Act 5, Scene I

SCENE I. The same.

Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL
HOLOFERNES
Satis quod sufficit.

SIR NATHANIEL
I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner
have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without
scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without
impudency, learned without opinion, and strange with-
out heresy. I did converse this quondam day with
a companion of the king's, who is intituled, nomi-
nated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.

HOLOFERNES
Novi hominem tanquam te: his humour is lofty, his
discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye
ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general
behavior vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is
too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it
were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.

SIR NATHANIEL
A most singular and choice epithet.

Draws out his table-book

HOLOFERNES
He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer
than the staple of his argument. I abhor such
fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and
point-devise companions; such rackers of
orthography, as to speak dout, fine, when he should
say doubt; det, when he should pronounce debt,--d,
e, b, t, not d, e, t: he clepeth a calf, cauf;
half, hauf; neighbour vocatur nebor; neigh
abbreviated ne. This is abhominable,--which he
would call abbominable: it insinuateth me of
insanie: anne intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.

SIR NATHANIEL
Laus Deo, bene intelligo.

HOLOFERNES
Bon, bon, fort bon, Priscian! a little scratch'd,
'twill serve.

SIR NATHANIEL
Videsne quis venit?

HOLOFERNES
Video, et gaudeo.

Enter DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO, MOTH, and COSTARD

DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO
Chirrah!

To MOTH

HOLOFERNES
Quare chirrah, not sirrah?
DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO
Men of peace, well encountered.

HOLOFERNES
Most military sir, salutation.

MOTH
[Aside to COSTARD] They have been at a great feast
of languages, and stolen the scraps.

COSTARD
O, they have lived 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
swallowed than a flap-dragon.

MOTH
Peace! the peal begins.
DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO
[To HOLOFERNES] Monsieur, are you not lettered?

MOTH
Yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook. What is a,
b, spelt backward, with the horn on his head?

HOLOFERNES
Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

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

HOLOFERNES
Quis,