Love’s Labour’s Lost

Act III

Scene I

The same.

	Enter Armado* and Moth.*
Armado	Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.
Moth	Concolinel. Singing.
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?
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.
Armado	How hast thou purchased this experience?
Moth	By my penny of observation.
Armado	But O⁠—but O⁠—
Moth	“The hobby-horse is forgot.”
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?
Armado	Almost I had.
Moth	Negligent student! learn her by heart.
Armado	By heart and in heart, boy.
Moth	And out of heart, master: all those three I will prove.
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.
Armado	I am all these three.
Moth	And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.
Armado	Fetch hither the swain: he must carry me a letter.
Moth	A message well sympathized; a horse to be ambassador for an ass.
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.
Armado	The way is but short: away!
Moth	As swift as lead, sir.
Armado	The meaning, pretty ingenious? Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?
Moth	Minimè, honest master; or rather, master, no.
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?
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.
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.
	Reenter Moth* with Costard.*
Moth	A wonder, master! here’s a costard broken in a shin.
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!
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?
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.
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.
Armado	Until the goose came out of door, Staying the odds by adding four.
Moth	A good l’envoy, ending in the goose: would you desire more?
Costard	The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that’s flat. Sir, your pennyworth is good, an your goose be fat. To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose: Let me see; a fat l’envoy; ay, that’s a fat goose.
Armado	Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin?
Moth	By saying that a costard was broken in a shin. Then call’d you for the l’envoy.
Costard	True, and I for a plantain: thus came your argument in; Then the boy’s fat l’envoy, the goose that you bought; And he ended the market.
Armado	But tell me; how was there a costard broken in a shin?
Moth	I will tell you sensibly.
Costard	Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth: I will speak that l’envoy: I Costard, running out, that was safely within, Fell over the threshold, and broke my shin.
Armado	We will talk no more of this matter.
Costard	Till there be more matter in the shin.
Armado	Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.
Costard	O, marry me to one Frances: I smell some l’envoy, some goose, in this.
Armado	By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty, enfreedoming thy person: thou wert immured, restrained, captivated, bound.
Costard	True, true; and now you will be my purgation and let me loose.
Armado	I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance; and, in lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this: bear this significant giving a letter to the country maid Jaquenetta: there is remuneration; for the best ward of mine honour is rewarding my dependents. Moth, follow. Exit.
Moth	Like the sequel, I. Signior Costard, adieu.
Costard	My sweet ounce of man’s flesh! my incony Jew! Exit Moth. Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration! O, that’s the Latin word for three farthings: three farthings⁠—remuneration.⁠—“What’s the price of this inkle?”⁠—“One penny.”⁠—“No, I’ll give you a remuneration:” why, it carries it. Remuneration! why, it is a fairer name than French crown. I will never buy and sell out of this word.
	Enter Biron.
Biron	O, my good knave Costard! exceedingly well met.
Costard	Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man buy for a remuneration?
Biron	What is a remuneration?
Costard	Marry, sir, halfpenny farthing.
Biron	Why, then, three-farthing worth of silk.
Costard	I thank your worship: God be wi’ you!
Biron	Stay, slave; I must employ thee: As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave, Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.
Costard	When would you have it done, sir?
Biron	This afternoon.
Costard	Well, I will do it, sir: fare you well.
Biron	Thou knowest not what it is.
Costard	I shall know, sir, when I have done it.
Biron	Why, villain, thou must know first.
Costard	I will come to your worship to-morrow morning.
Biron	It must be done this afternoon. Hark, slave, it is but this: The princess comes to hunt here in the park, And in her train there is a gentle lady; When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name, And Rosaline they call her: ask for her; And to her white hand see thou do commend This seal’d-up counsel. There’s thy guerdon; go. Giving him a shilling.
Costard	Gardon, O sweet gardon! better than remuneration, a ’leven-pence farthing better: most sweet gardon! I will do it, sir, in print. Gardon! Remuneration! Exit.
Biron	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 so magnificent! This whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy; This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid; Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms, The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans, Liege of all loiterers and malcontents, Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces, Sole imperator and great general Of trotting ’paritors:⁠—O 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! Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all; And, among three, to love the worst of all; A wightly wanton with a velvet brow, With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes; Ay, and by heaven, one that will do the deed Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard: And I to sigh for her! to watch for her! To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague That Cupid will impose for my neglect Of his almighty dreadful little might. Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue and groan: Some men must love my lady and some Joan. Exit.