7 Of worthy Frenchmen: let higher Italy (1) 2 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. Вотн. Our hearts receive your warnings. PAR. 'T is not his fault, the spark. Too young, and the next year, and 't is too early. PAR. An thy mind stand to 't, boy, steal away bravely. BER. I shall stay here the fore-horse to a smock," Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry, Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn, But one to dance with !(2) By heaven, I'll steal away. 1 LORD. There's honour in the theft. PAR. Commit it, count. 2 LORD. I am your accessary; and so farewell. BER. I grow to you, and our parting is a tortured body.b 1 LORD. Farewell, captain. 2 LORD. Sweet monsieur Parolles ! PAR. 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 (*) First folio, his cicatrice with. * LAF. Pardon, my lord, [Kneeling.] for me and for my tidings. KING. I'll sue thee to stand up. I would you had kneel'd, my lord, to ask me LAF. 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, (*) Old text, ye. "I would you had kneel'd, my lord," &c. d Good faith, across:] Across, in reference to the sports of chivalry, in which, to break a spear across the body of an opponent was disgraceful, came to be used in derision when any pass of wit miscarried. Here however, we believe Lafeu alludes rather to some game, where certain successes entitle the achiever to mark a cross. Yes, but you will my noble grapes,-] My in this passage has been changed in some modern editions to ay, but needlessly; we have only to read "my" emphatically, and the, sense is obvious: "O, will you eat no grapes?, &c. Yes, but you will, my noble grapes." And make you dance canary,-] To what has already been said on the nature of this sprightly dance (see note (a), vol I p. 64), may be added, that the dancers accompanied their movements with castagnets: see Florio, who defines Chioppare "to clacke or snap, or phip, or click, or lirp with ones fingers, as they that dance the Canaries, or as some barbers." C To empirics; or to dissever so To give great Charlemaine a pen in's hand, And write to her a love-line. KING. What her is this? LAF. 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 thee May spend our wonder too, or take off thine, By wond'ring how thou took'st it. LAF. Nay, I'll fit you, [Exit LAFEU. KING. Thus he his special nothing ever prologues. And not be all day neither. Knowing him, is enough. On's bed of death Safer than mine own two more dear: I have so; Our great self and our credit, to esteem A senseless help, when help past sense we deem. grateful: KING. I cannot give thee less, to be call'd HEL. What I can do, can do no hurt to try, Oft does them by the weakest minister: From simple sources; and great seas have dried, KING. I must not hear thee; fare thee well, Thy pains, not us'd, must by thyself be paid: Proffers, not took, reap thanks for their reward. HEL. Inspired merit so by breath is barr'd: It is not so with him that all things knows, As 't is 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? HEL. The great'st 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? HEL. Tax of impudence,A strumpet's boldness, a divulged shame,Traduc'd by odious ballads; my maiden's name ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. ACT II., HEL. If I break time, or flinch in property But will make it even? KING. Ay, by my sceptre, and my hopes of HEL. Then shalt thou give me, with thy kingly To choose from forth the royal blood of France; KING. Here is my hand; the premises observ'd, [SCENE I COUNT. To the court, why, what place make you special, when you put off that with such contempt? But to the court! CLO. 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. COUNT. Marry, that's a bountiful answer, that fits all questions. CLO. It is like a barber's chair, that fits all buttocks; the pin-buttock, the quatch-buttock, the brawn-buttock, or any buttock. COUNT. Will your answer serve fit to all questions? CLO. As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your French crown for your taffata punk, as Tib's rush for Tom's fore-finger, as a pancake for Shrove-Tuesday, a morris for May-day,(4) 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. COUNT. Have you, I say, an answer of such fitness for all questions? CLO. From below your duke, to beneath your constable, it will fit any question. COUNT. It must be an answer of most monstrous size, that must fit all demands. CLO. 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. COUNT. 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 ? CLO. O Lord, sir !-There's a simple putting off; more, more, a hundred of them. COUNT. Sir, I am a poor friend of [Flourish. Exeunt. yours, loves you. CLO. O Lord, sir !-Thick, thick, spare not me. COUNT. I think, sir, you can eat none of this homely meat. SCENE II.-Rousillon. A Room in the Enter COUNTESS and Clown. CLO. I will show myself highly fed, and lowly a Ne worse of worst extended,-] This is the lection of the old With vilest torture let my life be ended." b Impossibility-] That is, incredibility. c But will you make it even!] That is, Will you equate it? Will you match it? See note (a), p. 11, of the present volume. that CLO. O Lord, sir!-Nay, put me to't, I warrant you. COUNT. You were lately whipped, sir, as I think. COUNT. Do you cry, O Lord, sir, at your whip d And my hopes of heaven.] The old copy has help. The correction, which is due to Dr. Thirlby, seems called for both by the context and the rhyme. It is observable that much of this scene is in smooth, rhyming verses; it was a portion probably of the poet's first youthful conception, for we cannot divest ourselves of the impression that at a subsequent period of his career he rewrote a considerable part of this play. • O Lord, sir!] The use of this expletive, which appears to have been thought the mode both in court and city, has been finely ridiculed by Jonson also. See "Every Man out of his Humour," Act III. Sc. 1, and passim. |