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PROTEUS As much as I can do, I will effect.
But you, Sir Thurio, are not sharp enough:
You must lay lime, to tangle her desires
By wailful sonnets, whose composed rhymes
Should be full-fraught with serviceable vows.
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DUKE Ay, much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.
PROTEUS Say that upon the altar of her beauty
You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart.
Write till your ink be dry; and with your tears
Moist it again; and frame some feeling line
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That may discover such integrity.
For Orpheus’ lute was strung with poets’ sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps, to dance on sands.
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After your dire-lamenting elegies,
Visit by night your lady’s chamber-window
With some sweet consort; to their instruments
Tune a deploring dump: the night’s dead silence
Will well become such sweet complaining grievance.
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This, or else nothing, will inherit her.
DUKE This discipline shows thou hast been in love.
THURIO And thy advice, this night, I’ll put in practice:
Therefore, sweet Proteus, my direction-giver,
Let us into the city presently
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To sort some gentlemen, well skill’d in music.
I have a sonnet that will serve the turn
To give the onset to thy good advice.
DUKE About it, gentlemen.
PROTEUS We’ll wait upon your grace till after supper,
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And afterward determine our proceedings.
DUKE Even now about it. I will pardon you. Exeunt.
4.1 Enter certain Outlaws.
1 OUTLAW Fellows, stand fast: I see a passenger.
2 OUTLAW
If there be ten, shrink not, but down with ’em.
Enter VALENTINE and SPEED.
3 OUTLAW
Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye.
If not, we’ll make you sit, and rifle you.
SPEED Sir, we are undone; these are the villains
5
That all the travellers do fear so much.
VALENTINE My friends –
1 OUTLAW That’s not so, sir: we are your enemies.
2OUTLAW Peace; we’ll hear him.
3 OUTLAW
Ay, by my beard will we; for he is a proper man.
10
VALENTINE Then know that I have little wealth to lose;
A man I am, cross’d with adversity:
My riches are these poor habiliments,
Of which if you should here disfurnish me,
You take the sum and substance that I have.
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2 OUTLAW Whither travel you?
VALENTINE To Verona.
1 OUTLAW Whence came you?
VALENTINE From Milan.
3 OUTLAW Have you long sojourned there?
20
VALENTINE
Some sixteen months, and longer might have stay’d,
If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.
1 OUTLAW What, were you banished thence?
VALENTINE I was.
2 OUTLAW For what offence?
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VALENTINE
For that which now torments me to rehearse:
I kill’d a man, whose death I much repent,
But yet I slew him manfully, in fight,
Without false vantage, or base treachery.
1 OUTLAW Why, ne’er repent it, if it were done so;
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But were you banish’d for so small a fault?
VALENTINE I was, and held me glad of such a doom.
2 OUTLAW Have you the tongues?
VALENTINE
My youthful travel therein made me happy,
Or else I often had been miserable.
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3 OUTLAW By the bare scalp of Robin Hood’s fat friar,
This fellow were a king for our wild faction.
1 OUTLAW We’ll have him. Sirs, a word.
SPEED Master, be one of them: it’s an honourable kind
of thievery.
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VALENTINE Peace, villain.
2 OUTLAW Tell us this: have you anything to take to?
VALENTINE Nothing but my fortune.
3 OUTLAW Know, then, that some of us are gentlemen,
Such as the fury of ungovern’d youth
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Thrust from the company of awful men.
Myself was from Verona banished,
For practising to steal away a lady,
An heir, and near allied unto the Duke.
2 OUTLAW And I from Mantua, for a gentleman,
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Who, in my mood, I stabb’d unto the heart.
1 OUTLAW And I, for such like petty crimes as these.
But to the purpose: for we cite our faults,
That they may hold excus’d our lawless lives;
And partly seeing you are beautified
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With goodly shape, and by your own report
A linguist, and a man of such perfection
As we do in our quality much want –
2 OUTLAW Indeed because you are a banish’d man,
Therefore, above the rest, we parley to you:
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Are you content to be our general?
To make a virtue of necessity,
And live as we do in this wilderness?
3 OUTLAW
What say’st thou? Wilt thou be of our consort?
Say ‘ay’, and be the captain of us all:
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We’ll do thee homage, and be rul’d by thee,
Love thee, as our commander, and our king.
1 OUTLAW But if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest.
2 OUTLAW
Thou shalt not live to brag what we have offer’d.
VALENTINE I take your offer, and will live with you,
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Provided that you do no outrages
On silly women or poor passengers.
3 OUTLAW No, we detest such vile base practices.
Come, go with us, we’ll bring thee to our crews,
And show thee all the treasure we have got;
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Which, with ourselves, all rest at thy dispose. Exeunt.
4.2 Enter PROTEUS.
PROTEUS Already have I been false to Valentine,
And now I must be as unjust to Thurio:
Under the colour of commending him,
I have access my own love to prefer.
But Silvia is too fair, too true, too holy,
5
To be corrupted with my worthless gifts.
When I protest true loyalty to her,
She twits me with my falsehood to my friend;
When to her beauty I commend my vows,
She bids me think how I have been forsworn
10
In breaking faith with Julia, whom I lov’d.
And notwithstanding all her sudden quips,
The least whereof would quell a lover’s hope,
Yet, spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love,
The more it grows, and fawneth on her still.
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Enter THURIO and Musicians.
But here comes Thurio; now must we to her window,
And give some evening music to her ear.
THURIO
How now, Sir Proteus, are you crept before us?
PROTEUS Ay, gentle Thurio, for you know that love
Will creep in service where it cannot go.
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THURIO Ay, but I hope, sir, that you love not here.
PROTEUS Sir, b
ut I do; or else I would be hence.
THURIO Who? Silvia?
PROTEUS Ay, Silvia, for your sake.
THURIO
I thank you for your own. Now, gentlemen,
Let’s tune; and to it lustily awhile.
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Enter Host, and JULIA in boy’s clothes.
HOST Now, my young guest, methinks you’re allycholy.
I pray you, why is it?
JULIA Marry, mine host, because I cannot be merry.
HOST Come, we’ll have you merry: I’ll bring you where
you shall hear music, and see the gentleman that you
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asked for.
JULIA But shall I hear him speak?
HOST Ay, that you shall.
JULIA That will be music. [Music plays.]
HOST Hark, hark!
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JULIA Is he among these?
HOST Ay; but peace, let’s hear ’em.
Song.
Who is Silvia? What is she
That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she,
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The heaven such grace did lend her,
That she might admired be.
Is she kind as she is fair?
For beauty lives with kindness.
Love doth to her eyes repair,
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To help him of his blindness;
And, being help’d, inhabits there.
Then to Silvia let us sing,
That Silvia is excelling;
She excels each mortal thing
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Upon the dull earth dwelling.
To her let us garlands bring.
HOST How now? Are you sadder than you were before?
How do you, man? The music likes you not.
JULIA You mistake: the musician likes me not.
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HOST Why, my pretty youth?
JULIA He plays false, father.
HOST How, out of tune on the strings?
JULIA Not so; but yet so false that he grieves my very
heart-strings.
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HOST You have a quick ear.
JULIA Ay, I would I were deaf: it makes me have a slow
heart.
HOST I perceive you delight not in music.
JULIA Not a whit, when it jars so.
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HOST Hark, what fine change is in the music!
JULIA Ay; that change is the spite.
HOST You would have them always play but one thing?
JULIA I would always have one play but one thing.
But, host, doth this Sir Proteus, that we talk on,
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Often resort unto this gentlewoman?
HOST I tell you what Launce his man told me, he loved
her out of all nick.
JULIA Where is Launce?
HOST Gone to seek his dog, which to-morrow, by his
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master’s command, he must carry for a present to his
lady. [Music ceases.]
JULIA Peace, stand aside, the company parts.
PROTEUS Sir Thurio, fear not you, I will so plead,
That you shall say my cunning drift excels.
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THURIO Where meet we?
PROTEUS At Saint Gregory’s well.
THURIO Farewell.
Exeunt Thurio and Musicians.
Enter SILVIA, above.
PROTEUS Madam; good even to your ladyship.
SILVIA I thank you for your music, gentlemen.
Who is that that spake?
PROTEUS One, lady, if you knew his pure heart’s truth,
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You would quickly learn to know him by his voice.
SILVIA Sir Proteus, as I take it.
PROTEUS Sir Proteus, gentle lady, and your servant.
SILVIA What’s your will?
PROTEUS That I may compass yours.
SILVIA You have your wish: my will is even this,
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That presently you hie you home to bed.
Thou subtle, perjur’d, false, disloyal man,
Think’st thou I am so shallow, so conceitless,
To be seduced by thy flattery,
That hast deceiv’d so many with thy vows?
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Return, return, and make thy love amends.
For me, by this pale queen of night I swear,
I am so far from granting thy request,
That I despise thee for thy wrongful suit;
And by and by intend to chide myself,
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Even for this time I spend in talking to thee.
PROTEUS I grant, sweet love, that I did love a lady,
But she is dead.
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 542