Act 3, Scene 2

The Forest of Arden.

[Enter ORLANDO, with a paper.]
Orlando
1076 Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love;
1077 And thou, thrice-crowned queen of night, survey
1078 With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above,
1079 Thy huntress' name, that my full life doth sway.
1080 O Rosalind! these trees shall be my books,
1081 And in their barks my thoughts I'll character,
1082 That every eye which in this forest looks
1083 Shall see thy virtue witness'd every where.
1084 Run, run, Orlando; carve on every tree,
1085 The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she.
[Exit.]
[Enter CORIN and TOUCHSTONE.]
Corin
1086 And how like you this shepherd's life, Master Touchstone?
Touchstone
1087 Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good
1088 life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught.
1089 In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in
1090 respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in
1091 respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect
1092 it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life,
1093 look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no more
1094 plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach. Hast any
1095 philosophy in thee, shepherd?
Corin
1096 No more but that I know the more one sickens, the worse at
1097 ease he is; and that he that wants money, means, and content, is
1098 without three good friends; that the property of rain is to wet,
1099 and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep; and that a
1100 great cause of the night is lack of the sun; that he that hath
1101 learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding,
1102 or comes of a very dull kindred.
Touchstone
1103 Such a one is a natural philosopher. Wast ever in court,
1104 shepherd?
Corin
1105 No, truly.
Touchstone
1106 Then thou art damned.
Corin
1107 Nay, I hope,—
Touchstone
1108 Truly, thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side.
Corin
1109 For not being at court? Your reason.
Touchstone
1110 Why, if thou never wast at court, thou never saw'st good
1111 manners; if thou never saw'st good manners, then thy manners must
1112 be wicked; and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation. Thou art
1113 in a parlous state, shepherd.
Corin
1114 Not a whit, Touchstone; those that are good manners at the
1115 court are as ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of the
1116 country is most mockable at the court. You told me you salute not
1117 at the court, but you kiss your hands; that courtesy would be
1118 uncleanly if courtiers were shepherds.
Touchstone
1119 Instance, briefly; come, instance.
Corin
1120 Why, we are still handling our ewes; and their fells,
1121 you know, are greasy.
Touchstone
1122 Why, do not your courtier's hands sweat? and is not the
1123 grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man?
1124 Shallow, shallow: a better instance, I say; come.
Corin
1125 Besides, our hands are hard.
Touchstone
1126 Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow again: a more
1127 sounder instance; come.
Corin
1128 And they are often tarred over with the surgery of our
1129 sheep; and would you have us kiss tar? The courtier's hands
1130 are perfumed with civet.
Touchstone
1131 Most shallow man! thou worm's-meat in respect of a good
1132 piece of flesh indeed!—Learn of the wise, and perpend: civet is
1133 of a baser birth than tar,—the very uncleanly flux of a cat.
1134 Mend the instance, shepherd.
Corin
1135 You have too courtly a wit for me: I'll rest.
Touchstone
1136 Wilt thou rest damned? God help thee, shallow man!
1137 God make incision in thee! thou art raw.
Corin
1138 Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I
1139 wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other
1140 men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my
1141 pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.
Touchstone
1142 That is another simple sin in you: to bring the ewes
1143 and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the
1144 copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether; and to betray
1145 a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly ram,
1146 out of all reasonable match. If thou be'st not damned for this,
1147 the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how
1148 thou shouldst 'scape.
Corin
1149 Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new mistress's brother.
[Enter ROSALIND, reading a paper.]
Rosalind
1150 'From the east to western Ind,
1151 No jewel is like Rosalind.
1152 Her worth, being mounted on the wind,
1153 Through all the world bears Rosalind.
1154 All the pictures fairest lin'd
1155 Are but black to Rosalind.
1156 Let no face be kept in mind
1157 But the fair of Rosalind.'
Touchstone
1158 I'll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners, and
1159 suppers, and sleeping hours excepted. It is the right
1160 butter-women's rank to market.
Rosalind
1161 Out, fool!
Touchstone
1162 For a taste:—
1163 If a hart do lack a hind,
1164 Let him seek out Rosalind.
1165 If the cat will after kind,
1166 So be sure will Rosalind.
1167 Winter garments must be lin'd,
1168 So must slender Rosalind.
1169 They that reap must sheaf and bind,—
1170 Then to cart with Rosalind.
1171 Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,
1172 Such a nut is Rosalind.
1173 He that sweetest rose will find
1174 Must find love's prick, and Rosalind.
Touchstone
1175 This is the very false gallop of verses: why do you infect
1176 yourself with them?
Rosalind
1177 Peace, you dull fool! I found them on a tree.
Touchstone
1178 Truly, the tree yields bad fruit.
Rosalind
1179 I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a
1180 medlar. Then it will be the earliest fruit in the country:
1181 for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right
1182 virtue of the medlar.
Touchstone
1183 You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge.
[Enter CELIA, reading a paper.]
Rosalind
1184 Peace!
1185 Here comes my sister, reading: stand aside.
Celia
1186 'Why should this a desert be?
1187 For it is unpeopled? No;
1188 Tongues I'll hang on every tree
1189 That shall civil sayings show:
1190 Some, how brief the life of man
1191 Runs his erring pilgrimage,
1192 That the streching of a span
1193 Buckles in his sum of age.
1194 Some, of violated vows
1195 'Twixt the souls of friend and friend;
1196 But upon the fairest boughs,
1197 Or at every sentence end,
1198 Will I Rosalinda write,
1199 Teaching all that read to know
1200 The quintessence of every sprite
1201 Heaven would in little show.
1202 Therefore heaven nature charg'd
1203 That one body should be fill'd
1204 With all graces wide-enlarg'd:
1205 Nature presently distill'd
1206 Helen's cheek, but not her heart;
1207 Cleopatra's majesty;
1208 Atalanta's better part;
1209 Sad Lucretia's modesty.
1210 Thus Rosalind of many parts
1211 By heavenly synod was devis'd,
1212 Of many faces, eyes, and hearts,
1213 To have the touches dearest priz'd.
1214 Heaven would that she these gifts should have,
1215 And I to live and die her slave.'
Rosalind
1216 O most gentle Jupiter!—What tedious homily of love have
1217 you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried 'Have
1218 patience, good people!'
Celia
1219 How now! back, friends; shepherd, go off a little:—go
1220 with him, sirrah.
Touchstone
1221 Come, shepherd, let us make an honourable retreat; though not
1222 with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.
[Exeunt CORIN and TOUCHSTONE.]
Celia
1223 Didst thou hear these verses?
Rosalind
1224 O, yes, I heard them all, and more too; for some of
1225 them had in them more feet than the verses would bear.
Celia
1226 That's no matter; the feet might bear the verses.
Rosalind
1227 Ay, but the feet were lame, and could not bear themselves
1228 without the verse, and therefore stood lamely in the verse.
Celia
1229 But didst thou hear without wondering how thy name
1230 should be hanged and carved upon these trees?
Rosalind
1231 I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you
1232 came; for look here what I found on a palm-tree: I was never
1233 so berhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat,
1234 which I can hardly remember.
Celia
1235 Trow you who hath done this?
Rosalind
1236 Is it a man?
Celia
1237 And a chain, that you once wore, about his neck.
1238 Change you colour?
Rosalind
1239 I pray thee, who?
Celia
1240 O lord, lord! it is a hard matter for friends to meet; but
1241 mountains may be removed with earthquakes, and so encounter.
Rosalind
1242 Nay, but who is it?
Celia
1243 Is it possible?
Rosalind
1244 Nay, I pr'ythee now, with most petitionary vehemence,
1245 tell me who it is.
Celia
1246 O wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful wonderful! and yet
1247 again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!
Rosalind
1248 Good my complexion! dost thou think, though I am
1249 caparisoned like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my
1250 disposition? One inch of delay more is a South-sea of discovery.
1251 I pr'ythee tell me who is it? quickly, and speak apace. I would
1252 thou couldst stammer, that thou mightst pour this concealed man
1253 out of thy mouth, as wine comes out of narrow-mouth'd bottle;
1254 either too much at once or none at all. I pr'ythee take the cork
1255 out of thy mouth that I may drink thy tidings.
Celia
1256 So you may put a man in your belly.
Rosalind
1257 Is he of God's making? What manner of man?
1258 Is his head worth a hat or his chin worth a beard?
Celia
1259 Nay, he hath but a little beard.
Rosalind
1260 Why, God will send more if the man will be thankful: let me stay
1261 the growth of his beard, if thou delay me not the knowledge of
1262 his chin.
Celia
1263 It is young Orlando, that tripped up the wrestler's
1264 heels and your heart both in an instant.
Rosalind
1265 Nay, but the devil take mocking: speak sad brow and true maid.
Celia
1266 I' faith, coz, 'tis he.
Rosalind
1267 Orlando?
Celia
1268 Orlando.
Rosalind
1269 Alas the day! what shall I do with my doublet and hose?—
1270 What did he when thou saw'st him? What said he? How look'd he?
1271 Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where
1272 remains he? How parted he with thee? and when shalt thou see
1273 him again? Answer me in one word.
Celia
1274 You must borrow me Gargantua's mouth first: 'tis a word too
1275 great for any mouth of this age's size. To say ay and no to
1276 these particulars is more than to answer in a catechism.
Rosalind
1277 But doth he know that I am in this forest, and in
1278 man's apparel? Looks he as freshly as he did the day he wrestled?
Celia
1279 It is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the propositions of
1280 a lover:—but take a taste of my finding him, and relish it with
1281 good observance. I found him under a tree, like a dropp'd acorn.
Rosalind
1282 It may well be called Jove's tree, when it drops forth such
1283 fruit.
Celia
1284 Give me audience, good madam.
Rosalind
1285 Proceed.
Celia
1286 There lay he, stretched along like a wounded knight.
Rosalind
1287 Though it be pity to see such a sight, it well
1288 becomes the ground.
Celia
1289 Cry, "holla!" to thy tongue, I pr'ythee; it curvets
1290 unseasonably. He was furnished like a hunter.
Rosalind
1291 O, ominous! he comes to kill my heart.
Celia
1292 I would sing my song without a burden: thou bring'st me
1293 out of tune.
Rosalind
1294 Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak.
1295 Sweet, say on.
Celia
1296 You bring me out.—Soft! comes he not here?
Rosalind
1297 'Tis he: slink by, and note him.
Rosalind
1298 {CELIA and ROSALIND retire.]
[Enter ORLANDO and JAQUES.]
Jaques
1299 I thank you for your company; but, good faith, I had as
1300 lief have been myself alone.
Orlando
1301 And so had I; but yet, for fashion's sake, I thank you
1302 too for your society.
Jaques
1303 God buy you: let's meet as little as we can.
Orlando
1304 I do desire we may be better strangers.
Jaques
1305 I pray you, mar no more trees with writing love songs in
1306 their barks.
Orlando
1307 I pray you, mar no more of my verses with reading them
1308 ill-favouredly.
Jaques
1309 Rosalind is your love's name?
Orlando
1310 Yes, just.
Jaques
1311 I do not like her name.
Orlando
1312 There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened.
Jaques
1313 What stature is she of?
Orlando
1314 Just as high as my heart.
Jaques
1315 You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been
1316 acquainted with goldsmiths' wives, and conned them out of
1317 rings?
Orlando
1318 Not so; but I answer you right painted cloth, from
1319 whence you have studied your questions.
Jaques
1320 You have a nimble wit: I think 'twas made of Atalanta's
1321 heels. Will you sit down with me? and we two will rail
1322 against our mistress the world, and all our misery.
Orlando
1323 I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against
1324 whom I know most faults.
Jaques
1325 The worst fault you have is to be in love.
Orlando
1326 'Tis a fault I will not change for your best virtue. I am
1327 weary of you.
Jaques
1328 By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you.
Orlando
1329 He is drowned in the brook; look but in, and you shall see him.
Jaques
1330 There I shall see mine own figure.
Orlando
1331 Which I take to be either a fool or a cipher.
Jaques
1332 I'll tarry no longer with you: farewell, good Signior Love.
Orlando
1333 I am glad of your departure: adieu, good Monsieur Melancholy.
[Exit JAQUES.--CELIA and ROSALIND come forward.]
Rosalind
1334 I will speak to him like a saucy lacquey,
1335 and under that habit play the knave with him.—Do you hear,
1336 forester?
Orlando
1337 Very well: what would you?
Rosalind
1338 I pray you, what is't o'clock?
Orlando
1339 You should ask me what time o' day; there's no clock in the
1340 forest.
Rosalind
1341 Then there is no true lover in the forest, else sighing
1342 every minute and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot
1343 of time as well as a clock.
Orlando
1344 And why not the swift foot of time? had not that been as proper?
Rosalind
1345 By no means, sir. Time travels in divers paces with divers
1346 persons. I'll tell you who time ambles withal, who time trots
1347 withal, who time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.
Orlando
1348 I pr'ythee, who doth he trot withal?
Rosalind
1349 Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the
1350 contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized; if the
1351 interim be but a se'nnight, time's pace is so hard that it
1352 seems the length of seven year.
Orlando
1353 Who ambles time withal?
Rosalind
1354 With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath
1355 not the gout: for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study,
1356 and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain; the one
1357 lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning, the other
1358 knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury. These time ambles
1359 withal.
Orlando
1360 Who doth he gallop withal?
Rosalind
1361 With a thief to the gallows; for though he go as softly
1362 as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there.
Orlando
1363 Who stays it still withal?
Rosalind
1364 With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term
1365 and term, and then they perceive not how time moves.
Orlando
1366 Where dwell you, pretty youth?
Rosalind
1367 With this shepherdess, my sister; here in the skirts of
1368 the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat.
Orlando
1369 Are you native of this place?
Rosalind
1370 As the coney, that you see dwell where she is kindled.
Orlando
1371 Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in
1372 so removed a dwelling.
Rosalind
1373 I have been told so of many: but indeed an old religious
1374 uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland
1375 man; one that knew courtship too well, for there he fell in love.
1376 I have heard him read many lectures against it; and I thank God I
1377 am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offences as he
1378 hath generally taxed their whole sex withal.
Orlando
1379 Can you remember any of the principal evils that he laid
1380 to the charge of women?
Rosalind
1381 There were none principal; they were all like one another
1382 as halfpence are; every one fault seeming monstrous till his
1383 fellow fault came to match it.
Orlando
1384 I pr'ythee recount some of them.
Rosalind
1385 No; I will not cast away my physic but on those that are
1386 sick. There is a man haunts the forest that abuses our young
1387 plants with carving "Rosalind" on their barks; hangs odes upon
1388 hawthorns, and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the
1389 name of Rosalind: if I could meet that fancy-monger, I would give
1390 him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love
1391 upon him.
Orlando
1392 I am he that is so love-shaked: I pray you tell me your remedy.
Rosalind
1393 There is none of my uncle's marks upon you; he taught me how to
1394 know a man in love; in which cage of rushes I am sure you are not
1395 prisoner.
Orlando
1396 What were his marks?
Rosalind
1397 A lean cheek; which you have not: a blue eye and sunken;
1398 which you have not: an unquestionable spirit; which you have not:
1399 a beard neglected; which you have not: but I pardon you for that,
1400 for simply your having in beard is a younger brother's revenue:—
1401 then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your
1402 sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you
1403 demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man; you
1404 are rather point-device in your accoutrements, as loving yourself
1405 than seeming the lover of any other.
Orlando
1406 Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love.
Rosalind
1407 Me believe it! you may as soon make her that you love
1408 believe it; which, I warrant, she is apter to do than to confess
1409 she does: that is one of the points in the which women still give
1410 the lie to their consciences. But, in good sooth, are you he that
1411 hangs the verses on the trees, wherein Rosalind is so admired?
Orlando
1412 I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I
1413 am that he, that unfortunate he.
Rosalind
1414 But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?
Orlando
1415 Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.
Rosalind
1416 Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as
1417 well a dark house and a whip as madmen do: and the reason why
1418 they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so
1419 ordinary that the whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing
1420 it by counsel.
Orlando
1421 Did you ever cure any so?
Rosalind
1422 Yes, one; and in this manner. He was to imagine me his
1423 love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me: at which
1424 time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate,
1425 changeable, longing and liking; proud, fantastical, apish,
1426 shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; for every
1427 passion something and for no passion truly anything, as boys and
1428 women are for the most part cattle of this colour; would now like
1429 him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now
1430 weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his
1431 mad humour of love to a living humour of madness; which was, to
1432 forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook
1433 merely monastic. And thus I cured him; and this way will I take
1434 upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart,
1435 that there shall not be one spot of love in 't.
Orlando
1436 I would not be cured, youth.
Rosalind
1437 I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind, and
1438 come every day to my cote and woo me.
Orlando
1439 Now, by the faith of my love, I will: tell me where it is.
Rosalind
1440 Go with me to it, and I'll show it you: and, by the way,
1441 you shall tell me where in the forest you live. Will you go?
Orlando
1442 With all my heart, good youth.
Rosalind
1443 Nay, you must call me Rosalind.—Come, sister, will you go?
[Exeunt.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1077classical allusion
“thrice-crowned queen of night, survey”
Orlando addresses the moon-goddess in her triple form: Cynthia (moon in the sky), Diana (huntress on earth), and Hecate (goddess of darkness below). 'Thrice-crowned' refers to the crescent, full, and new phases of the moon, or to these three divine identities. 'Thy huntress' name' points to Rosalind, whose name contains Rosa ('rose') but whose association here is with Diana's chaste, silver light.
classical Diana, virgin goddess of the moon
TLN 1081archaic vocab
“in their barks my thoughts I'll character”
'Character' is used as a verb meaning to inscribe or engrave — to carve letters into the bark of a tree. The word descends from the Greek kharakter, the tool used to make marks. Orlando is saying the trees will literally become his writing surface.
TLN 1085archaic vocab
“The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she”
'Unexpressive' here means inexpressible or impossible to fully describe in words — beyond expression. It does not mean 'expressionless.' The line closing Orlando's poem says Rosalind's qualities surpass what any language can capture.
TLN 1086cultural context
“how like you this shepherd's life, Master Touchstone”
This exchange launches the play's central court-vs-country debate. Touchstone's deliberately self-contradicting logic — the shepherd's life is both good and naught, both pleasing and tedious — parodies the formal rhetorical exercise of arguing both sides of a question (the disputatio). The word 'in respect of' means 'considered as' or 'from the perspective of.'
historical Pastoral and the Forest of Arden
TLN 1103wordplay
“Such a one is a natural philosopher”
Touchstone's pun runs two ways. 'Natural' means 'of or concerning nature' (Corin's earthy wisdom is a philosophy of natural life), but 'natural' also meant a born idiot or simpleton in Elizabethan English. So Touchstone calls Corin both a 'nature philosopher' and a 'natural fool' in the same breath.
TLN 1108wordplay
“thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg”
Touchstone constructs a mock syllogism: no court = no good manners; no good manners = wickedness; wickedness = damnation. The absurd result is that Corin is damned simply for never having visited a city. The comparison to 'an ill-roasted egg, all on one side' means half-cooked — singed on one face, raw on the other — which mocks the logic as lopsided nonsense. The whole speech parodies the formal logical disputation of the schools.
TLN 1130cultural context
“perfumed with civet”
Civet is a strong, musky perfume extracted from the anal glands of the civet cat — a luxury scent fashionable at court. Touchstone inverts the expected hierarchy: the courtier's hands are perfumed with an animal's glandular 'flux,' which he declares more base than the honest tar Corin uses to treat his sheep. The joke deflates courtly refinement by revealing its animal origins.
TLN 1149classical allusion
“young Master Ganymede, my new mistress's brother”
Corin uses Rosalind's male disguise-name. In classical myth, Ganymede was a beautiful Trojan youth whom Jupiter carried up to Olympus to be his cupbearer and boy-beloved. A 'Ganymede' was Elizabethan slang for a pretty boy kept for erotic purposes. Rosalind chose the name in Act 1 when fleeing court; its mythological weight means her male disguise carries a charge of same-sex desire that the play exploits in the wooing scenes that follow.
classical Ganymede, cupbearer of Jove
TLN 1160cultural context
“butter-women's rank to market”
Touchstone compares Orlando's verses to the monotonous, ambling single-file ('rank') of dairy-women walking to market. The image mocks the thudding, mechanical rhythm of the poem's couplets — each line marching forward at the same plodding pace, like a line of market women with their baskets, all doing the same thing. A 'rank' is a line or column, as well as having a secondary sense of something coarse and unpleasant.
TLN 1175rhetorical device
“the very false gallop of verses”
A 'false gallop' was a horse's canter — a controlled, artificial pace that imitates the full gallop but is not the real thing. Applied to verse, it means a metrically smooth but hollow, mechanical rhythm: the kind of jingling rhymes that keep time without meaning. Touchstone is saying Orlando's poems (and his own parody) both trot along glibly without genuine feeling or thought.
TLN 1206classical allusion
“Helen's cheek, but not her heart; Cleopatra's majesty; Atalanta's better part; Sad Lucretia's modesty”
Orlando's poem on the trees assembles Rosalind from four famous classical women: Helen of Troy (beauty without the faithlessness that launched the war), Cleopatra (regal grandeur), Atalanta (the swift huntress-athlete who outran all her suitors — probably her fleetness of foot, the 'better part' being her speed, not her susceptibility to the golden apples trick), and Lucretia (the Roman matron who killed herself to preserve her honour, the standard of perfect chastity).
TLN 1216wordplay
“O most gentle Jupiter!—What tedious homily of love”
Rosalind's oath 'O most gentle Jupiter' is a mild exclamation, but the irony is sharp: the real Jupiter (Jove, king of the gods) was anything but gentle in love — he was famous for violent, shape-shifting seductions of mortal women. Rosalind's exasperated borrowing of his name to complain about a tedious love-sermon is deliberately comic. She then compares Orlando's poem to a long church sermon ('homily') whose congregation she is bored stiff by.
TLN 1222wordplay
“with scrip and scrippage”
Touchstone parodies the military phrase 'bag and baggage' (the equipment and luggage of a retreating army). A 'scrip' was a shepherd's small leather bag or wallet — the pastoral equivalent of a soldier's kit-bag. 'Scrippage' is Touchstone's comic invention: the made-up abstract noun (-age suffix) produces a word that sounds impressively formal but means nothing beyond 'whatever is in the scrip.' The joke deflates martial heroism by translating it into shepherd's gear.
TLN 1231cultural context
“seven of the nine days out of the wonder”
A 'nine days' wonder' was a proverbial phrase for any extraordinary event whose novelty wore off within a week and a half. Rosalind jokes she has already spent seven of those nine days being amazed that her name appeared on trees, so she is nearly over it. The proverb was already cliched enough in the 1590s that stretching it to 'seven of nine' is itself part of the joke.
TLN 1248cultural context
“I am caparisoned like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition”
'Caparisoned' means decked out or fitted out — originally used of horses dressed in rich trappings, here ironic because Rosalind is dressed as a man. A 'doublet' was a close-fitting padded jacket, and 'hose' were tight breeches or stockings: together they formed the standard male outfit. Rosalind is saying her clothing is masculine but her feelings (her 'disposition') are still a woman's — she cannot suppress her impatience to hear news of Orlando.
TLN 1250historical topical
“One inch of delay more is a South-sea of discovery”
In the 1590s the South Sea (Pacific Ocean) was the byword for an immense, uncharted, possibly endless expanse. The first European crossing had been completed by Magellan's crew in 1521-22, and the voyages of Drake and Cavendish had kept it in public imagination. Rosalind says one more inch of delay from Celia would be as long and unexplorable as the whole Pacific — an impatient hyperbole measuring her urgency.
TLN 1274cultural context
“You must borrow me Gargantua's mouth first”
Gargantua is the giant of François Rabelais's comic prose satire Gargantua (1534), whose mouth was famously enormous. Celia tells Rosalind she would need to borrow the mouth of this fictional giant to answer all Rosalind's questions in 'one word.' Rabelais's French books were not fully available in English translation until 1653, but Gargantua was well known by reputation in Elizabethan England as the very type of gigantic appetite.
TLN 1282classical allusion
“It may well be called Jove's tree, when it drops forth such fruit”
The oak was sacred to Jove (Jupiter/Zeus), the king of the gods, whose oracle at Dodona in Greece spoke through the rustling of oak leaves. Finding Orlando (the 'fruit') asleep under an oak, Rosalind calls it 'Jove's tree' with a pun: Orlando is worthy of the king of the gods' sacred tree. The acorn image also ties Orlando to the forest in a quietly pastoral way.
TLN 1318cultural context
“I answer you right painted cloth, from whence you have studied your questions”
Cheap 'painted cloths' — canvas hangings daubed with moral sayings, proverbs, and biblical scenes — decorated the walls of taverns, inns, and modest houses as a poor substitute for tapestry. Orlando says Jaques's questions are no better than the stock slogans lettered onto these mass-produced hangings: cliched, pre-formed wisdom available to anyone. It is a pointed counter to Jaques's affected superiority.
TLN 1320classical allusion
“'twas made of Atalanta's heels”
Jaques says Orlando's nimble wit was made from Atalanta's heels — the famous speed of the Greek huntress-heroine who could outrun any man. Atalanta agreed to marry only the man who could beat her in a footrace, and killed those who lost. The compliment to Orlando is backhanded: his wit is quick on its feet but, like Atalanta's heels, perhaps not very deep.
TLN 1333cultural context
“adieu, good Monsieur Melancholy”
Orlando's farewell label for Jaques invokes the fashionable Elizabethan type of the melancholy man: the brooding, satirical, witty outsider who cultivated sadness as a mark of superior sensitivity. The foreign title 'Monsieur' adds a hint of the affected, pseudo-continental posture that Elizabethan satirists often mocked. Melancholy was believed to result from an excess of black bile, one of the four humours governing temperament.
historical Melancholy and the malcontent
TLN 1341cultural context
“sighing every minute and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot of time”
Rosalind's wit-exchange with Orlando about clocks sets up her famous speech on time's different paces. Orlando says there is no clock in the forest; Rosalind counters that a true lover's sighs and groans mark time more reliably than a clock face. The pun is on the clock's 'foot' (one tick, from the pendulum's 'foot') and time's 'lazy' movement when nothing is happening.
TLN 1345rhetorical device
“Time travels in divers paces with divers persons”
Rosalind's extended conceit classifies four types of people and the pace at which time seems to move for each — ambles, trots, gallops, or stands still. The rhetorical form is division (divisio), a schoolroom exercise of exhaustively parcelling a topic into its sub-types. The four categories are: young bride-to-be (trots = slow); comfortable priest and comfortable rich man (ambles = easy); thief going to execution (gallops = too fast); lawyer on vacation (stands still). The speech shows off Rosalind's verbal wit as much as it teaches anything about time.
TLN 1354historical topical
“a priest that lacks Latin”
After the Reformation the Church of England faced a shortage of educated clergy; many rural ministers were poorly educated and could not read Latin, which was still required for church service books and scripture commentaries. A priest 'that lacks Latin' could not study, and therefore had no late-night reading to keep him awake — so time ambled easily for him. This was a live complaint in the 1590s, when the Elizabethan Settlement was struggling to staff country parishes with adequate ministers.
TLN 1390archaic vocab
“he seems to have the quotidian of love upon him”
A 'quotidian' was a type of intermittent fever (usually malaria) that recurred every day — from Latin quotidianus, 'daily.' In Elizabethan medicine love-sickness was classified alongside fevers as a physical disease of the blood and humours, and 'the lover's fever' was a stock medical metaphor. Rosalind is saying the man who writes Rosalind's name on trees shows all the symptoms of a chronic daily fever: love-sickness with no remission.
TLN 1397cultural context
“A lean cheek; which you have not: a blue eye and sunken”
Rosalind catalogues the conventional physical symptoms of the Petrarchan lover in love: hollow cheeks, dark rings under the eyes ('blue eye' means bruised or dark-rimmed, not the colour of the iris), neglected beard, ungartered stockings, hat with no hatband, sleeve unbuttoned, shoe untied. These visible signs of 'careless desolation' signalled lovesickness on the Elizabethan stage and in contemporary love poetry. Orlando, she notes, has none of them — he is too well-dressed to be a proper lover.
historical Petrarch and the Petrarchan lover
TLN 1416historical topical
“Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do”
The standard Elizabethan treatment for madness was confinement in a darkened room ('a dark house') and flogging — the same treatment recommended for melancholy and excessive passion. Bethlem Royal Hospital ('Bedlam') in London was the best-known institution for the insane, and visitors came to watch the patients; the whip and the dark cell were familiar facts of Elizabethan life. Rosalind frames love as a clinical insanity that simply escapes this treatment because it is too widespread.
TLN 1424archaic vocab
“being but a moonish youth”
'Moonish' means changeable, fickle, and inconstant — like the moon, which shifts through its phases and was thought in humoral medicine to govern mood-swings, lunacy, and feminine instability. Rosalind describes the 'cure' she plans to apply to Orlando: she will play the role of the inconstant, changeable woman, being now fond of him, now harsh, to drive his 'mad humour of love' into sane indifference. The word also hints at her own situation — she is a young man (Ganymede) who is really a young woman performing femininity.
TLN 1434cultural context
“wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart”
In Elizabethan humoral medicine the liver was the seat of love and passionate desire — just as the heart was the seat of courage, and the brain of reason. To 'wash the liver' of love means to purge it of erotic feeling entirely. The comparison to a 'sound sheep's heart' is deliberately anticlimactic: the organ of love reduced to a healthy piece of butchery.
TLN 1437cultural context
“if you would but call me Rosalind, and come every day to my cote and woo me”
Rosalind's cure-by-wooing establishes the central action of Act 4: Orlando must court 'Ganymede' as if Ganymede were Rosalind. The practical and emotional logic is that she can hear everything Orlando really thinks and feels about her, while simultaneously playing all the roles — the coy mistress, the mocking woman, the tender lover — that a Petrarchan poet projects onto his idealized object. A 'cote' is a cottage or small shelter.
historical Petrarch and the Petrarchan lover