COUNTESS If the living be not enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.

BERTRAM) (kneeling) Madam, I desire your holy wishes. LAFEU How understand we that?

COUNTESS

Be thou blessed, 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 checked for silence

But never taxed for speech. What heaven more will

That thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down,

Fall on thy head. Farewell. (To Lafeu) My lord,

’Tis an unseasoned courtier. Good my lord,

Advise him.

LAFEU

He cannot want the best

That shall attend his love.

COUNTESS Heaven bless him!—Farewell, Bertram.

BERTRAM (rising) The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts be servants to you.

⌈Exit Countess⌉

(To Helen) 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

HELEN

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.

Th’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 relics. Who comes here?

Enter Paroles

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

Looks bleak i’th’ cold wind. Withal, full oft we see

Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.

PAROLES Save you, fair queen.

HELEN And you, monarch.

PAROLES No.

HELEN And no.

PAROLES Are you meditating on virginity?

HELEN 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? in

PAROLES Keep him out.

HELEN But he assails, and our virginity, though valiant in the defence, yet is weak. Unfold to us some warlike resistance.

PAROLES There is none. Man, setting down before you, will undermine you and blow you up.

HELEN Bless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers-up. Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up men?

PAROLES 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 mettle 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.

HELEN I will stand for’t a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

PAROLES 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 lose by’t. Out with’t! Within t’one year it will make itself two, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with’t.

HELEN How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?

PAROLES 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 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, ’tis a withered pear—it was formerly better, marry, yet ’tis a withered pear. Will you anything with it?

HELEN 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—

PAROLES What one, i’faith?

HELEN That I wish well. ’Tis pity.

PAROLES What’s pity?

HELEN

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