Love's Labour's Lost (version 2) - Free Audiobook
1/6Dramatis Personae
Love's Labour's Lost (version 2)
LLL IV. 3
000 Scene III. The same.
LLL IV. 3 Enter Biron, with a paper.
001 Biron. The king he is hunting the deer; I am coursing 002 myself: they have pitched a toil; I am toiling in a pitch,— 003 pitch that defiles: defile! a foul word. Well, set thee down, sorrow! for so they say the fool said, and so say I, and I the fool: well proved, wit! By the Lord, this love is 005 as mad as Ajax: it kills sheep; it kills me, I a sheep: well 006 proved again o’ my side! I will not love: if I do, hang me; i’ faith, I will not. O, but her eye,—by this light, but for 009 her eye, I would not love her; yes, for her two eyes. Well, 010 I do nothing in the world but lie, and lie in my throat. By heaven, I do love: and it hath taught me to rhyme, and to 012 be melancholy; and here is part of my rhyme, and here my melancholy. Well, she hath one o’ my sonnets already: the clown bore it, the fool sent it, and the lady hath it: sweet 015 clown, sweeter fool, sweetest lady! By the world, I would not care a pin, if the other three were in. Here comes one 017 with a paper: God give him grace to groan! [Stands aside.
Enter the King, with a paper.
King. Ay me!
Biron. [Aside] Shot, by heaven! Proceed, sweet Cupid: 020 thou hast thumped him with thy bird-bolt under the left pap. In faith, secrets!
King [reads].
So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not
To those fresh morning drops upon the rose,
024 As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote
025 The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows:
Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright
Through the transparent bosom of the deep,
As doth thy face through tears of mine give light;
Thou shinest in every tear that I do weep:
030 No drop but as a coach doth carry thee;
So ridest thou triumphing in my woe.
Do but behold the tears that swell in me,
And they thy glory through my grief will show:
034 But do not love thyself; then thou wilt keep
035 My tears for glasses, and still make me weep.
036 O queen of queens! how far dost thou excel,
No thought can think, nor tongue of mortal tell.
How shall she know my griefs? I’ll drop the paper:—
Sweet leaves, shade folly. Who is he comes here? [Steps aside.
040 What, Longaville! and reading! Listen, ear.
Biron. Now, in thy likeness, one more fool appear!
Enter Longaville, with a paper.
Long. Ay me, I am forsworn!
043 Biron. Why, he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers.
045 King. In love, I hope: sweet fellowship in shame!
Biron. One drunkard loves another of the name.
Long. Am I the first that have been perjured so?
Biron. I could put thee in comfort. Not by two that I know:
049 Thou makest the triumviry, the corner-cap of society.
050 The shape of Love’s Tyburn that hangs up simplicity.
Long. I fear these stubborn lines lack power to move.
O sweet Maria, empress of my love!
These numbers will I tear, and write in prose.
Biron. O, rhymes are guards on wanton Cupid’s hose:
055 Disfigure not his slop.
Long.
This same shall go. [Reads.
Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,
057 ’Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,
Persuade my heart to this false perjury?
Vows for thee broke deserve not 059 punishment.
060 A woman I forswore; but I will prove,
Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:
My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly 062 love;
Thy grace being gain’d cures all disgrace in me.
Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour 064 is:
Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost 065 shine,
Exhalest this vapour-vow; in thee it 066 is:
If broken then, it is no fault of 067 mine:
If by me broke, what fool is not so wise
069 To lose an oath to win a paradise?
070 Biron. This is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity,
071 A green goose a goddess: pure, pure idolatry.
072 God amend us, God amend! we are much out o’ the way.
Long. By whom shall I send this?—Company! stay. [Steps aside.
Biron. All hid, all hid, an old infant play.
075 Like a demigod here sit I in the sky,
076 And wretched fools’ secrets heedfully o’er-eye.
077 More sacks to the mill! O heavens, I have my wish!
Enter Dumain with a paper.
Dumain transform’d! four woodcocks in a dish!
Dum. O most divine Kate!
080 Biron. O most profane coxcomb!
081 Dum. By heaven, the wonder in a mortal eye!
082 Biron. By earth, she is not, corporal, there you lie.
083 Dum. Her amber hairs for foul hath amber quoted.
Biron. An amber-colour’d raven was well noted.
Dum. As upright as the cedar.
Biron.
085 Stoop, I say;
Her shoulder is with child.
Dum.
As fair as day.
Biron. Ay, as some days; but then no sun must shine.
Dum. O that I had my wish!
Long.
And I had mine!
089 King. And I mine too, good Lord!
090 Biron. Amen, so I had mine: is not that a good word?
Dum. I would forget her; but a fever she
Reigns in my blood, and will remember’d be.
Biron. A fever in your blood! why, then incision
Would let her out in saucers: sweet misprision!
095 Dum. Once more I’ll read the ode that I have writ.
Biron. Once more I’ll mark how love can vary wit.
097 Dum. [reads]
On a day—alack the day!—
098 Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
100 Playing in the wanton air:
101 Through the velvet leaves the wind,
102 All unseen, can passage find;
103 That the lover, sick to death,
104 Wish himself the heaven’s breath.
105 Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;
106 Air, would I might triumph so!
107 But, alack, my hand is sworn
108 Ne’er to pluck thee from thy thorn;
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet,
110 Youth so apt to pluck a sweet!
111 Do not call it sin in me,
That I am forsworn for thee;
113 Thou for whom Jove would swear
Juno but an Ethiope were;
115 And deny himself for Jove,
Turning mortal for thy love.
This will I send and something else more plain,
118 That shall express my true love’s fasting pain.
O, would the king, Biron, and Longaville,
120 Were lovers too! Ill, to example ill,
Would from my forehead wipe a perjured note;
For none offend where all alike do dote.
Long. [advancing]. Dumain, thy love is far from charity,
That in love’s grief desirest society:
125 You may look pale, but I should blush, I know,
126 To be o’erheard and taken napping so.
King [advancing]. 127 Come, sir, you blush; as his your case is such;
128 You chide at him, offending twice as much;
129 You do not love Maria; Longaville
130 Did never sonnet for her sake compile,
Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart
His loving bosom, to keep down his heart.
I have been closely shrouded in this bush
And mark’d you both and for you both did blush:
135 I heard your guilty rhymes, observed your fashion,
Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion:
137 Ay me! says one; O Jove! the other cries;
138 One, her hairs were gold, crystal the other’s eyes:
139 You would for paradise break faith and troth; [To Long.
140 And Jove, for your love, would infringe an oath. [To Dum.
What will Biron say when that he shall hear
142 Faith infringed, which such zeal did swear?
How will he scorn! how will he spend his wit!
144 How will he triumph, leap and laugh at it!
145 For all the wealth that ever I did see,
I would not have him know so much by me.
147 Biron. Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy. [Advancing.
Ah, good my liege, I pray thee, pardon me!
Good heart, what grace hast thou, thus to reprove
150 These worms for loving, that art most in love?
151 Your eyes do make no coaches; in your tears
There is no certain princess that appears;
You’ll not be perjured, ’tis a hateful thing;
Tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting!
155 But are you not ashamed? nay, are you not,
All three of you, to be thus much o’ershot?
157 You found his mote; the king your mote did see;
But I a beam do find in each of three.
O, what a scene of foolery have I seen,
160 Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow and of teen!
O me, with what strict patience have I sat,
162 To see a king transformed to a gnat!
To see great Hercules whipping a gig,
164 And profound Solomon to tune a jig,
165 And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys,
166 And critic Timon laugh at idle toys!
Where lies thy grief, O, tell me, good Dumain?
And, gentle Longaville, where lies thy pain?
And where my liege’s? all about the breast:
170 A caudle, ho!
King. Too bitter is thy jest.
Are we betray’d thus to thy over-view?
172 Biron. Not you to me, but I betray’d by you:
I, that am honest; I, that hold it sin
To break the vow I am engaged in;
175 I am betray’d, by keeping company
176 With men like you, men of inconstancy.
When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme?
178 Or groan for love? or spend a minute’s time
179 In pruning me? When shall you hear that I
180 Will praise a hand, a foot, a face, an eye,
A gait, a state, a brow, a breast, a waist,
A leg, a limb?—
King.
Soft! whither away so fast?
A true man or a thief that gallops so?
Biron. I post from love: good lover, let me go.
Enter Jaquenetta and Costard.
Jaq. God bless the king!
King.
185 What present hast thou there?
Cost. Some certain treason.
King.
What makes treason here?
Cost. Nay, it makes nothing, sir.
King.
If it mar nothing neither,
188 The treason and you go in peace away together.
Jaq. I beseech your Grace, let this letter be read:
190 Our parson misdoubts it; ’twas treason, he said.
191 King. Biron, read it over. [Giving him the paper.
Where hadst thou it?
Jaq. Of Costard.
King. Where hadst thou it?
195 Cost. Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio. [Biron tears the letter.
196 King. How now! what is in you? why dost thou tear it?
Biron. A toy, my liege, a toy: your Grace needs not fear it.
Long. It did move him to passion, and therefore let’s hear it.
199 Dum. It is Biron’s writing, and here is his name. [Gathering up the pieces.
200 Biron. [To Costard] Ah, you whoreson loggerhead! you were born to do me shame.
201 Guilty, my lord, guilty! I confess, I confess.
King. What?
Biron. That you three fools lack’d me fool to make up the mess:
204 He, he, and you, and you, my liege, and I,
205 Are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die.
O, dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you more.
Dum. Now the number is even.
Biron.
207 True, true; we are four.
Will these turtles be gone?
King.
Hence, sirs; away!
209 Cost. Walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay. [Exeunt Costard and Jaquenetta.
210 Biron. Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O, let us embrace!
As true we are as flesh and blood can be:
212 The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face;
Young blood doth not obey an old decree:
214 We cannot cross the cause why we were born;
215 Therefore of all hands must we be forsworn.
King. What, did these rent lines show some love of thine?
217 Biron. Did they, quoth you? Who sees the heavenly Rosaline,
That, like a rude and savage man of Inde,
At the first opening of the gorgeous east,
220 Bows not his vassal head and strucken blind
Kisses the base ground with obedient breast?
What peremptory eagle-sighted eye
Dares look upon the heaven of her brow,
That is not blinded by her majesty?
225 King. What zeal, what fury hath inspired thee now?
My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon;
She an attending star, scarce seen a light.
Biron. My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Biron:
O, but for my love, day would turn to night!
230 Of all complexions the cull’d sovereignty
Do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek;
Where several worthies make one dignity,
Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek.
Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues,—
235 Fie, painted rhetoric! O, she needs it not:
To things of sale a seller’s praise belongs,
237 She passes praise; then praise too short doth blot.
A wither’d hermit, five-score winters worn,
Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye:
240 Beauty doth varnish age, as if new-born,
And gives the crutch the cradle’s infancy:
O, ’tis the sun that maketh all things shine.
King. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.
244 Biron. Is ebony like her? O wood divine!
245 A wife of such wood were felicity.
O, who can give an oath? where is a book?
That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack,
If that she learn not of her eye to look:
No face is fair that is not full so black.
250 King. O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,
251 The hue of dungeons and the school of night;
252 And beauty’s crest becomes the heavens well.
Biron. Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.
254 O, if in black my lady’s brows be deck’d,
255 It mourns that painting and usurping hair
Should ravish doters with a false aspect;
And therefore is she born to make black fair.
258 Her favour turns the fashion of the days,
For native blood is counted painting now;
260 And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise,
Paints itself black, to imitate her brow.
262 Dum. To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.
Long. And since her time are colliers counted bright.
264 King. And Ethiopes of their sweet complexion crack.
265 Dum. Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.
Biron. Your mistresses dare never come in rain,
267 For fear their colours should be wash’d away.
King. ’Twere good, yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain,
I ’ll find a fairer face not wash’d to-day.
270 Biron.I’ll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.
King.No devil will fright thee then so much as she.
Dum.I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear.
Long. Look, here’s thy love: my foot and her face see.
Biron. O, if the streets were paved with thine eyes,
275 Her feet were much too dainty for such tread!
276 Dum. O vile! then, as she goes, what upward lies
The street should see as she walk’d overhead.
King. But what of this? are we not all in love?
279 Biron. Nothing so sure; and thereby all forsworn.
280 King. Then leave this chat; and, good Biron, now prove
Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn.
Dum. Ay, marry, there; some flattery for this evil.
Long. O, some authority how to proceed;
Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil.
Dum. Some salve for perjury.
Biron.
285 ’Tis more than need.
286 Have at you, then, affection’s men at arms.
Consider what you first did swear unto,
To fast, to study, and to see no woman;
289 Flat treason ’gainst the kingly state of youth.
290 Say, can you fast? your stomachs are too young;
And abstinence engenders maladies.
And where that you have vow’d to study, lords,
293 In that each of you have forsworn his book,
Can you still dream and pore and thereon look?
295 For when would you, my Lord, or you, or you,
Have found the ground of study’s excellence
Without the beauty of a woman’s face?
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive;
They are the ground, the books, the academes
300 From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
301 Why, universal plodding prisons up
The nimble spirits in the arteries,
As motion and long-during action tires
304 The sinewy vigour of the traveller.
305 Now, for not looking on a woman’s face,
You have in that forsworn the use of eyes
And study too, the causer of your vow;
For where is any author in the world
309 Teaches such beauty as a woman’s eye?
310 Learning is but an adjunct to ourself
And where we are our learning likewise is
312 Then when ourselves we see in ladies’ eyes.
Do we not likewise see our learning there?
O, we have made a vow to study, lords,
315 And in that vow we have forsworn our books
For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,
In leaden contemplation have found out
318 Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes
319 Of beauty’s tutors have enrich’d you with?
320 Other slow arts entirely keep the brain;
And therefore, finding barren practisers,
Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil:
But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
325 But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
330 A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound,
332 When the suspicious head of theft is stopp’d:
Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails;
335 Love’s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste:
336 For valour, is not Love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
338 Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
339 As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair;
340 And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
341 Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
343 Until his ink were temper’d with Love’s sighs;
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears,
345 And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world:
350 Else none at all in ought proves excellent.
Then fools you were these women to forswear;
Or keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.
For wisdom’s sake, a word that all men love;
354 Or for love’s sake, a word that loves all men;
355 Or for men’s sake, the authors of these women;
356 Or women’s sake, by whom we men are men;
357 Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religion to be thus forsworn,
360 For charity itself fulfils the law,
And who can sever love from charity?
King. Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!
363 Biron. Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;
Pell-mell, down with them! but be first advised,
365 In conflict that you get the sun of them.
Long. Now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by:
Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?
King. And win them too: therefore let us devise
Some entertainment for them in their tents.
370 Biron. First, from the park let us conduct them thither;
Then homeward every man attach the hand
Of his fair mistress: in the afternoon
We will with some strange pastime solace them,
Such as the shortness of the time can shape;
375 For revels, dances, masks and merry hours
376 Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.
King. Away, away! no time shall be omitted
378 That will betime, and may by us be fitted.
379 Biron. Allons! allons! Sow’d cockle reap’d no corn;
380 And justice always whirls in equal measure:
Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn;
If so, our copper buys no better treasure. [Exeunt.
About
Temptations and infatuations abound in this sparklingly linguistic early comedy from Shakespeare, where cerebral pursuits and ascetic intentions prove no match for the nobles of Navarre’s royal court when the Princess of France and her attendants arrive on a political mission and find themselves enmeshed in a mission of far more amorous ambitions. An entertaining battle of sexes, wits and classes ensues as the great master of the English language concocts a roundelay of semantic gamesmanship, mixing high lyricism, bawdy wordplay and a fair degree of scholarly satire together with elastic dexterity to poke fun at masculine romantic ideations and female objectification, the ambiguities of communication, as well as the ignorance of the seemingly cultured societal sets. And then, in a stunning tonal turn mere moments before the play’s conclusion that manages to thwart all our expectations, the young Shakespeare grounds this heretofore exuberant work in a startlingly mature realism that is far removed from his most popular comedies, lending Love’s Labour’s Lost both a worldliness and honesty that marks it as a work of astonishing complexity.
And to perform it all? Three men (Craig Franklin, Tomas Peter, and Brad “Hamlet” Filippone) and three women (Sonia, Jenn Broda, and Kelly S. Taylor), determined to give you a performance of Shakespeare's work that you will never forget. You thought you knew your Shakespeare? Well, think again! - Summary by Tomas Peter
Cast list: Craig Franklin: Narrator; Costard; Dumain; Maria & Marcade. Brad “Hamlet” Filippone: Biron; Holofernes & French Lord. Jenn Broda: The Princess of France; Dull & Ver (the Spring). Kelly S. Taylor: Ferdinand, King of Navarre; Katharine; Jaquenetta & Forester. Sonia: Rosaline; Moth; Longaville & Hiems (the Winter). Tomas Peter: Don Adriano de Armado; Boyet & Sir Nathaniel.
Other versions of Love's Labour's Lost (version 2)
- Love's Labour's Lost — narrated by multiple narrators · English
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