Act 4, Scene 3

The same.

[Enter BEROWNE, with a paper.]
Berowne
1202 The king he is hunting the deer: I am coursing myself: they have
1203 pitched a toil: I am tolling in a pitch,—pitch that defiles:
1204 defile! a foul word! Well, sit thee down, sorrow! for
1205 so they say the fool said, and so say I, and I am the fool: well
1206 proved, wit! By the Lord, this love is as mad as Ajax: it kills
1207 sheep; it kills me, I a sheep: well proved again o' my side. I
1208 will not love; if I do, hang me; i' faith, I will not. O! but her
1209 eye,—by this light, but for her eye, I would not love her; yes,
1210 for her two eyes. Well, I do nothing in the world but lie, and
1211 lie in my throat. By heaven, I do love; and it hath taught me to
1212 rime, and to be melancholy; and here is part of my rhyme, and
1213 here my melancholy. Well, she hath one o' my sonnets already; the
1214 clown bore it, the fool sent it, and the lady hath it: sweet
1215 clown, sweeter fool, sweetest lady! By the world, I would not
1216 care a pin if the other three were in. Here comes one with a
1217 paper; God give him grace to groan!
[Gets up into a tree.]
[Enter the KING, with a paper.]
King of Navarre
1218 Ay me!
[Aside.]
Berowne
1219 Shot, by heaven! Proceed, sweet Cupid; thou hast thumped
1220 him with thy bird-bolt under the left pap. In faith, secrets!
King of Navarre
1221 So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not
1222 To those fresh morning drops upon the rose,
1223 As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote
1224 The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows;
1225 Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright
1226 Through the transparent bosom of the deep,
1227 As doth thy face through tears of mine give light.
1228 Thou shin'st in every tear that I do weep:
1229 No drop but as a coach doth carry thee;
1230 So ridest thou triumphing in my woe.
1231 Do but behold the tears that swell in me,
1232 And they thy glory through my grief will show:
1233 But do not love thyself; then thou wilt keep
1234 My tears for glasses, and still make me weep.
1235 O queen of queens! how far dost thou excel
1236 No thought can think nor tongue of mortal tell.
King of Navarre
1237 How shall she know my griefs? I'll drop the paper:
1238 Sweet leaves, shade folly. Who is he comes here?
[Steps aside.]
King of Navarre
1239 What, Longaville! and reading! Listen, ear.
[Enter LONGAVILLE, with a paper.]
Berowne
1240 Now, in thy likeness, one more fool appear!
Longaville
1241 Ay me! I am forsworn.
Berowne
1242 Why, he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers.
King of Navarre
1243 In love, I hope: sweet fellowship in shame!
Berowne
1244 One drunkard loves another of the name.
Longaville
1245 Am I the first that have been perjur'd so?
Berowne
1246 I could put thee in comfort: not by two that I know;
1247 Thou makest the triumviry, the corner-cap of society,
1248 The shape of love's Tyburn that hangs up simplicity.
Longaville
1249 I fear these stubborn lines lack power to move.
1250 O sweet Maria, empress of my love!
1251 These numbers will I tear, and write in prose.
Berowne
1252 O! rimes are guards on wanton Cupid's hose:
1253 Disfigure not his slop.
Longaville
1254 This same shall go.
Longaville
1255 Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,
1256 'Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,
1257 Persuade my heart to this false perjury?
1258 Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment.
1259 A woman I forswore; but I will prove,
1260 Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:
1261 My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love;
1262 Thy grace being gain'd, cures all disgrace in me.
1263 Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is:
1264 Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine,
1265 Exhal'st this vapour-vow; in thee it is:
1266 If broken, then it is no fault of mine:
1267 If by me broke, what fool is not so wise
1268 To lose an oath to win a paradise!
Berowne
1269 This is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity;
1270 A green goose a goddess; pure, pure idolatry.
1271 God amend us, God amend! We are much out o' the way.
Longaville
1272 By whom shall I send this?—Company! Stay.
[Steps aside.]
Berowne
1273 All hid, all hid; an old infant play.
1274 Like a demigod here sit I in the sky,
1275 And wretched fools' secrets heedfully o'er-eye.
1276 More sacks to the mill! O heavens, I have my wish.
[Enter DUMAINE, with a paper.]
Berowne
1277 Dumain transformed: four woodcocks in a dish!
Dumaine
1278 O most divine Kate!
Berowne
1279 O most profane coxcomb!
Dumaine
1280 By heaven, the wonder in a mortal eye!
Berowne
1281 By earth, she is but corporal; there you lie.
Dumaine
1282 Her amber hairs for foul hath amber quoted.
Berowne
1283 An amber-colour'd raven was well noted.
Dumaine
1284 As upright as the cedar.
Berowne
1285 Stoop, I say;
1286 Her shoulder is with child.
Dumaine
1287 As fair as day.
Berowne
1288 Ay, as some days; but then no sun must shine.
Dumaine
1289 O! that I had my wish.
Longaville
1290 And I had mine!
King of Navarre
1291 And I mine too, good Lord!
Berowne
1292 Amen, so I had mine. Is not that a good word?
Dumaine
1293 I would forget her; but a fever she
1294 Reigns in my blood, and will remember'd be.
Berowne
1295 A fever in your blood! Why, then incision
1296 Would let her out in saucers: sweet misprision!
Dumaine
1297 Once more I'll read the ode that I have writ.
Berowne
1298 Once more I'll mark how love can vary wit.
Dumaine
1299 On a day, alack the day!
1300 Love, whose month is ever May,
1301 Spied a blossom passing fair
1302 Playing in the wanton air:
1303 Through the velvet leaves the wind,
1304 All unseen, 'gan passage find;
1305 That the lover, sick to death,
1306 Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.
1307 Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;
1308 Air, would I might triumph so!
1309 But, alack! my hand is sworn
1310 Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn;
1311 Vow, alack! for youth unmeet,
1312 Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.
1313 Do not call it sin in me,
1314 That I am forsworn for thee;
1315 Thou for whom e'en Jove would swear
1316 Juno but an Ethiope were;
1317 And deny himself for Jove,
1318 Turning mortal for thy love.
Dumaine
1319 This will I send, and something else more plain,
1320 That shall express my true love's fasting pain.
1321 O! would the King, Berowne and Longaville
1322 Were lovers too. Ill, to example ill,
1323 Would from my forehead wipe a perjur'd note;
1324 For none offend where all alike do dote.
[Advancing.]
Longaville
1325 Dumain, thy love is far from charity,
1326 That in love's grief desir'st society;
1327 You may look pale, but I should blush, I know,
1328 To be o'erheard and taken napping so.
[Advancing.]
King of Navarre
1329 Come, sir, you blush; as his, your case is such.
1330 You chide at him, offending twice as much:
1331 You do not love Maria; Longaville
1332 Did never sonnet for her sake compile;
1333 Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart
1334 His loving bosom, to keep down his heart.
1335 I have been closely shrouded in this bush,
1336 And mark'd you both, and for you both did blush.
1337 I heard your guilty rimes, observ'd your fashion,
1338 Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion:
1339 Ay me! says one. O Jove! the other cries;
1340 One, her hairs were gold; crystal the other's eyes:
[To LONGAVILLE]
King of Navarre
1341 You would for paradise break faith and troth;
[To DUMAIN]
King of Navarre
1342 And Jove, for your love would infringe an oath.
1343 What will Berowne say when that he shall hear
1344 Faith infringed which such zeal did swear?
1345 How will he scorn! how will he spend his wit!
1346 How will he triumph, leap, and laugh at it!
1347 For all the wealth that ever I did see,
1348 I would not have him know so much by me.
Berowne
1349 Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy.
[Descends from the tree.]
Berowne
1350 Ah! good my liege, I pray thee pardon me:
1351 Good heart! what grace hast thou thus to reprove
1352 These worms for loving, that art most in love?
1353 Your eyes do make no coaches; in your tears
1354 There is no certain princess that appears:
1355 You'll not be perjur'd; 'tis a hateful thing:
1356 Tush! none but minstrels like of sonneting.
1357 But are you not asham'd? nay, are you not,
1358 All three of you, to be thus much o'ershot?
1359 You found his mote; the king your mote did see;
1360 But I a beam do find in each of three.
1361 O! what a scene of foolery have I seen,
1362 Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow, and of teen;
1363 O me! with what strict patience have I sat,
1364 To see a king transformed to a gnat;
1365 To see great Hercules whipping a gig,
1366 And profound Solomon to tune a jig,
1367 And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys,
1368 And critic Timon laugh at idle toys!
1369 Where lies thy grief, O! tell me, good Dumaine?
1370 And, gentle Longaville, where lies thy pain?
1371 And where my liege's? all about the breast:
1372 A caudle, ho!
King of Navarre
1373 Too bitter is thy jest.
1374 Are we betrayed thus to thy over-view?
Berowne
1375 Not you by me, but I betray'd by you.
1376 I that am honest; I that hold it sin
1377 To break the vow I am engaged in;
1378 I am betrayed by keeping company
1379 With men like men, men of inconstancy.
1380 When shall you see me write a thing in rime?
1381 Or groan for Joan? or spend a minute's time
1382 In pruning me? When shall you hear that I
1383 Will praise a hand, a foot, a face, an eye,
1384 A gait, a state, a brow, a breast, a waist,
1385 A leg, a limb?—
King of Navarre
1386 Soft! whither away so fast?
1387 A true man or a thief that gallops so?
Berowne
1388 I post from love; good lover, let me go.
[Enter JAQUENETTA and COSTARD.]
Jaquenetta
1389 God bless the king!
King of Navarre
1390 What present hast thou there?
Costard
1391 Some certain treason.
King of Navarre
1392 What makes treason here?
Costard
1393 Nay, it makes nothing, sir.
King of Navarre
1394 If it mar nothing neither,
1395 The treason and you go in peace away together.
Jaquenetta
1396 I beseech your Grace, let this letter be read;
1397 Our parson misdoubts it; 'twas treason, he said.
King of Navarre
1398 Berowne, read it over.
[Giving the letter to him.]
King of Navarre
1399 Where hadst thou it?
Jaquenetta
1400 Of Costard.
King of Navarre
1401 Where hadst thou it?
Costard
1402 Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio.
[BEROWNE tears the letter.]
King of Navarre
1403 How now! What is in you? Why dost thou tear it?
Berowne
1404 A toy, my liege, a toy: your Grace needs not fear it.
Longaville
1405 It did move him to passion, and therefore let's hear it.
[Picking up the pieces.]
Dumaine
1406 It is Berowne's writing, and here is his name.
[To COSTARD.]
Berowne
1407 Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, you were born
1408 to do me shame.
1409 Guilty, my lord, guilty; I confess, I confess.
King of Navarre
1410 What?
Berowne
1411 That you three fools lack'd me fool to make up the mess;
1412 He, he, and you, and you, my liege, and I,
1413 Are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die.
1414 O! dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you more.
Dumaine
1415 Now the number is even.
Berowne
1416 True, true, we are four.
1417 Will these turtles be gone?
King of Navarre
1418 Hence, sirs; away!
Costard
1419 Walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay.
[Exeunt COSTARD and JAQUENETTA.]
Berowne
1420 Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O! let us embrace!
1421 As true we are as flesh and blood can be:
1422 The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face;
1423 Young blood doth not obey an old decree:
1424 We cannot cross the cause why we were born,
1425 Therefore of all hands must we be forsworn.
King of Navarre
1426 What! did these rent lines show some love of thine?
Berowne
1427 'Did they?' quoth you? Who sees the heavenly Rosaline
1428 That, like a rude and savage man of Inde
1429 At the first op'ning of the gorgeous east,
1430 Bows not his vassal head and, strucken blind,
1431 Kisses the base ground with obedient breast?
1432 What peremptory eagle-sighted eye
1433 Dares look upon the heaven of her brow,
1434 That is not blinded by her majesty?
King of Navarre
1435 What zeal, what fury hath inspir'd thee now?
1436 My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon;
1437 She, an attending star, scarce seen a light.
Berowne
1438 My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Berowne.
1439 O! but for my love, day would turn to night.
1440 Of all complexions the cull'd sovereignty
1441 Do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek,
1442 Where several worthies make one dignity,
1443 Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek.
1444 Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues,—
1445 Fie, painted rhetoric! O! she needs it not:
1446 To things of sale a seller's praise belongs;
1447 She passes praise; then praise too short doth blot.
1448 A wither'd hermit, five-score winters worn,
1449 Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye:
1450 Beauty doth varnish age, as if new-born,
1451 And gives the crutch the cradle's infancy.
1452 O! 'tis the sun that maketh all things shine!
King of Navarre
1453 By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.
Berowne
1454 Is ebony like her? O wood divine!
1455 A wife of such wood were felicity.
1456 O! who can give an oath? Where is a book?
1457 That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack,
1458 If that she learn not of her eye to look.
1459 No face is fair that is not full so black.
King of Navarre
1460 O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,
1461 The hue of dungeons, and the school of night;
1462 And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well.
Berowne
1463 Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.
1464 O! if in black my lady's brows be deck'd,
1465 It mourns that painting and usurping hair
1466 Should ravish doters with a false aspect;
1467 And therefore is she born to make black fair.
1468 Her favour turns the fashion of the days,
1469 For native blood is counted painting now;
1470 And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise,
1471 Paints itself black, to imitate her brow.
Dumaine
1472 To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.
Longaville
1473 And since her time are colliers counted bright.
King of Navarre
1474 And Ethiopes of their sweet complexion crack.
Dumaine
1475 Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.
Berowne
1476 Your mistresses dare never come in rain,
1477 For fear their colours should be wash'd away.
King of Navarre
1478 'Twere good yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain,
1479 I'll find a fairer face not wash'd to-day.
Berowne
1480 I'll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.
King of Navarre
1481 No devil will fright thee then so much as she.
Dumaine
1482 I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear.
Longaville
1483 Look, here's thy love:
[Showing his shoe.]
Longaville
1484 my foot and her face see.
Berowne
1485 O! if the streets were paved with thine eyes,
1486 Her feet were much too dainty for such tread.
Dumaine
1487 O vile! Then, as she goes, what upward lies
1488 The street should see as she walk'd over head.
King of Navarre
1489 But what of this? Are we not all in love?
Berowne
1490 Nothing so sure; and thereby all forsworn.
King of Navarre
1491 Then leave this chat; and, good Berowne, now prove
1492 Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn.
Dumaine
1493 Ay, marry, there; some flattery for this evil.
Longaville
1494 O! some authority how to proceed;
1495 Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil.
Dumaine
1496 Some salve for perjury.
Berowne
1497 O, 'tis more than need.
1498 Have at you, then, affection's men-at-arms:
1499 Consider what you first did swear unto,
1500 To fast, to study, and to see no woman;
1501 Flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth.
1502 Say, can you fast? Your stomachs are too young,
1503 And abstinence engenders maladies.
1504 And where that you you have vow'd to study, lords,
1505 In that each of you have forsworn his book,
1506 Can you still dream, and pore, and thereon look?
1507 For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,
1508 Have found the ground of study's excellence
1509 Without the beauty of a woman's face?
1510 From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
1511 They are the ground, the books, the academes,
1512 From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
1513 Why, universal plodding poisons up
1514 The nimble spirits in the arteries,
1515 As motion and long-during action tires
1516 The sinewy vigour of the traveller.
1517 Now, for not looking on a woman's face,
1518 You have in that forsworn the use of eyes,
1519 And study too, the causer of your vow;
1520 For where is author in the world
1521 Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?
1522 Learning is but an adjunct to ourself,
1523 And where we are our learning likewise is:
1524 Then when ourselves we see in ladies' eyes,
1525 Do we not likewise see our learning there?
1526 O! we have made a vow to study, lords,
1527 And in that vow we have forsworn our books:
1528 For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,
1529 In leaden contemplation have found out
1530 Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes
1531 Of beauty's tutors have enrich'd you with?
1532 Other slow arts entirely keep the brain;
1533 And therefore, finding barren practisers,
1534 Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil;
1535 But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
1536 Lives not alone immured in the brain,
1537 But with the motion of all elements,
1538 Courses as swift as thought in every power,
1539 And gives to every power a double power,
1540 Above their functions and their offices.
1541 It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
1542 A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
1543 A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
1544 When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd:
1545 Love's feeling is more soft and sensible
1546 Than are the tender horns of cockled snails:
1547 Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.
1548 For valour, is not Love a Hercules,
1549 Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
1550 Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
1551 As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;
1552 And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
1553 Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.
1554 Never durst poet touch a pen to write
1555 Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs;
1556 O! then his lines would ravish savage ears,
1557 And plant in tyrants mild humility.
1558 From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
1559 They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
1560 They are the books, the arts, the academes,
1561 That show, contain, and nourish, all the world;
1562 Else none at all in aught proves excellent.
1563 Then fools you were these women to forswear,
1564 Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.
1565 For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love,
1566 Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men,
1567 Or for men's sake, the authors of these women;
1568 Or women's sake, by whom we men are men,
1569 Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
1570 Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
1571 It is religion to be thus forsworn;
1572 For charity itself fulfils the law;
1573 And who can sever love from charity?
King of Navarre
1574 Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!
Berowne
1575 Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;
1576 Pell-mell, down with them! be first advis'd,
1577 In conflict that you get the sun of them.
Longaville
1578 Now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by:
1579 Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?
King of Navarre
1580 And win them too; therefore let us devise
1581 Some entertainment for them in their tents.
Berowne
1582 First, from the park let us conduct them thither;
1583 Then homeward every man attach the hand
1584 Of his fair mistress: in the afternoon
1585 We will with some strange pastime solace them,
1586 Such as the shortness of the time can shape;
1587 For revels, dances, masks, and merry hours,
1588 Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.
King of Navarre
1589 Away, away! No time shall be omitted,
1590 That will betime, and may by us be fitted.
Berowne
1591 Allons! allons! Sow'd cockle reap'd no corn;
1592 And justice always whirls in equal measure:
1593 Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn;
1594 If so, our copper buys no better treasure.
[Exeunt.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1202wordplay
“I am coursing myself: they have pitched a toil”
Berowne packs three hunting terms into two lines: 'coursing' means pursuing game at speed (usually hares), 'pitched a toil' means set a trap-net. He applies the hunting vocabulary the King uses on deer to his own predicament — love has trapped him. The joke is that the hunter has become the hunted.
TLN 1203wordplay
“tolling in a pitch,—pitch that defiles: defile! a foul word”
Berowne chases the sound of words: 'toil' suggests 'tolling' (wallowing, being mired), then 'pitch' (the tar-like black substance that stains whatever touches it), and 'pitch that defiles' leads him to 'defile,' which he then condemns as 'a foul word' — punning on 'foul' (dirty) and the ordinary meaning of a bad word. The whole riff is a self-mocking demonstration of wordplay run amok.
TLN 1206classical allusion
“this love is as mad as Ajax: it kills sheep”
Ajax was the great Greek warrior at Troy who, after losing the dead Achilles's armour to Odysseus, went berserk: he slaughtered a whole flock of sheep believing they were his enemies, then killed himself in shame. Berowne says love makes him as crazy as the slaughter of sheep — then, catching himself, admits he too is a 'sheep' (a fool). The allusion packs a self-insult into a learned joke.
TLN 1219archaic vocab
“thou hast thumped him with thy bird-bolt under the left pap”
A 'bird-bolt' was a blunt, flat-headed arrow used for shooting birds so as not to damage the flesh. Berowne mocks the King's love-wound in anatomical terms: shot by Cupid's blunted arrow directly under the 'pap' (the nipple, hence the heart). The insult is that the King has been felled by a child's dull arrow aimed at the most sentimental spot.
classical Cupid's golden and leaden arrows
TLN 1241archaic vocab
“I am forsworn”
'Forsworn' means having broken a solemn oath. All four lords swore at the play's opening to spend three years studying, fasting, and avoiding women. To be forsworn is a serious moral and legal failing in Shakespeare's world, not merely an embarrassment; oaths had religious weight.
TLN 1242historical topical
“he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers”
A 'perjure' is a perjurer — someone who broke an oath in court. 'Wearing papers' describes a real Elizabethan public punishment: convicted perjurers were made to walk through public places wearing paper notices declaring their crime. Berowne wryly spots Longaville carrying a sheet of paper (his poem) as if wearing the badge of shame his oath-breaking deserves.
TLN 1247wordplay
“Thou makest the triumviry, the corner-cap of society”
'Triumviry' (a comic coinage on 'triumvirate') means a group of three — with Longaville now joining the King and Berowne, there are three forsworn lords. A 'corner-cap' was the square academic mortarboard cap; Berowne mocks the scholars' folly by calling their love-perjury the crowning achievement of their 'academe.' The tower of conceit 'hangs up simplicity' — the folly is their public display, like a body hung on a gibbet ('Tyburn,' see next note).
TLN 1248historical topical
“The shape of love's Tyburn that hangs up simplicity”
Tyburn was the main public execution site in London (near modern Marble Arch), famous for its three-cornered gallows that could hang several people at once. Berowne calls the three perjured lords the very 'shape' of the Tyburn gallows — a triangle of fools dangling in public disgrace.
TLN 1255rhetorical device
“Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye, 'Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument”
Longaville's sonnet opens with a legal-rhetorical conceit: Maria's eye makes an argument (in the technical sense of a proof or case) so perfect that the whole world cannot counter it — nobody can argue against her beauty. Turning a lover's complaint into a debate where the mistress automatically wins every point is a characteristic LLL figure, combining courtly love-praise with the language of academic disputation.
TLN 1263rhetorical device
“Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is: Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine, Exhal'st this vapour-vow”
Longaville builds a chain of pseudo-logical reasoning: vows are only breath; breath is vapour; the sun draws up (exhales) vapour; Maria is his sun; therefore Maria drew his vow up out of him — so if the vow breaks, it is her fault, not his. The figure is a comic example of sophistry: a technically clever argument that reaches a self-serving and absurd conclusion.
TLN 1269cultural context
“This is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity; A green goose a goddess; pure, pure idolatry”
The liver was thought to be the seat of passionate love (and of lust) in Elizabethan physiology. Berowne dismisses Longaville's hyperbolic sonnet as 'the liver-vein' — love-talk generated by the inflamed liver rather than by reason. 'Green goose' means a young, simple girl (a goose was stock slang for a foolish person); Longaville has turned a goose into a goddess. Berowne calls it flat idolatry — the sin of worshipping a creature instead of God.
TLN 1274rhetorical device
“Like a demigod here sit I in the sky, And wretched fools' secrets heedfully o'er-eye”
Berowne, perched in his tree, casts himself as a divinity surveying human folly from the sky. The self-aggrandizing comparison is immediately comic: he is the audience's surrogate, watching the scene from above — but he is also one of the fools he surveys, as he knows. 'O'er-eye' means to watch over and observe (an archaic compound).
TLN 1277archaic vocab
“four woodcocks in a dish”
A 'woodcock' was a bird proverbially easy to catch in a snare and so a byword for a simpleton or easy dupe. With Dumaine's arrival all four lords are now trapped by love — Berowne included — and he gleefully names them a dish of four fools ready for the table.
TLN 1295wordplay
“A fever in your blood! Why, then incision Would let her out in saucers: sweet misprision”
When Dumaine says love 'reigns in my blood' like a fever, Berowne takes the medical metaphor literally: the treatment for a fever in the blood was bloodletting — cutting a vein ('incision') and draining the blood into a saucer. So Dumaine could simply bleed Katharine out of his body. 'Misprision' means a mistake or misunderstanding (here, the misunderstanding of taking a metaphor as literal medicine), but Berowne calls it 'sweet' — the error is an entertaining one.
TLN 1315classical allusion
“Thou for whom e'en Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiope were; And deny himself for Jove, Turning mortal for thy love”
Dumaine's sonnet claims that for Katharine's sake Jupiter (king of the gods) would call his own wife Juno a dark-skinned stranger ('Ethiope,' meaning swarthy or black-complexioned), and would give up his godhood to become mortal. Both comparisons are standard hyperboles of Renaissance love-poetry: the mistress outshines the goddess of beauty and is worth divinity itself.
TLN 1325rhetorical device
“thy love is far from charity, That in love's grief desir'st society”
Longaville, stepping out to expose Dumaine, accuses him of being uncharitable: true charity (Christian love) would keep one's own shame private, but Dumaine wishes others would share his perjury to dilute the guilt. The accusation has a comic hypocrisy — Longaville himself is equally guilty — which the King immediately points out when he steps out in turn.
TLN 1359biblical allusion
“You found his mote; the king your mote did see; But I a beam do find in each of three”
Berowne inverts the Gospel parable of the mote and the beam: Jesus warned against noticing the small speck ('mote') in a neighbour's eye while ignoring the large plank ('beam') in your own (Matthew 7:3-5). Here each lord spotted the 'mote' — the small fault — of the one below him in the tree, while Berowne claims to see a full 'beam' of hypocrisy in all three, since he himself is the worst offender.
TLN 1364rhetorical device
“To see a king transformed to a gnat; To see great Hercules whipping a gig, And profound Solomon to tune a jig, And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys, And critic Timon laugh at idle toys”
Berowne strings together four classical and biblical images of grandeur reduced to childishness. A 'gig' (spinning top) and 'push-pin' (a child's game of flicking pins) are the most trivial pastimes imaginable; whipping a top or playing push-pin is what mighty Hercules and wise old Nestor are reduced to by love's folly. Timon of Athens, the famous misanthrope who laughed at nothing, is imagined laughing at 'idle toys' — even the bleakest philosopher can see the comedy of these lovesick lords.
classical Hercules and his labours
TLN 1372archaic vocab
“A caudle, ho”
A caudle was a warm, spiced gruel mixed with ale or wine, given to invalids and to women in childbed — a comfort drink for the weak and ailing. Berowne calls for one as if the king's romantic complaint were a sickness requiring sickroom nursing. The mock-solicitude undercuts the King's dignity: he is not a grieving lover but a patient needing gruel.
TLN 1402wordplay
“Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio”
Costard mangles 'Don Adriano de Armado' — Armado's full Spanish title — into 'Dun Adramadio,' reducing the grandly named Spaniard to gibberish. 'Dun' was English slang for a dull greyish-brown colour, so the garbling also strips the 'Don' of its aristocratic gloss. The repetition suggests Costard is pleased with his own version of the name.
TLN 1411archaic vocab
“you three fools lack'd me fool to make up the mess”
A 'mess' was a set of four people who ate together from a shared dish at a banquet — the standard dining unit at a formal meal. Berowne confesses he is the fourth fool needed to complete the group: three fools without him made an incomplete party. He turns his own confession into a joke about table-seating.
TLN 1417archaic vocab
“Will these turtles be gone”
'Turtles' means turtle-doves, not tortoises. The turtle-dove was the standard emblem of faithful, devoted love in Elizabethan poetry — its cooing call was heard as a lover's lament. Berowne's impatience to dismiss Costard and Jaquenetta by calling them 'turtles' mixes contempt with the play's ironic self-awareness: the word pairs with the sworn lovers still around him.
TLN 1453wordplay
“thy love is black as ebony. Is ebony like her? O wood divine”
When the King taunts Berowne that Rosaline is dark-complexioned ('black as ebony'), Berowne turns the insult into a punning compliment: 'Is ebony like her? O wood divine!' 'Wood' puns on 'would' (in Elizabethan pronunciation they sounded alike) — 'would divine,' i.e. 'how wonderful!' — and on the madness meaning of 'wood' (crazy, out of one's wits). So Berowne is both praising ebony for resembling Rosaline and admitting he is 'wood' (mad) with love.
TLN 1463biblical allusion
“Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light”
Berowne turns the theological commonplace that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light to his argument: the most effective temptations come in beautiful forms, so Rosaline's dark complexion is no disguise — it is the honest face of a woman who does not need false brightness to seduce. The allusion is to 2 Corinthians 11:14, where Paul warns that Satan 'transformeth himselfe into an Angel of light' (Geneva 1599).
TLN 1511classical allusion
“They are the ground, the books, the academes, From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire”
Prometheus was the Titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity — the divine spark of life, civilisation, and all arts. Berowne crowns his defence of love by claiming that the fire which lights the whole human mind comes not from libraries and lectures but from women's eyes. The 'academe' the lords swore to build is hollow; the real academy is the beloved.
classical Prometheus and the Promethean fire
TLN 1513cultural context
“universal plodding poisons up The nimble spirits in the arteries”
Berowne argues that endless grinding study clogs the vital spirits that flow through the arteries. In Galenic medicine the arteries carried 'spirits' — refined blood charged with life and intelligence — from the heart to the body. Heavy, undifferentiated work ('universal plodding') 'poisons up' (blocks or stifles) these spirits the way a blocked pipe stops flow. Love, by contrast, stimulates and quickens them.
TLN 1547classical allusion
“Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste”
Bacchus was the Roman god of wine (Greek Dionysus). Berowne claims that the taste of love — of speaking a beloved's name or praises — is more refined ('dainty') than wine, the finest pleasure Bacchus can offer. The love-sense that replaces and surpasses the wine-sense belongs to Berowne's catalogue of ways love sharpens every perception.
TLN 1548classical allusion
“For valour, is not Love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides”
Hercules's eleventh labour was to steal the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides, guarded by the ever-watchful dragon Ladon and the nymph-guardians at the world's western edge. Berowne claims Love is a Hercules who never stops performing this labour — still climbing those trees, still pressing toward an impossible prize. The image captures the perpetual, heroic effort of the lover.
classical Hercules and his laboursclassical The garden of the Hesperides
TLN 1550classical allusion
“Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair”
The Sphinx was the monstrous riddle-creature of Thebes that devoured those who could not answer her; 'subtle as Sphinx' means impossible to read or outwit. Apollo, the sun-god, was also the god of music and poetry, whose instrument was the lyre. Berowne claims love matches the Sphinx's cunning and Apollo's music — two extremes of divine power. 'Strung with his hair' is a hyperbole: as if the strings of Apollo's lute were spun from his golden hair.
TLN 1559rhetorical device
“They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes”
Berowne returns to 'Promethean fire' (from TLN 1512) and to his earlier catalogue of women as 'the books, the academes.' The repetition with variation is the rhetorical figure of 'epistrophe' — returning to the same phrase as an emphatic close — and also structurally mirrors the speech's argument: love doubles back on itself and intensifies. The speech is the play's longest formal oration and its emotional climax.
classical Prometheus and the Promethean fire
TLN 1571biblical allusion
“It is religion to be thus forsworn; For charity itself fulfils the law; And who can sever love from charity”
Berowne caps his speech by quoting Paul's Letter to the Romans: 'love is the fulfilling of the law' (Romans 13:10, Geneva 1599). He twists a theological principle — that Christian love (charity) supersedes the strict demands of the old law — into an excuse for breaking their oath: breaking the vow is not a sin but an act of love, and love is religion. The argument is brilliant, self-serving, and transparent.
TLN 1574rhetorical device
“Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field”
The King greets Berowne's speech with a battle-cry: 'Saint Cupid, then!' parodies the rally-cries used before military engagements, where soldiers invoked a patron saint — 'Saint George for England!' or 'Saint Denis for France!' Here Cupid is installed as the lords' patron saint, love replaces honour, and wooing the ladies is their new campaign. The military metaphor continues into the following lines about 'standards,' 'pell-mell,' and 'the sun.'
classical Cupid's golden and leaden arrows
TLN 1578archaic vocab
“lay these glozes by”
'Gloze' (noun) meant a deceptive gloss, a flattering or evasive interpretation designed to cover up the true meaning. To 'lay these glozes by' is to set aside the clever verbal evasions and speak plainly. Longaville signals that the lords are done with their rhetorical game-playing and will now simply declare their intention to woo.
TLN 1591rhetorical device
“Allons! allons! Sow'd cockle reap'd no corn; And justice always whirls in equal measure: Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn”
'Allons!' is French for 'Let's go!' — a show of courtly foreign polish (the play is set at the French-influenced Navarre court). 'Sow'd cockle reap'd no corn' is a proverb: cockle is a weed that chokes wheat, so sowing bad seed gets you only weeds, not grain. 'Light wenches' means sexually easy women; 'plagues' are divine punishments. Berowne ends the scene with a warning in plain English: if they court women lightly and break their oaths, they will reap what they sow. The proverbial close undercuts the entire rhetorical edifice he just built.