Page 1900 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

What shall be our sport then?

CELIA
Let us sit and mock the good hussif Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts
may henceforth be bestowed equally. [30]

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 [35] 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 [40] 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 [45] 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 [50]
whetstone of the wits. How now Wit, whither wander you?

TOUCHSTONE
Mistress, you must come away to your father.