AS YOU LIKE IT
Page: 6

ROSALIND.
I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily
misplaced: and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in
her gifts to women.

CELIA.
'Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes
honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very
ill-favouredly.

ROSALIND.
Nay; now thou goest from Fortune's office to Nature's: Fortune
reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature.

CELIA.
No; when Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by
Fortune fall into the fire?--Though Nature hath given us wit to
flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off
the argument?

[Enter TOUCHSTONE.]

ROSALIND.
Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when
Fortune makes Nature's natural the cutter-off of Nature's wit.

CELIA.
Peradventure this is not Fortune's work neither, but
Nature's, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of
such goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone: for
always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.--
How now, wit? whither wander you?

TOUCHSTONE.
Mistress, you must come away to your father.

CELIA.
Were you made the messenger?

TOUCHSTONE.
No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you.

ROSALIND.
Where learned you that oath, fool?

TOUCHSTONE.
Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were
good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught:
now, I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and the
mustard was good: and yet was not the knight forsworn.

CELIA.
How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge?

ROSALIND.
Ay, marry; now unmuzzle your wisdom.

TOUCHSTONE.
Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear
by your beards that I am a knave.

CELIA.
By our beards, if we had them, thou art.

TOUCHSTONE.
By my knavery, if I had it, then I were: but if you swear by that
that is not, you are not forsworn: no more was this knight,
swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he
had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancackes or that
mustard.

CELIA.