liday foolery; if we walk not in the trodden paths, our very petticoats will catch them.
Rof. I could shake them off my coat; these burs are in my heart.
Rof. I would try, if I could cry hem, and have him.
Cl. Come, come, wrestle with thy affections.
Rof. O, they take the part of a better wrestler than my self. Cel. O, a good wish upon you! you will try in time in defpight of a fall; but turning these jests out of service let us talk in good earnest: is it poffible on fuch a sudden you should fall into so strong a liking with old Sir Rowland's youngest son ?
Rof. The Duke my father lov'd his father dearly.
Cel. Doth it therefore ensue that you should love his fon dearly? by this kind of chase I should hate him; for my father hated his father dearly; yet I hate not Orlando. Rof. No, faith; hate him not, for my fake. Cel. Why should I ? doth he not deserve well?
SCENE IX. Enter Duke with Lords. Rof. Let me love him for that; and do you love him, because I do. Look, here comes the Duke. Cel. With his eyes full of anger.
Duke. Mistress, dispatch you with your fafeft haste,
And get you from our court.
Rof. Me, uncle!
Duke. You.
Within these ten days if that thou be'st found
So near our publick court as twenty miles,
Thou diest for it.
Rof. I do befeech your Grace,
Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me:
If with my self I hold intelligence,
Or have acquaintance with my own defires,
If that I do not dream, or be not frantick,
As I do trust I am not; then, dear uncle,
Never so much as in a a thoug
Did I offend your Highness.
Duke. Thus do all traitors;
If their purgation did consist in words,
They are as innocent as grace it self:
Let it fuffice thee that I trust thee not.
Rof. Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor;
Tell me whereon the likelihood depends.
Duke. Thou art thy father's daughter, there's enough.
Rof. So was I when your Highness took his Dukedom,
So was I when your Highness banished him ;
Treason is not inherited, my lord;
Or if we did derive it from our friends,
What's that to me? my father was no traitor :
Then, good my Liege, mistake me not so much
To think my poverty is treacherous.
Cel. Dear Sovereign, hear me speak.
Duke. Ay, Celia, we but staid her for your sake,
Else had she with her father rang'd along.
Cel. I did not then entreat to have her stay;
It was your pleasure, and your own remorse;
I was too young that time to value her;
But now I know her; if she be a traitor,
Why, so am I; we still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together,
And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans
Still we went coupled and infeparable.
Duke. She is too fubtle for thee; and her smoothness,
Her very filence and her patience,
Speak to the people, and they pity her :
Thou art a fool; she robs thee of thy name,
And thou wilt show more bright, and seem more virtuous
When she is gone; then open not thy lips:
Firm and irrevocable is my doom,
Which I have past upon her; she is banith'd.
Cel. Pronounce that fentence then on me, my Liege; I cannot live out of her company.
Duke. You are a fool: you, neice, provide your self; If you out-stay the time, upon mine honour, And in the greatness of my word, you die. [Exe. Duke, &c.
Cel. O my poor Rofalind, where wilt thou go? Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine : I charge thee be not thou more griev'd than I am.
Rof. I have more cause.
Cel. Thou haft not, dearest cousin;
Pr'ythee, be cheerful; know'st thou not the Duke
Has banish'd me his daughter ?
Cl. No? hath not? Rosalind lacks then the love
Which teacheth me that thou and I are one :
Shall we be sundred ? shall we part, sweet girl?
No, let my father seek another heir.
Therefore devise with me how we may fly,
Whither to go, and what to bear with us;
And do not seek to take your charge upon you,
To bear your griefs your self, and leave me out:
For by this heav'n, now at our forrows pale,
Say what thou can'st, I'll go along with thee.
Rof. Why, whither shall we go?
Cel. To seek my uncle in the foreft of Arden,
Rof. Alas, what danger will it be to us,
Maids as we are, to travel forth so far!
Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.
Cel. I'll put my self in poor and mean attire,
And with a kind of umber smutch my face;
The like do you; so shall we pass along,
And never ftir afsailants.
Rof. Were't not better,
Because that I am more than common tall,
That I did fuit me all points like a man?
A gallant curtelax upon my thigh,
A boar-spear in my hand, and (in my heart
Lye there what hidden woman's fear there will)
I'll have a swashing and a martial outside,
As many other mannish cowards have,
That do outface it with their semblances.
Cel. What shall I call thee when thou art a man?
Rof. I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page,
And therefore look you call me Ganimed;
But what will you be call'd ?
Cel. Something that hath a reference to my state :
No longer Celia, but Aliena.
Rof. But, coufin, what if we assaid to steal
The clownish fool out of your father's court?
Would he not be a comfort to our travel?
Cel. He'll go along o'er the wide world with me.
Leave me alone to woo him; let's away,
And get our jewels and our wealth together;
Devise the fittest time, and fafest way
To hide us from pursuit that will be made
After my flight: now go we in content
To liberty, and not to banishment !
ACT II. SCENE I.
A Forest, Enter Duke Senior, Amiens, and two or three
Hath not old custom made this life more
Than that of painted pomp? are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The sealon's difference; as, the icie phang,
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even 'till I shrink with cold, I fmile, and say,
This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly perfuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head :
And this our life, exempt from publick haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
Ami. I would not change it; happy is your Grace
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style.
Duke Sen. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desart city,
Should, in their own confines, with forked heads
Have their round haunches goar'd.
1 Lord. Indeed, my Lord,
The melancholy Jacques grieves at that,
And in that kind swears you do more ufurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you 1
To-day my Lord of Amiens and my self
Did steal behind him, as he lay along
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;
To the which place a poor sequestred stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and indeed, my lord,
The wretched Animal heav'd forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting, and the big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.
Duke Sen. But what said Jaques ?
Did he not moralize this spectacle?*
1 Lord. O yes, into a thousand similies.
First, for his weeping in the needless stream;
Poor deer, quoth he, thou mak'st a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much. Then, being alone
Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends;
'Tis right, quoth he; thus misery doth part
The flux of company: anon a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,
And never stays to greet him: ay, quoth Jaques,
Sweep on, you fat and greazy citizens,
'Tis just the fashion; wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?
Thus most invectively he pierced through
The body of the country, city, court,
Yea, and of this our life, swearing that we
Are meer ufurpers, tyrants, and what's worse,
To fright the animals, and to kill them up
In their assign'd and native dwelling place.
Duke Sen. And did you leave him in this contemplation?
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