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  • Title: Love's Labor's Lost (Quarto 1, 1598)
  • 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    Not Peer Reviewed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 (Quarto 1, 1598)

    called Loues Labor's lost.

    Brag. A most acute Iuuenall, volable and free of grace,
    By thy fauour sweete Welkin, I must sigh in thy face:
    Most rude melancholie, Valour giues thee place.
    My Herald is returnd.

    840Enter Page and Clowne.
    Pag. A wonder Maister, Heers a Costard broken in a shin.
    Ar. Some enigma, some riddle, come, thy Lenuoy begin.
    845Clo. No egma, no riddle, no lenuoy, no salue, in thee male sir.
    O sir, Plantan, a pline Plantan: no lenuoy, no lenuoy, no Salue
    sir, but a Plantan.
    Ar. By vertue thou inforcest laughter, thy sillie thought,
    my spleene, the heauing of my lunges prouokes me to radi-
    850culous smyling: O pardone me my starres, doth the incon-
    siderate take salue for lenuoy, and the word lenuoy for a salue?
    Pag. Do the wise thinke them other, is not lenuoy a salue?
    855A. No Page, it is an epilogue or discourse to make plaine,
    Some obscure presedence that hath tofore bin saine.
    856.1I will example it.
    The Fox, the Ape, and the Humble-Bee,
    Were still at oddes being but three.
    Ther's the morrall: Now the lenuoy.
    856.5Pag. I will adde the lenuoy, say the morrall againe.
    Ar. The Foxe, the Ape, and the Humble-Bee,
    Were still at oddes, being but three.
    Pag. Vntill the Goose came out of doore,
    And staied the oddes by adding foure.
    856.10Now will I begin your morrall, and do you follow with
    my lenuoy.
    The Foxe, the Ape, and the Humble-Bee,
    860Were still at oddes, being but three.
    Arm. Vntill the Goose came out of doore,
    Staying the oddes by adding foure.
    Pag. A good Lenuoy, ending in the Goose: woulde you
    desire more?
    865Clo. The Boy hath sold him a bargaine, a Goose, that's flat.
    Sir, your penny-worth is good, and your Goose be fat.
    To sell a bargaine well is as cunning as fast and loose:
    Let