Page 845 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

melancholy and air himself: for, if thou bee’st capable of things serious, thou
must know the king is full of grief.

SHEPHERD
So ’tis said, sir; about his son, that should have [755] married a shepherd’s
daughter.

AUTOLYCUS
If that shepherd be not in hand-fast, let him fly: the curses he shall have, the

tortures he shall feel, will break the back of man, the heart of monster.

CLOWN
Think you so, sir? [760]

AUTOLYCUS
Not he alone shall suffer what wit can make heavy and vengeance bitter; but
those that are germane to him, though removed fifty times, shall all come
under the hangman: which, though it be great pity, yet it is necessary. An old

sheep-whistling rogue, a ram-tender, to [765] offer to have his daughter
come into grace! Some say he shall be stoned; but that death is too soft for
him, say I. Draw our throne into a sheepcote! All deaths are too few, the
sharpest too easy.

CLOWN
Has the old man e’er a son, sir, do you hear, and ’t [770] like you, sir?

AUTOLYCUS
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; [775]
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. But what talk we of
these traitorly rascals, whose miseries are to be smiled [780] at, their
offences being so capital? Tell me (for you seem to be honest plain men)

what you have to the king: being something gently considered, I’ll bring you
where he is aboard, tender your persons to his presence, whisper him in your