makes an even more elaborate and comically witty comment:
I’ll graft it with you, and then I shall graft it with a medlar; then it will be the earliest fruit i’ th’ country, for you’ll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that’s the right virtue of the medlar. (106-09)
Rosalind’s response has two puns: first, the word you also sounds like yew, which is a type of evergreen tree. Second, the word medlar, which is a type of fruit tree, sounds like meddler, a person who intrudes on or interferes with other people’s affairs. Thus, literally, Rosalind is declaring that she will graft (to join two plants together, a common practice in horticulture) a yew tree with a medlar tree. But metaphorically Rosalind is declaring that she will graft or join Touchstone to the tree containing bad poetry so that Touchstone will be the bad fruit himself. The fruit of the medlar tree does not become ripe until it starts to rot, and thus Rosalind is jokingly asserting that Touchstone’s meddling comment is a rotten one.
Celia – still disguised as Aliena – then enters. She also is reading yet another of Orlando’s love poems in which he again praises the beauty of Rosalind (line 113-42). Orlando’s poem incorporates lines from an Elizabethan prayer book, so Rosalind refers to it as a “tedious homily of love” (143). A homily is a religious sermon. Rosalind is obviously already tired of hearing her name in the pathetic