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Swear his thought over
By each particular star in heaven and
By all their influences, you may as well
Forbid the sea for to obey the moon
As or by oath remove or counsel shake
The fabric of his folly, whose foundation
Is piled upon his faith and will continue
The standing of his body. (1.2.511–18)
Camillo speaks these words to Polixenes near the end of act 1, scene 2. The subject of these lines is King Leontes, whose folly is quickly transforming into an unshakable tyranny. Despite not having any firm evidence for his accusation that Polixenes has been sleeping with his wife, the Sicilian king has become fully wrapped up in his own jealous fantasy. Camillo affirms the baselessness of this fantasy by declaring that the king’s charge rests on a decidedly unstable “foundation” that’s “piled on his faith.” Yet however shaky the foundation might be, the king’s faith is, nonetheless, immovable. Camillo exclaims that no amount of oath-giving will dissuade the king, who is so stubborn that “you may as well / Forbid the sea for to obey the moon.” Seeing that the king cannot be convinced otherwise, Camillo not only helps Polixenes to escape Sicilia, but he also ends up accompanying the Bohemian king. There’s no point in remaining loyal to such a dangerously unstable king.
The poetic idiom that Camillo adopts in these lines powerfully foreshadows the tragedy to come. Camillo doesn’t need to see more to be convinced that things can only get worse from this point on. And indeed, as we will see in the following two acts, Leontes’s baseless jealousy will lead him to make yet more absurd charges. For instance, after Camillo and Polixenes escape, Leontes comes to believe that these men have actively been plotting his overthrow, or possibly his assassination. Throughout all of this, Leontes maintains his deluded fantasy, and he eventually shows himself to be so headstrong as to challenge the veracity of the oracle of Delphos. These and other grandiose delusions lead the king on his path to tragedy. He begins by imprisoning his wife and ordering the abandonment of his newborn daughter. The disturbance of these events leads to the sudden death of his son, Mamillius, the shock of which then leads to Hermione’s demise. Likewise, Antigonus, who will be charged with disposing of the newborn in the Bohemian wilderness, will meet his end in a fatal encounter with a bear. In a moment of keen foresight, Camillo seems to portend all this coming tragedy at the hands of an obdurate king.
Since what I am to say must be but that
Which contradicts my accusation, and
The testimony on my part no other
But what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me
To say “Not guilty.” Mine integrity,
Being counted falsehood, shall, as I express it,
Be so received. But thus: if powers divine
Behold our human actions, as they do,
I doubt not then but innocence shall make
False accusation blush and tyranny
Tremble at patience. (3.2.23–33)
Hermione speaks these lines in act 3, scene 2, where she is forced to defend herself in a court that has been convened by her jealous husband, Leontes. Given the circumstances, Hermione knows she’s fighting an uphill battle. Even though her spotless loyalty is evident to everyone in the play except for Leontes, she also realizes that no one else has the power to stop her husband, much less convince him of her innocence. Leontes is the king, and as such he has license to do as he wishes. The injustice of this is evident to everyone in the audience as we watch Leontes refuse to consider any testimony other than his own. He even dares to challenge the veracity of the oracle from Delphos, which announces in the clearest of terms: “Hermione is chaste, Polixenes blameless, Camillo a true subject, Leontes a jealous tyrant” (3.2.142–43). Even so, Leontes proclaims: “There is no truth at all i’ th’ oracle. / The sessions shall process. This is mere falsehood” (3.2.151–52). As both judge and jury, Leontes rules with the absolute authority of a tyrant.
In the face of such circumstances, Hermione addresses the court with remarkable eloquence and poise. Speaking in a rhetorically sophisticated language that reflects her noble status, she reflects on the impossibility of her situation. She admits that she can do no more than give testimony that “contradicts my accusation,” even while knowing that she’s already been condemned. Despite the fact that her “integrity” is already widely accepted, she knows that her husband has already judged it false, such that any attempt on her part to defend it will also be judged false. However, in the concluding lines of this passage, Hermione stops defending herself and utters a powerful indictment of injustice that bears the force of prophecy. Here she appeals indirectly to “powers divine.” Placing her faith in a higher authority of justice, Hermione proclaims that her innocence will be proven in the fulness of time. Not only that, but once proven, her innocence will cause such shame that “shall make / False accusation blush and tyranny / Tremble at patience.” And indeed, this is precisely what turns out to happen. Upon her death, the spell of Leontes’s jealous will be broken, leaving him penitent and ashamed.
What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I’d have you do it ever. When you sing,
I’d have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so; and for the ord’ring your affairs,
To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o’ th’ sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that, move still, still so,
And own no other function. Each your doing,
So singular in each particular,
Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds,
That all your acts are queens. (4.4.161–72)
Florizell addresses these words to Perdita, the country girl he’s hoping to marry. Earlier in act 4, we learned that Florizell, who is the prince of Bohemia, has been spending a lot of time in the countryside. Now, in the sheep-shearing scene that closes the fourth act, we learn that Florizell has disappeared to court a young beauty. We also learn that he’s conducted his visits while disguised as a shepherd named Diocles. Perdita, however, was not to be fooled by his attempt at concealing his identity, and though she does love the prince, she also worries about his father finding out that he’s been courting a low-born woman. At this point in the play, Perdita still has no idea about her true identity, which means that Florizell is also in the dark. But he doesn’t have to know that she’s of noble blood to recognize that there’s something special about her. His lines here express that intuition in a language that derives from conventional love poetry. Yet however conventional they may be, Florizell’s words reflect movingly on Perdita’s astonishing beauty as well as the singular grace she demonstrates in both speech and movement.
Although he is a prince and therefore a young man associated with the riches and luxury of city life, here Florizell casts himself in the role of a pastoral lover. He effectively exchanges the scepter of his royal heritage for the lowly shepherd’s crook, immersing himself in the springtime paradise of the Bohemian countryside. As a man of the city court trespassing in the country, Florizell recalls the long pastoral tradition that extends back to the classical poets of ancient Greece and Rome. These poets, typically from urban centers like Athens or Rome, wrote poems that conjured highly idealized images of rural life’s peaceful simplicity. A key element in pastoral poetry is the gently rolling country landscape, the chief inhabitant of which is the shepherd, who idly tends his flock while singing songs and amorously pursuing beautiful nymphs. This is the role Florizell wishes to play, as if in attempt to escape the complex social and political life of the city—the dangers of which we have just witnessed in the play’s first three acts. Thus, though he may appear to be fleeing his royal duties, from another perspective, Florizell has rejected the tragic mode of the play’s first half in favor of the promise of a comic pastoral mode.
THIRD GENTLEMAN Did you see the meeting of the two kings?
SECOND GENTLEMAN No.
THIRD GENTLEMAN Then you have lost a sight which was to be seen, cannot be spoken of. There might you have beheld one joy crown another, so and in such manner that is seemed sorrow wept to take leave of them, for their joy waded in tears. There was casting up of eyes, holding up of hands, with countenance of such distraction that they were to be known by garment, not by favor. Our king, being ready to leap out of himself for joy of his found daughter, as if that joy were now become a loss, cries ‘O, thy mother, thy mother!’ then asks Bohemia forgiveness, then embraces his son-in-law, then again worries he his daughter with clipping her. (5.2.42–57)
This exchange between two unnamed Sicilian courtiers occurs in the play’s penultimate scene. This scene is significant for two reasons. First, this is the scene where most of the play’s numerous tensions find their resolution. Polixenes and Camillo both return to Sicilia for the first time since their escape, and Leontes welcomes both men with open arms. Likewise, soon after Perdita takes her first steps on Sicilian soil, her true identity is revealed, thereby fulfilling the prophecy set forth by the oracle back in the third act: “the King shall live without an heir if that which is lost be not found” (3.2.144–46). Perdita, whose name literally means “that which is lost,” has now been found. As such, the king’s line is once again secure. It’s also significant that, with these wounds healed, the conflict between Polixenes and Florizell can also be resolved. What’s more, the union between Florizell and Perdita establishes diplomatic as well as familial ties between Sicilia and Bohemia. Polixenes has regained his son as well as a daughter-in-law, just as Leontes has regained a daughter as well as a son-in-law. Their friendship, broken in the first act, is more than fully restored in the fifth.
The second reason act 5, scene 2, is so significant brings us to the specific matter of the passage quoted above. Instead of directly depicting the climactic action described in the previous paragraph, Shakespeare makes the unexpected decision to keep it all offstage. In lieu of witnessing the action, then, we in the audience hear about it secondhand as three Sicilian courtiers piece together the events, recounting them to the recently arrived rogue, Autolycus. The effect of this technique is that we hear a rapid-fire account that efficiently ties up the loose ends of the play. It’s almost as though Shakespeare can anticipate the audience’s own anticipation: we know that everything will end up fine, so instead of belaboring the point, he invents a surprising device that will move things along quickly. Even so, the effect still packs a punch as the courtiers relay the emotions that flowed through the room at such a charged moment. Furthermore, by allowing such a key plot point to be delivered in the form of a secondhand account, Shakespeare also highlights the thematic importance of storytelling for the play as a whole.
I was a gentleman born before my father. For the King’s son took me by the hand and called me brother, and then the two kings called my father brother, and then the Prince my brother and the Princess my sister called my father father; and so we wept, and there was the first gentlemanlike tears that ever we shed. (5.2.149–55)
These words are spoken by the Shepherd’s Son, who was tricked into coming to Sicilia with his father by the rogue Autolycus at the end of act 4. The two country men had intended to go before King Polixenes and show him the bundle they found with Perdita, which proves that she was adopted. This, they hope, will be enough to help assuage the king’s anger with them. If Perdita is no blood kin of theirs, then it stands to reason that they can’t be held liable for the offense she gave him. As it turns out, however, their testimony before the Bohemian king unintentionally reveals Perdita’s true identity. In this way, the Shepherd and his son convert Polixenes’s anger into joy, and the king rewards them richly. The material rewards are immediately evident in their expensive new garb. They also adopt a newfound nobility of spirit, which they demonstrate by convincing Autolycus that he can be rehabilitated and luring him into their service.
Perhaps more significant, however, is that the Shepherd and his son have been symbolically absorbed into the Bohemian royal family. Just as they had adopted Perdita sixteen years ago, now too Polixenes and Florizell have adopted them. The Shepherd’s Son indicates as much in the passage quoted above, where he introduces an abundance of kinship terms to describe how new bonds were formed in real time. First, Florizell addressed the Shepherd’s Son as “brother.” Next, the two kings addressed the Shepherd as “brother.” Now implicitly part of both families, the Shepherd’s Son refers to Florizell and Perdita as “brother” and “sister,” respectively. His adoptive siblings likewise address the Shepherd as “father.” To be sure, there is an air of the ridiculous in this speech, as suggested in the way the Shepherd’s Son opens with a seemingly absurd statement: “I was a gentleman before my father.” What he means is simply that Florizell called him “brother” before the kings called his father “brother.” That is, he was chronologically first to gain the status of “gentleman.” But ridiculousness aside, this passage speaks powerfully to the thematic importance of loyalty in the play. Though broken early on, bonds of loyalty are fully restored by the end, glued together by the language of kinship.
