No Fear Shakespeare

As You Like It

William Shakespeare

Get this No Fear to go!

Act 3, Scene 2, Page 17

Original Text

Modern Text


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?
ROSALIND
Make me believe it? You might as well make the one you love believe it, which she’s more likely to do than admit that she does—that’s one of the ways that women fool their own consciences. But really, are you the one who’s been hanging on the trees those poems that speak so admiringly of Rosalind?

ORLANDO
I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am that he, that unfortunate he.
ORLANDO
I swear to you by Rosalind’s own pretty hand that I am that unfortunate man.

355
ROSALIND
But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?
ROSALIND
Are you really as in love as your poems declare?

ORLANDO
Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.
ORLANDO
Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much I love her.

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.
ROSALIND
Love is merely a form of insanity, and I tell you, lovers deserve the nuthouse just like crazy people do. The only reason they don’t get punished and cured is that the disease is so commonplace that the nuthouse nurses are usually suffering from it, too. But I promise it can be cured with some guidance.

ORLANDO
Did you ever cure any so?
ORLANDO
Have you ever cured anyone this way before?

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