Complete Plays, The (46 page)

Paulina

Had she such power,
She had just cause.

Leontes

She had; and would incense me
To murder her I married.

Paulina

I should so.
Were I the ghost that walk’d, I’ld bid you mark
Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in’t
You chose her; then I’ld shriek, that even your ears
Should rift to hear me; and the words that follow’d
Should be ‘Remember mine.’

Leontes

Stars, stars,
And all eyes else dead coals! Fear thou no wife;
I’ll have no wife, Paulina.

Paulina

Will you swear
Never to marry but by my free leave?

Leontes

Never, Paulina; so be blest my spirit!

Paulina

Then, good my lords, bear witness to his oath.

Cleomenes

You tempt him over-much.

Paulina

Unless another,
As like Hermione as is her picture,
Affront his eye.

Cleomenes

 
Good madam,—

Paulina

I have done.
Yet, if my lord will marry,— if you will, sir,
No remedy, but you will,— give me the office
To choose you a queen: she shall not be so young
As was your former; but she shall be such
As, walk’d your first queen’s ghost, it should take joy
To see her in your arms.

Leontes

My true Paulina,
We shall not marry till thou bid’st us.

Paulina

That
Shall be when your first queen’s again in breath;
Never till then.

Enter a Gentleman

Gentleman

One that gives out himself Prince Florizel,
Son of Polixenes, with his princess, she
The fairest I have yet beheld, desires access
To your high presence.

Leontes

What with him? he comes not
Like to his father’s greatness: his approach,
So out of circumstance and sudden, tells us
’Tis not a visitation framed, but forced
By need and accident. What train?

Gentleman

But few,
And those but mean.

Leontes

His princess, say you, with him?

Gentleman

Ay, the most peerless piece of earth, I think,
That e’er the sun shone bright on.

Paulina

O Hermione,
As every present time doth boast itself
Above a better gone, so must thy grave
Give way to what’s seen now! Sir, you yourself
Have said and writ so, but your writing now
Is colder than that theme, ‘she had not been,
Nor was not to be equall’d;’— thus your verse
Flow’d with her beauty once: ’tis shrewdly ebb’d,
To say you have seen a better.

Gentleman

Pardon, madam:
The one I have almost forgot,— your pardon,—
The other, when she has obtain’d your eye,
Will have your tongue too. This is a creature,
Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal
Of all professors else, make proselytes
Of who she but bid follow.

Paulina

How! not women?

Gentleman

Women will love her, that she is a woman
More worth than any man; men, that she is
The rarest of all women.

Leontes

Go, Cleomenes;
Yourself, assisted with your honour’d friends,
Bring them to our embracement. Still, ’tis strange

Exeunt Cleomenes and others

He thus should steal upon us.

Paulina

Had our prince,
Jewel of children, seen this hour, he had pair’d
Well with this lord: there was not full a month
Between their births.

Leontes

Prithee, no more; cease; thou know’st
He dies to me again when talk’d of: sure,
When I shall see this gentleman, thy speeches
Will bring me to consider that which may
Unfurnish me of reason. They are come.

Re-enter Cleomenes and others, with Florizel and Perdita

Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince;
For she did print your royal father off,
Conceiving you: were I but twenty-one,
Your father’s image is so hit in you,
His very air, that I should call you brother,
As I did him, and speak of something wildly
By us perform’d before. Most dearly welcome!
And your fair princess,— goddess!— O, alas!
I lost a couple, that ’twixt heaven and earth
Might thus have stood begetting wonder as
You, gracious couple, do: and then I lost —
All mine own folly — the society,
Amity too, of your brave father, whom,
Though bearing misery, I desire my life
Once more to look on him.

Florizel

By his command
Have I here touch’d Sicilia and from him
Give you all greetings that a king, at friend,
Can send his brother: and, but infirmity
Which waits upon worn times hath something seized
His wish’d ability, he had himself
The lands and waters ’twixt your throne and his
Measured to look upon you; whom he loves —
He bade me say so — more than all the sceptres
And those that bear them living.

Leontes

O my brother,
Good gentleman! the wrongs I have done thee stir
Afresh within me, and these thy offices,
So rarely kind, are as interpreters
Of my behind-hand slackness. Welcome hither,
As is the spring to the earth. And hath he too
Exposed this paragon to the fearful usage,
At least ungentle, of the dreadful Neptune,
To greet a man not worth her pains, much less
The adventure of her person?

Florizel

Good my lord,
She came from Libya.

Leontes

Where the warlike Smalus,
That noble honour’d lord, is fear’d and loved?

Florizel

Most royal sir, from thence; from him, whose daughter
His tears proclaim’d his, parting with her: thence,
A prosperous south-wind friendly, we have cross’d,
To execute the charge my father gave me
For visiting your highness: my best train
I have from your Sicilian shores dismiss’d;
Who for Bohemia bend, to signify
Not only my success in Libya, sir,
But my arrival and my wife’s in safety
Here where we are.

Leontes

 
The blessed gods
Purge all infection from our air whilst you
Do climate here! You have a holy father,
A graceful gentleman; against whose person,
So sacred as it is, I have done sin:
For which the heavens, taking angry note,
Have left me issueless; and your father’s blest,
As he from heaven merits it, with you
Worthy his goodness. What might I have been,
Might I a son and daughter now have look’d on,
Such goodly things as you!

Enter a Lord

Lord

Most noble sir,
That which I shall report will bear no credit,
Were not the proof so nigh. Please you, great sir,
Bohemia greets you from himself by me;
Desires you to attach his son, who has —
His dignity and duty both cast off —
Fled from his father, from his hopes, and with
A shepherd’s daughter.

Leontes

Where’s Bohemia? speak.

Lord

Here in your city; I now came from him:
I speak amazedly; and it becomes
My marvel and my message. To your court
Whiles he was hastening, in the chase, it seems,
Of this fair couple, meets he on the way
The father of this seeming lady and
Her brother, having both their country quitted
With this young prince.

Florizel

Camillo has betray’d me;
Whose honour and whose honesty till now
Endured all weathers.

Lord

Lay’t so to his charge:
He’s with the king your father.

Leontes

Who? Camillo?

Lord

Camillo, sir; I spake with him; who now
Has these poor men in question. Never saw I
Wretches so quake: they kneel, they kiss the earth;
Forswear themselves as often as they speak:
Bohemia stops his ears, and threatens them
With divers deaths in death.

Perdita

O my poor father!
The heaven sets spies upon us, will not have
Our contract celebrated.

Leontes

You are married?

Florizel

We are not, sir, nor are we like to be;
The stars, I see, will kiss the valleys first:
The odds for high and low’s alike.

Leontes

My lord,
Is this the daughter of a king?

Florizel

She is,
When once she is my wife.

Leontes

That ‘once’ I see by your good father’s speed
Will come on very slowly. I am sorry,
Most sorry, you have broken from his liking
Where you were tied in duty, and as sorry
Your choice is not so rich in worth as beauty,
That you might well enjoy her.

Florizel

Dear, look up:
Though Fortune, visible an enemy,
Should chase us with my father, power no jot
Hath she to change our loves. Beseech you, sir,
Remember since you owed no more to time
Than I do now: with thought of such affections,
Step forth mine advocate; at your request
My father will grant precious things as trifles.

Leontes

Would he do so, I’ld beg your precious mistress,
Which he counts but a trifle.

Paulina

Sir, my liege,
Your eye hath too much youth in’t: not a month
’Fore your queen died, she was more worth such gazes
Than what you look on now.

Leontes

I thought of her,
Even in these looks I made.

To Florizel

But your petition
Is yet unanswer’d. I will to your father:
Your honour not o’erthrown by your desires,
I am friend to them and you: upon which errand
I now go toward him; therefore follow me
And mark what way I make: come, good my lord.

Exeunt

S
CENE
II. B
EFORE
L
EONTES
’
PALACE
.

Enter Autolycus and a Gentleman

Autolycus

Beseech you, sir, were you present at this relation?

First Gentleman

I was by at the opening of the fardel, heard the old shepherd deliver the manner how he found it: whereupon, after a little amazedness, we were all commanded out of the chamber; only this methought I heard the shepherd say, he found the child.

Autolycus

I would most gladly know the issue of it.

First Gentleman

I make a broken delivery of the business; but the changes I perceived in the king and Camillo were very notes of admiration: they seemed almost, with staring on one another, to tear the cases of their eyes; there was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture; they looked as they had heard of a world ransomed, or one destroyed: a notable passion of wonder appeared in them; but the wisest beholder, that knew no more but seeing, could not say if the importance were joy or sorrow; but in the extremity of the one, it must needs be.

Enter another Gentleman

Here comes a gentleman that haply knows more.
The news, Rogero?

Second Gentleman

Nothing but bonfires: the oracle is fulfilled; the king’s daughter is found: such a deal of wonder is broken out within this hour that ballad-makers cannot be able to express it.

Enter a third Gentleman

Here comes the Lady Paulina’s steward: he can deliver you more. How goes it now, sir? this news which is called true is so like an old tale, that the verity of it is in strong suspicion: has the king found his heir?

Third Gentleman

Most true, if ever truth were pregnant by circumstance: that which you hear you’ll swear you see, there is such unity in the proofs. The mantle of Queen Hermione’s, her jewel about the neck of it, the letters of Antigonus found with it which they know to be his character, the majesty of the creature in resemblance of the mother, the affection of nobleness which nature shows above her breeding, and many other evidences proclaim her with all certainty to be the king’s daughter. Did you see the meeting of the two kings?

Second Gentleman

No.

Third Gentleman

Then have you lost a sight, which was to be seen, cannot be spoken of. There might you have beheld one joy crown another, so and in such manner that it seemed sorrow wept to take leave of them, for their joy waded in tears. There was casting up of eyes, holding up of hands, with countenances of such distraction that they were to be known by garment, not by favour. Our king, being ready to leap out of himself for joy of his found daughter, as if that joy were now become a loss, cries ‘O, thy mother, thy mother!’ then asks Bohemia forgiveness; then embraces his son-in-law; then again worries he his daughter with clipping her; now he thanks the old shepherd, which stands by like a weather-bitten conduit of many kings’ reigns. I never heard of such another encounter, which lames report to follow it and undoes description to do it.

Second Gentleman

What, pray you, became of Antigonus, that carried hence the child?

Third Gentleman

Like an old tale still, which will have matter to rehearse, though credit be asleep and not an ear open. He was torn to pieces with a bear: this avouches the shepherd’s son; who has not only his innocence, which seems much, to justify him, but a handkerchief and rings of his that Paulina knows.

First Gentleman

What became of his bark and his followers?

Third Gentleman

Wrecked the same instant of their master’s death and in the view of the shepherd: so that all the instruments which aided to expose the child were even then lost when it was found. But O, the noble combat that ’twixt joy and sorrow was fought in Paulina! She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband, another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled: she lifted the princess from the earth, and so locks her in embracing, as if she would pin her to her heart that she might no more be in danger of losing.

First Gentleman

The dignity of this act was worth the audience of kings and princes; for by such was it acted.