: 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 toothpick, 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, 't is a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet, 'tis a withered pear: Will you anything with it?" Hel. 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; Par. Little Helen, farewell: if I can remember thee, I will think of thee at court. Hel. Monsier Parolles, you were born under a charitable star. Par. Under Mars, I. Hel. I especially think, under Mars. Par. Why under Mars? Hel. The wars have so kept you under, that you must needs be born under Mars. Par. When he was predominant. Hel. You go so much backward when you fight. Par. That's for advantage. Hel. 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. Par. I am so full of businesses I cannot answer thee acutely: I will return perfect courtier; in the which, my instruction shall serve to naturalise 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 The court's a learning-place; and he is thy prayers; when thou hast none, remember one Par. What one, i' faith? - There is evidently something wanting here-and it is possible that "will you anything with it?" is a misprint for "will you anything wi' the court?" or "to the court." Hanmer makes Helena say, "You 're for the court," before she goes on. "There, shall your master," &c. Her meaning, however obscure the connexion with the speech of Parolles, is, that Bertram will find at the court (which she afterwards describes as the court 's a learning place") some love, which will have all the opposite qualities united which belong to "a thousand loves." The thy friends: get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee: so farewell. [Exit. Hel. 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? SCENE II.-Paris. A Room in the King's Palace. Flourish of cornets. Enter the KING OF FRANCE, with letters; Lords and others attending. King. The Florentines and Senoys are by the ears; As when thy father and myself, in friendship, He us'd as creatures of another place; In their poor praise he humbled: Such a man now But goers backward. Ber. His good remembrance, sir, Lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb; So in approof lives not his epitaph, As in your royal speech. King. 'Would I were with him! He would always say, (Methinks I hear him now: his plausive words He scatter'd not in ears, but grafted them, To grow there, and to bear,2)—'Let me not live,' This his good melancholy oft began, Enter COUNTESS, Steward, and Clown. Count. I will now hear: what say you of this gentlewoman? • Malone deems the construction to be, "in their poor praise he being humbled." Stew. Madam, the care I have had to even your content, I wish might be found in the calendar of my past endeavours: for then we wound our modesty, and make foul the clearness of our deservings, when of ourselves we publish them. Count. What does this knave here? Get you gone, sirrah: The complaints I have heard of you I do not all believe; 'tis my slowness that I do not: for I know you lack not folly to commit them, and have ability enough to make such knaveries yours.3 Clo. "T is not unknown to you, madam, I am a poor fellow. Clo. My poor body, madam, requires it: I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives. Count. Is this all your worship's reason? Clo. Faith, madam, I have other holy reasons, such as they are. Count. May the world know them? Clo. I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh and blood are; and, indeed, I do marry, that I may repent. Count. Thy marriage, sooner than thy wickedness. Clo. I am out of friends, madam; and I hope to have friends for my wife's sake. Count. Such friends are thine enemies, knave. Clo. You are shallow, madam, in great friends;b In Much Ado about Nothing (Act II. Sc. 1.), Beatrice says, "Thus goes every one to the world but I." The commentators explain the phrase of Beatrice by the Clown's speech in the text, and say that "to go to the world" is to be married. It appears to us that the Clown asks his freedom when he begs her ladyship's "good-will to go to the world." The domestic fool was ordinarily in the condition of a slave, and was sold or given away. The Clown here adds, "Service is no heritage." And yet, "to go to the world also mean to marry-as we still say, to settle in the world. A son or daughter, having the paternal leave to marry, goes to the world, in the sense of encountering its responsibilities. In great friends-so the original. The modern reading is e'en great friends. Surely no alteration is necessary; the may for the knaves come to do that for me, which I am a-weary of. He that ears my land spares my team, and gives me leave to in the crop: If I be his cuckold, he's my drudge: He that comforts my wife is the cherisher of my flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh and blood loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh and blood is my friend; ergo, he that kisses my wife is my friend. If men could be contented to be what they are, there were no fear in marriage: for young Charbon the puritan, and old Poysam the papist, howsoe'er their hearts are severed in religion, their heads are both one,—they may jowl horns together, like any deer i' the herd. Count. Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouth'd and calumnious knave? Clo. A prophet I, madam; and I speak the truth the next way:a Count. What, one good in ten? you corrupt the song, sirrah. Clo. One good woman in ten, madam, which is a purifying o'the song: 'Would God would serve the world so all the year! we'd find no fault with the tithe woman, if I were the parson: One in ten, quoth a'! and we might have a good woman born but for every blazing star, or at an earthquake, 't would mend the lottery well; a man may draw his heart out, ere he pluck one. meaning clearly being-You are shallow in the matter of great friends. The next way-the nearest way. The mention of Helen is associated in the mind of the Clown with some popular ballad on the war of Troy. For the original reads ore. Steevens omits the word altogether. The slight correction of for appears to us to give a sense. Count. You'll be gone, sir knave, and do as I Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong : command you! Clo. That man should be at woman's command, and yet no hurt done!—Though honesty be no puritan, yet it will do no hurt; it will wear the surplice of humility over the black gown of a big heart.-I am going, forsooth; the business is for Helen to come hither. [Exit. Count. Well, now. Stew. I know, madam, you love your gentlewoman entirely. Count. Faith, I do: her father bequeathed her to me; and she herself, without other advantage, may lawfully make title to as much love as she finds there is more owing her than is paid; and more shall be paid her than she'll demand. Stew. Madam, I was very late more near her than, I think, she wished me: alone she was, and did communicate to herself her own words to her own ears; she thought, I dare vow for her, they touched not any stranger sense. Her matter was, she loved your son: Fortune, she said, was no goddess, that had put such difference betwixt their two estates; Love, no god, that would not extend his might only where qualities were level; Diana, no queen of virgins, that would suffer her poor knight to be surprised, without rescue in the first assault, or ransom afterward: This she delivered in the most bitter touch of sorrow that e'er I heard virgin exclaim in: which I held my duty, speedily to acquaint you withal; sithence, in the loss that may happen, it concerns you something to know it. Count. You have discharged this honestly; keep it to yourself: many likelihoods informed me of this before, which hung so tottering in the balance, that I could neither believe, nor misdoubt: Pray you, leave me: stall this in your bosom, and I thank you for your honest care: I will speak with you further anon. [Exit Steward. Enter HELENA. Count. Even so it was with me when I was young: If we are nature's, these are ours; this thorn • The passage in the original stands thus:-"Love, no god, that would not extend his might only where qualities were level; queen of virgins, that would suffer her poor knight surprised without rescue," &c. The introduction of "Diana a," and to be," was made by Theobald. We adopt such changes with great reluctance; but, as the text in the original is certainly corrupt, we prefer a reading that has been generally received to any new conjecture. It would certainly be a less violent alteration to let the description of Fortune and Love terminate without the introduction of Diana; and to suppose the Steward to be translating into narrative an apostrophe of Helena to the Queen of Virgins. Our blood to us, this to our blood is born; By our remembrances of days foregone, none. Her eye is sick on 't; I observe her now. I am a mother to you. Hel. Mine honourable mistress. Nay, a mother; ther That you start at it? I say, I am your mother; Yet I express to you a mother's care :- That this distemper'd messenger of wet, That I am not. Count. I say, I am your mother. you were So that my lord, your son, were not my brother.) mothers, I care no more for than I do for heaven, We venture to point this very difficult passage differently from the received mode. It appears to us that the passages which we give between parentheses are spoken half aside. Farmer explains that I care no more for" means " I care as much for." God shield, you mean it not! daughter, and mother, So strive upon your pulse: What, pale again? My fear hath catch'd your fondness: Now I see The mystery of your loneliness," and find Your salt tears' head. Now to all sense 't is gross. You love my son; invention is asham'd, Confess it, th' one to th' other; and thine eyes As heaven shall work in me for thine avail, Hel. Count. Do you Hel. Good madam, pardon me. love my son? Your pardon, noble mistress! But knows of him no more. My dearest madam, Was both herself and love; O then, give pity |