The Winter’s Tale Act I, Scene ii

The Winter’s Tale.         Act 1, Scene 2.               Leontes

(This text is featured in our interview with Chris Clavelli)

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267:                                                                       Gone already!
268:   Inch-thick, knee-deep, o’er head and ears a fork’d one!
269:   Go, play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and I
270:   Play too, but so disgraced a part, whose issue
271:   Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour
272:   Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play. There have been,
273:   Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now;
274:   And many a man there is, even at this present,
275:   Now while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm,
276:   That little thinks she has been sluiced in’s absence
277:   And his pond fish’d by his next neighbour, by
278:   Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there’s comfort in’t
279:   Whiles other men have gates and those gates open’d,
280:   As mine, against their will. Should all despair
281:   That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
282:   Would hang themselves. Physic for’t there is none;
283:   It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
284:   Where ’tis predominant; and ’tis powerful, think it,
285:   From east, west, north and south: be it concluded,
286:   No barricado for a belly; know’t;
287:   It will let in and out the enemy
288:   With bag and baggage: many thousand on’s
289:   Have the disease, and feel’t not. How now, boy!