BER. Madam, I desire your holy wishes. LAF. How understand we that? COUNT. Be thou bless'd, Bertram! and succeed thy father "T is an unseason'd courtier; good my lord, LAF. He cannot want the best That shall attend his love. COUNT. Heaven bless him!-Farewell, Bertram. [Exit. BER. The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts [to HELENA] 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. [Exeunt BERTRAM and LAFEU. HEL. O, were that all!-I think not on my father; The ambition in my love thus plagues itself: Must die for love. 'T was 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 The "great tears" which the departure of Bertram causes her to shed, being imputed to her grief for her father, grace his remembrance more than those which she really shed for him. Table-the tabular surface, tablet, upon which a picture is painted, and thence used for the picture itself. d Favour-countenance. Trick-peculiarity. See Note on 'King John,' Act I., Scene 1. But now he's gone, and my idolatrous tancy Enter PABOLLES. 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 Look bleak i' the cold wind: withal, full oft we see Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly PAR. Save you, fair queen. HEL. And you, monarch a PAR. NO. HEL. And no. PAR. Are you meditating on virginity? HEL. 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? PAR. Keep him out. HEL. But he assails; and our virginity, though yaliant in the defence, yet is weak: unfold to us some warlike resistance. PAR. There is none blow you up. man, sitting down before you, will undermine you, and 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 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: 't is too cold a companion; away with 't. Το HEL. I will stand for 't a little, though therefore I die a virgin. PAR. There's little can be said in 't; 't is against the rule of nature. 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 • Monarch. When Parolles calls Helena "queen," she answers by a sarcastic allusion to the Monarcho-an Italian who figured in London about 1580, possessed with the notion that he was sovereign of the world. (See 'Love's Labour's Lost,' Act IV., Scene 1.) b Stain-tincture;—you have some slight mark of the soldier about you. is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by 't: Out with 't: within ten year it will make itself two", 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 it likes. "T is a commodity will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept the less worth: off with 't, while 't is 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, 't is a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet, 't is a withered pear: Will you anything with it? HEL. Not my virginity yet. There, shall your master have a thousand loves, A phoenix, captain, and an enemy, A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign, A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear; His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet, 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— PAR. What one, i' faith? HEL. That I wish well. -T is pity PAR. What's pity? HEL. 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, Enter a Page. PAGE. Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you. [Exit. • We print the text as in the folio. It is not worth discussing whether the word two of the original should not be ten, as it is commonly read. Hanmer makes Helena say, "You're for the court," before she goes on, "There, shall your master," &c. It is scarcely necessary that her slight answer to the random talk of Parolles should have any connection with her subsequent speech. She has been abstracted during this dialogue, and now her thoughts are clothed in words. 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. PAR. Why think you so? HEL. You go so much backward when you fight. PAR. That's for advantage. 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, and I like the wear well. PAR. I am so full of businesses I cannot answer thee acutely: I will return Which we ascribe to Heaven; the fated sky [Exit. [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; Have fought with equal fortune, and continue 1 LORD. So 't is reported, sir. KING. Youth, thou bear'st thy father's face; |