The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

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The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 33

by William Shakespeare


  Young Bertram.

  KING Youth, thou bear’st thy father’s face;

  Frank nature, rather curious than in haste,

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  Hath well compos’d thee. Thy father’s moral parts

  Mayest thou inherit too! Welcome to Paris.

  BERTRAM My thanks and duty are your majesty’s.

  KING I would I had that corporal soundness now,

  As when thy father and myself in friendship

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  First tried our soldiership. He did look far

  Into the service of the time, and was

  Discipled of the bravest. He lasted long,

  But on us both did haggish age steal on,

  And wore us out of act. It much repairs me

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  To talk of your good father; in his youth

  He had the wit which I can well observe

  Today in our young lords; but they may jest

  Till their own scorn return to them unnoted

  Ere they can hide their levity in honour.

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  So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness

  Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were,

  His equal had awak’d them, and his honour,

  Clock to itself, knew the true minute when

  Exception bid him speak, and at this time

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  His tongue obey’d his hand. Who were below him

  He us’d as creatures of another place,

  And bow’d his eminent top to their low ranks,

  Making them proud of his humility

  In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man

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  Might be a copy to these younger times;

  Which, followed well, would demonstrate them now

  But goers backward.

  BERTRAM His good remembrance, sir,

  Lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb;

  So in approof lives not his epitaph

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  As in your royal speech.

  KING Would I were with him! He would always say –

  Methinks I hear him now; his plausive words

  He scatter’d not in ears, but grafted them

  To grow there and to bear – ‘Let me not live’,

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  (This his good melancholy oft began

  On the catastrophe and heel of pastime,

  When it was out) ‘Let me not live’, quoth he,

  ‘After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff

  Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses

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  All but new things disdain; whose judgments are

  Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies

  Expire before their fashions’. This he wish’d.

  I, after him, do after him wish too,

  Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home,

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  I quickly were dissolved from my hive

  To give some labourers room.

  2 LORD You’re loved, sir;

  They that least lend it you shall lack you first.

  KING I fill a place, I know’t. How long is’t, count,

  Since the physician at your father’s died?

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  He was much fam’d.

  BERTRAM Some six months since, my lord.

  KING If he were living I would try him yet –

  Lend me an arm – the rest have worn me out

  With several applications; nature and sickness

  Debate it at their leisure. Welcome, count;

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  My son’s no dearer.

  BERTRAM Thank your majesty.

  Exeunt. Flourish.

  1.3 Enter COUNTESS, Steward and Clown.

  COUNTESS I will now hear. What say you of this

  gentlewoman?

  STEWARD Madam, the care I have had to even your

  content I wish might be found in the calendar of my

  past endeavours; for then we wound our modesty, and

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  make foul the clearness of our deservings, when of

  ourselves we publish them.

  COUNTESS What does this knave here? get you gone,

  sirrah. The complaints I have heard of you I do not all

  believe; ’tis my slowness that I do not; for I know you

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  lack not folly to commit them and have ability enough

  to make such knaveries yours.

  CLOWN ’Tis not unknown to you, madam, I am a poor

  fellow.

  COUNTESS Well, sir.

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  CLOWN No, madam, ’tis not so well that I am poor,

  though many of the rich are damn’d; but if I may have

  your ladyship’s good will to go to the world, Isbel the

  woman and I will do as we may.

  COUNTESS Wilt thou needs be a beggar?

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  CLOWN I do beg your good will in this case.

  COUNTESS In what case?

  CLOWN In Isbel’s case and mine own. Service is no

  heritage, and I think I shall never have the blessing of

  God till I have issue a’ my body; for they say barnes

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  are blessings.

  COUNTESS Tell me thy reason why thou wilt marry.

  CLOWN My poor body, madam, requires it; I am driven

  on by the flesh, and he must needs go that the devil

  drives.

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  COUNTESS Is this all your worship’s reason?

  CLOWN Faith, madam, I have other holy reasons, such

  as they are.

  COUNTESS May the world know them?

  CLOWN I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you

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  and all flesh and blood are, and indeed I do marry that

  I may repent.

  COUNTESS Thy marriage, sooner than thy wickedness.

  CLOWN I am out a’ friends, madam, and I hope to have

  friends for my wife’s sake.

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  COUNTESS Such friends are thine enemies, knave.

  CLOWN Y’are shallow, madam, in great friends; for the

  knaves come to do that for me which I am aweary of.

  He that ears my land spares my team, and gives me

  leave to in the crop; if I be his cuckold, he’s my

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  drudge. He that comforts my wife is the cherisher of

  my flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh and

  blood loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh

  and blood is my friend; ergo, he that kisses my wife is

  my friend. If men could be contented to be what they

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  are, there were no fear in marriage; for young Charbon

  the puritan and old Poysam the papist, howsome’er

  their hearts are sever’d in religion, their heads are both

  one; they may jowl horns together like any deer i’ th’

  herd.

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  COUNTESS Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouth’d and

  calumnious knave?

  CLOWN A prophet I, madam; and I speak the truth the

  next way:

  For I the ballad will repeat

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  Which men full true shall find:

  Your marriage comes by destiny,

  Your cuckoo sings by kind.

  COUNTESS Get you gone, sir; I’ll talk with you more anon.

  STEWARD May it please you, madam, that he bid Helen

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  come to you; of her I am to speak.

  COUNTESS Sirrah, tell my gentlewoman I would speak

  with her – Helen I mean.

  CLOWN Was this fair face the cause, quoth she,

  Why the Grecians sacked Troy?

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  Fond done, done fond,

  Was this King Priam’s joy?

  With that she sighed as she stood,

  With that she sighed as she stood,<
br />
  And gave this sentence then:

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  Among nine bad if one be good,

  Among nine bad if one be good,

  There’s yet one good in ten.

  COUNTESS What, one good in ten? You corrupt the

  song, sirrah.

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  CLOWN One good woman in ten, madam, which is a

  purifying a’th’ song. Would God would serve the

  world so all the year! We’d find no fault with the tithe-

  woman if I were the parson. One in ten, quoth’a! And

  we might have a good woman born but or every

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  blazing star or at an earthquake, ’twould mend the

  lottery well; a man may draw his heart out ere ’a pluck

  one.

  COUNTESS You’ll be gone, sir knave, and do as I

  command you?

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  CLOWN That man should be at woman’s command, and

  yet no hurt done! Though honesty be no puritan, yet it

  will do no hurt; it will wear the surplice of humility

  over the black gown of a big heart. I am going, forsooth;

  the business is for Helen to come hither. Exit.

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  COUNTESS Well, now.

  STEWARD I know, madam, you love your gentlewoman

  entirely.

  COUNTESS Faith, I do. Her father bequeath’d her to me,

  and she herself, without other advantage, may lawfully

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  make title to as much love as she finds; there is more

  owing her than is paid, and more shall be paid her than

  she’ll demand.

  STEWARD Madam, I was very late more near her than I

  think she wish’d me; alone she was, and did

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  communicate to herself her own words to her own

  ears; she thought, I dare vow for her, they touch’d not

  any stranger sense. Her matter was, she loved your

  son. Fortune, she said, was no goddess, that had put

  such difference betwixt their two estates; Love no god,

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  that would not extend his might only where qualities

  were level; Diana no queen of virgins, that would

  suffer her poor knight surpris’d without rescue in the

  first assault or ransom afterward. This she deliver’d in

  the most bitter touch of sorrow that ere I heard virgin

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  exclaim in, which I held my duty speedily to acquaint

  you withal, sithence, in the loss that may happen, it

  concerns you something to know it.

  COUNTESS You have discharg’d this honestly; keep it to

  yourself. Many likelihoods inform’d me of this before,

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  which hung so tott’ring in the balance that I could

  neither believe nor misdoubt. Pray you leave me; stall

  this in your bosom; and I thank you for your honest

  care. I will speak with you further anon. Exit Steward.

  Enter HELENA.

  COUNTESS Even so it was with me when I was young;

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  If ever we are nature’s, these are ours; this thorn

  Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong;

  Our blood to us, this to our blood is born:

  It is the show and seal of nature’s truth,

  Where love’s strong passion is impress’d in youth.

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  By our remembrances of days foregone,

  Such were our faults, or then we thought them none.

  Her eye is sick on’t; I observe her now.

  HELENA What is your pleasure, madam?

  COUNTESS You know, Helen,

  I am a mother to you.

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  HELENA Mine honourable mistress.

  COUNTESS Nay, a mother.

  Why not a mother? When I said ‘a mother’,

  Methought you saw a serpent. What’s in ‘mother’

  That you start at it? I say I am your mother,

  And put you in the catalogue of those

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  That were enwombed mine. ’Tis often seen

  Adoption strives with nature, and choice breeds

  A native slip to us from foreign seeds.

  You ne’er oppress’d me with a mother’s groan,

  Yet I express to you a mother’s care.

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  God’s mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood

  To say I am thy mother? what’s the matter,

  That this distempered messenger of wet,

  The many-colour’d Iris, rounds thine eye?

  – Why, that you are my daughter?

  HELENA That I am not.

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  COUNTESS I say I am your mother.

  HELENA Pardon, madam;

  The Count Rossillion cannot be my brother.

  I am from humble, he from honoured name;

 

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