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, observed your fashion,
Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion:
Ay me! says one; O Jove! the other cries; 141
One, her hairs were gold, crystal the other's eyes:
[To Long.] You would for paradise break faith
and troth;

[To Dum.] 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. 150
Biron. Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy.
[Advancing.

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 do make no coaches; in your tears
eyes
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?
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 foolery have I seen,
Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow and of teen!

O me, with what strict patience have I sat,

160

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 push-pin with the boys,
And critic 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?

170

Biron. Not you to me, but I betray'd by you:

I, that am honest; I, that hold it sin
To break the vow I am engaged in ;
I am betray'd, by keeping company

180

† With men like men of inconstancy.
When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme?
Or groan for love? 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.

Enter JAQUENETTA and Costard.
Faq. God bless the king!
King.

What present hast thou there?

Cost. Some certain treason.
King.
What makes treason here? 190
Cost. Nay, it makes nothing, sir.
King.

If it mar nothing neither,

Biron. A toy, my liege, a toy: your grace needs not fear it.

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

name.

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

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

He, he, and you, 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 Costard and Jaquenetta. Biron. Sweet lords, sweet lovers, 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?

220

250

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 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 suit 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 deck'd,

It mourns that painting and usurping hair Should ravish doters with a false aspect;

260

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 Ethiopes of their sweet complexion crack.

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

Biron. Your mistresses dare never come in 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. Biron. I'll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.

King. No devil will fright thee then so much as she.

Dum. I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear. Long. 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! Dum. O vile! then, as she goes, what upward lies

280

The street should see as she walk'd overhead. King. But what of this? are we not all in love? Biron. Nothing so sure; and thereby all for

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 300
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

310

321

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,
Do we not likewise see our learning there?
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 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:

330

340

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

350

Make 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:
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, 360
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.

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
Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.
King Away, away! no time shall be omitted
That will betime, and may by us be fitted.
Biron. Allons! allons! Sow'd cockle reap'd no

Enter HOLOFernes, Sir NATHANIEL, and DULL.

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 affection, 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 peregrinate, as I may call it.

Nath. A most singular and choice epithet. [Draws out his table-book. Hol. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, 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 abbominable: it insinuateth + me of insanie: anne intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.

Nath. Laus Deo, bene intelligo.

30

Hol. Quare chirrah, not sirrah?
Arm. Men of peace, well encountered.
Hol. Most military sir, salutation.

Moth. [Aside to Costard] They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps. Cost. O, they have lived long on 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. [To Hol.] Monsieur, are you not lettered?

Moth. Yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook. What is a, b, spelt backward, with the horn on his head?

51

Hol. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added. Moth. Ba, most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning.

Hol. Quis, quis, thou consonant?

Moth. The third of the five vowels, if you 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.

60

Arm. 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!

Moth. Offered 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.

70

Moth. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy circum circa,—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 halfpenny purse of wit, thou pigeonegg 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 false Latin; dunghill for

sir, is liable, congruent and measurable for the afternoon: the word is well culled, 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 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, 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 man 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 delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antique, 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.

Hol. Sir, you shall present before her the Nine Worthies. Sir, as concerning some entertainment of time, some show in the posterior of this day, to be rendered by our assistants, at 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. 130 Nath. Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?

Hol. Joshua, yourself; myself and 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.

150

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

Hol. Via, goodman Dull! thou hast spoken

no word all this while.

Dull. Nor understood none neither, sir. Hol. Allons! we will employ thee.

Enter the Princess, KATHARINE, ROSALINE, and MARIA.

Prin. Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart,

If fairings come thus plentifully in:
A lady wall'd about with diamonds!
Look you what I have from the loving king.
Ros. Madame, came nothing else along with
that?

Prin. Nothing but this! yes, as much love in rhyme

As would be cramm'd up in a sheet of paper,
Writ o' both sides the leaf, margent and all,
That he was fain to seal on Cupid's name.
Ros. That was the way to make his godhead
wax,

ΙΟ

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; a' 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 ha' 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. 20
Ros. We need more light to find your meaning

30

knew:

But, Rosaline, you have a favour too:
Who sent it? and what is it?
Ros.
I would you
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 numbering too,
were the fairest goddess on the ground:
I am compared to twenty thousand fairs.
O, he hath drawn my picture in his letter!
Prin. Any thing like?

Ros. Much in the letters; nothing in the praise.
Prin. Beauteous as ink; a good conclusion. 41
Kath. Fair as a text B in a copy-book.
Ros. 'Ware pencils, ho! let me not die
debtor,

My red dominical, my golden letter:

will play

dance the hay.

160

On the tabor to the Worthies, and let them

Hol. Most dull, honest Dull! To our sport, away!

[Exeunt.

your

Kath. A pox of that jest! and I beshrew all shrows.