HOLOFERNES.
The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood, ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven, and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth.
NATHANIEL.
Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least. But, sir, I assure ye it was a buck of the first head.
HOLOFERNES.
Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.
DULL.
’Twas not a “auld grey doe”, ’twas a pricket.
HOLOFERNES.
Most barbarous intimation! Yet a kind of insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were, replication, or rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his inclination, after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather, unlettered, or ratherest, unconfirmed fashion, to insert again my haud credo for a deer.
DULL.
I said the deer was not a “auld grey doe”, ’twas a pricket.
HOLOFERNES.
Twice-sod simplicity, bis coctus!
O, thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!
NATHANIEL.
Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred of a book.
He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink.
His intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts.
And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should be—
Which we of taste and feeling are—for those parts that do fructify in us more than he.
For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool,
So, were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school.
But, omne bene, say I, being of an old father’s mind;
Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.
DULL.
You two are bookmen. Can you tell me by your wit
What was a month old at Cain’s birth, that’s not five weeks old as yet?
HOLOFERNES.
Dictynna, goodman Dull. Dictynna, goodman Dull.