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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    Not Peer Reviewed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:

    Cost. It may be so: but if he say it is so, he is in telling true:
    but so.
    Ferd. Peace.
    Clow. Be to me, and euerie man that dares not fight.
    240Ferd. No wordes.
    Clow. Of other mens secrets I beseech you.
    Ferd. So it is besedged with sable coloured melancholie, I did
    commende the blacke oppressing humour to the most holsome phisicke
    of thy health-geuing ayre: And as I am a Gentleman, betooke my
    245selfe to walke: the time When? about the sixt houre, When Beastes
    most grase, Birdes best peck, and Men sit downe to that nourishment
    which is called Supper: So much for the time When. Now for the
    ground Which? which I meane I walkt vpon, it is ycliped Thy Park.
    Then for the place Where? where I meane, I did incounter that ob-
    250seene & most propostrous euent that draweth frõ my snowhite pen the
    ebon coloured Incke, which here thou viewest, beholdest, suruayest, or
    seest. But to the place Where? It standeth North North-east & by
    East from the West corner of thy curious knotted garden; There
    255did I see that low spirited Swaine, that base Minow of thy myrth,
    (Clowne. Mee?) that vnlettered smal knowing soule, (Clow. Mee?)
    that shallow vassall (Clown. Still mee.) which as I remember,
    hight Costard,(Clow. O mee)sorted and consorted contrary to
    thy established proclaymed Edict and continent Cannon: Which
    with, ô with, but with this I passion to say wherewith:
    Clo. With a Wench.
    Ferd.
    With a childe of our Grandmother Eue, a female; or for thy
    more sweete vnderstanding a Woman: him, I (as my euer esteemed
    265duetie prickes me on) haue sent to thee, to receiue the meede of pu-
    nishment by thy sweete Graces Officer Anthonie Dull, a man of
    good reput, carriage bearing, and estimation.
    Antho. Me ant shall please you? I am Anthony Dull.
    Ferd.
    For Iaquenetta (so is the weaker vessell called) vvhich I
    270apprehended with the aforesayd Swaine, I keepe her as a vessell of
    thy Lawes furie, and shall at the least of thy sweete notice, bring
    hir to tryall. Thine in all complements of deuoted and hartburning
    heate of duetie.
    Don Adriano de Armado.
    Ber.
    B