BIRON

Where? when? what vizard? why demand you this?

ROSALINE

There, then, that vizard; that superfluous case
That hid the worse and show'd the better face.

FERDINAND

We are descried; they'll mock us now downright.

DUMAIN

Let us confess and turn it to a jest.

PRINCESS

Amazed, my lord? why looks your highness sad?

ROSALINE

Help, hold his brows! he'll swoon! Why look you pale?
Sea-sick, I think, coming from Muscovy.

BIRON

Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury.
Can any face of brass hold longer out?
Here stand I lady, dart thy skill at me;
Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout;
Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance;
Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit;
And I will wish thee never more to dance,
Nor never more in Russian habit wait.
O, never will I trust to speeches penn'd,
Nor to the motion of a schoolboy's tongue,
Nor never come in vizard to my friend,
Nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper's song!
Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical; these summer-flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation:
I do forswear them; and I here protest,
By this white glove;–how white the hand, God knows!–
Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express'd
In russet yeas and honest kersey noes:
And, to begin, wench, –so God help me, la!–
My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.

ROSALINE

Sans sans, I pray you.

BIRON

Yet I have a trick
Of the old rage: bear with me, I am sick;
I'll leave it by degrees. Soft, let us see:
Write, 'Lord have mercy on us' on those three;
They are infected; in their hearts it lies;
They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes;
These lords are visited; you are not free,
For the Lord's tokens on you do I see.

PRINCESS

No, they are free that gave these tokens to us.

BIRON

Our states are forfeit: seek not to undo us.

ROSALINE

It is not so; for how can this be true,
That you stand forfeit, being those that sue?