The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare (book club suggestions txt) 📖

- Where we offend her now, - appear soul-vexed, And begin 'Why to me?'

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'd bid you mark Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in't You chose her: then I'd 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 bless'd 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 bidd'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 fram'd, but forc'd 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. -

[Exeunt CLEOMENES, Lords, and Gent.]

Still, 'tis strange 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. Pr'ythee 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, with FLORIZEL, PERDITA, and Attendants.]

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 seiz'd His wish'd ability, he had himself The lands and waters 'twixt your throne and his Measur'd, 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 Expos'd 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 lov'd?

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 blessèd 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 bless'd, - 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 hast'ning, - 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, Endur'd all weathers.

LORD.
Lay't so to his charge; He's with the king your father.

LEONTES.