The Winter’s Tale

It has been nine months since I left my throne. I could happily spend another nine months away, but I must leave now, forever in your debt. So, like a zero, which means “nothing” but adds value when placed beside a number, my one “thank you” will multiply the thousand more I’ve already said.

Don’t thank me yet. Wait until you leave.

Sir, I leave tomorrow. I’m fearful of what might happen by chance, or what plot may develop, because of my absence, and I worry my fears will be confirmed. Besides, I’ve worn you out with my company.

You couldn’t wear me out if you tried.

I can’t stay any longer.

Just one more week.

Really, tomorrow.

We’ll split the difference, and I won’t hear any objections.

Please, don’t plead with me. There is no one who can persuade me like you can, and you could persuade me to stay now if you really needed me to, even if it were necessary that I deny your request. My business does drag me home, so your attempts to keep me here, though done out of love, are painful to me. My staying only costs you and causes you trouble, so for both our sakes, I must go.

My queen, are you mute? Speak.

I intended to keep quiet until you’d made him promise to stay. You argue too mildly. Tell him you are sure that things in Bohemia are fine—in fact, just the other day it was proclaimed so. Tell him this, and his best argument for leaving is gone.

Well said, Hermione.

If he says that he wants to see his son, that’s a strong argument. But let him say it first, then let him go. If he swears to that, he won’t stay. We’ll chase him off by whacking him with wooden staffs. But I’m guessing he will remain in your presence another week. (to Polixenes) When you receive my lord in Bohemia, I’ll give him permission to stay a month past his fixed departure day . (to Leontes)* Yet, Leontes, I don’t love you a jot less than any other woman loves her lord. Polixenes, you’ll stay?

No, madam.

No, but you will?

I can’t, honestly.

Honestly! You counter me with weak vows, but even if you would try to take the stars out of the sky with your oaths, I’ll still say you are not going. Truly, you won’t go—my “truly” is as powerful as yours. Will you still go? You’ll force me to keep you like a prisoner, not like a guest, and you’ll have to pay a fine at the end, rather than give us thanks. What do you think? My prisoner, or my guest? “Truly,” as you say, you’ll be one of the two.

Your guest then, madam. Being your prisoner would suggest I’ve offended you, which would be more difficult and painful for me than your punishment.

I won’t be your jailer, then, but your kind hostess. Come, I’ll ask you about the tricks you and my husband played when you were boys. You were handsome princes then?

We were, fair queen, two young boys who thought that tomorrow would be just like today, and that we would be boys forever.

Was my husband the bigger prankster of you two?

We were like two lambs that played in the sun and bleated at one another. We were wholly innocent. We didn’t know what it was to do harm, or even that anyone did. Had we continued this way, and had our weak spirits never given way to stronger passions, we could have said upon reaching Heaven that we were “not guilty,” and we would have been cleared even of original sin.

I take it that you have not been so innocent since?

Most sacred lady! We’ve had our temptations since then. In those youthful days my wife was just a girl, and my playfellow had not yet seen you.

Heaven help me! Don’t pursue that train of thought, or you’ll go on to say that your wife and I are devils. Still, keep going. We’ll take responsibility for whatever sins we’ve made you commit, as long as those sins were committed first with us, only with us, and you’ve never sinned with any other.

Is he won over yet?

He’ll stay, my lord.

When I requested it he would not. Hermione, my dearest, you’ve never spoken so well.

Never?

Only once before.

What! I’ve only spoken well twice? When was the last time? Please, tell me. Fill me up with praise and make me as fat as a pet. If one good deed goes unrecognized, the thousand more that might have been inspired by it will never occur. Praise is our motivation and reward. One soft kiss will take you two hundred yards; a sharp kick only gets you an acre. But back to the point: my last good deed was to plead for Polixenes to stay. What was my first good deed? Unless I’m misunderstanding what you said, there was an earlier one. Oh, if only my name were Grace! So once before I’ve spoken well. When? Tell me, please, I long to know.

Why, it was when three bitter months had passed before I could get you to pledge your love to me with your white hands. And then you said, “I am yours forever.”

It is grace, indeed. According to you, I have spoken well twice: once to earn a royal husband and again to keep a friend a while longer.

(aside) That is too much! To take friendship too far is to make it a love affair. My heart is trembling and dancing, but not for joy. This hospitality may have an innocent face, and my wife’s generosity may in fact come from warmth, affection, and the fact that it makes her more attractive. Maybe. But to hold hands, as they are doing right now, and flirtatiously smile at each other as though into a mirror, all the while sighing as loud as a horn blast, that is not entertainment that pleases my heart, or my head. Mamillius, are you my son?

Yes, my good lord.

In faith! That’s my fine fellow. What, have you smudged your nose? They say it looks just like mine. Come on, captain, you must be neat, that is, clean. Yet the steer, the heifer, and the calf are all called neat. Still playing her fingers up and down his palm! What are you up to, you silly calf? Are you my calf?

Yes, if you’d like me to be, my lord.

You need a shaggy head and horns to be just like me. Still, they say we are as alike as a pair of eggs. Women say that, and they will say anything. But even if they were as false as Africans or black fabric, or as fickle as the wind and the water, or fixed as a cheating gambler wants the dice to be, it would still be true that this boy looks like me. Come, sir page, look at me with your sky blue eye. Sweet villain! Dearest! My flesh! Can your mother have? Could it be? Jealousy’s intensity strikes me through to my heart and makes things that are impossible seem possible. That jealousy speaks in dreams. How can this be? It collaborates with what’s unreal and corresponds to nothing in real life. Then it’s very believable that my jealousy may be real, and she’s gone beyond what’s permitted, and I would find out and grow insane, and my brow would harden into horns.

What is Leontes saying?

He seems upset.

How are you, my lord?

What news? How are you, my best brother?

You look distracted. Are you upset, my lord?

No, truly. Sometimes nature shows its weakness, its tenderness, and makes itself a source of amusement for harder hearts. Looking at my boy’s face, I thought I had gone back twenty-three years and saw myself without trousers, in my green velvet coat, with my dagger carefully sheathed so I would not hurt myself on it and so it wouldn’t prove too dangerous, as toys often do. I thought how alike I was at that age to this child, this young boy, this gentleman. My honest friend, will you accept something relatively worthless in exchange for something valuable?

No, my lord, I’ll fight.

You will! May happiness be his fortune! My brother, are you as fond of your young prince as I seem to be of mine?

When I’m home, sir, he’s my occupation, my laughter, all I worry about. First he’s my sworn friend, then he’s an enemy, a freeloader, a soldier, and a statesman, all together. He makes a long summer’s day feel as short as a day in the middle of winter. And his childish ways keep me from gloomy thoughts.

This young squire here does the same for me. He and I will walk along, my lord, and leave you to your slower steps. Hermione, show how much you love us in how you entertain our brother. Give him whatever he wants, no matter how expensive. After you and my young son, he’s dearest to me.

If you are looking for us, we’ll be in the garden. Should we wait for you there?

Do whatever pleases you. I’ll find you, if you are anywhere under the sky. (aside) I’m fishing now, though no one sees how I set the line. Go on! Look how she holds up her nose and mouth to him, as if to be kissed. She acts with the boldness of a wife toward her husband!

Gone already! A little here, knee deep there, then grow horns over my head and behind my ears! Go, boy, play. Your mother plays around, and I play a role, though my part is one of a disgrace, with the result that I’ll be hissed on my way to the grave, with contempt as my funeral bells. Go play, boy, play. Unless I’m mistaken, there have been cuckolds before. Even now, as I speak, there is many a man who may hold his wife by the arm without suspecting that she has been unfaithful in his absence, and his neighbor, call him Sir Smile, has been with the woman that belongs to him. There’s comfort in the fact that other men have had wives and those wives have been unfaithful, as mine has, against their will. If everyone whose wife strayed were to despair, a tenth of mankind would hang themselves. There’s no remedy for it, since it is a world full of lust, from east to west and north and south. There’s no barricade you can build around the womb, and one’s enemy will go in and out as he pleases. Thousands of us have the disease and don’t know it. What now, boy?

I look like you, they say.

That’s some comfort. Camillo, are you there?

Yes, my good lord.

Go play, Mamillius, that’s a good boy.

Camillo, my friend Polixenes will stay longer.

You had to go to great lengths to make him stay. No matter what you said, he insisted he would leave.

Did you see it?

He wouldn’t heed your pleas, but said his business was too important.

You saw it? (aside) People know my secret already, and they are whispering and murmuring, “Sicilia is a such-and-such.” It is already so well known while I am just figuring it out. Camillo, how did it happen that he stayed?

Because the good queen asked him.

True, because of the queen. “Good” should be an appropriate description, but under the circumstances it isn’t. Did anyone else see that it happened this way? Since you notice more than the common idiots, perhaps it is only seen by those intelligent enough, the ones with extraordinary intellects? Perhaps the commoners are blind to what just happened? Tell me.

What happened, my lord? I think almost everyone understands that Polixenes will stay here longer.

What?

He will stay here longer.

But why?

To satisfy your highness and the request of our most gracious mistress.

Satisfy! The request of your mistress! Satisfy her! That’s enough. I have trusted you, Camillo, with everything dearest to my heart, as well as confessed to you in my chamber. I parted from you there feeling repentant and reformed, as though departing from a visit to a priest. But now I feel that I have been deceived by what appears to be your integrity.

Forbid the thought, my lord!

Now that I think of it, you are either dishonest or, if you are honest, you are a coward, hiding your honesty for fear of having to follow the correct course of action. Perhaps you neglect your duties as a most trusted servant, or perhaps you are a fool who sees the high stakes of a game but thinks it’s all a joke.

My gracious lord, I may be negligent, foolish, and cowardly. No man is free from all those vices, and they will occasionally turn up. In your affairs, my lord, if I was ever deliberately negligent, it was because of my foolishness. If I ever pretended to be a fool, it was because of my neglectfulness and my inability to judge the consequences. If ever I was afraid to do something when I was uncertain of the outcome—and the deed was so necessary it had to be done—it was a fear that even wise men feel. My lord, these are acceptable weaknesses that honesty is always plagued by. But I beg your grace to be blunt: tell me exactly what I did wrong. Then if I deny that I did it, it truly is not my fault.

Haven’t you seen? You have, that’s not in doubt, unless you are willfully blind. Or perhaps you have heard, since rumors can’t be mute in the face of something so obvious. Or maybe you have thought, since every man who thinks must have thought it. Isn’t my wife deceiving me? You must confess, unless you want to shamelessly deny that you have either eyes or ears or thought, that my wife is a whore, and deserves a name as awful as any base woman deserves who sleeps with a man before she is married. Say it and affirm it.

I wouldn’t stand by and listen to my mistress be slandered like that without taking revenge immediately. Curse my heart, I’ve never heard you speak in a way that suited you less. To say it again would be as sinful as the crime you are describing, even if it was true.

Is it nothing that they whisper together? Lean their cheeks together? Or touch noses? Or kisses? Or interrupt their laughter with sighs, a certain sign that they’re in love? Or playing footsie? Or lurking in corners? Or wishing that time would run faster, that hours were minutes and noon midnight, and that all eyes were blind with cataracts but theirs, so that they can be wicked without being seen? Is this nothing? Why, then the world and everything in it is nothing. The sky is nothing, Polixenes is nothing, my wife is nothing, and they have nothing, if this is nothing.

My lord, let go of this terrible opinion, and quickly, because it is dangerous.

Say it is, but it is true.

No, no, my lord.

It is true, and you lie. I say you lie, Camillo, and I hate you. I call you a horrible oaf, a mindless slave, or else nervous and wishy-washy, who’s able to see good and evil in the same thing and is inclined to both. If my wife were as diseased physically as she is morally, she wouldn’t survive an hour.

Who corrupts her?

The one who wears her like a medal around his neck: Polixenes. If I had loyal servants, who saw my honor as their business and personal gain, they would act to prevent any more of this affair. And you, his cupbearer —I brought you up from a low rank, have given you some authority, and brought you up to respectability. You should be able to see plainly how upset I am. You could poison his drink to kill him, which would make me feel better.

My lord, I could do it with a tiny amount of a slow-working potion that isn’t as violent as poison. But I can’t believe that my noble mistress would be so flawed, having shown herself always so honorable. I have loved you—

Make that your problem, and go to hell! Do you think I am so dull-witted, so unsettled, that I would give myself all this trouble and dirty up the pure, clean whiteness of my bed? To preserve that purity gives one peace of mind, but if it’s tainted it hurts like thorns, nettles, and wasp stings. Do you think I would raise doubt about the legitimacy of my son, who I believe is mine and who I love, without compelling reasons? Would I do this? Could I turn aside from this?

I must believe you sir, and I do. I’ll take care of Polixenes for you, as long as once he’s gone you will again treat your wife as your own, at least for your son’s sake. That way you will silence all the harmful rumors that might spread to other kingdoms and courts that are allied with you.

You advise me to do what I already determined I would do. I won’t tarnish her reputation in any way.

My lord, then go, and with a face as open and friendly as if you were at a party, keep company with Polixenes and your queen. I am his cupbearer, and I will give him the potion, or no longer think of me as your servant.

Do this and you will have one half of my heart. Don’t do it and your own will be split.

I’ll do it, my lord.

I’ll act friendly, as you’ve advised me.

Oh, unfortunate lady! What have I gotten into? I have to poison good Polixenes, only because I would obey a master who is mad and wants all his servants to be mad, too. If I do this, I’ll be promoted. But even if I could find one example of someone who had struck down a chosen king and prospered, I wouldn’t do it. Since there isn’t such an example recorded anywhere in history, even a villain wouldn’t do it. I have to leave the court, since whether I do it or not I’m certain to be hanged. Oh, good! Here comes Polixenes.

This is odd. I think I’m losing favor here. He wouldn’t speak? Good day Camillo.

Hello, most royal sir!

What is the news of the court?

Nothing unusual, my lord.

The king looked as though he had lost a part of his kingdom as dear to him as himself. Just now I met him with the usual cordial greetings, but turning his eyes away and sneering in contempt, he walked away from me, leaving me to wonder what happened to make him act this way.

I don’t dare know, my lord.

What? You don’t dare, or you don’t know? Do you know, but don’t dare? It must be something of the sort, because if you know something for certain, you can’t deny it. Good Camillo, your face is like a mirror to me, in which your changed expression shows my own. I must be responsible in some way for Leontes’ altered behavior, since I’m changed, too.

There is an illness that makes some of us mad, but I can’t say exactly what it is. But even though you are still well, you have caught it, too.

What do you mean, I’ve caught it, too? Don’t tell me I have the deadly stare of the basilisk. I’ve looked at thousands of people who have been better off by having been seen by me, but I’ve never killed anyone that way. Camillo, I know you are a gentleman because you are educated, and that makes one a gentleman as much as having parents who are nobles. I beg you, if you know something I should know, please don’t pretend not to know and keep it from me.

I can’t tell you.

I’ve caught an illness, even though I am well! You have to tell me. Do you hear me, Camillo? I appeal to you by all the traits in a man that respond to honor, including this request itself. Tell me why you think I’m in danger, how close the danger is, and how I might prevent it. Or if I can’t, how I might best endure it.

Sir, I will tell you, since I am obligated by my honor and since you’re an honorable man. Therefore listen to my advice, which must be followed immediately, or both you and I will be doomed and will meet a bad end.

Go ahead, good Camillo.

I have been appointed by him to murder you.

By whom, Camillo?

By the king.

Why?

He thinks, no, he swears with as much confidence as if he had seen it or even helped you do it, that you have touched his queen in a forbidden way.

If I did, may my blood turn to poison and my name be as despised as Judas’! Let my reputation rot and stink so badly that even the least sensitive nose will be overwhelmed, and when I approach they’ll turn their backs! Let me be hated more than the worst disease that has ever been heard of!

No matter how vehemently you swear his suspicions aren’t true, you are as likely to keep the sea from obeying the moon as you are to change his mind. Neither will oaths or wise words disturb the foundation of his foolish notion, which is built on his faith and will last for the rest of his life.

How did this come about?

I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s safer to avoid his jealousy than to wonder why he feels that way. So if you trust my honesty, which you shall take as my pledge, then leave tonight! I’ll quietly let your followers know and get them out of the back gates of the city two or three at a time. As for me, I’ve lost everything I have by revealing this to you, but I’ll put what I have to your service. Don’t be uncertain. By the honor of my parents, I’m telling the truth. If you try to prove it, I’ll deny I ever said it. You won’t be any safer than a man whom the king himself has condemned to be executed.

I do believe you. I saw what he felt in his face. Give me your hand. Guide me and our fortunes will remain together. My ships are ready, and my people expected me to depart two days ago. He’s jealous over a very precious woman, and so his jealousy will be as great as she is rare, and as violent as he is powerful. And since he thinks that a man who always professed friendship has deceived him, his revenge will be even more bitter. I’m overwhelmed with fear. May my swift exit help me, and may it comfort the good queen, who has no responsibility for his unjustified suspicions. Come, Camillo. I will respect you like a father if you take me away safely. Let us leave.

I have the authority to pass through all the back gates of the city. Let’s go soon. Come, sir, let’s leave.