Sir, welcome. It is my father’s will
Perdita, to Polixenes
It is my father’s will I should take on me
The hostess-ship o’ th’ day. To Camillo. You’re welcome, sir.—
Give me those flowers there, Dorcas.—Reverend sirs,
For you there’s rosemary and rue. These keep
Seeming and savor all the winter long.
Grace and remembrance be to you both,
And welcome to our shearing.
It is my father’s will I should take on me
The hostess-ship o’ th’ day. To Camillo. You’re welcome, sir.—
Give me those flowers there, Dorcas.—Reverend sirs,
For you there’s rosemary and rue. These keep
Seeming and savor all the winter long.
Grace and remembrance be to you both,
And welcome to our shearing.
Here’s flowers for you:
Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram,
The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ th’ sun
And with him rises weeping.
Polixenes
Shepherdess—
A fair one are you—well you fit our ages
With flowers of winter.
Perdita
Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer’s death nor on the birth
Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o’ th’ season
Are our carnations and streaked gillyvors,
Which some call nature’s bastards. Of that kind
Our rustic garden’s barren, and I care not
To get slips of them.
Polixenes
Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?
Perdita
For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.
Polixenes
Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean
But nature makes that mean. So, over that art
Which you say adds to nature is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock,
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.
Perdita
So it is.
Polixenes
Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards.
Perdita
I’ll not put
The dibble in earth to set one slip of them,
No more than, were I painted, I would wish
This youth should say ’twere well, and only therefore
Desire to breed by me. Here’s flowers for you:
Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram,
The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ th’ sun
And with him rises weeping. These are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they are given
To men of middle age. You’re very welcome.
Camillo
I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,
And only live by gazing.
Perdita
Out, alas!
You’d be so lean that blasts of January
Would blow you through and through.
(To Florizell) Now, my fair’st friend,
I would I had some flowers o’ th’ spring, that might
Become your time of day,
(to the Shepherdesses) and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing. O Proserpina,
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let’st fall
From Dis’s wagon! Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength—a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one—O, these I lack
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
To strew him o’er and o’er.
Florizell
What, like a corse?
Perdita
No, like a bank for love to lie and play on,
Not like a corse; or if, not to be buried,
But quick and in mine arms. Come, take your flowers.
Methinks I play as I have seen them do
In Whitsun pastorals. Sure this robe of mine
Does change my disposition.
Shepherdess—
A fair one are you—well you fit our ages
With flowers of winter.
Perdita
Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer’s death nor on the birth
Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o’ th’ season
Are our carnations and streaked gillyvors,
Which some call nature’s bastards. Of that kind
Our rustic garden’s barren, and I care not
To get slips of them.
Polixenes
Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?
Perdita
For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.
Polixenes
Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean
But nature makes that mean. So, over that art
Which you say adds to nature is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock,
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.
Perdita
So it is.
Polixenes
Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards.
Perdita
I’ll not put
The dibble in earth to set one slip of them,
No more than, were I painted, I would wish
This youth should say ’twere well, and only therefore
Desire to breed by me. Here’s flowers for you:
Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram,
The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ th’ sun
And with him rises weeping. These are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they are given
To men of middle age. You’re very welcome.
Camillo
I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,
And only live by gazing.
Perdita
Out, alas!
You’d be so lean that blasts of January
Would blow you through and through.
(To Florizell) Now, my fair’st friend,
I would I had some flowers o’ th’ spring, that might
Become your time of day,
(to the Shepherdesses) and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing. O Proserpina,
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let’st fall
From Dis’s wagon! Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength—a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one—O, these I lack
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
To strew him o’er and o’er.
Florizell
What, like a corse?
Perdita
No, like a bank for love to lie and play on,
Not like a corse; or if, not to be buried,
But quick and in mine arms. Come, take your flowers.
Methinks I play as I have seen them do
In Whitsun pastorals. Sure this robe of mine
Does change my disposition.