what is sworn, you will prove fools.
For wisdom’s sake, a word that all men love,
Or for love’s sake, a word that loves all men,
Or for men’s sake, the [authors] of these women,
Or women’s sake, by whom we men are men,
[Let] us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religion to be thus forsworn:
For charity itself fulfills the law,
And who can sever love from charity?
King.
Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!
Ber.
Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;
Pell-mell, down with them! but be first advis’d,
In conflict that you get the sun of them.
Long.
Now to plain-dealing, lay these glozes by:
Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?
King.
And win them too; therefore let us devise
Some entertainment for them in their tents.
Ber.
First, from the park let us conduct them thither;
Then homeward every man attach the hand
Of his fair mistress. In the afternoon
We will with some strange pastime solace them,
Such as the shortness of the time can shape,
For revels, dances, masks, and merry hours
Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.
King.
Away, away, no time shall be omitted
That will be time, and may by us be fitted.
Ber. [Allons! allons!]
Sow’d cockle reap’d no corn,
And justice always whirls in equal measure:
Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn;
If so, our copper buys no better treasure.
[Exeunt.]
¶
[ACT V]
[Scene I]
Enter the Pedant [Holofernes], the Curate [Sir Nathaniel], and Dull.
Hol. Satis quid sufficit.
Nath. I praise God for you, sir. Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious: pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the King’s, who is intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.
Hol. Novi [hominem] tanquam te. His humor is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behavior vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.
Nath. A most singular and choice epithet.
Draw out his table-book.
Hol. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-devise companions, such rackers of ortography, as to speak ‘dout,’ fine, when he should say ‘doubt’; ‘det,’ when he should pronounce ‘debt’—d, e, b, t, not d, e, t: he clepeth a calf, ‘cauf’; half, ‘hauf’; neighbor vocatur ‘nebor’; neigh abbreviated ‘ne.’ This is abhominable—which he would call ‘abbominable’; it insinuateth me of [insanie]: ne intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.
Nath. Laus Deo, [bone] intelligo.
Hol. [Bone? bone for bene,] Priscian a little scratch’d, ’twill serve.
Enter Braggart [Armado], Boy [Moth, and Costard].
Nath. Videsne quis venit?
Hol. Video, et gaudeo.
Arm. [To Moth.] Chirrah!
Hol. [Quare.] chirrah, not sirrah?
Arm. Men of peace, well encount’red.
Hol. Most military sir, salutation.
Moth [Aside to Costard.] They have been at a great feast of languages, and stol’n the scraps.
Cost. O, they have liv’d long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallow’d than a flap-dragon.
Moth. Peace, the peal begins.
Arm. [To Holofernes.] Monsieur, are you not lett’red?
Moth. Yes, yes, he teaches boys the horn-book. What is a, b, spell’d backward, with the horn on his head?
Hol. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.
Moth. Ba, most silly sheep, with a horn. You hear his learning.
Hol. Quis, quis, thou consonant?
Moth. The last of the five vowels, if ‘you’ repeat them; or the fift, if I.
Hol. I will repeat them—a, e, I—
Moth. The sheep: the other two concludes it—o, U.
Arm. Now by the salt [wave] of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit—snip, snap, quick and home. It rejoiceth my intellect. True wit!
Moth. Offer’d by a child to an old man: which is wit-old.
Hol.
