As You Like It

1 Enter Rosalind and Celia.
2 ROSALIND.
3 How say you now? Is it not past two o’clock? And here much Orlando.
4 CELIA.
5 I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain he hath ta’en his bow
6 and arrows and is gone forth to sleep.
7 Enter Silvius.
8 Look who comes here.
9 SILVIUS.
10 My errand is to you, fair youth.
11 My gentle Phoebe did bid me give you this.
12 [_Giving a letter._]
13 I know not the contents, but, as I guess
14 By the stern brow and waspish action
15 Which she did use as she was writing of it,
16 It bears an angry tenor. Pardon me,
17 I am but as a guiltless messenger.
18 ROSALIND.
19 Patience herself would startle at this letter
20 And play the swaggerer. Bear this, bear all!
21 She says I am not fair, that I lack manners;
22 She calls me proud, and that she could not love me,
23 Were man as rare as phoenix. ’Od’s my will,
24 Her love is not the hare that I do hunt.
25 Why writes she so to me? Well, shepherd, well,
26 This is a letter of your own device.
27 SILVIUS.
28 No, I protest, I know not the contents.
29 Phoebe did write it.
30 ROSALIND.
31 Come, come, you are a fool,
32 And turned into the extremity of love.
33 I saw her hand. She has a leathern hand,
34 A freestone-coloured hand. I verily did think
35 That her old gloves were on, but ’twas her hands.
36 She has a huswife’s hand—but that’s no matter.
37 I say she never did invent this letter;
38 This is a man’s invention, and his hand.
39 SILVIUS.
40 Sure, it is hers.
41 ROSALIND.
42 Why, ’tis a boisterous and a cruel style,
43 A style for challengers. Why, she defies me,
44 Like Turk to Christian. Women’s gentle brain
45 Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention,
46 Such Ethiop words, blacker in their effect
47 Than in their countenance. Will you hear the letter?
48 SILVIUS.
49 So please you, for I never heard it yet,
50 Yet heard too much of Phoebe’s cruelty.
51 ROSALIND.
52 She Phoebes me. Mark how the tyrant writes.
53 [_Reads._]
54 _Art thou god to shepherd turned,
55 That a maiden’s heart hath burned?_
56 Can a woman rail thus?
57 SILVIUS.
58 Call you this railing?
59 ROSALIND.
60 _Why, thy godhead laid apart,
61 Warr’st thou with a woman’s heart?_
62 Did you ever hear such railing?
63 _Whiles the eye of man did woo me,
64 That could do no vengeance to me._
65 Meaning me a beast.
66 _If the scorn of your bright eyne
67 Have power to raise such love in mine,
68 Alack, in me what strange effect
69 Would they work in mild aspect?
70 Whiles you chid me, I did love,
71 How then might your prayers move?
72 He that brings this love to thee
73 Little knows this love in me;
74 And by him seal up thy mind,
75 Whether that thy youth and kind
76 Will the faithful offer take
77 Of me, and all that I can make,
78 Or else by him my love deny,
79 And then I’ll study how to die._
80 SILVIUS.
81 Call you this chiding?
82 CELIA.
83 Alas, poor shepherd.
84 ROSALIND.
85 Do you pity him? No, he deserves no pity.—Wilt thou love such a woman?
86 What, to make thee an instrument and play false strains upon thee? Not
87 to be endured! Well, go your way to her, for I see love hath made thee
88 a tame snake, and say this to her: that if she love me, I charge her to
89 love thee; if she will not, I will never have her unless thou entreat
90 for her. If you be a true lover, hence, and not a word, for here comes
91 more company.
92 [_Exit Silvius._]
93 Enter Oliver.
94 OLIVER.
95 Good morrow, fair ones. Pray you, if you know,
96 Where in the purlieus of this forest stands
97 A sheepcote fenced about with olive trees?
98 CELIA.
99 West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom;
100 The rank of osiers, by the murmuring stream,
101 Left on your right hand, brings you to the place.
102 But at this hour the house doth keep itself.
103 There’s none within.
104 OLIVER.
105 If that an eye may profit by a tongue,
106 Then should I know you by description,
107 Such garments, and such years. “The boy is fair,
108 Of female favour, and bestows himself
109 Like a ripe sister; the woman low,
110 And browner than her brother.” Are not you
111 The owner of the house I did inquire for?
112 CELIA.
113 It is no boast, being asked, to say we are.
114 OLIVER.
115 Orlando doth commend him to you both,
116 And to that youth he calls his Rosalind
117 He sends this bloody napkin. Are you he?
118 ROSALIND.
119 I am. What must we understand by this?
120 OLIVER.
121 Some of my shame, if you will know of me
122 What man I am, and how, and why, and where
123 This handkerchief was stained.
124 CELIA.
125 I pray you tell it.
126 OLIVER.
127 When last the young Orlando parted from you,
128 He left a promise to return again
129 Within an hour, and pacing through the forest,
130 Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy,
131 Lo, what befell. He threw his eye aside,
132 And mark what object did present itself.
133 Under an oak, whose boughs were mossed with age
134 And high top bald with dry antiquity,
135 A wretched ragged man, o’ergrown with hair,
136 Lay sleeping on his back; about his neck
137 A green and gilded snake had wreathed itself,
138 Who with her head, nimble in threats, approached
139 The opening of his mouth. But suddenly,
140 Seeing Orlando, it unlinked itself
141 And with indented glides did slip away
142 Into a bush; under which bush’s shade
143 A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,
144 Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch
145 When that the sleeping man should stir. For ’tis
146 The royal disposition of that beast
147 To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.
148 This seen, Orlando did approach the man
149 And found it was his brother, his elder brother.
150 CELIA.
151 O, I have heard him speak of that same brother,
152 And he did render him the most unnatural
153 That lived amongst men.
154 OLIVER.
155 And well he might so do,
156 For well I know he was unnatural.
157 ROSALIND.
158 But, to Orlando: did he leave him there,
159 Food to the sucked and hungry lioness?
160 OLIVER.
161 Twice did he turn his back and purposed so;
162 But kindness, nobler ever than revenge,
163 And nature, stronger than his just occasion,
164 Made him give battle to the lioness,
165 Who quickly fell before him; in which hurtling
166 From miserable slumber I awaked.
167 CELIA.
168 Are you his brother?
169 ROSALIND.
170 Was it you he rescued?
171 CELIA.
172 Was’t you that did so oft contrive to kill him?
173 OLIVER.
174 ’Twas I; but ’tis not I. I do not shame
175 To tell you what I was, since my conversion
176 So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.
177 ROSALIND.
178 But, for the bloody napkin?
179 OLIVER.
180 By and by.
181 When from the first to last betwixt us two
182 Tears our recountments had most kindly bathed—
183 As how I came into that desert place—
184 In brief, he led me to the gentle Duke,
185 Who gave me fresh array and entertainment,
186 Committing me unto my brother’s love,
187 Who led me instantly unto his cave,
188 There stripped himself, and here upon his arm
189 The lioness had torn some flesh away,
190 Which all this while had bled; and now he fainted,
191 And cried in fainting upon Rosalind.
192 Brief, I recovered him, bound up his wound,
193 And after some small space, being strong at heart,
194 He sent me hither, stranger as I am,
195 To tell this story, that you might excuse
196 His broken promise, and to give this napkin,
197 Dyed in his blood, unto the shepherd youth
198 That he in sport doth call his Rosalind.
199 [_Rosalind faints._]
200 CELIA.
201 Why, how now, Ganymede, sweet Ganymede!
202 OLIVER.
203 Many will swoon when they do look on blood.
204 CELIA.
205 There is more in it. Cousin—Ganymede!
206 OLIVER.
207 Look, he recovers.
208 ROSALIND.
209 I would I were at home.
210 CELIA.
211 We’ll lead you thither.
212 I pray you, will you take him by the arm?
213 OLIVER.
214 Be of good cheer, youth. You a man? You lack a man’s heart.
215 ROSALIND.
216 I do so, I confess it. Ah, sirrah, a body would think this was well
217 counterfeited. I pray you tell your brother how well I counterfeited.
218 Heigh-ho.
219 OLIVER.
220 This was not counterfeit. There is too great testimony in your
221 complexion that it was a passion of earnest.
222 ROSALIND.
223 Counterfeit, I assure you.
224 OLIVER.
225 Well then, take a good heart, and counterfeit to be a man.
226 ROSALIND.
227 So I do. But, i’ faith, I should have been a woman by right.
228 CELIA.
229 Come, you look paler and paler. Pray you draw homewards. Good sir, go
230 with us.
231 OLIVER.
232 That will I, for I must bear answer back
233 How you excuse my brother, Rosalind.
234 ROSALIND.
235 I shall devise something. But I pray you commend my counterfeiting to
236 him. Will you go?
237 [_Exeunt._]