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Ber. For the following, sir?

Cost. As it shall follow in my correction, and God defend the right!

King. Will you hear this letter with attention?

Ber. As we would hear an oracle.

Cost. Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.

King [Reads.] “Great deputy, the welkin’s vicegerent, and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul’s earth’s god, and body’s fost’ring patron”—

Cost. Not a word of Costard yet.

King [Reads.] “So it is”—

Cost. It may be so; but if he say it is so, he is, in telling true—but so.

King. Peace!

Cost.—be to me, and every man that dares not fight!

King. No words!

Cost.—of other men’s secrets, I beseech you.

King [Reads.] “So it is, besieged with sable-colored melancholy, I did commend the black oppressing humor to the most wholesome physic of thy health- giving air; and as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk: the time When? about the sixt hour, when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper: so much for the time When. Now for the ground Which? which, I mean, I walk’d upon: it is ycliped thy park. Then for the place Where? where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene and most prepost’rous event that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-colored ink which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest. But to the place Where? It standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted garden. There did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth”—