Complete Plays, The (347 page)

’Twere good, yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain,
I’ll find a fairer face not wash’d to-day.

Biron

I’ll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.

Ferdinand

 
No devil will fright thee then so much as she.

Dumain

I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear.

Longaville

 
Look, here’s thy love: my foot and her face see.

Biron

O, if the streets were paved with thine eyes,
Her feet were much too dainty for such tread!

Dumain

O, vile! then, as she goes, what upward lies
The street should see as she walk’d overhead.

Ferdinand

But what of this? are we not all in love?

Biron

 
Nothing so sure; and thereby all forsworn.

Ferdinand

Then leave this chat; and, good Biron, now prove
Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn.

Dumain

Ay, marry, there; some flattery for this evil.

Longaville

 
O, some authority how to proceed;
Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil.

Dumain

Some salve for perjury.

Biron

’Tis more than need.
Have at you, then, affection’s men at arms.
Consider what you first did swear unto,
To fast, to study, and to see no woman;
Flat treason ’gainst the kingly state of youth.
Say, can you fast? your stomachs are too young;
And abstinence engenders maladies.
And where that you have vow’d to study, lords,
In that each of you have forsworn his book,
Can you still dream and pore and thereon look?
For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,
Have found the ground of study’s excellence
Without the beauty of a woman’s face?
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive;
They are the ground, the books, the academes
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire
Why, universal plodding poisons up
The nimble spirits in the arteries,
As motion and long-during action tires
The sinewy vigour of the traveller.
Now, for not looking on a woman’s face,
You have in that forsworn the use of eyes
And study too, the causer of your vow;
For where is any author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman’s eye?
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself
And where we are our learning likewise is:
Then when ourselves we see in ladies’ eyes,
Do we not likewise see our learning there?
O, we have made a vow to study, lords,
And in that vow we have forsworn our books.
For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,
In leaden contemplation have found out
Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes
Of beauty’s tutors have enrich’d you with?
Other slow arts entirely keep the brain;
And therefore, finding barren practisers,
Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil:
But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp’d:
Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockl’d snails;
Love’s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste:
For valour, is not Love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair:
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were temper’d with Love’s sighs;
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world:
Else none at all in ought proves excellent.
Then fools you were these women to forswear,
Or keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.
For wisdom’s sake, a word that all men love,
Or for love’s sake, a word that loves all men,
Or for men’s sake, the authors of these women,
Or women’s sake, by whom we men are men,
Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religion to be thus forsworn,
For charity itself fulfills the law,
And who can sever love from charity?

Ferdinand

Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!

Biron

Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;
Pell-mell, down with them! but be first advised,
In conflict that you get the sun of them.

Longaville

Now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by:
Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?

Ferdinand

And win them too: therefore let us devise
Some entertainment for them in their tents.

Biron

First, from the park let us conduct them thither;
Then homeward every man attach the hand
Of his fair mistress: in the afternoon
We will with some strange pastime solace them,
Such as the shortness of the time can shape;
For revels, dances, masks and merry hours
Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.

Ferdinand

Away, away! no time shall be omitted
That will betime, and may by us be fitted.

Biron

Allons! allons! Sow’d cockle reap’d no corn;
And justice always whirls in equal measure:
Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn;
If so, our copper buys no better treasure.

Exeunt

A
CT
V

S
CENE
I. T
HE
SAME
.

Enter Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel, and Dull

Holofernes

Satis quod sufficit.

Sir Nathaniel

I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange with- out heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the king’s, who is intituled, nomi- nated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.

Holofernes

Novi hominem tanquam te: his humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behavior vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.

Sir Nathaniel

A most singular and choice epithet.

Draws out his table-book

Holofernes

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-devise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak dout, fine, when he should say doubt; det, when he should pronounce debt,— d, e, b, t, not d, e, t: he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour vocatur nebor; neigh abbreviated ne. This is abhominable,— which he would call abbominable: it insinuateth me of insanie: anne intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.

Sir Nathaniel

Laus Deo, bene intelligo.

Holofernes

Bon, bon, fort bon, Priscian! a little scratch’d, ’twill serve.

Sir Nathaniel

Videsne quis venit?

Holofernes

Video, et gaudeo.

Enter Don Adriano de Armado, Moth, and Costard

Don Adriano de Armado

Chirrah!

To Moth

Holofernes

Quare chirrah, not sirrah?

Don Adriano de Armado

Men of peace, well encountered.

Holofernes

Most military sir, salutation.

Moth

[Aside to Costard]
 
They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

Costard

O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.

Moth

Peace! the peal begins.

Don Adriano de Armado

[To Holofernes]
 
Monsieur, are you not lettered?

Moth

Yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook. What is a, b, spelt backward, with the horn on his head?

Holofernes

Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

Moth

Ba, most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning.

Holofernes

Quis, quis, thou consonant?

Moth

The third of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or the fifth, if I.

Holofernes

I will repeat them,— a, e, i,—

Moth

The sheep: the other two concludes it,— o, u.

Don Adriano de Armado

Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit! snip, snap, quick and home! it rejoiceth my intellect: true wit!

Moth

Offered by a child to an old man; which is wit-old.

Holofernes

What is the figure? what is the figure?

Moth

Horns.

Holofernes

Thou disputest like an infant: go, whip thy gig.

Moth

Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy circum circa,— a gig of a cuckold’s horn.

Costard

An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread: hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discretion. O, an the heavens were so pleased that thou wert but my bastard, what a joyful father wouldst thou make me! Go to; thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers’ ends, as they say.

Holofernes

O, I smell false Latin; dunghill for unguem.

Don Adriano de Armado

Arts-man, preambulate, we will be singled from the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the top of the mountain?

Holofernes

Or mons, the hill.

Don Adriano de Armado

At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.

Holofernes

I do, sans question.

Don Adriano de Armado

Sir, it is the king’s most sweet pleasure and affection to congratulate the princess at her pavilion in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.

Holofernes

The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable, congruent and measurable for the afternoon: the word is well culled, chose, sweet and apt, I do assure you, sir, I do assure.

Don Adriano de Armado

Sir, the king is a noble gentleman, and my familiar, I do assure ye, very good friend: for what is inward between us, let it pass. I do beseech thee, remember thy courtesy; I beseech thee, apparel thy head: and among other important and most serious designs, and of great import indeed, too, but let that pass: for I must tell thee, it will please his grace, by the world, sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder, and with his royal finger, thus, dally with my excrement, with my mustachio; but, sweet heart, let that pass. By the world, I recount no fable: some certain special honours it pleaseth his greatness to impart to Armado, a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world; but let that pass. The very all of all is,— but, sweet heart, I do implore secrecy,— that the king would have me present the princess, sweet chuck, with some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antique, or firework. Now, understanding that the curate and your sweet self are good at such eruptions and sudden breaking out of mirth, as it were, I have acquainted you withal, to the end to crave your assistance.

Holofernes

Sir, you shall present before her the Nine Worthies. Sir, as concerning some entertainment of time, some show in the posterior of this day, to be rendered by our assistants, at the king’s command, and this most gallant, illustrate, and learned gentleman, before the princess; I say none so fit as to present the Nine Worthies.

Sir Nathaniel

Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?

Holofernes

Joshua, yourself; myself and this gallant gentleman, Judas Maccabaeus; this swain, because of his great limb or joint, shall pass Pompey the Great; the page, Hercules,—

Don Adriano de Armado

Pardon, sir; error: he is not quantity enough for that Worthy’s thumb: he is not so big as the end of his club.

Holofernes

Shall I have audience? he shall present Hercules in minority: his enter and exit shall be strangling a snake; and I will have an apology for that purpose.

Moth

An excellent device! so, if any of the audience hiss, you may cry ‘Well done, Hercules! now thou crushest the snake!’ that is the way to make an offence gracious, though few have the grace to do it.

Don Adriano de Armado

For the rest of the Worthies?—

Holofernes

I will play three myself.

Moth

Thrice-worthy gentleman!

Don Adriano de Armado

Shall I tell you a thing?

Holofernes

We attend.

Don Adriano de Armado

We will have, if this fadge not, an antique. I beseech you, follow.

Holofernes

Via, goodman Dull! thou hast spoken no word all this while.

Dull

Nor understood none neither, sir.

Holofernes

Allons! we will employ thee.

Dull

I’ll make one in a dance, or so; or I will play
On the tabour to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay.