Comedy plays; Courts and courtiers -- Drama; Navarre (Kingdom) -- Drama; Princesses -- Drama
BOYET. Here comes a member of the commonwealth.
COSTARD. God dig-you-den all! Pray you, which is the head lady?
PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Thou shalt know her, fellow, by the rest
that
have no heads.
COSTARD. Which is the greatest lady, the highest?
PRINCESS OF FRANCE. The thickest and the tallest.
COSTARD. The thickest and the tallest! It is so; truth is
truth.
An your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit,
One o' these maids' girdles for your waist should be fit.
Are not you the chief woman? You are the thickest here.
PRINCESS OF FRANCE. What's your will, sir? What's your will?
COSTARD. I have a letter from Monsieur Berowne to one
Lady Rosaline.
PRINCESS OF FRANCE. O, thy letter, thy letter! He's a good
friend
of mine.
Stand aside, good bearer. Boyet, you can carve.
Break up this capon.
BOYET. I am bound to serve.
This letter is mistook; it importeth none here.
It is writ to Jaquenetta.
PRINCESS OF FRANCE. We will read it, I swear.
Break the neck of the wax, and every one give ear.
BOYET. [Reads] 'By heaven, that thou art fair is most
infallible;
true that thou art beauteous; truth itself that thou art
lovely.
More fairer than fair, beautiful than beauteous, truer than
truth
itself, have commiseration on thy heroical vassal. The
magnanimous and most illustrate king Cophetua set eye upon
the
pernicious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon; and he it was
that
might rightly say, 'Veni, vidi, vici'; which to annothanize
in
the vulgar,- O base and obscure vulgar!- videlicet, He came,
saw,
and overcame. He came, one; saw, two; overcame, three. Who
came?-
the king. Why did he come?- to see. Why did he see?-to
overcome.
To whom came he?- to the beggar. What saw he?- the beggar.
Who
overcame he?- the beggar. The conclusion is victory; on whose
side?- the king's. The captive is enrich'd; on whose side?-
the
beggar's. The catastrophe is a nuptial; on whose side?- the
king's. No, on both in one, or one in both. I am the king,
for so
stands the comparison; thou the beggar, for so witnesseth thy
lowliness. Shall I command thy love? I may. Shall I enforce
thy
love? I could. Shall I entreat thy love? I will. What shalt
thou
exchange for rags?- robes, for tittles?- titles, for thyself?
-me. Thus expecting thy reply, I profane my lips on thy foot,
my
eyes on thy picture, and my heart on thy every part.
Thine in the dearest design of industry,
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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