Ros. Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor : Tell me, whereon the likelihood depends. Duke F. Thou art thy father's daughter, there's enough. Ros. So was I, when your highness took his dukedom; So was I, when your highness banish'd him: Or, if we did derive it from our friends, Duke F. Ay, Celia; we stay'd her for your sake, Else had she with her father rang'd along. Cel. I did not then entreat to have her stay, It was your pleasure, and your own remorse *; I was too young that time to value her, But now I know her; if she be a traitor, Why so am I; we have still slept together, Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together; And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans, Still we went coupled, and inseparable. Duke F. She is too subtle for thee; and her smoothness, Her very silence, and her patience, Speak to the people, and they pity her. Thou art a fool: she robs thee of thy name; And thou wilt show more bright, and seem more virtuous, When she is gone: then open not thy lips; Firm and irrevocable is my doom Which I have pass'd upon her; she is banish'd. 4 i. e. compassion. So in Macbeth: 'Stop the access and passage to remorse.' Duke F. You are a fool:-You, niece, provide yourself; If you out-stay the time, upon mine honour, die. [Exeunt DUKE FREDERICK and Lords. Cel. O my poor Rosalind! whither wilt thou go? Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine. I charge thee, be not thou more griev'd than I am. Ros. I have more cause. Cel. Thou hast not, cousin; Pr'ythee, be cheerful: know'st thou not, the duke Hath banish'd me, his daughter? Ros. That he hath not. Cel. No? hath not? Rosalind lacks then the love Cel. To seek my uncle in the forest of Arden. Cel. I'll put myself in poor and mean attire, 5 The second folio reads charge. Malone explains it to take your change or reverse of fortune upon yourself, without any aid of participation.' 6 A kind of umber,' a dusky yellow-coloured earth, brought from Umbria in Italy, well known to artists. In the chorus to King Henry V. we have -the battle's umber'd face.' The like do you; so shall we pass along, Ros. Were it not better, Because that I am more than common tall, That I did suit me all points like a man? A boar-spear in my hand; and (in my heart That do outface it with their semblances. Cel. What shall I call thee, when thou art a man? Ros. I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page, And therefore look you call me Ganymede. But what will you be call'd? Cel. Something that hath a reference to my state; No longer Celia, but Aliena. Ros. But, cousin, what if we assay'd to steal The clownish fool out of your father's court? Would he not be a comfort to our travel? Cel. He'll go along o'er the wide world with me; Leave me alone to woo him: Let's away, And get our jewels and our wealth together; [Exeunt. 7 This was one of the old words for a cutlass, or short crooked sword, coutelas, French. It was variously spelled, courtlas, courtlax, curtlax. So in Fairefaxe's Tasso, b. ix. st. 82: 'His curtlax on his thigh, short crooked fine.' 9 i. e. as we now say, dashing; spirited and calculated to surprise. To swash is interpreted by Torriano, Strepitar con l'arme.' Hence 'a swash buckler was a swaggerer, a bragging toss-blade, a Captain Slash,' according to the same authority. ACT II. SCENE I. The Forest of Arden. Enter Duke senior, AMIENS, and other Lords, in the dress of Foresters. Duke S. Now, my co-mates, and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court? Here feel we but1 the penalty of Adam, The seasons' difference; as, the icy fang, And churlish chiding of the winter's wind, Which when it bites and blows upon my body, Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say,This is no flattery; these are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am. Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head 2; The old copy reads 'not the penalty,' Theobald proposed to read but, and has been followed by subsequent editors. Surely the old reading is right,' says Mr. Boswell; 'here we feel not, do not suffer, from the penalty of Adam; for when the winter's wind blows upon my body, I smile and say'— 2 It was currently believed in the time of Shakspeare that the toad had a stone contained in its head which was endued with singular virtues. This was called the toad-stone. Fenton in his Secrete Wonders of Nature, 1569, says :-There is founde in the heades of olde and great toades, a stone, which they call borax or stelon: it is most commonly found in the head of an hee toad, of power to repulse poysons, and that it is a most sovereigne medicine for the stone.' Lupton, in his One Thousand Notable Things, and other writers mention it. Ami. I would not change it: Happy is your grace, That can translate the stubbornness of fortune Into so quiet and so sweet a style. Duke S. Come, shall we go and kill us venison? And yet it irks3 me, the poor dappled fools,— Being native burghers of this desert city, Should in their own confínes, with forked heads * Have their round haunches gor'd. 1 Lord. Indeed, my lord, Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out 3 It irks me, i. e. it gives me pain. 'Mi rincresce, mi fà male.-Torriano's Dict. 4 Barbed arrows. 5 Gray, in his Elegy, has availed himself of this passage :- Virg. In a note on a similar passage in the Polyolbion it is said:The harte weepeth at his dying: his tears are held to be precious in medicine.' |