Act 2, Scene 1

Sicilia. A Room in the Palace.

[Enter HERMIONE, MAMILLIUS, and Ladies.]
Hermione
577 Take the boy to you: he so troubles me,
578 'Tis past enduring.
First Lady
579 Come, my gracious lord,
580 Shall I be your playfellow?
Mamillius
581 No, I'll none of you.
First Lady
582 Why, my sweet lord?
Mamillius
583 You'll kiss me hard, and speak to me as if
584 I were a baby still.—
[To Second Lady.]
Mamillius
585 I love you better.
Second Lady
586 And why so, my lord?
Mamillius
587 Not for because
588 Your brows are blacker; yet black brows, they say,
589 Become some women best; so that there be not
590 Too much hair there, but in a semicircle
591 Or a half-moon made with a pen.
Second Lady
592 Who taught you this?
Mamillius
593 I learn'd it out of women's faces.—Pray now,
594 What colour are your eyebrows?
First Lady
595 Blue, my lord.
Mamillius
596 Nay, that's a mock: I have seen a lady's nose
597 That has been blue, but not her eyebrows.
First Lady
598 Hark ye:
599 The queen your mother rounds apace. We shall
600 Present our services to a fine new prince
601 One of these days; and then you'd wanton with us,
602 If we would have you.
Second Lady
603 She is spread of late
604 Into a goodly bulk: good time encounter her!
Hermione
605 What wisdom stirs amongst you? Come, sir, now
606 I am for you again: pray you sit by us,
607 And tell 's a tale.
Mamillius
608 Merry or sad shall't be?
Hermione
609 As merry as you will.
Mamillius
610 A sad tale's best for winter. I have one
611 Of sprites and goblins.
Hermione
612 Let's have that, good sir.
613 Come on, sit down;—come on, and do your best
614 To fright me with your sprites: you're powerful at it.
Mamillius
615 There was a man,—
Hermione
616 Nay, come, sit down: then on.
Mamillius
617 Dwelt by a churchyard:—I will tell it softly;
618 Yond crickets shall not hear it.
Hermione
619 Come on then,
620 And give't me in mine ear.
[Enter LEONTES, ANTIGONUS, Lords, and Guards.]
Leontes
621 Was he met there? his train? Camillo with him?
First Lord
622 Behind the tuft of pines I met them; never
623 Saw I men scour so on their way: I ey'd them
624 Even to their ships.
Leontes
625 How bles'd am I
626 In my just censure, in my true opinion!—
627 Alack, for lesser knowledge!—How accurs'd
628 In being so blest!—There may be in the cup
629 A spider steep'd, and one may drink, depart,
630 And yet partake no venom; for his knowledge
631 Is not infected; but if one present
632 The abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known
633 How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,
634 With violent hefts;—I have drunk, and seen the spider.
635 Camillo was his help in this, his pander:—
636 There is a plot against my life, my crown;
637 All's true that is mistrusted:—that false villain
638 Whom I employ'd, was pre-employ'd by him:
639 He has discover'd my design, and I
640 Remain a pinch'd thing; yea, a very trick
641 For them to play at will.—How came the posterns
642 So easily open?
First Lord
643 By his great authority;
644 Which often hath no less prevail'd than so,
645 On your command.
Leontes
646 I know't too well.—
647 Give me the boy:—I am glad you did not nurse him:
648 Though he does bear some signs of me, yet you
649 Have too much blood in him.
Hermione
650 What is this? sport?
Leontes
651 Bear the boy hence; he shall not come about her;
652 Away with him!—and let her sport herself
653 With that she's big with;—for 'tis Polixenes
654 Has made thee swell thus.
[Exit MAMILLIUS, with some of the Guards.]
Hermione
655 But I'd say he had not,
656 And I'll be sworn you would believe my saying,
657 Howe'er you learn the nayward.
Leontes
658 You, my lords,
659 Look on her, mark her well; be but about
660 To say, 'she is a goodly lady' and
661 The justice of your hearts will thereto add,
662 ''Tis pity she's not honest, honourable':
663 Praise her but for this her without-door form,—
664 Which, on my faith, deserves high speech,—and straight
665 The shrug, the hum or ha,—these petty brands
666 That calumny doth use:—O, I am out,
667 That mercy does; for calumny will sear
668 Virtue itself:—these shrugs, these hum's, and ha's,
669 When you have said 'she's goodly,' come between,
670 Ere you can say 'she's honest': but be it known,
671 From him that has most cause to grieve it should be,
672 She's an adultress!
Hermione
673 Should a villain say so,
674 The most replenish'd villain in the world,
675 He were as much more villain: you, my lord,
676 Do but mistake.
Leontes
677 You have mistook, my lady,
678 Polixenes for Leontes: O thou thing,
679 Which I'll not call a creature of thy place,
680 Lest barbarism, making me the precedent,
681 Should a like language use to all degrees,
682 And mannerly distinguishment leave out
683 Betwixt the prince and beggar!—I have said,
684 She's an adultress; I have said with whom:
685 More, she's a traitor; and Camillo is
686 A federary with her; and one that knows
687 What she should shame to know herself
688 But with her most vile principal, that she's
689 A bed-swerver, even as bad as those
690 That vulgars give boldest titles; ay, and privy
691 To this their late escape.
Hermione
692 No, by my life,
693 Privy to none of this. How will this grieve you,
694 When you shall come to clearer knowledge, that
695 You thus have publish'd me! Gentle my lord,
696 You scarce can right me throughly then, to say
697 You did mistake.
Leontes
698 No; if I mistake
699 In those foundations which I build upon,
700 The centre is not big enough to bear
701 A school-boy's top.—Away with her to prison!
702 He who shall speak for her is afar off guilty
703 But that he speaks.
Hermione
704 There's some ill planet reigns:
705 I must be patient till the heavens look
706 With an aspect more favourable.—Good my lords,
707 I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
708 Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
709 Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
710 That honourable grief lodg'd here, which burns
711 Worse than tears drown: beseech you all, my lords,
712 With thoughts so qualified as your charities
713 Shall best instruct you, measure me;—and so
714 The king's will be perform'd!
[To the GUARD.]
Leontes
715 Shall I be heard?
Hermione
716 Who is't that goes with me?—Beseech your highness
717 My women may be with me; for, you see,
718 My plight requires it.—Do not weep, good fools;
719 There is no cause: when you shall know your mistress
720 Has deserv'd prison, then abound in tears
721 As I come out: this action I now go on
722 Is for my better grace.—Adieu, my lord:
723 I never wish'd to see you sorry; now
724 I trust I shall.—My women, come; you have leave.
Leontes
725 Go, do our bidding; hence!
[Exeunt QUEEN and Ladies, with Guards.]
First Lord
726 Beseech your highness, call the queen again.
Antigonus
727 Be certain what you do, sir, lest your justice
728 Prove violence, in the which three great ones suffer,
729 Yourself, your queen, your son.
First Lord
730 For her, my lord,—
731 I dare my life lay down,—and will do't, sir,
732 Please you to accept it,—that the queen is spotless
733 I' the eyes of heaven and to you; I mean
734 In this which you accuse her.
Antigonus
735 If it prove
736 She's otherwise, I'll keep my stables where
737 I lodge my wife; I'll go in couples with her;
738 Than when I feel and see her no further trust her;
739 For every inch of woman in the world,
740 Ay, every dram of woman's flesh, is false,
741 If she be.
Leontes
742 Hold your peaces.
First Lord
743 Good my lord,—
Antigonus
744 It is for you we speak, not for ourselves:
745 You are abus'd, and by some putter-on
746 That will be damn'd for't: would I knew the villain,
747 I would land-damn him. Be she honour-flaw'd,—
748 I have three daughters; the eldest is eleven;
749 The second and the third, nine and some five;
750 If this prove true, they'll pay for't. By mine honour,
751 I'll geld 'em all: fourteen they shall not see,
752 To bring false generations: they are co-heirs;
753 And I had rather glib myself than they
754 Should not produce fair issue.
Leontes
755 Cease; no more.
756 You smell this business with a sense as cold
757 As is a dead man's nose: but I do see't and feel't
758 As you feel doing thus; and see withal
759 The instruments that feel.
Antigonus
760 If it be so,
761 We need no grave to bury honesty;
762 There's not a grain of it the face to sweeten
763 Of the whole dungy earth.
Leontes
764 What! Lack I credit?
First Lord
765 I had rather you did lack than I, my lord,
766 Upon this ground: and more it would content me
767 To have her honour true than your suspicion;
768 Be blam'd for't how you might.
Leontes
769 Why, what need we
770 Commune with you of this, but rather follow
771 Our forceful instigation? Our prerogative
772 Calls not your counsels; but our natural goodness
773 Imparts this; which, if you,—or stupified
774 Or seeming so in skill,—cannot or will not
775 Relish a truth, like us, inform yourselves
776 We need no more of your advice: the matter,
777 The loss, the gain, the ord'ring on't, is all
778 Properly ours.
Antigonus
779 And I wish, my liege,
780 You had only in your silent judgment tried it,
781 Without more overture.
Leontes
782 How could that be?
783 Either thou art most ignorant by age,
784 Or thou wert born a fool. Camillo's flight,
785 Added to their familiarity,—
786 Which was as gross as ever touch'd conjecture,
787 That lack'd sight only, nought for approbation,
788 But only seeing, all other circumstances
789 Made up to th' deed,—doth push on this proceeding.
790 Yet, for a greater confirmation,—
791 For, in an act of this importance, 'twere
792 Most piteous to be wild,—I have despatch'd in post
793 To sacred Delphos, to Apollo's temple,
794 Cleomenes and Dion, whom you know
795 Of stuff'd sufficiency: now, from the oracle
796 They will bring all, whose spiritual counsel had,
797 Shall stop or spur me. Have I done well?
First Lord
798 Well done, my lord,—
Leontes
799 Though I am satisfied, and need no more
800 Than what I know, yet shall the oracle
801 Give rest to the minds of others such as he
802 Whose ignorant credulity will not
803 Come up to th' truth: so have we thought it good
804 From our free person she should be confin'd;
805 Lest that the treachery of the two fled hence
806 Be left her to perform. Come, follow us;
807 We are to speak in public; for this business
808 Will raise us all.
[Aside.]
Antigonus
809 To laughter, as I take it,
810 If the good truth were known.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 588cultural context
“black brows, they say, Become some women best”
Mamillius recites an Elizabethan beauty standard: dark, well-shaped eyebrows (ideally drawn with a pen into a neat semicircle) were considered attractive. His knowing commentary — plucked from 'women's faces' rather than books — marks him as an observant, precociously worldly child.
TLN 599archaic vocab
“the queen your mother rounds apace”
'Rounds apace' means 'grows visibly rounder, quickly' — Hermione is far along in her pregnancy and her belly is swelling fast. 'Apace' means at a fast pace.
TLN 610parallel passage
“A sad tale's best for winter. I have one Of sprites and goblins.”
Mamillius chooses a ghost story because winter nights were the traditional time for fireside tales of the supernatural. His half-told tale of a man who 'dwelt by a churchyard' is never finished — he is pulled away, then dies. The play's title is embedded here: the story Mamillius begins is the winter's tale itself, which will end only when spring returns sixteen years later.
TLN 618archaic vocab
“Yond crickets shall not hear it”
'Yond' is an archaic form of 'yonder' — over there. Mamillius gestures at the chattering ladies and calls them 'crickets,' meaning noisy, chirping gossips. He wants to tell his ghost story privately in Hermione's ear, away from the women.
TLN 625syntax grammar
“How bles'd am I In my just censure, in my true opinion!”
Leontes's speech is tortured in structure as well as content. Here 'censure' means 'judgment' (not 'condemnation' as in modern English), and he is calling his jealous suspicion his 'just' and 'true' judgment — even as the audience knows it to be completely mistaken. The exclamation mark caps a self-congratulation built on delusion.
TLN 628cultural context
“There may be in the cup A spider steep'd, and one may drink, depart, And yet partake no venom”
Elizabethans believed that spiders were venomous and that unknowingly drinking one dissolved in a cup could poison you — but only if you knew it was there. If you drank in ignorance, the belief held, you would feel no harm. Leontes uses this folk belief as a bitter analogy: knowing that Hermione may have been unfaithful has poisoned him, even though he might have lived happily in ignorance.
TLN 635archaic vocab
“Camillo was his help in this, his pander”
A 'pander' is a go-between who arranges sexual assignations — a pimp or procurer. The word derives from Pandarus, the character in the Troy legend who facilitated the love of Troilus and Cressida and whose name had become a byword for such a facilitator by Shakespeare's day. Leontes is accusing Camillo of procuring Hermione for Polixenes.
TLN 640archaic vocab
“Remain a pinch'd thing; yea, a very trick For them to play at will”
A 'pinch'd thing' means something squeezed, constricted, or tormented — here Leontes feels himself trapped and manipulated. A 'trick' means a toy or puppet: Leontes imagines himself as a plaything for Polixenes and Camillo to move at will, as if he were a puppet on a string.
TLN 641archaic vocab
“How came the posterns So easily open?”
'Posterns' are small back doors or side gates in a palace or castle wall — not the grand ceremonial entrance but private, less-guarded passages. Leontes is asking how Polixenes and Camillo got out of the palace and to their ships so quickly, implying the guards were bribed or suborned.
TLN 657archaic vocab
“Howe'er you learn the nayward”
'The nayward' is a rare word meaning the direction of denial, of saying 'nay' — the side of contradiction. Hermione is telling Leontes that she could swear she is innocent and he would believe her, no matter how he has come to learn or hear the contrary ('the nayward'). It means roughly 'however you've been told otherwise.'
TLN 663archaic vocab
“Praise her but for this her without-door form”
'Without-door form' means outward appearance — the looks visible to any eye, as opposed to inner virtue or private behaviour. Leontes is sarcastically conceding that Hermione is beautiful to look at ('deserves high speech') while implying her interior conduct is corrupt. 'Without-door' literally means outside the door, hence public, outward, visible.
TLN 665archaic vocab
“these petty brands That calumny doth use”
'Calumny' means slander or false accusation; a 'brand' here is a mark of shame burned onto someone's reputation (from the practice of branding criminals). Leontes says that when he praises Hermione's looks, people's knowing shrugs and murmurs — the small social 'brands' of gossip — immediately undercut her reputation. The dramatic irony is severe: it is Leontes himself who is the slanderer.
TLN 674archaic vocab
“The most replenish'd villain in the world, He were as much more villain”
'Replenish'd' here means fully stocked or complete — the most thoroughly accomplished villain imaginable. Hermione argues that even the worst possible villain would be made doubly villainous by saying what Leontes has just said about her. The construction 'as much more villain' means 'all the more a villain for saying it.'
TLN 685archaic vocab
“Camillo is A federary with her”
A 'federary' (sometimes spelled 'federarie') is a confederate — a conspirator who has made a secret alliance. Leontes accuses Camillo of being Hermione's accomplice in the supposed adultery and treason against him.
TLN 688archaic vocab
“she's A bed-swerver, even as bad as those That vulgars give boldest titles”
A 'bed-swerver' is one who swerves from the marriage bed — an adulterer. 'Vulgars' means common people, the vulgar crowd. 'Give boldest titles' means call by the plainest, crudest names. Leontes is saying Hermione is as bad as those women whom ordinary people openly call whores — but he himself is too high-born to use the word.
TLN 695archaic vocab
“you thus have publish'd me! Gentle my lord, You scarce can right me throughly then”
'Publish'd me' means publicly proclaimed or exposed me — Leontes has made his accusation before his lords, turning the slander into public record. Hermione foresees that even when he finally admits his mistake ('You did mistake'), he will not be able to fully restore her reputation. 'Throughly' is an older form of 'thoroughly.'
TLN 704cultural context
“There's some ill planet reigns: I must be patient till the heavens look With an aspect more favourable”
Hermione draws on Elizabethan astrology: planets were said to 'reign' when they dominated a given period, and an 'aspect' was the angle a planet made with others, which determined whether it sent favorable or harmful influence to earth. She is framing Leontes's delusion as a cosmic misalignment rather than a permanent condition — the stars will eventually change, and so may he.
TLN 721archaic vocab
“this action I now go on Is for my better grace”
Hermione says that enduring her unjust imprisonment will be 'for my better grace' — it will increase her spiritual dignity and moral merit. 'Grace' here means something like inner virtue, merit, or standing with God, not social grace or pardon. She is transforming arrest into a trial of character she intends to pass.
TLN 745archaic vocab
“you are abus'd, and by some putter-on That will be damn'd for't”
Antigonus tells Leontes he has been deceived — 'abus'd' means cheated or manipulated, not physically harmed. A 'putter-on' is someone who incites or instigates another to a bad act, a puppeteer or tempter working behind the scenes. Antigonus cannot imagine that Leontes's jealousy has no external source; the play's irony is that there is no 'putter-on' — the tyrant has manufactured his own suspicion.
TLN 792classical allusion
“I have despatch'd in post To sacred Delphos, to Apollo's temple”
Leontes has sent messengers at full speed ('in post,' meaning relay-post horses, the fastest travel available) to consult Apollo's oracle at 'Delphos.' Apollo, god of the sun and prophecy, maintained his most famous oracle at Delphi in Greece. The oracle's answer will be the play's hinge of divine justice: it will clear Hermione — but Leontes will refuse to believe it, and that defiance will cost him his son.
classical Apollo and the oracle at Delphos