Page:Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale.djvu/51

Love's Labour's Lost, IV. i

An your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit,

One o' these maids' girdles for your waist should be fit.

Are not you the chief woman? you are the thickest here.

Prin. What's your will, sir? what's your will?

Cost. I have a letter from Monsieur Berowne to one Lady Rosaline.

Prin. O thy letter, thy letter! He's a good friend of mine.

Stand aside, good bearer. Boyet, you can carve;

Break up this capon.

Boyet. I am bound to serve.—

This letter is mistook; it importeth none here:

It is writ to Jaquenetta.

Prin. We will read it, I swear.

Break the neck of the wax, and every one give ear.

Boyet. [Reads.] 'By heaven, that thou art fair,

is most infallible; true, that thou art beauteous;

truth itself, that thou art lovely. More fairer than

fair, beautiful than beauteous, truer than truth

itself, have commiseration on thy heroical vas-

sal. The magnanimous and most illustrate

king Cophetua set eye upon the pernicious and

indubitate beggar Zenelophon, and he it was

that might rightly say veni, vidi, vici; which to

anatomize in the vulgar—O base and obscure

vulgar!—videlicet, he came, saw, and overcame:

he came, one; saw, two; overcame, three. Who

came? the king: Why did he come? to see: Why

did he see? to overcome: To whom came he? to

 56 capon: love-letter; cf. n.

57 importeth: concerns

65 illustrate: illustrious

67 indubitate: indubitable

Zenelophon: Penelophon (in the old ballad)

69 anatomize: analyze, explain

