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
5
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;
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 33