Love's Labour's Lost: Act 3

Enter Braggart Armado and his Boy.

Warble, child, make passionate my sense of hearing.

Take this key, give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately hither.

...with your hat penthouse-like o’er the shop of your eyes, with your arms crossed on your thin-belly doublet like a rabbit on a spit...

These are compliments, these are humors; these betray nice wenches that would be betrayed without these, and make them men of note—do you note me?—that most are affected to these.

ARMADO: The way is but short. Away!
BOY: As swift as lead, sir.
ARMADO: Thy meaning, pretty ingenious? Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?

Sweet smoke of rhetoric! He reputes me a cannon, and the bullet, that’s he.

A most acute juvenal, voluble and free of grace.

Most rude melancholy, valor gives thee place.

My herald is returned.

BOY: A wonder, master! Here’s a costard broken in a shin.
ARMADO: Some enigma, some riddle.

No egma, no riddle, no l’envoi, no salve in the mail, sir.

No, page, it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain
Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.

No, page, it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain
Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.

Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.

Thou wert immured, restrained, captivated, bound.

I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance, and, in lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this: bear this significant to the country maid Jaquenetta.

I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance, and, in lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this: bear this significant to the country maid Jaquenetta.

There is remuneration (giving him a coin,) for the best ward of mine honor is rewarding my dependents.

As thou wilt win my favor, good my knave,
Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.

Hark, slave, it is but this:
The Princess comes to hunt here in the park,
And in her train there is a gentle lady.

There’s thy guerdon.

I that have been love’s whip,
A very beadle to a humorous sigh,
A critic, nay, a nightwatch constable,
A domineering pedant o’er the boy,
Than whom no mortal so magnificent.

I that have been love’s whip,
A very beadle to a humorous sigh,
A critic, nay, a nightwatch constable,
A domineering pedant o’er the boy,
Than whom no mortal so magnificent.

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,
This Signior Junior, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid,
Regent of love rhymes, lord of folded arms,
Th’ anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
Sole imperator and great general
Of trotting paritors—O my little heart!

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,
This Signior Junior, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid,
Regent of love rhymes, lord of folded arms,
Th’ anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
Sole imperator and great general
Of trotting paritors—O my little heart!

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,
This Signior Junior, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid,
Regent of love rhymes, lord of folded arms,
Th’ anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
Sole imperator and great general
Of trotting paritors—O my little heart!

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,
This Signior Junior, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid,
Regent of love rhymes, lord of folded arms,
Th’ anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
Sole imperator and great general
Of trotting paritors—O my little heart!

Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all.
And, among three, to love the worst of all,
A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,
With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes.

Ay, and by heaven, one that will do the deed
Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard.