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Flo.

Fortune speed us !—

Thus we set on, Camillo, to th' sea-side.

Cam. The swifter speed the better.

[Exeunt FLORIZEL, PERDITA, and CAMILLO.

Aut. I understand the business, I hear it: to have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is necessary for a cutpurse; 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 not a piece of honesty to acquaint the King withal, I would do't: I hold it the more knavery to conceal it; and therein am I constant to my profession.

Re-enter the 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.

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

of

Shep. Nay, but hear me.

Clo. Nay, but hear me.
Shep. Go to, then.

Clo. 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 punish'd 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.

Shep. 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.

Clo. 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 not how much an ounce.

Aut. [Aside.] Very wisely, puppies!

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

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

Clo. Pray heartily he be at the palace.

Aut. [Aside.] Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance : let me pocket up my pedler's excrement.71 [Takes off his false beard.]-How now, rustics! whither are you bound?

Shep. To the palace, an it like your Worship.

Aut. 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.

Clo. We are but plain fellows, sir.

:

Aut. 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.72

71 Excrement, from the Latin excresco, was applied to such outgrowths of the human body as hair, nails, &c. See vol. iii. page 172, note 16.

72 To give one the lie commonly meant to accuse him of lying, or to call him a liar. But Autolycus appears to be punning on the phrase, using it in the sense of dealing in lies, or cheating by means of falsehood, as he himself has often done in selling his wares. Giving the lie in this sense is paid with money, and not with stabbing, as it is in the other sense. And, in lying his customers out of their cash, Autolycus has had his lies well paid for; therefore he did not give them the lie.

Clo. Your Worship had like to have given us one, if

you

had not taken yourself with the manner.73

Shep. Are you a courtier, an't like you, sir?

See'st

74

Aut. Whether it like me or no, I am a courtier. 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 not on thy baseness courtcontempt? Think'st thou, for that I insinuate, or touse from thee thy business, I am therefore no courtier? I am courtier cap-a-pie; and one that will either push on or pluck back thy business there: whereupon I command thee to open thy affair.

Shep. My business, sir, is to the King.

Aut. What advocate hast thou to him?
Shep. I know not, an't like you.

Clo. [Aside to Shep.] Advocate's the court-word for a pheasant say you have none.

Shep. None, sir; I have no pheasant,75 cock nor hen.
Aut. How bless'd are we that are not simple men!

Yet Nature might have made me as these are ;

Therefore I'll not disdain.

Clo. [Aside to Shep.]
Shep. [Aside to Clo.]

them not handsomely.

This cannot be but a great courtier.
His garments are rich, but he wears

Clo. [Aside to Shep.] He seems to be the more noble in

78" Taken with the manner" is an old phrase for taken in the act. 74" Think'st thou, because I wind myself into thee, or draw from thee thy business, I am therefore no courtier ?" To touse is to pluck or draw out. As to touse or teize wool, Carpere lanam.

75 It appears that pheasants were in special favour as presents of game to persons in authority, when any thing was wanted of them. Halliwell aptly illustrates the text by the following from the Journal of the Rev. Giles Moore, 1665: "I gave to Mr. Cripps, Solicitor, for acting for me in obtaining my qualification, and effecting it, £1 10s.; and I allowed my brother Luxford for going to London thereupon, and presenting my lord with two brace of pheasants, IOS."

being fantastical: a great man, I'll warrant; I know by the picking on's teeth.

Aut. The fardel there? what's i' the fardel? Wherefore that box?

Shep. 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. Aut. Age, thou hast lost thy labour.

Shep. Why, sir?

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

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

Aut. If that shepherd be not in hand-fast,76 let him fly: the curses he shall have, the tortures he shall feel, will break the back of man, the heart of monster.

Clo. Think you so, sir?

Aut. Not he alone shall suffer what wit can make heavy and vengeance bitter; but those that are germane 77 to him, though removed fifty times, shall all come under the hangman: which though it 78 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.

76 That is, if he be not at large under bonds to appear and answer on a given day. Hand-fast is here equivalent to main-prize.

77 Germane is related or akin; used both of persons and of things.

78 The doubling of the subject in relative clauses, as which and it in this place, is common in the old writers; and sometimes happens with good writers even now, though probably through inadvertence. So, again, in the next scene: "Which that it shall, is all as monstrous," &c.

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

Aut. He has a son; who shall be flay'd alive; then, 'nointed over with honey, set on the head of a wasp's-nest; there stand till he be three quarters and a dram dead; then recover'd again with aqua-vitæ or some other hot infusion; then, raw as he is, and in the hottest day prognostication proclaims,79 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, 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,80 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.

Clo. [Aside to Shep.] He seems to be of great authority: close with him; give him gold: an though 81 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 flay'd alive.

Shep. 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.

Aut. After I have done what I promised?

Shep. Ay, sir.

79 Meaning the hottest day predicted by the almanac. Malone says, "Almanacs were in Shakespeare's time published under this title: 'An Almanack and Prognostigation made for the year of our Lord God 1575.''

80 "Gently considered" here means liberally bribed. The use of consideration for recompense has been made familiar to readers of romance by old Trapbois, in The Fortunes of Nigel.

81 An though is here equivalent, apparently, to although.

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