How say you now? Is it not past two o’clock? And here much Orlando.

I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain he hath ta’en his bow

and arrows and is gone forth to sleep.

Look who comes here.

My errand is to you, fair youth.

My gentle Phoebe did bid me give you this.

I know not the contents, but, as I guess

By the stern brow and waspish action

Which she did use as she was writing of it,

It bears an angry tenor. Pardon me,

I am but as a guiltless messenger.

Patience herself would startle at this letter

And play the swaggerer. Bear this, bear all!

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 phoenix. ’Od’s my will,

Her love is not the hare that I do hunt.

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

This is a letter of your own device.

No, I protest, I know not the contents.

Phoebe did write it.

Come, come, you are a fool,

And turned into the extremity of love.

I saw her hand. She has a leathern hand,

A freestone-coloured hand. I verily did think

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.

Sure, it is hers.

Why, ’tis a boisterous and a cruel style,

A style for challengers. Why, she defies me,

Like Turk to Christian. Women’s gentle brain

Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention,

Such Ethiop words, blacker in their effect

Than in their countenance. Will you hear the letter?

So please you, for I never heard it yet,

Yet heard too much of Phoebe’s cruelty.

She Phoebes me. Mark how the tyrant writes.

_Art thou god to shepherd turned,

That a maiden’s heart hath burned?_

Can a woman rail thus?

Call you this railing?

_Why, thy godhead laid apart,

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.

_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?

Whiles you chid me, I did love,

How then might your prayers move?

He that brings this love to thee

Little knows this love in me;

And by him seal up thy mind,

Whether that thy youth and kind

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._

Call you this chiding?

Alas, poor shepherd.

Do you pity him? No, he deserves no pity.—Wilt thou love such a woman?

What, to make thee an instrument and play false strains upon thee? Not

to be endured! Well, go your way to her, for I see love hath made thee

a 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.

Good morrow, fair ones. Pray you, if you know,

Where in the purlieus of this forest stands

A sheepcote fenced about with olive trees?

West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom;

The rank of osiers, by the murmuring stream,

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

But at this hour the house doth keep itself.

There’s none within.

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,

Of female favour, and bestows himself

Like a ripe sister; the woman low,

And browner than her brother.” Are not you

The owner of the house I did inquire for?

It is no boast, being asked, to say we are.

Orlando doth commend him to you both,

And to that youth he calls his Rosalind

He sends this bloody napkin. Are you he?

I am. What must we understand by this?

Some of my shame, if you will know of me

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

This handkerchief was stained.

I pray you tell it.

When last the young Orlando parted from you,

He left a promise to return again

Within an hour, and pacing through the forest,

Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy,

Lo, what befell. He threw his eye aside,

And mark what object did present itself.

Under an oak, whose boughs were mossed with age

And high top bald with dry antiquity,

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, approached

The opening of his mouth. But suddenly,

Seeing Orlando, it unlinked itself

And with indented glides did slip away

Into a bush; under which bush’s shade

A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,

Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch

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.

O, I have heard him speak of that same brother,

And he did render him the most unnatural

That lived amongst men.

And well he might so do,

For well I know he was unnatural.

But, to Orlando: did he leave him there,

Food to the sucked and hungry lioness?

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,

Who quickly fell before him; in which hurtling

From miserable slumber I awaked.

Are you his brother?

Was it you he rescued?

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

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

To tell you what I was, since my conversion

So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.

But, for the bloody napkin?

By and by.

When from the first to last betwixt us two

Tears our recountments had most kindly bathed—

As how I came into that desert place—

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,

There stripped 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 recovered him, bound up his wound,

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,

Dyed in his blood, unto the shepherd youth

That he in sport doth call his Rosalind.

Why, how now, Ganymede, sweet Ganymede!

Many will swoon when they do look on blood.

There is more in it. Cousin—Ganymede!

Look, he recovers.

I would I were at home.

We’ll lead you thither.

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

Be of good cheer, youth. You a man? You lack a man’s heart.

I do so, I confess it. Ah, sirrah, a body would think this was well

counterfeited. I pray you tell your brother how well I counterfeited.

Heigh-ho.

This was not counterfeit. There is too great testimony in your

complexion that it was a passion of earnest.

Counterfeit, I assure you.

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

So I do. But, i’ faith, I should have been a woman by right.

Come, you look paler and paler. Pray you draw homewards. Good sir, go

with us.

That will I, for I must bear answer back

How you excuse my brother, Rosalind.

I shall devise something. But I pray you commend my counterfeiting to

him. Will you go?