Page 795 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

No richer than his honour: how he glisters
Thorough my rust! and how his piety [170]
Does my deeds make the blacker!

(Enter Paulina.)

PAULINA
Woe the while!

O cut my lace, lest my heart, cracking it,
Break too!

A LORD
What fit is this, good lady?

PAULINA
What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?
What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling? [175]

In leads or oils? What old or newer torture
Must I receive, whose every word deserves
To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny,
Together working with thy jealousies

(Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle [180]
For girls of nine), O think what they have done,
And then run mad indeed: stark mad! for all
Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it.

That thou betray’dst Polixenes, ’twas nothing;
That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant [185]
And damnable ingrateful: nor was’t much,
Thou would’st have poison’d good Camillo’s honour,

To have him kill a king; poor trespasses,
More monstrous standing by: whereof I reckon
The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter, [190]
To be or none or little; though a devil

Would have shed water out of fire, ere done ’t:
Nor is’t directly laid to thee the death
Of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts
(Thoughts high for one so tender) cleft the heart [195]

That could conceive a gross and foolish sire