Part 6

COUNTESS. Nay, a mother. Why not a mother? When I said a mother, Methought you saw a serpent. What’s in mother, That you start at it? I say I am your mother, And put you in the catalogue of those That were enwombed mine. ’Tis often seen Adoption strives with nature, and choice breeds A native slip to us from foreign seeds. You ne’er oppress’d me with a mother’s groan, Yet I express to you a mother’s care. God’s mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood To say I am thy mother? What’s the matter, That this distempered messenger of wet, The many-colour’d Iris, rounds thine eye? —Why, that you are my daughter?

HELENA. That I am not.

COUNTESS. I say, I am your mother.

HELENA. Pardon, madam; The Count Rossillon cannot be my brother. I am from humble, he from honoured name; No note upon my parents, his all noble, My master, my dear lord he is; and I His servant live, and will his vassal die. He must not be my brother.

COUNTESS. Nor I your mother?

HELENA. You are my mother, madam; would you were— So that my lord your son were not my brother,— Indeed my mother! or were you both our mothers, I care no more for than I do for heaven, So I were not his sister. Can’t no other, But, I your daughter, he must be my brother?

COUNTESS. Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law. God shield you mean it not! daughter and mother So strive upon your pulse. What! pale again? My fear hath catch’d your fondness; now I see The mystery of your loneliness, and find Your salt tears’ head. Now to all sense ’tis gross You love my son; invention is asham’d, Against the proclamation of thy passion To say thou dost not. Therefore tell me true; But tell me then, ’tis so; for, look, thy cheeks Confess it, t’one to th’other; and thine eyes See it so grossly shown in thy behaviours, That in their kind they speak it; only sin And hellish obstinacy tie thy tongue, That truth should be suspected. Speak, is’t so? If it be so, you have wound a goodly clew; If it be not, forswear’t: howe’er, I charge thee, As heaven shall work in me for thine avail, To tell me truly.

HELENA. Good madam, pardon me.

COUNTESS. Do you love my son?

HELENA. Your pardon, noble mistress.

COUNTESS. Love you my son?

HELENA. Do not you love him, madam?

COUNTESS. Go not about; my love hath in’t a bond Whereof the world takes note. Come, come, disclose The state of your affection, for your passions Have to the full appeach’d.

HELENA. Then I confess, Here on my knee, before high heaven and you, That before you, and next unto high heaven, I love your son. My friends were poor, but honest; so’s my love. Be not offended; for it hurts not him That he is lov’d of me; I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suit, Nor would I have him till I do deserve him; Yet never know how that desert should be. I know I love in vain, strive against hope; Yet in this captious and inteemable sieve I still pour in the waters of my love And lack not to lose still. Thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun that looks upon his worshipper, But knows of him no more. My dearest madam, Let not your hate encounter with my love, For loving where you do; but if yourself, Whose aged honour cites a virtuous youth, Did ever, in so true a flame of liking, Wish chastely, and love dearly, that your Dian Was both herself and love; O then, give pity To her whose state is such that cannot choose But lend and give where she is sure to lose; That seeks not to find that her search implies, But riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies!

COUNTESS. Had you not lately an intent,—speak truly,— To go to Paris?

HELENA. Madam, I had.

COUNTESS. Wherefore? tell true.

HELENA. I will tell truth; by grace itself I swear. You know my father left me some prescriptions Of rare and prov’d effects, such as his reading And manifest experience had collected For general sovereignty; and that he will’d me In heedfull’st reservation to bestow them, As notes whose faculties inclusive were More than they were in note. Amongst the rest There is a remedy, approv’d, set down, To cure the desperate languishings whereof The king is render’d lost.

COUNTESS. This was your motive For Paris, was it? Speak.

HELENA. My lord your son made me to think of this; Else Paris, and the medicine, and the king, Had from the conversation of my thoughts Haply been absent then.

COUNTESS. But think you, Helen, If you should tender your supposed aid, He would receive it? He and his physicians Are of a mind; he, that they cannot help him; They, that they cannot help. How shall they credit A poor unlearned virgin, when the schools, Embowell’d of their doctrine, have let off The danger to itself?

HELENA. There’s something in’t More than my father’s skill, which was the great’st Of his profession, that his good receipt Shall for my legacy be sanctified By th’ luckiest stars in heaven; and would your honour But give me leave to try success, I’d venture The well-lost life of mine on his grace’s cure. By such a day, an hour.

COUNTESS. Dost thou believe’t?

HELENA. Ay, madam, knowingly.

COUNTESS. Why, Helen, thou shalt have my leave and love, Means and attendants, and my loving greetings To those of mine in court. I’ll stay at home, And pray God’s blessing into thy attempt. Be gone tomorrow; and be sure of this, What I can help thee to, thou shalt not miss.

[_Exeunt._]

ACT II.

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

Flourish. Enter the King with young Lords taking leave for the Florentine war; Bertram, Parolles and Attendants.

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 receiv’d, And is enough for both.

FIRST LORD. ’Tis our hope, sir, After well-ent’red 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. 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 honour, 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 If they demand; beware of being captives Before you serve.

BOTH. Our hearts receive your warnings.

KING. Farewell.—Come hither to me.

[_The King retires to a couch._]

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, Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry, Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn But one to dance with. By heaven, I’ll steal away.

FIRST LORD. There’s honour 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 tortur’d 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 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 entrench’d it. Say to him I live; and observe his reports for me.

FIRST LORD. We shall, noble captain.

PAROLLES. Mars dote on you for his novices!

[_Exeunt Lords._]

What will ye do?

BERTRAM. Stay the king.

PAROLLES. Use a more spacious ceremony to the noble lords; you have restrain’d yourself within the 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 receiv’d 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.

[_Exeunt Bertram and Parolles._]

Enter Lafew.

LAFEW. Pardon, my lord [_kneeling_], for me and for my tidings.

KING. I’ll fee thee to stand up.

LAFEW. 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.

LAFEW. Good faith, across; But, my good lord, ’tis thus: will you be cur’d Of your infirmity?

KING. No.

LAFEW. O, will you eat No grapes, my royal fox? Yes, but you will My noble grapes, and 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 sprightly fire and motion; whose simple touch Is powerful to araise King Pippen, nay, To give great Charlemain a pen in’s hand And write to her a love-line.

KING. What ‘her’ is this?

LAFEW. Why, doctor ‘she’! My lord, there’s one arriv’d, If you will see her. Now, by my faith and honour, 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 amaz’d 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 Lafew, Bring in the admiration; that we with thee May spend our wonder too, or take off thine By wond’ring how thou took’st it.

LAFEW. Nay, I’ll fit you, And not be all day neither.

[_Exit Lafew._]

KING. Thus he his special nothing ever prologues.

Enter Lafew with Helena.

LAFEW. Nay, come your ways.

KING. This haste hath wings indeed.

LAFEW. 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?

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 his bed of death Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one, Which, as the dearest issue of his practice, And of his old experience the only darling, He bade me store up as a triple eye, Safer than mine own two; more dear I have so, And hearing your high majesty is touch’d With that malignant cause, wherein the honour 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 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 great’st 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 us’d, 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 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 her 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; nay 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 bless’d. Give me some help here, ho! If thou proceed As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.

[_Flourish. Exeunt._]

SCENE II. Rossillon. 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 May-day, 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 whipp’d, 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 things 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. Commend me to my kinsmen and my son. This is not much.

CLOWN. Not much commendation to them?

COUNTESS. Not much employment for you. You understand me?

CLOWN. Most fruitfully. I am there before my legs.

COUNTESS. Haste you again.

[_Exeunt severally._]

SCENE III. Paris. The King’s palace.

Enter Bertram, Lafew and Parolles.

LAFEW. They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.

PAROLLES. Why, ’tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot out in our latter times.

BERTRAM. And so ’tis.

LAFEW. To be relinquish’d of the artists,—

PAROLLES. So I say; both of Galen and Paracelsus.

LAFEW. Of all the learned and authentic fellows,—

PAROLLES. Right; so I say.

LAFEW. That gave him out incurable,—

PAROLLES. Why, there ’tis; so say I too.

LAFEW. Not to be helped.

PAROLLES. Right; as ’twere a man assur’d of a—

LAFEW. Uncertain life and sure death.

PAROLLES. Just; you say well. So would I have said.

LAFEW. I may truly say, it is a novelty to the world.

PAROLLES. It is indeed; if you will have it in showing, you shall read it in what do you call there?

LAFEW. A showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor.

PAROLLES. That’s it; I would have said the very same.

LAFEW. Why, your dolphin is not lustier; fore me, I speak in respect—

PAROLLES. Nay, ’tis strange, ’tis very strange; that is the brief and the tedious of it; and he’s of a most facinerious spirit that will not acknowledge it to be the—

LAFEW. Very hand of heaven.

PAROLLES. Ay, so I say.

LAFEW. In a most weak—

PAROLLES. And debile minister, great power, great transcendence, which should indeed give us a further use to be made than alone the recov’ry of the king, as to be—

LAFEW. Generally thankful.

PAROLLES. I would have said it; you say well. Here comes the king.

Enter King, Helena and Attendants.

LAFEW. Lustique, as the Dutchman says. I’ll like a maid the better, whilst I have a tooth in my head. Why, he’s able to lead her a coranto.

PAROLLES. _Mor du vinager!_ is not this Helen?

LAFEW. Fore God, I think so.

KING. Go, call before me all the lords in court.

[_Exit an Attendant._]

Sit, my preserver, by thy patient’s side, And with this healthful hand, whose banish’d sense Thou has repeal’d, a second time receive The confirmation of my promis’d gift, Which but attends thy naming.

Enter several Lords.

Fair maid, send forth thine eye. This youthful parcel Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing, O’er whom both sovereign power and father’s voice I have to use. Thy frank election make; Thou hast power to choose, and they none to forsake.

HELENA. To each of you one fair and virtuous mistress Fall, when love please! Marry, to each but one!

LAFEW. I’d give bay curtal and his furniture My mouth no more were broken than these boys’, And writ as little beard.

KING. Peruse them well. Not one of those but had a noble father.

She addresses her to a Lord.

HELENA. Gentlemen, Heaven hath through me restor’d the king to health.

ALL. We understand it, and thank heaven for you.

HELENA. I am a simple maid, and therein wealthiest That I protest I simply am a maid. Please it, your majesty, I have done already. The blushes in my cheeks thus whisper me: “We blush that thou shouldst choose; but, be refused, Let the white death sit on thy cheek for ever, We’ll ne’er come there again.”

KING. Make choice; and, see, Who shuns thy love shuns all his love in me.

HELENA. Now, Dian, from thy altar do I fly, And to imperial Love, that god most high, Do my sighs stream. [_To first Lord._] Sir, will you hear my suit?

FIRST LORD. And grant it.

HELENA. Thanks, sir; all the rest is mute.

LAFEW. I had rather be in this choice than throw ames-ace for my life.

HELENA. [_To second Lord._] The honour, sir, that flames in your fair eyes, Before I speak, too threat’ningly replies. Love make your fortunes twenty times above Her that so wishes, and her humble love!

SECOND LORD. No better, if you please.

HELENA. My wish receive, Which great Love grant; and so I take my leave.

LAFEW. Do all they deny her? An they were sons of mine I’d have them whipp’d; or I would send them to th’ Turk to make eunuchs of.

HELENA. [_To third Lord._] Be not afraid that I your hand should take; I’ll never do you wrong for your own sake. Blessing upon your vows, and in your bed Find fairer fortune, if you ever wed!

LAFEW. These boys are boys of ice, they’ll none have her. Sure, they are bastards to the English; the French ne’er got ’em.

HELENA. [_To fourth Lord._] You are too young, too happy, and too good, To make yourself a son out of my blood.

FOURTH LORD. Fair one, I think not so.

LAFEW. There’s one grape yet. I am sure thy father drank wine. But if thou beest not an ass, I am a youth of fourteen; I have known thee already.

HELENA. [_To Bertram._] I dare not say I take you, but I give Me and my service, ever whilst I live, Into your guiding power. This is the man.

KING. Why, then, young Bertram, take her; she’s thy wife.

BERTRAM. My wife, my liege! I shall beseech your highness, In such a business give me leave to use The help of mine own eyes.

KING. Know’st thou not, Bertram, What she has done for me?

BERTRAM. Yes, my good lord, But never hope to know why I should marry her.

KING. Thou know’st she has rais’d me from my sickly bed.

BERTRAM. But follows it, my lord, to bring me down Must answer for your raising? I know her well; She had her breeding at my father’s charge: A poor physician’s daughter my wife! Disdain Rather corrupt me ever!