The Winter's Tale eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 141 pages of information about The Winter's Tale.

First lord
                    This your request
Is altogether just:  therefore, bring forth,
And in Apollo’s name, his oracle: 

[Exeunt certain Officers.]

Hermione
The Emperor of Russia was my father;
O that he were alive, and here beholding
His daughter’s trial! that he did but see
The flatness of my misery; yet with eyes
Of pity, not revenge!

[Re-enter officers, with Cleomenes and Dion.]

Officer
You here shall swear upon this sword of justice,
That you, Cleomenes and Dion, have
Been both at Delphos, and from thence have brought
This seal’d-up oracle, by the hand deliver’d
Of great Apollo’s priest; and that since then,
You have not dar’d to break the holy seal,
Nor read the secrets in’t.

Cleomenes, Dion
                           All this we swear.

Leontes
Break up the seals and read.

Officer. [Reads.] ’Hermione is chaste; Polixenes blameless; Camillo a true subject; Leontes a jealous tyrant; his innocent babe truly begotten; and the king shall live without an heir, if that which is lost be not found.’

Lords
Now blessed be the great Apollo!

Hermione
                                 Praised!

Leontes
Hast thou read truth?

Officer
                      Ay, my lord; even so
As it is here set down.

Leontes
There is no truth at all i’ the oracle: 
The sessions shall proceed:  this is mere falsehood!

[Enter a Servant hastily.]

Servant
My lord the king, the king!

Leontes
                            What is the business?

Servant
O sir, I shall be hated to report it: 
The prince your son, with mere conceit and fear
Of the queen’s speed, is gone.

Leontes
                               How! gone?

Servant
                                          Is dead.

Leontes
Apollo’s angry; and the heavens themselves
Do strike at my injustice.

[Hermione faints.]

How now there!

Paulina
This news is mortal to the queen:—­Look down
And see what death is doing.

Leontes
                             Take her hence: 
Her heart is but o’ercharg’d; she will recover.—­
I have too much believ’d mine own suspicion:—­
Beseech you tenderly apply to her
Some remedies for life.—­

[Exeunt Paulina and Ladies with Hermione.]

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Winter's Tale from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.