Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare (ebook and pdf reader .txt) 📕

She's too hard for you at pricks, sir; challenge her to bowl.

BOYET.
I fear too much rubbing. Good-night, my good owl.

[Exeunt BOYET and MARIA.]

COSTARD.
By my soul, a swain! a most simple clown!
Lord, Lord! how the ladies and I have put him down!
O' my troth, most sweet jests, most incony vulgar wit!
When it comes so smoothly off, so obscenely, as it were, so fit.
Armado, o' the one side, O! a most dainty man!
To see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan!
To see him kiss his hand! and how most sweetly a' will swear!
And his page o' t'other side, that handful of wit!
Ah! heavens, it is a most pathetical nit.
[Shouting within.] Sola, sola!

[Exit running.]


SCENE II. The same.

Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL.

NATHANIEL.
Very reverent sport, truly; and done in the testimony of
a good conscience.

HOLOFERNES.
The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe as
the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo,
the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on
the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth.

NATHANIEL.
Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly
varied, like a scholar at the least: but, sir, I assure ye it was
a buck of the first head.

HOLOFERNES.
Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.

DULL.
Twas not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket.

HOLOFERNES.
Most barbarous intimation! yet a kind of insinuation,
as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were,
replication, or rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his
inclination,--after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated,
unpruned, untrained, or rather, unlettered, or ratherest,
unconfirmed fashion,--to insert again my haud credo for a deer.

DULL.
I sthe deer was not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket.

HOLOFERNES.
Twice sod simplicity, bis coctus!
O! thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!

NATHANIEL.
Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred of a book;
he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his
intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible
in the duller parts:
And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should
be,
Which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts that do
fructify in us more than he;
For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool,
So, were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school.
But, omne bene, say I; being of an old Father's mind:
Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.

DULL.
You two are book-men: can you tell me by your wit,
What was a month old at Cain's birth, that's not five weeks old
as yet?

HOLOFERNES.
Dictynna, goodman Dull; Dictynna, goodman Dull.

DULL.
What is Dictynna?

NATHANIEL.
A title to Phoebe, to Luna, to the moon.

HOLOFERNES.
The moon was a month old when Adam was no more,
And raught not to five weeks when he came to five-score.
The allusion holds in the exchange.

DULL.
'Tis true, indeed; the collusion holds in the exchange.

HOLOFERNES.
God comfort thy capacity! I say, the allusion holds in
the exchange.

DULL.
And I say the pollusion holds in the exchange, for the moon is
never but a month old; and I say beside that 'twas a pricket
that the Princess killed.

HOLOFERNES.
Sir Nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal epitaph on the death
of the deer? And, to humour the ignorant, I have call'd the deer
the Princess killed, a pricket.

NATHANIEL.
Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge; so it shall please
you to abrogate scurrility.

HOLOFERNES.
I will something affect the letter; for it argues facility.
The preyful Princess pierc'd and prick'd a pretty pleasing
pricket;
Some say a sore; but not a sore till now made sore with
shooting.
The dogs did yell; put L to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket-
Or pricket sore, or else sorel; the people fall a-hooting.
If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores one sorel!
Of one sore I an hundred make, by adding but one more L.

NATHANIEL.
A rare talent!

DULL.
[Aside] If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a
talent.

HOLOFERNES.
This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish
extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects,
ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these are begot in
the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and
delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in
those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.

NATHANIEL.
Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my parishioners; for
their sons are well tutored by you, and their daughters profit
very greatly under you: you are a good member of the
commonwealth.

HOLOFERNES.
Mehercle! if their sons be ingenious, they shall want no
instruction; if their daughters be capable, I will put it to
them; but, vir sapit qui pauca loquitur. A soul feminine saluteth
us.

[Enter JAQUENETTA and COSTARD.]

JAQUENETTA.
God give you good morrow, Master parson.

HOLOFERNES.
Master parson, quasi pers-on. And if one should be
pierced, which is the one?

COSTARD.
Marry, Master schoolmaster, he that is likest to a hogshead.

HOLOFERNES.
Piercing a hogshead! A good lustre or conceit in a turf
of earth; fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine; 'tis
pretty; it is well.

JAQUENETTA.
Good Master parson [Giving a letter to NATHANIEL.], be so good as
read me this letter: it was given me by Costard, and sent me from
Don Armado: I beseech you read it.

HOLOFERNES.
'Fauste, precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra Ruminat,'
and so forth. Ah! good old Mantuan. I may speak of thee as
the traveller doth of Venice:
--Venetia, Venetia,
Chi non ti vede, non ti pretia.
Old Mantuan! old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not,
loves thee not. Ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa. Under pardon, sir, what
are the contents? or rather as Horace says in his-- What, my
soul, verses?

NATHANIEL.
Ay, sir, and very learned.

HOLOFERNES.
Let me hear a staff, a stanze, a verse; lege, domine.

NATHANIEL.
If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?
Ah! never faith could hold, if not to beauty vow'd;
Though to myself forsworn, to thee I'll faithful prove;
Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed.
Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes,
Where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend:
If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice.
Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend;
All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder;
Which is to me some praise that I thy parts admire.
Thy eye Jove's lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder,
Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire.
Celestial as thou art, O! pardon love this wrong,
That sings heaven's praise with such an earthly tongue.

HOLOFERNES.
You find not the apostrophas, and so miss the accent:
let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified;
but, for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy,
caret. Ovidius Naso was the man: and why, indeed, Naso but for
smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of
invention? Imitari is nothing: so doth the hound his master, the
ape his keeper, the 'tired horse his rider. But, damosella
virgin, was this directed to you?

JAQUENETTA.
Ay, sir; from one Monsieur Berowne, one of the strange
queen's lords.

HOLOFERNES.
I will overglance the superscript: 'To the snow-white
hand of the most beauteous Lady Rosaline.' I will look again on
the intellect of the letter, for the nomination of the party
writing to the person written unto: 'Your Ladyship's in all
desired employment, Berowne.'--Sir Nathaniel, this Berowne is one
of the votaries with the king; and here he hath framed a letter
to a sequent of the stranger queen's, which, accidentally, or by
the way of progression, hath miscarried. Trip and go, my sweet;
deliver this paper into the royal hand of the king; it may
concern much. Stay not thy compliment; I forgive thy duty. Adieu.

JAQUENETTA.
Good Costard, go with me. Sir, God save your life!

COSTARD.
Have with thee, my girl.

[Exeunt COSTARD and JAQUENETTA.]

NATHANIEL.
Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very religiously;
and, as a certain Father saith--

HOLOFERNES.
Sir, tell not me of the Father; I do fear colourable colours. But
to return to the verses: did they please you, Sir Nathaniel?

NATHANIEL.
Marvellous well for the pen.

HOLOFERNES.
I do dine to-day at the father's of a certain pupil of
mine; where, if, before repast, it shall please you to gratify
the table with a grace, I will, on my privilege I have with the
parents of the foresaid child or pupil, undertake your ben
venuto; where I will prove those verses to be very unlearned,
neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention. I beseech your
society.

NATHANIEL.
And thank you too; for society,--saith the text,--is the
happiness of life.

HOLOFERNES.
And certes, the text most infallibly concludes it.
[To DULL] Sir, I do invite you too; you shall not say me nay:
pauca verba. Away! the gentles are at their game, and we will to
our recreation.

[Exeunt.]


SCENE III. The same.

[Enter BEROWNE, with a paper.]

BEROWNE.
The king he is hunting the deer: I am coursing myself: they have
pitched a toil: I am tolling in a pitch,--pitch that defiles:
defile! a foul word! Well, sit thee down, sorrow! for
so they say the fool said, and so say I, and I am the fool: well
proved, wit! By the Lord, this love is as mad as Ajax: it kills
sheep; it kills me, I a sheep: well proved again o' my side. I
will not love; if I do, hang me; i' faith, I will not. O! but her
eye,--by this light, but for her eye, I would not love her; yes,
for her two eyes. Well, I do nothing in the world but lie, and
lie in my throat. By heaven, I do love; and it hath taught me to
rime, and to be melancholy; and here is part of my rhyme, and
here my melancholy. Well, she hath one o' my sonnets already; the
clown bore it, the fool sent it, and the lady hath it: sweet
clown, sweeter fool, sweetest lady! By the world, I would not
care a pin if the other three were in. Here comes one with a
paper; God give him grace to groan!

[Gets up into a tree.]

[Enter the KING, with a paper.]

KING.
Ay me!

BEROWNE. [Aside.]
Shot, by heaven! Proceed, sweet Cupid; thou hast thumped
him with thy bird-bolt under the left pap. In faith, secrets!

KING.
So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not
To those fresh morning drops upon