Complete Plays, The (311 page)

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 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, 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?

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
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;
’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.

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.

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.
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
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
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?

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
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.

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?

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 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 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 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.

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 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 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!

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. 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, 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.
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;
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 —
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?

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
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.

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.

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.

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 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 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
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
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?
The king’s disease — my project may deceive me,
But my intents are fix’d and will not leave me.

Exit

S
CENE
II. P
ARIS
. T
HE
K
ING
’
S
PALACE
.

Flourish of cornets. Enter the King of France, with letters, and divers Attendants

King

The Florentines and Senoys are by the ears;
Have fought with equal fortune and continue
A braving war.

First Lord

 
So ’tis reported, sir.

King

Nay, ’tis most credible; we here received it
A certainty, vouch’d from our cousin Austria,
With caution that the Florentine will move us
For speedy aid; wherein our dearest friend
Prejudicates the business and would seem
To have us make denial.

First Lord

His love and wisdom,
Approved so to your majesty, may plead
For amplest credence.

King

He hath arm’d our answer,
And Florence is denied before he comes:
Yet, for our gentlemen that mean to see
The Tuscan service, freely have they leave
To stand on either part.

Second Lord

It well may serve
A nursery to our gentry, who are sick
For breathing and exploit.

King

What’s he comes here?

Enter Bertram, Lafeu, and Parolles

First Lord

It is the Count Rousillon, my good lord,
Young Bertram.

King

 
Youth, thou bear’st thy father’s face;
Frank nature, rather curious than in haste,
Hath well composed thee. Thy father’s moral parts
Mayst thou inherit too! Welcome to Paris.

Bertram

My thanks and duty are your majesty’s.

King

I would I had that corporal soundness now,
As when thy father and myself in friendship
First tried our soldiership! He did look far
Into the service of the time and was
Discipled of the bravest: he lasted long;
But on us both did haggish age steal on
And wore us out of act. It much repairs me
To talk of your good father. In his youth
He had the wit which I can well observe
To-day in our young lords; but they may jest
Till their own scorn return to them unnoted
Ere they can hide their levity in honour;
So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness
Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were,
His equal had awaked them, and his honour,
Clock to itself, knew the true minute when
Exception bid him speak, and at this time
His tongue obey’d his hand: who were below him
He used as creatures of another place
And bow’d his eminent top to their low ranks,
Making them proud of his humility,
In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man
Might be a copy to these younger times;
Which, follow’d well, would demonstrate them now
But goers backward.

Bertram

His good remembrance, sir,
Lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb;
So in approof lives not his epitaph
As in your royal speech.

King

Would I were with him! He would always say —
Methinks I hear him now; his plausive words
He scatter’d not in ears, but grafted them,
To grow there and to bear,—‘Let me not live,’—
This his good melancholy oft began,
On the catastrophe and heel of pastime,
When it was out,—‘Let me not live,’ quoth he,
‘After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses
All but new things disdain; whose judgments are
Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies
Expire before their fashions.’ This he wish’d;
I after him do after him wish too,
Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home,
I quickly were dissolved from my hive,
To give some labourers room.

Second Lord

You are loved, sir:
They that least lend it you shall lack you first.

King

I fill a place, I know’t. How long is’t, count,
Since the physician at your father’s died?
He was much famed.

Bertram

 
Some six months since, my lord.

King

If he were living, I would try him yet.
Lend me an arm; the rest have worn me out
With several applications; nature and sickness
Debate it at their leisure. Welcome, count;
My son’s no dearer.

Bertram

Thank your majesty.

Exeunt. Flourish

S
CENE
III. R
OUSILLON
. T
HE
C
OUNT
’
S
PALACE
.