[Exit.]
ARMADO.
A most acute juvenal, voluble and free of grace!
By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face.
Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.
My herald is returned.
Enter Moth and Costard.
MOTH.
A wonder, master! Here’s a costard broken in a shin.
ARMADO.
Some enigma, some riddle. Come, thy l’envoi begin.
COSTARD.
No egma, no riddle, no l’envoi, no salve in the mail, sir. O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain! No l’envoi, no l’envoi, no salve, sir, but a plantain.
ARMADO.
By virtue, thou enforcest laughter; thy silly thought, my spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous smiling. O, pardon me, my stars! Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l’envoi, and the word l’envoi for a salve?
MOTH.
Do the wise think them other? Is not l’envoi a salve?
ARMADO.
No, page; it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain
Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.
I will example it:
The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee
Were still at odds, being but three.
There’s the moral. Now the l’envoi.
MOTH.
I will add the l’envoi. Say the moral again.