SCENE I
The same. Enter DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO and MOTH DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing. MOTH Concolinel.
Singing DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years; take this key, give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately hither: I must employ him in a letter to my love. MOTH Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO How meanest thou? brawling in French? MOTH No, my complete master: but to jig off a tune at the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet, humour it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you swallowed love with singing love, sometime through the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling love; with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin-belly doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in your pocket like a man after the old painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away.
These are complements, these are humours; these betray nice wenches, that would be betrayed without these; and make them men of note--do you note me?--that most are affected to these.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO How hast thou purchased this experience? MOTH By my penny of observation.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO But O,--but O,-- MOTH 'The hobby-horse is forgot.'
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO Callest thou my love 'hobby-horse'? MOTH No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO Almost I had. MOTH Negligent student! learn her by heart.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO By heart and in heart, boy. MOTH And out of heart, master: all those three I will prove.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO What wilt thou prove? MOTH A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, upon the instant: by heart you love her, because your heart cannot come by her; in heart you love her, because your heart is in love with her; and out of heart you love her, being out of heart that you cannot enjoy her.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO I am all these three. MOTH And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO Fetch hither the swain: he must carry me a letter. MOTH A message well sympathized; a horse to be ambassador for an ass.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO Ha, ha! what sayest thou? MOTH Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse, for he is very slow-gaited. But I go.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO The way is but short: away! MOTH As swift as lead, sir.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO The meaning, pretty ingenious?
Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow? MOTH Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO I say lead is slow. MOTH You are too swift, sir, to say so:
Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun?
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO Sweet smoke of rhetoric!
He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that's he:
I shoot thee at the swain. MOTH Thump then and I flee.
Exit DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO A most acute juvenal; voluble and free of grace!
By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face:
Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.
My herald is return'd.
Re-enter MOTH with COSTARD MOTH A wonder, master! here's a costard broken in a shin.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO Some enigma, some riddle: come, thy l'envoy; begin. COSTARD No enigma, no riddle, no l'envoy; no salve in the mail, sir: O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain! no l'envoy, no l'envoy; no salve, sir, but a plantain!
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO By virtue, thou enforcest laughter; thy silly thought my spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous smiling. O, pardon me, my stars!
Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l'envoy, and the word l'envoy for a salve? MOTH Do the wise think them other? is not l'envoy a salve?
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO No, page: it is an epilogue or discourse, to make plain Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.
I will example it:
The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee, Were still at odds, being but three.
There's the moral. Now the l'envoy. MOTH I will add the l'envoy. Say the moral again.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee, Were still at odds, being but three. MOTH Until the goose came out of door, And stay'd the odds by adding four.
Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l'envoy.
The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee, Were still at odds, being but three.
