William Shakespeare: As You Like It

ACT I.
2. SCENE II. A Lawn before the DUKE'S Palace.

[Enter ROSALIND and CELIA.]

CELIA.
I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry.

ROSALIND.
Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of; and would
you yet I were merrier? Unless you could teach me to forget a
banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any
extraordinary pleasure.

CELIA.
Herein I see thou lov'st me not with the full weight that I
love thee; if my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy
uncle, the duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me,
I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine; so
wouldst thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously
tempered as mine is to thee.

ROSALIND.
Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to rejoice in
yours.

CELIA.
You know my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to
have; and, truly, when he dies thou shalt be his heir: for what
he hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee
again in affection: by mine honour, I will; and when I break that
oath, let me turn monster; therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear
Rose, be merry.

ROSALIND.
From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports: let me see; what
think you of falling in love?

CELIA.
Marry, I pr'ythee, do, to make sport withal: but love no man
in good earnest, nor no further in sport neither than with
safety of a pure blush thou mayst in honour come off again.

ROSALIND.
What shall be our sport, then?

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

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.

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