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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,

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?

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

'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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Shakespeare All's Well That Ends Well | Act 1, Scene 1