William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition (158 page)

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Authors: William Shakespeare

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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 advised
In conflict that you get the sun of them.

LONGUEVILLE

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, masques, and merry hours
Forerun 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
! Sowed cockle reaped no corn,
And justice always whirls in equal measure.
Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn.
If so, our copper buys no better treasure.
Exeunt

5.1
Enter Holofernes the pedant, Nathaniel the curate, and Anthony Dull

HOLOFERNES
Satis quid sufficit.

NATHANIEL I praise Good for you, sir. Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious, pleasant without scurrility, witty without affections, audacious 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.

HOLOFERNES
Novi hominum 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, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.

NATHANIEL A most singular and choice epithet.

He draws out his table-book

HOLOFERNES He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasims, such insociable and point-device companions, such rackers of orthography as to speak ‘dout’,
sine
‘b’, when he should say ‘doubt’; ‘det’ when he should pronounce ‘debt’—‘d, e, b, t’, not ‘d, e, t’. He clepeth a calf ‘caul’, half ‘haul’, neighbour vocatur ‘nebour’—‘neigh’ abbreviated ‘ne’. This is abhominaMe—which he would call ‘abominable’. It insinuateth me of
insanire—ne intelligis, domine?—
to make frantic, lunatic.

NATHANIEL
Laus deo, bone intelligo.

HOLOFERNES
Bone? Bon, fort bon
—Priscian a little scratched-‘twill serve.

Enter Armado the braggart, Mote his boy, and Costard the clown

NATHANIEL
Videsne quis venit?

xoLOFeRrrss
Video, et gaudio
.

ARMADO (
to Mote
) Chirrah.

xoLOVExNES (
to Nathaniel
) Quare ‘chirrah’, not ‘sirrah’?

ARMADO Men of peace, well encountered.

HOLOFERNES Most military sir, salutation!

MOTE (
aside to Costard
) They have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps.

COSTARD (
aside to Mote
) O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as
honorificabilitudinitatibus
. Thou art easier swallowed than a flapdragon.

MOTE (
aside to Costard
) Peace, the peal begins.

ARMADO (
to Holofernes
) Monsieur, are you not lettered?

MOTE Yes, yes, he teaches boys the horn-book. What is ‘a, b’ spelled backward, with the horn on his head?

HOLOFERNES Ba,
pueritia
, with a horn added.

MOTE Ba, most silly sheep, with a horn! You hear his learning.

HOLOFERNES
Quis, quis
, thou consonant?

MOTE The last of the five vowels if you repeat them, or the fifth if I.

HOLOFERNES I will repeat them: a, e, i—

MOTE The sheep. The other two concludes it: o, u.

ARMADO Now by the salt wave of the
Mediterraneum
a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit; snip, snap, quick, and home. It rejoiceth my intellect—true wit.

MOTE Offered by a child to an old man, which is ‘wit-old’.

HOLOFERNES What is the figure? What is the figure?

MOTE Horns.

HOLOFERNES Thou disputes like an infant. Go whip thy gig.

MOTE Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy
circum circa
—a gig of a cuckold’s horn.

CUSTARD An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread. (
Giving money
) Hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou halfpenny 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.

HOLOFERNES O, I smell false Latin—‘dunghill’ for
unguem.

ARMADO Arts-man,
preambulate.
We will be singled from the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the top of the mountain?

HOLOFERNES Or mons, the hill.

ARMADO At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.

HOLOFERNES I do, sans question.

ARMADO 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.

HOLOFERNES The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable, congruent, and measurable for the afternoon. The word is well culled, choice, sweet, and apt, I do assure you, sir, I do assure.

ARMADO Sir, the King is a noble gentleman, and my familiar, I do assure ye, 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 important 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, sweetheart, 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, sweetheart, 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.

HOLOFERNES 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.

NATHANIEL Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?

HOLOFERNES Joshua, yourself; myself, Judas Maccabeus; and this gallant gentleman, Hector. This swain, because of his great limb or joint, shall pass Pompey the Great; the page, Hercules.

ARMADO Pardon, sir, error! He is not quantity enough for that Worthy’s thumb. He is not so big as the end of his club.

HOLOFERNES 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.

MOTE 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.

ARMADO For the rest of the Worthies?

HOLOFERNES I will play three myself.

MOTE Thrice-worthy gentleman!

ARMADO Shall I tell you a thing?

HOLOFERNES We attend.

ARMADO We will have, if this fadge not, an antic. I beseech you, follow.

HOLOFERNES Via, goodman Dull! Thou hast spoken no word all this while.

DULL Nor understood none neither, sir.

HOLOFERNES
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.

HOLOPERNES Most dull, honest Dull! To our sport, away.

Exeunt

5.2
Enter the Princess and her ladies: Rosaline, Maria, and Catherine

PRINCESS

Sweethearts, we shall be rich ere we depart,
If fairings come thus plentifully in.
A lady walled about with diamonds—
Look you what I have from the loving King.

ROSALINE

Madam, came nothing else along with that?

PRINCESS

Nothing but this?—yes, as much love in rhyme
As would be crammed up in a sheet of paper
Writ o’ both sides the leaf, margin and all,
That he was fain to seal on Cupid’s name.

ROSALINE

That was the way to make his godhead wax,
For he hath been five thousand year a boy.

CATHERINE

Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows, too.

ROSALINE

You’ll ne’er be friends with him, a killed your sister.

CATHERINE

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 ha’ been a grandam ere she died;
And so may you, for a light heart lives long.

ROSALINE

What’s your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?

CATHERINE

A light condition in a beauty dark.

ROSALINE

We need more light to find your meaning out.

CATHERINE

You’ll mar the light by taking it in snuff,
Therefore I’ll darkly end the argument.

ROSALINE

Look what you do, you do it still i’th’ dark.

CATHERINE

So do not you, for you are a light wench.

ROSALINE

Indeed I weigh not you, and therefore light.

CATHERINE

You weigh me not? O, that’s you care not for me.

ROSALINE

Great reason, for past care is still past cure.

PRINCESS

Well bandied, both; a set of wit well played.
But Rosaline, you have a favour, too.
Who sent it? And what is it?

ROSALINE I would you knew.

An if my face were but as fair as yours
My favour were as great, be witness this.
Nay, I have verses, too, I thank Biron,
The numbers true, and were the numb’ring, too,
I were the fairest goddess on the ground.
I am compared to twenty thousand fairs.
O, he hath drawn my picture in his letter.

PRINCESS Anything like?

ROSALINE

Much in the letters, nothing in the praise.

PRINCESS

Beauteous as ink—a good conclusion.

CATHERINE

Fair as a text B in a copy-book.

ROSALINE

Ware pencils, ho! Let me not die your debtor,
My red dominical, my golden letter.
O, that your face were not so full of O’s !

PRINCESS

A pox of that jest; I beshrew all shrews.

But Catherine, what was sent to you from fair Dumaine ?