on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies
on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the name of
Rosalind. If I could meet that fancy-monger, I would
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give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the
quotidian of love upon him.
ORLANDO I am he that is so love-shaked. I pray you tell
me your remedy.
ROSALIND There is none of my uncle’s marks upon you.
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He taught me how to know a man in love; in which
cage of rushes I am sure you are not prisoner.
ORLANDO What were his marks?
ROSALIND A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye
and sunken, which you have not; an unquestionable
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spirit, which you have not; a beard neglected, which
you have not – but I pardon you for that, for simply
your having in beard is a younger brother’s revenue.
Then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet
unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied,
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and everything about you demonstrating a careless
desolation. But you are no such man: you are rather
point-device in your accoutrements, as loving yourself
than seeming the lover of any other.
ORLANDO Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe
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I love.
ROSALIND Me believe it! You may as soon make her that
you love believe it, which I warrant she is apter to do
than to confess she does. That is one of the points in
the which women still give the lie to their consciences.
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But in good sooth, are you he that hangs the verses on
the trees, wherein Rosalind is so admired?
ORLANDO I swear to thee youth, by the white hand of
Rosalind, I am that he, that unfortunate he.
ROSALIND But are you so much in love as your rhymes
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speak?
ORLANDO Neither rhyme nor reason can express how
much.
ROSALIND Love is merely a madness, and I tell you,
deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen
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do; and the reason why they are not so punished and
cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the
whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing it by
counsel.
ORLANDO Did you ever cure any so?
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ROSALIND Yes, one, and in this manner. He was to
imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every
day to woo me. At which time would I, being but a
moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable,
longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow,
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inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles, for every
passion something and for no passion truly
anything, as boys and women are for the most part
cattle of this colour; would now like him, now loathe
him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep
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for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from
his mad humour of love to a living humour of
madness, which was, to forswear the full stream of the
world and to live in a nook merely monastic. And thus
I cured him, and this way will I take upon me to wash
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your liver as clean as a sound sheep’s heart, that there
shall not be one spot of love in’t.
ORLANDO I would not be cured, youth.
ROSALIND I would cure you, if you would but call me
Rosalind and come every day to my cote and woo me.
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ORLANDO Now by the faith of my love, I will. Tell me
where it is.
ROSALIND Go with me to it, and I’ll show it you; and by
the way, you shall tell me where in the forest you live.
Will you go?
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ORLANDO With all my heart, good youth.
ROSALIND Nay, you must call me Rosalind. Come sister,
will you go? Exeunt.
3.3 Enter TOUCHSTONE, AUDREY and JAQUES behind.
TOUCHSTONE Come apace good Audrey. I will fetch up
your goats, Audrey. And how Audrey, am I the man
yet? Doth my simple feature content you?
AUDREY Your features? Lord warrant us! What
features?
5
TOUCHSTONE I am here with thee and thy goats, as the
most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the
Goths.
JAQUES [aside] O knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than
Jove in a thatched house!
10
TOUCHSTONE When a man’s verses cannot be
understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the
forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more
dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I
would the gods had made thee poetical.
15
AUDREY I do not know what ‘poetical’ is. Is it honest in
deed and word? Is it a true thing?
TOUCHSTONE No truly; for the truest poetry is the most
feigning, and lovers are given to poetry; and what they
swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign.
20
AUDREY Do you wish then that the gods had made me
poetical?
TOUCHSTONE I do truly. For thou swear’st to me thou
art honest. Now if thou wert a poet, I might have some
hope thou didst feign.
25
AUDREY Would you not have me honest?
TOUCHSTONE No truly, unless thou wert hard-
favoured; for honesty coupled to beauty is to have
honey a sauce to sugar.
JAQUES [aside] A material fool!
30
AUDREY Well, I am not fair, and therefore I pray the
gods make me honest.
TOUCHSTONE Truly, and to cast away honesty upon a
foul slut were to put good meat into an unclean dish.
AUDREY I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am
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foul.
TOUCHSTONE Well, praised be the gods for thy
foulness; sluttishness may come hereafter. But be it as
it may be, I will marry thee; and to that end I have
been with Sir Oliver Martext, the vicar of the next
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village, who hath promised to meet me in this place of
the forest and to couple us.
JAQUES [aside] I would fain see this meeting.
AUDREY Well, the gods give us joy!
TOUCHSTONE Amen. A man may, if he were of a fearful
45
heart, stagger in this attempt; for here we have no
temple but the wood, no assembly but horn-beasts.
But what though? Courage! As horns are odious, they
are necessary. It is said, many a man knows no end of
his goods. Right. Many a man has good horns and
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knows no end of them. Well, that is the dowry of his
wife, ’tis none of his own getting. Horns? Even so. Poor
men alone? No, no. The noblest deer hath them as
huge as the rascal. Is the single man therefore blessed?
No. As a walled town is more worthier than a village,
55
so is the forehead of a married man more honourable
than the bare brow of a bachelor; and by how much
defence is better than no skill, by so much is a horn
more precious than to want. Here comes Sir Oli
ver.
Enter SIR OLIVER MARTEXT.
Sir Oliver Martext, you are well met. Will you
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dispatch us here under this tree or shall we go with
you to your chapel?
SIR OLIVER Is there none here to give the woman?
TOUCHSTONE I will not take her on gift of any man.
SIR OLIVER Truly she must be given, or the marriage is
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not lawful.
JAQUES [advancing] Proceed, proceed. I’ll give her.
TOUCHSTONE Good even, good Master What-ye-call’t.
How do you sir? You are very well met. God ’ild you
for your last company. I am very glad to see you. Even
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a toy in hand here sir. Nay, pray be covered.
JAQUES Will you be married, Motley?
TOUCHSTONE As the ox hath his bow sir, the horse his
curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires,
and as pigeons bill, so wedlock would be nibbling.
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JAQUES And will you, being a man of your breeding, be
married under a bush like a beggar? Get you to
church, and have a good priest that can tell you what
marriage is. This fellow will but join you together as
they join wainscot; then one of you will prove a shrunk
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panel, and like green timber, warp, warp.
TOUCHSTONE [aside] I am not in the mind but I were
better to be married of him than of another, for he is
not like to marry me well; and not being well married,
it will be a good excuse for me hereafter to leave my
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wife.
JAQUES Go thou with me, and let me counsel thee.
TOUCHSTONE Come sweet Audrey, We must be married
or we must live in bawdry. Farewell good Master
Oliver. Not –
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O sweet Oliver,
O brave Oliver,
Leave me not behind thee:
but –
Wind away,
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Be gone, I say,
I will not to wedding with thee.
Exeunt Jaques, Touchstone and Audrey.
SIR OLIVER ’Tis no matter. Ne’er a fantastical knave of
them all shall flout me out of my calling. Exit.
3.4 Enter ROSALIND and CELIA.
ROSALIND Never talk to me, I will weep.
CELIA Do I prithee, but yet have the grace to consider
that tears do not become a man.
ROSALIND But have I not cause to weep?
CELIA As good cause as one would desire, therefore
5
weep.
ROSALIND His very hair is of the dissembling colour.
CELIA Something browner than Judas’s. Marry his
kisses are Judas’s own children.
ROSALIND I’faith his hair is of a good colour.
10
CELIA An excellent colour. Your chestnut was ever the
only colour.
ROSALIND And his kissing is as full of sanctity as the
touch of holy bread.
CELIA He hath bought a pair of cast lips of Diana. A
15
nun of winter’s sisterhood kisses not more
religiously, the very ice of chastity is in them.
ROSALIND But why did he swear he would come this
morning and comes not?
CELIA Nay certainly there is no truth in him.
20
ROSALIND Do you think so?
CELIA Yes, I think he is not a pick-purse nor a horse-
stealer, but for his verity in love, I do think him as
concave as a covered goblet or a worm-eaten nut.
ROSALIND Not true in love?
25
CELIA Yes, when he is in, but I think he is not in.
ROSALIND You have heard him swear downright he was.
CELIA ‘Was’ is not ‘is’; besides, the oath of a lover is no
stronger than the word of a tapster. They are both
the confirmer of false reckonings. He attends here in
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the forest on the Duke your father.
ROSALIND I met the Duke yesterday and had much
question with him. He asked me of what parentage I
was: I told him of as good as he, so he laughed and let
me go. But what talk we of fathers, when there is such
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a man as Orlando?
CELIA O that’s a brave man! He writes brave verses,
speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks
them bravely, quite traverse, athwart the heart of his
lover, as a puisny tilter that spurs his horse but on
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one side breaks his staff like a noble goose. But all’s
brave that youth mounts and folly guides. Who
comes here?
Enter CORIN.
CORIN Mistress and master, you have oft enquir’d
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 70
