Page 2473 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

ROSALINE

Which of the visors was it that you wore? [385]

BEROWNE

Where, when, what visor? Why demand you this?

ROSALINE

There, then, that visor: that superfluous case
That hid the worse and showed the better face.

KING

We were descried. They’ll mock us now downright.

DUMAINE

Let us confess, and turn it to a jest. [390]

PRINCESS

Amazed, my lord? Why looks your highness sad?

ROSALINE

Help! Hold his brows! He’ll swoon. Why look you pale?
Sea-sick, I think, coming from Muscovy!

BEROWNE

Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury.
Can any face of brass hold longer out? [395]

Here stand I, lady; dart thy skill at me.
Bruise we with scorn, confound me with a flout,

Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance,
Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit,

And I will wish thee never more to dance, [400]
Nor never more in Russian habit wait.

O, never will I trust to speeches penned,
Nor to the motion of a schoolboy’s tongue,

Nor never come in visor to my friend,
Nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper’s song. [405]

Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affection,

Figures pedantical - these summer flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.