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Long. O, some authority how to proceed;

Some tricks, some quillets,* how to cheat the devil.
Dum. Some salve for perjury.

Biron. O, '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 hath 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 prisons 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 beauteous tutors have enrich'd you with?
Other slow arts entirely keept 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 :‡

* Quidlibets, subtleties.

+ Remain in. When even the quick-hearing thief hears nothing.

Love's feeling is more soft and sensible,

Than are the tender horns of cockled* 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 aught 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 fulfils the law;

And who can sever love from charity?

King. 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.

Long. Now to plain dealing; lay these glozes by:

Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?

King. 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,

Fore-run fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.
King. Away, away! no time shall be omitted,

That will be time, 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.

* Inshelled.

[Exeunt.

+ Elliptically, for "garden of the Hesperides."

ACT V.

SCENE I-Another part of the same.

Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL.

Hol. Satis quod sufficit.

Nath. I praise God for you, Sir: your reasons* at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection,† audacioust without impudency, learned without opinion,§ and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the king's, who is intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.

Hol. Novi hominem tanquam te: His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed,|| his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked,** too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate,tt as I may call it. Nath. Á most singular and choice epithet.

[Takes out his table-book. Hol. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasms, such unsociable 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, nebour, neigh, abbreviated, ne: This is abhominable (which he would call abominable), it insinuateth me of insanie; Ne intelligis domine? to make frantic, lunatic.

Nath. Laus Deo, bone intelligo.

Hol. Bone?-bone, for benè: Priscian a little scratch'd; 'twill

serve.

Enter ARMADO, MOTH, and COSTARD.

Nath. Videsne quis venit?

Hol. Video, et gaudeo.

Arm. Chirra!

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Hol. Most military Sir, salutation.

[TO MOTH.

Moth. They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps. To COSTARD aside.

Cost. O, they have lived long in 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.

Arm. Monsieur [To HOL.], are you not letter'd? Moth. Yes, yes; he teaches boys the horn-book:What is a, b, spelt backward with a horn on his head?

* Discourses.

§ Obstinacy.

** Over-dressed.

† Affectation,
Polished.

Spirited, animated. ¶ Boastful.

++ Foreign. ++ Finical exactness. $$ Nameth

A small inflammable substance swallowed in a glass of wine.

Hol Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

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

Hol. Quis, quis, thou consonant?

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

Hol. I will repeat them, a, e, i.

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

Arm. Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venew* of wit: snip, snap, quick and home; it rejoiceth my intellect; true wit.

Moth. Offer'd by a child to an old man; which is wit-old.
Hol. What is the figure? what is the figure?

Moth. Horns.

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

Moth. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy circùm circà; a gig of a cuckold's horn!

Cost. 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 half-penny purse of wit, thou pigeonegg 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.

Hol. O, I smell false Latin; dunghill for unguem.

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

Hol. Or, mons, the hill.

Arm. At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.

Hol. I do, sans question.

Arm. 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.

Hol. The posterior of the day, most generous Sir, is liable, congruent, and measurable for the afternoon: the word is well cull'd, chose; sweet and apt, I do assure you, Sir, I do assure.

Arm. Sir, the king is a noble gentleman: and my familiar, I do assure you, very good friend:-For what is inwardt between us, let it pass: I do beseech thee, remember thy courtesy ;-I beseech thee, apparel thy head; and among other importunate 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

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me present the princess, sweet chuck, with some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antic, 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. Hol. Sir, you shall present before her the nine worthies.-Sir Nathaniel, as concerning some entertainment of time, some show in the posterior of this day, to be rendered by our assistance, 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.

Nath. Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?

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

Arm. Pardon, Sir, error: he is not quantity enough for that worthy's thumb: he is not so big as the end of his club.

Hol. 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.

Arm. For the rest of the worthies?

Hol. I will play three myself,

Moth. Thrice-worthy gentleman!

Arm. Shall I tell you a thing?

Hol. We attend.

Arm. We will have, if this fadge* not, an antic. I beseech you, follow.

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

Dull. Nor understood none neither, Sir.

Hol. Allons! we will employ thee.

Dull. I'll make one in a dance, or so; or I will play on the tabor to the worthies, and let them dance the hay.‡ Hol. Most dull, honest Dull: to our sport, away.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.-Another part of the same. Before the PRINCESS'S

Pavilion.

Enter the PRINCESS, KATHARINE, ROSALINE, and MARIA.

Prin. Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart.

If fairings come thus plentifully in:

A lady wall'd about with diamonds!

Look you, what I have from the loving king..

Ros. Madam, came nothing else along with that?
Prin. Nothing but this? yes, as much love in rhyme,

As would be crammed up in a sheet of paper,

* Suit.

† Come.

A sort of brawl-dance.

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