SPEED ‘Item, she is slow in words.’
LANCE O villain, that set this down among her vices! To be slow in words is a woman’s only virtue. I pray thee out with’t, and place it for her chief virtue.
SPEED ‘Item, she is proud.’
LANCE Out with that, too. It was Eve’s legacy, and cannot be ta’en from her.
SPEED ‘Item, she hath no teeth.’
LANCE I care not for that, neither, because I love crusts.
SPEED ‘Item, she is curst.’
LANCE Well, the best is, she hath no teeth to bite.
SPEED ‘Item, she will often praise her liquor.’
LANCE If her liquor be good, she shall. If she will not, I will; for good things should be praised.
SPEED ‘Item, she is too liberal.’
LANCE Of her tongue she cannot, for that’s writ down she is slow of. Of her purse she shall not, for that I’ll keep shut. Now of another thing she may, and that cannot I help. Well, proceed.
SPEED ‘Item, she hath more hair than wit, and more faults than hairs, and more wealth than faults.’
LANCE Stop there. I’ll have her. She was mine and not mine twice or thrice in that last article. Rehearse that once more. 347
SPEED ‘Item, she hath more hair than wit’—
LANCE ‘More hair than wit.’ It may be. I’ll prove it: the cover of the salt hides the salt, and therefore it is more than the salt. The hair that covers the wit is more than the wit, for the greater hides the less. What’s next?
SPEED ‘And more faults than hairs’—
LANCE That’s monstrous. O that that were out!
SPEED ‘And more wealth than faults.’
LANCE Why, that word makes the faults gracious. Well, I’ll have her, and if it be a match—as nothing is impossible—
SPEED What then?
LANCE Why then will I tell thee that thy master stays for thee at the North Gate.
SPEED For me?
LANCE For thee? Ay, who art thou? He hath stayed for a better man than thee.
SPEED And must I go to him?
LANCE Thou must run to him, for thou hast stayed so long that going will scarce serve the turn.
SPEED Why didst not tell me sooner? Pox of your love letters! Exit
LANCE Now will he be swinged for reading my letter. An unmannerly slave, that will thrust himself into secrets. I’ll after, to rejoice in the boy’s correction.
Exit
3.2 Enter the Duke and Thurio
DUKE
Sir Thurio, fear not but that she will love you
Now Valentine is banished from her sight.
THURIO
Since his exile she hath despised me most,
Forsworn my company, and railed at me,
That I am desperate of obtaining her.
DUKE
This weak impress of love is as a figure
Trenched in ice, which with an hour’s heat
Dissolves to water and doth lose his form.
A little time will melt her frozen thoughts,
And worthless Valentine shall be forgot.
Enter Proteus
How now, Sir Proteus, is your countryman,
According to our proclamation, gone?
PROTEUS Gone, my good lord.
DUKE
My daughter takes his going grievously?
PROTEUS
A little time, my lord, will kill that grief.
DUKE
So I believe, but Thurio thinks not so.
Proteus, the good conceit I hold of thee—
For thou hast shown some sign of good desert—
Makes me the better to confer with thee.
PROTEUS
Longer than I prove loyal to your grace
Let me not live to look upon your grace.
DUKE
Thou know’st how willingly I would effect
The match between Sir Thurio and my daughter?
PROTEUS I do, my lord.
DUKE
And also, I think, thou art not ignorant
How she opposes her against my will?
PROTEUS
She did, my lord, when Valentine was here.
DUKE
Ay, and perversely she persevers so.
What might we do to make the girl forget
The love of Valentine, and love Sir Thurio?
PROTEUS
The best way is to slander Valentine
With falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent,
Three things that women highly hold in hate.
DUKE
Ay, but she’ll think that it is spoke in hate.
PROTEUS
Ay, if his enemy deliver it.
Therefore it must with circumstance be spoken
By one whom she esteemeth as his friend.
DUKE
Then you must undertake to slander him.
PROTEUS
And that, my lord, I shall be loath to do.
’Tis an ill office for a gentleman,
Especially against his very friend.
DUKE
Where your good word cannot advantage him
Your slander never can endamage him.
Therefore the office is indifferent,
Being entreated to it by your friend.
PROTEUS
By aught that I can speak in his dispraise
She shall not long continue love to him.
But say this weed her love from Valentine,
It follows not that she will love Sir Thurio.
THURIO
Therefore, as you unwind her love from him,
Lest it should ravel and be good to none
You must provide to bottom it on me;
Which must be done by praising me as much
As you in worth dispraise Sir Valentine.
DUKE
And Proteus, we dare trust you in this kind
Because we know, on Valentine’s report,
You are already love’s firm votary,
And cannot soon revolt, and change your mind.
Upon this warrant shall you have access
Where you with Silvia may confer at large.
For she is lumpish, heavy, melancholy,
And for your friend’s sake will be glad of you;
Where you may temper her, by your persuasion,
To hate young Valentine and love my friend.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
To sort some gentlemen well sk
illed 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,
And afterward determine our proceedings.
DUKE
Even now about it. I will pardon you.
Exeunt Thurio and Proteus at one door, and the Duke at another
4.1 Enter the Outlaws
FIRST OUTLAW
Fellows, stand fast. I see a passenger.
SECOND OUTLAW
If there be ten, shrink not, but down with ‘em.
Enter Valentine and Speed
THIRD OUTLAW
Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye.
If not, we’ll make you sit, and rifle you.
SPEED (to Valentine)
Sir, we are undone. These are the villains
That all the travellers do fear so much.
VALENTINE (to the Outlaws) My friends.
FIRST OUTLAW
That’s not so, sir. We are your enemies.
SECOND OUTLAW Peace. We’ll hear him.
THIRD OUTLAW Ay, by my beard will we. For he is a proper man.
VALENTINE
Then know that I have little wealth to lose.
A man I am, crossed 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.
SECOND OUTLAW Whither travel you?
VALENTINE To Verona.
FIRST OUTLAW Whence came you?
VALENTINE From Milan. 20
THIRD OUTLAW Have you long sojourned there?
VALENTINE
Some sixteen months, and longer might have stayed
If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.
FIRST OUTLAW
What, were you banished thence?
VALENTINE I was.
SECOND OUTLAW For what offence?
VALENTINE
For that which now torments me to rehearse.
I killed a man, whose death I much repent,
But yet I slew him manfully, in fight,
Without false vantage or base treachery.
FIRST OUTLAW
Why, ne’er repent it, if it were done so.
But were you banished for so small a fault?
VALENTINE
I was, and held me glad of such a doom.
SECOND OUTLAW Have you the tongues?
VALENTINE
My youthful travel therein made me happy,
Or else I had been often miserable.
THIRD OUTLAW
By the bare scalp of Robin Hood’s fat friar,
This fellow were a king for our wild faction.
FIRST OUTLAW
We’ll have him. Sirs, a word.
The Outlaws confer
SPEED (to Valentine) Master, be one of them.
It’s an honourable kind of thievery.
VALENTINE Peace, villain.
SECOND OUTLAW
Tell us this: have you anything to take to?
VALENTINE Nothing but my fortune.
THIRD OUTLAW
Know, then, that some of us are gentlemen
Such as the fury of ungoverned youth
Thrust from the company of aweful men.
Myself was from Verona banished
For practising to steal away a lady,
An heir, and near allied unto the Duke.
SECOND OUTLAW
And I from Mantua, for a gentleman
Who, in my mood, I stabbed unto the heart.
FIRST OUTLAW
And I, for suchlike petty crimes as these.
But to the purpose, for we cite our faults
That they may hold excused our lawless lives.
And partly seeing you are beautified
With goodly shape, and by your own report
A linguist, and a man of such perfection
As we do in our quality much want—
SECOND OUTLAW
Indeed because you are a banished man,
Therefore above the rest we parley to you.
Are you content to be our general,
To make a virtue of necessity
And live as we do in this wilderness?
THIRD OUTLAW
What sayst thou? Wilt thou be of our consort?
Say ‘Ay’, and be the captain of us all.
We’ll do thee homage, and be ruled by thee,
Love thee as our commander and our king.
FIRST OUTLAW
But if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest.
SECOND OUTLAW
Thou shalt not live to brag what we have offered.
VALENTINE
I take your offer, and will live with you,
Provided that you do no outrages
On silly women or poor passengers.
THIRD 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,
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
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
In breaking faith with Julia, whom I loved.
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.
But here comes Thurio. Now must we to her window,
And give some evening music to her ear.
Enter Thurio with Musicians
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.
THURIO
Ay, but I hope, sir, that you love not here.
PROTEUS
Sir, but 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.
Enter the Host, and Julia, dressed as a page-boy.
They talk apart
HOST Now, my young guest, methinks you’re allycholly. 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 asked for.
JULIA But shall I hear him speak?
HOST Ay, that you shall.
JULIA That will be music.
HOST Hark, hark.
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.
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
To help him of his blindness,
And, being helped, inhabits there.
Then to Silvia let us sing
That Silvia is excelling.
She excels each mortal thing
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.
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.
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.
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 often resort unto this gentlewoman?
HOST I tell you what Lance his man told me, he loved her out of all nick.
JULIA Where is Lance?
HOST Gone to seek his dog, which tomorrow, by his master’s command, he must carry for a present to his lady.
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.
THURIO
Where meet we?
PROTEUS At Saint Gregory’s well.
THURIO Farewell.
Exeunt Thurio and the 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
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