HELENA
Something, and scarce so much; nothing indeed.
I would not tell you what I would, my lord.
Faith, yes:
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Strangers and foes do sunder and not kiss.
BERTRAM I pray you, stay not, but in haste to horse.
HELENA I shall not break your bidding, good my lord.
Where are my other men? Monsieur, farewell. Exit.
BERTRAM
Go thou toward home, where I will never come
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Whilst I can shake my sword or hear the drum.
Away, and for our flight.
PAROLLES Bravely. Coragio! Exeunt.
3.1 Flourish. Enter the DUKE of Florence, the two French Lords, with a troop of soldiers.
DUKE So that from point to point now have you heard
The fundamental reasons of this war,
Whose great decision hath much blood let forth,
And more thirsts after.
1 LORD Holy seems the quarrel
Upon your Grace’s part; black and fearful
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On the opposer.
DUKE Therefore we marvel much our cousin France
Would in so just a business shut his bosom
Against our borrowing prayers.
2 LORD Good my lord,
The reasons of our state I cannot yield,
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But like a common and an outward man
That the great figure of a council frames
By self-unable motion; therefore dare not
Say what I think of it, since I have found
Myself in my incertain grounds to fail
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As often as I guess’d.
DUKE Be it his pleasure.
1 LORD But I am sure the younger of our nature
That surfeit on their ease will day by day
Come here for physic.
DUKE Welcome shall they be,
And all the honours that can fly from us
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Shall on them settle. You know your places well;
When better fall, for your avails they fell.
Tomorrow to the field. Flourish. Exeunt.
3.2 Enter COUNTESS and Clown.
COUNTESS It hath happen’d all as I would have had it,
save that he comes not along with her.
CLOWN By my troth, I take my young lord to be a very
melancholy man.
COUNTESS By what observance, I pray you?
5
CLOWN Why, he will look upon his boot and sing; mend
the ruff and sing; ask questions and sing; pick his teeth
and sing. I know a man that had this trick of
melancholy sold a goodly manor for a song.
COUNTESS Let me see what he writes, and when he
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means to come. [Reads the letter.]
CLOWN I have no mind to Isbel since I was at court. Our
old lings and our Isbels a’th’ country are nothing like
your old ling and your Isbels a’th’ court. The brains of
my Cupid’s knock’d out, and I begin to love as an old
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man loves money, with no stomach.
COUNTESS What have we here?
CLOWN E’en that you have there. Exit.
COUNTESS [Reads.] I have sent you a daughter-in-law;
she hath recovered the king and undone me. I have wedded
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her, not bedded her, and sworn to make the ‘not’ eternal.
You shall hear I am run away; know it before the report
come. If there be breadth enough in the world I will hold
a long distance. My duty to you. Your unfortunate son,
BERTRAM.
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This is not well, rash and unbridled boy,
To fly the favours of so good a king,
To pluck his indignation on thy head
By the misprizing of a maid too virtuous
For the contempt of empire.
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Re-enter Clown.
CLOWN O madam, yonder is heavy news within,
between two soldiers and my young lady.
COUNTESS What is the matter?
CLOWN Nay, there is some comfort in the news, some
comfort; your son will not be kill’d so soon as I
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thought he would.
COUNTESS Why should he be kill’d?
CLOWN So say I, madam – if he run away, as I hear he
does; the danger is in standing to’t; that’s the loss of
men, though it be the getting of children. Here they
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come will tell you more. For my part, I only hear your
son was run away. Exit.
Enter HELENA and the two French Lords.
1 LORD Save you, good madam.
HELENA Madam, my lord is gone, for ever gone.
2 LORD Do not say so.
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COUNTESS Think upon patience. Pray you,
gentlemen –
I have felt so many quirks of joy and grief
That the first face of neither on the start
Can woman me unto’t. Where is my son, I pray you?
2 LORD
Madam, he’s gone to serve the Duke of Florence;
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We met him thitherward, for thence we came,
And, after some dispatch in hand at court,
Thither we bend again.
HELENA
Look on his letter, madam; here’s my passport:
[Reads.] When thou canst get the ring upon my finger,
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which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten
of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband; but
in such a ‘then’ I write a ‘never’.
This is a dreadful sentence.
COUNTESS Brought you this letter, gentlemen?
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1 LORD Ay, madam; and for the contents’ sake are sorry
for our pains.
COUNTESS I prithee, lady, have a better cheer.
If thou engrossest all the griefs are thine
Thou robb’st me of a moiety. He was my son,
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But I do wash his name out of my blood
And thou art all my child. Towards Florence is he?
2 LORD Ay, madam.
COUNTESS And to be a soldier?
2 LORD Such is his noble purpose; and, believe’t,
The duke will lay upon him all the honour
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That good convenience claims.
COUNTESS Return you thither?
1 LORD Ay, madam, with the swiftest wing of speed.
HELENA [Reads.] Till I have no wife I have nothing in France.
’Tis bitter.
COUNTESS Find you that there?
HELENA Ay, madam.
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1 LORD ’Tis but the boldness of his hand, haply, which
his heart was not consenting to.
COUNTESS Nothing in France until he have no wife!
There’s nothing here that is too good for him
But only she, and she deserves a lord
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That twenty such rude boys might tend upon
And call her, hourly, mistress. Who was with him?
1 LORD A servant only, and a gentleman which I have
sometime known.
COUNTESS Parolles, was it not?
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1 LORD Ay, my good lady, he.
COUNTESS A very tainted fellow, and full of wickedness;
My son corrupts a well-derived nature
With his inducement.
1 LORD Indeed, good lady,
The fellow has a deal of that too much,
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Which holds him much to have.
COUNTESS Y’are welcome, gentlemen.
I will entreat you, when you see my s
on,
To tell him that his sword can never win
The honour that he loses; more I’ll entreat you
Written to bear along.
2 LORD We serve you, madam,
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In that and all your worthiest affairs.
COUNTESS Not so, but as we change our courtesies.
Will you draw near? Exeunt Countess and Lords.
HELENA ‘Till I have no wife I have nothing in France.’
Nothing in France until he has no wife!
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Thou shalt have none, Rossillion, none in France;
Then hast thou all again. Poor lord, is’t I
That chase thee from thy country, and expose
Those tender limbs of thine to the event
Of the none-sparing war? And is it I
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That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou
Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark
Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers,
That ride upon the violent speed of fire,
Fly with false aim; move the still-piecing air
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That sings with piercing; do not touch my lord.
Whoever shoots at him, I set him there;
Whoever charges on his forward breast,
I am the caitiff that do hold him to’t;
And though I kill him not, I am the cause
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His death was so effected. Better ’twere
I met the ravin lion when he roar’d
With sharp constraint of hunger; better ’twere
That all the miseries which nature owes
Were mine at once. No; come thou home, Rossillion,
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Whence honour but of danger wins a scar,
As oft it loses all; I will be gone;
My being here it is that holds thee hence.
Shall I stay here to do’t? No, no, although
The air of paradise did fan the house
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And angels offic’d all. I will be gone,
That pitiful rumour may report my flight
To consolate thine ear. Come, night; end, day;
For with the dark, poor thief, I’ll steal away. Exit.
3.3 Flourish. Enter the DUKE of Florence, BERTRAM, drum and trumpets, soldiers, PAROLLES.
DUKE The general of our horse thou art, and we,
Great in our hope, lay our best love and credence
Upon thy promising fortune.
BERTRAM Sir, it is
A charge too heavy for my strength; but yet
We’ll strive to bear it for your worthy sake
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To th’extreme edge of hazard.
DUKE Then go thou forth;
And fortune play upon thy prosperous helm
As thy auspicious mistress!
BERTRAM This very day,
Great Mars, I put myself into thy file;
Make me but like my thoughts and I shall prove
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A lover of thy drum, hater of love. Exeunt omnes.
3.4 Enter COUNTESS and Steward.
COUNTESS Alas! and would you take the letter of her?
Might you not know she would do as she has done
By sending me a letter? Read it again.
STEWARD [Reads.]
I am Saint Jaques’ pilgrim, thither gone.
Ambitious love hath so in me offended
5
That barefoot plod I the cold ground upon,
With sainted vow my faults to have amended.
Write, write, that from the bloody course of war
My dearest master, your dear son, may hie.
Bless him at home in peace, whilst I from far
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His name with zealous fervour sanctify.
His taken labours bid him me forgive;
I, his despiteful Juno, sent him forth
From courtly friends, with camping foes to live
Where death and danger dogs the heels of worth.
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He is too good and fair for death and me;
Whom I myself embrace to set him free.
COUNTESS
Ah, what sharp stings are in her mildest words!
Rynaldo, you did never lack advice so much
As letting her pass so; had I spoke with her,
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I could have well diverted her intents,
Which thus she hath prevented.
STEWARD Pardon me, madam;
If I had given you this at overnight
She might have been o’erta’en; and yet she writes
Pursuit would be but vain.
COUNTESS What angel shall
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Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive,
Unless her prayers, whom heaven delights to hear
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 38