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 co
urted 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
ACT V
SCENE I. A ROOM IN LEONTES’ 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?’
Paulina
Had she such power,
She had just cause.
Leontes
She had; and would incense me
To murder her I married.
Paulina
I should so.
Were I the ghost that walk’d, I’ld bid you mark
Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in’t
You chose her; then I’ld shriek, that even your ears
Should rift to hear me; and the words that follow’d
Should be ‘Remember mine.’
Leontes
Stars, stars,
And all eyes else dead coals! Fear thou no wife;
I’ll have no wife, Paulina.
Paulina
Will you swear
Never to marry but by my free leave?
Leontes
Never, Paulina; so be blest my spirit!
Paulina
Then, good my lords, bear witness to his oath.
Cleomenes
You tempt him over-much.
Paulina
Unless another,
As like Hermione as is her picture,
Affront his eye.
Cleomenes
Good madam,—
Paulina
I have done.
Yet, if my lord will marry,— if you will, sir,
No remedy, but you will,— give me the office
To choose you a queen: she shall not be so young
As was your former; but she shall be such
As, walk’d your first queen’s ghost, it should take joy
To see her in your arms.
Leontes
My true Paulina,
We shall not marry till thou bid’st us.
Paulina
That
Shall be when your first queen’s again in breath;
Never till then.
Enter a Gentleman
Gentleman
One that gives out himself Prince Florizel,
Son of Polixenes, with his princess, she
The fairest I have yet beheld, desires access
To your high presence.
Leontes
What with him? he comes not
Like to his father’s greatness: his approach,
So out of circumstance and sudden, tells us
’Tis not a visitation framed, but forced
By need and accident. What train?
Gentleman
But few,
And those but mean.
Leontes
His princess, say you, with him?
Gentleman
Ay, the most peerless piece of earth, I think,
That e’er the sun shone bright on.
Paulina
O Hermione,
As every present time doth boast itself
Above a better gone, so must thy grave
Give way to what’s seen now! Sir, you yourself
Have said and writ so, but your writing now
Is colder than that theme, ‘she had not been,
Nor was not to be equall’d;’— thus your verse
Flow’d with her beauty once: ’tis shrewdly ebb’d,
To say you have seen a better.
Gentleman
Pardon, madam:
The one I have almost forgot,— your pardon,—
The other, when she has obtain’d your eye,
Will have your tongue too. This is a creature,
Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal
Of all professors else, make proselytes
&nbs
p; Of who she but bid follow.
Paulina
How! not women?
Gentleman
Women will love her, that she is a woman
More worth than any man; men, that she is
The rarest of all women.
Leontes
Go, Cleomenes;
Yourself, assisted with your honour’d friends,
Bring them to our embracement. Still, ’tis strange
Exeunt Cleomenes and others
He thus should steal upon us.
Paulina
Had our prince,
Jewel of children, seen this hour, he had pair’d
Well with this lord: there was not full a month
Between their births.
Leontes
Prithee, no more; cease; thou know’st
He dies to me again when talk’d of: sure,
When I shall see this gentleman, thy speeches
Will bring me to consider that which may
Unfurnish me of reason. They are come.
Re-enter Cleomenes and others, with Florizel and Perdita
Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince;
For she did print your royal father off,
Conceiving you: were I but twenty-one,
Your father’s image is so hit in you,
His very air, that I should call you brother,
As I did him, and speak of something wildly
By us perform’d before. Most dearly welcome!
And your fair princess,— goddess!— O, alas!
I lost a couple, that ’twixt heaven and earth
Might thus have stood begetting wonder as
You, gracious couple, do: and then I lost —
All mine own folly — the society,
Amity too, of your brave father, whom,
Though bearing misery, I desire my life
Once more to look on him.
Florizel
By his command
Have I here touch’d Sicilia and from him
Give you all greetings that a king, at friend,
Can send his brother: and, but infirmity
Which waits upon worn times hath something seized
His wish’d ability, he had himself
The lands and waters ’twixt your throne and his
Measured to look upon you; whom he loves —
He bade me say so — more than all the sceptres
And those that bear them living.
Leontes
O my brother,
Good gentleman! the wrongs I have done thee stir
Afresh within me, and these thy offices,
So rarely kind, are as interpreters
Of my behind-hand slackness. Welcome hither,
As is the spring to the earth. And hath he too
Exposed this paragon to the fearful usage,
Complete Plays, The Page 36
