As You Like It
Act IV, Scene 1
The Forest of Arden.
- Enter Rosalind and Celia and Jaques.
Jaques
1 - 2- I prithee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted with
- thee.
Rosalind
3- They say you are a melancholy fellow.
Jaques
4- I am so; I do love it better than laughing.
Rosalind
5 - 7- Those that are in extremity of either are abominable
- fellows, and betray themselves to every modern censure worse
- than drunkards.
Jaques
8- Why, ’tis good to be sad and say nothing.
Rosalind
9- Why then ’tis good to be a post.
Jaques
10 - 18- I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is emulation;
- nor the musician’s, which is fantastical; nor the
- courtier’s, which is proud; nor the soldier’s, which is
- ambitious; nor the lawyer’s, which is politic; nor the
- lady’s, which is nice; nor the lover’s, which is all these:
- 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.
Rosalind
19 - 22- A traveler! 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.
Jaques
23- Yes, I have gain’d my experience.
- Enter Orlando.
Rosalind
24 - 26- 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!
Orlando
27- Good day and happiness, dear Rosalind!
Jaques
28- Nay then God buy you, and you talk in blank verse.
Rosalind
29 - 36- Farewell, Monsieur Traveler: 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; or I will scarce think you
- have swam in a gundello.
- Exit Jaques.
- Why, how now, Orlando, where have you been all this while?
- You a lover! And you serve me such another trick, never come
- in my sight more.
Orlando
37- My fair Rosalind, I come within an hour of my promise.
Rosalind
38 - 42- Break an hour’s promise in love! He that will divide a
- minute into a thousand parts, and break but a part of the
- thousand part of a minute in the affairs of love, it may be
- said of him that Cupid hath clapp’d him o’ th’ shoulder, but
- I’ll warrant him heart-whole.
Orlando
43- Pardon me, dear Rosalind.
Rosalind
44 - 45- Nay, and you be so tardy, come no more in my sight. I had as
- lief be woo’d of a snail.
Orlando
46- Of a snail?
Rosalind
47 - 49- Ay, of a snail; for though he comes slowly, he carries his
- house on his head; a better jointure I think than you make a
- woman. Besides, he brings his destiny with him.
Orlando
50- What’s that?
Rosalind
51 - 53- Why, horns! Which such as you are fain to be beholding to
- your wives for. But he comes arm’d in his fortune, and
- prevents the slander of his wife.
Orlando
54- Virtue is no horn-maker; and my Rosalind is virtuous.
Rosalind
55- And I am your Rosalind.
Celia
56 - 57- It pleases him to call you so; but he hath a Rosalind of a
- better leer than you.
Rosalind
58 - 60- Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a holiday humor, and
- like enough to consent. What would you say to me now, and I
- were your very very Rosalind?
Orlando
61- I would kiss before I spoke.
Rosalind
62 - 66- Nay, you were better speak first, and when you were
- gravell’d for lack of matter, you might take occasion to
- kiss. Very good orators when they are out, they will spit,
- and for lovers lacking (God warn us!) matter, the cleanliest
- shift is to kiss.
Celia from As You Like It
James Dromgole Linton, unknown date
Orlando
67- How if the kiss be denied?
Rosalind
68- Then she puts you to entreaty, and there begins new matter.
Orlando
69- Who could be out, being before his belov’d mistress?
Rosalind
70 - 71- Marry, that should you if I were your mistress, or I should
- think my honesty ranker than my wit.
Orlando
72- What, of my suit?
Rosalind
73 - 74- Not out of your apparel, and yet out of your suit. Am not I
- your Rosalind?
Orlando
75 - 76- I take some joy to say you are, because I would be talking
- of her.
Rosalind
77- Well, in her person, I say I will not have you.
Orlando
78- Then in mine own person, I die.
Rosalind
79 - 91- No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is almost six
- thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any
- man died in his own person, videlicet, in a love-cause.
- Troilus had his brains dash’d out with a Grecian club, yet
- he did what he could to die before, and he is one of the
- patterns of love. Leander, he would have liv’d many a fair
- year though Hero had turn’d nun, if it had not been for a
- hot midsummer night; for, good youth, he went but forth to
- wash him in the Hellespont, and being taken with the cramp
- was drown’d; and the foolish chroniclers of that age found
- it was—Hero of Sestos. But these are all lies: men have died
- from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for
- love.
Orlando
92 - 93- I would not have my right Rosalind of this mind, for I
- protest her frown might kill me.
Rosalind
94 - 96- By this hand, it will not kill a fly. But come, now I will
- be your Rosalind in a more coming-on disposition; and ask me
- what you will, I will grant it.
Orlando
97- Then love me, Rosalind.
Rosalind
98- Yes, faith, will I, Fridays and Saturdays and all.
Orlando
99- And wilt thou have me?
Rosalind
100- Ay, and twenty such.
Orlando
101- What sayest thou?
Rosalind
102- Are you not good?
Orlando
103- I hope so.
Rosalind
104 - 106- Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing? Come,
- sister, you shall be the priest, and marry us. Give me your
- hand, Orlando. What do you say, sister?
Orlando
107- Pray thee marry us.
Celia
108- I cannot say the words.
Rosalind
109- You must begin, “Will you, Orlando”—
Celia
110- Go to! Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind?
Orlando
111- I will.
Rosalind
112- Ay, but when?
Orlando
113- Why, now, as fast as she can marry us.
Rosalind
114- Then you must say, “I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.”
Orlando
115- I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.
Rosalind
116 - 119- I might ask you for your commission, but I do take thee,
- Orlando, for my husband. There’s a girl goes before the
- priest, and certainly a woman’s thought runs before her
- actions.
Orlando
120- So do all thoughts, they are wing’d.
Rosalind
121 - 122- Now tell me how long you would have her after you have
- possess’d her.
Orlando
123- Forever and a day.
Rosalind
124 - 133- Say “a day,” without the “ever.” No, no, Orlando, men are
- April when they woo, December when they wed; maids are May
- when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are
- wives. I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary
- cock-pigeon over his hen, more clamorous than a parrot
- against rain, more new-fangled than an ape, more giddy in my
- desires than a monkey. I will weep for nothing, like Diana
- in the fountain, and I will do that when you are dispos’d to
- be merry. I will laugh like a hyen, and that when thou art
- inclin’d to sleep.
Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a holiday humor
Elizabeth Shippen Green Elliott, 1922
Orlando
134- But will my Rosalind do so?
Rosalind
135- By my life, she will do as I do.
Orlando
136- O, but she is wise.
Rosalind
137 - 141- Or else she could not have the wit to do this; the wiser,
- the waywarder. Make the doors upon a woman’s wit, and it
- will out at the casement; shut that, and ’twill out at the
- key-hole; stop that, ’twill fly with the smoke out at the
- chimney.
Orlando
142 - 143- A man that had a wife with such a wit, he might say, “Wit,
- whither wilt?”
Rosalind
144 - 145- Nay, you might keep that check for it, till you met your
- wive’s wit going to your neighbor’s bed.
Orlando
146- And what wit could wit have to excuse that?
Rosalind
147 - 151- Marry, to say she came to seek you there. You shall never
- take her without her answer, unless you take her without her
- tongue. O, that woman that cannot make her fault her
- husband’s occasion, let her never nurse her child herself,
- for she will breed it like a fool!
Orlando
152- For these two hours, Rosalind, I will leave thee.
Rosalind
153- Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours!
Orlando
154 - 155- I must attend the Duke at dinner. By two a’ clock I will be
- with thee again.
Rosalind
156 - 159- Ay, go your ways, go your ways; I knew what you would prove;
- my friends told me as much, and I thought no less. That
- flattering tongue of yours won me. ’Tis but one cast away,
- and so come death! Two a’ clock is your hour?
Orlando
160- Ay, sweet Rosalind.
Rosalind
161 - 168- By my troth, and in good earnest, and so God mend me, and by
- all pretty oaths that are not dangerous, if you break one
- jot of your promise, or come one minute behind your hour, I
- will think you the most pathetical break-promise, and the
- most hollow lover, and the most unworthy of her you call
- Rosalind, that may be chosen out of the gross band of the
- unfaithful; therefore beware my censure, and keep your
- promise.
Orlando
169 - 170- With no less religion than if thou wert indeed my Rosalind;
- so adieu.
Rosalind
171 - 172- Well, Time is the old justice that examines all such
- offenders, and let Time try. Adieu.
- Exit Orlando.
Celia
173 - 175- You have simply misus’d our sex in your love-prate. We must
- have your doublet and hose pluck’d over your head, and show
- the world what the bird hath done to her own nest.
Rosalind
176 - 179- O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know
- how many fathom deep I am in love! But it cannot be sounded;
- my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the bay of
- Portugal.
Celia
180 - 181- Or rather, bottomless—that as fast as you pour affection in,
- it runs out.
Rosalind
182 - 187- No, that same wicked bastard of Venus that was begot of
- thought, conceiv’d of spleen, and born of madness, that
- blind rascally boy that abuses every one’s eyes because his
- own are out, let him be judge how deep I am in love. I’ll
- tell thee, Aliena, I cannot be out of the sight of Orlando.
- I’ll go find a shadow, and sigh till he come.
Celia
188- And I’ll sleep.
- Exeunt.
Illustrations to As You Like It
Hugh Thomson, 1910