A most unworthy and unnatural lord
Can do no more.
LEONTES.
I'll have thee burn'd.
PAULINA.
I care not:
It is an heretic that makes the fire,
Not she which burns in't.
Here, while we honor her courage and her affection, we cannot help regretting her violence. We see, too, in Paulina, what we so often see in real life, that it is not those who are most susceptible in their own temper and feelings, who are most delicate and forbearing towards the feelings of others. She does not comprehend, or will not allow for the sensitive weakness of a mind less firmly tempered than her own. There is a reply of Leontes to one of her cutting speeches, which is full of feeling, and a lesson to those, who, with the best intentions in the world, force the painful truth, like a knife, into the already lacerated heart.
PAULINA.
If, one by one, you wedded all the world,
Or, from the all that are, took something good
To make a perfect woman, she you kill'd
Would be unparallel'd.
LEONTES.
I think so. Kill'd!
She I kill'd? I did so: but thou strik'st me
Sorely, to say I did; it is as bitter
Upon thy tongue, as in my thought. Now, good now,
Say so but seldom.