Description of a beggarly Conjurer, or a For-| A man in all the world's new fashion planted,

tune-Teller.

A hungry, lean-faced 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 my eyes, feeling my pulse,
And with no face as 't were outfacing me,
Cries out, I was possest.

Old Age.

Not know my voice! O time's extremity, Hast thou so crack'd and splitted my poor tongue

In seven short years, that here my only son
Knows not my feeble key of untun'd cares?
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.

4. LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. SHAKSPEARE. A laudable Ambition for Fame and true Conquest described.

King. LET Fame, that all hunt after in
their lives,

Live register'd upon our brazen tombs,
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
When, spite of cormorant devouring time,
Th' endeavour of this present breath may buy
That honor which shall bate his scythe's keen
edge,

And make us heirs of all eternity.
Therefore, brave conquerors! for so you are
That war against your own affections,

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,
For interim to our studies, shall relate
In high-born words the worth of many a
knight,

From tawny Spain, lost in the word's debate.
How you delight, my lords, I know not, I:
But, I protest, I love to hear him lie,
And I will use him for my minstrelsy.

Biron. Armado is a most illustrious wight,
A man of fire-new words, fashion's own knight.
A Merry Man.

A merrier 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.

A Comical Description of Cupid or Love.
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 more magnificent;
This whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward
boy,

This Signior Julio's giant dwarf, Dan Cupid,
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
Th' anointed sovereign of sighs and groans;

And the huge army of the world's desires;-Liege of all loiterers and malcontents;

Our late edict shall strongly stand in force.
Navarre shall be the wonder of the world:

Our court shall be a little academe,
Still and contemplative in living art.

On Study.

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.
[fame,
Too much to know, is to know nought but
And every godfather can give a name.

A conceited Courtier, or Man of Compliments.
Our court, you know, is haunted

With a refined traveller of Spain;

Sole imperator, and great general

Of trotting 'paritors: (O my little heart)
And I to be a corporal of his file,

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 right, being a watch,
But being watch'd, that it may still go right?

Sonnet.

Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye
('Gainst whom the world cannot hold argu-
ment)

Persuade my heart to this false perjury?

Vows, for thee broke, deserve not punishA woman I forswore; but I will prove [ment.

(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 vapor is ;

Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost | Still climbing trees in the Hesperides ? Exhal'st this vapor vow; in thee it is: [shine, Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical

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 ?

Another,

On a day (alack the day!)
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spy'd 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 e'en Jove would swear

Juno but an Ethiope were;

And deny himself for Jove,

Turning mortal for thy love.

Commanding Beauty.

-Who sees the heavenly Rosalind,
That, like a rude and savage man of Inde,
At the first opening of the gorgeous east,
Bows not his vassal head, and, strucken blind,
Kisses the base ground with obedient breast?
What peremptory eagle-sighted eye

Dares look upon the heaven of her brow,
That is not blinded by her majesty ?

The Power of Love.

Why universal plodding prisons up
The nimble spirits in the arteries,
As motion and long-during action tire
The sinewy vigor of the traveller.

As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair:
And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write,
Until his ink were tempered with love's sighs:
O then his eyes would ravish savage ears,
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive :
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire:
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish all the world;
Else, none at all in aught proves excellent.

Ladies mask'd and unmask'd.

Fair ladies mask'd are roses in the bud; Dismask'd, their damask sweet commixture shown,

Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown.

A Lord Chamberlain or Gentleman Usher.
This fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons pease;
And utters it again when God doth please:
He is wit's pedler; and retails his wares [fairs.
At wakes, and wassels, meetings, markets,
And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,
Have not the grace to grace it with such show.
This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve;
Had he been Adam he had tempted Eve.
He can carve too, and lisp: Why this is he
That kiss'd his hand away in courtesy ;
This is the ape of form, Monsieur the nice,
That when he plays at tables, chides the dice
In honorable terms: nay, he can sing
A mean most meanly; and in ushering
Mend him who can : the ladies call him sweet;
The stairs as he treads on them kiss his feet.
This is the flower that smiles on every one,
To show his teeth as white as whale his bone
And consciences that will not die in debt,
Pay him the due of honey-tongu'd Boyet.

See where it comes! Behaviour, what wert
thou
[now?
Till this man show'd thee? and what art thou

The Effects of Love.

When would you, my liege-or you-or you-
In leaden contemplation have found out
Such fiery numbers, as the prompting eyes
Of beauteous tutors have enrich'd you with?
Other slow arts entirely keep the brain; For your fair sakes have we neglected time,
And therefore finding barren practisers, Play'd foul play with our oaths; your beauty,
Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil;
ladies,
[mors
But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Hath much deform'd us, fashioning our hu-
Lives not alone immured in the brain; Even to the opposed end of our intents;
But, with the motion of all elements,
And what in us hath seem'd ridiculous-
Courses as swift as thought in every pow'r;
As love is full of unbefitting strains,
And gives to every pow'r a double pow'r; All wanton as a child, skipping and vain;
Above their functions and their offices, Form'd by the eye; and therefore like the eye,
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
Full of strange shapes, of habits, and of forms,
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind: Varying in subjects as the eye doth roll
A lover's ears will hear the lowest sound, To every vary'd object in his glance:
When the suspicious head of theft is stopt. Which party-colored presence of loose love,
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible Put on by us, if, in your heavenly eyes,
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails. "T hath misbecom'd our oaths and gravities,
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in Those heavenly eyes that look into these faults
For valor, is not love a Hercules, [taste, Suggested us to make them; therefore, ladies,

Our love being yours, the error that love makes Is likewise yours.

If this austere, insociable life
Change not your offer made in heat of blood;
If frosts, and fasts, hard lodging and thin
weeds,

Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,
But that it bear this trial, and last love;
Then, at the expiration of the year,
Come challenge me..

Ros. Oft have I heard of you, my lord
Biron,

Before I saw you; and the world's large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks;
Full of comparisons, and wounding flouts;
Which you on all estates will execute,
That lie within the mercy of your wit: [brain
To weed this wormwood from your fruitful
And therewithal to win me, if you please,
(Without the which I am not to be won) [day,
You shall this twelvemonth term, from day to
Visit the speechless sick, and still converse
With groaning wretches: and your task shall
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit, [be,
T'enforce the pained impotent to smile.
Bir. To move wild laughter in the throat

Which for these nineteen years we have let Let mine own judgment pattern out my death,
Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave, [sleep; And nothing come in partial.
That goes not out to prey now as fond fathers
Having bound up the threat'ning twigs of
birch,

Only to stick it in their children's sight
For terror, not for use; in time the rod

Mercy in Governors recommended.

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,

Becomes more mock'd than fear'd; so our Become them with one half so good a grace

And make us lose the good we oft might win, We kill the fowl of season; shall we serve By fearing to attempt.

All Men frail.

Angelo. We must not make a scare-crow
of the law,

Setting it up to scare the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape till custom make it
Their perch and not their terror.

Esca. Ay, but yet

Let us be keen, and rather cut a little, Than fall, and bruise to death: alas! this tleman,

With less respect than we do minister [Heaven
To our gross selves? Good, good my lord,
bethink you;

Who is it that hath dy'd for this offence?
-There's many have committed it.

Ang. The law hath not been dead, though
it hath slept ;

Those many had not dar'd to do that evil, If the first man that did th' edict infringe Had answer'd for his deed: now, 'tis awake; gen-Takes note of what is done; and, like a prophet,

Whom I would save, had a most noble father.
Let but your honor know,

(Whom I believe to be most strait in virtue)
That in the working of your own affections,
Had time coher'd with place, or place with
wishing,

Or that the resolute acting of your blood
Could have attain'd th' effect of your own

purpose,

Looks in a glass, that shows what future evils
(Or new, or by remissness new conceiv'd,
And so in progress to be hatch'd and born)
Are now to have no successive degrees,
But, ere they live, to end.

Ang. I show it most of all when I show
For then I pity those I do not know,
Which a dismiss'd offence would after gall;
And do him right, that, answering one foul
Lives not to act another.
[wrong,

Whether you had not some time in your life
Err'd in this point, which now you censure
And pull'd the law upon you.
[him,
Angelo. "Tis one thing to be tempted, Es-
Another thing to fall. I'll not deny, [calus,
The jury, passing on the pris'ner's life,
May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two Oh, 'tis excellent
Guiltier than him they try; what 's open made To have a giant's strength! but it is tyrannous
To justice, that justice seizes. What know To use it like a giant.

the laws

[pregnant,

That thieves do pass on thieves? 'Tis very
The jewel that we find, we stoop and take it,
Because we see it; but what we do not see,
We tread upon, and never think of it.
You may not so extenuate his offence,
For I have had such faults: but rather tell me,
When I that censure him do so offend,

The Abuse of Authority.

Great Men's Abuse of Power.
Could great men thunder,
[quiet;
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be
For ev'ry pelting, petty officer [but thunder!
Would use his heav'n for thunder! Nothing
Merciful heav'n!
[bolt
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous

[man,

Love in a grave severe Governor.

pray

[words:

Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,
Than the soft myrtle. O, but man! proud When I would pray and think, I think and
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he 's most assur'd, To sev'ral subjects: Heav'n hath my empty
His glassy essence-like an angry ape, Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heav'n Anchors on Isabel. Heav'n 's in my mouth,
As makes the angels weep; who, with our As if I did but only chew his name;
Would all themselves laugh mortal. [spleens, And in my heart the strong and swelling evil
Consciousness of our own Faults should make of my conception: the state whereon I studied,
us merciful.
Is like a good thing, being often read,
Grown fear'd and tedious; yea, my gravity,
Wherein (let no man hear me) I take pride,
Could I with boot, change for an idle plume
Which the air beats for vain. O place! O

me?

Ang. Why do you put these sayings upon [others, Isab. Because authority, though it err like Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself, That skims the vice o' the top go to your bosom :

form!

How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit, [know Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls To thy false seeming! Blood, thou still art blood!

Knock there; and ask your heart what it doth
That's like my brother's fault: if it confess
A natural guiltiness, such as is his,
Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother's life.

Honest Bribery.

Isab. Hark how I'll bribe you! Good my
Ang. How! bribe me? [Lord, turn back.
Isab. Not with fond shekels of the tested
gold,

Or stones whose rate is either rich or poor
As fancy values them; but with true prayers,
That shall be up at heaven, and enter there
Ere the sun rise: prayers from preserved souls,
From fasting maids whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.

or mine?

The Power of virtuous Beauty.
Isab. Save your honour! [Exit Isab.
Ang. From thee; even from thy virtue !-
What's this? What's this? Is this her fault
[ha!
The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most?
Not she; nor doth she tempt; but it is I,
That, lying by the violet, in the sun,
Do, as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be,
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground
Shall we desire to rase the sanctuary, [enough,
And pitch our evils there? Oh, fie, fie, fie,
What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully, for those things
That make her good? Oh, let her brother live:
Thieves for their robbery have authority,
When judges steal themselves. What! do I
That I desire to hear her speak again, [love her,
And feast upon her eyes? What is 't I dream
Oh, cunning enemy, that to catch a saint, [on?
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most danger-

ous

Is that temptation, that does goad us on

Let's write good angel on the devil's horn ;-
'Tis not the devil's crest.

A simile on the Presence of the beloved Object.
LO Heavens!

Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
Making both it unable for itself,
And dispossessing all my other parts
Of necessary fitness ?

So play the foolish throngs with one that
swoons;

Come all to help him, and thus stop the air
By which he should revive and even so
The gen'ral subject to a well-wish'd king,
Quit their own part, and in obsequious fond-

To sin in loving virtue ne'er could the Better it were a brother died at once,

Than that a sister, by redeeming him
Should die for ever.

Ang. Were not you then as cruel as the
That you have slander'd so? [sentence