AS YOU LIKE IT
Page: 28

TOUCHSTONE.
Why, do not your courtier's hands sweat? and is not the
grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man?
Shallow, shallow: a better instance, I say; come.

CORIN.
Besides, our hands are hard.

TOUCHSTONE.
Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow again: a more
sounder instance; come.

CORIN.
And they are often tarred over with the surgery of our
sheep; and would you have us kiss tar? The courtier's hands
are perfumed with civet.

TOUCHSTONE.
Most shallow man! thou worm's-meat in respect of a good
piece of flesh indeed!--Learn of the wise, and perpend: civet is
of a baser birth than tar,--the very uncleanly flux of a cat.
Mend the instance, shepherd.

CORIN.
You have too courtly a wit for me: I'll rest.

TOUCHSTONE.
Wilt thou rest damned? God help thee, shallow man!
God make incision in thee! thou art raw.

CORIN.
Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I
wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other
men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my
pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.

TOUCHSTONE.
That is another simple sin in you: to bring the ewes
and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the
copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether; and to betray
a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly ram,
out of all reasonable match. If thou be'st not damned for this,
the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how
thou shouldst 'scape.

CORIN.
Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new mistress's brother.

[Enter ROSALIND, reading a paper.]

ROSALIND.
'From the east to western Ind,
No jewel is like Rosalind.
Her worth, being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind.
All the pictures fairest lin'd
Are but black to Rosalind.
Let no face be kept in mind
But the fair of Rosalind.'

TOUCHSTONE.
I'll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners, and
suppers, and sleeping hours excepted. It is the right
butter-women's rank to market.

ROSALIND.
Out, fool!

TOUCHSTONE.
For a taste:--