The Winter’s Tale

Antechamber in Leontes’ palace.

Enter Camillo and Archidamus.

Archidamus

If you shall chance, Camillo, to visit Bohemia, on the like occasion whereon my services are now on foot, you shall see, as I have said, great difference betwixt our Bohemia and your Sicilia.

Camillo

I think, this coming summer, the King of Sicilia means to pay Bohemia the visitation which he justly owes him.

Archidamus

Wherein our entertainment shall shame us we will be justified in our loves; for indeed⁠—

Camillo

Beseech you⁠—

Archidamus

Verily, I speak it in the freedom of my knowledge: we cannot with such magnificence⁠—in so rare⁠—I know not what to say. We will give you sleepy drinks, that your senses, unintelligent of our insufficience, may, though they cannot praise us, as little accuse us.

Camillo

You pay a great deal too dear for what’s given freely.

Archidamus

Believe me, I speak as my understanding instructs me and as mine honesty puts it to utterance.

Camillo

Sicilia cannot show himself over-kind to Bohemia. They were trained together in their childhoods; and there rooted betwixt them then such an affection, which cannot choose but branch now. Since their more mature dignities and royal necessities made separation of their society, their encounters, though not personal, have been royally attorneyed with interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies; that they have seemed to be together, though absent, shook hands, as over a vast, and embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed winds. The heavens continue their loves!

Ha’ not you seen, Camillo⁠— But that’s past doubt, you have, or your eye-glass Is thicker than a cuckold’s horn⁠—or heard⁠— For to a vision so apparent rumour Cannot be mute⁠—or thought⁠—for cogitation Resides not in that man that does not think⁠— My wife is slippery? If thou wilt confess, Or else be impudently negative, To have nor eyes nor ears nor thought, then say My wife’s a hobby-horse, deserves a name As rank as any flax-wench that puts to Before her troth-plight: say’t and justify’t.

Camillo

I would not be a stander-by to hear My sovereign mistress clouded so, without My present vengeance taken: ’shrew my heart, You never spoke what did become you less Than this; which to reiterate were sin As deep as that, though true.

Leontes

Is whispering nothing? Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses? Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career Of laughing with a sigh?⁠—a note infallible Of breaking honesty⁠—horsing foot on foot? Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift? Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only, That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing? Why, then the world and all that’s in’t is nothing; The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing; My wife is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings, If this be nothing.

Camillo

Good my lord, be cured Of this diseased opinion, and betimes; For ’tis most dangerous.

Leontes

Say it be, ’tis true.

Camillo

No, no, my lord.

Leontes

Camillo

There is a sickness Which puts some of us in distemper, but I cannot name the disease; and it is caught Of you that yet are well.

Polixenes

How! caught of me! Make me not sighted like the basilisk: I have look’d on thousands, who have sped the better By my regard, but kill’d none so. Camillo⁠— As you are certainly a gentleman, thereto Clerk-like experienced, which no less adorns Our gentry than our parents’ noble names, In whose success we are gentle⁠—I beseech you, If you know aught which does behove my knowledge Thereof to be inform’d, imprison’t not In ignorant concealment.

Camillo

I may not answer.

Polixenes

A sickness caught of me, and yet I well! I must be answer’d. Dost thou hear, Camillo, I conjure thee, by all the parts of man Which honour does acknowledge, whereof the least Is not this suit of mine, that thou declare What incidency thou dost guess of harm Is creeping toward me; how far off, how near; Which way to be prevented, if to be; If not, how best to bear it.

Camillo

Sir, I will tell you; Since I am charged in honour and by him That I think honourable: therefore mark my counsel, Which must be even as swiftly follow’d as I mean to utter it, or both yourself and me Cry lost, and so good night!

Polixenes

On, good Camillo.

Camillo

I am appointed him to murder you.

Nor I, nor any But one that’s here, and that’s himself, for he The sacred honour of himself, his queen’s, His hopeful son’s, his babe’s, betrays to slander, Whose sting is sharper than the sword’s; and will not⁠— For, as the case now stands, it is a curse He cannot be compell’d to’t⁠—once remove The root of his opinion, which is rotten As ever oak or stone was sound.

Leontes

A callat Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband And now baits me! This brat is none of mine; It is the issue of Polixenes: Hence with it, and together with the dam Commit them to the fire!

Paulina

It is yours; And, might we lay the old proverb to your charge, So like you, ’tis the worse. Behold, my lords, Although the print be little, the whole matter And copy of the father, eye, nose, lip, The trick of’s frown, his forehead, nay, the valley, The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek, His smiles, The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger: And thou, good goddess Nature, which hast made it So like to him that got it, if thou hast The ordering of the mind too, ’mongst all colours No yellow in’t, lest she suspect, as he does, Her children not her husband’s!

Come, poor babe: I have heard, but not believed, the spirits o’ the dead May walk again: if such thing be, thy mother Appear’d to me last night, for ne’er was dream So like a waking. To me comes a creature, Sometimes her head on one side, some another; I never saw a vessel of like sorrow, So fill’d and so becoming: in pure white robes, Like very sanctity, she did approach My cabin where I lay; thrice bow’d before me, And gasping to begin some speech, her eyes Became two spouts: the fury spent, anon Did this break from her: “Good Antigonus, Since fate, against thy better disposition, Hath made thy person for the thrower-out Of my poor babe, according to thine oath, Places remote enough are in Bohemia, There weep and leave it crying; and, for the babe Is counted lost for ever, Perdita, I prithee, call’t. For this ungentle business, Put on thee by my lord, thou ne’er shalt see Thy wife Paulina more.” And so, with shrieks, She melted into air. Affrighted much, I did in time collect myself and thought This was so and no slumber. Dreams are toys: Yet for this once, yea, superstitiously, I will be squared by this. I do believe Hermione hath suffer’d death, and that Apollo would, this being indeed the issue Of King Polixenes, it should here be laid, Either for life or death, upon the earth Of its right father. Blossom, speed thee well! There lie, and there thy character: there these; Which may, if fortune please, both breed thee, pretty, And still rest thine. The storm begins: poor wretch, That for thy mother’s fault art thus exposed To loss and what may follow! Weep I cannot, But my heart bleeds; and most accursed am I To be by oath enjoin’d to this. Farewell! The day frowns more and more: thou’rt like to have A lullaby too rough: I never saw The heavens so dim by day.