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.
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 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
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
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
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 on crutches till he had one.
[Exeunt]
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