WINTER'S TALE

Summary

ACT I

Scene I.–Sicilia.An Antichamber in Leontes' Palace.

Enter Camilloand Archidamus.

Archidamus. If you shall chance, Camillo, to visit Bohemia, on the like occasion whereon my services are now on foot, you shall see, as I have said, great difference betwixt our Bohemia and your Sicilia.

Camillo. I think, this coming summer, the king of Sicilia means to pay Bohemia the visitation which he justly owes him.

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: we cannot with such magnificence–in so rare–I know not what to say. We will give you sleepy drinks: that your senses, unintelligent of our insufficience, may, though they cannot praise us, as little accuse us.

Camillo. You pay a great deal too dear, for what's given freely.

Archidamus. Believe me, I speak as my understanding instructs me, and as mine honesty puts it to utterance.

Camillo. Sicilia cannot show himself over-kind to Bohemia. They were trained together in their childhoods; and there rooted betwixt them then such an affection, which cannot choose but branch now. Since their more mature dignities, and royal necessities, made separation of their society, their encounters, though not personal, have been royally attornied, with interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies; that they have seemed to be together, though absent; shook hands, as over a vast; and embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed winds.