The Two Gentlemen of Verona

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

You have prevail’d, my lord: if I can do it
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 concert; 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 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,
And afterward determine our proceedings.

Duke Even now about it! I will pardon you. Exeunt.

Act IV

Scene I

The frontiers of Mantua. A forest.

	Enter certain 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	Sir, we are undone; these are the villains That all the travellers do fear so much.
Valentine	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’s a proper man.
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.
Second Outlaw	Whither travel you?
Valentine	To Verona.
First Outlaw	Whence came you?
Valentine	From Milan.
Third Outlaw	Have you long sojourned there?
Valentine	Some sixteen months, and longer might have stay’d, If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.
First Outlaw	What, were you banish’d thence?
Valentine	I was.
Second Outlaw	For what offence?
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.
First Outlaw	Why, ne’er repent it, if it were done so. But were you banish’d 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 often had been 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.
Speed	Master, be one of them; it’s an honourable kind of thievery.
Valentine	Peace, villain!
Second Outlaw	Tell us this: have you any thing to take to?
Valentine	Nothing but my fortune.
Third Outlaw	Know, then, that some of us are gentlemen, Such as the fury of ungovern’d youth 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.
Second Outlaw	And I from Mantua, for a gentleman, Who, in my mood, I stabb’d unto the heart.
First 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 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 banish’d 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