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Dear sir, to my endeavors give consent.
Of heaven, not me, make an experiment.
I am not an impostor that proclaim
Myself against the level of mine aim,
But know I think and think I know most sure
My art is not past power nor you past cure. (2.1.171–76)
Helen addresses these words to the King of France as she attempts to convince him to allow her to treat his deadly illness. The King is, unsurprisingly, skeptical of the young woman—both because of her age and gender, and because his own physicians have failed in their attempts to treat him. Yet Helen is confident in her cure, and her confidence is what’s most at stake in this moment. She is a young woman in perfect possession of herself. She’s sure about what she knows, so when makes a promise to the King, she delivers on it—which is more than can be said for most of the men in the play.
Is it possible he should know what he is, and be that he is? (4.1.45–46)
As an anonymous lord and some soldiers lie in wait out of sight, they overhear Parolles talking to himself. He has been sent off to recover the regiment’s drum, which was lost in battle. This is the first step in a plan designed to expose Parolles as a treacherous coward: his companions will soon descend on him disguised as foreign soldiers, capture him, and interrogate him. But before they can expose his lies, Parolles walks alone talking to himself about his own foolhardiness. He knows he’s all talk and no action, and he appears to accept this unsavory fact about himself. The surprise of this leads one nobleman to utter this line, expressing his shock about Parolles’s self-awareness. Though it doesn’t make him less of a treacherous coward, Parolles’s capacity for self-knowledge arguably distinguishes him from Bertram. It also enables his minor rehabilitation in the play’s final act.
Plutus himself,
That knows the tinct and multiplying med’cine,
Hath not in nature’s mystery more science
Than I have in this ring. ’Twas mine, ’twas Helen’s,
Whoever gave it you. Then if you know
That you are well acquainted with yourself,
Confess ’twas hers and by what rough enforcement
You got it from her. (5.3.118–25)
In the tense final scene of the play, the King of France catches Bertram in a lie and confronts him about it. The King has noticed that the ring Bertram wears is identical to the ring he gave to Helen after she cured him. Bertram, however, concocts a story about a Florentine woman throwing it to him from her window. Smelling deceit, the King commands Bertram to tell him the truth. It’s significant that the King’s call for a confession is couched in the language of self-knowledge. He seems to be saying that the first step toward rehabilitation is for Bertram to recognize his own penchant not only for deception, but for self-deception. Only when he’s acknowledged his own shortcomings will his confession be meaningful.
