Full of dear guiltiness, and therefore this:
If for my love (as there is no such cause)
You will do aught, this shall you do for me:
Your oath I will not trust, but go with speed
To some forlorn and naked hermitage,
Remote from all the pleasures of the world;
There stay until the twelve celestial signs
Have brought about the annual reckoning.
If this austere insociable life
Change not your offer made in heat of blood;
If frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds
Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love
But that it bear this trial, and last love;
Then at the expiration of the year,
Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts,
And by this virgin palm now kissing thine,
I will be thine; and till that [instant] shut
My woeful self up in a mourning house,
Raining the tears of lamentation
For the remembrance of my father’s death.
If this thou do deny, let our hands part,
Neither intitled in the other’s heart.
King.
If this, or more than this, I would deny,
To flatter up these powers of mine with rest,
The sudden hand of death close up mine eye!
Hence [hermit] then—my heart is in thy breast.
[Ber.
And what to me, my love? and what to me?
Ros.
You must be purged too, your sins are rack’d,
You are attaint with faults and perjury:
Therefore if you my favor mean to get,
A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest,
But seek the weary beds of people sick.)
Dum.
But what to me, my love? but what to me?
A wife?
Kath.
A beard, fair health, and honesty;
With threefold love I wish you all these three.
Dum.
O, shall I say, I thank you, gentle wife?
Kath.
Not so, my lord, a twelvemonth and a day
I’ll mark no words that smooth-fac’d wooers say.
Come when the King doth to my lady come;
Then if I have much love, I’ll give you some.
Dum.
I’ll serve thee true and faithfully till then.
Kath.
Yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again.
Long.
What says Maria?
Mar.
At the twelvemonth’s end
I’ll change my black gown for a faithful friend.
Long.
I’ll stay with patience, but the time is long.
Mar.
The liker you; few taller are so young.
Ber.
Studies my lady? Mistress, look on me,
Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,
What humble suit attends thy answer there.
Impose some service on me for thy love.
Ros.
Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Berowne,
Before I saw you; and the world’s large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks,
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts,
Which you on all estates will execute
That lie within the mercy of your wit.
To weed this wormwood from your fructful brain,
And therewithal to win me, if you please,
Without the which I am not to be won,
You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick, and still converse
With groaning wretches; and your task shall be,
With all the fierce endeavor of your wit,
To enforce the pained impotent to smile.
Ber.
To move wild laughter in the throat of death?
It cannot be, it is impossible:
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
Ros.
Why, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools.
A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it; then if sickly ears,
Deaf’d with the clamors of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,
And I will have you and that fault withal;
But if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation.
Ber.
A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall,
I’ll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.
Prin. [To the King.]
Ay, sweet my lord, and so I take my leave.
King.
No, madam, we will bring you on your way.
Ber.
Our wooing doth not end like an old play:
Jack hath not Gill. These ladies’ courtesy
Might well have made our sport a comedy.
King.
Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth an’ a day,
And then ’twill end.