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, She Yet the triumph of her love is merely external. If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly, ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL ACT I. SCENE I. Rousillon. The COUNT's palace. Enter BERTRAM, the COUNTESS of ROUSILLON, 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. Count. Be thou blest, Bertram, and succeed thy In manners, as in shape! thy blood and virtue 'Tis an unseason'd courtier; good my lord, 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 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. |