_Hol_. _He draweth out the thread of his verbosity_ finer than the
_staple of his argument_, ['More matter with less art,' says the queen
in Hamlet], I abhor such _fantastical phantasms_, such insociable and
_point device_ companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak
doubt _fine_ when _he should say doubt_, etc. This is abhominable
which he would call abominable; it insinuateth me of insanie; _Ne
intelligis, domine_? to make frantic, lunatic.
_Nath_. _Lans deo bone intelligo_.
_Hol_. _Bone--bone for bene_: _Priscian, a little scratched 'twill
serve_. [This was never meant to be printed of course; all this is
understood to have been prepared only for a performance in 'a booth.']
_Enter_ Armado, etc.
_Nath. Videsne quis venit?_
_Ho. Video et gaudeo._
_Arm._ Chirra!
_Hol. Quare_ Chirra not Sirrah!
But the first appearance of these two _book-men_, as _Dull_ takes
leave them to call them in this scene, is not less to the purpose.
They come in with Antony Dull, who serves as a foil to their learning;
from the moment that they open their lips they speak 'in character,'
and they do not proceed far before they give us some hints of the
author's purpose.
_Nath_. Very _reverent sport_ truly, and done _in the testimony of a
good conscience_.
_Hol_. The deer was, as you know, in _sanguis_, ripe as a pomewater,
who _now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of Coelo_, the sky, the
welkin, the heaven, and _anon falleth like a crab on the face of
terra_--the soil, the land, the earth. [A-side glance at the heights
and depths of the incongruities which are the subject here.]
_Nath_. Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied,
like a scholar at the least, but, etc.....
_Hol_. Most _barbarous_ intimation! [referring to Antony Dull, who has
been trying to understand this learned language, and apply it to the
subject of conversation, but who fails in the attempt, very much to
the amusement and self-congratulation of these scholars]. Yet a _kind_
of _insinuation_, as it were, _in via, in way of explication_ [a style
much in use in this school], _facere_, as it were, replication, or
rather _ostentare_, to show, as it were, _his inclination_, after his
undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather
unlettered, or ratherest unconfirmed fashion,--to insert again my
_haud credo_ for a deer.... Twice sod simplicity, _bis coctus!_ Oh
_thou monster ignorance_, how deformed dost thou look!
_Nath._ [explaining] Sir, _he hath never fed of the dainties bred in a
book_; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; _his
intellect_ is not replenished; he is only an animal--only sensible in
the duller parts;
And such _barren_ plants are set before us that we thankful should be,
(Which we of taste and feeling are) for those parts that do fructify
in us more than he.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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