Complete Plays, The (349 page)

 
I am best pleased with that.

They converse apart

Biron

White-handed mistress, one sweet word with thee.

Princess

Honey, and milk, and sugar; there is three.

Biron

Nay then, two treys, and if you grow so nice,
Metheglin, wort, and malmsey: well run, dice!
There’s half-a-dozen sweets.

Princess

Seventh sweet, adieu:
Since you can cog, I’ll play no more with you.

Biron

One word in secret.

Princess

Let it not be sweet.

Biron

Thou grievest my gall.

Princess

Gall! bitter.

Biron

Therefore meet.

They converse apart

Dumain

Will you vouchsafe with me to change a word?

Maria

Name it.

Dumain

 
Fair lady,—

Maria

Say you so? Fair lord,—
Take that for your fair lady.

Dumain

Please it you,
As much in private, and I’ll bid adieu.

They converse apart

Katharine

What, was your vizard made without a tongue?

Longaville

I know the reason, lady, why you ask.

Katharine

O for your reason! quickly, sir; I long.

Longaville

You have a double tongue within your mask,
And would afford my speechless vizard half.

Katharine

Veal, quoth the Dutchman. Is not ’veal’ a calf?

Longaville

A calf, fair lady!

Katharine

 
No, a fair lord calf.

Longaville

Let’s part the word.

Katharine

No, I’ll not be your half
Take all, and wean it; it may prove an ox.

Longaville

Look, how you butt yourself in these sharp mocks!
Will you give horns, chaste lady? do not so.

Katharine

Then die a calf, before your horns do grow.

Longaville

One word in private with you, ere I die.

Katharine

Bleat softly then; the butcher hears you cry.

They converse apart

Boyet

The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen
As is the razor’s edge invisible,
Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen,
Above the sense of sense; so sensible
Seemeth their conference; their conceits have wings
Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things.

Rosaline

Not one word more, my maids; break off, break off.

Biron

By heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff!

Ferdinand

Farewell, mad wenches; you have simple wits.

Princess

Twenty adieus, my frozen Muscovits.

Exeunt Ferdinand, Lords, and Blackamoors

Are these the breed of wits so wonder’d at?

Boyet

Tapers they are, with your sweet breaths puff’d out.

Rosaline

Well-liking wits they have; gross, gross; fat, fat.

Princess

O poverty in wit, kingly-poor flout!
Will they not, think you, hang themselves tonight?
Or ever, but in vizards, show their faces?
This pert Biron was out of countenance quite.

Rosaline

O, they were all in lamentable cases!
The king was weeping-ripe for a good word.

Princess

Biron did swear himself out of all suit.

Maria

Dumain was at my service, and his sword:
No point, quoth I; my servant straight was mute.

Katharine

Lord Longaville said, I came o’er his heart;
And trow you what he called me?

Princess

Qualm, perhaps.

Katharine

Yes, in good faith.

Princess

Go, sickness as thou art!

Rosaline

Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps.
But will you hear? the king is my love sworn.

Princess

And quick Biron hath plighted faith to me.

Katharine

And Longaville was for my service born.

Maria

Dumain is mine, as sure as bark on tree.

Boyet

Madam, and pretty mistresses, give ear:
Immediately they will again be here
In their own shapes; for it can never be
They will digest this harsh indignity.

Princess

Will they return?

Boyet

 
They will, they will, God knows,
And leap for joy, though they are lame with blows:
Therefore change favours; and, when they repair,
Blow like sweet roses in this summer air.

Princess

How blow? how blow? speak to be understood.

Boyet

Fair ladies mask’d are roses in their bud;
Dismask’d, their damask sweet commixture shown,
Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown.

Princess

Avaunt, perplexity! What shall we do,
If they return in their own shapes to woo?

Rosaline

Good madam, if by me you’ll be advised,
Let’s, mock them still, as well known as disguised:
Let us complain to them what fools were here,
Disguised like Muscovites, in shapeless gear;
And wonder what they were and to what end
Their shallow shows and prologue vilely penn’d
And their rough carriage so ridiculous,
Should be presented at our tent to us.

Boyet

Ladies, withdraw: the gallants are at hand.

Princess

Whip to our tents, as roes run o’er land.

Exeunt Princess, Rosaline, Katharine, and Maria

Re-enter Ferdinand, Biron, Longaville, and Dumain, in their proper habits

Ferdinand

Fair sir, God save you! Where’s the princess?

Boyet

Gone to her tent. Please it your majesty
Command me any service to her thither?

Ferdinand

That she vouchsafe me audience for one word.

Boyet

I will; and so will she, I know, my lord.

Exit

Biron

This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease,
And utters it again when God doth please:
He is wit’s pedler, and retails his wares
At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;
And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,
Have not the grace to grace it with such show.
This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve;
Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve;
A’ can carve too, and lisp: why, this is he
That kiss’d his hand away in courtesy;
This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,
That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice
In honourable terms: nay, he can sing
A mean most meanly; and in ushering
Mend him who can: the ladies call him sweet;
The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet:
This is the flower that smiles on every one,
To show his teeth as white as whale’s bone;
And consciences, that will not die in debt,
Pay him the due of honey-tongued Boyet.

Ferdinand

A blister on his sweet tongue, with my heart,
That put Armado’s page out of his part!

Biron

See where it comes! Behavior, what wert thou
Till this madman show’d thee? and what art thou now?

Re-enter the Princess, ushered by Boyet, Rosaline, Maria, and Katharine

Ferdinand

All hail, sweet madam, and fair time of day!

Princess

‘Fair’ in ‘all hail’ is foul, as I conceive.

Ferdinand

Construe my speeches better, if you may.

Princess

Then wish me better; I will give you leave.

Ferdinand

We came to visit you, and purpose now
To lead you to our court; vouchsafe it then.

Princess

This field shall hold me; and so hold your vow:
Nor God, nor I, delights in perjured men.

Ferdinand

Rebuke me not for that which you provoke:
The virtue of your eye must break my oath.

Princess

You nickname virtue; vice you should have spoke;
For virtue’s office never breaks men’s troth.
Now by my maiden honour, yet as pure
As the unsullied lily, I protest,
A world of torments though I should endure,
I would not yield to be your house’s guest;
So much I hate a breaking cause to be
Of heavenly oaths, vow’d with integrity.

Ferdinand

O, you have lived in desolation here,
Unseen, unvisited, much to our shame.

Princess

Not so, my lord; it is not so, I swear;
We have had pastimes here and pleasant game:
A mess of Russians left us but of late.

Ferdinand

How, madam! Russians!

Princess

Ay, in truth, my lord;
Trim gallants, full of courtship and of state.

Rosaline

Madam, speak true. It is not so, my lord:
My lady, to the manner of the days,
In courtesy gives undeserving praise.
We four indeed confronted were with four
In Russian habit: here they stay’d an hour,
And talk’d apace; and in that hour, my lord,
They did not bless us with one happy word.
I dare not call them fools; but this I think,
When they are thirsty, fools would fain have drink.

Biron

This jest is dry to me. Fair gentle sweet,
Your wit makes wise things foolish: when we greet,
With eyes best seeing, heaven’s fiery eye,
By light we lose light: your capacity
Is of that nature that to your huge store
Wise things seem foolish and rich things but poor.

Rosaline

This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye,—

Biron

I am a fool, and full of poverty.

Rosaline

But that you take what doth to you belong,
It were a fault to snatch words from my tongue.

Biron

O, I am yours, and all that I possess!

Rosaline

All the fool mine?

Biron

 
I cannot give you less.

Rosaline

Which of the vizards was it that you wore?

Biron

Where? when? what vizard? why demand you this?

Rosaline

There, then, that vizard; that superfluous case
That hid the worse and show’d the better face.

Ferdinand

We are descried; they’ll mock us now downright.

Dumain

Let us confess and turn it to a jest.

Princess

Amazed, my lord? why looks your highness sad?

Rosaline

Help, hold his brows! he’ll swoon! Why look you pale?
Sea-sick, I think, coming from Muscovy.

Biron

Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury.
Can any face of brass hold longer out?
Here stand I lady, dart thy skill at me;
Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout;
Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance;
Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit;
And I will wish thee never more to dance,
Nor never more in Russian habit wait.
O, never will I trust to speeches penn’d,
Nor to the motion of a schoolboy’s tongue,
Nor never come in vizard to my friend,
Nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper’s song!
Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical; these summer-flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation:
I do forswear them; and I here protest,
By this white glove;— how white the hand, God knows!—
Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express’d
In russet yeas and honest kersey noes:
And, to begin, wench,— so God help me, la!—
My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.

Rosaline

Sans sans, I pray you.

Biron

Yet I have a trick
Of the old rage: bear with me, I am sick;
I’ll leave it by degrees. Soft, let us see:
Write, ‘Lord have mercy on us’ on those three;
They are infected; in their hearts it lies;
They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes;
These lords are visited; you are not free,
For the Lord’s tokens on you do I see.

Princess

No, they are free that gave these tokens to us.

Biron

Our states are forfeit: seek not to undo us.

Rosaline

It is not so; for how can this be true,
That you stand forfeit, being those that sue?

Biron

Peace! for I will not have to do with you.

Rosaline

Nor shall not, if I do as I intend.

Biron

Speak for yourselves; my wit is at an end.

Ferdinand

Teach us, sweet madam, for our rude transgression
Some fair excuse.

Princess

 
The fairest is confession.
Were not you here but even now disguised?

Ferdinand

Madam, I was.

Princess

 
And were you well advised?

Ferdinand

I was, fair madam.

Princess

 
When you then were here,
What did you whisper in your lady’s ear?

Ferdinand

That more than all the world I did respect her.

Princess

When she shall challenge this, you will reject her.

Ferdinand

Upon mine honour, no.

Princess

Peace, peace! forbear:
Your oath once broke, you force not to forswear.

Ferdinand

Despise me, when I break this oath of mine.

Princess

I will: and therefore keep it. Rosaline,
What did the Russian whisper in your ear?

Rosaline

Madam, he swore that he did hold me dear
As precious eyesight, and did value me
Above this world; adding thereto moreover
That he would wed me, or else die my lover.

Princess

God give thee joy of him! the noble lord
Most honourably doth unhold his word.