PERDITA

O Doricles,

Your praises are too large. But that your youth

And the true blood which peeps so fairly through’t

Do plainly give you out an unstained shepherd,

With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles,

You wooed 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;

Your hand, my Perdita. So turtles pair,

That never mean to part.

PERDITA

I’ll swear for ’em.

POLIXENES (to Camillo)

This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever

Ran on the greensward. Nothing she does or seems

But smacks of something greater than herself,

Too noble for this place.

CAMILLO

He tells her something

That makes her blood look out. Good sooth, she is

The queen of curds and cream.

CLOWN Come on, strike up!

DORCAS Mopsa must be your mistress. Marry, garlic to mend her kissing with!

MOPSA Now, in good time!

CLOWN Not a word, a word, we stand upon our manners.

Come, strike up!

Music. Here a dance of shepherds and shepherdesses

POLIXENES

Pray, good shepherd, what fair swain is this

Which dances with your daughter?

OLD SHEPHERD

They call him Doricles, and boasts himself

To have a worthy feeding; but I 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 gazed the moon

Upon the water as he’ll stand and read,

As ’twere, my daughter’s eyes; and to be plain,

I think there is not half a kiss to choose

Who loves another best.

POLIXENES

She dances featly.

OLD SHEPHERD

So she does anything, though I report it

That should be silent. If young Doricles

Do light upon her, she shall bring him that

Which he not dreams of.

Enter a Servant

SERVANT O, master, if you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you would never dance again after a tabor and pipe. No, the bagpipe could not move you. He sings several tunes faster than you’ll tell money. He utters them as he had eaten ballads, and all men’s ears grew to his tunes.

CLOWN He could never come better. He shall come in. I love a ballad but even too well, if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed, and sung lamentably.

SERVANT He hath songs for man or woman, of all sizes. No milliner can so fit his customers with gloves. He has the prettiest love songs for maids, so without bawdry, which is strange, with such delicate burdens of dildos and fadings, ‘Jump her, and thump her’; and where some stretch-mouthed rascal would, as it were, mean mischief and break a foul gap into the matter, he makes the maid to answer, ‘Whoop, do me no harm, good man’; puts him off, slights him, with ‘Whoop, do me no harm, good man!’

POLIXENES This is a brave fellow.

CLOWN Believe me, thou talkest of an admirable conceited fellow. Has he any unbraided wares?

SERVANT He hath ribbons of all the colours i‘th’ rainbow; points more than all the lawyers in Bohemia can learnedly handle, though they come to him by th’ gross; inkles, caddises, cambrics, lawns—why, he sings ’em over as they were gods or goddesses. You would think a smock were a she-angel, he so chants to the sleeve-hand and the work about the square on’t.

CLOWN Prithee bring him in, and let him approach singing.

PERDITA Forewarn him that he use no scurrilous words in’s tunes.

Exit Servant

CLOWN You have of these pedlars that have more in them than you’d think, sister.

PERDITA Ay, good brother, or go about to think.

Enter Autolycus, wearing a false beard, carrying his pack, and singing

AUTOLYCUS

Lawn as white as driven snow,

Cypress black as e’er was crow,

Gloves as sweet as damask roses,

Masks for faces, and for noses;

Bugle-bracelet, necklace amber,

Perfume for a lady’s chamber;

Golden coifs, and stomachers

For my lads to give their dears;

Pins and poking-sticks of steel,

What maids lack from head to heel

Come buy of me, come, come buy, come buy,

Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry. Come buy!

CLOWN If I were not in love with Mopsa thou shouldst take no money of me, but being enthralled as I am, it will also be the bondage of certain ribbons and gloves.

MOPSA I was promised them against the feast, but they come not too late now.

DORCAS He hath promised you more than that, or there be liars.

MOPSA He hath paid you all he promised you. Maybe he has paid you more, which will shame you to give him again.

CLOWN Is there no manners left among maids? Will they wear their plackets where they should bear their faces? Is there not milking-time, when you are going to bed, or kiln-hole, to whistle of these secrets, but you must be tittle-tattling before all our guests? ’Tis well they are whispering. Clammer your tongues, and not a word more.

MOPSA I have done. Come, you promised me a tawdry-lace and a pair of sweet gloves.

CLOWN Have I not told thee how I was cozened by the way, and lost all my money?

AUTOLYCUS And indeed, sir, there are cozeners abroad, therefore it behoves men to be wary.

CLOWN Fear not thou, man, thou shalt lose nothing here.

AUTOLYCUS I hope so, sir, for I have about me many parcels of charge.

CLOWN What hast here? Ballads?

MOPSA Pray now, buy some. I love a ballad in print, alife, for then we are sure they are true.

AUTOLYCUS Here’s one to a very doleful tune, how a usurer’s wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, and how she longed to eat adders’ heads and toads carbonadoed.

MOPSA Is it true, think you?

AUTOLYCUS Very true, and but a month old.

DORCAS Bless me from marrying a usurer!

AUTOLYCUS Here’s the midwife’s name to’t, one Mistress Tail-Porter, and five or six honest wives’ that were present. Why should I carry lies abroad?

MOPSA (to Clown) Pray you now, buy it.

CLOWN Come on, lay it by, and let’s first see more ballads. We’ll buy the other things anon.

AUTOLYCUS Here’s another ballad, of a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids. It was thought she was a woman, and was turned into a cold fish for she would not exchange flesh with one that loved her. The ballad is very pitiful, and as true.

DORCAS Is it true too, think you?

AUTOLYCUS Five justices’ hands at it, and witnesses more than my pack will hold.

CLOWN Lay it by, too. Another.