As You Like It William Shakespeare (comprehension books .txt) 📖

and Celia. Still Music. Hymen

Then is there mirth in heaven,
When earthly things made even
Atone together.
Good duke, receive thy daughter
Hymen from heaven brought her,
Yea, brought her hither,
That thou mightst join her hand with his
Whose heart within his bosom is.

Rosalind

To Duke Senior. To you I give myself, for I am yours.
To Orlando.To you I give myself, for I am yours.

Duke Senior If there be truth in sight, you are my daughter. Orlando If there be truth in sight, you are my Rosalind. Phebe

If sight and shape be true,
Why then, my love adieu!

Rosalind

I’ll have no father, if you be not he:
I’ll have no husband, if you be not he:
Nor ne’er wed woman, if you be not she.

Hymen

Peace, ho! I bar confusion:
’Tis I must make conclusion
Of these most strange events:
Here’s eight that must take hands
To join in Hymen’s bands,
If truth holds true contents.
You and you no cross shall part:
You and you are heart in heart
You to his love must accord,
Or have a woman to your lord:
You and you are sure together,
As the winter to foul weather.
Whiles a wedlock-hymn we sing,
Feed yourselves with questioning;
That reason wonder may diminish,
How thus we met, and these things finish.

Song.

Wedding is great Juno’s crown:
O blessed bond of board and bed!
’Tis Hymen peoples every town;
High wedlock then be honoured:
Honour, high honour and renown,
To Hymen, god of every town!

Duke Senior

O my dear niece, welcome thou art to me!
Even daughter, welcome, in no less degree.

Phebe

I will not eat my word, now thou art mine;
Thy faith my fancy to thee doth combine.

Enter Jaques de Boys. Jaques de Boys

Let me have audience for a word or two:
I am the second son of old Sir Rowland,
That bring these tidings to this fair assembly.
Duke Frederick, hearing how that every day
Men of great worth resorted to this forest,
Address’d a mighty power; which were on foot,
In his own conduct, purposely to take
His brother here and put him to the sword:
And to the skirts of this wild wood he came;
Where meeting with an old religious man,
After some question with him, was converted
Both from his enterprise and from the world,
His crown bequeathing to his banish’d brother,
And all their lands restored to them again
That were with him exiled. This to be true,
I do engage my life.

Duke Senior

Welcome, young man;
Thou offer’st fairly to thy brothers’ wedding:
To one his lands withheld, and to the other
A land itself at large, a potent dukedom.
First, in this forest, let us do those ends
That here were well begun and well begot:
And after, every of this happy number
That have endured shrewd days and nights with us
Shall share the good of our returned fortune,
According to the measure of their states.
Meantime, forget this new-fall’n dignity
And fall into our rustic revelry.
Play, music! And you, brides and bridegrooms all,
With measure heap’d in joy, to the measures fall.

Jaques

Sir, by your patience. If I heard you rightly,
The duke hath put on a religious life
And thrown into neglect the pompous court?

Jaques De boys He hath. Jaques

To him will I: out of these convertites
There is much matter to be heard and learn’d.
To Duke Senior.You to your former honour I bequeath;
Your patience and your virtue well deserves it:
To Orlando.You to a love that your true faith doth merit:
To Oliver.You to your land and love and great allies:
To Silvius.You to a long and well-deserved bed:
To Touchstone.And you to wrangling; for thy loving voyage
Is but for two months victuall’d. So, to your pleasures:
I am for other than for dancing measures.

Duke Senior Stay, Jaques, stay. Jaques

To see no pastime I what you would have
I’ll stay to know at your abandon’d cave. Exit.

Duke Senior

Proceed, proceed: we will begin these rites,
As we do trust they’ll end, in true delights. A dance.

Epilogue Rosalind It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue. If it be true that good wine needs no bush, ’tis true that a good play needs no epilogue; yet to good wine they do use good bushes, and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue nor cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play! I am not furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will not become me: my way is to conjure you; and I’ll begin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you: and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women⁠—as I perceive by your simpering, none of you hates them⁠—that between you and the women the play may please. If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me and breaths that I defied not: and, I am sure, as many as have good beards or good faces or sweet breaths will, for my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell. Exeunt. Colophon

As You Like It
was published in 1623 by
William Shakespeare.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Asher Smith,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1993 by
Jeremy Hylton
for the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and on digital scans available at the
HathiTrust Digital Library.

The cover page is adapted from
In the Forest of Arden,
a painting completed in 1892 by
John Collier.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014