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 cockled snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste:
For valour, is not love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides ?1
Subtile 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
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.2
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 woman'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 ;3
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?

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 advis'd,
In conflict that you get the sun of them.4

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!—Śow'd cockle reap'd no

ACT V.

Enter Ho

SCENE I. Another part of the same.
LOFERNES, 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, audaci ous 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,1° too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it. Nath. A 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 fantastical phantasms, such insociable and pointdevise11 companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak, doubt, 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 bene: Priscian a little scratch'd; 'twill serve.

Enter ARMADO, MOTH, and COSTARD.
Nath. Videsne quis venit
Hol. Video, et gaudeo.

Arm. Chirra!

[TO MOTH.

Hol. Quare Chirra, not sirrah? Arm. Men of peace, well encounter'd. Hol. Most military sir, salutation. 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-basket12 of words! I marvel, thy master hath not eaten thee for a word: for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus :13 thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.14

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?

Hol. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

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

Shakspeare intends to obtain for his vicar, but he has loquial excellence. It is very difficult to add any thing here put into his mouth a finished representation of colto his character of the school-master's table talk, and perhaps all the precepts of Castiglione will scarcely be found to comprehend a rule for conversation so justly delineated, so widely dilated, and so nicely limited.'

Reason, here signifies discourse; audacious is used in a good sense for spirited, animated, confident; aƒfection is affectation; opinion is obstinacy, opiniatrete.

8 Filed is polished.

9 Thrasonical is vainglorious, boastful.

10 Picked, piked, or picket, neat, spruce, over nice; that is, too nice in his dress. The substantive is used by Ben Johnson in his Discoveries: Pickedness for nicety in dress.

11 A common expression for exact, precise, or finical.

12 i. e. the refuse of words. The refuse meat of fami lies was put into a basket, and given to the poor, in Shakspeare's time.

13 This word, whencesoever it comes, is often men tioned as the longest word known.

14 A flap-dragon was some small combustible body set on fire and put afloat in a glass of liquor. It was an act of dexterity in the toper to swallow it without burn.

Hol. Quis, quis, thou consonant?

Hol. Joshua, yourself; myself, or this gallant

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

Moth. The sheep: the other two concludes it; o, u. Arm. No 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. Offered 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 circum circa; 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 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.

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-house 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 measureable 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 inward 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 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?

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.

I

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. beseech you, follow.

Hol. Via, 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 thus come 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 cramm'd up in a sheet of paper,
Writ on both sides the leaf, margent and all;
That he was fain to seal on Cupid's name.

Ros. That was the way to make his god-head wax:10

For he hath been five thousand years a boy.
Kath. Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too.
Ros. You'll ne'er be friends with him; he kill'ð
your sister.

Kath. He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy
And so she died: had she been light like you,
Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit,
She might have been a grandam ere she died:
And so may you; for a light heart lives long.
Ros. What's your dark meaning, mouse,'
1 of this

light word?

9 An Italian exclamation, signifying Courage! Come

10 Grow.

11 This was a term of endearment formerly.

12 Snuff is here used equivocally for anger, and the

13 A set is a term at tennis for a game.

With visages display'd, to talk and greet.

Ros. But shall we dance, if they desire us to't? Prin. No; to the death, we will not move a foot: Nor to their penn'd speech render we no grace; But, while 'tis spoke, each turn away her face. Boyet. Why, that contempt will kill the speaker's heart,

And quite divorce his memory from his part.

Prin. Therefore I do it: and, I make no doubt, The rest will ne'er come in, if he be out. There's no such sport, as sport by sport o'erthrown; To make theirs ours, and ours none but our own: So shall we stay, mocking intended game; And they, well mock'd, depart away with shame. [Trumpets sound within. Boyet. The trumpet sounds; be mask'd, the maskers come. [The Ladies mask.

Enter the King, BIRON, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN, in Russian habits, and masked; MOTH, Musicians, and Attendants.

Moth. All hail, the richest beauties on the earth! Boyet. Beauties no richer than rich taffata.' Moth. A holy parcel of the fairest dames,

[The ladies turn their backs to him. That ever turn'd their—backs-to mortal views! Biron. Their eyes, villain, their eyes. Moth. That ever turn'd their eyes to mortal views!

Out

Ros. What would these strangers? know their minds, Boyet:

If they do speak our language, 'tis our will
That some plain man recount their purposes:
Know what they would.

Boyet. What would you with the princess?
Biron. Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.
Ros. What would they, say they?
Boyet. Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.
Ros. Why, that they have; and bid them so

be gone.
Boyet. She says, you have it, and you may

gone.

Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face, That we, like savages, may worship it.

Ros. My face is but a moon, and clouded too. King. Blessed are clouds, to do as such clouds do! Vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine3 (Those clouds remov'd) upon our wat❜ry eyne.

Ros. O vain petitioner! beg a greater matter; Thou now request'st but moonshine in the water. King. Then in our measure vouchsafe but one change;

Thou bid'st me beg; this begging is not strange. Ros. Play, music, then: nay, you must do it [Music plays. Not yet :-no dance :-thus change I like the moon. King. Will you not dance? How come you thus

soon.

estrang'd?

Ros. You took the moon at full; but now she's chang'd.

King. Yet still she is the moon, and I the man. The music plays; vouchsafe some motion to it.

Ros. Our ears vouchsafe it.

King.
But your legs should do it.
Ros. Since you are strangers and come here by

Ros.

chance, We'll not be nice : take hands ;-We will not dance. King. Why take we hands, then? Only to part friends:Court'sy, sweet hearts; and so the measure ends. King. More measure of this measure; be not nice. Ros. We can afford no more at such a price. King. Prize you yourselves; What buys your company?

Ros. Your absence only. King.

That can never be.

Twice to your visor, and half once to you!
Ros. Then cannot we be bought and so adieu;

King. If you deny to dance, let's hold more chat.
Ros. In private then.
King.

I am best pleas'd with that. [They converse apart. Biron. White-handed mistress, one sweet word

with thee.

be

King. Say to her we have measur'd many miles, To tread a measure with her on this grass. Boyet. They say that they have measur'd many a mile,

To tread a measure2 with

you on this grass. Ros. It is not so: ask them how many inches Is in one mile: if they have measur'd many, The measure then of one is easily told.

Boyet. If,to come hither you have measur'd miles, And many miles, the princess bids you tell, How many inches do fill up one mile.

Biron. Tell her we measure them by weary steps. Boyet. She hears herself. Ros. How many weary steps, Of many weary miles you have o'ergone, Are number'd in the travel of one mile? Biron. We number nothing that we spend for you; Our duty is so rich, so infinite,

That we may do it still without accompt.

1 i. e. the taffata masks they wore.

2 A grave solemn dance, with slow and measured steps, like the minuet. As it was of so solemn a nature, it was performed at public entertainments in the Inns of Court; and it was not unusual, nor thought inconsistent, for the first characters in the law to bear a part in treading a measure. Sir Christopher Hatton was famous for it. When Queen Elizabeth asked an ambassador how

Dum. Will you vouchsafe with me to change a
word?
Mar. Name it.
Dum.
Mar.

Fair lady,-
Take that for your fair lady.

Dum.

Say you so? Fair lord,Please it you,

As much in private, and I'll bid adieu.

[They converse apart. Kath. What, was your visor made without a tongue?

Long. I know the reason, lady, why you ask. Kath. O, for your reason! quickly, sir; I long. Long. You have a double tongue within your mask, And would afford my speechless visor half. Kath. Veal, quoth the Dutchman ;-Is not veal a calf? Long. A calf, fair lady? Kath.

No, a fair lord calf. Long. Let's part the word.

he liked her ladies? It is hard,' said he, 'to judge of stars in the presence of the sun.'

4 To cog is to lie or cheat. Hence, to cog the dice.

5 The same joke occurs in 'Dr. Dodypoll.' 'Doct Hans, my very speciall friend; fait and trot me be right glad for see you reale. Hans. What, do you make a calfe of me, M. Doctor?