The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [272]
ROSALINE.
Then was Venus like her mother; for her father is but grim.
BOYET.
Do you hear, my mad wenches?
MARIA.
No.
BOYET.
What, then; do you see?
MARIA.
Ay, our way to be gone.
BOYET.
You are too hard for me. Exeunt
ACT III.
SCENE I. The park
Enter ARMADO and MOTH
ARMADO.
Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.
[MOTH sings Concolinel]
ARMADO.
Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years, take this key, give
enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately hither; I must
employ him in a letter to my love.
MOTH.
Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?
ARMADO.
How meanest thou? Brawling in French?
MOTH.
No, my complete master; but to jig off a tune at the tongue's
end, canary to it with your feet, humour it with turning up your
eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the
throat, as if you swallowed love with singing love, sometime
through the nose, as if you snuff'd up love by smelling love,
with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of your eyes, with
your arms cross'd on your thin-belly doublet, like a rabbit on a
spit, or your hands in your pocket, like a man after the old
painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away.
These are complements, these are humours; these betray nice
wenches, that would be betrayed without these; and make them men
of note- do you note me?- that most are affected to these.
ARMADO.
How hast thou purchased this experience?
MOTH.
By my penny of observation.
ARMADO.
But O- but O-
MOTH.
The hobby-horse is forgot.
ARMADO.
Call'st thou my love 'hobby-horse'?
MOTH.
No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love
perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?
ARMADO.
Almost I had.
MOTH.
Negligent student! learn her by heart.
ARMADO.
By heart and in heart, boy.
MOTH.
And out of heart, master; all those three I will prove.
ARMADO.
What wilt thou prove?
MOTH.
A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, upon the
instant. By heart you love her, because your heart cannot come by
her; in heart you love her, because your heart is in love with
her; and out of heart you love her, being out of heart that you
cannot enjoy her.
ARMADO.
I am all these three.
MOTH.
And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.
ARMADO.
Fetch hither the swain; he must carry me a letter.
MOTH.
A message well sympathiz'd- a horse to be ambassador for an ass.
ARMADO.
Ha, ha, what sayest thou?
MOTH.
Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse, for he is
very slow-gaited. But I go.
ARMADO.
The way is but short; away.
MOTH.
As swift as lead, sir.
ARMADO.
The meaning, pretty ingenious?
Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?
MOTH.
Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.
ARMADO.
I say lead is slow.
MOTH.
You are too swift, sir, to say so:
Is that lead slow which is fir'd from a gun?
ARMADO.
Sweet smoke of rhetoric!
He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that's he;
I shoot thee at the swain.
MOTH.
Thump, then, and I flee. Exit
ARMADO. A most acute juvenal; volable and free of grace!
By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face;
Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.
My herald is return'd.
Re-enter MOTH with COSTARD
MOTH.
A wonder, master! here's a costard broken in a shin.
ARMADO.
Some enigma, some riddle; come, thy l'envoy; begin.
COSTARD.
No egma, no riddle, no l'envoy; no salve in the mail, sir.
O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain; no l'envoy, no l'envoy; no
salve, sir, but a plantain!
ARMADO.
By virtue thou enforcest laughter; thy silly thought, my
spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous
smiling. O, pardon me, my stars! Doth the inconsiderate take
salve for l'envoy, and the word 'l'envoy' for a salve?
MOTH.
Do the wise think them other? Is not l'envoy a salve?
ARMADO.
No, page; it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain
Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.
I will example