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 't is 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?

AUT. 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 sheep-cote! all deaths are too few, the sharpest too easy.

CLO. Has the old man e'er a son, sir, do you hear, an 't like you, sir? AUT. 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 flies blown to death. But what talk we of these traitorly rascals, whose miseries are to be smiled at, their offences being so capital? Tell me (for you seem to be honest plain men) what you have to the king: being something gently considered, I'll bring you where he is aboard, tender your persons to his presence, whisper him in your behalfs; and, if it be in man, besides the king, to effect your suits, here is man shall do it.

CLO. He seems to be of great authority: close with him, give him gold; and though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led by the nose with gold: show the inside of your purse to the outside of his hand, and no more ado: Remember, stoned and flayed alive!

SHEP. An 't please you, sir, to undertake the business for us, here is that gold I have: I'll make it as much more; and leave this young man in pawn till I bring it you.

AUT. After I have done what I promised?

SHEP. Ay, sir.

AUT. Well, give me the moiety:-Are you a party in this business?

CLO. In some sort, sir: but though my case be a pitiful one, I hope I shall not be flayed out of it.

AUT. O, that's the case of the shepherd's son :-Hang him, he 'll be made an example.

CLO. Comfort, good comfort: we must to the king, and show our strange sights: he must know, 't is none of your daughter, nor my sister; we are gone else. Sir, I will give you as much as this old man does, when the business is performed; and remain, as he says, your pawn, till it be brought you.

AUT. I will trust you.
I will but look upon the hedge, and follow you.

Walk before toward the sea-side; go on the right hand;

CLO. We are blessed in this man, as I may say, even blessed.
SHEP. Let's before, as he bids us: he was provided to do us good.

[Exeunt Shepherd and Clown. AUT. If I had a mind to be honest, I see fortune would not suffer me; she drops booties in my mouth. I am courted now with a double occasion; gold, and a means to do the prince my master good; which, who knows how that may turn back to my advancement? I will bring these two moles, these blind ones, aboard him if he think it fit to shore them again, and that the complaint they have to the king concerns him nothing, let him call me rogue for being so far officious; for I am proof against that title, and what shame else belongs to 't: To him will I present them; there may be matter in it.

[Exit.

Enter LEONTES, CLEOMENES, DION, PAULINA, and others.

CLEO. Sir, you have done enough, and have perform'd
A saint-like sorrow: no fault could you make
Which you have not redeem'd; indeed, paid down
More penitence, than done trespass: At the last
Do, as the heavens have done; forget your evil;
With them, forgive yourself.

LEON.

Whilst I remember

She I kill'd! I did so: but thou strik'st me

Sorely, to say I did; it is as bitter

Upon thy tongue as in my thought. Now, good now,
Say so but seldom.

CLEO.

Not at all, good lady;

You might have spoken a thousand things that would
Have done the time more benefit, and grac'd

There is none worthy,

Respecting her that 's gone.

Besides, the gods
Will have fulfill'd their secret purposes:

For has not the divine Apollo said,

Is 't not the tenor of his oracle,

That king Leontes shall not have an heir

Till his lost child be found? which, that it shall,

Is all as monstrous to our human reason,

As my Antigonus to break his grave,

And come again to me; who, on my life,

* In Antony and Cleopatra' we have an explanation of the text:

"We use to say, the dead are well."

No more such wives; therefore, no wife: one worse,
And better us'd, would make her sainted spirit
Again possess her corpse; and, on this stage,
(Where we offenders now,) appear", soul-vex'd,
And begin, "Why to me?"

PAUL.

She had just cause b.

LEON.

Had she such power,

She had; and would incense me

Were I the ghost that walk'd, I'd bid you mark
Her eye; and tell me, for what dull part in 't
You chose her: then I'd shriek, that even your ears
Should rift to hear me; and the words that follow'd
Should be," Remember mine!"

LEON.

to

Stars, stars,

And all eyes else dead coals!-fear thou no wife,

a The original reads

(Where we offenders now appear.)

[TO LEONTES.

We have shifted the place of the parenthesis, making "her sainted spirit" the nominative case appear." By this arrangement, "where we offenders now' are must be understood. By any other construction we lose the force of the word "appear," as applied to "sainted spirit." Malone proposed to read,―

Begin' And why to me.'"

Just cause. In the original just such cause. In modern editions such is omitted, following the authority of the third folio.

• Stars, stars. So the original, but diluted by Hanmer into stars, very stars.