are you he that hangs the verses on the trees,
wherein Rosalind is so admired? 418
Orl. I swear to thee, youth, by the white
hand of Rosalind, I am that he, that unfor-
tunate he.
Ros. But are you so much in love as your
rimes speak?
Orl. Neither rime nor reason can express
how much. 425
Ros. 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.
Orl. Did you ever cure any so? 432
Ros. 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 effemi-
nate, changeable, longing and liking; proud,
fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of 438
tears, full of smiles, for every passion something,
and for no passion truly anything, 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 445
humour of madness, which was, to forswear the
full stream of the world, and to live in a nook
427 dark . . . whip; cf. n.
431 profess: claim to have knowledge of
434 set him: i.e., as a task
436 moonish: variable
438 fantastical: capricious
apish: imitative
443 entertain: receive
forswear: renounce
445 living . . . madness: humor of actual madness
