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Paris. A Room in the KING’S Palace. | |
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Flourish. Enter the KING, with divers young Lords taking leave for the Florentine war; BERTRAM, PAROLLES, and Attendants. | |
| King. Farewell, young lords: these war-like principles | |
| Do not throw from you: and you, my lords, farewell: | |
| Share the advice betwixt you; if both gain, all | 5 |
| The gift doth stretch itself as ’tis receiv’d, | |
| And is enough for both. | |
| First Lord. ’Tis our hope, sir, | |
| After well enter’d soldiers, to return | |
| And find your Grace in health. | 10 |
| King. No, no, it cannot be; and yet my heart | |
| Will not confess he owes the malady | |
| That doth my life besiêge. Farewell, young lords; | |
| Whether I live or die, be you the sons | |
| Of worthy Frenchmen: let higher Italy— | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| Sec. 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. | 25 |
| Both Lords. Our hearts receive your warnings. | |
| King. Farewell. Come hither to me. [Exit attended. | |
| First Lord. O my sweet lord, that you will stay behind us! | |
| Par. ’Tis not his fault, the spark. | |
| Sec. Lord. O! ’tis brave wars. | 30 |
| Par. Most admirable: I have seen those wars. | |
| Ber. I am commanded here, and kept a coil with | |
| ‘Too young,’ and ‘the next year,’ and ‘’tis too early.’ | |
| Par. An thy mind stand to ’t, boy, steal away bravely. | |
| Ber. I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock, | 35 |
| 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. | |
| Par. Commit it, count. | 40 |
| Sec. Lord. I am your accessary; and so farewell. | |
| Ber. I grow to you, and our parting is a tortured body. | |
| First Lord. Farewell, captain. | |
| Sec. Lord. Sweet Monsieur Parolles! | |
| Par. 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 entrenched it: say to him, I live, and observe his reports for me | 45 |
| Sec. Lord. We shall, noble captain. [Exeunt Lords. | |
| Par. Mars dote on you for his novices! | |
| What will ye do? | |
| Ber. Stay; the king. | |
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Re-enter KING; PAROLLES and BERTRAM retire. | 50 |
| Par. Use a more spacious ceremony to the noble lords; you have restrained 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 received star; and though the devil lead the measure, such are to be followed. After them, and take a more dilated farewell. | |
| Ber. And I will do so. | |
| Par. Worthy fellows; and like to prove most sinewy swordmen. [Exeunt BERTRAM and PAROLLES. | |
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Enter LAFEU. | |
| Laf. [Kneeling.] Pardon, my lord, for me and for my tidings. | 55 |
| King. I’ll fee thee to stand up. | |
| Laf. 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, | 60 |
| And ask’d thee mercy for ’t. | |
| Laf. Good faith, across: but, my good lord, ’tis thus; | |
| Will you be cur’d of your infirmity? | |
| King. No. | |
| Laf. O! will you eat no grapes, my royal fox? | 65 |
| Yes, but you will my noble grapes an 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 spritely fire and motion; whose simple touch | 70 |
| Is powerful to araise King Pepin, nay, | |
| To give great Charlemain a pen in ’s hand | |
| And write to her a love-line. | |
| King. What ‘her’ is this? | |
| Laf. Why, Doctor She. My lord, there’s one arriv’d | 75 |
| 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 | 80 |
| 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 Lafeu, | |
| Bring in the admiration, that we with thee | 85 |
| May spend our wonder too, or take off thine | |
| By wond’ring how thou took’st it. | |
| Laf. Nay, I’ll fit you, | |
| And not be all day neither. [Exit. | |
| King. Thus he his special nothing ever prologues. | 90 |
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Re-enter LAFEU, with HELENA. | |
| Laf. Nay, come your ways. | |
| King. This haste hath wings indeed. | |
| Laf. Nay, come your ways; | |
| This is his majesty, say your mind to him: | 95 |
| 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? | |
| Hel. Ay, my good lord. | 100 |
| Gerard de Narbon was my father; | |
| In what he did profess well found. | |
| King. I knew him. | |
| Hel. The rather will I spare my praises towards him; | |
| Knowing him is enough. On ’s bed of death | 105 |
| 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; | 110 |
| 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. | 115 |
| 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 | 120 |
| 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 | 125 |
| A senseless help when help past sense we deem. | |
| Hel. 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. | 130 |
| 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. | 135 |
| Hel. 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, | 140 |
| When judges have been babes; great floods have flown | |
| From simple sources; and great seas have dried | |
| When miracles have by the greatest been denied. | |
| Oft expectation fails, and most oft there | |
| Where most it promises; and oft it hits | 145 |
| 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. | |
| Hel. Inspired merit so by breath is barr’d. | 150 |
| 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; | 155 |
| 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. | 160 |
| King. Art thou so confident? Within what space | |
| Hop’st thou my cure? | |
| Hel. The great’st grace lending grace, | |
| Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring | |
| Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring, | 165 |
| Ere twice in murk and occidental damp | |
| Moist Hesperus hath quench’d his 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, | 170 |
| Health shall live free, and sickness freely die. | |
| King. Upon thy certainty and confidence | |
| What dar’st thou venture? | |
| Hel. Tax of impudence, | |
| A strumpet’s boldness, a divulged shame, | 175 |
| Traduc’d by odious ballads: my maiden’s name | |
| Sear’d otherwise; nay worse—if worse—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; | 180 |
| 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, virtue, all | 185 |
| 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. | 190 |
| Hel. 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. | 195 |
| Hel. But will you make it even? | |
| King. Ay, by my sceptre, and my hopes of heaven. | |
| Hel. Then shalt thou give me with thy kingly hand | |
| What husband in thy power I will command: | |
| Exempted be from me the arrogance | 200 |
| 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. | 205 |
| 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, | 210 |
| 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 blest. | |
| Give me some help here, ho! If thou proceed | |
| As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed. [Flourish. Exeunt. | 215 |
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