SCENE I. The same
Enter ARMADO and MOTH
ARMADO
Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.
MOTH
Concolinel. [Singing]
ARMADO
Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years; take this key,
give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately
hither: I must employ him in a letter to my love.
MOTH
Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?
ARMADO
How meanest thou? brawling in French?
MOTH
No, my complete master: but to jig off a tune at
the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet, humour
it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and
sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you
swallowed love with singing love, sometime through
the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling
love; with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of
your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin-belly
doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in
your pocket like a man after the old painting; and
keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away.
These are complements, these are humours; these
betray nice wenches, that would be betrayed without
these; and make them men of note--do you note
me?--that most are affected to these.
ARMADO
How hast thou purchased this experience?
MOTH
By my penny of observation.
ARMADO
But O,--but O,--
MOTH
'The hobby-horse is forgot.'
ARMADO
Callest thou my love 'hobby-horse'?
MOTH
No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your
love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?
ARMADO
Almost I had.
MOTH
Negligent student! learn her by heart.
ARMADO
By heart and in heart, boy.
MOTH
And out of heart, master: all those three I will prove.
ARMADO
What wilt thou prove?
MOTH
A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, upon
the instant: by heart you love her, because your
heart cannot come by her; in heart you love her,
because your heart is in love with her; and out of
heart you love her, being out of heart that you
cannot enjoy her.
ARMADO
I am all these three.
MOTH
And three times as much more, and yet nothing at
all.
ARMADO
Fetch hither the swain: he must carry me a letter.
MOTH
A message well sympathized; a horse to be ambassador
for an ass.
ARMADO
Ha, ha! what sayest thou?
MOTH
Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse,
for he is very slow-gaited. But I go.
ARMADO
The way is but short: away!
MOTH
As swift as lead, sir.
ARMADO
The meaning, pretty ingenious?
Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?
MOTH
Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.
ARMADO
I say lead is slow.
MOTH
You are too swift, sir, to say so:
Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun?
ARMADO
Sweet smoke of rhetoric!
He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that's he:
I shoot thee at the swain.
MOTH
Thump then and I flee.
Exit
ARMADO
A most acute juvenal; voluble and free of grace!
By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face:
Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.
My herald is return'd.
Re-enter MOTH with COSTARD
|
