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JEALOUSY.

Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange, and frown;
Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects,
I am not Adriana, nor thy wife.

The time was once, when thou unurg'd would'st

VOW.

That never words were music to thine ear,
That never object pleasing in thine eye,
That never touch well-welcome to thy hand,
That never meet sweet-savour'd in thy taste,
Unless I spake, look'd, touch'd, or carv'd to thee.

SLANDER.

For slander lives upon succession;

For ever hous'd, where it once gets possession.

ACT V.

A WOMAN'S JEALOUSY MORE DEADLY THAN POISON.

The venom clamours of a jealous woman Poison more deadly than a mad dog's tooth. It seems his sleeps were hinder'd by thy railing: And thereof comes it that his head is light. Thou say'st, his meat was sauc'd with thy upbraidings;

Unquiet meals make ill digestions,

Thereof the raging fire of fever bred;

And what's a fever but a fit of madness ?

Thou say'st, his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls
Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue,
But moody and dull melancholy,

(Kinsman to grm and comfortless despair;)
And, at her heels, a huge infectious troop
Of pale distemperatures, and foes to life?

DESCRIPTION OF A BEGGARLY FORTUNE-TELLER,

A hungry lean-fac'd villain,

A mere anatomy, a mountebank,

A thread-bare juggler, and a fortune-teller;
A needy, hollow-ey'd, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man: this pernicious slave,
Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer;
And, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,

And with no face, as 'twere outfacing me,
Cries out, I was possess'd.

OLD AGE.

Though now this grained* face of mine be hid
In sap-consuming winter's drizzled snow,
And all the conduits of my blood froze up;
Yet hath my night of life some memory,
My wasting lamp some fading glimmer left,
My dull deaf ears a little use to hear:
All these old witnesses (I cannot err,)
Tell me, thou art my son Antipholus.

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.

ACT I.

SELF-DENIAL.

BRAVE conquerors!-for so you are, That war against your own affections, And the huge army of the world's desires.

VANITY OF PLEASURE.

Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain, Which, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain.

ON STUDY.

looks

Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,
That will not be deep-search'd with saucy
Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority from others' books.
These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights,
That give a name to every fixed star,
Have no more profit of their shining nights,
Than those that walk, and wot not what they are
Too much to know, is, to know nought but fame;
And every godfather can give a name.

*Furrowed, lined.

FROST.

An envious sneaping* frost,

That bites the first born infants of the spring.

A CONCEITED COURTIER.

A man in all the world's new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain:
One, whom the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish, like enchanting harmony;
A man of compliments, whom right and wrong
Have chose as umpire of their mutiny:
This child of fancy, that Armado hight,t
For interim to our studies, shall relate,
In high-born words, the worth of many a knight
From tawny Spain, lost in the world's debate

ACT II.

BEAUTY.

My beauty, though but mean,

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise;
Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye,
Not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues.

A merrier man,

A MERRY MAN.

Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withal:
His eye begets occasion for his wit;
For every object that the one doth catch,
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest:
Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor,)
Delivers in such apt and gracious words,
That aged ears play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished;
So sweet and voluble is his discourse.

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ACT II.

HUMOUROUS DESCRIPTION OF LOVE.

()!—And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love's whip;

very beadle to a humourous 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 arm,
The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malecontents,
Dread prince of plackets,† king of codpieces,
Sole imperator, and great general

Of trotting paritors‡-0 my little heart!-
And I to be a corporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!
What? I! 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?

ACT IV.

SONNET.

Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye
('Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,)
Persuade my heart to this false perjury?

Vows, for thee broke, deserve not punishment.
A woman I forswore; but, I will prove,

Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:
My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love;

Thy grace being gain'd, cures all disgrace in me.
Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is:
Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine,
Exhal'st this vapour vow; in thee it is:

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If broken then, it is no fault of mine; If by me broke, what fool is not so wise, To lose an oath to win a paradise?

SONG.

On a day, (alack the day!)
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom, passing fair,
Playing in the wanton air:

Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, 'gan passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,

Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.
Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!
But, alack, my hand is sworn,
Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn:
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet;
Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.
Do not call it sin in me,

That I am forsworn for thee:

Thou for whom even Jove would swear,
Juno but an Ethiop were;

And deny himself for Jove,

Turning mortal for thy love.

THE POWER OF LOVE.

But love, first learned in a lady's eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain; But with the motion of all elements, Courses as swift as thought in every power; And gives to every power a double power, Above their functions and their offices. It adds a precious seeing to the eye; A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind; A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound, When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd; Love's feeling is more soft, and sensible, Than are the tender horns of cockled snails; Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste: For valour, is not love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?

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