William Shakespeare: All's Well That Ends Well

ACT I. SCENE 1. Rousillon. A room in the COUNTESS'S palace. (continued)

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, setting 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 it!

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 lose by't: out with't!
within ten years it will make itself ten, which is a goodly
increase; and the principal itself not much the worse: away with
it!

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