All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare
Act 1 - Scene 1
Rousillon. The COUNT’s palace.
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
[p]anew: but I must
attend his majesty's command, to
[p]whom I am now in ward, evermore in
subjection.
Lafeu : You shall find of the king a husband, madam; you,
[p]sir, a father: he
that so generally is at all times
[p]good must of necessity hold his
virtue to you; whose
[p]worthiness would stir it up where it wanted
rather
[p]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
[p]practises he
hath persecuted time with hope, and
[p]finds no other advantage in the
process but only the
[p]losing of hope by time.
Countess : This young gentlewoman had a father,--O, that
[p]'had'! how sad a
passage 'tis!--whose skill was
[p]almost as great as his honesty; had
it stretched so
[p]far, would have made nature immortal, and
death
[p]should have play for lack of work. Would, for the
[p]king's
sake, he were living! I think it would be
[p]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
[p]his great right
to be so: Gerard de Narbon.
Lafeu : He was excellent indeed, madam: the king very
[p]lately spoke of him
admiringly and mourningly: he
[p]was skilful enough to have lived
still, if knowledge
[p]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
[p]the daughter of
Gerard de Narbon?
Countess : His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my
[p]overlooking. I have
those hopes of her good that
[p]her education promises; her
dispositions she
[p]inherits, which makes fair gifts fairer; for
where
[p]an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities,
there
[p]commendations go with pity; they are virtues and
[p]traitors
too; in her they are the better for their
[p]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
[p]in. The
remembrance of her father never approaches
[p]her heart but the
tyranny of her sorrows takes all
[p]livelihood from her cheek. No more
of this, Helena;
[p]go to, no more; lest it be rather thought you
affect
[p]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,
[p]excessive grief the
enemy to the living.
Countess : If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess
[p]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
[p]In manners, as in
shape! thy blood and virtue
[p]Contend for empire in thee, and thy
goodness
[p]Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few,
[p]Do
wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
[p]Rather in power than use,
and keep thy friend
[p]Under thy own life's key: be cheque'd for
silence,
[p]But never tax'd for speech. What heaven more will,
[p]That
thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down,
[p]Fall on thy head!
Farewell, my lord;
[p]'Tis an unseason'd courtier; good my
lord,
[p]Advise him.
Lafeu : He cannot want the best
[p]That shall attend his love.
Countess : Heaven bless him! Farewell, Bertram.
Bertram : [To HELENA] The best wishes that can be forged in
[p]your thoughts be
servants to you! Be comfortable
[p]to my mother, your mistress, and
make much of her.
Lafeu : Farewell, pretty lady: you must hold the credit of
[p]your father.
Helena : O, were that all! I think not on my father;
[p]And these great tears
grace his remembrance more
[p]Than those I shed for him. What was he
like?
[p]I have forgot him: my imagination
[p]Carries no favour in't
but Bertram's.
[p]I am undone: there is no living, none,
[p]If Bertram
be away. 'Twere all one
[p]That I should love a bright particular
star
[p]And think to wed it, he is so above me:
[p]In his bright
radiance and collateral light
[p]Must I be comforted, not in his
sphere.
[p]The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
[p]The hind
that would be mated by the lion
[p]Must die for love. 'Twas pretty,
though plague,
[p]To see him every hour; to sit and draw
[p]His arched
brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
[p]In our heart's table; heart too
capable
[p]Of every line and trick of his sweet favour:
[p]But now
he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
[p]Must sanctify his reliques. Who
comes here?
[p][Enter PAROLLES]
[p][Aside]
[p]One that goes with him:
I love him for his sake;
[p]And yet I know him a notorious
liar,
[p]Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;
[p]Yet these
fixed evils sit so fit in him,
[p]That they take place, when virtue's
steely bones
[p]Look bleak i' the cold wind: withal, full oft we
see
[p]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
[p]ask you a
question. Man is enemy to virginity; how
[p]may we barricado it
against him?
Parolles : Keep him out.
Helena : But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant,
[p]in the defence
yet is weak: unfold to us some
[p]warlike resistance.
Parolles : There is none: man, sitting down before you, will
[p]undermine you and
blow you up.
Helena : Bless our poor virginity from underminers and
[p]blowers up! Is there
no military policy, how
[p]virgins might blow up men?
Parolles : Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be
[p]blown up: marry,
in blowing him down again, with
[p]the breach yourselves made, you
lose your city. It
[p]is not politic in the commonwealth of nature
to
[p]preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational
[p]increase
and there was never virgin got till
[p]virginity was first lost. That
you were made of is
[p]metal to make virgins. Virginity by being once
lost
[p]may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is
[p]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
[p]rule of nature.
To speak on the part of virginity,
[p]is to accuse your mothers; which
is most infallible
[p]disobedience. He that hangs himself is a
virgin:
[p]virginity murders itself and should be buried
in
[p]highways out of all sanctified limit, as a
desperate
[p]offendress against nature. Virginity breeds
mites,
[p]much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very
[p]paring,
and so dies with feeding his own stomach.
[p]Besides, virginity is
peevish, proud, idle, made of
[p]self-love, which is the most
inhibited sin in the
[p]canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but
loose
[p]by't: out with 't! within ten year it will make
[p]itself
ten, which is a goodly increase; and the
[p]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
[p]likes. 'Tis a
commodity will lose the gloss with
[p]lying; the longer kept, the less
worth: off with 't
[p]while 'tis vendible; answer the time of
request.
[p]Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out
[p]of
fashion: richly suited, but unsuitable: just
[p]like the brooch and
the tooth-pick, which wear not
[p]now. Your date is better in your pie
and your
[p]porridge than in your cheek; and your virginity,
[p]your
old virginity, is like one of our French
[p]withered pears, it looks
ill, it eats drily; marry,
[p]'tis a withered pear; it was formerly
better;
[p]marry, yet 'tis a withered pear: will you anything with
it?
Helena : Not my virginity yet [--]
[p]There shall your master have a thousand
loves,
[p]A mother and a mistress and a friend,
[p]A phoenix, captain
and an enemy,
[p]A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign,
[p]A counsellor,
a traitress, and a dear;
[p]His humble ambition, proud
humility,
[p]His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet,
[p]His
faith, his sweet disaster; with a world
[p]Of pretty, fond, adoptious
christendoms,
[p]That blinking Cupid gossips. Now shall he--
[p]I know
not what he shall. God send him well!
[p]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,
[p]Which might be felt; that
we, the poorer born,
[p]Whose baser stars do shut us up in
wishes,
[p]Might with effects of them follow our friends,
[p]And show
what we alone must think, which never
[p]Return us thanks.
Page : Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you.
Parolles : Little Helen, farewell; if I can remember thee, I
[p]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
[p]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;
[p]but the
composition that your valour and fear makes
[p]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
[p]acutely. I will
return perfect courtier; in the
[p]which, my instruction shall serve
to naturalize
[p]thee, so thou wilt be capable of a
courtier's
[p]counsel and understand what advice shall thrust
upon
[p]thee; else thou diest in thine unthankfulness, and
[p]thine
ignorance makes thee away: farewell. When
[p]thou hast leisure, say
thy prayers; when thou hast
[p]none, remember thy friends; get thee a
good husband,
[p]and use him as he uses thee; so, farewell.
Helena : Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
[p]Which we ascribe to heaven:
the fated sky
[p]Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
[p]Our
slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
[p]What power is it which
mounts my love so high,
[p]That makes me see, and cannot feed mine
eye?
[p]The mightiest space in fortune nature brings
[p]To join like
likes and kiss like native things.
[p]Impossible be strange attempts
to those
[p]That weigh their pains in sense and do suppose
[p]What
hath been cannot be: who ever strove
[p]So show her merit, that did
miss her love?
[p]The king's disease--my project may deceive
me,
[p]But my intents are fix'd and will not leave me.
Next: Act 1 - Scene 2
