Love's Labour's Lost

Do we not likewise see our learning there?
O, we have made a vow to study, lords,
And in that vow we have forsworn our books.
For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,
In leaden contemplation have found out
Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes
Of beauty's tutors have enrich'd you with?
Other slow arts entirely keep the brain;
And therefore, finding barren practisers,
Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil;
But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain,
But with the motion of all elements
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye:
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind.
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd.
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails:
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.
For valour, is not Love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair.
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were temp'red with Love's sighs;
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears,
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive.
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish, all the world,
Else none at all in aught proves excellent.
Then fools you were these women to forswear;
Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.
For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love;
Or for Love's sake, a word that loves all men;
Or for men's sake, the authors of these women;
Or women's sake, by whom we men are men-
Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religion to be thus forsworn;
For charity itself fulfils the law,
And who can sever love from charity?
KING. Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!
BEROWNE. Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;
Pell-mell, down with them! be first advis'd,
In conflict, that you get the sun of them.
LONGAVILLE. Now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by.
Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?
KING. And win them too; therefore let us devise
Some entertainment for them in their tents.
BEROWNE. First, from the park let us conduct them thither;
Then homeward every man attach the hand
Of his fair mistress. In the afternoon
We will with some strange pastime solace them,
Such as the shortness of the time can shape;
For revels, dances, masks, and merry hours,
Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.
KING. Away, away! No time shall be omitted
That will betime, and may by us be fitted.
BEROWNE. Allons! allons! Sow'd cockle reap'd no corn,
And justice always whirls in equal measure.
Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn;
If so, our copper buys no better treasure. Exeunt

ACT V. SCENE I. The park

Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL

HOLOFERNES. Satis quod sufficit.
NATHANIEL. I praise God for you, sir. Your reasons at dinner
have
been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility,
witty
without affection, audacious without impudency, learned
without
opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this
quondam
day with a companion of the King's who is intituled,
nominated,
or called, Don Adriano de Armado.
HOLOFERNES. Novi hominem tanquam te. His humour is lofty, his
discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious,
his
gait majestical and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous,
and
thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too
odd,
as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.
NATHANIEL. A most singular and choice epithet.
[Draws out his table-book]
HOLOFERNES. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer
than
the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical