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Dum. I never knew man hold vile stuff so

dear.

Long. Look, here's thy love: my foot and her face see.

[Showing his shoe.

Biron. O, if the streets were paved with thine

eyes,

Her feet were much too dainty for such

tread!

Dum. O vile! then as she goes, what upward

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lies

The street should see as she walk'd over,

head.

»King. But what of this? Are we not all in love?

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Biron. O, nothing so sure; and thereby all forsworn.

King. Then leave this chat; add, good Birốn, now prove

Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn. Dum. Ay, marry, there;

-

some flattery for

this evil.

Long. O, some authority how to proceed; Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the

devil.

Dum. Some salve for perjury. Biron. 0, 'tis more than need! Have at you then, affection's

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Consider, what you' first dien as

unto;

To fast, to study, and to see no woman
Flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth.
Say, can you fast? your stomachs are too young;
And abstinence engenders maladies,

And where that you have vow'd to study, Lords,
In that each of you hath forsworn his book:
Can you still dream, and pore, and thereon look?

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For when would you, my Lord, or you, or you,
Have found the ground of study's excellence,
Without the beauty of a woman's face?**
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They are the ground, the books, the academes,
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
Why, universal plodding prisons up.
The nimble spirits in the arteries;

As motion, and long- during action, tires
The sinewy vigour of the traveller.

Now, for not looking on a woman's face,
You have in that forsworn the use of eyes;
And study too, the causer of your vow:
For where is any author in the world,
Teaches such beauty, as a woman's eye;
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself,
And where we are, our learning likewise is,
Then, when ourselves we see in ladies' eyes,
Do we not likewise see our learning there?
O, we have made a vow to study, Lords;

And in that vow we have forsworn our books;

For when would you, my liege, or you, or you

In leaden contemplation, have found out
Such fiery numbers, as the prompting eyes

坚谏

Of beauteous tutors have enrich'd you with? you?
Other slow arts entirely keep the brain;o)
And therefore finding barren practisers,*
Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil: wouÃ
But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
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Lives not alone innred in the brain pin, somal
But with the motion of all elements,¢ V Mag
Courses as swift as thought in every power;
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eyed, lik
A lover's cyes will gaze an eagle blind

A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd;
Love's feeling is more soft, and sensible,
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in

taste:

For valour, is not love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as sphinx; as sweet, and musical,

As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;
And, when love speaks, the voice of all the
gods.

Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write,

Until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs;
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears,
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From, women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish all the world:
Else, none at all in aught proves excellent :
Then fools you were, these women to forswear;
Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove
fools.

For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love;
Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men ;
Or for men's sake, the authors of these women;
Or women's sake, by whom we men are men;
Let us once lose our oaths, to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths:
It is religion, to be thus forsworn:

For charity itself fulfils the law;

And who can sever love from charity?

King. Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!

Biron. Advance your standards, and upon themy

Lords;

Pell mell, down with them! but be first ad

vis'd,

In conflict that you get the sun of them.

Long. Now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by:

Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France? King. And whin them too: therefore let us devise

Some entertainment for them in their tents.
Biron. First, from the park let us conduct them
thither;

Then, homeward, every man attach the hand
Of his fair mistress: in the afternoon

We will with some strange pastime solace them,
Such as the shortness of the time can shape;
For revels, dances, masks, and merry hours,

Fore

-run fair Love, strewing her way with Aowers.

King. Away, away! no time shall be omitted, That will be time, and may by us be fitted. Biron. Allons! Allons! Sow'd cockle reap'd

no corn;

And justice always whirls in equal measure: Light wenches may prove plagues to men for

sworn;

If so our copper buys no better treasure.

[Exeunt.

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Nath. I praise God for you, Sir; your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; plea sant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the King's, who is intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado..

Hol. Novi hominem tanquam te: His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it. Nath. A most singular and choice epithet.

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Takes out his table-book. Hol. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasm, such insociable and point devise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak, dout, fine, when he should say, doubt; det, when he should pronounce, debt; d, e, b, t; not, d, e, t: he clepeth

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