SCENE I.-An Orchard, near Oliver's House.

Enter ORLANDO and ADAM.

Orl. As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will, but poor a thousand crowns; and, as thou say'st, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit: for my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays

We print this passage as in the original-the folio of 1623. It has been subjected to various alterations. In the folio of 1632 ** poor a" is changed to "a poor." The speaker is quoting the will; and poor is the adjective to a thousand crons. If the bequest had been two thousand the change would not have been made; a is one. The modern editors must also change the easy conversational tone to a very precise mode of expression; and so they read-" As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion. He bequeathed me by will but a poor thousand crowns, and as thou say'st charged my brother," &c. The allusive construction is justified by "as thou say'st.'

Stays-detains.

me here at home unkept. For call you that keeping for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred better; for, besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage, and to that end riders dearly hired: but I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth; for the which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something that nature gave me his countenancea seems to take from me: he lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and, as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my education. This is it, Adam, that grieves me; and the spirit of my father, which I think is within me, begins to mutiny against this ser

a His countenance-his behaviour-his bearing. A countenance, says Johnson, may be good or bad.

b Mines-undermines-seeks to destroy.

vitude: I will no longer endure it, though yet I know no wise remedy how to avoid it.

Enter OLIVER.

Adam. Yonder comes my master, your bro

ther.

Orl. Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me up.

Oli. Now, sir! what make you here?a Orl. Nothing: I am not taught to make anything.

Oli. What mar you, then, sir?

Orl. Marry, sir, I am helping you to mar that which God made, a poor unworthy brother of yours, with idleness.

Oli. Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain? Orl. I am no villain: I am the youngest son of sir Rowland de Bois; he was my father; and he is thrice a villain that says such a father begot villains: Wert thou not my brother, I would not take this hand from thy throat till this other had pulled out thy tongue for saying so; thou hast railed on thyself.

Adam. Sweet masters, be patient; for your father's remembrance, be at accord. Oli. Let me go, I say.

Orl. I will not, till I please: you shall hear me. My father charged you in his will to give me good education: you have trained me like a peasant, obscuring and hiding from me all

Orl. Shall I keep your hogs, and eat husks with them? What prodigal portion have I spent, that I should come to such penury?

Oli. Know you where you are, sir?

Orl. O, sir, very well: here in your orchard. Oli. Know you before whom, sir?

Orl. Ay, better than him I am before knows me. I know you are my eldest brother; and, in the gentle condition of blood, you should so know me: The courtesy of nations allows you my better, in that you are the first-born; but the same tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us: I have as much of my father in me, as you; albeit, I confess, your coming before me is nearer to his reverence.

Oli. What, boy!

Orl. Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this.d

What make you here? We have the same play upon the word, between the King and Costard, in Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV., Sc. III. :

"

King.

What makes treason here?
Cost. Nay, it makes nothing, sir."

b Be naught awhile. In Ben Jonson's 'Tale of a Tub' we have

"Peace and be naught! I think the woman's phrensic." In his Bartholomew Fair' we find," Leave the bottle behind you, and be curst awhile." There are many examples in the old dramatists which clearly show that be naught or be nought was a petty malediction; and thus Oliver says no more than-be better employed, and be hang'd to you. This is the substance of Gifford's sensible note upon the passage in Bartholomew Fair.' Orlando receives be naught in the sense of be dissipated; and refers to the parable of the Prodigal Son.

• Him in the original. The ordinary reading is he. It is mere pedantry to correct, as the phrase is, these grammatical errors in the use of the personal pronoun.

d When Orlando says "nearer to his reverence," Oliver is offended by the sarcastic employment of a word which is used to denote the condition of an aged man,-as in Much Ado About Nothing, "Knavery cannot hide himself in such reverence." He retorts by calling Orlando "boy;" upon which the younger either seizes him, or makes a threatening movement towards the after-seizure, in vindication of his manhood.

grows strong in me, and I will no longer endure it therefore allow me such exercises as may become a gentleman, or give me the poor allottery my father left me by testament; with that I will go buy my fortunes.

Oli. And what wilt thou do? beg, when that is spent? Well, sir, get you in: I will not long be troubled with you: you shall have some part of your will: I pray you, leave me.

Orl. I will no further offend you than becomes me for my good.

Oli. Get you with him, you old dog.

Adam. Is old dog my reward? Most true, I have lost my teeth in your service.-God be with my old master! he would not have spoke such a word. [Exeunt ORLANDO and ADAM.

Oli. Is it even so? begin you to grow upon me? I will physic your rankness, and yet give no thousand crowns neither. Holla, Dennis!

Enter DENNIS.

Den. Calls your worship?

Oli. Was not Charles, the duke's wrestler, here to speak with me?

Den. So please you, he is here at the door, and importunes access to you.

Oli. Call him in. [Exit DENNIS.]—'T will be a good way; and to-morrow the wrestling is.

Enter CHARLES.

Cha. Good morrow to your worship.

Oli. Good monsieur Charles !-what's the new news at the new court?

Cha. There's no news at the court, sir, but the old news: that is, the old duke is banished by his younger brother the new duke; and

a Villain. We have here the two meanings of the word. Oliver uses it in the sense of worthless fellow; Orlando in that of one of mean birth,—the original sense.

Oli. Can you tell, if Rosalind, the duke's daughter, be banished with her father?

Cha. O, no; for the duke's daughter, her cousin, so loves her, being ever from their cradles bred together, that she would have followed her exile, or have died to stay behind her. She is at the court, and no less beloved of her uncle than his own daughter; and never two ladies loved as they do.

Oli. Where will the old duke live?

Cha. They say he is already in the forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England: they say many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.'

Oli. What, you wrestle to-morrow before the new duke?

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.

Cha. 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.

Oli. 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 schooled 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.

tle for my credit; and he that escapes me without some broken limb shall acquit him well. Your brother is but young, and tender; and, for your love, I would be loth to foil him, as I must, for my own honour, if he come in: therefore, out of my love to you, I came hither to acquaint you withal; that either you might stay him from his intendment, or brook such disgrace well as he shall run into; in that it is a thing of his own search, and altogether against my will.

Oli. 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

⚫ See Introductory Notice.

Enter ROSALIND and CELIA.

Cel. I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be

merry.

Ros. 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.

Cel. 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.

Ros. Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to rejoice in yours.

Cel. 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.

Ros. From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports: let me see;-what think you of falling in love?

Cel. 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. Ros. What shall be our sport then?

Cel. Let us sit and mock the good housewife, Fortune, from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally."

Ros. 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.

Cel. "T is true: for those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favour'dly.

Ros. Nay, now thou goest from fortune's office to nature's: fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of nature.

Enter TOUCHSTONE.

Cel. No? When nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by fortune fall into the fire? Though nature hath given us wit to flout at fortune, hath not fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument?

Ros. Indeed, there is fortune too hard for nature; when fortune makes nature's natural the cutter off of nature's wit.

Cel. Peradventure, this is not fortune's work neither, but nature's; who perceiving our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, hath sent this natural for our whetstone: for always the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits?How now, wit? whither wander you?

Ros. Where learned you that oath, fool? Touch. Of a certain knight, that swore by his honour they were good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught: now, I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught, and the mustard was good; and yet was not the knight forsworn.a

Cel. How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge?

Ros. Ay, marry; now unmuzzle your wisdom. Touch. Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave.

Cel. By our beards, if we had them, thou art. Touch. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were but if you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn: no more was this knight, swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard.

Cel. Prithee, who is 't that thou mean'st? Touch. One that old Frederick, your father, loves.

Cel. My father's love is enough to honour him enough: speak no more of him; you'll be whipp'd for taxation, one of these days.

Touch. The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely, what wise men do foolishly.

Cel. By my troth, thou say'st true; for since the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show. Here comes monsieur Le Beau.

Enter LE BEAU.

Ros. With his mouth full of news. Cel. Which he will put on us, as pigeons feed their young.

Ros. Then shall we be news-cramm'd.

Cel. All the better; we shall be the more marketable. Bon jour, monsieur Le Beau: What's the news?

Le Beau. Fair princess, you have lost much

Cel. Sport? Of what colour?

Le Beau. What colour, madam? How shall I answer you?

a When Richard III. (Act Iv., Sc. Iv.) swears" by my George, my garter, and my crown," Queen Elizabeth says he swears by nothing: for this is no oath."

Celia asks a question, to which the clown replies. The usurping duke in the last scene is called duke Frederick. In the original this speech is given to Rosalind; but we have to choose between two mistakes-either that Shakspere in the last act forgot the name of the duke of the first act, or that the printer gave a speech of Celia to Rosalind, We prefer to regulate the text upon the minor error. • Taxation-satire.