The Winters Tale Hermione Character Study

Things Hermione Says About Herself

Act 1 Scene 2
I had thought, sir, to have held my peace until/You had drawn oaths from him not
to stay.
Not your jailer, then,/But your kind hostess.

Act 2 Scene 1
I am not prone to weeping
But I have/That honourable grief lodged here which burns/Worse than tears
drown.
This action I now go on/Is for my better grace.
I never wished to see you sorry.

Act 3 Scene 2
Mine integrity,/Being counted falsehood, shall, as I express it,/Be so received.
As I am now unhappy
A fellow of the royal bed
A moiety of the throne
A great kings daughter
The mother to a hopeful prince
For life, I prize it/As I weigh grief, which I would spare; for honour,/Tis a
derivative from me to mine,/And only that I stand for.
With such a kind of love as might become/A lady like me
Now for conspiracy,/I know not how it tastes
You speak a language that I understand not
My life stands in the level of your dreams,/Which Ill lay down
The bug which you would fright me with I seek.
To me can life be no commodity;/The crown and comfort of my life, your favour,/I
do give lost, for I feel it gone,/But know not how it went. My second joy,/ And first
fruits of my body, from his presence/I am barred like one infections. My third
comfort,/Starred most unluckily, is from my breast,/The innocent milk in it most
innocent mouth,/Haled out to murder; myself on every post/Proclaimed a
strumpet; with immodest hatred/The childbed privilege denied, which longs/To

women of all fashion; lastly, hurried/Here, to this place, ith open air, before/I
have got strength of limit.
Mistake me not: No life,/I prize it not a straw, but for mine honour
The Emperor of Russia was my father.

Act 5 Scene 3
I,/Knowing by Paulina that the oracle/Gave hope thou wast in being, have
preserved/Myself to see the issue.

Things People Say About Hermione

Act 2 Scene 1
And Ill be sworn you would believe my saying

Act 1 Scene 2
Tongue-tied, our queen?
To be your prisoner should import offending,/Which is for me less easy to
commit/Than you to punish.
Fair Queen
My most sacred lady
Your precious self had then not crossed the eyes/Of my young playfellow.
Hermione, my dearest
Hermione, how thou lovst us
How she holds up the neb, the bill to him!/And arms her with the boldness of a
wife/To her allowing husband.
Thy mother plays
She has been sluiced ins absence
The good Queens entreaty.
At the Queens bet; good should be pertinent,/But so it is, it is not.
Our most gracious mistress.
Satisfy?/Thentreaties of your mistress? Satisfy?
My wife is slippery?

My wifes a hobby horse, deserves a name/As rank as any flax-wench that puts
to/Before her troth-plight-sayt, and justifyt.
My sovereign mistress
My wife is nothing
Were my wifes liver/Infected as her life she would not live/The running of one
glass.
He that wears her like her medal
But I cannot/Believe this crack to be in my dread mistress
Take again your Queen as yours at first,/Even for your sons sake
Ill give no blemish to her honour, none.
With a countencance as clear/As friendship wears at feasts keep with
Bohemia/And with your Queen
O miserable lady!
Gracious Queen

Act 2 Scene 1
The Queen, your mother, rounds apace.
She is spread of late/Into a goodly bulk good time encounter her!
I am glad you did/not nurse him.
Yet you/Have too much blood in him.
Be but about/To say she is a goodly lady, and/The justice of your hearts will
thereto add/Tis pity shes not honest.
Praise her but for this her without-door form
Shes an adulteress!
You have mistook, my lady,/Polixenes for Leontes.
I have said/ Shes an adulteress!
Shes a traitor.
What she should shame to know herself/But with her most vile principal that
shes/A bed-swerver
The Queen is spotless/Ith eyes of heaven
For every inch of woman in the world,/Ay, every dram of womens flesh, is false/If
she be.
Be she honour-flawed
It would content me/To have her honour true than your suspicion

Act 2 Scene 2
Gracious Lady
As well as one so great and so forlorn/May hold together. On her frights and
griefs,/ Which never tender lady hath borne greater,/She is, something before her
time, delivered.
The Queen receives/Much comfort int, says My poor prisoner,/I am innocent as
you.

Act 2 Scene 3
She thadultress
But she/I can hook to me
The dishonour of his mother!
For present vengeance,/Take it on her
Good Queen
Good Queen, my lord, good queen, I say good Queen,/And would by combat
make her good
The good Queen-/For she is good hath brought you forth a daughter
Givet to thy crone
He dreads his wife.
This most cruel usage of your Queen
Our most disloyal lady; for as she hath/Been publicly accused, so shall she
have/A just and open trial.
While she lives my heart will be a burden to me.

Act 3 Scene 2
One/of us too much beloved
Hermione, Queen to the worthy Leontes, King of Sicilia, thou art here accused
and arraigned of high treason in committing adultery with Polixenes, King of
Bohemia, and conspiring with Camillo to take away the life of our sovereign lord
the King, thy royal husband; the pretence whereof being by circumstances partly
laid open, thou, Hermione, contrary to the faith and allegiance of a true subject,
didst counsel and aid them for their better safety to fly away by night.
Your actions are my dreams.
You had a bastard by Polixenes
As you were past all shame-/Those of your fact are so so past all truth

Hermione is chaste
This news is mortal to the Queen
Her heart is but oercharged; she will recover
The Queen,/The sweetst, dearst creatures dead
I say shes dead
One grave shall be for both

Act 3 Scene 3
Thy mother/Appeared to me last night
I do believe Hermione hath suffered death
That for thy mothers fault art thus exposed/To loss

Act 4 Scene 2
His most precious Queen

Act 5 Scene 1
Her and her virtues
Destroyed the sweetst companion that eer man/Bred his hopes out of.
To make a perfect woman, she you killed/Would be unparalleled.
What were more holy/Than to rejoice the former Queen is well?
Respecting her thats gone
My Queens full eyes
Had she such power,/She had just cause.
She had, and would incense me/To murder her I married.
Id bid you mark/Her eye, and tell me for what dull part int/You chose her
Stars, stars,/And all eyes else dead coals
That shall be when you first queens again in breath
O Hermione

Act 5 Scene 2
The mantle of/Queen Hermiones
O, thy mother, thy mother!

When at the relation of the/Queens death, with the manner how she came tot
bravely confessed and lamented by the King

Act 5 Scene 3
As she lived peerless,/So her dead likeness I do well believe/Excels whatever yet
you looked upon,/Or hand of man hath done
She was as tender/As infancy and grace.
Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing/So aged as this seems.
O, thus she stood,/Even with such life of majesty
Lady,/Dear Queen, that ended when I but began
Would you not deem it breathed, and that those veins/Did verily bear blood?
The very life seems warm upon her lip.
The fixture of her eye has motion int
There is an air comes from her
Her actions shall be holy as/You hear my spell is lawful. Do not shun her/Until you
see her die again, for then/You kill her double.
When she was young you wooed her; now in age/Is she become the suitor?
O, shes warm!
She embraces him.
If she pertain to life, let her speak too!
That she is living,/Where it but told you, should be hooted at/Like an old tale; but
it appears she lives,/Though yet she speak not.
Good lady