Act 5, Scene 1

Sicilia. A Room in the palace of LEONTES.

[Enter LEONTES, CLEOMENES, DION, PAULINA, and others.]
Cleomenes
2624 Sir, you have done enough, and have perform'd
2625 A saint-like sorrow: no fault could you make
2626 Which you have not redeem'd; indeed, paid down
2627 More penitence than done trespass: at the last,
2628 Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil;
2629 With them, forgive yourself.
Leontes
2630 Whilst I remember
2631 Her and her virtues, I cannot forget
2632 My blemishes in them; and so still think of
2633 The wrong I did myself: which was so much
2634 That heirless it hath made my kingdom, and
2635 Destroy'd the sweet'st companion that e'er man
2636 Bred his hopes out of.
Paulina
2637 True, too true, my lord;
2638 If, one by one, you wedded all the world,
2639 Or from the all that are took something good,
2640 To make a perfect woman, she you kill'd
2641 Would be unparallel'd.
Leontes
2642 I think so.—Kill'd!
2643 She I kill'd! I did so: but thou strik'st me
2644 Sorely, to say I did: it is as bitter
2645 Upon thy tongue as in my thought: now, good now,
2646 Say so but seldom.
Cleomenes
2647 Not at all, good lady;
2648 You might have spoken a thousand things that would
2649 Have done the time more benefit, and grac'd
2650 Your kindness better.
Paulina
2651 You are one of those
2652 Would have him wed again.
Dion
2653 If you would not so,
2654 You pity not the state, nor the remembrance
2655 Of his most sovereign name; consider little
2656 What dangers, by his highness' fail of issue,
2657 May drop upon his kingdom, and devour
2658 Incertain lookers-on. What were more holy
2659 Than to rejoice the former queen is well?
2660 What holier than,—for royalty's repair,
2661 For present comfort, and for future good,—
2662 To bless the bed of majesty again
2663 With a sweet fellow to't?
Paulina
2664 There is none worthy,
2665 Respecting her that's gone. Besides, the gods
2666 Will have fulfill'd their secret purposes;
2667 For has not the divine Apollo said,
2668 Is't not the tenour of his oracle,
2669 That king Leontes shall not have an heir
2670 Till his lost child be found? which that it shall,
2671 Is all as monstrous to our human reason
2672 As my Antigonus to break his grave
2673 And come again to me; who, on my life,
2674 Did perish with the infant. 'Tis your counsel
2675 My lord should to the heavens be contrary,
2676 Oppose against their wills.—
[To LEONTES.]
Paulina
2677 Care not for issue;
2678 The crown will find an heir: great Alexander
2679 Left his to the worthiest; so his successor
2680 Was like to be the best.
Leontes
2681 Good Paulina,—
2682 Who hast the memory of Hermione,
2683 I know, in honour,—O that ever I
2684 Had squar'd me to thy counsel!—then, even now,
2685 I might have look'd upon my queen's full eyes,
2686 Have taken treasure from her lips,—
Paulina
2687 And left them
2688 More rich for what they yielded.
Leontes
2689 Thou speak'st truth.
2690 No more such wives; therefore, no wife: one worse,
2691 And better us'd, would make her sainted spirit
2692 Again possess her corpse; and on this stage,—
2693 Where we offend her now,—appear soul-vexed,
2694 And begin 'Why to me?'
Paulina
2695 Had she such power,
2696 She had just cause.
Leontes
2697 She had; and would incense me
2698 To murder her I married.
Paulina
2699 I should so.
2700 Were I the ghost that walk'd, I'd bid you mark
2701 Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in't
2702 You chose her: then I'd shriek, that even your ears
2703 Should rift to hear me; and the words that follow'd
2704 Should be 'Remember mine!'
Leontes
2705 Stars, stars,
2706 And all eyes else dead coals!—fear thou no wife;
2707 I'll have no wife, Paulina.
Paulina
2708 Will you swear
2709 Never to marry but by my free leave?
Leontes
2710 Never, Paulina; so be bless'd my spirit!
Paulina
2711 Then, good my lords, bear witness to his oath.
Cleomenes
2712 You tempt him over-much.
Paulina
2713 Unless another,
2714 As like Hermione as is her picture,
2715 Affront his eye.
Cleomenes
2716 Good madam,—
Paulina
2717 I have done.
2718 Yet, if my lord will marry,—if you will, sir,
2719 No remedy but you will,—give me the office
2720 To choose you a queen: she shall not be so young
2721 As was your former; but she shall be such
2722 As, walk'd your first queen's ghost, it should take joy
2723 To see her in your arms.
Leontes
2724 My true Paulina,
2725 We shall not marry till thou bidd'st us.
Paulina
2726 That
2727 Shall be when your first queen's again in breath;
2728 Never till then.
[Enter a GENTLEMAN.]
Gentleman
2729 One that gives out himself Prince Florizel,
2730 Son of Polixenes, with his princess,—she
2731 The fairest I have yet beheld,—desires access
2732 To your high presence.
Leontes
2733 What with him? he comes not
2734 Like to his father's greatness: his approach,
2735 So out of circumstance and sudden, tells us
2736 'Tis not a visitation fram'd, but forc'd
2737 By need and accident. What train?
Gentleman
2738 But few,
2739 And those but mean.
Leontes
2740 His princess, say you, with him?
Gentleman
2741 Ay; the most peerless piece of earth, I think,
2742 That e'er the sun shone bright on.
Paulina
2743 O Hermione,
2744 As every present time doth boast itself
2745 Above a better gone, so must thy grave
2746 Give way to what's seen now! Sir, you yourself
2747 Have said and writ so,—but your writing now
2748 Is colder than that theme,—'She had not been,
2749 Nor was not to be equall'd'; thus your verse
2750 Flow'd with her beauty once; 'tis shrewdly ebb'd,
2751 To say you have seen a better.
Gentleman
2752 Pardon, madam:
2753 The one I have almost forgot,—your pardon;—
2754 The other, when she has obtain'd your eye,
2755 Will have your tongue too. This is a creature,
2756 Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal
2757 Of all professors else; make proselytes
2758 Of who she but bid follow.
Paulina
2759 How! not women?
Gentleman
2760 Women will love her that she is a woman
2761 More worth than any man; men, that she is
2762 The rarest of all women.
Leontes
2763 Go, Cleomenes;
2764 Yourself, assisted with your honour'd friends,
2765 Bring them to our embracement.—
[Exeunt CLEOMENES, Lords, and Gent.]
Leontes
2766 Still, 'tis strange
2767 He thus should steal upon us.
Paulina
2768 Had our prince,—
2769 Jewel of children,—seen this hour, he had pair'd
2770 Well with this lord: there was not full a month
2771 Between their births.
Leontes
2772 Pr'ythee no more; cease; Thou know'st
2773 He dies to me again when talk'd of: sure,
2774 When I shall see this gentleman, thy speeches
2775 Will bring me to consider that which may
2776 Unfurnish me of reason.—They are come.—
[Re-enter CLEOMENES, with FLORIZEL, PERDITA, and Attendants.]
Leontes
2777 Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince;
2778 For she did print your royal father off,
2779 Conceiving you: were I but twenty-one,
2780 Your father's image is so hit in you,
2781 His very air, that I should call you brother,
2782 As I did him, and speak of something wildly
2783 By us perform'd before. Most dearly welcome!
2784 And your fair princess,—goddess! O, alas!
2785 I lost a couple that 'twixt heaven and earth
2786 Might thus have stood, begetting wonder, as
2787 You, gracious couple, do! And then I lost,—
2788 All mine own folly,—the society,
2789 Amity too, of your brave father, whom,
2790 Though bearing misery, I desire my life
2791 Once more to look on him.
Florizel
2792 By his command
2793 Have I here touch'd Sicilia, and from him
2794 Give you all greetings that a king, at friend,
2795 Can send his brother: and, but infirmity,—
2796 Which waits upon worn times,—hath something seiz'd
2797 His wish'd ability, he had himself
2798 The lands and waters 'twixt your throne and his
2799 Measur'd, to look upon you; whom he loves,
2800 He bade me say so,—more than all the sceptres
2801 And those that bear them, living.
Leontes
2802 O my brother,—
2803 Good gentleman!—the wrongs I have done thee stir
2804 Afresh within me; and these thy offices,
2805 So rarely kind, are as interpreters
2806 Of my behind-hand slackness!—Welcome hither,
2807 As is the spring to the earth. And hath he too
2808 Expos'd this paragon to the fearful usage,—
2809 At least ungentle,—of the dreadful Neptune,
2810 To greet a man not worth her pains, much less
2811 The adventure of her person?
Florizel
2812 Good, my lord,
2813 She came from Libya.
Leontes
2814 Where the warlike Smalus,
2815 That noble honour'd lord, is fear'd and lov'd?
Florizel
2816 Most royal sir, from thence; from him whose daughter
2817 His tears proclaim'd his, parting with her: thence,—
2818 A prosperous south-wind friendly, we have cross'd,
2819 To execute the charge my father gave me,
2820 For visiting your highness: my best train
2821 I have from your Sicilian shores dismiss'd;
2822 Who for Bohemia bend, to signify
2823 Not only my success in Libya, sir,
2824 But my arrival, and my wife's, in safety
2825 Here, where we are.
Leontes
2826 The blessed gods
2827 Purge all infection from our air whilst you
2828 Do climate here! You have a holy father,
2829 A graceful gentleman; against whose person,
2830 So sacred as it is, I have done sin:
2831 For which the heavens, taking angry note,
2832 Have left me issueless; and your father's bless'd,—
2833 As he from heaven merits it,—with you
2834 Worthy his goodness. What might I have been,
2835 Might I a son and daughter now have look'd on,
2836 Such goodly things as you!
[Enter a Lord.]
Lord
2837 Most noble sir,
2838 That which I shall report will bear no credit,
2839 Were not the proof so nigh. Please you, great sir,
2840 Bohemia greets you from himself by me;
2841 Desires you to attach his son, who has,—
2842 His dignity and duty both cast off,—
2843 Fled from his father, from his hopes, and with
2844 A shepherd's daughter.
Leontes
2845 Where's Bohemia? speak.
Lord
2846 Here in your city; I now came from him:
2847 I speak amazedly; and it becomes
2848 My marvel and my message. To your court
2849 Whiles he was hast'ning,—in the chase, it seems,
2850 Of this fair couple,—meets he on the way
2851 The father of this seeming lady and
2852 Her brother, having both their country quitted
2853 With this young prince.
Florizel
2854 Camillo has betray'd me;
2855 Whose honour and whose honesty, till now,
2856 Endur'd all weathers.
Lord
2857 Lay't so to his charge;
2858 He's with the king your father.
Leontes
2859 Who? Camillo?
Lord
2860 Camillo, sir; I spake with him; who now
2861 Has these poor men in question. Never saw I
2862 Wretches so quake: they kneel, they kiss the earth;
2863 Forswear themselves as often as they speak:
2864 Bohemia stops his ears, and threatens them
2865 With divers deaths in death.
Perdita
2866 O my poor father!—
2867 The heaven sets spies upon us, will not have
2868 Our contract celebrated.
Leontes
2869 You are married?
Florizel
2870 We are not, sir, nor are we like to be;
2871 The stars, I see, will kiss the valleys first:—
2872 The odds for high and low's alike.
Leontes
2873 My lord,
2874 Is this the daughter of a king?
Florizel
2875 She is,
2876 When once she is my wife.
Leontes
2877 That once, I see by your good father's speed,
2878 Will come on very slowly. I am sorry,
2879 Most sorry, you have broken from his liking,
2880 Where you were tied in duty; and as sorry
2881 Your choice is not so rich in worth as beauty,
2882 That you might well enjoy her.
Florizel
2883 Dear, look up:
2884 Though Fortune, visible an enemy,
2885 Should chase us with my father, power no jot
2886 Hath she to change our loves.—Beseech you, sir,
2887 Remember since you ow'd no more to time
2888 Than I do now: with thought of such affections,
2889 Step forth mine advocate; at your request
2890 My father will grant precious things as trifles.
Leontes
2891 Would he do so, I'd beg your precious mistress,
2892 Which he counts but a trifle.
Paulina
2893 Sir, my liege,
2894 Your eye hath too much youth in't: not a month
2895 'Fore your queen died, she was more worth such gazes
2896 Than what you look on now.
Leontes
2897 I thought of her
2898 Even in these looks I made.—
[To FLORIZEL.]
Leontes
2899 But your petition
2900 Is yet unanswer'd. I will to your father.
2901 Your honour not o'erthrown by your desires,
2902 I am friend to them and you: upon which errand
2903 I now go toward him; therefore, follow me,
2904 And mark what way I make. Come, good my lord.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 2625archaic vocab
“saint-like sorrow: no fault could you make”
Cleomenes tells Leontes he has performed a 'saint-like sorrow' — a penitence as complete as a saint's suffering — and that no sin he committed has gone unatoned for, since he has paid more in remorse than the original wrong required.
TLN 2634syntax grammar
“heirless it hath made my kingdom, and Destroy'd the sweet'st companion”
The syntax is compressed: 'That wrong I did myself' was 'so much / That heirless it hath made my kingdom' means the wrong was so great that it has left Leontes's kingdom without an heir. 'Companion' here means partner — the person with whom one shares life, not merely a friend.
TLN 2639rhetorical device
“from the all that are took something good, To make a perfect woman”
Paulina uses a rhetorical figure: even if you were to marry every woman in the world, or take the best quality from every woman alive and combine them into one ideal person, that composite ideal would still fall short of Hermione. The device — constructing the best possible opponent case only to defeat it — is known as 'occupatio' or 'concession.'
TLN 2656archaic vocab
“his highness' fail of issue, May drop upon his kingdom”
'Fail of issue' means failure to produce an heir — 'issue' in legal and dynastic usage meant children, especially legitimate offspring who could inherit the throne. Dion argues that a kingdom without an heir is a political time-bomb: dangers could 'drop upon' it (fall on it suddenly) and devour uncertain bystanders.
TLN 2667classical allusion
“the divine Apollo said, Is't not the tenour of his oracle, That king Leontes shall not have an heir”
Paulina cites the sealed oracle that Apollo's priests delivered at Delphos (3.2): Leontes cannot have an heir until his 'lost child be found.' Apollo was the Greek god of prophecy, and his oracle at Delphi was the most authoritative in the ancient world. The oracle has been fulfilled in part — Leontes accepted it too late — and its final condition (finding the lost child Perdita) is what drives the plot forward.
classical Apollo and the oracle at Delphos
TLN 2672cultural context
“my Antigonus to break his grave And come again to me”
Paulina says that the oracle's remaining condition coming true is as impossible as her husband Antigonus rising from the dead to return to her. Antigonus was killed by a bear on the Bohemian coast after leaving the infant Perdita there (3.3); Paulina knows he is dead. The image is powerful because we have just seen what the oracle left to be fulfilled — and a bear killed the only person who knew where Perdita was left.
TLN 2678historical topical
“great Alexander Left his to the worthiest”
Paulina advises Leontes that the crown will find its own heir, as Alexander the Great allegedly did: when Alexander lay dying with no designated successor, he is said to have answered 'to the worthiest' when asked to whom he left his empire. Paulina implies that a good kingdom always produces a worthy heir — whether or not Leontes remarries to provide one.
TLN 2690syntax grammar
“No more such wives; therefore, no wife: one worse, And better us'd, would make her sainted spirit Again possess her corpse”
Leontes says: 'There are no more women like Hermione, so I will have no wife at all; if I did take a worse wife (any other woman) and treated her better than I treated Hermione, it would make Hermione's ghost return to her body in jealous rage.' The compressed logic requires unpacking: he means that even the act of treating a lesser wife kindly would be a kind of insult to Hermione's memory that would bring her spirit back in fury.
TLN 2700cultural context
“Were I the ghost that walk'd, I'd bid you mark Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in't”
Paulina says that if she were Hermione's ghost, she would demand Leontes compare the new woman's eyes with Hermione's and explain what he found attractive in them. 'Dull part in't' means: what unimpressive, unworthy quality did he see in her eyes? — a scornful question that frames any new wife as automatically lesser.
TLN 2705rhetorical device
“Stars, stars, And all eyes else dead coals”
Leontes interrupts himself with an exclamation: Hermione's eyes were like stars, and every other pair of eyes is, by comparison, nothing but dead coals — burned-out embers. The image is a superlative blazon (a conventional praise of a beloved's features), but its force here is that it chokes off Leontes rather than developing: grief overwhelms him mid-sentence.
TLN 2713archaic vocab
“Unless another, As like Hermione as is her picture, Affront his eye”
'Affront' here does not mean to insult; it means to come face to face with, to confront directly. Paulina says she will only permit Leontes to remarry if someone appears who is as like Hermione as Hermione's own portrait — and who presents herself directly to his gaze. This is Paulina's ironic hint at the revelation she is preparing in 5.3.
TLN 2722syntax grammar
“walk'd your first queen's ghost, it should take joy To see her in your arms”
The syntax bends here: 'As, walk'd your first queen's ghost' is a compressed conditional — 'as if your first queen's ghost were walking.' Paulina says the new wife she would choose for Leontes would be someone so compatible with Hermione's spirit that even Hermione's ghost, were it walking and watching, would rejoice to see her in Leontes's arms.
TLN 2756archaic vocab
“Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal Of all professors else; make proselytes Of who she but bid follow”
The Gentleman describes Perdita using religious language: if she were to found a religious 'sect,' her personal magnetism would extinguish ('quench') the devotion of every follower of every other religion, and anyone she invited to follow her would become a convert ('proselyte'). The hyperbole praises her beauty and presence as so overwhelming it could replace all other loyalties.
TLN 2777archaic vocab
“Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince; For she did print your royal father off”
Leontes compliments Florizel by saying his mother was so faithful that Florizel is a perfect copy — a 'print' — of his father Polixenes. To 'print off' meant to reproduce exactly, as a printing press stamps ink onto paper. The irony is acute: Leontes spent most of the play convinced that his own wife was unfaithful to him, and now he praises the faithfulness of another man's wife.
TLN 2793archaic vocab
“here touch'd Sicilia, and from him Give you all greetings that a king, at friend”
'Touch'd Sicilia' means 'set foot on Sicilian shore' — to 'touch' a place was a nautical idiom for making landfall. 'At friend' is a compressed phrase meaning 'as a friend,' 'in a friendly state' — Polixenes sends greetings befitting a king who stands in friendship to Leontes. Both are small idioms that stop a modern reader cold.
TLN 2808classical allusion
“the fearful usage,— At least ungentle,—of the dreadful Neptune”
Leontes expresses surprise that Polixenes would expose 'this paragon' (Perdita) to the dangers of the sea voyage — calling the sea 'dreadful Neptune' after the Roman god of the ocean. Neptune was the god invoked whenever the sea was dangerous or unpredictable. The remark is dramatic irony: Perdita has crossed the sea twice now (as an infant abandoned on a Bohemian coast, and now arriving in Sicilia).
classical Neptune, god of the sea
TLN 2818archaic vocab
“A prosperous south-wind friendly, we have cross'd”
Florizel reports that they crossed the sea from Libya (North Africa) to Sicilia with a favorable south wind behind them. In the Mediterranean, a south wind ('auster') blowing north would carry a ship from the African coast toward Sicily — which is north of Libya. A 'prosperous' wind in nautical usage means a wind that helps the voyage succeed, not a wealthy one.
TLN 2827archaic vocab
“Purge all infection from our air whilst you Do climate here”
'Climate' is used as a verb — 'to dwell or reside in a place,' with the sense of inhabiting its atmosphere. Leontes says that while Florizel and Perdita remain in Sicilia the gods will purge any infection from the air. The word 'climate' here carries the sense that visitors of exceptional virtue affect the very weather and atmosphere of the place they inhabit.
TLN 2841archaic vocab
“Desires you to attach his son, who has,— His dignity and duty both cast off,— Fled from his father”
'Attach' is a legal term meaning to arrest or seize a person by authority — Polixenes is formally requesting Leontes to place Florizel under arrest. 'Dignity' in this context means his princely rank and the obligations that come with it. The Lord's parenthetical 'His dignity and duty both cast off' is an accusation: Florizel has thrown away his title and his filial obligation by eloping.
TLN 2862cultural context
“they kneel, they kiss the earth; Forswear themselves as often as they speak”
The Lord reports that the Shepherd and Clown are prostrating themselves before Polixenes, kissing the ground in a gesture of extreme submission, and contradicting their own statements so frequently (swearing oaths and then swearing their opposite) that they can barely communicate. Kissing the earth before a monarch was a recognized gesture of extreme submission in both Eastern and European court practice.
TLN 2864archaic vocab
“Bohemia stops his ears, and threatens them With divers deaths in death”
'Divers deaths in death' means many different forms of death combined into one execution — a threat of torture-execution. 'Divers' meant various or several (from Old French divers, Latin diversus). Polixenes is so enraged at the shepherd and his son that he threatens to kill them in multiple horrible ways simultaneously. The phrase is a rhetorical intensification: not one death but several deaths in a single dying.
TLN 2871archaic vocab
“The stars, I see, will kiss the valleys first:— The odds for high and low's alike”
Florizel means that the stars are more likely to descend and kiss the valleys than he is to marry Perdita now — in other words, his marriage is as impossible as that astronomical absurdity. 'The odds for high and low's alike' means that whether you are powerful or powerless, the chances are equally bad: fate treats everyone the same when it has decided against you.
TLN 2884classical allusion
“Though Fortune, visible an enemy, Should chase us with my father, power no jot Hath she to change our loves”
Florizel defies Fortune — the classical goddess of chance and reversals — even though she is visibly working against him (his own father is Fortune's instrument here). He declares she has no power to change the love between him and Perdita, even if she can destroy their circumstances. Fortune was imagined as a goddess who spun a wheel, raising some people up while flinging others down.
classical Fortune and her wheel
TLN 2887archaic vocab
“Remember since you ow'd no more to time Than I do now: with thought of such affections”
Florizel asks Leontes to remember when he was young — 'when you owed no more to time than I do now' means 'when you had given no more of your life to the passing of years than I have given of mine.' In other words: remember being my age, having my feelings. 'Owe to time' is a metaphor of debt — to age is to spend what one owes to passing years.
TLN 2901archaic vocab
“Your honour not o'erthrown by your desires, I am friend to them and you”
Leontes says: 'As long as your honour has not been overthrown — ruined — by your desires, I will support both you and your petition.' 'O'erthrown' means destroyed or undone; 'honour' here means reputation, standing, and the chastity that Perdita would need to have preserved for their marriage to be legitimate. Leontes is checking that their relationship is not dishonourable before he agrees to help.