READ STUDY GUIDE: Act I, Scenes i-iii |
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Act I, Scene i:
Rousillon. A room in the COUNTESS'S palace.
Rousillon. A room in the COUNTESS'S palace.
| [Enter BERTRAM, the COUNTESS OF ROUSILLON, HELENA, and LAFEU, allin 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 |
| liv'd 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 blest, 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 check'd for silence, |
| But never tax'd for speech. What heaven more will, |
| That thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down, |
| Fall on thy head! Farewell.—My lord, |
| '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.] |
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