| ACT I SCENE I | Antechamber in LEONTES' palace. | |
| | Enter CAMILLO and 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. | 5 |
| 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,-- | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| | 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. | 20 |
| | 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, | 25 |
| | though not personal, have been royally attorneyed | |
| | 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 | 30 |
| | winds. The heavens continue their loves! | |
| ARCHIDAMUS | I think there is not in the world either malice or | |
| | matter to alter it. You have an unspeakable | |
| | comfort of your young prince Mamillius: it is a | |
| | gentleman of the greatest promise that ever came | 35 |
| | into my note. | |
| CAMILLO | I very well agree with you in the hopes of him: it | |
| | is a gallant child; one that indeed physics the | |
| | subject, makes old hearts fresh: they that went on | |
| | crutches ere he was born desire yet their life to | 40 |
| | see him a man. | |
| ARCHIDAMUS | Would they else be content to die? | |
| CAMILLO | Yes; if there were no other excuse why they should | |
| | desire to live. | |
| ARCHIDAMUS | If the king had no son, they would desire to live | 45 |
| | on crutches till he had one. | |
| | Exeunt | |
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