No grapes, my royal fox?
yes,
but
you
My noble grapes, an if my royal fox
Could reach them. I have seen a medicine,
That's able to breathe life into a stone,
Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary,2
With sprightly fire and motion ; whose simple touch
Is powerful to araise king Pepin, nay,
To give great Charlemain a pen in his hand,
And write to her a love-line.
King.
What her is this? La. Why, doctor she. My lord, there's one
arrived, If you will see her :
:-now, by my faith and honor,
If seriously I may convey my thoughts
In this my light deliverance, I have spoke
With one, that, in her sex, her years, profession,3
Wisdom, and constancy, hath amazed me more
Than I dare blame my weakness. Will you see her,
(For that is her demand) and know her business ?
That done, laugh well at me.
King.
Now, good Lafeu,
Bring in the admiration; that we with thee
May spend our wonder too, or take off thine,
By wondering how thou took’st it.
La.
Nay, I'll fit you,
And not be all day neither.
[Exit Lafeu. King. Thus he his special nothing ever prologue's.
A female physician. 2 The name of a dance. 3 Declaration of the purpose of her coming.
Re-enter LAFEU, with HELENA.
La. Nay, come your ways.
King.
This haste hath wings indeed.
La. Nay, come your ways :
This is his majesty ; say your mind to him.
A traitor you do look like; but such traitors
His majesty seldom fears. I am Cressid's uncle, 1
That dare leave two together : fare you well. [Exit.
King. Now, fair one, does your business follow us ?
Hel. Ay, my good lord. Gerard de Narbon was My father; in what he did profess, well found.2
King. I knew him.
Hel. The rather will I spare my praises towards
Knowing him, is enough. On his bed of death
Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one,
Which, as the dearest issue of his practice,
And of his old experience the only darling,
He bade me store up, as a triple eye,
Safer than mine own two, more dear; I have so:
And, hearing your high majesty is touch'd
With that malignant cause wherein the honor
Of my
dear father's gift stands chief in power,
I come to tender it, and my appliance,
With all bound humbleness.
King.
maiden ; But may not be so credulous of cure,
When our most learned doctors leave us; and
The congregated college have concluded
That laboring art can never ransom 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 empirics; 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 grate-
ful: 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 'gainst remedy.
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. Great floods have
flown
From simple sources; and great seas have dried,
When miracles have by the greatest been denied.
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 used, 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 endeavors give consent;
Of Heaven, not me, make an experiment.
I am not an impostor, that proclaim
Myself against the level of mine aim ; 1
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
Hopest thou my cure ?
Hel.
The greatest grace lending grace, 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 darest thou venture ?
Hel.
Tax of impudence ;-
A strumpet's boldness, a divulged shame ;-
Traduced by odious ballads ; my maiden's name
Sear'd otherwise ; no worse of worst 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 ; 1
Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, virtue, all
That happiness and prime ? can happy call :
Thou this to hazard, needs must intimate
Skiïl infinite, or monstrous desperate.
Sweet practiser, thy physic I will try,
That ministers thine own death if I die.
Hel. If I break time, or flinch in property 3
Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die ;
And well deserved. Not helping, death 's my
But, if I help, what do you promise me?
King. Make thy demand.
Hel.
But will
you
make it even ?
|