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

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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2.1 Flourish of cornetts. Enter the King ⌈carried in a chair⌉, with the two Lords Dumaine, divers young lords taking leave for the Florentine war, and Bertram and Paroles

KING

Farewell, young lords. These warlike principles

Do not throw from you. And you, my lords, 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 DUMAINE

’Tis our hope, sir, After well-entered 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 loud. I say farewell.

FIRST LORD DUMAINE

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 LORDS DUMAINE Our hearts receive your warnings.

KING Farewell.—Come hither to me.

⌈Some lords stand aside with the King⌉

FIRST LORD DUMAINE (to Bertram)

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

PAROLES

’Tis not his fault, the spark.

SECOND LORD DUMAINE

O ’tis brave wars.

PAROLES

Most admirable! I have seen those wars.

BERTRAM

I am commanded here, and kept a coil with

‘Too young’ and ‘the next year’ and ‘’tis too early’.

PAROLES

An thy mind stand to’t, 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 DUMAINE

There’s honour in the theft.

PAROLES

Commit it, Count.

SECOND LORD DUMAINE

I am your accessary. And so, farewell.

BERTRAM I grow to you,

And our parting is a tortured body.

FIRST LORD DUMAINE

Farewell, captain.

SECOND LORD DUMAINE Sweet Monsieur Paroles.

PAROLES Noble heroes, my sword and yours are kin. Good sparks and lustrous, a word, good mettles. 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 DUMAINE We shall, noble captain.

PAROLES Mars dote on you for his novices.

Exeunt both Lords Dumaine

(To Bertram) What will ye do?

BERTRAM Stay the King.

PAROLES 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.

PAROLES Worthy fellows, and like to prove most sinewy sword-men.

Exeunt [Bertram and Paroles]

Enter Lafeu to the King

LAFEU (kneeling)

Pardon, my lord, for me and for my tidings.

KING I’ll fee thee to stand up.

LAFEU (rising)

Then here’s a man stands that has bought his pardon.

I would you had kneeled, 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 asked 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, an 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 sprightly fire and motion; whose simple touch

Is powerful to araise King Pépin, nay,

To give great Charlemagne a pen in’s hand,

And write to her a love-line.

KING

What ’her’ is this?

LAFEU

Why, Doctor She. My lord, there’s one arrived,

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 amazed 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 thee

May spend our wonder too, or take off thine

By wond‘ring how thou took’st it.

LAFEU

Nay, I’ll fit you,

And not be all day neither.

⌈He goes to the door⌉

KING

Thus he his special nothing ever prologues.

LAFEU (to Helen, within) Nay, come your ways.

Enter Helen ⌈disguised⌉

KING This haste hath wings indeed.

LAFEU (to Helen) 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.

Exeunt fall but the King and Helen⌉

KING

Now, fair one, does your business follow us?

HELEN

Ay, my good lord. Gérard de Narbonne was my father;

In what he did profess, well found.

KING

I knew him.

HELEN

The rather will I spare my praises towards him;

Knowing him is enough. On’s bed of death

Many receipts he gave me, chiefly one

Which, as the dearest issue of his practice,

And of his old experience th’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 touched

With that malignant cause wherein the honour no

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 judgement 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.

HELEN

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 called 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.

HELEN

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 judgement shown

When judges have been babes; great floods have

flow’n

From simple sources, and great seas have dried.

When miracles have by th’ great’st 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.

HELEN

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?

HELEN

The great’st grace lending grace,

Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring

Their fiery coacher his diurnal ring,

Ere twice in murk and occidental damp

Moist Hesperus hath quenched her 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?

HELEN

Tax of impudence,

A strumpet’s boldness, a divulged shame;

Traduced by odious ballads, my maiden’s name

Seared otherwise, nay—worse of worst—extended

With vilest torture, let my life be ended.

KING

Methinks in thee some blessèd 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.

HELEN

If I break time, or flinch in property

Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die,

And well deserved. Not helping, death’s my fee.

But if I help, what do you promise me?

KING

Make thy demand.

HELEN

But will you make it even?

KING

Ay, by my sceptre and my hopes of heaven.

HELEN

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 observed,

Thy will by my performance shall be served.

So make the choice of thy own time, for I,

Thy resolved 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

Unquestioned welcome, and undoubted blessed.—

Give me some help here, ho! If thou proceed

As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.

Flourish. Exeunt the King, ⌈carried⌉, and Helen

2.2 Enter the Countess and Lavatch the clown

COUNTESS Come on, sir. I shall now put you to the height of your breeding.

LAVATCH 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’!

LAVATCH 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.

LAVATCH It is like a barber’s chair that fits all buttocks: the pin-buttock, the quatch-buttock, the brawn-buttock, or any buttock.

COUNTESS Will your answer serve fit to all questions?

LAVATCH As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your French crown for your taffeta punk, as Tib’s rush for Tom’s forefinger, as a pancake for Shrove Tuesday, a morris for May Day, 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?

LAVATCH From beyond 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.

LAVATCH 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?

LAVATCH 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.

LAVATCH O Lord, sir!—Thick, thick, spare not me.

COUNTESS I think, sir, you can eat none of this homely meat.

LAVATCH O Lord, sir!—Nay, put me to’t, I warrant you.

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

LAVATCH 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.

LAVATCH I ne‘er had worse luck in my life in my ‘O Lord, sir!’ I see things may serve long, but not serve ever.

COUNTESS I play the noble housewife with the time, to entertain it so merrily with a fool.

LAVATCH O Lord, sir!—Why, there’t serves well again. COUNTESS

An end, sir! To your business: give Helen this,

She gives him a letter

And urge her to a present answer back.

Commend me to my kinsmen and my son.

This is not much.

LAVATCH Not much commendation to them?

COUNTESS Not much employment for you. You understand me.

LAVATCH Most fruitfully. I am there before my legs.

COUNTESS Haste you again.

Exeunt severally

2.3 Enter Bertram, Lafeu ⌈with a ballad], and Paroles

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.

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

BERTRAM And so ’tis.

LAFEU To be relinquished of the artists—

PAROLES So I say—both of Galen and Paracelsus.

LAFEU Of all the learned and authentic Fellows—

PAROLES Right, so I say.

LAFEU That gave him out incurable—

PAROLES Why, there ’tis, so say I too.

LAFEU Not to be helped.

PAROLES Right, as ’twere a man assured of a—

LAFEU Uncertain life and sure death.

PAROLES Just, you say well, so would I have said.

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

PAROLES It is indeed. If you will have it in showing, you shall read it in [pointing to the ballad] what-do-ye-call there.

LAFEU ⌈reads⌉ ‘A showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor.’

PAROLES That’s it, I would have said the very same.

LAFEU Why, your dolphin is not lustier. Fore me, I speak in respect—

PAROLES Nay, ‘tis strange, ’tis very strange, that is the brief and the tedious of it, and he’s of a most facinorous spirit that will not acknowledge it to be the—

LAFEU Very hand of heaven.

PAROLES Ay, so I say.

LAFEU In a most weak—

PAROLES 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.

Enter the King, Helen, and attendants

PAROLES I would have said it, you say well. Here comes the King.

LAFEU Lustig, as the Dutchman says. I’ll like a maid the better whilst I have a tooth in my head.

⌈The King and Helen dance⌉

Why, he’s able to lead her a coranto.

PAROLES Mort du vinaigre, is not this Helen?

LAFEU Fore God, I think so.

KING

Go call before me all the lords in court.

Exit one or more

Sit, my preserver, by thy patient’s side,

⌈The King and Helen sit]

And with this healthful hand whose banished sense

Thou hast repealed, a second time receive

The confirmation of my promised gift,

Which but attends thy naming.

Enter four 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.

HELEN

To each of you one fair and virtuous mistress

Fall when love please. Marry, to each but one.

LAFEU (aside)

I’d give bay Curtal and his furniture

My mouth no more were broken than these boys’,

And writ as little beard.

KING (to Helen) Peruse them well.

Not one of these but had a noble father.

HELEN Gentlemen,

Heaven hath through me restored the King to health.

⌈ALL BUT HELEN]

We understand it, and thank heaven for you.

HELEN

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 refused,

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.

HELEN (rising)

Now, Dian, from thy altar do I fly,

And to imperial Love, that god most high,

Do my sighs stream.

⌈She addresses her to a Lord]

Sir, will you hear my suit?

FIRST LORD

And grant it.

HELEN Thanks, sir. All the rest is mute.

LAFEU (aside) I had rather be in this choice than throw ambs-ace for my life.

HELEN (to another Lord)

The honour, sir, that flames in your fair eyes,

Before I speak, too threat’ningly replies.

Love make your fortunes twenty times above

Her that so wishes, and her humble love.

SECOND LORD

No better, if you please.

HELEN

My wish receive,

Which great Love grant. And so I take my leave.

LAFEU (aside) Do all they deny her? An they were sons of mine I’d have them whipped, or I would send them to th’ Turk to make eunuchs of.

HELEN (to another 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 (aside) These boys are boys of ice, they’ll none have her. Sure they are bastards to the English, the French ne‘er got ’em.

HELEN (to another Lord)

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 (aside) There’s one grape yet. I am sure thy father drunk wine, but if thou beest not an ass I am a youth of fourteen. I have known thee already.

HELEN (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 raised 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, poured all together,

Would quite confound distinction, yet stands off

In differences so mighty. If she be

All that is virtuous, save what thou distik’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 th’ 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 foregoers. The mere word’s a slave,

Debauched on every tomb, on every grave

A lying trophy, and as oft is dumb

Where dust and dammed oblivion is the tomb

Of honoured 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—

HELEN

That you are well restored, my lord, I’m 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) (kneeling)

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 (rising)

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 performed tonight. 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.

⌈Flourish.⌉ Exeunt all but Paroles and Lafeu, who stay behind, commenting on this wedding

LAFEU Do you hear, monsieur? A word with you. PAROLES Your pleasure, sir.

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

PAROLES Recantation? My lord? My master?

LAFEU Ay. Is it not a language I speak?

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

LAFEU Are you companion to the Count Roussillon?

PAROLES To any count, to all counts, to what is man.

LAFEU To what is count’s man; count’s master is of another style.

PAROLES 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.

PAROLES 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 scarves 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’rt scarce worth.

PAROLES 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. 216

PAROLES My lord, you give me most egregious indignity.

LAFEU Ay, with all my heart, and thou art worthy of it. PAROLES I have not, my lord, deserved it.

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

PAROLES Well, I shall be wiser.

LAFEU E‘en as soon as thou canst, for thou hast to pull at a smack o’th’ contrary. If ever thou beest bound in thy scarf and beaten thou shall find what it is to be proud of thy bondage. I have a desire to hold my acquaintance with thee, or rather my knowledge, that I may say in the default, ‘He is a man I know’.

PAROLES My lord, you do me most insupportable vexation.

LAFEU I would it were hell-pains for thy sake, and my poor doing eternal; for doing I am past, as I will by thee, in what motion age will give me leave. Exit

PAROLES Well, thou hast a son shall take this disgrace off me. Scurvy, old, filthy, scurvy lord. Well, I must be patient. There is no fettering of authority. I’ll beat him, by my life, if I can meet him with any convenience, an he were double and double a lord. I’ll have no more pity of his age than I would have of—I’ll beat him, an if I could but meet him again.

Enter Lafeu

LAFEU Sirrah, your lord and master’s married. There’s news for you: you have a new mistress.

PAROLES I most unfeignedly beseech your lordship to make some reservation of your wrongs. He is my good lord; whom I serve above is my master.

LAFEU Who? God?

PAROLES Ay, sir.

LAFEU The devil it is that’s thy master. Why dost thou garter up thy arms o’ this fashion? Dost make hose of thy sleeves? Do other servants so? Thou wert best set thy lower part where thy nose stands. By mine honour, if I were but two hours younger I’d beat thee. Methink’st thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee. I think thou wast created for men to breathe themselves upon thee.

PAROLES This is hard and undeserved measure, my lord.

LAFEU Go to, sir. You were beaten in Italy for picking a kernel out of a pomegranate, you are a vagabond and no true traveller, you are more saucy with lords and honourable personages than the commission of your birth and virtue gives you heraldry. You are not worth another word, else I’d call you knave. I leave you.

Exit

PAROLES Good, very good, it is so then. Good, very good, let it be concealed awhile.

[Enter Bertram]

BERTRAM

Undone and forfeited to cares for ever.

PAROLES What’s the matter, sweetheart?

BERTRAM

Although before the solemn priest I have sworn,

I will not bed her.

PAROLES What, what, sweetheart?

BERTRAM

O my Paroles, they have married me.

I’ll to the Tuscan wars and never bed her.

PAROLES

France is a dog-hole, and it no more merits

The tread of a man’s foot. To th’ wars!

BERTRAM

There’s letters from my mother. What th’import is

I know not yet.

PAROLES

Ay, that would be known. To th’ wars, my boy, to th’

wars! 275

He wears his honour in a box unseen

That hugs his kicky-wicky here at home,

Spending his manly marrow in her arms,

Which should sustain the bound and high curvet

Of Mars’s fiery steed. To other regions!

France is a stable, we that dwell in’t jades.

Therefore to th’ war.

BERTRAM

It shall be so. I’ll send her to my house,

Acquaint my mother with my hate to her,

And wherefore I am fled, write to the King

That which I durst not speak. His present gift

Shall furnish me to those Italian fields

Where noble fellows strike. Wars is no strife

To the dark house and the detested wife.

PAROLES

Will this capriccio hold in thee? Art sure?

BERTRAM

Go with me to my chamber and advise me.

I’ll send her straight away. Tomorrow

I’ll to the wars, she to her single sorrow.

PAROLES

Why, these balls bound, there’s noise in it. ‘Tis hard:

A young man married is a man that’s marred.

Therefore away, and leave her bravely. Go.

The King has done you wrong, but hush ’tis so.

Exeunt