As You Like It
Epilogue
- Enter Rosalind
Rosalind
1 - 19 1 - 19- It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but it
- is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue. If
- it be true that good wine needs no bush, ’tis true that a
- good play needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they do use
- good bushes; and good plays prove the better by the help of
- good epilogues. What a case am I in then, that am neither a
- good epilogue, nor cannot insinuate with you in the behalf
- of a good play! I am not furnish’d like a beggar, therefore
- to beg will not become me. My way is to conjure you, and
- I’ll begin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the
- love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please
- you; and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women
- (as I perceive by your simp’ring, none of you hates them),
- that between you and the women the play may please. If I
- were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that
- pleas’d me, complexions that lik’d me, and breaths that I
- defied not; and I am sure, as many as have good beards, or
- good faces, or sweet breaths, will for my kind offer, when I
- make curtsy, bid me farewell.
- Exit.