Page 781 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

Thou dotard! thou art woman-tir’d, unroosted
By thy dame Partlet here. Take up the bastard, [75]
Take ’t up, I say; give ’t to thy crone.

PAULINA
For ever
Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou

Tak’st up the princess, by that forced baseness
Which he has put upon ’t!

LEONTES
He dreads his wife.

PAULINA
So I would you did; then ’twere past all doubt [80]

You’d call your children yours.

LEONTES

A nest of traitors!

ANTIGONUS
I am none, by this good light.

PAULINA
Nor I; nor any
But one that’s here, and that’s himself; for he,
The sacred honour of himself, his queen’s,

His hopeful son’s, his babe’s, betrays to slander, [85]
Whose sting is sharper than the sword’s; and will not
(For, as the case now stands, it is a curse
He cannot be compell’d to ’t) once remove

The root of his opinion, which is rotten
As ever oak or stone was sound.

LEONTES
A callat [90]
Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband,