Complete Plays, The (42 page)

Polixenes

I have considered so much, Camillo, and with some care; so far that I have eyes under my service which look upon his removedness; from whom I have this intelligence, that he is seldom from the house of a most homely shepherd; a man, they say, that from very nothing, and beyond the imagination of his neighbours, is grown into an unspeakable estate.

Camillo

I have heard, sir, of such a man, who hath a daughter of most rare note: the report of her is extended more than can be thought to begin from such a cottage.

Polixenes

That’s likewise part of my intelligence; but, I fear, the angle that plucks our son thither. Thou shalt accompany us to the place; where we will, not appearing what we are, have some question with the shepherd; from whose simplicity I think it not uneasy to get the cause of my son’s resort thither. Prithee, be my present partner in this business, and lay aside the thoughts of Sicilia.

Camillo

I willingly obey your command.

Polixenes

My best Camillo! We must disguise ourselves.

Exeunt

S
CENE
III. A
ROAD
NEAR
THE
S
HEPHERD
’
S
COTTAGE
.

Enter Autolycus, singing

Autolycus

When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.
The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,
With heigh! the sweet birds, O, how they sing!
Doth set my pugging tooth on edge;
For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.
The lark, that tirra-lyra chants,
With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay,
Are summer songs for me and my aunts,
While we lie tumbling in the hay.
I have served Prince Florizel and in my time
Wore three-pile; but now I am out of service:
But shall I go mourn for that, my dear?
The pale moon shines by night:
And when I wander here and there,
I then do most go right.
If tinkers may have leave to live,
And bear the sow-skin budget,
Then my account I well may, give,
And in the stocks avouch it.

My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen. My father named me Autolycus; who being, as I am, littered under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. With die and drab I purchased this caparison, and my revenue is the silly cheat. Gallows and knock are too powerful on the highway: beating and hanging are terrors to me: for the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it. A prize! a prize!

Enter Clown

Clown

Let me see: every ’leven wether tods; every tod yields pound and odd shilling; fifteen hundred shorn. what comes the wool to?

Autolycus

[Aside]
If the springe hold, the cock’s mine.

Clown

I cannot do’t without counters. Let me see; what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pound of sugar, five pound of currants, rice,— what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. She hath made me four and twenty nose-gays for the shearers, three-man-song-men all, and very good ones; but they are most of them means and bases; but one puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to horn-pipes. I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates?— none, that’s out of my note; nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o’ the sun.

Autolycus

O that ever I was born!

Grovelling on the ground

Clown

I’ the name of me —

Autolycus

O, help me, help me! pluck but off these rags; and then, death, death!

Clown

Alack, poor soul! thou hast need of more rags to lay on thee, rather than have these off.

Autolycus

O sir, the loathsomeness of them offends me more than the stripes I have received, which are mighty ones and millions.

Clown

Alas, poor man! a million of beating may come to a great matter.

Autolycus

I am robbed, sir, and beaten; my money and apparel ta’en from me, and these detestable things put upon me.

Clown

What, by a horseman, or a footman?

Autolycus

A footman, sweet sir, a footman.

Clown

Indeed, he should be a footman by the garments he has left with thee: if this be a horseman’s coat, it hath seen very hot service. Lend me thy hand, I’ll help thee: come, lend me thy hand.

Autolycus

O, good sir, tenderly, O!

Clown

Alas, poor soul!

Autolycus

O, good sir, softly, good sir! I fear, sir, my shoulder-blade is out.

Clown

How now! canst stand?

Autolycus

[Picking his pocket]
 
Softly, dear sir; good sir, softly. You ha’ done me a charitable office.

Clown

Dost lack any money? I have a little money for thee.

Autolycus

No, good sweet sir; no, I beseech you, sir: I have a kinsman not past three quarters of a mile hence, unto whom I was going; I shall there have money, or any thing I want: offer me no money, I pray you; that kills my heart.

Clown

What manner of fellow was he that robbed you?

Autolycus

A fellow, sir, that I have known to go about with troll-my-dames; I knew him once a servant of the prince: I cannot tell, good sir, for which of his virtues it was, but he was certainly whipped out of the court.

Clown

His vices, you would say; there’s no virtue whipped out of the court: they cherish it to make it stay there; and yet it will no more but abide.

Autolycus

Vices, I would say, sir. I know this man well: he hath been since an ape-bearer; then a process-server, a bailiff; then he compassed a motion of the Prodigal Son, and married a tinker’s wife within a mile where my land and living lies; and, having flown over many knavish professions, he settled only in rogue: some call him Autolycus.

Clown

Out upon him! prig, for my life, prig: he haunts wakes, fairs and bear-baitings.

Autolycus

Very true, sir; he, sir, he; that’s the rogue that put me into this apparel.

Clown

Not a more cowardly rogue in all Bohemia: if you had but looked big and spit at him, he’ld have run.

Autolycus

I must confess to you, sir, I am no fighter: I am false of heart that way; and that he knew, I warrant him.

Clown

How do you now?

Autolycus

Sweet sir, much better than I was; I can stand and walk: I will even take my leave of you, and pace softly towards my kinsman’s.

Clown

Shall I bring thee on the way?

Autolycus

No, good-faced sir; no, sweet sir.

Clown

Then fare thee well: I must go buy spices for our sheep-shearing.

Autolycus

Prosper you, sweet sir!

Exit Clown

Your purse is not hot enough to purchase your spice. I’ll be with you at your sheep-shearing too: if I make not this cheat bring out another and the shearers prove sheep, let me be unrolled and my name put in the book of virtue!

[Sings]

Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a:
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.

Exit

S
CENE
IV. T
HE
S
HEPHERD
’
S
COTTAGE
.

Enter Florizel and Perdita

Florizel

These your unusual weeds to each part of you
Do give a life: no shepherdess, but Flora
Peering in April’s front. This your sheep-shearing
Is as a meeting of the petty gods,
And you the queen on’t.

Perdita

Sir, my gracious lord,
To chide at your extremes it not becomes me:
O, pardon, that I name them! Your high self,
The gracious mark o’ the land, you have obscured
With a swain’s wearing, and me, poor lowly maid,
Most goddess-like prank’d up: but that our feasts
In every mess have folly and the feeders
Digest it with a custom, I should blush
To see you so attired, sworn, I think,
To show myself a glass.

Florizel

I bless the time
When my good falcon made her flight across
Thy father’s ground.

Perdita

Now Jove afford you cause!
To me the difference forges dread; your greatness
Hath not been used to fear. Even now I tremble
To think your father, by some accident,
Should pass this way as you did: O, the Fates!
How would he look, to see his work so noble
Vilely bound up? What would he say? Or how
Should I, in these my borrow’d flaunts, behold
The sternness of his presence?

Florizel

Apprehend
Nothing but jollity. The gods themselves,
Humbling their deities to love, have taken
The shapes of beasts upon them: Jupiter
Became a bull, and bellow’d; the green Neptune
A ram, and bleated; and the fire-robed god,
Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain,
As I seem now. Their transformations
Were never for a piece of beauty rarer,
Nor in a way so chaste, since my desires
Run not before mine honour, nor my lusts
Burn hotter than my faith.

Perdita

O, but, sir,
Your resolution cannot hold, when ’tis
Opposed, as it must be, by the power of the king:
One of these two must be necessities,
Which then will speak, that you must change this purpose,
Or I my life.

Florizel

 
Thou dearest Perdita,
With these forced thoughts, I prithee, darken not
The mirth o’ the feast. Or I’ll be thine, my fair,
Or not my father’s. For I cannot be
Mine own, nor any thing to any, if
I be not thine. To this I am most constant,
Though destiny say no. Be merry, gentle;
Strangle such thoughts as these with any thing
That you behold the while. Your guests are coming:
Lift up your countenance, as it were the day
Of celebration of that nuptial which
We two have sworn shall come.

Perdita

O lady Fortune,
Stand you auspicious!

Florizel

See, your guests approach:
Address yourself to entertain them sprightly,
And let’s be red with mirth.

Enter Shepherd, Clown, Mopsa, Dorcas, and others, with Polixenes and Camillo disguised

Shepherd

Fie, daughter! when my old wife lived, upon
This day she was both pantler, butler, cook,
Both dame and servant; welcomed all, served all;
Would sing her song and dance her turn; now here,
At upper end o’ the table, now i’ the middle;
On his shoulder, and his; her face o’ fire
With labour and the thing she took to quench it,
She would to each one sip. You are retired,
As if you were a feasted one and not
The hostess of the meeting: pray you, bid
These unknown friends to’s welcome; for it is
A way to make us better friends, more known.
Come, quench your blushes and present yourself
That which you are, mistress o’ the feast: come on,
And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing,
As your good flock shall prosper.

Perdita

[To Polixenes]
 
Sir, welcome:
It is my father’s will I should take on me
The hostess-ship o’ the day.

To Camillo

You’re welcome, sir.
Give me those flowers there, Dorcas. Reverend sirs,
For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savour all the winter long:
Grace and remembrance be to you both,
And welcome to our shearing!

Polixenes

Shepherdess,
A fair one are you — well you fit our ages
With flowers of winter.

Perdita

Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer’s death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o’ the season
Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors,
Which some call nature’s bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden’s barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.

Polixenes

Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?

Perdita

For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.

Polixenes

Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean
But nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race: this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature.

Perdita

So it is.

Polixenes

Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards.

Perdita

I’ll not put
The dibble in earth to set one slip of them;
No more than were I painted I would wish
This youth should say ’twere well and only therefore
Desire to breed by me. Here’s flowers for you;
Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ the sun
And with him rises weeping: these are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they are given
To men of middle age. You’re very welcome.

Camillo

I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,
And only live by gazing.

Perdita

Out, alas!
You’d be so lean, that blasts of January
Would blow you through and through.
Now, my fair’st friend,
I would I had some flowers o’ the spring that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing: O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let’st fall
From Dis’s waggon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bight Phoebus in his strength — a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one! O, these I lack,
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
To strew him o’er and o’er!