Cam. Shall satisfy your father. All, that you speak, shows fair. Happy be you! Who have we here? [Seeing AUTOLYCUS. We'll make an instrument of this; omit Aut. If they have overheard me now,- -why hanging. [Aside. Cam. How now, good fellow? Why shakest thou so? Fear not, man; here's no harm intended to thee. Aut. I am a poor fellow, sir. Cam. Why, be so still; here's nobody will steal that from thee: Yet, for the outside of thy poverty, we must make an exchange: therefore, discase thee instantly (thou must think, there's necessity in't), and change garments with this gentleman: Though the pennyworth, on his side, be the worst, yet hold thee, there's some boot 68. Aut. I am a poor fellow, sir:-I know ye well enough. [Aside. Cam. Nay, pr'ythee, despatch: the gentleman is half flayed 69 already. Aut. Are you in earnest, sir? I smell the trick of it. Flo. Despatch, I pr'ythee. [Aside. Aut. Indeed, I have had earnest; but I cannot with conscience take it. Cam. Unbuckle, unbuckle. [FLO. and AUTOL. exchange garments. Fortunate mistress, let my prophecy - Come home to you! - you must retire yourself The truth of your own seeming; that you may 68 Boot is advantage, profit. We now say something to boot, something beside the articles exchanged for each other. 69 Stripped. (For I do fear eyes over you) to shipboard Get undescried. Nay, you shall have Come, lady, come.-Farewell, my friend. Aut. Adieu, sir. Flo. O Perdita, what have we twain forgot? Pray you, a word. [They converse apart. Cam. What I do next, shall be to tell the king [Aside. 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 review Sicilia; for whose sight I have a woman's longing. Flo. Fortune speed us!Thus we set on, Camillo, to the sea-side. Cam. The swifter speed, the better. I [Exeunt FLO. PER. and CAM. Aut. 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 the other senses. 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 any thing 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 70: I hold it the more 10 Steevens reads, "If I thought it were NOT a piece of honesty to acquaint the king withal, I would do it.' Тhе гадеро knavery to conceal it; and therein am I constant to my profession. 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. Clo. 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. Shep. Nay, but hear me. Clo. Nay, but hear me. Shep. Go to then. Clo. 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. Shep. 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. Clo. 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. Aut. Very wisely; puppies! [Aside. Shep. Well; let us to the king; there is that in this fardel, will make him scratch his beard. Aut. I know not what impediment this complaint may be to the flight of my master. Clo. 'Pray heartily, he be at palace. sition of the word not was made by Hanmer; it does not render the passage more intelligible, and as we can extract a meaning out of the passage as it originally stood, I do not think so violent a transposition admissible. We should probably read, 'by I know not how much an ounce." Aut. Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance:-Let me pocket up my pedler's excrement 72. [Takes off his false beard.] How now, rustics? whither are you bound? Shep. To the palace, an it like your worship. Aut. Your affairs there? what? with whom? the condition of that fardel73, the place of your dwelling, your names, your ages, of what having 74, breeding, and any thing that is fitting to be known, discover. Clo. We are but plain fellows, sir. Aut. 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 75. Clo. Your worship had like to have given us one, if you had not taken yourself with the manner 76, Shep. Are you a courtier, an't like you, sir? Aut. Whether it like me, or no, I am a courtier. See'st 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 toze78 from thee thy business, I am therefore no courtier? I am courtier, cap-a-pè: and one that will either push on or pluck back thy business there: whereupon I command thee to open thy affair. 12 Thus in The Comedy of Errors: 'Why is time such a niggard of his hair, being as it is so plentiful an excrement?' 13 Fardel is a bundle, a pack or burthen. 'A pack that a man doth bear with him in the way,' says Baret. 74 i. e. estate, property. 75 The meaning is, they are paid for lying, therefore they do not give us the lie. 16 That is, in the fact. Vide Love's Labour's Lost, Act i. Sc. I. The measure, the stately tread of courtiers. 18 Think'st thou because I wind myself into, or draw from thee thy business, I am therefore no courtier? To toze is to pluck or draw out. As to toze or teize wool, Carpere lanam. See the old dictionaries. Shep. My business, sir, is to the king. Clo. Advocate's the court-word for a pheasant; say you have none. Shep. None, sir; I have no pheasant, cock, nor hen 79. Aut. How bless'd are we, that are not simple men! Yet nature might have made me as these are, Therefore I'll not disdain. Clo. This cannot be but a great courtier. Shep. His garments are rich, but he wears them not handsomely. Clo. He seems to be the more noble in being fantastical; a great man, I'll warrant; I know, by the picking on's teeth. Aut. The fardel there? what's i' the fardel? Wherefore that box? Shep. 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. Aut. Age, thou hast lost thy labour. Shep. Why, sir? Aut. The king is not at the palace; he is gone aboard a new ship to purge melancholy, and air himself: For, if thou be'st capable of things serious, thou must know, the king is full of grief. Shep. So 'tis said, sir; about his son, that should have married a shepherd's daughter. Aut. 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. Clo. Think you so, sir? 19 Malone says, perhaps in the first of these speeches we should read, a present, which the old shepherd mistakes for a pheasant. The clown perhaps thought courtiers as corruptible as some justices then were, of whom it is said, 'for half a dozen of chickens they would dispense with a whole dozen of penal statutes.' |