Is for my better grace.—Adieu, my lord:
I never wish’d to see you sorry; now
I trust I shall.—My women, come; you have leave.
LEONTES
Go, do our bidding; hence!
[Exeunt QUEEN and Ladies, with Guards.]
FIRST LORD
Beseech your highness, call the queen again.
ANTIGONUS
Be certain what you do, sir, lest your justice
Prove violence, in the which three great ones suffer,
Yourself, your queen, your son.
FIRST LORD
For her, my lord,—
I dare my life lay down,—and will do’t, sir,
Please you to accept it,—that the queen is spotless
I’ the eyes of heaven and to you; I mean
In this which you accuse her.
ANTIGONUS
If it prove
She’s otherwise, I’ll keep my stables where
I lodge my wife; I’ll go in couples with her;
Than when I feel and see her no further trust her;
For every inch of woman in the world,
Ay, every dram of woman’s flesh, is false,
If she be.
LEONTES
Hold your peaces.
FIRST LORD
Good my lord,—
ANTIGONUS
It is for you we speak, not for ourselves:
You are abus’d, and by some putter-on
That will be damn’d for’t: would I knew the villain,
I would land-damn him. Be she honour-flaw’d,—
I have three daughters; the eldest is eleven;
The second and the third, nine and some five;
If this prove true, they’ll pay for’t. By mine honour,
I’ll geld ‘em all: fourteen they shall not see,
To bring false generations: they are co-heirs;
And I had rather glib myself than they
Should not produce fair issue.
LEONTES
Cease; no more.
You smell this business with a sense as cold
As is a dead man’s nose: but I do see’t and feel’t
As you feel doing thus; and see withal
The instruments that feel.
ANTIGONUS
If it be so,
We need no grave to bury honesty;
There’s not a grain of it the face to sweeten
Of the whole dungy earth.
LEONTES
What! Lack I credit?
FIRST LORD
I had rather you did lack than I, my lord,
Upon this ground: and more it would content me
To have her honour true than your suspicion;
Be blam’d for’t how you might.
LEONTES
Why, what need we
Commune with you of this, but rather follow
Our forceful instigation? Our prerogative
Calls not your counsels; but our natural goodness
Imparts this; which, if you,—or stupified
Or seeming so in skill,—cannot or will not
Relish a truth, like us, inform yourselves
We need no more of your advice: the matter,
The loss, the gain, the ord’ring on’t, is all
Properly ours.
ANTIGONUS
And I wish, my liege,
You had only in your silent judgment tried it,
Without more overture.
LEONTES
How could that be?
Either thou art most ignorant by age,
Or thou wert born a fool. Camillo’s flight,
Added to their familiarity,—
Which was as gross as ever touch’d conjecture,
That lack’d sight only, nought for approbation,
But only seeing, all other circumstances
Made up to th’ deed,—doth push on this proceeding.
Yet, for a greater confirmation,—
For, in an act of this importance, ‘twere
Most piteous to be wild,—I have despatch’d in post
To sacred Delphos, to Apollo’s temple,
Cleomenes and Dion, whom you know
Of stuff’d sufficiency: now, from the oracle
They will bring all, whose spiritual counsel had,
Shall stop or spur me. Have I done well?
FIRST LORD
Well done, my lord,—
LEONTES
Though I am satisfied, and need no more
Than what I know, yet shall the oracle
Give rest to the minds of others such as he
Whose ignorant credulity will not
Come up to th’ truth: so have we thought it good
From our free person she should be confin’d;
Lest that the treachery of the two fled hence
Be left her to perform. Come, follow us;
We are to speak in public; for this business
Will raise us all.
ANTIGONUS
[Aside.] To laughter, as I take it,
If the good truth were known.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE II. The same. The outer Room of a Prison.
[Enter PAULINA and Attendants.]
PAULINA
The keeper of the prison,—call to him;
Let him have knowledge who I am.
[Exit an Attendant.]
Good lady!
No court in Europe is too good for thee;
What dost thou then in prison?
[Re-enter Attendant, with the Keeper.]
Now, good sir,
You know me, do you not?
KEEPER
For a worthy lady,
And one who much I honour.
PAULINA