Comedy plays; Courts and courtiers -- Drama; Navarre (Kingdom) -- Drama; Princesses -- Drama
ROSALINE.
This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye—
BEROWNE.
I am a fool, and full of poverty.
ROSALINE.
But that you take what doth to you belong,
It were a fault to snatch words from my tongue.
BEROWNE.
O, I am yours, and all that I possess.
ROSALINE.
All the fool mine?
BEROWNE.
I cannot give you less.
ROSALINE.
Which of the visors was it that you wore?
BEROWNE.
Where, when, what visor? Why demand you this?
ROSALINE.
There, then, that visor; that superfluous case
That hid the worse and showed the better face.
KING.
We are descried. They’ll mock us now downright.
DUMAINE.
Let us confess and turn it to a jest.
PRINCESS.
Amazed, my lord? Why looks your Highness sad?
ROSALINE.
Help! Hold his brows! He’ll swoon. Why look you pale?
Seasick, I think, coming from Muscovy.
BEROWNE.
Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury.
Can any face of brass hold longer out?
Here stand I, lady; dart thy skill at me.
Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout,
Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance,
Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit,
And I will wish thee never more to dance,
Nor never more in Russian habit wait.
O, never will I trust to speeches penned,
Nor to the motion of a school-boy’s tongue,
Nor never come in visor to my friend,
Nor woo in rhyme like a blind harper’s song.
Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical: these summer flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.
I do forswear them, and I here protest,
By this white glove—how white the hand, God knows!—
Henceforth my wooing mind shall be expressed
In russet yeas and honest kersey noes.
And, to begin: wench, so God help me, law,
My love to thee is sound, _sans_ crack or flaw.
ROSALINE.
_Sans_ “_sans_,” I pray you.
BEROWNE.
Yet I have a trick
Of the old rage. Bear with me, I am sick;
I’ll leave it by degrees. Soft, let us see:
Write “Lord have mercy on us” on those three.
They are infected; in their hearts it lies;
They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes.
These lords are visited. You are not free,
For the Lord’s tokens on you do I see.
PRINCESS.
No, they are free that gave these tokens to us.
BEROWNE.
Our states are forfeit. Seek not to undo us.
ROSALINE.
It is not so. For how can this be true,
That you stand forfeit, being those that sue?
BEROWNE.
Peace! for I will not have to do with you.
ROSALINE.
Nor shall not, if I do as I intend.
BEROWNE.
Speak for yourselves. My wit is at an end.
KING.
Teach us, sweet madam, for our rude transgression
Some fair excuse.
PRINCESS.
The fairest is confession.
Were not you here but even now, disguised?
KING.
Madam, I was.
PRINCESS.
And were you well advised?
KING.
I was, fair madam.
PRINCESS.
When you then were here,
What did you whisper in your lady’s ear?
KING.
That more than all the world I did respect her.
PRINCESS.
When she shall challenge this, you will reject her.
KING.
Upon mine honour, no.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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