PAROLLES. 1 страница

ACT II.

SCENE 1. Paris. A room in the King's palace.

[Flourish. Enter the King, with young LORDS taking leave for the Florentine war; BERTRAM, PAROLLES, and Attendants. ]

KING.   Farewell, young lord; these war-like principles  Do not throw from you: --and you, my lord, farewell; --  Share the advice betwixt you; if both gain all,   The gift doth stretch itself as 'tis received,   And is enough for both.

FIRST LORD.   It is our hope, sir,   After well-enter'd soldiers, to return  And find your grace in health.

KING.   No, no, it cannot be; and yet my heart  Will not confess he owes the malady  That doth my life besiege. Farewell, young lords;   Whether I live or die, be you the sons  Of worthy Frenchmen; let higher Italy, --  Those bated that inherit but the fall  Of the last monarchy, --see that you come  Not to woo honour, but to wed it; when  The bravest questant shrinks, find what you seek,   That fame may cry you aloud: I say farewell.

SECOND LORD.   Health, at your bidding, serve your majesty!

KING.   Those girls of Italy, take heed of them;   They say our French lack language to deny,   If they demand: beware of being captives  Before you serve.

BOTH.   Our hearts receive your warnings.

KING.   Farewell. --Come hither to me.

[The king retires to a couch. ]

FIRST LORD.   O my sweet lord, that you will stay behind us!

PAROLLES.   'Tis not his fault; the spark--

SECOND LORD.   O, 'tis brave wars!

PAROLLES.   Most admirable: I have seen those wars.

BERTRAM.   I am commanded here and kept a coil with,   'Too young' and next year' and ''tis too early. '

PAROLLES.   An thy mind stand to it, boy, steal away bravely.

BERTRAM.   I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock,   Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry,   Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn  But one to dance with! By heaven, I'll steal away.

FIRST LORD.   There's honour in the theft.

PAROLLES.   Commit it, count.

SECOND LORD.   I am your accessary; and so farewell.

BERTRAM.   I grow to you, and our parting is a tortured body.

FIRST LORD.   Farewell, captain.

SECOND LORD.   Sweet Monsieur Parolles!

PAROLLES.   Noble heroes, my sword and yours are kin. Good sparks and  lustrous, a word, good metals. --You shall find in the regiment of the Spinii one Captain Spurio, with his cicatrice, an emblem of war, here on his sinister cheek; it was this very sword  entrenched it: say to him I live; and observe his reports for me.

FIRST LORD.   We shall, noble captain.

PAROLLES.   Mars dote on you for his novices!

[Exeunt LORDS. ]

What will ye do?

BERTRAM.   Stay; the king--

PAROLLES.   Use a more spacious ceremony to the noble lords; you have  restrained yourself within the list of too cold an adieu: be more expressive to them; for they wear themselves in the cap of the time; there do muster true gait; eat, speak, and move, under the influence of the most received star; and though the devil lead the measure, such are to be followed: after them, and take a more dilated farewell.

BERTRAM.   And I will do so.

PAROLLES.   Worthy fellows; and like to prove most sinewy sword-men.

[Exeunt BERTRAM and PAROLLES. ]

[Enter LAFEU. ]

LAFEU.   Pardon, my lord [kneeling], for me and for my tidings.

KING.   I'll fee thee to stand up.

LAFEU.   Then here's a man stands that has bought his pardon.   I would you had kneel'd, my lord, to ask me mercy;   And that at my bidding you could so stand up.

KING.   I would I had; so I had broke thy pate,   And ask'd thee mercy for't.

LAFEU.   Good faith, across;   But, my good lord, 'tis thus: will you be cured  Of your infirmity?

KING.   No.

LAFEU.   O, will you eat  No grapes, my royal fox? yes, but you will  My noble grapes, and if my royal fox  Could reach them: I have seen a medicine  That's able to breathe life into a stone,   Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary  With spritely fire and motion; whose simple touch  Is powerful to araise King Pipin, nay,   To give great Charlemain a pen in his hand  And write to her a love-line.

KING.   What 'her' is that?

LAFEU.   Why, doctor 'she': my lord, there's one arriv'd,   If you will see her, --now, by my faith and honour,   If seriously I may convey my thoughts  In this my light deliverance, I have spoke  With one that in her sex, her years, profession,   Wisdom, and constancy, hath amaz'd me more  Than I dare blame my weakness: will you see her, --  For that is her demand, --and know her business?   That done, laugh well at me.

KING.   Now, good Lafeu,   Bring in the admiration; that we with the  May spend our wonder too, or take off thine  By wondering how thou took'st it.

LAFEU.   Nay, I'll fit you,   And not be all day neither.

[Exit LAFEU. ]

KING.   Thus he his special nothing ever prologues.

[Re-enter LAFEU with HELENA. ]

LAFEU.   Nay, come your ways.

KING.   This haste hath wings indeed.

LAFEU.   Nay, come your ways;   This is his majesty: say your mind to him.   A traitor you do look like; but such traitors  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; 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 his bed of death  Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one,   Which, as the dearest issue of his practice,   And of his old experience the 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  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  The congregated college have concluded  That labouring art can never ransom nature  From her inaidable estate, --I say we must not  So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope,   To prostitute our past-cure malady  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;   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:   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  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 greatest been denied.   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 used, must by thyself be paid:   Proffers, not took, reap thanks for their reward.

HELENA.   Inspired merit so by breath is barred:   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  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;   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  Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring;   Ere twice in murk and occidental damp  Moist Hesperus hath quench'd his sleepy lamp;   Or four-and-twenty times the pilot's glass  Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass;   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, --  Traduc'd by odious ballads; my maiden's name  Sear'd otherwise; ne worse of worst extended,   With vilest torture let my life be ended.

KING.   Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak;   His powerful sound within an organ weak:   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  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.

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?

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,   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,   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, --  From whence thou cam'st, how tended on. --But rest  Unquestion'd welcome and undoubted blest. --  Give me some help here, ho! --If thou proceed  As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.

[Flourish. Exeunt. ]

SCENE 2. Rousillon. A room in the COUNTESS'S palace.

[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 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 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.

CLOWN.   It is like a barber's chair, that fits all buttocks--the pinbuttock, 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 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 Mayday, 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 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.

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 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, 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 meat.

CLOWN.   O Lord, sir! --Nay, put me to't, I warrant you.

COUNTESS.   You were lately whipped, sir, as I think.

CLOWN.   O Lord, sir! --Spare not me.

COUNTESS.   Do you cry 'O Lord, sir! ' at your whipping, 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 thing's may serve long, but not serve ever.

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:   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.

COUNTESS.   Haste you again.

[Exeunt severally. ]

SCENE 3. Paris. The KING'S palace.

[Enter BERTRAM, LAFEU, and PAROLLES. ]

LAFEU.   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 to an unknown fear.

PAROLLES.   Why, 'tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot out in our latter times.

BERTRAM.   And so 'tis.

LAFEU.   To be relinquish'd of the artists, --

PAROLLES.   So I say; both of Galen and Paracelsus.

LAFEU.   Of all the learned and authentic fellows, --

PAROLLES.   Right; so I say.

LAFEU.   That gave him out incurable, --

PAROLLES.   Why, there 'tis; so say I too.

LAFEU.   Not to be helped, --

PAROLLES.   Right; as 'twere a man assured of a, --

LAFEU.   Uncertain life and sure death.

PAROLLES.   Just; you say well: so would I have said.

LAFEU.   I may truly say, it is a novelty to the world.

PAROLLES.   It is indeed: if you will have it in showing, you shall read it in, --What do you call there? --

LAFEU.   A showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor.

PAROLLES.   That's it; I would have said the very same.

LAFEU.   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 facinerious spirit that will not acknowledge it to be the, --

LAFEU.   Very hand of heaven.

PAROLLES.   Ay; so I say.

LAFEU.   In a most weak, --

PAROLLES.   And debile minister, great power, great transcendence: which should, indeed, give us a further use to be made than alone the recov'ry of the king, as to be, --

LAFEU.   Generally thankful.

PAROLLES.   I would have said it; you say well. Here comes the king.

[Enter KING, HELENA, and Attendants. ]

LAFEU.   Lustic, as the Dutchman says: I'll like a maid the better, whilst I have a tooth in my head: why, he's able to lead her a coranto.

PAROLLES.   'Mort du vinaigre! ' is not this Helen?

LAFEU.   'Fore God, I think so.

KING.   Go, call before me all the lords in court. --

[Exit an Attendant. ]

Sit, my preserver, by thy patient's side;   And with this healthful hand, whose banish'd sense  Thou has repeal'd, a second time receive  The confirmation of my promis'd gift,   Which but attends thy naming.

[Enter severaol Lords. ]

Fair maid, send forth thine eye: this youthful parcel  Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing,   O'er whom both sovereign power and father's voice  I have to use: thy frank election make;   Thou hast power to choose, and they none to forsake.

HELENA.   To each of you one fair and virtuous mistress  Fall, when love please! --marry, to each, but one!

LAFEU.   I'd give bay Curtal and his furniture,   My mouth no more were broken than these boys',   And writ as little beard.

KING.   Peruse them well:   Not one of those but had a noble father.

HELENA.   Gentlemen,   Heaven hath through me restor'd the king to health.

ALL.   We understand it, and thank heaven for you.

HELENA.   I am a simple maid, and therein wealthiest  That I protest I simply am a maid. --  Please it, your majesty, I have done already:   The blushes in my cheeks thus whisper me--  'We blush that thou shouldst choose; but, be refus'd,   Let the white death sit on thy cheek for ever;   We'll ne'er come there again. '

KING.   Make choice; and, see:   Who shuns thy love shuns all his love in me.

HELENA.   Now, Dian, from thy altar do I fly,   And to imperial Love, that god most high,   Do my sighs stream. --Sir, will you hear my suit?

FIRST LORD.   And grant it.

HELENA.   Thanks, sir; all the rest is mute.

LAFEU.   I had rather be in this choice than throw ames-ace for my life.

HELENA.   The honour, sir, that flames in your fair eyes,   Before I speak, too threateningly replies:   Love make your fortunes twenty times above  Her that so wishes, and her humble love!

SECOND LORD.   No better, if you please.

HELENA.   My wish receive,   Which great Love grant; and so I take my leave.

LAFEU.   Do all they deny her? An they were sons of mine I'd have them whipped; or I would send them to the Turk to make eunuchs of.

HELENA.   [To third Lord. ] Be not afraid that I your hand should take; I'll never do you wrong for your own sake:   Blessing upon your vows! and in your bed  Find fairer fortune, if you ever wed!

LAFEU.   These boys are boys of ice: they'll none have her:   Sure, they are bastards to the English; the French ne'er got 'em.

HELENA.   You are too young, too happy, and too good,   To make yourself a son out of my blood.

FOURTH LORD.   Fair one, I think not so.

LAFEU.   There's one grape yet, --I am sure thy father drank wine. --But if thou beest not an ass, I am a youth of fourteen; I have known thee already.

HELENA.   [To BERTRAM. ] I dare not say I take you; but I give  Me and my service, ever whilst I live,   Into your guiding power. --This is the man.

KING.   Why, then, young Bertram, take her; she's thy wife.

BERTRAM.   My wife, my liege! I shall beseech your highness,   In such a business give me leave to use  The help of mine own eyes.

KING.   Know'st thou not, Bertram,   What she has done for me?

BERTRAM.   Yes, my good lord;   But never hope to know why I should marry her.

KING.   Thou know'st she has rais'd me from my sickly bed.

BERTRAM.   But follows it, my lord, to bring me down  Must answer for your raising? I know her well;   She had her breeding at my father's charge:   A poor physician's daughter my wife! --Disdain  Rather corrupt me ever!

KING.   'Tis only title thou disdain'st in her, the which  I can build up. Strange is it that our bloods,   Of colour, weight, and heat, pour'd all together,   Would quite confound distinction, yet stand off  In differences so mighty. If she be  All that is virtuous, --save what thou dislik'st,   A poor physician's daughter, --thou dislik'st  Of virtue for the name: but do not so:   From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,   The place is dignified by the doer's deed:   Where great additions swell's, and virtue none,   It is a dropsied honour: good alone  Is good without a name; vileness is so:   The property by what it is should go,   Not by the title. She is young, wise, fair;   In these to nature she's immediate heir;   And these breed honour: that is honour's scorn  Which challenges itself as honour's born,   And is not like the sire: honours thrive  When rather from our acts we them derive  Than our fore-goers: the mere word's a slave,   Debauch'd on every tomb; on every grave  A lying trophy; and as oft is dumb  Where dust and damn'd oblivion is the tomb  Of honour'd bones indeed. What should be said?   If thou canst like this creature as a maid,   I can create the rest: virtue and she  Is her own dower; honour and wealth from me.

BERTRAM.   I cannot love her, nor will strive to do 't.

KING.   Thou wrong'st thyself, if thou shouldst strive to choose.

HELENA.   That you are well restor'd, my lord, I am glad:   Let the rest go.

KING.   My honour's at the stake; which to defeat,   I must produce my power. Here, take her hand,   Proud scornful boy, unworthy this good gift;   That dost in vile misprision shackle up  My love and her desert; that canst not dream  We, poising us in her defective scale,   Shall weigh thee to the beam; that wilt not know  It is in us to plant thine honour where  We please to have it grow. Check thy contempt:   Obey our will, which travails in thy good;   Believe not thy disdain, but presently  Do thine own fortunes that obedient right  Which both thy duty owes and our power claims  Or I will throw thee from my care for ever,   Into the staggers and the careless lapse  Of youth and ignorance; both my revenge and hate  Loosing upon thee in the name of justice,   Without all terms of pity. Speak! thine answer!

BERTRAM.   Pardon, my gracious lord; for I submit  My fancy to your eyes: when I consider  What great creation, and what dole of honour  Flies where you bid it, I find that she, which late  Was in my nobler thoughts most base, is now  The praised of the king; who, so ennobled,   Is as 'twere born so.

KING.   Take her by the hand,   And tell her she is thine: to whom I promise  A counterpoise; if not to thy estate,   A balance more replete.

BERTRAM.   I take her hand.

KING.   Good fortune and the favour of the king  Smile upon this contract; whose ceremony  Shall seem expedient on the now-born brief,   And be perform'd to-night: the solemn feast  Shall more attend upon the coming space,   Expecting absent friends. As thou lov'st her,   Thy love's to me religious; else, does err.

[Exeunt KING, BERTAM, HELENA, Lords, and Attendants. ]

LAFEU.   Do you hear, monsieur? a word with you.

PAROLLES.   Your pleasure, sir?

LAFEU.   Your lord and master did well to make his recantation.

PAROLLES.   Recantation! --my lord! my master!

LAFEU.   Ay; is it not a language I speak?

PAROLLES.   A most harsh one, and not to be understood without bloody  succeeding. My master!

LAFEU.   Are you companion to the Count Rousillon?

PAROLLES.   To any count; to all counts; to what is man.

LAFEU.   To what is count's man: count's master is of another style.

PAROLLES.   You are too old, sir; let it satisfy you, you are too old.

LAFEU.   I must tell thee, sirrah, I write man; to which title age cannot bring thee.

PAROLLES.   What I dare too well do, I dare not do.

LAFEU.   I did think thee, for two ordinaries, to be a pretty wise  fellow; thou didst make tolerable vent of thy travel; it might pass: yet the scarfs and the bannerets about thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of too great a burden. I have now found thee; when I lose thee again I care not: yet art thou good for nothing but taking up; and that thou art scarce worth.

PAROLLES.   Hadst thou not the privilege of antiquity upon thee, --

LAFEU.   Do not plunge thyself too far in anger, lest thou hasten thy trial; which if--Lord have mercy on thee for a hen! So, my good window of lattice, fare thee well: thy casement I need not open, for I look through thee. Give me thy hand.

PAROLLES.   My lord, you give me most egregious indignity.

LAFEU.   Ay, with all my heart; and thou art worthy of it.

PAROLLES.   I have not, my lord, deserved it.

LAFEU.   Yes, good faith, every dram of it: and I will not bate thee a scruple.

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