SCENE I. Rousillon. The COUNT's palace. All's Well That Ends Well  Shakespeare homepage  |  All's Well That Ends Well  | Act 1, Scene 1 

 Next scene  SCENE I. Rousillon. The COUNT's palace. 

 Enter BERTRAM, the COUNTESS of Rousillon, HELENA, and 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 

 practises 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 Narbon. 

 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 Gerard de Narbon? 

 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, Helena; 

 go to, no more; lest it be rather thought you affect 

 a sorrow than have it. 

 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 cheque'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  BERTRAM  [To HELENA]  The best wishes that can be forged in 

 your thoughts 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. '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. 

 The ambition in my love thus plagues itself: 

 The hind that would be mated by the lion 

 Must die for love. 'Twas pretty, though 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 reliques. Who comes here? 



 Enter PAROLLES 

 Aside  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 

 Look bleak i' the cold wind: withal, full oft we see 

 Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly. 

 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, sitting 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 't! 

 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 loose 

 by't: out with 't! within ten year it will make 

 itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the 

 principal itself not much the worse: away with 't! 

 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 tooth-pick, 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? 

 HELENA  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-- 

 PAROLLES  What one, i' faith? 

 HELENA  That I wish well. 'Tis pity-- 

 PAROLLES  What's pity? 

 HELENA  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 

 Return us thanks. 



 Enter Page  Page  Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you. 



 Exit  PAROLLES  Little Helen, farewell; if I can remember thee, I 

 will think of thee at court. 

 HELENA  Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a charitable star. 

 PAROLLES  Under Mars, I. 

 HELENA  I especially think, under Mars. 

 PAROLLES  Why under Mars? 

 HELENA  The wars have so kept you under that you must needs 

 be born under Mars. 

 PAROLLES  When he was predominant. 

 HELENA  When he was retrograde, I think, rather. 

 PAROLLES  Why think you so? 

 HELENA  You go so much backward when you fight. 

 PAROLLES  That's for advantage. 

 HELENA  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. 

 PAROLLES  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  HELENA  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 

 So show her merit, that did miss her love? 

 The king's disease--my project may deceive me, 

 But my intents are fix'd and will not leave me. 



 Exit  Shakespeare homepage  |  All's Well That Ends Well  | Act 1, Scene 1 

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