Page:Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale.djvu/83

Love's Labour's Lost, V. ii 

Prin. Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart,

If fairings come thus plentifully in.

A lady wall'd about with diamonds!

Look you what I have from the loving king.

Ros. Madam, came nothing else along with that?

Prin. Nothing but this! yes, as much love in rime

As would be cramm'd up in a sheet of paper,

Writ o' both sides the leaf, margent and all,

That he was fain to seal on Cupid's name.

Ros. That was the way to make his godhead wax;

For he hath been five thousand year a boy.

Kath. Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too.

Ros. You'll ne'er be friends with him: a' kill'd your sister.

Kath. He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy;

And so she died: had she been light, like you,

Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit,

She might ha' been a grandam ere she died;

And so may you, for a light heart lives long.

Ros. What's your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?

Kath. A light condition in a beauty dark.

Ros. We need more light to find your meaning out.

Kath. You'll mar the light by taking it in snuff;

 166 hay: country dance  2 fairings: presents, originally such as were bought at a fair

9 That: so that (there being no blank space left)

10 wax: grow (with quibble on sealing-wax)

12 shrewd gallows: cunning, roguish knave

13 Cf. n.

20 condition: temperament

22 in snuff: in anger, ill (with pun on the snuff of a candle)

