: Oli. Farewel, good Charles. Now will I stir this gamefter: I hope, I shall fee an end of him; for my foul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than him. Yet he's gentle; never school'd, and yet learned; full of noble device; of all Sorts enchantingly beloved; and, indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people who best know him, that I am altogether misprised. But it shall not be fo long-this wrestler shall clear all. Nothing remains, but that I kindle the boy thither, which now I'll go about. [Exit. SCENE IV. Changes to an Open Walk, before the Duke's Palace. Cel. Enter Rosalind and Celia. : Pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my co, be merry: Rof. Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of; and would you yet I were merrier? Unless you could teach me to forget a banish'd father, you muft not learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleafure. Cel. Herein, I fee, thou lov'st me not with the full weight that I love thee. If my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the Duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me, I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine; so wouldst thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteoufly temper'd, as mine is to thee. Rof. Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to rejoice in yours. Cel. You know, my father hath no child but I, nor: none is like to have; and, truly, when he dies, thou shalt be his heir; for what he hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee again in affection; by mine Honour, I will-and when I break: that that oath, let me turn monster. Therefore, my sweet Rofe, my dear Rofe, be merry. Rof. From henceforth I will, coz, and devise Sports. Let me fee-What think you of falling in love? Cel. Marry, I pr'ythee, do, to make sport withal; but love no man in good earnest; nor no further in sport neither, than with fafety of a pure blush thou may'st in honour come off again. Rof. What shall be our Sport then? Cel. Let us fit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally. Rof. I would, we could do fo; for her benefits are mightily misplaced, and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women. Cel. 'Tis true; for those, that she makes fair, she scarce makes honeft; and those, that she makes honeft, she makes very ill-favoured. Rof. Nay, now thou goest from fortune's office to nature's: fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of nature. Enter Touchstone, a Clown. Cel. No! when nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by fortune fall into the fire? Though nature hath given us wit to flout at fortune, hath not fortune sent in this Fool to cut off this argument? Rof. Indeed, there is fortune too hard for nature; when fortune makes nature's Natural the cutter off of nature's Wit. Cel. Peradventure, this is not fortune's work, neither, but nature's'; who, perceiving our natural wits too dull to reason of fuch Goddesses, hath fent this 8 - mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel,] The wheel of fortune is not the wheel of a bouferwife. Shakespeare has confounded fortune whose wheel only figures uncertainty and viciffitude, with the destinie that spins the thread of life, though indeed not with a wheel. Natural Natural for our whetstone: for always the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. How now, Wit, whither wander you? Clo. Mistress, you must come away to your father. Cel. Were you made the messenger? Clo. No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you. Rof. Where learned you that oath, fool? Clo. Of a certain Knight, that swore by his honour they were good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught. Now I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught, and the mustard was good, and yet was not the Knight forsworn. Cel. How prove you that in the great heap of your knowledge? : Rof. Ay, marry; now unmuzzle your wisdom. Clo. Stand you both forth now; stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave. • Cel. By our beards, if we had them, thou art. Clo. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were; but if you swear by That that is not, you are not forfworn; no more was this Knight swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had fworn it away, before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard. Cel. Pr'ythee, who is that thou mean'st? Clo. One, that old Frederick Rof. My Father's Love is enough to honour bim enough;) This Reply to the Clown is in all the Books plac'd to Rosalind; but Frederick was not her Father, but Celia's: I have therefore ventur'd to prefix the Name of Celia. There is no Countenance from any Paffage in the Play, or from the Dramatis Perfona, to imagine, that Both the BrotherDukes were Namesakes; and One call'd the Old, and the Other the Younger Frederick; and, without some such Authority, it would make Confufion to suppose it. THEOBALD. Mr. Theobald seems not to know that the Dramatis Perfonæ were first enumerated by Rowe. enough! enough! speak no more of him, you'll be whipt for taxation one of these days. Clo. The more pity, that fos may not speak wisely what wife men do foolishly. Cel. By my troth, thou say'st true; for fince the little wit that fools have was filenc'd', the little foolery that wife men have makes a great Show: here comes Monfieur Le Beu. : SCENE V. Enter Le Beu. Rof. With his mouth full of news. Cel. Which he will put on us, as pigeons feed their young. Rof. Then shall we be news-cram'd. Cel. All the better, we shall be the more marketable. Bon jour, Monfieur le Beu; what news? Le Beu. Fair Princess, you have loft much good Sport. Cel. Sport; of what colour ? Le Beu. What colour, Madam? How shall I an fwer you ? Rof. As wit and fortune will. Clo. Or as the destinies decree. Cel. Well faid; that was laid on with a trowel. Clo. Nay, if I keep not my rank, Rof. Thou losest thy old smell. Le Beu. You amaze me, ladies. I would have -fince the little wit that fools have was filenc'd.] Shake fpeare probably alludes to the use of fools or jesters, who for fome ages had been allowed in all courts an unbridled liberty of censure and mockery, and about this time began to be less tolerated. I suppose the meaning is, that there is too heavy a mass of big words laid upon a flight subject. laid on with a trowel.] 3 You amaze me, ladies.] To amaze, here, is not to aftonish or strike with wonder, but to perplex; to confuse; as, to put out of the intended narrative. told told you of good wrestling, which you have lost the fight of. Rof. Yet tell us the manner of the wrestling. Le Beu. I will tell you the beginning, and, if it please your Ladyships, you may fee the end, for the best is yet to do; and here where you are, they are coming to perform it. Cel. Well-the beginning that is dead and buried. Le Beu. There comes an old man and his three fons, Cel. I could match this beginning with an old tale. growth and prefence ; Rof. With bills on their necks: Be it known unto all men by these presents +, - Le Beu. The eldest of the three wrestled with Charlesthe Duke's Wrestler; which Charles in a moment threw him, and broke three of his ribs, and there is little hope of life in him: fo he serv'd the Second, and fo the Third. Yonder they lie, the poor old man their father making such pitiful Dole over them, that all the beholders take his his part with weeping. Rof. Alas! 4 With BILLS on their necks: Be it known unto all men by these presents;] The ladies and the fool, according to the mode of wit at that time, are av a kind of cross purposes. Where the words of one speaker are wrested by another, in a repartee, to a different meaning. As where the Clown says just before - Nay, if I keep not my rank. Rosalind replies---thou losest thy old fmell. So here when Rosalind had faid, With bills on their necks, the Clown, to be quits with her, puts in, Know all men by these pre fents. She spoke of an inftru ment of war, and he turns it to an instrument of law of the fame name, beginning with these words: So that they must be given to him. WARBURTON. This conjecture is ingenious. Where meaning is so very thin, hard to catch, and therefore I as in this vein of jocularity, it is know not well what to determine; but I cannot fee why Rofalind should suppose, that the competitors in a wrestling match carried bills on their shoulders, and I believe the whole conceit is in the poor resemblance of prefence and presents. Clo. But |