Long. Costard the swain, and he, shall be our sport; And, so to study, three years is but short.

Enter DULL, with a letter, and COSTARD.

Dull. Which is the Duke's own person?
Biron. This, fellow; What would'st?

Dull. I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his grace's tharborough: but I would see his own person in flesh and blood.

Biron. This is he.

Dull. Signior Arme-Arme-commends you. There's villany abroad; this letter will tell

you more. Cost. 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.

Long. A high hope for a low having: God grant us patience!

Biron. To hear? or forbear hearing?

Long. 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.

ta.

Cost. The matter is to me, sir, as concerning JaquenetThe manner of it is, I was taken with the manner." Biron. In what manner?

:

Cost. 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?

Cost. 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.

[4] i. e. Thirdborough, a peace officer, alike in authority with a headborough or a constable. SIR J. HAWKINS.

[5] i. e. in the fact. STEEVENS.

A forensic term. A thief is said to be taken with the manner, i. e. mainour or manour, (for so it is written in our old law books,) when he is apprehended with the thing stoler in his possession. The thing that he has taken was called mainour, from the Fr. manier, manu tractare. MALONE.

Cost. 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,

Cost. Not a word of Costard yet.

King. So it is,

Cost. It may be so: but if he say it is so, he is, in telling true, but so, so.

King Peace.

Cost.-be to me, and every man that dares not fight! King. No words.

Cost.-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 set 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 ycleped, 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. [Cost. Me.] that unletter'd small-knowing soul, [Cost. Me.] that shallow vassal, [Cost. Still me. which, as I remember, hight Costard, [Cost. O me !] sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established proclaimed edict and continent canon, with—with,-O with—but with this I passion to say wherewith,—

Cost. With a wench.

King. with a child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman.

[6] Ancient gardens abounded with figures of which the lines intersected each other in many directions. STEEVENS.

[7] The base minnow of thy mirth, is the contemptible little object that contri. butes to thy entertainment. Shakespeare makes Coriolanus characterize the tribunitian insolence of Sicinius, under the same figure.

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, Antony Dull; a man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation.

Dull. Me, an't shall please you; I am Antony 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 heart-burning 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. But, sirrah, what say you to this?

Cost, Sir, I confess the wench.

King. Did you hear the proclamation?

Cost. 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.

Cost. I was taken with none, sir, I was taken with a damosel.

King. Well, it was proclaimed damosel.

Cost. This was no damosel neither, sir; she was a virgin.

King. It is so varied too; for it was proclaimed, virgin. Cost. If it were, I deny her virginity; I was taken with a maid.

King. This maid will not serve your turn, sir.

Cost. This maid will serve my turn, sir.

King. Sir, I will pronounce your sentence; You shall fast a week with bran and water.

Cost. I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge.

King. And Don Armado shall be your keeper. My lord Biron, see him deliver'd o'er.—

And go we, lords, to put in practice that

Which each to other hath so strongly sworn.

[Exe. King, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN.

Biron. I'll lay my head to any good man's hat, These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn.Sirrah, come on.

Cost. I suffer for the truth, sir: for true it is, I was ta

ken 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! [Exeuni

SCENE II.

Another part of the same.

ARMADO'S House. Ente

ARMADO and Moтн.

Arm. Boy, what sign is it, when a man of great spirit grows melancholy?

Moth. A great, sign, sir, that he will look sad.

Arm. Why, sadness is one and the self-same thing, dear imp.

Moth. No, no; O lord, sir, no.

Arm. How canst thou part sadness and melancholy, my tender juvenal ?

Moth. By a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough senior.

Arm. Why tough senior? why tough senior?

Moth. Why tender juvenal? why tender juvenal?

Arm. I spoke it, tender juvenal, as a congruent epitheton, appertaining to thy young days, which we may nominate tender.

Moth. And I, tough senior, as an appertinent title to your old time, which we may name tough.

Arm. Pretty and apt.

Moth. How mean you, sir? I pretty, and my saying apt? or I apt, and my saying pretty?

Arm. Thou pretty, because little.

Moth. Little pretty, because little: Wherefore apt "

Arm. And therefore apt, because quick.

Moth. Speak you this in my praise, master?

Arm. In thy condign praise.

Moth. I will praise an eel with the same praise.
Arm. What? that an eel is ingenious?

Moth. That an eel is quick.

[8] Imp was anciently a term of dignity. Lord Cromwell, in his last letter to Henry VIII. prays for the imp his son. It is now used only in contempt or abhorrence; perhaps in our author's time it was ambiguous, in which state it suits well with this dialogue. JOHNSON.

The word literally means a graff, slip, scion, or sucker: and by metonymy comes to be used for a boy or child. The imp, his son, is no more than his infant son. It is now set apart to signify young fiends; as the devil and his imps.

Dr. Johnson was mistaken in supposing this a word of dignity. It occurs in The History of Celestina the Faire, 1596: "the gentleman had three sonnes, very ungracious impes, and of a wicked nature." RITSON

Arm. I do say, thou art quick in answers. Thou heatest my blood.

Moth. I am answered, sir.

Arm. I love not to be crossed.

Moth. He speaks the mere contrary, crosses love not Dim.

[Aside. Arm. I have promised to study three years with the duke.

Moth. You may do it in an hour, sir.
Arm. Impossible.

Moth. How many is one thrice told?

Arm. I am ill at reckoning, it fitteth the spirit of a tapster.

Moth. You are a gentleman, and a gamester, sir.

Arm. I confess both; they are both the varnish of a complete man.

Moth. Then, I am sure, you know how much the gross sum of deuce-ace amounts to.

Arm. It doth amount to one more than two.

Moth. Which the base vulgar do call, three.
Arm. True.

Moth. Why, sir, is this such a piece of study? Now here is three studied, ere you'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." Arm. A most fine figure!

Moth. To prove you a cypher.

[Aside.

Arm. 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 courtesy. I think scorn to sigh; methinks, I should out-swear Cupid.Comfort me, boy: What great men have been in love? Moth. Hercules, master.

[9] Bankes's horse, which play'd many remarkable pranks. Sir Walter Raleigh (Hist. of the World, first part, p. 178,) says: If Banks had lived in older times, he would have shamed all the enchanters in the world: for whosoever was most famous among them, could never master, or instruct any beast as he did his horse." DR. GREY Among other exploits of this celebrated beast, it is said that he went up to the top of St. Paul's; and the same circumstance is likewise mentioned in The Guls Horn-booke, a satirical pamphlet by Decker, 1609. STEEVENS.

Ben Jonson hints at the unfortunate catastrophe of both man and horse, which I find happened at Rome, where to the disgrace of the age, of the country, and of humanity, they were burnt by order of the pope, for magicians. Sec Don Zara del Fogo, 12mo. 1660. p 114. REED.