Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

And of his old experience the only darling,
He bade me store up, as a triple eye 21,
Safer than mine own two, more dear; I have so:
And, hearing your high majesty is touch'd
With that malignant cause wherein the honour
Of my dear father's gift stands chief in power,
I come to tender it, and my appliance,
With all bound humbleness.

We thank

you,

maiden;

King.
But may not be so credulous of cure,—
When our most learned doctors leave us; and
The congregated college have concluded
That labouring art can never ransome nature
From her inaidable estate,-I say we must not
So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope,
To prostitute our past-cure malady

To empiricks; or to dissever so

Our great self and our credit, to esteem

A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.
Hel. My duty then shall pay me for my pains:
I will no more enforce mine office on you;
Humbly entreating from your royal thoughts
A modest one, to bear me back again.

King. I cannot give thee less, to be call'd grateful:
Thou thought'st to help me; and such thanks I give,
As one near death to those that wish him live;
But, what at full I know, thou know'st no part;
I knowing all my peril, thou no art.

Hel. What I can do, can do no hurt to try, Since you set up your rest 22 'gainst remedy:

21 A third eye.

22 i.e. Since you have determined or made up your mind that there is no remedy.' Set up your rest is a metaphorical expression derived from the game of Primero, at which it seems to have meant to stand upon the cards one held in his hand. This word furnished many other proverbial expressions among the

He that of greatest works is finisher,

Oft does them by the weakest minister :

So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,

When judges have been babes 23. Great floods have flown

From simple sources 24; and great seas have dried, When miracles have by the greatest been denied 25. Oft expectation fails, and most oft there

Where most it promises; and oft it hits,

Where hope is coldest, and despair most sits.
King. I must not hear thee; fare thee well, 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 'tis 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

[ocr errors]

Haver fatto 'Ri

Italians, one of which is to be found in the Ciriffo Calvaneo of Luca Pulci. Fa del suo resto,' to adventure all. del resto,' to have lost all, or to have nothing to rest upon. serbar il resto,' to reserve one's rest, to be wary and circumspect, &c. &c. All authorities are decisive upon the derivation of this term from Primero, as Mr. Nares has amply shown. So says Minshew, Torriano, and Florio, who is worth quoting: 'Restare, to rest, &c. Also to set up one's rest, to make a rest, or play upon one's rest at Primero.' In Spanish too Echar el resto,' to set or lay up one's rest, has the same origin and figurative meaning; to adventure all, to be determined. We shall now, it is to be hoped, hear no more of musket rests, &c. in explanation of this phrase.

23 An allusion to Daniel judging the two Elders.

24 i. e. when Moses smote the rock in Horeb.

25 This must refer to the children of Israel passing the Red Sea, when miracles had been denied by Pharaoh.

Myself against the level of mine aim 26

;

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?

Hel.

The greatest grace lending grace 27,
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,
With vilest torture let my life be ended 28.

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 29:

26 I am not an impostor that proclaim one thing and design another, that proclaim a cure and aim at a fraud. I think what I speak.

i. e. the divine grace, lending me grace or power to accomplish it. So in Macbeth: at the conclusion we have the grace of grace.

28 Let me be stigmatized as a strumpet, and, in addition (although that would not be worse, or a more extended evil than what I have mentioned, the loss of my honour, which is the worst that could happen), let me die with torture. Ne is nor.

29 i. e. may be counted among the gifts enjoyed by thee.

Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, virtue, all
That happiness and prime 30 can happy call:
Thou this to hazard, needs must intimate
Skill infinite, or monstrous desperate.
Sweet practiser, thy physick I will try;
That ministers thine own death, if I die.
Hel. If I break time, or flinch in property 31
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.

Hel.

But will you make it even? King. Ay, by my sceptre, and my hopes of heaven 32.

Hel. 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 impage of thy state

33.

30 Prime here signifies that sprightly vigour which usually accompanies us in the prime of life; which old Montaigne calls, cet estat plein de verdeur et de feste, and which Florio translates, 'that state, full of lust, of prime, and mirth.' So in Hamlet:'A violet in the youth of primy nature.'

31 Property seems to be used here for performance or achievement, singular as it may seem. So in Hamlet, Horatio says of the Grave-digger :

'Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.'

32 The old copy reads 'hopes of help.' The emendation is Thirlby's.

33 The old copy reads image of thy state.' Warburton proposed impage, which Steevens rejects, saying unadvisedly there is no such word.' It is evident that Shakspeare formed it from an impe, a scion, or young slip of a tree.' To impe and imping were also in use, as was the whole verb among our ancestors. The context evidently requires a word of this import. The word propagate, in its old sense of increasing by grafting cuttings from an old stock, would never have been so incongruously followed

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 observ'd,
Thy will by my performance shall be serv'd;
So make the choice of thy own time; for I,
Thy resolv'd 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 cam'st, 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 deed.
[Flourish. Exeunt.

SCENE II. Rousillon.

A Room in the Countess's Palace.

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.

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;

as by image. Shakspeare beautifully alludes to this art in the following passage of the Winter's Tale :

You see, sweet maid, we marry

A gentler scion to the wildest stock;
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race.'

« VorigeDoorgaan »