The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare (book club suggestions txt) 📖

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 anything 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-odour from me? reflect I 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-à-pie, 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 bless'd 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-vitæ or some other hot infusion; then, raw as he is, and in the 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, 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, - ston'd 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 blessed in this man, as I may say, even blessed.

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 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 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. Sicilia. A Room in the palace of LEONTES.

[Enter LEONTES, CLEOMENES, DION, PAULINA, and others.]

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 strik'st 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 grac'd 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 tenour 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 squar'd 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 us'd, would make her sainted spirit Again possess her corpse; and on this stage,