To-morrow, sir, I wrestle for my credit; and he that escapes me without some broken limb shall acquit him well. Your brother is but young and tender; and, for your love, I would be loath to foil him, as Imust, for my own honour, if he come in: therefore, out of my love to you, I came hither to acquaint you withal, that either you might stay him from his intendment or brook such disgrace well as he shall run into, in that it is a thing of his own search and altogether against my will. OLIVER Charles, I thank thee for thy love to me, which thou shalt find I will most kindly requite. Ihad myself notice of my brother's purpose herein and have by underhand means laboured to dissuade him from it, but he is resolute. I'll tell thee, Charles:
it is the stubbornest young fellow of France, full of ambition, an envious emulator of every man's good parts, a secret and villanous contriver against me his natural brother: therefore use thy discretion; I had as lief thou didst break his neck as his finger. And thou wert best look to't;for if thou dost him any slight disgrace or if he do not mightily grace himself on thee, he will practise against thee by poison, entrap thee by some treacherous device and never leave thee till he hath ta'en thy life by some indirect means or other;for, I assure thee, and almost with tears I speak it, there is not one so young and so villanous this day living. I speak but brotherly of him; but should I anatomize him to thee as he is, I must blush and weep and thou must look pale and wonder. CHARLES I am heartily glad I came hither to you.
If he come to-morrow, I'll give him his payment: if ever he go alone again, I'll never wrestle for prize more:
and so God keep your worship! OLIVER Farewell, good Charles.
Exit CHARLES
Now will I stir this gamester: I hope I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than he. Yet he's gentle, never schooled and yet learned, full of noble device, of all sorts enchantingly beloved, and indeed so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprised: but it shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all: nothing remains but that I kindle the boy thither; which now I'll go about.
Exit SCENE II. Lawn before the Duke's palace. Enter CELIA and ROSALIND CELIA I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry. ROSALIND Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of;and would you yet I were merrier? Unless you could teach me to forget a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleasure. CELIA Herein I see thou lovest me not with the full weight that I love thee. If my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me, I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine: so wouldst thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously tempered as mine is to thee. ROSALIND Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to rejoice in yours. CELIA You know my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to have: and, truly, when he dies, thou shalt be his heir, for what he hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee again in affection; by mine honour, I will; and when Ibreak that oath, let me turn monster: therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear Rose, be merry. ROSALIND From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports. Let me see; what think you of falling in love? CELIA Marry, I prithee, do, to make sport withal:
but love no man in good earnest; nor no further in sport neither than with safety of a pure blush thou mayst in honour come off again. ROSALIND What shall be our sport, then? CELIA Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally. ROSALIND I would we could do so, for her benefits are mightily misplaced, and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women. CELIA 'Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest, and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly. ROSALIND Nay, now thou goest from Fortune's office to Nature's: Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature.
Enter TOUCHSTONE CELIA No? when Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by Fortune fall into the fire? Though Nature hath given us wit to flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument? ROSALIND Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when Fortune makes Nature's natural the cutter-off of Nature's wit. CELIA Peradventure this is not Fortune's work neither, but Nature's; who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses and hath sent this natural for our whetstone; for always the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. How now, wit! whither wander you? TOUCHSTONE Mistress, you must come away to your father. CELIA Were you made the messenger? TOUCHSTONE No, by mine honour, but I was bid to come for you. ROSALIND Where learned you that oath, fool? TOUCHSTONE Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were good pancakes and swore by his honour the mustard was naught: now I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and the mustard was good, and yet was not the knight forsworn. CELIA How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge? ROSALIND Ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom. TOUCHSTONE Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave. CELIA By our beards, if we had them, thou art. TOUCHSTONE By my knavery, if I had it, then I were;but if you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn:
no more was this knight swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard. CELIA Prithee, who is't that thou meanest? TOUCHSTONE One that old Frederick, your father, loves. CELIA My father's love is enough to honour him:
enough!
