The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [622]
OLIVER.
Charles, I thank thee for thy love to me, which thou shalt find I will most kindly requite. I had myself notice of my brother's purpose herein, and have by underhand means laboured to dissuade him from it; but he is resolute. I'll tell thee, Charles, it is the stubbornest young fellow of France; full of ambition, an envious emulator of every man's good parts, a secret and villainous contriver against me his natural brother. Therefore use thy discretion: I had as lief thou didst break his neck as his finger. And thou wert best look to't; for if thou dost him any slight disgrace, or if he do not mightily grace himself on thee, he will practise against thee by poison, entrap thee by some treacherous device, and never leave thee till he hath ta'en thy life by some indirect means or other; for, I assure thee, and almost with tears I speak it, there is not one so young and so villainous this day living. I speak but brotherly of him; but should I anatomize him to thee as he is, I must blush and weep, and thou must look pale and wonder.
CHARLES.
I am heartily glad I came hither to you. If he come to-morrow I'll give him his payment. If ever he go alone again, I'll never wrestle for prize more. And so, God keep your worship!
Exit
OLIVER. Farewell, good Charles. Now will I stir this gamester. I hope I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than he. Yet he's gentle; never school'd and yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved; and, indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprised. But it shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all. Nothing remains but that I kindle the boy thither, which now I'll go about. Exit
SCENE II.
A lawn before the DUKE'S palace
Enter ROSALIND and CELIA
CELIA.
I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry.
ROSALIND.
Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of; and would you yet I were merrier? Unless you could teach me to forget a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleasure.
CELIA.
Herein I see thou lov'st me not with the full weight that I love thee. If my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the Duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me, I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine; so wouldst thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously temper'd as mine is to thee.
ROSALIND.
Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to rejoice in yours.
CELIA.
You know my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to have; and, truly, when he dies thou shalt be his heir; for what he hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee again in affection. By mine honour, I will; and when I break that oath, let me turn monster; therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear Rose, be merry.
ROSALIND.
From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports.
Let me see; what think you of falling in love?
CELIA.
Marry, I prithee, do, to make sport withal; but love no man in good earnest, nor no further in sport neither than with safety of a pure blush thou mayst in honour come off again.
ROSALIND.
What shall be our sport, then?
CELIA.
Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.
ROSALIND.
I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily
misplaced; and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women.
CELIA.
'Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes
honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very
ill-favouredly.
ROSALIND.
Nay; now thou goest from Fortune's office to Nature's:
Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature.