http://www.arcamax.com/plays/b-1465-1
All's Well That Ends Well
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
by William Shakespeare
PERSONS REPRESENTED.
KING OF FRANCE. THE DUKE OF FLORENCE. BERTRAM, Count of Rousillon.
LAFEU, an old Lord. PAROLLES, a follower of Bertram. Several young
French Lords, that serve with Bertram in the Florentine War. Steward,
Servant to the Countess of Rousillon. Clown, Servant to the Countess
of Rousillon. A Page, Servant to the Countess of Rousillon. COUNTESS
OF ROUSILLON, Mother to Bertram. HELENA, a Gentlewoman protected by
the Countess. An old Widow of Florence. DIANA, daughter to the Widow.
VIOLENTA, neighbour and friend to the Widow. MARIANA, neighbour and
friend to the Widow.
Lords attending on the KING; Officers; Soldiers, &c., French and
Florentine.
SCENE: Partly in France, and partly in Tuscany.
ACT I.
SCENE 1. Rousillon. A room in the COUNTESS'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 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.]