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

Queen Guinever of Britain was a little wench, as touching the hit

       it.

       ROSALINE.

       Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it,

       Thou canst not hit it, my good man.

       BOYET.

       An I cannot, cannot, cannot,

       An I cannot, another can.

       [Exeunt ROSALINE and KATHARINE.]

       COSTARD.

       By my troth, most pleasant: how both did fit it!

       MARIA.

       A mark marvellous well shot; for they both did hit it.

       BOYET.

       A mark! O! mark but that mark; A mark, says my lady!

       Let the mark have a prick in’t, to mete at, if it may be.

       MARIA.

       Wide o’ the bow-hand! I’ faith, your hand is out.

       COSTARD.

       Indeed, a’ must shoot nearer, or he’ll ne’er hit the clout.

       BOYET.

       An’ if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in.

       COSTARD.

       Then will she get the upshoot by cleaving the pin.

       MARIA.

       Come, come, you talk greasily; your lips grow foul.

       COSTARD.

       She’s too hard for you at pricks, sir; challenge her to bowl.

       BOYET.

       I fear too much rubbing. Goodnight, my good owl.

       [Exeunt BOYET and MARIA.]

       COSTARD.

       By my soul, a swain! a most simple clown!

       Lord, Lord! how the ladies and I have put him down!

       O’ my troth, most sweet jests, most incony vulgar wit!

       When it comes so smoothly off, so obscenely, as it were, so fit.

       Armado, o’ the one side, O! a most dainty man!

       To see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan!

       To see him kiss his hand! and how most sweetly a’ will swear!

       And his page o’ t’other side, that handful of wit!

       Ah! heavens, it is a most pathetical nit.

       [Shouting within.] Sola, sola!

       [Exit running.]

      SCENE II. The same.

       Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL.

       NATHANIEL. Very reverent sport, truly; and done in the testimony of a good conscience.

       HOLOFERNES. The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth.

       NATHANIEL. Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least: but, sir, I assure ye it was a buck of the first head.

       HOLOFERNES.

       Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.

       DULL.

       Twas not a haud credo; ‘twas a pricket.

       HOLOFERNES. Most barbarous intimation! yet a kind of insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were, replication, or rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his inclination,—after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather, unlettered, or ratherest, unconfirmed fashion,—to insert again my haud credo for a deer.

       DULL.

       I sthe deer was not a haud credo; ‘twas a pricket.

       HOLOFERNES.

       Twice sod simplicity, bis coctus!

       O! thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!

       NATHANIEL.

       Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred of a book;

       he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his

       intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible

       in the duller parts:

       And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should

       be,

       Which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts that do

       fructify in us more than he;

       For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool,

       So, were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school.

       But, omne bene, say I; being of an old Father’s mind:

       Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.

       DULL.

       You two are book-men: can you tell me by your wit,

       What was a month old at Cain’s birth, that’s not five weeks old

       as yet?

       HOLOFERNES.

       Dictynna, goodman Dull; Dictynna, goodman Dull.

       DULL.

       What is Dictynna?

       NATHANIEL.

       A title to Phoebe, to Luna, to the moon.

       HOLOFERNES.

       The moon was a month old when Adam was no more,

       And raught not to five weeks when he came to five-score.

       The allusion holds in the exchange.

       DULL.

       ‘Tis true, indeed; the collusion holds in the exchange.

       HOLOFERNES. God comfort thy capacity! I say, the allusion holds in the exchange.

       DULL. And I say the pollusion holds in the exchange, for the moon is never but a month old; and I say beside that ‘twas a pricket that the Princess killed.

       HOLOFERNES. Sir Nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal epitaph on the death of the deer? And, to humour the ignorant, I have call’d the deer the Princess killed, a pricket.

       NATHANIEL. Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge; so it shall please you to abrogate scurrility.

       HOLOFERNES.

       I will something affect the letter; for it argues facility.

       The preyful Princess pierc’d and prick’d a pretty pleasing

       pricket;

       Some say a sore; but not a sore till now made sore with

       shooting.

       The dogs did yell; put L to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket-

       Or pricket sore, or else sorel; the people fall a-hooting.

       If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores one sorel!

       Of one sore I an hundred make, by adding but one more L.

       NATHANIEL.

       A rare talent!

       DULL. [Aside] If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent.

       HOLOFERNES. This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.

       NATHANIEL. Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my parishioners; for their sons are well