Page 2006 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

You to your land and love and great allies:
(to Silvius)
You to a long and well-deserved bed:
(to Touchstone)

And you to wrangling, for thy loving voyage
Is but for two months victuall’d. So to your pleasures.
I am for other than for dancing measures. [190]

DUKE SENIOR
Stay, Jaques, stay.

JAQUES
To see no pastime, I. What you would have

I’ll stay to know at your abandon’d cave.
Exit.

DUKE SENIOR
Proceed, proceed. We will begin these rites,
As we do trust they’ll end, in true delights. [195]

(A dance, after which Rosalind is left alone to speak the Epilogue.)

ROSALIND

It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but it is no more
unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue. If it be true that good wine
needs no bush, ’tis true that a good play needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine
they do use good bushes; and good plays prove the [200] better by the help
of good epilogues. What a case am I in then, that am neither a good

epilogue, nor cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play? I am not
furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will not become me. My way is to
conjure you, and I’ll begin with the [205] women. I charge you, O women, for

the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you. And I
charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women − as I perceive by your
simpering none of you hates them − that between you and the women the
play may [210] please. If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as
had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me, and breaths that I

defied not. And I am sure, as many as have good beards, or good faces, or
sweet breaths, will for my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.