Though I am not naturally honest
Autolycus
Though I am not naturally honest,
I am so sometimes by chance. Let me pocket up my
peddler's excrement.
He removes his false beard.
How now, rustics, whither are you bound?
Shepherd
To th' palace, an it like your Worship.
Autolycus
Your affairs there? What, with whom, the
condition of that fardel, the place of your dwelling,
your names, your ages, of what having, breeding,
and anything that is fitting to be known, discover!
Shepherd's Son
We are but plain fellows, sir.
Autolycus
A lie; you are rough and hairy. Let me have
no lying. It becomes none but tradesmen, and they
often give us soldiers the lie, but we pay them for it
with stamped coin, not stabbing steel; therefore
they do not give us the lie.
Shepherd's Son
Your Worship had like to have given
us one, if you had not taken yourself with the
manner.
Shepherd
Are you a courtier, an ‘t like you, sir?
Autolycus
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? Receives not thy nose court odor from me?
Reflect I not on thy baseness court contempt?
Think'st thou, for that I insinuate and toze from
thee thy business, I am therefore no courtier? I am
courtier cap-a-pie; and one that will either push on
or pluck back thy business there. Whereupon I
command thee to open thy affair.
Shepherd
My business, sir, is to the King.
Autolycus
What advocate hast thou to him?
Shepherd
I know not, an ‘t like you.
Shepherd's Son, aside to Shepherd
Advocate's the
court word for a pheasant. Say you have none.
Shepherd, to Autolycus
None, sir. I have no pheasant,
cock nor hen.
Autolycus
How blest are we that are not simple men!
Yet Nature might have made me as these are.
Therefore I will not disdain.
Shepherd's Son, to Shepherd
This cannot be but a
great courtier.
Shepherd
His garments are rich, but he wears them
not handsomely.
Shepherd's Son
He seems to be the more noble in
being fantastical. A great man, I'll warrant. I know
by the picking on ‘s teeth.
Autolycus
The fardel there. What's i' th' fardel?
Wherefore that box?
Shepherd
Sir, there lies such secrets in this fardel and
box which none must know but the King, and
which he shall know within this hour if I may come
to th' speech of him.