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Summary
Both Perdita and the Shepherd despair, with the latter cursing Florizell for his deception, then storming off. The prince is remarkably unfazed, however, and assures Perdita that he will not be separated from her. He says he is willing to give up the succession and flee Bohemia immediately. Camillo advises him against it, but Florizell insists that he will not break his oath to Perdita for anything in the world. This resolve gives Camillo an idea, and he advises the prince to flee at once to Sicilia, where Leontes, believing him sent from Polixenes, will give him a good welcome. In the meantime, Camillo promises to bring Polixenes around to the notion of his son marrying a commoner. In truth, however, Camillo hopes that the king will follow his son to Sicilia and bring him along, thus allowing him to return to his native land.
Florizell agrees to the old lord’s plan, but he points out that he doesn’t have an appropriate retinue to appear in the court of Sicilia as Polixenes’s son. They discuss this problem, and Camillo promises to furnish the necessary attendants and letters. Meanwhile, Autolycus enters, bragging to himself about all the cheap goods he sold and all the purses he stole during the sheep-shearing. Noticing him, Camillo asks the rascal to exchange clothes with Florizell. Autolycus, baffled, agrees. The prince dons the peddler’s rags, which, he hopes, will enable him to reach a ship undetected by his father. Florizell, Perdita, and Camillo then leave Autolycus alone on stage. The crafty cutpurse declares that he has figured out their business from listening to them. However, he will not go and tell the king, since that would be a good deed—and doing good deeds goes against his profession.
As Autolycus talks to himself, the Shepherd and the Shepherd’s Son enter. The son is advising his father to tell King Polixenes how he found Perdita in the forest years before. He argues that if she was a foundling, then he is not her real father and therefore not responsible for her actions.
Overhearing this, Autolycus sees a new opportunity for mischief. Since he’s still wearing Florizell’s clothing, he pretends to be a nobleman. He tells the two rustics that the king has gone aboard a nearby ship, and he sends them in that direction. In fact, he sends them to the ship that Florizell and Perdita are taking to Sicilia.
Read a translation of Act 4: Scene 4.
Analysis
Florizell’s steadfastness at this juncture is impressive. Though he has clearly wrecked matters with his father, his love for Perdita never wavers, nor does his desire to do what is right. In his devotion to his future mate, and in his honorable behavior, he makes a stark contrast with Leontes. His even temper additionally distinguishes him from his father, who has just demonstrated an emotional instability that, though not ultimately as cruel as that of Leontes, nonetheless reminds us of the Sicilian king. In distinction from both men of the previous generation, Florizell betokens the promise of a future characterized by moderation and fidelity. Of course, this promise is slightly marred by the fact that up until now he has acted under false pretenses. By pretending to be a shepherd named Diocles, he has bamboozled the Shepherd and his family and put them in harm’s way. However, the fact that he has done this out of genuine affection for Perdita, and considering his willingness to put things right, we in the audience find it easy to forgive him his trespasses.
We also find it easy to look past the fact that Camillo’s elaborate plan, which is is ultimately self-serving, entails various forms of disguise and deceit. Throughout the early acts of the play, this lord has proven himself an upstanding figure who refuses to be morally compromised. Yet in his old age, after loyally serving not one but two kings, he now longs for a more personal form of satisfaction. At the beginning of act 4, we learned that Camillo desires to return to Sicilia and finally resolve the conflict with his former king. Yet Polixenes, in a quiet act of coercion that foreshadowed his controlling outburst in this scene, refused Camillo this one desire. Now we see Camillo taking matters into his own hands, manipulating the situation in a way that will enable his return to Leontes’s side. Although this manipulative behavior could be understood as a double betrayal of both Polixenes and Florizell, as we will see in act 5, Camillo’s plan also makes him the architect of the play’s happy ending. By avoiding another tragedy while also securing his own future, Camillo ensures a properly comic ending for the play.
Once the decision is made to flee to Sicilia, Autolycus takes over this portion of the play. In a sequence of monologues, he presents the central tenets of his life philosophy. “What a fool honesty is,” he declares: “And trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman!” (4.4.711–12). So committed is Autolycus to the professional code of the cutpurse that he strenuously avoids doing good, even when chance presents an opportunity when it might benefit him personally. As he puts the matter in an aside: “If I thought it were a piece of honesty to acquaint the King withal, I would not do ’t. I hold the more knavery to conceal it, and therein am I constant to my profession” (4.4.803–806). These words echo the deliberate evils of villains like Iago in Othello and Edmund in King Lear. Yet Autolycus lacks their capacity for harm, and his “knavery” will eventually end up doing everyone a great deal of good. Indeed, so delightful is his bad behavior that his promise to “go straight” and enter in the Shepherd’s service in the next act may seem a disappointment, leavened only by the hope that the rascal will eventually abandon respectability.
