Come apace, good Audrey. I will fetch up your goats

Touchstone
Come apace, good Audrey. I will fetch up
your goats, Audrey. And how, Audrey? Am I the
man yet? Doth my simple feature content you?
Audrey
Your features, Lord warrant us! What features?
Touchstone
I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most
capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.

When a man’s verses cannot be understood,
nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward
child, understanding, it strikes a man more
dead than a great reckoning in a little room.

Jaques, aside
O knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than Jove
in a thatched house.
Touchstone
When a man’s verses cannot be understood,
nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward
child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead
than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I
would the gods had made thee poetical.
Audrey
I do not know what “poetical” is. Is it honest
in deed and word? Is it a true thing?
Touchstone
No, truly, for the truest poetry is the most feigning,
and lovers are given to poetry, and what they swear
in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign.
Audrey
Do you wish, then, that the gods had made me
poetical?
Touchstone
I do, truly, for thou swear’st to me thou art honest.
Now if thou wert a poet, I might have some hope
thou didst feign.
Audrey
Would you not have me honest?
Touchstone
No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favored; for
honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a
sauce to sugar.
Jaques, aside
A material fool.
Audrey
Well, I am not fair, and therefore I pray the
gods make me honest.
Touchstone
Truly, and to cast away honesty upon a foul slut
were to put good meat into an unclean dish.
Audrey
I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foul.
Touchstone
Well, praised be the gods for thy foulness;
sluttishness may come hereafter. But be it as it may
be, I will marry thee; and to that end I have been
with Sir Oliver Martext, the vicar of the next village,
who hath promised to meet me in this place of the
forest and to couple us.
Jaques, aside
I would fain see this meeting.
Audrey
Well, the gods give us joy.
Touchstone
Amen. A man may, if he were of a fearful
heart, stagger in this attempt, for here we have no
temple but the wood, no assembly but horn-beasts.
But what though? Courage. As horns are odious,
they are necessary. It is said “Many a man knows no
end of his goods.” Right: many a man has good
horns and knows no end of them. Well, that is the
dowry of his wife; ’tis none of his own getting.
Horns? Even so. Poor men alone? No, no. The
noblest deer hath them as huge as the rascal. Is the
single man therefore blessed? No. As a walled town
is more worthier than a village, so is the forehead of
a married man more honorable than the bare brow
of a bachelor. And by how much defense is better
than no skill, by so much is a horn more precious
than to want.