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  1. {Enter PEDANT, CURATE, and DULL.}
  2. PEDANT.Satis quid sufficit,
  3. CURATE. I praise God for you sir, your reasons at Dinner have been sharp and sententious: pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy: I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the king’s, who is entitled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.
  4. PEDANT. Novi hominum tanquam te, His humor is lofty, his discourse peremptory: his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate as I may call it.
  5. CURATE. A most singular and choice Epithet.
  6. Draw out his Tablebook.
  7. PEDANT. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity, finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasms, such insociable and point-device companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak dout fine, when he should say, doubt; det, when he should pronounce debt; d-e-b-t, not det: he ‘clepeth a Calf, Cauf: half, hauf: neighbour vocatur nebour; neigh abbreviated ne: this is abhominable, which he would call abominable, it insinuateth me of infamy: ne intelligis domini, to make frantique lunatique?
  8. CURATE. Laus Deo, bene intelligo.
  9. PEDANT. Bom boon for boon Priscian, a little
  10. scratch’d, ‘twill serve.
  11. {Enter BRAGGART, PAGE, and COSTARD.}
  12. CURATE. Vides ne quis venit?
  13. PEDANT. Video, et gaudeo.
  14. BRAGGART. Chirra.
  15. PEDANT.  Qua re Chirra, not Sirrah?
  16. BRAGGART. Men of peace well incontred.
  17. PEDANT. Most military sir salutation.
  18. MOTH. They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.
  19. COSTARD. Oh they have lived long in the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy Master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: Thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.
  20. PAGE. Peace, the peal begins.
  21. BRAGGART. Monsieur, are you not lettered?
  22. PAGE.   Yes yes, he teaches boys the Hornbook: What is Ab, spelt backward with the horn on his head?
  23. PEDANT. Ba, puericia with a horn added.
  24. PAGE. Ba, most silly Sheep, with a horn: you hear his learning.
  25. PEDANT.  Quis quis thou Consonant?
  26. PAGE. The last of the five Vowels if You repeat them, or the fifth if i.
  27. PEDANT. I will repeat them: a, e, i—
  28. PAGE. The sheep: the other two concludes it o, u.
  29. BRAGGART. Now by the salt wane of the Mediterranean, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit, snip snap, quick and home, it rejoiceth my intellect, true wit.
  30. PAGE. Offer’d by a child to an old man: which is wit-old.
  31. PEDANT. What is the figure? What is the figure?
  32. PAGE. Horns.
  33. PEDANT. Thou disputest like an infant: go whip thy Gig.
  34. PAGE. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your Infamy a gig of a Cuckold’s horn.
  35. COSTARD. And I had but one penny in the world thou shouldst have it to buy Gingerbread: Hold, there is the very Remuneration I had of thy Master, thou half-penny purse of wit, thou Pigeon-egg of discretion. Oh and the heavens were so pleased, that thou wert but my Bastard: What a joyful father wouldst thou make me? Go to, thou hast it ad dungle at the fingers’ ends, as they say.
  36. PEDANT. Oh I smell false Latin, dunghill for un-guem.
  37. BRAGGART. Arts-man, preambulat, we will be singled from the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the Charge-house on the top of the Mountain?
  38. PEDANT. Or Mons the hill.
  39. BRAGGART. At your sweet pleasure, for the Mountain.
  40. PEDANT. I do sans question.
  41. BRAGGART. Sir, it is the King’s most sweet pleasure and affection, to congratulate the Princess at her pavilion, in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.
  42. PEDANT. The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable, congruent, and measurable for the afternoon: the word is well cull’d, chose, sweet, and apt I do assure you sir, I do assure.
  43. BRAGGART. Sir, the King is a noble Gentleman, and my familiar, I do assure you very good friend: for what is inward between us, let it pass. I do beseech thee remember thy courtesy. I beseech thee apparel thy head: and among other important and most serious designs, and of great import indeed too: but let that pass for I must tell thee it will please his Grace (by the world) sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder, and with his royal finger thus dally with my excrement, with my mustache: but sweet heart let that pass. By the world I recount no fable, some certain special honors it pleaseth his greatness to impart to Armado a Soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world: but let that pass; the very all of all is: but sweet heart, I do implore secrecy, that the King would have me present the Princess (sweet chuck) with some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antic, or firework: Now understanding that the Curate and your sweet self, are good at such eruptions, and sudden breaking out of mirth (as it were) I have acquainted you withal, to the end to crave your assistance.
  44. PEDANT. Sir, you shall present before her the Nine Worthies, Sir Holofernes, as concerning some entertainment of time, some show in the posterior of this day, to be rendered by our assistants the King’s command, and this most gallant, illustrate, and learned Gentleman, before the Princess: I say none so fit as to present the nine Worthies.
  45. CURATE. Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?
  46. PEDANT. Joshua, yourself, myself, and this gallant Gentleman Judas Maccabeus; this Swain (because of his great limb or joint) shall pass Pompey the great, the page Hercules.
  47. BRAGGART. Pardon sir, error: He is not quantity enough for that worthy’s thumb, he is not so big as the end of his Club.
  48. PEDANT. Shall I have audience? He shall present Hercules in minority: his enter and exit shall be strangling a Snake; and I will have an Apology for that purpose.
  49. PAGE. An excellent device: so if any of the audience hiss, you may cry, Well done Hercules, now thou crushest the Snake; that is the way to make an offence gracious, though few have the grace to do it.
  50. BRAGGART. For the rest of the Worthies?
  51. PEDANT. I will play three myself.
  52. PAGE. Thrice-worthy Gentleman.
  53. BRAGGART. Shall I tell you a thing?
  54. PEDANT. We attend.
  55. BRAGGART. We will have, if this fadge not, an Antic. I beseech you follow.
  56. PEDANT. Via good-man Dull, thou hast spoken no word all this while.
  57. DULL. Nor understood none neither sir.
  58. PEDANT. Alone, we will employ thee.
  59. DULL. I’ll make one in a dance, or so: or I will play on the Tabor to the worthies, and let them dance the hay.
  60. PEDANT. Most dull, honest Dull, to our sport, away.
  61. {Exeunt omnes.}

 

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