Alls Well That Ends Well | Page 4

to have.
HELENA.
I do affect a sorrow indeed; but I have it too.
LAFEU.
Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead; excessive
grief the enemy to the living.
COUNTESS.
If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it
soon mortal.
BERTRAM.
Madam, I desire your holy wishes.
LAFEU.
How understand we that?
COUNTESS.
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 birthright! Love all, trust a few,

Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use;
and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,

But never tax'd for speech. What heaven more will,
That thee may
furnish and my prayers pluck down,
Fall on thy head! Farewell.--My
lord,
'Tis an unseason'd courtier; good my lord,
Advise him.

LAFEU.
He cannot want the best
That shall attend his love.
COUNTESS.
Heaven bless him!--Farewell, Bertram.
[Exit COUNTESS.]
BERTRAM.
The best wishes that can be forg'd in your thoughts [To
HELENA.] be servants to you! Be comfortable to my mother, your
mistress, and make much of her.
LAFEU.
Farewell, pretty lady: you must hold the credit of your
father.
[Exeunt BERTRAM and LAFEU.]
HELENA.
O, were that all!--I think not on my father;
And these
great tears grace his remembrance more
Than those I shed for him.
What was he like?
I have forgot him; my imagination
Carries no
favour in't 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 light
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?
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
Looks bleak i' the cold wind: withal, full oft we see

Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.
[Enter PAROLLES.]

PAROLLES.
Save you, fair queen!
HELENA.
And you, monarch!
PAROLLES.
No.
HELENA.
And no.
PAROLLES.
Are you meditating on virginity?
HELENA.
Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you: let me ask you
a question. Man is enemy to virginity; how may we barricado it against
him?
PAROLLES.
Keep him out.
HELENA.
But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant in the

defence, yet is weak: unfold to us some warlike resistance.
PAROLLES.
There is none: man, setting down before you, will
undermine you and blow you up.
HELENA.
Bless our poor virginity from underminers and
blowers-up!--Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up
men?
PAROLLES.
Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be
blown up: marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach
yourselves made, you lose your city. It is not politic in the
commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is
rational increase; 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!
HELENA.
I will stand for 't a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

PAROLLES.
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 highways, 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 it!
HELENA.
How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?
PAROLLES.
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 the toothpick, which
wear not now. Your date is better in your pie