William Shakespeare - Ultimate Collection: Complete Plays & Poetry in One Volume. William Shakespeare

pleasure.

       CELIA

       Herein I see thou lov’st me not with the full weight that I love thee; if my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me, I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine; so wouldst thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously tempered as mine is to thee.

       ROSALIND

       Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to rejoice in yours.

       CELIA

       You know my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to have; and, truly, when he dies thou shalt be his heir: for what he hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee again in affection: by mine honour, I will; and when I break that oath, let me turn monster; therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear Rose, be merry.

       ROSALIND

       From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports: let me see; what think you of falling in love?

       CELIA

       Marry, I pr’ythee, do, to make sport withal: but love no man in good earnest, nor no further in sport neither than with safety of a pure blush thou mayst in honour come off again.

       ROSALIND

       What shall be our sport, then?

       CELIA

       Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.

       ROSALIND

       I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily misplaced: and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women.

       CELIA

       ‘Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly.

       ROSALIND

       Nay; now thou goest from Fortune’s office to Nature’s: Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature.

       CELIA

       No; when Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by Fortune fall into the fire?—Though Nature hath given us wit to flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument?

       [Enter TOUCHSTONE.]

       ROSALIND

       Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when Fortune makes Nature’s natural the cutter-off of Nature’s wit.

       CELIA

       Peradventure this is not Fortune’s work neither, but Nature’s, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone: for always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.— How now, wit? whither wander you?

       TOUCHSTONE

       Mistress, you must come away to your father.

       CELIA

       Were you made the messenger?

       TOUCHSTONE

       No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you.

       ROSALIND

       Where learned you that oath, fool?

       TOUCHSTONE

       Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught: now, I’ll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and the mustard was good: and yet was not the knight forsworn.

       CELIA

       How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge?

       ROSALIND

       Ay, marry; now unmuzzle your wisdom.

       TOUCHSTONE

       Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave.

       CELIA

       By our beards, if we had them, thou art.

       TOUCHSTONE

       By my knavery, if I had it, then I were: but if you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn: no more was this knight, swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancackes or that mustard.

       CELIA

       Pr’ythee, who is’t that thou mean’st?

       TOUCHSTONE

       One that old Frederick, your father, loves.

       CELIA

       My father’s love is enough to honour him enough: speak no more of him: you’ll be whipp’d for taxation one of these days.

       TOUCHSTONE

       The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.

       CELIA

       By my troth, thou sayest true: for since the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show. Here comes Monsieur Le Beau.

       ROSALIND

       With his mouth full of news.

       CELIA

       Which he will put on us as pigeons feed their young.

       ROSALIND

       Then shall we be news-crammed.

       CELIA

       All the better; we shall be the more marketable.

       [Enter LE BEAU.]

       Bon jour, Monsieur Le Beau. What’s the news?

       LE BEAU

       Fair princess, you have lost much good sport.

       CELIA

       Sport! of what colour?

       LE BEAU

       What colour, madam? How shall I answer you?

       ROSALIND

       As wit and fortune will.

       TOUCHSTONE

       Or as the destinies decrees.

       CELIA Well said: that was laid on with a trowel.

       TOUCHSTONE

       Nay, if I keep not my rank,—

       ROSALIND

       Thou losest thy old smell.

       LE BEAU

       You amaze me, ladies; I would have told you of good wrestling, which you have lost the sight of.

       ROSALIND

       Yet tell us the manner of the wrestling.

       LE BEAU

       I will tell you the beginning, and, if it please your ladyships, you may see the end; for the best is yet to do; and here, where you are, they are coming to perform it.

       CELIA

       Well,—the beginning, that is dead and buried.

       LE BEAU

       There comes an old man and his three sons,—

       CELIA

       I could match this beginning with an old tale.

       LE BEAU

       Three proper young men, of excellent growth and presence, with bills on their necks,—

       ROSALIND

       “Be it known unto all men by these presents,”—

       LE BEAU

       The eldest of the three wrestled with Charles, the duke’s wrestler; which Charles in a moment threw him, and broke three of his ribs, that there is little hope of life in him: so he served the second, and so the third. Yonder they lie; the poor old man, their father, making such pitiful dole over them that all the beholders take his part with weeping.