having in bearda is a younger brother's revenue:) Then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, 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.

ORL. Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love.

Ros. 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. But, in good sooth, are you he that hangs the verses on the trees, wherein Rosalind is so admired?

ORL. I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am that he, that unfortunate he.

Ros. But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?

ORL. Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.

Ros. Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen 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.

ORL. Did you ever cure any so?

Ros. 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, 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 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 your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in 't.

ORL. I would not be cured, youth.

с

Ros. I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind, and come every day. to my cote, and woo me.

ORL. Now, by the faith of my love, I will: tell me where it is.

Ros. 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?

ORL. With all my heart, good youth.

Ros. Nay, you must call me Rosalind :--Come, sister, will you go?

[Exeunt.

a Having in beard. So the original. The second edition reads, "having no beard." The meaning is, your possession in beard; having is a substantive.

Point-device-minutely exact. See Twelfth Night,' Act II., Scene 5.

SCENE III.

Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY; JAQUES at a distance, observing them.

TOUCH. 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? AUD. Your features! Lord warrant us! what features?

Touch. I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths a

JAQ. O knowledge ill-inhabited! worse than Jove in a thatched house © !

[Aside.

TOUCH. 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.

AUD. I do not know what poetical is: Is it honest in deed, and word? Is it a true thing?

TOUCH. 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.

AUD. Do you wish, then, that the gods had made me poetical?

TOUCH. 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.

AUD. Would you not have me honest?

TOUCH. No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favoured: for honesty coupled to beauty,

is to have honey a sauce to sugar.

JAQ. A material fool d!

[Aside.

AUD. Well, I am not fair; and therefore I pray the gods make me honest! TOUCH. Truly, and to cast away honesty upon a foul slut, were to put good meat into an unclean dish.

AUD. I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foule. TOUCH. 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 Mar-text, the vicar of the next village; who hath promised to meet me in this place of the forest, and to couple us.

JAQ. I would fain see this meeting.

[Aside.

a Caldecott says, "Caper, capri, caperitious, capricious, fantastical, capering, goatish: and by a similar sort of process we are to smooth Goths into goats."

b Ill-inhabited-ill-lodged.

• The same allusion is in Much Ado about Nothing,' Act II., Scene 1:

"My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove."

A fool, says Johnson, with matter in him.

• Foul is here used in the sense of homely-opposed to fair. It retained this sense as late as Pope; and the meaning in the time of Shakspere may be seen in the following extract from Thomas's History of Italy:'-" If the maiden be fair she is soon had, and little money given with her; if she be foul they avaunce her with a better portion."

6

AUD. Well, the gods give us joy! TOUCH. Amen. A man may, if he were of a fearful heart, stagger in this attempt; for here we have no temple but the wood, no assembly but hornbeasts. 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 knows no end of them. Well, that is the dowry of his wife; 't is none of his own getting. Horns? Even so: Poor men alone? No, no; the noblest deer hath them as huge as the rascala. Is the single man therefore blessed? No; as a walled town is more worthier than a village, 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.

Enter Sir OLIVER MAR-TEXT.

Here comes sir Oliver :-Sir Oliver Mar-text, you are well met: Will you despatch us here under this tree, or shall we go with you to your chapel ? SIR OLI. Is there none here to give the woman?

TOUCH. I will not take her on gift of any man.

SIR OLI. Truly, she must be given, or the marriage is not lawful.

JAQ. [discovering himself.] Proceed, proceed; I'll give her.

TOUCH. 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 a toy in hand here, sir:-Nay; pray be covered. JAQ. Will you be married, motley?

TOUCH. As the ox hath his bow 16, sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells 17, so man hath his desires; and as pigeons bill, so wedlock would be nibbling. JAQ. 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 panel, and, like green timber, warp,

warp.

TOUCH. 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 wife.

JAQ. Go thou with me, and let me counsel thee.

TOUCH. Come, sweet Audrey :

We must be married, or we must live in bawdry.
Farewell, good master Oliver!

[Aside.

• Puttenham, in his 'Art of Poesie,' 1589, tells us-Rascal knave is "a figure of abuse; where rascal is properly the hunter's term given to young deer, lean and out of season, and not to people."

↳ And by how much defence is better, &c. Any means of defence is better than the lack of science; in proportion as something is to nothing.

• Sir Oliver. See the opening of Merry Wives of Windsor,' Sir Hugh.

d God yield you-give you recompense.

Not O sweet Oliver,

O brave Oliver,

Leave me not behind thee:

But wind away,

Begone I say,

I will not to wedding with thee.

[Exeunt JAQUES, TOUCHSTONE, and AUDREY.

SIR OLI. T is no matter; ne'er a fantastical knave of them all shall flout me

out of my calling.

[Exit.

SCENE IV.-The same. Before a Cottage.

Enter ROSALIND and CELIA.

Ros. Never talk to me, I will weep.

CEL. Do, I prithee; but yet have the grace to consider that tears do not become

a man.

Ros. But have I not cause to weep?

CEL. As good cause as one would desire; therefore weep.

Ros. His very hair is of the dissembling colour.

CEL. Something browner than Judas's: marry, his kisses are Judas's own

children.

Ros. I' faith, his hair is of a good colour.

CEL. An excellent colour: your chestnut was ever the only colour.

Ros. And his kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread.

CEL. He hath bought a pair of cast lips of Diana: a nun of winter's sister-
hood kisses not more religiously; the very ice of chastity is in them.
Ros. But why did he swear he would come this morning, and comes not?
CEL. Nay, certainly, there is no truth in him.

Ros. Do you think so?

CEL. 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.

Ros. Not true in love?

CEL. Yes, when he is in; but, I think he is not in.

Ros. You have heard him swear downright he was.

CEL. 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 the forest on the duke your father.

Ros. 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's such a man as Orlando ?

a The goblet is covered when it is empty; when full, to be drunk out of, the cover is removed. Question-discourse.

b

CEL. 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 puny tilter, that spurs his horse but on one side, breaks his staff like a noble goose: but all 's brave that youth mounts, and folly guides-Who comes here?

SIL. Sweet Phebe, do not scorn me; do not, Phebe :

Say, that you love me not; but say not so

In bitterness: The common executioner,

Whose heart the accustom'd sight of death makes hard,
Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck,

But first begs pardon; Will you sterner be

Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops?

Enter ROSALIND, CELIA, and CORIN, at a distance.

PHE. I would not be thy executioner;

I fly thee, for I would not injure thee.

Thou tell'st me, there is murther in mine eye;

'Tis pretty, sure, and very probable,

That eyes, that are the frail'st and softest things,
Who shut their coward gates on atomies,

COMEDIES.-VOL. II.

P