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- $Unique_ID{SSP01154}
- $Title{All's Well That Ends Well: Act II, 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 II
- ................................................................................
-
-
- SCENE I: Paris. The KING's palace.
- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
-
- {Flourish of cornets. Enter the KING, attended
- with divers young Lords taking leave for the
- Florentine war; BERTRAM, and PAROLLES.}
-
- KING: Farewell, young lords; these warlike principles
- Do not throw from you: and you, my lords, farewell:
- Share the advice betwixt you; if both gain, all
- The gift doth stretch itself as 'tis received,
- And is enough for both.
-
- First Lord: 'Tis our hope, sir,
- After well enter'd soldiers, to return
- And find your grace in health.
-
- KING: No, no, it cannot be; and yet my heart
- Will not confess he owes the malady
- That doth my life besiege. Farewell, young lords; 10
- Whether I live or die, be you the sons
- Of worthy Frenchmen: let higher Italy,--
- Those bated that inherit but the fall
- Of the last monarchy,--see that you come
- Not to woo honor, but to wed it; when
- The bravest questant shrinks, find what you seek,
- That fame may cry you loud: I say, farewell.
-
- Second Lord: Health, at your bidding, serve your majesty!
-
- KING: Those girls of Italy, take heed of them:
- They say, our French lack language to deny, 20
- If they demand: beware of being captives,
- Before you serve.
-
- Both: Our hearts receive your warnings.
-
- KING: Farewell. Come hither to me.
-
- [Exit, attended.]
-
- First Lord: O, my sweet lord, that you will stay behind us!
-
- PAROLLES: 'Tis not his fault, the spark.
-
- Second Lord: O, 'tis brave wars!
-
- PAROLLES: Most admirable: I have seen those wars.
-
- BERTRAM: I am commanded here, and kept a coil with
- 'Too young' and 'the next year' and ''tis too early.'
-
- PAROLLES: An thy mind stand to't, boy, steal away bravely.
-
- BERTRAM: I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock, 30
- Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry,
- Till honor be bought up and no sword worn
- But one to dance with! By heaven, I'll steal away.
-
- First Lord: There's honor in the theft.
-
- PAROLLES: Commit it, count.
-
- Second Lord: I am your accessary; and so, farewell.
-
- BERTRAM: I grow to you, and our parting is a tortured body.
-
- First Lord: Farewell, captain.
-
- Second Lord: Sweet Monsieur Parolles!
-
- PAROLLES: Noble heroes, my sword and yours are kin. Good
- sparks and lustrous, a word, good metals: you shall 40
- find in the regiment of the Spinii one Captain
- Spurio, with his cicatrice, an emblem of war, here
- on his sinister cheek; it was this very sword
- entrenched it: say to him, I live; and observe his
- reports for me.
-
- First Lord: We shall, noble captain.
-
- [Exeunt Lords.]
-
- PAROLLES: Mars dote on you for his novices! what will ye do?
-
- BERTRAM: Stay: the king.
-
- {Re-enter KING. BERTRAM and PAROLLES retire.}
-
- PAROLLES: [To BERTRAM] Use a more spacious ceremony to the
- noble lords; you have restrained yourself within the 50
- list of too cold an adieu: be more expressive to
- them: for they wear themselves in the cap of the
- time, there do muster true gait, eat, speak, and
- move under the influence of the most received star;
- and though the devil lead the measure, such are to
- be followed: after them, and take a more dilated
- farewell.
-
- BERTRAM: And I will do so.
-
- PAROLLES: Worthy fellows; and like to prove most sinewy
- sword-men. 60
-
- [Exeunt BERTRAM and PAROLLES.]
-
- {Enter LAFEU.}
-
- LAFEU: [Kneeling] Pardon, my lord, for me and for my
- tidings.
-
- KING: I'll fee thee to stand up.
-
- LAFEU: Then here's a man stands, that has brought his
- pardon.
- I would you had kneel'd, my lord, to ask me mercy,
- And that at my bidding you could so stand up.
-
- KING: I would I had; so I had broke thy pate,
- And ask'd thee mercy for't.
-
- LAFEU: Good faith, across: but, my good lord 'tis thus;
- Will you be cured of your infirmity?
-
- KING: No. 70
-
- LAFEU: O, will you eat no grapes, my royal fox?
- Yes, but you will my noble grapes, an if
- My royal fox could reach them: I have seen a medicine
- That's able to breathe life into a stone,
- Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary
- With spritely fire and motion; whose simple touch,
- Is powerful to araise King Pepin, nay,
- To give great Charlemain a pen in's hand,
- And write to her a love-line.
-
- KING: What 'her' is this?
-
- LAFEU: Why, Doctor She: my lord, there's one arrived, 80
- If you will see her: now, by my faith and honor,
- If seriously I may convey my thoughts
- In this my light deliverance, I have spoke
- With one that, in her sex, her years, profession,
- Wisdom and constancy, hath amazed me more
- Than I dare blame my weakness: will you see her
- For that is her demand, and know her business?
- That done, laugh well at me.
-
- KING: Now, good Lafeu,
- Bring in the admiration; that we with thee
- May spend our wonder too, or take off thine 90
- By wondering how thou took'st it.
-
- LAFEU: Nay, I'll fit you,
- And not be all day neither.
-
- [Exit.]
-
- KING: Thus he his special nothing ever prologues.
-
- {Re-enter LAFEU, with HELENA.}
-
- LAFEU: Nay, come your ways.
-
- KING: This haste hath wings indeed.
-
- LAFEU: Nay, come your ways:
- This is his majesty; say your mind to him:
- A traitor you do look like; but such traitors
- His majesty seldom fears: I am Cressid's uncle,
- That dare leave two together; fare you well.
-
- [Exit.]
-
- KING: Now, fair one, does your business follow us? 100
-
- HELENA: Ay, my good lord.
- Gerard de Narbon was my father;
- In what he did profess, well found.
-
- KING: I knew him.
-
- HELENA: The rather will I spare my praises towards him:
- Knowing him is enough. On's bed of death
- Many receipts he gave me: chiefly one.
- Which, as the dearest issue of his practice,
- And of his old experience the oily darling,
- He bade me store up, as a triple eye,
- Safer than mine own two, more dear; I have so; 110
- And hearing your high majesty is touch'd
- With that malignant cause wherein the honor
- Of my dear father's gift stands chief in power,
- I come to tender it and my appliance
- With all bound humbleness.
-
- KING: We thank you, maiden;
- But may not be so credulous of cure,
- When our most learned doctors leave us and
- The congregated college have concluded
- That laboring art can never ransom nature
- From her inaidible estate; I say we must not 120
- So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope,
- To prostitute our past-cure malady
- To empirics, or to dissever so
- Our great self and our credit, to esteem
- A senseless help when help past sense we deem.
-
- HELENA: My duty then shall pay me for my pains:
- I will no more enforce mine office on you.
- Humbly entreating from your royal thoughts
- A modest one, to bear me back a again.
-
- KING: I cannot give thee less, to be call'd grateful: 130
- Thou thought'st to help me; and such thanks I give
- As one near death to those that wish him live:
- But what at full I know, thou know'st no part,
- I knowing all my peril, thou no art.
-
- HELENA: What I can do can do no hurt to try,
- Since you set up your rest 'gainst remedy.
- He that of greatest works is finisher
- Oft does them by the weakest minister:
- So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,
- When judges have been babes; great floods have flown 140
- From simple sources, and great seas have dried
- When miracles have by the greatest been denied.
- Oft expectation fails and most oft there
- Where most it promises, and oft it hits
- Where hope is coldest and despair most fits.
-
- KING: I must not hear thee; fare thee well, kind maid;
- Thy pains not used must by thyself be paid:
- Proffers not took reap thanks for their reward.
-
- HELENA: Inspired merit so by breath is barr'd:
- It is not so with Him that all things knows 150
- As 'tis with us that square our guess by shows;
- But most it is presumption in us when
- The help of heaven we count the act of men.
- Dear sir, to my endeavors give consent;
- Of heaven, not me, make an experiment.
- I am not an impostor that proclaim
- Myself against the level of mine aim;
- But know I think and think I know most sure
- My art is not past power nor you past cure.
-
- KING: Are thou so confident? within what space 160
- Hopest thou my cure?
-
- HELENA: The great'st grace lending grace
- Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring
- Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring,
- Ere twice in murk and occidental damp
- Moist Hesperus hath quench'd his sleepy lamp,
- Or four and twenty times the pilot's glass
- Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass,
- What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly,
- Health shall live free and sickness freely die.
-
- KING: Upon thy certainty and confidence 170
- What darest thou venture?
-
- HELENA: Tax of impudence,
- A strumpet's boldness, a divulged shame
- Traduced by odious ballads: my maiden's name
- Sear'd otherwise; nay, worse--if worse--extended
- With vilest torture let my life be ended.
-
- KING: Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak
- His powerful sound within an organ weak:
- And what impossibility would slay
- In common sense, sense saves another way.
- Thy life is dear; for all that life can rate 180
- Worth name of life in thee hath estimate,
- Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, all
- That happiness and prime can happy call:
- Thou this to hazard needs must intimate
- Skill infinite or monstrous desperate.
- Sweet practiser, thy physic I will try,
- That ministers thine own death if I die.
-
- HELENA: If I break time, or flinch in property
- Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die,
- And well deserved: not helping, death's my fee; 190
- But, if I help, what do you promise me?
-
- KING: Make thy demand.
-
- HELENA: But will you make it even?
-
- KING: Ay, by my sceptre and my hopes of heaven.
-
- HELENA: Then shalt thou give me with thy kingly hand
- What husband in thy power I will command:
- Exempted be from me the arrogance
- To choose from forth the royal blood of France,
- My low and humble name to propagate
- With any branch or image of thy state;
- But such a one, thy vassal, whom I know 200
- Is free for me to ask, thee to bestow.
-
- KING: Here is my hand; the premises observed,
- Thy will by my performance shall be served:
- So make the choice of thy own time, for I,
- Thy resolved patient, on thee still rely.
- More should I question thee, and more I must,
- Though more to know could not be more to trust,
- From whence thou camest, how tended on: but rest
- Unquestion'd welcome and undoubted blest.
- Give me some help here, ho! If thou proceed 210
- As high as word, my deed shall match thy meed.
-
- [Flourish. Exeunt.]
-
