The park
Enter ARMADO and MOTH ARMADO Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.
[MOTH sings Concolinel] 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?
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 snuff'd up love by smelling love,
with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of your eyes, with
your arms cross'd 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.
ARMADO How hast thou purchased this experience?
MOTH By my penny of observation.
ARMADO But O- but O-
MOTH The hobby-horse is forgot.
ARMADO Call'st 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?
ARMADO Almost I had.
MOTH Negligent student! learn her by heart.
ARMADO By heart and in heart, boy.
MOTH And out of heart, master; all those three I will prove.
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.
ARMADO I am all these three.
MOTH And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.
ARMADO Fetch hither the swain; he must carry me a letter.
MOTH A message well sympathiz'd- a horse to be ambassador for an
ass.
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.
ARMADO The way is but short; away.
MOTH As swift as lead, sir.
ARMADO The meaning, pretty ingenious?
Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?
MOTH Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.
ARMADO I say lead is slow.
MOTH You are too swift, sir, to say so:
Is that lead slow which is fir'd from a gun?
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 ARMADO A most acute juvenal; volable 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.
ARMADO Some enigma, some riddle; come, thy l'envoy; begin.
COSTARD No egma, 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!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
ARMADO We will talk no more of this matter.
COSTARD Till there be more matter in the shin.
ARMADO Sirrah Costard. I will enfranchise thee.
COSTARD O, Marry me to one Frances! I smell some l'envoy, some
goose, in this.
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.
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 BEROWNE BEROWNE My good knave Costard, exceedingly well met!
COSTARD Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man buy for
a remuneration?
BEROWNE What is a remuneration?
COSTARD Marry, sir, halfpenny farthing.
BEROWNE Why, then, three-farthing worth of silk.
COSTARD I thank your worship. God be wi' you!
BEROWNE 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?
BEROWNE This afternoon.
COSTARD Well, I will do it, sir; fare you well.
BEROWNE Thou knowest not what it is.
COSTARD I shall know, sir, when I have done it.
BEROWNE Why, villain, thou must know first.
COSTARD I will come to your worship to-morrow morning.
BEROWNE 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 BEROWNE 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 wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
Th' anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
Sole imperator, and great general
Of trotting paritors. O my little heart!
And I to be a corporal of his field,
And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!
What! I love, I sue, I seek a wife-
A woman, that is like a German clock,
Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,
And never going aright, being a watch,
But being watch'd that it may still go right!
Nay, to be perjur'd, which is worst of all;
And, among three, to love the worst of all,
A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,
With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes;
Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed,
Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard.
And I to sigh for her! to watch for her!
To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague
That Cupid will impose for my neglect
Of his almighty dreadful little might.
Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan:
Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.
Exit