Love’s Labour’s Lost
Act III, Scene 1
The King of Navarre’s park.
- Enter Braggart Armado and his Boy Moth.
Armado
1- Warble, child, make passionate my sense of hearing.
Moth
2- Sings the song.
- “Concolinel.”
Armado
3- Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years, take this key, give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately hither. I must employ him in a letter to my love.
Moth
4- Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?
Armado
5- How meanest thou? Brawling in French?
Moth
6- No, my complete master, but to jig off a tune at the tongue’s end, canary to it with your feet, humor it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you swallow’d love with singing love, sometime through the nose, as if you snuff’d up love by smelling love; with your hat penthouse-like o’er the shop of your eyes; with your arms cross’d on your thin-bellied doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in your pocket like a man after the old painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away: these are complements, these are humors, these betray nice wenches that would be betray’d without these; and make them men of note—do you note?—men that most are affected to these.
Armado
7- How hast thou purchased this experience?
Moth
8- By my penny of observation.
Armado
9- But O—but O—
Moth
10- “The hobby-horse is forgot.”
Armado
11- Call’st thou my love “hobby-horse”?
Moth
12 - 14- No, master, the hobby-horse is but a colt,
- Aside.
- and your love perhaps a hackney.—
- But have you forgot your love?
Armado
15- Almost I had.
Moth
16- Negligent student, learn her by heart.
Armado
17- By heart and in heart, boy.
Moth
18- And out of heart, master; all those three I will prove.
Armado
19- What wilt thou prove?
Moth
20 - 24- A man, if I live; and this, “by, in, and without,” upon the
- instant: by heart you love her, because your heart cannot
- come by her; in heart you love her, because your heart is in
- love with her; and out of heart you love her, being out of
- heart that you cannot enjoy her.
Armado
25- I am all these three.
Moth
26 - 27- And three times as much more—
- Aside.
- and yet nothing at all.
Armado
28- Fetch hither the swain, he must carry me a letter.
Moth
29 - 30- A message well sympathiz’d—a horse to be ambassador for an
- ass.
Armado
31- Ha, ha? What sayest thou?
Moth
32 - 33- Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse, for he is
- very slow-gaited. But I go.
Armado
34- The way is but short, away!
Moth
35- As swift as lead, sir.
Armado
36 - 37- The meaning, pretty ingenious?
- Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?
Moth
38- Minime, honest master, or rather, master, no.
Armado
39- I say lead is slow.
Moth
40 - 41- You are too swift, sir, to say so.
- Is that lead slow which is fir’d from a gun?
Armado
42 - 44- Sweet smoke of rhetoric!
- He reputes me a cannon, and the bullet, that’s he;
- I shoot thee at the swain.
Moth
45- Thump then, and I flee.
- Exit.
Armado
46 - 49- A most acute juvenal, volable and free of grace!
- By thy favor, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face:
- Most rude melancholy, valor gives thee place.
- My herald is return’d.
- Enter Page Moth and Clown Costard.
Moth
50- A wonder, master! Here’s a costard broken in a shin.
Armado
51- Some enigma, some riddle—come, thy l’envoi—begin.
Costard
52 - 54- No egma, no riddle, no l’envoi, no salve in the mail, sir. O
- sir, plantan, a plain plantan; no l’envoi, no l’envoi, no
- salve, sir, but a plantan!
Armado
55 - 58- By virtue thou enforcest laughter—thy silly thought, my
- spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous
- smiling—O, pardon me, my stars! Doth the inconsiderate take
- salve for l’envoi, and the word “l’envoi” for a salve?
Moth
59- Do the wise think them other? Is not l’envoi a salve?
Armado
60 - 65- No, page, it is an epilogue or discourse, to make plain
- Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.
- I will example it:
- The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee
- Were still at odds, being but three.
- There’s the moral. Now the l’envoi.
Byam Shaw, 1901
Moth
66- I will add the l’envoi. Say the moral again.
Armado
67 - 68- The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee
- Were still at odds, being but three.
Moth
69 - 73- Until the goose came out of door,
- And stayed the odds by adding four.
- Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l’envoi:
- The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee
- Were still at odds, being but three.
Armado
74 - 75- Until the goose came out of door,
- Staying the odds by adding four.
Moth
76- A good l’envoi, ending in the goose; would you desire more?
Costard
77 - 80- The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that’s flat.
- Sir, your pennyworth is good, and your goose be fat.
- To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose:
- Let me see: a fat l’envoi—ay, that’s a fat goose.
Armado
81- Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin?
Moth
82 - 83- By saying that a costard was broken in a shin.
- Then call’d you for the l’envoi.
Costard
84 - 86- True, and I for a plantan; thus came your argument in;
- Then the boy’s fat l’envoi, the goose that you bought,
- And he ended the market.
Armado
87- But tell me, how was there a costard broken in a shin?
Moth
88- I will tell you sensibly.
Costard
89 - 91- Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth. I will speak that l’envoi:
- I, Costard, running out that was safely within,
- Fell over the threshold, and broke my shin.
Armado
92- We will talk no more of this matter.
Costard
93- Till there be more matter in the shin.
Armado
94- Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.
Costard
95 - 96- O, marry me to one Frances! I smell some l’envoi, some
- goose, in this.
Armado
97 - 99- By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty,
- enfreedoming thy person: thou wert immured, restrained,
- captivated, bound.
Costard
100 - 101- True, true, and now you will be my purgation and let me
- loose.
Armado
102 - 107- I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance, and in lieu
- thereof, impose on thee nothing but this: bear this
- significant
- Giving a letter
- to the country maid Jaquenetta. There is remuneration, for
- the best ward of mine honor is rewarding my dependents.
- Moth, follow.
Moth
108- Like the sequel, I. Signior Costard, adieu.
- Exit Armado, followed by Moth.
Costard
109 - 116- My sweet ounce of man’s flesh, my incony Jew!
- Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration! O, that’s
- the Latin word for three farthings: three
- farthings—remuneration. “What’s the price of this
- inkle?”—“One penny.”—“No, I’ll give you a remuneration”:
- why, it carries it. Remuneration: why, it is a fairer name
- than French crown! I will never buy and sell out of this
- word.
- Enter Berowne.
Berowne
117- O, my good knave Costard, exceedingly well met!
Costard
118- Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man buy for a remuneration?
Berowne
119- O, what is a remuneration?
Costard
120- Marry, sir, halfpenny farthing.
Berowne
121- O, why then three-farthing worth of silk.
Costard
122- I thank your worship, God be wi’ you!
Berowne
123 - 125- O, stay, slave; I must employ thee.
- As thou wilt win my favor, good my knave,
- Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.
From: American Book Company edition of Love's Labor's Lost
W. J. Rolfe, 1903
Costard
126- When would you have it done, sir?
Berowne
127- O, this afternoon.
Costard
128- Well, I will do it, sir; fare you well.
Berowne
129- O, thou knowest not what it is.
Costard
130- I shall know, sir, when I have done it.
Berowne
131- Why, villain, thou must know first.
Costard
132- I will come to your worship tomorrow morning.
Berowne
133 - 139- It must be done this afternoon. Hark, slave, it is but this:
- The Princess comes to hunt here in the park,
- And in her train there is a gentle lady:
- When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name,
- And Rosaline they call her. Ask for her,
- And to her white hand see thou do commend
- This seal’d-up counsel. There’s thy guerdon; go.
Costard
140 - 142- Garden, O sweet gardon! Better than remuneration,
- eleven-pence-farthing better; most sweet gardon! I will do
- it, sir, in print. Gardon! Remuneration!
- Exit.
Berowne
143 - 174- O, and I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love’s whip,
- A very beadle to a humorous sigh,
- A critic, nay, a night-watch constable,
- A domineering pedant o’er the boy,
- Than whom no mortal so magnificent!
- This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,
- This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid,
- Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
- Th’ anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
- Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
- Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
- Sole imperator and great general
- Of trotting paritors (O my little heart!),
- And I to be a corporal of his field,
- And wear his colors like a tumbler’s hoop!
- What! I love, I sue, I seek a wife—
- A woman, that is like a German clock,
- Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,
- And never going aright, being a watch,
- But being watch’d that it may still go right!
- Nay, to be perjur’d, which is worst of all;
- And among three to love the worst of all,
- A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,
- With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes;
- Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed
- Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard.
- And I to sigh for her, to watch for her,
- To pray for her, go to! It is a plague
- That Cupid will impose for my neglect
- Of his almighty dreadful little might.
- Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, groan:
- Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.
- Exit.
Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?
Armado and Moth
Edwin Austin Abbey, 1891