Cost. When would you have it done, sir?
Ber. O, this afternoon.
Cost. Well, I will do it, sir; fare you well.
Ber. O, thou knowest not what it is.
Cost. I shall know, sir, when I have done it.
Ber. Why, villain, thou must know first.
Cost. I will come to your worship to-morrow morning.
Ber.
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.
Cost. Garden, O sweet gardon! better than remuneration, aleven-pence-farthing better; most sweet gardon! I will do it, sir, in print. Gardon! Remuneration!
Exit.
Ber.
O, 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 malecontents,
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 colors 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, groan:
Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.
[Exit.]
¶
[ACT IV]
[Scene I]
Enter the Princess, a Forester, her Ladies [Rosaline, Maria, Katherine], and her Lords, [among them Boyet].
Prin.
Was that the King that spurr’d his horse so hard
Against the steep-up rising of the hill?
For.
I know not, but I think it was not he.
Prin.
Whoe’er ’a was, ’a show’d a mounting mind.
Well, lords, to-day we shall have our dispatch;
[On] Saturday we will return to France.
Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush
That we must stand and play the murtherer in?
For.
Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice,
A stand where you may make the fairest shoot.
Prin.
I thank my beauty, I am fair that shoot,
And thereupon thou speak’st the fairest shoot.
For.
Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so.
Prin.
What, what? First praise me, and again say no?
O short-liv’d pride! Not fair? alack for woe!
For.
Yes, madam, fair.
Prin.
Nay, never paint me now;
Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow.
Here (good my glass), take this for telling true:
[Giving him money.]
Fair payment for foul words is more than due.
For.
Nothing but fair is that which you inherit.
Prin.
See, see, my beauty will be sav’d by merit.
O heresy in fair, fit for these days!
A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise.
But come, the bow: now mercy goes to kill,
And shooting well is then accounted ill.
Thus will I save my credit in the shoot:
Not wounding, pity would not let me do’t;
If wounding, then it was to show my skill,
That more for praise than purpose meant to kill.
And out of question so it is sometimes:
Glory grows guilty of detested crimes,
When for fame’s sake, for praise, an outward part,
We bend to that the working of the heart;
As I for praise alone now seek to spill
The poor deer’s blood, that my heart means no ill.
Boyet.
Do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty
Only for praise’ sake, when they strive to be
Lords o’er their lords?
Prin.