Page 807 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

CLOWN

Let me see: every ’leven wether tods; every tod yields pound and odd
shilling: fifteen hundred shorn, what comes the wool to?

AUTOLYCUS
(aside)
If the springe hold, the cock’s mine.

CLOWN

I cannot do ’t without counters. Let me see; what [35] am I to buy for our
sheep-shearing feast? Three pound of sugar, five pound of currants, rice −
what will this sister
of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and
she lays it on. She hath made me four-and-twenty nosegays for the shearers,

three-man [40] song-men all, and very good ones; but they are most of them
means and basses but one puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to
hornpipes. I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates, none

− that’s out of my note; nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but [45]
that I may beg; four pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o’ th’ sun.

AUTOLYCUS
O that ever I was born!
(Grovelling on the ground)

CLOWN
I’ th’ name of me!

AUTOLYCUS
O, help me, help me! pluck but off these rags; [50] and then, death, death!

CLOWN
Alack, poor soul! thou hast need of more rags to lay on thee, rather than

have these off.

AUTOLYCUS
O sir, the loathsomeness of them offends me more than the stripes I have
received, which are mighty [55] ones and millions.