All's Well That Ends Well - William Shakespeare (adult books to read TXT) 📗

so: And, hearing your high majesty is touch'd With that malignant cause wherein the honour Of my dear father's gift stands chief in power, I come to tender it, and my appliance, With all bound humbleness.

KING. We thank you, maiden: But may not be so credulous of cure,-- When our most learned doctors leave us, and The congregated college have concluded That labouring art can never ransom nature From her inaidable estate,--I say we must not So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope, To prostitute our past-cure malady To empirics; or to dissever so Our great self and our credit, to esteem A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.

HELENA. My duty, then, shall pay me for my pains: I will no more enforce mine office on you; Humbly entreating from your royal thoughts A modest one to bear me back again.

KING. I cannot give thee less, to be call'd grateful. Thou thought'st to help me; and such thanks I give As one near death to those that wish him live: But what at full I know, thou know'st no part; I knowing all my peril, thou no art.

HELENA. What I can do can do no hurt to try, Since you set up your rest 'gainst remedy. He that of greatest works is finisher Oft does them by the weakest minister: So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown, When judges have been babes. Great floods have flown From simple sources; and great seas have dried When miracles have by the greatest been denied. Oft expectation fails, and most oft there Where most it promises; and oft it hits Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.

KING. I must not hear thee: fare thee well, kind maid; Thy pains, not used, must by thyself be paid: Proffers, not took, reap thanks for their reward.

HELENA. Inspired merit so by breath is barred: It is not so with Him that all things knows, As 'tis 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?

HELENA. The greatest 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?

HELENA. Tax of impudence,-- A strumpet's boldness, a divulged shame,-- Traduc'd by odious ballads; my maiden's name Sear'd otherwise; ne worse of worst extended, With vilest torture let my life be ended.

KING. Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak; His powerful sound within an organ weak: And what impossibility would slay In common sense, sense saves another way. Thy life is dear; for all that life can rate Worth name of life in thee hath estimate: Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, all That happiness and prime can happy call; Thou this to hazard needs must intimate Skill infinite or monstrous desperate. Sweet practiser, thy physic I will try: That ministers thine own death if I die.

HELENA. If I break time, or flinch in property Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die; And well deserv'd. Not helping, death's my fee; But, if I help, what do you promise me?

KING. Make thy demand.

HELENA. But will you make it even?

KING. Ay, by my sceptre and my hopes of heaven.

HELENA. Then shalt thou give me, with thy kingly hand What husband in thy power I will command: Exempted be from me the arrogance To choose from forth the royal blood of France, My low and humble name to propagate With any branch or image of thy state: But such a one, thy vassal, whom I know Is free for me to ask, thee to bestow.

KING. Here is my hand; the premises observ'd, Thy will by my performance shall be serv'd; So make the choice of thy own time, for I, Thy resolv'd patient, on thee still rely. More should I question thee, and more I must,-- Though more to know could not be more to trust,-- From whence thou cam'st, how tended on.--But rest Unquestion'd welcome and undoubted blest.-- Give me some help here, ho!--If thou proceed As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.

[Flourish. Exeunt.]


SCENE 2. Rousillon. A room in the COUNTESS'S palace.

[Enter COUNTESS and CLOWN.]

COUNTESS. Come on, sir; I shall now put you to the height of your breeding.

CLOWN. I will show myself highly fed and lowly taught: I know my business is but to the court.

COUNTESS. To the court! why, what place make you special, when you put off that with such contempt? But to the court!

CLOWN. 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.

COUNTESS. Marry, that's a bountiful answer that fits all questions.

CLOWN. It is like a barber's chair, that fits all buttocks--the pin- buttock, the quatch-buttock, the brawn-buttock, or any buttock.

COUNTESS. Will your answer serve fit to all questions?

CLOWN. As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your French crown for your taffety punk, as Tib's rush for Tom's forefinger, as a pancake for Shrove-Tuesday, a morris for Mayday, 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.

COUNTESS. Have you, I, say, an answer of such fitness for all questions?

CLOWN. From below your duke to beneath your constable, it will fit any question.

COUNTESS. It must be an answer of most monstrous size that must fit all demands.

CLOWN. 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.

COUNTESS. 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?

CLOWN. O Lord, sir!--There's a simple putting off. More, more, a hundred of them.

COUNTESS. Sir, I am a poor friend of yours, that loves you.

CLOWN. O Lord, sir!--Thick, thick; spare not me.

COUNTESS. I think, sir, you can eat none of this homely meat.

CLOWN. O Lord, sir!--Nay, put me to't, I warrant you.

COUNTESS. You were lately whipped, sir, as I think.

CLOWN. O Lord, sir!--Spare not me.

COUNTESS. Do you cry 'O Lord, sir!' at your whipping, and 'spare not me'? Indeed your 'O Lord, sir!' is very sequent to your whipping. You would answer very well to a whipping, if you were but bound to't.

CLOWN. I ne'er had worse luck in my life in my--'O Lord, sir!' I see thing's may serve long, but not serve ever.

COUNTESS. I play the noble housewife with the time, to entertain it so merrily with a fool.

CLOWN. O Lord, sir!--Why, there't serves well again.

COUNTESS. An end, sir! To your business. Give Helen this, And urge her to a present answer back: Commend me to my kinsmen and my son: This is not much.

CLOWN. Not much commendation to them.

COUNTESS. Not much employment for you: you understand me?

CLOWN. Most fruitfully: I am there before my legs.

COUNTESS. Haste you again.

[Exeunt severally.]


SCENE 3. Paris. The KING'S palace.

[Enter BERTRAM, LAFEU, and PAROLLES.]

LAFEU. They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.

PAROLLES. Why, 'tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot out in our latter times.

BERTRAM. And so 'tis.

LAFEU. To be relinquish'd of the artists,--

PAROLLES. So I say; both of Galen and Paracelsus.

LAFEU. Of all the learned and authentic fellows,--

PAROLLES. Right; so I say.

LAFEU. That gave him out incurable,--

PAROLLES. Why, there 'tis; so say I too.

LAFEU. Not to be helped,--

PAROLLES. Right; as 'twere a man assured of a,--

LAFEU. Uncertain life and sure death.

PAROLLES. Just; you say well: so would I have said.

LAFEU. I may truly say, it is a novelty to the world.

PAROLLES. It is indeed: if you will have it in showing, you shall read it in,--What do you call there?--

LAFEU. A showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor.

PAROLLES. That's it; I would have said the very same.

LAFEU. Why, your dolphin is not lustier: 'fore me, I speak in respect,--

PAROLLES. Nay, 'tis strange, 'tis very strange; that is the brief and the tedious of it; and he's of a most facinerious spirit that will not acknowledge it to be the,--

LAFEU. Very hand of heaven.

PAROLLES. Ay; so I say.

LAFEU. In a most weak,--

PAROLLES. And debile minister, great power, great transcendence: which should, indeed, give us a further use to be made than alone the recov'ry of the king, as to be,--

LAFEU. Generally thankful.

PAROLLES. I would have said it; you say well. Here comes the king.

[Enter KING, HELENA, and Attendants.]

LAFEU. Lustic, as the Dutchman says: I'll like a maid the better, whilst I have a tooth in my head: why, he's able to lead her a coranto.

PAROLLES. 'Mort du vinaigre!' is not this Helen?

LAFEU. 'Fore God, I think so.

KING. Go, call before me all the lords in court.--

[Exit an Attendant.]

Sit, my preserver, by thy patient's side; And with this healthful hand, whose banish'd sense Thou has repeal'd, a second time receive The confirmation of my promis'd gift, Which but attends thy naming.

[Enter severaol Lords.]

Fair maid, send forth thine eye: this youthful parcel Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing, O'er whom both sovereign power and father's voice I have to use: thy frank election make; Thou hast power to choose, and they none to forsake.

HELENA. To each of you one fair and virtuous mistress Fall, when love please!--marry, to each, but one!

LAFEU. I'd give bay Curtal and his furniture, My mouth no more were broken than these boys', And writ as little beard.

KING. Peruse them well: Not one of those but had a noble father.

HELENA. Gentlemen, Heaven hath through me restor'd the king to health.

ALL. We understand it, and thank heaven for you.