THE ALEXANDER SHAKESPEARE

General Editor

R.B. Kennedy

Additional notes and editing

Mike Gould

THE WINTER’S TALE
William Shakespeare

CONTENTS

Title Page

Prefatory Note

The Theatre in Shakespeare’s Day

Shakespeare: A Timeline

Life & Times

Money in Shakespeare’s Day

Introduction

List of Characters

Act One

Scene I

Scene II

Act Two

Scene I

Scene II

Scene III

Act Three

Scene I

Scene II

Scene III

Act Four

Scene I

Scene II

Scene III

Scene IV

Act Five

Scene I

Scene II

Scene III

Shakespeare: Words and Phrases

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prefatory Note

This Shakespeare play uses the full Alexander text. By keeping in mind the fact that the language has changed considerably in four hundred years, as have customs, jokes, and stage conventions, the editors have aimed at helping the modern reader – whether English is their mother tongue or not – to grasp the full significance of the play. The Notes, intended primarily for examination candidates, are presented in a simple, direct style. The needs of those unfamiliar with British culture have been specially considered.

Since quiet study of the printed word is unlikely to bring fully to life plays that were written directly for the public theatre, attention has been drawn to dramatic effects which are important in performance. The editors see Shakespeare’s plays as living works of art which can be enjoyed today on stage, film and television in many parts of the world.

An Elizabethan playhouse. Note the apron stage protruding into the auditorium, the space below it, the inner room at the rear of the stage, the gallery above the inner stage, the canopy over the main stage, and the absence of a roof over the audience.

The Theatre in Shakespeare’s Day

On the face of it, the conditions in the Elizabethan theatre were not such as to encourage great writers. The public playhouse itself was not very different from an ordinary inn-yard; it was open to the weather; among the spectators were often louts, pickpockets and prostitutes; some of the actors played up to the rowdy elements in the audience by inserting their own jokes into the authors’ lines, while others spoke their words loudly but unfeelingly; the presentation was often rough and noisy, with fireworks to represent storms and battles, and a table and a few chairs to represent a tavern; there were no actresses, so boys took the parts of women, even such subtle and mature ones as Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth; there was rarely any scenery at all in the modern sense. In fact, a quick inspection of the English theatre in the reign of Elizabeth I by a time-traveller from the twentieth century might well produce only one positive reaction: the costumes were often elaborate and beautiful.

Shakespeare himself makes frequent comments in his plays about the limitations of the playhouse and the actors of his time, often apologizing for them. At the beginning of Henry V the Prologue refers to the stage as ‘this unworthy scaffold’ and to the theatre building (the Globe, probably) as ‘this wooden O’, and emphasizes the urgent need for imagination in making up for all the deficiencies of presentation. In introducing Act IV the Chorus goes so far as to say:

… we shall much disgrace

With four or five most vile and ragged foils,

Right ill-dispos’d in brawl ridiculous,

The name of Agincourt, (lines 49–52)

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act V, Scene i) he seems to dismiss actors with the words:

The best in this kind are but shadows.

Yet Elizabeth’s theatre, with all its faults, stimulated dramatists to a variety of achievement that has never been equalled and, in Shakespeare, produced one of the greatest writers in history. In spite of all his grumbles he seems to have been fascinated by the challenge that it presented him with. It is necessary to re-examine his theatre carefully in order to understand how he was able to achieve so much with the materials he chose to use. What sort of place was the Elizabethan playhouse in reality? What sort of people were these criticized actors? And what sort of audiences gave them their living?

The Development of the Theatre up to Shakespeare’s Time

For centuries in England noblemen had employed groups of skilled people to entertain them when required. Under Tudor rule, as England became more secure and united, actors such as these were given more freedom, and they often performed in public, while still acknowledging their ‘overlords’ (in the 1570s, for example, when Shakespeare was still a schoolboy at Stratford, one famous company was called ‘Lord Leicester’s Men’). London was rapidly becoming larger and more important in the second half of the sixteenth century, and many of the companies of actors took the opportunities offered to establish themselves at inns on the main roads leading to the City (for example, the Boar’s Head in Whitechapel and the Tabard in South-wark) or in the City itself. These groups of actors would come to an agreement with the inn-keeper which would give them the use of the yard for their performances after people had eaten and drunk well in the middle of the day. Before long, some inns were taken over completely by companies of players and thus became the first public theatres. In 1574 the officials of the City of London issued an order which shows clearly that these theatres were both popular and also offensive to some respectable people, because the order complains about ‘the inordinate haunting of great multitudes of people, specially youth, to plays interludes and shows; namely occasion of frays and quarrels, evil practices of incontinency in great inns …’ There is evidence that, on public holidays, the theatres on the banks of the Thames were crowded with noisy apprentices and tradesmen, but it would be wrong to think that audiences were always undiscriminating and loudmouthed. In spite of the disapproval of Puritans and the more staid members of society, by the 1590s, when Shakespeare’s plays were beginning to be performed, audiences consisted of a good cross-section of English society, nobility as well as workers, intellectuals as well as simple people out for a laugh; also (and in this respect English theatres were unique in Europe), it was quite normal for respectable women to attend plays. So Shakespeare had to write plays which would appeal to people of widely different kinds. He had to provide ‘something for everyone’ but at the same time to take care to unify the material so that it would not seem to fall into separate pieces as they watched it. A speech like that of the drunken porter in Macbeth could provide the ‘groundlings’ with a belly-laugh, but also held a deeper significance for those who could appreciate it. The audience he wrote for was one of a number of apparent drawbacks which Shakespeare was able to turn to his and our advantage.

Shakespeare’s Actors

Nor were all the actors of the time mere ‘rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars’ as some were described in a Statute of 1572. It is true that many of them had a hard life and earned very little money, but leading actors could become partners in the ownership of the theatres in which they acted: Shakespeare was a shareholder in the Globe and the Blackfriars theatres when he was an actor as well as a playwright. In any case, the attacks made on Elizabethan actors were usually directed at their morals and not at their acting ability; it is clear that many of them must have been good at their trade if they were able to interpret complex works like the great tragedies in such a way as to attract enthusiastic audiences. Undoubtedly some of the boys took the women’s parts with skill and confidence, since a man called Coryate, visiting Venice in 1611, expressed surprise that women could act as well as they: ‘I saw women act, a thing that I never saw before … and they performed it with as good a grace, action, gesture … as ever I saw any masculine actor.’ The quality of most of the actors who first presented Shakespeare’s plays is probably accurately summed up by Fynes Moryson, who wrote, ‘… as there be, in my opinion, more plays in London than in all the parts of the world I have seen, so do these players or comedians excel all other in the world.’

The Structure of the Public Theatre

Although the ‘purpose-built’ theatres were based on the inn-yards which had been used for play-acting, most of them were circular. The walls contained galleries on three storeys from which the wealthier patrons watched, they must have been something like the ‘boxes’ in a modern theatre, except that they held much larger numbers – as many as 1500. The ‘groundlings’ stood on the floor of the building, facing a raised stage which projected from the ‘stage-wall’, the main features of which were:

1 a small room opening on to the back of the main stage and on the same level as it (rear stage),

2 a gallery above this inner stage (upper stage),

3 canopy projecting from above the gallery over the main stage, to protect the actors from the weather (the 700 or 800 members of the audience who occupied the yard, or ‘pit’ as we call it today, had the sky above them).

In addition to these features there were dressing-rooms behind the stage and a space underneath it from which entrances could be made through trap-doors. All the acting areas – main stage, rear stage, upper stage and under stage – could be entered by actors directly from their dressing rooms, and all of them were used in productions of Shakespeare’s plays. For example, the inner stage, an almost cavelike structure, would have been where Ferdinand and Miranda are ‘discovered’ playing chess in the last act of The Tempest, while the upper stage was certainly the balcony from which Romeo climbs down in Act III of Romeo and Juliet.

It can be seen that such a building, simple but adaptable, was not really unsuited to the presentation of plays like Shakespeare’s. On the contrary, its simplicity guaranteed the minimum of distraction, while its shape and construction must have produced a sense of involvement on the part of the audience that modern producers would envy.

Other Resources of the Elizabethan Theatre

Although there were few attempts at scenery in the public theatre (painted backcloths were occasionally used in court performances), Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights were able to make use of a fair variety of ‘properties’, lists of such articles have survived: they include beds, tables, thrones, and also trees, walls, a gallows, a Trojan horse and a ‘Mouth of Hell’; in a list of properties belonging to the manager, Philip Henslowe, the curious item ‘two mossy banks’ appears. Possibly one of them was used for the

bank whereon the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows

in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act II, Scene i). Once again, imagination must have been required of the audience.

Costumes were the one aspect of stage production in which trouble and expense were hardly ever spared to obtain a magnificent effect. Only occasionally did they attempt any historical accuracy (almost all Elizabethan productions were what we should call ‘modern-dress’ ones), but they were appropriate to the characters who wore them: kings were seen to be kings and beggars were similarly unmistakable. It is an odd fact that there was usually no attempt at illusion in the costuming: if a costume looked fine and rich it probably was. Indeed, some of the costumes were almost unbelievably expensive. Henslowe lent his company £19 to buy a cloak, and the Alleyn brothers, well-known actors, gave £20 for a ‘black velvet cloak, with sleeves embroidered all with silver and gold, lined with black satin striped with gold’.

With the one exception of the costumes, the ‘machinery’ of the playhouse was economical and uncomplicated rather than crude and rough, as we can see from this second and more leisurely look at it. This meant that playwrights were stimulated to produce the imaginative effects that they wanted from the language that they used. In the case of a really great writer like Shakespeare, when he had learned his trade in the theatre as an actor, it seems that he received quite enough assistance of a mechanical and structural kind without having irksome restrictions and conventions imposed on him; it is interesting to try to guess what he would have done with the highly complex apparatus of a modern television studio. We can see when we look back to his time that he used his instrument, the Elizabethan theatre, to the full, but placed his ultimate reliance on the communication between his imagination and that of his audience through the medium of words. It is, above all, his rich and wonderful use of language that must have made play-going at that time a memorable experience for people of widely different kinds. Fortunately, the deep satisfaction of appreciating and enjoying Shakespeare’s work can be ours also, if we are willing to overcome the language difficulty produced by the passing of time.

Shakespeare: A Timeline

Very little indeed is known about Shakespeare’s private life; the facts included here are almost the only indisputable ones. The dates of Shakespeare’s plays are those on which they were first produced.

1558 | Queen Elizabeth crowned. |
1561 | Francis Bacon born. |
1564 | Christopher Marlowe born. | William Shakespeare born, April 23rd, baptized April 26th.
1566 |  | Shakespeare’s brother, Gilbert, born.
1567 | Mary, Queen of Scots, deposed. James VI (later James I of England) crowned King of Scotland. |
1572 | Ben Jonson born. Lord Leicester’s Company (of players) licensed; later called Lord Strange’s, then the Lord Chamberlain’s and fi nally (under James) the King’s Men. |
1573 | John Donne born. |
1574 | The Common Council of London directs that all plays and playhouses in London must be licensed. |
1576 | James Burbage builds the first public playhouse, The Theatre, at Shoreditch, outside the walls of the City. |
1577 | Francis Drake begins his voyage round the world (completed 1580). Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland published (which Shakespeare later used extensively). |
1582 |  | Shakespeare married to Anne Hathaway.
1583 | The Queen’s Company founded by royal warrant. | Shakespeare’s daughter, Susanna, born.
1585 |  | Shakespeare’s twins, Hamnet and Judith, born.
1586 | Sir Philip Sidney, the Elizabethan ideal ‘Christian knight’, poet, patron, soldier, killed at Zutphen in the Low Countries. |
1587 | Mary, Queen of Scots, beheaded. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (Part I) first staged. |
1588 | Defeat of the Spanish Armada. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (Part II) first staged. |
1589 | Marlowe’s Jew of Malta and Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy (a ‘revenge tragedy’ and one of the most popular plays of Elizabethan times). |
1590 | Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Books I–III) published. |
1592 | Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Edward II first staged. Witchcraft trials in Scotland. Robert Greene, a rival playwright, refers to Shakespeare as ‘an upstart crow’ and ‘the only Shake-scene in a country’. | Titus Andronicus Henry VI, Parts I, II and III Richard III
1593 | London theatres closed by the plague. Christopher Marlowe killed in a Deptford tavern. | Two Gentlemen of Verona Comedy of Errors The Taming of the Shrew Love’s Labour’s Lost
1594 | Shakespeare’s company becomes The Lord Chamberlain’s Men. | Romeo and Juliet
1595 | Raleigh’s first expedition to Guiana. Last expedition of Drake and Hawkins (both died). | Richard II A Midsummer Night’s Dream
1596 | Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Books IV–VI) published. James Burbage buys rooms at Blackfriars and begins to convert them into a theatre. | King John The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare’s son Hamnet dies. Shakespeare’s father is granted a coat of arms.
1597 | James Burbage dies, his son Richard, a famous actor, turns the Blackfriars Theatre into a private playhouse. | Henry IV (Part I) Shakespeare buys and redecorates New Place at Stratford.
1598 | Death of Philip II of Spain | Henry IV (Part II) Much Ado About Nothing
1599 | Death of Edmund Spenser. The Globe Theatre completed at Bankside by Richard and Cuthbert Burbage. | Henry V Julius Caesar As You Like It
1600 | Fortune Theatre built at Cripplegate. East India Company founded for the extension of English trade and influence in the East. The Children of the Chapel begin to use the hall at Blackfriars. | Merry Wives of Windsor Troilus and Cressida
1601 |  | Hamlet
1602 | Sir Thomas Bodley’s library opened at Oxford. | Twelfth Night
1603 | Death of Queen Elizabeth. James I comes to the throne. Shakespeare’s company becomes The King’s Men. Raleigh tried, condemned and sent to the Tower |
1604 | Treaty of peace with Spain | Measure for Measure Othello All’s Well that Ends Well
1605 | The Gunpowder Plot: an attempt by a group of Catholics to blow up the Houses of Parliament. |
1606 | Guy Fawkes and other plotters executed. | Macbeth King Lear
1607 | Virginia, in America, colonized. A great frost in England. | Antony and Cleopatra Timon of Athens Coriolanus Shakespeare’s daughter, Susanna, married to Dr. John Hall.
1608 | The company of the Children of the Chapel Royal (who had performed at Blackfriars for ten years) is disbanded. John Milton born. Notorious pirates executed in London. | Richard Burbage leases the Blackfriars Theatre to six of his fellow actors, including Shakespeare. Pericles, Prince of Tyre
1609 |  | Shakespeare’s Sonnets published.
1610 | A great drought in England | Cymbeline
1611 | Chapman completes his great translation of the Iliad, the story of Troy. Authorized Version of the Bible published. | A Winter’s Tale The Tempest
1612 | Webster’s The White Devil first staged. | Shakespeare’s brother, Gilbert, dies.
1613 | Globe theatre burnt down during a performance of Henry VIII (the fi ring of small cannon set fi re to the thatched roof). Webster’s Duchess of Malfi first staged. | Henry VIII Two Noble Kinsmen Shakespeare buys a house at Blackfriars.
1614 | Globe Theatre rebuilt in ‘far finer manner than before’. |
1616 | Ben Jonson publishes his plays in one volume. Raleigh released from the Tower in order to prepare an expedition to the gold mines of Guiana. | Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith, marries Thomas Quiney. Death of Shakespeare on his birthday, April 23rd.
1618 | Raleigh returns to England and is executed on the charge for which he was imprisoned in 1603. |
1623 | Publication of the Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays | Death of Anne Shakespeare (née Hathaway).

Life & Times
William Shakespeare the Playwright

There exists a curious paradox when it comes to the life of William Shakespeare. He easily has more words written about him than any other famous English writer, yet we know the least about him. This inevitably means that most of what is written about him is either fabrication or speculation. The reason why so little is known about Shakespeare is that he wasn’t a novelist or a historian or a man of letters. He was a playwright, and playwrights were considered fairly low on the social pecking order in Elizabethan society. Writing plays was about providing entertainment for the masses – the great unwashed. It was the equivalent to being a journalist for a tabloid newspaper.

In fact, we only know of Shakespeare’s work because two of his friends had the foresight to collect his plays together following his death and have them printed. The only reason they did so was apparently because they rated his talent and thought it would be a shame if his words were lost.

Consequently his body of work has ever since been assessed and reassessed as the greatest contribution to English literature. That is despite the fact that we know that different printers took it upon themselves to heavily edit the material they worked from. We also know that Elizabethan plays were worked and reworked frequently, so that they evolved over time until they were honed to perfection, which means that many different hands played their part in the active writing process. It would therefore be fair to say that any play attributed to Shakespeare is unlikely to contain a great deal of original input. Even the plots were based on well known historical events, so it would be hard to know what fragments of any Shakespeare play came from that single mind.

One might draw a comparison with the Christian bible, which remains such a compelling read because it came from the collaboration of many contributors and translators over centuries, who each adjusted the stories until they could no longer be improved. As virtually nothing is known of Shakespeare’s life and even less about his method of working, we shall never know the truth about his plays. They certainly contain some very elegant phrasing, clever plot devices and plenty of words never before seen in print, but as to whether Shakespeare invented them from a unique imagination or whether he simply took them from others around him is anyone’s guess.

The best bet seems to be that Shakespeare probably took the lead role in devising the original drafts of the plays, but was open to collaboration from any source when it came to developing them into workable scripts for effective performances. He would have had to work closely with his fellow actors in rehearsals, thereby finding out where to edit, abridge, alter, reword and so on.

In turn, similar adjustments would have occurred in his absence, so that definitive versions of his plays never really existed. In effect Shakespeare was only responsible for providing the framework of plays, upon which others took liberties over time. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the English language itself was not definitive at that time either. The consequence was that people took it upon themselves to spell words however they pleased or to completely change words and phrasing to suit their own preferences.

It is easy to see then, that Shakespeare’s plays were always going to have lives of their own, mutating and distorting in detail like Chinese whispers. The culture of creative preservation was simply not established in Elizabethan England. Creative ownership of Shakespeare’s plays was lost to him as soon as he released them into the consciousness of others. They saw nothing wrong with taking his ideas and running with them, because no one had ever suggested that one shouldn’t, and Shakespeare probably regarded his work in the same way. His plays weren’t sacrosanct works of art, they were templates for theatre folk to make their livings from, so they had every right to mould them into productions that drew in the crowds as effectively as possible. Shakespeare was like the helmsman of a sailing ship, steering the vessel but wholly reliant on the team work of his crew to arrive at the desired destination.

It seems that Shakespeare certainly had a natural gift, but the genius of his plays may be attributable to the collective efforts of Shakespeare and others. It is a rather satisfying notion to think that his plays might actually be the creative outpourings of the Elizabethan milieu in which Shakespeare immersed himself. That makes them important social documents as well as seminal works of the English language.

Money in Shakespeare’s Day

It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to relate the value of money in our time to its value in another age and to compare prices of commodities today and in the past. Many items are simply not comparable on grounds of quality or serviceability.

There was a bewildering variety of coins in use in Elizabethan England. As nearly all English and European coins were gold or silver, they had intrinsic value apart from their official value. This meant that foreign coins circulated freely in England and were officially recognized, for example the French crown (écu) worth about 30p (72 cents), and the Spanish ducat worth about 33p (79 cents). The following table shows some of the coins mentioned by Shakespeare and their relation to one another.

A comparison of the following prices in Shakespeare’s time with the prices of the same items today will give some idea of the change in the value of money.

INTRODUCTION

As a budding playwright, Shakespeare was attacked by an older writer, Robert Greene, for plagiarism: ‘an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers’. Towards the end of his career, for his next-to-last play to be completed, Shakespeare drew upon a story by this same Greene, and so created The Winter’s Tale.

In Shakespeare’s own period, older playgoers, remembering Greene and seeing this work for the first time, must have thought they knew how it ended. The king, consumed by jealousy, repudiates his queen, who dies. He soon after recognises his error, but it is too late. That, at least, is the story of Greene’s Pandosto. Shakespeare, however, picks up this simple tale and turns it into a myth of resurrection. We all, like the early playgoers, think Hermione to be dead. We see her fall, deadly sick, on stage. News of her death is brought by Paulina, whom we know to be a reliable witness. Sixteen years pass, without any sign of her.

Tragedy lies very close to comedy here. The earlier episodes, the autumn and winter parts of the play, display the imagery of disease and dearth: ‘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 those nothings,/If this be nothing’. But those corrugated rhythms give way to the comedy of Autolycus and his song of spring: ‘When daffodils begin to peer,/With heigh! the doxy over the dale’. There is the daughter who was thought lost, Perdita in her harvest scene, also evoking the spring: ‘daffodils,/That come before the swallow dares, and take/The winds of March with beauty’. This prefigures the restoration of Hermione, which is the key to the play.

The meeting of Perdita with Leontes, her father, which could have been one of Shakespeare’s reconciliation set-pieces, is reported at second hand in order to preserve the grand climax for the restitution of Hermione. There, at the end, is the Statue Scene when Hermione rises, as though from the dead, and joins her repentant husband.

So far from attempting to seem naturalistic, the text drives home the impossibilities: ‘That she is living,/Were it but told you, should be hooted at/Like an old tale’. But Shakespeare has paid the ‘old tale’ of his former enemy, Robert Greene, the supreme compliment of turning it into high drama. Leontes says, ‘I saw her,/As I thought, dead; and have, in vain, said many/A prayer upon her grave’. However, the prayers have not been in vain. The whole scene is an acting out of resurrection.

The extravagance of the plot is matched by that of the structure. Such critics as the Italian, Castelvetro, and the Englishman, Sir Philip Sidney, thought that the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, had imposed rules on the drama that decreed restrictions as to the time a play should encompass in its action, the place – only one – it should represent, and the plot – very simple – that it should deploy. These rules were called ‘unities’, and Shakespeare violated these unities in an exuberant fashion. The action covers sixteen years, and not smoothly: there is a gaping void between Act 3 and Act 4. The scenes swerve between Sicily, the kingdom of Leontes, and Bohemia, the kingdom of his supposed rival, Polixenes. The plot, as we have seen, is far-fetched beyond all decorum. However, the appeal is not to the intricacies of art, but to nature. In the end, what we are shown is nature’s own cycle, represented in the death and restoration of Hermione. She is a kind of earth goddess. We see the earth die, every winter. Yet it revives in the spring. It is an idea similar to that of Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son. He ‘was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found’ (Luke 15:24).

LIST OF CHARACTERS

ACT ONE
Scene I

Sicilia. The palace of Leontes.

[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.
5

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.
10

Camillo

You pay a great deal too dear for what’s given freely.
15

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 train’d 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 seem’d to be together, though absent; shook hands, as over a vast; and embrac’d as it were from the ends of opposed winds. The heavens continue their loves!
20 25

Archidamus

I think there is not in the world either malice or matter to alter it. You have an unspeakable comfort of your young Prince Mamillius; it is a gentleman of the greatest promise that ever came into my note.
30

Camillo

I very well agree with you in the hopes of him. It is a gallant child; one that indeed physics the subject, makes old hearts fresh; they that went on crutches ere he was born desire yet their life to see him a man.
35

Archidamus

Would they else be content to die?

Camillo

Yes; if there were no other excuse why they should desire to live.

Archidamus

If the King had no son, they would desire to live on crutches till he had one.
40

[Exeunt.]

Scene II

Sicilia. The palace of Leontes.

[Enter LEONTES, POLIXENES, HERMIONE, MAMILLIUS, CAMILLO, and Attendants.]

Polixenes

Nine changes of the wat’ry star hath been

The shepherd’s note since we have left our throne

Without a burden. Time as long again

Would be fill’d up, my brother, with our thanks;

And yet we should for perpetuity
5

Go hence in debt. And therefore, like a cipher,

Yet standing in rich place, I multiply

With one ‘We thank you’ many thousands moe

That go before it.

Leontes

Stay your thanks a while,

And pay them when you part.

Polixenes

Sir, that’s to-morrow.
10

I am question’d by my fears of what may chance

Or breed upon our absence, that may blow

No sneaping winds at home, to make us say

‘This is put forth too truly’. Besides, I have stay’d

To tire your royalty.

Leontes

We are tougher, brother,
15

Than you can put us to’t.

Polixenes

No longer stays.

Leontes

One sev’night longer.

Polixenes

Very sooth, to-morrow.

Leontes

We’ll part the time between’s then; and in that

I’ll no gainsaying.

Polixenes

Press me not, beseech you, so.

There is no tongue that moves, none, none i’ th’ world,
20

So soon as yours could win me. So it should now,

Were there necessity in your request, although

’Twere needful I denied it. My affairs

Do even drag me homeward; which to hinder

Were in your love a whip to me; my stay
25

To you a charge and trouble. To save both,

Farewell, our brother.

Leontes

Tongue-tied, our Queen? Speak you.

Hermione

I had thought, sir, to have held my peace until

You had drawn oaths from him not to stay. You, sir,

Charge him too coldly. Tell him you are sure
30

All in Bohemia’s well – this satisfaction

The by-gone day proclaim’d. Say this to him,

He’s beat from his best ward.

Leontes

Well said, Hermione.

Hermione

To tell he longs to see his son were strong;

But let him say so then, and let him go;
35

But let him swear so, and he shall not stay;

We’ll thwack him hence with distaffs.

[To POLIXENES] Yet of your royal presence I’ll adventure

The borrow of a week. When at Bohemia

You take my lord, I’ll give him my commission
40

To let him there a month behind the gest

Prefix’d for’s parting. – Yet, good deed, Leontes,

I love thee not a jar o’ th’ clock behind

What lady she her lord. – You’ll stay?

Polixenes

No, madam.

Hermione

Nay, but you will?

Polixenes

I may not, verily.
45

Hermione

Verily!

You put me off with limber vows; but I,

Though you would seek t’ unsphere the stars with oaths,

Should yet say ‘Sir, no going’. Verily,

You shall not go; a lady’s ‘verily’ is

As potent as a lord’s. Will you go yet?
50

Force me to keep you as a prisoner,

Not like a guest; so you shall pay your fees

When you depart, and save your thanks. How say you?

My prisoner or my guest? By your dread ‘verily’,

One of them you shall be.

Polixenes

Your guest, then, madam:
55

To be your prisoner should import offending;

Which is for me less easy to commit

Than you to punish.

Hermione

Not your gaoler then,

But your kind hostess. Come, I’ll question you

Of my lord’s tricks and yours when you were boys.
60

You were pretty lordings then!

Polixenes

We were, fair Queen,

Two lads that thought there was no more behind

But such a day to-morrow as to-day,

And to be boy eternal.

Hermione

Was not my lord

The verier wag o’ th’ two?
65

Polixenes

We were as twinn’d lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun

And bleat the one at th’ other. What we chang’d

Was innocence for innocence; we knew not

The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream’d

That any did. Had we pursu’d that life,
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And our weak spirits ne’er been higher rear’d

With stronger blood, we should have answer’d heaven

Boldly ‘Not guilty’, the imposition clear’d

Hereditary ours.

Hermione

By this we gather

You have tripp’d since.

Polixenes

O my most sacred lady,
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Temptations have since then been born to ’s, for

In those unfledg’d days was my wife a girl;

Your precious self had then not cross’d the eyes

Of my young playfellow.

Hermione

Grace to boot!

Of this make no conclusion, lest you say
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Your queen and I are devils. Yet, go on;

Th’ offences we have made you do we’ll answer,

If you first sinn’d with us, and that with us

You did continue fault, and that you slipp’d not

With any but with us.

Leontes

Is he won yet?
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Hermione

He’ll stay, my lord.

Leontes

At my request he would not.

Hermione, my dearest, thou never spok’st

To better purpose.

Hermione

Never?

Leontes

Never but once.

Hermione

What! Have I twice said well? When was’t before?

I prithee tell me; cram’s with praise, and make’s
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As fat as tame things. One good deed dying tongueless

Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that.

Our praises are our wages; you may ride’s

With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere

With spur we heat an acre. But to th’ goal:
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My last good deed was to entreat his stay;

What was my first? It has an elder sister,

Or I mistake you. O, would her name were Grace!

But once before I spoke to th’ purpose – When?

Nay, let me have’t; I long.
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Leontes

Why, that was when

Three crabbed months had sour’d themselves to death,

Ere I could make thee open thy white hand

And clap thyself my love; then didst thou utter

‘I am yours for ever’.

Hermione

’Tis Grace indeed.
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Why, lo you now, I have spoke to th’ purpose twice:

The one for ever earn’d a royal husband;

Th’ other for some while a friend.

[Giving her hand to POLIXENES.]

Leontes

[Aside] Too hot, too hot!

To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods.

I have tremor cordis on me; my heart dances,
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But not for joy, not joy. This entertainment

May a free face put on; derive a liberty

From heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom,

And well become the agent. ’T may, I grant;

But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers,
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As now they are, and making practis’d smiles

As in a looking-glass; and then to sigh, as ’twere

The mort o’ th’ deer. O, that is entertainment

My bosom likes not, nor my brows! Mamillius,

Art thou my boy?

Mamillius

Ay, my good lord.

Leontes

I’ fecks!
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Why, that’s my bawcock. What! hast smutch’d thy nose?

They say it is a copy out of mine. Come, Captain,

We must be neat – not neat, but cleanly, Captain.

And yet the steer, the heifer, and the calf,

Are all call’d neat. – Still virginalling
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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,
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That will say any thing. But were they false

As o’er-dy’d 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,
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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,

Communicat’st with dreams – how can this be? –
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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
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And hard’ning 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 mov’d, my lord?

Leontes

No, in good earnest.
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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, me thoughts I did recoil

Twenty-three years; and saw myself unbreech’d,
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In my green velvet coat; my dagger muzzl’d,

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,
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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,
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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
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Thoughts that would thick my blood.

Leontes

So stands this squire

Offic’d with me. We two will walk, my lord,

And leave you to your graver steps. Hermione,

How thou lov’st us show in our brother’s welcome;

Let what is dear in Sicily be cheap;
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Next to thyself and my young rover, he’s

Apparent to my heart.

Hermione

If you would seek us,

We are yours i’ th’ 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,
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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!
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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 disgrac’d a part, whose issue

Will hiss me to my grave. Contempt and clamour

Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play. There have been,
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Or I am much deceiv’d, cuckolds ere now;

And many a man there is, even at this present,

Now while I speak this, holds his wife by th’ arm

That little thinks she has been sluic’d in’s absence,

And his pond fish’d by his next neighbour, by
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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’s none;
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It is a bawdy planet, that will strike

Where ’tis predominant; and ’tis pow’rful, think it,

From east, west, north, and south. Be it concluded,

No barricado for a belly. Know’t,

It will let in and out the enemy
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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.
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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
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His business more material.

Leontes

Didst perceive it?

[Aside] They’re here with me already; whisp’ring, 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.
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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,
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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?

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