William Shakespeare: As You Like It

ACT III. 2. SCENE II. The Forest of Arden. (continued)

ORLANDO.
Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in
so removed a dwelling.

ROSALIND.
I have been told so of many: but indeed an old religious
uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland
man; one that knew courtship too well, for there he fell in love.
I have heard him read many lectures against it; and I thank God I
am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offences as he
hath generally taxed their whole sex withal.

ORLANDO.
Can you remember any of the principal evils that he laid
to the charge of women?

ROSALIND.
There were none principal; they were all like one another
as halfpence are; every one fault seeming monstrous till his
fellow fault came to match it.

ORLANDO.
I pr'ythee recount some of them.

ROSALIND.
No; I will not cast away my physic but on those that are
sick. There is a man haunts the forest that abuses our young
plants with carving Rosalind on their barks; hangs odes upon
hawthorns, and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the
name of Rosalind: if I could meet that fancy-monger, I would give
him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love
upon him.

ORLANDO.
I am he that is so love-shaked: I pray you tell me your remedy.

ROSALIND.
There is none of my uncle's marks upon you; he taught me how to
know a man in love; in which cage of rushes I am sure you are not
prisoner.

ORLANDO.
What were his marks?

ROSALIND.
A lean cheek; which you have not:a blue eye and sunken;
which you have not: an unquestionable spirit; which you have not:
a beard neglected; which you have not: but I pardon you for that,
for simply your having in beard is a younger brother's revenue:--
then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your
sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you
demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man; you
are rather point-device in your accoutrements, as loving yourself
than seeming the lover of any other.