- Jaques: All the world's a stage,/ And all the men and women merely players: /They have their exits and their entrances; /And one man in his time plays many parts,/ His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,/ Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms./ And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel/ And shining morning face, creeping like snail /Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, /Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad /Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, /Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, /Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,/ Seeking the bubble reputation /Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, /In fair round belly with good capon lined, /With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, /Full of wise saws and modern instances; /And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts /Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, /With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, /His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide /For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, /Turning again toward childish treble, pipes /And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, /That ends this strange eventful history, /Is second childishness and mere oblivion, /Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
- Jaques: I pray you, mar no more trees with writing love songs in their barks.
- Orlando De Boys: I pray you, mar no more of my verses with reading them ill-favoredly.
- Jaques: Rosalind is your love's name?
- Orlando De Boys: Yes, just.
- Jaques: I do not like her name.
- Orlando De Boys: There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened.
- Orlando De Boys: I am weary of you.
- Jaques: By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you.
- Orlando De Boys: He is drowned in the brook. Look but in and you shall see him.
- Jaques: [hurrying over] Why, there I shall see mine own figure.
- Orlando De Boys: Adieu, good Monsieur Melancholy.
- Jaques: Farewell, good Signor Love.
- Jaques: More. More. I prithee, more.
- Amiens: It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaques.
- Jaques: I thank it. More, I prithee, more. I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs. More, prithee, more.
- Amiens: My voice is ragged: I know I cannot please you.
- Jaques: I do not desire you to please me, I do desire you to sing. Come, more; another stanza: call you 'em stanzas?
- Amiens: What you will, Monsieur Jaques.
- Jaques: Nay, I care not for their names. They owe me nothing. Will you sing?
- Amiens: More at your request than to please myself.
- Jaques: Well then, if ever I thank any man, I'll thank you. Come, warble.
- Amiens: The duke hath been all this day to look you.
- Jaques: I have been all this day to avoid him. I'll go sleep, if I can; if I cannot, I'll rail against all the first-born of Egypt.
- Rosalind: Alas, poor shepherd, searching of thy wound, I have by hard adventure found mine own.
- Touchstone: And I mine. I remember when I was in love. We that are true lovers run into strange capers. But as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.
- Rosalind: Thou speak'st wiser than thou art 'ware of.
- Touchstone: Nay, I shall ne'er be 'ware of mine own wit 'till I break my shins against it.
- Corin: And how like you this shepherd's life, master Touchstone?
- Touchstone: Truly, shepherd... in respect of itself, it is a good life. But in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well. But in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now, in respect that it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well. But in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?
- Corin: No more but that I know the more one sickens, the worse at ease he is. And that, uh, he that wants money, means, and content is without three good friends. That the property of rain is to wet and fire to burn. That, uh, good pastures makes fat sheep. And that the great cause of the night is... lack of the sun.
- Touchstone: [sarcastic] A natural philosopher.
- Celia: Know you who hath done this?
- Rosalind: Is it a man?
- Celia: And a chain that you once wore about his neck?
- [noticing her reaction]
- Celia: Change you color?
- Rosalind: I prithee, who?
- Celia: O Lord.
- Rosalind: Nay, but who is it?
- Celia: Is it possible?
- Rosalind: Nay, I prithee now with most petitionary vehemence, tell me who it is.
- Celia: It is young Orlando that tripped up the wrestler's heels and your heart both in an instant.
- Rosalind: Orlando?
- Celia: Orlando.
- Rosalind: What did he when thou saw'st him? What said he? How looked he? Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where remains he? How parted he with thee? And when shalt thou see him again? Answer me in one word.
- Celia: I found him under a tree like a dropped acorn.
- Rosalind: It may be well called Jove's tree when it drops forth such fruit.
- Celia: Give me good audience, madam.
- Rosalind: Proceed.
- Celia: There he lay, stretched along like a wounded knight.
- Rosalind: Though it be a pity to see such a sight, it well becomes the ground.
- Celia: Cry "holla" to thy tongue, I prithee. It curvets unseasonably. He was furnished like a hunter.
- Rosalind: How ominous. He comes to kill my heart.
- Celia: I would sing my song without a burden. Thou bring'st me out of tune.
- Rosalind: Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.
- Rosalind: There is a man who haunts the forest that abuses our young plants with carving "Rosalind" on their barks. Hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles all forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind. If I could meet that fancy monger, I would give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love upon him.
- Orlando De Boys: I am he that is so love-shaked.
- Rosalind: There is none of my uncle's marks upon you. He taught me how to know a man in love, in which cage of rushes I am sure you are not prisoner.
- Orlando De Boys: What were his marks?
- Rosalind: A lean cheek, which you have not. A blue eye and sunken, which you have not. An unquestionable spirit, which you have not. Then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and everything about you demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man. You are rather point-device in your accoutrements, as loving yourself than seeming the lover of any other.
- Orlando De Boys: Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love.
- Rosalind: Me believe it? You may as soon make her that you love believe it.
- Orlando De Boys: I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind I am that he, that unfortunate he.
- Rosalind: But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?
- Orlando De Boys: Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.
- 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.
- Orlando De Boys: Did you ever cure any so?
- Rosalind: 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 effeminate, changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of 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 color, 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 humor of love to a living humor of madness, which was to forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook merely monastic. And thus I cured him. And this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart that there shall not be one spot of love in it.
- Orlando De Boys: I would not be cured, youth.
- Rosalind: I would cure you if you would but call me Rosalind, and come every day and woo me.
- Orlando De Boys: Now, by the faith of my love, I will.
- Rosalind: [shaking hands] Will you?
- Orlando De Boys: With all my heart, good youth.
- Rosalind: Nay, you must call me Rosalind.
- Jaques: And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, and from hour to hour, we rot and rot, and thereby hangs a tale.
- Rosalind: I would rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad. And to travel for it too!
- Rosalind: Nay, an you be so tardy, come no more in my sight: I had as lief be wooed of a snail.
- Orlando De Boys: Of a snail?
- Rosalind: Ay, of a snail; for though he comes slowly, he carries his house on his head; a better jointure, I think, than you make a woman: besides he brings his destiny with him.
- Jaques: I prithee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted with thee.
- Rosalind: They say you are a melancholy fellow.
- Jaques: I am so; I do love it better than laughing.
- Rosalind: Those that are in extremity of either are abominable fellows and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than drunkards.
- Jaques: Why, 'tis good to be sad and say nothing.
- Rosalind: Why then, 'tis good to be a post.
- Jaques: I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation, nor the musician's, which is fantastical, nor the courtier's, which is proud, nor the soldier's, which is ambitious, nor the lawyer's, which is politic, nor the lady's, which is nice, nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry's contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me m a most humorous sadness.
- Rosalind: A traveler! By my faith, you have great reason to be sad: I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's; then, to have seen much and to have nothing, is to have rich eyes and poor hands.
- Jaques: Yes, I have gained my experience.
- Rosalind: And your experience makes you sad: I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad; and to travel for it too!
- Orlando De Boys: Good day and happiness, dear Rosalind!
- Jaques: Nay, then, God by you, an you talk in blank verse.
- Rosalind: Farewell, Monsieur Traveler.