In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband
Countess
In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband.
Bertram
And I in going, madam, weep o’er my father’s
death anew; but I must attend his Majesty’s
command, to whom I am now in ward, evermore
in subjection.
Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead,
excessive grief the enemy to the living
Lafew
You shall find of the King a husband, madam;
you, sir, a father. He that so generally is at all times
good must of necessity hold his virtue to you,
whose worthiness would stir it up where it wanted
rather than lack it where there is such abundance.
Countess
What hope is there of his Majesty’s amendment?
Lafew
He hath abandoned his physicians, madam,
under whose practices he hath persecuted time
with hope, and finds no other advantage in the
process but only the losing of hope by time.
Countess
This young gentlewoman had a father—O,
that “had,” how sad a passage ’tis!—whose skill
was almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched
so far, would have made nature immortal, and
death should have play for lack of work. Would for
the King’s sake he were living! I think it would be
the death of the King’s disease.
Lafew
How called you the man you speak of, madam?
Countess
He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it
was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon.
Lafew
He was excellent indeed, madam. The King
very lately spoke of him admiringly, and mourningly.
He was skillful enough to have lived still, if
knowledge could be set up against mortality.
Bertram
What is it, my good lord, the King languishes of?
Lafew
A fistula, my lord.
Bertram
I heard not of it before.
Lafew
I would it were not notorious.—Was this gentlewoman
the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?
Countess
His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to
my overlooking.Ellipsis I have those hopes of her good
that her education promises. Her dispositions she
inheritsHyperbaton, which makes fair gifts fairer;Polyptoton for where an
unclean mind carries virtuous qualitiesSynecdoche, there
commendations go with pity—they are virtues and
traitors tooPersonification. In her they are the better for their simpleness.
She derives her honesty and achieves her goodness.
Lafew
Your commendations, madam, get from her tears.Hyperbaton
Countess
’Tis the best brine a maiden can season her
praise in.Metaphor The remembrance of her father never
approaches her heart but the tyranny of her sorrows
takes all livelihood from her cheek.Isocolon—No
more of this, Helena. Go to. No more, lest it be
rather thought you affect a sorrow than to have—Anadopoton & Anaphora
Helen
I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too.
Lafew
Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead,
excessive grief the enemy to the livingAlliosis, Ellipsis & Isocolon.
Countess
If the living be enemy to the grief, the
excess makes it soon mortal.Ellipsis