Act 2, Scene 3

Before OLIVER'S House.

[Enter ORLANDO and ADAM, meeting.]
Orlando
613 Who's there?
Adam
614 What, my young master?—O my gentle master!
615 O my sweet master! O you memory
616 Of old Sir Rowland! why, what make you here?
617 Why are you virtuous? why do people love you?
618 And wherefore are you gentle, strong, and valiant?
619 Why would you be so fond to overcome
620 The bonny prizer of the humorous duke?
621 Your praise is come too swiftly home before you.
622 Know you not, master, to some kind of men
623 Their graces serve them but as enemies?
624 No more do yours; your virtues, gentle master,
625 Are sanctified and holy traitors to you.
626 O, what a world is this, when what is comely
627 Envenoms him that bears it!
Orlando
628 Why, what's the matter?
Adam
629 O unhappy youth,
630 Come not within these doors; within this roof
631 The enemy of all your graces lives:
632 Your brother,—no, no brother; yet the son—
633 Yet not the son; I will not call him son—
634 Of him I was about to call his father,—
635 Hath heard your praises; and this night he means
636 To burn the lodging where you use to lie,
637 And you within it: if he fail of that,
638 He will have other means to cut you off;
639 I overheard him and his practices.
640 This is no place; this house is but a butchery:
641 Abhor it, fear it, do not enter it.
Orlando
642 Why, whither, Adam, wouldst thou have me go?
Adam
643 No matter whither, so you come not here.
Orlando
644 What, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food?
645 Or with a base and boisterous sword enforce
646 A thievish living on the common road?
647 This I must do, or know not what to do:
648 Yet this I will not do, do how I can:
649 I rather will subject me to the malice
650 Of a diverted blood and bloody brother.
Adam
651 But do not so. I have five hundred crowns,
652 The thrifty hire I sav'd under your father,
653 Which I did store to be my foster-nurse,
654 When service should in my old limbs lie lame,
655 And unregarded age in corners thrown;
656 Take that: and He that doth the ravens feed,
657 Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,
658 Be comfort to my age! Here is the gold;
659 All this I give you. Let me be your servant;
660 Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty:
661 For in my youth I never did apply
662 Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood;
663 Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
664 The means of weakness and debility;
665 Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
666 Frosty, but kindly: let me go with you;
667 I'll do the service of a younger man
668 In all your business and necessities.
Orlando
669 O good old man; how well in thee appears
670 The constant service of the antique world,
671 When service sweat for duty, not for meed!
672 Thou art not for the fashion of these times,
673 Where none will sweat but for promotion;
674 And having that, do choke their service up
675 Even with the having: it is not so with thee.
676 But, poor old man, thou prun'st a rotten tree,
677 That cannot so much as a blossom yield
678 In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry:
679 But come thy ways, we'll go along together;
680 And ere we have thy youthful wages spent
681 We'll light upon some settled low content.
Adam
682 Master, go on; and I will follow thee
683 To the last gasp, with truth and loyalty.—
684 From seventeen years till now almost fourscore
685 Here lived I, but now live here no more.
686 At seventeen years many their fortunes seek;
687 But at fourscore it is too late a week:
688 Yet fortune cannot recompense me better
689 Than to die well and not my master's debtor.
[Exeunt.]

Notes

TLN 620archaic vocab

“The bonny prizer of the humorous duke”

'Humorous' here means governed by a bad or unstable humour — an uncontrollable fit of ill temper or caprice. Elizabethans believed health and character were ruled by four bodily fluids ('humours'); a person dominated by any one of them to excess was described as 'humorous,' i.e., moody and unpredictable. Adam is saying Duke Frederick acts from irrational passion, not reason. 'Prizer' means a wrestler who wins a prize.

TLN 624rhetorical device

“your virtues, gentle master, Are sanctified and holy traitors to you”

Adam uses an arresting paradox: Orlando's virtues are 'holy traitors' — things that are both sacred and treacherous at once. The phrase captures the play's central irony that goodness provokes envy and destruction in a corrupt court. 'Sanctified' means consecrated, blessed — yet those same blessings 'envenomin' and betray their owner.

TLN 649archaic vocab

“malice Of a diverted blood and bloody brother”

'Diverted blood' means blood (kinship, brotherhood) that has been turned away from its natural course. Oliver, who should love Orlando as a brother, has had his natural affection 'diverted' — redirected into hatred. 'Blood' meant both family relationship and one's shared nature as kin. Orlando says he would rather endure his brother's unnatural malice than beg or steal.

TLN 656biblical allusion

“He that doth the ravens feed, Yea, providently caters for the sparrow”

Adam invokes God's providence over even the least creatures: the God who feeds the ravens (Psalm 147 and Luke 12) and 'providently caters for the sparrow' (Matthew 10:29). These were the two most-quoted scriptural proofs that God watches over and supplies even worthless birds; Adam trusts the same God to see him through old age without his savings.

biblical The fall of a sparrow

TLN 661archaic vocab

“in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood”

'Rebellious liquors' are hot, fiery drinks (wine and strong ale) that were thought to stir up the blood and inflame the 'rebellious' lower passions — lust, rage, excess. Adam boasts that his temperate youth explains his vigorous old age: he never fed his blood with stimulants that would throw his humours into disorder. 'Apply' here means to administer (a remedy or substance) to the body.

TLN 670cultural context

“constant service of the antique world, When service sweat for duty, not for meed”

Orlando praises Adam as a relic of an older, purer world where servants served out of loyalty ('duty'), not for wages ('meed'). 'Antique world' means the ancient past — here idealized as a golden age of faithful service, in contrast with the modern court where men work only to advance themselves. 'Meed' is an archaic word for reward or payment.

classical The Golden Agehistorical Pastoral and the Forest of Arden

TLN 676rhetorical device

“thou prun'st a rotten tree, That cannot so much as a blossom yield In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry”

Orlando compares himself to a dead tree that Adam is trying to cultivate, extending the metaphor across three lines: pruning a tree that cannot blossom, meaning all of Adam's care and effort ('pains and husbandry') will go unrewarded. 'Husbandry' here means careful, thrifty tending — the same word used for farming. The metaphor of the fruitless tree was a familiar scriptural and proverbial image for wasted effort.