His servant live, and will his vassal die: He must not be my brother. Count. Nor I your mother? Hel. You are my mother, madam; 'Would you were (So that my lord, your son, were not my brother,) Indeed, my mother! - or were you both our mothers, I care no more for, than I do for heaven, So I were not his sister: Can't no other, But, I your daughter, he must be my brother? God shield, you mean it not! daughter, and mother, Against the proclamation of thy passion, Το thou dost not: therefore tell me true; That truth should be suspected: Speak, is't so? To tell me truly. Hel. Count. Do you Good madam, pardon me! 6 I care no more for,] There is a designed ambiguity: I care no more for, is, I care as much for. I wish it equally. FARMER. 7 strive] To strive is to contend. 8 Your salt tears' head.] The source, the fountain of your tears, the cause of your grief. JOHNSON. 9 nature. in their kind-] i. e. in their language, according to their Hel. Count. Love Hel. you my Your pardon, noble mistress! son ? Do not you love him, madam? Count. Go not about; my love hath in't a bond, Whereof the world takes note: come, come, disclose The state of your affection; for your passions Have to the full appeach'd. Hel. My friends were poor, but honest; so's my love: That he is lov'd of me: I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suit; Nor would I have him, till I do deserve him; The sun, that looks upon his worshipper, But knows of him no more. My dearest madam, For loving where you do: but, if yourself, 1 captious and intenible sieve,] Dr. Farmer supposes captious to be a contraction of capacious. Mr. Malone thinks it means recipient, capable of receiving what is put into it; and by intenible, incapable of holding or retaining it. 2 And lack not to lose still:] Helena means to say, that, like a person who pours water into a vessel full of holes, and still continues his employment, though he finds the water all lost, and the vessel empty; so, though she finds that the waters of her love are still lost, that her affection is thrown away on an object whom she thinks she never can deserve, she yet is not discouraged, but perseveres in her hopeless endeavour to accomplish her wishes. Whose aged honour cites a virtuous youth3, Hel. Count. Madam, I had. Wherefore? tell true. Hel. I will tell truth; by grace itself, I swear. You know, my father left me some prescriptions Of rare and prov'd effects, such as his reading, And manifest experience, had collected For general sovereignty; and that he will'd me In heedfullest reservation to bestow them, As notes, whose faculties inclusive 5 were, More than they were in note: amongst the rest, There is a remedy, approv'd, set down, To cure the desperate languishes, whereof The king is render'd lost. Count. For Paris, was it? speak. This was your motive Hel. My lord your son made me to think of this; Else Paris, and the medicine, and the king, Had, from the conversation of my thoughts, Haply been absent then. 3 Whose aged honour cites a virtuous youth,] i. e. whose respectable conduct in age shows, or proves, that you were no less virtuous when young. 4 Wish chastly, and love dearly, that your Dian Was both herself and love ;] i. e. Venus. Helena means to say— "If ever you wished that the deity who presides over chastity, and the queen of amorous rights, were one and the same person; or, in other words, if ever you wished for the honest and lawful completion of your chaste desires.” 5 notes, whose faculties inclusive-] Receipts in which greater virtues were inclosed than appeared to observation. Count. But think you, Helen, If you should tender your supposed aid, He would receive it? He and his physicians Embowell'd of their doctrine, have left off The danger to itself? Hel. There's something hints, More than my father's skill, which was the greatest Of his profession, that his good receipt Shall, for my legacy, be sanctified By the luckiest stars in heaven: and, would your honour But give me leave to try success, I'd venture The well-lost life of mine on his grace's cure, By such a day, and hour. Count. Dost thou believ't? Hel. Ay, madam, knowingly. Count. Why, Helen, thou shalt have my leave, and love, Means, and attendants, and my loving greetings To those of mine in court; I'll stay at home, Be gone to-morrow; and be sure of this, What I can help thee to, thou shalt not miss. [Exeunt. ACT II. SCENE I. Paris. A Room in the King's Palace. Flourish. Enter King, with young Lords, taking leave for the Florentine war; BERTRAM, PAROLLES, and Attendants. King. Farewell, young lord†, these warlike principles 6 Embowell'd of their doctrine,] i. e. exhausted of their skill. + "young lords." MALONE. Do not throw from you:-and you, my lordt, fare well: Share the advice betwixt you; if both gain all, The gift doth stretch itself as 'tis receiv'd, And is enough for both. 1 Lord. It is our hope, sir, After well enter'd soldiers, to return And find your grace in health. King. No, no, it cannot be; and yet my heart That doth my life besiege.7 Farewell, young lords; 2 Lord. Health, at your bidding, serve your majesty! King. Those girls of Italy, take heed of them; ઃ +"my lords." MALONE. 7 and yet my heart, &c.] i. e. in the common phrase, I am still heart-whole; my spirits, by not sinking under my distemper, do not acknowledge its influence. 8 let higher Italy (Those 'bated, that inherit but the fall Of the last monarchy,) see, &c.] The ancient geographers have divided Italy into the higher and the lower, the Apennine hills being a kind of natural line of partition; the side next the Adriatic was denominated the higher Italy, and the other side the lower; and the two seas followed the same terms of distinction, the Adriatic being called the upper Sea, and the Tyrrhene, or Tuscan, the lower. Now the Sennones, or Senois, with whom the Florentines are here supposed to be at war, inhabited the higher Italy, their chief town HANMER. being Arminium, now called Rimini, upon the Adriatic. Dr. Johnson says, that the sense may be this: Let upper Italy, where you are to exercise your valour, see that you come to gain honour, to the abatement, that is, to the disgrace and depression of those that have now lost their ancient military fame, and inherit but the fall of the last monarchy. To abate is used by Shakspeare in the original sense of abatre, to depress, to sink, to deject, to subdue. |
