Love's Labour's Lost

Act 3, Scene I

Enter DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO and MOTH

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.

MOTH

Concolinel.

Singing

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years; take this key,

give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately

hither: I must employ him in a letter to my love.

MOTH

Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

How meanest thou? brawling in French?

MOTH

No, my complete master: but to jig off a tune at

the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet, humour

it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and

sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you

swallowed love with singing love, sometime through

the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling

love; with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of

your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin-belly

doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in

your pocket like a man after the old painting; and

keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away.

These are complements, these are humours; these

betray nice wenches, that would be betrayed without

these; and make them men of note--do you note

me?--that most are affected to these.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

How hast thou purchased this experience?

MOTH

By my penny of observation.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

But O,--but O,--

MOTH

'The hobby-horse is forgot.'

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Callest thou my love 'hobby-horse'?

MOTH

No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your

love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Almost I had.

MOTH

Negligent student! learn her by heart.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

By heart and in heart, boy.

MOTH

And out of heart, master: all those three I will prove.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

What wilt thou prove?

MOTH

A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, upon

the instant: by heart you love her, because your

heart cannot come by her; in heart you love her,

because your heart is in love with her; and out of

heart you love her, being out of heart that you

cannot enjoy her.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I am all these three.

MOTH

And three times as much more, and yet nothing at

all.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Fetch hither the swain: he must carry me a letter.

MOTH

A message well sympathized; a horse to be ambassador

for an ass.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Ha, ha! what sayest thou?

MOTH

Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse,

for he is very slow-gaited. But I go.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

The way is but short: away!

MOTH

As swift as lead, sir.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

The meaning, pretty ingenious?

Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?

MOTH

Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I say lead is slow.

MOTH

You are too swift, sir, to say so:

Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun?

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Sweet smoke of rhetoric!

He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that's he:

I shoot thee at the swain.

MOTH

Thump then and I flee.

Exit

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

A most acute juvenal; voluble and free of grace!

By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face:

Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.

My herald is return'd.

Re-enter MOTH with COSTARD

MOTH

A wonder, master! here's a costard broken in a shin.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Some enigma, some riddle: come, thy l'envoy; begin.

COSTARD

No enigma, no riddle, no l'envoy; no salve in the

mail, sir: O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain! no

l'envoy, no l'envoy; no salve, sir, but a plantain!

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

By virtue, thou enforcest laughter; thy silly

thought my spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes

me to ridiculous smiling. O, pardon me, my stars!

Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l'envoy, and

the word l'envoy for a salve?

MOTH

Do the wise think them other? is not l'envoy a salve?

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

No, page: it is an epilogue or discourse, to make plain

Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.

I will example it:

The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,

Were still at odds, being but three.

There's the moral. Now the l'envoy.

MOTH

I will add the l'envoy. Say the moral again.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,

Were still at odds, being but three.

MOTH

Until the goose came out of door,

And stay'd the odds by adding four.

Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with

my l'envoy.

The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,

Were still at odds, being but three.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Until the goose came out of door,

Staying the odds by adding four.

MOTH

A good l'envoy, ending in the goose: would you

desire more?

COSTARD

The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that's flat.

Sir, your pennyworth is good, an your goose be fat.

To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose:

Let me see; a fat l'envoy; ay, that's a fat goose.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin?

MOTH

By saying that a costard was broken in a shin.

Then call'd you for the l'envoy.

COSTARD

True, and I for a plantain: thus came your

argument in;

Then the boy's fat l'envoy, the goose that you bought;

And he ended the market.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

But tell me; how was there a costard broken in a shin?

MOTH

I will tell you sensibly.

COSTARD

Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth: I will speak that l'envoy:

I Costard, running out, that was safely within,

Fell over the threshold and broke my shin.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

We will talk no more of this matter.

COSTARD

Till there be more matter in the shin.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.

COSTARD

O, marry me to one Frances: I smell some l'envoy,

some goose, in this.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty,

enfreedoming thy person; thou wert immured,

restrained, captivated, bound.

COSTARD

True, true; and now you will be my purgation and let me loose.

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance; and,

in lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this:

bear this significant

Giving a letter

to the country maid Jaquenetta:

there is remuneration; for the best ward of mine

honour is rewarding my dependents. Moth, follow.

Exit

MOTH

Like the sequel, I. Signior Costard, adieu.

COSTARD

My sweet ounce of man's flesh! my incony Jew!

Exit MOTH

Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration!

O, that's the Latin word for three farthings: three

farthings--remuneration.--'What's the price of this

inkle?'--'One penny.'--'No, I'll give you a

remuneration:' why, it carries it. Remuneration!

why, it is a fairer name than French crown. I will

never buy and sell out of this word.

Enter BIRON

BIRON

O, my good knave Costard! exceedingly well met.

COSTARD

Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man

buy for a remuneration?

BIRON

What is a remuneration?

COSTARD

Marry, sir, halfpenny farthing.

BIRON

Why, then, three-farthing worth of silk.

COSTARD

I thank your worship: God be wi' you!

BIRON

Stay, slave; I must employ thee:

As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave,

Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.

COSTARD

When would you have it done, sir?

BIRON

This afternoon.

COSTARD

Well, I will do it, sir: fare you well.

BIRON

Thou knowest not what it is.

COSTARD

I shall know, sir, when I have done it.

BIRON

Why, villain, thou must know first.

COSTARD

I will come to your worship to-morrow morning.

BIRON

It must be done this afternoon.

Hark, slave, it is but this:

The princess comes to hunt here in the park,

And in her train there is a gentle lady;

When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name,

And Rosaline they call her: ask for her;

And to her white hand see thou do commend

This seal'd-up counsel. There's thy guerdon; go.

Giving him a shilling

COSTARD

Gardon, O sweet gardon! better than remuneration,

a'leven-pence farthing better: most sweet gardon! I

will do it sir, in print. Gardon! Remuneration!

Exit

BIRON

And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love's whip;

A very beadle to a humorous sigh;

A critic, nay, a night-watch constable;

A domineering pedant o'er the boy;

Than whom no mortal so magnificent!

This whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy;

This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;

Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,

The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,

Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,

Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,

Sole imperator and great general

Of trotting 'paritors:--O my little heart:--

And I to be a corporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!

What, I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!

A woman, that is like a German clock,

Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,

And never going aright, being a watch,

But being watch'd that it may still go right!

Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all;

And, among three, to love the worst of all;

A wightly wanton with a velvet brow,

With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes;

Ay, and by heaven, one that will do the deed

Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard:

And I to sigh for her! to watch for her!

To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague

That Cupid will impose for my neglect

Of his almighty dreadful little might.

Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue and groan:

Some men must love my lady and some Joan.

Exit

LOVE'S LABOURS LOST