shearers prove sheep, let me be unrolled 18, and my name put in the book of virtue! Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, Your sad tires in a mile-a. [Exit. SCENE III. The same. A Shepherd's Cottage. Enter FLORIZEL and PERDITA. Flo. These your unusual weeds to each part of you Do give a life: no shepherdess, but Flora, Peering in April's front. This your sheep-shearing Is as a meeting of the petty gods, And you the queen on't. Sir, my gracious lord, Per. To chide at your extremes 1, it not becomes me; O, pardon, that I name them: your high self, The gracious mark o' the land, you have obscur'd With a swain's wearing; and me, poor lowly maid, Most goddesslike prank'd up: 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; sworn, I think, To show myself a glass3, 18 i. e. dismissed from the society of rogues. 19 To hent the stile is to take the stile. It comes from the Saxon hentan. i. e. the extravagance of his conduct in disguising himself in shepherd's clothes, while he pranked her up most goddesslike. 2 The gracious mark of the land is the object of all men's notice and expectation. 3 To show myself a glass.' She probably means,, that the prince, by the rustic habit he wears, seems as if he had sworn to show her as in a glass how she ought to be dressed, instead of being so goddesslike prank'd up. And were it not for the licence and folly which custom had made familiar at such feasts, as that of sheep-sheering, when mimetic sports were allowable, she should blush to see him so attired. To me, the difference forges dread; your greatness Flo. Per. O but, dear sir, Your resolution cannot hold, when 'tis Oppos'd, as it must be, by the power o'the king: One of these two must be necessities, Which then will speak; that you must change this purpose, Or I my life. 4 Meaning the difference between his rank and hers. 5 Vilely bound up.' This was a metaphor natural enough to a writer, though not exactly suitable in the mouth of Perdita. Shakspeare has repeated it more than once in Romeo and Juliet. 6 This speech is almost literally taken from the novel. 7 Dear is wanting in the oldest copy. With these forc'd thoughts, I pr'ythee, darken not Mine own, nor any thing to any, if I be not thine: to this I am most constant, We two have sworn shall come. Per. O lady fortune, Stand you auspicious! Enter Shepherd, with POLIXENES and CAMILLO, disguised; Clown, MOPSA, DORCAS, and others. Flo. See, your guests approach: Address yourself to entertain them sprightly, And let's be red with mirth. Shep. Fye, daughter! when my old wife liv'd, upon This day, she was both pantler, butler, cook; Both dame and servant: welcom'd all; serv'd all: Would sing her song, and dance her turn: now here, At upper end o'the table, now i' the middle; On his shoulder, and his: her face o' fire With labour; and the thing, she took to quench it, A H And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing, Per. It is my Welcome, sir! [To POL. father's will, I should take on me The hostesship o' the day:-You're welcome, sir! Give me those flowers there, Dorcas.-Reverend [To CAMILLO. and rue; these keep sirs, For there's you rosemary, Seeming, and savour9, all the winter long: Grace, and remembrance, be to you both, And welcome to our shearing! Pol. (A fair one are you), well you With flowers of winter. Per. Shepherdess, fit our ages Sir, the year growing ancient,Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth Of trembling winter,—the fairest flowers o' the season Are our carnations, and streak'd gilliflowers, Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind Our rustick garden's barren; and I care not To get slips of them. Pol. Do you neglect them? 11 Wherefore, gentle maiden, Per. For 10 I have heard it said, There is an art11, which, in their piedness, shares With great creating nature. 9 i. e. appearance and smell. Rue, being used in exorcisms, was called herb of grace, and rosemary was supposed to strengthen the memory, it is prescribed for that purpose in the ancient herbals. Ophelia distributes the same plants with the same attributes. 10 For again in the sense of cause. 11 Surely there is no reference here to the impracticable pretence of producing flowers by art to rival those of nature, as Steevens supposed. The allusion is to the common practice of producing by art particular varieties of colours on flowers, especially on carnations. Pol. Say, there be; Yet nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art, That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race; This is an art Which does mend nature,-change it rather: but The art itself is nature. Pol. Then make your garden rich in gilliflowers 12, And do not call them bastards. Per. I'll not put The dibble in earth to set one slip of them: 12 In the folio edition it is spelt Gillyvors. Gelofer or gillofer was the old name for the whole class of carnations, pinks, and sweetwilliams; from the French girofle. There were also stockgelofers, and wall-gelofers. The variegated gilliflowers or carnations, being considered as a produce of art, were properly called nature's bastards, and being streaked white and red, Perdita considers them a proper emblem of a painted or immodest woman; and therefore declines to meddle with them. She connects the gardener's art of varying the colours of these flowers with the art of painting the face, a fashion very prevalent in Shakspeare's time. This is Mr. Douce's very ingenious solution of this riddle, which had embarrassed Mr. Steevens. 13Some call it sponsus solis, the spowse of the sunne, because it sleeps and is awakened with him.'-Lupton's Notable Things, book vi. |