ARKCODEX
Act I, Scene 1
1Rousillon. The Count’s palace.
2Enter Bertram, the Countess of Rousillon, Helena, and Lafeu, all in black.
3CountessIn delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband.
4BertramAnd 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.
5LafeuYou shall find of the king a husband, madam; you, 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.
6CountessWhat hope is there of his majesty’s amendment?
7LafeuHe hath abandoned his physicians, madam; under whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope, and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time.
8CountessThis young gentlewoman had a father—O, that “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 the death of the king’s disease.
9LafeuHow called you the man you speak of, madam?
10CountessHe was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon.
11LafeuHe was excellent indeed, madam: the king very lately spoke of him admiringly and mourningly: he was skilful enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality.
12BertramWhat is it, my good lord, the king languishes of?
13LafeuA fistula, my lord.
14BertramI heard not of it before.
15LafeuI would it were not notorious. Was this gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?
16CountessHis sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that 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 simpleness; she derives her honesty and achieves her goodness.
17LafeuYour commendations, madam, get from her tears.
18Countess’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.
19HelenaI do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too.
20LafeuModerate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living.
21CountessIf the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.
22BertramMadam, I desire your holy wishes.
23LafeuHow understand we that?
24CountessBe 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 check’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.
25LafeuHe cannot want the best
That shall attend his love.
26CountessHeaven bless him! Farewell, Bertram. Exit.
27BertramTo 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.
28LafeuFarewell, pretty lady: you must hold the credit of your father. Exeunt Bertram and Lafeu.
29HelenaO, 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 a 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 relics. Who comes here?
30Enter Parolles.
31Aside. 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.
32ParollesSave you, fair queen!
33HelenaAnd you, monarch!
34ParollesNo.
35HelenaAnd no.
36ParollesAre you meditating on virginity?
37HelenaAy. 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?
38ParollesKeep him out.
39HelenaBut he assails; and our virginity, though valiant, in the defence yet is weak: unfold to us some warlike resistance.
40ParollesThere is none: man, sitting down before you, will undermine you and blow you up.
41HelenaBless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers up! Is there no military policy, how virgins might blow up men?
42ParollesVirginity 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!
43HelenaI will stand for’t a little, though therefore I die a virgin.
44ParollesThere’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!
45HelenaHow might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?
46ParollesLet 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?
47HelenaNot my virginity yet—1
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—
48ParollesWhat one, i’ faith?
49HelenaThat I wish well. ’Tis pity—
50ParollesWhat’s pity?
51HelenaThat 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.
52Enter Page.
53PageMonsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you. Exit.
54ParollesLittle Helen, farewell; if I can remember thee, I will think of thee at court.
55HelenaMonsieur Parolles, you were born under a charitable star.
56ParollesUnder Mars, I.
57HelenaI especially think, under Mars.
58ParollesWhy under Mars?
59HelenaThe wars have so kept you under that you must needs be born under Mars.
60ParollesWhen he was predominant.
61HelenaWhen he was retrograde, I think, rather.
62ParollesWhy think you so?
63HelenaYou go so much backward when you fight.
64ParollesThat’s for advantage.
65HelenaSo 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.
66ParollesI 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.
67HelenaOur 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.