This is his majesty; say your mind to him.
A traitor you do look like, but such traitors
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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?
HELENA Ay, my good lord.
Gerard de Narbon was my father,
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In what he did profess, well found.
KING I knew him.
HELENA
The rather will I spare my praises towards him;
Knowing him is enough. On’s bed of death
Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one,
Which, as the dearest issue of his practice,
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And of his old experience th’only darling,
He bade me store up as a triple eye,
Safer than mine own two; more dear I have so,
And hearing your high majesty is touch’d
With that malignant cause, wherein the honour
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Of my dear father’s gift stands chief in power,
I come to tender it and my appliance,
With all bound humbleness.
KING We thank you, maiden;
But may not be so credulous of cure,
When our most learned doctors leave us, and
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The congregated college have concluded
That labouring art can never ransom nature
From her inaidible estate. I say we must not
So stain our judgment or corrupt our hope,
To prostitute our past-cure malady
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To empirics, or to dissever so
Our great self and our credit, to esteem
A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.
HELENA My duty then shall pay me for my pains.
I will no more enforce mine office on you,
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Humbly entreating from your royal thoughts
A modest one to bear me back again.
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.
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But what at full I know, thou know’st no part;
I knowing all my peril, thou no art.
HELENA 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
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Oft does them by the weakest minister.
So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,
When judges have been babes. Great floods have flown
From simple sources, and great seas have dried
When miracles have by the great’st been denied.
140
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises, and oft it hits
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;
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Proffers not took reap thanks for their reward.
HELENA Inspired merit so by breath is barr’d.
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
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The help of heaven we count the act of men.
Dear sir, to my endeavours give consent;
Of heaven, not me, make an experiment.
I am not an impostor, that proclaim
Myself against the level of mine aim,
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But know I think, and think I know most sure,
My art is not past power, nor you past cure.
KING Art thou so confident? Within what space
Hop’st thou my cure?
HELENA The greatest Grace lending grace,
Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring
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Their fiery coacher his diurnal ring,
Ere twice in murk and occidental damp
Moist Hesperus hath quench’d her sleepy lamp,
Or four and twenty times the pilot’s glass
Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass,
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What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly,
Health shall live free and sickness freely die.
KING Upon thy certainty and confidence
What dar’st thou venture?
HELENA Tax of impudence,
A strumpet’s boldness, a divulged shame,
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Traduc’d by odious ballads; my maiden’s name
Sear’d otherwise; ne worse of worst, extended
With vildest torture, let my life be ended.
KING Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak
His powerful sound within an organ weak;
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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 – all
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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.
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HELENA 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.
HELENA But will you make it even?
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KING Ay, by my sceptre and my hopes of heaven.
HELENA Then shalt thou give me with thy kingly hand
What husband in thy power I will command:
Exempted be from me the arrogance
To choose from forth the royal blood of France
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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.
KING Here is my hand; the premises observ’d,
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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,
Though more to know could not be more to trust:
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From whence thou cam’st, how tended on; but rest,
Unquestion’d, welcome, and undoubted bless’d.
Give me some help here, ho! If thou proceed
As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.
Flourish. Exeunt.
2.2 Enter COUNTESS and Clown.
COUNTESS Come on, sir; I shall now put you to the
height of your breeding.
CLOWN I will show myself highly fed and lowly taught.
I know my business is but to the court.
COUNTESS To the court! Why, what place make you
5
special, when you put off that with such contempt?
But to the court!
CLOWN Truly, madam, if God have lent a man any
manners he may easily put it off at court: he that
cannot make a leg, put off’s cap, kiss his hand, and say
10
nothing, has neither leg, hands, lip, nor cap; and
indeed such a fellow, to say precisely, were not for the
court; but for me, I have an answer will serve all men.
COUNTESS Marry, that’s a
bountiful answer that fits all
questions.
15
CLOWN It is like a barber’s chair that fits all buttocks:
the pin-buttock, the quatch-buttock, the brawn-
buttock, or any buttock.
COUNTESS Will your answer serve fit to all questions?
CLOWN As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an
20
attorney, as your French crown for your taffety punk,
as Tib’s rush for Tom’s forefinger, as a pancake for
Shrove Tuesday, a morris for May-day, as the nail to
his hole, the cuckold to his horn, as a scolding quean
to a wrangling knave, as the nun’s lip to the friar’s
25
mouth; nay, as the pudding to his skin.
COUNTESS Have you, I say, an answer of such fitness for
all questions?
CLOWN From below your duke to beneath your
constable, it will fit any question.
30
COUNTESS It must be an answer of most monstrous size
that must fit all demands.
CLOWN But a trifle neither, in good faith, if the learned
should speak truth of it. Here it is, and all that belongs
to’t: ask me if I am a courtier; it shall do you no harm
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to learn.
COUNTESS To be young again, if we could, I will be a
fool in question, hoping to be the wiser by your
answer. I pray you, sir, are you a courtier?
CLOWN O Lord, sir! There’s a simple putting off. More,
40
more, a hundred of them.
COUNTESS Sir, I am a poor friend of yours that loves
you.
CLOWN O Lord, sir! Thick, thick; spare not me.
COUNTESS I think, sir, you can eat none of this homely
45
meat.
CLOWN O Lord, sir! Nay, put me to’t, I warrant you.
COUNTESS You were lately whipp’d, sir, as I think.
CLOWN O Lord, sir! Spare not me.
COUNTESS Do you cry ‘O Lord, sir!’ at your whipping,
50
and ‘spare not me’? Indeed your ‘O Lord, sir!’ is very
sequent to your whipping; you would answer very well
to a whipping, if you were but bound to’t.
CLOWN
I ne’er had worse luck in my life in my ‘O Lord, sir!’
I see things may serve long, but not serve ever.
55
COUNTESS I play the noble housewife with the time,
To entertain it so merrily with a fool.
CLOWN O Lord, sir! Why, there’t serves well again.
COUNTESS
An end, sir! To your business: give Helen this,
And urge her to a present answer back.
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Commend me to my kinsmen and my son.
This is not much.
CLOWN Not much commendation to them?
COUNTESS
Not much employment for you. You understand me?
CLOWN Most fruitfully. I am there before my legs.
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COUNTESS Haste you again. Exeunt.
2.3 Enter BERTRAM, LAFEW and PAROLLES.
LAFEW They say miracles are past; and we have our
philosophical persons to make modern and familiar,
things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we
make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into
seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves
5
to an unknown fear.
PAROLLES Why, ’tis the rarest argument of wonder that
hath shot out in our latter times.
BERTRAM And so ’tis.
LAFEW To be relinquish’d of the artists –
10
PAROLLES So I say – both of Galen and Paracelsus.
LAFEW Of all the learned and authentic Fellows –
PAROLLES Right; so I say.
LAFEW That gave him out incurable –
PAROLLES Why, there ’tis; so say I too.
15
LAFEW Not to be help’d.
PAROLLES Right; as ’twere a man assur’d of a –
LAFEW Uncertain life and sure death.
PAROLLES Just. You say well. So would I have said.
LAFEW I may truly say it is a novelty to the world.
20
PAROLLES It is indeed; if you will have it in showing,
you shall read it in what-do-ye-call there.
LAFEW [reading] A showing of a heavenly effect in an
earthly actor.
PAROLLES That’s it; I would have said the very same.
25
LAFEW Why, your dolphin is not lustier; fore me, I
speak in respect –
PAROLLES Nay, ’tis strange, ’tis very strange; that is the
brief and the tedious of it; and he’s of a most
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 35