Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself
That which you are, Mistress o’th’ Feast. Come on,
And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing,
As your good flock shall prosper.
PERDITA [to Polixenes] Sir, welcome:
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It is my father’s will I should take on me
The hostess-ship o’th’ 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:
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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
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Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o’th’ 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,
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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,
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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
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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;
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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, savory, marjoram,
The marigold, that goes to bed wi’th’ sun
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And with him rises, weeping: these are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they are given
To men of middle age. Y’are very welcome.
[She gives them flowers.]
CAMILLO I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,
And only live by gazing.
PERDITA Out, alas!
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You’d be so lean that blasts of January
Would blow you through and through.
[to Florizel] Now, my fair’st friend,
I would I had some flowers o’th’ spring, that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
[to Mopsa and the other girls] That wear upon your virgin branches yet
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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,
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But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength (a malady
Most incident to maids); bold oxlips and
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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!
FLORIZEL What, like a corpse?
PERDITA No, like a bank, for love to lie and play on:
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Not like a corpse; or if – not to be buried,
But quick, and in mine arms. Come, take your flowers:
Methinks I play as I have seen them do
In Whitsun pastorals: sure this robe of mine
Does change my disposition.
FLORIZEL What you do,
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Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I’d have you do it ever: when you sing,
I’d have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so, and, for the ord’ring your affairs,
To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you
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A wave o’th’ sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that, move still, still so,
And own no other function. Each your doing,
So singular in each particular,
Crowns what you are doing, in the present deeds,
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That all your acts are queens.
PERDITA O Doricles,
Your praises are too large: but that your youth,
And the true blood which peeps fairly through’t,
Do plainly give you out an unstain’d shepherd,
With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles,
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You woo’d me the false way.
FLORIZEL I think you have
As little skill to fear as I have purpose
To put you to’t. But come; our dance, I pray,
Your hand, my Perdita: so turtles pair
That never mean to part.
PERDITA I’ll swear for ’em.
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POLIXENES This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever
Ran on the green-sward: nothing she does or seems
But smacks of something greater than herself,
Too noble for this place.
CAMILLO He tells her something
That makes her blood look out: good sooth, she is
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The queen of curds and cream.
CLOWN Come on, strike up!
DORCAS Mopsa must be your mistress: marry, garlic to
mend her kissing with!
MOPSA Now, in good time!
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CLOWN Not a word, a word; we stand upon our
manners. Come, strike up!
[Music. Here a dance of shepherds and shepherdesses.]
POLIXENES Pray, good shepherd, what fair swain is this
Which dances with your daughter?
SHEPHERD They call him Doricles; and boasts himself
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To have a worthy feeding: but I have it
Upon his own report and I believe it;
He looks like sooth. He says he loves my daughter:
I think so too; for never gaz’d the moon
Upon the water as he’ll stand and read
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As ’twere my daughter’s eyes: and, to be plain,
I think there is not half a kiss to choose
Who loves another best.
POLIXENES She dances featly.
SHEPHERD So she does any thing, though I report it
That should be silent. If young Doricles
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Do light upon her, she shall bring him that
Which he not dreams of.
Enter Servant.
SERVANT O master! if you did but hear the pedlar at the
door, you would never dance again after a tabor and
pipe; no, the bagpipe could not move you: he sings
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several tunes, faster than you’ll tell money; he utters
them as he had eaten ballads, and all men�
��s ears grew
to his tunes.
CLOWN He could never come better: he shall come in. I
love a ballad but even too well, if it be doleful matter
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merrily set down; or a very pleasant thing indeed,
and sung lamentably.
SERVANT He hath songs for man or woman, of all sizes:
no milliner can so fit his customers with gloves: he has
the prettiest love-songs for maids, so without bawdry
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(which is strange); with such delicate burdens of
dildoes and fadings, jump her and thump her; and
where some stretch-mouthed rascal would, as it were,
mean mischief and break a foul gap into the matter, he
makes the maid to answer ‘Whoop, do me no harm,
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good man;’ puts him off, slights him, with ‘Whoop,
do me no harm, good man.’
POLIXENES This is a brave fellow.
CLOWN Believe me, thou talkest of an admirable
conceited fellow. Has he any unbraided wares?
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SERVANT He hath ribbons of all the colours i’th’
rainbow; points, more than all the lawyers in Bohemia
can learnedly handle, though they come to him by th’
gross; inkles, caddisses, cambrics, lawns: why, he
sings ’em over as they were gods or goddesses; you
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would think a smock were a she-angel, he so chants
to the sleeve-hand and the work about the square on’t.
CLOWN Prithee bring him in; and let him approach
singing.
PERDITA Forewarn him, that he use no scurrilous words
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in’s tunes. Exit Servant.
CLOWN You have of these pedlars that have more in
them than you’d think, sister.
PERDITA Ay, good brother, or go about to think.
Enter AUTOLYCUS, singing.
Lawn as white as driven snow,
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Cypress black as e’er was crow,
Gloves as sweet as damask roses,
Masks for faces and for noses:
Bugle-bracelet, necklace amber,
Perfume for a lady’s chamber:
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Golden quoifs and stomachers
For my lads to give their dears:
Pins, and poking-sticks of steel,
What maids lack from head to heel:
Come buy of me, come! come buy! come buy!
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Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry.
Come buy!
CLOWN If I were not in love with Mopsa, thou shouldst
take no money of me; but being enthralled as I am, it
will also be the bondage of certain ribbons and gloves.
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MOPSA I was promised them against the feast; but they
come not too late now.
DORCAS He hath promised you more than that, or there
be liars.
MOPSA He hath paid you all he promised you: may be
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he has paid you more, which will shame you to give
him again.
CLOWN Is there no manners left among maids? Will
they wear their plackets where they should bear their
faces? Is there not milking-time, when you are going
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to bed, or kiln-hole, to whistle of these secrets, but you
must be tittle-tattling before all our guests? ’Tis well
they are whispering: clamor your tongues, and not a
word more.
MOPSA I have done. Come, you promised me a tawdry-
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lace and a pair of sweet gloves.
CLOWN Have I not told thee how I was cozened by the
way and lost all my money?
AUTOLYCUS And indeed, sir, there are cozeners abroad;
therefore it behoves men to be wary.
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CLOWN Fear not thou, man, thou shalt lose nothing
here.
AUTOLYCUS I hope so, sir; for I have about me many
parcels of charge.
CLOWN What hast here? ballads?
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MOPSA Pray now, buy some: I love a ballad in print, a
life, for then we are sure they are true.
AUTOLYCUS Here’s one, to a very doleful tune, how a
usurer’s wife was brought to bed of twenty money-
bags at a burden, and how she longed to eat adders’
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heads and toads carbonadoed.
MOPSA Is it true, think you?
AUTOLYCUS Very true, and but a month old.
DORCAS Bless me from marrying a usurer!
AUTOLYCUS Here’s the midwife’s name to’t, one
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 570