COR. And they are often tarred over with the surgery of our sheep; and would you have us kiss tar? The courtier's hands are perfumed with civet. TOUCH. Most shallow man! thou worms-meat, in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed! Learn of the wise, and perpend: civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd. COR. You have too courtly a wit for me: I'll rest. TOUCH. Wilt thou rest damned? God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee! thou art raw. COR. Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my harm, and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck. TOUCH. That is another simple sin in you, to bring the ewes and the rams together and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bellwether, and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to a crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou beest not damned for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how thou shouldst 'scape. COR. Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new mistress's brother. ... 64 God make incision . . . ran] A reference to blood-letting, which was the accepted method of treating diseases alike of mind or body. "Raw seems used in a double sense of "ignorant" and suffering from a flesh wound," which requires medical treatment. 60 70 Ros. Enter ROSALIND, with a paper, reading From the east to western Ind, No jewel is like Rosalind. Her worth, being mounted on the wind, Are but black to Rosalind. Let no face be kept in mind But the fair of Rosalind. TOUCH. I'll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners and suppers and sleeping-hours excepted: it is the right butter-women's rank to market. Ros. Out, fool! If a hart do lack a hind, Winter garments must be lined, way 88 rank] This, the original reading, has been much questioned, and the · numerous suggested substitutes for rank include rate, rack, canter, and others. It is clear that the sense required is that of a jog trot or ambling pace, such as characterises butter-women on their to market. Such a meaning may possibly be deducible from the women's practice of riding or walking in file or rank. Cf. Pettie's translation of Guazzo's, Civil Conversation (1586): "All the women in the towne runne thether of a ranke, as it were in procession." But much is to be said for the emendation rack, which was in common use for a horse's jogging method of progression. They that reap must sheaf and bind; Then to cart with Rosalind. Sweetest nut hath sourest rind, Such a nut is Rosalind. He that sweetest rose will find, Must find love's prick and Rosalind. This is the very false gallop of verses: why do you infect yourself with them? Ros. Peace, you dull fool! I found them on a tree. Ros. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar: then it will be the earliest fruit i' the country; for you 'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar. TOUCH. You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge. Ros. Peace! Enter CELIA, with a writing Here comes my sister, reading: stand aside. CEL. [reads] Why should this a desert be? For it is unpeopled? No; Tongues I'll hang on every tree, That shall civil sayings show: 103 false gallop] Cf. Nashe's Foure Letters, "I would trot a false gallop through the rest of his ragged verses.' The term technically means the jerky amble in which the horse puts the left foot before the right. Shakespeare, in 1 Hen. IV, III, i, 134-135, likens "mincing poetry" to the "forced gait of a shuffling nag." 108 earliest fruit] The medlar is now one of the latest fruits to ripen. The circumstance that it rots ere it ripens argues a premature precocity, which may justify Rosalind's quibbling argument. 100 110 Some, how brief the life of man "Twixt the souls of friend and friend: Or at every sentence end, Will I Rosalinda write, Teaching all that read to know Atalanta's better part, Sad Lucretia's modesty. Thus Rosalind of many parts 130 in little] The train of thought has here astrological significance, and "in little" probably refers to the "microcosm, the little world of man," which is a miniature reflection of the stars. “A picture in little," as in Hamlet, II, ii, 362, was a common synonym for a miniature painting. But there is no such reference here. 137 Atalanta's better part] Ovid declares himself unable to decide whether Atalanta more excelled in swiftness of foot or in beauty of face (Met., X, 562-563). In line 260, infra, reference is made to" Atalanta's heels," the first of her two distinctive characteristics. At this place Shakespeare probably had in mind the charm of feature which Ovid puts to her credit. 120 130 By heavenly synod was devised; To have the touches dearest prized. Ros. O most gentle pulpiter! what tedious homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried "Have patience, good people"! CEL. How now! back, friends! Shepherd, go off a little. Go with him, sirrah. TOUCH. Come, shepherd, let us make an honourable retreat; though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage. [Exeunt Corin and Touchstone. CEL. Didst thou hear these verses? Ros. O, yes, I heard them all, and more too; for some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear. CEL. That's no matter: the feet might bear the verses. Ros. Ay, but the feet were lame and could not bear themselves without the verse and therefore stood lamely in the verse. CEL. But didst thou hear without wondering how thy name should be hanged and carved upon these trees? Ros. I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you came; for look here what I found on a palm 145 pulpiter] i. e., preacher. This is Spedding's ingenious substitute for Jupiter of the Folios. But Rosalind has already made one appeal to Jupiter (II, iv, 1), and has twice called on Jove (II, iv, 56), while she makes a passing reference to the god at III, ii, 221, infra. Irrelevant use of these expletives of adjuration seems in keeping with her character, and the old reading may possibly be right. 140 149 159 |