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,

Where we offenders mourn, 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 over-much.

PAULINA

Unless another

As like Hermione as is her picture

Affront his eye—

CLEOMENES

Good madam, I have done.

PAULINA

Yet if my lord will marry—if you will, sir;

No remedy but you will—give me the office

To choose your 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 Servant

SERVANT

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?

SERVANT

But few,

And those but mean.

LEONTES

His princess, say you, with him?

SERVANT

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!

(To the Servant) 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.

SERVANT

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!

SERVANT

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