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As You Like It: Act IV, Scene 3

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As You Like It
Act IV, Scene 3

Another part of the Forest of Arden.

My gentle Phebe did bid me give you this.

Hugh Thomson, 1910

  1. Enter Rosalind and Celia.

Rosalind

1 - 2
  1. How say you now? Is it not past two a’ clock? And here much
  2. Orlando!

Celia

3 - 5
  1. I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain, he hath
  2. ta’en his bow and arrows and is gone forth—to sleep. Look
  3. who comes here.
  1. Enter Silvius.

Silvius

6 - 12
  1. My errand is to you, fair youth,
  2. My gentle Phebe did bid me give you this.
  3. Gives a letter.
  4. I know not the contents, but as I guess
  5. By the stern brow and waspish action
  6. Which she did use as she was writing of it,
  7. It bears an angry tenure. Pardon me,
  8. I am but as a guiltless messenger.

Rosalind

13 - 20
  1. Patience herself would startle at this letter,
  2. And play the swaggerer: bear this, bear all!
  3. She says I am not fair, that I lack manners;
  4. She calls me proud, and that she could not love me
  5. Were man as rare as phoenix. ’Od’s my will,
  6. Her love is not the hare that I do hunt;
  7. Why writes she so to me? Well, shepherd, well,
  8. This is a letter of your own device.

Silvius

21 - 22
  1. No, I protest, I know not the contents,
  2. Phebe did write it.

Rosalind

23 - 30
  1.                     Come, come, you are a fool,
  2. And turn’d into the extremity of love.
  3. I saw her hand, she has a leathern hand,
  4. A freestone-colored hand. I verily did think
  5. That her old gloves were on, but ’twas her hands;
  6. She has a huswive’s hand—but that’s no matter.
  7. I say she never did invent this letter,
  8. This is a man’s invention and his hand.

Silvius

31
  1. Sure it is hers.

Rosalind

32 - 37
  1. Why, ’tis a boisterous and a cruel style,
  2. A style for challengers. Why, she defies me,
  3. Like Turk to Christian. Women’s gentle brain
  4. Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention,
  5. Such Ethiop words, blacker in their effect
  6. Than in their countenance. Will you hear the letter?

Silvius

38 - 39
  1. So please you, for I never heard it yet;
  2. Yet heard too much of Phebe’s cruelty.

Rosalind

40 - 43
  1. She Phebes me. Mark how the tyrant writes.
  2. Read.
  3. “Art thou god to shepherd turn’d,
  4. That a maiden’s heart hath burn’d?”
  5. Can a woman rail thus?

Silvius

44
  1. Call you this railing?

Rosalind

45 - 64
  1. Reads.
  2. “Why, thy godhead laid apart,
  3. Warr’st thou with a woman’s heart?”
  4. Did you ever hear such railing?
  5. “Whiles the eye of man did woo me,
  6. That could do no vengeance to me.”
  7. Meaning me a beast.
  8. “If the scorn of your bright eyne
  9. Have power to raise such love in mine,
  10. Alack, in me what strange effect
  11. Would they work in mild aspect?
  12. Whiles you chid me, I did love;
  13. How then might your prayers move?
  14. He that brings this love to thee
  15. Little knows this love in me;
  16. And by him seal up thy mind,
  17. Whether that thy youth and kind
  18. Will the faithful offer take
  19. Of me, and all that I can make,
  20. Or else by him my love deny,
  21. And then I’ll study how to die.”
Rosalind in the Forest

Rosalind in the Forest

John Everett Millais, 1868

Silvius

65
  1. Call you this chiding?

Celia

66
  1. Alas, poor shepherd!

Rosalind

67 - 74
  1. Do you pity him? No, he deserves no pity. Wilt thou love
  2. such a woman? What, to make thee an instrument, and play
  3. false strains upon thee? Not to be endur’d! Well, go your
  4. way to her (for I see love hath made thee a tame snake) and
  5. say this to her: that if she love me, I charge her to love
  6. thee; if she will not, I will never have her unless thou
  7. entreat for her. If you be a true lover, hence, and not a
  8. word; for here comes more company.
  1. Exit Silvius
  1. Enter Oliver.

Oliver

75 - 77
  1. Good morrow, fair ones. Pray you (if you know)
  2. Where in the purlieus of this forest stands
  3. A sheep-cote fenc’d about with olive-trees?

Celia

78 - 82
  1. West of this place, down in the neighbor bottom,
  2. The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream
  3. Left on your right hand brings you to the place.
  4. But at this hour the house doth keep itself,
  5. There’s none within.

Oliver

83 - 89
  1. If that an eye may profit by a tongue,
  2. Then should I know you by description—
  3. Such garments and such years. “The boy is fair,
  4. Of female favor, and bestows himself
  5. Like a ripe sister; the woman low,
  6. And browner than her brother.” Are not you
  7. The owner of the house I did inquire for?

Celia

90
  1. It is no boast, being ask’d, to say we are.

Oliver

91 - 93
  1. Orlando doth commend him to you both,
  2. And to that youth he calls his Rosalind
  3. He sends this bloody napkin. Are you he?

Rosalind

94
  1. I am. What must we understand by this?

Oliver

95 - 97
  1. Some of my shame, if you will know of me
  2. What man I am, and how, and why, and where
  3. This handkercher was stain’d.

Celia

98
  1.                               I pray you tell it.

Oliver

99 - 121
  1. When last the young Orlando parted from you
  2. He left a promise to return again
  3. Within an hour, and pacing through the forest,
  4. Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy,
  5. Lo what befell! He threw his eye aside,
  6. And mark what object did present itself
  7. Under an old oak, whose boughs were moss’d with age
  8. And high top bald with dry antiquity:
  9. A wretched ragged man, o’ergrown with hair,
  10. Lay sleeping on his back; about his neck
  11. A green and gilded snake had wreath’d itself,
  12. Who with her head nimble in threats approach’d
  13. The opening of his mouth; but suddenly
  14. Seeing Orlando, it unlink’d itself,
  15. And with indented glides did slip away
  16. Into a bush, under which bush’s shade
  17. A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,
  18. Lay couching, head on ground, with cat-like watch
  19. When that the sleeping man should stir; for ’tis
  20. The royal disposition of that beast
  21. To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.
  22. This seen, Orlando did approach the man,
  23. And found it was his brother, his elder brother.

Celia

122 - 124
  1. O, I have heard him speak of that same brother,
  2. And he did render him the most unnatural
  3. That liv’d amongst men.

Oliver

125 - 126
  1.                         And well he might so do,
  2. For well I know he was unnatural.

Rosalind

127 - 128
  1. But to Orlando: did he leave him there,
  2. Food to the suck’d and hungry lioness?
Rosalind, Oliver and Celia

The lioness had torn some flesh away

Rosalind, Oliver and Celia

William Hamilton, 1791

Oliver

129 - 134
  1. Twice did he turn his back, and purpos’d so;
  2. But kindness, nobler ever than revenge,
  3. And nature, stronger than his just occasion,
  4. Made him give battle to the lioness,
  5. Who quickly fell before him, in which hurtling
  6. From miserable slumber I awaked.

Celia

135
  1. Are you his brother?

Rosalind

136
  1.                      Was’t you he rescu’d?

Celia

137
  1. Was’t you that did so oft contrive to kill him?

Oliver

138 - 140
  1. ’Twas I; but ’tis not I. I do not shame
  2. To tell you what I was, since my conversion
  3. So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.

Rosalind

141
  1. But for the bloody napkin?

Oliver

142 - 160
  1.                            By and by.
  2. When from the first to last betwixt us two
  3. Tears our recountments had most kindly bath’d,
  4. As how I came into that desert place—
  5. In brief, he led me to the gentle Duke,
  6. Who gave me fresh array and entertainment,
  7. Committing me unto my brother’s love,
  8. Who led me instantly unto his cave,
  9. There stripp’d himself, and here upon his arm
  10. The lioness had torn some flesh away,
  11. Which all this while had bled; and now he fainted,
  12. And cried in fainting upon Rosalind.
  13. Brief, I recover’d him, bound up his wound,
  14. And after some small space, being strong at heart,
  15. He sent me hither, stranger as I am,
  16. To tell this story, that you might excuse
  17. His broken promise, and to give this napkin,
  18. Dy’d in his blood, unto the shepherd youth
  19. That he in sport doth call his Rosalind.
  1. Rosalind faints.

Celia

161
  1. Why, how now, Ganymede, sweet Ganymede?

Oliver

162
  1. Many will swoon when they do look on blood.

Celia

163
  1. There is more in it. Cousin Ganymede!

Oliver

164
  1. Look, he recovers.

Rosalind

165
  1. I would I were at home.

Celia

166 - 167
  1.                         We’ll lead you thither.
  2. I pray you, will you take him by the arm?

Oliver

168 - 169
  1. Be of good cheer, youth. You a man?
  2. You lack a man’s heart.

Rosalind

170 - 172
  1. I do so, I confess it. Ah, sirrah, a body would think this
  2. was well counterfeited! I pray you tell your brother how
  3. well I counterfeited. Heigh-ho!

Oliver

173 - 174
  1. This was not counterfeit, there is too great testimony in
  2. your complexion that it was a passion of earnest.

Rosalind

175
  1. Counterfeit, I assure you.

Oliver

176
  1. Well then, take a good heart and counterfeit to be a man.

Rosalind

177
  1. So I do; but i’ faith, I should have been a woman by right.

Celia

178 - 179
  1. Come, you look paler and paler. Pray you draw homewards.
  2. Good sir, go with us.

Oliver

180 - 181
  1. That will I, for I must bear answer back
  2. How you excuse my brother, Rosalind.

Rosalind

182 - 183
  1. I shall devise something; but I pray you commend my
  2. counterfeiting to him. Will you go?
  1. Exeunt.
Dorothea Baird as Rosalind

Dorothea Baird as Rosalind

Virtue & Co., circa 1900

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