Grounded upon no other argument
But that the people praise her for her virtues,
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And pity her for her good father’s sake;
And on my life his malice ’gainst the lady
Will suddenly break forth. Sir, fare you well.
Hereafter, in a better world than this,
I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.
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ORLANDO I rest much bounden to you. Fare you well.
Exit Le Beau.
Thus must I from the smoke into the smother,
From tyrant Duke unto a tyrant brother.
But heavenly Rosalind! Exit.
1.3 Enter CELIA and ROSALIND.
CELIA Why cousin, why Rosalind! Cupid have mercy,
not a word?
ROSALIND Not one to throw at a dog.
CELIA No, thy words are too precious to be cast away
upon curs. Throw some of them at me; come lame me
5
with reasons.
ROSALIND Then there were two cousins laid up, when
the one should be lamed with reasons and the other
mad without any.
CELIA But is all this for your father?
10
ROSALIND No, some of it is for my child’s father. O how
full of briers is this working-day world!
CELIA They are but burs, cousin, thrown upon thee in
holiday foolery; if we walk not in the trodden paths
our very petticoats will catch them.
15
ROSALIND I could shake them off my coat: these burs
are in my heart.
CELIA Hem them away.
ROSALIND I would try, if I could cry hem and have him.
CELIA Come, come, wrestle with thy affections.
20
ROSALIND O they take the part of a better wrestler than
myself.
CELIA O a good wish upon you! You will cry in time, in
despite of a fall. But turning these jests out of service,
let us talk in good earnest. Is it possible, on such a
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sudden, you should fall into so strong a liking with old
Sir Rowland’s youngest son?
ROSALIND The Duke my father loved his father dearly.
CELIA Doth it therefore ensue that you should love his
son dearly? By this kind of chase, I should hate him,
30
for my father hated his father dearly; yet I hate not
Orlando.
ROSALIND No faith, hate him not, for my sake.
CELIA Why should I not? Doth he not deserve well?
ROSALIND Let me love him for that, and do you love
35
him because I do. Look, here comes the Duke.
Enter DUKE FREDERICK with lords.
CELIA With his eyes full of anger.
DUKE FREDERICK
Mistress, dispatch you with your safest haste
And get you from our court.
ROSALIND Me uncle?
DUKE FREDERICK You cousin.
Within these ten days if that thou be’st found
40
So near our public court as twenty miles,
Thou diest for it.
ROSALIND I do beseech your Grace,
Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me.
If with myself I hold intelligence,
Or have acquaintance with mine own desires,
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If that I do not dream, or be not frantic,
As I do trust I am not, then dear uncle,
Never so much as in a thought unborn
Did I offend your Highness.
DUKE FREDERICK Thus do all traitors.
If their purgation did consist in words,
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They are as innocent as grace itself.
Let it suffice thee that I trust thee not.
ROSALIND Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor.
Tell me whereon the likelihood depends.
DUKE FREDERICK
Thou art thy father’s daughter, there’s enough.
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ROSALIND
So was I when your Highness took his dukedom,
So was I when your Highness banish’d 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.
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Then good my liege, mistake me not so much
To think my poverty is treacherous.
CELIA Dear sovereign, hear me speak.
DUKE FREDERICK
Ay Celia, we stay’d her for your sake,
Else had she with her father rang’d along.
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CELIA 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,
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Rose at an instant, learn’d, play’d, eat together,
And whereso’er we went, like Juno’s swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.
DUKE FREDERICK
She is too subtle for thee, and her smoothness,
Her very silence, and her patience
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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
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Which I have pass’d upon her; she is banish’d.
CELIA Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege.
I cannot live out of her company.
DUKE FREDERICK
You are a fool. You, niece, provide yourself.
If you outstay the time, upon mine honour,
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And in the greatness of my word, you die.
Exeunt Duke Frederick and train.
CELIA O my poor Rosalind, whither wilt thou go?
Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine.
I charge thee be not thou more griev’d than I am.
ROSALIND I have more cause.
CELIA Thou hast not, cousin.
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Prithee be cheerful. Know’st thou not the Duke
Hath banish’d me his daughter?
ROSALIND That he hath not.
CELIA No, hath not? Rosalind lacks then the love
Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one.
Shall we be sunder’d? Shall we part, sweet girl?
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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 change upon you,
To bear your griefs yourself and leave me out.
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For by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale,
Say what thou canst, I’ll go along with thee.
ROSALIND Why, whither shall we go?
CELIA To seek my uncle in the Forest of Arden.
ROSALIND Alas, what danger will it be to us,
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Maids as we are, to travel forth so far?
Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.
CELIA I’ll put myself in poor and mean attire,
And with a kind of umber smirch my face;
The like do you. So shall we pass along
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And never stir assailants.
ROSALIND Were it not better,
Because that I am more than common tall,
That I did suit me all points like a man?
A gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh,
A boar-spear in my hand, and in my
heart,
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Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will,
We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside,
As many other mannish cowards have
That do outface it with their semblances.
CELIA What shall I call thee when thou art a man?
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ROSALIND
I’ll have no worse a name than Jove’s own page,
And therefore look you call me Ganymede.
But what will you be call’d?
CELIA Something that hath a reference to my state.
No longer Celia, but Aliena.
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ROSALIND But cousin, what if we assay’d to steal
The clownish fool out of your father’s court?
Would he not be a comfort to our travel?
CELIA He’ll go along o’er the wide world with me;
Leave me alone to woo him. Let’s away,
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And get our jewels and our wealth together,
Devise the fittest time and safest way
To hide us from pursuit that will be made
After my flight. Now go we in content
To liberty, and not to banishment. Exeunt.
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2.1 Enter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS and two or three Lords like foresters.
DUKE SENIOR Now my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,
5
The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
Which when it bites and blows upon my body
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say
‘This is no flattery. These are counsellors
10
That feelingly persuade 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 public haunt,
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Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
AMIENS I would not change it. Happy is your Grace,
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style.
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DUKE SENIOR Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gor’d.
1 LORD Indeed my lord,
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The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,
And in that kind swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish’d you.
To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him as he lay along
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Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood,
To the which place a poor sequester’d stag,
That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and indeed my lord,
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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,
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Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on th’extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.
DUKE SENIOR But what said Jaques?
Did he not moralize this spectacle?
1 LORD O yes, into a thousand similes.
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First, for his weeping into 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 there
alone,
Left and abandon’d of his velvet friend,
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‘’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 greasy citizens,
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’Tis just the fashion. Wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?’
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 65