If it be so, you have wound a goodly clue; Count. Love you my son? Hel. 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. Then, I confess, 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; 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. VOL. III. U Religious in mine error, I adore The sun, that looks upon his worshipper, То Hel. Count. Madam, I had. Wherefore? tell true. For general sovereignty; and that he will'd me 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. * 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 rites, 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 enclosed than appeared to observation. This was your motive The king is render'd lost. For Paris, was it? speak. 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, If Count. you But think you, Helen, should tender your supposed aid, He would receive it? He and his physicians Are of a mind; he, that they cannot help him, They, that they cannot help: How shall they credit poor unlearned virgin, when the schools, Embowell'd of their doctrine, have left off A 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 to 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 [Exeunt. 6 Embowell'd of their doctrine,] i. e. exhausted of their skill. ACT II. SCENE 1. 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 Do not throw from you :—and you, my lord, farewell : Share the advice betwixt you; if both gain all, 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 Will not confess he owes the malady That doth my life besiege." Farewell, young lords; 7 8 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 antient 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 Not to woo honour, but to wed it; when 2 Lord. Health, at your bidding, serve your majesty ! King. Those girls of Italy, take heed of them; Both. [The King retires to a couch. 1 Lord. O my sweet lord, that hind us! you will stay be Par. 'Tis not his fault; the spark- with; Too young, and the next year, and 'tis too early. Par. An thy mind stand to it, boy, steal away bravely. Ber. I shall stand here the forehorse to a smock, Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry, Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn, the Florentines are here supposed to be at war, inhabited the higher Italy, their chief town being Arminium, now called Rimini, upon the Adriatic. HANMER. 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 antient 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. 9 — beware of being captives, Before you serve.] The word serve is equivocal; the sense is, Be not captives before you serve in the war. |