The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare/Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, The (1990)(Animated Pixels)[!][CDTV-PC].iso/shakes/text/24/01_01

Text File | 1991-04-10 | 11KB | 290 lines

Rousillon. A Room in the Countess's Palace.
 Enter young BERTRAM, Count of Rousillon, his mother the COUNTESS,
 HELENA, and LORD 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
    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 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 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 blessed, 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 checked for silence,
    But never taxed for speech. What heaven more will
    That thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down,
    Fall on thy head! Farewell. My lord,
    'Tis an unseasoned 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    The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts be
    servants to you!
    [To HELENA.] 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.
    Th' 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 archd 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?

                             Enter PAROLLES.

    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
    Looks bleak i'th' 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, 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
    mettle 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 lose by't. Out with't! Within the year it
    will make itself two, 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 toothpick, 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
    Returns 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 hath 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
    To show her merit that did miss her love?
    The king's disease - my project may deceive me,
    But my intents are fixed and will not leave me.
                                                [Exit.