Complete Plays, The (38 page)

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,
Nay, hated too, worse than the great’st infection
That e’er was heard or read!

Camillo

Swear his thought over
By each particular star in heaven and
By all their influences, you may as well
Forbid the sea for to obey the moon
As or by oath remove or counsel shake
The fabric of his folly, whose foundation
Is piled upon his faith and will continue
The standing of his body.

Polixenes

How should this grow?

Camillo

I know not: but I am sure ’tis safer to
Avoid what’s grown than question how ’tis born.
If therefore you dare trust my honesty,
That lies enclosed in this trunk which you
Shall bear along impawn’d, away to-night!
Your followers I will whisper to the business,
And will by twos and threes at several posterns
Clear them o’ the city. For myself, I’ll put
My fortunes to your service, which are here
By this discovery lost. Be not uncertain;
For, by the honour of my parents, I
Have utter’d truth: which if you seek to prove,
I dare not stand by; nor shall you be safer
Than one condemn’d by the king’s own mouth, thereon
His execution sworn.

Polixenes

I do believe thee:
I saw his heart in ’s face. Give me thy hand:
Be pilot to me and thy places shall
Still neighbour mine. My ships are ready and
My people did expect my hence departure
Two days ago. This jealousy
Is for a precious creature: as she’s rare,
Must it be great, and as his person’s mighty,
Must it be violent, and as he does conceive
He is dishonour’d by a man which ever
Profess’d to him, why, his revenges must
In that be made more bitter. Fear o’ershades me:
Good expedition be my friend, and comfort
The gracious queen, part of his theme, but nothing
Of his ill-ta’en suspicion! Come, Camillo;
I will respect thee as a father if
Thou bear’st my life off hence: let us avoid.

Camillo

It is in mine authority to command
The keys of all the posterns: please your highness
To take the urgent hour. Come, sir, away.

Exeunt

A
CT
II

S
CENE
I. A
ROOM
IN
L
EONTES
’
PALACE
.

Enter Hermione, Mamillius, and Ladies

Hermione

Take the boy to you: he so troubles me,
’Tis past enduring.

First Lady

Come, my gracious lord,
Shall I be your playfellow?

Mamillius

No, I’ll none of you.

First Lady

Why, my sweet lord?

Mamillius

You’ll kiss me hard and speak to me as if
I were a baby still. I love you better.

Second Lady

And why so, my lord?

Mamillius

Not for because
Your brows are blacker; yet black brows, they say,
Become some women best, so that there be not
Too much hair there, but in a semicircle
Or a half-moon made with a pen.

Second Lady

Who taught you this?

Mamillius

I learnt it out of women’s faces. Pray now
What colour are your eyebrows?

First Lady

Blue, my lord.

Mamillius

Nay, that’s a mock: I have seen a lady’s nose
That has been blue, but not her eyebrows.

First Lady

Hark ye;
The queen your mother rounds apace: we shall
Present our services to a fine new prince
One of these days; and then you’ld wanton with us,
If we would have you.

Second Lady

She is spread of late
Into a goodly bulk: good time encounter her!

Hermione

What wisdom stirs amongst you? Come, sir, now
I am for you again: pray you, sit by us,
And tell ’s a tale.

Mamillius

Merry or sad shall’t be?

Hermione

As merry as you will.

Mamillius

A sad tale’s best for winter: I have one
Of sprites and goblins.

Hermione

Let’s have that, good sir.
Come on, sit down: come on, and do your best
To fright me with your sprites; you’re powerful at it.

Mamillius

There was a man —

Hermione

 
Nay, come, sit down; then on.

Mamillius

Dwelt by a churchyard: I will tell it softly;
Yond crickets shall not hear it.

Hermione

Come on, then,
And give’t me in mine ear.

Enter Leontes, with Antigonus, Lords and others

Leontes

Was he met there? his train? Camillo with him?

First Lord

Behind the tuft of pines I met them; never
Saw I men scour so on their way: I eyed them
Even to their ships.

Leontes

How blest am I
In my just censure, in my true opinion!
Alack, for lesser knowledge! how accursed
In being so blest! There may be in the cup
A spider steep’d, and one may drink, depart,
And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge
Is not infected: but if one present
The abhorr’d ingredient to his eye, make known
How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,
With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider.
Camillo was his help in this, his pander:
There is a plot against my life, my crown;
All’s true that is mistrusted: that false villain
Whom I employ’d was pre-employ’d by him:
He has discover’d my design, and I
Remain a pinch’d thing; yea, a very trick
For them to play at will. How came the posterns
So easily open?

First Lord

 
By his great authority;
Which often hath no less prevail’d than so
On your command.

Leontes

 
I know’t too well.
Give me the boy: I am glad you did not nurse him:
Though he does bear some signs of me, yet you
Have too much blood in him.

Hermione

What is this? sport?

Leontes

Bear the boy hence; he shall not come about her;
Away with him! and let her sport herself
With that she’s big with; for ’tis Polixenes
Has made thee swell thus.

Hermione

But I’ld say he had not,
And I’ll be sworn you would believe my saying,
Howe’er you lean to the nayward.

Leontes

You, my lords,
Look on her, mark her well; be but about
To say ‘she is a goodly lady,’ and
The justice of your bearts will thereto add
’Tis pity she’s not honest, honourable:’
Praise her but for this her without-door form,
Which on my faith deserves high speech, and straight
The shrug, the hum or ha, these petty brands
That calumny doth use — O, I am out —
That mercy does, for calumny will sear
Virtue itself: these shrugs, these hums and ha’s,
When you have said ‘she’s goodly,’ come between
Ere you can say ‘she’s honest:’ but be ’t known,
From him that has most cause to grieve it should be,
She’s an adulteress.

Hermione

Should a villain say so,
The most replenish’d villain in the world,
He were as much more villain: you, my lord,
Do but mistake.

Leontes

 
You have mistook, my lady,
Polixenes for Leontes: O thou thing!
Which I’ll not call a creature of thy place,
Lest barbarism, making me the precedent,
Should a like language use to all degrees
And mannerly distinguishment leave out
Betwixt the prince and beggar: I have said
She’s an adulteress; I have said with whom:
More, she’s a traitor and Camillo is
A federary with her, and one that knows
What she should shame to know herself
But with her most vile principal, that she’s
A bed-swerver, even as bad as those
That vulgars give bold’st titles, ay, and privy
To this their late escape.

Hermione

No, by my life.
Privy to none of this. How will this grieve you,
When you shall come to clearer knowledge, that
You thus have publish’d me! Gentle my lord,
You scarce can right me throughly then to say
You did mistake.

Leontes

 
No; if I mistake
In those foundations which I build upon,
The centre is not big enough to bear
A school-boy’s top. Away with her! to prison!
He who shall speak for her is afar off guilty
But that he speaks.

Hermione

There’s some ill planet reigns:
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favourable. Good my lords,
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have
That honourable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown: beseech you all, my lords,
With thoughts so qualified as your charities
Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so
The king’s will be perform’d!

Leontes

Shall I be heard?

Hermione

Who is’t that goes with me? Beseech your highness,
My women may be with me; for you see
My plight requires it. Do not weep, good fools;
There is no cause: when you shall know your mistress
Has deserved prison, then abound in tears
As I come out: this action I now go on
Is for my better grace. Adieu, my lord:
I never wish’d to see you sorry; now
I trust I shall. My women, come; you have leave.

Leontes

Go, do our bidding; hence!

Exit Hermione, guarded; with Ladies

First Lord

Beseech your highness, call the queen again.

Antigonus

Be certain what you do, sir, lest your justice
Prove violence; in the which three great ones suffer,
Yourself, your queen, your son.

First Lord

For her, my lord,
I dare my life lay down and will do’t, sir,
Please you to accept it, that the queen is spotless
I’ the eyes of heaven and to you; I mean,
In this which you accuse her.

Antigonus

If it prove
She’s otherwise, I’ll keep my stables where
I lodge my wife; I’ll go in couples with her;
Than when I feel and see her no farther trust her;
For every inch of woman in the world,
Ay, every dram of woman’s flesh is false, If she be.

Leontes

 
Hold your peaces.

First Lord

Good my lord,—

Antigonus

It is for you we speak, not for ourselves:
You are abused and by some putter-on
That will be damn’d for’t; would I knew the villain,
I would land-damn him. Be she honour-flaw’d,
I have three daughters; the eldest is eleven
The second and the third, nine, and some five;
If this prove true, they’ll pay for’t: by mine honour,
I’ll geld ’em all; fourteen they shall not see,
To bring false generations: they are co-heirs;
And I had rather glib myself than they
Should not produce fair issue.

Leontes

Cease; no more.
You smell this business with a sense as cold
As is a dead man’s nose: but I do see’t and feel’t
As you feel doing thus; and see withal
The instruments that feel.

Antigonus

If it be so,
We need no grave to bury honesty:
There’s not a grain of it the face to sweeten
Of the whole dungy earth.

Leontes

What! lack I credit?

First Lord

I had rather you did lack than I, my lord,
Upon this ground; and more it would content me
To have her honour true than your suspicion,
Be blamed for’t how you might.

Leontes

Why, what need we
Commune with you of this, but rather follow
Our forceful instigation? Our prerogative
Calls not your counsels, but our natural goodness
Imparts this; which if you, or stupefied
Or seeming so in skill, cannot or will not
Relish a truth like us, inform yourselves
We need no more of your advice: the matter,
The loss, the gain, the ordering on’t, is all
Properly ours.

Antigonus

 
And I wish, my liege,
You had only in your silent judgment tried it,
Without more overture.

Leontes

How could that be?
Either thou art most ignorant by age,
Or thou wert born a fool. Camillo’s flight,
Added to their familiarity,
Which was as gross as ever touch’d conjecture,
That lack’d sight only, nought for approbation
But only seeing, all other circumstances
Made up to the deed, doth push on this proceeding:
Yet, for a greater confirmation,
For in an act of this importance ’twere
Most piteous to be wild, I have dispatch’d in post
To sacred Delphos, to Apollo’s temple,
Cleomenes and Dion, whom you know
Of stuff’d sufficiency: now from the oracle
They will bring all; whose spiritual counsel had,
Shall stop or spur me. Have I done well?