Enter Shepherd, with POLIXENES and CAMILLO, disguised; Clown, MOPSA, DORCAS, and others. Flo. See, your guests approach: Address yourself to entertain them sprightly, And let's be red with mirth. Shep. Fye, daughter! when my old wife liv'd, upon With labour; and the thing, she took to quench it, As your good flock shall prosper. Per. Welcome, sir! [To Pol. It is my father's will, I should take on me The hostessship o'the day:-You're welcome, sir! [To Camillo. Give me those flowers there, Dorcas.-Reverend sirs, For you there's rosemary, and rue; these keep Seeming, and savour, all the winter long: Grace, and remembrance 58, be to you both, Pol. 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 fairest flowers o'the season Are our carnations, and streak'd gillyflowers, Which some call, nature's bastards: of that kind Our rustick garden's barren; and I care not To get slips of them. Pol. Wherefore, gentle maiden, Do you neglect them? Per. For I have heard it said, There is an art, which, in their piedness, shares With great creating nature. Pol. Say, there be; Yet nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean: so, o'er 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. Pol. Then make your garden rich in gillyflowers, And do not call them bastards. Per. I'll not put The dibble in earth to set one slip of them: No more than, were I painted, I would wish fore you; Desire to breed by me.-Here's flowers for Cam. I should leave grazing, were I of your flock, And only live by gazing. You'd be so lean, that blasts of January Would blow you through and through.-Now, my fairest friend, I would, I had some flowers o'the spring, that might That come before the swallow dares, and take |