As You Like It

As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou sayest, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit: for my 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.

Adam

Yonder comes my master, your brother.

Orlando

Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me up.

Enter Oliver.

Oliver

Now, sir! what make you here?

Rosalind

Young man, have you challenged Charles the wrestler?

Orlando

No, fair princess; he is the general challenger: I come but in, as others do, to try with him the strength of my youth.

Celia

Young gentleman, your spirits are too bold for your years. You have seen cruel proof of this man’s strength: if you saw yourself with your eyes or knew yourself with your judgment, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a more equal enterprise. We pray you, for your own sake, to embrace your own safety and give over this attempt.

Rosalind

Do, young sir; your reputation shall not therefore be misprised: we will make it our suit to the duke that the wrestling might not go forward.

Orlando

I beseech you, punish me not with your hard thoughts; wherein I confess me much guilty, to deny so fair and excellent ladies any thing. But let your fair eyes and gentle wishes go with me to my trial: wherein if I be foiled, there is but one shamed that was never gracious; if killed, but one dead that was willing to be so: I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none to lament me, the world no injury, for in it I have nothing; only in the world I fill up a place, which may be better supplied when I have made it empty.

Rosalind

The little strength that I have, I would it were with you.

Celia

And mine, to eke out hers.

Rosalind

Fare you well: pray heaven I be deceived in you!

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 ranged along.

Celia

What, my young master? O, my gentle master! O my sweet master! O you memory Of old Sir Rowland! why, what make you here? Why are you virtuous? why do people love you? And wherefore are you gentle, strong and valiant? Why would you be so fond to overcome The bonny priser of the humorous duke? Your praise is come too swiftly home before you. Know you not, master, to some kind of men Their graces serve them but as enemies? No more do yours: your virtues, gentle master, Are sanctified and holy traitors to you. O, what a world is this, when what is comely Envenoms him that bears it!

Orlando

Why, what’s the matter?

Adam

O unhappy youth! Come not within these doors; within this roof The enemy of all your graces lives: Your brother⁠—no, no brother; yet the son⁠— Yet not the son, I will not call him son Of him I was about to call his father⁠— Hath heard your praises, and this night he means To burn the lodging where you use to lie And you within it: if he fail of that, He will have other means to cut you off. I overheard him and his practises. This is no place; this house is but a butchery: Abhor it, fear it, do not enter it.

Orlando

Why, whither, Adam, wouldst thou have me go?

Adam

No matter whither, so you come not here.

Orlando

What, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food? Or with a base and boisterous sword enforce A thievish living on the common road?

Orlando

I am glad of your departure: adieu, good Monsieur Melancholy. Exit Jaques.

Rosalind

Aside to Celia. I will speak to him, like a saucy lackey and under that habit play the knave with him. Do you hear, forester?

Orlando

Very well: what would you?

Rosalind

I pray you, what is’t o’clock?

Orlando

You should ask me what time o’ day: there’s no clock in the forest.

Rosalind

Then there is no true lover in the forest; else sighing every minute and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot of Time as well as a clock.

Orlando

And why not the swift foot of Time? had not that been as proper?

Rosalind

By no means, sir: Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal and who he stands still withal.

Orlando

I prithee, who doth he trot withal?

Rosalind

Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized: if the interim be but a sennight, Time’s pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven year.