The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 573
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.
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[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. [They draw aside.]
CAMILLO What I do next, shall be to tell the king
Of this escape and whither they are bound;
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Wherein my hope is I shall so prevail
To force him after: in whose company
I shall re-view Sicilia, for whose sight
I have a woman’s longing.
FLORIZEL Fortune speed us!
Thus we set on, Camillo, to th’ sea-side.
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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
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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
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(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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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pedlar’s excrement. [Takes off his false beard.] How
now, rustics! whither are you bound?
SHEPHERD To th’ palace, and it like your worship.
AUTOLYCUS Your affairs there, what, with whom, the
condition of that fardel, the place of your dwelling,
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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
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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.
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SHEPHERD Are you a courtier, and’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-odour from me? reflect I
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not on thy baseness, court-contempt? Think’st 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.
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SHEPHERD My business, sir, is to the king.
AUTOLYCUS What advocate hast thou to him?
SHEPHERD I know not, and’t like you.
CLOWN Advocate’s the court-word for a pheasant: say
you have none.
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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.
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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.
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AUTOLYCUS The fardel there? What’s i’th’ fardel? Where-
fore 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 th’
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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
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himself: for, if thou be’st 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
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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
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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
sheepcote! All deaths are too few, the sharpest too easy.
CLOWN Has the old man e’er a son, sir, do you hear,
and’t like you, sir?
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AUTOLYCUS He has a son, who shall be flayed alive,
then ’nointed over with honey, set on the head of a
wasps’ 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
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hottest day prognostication proclaims, shall he 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,
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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
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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:
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show the inside of your purse to the outside of his
hand, and no more ado. Remember ‘stoned’, and
‘flayed alive’!
SHEPHERD And’t please you, sir, to undertake the
business for us, here is that gold I have: I’ll make it as
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
845
5.1 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;
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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
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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
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Would be unparallel’d.