Comedy plays; Exiles -- Drama; Fathers and daughters -- Drama; Pastoral drama
Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her
wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.
ROSALIND. I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily
misplaced; and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in
her
gifts to women.
CELIA. 'Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce
makes
honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very
ill-favouredly.
ROSALIND. Nay; now thou goest from Fortune's office to
Nature's:
Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments
of
Nature.
Enter TOUCHSTONE
CELIA. No; when Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not
by
Fortune fall into the fire? Though Nature hath given us wit
to
flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut
off
the argument?
ROSALIND. Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when
Fortune makes Nature's natural the cutter-off of Nature's
wit.
CELIA. Peradventure this is not Fortune's work neither, but
Nature's, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason
of
such goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone;
for
always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.
How
now, wit! Whither wander you?
TOUCHSTONE. Mistress, you must come away to your father.
CELIA. Were you made the messenger?
TOUCHSTONE. No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you.
ROSALIND. Where learned you that oath, fool?
TOUCHSTONE. Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they
were
good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was
naught.
Now I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and the
mustard
was good, and yet was not the knight forsworn.
CELIA. How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge?
ROSALIND. Ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom.
TOUCHSTONE. Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and
swear
by your beards that I am a knave.
CELIA. By our beards, if we had them, thou art.
TOUCHSTONE. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were. But if you
swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn; no more was
this
knight, swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if
he
had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancackes
or
that mustard.
CELIA. Prithee, who is't that thou mean'st?
TOUCHSTONE. One that old Frederick, your father, loves.
CELIA. My father's love is enough to honour him. Enough, speak
no
more of him; you'll be whipt for taxation one of these days.
TOUCHSTONE. The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what
wise
men do foolishly.
CELIA. By my troth, thou sayest true; for since the little wit
that
fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men
have
makes a great show. Here comes Monsieur Le Beau.
Enter LE BEAU
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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