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We honour you with trouble: but we came |
To see the statue of our queen: your gallery |
Have we pass'd through, not without much content |
In many singularities; but we saw not |
That which my daughter came to look upon, |
The statue of her mother. |
PAULINA: |
As she lived peerless, |
So her dead likeness, I do well believe, |
Excels whatever yet you look'd upon |
Or hand of man hath done; therefore I keep it |
Lonely, apart. But here it is: prepare |
To see the life as lively mock'd as ever |
Still sleep mock'd death: behold, and say 'tis well. |
I like your silence, it the more shows off |
Your wonder: but yet speak; first, you, my liege, |
Comes it not something near? |
LEONTES: |
Her natural posture! |
Chide me, dear stone, that I may say indeed |
Thou art Hermione; or rather, thou art she |
In thy not chiding, for she was as tender |
As infancy and grace. But yet, Paulina, |
Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing |
So aged as this seems. |
POLIXENES: |
O, not by much. |
PAULINA: |
So much the more our carver's excellence; |
Which lets go by some sixteen years and makes her |
As she lived now. |
LEONTES: |
As now she might have done, |
So much to my good comfort, as it is |
Now piercing to my soul. O, thus she stood, |
Even with such life of majesty, warm life, |
As now it coldly stands, when first I woo'd her! |
I am ashamed: does not the stone rebuke me |
For being more stone than it? O royal piece, |
There's magic in thy majesty, which has |
My evils conjured to remembrance and |
From thy admiring daughter took the spirits, |
Standing like stone with thee. |
PERDITA: |
And give me leave, |
And do not say 'tis superstition, that |
I kneel and then implore her blessing. Lady, |
Dear queen, that ended when I but began, |
Give me that hand of yours to kiss. |
PAULINA: |
O, patience! |
The statue is but newly fix'd, the colour's Not dry. |
CAMILLO: |
My lord, your sorrow was too sore laid on, |
Which sixteen winters cannot blow away, |
So many summers dry; scarce any joy |
Did ever so long live; no sorrow |
But kill'd itself much sooner. |
POLIXENES: |
Dear my brother, |
Let him that was the cause of this have power |
To take off so much grief from you as he |
Will piece up in himself. |
PAULINA: |
Indeed, my lord, |
If I had thought the sight of my poor image |
Would thus have wrought you,--for the stone is mine-- |
I'ld not have show'd it. |
LEONTES: |
Do not draw the curtain. |
PAULINA: |
No longer shall you gaze on't, lest your fancy |
May think anon it moves. |
LEONTES: |
Let be, let be. |
Would I were dead, but that, methinks, already-- |
What was he that did make it? See, my lord, |
Would you not deem it breathed? and that those veins |
Did verily bear blood? |
POLIXENES: |
Masterly done: |
The very life seems warm upon her lip. |
LEONTES: |
The fixture of her eye has motion in't, |
As we are mock'd with art. |
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