THE WINTER'S TALE. Sidney Lee

[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 cutpurse; a good nose is requisite also, to smell out work for the 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 punished 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 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 sheepcote!—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