When Rosalind, dressed as a boy, accosts Orlando in the Forest of Arden she opens by asking him the time. It proves to be a good opening, as they begin to exchange banter about time, and how its passage is experienced according to the situation. Rosalind promises examples of time trotting, ambling and galloping, and Orlando asks to hear them.
Rosalind, challenged to provide examples of time’s varying pace, tells Orlando that it trots jarringly with a bride-to-be, ambles with a lazy priest or a man of leisure and gallops with the condemned man facing execution, but it stands still with lawyers out of Term, as they sleep and do not notice time at all.
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