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Enter Duke FREDERICK, with Lords.

DUKE F. Mistress, despatch you with your

safest haste,

And get you from our court.

Ros.

DUKE F.

Me, uncle?

You, cousin :

Within these ten days if that thou be'st found
So near our publick court as twenty miles,
Thou diest for it.

Ros.

I do beseech your grace,

Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me:
If with myself I hold intelligence,

Or have acquaintance with mine own desires;
If that I do not dream, or be not frantick,
(As I do trust I am not,) then, dear uncle,
Never, so much as in a thought unborn,
Did I offend your highness.

DUKE F.
If their purgation did consist in words,
They are as innocent as grace itself:-
Let it suffice thee, that I trust thee not.

Thus do all traitors;

Ros. Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor: Tell me, whereon the likelihood depends.

DUKE F. Thou art thy father's daughter, there's enough.

Ros. So was I, when your highness took his dukedom;

So was I, when your highness banish'd him :
Treason is not inherited, my lord;

Or, if we did derive it from our friends,
What's that to me? my father was no traitor:
Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much,
To think my poverty is treacherous.

CEL. Dear sovereign, hear me speak.

DUKE F. Ay, Celia; we stay'd her for your sake, Else had she with her father rang'd along.

8

CEL. I did not then entreat to have her stay, It was your pleasure, and your own remorse; I was too young that time to value her, But now I know her: if she be a traitor, Why so am I; we still have slept together, Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together; And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans, Still we went coupled, and inseparable.

DUKE F. She is too subtle for thee; and her smoothness,

Her very silence, and her patience,

Speak to the people, and they pity her.
Thou art a fool: she robs thee of thy name;
And thou wilt show more bright, and seem more

virtuous,1

When she is gone: then open not thy lips;

Firm and irrevocable is my doom

Which I have pass'd upon her; she is banish'd.

CEL. Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege;

I cannot live out of her company.

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remorse;] i. e. compassion. So, in Macbeth: "Stop the access and passage to remorse.”

we still have slept together,

STEEVENS.

Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together;] Youthful friendship is described in nearly the same terms in a book pubKished the year in which this play first appeared in print :"They ever went together, plaid together, eate together, and usually slept together, out of the great love that was between them." Life of Guzman de Alfarache, folio, printed by Edward Blount, 1623, P. I. B. I. c. viii. p. 75. REED.

1 And thou wilt show more bright, and seem more virtuous,] When she was seen alone, she would be more noted.

JOHNSON.

1

DUKE F. You are a fool :-You, niece, provide

yourself;

If you out-stay the time, upon mine honour,
And in the greatness of my word, you die.

[Exeunt Duke FREDERICK and Lords.
CEL. O my poor Rosalind! whither wilt thou go?
Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine.
I charge thee, be not thou more griev'd than I am.
Ros. I have more cause.

CEL.

Thou hast not, cousin ; 2 Pr'ythee, be cheerful: know'st thou not, the duke Hath banish'd me his daughter?

Ros.

That he hath not.

CEL. No? hath not? Rosalind lacks then the love Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one: 3 Shall we be sunder'd? shall we part, sweet girl? No; let my father seek another heir.

1

Therefore devise with me, how we may fly,
Whither to go, and what to bear with us:
And do not seek to take your change upon you,*

• Thou hast not, cousin;] Some word is wanting to the metre. Perhaps our author wrote:

3

Indeed thou hast not, cousin. STEEVENS.

· Rosalind lacks then the love

Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one:] The poet certainly wrote-which teacheth me. For if Rosalind had learnt to think Celia one part of herself, she could not lack that love which Celia complains she does. WARBURTON.

Either reading may stand. The sense of the established text is not remote or obscure. Where would be the absurdity of saying, You know not the law which teaches you to do right?

JOHNSON.

to take your change upon you,] i. e. to take your change or reverse of fortune upon yourself, without any and or participation. MALONE.

To bear your griefs yourself, and leave me out; For, by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale, Say what thou canst, I'll go along with thee. Ros. Why, whither shall we go?

CEL.

To seek my uncle.

Ros. Alas, what danger will it be to us, Maids as we are, to travel forth so far? Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.

CEL. I'll put myself in poor and mean attire, And with a kind of umber smirch my face;" The like do you; so shall we pass along, And never stir assailants.

Ros.

Were it not better,

Because that I am more than common tall,
That I did suit me all points like a man?
A gallant curtle-ax' upon my thigh,

A boar-spear in my hand; and (in my heart
Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will,)
We'll have a swashing and a martial outside;

8

I have inserted this note, but without implicit confidence in the reading it explains. The second folio has-charge.

STEEVENS.

5 To seek my uncle.] Here the old copy adds-in the forest of Arden. But these words are an evident interpolation, without use, and injurious to the measure:

Why, whither shall we go?-To seek my uncle, being a complete verse. Besides, we have been already informed by Charles the wrestler, that the banished Duke's residence was in the forest of Arden. STEEVENS.

6 And with a kind of umber smirch my face;] Umber is a dusky yellow-coloured earth, brought from Umbria in Italy. See a note on "the umber'd fires," in King Henry V. Act III. MALONE.

7 -curtle-ax-] Or cutlace, a broad sword. JOHNSON. • We'll have a swashing &c.] A swashing outside is an appearance of noisy, bullying valour. Swashing blow is men

As many other mannish cowards have,
That do outface it with their semblances.

CEL. What shall I call thee, when thou art a man?

Ros. I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page,

And therefore look you call me, Ganymede.
But what will you be call'd?

CEL. Something that hath a reference to my state; No longer Celia, but Aliena.

Ros. But, cousin, what if we assay'd to steal The clownish fool out of your father's court? Would he not be a comfort to our travel?

CEL. He'll go along o'er the wide world with

me;

Leave me alone to woo him: Let's away,
And get our jewels and our wealth together;
Devise the fittest time, and safest way
To hide us from pursuit that will be made
After my flight: Now go we in content,"
To liberty, and not to banishment.

[Exeunt.

tioned in Romeo and Juliet; and, in King Henry V. the Boy says: "As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers;" meaning Nym, Pistol, and Bardolph. STEEVENS.

9 Now go we in content,] The old copy reads-Now go in we content. Corrected by the editor of the second folio. I am not sure that the transposition is necessary. Our author might have used content as an adjective. MALONE.

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