Complete Plays, The (45 page)

Indeed, I have had earnest: but I cannot with conscience take it.

Camillo

Unbuckle, unbuckle.

Florizel and Autolycus exchange garments

Fortunate mistress,— let my prophecy
Come home to ye!— you must retire yourself
Into some covert: take your sweetheart’s hat
And pluck it o’er your brows, muffle your face,
Dismantle you, and, as you can, disliken
The truth of your own seeming; that you may —
For I do fear eyes over — to shipboard
Get undescried.

Perdita

 
I see the play so lies
That I must bear a part.

Camillo

No remedy.
Have you done there?

Florizel

Should I now meet my father,
He would not call me son.

Camillo

Nay, you shall have no hat.

Giving it to Perdita

Come, lady, come. Farewell, my friend.

Autolycus

Adieu, sir.

Florizel

O Perdita, what have we twain forgot!
Pray you, a word.

Camillo

[Aside]
 
What I do next, shall be to tell the king
Of this escape and whither they are bound;
Wherein my hope is I shall so prevail
To force him after: in whose company
I shall review Sicilia, for whose sight
I have a woman’s longing.

Florizel

Fortune speed us!
Thus we set on, Camillo, to the sea-side.

Camillo

The swifter speed the better.

Exeunt Florizel, Perdita, and Camillo

Autolycus

I understand the business, I hear it: to have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is necessary for a cut-purse; a good nose is requisite also, to smell out work for the other senses. I see this is the time that the unjust man doth thrive. What an exchange had this been without boot! What a boot is here with this exchange! Sure the gods do this year connive at us, and we may do any thing extempore. The prince himself is about a piece of iniquity, stealing away from his father with his clog at his heels: if I thought it were a piece of honesty to acquaint the king withal, I would not do’t: I hold it the more knavery to conceal it; and therein am I constant to my profession.

Re-enter Clown and Shepherd

Aside, aside; here is more matter for a hot brain: every lane’s end, every shop, church, session, hanging, yields a careful man work.

Clown

See, see; what a man you are now! There is no other way but to tell the king she’s a changeling and none of your flesh and blood.

Shepherd

Nay, but hear me.

Clown

Nay, but hear me.

Shepherd

Go to, then.

Clown

She being none of your flesh and blood, your flesh and blood has not offended the king; and so your flesh and blood is not to be punished by him. Show those things you found about her, those secret things, all but what she has with her: this being done, let the law go whistle: I warrant you.

Shepherd

I will tell the king all, every word, yea, and his son’s pranks too; who, I may say, is no honest man, neither to his father nor to me, to go about to make me the king’s brother-in-law.

Clown

Indeed, brother-in-law was the farthest off you could have been to him and then your blood had been the dearer by I know how much an ounce.

Autolycus

[Aside]
 
Very wisely, puppies!

Shepherd

Well, let us to the king: there is that in this fardel will make him scratch his beard.

Autolycus

[Aside]
 
I know not what impediment this complaint may be to the flight of my master.

Clown

Pray heartily he be at palace.

Autolycus

[Aside]
 
Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance: let me pocket up my pedlar’s excrement.

Takes off his false beard

How now, rustics! whither are you bound?

Shepherd

To the palace, an it like your worship.

Autolycus

Your affairs there, what, with whom, the condition of that fardel, the place of your dwelling, your names, your ages, of what having, breeding, and any thing that is fitting to be known, discover.

Clown

We are but plain fellows, sir.

Autolycus

A lie; you are rough and hairy. Let me have no lying: it becomes none but tradesmen, and they often give us soldiers the lie: but we pay them for it with stamped coin, not stabbing steel; therefore they do not give us the lie.

Clown

Your worship had like to have given us one, if you had not taken yourself with the manner.

Shepherd

Are you a courtier, an’t like you, sir?

Autolycus

Whether it like me or no, I am a courtier. Seest thou not the air of the court in these enfoldings? hath not my gait in it the measure of the court? receives not thy nose court-odor from me? reflect I not on thy baseness court-contempt? Thinkest thou, for that I insinuate, or toaze from thee thy business, I am therefore no courtier? I am courtier cap-a-pe; and one that will either push on or pluck back thy business there: whereupon I command thee to open thy affair.

Shepherd

My business, sir, is to the king.

Autolycus

What advocate hast thou to him?

Shepherd

I know not, an’t like you.

Clown

Advocate’s the court-word for a pheasant: say you have none.

Shepherd

None, sir; I have no pheasant, cock nor hen.

Autolycus

How blessed are we that are not simple men!
Yet nature might have made me as these are,
Therefore I will not disdain.

Clown

This cannot be but a great courtier.

Shepherd

His garments are rich, but he wears them not handsomely.

Clown

He seems to be the more noble in being fantastical: a great man, I’ll warrant; I know by the picking on’s teeth.

Autolycus

The fardel there? what’s i’ the fardel?
Wherefore that box?

Shepherd

Sir, there lies such secrets in this fardel and box, which none must know but the king; and which he shall know within this hour, if I may come to the speech of him.

Autolycus

Age, thou hast lost thy labour.

Shepherd

Why, sir?

Autolycus

The king is not at the palace; he is gone aboard a new ship to purge melancholy and air himself: for, if thou beest capable of things serious, thou must know the king is full of grief.

Shepherd

So ’tis said, sir; about his son, that should have married a shepherd’s daughter.

Autolycus

If that shepherd be not in hand-fast, let him fly: the curses he shall have, the tortures he shall feel, will break the back of man, the heart of monster.

Clown

Think you so, sir?

Autolycus

Not he alone shall suffer what wit can make heavy and vengeance bitter; but those that are germane to him, though removed fifty times, shall all come under the hangman: which though it be great pity, yet it is necessary. An old sheep-whistling rogue a ram-tender, to offer to have his daughter come into grace! Some say he shall be stoned; but that death is too soft for him, say I draw our throne into a sheep-cote! all deaths are too few, the sharpest too easy.

Clown

Has the old man e’er a son, sir, do you hear. an’t like you, sir?

Autolycus

He has a son, who shall be flayed alive; then ’nointed over with honey, set on the head of a wasp’s nest; then stand till he be three quarters and a dram dead; then recovered again with aqua-vitae or some other hot infusion; then, raw as he is, and in the hottest day prognostication proclaims, shall be be set against a brick-wall, the sun looking with a southward eye upon him, where he is to behold him with flies blown to death. But what talk we of these traitorly rascals, whose miseries are to be smiled at, their offences being so capital? Tell me, for you seem to be honest plain men, what you have to the king: being something gently considered, I’ll bring you where he is aboard, tender your persons to his presence, whisper him in your behalfs; and if it be in man besides the king to effect your suits, here is man shall do it.

Clown

He seems to be of great authority: close with him, give him gold; and though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led by the nose with gold: show the inside of your purse to the outside of his hand, and no more ado. Remember ‘stoned,’ and ‘flayed alive.’

Shepherd

An’t please you, sir, to undertake the business for us, here is that gold I have: I’ll make it as much more and leave this young man in pawn till I bring it you.

Autolycus

After I have done what I promised?

Shepherd

Ay, sir.

Autolycus

Well, give me the moiety. Are you a party in this business?

Clown

In some sort, sir: but though my case be a pitiful one, I hope I shall not be flayed out of it.

Autolycus

O, that’s the case of the shepherd’s son: hang him, he’ll be made an example.

Clown

Comfort, good comfort! We must to the king and show our strange sights: he must know ’tis none of your daughter nor my sister; we are gone else. Sir, I will give you as much as this old man does when the business is performed, and remain, as he says, your pawn till it be brought you.

Autolycus

I will trust you. Walk before toward the sea-side; go on the right hand: I will but look upon the hedge and follow you.

Clown

We are blest in this man, as I may say, even blest.

Shepherd

Let’s before as he bids us: he was provided to do us good.

Exeunt Shepherd and Clown

Autolycus

If I had a mind to be honest, I see Fortune would not suffer me: she drops booties in my mouth. I am courted now with a double occasion, gold and a means to do the prince my master good; which who knows how that may turn back to my advancement? I will bring these two moles, these blind ones, aboard him: if he think it fit to shore them again and that the complaint they have to the king concerns him nothing, let him call me rogue for being so far officious; for I am proof against that title and what shame else belongs to’t. To him will I present them: there may be matter in it.

Exit

A
CT
V

S
CENE
I. A
ROOM
IN
L
EONTES
’
PALACE
.

Enter Leontes, Cleomenes, Dion, Paulina, and Servants

Cleomenes

Sir, you have done enough, and have perform’d
A saint-like sorrow: no fault could you make,
Which you have not redeem’d; indeed, paid down
More penitence than done trespass: at the last,
Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil;
With them forgive yourself.

Leontes

Whilst I remember
Her and her virtues, I cannot forget
My blemishes in them, and so still think of
The wrong I did myself; which was so much,
That heirless it hath made my kingdom and
Destroy’d the sweet’st companion that e’er man
Bred his hopes out of.

Paulina

True, too true, my lord:
If, one by one, you wedded all the world,
Or from the all that are took something good,
To make a perfect woman, she you kill’d
Would be unparallel’d.

Leontes

I think so. Kill’d!
She I kill’d! I did so: but thou strikest me
Sorely, to say I did; it is as bitter
Upon thy tongue as in my thought: now, good now,
Say so but seldom.

Cleomenes

 
Not at all, good lady:
You might have spoken a thousand things that would
Have done the time more benefit and graced
Your kindness better.

Paulina

You are one of those
Would have him wed again.

Dion

If you would not so,
You pity not the state, nor the remembrance
Of his most sovereign name; consider little
What dangers, by his highness’ fail of issue,
May drop upon his kingdom and devour
Incertain lookers on. What were more holy
Than to rejoice the former queen is well?
What holier than, for royalty’s repair,
For present comfort and for future good,
To bless the bed of majesty again
With a sweet fellow to’t?

Paulina

There is none worthy,
Respecting her that’s gone. Besides, the gods
Will have fulfill’d their secret purposes;
For has not the divine Apollo said,
Is’t not the tenor of his oracle,
That King Leontes shall not have an heir
Till his lost child be found? which that it shall,
Is all as monstrous to our human reason
As my Antigonus to break his grave
And come again to me; who, on my life,
Did perish with the infant. ’Tis your counsel
My lord should to the heavens be contrary,
Oppose against their wills.

To Leontes

Care not for issue;
The crown will find an heir: great Alexander
Left his to the worthiest; so his successor
Was like to be the best.

Leontes

Good Paulina,
Who hast the memory of Hermione,
I know, in honour, O, that ever I
Had squared me to thy counsel! then, even now,
I might have look’d upon my queen’s full eyes,
Have taken treasure from her lips —

Paulina

And left them
More rich for what they yielded.

Leontes

Thou speak’st truth.
No more such wives; therefore, no wife: one worse,
And better used, would make her sainted spirit
Again possess her corpse, and on this stage,
Where we’re offenders now, appear soul-vex’d,
And begin, ‘Why to me?’