Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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3.3 Enter Antigonus, carrying the babe, with a Mariner ANTIGONUS

Thou art perfect then our ship hath touched upon

The deserts of Bohemia?

MARINER

Ay, my lord, and fear

We have landed in ill time. The skies look grimly

And threaten present blusters. In my conscience,

The heavens with that we have in hand are angry,

And frown upon’s.

ANTIGONUS

Their sacred wills be done. Go get aboard.

Look to thy barque. I’ll not be long before

I call upon thee.

MARINER

Make your best haste, and go not

Too far i‘th’ land. ’Tis like to be loud weather.

Besides, this place is famous for the creatures

Of prey that keep upon’t.

ANTIGONUS

Go thou away.

I’ll follow instantly.

MARINER

I am glad at heart

To be so rid o’th’ business. Exit

ANTIGONUS

Come, poor babe.

I have heard, but not believed, the spirits o‘th’ dead

May walk again. If such thing be, thy mother

Appeared to me last night, for ne’er was dream

So like a waking. To me comes a creature,

Sometimes her head on one side, some another.

I never saw a vessel of like sorrow,

So filled and so becoming. In pure white robes

Like very sanctity she did approach

My cabin where I lay, thrice bowed before me,

And, gasping to begin some speech, her eyes

Became two spouts. The fury spent, anon

Did this break from her: ‘Good Antigonus,

Since fate, against thy better disposition,

Hath made thy person for the thrower-out

Of my poor babe according to thine oath,

Places remote enough are in Bohemia.

There weep, and leave it crying; and for the babe

Is counted lost for ever, Perdita

I prithee call’t. For this ungentle business

Put on thee by my lord, thou ne’er shalt see

Thy wife Paulina more.’ And so with shrieks

She melted into air. Affrighted much,

I did in time collect myself, and thought

This was so, and no slumber. Dreams are toys,

Yet for this once, yea superstitiously,

I will be squared by this. I do believe

Hermione hath suffered death, and that

Apollo would—this being indeed the issue

Of King Polixenes—it should here be laid,

Either for life or death, upon the earth

Of its right father. Blossom, speed thee well!

He lays down the babe and a scroll

There lie, and there thy character.

He lays down a box

There these,

Which may, if fortune please, both breed thee, pretty,

And still rest thine.

⌈Thunder⌉

The storm begins. Poor wretch,

That for thy mother’s fault art thus exposed

To loss and what may follow! Weep I cannot,

But my heart bleeds, and most accursed am I

To be by oath enjoined to this. Farewell.

The day frowns more and more. Thou’rt like to have

A lullaby too rough. I never saw

The heavens so dim by day. A savage clamour!

Well may I get aboard. This is the chase.

I am gone for ever!

Exit, pursued by a bear

Enter an Old Shepherd

OLD SHEPHERD I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting—hark you now, would any but these boiled-brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather? They have scared away two of my best sheep, which I fear the wolf will sooner find than the master. If anywhere I have them, ’tis by the seaside, browsing of ivy. Good luck, an’t be thy will!

He sees the babe

What have we here? Mercy on‘s, a bairn! A very pretty bairn. A boy or a child, I wonder? A pretty one, a very pretty one. Sure some scape. Though I am not bookish, yet I can read ‘waiting-gentlewoman’ in the scape. This has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some behind-door-work. They were warmer that got this than the poor thing is here. I’ll take it up for pity; yet I’ll tarry till my son come. He hallooed but even now. Whoa-ho-hoa!

Enter Clown

CLOWN Hilloa, loa!

OLD SHEPHERD What, art so near? If thou‘lt see a thing to talk on when thou art dead and rotten, come hither. What ail’st thou, man?

CLOWN I have seen two such sights, by sea and by land! But I am not to say it is a sea, for it is now the sky. Betwixt the firmament and it you cannot thrust a bodkin’s point.

OLD SHEPHERD Why, boy, how is it?

CLOWN I would you did but see how it chafes, how it rages, how it takes up the shore. But that’s not to the point. O, the most piteous cry of the poor souls! Sometimes to see ‘em, and not to see ’em; now the ship boring the moon with her mainmast, and anon swallowed with yeast and froth, as you’d thrust a cork into a hogshead. And then for the land-service, to see how the bear tore out his shoulder-bone, how he cried to me for help, and said his name was Antigonus, a nobleman! But to make an end of the ship—to see how the sea flap-dragoned it! But first, how the poor souls roared, and the sea mocked them, and how the poor gentleman roared, and the bear mocked him, both roaring louder than the sea or weather.

OLD SHEPHERD Name of mercy, when was this, boy?

CLOWN Now, now. I have not winked since I saw these sights. The men are not yet cold under water, nor the bear half dined on the gentleman. He’s at it now.

OLD SHEPHERD Would I had been by to have helped the old man!

CLOWN I would you had been by the ship side, to have helped her. There your charity would have lacked footing.

OLD SHEPHERD Heavy matters, heavy matters. But look thee here, boy. Now bless thyself. Thou metst with things dying, I with things new-born. Here’s a sight for thee. Look thee, a bearing-cloth for a squire’s child.

He points to the box

Look thee here, take up, take up, boy. Open’t. So, let’s see. It was told me I should be rich by the fairies. This is some changeling. Open’t. What’s within, boy?

CLOWN (opening the box) You’re a made old man. If the sins of your youth are forgiven you, you’re well to live. Gold, all gold!

OLD SHEPHERD This is fairy gold, boy, and ‘twill prove so. Up with’t, keep it close. Home, home, the next way. We are lucky, boy, and to be so still requires nothing but secrecy. Let my sheep go. Come, good boy, the next way home.

CLOWN Go you the next way with your findings. I’ll go see if the bear be gone from the gentleman, and how much he hath eaten. They are never curst but when they are hungry. If there be any of him left, I’ll bury it.

OLD SHEPHERD That’s a good deed. If thou mayst discern by that which is left of him what he is, fetch me to th’ sight of him.

CLOWN Marry will I; and you shall help to put him i’th’ ground.

OLD SHEPHERD ’Tis a lucky day, boy, and we’ll do good deeds on’t.

Exeunt

4.1 Enter Time, the Chorus

TIME

I that please some, try all; both joy and terror

Of good and bad; that makes and unfolds error,

Now take upon me in the name of Time

To use my wings. Impute it not a crime

To me or my swift passage that I slide

O‘er sixteen years and leave the growth untried

Of that wide gap, since it is in my power

To o’erthrow law, and in one self-born hour

To plant and o‘erwhelm custom. Let me pass

The same I am ere ancient’st order was

Or what is now received. I witness to

The times that brought them in; so shall I do

To th’ freshest things now reigning, and make stale

The glistering of this present as my tale

Now seems to it. Your patience this allowing,

I turn my glass, and give my scene such growing

As you had slept between. Leontes leaving

Th‘effects of his fond jealousies, so grieving

That he shuts up himself, imagine me,

Gentle spectators, that I now may be

In fair Bohemia, and remember well

I mentioned a son o’th’ King‘s, which Florizel

I now name to you; and with speed so pace

To speak of Perdita, now grown in grace

Equal with wond’ring. What of her ensues

I list not prophesy, but let Time’s news

Be known when ‘tis brought forth. A shepherd’s

daughter

And what to her adheres, which follows after,

Is th’argument of Time. Of this allow,

If ever you have spent time worse ere now.

If never, yet that Time himself doth say

He wishes earnestly you never may.

Exit

4.2 Enter Polixenes and Camillo

POLIXENES I pray thee, good Camillo, be no more importunate. ’Tis a sickness denying thee anything, a death to grant this.

CAMILLO It is sixteen years since I saw my country. Though I have for the most part been aired abroad, I desire to lay my bones there. Besides, the penitent King, my master, hath sent for me, to whose feeling sorrows I might be some allay—or I o’erween to think so—which is another spur to my departure.

POLIXENES As thou lov’st me, Camillo, wipe not out the rest of thy services by leaving me now. The need I have of thee thine own goodness hath made. Better not to have had thee than thus to want thee. Thou, having made me businesses which none without thee can sufficiently manage, must either stay to execute them thyself or take away with thee the very services thou hast done; which if I have not enough considered—as too much I cannot—to be more thankful to thee shall be my study, and my profit therein, the heaping friendships. Of that fatal country Sicilia, prithee speak no more, whose very naming punishes me with the remembrance of that penitent—as thou callest him—and reconciled King my brother, whose loss of his most precious queen and children are even now to be afresh lamented. Say to me, when sawest thou the Prince Florizel, my son? Kings are no less unhappy, their issue not being gracious, than they are in losing them when they have approved their virtues.

CAMILLO Sir, it is three days since I saw the Prince. What his happier affairs may be are to me unknown; but I have missingly noted he is of late much retired from court, and is less frequent to his princely exercises than formerly he hath appeared.

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

4.3 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-lirra 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 snapperup 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 nosegays for the shearers—three-man-song-men, all, and very good ones—but they are most of them means and basses, but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes. 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’th’ sun.

AUTOLYCUS (grovelling on the ground) O, that ever I was born!

CLOWN I’th’ 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 offend 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.

He helps Autolycus up

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 Softly, dear sir. Good sir, softly.

⌈He picks the Clown’s pocket⌉

You ha’ done me a charitable office.

CLOWN (reaching for his purse) 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 anything 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-madams. 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’d 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 the 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 footpath way,

And merrily hent the stile-a.

A merry heart goes all the day,

Your sad tires in a mile-a.

Exit

4.4 Enter Florizel dressed as Doricles a countryman, and Perdita as Queen of the Feast

FLORIZEL

These your unusual weeds to each part of you

Does 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’th’ land, you have obscured

With a swain’s wearing, and me, poor lowly maid,

Most goddess-like pranked 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; swoon, 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 borrowed 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 bellowed; 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 th’ 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’th’ feast. Or I’ll be thine, my fair,

Or not my father’s. For I cannot be

Mine own, nor anything 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 anything

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 the Old Shepherd, with Polixenes and Camillo,

disguised, the Clown, Mopsa, Dorcas, and others

OLD SHEPHERD (to Perdita)

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‘th’ table, now i’th’ middle,

On his shoulder, and his, her face afire

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’th’ 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’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.

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’th’ season

Are our carnations and streaked 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, savory, marjoram,

The marigold, that goes to bed wi’th’ 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.

She gives them flowers

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.

(To Florizel) Now, my fair‘st friend,

I would I had some flowers o’th’ spring that might

Become your time of day; (to Mopsa and Dorcas) and

yours, and yours,

That wear upon your virgin branches yet

Your maidenheads growing. O Proserpina,

For the flowers now that, frighted, thou letst fall

From Dis’s wagon!-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

Bright 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.

FLORIZEL

What, like a corpse?

PERDITA

No, like a bank, for love to lie and play on,

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

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

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,

That all your acts are queens.

PERDITA

O Doricles,

Your praises are too large. But that your youth

And the true blood which peeps so fairly through’t

Do plainly give you out an unstained shepherd,

With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles,

You wooed 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.

POLIXENES (to Camillo)

This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever

Ran on the greensward. 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

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!

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?

OLD SHEPHERD

They call him Doricles, and boasts himself

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 gazed the moon

Upon the water as he’ll stand and read,

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.

OLD SHEPHERD

So she does anything, though I report it

That should be silent. If young Doricles

Do light upon her, she shall bring him that

Which he not dreams of.

Enter a 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 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 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, which is strange, with such delicate burdens of dildos 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, 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?

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, caddises, cambrics, lawns—why, he sings ’em over as they were gods or goddesses. You 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 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, wearing a false beard, carrying his pack, and singing

AUTOLYCUS

Lawn as white as driven snow,

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;

Golden coifs, 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,

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.

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. Maybe 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 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. Clammer your tongues, and not a word more.

MOPSA I have done. Come, you promised me a tawdry-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.

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?

MOPSA Pray now, buy some. I love a ballad in print, alife, 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’ 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 Mistress Tail-Porter, and five or six honest wives’ that were present. Why should I carry lies abroad?

MOPSA (to Clown) Pray you now, buy it.

CLOWN Come on, lay it by, and let’s first see more ballads. We’ll buy the other things anon.

AUTOLYCUS Here’s another ballad, of a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids. It was thought she was a woman, and was turned into a cold fish for she would not exchange flesh with one that loved her. The ballad is very pitiful, and as true.

DORCAS Is it true too, think you?

AUTOLYCUS Five justices’ hands at it, and witnesses more than my pack will hold.

CLOWN Lay it by, too. Another.

AUTOLYCUS This is a merry ballad, but a very pretty one. MOPSA Let’s have some merry ones.

AUTOLYCUS Why, this is a passing merry one, and goes to the tune of ‘Two Maids Wooing a Man’. There’s scarce a maid westward but she sings it. ’Tis in request, I can tell you.

MOPSA We can both sing it. If thou‘lt bear a part thou shalt hear; ’tis in three parts.

DORCAS We had the tune on’t a month ago.

AUTOLYCUS I can bear my part, you must know, ’tis my occupation. Have at it with you.

CLOWN We’ll have this song out anon by ourselves. My father and the gentlemen are in sad talk, and we’ll not trouble them. Come, bring away thy pack after me. Wenches, I’ll buy for you both. Pedlar, let’s have the first choice. Follow me, girls.

Exit with Dorcas and Mopsa

AUTOLYCUS And you shall pay well for ’em.

Enter Servant

SERVANT Master, there is three carters, three shepherds, three neatherds, three swineherds that have made themselves all men of hair. They call themselves saultiers, and they have a dance which the wenches say is a gallimaufry of gambols, because they are not in’t. But they themselves are o’th’ mind, if it be not too rough for some that know little but bowling, it will please plentifully.