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Shakespeare on Stage
Atlanta Shakespeare Company, As You Like It. To Jun. 24, 2012.
The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, The Comedy of Errors. To Jul. 29, 2012.
The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Henry IV, Part One. To Jun. 24, 2012.
American Shakespeare Center, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. To Jun. 16, 2012.
American Shakespeare Center, The Winter's Tale. To Jun. 16, 2012.
More Performances…
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A cutpurse

A cutpurse.

When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh the doxy* over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o'the year
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale*.

The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,
With heigh the sweet birds, O how they sing!
Doth set my pugging tooth on edge,
For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.


Thus Autolycus announces his membership in the fraternity of vagabonds, as he enters in The Winter's Tale (4.3.1-8). He sells trinkets and ballads--and cuts purses at the Shepherd's sheep-shearing festival, an activity he says himself would be punished by hanging. Yet he is a wonderful and sympathetic stage presence, by no means a villain.

The laws of "figging," or villainy*.

Footnotes

  1. Pale Doxies?

    Doxy
    A prostitute (click for more).
    Pale
    Literally a fence or enclosure, but there is also a pun on winter's pale complexion.

  2. Greene's "figging law"

    "Figging law"--one of the "eight laws of villainy" revealed in Robert Greene's pamphlet, A Notable Discovery of Cozenage--covers the activities of cutpurses and pickpockets. Greene offers a dictionary of their terms:

    "The cutpurse, a nip;
    He that is half with him, the snap;
    The knife, the cuttle-bung;
    The pickpocket, a foin;
    He that faceth the man [acts as a decoy], the stale;
    Taking the purse, drawing;
    Spying of him, smoking;
    The purse, the bung;
    The money, the shells;
    The act doing, striking."