William Shakespeare: All's Well That Ends Well

ACT IV. SCENE 5. Rousillon. A room in the COUNTESS'S palace.

[Enter COUNTESS, LAFEU, and CLOWN.]

LAFEU.
No, no, no, son was misled with a snipt-taffeta fellow there,
whose villanous saffron would have made all the unbaked and
doughy youth of a nation in his colour: your daughter-in-law
had been alive at this hour, and your son here at home, more
advanced by the king than by that red-tail'd humble-bee I speak
of.

COUNTESS.
I would I had not known him! It was the death of the most
virtuous gentlewoman that ever nature had praise for creating: if
she had partaken of my flesh, and cost me the dearest groans of a
mother, I could not have owed her a more rooted love.

LAFEU.
'Twas a good lady, 'twas a good lady: we may pick a thousand
salads ere we light on such another herb.

CLOWN.
Indeed, sir, she was the sweet marjoram of the salad, or,
rather, the herb of grace.

LAFEU.
They are not salad-herbs, you knave; they are nose-herbs.

CLOWN.
I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, sir; I have not much skill in
grass.

LAFEU.
Whether dost thou profess thyself,--a knave or a fool?

CLOWN.
A fool, sir, at a woman's service, and a knave at a man's.

LAFEU.
Your distinction?

CLOWN.
I would cozen the man of his wife, and do his service.

LAFEU.
So you were a knave at his service, indeed.

CLOWN.
And I would give his wife my bauble, sir, to do her service.

LAFEU.
I will subscribe for thee; thou art both knave and fool.

CLOWN.
At your service.

LAFEU.
No, no, no.