Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  “If I dream not,” whispered Egeon, for that indeed was his name, “thou art Emilia!” and he gazed in wonderment at his restored wife! “If thou art she, tell me, where is that son that floated with thee on the fatal raft?”

  She sighed; and, between the tender embracings of husband, wife and sons, she told of how she and the babes had been cruelly parted, and how she had come to Ephesus, where, dwelling in holy seclusion, she had never seen them again until this very day.

  At last, the sea-storm that had parted them so long ago, had blown itself out in a tempest of madness, and washed them all together again.

  “Which of you two did dine with me today?” asked Adriana, uneasily, of her two husbands.

  “I, gentle mistress,” answered one.

  “And are you not my husband?”

  He shook his head. He had been the wrong Antipholus in the right one’s place. He turned to Luciana, and renewed his declaration of love; and she, with a glance at her sister, smiled and held out her hand. Now she would have a husband as handsome as Adriana’s.

  “This is the chain, sir, which you had of me,” said the goldsmith, pointing to one of the Antipholuses.

  “And you, sir,” said the other, “for this chain arrested me.” He had been the right Antipholus, in the wrong one’s place.

  So at last all debts were paid and all property restored. The Duke, much moved, released Egeon from his ransom and chains. At the Lady Abbess’s invitation, the rejoicing company went into the priory to partake of a feast. But two remained behind. The brothers Dromio.

  Said one: “There is a fat friend at your master’s house that kitchened me for you today at dinner. She now shall be my sister, not my wife.”

  Said the other: “Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother. I see by you I am a sweet-faced youth. Will you walk in to see their gossiping?” He offered the way. His brother held back.

  “Not I, sir. You are my elder.”

  “That’s a question. How shall we try it?”

  They scratched their heads and grinned.

  “We’ll draw cuts for the senior,” said one. “Till then, lead thou first.”

  “Nay,” said the other. “We came into the world like brother and brother, and now let’s go hand in hand, not one before the other.”

  And in they went.

  The Winter’s Tale

  King Leontes of Sicilia was angry. A time of happiness was at an end. Polixenes, the friend of his boyhood, was leaving him. For nine carefree months Polixenes had been his guest, and it had seemed that time had stepped backward and he had lived again amid the golden recollections of childhood. But now it was over. Polixenes was resolved to return to his faraway kingdom of Bohemia, and not all Leontes’ pleadings could make him change his mind.

  “One seve’night longer!” Leontes begged; but Polixenes shook his head, so Leontes, in despair, turned to Hermione, his queen, and demanded that she should try where he had failed. “Speak you!” he urged; and, leaving his wife to persuade his friend, he retreated, with quick, impatient steps, to the far end of the hall where his little son, Mamillius, was playing by the fire with ladies from the court.

  Anxiously he watched as his wife, bulky with her unborn child, conversed with his handsome friend. They were smiling and laughing. All seemed to be going well. Plainly Polixenes was quite captivated by the beautiful Hermione. Already Polixenes was nodding . . .

  Eagerly Leontes walked back. Hermione was saying, “If you first sinned with us,” when she looked up and saw her husband approach.

  “Is he won yet?” Leontes demanded.

  Hermione smiled triumphantly. “He’ll stay, my lord.”

  Leontes turned to Polixenes, who bowed gallantly to the lady who had conquered his resolve. Leontes frowned. “At my request he would not,” he muttered; then he recollected himself and, after paying tribute to his wife’s success, he returned to his little son and the fire.

  He looked back. Hermione had linked her arm with Polixenes. Leontes bit his lip. “Too hot, too hot!” he whispered; and little Mamillius, hearing him, tried to tug him away from the fire. His wife and friend were approaching. Their heads were almost kissing-close together. “To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods!” There was a painful leaping in his breast. “I have tremor cordis on me; my heart dances, but not for joy—not joy.”

  Hermione and Polixenes were smiling at him. He looked down to his son. “What! hast smutched thy nose?” he exclaimed. There was a speck of soot on his son’s face, like a badge of dishonour. “Come, captain, we must be neat—” He tried to repair the damage, but only made it worse—

  “Are you moved, my lord?”

  Hermione was speaking to him. Both she and Polixenes were looking concerned. At once he realized that his face was betraying his inmost thoughts. Leontes struggled to smile, and was surprised by how calm his voice sounded as he bade Hermione entertain his friend, while he remained with his son.

  “If you would seek us, we’re yours i’ the garden,” said she, leading Polixenes away. “You’ll be found,” murmured Leontes, “be you beneath the sky,” and he watched them go.

  Mamillius was staring at him. “Go play, boy, play,” he urged; and then began to mutter, “Thy mother plays, and I play too—but so disgraced a part . . . Many a man . . . holds his wife by th’arm, that little thinks she has been sluiced in’s absence, and his pond fished by his next neighbour, by Sir Smile, his neighbour . . .”

  A dark suspicion had entered his head; and once there, everything he saw, everything he heard, had conspired to feed it. Now it was no longer a suspicion; it was a hideous certainty! His friend was his wife’s lover, and the father of the child she was carrying!

  “How now, boy!” Mamillius was still staring at him. The boy looked almost frightened. “Go play, Mamillius!” he bade him, and, with an impatient wave of his hand, despatched the boy and his attendants from the room.

  One man remained. It was old Camillo, his shrewd councillor. Leontes beckoned him close. “Ha’ you not seen,” he asked him quietly, “my wife is slippery?”

  Camillo stared at his master in amazement. Then amazement turned to indignation and, to Leontes’ fury, his servant dared to reproach him for so foully slandering the Queen! “Good my lord, be cured of this diseased opinion, for ’tis most dangerous!” the fellow begged.

  “You lie, you lie!” shouted the King. He seized Camillo by the chain of office he wore round his neck. He twisted it like a halter and, half strangling the man, forced him to admit the justice of the suspicion that Polixenes was the Queen’s lover.

  “I must believe you sir!” cried the old man, helplessly, and Leontes released him.

  Trembling, Camillo stood before his master. “Might’st bespice a cup, to give mine enemy a lasting wink?” Leontes asked him. The old councillor grew pale as he understood what was asked of him: that he should murder Polixenes with poison, “Do’t, and thou hast the one half of my heart,” continued Leontes softly; “do’t not, thou splitt’st thine own.”

  “I’ll do’t, my lord,” said Camillo. Leontes nodded, and left him.

  Never was a man more frightened and more wretched than Camillo. He was bound, by solemn oaths of loyalty, to a king who had been struck down by madness! Either he must obey his master and become a murderer, or break his oath and lose his life.

  He shook his head. Better to break his oath and lose all than to obey a wicked command. He would warn Polixenes and, that very night, they would fly from dangerous Sicilia!

  The Queen was in her parlour with her ladies and her little son. “Take the boy to you!” she begged, for the boy was as restless as the fire that burned fitfully in the hearth. “He so troubles me, ’tis past enduring!”

  “Come, my gracious lord!” offered one fair pearly lady, holding out her velvet arms. “Shall I be your playfellow?”

  “No!” cried Mamillius, shaking his head till his bright curls flew. “You’ll kiss me hard and speak to me as if I was a baby still!
I love you better,” he declared, turning to another; but before he could plague her, his mother took pity on her women and called her son back to her side.

  “Sit by us,” she commanded, “and tell’s a tale.”

  Mamillius frowned. “Merry or sad, shall’t be?”

  “As merry as you will,” said his mother with a smile.

  The child thought deeply. “A sad tale’s best for winter,” he decided. “I have one of sprites and goblins.”

  His mother looked properly alarmed. “Come on, sit down,” she pleaded, “and do your best to fright me with your sprites; you’re powerful at it!”

  Mamillius settled himself down beside his mother, and, with a scornful look at the laughing ladies, began his tale in a fearful, horrible, ghostly whisper: “There was a man dwelt by a churchyard—”

  But what became of that man who dwelt by the churchyard was never to be told. The door burst open and the King, followed by his lords and armed guards, entered the room! His eyes blazed with anger, and the veins in his temples were swollen and seemed to writhe like serpents.

  Leontes had discovered a plot against his life! He knew it as soon as he’d heard that Polixenes and Camillo had fled from Sicilia. Their flight confirmed their guilt. Together with his faithless Queen they had conspired to kill him! But now his thoughts were for Mamillius, his true-born son. The child must be taken away from its unclean mother!

  He stared at the child who was crouching beside the adulteress. “Bear the boy hence!” he commanded harshly; and when the frightened child had been dragged from the arms of the amazed Queen, Leontes turned to his followers. “You, my lords,” he cried, “look on her, mark her well!” and, pointing a trembling finger at his wife, hurled her vile treachery into her white face. “Away with her to prison!” he shouted.

  Hermione bore all with quiet dignity. She bowed her head and, praying that her husband’s sickness—for surely a sickness it must be!—would pass as suddenly as it had struck, she begged leave to take her women with her, for the birth of her child was near. “Adieu, my lord,” she bade him sadly, as she was led away. “I never wished to see you sorry; now I trust I shall.”

  No sooner had the adulteress, her belly all swollen with her guilty brat, departed, than his lords dared to plead with Leontes to think again.

  “Be certain what you do, sir,” warned Antigonus, a man old enough to know better.

  Leontes stared at him contemptuously. “Cease, no more,” he commanded. “You smell this business with a sense as cold as is a dead man’s nose!”

  They were fools, all of them, to be so blind to the Queen’s guilt; but he, the King, had foreseen their tender feelings for the Queen. He had taken steps to allay all doubts. He had sent messengers to the temple of Apollo to question the sacred Oracle, so that the god himself might confirm the treachery of Polixenes and Camillo and the guilt of the Queen. “Have I done well?” he demanded, when he had revealed what he had done. The courtiers sighed, and nodded.

  “Nor night, nor day, no rest!” The King was in his bedchamber, pacing to and fro. Since he had discovered his wife’s crime, he had not slept. The fierceness in his brain would give him no relief. Polixenes and Camillo were beyond his vengeance, but the Queen was not. She must be tried, condemned and put to death by burning; then he would have peace.

  “My lord!” a servant had entered. He had come from the bedside of little Mamillius. The boy had fallen sick. His mother’s disgrace had brought it on.

  “How does the boy?”

  “He took good rest tonight,” the servant answered. Leontes dismissed him, and resumed his troubled pacing.

  Suddenly there was a commotion outside the room. He heard Antigonus’ quavering voice cry out: “You must not enter!” A moment later the door was thrust open and into the room stumbled Antigonus, vainly trying to hold back a rushing lady, whose gown flowed and billowed like an angry sea. It was his wife, Paulina, and he might as well have tried to stop the weather. Several lords followed cautiously in her wake.

  “Away with that audacious lady!” commanded the King, retreating as Paulina advanced towards him with an embroidered bundle clutched in her arms. “Antigonus, I charged thee that she should not come about me. I knew she would!”

  “I told her so, my lord,” protested the feeble husband.

  “What! can’st not rule her? Force her hence!”

  “Let him that makes but trifles of his eyes first hand me!” warned the lady, raising a threatening hand; and not a man dared encounter her.

  Suddenly Paulina knelt before the King. “The good Queen (for she is good) hath brought you forth a daughter,” she told him; “here ’tis; commends it to your blessing.” And she laid the bundle at Leontes’ feet.

  He looked down and saw that the bundle contained a creased and crumpled infant, foul as dirty washing. “This brat is none of mine,” he swore, and turned away with a shudder. “It is the issue of Polixenes. Hence with it, and together with the dam commit them to the fire!”

  “It is yours!” cried Paulina; “and so like you, ’tis the worse!”

  He tried to silence her, but she would not be silenced, and set about abusing him as no subject should have dared, while Antigonus, her pitiful husband, stood by and did nothing to control his outrageous wife. “Thou art worthy to be hanged that will not stay her tongue!” Leontes raged at him; to which the wretch replied, “Hang all the husbands that cannot do that feat, you’ll leave yourself hardly one subject!”

  “Once more,” cried Leontes, “take her hence!”

  “A most unworthy and unnatural lord—” accused Paulina.

  “I’ll ha’ thee burnt!” shouted the King.

  “I care not!” she shouted back. “It is an heretic that makes the fire, not she which burns in’t!”

  “Away with her!” screamed the King; and at last his lords made a move to obey him.

  “I pray you, do not push me,” said Paulina with dignity, as nervous hands sought to escort her. “I’ll be gone. Look to your babe, my lord,” she called back defiantly, “ ’tis yours!” Then she was gone.

  The babe was crying. Leontes could not endure the noise. “Take it hence,” he commanded, “and see it instantly consumed with fire!” He looked at Antigonus. “Even thou and none but thou!” The fellow grew pale. He was trembling. “Go, take it to the fire, for thou sett’st on thy wife!”

  “I did not, sir!” wailed Antigonus, and appealed to his companions to confirm his innocence.

  They all supported him, fools and liars that they were; and then, with one accord, they knelt and begged Leontes to recall his terrible command. He stared at them, and then at the crying babe. “What will you adventure to save this brat’s life?” he asked Antigonus.

  “Anything, my lord!”

  “Mark and perform it: seest thou? for the fail of any point in’t shall not only be death to thyself but to thy lewd-tongued wife.” Antigonus nodded eagerly; and the King went on: “We enjoin thee, that thou carry this female bastard hence; and that thou bear it to some remote and desert place, quite out of our dominions; and that there thou leave it, without more mercy, to its own protection. Take it up!”

  Leontes breathed deeply as Antigonus gathered up the howling brat and bore it away. “No!” he muttered. “I’ll not raise another’s issue!” Even as he said it, the gods themselves seemed to approve his action. A servant came in, all smiles. The messengers who had been sent to the temple of Apollo had returned. They were on their way to the palace with the words of the sacred Oracle. “Prepare you, lords!” cried Leontes triumphantly. “Summon a session, that we may arraign our most disloyal lady!” Very soon now, all the world would hear that Apollo himself had justified the King!

  The court was in session, and all the lords of Sicilia had crowded into the courtroom in a vast murmuring throng. The King sat in the place of Justice and behind him, like solemn black volumes on a shelf, sat the judges who were to try the Queen. Leontes spoke.

  “Produce the pris
oner.”

  The murmuring ceased. All heads turned, like a field of corn in a wind. It was not every day that a queen came to her trial. There was a great sigh as she entered, very upright, with her head held high; but before the day was out, that proud, insolent head would be bowed in shame!

  Leontes waited until she stood before him, attended by the noisy hag Paulina, and her foolish weeping women; then he spoke again:

  “Read the indictment.”

  The clerk of the court stood up and, reading from his scroll, uttered the solemn words: “Hermione, Queen to the worthy Leontes, King of Sicilia, thou art here accused and arraigned of high treason, in committing adultery with Polixenes, King of Bohemia, and conspiring with Camillo to take away the life of our sovereign lord, the King . . .”

  There was a moment’s silence, then the prisoner answered the charge. She spoke loud and clear, and denied everything. Her shamelessness knew no bounds; and Leontes, to his mounting anger, could see that her dignified bearing was gaining the sympathy of all. But not for long! Furiously he accused her again.

  “Sir,” she answered, gazing almost sadly straight at him, “you speak a language I understand not. My life stands in the level of your dreams, which I’ll lay down.”

  “Your actions are my dreams! You had a bastard by Polixenes. Look for no less than death!”

  “Sir,” said she, unmoved, “spare your threats: the bug which you would fright me with, I seek.” She looked up to the judges. “Your honours all, I do refer me to the Oracle: Apollo be my judge!”

  The judges nodded and straightway the two messengers who had returned from the sacred temple of Apollo, entered the court. Anxiously Leontes searched their faces for any sign that would betray that they knew the contents of the sealed scroll they carried. There was none.

  Solemnly the clerk of the court required them to swear, upon the sword of Justice, that they had received the scroll from the hands of the high priest of the temple and that the seals had not been broken.