SERVANT.
One three of them, by their own report, sir, hath danced before the king; and not the worst of the three but jumps twelve foot and a half by th’ square.
SHEPHERD.
Leave your prating: since these good men are pleased, let them come in; but quickly now.
SERVANT.
Why, they stay at door, sir.
[Exit.]
Enter Twelve Rustics, habited like Satyrs. They dance, and then exeunt.
POLIXENES.
O, father, you’ll know more of that hereafter.
[To Camillo.] Is it not too far gone? ’Tis time to part them.
He’s simple and tells much. [To Florizel.] How now, fair shepherd!
Your heart is full of something that does take
Your mind from feasting. Sooth, when I was young
And handed love, as you do, I was wont
To load my she with knacks: I would have ransack’d
The pedlar’s silken treasury and have pour’d it
To her acceptance. You have let him go,
And nothing marted with him. If your lass
Interpretation should abuse, and call this
Your lack of love or bounty, you were straited
For a reply, at least if you make a care
Of happy holding her.
FLORIZEL.
Old sir, I know
She prizes not such trifles as these are:
The gifts she looks from me are pack’d and lock’d
Up in my heart, which I have given already,
But not deliver’d. O, hear me breathe my life
Before this ancient sir, who, it should seem,
Hath sometime lov’d. I take thy hand! this hand,
As soft as dove’s down and as white as it,
Or Ethiopian’s tooth, or the fann’d snow that’s bolted
By th’ northern blasts twice o’er.
POLIXENES.
What follows this?
How prettily the young swain seems to wash
The hand was fair before! I have put you out.
But to your protestation. Let me hear
What you profess.
FLORIZEL.
Do, and be witness to ’t.
POLIXENES.
And this my neighbour, too?