All’s Well That Ends Well

die. King

Upon thy certainty and confidence
What darest thou venture?

Helena

Tax of impudence,
A strumpet’s boldness, a divulged shame
Traduced by odious ballads: my maiden’s name
Sear’d otherwise; nay, worse⁠—if worse⁠—extended
With vilest torture let my life be ended.

King

Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak
His powerful sound within an organ weak:
And what impossibility would slay
In common sense, sense saves another way.
Thy life is dear; for all that life can rate
Worth name of life in thee hath estimate,
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.

Helena

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. Helena But will you make it even? King Ay, by my sceptre and my hopes of heaven. Helena

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 camest, how tended on: but rest
Unquestion’d welcome and undoubted blest.
Give me some help here, ho! If thou proceed
As high as word, my deed shall match thy meed. Flourish. Exeunt.

Scene II

Rousillon. The Count’s palace.

	Enter Countess and Clown.
Countess	Come on, sir; I shall now put you to the height of your breeding.
Clown	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!
Clown	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.
Clown	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?
Clown	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 queen 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?
Clown	From below 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.
Clown	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?
Clown	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.
Clown	O Lord, sir! Thick, thick, spare not me.
Countess	I think, sir, you can eat none of this homely meat.
Clown	O Lord, sir! Nay, put me to’t, I warrant you.
Countess	You were lately whipped, sir, as I think.
Clown	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.
Clown	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’t so merrily with a fool.
Clown	O Lord, sir! why, there’t serves well again.
Countess	An end, sir; to your business. Give Helen this, And urge her to a present answer back: Commend me to my kinsmen and my son: This is not much.
Clown	Not much commendation to them.
Countess	Not much employment for you: you understand me?
Clown	Most fruitfully: I am there before my legs.
Countess	Haste you again. Exeunt severally.

Scene III

Paris. The King’s palace.

	Enter Bertram, Lafeu, and Parolles.
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.
Parolles	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—
Parolles	So I say.
Lafeu	Both of Galen and Paracelsus.
Parolles	So I say.
Lafeu	Of all the learned and authentic fellows⁠—
Parolles	Right; so I say.
Lafeu	That gave him out incurable⁠—
Parolles	Why, there ’tis; so say I too.
Lafeu	Not to be helped⁠—
Parolles	Right; as ’twere, a man assured of a⁠—
Lafeu	Uncertain life, and sure death.
Parolles	Just, you say well; so would I have said.
Lafeu	I may truly say, it