• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

FLORIZEL.

Should I now meet my father,

He would not call me son.

CAMILLO.

Nay, you shall have no hat.

[Giving it to PERDITA]

Come, lady, come. Farewell, my friend.

AUTOLYCUS.

Adieu, sir.

FLORIZEL.

O Perdita, what have we twain forgot!

Pray you a word. [They converse apart]

CAMILLO.

[Aside] What I do next shall be to tell the King

Of this escape, and whither they are bound;

Wherein my hope is I shall so prevail

To force him after; in whose company

I shall re-view Sicilia, for whose sight

I have a woman's longing.

FLORIZEL.

Fortune speed us!

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

CAMILLO.

The swifter speed the better.

Exeunt FLORIZEL, PERDITA, and CAMILLO

AUTOLYCUS.

I understand the business, I hear it. To have an open

ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is necessary for a

cut-purse; a good nose is requisite also, to smell out work for

th' 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 anything 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 a piece of honesty to

acquaint the King withal, I would not do't. I hold it the more

knavery to conceal it; and therein am I constant to my profession.

Re-enter 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. CLOWN. See, see; what a man you are now! There is no other way but to tell the King she's a changeling and none of your flesh and blood. SHEPHERD. Nay, but hear me. CLOWN. Nay- but hear me. SHEPHERD. Go to, then. CLOWN. 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. SHEPHERD. 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. CLOWN. 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 how much an ounce. AUTOLYCUS. [Aside] Very wisely, puppies! SHEPHERD. Well, let us to the King. There is that in this fardel will make him scratch his beard. AUTOLYCUS. [Aside] I know not what impediment this complaint 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 th' 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, that toaze from thee thy business, I am therefore no courtier? I am courtier cap-a-pe, and one that will either push on or pluck back thy business there; whereupon I command the to open thy affair. SHEPHERD. My