Dothe venture life, with fardle on his backe,
That if he scape, the same in steede maye stande.
Thus, hope of life, and loue vnto his goods,
Houldes vp his chinne, with burthen in the floods.”
In the Winter’s Tale, the word “fardel” occurs several times; we will, however, take a familiar quotation from Hamlet (act iii. sc. 1, l. 76, vol. viii. p. 80),—
“Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,