All's Well That End's Well, heaven on earth; forgive and forget

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     Here is a compilation of quotes and phrases from All's Well That Ends Well.  As usual, I am always struck by the Cervantean scope of phrases that Shakespeare introduced into our language as well as the humor in his writings (how a barber's chair fits all sizes of buttocks, just like a politician's answer fits all questions; or his observations on virginity).  As Harold Bloom states, after spending a lifetime reading and teaching Shakespeare, his plays are always just beyond us as we try to grasp their full import with our intellect. 

Iconic phrases:

            Heaven on earth

            Forgive and forget  (“forgiven and forgotten”)

            (what a tangled web we weave…)  “the web of our life is of a mingled yarn"

            All’s well that ends well

Quotes:

Topics: physicians, medication and the art of medicine, love, virginity, fate vs self-will, the passage of time, youth, death, virtue, antiquity, nothing, good and evil, clothes and motherhood.

“He hath abandoned his physicians, madam, under whose practices he has persecuted time with hope, and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time,” Lafew, 1.1.15-18

     I will have to make a summary of Shakespeare's wonderful and ubiquitous inversion of phrases...time and hope, hope and time.

“…he was skillful enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality,” Lafew about the King’s physician who had died. 1.1.33-34

    This may be my hidden, subconscious quest as a physician, and of all physicians.

“Love all, trust a few.” Countess of Rousillon, 1.1.68

“Are you meditating on virginity?” Parolles. 

“Man is the enemy of virginity; how may we barricado it against him?” Helena. 

“There is none.” Parolles  1.1.116-119

“There was never virgin got (begotten) till virginity was first lost.  …Virginity by being once lost may be ten times found; by being ever kept it is ever lost.”  Parolles  1.1. 134-138

"'tis against the rule of nature.  To speak on the part of virginity, is to accuse your mothers." Parolles.  1.1.142-144

"'tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying."  Parolles.  1.1 160-161

"the longer kept, the less worth."  Parolles.  1.1. 161

“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,

“Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky,” Helena.  1.1.223-224

“I am out of friends, madam, and I hope to have friends for my wife’s sake,” Clown.  1.3.29-30

“…love’s strong passion is impressed in youth.

By our remembrances of days gone by,” Countess.  1.3.235-236

“…I have seen a medicine

That’s able to breath life into a stone,

Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary,” Lafew to the King.  2.1.74-76

“My art is not past power, nor you past cure.”  Helena to the King.  2.1.160

 

“the thievish minutes.”  Helena.  2.1.168

 

“…that’s a bountiful answer that fits all questions.” Countess. 

“It’s like a barber’s chair that fits all buttocks.   …As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney…as a pancake on Shrove Tuesday, as the nail is to the hole…as the nun’s lip to the friar’s mouth.”  Clown 2.2.15-27

“To be young again, if we could, I will be a fool in question.”  Countess. 2.2.39-40

“Uncertain life and sure death.”  Lafew.  2.3.18

 

“I’ll like a maid the better whilst I have a tooth in my head.”  Lafew.  2.3.42-43

 

“Strange is it that our bloods,

Of color, weight, and heat, poured all together,

Would quite confound distinction.”  King (about his son’s refusal to marry Helena, a poor physician’s daughter)  2.3.119-121

“From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,

The place is dignified by the doer’s deed.”  King.  2.3.126-127

 

“The careless lapse of youth and ignorance.”  King.  2.3.164-165

“the privilege of antiquity.”  Parolles.  2.3.210

 

“scurvy, old filthy scurvy.”  Parolles.  2.3.237

“to say nothing, to do nothing, to know nothing, and to have nothing, is to be a great part of your title – which is within a very little of nothing.”  Clown to Parolles.  2.4.24-26

“there can be no kernel in this light nut; the soul of this man is his clothes.”  Lafew.  2.5.44, 45

 

“an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker.”  First Lord.  3.6.10

 

“heaven on earth” Bertam.  4.2.66

 

“the web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud

if our faults whipped them not, and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our

virtues.”  First Lord.  4.3.74-78”

 

“time will bring on summer, When briars shall have leaves as well as thorns.”  Helena.  4.4.31-32

“All’s well that ends well.”  Helena.  4.4.45

 

“if she had partaken of my flesh and cost me the dearest groans of a mother, I could not have owed her a more rooted love.”  Countess.  4.5.10-12 (about her orphan daughter, Helena)

“…the blade of youth, When oil and fire, too strong for reason’s force, O’erbears it and burns on.” Countess.   5.3.6-8

“I have forgiven and forgotten.” King of France.  5.3.9

“For we are old, and on our quisk’st decrees

Th’ inaudible and noiseless foot of Time

Steals ere we can effect them.  ” King of France.  5.3.40-42

Vocabulary: scurvy, obloquy, taffeta