William Shakespeare: As You Like It

ACT IV. 3. SCENE III. Another part of the Forest.

[Enter ROSALIND and CELIA.]

ROSALIND.
How say you now? Is it not past two o'clock?
And here much Orlando!

CELIA.
I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain, he hath
ta'en his bow and arrows, and is gone forth--to sleep. Look,
who comes here.

[Enter SILVIUS.]

SILVIUS.
My errand is to you, fair youth;--
My gentle Phebe did bid me give you this:

[Giving a letter.]

I know not the contents; but, as I guess
By the stern brow and waspish action
Which she did use as she was writing of it,
It bears an angry tenor: pardon me,
I am but as a guiltless messenger.

ROSALIND.
Patience herself would startle at this letter,
And play the swaggerer; bear this, bear all:
She says I am not fair; that I lack manners;
She calls me proud, and that she could not love me,
Were man as rare as Phoenix. Od's my will!
Her love is not the hare that I do hunt;
Why writes she so to me?--Well, shepherd, well,
This is a letter of your own device.

SILVIUS.
No, I protest, I know not the contents: Phebe did write it.

ROSALIND.
Come, come, you are a fool,
And turn'd into the extremity of love.
I saw her hand: she has a leathern hand,
A freestone-colour'd hand: I verily did think
That her old gloves were on, but 'twas her hands;
She has a huswife's hand: but that's no matter:
I say she never did invent this letter:
This is a man's invention, and his hand.

SILVIUS.
Sure, it is hers.

ROSALIND.
Why, 'tis a boisterous and a cruel style;
A style for challengers: why, she defies me,
Like Turk to Christian: women's gentle brain
Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention,
Such Ethiop words, blacker in their effect
Than in their countenance.--Will you hear the letter?