Jaq. I do not like her name.

Orl. There was no thought of pleasing you, when she was christened.

Jaq. What stature is she of?

Orl. Just as high as my heart.

Jaq. You are full of pretty answers.

Have you not

been acquainted with goldsmiths' wives, and conned them out of rings?

Orl. Not so; but I answer you right painted cloth,' from whence you have studied your questions.

Jaq. You have a nimble wit; I think it was made of Atalanta's heels. Will you sit down with me? and we two will rail against our mistress the world, and all our misery.

Orl. I will chide no breather in the world, but myself; against whom I know most faults.

Jaq. The worst fault you have, is to be in love Orl. 'Tis a fault I will not change for your best virtue. I am weary of

you.

Jaq. By my troth, I was seeking for a fool, when I found you.

Orl. He is drowned in the brook; look but in and you shall see him.

Jaq. There shall I see mine own figure.

Orl. Which I take to be either a fool, or a cipher. Jaq. I'll tarry no longer with you; farewell, good seignior love.

Orl. I am glad of your departure; adieu, good monsieur melancholy.

[Exit JAQ.-CEL. and Ros. come forward. Ros. I will speak to him like a saucy lackey, and under that habit play the knave with him.-Do you hear, forester ?

Orl. Very well; what would you?

Ros. I pray you, what is't o'clock?

1 To answer right painted cloth, is to answer sententiously. We still say she talks right Billingsgate. Painted cloth was a species of hangings for the walls of rooms, which has generally been supposed and explained to mean tapestry; but was really cloth or canvass painted with various devices and mottos. The verses, mottos, and proverbial sentences on such cloths are often made the subject of allusion in our old writers.

Orl. You should ask me, what time o'day; there's no clock in the forest.

Ros. Then there is no true lover in the forest; else sighing every minute, and groaning every hour, would detect the lazy foot of time, as well as a clock.

Orl. And why not the swift foot of time? Had not that been as proper?

Ros. By no means, sir; time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I'll tell you who time ambles withal, who time trots withal, who time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.

Orl. I pr'ythee, who doth he trot withal?

Ros. Marry, he trots hard with a young maid, between the contract of her marriage, and the day it is solemnized. If the interim be but a se'nnight, time's pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven years. Orl. Who ambles time withal?

Ros. With a priest that lacks Latin, and a rich man that hath not the gout; for the one sleeps easily, because he cannot study; and the other lives merrily, because he feels no pain: the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning; the other knowing no burden of heavy, tedious penury. These time ambles withal.

Orl. Who doth he gallop withal?

Ros. With a thief to the gallows; for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there. Orl. Who stays it withal?

Ros. With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how time moves.

Orl. Where dwell you, pretty youth?

Ros. With this shepherdess, my sister; here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat. Orl. Are you a native of this place?

Ros. As the cony that you see dwell where she is kindled.

Orl. Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so removed1 a dwelling.

1 i. e. sequestered.

Ros. I have been told so of many; but, indeed, an old religious uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland' man; one that knew courtship too well, for there he fell in love. I have heard him read many lectures against it; and I thank God I am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offences as he hath generally taxed their whole sex withal.

Orl. Can you remember any of the principal evils that he laid to the charge of women?

Ros. There were none principal; they were all like one another, as half-pence are; every one fault seeming monstrous, till his fellow fault came to match it.

Orl. I pr'ythee, recount some of them.

Ros. No; I will not cast away my physic, but on those that are sick. There is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our young plants with carving Rosalind on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns, and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind. If I could meet that fancy-monger, I would give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love upon him.

Orl. I am he that is so love-shaked; I pray you tell me your remedy.

Ros. There is none of my uncle's marks upon you: he taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes, I am sure, you are not prisoner.

Orl. What were his marks?

Ros. A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye, and sunken, which you have not; an unquestionable spirit,3 which you have not; a beard neglected, which you have not; but I pardon you for that; for, simply, your having in beard is a younger brother's revenue. -Then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied,

4

1 i. e. civilized. See note on Act ii. Sc. 7.

2 Courtship is here used for courtly behavior, courtiership. See Romeo and Juliet, Act iii. Sc. 3.

3 i. e. a spirit averse to conversation.

4 Having is possession, estate.

and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man; you are rather point-device in your accoutrements; as loving yourself, than seeming the lover of any other.

Orl. Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love.

which, I

Ros. Me believe it! You may as soon make her that you love believe it; warrant, she is apter to do, than to confess she does. That is one of the points in which women still give the lie to their consciences. But, in good sooth, are you he that hangs the verses on the trees, wherein Rosalind is so admired?

Orl. I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am that he, that unfortunate he. Ros. But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?

Orl. Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.

Ros. Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip, as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured, is, that the lunacy is so ordinary, that the whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing it by

counsel.

Orl. Did you ever cure any so?

2

Ros. Yes, one; and in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me: At which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing, and liking; proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; for every passion something, and for no passion truly any thing, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this color; would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his mad

VOL. II.

1 i. e. precise, exact; dressed with finical nicety.
2 Moonish, that is, as changeable as the moon.

39

humor of love, to a living humor of madness; which was to forswear the full stream of the world, and to live in a nook merely monastic. And thus I cured him; and this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in't.

Orl. I would not be cured, youth.

Ros. I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind, and come every day to my cote, and woo me. Orl. Now, by the faith of my love, I will. Tell me where it is.

Ros. Go with me to it, and I'll show it you; and by the way, you shall tell me where in the forest you live. Will you go?

Orl. With all my heart, good youth.

Ros. Nay, you must call me Rosalind.-Come, sister, will you go?

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.

Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY; 2 JAQUES at a distance, observing them.

Touch. Come apace, good Audrey; I will fetch up your goats, Audrey. And how, Audrey? am I the man yet? Doth my simple feature content you?

Aud. Your features! Lord warrant us! what features?

Touch. I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.

Jaq. O knowledge ill-inhabited! worse than Jove in a thatched house!

[Aside.

Touch. When a man's verses cannot be understood,

1 "If," says Johnson, "this be the true reading, we must by living understand lasting or permanent." But he suspected that this passage was corrupt; that originally some antithesis was intended, which is now lost.

2 Audrey is a corruption of Etheldreda. The saint of that name is so styled in ancient calendars.