As You Like It | Page 8

DUKE FREDERICK, with Lords.]
DUKE FREDERICK.?Mistress, despatch you with your safest haste,?And get you from our court.
ROSALIND.?Me, uncle?
DUKE FREDERICK.?You, cousin:?Within these ten days if that thou be'st found?So near our public court as twenty miles,?Thou diest for it.
ROSALIND.?I do beseech your grace,?Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me:?If with myself I hold intelligence,?Or have acquaintance with mine own desires;?If that I do not dream, or be not frantic,--?As I do trust I am not,--then, dear uncle,?Never so much as in a thought unborn?Did I offend your highness.
DUKE FREDERICK.?Thus do all traitors;?If their purgation did consist in words,?They are as innocent as grace itself:--?Let it suffice thee that I trust thee not.
ROSALIND.?Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor:?Tell me whereon the likelihood depends.
DUKE FREDERICK.?Thou art thy father's daughter; there's enough.
ROSALIND.?So was I when your highness took his dukedom;?So was I when your highness banish'd him:?Treason is not inherited, my lord:?Or, if we did derive it from our friends,?What's that to me? my father was no traitor!?Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much?To think my poverty is treacherous.
CELIA.?Dear sovereign, hear me speak.
DUKE FREDERICK.?Ay, Celia: we stay'd her for your sake,?Else had she with her father rang'd along.
CELIA.?I did not then entreat to have her stay;?It was your pleasure, and your own remorse:?I was too young that time to value her;?But now I know her: if she be a traitor,?Why so am I: we still have slept together,?Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together;?And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,?Still we went coupled and inseparable.
DUKE FREDERICK.?She is too subtle for thee; and her smoothness,?Her very silence, and her patience?Speak to the people, and they pity her.?Thou art a fool: she robs thee of thy name;?And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous?When she is gone: then open not thy lips;?Firm and irrevocable is my doom?Which I have pass'd upon her;--she is banish'd.
CELIA.?Pronounce that sentence, then, on me, my liege:?I cannot live out of her company.
DUKE FREDERICK.?You are a fool.--You, niece, provide yourself:?If you outstay the time, upon mine honour,?And in the greatness of my word, you die.
[Exeunt DUKE FREDERICK and Lords.]
CELIA.?O my poor Rosalind! whither wilt thou go??Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine.?I charge thee be not thou more griev'd than I am.
ROSALIND.?I have more cause.
CELIA.?Thou hast not, cousin;?Pr'ythee be cheerful: know'st thou not the duke?Hath banish'd me, his daughter?
ROSALIND.?That he hath not.
CELIA.?No! hath not? Rosalind lacks, then, the love?Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one:?Shall we be sund'red? shall we part, sweet girl??No; let my father seek another heir.?Therefore devise with me how we may fly,?Whither to go, and what to bear with us:?And do not seek to take your charge upon you,?To bear your griefs yourself, and leave me out;?For, by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale,?Say what thou canst, I'll go along with thee.
ROSALIND.?Why, whither shall we go?
CELIA.?To seek my uncle in the Forest of Arden.
ROSALIND.?Alas! what danger will it be to us,?Maids as we are, to travel forth so far??Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.
CELIA.?I'll put myself in poor and mean attire,?And with a kind of umber smirch my face;?The like do you; so shall we pass along,?And never stir assailants.
ROSALIND.?Were it not better,?Because that I am more than common tall,?That I did suit me all points like a man??A gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh,?A boar spear in my hand; and,--in my heart?Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will,--?We'll have a swashing and a martial outside,?As many other mannish cowards have?That do outface it with their semblances.
CELIA.?What shall I call thee when thou art a man?
ROSALIND.?I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page,?And, therefore, look you call me Ganymede.?But what will you be call'd?
CELIA.?Something that hath a reference to my state:?No longer Celia, but Aliena.
ROSALIND.?But, cousin, what if we assay'd to steal?The clownish fool out of your father's court??Would he not be a comfort to our travel?
CELIA.?He'll go along o'er the wide world with me;?Leave me alone to woo him. Let's away,?And get our jewels and our wealth together;?Devise the fittest time and safest way?To hide us from pursuit that will be made?After my flight. Now go we in content?To liberty, and not to banishment.
[Exeunt.]
ACT II.
SCENE I. The Forest of Arden.
[Enter DUKE Senior, AMIENS, and other LORDS, in the dress of foresters.]
DUKE SENIOR.?Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,?Hath not old custom made this life more sweet?Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods?More free from peril than the envious court??Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,--?The seasons' difference: as the icy fang?And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,?Which when it bites and blows upon my body,?Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say,?'This is no flattery: these are counsellors?That feelingly persuade me what I am.'?Sweet are the