About surrender-up of Aquitain

To her decrepit, sick, and bed-rid father: Therefore this article is made in vain,

Or vainly comes the admired princess hither. King. What say you, lords? why, this was quite forgot.

Biron. So study evermore is overshot; While it doth study to have what it would, 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; She must lie here on mere necessity.

Biron. Necessity will make us all forsworn

For

Three thousand times within this three years' space:

every man with his affects is born;

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. And he, that breaks them in the least degree, Stands in attainder of eternal shame;

10

Suggestions are to others, as to me;

But, I believe, although I seem so loath,
I am the last that will last keep his oath.
But, is there no quick 11 recreation granted?
King. Ay, that there is: our court, you know, is
haunted

With a refined traveller of Spain;
A man in all the world's new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain:

9 That is, reside here. So in Sir Henry Wotton's equivocal definition: An Ambassador is an honest man sent to lie (i. e. reside) abroad for the good of his country.'

10 Temptations.

11 Lively, sprightly.

One, whom the musick of his own vain tongue,
Doth ravish, like enchanting harmony;
A man of complements 12, whom right and wrong
Have chose as umpire of their mutiny:
This child of fancy, that Armado hight 13,

For interim to our studies, shall relate,
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,
And I will use him for my minstrelsy 14.

Biron. Armado is a most illustrious wight,
A man of fire-new 15 words, fashion's own knight.
Long. Costard the swain, and he, shall be our sport;
And, so to study, three years is but short.

Enter DULL, with a Letter, and COSTARD.
Dull. Which is the duke's own person?
Biron. This, fellow; What would'st?

Dull. I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his grace's tharborough 16: but I would see his own person in flesh and blood.

Biron. This is he.

Dull. Signior Arme-Arme-commends you. There's villany abroad; this letter will tell you more. Cost. Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching

me.

King. A letter from the magnificent Armado.

12 Complements is here used in its ancient sense of accomplishments. Vide Note on K. Henry V. Act ii. Sc. 2.

13 i. e. who is called Armado.

14 I will make use of him instead of a minstrel, whose occupation was to relate fabulous stories.

15 i. e. new from the forge; we have still retained a similar mode of speech in the colloquial phrase brand-new.

16 i. e. third-borough, a peace-officer.

VOL. II.

EE

Biron. How low soever the matter, I hope in God for high words.

Long. A high hope for a low having: God grant us patience!

17

Biron. To hear? or forbear hearing 17?

Long. To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately; or to forbear both.

Biron. Well, sir, be it as the style 18 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 19.

Biron. In what manner?

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.

Biron. 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? Biron. As we would hear an oracle.

Cost. Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.

King. [Reads.] 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.

17 To hear? or forbear laughing?" is possibly the true reading. 18 A quibble is here intended between a stile and style.

19 That is, in the fact. A thief is said to be taken with the manner (mainour) when he is taken with the thing stolen about him. The thing stolen was called mainour, manour, or meinour, from the French manier, manu tractare.

King. So it is,

Cost. It may be so: but if he say it is so, he is, in telling true, but so, so.

King. Peace.

Cost. -be to me, and every man that dares not fight!

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 physick 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 obscene and most 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 20: There did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth 21,

Cost. Me.

King-that unletter'd small-knowing soul,
Cost. Me.

King-that shallow vassal,

Cost. Still me.

King.-which, as I remember, hight Costard,

20 Ancient gardens abounded with knots or figures, of which the lines intersected each other. In the old books of gardening are devices for them.

21 i. e. the contemptible little object that contributes to thy entertainment. So in Coriolanus :

"This Triton of the Minnows.'

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.

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 shall 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. Biron. This is not so well as I looked for, but the best that ever I heard.

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.

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.

King. It is so varied too; for it was proclaimed, virgin.