Page images
PDF
EPUB

Julia. Fie, fie, how wayward is this foolish love,

That, like a testy babe,* will scratch the nurse,
And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod !-Act 1, Sc. 2.

Ant. Experience is by industry achiev'd,

And perfected by the swift course of time:

Pro. O how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day;

Act 1, Sc. 3.

Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,

And by and by a cloud takes all away!—Act 1, Sc. 3.

Pro. Why, then, we'll make exchange; herc, take you this, Julia. And seal the bargain with a holy kiss.—Act 2, Sc. 2.† As white as a lily,

Launce.

And as small as a wand.

Act 2, Sc. 3.

Val. Why, lady, Love hath twenty pair of eyes.
Thu. They say that Love hath not an eye at all-

Act 2, Sc. 4.

Julia. A true-devoted pilgrim is not weary,
To measure kingdoms with his feeble steps;

Act 2, Sc. 7.

Julia. Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow.
As seek to quench the fire of love with words.

Act 2, Sc. 7.

Julia. The current that with gentle murmur glides,

Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage;

* Shakespeare has applied the same expression to grief in the Rape of Lucrece, line 1094.

+ This expression is also found in Dryden's "The Wife of Bath, her Tale," line 524:

"Forgive if I have said, or done amiss,

And seal the bargain with a friendly kiss."

But when his fair course is not hindered,

He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;

And so by many winding nooks he strays
With willing sport, to the wild ocean.

Act 2, Sc. 7.

Val. Dumb jewels often, in their silent kind,
More than quick words, do move a woman's mind.

Act 3, Sc. I.

Val. Flatter, and praise, commend, extol their graces;
Though ne'er so black, say they have angels' faces.
That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man,
If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.

Duke.

Act 3, Sc. I.

Love is like a child,

That longs for everything that he can come by.

Act 3, Sc. I.

Pro. A sea of melting pearl, which some call tears:

Act 3, Sc. I.

Pro. Time is the nurse and breeder of all good.

Act 3, Sc. I.

Pro. Hope is a lover's staff; walk hence with that,
And manage it against despairing thoughts.

Act 3, Sc. I.

Lau. To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue.

Act 3, Sc. I.

Lau. Good things should be praised.

Act 3, Sc. I.

Duke. This weak impress of love is as a figure

Trenched in ice, which, with an hour's heat,
Dissolves to water, and doth lose his form.

Act 3, Sc. 2.

Pro. For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans

Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.

Sec. Out. Are you content to be our general?
To make a virtue of necessity*

And live, as we do, in this wilderness?

Act 3, Sc. 2.

[blocks in formation]

* This expression is also found in Chaucer's "Squier's Tale," Pt. 2:"That I made vertue of necessitee,

And toke it wel, sin that it muste be."

Also in Rabelais, Book I. ch. 2; and in Dryden's "Palamon and Arcite."

Pro. Love will not be spurr'd to what it loathes.

Act 5, Sc. 1.

Pro. Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies' eyes.

Act 5, Sc. I.

Val. How use doth breed a habit in a man !—Act 5, Si. 4.

Val.

Pro.

O time most accurs'd!

'Mongst all foes that a friend should be the worst.

Act 5, Sc. 4.

O Heaven! were man

:

But constant, he were perfect that one error
Fills him with faults; makes him run thro' all th' sins.

Act 5, Sc. 4.

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

Slen. I had rather than forty shillings I had my book of songs and sonnets here.-Act 1, Sc. I.

Fal. A tapster is a good trade: an old cloak makes a new jerkin; a withered serving-man a fresh tapster.-Act 1, Sc. 3.

Mrs. Page. Well, I will find you twenty lascivious turtles ere one chaste man.-Act 2, Sc. I.

[ocr errors]

Pist. Why then the world's mine oyster,

Which I with sword will open.-Act 2, Sc. 2.

Fal. Such Brooks are welcome to me, that o'erflow such liquor.-Act 2, Sc. 2.

Ford. Love like a shadow flies, when substance love pursues ; Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.

Act 2, Sc. 2.

Anne. O what a world of vile, ill-flavour'd faults
Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year.
Act. 3, Sc. 4.

Fal. The rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.—Act 3, Sc. 5.

Fal. Think of that, Master Brook.-Act 3, Sc. 5.

Mrs. Page. We'll leave a proof, by that which we will do, Wives may be merry, and yet honest too:

We do not act that often jest and laugh;

'Tis old, but true, Still swine eat all the draff.

Act 4, Sc. 2.

Mrs. Page. There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter,
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest,

Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;
And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and fearful manner:

You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know,
The superstitious idle-headed eld

Received, and did deliver to our age,

This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth.

Act 4, Sc. 4.

Fal. They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.-Act 5, Sc. I.

Fal. O powerful love! that, in some respects, makes a beast a man, in some other, a man a beast.

SONG.

Fie on sinful fantasy!
Fie on lust and luxury!

Act 5, Sc. 5.

« PreviousContinue »