William Shakespeare - The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

‘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 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 wither’d pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet ‘tis a wither’d 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 a PAGE.]

PAGE.

Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you.

[Exit PAGE.]

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 business 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 fix’d, and will not leave me.

[Exit.]

SCENE 2. Paris. A room in the King’s palace.