The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare
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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.
Call’st 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.
Minime, 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 fir’d 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; volable 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 egma, 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.