Sicilia. A Room in the Palace of Leontes.
 Enter LEONTES, CLEOMENES, DION, and PAULINA.

Cleomenes	Sir, you have done enough, and have performed
	A saintlike sorrow. No fault could you make
	Which you have not redeemed; indeed, paid down
	More penitence than done trespass. At the last,
	Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil;
	With them, forgive yourself.

Leontes									Whilst 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 hath made my kingdom, and
	Destroyed the sweet'st companion that e'er man
	Bred his hopes out of.

Paulina								True, too true, my lord.
	If one by one you wedded all the world,
	Or from the all that are took something good
	To make a perfect woman, she you killed
	Would be unparalleled.

Leontes							I think so. Killed!
	She I killed! I did so, but thou strik'st me
	Sorely to say I did; it is as bitter
	Upon thy tongue as in my thought. Now, good now,
	Say so but seldom.

Cleomenes							Not at all, good lady.
	You might have spoken a thousand things that would
	Have done the time more benefit, and graced
	Your kindness better.

Paulina								You are one of those
	Would have him wed again.

Dion									If you would not so,
	You pity not the state nor the remembrance
	Of his most sovereign name, consider little
	What dangers by his highness' fail of issue
	May drop upon his kingdom and devour
	Incertain lookers-on. What were more holy
	Than to rejoice the former queen is well?
	What holier than, for royalty's repair,
	For present comfort, and for future good,
	To bless the bed of majesty again
	With a sweet fellow to't?

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,
	Is't not the tenor of his oracle,
	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. 'Tis your counsel
	My lord should to the heavens be contrary,
	Oppose against their wills.
					[To LEONTES.] Care not for issue;
	The crown will find an heir. Great Alexander
	Left his to th' worthiest, so his successor
	Was like to be the best.

Leontes									Good Paulina,
	Who hast the memory of Hermione,
	I know, in honour - O, that ever I
	Had squared me to thy counsel! Then, even now,
	I might have looked upon my queen's full eyes,
	Have taken treasure from her lips-

Paulina											And left them
	More rich for what they yielded.

Leontes										Thou speak'st truth.
	No more such wives; therefore, no wife. One worse,
	And better used, would make her sainted spirit
	Again possess her corpse, and on this stage,
	Were we offenders 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 walked 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 followed
	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 blest 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, walked 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 framed, but forced
	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 equalled'; thus your verse
	Flowed with her beauty once: 'tis shrewdly ebbed
	To say you have seen a better.

Gentleman										Pardon, madam.
	The one I have almost forgot - your pardon;
	The other, when she has obtained 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 honoured friends,
	Bring them to our embracement.
													[Exit CLEOMENES.
										Still, 'tis strange
	He thus should steal upon us.

Paulina										Had our prince-
	Jewel of children - seen this hour, he had paired
	Well with this lord. There was not full a month
	Between their births.

Leontes							Prithee, no more; cease. Thou know'st
	He dies to me again when talked 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.

              Enter FLORIZEL, PERDITA, CLEOMENES and OTHERS.

	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 performed 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-
	All mine own folly - the society,
	Amity too, of your brave father, whom,
	Though bearing misery, I desire my life
	Once more to look on him.

Florizel									By his command
	Have I here touched Sicilia, and from him
	Give you all greetings that a king at friend
	Can send his brother; and but infirmity,
	Which waits upon worn times, hath something seized
	His wished ability, he had himself
	The lands and waters 'twixt your throne and his
	Measured, to look upon you; whom he loves,
	He bade me say so, more than all the sceptres
	And those that bear them living.

Leontes											O my brother-
	Good gentleman! - the wrongs I have done thee stir
	Afresh within me; and these thy offices,
	So rarely kind, are as interpreters
	Of my behind-hand slackness. - Welcome hither,
	As is the spring to th' earth. And hath he too
	Exposed this paragon to th' fearful usage,
	At least ungentle, of the dreadful Neptune,
	To greet a man not worth her pains, much less
	Th' adventure of her person?

Florizel										Good my lord,
	She came from Libya.

Leontes							Where the warlike Smalus,
	That noble honoured lord, is feared and loved?

Florizel	Most royal sir, from thence; from him whose daughter
	His tears proclaimed his, parting with her; thence,
	A prosperous south wind friendly, we have crossed,
	To execute the charge my father gave me
	For visiting your highness. My best train
	I have from your Sicilian shores dismissed;
	Who for Bohemia bend, to signify
	Not only my success in Libya, sir,
	But my arrival and my wife's in safety
	Here where we are.

Leontes							The blessd gods
	Purge all infection from our air whilst you
	Do climate here! You have a holy father,
	A graceful gentleman, against whose person,
	So sacred as it is, I have done sin,
	For which the heavens, taking angry note,
	Have left me issueless; and your father's blest,
	As he from heaven merits it, with you,
	Worthy his goodness. What might I have been
	Might I a son and daughter now have looked on,
	Such goodly things as you?

                              Enter a LORD.

Lord										Most noble sir,
	That which I shall report will bear no credit
	Were not the proof so nigh. Please you, great sir,
	Bohemia greets you from himself by me;
	Desires you to attach his son, who has,
	- His dignity and duty both cast off-
	Fled from his father, from his hopes, and with
	A shepherd's daughter.

Leontes								Where's Bohemia? Speak.

Lord	Here in your city; I now came from him.
	I speak amazdly, and it becomes
	My marvel and my message. To your court
	Whiles he was hast'ning - 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;
	Whose honour and whose honesty till now
	Endured all weathers.

Lord							Lay't so to his charge;
	He's with the king your father.

Leontes											Who? Camillo?

Lord	Camillo, sir; I spake with him, who now
	Has these poor men in question. Never saw I
	Wretches so quake: they kneel, they kiss the earth,
	Forswear themselves as often as they speak.
	Bohemia stops his ears, and threatens them
	With divers deaths in death.

Perdita										O my poor father!
	The heaven sets spies upon us, will not have
	Our contract celebrated.

Leontes								You are married?

Florizel	We are not, sir, nor are we like to be.
	The stars, I see, will kiss the valleys first:
	The odds for high and low's alike.

Leontes											My lord,
	Is this the daughter of a king?

Florizel										She is,
	When once she is my wife.

Leontes	That 'once', I see by your good father's speed,
	Will come on very slowly. I am sorry,
	Most sorry, you have broken from his liking,
	Where you were tied in duty; and as sorry
	Your choice is not so rich in worth as beauty,
	That you might well enjoy her.

Florizel											Dear, look up.
	Though Fortune, visible an enemy,
	Should chase us with my father, power no jot
	Hath she to change our loves. Beseech you, sir,
	Remember since you owed no more to time
	Than I do now. With thought of such affections,
	Step forth mine advocate; at your request
	My father will grant precious things as trifles.

Leontes	Would he do so, I'd beg your precious mistress,
	Which he counts but a trifle.

Paulina										Sir, my liege,
	Your eye hath too much youth in't. Not a month
	'Fore your queen died she was more worth such gazes
	Than what you look on now.

Leontes									I thought of her,
	Even in these looks I made.
					[To FLORIZEL.] But your petition
	Is yet unanswered. I will to your father.
	Your honour not o'erthrown by your desires,
	I am friend to them and you; upon which errand
	I now go toward him. Therefore follow me,
	And mark what way I make. Come, good my lord.
													[Exeunt.
