Internet Shakespeare Editions

Author: William Shakespeare
Editor: Timothy Billings
Not Peer Reviewed

Love's Labor's Lost (Quarto 1, 1598)

called Loues Labor's lost.

And you giue him for my sake but one louing kisse.
Prin. Come, to our Pauilion, Boyet is disposde.
755Bo. But to speak that in words, which his eie hath disclosd.
I onelie haue made a mouth of his eie,
By adding a tongue which I know will not lie.
Lad. Thou art an old Loue-monger, & speakest skilfully.
760Lad. 2. He is Cupids Graundfather, and learnes newes
of him.
Lad. 3. Then was Venus like her mother, for her father is
but grim.
Boy. Do you heare my mad Wenches?
765Lad. No.
Boy. What then, do you see?
Lad. I, our way to be gone.
Boy. You are too hard for mee. Exeunt omnes.

770Enter Braggart and his Boy.
Bra. Warble child, make passionate my sense of hearing.
Boy. Concolinel.
775Brag. Sweete Ayer, go tendernes of yeeres, take this Key,
giue enlargement to the Swaine, bring him festinatly hither,
I must imploy him in a letter to my loue.
Boy. Maister, will you win your loue with a french braule?
780Brag. How meanest thou? brawling in French.
Boy. No my complet Maister, but to Iigge off a tune at
the tongues ende, canarie to it with your feete, humour it
with turning vp your eylids, sigh a note and sing a note som-
time through the throate, if you swallowed loue with sing-
785ing loue sometime through: nose as if you snufft vp loue by
smelling loue with your hat penthouse like ore the shop of
your eyes, with your armes crost on your thinbellies doblet
like a Rabbet on a spit, or your handes in your pocket like a
man after the olde painting, and keepe not too long in one
790tune, but a snip and away: these are complementes, these
are humours, these betraie nice wenches that would be be-
traied without these, and make them men of note: do you
note men that most are affected to these.
795Brag. How hast thou purchased this experience?
Boy.