As You Like It

First, in this forest let us do those ends That here were well begun and well begot;

I do remember in this shepherd boy Some lively touches of my daughter’s favor.

It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue.

JAQ. Is not this a rare fellow, my lord? He’s as good at any thing, and yet a fool. DUKE S. He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.

By so much the more shall I tomorrow be at the height of heart-heaviness, by how much I shall think my brother happy in having what he wishes for.

If you do love Rosalind so near the heart as your gesture cries it out, when your brother marries Aliena, shall you marry her.

Neither call the giddiness of it in question, the poverty of her, the small acquaintance, my sudden wooing, nor her sudden consenting; but say with me, I love Aliena;

Why do you speak too, “Why blame you me to love you?” ORL. To her that is not here, nor doth not hear. ROS. Pray you no more of this, ’tis like the howling of Irish wolves against the moon.

But kindness, nobler ever than revenge, And nature, stronger than his just occasion, Made him give battle to the lioness, Who quickly fell before him, in which hurtling From miserable slumber I awaked.

It is no boast, being ask’d, to say we are.

West of this place, down in the neighbor bottom, The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream Left on your right hand brings you to the place. But at this hour the house doth keep itself, There’s none within.

Where in the purlieus of this forest stands A sheep-cote fenc’d about with olive-trees?

Have you no song, forester, for this purpose? 2. LORD. ARD. Yes, sir. JAQ. Sing it. ’Tis no matter how it be in tune, so it make noise enough.

A traveller! By my faith, you have great reason to be sad. I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men’s; then to have seen much, and to have nothing, is to have rich eyes and poor hands.

And your experience makes you sad. I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad—and to travel for it too!

Besides, I like you not. If you will know my house, ’Tis at the tuft of olives here hard by.

but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness .

Come, sister. Shepherdess, look on him better, And be not proud; though all the world could see, None could be so abus’d in sight as he.

Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: look you lisp and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are;

There’s a girl goes before the priest, and certainly a woman’s thought runs before her actions. ORL. So do all thoughts, they are wing’d.

’Tis but a peevish boy—yet he talks well— But what care I for words? Yet words do well When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.

’Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair, Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream That can entame my spirits to your worship.

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;

CEL. An excellent color. Your chestnut was ever the only color. ROS. And his kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread.

for every passion something, and for no passion truly any thing, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this color;

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

O, come, let us remove, The sight of lovers feedeth those in love. Bring us to this sight, and you shall say I’ll prove a busy actor in their play.

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.

would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him;

You are full of pretty answers; have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths’ wives, and conn’d them out of rings?

Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so remov’d a dwelling.

But upon the fairest boughs, Or at every sentence end, Will I ‘Rosalinda’ write, Teaching all that read to know The quintessence of every sprite Heaven would in little show.

Come, shepherd, let us make an honorable retreat, though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.

Is he of God’s making? What manner of man? Is his head worth a hat? Or his chin worth a beard?

You must borrow me Gargantua’s mouth first; ’tis a word too great for any mouth of this age’s size. To say ay and no to these particulars is more than to answer in a catechism.

Sir, I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm, and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.

Thus Rosalind of many parts By heavenly synod was devis’d, Of many faces, eyes, and hearts, To have the touches dearest priz’d. Heaven would that she these gifts should have, And I to live and die her slave.”

Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love, And thou, thrice-crowned queen of night, survey With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above, Thy huntress’ name that my full life doth sway.

No more but that I know the more one sickens the worse at ease he is; and that he that wants money, means, and content is without three good friends; that the property of rain is to wet and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep; and that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun;

O Rosalind, these trees shall be my books, And in their barks my thoughts I’ll character, That every eye which in this forest looks Shall see thy virtue witness’d every where.

And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man’s ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude.

Bur what e’er you are That in this desert inaccessible, Under the shade of melancholy boughs, Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time;

Come, I will bear thee to some shelter, and thou shalt not die for lack of a dinner if there live any thing in this desert.

give me leave To speak my mind, and I will through and through Cleanse the foul body of th’ infected world, If they will patiently receive my medicine.

Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho! Unto the green holly, Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly.

Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness, and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.

Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden, and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth.

There then! How then? What then? Let me see wherein My tongue hath wrong’d him; if it do him right, Then he hath wrong’d himself. If he be free, Why then my taxing like a wild goose flies, Unclaim’d of any man.

Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy: This wide and universal theatre Presents more woeful pageants than the scene Wherein we play in.