Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare

Author:William Shakespeare
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: ManyBooks.net

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ACT V.

SCENE I. The King of Navarre's park.

[Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL.]

HOLOFERNES. Satis quod sufficit.

NATHANIEL. I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the king's who is intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.

HOLOFERNES. Novi hominem tanquam te: his humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.

NATHANIEL. A most singular and choice epithet.

[Draws out his table-book.]

HOLOFERNES. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-devise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak dout, fine, when he should say doubt; det when he should pronounce debt,--d, e, b, t, not d, e, t: he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour vocatur nebour, neigh abbreviated ne. This is abhominable, which he would call abominable,--it insinuateth me of insanie: anne intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.

NATHANIEL. Laus Deo, bone intelligo.

HOLOFERNES. Bone? bone for bene: Priscian a little scratch'd; 'twill serve.

[Enter ARMADO, MOTH, and COSTARD.]

NATHANIEL. Videsne quis venit?

HOLOFERNES. Video, et gaudeo.

ARMADO. [To MOTH] Chirrah!

HOLOFERNES. Quare chirrah, not sirrah?

ARMADO. Men of peace, well encountered.

HOLOFERNES. Most military sir, salutation.

MOTH. [Aside to COSTARD.] They have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps.

COSTARD. O! they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou are not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus; thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.

MOTH. Peace! the peal begins.

ARMADO. [To HOLOFERNES.] Monsieur, are you not lettered?

MOTH. Yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook. What is a, b, spelt backward with the horn on his head?

HOLOFERNES. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

MOTH. Ba! most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning.

HOLOFERNES. Quis, quis, thou consonant?

MOTH. The third of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or the fifth, if I.

HOLOFERNES. I will repeat them,--a, e, i,--

MOTH. The sheep; the other two concludes it,--o, u.

ARMADO. Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit! snip, snap, quick and home! It rejoiceth my intellect: true wit!

MOTH. Offered by a child to an old man; which is wit-old.

HOLOFERNES. What is the figure? What is the figure?

MOTH. Horns.

HOLOFERNES. Thou disputes like an infant; go, whip thy gig.

MOTH. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy circum circa. A gig of a cuckold's horn.

COSTARD. An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread. Hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou half-penny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discretion.

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