• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

NATHANIEL.

Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge, so it shall please

you to abrogate scurrility.

HOLOFERNES.

I Will something affect the letter, for it argues facility.

The preyful Princess pierc'd and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket.

Some say a sore; but not a sore till now made sore with shooting.

The dogs did yell; put el to sore, then sorel jumps from

thicket-

Or pricket sore, or else sorel; the people fall a-hooting.

If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores o' sorel.

Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but one more L.

NATHANIEL.

A rare talent!

DULL.

[Aside] If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent.

HOLOFERNES.

This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish

extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects,

ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions. These are begot in

the ventricle of memory, nourish'd in the womb of pia mater, and

delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in

those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.

NATHANIEL.

Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my

parishioners; for their sons are well tutor'd by you, and their

daughters profit very greatly under you. You are a good member of

the commonwealth.

HOLOFERNES.

Mehercle, if their sons be ingenious, they shall want

no instruction; if their daughters be capable, I will put it to

them; but, vir sapit qui pauca loquitur. A soul feminine saluteth us.

Enter JAQUENETTA and COSTARD

JAQUENETTA.

God give you good morrow, Master Person. HOLOFERNES. Master Person, quasi pers-one. And if one should be pierc'd which is the one? COSTARD. Marry, Master Schoolmaster, he that is likest to a hogshead. HOLOFERNES. Piercing a hogshead! A good lustre of conceit in a turf of earth; fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine; 'tis pretty; it is well. JAQUENETTA. Good Master Parson, be so good as read me this letter; it was given me by Costard, and sent me from Don Armado. I beseech you read it. HOLOFERNES. Fauste, precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra Ruminat- and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan! I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice: Venetia, Venetia, Chi non ti vede, non ti pretia. Old Mantuan, old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not, loves thee not- Ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa. Under pardon, sir, what are the contents? or rather as Horace says in his- What, my soul, verses? NATHANIEL. Ay, sir, and very learned. HOLOFERNES. Let me hear a staff, a stanze, a verse; lege, domine. NATHANIEL. [Reads] 'If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love? Ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vowed! Though to myself forsworn, to thee I'll faithful prove; Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed. Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes, Where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend. If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice; Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend; All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder; Which is to me some praise that I thy parts admire. Thy eye Jove's lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder, Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire. Celestial as thou art, O, pardon love this wrong, That singes heaven's praise with such an earthly tongue.' HOLOFERNES. You find not the apostrophas, and so miss the accent: let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified; but, for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret. Ovidius Naso was the man. And why, indeed, 'Naso' but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention? Imitari is nothing: so doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider. But, damosella virgin, was this directed to you? JAQUENETTA. Ay, sir, from one Monsieur Berowne, one of the strange queen's lords. HOLOFERNES. I will overglance the superscript: 'To the snow-white hand of the most beauteous Lady Rosaline.' I will look again on the intellect of the letter, for the nomination of the party writing to the person written