AS YOU LIKE IT.

ACT I.

SCENE FIRST.-Oliver's Orchard.

Enter ORLANDO and ADAM, R.

ORL. As I remember, Adam, it was in this fashion bequeathed me: By will, but a poor thousand crowns; and, as thou say'st, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my sadness. My brother Jacques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit; for my own part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home, unkept; for call you that keeping, for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred better; for, besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage, and, to that end, riders, dearly hired; but I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth; for the which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something, that nature gave me, his countenance seems to take from me; he lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my education. This is it, Adam, that grieves me; and the spirit of my father, which I think is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude: I will no longer endure it, though yet I know no wise remedy how to avoid it. [Crosses, L. ADAM. (L.) Yonder comes my master, your brother. ORL. Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me up. [Adam retires up the Stage,R.

Enter OLIVER, L.

OLIV. (L.) Now, sir! what make you here?

ORL. (R. C.) Nothing; I am not taught to make any thing.

OLIV. What mar you, then, sir?

ORL. Marry, sir, I am helping you to mar that which Heaven made a poor unworthy brother of yours, with idleness.

OLIV. Marry, sir, be better employed, and be naught a while.

ORL. Shall I keep your hogs, and eat husks with them? What prodigal portion have I spent, that I should come to such penury?

OLIV. Know you where you are, sir?

ORL.

Oh, sir, very well; here, in your orchard.

Know you

before whom, sir?

OLIV. ORL. Ay, better than he I am before, knows me. I know you are my eldest brother; and, in the gentle condition of blood, you should so know me. The courtesy of nations allows you my better, in that you are the first born; but the same tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us: I have as much of my father in me as you; albeit, I confess your coming before me is nearer to his reverence.

OLIV. What, boy! [Advances and lays hold of him. ORL. Come, come, elder brother, you are too young

in this.

OLIV. Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain?

Part.

ORL. I am no villain: I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Bois; he was my father, and he is thrice a villain that says such a father begot villains: (Lays hold of Oliver.) Wert thou not my brother, I would not take this hand from thy throat, till this other had pulled out thy tongue for saying so; thou hast railed on thyself.

ADAM. (Advancing, R. C.) Sweet masters, be patient; for your father's remembrance, be at accord.

OLIV. Let me go, I say.

ORL. I will not, till I please; you shall hear me. My father charged you, in his will, to give me good education: you have trained me up like a peasant, obscuring and hiding from me all gentleman-like qualities: the spirit of my father grows strong in me, and I will no longer endure it: therefore, allow me such exercises as

may become a gentleman, or give me the poor allottery my father left me by testament; with that I will go buy my fortunes.

OLIV. And what wilt thou do? beg, when that is spent? Well, sir, get you in; (Crosses to Oliver's House.) I will not long be troubled with you; you shall have some part of your will: I pray you, leave me. ORL. I will no further offend you than becomes me for my good. [Exit into house, D. F.

OLIV. (R.) [To Adam.] Get you with him, you old dog!

ADAM. (Crossing.) Is old dog my reward? Most true, I have lost my teeth in your service.-Heaven be with my old master, he would not have spoken such a word! [Exit into house, D. F. OLIV. Is it even so? begin you to grow upon me? I will physic your rankness, and yet give no thousand crowns neither. [Exit into the house, L. I E. Change.

SCENE SECOND-A Lawn before the Duke's Palace.

Enter ROSALIND and CELIA, R.

CEL. (R.) I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be

merry.

Ros. (L. c.) Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of; and would you yet I were merrier? Unless you could teach me to forget a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleasure.

CEL. (R. C.) Herein, I see, thou lov'st me not with the full weight that I love thee. If my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the Duke, my father, so thou hadst been still with me, I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine; so wouldst thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously tempered as mine is to thee.

Ros. Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to rejoice in yours.

CEL. You know, my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to have; and, truly, when he dies, thou shalt be his heir: for what he hath taken away from thy

father perforce, I will render thee again in affection; by mine honour, I will; and when I break that oath, let me turn monster; therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear Rose,

be merry.

Ros. From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports; let me see; what think you of falling in love?

CEL. Marry, I pr'ythee, do, to make sport withal; but love no man in good earnest; nor no further in sport, neither, that with safety of a pure blush thou may'st in honour come off again.

Ros. What shall be our sport, then?

CEL. Let us sit and mock the good housewife, Fortune, from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.

Ros. I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily misplaced; and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women.

CEL. 'Tis true: for those that she makes fair, she scarce makes honest, and those that she makes honest, she makes very ill-favouredly.

Ros. Nay, now thou goest from Fortune's office to Nature's: Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of nature.

CEL. No! When Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by Fortune fall into the fire? (Touchstone sings without, L.) Though Nature hath given us wit to flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool, to cut off the argument. [Ladies retire, R.

Enter TOUCHSTONE, L. U. E. How now, wit! whither wander you?

TOUCH. (L.) Mistress, you must come away to your father.

CEL. Were you made the messenger?

TOUCH. No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you.

Ros. Where learned you that oath, fool?

TOUCH. Of a certain knight, that swore by his honour they were good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught: now I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught, and the mustard was good; and yet was not the knight forsworn.

CEL. knowledge?

How prove you that, in the great heap of your

stroke your

Ros. Ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom. TOUCH. Stand you both forth now: chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave. CEL. By our beards, if we had them, thou art. TOUCH. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were; but if you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn: no more was this knight, swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or, if he had, he had sworn it all away before he ever saw, those pancakes, or that mustard.

CEL. Here comes Monsieur Le Beau.

Ros.
CEL.

young.

Ros.

CEL.

able.

With his mouth full of news.

Which he will put on us, as pigeons feed their

Then shall we be news-crammed.

All the better; we shall be the more market

Enter LE BEAU, L. U. E.

Bon jour, Monsieur Le Beau; what's the news?

LE BEAU. Fair Princess, you have lost much good sport.

CEL. Sport! of what colour?

LE BEAU.

you?

Ros.

What colour, madam? how shall I answer

As wit and fortune will.

TOUCH. Or as the destinies decree.

CEL.

Well said that was laid on with a trowel. LE BEAU. You amaze me ladies: I would have told you of good wrestling, which you have lost sight of.

Ros. Yet tell us the manner of the wrestling.

LE BEAU. (L. c.) I will tell you the beginning, (Goes to c.) and, if it pleases your ladyships, you may see the end; for the best is yet to do; and here, where you are, they are coming to perform it.

CEL. (c.) Well-the beginning that is dead and buried.

LE BEAU. There comes an old man and his three

sons

CEL. I could match this beginning with an old tale.