Count. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal. 6 Ber. Madam, I desire your holy wishes. Count. Be thou blest, Bertram! and succeed thy father In manners, as in shape! thy blood, and virtue, Laf. He cannot want the best That shall attend his love. Count. Heaven bless him!-Farewell, Bertram. [Exit Countess. Ber. The best wishes, that can be forged in your thoughts, [To HELENA] be servants to you! Be comfortable to my mother, your mistress, and make much of her. Laf. Farewell, pretty lady: You must hold the credit of your father. [Exeunt BERTRAM and LaFEU. • If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.] Lafeu says, excessive grief is the enemy of the living: the Countess replies, If the living be an enemy to grief, the excess soon makes it mortal: that is, If the living do not indulge grief, grief destroys itself by its own excess. By the word mortal, I understand that which dies; and Dr. Warburton [who reads-be not enemy - that which destroys. I think that my interpretation gives a sentence more acute and more refined. Let the reader judge. JOHNSON. That thee may furnish,] That may help thee with more and better qualifications. 8 Hel. O, were that all!-I think not on my father; And these great tears grace his remembrance more Than those I shed for him. What was he like? I have forgot him: my imagination Enter PAROLLES.. One that goes with him: I love him for his sake; Laf. Farewell, pretty lady: You must hold the credit of your father. Hel. O, were that all! I think not on my father;] Would that the attention to maintain the credit of my father, (or, not to act unbecoming the daughter of such a father, for such, perhaps, is the meaning,) were my only solicitude! I think not of him. My cares are all for Bertram. MALONE. • In his bright radiance and collateral light, &c.] I cannot be united with him and move in the same sphere, but must be comforted at a distance by the radiance that shoots on all sides from him. JOHNSON. In our heart's table;] A table was, in our author's time, a term for a picture, in which sense it is used here. -trick of his sweet favour:] Trick is an expression taken from drawing; but on the present occasion may mean neither tracing nor outline, but peculiarity. VOL. III. T And yet I know him a notorious liar, Look bleak in the cold wind: withal, full oft we see Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly. Par. Save you, fair queen. Hel. And you, monarch. Par. No. Hel. And no.4 Par. Are you meditating on virginity? Hel. Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you; let me ask you a question: Man is enemy to virginity; how may we barricado it against him? 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 politick 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. Virginity, 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. 3 Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.] Cold for naked: as superfluous for over-clothed. This makes the propriety of the antithesis. WARBURTON. * And no.] I am no more a queen than you are a monarch. 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 loose by't: Outwith't: within ten years it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the principal itself not much the worse: Away with't. Hel. How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking? Par. Let me see: Marry, ill, to like him that ne'er it likes. 'Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept, the less worth: off with't, while 'tis vendible: answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion; richly suited, but unsuitable: just like the brooch and tooth-pick, 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 dryly; marry, 'tis a 5 6 -inhibited sin -) i, e. forbidden. Your date is better -) Here is a quibble on the word date, which means both age, and a candied fruit much used in our author's time. withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet, 'tis well! The court's a learning-place;-and he is one- Hel. That I wish well.-'Tis pity- Hel. That wishing well had not a body in't, 1 A phanix, &c.] The eight lines following friend, I am persuaded is the nonsense of some foolish conceited player. 8 WARBURTON. - a traitress,] It seems that traitress was in that age a term of endearment. 9 christendoms,] This word, which signifies the collectiye body of christianity, every place where the christian religion is embraced, is surely used with much license on the present occasion. And show what we alone must think;] And show by realities what we now must only think. JOHNSON. |