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 bid me give you this:
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 Ethiope words, blacker in their effect
Than in their countenance. Will you hear the letter?
SILVIUS
So please you, for I never heard it yet;
Yet heard too much of Phebe's cruelty.