William Shakespeare - All's Well That Ends Well Act 1 Scene 1 lyrics

SCENE I. Rousillon. The COUNT's palace. Enter BERTRAM, the COUNTESS of Rousillon, HELENA, and LAFEU, all in 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 d**h 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 practises 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 pa**age 'tis!--whose sk** was almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, and d**h should have play for lack of work. Would, for the king's sake, he were living! I think it would be the d**h 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 lived 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 have it. 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 cheque'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 BERTRAM [To HELENA] 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. 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. 'Twere 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 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 reliques. Who comes here? Enter PAROLLES Aside 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 fixed evils sit so fit in him, That they take place, when virtue's steely bones Look bleak i' the cold wind: withal, full oft we see Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly. 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 a**ails; and our virginity, though valiant, in the defence yet is weak: unfold to us some warlike resistance. PAROLLES There is none: man, sitting 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 't! 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 loose by't: out with 't! within ten year it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the principal itself not much the worse: away with 't! 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 tooth-pick, 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 withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet 'tis a withered 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 Return us thanks. Enter Page PAGE Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you. Exit 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 have 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 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. 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 So 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