AS YOU LIKE IT. Sidney Lee

1. Then sing him home:

       [The rest shall bear this burden.]

       Take thou no scorn to wear the horn;

       It was a crest ere thou wast born.

       1. Thy father’s father wore it;

       2. And thy father bore it;

       All. The horn, the horn, the lusty horn,

       Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.

       [Exeunt.]

      SCENE III. Another part of the Forest

       [Enter ROSALIND and CELIA.]

       ROSALIND

       How say you now? Is it not past two o’clock? And here much Orlando!

       CELIA

       I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain, he hath ta’en his bow and arrows, and is gone forth—to sleep. Look, who comes here.

       [Enter SILVIUS.]

       SILVIUS

       My errand is to you, fair youth;—

       My gentle Phebe did bid me give you this:

       [Giving a letter.]

       I know not the contents; but, as I guess

       By the stern brow and waspish action

       Which she did use as she was writing of it,

       It bears an angry tenor: pardon me,

       I am but as a guiltless messenger.

       ROSALIND

       Patience herself would startle at this letter,

       And play the swaggerer; bear this, bear all:

       She says I am not fair; that I lack manners;

       She calls me proud, and that she could not love me,

       Were man as rare as Phoenix. Od’s my will!

       Her love is not the hare that I do hunt;

       Why writes she so to me?—Well, shepherd, well,

       This is a letter of your own device.

       SILVIUS

       No, I protest, I know not the contents:

       Phebe did write it.

       ROSALIND

       Come, come, you are a fool,

       And turn’d into the extremity of love.

       I saw her hand: she has a leathern hand,

       A freestone-colour’d hand: I verily did think

       That her old gloves were on, but ‘twas her hands;

       She has a huswife’s hand: but that’s no matter:

       I say she never did invent this letter:

       This is a man’s invention, and his hand.

       SILVIUS

       Sure, it is hers.

       ROSALIND

       Why, ‘tis a boisterous and a cruel style;

       A style for challengers: why, she defies me,

       Like Turk to Christian: women’s gentle brain

       Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention,

       Such Ethiop words, blacker in their effect

       Than in their countenance.—Will you hear the letter?

       SILVIUS

       So please you, for I never heard it yet;

       Yet heard too much of Phebe’s cruelty.

       ROSALIND

       She Phebes me: mark how the tyrant writes.

       [Reads]

       “Art thou god to shepherd turn’d,

       That a maiden’s heart hath burn’d?”

       Can a woman rail thus?

       SILVIUS

       Call you this railing?

       ROSALIND

       “Why, thy godhead laid apart,

       Warr’st thou with a woman’s heart?”

       Did you ever hear such railing?

       “Whiles the eye of man did woo me,

       That could do no vengeance to me.”—

       Meaning me a beast.—

       “If the scorn of your bright eyne

       Have power to raise such love in mine,

       Alack, in me what strange effect

       Would they work in mild aspéct?

       Whiles you chid me, I did love;

       How then might your prayers move?

       He that brings this love to thee

       Little knows this love in me:

       And by him seal up thy mind;

       Whether that thy youth and kind

       Will the faithful offer take

       Of me and all that I can make;

       Or else by him my love deny,

       And then I’ll study how to die.”

       SILVIUS

       Call you this chiding?

       CELIA

       Alas, poor shepherd!

       ROSALIND

       Do you pity him? no, he deserves no pity.—Wilt thou love such a woman?—What, to make thee an instrument, and play false strains upon thee! Not to be endured!—Well, go your way to her, —for I see love hath made thee a tame snake,—and say this to her;—that if she love me, I charge her to love thee; if she will not, I will never have her unless thou entreat for her.—If you be a true lover, hence, and not a word; for here comes more company.

       [Exit SILVIUS.]

       [Enter OLIVER.]

       OLIVER

       Good morrow, fair ones: pray you, if you know,

       Where in the purlieus of this forest stands

       A sheepcote fenc’d about with olive trees?

       CELIA

       West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom:

       The rank of osiers, by the murmuring stream,

       Left on your right hand, brings you to the place.

       But at this hour the house doth keep itself;

       There’s none within.

       OLIVER

       If that an eye may profit by a tongue,

       Then should I know you by description;

       Such garments, and such years: “The boy is fair,

       Of female favour, and bestows himself

       Like a ripe sister: the woman low,

       And browner than her brother.” Are not you

       The owner of the house I did inquire for?

       CELIA

       It is no boast, being ask’d, to say we are.

       OLIVER

       Orlando doth commend him to you both;

       And to that youth he calls his Rosalind

       He sends this bloody napkin:—are you he?

       ROSALIND

       I am: what must we understand by this?