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

sir. Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell you who time ambles withal, who time trots withal, who time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.

       ORLANDO

       I pr’ythee, who doth he trot withal?

       ROSALIND

       Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized; if the interim be but a se’nnight, time’s pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven year.

       ORLANDO

       Who ambles time withal?

       ROSALIND

       With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath not the gout: for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study, and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain; the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning, the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury. These time ambles withal.

       ORLANDO

       Who doth he gallop withal?

       ROSALIND

       With a thief to the gallows; for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there.

       ORLANDO

       Who stays it still withal?

       ROSALIND

       With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how time moves.

       ORLANDO

       Where dwell you, pretty youth?

       ROSALIND

       With this shepherdess, my sister; here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat.

       ORLANDO

       Are you native of this place?

       ROSALIND

       As the coney, that you see dwell where she is kindled.

       ORLANDO

       Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so removed a dwelling.

       ROSALIND

       I have been told so of many: but indeed an old religious uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland man; one that knew courtship too well, for there he fell in love. I have heard him read many lectures against it; and I thank God I am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offences as he hath generally taxed their whole sex withal.

       ORLANDO

       Can you remember any of the principal evils that he laid to the charge of women?

       ROSALIND

       There were none principal; they were all like one another as halfpence are; every one fault seeming monstrous till his fellow fault came to match it.

       ORLANDO

       I pr’ythee recount some of them.

       ROSALIND

       No; I will not cast away my physic but on those that are sick. There is a man haunts the forest that abuses our young plants with carving “Rosalind” on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns, and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind: if I could meet that fancy-monger, I would give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love upon him.

       ORLANDO

       I am he that is so love-shaked: I pray you tell me your remedy.

       ROSALIND

       There is none of my uncle’s marks upon you; he taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes I am sure you are not prisoner.

       ORLANDO

       What were his marks?

       ROSALIND

       A lean cheek; which you have not: a blue eye and sunken; which you have not: an unquestionable spirit; which you have not: a beard neglected; which you have not: but I pardon you for that, for simply your having in beard is a younger brother’s revenue:— then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man; you are rather point-device in your accoutrements, as loving yourself than seeming the lover of any other.

       ORLANDO

       Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love.

       ROSALIND

       Me believe it! you may as soon make her that you love believe it; which, I warrant, she is apter to do than to confess she does: that is one of the points in the which women still give the lie to their consciences. But, in good sooth, are you he that hangs the verses on the trees, wherein Rosalind is so admired?

       ORLANDO

       I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am that he, that unfortunate he.

       ROSALIND

       But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?

       ORLANDO

       Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.

       ROSALIND

       Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do: and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing it by counsel.

       ORLANDO

       Did you ever cure any so?

       ROSALIND

       Yes, one; and in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me: at which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing and liking; proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; for every passion something and for no passion truly anything, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour; would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love to a living humour of madness; which was, to forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook merely monastic. And thus I cured him; and this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep’s heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in ‘t.

       ORLANDO

       I would not be cured, youth.

       ROSALIND

       I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind, and come every day to my cote and woo me.

       ORLANDO

       Now, by the faith of my love, I will: tell me where it is.

       ROSALIND

       Go with me to it, and I’ll show it you: and, by the way, you shall tell me where in the forest you live. Will you go?

       ORLANDO

       With all my heart, good youth.

       ROSALIND

       Nay, you must call me Rosalind.—Come, sister, will you go?

       [Exeunt.]

      SCENE III. Another part of the Forest

       [Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY; JAQUES at a distance observing them.]

       TOUCHSTONE

       Come apace, good Audrey; I will fetch up your goats, Audrey. And how, Audrey? am I the man yet? Doth my simple feature content you?

       AUDREY

       Your features! Lord warrant us! what features?

       TOUCHSTONE

       I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.

       JAQUES

       [Aside] O knowledge ill-inhabited! worse than Jove in a thatch’d house!

       TOUCHSTONE

       When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor