The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare
Act 5 - Scene 1
A room in LEONTES’ palace.
Cleomenes : Sir, you have done enough, and have perform'd
[p]A saint-like sorrow:
no fault could you make,
[p]Which you have not redeem'd; indeed, paid
down
[p]More penitence than done trespass: at the last,
[p]Do as the
heavens have done, forget your evil;
[p]With them forgive yourself.
Leontes : Whilst I remember
[p]Her and her virtues, I cannot forget
[p]My
blemishes in them, and so still think of
[p]The wrong I did myself;
which was so much,
[p]That heirless it hath made my kingdom
and
[p]Destroy'd the sweet'st companion that e'er man
[p]Bred his
hopes out of.
Paulina : True, too true, my lord:
[p]If, one by one, you wedded all the
world,
[p]Or from the all that are took something good,
[p]To make a
perfect woman, she you kill'd
[p]Would be unparallel'd.
Leontes : I think so. Kill'd!
[p]She I kill'd! I did so: but thou strikest
me
[p]Sorely, to say I did; it is as bitter
[p]Upon thy tongue as in
my thought: now, good now,
[p]Say so but seldom.
Cleomenes : Not at all, good lady:
[p]You might have spoken a thousand things that
would
[p]Have done the time more benefit and graced
[p]Your kindness
better.
Paulina : You are one of those
[p]Would have him wed again.
Dion : If you would not so,
[p]You pity not the state, nor the
remembrance
[p]Of his most sovereign name; consider little
[p]What
dangers, by his highness' fail of issue,
[p]May drop upon his kingdom
and devour
[p]Incertain lookers on. What were more holy
[p]Than to
rejoice the former queen is well?
[p]What holier than, for royalty's
repair,
[p]For present comfort and for future good,
[p]To bless the
bed of majesty again
[p]With a sweet fellow to't?
Paulina : There is none worthy,
[p]Respecting her that's gone. Besides, the
gods
[p]Will have fulfill'd their secret purposes;
[p]For has not the
divine Apollo said,
[p]Is't not the tenor of his oracle,
[p]That King
Leontes shall not have an heir
[p]Till his lost child be found? which
that it shall,
[p]Is all as monstrous to our human reason
[p]As my
Antigonus to break his grave
[p]And come again to me; who, on my
life,
[p]Did perish with the infant. 'Tis your counsel
[p]My lord
should to the heavens be contrary,
[p]Oppose against their
wills.
[p][To LEONTES]
[p]Care not for issue;
[p]The crown will find
an heir: great Alexander
[p]Left his to the worthiest; so his
successor
[p]Was like to be the best.
Leontes : Good Paulina,
[p]Who hast the memory of Hermione,
[p]I know, in
honour, O, that ever I
[p]Had squared me to thy counsel! then, even
now,
[p]I might have look'd upon my queen's full eyes,
[p]Have taken
treasure from her lips--
Paulina : And left them
[p]More rich for what they yielded.
Leontes : Thou speak'st truth.
[p]No more such wives; therefore, no wife: one
worse,
[p]And better used, would make her sainted spirit
[p]Again
possess her corpse, and on this stage,
[p]Where we're offenders now,
appear soul-vex'd,
[p]And begin, 'Why to me?'
Paulina : Had she such power,
[p]She had just cause.
Leontes : She had; and would incense me
[p]To murder her I married.
Paulina : I should so.
[p]Were I the ghost that walk'd, I'ld bid you mark
[p]Her
eye, and tell me for what dull part in't
[p]You chose her; then I'ld
shriek, that even your ears
[p]Should rift to hear me; and the words
that follow'd
[p]Should be 'Remember mine.'
Leontes : Stars, stars,
[p]And all eyes else dead coals! Fear thou no
wife;
[p]I'll have no wife, Paulina.
Paulina : Will you swear
[p]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,
[p]As like Hermione as is her picture,
[p]Affront his
eye.CLEOMENES. Good madam,--
Paulina : I have done.
[p]Yet, if my lord will marry,--if you will, sir,
[p]No
remedy, but you will,--give me the office
[p]To choose you a queen:
she shall not be so young
[p]As was your former; but she shall be
such
[p]As, walk'd your first queen's ghost,
[p]it should take
joy
[p]To see her in your arms.
Leontes : My true Paulina,
[p]We shall not marry till thou bid'st us.
Paulina : That
[p]Shall be when your first queen's again in breath;
[p]Never
till then.
Gentleman : One that gives out himself Prince Florizel,
[p]Son of Polixenes, with
his princess, she
[p]The fairest I have yet beheld, desires
access
[p]To your high presence.
Leontes : What with him? he comes not
[p]Like to his father's greatness: his
approach,
[p]So out of circumstance and sudden, tells us
[p]'Tis not a
visitation framed, but forced
[p]By need and accident. What train?
Gentleman : But few,
[p]And those but mean.
Leontes : His princess, say you, with him?
Gentleman : Ay, the most peerless piece of earth, I think,
[p]That e'er the sun
shone bright on.
Paulina : O Hermione,
[p]As every present time doth boast itself
[p]Above a
better gone, so must thy grave
[p]Give way to what's seen now! Sir,
you yourself
[p]Have said and writ so, but your writing now
[p]Is
colder than that theme, 'She had not been,
[p]Nor was not to be
equall'd;'--thus your verse
[p]Flow'd with her beauty once: 'tis
shrewdly ebb'd,
[p]To say you have seen a better.
Gentleman : Pardon, madam:
[p]The one I have almost forgot,--your pardon,--
[p]The
other, when she has obtain'd your eye,
[p]Will have your tongue too.
This is a creature,
[p]Would she begin a sect, might quench the
zeal
[p]Of all professors else, make proselytes
[p]Of who she but bid
follow.
Paulina : How! not women?
Gentleman : Women will love her, that she is a woman
[p]More worth than any man;
men, that she is
[p]The rarest of all women.
Leontes : Go, Cleomenes;
[p]Yourself, assisted with your honour'd
friends,
[p]Bring them to our embracement. Still, 'tis
strange
[p][Exeunt CLEOMENES and others]
[p]He thus should steal upon
us.
Paulina : Had our prince,
[p]Jewel of children, seen this hour, he had
pair'd
[p]Well with this lord: there was not full a month
[p]Between
their births.
Leontes : Prithee, no more; cease; thou know'st
[p]He dies to me again when
talk'd of: sure,
[p]When I shall see this gentleman, thy
speeches
[p]Will bring me to consider that which may
[p]Unfurnish me
of reason. They are come.
[p][Re-enter CLEOMENES and others, with
FLORIZEL and PERDITA]
[p]Your mother was most true to wedlock,
prince;
[p]For she did print your royal father off,
[p]Conceiving you:
were I but twenty-one,
[p]Your father's image is so hit in you,
[p]His
very air, that I should call you brother,
[p]As I did him, and speak
of something wildly
[p]By us perform'd before. Most dearly
welcome!
[p]And your fair princess,--goddess!--O, alas!
[p]I lost a
couple, that 'twixt heaven and earth
[p]Might thus have stood
begetting wonder as
[p]You, gracious couple, do: and then I
lost--
[p]All mine own folly--the society,
[p]Amity too, of your brave
father, whom,
[p]Though bearing misery, I desire my life
[p]Once more
to look on him.
Florizel : By his command
[p]Have I here touch'd Sicilia and from him
[p]Give you
all greetings that a king, at friend,
[p]Can send his brother: and,
but infirmity
[p]Which waits upon worn times hath something
seized
[p]His wish'd ability, he had himself
[p]The lands and waters
'twixt your throne and his
[p]Measured to look upon you; whom he
loves--
[p]He bade me say so--more than all the sceptres
[p]And those
that bear them living.
Leontes : O my brother,
[p]Good gentleman! the wrongs I have done thee
stir
[p]Afresh within me, and these thy offices,
[p]So rarely kind,
are as interpreters
[p]Of my behind-hand slackness. Welcome
hither,
[p]As is the spring to the earth. And hath he too
[p]Exposed
this paragon to the fearful usage,
[p]At least ungentle, of the
dreadful Neptune,
[p]To greet a man not worth her pains, much
less
[p]The adventure of her person?
Florizel : Good my lord,
[p]She came from Libya.
Leontes : Where the warlike Smalus,
[p]That noble honour'd lord, is fear'd and
loved?
Florizel : Most royal sir, from thence; from him, whose daughter
[p]His tears
proclaim'd his, parting with her: thence,
[p]A prosperous south-wind
friendly, we have cross'd,
[p]To execute the charge my father gave
me
[p]For visiting your highness: my best train
[p]I have from your
Sicilian shores dismiss'd;
[p]Who for Bohemia bend, to signify
[p]Not
only my success in Libya, sir,
[p]But my arrival and my wife's in
safety
[p]Here where we are.
Leontes : The blessed gods
[p]Purge all infection from our air whilst you
[p]Do
climate here! You have a holy father,
[p]A graceful gentleman; against
whose person,
[p]So sacred as it is, I have done sin:
[p]For which the
heavens, taking angry note,
[p]Have left me issueless; and your
father's blest,
[p]As he from heaven merits it, with you
[p]Worthy his
goodness. What might I have been,
[p]Might I a son and daughter now
have look'd on,
[p]Such goodly things as you!
Lord : Most noble sir,
[p]That which I shall report will bear no
credit,
[p]Were not the proof so nigh. Please you, great
sir,
[p]Bohemia greets you from himself by me;
[p]Desires you to
attach his son, who has--
[p]His dignity and duty both cast
off--
[p]Fled from his father, from his hopes, and with
[p]A
shepherd's daughter.
Leontes : Where's Bohemia? speak.
Lord : Here in your city; I now came from him:
[p]I speak amazedly; and it
becomes
[p]My marvel and my message. To your court
[p]Whiles he was
hastening, in the chase, it seems,
[p]Of this fair couple, meets he on
the way
[p]The father of this seeming lady and
[p]Her brother, having
both their country quitted
[p]With this young prince.
Florizel : Camillo has betray'd me;
[p]Whose honour and whose honesty till
now
[p]Endured all weathers.
Lord : Lay't so to his charge:
[p]He's with the king your father.
Leontes : Who? Camillo?
Lord : Camillo, sir; I spake with him; who now
[p]Has these poor men in
question. Never saw I
[p]Wretches so quake: they kneel, they kiss the
earth;
[p]Forswear themselves as often as they speak:
[p]Bohemia stops
his ears, and threatens them
[p]With divers deaths in death.
Perdita : O my poor father!
[p]The heaven sets spies upon us, will not
have
[p]Our contract celebrated.
Leontes : You are married?
Florizel : We are not, sir, nor are we like to be;
[p]The stars, I see, will kiss
the valleys first:
[p]The odds for high and low's alike.
Leontes : My lord,
[p]Is this the daughter of a king?
Florizel : She is,
[p]When once she is my wife.
Leontes : That 'once' I see by your good father's speed
[p]Will come on very
slowly. I am sorry,
[p]Most sorry, you have broken from his
liking
[p]Where you were tied in duty, and as sorry
[p]Your choice is
not so rich in worth as beauty,
[p]That you might well enjoy her.
Florizel : Dear, look up:
[p]Though Fortune, visible an enemy,
[p]Should chase us
with my father, power no jot
[p]Hath she to change our loves. Beseech
you, sir,
[p]Remember since you owed no more to time
[p]Than I do now:
with thought of such affections,
[p]Step forth mine advocate; at your
request
[p]My father will grant precious things as trifles.
Leontes : Would he do so, I'ld beg your precious mistress,
[p]Which he counts
but a trifle.
Paulina : Sir, my liege,
[p]Your eye hath too much youth in't: not a
month
[p]'Fore your queen died, she was more worth such gazes
[p]Than
what you look on now.
Leontes : I thought of her,
[p]Even in these looks I made.
[p][To
FLORIZEL]
[p]But your petition
[p]Is yet unanswer'd. I will to your
father:
[p]Your honour not o'erthrown by your desires,
[p]I am friend
to them and you: upon which errand
[p]I now go toward him; therefore
follow me
[p]And mark what way I make: come, good my lord.
Previous: Act 4 - Scene 4
Next: Act 5 - Scene 2
