Count. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal. Ber. Madam, I desire your holy wishes. Count. Be thou blest, Bertram ! and succeed thy father In manners, as in shape! thy blood, and virtue, Laf. He cannot want the best That shall attend his love. Count. Heaven bless him!- Farewell, Bertram. [Ex. Ber. [To HEL.] The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts, be servants to you! Be comfortable to my mother, your mistress, and make much of her. Laf. Farewell, pretty lady: You must hold the credit of your father. [Exe. BER. and LAF. Hel. O, were that all !-I think not on my father; Of every line and tricks of his sweet favour: [4] Trick is an expression taken from drawing, and is so explained in King John, Act 1. sc. i. The present instance explains itself: -to sit and draw But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy Enter PAROLLES. One that goes with him: I love him for his sake; 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 Look bleak in the cold wind: withal, full oft we see Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly. 5 Par. Save you, fair queen. Hel. And you, monarch. Par. No. Hel. And no. Par. Are you meditating on virginity? Hel. Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you ; 6 let me ask you a question: Man is enemy to virginity; how may we barricado it against him? Par. Keep him out. Hel. But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant in the defence, yet is weak: unfold to us some warlike resistance. Par. There is none; man, sitting down before you, will undermine you, and blow you up. Hel. Bless our poor virginity from underminers, and blowers up!-Is there no military policy, how virgins might blow up men? Par. Virginity, being blown down, man will quicklierbe 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. Hel. I will stand for't a little, though therefore I die a virgin. Par. There's little can be said in't; 'tis against the [5] Cold for naked; as superfluous for over-cloathed. This makes the propriety of the antithesis. WARBURTON. [6] Stain for colour. Parolles was in red. as appears from his being afterwards called red-tail'd humble-bee. WARB. Stain rather for what we now say tincture, some qualities, at least super ficial, of a soldier. JOHNS. 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't. Hel. How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking? Par. Let me see: Marry, ill, to like him that ne'er itlikes. '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 toothpick, which were not now: your date is better in your pye 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 dryly; marry, 'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet, 'tis a withered pear: Will you any thing with it? Hel. Not my virginity yet. There shall your master have a thousand loves, 8 [7] i. e. he that hangs himself, and a virgin, are in this circumstance alike; they are both self-destroyers. MALONE. [8] It does not appear that this rapturous effusion of Helena was designed to be intelligible to Parolles Its obscurity, therefore, may be its merit. It sufficiently explains what is passing in the mind of the speaker, to every one but him to whom she does not mean to explain it. STEEV. [9] Traditoria, a traitress, in the Italian language, is generally used as a term of endearment, The meaning of Helena is, that she shall prove every thing to Bertram. Our ancient writers delighted in catalogues, and always characterised love by contrarieties. STEEV. Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms, Hel. That I wish well. 'Tis pity Par. What's pity? Hel. That wishing well had not a body in't, Enter a Page. Page. Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you. [Exit Page. Par. Little Helen, farewell; if I can remember thee, I will think of thee at court. Hel. Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a charitable star. Par. Under Mars, I. Hel. I especially think, under Mars. Par. Why under Mars? Hel. The wars have so kept you under, that you must needs be born under Mars. Par. When he was predominant. Hel. When he was retrograde, I think, rather. Hel. You go so much backward, when you fight. Hel. 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, 2 and I like the wear well. Par. 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. [Ex. [1] And show by realities what we now must only think. JOHNS. M. MASON. Hel. 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? 3 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 II. Paris. A Room in the King's Palace. Flourish of Cornets. Enter the King of France, with letters; Lords and others attending. King. The Florentines and Senoys are by the ears; 1 Lord. So 'tis reported, sir. King. Nay, 'tis most credible; we here receive it 1 Lord. His love and wisdom, Approv'd so to your majesty, may plead For amplest credence. King. He hath arm'd our answer, 2 Lord. It may well serve A nursery to our gentry, who are sick King. What's he comes here? [3] She means, by what influence is my love directed to a person so much above me? why am I made to discern excellence, and left to long after it, without the food of hope? JOHNS. |