pedant, Nathaniel the curate, and Anthony Dull
HOLOFERNES	Satis quid sufficit.
NATHANIEL	I praise Good for you, sir. Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious, pleasant without scurrility, witty without affections, 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 hominum 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. He 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 phantasims, such insociable and point-device companions, such rackers of orthography as to speak ‘dout’, sine ‘b’, when he should say ‘doubt’; ‘det’ when he should pronounce ‘debt’—‘d, e, b, t’, not ‘d, e, t’. He clepeth a calf ‘caul’, half ‘haul’, neighbour vocatur ‘nebour’—‘neigh’ abbreviated ‘ne’. This is abhominaMe—which he would call ‘abominable’. It insinuateth me of insanire—ne intelligis, domine?—to make frantic, lunatic.
NATHANIEL	Laus deo, bone intelligo.
HOLOFERNES	Bone? Bon, fort bon—Priscian a little scratched-‘twill serve.
(didascalia)	Enter Armado the braggart, Mote his boy, and Costard the clown
NATHANIEL	Videsne quis venit? xoLOFeRrrss Video, et gaudio.
ARMADO	(to Mote) Chirrah. xoLOVExNES (to Nathaniel) Quare ‘chirrah’, not ‘sirrah’?
ARMADO	Men of peace, well encountered.
HOLOFERNES	Most military sir, salutation!
MOTE	(aside to Costard) They have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps.
COSTARD	(aside to Mote) O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus. Thou art easier swallowed than a flapdragon.
MOTE	(aside to Costard) Peace, the peal begins.
ARMADO	(to Holofernes) Monsieur, are you not lettered?
MOTE	Yes, yes, he teaches boys the horn-book. What is ‘a, b’ spelled backward, with the horn on his head?
HOLOFERNES	Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.
MOTE	Ba, most silly sheep, with a horn! You hear his learning.
HOLOFERNES	Quis, quis, thou consonant?
MOTE	The last of the five vowels if you repeat them, or the fifth if I.
HOLOFERNES	I will repeat them: a, e, i—
MOTE	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.
MOTE	Offered by a child to an old man, which is ‘wit-old’.
HOLOFERNES	What is the figure? What is the figure?
MOTE	Horns.
HOLOFERNES	Thou disputes like an infant. Go whip thy gig.
MOTE	Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy circum circa—a gig of a cuckold’s horn.
CUSTARD	An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread. (Giving money) Hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discretion. O, an the heavens were so pleased that thou wert but my bastard, what a joyful father wouldst thou make me! Go to, thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers’ ends, as they say.
HOLOFERNES	O, I smell false Latin—‘dunghill’ for unguem.
ARMADO	Arts-man, preambulate. We will be singled from the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the top of the mountain?
HOLOFERNES	Or mons, the hill.
ARMADO	At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.
HOLOFERNES	I do, sans question.
ARMADO	Sir, it is the King’s most sweet pleasure and affection to congratulate the Princess at her pavilion in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.
HOLOFERNES	The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable, congruent, and measurable for the afternoon. The word is well culled, choice, sweet, and apt, I do assure you, sir, I do assure.
ARMADO	Sir, the King is a noble gentleman, and my familiar, I do assure ye, very good friend. For what is inward between us, let it pass. I do beseech thee, remember thy courtesy. I beseech thee, apparel thy head. And, among other important and most serious designs, and of great import indeed, too—but let that pass, for I must tell thee it will please his grace, by the world, sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder and with his royal finger thus dally with my excrement, with my mustachio. But, sweetheart, let that pass. By the world, I recount no fable. Some certain special honours it pleaseth his greatness to impart to Armado, a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world. But let that pass. The very all of all is—but, sweetheart, I do implore secrecy—that the King would have me present the Princess-sweet chuck-with some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antic, or firework. Now, understanding that the curate and your sweet self are good at such eruptions and sudden breaking-out of mirth, as it were, I have acquainted you withal to the end to crave your assistance.
HOLOFERNES	Sir, you shall present before her the Nine Worthies. Sir Nathaniel, as concerning some entertainment of time, some show in the posterior of this day to be rendered by our assistance, the King’s command, and this most gallant, illustrate, and learned gentleman before the Princess, I say none so fit as to present the Nine Worthies.
NATHANIEL	Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?
HOLOFERNES	Joshua, yourself; myself, Judas Maccabeus; and this gallant gentleman, Hector. This swain, because of his great limb or joint, shall pass Pompey the Great; the page, Hercules.
ARMADO	Pardon, sir, error! He is not quantity enough for that Worthy’s thumb. He is not so big as the end of his club.
HOLOFERNES	Shall I have audience? He shall present Hercules in minority. His enter and exit shall be strangling a snake, and I will have an apology for that purpose.
MOTE	An excellent device! So, if any of the audience hiss, you may cry ‘Well done, Hercules, now thou crushest the snake!’—that is the way to make an offence gracious, though few have the grace to do it.
ARMADO	For the rest of the Worthies?
HOLOFERNES	I will play three myself.
MOTE	Thrice-worthy gentleman!
ARMADO	Shall I tell you a thing?
HOLOFERNES	We attend.
ARMADO	We will have, if this fadge not, an antic. I beseech you, follow.
HOLOFERNES	Via, goodman Dull! Thou hast spoken no word all this while.
DULL	Nor understood none neither, sir.
HOLOFERNES	Allons! We will employ thee.
DULL	I’ll make one in a dance or so, or I will play on the tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay.
HOLOPERNES	Most dull, honest Dull! To our sport, away.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Speaker	Line
(didascalia)	Enter the Princess and her ladies: Rosaline, Maria, and Catherine
PRINCESS	Sweethearts, we shall be rich ere we depart, If fairings come thus plentifully in. A lady walled about with diamonds— Look you what I have from the loving King.
ROSALINE	Madam, came nothing else along with that?
PRINCESS	Nothing but this?—yes, as much love in rhyme As would be crammed up in a sheet of paper Writ o’ both sides the leaf, margin and all, That he was fain to seal on Cupid’s name.
ROSALINE	That was the way to make his godhead wax, For he hath been five thousand year a boy.
CATHERINE	Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows, too.
ROSALINE	You’ll ne’er be friends with him, a killed your sister.
CATHERINE	He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy, And so she died. Had she been light like you, Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit, She might ha’ been a grandam ere she died; And so may you, for a light heart lives long.
ROSALINE	What’s your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?
CATHERINE	A light condition in a beauty dark.
ROSALINE	We need more light to find your meaning out.
CATHERINE	You’ll mar the light by taking it in snuff, Therefore I’ll darkly end the argument.
ROSALINE	Look what you do, you do it still i’th’ dark.
CATHERINE	So do not you, for you are a light wench.
ROSALINE	Indeed I weigh not you, and therefore light.
CATHERINE	You weigh me not? O, that’s you care not for me.
ROSALINE	Great reason, for past care is still past cure.
PRINCESS	Well bandied, both; a set of wit well played. But Rosaline, you have a favour, too. Who sent it? And what is it?
ROSALINE	I would you knew. An if my face were but as fair as yours My favour were as great, be witness this. Nay, I have verses, too, I thank Biron, The numbers true, and were the numb’ring, too, I were the fairest goddess on the ground. I am compared to twenty thousand fairs. O, he hath drawn my picture in his letter.
PRINCESS	Anything like?
ROSALINE	Much in the letters, nothing in the praise.
PRINCESS	Beauteous as ink—a good conclusion.
CATHERINE	Fair as a text B in a copy-book.
ROSALINE	Ware pencils, ho! Let me not die your debtor, My red dominical, my golden letter. O, that your face were not so full of O’s !
PRINCESS	A pox of that jest; I beshrew all shrews. But Catherine, what was sent to you from fair Dumaine ?
CATHERINE	Madam, this glove.
PRINCESS	Did he not send you twain ?
CATHERINE	Yes, madam; and moreover, Some thousand verses of a faithful lover. A huge translation of hypocrisy Vilely compiled, profound simplicity.
MARIA	This and these pearls to me sent Longueville. The letter is too long by half a mile.
PRINCESS	I think no less. Dost thou not wish in heart The chain were longer and the letter short?
MARIA	Ay, or I would these hands might never part.
PRINCESS	We are wise girls to mock our lovers so.
ROSALINE	They are worse fools to purchase mocking so. That same Biron I’ll torture ere I go. O that I knew he were but in by th’ week!— How I would make him fawn, and beg, and seek, And wait the season, and observe the times, And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes, And shape his service wholly to my hests, And make him proud to make me proud that jests! So pursuivant-like would I o’ersway his state That he should be my fool, and I his fate.
PRINCESS	None are so surely caught when they are catched As wit turned fool. Folly in wisdom hatched Hath wisdom’s warrant, and the help of school, And wit’s own grace, to grace a learned fool.
ROSALINE	The blood of youth burns not with such excess As gravity’s revolt to wantonness.
MARIA	Folly in fools bears not so strong a note As fool’ry in the wise when wit doth dote, Since all the power thereof it doth apply To prove, by wit, worth in simplicity.
(didascalia)	Enter Boyet
PRINCESS	Here comes Boyet, and mirth is in his face.
BOYET	O, I am stabbed with laughter! Where’s her grace?
PRINCESS	Thy news, Boyet?
BOYET	Prepare, madam, prepare. Arm, wenches, arm. Encounters mounted are Against your peace. Love doth approach disguised, Armed in arguments. You’ll be surprised. Muster your wits, stand in your own defence, Or hide your heads like cowards and fly hence.
PRINCESS	Saint Denis to Saint Cupid! What are they That charge their breath against us? Say, scout, say.
BOYET	Under the cool shade of a sycamore I thought to close mine eyes some half an hour When lo, to interrupt my purposed rest Toward that shade I might behold addressed The King and his companions. Warily I stole into a neighbour thicket by And overheard what you shall overhear: That by and by disguised they will be here. Their herald is a pretty knavish page That well by heart hath conned his embassage. Action and accent did they teach him there. ‘Thus must thou speak’, and ‘thus thy body bear’. And ever and anon they made a doubt Presence majestical would put him out, ‘For’, quoth the King, ‘an angel shalt thou see, Yet fear not thou, but speak audaciously.’ The boy replied, ‘An angel is not evil. I should have feared her had she been a devil.’ With that all laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, Making the bold wag by their praises bolder. One rubbed his elbow thus, and fleered, and swore A better speech was never spoke before. Another with his finger and his thumb Cried ‘Via, we will do’t, come what will come!’ The third he capered and cried ‘All goes welll’ The fourth turned on the toe and down he fell. With that they all did tumble on the ground With such a zealous laughter, so profound, That in this spleen ridiculous appears, To check their folly, passion’s solemn tears.
PRINCESS	But what, but what—come they to visit us?
BOYET	They do, they do, and are apparelled thus
(didascalia)
BOYET	Like Muscovites or Russians, as I guess. Their purpose is to parley, to court and dance, And every one his love-suit will advance Unto his several mistress, which they’ll know By favours several which they did bestow.
PRINCESS	And will they so ? The gallants shall be tasked, For, ladies, we will every one be masked, And not a man of them shall have the grace, Despite of suit, to see a lady’s face. (To Rosaline) Hold, take thou this, my sweet, and give me thine. So shall Biron take me for Rosaline. She changes favours with Rosaline (To Catherine and Maria) And change you favours, too. So shall your loves Woo contrary, deceived by these removes. Catherine and Maria change favours
ROSALINE	Come on, then, wear the favours most in sight.
CATHERINE	But in this changing what is your intent?
PRINCESS	The effect of my intent is to cross theirs. They do it but in mockery-merriment, And mock for mock is only my intent. Their several counsels they unbosom shall To loves mistook, and so be mocked withal Upon the next occasion that we meet With visages displayed to talk and greet.
ROSALINE	But shall we dance if they desire us to’t?
PRINCESS	No, to the death we will not move a foot, Nor to their penned speech render we no grace, But while ’tis spoke each turn away her face.
BOYET	Why, that contempt will kill the speaker’s heart, And quite divorce his memory from his part.
PRINCESS	Therefore I do it; and I make no doubt The rest will ne‘er come in if he be out. There’s no such sport as sport by sport o’erthrown, To make theirs ours, and ours none but our own. So shall we stay, mocking intended game, And they well mocked depart away with shame. A trumpet sounds
BOYET	The trumpet sounds, be masked, the masquers come. The ladies mask.
(didascalia)	Enter blackamoors with music; the boy Mote with
BOYET	a speech ; the King and his lords, disguised as Russians
MOTE	All hail, the richest beauties on the earth!
BIRON	(aside) Beauties no richer than rich taffeta.
MOTE	A holy parcel of the fairest dames— The ladies turn their backs to him That ever turned their—backs to mortal views.
BIRON	‘Their eyes’, villain, ‘their eyes’!
MOTE	That ever turned their eyes to mortal views. Out …
BOYET	True, out indeed!
MOTE	Out of your favours, heavenly spirits, vouchsafe Not to behold—
BIRON	‘Once to behold’, rogue!
MOTE	Once to behold with your sun-beamèd eyes— With your sun-beamèd eyes—
BOYET	They will not answer to that epithet. You were best call it ‘daughter-beamèd’ eyes.
MOTE	They do not mark me, and that brings me out.
BIRON	Is this your perfectness? Be gone, you rogue!
(didascalia)	Exit Mote
ROSALINE	(as the Princess) What would these strangers ? Know their minds, Boyet. If they do speak our language, ‘tis our will That some plain man recount their purposes. Know what they would.
BOYET	What would you with the Princess?
BIRON	Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.
ROSALINE	What would they, say they?
BOYET	Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.
ROSALINE	Why, that they have, and bid them so be gone.
BOYET	She says you have it, and you may be gone.
KING	Say to her we have measured many miles To tread a measure with her on this grass.
BOYET	They say that they have measured many a mile To tread a measure with you on this grass.
ROSALINE	It is not so. Ask them how many inches Is in one mile. If they have measured many, The measure then of one is easily told.
BOYET	If to come hither you have measured miles, And many miles, the Princess bids you tell How many inches doth fill up one mile.
BIRON	Tell her we measure them by weary steps.
BOYET	She hears herself.
ROSALINE	How many weary steps Of many weary miles you have o’ergone Are numbered in the travel of one mile?
BIRON	We number nothing that we spend for you. Our duty is so rich, so infinite, That we may do it still without account. Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face That we, like savages, may worship it.
ROSALINE	My face is but a moon, and clouded, too.
KING	Blessed are clouds to do as such clouds do. Vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine, Those clouds removed, upon our watery eyne.
ROSALINE	O vain petitioner, beg a greater matter. Thou now requests but moonshine in the water.
KING	Then in our measure do but vouchsafe one change. Thou bid’st me beg; this begging is not strange.
ROSALINE	Play, music, then.
(didascalia)	Music plays
ROSALINE	Nay, you must do it soon. Not yet?—no dance! Thus change I like the moon.
KING	Will you not dance? How come you thus estranged?
ROSALINE	You took the moon at full, but now she’s changed.
KING	Yet still she is the moon, and I the man.
(didascalia)	215
KING	The music plays, vouchsafe some motion to it.
ROSALINE	Our ears vouchsafe it.
KING	But your legs should do it.
ROSALINE	Since you are strangers and come here by chance We’ll not be nice. Take hands. We will not dance.
KING	Why take we hands, then?
ROSALINE	Only to part friends. Curtsy, sweethearts, and so the measure ends.
KING	More measure of this measure, be not nice.
ROSALINE	We can afford no more at such a price.
KING	Price you yourselves. What buys your company?
ROSALINE	Your absence only.
KING	That can never be.
ROSALINE	Then cannot we be bought, and so adieu— Twice to your visor, and half once to you.
KING	If you deny to dance, let’s hold more chat.
ROSALINE	In private, then.
KING	I am best pleased with that. The King and Rosaline talk apart
BIRON	(to the Princess, taking her for Rosaline) White-handed mistress, one sweet word with thee.
PRINCESS	Honey and milk and sugar—there is three.
BIRON	Nay then, two treys, an if you grow so nice— Metheglin, wort, and malmsey—well run, dice! There’s half-a-dozen sweets.
PRINCESS	Seventh sweet, adieu. Since you can cog, I’ll play no more with you.
BIRON	One word in secret.
PRINCESS	Let it not be sweet.
BIRON	Thou griev’st my gall.
PRINCESS	Gall—bitter!
BIRON	Therefore meet. Biron and the Princess talk apart
DUMAINE	(to Maria, taking her for Catherine) Will you vouchsafe with me to change a word?
MARIA	Name it.
DUMAINE	Fair lady—
MARIA	Say you so? Fair lord- Take that for your ‘fair lady’.
DUMAINE	Please it you, As much in private, and I’ll bid adieu. Dumaine and Maria talk apart
CATHERINE	What, was your visor made without a tongue?
LONGUEVILLE	(taking Catherine for Maria) I know the reason, lady, why you ask.
CATHERINE	O, for your reason ! Quickly, sir, I long.
LONGUEVILLE	You have a double tongue within your mask, And would afford my speechless visor half.
CATHERINE	‘Veal’, quoth the Dutchman. Is not veal a calf?
LONGUEVILLE	A calf, fair lady?
CATHERINE	No, a fair lord calf.
LONGUEVILLE	Let’s part the word.
CATHERINE	No, I’ll not be your half. Take all and wean it, it may prove an ox.
LONGUEVILLE	Look how you butt yourself in these sharp mocks ! Will you give horns, chaste lady? Do not so.
CATHERINE	Then die a calf before your horns do grow.
LONGUEVILLE	One word in private with you ere I die.
CATHERINE	Bleat softly, then. The butcher hears you cry. Longueville and Catherine talk apart
BOYET	The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen As is the razor’s edge invisible, Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen, Above the sense of sense; so sensible Seemeth their conference. Their conceits have wings Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things.
ROSALINE	Not one word more, my maids. Break off, break off.
BIRON	By heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff!
KING	Farewell, mad wenches, you have simple wits.
(didascalia)	Exeunt the King, lords, and blackamoors
(didascalia)	The ladies unmask
PRINCESS	Twenty adieus, my frozen Muscovites. Are these the breed of wits so wondered at?
BOYET	Tapers they are, with your sweet breaths puffed out.
ROSALINE	Well-liking wits they have; gross, gross; fat, fat.
PRINCESS	O poverty in wit, kingly-poor flout ! Will they not, think you, hang themselves tonight, Or ever but in visors show their faces? This pert Biron was out of count’nance quite.
ROSALINE	Ah, they were all in lamentable cases. The King was weeping-ripe for a good word.
PRINCESS	Biron did swear himself out of all suit.
MARIA	Dumaine was at my service, and his sword. ‘Non point,’ quoth I. My servant straight was mute.
CATHERINE	Lord Longueville said I came o’er his heart, And trow you what he called me?
PRINCESS	‘Qualm’, perhaps.
CATHERINE	Yes, in good faith.
PRINCESS	Go, sickness as thou art.
ROSALINE	Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps. But will you hear? The King is my love sworn.
PRINCESS	And quick Biron hath plighted faith to me.
CATHERINE	And Longueville was for my service born.
MARIA	Dumaine is mine, as sure as bark on tree.
BOYET	Madam, and pretty mistresses, give ear. Immediately they will again be here In their own shapes, for it can never be They will digest this harsh indignity.
PRINCESS	Will they return?
BOYET	They will, they will, God knows, And leap for joy, though they are lame with blows. Therefore change favours, and when they repair, Blow like sweet roses in this summer air.
PRINCESS	How ‘blow’ ? How ‘blow’ ? Speak to be understood.
BOYET	Fair ladies masked are roses in their bud; Dismasked, their damask sweet commixture shown, Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown.
PRINCESS	Avaunt, perplexity! What shall we do If they return in their own shapes to woo?
ROSALINE	Good madam, if by me you’ll be advised, Let’s mock them still, as well known as disguised. Let us complain to them what fools were here, Disguised like Muscovites in shapeless gear, And wonder what they were, and to what end Their shallow shows, and prologue vilely penned, And their rough carriage so ridiculous, Should be presented at our tent to us.
BOYET	Ladies, withdraw. The gallants are at hand.
PRINCESS	Whip, to our tents, as roes run over land!
(didascalia)	Exeunt the ladies
(didascalia)	Enter the King, Biron, Dumaine, and Longueville, as themselves
KING	Fair sir, God save you. Where’s the Princess?
BOYET	Gone to her tent. Please it your majesty Command me any service to her thither?
KING	That she vouchsafe me audience for one word.
BOYET	I will, and so will she, I know, my lord. Exit
BIRON	This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons peas, And utters it again when God doth please. He is wit’s pedlar, and retails his wares At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs. And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know, Have not the grace to grace it with such show. This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve. Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve. A can carve too, and lisp, why, this is he That kissed his hand away in courtesy. This is the ape of form, Monsieur the Nice, That when he plays at tables chides the dice In honourable terms. Nay, he can sing A mean most meanly, and in ushering Mend him who can. The ladies call him sweet. The stairs as he treads on them kiss his feet. This is the flower that smiles on everyone To show his teeth as white as whales bone, And consciences that will not die in debt Pay him the due of ‘honey-tongued’ Boyet.
KING	A blister on his sweet tongue with my heart, That put Armado’s page out of his part!
(didascalia)	Enter the ladies and Boyet
BIRON	See where it comes. Behaviour, what wert thou Till this madman showed thee, and what art thou now ?
KING	All hail, sweet madam, and fair time of day!
PRINCESS	‘Fair’ in ‘all hail’ is foul, as I conceive.
KING	Construe my speeches better, if you may.
PRINCESS	Then wish me better. I will give you leave.
KING	We came to visit you, and purpose now To lead you to our court. Vouchsafe it, then.
PRINCESS	This field shall hold me, and so hold your vow. Nor God nor I delights in perjured men.
KING	Rebuke me not for that which you provoke. The virtue of your eye must break my oath.
PRINCESS	You nickname virtue. ‘Vice’ you should have spoke, For virtue’s office never breaks men’s troth. Now by my maiden honour, yet as pure As the unsullied lily, I protest, A world of torments though I should endure, I would not yield to be your house’s guest, So much I hate a breaking cause to be Of heavenly oaths, vowed with integrity.
KING	O, you have lived in desolation here, Unseen, unvisited, much to our shame.
PRINCESS	Not so, my lord. It is not so, I swear. We have had pastimes here, and pleasant game. A mess of Russians left us but of late.
KING	How, madam? Russians?
PRINCESS	Ay, in truth, my lord. Trim gallants, full of courtship and of state.
ROSALINE	Madam, speak true.—It is not so, my lord. My lady, to the manner of the days, In courtesy gives undeserving praise. We four indeed confronted were with four In Russian habit. Here they stayed an hour, And talked apace, and in that hour, my lord, They did not bless us with one happy word. I dare not call them fools, but this I think: When they are thirsty, fools would fain have drink.
BIRON	This jest is dry to me. Gentle sweet, Your wits makes wise things foolish. When we greet, With eyes’ best seeing, heaven’s fiery eye, By light we lose light. Your capacity Is of that nature that to your huge store Wise things seem foolish, and rich things but poor.
ROSALINE	This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye—
BIRON	I am a fool, and full of poverty.
ROSALINE	But that you take what doth to you belong It were a fault to snatch words from my tongue.
BIRON	O, I am yours, and all that I possess.
ROSALINE	All the fool mine!
BIRON	I cannot give you less.
ROSALINE	Which of the visors was it that you wore?
BIRON	Where? When? What visor? Why demand you this?
ROSALINE	There, then, that visor, that superfluous case, That hid the worse and showed the better face.
KING	(aside to the lords) We were descried. They’ll mock us now, downright.
DUMAINE	(aside to the King) Let us confess, and turn it to a jest.
PRINCESS	Amazed, my lord? Why looks your highness sad?
ROSALINE	Help, hold his brows, he’ll swoon. Why look you pale? Seasick, I think, coming from Muscovy.
BIRON	Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury. Can any face of brass hold longer out? Here stand I, lady. Dart thy skill at me— Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout, Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance, Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit, And I will wish thee nevermore to dance, Nor nevermore in Russian habit wait. O, never will I trust to speeches penned, Nor to the motion of a schoolboy’s tongue, Nor never come in visor to my friend, Nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper’s song. Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, Figures pedantical-these summer flies Have blown me full of maggot ostentation. I do forswear them, and I here protest, By this white glove—how white the hand, God knows!— Henceforth my wooing mind shall be expressed In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes. And to begin, wench, so God help me, law! My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.
ROSALINE	Sans ‘sans’, I pray you.
BIRON	Yet I have a trick Of the old rage. Bear with me, I am sick. I’ll leave it by degrees. Soft, let us see. Write ‘Lord have mercy on us’ on those three. They are infected, in their hearts it lies. They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes. These lords are visited, you are not free; For the Lord’s tokens on you do I see.
PRINCESS	No, they are free that gave these tokens to us.
BIRON	Our states are forfeit. Seek not to undo us.
ROSALINE	It is not so, for how can this be true, That you stand forfeit, being those that sue?
BIRON	Peace, for I will not have to do with you.
ROSALINE	Nor shall not, if I do as I intend.
BIRON	(to the lords) Speak for yourselves. My wit is at an end.
KING	Teach us, sweet madam, for our rude transgression Some fair excuse.
PRINCESS	The fairest is confession. Were not you here but even now disguised?
KING	Madam, I was.
PRINCESS	And were you well advised?
KING	I was, fair madam.
PRINCESS	When you then were here, What did you whisper in your lady’s ear?
KING	That more than all the world I did respect her.
PRINCESS	When she shall challenge this, you will reject her.
KING	Upon mine honour, no.
PRINCESS	Peace, peace,forbear. Your oath once broke, you force not to forswear.
KING	Despise me when I break this oath of mine.
PRINCESS	I will, and therefore keep it. Rosaline, What did the Russian whisper in your ear?
ROSALINE	Madam, he swore that he did hold me dear As precious eyesight, and did value me Above this world, adding thereto moreover That he would wed me, or else die my lover.
PRINCESS	God give thee joy of him! The noble lord Most honourably doth uphold his word.
KING	What mean you, madam? By my life, my troth, I never swore this lady such an oath.
ROSALINE	By heaven, you did, and to confirm it plain, You gave me this. But take it, sir, again.
KING	My faith and this the Princess I did give. I knew her by this jewel on her sleeve.
PRINCESS	Pardon me, sir, this jewel did she wear, And Lord Biron, I thank him, is my dear. (To Biron) What, will you have me, or your pearl again?
BIRON	Neither of either. I remit both twain. I see the trick on’t. Here was a consent, Knowing aforehand of our merriment, To dash it like a Christmas comedy. Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany, Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick That smiles his cheek in years, and knows the trick To make my lady laugh when she’s disposed, Told our intents before, which once disclosed, The ladies did change favours, and then we, Following the signs, wooed but the sign of she. Now, to our perjury to add more terror, We are again forsworn, in will and error. Much upon this ’tis, (to Boyet) and might not you Forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue? Do not you know my lady’s foot by th’ square, And laugh upon the apple of her eye, And stand between her back, sir, and the fire, Holding a trencher, jesting merrily? You put our page out. Go, you are allowed. Die when you will, a smock shall be your shroud. You leer upon me, do you? There’s an eye Wounds like a leaden sword.
BOYET	Full merrily Hath this brave manège, this career been run.
BIRON	Lo, he is tilting straight. Peace, I have done.
(didascalia)	Enter Costard the clown
BIRON	Welcome, pure wit. Thou partest a fair fray.
COSTARD	O Lord, sir, they would know 485 Whether the three Worthies shall come in or no.
BIRON	What, are there but three?
COSTARD	No, sir, but it is vara fine, For everyone pursents three.
BIRON	And three times thrice is nine.
COSTARD	Not so, sir, under correction, sir, I hope it is not so. You cannot beg us, sir. I can assure you, sir, we know what we know. I hope, sir, three times thrice, sir—
BIRON	Is not nine?
COSTARD	Under correction, sir, we know whereuntil it doth amount.
BIRON	By Jove, I always took three threes for nine.
COSTARD	O Lord, sir, it were pity you should get your living by reck’ning, sir. BIRON How much is it?
COSTARD	O Lord, sir, the parties themselves, the actors, sir, will show whereuntil it doth amount. For mine own part, I am, as they say, but to parfect one man in one poor man, Pompion the Great, sir.
BIRON	Art thou one of the Worthies?
COSTARD	It pleased them to think me worthy of Pompey the Great. For mine own part, I know not the degree of the Worthy, but I am to stand for him.
BIRON	Go, bid them prepare.
COSTARD	We will turn it finely off, sir. We will take some care.
(didascalia)	Exit
KING	Biron, they will shame us. Let them not approach.
BIRON	We are shame-proof, my lord, and ‘tis some policy To have one show worse than the King’s and his company.
KING	I say they shall not come.
PRINCESS	Nay, my good lord, let me o’errule you now. That sport best pleases that doth least know how. Where zeal strives to content, and the contents
(didascalia)	Dies in the zeal of that which it presents,
PRINCESS	There form confounded makes most form in mirth, When great things labouring perish in their birth.
BIRON	A right description of our sport, my lord.
(didascalia)	Enter Armado the braggart
ARMADO	(to the King) Anointed, I implore so much expense of thy royal sweet breath as will utter a brace of words.
(didascalia)	Armado and the King speak apart
PRINCESS	Doth this man serve God?
BIRON	Why ask you?
PRINCESS	A speaks not like a man of God his making.
ARMADO	That is all one, my fair sweet honey monarch, for, I protest, the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical, too-too vain, too-too vain. But we will put it, as they say, to fortuna de la guerra. I wish you the peace of mind, most royal couplement.
(didascalia)	Exit
KING	Here is like to be a good presence of Worthies. He presents Hector of Troy, the swain Pompey the Great, the parish curate Alexander, Armado’s page Hercules, the pedant Judas Maccabeus, And if these four Worthies in their first show thrive, These four will change habits and present the other five.
BIRON	There is five in the first show.
KING	You are deceived, ’tis not so.
BIRON	The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool, and the boy, Abate throw at novum and the whole world again Cannot pick out five such, take each one in his vein.
KING	The ship is under sail, and here she comes amain.
(didascalia)	Enter Costard the clown as Pompey
COSTARD	(as Pompey) I Pompey am—
BIRON	You lie, you are not he.
COSTARD	(as Pompey) I Pompey am—
BOYET	With leopard’s head on knee.
BIRON	Well said, old mocker. I must needs be friends with thee.
COSTARD	(as Pompey) I Pompey am, Pompey surnamed the Big.
DUMAINE	‘The Great’.
COSTARD	It is ‘Great’, sir— (As Pompey) Pompey surnamed the Great, That oft in field with targe and shield did make my foe to sweat, And travelling along this coast I here am come by chance, And lay my arms before the legs of this sweet lass of France.— If your ladyship would say ‘Thanks, Pompey’, I had done.
(didascalia)	PRTNCESS Great thanks, great Pompey.
COSTARD	‘Tis not so much worth, but I hope I was perfect. I made a little fault in ‘great’.
BIRON	My hat to a halfpenny Pompey proves the best Worthy. Costard stands aside.
(didascalia)	Enter Nathaniel the curate as Alexander
NATHANIEL	(as Alexander) When in the world I lived I was the world’s commander. By east, west, north, and south, I spread my conquering might. My scutcheon plain declares that I am Alisander.
BOYET	Your nose says no, you are not, for it stands too right.
BIRON	(to Boyet) Your nose smells ‘no’ in this, most tender-smelling knight.
PRINCESS	The conqueror is dismayed. Proceed, good Alexander.
NATHANIEL	(as Alexander) When in the world I lived I was the world’s commander.
BOYET	Most true, ’tis right, you were so, Alisander.
BIRON	(to Costard) Pompey the Great.
COSTARD	Your servant, and Costard.
BIRON	Take away the conqueror, take away Alisander.
COSTARD	(to Nathaniel) O, sir, you have overthrown Alisander the Conqueror. You will be scraped out of the painted cloth for this. Your lion that holds his poleaxe sitting on a close-stool will be given to Ajax. He will be the ninth Worthy. A conqueror and afeard to speak? Run away for shame, Alisander.
(didascalia)	Exit Nathaniel the curate
COSTARD	There, an’t shall please you, a foolish mild man, an honest man, look you, and soon dashed. He is a marvellous good neighbour, faith, and a very good bowler, but for Alisander—alas, you see how ‘tis—a little o’erparted. But there are Worthies a-coming will speak their mind in some other sort.
PRINCESS	Stand aside, good Pompey.
(didascalia)	Enter Holofernes the pedant as Judas, and the boy Mote as Hercules
HOLOFERNES	Great Hercules is presented by this imp, Whose club killed Cerberus, that three-headed canus, And when he was a babe, a child, a shrimp, Thus did he strangle serpents in his manus. Quoniam he seemeth in minority, Ergo I come with this apology. (To Mote) Keep some state in thy exit, and vanish.
(didascalia)	Exit Mote
HOLOFERNES	(as Judas) Judas I am—
DUMAINE	A Judas?
HOLOFERNES	Not Iscariot, sir. (As Judas) Judas I am, yclept Maccabeus.
DUMAINE	Judas Maccabeus clipped is plain Judas.
BIRON	A kissing traitor. How art thou proved Judas ?
HOLOFERNES	(as Judas) Judas I am—
DUMAINE	The more shame for you, Judas.
HOLOFERNES	What mean you, sir?
BOYET	To make Judas hang himself.
HOLOFERNES	Begin, sir. You are my elder.
BIRON	Well followed—Judas was hanged on an elder.
HOLOFERNES	I will not be put out of countenance. 601
BIRON	Because thou hast no face.
HOLOFERNES	What is this?
BOYET	A cittern-head.
DUMAINE	The head of a bodkin.
BIRON	A death’s face in a ring.
LONGUEVILLE	The face of an old Roman coin, scarce seen.
BOYET	The pommel of Caesar’s falchion.
DUMAINE	The carved-bone face on a flask.
BIRON	Saint George’s half-cheek in a brooch.
DUMAINE	Ay, and in a brooch of lead.
BIRON	Ay, and worn in the cap of a tooth-drawer. And now forward, for we have put thee in countenance.
HOLOFERNES	You have put me out of countenance.
BIRON	False, we have given thee faces.
HOLOFERNES	But you have outfaced them all.
BIRON	An thou wert a lion, we would do so.
BOYET	Therefore, as he is an ass, let him go. And so adieu, sweet Jude. Nay, why dost thou stay?
DUMAINE	For the latter end of his name.
BIRON	For the ass to the Jude. Give it him. Jud-as, away.
HOLOFERNES	This is not generous, not gentle, not humble.
BOYET	A light for Monsieur Judas. It grows dark, he may stumble.
(didascalia)	Exit Holofernes
PRINCESS	Alas, poor Maccabeus, how hath he been baited !
(didascalia)	Enter Armado the braggart as Hector
BIRON	Hide thy head, Achilles, here comes Hector in arms.
DUMAINE	Though my mocks come home by me, I will now be merry.
KING	Hector was but a Trojan in respect of this.
BOYET	But is this Hector?
KING	I think Hector was not so clean-timbered.
LONGUEVILLE	His leg is too big for Hector’s.
DUMAINE	More calf, certain.
BOYET	No, he is best endowed in the small.
BIRON	This cannot be Hector.
DUMAINE	He’s a god, or a painter, for he makes faces.
ARMADO	(as Hector) The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, Gave Hector a gift—
DUMAINE	A gilt nutmeg.
BIRON	A lemon.
LONGUEVILLE	Stuck with cloves.
DUMAINE	NO, cloven.
ARMADO	Peace I (As Hector) The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, Gave Hector a gift, the heir of Ilion, A man so breathed that certain he would fight, yea, From morn till night, out of his pavilion. I am that flower—
DUMAINE	That mint.
LONGUEVILLE	That colombine.
ARMADO	Sweet Lord Longueville, rein thy tongue.
LONGUEVILLE	I must rather give it the rein, for it runs against Hector.
DUMAINE	Ay, and Hector’s a greyhound.
ARMADO	The sweet war-man is dead and rotten. Sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the buried. When he breathed he was a man. But I will forward with my device. (To the Princess) Sweet royalty, bestow on me the sense of hearing. Biron steps forth
PRINCESS	Speak, brave Hector, we are much delighted.
ARMADO	I do adore thy sweet grace’s slipper.
BOYET	Loves her by the foot.
DUMAINE	He may not by the yard.
ARMADO	(as Hector) This Hector far surmounted Hannibal.
(didascalia)
ARMADO	The party is gone.
COSTARD	Fellow Hector, she is gone, she is two months on her way.
ARMADO	What meanest thou?
COSTARD	Faith, unless you play the honest Trojan the poor wench is cast away. She’s quick. The child brags in her belly already. ’Tis yours.
ARMADO	Dost thou infamonize me among potentates? Thou shalt die.
COSTARD	Then shall Hector be whipped for Jaquenetta that is quick by him, and hanged for Pompey that is dead by him. 675
DUMAINE	Most rare Pompey!
BOYET	Renowned Pompey!
BIRON	Greater than great—great, great, great Pompey, Pompey the Huge.
DUMAINE	Hector trembles.
BIRON	Pompey is moved. More Ates, more Ates—stir them on, stir them on!
DUMAINE	Hector will challenge him.
BIRON	Ay, if a have no more man’s blood in his belly than will sup a flea.
ARMADO	By the North Pole, I do challenge thee.
COSTARD	I will not fight with a pole, like a northern man. I’ll slash, I’ll do it by the sword. I bepray you, let me borrow my arms again.
DUMAINE	Room for the incensed Worthies.
COSTARD	I’ll do it in my shirt.
DUMAINE	Most resolute Pompey.
MOTE	(aside to Armado) Master, let me take you a buttonhole lower. Do you not see Pompey is uncasing for the combat? What mean you? You will lose your reputation.
ARMADO	Gentlemen and soldiers, pardon me. I will not combat in my shirt.
DUMAINE	You may not deny it, Pompey hath made the challenge.
ARMADO	Sweet bloods, I both may and will.
BIRON	What reason have you for’t?
ARMADO	The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt. I go woolward for penance.
(didascalia)	MOTE True, and it was enjoined him in Rome for want of linen, since when I’ll be sworn he wore none but a dish-clout of Jaquenetta’s, and that a wears next his heart, for a favour.
(didascalia)	Enter a messenger, Monsieur Mercadé
ARMADO	MERCADÉ God save you, madam.
PRINCESS	Welcome, Mercadé, But that thou interrupt’st our merriment. MERCADÉ I am sorry, madam, for the news I bring Is heavy in my tongue. The King your father—
PRINCESS	Dead, for my life. MERCADÉ Even so. My tale is told.
BIRON	Worthies, away. The scene begins to cloud.
ARMADO	For mine own part, I breathe free breath. I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion, and I will right myself like a soldier.
(didascalia)	Exeunt the Worthies
KING	How fares your majesty ?
QUEEN	Boyet, prepare. I will away tonight.
KING	Madam, not so, I do beseech you stay.
QUEEN	Prepare, I say. I thank you, gracious lords, For all your fair endeavours, and entreat, Out of a new-sad soul, that you vouchsafe In your rich wisdom to excuse or hide The liberal opposition of our spirits. If overboldly we have borne ourselves In the converse of breath, your gentleness Was guilty of it. Farewell, worthy lord. A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue. Excuse me so coming too short of thanks, For my great suit so easily obtained.
KING	The extreme parts of time extremely forms All causes to the purpose of his speed, And often at his very loose decides That which long process could not arbitrate. And though the mourning brow of progeny Forbid the smiling courtesy of love The holy suit which fain it would convince, Yet since love’s argument was first on foot, Let not the cloud of sorrow jostle it From what it purposed, since to wail friends lost Is not by much so wholesome-profitable As to rejoice at friends but newly found.
QUEEN	I understand you not. My griefs are double.
BIRON	Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief, And by these badges understand the King. For your fair sakes have we neglected time, Played foul play with our oaths. Your beauty, ladies, Hath much deformed us, fashioning our humours Even to the opposed end of our intents, And what in us hath seemed ridiculous— As love is full of unbefitting strains, All wanton as a child, skipping and vain, Formed by the eye and therefore like the eye, Full of strange shapes, of habits and of forms, Varying in subjects as the eye doth roll To every varied object in his glance; Which parti-coated presence of loose love Put on by us, if in your heavenly eyes Have misbecomed our oaths and gravities, Those heavenly eyes that look into these faults Suggested us to make them. 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.
QUEEN	We have received 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, showed much more than jest.
LONGUEVILLE	So did our looks.
ROSALINE	We did not quote them so.
KING	Now, at the latest minute of the hour, Grant us your loves.
QUEEN	A time, methinks, too short To make a world-without-end bargain in. No, no, my lord, your grace is perjured 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 instance shut My woeful self up in a mourning house, Raining the tears of lamentation For the remembrance of my father’s death. If this thou do deny, let our hands part, Neither entitled 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, hermit, then. My heart is in thy breast. They talk apart
DUMAINE	(to Catherine) But what to me, my love? But what to me? A wife?
CATHERINE	A beard, fair health, and honesty. With three-fold love I wish you all these three.
DUMAINE	O, shall I say ‘I thank you, gentle wife’?
CATHERINE	Not so, my lord. A twelvemonth and a day I’ll mark no words that smooth-faced 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.
CATHERINE	Yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again. They talk apart
LONGUEVILLE	What says Maria?
MARIA	At the twelvemonth’s end I’ll change my black gown for a faithful friend.
LONGUEVILLE	I’ll stay with patience; but the time is long.
MARIA	The liker you—few taller are so young. They talk apart
BIRON	(to Rosaline) 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 Biron, 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.
BIRON	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, Deafed 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.
BIRON	A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall, I’ll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.
QUEEN	(to the King) Ay, sweet my lord, and so I take my leave.
KING	No, madam, we will bring you on your way.
BIRON	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 an’ a day, And then ’twill end.
BIRON	That’s too long for a play.
(didascalia)	Enter Armado the braggart
ARMADO	(to the King) Sweet majesty, vouchsafe me.
QUEEN	Was not that 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 year. 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!
(didascalia)	Enter Holofernes, Nathaniel, Costard, Mote, Dull, Jaquenetta, and others
ARMADO	This side is Hiems, winter, This Ver, the spring, the one maintained by the owl, The other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin.
SPRING	(sings) 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. 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	(sings) 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 nipped, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl: Tu-whit, tu-whoo!—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. 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, Then nightly sings the staring owl: Tu-whit, tu-whoo!—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
(didascalia)	ARMADO The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You that way, we this way. Exeunt, severally
ADDITIONAL PASSAGES	A. The following lines found after 4.3.293 in the First Quarto represent an unrevised version of parts of Biron’s long speech, 4.3.287-341. The first six lines form the basis of 4.3.294-9; the next three are revised at 4.3.326- 30; the next four at 4.3.300-2; the last nine are less directly related to the revised version. And where that you have vowed 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 any 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 With ourselves. Do we not likewise see our learning there? B. The following two lines, spoken by the Princess and found after 5.2.130 in the First Quarto, seem to represent a first draft of 5.2.131-2. Hold, Rosaline. This favour thou shalt wear, And then the King will court thee for his dear. C. The following lines found after 5.2.809 in the First Quarto represent a draft version of 5.2.824-41.
BIRON	And what to me, my love? And what to me?
ROSALINE	You must be purged, too. Your sins are rank. 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.
LOVE’S LABOUR’S WON	A BRIEF ACCOUNT
IN	1598, Francis Meres called as witnesses to Shakespeare’s excellence in comedy ‘his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labour’s Lost, his Love Labour’s Wone, his Midsummer’s Night Dream, and his Merchant of Venice’. This was the only evidence that Shakespeare wrote a play called Love’s Labour’s Won until the discovery in 1953 of a fragment of a bookseller’s list that had been used in the binding of a volume published in 1637/8. The fragment itself appears to record titles sold from 9 to 17 August 1603 by a book dealer in the south of England. Among items headed ‘[inte]rludes & tragedyes’ are marchant of vennis taming of a shrew knak to know a knave knak to know an honest man loves labor lost loves labor won No author is named for any of the items. All the plays named in the list except Love’s Labour’s Won are known to have been printed by 1600; all were written by 1596-7. Taken together, Meres’s reference in 1598 and the 1603 fragment appear to demonstrate that a play by Shakespeare called Love’s Labour’s Won had been performed by the time Meres wrote and was in print by August 1603. Conceivably the phrase served as an alternative title for one of Shakespeare’s other comedies, though the only one believed to have been written by 1598 but not listed by Meres is The Taming of the Shrew, which is named (as The Taming of A Shrew) in the bookseller’s fragment. Otherwise we must suppose that Love’s Labour’s Won is the title of a lost play by Shakespeare, that no copy of the edition mentioned in the bookseller’s list is extant, and that Heminges and Condell failed to include it in the 1623 Folio. None of these suppositions is implausible. We know of at least one other lost play attributed to Shakespeare (see Cardenio, below), and of many lost works by contemporary playwrights. No copy of the first edition of Titus Andronicus was known until 1904; for I Henry IV and The Passionate Pilgrim only a fragment of the first edition survives. And we now know that Troilus and Cressida was almost omitted from the 1623 Folio (probably for copyright reasons) despite its evident authenticity. It is also possible that, like most of the early editions of Shakespeare’s plays, the lost edition of Love’s Labour’s Won did not name him on the title-page, and this omission might go some way to explaining the failure of the edition to survive, or (if it does) to be noticed. Love’s Labour’s Won stands a much better chance of having survived, somewhere, than Cardenio: because it was printed, between 500 and 1,500 copies were once in circulation, whereas for Cardenio we know of only a single manuscript. The evidence for the existence of the lost play (unlike that for Cardenio) gives us little indication of its content. Meres explicitly states, and the title implies, that it was a comedy. Its titular pairing with Love’s Labour’s Lost suggests that they may have been written at about the same time. Both Meres and the bookseller’s catalogue place it after Love’s Labour’s Lost; although neither list is necessarily chronological, Meres’s does otherwise agree with our own view of the order of composition of Shakespeare’s comedies.