ACT I.

SCENE I.—An Apartment in the DUKE'S Palace.

Enter DUKE, CURIO, LORDS; Musicians attending.

Duke. If musick be the food of love, play on,

Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.—

That strain again;—it had a dying fall:

O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing, and giving odour.—Enough; no more,

'Tis not so sweet now, as it was before.

O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!

That notwithstanding thy capacity

Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,

Of what validity and pitch soever,

But falls into abatement and low price,

Even in a minute! so full of shapes is fancy

That it alone is high-fantastical.

Curio. Will you go hunt, my lord?

Duke. What, Curio?

Curio. The hart.

Duke. Why, so I do, the noblest that I have:

O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,

Methought, she purg'd the air of pestilence;

That instant was I turned into a hart;

And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,

E'er since pursue me.—How now? what news from her?

Enter VALENTINE.

Valentine. So please my lord, I might not be admitted,

But from her handmaid do return this answer:

The element itself, till seven years' heat,

Shall not behold her face at ample view;

But, like a cloistress, she will veiled walk,

And water once a day her chamber round

With eye-offending brine: all this, to season

A brother's dead love, which she would keep fresh,

And lasting, in her sad remembrance.