The Winter's Tale eBook

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

Paulina
                          As she liv’d peerless,
So her dead likeness, I do well believe,
Excels whatever yet you look’d upon
Or hand of man hath done; therefore I keep it
Lonely, apart.  But here it is:  prepare
To see the life as lively mock’d as ever
Still sleep mock’d death:  behold; and say ’tis well.

[Paulina undraws a curtain, and discovers Hermione, standing as a statue.]

I like your silence,—­it the more shows off
Your wonder:  but yet speak;—­first, you, my liege. 
Comes it not something near?

Leontes
                             Her natural posture!—­
Chide me, dear stone, that I may say indeed
Thou art Hermione; or rather, thou art she
In thy not chiding; for she was as tender
As infancy and grace.—­But yet, Paulina,
Hermione was not so much wrinkled; nothing
So aged, as this seems.

Polixenes
                        O, not by much!

Paulina
So much the more our carver’s excellence;
Which lets go by some sixteen years, and makes her
As she liv’d now.

Leontes
                  As now she might have done,
So much to my good comfort, as it is
Now piercing to my soul.  O, thus she stood,
Even with such life of majesty,—­warm life,
As now it coldly stands,—­when first I woo’d her! 
I am asham’d:  does not the stone rebuke me
For being more stone than it?—­O royal piece,
There’s magic in thy majesty; which has
My evils conjur’d to remembrance; and
From thy admiring daughter took the spirits,
Standing like stone with thee!

Perdita
                               And give me leave;
And do not say ’tis superstition, that
I kneel, and then implore her blessing.—­Lady,
Dear queen, that ended when I but began,
Give me that hand of yours to kiss.

Paulina
                                    O, patience! 
The statue is but newly fix’d, the colour’s
Not dry.

Camillo
My lord, your sorrow was too sore laid on,
Which sixteen winters cannot blow away,
So many summers dry; scarce any joy
Did ever so long live; no sorrow
But kill’d itself much sooner.

Polixenes
                               Dear my brother,
Let him that was the cause of this have power
To take off so much grief from you as he
Will piece up in himself.

Paulina
                          Indeed, my lord,
If I had thought the sight of my poor image
Would thus have wrought you,—­for the stone is mine,—­
I’d not have show’d it.

Leontes
                        Do not draw the curtain.

Paulina
No longer shall you gaze on’t; lest your fancy
May think anon it moves.

Leontes
                         Let be, let be.—­
Would I were dead, but that, methinks, already—­
What was he that did make it?  See, my lord,
Would you not deem it breath’d, and that those veins
Did verily bear blood?

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