⌈MARIA⌉

No.

BOYET

What then, do you see?

⌈CATHERINE⌉

Ay—our way to be gone.

BOYET

You are too hard for me.

Exeunt

3.1 Enter Armado the braggart, and Mote his boy

ARMADO Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.

MOTE (sings) Concolinel.

ARMADO Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years, take this key. Give enlargement to the swain. Bring him festinately hither. I must employ him in a letter to my love.

MOTE Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?

ARMADO How meanest thou—brawling in French?

MOTE No, my complete master; but to jig off a tune at the tongue’s end, canary to it with your feet, humour it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the throat as if you swallowed love with singing love, sometime through the nose as if you snuffed up love by smelling love, 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, or your hands in your pocket like a man after the old painting, and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away. These are complements, these are humours; these betray nice wenches that would be betrayed without these, and make them men of note—do you note? men—that most are affected to these.

ARMADO How hast thou purchased this experience?

MOTE By my penny of observation.

ARMADO But O, but O-

MOTE ‘The hobby-horse is forgot.’

ARMADO Call’st thou my love hobby-horse ?

MOTE No, master, the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?

ARMADO Almost I had.

MOTE Negligent student, learn her by heart.

ARMADO By heart and in heart, boy.

MOTE And out of heart, master. All those three I will prove. 36

ARMADO What wilt thou prove?

MOTE A man, if I live; and this, ‘by’, ‘in’, and ‘without’, upon the instant: ‘by’ heart you love her because your heart cannot come by her; ‘in’ heart you love her because your heart is in love with her; and ‘out’ of heart you love her, being out of heart that you cannot enjoy her.

ARMADO I am all these three.

MOTE (aside) And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.

ARMADO Fetch hither the swain. He must carry me a letter.

MOTE (aside) A message well sympathized—a horse to be ambassador for an ass.

ARMADO Ha, ha! What sayst thou?

MOTE Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse, for he is very slow-gaited. But I go.

ARMADO The way is but short. Away!

MOTE As swift as lead, sir. 55

ARMADO The meaning, pretty ingenious?

Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow ?

MOTE

Minime, honest master—or rather, master, no.

ARMADO

I say lead is slow.

MOTE You are too swift, sir, to say so.

Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun?

ARMADO Sweet smoke of rhetoric!

He reputes me a cannon, and the bullet, that’s he.

I shoot thee at the swain.

MOTE Thump, then, and I flee.

Exit

ARMADO

A most acute juvenal—voluble and free of grace.

By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face.

Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.

My herald is returned.

Enter Mote the page, and Costard the clown

MOTE

A wonder, master—here’s a costard broken in a shin.

ARMADO

Some enigma, some riddle; come, thy l’envoi. Begin.

COSTARD No egma, no riddle, no l‘envoi, no salve in the mail, sir. O sir, plantain, a plain plantain—no l’envoi, no l’envoi, no salve, sir, but a plantain.

ARMADO By virtue, thou enforcest laughter—thy silly thought my spleen. The heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous smiling. O pardon me, my stars! Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l‘envoi, and the word l’envoi for a salve?

MOTE

Do the wise think them other? Is not l’envoi a salve ?

ARMADO

No, page, it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain

Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.

I will example it. so

The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee

Were still at odds, being but three.

There’s the moral. Now the /’envoi.

MOTE I will add the l’envoi. Say the moral again.

ARMADO The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee

Were still at odds, being but three.

MOTE Until the goose came out of door

And stayed the odds by adding four.

Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l’envoi.

The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee

Were still at odds, being but three.

ARMADO Until the goose came out of door,

Staying the odds by adding four.

MOTE A good l’envoi, ending in the goose. Would you desire more?

COSTARD

The boy hath sold him a bargain—a goose, that’s flat.

Sir, your pennyworth is good an your goose be fat.

To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose.

Let me see, a fat l’envoi-ay, that’s a fat goose.

ARMADO

Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin?

MOTE

By saying that a costard was broken in a shin.

Then called you for the l’envoi.

COSTARD True, and I for a plantain. Thus came your argument in. Then the boy’s fat l’envoi, the goose that you bought, and he ended the market.

ARMADO But tell me, how was there a costard broken in a shin?

MOTE I will tell you sensibly.

COSTARD Thou hast no feeling of it. Mote, I will speak that l’envoi.

I, Costard, running out, that was safely within,

Fell over the threshold and broke my shin.

ARMADO We will talk no more of this matter.

COSTARD Till there be more matter in the shin.

ARMADO Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.

COSTARD O, marry me to one Frances! I smell some l’envoi, some goose, in this.

ARMADO By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty, enfreedoming thy person. Thou wert immured, restrained, captivated, bound.

COSTARD True, true, and now you will be my purgation and let me loose.

ARMADO 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. (Giving him a letter) There is remuneration (giving him money), for the best ward of mine honour is rewarding my dependants. Mote, follow. Exit

MOTE

Like the sequel, I. Signor Costard, adieu. Exit

COSTARD

My sweet ounce of man’s flesh, my incony Jew!

Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration—

O, that’s the Latin word for three-farthings. Three

farthings—remuneration. ‘What’s the price of this

inkle?’ ‘One penny.’ ‘No, I’ll give you a remuneration.’

Why, it carries it! Remuneration! Why, it is a fairer

name than French crown. I will never buy and sell out

of this word.

Enter Biron

BIRON My good knave Costard, exceedingly well met.