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- {Enter BRAGGART and PAGE.}
- BRAGGART. Warble child, make passionate my sense of hearing.
- PAGE. Concolinel.
- BRAGGART. Sweet Air, go tenderness of years, take this Key, give enlargement to the Swain, bring him festinately hither, I must employ him in a letter to my love.
- PAGE. Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?
- BRAGGART. How meanest thou? brawling in French.
- PAGE. No my complete Master, but to Jig off a tune at the tongue’s end, canary to it with your feet, humor it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note sometime through the throat, if you swallowed love with singing love sometime through: nose as if you snuffed up love by smelling love with your hat penthouse-like o’er the shop of your eyes, with your arms crossed on your thin-belly’s doublet like a Rabbit on a spit, or your hands in your pocket like a man after the old painting, and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away: these are complements, these are humors, these betray nice wenches that would be betrayed without these, and make them men of note: do you note men that most are affected to these.
- BRAGGART. How hast thou purchased this experience?
- PAGE. By my penny of observation.
- BRAGGART. But Oh—, but Oh—
- PAGE. The Hobby-horse is forgot.
- BRAGGART. Callest thou my love Hobby-horse.
- PAGE. No Master, the Hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love perhaps, a hackney: But have you forgot your love?
- BRAGGART. Almost I had.
- PAGE. Negligent student, learn her by heart.
- BRAGGART. By heart, and in heart boy.
- PAGE. And out of heart Master: all those three I will prove.
- BRAGGART. What wilt thou prove?
- PAGE. A man, if I live (and this) by, in, and without, upon the instant: by heart you love her, because your heart cannot come by her: in heart you love her, because your heart is in love with her: and out of heart you love her, being out of heart that you cannot enjoy her.
- BRAGGART. I am all these three.
- PAGE. And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.
- BRAGGART. Fetch hither the Swain, he must carry me a letter.
- PAGE. A message well sympathized, a Horse to be ambassador for an Ass.
- BRAGGART. Ha ha, What sayest thou?
- PAGE. Marry, sir, you must send the Ass upon the Horse, for he is very slow-gaited: but I go.
- BRAGGART. The way is but short, away.
- PAGE. As swift as Lead sir.
- BRAGGART. The meaning pretty ingenious, is not Lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?
- PAGE. Minime honest Master, or rather Master no.
- BRAGGART. I say Lead is slow.
- PAGE. You are too swift sir to say so.
- Is that Lead slow which is fired from a Gun?
- BRAGGART. Sweet smoke of Rhetoric,
- He reputes me a Cannon, and the Bullet that’s he:
- I shoot thee at the Swain.
- PAGE. Thump then, and I flee.
- {Exit PAGE.}
- BRAGGART. A most acute Juvenal, voluble and free of grace,
- By thy favor sweet Welkin, I must sigh in thy face:
- Most rude melancholy, Valor gives thee place.
- My Herald is return’d.
- {Enter PAGE and COSTARD.}
- PAGE. A wonder Master, Here’s a Costard broken in a shin.
- BRAGGART. Some enigma, some riddle, come, thy L’envoy begin.
- COSTARD. No e’gma, no riddle, no lenvoy, no salve, in the mail sir. Oh sir, Plantain, a plain Plantain: no lenvoy, no lenvoy, no Salve sir, but a Plantain.
- BRAGGART. By virtue thou enforcest laughter, thy silly thought, my spleen, the heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous smiling: Oh pardon me my stars, doth the inconsiderate take salve for l’envoy, and the word l’envoy for a salve?
- PAGE. Do the wise think them other, is not l’envoy a salve?
- BRAGGART. No Page, it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain,
- Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.
- I will example it.
- {Declaims} The Fox, the Ape, and the Humble-Bee,
- Were still at odds being but three.
- {Says} There’s the moral: Now the l’envoy.
- PAGE. I will add the l’envoy, say the moral again.
- BRAGGART {declaims}. The Fox, the Ape, and the Humble-Bee,
- Were still at odds, being but three:
- PAGE {declaims}. Until the Goose came out of door,
- And stayed the odds by adding four.
- {Says} Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l’envoy.
- {Declaims} The Fox, the Ape, and the Humble-Bee,
- Were still at odds, being but three.
- BRAGGART {declaims}. Until the Goose came out of door,
- Staying the odds by adding four.
- PAGE. A good L’envoy, ending in the Goose: would you desire more?
- COSTARD. The boy hath sold him a bargain, a Goose, that’s flat.
- Sir, your penny-worth is good, and your Goose be fat.
- To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose:
- Let me see a fat Lenvoy, aye that’s a fat Goose.
- BRAGGART. Come hither, come hither: How did this argument begin?
- PAGE. By saying that a Costard was broken in a shin.
- Then call’d you for the L’envoy.
- COSTARD. True, and I for a Plantain, thus came your argument in,
- Then the boy’s fat Lenvoy, the Goose that you bought, and he ended the market.
- BRAGGART. But tell me, How was there a Costard broken in a shin?
- PAGE. I will tell you sensibly.
- COSTARD. Thou hast no feeling of it Moth, I will speak that Lenvoy.
- {Declaims} I, Costard running out, that was safely within,
- Fell over the threshold, and broke my shin.
- BRAGGART. We will talk no more of this matter.
- COSTARD. Till there be more matter in the shin.
- BRAGGART. Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.
- COSTARD. Oh marry me to one Francis, I smell some Lenvoy, some Goose in this.
- BRAGGART. By my sweet soul, I mean, setting thee at liberty. Enfreedoming thy person: thou wert immured, restrained, captivated, bound.
- COSTARD. True, true, and now you will be my purgation, and let me loose.
- BRAGGART. I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance, and in lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this: Bear this significant to the country Maid Jaquenetta: there is remuneration, for the best ward of mine honor, is rewarding my dependents.
- Moth, follow.
- {BRAGGART gives COSTARD a silver penny.}
- PAGE. Like the sequel I. Señor Costard adieu.
- {Exit BRAGGART and PAGE.}
- COSTARD. My sweet ounce of man’s flesh, my incony Jewel: Now will I look to his remuneration.
- Remuneration, Oh that’s the Latin word for three farthings: Three-farthings remuneration, What’s the price of this inkle? a penny. no, I’ll give you a remuneration: Why? it carries it remuneration: Why? it is a fairer name than French Crown. I will never buy and sell out of this word.
- {Enter BEROWNE.}
- BEROWNE. O my good knave Costard, exceedingly well met.
- COSTARD. Pray you sir, How much Carnation Ribbon may a man buy for a remuneration?
- BEROWNE. Oh what is a remuneration?
- COSTARD. Marry sir, half-penny farthing.
- BEROWNE. Oh, why then, three-farthings worth of Silk.
- COSTARD. I thank your worship, God be wi’ you.
- BEROWNE. Oh stay slave, I must employ thee.
- As thou wilt win my favor, good my knave,
- Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.
- COSTARD. When would you have it done sir?
- BEROWNE. Oh this afternoon.
- COSTARD. Well, I will do it sir: Fare you well.
- BEROWNE. O thou knowest not what it is.
- COSTARD. I shall know sir when I have done it.
- BEROWNE. Why villain, thou must know first.
- COSTARD. I will come to your worship to-morrow morning.
- BEROWNE. It must be done this afternoon,
- Hark slave, it is but this:
- The princess comes to hunt here in the Park,
- And in her train there is a gentle Lady:
- When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name,
- And Rosaline they call her, ask for her:
- And to her white hand see thou do commend
- This seal’d-up counsel. There’s thy guerdon, go.
- {BEROWNE gives COSTARD a shilling.}
- COSTARD. Guerdon, O sweet guerdon, better than remuneration. A’leven-pence farthing better: most sweet guerdon. I will do it sir in print: guerdon remuneration.
- {Exit Costard.}
- BEROWNE. Oh and I forsooth in love, I that have been love’s whip?
- A very Beadle to a humorous sigh, a Critic, nay a night watch Constable,
- A domineering pedant o’er the Boy, than whom no mortal so magnificent.
- This wimpled whining purblind wayward Boy,
- This senior junior-giant dwarf, dan Cupid,
- Regent of Love-rhymes, Lord of folded arms,
- Th’anointed sovereign of sighs and groans:
- Liege of all loiterers and malcontents:
- Dread Prince of Plackets, King of Codpieces.
- Sole Imperator and great general
- Of trotting Paritors (Oh my little heart.)
- And I to be a Corporal of his field,
- And wear his colors like a Tumbler’s hoop.
- What? I love, I sue, I seek a wife,
- A woman that is like a German Clock,
- Still a repairing, ever out of frame,
- And never going aright, being a Watch:
- But being watch’d, that it may still go right.
- Nay to be perjur’d, which is worst of all:
- And among three to love the worst of all,
- A wightly wanton, with a velvet brow,
- With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes.
- Aye and by heaven, one that will do the deed,
- Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard.
- And I to sigh for her, to watch for her,
- To pray for her, go to: it is a plague
- That Cupid will impose for my neglect,
- Of his almighty dreadful little might.
- Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, eschew, groan,
- Some men must love my Lady, and some Joan.
- {Exeunt.}
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