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THE WINTER'S TALE.

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.

Flo.

How, Camillo,

May this, almost a miracle, be done?

That I may call thee something more than man,
And, after that, trust to thee.

Flo.

Have you thought on

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.

Cam.

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-
she must be,-'fore Leontes:
For So, I see,

She shall be habited, as it becomes

His welcomes forth; asks thee, the son, forgiveness,
As 't were 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.

Flo.

Worthy Camillo,

What colour for my visitation shall I

Hold up before him?

Cam.

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.

Flo.

There is some sap in this.

Cam.

I am bound to you.

A course more promising

Than a wild dedication of yourselves

To unpathed waters, undreamed shores, most cer

tain

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.

Per.

One of these is true:

I think affliction may subdue the cheek,
But not take in the mind.

Cam.

Yea, say you so?

There shall not, at your father's house, these seven

years,

Be born another such.

Flo.

My good Camillo,

She is as forward of her breeding as

She 'si' the rear our birth.

Cam.

I cannot say,

Pity she lacks instructions, for she seems

Mistress to most that teach.

Per.

Your pardon, sir;

My prettiest Perdita !—

For this I'll blush you thanks.

Flo.

+ the thorns we stand upon! - Camillo,

We are not furnished like Bohemia's son,

Nor shall appear so in Sicilia.

Cam.

My lord,

Fear none of this. I think, you know, my for

tunes

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.

Enter AUTOLYCUS.

[They talk aside.

Aut. 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 riband, glass, pomander, brooch, tablebook, 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

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THE WINTER'S TALE.

drew the rest of the herd to me, with all their other senses stuck in ears; you might have pinched a placket, it was senseless; 't was nothing to geld a codpiece of a purse: I would 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 whoobub 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 [CAMILLO, FLORIZEL, and PERDITA come

army.

forward.

Cam. Nay, but my letters, by this means being

there

So soon as you arrive, shall clear that doubt.
Flo. And those that you'll procure from King
Leontes-

Cam. Shall satisfy your father.

Per.

All that you speak shows fair.

Happy be you!

Cam. [Seeing AUTOLYCUS.] Who have we here? We'll make an instrument of this: omit

aid