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- $Unique_ID{SSP01151}
- $Title{All's Well That Ends Well: Act I, Scene I}
- $Author{Shakespeare, William}
- $Subject{}
- $Log{Dramatis Personae*01150.txt}
-
- Portions copyright (c) CMC ReSearch, Inc., 1989
-
- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
-
- ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
-
-
- ACT I
- ................................................................................
-
-
- 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. 10
-
- COUNTESS: What hope is there of his majesty's amendment?
-
- LAFEU: He 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.
-
- 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 20
- 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? 30
-
- 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 40
- 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. 50
-
- 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 60
- 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. 70
-
- 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 80
- Carries no favor 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, 90
- 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 favor:
- 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, 100
- 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 110
- 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 ? 120
-
- 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! 130
-
- 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 140
- 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 150
- 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; 160
- 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, 170
- 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, 180
- 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. 190
-
- 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; 200
- but the composition that your valor 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 210
- 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 220
- 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.]
-