As You Like It: Act III

And thou, thrice-crownèd queen of night, survey
With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above,
Thy huntress’ name that my full life doth sway.

Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious.

Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd.

Thou worms’ meat in respect of a good piece of flesh, indeed. Learn of the wise and perpend: civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat.

That is another simple sin in you, to bring the ewes and the rams together and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to a crooked-pated old cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match.

I’ll graft it with you, and then I shall graft it with a medlar.

But upon the fairest boughs,
Or at every sentence’ end,
Will I “Rosalinda” write,
Teaching all that read to know
The quintessence of every sprite
Heaven would in little show.

O most gentle Jupiter, what tedious homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried “Have patience, good people!”

Nay, I prithee now, with most petitionary vehemence, tell me who it is.

Come apace, good Audrey.

I prithee take the cork out of thy mouth, that I may drink thy tidings.

To say ay and no to these particulars is more than to answer in a catechism.

But take a taste of my finding him, and relish it with good observance.

But take a taste of my finding him, and relish it with good observance.

O, ominous! He comes to kill my heart.

You have a nimble wit. I think ’twas made of Atalanta’s heels. Will you sit down with me? And we two will rail against our mistress the world and all our misery.

Which I take to be either a fool or a cipher.

I’ll tarry no longer with you.

I will speak to him like a saucy lackey, and under that habit play the knave with him.

I will speak to him like a saucy lackey, and under that habit play the knave with him.

I’ll tell you who time ambles withal, who time trots withal, who time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.

Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized.

No, I will not cast away my physic but on those that are sick.

There is a man haunts the forest that abuses our young plants with carving “Rosalind” on their barks, hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles, all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind.

There is a man haunts the forest that abuses our young plants with carving “Rosalind” on their barks, hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles, all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind.

...I drave my suitor from his mad humor of love to a living humor of madness, which was to forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook merely monastic.

...I drave my suitor from his mad humor of love to a living humor of madness, which was to forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook merely monastic.

...I drave my suitor from his mad humor of love to a living humor of madness, which was to forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook merely monastic.

O knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than Jove in a thatched house.

When a man’s verses cannot be understood,
nor a man’s good wit seconded with the
forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more
dead than a great reckoning in a little room.

As horns are odious, they are necessary.

Well, that is the dowry of his wife; ’tis none of his own getting.

His very hair is of the dissembling color.

Yes, I think he is not a pickpurse nor a horse-stealer, but for his verity in love, I do think him as concave as a covered goblet or a worm-eaten nut.

He writes brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely, quite traverse, athwart the heart of his lover, as a puny tilter that spurs his horse but on one side breaks his staff like a noble goose; but all’s brave that youth mounts and folly guides.

Mistress and master, you have oft inquired
After the shepherd that complained of love,
Who you saw sitting by me on the turf,
Praising the proud disdainful shepherdess
That was his mistress.

Now counterfeit to swoon; why, now fall down;
Or if thou canst not, O, for shame, for shame,
Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers.

Why, that were covetousness.

Silvius, the time was that I hated thee;
And yet it is not that I bear thee love;
But since that thou canst talk of love so well,
Thy company, which erst was irksome to me,
I will endure, and I’ll employ thee too.

So holy and so perfect is my love,
And I in such a poverty of grace,
That I shall think it a most plenteous crop
To glean the broken ears after the man
That the main harvest reaps.