| ACT I SCENE I | Rousillon. The COUNT's palace. | |
| [
Enter BERTRAM, the COUNTESS of Rousillon, HELENA,
and LAFEU, all in black
] |
| COUNTESS | In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband. |
| BERTRAM | And I in going, madam, weep o'er my father's death |
| anew: but I must attend his majesty's command, to |
| whom I am now in ward, evermore in subjection. |
| LAFEU | You shall find of the king a husband, madam; you, | 5 |
| sir, a father: he that so generally is at all times |
| good must of necessity hold his virtue to you; whose |
| worthiness would stir it up where it wanted rather |
| than lack it where there is such abundance. |
| COUNTESS | What hope is there of his majesty's amendment? | 10 |
| LAFEU | He hath abandoned his physicians, madam; under whose |
| practises he hath persecuted time with hope, and |
| finds no other advantage in the process but only the |
| losing of hope by time. |
| COUNTESS | This young gentlewoman had a father,--O, that | 15 |
| 'had'! how sad a passage 'tis!--whose skill was |
| almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched so |
| far, would have made nature immortal, and death |
| should have play for lack of work. Would, for the |
| king's sake, he were living! I think it would be | 20 |
| the death of the king's disease. |
| LAFEU | How called you the man you speak of, madam? |
| COUNTESS | He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was |
| his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon. |
| LAFEU | He was excellent indeed, madam: the king very | 25 |
| lately spoke of him admiringly and mourningly: he |
| was skilful enough to have lived still, if knowledge |
| could be set up against mortality. |
| BERTRAM | What is it, my good lord, the king languishes of? |
| LAFEU | A fistula, my lord. | 30 |
| BERTRAM | I heard not of it before. |
| LAFEU | I would it were not notorious. Was this gentlewoman |
| the daughter of Gerard de Narbon? |
| COUNTESS | His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my |
| overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that | 35 |
| her education promises; her dispositions she |
| inherits, which makes fair gifts fairer; for where |
| an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there |
| commendations go with pity; they are virtues and |
| traitors too; in her they are the better for their | 40 |
| simpleness; she derives her honesty and achieves her goodness. |
| LAFEU | Your commendations, madam, get from her tears. |
| COUNTESS | 'Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise |
| in. The remembrance of her father never approaches |
| her heart but the tyranny of her sorrows takes all | 45 |
| livelihood from her cheek. No more of this, Helena; |
| go to, no more; lest it be rather thought you affect |
| a sorrow than have it. |
| HELENA | I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too. |
| LAFEU | Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, | 50 |
| excessive grief the enemy to the living. |
| COUNTESS | If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess |
| makes it soon mortal. |
| BERTRAM | Madam, I desire your holy wishes. |
| LAFEU | How understand we that? | 55 |
| COUNTESS | Be thou blest, Bertram, and succeed thy father |
| In manners, as in shape! thy blood and virtue |
| Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness |
| Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few, |
| Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy | 60 |
| Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend |
| Under thy own life's key: be cheque'd for silence, |
| But never tax'd for speech. What heaven more will, |
| That thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down, |
| Fall on thy head! Farewell, my lord; | 65 |
| 'Tis an unseason'd courtier; good my lord, |
| Advise him. |
| LAFEU | He cannot want the best |
| That shall attend his love. |
| COUNTESS | Heaven bless him! Farewell, Bertram. | 70 |
| [Exit] |
| BERTRAM | [To HELENA] The best wishes that can be forged in
|
| your thoughts be servants to you! Be comfortable |
| to my mother, your mistress, and make much of her. |
| LAFEU | Farewell, pretty lady: you must hold the credit of |
| your father. | 75 |
| [Exeunt BERTRAM and LAFEU] |
| HELENA | O, were that all! I think not on my father; |
| And these great tears grace his remembrance more |
| Than those I shed for him. What was he like? |
| I have forgot him: my imagination |
| Carries no favour in't but Bertram's. | 80 |
| I am undone: there is no living, none, |
| If Bertram be away. 'Twere all one |
| That I should love a bright particular star |
| And think to wed it, he is so above me: |
| In his bright radiance and collateral light | 85 |
| Must I be comforted, not in his sphere. |
| The ambition in my love thus plagues itself: |
| The hind that would be mated by the lion |
| Must die for love. 'Twas pretty, though plague, |
| To see him every hour; to sit and draw | 90 |
| His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls, |
| In our heart's table; heart too capable |
| Of every line and trick of his sweet favour: |
| But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy |
| Must sanctify his reliques. Who comes here? | 95 |
[Enter PAROLLES] |
[Aside] |
| One that goes with him: I love him for his sake; |
| And yet I know him a notorious liar, |
| Think him a great way fool, solely a coward; |
| Yet these fixed evils sit so fit in him, |
| That they take place, when virtue's steely bones | 100 |
| Look bleak i' the cold wind: withal, full oft we see |
| Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly. |
| PAROLLES | Save you, fair queen! |
| HELENA | And you, monarch! |
| PAROLLES | No. | 105 |
| HELENA | And no. |
| PAROLLES | Are you meditating on virginity? |
| HELENA | Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you: let me |
| ask you a question. Man is enemy to virginity; how |
| may we barricado it against him? | 110 |
| PAROLLES | Keep him out. |
| HELENA | But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant, |
| in the defence yet is weak: unfold to us some |
| warlike resistance. |
| PAROLLES | There is none: man, sitting down before you, will | 115 |
| undermine you and blow you up. |
| HELENA | Bless our poor virginity from underminers and |
| blowers up! Is there no military policy, how |
| virgins might blow up men? |
| PAROLLES | Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be | 120 |
| blown up: marry, in blowing him down again, with |
| the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It |
| is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to |
| preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational |
| increase and there was never virgin got till | 125 |
| virginity was first lost. That you were made of is |
| metal to make virgins. Virginity by being once lost |
| may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is |
| ever lost: 'tis too cold a companion; away with 't! |
| HELENA | I will stand for 't a little, though therefore I die a virgin. | 130 |
| PAROLLES | There's little can be said in 't; 'tis against the |
| rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity, |
| is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible |
| disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin: |
| virginity murders itself and should be buried in | 135 |
| highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate |
| offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, |
| much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very |
| paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. |
| Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of | 140 |
| self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the |
| canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but loose |
| by't: out with 't! within ten year it will make |
| itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the |
| principal itself not much the worse: away with 't! | 145 |
| HELENA | How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking? |
| PAROLLES | Let me see: marry, ill, to like him that ne'er it |
| likes. 'Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with |
| lying; the longer kept, the less worth: off with 't |
| while 'tis vendible; answer the time of request. | 150 |
| Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out |
| of fashion: richly suited, but unsuitable: just |
| like the brooch and the tooth-pick, which wear not |
| now. Your date is better in your pie and your |
| porridge than in your cheek; and your virginity, | 155 |
| your old virginity, is like one of our French |
| withered pears, it looks ill, it eats drily; marry, |
| 'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; |
| marry, yet 'tis a withered pear: will you anything with it? |
| HELENA | Not my virginity yet | 160 |
| There shall your master have a thousand loves, |
| A mother and a mistress and a friend, |
| A phoenix, captain and an enemy, |
| A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign, |
| A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear; | 165 |
| His humble ambition, proud humility, |
| His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet, |
| His faith, his sweet disaster; with a world |
| Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms, |
| That blinking Cupid gossips. Now shall he-- | 170 |
| I know not what he shall. God send him well! |
| The court's a learning place, and he is one-- |
| PAROLLES | What one, i' faith? |
| HELENA | That I wish well. 'Tis pity-- |
| PAROLLES | What's pity? | 175 |
| HELENA | That wishing well had not a body in't, |
| Which might be felt; that we, the poorer born, |
| Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes, |
| Might with effects of them follow our friends, |
| And show what we alone must think, which never | 180 |
| Return us thanks. |
| [Enter Page] |
| Page | Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you. |
| [Exit] |
| PAROLLES | Little Helen, farewell; if I can remember thee, I |
| will think of thee at court. |
| HELENA | Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a charitable star. | 185 |
| PAROLLES | Under Mars, I. |
| HELENA | I especially think, under Mars. |
| PAROLLES | Why under Mars? |
| HELENA | The wars have so kept you under that you must needs |
| be born under Mars. | 190 |
| PAROLLES | When he was predominant. |
| HELENA | When he was retrograde, I think, rather. |
| PAROLLES | Why think you so? |
| HELENA | You go so much backward when you fight. |
| PAROLLES | That's for advantage. | 195 |
| HELENA | So is running away, when fear proposes the safety; |
| but the composition that your valour and fear makes |
| in you is a virtue of a good wing, and I like the wear well. |
| PAROLLES | I am so full of businesses, I cannot answer thee |
| acutely. I will return perfect courtier; in the | 200 |
| which, my instruction shall serve to naturalize |
| thee, so thou wilt be capable of a courtier's |
| counsel and understand what advice shall thrust upon |
| thee; else thou diest in thine unthankfulness, and |
| thine ignorance makes thee away: farewell. When | 205 |
| thou hast leisure, say thy prayers; when thou hast |
| none, remember thy friends; get thee a good husband, |
| and use him as he uses thee; so, farewell. |
| [Exit] |
| HELENA | Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, |
| Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky | 210 |
| Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull |
| Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull. |
| What power is it which mounts my love so high, |
| That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye? |
| The mightiest space in fortune nature brings | 215 |
| To join like likes and kiss like native things. |
| Impossible be strange attempts to those |
| That weigh their pains in sense and do suppose |
| What hath been cannot be: who ever strove |
| So show her merit, that did miss her love? | 220 |
| The king's disease--my project may deceive me, |
| But my intents are fix'd and will not leave me. |
| [Exit] |