ing, breeding, and anything that is fitting to be known?
discover.

CLOWN.
We are but plain fellows, sir.

AUTOLYCUS.
A lie: you are rough and hairy. Let me have no lying; it becomes
none but tradesmen, and they often give us soldiers the lie:
but we pay them for it with stamped coin, not stabbing steel;
therefore they do not give us the lie.

CLOWN.
Your worship had like to have given us one, if you had not taken
yourself with the manner.

SHEPHERD.
Are you a courtier, an't like you, sir?

AUTOLYCUS.
Whether it like me or no, I am a courtier. Seest thou not the
air of the court in these enfoldings? hath not my gait in it the
measure of the court? receives not thy nose court-odour from me?
reflect I not on thy baseness court-contempt? Think'st thou, for
that I insinuate, or toaze from thee thy business, I am therefore
no courtier? I am courtier cap-a-pie, and one that will either
push on or pluck back thy business there: whereupon I command
thee to open thy affair.

SHEPHERD.
My business, sir, is to the king.

AUTOLYCUS.
What advocate hast thou to him?

SHEPHERD.
I know not, an't like you.

CLOWN.
Advocate's the court-word for a pheasant; say you have none.

SHEPHERD.
None, sir; I have no pheasant, cock nor hen.

AUTOLYCUS.
How bless'd are we that are not simple men!
Yet nature might have made me as these are,
Therefore I will not disdain.

CLOWN.
This cannot be but a great courtier.

SHEPHERD.
His garments are rich, but he wears them not handsomely.

CLOWN.
He seems to be the more noble in being fantastical: a great man,
I'll warrant; I know by the picking on's teeth.

AUTOLYCUS.
The fardel there? what's i' the fardel? Wherefore that box?

SHEPHERD.
Sir, there lies such secrets in this fardel and box which none
must know but the king; and which he shall know within this
hour, if I may come to the speech of him.

AUTOLYCUS.
Age, thou hast lost thy labour.

SHEPHERD.
Why, sir?

AUTOLYCUS.
The king is not at the palace; he is gone aboard a new ship to
purge melancholy and air himself: for, if thou beest capable of
things serious, thou must know the king is full of grief.

SHEPHERD.
So 'tis said, sir,--about his son, that should have married a
shepherd's daughter.

AUTOLYCUS.
If that shepherd be not in hand-fast, let him fly: the curses he
shall have, the tortures he shall feel, will break the back of
man, the heart of monster.

CLOWN.
Think you so, sir?

AUTOLYCUS.
Not