The Winter’s Tale

1 Enter Leontes, Cleomenes, Dion, Paulina and others.
2 CLEOMENES
3 Sir, you have done enough, and have perform’d
4 A saint-like sorrow: no fault could you make
5 Which you have not redeem’d; indeed, paid down
6 More penitence than done trespass: at the last,
7 Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil;
8 With them, forgive yourself.
9 LEONTES.
10 Whilst I remember
11 Her and her virtues, I cannot forget
12 My blemishes in them; and so still think of
13 The wrong I did myself: which was so much
14 That heirless it hath made my kingdom, and
15 Destroy’d the sweet’st companion that e’er man
16 Bred his hopes out of.
17 PAULINA.
18 True, too true, my lord.
19 If, one by one, you wedded all the world,
20 Or from the all that are took something good,
21 To make a perfect woman, she you kill’d
22 Would be unparallel’d.
23 LEONTES.
24 I think so. Kill’d!
25 She I kill’d! I did so: but thou strik’st me
26 Sorely, to say I did: it is as bitter
27 Upon thy tongue as in my thought. Now, good now,
28 Say so but seldom.
29 CLEOMENES
30 Not at all, good lady.
31 You might have spoken a thousand things that would
32 Have done the time more benefit and grac’d
33 Your kindness better.
34 PAULINA.
35 You are one of those
36 Would have him wed again.
37 DION.
38 If you would not so,
39 You pity not the state, nor the remembrance
40 Of his most sovereign name; consider little
41 What dangers, by his highness’ fail of issue,
42 May drop upon his kingdom, and devour
43 Incertain lookers-on. What were more holy
44 Than to rejoice the former queen is well?
45 What holier than, for royalty’s repair,
46 For present comfort, and for future good,
47 To bless the bed of majesty again
48 With a sweet fellow to ’t?
49 PAULINA.
50 There is none worthy,
51 Respecting her that’s gone. Besides, the gods
52 Will have fulfill’d their secret purposes;
53 For has not the divine Apollo said,
54 Is ’t not the tenor of his oracle,
55 That king Leontes shall not have an heir
56 Till his lost child be found? Which that it shall,
57 Is all as monstrous to our human reason
58 As my Antigonus to break his grave
59 And come again to me; who, on my life,
60 Did perish with the infant. ’Tis your counsel
61 My lord should to the heavens be contrary,
62 Oppose against their wills. [_To Leontes._] Care not for issue;
63 The crown will find an heir. Great Alexander
64 Left his to th’ worthiest; so his successor
65 Was like to be the best.
66 LEONTES.
67 Good Paulina,
68 Who hast the memory of Hermione,
69 I know, in honour, O that ever I
70 Had squar’d me to thy counsel! Then, even now,
71 I might have look’d upon my queen’s full eyes,
72 Have taken treasure from her lips,—
73 PAULINA.
74 And left them
75 More rich for what they yielded.
76 LEONTES.
77 Thou speak’st truth.
78 No more such wives; therefore, no wife: one worse,
79 And better us’d, would make her sainted spirit
80 Again possess her corpse, and on this stage,
81 (Where we offenders now appear) soul-vexed,
82 And begin “Why to me?”
83 PAULINA.
84 Had she such power,
85 She had just cause.
86 LEONTES.
87 She had; and would incense me
88 To murder her I married.
89 PAULINA.
90 I should so.
91 Were I the ghost that walk’d, I’d bid you mark
92 Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in ’t
93 You chose her: then I’d shriek, that even your ears
94 Should rift to hear me; and the words that follow’d
95 Should be “Remember mine.”
96 LEONTES.
97 Stars, stars,
98 And all eyes else dead coals! Fear thou no wife;
99 I’ll have no wife, Paulina.
100 PAULINA.
101 Will you swear
102 Never to marry but by my free leave?
103 LEONTES.
104 Never, Paulina; so be bless’d my spirit!
105 PAULINA.
106 Then, good my lords, bear witness to his oath.
107 CLEOMENES
108 You tempt him over-much.
109 PAULINA.
110 Unless another,
111 As like Hermione as is her picture,
112 Affront his eye.
113 CLEOMENES
114 Good madam,—
115 PAULINA.
116 I have done.
117 Yet, if my lord will marry,—if you will, sir,
118 No remedy but you will,—give me the office
119 To choose you a queen: she shall not be so young
120 As was your former, but she shall be such
121 As, walk’d your first queen’s ghost, it should take joy
122 To see her in your arms.
123 LEONTES.
124 My true Paulina,
125 We shall not marry till thou bid’st us.
126 PAULINA.
127 That
128 Shall be when your first queen’s again in breath;
129 Never till then.
130 Enter a Servant.
131 SERVANT.
132 One that gives out himself Prince Florizel,
133 Son of Polixenes, with his princess (she
134 The fairest I have yet beheld) desires access
135 To your high presence.
136 LEONTES.
137 What with him? he comes not
138 Like to his father’s greatness: his approach,
139 So out of circumstance and sudden, tells us
140 ’Tis not a visitation fram’d, but forc’d
141 By need and accident. What train?
142 SERVANT.
143 But few,
144 And those but mean.
145 LEONTES.
146 His princess, say you, with him?
147 SERVANT.
148 Ay, the most peerless piece of earth, I think,
149 That e’er the sun shone bright on.
150 PAULINA.
151 O Hermione,
152 As every present time doth boast itself
153 Above a better gone, so must thy grave
154 Give way to what’s seen now! Sir, you yourself
155 Have said and writ so,—but your writing now
156 Is colder than that theme,—‘She had not been,
157 Nor was not to be equall’d’; thus your verse
158 Flow’d with her beauty once; ’tis shrewdly ebb’d,
159 To say you have seen a better.
160 SERVANT.
161 Pardon, madam:
162 The one I have almost forgot,—your pardon;—
163 The other, when she has obtain’d your eye,
164 Will have your tongue too. This is a creature,
165 Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal
166 Of all professors else; make proselytes
167 Of who she but bid follow.
168 PAULINA.
169 How! not women?
170 SERVANT.
171 Women will love her that she is a woman
172 More worth than any man; men, that she is
173 The rarest of all women.
174 LEONTES.
175 Go, Cleomenes;
176 Yourself, assisted with your honour’d friends,
177 Bring them to our embracement.
178 [_Exeunt Cleomenes and others._]
179 Still, ’tis strange
180 He thus should steal upon us.
181 PAULINA.
182 Had our prince,
183 Jewel of children, seen this hour, he had pair’d
184 Well with this lord. There was not full a month
185 Between their births.
186 LEONTES.
187 Prithee no more; cease; Thou know’st
188 He dies to me again when talk’d of: sure,
189 When I shall see this gentleman, thy speeches
190 Will bring me to consider that which may
191 Unfurnish me of reason. They are come.
192 Enter Florizel, Perdita, Cleomenes and others.
193 Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince;
194 For she did print your royal father off,
195 Conceiving you. Were I but twenty-one,
196 Your father’s image is so hit in you,
197 His very air, that I should call you brother,
198 As I did him, and speak of something wildly
199 By us perform’d before. Most dearly welcome!
200 And your fair princess,—goddess! O, alas!
201 I lost a couple that ’twixt heaven and earth
202 Might thus have stood, begetting wonder, as
203 You, gracious couple, do! And then I lost,—
204 All mine own folly,—the society,
205 Amity too, of your brave father, whom,
206 Though bearing misery, I desire my life
207 Once more to look on him.
208 FLORIZEL.
209 By his command
210 Have I here touch’d Sicilia, and from him
211 Give you all greetings that a king, at friend,
212 Can send his brother: and, but infirmity,
213 Which waits upon worn times, hath something seiz’d
214 His wish’d ability, he had himself
215 The lands and waters ’twixt your throne and his
216 Measur’d, to look upon you; whom he loves,
217 He bade me say so,—more than all the sceptres
218 And those that bear them living.
219 LEONTES.
220 O my brother,—
221 Good gentleman!—the wrongs I have done thee stir
222 Afresh within me; and these thy offices,
223 So rarely kind, are as interpreters
224 Of my behind-hand slackness! Welcome hither,
225 As is the spring to the earth. And hath he too
226 Expos’d this paragon to the fearful usage,
227 At least ungentle, of the dreadful Neptune,
228 To greet a man not worth her pains, much less
229 Th’ adventure of her person?
230 FLORIZEL.
231 Good, my lord,
232 She came from Libya.
233 LEONTES.
234 Where the warlike Smalus,
235 That noble honour’d lord, is fear’d and lov’d?
236 FLORIZEL.
237 Most royal sir, from thence; from him, whose daughter
238 His tears proclaim’d his, parting with her: thence,
239 A prosperous south-wind friendly, we have cross’d,
240 To execute the charge my father gave me
241 For visiting your highness: my best train
242 I have from your Sicilian shores dismiss’d;
243 Who for Bohemia bend, to signify
244 Not only my success in Libya, sir,
245 But my arrival, and my wife’s, in safety
246 Here, where we are.
247 LEONTES.
248 The blessed gods
249 Purge all infection from our air whilst you
250 Do climate here! You have a holy father,
251 A graceful gentleman; against whose person,
252 So sacred as it is, I have done sin,
253 For which the heavens, taking angry note,
254 Have left me issueless. And your father’s bless’d,
255 As he from heaven merits it, with you,
256 Worthy his goodness. What might I have been,
257 Might I a son and daughter now have look’d on,
258 Such goodly things as you!
259 Enter a Lord.
260 LORD.
261 Most noble sir,
262 That which I shall report will bear no credit,
263 Were not the proof so nigh. Please you, great sir,
264 Bohemia greets you from himself by me;
265 Desires you to attach his son, who has—
266 His dignity and duty both cast off—
267 Fled from his father, from his hopes, and with
268 A shepherd’s daughter.
269 LEONTES.
270 Where’s Bohemia? speak.
271 LORD.
272 Here in your city; I now came from him.
273 I speak amazedly, and it becomes
274 My marvel and my message. To your court
275 Whiles he was hast’ning—in the chase, it seems,
276 Of this fair couple—meets he on the way
277 The father of this seeming lady and
278 Her brother, having both their country quitted
279 With this young prince.
280 FLORIZEL.
281 Camillo has betray’d me;
282 Whose honour and whose honesty till now,
283 Endur’d all weathers.
284 LORD.
285 Lay ’t so to his charge.
286 He’s with the king your father.
287 LEONTES.
288 Who? Camillo?
289 LORD.
290 Camillo, sir; I spake with him; who now
291 Has these poor men in question. Never saw I
292 Wretches so quake: they kneel, they kiss the earth;
293 Forswear themselves as often as they speak.
294 Bohemia stops his ears, and threatens them
295 With divers deaths in death.
296 PERDITA.
297 O my poor father!
298 The heaven sets spies upon us, will not have
299 Our contract celebrated.
300 LEONTES.
301 You are married?
302 FLORIZEL.
303 We are not, sir, nor are we like to be.
304 The stars, I see, will kiss the valleys first.
305 The odds for high and low’s alike.
306 LEONTES.
307 My lord,
308 Is this the daughter of a king?
309 FLORIZEL.
310 She is,
311 When once she is my wife.
312 LEONTES.
313 That “once”, I see by your good father’s speed,
314 Will come on very slowly. I am sorry,
315 Most sorry, you have broken from his liking,
316 Where you were tied in duty; and as sorry
317 Your choice is not so rich in worth as beauty,
318 That you might well enjoy her.
319 FLORIZEL.
320 Dear, look up:
321 Though Fortune, visible an enemy,
322 Should chase us with my father, power no jot
323 Hath she to change our loves. Beseech you, sir,
324 Remember since you ow’d no more to time
325 Than I do now: with thought of such affections,
326 Step forth mine advocate. At your request
327 My father will grant precious things as trifles.
328 LEONTES.
329 Would he do so, I’d beg your precious mistress,
330 Which he counts but a trifle.
331 PAULINA.
332 Sir, my liege,
333 Your eye hath too much youth in ’t: not a month
334 ’Fore your queen died, she was more worth such gazes
335 Than what you look on now.
336 LEONTES.
337 I thought of her
338 Even in these looks I made. [_To Florizel._] But your petition
339 Is yet unanswer’d. I will to your father.
340 Your honour not o’erthrown by your desires,
341 I am friend to them and you: upon which errand
342 I now go toward him; therefore follow me,
343 And mark what way I make. Come, good my lord.
344 [_Exeunt._]