The KING OF NAVARRE’S Park. | |
| |
Enter the KING, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAINE. | |
| King. Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, | |
| Live register’d upon our brazen tombs, | 4 |
| And then grace us in the disgrace of death; | |
| When, spite of cormorant devouring Time, | |
| The endeavour of this present breath may buy | |
| That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge, | 8 |
| And make us heirs of all eternity. | |
| Therefore, brave conquerors,—for so you are, | |
| That war against your own affections | |
| And the huge army of the world’s desires,— | 12 |
| Our late edict shall strongly stand in force: | |
| Navarre shall be the wonder of the world; | |
| Our court shall be a little academe, | |
| Still and contemplative in living art. | 16 |
| You three, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, | |
| Have sworn for three years’ term to live with me, | |
| My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes | |
| That are recorded in this schedule here: | 20 |
| Your oaths are pass’d; and now subscribe your names, | |
| That his own hand may strike his honour down | |
| That violates the smallest branch herein. | |
| If you are arm’d to do, as sworn to do, | 24 |
| Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too. | |
| Long. I am resolv’d; ’tis but a three years’ fast: | |
| The mind shall banquet, though the body pine: | |
| Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits | 28 |
| Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits. | |
| Dum. My loving lord, Dumaine is mortified: | |
| The grosser manner of these world’s delights | |
| He throws upon the gross world’s baser slaves: | 32 |
| To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die; | |
| With all these living in philosophy. | |
| Ber. I can but say their protestation over; | |
| So much, dear liege, I have already sworn, | 36 |
| That is, to live and study here three years. | |
| But there are other strict observances; | |
| As, not to see a woman in that term, | |
| Which I hope well is not enrolled there: | 40 |
| And one day in a week to touch no food, | |
| And but one meal on every day beside; | |
| The which I hope is not enrolled there: | |
| And then, to sleep but three hours in the night, | 44 |
| And not be seen to wink of all the day,— | |
| When I was wont to think no harm all night | |
| And make a dark night too of half the day,— | |
| Which I hope well is not enrolled there. | 48 |
| O! these are barren tasks, too hard to keep, | |
| Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep. | |
| King. Your oath is pass’d to pass away from these. | |
| Ber. Let me say no, my liege, an if you please. | 52 |
| I only swore to study with your Grace, | |
| And stay here in your court for three years’ space. | |
| Long. You swore to that, Berowne, and to the rest. | |
| Ber. By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest. | 56 |
| What is the end of study? let me know. | |
| King. Why, that to know which else we should not know. | |
| Ber. Things hid and barr’d, you mean, from common sense? | |
| King. Ay, that is study’s god-like recompense. | 60 |
| Ber. Come on then; I will swear to study so, | |
| To know the thing I am forbid to know; | |
| As thus: to study where I well may dine, | |
| When I to feast expressly am forbid; | 64 |
| Or study where to meet some mistress fine, | |
| When mistresses from common sense are hid; | |
| Or, having sworn too hard-a-keeping oath, | |
| Study to break it, and not break my troth. | 68 |
| If study’s gain be thus, and this be so, | |
| Study knows that which yet it doth not know. | |
| Swear me to this, and I will ne’er say no. | |
| King. These be the stops that hinder study quite, | 72 |
| And train our intellects to vain delight. | |
| Ber. Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain | |
| Which, with pain purchas’d doth inherit pain: | |
| As, painfully to pore upon a book, | 76 |
| To seek the light of truth; while truth the while | |
| Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look: | |
| Light seeking light doth light of light beguile: | |
| So, ere you find where light in darkness lies, | 80 |
| Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes. | |
| Study me how to please the eye indeed, | |
| By fixing it upon a fairer eye, | |
| Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed, | 84 |
| And give him light that it was blinded by. | |
| Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun, | |
| That will not be deep-search’d with saucy looks; | |
| Small have continual plodders ever won, | 88 |
| Save base authority from others’ books. | |
| These earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights | |
| That give a name to every fixed star, | |
| Have no more profit of their shining nights | 92 |
| Than those that walk and wot not what they are. | |
| Too much to know is to know nought but fame; | |
| And every godfather can give a name. | |
| King. How well he’s read, to reason against reading! | 96 |
| Dum. Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding! | |
| Long. He weeds the corn, and still lets grow the weeding. | |
| Ber. The spring is near, when green geese are a-breeding. | |
| Dum. How follows that? | 100 |
| Ber. Fit in his place and time. | |
| Dum. In reason nothing. | |
| Ber. Something then, in rime. | |
| King. Berowne is like an envious sneaping frost | 104 |
| That bites the first-born infants of the spring. | |
| Ber. Well, say I am: why should proud summer boast | |
| Before the birds have any cause to sing? | |
| Why should I joy in an abortive birth? | 108 |
| At Christmas I no more desire a rose | |
| Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth; | |
| But like of each thing that in season grows. | |
| So you, to study now it is too late, | 112 |
| Climb o’er the house to unlock the little gate. | |
| King. Well, sit you out: go home, Berowne: adieu! | |
| Ber. No, my good lord; I have sworn to stay with you: | |
| And though I have for barbarism spoke more | 116 |
| Than for that angel knowledge you can say, | |
| Yet confident I’ll keep to what I swore, | |
| And bide the penance of each three years’ day. | |
| Give me the paper; let me read the same; | 120 |
| And to the strict’st decrees I’ll write my name. | |
| King. How well this yielding rescues thee from shame! | |
| Ber. Item, That no woman shall come within a mile of my court.Hath this been proclaimed? | |
| Long. Four days ago. | 124 |
| Ber. Let’s see the penalty. On pain of losing her tongue. Who devised this penalty? | |
| Long. Marry, that did I. | |
| Ber. Sweet lord, and why? | |
| Long. To fright them hence with that dread penalty. | 128 |
Ber. A dangerous law against gentility!
Item. If any man be seen to talk with a woman within the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the rest of the court can possibly devise. | |
| This article, my liege, yourself must break; | |
| For well you know here comes in embassy | |
| The French king’s daughter with yourself to speak— | 132 |
| A maid of grace and complete majesty— | |
| About surrender up of Aquitaine | |
| To her decrepit, sick, and bed-rid father: | |
| Therefore this article is made in vain, | 136 |
| Or vainly comes th’ admired princess hither. | |
| King. What say you, lords? why, this was quite forgot. | |
| Ber. So study evermore is overshot: | |
| While it doth study to have what it would, | 140 |
| It doth forget to do the thing it should; | |
| And when it hath the thing it hunteth most, | |
| ’Tis won as towns with fire; so won, so lost. | |
| King. We must of force dispense with this decree; | 144 |
| She must lie here on mere necessity. | |
| Ber. Necessity will make us all forsworn | |
| Three thousand times within this three years’ space; | |
| For every man with his affects is born, | 148 |
| Not by might master’d, but by special grace. | |
| If I break faith this word shall speak for me, | |
| I am forsworn ‘on mere necessity.’ | |
| So to the laws at large I write my name: [Subscribes. | 152 |
| And he that breaks them in the least degree | |
| Stands in attainder of eternal shame: | |
| Suggestions are to others as to me; | |
| But I believe, although I seem so loath, | 156 |
| I am the last that will last keep his oath. | |
| But is there no quick recreation granted? | |
| King. Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted | |
| With a refined traveller of Spain; | 160 |
| A man in all the world’s new fashion planted, | |
| That hath a mint of phrases in his brain; | |
| One whom the music of his own vain tongue | |
| Doth ravish like enchanting harmony; | 164 |
| A man of complements, whom right and wrong | |
| Have chose as umpire of their mutiny: | |
| This child of fancy, that Armado hight, | |
| For interim to our studies shall relate | 168 |
| In high-born words the worth of many a knight | |
| From tawny Spain lost in the world’s debate. | |
| How you delight, my lords, I know not, I; | |
| But, I protest, I love to hear him lie, | 172 |
| And I will use him for my minstrelsy. | |
| Ber. Armado is a most illustrious wight, | |
| A man of fire-new words, fashion’s own knight. | |
| Long. Costard the swain and he shall be our sport; | 176 |
| And, so to study, three years is but short. | |
| |
Enter DULL, with a letter, and COSTARD. | |
| Dull. Which is the duke’s own person? | |
| Ber. This, fellow. What wouldst? | 180 |
| Dull. I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his Grace’s tharborough: but I would see his own person in flesh and blood. | |
| Ber. This is he. | |
| Dull. Signior Arm—Arm—commends you. There’s villany abroad: this letter will tell you more. | |
| Cost. Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me. | 184 |
| King. A letter from the magnificent Armado. | |
| Ber. How long soever the matter, I hope in God for high words. | |
| Long. A high hope for a low heaven: God grant us patience! | |
| Ber. To hear, or forbear laughing? | 188 |
| Long. To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately; or to forbear both. | |
| Ber. Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb in the merriness. | |
| Cost. The matter is to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta. The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner. | |
| Ber. In what manner? | 192 |
| Cost. In manner and form following, sir; all those three: I was seen with her in the manor-house, sitting with her upon the form, and taken following her into the park; which, put together, is, in manner and form following. Now, sir, for the manner,—it is the manner of a man to speak to a woman, for the form,—in some form. | |
| Ber. For the following, sir? | |
| Cost. As it shall follow in my correction; and God defend the right! | |
| King. Will you hear this letter with attention? | 196 |
| Ber. As we would hear an oracle. | |
| Cost. Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh. | |
| King. Great deputy, the welkin’s vicegerent, and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul’s earth’s God, and body’s fostering patron, | |
| Cost. Not a word of Costard yet. | 200 |
| King. So it is,— | |
| Cost. It may be so; but if he say it is so, he is, in telling true, but so.— | |
| King. Peace! | |
| Cost. Be to me and every man that dares not fight. | 204 |
| King. No words! | |
| Cost. Of other men’s secrets, I beseech you. | |
| King. So it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About the sixth hour; when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper: so much for the time when. Now for the ground which; which, I mean, I walked upon: it is ycleped thy park. Then for the place where; where, I mean, I did encounter that most obscene and preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest. But to the place where, it standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted garden: there did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth,— | |
| Cost. Me. | 208 |
| King. that unlettered small-knowing soul,— | |
| Cost. Me. | |
| King. that shallow vessel,— | |
| Cost. Still me. | 212 |
| King. which, as I remember, hight Costard,— | |
| Cost. O me. | |
| King. sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established proclaimed edict and continent canon, with—with,—O! with but with this I passion to say wherewith,— | |
| Cost. With a wench. | 216 |
| King. with a child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman. Him, I,—as my ever-esteemed duty pricks me on,—have sent to thee, to receive the meed of punishment, by thy sweet Grace’s officer, Antony Dull; a man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation. | |
| Dull. Me, an ’t please you; I am Antony Dull. | |
King. For Jaquenetta,—so is the weaker vessel called which I apprehended with the aforesaid swain,—I keep her as a vessel of thy law’s fury; and shall, at the least of thy sweet notice, bring her to trial. Thine, in all compliments of devoted and heart-burning heat of duty,
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO. | |
| Ber. This is not so well as I looked for, but the best that ever I heard. | 220 |
| King. Ay, the best for the worst. But, sirrah, what say you to this? | |
| Cost. Sir, I confess the wench. | |
| King. Did you hear the proclamation? | |
| Cost. I do confess much of the hearing it, but little of the marking of it. | 224 |
| King. It was proclaimed a year’s imprisonment to be taken with a wench. | |
| Cost. I was taken with none, sir: I was taken with a damosel. | |
| King. Well, it was proclaimed ‘damosel.’ | |
| Cost. This was no damosel neither, sir: she was a ‘virgin.’ | 228 |
| King. It is so varied too; for it was proclaimed ‘virgin.’ | |
| Cost. If it were, I deny her virginity: I was taken with a maid. | |
| King. This maid will not serve your turn, sir. | |
| Cost. This maid will serve my turn, sir. | 232 |
| King. Sir, I will pronounce your sentence: you shall fast a week with bran and water. | |
| Cost. I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge. | |
| King. And Don Armado shall be your keeper. | |
| My Lord Berowne, see him deliver’d o’er: | 236 |
| And go we, lords, to put in practice that | |
| Which each to other hath so strongly sworn. [Exeunt KING, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAINE. | |
| Ber. I’ll lay my head to any good man’s hat, | |
| These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn. | 240 |
| Sirrah, come on. | |
| Cost. I suffer for the truth, sir: for true it is I was taken with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl; and therefore welcome the sour cup of prosperity! Affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow! [Exeunt. | |
