The Complete Works of William ShakespeareShakespeare, William
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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare, William
English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600
CHARLES.
I am heartily glad I came hither to you. If he come tomorrow I’ll give
him his payment. If ever he go alone again I’ll never wrestle for prize
more. And so, God keep your worship.
[_Exit._]
OLIVER.
Farewell, good Charles. Now will I stir this gamester. I hope I shall
see an end of him; for my soul—yet I know not why—hates nothing more
than he. Yet he’s gentle, never schooled and yet learned, full of noble
device, of all sorts enchantingly beloved, and indeed so much in the
heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him,
that I am altogether misprized. But it shall not be so long; this
wrestler shall clear all. Nothing remains but that I kindle the boy
thither, which now I’ll go about.
[_Exit._]
SCENE II. A Lawn before the Duke’s Palace
Enter Rosalind and Celia.
CELIA.
I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry.
ROSALIND.
Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of, and would you yet
I were merrier? Unless you could teach me to forget a banished father,
you must not learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleasure.
CELIA.
Herein I see thou lov’st me not with the full weight that I love thee.
If my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the Duke my
father, so thou hadst been still with me, I could have taught my love
to take thy father for mine. So wouldst thou, if the truth of thy love
to me were so righteously tempered as mine is to thee.
ROSALIND.
Well, I will forget the condition of my estate to rejoice in yours.
CELIA.
You know my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to have; and
truly, when he dies thou shalt be his heir, for what he hath taken away
from thy father perforce, I will render thee again in affection. By
mine honour I will! And when I break that oath, let me turn monster.
Therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear Rose, be merry.
ROSALIND.
From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports. Let me see—what think
you of falling in love?
CELIA.
Marry, I prithee do, to make sport withal; but love no man in good
earnest, nor no further in sport neither than with safety of a pure
blush thou mayst in honour come off again.
ROSALIND.
What shall be our sport, then?
CELIA.
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?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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