Act 3, Scene 2

Rousillon. A room in the COUNTESS'S palace.

[Enter COUNTESS and CLOWN.]
Countess of Rousillon
1270 It hath happened all as I would have had it, save that he
1271 comes not along with her.
Lavatch the Clown
1272 By my troth, I take my young lord to be a very melancholy man.
Countess of Rousillon
1273 By what observance, I pray you?
Lavatch the Clown
1274 Why, he will look upon his boot and sing; mend the ruff and sing;
1275 ask questions and sing; pick his teeth and sing. I know a man
1276 that had this trick of melancholy sold a goodly manor for a song.
Countess of Rousillon
1277 Let me see what he writes, and when he means to come.
[Opening a letter.]
Lavatch the Clown
1278 I have no mind to Isbel since I was at court. Our old ling
1279 and our Isbels o' the country are nothing like your old ling and
1280 your Isbels o' the court. The brains of my Cupid's knocked out;
1281 and I begin to love, as an old man loves money, with no stomach.
Countess of Rousillon
1282 What have we here?
Lavatch the Clown
1283 E'en that you have there.
[Exit.]
[Reads.]
Countess of Rousillon
1284 'I have sent you a daughter-in-law; she hath
1285 recovered the king and undone me. I have wedded her, not bedded
1286 her; and sworn to make the "not" eternal. You shall hear I am run
1287 away: know it before the report come. If there be breadth enough
1288 in the world, I will hold a long distance. My duty to you.
1289 Your unfortunate son,
1290 BERTRAM.'
Countess of Rousillon
1291 This is not well, rash and unbridled boy,
1292 To fly the favours of so good a king;
1293 To pluck his indignation on thy head
1294 By the misprizing of a maid too virtuous
1295 For the contempt of empire.
[Re-enter CLOWN.]
Lavatch the Clown
1296 O madam, yonder is heavy news within between two soldiers and my
1297 young lady.
Countess of Rousillon
1298 What is the matter?
Lavatch the Clown
1299 Nay, there is some comfort in the news, some comfort; your son
1300 will not be killed so soon as I thought he would.
Countess of Rousillon
1301 Why should he be killed?
Lavatch the Clown
1302 So say I, madam, if he run away, as I hear he does: the danger is
1303 in standing to 't; that's the loss of men, though it be the
1304 getting of children. Here they come will tell you more: for my
1305 part, I only hear your son was run away.
[Exit.]
[Enter HELENA and the two Gentlemen.]
Second Gentleman
1306 Save you, good madam.
Helena
1307 Madam, my lord is gone, for ever gone.
First Gentleman
1308 Do not say so.
Countess of Rousillon
1309 Think upon patience.—Pray you, gentlemen,—
1310 I have felt so many quirks of joy and grief
1311 That the first face of neither, on the start,
1312 Can woman me unto 't.—Where is my son, I pray you?
First Gentleman
1313 Madam, he's gone to serve the Duke of Florence:
1314 We met him thitherward; for thence we came,
1315 And, after some despatch in hand at court,
1316 Thither we bend again.
Helena
1317 Look on this letter, madam; here's my passport.
[Reads.]
Helena
1318 'When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which
1319 never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body
1320 that I am father to, then call me husband; but in such a "then" I
1321 write a "never."
1322 This is a dreadful sentence.
Countess of Rousillon
1323 Brought you this letter, gentlemen?
First Gentleman
1324 Ay, madam;
1325 And for the contents' sake, are sorry for our pains.
Countess of Rousillon
1326 I pr'ythee, lady, have a better cheer;
1327 If thou engrossest all the griefs are thine,
1328 Thou robb'st me of a moiety. He was my son:
1329 But I do wash his name out of my blood,
1330 And thou art all my child.—Towards Florence is he?
First Gentleman
1331 Ay, madam.
Countess of Rousillon
1332 And to be a soldier?
First Gentleman
1333 Such is his noble purpose: and, believe 't,
1334 The duke will lay upon him all the honour
1335 That good convenience claims.
Countess of Rousillon
1336 Return you thither?
Second Gentleman
1337 Ay, madam, with the swiftest wing of speed.
[Reads.]
Helena
1338 'Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France.'
1339 'Tis bitter.
Countess of Rousillon
1340 Find you that there?
Helena
1341 Ay, madam.
Second Gentleman
1342 'Tis but the boldness of his hand haply,
1343 Which his heart was not consenting to.
Countess of Rousillon
1344 Nothing in France until he have no wife!
1345 There's nothing here that is too good for him
1346 But only she; and she deserves a lord
1347 That twenty such rude boys might tend upon,
1348 And call her hourly mistress. Who was with him?
Second Gentleman
1349 A servant only, and a gentleman
1350 Which I have sometime known.
Countess of Rousillon
1351 Parolles, was it not?
Second Gentleman
1352 Ay, my good lady, he.
Countess of Rousillon
1353 A very tainted fellow, and full of wickedness.
1354 My son corrupts a well-derived nature
1355 With his inducement.
Second Gentleman
1356 Indeed, good lady,
1357 The fellow has a deal of that too much
1358 Which holds him much to have.
Countess of Rousillon
1359 You are welcome, gentlemen.
1360 I will entreat you, when you see my son,
1361 To tell him that his sword can never win
1362 The honour that he loses: more I'll entreat you
1363 Written to bear along.
First Gentleman
1364 We serve you, madam,
1365 In that and all your worthiest affairs.
Countess of Rousillon
1366 Not so, but as we change our courtesies.
1367 Will you draw near?
[Exeunt COUNTESS and Gentlemen.]
Helena
1368 'Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France.'
1369 Nothing in France until he has no wife!
1370 Thou shalt have none, Rousillon, none in France;
1371 Then hast thou all again. Poor lord! is't I
1372 That chase thee from thy country, and expose
1373 Those tender limbs of thine to the event
1374 Of the none-sparing war? and is it I
1375 That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou
1376 Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark
1377 Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers,
1378 That ride upon the violent speed of fire,
1379 Fly with false aim: move the still-peering air,
1380 That sings with piercing; do not touch my lord!
1381 Whoever shoots at him, I set him there;
1382 Whoever charges on his forward breast,
1383 I am the caitiff that do hold him to it;
1384 And though I kill him not, I am the cause
1385 His death was so effected: better 'twere
1386 I met the ravin lion when he roar'd
1387 With sharp constraint of hunger; better 'twere
1388 That all the miseries which nature owes
1389 Were mine at once. No; come thou home, Rousillon,
1390 Whence honour but of danger wins a scar,
1391 As oft it loses all. I will be gone:
1392 My being here it is that holds thee hence:
1393 Shall I stay here to do't? no, no, although
1394 The air of paradise did fan the house,
1395 And angels offic'd all: I will be gone,
1396 That pitiful rumour may report my flight
1397 To consolate thine ear. Come, night; end, day!
1398 For with the dark, poor thief, I'll steal away.
[Exit.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1276archaic vocab
“sold a goodly manor for a song”
To sell something 'for a song' means to sell it for almost nothing — a trifling sum. Lavatch is mocking Bertram's melancholy habit of singing over idle tasks: he implies that a man so consumed by moody singing that he neglects business is the sort who would fritter away a valuable estate for a pittance.
TLN 1285cultural context
“I have wedded her, not bedded her; and sworn to make the "not" eternal”
Bertram's letter announces he has gone through the wedding ceremony but refused to consummate the marriage and means to keep it that way forever. In Elizabethan law a marriage was not fully binding until consummated; by fleeing before the wedding night Bertram is trying to hold the match in permanent legal limbo — married in form but never truly bound. His 'eternal not' is both a legal strategy and a brutal personal rejection.
historical Giletta of Narbonne (the source story)historical The bed-trick
TLN 1294archaic vocab
“misprizing of a maid too virtuous For the contempt of empire”
'Misprizing' means contemptuous undervaluing or scorning — treating something as worth less than it is. The Countess says Bertram has earned the King's anger by despising ('misprizing') a girl so virtuous that even an empire could not afford to hold her in contempt — meaning Helena's worth is too great to be scorned even by the most powerful ruler on earth. The compressed phrase is one of the sharpest moral judgements in the scene.
TLN 1317archaic vocab
“here's my passport”
Helena calls Bertram's letter her 'passport' — literally a document authorising travel out of a country. In Elizabethan usage a passport was also a discharge paper releasing a soldier or servant from service, or a formal licence to depart. Helena means the letter is her permission to leave France: since Bertram's conditions make her presence the only thing keeping him away, the letter releases her to go. The word carries bitter irony — a husband's rejection letter read as a travel warrant.
TLN 1318cultural context
“get the ring upon my finger, which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body”
Bertram's letter sets two conditions that he believes are impossible: Helena must first steal his ancestral ring — which he will never willingly give — and then bear his child, when he has refused to share her bed. Both conditions will in fact be met through the bed-trick: Helena, posing as Diana in the dark, will receive the ring from Bertram himself and conceive his child. Bertram thinks he is saying 'never'; the plot shows him sealing his own fate.
historical Giletta of Narbonne (the source story)historical The bed-trick
TLN 1327archaic vocab
“If thou engrossest all the griefs are thine, Thou robb'st me of a moiety”
'Engross' here means to monopolize or take up entirely for oneself; a 'moiety' is a half-share. The Countess tells Helena not to claim all the sorrow as hers alone, because that would rob the Countess of her own half of it. Bertram is the Countess's son as well as Helena's husband, so they share the grief of his desertion; the Countess is asserting her equal claim to be devastated.
TLN 1329rhetorical device
“I do wash his name out of my blood”
The Countess uses a powerful metaphor of literal washing to express her disowning of Bertram: his name, carried in her blood as her son, is something she will wash out and remove — as if blood, and the kinship it represents, could be cleansed away. The image turns the biological bond of mother and son into something stainable and removable. Her next line then adopts Helena as her only child, completing the transfer of maternal feeling.
TLN 1353cultural context
“A very tainted fellow, and full of wickedness. My son corrupts a well-derived nature”
The Countess identifies Parolles as the corrupting influence dragging Bertram into folly. 'Tainted' means morally infected or contaminated — like meat gone bad. 'Well-derived nature' means a character formed of good birth and good upbringing; the Countess believes her son's natural goodness is being spoiled by his swaggering companion. Parolles is the play's braggart soldier: all boast, no substance, whose real cowardice will eventually be publicly exposed.
classical The miles gloriosus (the braggart soldier)
TLN 1377archaic vocab
“O you leaden messengers, That ride upon the violent speed of fire, Fly with false aim: move the still-peering air”
Helena addresses the bullets of the war ('leaden messengers' — lead was the material of musket balls) as if she could bargain with them. They 'ride upon the violent speed of fire' because gunpowder propels them. 'Still-peering' means always watching or constantly alert — the air hangs watchfully over the battlefield. Helena is imploring the bullets to miss Bertram: she blames herself for his danger and begs the instruments of war to spare him.
TLN 1383archaic vocab
“I am the caitiff that do hold him to it”
A 'caitiff' is a wretched, despicable person — the word blends 'captive' and 'coward,' from Old French chaitif (prisoner; wretch). Helena uses it to condemn herself: she is the miserable wretch who, by her love and her pursuit of Bertram, has driven him to the war and to the danger she is now begging the bullets to spare him from. Her self-accusation is as extreme as her love.
TLN 1386archaic vocab
“the ravin lion when he roar'd With sharp constraint of hunger”
'Ravin' (or ravenous) means fiercely hungry, predatory — the word is related to 'ravine' and 'ravage' and evokes an animal in the grip of violent appetite. A 'ravin lion' is one maddened by starvation. Helena says she would rather face such a beast than endure the knowledge that her love has sent Bertram to the battlefield. The image measures her guilt: even being eaten by a starving lion is preferable to being the cause of his death.