Page:Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale.djvu/48

36

The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,

Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,

Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,

Sole imperator and great general

Of trotting 'paritors: O my little heart!

And I to be a corporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!

What! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!

A woman that is like a German clock,

Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,

And never going aright, being a watch,

But being watch'd that it may still go right!

Nay, to be perjur'd, which is worst of all;

And, among three, to love the worst of all;

A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,

With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes.

Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed,

Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard.

And I to sigh for her! to watch for her!

To pray for her! Go to: it is a plague

That Cupid will impose for my neglect

Of his almighty dreadful little might.

Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, groan:

Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.

[Exit.]

 194 plackets: petticoats, or slits in petticoats or skirts

codpieces: baggy appendages to the front of breeches

196 'paritors: apparitors, officials of the ecclesiastical court

198 like hoop: like the flaunting ribbons attached to a tumbler's hoop

201 frame: order

206 whitely: pale-skinned

209 Argus: a monster having a hundred eyes

215 Joan: ''stock name for a peasant wench; cf. IV. iii. 182 and V. ii.'' 928 