The Two Gentlemen of Verona is one of Shakespeare’s early plays, perhaps even his first. We do not know exactly when it was written or first performed, but its stylistic and dramatic features distinguish it as early work: a small cast, a preponderance of end-stopped verse lines, a degree of simplicity in both language and characterization. Though the play has the relative superficiality of youth, it also has the virtues of that time of life: freshness, energy, pace, wholeheartedness, a desire to get to the point and to speak its mind. It is about the things that matter most urgently to young people: themselves, their friendships, and their love affairs. It makes its drama out of the conflicts between these things: how can you be simultaneously true to yourself, to your best friend, and to the object of your sexual desire? Especially if the person you’ve fallen in love with happens to be your best friend’s girlfriend.
In all sorts of ways, The Two Gentlemen is a prototype for later Shakespearean developments. The cross-dressed heroine recurs in the more renowned comedies of the late 1590s and early 1600s. The outlaw scenes introduce a movement out from “civil” society into a “wilderness” or green world, where surprising developments take place, anticipating the enchanted wood of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the forest of Arden in As You Like It. The soliloquies of Proteus, meanwhile, offer an early example of a Shakespearean character undergoing a crisis of personal identity, of consciousness—already we are moving into the territory that will be taken in very different (and of course much more complex) directions in the self-communion of Richard III, Richard II, and eventually Hamlet.
The play begins by establishing the friendship between the two gentlemen. Valentine’s name suggests the patron saint of lovers in the Christian tradition, while that of Proteus evokes the shape-changing god of the classical tradition. The names are enough to suggest that Valentine will be the constant lover, Proteus the fickle one. Initially, though, Valentine is associated with the pursuit of “honor” rather than sexual desire. He intends to seek his fortune in the city of Milan instead of “living dully sluggardized at home.” His plan would immediately have pricked the interest of many members of the play’s original London audience, who would themselves have made the journey from the provinces to the capital—as indeed Shakespeare had done himself not long before writing the play.
Proteus, meanwhile, has undergone a psychological rather than a physical journey: he has left himself, his friends, and all, for love. His desire for Julia has “metamorphosed” him and made him neglect his studies, waste his time, and go to “war with good counsel.” The didactic literature of the age was full of admonitions against such self-abuse. Young gentlemen were supposed to study the arts of good behavior and good citizenship, not to be distracted by affairs of the heart and effeminizing influences. Stage plays came into the latter category, which partially accounts for the antitheatrical diatribes of Elizabethan “puritans.”
The opening also establishes oppositions between generations and genders. Shakespeare then sets up a dialogue across the barrier of class by means of witty banter between master and servant. Valentine’s servant Speed is there to anatomize the characteristics of the mooning courtly lover: he observes his master folding his arms like a melancholy malcontent, relishing love songs, walking alone, sighing like a schoolboy who knows he’s going to be in trouble for losing his spelling book, weeping, speaking in a whining voice, and rejecting food like someone on a diet. Much as the play celebrates the transforming energies of young love—and indeed engages with its destructive potential—it also mocks the courtly idiom of love-language, not least through the contrast between the artificial poeticisms of the genteel characters and the robust prose voice of their servants.
The name Speed suggests the quickness of wit that is confirmed by this servant’s linguistic facility and awareness of the gentlemen’s foibles. He always seems to be one step ahead of Valentine, anticipating what his master’s going to do next in an aside shared with the audience. Proteus’s servant Lance also has a name that suggests mental sharpness: Shakespeare himself was often praised by his contemporaries for having a wit that was as sharp as the spear in his name. Ironically, though, Lance’s way of proceeding is anything but pointed: his role is that of the clown for whom everything goes wrong and who confuses his words (“the prodigious son” for the prodigal son, “a notable lover” misheard as “a notable lubber”). When he tries to use his shoe, his staff, his hat, and his dog to act out the scene of his farewell from his family, he gets into a terrible tangle. The joke is that this should be asa result of the unpredictability of the live dog on stage, but actually it is due to Lance’s own incompetence. At the end of the fourth act, Lance has a second two-hander with his dog, a riff on the theme of a servant’s obedience to his master. As Lance makes a mess of the demands of Proteus, so Crab fails to do the will of Lance: “Did not I bid thee still mark me, and do as I do? When didst thou see me heave up my leg and make water against a gentlewoman’s farthingale?”
While Speed mocks Valentine’s transformation into a lover, Lance succumbs to desire in the manner of his master. He falls in love with a milkmaid, the unseen prototype of the hoyden character-type that will be incarnated in the fat kitchen maid of The Comedy of Errors and As You Like It’s goatherd Audrey. Lance’s catalog of the milkmaid’s down-to-earth virtues and vices parodies the courtly lover’s enumeration of the beauties of his mistress.
Silvia is the beautiful lady of courtly romance, the object of men’s devoted gaze and fantastic desire, a woman on a pedestal who reveals little of her inner life. Julia, by contrast, wears her heart upon her sleeve as she moves from domesticity to danger when she sets off in pursuit of Proteus. Her decision to do so reveals the sexual double standard that was pervasive in Shakespeare’s time: whereas a young man is condemned for sluggardizing at home, a young woman risks being made the object of scandal by setting out from home.
One of Shakespeare’s favorite techniques was the dramatically ironic counterpointing of scenes: we see Julia proving her love for Proteus by setting off on her dangerous journey immediately after we have seen Proteus renouncing his love for Julia because he has been smitten by the sight of Silvia. The scene when Valentine introduces his best friend to the girl he has fallen in love with is brief but very subtly written. It turns on the correspondence between the language of courtesy and that of courtship. Valentine asks Silvia to welcome Proteus “with some special favour” and to “entertain him” in her service. What he means is “please treat my friend with respect,” but since in the courtly idiom the language of service is synonymous with that of love, Proteus is given an opening to project himself into the role of a rival lover—when Silvia modestly refers to herself as a “worthless mistress” he responds by saying that he would fight to the death anyone else who described her thus. In a sense, the crux of the play lies in the double meaning of the word “mistress.”
Proteus explores his own transformation in two soliloquies that come in rapid succession. In the first, he introduces the image of his love for Julia as akin to a wax image melted to oblivion by the heat of his new desire for Silvia. At the same time, he recognizes that what he has fallen in love with is merely a “picture,” the outer image of her beauty. The play begins to probe more deeply into the nature of love when in later scenes a series of questions are asked about the relationship between the “shadow” of surface beauty and the “substance” or “essence” of personality within. In parallel with this motif, the action develops the concerns of Proteus’s second major soliloquy: making and breaking vows, finding and losing selves, and the conflict between “sweet-suggesting love” and “the law of friendship.” “In love,” Proteus asks at the play’s crisis point, “Who respects friend?”
Prior to the last few years of Shakespeare’s career, his plays were performed without an interval. Despite this, there is often a perceptible change in the action at the beginning of the fourth act. The plot has been wound to the full, so now the unwinding begins. Here the turning point is marked by the movement away from court and city to a wood peopled by some rather genteel outlaws. One of them swears “By the bare scalp of Robin Hood’s fat friar” and it is the jolly camaraderie of the Merry Men, stripped of the old story’s violence and political edge, that is evoked by these outlaws.
Desire feeds itself on rejection. The more Silvia spurns Proteus, the more he desires her. By the same account, the more he spurns Julia, the more she dotes on him. In the play’s richest sequence, music is introduced to establish a nocturnal setting in which Proteus displaces Turio and woos Silvia at her window, not knowing that he is overheard by Julia in her pageboy disguise: this is her dark night of the soul. But then in a bold and very Shakespearean twist, when Proteus confronts the disguised Julia face to face he takes rather a fancy to her boy-self: “Sebastian is thy name? I like thee well, / And will employ thee in some service presently.” The words “employ” and “service” maintain the punning on the shared language of domestic obligation and sexual engagement. Anticipating Viola in Twelfth Night, Julia finds herself in the painful position of being “servant” to the man whose “mistress” she really wants to be. Hitherto Proteus has regarded Julia as nothing more than a decorative blonde. Now that he thinks she is Sebastian, he unwittingly begins to intuit her inner qualities.
At this point, the play reaches its highest point of sophistication and self-conscious artfulness. The audience is offered two images: a portrait of Silvia and a description of Sebastian, dressed in Julia’s clothes, playing the part of a rejected lover, Ariadne deserted by Theseus in a famous story from classical mythology. The contrast between the two images effectively turns the scene into a Shakespearean claim for the superiority not only of the player’s art to the portrait painter’s but also of his own dramatization of love to the static vision of courtly romance. The painting, like the lady of romance, is but a “senseless form” to be “worshipped, kissed, loved, and adored.” The actor, by contrast, can evoke the real pain of passion so convincingly (“so lively acted”) that the audience may be moved to tears. No one is better than Proteus at expressing eternal adoration in the artful language—all sighs and poetic hyperbole—of the courtly lover, but his fickleness reveals the essential insincerity of the code. Paradoxically, it is the play-actor who is truly sincere: “Sebastian” is really Julia, passioning not for Theseus’s but for Proteus’s perjury and unjust flight.
Painters can achieve tricks of the eye—perspectival illusions of depth, anamorphic representations that vary in appearance according to where the viewer stands—but the theatrical imagination can do much more: the imagined performance of Sebastian as Ariadne is mapped on to the achieved performance of both Julia as Sebastian in the world of the play and the boy-actor as Julia on the stage where the drama was first brought to life. Throughout his career, Shakespeare will return to such complex layered effects of illusion and reality, in accordance with his core belief that we are all players in the great theater of the world.
Having gone emotionally deep in the fourth act, Shakespeare speeds toward a conventional comic conclusion in the fifth. The forest of the jolly outlaws is his device for doing so. It is not a psychologically complex environment like the wood in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Rather, it is a place where the polished veneer of civil society is stripped away, allowing people to act impulsively on their desires. Psychological consistency is not the point here: one moment Proteus is threatening to rape Silvia, the next Valentine is seeking to demonstrate that he values gentlemanly friendship above erotic desire by offering Silvia to Proteus. We do get the ending we expect and desire, but the abruptness with which it comes about is a sign of impatience or immaturity on Shakespeare’s part—but then again, his mind was so restlessly inventive that he never really cared for endings.
PLOT: Valentine sets off from Verona for Milan to see the world. Proteus stays at home because of his love for Julia. She is in love with him, but neither knows of the other’s love until Lucetta shows Julia a love letter from Proteus. He is reading her reply when his father, Antonio, informs him of his decision to send him to the duke’s court to join Valentine. The lovers take their leave and swear eternal constancy. In Milan, Proteus finds that Valentine has fallen in love with Silvia, the duke’s daughter, and plans to elope with her to foil her father’s plan to marry her to Turio. Valentine confides his plan to his friend but Proteus, infatuated with Silvia at first sight, betrays the plan to the duke and Valentine is banished from Milan. In the wilderness he encounters a band of outlaws and is elected their leader. Meanwhile Julia, disguised as Sebastian, has come to Milan in search of Proteus. Overhearing him declare his passion for Silvia, she is devastated but, under cover of her disguise, enters his service as a page. When Proteus sends her with a message to Silvia, Julia is encouraged to find that his advances are again rejected and that Silvia remains faithful to Valentine. Silvia escapes into the forest to join Valentine. The duke and Turio set out in pursuit, followed by Proteus and Julia. Silvia is captured by the outlaws but then rescued by Proteus, who, seeing that she still spurns him, tries to force himself on her. Valentine intervenes and Proteus is forced to confront his act of betrayal. Julia reveals her identity and a reconciliation begins.
MAJOR PARTS: (with number of speeches/scenes on stage) Proteus (20%/147/11), Valentine (17%/149/6), Julia (14%/107/7), Speed (9%/117/6), Lance (9%/68/4), Duke (9%/48/5), Silvia (7%/58/6), Lucetta (3%/48/2), Turio (3%/36/5).
LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 80% verse, 20% prose. High frequency of rhyme.
DATE: Early 1590s. Mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598. Presumed on stylistic grounds to be one of the earliest plays, but no firm evidence for any particular year.
SOURCES: Main plot based on a story in Jorge de Montemayor, Diana Enamorada (originally in Spanish—English translation by Bartholomew Yong published 1598, but circulated in manuscript several years earlier); plot may be mediated via a lost Queen’s Men play of the 1580s, Felix and Feliomena. Other literary influences seem to include Arthur Brooke, Romeus and Juliet (1562), and John Lyly, Euphues (1578), and perhaps Midas (ca. 1589).
TEXT: First Folio of 1623 is the only early printed text. Based on a transcript by Ralph Crane, professional scribe working for the King’s Men. Generally good quality of printing.
SPEED, a clownish servant to Valentine
LANCE, the like to Proteus
DUKE OF MILAN, father to Silvia
SILVIA, beloved of Valentine
EGLAMOUR, agent for Silvia in her escape
ANTONIO, father to Proteus
PANTINO, servant to Antonio
TURIO, a foolish rival to Valentine
JULIA, beloved of Proteus
LUCETTA, waiting-woman to Julia
HOST, where Julia lodges
OUTLAWS, with Valentine
Servants, Musicians, Lance’s dog Crab
Enter Valentine [and] Proteus
Home-keeping youth have ever homely2 wits.
Were’t not affection3 chains thy tender days
To the sweet glances of thy honoured love,
5 I rather would entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad,
Than — living dully sluggardized7 at home —
Wear out thy youth with shapeless8 idleness.
But since thou lov’st, love still,9 and thrive therein,
10 Even as I would, when I to love begin.
Think on thy Proteus, when thou haply12 see’st
Some rare noteworthy object in thy travel.
Wish me partaker in thy happiness
15 When thou dost meet good hap:15 and in thy danger —
If ever danger do environ16 thee —
Commend thy grievance17 to my holy prayers,
For I will be thy beadsman,18 Valentine.
How young Leander22 crossed the Hellespont.
For he was more than over-shoes in love.24
And yet you never swam the Hellespont.
Coy31 looks with heart-sore sighs, one fading moment’s mirth,
With twenty watchful,32 weary, tedious nights;
If haply won, perhaps a hapless33 gain,
If34 lost, why then a grievous labour won;
35 However,35 but a folly bought with wit,
Or else a wit by folly vanquishèd.
And he that is so yokèd41 by a fool,
Methinks should not be chronicled for42 wise.
The eating canker44 dwells, so eating love
45 Inhabits in the finest wits of all.
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,47
Even so by love, the young and tender wit
Is turned to folly, blasting49 in the bud,
50 Losing his verdure,50 even in the prime,
And all the fair effects51 of future hopes.
But wherefore52 waste I time to counsel thee
That art a votary53 to fond desire?
Once more, adieu. My father at the road54
55 Expects my coming, there to see me shipped.55
To Milan58 let me hear from thee by letters
Of thy success59 in love, and what news else
60 Betideth60 here in absence of thy friend:
And I likewise will visit thee with mine.61
Exit
65 He leaves his friends to dignify65 them more;
I leave66 myself, my friends and all, for love.
Thou, Julia,67 thou hast metamorphosed me:
Made me neglect my studies, lose my time,
War69 with good counsel, set the world at nought;
70 Made wit with musing70 weak, heart sick with thought.
[Enter Speed]
And I have played the sheep74 in losing him.
An if76 the shepherd be awhile away.
[Exit Speed]
130 Which cannot perish having thee aboard,
Being destined to a drier death131 on shore.
I must go send some better messenger:
I fear my Julia would not deign my lines,133
Receiving them from such a worthless post.134
Exit
Enter Julia and Lucetta
Wouldst thou then counsel me to fall in love?
5 That every day with parle5 encounter me,
In thy opinion, which is worthiest love?
According to my shallow simple skill.
But, were I you, he never should be mine.
That I — unworthy body as I am —
Should censure19 thus on lovely gentlemen.
I think him so because I think him so.
He would have given it you, but I, being39 in the way,
40 Did in your name receive it: pardon the fault, I pray.
Dare you presume to harbour wanton42 lines?
To whisper and conspire against my youth?
Now trust me, ’tis an office44 of great worth,
45 And you an officer fit for the place.
There, take the paper: see it be returned,
Or else return no more into my sight.
Exit
It were a shame to call her back again
And pray her to53 a fault for which I chid her.
What fool is she, that knows I am a maid,
55 And would not force the letter to my view!
Since maids, in modesty, say ‘no’ to that
Which they would have57 the profferer construe ‘ay’.
Fie, fie: how wayward58 is this foolish love
That — like a testy59 babe — will scratch the nurse
60 And presently,60 all humbled, kiss the rod!
How churlishly61 I chid Lucetta hence,
When willingly I would have had her here!
How angerly63 I taught my brow to frown,
When inward joy enforced my heart to smile!
65 My penance is to call Lucetta back
And ask remission66 for my folly past.
What ho! Lucetta!
[Enter Lucetta]
That you might kill your stomach71 on your meat
And not upon your maid. Drops a letter, then picks it up
Unless it have a false interpreter.81
Give me a note: your ladyship can set84—
Best sing it to the tune of ‘Light o’love’.86
How now, minion!92
And yet methinks I do not like this tune.
And mar99 the concord with too harsh a descant:
100 There wanteth but a mean100 to fill your song.
Here is a coil with protestation!104 Tears the letter
105 Go, get you gone, and let the papers lie:
You would be fing’ring106 them to anger me.
To be so angered with another letter.
[Exit]
110 O hateful hands, to tear such loving words;
Injurious wasps,111 to feed on such sweet honey
And kill the bees that yield it with your stings!
I’ll kiss each several paper113 for amends.
Look, here is writ ‘kind Julia’. Unkind114 Julia, ↓Examining the pieces↓
115 As115 in revenge of thy ingratitude,
I throw thy name against the bruising stones,
Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain.
And here is writ ‘love-wounded Proteus’.
Poor wounded name: my119 bosom as a bed
120 Shall lodge thee till thy wound be throughly120 healed;
And thus I search121 it with a sovereign kiss.
But twice or thrice was ‘Proteus’ written down.
Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away
Till I have found each letter, in the letter,
125 Except mine own name: that, some whirlwind bear
Unto a ragged,126 fearful, hanging rock,
And throw it thence into the raging sea.
Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ:
‘Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus,
130 To the sweet Julia’: that130 I’ll tear away:
And yet I will not, sith131 so prettily
He132 couples it to his complaining names.
Thus133 will I fold them, one upon another;
Now kiss, embrace, contend,134 do what you will.
[Enter Lucetta]
140 Yet here they shall not lie, for140 catching cold. Picks up the pieces
I see things too, although you judge I wink.143
Exeunt
Enter Antonio and Pantino
Wherewith my brother held you in the cloister?2
Would suffer6 him to spend his youth at home,
While other men, of slender reputation,7
Put forth8 their sons to seek preferment out:
Some to the wars to try their fortune there,
10 Some to discover islands far away,
Some to the studious universities;
For any or for all these exercises,
He said that Proteus your son was meet,13
And did request me to importune14 you
15 To let him spend his time no more at home,
Which would be great impeachment16 to his age,
In having known no travel in his youth.
Whereon this month I have been hammering.19
20 I have considered well his loss of time,
And how he cannot be a perfect21 man,
Not being tried22 and tutored in the world:
Experience is by industry achieved
And perfected by the swift course of time.
25 Then tell me, whither were I best to send him?
How his companion, youthful Valentine,
Attends the emperor28 in his royal court.
There shall he practise tilts31 and tournaments,
Hear sweet discourse,32 converse with noblemen,
And be in eye of33 every exercise
Worthy his youth and nobleness of birth.
And that thou mayst perceive how well I like it,
The execution37 of it shall make known.
Even with the speediest expedition38
I will dispatch him to the emperor’s court.
With other gentlemen of good esteem
Are journeying to salute the emperor
And to commend43 their service to his will.
[Enter Proteus, reading]
45 And in good time!45 Now will we break with him.
Here is her hand,47 the agent of her heart;
Here is her oath for love, her honour’s pawn.48
O, that our fathers would applaud our loves
50 To seal50 our happiness with their consents.
O heavenly Julia!
Of commendations54 sent from Valentine,
55 Delivered by a friend that came from him.
How happily he lives, how well beloved
And daily gracèd59 by the emperor,
60 Wishing me with him, partner of his fortune.
And not depending on his63 friendly wish.
65 Muse65 not that I thus suddenly proceed:
For what I will, I will, and there an end.
I am resolved that thou shalt spend some time
With Valentinus in the emperor’s court:
What maintenance69 he from his friends receives,
70 Like exhibition70 thou shalt have from me.
Tomorrow be in readiness to go:
Excuse it not,72 for I am peremptory.
Please you deliberate a day or two.
No76 more of stay: tomorrow thou must go.
Come on, Pantino, you shall be employed
To hasten on his expedition.
[Exeunt Antonio and Pantino]
80 And drenched me in the sea where I am drowned.
I feared to show my father Julia’s letter,
Lest he should take exceptions82 to my love,
And with the vantage83 of mine own excuse
Hath he excepted most against84 my love.
85 O, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by and by a cloud takes all away.
[Enter Pantino]
90 He is in haste, therefore I pray you go.
And yet a thousand times it answers ‘no’.
Exeunt
Enter Valentine [and] Speed
5 Sweet ornament5 that decks a thing divine.
Ah, Silvia,6 Silvia!
[Enter Silvia]
Unto the secret, nameless friend79 of yours,
80 Which I was much unwilling to proceed in
But for my duty to your ladyship. Gives her a letter
For being ignorant to whom it goes
85 I writ at random, very doubtfully.85
Please you command — a thousand times as much.
And yet—
And yet I will not name it: and yet I care not.
And yet take this92 again. And yet I thank you, Offers him the letter
Meaning henceforth to trouble you no more.
But, since unwillingly, take them again.97 Offers the letter again
Nay, take them.
But I will none of101 them. They are for you:
I would have had them writ more movingly.
105 And if it please you, so:105 if not, why, so.
And so, good morrow, servant.
Exit
110 As a nose on a man’s face, or a weathercock on a steeple!
My master sues to111 her, and she hath taught her suitor,
He being her pupil, to become her tutor.
O, excellent device!113 Was there ever heard a better?
That my master, being scribe,
115 To himself should write the letter?
135 For often have you writ to her, and she in modesty,
Or else for want136 of idle time, could not again reply,
Or fearing else some messenger that might her mind discover,137
Herself hath taught her love himself to write unto her lover.
All this I speak in print,139 for in print I found it.
140 Why muse you, sir? ’Tis dinner-time.
Exeunt
Enter Proteus [and] Julia
5 Keep this remembrance5 for thy Julia’s sake. Gives a ring
And when that hour o’erslips9 me in the day,
10 Wherein I sigh not, Julia, for thy sake,
The next ensuing hour some foul mischance11
Torment me for my love’s forgetfulness.
My father stays13 my coming: answer not,
The tide is now; nay, not thy tide of tears,
15 That tide will stay15 me longer than I should.
Julia, farewell. What, gone without a word?
[Exit Julia]
Ay, so true love should do: it cannot speak,
For truth hath better deeds than words to grace18 it.
[Enter Pantino]
Alas, this parting strikes poor lovers dumb.
Exeunt
Enter Lance [leading his dog, Crab]
[Enter Pantino]
Exeunt
Enter Valentine, Silvia, Turio [and] Speed
[Exit]
[Enter Duke]
Sir Valentine, your father is in good health:
What say you to a letter from your friends
Of much good news?
45 To any happy messenger45 from thence.
To be of worth48 and worthy estimation,
And not without desert49 so well reputed.
The honour and regard of such a father.
55 We have conversed and spent our hours together,
And though myself have been an idle truant,
Omitting57 the sweet benefit of time
To clothe mine age58 with angel-like perfection,
Yet hath Sir Proteus — for that’s his name —
60 Made use and fair advantage of his days:
His years but young, but his experience old,
His head unmellowed62 but his judgement ripe,
And in a word — for far behind his worth
Comes all the praises that I now bestow —
65 He is complete65 in feature and in mind,
With all good grace to grace a gentleman.
He is as worthy for an empress’ love,
As meet to be an emperor’s counsellor.
70 Well, sir, this gentleman is come to me,
With commendation from great potentates,71
And here he means to spend his time awhile:
I think ’tis no unwelcome news to you.
Silvia, I speak to you, and you, Sir Turio,
For Valentine, I need not cite77 him to it:
I will send him hither to you presently.
[Exit]
80 Had come80 along with me, but that his mistress
Did hold his eyes locked in her crystal looks.81
Upon some other pawn for fealty.
How could he see his way to seek out you?
90 Upon a homely90 object, Love can wink.
[Turio may exit]
[Enter Proteus]
Confirm his welcome with some special favour.
95 If this be he you oft have wished to hear from.
To be my fellow-servant to your ladyship.
100 To have a look of such a worthy mistress.
Sweet lady, entertain him for your servant.
105 Servant, you are welcome to a worthless mistress.
[Enter Turio, or a servant enters and whispers to Turio]
Go with me. Once more, new servant, welcome.
I’ll leave you to confer of home affairs:
When you have done, we look to hear from you.
[Exeunt Silvia and Turio]
I know you joy not in a love discourse.
I have done penance for contemning123 Love,
Whose high imperious124 thoughts have punished me
125 With bitter fasts, with penitential125 groans,
With nightly tears and daily heart-sore sighs:
For in revenge of my contempt of love,
Love hath chased sleep from my enthrallèd128 eyes,
And made them watchers of129 mine own heart’s sorrow.
130 O gentle Proteus, Love’s a mighty lord,
And hath so humbled me, as I confess,
There is no132 woe to his correction,
Nor to133 his service no such joy on earth.
Now no discourse, except it be of love:
135 Now can I break my fast, dine, sup and sleep
Upon the very naked136 name of love.
Was this138 the idol that you worship so?
145 And I must minister the like145 to you.
Yet let her be a principality,147
Sovereign to all the creatures on the earth.
Except151 thou wilt except against my love.
She shall be dignified with this high honour,
155 To bear my lady’s train, lest the base earth
Should from156 her vesture chance to steal a kiss,
And of so great a favour growing proud,
Disdain158 to root the summer-swelling flower
And make rough winter everlastingly.
To162 her whose worth makes other worthies nothing.
She is alone.163
And I as rich in having such a jewel
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.
Forgive me that I do not dream on thee,169
170 Because thou see’st me dote upon170 my love.
My foolish rival, that her father likes —
Only for172 his possessions are so huge —
Is gone with her along, and I must after:
For love, thou know’st, is full of jealousy.
With177 all the cunning manner of our flight,
Determined of:178 how I must climb her window,
The ladder made of cords, and all the means
180 Plotted and ’greed180 on for my happiness.
Good Proteus, go with me to my chamber,
In these affairs to aid me with thy counsel.
I must unto the road, to disembark184
185 Some necessaries185 that I needs must use,
And then I’ll presently attend you.
Exit [Valentine]
Even as one heat another heat expels,189
190 Or as one nail by strength drives out another,
So the remembrance191 of my former love
Is by a newer object192 quite forgotten.
Is it mine eye or Valentine’s praise?
Her true perfection or my false transgression194
195 That makes me reasonless195 to reason thus?
She is fair: and so is Julia that I love —
That I did love, for now my love is thawed,
Which, like a waxen image gainst a fire
Bears no impression of the thing it was.
200 Methinks my zeal200 to Valentine is cold,
And that I love him not as I was wont.
O, but I love his lady too too much,
And that’s the reason I love him so little.
How shall I dote on her with more advice,204
205 That thus without advice205 begin to love her?
’Tis but her picture206 I have yet beheld,
And that hath dazzlèd my reason’s light:
But when I look208 on her perfections,
There is no reason but209 I shall be blind.
210 If I can check210 my erring love, I will:
If not, to compass211 her I’ll use my skill.
Exit
Enter Speed and Lance [separately. Lance with his dog, Crab]
Exeunt
Enter Proteus alone
To love fair Silvia, shall I be forsworn?
To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn.
And ev’n that power4 which gave me first my oath
5 Provokes me to this threefold perjury.
Love bade me swear, and Love bids me forswear;
O sweet-suggesting7 Love, if thou hast sinned,
Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it.
At first I did adore a twinkling star,
10 But now I worship a celestial sun.
Unheedful11 vows may heedfully be broken,
And he wants wit12 that wants resolved will
To learn13 his wit t’exchange the bad for better.
Fie, fie, unreverend14 tongue, to call her bad,
15 Whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferred15
With twenty thousand soul-confirming16 oaths.
I cannot leave17 to love, and yet I do:
But there I leave to love where I should love.
Julia I lose, and Valentine I lose:
20 If I keep them, I needs must lose myself.
If I lose them, thus find I21 by their loss:
For22 Valentine, myself, for Julia, Silvia.
I to myself am dearer than a friend,
For love is still most precious in itself,
25 And Silvia — witness heaven that made her fair25 —
Shows Julia26 but a swarthy Ethiope.
I will forget that Julia is alive,
Remembering that my love to her is dead.
And Valentine I’ll hold29 an enemy,
30 Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend.
I cannot now prove constant31 to myself,
Without some treachery used to Valentine.
This night he meaneth with a corded33 ladder
To climb celestial Silvia’s chamber-window,
35 Myself in counsel35 his competitor.
Now presently I’ll give her father notice
Of their disguising37 and pretended flight,
Who, all enraged, will banish Valentine,
For Turio he intends shall wed his daughter.
40 But Valentine being gone, I’ll quickly cross,40
By some sly trick, blunt41 Turio’s dull proceeding.
Love, lend42 me wings to make my purpose swift,
As thou hast lent me wit to plot this drift.43
Exit
Enter Julia and Lucetta
And ev’n in kind love, I do conjure2 thee,
Who art the table3 wherein all my thoughts
Are visibly charactered4 and engraved,
5 To lesson5 me and tell me some good mean
How with my honour I may undertake
A journey to my loving Proteus.
10 To measure10 kingdoms with his feeble steps:
Much less shall she that hath Love’s wings to fly,
And when the flight is made to one so dear,
Of such divine perfection as Sir Proteus.
Pity the dearth16 that I have pined in,
By longing for that food so long a time.
Didst thou but know the inly18 touch of love,
Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow
20 As seek to quench the fire of love with words.
But qualify22 the fire’s extreme rage,
Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason.
25 The current25 that with gentle murmur glides,
Thou know’st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage:
But when his fair course is not hinderèd,
He makes28 sweet music with th’enamelled stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge29
30 He overtaketh in his pilgrimage,
And so by many winding nooks he strays
With willing sport32 to the wild ocean.
Then let me go, and hinder not my course:
I’ll be as patient as a gentle stream,
35 And make a pastime of each weary step,
Till the last step have brought me to my love,
And there I’ll rest, as after much turmoil
A blessèd soul doth in Elysium.38
The loose encounters of lascivious men:
Gentle Lucetta, fit me with such weeds42
As may beseem43 some well-reputed page.
With twenty odd-conceited46 true-love knots.
To be fantastic47 may become a youth
Of greater time48 than I shall show to be.
What compass51 will you wear your farthingale?’
Why, ev’n what fashion thou best likes, Lucetta.
Unless you have a codpiece to stick pins on.56
What thou think’st meet and is most mannerly.58
But tell me, wench, how will the world repute me
60 For undertaking so unstaid60 a journey?
I fear me it will make me scandalized.61
65 If Proteus like your journey when you come,
No matter who’s displeased when you are gone:
I fear me he will scarce be pleased withal.67
A thousand oaths, an ocean of his tears,
70 And instances70 of infinite of love
Warrant71 me welcome to my Proteus.
But truer stars did govern Proteus’ birth:
75 His words are bonds,75 his oaths are oracles,
His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate,76
His tears pure messengers sent from his heart,
His heart, as far from fraud as heaven from earth.
To bear a hard81 opinion of his truth:
Only deserve my love by loving him,
And presently go with me to my chamber
To take a note of what I stand in need of,
85 To furnish85 me upon my longing journey.
All that is mine I leave at thy dispose,86
My goods, my lands, my reputation:
Only, in lieu thereof,88 dispatch me hence.
Come, answer not, but to it presently.
90 I am impatient of my tarriance.90
Exeunt
Enter Duke, Turio [and] Proteus
We have some secrets to confer about.
[Exit Turio]
Now, tell me, Proteus, what’s your will with me?
5 The law of friendship bids me to conceal,
But when I call to mind your gracious favours
Done to me — undeserving as I am —
My duty pricks8 me on to utter that
Which else no worldly good should draw from me.
10 Know, worthy prince, Sir Valentine my friend
This night intends to steal away your daughter:
Myself am one made privy to12 the plot.
I know you have determined to bestow her
On Turio, whom your gentle daughter hates,
15 And should she thus be stol’n away from you,
It would be much vexation16 to your age.
Thus, for my duty’s sake, I rather chose
To cross my friend in his intended drift,
Than, by concealing it, heap on your head
20 A pack of sorrows which would press you down,
Being unprevented, to your timeless21 grave.
Which to requite,23 command me while I live.
This love of theirs myself have often seen,
25 Haply when they have judged me fast asleep,
And oftentimes have purposed26 to forbid
Sir Valentine her company and my court.
But fearing lest my jealous aim28 might err
And so unworthily disgrace the man —
30 A rashness that I ever yet have shunned —
I gave him gentle31 looks, thereby to find
That which thyself hast now disclosed to me.
And that thou mayst perceive my fear of this,
Knowing that tender youth is soon suggested,34
35 I nightly lodge her in an upper tower,
The key whereof myself have ever kept:
And thence she cannot be conveyed away.
How he her chamber-window will ascend,
40 And with a corded ladder fetch her down:
For which, the youthful lover now is gone,
And this way comes he with it presently,
Where, if it please you, you may intercept him.
But, good my lord, do it so cunningly
45 That my discovery45 be not aimed at:
For love of you, not hate unto my friend,
Hath made me publisher47 of this pretence.
That I had any light49 from thee of this.
[Exit Proteus]
[Enter Valentine]
That stays to bear my letters to my friends,
And I am going to deliver them.
My health and happy being at your court.
I am to break59 with thee of some affairs
60 That touch me near,60 wherein thou must be secret.
’Tis not unknown to thee that I have sought
To match my friend Sir Turio to my daughter.
Were rich and honourable: besides, the gentleman
65 Is full of virtue, bounty,65 worth and qualities
Beseeming66 such a wife as your fair daughter.
Cannot your grace win her to fancy him?
Proud, disobedient, stubborn, lacking duty,
70 Neither regarding70 that she is my child
Nor fearing me as71 if I were her father.
And, may I say to thee, this pride of hers,
Upon advice,73 hath drawn my love from her,
And, where I thought the remnant74 of mine age
75 Should have been cherished by her child-like duty,
I now am full resolved to take a wife
And turn her out to who77 will take her in:
Then let her beauty be her wedding-dower,78
For me and my possessions she esteems79 not.
Whom I affect:82 but she is nice and coy,
And nought83 esteems my agèd eloquence.
Now therefore would I have thee to my tutor —
85 For long agone85 I have forgot to court,
Besides, the fashion of the time is changed —
How and which way I may bestow myself87
To be regarded88 in her sun-bright eye.
90 Dumb jewels often in their silent kind90
More than quick91 words do move a woman’s mind.
Send her another: never give her o’er,94
95 For scorn at first makes after-love the more.95
If she do frown, ’tis not in hate of you,
But rather to beget97 more love in you.
If she do chide, ’tis not to have you gone,
Forwhy,99 the fools are mad, if left alone.
100 Take no repulse, whatever she doth say,
For101 ‘get you gone’, she doth not mean ‘away!’
Flatter and praise, commend,102 extol their graces:
Though103 ne’er so black, say they have angels’ faces.
That man that hath a tongue, I say is no man
105 If with his tongue105 he cannot win a woman.
Unto a youthful gentleman of worth,
And kept severely from resort of men,
That109 no man hath access by day to her.
That no man hath recourse to her by night.
115 And built so shelving115 that one cannot climb it
Without apparent hazard of his life.
To cast up, with a pair of anchoring hooks,118
Would serve to scale another Hero’s tower,119
120 So120 bold Leander would adventure it.
Advise me where I may have such a ladder.
125 That longs for everything that he can come by.
How shall I best convey the ladder thither?
130 Under a cloak that is of any length.130
I’ll get me one of such another134 length.
I pray thee, let me feel thy cloak upon me. Takes Valentine’s cloak and discovers a letter
What letter is this same?138 What’s here? ‘To Silvia’! and a rope ladder concealed under it
And here an engine139 fit for my proceeding.
140 I’ll be so bold to break the seal for once.
‘My thoughts do harbour141 with my Silvia nightly, Reads
And slaves they are to me that send them flying.
O, could their master come and go as lightly,143
Himself144 would lodge where, senseless, they are lying.
145 My herald145 thoughts in thy pure bosom rest them,
While I, their king, that thither them importune,146
Do curse the grace147 that with such grace hath blessed them,
Because myself do want148 my servants’ fortune.
I curse myself, for they are sent by me,
150 That they should harbour where their lord should be.’
What’s here?
‘Silvia, this night I will enfranchise152 thee.’
’Tis so: and here’s the ladder for the purpose.
Why, Phaeton154 — for thou art Merops’ son —
155 Wilt thou aspire to guide the heavenly car,
And with thy daring folly burn the world?
Wilt thou reach stars because they shine on thee?
Go, base intruder, overweening slave,158
Bestow thy fawning smiles on equal mates,159
160 And160 think my patience, more than thy desert,
Is privilege for thy departure hence.
Thank me for this more than for all the favours
Which, all too much, I have bestowed on thee.
But if thou linger in my territories
165 Longer than swiftest expedition165
Will give thee time to leave our royal court,
By heaven, my wrath shall far exceed the love
I ever bore my daughter or thyself.
Be gone! I will not hear thy vain excuse,
170 But as thou lov’st thy life, make speed from hence.
[Exit]
To die is to be banished from myself,
And Silvia is myself: banished from her
Is self from self. A deadly banishment:
175 What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?
What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?176
Unless it be to think that she is by
And feed upon the shadow178 of perfection.
Except179 I be by Silvia in the night,
180 There is no music in the nightingale.
Unless I look on Silvia in the day,
There is no day for me to look upon.
She is my essence, and I leave to be183
If I be not by her fair influence184
185 Fostered,185 illumined, cherished, kept alive.
I186 fly not death, to fly his deadly doom:
Tarry I here, I but attend on187 death,
But fly I hence, I fly away from life.
[Enter Proteus and Lance]
So much of bad already hath possessed them.
For they are harsh, untuneable and bad.
Hath she forsworn213 me?
What is your news?
From hence, from Silvia, and from me thy friend.
And now excess of it will make me surfeit.221
Doth Silvia know that I am banishèd?
Which unreversed stands in effectual force —
225 A sea of melting pearl, which some call tears:
Those at her father’s churlish feet she tendered,226
With them, upon her knees, her humble self,
Wringing her hands, whose whiteness so became228 them
As if but now they waxèd229 pale for woe.
230 But neither bended knees, pure hands held up,
Sad sighs, deep groans, nor silver-shedding tears
Could penetrate her uncompassionate sire;232
But Valentine, if he be ta’en, must die.
Besides, her intercession234 chafed him so,
235 When she for thy repeal235 was suppliant,
That to close236 prison he commanded her,
With many bitter threats of biding237 there.
Have some malignant239 power upon my life:
240 If so, I pray thee breathe it in mine ear,
As241 ending anthem of my endless dolour.
And study243 help for that which thou Iament’st:
Time is the nurse and breeder of all good.
245 Here if thou stay, thou canst not see thy love:
Besides, thy staying will abridge246 thy life.
Hope is a lover’s staff: walk hence with that
And manage248 it against despairing thoughts.
Thy letters may be here, though thou art hence,
250 Which, being writ to me, shall be delivered
Even in the milk-white bosom of thy love.251
The time now serves not to expostulate:252
Come, I’ll convey thee through the city-gate,
And ere I part with thee, confer at large254
255 Of all that may concern thy love-affairs.
As thou lov’st Silvia, though256 not for thyself,
Regard257 thy danger, and along with me.
Bid him make haste and meet me at the North-gate.
[Exeunt Valentine and Proteus]
[Enter Speed]
thou canst not read.
[Exit]
Exit
Enter Duke [and] Turio
Now Valentine is banished from her sight.
Forsworn my company and railed4 at me,
5 That5 I am desperate of obtaining her.
Trenchèd7 in ice, which with an hour’s heat
Dissolves to water and doth lose his form.
A little time will melt her frozen thoughts
10 And worthless Valentine shall be forgot.
[Enter Proteus]
How now, Sir Proteus, is your countryman,
According to our proclamation, gone?
Proteus, the good conceit17 I hold of thee —
For thou hast shown some sign of good desert18 —
Makes me the better19 to confer with thee.
Let me not live to look upon your grace.
The match between Sir Turio and my daughter?
How she opposes her against my will?
What might we do to make the girl forget
30 The love of Valentine, and love Sir Turio?
With falsehood, cowardice and poor descent:32
Three things that women highly hold in hate.
Therefore it must with circumstance36 be spoken
By one whom she esteemeth as his friend.
40 ’Tis an ill office for a gentleman,
Especially against his very41 friend.
Your slander never can endamage him;
Therefore the office is indifferent,
45 Being entreated to it by your friend.45
By aught47 that I can speak in his dispraise,
She shall not long continue love to him.
But say this weed49 her love from Valentine,
50 It follows not that she will love Sir Turio.
Lest it should ravel52 and be good to none,
You must provide53 to bottom it on me,
Which must be done by praising me as much
55 As you in worth dispraise Sir Valentine.
Because we know, on Valentine’s report,
You are already Love’s firm votary,
And cannot soon revolt and change your mind.
60 Upon this warrant60 shall you have access
Where you with Silvia may confer at large —
For she is lumpish,62 heavy, melancholy,
And, for your friend’s sake, will be glad of you —
Where you may temper64 her by your persuasion
65 To hate young Valentine and love my friend.
But you, Sir Turio, are not sharp67 enough:
You must lay lime68 to tangle her desires
By wailful sonnets,69 whose composèd rhymes
70 Should be full-fraught70 with serviceable vows.
You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart.
Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears
75 Moist it again, and frame75 some feeling line
That may discover76 such integrity:
For Orpheus’77 lute was strung with poets’ sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame and huge leviathans79
80 Forsake unsounded deeps80 to dance on sands.
After your dire-lamenting81 elegies,
Visit by night your lady’s chamber-window
With some sweet consort;83 to their instruments
Tune84 a deploring dump. The night’s dead silence
85 Will well become such sweet-complaining grievance.
This, or else nothing, will inherit86 her.
Therefore, sweet Proteus, my direction-giver,
90 Let us into the city presently
To sort91 some gentlemen well skilled in music.
I have a sonnet that will serve the turn
To give93 the onset to thy good advice.
And afterward determine our proceedings.
Exeunt
Enter certain Outlaws
[Enter Valentine and Speed]
If not, we’ll make you sit and rifle4 you.
That all the travellers do fear so much.
A man I am, crossed with12 adversity:
My riches are these poor habiliments,13
Of which, if you should here disfurnish14 me,
15 You take the sum and substance15 that I have.
If crookèd22 fortune had not thwarted me.
I killed a man, whose death I much repent,
But yet I slew him manfully, in fight,
Without false vantage29 or base treachery.
But were you banished for so small a fault?
35 Or else I often had been miserable.
This fellow were37 a king for our wild faction!
Such as the fury of ungoverned44 youth
45 Thrust from the company of awful45 men.
Myself was from Verona banishèd
For practising47 to steal away a lady,
An heir and niece,48 allied unto the duke.
50 Who, in my mood,50 I stabbed unto the heart.
But to the purpose: for we cite52 our faults,
That they may hold excused53 our lawless lives;
And partly, seeing you are beautified
55 With goodly shape,55 and by your own report
A linguist and a man of such perfection
As we do in our quality57 much want—
Therefore, above the rest,59 we parley to you:
60 Are you content to be our general?
To make a virtue of necessity
And live as we do in this wilderness?
Say ‘ay’, and be the captain of us all:
65 We’ll do thee homage65 and be ruled by thee,
Love thee as our commander and our king.
70 Provided that you do no outrages70
On silly71 women or poor passengers.
Come, go with us: we’ll bring thee to our crews,73
And show thee all the treasure we have got,
75 Which, with ourselves, all rest at thy dispose.75
Exeunt
Enter Proteus
And now I must be as unjust to Turio:
Under the colour3 of commending him,
I have access my own love to prefer.
5 But Silvia is too fair, too true, too holy,
To be corrupted with my worthless gifts;
When I protest7 true loyalty to her,
She twits8 me with my falsehood to my friend;
When to her beauty I commend9 my vows,
10 She bids me think how I have been forsworn
In breaking faith with Julia, whom I loved;
And notwithstanding all her sudden quips,12
The least whereof would quell a lover’s hope,
Yet, spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love,
15 The more it grows and fawneth on her still.
[Enter Turio and Musicians]
But here comes Turio; now must we to her window,
And give some evening music to her ear.
20 Will creep20 in service where it cannot go.
[Enter, at a distance, the Host, and Julia in boy’s clothes] They talk apart
[PROTEUS or A MUSICIAN sings the] song
Who is Silvia? What is she?
That all our swains38 commend her?
Holy, fair and wise is she:
40 The heaven such grace40 did lend her,
That she might admirèd41 be.
Is she kind as she is fair?
For beauty lives with kindness:
Love doth to her eyes repair,44
45 To help him of45 his blindness,
And, being helped, inhabits there.
Then to Silvia let us sing,
That Silvia is excelling;
She excels each mortal thing
50 Upon the dull earth dwelling.
To her let us garlands bring.
[Exeunt Turio and Musicians]
[Enter Silvia above, at her window]
That presently you hie89 you home to bed.
90 Thou subtle,90 perjured, false, disloyal man:
Think’st thou I am so shallow, so conceitless,91
To be seduced by thy flattery,
That hast deceived so many with thy vows?
Return, return, and make thy love94 amends.
95 For me — by this pale95 queen of night I swear —
I am so far from granting thy request
That I despise thee for thy wrongful suit,97
And by and by98 intend to chide myself,
Even for this time I spend in talking to thee.
But she is dead.
For I am sure she is not burièd.
105 Survives; to whom, thyself art witness,
I am betrothed. And art thou not ashamed
To wrong him with thy importunacy?107
110 Assure thyself, my love is burièd.
Or at the least, in hers sepulchre113 thine.
Vouchsafe116 me yet your picture for my love,
The picture that is hanging in your chamber.
To that I’ll speak, to that I’ll sigh and weep:
For since the substance of your perfect self
120 Is else120 devoted, I am but a shadow,
And to your shadow121 will I make true love.
And make it but a shadow, as I am.
125 But, since125 your falsehood shall become you well
To worship shadows and adore false shapes,
Send to me in the morning, and I’ll send it.
And so, good rest.
130 That wait for execution in the morn.
[Exeunt Proteus and Silvia, separately]
That e’er I watched, and the most heaviest.136
[Exeunt]
Enter Eglamour
Entreated me to call and know her mind:
There’s some great matter she’d employ me in.
Madam, madam.
[Enter Silvia above, at her window]
One that attends your ladyship’s command.
10 According to your ladyship’s impose,10
I am thus early come to know what service
It is your pleasure to command me in.
Think not I flatter, for I swear I do not —
15 Valiant, wise, remorseful,15 well accomplished.
Thou art not ignorant what dear good will
I bear unto the banished Valentine,
Nor how my father would enforce me marry
Vain19 Turio, whom my very soul abhorred.
20 Thyself hast loved, and I have heard thee say
No grief did ever come so near thy heart
As when thy lady and thy true love died,
Upon whose grave thou vowed’st pure chastity.
Sir Eglamour, I would24 to Valentine,
25 To Mantua, where I hear he makes abode;
And for26 the ways are dangerous to pass,
I do desire thy worthy company,
Upon whose faith and honour I repose.28
Urge not my father’s anger, Eglamour,
30 But think upon my grief, a lady’s grief,
And on the justice of my flying hence,
To keep me from a most unholy match,
Which heaven and fortune still33 rewards with plagues.
I do desire thee, even from a heart
35 As full of sorrows as the sea of sands,
To bear me company and go with me:
If not, to hide what I have said to thee,
That I may venture to depart alone.
40 Which, since I know they virtuously are placed,
I give consent to go along with you,
Recking42 as little what betideth me
As much I wish all good befortune43 you.
When will you go?
Where I intend holy confession.
50 Good morrow, gentle lady.
Exeunt [separately]
Enter Lance [with his dog, Crab]
[Enter Proteus, and Julia disguised as Sebastian]
Or ne’er return again into my sight.
Away, I say: stay’st thou to vex me here?
[Exit Lance with Crab]
A slave, that still an end44 turns me to shame.
45 Sebastian, I have entertained45 thee,
Partly that I have need of such a youth
That can with some discretion do my business,
For ’tis no trusting to yond48 foolish lout,
But chiefly for thy face and thy behaviour,49
50 Which, if my augury50 deceive me not,
Witness51 good bringing up, fortune and truth:
Therefore know thou, for this I entertain thee.
Go presently, and take this ring with thee, Gives a ring
Deliver it to Madam Silvia;
55 She loved me well delivered55 it to me.
As you do love your lady Silvia:
65 She dreams on him that has forgot her love,
You dote on her that cares not for your love.
’Tis pity love should be so contrary:
And thinking on it makes me cry ‘Alas’.
70 This letter. That’s her chamber. Tell my lady Gives a letter
I claim the promise for her heavenly picture.
Your message done, hie home unto my chamber,
Where thou shalt find me, sad and solitary.
[Exit]
75 Alas, poor Proteus, thou hast entertained
A fox to be the shepherd of thy Iambs.
Alas, poor fool,77 why do I pity him
That with his very heart despiseth me?
Because he loves her, he despiseth me:
80 Because I love him, I must pity him.
This ring I gave him when he parted from me,
To bind him to remember my good will.
And now am I, unhappy messenger,
To84 plead for that which I would not obtain,
85 To carry that which I would have refused,
To praise his faith which I would have dispraised.
I am my master’s true-confirmèd87 love,
But cannot be true servant to my master,
Unless I prove false traitor to myself.
90 Yet will I woo for him, but yet so coldly
As, heaven it knows, I would not have him speed.91
[Enter Silvia, attended by her servant Ursula]
Gentlewoman, good day: I pray you, be my mean92
To bring me where to speak with Madam Silvia.
To hear me speak the message I am sent on.
Go give your master this: tell him from me,
One Julia, that his changing thoughts forget,
Would better fit his chamber104 than this shadow.
Pardon me, madam, I have unadvised106
Delivered you a paper that I should not:
This is the letter to your ladyship. Takes back the letter and gives another
I will not look upon your master’s lines:
I know they are stuffed with protestations113
And full of newfound114 oaths, which he will break
115 As easily as I do tear his paper. Tears the letter
For I have heard him say a thousand times
His Julia gave it him at his departure.
120 Though his false finger have profaned120 the ring,
Mine shall not do his Julia so much wrong.
125 Poor gentlewoman, my master wrongs her much.
To think upon her woes, I do protest
That I have wept a hundred several times.
When she did think my master loved her well,
135 She, in my judgement, was as fair as you.
But since she did neglect her looking-glass
And threw her sun-expelling mask137 away,
The air hath starved the roses in her cheeks
And pinched the lily-tincture139 of her face,
140 That now she is become as140 black as I.
When all our pageants of delight143 were played,
Our youth got me to play the woman’s part,
145 And I was trimmed145 in Madam Julia’s gown,
Which served me as fit, by all men’s judgements,
As if the garment had been made for me:
Therefore I know she is about my height.
And at that time I made her weep a-good,149
150 For I did play a lamentable part.
Madam, ’twas Ariadne,151 passioning
For Theseus’ perjury and unjust flight,
Which I so lively153 acted with my tears
That my poor mistress, movèd therewithal,
155 Wept bitterly: and would I might be dead
If I in thought felt not her very sorrow.
Alas, poor lady, desolate and left!
I weep myself to think upon thy words.
160 Here, youth, there is my purse: I give thee this Gives money
For thy sweet mistress’ sake, because thou lov’st her.
Farewell.
[Exeunt Silvia and Ursula]
A virtuous gentlewoman, mild164 and beautiful.
165 I hope my master’s suit165 will be but cold,
Since she respects my mistress’166 love so much.
Alas, how love can trifle with itself!
Here is her picture: let me see, I think
If I had such a tire,169 this face of mine
170 Were full as lovely as is this of hers.
And yet the painter flattered her a little,
Unless I flatter with myself too much.
Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow;
If that be all the difference in his love,
175 I’ll get me such a coloured periwig.175
Her eyes are grey as glass, and so are mine:
Ay, but her forehead’s low, and mine’s as high.177
What should it be that he respects178 in her
But I can make respective179 in myself,
180 If this fond Love were not a blinded god?
Come, shadow,181 come, and take this shadow up,
For ’tis thy rival.— O thou senseless form,182 Looks at the picture
Thou shalt be worshipped, kissed, loved and adored;
And were there sense in his idolatry,
185 My substance should be statue185 in thy stead.
I’ll use186 thee kindly, for thy mistress’ sake
That used me so: or else, by Jove187 I vow,
I should have scratched out your unseeing eyes
To make my master out of love with thee.
Exit
Enter Eglamour
And now it is about the very hour
That Silvia, at Friar Patrick’s cell, should meet me.
She will not fail; for lovers break not hours,4
5 Unless it be to come before their time,5
So much they spur their expedition.6
See where she comes.—
[Enter Silvia, with a mask]
Lady, a happy evening!
Out at the postern9 by the abbey-wall;
10 I fear I am attended10 by some spies.
If we recover12 that, we are sure enough.
Exeunt
Enter Turio, Proteus, [and] Julia [disguised as Sebastian]
And yet she takes exceptions at your person.3
Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies’ eyes.
For I had rather wink than look on them.
[Enter the Duke]
Which of you saw Eglamour of late?
She’s fled unto that peasant Valentine,
And Eglamour is in her company.
40 ’Tis true, for Friar Laurence40 met them both
As he, in penance, wandered through the forest.
Him42 he knew well, and guessed that it was she,
But, being masked,43 he was not sure of it.
Besides, she did intend confession
45 At Patrick’s cell this even,45 and there she was not.
These likelihoods confirm her flight from hence.
Therefore I pray you stand47 not to discourse,
But mount you48 presently and meet with me
Upon the rising of the mountain-foot
50 That leads toward Mantua, whither they are fled:
Dispatch,51 sweet gentlemen, and follow me.
[Exit]
That flies her fortune53 when it follows her.
I’ll after, more to be revenged on Eglamour
55 Than for the love of reckless55 Silvia.
[Exit]
Than hate of Eglamour that goes with her.
[Exit]
Than hate for Silvia, that is gone for love.
Exit
[Enter] Silvia [with the] Outlaws
We must bring you to our captain.
Have learned me how to brook4 this patiently.
But Moyses and Valerius8 follow him.
Go thou with her to the west end of the wood,
10 There is our captain: we’ll follow him that’s fled.
The thicket is beset,11 he cannot scape.
[Exeunt Second and Third Outlaws]
Fear not: he bears an honourable mind,
And will not use a woman lawlessly.
Exeunt
Enter Valentine
This shadowy desert,2 unfrequented woods,
I better brook than flourishing peopled towns:
Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,
5 And to the nightingale’s complaining5 notes
Tune my distresses and record6 my woes.
O thou that dost inhabit in my breast,
Leave not the mansion8 so long tenantless,
Lest, growing ruinous, the building fall
10 And leave no memory of what it was.
Repair11 me with thy presence, Silvia:
Thou gentle nymph,12 cherish thy forlorn swain. Commotion within
What hallowing13 and what stir is this today?
These are my mates, that make their wills their law,
15 Have15 some unhappy passenger in chase.
They love me well: yet I have much to do
To keep them from17 uncivil outrages.
Withdraw thee, Valentine: who’s this comes here? Stands aside
[Enter Proteus, Silvia, and Julia disguised as Sebastian]
20 Though you respect20 not aught your servant doth —
To hazard life and rescue you from him21
That would have forced22 your honour and your love.
Vouchsafe23 me for my meed but one fair look:
A smaller boon24 than this I cannot beg,
25 And less than this I am sure you cannot give.
Love, lend me patience to forbear awhile.
30 But by my coming I have made you happy.
I would have been a breakfast to the beast
35 Rather than have false Proteus rescue me.
O, heaven, be judge how I love Valentine,
Whose life’s as tender37 to me as my soul!
And full38 as much, for more there cannot be,
I do detest false perjured Proteus.
40 Therefore be gone, solicit40 me no more.
Would I not undergo for one calm look:
O, ’tis the curse in love, and still approved,43
When women cannot love where they’re beloved.
Read over Julia’s heart, thy first best love,
For whose dear sake thou didst then rend47 thy faith
Into a thousand oaths; and all those oaths
Descended into perjury, to love me.
50 Thou hast no faith left now, unless thou’dst two,50
And that’s far worse than none: better have none
Than plural faith, which is too much by one.
Thou counterfeit53 to thy true friend!
55 Who respects55 friend?
Can no way change you to a milder form,58
I’ll woo you like a soldier, at arms’ end,59
60 And love you ’gainst the nature of love: force ye. He grabs her
Thou friend of an ill fashion!64
For such is a friend now. Treacherous man,
Thou hast beguiled68 my hopes; nought but mine eye
Could have persuaded me. Now I dare not say
70 I have one friend alive: thou wouldst disprove me.
Who should be trusted, when one’s right hand71
Is perjured to the bosom? Proteus,
I am sorry I must never trust thee more,
But count74 the world a stranger for thy sake.
75 The private75 wound is deepest. O time most accurst,
’Mongst all foes that a friend should be the worst!
Forgive me, Valentine: if hearty sorrow
Be a sufficient ransom for offence,
80 I tender’t80 here. I do as truly suffer
As e’er I did commit.81
And once again I do receive thee83 honest.
Who84 by repentance is not satisfied
85 Is nor85 of heaven nor earth, for these are pleased:
By penitence86 th’Eternal’s wrath’s appeased.
And that my love87 may appear plain and free,
All that was mine in Silvia I give thee.
And entertained104 ’em deeply in her heart.
105 How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root!105
O Proteus, let this habit106 make thee blush.
Be thou ashamed that I have took upon me
Such an immodest raiment,108 if shame live
In a disguise of love!
110 It110 is the lesser blot, modesty finds,
Women to change their shapes than men their minds.
But constant, he were perfect. That one error
Fills him with faults, makes him run through all th’sins:
115 Inconstancy115 falls off ere it begins.
What is in Silvia’s face but I may spy
More fresh in Julia’s, with a constant eye?
Let me be blest to make this happy close:
120 ’Twere pity two such friends should be long foes.
[Enter Outlaws, with Duke and Turio]
125 Your grace is welcome to a man disgraced,125
Banished Valentine.
130 Come not within the measure130 of my wrath.
Do not name Silvia thine: if once again,
Verona shall not hold132 thee. Here she stands,
Take but possession of her with a touch:
I dare thee but to breathe upon my love.
I hold him but a fool that will endanger
His body for a girl that loves him not:
I claim her not, and therefore she is thine.
140 To make such means140 for her as thou hast done,
And leave her on such slight conditions.141
Now, by the honour of my ancestry,
I do applaud thy spirit, Valentine,
And think thee worthy of an empress’ love:
145 Know then, I here forget all former griefs,
Cancel all grudge, repeal146 thee home again,
Plead147 a new state in thy unrivalled merit,
To which I thus subscribe:148 Sir Valentine,
Thou art a gentleman and well derived,
150 Take thou thy Silvia, for thou hast deserved her.
I now beseech you, for your daughter’s sake,
To grant one boon that I shall ask of you.
Are men endued with worthy qualities:
Forgive them what they have committed here
And let them be recalled from their exile:
They are reformèd, civil, full of good,
160 And fit for great employment,160 worthy lord.
Dispose of162 them as thou know’st their deserts.
Come, let us go: we will include all jars163
With triumphs,164 mirth and rare solemnity.
With our discourse to make your grace to smile.
What think you of this page, my lord?
That you will wonder what hath fortunèd.172
Come Proteus, ’tis your penance but to hear
The story of your loves discoverèd.
175 That done, our day of marriage shall be yours,
One feast, one house, one mutual happiness.
Exeunt
F = First Folio text of 1623, the only authority for the play
F2 = a correction introduced in the Second Folio text of 1632
Ed = a correction introduced by a later editor
SD = stage direction
List of parts based on “Names of all the Actors” (reordered) at end of F text
F spells Protheus, Thurio, Panthino and Panthion
All entrances mid-scene = Ed. F groups names of all characters in each scene at beginning of scene
1.1.26 swam spelled swom in F 44 eating love = F. Some eds emend to doting love 66 leave = Ed. F = loue 67, 2.1.25 metamorphosed spelled metamorphis’d in F 77 a sheep = F2. F = sheepe 127 testerned = F2. F = cestern’d
1.2.101 your = F2. F = you
1.3.17 travel spelled trauaile in F which could mean either travel or travail 89 father = F2. F = Fathers
2.4.100 worthy = F2. F = worthy a 193 Is it = F2. F = It is mine eye = Ed. F = mine 211 SD Exit = F2. F = Exeunt
2.5.29 that = F2. F = that that
2.6.0 SD alone F = solus
3.1.56 tenor = Ed. F = tenure 274 master’s ship = Ed. F = Mastership 308 kissed fasting = Ed. F = fasting
3.2.14 grievously = F (corrected). F (uncorrected) = heauily
4.1.35 often had been = F2. F = often had beene often
4.2.109 his = F2. F = her
4.3.42 Recking = Ed. F = Wreaking
4.4.38 hangman = Ed. F = Hangmans 52 thou = F2. F = thee 56 to leave = F2. F = not leaue
5.2.18 your = Ed. F = you
Will Kempe, company clown to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men; he is shown with a man playing the tabor, a common instrument in the musical accompaniment to the plays.