ROSALIND.
So was I when your highness took his dukedom;
So was I when your highness banished him.
Treason is not inherited, my lord,
Or, if we did derive it from our friends,
What’s that to me? My father was no traitor.
Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much
To think my poverty is treacherous.
CELIA.
Dear sovereign, hear me speak.
DUKE FREDERICK.
Ay, Celia, we stayed her for your sake,
Else had she with her father ranged along.
CELIA.
I did not then entreat to have her stay;
It was your pleasure and your own remorse.
I was too young that time to value her,
But now I know her. If she be a traitor,
Why, so am I. We still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learned, played, ate together,
And wheresoe’er we went, like Juno’s swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.
DUKE FREDERICK.
She is too subtle for thee, and her smoothness,
Her very silence, and her patience
Speak to the people, and they pity her.
Thou art a fool. She robs thee of thy name,
And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous
When she is gone. Then open not thy lips.
Firm and irrevocable is my doom
Which I have passed upon her. She is banished.
CELIA.
Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege.
I cannot live out of her company.
DUKE FREDERICK.
You are a fool. You, niece, provide yourself.
If you outstay the time, upon mine honour
And in the greatness of my word, you die.
[Exeunt Duke Frederick and Lords.]
CELIA.
O my poor Rosalind, whither wilt thou go?
Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine.
I charge thee, be not thou more grieved than I am.
ROSALIND.
I have more cause.