The KING OF NAVARRE’S Park. | |
| |
Enter ARMADO and MOTH. | |
| Arm. Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing. | |
| Moth. [Singing.] Concolinel,— | 4 |
| Arm. 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? | |
| Arm. 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 by singing love, sometime through the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling love; with your hat penthouse-like o’er the shop of your eyes; with your arms crossed 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. | 8 |
| Arm. How hast thou purchased this experience? | |
| Moth. By my penny of observation. | |
| Arm. But O—but O,— | |
| Moth. ‘The hobby-horse is forgot.’ | 12 |
| Arm. Callest 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? | |
| Arm. Almost I had. | |
| Moth. Negligent student! learn her by heart. | 16 |
| Arm. By heart, and in heart, boy. | |
| Moth. And out of heart, master: all those three I will prove. | |
| Arm. 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. | 20 |
| Arm. I am all these three. | |
| Moth. And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all. | |
| Arm. Fetch hither the swain: he must carry me a letter. | |
| Moth. A message well sympathized: a horse to be ambassador for an ass. | 24 |
| Arm. 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. | |
| Arm. The way is but short: away! | |
| Moth. As swift as lead, sir. | 28 |
| Arm. Thy meaning, pretty ingenious? | |
| Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow? | |
| Moth. Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no. | |
| Arm. I say, lead is slow. | 32 |
| Moth. You are too swift, sir, to say so: | |
| Is that lead slow which is fir’d from a gun? | |
| Arm. Sweet smoke of rhetoric! | |
| He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that’s he: | 36 |
| I shoot thee at the swain. | |
| Moth. Thump then, and I flee. [Exit. | |
| Arm. A most acute juvenal; volable and free of grace! | |
| By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face: | 40 |
| 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. | 44 |
| Arm. Some enigma, some riddle: come, thy l’envoy; begin. | |
| Cost. 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. | |
| Arm. 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? | 48 |
| Arm. 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 | 52 |
| 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. | |
| Arm. The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee, | 56 |
| 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. | 60 |
| The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee, | |
| Were still at odds, being but three. | |
| Arm. Until the goose came out of door, | |
| Staying the odds by adding four. | 64 |
| Moth. A good l’envoy, ending in the goose. | |
| Would you desire more? | |
| Cost. The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that’s flat. | |
| Sir, your pennyworth is good an your goose be fat. | 68 |
| 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. | |
| Arm. Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin? | |
| Moth. By saying that a costard was broken in a shin. | 72 |
| Then call’d you for the l’envoy. | |
| Cost. 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. | 76 |
| Arm. But tell me; how was there a costard broken in a shin? | |
| Moth. I will tell you sensibly. | |
| Cost. Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth: I will speak that l’envoy: | |
| I, Costard, running out, that was safely within, | 80 |
| Fell over the threshold and broke my shin. | |
| Arm. We will talk no more of this matter. | |
| Cost. Till there be more matter in the shin. | |
| Arm. Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee. | 84 |
| Cost. O! marry me to one Frances: I smell some l’envoy, some goose, in this. | |
| Arm. By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty, enfreedoming thy person: thou wert immured, restrained, captivated, bound. | |
| Cost. True, true, and now you will be my purgation and let me loose. | |
| Arm. I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance; and in lieu thereof, impose upon thee nothing but this:—[Giving a letter.] Bear this significant to the country maid Jaquenetta. [Giving money.] There is remuneration; for the best ward of mine honour is rewarding my dependents. Moth, follow. [Exit. | 88 |
| Moth. Like the sequel, I. Signior Costard, adieu. | |
| Cost. 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. | 92 |
| Ber. O! my good knave Costard, exceedingly well met. | |
| Cost. Pray you, sir, how much carnation riband may a man buy for a remuneration? | |
| Ber. What is a remuneration? | |
| Cost. Marry, sir, halfpenny farthing. | 96 |
| Ber. Why then, three-farthing-worth of silk. | |
| Cost. I thank your worship. God be wi’ you! | |
| Ber. Stay, slave; I must employ thee: | |
| As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave, | 100 |
| Do one thing for me that I shall entreat. | |
| Cost. When would you have it done, sir? | |
| Ber. O, this afternoon. | |
| Cost. Well, I will do it, sir! fare you well. | 104 |
| 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. | 108 |
| 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, | 112 |
| And Rosaline they call her: ask for her | |
| And to her white hand see thou do commend | |
| This seal’d-up counsel. [Gives him a shilling.] There’s thy guerdon: go. | |
| Cost. 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. | 116 |
| Ber. 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, | 120 |
| 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; | 124 |
| Regent of love-rimes, lord of folded arms, | |
| The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans, | |
| Liege of all loiterers and malecontents, | |
| Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces, | 128 |
| 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! | 132 |
| What I! 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, | 136 |
| 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 wightly wanton with a velvet brow, | 140 |
| 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! | 144 |
| 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: | 148 |
| Some men must love my lady, and some Joan. [Exit. | |
