Of worthy Frenchmen: let higher Italy (1) 2 LORD. Health, at your bidding, serve your KING. Those girls of Italy, take heed of them; They say, our French lack language to deny, If they demand; beware of being captives, Before you serve. Вотн. Our hearts receive your warnings. KING. Farewell.-Come hither to me. [The KING retires to a couch. 1 LORD. O my sweet lord, that will stay behind us! PAR. 'T is not his fault, the spark. 2 LORD. you O, 't is brave wars! PAR. Most admirable; I have seen those wars. BER. I am commanded here, and kept a coil with, Тоо young, and the next year, and 't is too early. PAR. An thy mind stand to 't, boy, steal away bravely. BER. I shall stay here the fore-horse to a smock,a Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry, Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn, But one to dance with (2) By heaven, I'll steal away. 1 LORD. There's honour in the theft. PAR. Commit it, count. 2 LORD. I am your accessary; and so farewell. BER. I tured body. grow to you, and our parting is a tor 1 LORD. Farewell, captain. 2 LORD. Sweet monsieur Parolles ! PAR. Noble heroes, my sword and yours are kin. Good sparks and lustrous, a word, good metals. You shall find in the regiment of the Spinii, one captain Spurio, with his cicatrice,* an emblem of war, here on his sinister cheek; it was I'll sue thee to stand up.] The old copy reads, "I'll see thee." &c. When any one kneels to a sovereign, it is to ask perission to stand in his presence. Thus, in Richard II." Act V.Sc. 3, Bolingbroke says- "Good aunt, stand up;" to which she answers, "I do not sue to stand." PAR. Use a more spacious ceremony to the noble lords; you have restrained yourself within the list of too cold an adieu: be more expressive to them; for they wear themselves in the cap of the time; there, do muster true gait, eat, speak, and move under the influence of the most received star; and though the devil lead the measure, such are to be followed: after them, and take a more dilated farewell. Upon Lafeu prostrating himself, the afflicted king, mindful of his own debility, remarks,-"Instead of your begging permission of me to rise. I'll sue thee for the same grace;"-Lafeu imme diately responds, VOL. II. BER. And I will do so. PAR. Worthy fellows; and like to prove most sinewy sword-men. [Exeunt BERTRAM and PAROLLES., Enter LAFEU. LAF. Pardon, my lord, [Kneeling.] for me and for my tidings. KING. I'll sue thee to stand up. LAF. Then here's a man stands, that has brought his pardon. [mercy; I would you had kneel'd, my lord, to ask me And that, at my bidding, you could so stand up. KING. I would I had; so I had broke thy pate, And ask'd thee mercy for't. ['t is thus ; LAF. Good faith, across : d but, my good lord, Will you be cur'd of your infirmity? KING. NO. e LAF. O, will you eat no grapes, my royal fox? Yes, but will, you my noble grapes, an if My royal fox could reach them: I have seen a medicine.. That's able to breathe life into a stone, (*) Old text, ye. "I would you had kneel'd, my lord," &c. d Good faith, across:] Across, in reference to the sports of chivalry, in which, to break a spear across the body of an opponent was disgraceful, came to be used in derision when any pass of wit miscarried. Here, however, we believe Lafeu alludes rather to some game, where certain successes entitle the achiever to mark a cross. e Yes, but you will, my noble grapes,-] My in this passage has been changed in some modern editions to ay, but needlessly; we have only to read "my" emphatically, and the sense is obvious: "O, will you eat no grapes? &c. Yes, but you will, my noble grapes." And make you dance canary,-] To what has already been said on the nature of this sprightly dance (see note (a), vol. I. p. 64), may be added, that the dancers accompanied their movements with castagnets: see Florio, who defines Chioppare "to clacke or snap, or phip, or click, or lirp with ones fingers, as they that dance the Canaries, or as some barbers." ACT 11] To give great Charlemaine a pen in's hand, And write to her a love-line. What her is this? KING. If you will see her,-now, by my faith and honour, KING. And not be all day neither. Nay, I'll fit you, Exit LAFEU. KING. Thus he his special nothing ever prologues. him; Knowing him, is enough. On's bed of death Safer than mine own two more dear: I have so; KING. To empirics; or to dissever so HEL. What I can do, can do no hurt to try, From simple sources; and great seas have dried, kind maid; Thy pains, not us'd, must by thyself be paid: Proffers, not took, reap thanks for their reward. HEL. Inspired merit so by breath is barr'd: It is not so with him that all things knows, As 't is 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? IIEL. The great'st 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? HEL. 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," b In common sense, sense saves another way. That happiness and prime can happy call : HEL. If I break time, or flinch in property HEL. But will you make it even? To choose from forth the royal blood of France; KING. Here is my hand; the premises observ'd, SCENE II.-Rousillon. A Room in the Enter COUNTESS and Clown. COUNT. Come on, sir; I shall now put you to the height of your breeding. CLO. I will show myself highly fed, and lowly taught: I know my business is but to the court. Ne worse of worst extended,-] This is the lection of the old copy, and, although unquestionably corrupt, it is not worse than the commentators' suggestions for its amendment. We should, perhaps, approach nearer to what the poet really wrote by treating He and extended as palpable misprints, and reading : and, worse of worst expended, With vilest torture let my life be ended." Impossibility-] That is, incredibility. e But will you make it even?] That is, Will you equate it? Will you match it? See note (a), p. 11, of the present volume. 19 [SCENE I. COUNT. To the court, why, what place make you special, when you put off that with such contempt? But to the court! CLO. 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. COUNT. Marry, that's a bountiful answer, fits all questions. that CLO. It is like a barber's chair, that fits all buttocks; the pin-buttock, the quatch-buttock, the brawn-buttock, or any buttock. COUNT. Will your answer serve fit to all questions? CLO. As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your French crown for your taffata punk, as Tib's rush for Tom's fore-finger, as a pancake for Shrove-Tuesday, a morris for May-day,(4) scolding quean to a wrangling knave, as the nun's as the nail to his hole, the cuckold to his horn, as a lip to the friar's mouth; nay, as the pudding to his skin. COUNT. Have you, I say, an answer of such fitness for all questions? CLO. From below your duke, to beneath your constable, it will fit any question. size, that must fit all demands. COUNT. It must be an answer of most monstrous CLO. 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. COUNT. 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? CLO. O Lord, sir!-There's a simple putting off;more, more, a hundred of them. COUNT. Sir, I am a poor friend of yours, that loves you. CLO. O Lord, sir !-Thick, thick, spare not me. COUNT. I think, sir, you can eat none of this homely meat. CLO. O Lord, sir!-Nay, put me to't, I war rant you. COUNT. You were lately whipped, sir, as I think. COUNT. Do you cry, O Lord, sir, at your whip And my hopes of heaven.] The old copy has help. The correction, which is due to Dr. Thirlby, seems called for both by the context and the rhyme. It is observable that much of this scene is in smooth, rhyming verses; it was a portion probably of the poet's first youthful conception, for we cannot divest ourselves of the impression that at a subsequent period of his career he rewrote a considerable part of this play. e O Lord, sir!] The use of this expletive, which appears to have been thought the mode both in court and city, has been finely ridiculed by Jonson also. See "Every Man out of his Humour," Act III. Sc. 1, and passim. ACT II.] LAF. To be relinquished of the artists,- LAF. That gave him out incurable,— PAR. Right: as 't were, a man assured of a- PAR. Just, you say well; so would I have said. LAF. I may truly say, it is a novelty to the world. PAR. It is, indeed: if you will have it in (*) First folio, And. a Lustique,-] "An old play, that has a great deal of merit, call'd The weakest goeth to the Wall,' (printed in 1600, but how much earlier written, or by whom written, we are no where inform'd,) has in it a Dutchman, call'd-Jacob van Smelt, who speaks a jargon of Dutch and our language; and upon several occasions uses this very word, which in English is-lusty."-CAPELI.. PAR. And debile minister, great power, great transcendence: which should, indeed, give us a further use to be made, than alone the recovery of the king, as to be LAF. Generally thankful. PAR. I would have said it; you say well. Here comes the king. LAF. Lustique, 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.b PAR. Mort du Vinaigre! Is not this Helen? LAF. 'Fore God, I think so. |