TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

SCENE I. Verona. An Open Place

Enter VALENTINE and PROTEUS.

Valentine. Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus;
Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.
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 sluggardiz'd at home,

Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.

But since thou lov'st, love still and thrive therein,

Even as I would when I to love begin.

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Proteus. Wilt thou be gone? Sweet Valentine, adieu !

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Think on thy Proteus, when thou haply seest
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, Valentine.

Valentine. And on a love-book pray for my success?

Proteus. Upon some book I love I 'll pray for thee. Valentine. That's on some shallow story of deep love,— How young Leander cross'd the Hellespont.

Proteus. That's a deep story of a deeper love,

For he was more than over shoes in love.

Valentine. 'T is true; for you are over boots in love,
And yet you never swum the Hellespont.

Proteus. Over the boots? nay, give me not the boots.
Valentine. No, I will not, for it boots thee not.

Proteus.

What?

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Valentine. To be 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 vanquished.

Proteus. So, by your circumstance, you call me fool.
Valentine. So, by your circumstance, I fear you'll prove.
Proteus. 'T is love you cavil at; I am not Love.

Valentine. Love is your master, for he masters you;

And he that is so yoked by a fool,

Methinks, should not be chronicled for wise.

Proteus. Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud

The eating canker dwells, so eating love

Inhabits in the finest wits of all.

Valentine. And writers say, as the most forward bud

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