The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

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by William Shakespeare


  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.

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  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,

  Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,

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  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!

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  BEROWNE

  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.

  LONGAVILLE

  Now to plain dealing. Lay these glozes by.

  Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?

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  KING And win them too! Therefore let us devise

  Some entertainment for them in their tents.

  BEROWNE

  First, from the park let us conduct them thither.

  Then homeward every man attach the hand

  Of his fair mistress. In the afternoon

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  We will with some strange pastime solace them,

  Such as the shortness of the time can shape;

  For revels, dances, masques and merry hours

  Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.

  KING Away, away! No time shall be omitted

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  That will betime and may by us be fitted.

  BEROWNE

  Allons, allons!

  Exeunt the King, Longaville and Dumaine.

  Sowed cockle reaped no corn:

  And justice always whirls in equal measure.

  Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn;

  If so, our copper buys no better treasure. Exit.

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  5.1 Enter HOLOFERNES, the Pedant, NATHANIEL, the Curate, and DULL, the Constable.

  HOLOFERNES Satis quod sufficit.

  NATHANIEL 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

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  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.

  HOLOFERNES Novi hominem tanquam te. His humour is

  lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his

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  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.

  NATHANIEL A most singular and choice epithet.

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  [Draws out his table-book.]

  HOLOFERNES He draweth out the thread of his verbosity

  finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such

  fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-device

  companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak

  ‘dout’ sine ‘b’, when he should say ‘doubt’, ‘det’ when

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  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 ‘abominable’. It insinuateth me of

  insanie. Ne intelligis, domine? To make frantic, lunatic.

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  NATHANIEL Laus Deo, bone intelligo.

  HOLOFERNES Bone? ‘Bone’ for ‘bene’! Priscian a little

  scratched; ’twill serve.

  Enter ARMADO, the Braggart, MOTH, his boy, and COSTARD.

  NATHANIEL Videsne quis venit?

  HOLOFERNES Video et gaudeo.

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  ARMADO Chirrah!

  HOLOFERNES Quare ‘chirrah’, not ‘sirrah’?

  ARMADO Men of peace, well encountered.

  HOLOFERNES Most military sir, salutation.

  MOTH [to Costard] They have been at a great feast of

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  languages and stolen the scraps.

  COSTARD [to Moth] O, they have lived long on the

  alms-basket 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

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  swallowed than a flap-dragon.

  MOTH Peace! The peal begins.

  ARMADO [to Holofernes] 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?

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  HOLOFERNES Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

  MOTH Ba, most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning.

  HOLOFERNES Quis, quis, thou consonant?

  MOTH The last of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or

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  the fifth, if I.

  HOLOFERNES I will repeat them: a, e, i –

  MOTH The sheep. The other two concludes it: o, u.

  ARMADO Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a

  sweet touch, a quick venue of wit! Snip-snap, quick

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  and home! It rejoiceth my intellect. True wit!

  MOTH Offered by a child to an old man – which is wit-old.

  HOLOFERNES What is the figure? What is the figure?

  MOTH Horns.

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  HOLOFERNES Thou disputes like an infant. Go, whip thy gig.

  MOTH Lend me your horn to make one and I will whip

  about your infamy manu cita. A gig of a cuckold’s horn!

  COSTARD An I had but one penny in the world, thou

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  shouldst have it to buy gingerbread. Hold, there is the

  very remuneration I had of thy master, thou halfpenny

  purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg 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

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  hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers’ ends, as they say.

  HOLOFERNES O, I smell false Latin: ‘dunghill’ for unguem.

  ARMADO Arts-man, preambulate. We will be singuled

  from the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the

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  charge-house on the top of the mountain?

  HOLOFERNES Or mons, the hill.

  ARMADO At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.

  HOLOFERNES I do, sans question.

  ARMADO Sir, it is the King’s most sweet pleasure and

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  affection to congratulate the Princess at her pavilion

  in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude

  call the afternoon.

  HOLOFERNES The posterior of the day, most generous

  sir, is liable, congruent and measurable for the

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  afternoon. The word is well culled, choice, sweet and

  apt, I do assure you, sir, I do assure.

  ARMADO 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,

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  remember thy courtesy: I beseech thee, apparel thy

  head. And among other importunate and mos
t 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

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  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

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  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 antic, or

  firework. Now, understanding that the curate and your

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  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.

  HOLOFERNES Sir, you shall present before her the

  Nine Worthies. Sir Nathaniel, as concerning some

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  entertainment of time, some show in the posterior of

  this day, to be rendered by our assistance, 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.

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  NATHANIEL Where will you find men worthy enough to

  present them?

  HOLOFERNES Joshua, yourself; this gallant gentleman,

  Judas Maccabaeus; this swain, because of his great

  limb or joint, shall pass Pompey the Great; the page,

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  Hercules.

  ARMADO Pardon, sir, error! He is not quantity enough

  for that Worthy’s thumb. He is not so big as the end of his club.

  HOLOFERNES Shall I have audience? He shall present

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  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

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  crushest the snake!’ That is the way to make an

  offence gracious, though few have the grace to do it.

  ARMADO For the rest of the Worthies?

  HOLOFERNES I will play three myself.

  MOTH Thrice-worthy gentleman.

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  ARMADO Shall I tell you a thing?

  HOLOFERNES We attend.

  ARMADO We will have, if this fadge not, an antic. I beseech you, follow.

  HOLOFERNES Via, goodman Dull! Thou hast spoken no

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  word all this while.

  DULL Nor understood none neither, sir.

  HOLOFERNES Allons! We will employ thee.

  DULL I’ll make one in a dance, or so; or I will play on

  the tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay.

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  HOLOFERNES Most Dull, honest Dull! To our sport,

  away! Exeunt.

  5.2 Enter the ladies, the PRINCESS, ROSALINE, MARIA and KATHERINE.

  PRINCESS Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart

  If fairings come thus plentifully in.

  A lady walled about with diamonds!

  Look you what I have from the loving King.

  ROSALINE Madam, came nothing else along with that?

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  PRINCESS

  Nothing but this? Yes, as much love in rhyme

  As would be crammed up in a sheet of paper

  Writ o’both sides the leaf, margin and all,

  That he was fain to seal on Cupid’s name.

  ROSALINE That was the way to make his godhead wax,

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  For he hath been five thousand year a boy.

  KATHERINE Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too.

  ROSALINE

  You’ll ne’er be friends with him: ‘a killed your sister.

  KATHERINE He made her melancholy, sad and heavy;

  And so she died. Had she been light, like you,

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  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.

  ROSALINE

  What’s your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?

  KATHERINE A light condition in a beauty dark.

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  ROSALINE

  We need more light to find your meaning out.

  KATHERINE You’ll mar the light by taking it in snuff;

  Therefore I’ll darkly end the argument.

  ROSALINE Look what you do, you do it still i’th’ dark.

  KATHERINE So do not you, for you are a light wench.

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  ROSALINE Indeed I weigh not you, and therefore light.

  KATHERINE

  You weigh me not? O, that’s you care not for me!

 

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