The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare

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 to have.

       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 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.

       LAFEU.

       He cannot want the best

       That shall attend his love.

       COUNTESS.

       Heaven bless him!—Farewell, Bertram.

       [Exit COUNTESS.]

       BERTRAM. The best wishes that can be forg’d in your thoughts [To HELENA.] 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. It were 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?

       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 fix’d evils sit so fit in him

       That they take place when virtue’s steely bones

       Looks bleak i’ the cold wind: withal, full oft we see

       Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.

       [Enter PAROLLES.]

       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, setting 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 it!

       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 lose by’t: out with’t! within ten years it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the principal itself not much the worse: away with it!

       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 toothpick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your