Upon his palm!— How now, you wanton calf!
Art thou my calf?
Mamillius
Yes, if you will, my lord.
Leontes
Thou want’st a rough pash and the shoots that I have,
To be full like me: yet they say we are
Almost as like as eggs; women say so,
That will say anything but were they false
As o’er-dyed blacks, as wind, as waters, false
As dice are to be wish’d by one that fixes
No bourn ’twixt his and mine, yet were it true
To say this boy were like me. Come, sir page,
Look on me with your welkin eye: sweet villain!
Most dear’st! my collop! Can thy dam?— may’t be?—
Affection! thy intention stabs the centre:
Thou dost make possible things not so held,
Communicatest with dreams;— how can this be?—
With what’s unreal thou coactive art,
And fellow’st nothing: then ’tis very credent
Thou mayst co-join with something; and thou dost,
And that beyond commission, and I find it,
And that to the infection of my brains
And hardening of my brows.
Polixenes
What means Sicilia?
Hermione
He something seems unsettled.
Polixenes
How, my lord!
What cheer? how is’t with you, best brother?
Hermione
You look as if you held a brow of much distraction
Are you moved, my lord?
Leontes
No, in good earnest.
How sometimes nature will betray its folly,
Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime
To harder bosoms! Looking on the lines
Of my boy’s face, methoughts I did recoil
Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreech’d,
In my green velvet coat, my dagger muzzled,
Lest it should bite its master, and so prove,
As ornaments oft do, too dangerous:
How like, methought, I then was to this kernel,
This squash, this gentleman. Mine honest friend,
Will you take eggs for money?
Mamillius
No, my lord, I’ll fight.
Leontes
You will! why, happy man be’s dole! My brother,
Are you so fond of your young prince as we
Do seem to be of ours?
Polixenes
If at home, sir,
He’s all my exercise, my mirth, my matter,
Now my sworn friend and then mine enemy,
My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all:
He makes a July’s day short as December,
And with his varying childness cures in me
Thoughts that would thick my blood.
Leontes
So stands this squire
Officed with me: we two will walk, my lord,
And leave you to your graver steps. Hermione,
How thou lovest us, show in our brother’s welcome;
Let what is dear in Sicily be cheap:
Next to thyself and my young rover, he’s
Apparent to my heart.
Hermione
If you would seek us,
We are yours i’ the garden: shall’s attend you there?
Leontes
To your own bents dispose you: you’ll be found,
Be you beneath the sky.
Aside
I am angling now,
Though you perceive me not how I give line.
Go to, go to!
How she holds up the neb, the bill to him!
And arms her with the boldness of a wife
To her allowing husband!
Exeunt Polixenes, Hermione, and Attendants
Gone already!
Inch-thick, knee-deep, o’er head and ears a fork’d one!
Go, play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and I
Play too, but so disgraced a part, whose issue
Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour
Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play.
There have been,
Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now;
And many a man there is, even at this present,
Now while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm,
That little thinks she has been sluiced in’s absence
And his pond fish’d by his next neighbour, by
Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there’s comfort in’t
Whiles other men have gates and those gates open’d,
As mine, against their will. Should all despair
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
Would hang themselves. Physic for’t there is none;
It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
Where ’tis predominant; and ’tis powerful, think it,
From east, west, north and south: be it concluded,
No barricado for a belly; know’t;
With bag and baggage: many thousand on’s
Have the disease, and feel’t not. How now, boy!
Mamillius
I am like you, they say.
Leontes
Why that’s some comfort. What, Camillo there?
Camillo
Ay, my good lord.
Leontes
Go play, Mamillius; thou’rt an honest man.
Exit Mamillius
Camillo, this great sir will yet stay longer.
Camillo
You had much ado to make his anchor hold:
When you cast out, it still came home.
Leontes
Didst note it?
Camillo
He would not stay at your petitions: made
His business more material.
Leontes
Didst perceive it?
Aside
They’re here with me already, whispering, rounding
’sicilia is a so-forth:’ ’tis far gone,
When I shall gust it last. How came’t, Camillo,
That he did stay?
Camillo
At the good queen’s entreaty.
Leontes
At the queen’s be’t: ’good’ should be pertinent
But, so it is, it is not. Was this taken
By any understanding pate but thine?
For thy conceit is soaking, will draw in
More than the common blocks: not noted, is’t,
But of the finer natures? by some severals
Of head-piece extraordinary? lower messes
Perchance are to this business purblind? say.
Camillo
Business, my lord! I think most understand
Bohemia stays here longer.
Leontes
Ha!
Camillo
Stays here longer.
Leontes
Ay, but why?
Camillo
To satisfy your highness and the entreaties
Of our most gracious mistress.
Leontes
Satisfy!
The entreaties of your mistress! satisfy!
Let that suffice. I have trusted thee, Camillo,
With all the nearest things to my heart, as well
My chamber-councils, wherein, priest-like, thou
Hast cleansed my bosom, I from thee departed
Thy penitent reform’d: but we have been
Deceived in thy integrity, deceived
In that which seems so.
Camillo
Be it forbid, my lord!
Leontes
To bide upon’t, thou art not honest, or,
If thou inclinest that way, thou art a coward,
Which hoxes honesty behind, restraining
From course required; or else thou must be counted
A servant gra
fted in my serious trust
And therein negligent; or else a fool
That seest a game play’d home, the rich stake drawn,
And takest it all for jest.
Camillo
My gracious lord,
I may be negligent, foolish and fearful;
In every one of these no man is free,
But that his negligence, his folly, fear,
Among the infinite doings of the world,
Sometime puts forth. In your affairs, my lord,
If ever I were wilful-negligent,
It was my folly; if industriously
I play’d the fool, it was my negligence,
Not weighing well the end; if ever fearful
To do a thing, where I the issue doubted,
Where of the execution did cry out
Against the non-performance, ’twas a fear
Which oft infects the wisest: these, my lord,
Are such allow’d infirmities that honesty
Is never free of. But, beseech your grace,
Be plainer with me; let me know my trespass
By its own visage: if I then deny it,
’Tis none of mine.
Leontes
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
It is; you lie, you lie:
I say thou liest, Camillo, and I hate thee,
Pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave,
Or else a hovering temporizer, that
Canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil,
Inclining to them both: were my wife’s liver
Infected as her life, she would not live
The running of one glass.
Camillo
Who does infect her?
Leontes
Why, he that wears her like a medal, hanging
About his neck, Bohemia: who, if I
Had servants true about me, that bare eyes
To see alike mine honour as their profits,
Their own particular thrifts, they would do that
Which should undo more doing: ay, and thou,
His cupbearer,— whom I from meaner form
Have benched and reared to worship, who mayst see
Plainly as heaven sees earth and earth sees heaven,
How I am galled,— mightst bespice a cup,
To give mine enemy a lasting wink;
Which draught to me were cordial.
Camillo
Sir, my lord,
I could do this, and that with no rash potion,
But with a lingering dram that should not work
Maliciously like poison: but I cannot
Believe this crack to be in my dread mistress,
So sovereignly being honourable.
I have loved thee,—
Leontes
Make that thy question, and go rot!
Dost think I am so muddy, so unsettled,
To appoint myself in this vexation, sully
The purity and whiteness of my sheets,
Which to preserve is sleep, which being spotted
Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps,
Give scandal to the blood o’ the prince my son,
Who I do think is mine and love as mine,
Without ripe moving to’t? Would I do this?
Could man so blench?
Camillo
I must believe you, sir:
I do; and will fetch off Bohemia for’t;
Provided that, when he’s removed, your highness
Will take again your queen as yours at first,
Even for your son’s sake; and thereby for sealing
The injury of tongues in courts and kingdoms
Known and allied to yours.
Leontes
Thou dost advise me
Even so as I mine own course have set down:
I’ll give no blemish to her honour, none.
Camillo
My lord,
Go then; and with a countenance as clear
As friendship wears at feasts, keep with Bohemia
And with your queen. I am his cupbearer:
If from me he have wholesome beverage,
Account me not your servant.
Leontes
This is all:
Do’t and thou hast the one half of my heart;
Do’t not, thou split’st thine own.
Camillo
I’ll do’t, my lord.
Leontes
I will seem friendly, as thou hast advised me.
Exit
Camillo
O miserable lady! But, for me,
What case stand I in? I must be the poisoner
Of good Polixenes; and my ground to do’t
Is the obedience to a master, one
Who in rebellion with himself will have
All that are his so too. To do this deed,
Promotion follows. If I could find example
Of thousands that had struck anointed kings
And flourish’d after, I’ld not do’t; but since
Nor brass nor stone nor parchment bears not one,
Let villany itself forswear’t. I must
Forsake the court: to do’t, or no, is certain
To me a break-neck. Happy star, reign now!
Here comes Bohemia.
Re-enter Polixenes
Polixenes
This is strange: methinks
My favour here begins to warp. Not speak?
Good day, Camillo.
Camillo
Hail, most royal sir!
Polixenes
What is the news i’ the court?
Camillo
None rare, my lord.
Polixenes
The king hath on him such a countenance
As he had lost some province and a region
Loved as he loves himself: even now I met him
With customary compliment; when he,
Wafting his eyes to the contrary and falling
A
lip of much contempt, speeds from me and
So leaves me to consider what is breeding
That changeth thus his manners.
Camillo
I dare not know, my lord.
Polixenes
How! dare not! do not. Do you know, and dare not?
Be intelligent to me: ’tis thereabouts;
For, to yourself, what you do know, you must.
And cannot say, you dare not. Good Camillo,
Your changed complexions are to me a mirror
Which shows me mine changed too; for I must be
A party in this alteration, finding
Myself thus alter’d with ’t.
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.
Polixenes
By whom, Camillo?
Camillo
By the king.
Polixenes
For what?
Camillo
He thinks, nay, with all confidence he swears,
As he had seen’t or been an instrument
To vice you to’t, that you have touch’d his queen
Forbiddenly.
Polixenes
O, then my best blood turn
To an infected jelly and my name
Be yoked with his that did betray the Best!
Turn then my freshest reputation to
A savour that may strike the dullest nostril
Where I arrive, and my approach be shunn’d,