Exit THURIO
Enter PROTEUS
VALENTINE Welcome, dear Proteus! Mistress, I beseech you,
Confirm his welcome with some special favour.
SILVIA His worth is warrant for his welcome hither,
If this be he you oft have wish’d to hear from.
VALENTINE Mistress, it is: sweet lady, entertain him
To be my fellow-servant to your ladyship.
SILVIA Too low a mistress for so high a servant.
PROTEUS Not so, sweet lady: but too mean a servant
To have a look of such a worthy mistress.
VALENTINE Leave off discourse of disability:
Sweet lady, entertain him for your servant.
PROTEUS My duty will I boast of; nothing else.
SILVIA And duty never yet did want his meed:
Servant, you are welcome to a worthless mistress.
PROTEUS I’ll die on him that says so but yourself.
SILVIA That you are welcome?
PROTEUS That you are worthless.
Re-enter THURIO
THURIO Madam, my lord your father would speak with you.
SILVIA I wait upon his pleasure. Come, Sir Thurio,
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.
PROTEUS We’ll both attend upon your ladyship.
Exeunt SILVIA and THURIO
VALENTINE Now, tell me, how do all from whence you came?
PROTEUS Your friends are well and have them much commended.
VALENTINE And how do yours?
PROTEUS I left them all in health.
VALENTINE How does your lady? and how thrives your love?
PROTEUS My tales of love were wont to weary you;
I know you joy not in a love discourse.
VALENTINE Ay, Proteus, but that life is alter’d now:
I have done penance for contemning Love,
Whose high imperious thoughts have punish’d me
With bitter fasts, with penitential groans,
With nightly tears and daily heart-sore sighs;
For in revenge of my contempt of love,
Love hath chased sleep from my enthralled eyes
And made them watchers of mine own heart’s sorrow.
O gentle Proteus, Love’s a mighty lord,
And hath so humbled me, as, I confess,
There is no woe to his correction,
Nor to his service no such joy on earth.
Now no discourse, except it be of love;
Now can I break my fast, dine, sup and sleep,
Upon the very naked name of love.
PROTEUS Enough; I read your fortune in your eye.
Was this the idol that you worship so?
VALENTINE Even she; and is she not a heavenly saint?
PROTEUS No; but she is an earthly paragon.
VALENTINE Call her divine.
PROTEUS I will not flatter her.
VALENTINE O, flatter me; for love delights in praises.
PROTEUS When I was sick, you gave me bitter pills,
And I must minister the like to you.
VALENTINE Then speak the truth by her; if not divine,
Yet let her be a principality,
Sovereign to all the creatures on the earth.
PROTEUS Except my mistress.
VALENTINE Sweet, except not any;
Except thou wilt except against my love.
PROTEUS Have I not reason to prefer mine own?
VALENTINE And I will help thee to prefer her too:
She shall be dignified with this high honour–
To bear my lady’s train, lest the base earth
Should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss
And, of so great a favour growing proud,
Disdain to root the summer-swelling flower
And make rough winter everlastingly.
PROTEUS Why, Valentine, what braggardism is this?
VALENTINE Pardon me, Proteus: all I can is nothing
To her whose worth makes other worthies nothing;
She is alone.
PROTEUS Then let her alone.
VALENTINE Not for the world: why, man, she is mine own,
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,
Because thou see’st me dote upon my love.
My foolish rival, that her father likes
Only for his possessions are so huge,
Is gone with her along, and I must after,
For love, thou know’st, is full of jealousy.
PROTEUS But she loves you?
VALENTINE Ay, and we are betroth’d: nay, more, our,
marriage-hour,
With all the cunning manner of our flight,
Determined of; how I must climb her window,
The ladder made of cords, and all the means
Plotted and ‘greed on for my happiness.
Good Proteus, go with me to my chamber,
In these affairs to aid me with thy counsel.
PROTEUS Go on before; I shall inquire you forth:
I must unto the road, to disembark
Some necessaries that I needs must use,
And then I’ll presently attend you.
VALENTINE Will you make haste?
PROTEUS I will.
Exit VALENTINE
Even as one heat another heat expels,
Or as one nail by strength drives out another,
So the remembrance of my former love
Is by a newer object quite forgotten.
Is it mine, or Valentine’s praise,
Her true perfection, or my false transgression,
That makes me reasonless to reason thus?
She is fair; and so is Julia that I love–
That I did love, for now my love is thaw’d;
Which, like a waxen image, ‘gainst a fire,
Bears no impression of the thing it was.
Methinks my zeal 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,
That thus without advice begin to love her!
‘Tis but her picture I have yet beheld,
And that hath dazzled my reason’s light;
But when I look on her perfections,
There is no reason but I shall be blind.
If I can cheque my erring love, I will;
If not, to compass her I’ll use my skill.
Exit
Scene 5
The same. A street.
Enter SPEED and LAUNCE severally
SPEED Launce! by mine honesty, welcome to Milan!
LAUNCE Forswear not thyself, sweet youth, for I am not
welcome. I reckon this always, that a man is never
undone till he be hanged, nor never welcome to a
place till some certain shot be paid and the hostess
say ‘Welcome!’
SPEED Come on, you madcap, I’ll to the alehouse with you
presently; where, for one shot of five pence, thou
shalt have five thousand welcomes. But, sirrah, how
did thy master part with Madam Julia?
LAUNCE Marry, after they closed in earnest, they parted very
fairly in jest.
SPEED But shall she marry him?
LAUNCE No.
SPEED How then? shall he marry her?
LAUNCE No, neither.
SPEED What, are they broken?
LAUNCE No, they are both as whole as a fish.
SPEED Why, then, how stands the matter with them?
LAUNCE Marry, thus: when it stands well with him, it
stands well with her.
SPEED What an ass art thou! I understand thee not.
LAUNCE What a block art thou, that thou canst not! My
staff understands me.
SPEED What thou sayest?
LAUNCE Ay, and what I do too: look thee, I’ll but lean,
and my staff understands me.
SPEED It stands under thee, indeed.
LAUNCE Why, stand-under and under-stand is all one.
SPEED But tell me true, will’t be a match?
LAUNCE Ask my dog: if he say ay, it will! if he say no,
it will; if he shake his tail and say nothing, it will.
SPEED The conclusion is then that it will.
LAUNCE Thou shalt never get such a secret from me but by a parable.
SPEED ‘Tis well that I get it so. But, Launce, how sayest
thou, that my master is become a notable lover?
LAUNCE I never knew him otherwise.
SPEED Than how?
LAUNCE A notable lubber, as thou reportest him to be.
SPEED Why, thou whoreson ass, thou mistakest me.
LAUNCE Why, fool, I meant not thee; I meant thy master.
SPEED I tell thee, my master is become a hot lover.
LAUNCE Why, I tell thee, I care not though he burn himself
in love. If thou wilt, go with me to the alehouse;
if not, thou art an Hebrew, a Jew, and not worth the
name of a Christian.
SPEED Why?
LAUNCE Because thou hast not so much charity in thee as to
go to the ale with a Christian. Wilt thou go?
SPEED At thy service.
Exeunt
Scene 6
The same. The DUKE’S palace.
Enter PROTEUS
PROTEUS To leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn;
To love fair Silvia, shall I be forsworn;
To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn;
And even that power which gave me first my oath
Provokes me to this threefold perjury;
Love bade me swear and Love bids me forswear.
O sweet-suggesting Love, if thou hast sinned,
Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it!
At first I did adore a twinkling star,
But now I worship a celestial sun.
Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken,
And he wants wit that wants resolved will
To learn his wit to exchange the bad for better.
Fie, fie, unreverend tongue! to call her bad,