In a too-cheap-to-buy-an-Arden-or-annotated-otherwise-edition, can someone give me the full Straight Dope annotation explanation of this quote?
Is part of this uttered sotto voce? I need this explained like I am a lazy Frosh in 101. I sense obviously that he is like a shady merchant saying something like “I’m going to get your money sucker” but I dont get how this is going down in the text above. Is the sheepe-shearing figurative or he is actually selling to shepherds?
Clown’s left already. Autolycus is just saying to himself, ‘If I can’t con this guy again, it’s time to call it a day as a grifter and take up something honorable.’
Think of it this way: Sheep are soaking up the expenses until they get sheared and their wool starts making their owner some money.
He’s saying he’ll be back when the sheep owner has more money. Ag creditors know you can’t get money before the harvest.
Which play? I figured this out from context and a little knowledge of agricultural economics.
I have the Alexander Text in front of me. The quote goes thus:
In the stage directions, Autolycus has already picked the clown’s pocket at “Softly, dear sir” when he helps him up earlier in the scene.
As far as I can tell he’s saying he’s going to rob the shepherds - by one means or another, perhaps by trickery - at a real sheep shearing competition. If he fails (not sure why failure would cause him to allude to the shearers being sheep, which aren’t renowned for their intelligence) then he can no longer be declared dishonest. No need for sotto voce because the clown has already left.
Don’t know the play to comment further.
ETA: scooped by Inner Stickler. :mad:
A Winter’s Tale.
The Winter’s Tale.
Autolycus says this after the Clown has left the stage, so no one else can hear it. The Clown’s last words before he leaves are, “I must go buy spices for our sheep-shearing.”
I think the point of “Your purse is not hot e-nough to purchase your Spice” is that Autolycus has just picked the Clown’s pocket, so the Clown no longer has any money in his purse. (Autolycus has just been pretending to have been robbed, but has refused an offer of money from the Clown, presumably because he doesn’t want the Clown to find his purse already empty.)
The Clown’s sheep-shearing does involve real sheep, but with Autolycus’ sheep-shearing the Clown will be the one shorn (“the sheerers proue sheepe”). At the start of the scene, Autolycus has made it quite clear that he is a thief and a conman: “My father named me Autolycus; who being, as I am, littered under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. With die and drab I purchased this caparison, and my revenue is the silly cheat.”
Articles are stupid.
Definitely.
The “and the shearers prove sheep” is part of the conditional clause, not the main clause. Let me take a stab at it:
“You have no money left to buy spices. I’ll be at the sheep-shearing, too, and if I don’t manage to cheat the shearers and make them look foolish as sheep, I’ll go straight.”
golf clap
Almost whooshed me until you did that. Nice.
Aha, thank you.
Let me attempt a more literal translation in English of 4 centuries after Shakespeare:
Your purse is not full enough to buy any spices: I’ll be with you at your sheep shearing too. If I can’t build on this cheating to cheat again, and the sheep-shearers do not turn out to be sheep, let me be unrolled, and my name put in the book of virtue."
But there’s a problem with one word there: “unrolled” (or “vnrold” in the First Folio"). OED does not cite this quotation in its entries for “unroll” or “unrolled”, and none of its definitions fit this context. John Payne Collier suggested as an emendation “enrolled”, which seems to me to be the opposite of “unrolled”. However, I think this simplest meaning of “let me be unrolled” is “let me be taken off the roll of villains”, where a “roll” is an official list of names.
I wonder if there’s a hot/spices thing going on there - had chillis been brought to Europe at that time? Were they well known? Were they/other spices - in particular pepper, which was established, yet referred to as ‘hot’?
Yes, there’s definitely a hot / spice pun going on; Shakespeare uses “hot” to mean “spicy” elsewhere, as in Feste’s line “And ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth, too.” (The Clown’s shopping list doesn’t include pepper, although Shakespeare mentions it elsewhere, but it does include ginger.)
They would have had plenty of spices considered “hot”-- If nothing else, mustard and radishes, and garlic and onion were also considered “hot”.
All foods were classifed on the hot/cold, wet/dry system. Spices were always on the Hot and Dry end of the scale. So yeah, Autolycus is punning about the purse and spices.
Why does the Clown need spices for the sheep shearing? Is it also a Chili Cook-Off?
Well, festival, yes. Clown was heading into town to buy all sorts of provisions for the sheep shearing. Sugar, currants, rice, saffron, mace, dates, nutmeg, ginger, prunes and raisins is what he lists in the beginning of 4.3 but he may not have finished going over the list when he runs into Autolycus.
I don’t know if it was traditional for shepherds to have a big party at the shearing but they do in Winter’s Tale because it gave Shakespeare an opportunity to have Perdita and Florizel being all lovey-dovey in a place where Polixenes could find them and get upset and then gear everything up for the denouement.