From As You Like It - anthology.

« ROSALIND : Ay, and twenty such. ORLANDO : What sayst thou? ROSALIND : Are you not good? ORLANDO : I hope so. ROSALIND : Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing? [ To CELIA ] Come, sister, you shall be the priest and marry us.—Give me your hand, Orlando.—What do you say, sister?ORLANDO : [to CELIA ] Pray thee, marry us. CELIA : I cannot say the words. ROSALIND : You must begin, 'Will you, Orlando'— CELIA : Go to.

Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind? ORLANDO : I will. ROSALIND : Ay, but when? ORLANDO : Why now, as fast as she can marry us. ROSALIND : Then you must say, 'I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.' ORLANDO : I take thee, Rosalind, for wife. ROSALIND : I might ask you for your commission [authority]; but I do take thee, Orlando, for my husband.

There's a girl goes before the priest; and certainly a woman's thought runs before her actions.ORLANDO : So do all thoughts; they are winged. ROSALIND : Now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her? ORLANDO : For ever and a day. ROSALIND : Say a day without the ever.

No, no, Orlando; men are April when they woo, December when they wed.

Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.

I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen, more clamorous than a parrot against rain, more new-fangledthan an ape, more giddy in my desires than a monkey.

I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you are disposed to be merry.

I willlaugh like a hyena, and that when thou art inclined to sleep.ORLANDO : But will my Rosalind do so? ROSALIND : By my life, she will do as I do. ORLANDO : O, but she is wise. ROSALIND : Or else she could not have the wit to do this.

The wiser, the waywarder.

Make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement.

Shut that, and 'twill out at the key-hole.

Stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.ORLANDO : A man that had a wife with such a wit, he might say 'Wit, whither wilt?' ROSALIND : Nay, you might keep that check [rebuke] for it till you met your wife's wit going to your neighbour's bed. ORLANDO : And what wit could wit have to excuse that? ROSALIND : Marry, to say she came to seek you there.

You shall never take her without her answer unless you take her without her tongue.

O, that woman that cannot make her fault her husband's occasion, let her never nurse her child herself, for she will breed it like a fool.ORLANDO : For these two hours, Rosalind, I will leave thee. ROSALIND : Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours. ORLANDO : I must attend the Duke at dinner.

By two o'clock I will be with thee again. ROSALIND : Ay, go your ways, go your ways.

I knew what you would prove; my friends told me as much, and I thought no less.

That flattering tongue of yours won me.

'Tis but one cast away, and so, come, death! Two o'clock is your hour?ORLANDO : Ay, sweet Rosalind. ROSALIND : By my troth, and in good earnest, and so God mend me, and by all pretty oaths that are not dangerous, if you break one jot of your promise or come one minute behind your hour, I will think you the most pathetical break-promise, and the most hollow lover, and the most unworthy of her you call Rosalind that may bechosen out of the gross band of the unfaithful.

Therefore beware my censure, and keep your promise.ORLANDO : With no less religion than if thou wert indeed my Rosalind.

So, adieu. ROSALIND : Well, Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders; and let Time try.

Adieu.

Exit [ORLANDO ] CELIA : You have simply misused our sex in your love-prate.

We must have your doublet and hose plucked over your head, and show the world what the bird hath done to her own nest.ROSALIND : O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love.

But it cannot be sounded.

My affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.CELIA : Or rather bottomless, that as fast as you pour affection in, it runs out. ROSALIND : No, that same wicked bastard of Venus [Cupid, who was fathered by Mercury, not by Venus’s husband Vulcan], that was begot of thought, conceived of spleen, and born of madness, that blind rascally boy that abuses everyone's eyes because his own are out, let him be judge how deep I am in love.

I'll tell thee, Aliena,I cannot be out of the sight of Orlando.

I'll go find a shadow and sigh till he come.CELIA : And I'll sleep. Exeunt Source: The Complete Oxford Shakespeare. Wells, Stanley, Gary Taylor, John Jowett, and William Montgomery, eds.

© 1994.

Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.. »