[Bone? bone for bene,] Priscian a little scratch'd, 'twill serve.

 

Enter Braggart [Armado], Boy [Moth, and Costard].

 

NATH. Videsne quis venit?

HOL. Video, et gaudeo.

ARM [To Moth.] Chirrah!

HOL [Quare.] chirrah, not sirrah?

ARM. Men of peace, well encount'red.

HOL. Most military sir, salutation.

MOTH [Aside to Costard.] They have been at a great feast of languages, and stol'n the scraps.

COST. O, they have liv'd long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallow'd than a flap-dragon.

MOTH. Peace, the peal begins.

ARM [To Holofernes.] Monsieur, are you not lett'red?

MOTH. Yes, yes, he teaches boys the horn-book. What is a, b, spell'd backward, with the horn on his head?

HOL. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

MOTH. Ba, most silly sheep, with a horn. You hear his learning.

HOL. Quis, quis, thou consonant?

MOTH. The last of the five vowels, if ›you‹ repeat them; or the fift, if I.

HOL. I will repeat them – a, e, I –

MOTH. The sheep: the other two concludes it – o, U.

ARM. Now by the salt [wave] of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit – snip, snap, quick and home. It rejoiceth my intellect. True wit!

MOTH. Offer'd by a child to an old man: which is wit-old.

HOL. What is the figure? What is the figure?

MOTH. Horns.

HOL. Thou disputes like an infant; go whip thy gig.

MOTH. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy, [manu] cita – a gig of a cuckold's horn.

COST. And I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread. Hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discretion. O, and the heavens were so pleas'd that thou wert but my bastard, what a joyful father wouldest thou make me! Go to, thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers' ends, as they say.

HOL. O, I smell false Latin, ›dunghill‹ for unguem.

ARM. Arts-man, preambulate, we will be singuled from the barbarous.