The Winter's Tale: Act 4

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.

What of her ensues
I list not prophesy; but let Time’s news
Be known when ’tis brought forth.

Of this allow,
If ever you have spent time worse ere now.
If never, yet that Time himself doth say
He wishes earnestly you never may.

I pray thee, good Camillo, be no more importunate.

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.

I have considered so much, Camillo, and with some care, so far that I have eyes under my service which look upon his removedness, from whom I have this intelligence: that he is seldom from the house of a most homely shepherd, a man, they say, that from very nothing, and beyond the imagination of his neighbors, is grown into an unspeakable estate.

When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh, the doxy over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year,
For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.

Then he compassed a motion of the Prodigal Son, and married a tinker’s wife within a mile where my land and living lies, and, having flown over many knavish professions, he settled only in rogue.

Sir, my gracious lord,
To chide at your extremes it not becomes me;
O, pardon that I name them!

But that our feasts
In every mess have folly, and the feeders
Digest it with a custom, I should blush
To see you so attired, swoon, I think,
To show myself a glass.

Apprehend
Nothing but jollity.

Lift up your countenance as it were the day
Of celebration of that nuptial which
We two have sworn shall come.

O Lady Fortune,
Stand you auspicious!

Of that kind
Our rustic garden’s barren, and I care not
To get slips of them.

For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.

Pray, good shepherd, what fair swain is this
Which dances with your daughter?

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.

He hath songs for man or woman, of all sizes. No milliner can so fit his customers with gloves.

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

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

DORCAS: Me too. Let me go thither.
MOPSA: Or thou goest to th’ grange or mill.
DORCAS: If to either, thou dost ill.

They call themselves saultiers, and they have a dance which the wenches say is a gallimaufry of gambols, because they are not in ’t, but they themselves are o’ th’ mind, if it be not too rough for some that know little but bowling, it will please plentifully.

They call themselves saultiers, and they have a dance which the wenches say is a gallimaufry of gambols, because they are not in ’t, but they themselves are o’ th’ mind, if it be not too rough for some that know little but bowling, it will please plentifully.

I would not prize them
Without her love; for her employ them all,
Commend them and condemn them to her service
Or to their own perdition.

Is he not stupid
With age and alt’ring rheums?

Reason my son
Should choose himself a wife, but as good reason
The father, all whose joy is nothing else
But fair posterity, should hold some counsel
In such a business.

Camillo,
Not for Bohemia nor the pomp that may
Be thereat gleaned, for all the sun sees or
The close earth wombs or the profound seas hides
In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath
To this my fair beloved.

On mine honor,
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

I have sold all my trumpery.

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.

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.

Take your sweetheart’s hat
And pluck it o’er your brows, muffle your face,
Dismantle you, and, as you can, disliken
The truth of your own seeming, that you may—
For I do fear eyes over—to shipboard
Get undescried.

O Perdita, what have we twain forgot?

To have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand is necessary for a cutpurse; a good nose is requisite also, to smell out work for th’ other senses.

Sure the gods do this year connive at us, and we may do anything extempore. The Prince himself is about a piece of iniquity, stealing away from his father with his clog at his heels.

Sure the gods do this year connive at us, and we may do anything extempore. The Prince himself is about a piece of iniquity, stealing away from his father with his clog at his heels.

The Prince himself is about a piece of iniquity, stealing away from his father with his clog at his heels.

Whether it like me or no, I am a courtier. Seest thou not the air of the court in these enfoldings? Hath not my gait in it the measure of the court?

Think’st thou, for that I insinuate and toze from thee thy business, I am therefore no courtier?

He has a son, who shall be flayed alive; then ’nointed over with honey, set on the head of a wasps’-nest; then stand till he be three-quarters and a dram dead, then recovered again with aqua vitae 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.