The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows:

Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright
Through the transparent bosom of the deep,
As doth thy face through tears of mine give light;
Thou shin'st in every tear that I do weep :
No drop but as a coach doth carry thee,
So ridest thou triumphing in my woe;
Do but behold the tears that swell in me,

And they thy glory through my grief will show:
But do not love thyself; then thou wilt keep
My tears for glasses, and still make me weep.
O queen of queens, how fur dost thou excel!
No thought can think, nor tongue of mortal tell.
How shall she know my griefs? I'll drop the

Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is : Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine,

Exhal'st this vapour vow; in thee it is:

If broken then, it is no fault of mine; If by me broke, What fool is not so wise, To lose an oath to win a paradise?

Biron. [Aside. This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity;

A green goose, a goddess: pure, pure idolatry. God amend us, God amend! we are much out o' the way.

Enter DUMAIN, with a paper.

Long. By whom shall I send this? Company!
stay.
[Stepping aside.
Biron. Aside. All hid, all hid, an old in-
fant play:

Like a demi-god here sit I in the sky,
And wretched fools' secrets heedfully o'er-eye.
More sacks to the mill! O heavens, I have my
wish;

Dumain transform'd: four woodcocks in a dish!
Dum. O most divine Kate!

Biron. O most prophane coxcomb! [Aside. Dum. By heaven, the wonder of a mortal eye! Biron. By earth, she is but corporal; there you lie. [Aside.

Dum. Her amber hairs for foul have amber coted.

Biron. An amber-colour'd raven was well no

ted.

Aside.

Biron. One drunkard loves another of the name.

Dum. As fair as day.

[Aside.

[Aside.

[Aside.

Long. Am I the first that have been perjur'd so?

Biron. [Aside.] I could put thee in comfort; not by two, that I know:

Thou mak'st the triumviry, the corner-cap of society,

The shane of love's Tyburn that hangs up simplicity.

Long. I fear, these stubborn lines lack power

Biron. Ay, as some days; but then no sun

must shine.

[Aside.

King. And I mine too, good Lord!
Biron. Amen, so I had mine: Is not that a

good word?

Dum. I would forget her; but a fever she Reigns in my blood, and will remember'd be. Biron. A fever in your blood, why, then in

cision

Would let her out in saucers; sweet misprision!

Aside.

Dum. Once more I'll read the ode that I have writ.

Biron. Once more I'll mark how love can

vary wit. Dum. On a day, (alack the day!)

[Aside.

Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom, passing fair,
Playing in the wanton air:
Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, 'gan passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,
Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.
Air, quoth he, thy checks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!

But alack, my hand is sworn,
Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn :
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet;
Youth, so apt to pluck a sweet.
Do not call it sin in me,
That I am forsworn for thee:
Thou, for whom even Jove would swear,
Juno but an Ethiop were;
And deny himself for Jove,
Turning mortal for thy love.-

This will I send; and something else more plain,
That shall express my true love's fasting pain.
O, would the King, Biron, and Longaville,
Were lovers too! Ill, to example ill,
Would from my forehead wipe a perjur'd note;
For none offend, where all alike do dote.
Long. Dumain, [advancing.] thy love is far
from charity,

That in love's grief desir'st society:
You may look pale, but I should blush, I know,
To be o'erheard, and taken napping so.

King. Come, sir, [advancing.] you blush; as his your case is such;

You chide at him, offending twice as much:
You do not love Maria; Longaville
Did never sonnet for her sake compile ;
Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart
His loving bosom, to keep down his heart!
I have been closely shrouded in this bush,
And mark'd you both, and for you both did blush.
I heard your guilty rhymes, observ'd your fashion;
Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion:
Ah me! says one; O Jove! the other cries;
One, her hairs were gold, crystal the other's eyes:
You would for paradise break faith and troth;

[To Long.
And Jove, for your love, would infringe an oath.
[To Dumain.
What will Birón say, when that he shall hear
A faith infring'd, which such a zeal did swear?
How will he scorn? how will he spend his wit?
How will he triumph, leap, and laugh at it?
For all the wealth that ever I did see,

I would not have him know so much by me.
Biron. Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy.-
Ah, good my liege, I pray thee pardon me:
Descends from the tree.
Good heart, what grace hast thou, thus to reprove
These worms for loving, that art most in love?
Your eyes do make no coaches; in your tears,
There is no certain princess that appears;
You'll not be perjur'd, 'tis a hateful thing;
Tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting.
But are you not asham'd? nay, are you not,
All three of you, to be thus much o'ershot?
You found his mote; the king your mote did see;
But I a beam do find in each of three.
O, what a scene of foolery I have seen,
Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow, and of teen!
O me, with what strict patience have I sat,
To see a king transformed to a gnat!
To see great Hercules whipping a gigg,
And profound Solomon to tune a jigg,

And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys,
And critick Timon laugh at idle toys!
Where lies thy grief, O tell me, good Dumain?
And, gentle Longaville, where lies thy pain?
And where my liege's? all about the breast:-
A caudle, ho!

King. Too bitter is thy jest.

Are we betray'd thus to thy over-view?

Biron. Not you by me, but I betray'd to you; I, that am honest; I, that hold it sin To break the vow I am engaged in ; I am betray'd, by keeping company With moon-like men, of strange inconstancy. When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme? Or groan for Joan? or spend a minute's time In pruning me? When shall you hear, that I Will praise a hand, a foot, a face, an eye, A gait, a state, a brow, a breast, a waist, A leg, a limb?—

King. Soft; whither away so fast? A true man, or a thief, that gallops so? Biron. I post from love; good lover, let me go,

name.

Dum. It is Biron's writing, and here is his [Picks up the pieces. Biron. Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, [To Costard. you were born to do me shame.Guilty, my lord, guilty; I confess, I confess. King. What?

Biron. That you three fools lack'd me fool to make up the mess :

He, he, and you, my liege, and I,
Are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die.
O, dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you

more.

Dum. Now the number is even. Biron. True, true; we are four :Will these turtles be gone?

King. Hence, sirs; away.

Cost. Walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay.

[Exeunt Costard and Jaquenetta. Biron. Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O let us embrace!

As true we are, as flesh and blood can be: The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face; Young blood will not obey an old decree : We cannot cross the cause why we were born; Therefore, of all hands must we be forsworn. King. What, did these rent lines show some love of thine?

Biron. Did they, quoth you? Who sees the heavenly Rosaline,

That, like a rude and savage man of Inde,

At the first opening of the gorgeous east, Bows not his vassal head; and, strucken blind, Kisses the base ground with obedient breast? What peremptory eagle-sighted eye

Dares look upon the heaven of her brow, That is not blinded by her majesty?

King. What zeal, what fury hath inspir'd
thee now?

My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon;
She, an attending star, scarce seen a light.
Biron. My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Birón:
O, but for my love, day would turn to night!
Of all complexions the cull'd sovereignty

Do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek; Where several worthies make one dignity; Where nothing wants, that want itself doth seek.

Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues,

Fye, painted rhetorick! O, she needs it not: To things of sale a seller's praise belongs; She passes praise; then praise too short doth blot. A wither'd hermit, five-score winters worn,

Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye: Beauty doth varnish age, as if new-born,

And gives the crutch the cradle's infancy. O, 'tis the sun that maketh all things shine! King. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony. Biron. Is ebony like her? O wood divine! A wife of such wood were felicity. O, who can give an oath? where is a book? That I may swear, beauty doth beauty lack, If that she learn not of her eye to look:

No face is fair, that is not full so black. King. O, paradox! black is the badge of hell, The hue of dungeons, and the scowl of night; And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well. Biron. Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.

O, if in black my lady's brows be deckt,

It mourns, that painting, and usurping hair, Should ravish doters with a false aspect; And therefore is she born to make black fair. Her favour turns the fashion of the days;

For native blood is counted painting now; And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise, Paints itself black, to imitate her brow. Dum. To look like her, are chimney-sweepers black.

Long. And, since her time, are colliers counted bright.

King. And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack.

Dum. Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.

Biron. Your mistresses dare never come in rain, For fear their colours should be wash'd away. King. 'Twere good yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain,

I'll find a fairer face not wash'd to-day. Biron. I'll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.

King. No devil will fright thee then so much

as she.

Dum. I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear. Long. Look, here's thy love: my foot and her face see. [Showing his shoe.

Biron. O, if the streets were paved with thine eyes,

Her feet were much too dainty for such tread !

Dum. Ovile! then as she goes, what upward lies

The street should see, as she walk'd over head. King. But what of this? Are we not all in love? Biron. O, nothing so sure; and thereby all forsworn.

King. Then leave this chat; and, good Birón, now prove

Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn. Dum. Ay, marry, there;-some flattery for this evil.

Long. O, some authority how to proceed; Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil. Dum. Some salve for perjury.

Biron. O, 'tis more than need!-
Have at you then, affection's men at arms:
Consider, what you first did swear unto ;—
To fast,-to study, and to see no woman;-
Flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth.
Say, can you fast? your stomachs are too young;
And abstinence engenders maladies.
And where that you have vow'd to study, lords,
In that each of you hath forsworn his book:
Can you still dream, and pore, and thereon look?
For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,
Have found the ground of study's excellence,
Without the beauty of a woman's face?
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive;
They are the ground, the books, the academes,
From whence doth spring the true Promethean
fire.

Why, universal plodding prisons up
The nimble spirits in the arteries;
As motion, and long-during action, tires
The sinewy vigour of the traveller.
Now, for not looking on a woman's face,
You have in that forsworn the use of eyes;
And study too, the causer of your vow:
For where is any author in the world,
Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself,
And where we are, our learning likewise is.

Then, when ourselves we see in ladies' eyes,
Do we not likewise see our learning there?
0, we have made a vow to study, lords;
And in that vow we have forsworn our books;
For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,
In leaden contemplation, have found out
Such fiery numbers, as the prompting eyes
Of beauteous tutors have enrich'd you with?
Other slow arts entirely keep the brain;
And therefore finding barren practisers,
Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil:
But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power;
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd;
Love's feeling is more soft, and sensible,
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in
taste:

For valour, is not love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as sphinx; as sweet, and musical,
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;
And, when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write,
Until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs;
0, then his lines would ravish savage ears,
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish all the world;
Else, none at all in aught proves excellent:

Then fools you were these women to forswear;
Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.
For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love;
Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men ;
Or for men's sake, the authors of these women;
Or women's sake, by whom we men are men;
Let us once lose our oaths, to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves, to keep our oaths:
It is religion to be thus forsworn:
For charity itself fulfils the law;
And who can sever love from charity?
King. Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to
the field!

Biron. Advance your standards, and upon
them, lords;

Pell-mell, down with them! but be first advis'd, In conflict that you get the sun of them.

Long. Now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by:

Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France? King. And win them too; therefore let us devise

Some entertainment for them in their tents. Biron. First, from the park let us conduct them thither;

Then, homeward, every man attach the hand
Of his fair mistress: in the afternoon
We will with some strange pastime solace them,
Such as the shortness of the time can shape;
For revels, dances, masks, and merry hours,
Fore-run fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.

King. Away, away! no time shall be omitted, That will be time, and may by us be fitted. Biron. Allons! Allons !-Sow'd cockle reap'd

SCENE 1.-Another part of the same. Enter HOLOFERNES, Sir NATHANIEL, and DULL.

Hol. Satis quod sufficit. Nath. 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 intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.

Hol. Novi hominem tanquam te: His humour 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 perigrinate, as I may call it.

Nath. A most singular and choice epithet. [Takes out his table-book. Hol. He draweth out the thread of his verbo

sity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasms, such insociable and point-devise 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, d, e, t: he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour, vocatur, nebour; neigh, abbreviated, ne: This is abhomi

to make frantick, lunatick.

Nath. Laus deo, bone intelligo.

Hol. Bone?- -bone, for benè: Priscian a little scratch'd; 'twill serve.

Enter ARMADO, MOTH, and COSTARD.

Arm. Men of peace, well encounter'd. Hol. Most military sir, salutation.

Hol. Or, mons, the hill.

Arm. At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain. Hol. I do, sans question.

Arm. 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.

Hol. 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.

Moth. Peace; the peal begins.

Arm. Monsieur, [To Hol.] are you not let ter'd?

Moth. Yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook:-What is a, b, spelt backward with a horn on his head?

Hol. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added. Moth. Ba, most silly sheep, with a horn:— You hear his learning.

Hol. Quis, quis, thou consonant? Moth. The third of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or the fifth, if I.

Hol. I will repeat them, a, e, i,—
Moth. The sheep: the other two concludes it;

Hol. Thou disputest like an infant: go, whip thy gig.

Moth. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy circùm circà; A gig of a cuckold's horn!

Cost. An 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 pigeonegg of discretion. O, an 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 dunghill, at thy fingers' ends, as they say.

Hol. O, I smell false Latin; dunghill for unguem.

Arm. Arts-man, præambula; we will be singled from the barbarous. Do you not educate

importunate 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 mustachio: but, sweet heart, let that pass. By the world, I recount no fable; some certain special honours 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 antick, or fire-work. 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.

Hol. Sir, you shall present before her the nine worthies.-Sir Nathaniel, as concerning some entertainment of time, some show in the posterior of this day, to be rendered by our assistance,—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.

Nath. Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?

Hol. Joshua, yourself; myself, or this gallant gentleman, Judas Maccabæus; this swain, because of his great limb or joint, shall pass Pompey the great; the page, Hercules.

Arm. Pardon, sir, error: he is not quantity enough for that worthy's thumb: he is not so big as the end of his club.

Hol. 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.

Moth. 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.