"No more than were I painted I would wish
This youth should say 'twere well, and only therefore
Desire to breed by me."
Nowhere is Shakespeare's knowledge of nature more charmingly displayed than in her speeches. It is not only the poetic expression that is so wonderful in Perdita's distribution of flowers; it is the intimacy shown with their habits. She says (Act iv. sc. 3):
"Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun
And with him rises weeping."
How well she knows that in England the daffodils bloom as early as February and March, while the swallow does not come till April:
"——O Proserpina,
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou lett'st fall
From Dis's waggon! 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 Phœbus 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! Oh, these I lack
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
To strew him o'er and o'er!
Florizel. 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." ...
Florizel's answer describes her with a lover's eloquence:
"What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I'd have you do it ever: when you sing
I'd have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so, and, for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too."...
Her charm is equalled by her pride and resolution. When the king threatens to have her "beauty scratched with briars" if she dares retain her hold upon his son, although she believes all is lost, she says:
"I was not much afraid; for once or twice
I was about to speak and tell him plainly,
The self-same sun that shines upon his court
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
Looks on alike." ...
The delineation of the love between Florizel and Perdita is marked by certain features not to be found in Shakespeare's youthful works, but which reappear with Ferdinand and Miranda in The Tempest. There is a certain remoteness from the world about it, a tenderness for those who are still yearning and hoping for happiness and a renunciation of any expectation as far as himself is concerned. He stands outside and beyond it all now. In the old days the poet stood on a level, as it were, with the love he was portraying; now he looks upon it from above with a fatherly eye.