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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    Not Peer Reviewed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)

    A pleasant conceited Comedie:

    Holo. Sir Nathaniel, will you heare an extemporall Epy-
    taph on the death of the Deare, and to humour the igno-
    rault cald the Deare: the Princesse kild a Pricket.
    Nath. Perge, good M. Holofernes perge, so it shall please
    you to abrogate squirilitie.
    Holo. I wil somthing affect the letter, for it argues facilitie.

    1215The prayfull Princesse pearst and prickt
    a prettie pleasing Pricket,
    Some say a Sore, but not a sore,
    till now made sore with shooting.
    The Dogges did yell, put ell to Sore,
    1220 then Sorell iumps from thicket:
    Or Pricket-sore, or els Sorell,
    the people fall a hooting.
    If Sore be sore, then el to Sore,
    makes fiftie sores o sorell:
    1225Of one sore I an hundred make
    by adding but one more l.
    Nath. A rare talent.
    Dull. If a talent be a claw, looke how he clawes him
    with a talent.
    1230Nath. This is a gyft that I haue simple: simple, a foolish
    extrauagant spirit, full of formes, figures, shapes, obiectes,
    Ideas, aprehentions, motions, reuolutions. These are begot in
    the ventricle of Memorie, nourisht in the wombe of prima-
    ter, and deliuered vpon the mellowing of occasion: But the
    1235gyft is good in those whom it is acute, and I am thankfull
    for it.
    Holo. Sir, I prayse the L. for you, and so may my parishi-
    oners, for their Sonnes are well tuterd by you, and their
    Daughters profite very greatly vnder you: you are a good
    1240member of the common wealth.
    Nath. Me hercle, yf their Sonnes be ingenous, they shal
    want no instruction: If their Daughters be capable, I will
    put it to them. But Vir sapis qui pauca loquitur, a soule Femi-
    nine saluteth vs.
    Enter
    E