• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 19192 0

have gathered in, to share and enhance the sport. The old Shepherd is present, but only as a looker-on, having for the nonce resigned the command to his reputed daughter. Under their mutual inspiration, the Prince and Princess are each in the finest rapture of fancy, while the surrounding influences of the rustic festival are just enough to enfranchise their inward music into modest and delicate utterance. He has tastefully decked her person with flowers, till no traces of the shepherdess can be seen, and she seems herself a multitudinous flower; having also attired himself "with a swain's wearing," so that the prince is equally obscured.

"These your unusual weeds to each part of you Do give a life: no shepherdess; but Flora, Peering in April's front. This your sheep-shearing Is as a meeting of the petty gods, And you the queen on't."

Thus he opens the play. And when she repeats her fears of the event:

"Thou dearest Perdita, With these forc'd thoughts, I pr'ythee, darken not The mirth o' the feast: or I'll be thine, my fair, Or not my father's; for I cannot be Mine own, nor any thing to any, if I be not thine: to this I am most constant, Though destiny say no."

The King and Camilla steal upon them in disguise, and while they are present we have this:

"Perdita. Come, take your flowers: Methinks I play as I have seen them do In Whitsun pastorals: sure, this robe of mine Does change my disposition.

Florizel. What you do Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, I'd have you do it ever: when you sing, I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms; Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs, To sing them too: when you do dance I wish you A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own No other function. Each your doing is So singular in each particular, Crowning what you have done i' the present deed, That all your acts are queens.

Perdita. O Doricles! Your praises are too large: but that your youth, And the true blood that peeps so fairly through 't, Do plainly give you out an unstain'd shepherd, With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles, You woo'd me the false way.

Florizel. I think you have As little skill to fear as I have purpose To put you to 't. But come; our dance, I pray.

Polix. This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever Ran on the green-sward: nothing she does or seems But smacks of something greater than herself,— Too noble for this place.

Camil. He tells her something That makes her blood look out: Good sooth, she is The queen of curds and cream.

Polix. 'Pray you, good shepherd, what fair swain is this Which dances with your daughter?

Shep. They call him Doricles; and boasts himself To have a worthy feeding: I but have it Upon his own report, and I believe it; He looks like sooth. He says he loves my daughter: I think so too; for never gaz'd the Moon Upon the water, as he'll stand, and read, As 't were, my daughter's eyes: and, to be plain, I think there is not half a kiss to choose Who loves another best.

Polix. She dances featly.

Shep. So she does any thing, though I report it, That should be silent."

Perdita, notwithstanding she occupies so little room in the play, fills a large space in the reader's thoughts, almost disputing precedence with the Queen. And her mother's best native qualities reappear in her, sweetly modified by pastoral associations; her nature being really much the same, only it has been developed and seasoned in a different atmosphere; a nature too strong indeed to be displaced by any power of circumstances or supervenings of art, but at the same time too delicate and susceptive not to take a lively and lasting impress of them. So that, while she has thoroughly assimilated, she nevertheless clearly indicates, the food of place and climate, insomuch that the dignities of the princely and the simplicities of the pastoral character seem striving which shall express her goodliest. We can hardly call her a poetical being; she is rather poetry itself, and every thing lends and borrows beauty at her touch. A playmate of the flowers, when