Comedy plays; Exiles -- Drama; Fathers and daughters -- Drama; Pastoral drama
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.
PHOEBE.
If sight and shape be true,
Why then, my love adieu.
ROSALIND.
[_To Duke Senior_.] I’ll have no father, if you be not he.
[_To Orlando_.] I’ll have no husband, if you be not he.
[_To Phoebe_.] 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.
[_To Orlando and Rosalind_.] You and you no cross shall part.
[_To Celia and Oliver_.] You and you are heart in heart.
[_To Phoebe_.] You to his love must accord
Or have a woman to your lord.
[_To Audrey and Touchstone_.] 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.
PHOEBE.
[_To Silvius_.] 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,
Addressed 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 banished 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 brother’s 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 heaped in joy to th’ measures fall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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