Exeunt the Worthies

KING How fares your majesty ?

QUEEN

Boyet, prepare. I will away tonight.

KING

Madam, not so, I do beseech you stay.

QUEEN

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 overboldly we have borne ourselves

In the converse of breath, your gentleness

Was guilty of it. Farewell, worthy lord.

A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue.

Excuse me so coming too short of thanks,

For my great suit so easily obtained.

KING

The extreme parts of time extremely forms

All causes to the purpose of his speed,

And often at his very loose decides

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 jostle it

From what it purposed, since to wail friends lost

Is not by much so wholesome-profitable

As to rejoice at friends but newly found.

QUEEN

I understand you not. My griefs are double.

BIRON

Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief,

And by these badges understand the King.

For your fair sakes have we neglected time,

Played foul play with our oaths. Your beauty, ladies,

Hath much deformed us, fashioning our humours

Even to the opposed end of our intents,

And what in us hath seemed ridiculous—

As love is full of unbefitting strains,

All wanton as a child, skipping and vain,

Formed by the eye and therefore like the eye,

Full of strange shapes, of habits and of forms,

Varying in subjects as the eye doth roll

To every varied object in his glance;

Which parti-coated presence of loose love

Put on by us, if in your heavenly eyes

Have misbecomed our oaths and gravities,

Those heavenly eyes that look into these faults

Suggested us to make them. 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.

QUEEN

We have received your letters full of love,

Your favours the ambassadors of love,

And in our maiden council rated them

At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy,

As bombast 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.

DUMAINE

Our letters, madam, showed much more than jest.

LONGUEVILLE

So did our looks.

ROSALINE

We did not quote them so.

KING

Now, at the latest minute of the hour,

Grant us your loves.

QUEEN A time, methinks, too short

To make a world-without-end bargain in.

No, no, my lord, your grace is perjured 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 the 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,

But that it bear this trial and last love,

Then at the expiration of the year

Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts,

And, by this virgin palm now kissing thine,

I will be thine, and till that instance 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 entitled 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, hermit, then. My heart is in thy breast.

They talk apart

DUMAINE (to Catherine)

But what to me, my love? But what to me?

A wife?

CATHERINE A beard, fair health, and honesty.

With three-fold love I wish you all these three.

DUMAINE

O, shall I say ‘I thank you, gentle wife’?

CATHERINE

Not so, my lord. A twelvemonth and a day

I’ll mark no words that smooth-faced wooers say.

Come when the King doth to my lady come;

Then if I have much love, I’ll give you some.

DUMAINE

I’ll serve thee true and faithfully till then.

CATHERINE

Yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again.