All’s Well That Ends Well
| ACT II SCENE II | Rousillon. The COUNT’s palace. | |
| [Enter COUNTESS and Clown] | ||
| COUNTESS | Come on, sir; I shall now put you to the height of | |
| your breeding. | ||
| Clown | I will show myself highly fed and lowly taught: I | |
| know my business is but to the court. | ||
| COUNTESS | To the court! why, what place make you special, | 5 |
| when you put off that with such contempt? But to the court! | ||
| Clown | Truly, madam, if God have lent a man any manners, he | |
| may easily put it off at court: he that cannot make | ||
| a leg, put off’s cap, kiss his hand and say nothing, | ||
| has neither leg, hands, lip, nor cap; and indeed | 10 | |
| such a fellow, to say precisely, were not for the | ||
| court; but for me, I have an answer will serve all | ||
| men. | ||
| COUNTESS | Marry, that’s a bountiful answer that fits all | |
| questions. | 15 | |
| Clown | It is like a barber’s chair that fits all buttocks, | |
| the pin-buttock, the quatch-buttock, the brawn | ||
| buttock, or any buttock. | ||
| COUNTESS | Will your answer serve fit to all questions? | |
| Clown | As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, | 20 |
| as your French crown for your taffeta punk, as Tib’s | ||
| rush for Tom’s forefinger, as a pancake for Shrove | ||
| Tuesday, a morris for May-day, as the nail to his | ||
| hole, the cuckold to his horn, as a scolding queen | ||
| to a wrangling knave, as the nun’s lip to the | 25 | |
| friar’s mouth, nay, as the pudding to his skin. | ||
| COUNTESS | Have you, I say, an answer of such fitness for all | |
| questions? | ||
| Clown | From below your duke to beneath your constable, it | |
| will fit any question. | 30 | |
| COUNTESS | It must be an answer of most monstrous size that | |
| must fit all demands. | ||
| Clown | But a trifle neither, in good faith, if the learned | |
| should speak truth of it: here it is, and all that | ||
| belongs to’t. Ask me if I am a courtier: it shall | 35 | |
| do you no harm to learn. | ||
| COUNTESS | To be young again, if we could: I will be a fool in | |
| question, hoping to be the wiser by your answer. I | ||
| pray you, sir, are you a courtier? | ||
| Clown | O Lord, sir! There’s a simple putting off. More, | 40 |
| more, a hundred of them. | ||
| COUNTESS | Sir, I am a poor friend of yours, that loves you. | |
| Clown | O Lord, sir! Thick, thick, spare not me. | |
| COUNTESS | I think, sir, you can eat none of this homely meat. | |
| Clown | O Lord, sir! Nay, put me to’t, I warrant you. | 45 |
| COUNTESS | You were lately whipped, sir, as I think. | |
| Clown | O Lord, sir! spare not me. | |
| COUNTESS | Do you cry, ‘O Lord, sir!’ at your whipping, and | |
| ‘spare not me?’ Indeed your ‘O Lord, sir!’ is very | ||
| sequent to your whipping: you would answer very well | 50 | |
| to a whipping, if you were but bound to’t. | ||
| Clown | I ne’er had worse luck in my life in my ‘O Lord, | |
| sir!’ I see things may serve long, but not serve ever. | ||
| COUNTESS | I play the noble housewife with the time | |
| To entertain’t so merrily with a fool. | 55 | |
| Clown | O Lord, sir! why, there’t serves well again. | |
| COUNTESS | An end, sir; to your business. Give Helen this, | |
| And urge her to a present answer back: | ||
| Commend me to my kinsmen and my son: | ||
| This is not much. | 60 | |
| Clown | Not much commendation to them. | |
| COUNTESS | Not much employment for you: you understand me? | |
| Clown | Most fruitfully: I am there before my legs. | |
| COUNTESS | Haste you again. | |
| [Exeunt severally] | ||
Next: All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 2, Scene 3