With these forced thoughts, I pr'ythee, darken not
The mirth o' the feast or I'll be thine, my fair,
Or not my father's; for I cannot be

Mine own, nor any thing to any, if

I be not thine: to this I am most constant,
Though destiny say no. Be merry, gentle;
Strangle such thoughts as these with any thing
That you behold the while. Your guests are coming:
Lift up your countenance, as it were the day

Of celebration of that nuptial which

We two have sworn shall come.

Per.

Stand you auspicious!

Flo.

O Lady Fortune,

See, your guests approach:

Address yourself to entertain them sprightly,

And let's be red with mirth.

Enter the Shepherd, with POLIXENES and CAMILLO disguised; the Clown, MOPSA, DORCAS, and other Shepherds and Shepherdesses.

Shep. Fie, daughter! when my old wife lived, upon
This day she was both pantler, butler, cook;

Both dame and servant; welcomed all, served 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,
She would to each one sip. You are retired,
As if you were a feasted one, and not
The hostess of the meeting: pray you, bid
These unknown friends to's welcome ;

for it is

6 "These friends unknown to us," is the meaning.

A way to make us better friends, more known.
Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself
That which you are, mistress o' the feast: come on,
And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing,

As your good flock shall prosper.

Per. [To POLIX.]

Welcome, sir :

It is my father's will I should take on me

The hostess-ship o' the day. — [To CAM.] You're welcome,

sir.

Give me those flowers there, Dorcas. Reverend sirs,

there's rosemary

and rue; these keep

For you
Seeming and savour all the Winter long :
Grace and remembrance be to you both,7
And welcome to our shearing!

Polix.

Shepherdess,

A fair one are you, - well you fit our ages

With flowers of Winter.

Per.

Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on Summer's death, nor on the birth

Of trembling Winter, - the fair'st flowers o' the season
Are our carnations, and streak'd gillyvors,8

Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not

To get slips of them.

Polix.

Do you neglect them?

Per.

Wherefore, gentle maiden,

For I have heard it said,

There is an art which, in their piedness, shares

7 These plants were probably held as emblematic of grace and remembrance, because they keep their beauty and fragrance "all the winter long." 8 Spelt gillyvors in the original, and probably so pronounced at the time. Dyce thinks it should be retained as "an old form of the word." Douce says, " Gelofer, or gillofer was the old name for the whole class of carnations, pinks, and sweetwilliams; from the French girofle."

9 For was often used where we should use because.

With great creating Nature. 10

Polix.

Say there be;

Yet Nature is made better by no mean,

But Nature makes that mean: so, even 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.11

Polix. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors, And do not call them bastards.

Per.

I'll not put

The dibble in earth to set one slip of them ; 12

No more than, were I painted, I would wish

This youth should say, 'twere well, and only therefore

10 It would seem that variegated gilliflowers were produced by crossbreeding of two or more varieties; as variegated ears of corn often grow from several sorts of corn being planted .ogether. The gardener's art whereby this was done might properly be said to share with creating Nature, Douce says that "Perdita connects the gardener's art of varying the colours of these flowers with the art of painting the face, a fashion very prevalent in Shakespeare's time."

11 This identity of Nature and Art is thus affirmed by Sir Thomas Browne: "Nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they both being the servants of the Providence of God. Art is the perfection of nature: were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God."

12 Perdita is too guileless to take the force of Polixenes' reasoning; she therefore assents to it, yet goes on to act as though there were nothing in it: her assent, indeed, is merely to get rid of the perplexity it causes her; for it clashes with and disturbs her moral feelings and associations.- Dibble was the name of an instrument for making holes in the ground to plant seeds or to set plants in.

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: 13 these are flowers
Of middle Summer, and, I think, they're given
To men of middle age. Ye're very welcome.

Cam. I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,
And only live by gazing.

Per.

Out, alas !

You'd be so lean, that blasts of January

Would blow you through and through. — Now, my fair'st friend,

I would I had some flowers o' the Spring that might
Become your time of day ;- and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenhoods growing:-O Proserpina,
For th' flowers now, that, frighted, thou lett'st fall
From Dis's wagon ! 14 golden daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take 15
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes

13 The marigold here meant is the sun-flower. Thus spoken of in Lupton's Notable Things: "Some call it Sponsus Solis, the Spowse of the Sunne, because it sleeps and is awakened with him.”

In

14 "From Dis's wagon" means at the coming of Dis's wagon. Shakespeare's time wagon was often used where we should use chariot; its application not being confined to the coarse common vehicle now called by that name. So in Mercutio's description of Queen Mab: "Her wagoner, a small gray-coated gnat"; where later usage would require charioteer. The story how, at the approach of Dis in his chariot, Proserpine, affrighted, let fall from her lap the flowers she had gathered, is told in the fifth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses; familiar to the Poet, no doubt, in Golding's translation, 1587.

15 To take here means to captivate, to entrance, or ravish with delight. We have a similar thought in Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 2: “Purple the sails, and so perfumed that the winds were love-sick with them."

Or Cytherea's breath; 16 pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips 17 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 !

not to be buried,

your

flowers:

Flo.
What, like a corse?
Per. No, like a bank for love to lie and play on;
Not like a corse; or if,
But quick,18 and in mine arms. — Come, take
Methinks I play as I have seen them do
In Whitsun pastorals: sure, this robe of mine
Does change my disposition.

Flo.

Still betters what is done.19

What you do

When you speak, sweet,

16 "The beauties of Greece and some Asiatic nations tinged their eyelids of an obscure violet colour by means of some unguent, which was doubtless perfumed like those for the hair, &c., mentioned by Athenæus. Of the beauty and propriety of the epithet violets dim, and the transition at once to the lids of Juno's eyes and Cytherea's breath, no reader of taste and feeling need be reminded." Such is the common explanation of the passage. But I suspect the sweetness of Juno's eyelids, as Shakespeare conceived them, was in the look, not in the odour. Much the same sweetness is ascribed to the sleeping Imogen's eyelids, in Cymbeline, ii. 2: “These windows-white and azure-laced with blue of heaven's own tinct."— Probably violets are called dim, because their colour is soft and tender, not bold and striking. Or the epithet may have reference to the shyness of that flower; as in Wordsworth's well-known lines, "A violet by a mossy stone, half hidden from the eye."

17 The epithet bold in this place is justified by Steevens, on the ground that "the oxlip has not a weak flexible stalk like the cowslip, but erects itself boldly in the face of the Sun. Wallis, in his History of Northumberland, says that the great oxlip grows a foot and a half high."

18 Quick in its original sense of living or alive, as in the Nicene Creed: "To judge both the quick and dead."

19 Surpasses what is done. So the Poet often uses to better.