SCENE.-In Verona; in Milan; and in a forest near Milan.

ACT I.

SCENE I. - Verona.

An open Place in the City.

Enter VALENTINE and PROTEUS.

Val. Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus:
Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.1
Were't not affection chains thy tender days
To the sweet glances of thy honour'd love,
I rather would entreat thy company

To see the wonders of the world abroad,

Than, living dully sluggardized at home,

1 Milton has a similar play upon words in his Comus: "It is for homely

features to keep home; they had their name thence."

161

Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.2

But, since thou lovest, love still, and thrive therein,
Even as I would, when I to love begin.

Pro. Wilt thou be gone? Sweet Valentine, adieu!
Think on thy Proteus, when thou haply see'st

Some rare note-worthy object in thy travel:
Wish me partaker in thy happiness,

When thou dost meet good hap; and in thy danger,
If ever danger do environ thee,

Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers,

For I will be thy beadsman,3 Valentine.

Val. And on a love-book pray

for my

success?

Pro. Upon some book I love I'll pray for thee.
Val. That's on some shallow story of deep love;

How young Leander cross'd the Hellespont.

Pro. That's a deep story of a deeper love;

For he was more than over shoes in love.

Val. 'Tis true; and you are over boots in love,

And yet you never swam the Hellespont.

Pro. Over the boots! nay, give me not the boots.4
Val. No,

I will not, for it boots not.

2 Shapeless in the active sense of unshaping; as idleness does nothing towards shaping the mind and character. So the Poet has helpless repeatedly for unhelping or affording no help.

3 A beadsman is one bound or pledged to pray for another's welfare. Bead, in fact, is Anglo-Saxon for prayer, and so for the small wooden balls which are strung together in what is called a rosary, and one of which is dropped down the string as often as a prayer is said. Hence the name, if not the thing, "a string of beads." Not the only instance of piety turned to account as an ornament or a beautifier.

4 An old proverbial phrase, meaning "Don't make me a laughing-stock." The French have a phrase, Bailler foin en corne; which Cotgrave interprets, "To give one the boots; to sell him a bargain"; or, as we say, "to sell him."

In love, where scorn is bought with groans; coy looks
With heart-sore sighs; one fading moment's mirth
With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights:

If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain;
If lost, why, then a grievous labour won;
However, but a folly bought with wit,
Or else a wit by folly vanquishéd.

Pro. So, by your circumstance, you call me fool.
Val. So, by your circumstance, I fear you'll prove.
Pro. 'Tis love you cavil at: I am not Love.
Val. Love is your master, for he masters you:
And he that is so yokèd by a fool,

Methinks, should not be chronicled for wise.

Pro. Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud The eating canker dwells, so eating love Inhabits in the finest wits of all.

Val. And writers say, as the most forward bud

Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,

Even so by love the young and tender wit

Is turn'd to folly; blasting in the bud,

Losing his verdure even in the prime,
And all the fair effects of future hopes.
But wherefore waste I time to counsel thee,
That art a votary to fond desire?

Once more adieu! my father at the road

Expects my coming, there to see me shipp'd.

Pro. And thither will I bring thee, Valentine.

Val. Sweet Proteus, no; now let us take our leave.

At Milan let me hear from thee by letters

5 However here has the force of at all events or in either case.

6 The Poet sometimes uses circumstance in the sense of circumlocution

or circumstantial inference. In the next line it means conduct. This play abounds in such quirks of thought.

Of thy success in love, and what news else
Betideth here in absence of thy friend;
And I likewise will visit thee with mine.

Pro. All happiness bechance to thee in Milan!
Val. As much to you at home! and so, farewell.
Pro. He after honour hunts, I after love:
He leaves his friends to dignify them more;
I leave myself, my friends, and all, for love. -
Thou, Julia, thou hast metamorphosed me;
Made me neglect my studies, lose my time,
War with good counsel, set the world at nought,
Make wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought.

Enter SPEED.

Speed. Sir Proteus, save you! Saw you my master? Pro. But now he parted hence, t' embark for Milan. Speed. Twenty to one, then, he is shipp'd already, And I have play'd the sheep in losing him.

Pro. Indeed, a sheep doth very often stray,

An if the shepherd be awhile away.

[Exit.

Speed. You conclude that my master is a shepherd, then, and I a sheep?

Pro. I do.

Speed. Why, then my horns are his horns, whether I wake

or sleep.

Pro. A silly answer, and fitting well a sheep.

Speed. This proves me still a sheep.

Pro. True; and thy master a shepherd.

Speed. Nay, that I can deny by a circumstance.
Pro. It shall go hard but I'll prove it by another.8

8 "

7 It appears from this that ship and sheep were pronounced alike. I will try very hard rather than fail to prove it by another." 'It shall go hard but" is an old phrase repeatedly used thus by Shakespeare. So in The Merchant, iii. 1: “The villainy you teach me I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction"; evidently meaning, "I will work

Speed. The shepherd seeks the sheep, and not the sheep the shepherd; but I seek my master, and my master seeks not me therefore I am no sheep.

Pro. The sheep for fodder follow the shepherd, the shepherd for food follows not the sheep; thou for wages followest thy master, thy master for wages follows not thee: therefore thou art a sheep.

Speed. Such another proof will make me cry baa.

Pro. But, dost thou hear? gavest thou my letter to Julia? Speed. Ay, sir: I, a lost mutton, gave your letter to her, a laced mutton; and she, a laced mutton,9 gave me, a lost mutton, nothing for my labour.

Pro. Here's too small a pasture for such store of muttons. Speed. If the ground be overcharged, you were best stick her.

Pro. Nay, in that you are astray; 'twere best pound you. Speed. Nay, sir, less than a pound shall serve me for carrying your letter.

Pro. You mistake; I mean the pound, a pinfold. Speed. From a pound to a pin? fold it over and over, 'Tis threefold too little for carrying a letter to your lover. Pro. But what said she?

Speed. [Nodding.] Ay.

Pro. Nod, Ay ?-why, that's noddy,10

mighty hard rather than fail to surpass my teachers." And in Hamlet, iii. 4: "It shall go hard but I will delve one yard below their mines, and blow them at the Moon."

9 Laced mutton was a cant term for a courtezan. So in Delany's Thomas of Reading: "No meat pleased him so well as mutton, such as was laced in a red petticoat." As courtesans are fond of finery, Dyce thinks that "Speed applies the term to Julia in the much less offensive sense of-a richly-attired piece of woman's flesh."

10 The poor quibble is more apparent in the original where, according to the mode of that time, the affirmative particle ay is printed I. Noddy was a game at cards; applied to a person, the word meant fool; Noddy being the name of what is commonly called the Jack.