Page 2427 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

DULL

’Tis true, indeed; the collusion holds in the exchange.

HOLOFERNES

God comfort thy capacity! I say th’allusion [45] holds in the exchange.

DULL

And I say the pollution holds in the exchange, for the moon is never but a
month old; and I say beside that ’twas a pricket that the Princess killed.

HOLOFERNES

Sir Nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal [50] epitaph on the death of the
deer? And, to humour the ignorant, call I the deer the Princess killed a
pricket.

NAT HANIEL

Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge, so it shall please you to abrogate
scurrility.

HOLOFERNES

I will something affect the letter, for it [55] argues facility.
The preyful Princess pierced and pricked a pretty pleasing pricket;
Some say a sore, but not a sore till now made sore with
shooting.
The dogs did yell; put ‘L’ to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket;
Or pricket, sore, or else sorel, the people fall a-hooting. [60]
If sore be sore, then ‘L’ to sore makes fifty sores o’sorel:
Of one sore I an hundred make, by adding but one more ‘L’.

NAT HANIEL

A rare talent!

DULL

If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent. [65]

HOLOFERNES

This is a gift that I have; simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of
forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions.
These are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia
mater, and delivered upon the mellowing [70] of occasion. But the gift is