William Shakespeare - Ultimate Collection: Complete Plays & Poetry in One Volume. William Shakespeare

Whose dear perfection hearts that scorn’d to serve

       Humbly call’d mistress.

       KING.

       Praising what is lost

       Makes the remembrance dear.—Well, call him hither;—

       We are reconcil’d, and the first view shall kill

       All repetition:—let him not ask our pardon;

       The nature of his great offence is dead,

       And deeper than oblivion do we bury

       Th’ incensing relics of it; let him approach,

       A stranger, no offender; and inform him,

       So ‘tis our will he should.

       GENTLEMAN.

       I shall, my liege.

       [Exit Gentleman.]

       KING.

       What says he to your daughter? have you spoke?

       LAFEU.

       All that he is hath reference to your highness.

       KING.

       Then shall we have a match. I have letters sent me

       That sets him high in fame.

       [Enter BERTRAM.]

       LAFEU.

       He looks well on ‘t.

       KING.

       I am not a day of season,

       For thou mayst see a sunshine and a hail

       In me at once: but to the brightest beams

       Distracted clouds give way; so stand thou forth;

       The time is fair again.

       BERTRAM.

       My high-repented blames,

       Dear sovereign, pardon to me.

       KING.

       All is whole;

       Not one word more of the consumed time.

       Let’s take the instant by the forward top;

       For we are old, and on our quick’st decrees

       The inaudible and noiseless foot of time

       Steals ere we can effect them. You remember

       The daughter of this lord?

       BERTRAM.

       Admiringly, my liege: at first

       I stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart

       Durst make too bold herald of my tongue:

       Where the impression of mine eye infixing,

       Contempt his scornful perspective did lend me,

       Which warp’d the line of every other favour;

       Scorned a fair colour, or express’d it stolen;

       Extended or contracted all proportions

       To a most hideous object: thence it came

       That she whom all men prais’d, and whom myself,

       Since I have lost, have lov’d, was in mine eye

       The dust that did offend it.

       KING.

       Well excus’d:

       That thou didst love her, strikes some scores away

       From the great compt: but love that comes too late,

       Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried,

       To the great sender turns a sour offence,

       Crying, That’s good that’s gone. Our rash faults

       Make trivial price of serious things we have,

       Not knowing them until we know their grave:

       Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust,

       Destroy our friends, and after weep their dust:

       Our own love waking cries to see what’s done,

       While shameful hate sleeps out the afternoon.

       Be this sweet Helen’s knell, and now forget her.

       Send forth your amorous token for fair Maudlin:

       The main consents are had; and here we’ll stay

       To see our widower’s second marriage-day.

       COUNTESS.

       Which better than the first, O dear heaven, bless!

       Or, ere they meet, in me, O nature, cesse!

       LAFEU.

       Come on, my son, in whom my house’s name

       Must be digested, give a favour from you,

       To sparkle in the spirits of my daughter,

       That she may quickly come.—

       [BERTRAM gives a ring to Lafeu.]

       By my old beard,

       And every hair that’s on ‘t, Helen, that’s dead,

       Was a sweet creature: such a ring as this,

       The last that e’er I took her leave at court,

       I saw upon her finger.

       BERTRAM.

       Hers it was not.

       KING.

       Now, pray you, let me see it; for mine eye,

       While I was speaking, oft was fasten’d to it.—

       This ring was mine; and when I gave it Helen

       I bade her, if her fortunes ever stood

       Necessitied to help, that by this token

       I would relieve her. Had you that craft to ‘reave her

       Of what should stead her most?

       BERTRAM.

       My gracious sovereign,

       Howe’er it pleases you to take it so,

       The ring was never hers.

       COUNTESS.

       Son, on my life,

       I have seen her wear it; and she reckon’d it

       At her life’s rate.

       LAFEU.

       I am sure I saw her wear it.

       BERTRAM.

       You are deceiv’d, my lord; she never saw it:

       In Florence was it from a casement thrown me,

       Wrapp’d in a paper, which contain’d the name

       Of her that threw it: noble she was, and thought

       I stood engag’d: but when I had subscrib’d

       To mine own fortune, and inform’d her fully

       I could not answer in that course of honour

       As she had made the overture, she ceas’d,

       In heavy satisfaction, and would never

       Receive the ring again.

       KING.

       Plutus himself,

       That knows the tinct and multiplying medicine,

       Hath not in nature’s mystery more science

       Than I have in this ring: ‘twas mine, ‘twas Helen’s,

       Whoever gave it you. Then, if you know

       That you are well acquainted with yourself,

       Confess ‘twas hers, and by what rough enforcement

       You got it from her: she call’d the saints to surety

       That she would never put it from her finger