Before OLIVER’S House. | |
| |
Enter ORLANDO and ADAM, meeting. | |
| Orl. Who’s there? | |
| Adam. What! my young master? O my gentle master! | 4 |
| O my sweet master! O you memory | |
| Of old Sir Rowland! why, what make you here? | |
| Why are you virtuous? Why do people love you? | |
| And wherefore are you gentle, strong, and valiant? | 8 |
| Why would you be so fond to overcome | |
| The bony priser of the humorous duke? | |
| Your praise is come too swiftly home before you. | |
| Know you not, master, to some kind of men | 12 |
| Their graces serve them but as enemies? | |
| No more do yours: your virtues, gentle master, | |
| Are sanctified and holy traitors to you. | |
| O, what a world is this, when what is comely | 16 |
| Envenoms him that bears it! | |
| Orl. Why, what’s the matter? | |
| Adam. O unhappy youth! | |
| Come not within these doors; within this roof | 20 |
| The enemy of all your graces lives. | |
| Your brother,—no, no brother; yet the son,— | |
| Yet not the son, I will not call him son | |
| Of him I was about to call his father,— | 24 |
| Hath heard your praises, and this night he means | |
| To burn the lodging where you use to lie, | |
| And you within it: if he fail of that, | |
| He will have other means to cut you off. | 28 |
| I overheard him and his practices. | |
| This is no place; this house is but a butchery: | |
| Abhor it, fear it, do not enter it. | |
| Orl. Why, whither, Adam, wouldst thou have me go? | 32 |
| Adam. No matter whither, so you come not here. | |
| Orl. What! wouldst thou have me go and beg my food? | |
| Or with a base and boisterous sword enforce | |
| A thievish living on the common road? | 36 |
| This I must do, or know not what to do: | |
| Yet this I will not do, do how I can; | |
| I rather will subject me to the malice | |
| Of a diverted blood and bloody brother. | 40 |
| Adam. But do not so. I have five hundred crowns, | |
| The thrifty hire I sav’d under your father, | |
| Which I did store to be my foster-nurse | |
| When service should in my old limbs lie lame, | 44 |
| And unregarded age in corners thrown. | |
| Take that; and He that doth the ravens feed, | |
| Yea, providently caters for the sparrow, | |
| Be comfort to my age! Here is the gold; | 48 |
| All this I give you. Let me be your servant: | |
| Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty; | |
| For in my youth I never did apply | |
| Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood, | 52 |
| Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo | |
| The means of weakness and debility; | |
| Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, | |
| Frosty, but kindly. Let me go with you; | 56 |
| I’ll do the service of a younger man | |
| In all your business and necessities. | |
| Orl. O good old man! how well in thee appears | |
| The constant service of the antique world, | 60 |
| When service sweat for duty, not for meed! | |
| Thou art not for the fashion of these times, | |
| Where none will sweat but for promotion, | |
| And having that, do choke their service up | 64 |
| Even with the having: it is not so with thee. | |
| But, poor old man, thou prun’st a rotten tree, | |
| That cannot so much as a blossom yield, | |
| In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry. | 68 |
| But come thy ways, we’ll go along together, | |
| And ere we have thy youthful wages spent, | |
| We’ll light upon some settled low content. | |
| Adam. Master, go on, and I will follow thee | 72 |
| To the last gasp with truth and loyalty. | |
| From seventeen years till now almost fourscore | |
| Here lived I, but now live here no more. | |
| At seventeen years many their fortunes seek; | 76 |
| But at fourscore it is too late a week: | |
| Yet fortune cannot recompense me better | |
| Than to die well and not my master’s debtor. [Exeunt. | |
