12 As You Like It Act I
ACT I
SCENE I. An Orchard near Oliver’s house
Enter Orlando and
Adam.
ORLANDO.
As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a
thousand crowns, and, as thou sayst, charged my brother, on his blessing, to
breed me well; and there begins my sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at
school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit. For my part, he keeps me
rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept;
for call you that keeping, for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from
the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred better, for, besides that they are
fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage and to that end riders
dearly hired; but I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth, for the
which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this
nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something that nature gave me his
countenance seems to take from me. He lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the
place of a brother, and as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my
education. This is it, Adam, that grieves me, and the spirit of my father,
which I think is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude. I will no
longer endure it, though yet I know no wise remedy how to avoid it.
Enter Oliver.
ADAM.
Yonder comes my master, your brother.
ORLANDO.
Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me up.
[Adam retires.]
OLIVER.
Now, sir, what make you here?
ORLANDO.
Nothing. I am not taught to make anything.
OLIVER.
What mar you then, sir?
ORLANDO.
Marry, sir, I am helping you to mar that which God made, a poor unworthy
brother of yours, with idleness.
OLIVER.
Marry, sir, be better employed, and be naught awhile.
ORLANDO.
Shall I keep your hogs, and eat husks with them? What prodigal portion have I
spent that I should come to such penury?
OLIVER.
Know you where you are, sir?
ORLANDO.
O, sir, very well: here in your orchard.
OLIVER.
Know you before whom, sir?
ORLANDO.
Ay, better than him I am before knows me. I know you are my eldest brother, and
in the gentle condition of blood you should so know me. The courtesy of
nations allows you my better in that you are the first-born, but the same
tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us. I
have as much of my father in me as you, albeit I confess your coming before
me is nearer to his reverence.
OLIVER.
What, boy!
ORLANDO.
Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this.
OLIVER.
Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain?
ORLANDO.
I am no villain. I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys; he was my
father, and he is thrice a villain that says such a father begot villains. Wert
thou not my brother, I would not take this hand from thy throat till this other
had pulled out thy tongue for saying so. Thou has railed on thyself.
ADAM.
[Coming forward.] Sweet masters, be patient. For your father’s
remembrance, be at accord.
OLIVER.
Let me go, I say.
ORLANDO.
I will not till I please. You shall hear me. My father charged you in his will
to give me good education. You have trained me like a peasant, obscuring and
hiding from me all gentleman-like qualities. The spirit of my father grows
strong in me, and I will no longer endure it. Therefore allow me such
exercises as may become a gentleman, or give me the poor allottery my father
left me by testament; with that I will go buy my fortunes.
OLIVER.
And what wilt thou do? Beg when that is spent? Well, sir, get you in. I will
not long be troubled with you. You shall have some part of your will. I pray
you leave me.
ORLANDO.
I no further offend you than becomes me for my good.
OLIVER.
Get you with him, you old dog.
ADAM.
Is “old dog” my reward? Most true, I have lost my teeth in your service. God be
with my old master. He would not have spoke such a word.
[Exeunt Orlando and
Adam.]
OLIVER.
Is it even so? Begin you to grow upon me? I will physic your rankness, and yet
give no thousand crowns neither. Holla, Dennis!
Enter Dennis.
DENNIS
Calls your worship?
OLIVER.
Was not Charles, the Duke’s wrestler, here to speak with me?
DENNIS
So please you, he is here at the door and importunes access to you.
OLIVER.
Call him in.
[Exit Dennis.]
’Twill be a good way, and tomorrow the wrestling is.
Enter Charles.
CHARLES.
Good morrow to your worship.
OLIVER.
Good Monsieur Charles. What’s the new news at the new court?
CHARLES.
There’s no news at the court, sir, but the old news. That is, the old Duke is
banished by his younger brother the new Duke, and three or four loving lords
have put themselves into voluntary exile with him, whose lands and revenues
enrich the new Duke; therefore he gives them good leave to wander.
OLIVER.
Can you tell if Rosalind, the Duke’s daughter, be banished with her father?
CHARLES.
O, no; for the Duke’s daughter, her cousin, so loves her, being ever from their
cradles bred together, that she would have followed her exile or have died to
stay behind her. She is at the court and no less beloved of her uncle than his
own daughter, and never two ladies loved as they do.
OLIVER.
Where will the old Duke live?
CHARLES.
They say he is already in the Forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him;
and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England. They say many young
gentlemen flock to him every day and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in
the golden world.
OLIVER.
What, you wrestle tomorrow before the new Duke?
CHARLES.
Marry, do I, sir, and I came to acquaint you with a matter. I am given, sir,
secretly to understand that your younger brother Orlando hath a disposition
to come in disguised against me to try a fall. Tomorrow, sir, I wrestle for my
credit, and he that escapes me without some broken limb shall acquit him well.
Your brother is but young and tender, and for your love I would be loath to
foil him, as I must for my own honour if he come in. Therefore, out of my
love to you, I came hither to acquaint you withal, that either you might stay
him from his intendment, or brook such disgrace well as he shall run into, in
that it is a thing of his own search and altogether against my will.
OLIVER.
Charles, I thank thee for thy love to me, which thou shalt find I will most
kindly requite. I had myself notice of my brother’s purpose herein, and have by
underhand means laboured to dissuade him from it; but he is resolute. I’ll tell
thee, Charles, it is the stubbornest young fellow of France, full of ambition,
an envious emulator of every man’s good parts, a secret and villainous
contriver against me his natural brother. Therefore use thy discretion. I had
as lief thou didst break his neck as his finger. And thou wert best look to’t;
for if thou dost him any slight disgrace, or if he do not mightily grace
himself on thee, he will practise against thee by poison, entrap thee by some
treacherous device, and never leave thee till he hath ta’en thy life by some
indirect means or other. For I assure thee (and almost with tears I speak it)
there is not one so young and so villainous this day living. I speak but
brotherly of him, but should I anatomize him to thee as he is, I must blush and
weep, and thou must look pale and wonder.
CHARLES.
I am heartily glad I came hither to you. If he come tomorrow I’ll give him his
payment. If ever he go alone again I’ll never wrestle for prize more. And so,
God keep your worship.
[Exit.]
OLIVER.
Farewell, good Charles. Now will I stir this gamester. I hope I shall see an
end of him; for my soul—yet I know not why—hates nothing more than he. Yet
he’s gentle, never schooled and yet learned, full of noble device, of all sorts
enchantingly beloved, and indeed so much in the heart of the world, and
especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprized.
But it shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all. Nothing remains but
that I kindle the boy thither, which now I’ll go about.
[Exit.]
SCENE II. A Lawn before the Duke’s Palace
Enter Rosalind and
Celia.
CELIA.
I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry.
ROSALIND.
Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of, and would you yet I were
merrier? Unless you could teach me to forget a banished father, you must not
learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleasure.
CELIA.
Herein I see thou lov’st me not with the full weight that I love thee. If my
uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the Duke my father, so thou
hadst been still with me, I could have taught my love to take thy father for
mine. So wouldst thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously
tempered as mine is to thee.
ROSALIND.
Well, I will forget the condition of my estate to rejoice in yours.
CELIA.
You know my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to have; and truly,
when he dies thou shalt be his heir, for what he hath taken away from thy
father perforce, I will render thee again in affection. By mine honour I will!
And when I break that oath, let me turn monster. Therefore, my sweet Rose, my
dear Rose, be merry.
ROSALIND.
From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports. Let me see—what think you of
falling in love?
CELIA.
Marry, I prithee do, to make sport withal; but love no man in good earnest,
nor no further in sport neither than with safety of a pure blush thou mayst in
honour come off again.
ROSALIND.
What shall be our sport, then?
CELIA.
Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts
may henceforth be bestowed equally.
ROSALIND.
I would we could do so, for her benefits are mightily misplaced, and the
bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women.
CELIA.
’Tis true, for those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest, and those
that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly.
ROSALIND.
Nay, now thou goest from Fortune’s office to Nature’s. Fortune reigns in gifts
of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature.
Enter Touchstone.
CELIA.
No? When Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by Fortune fall into the
fire? Though Nature hath given us wit to flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune
sent in this fool to cut off the argument?
ROSALIND.
Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when Fortune makes Nature’s
natural the cutter-off of Nature’s wit.
CELIA.
Peradventure this is not Fortune’s work neither, but Nature’s, who perceiveth
our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, and hath sent this
natural for our whetstone; for always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone
of the wits.—How now, wit, whither wander you?
TOUCHSTONE.
Mistress, you must come away to your father.
CELIA.
Were you made the messenger?
TOUCHSTONE.
No, by mine honour, but I was bid to come for you.
ROSALIND.
Where learned you that oath, fool?
TOUCHSTONE.
Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were good pancakes, and swore
by his honour the mustard was naught. Now, I’ll stand to it, the pancakes were
naught and the mustard was good, and yet was not the knight forsworn.
CELIA.
How prove you that in the great heap of your knowledge?
ROSALIND.
Ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom.
TOUCHSTONE.
Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am
a knave.
CELIA.
By our beards, if we had them, thou art.
TOUCHSTONE.
By my knavery, if I had it, then I were. But if you swear by that that is not,
you are not forsworn. No more was this knight swearing by his honour, for he
never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those
pancackes or that mustard.
CELIA.
Prithee, who is’t that thou mean’st?
TOUCHSTONE.
One that old Frederick, your father, loves.
CELIA.
My father’s love is enough to honour him. Enough! Speak no more of him. You’ll
be whipped for taxation one of these days.
TOUCHSTONE.
The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.
CELIA.
By my troth, thou sayest true. For since the little wit that fools have was
silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show. Here comes
Monsieur Le Beau.
Enter Le Beau.
ROSALIND.
With his mouth full of news.
CELIA.
Which he will put on us as pigeons feed their young.
ROSALIND.
Then shall we be news-crammed.
CELIA.
All the better; we shall be the more marketable.
Bonjour, Monsieur Le Beau. What’s the news?
LE BEAU.
Fair princess, you have lost much good sport.
CELIA.
Sport! Of what colour?
LE BEAU.
What colour, madam? How shall I answer you?
ROSALIND.
As wit and fortune will.
TOUCHSTONE.
Or as the destinies decrees.
CELIA.
Well said. That was laid on with a trowel.
TOUCHSTONE.
Nay, if I keep not my rank—
ROSALIND.
Thou losest thy old smell.
LE BEAU.
You amaze me, ladies. I would have told you of good wrestling, which you have
lost the sight of.
ROSALIND.
Yet tell us the manner of the wrestling.
LE BEAU.
I will tell you the beginning and, if it please your ladyships, you may see
the end, for the best is yet to do; and here, where you are, they are coming to
perform it.
CELIA.
Well, the beginning that is dead and buried.
LE BEAU.
There comes an old man and his three sons—
CELIA.
I could match this beginning with an old tale.
LE BEAU.
Three proper young men of excellent growth and presence.
ROSALIND.
With bills on their necks: “Be it known unto all men by these presents.”
LE BEAU.
The eldest of the three wrestled with Charles, the Duke’s wrestler, which
Charles in a moment threw him and broke three of his ribs, that there is
little hope of life in him. So he served the second, and so the third. Yonder
they lie, the poor old man their father making such pitiful dole over them
that all the beholders take his part with weeping.
ROSALIND.
Alas!
TOUCHSTONE.
But what is the sport, monsieur, that the ladies have lost?
LE BEAU.
Why, this that I speak of.
TOUCHSTONE.
Thus men may grow wiser every day. It is the first time that ever I heard
breaking of ribs was sport for ladies.
CELIA.
Or I, I promise thee.
ROSALIND.
But is there any else longs to see this broken music in his sides? Is there yet
another dotes upon rib-breaking? Shall we see this wrestling, cousin?
LE BEAU.
You must if you stay here, for here is the place appointed for the wrestling,
and they are ready to perform it.
CELIA.
Yonder, sure, they are coming. Let us now stay and see it.
Flourish. Enter Duke Frederick,
Lords, Orlando, Charles and Attendants.
DUKE FREDERICK.
Come on. Since the youth will not be entreated, his own peril on his
forwardness.
ROSALIND.
Is yonder the man?
LE BEAU.
Even he, madam.
CELIA.
Alas, he is too young. Yet he looks successfully.
DUKE FREDERICK.
How now, daughter and cousin? Are you crept hither to see the wrestling?
ROSALIND.
Ay, my liege, so please you give us leave.
DUKE FREDERICK.
You will take little delight in it, I can tell you, there is such odds in the
man. In pity of the challenger’s youth I would fain dissuade him, but he will
not be entreated. Speak to him, ladies; see if you can move him.
CELIA.
Call him hither, good Monsieur Le Beau.
DUKE FREDERICK.
Do so; I’ll not be by.
[Duke Frederick steps
aside.]
LE BEAU.
Monsieur the challenger, the Princess calls for you.
ORLANDO.
I attend them with all respect and duty.
ROSALIND.
Young man, have you challenged Charles the wrestler?
ORLANDO.
No, fair princess. He is the general challenger. I come but in as others do,
to try with him the strength of my youth.
CELIA.
Young gentleman, your spirits are too bold for your years. You have seen cruel
proof of this man’s strength. If you saw yourself with your eyes or knew
yourself with your judgement, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a
more equal enterprise. We pray you for your own sake to embrace your own
safety and give over this attempt.
ROSALIND.
Do, young sir. Your reputation shall not therefore be misprized. We will make
it our suit to the Duke that the wrestling might not go forward.
ORLANDO.
I beseech you, punish me not with your hard thoughts, wherein I confess me much
guilty to deny so fair and excellent ladies anything. But let your fair eyes
and gentle wishes go with me to my trial, wherein if I be foiled there is but
one shamed that was never gracious; if killed, but one dead that is willing to
be so. I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none to lament me; the world
no injury, for in it I have nothing. Only in the world I fill up a place, which
may be better supplied when I have made it empty.
ROSALIND.
The little strength that I have, I would it were with you.
CELIA.
And mine to eke out hers.
ROSALIND.
Fare you well. Pray heaven I be deceived in you.
CELIA.
Your heart’s desires be with you.
CHARLES.
Come, where is this young gallant that is so desirous to lie with his mother
earth?
ORLANDO.
Ready, sir; but his will hath in it a more modest working.
DUKE FREDERICK.
You shall try but one fall.
CHARLES.
No, I warrant your grace you shall not entreat him to a second, that have so
mightily persuaded him from a first.
ORLANDO.
You mean to mock me after; you should not have mocked me before. But come your
ways.
ROSALIND.
Now, Hercules be thy speed, young man!
CELIA.
I would I were invisible, to catch the strong fellow by the leg.
[Orlando and
Charles wrestle.]
ROSALIND.
O excellent young man!
CELIA.
If I had a thunderbolt in mine eye, I can tell who should down.
[Charles is thrown. Shout.]
DUKE FREDERICK.
No more, no more.
ORLANDO.
Yes, I beseech your grace. I am not yet well breathed.
DUKE FREDERICK.
How dost thou, Charles?
LE BEAU.
He cannot speak, my lord.
DUKE FREDERICK.
Bear him away.
[Charles is carried off by Attendants.]
What is thy name, young man?
ORLANDO.
Orlando, my liege, the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys.
DUKE FREDERICK.
I would thou hadst been son to some man else.
The world esteemed thy father honourable,
But I did find him still mine enemy.
Thou shouldst have better pleased me with this deed
Hadst thou descended from another house.
But fare thee well, thou art a gallant youth.
I would thou hadst told me of another father.
[Exeunt Duke Frederick, Le Beau and
Lords.]
CELIA.
Were I my father, coz, would I do this?
ORLANDO.
I am more proud to be Sir Rowland’s son,
His youngest son, and would not change that calling
To be adopted heir to Frederick.
ROSALIND.
My father loved Sir Rowland as his soul,
And all the world was of my father’s mind.
Had I before known this young man his son,
I should have given him tears unto entreaties
Ere he should thus have ventured.
CELIA.
Gentle cousin,
Let us go thank him and encourage him.
My father’s rough and envious disposition
Sticks me at heart.—Sir, you have well deserved.
If you do keep your promises in love
But justly, as you have exceeded promise,
Your mistress shall be happy.
ROSALIND.
Gentleman,
[Giving him a chain from her neck.]
Wear this for me—one out of suits with Fortune,
That could give more but that her hand lacks means.—
Shall we go, coz?
CELIA.
Ay.—Fare you well, fair gentleman.
ORLANDO.
Can I not say, I thank you? My better parts
Are all thrown down, and that which here stands up
Is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block.
ROSALIND.
He calls us back. My pride fell with my fortunes.
I’ll ask him what he would.—Did you call, sir?—
Sir, you have wrestled well and overthrown
More than your enemies.
CELIA.
Will you go, coz?
ROSALIND.
Have with you.—Fare you well.
[Exeunt Rosalind and
Celia.]
ORLANDO.
What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue?
I cannot speak to her, yet she urged conference.
O poor Orlando, thou art overthrown.
Or Charles or something weaker masters thee.
Enter Le Beau.
LE BEAU.
Good sir, I do in friendship counsel you
To leave this place. Albeit you have deserved
High commendation, true applause, and love,
Yet such is now the Duke’s condition
That he misconsters all that you have done.
The Duke is humorous; what he is indeed
More suits you to conceive than I to speak of.
ORLANDO.
I thank you, sir; and pray you tell me this:
Which of the two was daughter of the Duke
That here was at the wrestling?
LE BEAU.
Neither his daughter, if we judge by manners,
But yet indeed the smaller is his daughter.
The other is daughter to the banished Duke,
And here detained by her usurping uncle
To keep his daughter company, whose loves
Are dearer than the natural bond of sisters.
But I can tell you that of late this Duke
Hath ta’en displeasure ’gainst his gentle niece,
Grounded upon no other argument
But that the people praise her for her virtues
And pity her for her good father’s sake;
And, on my life, his malice ’gainst the lady
Will suddenly break forth. Sir, fare you well.
Hereafter, in a better world than this,
I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.
ORLANDO.
I rest much bounden to you; fare you well!
[Exit Le Beau.]
Thus must I from the smoke into the smother,
From tyrant Duke unto a tyrant brother.
But heavenly Rosalind!
[Exit.]
SCENE III. A Room in the Palace
Enter Celia and
Rosalind.
CELIA.
Why, cousin, why, Rosalind! Cupid have mercy! Not a word?
ROSALIND.
Not one to throw at a dog.
CELIA.
No, thy words are too precious to be cast away upon curs. Throw some of them at
me. Come, lame me with reasons.
ROSALIND.
Then there were two cousins laid up, when the one should be lamed with reasons
and the other mad without any.
CELIA.
But is all this for your father?
ROSALIND.
No, some of it is for my child’s father. O, how full of briers is this
working-day world!
CELIA.
They are but burs, cousin, thrown upon thee in holiday foolery. If we walk not
in the trodden paths, our very petticoats will catch them.
ROSALIND.
I could shake them off my coat; these burs are in my heart.
CELIA.
Hem them away.
ROSALIND.
I would try, if I could cry “hem” and have him.
CELIA.
Come, come, wrestle with thy affections.
ROSALIND.
O, they take the part of a better wrestler than myself.
CELIA.
O, a good wish upon you! You will try in time, in despite of a fall. But
turning these jests out of service, let us talk in good earnest. Is it
possible on such a sudden you should fall into so strong a liking with old
Sir Rowland’s youngest son?
ROSALIND.
The Duke my father loved his father dearly.
CELIA.
Doth it therefore ensue that you should love his son dearly? By this kind of
chase I should hate him, for my father hated his father dearly; yet I hate not
Orlando.
ROSALIND.
No, faith, hate him not, for my sake.
CELIA.
Why should I not? Doth he not deserve well?
Enter Duke Frederick with Lords.
ROSALIND.
Let me love him for that, and do you love him because I do.—Look, here comes
the Duke.
CELIA.
With his eyes full of anger.
DUKE FREDERICK.
Mistress, dispatch you with your safest haste,
And get you from our court.
ROSALIND.
Me, uncle?
DUKE FREDERICK.
You, cousin.
Within these ten days if that thou be’st found
So near our public court as twenty miles,
Thou diest for it.
ROSALIND.
I do beseech your Grace,
Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me.
If with myself I hold intelligence,
Or have acquaintance with mine own desires,
If that I do not dream, or be not frantic—
As I do trust I am not—then, dear uncle,
Never so much as in a thought unborn
Did I offend your Highness.
DUKE FREDERICK.
Thus do all traitors.
If their purgation did consist in words,
They are as innocent as grace itself.
Let it suffice thee that I trust thee not.
ROSALIND.
Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor.
Tell me whereon the likelihood depends.
DUKE FREDERICK.
Thou art thy father’s daughter, there’s enough.
ROSALIND.
So was I when your highness took his dukedom;
So was I when your highness banished him.
Treason is not inherited, my lord,
Or, if we did derive it from our friends,
What’s that to me? My father was no traitor.
Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much
To think my poverty is treacherous.
CELIA.
Dear sovereign, hear me speak.
DUKE FREDERICK.
Ay, Celia, we stayed her for your sake,
Else had she with her father ranged along.
CELIA.
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 still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learned, played, ate together,
And wheresoe’er we went, like Juno’s swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.
DUKE FREDERICK.
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 passed upon her. She is banished.
CELIA.
Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege.
I cannot live out of her company.
DUKE FREDERICK.
You are a fool. You, niece, provide yourself.
If you outstay the time, upon mine honour
And in the greatness of my word, you die.
[Exeunt Duke Frederick
and Lords.]
CELIA.
O my poor Rosalind, whither wilt thou go?
Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine.
I charge thee, be not thou more grieved than I am.
ROSALIND.
I have more cause.
CELIA.
Thou hast not, cousin.
Prithee be cheerful. Know’st thou not the Duke
Hath banished me, his daughter?
ROSALIND.
That he hath not.
CELIA.
No, hath not? Rosalind lacks then the love
Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one.
Shall we be sundered? Shall we part, sweet girl?
No, let my father seek another heir.
Therefore devise with me how we may fly,
Whither to go, and what to bear with us,
And do not seek to take your change upon you,
To bear your griefs yourself and leave me out.
For, by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale,
Say what thou canst, I’ll go along with thee.
ROSALIND.
Why, whither shall we go?
CELIA.
To seek my uncle in the Forest of Arden.
ROSALIND.
Alas, what danger will it be to us,
Maids as we are, to travel forth so far?
Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.
CELIA.
I’ll put myself in poor and mean attire,
And with a kind of umber smirch my face.
The like do you; so shall we pass along
And never stir assailants.
ROSALIND.
Were it not better,
Because that I am more than common tall,
That I did suit me all points like a man?
A gallant curtal-axe upon my thigh,
A boar-spear in my hand, and in my heart
Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will,
We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside,
As many other mannish cowards have
That do outface it with their semblances.
CELIA.
What shall I call thee when thou art a man?
ROSALIND.
I’ll have no worse a name than Jove’s own page,
And therefore look you call me Ganymede.
But what will you be called?
CELIA.
Something that hath a reference to my state:
No longer Celia, but Aliena.
ROSALIND.
But, cousin, what if we assayed to steal
The clownish fool out of your father’s court?
Would he not be a comfort to our travel?
CELIA.
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,
Devise the fittest time and safest way
To hide us from pursuit that will be made
After my flight. Now go we in content
To liberty, and not to banishment.
[Exeunt.]