But more devout than this, in our respects, Dum. Our letters, madam, show'd much more than jest. Long. So did our looks. Ros. We did not quote* them so. A time, methinks, too short King. Now, at the latest minute of the hour, Prin. Change not your offer made in heat of blood; But that it bear this trial, and last love: Then, at the expiration of the year, Come challenge, challenge me by these deserts, For the remembrance of my father's death. King. If this, or more than this, I would deny, To flatter up these powers of mine with rést, 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? Ros. You must be purged too, your sins are rank; You are attaint with faults and perjury; Therefore, if you my favour mean to get, Dum. But what to me, my love? but what to my? 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: Dum. I'll serve thee true and faithfully till then. Kath. Yet swear not, lest you be forsworn again. Long. What says Maria? Ros. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Birón, To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain ; With all the fierce endeavour of your wit, 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 deart groans, Will hear your idle scorns, continue then, 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 [To the King. leave. 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 will end. Biron. That's too long for a play. Enter Armado. Arm. Sweet majesty, vouchsafe me,- * Vehement. + Immediate. 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. Enter Holofernes, Nathaniel, Moth, Costard, and others. This side is Hiems, winter; this Ver, the spring; the one maintain'd by the owl, the other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin. SONG. Spring. When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, Cuckoo, cuckoo,—O word of fear, II. When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, Cuckoo, cukoo,-O word of fear, III. Winter. When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And milk comes frozen home in pail, Tu-whit, to who, a merry note, IV. When all aloud the wind doth blow, 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. * Cool. [Exeunt. + Wild apples. In this play, which all the editors have concurred to censure, and some have rejected as unworthy of our poet, it must be confessed that there are many |