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PAR. Keep him out.

HEL. But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant in the defence, yet is weak: unfold to us some warlike resistance.

PAR. There is none; man, sitting down before you, will undermine you, and blow you up.

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

PAR. 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 metal to make virgins. ginity, by being once lost, may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is ever lost: 'tis too cold a companion: away with it.

Vir

HEL. I will stand for't a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

PAR. 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 ten year it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with 't.

C

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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 any thing with it?

d

HEL. 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-
PAR. What one, i'faith?

HEL. That I wish well.-'Tis pity-
PAR. What's pity?

HEL. 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,
And show what we alone must think; which

never

Returns us thanks.

Enter a Page.

PAGE. Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you. [Exit Page.

PAR. Little Helen, farewell: if I can remember thee, I will think of thee at court.

HEL. Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a charitable star.

PAR. Under Mars, I.

HEL. I especially think, under Mars.
PAR. Why under Mars?

HEL. The wars have so kept you under, that you must needs be born under Mars.

PAR. When he was predominant.

HEL. When he was retrograde, I think, rather. PAR. Why think you so?

HEL. You go so much backward, when you fight.

d It was formerly better, marry, yet, 'tis a withered pear:] This is a notable instance of "get" being used in the sense of now. See note (b), p. 346, Vol. I.

There shall your master have a thousand loves,-] Something is evidently wanting here; this rhapsody having no connexion with what precedes it. Hanmer remedies the defect by making Helena say, "You're for the court;" but the deficiency is more probably in Parolles' speech, where the words "We are for the court" may have been omitted by the compositor.

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PAR. That's for advantage.

HEL. So is running away, when fear proposes the safety but the composition, that your valour and fear makes in you, is a virtue of a good wing, and I like the wear well.

PAR. I am so full of businesses, I cannot answer thee acutely: I will return perfect courtier; in the which, my instruction shall serve to naturalize thee, so thou wilt be capable of a courtier's counsel, and understand what advice shall thrust upon thee; else thou diest in thine unthankfulness, and thine ignorance makes thee away: farewell. When thou hast leisure, say thy prayers; when thou hast none, remember thy friends: get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee: so farewell. [Exit.

HEL. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky Gives us free scope; only, doth backward pull Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull. What power is it, which mounts my love so high; That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye? The mightiest space in fortune, nature brings

The mightiest space in fortune, nature brings To join like likes, and kiss like native things.] It would improve both the sense and metre were we to read,"The wid'st apart in fortune," &c.

Mightiest space is clearly one of the swarm of typographical blemishes by which the old text of this comedy is disfigured. b What hath been cannot be.] The very opposite of what the speaker intended to express! Mason, therefore, proposed"What ha'n't been, cannot be;"

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As when thy father, and myself, in friendship
First tried our soldiership! He did look far
Into the service of the time, and was
Discipled of the bravest: he lasted long;
But on us both did haggish age steal on,
And wore us out of act. It much repairs me
To talk of your good father: in his youth
He had the wit, which I can well observe
To-day in our young lords; but they may jest,
Till their own scorn return to them unnoted,
Ere they can hide their levity in honour.
So like a courtier: contempt nor bitterness
Were in his pride, or sharpness; if they were,
His equal had awak'd them; and his honour,
Clock to itself, knew the true minute when
Exception bid him speak, and, at this time,
His tongue obey'd his hand. Who were below him
He us'd as creatures of another place;
And bow'd his eminent top to their low ranks,

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Making them proud of his humility,

In their poor praise he humbled: such a man
Might be a copy to these younger times;
Which, follow'd well, would démonstrate them now
But goers backward.

BER.

His good remembrance, sir, Lies richer in your thoughts, than on his tomb; So in approof lives not his epitaph,

As in your royal speech.

KING. Would I were with him! He would always say,

(Methinks, I hear him now: his plausive words
He scatter'd not in ears, but grafted them,
To grow there, and to bear,)-Let me not live,-
This his good melancholy oft began,
On the catastrophe and heel of pastime,
When it was out,—let me not live, quoth he,
After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses
All but new things disdain; whose judgments are
Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies
Expire before their fashions.-
-This he wish'd:

I, after him, do after him wish too,
Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home,
I quickly were dissolved from my hive,
To give some labourers room.

2 LORD.

You are lov'd, sir: They, that least lend it you, shall lack you first. KING. I fill a place, I know't.-How long is 't,

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Enter COUNTESS, Steward, and Clown.(2) COUNT. I will now hear: what say you of this gentlewoman?

A very slight alteration would lessen the ambiguity of this passage. We should, perhaps, read,

"In their poor praise be-humbled."

The commen

d When it was out,-] When what was out? tators are mute. Does not the whole tenor of the context tend to show that it is a misprint of wit? With this simple change, and supposing the ordinary distribution of the lines to be correct, the purport would be, "Often towards the end of some spirituel disport, when wit was exhausted, he would say," &c.

e With several applications:-] Manifold applications.

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b

the world, Isbel the woman and I will do as we may.

COUNT. Wilt thou needs be a beggar?

CLO. I do beg your good-will in this case.
COUNT. In what case?

CLO. In Isbel's case, and mine own. Service is no heritage and, I think, I shall never have the blessing of God, till I have issue o' my body; for, they say, barns are blessings.

COUNT. Tell me thy reason why thou wilt marry.

CLO. My poor body, madam, requires it: I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go, that the devil drives.

COUNT. Is this all your worship's reason? CLO. 'Faith, madam, I have other, holy reasons, such as they are.

COUNT. May the world know them?

(*) First folio, w.

b To go to the world,-] That is, to be married. See note (e), p. 707, Vol. I.

CLO. I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh and blood are; and, indeed, I do marry, that I may repent.

COUNT. Thy marriage, sooner than thy wicked

ness.

CLO. I am out o' friends, madam; and I hope to have friends for my wife's sake.

COUNT. Such friends are thine enemies, knave. CLO. You are shallow, madam, in great friends;" for the knaves come to do that for me, which I am a-weary of. He, that ears my land, spares my team, and gives me leave to inn the crop: if I be his cuckold, he's my drudge. He, that comforts my wife, is the cherisher of my flesh and blood; he, that cherishes my flesh and blood, loves my flesh and blood; he, that loves my flesh and blood, is my friend; ergo, he that kisses my wife, is my friend. If men could be contented to be what they are, there were no fear in marriage: for young Charbon the puritan, and old Poysam the papist, howsome'er their hearts are severed in religion, their heads are both one, they may jowl horns together, like any deer i' the herd.

COUNT. Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouthed and calumnious knave?

CLO. A prophet (3) I, madam; and I speak the truth the next way:

: c

For I the ballad will repeat,

Which men full true shall find;
Your marriage comes by destiny,
Your cuckoo sings by kind.a

COUNT. Get you gone, sir, I'll talk with you

more anon.

STEW. May it please you, madam, that he bid Helen come to you; of her I am to speak. COUNT. Sirrah, tell my gentlewoman, I would speak with her; Helen I mean.

CLO. [Singing.]

Was this fair face the cause, quoth she, Why the Grecians sacked Troy? Fond done, done fond,

Was this king Priam's joy. With that she sighed as she stood, With that she sighed as she stood.

a You are shallow, madam, in great friends;] This is usually read, "You are shallow, madam; e'en great friends;" and the instances, both in these plays and in contemporaneous books, of in being misprinted for e'en, suggests the probability of a like error here; but the meaning may be, "You are shallow in the uses of great friends."

b Young Charbon the puritan, and old Poysam the papist,-] Malone suggested that the original word was Poisson; an allusion to the practice of eating fish on fast-days, as Charbon might be to the fiery zeal of the puritans.

c The next way:] The nearest way.

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the

And gave this sentence then; Among nine bad if one be good,

Among nine bad if one be good, There's yet one good in ten.

COUNT. What, one good in ten? you corrupt song, sirrah.

CLO. One good woman in ten, madam; which is a purifying o' the song.(4) Would God would serve the world so all the year! we'd find no fault with the tithe-woman, if I were the parson: one in ten, quoth a'! an we might have a good woman born but 'fore every blazing star, or at an earthquake, 't would mend the lottery well; a man may draw his heart out, ere 'a pluck one.

COUNT. You'll be gone, sir knave, and do as I command you.

CLO. That man should be at woman's command, and yet no hurt done!-Though honesty be no puritan, yet it will do no hurt; it will wear the surplice of humility over the black gown of a big heart.(5)—I am going, forsooth; the business is for Helen to come hither. [Exit Clown.

COUNT. Well, now. STEW. I know, madam, woman entirely.

you love your gentle

COUNT. 'Faith, I do her father bequeathed. her to me; and she herself, without other advantage, may lawfully make title to as much love as she finds; there is more owing her than is paid; and more shall be paid her, than she'll demand.

STEW. Madam, I was very late more near her than, I think, she wished me: alone she was, and did communicate to herself, her own words to her own ears; she thought, I dare vow for her, they touched not any stranger sense. Her matter was, she loved your son: Fortune, she said, was no goddess, that had put such difference betwixt their two estates; Love, no god, that would not extend his might, only where qualities were level; Diana, no queen of virgins, that would suffer her poor knight surprised, without rescue, in the first assault, or ransome afterward. This she delivered in the most bitter touch of sorrow, that e'er I heard virgin exclaim in which I held my duty, speedily to acquaint you withal; sithence, in the

f

(*) First folio, ore.

As cuckoldes come by destinie, So cuckowes sing by kinde."

e Was this fair face the cause, quoth she,-] This is, perhaps, a snatch of some antique ballad, which the fool craftily corrupts, to intimate, in the enigmatical manner of his calling, that he was not altogether ignorant of the subject which his mistress and her steward had met to speak about.

f Diana, no queen of virgins,-] The old text has only "Queene of Virgins;" the two words prefixed by Theobald, are probably as near to the original as can be supplied.

g That would suffer her poor knight surprised,-] This is the lection of the old text, and the phraseology of the poet's age. Theobald inserted the words to be, reading,-"that would suffer her poor knight to be surprised," and he has been followed by every subsequent editor.

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