You [To Oliver.] to your land, and love, and great not become me; my way is, to conjure you; and allies:I'll begin with the women. I 'charge you, O women, You [To Silvius.] to a long and well-deserved for the love you bear to men, to like as much of bed:And you [To Touchstone.] to wrangling; for thy men, for the love you bear to women, (as I perceive

loving voyage

this play as please them: and so I charge you, ( by your simpering, none of you hate them,) that

Is but for two months victuall'd:—So to your plea-between you and the women, the play may please.

If I were a woman, I would Liss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked 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 curt'sy, bid me farewell. Exeunt.

EPILOGUE.

(A dance.

Of this play the fable is wild and pleasing. I know not how the ladies will approve the facility with which both Rosalind and Celia give away

Ros. It is not the fashion to see tne lady the epi- their hearts. To Celia much may be forgiven, for logue: but it is no more unhandsome, than to see the heroism of her friendship. The character of the lord the prologue. If it be true, that good wine Jaques is natural and well preserved. The comic needs no bush, 'tis true, that a good play needs no dialogue is very sprightly, with less mixture of low epilogue: Yet to good wine they do use good buffoonery than in some other plays; and the graver bushes; and good plays prove the better by the part is elegant and harmonious. By hastening to help of good epilogues. What a case am I in then, the end of this work, Shakspeare suppressed the that am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot insi- dialogue between the usurper and the hermit, and nuate with you in the behalf of a good play? I am lost an opportunity of exhibiting a moral lesson, in not furnished' like a beggar, therefore to beg will which he might have found matter worthy of his highest powers.

(1) Dressed.

(2) That I liked.

JOHNSON.

ACT I.

SCENE I-Rousillon. A Room in the Countess's Palace. Enter Bertram, the Countess of Rousillon, Helena, and Lafeu, in mourning.

Countess.

Scene, partly in France, and partly in Tuscany.

Ber. I heard not of it before.

Laf. I would, it were not notorious.-Was this gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?

Count. His sole child, my lord; and bequeathed to my overlooking. I have those hopes of her good, that her education promises: her dispositions she inherits, which make fair gifts fairer; for where

IN delivering my son from me, I bury a second an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there

husband.

commendations go with pity, they are virtues and

Ber. And I, in going, madam, weep o'er my traitors too; in her they are the better for their father's death anew: but I must attend his majes- simpleness; she derives her honesty, and achieves ty's command, to whom I am now in ward,' ever- her goodness. more in subjection.

Laf. Your commendations, madam, get from Laf. You shall find of the king a husband, ma- her tears. dam;-you, sir, a father: He that so generally is Count. 'Tis the best brine a maiden can season at all times good, must of necessity hold his virtue her praise in. The remembrance of her father to you; whose worthiness would stir it up where never approaches her heart, but the tyranny of her it wanted, rather than lack it where there is such sorrows takes all livelihoods from her cheek. No abundance. more of this, Helena, go to, no more; lets it be Count. What hope is there of his majesty's rather thought you affect a sorrow, than to have. Hel. I do affect a sorrow, indeed, but I have it

amendment?

Laf. He hath abandoned his physicians, madam; too. under whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope; and finds no other advantage in the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living. process but only the losing of hope by time.

Laf. Moderate lamentation is the right of the

Count. This young gentlewoman had a father (0, that had 2 how sad a passage 'tis !) whose skill was almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. 'Would, for the king's sake, he were living! I think, it would be the death of the king's disease. Laf. How called you the man you speak of,

madam?

Count. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.

Ber. Madam, I desire your holy wishes.
Laf. How understand we that?

Count. Be thou blest, Bertram! and succeed
thy father

In manners, as in shape! thy blood, and virtue, Contend for empire in thee; and thy goodness Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Count. He was famous, sir, in his profession, and Rather in power, than use; and keep thy friend it was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon. Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence, Laf. He was excellent, indeed, madam; the king But never tax'd for speech. What heaven more will, very lately spoke of him, admiringly, and mourn- That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck ingly he was skilful enough to have lived still, if

down,

knowledge could be set up against mortality. Fall on thy head! Farewell.-My lord,
Ber. What is it, my good lord, the king lan-Tis an unseason'd courtier; good my lord,
guishes of?
Laf. A fistula, my lord.

(1) Under his particular care, as my guardian. (2) The countess recollects her own loss of a husband, and observes how heavily had passes through her mind.

(3) Qualities of good breeding and erudition.

Advise him.

Laf.

He cannot want the best

(4) i. e. Her excellencies are the better because they are artless.

(5) All appearance of life.

(6) i. e. That may help thee with more and bet Iter qualifications.

That shall attend his love. Par. There's little can be said in't; 'tis against Count. Heaven bless him!-Farewell, Bertram. the rule of nature. To speak on the part of vir [Exit Countess. ginity, is to accuse your mothers: which is most Ber. The best wishes, that can be forged in your infallible disobedience. He, that hangs himself, is thoughts, [To Helena.] be servants to you! Be a virgin virginity murders itself; and should be comfortable to my mother, your mistress, and make buried in highways, out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity

much of her.

Laf. Farewell, pretty lady: You must hold the breeds mites, much like a cheese; consumes itself credit of your father. [Exe. Bertram and Lafeu. to the very paring, and so diez with feeding his own Hel. O, were that all!-I think not on my father; stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, And these great tears grace his remembrance more made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin Than those I shed for him. What was he like?

I have forgot him: my imagination
Carries no favour in it, but Bertram's.
I am undone; there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. It were all one,
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it, he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind, that would be mated by the lion,
Must die for love. "Twas pretty, though a plague,
To see him every hour; to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart's table; heart, too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour:4
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his relics. Who comes here?
Enter Parolles.

One that goes with him: I love him for his sake;
And yet I know him a notorious liar,
Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;
Yet these fix'd evils sit so fit in him,
That they take place, when virtue's steely bones
Look bleak in the cold wind; withal, full oft we see
Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.
Par. Save you, fair queen.

Hel. And you, monarch.

Par. No.

Hel. And no.

Par. Are you meditating on virginity? Hel. Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you; let me ask you a question: Man is enemy to virginity; how may we barricado it against him? Par. Keep him out.

Hel. But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant in the defence, yet is weak: unfold to us some warlike resistance.

Par. There is none; man, sitting down before vou, will undermine you, and blow you up.

Hel. Bless our poor virginity from underminers, and blowers up!-Is there no military policy, how virgins might blow up men?

Par. Virginity, being blown down, man will quicklier be blown up: marry, in blowing him! down again, with the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature, to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase; and there was never virgin got, till virginity was first lost. That, you were made of, is metal to make virgins. Virginity, by being once lost, may be ten times found: by being ever kept, it is ever lost: 'tis too cold a companion; away with it.

Hel. I will stand for't a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

(1) i. e. May you be mistress of your wishes, and have power to bring them to effect.

(2) Helena considers her heart as the tablet on which his resemblance was portrayed.

(3) Peculiarity of feature. (4) Countenance.

in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by't; Out with't: within ten years it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the prin cipal itself not much the worse: Away with't.

Hel. How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?

Par. Let me see: Marry, ill, to like him that ne'er it likes. 'Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept, the less worth: off with't, while 'tis vendible: answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion; richly suited, but unsuitable: just like the brooch and toothpick, which wear not now: Your dates is better in your pie and your porridge, than in your cheek: And your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears; it looks ill, it eats dryly; marry, 'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet, 'tis a withered pear: Will you any thing with it? Hel. Not my virginity vet.

There shall your master have a thousand loves.
A mother, and a mistress, and a friend,
A phoenix, captain, and an enemy,
A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign,
A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear;
His humble ambition, proud humility,
His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet,
His faith, his sweet disaster; with a world'
Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms,
That blinking Cupid gossips. Now shall he-
I know not what he shall :-God send him well!-
The court's a learning-place;-and he is one-
Par. What one, i'faith?

Hel. That I wish well.-'Tis pity-
Par. What's pity?

Hel. That wishing well had not a body in't,
Which might be felt: that we, the poorer born,
Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,
Might with effects of them follow our friends,
And show what we alone must think; which never
Returns us thanks.

(6) A quibble on date, which means age, and candied fruit.

(7) i. e. And show by realities what we LOW Imust only think.