Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

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ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

All’s Well That Ends Well, first printed in the 1623 Folio, is often paired with Measure for Measure. Though we lack external evidence as to its date of composition, internal evidence suggests that it, too, is an early Jacobean play. Like Measure for Measure, it places its central characters in more painful situations than those in which the heroes and heroines of the earlier, more romantic comedies usually find themselves. The touching ardour with which Helen, ‘a poor physician’s daughter’, pursues the young Bertram, son of her guardian the Countess of Roussillon, creates embarrassments for both of them. When the King, whose illness she cures by her semi-magical skills, brings about their marriage as a reward, Bertram’s flight to the wars seems to destroy all her chances of happiness. She achieves consummation of the marriage only by the ruse (resembling Isabella’s ’bed-trick’ in Measure for Measure) of substituting herself for the Florentine maiden Diana whom Bertram believes himself to be seducing. The play’s conclusion, in which the deception is exposed and Bertram is shamed into acknowledging Helen as his wife, offers only a tentatively happy ending.

Shakespeare based the story of Bertram and Helen on a tale from Boccaccio’s Decameron either in the original or in the version included in William Painter’s Palace of Pleasure (1566-7, revised 1575). But he created several important characters, including the Countess and the old Lord, Lafeu. He also invented the accompanying action exposing the roguery of Bertram’s flashy friend Paroles, a man of words (as his name indicates) descending from the braggart soldier of Roman comedy.

Versions of the play performed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mostly emphasizing either the comedy of Paroles or the sentimental appeal of Helen, had little success; but fine productions from the middle of the twentieth century onwards have shown it in a more favourable light, demonstrating, for example, that the role of the Countess is (in Bernard Shaw’s words) ‘the most beautiful old woman’s part ever written’, that the discomfiture of Paroles provides comedy that is subtle as well as highly laughable, and that the relationship of Bertram and Helen is profoundly convincing in its emotional reality.

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

The Dowager COUNTESS of Roussillon

BERTRAM, Count of Roussillon, her son

HELEN, an orphan, attending on the Countess

LAVATCH, a Clown, the Countess’s servant

REYNALDO, the Countess’s steward

PAROLES, Bertram’s companion

The KING of France

LAFEU, an old lord

INTERPRETER, a French soldier

An AUSTRINGER

The DUKE of Florence

WIDOW Capilet

DIANA, her daughter

MARIANA, a friend of the Widow

Lords, attendants, soldiers, citizens

All’s Well That Ends Well

1.1 Enter young Bertram Count of Roussillon, his mother the Countess, Helen, and Lord Lafeu, all in black

COUNTESS In delivering my son from me I bury a second husband.

BERTRAM And I in going, madam, weep o’er my father’s death anew; but I must attend his majesty’s command, to whom I am now in ward, evermore in subjection.

LAFEU 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.

COUNTESS What hope is there of his majesty’s amendment?

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

COUNTESS 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.

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

LAFEU He was excellent indeed, madam. The King very lately spoke of him, admiringly and mourningly. He was skilful enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality.

BERTRAM What is it, my good lord, the King languishes of?

LAFEU A fistula, my lord.

BERTRAM I heard not of it before.

LAFEU I would it were not notorious.—Was this gentlewoman the daughter of Gérard de Narbonne?

COUNTESS His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that her education promises; her dispositions she inherits, which makes 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.

LAFEU Your commendations, madam, get from her tears.

COUNTESS ’Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in. The remembrance of her father never approaches her heart but the tyranny of her sorrows takes all livelihood from her cheek.—No more of this, Helen. Go to, no more, lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow than to have—

HELEN 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 not enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.

BERTRAM) (kneeling) Madam, I desire your holy wishes. LAFEU How understand we that?

COUNTESS

Be thou blessed, 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 checked for silence

But never taxed for speech. What heaven more will

That thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down,

Fall on thy head. Farewell. (To Lafeu) My lord,

’Tis an unseasoned courtier. Good my lord,

Advise him.

LAFEU

He cannot want the best

That shall attend his love.

COUNTESS Heaven bless him!—Farewell, Bertram.

BERTRAM (rising) The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts be servants to you.

⌈Exit Countess⌉

(To Helen) 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

HELEN

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. ‘Twere 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.

Th’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 Paroles

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 fixed evils sit so fit in him

That they take place when virtue’s steely bones

Looks bleak i’th’ cold wind. Withal, full oft we see

Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.

PAROLES Save you, fair queen.

HELEN And you, monarch.

PAROLES No.

HELEN And no.

PAROLES Are you meditating on virginity?

HELEN 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? in

PAROLES Keep him out.

HELEN But he assails, and our virginity, though valiant in the defence, yet is weak. Unfold to us some warlike resistance.

PAROLES There is none. Man, setting down before you, will undermine you and blow you up.

HELEN Bless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers-up. Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up men?

PAROLES 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 mettle 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’t.

HELEN I will stand for’t a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

PAROLES 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 t’one year it will make itself two, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with’t.

HELEN How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?

PAROLES 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 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 eats drily, marry, ’tis a withered pear—it was formerly better, marry, yet ’tis a withered pear. Will you anything with it?

HELEN 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—

PAROLES What one, i’faith?

HELEN That I wish well. ’Tis pity.

PAROLES What’s pity?

HELEN

That wishing well had not a body in’t

Which might be felt, that we, the poorer born,

Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,

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 Paroles, my lord calls for you.

⌈Exit⌉

PAROLES Little Helen, farewell. If I can remember thee I will think of thee at court.

HELEN Monsieur Paroles, you were born under a charitable star.

PAROLES Under Mars, I.

HELEN I especially think under Mars.

PAROLES Why ‘under Mars’?

HELEN The wars hath so kept you under that you must needs be born under Mars.

PAROLES When he was predominant.

HELEN When he was retrograde, I think rather.

PAROLES Why think you so?

HELEN You go so much backward when you fight.

PAROLES That’s for advantage.

HELEN 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.

PAROLES 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 shall 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. So farewell.

Exit

HELEN

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie

Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky

Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull

Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.

What power is it which mounts my love so high,

That makes me see and cannot feed mine eye?

The mightiest space in fortune nature brings

To join like likes and kiss like native things.

Impossible be strange attempts to those

That weigh their pains in sense and do suppose

What hath been cannot be. Who ever strove

To show her merit that did miss her love?

The King’s disease—my project may deceive me,

But my intents are fixed and will not leave me.

Exit

1.2 A flourish of cornetts. Enter the King of France with letters, the two Lords Dumaine, ⌈and divers attendants⌉

KING

The Florentines and Sienese are by th’ears,

Have fought with equal fortune, and continue

A braving war.

FIRST LORD DUMAINE So ’tis reported, sir.

KING

Nay, ’tis most credible: we here receive it

A certainty vouched from our cousin Austria,

With caution that the Florentine will move us

For speedy aid-wherein our dearest friend

Prejudicates the business, and would seem

To have us make denial.

FIRST LORD DUMAINE

His love and wisdom

Approved so to your majesty may plead

For amplest credence.

KING

He hath armed our answer,

And Florence is denied before he comes.

Yet for our gentlemen that mean to see

The Tuscan service, freely have they leave

To stand on either part.

SECOND LORD DUMAINE

It well may serve

A nursery to our gentry, who are sick

For breathing and exploit.

KING

What’s he comes here?

Enter Bertram, Lafeu, and Paroles

FIRST LORD DUMAINE

It is the Count Roussillon, my good lord,

Young Bertram.

KING (to Bertram) Youth, thou bear’st thy father’s face.

Frank nature, rather curious than in haste,

Hath well composed thee. Thy father’s moral parts

Mayst thou inherit, too. Welcome to Paris.

BERTRAM

My thanks and duty are your majesty’s.

KING

I would I had that corporal soundness now

As when thy father and myself in friendship

First tried our soldiership. He did look far

Into the service of the time, and was

Discipled of the bravest. He lasted long,

But on us both did haggish age steal on,

And wore us out of act. It much repairs me

To talk of your good father. In his youth

He had the wit which I can well observe

Today in our young lords, but they may jest

Till their own scorn return to them unnoted

Ere they can hide their levity in honour.

So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness

Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were

His equal had awaked them, and his honour—

Clock to itself—knew the true minute when

Exception bid him speak, and at this time

His tongue obeyed his hand. Who were below him

He used as creatures of another place,

And bowed his eminent top to their low ranks,

Making them proud of his humility,.

In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man

Might be a copy to these younger times,

Which followed well would demonstrate them now

But goers-backward.

BERTRAM

His good remembrance, sir, Lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb.

So in approof lives not his epitaph

As in your royal speech.

KING

Would I were with him! He would always say—

Methinks I hear him now; his plausive words

He scattered not in ears, but grafted them

To grow there and to bear. ‘Let me not live’—

This his good melancholy oft began

On the catastrophe and heel of pastime,

When it was out—‘Let me not live’, quoth he,

‘After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff

Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses

All but new things disdain, whose judgements are

Mere fathers of their garments, whose constancies

Expire before their fashions.’ This he wished.

I after him do after him wish too,

Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home,

I quickly were dissolvèd from my hive

To give some labourers room.

SECOND LORD DUMAINE

You’re lovèd, sir.

They that least lend it you shall lack you first.

KING

I fill a place, I know’t.—How long is’t, Count,

Since the physician at your father’s died?

He was much famed.

BERTRAM

Some six months since, my lord.

KING

If he were living I would try him yet.—

Lend me an arm.—The rest have worn me out

With several applications. Nature and sickness

Debate it at their leisure. Welcome, Count.

My son’s no dearer.

BERTRAM)

Thank your majesty.

⌈Flourish.⌉ Exeunt

1.3 Enter the Countess, Reynaldo her steward, and ⌈behind⌉ Lavatch her clown

COUNTESS I will now hear. What say you of this gentlewoman?

REYNALDO Madam, the care I have had to even your content I wish might be found in the calendar of my past endeavours, for then we wound our modesty and make foul the clearness of our deservings, when of ourselves we publish them.

COUNTESS What does this knave here? (To Lavatch) Get you gone, sirrah. The complaints I have heard of you I do not all believe. ’Tis my slowness that I do not, for I know you lack not folly to commit them and have ability enough to make such knaveries yours.

LAVATCH ’Tis not unknown to you, madam, I am a poor fellow.

COUNTESS Well, sir?

LAVATCH No, madam, ’tis not so well that I am poor, though many of the rich are damned. But if I may have your ladyship’s good will to go to the world, Isbel the woman and I will do as we may.

COUNTESS Wilt thou needs be a beggar?

LAVATCH I do beg your good will in this case.

COUNTESS In what case?

LAVATCH In Isbel’s case and mine own. Service is no heritage, and I think I shall never have the blessing of God till I have issue o’ my body, for they say bairns are blessings.

COUNTESS Tell me thy reason why thou wilt marry.

LAVATCH My poor body, madam, requires it. I am driven on by the flesh, and he must needs go that the devil drives.

COUNTESS Is this all your worship’s reason?

LAVATCH Faith, madam, I have other holy reasons, such as they are.

COUNTESS May the world know them?

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

COUNTESS Thy marriage sooner than thy wickedness.

LAVATCH I am out o’ friends, madam, and I hope to have friends for my wife’s sake.

COUNTESS Such friends are thine enemies, knave.

LAVATCH You’re shallow, madam—in 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 in 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 Chairbonne the puritan and old Poisson the papist, howsome‘er their hearts are severed in religion, their heads are both one: they may jowl horns together like any deer i’th’ herd.

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

LAVATCH A prophet? Ay, madam, and I speak the truth the next way.

[He sings]

For I the ballad will repeat,

Which men full true shall find:

Your marriage comes by destiny,

Your cuckoo sings by kind.

COUNTESS Get you gone, sir. I’ll talk with you more anon.

REYNALDO May it please you, madam, that he bid Helen come to you? Of her I am to speak.

COUNTESS (to Lavatch) Sirrah, tell my gentlewoman I would speak with her. Helen, I mean.

LAVATCH ⌈sings⌉

‘Was this fair face the cause’, quoth she,

‘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.’

COUNTESS What, ‘one good in ten’? You corrupt the song, sirrah.

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

COUNTESS You’ll be gone, sir knave, and do as I command you.

LAVATCH 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

COUNTESS Well now.

REYNALDO I know, madam, you love your gentlewoman entirely.

COUNTESS 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 is more owing her than is paid, and more shall be paid her than she’ll demand.

REYNALDO 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; Dian no queen of virgins, that would suffer her poor knight surprised without rescue in the first assault or ransom 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.

COUNTESS You have discharged this honestly. Keep it to yourself. Many likelihoods informed me of this before, which hung so tott’ring 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 Helen

COUNTESS (aside)

Even so it was with me when I was young.

If ever 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 impressed 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.

HELEN

What is your pleasure, madam?

COUNTESS

You know, Helen,

I am a mother to you.

HELEN

Mine honourable mistress.

COUNTESS

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 enwombèd mine. ’Tis often seen

Adoption strives with nature, and choice breeds

A native slip to us from foreign seeds.

You ne’er oppressed 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 distempered messenger of wet,

The many-coloured Iris, rounds thine eye?

Why, that you are my daughter?

HELEN

That I am not.

COUNTESS

I say I am your mother.

HELEN

Pardon, madam.

The Count Roussillon cannot be my brother.

I am from humble, he from honoured 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.

COUNTESS

Nor I your mother?

HELEN

You are my mother, madam. Would you were—

So that my lord your son were not my brother—

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?

COUNTESS

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

God shield you mean it not! ‘Daughter’ and ‘mother’

So strive upon your pulse. What, pale again?

My fear hath catched your fondness. Now I see

The myst‘ry of your loneliness, and find

Your salt tears’ head. Now to all sense ’tis gross:

You love my son. Invention is ashamed

Against the proclamation of thy passion

To say thou dost not. Therefore tell me true,

But tell me then ‘tis so—for look, thy cheeks

Confess it t’one to th‘other, and thine eyes

See it so grossly shown in thy behaviours

That in their kind they speak it. Only sin

And hellish obstinacy tie thy tongue,

That truth should be suspected. Speak, is’t so?

If it be so you have wound a goodly clew;

If it be not, forswear’t. Howe’er, I charge thee,

As heaven shall work in me for thine avail,

To tell me truly.

HELEN

Good madam, pardon me.

COUNTESS

Do you love my son?

HELEN

Your pardon, noble mistress.

COUNTESS

Love you my son?

HELEN

Do not you love him, madam?

COUNTESS

Go not about. My love hath in’t a bond

Whereof the world takes note. Come, come, disclose

The state of your affection, for your passions

Have to the full appeached.

HELEN

Then I confess,

Here on my knee, before high heaven and you,

That before you and next unto high heaven

I love your son.

My friends were poor but honest; so’s my love.

Be not offended, for it hurts not him

That he is loved of me. I follow him not

By any token of presumptuous suit,

Nor would I have him till I do deserve him,

Yet never know how that desert should be.

I know I love in vain, strive against hope;

Yet in this captious and intenable sieve

I still pour in the waters of my love

And lack not to lose still. Thus, Indian-like,

Religious in mine error, I adore

The sun that looks upon his worshipper

But knows of him no more. My dearest madam,

Let not your hate encounter with my love

For loving where you do; but if yourself,

Whose aged honour cites a virtuous youth,

Did ever in so true a flame of liking

Wish chastely and love dearly, that your Dian

Was both herself and Love, O then give pity

To her whose state is such that cannot choose

But lend and give where she is sure to lose,

That seeks to find not that her search implies,

But riddle-like lives sweetly where she dies.

COUNTESS

Had you not lately an intent—speak truly—

To go to Paris?

HELEN Madam, I had.

COUNTESS Wherefore? Tell true.

HELEN

I will tell truth, by grace itself I swear.

You know my father left me some prescriptions

Of rare and proved effects, such as his reading

And manifest experience had collected

For general sovereignty, and that he willed me

In heedfull’st reservation to bestow them,

As notes whose faculties inclusive were

More than they were in note. Amongst the rest

There is a remedy, approved, set down,

To cure the desperate languishings whereof

The King is rendered lost.

COUNTESS

This was your motive

For Paris, was it? Speak.

HELEN

My lord your son made me to think of this,

Else Paris and the medicine and the King

Had from the conversation of my thoughts

Haply been absent then.

COUNTESS

But think you, Helen, If you should tender your supposed aid,

He would receive it? He and his physicians

Are of a mind: he, that they cannot help him;

They, that they cannot help. How shall they credit

A poor unlearned virgin, when the schools,

Embowelled of their doctrine, have left off

The danger to itself?

HELEN

There’s something in’t

More than my father’s skill, which was the great’st

Of his profession, that his good receipt

Shall for my legacy be sanctified

By th’ luckiest stars in heaven, and would your

honour

But give me leave to try success, I’d venture

The well-lost life of mine on his grace’s cure

By such a day, an hour.

COUNTESS Dost thou believe’t?

HELEN Ay, madam, knowingly.

COUNTESS

Why, Helen, thou shalt have my leave and love,

Means and attendants, and my loving greetings

To those of mine in court. I’ll stay at home

And pray God’s blessing into thy attempt.

Be gone tomorrow, and be sure of this:

What I can help thee to, thou shalt not miss.

Exeunt