All’s Well That Ends Well
Act I Sc. 1
“It would have made nature immortal.”
“Hel. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess
makes it soon mortal.
Laf. How understand we that?”
In the folio the first of these speeches is given to the Countess; but Tieck saw rightly that it could only belong to Helena. I have transposed the next two speeches; for Lafeu must reply immediately; metrically also his reply is the complement of the speech of Helena, in which ‘living’ and ‘grief’ should perhaps change places.
“Advise him.—He cannot want the best advice.”
“And these great tears grace his remembrance more
Than those I shed for him.... What was he like?”
For ‘his’ I read this, i.e. that of Bertram, whose departure has caused her tears to flow. There is an evident aposiopesis of graced his, arising from the perturbation of her mind, as is proved by the falling of the metric ictus on ‘him,’ and which also proves that ‘his’ could not have been the poet’s word.
“Carries no favour in it but Bertram’s only.”
Bertram is always a dissyllable. We might also read ‘but only,’ but with less force.
“He that hangs himself is a virgin.”
This is sheer nonsense; ‘virgin,’ suggested by the following ‘virginity,’ should be self-murderer, as I have given it in my Edition, or rather perhaps the legal term felo de se; for what Parolles means is that as suicides were ‘buried in highways,’ Virginity being such should be treated in the same manner.
“Out with it; within ten years it will make itself two.”
For ‘two’ Hanmer read ten, and Steevens for ‘ten’ two. The best reading seems to be that of Singer’s folio, months for ‘years,’ which I have given in my Edition.
“Not my virginity yet.”
This is complementary to the preceding speech, of which it completes the metre. The emphasis is to be on ‘my,’ as her meaning is that her virginity is not yet old and withered. She stops there, and enters on a new subject, and it is evident that at least the first line is lost. It may have been like this, “Monsieur Parolles, you are for the Court,” which I have ventured to insert in my Edition; it seems so essential to the sense.
“A mother, and a mistress, and a friend.”
None of the editors seem to have perceived that in this and the six following lines Helena is enumerating the titles, mostly Euphuistic, that lovers at that time used to give their mistresses (comp. L.L.L. iii. 1 ad fin.), “Christendoms,” i.e. baptismal names, as she styles them, to which Cupid stood gossip. As ‘mother’ could hardly have been one of these, I feel almost certain that the original word was lover, which being damaged and only er remaining (see on ii. 1), the printer made ‘mother’ of it. There is, however, it seems a term mauther or mother still in use in the Eastern counties, and signifying young girl. In Fletcher’s Maid in the Mill (iii. 2), the miller says of his daughter,
“A pretty child she is, although I say it,
A handsome mother.”
In the Alchemist (iv. 4) Kastrill says to his sister, “You talk like a foolish mauther.” Tusser has in his Husbandry,
“No sooner a sowing but out by and by,
With mother or (and?) boy that alarum can cry;
And let them be armed with a sling or a bow.”
And again,
“A sling for a mother, a bow for a boy.”
But surely such a term could not be used of the ladies of the Court of France. The context shows that it is not mother-in-law that is meant. ‘Captain’ in the next line may appear suspicious; but lovers were in the habit of regarding their mistresses as commanders, whose orders they were bound to obey. “She that I spake of our great captain’s captain,” Othel. ii. 1. Steevens states that guerrière is a favourite term for a mistress in Ronsard.
“Use him as he uses thee; and so farewell.”
Sc. 2
“In his youth
He had the wit, which I can well observe,” etc.
I doubt if the editors have perfectly understood this passage. I cannot, for example, see that they have been aware that the ‘tongue’ and the ‘hand’ both belong to the metaphorical ‘clock’—the former being the bell which sounds, when the latter gives the signal by arriving at the point of twelve, that is, when ‘Exception,’ i.e. contradiction, ‘bids it speak.’
“In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man.”
I would read whose for ‘their,’ evidently suggested by ‘them’ in the preceding line; and as the verb ‘humble’ rarely, if ever, occurs without its object, we should perhaps read, as I have done, ‘humbled him.’
“Whose judgements are
Mere fathers of their garments.”
I incline to suspect that ‘fathers’ should be children—not an unusual error. (See Introd. p. 66.) “A parcel of conceited feather-caps, whose fathers were their garments.”—Old Play quoted by Steevens. “Whose mother was her painting.”—Cymb. iii. 4.
“Believe it, sir,
That clothes do much upon the wit, as weather
Does on the brain; and thence, sir, comes your proverb,
The tailor makes the man.”
Jonson, Staple of News, i. 1.
See, however, the character of Piso in Marston’s Scourge of Villainy, Sat. xi.
Sc. 3
“Fond done, done fond; for only he
Was this King of Priam’s joy.”
“And here fair Paris comes, the hopeful youth, of Troy,
Queen Hecub’s darling son, King Priam’s only joy.”
Fletch. and Rowl. Maid in Mill, ii. 2.
“I’ faith I do; her father bequeathed her to me.”
“Extend his might, save only where qualities were level.”
“Diana no queen of virgins, that would suffer her poor knight to be surprised.”
The words in Italics, absolutely necessary for the sense, were supplied by Theobald.
“I care no more for than I do for heaven,
So I were not his sister. Can it be no other?”
I can only make sense here by reading ‘I’d care e’en more for it.’ The damp had probably effaced the d, e’e, it, or t, and be. For a similar omission of ‘d, see on King John iv. 2. The ‘no,’ however, may have been a casual insertion of the printer’s. In my Edition of these plays, unaware of the rime, I placed be at the end of the line; but I corrected it.
“The mystery of your loneliness.”
So Theobald properly corrected the loveliness of the folio, the n, as was so frequent, having been turned upside down.
“Confess it, th’ one to th’ other, and thine eyes.”
The folio has ‘ton tooth to th’ other. The 2nd folio made the necessary correction by rejecting tooth—a mere reduplication of ‘to th’. Knight, it would appear, was the first to correct ‘ton.
“Yet in this captious and intenable sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still.”
For ‘captious’ we should certainly read, with Farmer, capacious. It was, in fact, only the omission of a letter. (See on M. for M. iv. 2.) T and c were often used indifferently before e and i. Reck might be better than ‘lack.’
“And manifest experience had collected.”
With Collier’s folio I read manifold; “an epithet,” says Mr. Dyce, “which, I apprehend, can hardly be applied to ‘experience.’” Why not?
“He and his physicians
Are of a mind; he that they cannot help him,
They that they cannot help him.”
One ‘help’ has evidently been suggested by the other; for the first I would read cure. (See Introd. p. 65.)
“Embowell’d of their doctrine have left off
The danger to itself?—There’s something in’t
More than my father’s skill.”
The best correction of the passage is to supply tells me after ‘in it.’ This had evidently been effaced, as in Hen. VIII. i. 2.
“There’s something tells me,—but it is not love,—
I would not lose you.”
—Mer. of Ven. iii. 2.
I arrange the passage thus:
“Embowell’d of their docterine, have left
The danger to itself.—There is something in it tells me.”
In the first line I inserted in my Edition all; but it was needless; for ‘doctrine’ was no doubt pronounced as a trisyllable. ‘Off’ was evidently added by the printer to complete the metre. (See Introd. p. 67.) For ‘in’t’ of the folio Hanmer read hints.
“And pray God’s blessing into thy attempt.”
Unto or upon would seem more correct; but no change is needed.