should fall into so strong a liking with old Sir Roland's youngest son?

Ros. The Duke my father lov'd his father dearly.

Cel. Doth it therefore ensue that you should love his son dearly? By this kind of chase, I should hate him, for my father hated his father dearly; yet I hate not Orlando.

2

Ros. No, 'faith, hate him not, for my sake.

Cel. Why should I not? doth he not deserve well?3 Ros. Let me love him for that; and do you love him because I do. Look, here comes the Duke.

Cel. With his eyes full of anger.

Enter DUKE FREDERICK, with Lords.

Fred. Mistress, despatch you with your safest haste, And get you from our Court.

Ros.

Fred.

Me, uncle?

You, cousin:

Within these ten days if that thou be'st found
So near our public Court as twenty miles,
Thou diest for it.

Ros.
I do beseech your Grace,
Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me.
If with myself I hold intelligence,

Or have acquaintance with mine own desires;
If that I do not dream, or be not frantic,

(As I do trust I am not,) then, dear uncle,
Never so much as in a thought unborn
Did I offend your Highness.

Fred.
If their purgation did consist in words,*

Thus do all traitors:

They are as innocent as grace itself:
Let it suffice thee, that I trust thee not.

Ros. Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor.

Tell me whereon the likelihood depends.

Fred. Thou art thy father's daughter; there's enough.
Ros. So was I when your Highness took his dukedom;

So was I when your Highness banish'd him:

Treason is not inherited, my lord;

Or, if we did derive it from our friends,

What's that to me? my father was no traitor:

2 In Shakespeare's time, it was just as correct to speak of hating dearly as of loving dearly; of a dear foe as of a dear friend. Thus, in Hamlet, Act i. scene 2: " Would I had met my dearest foe in Heaven, or ever I had seen

that day."

3 Celia here speaks ironically, her meaning apparently being, - "It was because your father deserved well that my father hated him; and ought I not, by your reasoning, to hate Orlando for the same cause?"

Purgaton is proof of innocence; clearing themselves of the matter charged. See Act v. scene 4, note 4.

Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much
To think my poverty is treacherous.

Cel. Dear sovereign, hear me speak.

Fred. Ay, Celia; we stay'd her for your sake;
Else had she with her father rang'd along.

Cel. I did not then entreat to have her stay;
It was your pleasure and your own remorse: 5
I was too young that time to value her,
But now I know her: if she be a traitor,
Why, so am I; we still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together;
And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,

Still we went coupled and inseparable.

Fred. She is too subtle for thee; and her smoothness, Her very silence, and her patience,

Speak to the people, and they pity her.

Thou art a fool: she robs thee of thy name;

And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous
When she is gone. Then open not thy lips;

Firm and irrevocable is my doom

Which I have pass'd upon her: she is banish'd.

Cel. Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege.

I cannot live out of her company.

Fred. You are a fool. You, niece, provide yourself: If you out-stay the time, upon mine honour,

And in the greatness of my word, you die.

[Exeunt FREDERICK and Lords Cel. O, my poor Rosalind! whither wilt thou go? Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine. I charge thee, be not thou more griev'd than I am. Ros. I have more cause. Cel. Thou hast not, cousin. Pr'ythee, be cheerful: know'st thou not the Duke Hath banish'd me, his daughter?

Ros.

That he hath not.

Cel. No? hath not? Rosalind lacks then the love
Which teacheth me that thou and I am one: 6

Shall we be sunder'd? shall we part, sweet girl?
No; let my father seek another heir.
Therefore devise with me how we may fly,
Whither to go, and what to bear with us:
And do not seek to take the charge upon you,
To bear your griefs yourself, and leave me out;

Remorse was continually used by the old writers for pity.

The original has thee instead of me. The change was made by War burton has been renewed by Dyce, and ought never to have been rejected

For, by this Heaven, now at our sorrows pale,
Say what thou canst, I'll go along with thee.
Ros. Why, whither shall we go?

Cel. To seek my uncle in the Forest of Arden.
Ros. Alas, what danger will it be to us,
Maids as we are, to travel forth so far!
Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.

Cel. I'll put myself in poor and mean attire,
And with a kind of umber smirch my face;7
The like do you: so shall we pass along,
And never stir assailants.

Were 't not better,

Ros.
Because that I am more than common tall,
That I did suit me all points like a man?
A gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh,
A boar-spear in my hand; and-in my heart
Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will
We'll have a swashing and a martial outside; 10
As many other mannish cowards have,

That do outface it with their semblances.11

Cel. What shall I call thee when thou art a man ?
Ros. I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page;
And therefore look you call me Ganymede.

But what will you be called?

Cel. Something that hath a reference to my state; No longer Celia, but Aliena.

Ros. But, cousin, what if we assay'd to steal The clownish Fool out of your father's Court? Would he not be a comfort to our travel?

Cel. He'll go along o'er the wide world with me;
Leave me alone to woo him. Let's away,

And get our jewels and our wealth together;
Devise the fittest time and safest way

To hide us from pursuit that will be made
After my flight. Now go we in content,

To liberty, and not to banishment.

Italy.

[Exeunt.

Umber was a dusky, yellow-coloured earth, brought from Umbria in

This was one of the old words for a cutlass, or short, crooked sword. It was variously spelt, courtlas, courtlax, curtlax.

9 That is, "Whatever hidden woman's fear lies in my heart."

10 Swashing is dashing, swaggering. Thus, in Fuller's Worthies of England: "A ruffian is the same with a swaggerer, so called, because endeavouring to make that side swag or weigh down, whereon he engageth. The same also

with swash-buckler, from swashing or making a noise on bucklers."

11 Compare with this Portia's delectable speech on a like occasion; her last but one in The Merchant of Venice, Act iii. scene 4.

ACT II. SCENE I. The Forest of Arden.

Enter the DUKE, AMIENS, and other Lords, drest like Foresters

Duke. Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious Court?
Here feel we not the penalty of Adam.1
The seasons' difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the Winter's wind,
Which when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say,
This is no flattery, these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;"
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing:

I would not change it.*

Ami.

Happy is your Grace,

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

Duke. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me," the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should, in their own confines, with forked heads
Have their round haunches gor'd.

6

1 So in the original: modern editions have generally changed not into but. Their reasons for the change are plausible, but far from conclusive. The curse, or penalty, denounced upon Adam was, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." Now this is just what the Duke and his co-mates do not feel: they fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world." The Dake then goes on, consistently, to say what they do feel. So that I see no good cause for departing from the original reading.

The using of both the relative and the personal pronouns, in relative clauses, as which and it in this passage, was not uncommon with the best writers. Shakespeare has many instances of it, as "Who if he break." in The Merchant of Venice. So in Bacon's Advancement of Learning: "Which though it be not true, yet I forbear to note any deficiencies." It results from a doubling of the connectives, as which and when, who and if, which and though; a Latin idiom, which our language does not rightly admit of.

The "precious jewel" in the toad's head was not his bright eye, as is sometimes supposed, but one of the "secret wonders of nature." According to Edward Fenton, it was found in the heads of old, and large, and especially he toads, and was of great value for its moral and medicinal virtues.

4 In the original, these words, "I would not change it," begin the next speech. Some of the best editors transfer them justly, I think -to the Duke. 5 The verb irk has gone out of use, but its sense survives in the adjective irksome. Forked beads are barbed arrows. - Forked is here a dissyllable. as

1 Lord.

Indeed, my lord,

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;"
And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.
To-day, my lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him, as he lay along
Under an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish: and indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on th' extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

Duke.

Did he not moralize this spectacle?

But what said Jaques?

9

1 Lord. O yes, into a thousand similes.
First, for his weeping in the needless stream;
Poor deer, quoth he, thou mak'st a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much. Then, being alone.
Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends:
'Tis right, quoth he; thus misery doth part
The flux of company. Anon, a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,

And never stays to greet him: Ay, quoth Jaques,

marked also is, a little after. In Shakespeare's time, in verbs, participles, and adjectives ending with ed, the ed was always a syllable by itself. The old copies are very particular in the matter, dropping the e whenever the verse requires that syllable to coalesce with the preceding, as in gor'd and banish'd, just below. In the text as here set forth, this rule is uniformly followed, except in words ending in ied, such as died, tried, &c.

7 This shows that the Poet anglicized the name Jaques, instead of giving it the French pronunciation. The verse here requires it to be a dissyllable. I never heard Mrs. Kemble read this play; but I remember, many years ago, hearing an equally good authority, Mrs. Charles Kean, pronounce it as a dissyllable on the stage.

8 Drayton in the thirteenth song of his Poly-Olbion has a fine description of a deer-hunt, which he winds up thus:

"He who the mourner is to his own dying corse,

Upon the ruthless earth his precious tears lets fall."

And in a note upon the passage he adds, "The hart weepeth at his dying: his tears are held precious in medicine."

9 Needless for not needing. Shakespeare abounds in similar language.