Section 1:
ACT I, SCENE I Sicilia. An Antechamber in LEONTES' Palace.

[Enter CAMILLO and ARCHIDAMUS]

ARCHIDAMUS.:

If 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.

CAMILLO.:

I think this coming summer the King of Sicilia means to

pay Bohemia the visitation which he justly owes him.

ARCHIDAMUS.:

Wherein our entertainment shall shame us we will be

justified in our loves; for indeed,—

CAMILLO.:

Beseech you,—

ARCHIDAMUS.:

Verily, 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.

CAMILLO.:

You pay a great deal too dear for what's given freely.

ARCHIDAMUS.:

Believe me, I speak as my understanding instructs me

and as mine honesty puts it to utterance.

CAMILLO.:

Sicilia cannot show himself overkind to Bohemia. They were

trained together in their childhoods; and there rooted betwixt

them then such an affection which cannot choose but branch now.

Since their more mature dignities and royal necessities made

separation of their society, their encounters, though not

personal, have been royally attorneyed with interchange of gifts,

letters, loving embassies; that they have seemed to be together,

though absent; shook hands, as over a vast; and embraced as it

were from the ends of opposed winds. The heavens continue their

loves!

ARCHIDAMUS.:

I think there is not in the world either malice or matter to

alter it. You have an unspeakable comfort of your young Prince

Mamillius: it is a gentleman of the greatest promise that ever

came into my note.

CAMILLO.:

I very well agree with you in the hopes of him. It is a

gallant child; one that indeed physics the subject, makes old

hearts fresh: they that went on crutches ere he was born desire

yet their life to see him a man.

ARCHIDAMUS.:

Would they else be content to die?

CAMILLO.:

Yes; if there were no other excuse why they should desire to

live.

ARCHIDAMUS.:

If the king had no son, they would desire to live on crutches

till he had one.

[Exeunt.]