1 SHEPHERD. Heavy matters! heavy matters! but look thee here, boy. Now bless thyself: thou mettest with things dying, I with things new-born. Here's a sight for thee; look thee, a bearing-cloth for a squire's child! 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. You're a made old man: if the sins of your youth are forgiven you, you 're well to live. Gold! all gold! 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. SHEPHERD. That's a good deed. If thou mayest discern by that which is left of him what he is, fetch me to the sight of him. CLOWN. Marry, will I; and you shall help to put him i' the ground. SHEPHERD. 'Tis a lucky day, boy, and we'll do good deeds on 't. (Exeunt.) ACT IV. SCENE I. Enter Time, the Chorus. TIME. I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror The times that brought them in: so shall I do Now seems to it. Your patience this allowing, In fair Bohemia; and remember well, I mention'd a son o' the king's, which Florizel 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 the argument of Time. Of this allow, If ever you have spent time worse ere now: He wishes earnestly you never may. SCENE II. Bohemia. The palace of Polixenes. POLIXENES. (Exit.) I pray thee, good Camillo, be no more importunate: 'tis a sickness denying thee any thing; a death to grant this. CAMILLO. It is fifteen years since I saw my country; though I have 7 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 lovest 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. POLIXÉNES. 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 has 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. Mybest Camillo! We must disguise ourselves. (Exeunt.) SCENE III. A road near the Shepherd's cottage. Enter Autolycus, singing. 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, Oh, how they sing! For a quart of ale is a dish for a king. The lark, that tirra-lyra 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 threepile; but now I am out of service: dear? But shall I go mourn for that, my If tinkers may have leave to live, 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 snapper-up 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! CLOWN. (Enter Clown.) Let me see: every 'leven wether tods; every tod yields pound and odd shilling; fifteen hundred shorn, what comes the wool to? 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 bases; 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' the sun. AUTOLYCUS.. Oh that ever I was born! (Grovelling on the ground.) CLOWN. I' the name of me... AUTOLYCUS. Oh, help me! help me! pluck but off these rags; and then, death, death! CLOWN. Alack, poor soul! thou has need of more rags to lay on thee, rather than these off. AUTOLYCUS. O sir, the loathsomeness of them offends 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. |