Love's Labour's Lost

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 snuff'd up love by smelling love,
with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of your eyes, with
your arms cross'd 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. Call'st 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 sympathiz'd- 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. Minime, 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 fir'd 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; volable 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.
ARMADO. Some enigma, some riddle; come, thy l'envoy; begin.
COSTARD. No egma, 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?