Cor. For not being at court? Your reason.
Touch. Why, if thou never wast at court, thou never saw’st good manners; if thou never saw’st good manners, then thy manners must be wicked, and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation. Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd.
Cor. Not a whit, Touchstone. Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court. You told me you salute not at the court but you kiss your hands; that courtesy would be uncleanly if courtiers were shepherds.
Touch. Instance, briefly; come, instance.
Cor. Why, we are still handling our ewes, and their fells you know are greasy.
Touch. Why, do not your courtier’s hands sweat? And is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man? Shallow, shallow. A better instance, I say; come.
Cor. Besides, our hands are hard.
Touch. Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow again. A more sounder instance, come.
Cor. And they are often tarr’d over with the surgery of our sheep; and would you have us kiss tar? The courtier’s hands are perfum’d with civet.
Touch. Most shallow man! thou worm’s-meat, in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed! Learn of the wise, and perpend: civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd.
Cor. You have too courtly a wit for me, I’ll rest.
Touch. Wilt thou rest damn’d? God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee, thou art raw.
Cor. Sir, I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm, and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.
Touch. That is another simple sin in you, to bring the ewes and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether, and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to a crooked-pated old cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou beest not damn’d for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how thou shouldst scape.
Cor. Here comes young Master Ganymed, my new mistress’s brother.
Enter Rosalind [with a paper, reading].
Ros.
“From the east to western Inde,
No jewel is like Rosalind.
Her worth, being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind.
All the pictures fairest lin’d
Are but black to Rosalind.
Let no face be kept in mind
But the fair of Rosalind.”
Touch. I’ll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners and suppers and sleeping-hours excepted. It is the right butter-women’s rank to market.
Ros. Out, fool!
Touch. For a taste:
If a hart do lack a hind,
Let him seek out Rosalind.
If the cat will after kind,
So be sure will Rosalind.
Wint’red garments must be lin’d,
So must slender Rosalind.
They that reap must sheaf and bind,
Then to cart with Rosalind.
Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,
Such a nut is Rosalind.
He that sweetest rose will find,
Must find love’s prick and Rosalind.
This is the very false gallop of verses; why do you infect yourself with them?
Ros. Peace, you dull fool, I found them on a tree.
Touch. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit.
Ros. I’ll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar. Then it will be the earliest fruit i’ th’ country; for you’ll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that’s the right virtue of the medlar.
Touch. You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge.
Enter Celia with a writing.
Ros.
Peace,
Here comes my sister reading, stand aside.
Cel. [Reads.]
“Why should this [a] desert be?
For it is unpeopled? No!
Tongues I’ll hang on every tree,
That shall civil sayings show:
Some, how brief the life of man
Runs his erring pilgrimage,
That the stretching of a span
Buckles in his sum of age;
Some, of violated vows
’Twixt the souls of friend and friend;
But upon the fairest boughs,
Or at every sentence end,
Will I ‘Rosalinda’ write,
Teaching all that read to know
The quintessence of every sprite
Heaven would in little show.
Therefore heaven Nature charg’d
That one body should be fill’d
With all graces wide-enlarg’d.
Nature presently distill’d
Helen’s cheek, but not [her] heart,
Cleopatra’s majesty,
Atalanta’s better part,
Sad Lucretia’s modesty.
Thus Rosalind of many parts
By heavenly synod was devis’d,
Of many faces, eyes, and hearts,
To have the touches dearest priz’d.
Heaven would that she these gifts should have,
And I to live and die her slave.”
Ros. O most gentle Jupiter, what tedious homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried, “Have patience, good people!”
Cel. How now? back, friends! Shepherd, go off a little. Go with him, sirrah.
Touch. Come, shepherd, let us make an honorable retreat, though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.
Exit [with Corin].
Cel. Didst thou hear these verses?
Ros. O yes, I heard them all, and more too, for some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear.
Cel. That’s no matter; the feet might bear the verses.
Ros. Ay, but the feet were lame, and could not bear themselves without