William Shakespeare: As You Like It

ACT IV. 1. SCENE I. Forest of Arden. (continued)

ORLANDO.
For ever and a day.

ROSALIND.
Say a day, without the ever. No, no, Orlando: men are
April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when
they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. I will
be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen;
more clamorous than a parrot against rain; more new-fangled than
an ape; more giddy in my desires than a monkey: I will weep for
nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you
are disposed to be merry; I will laugh like a hyen, and that when
thou are inclined to sleep.

ORLANDO.
But will my Rosalind do so?

ROSALIND.
By my life, she will do as I do.

ORLANDO.
O, but she is wise.

ROSALIND.
Or else she could not have the wit to do this: the wiser,
the waywarder: make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will
out at the casement; shut that, and it will out at the keyhole;
stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.

ORLANDO.
A man that had a wife with such a wit, he might say,--'Wit,
whither wilt?'

ROSALIND.
Nay, you might keep that check for it, till you met your wife's
wit going to your neighbour's bed.

ORLANDO.
And what wit could wit have to excuse that?

ROSALIND.
Marry, to say,--she came to seek you there. You shall never
take her without her answer, unless you take her without her
tongue. O, that woman that cannot make her fault her husband's
occasion, let her never nurse her child herself, for she will
breed it like a fool.

ORLANDO.
For these two hours, Rosalind, I will leave thee.

ROSALIND.
Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours!