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

other mannish cowards have
That do outface it with their semblances. Celia What shall I call thee when thou art a man? Rosalind

I’ll have no worse a name than Jove’s own page;
And therefore look you call me Ganymede.
But what will you be call’d?

Celia

Something that hath a reference to my state
No longer Celia, but Aliena.

Rosalind

But, cousin, what if we assay’d to steal
The clownish fool out of your father’s court?
Would he not be a comfort to our travel?

Celia

He’ll go along o’er the wide world with me;
Leave me alone to woo him. Let’s away,
And get our jewels and our wealth together,
Devise the fittest time and safest way
To hide us from pursuit that will be made
After my flight. Now go we in content
To liberty and not to banishment. Exeunt.

Act II Scene I

The Forest of Arden.

Enter Duke Senior, Amiens, and two or three Lords, like foresters. Duke Senior

Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
“This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.”
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in every thing.
I would not change it.

Amiens

Happy is your grace,
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

Duke Senior

Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored.

First Lord

Indeed, my lord,
The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,
And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish’d you.
To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him as he lay along
Under an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:
To the which place a poor sequester’d stag,
That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt,
Did come to languish, and indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting, and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

Duke Senior

But what said Jaques?
Did he not moralize this spectacle?

First Lord

O, yes, into a thousand similes.
First, for his weeping into the needless stream;
“Poor deer,” quoth he, “thou makest a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much:” then, being there alone,
Left and abandon’d of his velvet friends,
“ ’Tis right:” quoth he; “thus misery doth part
The flux of company:” anon a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him
And never stays to greet him; “Ay” quoth Jaques,
“Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;
’Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?”
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court,
Yea, and of this our life, swearing that we
Are mere usurpers, tyrants and what’s worse,
To fright the animals and to kill them up
In their assign’d and native dwelling-place.

Duke Senior And did you leave him in this contemplation? Second Lord

We did, my lord, weeping and commenting
Upon the sobbing deer.

Duke Senior

Show me the place:
I love to cope him in these sullen fits,
For then he’s full of matter.

First Lord I’ll bring you to him straight. Exeunt. Scene II

A room in the palace.

Enter Duke Frederick, with Lords. Duke Frederick

Can it be possible that no man saw them?
It cannot be: some villains of my court
Are of consent and sufferance in this.

First Lord

I cannot hear of any that did see her.
The ladies, her attendants of her chamber,
Saw her abed, and in the morning early
They found the bed untreasured of their mistress.

Second Lord

My lord, the roynish clown, at whom so oft
Your grace was wont to laugh, is also missing.
Hisperia, the princess’ gentlewoman,
Confesses that she secretly o’erheard
Your daughter and her cousin much commend
The parts and graces of the wrestler
That did but lately foil the sinewy Charles;
And she believes, wherever they are gone,
That youth is surely in their company.

Duke Frederick

Send to his brother; fetch that gallant hither;
If he be absent, bring his brother to me;
I’ll make him find him: do this suddenly,
And let not search and inquisition quail
To bring again these foolish runaways. Exeunt.

Scene III

Before Oliver’s house.

Enter Orlando and Adam, meeting. Orlando Who’s there? Adam

What, my young master? O, my gentle master!
O my sweet master! O you memory
Of old Sir Rowland! why, what make you here?
Why are you virtuous? why do people love you?
And wherefore are you gentle, strong and valiant?
Why would you be so fond to overcome
The bonny priser of the humorous duke?
Your praise is come too swiftly home before you.
Know you not, master, to some kind of men
Their graces serve them but as enemies?
No more do yours: your virtues, gentle master,
Are sanctified and holy traitors to you.
O, what a world is this, when what is comely
Envenoms him that bears it!

Orlando Why, what’s the matter? Adam

O unhappy youth!
Come not within these doors; within this roof
The enemy of all your graces lives:
Your brother⁠—no, no brother; yet the son⁠—
Yet not the son, I will not call him son
Of him I was about to call his father⁠—
Hath heard your praises, and this night he means
To burn the lodging where you use to lie
And you within it: if he fail of that,
He