Ros. O! I know where you are.
Nay, 'tis true: there was never anything so sudden
but the fight of two rams, Caesar's thrasonical brag of 'I came, saw, and overcame:'
for your brother and my sister no sooner met, but they looked; no sooner looked
but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed; no sooner sighed but they asked
one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy:
and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage which they will
climb incontinent, or else be incontinent before marriage. They are in the very
wrath of love, and they will together: clubs cannot part them.
Ros. Why then, to-morrow I cannot serve your turn for Rosalind?
Ros. I will weary you then no longer with idle talking. Know of me then,'for now I
speak to some purpose,'that I know you are a gentleman of good conceit. I speak
not this that you should bear a good opinion of my knowledge, insomuch I say I
know you are; neither do I labour for a greater esteem than may in some little
measure draw a belief from you, to do yourself good, and not to grace me. Believe
then, if you please, that I can do strange things. I have, since I was three years old,
conversed with a magician, most profound in his art and yet not damnable. If you
do love Rosalind so near the heart as your gesture cries it out, when your brother
marries Aliena, shall you marry her. I know into what straits of fortune she is
driven; and it is not impossible to me, if it appear not inconvenient to you, to set
her before your eyes to-morrow, human as she is, and without any danger.
Epilogue
It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but it is no more unhandsome
than to see the lord the prologue. If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis
true that a good play needs no epilogue; yet to good wine they do use good bushes,
and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a case am I in
then, that am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot insinuate with you in the behalf
of a good play! I am not furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will not become
me: my way is, to conjure you; and I'll begin with the women. I charge you, O
women! for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you:
and I charge you, O men! for the love you bear to women,'as I perceive by your
simpering none of you hate them,'that between you and the women, the play may
please. If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased
me, complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied not; and, I am sure, as
many as have good beards, or good faces, or sweet breaths, will, for my kind offer,
when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.
Richard 2
I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father; and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermix'd
With scruples and do set the word itself Against the word:
As thus, 'Come, little ones,' and then again,
'It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a small needle's eye.'
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders; how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls,
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of fortune's slaves,
Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars
Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame,
That many have and others must sit there;
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortunes on the back
Of such as have before endured the like.
Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented: sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I king'd again: and by and by
Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing. Music do I hear?
[Music]
Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is,
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To cheque time broke in a disorder'd string;
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours: but my time
Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy,
While I stand fooling here, his Jack o' the clock.
This music mads me; let it sound no more;
For though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me it seems it will make wise men mad.
Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me!
For 'tis a sign of love; and love to Richard
Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.
I left no ring with her: what means this lady?
Fortune forbid my outside have not charm'd her!
She made good view of me; indeed, so much,
That sure methought her eyes had lost her tongue,
For she did speak in starts distractedly.
She loves me, sure; the cunning of her passion
Invites me in this churlish messenger.
None of my lord's ring! why, he sent her none.
I am the man: if it be so, as 'tis,
Poor lady, she were better love a dream.
Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness,
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
How easy is it for the proper-false
In women's waxen hearts to set their forms!
Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we!
For such as we are made of, such we be.
How will this fadge? my master loves her dearly;
And I, poor monster, fond as much on him;
And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.
What will become of this? As I am man,
My state is desperate for my master's love;
As I am woman,.now alas the day!.
What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe!
O time! thou must untangle this, not I;
It is too hard a knot for me to untie!
Autolycus
Ha, ha! what a fool Honesty is! and Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple
gentleman! I have sold all my trumpery; not a counterfeit stone, not a ribbon,
glass, pomander, brooch, table-book, ballad, knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet,
horn-ring, to keep my pack from fasting: they throng who should buy first, as if
my trinkets had been hallowed and brought a benediction to the buyer: by which
means I saw whose purse was best in picture; and what I saw, to my good use I
2565 remembered. My clown, who wants but something to be a reasonable man,
grew so in love with the wenches' song, that he would not stir his pettitoes till he
had both tune and words; which so drew the rest of the herd to me that all their
other senses stuck in ears: you might have pinched a placket, it was senseless;
'twas nothing to geld a codpiece of a purse; I could have filed keys off that hung in
chains: no hearing, no feeling, but my sir's song, and admiring the nothing of it. So
that in this time of lethargy I picked and cut most of their festival purses; and had
not the old man come in with a whoo-bub against his daughter and the king's son
and scared my choughs from the chaff, I had not left a purse alive in the whole
army.
Lear’s Fool
We'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there's no labouring i' th' winter. All
that follow their noses are led by their eyes but blind men, and there's not a nose
among twenty but can smell him that's stinking. Let go thy hold when a great
wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it; but the great one
that goes upward, let him draw thee after. When a wise man gives thee better
counsel, give me mine again. I would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool
gives it.
That sir which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain
And leave thee in the storm.
But I will tarry; the fool will stay,
And let the wise man fly.
The knave turns fool that runs away;
The fool no knave, perdy.
