The Winter's Tale E-Book

William Shakespeare

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

The Winter's Tale, one of Shakespeare's very late plays, is filled with improbabilities. Before the conclusion, one character comments that what we are about to see, "Were it but told you, should be hooted at / Like an old tale." It includes murderous passions, man-eating bears, princes and princesses in disguise, death by drowning and by grief, oracles, betrayal, and unexpected joy. Yet the play, which draws much of its power from Greek myth, is grounded in the everyday. A "winter's tale" is one told or read on a long winter's night. Paradoxically, this winter's tale is ideally seen rather than read—though the imagination can transform words into vivid action. Its shift from tragedy to comedy, disguises, and startling exits and transformations seem addressed to theater audiences.

Leseprobe

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACT I

ACT II

ACT III

ACT IV

ACT V

 

The Winter's Tale

ByWilliam Shakespeare

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE FIRST FOLIO OF 1623

Edition 2017 by David De Angelis – all rights reserved

ACT I

SCENE I. 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 over-kind 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!