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There lie; and there thy character: there these;

[Laying down a bundle.
Which may, if fortune please, both breed thee pretty,
And still rest thine.-The storm begins :-Poor wretch,
That, for thy mother's fault, art thus expos'd
To loss, and what may follow!-Weep I cannot,
But my heart bleeds: and most accurs'd am I,
To be by oath enjoin'd to this.—Farewell!

The day frowns more and more-thou 'rt like to have
A lullaby too rough: I never saw

The heavens so dim by day. A savage clamour!—
Well may I get aboard!-This is the chace;

I am gone

for ever.

[Exit, pursued by a Bear.

Enter an old Shepherd.

Shep. I would there was no age between ten and threeand-twenty; or that youth would sleep out the rest for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.—Hark you now!-Would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather? They have scared away two of my best sheep; which, I fear, the wolf will sooner find than the master; if anywhere I have them, 't is by the sea-side, browzing of ivy. Good luck, an 't be thy will! what have we here? [Taking up the Child.] Mercy on 's, a barne; a very pretty barne! A boy, or a child,© I wonder? A pretty one; a very pretty one: Sure, some scape: though I am not bookish, yet I can read waiting-gentlewoman in the scape. This has been some stair-work,

а

b

Character-description-the writing which describes thee.

b Barne-the Scotch bairn'; a child baren, or born.

A child. Steevens says that he is told "that, in some of our inland counties, a female infant, in contradistinction to a male one, is still termed among the peasantry —a child." This use of the word was clearly the meaning of Shakspere; but in none of the provincial glossaries can we find any authority for such an application. On the contrary, in all the ancient writers childe means a boy, a young man, and generally in some association with chivalry. Byron, in his preface to Childe Harold,' says,—" It is almost superfluous to mention that the appellation ‘Childe,' as 'Childe Waters,' 'Childe Childers,' &c., is used as more consonant with the old structure of versification which I have adopted." Nares observes upon the passage before us that the expression child" may perhaps be rather referred to the simplicity of the shepherd, reversing the common practice, than taken as an authority for it."

some trunk-work, some behind-door-work: they were warmer that got this than the poor thing is here. I'll take it up

for pity: yet I'll tarry till my son come; he hollaed but Whoa, họ hoa!

even now.

Enter Clown.

Clo. Hilloa, loa!

Shep. What, art so near? If thou 'lt see a thing to talk on when thou art dead and rotten, come hither. What ailest thou, man?

Clo. I have seen two such sights, by sea, and by land ;— but I am not to say, it is a sea, for it is now the sky; betwixt the firmament and it you cannot thrust a bodkin's point.

Shep. Why, boy, how is it?

Clo. I would you did but see how it chafes, how it rages, how it takes up the shore! but that 's not to the point! O, the most piteous cry of the poor souls! sometimes to see 'em, and not to see 'em: now the ship boring the moon with her main-mast; and anon swallowed with yest and froth, as you 'd thrust a cork into a hogshead. And then for the land-service,-To see how the bear tore out his shoulderbone; how he cried to me for help, and said his name was Antigonus, a nobleman :-But to make an end of the ship:to see how the sea flap-dragoned it:a-but, first, how the poor souls roared, and the sea mocked them; and how the poor gentleman roared, and the bear mocked him, both roaring louder than the sea, or weather.

Shep. Name of mercy, when was this, boy?

Clo. Now, now; I have not winked since I saw these sights: the men are not yet cold under water, nor the bear half dined on the gentleman; he 's at it now.

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Shep. Would I had been by, to have helped the old man!

Flap-dragoned it. In 'Love's Labour's Lost' we have,-" Thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon." This was some inflammable substance floating on a goblet, to be gulped down in the wildness of the toper's revels. Falstaff says of Prince Henry that he "drinks off candle-ends for flap-dragons." The practice, however, was not always safe, if we may judge from the assertion of the captain in Rowley's 'Match at Midnight,' who says that his "corporal was lately choked at Delf by swallowing a flap-dragon."

Clo. I would you had been by the ship side, to have helped her; there your charity would have lacked footing.

Shep. Heavy matters! heavy matters! but look thee here, boy. Now bless thyself; thou mett'st with things dying, I with things new born. Here's a sight for thee; look thee, a bearing clotha for a squire's child! look thee here! take up, take up, boy; open 't. So, let's see. It was told me, I should be rich by the fairies; this is some changeling: open 't: What 's within, boy?

Clo. You 're a made old man; if the sins of your youth are forgiven you, you 're well to live. Gold! all gold!

Shep. This is fairy gold, boy, and 't will prove so: up with it, keep it close; home, home, the next way. We are lucky, boy, and to be so still requires nothing but secrecy.— Let my sheep go:-Come, good boy, the next way home.

Clo. Go you the next way with your findings; I'll go see if the bear be gone from the gentleman, and how much he hath eaten they are never curst, but when they are hungry if there be any of him left, I'll bury it.

d

Shep. That's a good deed: If thou mayst discern, by that which is left of him, what he is, fetch me to the sight of him.

Clo. Marry, will I; and you shall help to put him i̇' the ground.

Shep. 'T is a lucky day, boy; and we 'll do good deeds on 't. [Exeunt.

a

Bearing-cloth. Percy explains this as "the fine mantle or cloth with which a child is usually covered when it is carried to the church to be baptized."

b Changeling-a child changed. The allusion is here to the superstition that children were sometimes changed by fairies. So in A Midsummer Night's Dream,'

"A lovely boy, stol'n from an Indian king;

She never had so sweet a changeling."

Made. In the original, mad. The correction is by Theobald. d Curst-mischievous.

ACT IV.

Enter Time, as Chorus.

Time. I, that please some, try all,—both joy and terror
Of good and bad, that make, and unfold error,-
Now take upon me, in the name of Time,
To use my wings. Impute it not a crime
To me, or my swift passage, that I slide
O'er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried
Of that wide gap; since it is in my power
To o'erthrow law, and in one self-born hour
To plant and o'erwhelm custom: Let me pass
The same I am, ere ancient'st order was,
Or what is now receiv'd: I witness to

The times that brought them in: so shall I do
To the freshest things now reigning; and make stale
The glistering of this present, as my tale

Now seems to it. Your patience this allowing,

I turn my glass; and give my scene such growing
As you had slept between. Leontes leaving
The effects of his fond jealousies; so grieving,
That he shuts up himself; imagine me,
Gentle spectators, that I now may be

In fair Bohemia; and remember well,

I mentioned a son o' the king's, which Florizel
I now name to you; and with speed so pace
To speak of Perdita, now grown in grace
Equal with wondering: What of her ensues

I list not prophesy; but let Time's news

Be known when 't is brought forth :-a shepherd's daughter, And what to her adheres, which follows after,

Is the argument of time: Of this allow,a

If ever you

have spent time worse ere now;

Allow-approve.

VOL. IV.

F

If never yet, that Time himself doth say,
He wishes earnestly you never may.

[Exit.

SCENE I.-Bohemia. A Room in the Palace of Polixenes.

Enter POLIXENES and CAMILLO.

Pol. I pray thee, good Camillo, be no more importunate: 't is a sickness denying thee anything; a death to grant this.

Cam. It is fifteen years since I saw my country. Though I have, for the most part, been aired abroad, I desire to lay my bones there. Besides, the penitent king, my master, hath sent for me: to whose feeling sorrows I might be some allay, or I o'erween to think so; which is another spur to my departure.

Pol. As thou lovest me, Camillo, wipe not out the rest of thy services, by leaving me now: the need I have of thee thine own goodness hath made; better not to have had thee than thus to want thee: thou, having made me businesses which none without thee can sufficiently manage, must either stay to execute them thyself, or take away with thee the very services thou hast done: which if I have not enough considered, (as too much I cannot,) to be more thankful to thee shall be my study; and my profit therein, the heaping friendships. Of that fatal country, Sicilia, prithee speak no more: whose very naming punishes me with the remembrance of that penitent, as thou callest him, and reconciled king, my brother; whose loss of his most precious queen and children are even now to be afresh lamented. Say to me, when sawest thou the prince Florizel my son? Kings are no less unhappy, their issue not being gracious, than they are in losing them when they have approved their virtues.

Cam. Sir, it is three days since I saw the prince: What his happier affairs may be are to me unknown: but I have, missingly, noted he is of late much retired from court; and

a Missingly. Steevens explains this," I have observed him at intervals." But is it not rather-missing him, I have noted he is of late much retired from court?

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