COSTARD Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man buy for a remuneration?

BIRON What is a remuneration?

COSTARD Marry, sir, halfpenny-farthing.

BIRON Why, then, three-farthing-worth of silk.

COSTARD I thank your worship. God be wi’ you.

BIRON Stay, slave, I must employ thee.

As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave,

Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.

COSTARD When would you have it done, sir?

BIRON This afternoon.

CUSTARD Well, I will do it, sir. Fare you well.

BIRON Thou knowest not what it is.

CUSTARD I shall know, sir, when I have done it.

BIRON Why, villain, thou must know first.

COSTARD I will come to your worship tomorrow morning.

BIRON

It must be done this afternoon. Hark, slave,

It is but this:

The Princess comes to hunt here in the park,

And in her train there is a gentle lady.

When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her

name,

And Rosaline they call her. Ask for her,

And to her white hand see thou do commend

This sealed-up counsel. There’s thy guerdon (giving him a letter and money), go.

COSTARD Guerdon! O sweet guerdon!—better than remuneration, elevenpence-farthing better—most sweet guerdon! I will do it, sir, in print. Guerdon—remuneration. Exit

BIRON

And I, forsooth, in love—I that have been love’s whip,

A very beadle to a humorous sigh,

A critic, nay, a night-watch constable,

A domineering pedant o‘er the boy,

Than whom no mortal so magnificent.

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,

This Signor Junior, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid,

Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,

Th’anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,

Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,

Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,

Sole imperator and great general

Of trotting paritors—O my little heart!

And I to be a corporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler’s hoop!

What? I love, I sue, I seek a wife?—

A woman, that is like a German clock,

Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,

And never going aright, being a watch,

But being watched that it may still go right.

Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all,

And among three to love the worst of all—

A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,

With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes—

Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed

Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard.

And I to sigh for her, to watch for her,

To pray for her—go to, it is a plague

That Cupid will impose for my neglect

Of his almighty dreadful little might.

Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, groan:

Some men must love my lady, and some Joan. Exit

4.1 Enter the Princess, a Forester, her ladies-Rosaline, Maria, and Catherine—and her lords, among them Boyet

PRINCESS

Was that the King that spurred his horse so hard

Against the steep uprising of the hill?

⌈BOYET⌉

I know not, but I think it was not he.

PRINCESS

Whoe’er a was, a showed a mounting mind.

Well, lords, today we shall have our dispatch.

Ere Saturday we will return to France.

Then, forester my friend, where is the bush

That we must stand and play the murderer in?

FORESTER

Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice—

A stand where you may make the fairest shoot.

PRINCESS

I thank my beauty, I am fair that shoot,

And thereupon thou speak’st ‘the fairest shoot’.

FORESTER

Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so.

PRINCESS

What, what? First praise me, and again say no?

O short-lived pride! Not fair? Alack, for woe !

FORESTER

Yes, madam, fair.

PRINCESS Nay, never paint me now.

Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow.

Here, good my glass, take this for telling true.

She gives him money

Fair payment for foul words is more than due.

FORESTER

Nothing but fair is that which you inherit.

PRINCESS

See, see, my beauty will be saved by merit!

O heresy in fair, fit for these days—

A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise.

But come, the bow. Now mercy goes to kill,

And shooting well is then accounted ill.

Thus will I save my credit in the shoot,

Not wounding—pity would not let me do’t.

If wounding, then it was to show my skill,

That more for praise than purpose meant to kill.

And, out of question, so it is sometimes—

Glory grows guilty of detested crimes

When for fame’s sake, for praise, an outward part,

We bend to that the working of the heart,

As I for praise alone now seek to spill

The poor deer’s blood that my heart means no ill.

BOYET

Do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty

Only for praise’ sake when they strive to be

Lords o’er their lords?

PRINCESS

Only for praise, and praise we may afford

To any lady that subdues a lord.

Enter Costard the clown

BOYET

Here comes a member of the commonwealth.

COSTARD God dig-you-de’en, all. Pray you, which is the

head lady?

PRINCESS Thou shalt know her, fellow, by the rest that have no heads.

COSTARD Which is the greatest lady, the highest?

PRINCESS The thickest and the tallest.

COSTARD

The thickest and the tallest—it is so, truth is truth.

An your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit