The Winter's Tale: Act 1

ARCHIDAMUS: Wherein our entertainment shall shame us; we will be justified in our loves. For indeed—
CAMILLO: Beseech you—
ARCHIDAMUS: Verily, I speak it in the freedom of my knowledge.

ARCHIDAMUS: Wherein our entertainment shall shame us; we will be justified in our loves. For indeed—
CAMILLO: Beseech you—
ARCHIDAMUS: Verily, I speak it in the freedom of my knowledge.

Time as long again
Would be filled up, my brother, with our thanks,
And yet we should for perpetuity
Go hence in debt.

And therefore, like a cipher,
Yet standing in rich place, I multiply
With one “We thank you” many thousands more
That go before it.

My affairs
Do even drag me homeward, which to hinder
Were in your love a whip to me, my stay
To you a charge and trouble.

But let him swear so and he shall not stay;
We’ll thwack him hence with distaffs.

We were as twinned lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun
And bleat the one at th’ other.

Had we pursued that life,
And our weak spirits ne’er been higher reared
With stronger blood, we should have answered heaven
Boldly “Not guilty,” the imposition cleared
Hereditary ours.

O my most sacred lady,
Temptations have since then been born to ’s, for
In those unfledged days was my wife a girl;
Your precious self had then not crossed the eyes
Of my young playfellow.

You may ride ’s
With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere
With spur we heat an acre.

But to th’ goal:
My last good deed was to entreat his stay.

Why, that was when
Three crabbèd months had soured themselves to death
Ere I could make thee open thy white hand
And clap thyself my love; then didst thou utter
“I am yours forever.”

Go play, boy, play. Thy mother plays, and I
Play too, but so disgraced a part, whose issue
Will hiss me to my grave. Contempt and clamor
Will be my knell.

Go play, boy, play.—There have been,
Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now;
And many a man there is, even at this present,
Now while I speak this, holds his wife by th’ arm,
That little thinks she has been sluiced in ’s absence,
And his pond fished by his next neighbor, by
Sir Smile, his neighbor.

Go play, boy, play.—There have been,
Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now;
And many a man there is, even at this present,
Now while I speak this, holds his wife by th’ arm,
That little thinks she has been sluiced in ’s absence,
And his pond fished by his next neighbor, by
Sir Smile, his neighbor.

Should all despair
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
Would hang themselves. Physic for ’t there’s none.

It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
Where ’tis predominant; and ’tis powerful, think it,
From east, west, north, and south.

“At the queen’s” be ’t. “Good” should be pertinent,
But so it is, it is not.

I have trusted thee, Camillo,
With all the nearest things to my heart, as well
My chamber-counsels, wherein, priestlike, thou
Hast cleansed my bosom; I from thee departed
Thy penitent reformed.

In your affairs, my lord,
If ever I were willful-negligent,
It was my folly

These, my lord,
Are such allowed infirmities that honesty
Is never free of.

But, beseech your Grace,
Be plainer with me; let me know my trespass
By its own visage.

Ha’ not you seen, Camillo—
But that’s past doubt; you have, or your eyeglass
Is thicker than a cuckold’s horn—or heard—
For to a vision so apparent, rumor
Cannot be mute—or thought—for cogitation
Resides not in that man that does not think—
My wife is slippery?

If thou wilt confess—
Or else be impudently negative
To have nor eyes nor ears nor thought—then say
My wife’s a hobby-horse, deserves a name
As rank as any flax-wench that puts to
Before her troth-plight.

Horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? Wishing clocks more swift?
Hours minutes? Noon midnight?

I say thou liest, Camillo, and I hate thee,
Pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave,
Or else a hovering temporizer that
Canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil,
Inclining to them both.

I say thou liest, Camillo, and I hate thee,
Pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave,
Or else a hovering temporizer that
Canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil,
Inclining to them both.

Ay, and thou,
His cupbearer—whom I from meaner form
Have benched and reared to worship, who mayst see
Plainly as heaven sees Earth and Earth sees heaven
How I am galled—mightst bespice a cup
To give mine enemy a lasting wink,
Which draft to me were cordial.

Dost think I am so muddy, so unsettled,
To appoint myself in this vexation, sully
The purity and whiteness of my sheets—
Which to preserve is sleep, which being spotted
Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps—

Dost think I am so muddy, so unsettled,
To appoint myself in this vexation, sully
The purity and whiteness of my sheets—
Which to preserve is sleep, which being spotted
Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps—

Dost think I am so muddy, so unsettled,
To appoint myself in this vexation, sully
The purity and whiteness of my sheets—
Which to preserve is sleep, which being spotted
Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps—

My lord,
Go then, and with a countenance as clear
As friendship wears at feasts, keep with Bohemia
And with your queen.

If I could find example
Of thousands that had struck anointed kings
And flourished after, I’d not do ’t.

If I could find example
Of thousands that had struck anointed kings
And flourished after, I’d not do ’t.

But since
Nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment bears not one,
Let villainy itself forswear ’t.

I must
Forsake the court. To do ’t or no is certain
To me a breakneck.

Camillo,
As you are certainly a gentleman, thereto
Clerklike experienced, which no less adorns
Our gentry than our parents’ noble names,
In whose success we are gentle, I beseech you,
If you know aught which does behoove my knowledge
Thereof to be informed, imprison ’t not
In ignorant concealment.

Camillo,
As you are certainly a gentleman, thereto
Clerklike experienced, which no less adorns
Our gentry than our parents’ noble names,
In whose success we are gentle, I beseech you,
If you know aught which does behoove my knowledge
Thereof to be informed, imprison ’t not
In ignorant concealment.

O, then my best blood turn
To an infected jelly, and my name
Be yoked with his that did betray the Best!

As she’s rare,
Must it be great; and as his person’s mighty,
Must it be violent; and as he does conceive
He is dishonored by a man which ever
Professed to him, why, his revenges must
In that be made more bitter.