Page 1958 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

TOUCHSTONE

Come apace good Audrey. I will fetch up your goats, Audrey. And how
Audrey, am I the man yet? Doth my simple feature content you?

AUDREY
Your features? Lord warrant us! What features?

TOUCHSTONE
I am here with thee and thy goats, as the [5] most capricious poet, honest

Ovid, was among the Goths.

JAQUES

(aside)
O knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than Jove in a thatched house!

TOUCHSTONE
When a man’s verses cannot be understood, [10] nor a man’s good wit
seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead
than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made

thee poetical.

AUDREY
I do not know what ‘poetical’ is. Is it honest in [15] deed and word? Is it a
true thing?

TOUCHSTONE
No truly; for the truest poetry is the most feigning, and lovers are given to

poetry; and what they swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign.

AUDREY

Do you wish then that the gods had made me [20] poetical?

TOUCHSTONE
I do truly. For thou swear’st to me thou art honest. Now if thou wert a poet, I
might have some hope thou didst feign.

AUDREY