ARMADO.
My love is most immaculate white and red.
MOTH.
Most maculate thoughts, master, are masked under such colours.
ARMADO.
Define, define, well-educated infant.
MOTH.
My father’s wit and my mother’s tongue assist me!
ARMADO.
Sweet invocation of a child, most pretty, and pathetical!
MOTH.
If she be made of white and red,
Her faults will ne’er be known;
For blushing cheeks by faults are bred,
And fears by pale white shown.
Then if she fear, or be to blame,
By this you shall not know,
For still her cheeks possess the same
Which native she doth owe.
A dangerous rhyme, master, against the reason of white and red.
ARMADO.
Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?
MOTH.
The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since, but I think now ’tis not to be found; or if it were, it would neither serve for the writing nor the tune.
ARMADO.
I will have that subject newly writ o’er, that I may example my digression by some mighty precedent. Boy, I do love that country girl that I took in the park with the rational hind Costard. She deserves well.
MOTH.
[Aside.] To be whipped: and yet a better love than my master.