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As You Like It · William Shakespeare · c. 1599
ROSALIND
The heroine, still half in her boy’s disguise, stepping out to close the play and knowing exactly how odd that is.
The speech110 words · 3 beats
0:00 / 0:58
It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue.
If it be true that good wine needs no bush, ’tis true that a good play needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they do use good bushes, and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues.
What a case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue nor cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play! My way is to conjure you, and I’ll begin with the women.turn
- Speaking to
- The audience, flirting with the whole house at once.
- What just happened
- The weddings are done. Custom says a man should speak the epilogue. She does it anyway.
- Objective
- To charm the room into loving the play by admitting, cheerfully, that she has no right to be the one asking.
- The turn
- ‘What a case am I in then’ — she drops the wine-and-bush wit and simply asks them, warmly, to like it.
- Watch out for
- Prose, and it must sound off-the-cuff. The moment it sounds written, the charm — which is the whole point — evaporates.