Love’s Labor’s Lost: Act III, Scene i

 

Love’s Labor’s Lost.         Act 3, Scene 1.      Berowne

(This text is featured in our interview with Bradford Cover)

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  1. And I forsooth in love! I that have been love’s whip,
  2. A very beadle to a humorous sigh,
  3. A critic, nay, a nightwatch constable,
  4. A domineering pedant o’er the boy,
  5. Than whom no mortal so magnificent.
  6. This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,
  7. This Signior Junior, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid,
  8. Regent of love rhymes, lord of folded arms,
  9. Th’ anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
  10. Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
  11. Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
  12. Sole imperator and great general
  13. Of trotting paritors—O my little heart!
  14. And I to be a corporal of his field
  15. And wear his colors like a tumbler’s hoop!
  16. What? I love, I sue, I seek a wife?
  17. A woman, that is like a German clock,
  18. Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,
  19. And never going aright, being a watch,
  20. But being watched that it may still go right.
  21. Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all.
  22. And, among three, to love the worst of all,
  23. A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,
  24. With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes.
  25. Ay, and by heaven, one that will do the deed
  26. Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard.
  27. And I to sigh for her, to watch for her,
  28. To pray for her! Go to. It is a plague
  29. That Cupid will impose for my neglect
  30. Of his almighty dreadful little might.
  31. Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, groan.
  32. Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.

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