1    Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.

2    Concolinel.

3    Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years; take this key,
4    give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately
5    hither: I must employ him in a letter to my love.

6    Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?

7    How meanest thou? brawling in French?

8    No, my complete master: but to jig off a tune at
9    the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet, humour
10   it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and
11   sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you
12   swallowed love with singing love, sometime through
13   the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling
14   love; with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of
15   your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin-belly
16   doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in
17   your pocket like a man after the old painting; and
18   keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away.
19   These are complements, these are humours; these
20   betray nice wenches, that would be betrayed without
21   these; and make them men of note--do you note
22   me?--that most are affected to these.

23   How hast thou purchased this experience?

24   By my penny of observation.

25   But O,--but O,--

26   'The hobby-horse is forgot.'

27   Callest thou my love 'hobby-horse'?

28   No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your
29   love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?

30   Almost I had.

31   Negligent student! learn her by heart.

32   By heart and in heart, boy.

33   And out of heart, master: all those three I will prove.

34   What wilt thou prove?

35   A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, upon
36   the instant: by heart you love her, because your
37   heart cannot come by her; in heart you love her,
38   because your heart is in love with her; and out of
39   heart you love her, being out of heart that you
40   cannot enjoy her.

41   I am all these three.

42   And three times as much more, and yet nothing at
43   all.

44   Fetch hither the swain: he must carry me a letter.

45   A message well sympathized; a horse to be ambassador
46   for an ass.

47   Ha, ha! what sayest thou?

48   Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse,
49   for he is very slow-gaited. But I go.

50   The way is but short: away!

51   As swift as lead, sir.

52   The meaning, pretty ingenious?
53   Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?

54   Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.

55   I say lead is slow.

56   You are too swift, sir, to say so:
57   Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun?

58   Sweet smoke of rhetoric!
59   He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that's he:
60   I shoot thee at the swain.

61   Thump then and I flee.

62   A most acute juvenal; voluble and free of grace!
63   By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face:
64   Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.
65   My herald is return'd.

66   A wonder, master! here's a costard broken in a shin.

67   Some enigma, some riddle: come, thy l'envoy; begin.

68   No enigma, no riddle, no l'envoy; no salve in the
69   mail, sir: O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain! no
70   l'envoy, no l'envoy; no salve, sir, but a plantain!

71   By virtue, thou enforcest laughter; thy silly
72   thought my spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes
73   me to ridiculous smiling. O, pardon me, my stars!
74   Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l'envoy, and
75   the word l'envoy for a salve?

76   Do the wise think them other? is not l'envoy a salve?

77   No, page: it is an epilogue or discourse, to make plain
78   Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.
79   I will example it:
80   The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,
81   Were still at odds, being but three.
82   There's the moral. Now the l'envoy.

83   I will add the l'envoy. Say the moral again.

84   The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,
85   Were still at odds, being but three.

86   Until the goose came out of door,
87   And stay'd the odds by adding four.
88   Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with
89   my l'envoy.
90   The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,
91   Were still at odds, being but three.

92   Until the goose came out of door,
93   Staying the odds by adding four.

94   A good l'envoy, ending in the goose: would you
95   desire more?

96   The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that's flat.
97   Sir, your pennyworth is good, an your goose be fat.
98   To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose:
99   Let me see; a fat l'envoy; ay, that's a fat goose.

100  Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin?

101  By saying that a costard was broken in a shin.
102  Then call'd you for the l'envoy.

103  True, and I for a plantain: thus came your
104  argument in;
105  Then the boy's fat l'envoy, the goose that you bought;
106  And he ended the market.

107  But tell me; how was there a costard broken in a shin?

108  I will tell you sensibly.

109  Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth: I will speak that l'envoy:
110  I Costard, running out, that was safely within,
111  Fell over the threshold and broke my shin.

112  We will talk no more of this matter.

113  Till there be more matter in the shin.

114  Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.

115  O, marry me to one Frances: I smell some l'envoy,
116  some goose, in this.

117  By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty,
118  enfreedoming thy person; thou wert immured,
119  restrained, captivated, bound.

120  True, true; and now you will be my purgation and let me loose.

121  I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance; and,
122  in lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this:
123  bear this significant
Giving a letter
124  to the country maid Jaquenetta:
125  there is remuneration; for the best ward of mine
126  honour is rewarding my dependents. Moth, follow.

127  Like the sequel, I. Signior Costard, adieu.

128  My sweet ounce of man's flesh! my incony Jew!
Exit MOTH
129  Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration!
130  O, that's the Latin word for three farthings: three
131  farthings--remuneration.--'What's the price of this
132  inkle?'--'One penny.'--'No, I'll give you a
133  remuneration:' why, it carries it. Remuneration!
134  why, it is a fairer name than French crown. I will
135  never buy and sell out of this word.

136  O, my good knave Costard! exceedingly well met.

137  Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man
138  buy for a remuneration?

139  What is a remuneration?

140  Marry, sir, halfpenny farthing.

141  Why, then, three-farthing worth of silk.

142  I thank your worship: God be wi' you!

143  Stay, slave; I must employ thee:
144  As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave,
145  Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.

146  When would you have it done, sir?

147  This afternoon.

148  Well, I will do it, sir: fare you well.

149  Thou knowest not what it is.

150  I shall know, sir, when I have done it.

151  Why, villain, thou must know first.

152  I will come to your worship to-morrow morning.

153  It must be done this afternoon.
154  Hark, slave, it is but this:
155  The princess comes to hunt here in the park,
156  And in her train there is a gentle lady;
157  When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name,
158  And Rosaline they call her: ask for her;
159  And to her white hand see thou do commend
160  This seal'd-up counsel. There's thy guerdon; go.

161  Gardon, O sweet gardon! better than remuneration,
162  a'leven-pence farthing better: most sweet gardon! I
163  will do it sir, in print. Gardon! Remuneration!

164  And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love's whip;
165  A very beadle to a humorous sigh;
166  A critic, nay, a night-watch constable;
167  A domineering pedant o'er the boy;
168  Than whom no mortal so magnificent!
169  This whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy;
170  This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
171  Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
172  The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
173  Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
174  Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
175  Sole imperator and great general
176  Of trotting 'paritors:--O my little heart:--
177  And I to be a corporal of his field,
178  And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!
179  What, I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
180  A woman, that is like a German clock,
181  Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,
182  And never going aright, being a watch,
183  But being watch'd that it may still go right!
184  Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all;
185  And, among three, to love the worst of all;
186  A wightly wanton with a velvet brow,
187  With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes;
188  Ay, and by heaven, one that will do the deed
189  Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard:
190  And I to sigh for her! to watch for her!
191  To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague
192  That Cupid will impose for my neglect
193  Of his almighty dreadful little might.
194  Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue and groan:
195  Some men must love my lady and some Joan.