Love's Labour's Lost (version 2) - Sách nói Miễn phí

000 Scene III. The forest.

AYLI IV. 3 Enter Rosalind and Celia.

001 Ros. How say you now? Is it not past two o’clock? 002 and here much Orlando!

Cel. I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain, he hath ta’en his bow and arrows and is gone forth to 005 sleep. Look, who comes here.

Enter Silvius.

Sil. My errand is to you, fair youth;

007 My gentle Phebe bid me give you this:

008 I know not the contents; but, as I guess

By the stern brow and waspish action

010 Which she did use as she was writing of it,

011 It bears an angry tenour: pardon me;

I am but as a guiltless messenger.

Ros. Patience herself would startle at this letter

And play the swaggerer; bear this, bear all:

015 She says I am not fair, that I lack manners;

She calls me proud, and that she could not love me,

Were man as rare as phœnix. ’Od’s my will!

018 Her love is not the hare that I do hunt:

Why writes she so to me? Well, shepherd, well,

020 This is a letter of your own device.

Sil. No, I protest, I know not the contents:

022 Phebe did write it.

Ros.

Come, come, you are a fool,

023 And turn’d into the extremity of love.

I saw her hand: she has a leathern hand,

025 A freestone-colour’d hand; I verily did think

026 That her old gloves were on, but ’twas her hands:

She has a huswife’s hand; but that’s no matter:

I say she never did invent this letter;

This is a man’s invention and his hand.

030 Sil. Sure, it is hers.

Ros. Why, ’tis a boisterous and a cruel style,

A style for challengers; why, she defies me,

033 Like Turk to Christian: women’s gentle brain

Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention,

035 Such Ethiope words, blacker in their effect

Than in their countenance. Will you hear the letter?

Sil. So please you, for I never heard it yet;

Yet heard too much of Phebe’s cruelty.

Ros. She Phebes me: mark how the tyrant writes. [Reads.

040 Art thou god to shepherd turn’d,

That a maiden’s heart hath burn’d?

Can a woman rail thus?

Sil. Call you this railing?

Ros. [reads

Why, thy godhead laid apart,

045 Warr’st thou with a woman’s heart?

Did you ever hear such railing?

Whiles the eye of man did woo me,

That could do no vengeance to me.

Meaning me a beast.

050 If the scorn of your bright eyne

Have power to raise such love in mine,

Alack, in me what strange effect

Would they work in mild aspect!

054 Whiles you chid me, I did love;

055 How then might your prayers move!

He that brings this love to thee

057 Little knows this love in me:

And by him seal up thy mind;

Whether that thy youth and kind

060 Will the faithful offer take

Of me and all that I can make;

Or else by him my love deny,

And then I’ll study how to die.

Sil. Call you this chiding?

065 Cel. Alas, poor shepherd!

Ros. Do you pity him? no, he deserves no pity. Wilt thou love such a woman? What, to make thee an instrument 068 and play false strains upon thee! not to be endured! Well, go your way to her, for I see love hath made thee a 070 tame snake, and say this to her: that if she love me, I charge her to love thee; if she will not, I will never have her unless thou entreat for her. If you be a true lover, hence, and not a word; for here comes more company. [Exit Silvius.

Enter Oliver.

Oli. Good morrow, fair ones: pray you, if you know,

075 Where in the purlieus of this forest stands

A sheep-cote fenced about with olive-trees?

Cel. West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom:

The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream

079 Left on your right hand brings you to the place.

080 But at this hour the house doth keep itself;

There’s none within.

Oli. If that an eye may profit by a tongue,

Then should I know you by description;

Such garments and such years: ‘The boy is fair,

085 Of female favour, and bestows himself

086 Like a ripe sister: the woman low,

And browner than her brother.’ Are not you

088 The owner of the house I did inquire for?

Cel. It is no boast, being ask’d, to say we are.

090 Oli. Orlando doth commend him to you both,

And to that youth he calls his Rosalind

092 He sends this bloody napkin. Are you he?

Ros. I am: what must we understand by this?

Oli. Some of my shame; if you will know of me

095 What man I am, and how, and why, and where

096 This handkercher was stain’d.

Cel.

I pray you, tell it.

Oli. When last the young Orlando parted from you

He left a promise to return again

099 Within an hour, and pacing through the forest,

100 Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy,

Lo, what befel! he threw his eye aside,

And mark what object did present itself:

103 Under an oak, whose boughs were moss’d with age

And high top bald with dry antiquity,

105 A wretched ragged man, o’ergrown with hair,

Lay sleeping on his back: about his neck

A green and gilded snake had wreathed itself,

Who with her head nimble in threats approach’d

The opening of his mouth; but suddenly,

110 Seeing Orlando, it unlink’d itself,

And with indented glides did slip away

112 Into a bush: under which bush’s shade

A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,

Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch,

115 When that the sleeping man should stir; for ’tis

The royal disposition of that beast

To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead:

This seen, Orlando did approach the man

And found it was his brother, his elder brother.

120 Cel. O, I have heard him speak of that same brother;

And he did render him the most unnatural

122 That lived amongst men.

Oli.

And well he might so do,

For well I know he was unnatural.

Ros. But, to Orlando: did he leave him there,

125 Food to the suck’d and hungry lioness?

Oil. Twice did he turn his back and purposed so;

But kindness, nobler ever than revenge,

And nature, stronger than his just occasion,

Made him give battle to the lioness,

130 Who quickly fell before him: in which hurtling

From miserable slumber I awaked.

Cel. Are you his brother?

Ros.

132 Was’t you he rescued?

Cel. Was’t you that did so oft contrive to kill him?

Oli. ’Twas I; but ’tis not I: I do not shame

135 To tell you what I was, since my conversion

So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.

Ros. But, for the bloody napkin?

Oli.

By and by.

When from the first to last betwixt us two

Tears our recountments had most kindly bathed,

140 As how I came into that desert place;

141 In brief, he led me to the gentle Duke,

Who gave me fresh array and entertainment,

Committing me unto my brother’s love;

Who led me instantly unto his cave,

145 There stripp’d himself, and here upon his arm

The lioness had torn some flesh away,

Which all this while had bled; and now he fainted

And cried, in fainting, upon Rosalind.

Brief, I recover’d him, bound up his wound;

150 And, after some small space, being strong at heart,

He sent me hither, stranger as I am,

To tell this story, that you might excuse

His broken promise, and to give this napkin,

154 Dyed in his blood, unto the shepherd youth

155 That he in sport doth call his Rosalind. [Rosalind swoons.

Cel. Why, how now, Ganymede! sweet Ganymede!

Oli. Many will swoon when they do look on blood.

158 Cel. There is more in it. Cousin Ganymede!

Oli. Look, he recovers.

160 Ros. I would I were at home.

Cel.

We’ll lead you thither.

I pray you, will you take him by the arm?

Oli. Be of good cheer, youth: you a man! you lack a man’s heart.

164 Ros. I do so, I confess it. Ah, sirrah, a body would 165 think this was well counterfeited! I pray you, tell your brother how well I counterfeited. Heigh-ho!

Oli. This was not counterfeit: there is too great testimony 168 in your complexion that it was a passion of earnest.

Ros. Counterfeit, I assure you.

170 Oli. Well then, take a good heart and counterfeit to be a man.

Ros. So I do: but, i’faith, I should have been a woman by right.

Cel. Come, you look paler and paler: pray you, draw 175 homewards. Good sir, go with us.

Oli. That will I, for I must bear answer back How you excuse my brother, Rosalind.

Ros. I shall devise something: but, I pray you, commend my counterfeiting to him. Will you go? [Exeunt.