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picture the salvation of a worthless man by a woman's devoted love. But neither of these transcendent ways of looking at love is anywhere suggested in Shakespeare. Helen's love is an idolatry, and finds its highest expression in adoring self-subjection:

I dare not say I take you; but I give

Me and my service, ever whilst I live,
Into your guiding power.

She

Yet the triumph of her love is merely external.
has satisfied the conditions and her husband consents
to take her home; but of the sequel we are left to
form what ominous conjecture we may from the per-
functory declaration of the 'shrewd boggler' in the
last lines:

If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly,
I'll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

ACT I.

SCENE I. Rousillon. The COUNT's palace.

Enter BERTRAM, the COUNTESS of ROUSILLON,
HELENA, and LAFEU, all in black.

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

Ber. 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.

Laf. 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 10 where it wanted rather than lack it where there is such abundance.

Count. What hope is there of his majesty's amendment?

Laf. He hath abandoned his physicians, madam; under whose practices he hath persecuted time

16. persecuted time with hope. His 'hope that the 'time' of his disease would be cut shortis conceived as a weapon which

he used against time, -with no further result than to spoil its edge.

with hope, and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time.

Count. This young gentlewoman had a father, -O, that 'had'! how sad a passage 'tis !—whose 20 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.

Laf. How called you the man you speak of,

madam?

Count. He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon.

Laf. 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.

Ber. What is it, my good lord, the king languishes of?

Laf. A fistula, my lord.

Ber. I heard not of it before.

Was

Laf. I would it were not notorious. this gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?

30

40

Count. 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 50

20. how sad a passage 'tis, 'what a grievous passing away lies "had"!'

in this "

they are the better for their simpleness; she derives her honesty and achieves her goodness. Laf. Your commendations, madam, get from her tears.

Count. '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 60 have it.

Hel. I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too.

Laf. Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living.

Count. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.

Ber. Madam, I desire your holy wishes.
Laf. How understand we that?

Count. 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 check'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.
Laf. He cannot want the best
That shall attend his love.

58. livelihood, liveliness. 74. be able for, be a match for. 78. furnish, enrich, endow.

70

80

Count. Heaven bless him! Farewell, Bertram. [Exit.

Ber. [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.

Laf. Farewell, pretty lady: you must hold the credit of your father.

[Exeunt Bertram and Lafeu. Hel. 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 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 reliques.

91. these great tears grace his

remembrance more than those I shed for him, i.e. her 'great tears at Bertram's departure, shed, as the Countess and Lafeu supposed, for her father, betray a far deeper grief than those she

Who comes here?

had actually shed for him.

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