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.

HELEN

If I break time, or flinch in property

Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die,

And well deserved. Not helping, death’s my fee.

But if I help, what do you promise me?

KING

Make thy demand.

HELEN

But will you make it even?

KING

Ay, by my sceptre and my hopes of heaven.

HELEN

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 observed,

Thy will by my performance shall be served.

So make the choice of thy own time, for I,

Thy resolved 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

Unquestioned welcome, and undoubted blessed.—

Give me some help here, ho! If thou proceed

As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.

Flourish. Exeunt the King, ⌈carried⌉, and Helen

2.2 Enter the Countess and Lavatch the clown

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

LAVATCH 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’!

LAVATCH 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.

LAVATCH 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?

LAVATCH As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your French crown for your taffeta punk, as Tib’s rush for Tom’s forefinger, as a pancake for Shrove Tuesday, a morris for May Day, 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?

LAVATCH From beyond 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.

LAVATCH 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?

LAVATCH 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.

LAVATCH O Lord, sir!—Thick, thick, spare not me.

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

LAVATCH O Lord, sir!—Nay, put me to’t, I warrant you.

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

LAVATCH 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.

LAVATCH I ne‘er had worse luck in my life in my ‘O Lord, sir!’ I see things may serve long, but not serve ever.

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

LAVATCH O Lord, sir!—Why, there’t serves well again. COUNTESS

An end, sir! To your business: give Helen this,

She gives him a letter

And urge her to a present answer back.

Commend me to my kinsmen and my son.

This is not much.

LAVATCH Not much commendation to them?

COUNTESS Not much employment for you. You understand me.

LAVATCH Most fruitfully. I am there before my legs.

COUNTESS Haste you again.

Exeunt severally

2.3 Enter Bertram, Lafeu ⌈with a ballad], and Paroles

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.

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

BERTRAM And so ’tis.

LAFEU To be relinquished of the artists—

PAROLES So I say—both of Galen and Paracelsus.

LAFEU Of all the learned and authentic Fellows—

PAROLES Right, so I say.

LAFEU That gave him out incurable—

PAROLES Why, there ’tis, so say I too.

LAFEU Not to be helped.

PAROLES Right, as ’twere a man assured of a—

LAFEU Uncertain life and sure death.

PAROLES Just, you say well, so would I have said.

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

PAROLES It is indeed. If you will have it in showing, you shall read it in [pointing to the ballad] what-do-ye-call there.

LAFEU ⌈reads⌉ ‘A showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor.’

PAROLES That’s it, I would have said the very same.

LAFEU Why, your dolphin is not lustier. Fore me, I speak in respect—

PAROLES Nay, ‘tis strange, ’tis very strange, that is the brief and the tedious of it, and he’s of a most facinorous spirit that will not acknowledge it to be the—

LAFEU Very hand of heaven.

PAROLES Ay, so I say.

LAFEU In a most weak—

PAROLES 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.

Enter the King, Helen, and attendants

PAROLES I would have said it, you say well. Here comes the King.

LAFEU Lustig, as the Dutchman says. I’ll like a maid the better whilst I have a tooth in my head.

⌈The King and Helen dance⌉

Why, he’s able to lead her a coranto.