delivering my son from me, I bury a second

husband.

her education promises: her dispositions she inherits, which make fair gifts fairer; for where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity, they are virtues and traitors too; in her they are the better for their simpleness; she derives her honesty, and achieves her goodness.

Laf. Your commendations, madam, get from her

tears.

Count. 'Tis the best brine a maiden can season her Ber. And 1, in going, madam, weep o'er my father's praise in. The remembrance of her father never apdeath anew: but I must attend his majesty's com- proaches her heart, but the tyranny of her sorrows mand, to whom I am now in ward, evermore in sub-takes all livelihood from her cheek.-No more of this, jection.

Lef. You shall find of the king a husband, madam;|| -you, sir, a father: He that so generally is at all times good, must of necessity hold his virtue to you; whose worthiness would stir it up where it wanted, rather than lack it where there is such abundance.

Count. What hope is there of his majesty's amendment?

Laf. He hath abandoned his physicians, madam; under whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope: and finds no other advantage in the process but ealy the losing of hope by time.

Count. This young gentlewoman had a father, (O, that had! how sad a passage 'tis!) whose skill was almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. 'Would, for the king's sake, he were living! I think, it would be the death of the king's disease.

Laf. How called you the man you speak of, madam? Count. He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon.

Laf. He was excellent, indeed, madam; the king very lately spoke of him, admiringly, and mourning ly: he was skilful enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality.

Ber. What is it, my good lord, the king languishes

of?

affect a sorrow, than to have.
Helena, go to, no more; lest it be rather thought you

Hel. I do affect a sorrow, indeed, but I have it too. Laf. Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living.

Count. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.

Ber. Madam, I desire your holy wishes.

Laf. How understand we that?

Count. Be thou blest, Bertram! and succeed thy father

In manners, as in shape! thy blood, and virtue,
Contend for empire in thee; and thy goodness
Share with thy birth-right! Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,
Rather in power, than use; and keep thy friend
But never tax'd for speech. What heaven more will,
That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck down,
'Tis an unseason'd courtier; good my lord,
Fall on thy head! Farewell.-My lord,
Advise him.

That shall attend his love.
Laf. He cannot want the best

Count. Heaven bless him!-Farewell, Bertram.

I have forgot him: my imagination
Carries no favour in it, but Bertram's.
I am undone; there is no living, none,
If Bertram, be away. It were all one,
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it, he is so above me:.
In his bright radiance and collateral fight
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.

The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind, that would be mated by the lion,
Must die for love. 'Twas 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
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour:
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his relics. Who comes here?

Enter Parolles.

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 in the cold wind: withal, full oft we see
Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.

Par. Save you, fair queen.

Hel. And you, monarch.

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. "Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept, the less worth: off with't, while 'tis 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 toothpick, which were not now: your date is better in your pye 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 cats dryly; mar ry, 'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet, 'tis a withered pear: Will you any thing with it? Hel. Not my virginity yet.

There shall your master have a thousand loves,

A mother, and a mistress, and a friend,

A phoenix, captain, and an enemy,

A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign,
A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear;
His humble ambition, proud humility,
His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet,
His faith, his sweet disaster; with a world
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.-'Tis pity--
Par. What's pity?

Hel. That wishing well had not a body in't,
Which might be felt that we, the poorer born,
virgini-Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,

Hel. Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you; let me ask you a question: Man is enemy to ty; how may we barricado it against him?

Par. Keep him out.

Hel. But he assaiis; and our virginity, though valiant in the defence, yet is weak: unfold to us some warlike resistance.

Par. There is none; man, sitting down before you, will undermine you, and blow you up.

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 quick- || lier be blown up: marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It is not politie in the commonwealth of nature, to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational inerease; 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 : 'tis too cold a companion; away with it.

Hel. I will stand for't a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

Par. There's little can be said in't; 'tis against the rule of nature. To 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 high ways, 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 is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by't: Out with't: within ten years it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the principal itself not much the worse: Away

with t

Might with effects of them follow our friends,
And show what we alone must think; which never
Returns us thanks.

Enter a Page.

Page. Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for

you. [Exit Page. Par. Little Helen, farewell; If I can remember thee, I will think of thee at court.

Hel. Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a char itable 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 perfect courtier; in the which, my instruction shall serve to naturalize thee, so thou wilt be capable of a courtier's counsel, and understand what advice shail thrust upon thee; else thou diest in thine unthankfulness, and thine ignorance makes thee away; farewell. When thou hast leisure, say thy prayers; when thou hast none, remember thy friends: get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee: [Exit. so farewell.

Hel. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky

136

Count. May the world know them?

Clo. I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh and blood are; and, indeed, I do marry, that I may repent.

Count. Thy marriage, sooner than thy wickedness. Clo. I am out of friends, madam; and I hope to have friends for my wife's sake.

Count. Such friends are thine enemies, knave. Clo. You are shallow, madam; e'en 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 inn the crop if I be his cuckold, he's my 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 are, there were no fear in marriage; for young Charbon the puritan, and old Poysam the papist, howsoe'er their hearts are severed in religion, their heads are both one; they may joll horns together, like any deer i' the herd.

Count. Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouthed and calumnious knave?

Clo. A prophet I, madam; and I speak the truth the next way:

For I the ballad will repeat,

Which men full true shall find ;
Your marriage comes by destiny,

Your cuckoo sings by kind.

Count. Get you gone, sir; I'll talk with you more

anon.

Stew. May it please you, madam, that he bid Helen come to you; of her I am to speak.

Count. Sirrah, tell my gentlewoman, I would speak with her: Helen I mean.

Clo. Was this fair face the cause, quoth she, [Singing.
Why the Grecians sacked Troy?

Fond done, done fond,

Was this king Priam's joy?"
With that she sighed as she stood,
With that she sighed as she stood,
And gave this sentence then ;
Among nine bad if one be good,
Among nine bad if one be good,

There's yet one good in ten.

Count. What, one good in ten? You corrupt the song, sirrah.

Clo. One good woman in ten, madam; which is a purifying o' the song: 'Would God would serve the world so all the year! we'd find no fault with the tythe-woman, if I were the parson: One in ten, quoth a'! an we might have a good woman born but every blazing star, or at an earthquake, 'twould mend the lottery well; a man may draw his heart out, ere he pluck one.

Count. You'll be gone, sir knave, and do as I command you?

Clo. 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. Count. Well, now.

is more owing her, than is paid; and more shall be paid her, than she'll demand.

Stew. Madam, I was very late more near her than, I think, she wished me: alone she was, and did communicate to herself, her own words to her own ears; she thought, I dare vow for her, they touched 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, that would not extend his might, only where qualities were level; Diana, no queen of virgins, that would suffer her poor knight to be surprised, without rescue in the first assault, or ransome afterward: This she delivered in the most bitter touch of sorrow, that e'er I heard virgin 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.

Count. You have discharged this honestly; keep it to yourself: many likelihoods informed me of this be fore, which hung so tottering 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.

Count. Even so it was with me, when I was young: If 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:
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.
Hel. What is your pleasure, madam?

Count.

I am a mother to you.

You know, Helen,

Hel. Mine honourable mistress.
Count.
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
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:-
God's mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood,
To say, I am thy mother? What's the matter,
That this distemper'd messenger of wet,
The many-colour'd Iris, rounds thine eye?
Why?that you are my daughter?

Hel.

Count. I say, I am your mother.

That I am not.

Pardon, madam;

Hel.
The count Rousillon cannot be my brother;
I am from humble, he from honour'd name;
No note upon my parents, his all noble:
My master, my dear lord he is; and I
His servant live, and will his vassal die:
He must not be my brother.

Count.
Nor I your mother?
Hel. You are my mother, madam; 'Would you were

Stew. I know, madam, you love your gentlewoman (So that my lord, your son, were not my brother.) entirely.

Count. Faith, I do : her father bequeathed her to me; and she herself, without other advantage, may lawfully make title to as much love as she finds; there

Indeed, my mother!-or were you both our mothers
I care no more for, than I do for heaven,

So I were not his sister: Can't no other,
But, I your daughter, he must be my brother?

Count. Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in