Act 5, Scene I - Page 2

PAULINA
And left them
More rich for what they yielded.

LEONTES
Thou speak'st truth.
No more such wives; therefore, no wife: one worse,
And better used, would make her sainted spirit
Again possess her corpse, and on this stage,
Where we're offenders now, appear soul-vex'd,
And begin, 'Why to me?'

PAULINA
Had she such power,
She had just cause.

LEONTES
She had; and would incense me
To murder her I married.

PAULINA
I should so.
Were I the ghost that walk'd, I'ld bid you mark
Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in't
You chose her; then I'ld shriek, that even your ears
Should rift to hear me; and the words that follow'd
Should be 'Remember mine.'

LEONTES
Stars, stars,
And all eyes else dead coals! Fear thou no wife;
I'll have no wife, Paulina.

PAULINA
Will you swear
Never to marry but by my free leave?

LEONTES
Never, Paulina; so be blest my spirit!

PAULINA
Then, good my lords, bear witness to his oath.

CLEOMENES
You tempt him over-much.

PAULINA
Unless another,
As like Hermione as is her picture,
Affront his eye.

CLEOMENES
Good madam,--

PAULINA
I have done.
Yet, if my lord will marry,--if you will, sir,
No remedy, but you will,--give me the office
To choose you a queen: she shall not be so young
As was your former; but she shall be such
As, walk'd your first queen's ghost,
it should take joy
To see her in your arms.

LEONTES
My true Paulina,
We shall not marry till thou bid'st us.

PAULINA
That
Shall be when your first queen's again in breath;
Never till then.

Enter a Gentleman

Gentleman
One that gives out himself Prince Florizel,
Son of Polixenes, with his princess, she
The fairest I have yet beheld, desires access
To your high presence.

LEONTES
What with him? he comes not
Like to his father's greatness: his approach,
So out of circumstance and sudden, tells us
'Tis not a visitation framed, but forced
By need and accident. What train?

Gentleman
But few,
And those but mean.

LEONTES
His princess, say you, with him?

Gentleman
Ay, the most peerless piece of earth, I think,
That e'er the sun shone bright on.

PAULINA
O Hermione,
As every present time doth boast itself
Above a better gone, so must thy grave
Give way to what's seen now! Sir, you yourself
Have said and writ so, but your writing now
Is colder than that theme, 'She had not been,
Nor was not to be equall'd;'--thus your verse
Flow'd with her beauty once: 'tis shrewdly ebb'd,
To