Love's Labour's Lost (version 2) - Free Audiobook

000 Scene III. Before Oliver’s house.

AYLI II. 3 Enter Orlando and Adam, meeting.

Orl. Who’s there?

Adam. What, my young master? O my gentle master!

O my sweet master! O you memory

Of old Sir Rowland! why, what make you here?

005 Why are you virtuous? why do people love you?

And wherefore are you gentle, strong and valiant?

Why would you be so fond to overcome

008 The bonny priser of the humorous Duke?

Your praise is come too swiftly home before you

010 Know you not, master, to some kind of men

Their graces serve them but as enemies?

No more do yours: your virtues, gentle master,

Are sanctified and holy traitors to you.

O, what a world is this, when what is comely

015 Envenoms him that bears it!

016 Orl. Why, what’s the matter?

Adam.

O unhappy youth!

017 Come not within these doors; within this roof

The enemy of all your graces lives:

Your brother—no, no brother; yet the son—

020 Yet not the son, I will not call him son,

Of him I was about to call his father,—

Hath heard your praises, and this night he means

To burn the lodging where you use to lie

And you within it: if he fail of that,

025 He will have other means to cut you off.

I overheard him and his practices.

This is no place; this house is but a butchery:

Abhor it, fear it, do not enter it.

029 Orl. Why, whither, Adam, wouldst thou have me go?

030 Adam. No matter whither, so you come not here.

Orl. What, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food?

Or with a base and boisterous sword enforce

A thievish living on the common road?

This I must do, or know not what to do:

035 Yet this I will not do, do how I can;

I rather will subject me to the malice

037 Of a diverted blood and bloody brother.

Adam. But do not so. I have five hundred crowns,

039 The thrifty hire I saved under your father,

040 Which I did store to be my foster-nurse

041 When service should in my old limbs lie lame,

And unregarded age in corners thrown:

Take that, and He that doth the ravens feed,

Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,

045 Be comfort to my age! Here is the gold;

All this I give you. Let me be your servant:

Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;

For in my youth I never did apply

049 Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood,

050 Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo

The means of weakness and debility;

Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,

Frosty, but kindly: let me go with you;

I’ll do the service of a younger man

055 In all your business and necessities.

Orl. O good old man, how well in thee appears

057 The constant service of the antique world,

058 When service sweat for duty, not for meed!

Thou art not for the fashion of these times,

060 Where none will sweat but for promotion,

And having that do choke their service up

Even with the having: it is not so with thee.

But, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree,

That cannot so much as a blossom yield

065 In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry.

But come thy ways; we’ll go along together,

And ere we have thy youthful wages spent,

We’ll light upon some settled low content.

Adam. Master, go on, and I will follow thee,

070 To the last gasp, with truth and loyalty.

071 From seventeen years till now almost fourscore

Here lived I, but now live here no more.

At seventeen years many their fortunes seek;

074 But at fourscore it is too late a week:

075 Yet fortune cannot recompense me better

Than to die well and not my master’s debtor. [Exeunt.