01ACT V

02SCENE I. The King of Navarre’s park

03Enter Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel and Dull .

04HOLOFERNES.

05Satis quod sufficit.

06NATHANIEL.

07I praise God for you, sir. Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious, pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the King’s, who is intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.

08HOLOFERNES.

09Novi hominem tanquam te. His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.

10NATHANIEL.

11A most singular and choice epithet.

12[ Draws out his table-book. ]

13HOLOFERNES.

14He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-devise companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak “dout” sine “b”, when he should say “doubt”, “det” when he should pronounce “debt”— d, e, b, t , not d, e, t . He clepeth a calf “cauf”, half “hauf”; neighbour vocatur “nebour”, neigh abbreviated “ne”. This is abhominable, which he would call “abominable”. It insinuateth me of insanie. Ne intelligis, domine? To make frantic, lunatic.

15NATHANIEL.

16Laus Deo, bone intelligo.

17HOLOFERNES.

18Bone? Bone for bene? Priscian a little scratched; ’twill serve.

19Enter Armado, Moth and Costard .

20NATHANIEL.

21Videsne quis venit?

22HOLOFERNES.

23Video, et gaudeo.

24ARMADO.