Imatges de pàgina
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Ro/%. The Duke my father lov'd his father dearly. Cel. Doth it therefore ensue, that you should love his for dearly; by this kind of chase, I should hate him; for my father hated his father dearly; yet I hate not Orlando.

Rof. No, faith, hate him not, for my fake.
Cel. Why should I doth he not deserve well?

Enter Duke, with Lords.

Rof. Let me love him for that; and do you love him, because I do. Look, here comes the Duke. Cel. With his eyes full of anger.

Duke. Mistress, dispatch you with your fafest hafte,

And get you from our court.
Rof. Me, uncle !

Duke. You, coufin.

Within these ten days if that thou be'st found
So near our publick court as twenty miles,
Thou dieft for it.

Rof. I do beseech your Grace,
Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me:
If with myself I hold intelligence,

Or have acquaintance with my own defires;
If that I do not dream, or be not frantick,
(As I do truft, I am not,) then, dear uncle,
Never so much as in a thought unborn
Did I offend your Highness.

Duke. Thus do all traitors;
If their purgation did confist in words,
They are as innocent as grace itself:
Let it fuffice thee, that I trust thee not.

Rof. Yet your mistruit cannot make me a traitor;

Tell me wherein the likelihood depends.

Duke. Thou art thy father's daughter, there's enough. Rof. So was I, when your Highness took his dukedom;

So was I, when your Highness banish'd him;

Treason is not inherited, my lord;

Or if we did derive it from our friends,

What's that to me? my father-was no traitor :

Then,

Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much,
To think my poverty is treacherous.

Cel. Dear Sovereign, hear me fpeak.
Duke. Ay, Celia, we but staid her for your fake;
Else had the with her father rang'd along.

Cel. I did not then entreat to have her stay;
It was your pleasure, and your own remorse;
I was too young that time to value her;
But now I know her; if she be a traitor,
Why so am I; we still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together;
And wherefoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled, and inseparable.

Duke. She is too fubtle for thee; and her smoothness,

Her very filence and her patience,

Speak to the people, and they pity her:
Thou art a fool; she robs thee of thy name,

And thou wilt show more bright, and seem more virtuous,
When the is gone; then open not thy lips:
Firm and irrevocable is my doom,

Which I have pass'd upon her; the is banish'd.

Cel. Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege; I cannot live out of her company.

Duke. You are a fool: you, niece, provide yourself; If you out-stay the time, upon mine honour, And in the greatness of my word, you die.

[Exeunt Duke, &c.

Cel. O my poor Rosalind; where wilt thou go?
Wilt thou change fathers! I will give thee mine:
I charge thee, be not thou more griev'd than I am.
Rof. I have more caufe.

Cel. Thou hast not, coufin;

Pr'ythee, be cheerful; know'st thou not, the Duke

Has banish'd me his daugher ?

Rof. That he hath not.

Cel. No? hath not? (3) Rosalind lacks then the love,

Which

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Which teacketh thee that thou and I am one.]

Tho' this be the Reading of all the printed Copies, 'tis evident, the

Poet wrote;

Which teacheth me that thou and I am one:
Shall we be sundred? shall we part, sweet Girl?
No, let my father feek another heir.
Therefore re devise with me, how we may fly;
Whither to go, and what to bear with us;
And do not feek to take your charge upon you,
To bear your griefs yourself, and leave me out:
For by this beav'n, now at our forrows pale,
Say what thou canst, I'll go along with thee.
Rof. Why, whither shall we go?
Cel. To feek my Uncle in the foreft of Arden.
Rof. Alas, what danger will it be to us,

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Maids as we are, to travel forth so far!
Beauty provoketh thieves fooner than gold.
Cel. I'll put myself in poor and mean attire,
And with a kind of umber smirch my face;
The like do you; fo shall we pafs along,
And never ftir afsailants.

Rof. Were't not better,
Because that I am more than common tall,
That I did fuit me all points like a man ?
A gallant Curtle-ax upon my thigh,

A boar-spear in my hand, (and in my heart
Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will)
We'll have a fowashing and a martial outside,
As many other mannith Cowards have,

That do outface it with their semblances.

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Cel. What shall I call thee, when thou art a man ?

Ros. I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own Page:

And therefore, look, you call me Ganimed;

But what will you be call'd ?

Cel. Something that hath a reference to my state: No longer Celia, but Aliena.

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For if Rosalind had learn'd to think Celia one Part of her Self, She could not lack that love which Celia complains She does. My Emendation is confirm'd by what Celia says when She first comes upon the Stage.

Rof.

Rof. But, Cousin, what if we assaid to steal
The clownish Fool out of your father's Court?
Would he not be a comfort to our travel?

Cel. He'll go along o'er the wide world with me.
Leave me alone to woo him; let's away,
And get our jewels and our wealth together;
Devise the fittest time, and fafeft way
To hide us from purfuit that will be made
After my fight: now go we in content
To Liberty, and not to Banishment.

[Exeunt.

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Enter Duke Senior, Amiens, and two or three Lords

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like Foresters.

DUKE Senior.

OW, my co mates, and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted Pomp? are not these woods
More free from peril, than the envious Court?.
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, (4)
The Seafons' difference; as, the icy phang,
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind;
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even 'till I shrink with cold, I fmile, and fay,
This is no Flattery: these are Counsellors,
That feelingly persuade me what I am.

(4) Here feel we not the Penalty.] What was the Penalty of Adam, hinted at by our Poet? The being fenfible of the Difference of the Seafons. The Duke says, the Cold and Effects of the Winter feelingly perfuade him what he is. How does he not then feel the Penalty? Doubtless, the Text must be restor'd as I have corrected it: and 'tis obvious in the Course of these Notes, how often not and but by Mistake have chang'd Place in our Author's former Editions.

Sweet

Sweet are the uses of Adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head:
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

Ami. I would not change it; happy is your Grace,
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

Duke Sen. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?

And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this defert city,
Should in their own Confines, with forked heads

Have their round haunches goar'd.

I Lord. Indeed, my Lord,
The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;
And in that kind swears you do more ufurp
Than doth your brother, that hath banish'd you :
To day my Lord of Amiens, and myself,
Did steal behind him, as he lay along
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;
To the which place a poor sequestred stag,
That from the hunters' aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord,
The wretched Animal heav'd forth fuch groans
That their difcharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on th' extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

Duke Sen. But what faid Jaques ?
Did he not moralize this spectacle ?

1 Lord. O yes, into a thousand fimilies.
First, for his weeping in the needless stream;
Poor Deer, quoth he, thou mak'st a teftament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much. Then being alone,

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