Offi. Hermione, queen to the worthy Leontes, king of Sicilia, thou art here accused and arraigned of high treason, in committing adultery with Polixenes, king of Bohemia; and conspiring with Camillo to take away the life of our sovereign lord the king, thy royal husband; th pretences whereof being by circumstances partly laid open, thou, Hermione, contrary to the faith and allegiance of a true subject, didst counsel and aid them, for their better safety, to fly away by night. Her. Since what I am to say, must be but that But what comes from myself; it shall scarce boot me I doubt not then, but innocence shall make Tremble at patience.-You, my lord, best know, Who please to come and hear. For life, I prize it, As I weigh grief, which I would spare: for honor, 'Tis a derivative from me to mine, And only that I stand for. I appeal To your conscience, sir, before Polixenes Came to your court, how I was in your grace, With what encounter so uncurrent I Have strain'd to appear thus: if one jot beyond Leon. I ne'er heard yet, That any of these bolder vices wanted Less impudence to gainsay what they did, Than to perform it first. Her. Though 'tis a saying, sir, not due to me. That's true enough; More than mistress of, Leon. You will not own it. Her. Which comes to me in name of fault, I must not At all acknowledge. For Polixenes, (With whom I am accused,) I do confess, I lov'd him, as in honor he required; A lady like me; with a love, even such, To you, and toward your friend; whose love had spoke, Even since it could speak, from an infant, freely, That it was yours. Now, for conspiracy, I know not how it tastes; though it be dish'd For me to try how: all I know of it Is, that Camillo was an honest man; And, why he left your court, the gods themselves, Wotting no more than 1, are ignorant. Leon. You knew of his departure, as you know What you have underta'en to do in his absence. Her. Sir, You speak a language that I understand not: Leon. Your actions are my dreams; And I but dream'd it:-As you were past all shame, Thy brat hath been cast out, like to itself, No father owning it, (which is, indeed, More criminal in thee, than it,) so thou Shalt feel our justice; in whose easiest passage, Her. Sir, spare your threats; The bug, which you would fright ine with, I seck. To me can life be no commodity: 1 Lord: This your request Is altogether just therefore, bring forth, [Exeunt certain Officers. Re-enter Officers with CLEOMENES and DION. Off. You here shall swear upon this sword of justice, That you, Cleomenes and Dion, have selves Do strike at my injustice. [HERMIONE faints.] How now there? Paul. This news is mortal to the queen:-Look down, And see what death is doing. [Exeunt PAULINA and Ladies, with HERM. i. e. The degree of strength which it is customary to acquire before women are suffered to go abroad after child-bearing. Of the event of the queen's trial. My friend Polixenes: which had been done, Paul. Re-enter PAULINA. Woe the while! O, cut my lace; lest my heart, cracking it, Break too! 1 Lord. What fit is this, good lady? Paul. What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me? What wheels? racks? fires? What flaying? boiling, In leads, or oils? what old, or newer torture Must I receive; whose every word deserves To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny Together working with thy jealousies,Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle For girls of nine!-0, think, what they have done, And then run mad, indeed; stark mad! for all Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing; That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant, And damnable ungrateful: nor was't much, Thou wouldst have poison'd good Camillo's honor, To have him kill a king; poor trespasses, More monstrous standing by: whereof I reckon The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter, To be or none, or little; though a devil Would have shed water out of fire, ere done't; Nor is't directly laid to thee, the death Of the young prince, whose honorable thoughts (Thoughts high for one so tender) cleft the heart That could conceive, a gross and foolish sire Blemish'd his gracious dam: this is not, no, Laid to thy answer: But the last.-0, lords, When I have said, cry, woe !-the queen, the queen, The sweetest, dearest, creature's dead; and vengeance for't Not dropp'd down yet. 1 Lord. The higher powers forbid! Paul. I say, she's dead; I'll swear't: if word, nor oath, Prevail not, go and see: if you can bring Leon. Go on, go on: Thou canst not speak too much I have deserv'd All tongues to talk their bitterest. 1 Lord. Say no more; Howe'er the business goes, you have made fault I'the boldness of your speech. Paul. I am sorry for't; All faults I make, when I shall come to know them, To the noble heart.-What's gone, and what's past help, Should be past grief: Do not receive affliction Of what you should forget. Now, good my liege, The love I bore your queen,-lo, fool again!- Who is lost too: Take your patience to you, Leon. i. e. A devil wou'd have shed tears of pity, ere he would have perpetrated such an action. SCENE III-Bohemia. A desert Country near the Sea. Enter ANTIGONUS, with the Child; and a Mariner. Ant. Thou art 'perfect' then, our ship hath touch'd upon The deserts of Bohemia? Ant. Their sacred wills be done!-Go, get aboard; Mar. Make your best haste; and go not I'll follow instantly. Mur. Go thou away: I am glad at heart To be so rid o'the business. Ant. [Exit. Come, poor babe : I have heard, (but not believ'd,) the spirits of the dead May walk again: if such thing be, thy mother I prythee, call'; for this ungentle business, I did in time collect myself; and thought I will be squared by this. I do believe, And still rest thine.-The storm begins:-Poor wretch, That, for thy mother's fault, art thus expos'd The heavens so dim by day. A savage clamor ?-- I am gone forever. [Exit, pursued by a Bear. Enter an old Shepherd. Shep. 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 1 Well assured. The writing afterward discovered with Perdita. a Child. 4 Female infant. Shep. Name of mercy, when was this, boy? Clo. 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. Shep. Would I had been by, to have helped the old man! ancientry, stealing, fighting.-Hark you now!-tleman roared, and the bear mocked him, both roar Would any but these boiled brains of nineteen, and ing louder than sea or weather. 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 any where I have them, 'tis by the sea-side, browzing on ivy. Good luck, an't be thy will! what have we here! Taking up the Child.] Mercy on's, a barne; a very pretty barne! 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 waitinggentlewoman in the scape. This has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some behind-doorwork: 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 halloed but even now. Whoa, họ hoa! Clo. Hilloa, loa! Enter Clown. Shep. What, art so near? if thou'lt see a thing to talk on when thou art dead and rotten, come hither. What ailest thou, man? Clo. 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. Shep. Why, boy, how is it? Clo. I would you had been by the ship side, to have helped her; there your charity would have lacked footing. Aside. Shep. Heavy matters! heavy matters! but look thee here, boy. Now bless thyself; thou met'st 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? Clo. You're a made old man: if the sins of your youth are forgiven you, you're well to live. Gold! a gold! Shep. This is fairy gold, boy, and 'twill prove so: up with it, 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. Clo. 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. : Clo. 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 yest and froth, as you'd thrust a cork into a bogshead. 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 Clo. Marry, will I; and you shall help to put make an end of the ship: to see how the sea flap-him i'the ground. dragoned it:-but, first, how the poor souls roared, Shep. 'Tis a lucky day, boy; and we'll do good and the sea mocked them;-and how the poor gen Enter Time, as Chorus. Shep. That's a good deed: If thou mayst dis cern by that which is left of him, what he is, fetch me to the sight of him. deeds on't. ACT IV. Time. I,-that please some, try all; both joy and terror, Of good and bad; that make, and unfold error,- I mentioned a son o`the king's, which Florizel And what to her adheres which follows after, [Exit. [Exeunt. Cam. It is fifteen 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 peni tent king, my master, hath sent for me: to whose feeling sorrows I might be some allay, or I o'er ween to think so; which is another spur to my departure. Pol. As thou lovest me, Camillo, wipe not ou 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 the businesses, which none, with out 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, prythee speak no more: whose very naming punishes me with the remem brance of that penitent, as thou call'st 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 saw'st 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. Cam. 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. Pol. 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 neighbors, is grown into an unspeakable estate. Cam. I have heard, sir, of such a man, who hath a daughter of most rare note: the report of her is The mantle in which a child was carried to be baptized. Think too highly of myself. Observed at intervals extended more, than can be thought to begin from such a cottage. Pol. 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. Prythee, be my present partner in this business, and lay aside the thoughts of Sicília. Cam. I willingly obey your command. Pol. My best Camillo!-We must disguise ourselves. [Exeunt. SCENE II-A Road near the Shepherd's Cottage. Enter AUTOLYCUS, singing. When daffodils begin to peer,— With heigh! the doxy over the dale,- For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale. For a quart of ale is a dish for a king. With, hey! with hey! the thrush and the jay: Are summers' songs for me and my aunts, While we lie tumbling in the hay Clo. What, by a horse-man, or a foot-man? Aut. A foot-man, sweet sir, a foot-man. Clo. Indeed, he should be a foot-man, by the gar ments he hath 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. [Helping him up. Aut. O! good sir, tenderly, oh! Clo. Alas, poor soul. Aut. O, good sir, softly, good sir: I fear, sir, my shoulder-blade is out. Clo. How now? canst stand? Aut. Softly, dear sir; | Picks his pocket.] good sir, softly: you ha done me a charitable office. Clo. Dost lack any money? I have a little money for thee. Aut. 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. Clo. What manner of fellow was he that robbed you? Aut. A fellow, sir, that I have known to go about with trol-my-dames: 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. Clo. His vices, you would say; there's no virtue whipped out of the court: they cherish it, to make I have served prince Florizel, and, in my time, wore it stay there; and yet it will no more but abide. three-pile; but now I am out of service: But shall I go mourn for that, my dear? And when I wander here and there, I then do most go right. If tinkers may have leave to live, Aut. Vices I would say, sir. I know this man well: he hath been since an ape-bearer; then a [Sings. 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 Autoly My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen. My father named me, Autolycus; who, being, as am, littered under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles: With die, and drab, 1 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! prize! Enter Clown. Clo. Let me see:-Every 'leven weather-tods: every tod yields--pound and odd shilling: fifteen hundred shorn,-What comes the wool to? Aut. If the springe hold, the cock's mine. [Aside. Clo. 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-mens 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 color the warden pies; mace,-tales, 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. Aut. O, that ever I was born! [Grovelling on the ground. Clo. I'the name of me,Aut. O help me, help me! pluck but off these rags; and then, death, death! Clo. Alack, poor soul! thou hast need of more rags to lay on thee, rather than have these off. Aut. O, sir, the loathsomeness of them offends me more than the stripes I have received; which are mighty ones and millions. Clo. Alas, poor man! a million of heating may come to a great matter. Aut. I am robbed, sir, and beaten my money and apparel ta'en from me, and these detestable things put upon me. Rich velvet. * Singers of catches in three parts. s Pies made of a species of pears. cus. Clo. Out upon him! Prig, for my life, prig: he haunts wakes, fairs, and bear-baitings. Aut. Very true, sir; he, sir, he; that's the rogue, that put me into this apparel. Clo. Not a more cowardly rogue in all Bohemia; if you had but looked big, and spit at him, he'd have run. Aut. I must confess to you, sir, I am no fighter: I am false of heart that way; and that he knew, I warrant him. Clo. How do you now? Aut. 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. Clo. Shall I bring thee on the way? Aut. Prosper you, sweet sir!-[Exit 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! Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, Enter FLORIZEL and PERDITA. [Exit. Flo. These your unusual weeds to each part of you Per. • The machine used in the game of pigeon holes. Flo. I bless the time, made her light across When my good falcon Flo. Per. O but, dear sir, Your resolution cannot hold, when 'tis Oppos'd, as it must be, by the power o'the king: One of these two must be necessities, Which then will speak; that you must change this purpose, Or I my life. Flo. Thou dearest Perdita, With these forced thoughts, I prythee, darken not Mine own, nor any thing to any, if I be not thine: to this I am most constant, Stand you auspicious! Pol. Do you neglect them? Per. Wherefore, gentle maiden, For I have heard it said, There is an art, which, in their piedness, shares Say, there be; But nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art, A gentle 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. So it is. Per. Pol. Then make your garden rich in gillyflowers, And do not call them bastards. I'll not put Per. The dibble in earth to set one slip of them: You'd be so lean, that blasts of January I would, I had some flowers o'the spring, that might That come before the swallow dares, and take Enter Shepherd with POLIENES and CAMILLO, This day she was both pantler, butler, cook; For you there's rosemary, and rue; these keep Pol. Shepherdess, (A fair one are you.) well you fit our ages With flowers of winter. Per. Flo. Methinks, I play as I have seen them do Flo. Flo. I think, you have Sir, the year growing ancient,-Your hand, my Perdita: so turtles pair, Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth season |