ORLANDO
For these two hours, Rosalind, I will leave thee.
ROSALIND
Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours!
ORLANDO
I must attend the duke at dinner; by two o’clock I will be with thee again.
ROSALIND
Ay, go your ways, go your ways; I knew what you would prove; my friends told me as much, and I thought no less:—that flattering tongue of yours won me:—‘tis but one cast away, and so,—come death!—Two o’clock is your hour?
ORLANDO
Ay, sweet Rosalind.
ROSALIND
By my troth, and in good earnest, and so God mend me, and by all pretty oaths that are not dangerous, if you break one jot of your promise, or come one minute behind your hour, I will think you the most pathetical break-promise, and the most hollow lover, and the most unworthy of her you call Rosalind, that may be chosen out of the gross band of the unfaithful: therefore beware my censure, and keep your promise.
ORLANDO
With no less religion than if thou wert indeed my Rosalind: so, adieu!
ROSALIND
Well, Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let time try: adieu!
[Exit ORLANDO.]
CELIA
You have simply misus’d our sex in your love-prate: we must have your doublet and hose plucked over your head, and show the world what the bird hath done to her own nest.
ROSALIND
O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love! But it cannot be sounded: my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the bay of Portugal.
CELIA
Or rather, bottomless; that as fast as you pour affection in, it runs out.
ROSALIND
No; that same wicked bastard of Venus, that was begot of thought, conceived of spleen, and born of madness; that blind rascally boy, that abuses every one’s eyes, because his own are out, let him be judge how deep I am in love.—I’ll tell thee, Aliena, I cannot be out of the sight of Orlando: I’ll go find a shadow, and sigh till he come.
CELIA
And I’ll sleep.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE II. Another part of the Forest
[Enter JAQUES and Lords, in the habit of Foresters.]
JAQUES
Which is he that killed the deer?
LORD
Sir, it was I.
JAQUES
Let’s present him to the duke, like a Roman conqueror; and it would do well to set the deer’s horns upon his head for a branch of victory.—Have you no song, forester, for this purpose?
LORD
Yes, sir.
JAQUES
Sing it; ‘tis no matter how it be in tune, so it make noise enough.
SONG
1. What shall he have that kill’d the deer?
2. His leather skin and horns to wear.
1. Then sing him home:
[The rest shall bear this burden.]
Take thou no scorn to wear the horn;
It was a crest ere thou wast born.
1. Thy father’s father wore it;
2. And thy father bore it;
All. The horn, the horn, the lusty horn,
Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE III. Another part of the Forest
[Enter ROSALIND and CELIA.]
ROSALIND
How say you now? Is it not past two o’clock? And here much Orlando!
CELIA
I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain, he hath ta’en his bow and arrows, and is gone forth—to sleep. Look, who comes here.
[Enter SILVIUS.]
SILVIUS
My errand is to you, fair youth;—
My gentle Phebe did bid me give you this:
[Giving a letter.]
I know not the contents; but, as I guess
By the stern brow and waspish action
Which she did use as she was writing of it,
It bears an angry tenor: pardon me,
I am but as a guiltless messenger.
ROSALIND
Patience herself would startle at this letter,
And play the swaggerer; bear this, bear all:
She says I am not fair; that I lack manners;
She calls me proud, and that she could not love me,
Were man as rare as Phoenix. Od’s my will!
Her love is not the hare that I do hunt;
Why writes she so to me?—Well, shepherd, well,
This is a letter of your own device.
SILVIUS
No, I protest, I know not the contents:
Phebe did write it.
ROSALIND
Come, come, you are a fool,
And turn’d into the extremity of love.
I saw her hand: she has a leathern hand,
A freestone-colour’d hand: I verily did think
That her old gloves were on, but ‘twas her hands;
She has a huswife’s hand: but that’s no matter:
I say she never did invent this letter:
This is a man’s invention, and his hand.
SILVIUS
Sure, it is hers.
ROSALIND
Why, ‘tis a boisterous and a cruel style;
A style for challengers: why, she defies me,
Like Turk to Christian: women’s gentle brain
Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention,
Such Ethiop words, blacker in their effect
Than in their countenance.—Will you hear the letter?
SILVIUS
So please you, for I never heard it yet;
Yet heard too much of Phebe’s cruelty.
ROSALIND
She Phebes me: mark how the tyrant writes.
[Reads]
“Art thou god to shepherd turn’d,
That a maiden’s heart hath burn’d?”
Can a woman rail thus?
SILVIUS
Call you this railing?