MARIA He is Cupid’s grandfather and learns news of him.
ROSALINE 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?
ROSALINE Ay, our way to be gone.
BOYET You are too hard for me.
Exeunt
Act 3
Scene 1
The same.
Enter DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO and MOTH
ADRIANO DE ARMADO Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.
MOTH Concolinel.
Singing
ADRIANO DE 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?
ADRIANO DE 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 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 old painting; and
keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away.
These are complements, 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.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO How hast thou purchased this experience?
MOTH By my penny of observation.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO But O,–but O,–
MOTH ‘The hobby-horse is forgot.’
ADRIANO DE ARMADO Callest thou my love ‘hobby-horse’?
MOTH No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your
love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?
ADRIANO DE ARMADO Almost I had.
MOTH Negligent student! learn her by heart.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO By heart and in heart, boy.
MOTH And out of heart, master: all those three I will prove.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO What wilt thou prove?
MOTH A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, 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.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO I am all these three.
MOTH And three times as much more, and yet nothing at
all.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO Fetch hither the swain: he must carry me a letter.
MOTH A message well sympathized; a horse to be ambassador
for an ass.
ADRIANO DE 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.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO The way is but short: away!
MOTH As swift as lead, sir.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO The meaning, pretty ingenious?
Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?
MOTH Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO I say lead is slow.
MOTH You are too swift, sir, to say so:
Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun?
ADRIANO DE ARMADO Sweet smoke of rhetoric!
He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that’s he:
I shoot thee at the swain.
MOTH Thump then and I flee.
Exit
ADRIANO DE ARMADO A most acute juvenal; voluble and free of grace!
By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face:
Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.
My herald is return’d.
Re-enter MOTH with COSTARD
MOTH A wonder, master! here’s a costard broken in a shin.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO Some enigma, some riddle: come, thy l’envoy; begin.
COSTARD No enigma, no riddle, no l’envoy; no salve in the
mail, sir: O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain! no
l’envoy, no l’envoy; no salve, sir, but a plantain!
ADRIANO DE ARMADO By virtue, thou enforcest laughter; thy silly
thought my spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes
me to ridiculous smiling. O, pardon me, my stars!
Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l’envoy, and
the word l’envoy for a salve?
MOTH Do the wise think them other? is not l’envoy a salve?
ADRIANO DE ARMADO No, page: it is an epilogue or discourse, to make plain
Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.
I will example it:
The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,
Were still at odds, being but three.
There’s the moral. Now the l’envoy.
MOTH I will add the l’envoy. Say the moral again.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,
Were still at odds, being but three.
MOTH Until the goose came out of door,
And stay’d the odds by adding four.
Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with
my l’envoy.
The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,
Were still at odds, being but three.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO Until the goose came out of door,
Staying the odds by adding four.
MOTH A good l’envoy, ending in the goose: would you
desire more?
COSTARD The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that’s flat.
Sir, your pennyworth is good, an your goose be fat.
To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose:
Let me see; a fat l’envoy; ay, that’s a fat goose.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin?
MOTH By saying that a costard was broken in a shin.
Then call’d you for the l’envoy.
COSTARD True, and I for a plantain: thus came your
argument in;
Then the boy’s fat l’envoy, the goose that you bought;
And he ended the market.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO But tell me; how was there a costard broken in a shin?
MOTH I will tell you sensibly.
COSTARD Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth: I will speak that l’envoy:
I Costard, running out, that was safely within,
Fell over the threshold and broke my shin.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO We will talk no more of this matter.
COSTARD Till there be more matter in the shin.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.
COSTARD O, marry me to one Frances: I smell some l’envoy,
some goose, in this.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty,
enfreedoming thy person; thou wert immured,
restrained, captivated, bound.
COSTARD True, true; and now you will be my purgation and let me loose.
ADRIANO DE ARMADO I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance; and,
in lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this:
bear this significant
Giving a letter
to the country maid Jaquenetta:
there is remuneration; for the best ward of mine
honour is rewarding my dependents. Moth, follow.
Exit
MOTH Like the sequel, I. Signior Costard, adieu.
COSTARD My sweet ounce of man’s flesh! my incony Jew!
Exit MOTH
Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration!
O, that’s the Latin word for three farthings: three
farthings–remuneration.–‘What’s the price of this
inkle?’–‘One penny.’–‘No, I’ll give you a
remuneration:’ why, it carries it. Remuneration!
why, it is a fairer name than French crown. I will
never buy and sell out of this word.
Enter BIRON
BIRON O, my good knave Costard! exceedingly well met.
COSTARD Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man
buy for a remuneration?
BIRON What is a remuneration?
COSTARD Marry, sir, halfpenny farthing.
BIRON Why, then, three-farthing worth of silk.
COSTARD I thank your worship: God be wi’ you!
BIRON Stay, slave; I must employ thee:
As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave,
Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.
COSTARD When would you have it done, sir?
BIRON This afternoon.
COSTARD Well, I will do it, sir: fare you well.
BIRON Thou knowest not what it is.
COSTARD I shall know, sir, when I have done it.
BIRON Why, villain, thou must know first.
COSTARD I will come to your worship to-morrow morning.
BIRON It must be done this afternoon.
Hark, slave, it is but this:
The princess comes to hunt here in the park,
And in her train there is a gentle lady;
When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name,
And Rosaline they call her: ask for her;
And to her white hand see thou do commend
This seal’d-up counsel. There’s thy guerdon; go.
Giving him a shilling
COSTARD Gardon, O sweet gardon! better than remuneration,
a’leven-pence farthing better: most sweet gardon! I
will do it sir, in print. Gardon! Remuneration!
Exit
BIRON And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love’s whip;
A very beadle to a humorous sigh;
A critic, nay, a night-watch constable;
A domineering pedant o’er the boy;
Than whom no mortal so magnificent!
This whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy;
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;