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You may look pale, but I should blush, I know, | When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme? To be o'erheard, and taken napping so.

King. Come, sir, [advancing.] you blush; as
his your case is such;

You chide at him, offending twice as much:
You do not love Maria! Longaville
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 mark'd you both, and for you both did
blush.

I heard your guilty rhymes, observ'd your

fashion;

Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your

passion:

Ab me! says one; O Jove! the other cries;
One, her hairs were gold, crystal the other's
eyes:

You would for paradise break faith and troth;
[To Long.
And Jove, for your love, would infringe an oath.
[To Dumain.
What will Birón say, when that he shall hear
A faith infring'd, which such a 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. Now step I forth to whip hypo-
crisy.-

Ah, good my liege, I pray thee pardon me:
[Descends from the tree.
Good heart, what grace hast thou, thus to

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But I a beam do find in each of three.
O, what a scene of foolery I have 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 gigg,
And profound Solomon to tune a jigg,
And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys,
And critick Timon laugh at idle toys!
Where lies thy grief, O tell me, good Dumain?
And, gentle Longaville, where lies thy pain?
And where my liege's? all about the breast:-
A caudle, ho!

King.

Too bitter is thy jest.

Are we betray'd thus to thy over-view?

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 cye,
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..

Enter JAQUENETTA and COSTARD.
Jaq. God bless the king!
King.

What present hast thou there?

Cost. Some certain treason.

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Long. It did move him to passion, and therefore let's hear it.

name.

Dum. It is Biron's writing, and here is his [Picks up the pieces. Biron. Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, [To Costard. you were born to do me shame.Guilty, my lord, guilty; I confess, I confess. King. What?

you

Biron. That three fools lack'd me fool to make up the mess:

He, hc, and you, my liege, and I,

Are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die.
O, dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you

more.

Dum. Now the number is even.
Biron.
True true; we are four:-
Will these turtles be gone?
King.
Hence, sirs; away.
Cost. Walk aside the true folk, and let the
traitors stay. [Exeunt Cost. and Jaquenet.
Biron. Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O let us em-
brace!

As true we are, as flesh and blood can be:
The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face;
Young blood will not obey an old decree:
We cannot cross the cause why we were born;

Biron. Not you by me, but I betray'd to you; Therefore, of all hands must we be forsworn.

I, that am honest; I, that hold it sin

To break the vow I am engaged in ;
I am betray'd, by keeping company

With moon-like men, of strange inconstancy.

King. What, did these rent lines show some love of thine?

Biron. Did they, quoth you? Who sces the heavenly Rosaline,

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That, like a rude and savage man of Inde,

At the first opening 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 inspir'd 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 Birón:
O, but for my love, day would turn to night!
Of all complexions the cull'd sovereignty

Do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek;
Where several worthies make one dignity;

Where nothing wants, that want itself doth seck.

Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues,

Fye, painted rhetorick! O, she needs it not: To things of sale a seller's praise belongs;

She passes praise; then praise too short
doth blot.

A wither'd hermit, five-score winters worn,
Might shake off fifty, looking in her
Beauty doth varnish age, as if new-born,

eye:

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 wood 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 scowl
night;

of

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 deckt,

It mourns, that painting, and usurping hair, Should ravish doters with a false aspéct;.

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. Dum. To look like her, are chimney-sweepers black.

Long. And, since her time, are colliers counted bright.

King. And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack.

Dum. Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.

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eyes,

Her feet were much too dainty for such tread!

Dum. O vile! then as she goes, what upward lies

The street should see as she walk'd over head.

King. But what of this? Are we not all in love?

Biron. O, nothing so sure; and thereby all forsworn.

King. Then leave this chat; and, good Birón, now prove

Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn. Dum. Ay, marry, there;-some flattery for this evil.

Long. O, some authority how to proceed; Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil.

Dum. 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.

And where that you have vow'd to study, lords,
In that each of you hath forsworn his book:
Can you still dream, and porc, 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 prisons 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,

Biron. Your mistresses dare never come in Do we not likewise see our learning there?

rain,

For fear their colours should be wash'd away. King. Twere good, yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain,

I'll find a fairer face not wash'd to-day.

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

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Of beauteous tutors have enrich'd 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 stopp'd;
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
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write,
Until his ink were temper'd 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;
Elsc, 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 advis'd, In conflict that you get the sun of them.

Long. 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, masks, and merry hours, Fore-run 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!-Sow'd cockle reap'd

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ACT THE FIFTH.

SCENE I.

Another part of the same.

Nath. A most singular and choice epithet. [Takes out his table-book: Hol. He draweth out the thread of his ver

Enter HOLOFERNES, Sir NATHANIEL, and DULL. bosity finer than the staple of his argument. I

Hol. Satis quod sufficit.

Nath. I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without af fection, 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.

Hol. Novi hominem 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 perigrinate, as may call it.

I

abhor such fanatical phantasms, such insociable and point-devise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak, dout, fine, when he should say, doubt; det, when he should pronounce, debt; d, e, b, t; not, d, e, t: he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour, vocatur, nebour; neigh, abbreviated, ne: This is abhominable, (which he would call abominable,) it insinuateth me of insanie; Ne intelligis domine? to make frantick, lunatick.

Nath. Laus deo, bone intelligo.

Hol. Bone- -bone, for benè: Priscian a little scratch'd; 'twill serve.

Enter ARMADO, MOTH, and Costard.
Nath. Videsne quis venit?
Hol. Video, & gaudeo.

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Arm. Chirra!

[To Moth.

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Hol. Quare Chirra, not sirrah? Arm. Men of peace, well encounter'd. Hol. Most military sir, salutation. Moth. They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

[To Costard aside. Cost. O, they have lived long in the almsbasket 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 flap-dragon. Moth. Peace; the peal begins. Arm. Monsieur, [To Hol.] are you not let

ter'd?

Moth. Yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook:

What is a, b, spelt backward with a horn on his head?

Hol. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

Moth. Ba, most-silly sheep, with a horn:

You hear his learning.

Hol. Quis, quis, thou consonant?

rous sir, is liable, congruent, and measurable for the afternoon: the word is well cull'd, chose; sweet and apt, I do assure you, sir, I do assure.

Arm. Sir, the king is a noble gentleman; and my familiar, I do assure you, 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 importunate 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 sweet heart, 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 inan of travel, that hath seen the world: but let that pass.-The very all of all is, but, sweet heart, I do implore secrecy, that the king would have me present the princess, sweet chuck, with some

Moth. The third of the five vowels, if you delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or repeat them; or the fifth, if I.

Hol. I will repeat them, a, e, i.— Moth. The sheep: the other two concludes it; o, u.

Arm. Now, by the salt wave of the Mediter raneum, a sweet touch, a quick venew of wit: snip, snap, quick and home; it rejoiceth my intellect: true wit.

Moth. Offer'd by a child to an old man; which is wit-old:

Hol. What is the figure? what is the figure?
Moth. Horns.

Hol. Thou disputest like an infant: go, whip thy gig.

Moth. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy circùm circà; A gig of a cuckold's horn!

Cost. An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread: hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou half-penny 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.

Hol. O, I smell falso Latin; dunghill for unguem.

Arm. Arts-man, præambula; we will be singled from the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the top of the mountain?

Hol. Or, mons, the hill.

Arm. At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain. Hol. I do, sans question.

Arm. 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.

Hol. The posterior of the day, most gene

antick, or fire-work. 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.

Hol. 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.

Nath. Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?

Hol. Joshua, yourself; myself, or this gallant gentleman, Judas Maccabæus; this swain, because of his great limb or joint, shall pass Pompey the great; the page, Hercules.

Arm. Pardon, sir, error: he is not quantity enough for that worthy's thumb: he is not so big as the end of his club.

Hol. 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:

Moth. 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.

Arm. For the rest of the worthies?-
Hol. I will play three myself.
Moth. Thrice-worthy gentleman!
Arm. Shall I tell you a thing?
Hol. We attend.

Arm. We will have, if this fadge not, an antick. I beseech you, follow.

Hol. Via, goodman Dull! thou hast spoken no word all this while.

Dull. Nor understood none neither, sir. Hol. Alions! 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 bay.

lol. Most dull, honest Dull, to our sport, [Exeunt.

away.

SCENE II.

Another part of the same.

Before the Princess's pavilion.

Nay, I have verses too, I thank Birón:
The numbers true; and, were the numb'ring
too,

I were the fairest goddess on the ground:
I am compar'd to twenty thousand fairs.
O, he hath drawn my picture in his letter!
Prin. Any thing like?

Kos. Much, in the letters; nothing in the
praise.

Prin. Beauteous as ink; a good conclusion.
Kath. Fair as a text B in a copy-book.
Ros. 'Ware pencils! How? let me not die
your debtor,

Enter the Princess, KATHARINE, ROSALINE, My red dominical, my golden letter:

and MARIA.

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wax;

For he hath been five thousand years a boy.

Kath. Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too. Ros. You'll ne'er be friends with him; he kill'd your sister.

Kath. 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 have been a grandam ere she died:
And so may you; for a light heart lives long.
Ros. What's your dark meaning, mouse, of
this light word?

Kath. A light condition in a beauty dark.
Ros. We need more light to find your mean-
ing out.

Kath. You'll mar the light, by taking it in snuff;

Therefore, I'll darkly end the argument.

Ros. Look, what you do, you do it still i' the dark.

Kath. So do not you; for you are a light wench.

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O, that your face were not so full of O's!
Kath. A pox of that jest! and beshrew all
shrows!

Prin. But what was sent to you from fair

Dumain?

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ing so.

That same Birón I'll torture ere I go.

O, that I knew, he were but in by the 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 behests;
And make him proud to make me proud that
jests!

So portent-like would I o'ersway his state,
That he should be my fool, and I his fate.

Prin. None are so surely caught, when they
are catch'd,

As wit turn'd fool: folly, in wisdom hatch'd,
Hath wisdom's warrant, and the help of school;
And wit's own grace to grace a learned fool.

Ros. The blood of youth burns not with such

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