Template:Dsh special pleading quote

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QUEEN: This covenant is well-drafted, but yegads! ’Tis lengthy.
TRIAGO (bowing unctuously): The writer shall be deemed hereinbefore obliged.
HERCULIO: My liege and madam, to expostulate
What brevity should be, what clarity is —
Why “day” is business day, and “time” is closing time.
’Tis buried — lost — among the cluttered syntax of this deed.
QUEEN: ’Twas no compliment, good Herculio, rest assured.
A crafty phrase to propitiate that noisome clerk, no more.
HERCULIO: Madam, I do concur!
Since brevity is the soul of wit,
And boilerplate the crutch of wretched tedium
I will be brief, where Triago, in all his trite facility, cannot.

Triago: Milady! With all due and payable respect, and interest accrued thereon
I wouldst be inclined to be supportive of dissent —

Queen: O, exasperating vapours! Whatever doth he mean?

Herculio: Triago disagrees.
Inclined”, Triago?
Supportive”?
As straight as that?
No deemery to wrap it round?

Triago: Aye, deemèd, perchance — I pray just such indulgence
To vouchsafe avoidance of some doubt.

Queen: Doubt, Triago?

Triago: I’ll think of something, Majesty.

HERCULIO: How now, good lady: doth thou now understand?
QUEEN: I fear I do, in that I do not.
Speak, Triago — but pray, be quick.
TRIAGO: Celerity shall herein be mutually agreed to be — and shall be deemed to be — the watchword Madam!
HERCULIO: There goeth that wretched deemery
TRIAGO: Was it not ever not unlike a thing unsuch as this?
QUEEN: Damn and blast your eyes Triago!
Have at you now!

QUEEN runs TRIAGO through with a rapier and exits

HERCULIO:

We fold our patron’s righteous sleep in word pollution
By the chaff and shucks and hulls of convolution
And whoever buys these minty lines: understand
Lexical complexity doth, pro rata with thy budget, soon expand.

CURTAIN