That are recorded in this schedule here: Your oaths are pass'd; and now subscribe your names, If you are arm'd to do as sworn to do, Biron. I can but say their protestation over; King. Your oath is pass'd to pass away from these I only swore to study with your grace 20 30 40 50 King. Why, that to know, which else we should not know. Biron. Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from common sense? King. Ay, that is study's god-like recompense. Biron. Come on, then; I will swear to study so, To know the thing I am forbid to know: When mistresses from common sense are hid; Study knows that which yet it doth not know: King. These be the stops that hinder study quite 70 And train our intellects to vain delight. Biron. Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain, Which with pain purchased doth inherit pain: As, painfully to pore upon a book To seek the light of truth; while truth the while Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look: Light seeking light doth light of light beguile : So, ere you find where light in darkness lies, Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes Study me how to please the eye indeed By fixing it upon a fairer eye, Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed Study is like the heaven's glorious sun That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks: 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. King. How well he's read, to reason against reading ! 80 90 Long. He weeds the corn and still lets grow the weeding. Biron. The spring is near when green geese are a-breed ing. Dum. How follows that? Dum. In reason nothing. Biron. Fit in his place and time Something then in rhyme. King. Biron is like an envious sneaping frost 100 That bites the first born infants of the spring. Biron. Well, say I am; why should proud summer boast Before the birds have any cause to sing? Why should I joy in any abortive birth? At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth"; So you, to study now it is too late, Climb o'er the house to unlock the little gate. King. Well, sit you out go home, Biron: adieu. 110 Biron. No, my good lord; I have sworn to stay with you: And though I have for barbarism spoke more Than for that angel knowledge you can say, Yet confident I'll keep what I have swore And bide the penance of each three years' day. King. How well this yielding rescues thee from shame! a mile of my court:" Hath this been proclaimed ? Long. Four days ago. Biron. Let's see the penalty. 121 [Reads] “On pain of los ing her tongue." Who devised this penalty? Long. Marry, that did I. Biron. Sweet lord, and why? Long. To fright them hence with that dread penalty. Biron. A dangerous law against gentility! [Reads] Item, If any man be seen to talk with a woman within the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the rest of the court can possibly devise." This article, my liege, yourself must break; For well you know here comes in embassy The French king's daughter with yourself to speak- About surrender up of Aquitaine To her decrepit, sick and bedrid father: Therefore this article is made in vain, Or vainly comes the admired princess hither. 140 King. What say you, lords? why, this was quite forgot. Biron. So study evermore is overshot: While it doth study to have what it would It doth forget to do the thing it should, And when it hath the thing it hunteth most, "Tis won as towns with fire, so won, so lost. King. We must of force dispense with this decree; She must lie here on mere necessity. Biron. Necessity will make us all forsworn Not by might master'd but by special grace : mere necessity." SHAK. I.-12 150 [Subscribes. Stands in attainder of eternal shame : 160 King. Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted A man in all the world's new fashion planted, A man of complements, whom right and wrong For interim to our studies shall relate In high-born words the worth of many a knight And I will use him for my minstrelsy. 170 Biron. Armado is a most illustrious wight, A man of fire-new words, fashion's own knight. Long. Costard the swain and he shall be our sport; 180 And so to study, three years is but short. Enter DULL with a letter, and COSTARD. Dull. Which is the duke's own person? Biron. This, fellow; what wouldst ? Dull. I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his grace's tharborough: but I would see his own person in flesh and blood. Biron. This is he. Dull. Signior Arme-Arme-commends you. There's vil lany abroad: this letter will tell you more. 190 Cost. Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me. King. A letter from the magnificent Armado. Biron. How low soever the matter, I hope in God for high words. Long. A high hope for a low heaven: God grant us patience! Biron. To hear? or forbear laughing? Long. To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately; or to forbear both. 200 Biron. Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb in the merriness. Cost. The matter is to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta. The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner. Biron. In what manner? Cost. In manner and form following, sir; all those three: I was seen with her in the manor house, sitting with her upon the form, and taken following her into the park; which, put together, is in manner and form following. Now, sir, for the manner,-it is the manner of a man to speak to a woman for the form,-in some form. Biron. For the following, sir? Cost. As it shall follow in my correction: and God defend the right! King. Will you hear this letter with attention? Biron. As we would hear an oracle. Cost. Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh. 220 King [reads]. "Great deputy, the welkin's vicegerent and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul's earth's god, and body's fostering patron." Cost. Not a word of Costard yet. King [reads]. So it is, Cost. It may be so: but if he say it is so, true, but so. King. Peace! he is, in telling Cost. Be to me and every man that dares not fight! 230 King. No words! Cost. Of other men's secrets, I beseech you. King [reads]. "So it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when. About the sixth hour; when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper: so much for the time when. Now for the ground which; which, I mean, I walked upon : it is ycleped thy park. Then for the place where; where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene and most preposter ous event, that draweth from my snow white pen the eboncoloured ink, which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest: but to the place where; it standeth northnorth-east and by east from the west corner of thy curiousknotted garden: there did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth," Cost. Me? King [reads]. "that unlettered small-knowing soul,”— Cost. Me? King [reads]. Cost. Still me? 66 that shallow vassal,"— 251 King [reads]. "which, as I remember, hight Costard,— |