As You Like It
CELIA.
I cannot say the words.
ROSALIND.
You must begin “Will you, Orlando—”
CELIA.
Go to.—Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind?
ORLANDO.
I will.
ROSALIND.
Ay, but when?
ORLANDO.
Why now, as fast as she can marry us.
ROSALIND.
Then you must say “I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.”
ORLANDO.
I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.
ROSALIND.
I might ask you for your commission. But I do take thee, Orlando, for
my husband. There’s a girl goes before the priest, and certainly a
woman’s thought runs before her actions.
ORLANDO.
So do all thoughts. They are winged.
ROSALIND.
Now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her.
ORLANDO.
For ever and a day.
ROSALIND.
Say “a day” without the “ever.” No, no, Orlando, men are April when
they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids,
but the sky changes when they are wives. I will be more jealous of thee
than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen, more clamorous than a parrot
against rain, more new-fangled than an ape, more giddy in my desires
than a monkey. I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and
I will do that when you are disposed to be merry. I will laugh like a
hyena, and that when thou are inclined to sleep.
ORLANDO.
But will my Rosalind do so?
ROSALIND.
By my life, she will do as I do.
ORLANDO.
O, but she is wise.
ROSALIND.
Or else she could not have the wit to do this. The wiser, the
waywarder. Make the doors upon a woman’s wit, and it will out at the
casement. Shut that, and ’twill out at the keyhole. Stop that, ’twill
fly with the smoke out at the chimney.
ORLANDO.
A man that had a wife with such a wit, he might say, “Wit, whither
wilt?”
ROSALIND.
Nay, you might keep that check for it till you met your wife’s wit
going to your neighbour’s bed.
ORLANDO.
And what wit could wit have to excuse that?
ROSALIND.
Marry, to say she came to seek you there. You shall never take her
without her answer unless you take her without her tongue. O, that
woman that cannot make her fault her husband’s occasion, let her never
nurse her child herself, for she will breed it like a fool.
ORLANDO.
For these two hours, Rosalind, I will leave thee.
ROSALIND.
Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours.
ORLANDO.
I must attend the Duke at dinner. By two o’clock I will be with thee
again.
ROSALIND.
Ay, go your ways, go your ways. I knew what you would prove. My friends
told me as much, and I thought no less. That flattering tongue of yours
won me. ’Tis but one cast away, and so, come death! Two o’clock is your
hour?
ORLANDO.
Ay, sweet Rosalind.
ROSALIND.
By my troth, and in good earnest, and so God mend me, and by all pretty
oaths that are not dangerous, if you break one jot of your promise or
come one minute behind your hour, I will think you the most pathetical
break-promise, and the most hollow lover, and the most unworthy of her
you call Rosalind that may be chosen out of the gross band of the
unfaithful. Therefore beware my censure, and keep your promise.
ORLANDO.
With no less religion than if thou wert indeed my Rosalind. So, adieu.
ROSALIND.
Well, Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let
time try. Adieu.
[_Exit Orlando._]
CELIA.
You have simply misused our sex in your love-prate! We must have your
doublet and hose plucked over your head and show the world what the
bird hath done to her own nest.
ROSALIND.
O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many
fathom deep I am in love! But it cannot be sounded; my affection hath
an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.
CELIA.
Or rather, bottomless, that as fast as you pour affection in, it runs
out.
ROSALIND.
No, that same wicked bastard of Venus, that was begot of thought,
conceived of spleen, and born of madness, that blind rascally boy that
abuses everyone’s eyes because his own are out, let him be judge how
deep I am in love. I’ll tell thee, Aliena, I cannot be out of the sight
of Orlando. I’ll go find a shadow and sigh till he come.
CELIA.
And I’ll sleep.
[_Exeunt._]
SCENE II. Another part of the Forest
Enter Jaques and Lords, like foresters.
JAQUES.
Which is he that killed the deer?
FIRST LORD.
Sir, it was I.
JAQUES.
Let’s present him to the Duke, like a Roman conqueror, and it would do
well to set the deer’s horns upon his head for a branch of victory.
Have you no song, forester, for this purpose?
SECOND LORD.
Yes, sir.
JAQUES.
Sing it. ’Tis no matter how it be in tune, so it make noise enough.
SONG
SECOND LORD.
[_Sings_.]
What shall he have that killed the deer?
His leather skin and horns to wear.
Then sing him home:
[_The rest shall bear this burden_.]
Take thou no scorn to wear the horn.
It was a crest ere thou wast born.
Thy father’s father wore it
And thy father bore it.
The horn, the horn, the lusty horn
Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.
[_Exeunt._]
SCENE III. Another part of the Forest
Enter Rosalind and Celia.
ROSALIND.
How say you now? Is it not past two o’clock? And here much Orlando.
CELIA.
I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain he hath ta’en his bow
and arrows and is gone forth to sleep.
Enter Silvius.
Look who comes here.
SILVIUS.
My errand is to you, fair youth.
My gentle Phoebe did bid me give you this.
[_Giving a letter._]
I know not the contents, but, as I guess
By the stern brow and waspish action
Which she did use as she was writing of it,
It bears an angry tenor. Pardon me,
I am but as a guiltless messenger.
ROSALIND.
Patience herself would startle at this letter
And play the swaggerer. Bear this, bear all!
She says I am not fair, that I lack manners;
She calls me proud, and that she could not love me,
Were man as rare as phoenix. ’Od’s my will,
Her love is not the hare that I do hunt.
Why writes she so to me? Well, shepherd, well,
This is a letter of your own device.
SILVIUS.
No, I protest, I know not the contents.
Phoebe did write it.
ROSALIND.
Come, come, you are a fool,
And turned into the extremity of love.
I saw her hand. She has a leathern hand,
A freestone-coloured hand. I verily did think
That her old gloves were on, but ’twas her hands.
She has a huswife’s hand—but that’s no matter.
I say she never did invent this letter;
This is a man’s invention, and his hand.
SILVIUS.
Sure, it is hers.
ROSALIND.
Why, ’tis a boisterous and a cruel style,
A style for challengers. Why, she defies me,
Like Turk to Christian. Women’s gentle brain
Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention,
Such Ethiop words, blacker in their effect
Than in their countenance. Will you hear the letter?
SILVIUS.
So please you, for I never heard it yet,
Yet heard too much of Phoebe’s cruelty.
ROSALIND.
She Phoebes me. Mark how the tyrant writes.
[_Reads._]
_Art thou god to shepherd turned,
That a maiden’s heart hath burned?_
Can a woman rail thus?
SILVIUS.
Call you this railing?
ROSALIND.
_Why, thy godhead laid apart,
Warr’st thou with a woman’s heart?_
Did you ever hear such railing?
_Whiles the eye of man did woo me,
That could do no vengeance to me._
Meaning me a beast.
_If the scorn of your bright eyne
Have power to raise such love in mine,
Alack, in me what strange effect
Would they work in mild aspect?
Whiles you chid me, I did love,
How then might your prayers move?
He that brings this love to thee
Little knows this love in me;
And by him seal up thy mind,
Whether that thy youth and kind
Will the faithful offer take
Of me, and all that I can make,
Or else by him my love deny,
And then I’ll study how to die._
SILVIUS.
Call you this chiding?
CELIA.
Alas, poor shepherd.
ROSALIND.
Do you pity him? No, he deserves no pity.—Wilt thou love such a woman?
What, to make thee an instrument and play false strains upon thee? Not
to be endured! Well, go your way to her, for I see love hath made thee
a tame snake, and say this to her: that if she love me, I charge her to
love thee; if she will not, I will never have her unless thou entreat
for her. If you be a true lover, hence, and not a word, for here comes
more company.
[_Exit Silvius._]
Enter Oliver.
OLIVER.
Good morrow, fair ones. Pray you, if you know,
Where in the purlieus of this forest stands
A sheepcote fenced about with olive trees?
CELIA.
West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom;
The rank of osiers, by the murmuring stream,
Left on your right hand, brings you to the place.
But at this hour the house doth keep itself.
There’s none within.
OLIVER.
If that an eye may profit by a tongue,
Then should I know you by description,
Such garments, and such years. “The boy is fair,
Of female favour, and bestows himself
Like a ripe sister; the woman low,
And browner than her brother.” Are not you
The owner of the house I did inquire for?
CELIA.
It is no boast, being asked, to say we are.
OLIVER.
Orlando doth commend him to you both,
And to that youth he calls his Rosalind
He sends this bloody napkin. Are you he?
ROSALIND.
I am. What must we understand by this?
OLIVER.
Some of my shame, if you will know of me
What man I am, and how, and why, and where
This handkerchief was stained.
CELIA.
I pray you tell it.
OLIVER.
When last the young Orlando parted from you,
He left a promise to return again
Within an hour, and pacing through the forest,
Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy,
Lo, what befell. He threw his eye aside,
And mark what object did present itself.
Under an oak, whose boughs were mossed with age
And high top bald with dry antiquity,
A wretched ragged man, o’ergrown with hair,
Lay sleeping on his back; about his neck
A green and gilded snake had wreathed itself,
Who with her head, nimble in threats, approached
The opening of his mouth. But suddenly,
Seeing Orlando, it unlinked itself
And with indented glides did slip away
Into a bush; under which bush’s shade
A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,
Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch
When that the sleeping man should stir. For ’tis
The royal disposition of that beast
To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.
This seen, Orlando did approach the man
And found it was his brother, his elder brother.
CELIA.
O, I have heard him speak of that same brother,
And he did render him the most unnatural
That lived amongst men.
OLIVER.
And well he might so do,
For well I know he was unnatural.
ROSALIND.
But, to Orlando: did he leave him there,
Food to the sucked and hungry lioness?
OLIVER.
Twice did he turn his back and purposed so;
But kindness, nobler ever than revenge,
And nature, stronger than his just occasion,
Made him give battle to the lioness,
Who quickly fell before him; in which hurtling
From miserable slumber I awaked.
CELIA.
Are you his brother?
ROSALIND.
Was it you he rescued?
CELIA.
Was’t you that did so oft contrive to kill him?
OLIVER.
’Twas I; but ’tis not I. I do not shame
To tell you what I was, since my conversion
So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.
ROSALIND.
But, for the bloody napkin?
OLIVER.
By and by.
When from the first to last betwixt us two
Tears our recountments had most kindly bathed—
As how I came into that desert place—
In brief, he led me to the gentle Duke,
Who gave me fresh array and entertainment,
Committing me unto my brother’s love,
Who led me instantly unto his cave,