Biron. Necessity will make us all forsworn
Three thousand times within this three years' space :

For every man with his affects is born;

Not by might master'd, but by special grace :

If I break faith, this word shall speak for me,
I am forsworn on mere necessity.-7

So to the laws at large I write my name: [Subscribes.
And he, that breaks them in the least degree,
Stands in attainder of eternal shame:

Suggestions are to others, as to me;
But, I believe, although I seem so loth,
I am the last that will last keep his oath.
But is there no quick recreation granted?9

King. Ay, that there is: our court, you know, is haunted
With a refined traveller of Spain;

A man in all the world's new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain :
One, whom the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish, like enchanting harmony;

A

man of complements, whom

whom right and wrong

Have chose as umpire of their mutiny :1
This child of fancy, that Armado hight,

For interim to our studies, shall relate,
In high-born words, the worth of many a knight
From tawny Spain, lost in the world's debate.
How you delight, my lords, I know not, I;
But I protest, I love to hear him lie,
And I will use him for my minstrelsy.2

Biron. Armado is a most illustrious wight,
A man of fire-new words, 3 fashion's own knight.

[7] Biron, amidst his extravagancies, speaks with great justness against the folly of vows. They are made without sufficient regard to the variations of life, and are therefore broken by some unforeseen necessity. They proceed commonly from a presumptuous confidence, and a false estimate of human power. JOHNSON. [8] Suggestions-Temptations. JOHNSON..

[9] Quick recreation-Lively sport, spritely diversion. JOHNSON. [1] This passage, I believe, means no more than that Don Armado was a man nicely versed in ceremonial distinctions, one who could distinguish in the most delicate questions of honour the exact boundaries of right and wrong. Compliment, in Shakspeare's time, did not signify, at least, did not only signify verbal civility, or phrases of courtesy, but, according to its original meaning, the trappings, or ornamental appendages of a character, in the same manner and on the same principles of speech with accomplishment Complement is, as Armado well expresses it, the varnish of a complete man. JOHNS.

[2] i. e. I will make a minstrel of him, whose occupation was to relate fabulous stories. DOUCE.

[3] i. e. (says an intelligent writer in the Edinburgh Magazine,) words newly coined, new from the forge. Fire new, new off the irons, and the Scot tish expression bren-new have all the same origin." STEEVENS.

Long. Costard the swain, and he, shall be our sport; And, so to study, three years is but short.

Enter DULL, with a letter, and COSTARD.

Dull. Which is the Duke's own person?
Biron. This, fellow; What would'st?

Dull. I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his grace's tharborough :4 but I would see his own person in flesh and blood.

Biron. This is he.

Dull. Signior Arme-Arme-commend you. There's villainy abroad; this letter will tell you more.

Cost. Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me. King. A letter from the magnificent Armado. Biron. How low soever the matter, I hope in God for high words.

Long. A high hope for a low having: God grant us patience!

Biron. To hear? or forbear hearing?

Long. To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately; or to forbear both.

Biron. Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb in the merriness.

Cost. The matter is to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta. The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner.5 Biron. In what manner?

Cost. In manner and form following, sir; all those three: I was seen with her in the manor house, sitting with her upon the form, and taken following her into the park; which, put together, is, in manner and form following. Now, sir, for the manner, it is the manner of a man to speak to a woman: for the form, in some form.

Biron. For the following, sir?

Cost. As it shall follow in my correction; And God

defend the right!

King. Will you hear this letter with attention ?
Biron. As we would hear an oracle.

[4] i. e. Thirdborough, a peace officer, alike in authority with a headboCost. Such is the simplicity of man to hoarken after the flesh.

King. [Reads.] Great deputy, the welkin's vicegerent, and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul's earth's God, and body's fostering patron,

Cost. Not a word of Costard yet.

King. So it is,

Cost. It may be so: but if he say it is so, he is, in tel

ling true, but so, so.

King. Peace.

Cost. -be to me, and every man that dares not fight! King. No words.

Cost. of other men's secrets, I beseech you. King. So it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About the sixth hour; when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper. So much for the time when: Now for the ground which; which, I mean, I walked upon: it is ycleped, thy park. Then for the place where; where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest : But to the place, where,-It standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted garden :6 There did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth.7 [Cost. Me.] that unletter'd small-knowing soul, [Cost. Me.] that shallow vassal, [Cost. Still me.] which, as I remember, hight Costard, [Cost. O me Cost !]sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established proclaimed edict and continent canon, withwith, with but with this I passion to say wherewith,

Cost. With a wench.

King. -with a child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman.

[6] Ancient gardens abounded with figures of which the lines intersected each other in many directions. STEEVENS.

[7] The base minnow of thy mirth, is the contemptible little object that contributes to thy entertainment. Shakspeare makes Coriolanus character. ize the tribunitian insolence of Sicinius, under the same figure :

Him I (as my ever-esteemed duty pricks me on) have sent to thee, to receive the meed of punishment, by thy sweet grace's officer, Antony Dull; a man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation.

Dull. Me, an't shall please you; I am Antony Dull, King. ForJaquenetta, (so is the weaker vessel called, which I apprehended with the aforesaid swain,) Ikeep her as a vessel of thy law's fury; and shall, at the least of thy sweet notice, bring her to trial. Thine, in all compliments of devoted and heart-burning heat of duty. DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO.

Biron. This is not so well as I looked for, but the best that ever I heard.

King. Ay, the best for the worst. But, sirrah, what say you to this?

Cost. Sir, I confess the wench.

King. Did you hear the proclamation?

Cost. I do confess much of the hearing it, but little of the marking of it.

King. It was proclaimed a year's imprisonment, to be taken with a wench.

Cost. I was taken with none, sir, I was taken with a damosel.

King. Well, it was proclaimed damosel.

Cost. This was no damosel neither, sir; she was a virgin.

King. It is so varied too; for it was proclaimed, virgin. Cost. If it were, I deny her virginity; I was taken with a maid.

King. This maid will not serve your turn, sir.
Cost. This maid will serve my turn, sir.

King. Sir, I will pronounce your sentence; You shall fast a week with bran and water.

Cost. I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge.

King. And Don Armado shall be your keeper.-
My lord Biron, see him deliver'd o'er.-
And go we, lords, to put in practice that

Which each to other hath so strongly sworn.
[Exe. King, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN.

Biron. I'll lay my head to any good man's hat, These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn.Sirrah, come on.

Cost. I suffer for the truth, sir: for true it is, I was ta

ken with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl; and therefore, Welcome the sour cup of prosperity! Affliction may one day smile again, and till then, Sit thee down, sorrow!

SCENE II.

[Exeunt.

Another part of the same. ARMADO'S House. Enter ARMADO and Мотн.

Arm. Boy, what sign is it, when a man of great spirit grows melancholy?

Moth. A great sign, sir, that he will look sad.

Arm. Why, sadness is one and the self-same thing, dear imp.8

Moth. No, no; O lord, sir, no.

Arm. How canst thou part sadness and melancholy, my tender juvenal?

Moth. By a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough senior.

Arm. Why tough senior? why tough senior?

Moth. Why tender juvenal? why tender juvenal? Arm. I spoke it, tender juvenal, as a congruent epitheton, appertaining to thy young days, which we may nominate tender.

Moth. And I, tough senior, as an appertinent title to your old time, which we may name tough.

Arm. Pretty, and apt.

Moth. How mean you, sir? I pretty, and my saying apt? or I apt, and my saying pretty?

Arm. Thou pretty, because little.

Moth. Little pretty, because little: Wherefore apt? Arm. And therefore apt, because quick.

Moth. Speak you this in my praise, master?

Arm. In thy condign praise.

Moth. I will praise an eel with the same praise.
Arm. What? that an eel is ingenious?

Moth. That an eel is quick.

[8] Imp was anciently a term of dignity. Lord Cromwell, in his last letter to Henry VIII. prays for the imp his son. It is now used only in contempt or abhorrence; perhaps in our author's time it was ambiguous, in which state it suits well with this dialogue. JOHNSON

The word literally means a graff, slip, scion, or sucker and by metonymy comes to be used for a boy or child. The imp, his son, is no more than his infant son. It is now set apart to signify young fiends; as the devil and his imps. Dr. Johnson was mistaken in supposing this a word of dignity. It occurs in The History of Celestina the Faire, 1596: "-the gentleman had three sonnes, very ungracious impes, and of a wicked nature." RITSON.