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I care no more for, than I do for heaven,
So I were not his sister: Can 't no other,

But, I your daughter, he must be my brother?1

Count. Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law; God shield, you mean it not! daughter, and mother, So strive2 upon your pulse: What, pale again? My fear hath catch'd your fondness: Now I see The mystery of your loneliness, and find

Your salt tears' head. 3 Now to all sense 'tis gross,

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or were you both our mothers,

I care no more for, than I do for heaven,

So I were not his sister:] There is a designed ambiguity: I care no more for, is, I care as much for. I wish it equally.

Farmer.

In Troilus and Cressida we find-" I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus." There the words certainly mean, I should not be sorry or unwilling to be, &c. According to this, then, the meaning of the passage before us should be, "If you were mother to us both, it would not give me more solicitude than heaven gives me, so I were not his sister." But Helena certainly would not confess an indifference about her future state. However, she may mean, as Dr. Farmer has suggested, "I should not care more than, but equally as, I care for future happiness; I should be as content, and solicit it as much, as I pray for the bliss of heaven." Malone.

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But, I your daughter, he must be my brother?] The meaning is obscured by the elliptical diction. Can it be no other way, but if I be your daughter, he must be my brother? Johnson.

2

3

strive-] To strive is to contend. So, in Cymbeline: "That it did strive in workmanship and value." Steevens.

Now I see

The mystery of your loneliness, and find

Your salt tears' head.] The old copy reads-loveliness.

Steevens.

The mystery of her loveliness is beyond my comprehension: the old Countess is saying nothing ironical, nothing taunting, or in reproach, that this word should find a place here; which it could not unless sarcastically employed, and with some spleen. I dare warrant the poet meant his old lady should say no more than this: "I now find the mystery of your creeping into corners, and weeping, and pining in secret." For this reason I have amended the text, loneliness. The Steward, in the foregoing scene, where he gives the Countess intelligence of Helena's behaviour, says—

"Alone she was, and did communicate to herself, her own words to her own ears." Theobald.

You love my son; invention is asham'd,
Against the proclamation of thy passion,
To say, thou dost not: therefore tell me true;
But tell me then, 'tis so:-for, look, thy cheeks
Confess it, one to the other; and thine eyes
See it so grossly shown in thy behaviours,
That in their kind they speak it; only sin
And hellish obstinancy tie thy tongue,

That truth should be suspected: Speak, is 't so?
If it be so, you have wound a goodly clue;
If it be not, forswear 't: howe'er, I charge thee,
As heaven shall work in me for thine avail,

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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,

Here on my knee, before high heaven and you,
That before you, and next unto high heaven,

I love your son;—

My friends were poor, but honest; so 's my love:
Be not offended; for it hurts not him,

That he is lov'd of me: I follow him not

By any token of presumptuous suit;

Nor would I have him, till I do deserve him;
Yet never know how that desert should be.
I know I love in vain, strive against hope;
Yet, in this captious and intenible sieve,5

The late Mr. Hall had corrected this, I believe, rightly,—your lowliness. Tyrwhitt.

I think Theobald's correction as plausible. To choose solitude is a mark of love.

Steevens.

Your salt tears' head.] The source, the fountain of your tears, the cause of your grief. Johnson.

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nature.

in their kind-] i. e. their language, according to their

Steevens.

I still pour in the waters of my love,

And lack not to lose still: thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore

The sun, that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more.

My dearest madam,

Let not your hate encounter with my love,
For loving where you do: but, if yourself,
Whose aged honour cites a virtuous youth,"
Did ever, in so true a flame of liking,

Wish chastly, and love dearly, that your Dian
Was both herself and love; O then, give pity

5 captious and intenible sieve,] The word captious I never found in this sense; yet I cannot tell what to substitute, unless carious for rotten, which yet is a word more likely to have been mistaken by the copiers than used by the author. Johnson.

Dr. Farmer supposes captious to be a contraction of capacious. As violent ones are to be found among our ancient writers, and especially in Churchyard's Poems, with which Shakspeare was not unacquainted. Steevens.

By captious, I believe Shakspeare only meant recipient, capable of receiving what is put into it; and by intenible, incapable of holding or retaining it. How frequently he and the other writers of his age confounded the active and passive adjectives, has been already more than once observed.

The original copy reads-intemible. The correction was made in the second folio. Malone.

6 And lack not to lose still:] Perhaps we should readAnd lack not to love still.

Tyrwhitt.

I believe lose is right. So afterwards, in this speech: 66 whose state is such, that cannot choose

"But lend and give, where she is sure to lose." Helena means, I think, 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 diseouraged, but perseveres in her hopeless endeavour to accomplish her wishes. The poet evidently alludes to the trite story of the daughters of Danaus.

Malone.

7 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. As a fact is proved by citing witnesses, or examples from books, our author, with his usual license, uses to cite in the same sense of to prove. Malone.

8 Wish chastly, and love dearly, that your Dian

Was both herself and love;] i. e. Venus. Helena means to

To her, whose state is such, that cannot choose
But lend and give, where she is sure to lose;
That seeks not to find that her search implies,
But, riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies.
Count. Had you not lately an intent, speak truly,
To go to Paris?

Hel.

Count.

Madam, I had.

Wherefore? tell true."
Hel. I will tell truth; by grace itself, I swear.
You know, my father left me some prescriptions
Of rare and prov'd effects, such as his reading,
And manifest"experience, had collected manifold
For general sovereignty; and that he will'd me
In heedfullest reservation to bestow them,
As notes, whose faculties inclusive1 were,
More than they were in note: amongst the rest,
There is a remedy, approv'd set down,

To cure the desperate languishings, whereof
The king is render'd lost.

Count.

For Paris, was it? speak.

This was your motive

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,
Haply, been absent then.

Count.

But think you, Helen,

If you 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

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." I believe, however, the words were accidentally transposed at the press, and would read

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Love dearly, and wish chastly, that your Dian &c. Malone. tell true.] This is an evident interpolation. It is needless, because it repeats what the Countess had already said: it is injurious, because it spoils the measure. Steevens.

1 notes, whose faculties inclusive-] Receipts in which greater virtues were inclosed than appeared to observation.

Johnson.

A poor unlearned virgin, when the schools,
Embowell'd of their doctrine,2 have left off
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 receipt3

Shall, for my legacy, be sanctified

By the luckiest stars in heaven: and, would your honour But give me 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 believe 't?

Hel. Ay, madam, knowingly.

Count. Why, Helen, thou shalt have my leave, and love,

Means, and attendants, and my loving greetings
To those of mine in court; I'll stay at home,
And pray God's blessing into thy attempt: 4
Be gone to-morrow; and be sure of this,

What I can help thee to, thou shalt not miss. [Exeunt.

2 Embowell'd of their doctrine,] i. e. exhausted of their skill. So, in the old spurious play of K. John:

"Back war-men, back; embowel not the clime." Steevens. 3 There's something hints

More than my father's skill,

thing in 't.

that his good receipt, &c.] The old copy reads-someSteevens.

Here is an inference, [that] without any thing preceding, to which it refers, which makes the sentence vicious, and shows that we should read

There's something hints

More than my father's skill,
that his good receipt

i. e. I have a secret premonition, or presage.

Warburton.

This necessary correction was made by Sir Thomas Hanmer.

Malone.

4 into thy attempt:] So in the old copy. We might more intelligibly read, according to the third folio,-unto thy attempt. Steevens.

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