Page:Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale.djvu/124

112 Princess) wear masks in this scene is Berowne's exclamation, 'Now fair befall your mask!' (l. 123), and the reply of Rosaline ('Katharine' in the Quarto). This is far from conclusive. On the other hand, the evident purpose of the scene is to allow each of the lords an opportunity of falling in love with a lady with whom, by hypothesis, he has previously had only the slightest acquaintance, but with whose peculiarities of face and coloring they are all shown to be perfectly familiar when they next appear (see Berowne's soliloquy, III. i. 205 ff., and the whole of IV. iii). It is impossible to believe that any author, skilled or unskilled, could have had the idea of frustrating so essential a piece of dramatic business by having the ladies unrecognizably masked and making them converse at cross purposes with the wrong gallants.

God's blessing on your beard. Longaville means to imply that Boyet's flippant answers are inconsistent with his venerable beard. In pronunciation 'beard' and 'heard' rimed better than at present, the latter word still retaining the long vowel of its infinitive.

Farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you. Say 'farewell' to me, and I will say you are welcome (to depart).

''Kath. Two hot sheeps, marry''. The Quarto assigns this speech to 'Lady Ka.' and the Folio to 'La. Ma.' Nearly all editors follow the latter, which, however, is probably a compositor's error occasioned by the fact that Maria is the speaker just above (l. 213). The three following lady's speeches (ll. 219, 220, 222), assigned in both the early editions simply to 'La.' or 'Lad.,' evidently belong to the same lady who speaks in l. 217. The Quarto's introduction of Katharine into the conversation is a dramatic gain.

My lips are no common, though several they be. A quasi-legal pun. Several land, as