HELENA	Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you: let me
	ask you a question. Man is enemy to virginity; how
	may we barricado it against him?

PAROLLES	Keep him out.

HELENA	But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant,
	in the defence yet is weak: unfold to us some
	warlike resistance.

PAROLLES	There is none: man, sitting down before you, will
	undermine you and blow you up.

HELENA	Bless our poor virginity from underminers and
	blowers up! Is there no military policy, how
	virgins might blow up men?

PAROLLES	Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be
	blown up: marry, in blowing him down again, with
	the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It
	is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to
	preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational
	increase and there was never virgin got till
	virginity was first lost. That you were made of is
	metal to make virgins. Virginity by being once lost
	may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is
	ever lost: 'tis too cold a companion; away with 't!

HELENA	I will stand for 't a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

PAROLLES	There's little can be said in 't; 'tis against the
	rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity,
	is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible
	disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin:
	virginity murders itself and should be buried in
	highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate
	offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites,
	much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very
	paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach.
	Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of
	self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the
	canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but loose
	by't: out with 't! within ten year it will make
	itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the
	principal itself not much the worse: away with 't!

HELENA	How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?

PAROLLES	Let me see: marry, ill, to like him that ne'er it
	likes. 'Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with
	lying; the longer kept, the less worth: off with 't
	while 'tis vendible; answer the time of request.
	Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out
	of fashion: richly suited, but unsuitable: just
	like the brooch and the tooth-pick, which wear not
	now. Your date is better in your pie and your
	porridge than in your cheek; and your virginity,
	your old virginity, is like one of our French
	withered pears, it looks ill, it eats drily; marry,
	'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better;
	marry, yet 'tis a withered pear: will you anything with it?

HELENA	Not my virginity yet [         ]
	There shall your master have a thousand loves,
	A mother and a mistress and a friend,
	A phoenix, captain and an enemy,
	A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign,
	A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear;
	His humble ambition, proud humility,
	His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet,
	His faith, his sweet disaster; with a world
	Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms,
	That blinking Cupid gossips. Now shall he--
	I know not what he shall. God send him well!
	The court's a learning place, and he is one--

PAROLLES	What one, i' faith?

HELENA	That I wish well. 'Tis pity--

PAROLLES	What's pity?

HELENA	That wishing well had not a body in't,
	Which might be felt; that we, the poorer born,
	Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,
	Might with effects of them follow our friends,
	And show what we alone must think, which never
	Return us thanks.

	[Enter Page]

Page	Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you.

	[Exit]

PAROLLES	Little Helen, farewell; if I can remember thee, I
	will think of thee at court.

HELENA	Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a charitable star.