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- {Enter the KING of Navarre with Lords BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAINE.}
- KING. Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
- Live registered upon our brazen Tombs,
- And then grace us, in the disgrace of death:
- When spight of cormorant devouring Time,
- Th’ endeavor of this present breath may buy:
- That honor which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge,
- And make us heirs of all eternity.
- Therefore brave Conquerors, for so you are,
- That war against your own affections,
- And the huge army of the world’s desires.
- Our late edict shall strongly stand in force,
- Navarre shall be the wonder of the world.
- Our Court shall be a little Academe,
- Still and contemplative in living art.
- You three, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville,
- Have sworn for three years’ term, to live with me:
- My fellow Scholars, and to keep those statutes
- That are recorded in this schedule here.
- Your oaths are past, and now subscribe your names:
- That his own hand may strike his honor down,
- That violates the smallest branch herein.
- If you are arm’d to do, as sworn to do,
- Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too.
- LONGAVILLE. I am resolved, ’tis but a three years’ fast:
- The mind shall banquet, though the body pine,
- Fat paunches have lean pates: and dainty bits
- Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.
- DUMAINE. My loving lord, Dumaine is mortified,
- The grosser manner of these world’s delights:
- He throws upon the gross world’s baser slaves
- To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die,
- With all these living in Philosophy.
- BEROWNE. I can but say their protestation over,
- So much dear Liege, I have already sworn,
- That is, to live and study here three years.
- But there are other strict observances:
- As not to see a woman in that term,
- Which I hope well is not enrolled there.
- And one day in a week to touch no food:
- And but one meal on every day beside:
- The which I hope is not enrolled there.
- And then to sleep but three hours in the night,
- And not be seen to wink of all the day.
- When I was wont to think no harm all night,
- And make a dark night too of half the day:
- Which I hope well is not enrolled there.
- O these are barren tasks, too hard to keep,
- Not to see Ladies, study, fast, not sleep.
- KING. Your oath is past, to pass away from these.
- BEROWNE. Let me say no my liege, an if you please,
- I only swore to study with your grace,
- And stay herein your Court for three years’ space.
- LONGAVILLE. You swore to that Berowne, and to the rest.
- BEROWNE. By yea and nay sir, then I swore in jest.
- What is the end of study, let me know?
- KING. Why that to know which else we should not know.
- BEROWNE. Things hid and barred (you mean) from common sense.
- KING. Ay, that is study’s god-like recompense.
- BEROWNE. Come on then, I will swear to study so,
- To know the thing I am forbid to know:
- As thus, to study where I well may dine,
- When I to feast expressly am forbid.
- Or study where to meet some Mistress fine.
- When Mistresses from common sense are hid.
- Or having sworn too hard a keeping oath,
- Study to break it, and not break my troth.
- If study’s gain be thus, and this be so,
- Study knows that which yet it doth not know,
- Swear me to this, and I will ne’er say no.
- KING. These be the stops that hinder study quite,
- And train our intellects to vain delight.
- BEROWNE. Why? all delights are vain, but that most vain
- Which with pain purchased, doth inherit pain,
- As painfully to pour upon a Book.
- To seek the light of truth, while truth the while
- Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look:
- Light seeking light, doth light of light beguile:
- So ere you find where light in darkness lies,
- Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.
- Study me how to please the eye indeed,
- By fixing it upon a fairer eye,
- Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed,
- And give him light that it was blinded by.
- Study is like the heavens’ glorious Sun,
- That will not be deep search’d with saucy looks:
- Small have continual plodders ever won,
- Save base authority from others’ Books.
- These earthly Godfathers of heavens’ lights,
- That give a name to every fixed Star,
- Have no more profit of their shining nights,
- Then those that walk and wot not what they are.
- Too much to know, is to know nought but fame:
- And every Godfather can give a name.
- KING. How well he’s read to reason against reading.
- DUMAINE. Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding.
- LONGAVILLE. He weeds the corn, and still lets grow the weeding.
- BEROWNE. The spring is near when green geese are a breeding.
- DUMAINE. How follows that?
- BEROWNE. Fit in his place and time.
- DUMAINE. In reason nothing.
- BEROWNE. Something then in rhyme.
- KING. Berowne is like an envious sneaping Frost,
- That bites the first-born infants of the Spring.
- BEROWNE. Well say I am, why should proud Summer boast,
- Before the Birds have any cause to sing?
- Why should I joy in an abortive birth?
- At Christmas I no more desire a Rose,
- Then wish a Snow in May’s new-fangled shows:
- But like of each thing that in season grows.
- So you to study now it is too late,
- Climb o’er the house to unlock the little gate.
- KING. Well, sit you out: go home Berowne: adieu.
- BEROWNE. No my good Lord, I have sworn to stay with you.
- And though I have for barbarism spoke more
- Then for that Angel knowledge you can say,
- Yet confident I’ll keep what I have sworn,
- And bide the penance of each three years’ day.
- Give me the paper, let me read the same,
- And to the strictest decrees I’ll write my name.
- KING. How well this yielding rescues thee from shame.
- BEROWNE {reads}. “Item, That no woman shall come within a mile of my Court.” Hath this been proclaimed?
- LONGAVILLE. Four days ago.
- BEROWNE. Let’s see the penalty.
- {Reads} “On pain of losing her tongue.”
- Who devised this penalty?
- LONGAVILLE. Marry that did I.
- BEROWNE. Sweet Lord and why?
- LONGAVILLE. To fright them hence with that dread penalty.
- BEROWNE. A dangerous law against gentility.
- LONGAVILLE {reads}. “Item, If any man be seen to talk with a woman within the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the rest of the Court can possibly devise.”
- BEROWNE. This Article my liege yourself must break,
- For well you know here comes in Embassy,
- The French king’s daughter with yourself to speak:
- A Maid of grace and complete majesty,
- About surrender-up of Aquitaine,
- To her decrepit, sick, and bed-rid Father.
- Therefore this Article is made in vain,
- Or vainly comes the admired Princess hither.
- KING. What say you Lords? Why, this was quite forgot.
- BEROWNE. So Study evermore is overshot,
- While it doth study to have what it would,
- It doth forget to do the thing it should:
- And when it hath the thing it hunteth most,
- Tis won as towns with fire, so won so lost.
- KING. We must of force dispense with this Decree,
- She must lie here on mere necessity.
- BEROWNE. Necessity will make us all forsworn
- Three thousand times within this three years’ space:
- For every man with his affects is born,
- Not by might mastered, but by special grace.
- If I break faith, this word shall speak for me,
- I am forsworn on mere necessity.
- So to the Laws at large I write my name,
- And he that breaks them in the least degree,
- Stands in attainder of eternal shame.
- Suggestions are to other as to me:
- But I believe although I seem so loth,
- I am the last that will last keep his oath.
- But is there no quick recreation granted?
- KING. Ay that there is, Our court you know is haunted
- With a refined traveler of Spain,
- A man in all the world’s new fashion planted,
- That hath a mint of phrases in his brain:
- On who the music of his own vain tongue
- Doth ravish like enchanting harmony:
- A man of complements whom right and wrong
- Have chosen as umpire of their mutiny.
- This child of Fancy that Armado hight,
- For interim to our studies shall relate,
- In high-born words the worth of many a Knight:
- From tawny Spain lost in the world’s debate.
- How you delight my Lords I know not I,
- But I protest I love to hear him lie,
- And I will use him for my Minstrelsy.
- BEROWNE. Armado is a most illustrious wight,
- A man of fine new words, Fashion’s own knight.
- LONGAVILLE.Costardthe swain and he, shall be our sport,
- And so to study three years is but short.
- {Enter DULL the constable with a letter, and COSTARD the rustic jester.}
- DULL. Which is the Duke’s own person?
- BEROWNE. This fellow. What would’st?
- DULL. I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his grace’s Farborough: But I would see his own person in flesh and blood.
- BEROWNE. This is he.
- DULL. Señor Arme—, Arma—, commends you:
- There’s villainy abroad, this letter will tell you more.
- COSTARD. Sir, the Contempts thereof are as touching me.
- KING. A letter from the magnificent Armado.
- BEROWNE. How low so ever the matter, I hope in God for high words.
- LONGAVILLE. A high hope for a low heaven. God grant us patience—
- BEROWNE. To hear, or forbear hearing.
- LONGAVILLE. To hear meekly sir, and to laugh moderately, or to forbear both.
- BEROWNE. Well sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb in the merriness.
- COSTARD. The matter is to me sir, as concerning Jaquenetta:
- The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner.
- BEROWNE. In what manner?
- COSTARD. In manner and form following sir all those three.
- I was seen with her in the Manor house, sitting with her
- upon the Form, and taken following her into the Park:
- which put together, is in manner and form following.
- Now sir for the manner, It is the manner of a man to speak
- to a woman, for the form in some form.
- BEROWNE. For the following sir.
- COSTARD. As it shall follow in my correction, And God defend the right.
- KING. Will you hear this letter with attention?
- BEROWNE. As we would hear an Oracle.
- COSTARD. Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.
- KING {reads}. “Great deputy the welkin’s vicegerent, and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul’s earth’s God, and body’s fostering patron:”
- COSTARD. Not a word of Costard yet.
- KING {reads}. “So it is—”
- COSTARD. It may be so: but if he say it is so, he is in telling true: but so.
- KING {commands}. Peace.
- COSTARD. —be to me, and every man that dares not.
- KING {shouts}. No words.
- COSTARD. —of other men’s secrets, I beseech you.
- KING {reads}. “So it is besieged with sable colored melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humor to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air: And as I am a Gentleman, betook myself to walk: the time When? about the sixth hour, When beasts most graze, Birds best peck, and Men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper: So much for the time When. Now for the ground Which? which I mean I walked upon, it is ycleped Thy Park. Then for the place Where? where I mean, I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebony colored Ink, which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest. But to the place Where? It standeth North, North-east and by East from the West corner of thy curious knotted garden; There did I see that low spirited Swain, that base Minnow of thy mirth,”
- COSTARD. Me?
- KING {reads}. “—that unlettered small knowing soul—”
- COSTARD. Me?
- KING {reads}. “—that shallow vassal—”
- COSTARD. Still me.
- KING {reads}. “—which, as I remember, hight Costard—”
- COSTARD. Oh, me.
- KING {reads}. “—sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established proclaimed Edict and continent Canon: Which with, oh with, but with this I passion to say wherewith:”
- COSTARD. With a wench.
- KING {reads}. “With a child of our Grandmother Eve, a female; or for thy more sweet understanding a Woman: him, I (as my ever esteemed duty pricks me on) have sent to thee, to receive the meed of punishment by thy sweet Grace’s Officer Anthony Dull, a man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation.”
- DULL. Me an’t shall please you? I am Anthony Dull.
- KING {reads}. “For Jaquenetta, (so is the weaker vessel called) which I apprehended with the aforesaid Swain, I keep her as a vassel of thy Law’s fury, and shall at the least of thy sweet notice, bring her to trial. Thine, in all complements of devoted and heart-burning heat of duty. Don Adriano de Armado.”
- BEROWNE. This is not so well as I looked for, but the best that ever I heard.
- KING. Ay the best for the worst. But, sirrah, what say you to this?
- COSTARD. Sir I confess the Wench.
- KING. Did you hear the Proclamation?
- COSTARD. I do confess much of the hearing it, but little of the marking of it.
- KING. It was proclaimed a year’s imprisonment to be taken with a Wench.
- COSTARD. I was taken with none sir, I was taken with a Damsel.
- KING. Well, it was proclaimed Damsel.
- COSTARD. This was no Damsel neither sir, she was a Virgin.
- BEROWNE. It is so varied too, for it was proclaimed Virgin.
- COSTARD. If it were, I deny her Virginity: I was taken with a Maid.
- KING. This Maid will not serve your turn sir.
- COSTARD. This Maid will serve my turn sir.
- KING. Sir I will pronounce your sentence: You shall fast a week with Bran and Water.
- COSTARD. I had rather pray a month with Mutton and Porridge.
- KING. And Don Armado shall be your keeper.
- My lord Berowne, see him delivered o’er.
- And go we Lords to put in practice that,
- Which each to other has so strongly sworn.
- BEROWNE. I’ll lay my Head to any good man’s Hat,
- These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn.
- Sirrah, Come on.
- COSTARD. I suffer for the truth sir: for true it is, I was taken with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl, and therefore welcome the sour Cup of prosperity, affliction may one day smile again, and till then sit thee down sorrow.
- {Exeunt omnes.}
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