To ask the question!
BEROWNE You must not be so quick.
ROSALINE
’Tis long of you that spur me with such questions.
BEROWNE
Your wit’s too hot, it speeds too fast, ’twill tire.
ROSALINE Not till it leave the rider in the mire.
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BEROWNE What time o’day?
ROSALINE The hour that fools should ask.
BEROWNE Now fair befall your mask.
ROSALINE Fair fall the face it covers.
BEROWNE And send you many lovers.
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ROSALINE Amen, so you be none.
BEROWNE Nay, then will I be gone. [Leaves her.]
KING Madam, your father here doth intimate
The payment of a hundred thousand crowns,
Being but the one half of an entire sum
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Disbursed by my father in his wars.
But say that he or we – as neither have –
Received that sum, yet there remains unpaid
A hundred thousand more, in surety of the which
One part of Aquitaine is bound to us,
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Although not valued to the money’s worth.
If then the King your father will restore
But that one half which is unsatisfied,
We will give up our right in Aquitaine
And hold fair friendship with his majesty.
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But that, it seems, he little purposeth:
For here he doth demand to have repaid
A hundred thousand crowns, and not demands,
On payment of a hundred thousand crowns,
To have his title live in Aquitaine,
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Which we much rather had depart withal,
And have the money by our father lent,
Than Aquitaine, so gelded as it is.
Dear Princess, were not his requests so far
From reason’s yielding, your fair self should make
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A yielding ’gainst some reason in my breast
And go well satisfied to France again.
PRINCESS You do the King my father too much wrong
And wrong the reputation of your name,
In so unseeming to confess receipt
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Of that which hath so faithfully been paid.
KING I do protest I never heard of it.
And, if you prove it, I’ll repay it back
Or yield up Aquitaine.
PRINCESS We arrest your word.
Boyet, you can produce acquittances
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For such a sum from special officers
Of Charles, his father.
KING Satisfy me so.
BOYET So please your grace, the packet is not come
Where that and other specialties are bound.
Tomorrow you shall have a sight of them.
165
KING It shall suffice me; at which interview
All liberal reason I will yield unto.
Meantime, receive such welcome at my hand
As honour, without breach of honour, may
Make tender of to thy true worthiness.
170
You may not come, fair Princess, within my gates,
But here without you shall be so received
As you shall deem yourself lodged in my heart,
Though so denied fair harbour in my house.
Your own good thoughts excuse me, and farewell.
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Tomorrow shall we visit you again.
PRINCESS
Sweet health and fair desires consort your grace.
KING Thy own wish wish I thee in every place.
Exeunt the King, Longaville and Dumaine.
BEROWNE Lady, I will commend you to mine own heart.
ROSALINE Pray you, do my commendations; I would be
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glad to see it.
BEROWNE I would you heard it groan.
ROSALINE Is the fool sick?
BEROWNE Sick at the heart.
ROSALINE Alack, let it blood.
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BEROWNE Would that do it good?
ROSALINE My physic says ay.
BEROWNE Will you prick’t with your eye?
ROSALINE Non point, with my knife.
BEROWNE Now God save thy life.
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ROSALINE And yours from long living.
BEROWNE I cannot stay thanksgiving. Exit.
Enter DUMAINE.
DUMAINE
Sir, I pray you a word. What lady is that same?
BOYET The heir of Alençon, Katherine her name.
DUMAINE A gallant lady. Monsieur, fare you well. Exit.
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[Enter LONGAVILLE.]
LONGAVILLE
I beseech you a word. What is she in the white?
BOYET
A woman sometimes, an you saw her in the light.
LONGAVILLE
Perchance light in the light. I desire her name.
BOYET
She hath but one for herself; to desire that were a shame.
LONGAVILLE Pray you, sir, whose daughter?
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BOYET Her mother’s, I have heard.
LONGAVILLE God’s blessing on your beard!
BOYET Good sir, be not offended.
She is an heir of Falconbridge.
LONGAVILLE Nay, my choler is ended.
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She is a most sweet lady.
BOYET Not unlike, sir, that may be. Exit Longaville.
Enter BEROWNE.
BEROWNE What’s her name in the cap?
BOYET Rosaline, by good hap.
BEROWNE Is she wedded or no?
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BOYET To her will sir, or so.
BEROWNE You are welcome, sir. Adieu.
BOYET Farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you.
Exit Berowne.
MARIA That last is Berowne, the merry madcap lord.
Not a word with him but a jest.
BOYET And every jest but a word.
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PRINCESS
It was well done of you to take him at his word.
BOYET I was as willing to grapple as he was to board.
KATHERINE Two hot sheeps, marry!
BOYET And wherefore not ‘ships’?
No sheep, sweet lamb, unless we feed on your lips.
KATHERINE
You sheep, and I pasture. Shall that finish the jest?
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BOYET So you grant pasture for me. [Tries to kiss her.]
KATHERINE Not so, gentle beast.
My lips are no common, though several they be.
BOYET Belonging to whom?
KATHERINE To my fortunes and me.
PRINCESS
Good wits will be jangling; but, gentles, agree.
This civil war of wits were much better used
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On Navarre and his bookmen, for here ’tis abused.
BOYET If my observation, which very seldom lies
By the heart’s still rhetoric disclosed with eyes,
Deceive me not now, Navarre is infected.
PRINCESS With what?
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BOYET With that which we lovers entitle ‘affected’.
PRINCESS Your reason?
BOYET Why, all his behaviours did make their retire
To the court of his eye, peeping thorough desire.
His heart, like an agate with your print impressed,
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Proud with his form, in his eye pride expressed.
His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see,
Did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be.
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All senses to that sense did make their repair,
To feel only looking on fairest of fair.
Methought all his senses were locked in his eye,
&nbs
p; As jewels in crystal for some prince to buy;
Who, tendering their own worth from where they
were glassed,
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Did point you to buy them along as you passed.
His face’s own margin did quote such amazes
That all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes.
I’ll give you Aquitaine, and all that is his,
An you give him for my sake but one loving kiss.
PRINCESS Come, to our pavilion. Boyet is disposed.
BOYET
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But to speak that in words which his eye hath disclosed.
I only have made a mouth of his eye
By adding a tongue which I know will not lie.
MARIA
Thou art an old love-monger, and speakest skilfully.
KATHERINE
He is Cupid’s grandfather, and learns news of him.
ROSALINE
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Then was Venus like her mother, for her father is but grim.
BOYET Do you hear, my mad wenches?
MARIA No.
BOYET What then, do you see?
MARIA Ay, our way to be gone.
BOYET You are too hard for me.
Exeunt omnes.
3.1 Enter ARMADO, the Braggart, and MOTH, his boy.
ARMADO Warble, child, make passionate my sense of hearing.
MOTH [Sings.] Concolinel.
5
ARMADO Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years, take this key,
give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately
hither. I must employ him in a letter to my love.
MOTH Master, will you win your love with a French
brawl?
10
ARMADO How meanest thou? Brawling in French?
MOTH No, my complete master; but to jig off a tune at
the tongue’s end, canary to it with your feet, humour it
with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a
note, sometime through the throat as if you swallowed
15
love with singing love, sometime through the nose as if
you snuffed up love by smelling love, with your hat
penthouse-like o’er the shop of your eyes, with your
arms crossed on your thin-belly doublet like a rabbit on
a spit, or your hands in your pocket like a man after the
20
old painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a
snip and away. These are compliments, these are
humours, these betray nice wenches that would be
betrayed without these; and make them men of note –
do you note me? – that most are affected to these.
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ARMADO How hast thou purchased this experience?
MOTH By my penny of observation.
ARMADO But O – But O –
MOTH ‘The hobby-horse is forgot.’
ARMADO Call’st thou my love ‘hobby-horse’?
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MOTH No, master. The hobby-horse is but a colt, and
your love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your
love?
ARMADO Almost I had.
MOTH Negligent student! Learn her by heart.
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ARMADO By heart and in heart, boy.
MOTH And out of heart, master. All those three I will prove.
ARMADO What wilt thou prove?
MOTH A man, if I live; and this ‘by’, ‘in’ and ‘without’
40
upon the instant. ‘By’ heart you love her, because your
heart cannot come by her; ‘in’ heart you love her, because
your heart is in love with her; and ‘out’ of heart you love
her, being out of heart that you cannot enjoy her.
ARMADO I am all these three.
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MOTH And three times as much more, and yet nothing
at all.
ARMADO Fetch hither the swain. He must carry me a
letter.
MOTH A message well sympathized: a horse to be
50
ambassador for an ass.
ARMADO Ha, ha, what sayest thou?
MOTH Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse,
for he is very slow-gaited. But I go.
ARMADO The way is but short. Away!
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MOTH As swift as lead, sir.
ARMADO The meaning, pretty ingenious?
Is not lead a metal heavy, dull and slow?
MOTH Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.
ARMADO I say lead is slow.
MOTH You are too swift, sir, to say so.
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 327
