For this design. What course I mean to hold

Shall nothing benefit your knowledge, nor

Concern me the reporting.

CAMILLO

O my lord,

I would your spirit were easier for advice,

Or stronger for your need.

FLORIZEL

Hark, Perdita—

(To Camillo) I’ll hear you by and by.

CAMILLO (aside) He’s irremovable,

Resolved for flight. Now were I happy if

His going I could frame to serve my turn,

Save him from danger, do him love and honour,

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’th’ 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’s 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 forfend, 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 th’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 there ‘Son, forgiveness!’

As ‘twere i’th’ father’s person, kisses the hands

Of your fresh princess; o‘er and o’er divides him

‘Twixt his unkindness and his kindness. Th’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 course more promising

Than a wild dedication of yourselves

To unpathed waters, undreamed 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’s as forward of her breeding as

She is i’th’ 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 furnished like Bohemia’s son,

Nor shall appear so 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 speak apart.

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 hubbub 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.