Dum. Room for the incensed worthies. Cost. I'll do it in my shirt. Dum. Most resolute Pompey! Moth. Master, let me take you a buttonhole lower. Do you not see, Pompey is uncasing for the combat? What mean you? you will lose your reputation. Arm. Gentlemen, and soldiers, pardon me ; not combat in my shirt.

will

Dum. You may not deny it; Pompey hath made the challenge.

Arm. Sweet bloods, I both may and will. Biron. What reasons have you for't? Arm. The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt; I go woolward' for penance.

Boyet. True, and it was enjoin'd him in Rome for want of linen: since when, I'll be sworn, he wore none, but a dish-clout of Jaquenetta's; and that a' wears next his heart for a favour.

Enter a Messenger MONSIEUR MERCADE. Mer. God save you, Madam.

Prin. Welcome, Mercade;

But that thou interrupt'st our merriment.

Mer. I am sorry, madam; for the news I bring, Is heavy in my tongue. The king your fatherPrin. Dead, for my life.

Mer. Even so; my tale is told.

Biron. Worthies, away; the scene begins to cloud. Arm. For mine own part, I breathe free breath: I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion, and I will right myself like a soldier. [Exeunt Worthies.

King. How fares your majesty?

Prin. Boyet, prepare; I will away to-night.
King, Madam, not so; I do beseech you, stay.
Prin. Prepare, I say.-I thank you, gracious
lords,

For all your fair endeavours; and entreat,
Out of a new-sad sou, that you vouchsafe
In your rich wisdom, to excuse, or hide,
The liberal' opposition of our spirits:
If over-boldly we have borne ourselves
In the converse of breath, your gentleness
Was guilty of it.-Farewell, worthy lord!
A heavy heart bears not an humble tongue :
Excuse me so, coming so short of thanks
For my great suit so easily obtain'd.

Put on by us, if, in your heavenly eyes,
Have misbecom'd our oaths and gravities,
Those heavenly eyes, that look into these faults,
Suggested' us to make: Therefore, ladies,
Our love being yours, the error that love makes
Is likewise yours: we to ourselves prove faise,
By being once false for ever to be true
To those that make us both,-fair ladies, you:
And even that falsehood, in itself a sin,
Thus purifies itself, and turns to grace.

Prin. We have receiv'd your letters, full of love;
Your favours, the embassadors of love;
And, in our maiden council, rated them
At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy,
As bombast, and as lining to the time:
But more devout than this, in our respects,
Have we not been; and therefore met your loves
In their own fashion, like a merriment.

Dum. Our letters, madam, show'd much more than jest.

Long. So did our looks.

Ros. We did not quote them so. King. Now, at the latest minute of the hour, Grant us your loves.

Prin.

A time, methinks, too short
To make a world-without-end bargain in:
No, no, my lord, your grace is perjur'd much,
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 their 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, challenge me by these deserts,
And, by this virgin palm, now kissing thine,

I will be thine; and, till that instant, shut

My woful self up in a mourning house;
Raining the tears of lamentation,

For the remembrance of my father's death.

All causes to the purpose of his speed;
And often, at his very loose, decides

That which long process could not arbitrate:
And though the mourning brow of progeny
Forbid the smiling courtesy of love,

The holy suit which fain it would convince ;
Yet, since love's argument was first on foot,
Let not the cloud of sorrow justle it

From what it purpos'd; since, to wail friends lost,
Is not by much so wholesome, profitable,
As to rejoice at friends but newly found.

Prin. I understand you not; my griefs are double. Biron. Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief;

And by these badges understand the king.
For your fair sakes have we neglected time,
Play'd foul play with our oaths; your beauty, ladics,
Hath much deform'd us, fashioning our humours
Even to the opposed end of our intents;
And what in us hath seem'd ridiculous,-
As love is full of unbefitting strains;
All wanton as a child, skipping, and vain;
Form'd by the eye, and therefore, like the eye,
Full of strange shapes, of habits, and of forms,
Varying in subjects as
doth roll
eye
To every varied object in his glance :
Which party-coated presence of loose love

the

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 ever then my heart is in thy breast. Biron. And what to me, my love? and what to

me?

Ros. You must be purged too, your sins are rank; Therefore, if you my favour mean to get, You are attaint with faults and perjury; 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? Kath. A wife!-A beard, fair health, and honesty;

With three-fold 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 you be forsworn again.
Long. What Maria?

Mar.

says

At the twelvemonth's end,

I'll change my black gown for a faithful friend.

5 Loose may mean at the moment of his parting, i. e. of his getting loose or away from us. 6 i. e. which it fain would succeed in obtaining. 7 Tempted.

8 Thus in Decker's Satiromastix: You shall swear not to bombast out a new play with the old nings o jests."

9 Regard,

10 Clothing.

'Long. I'll stay with patience: but the time is long.

Mar. The liker you; few taller are so young. Biron. 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 Biron, 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 fruitful 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' endeavour of your wit, To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

Biron. 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 clamours of their own dear2 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.

Biron. A twelvemonth? well, befall what will befall,

I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.

Prin. Ay, sweet my lord; and so I take my leave. To the King.

King. No, madam; we will bring you on your

King. Call them forth quickly, we will do so. Arm. Holla! approach.

Enter HOLOFERNES, NATHANIEI, MOTH, COSTARD, and others. This side is Hiems, winter; this Ver, the spring; the one maintain'd by the owl, the other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin.

SONG. I.

Spring. When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he,
Cuckoo ;

Cuckoo, cuckoo,-O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
IL.

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,

And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo, then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he,
Cuckoo ;

Cuckoo, cuckoo,-O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

III.

Winter. When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-who;

To-whit, to-who, a merry note,
White greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
IV.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-who;

To-whit, to-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
Arm. The words of Mercury are harsh after the
songs of Apollo. You that way; we, this way.

[Exeunt.