Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things.
Rosaline
Not one word more, my maids; break off, break off.
Biron
By heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff!
Ferdinand
Farewell, mad wenches; you have simple wits.
Princess
Twenty adieus, my frozen Muscovits.
Exeunt Ferdinand, Lords, and Blackamoors
Are these the breed of wits so wonder’d at?
Boyet
Tapers they are, with your sweet breaths puff’d out.
Rosaline
Well-liking wits they have; gross, gross; fat, fat.
Princess
O poverty in wit, kingly-poor flout!
Will they not, think you, hang themselves tonight?
Or ever, but in vizards, show their faces?
This pert Biron was out of countenance quite.
Rosaline
O, they were all in lamentable cases!
The king was weeping-ripe for a good word.
Princess
Biron did swear himself out of all suit.
Maria
Dumain was at my service, and his sword:
No point, quoth I; my servant straight was mute.
Katharine
Lord Longaville said, I came o’er his heart;
And trow you what he called me?
Princess
Qualm, perhaps.
Katharine
Yes, in good faith.
Princess
Go, sickness as thou art!
Rosaline
Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps.
But will you hear? the king is my love sworn.
Princess
And quick Biron hath plighted faith to me.
Katharine
And Longaville was for my service born.
Maria
Dumain is mine, as sure as bark on tree.
Boyet
Madam, and pretty mistresses, give ear:
Immediately they will again be here
In their own shapes; for it can never be
They will digest this harsh indignity.
Princess
Will they return?
Boyet
They will, they will, God knows,
And leap for joy, though they are lame with blows:
Therefore change favours; and, when they repair,
Blow like sweet roses in this summer air.
Princess
How blow? how blow? speak to be understood.
Boyet
Fair ladies mask’d are roses in their bud;
Dismask’d, their damask sweet commixture shown,
Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown.
Princess
Avaunt, perplexity! What shall we do,
If they return in their own shapes to woo?
Rosaline
Good madam, if by me you’ll be advised,
Let’s, mock them still, as well known as disguised:
Let us complain to them what fools were here,
Disguised like Muscovites, in shapeless gear;
And wonder what they were and to what end
Their shallow shows and prologue vilely penn’d
And their rough carriage so ridiculous,
Should be presented at our tent to us.
Boyet
Ladies, withdraw: the gallants are at hand.
Princess
Whip to our tents, as roes run o’er land.
Exeunt Princess, Rosaline, Katharine, and Maria
Re-enter Ferdinand, Biron, Longaville, and Dumain, in their proper habits
Ferdinand
Fair sir, God save you! Where’s the princess?
Boyet
Gone to her tent. Please it your majesty
Command me any service to her thither?
Ferdinand
That she vouchsafe me audience for one word.
Boyet
I will; and so will she, I know, my lord.
Exit
Biron
This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease,
And utters it again when God doth please:
He is wit’s pedler, and retails his wares
At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;
And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,
Have not the grace to grace it with such show.
This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve;
Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve;
A’ can carve too, and lisp: why, this is he
That kiss’d his hand away in courtesy;
This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,
That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice
In honourable terms: nay, he can sing
A mean most meanly; and in ushering
Mend him who can: the ladies call him sweet;
The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet:
This is the flower that smiles on every one,
To show his teeth as white as whale’s bone;
And consciences, that will not die in debt,
Pay him the due of honey-tongued Boyet.
Ferdinand
A blister on his sweet tongue, with my heart,
That put Armado’s page out of his part!
Biron
See where it comes! Behavior, what wert thou
Till this madman show’d thee? and what art thou now?
Re-enter the Princess, ushered by Boyet, Rosaline, Maria, and Katharine
Ferdinand
All hail, sweet madam, and fair time of day!
Princess
‘Fair’ in ‘all hail’ is foul, as I conceive.
Ferdinand
Construe my speeches better, if you may.
Princess
Then wish me better; I will give you leave.
Ferdinand
We came to visit you, and purpose now
To lead you to our court; vouchsafe it then.
Princess
This field shall hold me; and so hold your vow:
Nor God, nor I, delights in perjured men.
Ferdinand
Rebuke me not for that which you provoke:
The virtue of your eye must break my oath.
Princess
You nickname virtue; vice you should have spoke;
For virtue’s office never breaks men’s troth.
Now by my maiden honour, yet as pure
As the unsullied lily, I protest,
A world of torments though I should endure,
I would not yield to be your house’s guest;
So much I hate a breaking cause to be
Of heavenly oaths, vow’d with integrity.
Ferdinand
O, you have lived in desolation here,
Unseen, unvisited, much to our shame.
Princess
Not so, my lord; it is not so, I swear;
We have had pastimes here and pleasant game:
A mess of Russians left us but of late.
Ferdinand
How, madam! Russians!
Princess
Ay, in truth, my lord;
Trim gallants, full of courtship and of state.
Rosaline
Madam, speak true. It is not so, my lord:
My lady, to the manner of the days,
In courtesy gives undeserving praise.
We four indeed confronted were with four
In Russian habit: here they stay’d an hour,
And talk’d apace; and in that hour, my lord,
They did not bless us with one happy word.
I dare not call them fools; but this I think,
When they are thirsty, fools would fain have drink.
Biron
This jest is dry to me. Fair gentle sweet,
Your wit makes wise things foolish: when we greet,
With eyes best seeing, heaven’s fiery eye,
<
br /> By light we lose light: your capacity
Is of that nature that to your huge store
Wise things seem foolish and rich things but poor.
Rosaline
This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye,—
Biron
I am a fool, and full of poverty.
Rosaline
But that you take what doth to you belong,
It were a fault to snatch words from my tongue.
Biron
O, I am yours, and all that I possess!
Rosaline
All the fool mine?
Biron
I cannot give you less.
Rosaline
Which of the vizards was it that you wore?
Biron
Where? when? what vizard? why demand you this?
Rosaline
There, then, that vizard; that superfluous case
That hid the worse and show’d the better face.
Ferdinand
We are descried; they’ll mock us now downright.
Dumain
Let us confess and turn it to a jest.
Princess
Amazed, my lord? why looks your highness sad?
Rosaline
Help, hold his brows! he’ll swoon! Why look you pale?
Sea-sick, I think, coming from Muscovy.
Biron
Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury.
Can any face of brass hold longer out?
Here stand I lady, dart thy skill at me;
Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout;
Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance;
Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit;
And I will wish thee never more to dance,
Nor never more in Russian habit wait.
O, never will I trust to speeches penn’d,
Nor to the motion of a schoolboy’s tongue,
Nor never come in vizard to my friend,
Nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper’s song!
Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical; these summer-flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation:
I do forswear them; and I here protest,
By this white glove;— how white the hand, God knows!—
Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express’d
In russet yeas and honest kersey noes:
And, to begin, wench,— so God help me, la!—
My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.
Rosaline
Sans sans, I pray you.
Biron
Yet I have a trick
Of the old rage: bear with me, I am sick;
I’ll leave it by degrees. Soft, let us see:
Write, ‘Lord have mercy on us’ on those three;
They are infected; in their hearts it lies;
They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes;
These lords are visited; you are not free,
For the Lord’s tokens on you do I see.
Princess
No, they are free that gave these tokens to us.
Biron
Our states are forfeit: seek not to undo us.
Rosaline
It is not so; for how can this be true,
That you stand forfeit, being those that sue?
Biron
Peace! for I will not have to do with you.
Rosaline
Nor shall not, if I do as I intend.
Biron
Speak for yourselves; my wit is at an end.
Ferdinand
Teach us, sweet madam, for our rude transgression
Some fair excuse.
Princess
The fairest is confession.
Were not you here but even now disguised?
Ferdinand
Madam, I was.
Princess
And were you well advised?
Ferdinand
I was, fair madam.
Princess
When you then were here,
What did you whisper in your lady’s ear?
Ferdinand
That more than all the world I did respect her.
Princess
When she shall challenge this, you will reject her.
Ferdinand
Upon mine honour, no.
Princess
Peace, peace! forbear:
Your oath once broke, you force not to forswear.
Ferdinand
Despise me, when I break this oath of mine.
Princess
I will: and therefore keep it. Rosaline,
What did the Russian whisper in your ear?
Rosaline
Madam, he swore that he did hold me dear
As precious eyesight, and did value me
Above this world; adding thereto moreover
That he would wed me, or else die my lover.
Princess
God give thee joy of him! the noble lord
Most honourably doth unhold his word.
Ferdinand
What mean you, madam? by my life, my troth,
I never swore this lady such an oath.
Rosaline
By heaven, you did; and to confirm it plain,
You gave me this: but take it, sir, again.
Ferdinand
My faith and this the princess I did give:
I knew her by this jewel on her sleeve.
Princess
Pardon me, sir, this jewel did she wear;
And Lord Biron, I thank him, is my dear.
What, will you have me, or your pearl again?
Biron
Neither of either; I remit both twain.
I see the trick on’t: here was a consent,
Knowing aforehand of our merriment,
To dash it like a Christmas comedy:
Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany,
Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick,
That smiles his cheek in years and knows the trick
To make my lady laugh when she’s disposed,
Told our intents before; which once disclosed,
The ladies did change favours: and then we,
Following the signs, woo’d but the sign of she.
Now, to our perjury to add more terror,
We are again forsworn, in will and error.
Much upon this it is: and might not you
To Boyet
Forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue?
Do not you know my lady’s foot by the squier,
And laugh upon the apple of her eye?
And stand between her back, sir, and the fire,
Holding a trencher, jesting merrily?
You put our page out: go, you are allow’d;
Die when you will, a smock shall be your shroud.
You leer upon me, do you? there’s an eye
Wounds like a leaden sword.
Boyet
Full merrily
Hath this brave manage, this career, been run.
Biron
Lo, he is tilting straight! Peace! I have done.
Enter Costard
Welcome, pure wit! thou partest a fair fray.
Costard
O Lord, sir, they would know
Whether the three Worthies shall come in or no.
Biron
What, are there but three?
Costard
No, sir; but it is vara fine,
For every one pursents three.
Biron
And three times thrice is nine.
Costard
Not so, sir; under correction, sir; I hope it is not so. You cannot beg us, sir, I can assure you, sir we know what we know: I hope, sir, three times thrice, sir,—
Biron
Is not nine.
Costard
Under correction, sir, we know whereuntil it doth am
ount.
Biron
By Jove, I always took three threes for nine.
Costard
O Lord, sir, it were pity you should get your living by reckoning, sir.
Biron
How much is it?
Costard
O Lord, sir, the parties themselves, the actors, sir, will show whereuntil it doth amount: for mine own part, I am, as they say, but to parfect one man in one poor man, Pompion the Great, sir.
Biron
Art thou one of the Worthies?
Costard
It pleased them to think me worthy of Pompion the Great: for mine own part, I know not the degree of the Worthy, but I am to stand for him.
Biron
Go, bid them prepare.
Costard
We will turn it finely off, sir; we will take some care.
Exit
Ferdinand
Biron, they will shame us: let them not approach.
Biron
We are shame-proof, my lord: and tis some policy
To have one show worse than the king’s and his company.
Ferdinand
I say they shall not come.
Princess
Nay, my good lord, let me o’errule you now:
That sport best pleases that doth least know how:
Where zeal strives to content, and the contents
Dies in the zeal of that which it presents:
Their form confounded makes most form in mirth,
When great things labouring perish in their birth.
Biron
A right description of our sport, my lord.
Enter Don Adriano De Armado
Don Adriano de Armado
Anointed, I implore so much expense of thy royal sweet breath as will utter a brace of words.
Converses apart with Ferdinand, and delivers him a paper
Princess
Doth this man serve God?
Biron
Why ask you?
Princess
He speaks not like a man of God’s making.
Don Adriano de Armado
That is all one, my fair, sweet, honey monarch; for, I protest, the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical; too, too vain, too too vain: but we will put it, as they say, to fortuna de la guerra. I wish you the peace of mind, most royal couplement!
Exit
Ferdinand
Here is like to be a good presence of Worthies. He presents Hector of Troy; the swain, Pompey the Great; the parish curate, Alexander; Armado’s page, Hercules; the pedant, Judas Maccabaeus:
And if these four Worthies in their first show thrive,
These four will change habits, and present the other five.
Biron
There is five in the first show.
Ferdinand
You are deceived; ’tis not so.
Biron
The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool and the boy:—
Abate throw at novum, and the whole world again
Cannot pick out five such, take each one in his vein.
Ferdinand
The ship is under sail, and here she comes amain.
Enter Costard, for Pompey
Complete Plays, The Page 280