The Winter's Tale
William Shakespeare
- 128 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
The Winter's Tale
William Shakespeare
About This Book
`A merry winter's tale would drive away the time trimly,` suggests a character from The Old Wives' Tale, a play by one of Shakespeare's lesser-known contemporaries. And indeed, Elizabethan audiences recognized a `winter's tale` as a fanciful story, rendered all the more appealing by its very improbability. The Bard's version of this traditional entertainment is a charming romantic comedy, but with undertones of tragedy.
Running an emotional gamut from betrayal and broken hearts to a lighthearted romp, the tale begins with the tyrannical actions of a jealous king, whose baseless suspicions of his wife and best friend destroy his own family. The play's second half takes place sixteen years later, when the lovely plot turns toward romance and reconciliation. A sheep-shearing festival provides the occasion for a picturesque assembly of country folk, who contribute some of the play's finest moments with their rustic songs and dances.
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ACT V
Which you have not redeem’d; indeed, paid down
More penitence than done trespass: at the last,
Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil;
With them forgive yourself.
My blemishes in them,334 and so still think of
The wrong I did myself: which was so much,
That heirless it hath made my kingdom; and
Destroy’d the sweet‘st companion that e’er man
Bred his hopes out of.
Or from the all that are took something good,
To make a perfect woman, she you kill’d
Would be unparallel’d.
Sorely, to say I did; it is as bitter
Upon thy tongue as in my thought: now, good now,336
Say so but seldom.
You might have spoken a thousand things that would
Have done the time more benefit and graced
Your kindness better.
Of his most sovereign name; consider little
What dangers, by his highness’ fail of issue,
May drop upon his kingdom and devour
Incertain lookers on.337 What were more holy
Than to rejoice the former queen is well?5
What holier than, for royalty’s repair,
For present comfort and for future good,
To bless the bed of majesty again
With a sweet fellow to ’t?
Will have fulfill’d their secret purposes;
For has not the divine Apollo said,
Is’t not the tenor of his oracle,
That King Leontes shall not have an heir
Till his lost child be found? which that it shall,
Is all as monstrous to our human reason
As my Antigonus to break his grave
And come again to me; who, on my life,
Did perish with the infant. ’T is your counsel
My lord should to the heavens be contrary,
Oppose against their wills. [To LEONTES] Care not for issue;
The crown will find an heir: great Alexander
Left his to the worthiest; so his successor
Was like to be the best.
I know, in honour, O, that ever I
Had squared me to thy counsel!—then, even now,
I might have look’d upon my queen’s full eyes;
Have taken treasure from her lips,—
More rich for what they yielded.
And better used, would make her sainted spirit
Again possess her corpse, and on this stage,
Where we offenders now, appear338 soul-vex’d,
And begin, “Why to me?”339
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.”340
I’ll have no wife, Paulina.
Affront341 his eye.
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...