Purchase the sight again of dear Sicilia
And that unhappy king, my master, whom
I so much thirst to see.
FLORIZEL Now, good Camillo;
I am so fraught with curious business that
I leave out ceremony.
CAMILLO Sir, I think
You have heard of my poor services, i’ the love
That I have borne your father?
FLORIZEL Very nobly
Have you deserved: it is my father’s music
To speak your deeds, not little of his care
To have them recompensed as thought on.
CAMILLO Well, my lord,
If you may please to think I love the king
And through him what is nearest to him, which is
Your gracious self, embrace but my direction:
If your more ponderous and settled project
May suffer alteration, on mine honour,
I’ll point you where you shall have such receiving
As shall become your highness; where you may
Enjoy your mistress, from the whom, I see,
There’s no disjunction to be made, but by–
As heavens forefend!–your ruin; marry her,
And, with my best endeavours in your absence,
Your discontenting father strive to qualify
And bring him up to liking.
FLORIZEL How, Camillo,
May this, almost a miracle, be done?
That I may call thee something more than man
And after that trust to thee.
CAMILLO Have you thought on
A place whereto you’ll go?
FLORIZEL Not any yet:
But as the unthought-on accident is guilty
To what we wildly do, so we profess
Ourselves to be the slaves of chance and flies
Of every wind that blows.
CAMILLO Then list to me:
This follows, if you will not change your purpose
But undergo this flight, make for Sicilia,
And there present yourself and your fair princess,
For so I see she must be, ‘fore Leontes:
She shall be habited as it becomes
The partner of your bed. Methinks I see
Leontes opening his free arms and weeping
His welcomes forth; asks thee the son forgiveness,
As ’twere i’ the father’s person; kisses the hands
Of your fresh princess; o’er and o’er divides him
‘Twixt his unkindness and his kindness; the one
He chides to hell and bids the other grow
Faster than thought or time.
FLORIZEL Worthy Camillo,
What colour for my visitation shall I
Hold up before him?
CAMILLO Sent by the king your father
To greet him and to give him comforts. Sir,
The manner of your bearing towards him, with
What you as from your father shall deliver,
Things known betwixt us three, I’ll write you down:
The which shall point you forth at every sitting
What you must say; that he shall not perceive
But that you have your father’s bosom there
And speak his very heart.
FLORIZEL I am bound to you:
There is some sap in this.
CAMILLO A cause more promising
Than a wild dedication of yourselves
To unpath’d waters, undream’d shores, most certain
To miseries enough; no hope to help you,
But as you shake off one to take another;
Nothing so certain as your anchors, who
Do their best office, if they can but stay you
Where you’ll be loath to be: besides you know
Prosperity’s the very bond of love,
Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together
Affliction alters.
PERDITA One of these is true:
I think affliction may subdue the cheek,
But not take in the mind.
CAMILLO Yea, say you so?
There shall not at your father’s house these
seven years
Be born another such.
FLORIZEL My good Camillo,
She is as forward of her breeding as
She is i’ the rear our birth.
CAMILLO I cannot say ’tis pity
She lacks instructions, for she seems a mistress
To most that teach.
PERDITA Your pardon, sir; for this
I’ll blush you thanks.
FLORIZEL My prettiest Perdita!
But O, the thorns we stand upon! Camillo,
Preserver of my father, now of me,
The medicine of our house, how shall we do?
We are not furnish’d like Bohemia’s son,
Nor shall appear in Sicilia.
CAMILLO My lord,
Fear none of this: I think you know my fortunes
Do all lie there: it shall be so my care
To have you royally appointed as if
The scene you play were mine. For instance, sir,
That you may know you shall not want, one word.
They talk aside
Re-enter AUTOLYCUS
AUTOLYCUS Ha, ha! what a fool Honesty is! and Trust, his
sworn brother, a very simple gentleman! I have sold
all my trumpery; not a counterfeit stone, not a
ribbon, glass, pomander, brooch, table-book, ballad,
knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet, horn-ring,
to keep my pack from fasting: they throng who
should buy first, as if my trinkets had been
hallowed and brought a benediction to the buyer:
by which means I saw whose purse was best in
picture; and what I saw, to my good use I
remembered. My clown, who wants but something to
be a reasonable man, grew so in love with the
wenches’ song, that he would not stir his pettitoes
till he had both tune and words; which so drew the
rest of the herd to me that all their other senses
stuck in ears: you might have pinched a placket, it
was senseless; ’twas nothing to geld a codpiece of a
purse; I could have filed keys off that hung in
chains: no hearing, no feeling, but my sir’s song,
and admiring the nothing of it. So that in this
time of lethargy I picked and cut most of their
festival purses; and had not the old man come in
with a whoo-bub against his daughter and the king’s
son and scared my choughs from the chaff, I had not
left a purse alive in the whole army.
CAMILLO, FLORIZEL, and PERDITA come forward
CAMILLO Nay, but my letters, by this means being there
So soon as you arrive, shall clear that doubt.
FLORIZEL And those that you’ll procure from King Leontes–
CAMILLO Shall satisfy your father.
PERDITA Happy be you!
All that you speak shows fair.
CAMILLO Who have we here?
Seeing AUTOLYCUS
We’ll make an instrument of this, omit
Nothing may give us aid.
AUTOLYCUS If they have overheard me now, why, hanging.
CAMILLO How now, good fellow! why shakest thou so? Fear
not, man; here’s no harm intended to thee.
AUTOLYCUS I am a poor fellow, sir.
CAMILLO 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 a 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.
AUTOLYCUS I am a poor fellow, sir.
Aside
I know ye well enough.
CAMILLO Nay, prithee, dispatch: the gentleman is half
flayed already.
AUTOLYCUS Are you in earnest, sir?
Aside
I smell the trick on’t.
FLORIZEL Dispatch, I prithee.
AUTOLYCUS Indeed, I have had earnest: but I cannot with
conscience take it.
CAMILLO Unbuckle, unbuckle.
FLORIZEL and AUTOLYCUS exchange garments
Fortunate mistress,–let my prophecy
Come home to ye!–you must retire yourself
Into some covert: take your sweetheart’s hat
And pluck it o’er your brows, muffle your face,
Dismantle you, and, as you can, disliken
The truth of your own seeming; that you may–
For I do fear eyes over–to shipboard
Get undescried.
PERDITA I see the play so lies
That I must bear a part.
CAMILLO No remedy.
Have you done there?
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.
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 review Sicilia, for whose sight
I have a woman’s longing.
FLORIZEL Fortune speed us!
Thus we set on, Camillo, to the 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 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 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: 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: