Comedy plays; Exiles -- Drama; Fathers and daughters -- Drama; Pastoral drama
be wicked; and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation. Thou
art
in a parlous state, shepherd.
CORIN. Not a whit, Touchstone. Those that are good manners at
the
court are as ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of
the
country is most mockable at the court. You told me you salute
not
at the court, but you kiss your hands; that courtesy would be
uncleanly if courtiers were shepherds.
TOUCHSTONE. Instance, briefly; come, instance.
CORIN. Why, we are still handling our ewes; and their fells,
you
know, are greasy.
TOUCHSTONE. Why, do not your courtier's hands sweat? And is not
the
grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man?
Shallow,
shallow. A better instance, I say; come.
CORIN. Besides, our hands are hard.
TOUCHSTONE. Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow again.
A
more sounder instance; come.
CORIN. And they are often tarr'd over with the surgery of our
sheep; and would you have us kiss tar? The courtier's hands
are
perfum'd with civet.
TOUCHSTONE. Most shallow man! thou worm's meat in respect of a
good
piece of flesh indeed! Learn of the wise, and perpend: civet
is
of a baser birth than tar- the very uncleanly flux of a cat.
Mend
the instance, shepherd.
CORIN. You have too courtly a wit for me; I'll rest.
TOUCHSTONE. Wilt thou rest damn'd? God help thee, shallow man!
God
make incision in thee! thou art raw.
CORIN. Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I
wear; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad of other
men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my
pride is
to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.
TOUCHSTONE. That is another simple sin in you: to bring the
ewes
and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the
copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether, and to
betray
a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly
ram,
out of all reasonable match. If thou beest not damn'd for
this,
the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else
how
thou shouldst scape.
CORIN. Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new mistress's
brother.
Enter ROSALIND, reading a paper
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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