ROSALIND
Me believe it! you may as soon make her that you love believe it; which, I warrant, she is apter to do than
to confess she does: that is one of the points in the which women still give the lie to their consciences.
But, in good sooth, are you he that hangs the verses on the trees, wherein Rosalind is so admired? ORLANDO
I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am that he, that unfortunate he. ROSALIND
But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak? ORLANDO
Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much. ROSALIND
Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do: and the
reason why they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in
love too. Yet I profess curing it by counsel. ORLANDO
Did you ever cure any so? ROSALIND
Yes, one, and in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo
me: at which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing and
liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles, for every passion something
and for no passion truly any thing, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour; would
now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that
I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love to a living humour of madness; which was, to forswear the
full stream of the world, and to live in a nook merely monastic. And thus I cured him; and this way will I
take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one spot of
love in't. ORLANDO
I would not be cured, youth. ROSALIND
I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind and come every day to my cote and woo me. ORLANDO
Now, by the faith of my love, I will: tell me where it is. ROSALIND
Go with me to it and I'll show it you and by the way you shall tell me where in the forest you live. Will you
go?
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By PanEris
using Melati.
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