The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare (moboreader .TXT) 📕

Did I offend your Highness.

FREDERICK. Thus do all traitors;

If their purgation did consist in words, They are as innocent as grace itself.

Let it suffice thee that I trust thee not.

ROSALIND. Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor.

Tell me whereon the likelihood depends.

FREDERICK. Thou art thy father’s daughter; there’s enough.

ROSALIND. SO was I when your Highness took his dukedom; So was I when your Highness banish’d him.

Treason is not inherited, my lord;

Or, if we did derive it from our friends, What’s that to me? My father was no traitor.

Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much To think my poverty is treacherous.

CELIA. Dear sovereign, hear me speak.

FREDERICK. Ay, Celia; we stay’d her for your sake, Else had she with her father rang’d along.

CELIA. I did not then entreat to have her stay; It was your pleasure, and your own remorse; I was too young that time to value her, But now I know her. If she be a traitor, Why so am I: we still have slept together, Rose at an instant, learn’d, play’d, eat together; And wheresoe’er we went, like Juno’s swans, Still we went coupled and inseparable.

FREDERICK. She is too subtle for thee; and her smoothness, Her very silence and her patience,

Speak to the people, and they pity her.

Thou art a fool. She robs thee of thy name; And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous When she is gone. Then open not thy lips.

Firm and irrevocable is my doom

Which I have pass’d upon her; she is banish’d.

CELIA. Pronounce that sentence, then, on me, my liege; I cannot live out of her company.

FREDERICK. You are a fool. You, niece, provide yourself.

If you outstay the time, upon mine honour, And in the greatness of my word, you die.

Exeunt DUKE and LORDS

CELIA. O my poor Rosalind! Whither wilt thou go?

Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine.

I charge thee be not thou more griev’d than I am.

ROSALIND. I have more cause.

CELIA. Thou hast not, cousin.

Prithee be cheerful. Know’st thou not the Duke Hath banish’d me, his daughter?

ROSALIND. That he hath not.

CELIA. No, hath not? Rosalind lacks, then, the love Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one.

Shall we be sund’red? Shall we part, sweet girl?

No; let my father seek another heir.

Therefore devise with me how we may fly, Whither to go, and what to bear with us; And do not seek to take your charge upon you, To bear your griefs yourself, and leave me out; For, by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale, Say what thou canst, I’ll go along with thee.

ROSALIND. Why, whither shall we go?

CELIA. To seek my uncle in the Forest of Arden.

ROSALIND. Alas, what danger will it be to us, Maids as we are, to travel forth so far!

Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.

CELIA. I’ll put myself in poor and mean attire, And with a kind of umber smirch my face; The like do you; so shall we pass along, And never stir assailants.

ROSALIND. Were it not better,

Because that I am more than common tall, That I did suit me all points like a man?

A gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh,

A boar spear in my hand; and-in my heart Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will-We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside, As many other mannish cowards have

That do outface it with their semblances.

CELIA. What shall I call thee when thou art a man?

ROSALIND. I’ll have no worse a name than Jove’s own page, And therefore look you call me Ganymede.

But what will you be call’d?

CELIA. Something that hath a reference to my state: No longer Celia, but Aliena.

ROSALIND. But, cousin, what if we assay’d to steal The clownish fool out of your father’s court?

Would he not be a comfort to our travel?

CELIA. He’ll go along o’er the wide world with me; Leave me alone to woo him. Let’s away, And get our jewels and our wealth together; Devise the fittest time and safest way To hide us from pursuit that will be made After my flight. Now go we in content To liberty, and not to banishment. Exeunt

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ACT II. SCENE I.

The Forest of Arden

Enter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS, and two or three LORDS, like foresters DUKE SENIOR. Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court?

Here feel we not the penalty of Adam, The seasons’ difference; as the icy fang And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind, Which when it bites and blows upon my body, Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say ‘This is no flattery; these are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am.’

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

I would not change it.

AMIENS. Happy is your Grace,

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

DUKE SENIOR. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?

And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools, Being native burghers of this desert city, Should, in their own confines, with forked heads Have their round haunches gor’d.

FIRST LORD. Indeed, my lord,

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that; And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp Than doth your brother that hath banish’d you.

To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself

Did steal behind him as he lay along

Under an oak whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this wood!

To the which place a poor sequest’red stag, That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt, Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord, The wretched animal heav’d forth such groans That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat Almost to bursting; and the big round tears Cours’d one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool, Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, Stood on th’ extremest verge of the swift brook, Augmenting it with tears.

DUKE SENIOR. But what said Jaques?

Did he not moralize this spectacle?

FIRST LORD. O, yes, into a thousand similes.

First, for his weeping into the needless stream: ‘Poor deer,’ quoth he ‘thou mak’st a testament As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more To that which had too much.’ Then, being there alone, Left and abandoned of his velvet friends: ”Tis right’; quoth he ‘thus misery doth part The flux of company.’ Anon, a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him And never stays to greet him. ‘Ay,’ quoth Jaques ‘Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens; ‘Tis just the fashion. Wherefore do you look Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?’

Thus most invectively he pierceth through The body of the country, city, court, Yea, and of this our life; swearing that we Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what’s worse, To fright the animals, and to kill them up In their assign’d and native dwelling-place.

DUKE SENIOR. And did you leave him in this contemplation?

SECOND LORD. We did, my lord, weeping and commenting Upon the sobbing deer.

DUKE SENIOR. Show me the place;

I love to cope him in these sullen fits, For then he’s full of matter.

FIRST LORD. I’ll bring you to him straight. Exeunt

SCENE II.

The DUKE’S palace

Enter DUKE FREDERICK, with LORDS

FREDERICK. Can it be possible that no man saw them?

It cannot be; some villains of my court Are of consent and sufferance in this.

FIRST LORD. I cannot hear of any that did see her.

The ladies, her attendants of her chamber, Saw her abed, and in the morning early They found the bed untreasur’d of their mistress.

SECOND LORD. My lord, the roynish clown, at whom so oft Your Grace was wont to laugh, is also missing.

Hisperia, the Princess’ gentlewoman,

Confesses that she secretly o’erheard Your daughter and her cousin much commend The parts and graces of the wrestler

That did but lately foil the sinewy Charles; And she believes, wherever they are gone, That youth is surely in their company.

FREDERICK. Send to his brother; fetch that gallant hither.

If he be absent, bring his brother to me; I’ll make him find him. Do this suddenly; And let not search and inquisition quail To bring again these foolish runaways. Exeunt

SCENE III.

Before OLIVER’S house

Enter ORLANDO and ADAM, meeting

ORLANDO. Who’s there?

ADAM. What, my young master? O my gentle master!

O my sweet master! O you memory

Of old Sir Rowland! Why, what make you here?

Why are you virtuous? Why do people love you?

And wherefore are you gentle, strong, and valiant?

Why would you be so fond to overcome

The bonny prizer of the humorous Duke?

Your praise is come too swiftly home before you.

Know you not, master, to some kind of men Their graces serve them but as enemies?

No more do yours. Your virtues, gentle master, Are sanctified and holy traitors to you.

O, what a world is this, when what is comely Envenoms him that bears it!

ORLANDO. Why, what’s the matter?

ADAM. O unhappy youth!

Come not within these doors; within this roof The enemy of all your graces lives.

Your brother-no, no brother; yet the son-Yet not the son; I will not call him son Of him I was about to call his father-Hath heard your praises; and this night he means To burn the lodging where you use to lie, And you within it. If he fail of that, He will have other means to cut you off; I overheard him and his practices.

This is no place; this house is but a butchery; Abhor it, fear it, do not enter it.

ORLANDO. Why, whither, Adam, wouldst thou have me go?

ADAM. No matter whither, so you come not here.

ORLANDO. What, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food, Or with a base and boist’rous sword enforce A thievish living on the common road?

This I must do, or know not what to do; Yet this I will not do, do how I can.

I rather will subject me to the malice Of a diverted blood and bloody brother.

ADAM. But do not so. I have five hundred crowns, The thrifty hire I sav’d under your father, Which I did store to be my foster-nurse, When service should in my old limbs lie lame, And unregarded age in corners thrown.

Take that, and He that doth the ravens feed, Yea, providently caters for the sparrow, Be comfort to my age! Here is the gold; All this I give you. Let me be your servant; Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty; For in my youth I never did apply

Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood, Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo The means of weakness and debility;

Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, Frosty,