Love's Labour's Lost: Act 5

Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious, pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy.

I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the King’s, who is intituled, nominated, or called Don Adriano de Armado.

His humor is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behavior vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical.

I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-devise companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak “dout,” fine, when he should say “doubt”; “det” when he should pronounce “debt”—d, e, b, t, not d, e, t.

BOY Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip
about your infamy—unum cita—a gig of a cuckold’s
horn.

Hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou pigeon egg of discretion.

Arts-man, preambulate.

And among other important and most serious designs, and of great import indeed, too—but let that pass; for I must tell thee, it will please his Grace, by the world, sometimes to lean upon my poor shoulder and with his royal finger thus dally with my excrement, with my mustachio—but, sweetheart, let that pass.

Some certain special honors it pleaseth his Greatness to impart to Armado, a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world—but let that pass.

The very all of all is—but sweetheart, I do implore secrecy—that the King would have me present the Princess, sweet chuck, with some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antic, or firework.

Sir, you shall present before her the Nine Worthies.

Well bandied both; a set of wit well played.

The third he capered and cried “All goes well!”

Their several counsels they unbosom shall
To loves mistook, and so be mocked withal
Upon the next occasion that we meet,
With visages displayed, to talk and greet.

Thou grievest my gall.

Tapers they are, with your sweet breaths puffed out.

This pert Berowne was out of count’nance quite.

And quick Berowne hath plighted faith to me.

Construe my speeches better, if you may.

Now by my maiden honor, yet as pure
As the unsullied lily, I protest,
A world of torments though I should endure,
I would not yield to be your house’s guest,
So much I hate a breaking cause to be
Of heavenly oaths vowed with integrity.

Here they stayed an hour
And talked apace; and in that hour, my lord,
They did not bless us with one happy word.

There; then; that vizard; that superfluous case
That hid the worse and showed the better face.

We were descried.

Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical—these summer flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.

And stand between her back, sir, and the fire,
Holding a trencher, jesting merrily?

Quoniam he seemeth in minority,
Ergo I come with this apology.

ARMADO: The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty,
Gave Hector a gift—
DUMAINE: A gilt nutmeg.

BEROWNE: A lemon.
LONGAVILLE: Stuck with cloves.
DUMAINE: No, cloven.

Dost thou infamonize me among potentates?

Room for the incensed Worthies!

True, and it was enjoined him in Rome for want of linen; since when, I’ll be sworn, he wore none but a dishclout of Jaquenetta’s, and that he wears next his heart for a favor.

The extreme parts of time extremely forms
All causes to the purpose of his speed,
And often at his very loose decides
That which long process could not arbitrate.

And though the mourning brow of progeny
Forbid the smiling courtesy of love
The holy suit which fain it would convince,
Yet since love’s argument was first on foot,
Let not the cloud of sorrow jostle it
From what it purposed, since to wail friends lost
Is not by much so wholesome-profitable
As to rejoice at friends but newly found.

We have received your letters full of love;
Your favors, the ambassadors of love;
And in our maiden council rated them
At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy,
As bombast and as lining to the time.

If this austere insociable life
Change not your offer made in heat of blood;
If frosts and fasts, hard lodging, and thin weeds
Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,
But that it bear this trial, and last love;
Then, at the expiration of the year,
Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts,
[She takes his hand.]
And by this virgin palm now kissing thine,
I will be thine.

If this austere insociable life
Change not your offer made in heat of blood;
If frosts and fasts, hard lodging, and thin weeds
Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,
But that it bear this trial, and last love;
Then, at the expiration of the year,
Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts,
[She takes his hand.]
And by this virgin palm now kissing thine,
I will be thine.

If this austere insociable life
Change not your offer made in heat of blood;
If frosts and fasts, hard lodging, and thin weeds
Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,
But that it bear this trial, and last love;
Then, at the expiration of the year,
Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts,
[She takes his hand.]
And by this virgin palm now kissing thine,
I will be thine.

Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Berowne,
Before I saw you; and the world’s large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks,
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts,
Which you on all estates will execute
That lie within the mercy of your wit.

Why, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools.

When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then on every tree
Mocks married men; for thus sings he:
“Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!”