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:
That presently you hie you home to bed.
Thou subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man!
Think’st thou I am so shallow, so conceitless,
To be seduced by thy flattery,
That hast deceived so many with thy vows?
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
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.
JULIA [Aside]
‘Twere false, if I should speak it;
For I am sure she is not buried.
SILVIA Say that she be; yet Valentine thy friend
Survives; to whom, thyself art witness,
I am betroth’d: and art thou not ashamed
To wrong him with thy importunacy?
PROTEUS I likewise hear that Valentine is dead.
SILVIA And so suppose am I; for in his grave
Assure thyself my love is buried.
PROTEUS Sweet lady, let me rake it from the earth.
SILVIA Go to thy lady’s grave and call hers thence,
Or, at the least, in hers sepulchre thine.
JULIA [Aside]
He heard not that.
PROTEUS Madam, if your heart be so obdurate,
Vouchsafe 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
Is else devoted, I am but a shadow;
And to your shadow will I make true love.
JULIA [Aside]
If ’twere a substance, you would, sure,
deceive it,
And make it but a shadow, as I am.
SILVIA I am very loath to be your idol, sir;
But since 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.
PROTEUS As wretches have o’ernight
That wait for execution in the morn.
Exeunt PROTEUS and SILVIA severally
JULIA Host, will you go?
Host By my halidom, I was fast asleep.
JULIA Pray you, where lies Sir Proteus?
Host Marry, at my house. Trust me, I think ’tis almost
day.
JULIA Not so; but it hath been the longest night
That e’er I watch’d and the most heaviest.
Exeunt
Scene 3
The same.
Enter EGLAMOUR
EGLAMOUR This is the hour that Madam Silvia
Entreated me to call and know her mind:
There’s some great matter she’ld employ me in.
Madam, madam!
Enter SILVIA above
SILVIA Who calls?
EGLAMOUR Your servant and your friend;
One that attends your ladyship’s command.
SILVIA Sir Eglamour, a thousand times good morrow.
EGLAMOUR As many, worthy lady, to yourself:
According to your ladyship’s impose,
I am thus early come to know what service
It is your pleasure to command me in.
SILVIA O Eglamour, thou art a gentleman–
Think not I flatter, for I swear I do not–
Valiant, wise, remorseful, well accomplish’d:
Thou art not ignorant what dear good will
I bear unto the banish’d Valentine,
Nor how my father would enforce me marry
Vain Thurio, whom my very soul abhors.
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 vow’dst pure chastity.
Sir Eglamour, I would to Valentine,
To Mantua, where I hear he makes abode;
And, for the ways are dangerous to pass,
I do desire thy worthy company,
Upon whose faith and honour I repose.
Urge not my father’s anger, Eglamour,
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 still rewards with plagues.
I do desire thee, even from a heart
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.
EGLAMOUR Madam, I pity much your grievances;
Which since I know they virtuously are placed,
I give consent to go along with you,
Recking as little what betideth me
As much I wish all good befortune you.
When will you go?
SILVIA This evening coming.
EGLAMOUR Where shall I meet you?
SILVIA At Friar Patrick’s cell,
Where I intend holy confession.
EGLAMOUR I will not fail your ladyship. Good morrow, gentle lady.
SILVIA Good morrow, kind Sir Eglamour.
Exeunt severally
Scene 4
The same.
Enter LAUNCE, with his his Dog
LAUNCE When a man’s servant shall play the cur with him,
look you, it goes hard: one that I brought up of a
puppy; one that I saved from drowning, when three or
four of his blind brothers and sisters went to it.
I have taught him, even as one would say precisely,
‘thus I would teach a dog.’ I was sent to deliver
him as a present to Mistress Silvia from my master;
and I came no sooner into the dining-chamber but he
steps me to her trencher and steals her capon’s leg:
O, ’tis a foul thing when a cur cannot keep himself
in all companies! I would have, as one should say,
one that takes upon him to be a dog indeed, to be,
as it were, a dog at all things. If I had not had
more wit than he, to take a fault upon me that he did,
I think verily he had been hanged for’t; sure as I
live, he had suffered for’t; you shall judge. He
thrusts me himself into the company of three or four
gentlemanlike dogs under the duke’s table: he had
not been there–bless the mark!–a pissing while, but
all the chamber smelt him. ‘Out with the dog!’ says
one: ‘What cur is that?’ says another: ‘Whip him
out’ says the third: ‘Hang him up’ says the duke.
I, having been acquainted with the smell before,
knew it was Crab, and goes me to the fellow that
whips the dogs: ‘Friend,’ quoth I, ‘you mean to whip
the dog?’ ‘Ay, marry, do I,’ quoth he. ‘You do him
the more wrong,’ quoth I; ”twas I did the thing you
wot of.’ He makes me no more ado, but whips me out
of the chamber. How many masters would do this for
his servant? Nay, I’ll be sworn, I have sat in the
stocks for puddings he hath stolen, otherwise he had
been executed; I have stood on the pillory for geese
he hath killed, otherwise he had suffered for’t.
Thou thinkest not of this now. Nay, I remember the
trick you served me when I took my leave of Madam
Silvia: 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? didst
thou ever see me do such a trick?
Enter PROTEUS and JULIA
PROTEUS Sebastian is thy name? I like thee well
And will employ thee in some service presently.
JULIA In what you please: I’ll do what I can.
PROTEUS I hope thou wilt.
To LAUNCE
How now, you whoreson peasant!
Where have you been these two days loitering?
LAUNCE Marry, sir, I carried Mistress Silvia the dog you bade me.
PROTEUS And what says she to my little jewel?
LAUNCE Marry, she says your dog was a cur, and tells you
currish thanks is good enough for such a present.
PROTEUS But she received my dog?
LAUNCE No, indeed, did she not: here have I brought him
back again.
PROTEUS What, didst thou offer her this from me?
LAUNCE Ay, sir: the other squirrel was stolen from me by
the hangman boys in the market-place: and then I
offered her mine own, who is a dog as big as ten of
yours, and therefore the gift the greater.
PROTEUS Go get thee hence, and find my dog again,
Or ne’er return again into my sight.
Away, I say! stay’st thou to vex me here?
Exit LAUNCE
A slave, that still an end turns me to shame!
Sebastian, I have entertained thee,
Partly that I have need of such a youth
That can with some discretion do my business,
For ’tis no trusting to yond foolish lout,
But chiefly for thy face and thy behavior,
Which, if my augury deceive me not,
Witness good bringing up, fortune and truth:
Therefore know thou, for this I entertain thee.
Go presently and take this ring with thee,
Deliver it to Madam Silvia:
She loved me well deliver’d it to me.
JULIA It seems you loved not her, to leave her token.