Love's Labour's Lost (version 2) - Бесплатная аудиокнига

ACT II.

Scene I. The Forest of Arden.

AYLI II. 1 Enter Duke senior, Amiens, and two or three Lords, like foresters.

001 Duke S. Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?

005 Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,

006 The seasons’ difference; as the icy fang

And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,

Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,

Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say

010 ‘This is no flattery: these are counsellors

That feelingly persuade me what I am.’

Sweet are the uses of adversity;

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head:

015 And this our life exempt from public haunt

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones and good in every thing.

018 I would not change it.

Ami.

Happy is your Grace,

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune

020 Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

Duke S. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?

And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,

Being native burghers of this desert city,

Should in their own confines with forked heads

Have their round haunches gored.

First Lord.

025 Indeed, my lord,

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,

And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp

Than doth your brother that hath banish’d you.

To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself

030 Did steal behind him as he lay along

031 Under an oak whose antique root peeps out

Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:

To the which place a poor sequester’d stag,

That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt,

035 Did come to languish, and indeed, my lord,

The wretched animal heaved forth such groans,

That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat

Almost to bursting, and the big round tears

Coursed one another down his innocent nose

040 In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,

Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,

042 Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,

Augmenting it with tears.

Duke S.

But what said Jaques?

Did he not moralize this spectacle?

045 First Lord. O, yes, into a thousand similes.

First, for his weeping into the needless stream;

‘Poor deer,’ quoth he, ‘thou makest a testament

As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more

049 To that which had too much:’ then, being there alone,

050 Left and abandon’d of his velvet friends;

‘’Tis right,’ quoth he; ‘thus misery doth part

The flux of company:’ anon a careless herd,

Full of the pasture, jumps along by him

And never stays to greet him; ‘Ay,’ quoth Jaques,

055 ‘Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;

’Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look

Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?’

Thus most invectively he pierceth through

059 The body of the country, city, court,

060 Yea, and of this our life; swearing that we

Are mere usurpers, tyrants and what’s worse,

062 To fright the animals and to kill them up

In their assign’d and native dwelling-place.

Duke S. And did you leave him in this contemplation?

065 Sec. Lord. We did, my lord, weeping and commenting

Upon the sobbing deer.

Duke S.

Show me the place:

I love to cope him in these sullen fits,

For then he’s full of matter.

First Lord. I’ll bring you to him straight. [Exeunt.