No Fear Shakespeare
As You Like It
Get this No Fear to go!
Act 1, Scene 3, Page 3
Original Text |
Modern Text |
|
|
40 45 |
ROSALIND
I do beseech your Grace,
Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me.
If with myself I hold intelligence
Or have acquaintance with mine own desires,
If that I do not dream or be not frantic—
As I do trust I am not—then, dear uncle,
Never so much as in a thought unborn
Did I offend your Highness.
|
ROSALIND
Please, your Grace, tell me what crime I have committed. If I know my own thoughts and desires, and I’m not dreaming or crazy—which I’m sure I’m not—then, dear uncle, I’ve never had so much as a half-formed thought that would have offended you.
|
|
50 |
DUKE FREDERICK
Thus do all traitors.
If their purgation did consist in words,
They are as innocent as grace itself.
Let it suffice thee that I trust thee not.
|
DUKE FREDERICK
All traitors protest like this. If they could purge their guilt simply by saying that they were innocent, they’d all be as innocent as God Himself. I don’t trust you. Enough said.
|
|
|
ROSALIND
Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor.
Tell me whereon the likelihood depends.
|
ROSALIND
But your mistrust alone can’t make me a traitor—on what basis do you suspect me?
|
|
DUKE FREDERICK
Thou art thy father’s daughter. There’s enough.
|
DUKE FREDERICK
You are your father’s daughter. That’s enough.
|
|
|
55 60 |
ROSALIND
So was I when your Highness took his dukedom.
So was I when your Highness banished him.
Treason is not inherited, my lord,
Or if we did derive it from our friends,
What’s that to me? My father was no traitor.
Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much
To think my poverty is treacherous.
|
ROSALIND
I was his daughter when your Highness took my father’s dukedom. I was his daughter when you banished him. Treason is not inherited, my lord. But even if we did inherit it from our family, what does that have to do with me? My father wasn’t a traitor. So, please, my lord, don’t assume that I’m treacherous just because I’m poor, with no titles to my name.
|
|
CELIA
Dear sovereign, hear me speak.
|
CELIA
Dear master, listen to me.
|
|
|
|
DUKE FREDERICK
Ay, Celia, we stayed her for your sake.
Else had she with her father ranged along.
|
DUKE FREDERICK
Yes, Celia, we kept her here for your sake. Otherwise, she would have been banished with her father.
|
