Modern English

Scene 2. The same palace. A formal state room. Leontes, Polixenes, Hermione, Mamillius, Camillo, and attendants enter.

Modern English

POLIXENES. Nine months have passed — nine full turns of the moon — since I left my throne unattended. Another nine months couldn't begin to repay the thanks I owe you, brother; I'd still go home in debt. So let me be like a zero placed in rich company — standing beside one "thank you," it multiplies into a thousand, and more than that.

Modern English

LEONTES. Save your thanks for when you're leaving. POLIXENES. Sir, that's tomorrow. My fears have been questioning me about what troubles might have sprung up at home while I've been away — that I haven't set a cold wind blowing there by staying gone too long. Besides, I've already worn out my welcome with your court.

Modern English

LEONTES. We are harder to wear out, brother, than you give us credit for. POLIXENES. No longer — I really must go. LEONTES. One more week. POLIXENES. Tomorrow — I mean it. LEONTES. We'll split the difference, then, and I won't take no for an answer.

Modern English

POLIXENES. Please don't press me like this. There is no voice in all the world that could move me as quickly as yours — it would even now, if your need were genuine, even if I had to refuse it. But my affairs are pulling me home. To delay them would be, however loving your intention, a whip against me, and my staying here a burden on you. So, to spare us both — goodbye, dear brother.

Modern English

LEONTES. Cat got your tongue, my queen? You speak to him. HERMIONE. I was planning to hold my peace, sir, until you'd wrung a sworn refusal out of him. You're approaching this too coolly. Tell him you're certain everything in Bohemia is fine — we heard as much just yesterday. Say that, and you've knocked aside his strongest defense.

Modern English

LEONTES. Well said, Hermione. HERMIONE. Telling him he misses his son would be a strong move. But if he says so himself, let him go; if he swears by it, we'll drive him out with broomsticks — we won't stop him. [_To Polixenes._] Still, I'll take the liberty of asking to borrow a week of your royal presence. And when you take my husband back to Bohemia with you, I'll grant him license to stay a month past the date you'd fixed for the visit — yet I assure you, Leontes, I love you every bit as faithfully as any wife loves her husband. Will you stay?

Modern English

POLIXENES. No, madam. HERMIONE. But you will, won't you? POLIXENES. I truly cannot. HERMIONE. "Truly"! You're fobbing me off with limp little promises. But I, even if you swore to shake the very stars from their spheres, would still say, "Sir, you're not going." "Truly" — well, my "truly" carries just as much weight as yours. Are you still trying to leave? Then I'll have to keep you here as a prisoner, not a guest. You'll owe a prisoner's ransom when you leave, instead of mere thanks. What do you say? My prisoner or my guest? By that solemn "truly" of yours, you're going to be one of them.

Modern English

POLIXENES. Your guest, then, madam. Being your prisoner would imply I've done something wrong — and wronging you is rather harder for me to manage than it would be for you to punish. HERMIONE. Not your jailer, then — your hostess. Come, let me quiz you about my husband's mischief and yours when you were boys. You must have been a pair of little lords.

Modern English

POLIXENES. We were, fair queen — two boys who thought there was nothing ahead but another day just like today, and childhood stretching on forever. HERMIONE. But wasn't my husband the wilder of the two?

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POLIXENES. We were like twin lambs playing in the sun, bleating back and forth at each other. What we traded was innocence for innocence — we had no knowledge of wrongdoing, and never dreamed anyone else did either. If we'd stayed that way, if stronger passions had never taken root in us, we could have faced heaven and said boldly, "Not guilty" — cleared of the very sin we inherited at birth.

Modern English

HERMIONE. From which I take it you've slipped up since then. POLIXENES. Oh, most gracious lady — temptations weren't even born to us back then! In those innocent days my wife was still a girl, and your precious self had not yet crossed the eyes of my young playmate here.

Modern English

HERMIONE. Heaven help us! Don't draw any conclusions from that, or you'll end up saying that your queen and I are the ones who led you into sin. Go on, though — any offenses we've led you into, we'll account for, as long as you only ever sinned with us, and stayed faithfully in your fault with us, and never strayed with anyone else.

Modern English

LEONTES. Has she won him over? HERMIONE. He'll stay, my lord. LEONTES. He wouldn't stay at my request. Hermione, my dearest — you have never spoken to better effect. HERMIONE. Never? LEONTES. Never but once.

Modern English

HERMIONE. What — so I've said the right thing twice now? When was the first time? Do tell me. Heap on the praise — feed us well with it, like tame creatures fattened on approval: one good deed left unacknowledged kills a thousand that were waiting their turn. Praise is our pay. You can ride us a thousand miles with one soft kiss sooner than goad us an inch with a spur. But back to the point: my last good deed was keeping him here. What was my first? It must have a sister before it, or I've misread you. Oh, I wish her name were Grace! But there was one time before when I spoke to the purpose — when was it? Come on, tell me. I want to hear it.

Modern English

LEONTES. That was when three long, sour months had dragged themselves to death before I could coax your white hand open and have you take me as your love — and then you said, "I am yours forever." HERMIONE. That was Grace, truly. So you see — I've said the right thing exactly twice. The first won me a royal husband forever; the second wins me a friend for a little while. [_Giving her hand to Polixenes._]

Modern English

LEONTES. [_Aside._] Too warm. Too warm. To carry friendship this far is to mix blood. I feel a trembling in my heart — it's dancing, but not from joy. Not joy. All this could be innocent hospitality — open-hearted, generous, a warm nature doing well for a guest. I grant it could be. But to be holding hands and pressing fingers the way they're doing — putting on those practiced smiles like people admiring themselves in a mirror — then sighing as if at a death. That kind of warmth sits wrong in my chest. Wrong in my blood. Mamillius — is that my boy?

Modern English

MAMILLIUS. Yes, my good lord. LEONTES. By heaven! There's my brave lad. What's this — you've smudged your nose? They say it's a copy of mine. Come, captain — we have to be presentable. Not "neat" like cattle, mind you, just clean — though I note the bull, the heifer, and the calf are all called "neat" too. — [_Glancing back._] Still playing with his hand? You little calf, you! Are you my calf? MAMILLIUS. If you like, my lord.

Modern English

LEONTES. You'd need a rough jaw and my kind of bristle to really look like me — and yet they say we are nearly as alike as two eggs. Women say so, women who'll say anything. But even if they were false as overdyed cloth, false as the wind, false as the water, false as the dice a desperate gambler prays for — even then, it would still be true that this boy is like me. Come here, little page — look up at me with those sky-blue eyes. Sweet little rogue! My dearest — my own flesh — can your mother — could she?

Modern English

Passion — your grip pierces to the very core. You make possible what should be impossible; you traffic with dreams — how can this be? — you conspire with unreality, you thrive on nothing. And yet — if so — you can join yourself to something real, and you do, you do, and further than you should, and I feel it, and it infects my mind, and it marks my brow.

Modern English

POLIXENES. What's come over the King of Sicilia? HERMIONE. He seems troubled somehow. POLIXENES. What is it, my lord? What's wrong? How are you, dear brother? HERMIONE. You look as if something is pulling hard at your thoughts. Are you upset, my lord?

Modern English

LEONTES. No, not at all. I'm fine. It's funny how emotion can get the better of a man — how tenderness makes you weak, leaves you open to mockery in front of harder hearts. Looking at the face of my boy just now, I seemed to fall backward twenty-three years, and saw myself a little child in my green velvet coat — my toy dagger sheathed and harmless, the way decorations often are, too dangerous to be left unblunted. How close I was, I thought, to this little thing, this unripe squash, this gentleman. — My boy, will you let anyone push you around?

Modern English

MAMILLIUS. No, my lord — I'd fight. LEONTES. Good man! Brother, are you as devoted to your young prince back home as I seem to be to mine? POLIXENES. At home, sir, he is everything — my occupation, my laughter, my subject. One moment my sworn friend, the next my enemy; my flatterer, my soldier, my statesman, all of it. He makes a summer's day feel as short as December. And his restless, changeable boyhood drives out thoughts that would thicken my blood.

Modern English

LEONTES. This boy serves the same office for me. Come, my lord — the two of us will walk, and leave you to your more serious company. Hermione, show your love for me in how you treat our brother — let Sicily's finest pleasures be freely given. After yourself and my little wanderer, he's the one dearest to my heart.

Modern English

HERMIONE. If you need us, we'll be in the garden. Shall we wait for you there? LEONTES. Go as you please. You'll be easy enough to find beneath open sky. [_Aside._] I'm playing the fisherman now, casting my line — and you don't see me doing it. Oh, go on, go on! Look at the way she lifts her face up to him — arming herself with the easy confidence of a wife certain of her husband's trust!

Modern English

[_Exeunt Polixenes, Hermione, and Attendants._] Already gone! Inch deep, knee deep, in over my head — and horns on my brow. Go on, play, boy. Your mother is playing her own game, and I'm playing mine — but what a wretched part I've been given, a role whose ending will hiss me into my grave. Contempt and scandal will be my funeral bells. Go play. There have been cuckolded men before — or I am very much mistaken — and right now, this very moment, as I'm speaking these words, some man out there has his wife on his arm, with no idea she's been drained dry while he was gone, his private pond fished out by the man next door — good old Sir Smile, his neighbor.

Modern English

And there's cold comfort to be had in it: other men have gates, and those gates are pried open just as mine has been, against their will. If everyone with a faithless wife despaired, a tenth of mankind would hang themselves. There's no cure for it. It's a lecherous planet, striking where it reigns, and it reigns everywhere — east, west, north, south. Face it: there's no wall you can build around a woman's will. She'll open the door for the enemy and let him in with all his baggage. Thousands of us carry this disease and don't even know we have it. — Well, boy!

Modern English

MAMILLIUS. They say I look like you. LEONTES. There's some comfort in that, at least. What — Camillo! Is that you there? CAMILLO. Yes, my good lord. LEONTES. Go play, Mamillius — there's a good, honest boy. [_Exit Mamillius._]

Modern English

Camillo — this great lord is staying longer after all. CAMILLO. You had a hard time keeping his anchor down — every time you cast, it came drifting back. LEONTES. You noticed? CAMILLO. He wouldn't stay for your asking — kept insisting his business was more pressing. LEONTES. You saw that? [_Aside._] They're ahead of me already — whispering, circling, "Sicilia is a — " You know the word. It's gone far when I'm the last to taste it. — So tell me, Camillo, how did he come to stay?

Modern English

CAMILLO. At the good queen's entreaty. LEONTES. At the queen's. "Good" ought to apply there — but it doesn't, as things stand. Has anyone else worked this out, or only you? You're sharp enough to absorb more than most. The ordinary minds wouldn't see it, would they — only the more perceptive ones? The sharper heads? The common crowd is probably blind to this business? Tell me.

Modern English

CAMILLO. What business, my lord? I think most people simply understand that Bohemia is staying longer. LEONTES. What? CAMILLO. Staying longer. LEONTES. Yes — but why? CAMILLO. To honor your highness's wishes, and at the request of our most gracious queen. LEONTES. "Request." Your mistress's "request." "Honor." That's enough of that.

Modern English

I have trusted you, Camillo, with everything closest to my heart — my private counsel, the secrets of my chamber — and you, like a confessor, cleansed me. I left you like a penitent made new. But I've been deceived in your integrity. Deceived in what seemed trustworthy. CAMILLO. God forbid, my lord!

Modern English

LEONTES. Sit with this: either you're not honest — or, if you lean that way, you're a coward, hamstringing your own honesty, holding it back from what's required of it. Or else you're a servant so firmly planted in my trust that you've grown negligent in it. Or a fool who watches a high-stakes game play out to the end, sees the winnings raked away, and laughs it off as nothing.

Modern English

CAMILLO. My gracious lord, I may have been negligent, foolish, and afraid — no man is entirely free of those failings; they break through in all of us, given the infinite business of the world. In your service, my lord: if I was ever carelessly negligent, that was my foolishness; if I deliberately played the fool, that was negligence — not thinking through what I was doing. If I was ever afraid to act where I doubted the outcome — where doing nothing would have been the worse choice — that was a fear the wisest men share. These are the ordinary failings that even honest men never escape entirely. But I beg your grace — be plain with me. Show me my offense by name. If I deny it then, it isn't mine.

Modern English

LEONTES. Haven't you seen it, Camillo? — But of course you have: your eyesight can't be so dulled as a cuckold's horn-thickened skull — or heard it? — Because for something this visible, rumor can't have stayed quiet — or even thought it? — For thought lives in every man who thinks at all — that my wife has been unfaithful? If you won't confess it, or if you're bold enough to deny having eyes, ears, or a thinking mind — then go ahead and call my wife a whore, say she deserves a name as foul as any common girl who gives herself away before she's bound. Go on — say it and stand by it.

Modern English

CAMILLO. I would not stand by and hear my sovereign lady spoken of so foully without striking back on the spot. Curse my heart — you have never said anything that became you less. To repeat it would be a sin as deep as the thing you're accusing her of, even if it were true.

Modern English

LEONTES. Is whispering nothing? Cheek pressed against cheek — nothing? Noses touching? Kissing on the inside of the lip? Cutting off laughter with a sudden sigh — the unmistakable sign of a guilty conscience — feet tangled together? Slipping away into corners? Wishing the clock would run faster — hours, minutes — noon, midnight — and every eye in the world blinded, except theirs, theirs alone, wanting to do wrong unseen? Is all that nothing? Then the world and everything in it is nothing, the sky above is nothing, Bohemia nothing, my wife is nothing — and nothing means anything at all, if this is nothing.

Modern English

CAMILLO. My lord, please — let yourself be cured of this sick belief, and quickly, because it is extremely dangerous. LEONTES. Call it dangerous — it's still true. CAMILLO. No, my lord, it isn't. LEONTES. It is. You're lying. You lie. I say you lie, Camillo — and I hate you for it. I call you a dense fool, a mindless servant, or else a slippery fence-sitter who can look at good and evil at the same moment and lean toward both. If my wife's soul were as infected as her life, she wouldn't survive the time it takes to turn one hourglass.

Modern English

CAMILLO. Who is supposed to have infected her? LEONTES. The one who wears her like a medallion hung around his neck — Bohemia. If I had loyal servants who could see my honor as clearly as they see their own interests, their own profit, they'd have done something to put a stop to all this doing. And you — his cupbearer, whom I raised from obscurity to a place of worship, who can see as plainly as heaven sees the earth how I've been wounded — you could spice a cup, give my enemy a long and lasting sleep. That drink would be medicine to me.

Modern English

CAMILLO. My lord — I could do this, and not with any crude, fast poison, but with a slow draught that works its way without the cruelty of speed. But I cannot believe that this fault exists in my honored mistress — a woman of such unchallenged integrity. I have loved you — LEONTES. Save that thought for the sewer where it belongs. Do you think I'm so muddy-brained, so unmoored, that I would inflict this torment on myself — defile the clean white linen of my marriage bed (which, kept pure, means sleep; once stained, means thorns and nettles and wasp-stings in the dark) — slander the blood of my own son, my prince (whom I believe is mine, whom I love as mine) — without real, solid reason? Could a man twist himself into this shape for nothing?

Modern English

CAMILLO. I must believe you, sir. I do. And I will remove Bohemia for you — on one condition: when he's gone, your highness will take back your queen as before, for your son's sake, and to stop the mouths of gossips in every court and kingdom that knows this one. LEONTES. You advise exactly what I had already decided. I will do nothing to blemish her honor. Nothing.

Modern English

CAMILLO. My lord — go then, and with a face as open as friendship wears at a feast. Keep good company with Bohemia and your queen. I am his cupbearer. If any wholesome drink passes from my hand to his — count me no servant of yours. LEONTES. That's all I ask. Do it, and you own half my heart. Fail, and you've split your own in two. CAMILLO. I'll do it, my lord. LEONTES. I'll act friendly, as you've advised. [_Exit._]

Modern English

CAMILLO. Oh, poor miserable lady. But what about me? What position am I standing in? I'm to be the murderer of good Polixenes — and the only ground I have for doing it is obedience to a master who, being at war with himself, needs everyone around him to be at war too. Do this deed, and promotion follows. If I could find a single example — a thousand examples — of men who killed anointed kings and prospered afterward, I still wouldn't do it. But since not one such example exists in brass, or stone, or written record — let villainy itself renounce the act. I have to flee this court. Whether I do it or refuse, it's a broken neck either way. Lucky stars, shine on me now. Here comes Bohemia. Enter Polixenes.

Modern English

POLIXENES. Something is wrong. I sense it — the welcome here has started to curdle. He didn't even speak. Good day, Camillo. CAMILLO. Hail, most royal sir. POLIXENES. What news at court? CAMILLO. Nothing unusual, my lord.

Modern English

POLIXENES. The king is wearing a face as if he'd lost an entire province — a territory he loved as much as himself. Just now I greeted him with the usual courtesies, and he turned his eyes away, let his lip curl with contempt, and hurried off — leaving me to wonder what's brewing that's changed his manner so completely.

Modern English

CAMILLO. I dare not say, my lord. POLIXENES. What — dare not? Won't? You know, and you dare not tell me? It amounts to the same thing: what you know, you must own to yourself — you can't say you "dare not." Good Camillo, the change in your face is a mirror that shows me my own face has changed as well; I must be part of whatever this shift is, since I find myself shifted by it.

Modern English

CAMILLO. There is a sickness here that has unsettled some of us, but I can't name the disease — and you're the one who's said to have caused it, though you seem well enough. POLIXENES. Caused by me? How? Don't give me the eyes of a basilisk — I've looked on thousands who came away better for my attention, not killed by it. Camillo — you are a gentleman, well-read, experienced; your learning honors your rank as much as your father's noble name does — I beg you, if you know something I need to know, don't lock it up in deliberate ignorance.

Modern English

CAMILLO. I cannot answer. POLIXENES. A disease caused by me — and yet I'm well? I demand an answer. Listen, Camillo — I call on every honorable part of your nature, and none is less than this request of mine: tell me what harm you think is creeping toward me, how close it is, what direction it's coming from, whether there's a way to stop it, and if not, how best to meet it.

Modern English

CAMILLO. Sir, I will tell you. I'm bound by honor — and by the honor of the man I thought honorable. So listen carefully: what I'm about to say must be acted on as fast as I can say it, or we are both lost — and that's goodnight. POLIXENES. Go on, Camillo. CAMILLO. I have been appointed to kill you. POLIXENES. By whom, Camillo? CAMILLO. By the king. POLIXENES. For what?

Modern English

CAMILLO. He believes — no, more than believes — he swears it, as if he'd witnessed it himself or arranged it — that you have lain with his queen unlawfully. POLIXENES. Then let my blood turn to poison in my veins, and let my name be bracketed with Judas. Let my reputation, fresh as it still is, become a stench that strikes the dullest nose wherever I go — let my arrival be dreaded, despised, hated worse than the worst plague ever heard of or recorded.

Modern English

CAMILLO. You could swear yourself hoarse before every star in heaven and call on all their powers — it would no more shift the structure of his delusion than you could command the sea to ignore the moon. The foundation of his madness is faith — his own certainty — and it will last as long as his body does.

Modern English

POLIXENES. How did it come to this? CAMILLO. I don't know. But I am certain it's safer to escape what's grown than to trace how it began. So — if you trust my honesty, pledged on this body of mine, which you must now take as your guarantee — leave tonight. I'll quietly let your people know what's happening, and slip them out of the city two and three at a time through the back gates. As for me, I'll throw my fortunes into your service — they're forfeited here now that I've told you this. Don't waver. By the honor of my parents, I have told you the truth — and if you try to test it, I won't be there to back you up. You'll be no safer than a man the king himself has condemned out loud and sworn to execute.

Modern English

POLIXENES. I believe you. I saw his heart written in his face. Give me your hand. Lead me out of here, and your place in the world will always be beside mine. My ships are ready — my people were expecting me two days ago. This jealousy of his — it's aimed at a precious woman, so it will run as deep as she is rare. His power is great, so the rage will be violent. And since he believes he's been dishonored by a man who swore him friendship, his revenge will be the bitterest kind. Fear is closing over me. Speed is my only friend now. May it be some comfort to the good queen — who is his obsession, but not the one responsible for his poisoned suspicion. Come, Camillo — if you get me out of here alive, I'll regard you as a father. Let's go now.

Modern English

CAMILLO. I have the authority to open every back gate in the palace. Your highness — take this urgent hour. Come, sir. Away. [_Exeunt._]