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  • Title: Love's Labor's Lost (Folio 1, 1623)
  • Editor: Timothy Billings

    • Copyright Timothy Billings. This text may be freely used for educational, non-profit purposes; for all other uses contact the Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Editor: Timothy Billings
    Not Peer Reviewed

    Love's Labor's Lost (Folio 1, 1623)

    Actus Quartus.
    Enter the Pedant, Curate and Dull.
    1740Pedant. Satis quid sufficit.
    Curat. I praise God for you sir, your reasons at dinner
    haue beene sharpe & sententious: pleasant without scur-
    rillity, witty without affection, audacious without im-
    pudency, learned without opinion, and strange without
    1745heresie: I did conuerse this quondam day with a compa-
    nion of the Kings, who is intituled, nominated, or called,
    Don Adriano de Armatho.
    Ped. Noui hominum tanquam te, His humour is lofty,
    his discourse peremptorie: his tongue filed, his eye
    1750ambitious, his gate maiesticall, and his generall behaui-
    our vaine, ridiculous, and thrasonicall. He is too picked,
    too spruce, too affected, too odde, as it were, too pere-
    grinat, as I may call it.
    M2 Curat.
    136 Loues Labour's lost
    Curat. A most singular and choise Epithat,
    1755 Draw out his Table-booke.
    Peda. He draweth out the thred of his verbositie, fi-
    ner then the staple of his argument. I abhor such pha-
    naticall phantasims, such insociable and poynt deuise
    companions, such rackers of ortagriphie, as to speake
    1760dout fine, when he should say doubt; det, when he shold
    pronounce debt; d e b t, not det: he clepeth a Calf, Caufe:
    halfe, haufe: neighbour vocatur nebour; neigh abreuiated
    ne: this is abhominable, which he would call abhomi-
    nable it insinuateth me of infamie: ne inteligis domine, to
    1765make franticke, lunaticke?
    Cura. Laus deo, bene intelligo.
    Peda. Bome boon for boon prescian, a little scratcht, 'twil
    serue.
    Enter Bragart, Boy.
    1770Curat. Vides ne quis venit?
    Peda. Video, & gaudio.
    Brag. Chirra.
    Peda. Quari Chirra, not Sirra?
    Brag. Men of peace well incountred.
    1775Ped. Most millitarie sir salutation.
    Boy. They haue beene at a great feast of Languages,
    and stolne the scraps.
    Clow. O they haue liu'd long on the almes-basket of
    words. I maruell thy M. hath not eaten thee for a word,
    1780for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitu-
    dinitatibus: Thou art easier swallowed then a flapdra-
    gon.
    Page. Peace, the peale begins.
    Brag. Mounsier, are you not lettred?
    1785Page. Yes, yes, he teaches boyes the Horne-booke:
    What is Ab speld backward with the horn on his head?
    Peda. Ba, puericia with a horne added.
    Pag. Ba most seely Sheepe, with a horne: you heare
    his learning.
    1790Peda. Quis quis, thou Consonant?
    Pag. The last of the fiue Vowels if You repeat them,
    or the fift if I.
    Peda. I will repeat them: a e I.
    Pag. The Sheepe, the other two concludes it o u.
    1795Brag. Now by the salt waue of the mediteranium, a
    sweet tutch, a quicke venewe of wit, snip snap, quick &
    home, it reioyceth my intellect, true wit.
    Page. Offered by a childe to an olde man: which is
    wit-old.
    1800Peda. What is the figure? What is the figure?
    Page. Hornes.
    Peda. Thou disputes like an Infant: goe whip thy
    Gigge.
    Pag. Lend me your Horne to make one, and I will
    1805whip about your Infamie vnum cita a gigge of a Cuck-
    olds horne.
    Clow. And I had but one penny in the world, thou
    shouldst haue it to buy Ginger bread: Hold, there is the
    very Remuneration I had of thy Maister, thou halfpenny
    1810purse of wit, thou Pidgeon-egge of discretion. O & the
    heauens were so pleased, that thou wert but my Bastard;
    What a ioyfull father wouldst thou make mee? Goe to,
    thou hast it ad dungil, at the fingers ends, as they say.
    Peda. Oh I smell false Latine, dunghel for vnguem.
    1815Brag. Arts-man preambulat, we will bee singled from
    the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the Charg-
    house on the top of the Mountaine?
    Peda. Or Mons the hill.
    Brag. At your sweet pleasure, for the Mountaine.
    1820Peda. I doe sans question.
    Bra. Sir, it is the Kings most sweet pleasure and af-
    fection, to congratulate the Princesse at her Pauilion, in
    the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call
    the after-noone.
    1825Ped. The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is lia-
    ble, congruent, and measurable for the after-noone: the
    word is well culd, chose, sweet, and apt I doe assure you
    sir, I doe assure.
    Brag. Sir, the King is a noble Gentleman, and my fa-
    1830miliar, I doe assure ye very good friend: for what is in-
    ward betweene vs, let it passe. I doe beseech thee re-
    member thy curtesie. I beseech thee apparell thy head:
    and among other importunate & most serious designes,
    and of great import indeed too: but let that passe, for I
    1835must tell thee it will please his Grace (by the world)
    sometime to leane vpon my poore shoulder, and with
    his royall finger thus dallie with my excrement, with my
    mustachio: but sweet heart, let that passe. By the world
    I recount no fable, some certaine speciall honours it
    1840pleaseth his greatnesse to impart to Armado a Souldier,
    a man of trauell, that hath seene the world: but let that
    passe; the very all of all is: but sweet heart I do implore
    secrecie, that the King would haue mee present the
    Princesse (sweet chucke) with some delightfull ostenta-
    1845tion, or show, or pageant, or anticke, or fire-worke:
    Now, vnderstanding that the Curate and your sweet self
    are good at such eruptions, and sodaine breaking out of
    myrth (as it were) I haue acquainted you withall, to
    the end to craue your assistance.
    1850Peda. Sir, you shall present before her the Nine Wor-
    thies. Sir Holofernes, as concerning some entertainment
    of time, some show in the posterior of this day, to bee
    rendred by our assistants the Kings command: and this
    most gallant, illustrate and learned Gentleman, before
    1855the Princesse: I say none so fit as to present the Nine
    Worthies.
    Curat. Where will you finde men worthy enough to
    present them?
    Peda. Iosua, your selfe: my selfe, and this gallant gen-
    1860tleman Iudas Machabeus; this Swaine (because of his
    great limme or ioynt) shall passe Pompey the great, the
    Page Hercules.
    Brag. Pardon sir, error: He is not quantitie enough
    for that Worthies thumb, hee is not so big as the end of
    1865his Club.
    Peda. Shall I haue audience? he shall present Hercu-
    les in minoritie: his enter and exit shall bee strangling a
    Snake; and I will haue an Apologie for that purpose.
    Pag. An excellent deuice: so if any of the audience
    1870hisse, you may cry, Well done Hercules, now thou cru-
    shest the Snake; that is the way to make an offence gra-
    cious, though few haue the grace to doe it.
    Brag. For the rest of the Worthies?
    Peda. I will play three my selfe.
    1875Pag. Thrice worthy Gentleman.
    Brag. Shall I tell you a thing?
    Peda. We attend.
    Brag. We will haue, if this fadge not, an Antique. I
    beseech you follow.
    1880Ped. Via good-man Dull, thou hast spoken no word
    all this while.
    Dull. Nor vnderstood none neither sir.
    Ped. Alone, we will employ thee.
    Dull. Ile make one in a dance, or so: or I will play
    M2v on
    Loues Labour's lost137
    1885on the taber to the Worthies, & let them dance the hey.
    Ped. Most Dull, honest Dull, to our sport away. Exit.
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