BIRON. Worthies, away; the scene begins to cloud.

ARM. For mine own part, I breathe free breath: I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion, and I will right myself like a soldier.

KING. How fares your majesty?

PRIN. Boyet, prepare; I will away to-night.
KING. Madam, not so; I do beseech you stay.
PRIN. Prepare, I say. I thank you, gracious lords,
For all your fair endeavours; and entreat,
Out of a new-sad soul, that you vouchsafe
In your rich wisdom, to excuse, or hide,
The liberal opposition of our spirits:
If over-boldly we have borne ourselves
In the converse of breath, your gentleness
Was guilty of it.-Farewell, worthy lord!
A heavy heart bears not
humble tongue :
Excuse me so, coming so short of thanks
For my great suit so easily obtain'd.

KING. The extreme parts of time extremely form
All causes to the purpose of his speed;
And often, at his very loose, decide

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 justle it

From what it purpos'd; since, to wail friends lost,
Is not by much so wholesome, profitable,

As to rejoice at friends but newly found.

PRIN. I understand you not; my griefs are double.
BIRON. Honest plain words best pierce the ears of grief;-
And by these badges understand the king.

For your fair sakes have we neglected time;

Play'd foul play with our oaths. Your beauty, ladies,

Hath much deform'd us, fashioning our humours

Even to the opposed end of our intents:
And what in us hath seem'd ridiculous,-
As love is full of unbefitting strains;
All wanton as a child, skipping, and vain ;
Form'd by the eye, and, therefore, like the eye,
Full of stray shapes, of habits, and of forms,

a

[Exeunt Worthies.

• Full of stray shapes. The old copies read straying; the modern strange. Coleridge suggested stray. Mr. Dyce would retain strange, contending that our early printers often blundered in the substitution of another word for strange.

Varying in subjects as the eye doth roll
To every varied object in his glance:
Which party-coated presence of loose love
Put on by us, if, in your heavenly eyes,
Have misbecom'd our oaths and gravities,
Those heavenly eyes, that look into these faults,
Suggested us to make: Therefore, ladies,
Our love being yours, the error that love makes
Is likewise yours: we to ourselves prove false,
By being once false for ever to be true

To those that make us both,-fair ladies, you:
And even that falsehood, in itself a sin,
Thus purifies itself, and turns to grace.
PRIN. We have receiv'd your letters, full of love;
Your favours, the embassadors of love;
And, in our maiden council, rated them
At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy,
As bombasta, and as lining to the time;
But more devout than this, in our respects,
Have we not been; and therefore met your loves
In their own fashion, like a merriment.

DUM. Our letters, madam, show'd much more than jest.
LONG. So did our looks.

PRIN.
A time, methinks, too short
To make a world-without-end bargain in :
No, no, my lord, your grace is perjur'd much,
Full of dear guiltiness; and, therefore this,-
If for my love (as there is no such cause)
You will do aught, this shall you do for me:
Your oath I will not trust; but go with speed
To some forlorn and naked hermitage,
Remote from all the pleasures of the world;
There stay, until the twelve celestial signs
Have brought about their annual reckoning:
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,

* Bombast, from bombagia, cotton wool used as stuffing.

The folio reads "than these are our respects;"-the quarto, "than this our respects." Hanmer suggested that in was omitted.

But that it bear this trial, and last love;

Then, at the expiration of the year,

Come challenge, challenge me by these deserts,
And, by this virgin palm, now kissing thine,
I will be thine; and, till that instant, shut
My woeful self up in a mourning house;
Raining the tears of lamentation

For the remembrance of my father's death.
If this thou do deny, let our hands part;
Neither intitled in the other's heart.

KING. If this, or more than this, I would deny,

To flatter up these powers of mine with rest,
The sudden hand of death close up mine eye!

Hence ever, then, my heart is in thy breast.
BIRON. And what to me, my love? and what to me a?
DUM. But what to me, my love? but what to me?
KATH. A wife!-A beard, fair health, and honesty;
With three-fold love I wish you all these three.
DUM. O, shall I say, I thank you, gentle wife?
KATH. Not so, my lord;—a twelvemonth and a day
I'll mark no words that smooth-fac'd wooers say:
Come when the king doth to my lady come,
Then, if I have much love, I'll give you some.
DUM. I'll serve thee true and faithfully till then.
KATH. Yet swear not, lest you be forsworn again.
LONG. What says Maria?

The following lines here occur in all the old editions, and are repeated by the modern editors:Ros. You must be purged too, your sins are rank;

You are attaint with faults and perjury;

Therefore, if you my favour mean to get,

A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest,

But seek the weary beds of people sick.

There can be no doubt, we think, that Rosaline's speech should be omitted, and Biron left without an answer to his question. This is Coleridge's opinion. Rosaline's answer is so beautifully expanded in her subsequent speech, that these five lines seem a bald and unpoetical announcement of what is to follow. The lines most likely occurred in the original play; and were not struck out of the MS. when the copy was "augmented and amended." The theory stands upon a different ground from Biron's oratorical repetitions in the fourth act.

Ros. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron,
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:

To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain,
And, therewithal, to win me, if you please,
(Without the which I am not to be won,)

You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick, and still converse
With groaning wretches; and your task shall be,
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,

To enforce the pained impotent to smile.
BIRON. To move wild laughter in the throat of death?
It cannot be; it is impossible:

Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

Ros. 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:
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it, never in the tongue

Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears,

Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,

And I will have you, and that fault withal;
But, if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation.

BIRON. A twelvemonth? well, befal what will befal,

I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.
PRIN. Ay, sweet my lord; and so I take my leave.
KING. No, madam, we will bring you on your way.
BIRON. Our wooing doth not end like an old play;

Jack hath not Jill: these ladies' courtesy
Might well have made our sport a comedy.
KING. Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day,
And then 't will end.

[To the KING.

Enter ARMADO.

ARM. Sweet majesty vouchsafe me,—

PRIN. Was not that Hector?

DUM. The worthy knight of Troy.

ARM. I will kiss thy royal finger, and take leave: I am a votary; I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three years. But, most esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled, in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? it should have followed in the end of our show.

KING. Call them forth quickly, we will do so.

ARM. Holla! approach.

Enter HOLOFERNES, NATHANIEL, MOTH, COSTARD, and others.

This side is Hiems, winter: This Ver, the spring: the one maintained by the owl, the other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin.

SONG ".
I.

SPRING. 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,-O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

II.

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer-smocks,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he,

Cuckoo ;

Cuckoo, cuckoo,—O word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear!

III.

WINTER. When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-who;

Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel" the pot.

· • Keel-skim.