- Announcer: Funding for APT's "Out of the Woods"
is provided by
Boardman Clark Law Firm,
Arcadia Books,
Dane Arts,
Nancy A. McDaniel,
Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin,
Orange Tree Imports,
Wilson Creek Pottery,
Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming,
and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
[whippoorwills singing]
[crickets chirping]
* [classical trumpet music]
* [discordant piano notes]
This cannot be right.
[exasperated sigh]
Did I-- Am I, am I?
- Okay... [shaking sound]
* [strumming harp]
- Uh, can you tell me if the lens is scratched
or is that my glasses?
[overlapping voices, audio cutting out]
- [man does vocal warm-up] I love my kids, I love my kids,
I love my kids, I love...
[overlapping voices]
- Man: Hey, Jimmy!
[man does throat exercise]
Jimmy, you frozen?
- Places!
- I'm here, I'm here, coming!
- Places, everyone!
This is places.
* [playful, expectant keyboard music] *
- Oh, hey, what's up Marcus?
How ya doing?
- Man: Good luck, everybody!
*
* [birds warbling, crickets chirping] *
*
[bird chirping]
- Brenda DeVita: Hello, everybody, we're all here now.
Welcome to live Zoom theater!
Thank you for bearing with us.
This is-- we are not quite experts yet at this.
We've done this one time before
so we can't say, "We've never done it before."
But we started last week
with our first reading in a series of six,
and tonight's our second reading
of the "Out of the Woods" series.
So, thank you for joining us
and thanks to everyone who's rejoining us tonight.
I want to do a shout out because we've heard
from all kinds of people all over the country
that they were with us last week
and they are here tonight
and I want to say 'hi' to everyone
and especially to Jennifer Lang in Madrid,
who, I know, got up and poured herself a bourbon
in the middle of the night to watch with us.
So, I promise it will be worth your time
of getting out of bed.
We are so excited because if you didn't see last week,
you'll be able to see it
because when we recorded it last week, Wisconsin--
PBS Wisconsin has agreed to put these online
and stream them on their website online
so you will be able to see this series online.
We'll start that in early June and more details to come,
but thank you, PBS Wisconsin.
We appreciate it!
There's a few 'thank-you's I need to have-- make tonight.
This idea came up a couple of weeks ago,
and the staff at APT just jumped in,
like they always do.
And I need to say they're the best in the world
and they say 'yes' all the time.
So, thank you to them.
They got you all here today.
And thank you to our backstage crew,
Jacki Singleton and Evelyn Matten.
WHEW! Got through that one.
Thank you, guys.
You guys are doing a great job.
Jake Penner and Carey Cannon, the artistic team.
Thank you, guys, for always being there
and working so diligently to make things great.
I also need to say thank you
to Christopher Corkery and Jack Whaley.
Hi, Jack, it's your birthday!
Happy birthday, Jack!
They created the video that you all saw,
the opening video.
They did that for us for free on their own time and thank you.
They're just geniuses, and we are so grateful.
It's really important that I take a moment
to thank that people who have stuck with us
through thick and thin,
who are such incredible stewards of APT,
and all the changes of our season.
They're still here with us.
It's our season sponsors, and I am honored to say
that they're-- to know them is to love them.
They're wonderful humans besides being incredibly generous.
Steve and Laurel Brown Foundation,
Doug and Sherry Caves,
JJJ Productions,
Kasieta Legal Group,
Sherry and Rick Lundell,
Ann and Fred Moore,
Nelson-Jameson,
Allison and Dale Smith,
Steve Brown Apartments,
the Mr. and Mrs. C.J. Williams Storage Foundation,
and U.S. Bank.
Thank you.
And last but not least, I want to thank the artists;
The artists who are perfectionists,
who don't think they're good enough,
which makes them the greatest artists on earth
because they're brilliant
and they don't let themselves think that every day,
which I thoroughly appreciate.
John Lang's our director who jumped in
and said, "Yes, I'll do this Shakespeare online.
What is this? How do we do it?"
His team:
Eva Brenneman, as text coach
and Joe Cerqua is the wonderful composer
of tonight's music
and last, but not least,
the core company and the actors.
I know you all know them from stage,
and some of them, you know them personally
but they are the hardest-working group of humans that I know
that work in the theater
and they are so good at their jobs,
they make it look so easy.
And this reading is not easy.
It's very, very nerve-racking
and I want to thank them for, like I said,
"throwing caution to the wind and bravely doing their jobs,"
which is to share with you with their whole hearts
this story.
So, before further ado,
special guest star Elise Dickerson as 'Sylia.'
Thank you, as well.
We want to say, enjoy tonight's performance!
Oh, not performance.
It is a reading of "As You Like It."
[loud, agitated sighing]
[growls, grunts, pounds on door]
- ADAM: Ah, my young master, Orlando!
- ORLANDO: As I remember, Adam, it was bequeathed me by will
but poor a thousand crowns,
and charged my brother on his blessing
to breed me well;
and there begins my sadness.
My brother Jacques he keeps at school
and report speaks goldenly of his profit.
For my part, he keeps me rustically at home
or, to speak more perfectly, 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?
- ADAM: Orlando!
[Orlando scoffs]
- ORLANDO: 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,
and the spirit of my father, which I think is within me,
begins to mutiny against this servitude.
- OLIVER: Now, sir, what make you here?
- ORLANDO: Nothing, brother.
I am not taught to make anything.
- OLIVER: What mar you then, sir?
- ORLANDO: Marry, sir, I am helping you to mar
that which God made,
a poor unworthy brother of yours, with idleness.
- OLIVER: Marry sir, be better employed.
- ORLANDO: Shall I keep your hogs and eat husks with them?
What prodigal portion have I spent
that I should come to such penury?
- OLIVER: Know you where you are, sir?
- ORLANDO: O, sir, very well: here in your orchard.
- OLIVER: Know you before whom, sir?
- ORLANDO: Ay, better than him I am before knows me.
I know you are my eldest brother,
and in the gentle condition of blood
you should so know me.
The courtesy of nations allows you my better
in that you are the first-born,
but the same tradition takes not away my blood,
were there twenty brothers betwixt us.
[grunts, moves forcefully]
- OLIVER: What, boy!
Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain?
- ORLANDO: I am no villain.
I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys;
he was my father,
and he is thrice a villain
that says such a father begot villains.
Wert thou not my brother
I would not take this hand from thy throat
till this other had pulled out thy tongue
for saying so. - OLIVER: Let me go!
- ORLANDO: I will not till I please:
[grunting in physical struggle]
You shall hear me.
My father charged you in his will to give me good education.
You have trained me like a peasant,
obscuring and hiding from me all gentleman-like qualities,
and I will no longer endure it! [Oliver groans]
Therefore give me such good education as may become my, my,
become a gentleman, or give me the poor allottery
my father left me by testament;
with that I will go buy my fortunes.
[Oliver groans, catches breath]
- OLIVER: And what wilt thou do?
Beg when that is spent?
Well, sir, get you in.
I will not long be troubled with you;
you shall have some part of your will.
Get you with him, you old dog.
- ADAM: Is 'old dog' my reward?
Most true, I have lost my teeth in your service.
God be with my old master,
he would not have spoke such a word.
- OLIVER: Is it even so?
Begin you to grow upon me?
I will physic your rankness,
and yet give no thousand crowns neither.
Was not Charles, the Duke's wrestler,
here to speak with me?
'Twill be a good way, and tomorrow the wrestling is.
Good Monsieur, Charles,
What's the new news at the new court?
- [Charles laughs] There's no news at the court, sir,
but the old news:
that is, the old Duke is banished
by his younger brother, the new Duke,
and three or four loving lords have put themselves
into voluntary exile with him,
whose lands and revenues enrich the new Duke;
therefore he gives them good leave to wander.
- OLIVER: Where will the old Duke live?
- CHARLES: They say he is already in the Forest of Arden
and a many merry men with him,
and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England.
- OLIVER: What, you wrestle tomorrow before the new Duke?
- CHARLES: Marry, do I, sir;
and I came to acquaint you with a matter.
Now-- [chuckles]
I am given to understand that your younger brother, Orlando,
hath a disposition to come against [dismissive laugh] me.
Tomorrow, sir, I wrestle for my credit, and he that escapes me
without some broken limb shall acquit him well.
Your younger brother is young, he's tender,
therefore out of my love to you I came hither,
that either you might stay him from his intendment
or brook such disgrace well as he shall run into,
in that it is a thing of his own search.
It's altogether against my will.
- OLIVER: Charles, I thank thee for thy love,
which thou shalt find I will most kindly requite.
I had myself notice of my brother's purpose
and have labored to dissuade him from it;
but I'll tell thee, Charles,
it is the stubbornest young fellow, full of ambition,
a secret and villainous contriver against me,
his natural brother.
Therefore use thy discretion;
I had as lief thou didst break his neck as his finger.
And thou wert best look to't;
for if thou dost him any slight disgrace,
he will practice against thee by poison,
entrap thee by some treacherous device,
and never leave thee till he hath ta'en thy life.
For I assure thee
and almost with tears I speak it
there is not one so young and so villainous
this day living. [scoffs]
- CHARLES: I am heartily glad I came hither to you.
If he come tomorrow I'll give him his payment.
If ever he go alone again, I'll never wrestle for prize more.
God keep your worship.
- OLIVER: [chuckling] Charles, can you tell if Rosalind,
the Duke's daughter, be banished with her father?
- CHARLES: [chuckling]
O no; for the new Duke's daughter, Celia, her cousin,
so loves her, that she would have followed Rosalind
into exile or died to stay behind her.
[whispering] She's at the court.
- OLIVER: Farewell, good Charles.
- CHARLES: Farewell, my Oliver.
- OLIVER: I hope I shall see an end of Orlando;
for my soul, yet I know not why,
hates nothing more than he.
Yet he's gentle, never schooled and yet learned,
full of noble device, of all sorts enchantingly beloved,
and indeed so much in the heart of the world,
that I am altogether misprized.
But it shall not be so long.
This wrestler shall clear all.
- [Celia sighs woefully]
CELIA: I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz,
be merry.
- ROSALIND: Dear Celia,
I show more mirth than I am mistress of,
and would you yet I were merrier?
Unless you could teach me to forget a banished father
you must not learn me
how to remember any extraordinary pleasure.
- CELIA: Herein I see thou lov'st me
not with the full weight that I love thee.
If my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle,
the Duke, my father, so thou hadst been still with me
I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine.
- ROSALIND: Well, I will forget the condition of my estate
to rejoice in yours.
- CELIA: You know my father hath no child but I,
nor none is like to have,
and truly when he dies thou shalt be his heir,
for what he hath taken away from thy father perforce,
I will render thee again in affection.
By mine honor I will!
Therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear sweet Rose, be merry.
- ROSALIND: From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports.
Let me see:
what think you of falling in love?
- CELIA: [laughs] Marry, I prithee do, to make sport withal
but love no man in good earnest,
no, therefore in sport neither.
- ROSALIND: What shall be our sport then?
- CELIA: Let us sit and mock the good housewife
Fortune from her wheel,
that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.
- ROSALIND: I would we could do so,
for her benefits are mightily misplaced
and the bountiful blind woman
doth most mistake in her gifts to women.
- CELIA: [laughs] 'Tis true,
for those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest,
and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly.
- ROSALIND: Nay, now thou goest
from Fortune's office to Nature's;
Fortune reigns in gifts of the world
not in the lineaments of Nature.
- CELIA: No?
When Nature hath made a fair creature
may she not by Fortune be thrown into the fire?
Though Nature hath given us wit to flout at Fortune,
hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument?
How now, wit, whither wander you?
- TOUCHSTONE: Mistress, you must come away to your father.
- CELIA: Were you made the messenger?
- TOUCHSTONE: No, by mine honor,
but I was bid to come for you.
- ROSALIND: Where learned you that oath, fool?
- TOUCHSTONE: Of a certain knight who swore by his honor
that the pancakes were good,
and swore by his honor that the mustard was naught.
Now I'll stand to it the mustard was good
and the pancakes were naught,
and yet was not this knight forsworn.
[Celia laughs critically] - CELIA: How prove you that
in the great heap of your knowledge?
- TOUCHSTONE: Stand you both forth.
Stroke your chins and swear by your beards that I am a knave.
- CELIA: By our beards--
- ROSALIND: If we had them-- - CELIA: Thou art.
- TOUCHSTONE: By my knavery, if I had it, then I were.
But if you swear by that that is not,
you are not forsworn.
And no more was this knight swearing by his honor,
for he never had any;
or if he had, he had sworn it away
before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard.
- CELIA: Prithee, who is't that thou mean'st?
- TOUCHSTONE: One that old Frederick, your father, loves.
- CELIA: My father's love is enough to honor him.
Enough! Speak no more of him.
You'll be whipped for taxation one of these days.
- TOUCHSTONE: The more pity that fools may not speak wisely
what wise men do foolishly.
- CELIA: By my troth, thou sayest true.
For since the little wit that fools have was silenced,
the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show.
Here comes Le Beau.
Madame Le Beau, what's the news?
- LE BEAU: Oh, fair princess, you have lost much good sport.
[Touchstone gasps] - CELIA: Sport?
Of what colour?
- LE BEAU: Of what colour, Madame?
How shall I answer you?
- ROSALIND: As wit and Fortune will.
- TOUCHSTONE: Or as the Destinies decree.
- CELIA: Well said!
That was laid on with a trowel.
- LE BEAU: You amaze me, ladies.
I would have told you of good wrestling,
which you have lost the sight of.
- ROSALIND: Yet tell us the manner of the wrestling.
- LE BEAU: I will tell you the beginning
and you may see the end,
for here they are coming to perform it.
- CELIA: Well, the beginning that is dead and buried.
- LE BEAU: There comes an old man and his three sons.
- CELIA: I could match this beginning with an old tale.
- LE BEAU: Three proper young men
of excellent growth and presence.
The eldest of the three wrestled with Charles,
the Duke's wrestler,
which Charles in a moment threw him and broke three of his ribs,
that there is little hope of life in him.
And so he served the second and so the third.
Well yonder they lie,
the poor old man their father
making such pitiful dole over them
that all the beholders take his part with weeping.
- ROSALIND: Alas!
- TOUCHSTONE: But what is the sport, Madame,
that the ladies have lost?
- LE BEAU: Why, this that I speak of.
- TOUCHSTONE: Oh, [laughs self-consciously]
thus men may grow wiser every day.
It is the first time that ever I heard breaking of ribs
was sport for ladies.
- CELIA: Or I, I promise thee.
- ROSALIND: But is there yet another
dotes upon rib-breaking?
Shall we see this wrestling, cousin?
- LE BEAU: Well, you must if you stay here,
for here is the place appointed for the wrestling
and they are ready to perform it.
[struggling to move]
- DUKE FREDERICK: Come on.
Since the youth will not be entreated,
his own peril on his forwardness.
- ROSALIND: Is yonder the man?
- LE BEAU: Even he, Madame.
- CELIA: Alas, he is too young.
Yet, he looks successfully.
- DUKE FREDERICK: How now, daughter and cousin.
Are you crept hither to see the wrestling?
- ROSALIND: Ay, so please you give us leave.
- DUKE FREDERICK: You will take little delight in it,
I can tell you;
there is such odds in the man.
In pity of the challenger's youth I would fain dissuade him,
but he will not be entreated.
You speak to him, ladies; Maybe you can move him.
- CELIA: Call him hither, good Madame Le Beau.
- DUKE FREDERICK: Do so; I'll not be by.
- LE BEAU: Monsieur the challenger,
the princess calls for you.
- ORLANDO: [stammers] I attend them with all respect and duty.
- 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, you have seen cruel proof
of this man's strength.
We pray you embrace your own safety
and give over this attempt.
- ROSALIND: Do, young sir.
- ORLANDO: I confess me much guilty to deny
so fair and excellent ladies anything.
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 is willing to be so.
No, 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.
- CELIA: Your heart's desires be with you.
[Celia laughs shyly]
[groans with exertion]
- CHARLES: Come, where is this young gallant
that is so desirous to lie with his mother earth?
- ORLANDO: Ready, sir,
but his will hath in it a more modest working.
- DUKE FREDERICK: You shall try but one fall.
- CHARLES: I warrant your grace
you shall not entreat him to a second
that have so mightily persuaded him from a first.
- ORLANDO: You mean to mock me after;
you should not have mocked me before.
[thunk]
[fumes with fury]
[fighting struggle, punch]
[enraged pummeling]
- CELIA: I would I were invisible,
to catch the strong fellow by the leg. [wrestlers struggling]
- ROSALIND: Now Hercules be thy speed, young man!
[men brawling loudly]
O excellent young man!
[infuriated howling, Rosalind gasps]
- DUKE FREDERICK: No more, no more.
- ORLANDO: Yes, I beseech your grace:
I am not yet well breathed.
- DUKE FREDERICK: How dost thou, Charles?
- LE BEAU: He cannot speak, my lord.
- DUKE FREDERICK: Bear him away.
What is thy name, young man?
- ORLANDO: Orlando, the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys.
- DUKE FREDERICK: I would thou hadst been son to some man else.
The world esteemed thy father honourable,
but I did find him still mine enemy.
Shouldst have better pleased me with this deed
Hadst thou descended from another house.
But... fare thee well, thou art a gallant youth.
I would thou hadst told me of another father.
- CELIA: Were I my father, coz, would I do this?
- ORLANDO: I am more proud to be Sir Rowland's son,
his youngest son, and would not change that calling
to be adopted heir to Frederick.
- ROSALIND: My father loved Sir Rowland as his soul,
And all the world was of my father's mind.
Had I before known this young man, his son,
I should have given him tears unto entreaties.
Ere he should thus have ventured.
- CELIA: Gentle cousin,
let us go and thank him and encourage him.
My father's rough and envious disposition
Sticks me at heart.
Sir, you have well deserved.
If you do keep your promises in love
But justly as you have exceeded all promise,
Your mistress shall be happy.
- ROSALIND: Gentleman,
Wear this for me,
one out of suits with fortune,
That could give more but that her hand lacks means.
Shall we go, coz?
- CELIA: Ay.
Fare you well, fair gentleman.
[quick intake of breath]
- ORLANDO: Can I not say, I thank you?
[moans in pain, laughs]
My better parts
Are all thrown down, and that which here stands up
Is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block.
[shouts 'Ahhh!' combatively]
- ROSALIND: He calls us back.
My pride fell with my fortunes.
I'll ask him what he would.
Did you call, sir?
[awkward non-verbal sounds]
Sir, you have wrestled well and overthrown
More than your enemies.
- CELIA: Will you go, coz?
- ROSALIND: [false pleased tone] Have with you.
Fare you well.
[Orlando laughs with surprised awkwardness]
- ORLANDO: God, what passion
hangs these weights upon my tongue?
I cannot speak to her, yet she urged conference.
O poor Orlando, thou art overthrown!
Or Charles or something weaker masters thee.
- LE BEAU: Good sir, I do in friendship counsel you
To leave this place,
albeit you have deserved
high commendation, true applause and love.
Yet such is now the Duke's condition
that he misconsters all that you have done.
- ORLANDO: I thank you, Ma'am;
and pray you, tell me:
Which of the two was daughter of the Duke
That here was at the wrestling?
- LE BEAU: Neither his daughter, if we judge by manners,
But yet indeed the taller is his daughter.
The other is daughter to the banished Duke,
And here detained by her usurping uncle
To keep his daughter company, whose loves
Are dearer than the natural bond of sisters.
But I can tell you that of late this Duke
Hath ta'en displeasure 'gainst his gentle niece,
Grounded upon no other argument
But that the people praise her for her virtues,
And pity her for her good father's sake.
Sir, fare you well.
Hereafter in a better world than this
I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.
- ORLANDO: I rest much bounden to you;
fare you well.
[Orlando sighs]
Thus must I from the smoke unto the smother,
[teeth clenched] From tyrant Duke unto a tyrant brother.
But heavenly, Rosalind!
[laughs admiringly]
- CELIA: [sighs] Why, cousin, why, Rosalind!
Cupid have mercy!
Not a word?
- ROSALIND: Not one to throw at a dog. [laughs]
- CELIA: No, thy words are too precious
to be cast away upon curs.
Throw some of them at me.
Come, lame me with reasons.
- ROSALIND: Then there were two cousins laid up,
when the one should be blamed with reasons
and the other mad without any.
- CELIA: But is all this for your father?
- ROSALIND: No, some of it is for my child's father.
O, [laughs dramatically]
how full of briers is this working-day world!
- CELIA: They are but burrs, cousin.
If we walk not in the trodden paths
our very petticoats will catch them.
- ROSALIND: I could shake them off my coat;
these burrs are in my heart.
- CELIA: Come, come, wrestle with thy affections.
- ROSALIND: O, they take the part of a better wrestler
than myself.
- CELIA: [gasps excitedly] O,
a good wish upon you,
let us talk in good earnest.
Is it possible that on such a sudden
you should fall into so strong a liking
with old Sir Rowland's youngest son?
- ROSALIND: The Duke my father loved his father dearly.
- CELIA: Doth it therefore ensue
that you should love his son dearly?
By this kind of chase
I should hate him for my father hated his father dearly;
yet, I hate not Orlando.
- ROSALIND: No, faith, hate him not.
- CELIA: Why should I not?
- ROSALIND: Oh, let me love him,
and do you love him because I do?!
[both women laugh with delight]
- DUKE FREDERICK: Mistress,
dispatch 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 ninety 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,
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 banished 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.
- CELIA: Dear sovereign, hear me speak.
- DUKE FREDERICK: Ay, Celia, we stayed her for your sake,
Else had she with her father ranged along.
- CELIA: I did not then entreat to have her stay;
It was your own pleasure and your own remorse.
But this I know:
that if she be a traitor,
Why, so am I.
We still have slept together,
Rose at an instant,
learned, played, ate together,
And whereso'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 passed upon her.
She is banished.
- 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 honor
And in the greatness of my word,
you die.
- 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 grieved than I am.
- ROSALIND: I have more cause.
- CELIA: Thou hast not, cousin.
Prithee, be cheerful.
Knowst thou not the Duke
Hath banished 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 sundered? Hmm?
Shall we part, sweet girl?
No, let my father find another heir!
Therefore devise with me how we may fly,
And do not seek to take your change 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 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,
The like do you;
so we shall pass along
And never stir assailants.
- ROSALIND: Were it not better,
That I did suit me all points like a man?
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: [giddily] 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. [Celia laughs]
But what will you be called?
- CELIA: Something that hath a reference to my state:
No longer Celia, but...
Aliena.
- ROSALIND: But cousin, what if we assayed 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 we go in content
To liberty and not to banishment.
- ORLANDO: Who's there?
- [Jove's breathing distressed] - Oh, Jove!
- ADAM: What, my young master?
What make you here?
- 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, [grumbling] no, no brother, and 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;
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?
This I must do, or know not what to do.
- ADAM: But do not so.
I have five hundred crowns,
[rifling through a drawer]
The thrifty hire I saved under your father,
Which I did store to be my foster-nurse,
When service should in my old limbs lie lame
And unregarded age in corners thrown.
Take that, and
He that doth the ravens feed,
Yea, providently caters to the sparrow,
Be comfort to my age.
Here is the gold:
All this I give you.
Well, let me be your servant.
Though I look old, let me go with you.
I'll do the service of a younger man
In all your business and necessities.
- ORLANDO: Good old man, thou prun'st a rotten tree,
That cannot so much as a blossom yield
In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry.
But come thy ways, we'll go along together,
And ere we have thy youthful wages spent
We'll settle on some settled low content.
[Adam shuffles]
- ADAM: Seventeen years till now, some fourscore
Here lived I,
but now live here no more.
At seventeen years many their fortunes seek,
But at fourscore it's too late a week.
Yet fortune cannot recompense me better
Than to die well and not my master's debtor.
- Adam!
- DUKE FREDERICK: Can it be possible that no man saw them?
It cannot be!
Some villains of my court
Are of consent and sufferance in this.
- LE BEAU: I cannot hear of any that did see her.
- Sheesh!
- Well, the ladies, her attendants of her chamber,
Saw her abed, and in the morning early
They found the bed unmeasured of their mistress.
[Duke Frederick groans]
My lord, the roynish clown is also missing.
- What?
- Hisperia, the princess' gentlewoman,
Confesses that she secretly o'erheard
Your daughter and her cousin much commend
The parts and graces of the wrestler
That did but lately foil the sinewy Charles;
And she believes that wherever they are gone
The youth is surely in their company.
- DUKE FREDERICK: Well, fetch that gallant hither!
If he be absent, bring his brother to me.
I'll make him find him.
Do this suddenly!
And let not search and inquisition quail
To bring again these foolish runaways.
- ROSALIND: O [grumbles]
Jupiter, how weary are my spirits!
- TOUCHSTONE: I care not for my spirits
if my legs were not weary.
- ROSALIND: I could find it in my heart
to disgrace my man's apparel and to cry like a woman...
- CELIA: [distressed groan] Ahhhhhh.
- ROSALIND: ...but I must comfort the weaker vessel;
therefore courage, good Aliena.
- CELIA: [gasping] I pray you,
[panting] bear with me;
I can go no further.
- TOUCHSTONE: For my part,
I'd rather bear with you than bear you. [Celia groans]
- ROSALIND: Well, this is the Forest of Arden.
- TOUCHSTONE: Ay, now am I in Arden,
the more fool I!
When I was at home I was in a better place,
but travellers must be content.
- ROSALIND: Ay, be so, good Touchstone.
Look you, who comes here?
- CORIN: That is the way to make her scorn you still.
- SILVIUS: O Corin, that thou knewst how I do love her!
- CORIN: I partly guess, for I have loved ere now.
- SILVIUS: No, Corin, being old, thou canst not guess,
Though in thy youth thou wast as true a lover
As ever sighed upon a midnight pillow.
But if thy love were ever like to mine,
As sure I think did never man love so,
How many actions most ridiculous
Hast thou been drawn to by thy fantasy?
- CORIN: Into a thousand that I have forgotten.
- SILVIUS: O, thou didst then never love so heartily!
If thou rememb'rest not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved.
Or if thou hast not sat as I do now,
Wearying thy hearer in thy mistress' praise,
Thou hast not loved.
Or, if thou hast not broke from company
Abruptly as my passion now makes me, [grunts]
Thou hast not loved. [weeping]
O Phoebe, [pounds the wall] Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe,
Phoebe, Phoebe,Phoebe!
- [Rosalind gasps]
Alas, poor shepherd, searching of thy wound
I've by hard adventure found mine own.
- TOUCHSTONE: And I mine.
I remember when I was in love
I broke my sword upon a stone and bid him 'Take that!'
for coming a-night to Jane Smile;
and I remember the kissing of her batlet,
and the cow's dugs that her pretty chapped hands had milked;
and I remember the wooing of a peascod
instead of her, from whom I took two peas,
and, giving her them again, said with weeping tears:
'Wear these for my sake.'
We that are true lovers run into strange capers.
But, [chuckles] as all is mortal in nature,
so is all nature in love mortal in folly.
- ROSALIND: Thou speak'st wiser than thou art ware of.
- TOUCHSTONE: Nay, I shall ne'er be ware of mine own wit
till I break my shins against it.
- CELIA: I pray you, one of you question yon man
if he for gold will give us any food.
I-- I faint almost to death.
- TOUCHSTONE: Holla, you clown!
- ROSALIND: Peace, fool, he's not thy kinsman.
- CORIN: Who calls?
- TOUCHSTONE: Your betters, sir.
- CORIN: Else are they very wretched.
- ROSALIND: Peace, I say.
Good even to you, friend.
- CORIN: And to you, gentle sir, and to you all.
- ROSALIND: I prithee, shepherd, if that love or gold
Can in this desert place buy entertainment,
Bring us where we may rest ourselves and feed.
Here's a young maid with travel much oppressed
And faints for succour.
- CORIN: Fair sir, I pity her
And wish, for her sake more than for mine own,
My fortunes were more able to relieve her.
But I am shepherd to another man
And do not shear the fleeces that I graze.
My master is of churlish disposition
And little recks to find the way to heaven
By doing deeds of hospitality.
Besides, his coat, his flocks and bounds of feed
Are now on sale, and at our sheepcote now,
By reason of his absence, there is nothing
That you will feed on.
But wait, come see,
And in my voice most welcome shall you be.
[relieved laughter, guitar music]
- DUKE SENIOR: Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? [strums guitar, both laugh]
Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
[strums guitar]
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.
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
- AMIENS: I would not change it.
Happy is your Grace
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style.
[strums guitar]
- DUKE SENIOR: Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored.
- AMIENS: Indeed, my lord,
The melancholy Jacques grieves at that,
And in that kind swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banished you.
Today my Lord I did steal behind her as he lay along
Under an oak, whose antic root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood
To the which place a poor sequestered stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish.
And thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on th'extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.
- DUKE SENIOR: But what said Jacques?
Did she not moralize this spectacle?
- AMIENS: O yes, into a thousand similes.
And swears that we
Are mere usurpers, tyrants and what's worse,
To fright the animals and to kill them up
In their assigned and native dwelling-place.
- DUKE SENIOR: And did you leave her in this contemplation?
- AMIENS: I did, my lord.
- DUKE SENIOR: Oh, show me the place.
I love to cope her in these sullen fits.
For then she's full of matter.
- AMIENS: My Lord, I'll bring you to her by and by.
And with sweet tune will summon the heart
of our most melancholy friend, Anon, sir.
*
- AMIENS: [Sings] * Under the greenwood tree
* Who loves to lie with me?
* And turn his merry note
* Unto the sweet bird's throat
* Come hither...
* Come hither, come hither!
* Come hither!
* Here shall he see no enemy *
* But winter
* And rough weather
*
- JAQUES: More, I prithee, more.
- AMIENS: It will make you melancholy, Madame Jacques.
- JAQUES: I thank it;
more, I prithee, more.
I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs.
- AMIENS: My voice is ragged:
I know I cannot please you.
- JAQUES: I do not desire you to please me;
I do desire you to sing.
Will you?
- AMIENS: More at your request than to please myself.
The Duke hath been all this day to look you.
- [Jaques sighs heavily]
JAQUES: And I have been all this day to avoid him;
he is too disputable for my company.
I think of as many matters as he,
but I give heaven thanks and make no boast of them.
I'll give you a verse
to this note that I made yesterday
in despite of my invention.
Thus it goes:
* [Amiens strums guitar]
[Jaques singing] * If it do come to pass
* That any man turn ass
* Leaving his wealth and ease
* A stubborn will to please
* Ducdame (Ducdame)
[strums guitar]
* Here shall he see
* Gross fools as he
* If he will
* Come to me
- AMIENS: What's that 'ducdame'?
- JAQUES: 'Tis a Greek invocation
to call fools into a circle.
I'll go sleep if I can;
if I cannot, I'll rail against all the first-born of Egypt.
- AMIENS: And I'll go seek the Duke.
[winded, Orlando pants]
- ADAM: Oh, dear, dear master,
I can go no further.
- ORLANDO: How now, Adam?
- ADAM: I die for food!
- ORLANDO: No, no, no, no, no, no!
No greater heart in thee? [laughs anxiously]
How now, Adam?
- [Adam groans]
- ORLANDO: If this uncouth forest yield any thing savage
I will either be food for it or yield it for food to thee.
- [Adam pants and groans]
- ORLANDO: Hold death at the arm's end a little longer.
I will here be with thee presently,
and if I bring thee not something to eat,
thou hast my leave to die;
but if thou diest before I come,
thou art a mocker of my labour.
- [Adam grunts affirmatively]
- ORLANDO: I'll be with thee presently.
- [Adam breathes laboriously, groans]
- ORLANDO: Yet thou liest in the bleak air.
Come. - [Adam gasps raggedly]
- ORLANDO: I will bear thee to some shelter
and thou shalt not die for lack of a dinner
while there live anything in this desert.
Cheerly, good Adam, come.
- DUKE SENIOR: I think she be transformed into a beast,
For I can nowhere find her like a woman.
- AMIENS: My lord, she is but even now gone hence:
Here was she merry, hearing of a song.
- DUKE SENIOR: Well, if she grow musical,
We shall have shortly discord in the spheres.
[Amiens chuckles] - DUKE SENIOR: Oh.
Why, how now, Madame!
What a life is this
That your poor friends must woo your company!
- [Jaques scoffs incredulously]
- What, what, you look merrily.
- JAQUES: A fool, a fool!
I met a fool in the forest,
As I do live by food, I met a fool,
Who laid him down and basked him in the sun,
And railed on Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms and yet a motley fool!
- DUKE SENIOR: What fool is this?
- JAQUES: One that hath been a courtier,
And in his brain,
Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit
After a voyage,
he hath strange places crammed
With observation, the which he vents
In mangled forms.
O that I were a fool!
I am ambitious for a motley coat.
- DUKE SENIOR: Well, thou shalt have one.
- JAQUES: It is my only suit,
Provided that you weed your better judgments
Of all opinion that grows rank in them
That I am wise.
Oh, I must have liberty
Withal, as large a charter as the wind
To blow on whom I please, for so fools have,
Invest me in my motley.
Give me leave
To speak my mind, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of th'infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine.
- DUKE SENIOR: Fie on thee!
I can tell what thou wouldst do.
- JAQUES: What, for a counter, would I do but good?
- DUKE SENIOR: Most mischievous foul sin in chiding sin.
For thou thyself hast been a libertine,
As sensual as the brutish sting itself.
- [Jaques sighs]
- ORLANDO: [panting] Forbear and eat no more!
- JAQUES: Why, I have ate none yet.
- ORLANDO: Nor shalt not till necessity be served.
- DUKE SENIOR: Art thou thus boldened, man, by thy distress?
Or else a rude despiser of good manners,
That in civility thou seem'st so empty?
- ORLANDO: You touched my vein at first.
The thorny point
Of bare distress hath ta'en from me the show
Of smooth civility;
yet am I inland bred
And know some nurture.
But forbear, I say!
He dies that touches any of this fruit
Till I and my affairs be answered.
- JAQUES: No I will not be answered with reason,
I must die.
- DUKE SENIOR: What would you have?
Your gentleness shall force
More than your force move us to gentleness.
- ORLANDO: [shaking] I almost die for food and let me have it.
- DUKE SENIOR: Sit down and feed and welcome to our table.
- ORLANDO: Speak you so gently?
I pray you, pardon me,
I thought that all things had been savage here
And therefore put I on the countenance
Of stern commandment.
But whate'er you are,
If ever you have seen better days,
If ever been where bells have knolled to church,
If ever sat at any good man's feast,
And if ever from thy eyelids wiped a tear,
And know what 'tis to pity and be pitied
"Let gentleness my stern commandment be,
In the which hope, I blush and hide my blades.
[knife clatters]
- DUKE SENIOR: True is it that we have seen better days,
And have with holy bell been knolled to church,
And sat at good men's feasts,
and wiped our eyes
Of drops that sacred pity hath engendered;
And therefore, sit you down in gentleness
And take upon command what help we have
That to your wanting may be ministered.
- ORLANDO: Ah...
There is an old poor man
That after me hath many a weary step
Limped in pure love.
Till he be first sufficed,
Oppressed with two weak evils, age and hunger,
I will not touch a bit.
- DUKE SENIOR: Go find him out,
And we will nothing waste till you return.
- ORLANDO: I thank you, and be blest for your good comfort.
- DUKE SENIOR: Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy.
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.
- JAQUES: All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face,
creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school;
and then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow; [Duke Senior chuckles]
- JAQUES: Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth;
and then the justice,
With fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part.
The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well saved,
a world too wide
For his shrunk shank,
and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble,
pipes and whistles in his sound.
Last scene of all, - [Adam wheezes shallow breaths]
- JAQUES: That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness
and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans...
...everything.
- [Adam straining to breath]
- DUKE SENIOR: Welcome.
Set down your venerable burden
And let him feed.
- ORLANDO: I thank you most for him.
- ADAM: So had you need;
I scarce can speak to thank you for myself.
- DUKE SENIOR: Welcome, fall to.
I will not trouble you
As yet to question you about your fortunes.
Give us some music, and, good cousin, sing.
* [strums guitar]
- AMIENS: [sings] * Blow, blow, thou winter wind *
* Thou art not so unkind
* As man's ingratitude
* Man's ingratitude
* Thy tooth is not so keen
* Because thou art not seen [Adams struggles for air]
* Although thy breath be rude *
* Thy breath be rude
* Hey ho!
* Unto the green holly
* Most friendship is feigning
* Most loving mere folly
* Then hey-ho, the holly!
* This life is most jolly
*
- DUKE SENIOR: If that you be the good Sir Rowland's son,
And as mine eye doth his effigies witness,
Most truly limned and living in your face,
Be truly welcome hither.
I am the Duke
That loved your father.
Um, the residue of your fortune
Go to my cave and tell me.
And good old man,
Thou art right welcome as thy master is.
- ORLANDO: [sings] * Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky *
* That dost not bite so nigh *
* As benefits forgot
* Benefits forgot
* Though thou the waters warp
* Thy sting is not so sharp
* As friend remembered not
* Hey ho!
* Unto the green holly
* Most friendship is feigning
* Most loving mere folly
* Then hey-ho, the holly!
* This life is most jolly
* [pianist plays arpeggios in a minor key *
* [playing string instruments]
- DUKE FREDERICK: Not see him since?
Sir, sir, that cannot be.
But were I not the better part made mercy
I should not seek an absent argument
Of my revenge, thou present.
But look to it!
Find out thy brother wheresoe'er he is;
Bring him dead or living
Within this twelvemonth, or turn thou no more
To seek a living in our territory.
- OLIVER: O that your highness knew my heart in this:
I never loved my brother in my life.
- DUKE FREDERICK: More villain thou!
Well, push him out of doors,
And let my officers of such a nature
Make an extent upon his house and lands.
Do this suddenly, and turn him going.
[uneven breathing, panting]
- ORLANDO: Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love.
And thou, thrice-crowned queen of night, survey
With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above,
Thy huntress' name which my full life doth sway.
O Rosalind, these trees shall be my books,
And in their barks my thoughts
I'll character,
Run, run, Orlando,
carve on every tree
The fair, the chaste and unexpressive she!
[slams book closed]
- CORIN: How like you this shepherd's life,
Master Touchstone?
- TOUCHSTONE: Oh, truly shepherd, in respect of itself,
it is a good life;
but in respect that it is a shepherd's life,
it is naught.
In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well;
but in respect that it is private,
it is a very vile life.
Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well;
but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious.
As is it a spare life, look you, it fits my humor well;
but as there is no more plenty in it,
it goes much against my stomach.
Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?
- CORIN: No more but that I know
the more one sickens the worse at ease he is;
that the property of rain is to wet and fire to burn;
that uh good pasture makes fat sheep;
and [snapping fingers] the great cause of the night
is lack of the sun.
- TOUCHSTONE: Such a one is a natural philosopher.
Wast ever in court, shepherd?
- CORIN: No, truly.
- TOUCHSTONE: Then thou art damned.
- CORIN: For not being at court?
Your reason?
- TOUCHSTONE: If thou never wast at court
thou never sawest good manners;
if thou never sawest good manners
thy manners must be wicked,
wickedness is sin, sin is damnation,
yadda yadda yadda.
Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd.
- CORIN: Not a whit, Touchstone.
Those that are good manners at the court
are as ridiculous in the country
as the behavior of the country
is most mockable at the court.
[Touchstone laughs]
You told me you salute not at the court
but you kiss your hands.
That courtesy would be uncleanly if courtiers were shepherds.
- TOUCHSTONE: Instance, briefly, come.
- CORIN: Why, we are still handling our ewes,
and their fells you know are greasy.
- TOUCHSTONE: Why, do not your courtier's hands sweat?
And is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome
as the sweat of a man?
Oh, shallow.
A better instance, I say.
Come.
- CORIN: Besides, our hands are hard.
- TOUCHSTONE: Your lips shall feel them
the sooner shallow again.
- CORIN: And they are often tarred over
with the surgery of our sheep,
and would you have us kiss tar?
The courtier's hands are perfumed with civet.
- TOUCHSTONE: Oh, thou worm's meat
in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed!
Learn of the wise and perpend.
Civet is of a baser birth than tar,
the very uncleanly flux of a cat.
Oh, mend the instance, shepherd.
- CORIN: You have too courtly a wit for me, I'll rest.
- [Touchstone chuckles]
- CORIN: Here comes young Master Ganymede.
- ROSALIND: [reading] From the east to western Inde
No jewel is like Rosalind.
Her worth being mounted on the wind
Through all the world bears Rosalind.
All the pictures fairest lined
Are but black to Rosalind. [giggles]
Let no fair be kept in mind
But the fair of Rosalind.
- TOUCHSTONE: Psst... I'll rhyme you so eight years together,
dinners and suppers and sleeping-hours excepted.
- ROSALIND: Out, fool!
- TOUCHSTONE: For a taste, for a taste, for a taste,
If a hart do lack a hind,
Let him seek out Rosalind.
If the cat will after kind,
So be sure will Rosalind.
Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,
Such a nut is Rosalind.
He that sweetest rose will find
Must find love's prick and Rosalind.
This is the very false gallop of verse.
Why do you infect yourself with them?
- ROSALIND: Peace fool, I found them on a tree.
- TOUCHSTONE: No truly, the tree yields bad fruit.
- [Celia cracks up laughing]
CELIA: [Reading] Helen's cheek but not her heart,
Cleopatra's majesty, Atalanta's better part,
Sad Lucretia's modesty.
Thus Rosalind of many parts
By heavenly synod was devised,
Of many faces, eyes and hearts
To have the touches dearest prized.
Heaven would that she these gifts should have,
And I to live and die her slave.
[Rosalind and Celia laugh wickedly]
- ROSALIND: O most gentle pulpiter,
what tedious homily of love
have you wearied your parishioners withal.
- CELIA: Back, friend.
Shepherd, go off a little;
go with him, sirrah.
- TOUCHSTONE: Come, shepherd,
let us make an honorable retreat,
though with not with bag and baggage
yet with scrip and scrippage.
Ooh, ooh oh, when in love I lose my mind,
- Celia: GO!!! - I'll get jiggy with Rosalind.
- CELIA: Get out!
Didst thou hear these verses?
- ROSALIND: O yes, I heard them all.
- CELIA: But didst thou hear, without wondering,
how thy name should be hanged and carved among these trees?
- ROSALIND: I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder
before you came;
for look here what I found.
- CELIA: Trow you who hath done this?
- ROSALIND: Is it a man?
- CELIA: And a chain that you once wore about his neck.
Change you color?
- ROSALIND: I prithee, who?
- CELIA: [chortles] Is it possible?
- ROSALIND: Nay, I prithee now,
with most petitionary vehemence, tell me who it is.
- CELIA: O wonderful, wonderful,
and most wonderful wonderful,
and yet again wonderful,
and after that out of all hooping!
- ROSALIND: Good my complexion!
Dost thou think, though I am caparisoned like a man,
I have a doublet and hose in my disposition?
One inch of delay more is a South Sea of discovery.
I prithee tell me who is it quickly, and speak apace.
I prithee take the cork out of thy mouth
that I may drink thy tidings.
- CELIA: So you may put a man in your belly.
- ROSALIND: What manner of man?
Is his head worth a hat?
Or his chin worth a beard?
- CELIA: It is young Orlando,
that tripped up the wrestler's heels and your heart
both in an instant.
- ROSALIND: Nay, but the devil take mocking!
Speak sad brow and true maid.
- CELIA: I' faith, coz, 'tis he.
- ROSALIND: Orlando?
- CELIA: Orlando.
- ROSALIND: Alas the day,
what shall I do with my doublet and hose?
What did he when thou sawest him?
What said he? How looked he?
Wherein went he? What makes he here?
Did he ask for me?
Where remains he?
How parted he with thee?
And when shalt thou see him again?
Answer me in one word.
- CELIA: You must borrow me Gargantua's mouth first.
'Tis a word too great for any age's this mouth's size.
- ROSALIND: But doth he know that I am in this forest
in man's apparel?
Looks he as freshly as he did the day he wrestled?
- CELIA: Take a taste of my finding him
and relish it with good observance.
I found him under a tree, like a dropped acorn.
- ROSALIND: It may well be called Jove's tree
since it drops forth such fruit.
- CELIA: Give me audience, good madame.
- ROSALIND: Proceed.
- CELIA: There lay he stretched along like a wounded knight.
- ROSALIND: Though it be pity to see such a sight,
it well becomes the ground.
- CELIA: Cry holla to thy tongue, I prithee:
it skips unseasonably.
He was furnished like a hunter
- ROSALIND: O ominous, he comes to kill my heart!
- CELIA: Soft, he comes not here?
- ROSALIND: 'Tis he!
Slink by and note him.
- JAQUES: I thank you for your company but, good faith,
I had as lief have been myself alone.
- ORLANDO: And so had I, but yet for fashion' sake
I thank you too for your society.
- JAQUES: God be with you, let's meet as little as we can.
- ORLANDO: I do desire we may be better strangers.
- JAQUES: I pray you, mar no more trees with writing
love-songs in their barks.
- ORLANDO: I pray you, mar no more of my verses with reading
them ill-favouredly.
- JAQUES: Rosalind is your love's name?
- ORLANDO: Yes, just.
- JAQUES: I do not like her name.
- ORLANDO: There was no thought of pleasing you
when she was christened.
- JAQUES: What stature is she of?
- ORLANDO: Just as high as my heart.
- JAQUES: You have a nimble wit;
By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you.
- ORLANDO: Oh, she is drowned in the brook.
Look but in and you shall see her.
- JAQUES: I'll tarry no longer with you.
Farewell, good Signior Love.
- ORLANDO: I am glad of your departure.
Adieu, good Madame Melancholy.
- ROSALIND: 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: [laughs] 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: [laughs] 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 se'nnight,
Time's pace is so hard
that it seems the length of seven year.
- ORLANDO: Who does he amble withal?
- ROSALIND: With a priest that lacks Latin,
and a rich man that hath not the gout;
for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study,
and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain.
These Time ambles withal. - [Orlando laughs]
ORLANDO: Who doth Time gallop withal?
- ROSALIND: With a thief to the gallows;
for though he go as softly as foot can fall,
he thinks himself too soon there.
- ORLANDO: Who stays it still withal?
- ROSALIND: With lawyers in the vacation;
for they sleep between term and term
and perceive not how time moves.
- ORLANDO: [laughs] Where dwell you, pretty youth?
- ROSALIND: With the shepherdess, my sister,
here in the skirts of the forest,
like fringe upon a petticoat.
- ORLANDO: Are you native of this place?
- ROSALIND: As the rabbit that you see dwell
where she is kindled.
- ORLANDO: Your accent is something finer
than you could purchase in so removed a dwelling.
- ROSALIND: I have been told so of many.
An old religious uncle of mine taught me to speak,
who was in his youth an inland man
one that knew courtship too well,
for there he fell in love.
I have heard him read many lectures against it.
- ORLANDO: Can you remember any of the principal evils
he laid to the charge of love?
I prithee, recount some of them.
- ROSALIND: No.
I will not cast away my physic but on those that are sick.
There is a man haunts the forest that abuses our young plants
with carving 'Rosalind' on their barks; hangs odes upon
hawthorns and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth,
deifying the name of Rosalind.
If I could meet that fancy-monger
I would give him some good counsel,
for he seems to have the quotidian of love upon him.
- ORLANDO: I am he that is so love-shaked.
I pray thee, tell me your remedy.
- ROSALIND: There is none of mine uncle's marks upon you.
He taught me how to know a man in love,
in which cage of rushes
I am sure you are no prisoner.
- ORLANDO: What were his marks?
- ROSALIND: A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye
and sunken, which you have not;
an unquestionable spirit, which you have not;
a beard neglected, which you have not.
Then your hose should be ungartered,
your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied,
and everything about you
demonstrating a careless desolation.
No, but you are no such man.
You are rather point-device in your accoutrements,
as loving yourself as seeming the lover of any other.
- ORLANDO: Fair youth, I would
I could make thee believe I love.
- ROSALIND: Me believe it?
You may as soon make her that you love believe it,
which I warrant she is apter to do than to confess she does.
But in good sooth, are you
he that hangs the verses on the trees,
wherein Rosalind is so admired?
- ORLANDO: I swear to thee, youth,
by the soft hand of Rosalind,
I am that he, that unfortunate he.
- ROSALIND: But are you so much in love
as your rhymes speak?
- ORLANDO: Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.
- [Rosalind laughs apprehensively]
ROSALIND: Love is merely a madness,
and I tell you deserves as well
a dark house and a whip as madmen do;
and the reason why they are not so punished and cured
is that the lunacy is so ordinary
that the whippers are in love too.
Yet I profess curing it by counsel.
- ORLANDO: Did you ever cure any so?
- ROSALIND: Yes, one, and in this manner.
He was to imagine me his love, his mistress,
and I set him every day to woo me.
At which time would I now loath him;
then entertain him, then forswear him;
now weep for him, then spit at him;
that I drave my suitor from his mad humor of love
to a living humor of madness,
which was
to forswear the full stream of the world
and to live in a nook merely monastic.
And thus I cured him, and this way will I take upon me
to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart,
that there shall not be one spot of love in't.
- ORLANDO: I would not be cured, youth.
- ROSALIND: I would cure you,
if you would but call me Rosalind
and come every day to my cottage and woo me.
- ORLANDO: Now, by my faith, I will.
Tell me where it is.
- [Rosalind stammers] Go with me and I'll show it you;
and by the way
you shall tell me where in the forest you live.
Will you go?
- ORLANDO: With all my heart, good youth.
- ROSALIND: Nay, you must call me Rosalind.
- [Orlando responds agreeably]
- ROSALIND: Come, sister, will you go?
- TOUCHSTONE: Come apace, good Audrey,
I will fetch up your goats, Audrey.
And how now, Audrey?
Am I the man yet?
Doth my simple feature content you?
- AUDREY: Your features, Lord warrant us!
What features? - [Touchstone laughs]
TOUCHSTONE: I am here with thee and thy goats,
as the most capricious poet,
honest Ovid was among the Goths.
- JAQUES: O knowledge ill-inhabited,
worse than Jove in a thatched house.
- TOUCHSTONE: When a man's verses cannot be understood
it strikes a man more dead
than a great reckoning in a little room.
Oh, I would the gods had made thee poetical.
- AUDREY: I do not know what "poetical" is.
Is it honest in word and deed?
Is it a true thing?
- TOUCHSTONE: No, truly;
for the truest poetry is the most faining,
and lovers are given to poetry.
- AUDREY: Do you wish then that the gods had made me poetical?
- TOUCHSTONE: I do truly, for thou swear'st to me
that thou art honest.
Now if thou wert a poet
I might have some hope that thou didst feign.
- AUDREY: Would you not have me honest?
- TOUCHSTONE: No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favored;
for honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar.
- AUDREY: Well, I am not fair,
therefore, I pray the gods make me honest.
- TOUCHSTONE: Oh, truly;
and to cast away honesty upon a foul slut
were to put good meat in an unclean dish.
- AUDREY: I am not a slut,
but I thank the gods I am foul.
- [Touchstone hyperventilating]
Well, praised be the gods for thy foulness.
- [Audrey laughs giddily]
- Touchstone: Sluttishness may come hereafter. [dirty laugh]
But be that it as it may, I will marry thee.
And to that effect, I have been with Reverend Olive Martext,
the vicar of the next village,
who hath promised to meet me in this place of the forest
and to couple us.
[excited squeal-laugh]
- JAQUES: I would fain see this meeting.
- AUDREY: Well, the gods give us joy!
- TOUCHSTONE: Ooh, here comes the Reverend Olive Martext.
Reverend Olive Martext, you are well met.
Will you dispatch us here under this tree,
or shall we go with you to your chapel?
- OLIVE MARTEXT: Uhh... Is there none here to give the woman?
- TOUCHSTONE: I will not take her on gift of any man.
- OLIVE MARTEXT: Truly, she must be given
or the marriage is not lawful.
- JAQUES: Proceed, proceed.
I'll give her.
- TOUCHSTONE: Oh good even, good Mistress What-ye-call't,
how do you, miss?
Oh, you are very well met.
God 'ild you for your last company.
I am very glad to see you. [clears throat]
Even a toy in hand here, ma'am, nay, I pray, be covered.
- JAQUES: Will you be married, motley?
- TOUCHSTONE: As the ox hath his yoke, the horse his rein,
and the falcon her bells, so man has his desires;
and wedlock would be nibbling.
- JAQUES: And will you, being a man of your breeding,
be married under a bush like a beggar?
Get you to church, and have a good priest
that can tell you what marriage is.
This woman will but join you together as they join wainscot;
and then, one of you will prove a shrunk panel
and, like green timber, warp.
Warp.
- TOUCHSTONE: I am not in the mind but I were better
to be married of this reverend than of another,
for she is not like to marry me well,
and not being well married it will be a good excuse
for me hereafter to leave my wife.
- JAQUES: Go thou with me and let me counsel thee.
- TOUCHSTONE: Come, sweet Audrey.
We must be married, or we live in bawdry.
Farewell, good Olive.
Not [Singing and dancing] * O sweet Olive, O brave Olive
* Leave me not behind thee
* But wind away
* Be gone, I say
* I will not to wedding with thee *
- OLIVE MARTEXT: 'Tis no matter.
Ne'er a fantastical knave of them all.
May all flout me out of my calling.
[Rosalind sighs angstfully]
- ROSALIND: Never talk to me.
I will weep.
- CELIA: Do, I prithee, but yet have the grace to consider
that tears do not become a man.
- ROSALIND: But have I not cause to weep?
- CELIA: As good a cause as one would desire;
therefore weep.
- ROSALIND: His very hair is of the dissembling color.
- CELIA: Something browner than Judas's.
Marry, his kisses are Judas's own children.
- ROSALIND: I' faith, his hair is of a good color.
- CELIA: An excellent color.
- ROSALIND: And his kissing is as full of sanctity
as the touch of holy bread.
- CELIA: A nun of winter's sisterhood
kisses not more religiously;
the very ice of chastity is in them.
- ROSALIND: But why did he swear he would come this morning
and comes not?
- CELIA: Nay certainly there is no truth in him.
- ROSALIND: Do you think so?
- CELIA: Yes.
I think he is not a pick-purse nor a horse-stealer,
but for his verity in love
I do think him as concave as a worm-eaten nut.
- ROSALIND: Not true in love?
- CELIA: Yes, when he's in
but I think he is not in.
- ROSALIND: You have heard him say downright he was.
- CELIA: 'Was' is not 'is.'
Besides, the oath of a lover
is no stronger than the word of a tapster:
they are both the confirmer of false reckonings.
He attends here in the forest on the Duke your father.
- ROSALIND: I met the Duke yesterday
and had much question with him.
He asked me of what parentage I was.
I told him of as good as he, so he laughed and let me go.
But what talk we of fathers
when there is such a man as Orlando?
- CELIA: O, that's a brave man!
He writes brave verses, speaks brave words,
swears brave oaths and breaks them bravely
quite athwart the heart of his lover.
- CORIN: Mistress and master, you have oft enquired
After the shepherd that complained of love,
Who praised the proud disdainful shepherdess
who was his mistress.
- CELIA: Well, and what of him?
- CORIN: If you will see a pageant truly played
Between the pale complexion of true love
And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain,
Go hence a little.
[Phoebe screams]
- SILVIUS: Sweet Phoebe, do not scorn me, do not, Phoebe.
Say that you love me not, but say not so
In bitterness.
The common executioner,
Whose heart th'accustomed sight of death makes hard,
Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck
But first begs pardon. [laughs]
Will you sterner be
Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops?
- PHOEBE: I would not be thy executioner;
I fly thee for I would not injure thee.
Thou tell'st me there is murder in mine eye. [laughs bitterly]
'Tis pretty, sure, and very probable
Eyes, that are the frail'st and softest things,
Who shut their coward gates on atomies,
Should be called tyrants, butchers, murderers.
Now I do frown on thee with all my heart,
And if mine eyes can wound,
now let them kill thee.
Now counterfeit to swoon, why now fall down!
Or if thou canst not, O, for shame, for shame,
Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers.
Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee:
Scratch thee but with a pin, and there remains
some scar of it;
But now mine eyes,
Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not,
Nor I am sure there is no force in eyes
That can do hurt.
- SILVIUS: O dear Phoebe,
If ever, as that ever may be near,
You meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy,
Then shall you know the wounds invisible
That love's keen arrows make.
- PHOEBE: But till that time
Come not thou near me. [laughs hysterically]
When that time comes,
Afflict me with thy mocks, pity me not,
For till that time I shall not pity thee.
- ROSALIND: And why, I pray you?
Who might be your mother,
That you insult, exult, and all at once
Over the wretched?
'Od's my little life, I think she means to tangle my eyes too!
No, faith, proud mistress, hope not after it.
You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her
Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain?
You are a thousand times a properer man
Than she a woman.
'Tis such fools as you
That makes the world full of ill-favored children.
'Tis not her glass but you that flatters her,
And out of you she sees herself more proper
Than any of her lineaments can show her.
But, mistress, know yourself;
down on your knees,
And thank heaven fasting for a good man's love.
For I must tell you friendly in your ear:
Sell when you can, you are not for all markets.
Cry the man mercy, love him, take his offer.
- PHOEBE: Sweet youth, I pray you chide a year together!
I had rather hear you chide than this man woo.
- ROSALIND: I pray you do not fall in love with me.
- [Phoebe gasps]
- For I am falser than vows made in wine.
Besides, I like you not.
Shepherd, ply her hard.
Shepherdess, look on him better,
And be not proud.
- [Phoebe laugh-cries]
PHOEBE: Dear shepherd, now I find thy saw of might:
'Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?'
- SILVIUS: Sweet Phoebe.
- PHOEBE: Ha? - SILVIUS: Please, listen
- PHOEBE: What sayst thou, Silvius?
- SILVIUS: Sweet Phoebe, pity me.
- PHOEBE: Why, I am sorry for thee, gentle Silvius.
- SILVIUS: Wherever sorrow is, relief would be.
If you do sorrow at my grief in love,
By giving love your sorrow and my grief
Were both extermined.
- PHOEBE: Silvius, the time was that I hated thee,
And yet it is not that I bear thee love,
But since that thou canst talk of love so well,
Thy company, which erst was irksome to me,
I will endure, and I'll employ thee too.
But do not look for further recompense
Than thine own gladness that thou art employed.
- SILVIUS: But so holy and so perfect is my love,
And I in such a poverty of grace,
That I shall think it a most plenteous crop
To glean the broken ears after the man
That the main harvest reaps.
Loose now and then
A scattered smile, and that I'll live upon.
- PHOEBE: Knowst thou the youth that spoke to me erewhile?
- SILVIUS: Not very well, but I have met him oft,
And he hath bought the cottage and the bounds
That the old Carlot once was master of.
- [Phoebe laughs wickedly]
PHOEBE: Think not I love him though I ask for him.
'Tis but a peevish boy yet he talks well.
[laughs sharply]
But what care I for words?
Yet words do well
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.
It is a pretty youth, not very pretty,
But sure he's proud, and yet his pride becomes him.
And faster than his tongue
Did make offense, his eye did heal it up.
There was a pretty redness in his lip.
There be some women, Silvius, had they marked him
In parcels as I did, would have gone near
To fall in love with him;
but for my part I love him not, nor hate him not.
And yet I have more cause to hate him than to love him,
For what had he to do to chide at me?
Oh, I marvel that I answered not again.
But that's all one omittance is no quittance.
I'll write to him a very taunting letter
And thou shalt bear it.
Wilt thou, Silvius?
- SILVIUS: Phoebe, with all my heart.
- PHOEBE: Oh, I'll write it straight.
The matter's in my head and in my heart;
I will be bitter with him and passing short.
[laughs maniacally]
Go with me, Silvius.
- [Rosalind sighs angrily]
- JAQUES: I prithee, pretty youth,
let me be better acquainted with thee.
- ROSALIND: They say you are melancholy.
- JAQUES: I am so, but it is a melancholy of mine own,
compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects,
and indeed the sundry computation of my travels,
[Rosalind growls]
- in which my often rumination wraps me
in a most humorous sadness.
- ROSALIND: A traveller!
By my faith, you have great reason to be sad.
I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's.
- JAQUES: I've gained my experience.
- ROSALIND: And your experience makes you sad.
I had rather have a fool to make me merry
than experience to make me sad, and to travel for it too.
- ORLANDO: Good day and happiness, dear Rosalind.
- [Jaques sighs disdainfully] Nay then, God b'wi' you
an you talk in blank verse.
- ROSALIND: Why, how now, Orlando,
where have you been all this while?
You a lover?
An you serve me such another trick,
never come in my sight more!
- ORLANDO: Pardon me, dear Rosalind.
- ROSALIND: Nay, an you be so tardy, come no more!
I had as lief be wooed of a snail.
- ORLANDO: Of a snail?
- ROSALIND: Ay, of a snail, for though he comes slowly
he carries his house on his head.
Besides, he brings his destiny with him.
- ORLANDO: What's that?
- ROSALIND: Why, horns.
- ORLANDO: Virtue is no horn-maker
and my Rosalind is virtuous.
- ROSALIND: And I am your Rosalind.
[sighs] Come, woo me, woo me, for now
I am in a holiday humor and like enough to consent.
What would you say to me now,
an I were your very, very Rosalind?
- ORLANDO: I would kiss before I spoke.
- [Rosalind clears throat awkwardly]
Nay, you were better speak first,
and when you were gravelled for lack of matter
you might take occasion to kiss.
Very good orators when they are out, they will spit,
and for lovers lacking [God warrant us] matter,
the cleanliest shift is to kiss.
- ORLANDO: How if the kiss be denied?
- ROSALIND: Then she puts you to entreaty
and there begins new matter.
- ORLANDO: Who could be out,
being before his beloved mistress?
- ROSALIND: Marry, that should you,
if I were your mistress,
or I should think my honesty ranker than my wit.
Am not I your Rosalind?
- ORLANDO: I take some joy to say you are
because I would be talking of her.
- ROSALIND: Well, in her person,
I say I will not have you.
- ORLANDO: Then, in mine own person, I die.
- ROSALIND: No, faith.
The poor world is almost 6,000 years old,
and in all this time
there was not any man died in a love-cause.
Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them,
but not for love.
- ORLANDO: I would not have my right, Rosalind, of this mind,
for I protest her frown might kill me.
- ROSALIND: By this hand, it will not kill a fly.
But come, now I will be your Rosalind
in a more coming-on disposition,
and ask me what you will,
I will grant it.
- ORLANDO: Then love me, Rosalind.
- ROSALIND: Yes, faith, will I,
Fridays and Saturdays and all.
- ORLANDO: And wilt thou have me?
- ROSALIND: Ay, and twenty such.
- ORLANDO: What sayest thou?
- ROSALIND: Are you not good?
- ORLANDO: I hope so. - ROSALIND: Why then,
can one desire too much of a good thing?
Come, sister, you shall be the priest and marry us.
Give me your hand, Orlando.
What do you say, sister?
- ORLANDO: Pray thee, marry us.
- CELIA: I cannot say the words.
- ROSALIND: You must begin: 'Will you, Orlando,'
- CELIA: Go to.
Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind?
- ORLANDO: I will.
- ROSALIND: Ay, but when?
- ORLANDO: Why now, as quickly as she can marry us.
- ROSALIND: Then you must say:
'I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.'
- ORLANDO: I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.
- [Celia gasps nervously]
- ROSALIND: I might ask you for your commission.
But I do take thee, Orlando, for my husband.
Now tell me how long you would have her
after you have possessed her?
- ORLANDO: For ever and a day.
- ROSALIND: Say 'a day' without the 'ever.'
No, no, Orlando, men are April when they woo,
December when they wed.
Maids are May when they are maids,
but the sky changes when they are wives.
I will be more jealous of thee than a cock-pigeon
over his hen,
more clamorous than a parrot against rain,
more giddy in my desires than a monkey.
I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain,
and I will do that when thou art disposed to be merry.
I will laugh like a hyena,
and that when thou art inclined to sleep.
- ORLANDO: But will my Rosalind do so?
- ROSALIND: By my life, she will do as I do.
- ORLANDO: O, but she is wise.
- ROSALIND: Or else she could not have the wit
to do this, the wiser, the waywarder.
Thou make the doors upon a woman's wit
and it will out at the casement.
Shut that and 'twill out at the keyhole.
Stop that, and 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.
- ORLANDO: If a man that had a wife with such a wit,
he might say 'Wit, whither wilt'?
- ROSALIND: Nay, you might keep that check for it
till you met your wife's wit going to your neighbour's bed.
- ORLANDO: And what wit could wit have to excuse that?
- ROSALIND: Marry, to say she came to seek you there.
You shall never take her without her answer
unless you take her without her tongue.
O, that woman that cannot make her fault
her husband's occasion,
oh let her never nurse her child herself,
for she will breed it like a fool!
- ORLANDO: For these two hours, Rosalind, I will leave thee.
- ROSALIND: Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours.
- ORLANDO: I must attend the Duke.
By two o'clock I will be with thee again.
- ROSALIND: Ay, go your ways, go your ways.
I knew what you would prove.
My friends told me as much and I thought no less.
That flattering tongue of yours won me.
'Tis but one cast away, and so, come death!
Two o'clock is your hour?
- ORLANDO: Ay, sweet Rosalind.
- ROSALIND: By my troth, and in good earnest,
and so God mend me,
if you break one jot of your promise
or come one minute behind your hour,
I will think you the most pathetical break-promise
and the most hollow lover and the most unworthy
of her you call, Rosalind.
Therefore beware my censure and keep your promise.
- ORLANDO: With no less religion than if thou
wert indeed my Rosalind.
And so adieu.
- ROSALIND: Well, Time is the old justice
that examines all such offenders,
and let Time try.
Adieu.
- CELIA: [laughs] You have simply misused our sex
in your love-prate!
We must have your doublet and hose plucked over your head
and show the world what the bird hath done to her own nest.
- ROSALIND: O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz,
that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love!
But it cannot be sounded
my affection hath an unknown bottom,
like the Bay of Portugal.
- CELIA: Or rather bottomless,
that as fast as you pour affection in,
it runs out.
- ROSALIND: I tell thee, Aliena,
I cannot be out of the sight of Orlando.
I'll go find a shadow and sigh till he come.
- CELIA: But look who comes here.
- SILVIUS: [panting] My errand is to you, fair youth.
My gentle Phoebe, bid me give you this.
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. [scoffs]
Bear this, bear all!
She says I am not fair, that I lack manners;
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.
Phoebe did write it.
- ROSALIND: Come, come, you are a fool.
And turn'd into the extremity of love.
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.
Will you hear the letter?
- SILVIUS: So please you, for I never heard it yet,
Yet heard too much of Phoebe's cruelty.
- ROSALIND: She Phoebes me.
Mark how the tyrant writes.
[Reads] Art thou god to shepherd turned,
That a maiden's heart hath burned?
Can a woman rail thus?
- SILVIUS: Call you this railing?
- ROSALIND: [Reads] Why, thy godhead laid apart,
Warr'st thou with a woman's heart?
Did you ever hear such railing?
If the scorn of my bright eyne
Have power to raise such love in thine,
Alack, in me what strange effect
Would they have in mild aspect?
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.
- OLIVER: Good morrow, fair one.
Pray you, if you know,
Where in the purlieus of this forest stands
A sheepcote fenced about with olive-trees?
- CELIA: Ah ah ah, west.
West of this place, down the neighbouring 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 right forester.
' Are not you The owner of the house that I did inquire for?
- CELIA: It is no boast, being asked, 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 stained.
- 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 mossed 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 wreathed itself,
Who with her head,
nimble in threats, approached
The opening of his mouth.
But suddenly seeing Orlando, it unlinked 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 catlike 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 ever lived 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 sucked and hungry lioness?
- OLIVER: Twice did he turn his back and purposed 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 awaked.
- CELIA: Are you his brother?
- ROSALIND: Was't 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 bathed,
I'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 stripped 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 recovered 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,
Dyed in his blood, unto the shepherd youth
That he in sport doth call his Rosalind.
- CELIA: Why, how now, Ganymede, oh sweet Ganymede!
- OLIVER: Many will swoon when they do look on blood.
- CELIA: There is more in it.
Cousin, Ganymede!
[panicked breathing]
- 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.
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.
- 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.
*
- AUDREY: [Groaning]
- TOUCHSTONE: We shall find a time, Audrey;
patience, gentle Audrey.
- AUDREY: Faith, the priest was good enough,
for all the gentlewoman's saying.
- TOUCHSTONE: Audrey, there is a youth here in the forest
lays claim to you.
- AUDREY: Ay, I know who 'tis.
He hath no interest in me in the world.
Here comes the man you mean.
- WILLIAM: Good ev'n, Audrey.
- AUDREY: God ye good ev'n, William.
- WILLIAM: And good ev'n to you, sir.
- TOUCHSTONE: Good ev'n, friend.
Oh no, cover thy head, cover thy head.
Nay, prithee be covered.
How old are you, friend?
- WILLIAM: Five-and-forty, sir.
- TOUCHSTONE: A ripe age.
Is thy name William?
- WILLIAM: William, sir.
- TOUCHSTONE: A fair name.
Wast born in the forest here?
- WILLIAM: Yeah, ay, sir, and I thank God for it.
- TOUCHSTONE: Oh 'Thank God' a good answer, good answer.
Art rich?
- WILLIAM: Yeah, faith, sir, yeah so, so-so.
- TOUCHSTONE: 'So-so' is good, very good, very excellent good
and yet it is not, it is but so-so.
Art thou wise?
- WILLIAM: Ay, sir, I have a pretty wit.
- TOUCHSTONE: Oh, well, thou sayest well.
I do now remember a saying that 'The fool doth think he is wise,
but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.'
[laughs] Whoo!
You do love this maid?
- WILLIAM: Yeah I do, sir.
- TOUCHSTONE: Give me your hand.
- WILLIAM: Uh-uh, uh-uh
- TOUCHSTONE: Art thou learned?
- WILLIAM: No, sir.
- TOUCHSTONE: Then learn this of me:
to have is to have for I am he.
- WILLIAM: Which which which is he, sir?
- TOUCHSTONE: He, sir, that must marry this woman.
And therefore, clown, abandon
[which is, in the vulgar, -leave']
the society [which is in the company'] boorish woman,
which is, in the female [which is -woman'];
which together is: 'abandon the society of this female',
or clown, thou perishest!
Or to thy better understanding, diest.
Or [to wit] I kill thee, make thee away,
translate thy life into death,
thy liberty into bondage.
I will deal in poison with thee, or in bastinado or in steel;
I will o'errun thee with policy.
I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways!
And therefore tremble and depart.
- WILLIAM: All right.
- AUDREY: Do, good William.
- WILLIAM: Yeah.
Yeah, God rest you merry, sir.
- CORIN: Touchstone, our master and mistress seeks you.
Come away, come on.
- TOUCHSTONE: Trip, Audrey, trip, Audrey!
I attend, I attend.
- ORLANDO: Is't possible that on so little acquaintance
you should like her?
That but seeing, you should love her?
And loving, woo?
And wooing, she should grant?
And will you persever to enjoy her?
- OLIVER: Neither call the giddiness of it in question,
the small acquaintance,
my sudden wooing nor her sudden consenting.
But say with me,
I love Aliena.
Say with her that she loves me.
Consent with both that we may enjoy each other;
for my father's house,
and all the revenue that was Sir Rowland's,
will I estate upon you, and here live and die
a shepherd.
- ORLANDO: Let your wedding be tomorrow.
Thither will I invite the Duke and all his contented followers.
Go you and prepare your Aliena; - [Aliena giggles]
- ORLANDO: For look you, here comes my Rosalind.
- ROSALIND: God save you, brother.
- OLIVER: And you, fair sister.
- ROSALIND: O my dear Orlando, how it grieves me
to see thee wear thy heart in a scarf!
- ORLANDO: It is my arm.
- ROSALIND: I thought thy heart had been wounded
with the claws of a lion.
- ORLANDO: Wounded it is, but with the eyes of a lady.
- ROSALIND: Did your brother tell you how I counterfeited
to swoon when he showed me your handkerchief?
- ORLANDO: Ay, and greater wonders than that.
- ROSALIND: O, I know where you are.
Nay, 'tis true.
For your brother and my sister no sooner met but they looked;
no sooner looked but they loved;
no sooner loved but they sighed;
no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason;
no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy;
and in these degrees they have made a pair of stairs
to marriage which they will climb.
- ORLANDO: They shall be married tomorrow.
But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness
through another man's eyes!
By so much the more shall I tomorrow
be at the height of heart-heaviness,
by how much I shall think my brother happy
in having that he wishes for.
- ROSALIND: Why then, tomorrow I cannot serve your turn
for Rosalind?
- ORLANDO: I can live no longer by thinking.
- ROSALIND: I will weary you no longer then
with idle talking.
Know of me, for now I speak to some purpose,
that I know you are a gentleman of good conceit.
Believe then, if you please, that I can do strange things.
I have since I was three year old conversed with a magician,
most profound in his art and yet not damnable.
If you do love Rosalind so near the heart
as your gesture cries it out,
when your brother marries Aliena shall you marry her.
I know into what straits of fortune she is driven
and it is not impossible to me,
if it appear not inconvenient to you,
to set her before your eyes tomorrow, human as she is,
and without any danger.
- ORLANDO: Speak'st thou in sober meanings?
- ROSALIND: By my life I do.
Therefore put you in your best array, bid your friends;
for if you will be married tomorrow you shall,
and to Rosalind if you will.
- [Phoebe shrieks]
- Oh, look, here comes a lover of mine and a lover of hers.
- PHOEBE: Youth, you have done me much ungentleness
To show the letter that I writ to you.
- ROSALIND: I care not if I have;
it is my study
To seem despiteful and ungentle to you.
You are there followed by a faithful shepherd.
Look upon him; love him; he worships you.
- PHOEBE: Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love.
- SILVIUS: It is to be all made of sighs and tears,
And so am I for Phoebe.
- PHOEBE: And I for Ganymede.
- ORLANDO: And I for Rosalind.
- ROSALIND: And I for no woman.
- SILVIUS: It is to be all made of faith and service,
And so am I for Phoebe.
- PHOEBE: And I for Ganymede.
- ORLANDO: And I for Rosalind.
- ROSALIND: And I for no woman.
- SILVIUS: It is to be all made of fantasy,
All made of passion,
and all made of wishes,
All adoration, duty and observance,
All humbleness, all patience and impatience,
All purity, all trial, all observance,
And so am I for Phoebe.
- PHOEBE: And so am I for Ganymede.
- ORLANDO: And so am I for Rosalind.
- ROSALIND: And so am I for no woman.
- PHOEBE: If this be so, why blame you me to love you?
- SILVIUS: If this be so, why blame you me to love you?
- ORLANDO: If this be so, why blame you me to love you?
- ROSALIND: Who do you speak to,
'Why blame you me to love you?'
- ORLANDO: To her that is not here nor doth not hear.
- ROSALIND: I pray you no more of this,
'tis like the howling of Irish wolves against the moon.
I will help you if I can.
I would love you if I could.
Tomorrow meet me all together.
I will marry you, if ever I marry woman,
and you shall be married tomorrow.
- [Phoebe shrieks]
- I will satisfy you, if ever I satisfy man,
and you shall be married tomorrow.
I will content you, if what pleases you contents you,
and you shall be married tomorrow.
As you love Rosalind, meet.
As you love Phoebe, meet.
And as I love no woman, I'll meet.
So fare you well.
I have left you commands.
- SILVIUS: I'll not fail, if I live.
- PHOEBE: Nor I.
- ORLANDO: Nor I.
- TOUCHSTONE: Tomorrow is the joyful day, Audrey.
Tomorrow will we be married.
- AUDREY: I do desire it with all my heart;
and I hope it is no dishonest desire,
to desire to be a woman of the world?
* Ah, here the banished Duke's gentleman *
- AMIENS: Ah, well met, Monsieur Touchstone.
- TOUCHSTONE: By my troth, well met.
Come, sit, sit, oh, and a song.
- AMIENS: We are for you, sit i'th' middle.
- AMIENS: * It was a lover and his lass
* With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino *
* That o'er the green cornfield did pass *
* In spring-time, the only pretty ring-time *
* Between the acres of the rye *
* With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino *
* These pretty country folks would lie *
* In spring-time the only pretty ring-time *
* When birds do sing, hey ding a ding ding *
* Sweet lovers love the spring! *
- * This carol they began that hour *
- * With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino *
- * How that a life was but a flower *
- * In spring-time, the only pretty ring-time *
- * And therefore take the present time *
- * With a hey nonino and a hey nonino *
- * For love is crowned with the prime *
- * In spring-time, the only pretty ring-time *
* When birds do sing, hey ding a ding ding *
- * Sweet lovers love
- * The spring
- DUKE SENIOR: Dost thou believe, Orlando,
that the boy
Can do all this that he hath promised?
- ORLANDO: I sometimes do believe and sometimes do not,
As those that fear to hope, and know to fear.
- ROSALIND: Patience once more
whiles our compact is urged.
Your Duke, you say if I bring in your Rosalind
You will bestow her on Orlando, here?
- DUKE SENIOR: That would I,
had I kingdoms to give with her.
- ROSALIND: And Orlando,
you say you will have her when I bring her?
- ORLANDO: That would I, were I of all kingdoms king.
- ROSALIND: Phoebe, you say you'll marry me
if I be willing?
- PHOEBE: That will I, should I die the hour after.
- ROSALIND: Yeah, but if you do refuse to marry me
You'll give yourself to this most faithful shepherd?
- PHOEBE: So is the bargain.
- ROSALIND: Silvius, you say that you'll have
Phoebe if she will?
- SILVIUS: Though to have her and death were both one thing.
- ROSALIND: I have promised to make all this matter even.
Keep you your word, O Duke, to give your daughter,
You yours, Orlando, to receive his daughter.
Keep you your word, Phoebe, that you'll marry me,
Or else, refusing me, to wed this shepherd.
Keep your word, Silvius, that you'll marry her
If she refuse me;
and from hence I go
To make these doubts all even.
- DUKE SENIOR: I do remember in this shepherd boy
Some lively touches of my daughter's favour.
- ORLANDO: My lord, the first time that I ever saw him
Methought he was a brother to your daughter.
But my good lord, this boy is forest-born
And hath been tutored in the rudiments
Of many desperate studies by his uncle,
Whom, whom he reports to be a great magician,
Obscured in circle of this forest.
- JAQUES: There is sure another flood toward,
and these couples are coming to the ark.
Here comes a pair of very strange beasts,
which in all tongues are called fools.
- TOUCHSTONE: Salutation and greeting to you all.
- JAQUES: Good my lord, this is the motley-minded gentleman
that I have so often met in the forest.
He hath been a courtier, he swears.
- TOUCHSTONE: [laughs] If any man doubt that,
let him put me to my purgation.
I have trod a measure;
I have flattered a lady;
I have been politic with my friend,
smooth with mine enemy;
I have undone three tailors;
I have fought four quarrels
and like to have fought one.
- JAQUES: And how was that ta'en up?
- TOUCHSTONE: Faith, we met
and found the quarrel to be upon the seventh cause.
- JAQUES: How, seventh cause?
Good my lord, like this fellow.
- DUKE SENIOR: I like him very well.
- TOUCHSTONE: God'ild you, sir, I desire you of the like.
I press in here, sir,
amongst the rest of the country copulatives,
to swear and forswear
both as marriage binds and blood breaks;
[laughs]
it's a poor virgin, sir, an ill-favored thing, sir,
but mine own;
a poor humor of mine, sir,
to take that that no man else will.
- JAQUES: But for the seventh cause,
how did you find the quarrel on the seventh cause?
- TOUCHSTONE: Upon a lie seven times removed.
Bear your body more seeming, Audrey.
[chuckles]
As thus, sir.
I did dislike the cut of a certain courtier's beard.
He sent me word if I said his beard was not cut well,
he was in the mind it was.
This is called the -retort courteous.'
If I sent him word again it was not well cut,
he would send me word he cut it to please himself.
This is called the -quip modest.'
If again it was not well cut, he disabled my judgment.
This is called the -reply churlish'.
If again it was not well cut,
he would answer I spake not true.
This is called the -reproof valiant.'
If again, it was not well cut, he would say I lie.
This is called the -countercheck quarrelsome'
and so to the -lie circumstantial'
and the -lie direct'.
- JAQUES: And how oft did you say his beard was not well cut?
- TOUCHSTONE: Well, I durst go no further than
the lie circumstantial,
then he durst not give me the lie direct;
and so we measured swords and parted.
- JAQUES: Is this not a rare fellow, my lord?
He's as good at anything, and yet a fool.
- DUKE SENIOR: He uses his folly like a stalking-horse
and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.
[clanging on glass]
- HYMEN: Then is there mirth in heaven
When earthly things made even Atone together.
Good Duke, receive thy daughter.
Hymen from heaven brought her,
Yea, brought her hither,
That thou mightst join her hand with his,
Whose heart within his bosom is.
[soft processional music]
- ROSALIND: To you, dear Duke, I give myself,
for I am yours.
To you, Orlando, I give myself, for I am yours.
- DUKE SENIOR: If there be truth in sight,
you are my daughter.
- ORLANDO: If there be truth in sight, you are my Rosalind.
- PHOEBE: If sight and shape be true,
Why then, my love adieu.
- ROSALIND: I'll have no father, if you be not he.
I'll have no husband, if you be not he.
Nor ne'er wed woman, if you be not she.
- HYMEN Peace, ho.
- [overlapping chatter]
- I bar confusion.
'Tis I must make conclusion
Of these most strange events.
Here's eight that must take hands
To join in Hymen's bands,
If truth holds true contents.
You and you no cross shall part.
You and you are heart in heart.
You to his love must accord
Or have a woman to your lord.
You and you are sure together
As the winter to foul weather.
*
- [Jaques singing] * Wedding is great Juno's crown *
* O blessed bond of board and bed *
* 'Tis Hymen peoples every town *
* High wedlock then be honored
* Honor, high honor and renown
[background speaking, laughter] * To Hymen
* God of every town
* Mmm, to Hymen
* God of every town
*
- DUKE SENIOR: O my dear niece, welcome thou art to me
Even daughter;
welcome to no less degree.
- PHOEBE: I will not eat my word, Silvius,
now thou art mine,
Thy faith my fancy to thee doth combine.
- JAQUES: De Boys,
Let me have audience for a word or two.
I am the second son of old Sir Rowland
That bring these tidings to this fair assembly.
Duke Frederick, hearing how that every day
Men of great worth resorted to this forest,
Addressed a power purposely to take
His brother here and put him to the sword;
And to the skirts of this wild wood he came,
Where meeting with an old religious man,
After some question with him, was converted
Both from his enterprise and from the world, [laughter]
His crown bequeathing to his banished brother,
And all their lands restored to them
That were with him exiled.
[joyous laughter]
- DUKE SENIOR: Oh, welcome, young man.
Thou offer'st fairly to thy brothers' wedding
And in this forest let us do those ends
That here were well begun and well begot;
And after, every of this happy number
That have endured shrewd days and nights with us
Shall share the good of our returned fortune,
According to the measure of their states.
And meantime, forget this new-fall'n dignity
And fall into our rustic revelry.
- [cheers]
- Yes, play, music!
And you, brides and bridegrooms all,
With measure heaped in joy to th' measures fall.
- JAQUES: Sir, by your patience.
If I heard you rightly,
Duke Frederick,
hath put on a religious life
And thrown into neglect the pompous court?
- JAQUES DE BOYS: He hath.
- JAQUES: [sighs] To him will I;
out of these convertites
There is much matter to be heard and learned.
You to your former honor I bequeath:
Your patience and your virtue well deserves it.
You, to a love that your true faith doth merit;
You, to your land and love and great allies;
You, to a long and well-deserved bed;
And you, to wrangling, for thy loving voyage
Is but for two months victualled.
So to your pleasures,
I am for other than for dancing measures.
- DUKE SENIOR: Stay, Jaques, stay.
- JAQUES: To see no pastime, I.
What you would have I'll stay to know at your abandoned cave.
- DUKE SENIOR: Proceed, proceed!
We'll begin these rites
As we do trust they'll end, in true delights.
- [happy laughter]
- [Rosalind weeping happily]
ROSALIND: It is not the fashion to see the lady,
the epilogue,
but it is no more unhandsome
than to see the lord the Prologue.
If it be true that good wine needs no bush,
'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue.
Yet to good wine they do use good bushes,
and good plays prove the better
by the help of good epilogues.
What a case am I in then,
that I am neither a good epilogue,
nor cannot insinuate with you
on the behalf of a good play.
I am not furnished like a beggar,
therefore to beg will not become me.
My way
is to conjure you,
and I'll begin with the women.
I charge you, O women,
for the love you bear to men,
to like as much of this play as please you.
And I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women
[as I perceive by your simpering,
none of you hates them],
that between you, the women and all else,
the play may please.
If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you
as had beards that pleased me,
complexions that liked me
and breaths that I defied not.
And I am sure as many as have good beards, or good faces,
or sweet breaths will,
for my kind offer when I make curtsy,
bid me farewell.
*
[clapping]
[clapping and cheering]
- Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh!
That was amazing you guys.
Nate, how are you?
You had some technical difficulties?
How you doing? - Nate: I'm all right.
- Brenda: You're amazing!
What happened?
- Nate: I got booted off Zoom at 5:57 pm.
[participants laugh]
- Nate: And then, I had to reboot my computer.
And when we started,
I couldn't get into the file for the script.
- [Brenda exclaims]
- So, I didn't have the text in front of me for a while.
- Colleen: So you did that mostly off the book?
- Nate: Some of it, and then I got it up,
and then my computer crashed again,
and I got booted off the Zoom again.
And so then, I got back in,
but again, I didn't have my script.
So act one was just a real wild ride, everybody,
real wild ride!
- Brenda: Oh, my gosh!
I had no idea.
I knew that you got booted off beforehand
because they said, "Brenda, we have to hold
and Nate doesn't have a computer,"
and I was like, "Oh, okay!" and then I thought--
Tim Gittings, you're on call, right,
To step in?
- Tim: I thought the same thing.
- Oh, my god! Then, I had no idea
that you had any other trouble though.
- Nate: Thank you!
[everyone laughs]
- You are amazing, you all were amazing,
but that's amazing.
Carey Cannon, I know that you've been
looking at questions and--
- Carey: I have been, do we want John Langs to join us.
Has he joined us?
- Yes, please, John Langs, are you on?
[crowd cheers and applauds] - Carey: Hi, John Langs!
- John: Hey, Nate, that is the first
I heard any of this and it was amazing!
That was amazing! - Nate: I'm glad.
- John: 'Cuz I would not have known that your script was down
and, yes, congratulations.
Congratulations, everybody!
That is, I mean, we're all making this forum together
and it is a thrill ride right now.
So, I thank you for your courage and bravery.
It's just so exciting
to watch that come together, cheers.
- Carey: Along these lines, I have to say that
Bill and Diane asked, "You seemed to know the lines.
Were you actually reading?"
and, apparently, sometimes you were not actually reading.
What's the answer to that, folks?
How are you reading those things?
- Daniel: Well, in my case, I have the script
in front of me which apparently doesn't
always help with speaking.
So, yeah, the script is on the screen,
although, occasionally it serves to help.
- Brenda: Does anybody else have any of their little tricks,
or are you all just on the screen?
I know last--
- Colleen: This whole Zoom thing has been
really, really different for us.
Probably, a bit easier for the younger members,
who have taught us a lot.
- [laughter]
- Daniel: Not you, Kelsey.
- Colleen: Talking to you, Kelsey!
So what we learned is, you know, there are three points of...
We have to look, actually, in four different places.
So, there's the camera,
and when we're looking at our scene partner,
we're actually looking at the camera.
There are times when John has directed us
to look right or left to intimate
that the scene partner is there,
but all of us have the script just below the camera.
So that we can be reading as we go
because many of us have not played these roles before
and we only had a week to read and rehearse.
Actually, less then a week: five days.
So, yeah, we have got the Zoom screen,
the script, the camera, and the invisible scene partners.
- Carey: One of the questions was
how long did you all rehearse,
but there's another.
Roseanne says, "So impressed that these stage actors
"have become this skilled so quickly
with this newish media."
Any of the rest of you wanna speak to that?
Or, Brenda, do you wanna field that?
- Brenda: Sure, sure, I mean, Sarah Day,
how do you feel about the whole Zoom acting?
How different is it?
You were wonderful tonight, by the way.
- [Sarah] [laughs] Thank you,
that was a nice way to smooth that in.
[participants laughing]
Yes, Zoom is a brand new thing.
What? A month and a half, I have been playing around with it.
And it's a nice little bridge of a substitute somehow,
but it's not like being in the room
with all of you and all my friends.
- Yeah.
- But it's third-best, seventh-best, I don't know.
I am really grateful for the opportunity
to be in a Zoom room with y'all.
Oh! pressing buttons, oh no!
[laughs]
It is crazy, silly fun
and I am really grateful to be able to share stories.
- Brenda: Does anybody find it more freeing,
just in your room by yourself?
Does it feel a little bit like-- you know how actors always say,
"I was so good
when I was home doing it by myself"
When you get to rehearsal and all your plans
kinda fall apart sometimes.
Does anyone find it freeing in that way at all?
Anybody?
[Several speaking at once]
- Go, May.
- Melisa: I don't think it's a comparable experience.
You know, I think you are judging
two completely different mediums,
and completely different experiences.
So, I don't know that I put it that category,
but it's definitely a different skill set,
which is fun to be like,
"Oh! This is how we're doing it"
and kind of, I think there's a lot of relinquishing control.
- Brenda: Yeah.
- Melisa: Because you can't direct your actor friends,
no matter how much we want to.
[Brenda laughs]
It is all about what you do yourself, right?
And you trust one person, who is John,
who is looking on the outside to say,
to say, like, "Do it like this,"
because I think when we work live,
we are constantly giving each other feedback,
even if it's non-verbal.
That's about the kind of energy
we're receiving from the other person.
- Right.
- Melisa: So, that just doesn't exist here
and I think you pretend that it does,
is kind a doing a disservice to the medium
we're using, which is completely
different and beneficial in its own ways
because we can really be right here
and that's really cool.
[several actors start talking at the same time]
- Brenda: Kelsey was gonna say something, too.
- Kelsey: All I said was, "I got to do the show barefoot."
[actors laugh]
- Brenda: Which we don't do on our stage very much, right?
- Tracy: Pajama pants. - Pajama pants.
- Brenda: Brian, what were you gonna say?
- Brian: I was just gonna say
that the strange thing is
that we are not looking at our fellow actors.
When we're perceived to be connecting
with our fellow actors,
We're looking at a little dot
at the top of our laptops, most of us.
So, I have the image of everyone else
over to my left, over here, my script underneath,
and then, I'm looking into someone's eyes here
and that's what's really strange.
- Brenda: Right, right.
Carey Cannon, what else have you got?
- Carey: I was just saying there's a question
about editing the text and as we have got
John and Eva here, who was our text coach,
John was the director.
There's a question about-- Dana and Lisa said,
"This has given us an opportunity
"we don't normally have to follow along
"and see how you have edited the text.
"We're curious how you have approached
both the edits creatively and as storytellers."
- Brenda: John?
- John: Yeah, totally, I can speak to that.
The form is interesting,
Shakespeare wrote for four hours
outside under the steady light in the middle of the day.
[Microsoft Windows boot up tones]
And that is a very particular form.
This is another form and I really felt
like its my first foray as a Zoom director
and I feel like in this particular format
you have to come
because you really, really want this story.
There's so many distractions
just sitting around your desk
and I wanted to condense the story
into a time and a space that I felt like you could hang with.
So, in my mind it was,
Let's get to the most efficient way to tell this story
with most heart possible and see, if we let
a lot of the ornamentation that Shakespeare puts on,
which I love,
which is incredibly valuable and nobody does it better,
but let's let that fall away
and make it an efficient machine of storytelling
about the nature
of these concentric circles of love.
That's the story I wanted to tell.
We're all kind of in alienation and isolation right now
and I think this story has a lot to say about a reset.
That everybody is confronted with love
in a particular way right now
and resetting their lives
and this story speaks to that
so I wanted to get to that essence
and that's what lead the cut for me.
- Brenda: Eva, how did you help out with that cut?
How are you doing Eva?
Good job!
[everyone laughs]
- Eva: Thank you, thank you, all, for killing it.
I think I was just trying to, as John said,
help with the core story
and trying to get that across.
I was sometimes brutal with my cuts,
and then, people would say, "No, you can't be that brutal,"
and then sometimes they were just tiny little snips,
but we tried to keep the shape of the storytelling
as much as we could for this format.
That was pretty much the goal.
- Colleen: I bet that during the plague,
when the theaters were shut down, if Zoom existed,
Shakespeare would have been all over it.
[everyone laughs]
- Brenda: We'll have to ask him that sometime.
I have to know, on the Post-It notes,
whose idea was the Post-It notes?
- Nate: I think it was John, wasn't it?
I don't know.
- Brenda: Was it John?
- John: It was the first image-- you know, I have to--
It was wonderful to watch the first reading
because I have a three-year-old daughter,
and oftentimes I am bereft of anything to do with her,
but I have bunch of objects in the room
and she loves a good story.
And so, I'll start to pick an object
and that object will become a spaceship for her
and it may be a saucer we have
or some kind of ornament that's in our room,
and I tell stories with that.
When we landed in Zoom for the first time
and I saw Nate and he was just reading in his kitchen
by the end of that first reading,
I thought, "Well, of course,
"Orlando is in the kitchen.
Of course, he is."
What are the objects?
I mean, part of the fun of this
is the ingenuity of the actors.
As a director, you know, usually you get set designers,
costume designers, lighting, make up.
All I had was these wonderfully creative actors
who kept bringing something
and the only thought I had was,
how are we gonna do the letters all over the forest?"
And, how are we gonna do the wrestling?
- Brenda: Oh, yeah!
- John: And those two things were primary,
but Post-It notes,
everybody has on their desk, around their computer.
So, I felt like if we can depart through there,
then I think a world of imagination
kinda unfolds for us.
- Carey: There were some 'Behind the Scenes' questions,
some kind of stage trick questions.
Roseanne says, "How many monitors?
What are the stage managers doing?"
Somebody else commented on
the props being passed from actor to actor.
Cathy asked about the props.
- John: Mm-hmm.
Well, we talked a little bit about, sort of,
you know, I feel like we're at
the very very beginning of the Zoom generation of doing theater
and years from now--
I hope, I hope it doesn't last too long, honestly,
because I'd love to get back in the room
breathing with you,
but if it does,
years from now, we'll look back and go, like
"Oh, remember when we used to pass props that way?
Wasn't that super fun?"
But we couldn't resist.
You know, it's a little bit of stage magic that we could do.
and for what it was worth,
I felt, like, super fun and playful and creative.
- Carey: And the actors moving entrances
and how people popped up when they were needed,
or what stage management did to manipulate the view?
There were couple of questions that lead to that.
- John: Jacki.
- Brenda: Yeah, Jacki and Evelyn.
[actors cheer]
- Jacki: We have two stage managers,
who are "behind the scenes" right now.
I am the person who is following along in the script.
I am playing the sound cues, I am making sure
that people are getting renamed to their correct characters.
So, my setup: I have two computers here.
This is my first computer that I'm on Zoom
and then, my second computer,
where I have my script and my sound program
and another Zoom.
And then, our other stage manager, Evelyn Matten,
whose voice you heard at the beginning,
she is sort of our backstage manager.
So, if something goes wrong,
like Nate Burger in Chicago gets kicked off of his Internet,
she's the person that we rely on
to solve the problem as quickly as possible with Nate.
So, it's sort of like
I'm the stage manager that's in the booth
and Evelyn is the stage manager
who's backstage, backstage during the reading.
- Brenda: Awesome, awesome!
Any more questions from the audience?
- Carey: Yeah, Sherry Lundell-- Hey, Sherry!--
said, "Have you--" - Brenda: Yeah?
- Carey: Just a really interesting question...
"How have you found the words in solitude,
"as active in a different way than a stage movement?
"I mean, the words move and suggest movement.
"We're laughing in a new way at new revelations.
"It's interesting 'hearing' a play.
"What are your--
"As performers, how is that change
your moving the story?"
- Tracy: You know, when we put together a play
and we get to be together in a same room,
we usually spend the first week working this way.
We all do our read-through around the table.
Almost every director likes to start
with the read-through of the play.
And even though we don't know our lines yet,
we've all been looking at the script
and studying the script and trying out ideas.
So, in a way, this is similar to that
'cause we generally like to bring ourselves
to that first read and make it as alive as--
We've been chomping at the bit to do it.
So, it's our chance to do it, ah, reading it.
So, it is sort of like that, feels similar.
I mean, we're embodying the play
as best we can seated.
So, it feels similar to that.
It's not quite the same 'cause
our energies aren't in the same room
and we don't hear each other laugh at each other's lines,
or, you know,
you can feel energy,
as you know as audience members.
When you're in an audience, you feel that united energy
and we feel it also in a room.
That's the element that I'm sure we all miss.
You know, that electric energy of person to person.
- Carey: There was a question
about including the Zoom audience,
whether there was any thought
about being able to see the watchers?
- [Tracy sighs woefully]
Brenda: It'd be so nice to see the watchers
when they create Zoom for theater,
like a whole new platform that we can do that,
that would be awesome.
But it's so interesting
'cause even we can do the thing where we're like,
"Oh, wait, I'm not on camera; Wait, I'm off-camera,"
or come into a scene that you weren't supposed to be in.
It just so precarious right now
to try to keep it straight-forward.
I see-- To speak to what you said, Tracy,
as a person
who's watched you guys do cold readings all the time--
I mean, I'm obsessed with cold readings
because we do some internally to look for plays in the future.
Now, we turned some of those into "Winter Words,"
because, you guys, there's something amazingly exciting,
I think it's even like extra live theater
because when you come to see a performance,
it's been rehearsed.
It's been worked on and worked on and worked on,
but when you guys sit down the first time
and you're reading something,
there's a whole another level of the creative juices
that's happening:
the kind of risk that's being taken,
the kind of a boldness and, like, bravery.
And so, there's just something about you guys
reading a play that you don't have a lot of time with,
which is terrifying to you all.
Who doesn't mind cold readings?
Who doesn't mind sitting down and reading a play publicly?
Any of you? Any of you not mind it?
Tracy doesn't mind, Nate doesn't mind, Tim.
- Gavin: If I add something? - Brenda: Yeah.
- Gavin: About just the reading aspect of this on Zoom?
One of the things that is affected very deeply
is rhythm and timing
because we can't overlap lines like we would
in the same room with each other,
or else it would be like a mosh of sound
and there'll be a delay.
So, I feel that rhythmically this format changes
how we read.
It's slightly different than being in the same room
as far as rhythm and timing and tempo is concerned.
- Brenda: Right, right.
- Kelsey: I also just wanna say,
when we did this a couple of years ago,
I played Phoebe and Melisa played Rosalind,
and I can't help but feel
a huge melancholy difference between
acting those comic scenes with her
and getting up in her stuff,
and being boxed into this little machine
when she's across the street at her house.
[Brenda laughs]
There's something really blue about that
that I can't just get past,
but at the same time,
you can't do anything but be grateful.
But it's definitly different. - Brenda: Yeah.
- Joe: Street-- street video!
That's what we need to do.
We need to-- - Brenda: Street video, Joe?
There's Joe.
For all of you, that's Joe Cerqua, our composer.
Well done, Joe! [actors clap and cheer]
Talk a little bit about how weird this was, Joe.
Is this the first time you've done a Zoom production?
- Joe: It's the first time--
I've been doing online stuff now for the last couple of months.
This was the first time I-- we attempted this through Zoom.
I've been doing Zoom classes with my students
and learned a lot.
- Brenda: Yeah. - Joe: Yeah.
- Carey: I wanted to, if we had a second,
there are two young actors
that Tim Gittings directed in this play:
Clare and Kayley, who played as Audrey and Phoebe,
who joined us
and were excited to be able to watch.
- [Brenda laughs] That's awesome!
Anybody else?
- Tim: Thank you so much for watching, guys!
I have Audrey's goat here, by the way.
[actors laugh]
- Daniel: Brenda? - Brenda: Yeah?
- This is great.
I love the format and we're always making art,
but I hope we still recognize that there is nothing like
seeing an actor in a beautiful costume,
standing on an extraordinarily designed and constructed set
outside, under the stars.
I mean, this is us
desperately trying to get at a piece of that.
We're lucky, but those carpenters and our costume...
- Brenda: Oh, yeah!
- Just so many people go into
making this thing beautiful.
This is just us doing barely what we do
because the whole package is so extraordinary
and so, we feel very lucky and privileged
and if you meet a carpenter or a seamstress
or a ticket holder or someone up there still pulling mustard,
please hug them and tell them we love them so much.
- Brenda: Yes, yes, I'm gonna say thank you to everybody,
that I do realize
that this is kind of like bread when we're starving.
You know, this isn't a whole meal.
And I-- Is that a terrible analogy?
But I do-- We all miss that.
We all know what it takes to put a play on.
We all know it, we do, and I hope that the audience,
I'm sure that they miss that, too.
And I just think this is one way that we can just...
just put something out there for everyone
to have a couple of hours of respite from what's going on,
but yeah, thank you, D.D., for mentioning that.
We miss that.
- Joe: Folks, hire a lighting designer
now, if you can, for the upcoming Christmas season,
or whatever you are doing.
- Brenda: Oh, yeah, yup, yup. - They need work.
- Brenda: Everybody needs work right now, don't they?
Yes.
Any more questions, Carey Cannon?
- Carey: We have lots of folks
just thanking us for the experience.
"Grateful to be able to see you all,
to be able to see your houses, to get close to your faces."
Lots of comments on that.
Some questions about,
how this is different from "Winter Words,"
and I think we talked about how it is different virtually,
but it feels a little like that.
Brenda?
- Brenda: Yeah, it does feel a little like that.
It really does.
My phone blows up when we start these.
I get all of these people texting me.
And Kim Rhodes sends her love. - Oh!
- I wanna just read quickly what she said,
just one text she sent me.
She said... she said--
I can't find it now.
- Carey: Keira Fromme compliments the wrestling
and shadow boxing and Jimmy's biceps,
just to get some-- the sublime to the ridiculous.
- [actors laugh] - Thank you, Keira.
- Brenda: Kim Rhodes said, "This is everything.
"I am totally crying.
This is how artists do."
So, she was just-- she had just caught--
She was late getting on
and that's what was happening all night,
is that, you know, it was very different to do Shakespeare
than it was to do the first one,
right, Colleen, right, D.D.?
I mean, this was very different to do the Shakespeare
and we were wondering, I mean, John and I talked about
if it would hold, right, John?
I mean, if it would play on this format,
and it did beautifully, I think.
- John: Yeah, you guys were amazing, it was great.
- Brenda: Yeah, you guys were amazing, that's why.
That's why it held.
All right, is that it, Carey Cannon?
- Carey: That covers many of them.
I mean, yes, yes, that's it. - [Brenda laughs]
- You just addressed that it's different with the Shakespeare
because there was one question:
For those of you who did it last week,
for some of you it's your first time,
but for those of you who did it last week,
how was it different having so many more characters
on-stage, in air quotes, with you?
Did it make more complicated?
- Tracy: We had to really time entrances sometimes.
Entrances being, like I had written,
typed into my script on the screen
wait for Melisa to get on screen
before you click on screen, things like that.
Because somebody's outside eye,
not ours, could see where we lined up on the screen
and at one point, Rosalind speaks to more than one person
and John wanted her to be able to do this
and this and this and this,
so if we clicked at the wrong time,
we were gonna mess that up for her.
So, you know, it just involved
a little bit more direction, right? [laughs]
- Brenda: Yes, Zoom staging, Zoom staging.
- Tracy: Staging, staging, if you can call it that.
- Brenda: Well, we're gonna learn a lot.
We learned a lot and we are gonna keep learning
over the next couple of weeks.
When we get to "Julius Caesar"
where there's, like, 89 characters.
- [actor cheers 'Whoo hoo!']
- I know-- That's gonna be a whole another world.
I have to just say this to everybody,
you will never not have the picture
of D.D. taking his shirt off like that
out of your mind. - [laughter]
- Brenda: It will be burned in your mind.
- Brian: I won't. - Tracy: You're welcome!
- Joe: It made me question
choices that I've made in my life, I'll tell you that.
- [everyone laughs]
- Brenda: All right, you guys, I love you guys!
Thank you so much.
Thank you, audience, for staying with us.
We appreciate you so much.
We'll see you next week.
Thank you!
- [overlapping 'thank you's]
- Announcer: Funding for APT's "Out of the Woods"
is provided by
Boardman Clark Law Firm,
Arcadia Books,
Dane Arts,
Nancy A. McDaniel,
Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin,
Orange Tree Imports,
Wilson Creek Pottery,
Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming,
and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.