Complete Plays, The

by William Shakespeare

  I’ll ask him what he would. Did you call, sir?

  Sir, you have wrestled well and overthrown

  More than your enemies.

  Celia

  Will you go, coz?

  Rosalind

  Have with you. Fare you well.

  Exeunt Rosalind and Celia

  Orlando

  What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue?

  I cannot speak to her, yet she urged conference.

  O poor Orlando, thou art overthrown!

  Or Charles or something weaker masters thee.

  Re-enter Le Beau

  Le Beau

  Good sir, I do in friendship counsel you

  To leave this place. Albeit you have deserved

  High commendation, true applause and love,

  Yet such is now the duke’s condition

  That he misconstrues all that you have done.

  The duke is humorous; what he is indeed,

  More suits you to conceive than I to speak of.

  Orlando

  I thank you, sir: and, pray you, tell me this:

  Which of the two was daughter of the duke

  That here was at the wrestling?

  Le Beau

  Neither his daughter, if we judge by manners;

  But yet indeed the lesser is his daughter

  The other is daughter to the banish’d duke,

  And here detain’d by her usurping uncle,

  To keep his daughter company; whose loves

  Are dearer than the natural bond of sisters.

  But I can tell you that of late this duke

  Hath ta’en displeasure ’gainst his gentle niece,

  Grounded upon no other argument

  But that the people praise her for her virtues

  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.

  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

  SCENE III. A ROOM IN THE PALACE.

  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 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?

  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.

  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.

  Rosalind

  O, they take the part of a better wrestler than myself!

  Celia

  O, a good wish upon you! you will try 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 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, 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 him because I do. Look, here comes the duke.

  Celia

  With his eyes full of anger.

  Enter Duke Frederick, with Lords

  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

  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,

  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,

  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.

  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:

  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 ranged along.

  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,

  Rose at an instant, learn’d, play’d, eat together,

  And wheresoever 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

  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

  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,

  And in the greatness of my word, you die.

  Exeunt Duke Frederick and Lords

  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 grieved than I am.

  Rosalind

  I have more cause.

  Celia
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  Thou hast not, cousin;

  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?

  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;

  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,

  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

  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

  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?

  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.

  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,

  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

  ACT II

  SCENE I. THE FOREST OF ARDEN.

  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 but the penalty of Adam,

  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

  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

  Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

  Sermons in stones and good in every thing.

  I would not change it.

  Amiens

  Happy is your grace,

  That can translate the stubbornness of fortune

  Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

  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 gored.

  First Lord

  Indeed, my lord,

  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

  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,

  The wretched animal heaved forth such groans

  That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat

  Almost to bursting, and the big round tears

  Coursed one another down his innocent nose

  In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool

  Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,

  Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,

  Augmenting it with tears.

  Duke Senior

  But what said Jaques?

  Did he not moralize this spectacle?

  First Lord

  O, yes, into a thousand similes.

  First, for his weeping into the needless stream;

  ‘Poor deer,’ quoth he, ‘thou makest 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 friends,

  ‘’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;

  ’Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look

  Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?’

  Thus most invectively he pierceth through

  The body of the country, city, court,

  Yea, and of this our life, swearing that we

  Are mere usurpers, tyrants and what’s worse,

  To fright the animals and to kill them up

  In their assign’d and native dwelling-place.

  Duke Senior

  And did you leave him in this contemplation?

  Second Lord

  We did, my lord, weeping and commenting

  Upon the sobbing deer.

  Duke Senior

  Show me the place:

  I love to cope him in these sullen fits,

  For then he’s full of matter.

  First Lord

  I’ll bring you to him straight.

  Exeunt

  SCENE II. A ROOM IN THE PALACE.

  Enter Duke Frederick, with Lords

  Duke Frederick

  Can it be possible that no man saw them?

  It cannot be: some villains of my court

  Are of consent and sufferance in this.

  First Lord

  I cannot hear of any that did see her.

  The ladies, her attendants of her chamber,

  Saw her abed, and in the morning early

  They found the bed untreasured of their mistress.

  Second Lord

  My lord, the roynish clown, at whom so oft

  Your grace was wont to laugh, is also missing.

  Hisperia, the princess’ gentlewoman,

  Confesses that she secretly o’erheard

  Your daughter and her cousin much commend


  The parts and graces of the wrestler

  That did but lately foil the sinewy Charles;

  And she believes, wherever they are gone,

  That youth is surely in their company.

  Duke Frederick

  Send to his brother; fetch that gallant hither;

  If he be absent, bring his brother to me;

  I’ll make him find him: do this suddenly,

  And let not search and inquisition quail

  To bring again these foolish runaways.

  Exeunt

  SCENE III. BEFORE OLIVER’S HOUSE.

  Enter Orlando and Adam, meeting

  Orlando

  Who’s there?

  Adam

  What, my young master? O, my gentle master!

  O my sweet master! O you memory

  Of old Sir Rowland! why, what make you here?

  Why are you virtuous? why do people love you?

  And wherefore are you gentle, strong and valiant?

  Why would you be so fond to overcome

  The bonny priser of the humorous duke?

  Your praise is come too swiftly home before you.

  Know you not, master, to some kind of men

  Their graces serve them but as enemies?

  No more do yours: your virtues, gentle master,

  Are sanctified and holy traitors to you.

  O, what a world is this, when what is comely

  Envenoms him that bears it!

  Orlando

  Why, what’s the matter?

  Adam

  O unhappy youth!

  Come not within these doors; within this roof

  The enemy of all your graces lives:

  Your brother — no, no brother; yet the son —

  Yet not the son, I will not call him son

  Of him I was about to call his father —

  Hath heard your praises, and this night he means

  To burn the lodging where you use to lie

  And you within it: if he fail of that,

  He will have other means to cut you off.

  I overheard him and his practises.

  This is no place; this house is but a butchery:

  Abhor it, fear it, do not enter it.

  Orlando

  Why, whither, Adam, wouldst thou have me go?

  Adam

  No matter whither, so you come not here.

  Orlando

  What, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food?

  Or with a base and boisterous sword enforce

  A thievish living on the common road?

  This I must do, or know not what to do:

  Yet this I will not do, do how I can;

  I rather will subject me to the malice

  Of a diverted blood and bloody brother.

  Adam

  But do not so. I have five hundred crowns,

  The thrifty hire I saved under your father,

  Which I did store to be my foster-nurse

  When service should in my old limbs lie lame