William Shakespeare

The Winter's Tale William Shakespeare

One of Shakespeare's later plays, best described as a tragic-comedy, the play falls into two distinct parts. In the first Leontes is thrown into a jealous rage by his suspicions of his wife Hermione and his best-friend, and imprisons her and orders that her new born daughter be left to perish. The second half is a pastoral comedy with the 'lost' daughter Perdita having been rescued by shepherds and now in love with a young prince. The play ends with former lovers and friends reunited after the apparently miraculous resurrection of Hermione. ARCHIDAMUSIf 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. CAMILLOI think, this coming summer, the King of Sicilia means to pay Bohemia the visitation which he justly owes him. ARCHIDAMUSWherein our entertainment shall shame us we will be justified in our loves; for indeed-CAMILLOBeseech you, -ARCHIDAMUSVerily, 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