There stay, until the twelve celestial signs
Have brought about their annual reckoning:
If this austere insociable life

Change not your offer made in heat of blood;

If frosts, and fasts, hard lodging, and thin weeds,
Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,
But that it bear this trial, and last love;
Then, at the expiration of the year,

Come challenge, challenge me by these deserts,
And, by this virgin palm, now kissing thine,
I will be thine; and, till that instant, shut
My woeful self up in a mourning house;
Raining the tears of lamentation

For the remembrance of my father's death.
If this thou do deny, let our hands part;
Neither intitled in the other's heart.

KING. If this, or more than this, I would deny,
To flatter up these powers of mine with rest,
The sudden hand of death close up mine eye!
Hence ever, then, my heart is in thy breast.
BIRON. And what to me, my love? and what to me?
DUM. But what to me, my love? but what to me?
KATH. A wife!-A beard, fair health, and honesty;
With three-fold love I wish you all these three.
DUM. O, shall I say, I thank you, gentle wife?
KATH. Not so, my lord;-a twelvemonth and a day
I'll mark no words that smooth-fac'd wooers say:
Come when the king doth to my lady come,
Then, if I have much love, I'll give you some.

DUM. I'll serve thee true and faithfully till then.
KATH. Yet swear not, lest you be forsworn again.
LONG. What says Maria?

MAR.
At the twelvemonth's end,
I'll change my black gown for a faithful friend.

LONG. I'll stay with patience; but the time is long. MAR. The liker you; few taller are so young. BIRON. Studies my lady? mistress, look on me, Behold the window of my heart, mine eye, What humble suit attends thy answer there; Impose some service on me for thy love.

Ros. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron,
Before I saw you: and the world's large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks;
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts;
Which you on all estates will execute,
That lie within the mercy of your wit:

To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain,
And, therewithal, to win me, if you please,
(Without the which I am not to be won,)
You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick, and still converse
With groaning wretches; and your task shall be,
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,

To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

BIRON. To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be; it is impossible:

Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

Ros. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit,

Whose influence is begot of that loose grace

Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools:

A jest's prosperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it, never in the tongue

Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears,

Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,

And I will have you, and that fault withal;

But, if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,

Right joyful of your reformation.

BIRON. A twelvemonth? well, befal what will befal,

I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.

PRIN. Ay, sweet my lord; and so I take my leave.

[To the KING.

KING. No, madam, we will bring you on your way. BIRON. Our wooing doth not end like an old play; Jack hath not Jill: these ladies' courtesy

Might well have made our sport a comedy.

KING. Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day, And then 't will end.

BIRON.

That's too long for a play.

Enter ARMADO.

ARM. Sweet majesty vouchsafe me,—
PRIN. Was not that Hector?

DUM. The worthy knight of Troy.

ARM. I will kiss thy royal finger, and take leave: I am a votary; I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three years. But, most esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled, in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? it should have followed in the end of our show.

KING. Call them forth quickly, we will do so.

ARM. Holla! approach.

Enter HOLOFERNES, NATHANIEL, MOTH, COSTARD, and others. This side is Hiems, winter: this Ver, the spring: the one maintained by the owl, the other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin.

SPRING.

SONG.

I.

When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he,
Cuckoo ;

Cuckoo, cuckoo,-O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

II.

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,

When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,

And maidens bleach their summer-smocks,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he,

III.

WINTER.

When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-who;

Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

IV.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian's nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-who;

Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

ARM. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of

Apollo. You, that way; we, this way.

[Exeunt.

VARIOUS READINGS.

"When I to feast expressly am forbid." (ACT I., Sc. 1.)

Theobald proposed to read the line, as above, instead of "to fast," of the original copies; and the corrector of Mr. Collier's folio has the same reading. Theobald says, "If Biron studied where to get a good dinner, at a time when he was forbid to fast, how was this studying to know what he was forbid to know?"

Biron expresses his determination, "Having sworn too hard-akeeping oath," to "Study to break it, and not break my troth."

He therefore was forbid in a double meaning. When he will study to know what he is forbid to know, he uses the word in its common acceptation. But forbid was an ancient mode of making bid more emphatical. In this sense he is bid to fast; but he will receive the word as if he were forbidden-bid from fasting.

“Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to chime in the merriness."

"The manuscript Corrector has 'altered climb in the merriness' of the old copies, to 'chime in the merriness,' in allusion to the laughable contents of Armado's letter, in the merriness of which the King and his companions hope to chime in, or participate." So Mr. Collier.

"That shallow vessel."

"Shallow vassal" is a misprint, according to Mr. Collier's corrected folio. "The context," says Mr. Collier, "requires us to alter the phrase to 'shallow vessel."

VOL. IV.

(ACT I., Sc. 1.)

The change was proposed before the MS. Corrector came to light. A quibble was doubtless intended, between the style which makes us climb to get over it, and the style which shall give us cause to climb, ascend, in our merriness. Mr. Dyce has given several examples of this play upon the word style.

(ACT I., Sc. 2.)

Is not vassal a term of ignominy frequently used by Shakspere? Mr. Collier does not point out that, in the same letter of Armado, the word vessel is twice

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