The Winter’s Tale

Introduction

This is an unusual, remarkable, and powerful tragic-comedy told in two parts. The first three acts are the stuff of full blown classical tragedy, on the scale of King Lear or Othello, as Leontes, King of Sicily, suspects his wife, Hermione, and an old friend, Polixenes, of adultery and his rage escalates into a tragic madness of the imagination unmatched even in Shakespeare. And then suddenly 16 years pass and the final two acts ignite a romantic comedy / resurrection / resolution unprecedented in all of Shakespeare, as the next generation, untouched by the sins of the old, overcome their parent’s ordeals and find harmony and renewal. Jealous paranoia gives way to a triumph of exuberance and goodness, which includes a miraculous and improbable resurrection of great consequence. Hence, we technically have a comedy on our hands.

This is the story of a king who disintegrates from the madness of a jealous imagination, of a wife who is falsely accused, assumes to die and then is miraculously resurrected 16 years later and of a daughter left for dead and raised by shepherds, who finds love and is eventually re-united with the royal family taken from her as an infant. This is a story about the healing quality of time. It is a tale of suffering and resurrection. The Winter’s Tale is a real ‘late in his career’ Shakespearean gem and one of his most profoundly moving plays.

Act I (2 scenes)

Scene i

Sicily. The palace of Leontes

Enter Camillo and Archidamus

Camillo: “Sicily cannot show himself over-kind to Bohemia. They were trained together in their childhoods and rooted in affection. Their encounters have been royally attorneyed with interchange of gifts, letters and loving embassies. The heavens continue their loves!”

Archidamus: “I think there is not in the world either malice or matter to alter it.”

Analysis

Yes, Leontes (King of Sicily) and Polixenes (King of Bohemia) are very close childhood friends, but this very first scene is the very last scene before this intimate old kinship ruptures badly and creates the tragedy of this play’s first three acts.

Act I

Scene ii

Sicily. The palace of Leontes

Enter Leontes, Polixenes, Hermione, Mamillius and Camillo

Polixenes: “Nine months since we have left our throne without a burden. Time as long again would be filled up, my brother, with our thanks.”

Leontes: “Stay your thanks a while.”

Polixenes: “Sir, that’s tomorrow. I am questioned by my fears of what may chance or breed upon our absence. Besides, I have stayed to tire your royalty.”

Leontes: “We are tougher, brother, than you could put us to it.”

Polixenes: “I can no longer stay.”

Leontes: “One seven nights longer.”

Polixenes: “For sooth, tomorrow. Press me not, I beseech you. There is no tongue that moves me, none in the world, so soon as yours could win me. My affairs drag me homeward. Farewell, my brother.”

Leontes: “Tongue-tied, our Queen? Speak you.”

Hermione: (to Leontes) “You, sir, charge him too coldly. Tell him you are sure all in Bohemia is well.” (to Polixenes) “Yet of your royal presence I’ll adventure the borrow of a week. You’ll stay?”

Polixenes: “No, madam.”

Hermione: “Nay, but you will?”

Polixenes: “I may not, verily.”

Hermione: “Verily! Verily, you shall not go. A lady’s verily is as potent as a lord’s. Will you go yet? How say you? My prisoner or my guest? One of them you shall be.”

Polixenes: “Your guest then, madam.”

Hermione: “Not your jailer then, but your kind hostess. Come, I’ll question you of my lord’s tricks and yours when you were boys. You were pretty lords then.”

Polixenes: “We were, fair Queen; two lads who thought there was no more behind but such a day tomorrow as today, and to be boys eternal. We were as twinned lambs, who did frisk in the sun. What we changed was innocence for innocence; we knew not the doctrine of ill-doing, nor dreamed that any did.”

Leontes: “Is he won yet?”

Hermione: “He’ll stay, my lord.”

Leontes: “At my request he would not. Hermione, my dearest, thou never spoke to better purpose.”

Hermione: “Never?”

Leontes: “Never but once.”

Hermione: “My last good deed was to entreat his stay; what was my first?”

Leontes: “Why that was when thou did utter ‘I am yours forever’.”

Hermione: “Tis grace indeed. I have spoken to the purpose twice; the one forever earned a royal husband; the other for some while a friend.” (she gives her hand to Polixenes)

Leontes: (aside) “Too hot, too hot! To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods. I have tremors and my heart dances, but not for joy. But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers, as now they are, and making practiced smiles as in a looking glass; and then to sigh. O, that is entertainment my bosom like not. Mamillius, art thou my boy?”

Mamillius: “Ay, my good lord.”

Leontes: “Why, they say thy nose is a copy of mine. Art thou my calf?”

Mamillius: “Yes, if you will, my lord.”

Leontes: “They say we are almost as like as eggs.”

Polixenes: “What means Sicily?”

Hermione: “He something seems unsettled.”

Polixenes: “How is it with you, best brother?”

Hermione: “You look as if you held a brow of much distraction.”

Leontes: “No, in good earnest. Looking on the lines of my boy’s face, me thought I did recoil twenty-three years; and saw myself unbreeched. How like, me thought, I then was to this kernel, this squash, this gentleman. We two will walk. Hermione, how thou loves us show in our brother’s welcome.”

Hermione: “If you would seek us, we are yours in the garden. Shall we attend you there?”

Leontes: “You’ll be found, be you beneath the sky.” (aside) “How she holds up, and arms herself with the boldness of a wife to her allowing husband! Inch-thick, knee-deep, over head! Go, play, boy, play; thy mother plays, and I play too; but so disgraced a part. Contempt and clamour will be my knell. Go, play, boy. 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 who little think she has been sluiced in his absence, and his pond fished by his neighbour, Sir Smile. Should all despair who have revolted wives, a tenth of mankind would hang themselves. It is a bawdy planet. How now, boy!”

Mamillius: “I am like you, they say.”

Leontes: “Why, that’s some comfort. Camillo is here.“

Camillo: “Ay, my good lord.”

Leontes: “Go play, Mamillius.”

Exit Mamillius

Leontes: “Camillo, this great sir will yet stay longer.”

Camillo: “He would not stay at your petitions.”

Leontes: “How came it, Camillo, that he did stay?”

Camillo: “At the good Queen’s entreaty.”

Leontes: “‘Good’ should be pertinent, but it is not.”

Camillo: “Bohemia 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 council. But we have been deceived in that which seems so.”

Camillo: “Be it forbid, my lord.”

Leontes: “Thou art not honest; or thou art a coward; or else thou must be counted a servant grafted in my serious trust, and therein negligent; or else a fool, who sees a game played home, and takes it all for jest.”

Camillo: “My gracious lord, I may be negligent, foolish and fearful. If ever I were wilful-negligent, it was my folly; if industriously I played the fool, it was my negligence, not weighing well the end; if ever fearful to do a thing where I the issue doubted, t’was a fear which often infects the wisest. These, my lord, are such allowed infirmaries that honesty is never free of.”

Leontes: “Have you not seen, Camillo – or heard – or thought – my wife is slippery? Then say my wife is a hobby-horse, deserves a name as rank as any flax-wench. Say it and justify it.”

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.”

Leontes: “Is whispering nothing? Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses? Kissing with inside lip? Horsing foot on foot? Skulking in corners? That would unseen be wicked – is this nothing? Why, then the world and all that’s in it 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; 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 lies, Camillo, and I hate thee, and pronounce thee a gross lout and a mindless slave.”

Camillo: “Who does infect her?”

Leontes: “Why, he who wears her like her medal, hanging around his neck, Bohemia; who – if I had servants true about me who bear eyes to see my honour as their profits, they would do that which should undo more doing. Ay, and thou, who may see plainly how I am galled – might bespice a cup to give my enemy a lasting wink.”

Camillo: Sir, my lord, I could do this; but I cannot believe this crack to be in my dread mistress. I will fetch off Bohemia provided that, when he is removed, your Highness will take again your queen, even for your son’s sake.”

Leontes: “Thou does advise me even so as I my own course have set down. I’ll give no blemish to her honour, none.”

Camillo: “My lord, go then; keep with Bohemia and with your queen. I am his cupbearer; if from me he has wholesome beverage, account me not your servant.”

Leontes: “This is all; do it, and thou has the one half of my heart; do it not, and thou spilts thy own.”

Camillo: “I’ll do it, my lord.”

Leontes: “I will seem friendly, as thou has advised me.”

Exit leontes

Camillo: “O misreable lady! But, for me, what case stand I in? I must be the poisoner of good Polixenes; and my ground to do it is the obedience to a master. Here comes Polixenes.”

Polixenes: “This is strange. methinks my favour here begins to warp. Good day, Camillo.”

Camillo: “Hail, most royal sir!”

Polixenes: “What is the news in the court?”

Camillo: “None rare, my lord.”

Polixenes: “The King has on him such a countenance as he had lost some province, loved as he loves himself. What is breeding that changes thus his manners?”

Camillo: “I do not know, my lord.”

Polixenes: “How, dare not! Do you know, and dare not be intelligent to me? Good Camillo, your changed complexions are to me a mirror which shows me my change too; for I must be a party in this alteration, finding myself thus altered with it.”

Camillo: “There is a sickness, but I cannot name the disease; and it is caught of you that yet are well.”

Polixenes: “How? Caught of me? Camillo, as you are certainly a gentleman, I beseech you – if you know aught which does behove my knowledge thereof to be informed, imprison it not in ignorant concealment.”

Camillo: “I may not answer.”

Polixenes: “I must be answered. Declare what incidence thou does 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. Therefore, mark my counsel, which must be even as swiftly followed as I mean to utter it, or both yourself or me cry lost, and so goodnight. I am appointed by the king to murder you.”

Polixenes: “For what?”

Camillo: “He thinks, nay, with all confidence he swears, as he had seen it, that you have touched his queen forbiddenly.”

Polixenes: “How should this grow?”

Camillo: “I know not; but I am sure tis safer to avoid what’s grown than question how it was born. If therefore you dare trust my honesty, away tonight. For myself, I’ll put my fortunes to your service, which are here by this discovery lost.”

Polixenes: “I do believe thee: I saw his heart in his face. Give me thy hand; my ships are ready. This jealousy is for a precious creature; as she is rare, must it be great; and, as his person’s mighty, must it be violent; and as he does conceive he is dishonoured by a man which ever professed to him, why, his revenges must in that be made more bitter. Fear overshades me. Good expedition be my friend. Come, Camillo; I will respect thee as a father, if thou bears my life off hence. Let us avoid.”

Camillo: “Please your Highness to take the urgent hour. Come, sir, away.”

Analysis

In an earlier play Iago warns Othello, “Beware, my lord, of jealousy. It is the green eyed monster.” In The Winter’s Tale Leontes is his own Iago, who needs no such luring to his fate. Nonetheless, here is a play where that green eyed monster wreaks havoc every bit as much as in Othello. Leontes pleads for Polixenes to stay a bit longer than the nine months he has been in Sicily. He will not budge, that is until Hermione requests he stay, and then suddenly he changes his mind and agrees to stay. This makes Leontes jealous, as does the overall closeness of Polixenes and Hermione. We are never given the slightest indication that there is anything untoward actually occurring between them, but Leontes takes the bait and is hopelessly consumed by that green eyed monster. As well, she is pregnant, so he imagines it is not his child and off he drifts toward the madness of jealousy. He instructs Camillo, his counsellor, to poison Polixenes, but Camillo instead runs off with him back to Bohemia, leaving Hermione behind to suffer the wrath of Leontes. Let the tragedy commence.

Act II (3 scenes)

Scene i

Sicily. The palace of Leontes.

Enter Hermione and Mamillius

Hermione: “What wisdom stirs within you? Pray you sit by us and tell us a tale.”

Mamillius: “Merry or sad shall it be?”

Hermione: “As merry as you will.”

Mamillius: “A sad tale is best for winter. I have one of sprites and goblins.”

Hermione: “Let’s have that, good sir; and do your best to fright me with your sprites.”

Enter Leontes, Antigonus and lords

Leontes: “Was he met there? Camillo with him?”

1 Lord: “Never saw I men scour so on their way. I eyed them even to their ships.”

Leontes: “How blessed am I in my true opinion! How accursed in being so blessed! Camillo was his help in this. There is a plot against my life, my crown; all is true that is mistrusted. That false villain whom I employed was pre-employed by him; he has discovered my design, and I remain a pinched thing. 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.”

Mamillius is led out

Leontes: “For tis Polixenes has made thee swell thus.”

Hermione: “But I say he has not. And I’ll be sworn you would believe my saying, however you lean to the wayward.”

Leontes: “You, my lords, look on her and mark her well; be but about to say ‘she is a goodly lady’ and the justice of your hearts will thereto add ’tis pity she’s not honest and honourable’. But be it known, from he who had most cause to grieve it should be, she is an adulteress.”

Hermione: “Should a villain say so, 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. I have said sh’e an adulteress; I have said with whom. More, she’s a traitor; and Camillo is confederate with her; she is a bed-swerver; even as bad as those who vulgars give boldest titles unto.”

Hermione: “No, by my life. How this will grieve you, when you shall come to clearer knowledge.”

Leontes: “Away with her to prison.”

Hermione: “There’s some ill planet reigns. I must be patient till the heavens look with an aspect more favourable. Do not weep, good fools; there is no cause; when you shall know your mistress has deserved prison, then abound in tears.”

Exit Hermione, guarded

1 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 and your son.”

1 Lord: “For her, my lord, I dare my life lay down – that the Queen is spotless in the eyes of heaven and of you – I mean in this you accuse her.”

Antigonus: “For every inch of woman in the world is false, if she be.”

Leontes: “Hold your pieces.”

Antigonus: “It is for you we speak, not for ourselves. You are abused, and by some putter-on, who will be damned for it. Would I knew the villain!”

Leontes: “Cease, no more.”

1 Lord: “More would it content me to have her honour true than her suspicion.”

Leontes: “Why, what need we commune with you of this, but rather follow our forceful instigation? Our prerogative calls not for your counsels. If you – stupified -cannot or will not relish a truth like us, inform yourselves we need no more of your advice. For a greater confirmation I have dispatched in post to sacred Delphi, to Apollo’s temple, Cleomenes and Dion. Now from the oracle they will bring all. Have I done well?”

1 Lord: “Well done, my lord.”

Leontes: “Though I am satisfied, and need no more than what I know, yet shall the oracle give rest to the mind of others such as he whose ignorant credulity will not come up to the truth. So have we thought it good from our free person she should be confined, lest that the treachery of the two fled hence be left her to perform.”

Analysis

With Polixenes having fled home to Bohemia with Camillo, this only confirms for Leontes the guilt of Hermione, who remains the sole object of his wrath remaining in Sicily. He takes his son away from her, declares her pregnancy to be the work of Polixenes and orders her to prison. She and several lords try to reason with Leones, to no avail. His only concession is to have the oracle at Delphi confirm his suspicions. He has totally gone off the deep end, with no one supporting his paranoid accusations. Before Mamillius is taken from his mother he promises to tell her a sad story, because such a tale is best for winter. Indeed, the first three acts of our play is set in winter, hence the title, while the final two scenes of resolution and resurrection are played out in the summer.

Act II

Scene ii

Sicily. A prison

Enter Paulina and a gentleman

Paulina: “The keeper of the prison – call to him; let him have knowledge of who I am.”

Exit the gentleman

Enter the jailer

Paulina: “Now, good sir, you know me, do you not?”

Jailer: “For a worthy lady, and one who much I honour.”

Paulina: “Pray you, then, conduct me to the Queen.”

Jailer: “I may not, madam; to the contrary, I have express commandment.”

Paulina: “Here’s ado, to lock up honesty and honour from the access of gentle visitors! Is it lawful, pray you, to see her women? Emilia?”

Jailer: “So please you, madam. I shall bring Emilia forth.”

Paulina: “I pray now, call her.”

Jailer: “Madam, I must be present at your conference.”

Paulina: “Well, be it so.”

Re-enter Jailer with Emilia

Paulina: “Dear gentlewoman, how fares our gracious lady?”

Emilia: “As well as one so great and so forlorn may hold together. On her frights and griefs, which never a tender lady has borne greater, she is, something before her time, delivered.”

Paulina: “A boy?”

Emilia: “A daughter, and a goodly babe, lusty and likely to live. The Queen receives much comfort in it; says ‘my poor prisoner, I am as innocent as you.'”

Paulina: “I dare be sworn, he must be told of it, and he shall. I’ll take it upon me. Pray you, Emilia, commend my best obedience to the Queen; if she dares trust me with her little babe, I’ll show it to the King and undertake to be her advocate to the loudest. We do not know how he may soften at the sight of the child: the silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.”

Emilia: “I’ll presently acquaint the Queen of your most noble offer.”

Paulina: “Tell her, Emilia, I’ll use that tongue I have; if wit flow from it, as boldness from my bosom, let it not be doubted I shall do good.”

Emilia: “Now be you blest for it!”

jailer: “Madam, if it please the Queen to send the babe, I know not what I shall incur, having no warrant.”

Paulina: “You need not fear it, sir. This child was prisoner to the womb, and is by law freed and enfranchised – not a party to the anger of the King.”

Jailer: “I do believe it.”

Paulina: “Do not you fear. Upon my honour, I will stand between you and danger.”

Analysis

Paulina, wife to Antigonus, manages to learn that Queen Hermione has given birth to a daughter while in prison. Paulina intends to bring the child to Leontes, hoping the sight of such innocence will soften him and release him from the grips of his madness. Unfortunately, we already know that he has convinced himself that the babe is the child of Polixenes. Paulina will play a most significant role in sheltering Hermione until enough time passes for Leontes to heal from his self imposed disintegration.

Act II

Scene iii

Sicily. The palace of Leontes.

Enter Leontes, Antigonus, servants and lords

Leontes: “She, the adulteress; for the harlot king is quite beyond my arm; but she I can hook to me. How’s the boy?”

1 Servant: “He took good rest tonight.; tis hoped his sickness is discharged.”

Leontes: “Conceiving the dishonour of his mother, he straight declined, drooped, took it deeply, fastened and fixed the shame on himself, threw off his spirit, his appetite, his sleep, and downright languished. The very thought of my revenges that way recoil upon me. Let him be until a time may serve; for present vengeance, take it on her. Camillo and Polixenes laugh at me. I should not laugh if I could reach them, nor shall she, within my power.”

Enter Paulina, with child

1 Lord: “You must not enter.”

Paulina: ” Fear you his tyrannous passion more, alas, than the Queen’s life?”

2 Servant: “Madam, he has not slept tonight and commanded none should come see him.”

Paulina: “I come to bring him sleep, just as you nourish the cause of his awkening. I come with words medicinal, to purge him of that humour that presses him from sleep.”

Leontes: “What noise there, ho? Away with that audacious lady! Antigonus, I charged thee that she should not come about me; I knew she would.”

Antigonus: “I told her so, my lord.”

Leontes: “What, can you not rule her?”

Paulina: “From all dishonesty he can. Trust, he shall not rule me. Good, my liege, I come and I beseech you hear me, as I profess myself your loyal servant, your physician, your most obedient counsellor. I come from your good Queen.”

Leontes: “Good Queen!”

Paulina: “I say good Queen.”

Leontes: “Force her hence.”

Paulina: “The good Queen, for she is good, has brought you forth a daughter. Here it is; commends it to your blessing.”

Leontes: “Out! A mankind witch! Hence with her, out of door!”

Paulina: “Not so. I am no less honest than you are mad.”

Leontes: “Traitors! Will you not push her out? Give her the bastard. A nest of traitors!”

Antigonus: “I am none.”

Paulina: “Nor I; nor any but one that’s here and that’s himself.”

Leontes: “This brat is none of mine; it is the issue of Polixenes. Hence with it, and together with the dam commit them to the fire.”

Paulina: “It is yours, so like you tis the worse. Behold, my lords, although the print be little, the whole matter and copy of the father – eyes, nose, lips, forehead, the pretty dimple, the smile; the very mould and frame of hand and fingers.”

Leontes: “A gross hag! Antigonus, thou art worthy to be hanged, who will not stay her tongue.”

Antigonus: “Hang all the husbands who cannot do that feat, and you’ll leave yourself hardly one subject.”

Leontes: “Once more, take her hence. I will have her burned!”

Paulina: “I care not. It is a heretic who makes the fire, not she who burns in it; I’ll not call you tyrant; but this most cruel usage of your Queen – not able to produce more accusation than your own weak-hinged fancy – something savours of tyranny, and will ignoble name you scandalous to the world.”

Leontes: “Out of the chamber with her! Away with her!”

Paulina: “Look to your babe, my lord; tis yours.”

Exit Paulina

Leontes: “My child! Away with it. Take it hence, and see it instantly consumed with fire. Within this hour bring me word it is done, or I will seize thy life. If thy refuse, and will encounter my wrath, say so; the bastard’s brains with these my hands shall I dash out. Go, take it to the fire. You’re all liars!”

1 Lord: “Beseech your Highness, give us better credit. We have always truly served you, and on our knees we beg that you do change this purpose, which being so horrible, so bloody, must lead to some foul issue. We all knell.”

Leontes: “Shall I live on to see this bastard call me father? Better to burn it now than curse it then. But let it live. Carry this female bastard hence; and bear it to some remote and deserted place, quite out of our dominions, and there leave it, without mercy, to its own protection. I do in justice charge thee, on thy soul’s peril and thy body’s torture, that thou commend it to some place where chance may nurse or end it. Take it up.”

Antigonus: “I swear to do this, though a present death would be more merciful. Come, poor babe, some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens to be thy nurses! Wolves and bears, they say, casting their savageness aside, have done like offices of pity.

Antigonus exits with the child

Leontes: “I’ll not rear another’s issue.”

Servant: “Please your Highness, posts from those you sent to the oracle are come an hour since. Clemens and Dion being well arrived from Delphi.”

Leontes: “Twenty-three days they have been absent; tis good speed. Prepare you, lords; summon a session, that we may arraign our most disloyal lady; for, as she has been publicly accused, so shall she have a just and open trial. While she lives, my heart will be a burden to me.”

Analysis

The King’s son, Mamillius, has fallen ill and Leontes blames this on the shock of his mother’s infidelity and shame. Paulina brings his new born baby to Leontes, all the while defending Hermione’s honour. Paulina does her very best to soften the rage of the king but only infuriates him further. Leontes grows so furious that he demands the child be consumed by fire, since he refuses to raise a daughter fathered by Polixenes. Various lords plead with him to reconsider this verdict and he agrees to the minor concession that the child be taken to a barren and remote location and left to its own devices amongst the wolves and bears.

Act III (3 scenes)

Scene i

Sicily. On the road to the capital

Enter Cleomenes and Dion

Dion: “O, the sacrifice! How ceremonious, solemn and unearthly it was in the offering.”

Cleomenes: “But of all, the burst, and the ear-deafening voice of the oracle.

Dion: “If the event of the journey prove as successful to the Queen – O, be it so – the time is worth the use of it.”

Analysis

Returning from Delphi, the lords Dion and Cleomenes are hopeful that the oracle will vindicate Queen Hermione. In fact, absolutely no one in this play has sided with the king, who stands alone in his condemnation of his wife.

Act III

Scene ii

Sicily. A court of justice.

Leontes: “This session, to our great grief we pronounce, even pushes against our heart: the party tried, the daughter of a king, our wife, and one of us too much beloved. Let us be cleared with being tyrannous, since we so openly proceed in justice, which shall have due course. Produce the prisoner.”

Enter Hermione and Paulina

Leontes: “Read the indictment.”

Officer: (reads) “Hermione, Queen to the worthy Leontes, King of Sicily, thou art here accused and arraigned of high treason, in committing adultery with Polixenes, King of Bohemia; and conspiring with Camillo to take away the life of our sovereign lord the king, thy royal husband. Thou, Hermione, contrary to the faith and allegiance of a true subject, did counsel and aid them, for their better safety, to fly away by night.”

Hermione: “Since what I am to say must be but that which contradicts my accusation, it shall scarce boot me to say ‘not guilty’. Being counted falsehood shall, as I express it, be so received. But if powers divine behold our human actions, as they do, I doubt not then but innocence shall make false accusation blush, and tyranny tremble at patience. You, my lord, best know – who least will seem to do so – my past life has been as continent, as chaste, as true, as I am now unhappy; for behold me, a fellow of the royal bed, a great king’s daughter, the mother to a hopeful prince. I appeal to your own conscience, sir, before Polixenes came to your court, how I was in your grace, how merited to be so. For Polixenes, with whom I am accused, I do confess I loved as in honour he required; with such a kind of love as might become a lady like me, and no other, as yourself commanded; which not to have done, I think had been in me both disobedience and ingratitude to you and toward your friend, whose love had spoke, from an infant, freely, that it was yours. Now for conspiracy: all I know of it is that Camillo was an honest man; and why he left your court, the gods themselves are ignorant.”

Leontes: “You had a bastard by Polixenes and for as thy brat has been cast out, no father owning it – which is indeed more criminal in thee than it – so thou shall feel our justice; in whose easiest passage look for no less than death.”

Hermione: “Sir, spare your threats. The bug which you would frighten me with I seek. The crown and comfort of my life, your favour, I do give lost, for I do feel it gone, but know not how it went; my second joy, and first fruit of my body, from his presence I am barred, like one infectious; my third comfort is from my breast, halled out to murder; myself on every post proclaimed a strumpet; with immodest hatred the child-bed privilege denied; lastly, hurried here to this place, in the open air, before I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege, tell me what blessings I have here alive that I should fear to die. Therefore proceed. Your honours all, I do refer me to the oracle. Apollo be my judge!”

Lord: “This you request is altogether just, therefore, bring forth the oracle.”

Hermione: “The emperor of Russia was my father; O that he were alive and beholding his daughter’s trial.”

Enter officers with Cleomenes and Dion

Officer: “You two shall swear that you have both been to Delphi and from hence have brought this sealed oracle.”

Cleomenes and Dion: “All this we swear.”

Leontes: “Break open the seal and read.”

Officer: (reads) “Hermione is chaste; Polixenes blameless; Camillo a true subject: Leontes a jealous tyrant; his innocent babe truly begotten; and the king shall live without an heir, if that which is lost be not found.”

Hermione: “Praised!”

Leontes: “There is no truth at all in the oracle. The session shall proceed. This is mere falsehood.”

Enter a servant

Servant: “My lord the King, the King!”

Leontes: “What is the business?”

Servant: “O, sir, I shall be hated to report it. The Prince your son is dead.”

Leontes: “Apollo’s angry; and the heavens themselves do strike at my injustice.”

Hermione swoons

Paulina: “The news is mortal to the Queen. Look and see what death is doing.”

Leontes: “Take her hence. Her heart is but overcharged; she will recover. I have too much believed my own suspicion. Beseech you tenderly apply to her some remedies for life.”

Exit Paulina and some ladies with Hermione

Leontes: “Apollo, pardon my great profaneness against thy oracle. I’ll reconcile me to Polixenes, new woo my queen, recall the good Camillo, whom I proclaim a man of truth and mercy. For, being transported by my jealousies to bloody thoughts and to revenge, I chose Camillo for the minister to poison my friend, Polixenes; which had been done but that the good mind of Camillo traded my swift command, though I with death and reward did threaten and encourage him. He, most humane and filled with honour, quit his fortunes here. How he glisters through my rust. And how his piety does my deeds make the blacker!”

Enter Paulina: “Woe the while! O, cut my lace, lest my heart, cracking it, break too! What studied torments, tyrant, has thou for me? What wheels, racks, fires? What flaying, boiling in leads or oils? What older or newer tortures must I receive? Thy tyranny together working with thy jealousies; O think what they have done, and then run mad indeed, stark mad. That thou betrayed Polixenes, twas nothing; that did but show thee, of a fool inconstant and damnable ungrateful. Nor was it much thou would have poisoned good Camillo’s honour, to have him kill a king; more monstrous, whereof I reckon the casting forth to crows thy baby daughter, though a devil would have shed tears; nor is it directly laid to thee, the death of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts cleft the heart that could conceive a gross and foolish sire blemished his gracious dam. But the last, o lords, the Queen, the Queen, the sweetest, dearest creature dead.”

Lord: “The higher powers forbid.”

Paulina: “I say she’s dead; I’ll swear it. Go and see. If you can bring lustre to her lips, her eye or her breath, I’ll serve you as I would the gods. But, O thy tyrant! Do not repent these things, for they are heavier than all thy woes can stir; therefore, betake thee to nothing but despair. A thousand knees ten thousand years together, naked, fasting upon a barren mountain, and still winter in storm perpetual, could not move the gods to look that way thou were.”

Leontes: “Go on, go on. Thou cannot speak too much; I have deserved all tongues to talk their bitterest.”

Lord: “Say no more; you have made fault in the boldness of your speech.”

Paulina:”I am sorry for it and I do repent. Alas, I have shown too much the rashness of a woman! He is touched to the noble heart. What’s gone and what’s past help should be past grief. Do not receive affliction at my petition. Now, good, my liege, forgive a foolish woman the love I bore your queen. I’ll speak of her no more, nor of your children.”

Leontes: “Prithee, bring me to the dead bodies of my queen and son. One grave shall be for both. Once a day I will visit the chapel where they lie; and tears shed there shall be my recreation. Come and lead me to these sorrows.”

Analysis

The court is in session and Leontes comes out swinging. The charges of high treason and adultery against Hermione are read and Hermione defends herself most eloquently and honourably. Nonetheless, Leontes pronounces her guilty and declares her punishment to be death, a sentence Hermione says will be a relief. However, just then the messengers from Delphi arrive and the oracle proclaims Hermione chaste, Polixenes blameless, Camillo a true subject and Leontes a tyrant, who will live without heirs. Leontes refuses to accept the verdict of Apollo until word comes that his son has just died and then he does a complete about face and takes full responsibility for everything. Hermione faints and is carried away, as her ladies try desperately to revive her. Leontes mourns his own jealous behaviour and Paulina re-enters with the news that the Queen is dead. She lashes out harshly at the king, who accepts her attacks and claims he will spend the rest of his life in penance.

This is the real turning point in the play, as the weight and consequence of King Leontes’ madness hit home with a vigorous magnitude until he cracks and willingly bears the entire responsibility for everything that has gone amiss with Polixenes, Camillo, his Queen, their new baby and their grown son. This is the stuff of high tragedy. At least so far, as our setting moves, for the next while, to the mythical sea coast of Bohemia.

Act III

Scene III

Bohemia. The Sea Coast

Enter Antigonus with the child and a mariner

Antigonus: “Our ship has touched upon the deserts of Bohemia?”

Mariner: “Ah, my lord.”

Antigonus: “I’ll not be long.”

Mariner: “Make your best haste; this place is famous for the creatures of prey that keep upon it.”

Antigonus: “Come, poor babe, I have heard, but not believed, the spirits of the dead may walk again. If such things be, thy mother appeared to me last night; so never was dream so like a waking. The fury spent, anon did this break from her: ‘Good Antigonus, since fate has made thy person for the thrower out of my poor babe in Bohemia, there weep and leave it crying, lost for ever. For this ungentle business thou shall never see thy wife Pauline more.’ And so she melted into air. I do believe that Hermione has suffered death, and this being indeed the issue of King Polixenes, it should be here laid, either for life or death, upon the earth.” (he lays down the child) “The storm begins. Poor wench, that for thy mother’s fault art thus exposed to what may follow! My heart bleeds; and most accursed am I to be by oath enjoined to this. Farewell! Thou art like to have a lullaby too rough. A savage clamour! Well may I get aboard! This is the chase; I am gone forever.”

Exit pursued by bear

Enter an old shepherd

Shepherd: “What have we hear?” (taking up the child) “A pretty one; a very pretty one. I’ll take it up for pity.”

Enter a clown

Clown: “I have seen two such sights, by sea and by land. For the land service, to see how the bear tore out his shoulder bone; how he cried to me for help, and said his name was Antigonus, a nobleman! But to make an end to the ship, how the poor souls roared, and the sea mocked them; and how the poor gentleman roared, and the bear mocked him. The men are not yet cold under water, nor the bear half dined on the gentleman; he’s at it now.”

Shepherd: “Would I had been by to have helped the old man! Heavy matters, heavy matters! Thou met with things dying, I with things new-born.”

Clown: “Go you the next way with your findings. I’ll go see if the bear be gone from the gentleman, and how much he has eaten. They are never cursed but when they are hungry. If there be any of him left, I’ll bury it.”

Analysis

Antigonus has arrived on the remote and desolate (and fictional) coast of Bohemia to drop off Hermione and Leontes’ babe. He dreams that Hermione tells him to name the child Perdita and then states that he will never return home to see his wife, Pauline, again. He puts down the infant with her name written on a note and begins to return to the ship, which is being destroyed in a storm when he is attacked and eaten by a bear. This simple and brief scene alters the tone of the play considerably. This has been a tragic play up to this point, until the shepherd and his son, the clown, with great comic effect, discover the ship wreck, find Antigonus being devoured by the bear and come upon Perdita. They will save the child and a fairy tale comedic element in the play emerges. The tragedy is indeed over, and Act IV will be set entirely in Bohemia, far from the horrors we have witnessed thus far in the royal palace of Sicily.

Act IV

Scene i

Enter Time, the Chorus

Time: “Now take upon me, in the name of Time, to use my wings. Impute it not a crime for me that I slide over 16 years. Your patience this allowing, I turn my glass, and give my scene such growing as you had slept between. Leontes, so grieving that he shuts up himself. Imagine me, gentle spectators, that I now may be in fair Bohemia; and remember well I mentioned a son of the King’s, which Florizel I now name to you; and with speed so pace to speak of Perdita, now grown in grace, a shepherd’s daughter.”

Analysis

A lone figure named Time enters the stage and announces that sixteen years have past between the first three acts of the play and the subsequent two, as the scenes shift from Sicily to Bohemia and from tragedy to romantic comedy.

Act IV

Scene ii

Bohemia. The palace of Polixenes

Enter Polixenes and Camillo

Camillo: “It has been fifteen years since I saw my country. I desire to lay my bones there. Besides, the penitent King, my master, has sent for me.”

Polixenes: “As thou loves me, Camillo, wipe not out the rest of thy services by leaving me now. The need I have of thee, thine own goodness has made. Better not to have had thee than thus to want thee. Of that fatal country Sicily, prithee, speak no more; whose very naming punishes me with the remembrance of that penitent, as thou calls him, and reconciled King, my brother; whose loss of his most precious queen and children are even now to be afresh lamented. Say to me, when saw’st thou the Prince Florizel, my son?”

Camillo: “Sir, it has been three days since I saw the prince. What his happier affairs may be are to me unknown; but I have noted that he is of late much retired from court, and is less frequent to his princely exercises than formerly he has appeared.”

Polixenes: “I have considered so much, Camillo, and with some care I have this intelligence: that he is seldom from the house of a most homely shepherd.”

Camillo: “I have heard, sir, of such a man, who has a daughter of much rare note.”

Polixenes: “That’s likewise part of my intelligence. Thou shall accompany us to the place, where we will, not appearing what we are, have some question with the shepherd.”

Camillo: “I willingly obey your command.”

Polixenes: “My best Camillo. We must disguise ourselves.”

Analysis

Camillo expresses to King Polixenes his desire to return to Sicily but Polixenes pleads with him to speak no more of this idea and they instead discuss the king’s son, Florizel, who spends most of his time at a poor shepherd’s house, who just happens to have a stunningly beautiful daughter. They decide to disguise themselves and go see what’s up with that. We are transitioning, not just sixteen years from Sicily to Bohemia and not only from tragedy to romantic-comedy, but there is also a seismic shift in theme and mood as well, as Bohemia becomes an enchanted place where love will blossom around the presence of a delightful rogue. Welcome to a whole new play!

Act IV

Scene iii

Bohemia. A road near the shepherd’s cottage.

Enter Autolycus, singing

Autolycus: “I have served Prince Florizel, but now I am out of service. My father named me Autolycus, who, being as I am, was likewise a snapper up of unconsidered trifles. My revenue is the silly cheat. Beatings and hangings are terrors to me.”

Enter Clown

Clown: “Let me see: what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? What will this sister of mine do with rice?”

Autolycus: (grovelling on the ground) “O, that ever I was born!”

Clown: “In the name of me!”

Autolycus: “O, help me, help me! Pluck but off these rags; and then, death, death, death!”

Clown: “Alack, poor soul! Thou has need of more rags to lay on thee, rather than have these off.”

Autolycus: “O sir, the loathsomeness of them offend me more than the stripes I have received, which are mighty ones and millions. I am robbed, sir, and beaten; my money and apparel taken from me, and these detestable things put upon me.”

Clown: “Lend me thy hand and I’ll help thee.”

Autolycus: “O, good sir, tenderly, O!”

Clown: “Alas, poor soul!”

Autolycus: “I fear, sir, that my shoulder blade is out. Softly, dear sir (Autolycus picks his pocket); dear sir, softly. You have done me a charitable office.”

Clown: “Does thou lack any money? I have a little money for thee.”

Autolycus: “No, good sweet sir, no.”

Clown: “What manner of fellow was he who robbed you?”

Autolycus: “I knew him once a servant of the Prince, but he was certainly whipped out of the court. I know this man well. Some call him Autolycus.”

Clown: “Out upon him! Prig, for my life, prig! He haunts wakes, fairs and bear-baiting.”

Autolycus: “Very true, sir. That’s the rogue who put me into this apparel.”

Clown: “Not a more cowardly rogue in all of Bohemia.”

Autolycus: “I must confess to you, sir, I am no fighter; I am false of heart that way.”

Clown: “Shall I bring thee on thy way?”

Autolycus: “No, good faced sir.”

Clown: “Then fare thee well. I must go buy spices for our sheep-shearing.”

Autolycus: “Prosper you, sweet sir.” (exit clown) 

Autolycus: (Aside) “Your purse is not hot enough to purchase your spice.”

Analysis

It is with the appearance of Autolycus that this truly becomes a different play. He is one of Shakespeare’s most beloved rogues. He is a robber and a cheat and yet there is an enduring quality to his mischief. Here he pick pockets the clown who stops to help him, as planned. His cheerful villainy will serve as a counterpoint to the otherwise idyllic setting around the shepherd’s farm, where the plot develops so sweetly.

Act IV

Scene iv

Bohemia. The shepherd’s cottage.

Enter Florizel and Perdita.

Florizel: “This your sheep-shearing is a meeting of the pretty gods, and you the queen of it.”

Perdita: “Sir, my gracious lord. Your high self, the gracious mark of the land; and me, poor lowly maid; I should blush to see you so attired; swoon, I think.”

Florizel: “I bless the time when my good falcon made her flight across thy father’s ground.”

Perdita: “Now Jove afford you cause! To me the difference forges dread. Even now I tremble to think your father, by some accident, should pass this way, as you did. O, the fates! How would he look to see his work, so noble, vilely bound up? What would he say? Or how should I behold the sternest of his presence?”

Florizel: “Apprehend nothing but jollity. The gods themselves have taken the shapes of beasts: Jupiter becomes a bull; Neptune a ram. My desires run not before my honour, nor my lusts burn hotter than my faith.”

Perdita: “O, but sir, your resolution cannot hold when it is opposed, as it must be, by the power of the King.”

Florizel: “Thou dearest Perdita, darken not the mirth of the feast. I’ll be thine, my fair, or not my father’s. For I cannot be anything to any, if I be not thine. To this I am most constant, though destiny say no. Be merry, gentle. Lift up your countenance, as it were the day of celebration of that nuptial which we two have sworn will come. See, your guests approach.”

Enter Shepherd, with Polixenes and Camillo disguised, clown, Mopsa and Dorcas (shepherdesses)

Shepherd: “Fie, daughter! When my old wife lived this day she was both butler and cook; both dame and servant; welcomed all; served all; would sing her song and dance her turn; now here you are retired, as if you were a feasted one and not the hostess of the meeting. Come, present yourself that which you are, Mistress of the Feast, and bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing.”

Perdita: (to Polixenes) “Sir, welcome. It is my father’s will I should take on me the hostess-ship of the day.” (to Camillo). “You’re welcome, sir. Grace be to you both! And welcome to our shearing.”

Polixenes: “Shepherdess, a fair one you are.”

Camillo: “I should leave grazing, were I of your flock, and only live by gazing.”

Florizel: “What you do still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, I’d have you do it ever. When you dance, I wish you a wave of the sea that you might ever do nothing but that; move still, still so, and own no other function. Come, our dance, I pray. Your hand, my Perdita.”

Perdita: “O Doricles, your praises are too large.”

Polixenes: “This is the prettiest low-born lass; nothing she does or seems but smacks of something greater than herself, too noble for this place.”

Camillo: “She is the queen of curds and cream.

Music. A dance of Shepherds and shepherdesses

Polixenes: “Pray, good shepherd, what fair swain is this who dances with your daughter?”

Shepherd: “They call him Doricles, and boasts himself to have a worthy feeding. He says he loves my daughter; I think so too. If young Doricles do light upon her, she shall bring him that which he not dreams of.”

Enter a servant

Servant: “O master, if you did but hear the pedlar at the door you would never dance again after a pipe; no, the bagpipe could not move you. He sings several tunes and utters them as he had eaten ballads, and all men’s ears grew to his tunes. He has songs for men or women. He has the prettiest love songs for maids.”

Clown: “Thou talks of a admirable conceited fellow. Prithee bring him in and le him sing.”

Perdida: “Forewarn him that he use no scurrilous words in his tunes.”

Enter Autolycus singing

Clown: “Ballads?”

Mopsa: “I love a ballad.”

Autolycus: “Here’s one to a very doleful tune.”

Mopsa: “Pray you now, buy it.”

Clown: “Come on, let’s see more ballads.”

Autolycus: “Here’s another ballad, of a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday.”

Dorcas: “Is it true too, think you?”

Autolycus: “Witnesses more than my pack will hold.”

Clown: “Lay it by too. Another.”

Autolycus: “This is a merry ballad, but a very pretty one.”

Mopsa: “Let’s have some merry ones.”

Autolycus: “Why this is a passing merry one; tis in request, I can tell you.”

Clown: “We’ll have this song. Wenches, I’ll buy for you both. Pedlar, let’s have the first choice.”

Exit clown

Autolycus: “And you shall pay well for them.”

Exit Autolycus, singing

Polixenes: (disguised, to Florizel, his son) “How now, fair shepherd! Your heart is full of something that does take your mind from feasting.”

Florizel: “Old sir, I know. Her looks are locked up in my heart, which I have given already, but not yet delivered.”

Polixenes: “Let me hear what you profess.”

Florizel: “Do, and be witness to it.”

Polixenes: “And this my neighbour too?”

Florizel: “And he, and more. Were I crowned he most imperial monarch, were I the fairest youth, had force and knowledge more than was ever man’s, I would not prize them without her love.”

Polixenes: “Fairly offered.”

Camillo: “This shows a sound affection.”

Shepherd: “But, my daughter, say you the like to him?”

Perdita: “I cannot speak so well, but by the pattern of my own thoughts I cut out the purity of his.”

Shepherd: “Take hands! I give my daughter to him.”

Florizel: “O, that must be. Come, contract us before these witnesses.”

Polixenes: “Soft, swain, awhile, beseech you; have you a father?”

Florizel: “I have, but what of him?”

Polixenes: “Knows he of this?”

Florizel: “He neither does nor shall.”

Polixenes: “Methinks a father is at the nuptial of his son a guest that best becomes the table. Has your father grown incapable of reasonable affairs? Is he stupid with age and altering rheums? Can he speak, hear, know man from man, dispute his own estate? Lies he bed-ridden and does nothing but what he did being childish?”

Florizel: ” No, good sir; he has his health and strength indeed more than most half of his age.”

Polixenes: “By my white beard, you offer him, if this be so, a wrong something unfilial. The father should hold some counsel in such a business.”

Florizel: “I yield all this; but, for some other reasons, my grave sir, which is not fit for you to know, I will not acquaint my father of this business.”

Polixenes: “Le him know it.”

Florizel: “He shall not.”

Polixenes: “Prithee, let him.”

Florizel: “No, he must not.”

Shepherd: “Let him, my son.”

Florizel: “He must not.”

Polixenes: (revealing himself) “Young sir, whom son I do not call; thou are too base to be acknowledged! Thou traitor, I am sorry that by hanging thee I can but shorten thy life one week. Thou fresh piece of excellent witchcraft.”

Shepherd: “O, my heart!”

Polixenes: “I’ll have thy beauty scratched with briers and made more homely than thy state. I’ll bar thee from succession; not hold thee of our blood, no, not our kin. Mark thou my words. And you, enchantment, if ever henceforth thou these rural latches to his entrance open, or hoop his body more with thy embraces, I will devise a death as cruel for thee as thou are tender.”

Exit Polixenes

Perdita: “Even here undone.” (to Florizel) “Will it please you, sir, to be gone? I told you what would come of this. Beseech you, of your own state take care. This dream of mine, being now awake, I’ll queen it no inch farther, but milk my ewes and weep.”

Shepherd: (to Perdita) “O cursed wretch, who knew this was the Prince, and would adventure to mingle faith with him! Undone, undone! If I might die within this hour, I have lived to die when I desire.”

Exit Shepherd

Florizel: “Why look you so upon me? I am sorry, not afeared; delayed but nothing altered.”

Camillo: “Gracious, my lord, you know your father’s temper. At this time he will allow no speech, and as hardly will he endure your sight as yet, I fear; til the fury of his Highness settles, come not before him.”

Perdita: “How often have I told you it would be thus! How often said my dignity would last but till it were known!”

Florizel: “It cannot fail but by the violation of my faith. Lift up thy looks. From my succession wipe me, father; I am heir to my affection.”

Camillo: “Be advised. This is desperate, sir.”

Florizel: “So call it; but it does fulfill my vow. Camillo, not for Bohemia will I break my oath to this my fair beloved. Therefore, I pray you, as you have ever been my father’s honoured friend, when he shall miss me, as, in faith, I mean not to see him anymore, cast your good counsels upon his passion. Let myself and fortune tug for the time to come. This you may know, and so deliver: I am put to sea with her who here I cannot hold on shore. Hark, Perdita”

Florizel takes Perdita aside

Camillo: “He’s irremovable, resolved for flight. Now were I happy if his going could frame to serve my turn, save him from danger, do him love and honour, purchase the sight again of dear Sicily and that unhappy king, my master, whom I do so thirst to see. (to Florizel) Sir, I think you have heard of my poor services in the love I have borne your father?”

Florizel: “Very nobly have you deserved. It is my father’s music to speak your deeds.”

Camillo: “Well, my lord, if you may please to think I love the King, and through him what’s nearest to him, which is your gracious self, I’ll point you to where you shall have such receiving as shall become your Highness; where you may enjoy your mistress.”

Florizel: “How, Camillo, may this, almost a miracle, be done?”

Camillo: “Have you thought on a place where you will go?”

Florizel: “Not any yet.”

Camillo: “Then listen to me. This follows: make for Sicily, and there present yourself and your fair princess – for so, I see, she must be – before Leontes. Methinks I see Leontes opening free arms and weeping his welcomes forth, sent by the king your father, to greet him and to give him comforts, with what you as from your father shall deliver; things known between us three, I will write down.”

Florizel: “I am bound to you. But Camillo, preserver of my father and now of me. We are not furnished like Bohemia’s son; nor shall we appear in Sicily.”

Camillo: “My lord, fear none of this. I think you know my fortunes do all lie there. It shall be so my care to have you royally appointed as if the scene you play were mine.”

Florizel and Camillo talk aside

Enter Autolycus

Autolycus: “Ha ha! What a fool honesty is! And trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman! I have sold all of my trumpery; not a counterfeit stone, not a ribbon, glass, table-book, ballad, knife, tape, glove or bracelet to keep my pack from fasting, as if my trinkets had brought a benediction to the buyer. In this time of lethargy I picked and cut most of their festival purses; and had not the old man come in with a whoobub against his daughter and the King’s son, I had not left a purse alive in the whole army.”

Enter Camillio, Florizel and Perdida

Camillo: (seeing Autolycus) “Who have we here?”

Autolycus: (aside) “If they have overheard me, why, hanging.”

Camillo: “How now, good fellow! Why shake thou so? Fear not, man; here’s no harm intended to thee.”

Autolycus: “I am a poor fellow, sir.”

Camillo: “Why, be so still; here’s nobody will steal that from thee. Yet for the outside of thy poverty we must make an exchange and change garments with this gentleman.”

Camillo gives Autolycus money

Camillo: “Unbuckle, unbuckle.”

Autolycus and Florizel exchange garments

Camillo: “Fortunate mistress. You must take your sweetheart’s hat and pluck it over your brows, muffle your face, dismantle you, and, as you can, dislike the truth of your own seeming, that you may to shipboard get.”

Florizel: “Should I now meet my father, he would not call me son.”

Camillo: (aside) “What I do next shall be to tell the King of this escape, and whither they are bound; wherein my hope is I shall so prevail to force him after; in whose company shall re-view Sicily, for whose sight I have a woman’s longing for.”

Florizel: “Fortune speed us!”

Camillo:”The swifter speed the better.”

Exit Florizel, Perdida and Camillo

Autolycus: “I understand the business, I hear it. To have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is necessary for a cut-purse; a good nose is requisite too, to smell out work for the other senses. I see this is the time that the unjust man does thrive.”

Enter clown and shepherd

Clown: “There is no other way but to tell the King she’s a changeling and none of your flesh and blood.”

Shepherd: “Go to, then.”

Clown: “She being none of your flesh and blood, your flesh and blood has not offended the King; and so your flesh and blood is not to be punished by him.”

Shepherd: “I will tell the King all, every word, and his son’s pranks too. Let us to the King.”

Autolycus: (aside) “Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.” “How now, rustics! Whither are you bound?”

Shepherd: “To the palace.”

Clown: We are but plain fellows, sir.”

Autolycus: A lie: you are rough and hairy. Let me have no lying.”

Shepherd: “Are you a courtier?”

Autolycus: “I am a courtier. See thou not the air of the court in these enfolding? Has not my gait the measure of the court? Receives not thy nose court-odor from me? I am courier cap-a-pe, and one who will either push on or pluck back thy business there; whereupon I command thee to open thy affairs.”

Shepherd: “My business, sir, is with the King.”

Clown: “This cannot be but a great courtier.”

Shepherd: “His garments are rich, but he wears them not handsomely.”

Clown: “He seems to be more noble in being fantastical. A great man, I’ll warrant.”

Autolycus: “What’s in the box?”

Shepherd: “Sir, there lies such secrets in this box which none must know but the King.”

Autolycus: “The King is not at the palace; he is gone aboard a new ship to purge melancholy; for, if thou be capable of things serious, thou must know that the King is full of grief.”

Shepherd: “So it is said, sir – about his son, that should have married a shepherd’s daughter.”

Autolycus: “Let that shepherd fly. Curses he shall have and tortures he shall feel, will break the back of a man, the heart of a monster.”

Clown: “Think you so, sir?”

Autolycus: “Not he alone shall suffer, but those as well who are germane to him, shall all come under the hangman. An old sheep-whistling rogue, to offer to have his daughter come into grace! Some say he shall be stoned; but that death is too soft for him, say I.”

Clown: “Has the old man a son?”

Autolycus: “He has a son – who shall be flayed alive; then anointed over with honey and set on the head of a wasp’s nest; then stand until he be three-quarters dead; then recovered again, raw as he is , and on the hottest day shall he be set against a brick wall. But why talk we of these traitorly rascals, whose miseries are to be smiled at. Tell me, for you seem to be honest plain men, what you have for the King. I’ll bring you where he is aboard.”

Clown: “He seems to be of great authority. Give him gold. Show the inside of your purse to the outside of his hand. Remember – stoned and flayed alive.”

Shepherd: “If it please you, sir, to undertake the business for us, here is the gold I have. I’ll make it as much more.”

Autolycus: “Well, give me your gold.”

Clown: “We must to the King. He must know tis none of your daughter nor my sister; we are gone else. Sir, I will give you as much as this old man does, when the business is performed.”

Autolycus: “I will trust you.”

Clown: “We are blessed in this man.”

Shepherd: “Let’s before, as he bids us. He was provided to do us good.”

Exit Shepherd and Clown

Autolycus: “If I had a mind to be honest, I see fortune would not suffer me; she drops booties in my mouth. I am courted now with a double occasion – gold, and a means to do the Prince, my master, good; which who knows how that may turn back to my advancement? I will bring these two moles aboard with him. To him will I present them. There may be matter in it.”

Analysis

When we first encounter Florizel and Perdita it is evident that they are deeply in love. Of course we know what many in the play do not, which is that Florizel is the son of King Polixenes of Bohemia and Perdita is the long lost daughter of King Leontes of Sicily, left exposed and thought to be dead sixteen years ago. King Polixenes denounces the union of the two lovers, threatening to kill the shepherd for allowing his daughter to woo a prince, disfigure the shepherdess Perdita and disinherit his son, Florizel. The prince boldly insists to Perdita that despite his impending disinheritance they should run off together and escape his father, the king, altogether. Camillo hatches a plan to direct their departure toward Sicily, so that he can then accompany King Polixenes in pursuit of them back to where our play began and where perhaps Shakespeare’s most memorable reconciliation scene awaits, uniting King Leontes and his dear old estranged friend, King Polixenes, his daughter Perdita, and, rather miraculously, his dearly depart wife Hermione, long thought to be dead. Thus, as we begin act V our play is about to come full circle, with surprises in store for nearly everyone. Autolycus is one of Shakespeare’s most interesting and most harmless rogues and his humorous interludes lend some lightness to the otherwise troublesome ordeal in Bohemia between Polixenes and his son and Perdita.

Act V

Scene i

Sicily. The palace of Leontes

Enter Leontes and his lords Cleomenes and Dion, along with Paulina

Cleomenes: “Sir, you have done enough, and have performed a saint-like sorrow. No fault could you make which you have not redeemed; more penitence than you have done trespass. At the last, do what the heavens have done: forget your evil; with them forgive yourself.”

Leontes: “While I remember her and her virtues, I cannot forget my blemishes in them, and so still think of the wrong I did myself; which was so much that heirless it has made my kingdom, and destroyed the sweetest companion that ever man bred his hopes out of.”

Paulina: “True, too true, my lord. If, one by one, you wedded all the world, she you killed would be unparalleled.”

Leontes: “I think so. Killed! She I killed! I did so; but thou strikes me sorely to say I did it. It is as bitter on thy tongue as in my thoughts. Say so but seldom.”

Cleomenes: “Good lady, you might have spoken a thousand things that would have done the time more benefit and graced your kindness better.”

Paulina: (to Dion) “You are one of those who would have him wed again.”

Dion: “If you would not so, you pity not the state. Consider what dangers, by his Highness’ fail of issue, may drop upon his kingdom. What is holier, for royalty’s repair, for present comfort and for future good, than to bless the bed of majesty again with a sweet fellow to it?”

Paulina: “There is none worthy, respecting her that’s gone. Besides, the gods will have fulfilled their secret purposes; for has not the divine Apollo said that King Leontes shall not have an heir till his lost child be found? Which that it shall, is all as monstrous to our human reason as my Antigonus to break his grave and come again to me; who, on my life, did perish with the infant. (to Leontes) Care not for issue; the crown will find an heir. Great Alexander left his to the worthiest, so his successor was likely to be the best.”

Leontes: “Good Paulina, O that ever I had squared me to thy counsel! Then, even now, I might have looked upon my queen’s full eyes and have taken treasure from her lips.”

Paulina: “And left them more rich for what they yielded.”

Leontes: “Thou speaks the truth. No more such wives; therefore, I’ll have no wife, Paulina.”

Paulina: “Will you swear never to marry but by my free leave?”

Leontes: “Never, Paulina.”

Paulina: “Then, good my lords, bear witness to his oath.”

Cleomenes: “You tempt him over-much.”

Paulina: “Unless another, as like Hermione as is her picture, affront his eye. Yet, if my lord will marry – if you will, sir, 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 it should take joy to see her in your arms.”

Leontes: “My true Paulina, we shall not marry till thou bids us.”

Paulina: “That shall be when your first queen is again in breath; never till then.”

Enter a gentleman

Gentleman: “One who 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: “His princess, you say, with him?”

Gentleman: “Ay, the most peerless piece of earth, I think, that ever the sun shone bright on. She is the rarest of all women.”

Leontes: “Go, Cleomenes; bring them to our embracement.”

Enter Cleomenes, Florizel and Perdida

Leontes: “Prince, were I but twenty-one, your father’s image is so hit in you that I should call you brother, as I did him. You are most dearly welcome! And your fair princess – goddess! O, alas! I lost, at my own folly, the society of your brave father, whom, I desire my life once more to look on him.”

Florizel: “By his command I here give you all greetings that a king and a friend can send to his brother. But infirmity, which waits upon worn times, has something seized his wished ability. He had himself measured to look upon you, whom he loves, and bade me say so.”

Leontes: “O, my brother – the wrongs I have done thee stir afresh within me. Prince, the blessed gods purge all infection from our air while you do climate here! You have a holy father, against whose person, so sacred as it is, I have done sin for which the heavens, taking angry note, have left me issueless.”

Enter a lord

Lord: “Most noble sir, Bohemia greets you and desires you to attach his son, who has fled from his father, from his hopes, and with a shepherd’s daughter.”

Leontes: “Where is Bohemia? Speak.”

Lord: “Here in your city; I just now came from him. To your court he was hastening, in the chase, it seems, of this fair couple. Meets he on the way the father of this seeming lady and her brother, having both their country quitted with this young prince.”

Florizel: “Camillo has betrayed me.”

Lord: “He’s with the king, your father.”

Florizel: “Who? Camillo?”

Lord: “Camillo, sir.”

Perdida: “O. my poor father! The heavens set spies upon us and will not have our contract celebrated.”

Lleontes: “You are married?”

Florizel: “We are not, sir, nor are we likely to be.”

Leontes: “My lord, is this the daughter of a king?”

Florizel: “She is, when once she is my wife.”

Leontes: “I am sorry, most sorry, you have broken from his liking, and as sorry your choice is not so rich in worth as beauty, that you might well enjoy her. I will to your father. Your honour not overthrown by your desires, I am friend to them and you. Upon which errand I now go toward him; therefore, follow me.”

Analysis

As our scene shifts back to Sicily, we find King Leontes still in mourning and doing penance for his errors 16 years ago, chronicled in the first three acts. Some of his lords want to see him forget the past and marry again but Paulina makes him promise not to take a wife until she condones it. Soon enough we will find out her reasons for this. Florizel and Perdita arrive from Bohemia and are received warmly by Leontes, who has had no word from Bohemia in many years. Word comes that King Polixenes and Camillo, along with the shepherd and his son have arrived in Sicily as well, apparently in pursuit of the king’s fleeing son and mistress. Leontes brings Florizel and Perdita to meet with King Polixenes, as all of the parties involved are about to gather. Much will soon be revealed and the end is surely near.

Act V

Scene ii

Sicily. Before the palace of Leontes

Enter Autolycus and a gentleman

Autolycus: “Beseech you, sir, were you present at this relation?”

1 Gentleman: “I heard the old shepherd deliver the manner how he found her. I heard him say he found the child. Here comes a gentleman who happily knows more.”

Enter a second gentleman

2 Gentleman: “The oracle is fulfilled: the King’s daughter is found. Such a deal of wonder is broken out within this hour that ballad-makers cannot express it. Here comes the lady Paulina’s steward: he can deliver you more. Has the King found his heir?”

3 Gentleman: “Most true, if ever truth were pregnant by circumstance. There is such unity in the proofs: the mantle of Queen Hermione’s; her jewel about the neck of the child; the letters of Antigonus found with it all; the majesty of the creature in resemblance of the mother; the affection of nobleness which nature shows above her breeding; and many other evidences – proclaim her with all certainty to be the King’s daughter. Did you see the meeting of the two kings?”

2 Gentleman: “No.”

3 Gentleman: “There might you have beheld one joy crown another. Their joy waded in tears. Our King, being ready to leap out of himself for joy of his found daughter, as if that joy were now a loss, cries ‘O, thy mother, thy mother!’ then asks Bohemia forgiveness; then embraces his son-in-law. Now he thanks the old shepherd.”

2 Gentleman: “What, pray you, became of Antigonus, who carried hence the child?”

3 Gentleman: “He was torn to pieces by a bear. But O the noble combat that twixt joy and sorrow was fought in Paulina! She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband, another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled. She lifted the Princess from the earth, and so locks her in embracing as if she would pin her to her heart, that she might no more be in danger of losing.”

1 Gentleman: “Are they returned to the court?”

3 Gentleman: “No. The Princess hearing of her mother’s statue, which is in the keeping of Paulina, – a piece many years in doing and now newly performed by that rare Italian master, Julio Romano. He so near to Hermione has done Hermione that they say one would speak to her and stand in hope of answer.”

2 Gentleman: “Paulina has privately twice or thrice a day, ever since the death of Hermione, visited that removed house. Shall we thither and join the rejoicing?”

Analysis

Here the shepherd has told his story of having found Perdita on the Bohemian coast sixteen years ago and includes word of the various tokens from Hermione that were found with the child. Therefore, there remains no doubt that Perdita is every bit the princess as Florizel is a prince. Both the shepherd and the clown are made gentlemen and Autolycus becomes their servant. There remains one scene and one astonishing revelation, which will be the true climax of the play.

Act V

Scene iii

Sicily. A chapel in Paulina’s house

Enter Leontes, Polixenes, Florizel, Perdita, Camillo and Paulina

Leontes: “O Paulina, we have come to see the statue of our queen.”

Paulina: “As she lived peerless, so her dead likeness, I do believe, excels whatever yet you looked upon. But here it is, prepare to see the life as lively mocked as ever still sleep mocked death. Behold; and say tis well. (Paulina draws a curtain and reveals Hermione standing like a statue). I like your silence; it the more shows off your wonder; but yet speak. First, you, my liege. Comes it not something near?”

Leontes: “Her natural posture! Chide me, dear stone, that I might say indeed thou art Hermione. But yet, Paulina, Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing so aged as this seems.”

Paulina: “So much the more our carver’s excellence, which lets go by some sixteen years and makes her as she lived now.”

Leontes: “As now she might have done, as it is piercing to my soul. O, thus she stood, even with such life of majesty – warm life, as now it coldly stands – when first I woo’d her! I am ashamed. Does not the stone rebuke me for being more stone than it? O royal piece, there’s magic in thy majesty, which has my evils conjured to remembrance.”

Perdita: “Dear queen, who ended when I but began, give me the hand of yours to kiss.”

Paulina: “O, patience! The statue is but newly fixed, the colour’s not dry.”

Leontes: “Do not draw the curtain.”

Paulina: “No longer shall you gaze on it, lest your fancy may think it moves.”

Leontes: “Let be, let be. Would you not deem it breath’d, and that those veins did verily bear blood?”

Polixenes: “Masterly done! The very life seems warm upon her lips.”

Leontes: “The fixture of her eye has motion in it, as we are mocked with art.”

Paulina: “I’ll draw the curtain. My lord’s almost so far transported that he’ll think anon it lives.”

Leontes: “The pleasure of that madness. Let it alone.”

Paulina: “I am sorry, sir, I have thus far stirred you; but I could afflict you further.”

Leontes: “Do, Paulina; for this affliction has a taste as sweet as any cordial comfort. Still, methinks there is an air that comes from her. Why fine chisel could ever yet cut breath? Let no man mock me, for I will kiss her.”

Paulina: “Good, my lord, forbear. The ruddiness upon her lip is wet; you’ll mar it if you kiss it and stain your own with oily paint. Shall I draw the curtain?”

Leontes: “No, not these twenty years.”

Perdita: “So long could I stand by, a looker-on.”

Paulina: “Either forbear or resolve you for more amazement. If you can behold it, I’ll make the statue move indeed. But then you’ll think I am assisted by wicked powers.”

Leontes: “What you can make her do I am content to look upon.”

Paulina: “It is required you do awake your faith. Then all stand still; or those who think it is an unlawful business I am about, let them depart.”

Leontes: “Proceed. No foot shall stir.”

Paulina: “Music, awake her. Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach; strike all who look upon with marvel. Come; stir; nay, come away. Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him dear life redeems you. You perceive she stirs. (Hermione comes down from the pedestal). Do not shun her until you see her die again; for then you kill her double. Nay, present your hand. When she was young you woo’d her.”

Leontes: “O, she’s warm!”

Polixenes: “She embraces him.”

Camillo: “She hangs around his neck. If she pertain to life, let her speak too.”

Polixenes: “Ay, how stolen from the dead.”

Paulina: “It appears she lives though yet she speaks not. Mark a little while. Turn, good lady; our Perdida is found.”

Hermione: “You gods, look down, and from your sacred vials pour your graces upon my daughter’s head! Tell me, mine own, where has thou been preserved? Where lived? How found? For thou shall hear that I, knowing by Paulina that the oracle gave hope that thou was in being, have preserved myself to see the issue.”

Paulina: “There’s time enough for that. Go together, you precious winners all. I, an old turtle, will wing me to some withered bough, and there my mate, who’s never to be found again, lament till I am lost.”

Leontes: “O peace, Paulina! Thou should a husband take by my consent, as I by thine a wife. Thou has found mine. But how, for I saw her, as I thought, dead; and have; in vain, said many a prayer upon her grave. I’ll not seek far to find thee an honourable husband. Come, Camillo, and take her by the hand, justified by us, a pair of kings. Good Paulina, lead us from hence. Hastily lead away.

Analysis

Pauline reveals her statue of Hermione, which is strikingly realistic. Everyone is overwhelmed by the lifelike resemblance to Hermione as she would have been in the present, sixteen years aged. Leontes wants to touch and to kiss the statue. Pauline finally has the statue come down from the pedestal. It seems she has been secretly harbouring Hermione for all of the years since her trial for treason and adultery. As soon as Perdita was found to be alive and well and peace was established between Sicily and Bohemia, Pauline determined that the time was right to seemingly bring back Hermione from the dead. Hermione and Leontes embrace and Paulina is rewarded with a husband in Camillo, while Perdida is heir to the kingdom of Sicily. This is Shakespeare’s most breathtaking resolution scene, as all parties are reunited in Sicily, Perdita is found to be the daughter of Leontes and Hermione is miraculously resurrected from the dead. Only Paulina and Hermione know the real truth of her apparent death defying re-emergance.

Final thoughts

One of the most astounding facts about this impressive later work of the Bard’s is that it is seldom considered a star in the firmament of his acknowledged masterpieces. By this point in his waning career he was no longer writing clearly delineated comedies or tragedies. Pericles, Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale, all completed between 1608 and 1610, have a mix of everything, defy easy classification and are often referred to as problem plays or romantic comedies. They are complex works of great magnitude and exquisite language. However, they follow on the heals of the staggering genius of his most prolific and profound phase, where in a very short period of time, from 1599-1606, he managed to somehow compose As You like It, Henry V, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra. And while his remaining eight plays do include Coriolanus, Pericles, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest, his swan song, nothing was seen to compare to that previous incomparable string of masterpieces. And yet, in Shakespeare’s day, these later romantic comedies were quite popular, often perceived as a type of fairy tale, with magical places (a coastline in Bavaria) and big adventures and bizarre events (a man being eaten by a bear and a statue coming to life). There are often separations, disguises, mistaken identities, and grand reconciliations. They may be at one and the same time tragic (acts I-III) and comedic (acts IV-V). After a generation of popularity The Winter’s Tale seems to have been scrapped until at least 1741, when it was re-worked thoroughly. It was not until the 19th century that Shakespeare’s original version was restored. It was never really embraced in the 20th century, despite several memorable productions starring the likes of John Gielgud, Judi Dench and Lawrence Harvey. As usual, you can find several full productions on youtube along with a plethora of shorter clips and analysis.