she answers thee with frowning looks, I’ll sauce her
with bitter words. Why look you so upon me?
PHEBE For no ill will I bear you.
ROSALIND I pray you, do not fall in love with me,
For I am falser than vows made in wine:
Besides, I like you not. If you will know my house,
‘Tis at the tuft of olives here hard by.
Will you go, sister? Shepherd, ply her hard.
Come, sister. Shepherdess, look on him better,
And be not proud: though all the world could see,
None could be so abused in sight as he.
Come, to our flock.
Exeunt ROSALIND, CELIA and CORIN
PHEBE Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might,
‘Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?’
SILVIUS Sweet Phebe,–
PHEBE Ha, what say’st thou, Silvius?
SILVIUS Sweet Phebe, pity me.
PHEBE Why, I am sorry for thee, gentle Silvius.
SILVIUS Wherever sorrow is, relief would be:
If you do sorrow at my grief in love,
By giving love your sorrow and my grief
Were both extermined.
PHEBE Thou hast my love: is not that neighbourly?
SILVIUS I would have you.
PHEBE Why, that were covetousness.
Silvius, the time was that I hated thee,
And yet it is not that I bear thee love;
But since that thou canst talk of love so well,
Thy company, which erst was irksome to me,
I will endure, and I’ll employ thee too:
But do not look for further recompense
Than thine own gladness that thou art employ’d.
SILVIUS So holy and so perfect is my love,
And I in such a poverty of grace,
That I shall think it a most plenteous crop
To glean the broken ears after the man
That the main harvest reaps: loose now and then
A scatter’d smile, and that I’ll live upon.
PHEBE Know’st now the youth that spoke to me erewhile?
SILVIUS Not very well, but I have met him oft;
And he hath bought the cottage and the bounds
That the old carlot once was master of.
PHEBE Think not I love him, though I ask for him:
‘Tis but a peevish boy; yet he talks well;
But what care I for words? yet words do well
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.
It is a pretty youth: not very pretty:
But, sure, he’s proud, and yet his pride becomes him:
He’ll make a proper man: the best thing in him
Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue
Did make offence his eye did heal it up.
He is not very tall; yet for his years he’s tall:
His leg is but so so; and yet ’tis well:
There was a pretty redness in his lip,
A little riper and more lusty red
Than that mix’d in his cheek; ’twas just the difference
Between the constant red and mingled damask.
There be some women, Silvius, had they mark’d him
In parcels as I did, would have gone near
To fall in love with him; but, for my part,
I love him not nor hate him not; and yet
I have more cause to hate him than to love him:
For what had he to do to chide at me?
He said mine eyes were black and my hair black:
And, now I am remember’d, scorn’d at me:
I marvel why I answer’d not again:
But that’s all one; omittance is no quittance.
I’ll write to him a very taunting letter,
And thou shalt bear it: wilt thou, Silvius?
SILVIUS Phebe, with all my heart.
PHEBE I’ll write it straight;
The matter’s in my head and in my heart:
I will be bitter with him and passing short.
Go with me, Silvius.
Exeunt
Act 4
Scene 1
The forest.
Enter ROSALIND, CELIA, and JAQUES
JAQUES I prithee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted
with thee.
ROSALIND They say you are a melancholy fellow.
JAQUES I am so; I do love it better than laughing.
ROSALIND Those that are in extremity of either are abominable
fellows and betray themselves to every modern
censure worse than drunkards.
JAQUES Why, ’tis good to be sad and say nothing.
ROSALIND Why then, ’tis good to be a post.
JAQUES I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is
emulation, nor the musician’s, which is fantastical,
nor the courtier’s, which is proud, nor the
soldier’s, which is ambitious, nor the lawyer’s,
which is politic, nor the lady’s, which is nice, nor
the lover’s, which is all these: but it is a
melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples,
extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry’s
contemplation of my travels, in which my often
rumination wraps me m a most humorous sadness.
ROSALIND A traveller! By my faith, you have great reason to
be sad: I fear you have sold your own lands to see
other men’s; then, to have seen much and to have
nothing, is to have rich eyes and poor hands.
JAQUES Yes, I have gained my experience.
ROSALIND And your experience makes you sad: I had rather have
a fool to make me merry than experience to make me
sad; and to travel for it too!
Enter ORLANDO
ORLANDO Good day and happiness, dear Rosalind!
JAQUES Nay, then, God be wi’ you, an you talk in blank verse.
Exit
ROSALIND Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: look you lisp and
wear strange suits, disable all the benefits of your
own country, be out of love with your nativity and
almost chide God for making you that countenance you
are, or I will scarce think you have swam in a
gondola. Why, how now, Orlando! where have you been
all this while? You a lover! An you serve me such
another trick, never come in my sight more.
ORLANDO My fair Rosalind, I come within an hour of my promise.
ROSALIND Break an hour’s promise in love! He that will
divide a minute into a thousand parts and break but
a part of the thousandth part of a minute in the
affairs of love, it may be said of him that Cupid
hath clapped him o’ the shoulder, but I’ll warrant
him heart-whole.
ORLANDO Pardon me, dear Rosalind.
ROSALIND Nay, an you be so tardy, come no more in my sight: I
had as lief be wooed of a snail.
ORLANDO Of a snail?
ROSALIND Ay, of a snail; for though he comes slowly, he
carries his house on his head; a better jointure,
I think, than you make a woman: besides he brings
his destiny with him.
ORLANDO What’s that?
ROSALIND Why, horns, which such as you are fain to be
beholding to your wives for: but he comes armed in
his fortune and prevents the slander of his wife.
ORLANDO Virtue is no horn-maker; and my Rosalind is virtuous.
ROSALIND And I am your Rosalind.
CELIA It pleases him to call you so; but he hath a
Rosalind of a better leer than you.
ROSALIND Come, woo me, woo me, for now I am in a holiday
humour and like enough to consent. What would you
say to me now, an I were your very very Rosalind?
ORLANDO I would kiss before I spoke.
ROSALIND Nay, you were better speak first, and when you were
gravelled for lack of matter, you might take
occasion to kiss. Very good orators, when they are
out, they will spit; and for lovers lacking–God
warn us!–matter, the cleanliest shift is to kiss.
ORLANDO How if the kiss be denied?
ROSALIND Then she puts you to entreaty, and there begins new matter.
ORLANDO Who could be out, being before his beloved mistress?
ROSALIND Marry, that should you, if I were your mistress, or
I should think my honesty ranker than my wit.
ORLANDO What, of my suit?
ROSALIND Not out of your apparel, and yet out of your suit.
Am not I your Rosalind?
ORLANDO I take some joy to say you are, because I would be
talking of her.
ROSALIND Well in her person I say I will not have you.
ORLANDO Then in mine own person I die.
ROSALIND No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is
almost six thousand years old, and in all this time
there was not any man died in his own person,
videlicit, in a love-cause. Troilus had his brains
dashed out with a Grecian club; yet he did what he
could to die before, and he is one of the patterns
of love. Leander, he would have lived many a fair
year, though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been
for a hot midsummer night; for, good youth, he went
but forth to wash him in the Hellespont and being
taken with the cramp was drowned and the foolish
coroners of that age found it was ‘Hero of Sestos.’
But these are all lies: men have died from time to
time and worms have eaten them, but not for love.
ORLANDO I would not have my right Rosalind of this mind,