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The Shakespeare Story-Book
The Winter’s Tale
At the Palace of Leontes
Leontes, King of Sicilia, and Polixenes, King of Bohemia, had always been the closest and dearest friends. Trained together in childhood, and as boys never apart, a deep-rooted affection had sprung up between them, and when the necessities of their royal birth and dignities made separation necessary, by calling each to rule over his own kingdom, they still kept up the warmest intercourse by gifts, letters, and loving embassies. Both in due course married. Hermione, wife of Leontes, was a noble and beautiful woman, and they had one child, a princely boy called Mamillius. Polixenes, in Bohemia, had also one boy, Florizel, within a month of the same age as Mamillius. When the children were five years old, Polixenes came to pay a visit to Leontes, and for many months he remained in Sicilia, renewing the happy days of boyhood with his old friend, and made cordially welcome by Hermione for the sake of her husband.
But at last the time came when Polixenes must turn his steps homeward; he had been long absent from Bohemia, and matters of state required his presence. Leontes pressed him warmly to remain, even if it were only for a few days longer, but Polixenes was firm. Then Leontes bade his wife try her powers of persuasion. Glad to please her husband, and liking their visitor for his own sake, Hermione merrily announced that she absolutely refused to let Polixenes go. It was useless for him to pretend excuses; Bohemia was getting on very well without him. Polixenes must learn, she said, that a lady’s “Verily” was just as potent as a lord’s; and she had said “Verily” he must stay, either as her prisoner or her guest – he could take his choice, whichever he preferred, but one of them he certainly should be.
Polixenes could not be so churlish as to resist such a sweet pleader, and accordingly he said he would stay for another week. But no sooner was this point settled than a strange fit of jealous rage took possession of Leontes. To his unhappy temper it seemed that Hermione was showing far too much affection to this friend of his, and he was enraged that Polixenes had consented to do for her what he had refused to do for himself. With growing wrath he watched their light-hearted cordiality, for Hermione was gay and joyous by nature, and her innocent playfulness was always ready to sparkle forth in merry words. Instead of trying to banish his sullen suspicions Leontes chose to keep brooding over them, and presently they overmastered his reason to such an extent that he confided them to one of his lords, called Camillo, and ordered him to find means of poisoning Polixenes.
In vain did the honest old courtier try to argue with Leontes, begging him to put aside such delusions, for they were most dangerous, and protesting there was no truth whatever in them. Leontes refused to listen to reason, and Camillo thought the best plan was to appear to yield. He therefore said he would undertake to get rid of Polixenes, provided that after he was gone, Leontes would promise to treat his Queen exactly the same as formerly. This, Leontes replied, it was his intention to do.
Camillo, however, instead of poisoning Polixenes, warned him of the danger he was in, and the King of Bohemia, already put on his guard by the frowning looks which met him in all directions, determined to leave at once. Knowing that it would be impossible to continue in the service of Leontes when the latter discovered what he had done, Camillo accepted an offer from Polixenes to join his followers, and the two left Sicilia that very night.
Leontes, hearing of their hasty departure, was more convinced than ever in his suspicions, and in spite of the indignant remonstrances of all his lords, his next step was to order the imprisonment of his noble Queen. Not long after she was shut up in prison, Hermione had a little baby girl, but in his fury against his wife Leontes refused to see his little daughter, or to treat her in any way as a child of his own.
All the Court ladies were devoted to their beloved Queen, and not one of them but believed in her innocence, and was indignant at the cruel way in which she was treated. But not contented with simply pitying her, one of them, Paulina, wife of the lord Antigonus, determined to make an effort to get justice done. She thought that perhaps at the sight of the innocent little child, the King’s stubborn heart might relent. Paulina was a woman of firm and dauntless character. She went to the prison, calmly carried off the infant in the face of some feeble objections from the gaoler, then, proceeding to the palace, she insisted on making her way into the presence of the King. Leontes ordered her to be removed, but the spirited lady drew herself up with such an air of defiance that for a moment no man dared lay hands on her.
“Of my own accord I will go, but first I’ll do my errand,” she said haughtily. Then, kneeling before the King, she placed the child at his feet. “The good Queen – for she is good – hath brought you forth a daughter,” she said. “Here it is; she commends it to your blessing.”
But her appeal was useless. With uncontrolled fury Leontes bade her be gone, and to take the child with her. Paulina cared nothing for his wild torrent of abuse, but unflinchingly expressed her opinion that he was acting in a most senseless manner, and said that his cruel usage of the Queen would make him scandalous to the world.
The outspoken lady was at last hustled away, but she left the child behind her, bidding the King look to it. Paulina’s husband, Antigonus, had taken up the infant in pity, and now Leontes turned on him with fury, accusing him of having set on his wife, and ordering him to take away the child and kill it.
Antigonus respectfully denied that he had set on his wife, and the other lords confirmed what he said, and further besought on their knees that Leontes would relent from his horrible purpose. Softening a little, Leontes grudgingly consented that the child might live, but he forthwith commanded Antigonus, on his allegiance, to carry it away to some remote and desert place quite out of his dominions, and there leave it, without more mercy, to its own protection and the favour of the climate. Chance might nurse it, or end it.
Antigonus, though sore at heart, did as he had sworn to the King he would do, and carried away the child. That night, as he was in the ship that conveyed them away from the domain of Sicilia, there came to him a dream. The spirit of Hermione stood before him, clad in pure white robes, her eyes flashing fire. When their fury was spent, she spoke thus:
“Good Antigonus, since Fate, against thy better disposition, had made thy person for the thrower-out of my poor babe, according to thine oath, there are places remote enough in Bohemia; there weep, and leave it crying. And because the babe is counted lost for ever, prithee call it Perdita. For this ungentle business, put on thee by my lord, thou never more shalt see thy wife Paulina.”
And so, wailing, the vision melted into the air.
In accordance with this dream, Antigonus carried the babe into the country of Bohemia. Unable to weep, but his heart bleeding for pity at the cruel deed which his oath enjoined on him, he placed it tenderly on the ground. As he turned away he was pursued by a savage bear, which made him take to instant flight. He had not, therefore, the happiness of knowing that the little child found a speedy preserver, for within a few minutes an aged shepherd, in search of some strayed sheep, came that way.
“Good luck, what have we here?” he cried in astonishment. “Mercy on us, a bairn! – a very pretty bairn! A boy or a girl I wonder. A pretty one – a very pretty one! I’ll take it up for pity; yet I’ll tarry till my son come. He hallooed but even now. Whoa, ho, hoa!”
The shepherd’s son, coming up to wonder over the strange discovery, soon noticed there was a heap of gold hidden away in the costly wrappings of the little foundling, and rejoicing in their luck, the rustics carried Perdita home to their shepherd’s cottage.
The Oracle Speaks
Leontes, in order to avoid the reproach of tyranny which he feared his people had only too much reason to fasten on him, decreed that the Queen should be openly tried in a court of justice, and herself appear in person to answer the charges he had seen fit to bring against her. He had despatched messengers to the Temple of Apollo, at Delphos, to consult the Oracle, and on their return the trial was appointed to take place. The messengers had brought back the answer of the Oracle in a sealed cover, and at the proper moment during the trial the seals would be broken and the verdict would be read in open court.
Hermione’s answer to the accusations brought against her was an indignant denial. She declared that she had never had for Polixenes more affection than was right and fitting for any honourable lady to have for her guest, such an affection as Leontes himself had commanded her to bestow on the friend who had loved him from infancy. She had never conspired with Camillo against Leontes; all she knew was that Camillo was an honest man, and she was entirely ignorant why he had left the court.
The only effect these words had on Leontes was to make him more violent than before. He told his wife that as she had already been past all shame, so she was now past all truth, and he threatened her with the punishment of death.
“Sir, spare your threats,” said Hermione with noble dignity. “The spectre you would frighten me with, I seek. To me life is no great thing to be desired. The crown and comfort of my life – your favour – is lost, for I feel it to be gone, though I know not how it went. My second joy – my first-born child – I am debarred from his presence, like one infectious. My third comfort – my dear little innocent baby – has been torn from me. I have myself been branded with disgrace on every hand. And, lastly, I have been hurried here to this place, in the open court, while I am still weak and ill, and unfitted to appear. Now, my liege, tell me what blessings I have here while I am alive, that I should fear to die? Therefore proceed. But yet, hear this: mistake me not, I do not beg for life; I prize it not a straw. But for mine honour, I will not have that condemned without any proof except what your jealous surmises awake. My lords, I refer me to the Oracle. Apollo be my judge!”
The councillors present declared that Hermione’s request was altogether just, and ordered the messengers from Delphos to be summoned. The latter then handed to the officer of the court the sealed letter from the Oracle, which he forthwith opened and read in the presence of all.
The Oracle spoke thus:
“Hermione is innocent; Polixenes blameless; Camillo a true subject; Leontes a jealous tyrant; the innocent babe is his daughter; and the King shall live without an heir if that which is lost be not found.”
“Now blessed be the great Apollo!” shouted all the lords.
“Praised!” cried Hermione.
“Hast thou read truth?” demanded Leontes.
“Ay, my lord, even so as it is here set down,” said the officer of the court.
“There is no truth at all in the Oracle,” exclaimed Leontes. “The trial shall proceed; this is mere falsehood.”
But at that instant came a terrible shock to the headstrong King. A servant entered with the mournful tidings that the young Prince, the noble boy Mamillius, was dead. The separation from his beloved mother, and dread as to her possible fate, had so wrought on the imagination of the sensitive child that he had died of grief.
On hearing of this new calamity, Hermione’s fortitude gave way, and she fell fainting to the ground.
Leontes’s stubborn spirit began to quail. He saw in this blow the wrath of heaven against his injustice. He admitted that he had too much believed his suspicions; he ordered that the Queen should be carried away, and every remedy tenderly applied to restore her to life.
In his new terror he hastily began to make good resolutions. He would be reconciled with Polixenes; he would woo the Queen again; he would recall Camillo, whom he forthwith proclaimed a man of mercy and truth, for by his piety and humanity he had saved the life of Polixenes when Leontes would have poisoned him.
But these good resolves came too late. Even as Leontes was speaking, Paulina rushed back into the court, weeping and wringing her hands. With burning words that went straight to the truth, she hurled the bitterest reproaches at the King, denouncing his tyranny and worse than childish jealousy, which had led to one evil after another. He had betrayed Polixenes, attempted to poison Camillo’s honour, cast forth to the crows his baby daughter, had indirectly brought about the death of the young Prince. But last, beyond all these things – worst of all – the Queen was dead!
“O, thou tyrant!” she cried, almost distracted with grief. “Do not repent these things, for they are heavier than all thy woes can stir; therefore betake thee to nothing but despair. A thousand knees, ten thousand years together, naked, fasting, upon a barren mountain, and still winter, in storm perpetual, could not move the gods to look on thee with pity.”
“Go on, go on,” murmured the conscience-stricken Leontes. “I have deserved all tongues to talk their bitterest.”
Paulina, seeing that Leontes was sincere in his repentance, now softened, and in her impulsive fashion asked pardon for her rash and impetuous words. But Leontes was honest enough to own that she had spoken nothing but truth, and he would not let her retract what she had said.
“Prithee, bring me to the dead bodies of my wife and son,” he said. “One grave shall be for both; on it shall appear the cause of their death, for my perpetual shame. Once a day I’ll visit the chapel where they lie, and tears shed there shall be my recreation.”
So the unhappy King strove in vain by a tardy penance to atone for the wrongs he had done.
A Queen of Curds and Cream
Sixteen years had rolled away since the day when the shepherd had found the little deserted baby, and taken it to his own cottage. The old man had prospered since those days, and from having almost nothing had risen to large estates. The maiden who passed as his daughter had grown into such rare loveliness that the report of her beauty spread through all the country of Bohemia, and even reached the palace of the King.
Polixenes, it will be remembered, had one son, Florizel, who was the same age as the young Prince Mamillius of Sicilia, dead sixteen years before. Prince Florizel at this time was about twenty-one years old.
It happened one day when he was out hawking that his falcon flew across the land belonging to the shepherd, and seeing Perdita, Florizel was so struck by her charm and beauty that he at once fell in love with her. From that day he was a constant visitor at the shepherd’s house, so much so that the King, his father, noticed his frequent absence from home, and taking counsel with Camillo, they decided to go themselves to the shepherd’s house in disguise to see what could be the attraction that was always taking the Prince to this homely dwelling.
The day they chose for their expedition was the great feast of the sheep-shearing, when all the shepherds and shepherdesses collected together to make merry. Among the company, in the guise of a shepherd, came Florizel, who was only known to the adopted father of Perdita as Doricles, and whom he imagined to be nothing but a humble swain.
The old shepherd had provided a goodly entertainment for his guests, and seeing that Perdita was inclined to be too shy and retiring, he insisted on her taking full direction of everything, reminding her that she was the hostess of the meeting, and that she must bid all these unknown friends welcome.
“Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself that which you are, mistress of the feast,” he said. “Come on, and bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing; so your good flock shall prosper.”
Thus urged, Perdita made a brave effort to conquer her girlish shyness, and with the prettiest grace possible she went up to the two strangers whom her father had pointed out, and bade them welcome. These strangers were Polixenes and Camillo. Calling to her a shepherdess who was carrying a basket of flowers, Perdita selected some and gave a little posy to each of the strangers.
“Reverend sirs, for you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep seeming and savour all the winter long. Grace and remembrance be to you both, and welcome to our shearing.”
Polixenes and Camillo were enchanted with the loveliness and modest grace of this lowly-born damsel, who, in spite of her bashfulness, showed that she could answer with wit and intelligence when they began to converse with her. For the King and Camillo, Perdita had chosen the flowers of middle summer – hot lavender, mint, savory, marjoram, the marigold that goes to bed with the sun and with him rises weeping. These are the flowers of middle summer, and these she thought suitable to give to men of middle age. But when a bevy of fair young shepherdesses approached, in all the first sweet bloom of early girlhood, she longed to have some flowers of the spring that would become their time of day.
“O Proserpina, for the flowers now, that frighted thou let’st fall from Dis’s waggon!” she cried. “Daffodils, that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty; violets dim, but sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes, or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses, that die unmarried ere they can behold bright Phœbus in his strength; bold oxlips, and the crown imperial; lilies of all kinds, the flower-de-luce being one. O, these I lack, to make you garlands of!”
“This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever ran on green-sward!” cried Polixenes when, a few minutes later, Perdita led off with Florizel the rustic dance of shepherds and shepherdesses. “Nothing she does or seems but smacks of something greater than herself, too noble for this place.”
“Good sooth,” agreed Camillo, “she is the Queen of curds and cream.”
“Pray, good shepherd, what fair swain is this who dances with your daughter?” asked Polixenes of their aged host.
The shepherd replied that he was called Doricles, and boasted that he was well off; he had it only on the young man’s own report, but he believed it, for he looked like truth.
“He says he loves my daughter; I think so too. And, to be plain, I think there is not half a kiss to choose which loves the other best.”
“She dances featly,” said the King.
“So she does everything, though I report it who should be silent. If young Doricles do light upon her, she shall bring him that which he dreams not of.”
But in spite of the King’s admiration for Perdita, he had no mind that the heir to the throne of Bohemia should wed the daughter of a lowly shepherd. As the feast went on and became merrier and more uproarious, Florizel could no longer restrain his affection; and calling the two strangers as witness, he begged that the contract of marriage between himself and Perdita should be there and then concluded.
The aged shepherd was quite willing to join their hands, but Polixenes bade the young man pause. Had he no father, he asked, and did he know of this?
“He neither does nor shall,” replied Florizel.
“Methinks a father is, at the nuptial of his son, a guest that best becomes the table,” said Polixenes. Was the father incapable, stupid with age or illness, crazy, childish?
“No,” answered Florizel to all this; but he nevertheless persisted in refusing to let him know what was taking place.
Then Polixenes threw off his disguise and revealed himself as the King. All was now consternation. He terrified the shepherd by saying he would probably be hanged for letting his daughter entrap the young Prince; he commanded Florizel to part instantly from Perdita, and follow him to the Court; and he threatened the maiden with cruel death if ever she dared henceforth to encourage his son by the slightest word or caress.
The old shepherd was in despair at the King’s displeasure, for it meant ruin to them all, and perhaps a shameful death for himself. Perdita prepared with a breaking heart to give up her lover. She had often warned him what would come of this; she was no fitting mate for a Prince. Her dream of happiness was over.
“Being now awake, I’ll queen it no inch further, but milk my ewes and weep,” she murmured sorrowfully.
But Florizel had no intention of giving up the bride to whom he had plighted his troth. Not for Bohemia, nor for all the pomp that the sun saw, or the earth held, or the sea hid, would he break his oath to his beloved.
Camillo, who had remained behind when Polixenes wrathfully departed, tried to reason with the Prince. But Florizel was resolute. For some time, fearing a possible event such as had now happened, he had had a ship prepared for flight, which was riding at anchor close by. He bade Camillo return to Court and inform Polixenes that he had put to sea with Perdita; what course he meant to hold it would be better for Camillo not to know or the Prince to tell.
A plan now occurred to the good Camillo by which he hoped to benefit every one concerned. He still kept a warm feeling of affection for his late master, Leontes, and often during his sixteen years of exile he had longed to return to Sicilia. He now proposed to Florizel that he should carry Perdita to the Court of Leontes, where they would be certain to receive the warmest welcome from the repentant King, who would be anxious to make every possible amends to the son for the way in which he had treated the father. Camillo, meanwhile, would stay with Polixenes, and do everything in his power to soften his resentment and reconcile him to his son’s marriage.
