love.
| Moth |
Master, will you win your love with a French brawl? |
| Armado |
How meanest thou? brawling in French? |
| Moth |
No, my complete master: but to jig off a tune at the tongue’s end, canary to it with your feet, humour it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you swallowed love with singing love, sometime through the 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 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 humours; these betray nice wenches, that would be betrayed without these; and make them men of note—do you note me?—that most are affected to these. |
| Armado |
How hast thou purchased this experience? |
| Moth |
By my penny of observation. |
| Armado |
But O—but O— |
| Moth |
“The hobby-horse is forgot.” |
| Armado |
Callest thou my love “hobby-horse”? |
| Moth |
No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love? |
| Armado |
Almost I had. |
| Moth |
Negligent student! learn her by heart. |
| Armado |
By heart and in heart, boy. |
| Moth |
And out of heart, master: all those three I will prove. |
| Armado |
What wilt thou prove? |
| Moth |
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. |
| Armado |
I am all these three. |
| Moth |
And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all. |
| Armado |
Fetch hither the swain: he must carry me a letter. |
| Moth |
A message well sympathized; a horse to be ambassador for an ass. |
| Armado |
Ha, ha! what sayest thou? |
| Moth |
Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse, for he is very slow-gaited. But I go. |
| Armado |
The way is but short: away! |
| Moth |
As swift as lead, sir. |
| Armado |
The meaning, pretty ingenious? Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow? |
| Moth |
Minimè, honest master; or rather, master, no.
|
| Armado |
I say lead is slow. |
| Moth |
You are too swift, sir, to say so:
Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun?
|
| Armado |
Sweet smoke of rhetoric!
He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that’s he:
I shoot thee at the swain.
|
| Moth |
Thump then and I flee. Exit.
|
| Armado |
A most acute juvenal; voluble and free of grace!
By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face:
Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.
My herald is return’d.
|
|
Re-enter Moth with Costard. |
| Moth |
A wonder, master! here’s a costard broken in a shin.
|
| Armado |
Some enigma, some riddle: come, thy l’envoy; begin.
|
| Costard |
No enigma, no riddle, no l’envoy; no salve in the mail, sir: O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain! no l’envoy, no l’envoy; no salve, sir, but a plantain! |
| Armado |
By virtue, thou enforcest laughter; thy silly thought my spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous smiling. O, pardon me, my stars! Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l’envoy, and the word l’envoy for a salve? |
| Moth |
Do the wise think them other? is not l’envoy a salve?
|
| Armado |
No, page: it is an epilogue or discourse, to make plain
Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.
I will example it:
The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,
Were still at odds, being but three.
There’s the moral. Now the l’envoy.
|
| Moth |
I will add the l’envoy. Say the moral again. |
| Armado |
The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,
Were still at odds, being but three.
|
| Moth |
Until the goose came out of door,
And stay’d the odds by adding four.
Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l’envoy.
The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,
Were still at odds, being but three.
|
| Armado |
Until the goose came out of door,
Staying the odds by adding four.
|
| Moth |
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 pennyworth is good, an your goose be fat.
To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose:
Let me see; a fat l’envoy; ay, that’s a fat goose.
|
| Armado |
Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin?
|
| Moth |
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 l’envoy, the goose that you bought;
And he ended the market.
|
| Armado |
But tell me; how was there a costard broken in a shin? |
| Moth |
I will tell you sensibly. |
| Costard |
Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth: I will speak that l’envoy:
I Costard, running out, that was safely within,
Fell over the threshold, and broke my shin.
|
| Armado |
We will talk no more of this matter. |
| Costard |
Till there be more matter in the shin. |
| Armado |
Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee. |
| Costard |
O, marry me to one Frances: I smell some l’envoy, some goose, in this. |
| Armado |
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. |
| Armado |
I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance; and, in lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this: bear this significant giving a letter to the country maid Jaquenetta: there is remuneration; for the best ward of mine honour is rewarding my dependents. Moth, follow. Exit. |
| Moth |
Like the sequel, I. Signior Costard, adieu.
|
| Costard |
My sweet ounce of man’s flesh! my incony Jew! Exit Moth.
Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration! O, that’s the Latin word for three farthings: three farthings—remuneration.—“What’s the price of this inkle?”—“One penny.”—“No, I’ll
|
