William Shakespeare - The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

The congregated college have concluded

That labouring art can never ransom nature

From her inaidable estate,—I say we must not

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 again.

KING.

I cannot give thee less, to be call’d grateful.

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

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 barred:

It is not so with Him that all things knows,

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 endeavours 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.

Art thou so confident? Within what space

Hop’st thou my cure?

HELENA.

The greatest 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

What dar’st thou venture?

HELENA.

Tax of impudence,—

A strumpet’s boldness, a divulged shame,—

Traduc’d by odious ballads; my maiden’s name

Sear’d otherwise; ne worse of worst 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

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 deserv’d. Not helping, death’s my fee;

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

Is free for me to ask, thee to bestow.

KING.

Here is my hand; the premises observ’d,

Thy will by my performance shall be serv’d;

So make the choice of thy own time, for I,

Thy resolv’d 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 cam’st, how tended on.—But rest

Unquestion’d welcome and undoubted blest.—

Give me some help here, ho!—If thou proceed

As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.

[Flourish. Exeunt.]

SCENE 2. Rousillon. A room in the COUNTESS’S palace.

[Enter COUNTESS and CLOWN.]

COUNTESS. Come on, sir; I shall now put you to the height of your breeding.

CLOWN. I will show myself highly fed and lowly taught: I know my business is but to the court.

COUNTESS. To the court! why, what place make you special, when you put off that with such contempt? But to the court!

CLOWN. Truly, madam, if God have lent a man any manners, he may easily put it off at court: he that cannot make a leg, put off’s cap, kiss his hand, and say nothing, has neither leg, hands, lip, nor cap; and indeed such a fellow, to say precisely, were not for the court; but for me, I have an answer will serve all men.

COUNTESS.

Marry, that’s a bountiful answer that fits all questions.

CLOWN. It is like a barber’s chair, that fits all buttocks—the pin-buttock, the quatch-buttock, the brawn-buttock, or any buttock.

COUNTESS.

Will your answer serve fit to all questions?

CLOWN. As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your French crown for your taffety punk, as Tib’s rush for Tom’s forefinger, as a pancake for Shrove-Tuesday, a morris for Mayday, as the nail to his hole, the cuckold to his horn, as a scolding quean to a wrangling knave, as the nun’s lip to the friar’s mouth; nay, as the pudding to his skin.

COUNTESS.

Have you, I, say, an answer of such fitness for all questions?

CLOWN. From below your duke to beneath your constable, it will fit any question.

COUNTESS. It must be an answer of most monstrous size that must fit all demands.

CLOWN. But a trifle neither, in good faith, if the learned should speak truth of it: here it is, and all that belongs to’t. Ask me if I am a courtier: it shall do you no harm to learn.

COUNTESS. To be young again, if we could: I will be a fool in question, hoping to be the wiser by your answer. I pray you, sir, are you a courtier?

CLOWN. O Lord, sir!—There’s a simple putting off. More, more, a hundred of them.

COUNTESS.

Sir, I am a poor friend of yours, that loves you.

CLOWN.

O Lord, sir!—Thick, thick; spare not me.

COUNTESS.

I think, sir, you can eat none of this homely meat.

CLOWN.

O Lord, sir!—Nay, put me to’t, I warrant you.

COUNTESS.

You were lately whipped, sir, as I think.

CLOWN.

O Lord, sir!—Spare not me.

COUNTESS.

Do you cry ‘O Lord, sir!’ at your whipping, and ‘spare not me’?

Indeed your ‘O Lord, sir!’ is very sequent to your whipping. You

would answer very well to a whipping, if you were but bound to’t.

CLOWN. I ne’er had worse luck in my life in my—‘O Lord, sir!’ I see thing’s may serve long, but not serve ever.

COUNTESS. I play the noble housewife with the time, to entertain it so merrily with a fool.

CLOWN.

O Lord, sir!—Why, there’t serves well again.

COUNTESS.

An end, sir! To your business. Give Helen this,

And urge her to a present answer back: