The ministration and required office

On my particular. Prepared I was not

For such a business, therefore am I found

So much unsettled. This drives me to entreat you

That presently you take your way for home,

And rather muse than ask why I entreat you,

For my respects are better than they seem,

And my appointments have in them a need

Greater than shows itself at the first view

To you that know them not. This to my mother.

He gives her a letter

’Twill be two days ere I shall see you, so

I leave you to your wisdom.

HELEN

Sir, I can nothing say

But that I am your most obedient servant.

BERTRAM

Come, come, no more of that.

HELEN

And ever shall

With true observance seek to eke out that

Wherein toward me my homely stars have failed

To equal my great fortune.

BERTRAM

Let that go.

My haste is very great. Farewell. Hie home.

HELEN

Pray sir, your pardon.

BERTRAM

Well, what would you say?

HELEN

I am not worthy of the wealth I owe,

Nor dare I say ’tis mine—and yet it is—

But like a timorous thief most fain would steal

What law does vouch mine own.

BERTRAM

What would you have?

HELEN

Something, and scarce so much: nothing indeed.

I would not tell you what I would, my lord. Faith,

yes:

Strangers and foes do sunder and not kiss.

BERTRAM

I pray you, stay not, but in haste to horse.

HELEN

I shall not break your bidding, good my lord.—

Where are my other men?—Monsieur, farewell.

Exeunt Helen ⌈and attendants at one door⌉

BERTRAM

Go thou toward home, where I will never come

Whilst I can shake my sword or hear the drum.—

Away, and for our flight.

PAROLES

Bravely. Coraggio!

Exeunt ⌈at another door⌉

3.1 Flourish of trumpets. Enter the Duke of Florence and the two Lords Dumaine, with a troop of soldiers

DUKE

So that from point to point now have you heard

The fundamental reasons of this war,

Whose great decision hath much blood let forth,

And more thirsts after.

FIRST LORD DUMAINE Holy seems the quarrel

Upon your grace’s part; black and fearful

On the opposer.

DUKE

Therefore we marvel much our cousin France

Would in so just a business shut his bosom

Against our borrowing prayers.

SECOND LORD DUMAINE

Good my lord,

The reasons of our state I cannot yield

But like a common and an outward man

That the great figure of a council frames

By self-unable motion; therefore dare not

Say what I think of it, since I have found

Myself in my incertain grounds to fail

As often as I guessed.

DUKE

Be it his pleasure.

FIRST LORD DUMAINE

But I am sure the younger of our nation,

That surfeit on their ease, will day by day

Come here for physic.

DUKE

Welcome shall they be,

And all the honours that can fly from us

Shall on them settle. You know your places well;

When better fall, for your avails they fell.

Tomorrow to the field.

Flourish. Exeunt

3.2 Enter the Countess with a letter, and Lavatch COUNTESS It hath happened all as I would have had it, save that he comes not along with her.

LAVATCH By my troth, I take my young lord to be a very melancholy man.

COUNTESS By what observance, I pray you?

LAVATCH Why, he will look upon his boot and sing, mend the ruff and sing, ask questions and sing, pick his teeth and sing. I know a man that had this trick of melancholy sold a goodly manor for a song.

COUNTESS Let me see what he writes, and when he means to come.

She opens the letter and reads

LAVATCH (aside) I have no mind to Isbel since I was at court. Our old lings and our Isbels o‘th’ country are nothing like your old ling and your Isbels o’th’ court. The brains of my Cupid’s knocked out, and I begin to love as an old man loves money: with no stomach.

COUNTESS What have we here?

LAVATCH E’en that you have there.

Exit

COUNTESS (reads the letter aloud) ’I have sent you a daughter-in-law. She hath recovered the King and undone me. I have wedded her, not bedded her, and sworn to make the “not” eternal. You shall hear I am run away; know it before the report come. If there be breadth enough in the world I will hold a long distance. My duty to you.

Your unfortunate son,

Bertram.’

This is not well, rash and unbridled boy,

To fly the favours of so good a King,

To pluck his indignation on thy head

By the misprizing of a maid too virtuous

For the contempt of empire.

Enter Lavatch

LAVATCH O madam, yonder is heavy news within, between two soldiers and my young lady.

COUNTESS What is the matter?

LAVATCH Nay, there is some comfort in the news, some comfort. Your son will not be killed so soon as I thought he would.

COUNTESS Why should he be killed?

LAVATCH So say I, madam—if he run away, as I hear he does. The danger is in standing to’t; that’s the loss of men, though it be the getting of children. Here they come will tell you more. For my part, I only heard your son was run away. [Exit]

Enter Helen with a letter, and the two Lords Dumaine

SECOND LORD DUMAINE (to the Countess)

Save you, good madam.

HELEN

Madam, my lord is gone, for ever gone.

FIRST LORD DUMAINE Do not say so.

COUNTESS (to Helen)

Think upon patience.—Pray you, gentlemen,

I have felt so many quirks of joy and grief

That the first face of neither on the start

Can woman me unto’t. Where is my son, I pray you?

FIRST LORD DUMAINE

Madam, he’s gone to serve the Duke of Florence.

We met him thitherward, for thence we came,

And, after some dispatch in hand at court,

Thither we bend again.

HELEN

Look on his letter, madam: here’s my passport.

⌈She⌉ reads aloud

‘When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband; but in such a “then” I write a “never”.’ This is a dreadful sentence.