THE WINTER'S TALE. Sidney Lee

left them

       More rich for what they yielded.

       LEONTES

       Thou speak’st truth.

       No more such wives; therefore, no wife: one worse,

       And better us’d, would make her sainted spirit

       Again possess her corpse; and on this stage,—

       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 overmuch.

       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,—