Imatges de pàgina
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dience hiss, you may cry, Well done, Hercules! Now thou crushest the snake! That is the way to make an offence gracious; though few have the grace to do it. Arm. For the rest of the worthies ?

Hol. I will play three myself.
Moth. Thrice worthy gentleman!
Arm. Shall I tell you a thing?
Hol. We attend.

Arm. We will have, if this fadge' not, an antic. I beseech you, follow.

Hol. Via, goodman Dull! Thou hast spoken no word all this while.

Dull. Nor understood none neither, sir.

Hol. Allons! we will employ thee.

Dull. I'll make one in a dance, or so; or I will play on the tabor to the worthies, and let them dance the hay.

Hol. Most dull, honest Dull, to our sport, away.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II. Another part of the same. Before the Princess's Pavilion.

Enter the Princess, KATHARINE, ROSALINE, and MARIA.

Prin. Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart,

If fairings come thus plentifully in.

A lady walled about with diamonds!—

Look you, what I have from the loving king.

Ros. Madam, came nothing else along with that? Prin. Nothing but this? Yes, as much love in

rhyme,

As would be crammed up in a sheet of paper,
Writ on both sides the leaf, margent and all;
That he was fain to seal on Cupid's name.

1 i. e. suit not, go not.

An Italian exclamation, signifying Courage! Come on!

Ros. That was the way to make his god-head wax;1 For he hath been five thousand years a boy.

Kath. Ay, and a shrewd, unhappy gallows too. Ros. You'll ne'er be friends with him: he killed your sister.

Kath. He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy;
And so she died. Had she been light like you,
Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit,

She might have been a grandam ere she died!
And so may you; for a light heart lives long.

Ros. What's your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?

Kath. A light condition in a beauty dark.

Ros. We need more light to find your meaning out. Kath. You'll mar the light by taking it in snuff: 2 Therefore I'll darkly end the argument.

Ros. Look, what you do, you do it still i'the dark. Kath. So do not you; for you are a light wench. Ros. Indeed, I weigh not you; and therefore light. Kath. You weigh me not,-O, that's you care not for me.

Ros. Great reason; for, past cure is still past care. Prin. Well bandied both; a set of wit well played.

But, Rosaline, you have a favor too.

Who sent it, and what is it?

Ros.
I would you knew;
And if my face were but as fair as yours,
My favor were as great; be witness this.
Nay, I have verses too, I thank Birón;

The numbers true; and, were the numbering too,
I were the fairest goddess on the ground.

I am compared to twenty thousand fairs.

O, he hath drawn my picture in his letter!

Prin. Any thing like?

Ros. Much, in the letters; nothing in the praise.

1 Grow.

2 Snuff is here used equivocally for anger, and the snuff of a candle. See King Henry IV. Act i. Sc. 3.

3 A set is a term at tennis for a game.

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