Page:Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale.djvu/21

Love's Labour's Lost, I. i

King. [Reads.] 'Great deputy, the welkin's vice-

gerent, and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul's

earth's God, and body's fostering patron,—'

Cost. Not a word of Costard yet.

King. [Reads.] 'So it is—'

Cost. It may be so; but if he say it is so, he

is, in telling true, but so.—

King. Peace!

Cost. Be to me and every man that dares not

fight.

King. No words!

Cost. Of other men's secrets, I beseech you.

King. [Reads.] 'So it is, besieged with sable-col-

oured melancholy, I did commend the black-op-

pressing humour to the most wholesome physic of

thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentle-

man, betook myself to walk. The time when?

About the sixth hour; when beasts most graze,

birds best peck, and men sit down to that

nourishment which is called supper: so much

for the time when. Now for the ground which;

which, I mean, I walked upon: it is ycleped

thy park. Then for the place where; where, I

mean, I did encounter that most obscene and

preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-

white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which here thou

viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest. But to the

place where, it standeth north-north-east and

by east from the west corner of thy curious-

knotted garden. There did I see that low-spirited

swain, that base minnow of thy mirth,—'

Cost. Me?

 240 ycleped: called

247 curious-knotted: fancifully laid out in intricate beds

