Page:Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale.djvu/95

Love's Labour's Lost, V. ii

Should be presented at our tent to us.

Boyet. Ladies, withdraw: the gallants are at hand.

Prin. Whip to your tents, as roes runs o'er land.

Exeunt [Princess, Ros., Kath., and Maria].

King. Fair sir, God save you! Where is the princess?

Boyet. Gone to her tent. Please it your majesty,

Command me any service to her thither?

King. That she vouchsafe me audience for one word.

Boyet. I will; and so will she, I know, my lord.

Exit.

Ber. This fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons pease,

And utters it again when God doth please:

He is wit's pedlar, and retails his wares

At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;

And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,

Have not the grace to grace it with such show.

This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve;

Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve:

He can carve too, and lisp: why, this is he

That kiss'd his hand away in courtesy.

This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,

That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice

In honourable terms: nay, he can sing

A mean most meanly, and in ushering

Mend him who can: the ladies call him sweet;

The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet.

This is the flower that smiles on every one,

To show his teeth as white as whales-bone;

 310 runs: run

319 wakes: night festivals

wassails: drinking bouts

324 can carve: knows the art of amorous glance and gesture

327 tables: backgammon

329 mean: tenor

333 whales-bone: whale's bone, walrus tusk

