As You Like It

by William Shakespeare

Act IV, Scene III: Another part of the Forest

[Enter ROSALIND and CELIA.]

ROSALIND How say you now? Is it not past two o'clock? And here much Orlando!

CELIA I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain, he hath ta'en his bow and arrows, and is gone forth—to sleep. Look, who comes here.

[Enter SILVIUS.]

SILVIUS

My errand is to you, fair youth;—
My gentle Phebe did bid me give you this:
[Giving a letter.]
I know not the contents; but, as I guess
By the stern brow and waspish action
Which she did use as she was writing of it,
It bears an angry tenor: pardon me,
I am but as a guiltless messenger.

ROSALIND

Patience herself would startle at this letter,
And play the swaggerer; bear this, bear all:
She says I am not fair; that I lack manners;
She calls me proud, and that she could not love me,
Were man as rare as Phoenix. Od's my will!
Her love is not the hare that I do hunt;
Why writes she so to me?—Well, shepherd, well,
This is a letter of your own device.

SILVIUS No, I protest, I know not the contents: Phebe did write it.

ROSALIND

Come, come, you are a fool,
And turn'd into the extremity of love.
I saw her hand: she has a leathern hand,
A freestone-colour'd hand: I verily did think
That her old gloves were on, but 'twas her hands;
She has a huswife's hand: but that's no matter:
I say she never did invent this letter:
This is a man's invention, and his hand.

SILVIUS Sure, it is hers.

ROSALIND

Why, 'tis a boisterous and a cruel style;
A style for challengers: why, she defies me,
Like Turk to Christian: women's gentle brain
Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention,
Such Ethiop words, blacker in their effect
Than in their countenance.—Will you hear the letter?

SILVIUS

So please you, for I never heard it yet;
Yet heard too much of Phebe's cruelty.

ROSALIND She Phebes me: mark how the tyrant writes. [Reads]

"Art thou god to shepherd turn'd,
            That a maiden's heart hath burn'd?"

Can a woman rail thus?

SILVIUS Call you this railing?

ROSALIND

"Why, thy godhead laid apart,
            Warr'st thou with a woman's heart?"
Did you ever hear such railing?
           "Whiles the eye of man did woo me,
            That could do no vengeance to me."—
Meaning me a beast.—
           "If the scorn of your bright eyne
            Have power to raise such love in mine,
            Alack, in me what strange effect
            Would they work in mild aspéct?
            Whiles you chid me, I did love;
            How then might your prayers move?
            He that brings this love to thee
            Little knows this love in me:
            And by him seal up thy mind;
            Whether that thy youth and kind
            Will the faithful offer take
            Of me and all that I can make;
            Or else by him my love deny,
            And then I'll study how to die."

SILVIUS Call you this chiding?

CELIA Alas, poor shepherd!

ROSALIND Do you pity him? no, he deserves no pity.—Wilt thou love such a woman?—What, to make thee an instrument, and play false strains upon thee! Not to be endured!—Well, go your way to her, —for I see love hath made thee a tame snake,—and say this to her;—that if she love me, I charge her to love thee; if she will not, I will never have her unless thou entreat for her.—If you be a true lover, hence, and not a word; for here comes more company.

[Exit SILVIUS.]

[Enter OLIVER.]

OLIVER

Good morrow, fair ones: pray you, if you know,
Where in the purlieus of this forest stands
A sheep-cote fenc'd about with olive trees?

CELIA

West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom:
The rank of osiers, by the murmuring stream,
Left on your right hand, brings you to the place.
But at this hour the house doth keep itself;
There's none within.

OLIVER

If that an eye may profit by a tongue,
Then should I know you by description;
Such garments, and such years: "The boy is fair,
Of female favour, and bestows himself
Like a ripe sister: the woman low,
And browner than her brother." Are not you
The owner of the house I did inquire for?

CELIA It is no boast, being ask'd, to say we are.

OLIVER

Orlando doth commend him to you both;
And to that youth he calls his Rosalind
He sends this bloody napkin:—are you he?

ROSALIND I am: what must we understand by this?

OLIVER

Some of my shame; if you will know of me
What man I am, and how, and why, and where,
This handkerchief was stain'd.

CELIA I pray you, tell it.

OLIVER

When last the young Orlando parted from you,
He left a promise to return again
Within an hour; and, pacing through the forest,
Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy,
Lo, what befell! he threw his eye aside,
And, mark, what object did present itself!
Under an oak, whose boughs were moss'd with age,
And high top bald with dry antiquity,
A wretched ragged man, o'ergrown with hair,
Lay sleeping on his back: about his neck
A green and gilded snake had wreath'd itself,
Who, with her head nimble in threats, approach'd
The opening of his mouth; but suddenly,
Seeing Orlando, it unlink'd itself,
And with indented glides did slip away
Into a bush: under which bush's shade
A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,
Lay couching, head on ground, with cat-like watch,
When that the sleeping man should stir; for 'tis
The royal disposition of that beast
To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead:
This seen, Orlando did approach the man,
And found it was his brother, his elder brother.

CELIA

O, I have heard him speak of that same brother;
And he did render him the most unnatural
That liv'd amongst men.

OLIVER And well he might so do, For well I know he was unnatural.

ROSALIND

But, to Orlando:—did he leave him there,
Food to the suck'd and hungry lioness?

OLIVER

Twice did he turn his back, and purpos'd so;
But kindness, nobler ever than revenge,
And nature, stronger than his just occasion,
Made him give battle to the lioness,
Who quickly fell before him; in which hurtling
From miserable slumber I awak'd.

CELIA Are you his brother?

ROSALIND Was it you he rescued?

CELIA Was't you that did so oft contrive to kill him?

OLIVER

'Twas I; but 'tis not I: I do not shame
To tell you what I was, since my conversion
So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.

ROSALIND But, for the bloody napkin?—

OLIVER

By and by.
When from the first to last, betwixt us two,
Tears our recountments had most kindly bath'd,
As, how I came into that desert place;—
In brief, he led me to the gentle duke,
Who gave me fresh array and entertainment,
Committing me unto my brother's love,
Who led me instantly unto his cave,
There stripp'd himself, and here upon his arm
The lioness had torn some flesh away,
Which all this while had bled; and now he fainted,
And cried, in fainting, upon Rosalind.
Brief, I recover'd him, bound up his wound,
And, after some small space, being strong at heart,
He sent me hither, stranger as I am,
To tell this story, that you might excuse
His broken promise, and to give this napkin,
Dy'd in his blood, unto the shepherd-youth
That he in sport doth call his Rosalind.

[ROSALIND faints.]

CELIA Why, how now, Ganymede! sweet Ganymede!

OLIVER Many will swoon when they do look on blood.

CELIA There is more in it:—Cousin—Ganymede!

OLIVER Look, he recovers.

ROSALIND I would I were at home.

CELIA We'll lead you thither:— I pray you, will you take him by the arm?

OLIVER Be of good cheer, youth:—you a man?—You lack a man's heart.

ROSALIND I do so, I confess it. Ah, sir, a body would think this was well counterfeited. I pray you tell your brother how well I counterfeited.—Heigh-ho!—

OLIVER This was not counterfeit; there is too great testimony in your complexion that it was a passion of earnest.

ROSALIND Counterfeit, I assure you.

OLIVER Well then, take a good heart, and counterfeit to be a man.

ROSALIND So I do: but, i' faith, I should have been a woman by right.

CELIA Come, you look paler and paler: pray you draw homewards.— Good sir, go with us.

OLIVER That will I, for I must bear answer back How you excuse my brother, Rosalind.

ROSALIND I shall devise something: but, I pray you, commend my counterfeiting to him.—Will you go?

[Exeunt.]