The arden shakespeare co.., p.563
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, page 563
Th’entreaties of your mistress? satisfy?
Let that suffice. I have trusted thee, Camillo,
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With all the nearest things to my heart, as well
My chamber-counsels, wherein, priest-like, thou
Hast cleans’d my bosom: I from thee departed
Thy penitent reform’d. But we have been
Deceiv’d in thy integrity, deceiv’d
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In that which seems so.
CAMILLO Be it forbid, my lord!
LEONTES To bide upon’t: thou art not honest: or,
If thou inclin’st that way, thou art a coward,
Which hoxes honesty behind, restraining
From course requir’d: or else thou must be counted
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A servant grafted in my serious trust,
And therein negligent; or else a fool,
That seest a game play’d home, the rich stake drawn,
And tak’st it all for jest.
CAMILLO My gracious lord,
I may be negligent, foolish, and fearful;
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In every one of these no man is free,
But that his negligence, his folly, fear,
Among the infinite doings of the world,
Sometime puts forth. In your affairs, my lord,
If ever I were wilful-negligent,
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It was my folly: if industriously
I play’d the fool, it was my negligence,
Not weighing well the end: if ever fearful
To do a thing, where I the issue doubted,
Whereof the execution did cry out
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Against the non-performance, ’twas a fear
Which oft infects the wisest: these, my lord,
Are such allow’d infirmities that honesty
Is never free of. But, beseech your Grace,
Be plainer with me; let me know my trespass
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By its own visage: if I then deny it,
’Tis none of mine.
LEONTES Ha’ not you seen, Camillo?
(But that’s past doubt: you have, or your eye-glass
Is thicker than a cuckold’s horn) or heard?
(For to a vision so apparent rumour
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Cannot be mute) or thought? (for cogitation
Resides not in that man that does not think)
My wife is slippery? If thou wilt confess,
Or else be impudently negative,
To have nor eyes, nor ears, nor thought, then say
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My wife’s a hobby-horse, deserves a name
As rank as any flax-wench that puts to
Before her troth-plight: say’t and justify’t!
CAMILLO I would not be a stander-by, to hear
My sovereign mistress clouded so, without
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My present vengeance taken: ’shrew my heart,
You never spoke what did become you less
Than this; which to reiterate were sin
As deep as that, though true.
LEONTES Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
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Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughter with a sigh (a note infallible
Of breaking honesty)? horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes
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Blind with the pin and web, but theirs; theirs only.
That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing?
Why then the world, and all that’s in’t, is nothing,
The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing,
My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings,
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If this be nothing.
CAMILLO Good my lord, be cur’d
Of this diseas’d opinion, and betimes,
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 liest, Camillo, and I hate thee,
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Pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave,
Or else a hovering temporizer that
Canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil,
Inclining to them both: were my wife’s liver
Infected, as her life, she would not live
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The running of one glass.
CAMILLO Who does infect her?
LEONTES
Why, he that wears her like her medal, hanging
About his neck, Bohemia; who, if I
Had servants true about me, that bare eyes
To see alike mine honour as their profits,
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Their own particular thrifts, they would do that
Which should undo more doing: ay, and thou
His cupbearer, – whom I from meaner form
Have bench’d and rear’d to worship, who may’st see
Plainly as heaven sees earth and earth sees heaven,
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How I am gall’d, – might’st bespice a cup,
To give mine enemy a lasting wink;
Which draught to me were cordial.
CAMILLO Sir, my lord,
I could do this, and that with no rash potion,
But with a ling’ring dram, that should not work
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Maliciously, like poison: but I cannot
Believe this crack to be in my dread mistress
(So sovereignly being honourable).
I have lov’d thee, –
LEONTES Make that thy question, and go rot!
Dost think I am so muddy, so unsettled,
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To appoint myself in this vexation; sully
The purity and whiteness of my sheets,
(Which to preserve is sleep, which being spotted
Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps)
Give scandal to the blood o’th’ prince, my son,
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(Who I do think is mine and love as mine)
Without ripe moving to’t? Would I do this?
Could man so blench?
CAMILLO I must believe you, sir:
I do; and will fetch off Bohemia for’t;
Provided, that when he’s removed, your highness
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Will take again your queen, as yours at first,
Even for your son’s sake, and thereby for sealing
The injury of tongues in courts and kingdoms
Known and allied to yours.
LEONTES Thou dost advise me
Even so as I mine own course have set down:
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I’ll give no blemish to her honour, none.
CAMILLO My lord,
Go then; and with a countenance as clear
As friendship wears at feasts, keep with Bohemia,
And with your queen. I am his cupbearer:
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If from me he have wholesome beverage,
Account me not your servant.
LEONTES This is all:
Do’t, and thou hast the one half of my heart;
Do’t not, thou splitt’st thine own.
CAMILLO I’ll do’t, my lord.
LEONTES I will seem friendly, as thou hast advis’d me.
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Exit.
CAMILLO O miserable lady! But, for me,
What case stand I in? I must be the poisoner
Of good Polixenes, and my ground to do’t
Is the obedience to a master; one
Who, in rebellion with himself, will have
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All that are his, so too. To do this deed,
Promotion follows. If I could find example
Of thousands that had struck anointed kings
And flourish’d after, I’d not do’t: but since
Nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment bears not one,
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Let villainy itself forswear’t. I must
Forsake the court: to do’t, or no, is certain
To me a break-neck. Happy star reign now!
Here comes Bohemia.
Enter POLIXENES.
POLIXENES This is strange: methinks
My favour here begins to warp. Not speak?
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Good day, Camillo.
CAMILLO Hail, most royal sir!
POLIXENES What is the news i’th’ court?
CAMILLO None rare, my lord.
POLIXENES The king hath on him such a countenance
As he had lost some province, and a region
Lov’d as he loves himself: even now I met him
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With customary compliment, when he,
Wafting his eyes to th’ contrary, and falling
A lip of much contempt, speeds from me, and
So leaves me, to consider what is breeding
That changes thus his manners.
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CAMILLO I dare not know, my lord.
POLIXENES
How, dare not? do not? Do you know, and dare not?
Be intelligent to me: ’tis thereabouts:
For, to yourself, what you do know, you must,
And cannot say you dare not. Good Camillo,
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Your chang’d complexions are to me a mirror
Which shows me mine chang’d too; for I must be
A party in this alteration, finding
Myself thus alter’d with’t.
CAMILLO There is a sickness
Which puts some of us in distemper, but
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I cannot name the disease, and it is caught
Of you, that yet are well.
POLIXENES How caught of me?
Make me not sighted like the basilisk.
I have look’d on thousands, who have sped the better
By my regard, but kill’d none so. Camillo, –
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As you are certainly a gentleman, thereto
Clerk-like experienc’d, which no less adorns
Our gentry than our parents’ noble names,
In whose success we are gentle, – I beseech you,
If you know aught which does behove my knowledge
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Thereof to be inform’d, imprison’t not
In ignorant concealment.
CAMILLO I may not answer.
POLIXENES A sickness caught of me, and yet I well?
I must be answer’d. Dost thou hear, Camillo?
I conjure thee, by all the parts of man
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Which honour does acknowledge, whereof the least
Is not this suit of mine, that thou declare
What incidency thou dost guess of harm
Is creeping toward me; how far off, how near,
Which way to be prevented, if to be:
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If not, how best to bear it.
CAMILLO Sir, I will tell you;
Since I am charg’d in honour, and by him
That I think honourable. Therefore mark my counsel,
Which must be ev’n as swiftly follow’d as
I mean to utter it, or both yourself and me
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Cry lost, and so good night!
POLIXENES On, good Camillo.
CAMILLO I am appointed him to murder you.
POLIXENES By whom, Camillo?
CAMILLO By the king.
POLIXENES For what?
CAMILLO
He thinks, nay, with all confidence he swears,
As he had seen’t, or been an instrument
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To vice you to’t, that you have touch’d his queen
Forbiddenly.
POLIXENES O then, my best blood turn
To an infected jelly, and my name
Be yok’d with his that did betray the Best!
Turn then my freshest reputation to
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A savour that may strike the dullest nostril
Where I arrive, and my approach be shunn’d,
Nay, hated too, worse than the great’st infection
That e’er was heard or read!
CAMILLO Swear his thought over
By each particular star in heaven, and
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By all their influences; you may as well
Forbid the sea for to obey the moon,
As or by oath remove or counsel shake
The fabric of his folly, whose foundation
Is pil’d upon his faith, and will continue
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The standing of his body.
