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have us

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Touch. Why, do not your courtier's hands sweat? and is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man? Shallow, shallow. A better instance, I say; come.

Cor. Besides, our hands are hard.

Touch. Your lips will feel them the sooner: shallow again. A more sounder instance; come.

Cor. And they are often tarred over with the surgery of our sheep; and would

you kiss tar? The courtier's hands are perfumed with civet.

67 Touch. Most shallow man! Thou worms-meat, in respect of a good piece of flesh, indeed! Learn of the wise, and perpend: civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd.

Cor. You have too courtly a wit for me: I'll rest.

Touch. Wilt thou rest damned? God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee! thou art raw.

77 Cor. Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck. 82

Touch. That is another simple sin in you, to bring the ewes and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the copulation of

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tray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to a crooked- 87 pated, old, cuckoldy ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou be'st not damned for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds: I cannot see else how thou shouldst 'scape.

Cor. Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new mistress's brother.

Enter Rosalind [reading a paper].
Ros. From the east to western Ind,

No jewel is like Rosalind.
Her worth, being mounted on the wind, 96
Through all the world bears Rosalind.
All the pictures fairest lin'd
Are but black to Rosalind.
Let no face be kept in mind,

But the fair of Rosalind.' Touch. I'll rime you so, eight years together, dinners and suppers and sleeping hours excepted: it is the right butter-women's rank to market.

105 Ros. Out, fool! Touch. For a taste: 'If a hart do lack a hind,

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Let him seek out Rosalind.
If the cat will after kind,
So be sure will Rosalind.
Winter garments must be lin’d,

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So must slender Rosalind.
They that reap must sheaf and bind,

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a

a

121

129

Then to cart with Rosalind.
Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,

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Such a nut is Rosalind.
He that sweetest rose will find

Must find love's prick and Rosalind.' This is the very false gallop of verses: why do you infect yourself with them?

Ros. Peace! you dull fool: I found them on a tree.

Touch. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit. 124

Ros. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar: then it will be the earliest fruit i' the country; for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar.

Touch. You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge.

Enter Celia with a writing.
Ros. Peace!
Here comes my sister, reading: stand aside.
Cel. Why should this a desert be?

For it is unpeopled? No;
Tongues I'll hang on every tree,

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That shall civil sayings show.
Some, how brief the life of man

Runs his erring pilgrimage,
That the stretching of a span

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Buckles in his sum of age;
Some, of violated vows

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But upon the fairest boughs,

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Or at every sentence' end,
Will I Rosalinda write;

Teaching all that read to know
The quintessence of every sprite

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Heaven would in little show.
Therefore Heaven Nature charg'd

That one body should be fill'd
With all graces wide enlarg'd:

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Nature presently distilla
Helen's cheek, but not her heart,

Cleopatra's majesty,
Atalanta's better part,

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Sad Lucretia's modesty.
Thus Rosalind of many parts

By heavenly synod was devis'd
Of many faces, eyes, and hearts,

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To have the touches dearest priz’d.
Heaven would that she these gifts should have,

And I to live and die her slave.' Ros. O most gentle Jupiter! what tedious 164 homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried, 'Have patience, good people!

Cel. How now! back, friends! Shepherd, go off a little: go with him, sirrah.

169 Touch. Come, shepherd, let us make an honourable retreat; though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.

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Ros. O, yes, I heard them all, and more too; for some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear.

Cel. That's no matter: the feet might bear the verses.

Ros. Ay, but the feet were lame, and could not bear themselves without the

verse,

and therefore stood lamely in the verse.

181 Cel. But didst thou hear without wondering how thy name should be hanged and carved upon these trees?

184 Ros. I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you came; for look here what I found on a palm-tree: I was never so be-rimed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember.

189 Cel. Trow you who hath done this ? Ros. Is it a man?

Cel. And a chain, that you once wore, about his neck. Change you colour?

Ros. I prithee, who?

Cel. O Lord, Lord! it is a hard matter for friends to meet; but mountains may be removed with earthquakes, and so encounter.

197 Ros. Nay, but who is it? Cel. Is it possible?

Ros. Nay, I prithee now, with most petitionary vehemence, tell me who it is.

201 Cel. O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful! and after that, out of all whooping!

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