Where you may temper her, by your persuasion,
To hate young Valentine, and love my friend.
PRO. 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.

PRO. 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 lines
That may discover such idolatry :

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;1 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 shews thou hast been in love.
THU. 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.

PRO. We'll wait upon your Grace till after supper,
And afterward determine our proceedings.

DUKE. Even now about it; I will pardon you.

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[exeunt.

ACT III
Sc. II

ACT IV

Sc. I

ACT IV

SCENE I. A Forest near Milan.

Enter certain Outlaws.

FIRST OUT. Fellows, stand fast: I see a passenger.

SEC. OUT. If there be ten, shrink not, but down with 'em.

Enter VALENTINE and SPEED.

THIRD OUT. 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.

VAL. My friends

FIRST OUT. That's not so, Sir: we are your enemies.

SEC. OUT. Peace; we'll hear him.

THIRD OUT. Ay, by my beard, will we; for he is a proper

man.

VAL. Then know that I have little wealth to lose:
A man I am cross'd with adversity.

VAL. Some sixteen months; and longer might have

stay'd,

If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.

FIRST OUT. What, were you banish'd thence?

VAL. I was.

SEC. OUT. For what offence?

VAL. 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.

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FIRST OUT. Why, ne'er repent it, if it were done so.
But were you banish'd for so small a fault?
VAL. I was, and held me glad of such a doom.

SEC. OUT. Have you the tongues?

VAL. My youthful travel therein made me happy,

Or else I often had been miserable.

THIRD OUT. By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar,

This fellow were a king for our wild faction.

FIRST OUT. We'll have him. Sirs, a word.

SPEED. Master, be one of them;

It's an honourable kind of thievery.

VAL. Peace, villain!

SEC. OUT. Tell us this: have you any thing to take to?
VAL. Nothing but my fortune.

THIRD OUT. Know, then, that some of us are gentlemen,
Such as the fury of ungovern'd youth

Thrust from the company of awful1 men:
Myself was from Verona banished

For practising to steal away a lady,

An heir, and near-allied unto the Duke.

SEC. OUT. And I from Mantua, for a gentleman,
Who, in my mood, I stabb'd unto the heart.
FIRST OUT. 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

SEC. OUT. 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?

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THIRD OUT. What say'st thou wilt thou be of our

consórt ?2

Say ay, and be the captain of us all.

We'll do thee homage and be rul'd by thee,

Love thee as our commander and our king.

FIRST OUT. But, if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest.

ACT IV

Sc. I

ACT IV SEC. OUT. Thou shalt not live to brag what we have

VAL. I take your offer, and will live with you:

Provided that you do no outrages

On silly1 women or poor passengers.

THIRD OUT. No, we detest such vile, base practices.
Come, go with us, we'll bring thee to our cave,
And shew thee all the treasure we have got;
Which, with ourselves, shall rest at thy dispose.

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[exeunt.

SCENE II. Milan. The Court of the DUKE's Palace.

Enter PROTEUS.

PRO. 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 lov'd:
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 and Musicians.

THU. How now, Sir Proteus! are you crept before us?
PRO. Ay, gentle Thurio; for you know that Love
Will
in service where it cannot go.
THU. Ay, but I hope, Sir, that you love not here.
PRO. Sir, but I do; or else I would be hence.

creep

1Ο

20

THU. I thank you for your own.-Now, gentlemen,
Let's tune, and to it lustily a while.

Enter, at a distance, Host, with JULIA in boy's clothes. HOST. Now, my young guest, methinks you 're allycholly: I pray you, why is it?

JUL. Marry, mine Host, because I cannot be merry.

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Host. Come, we'll have you merry: I'll bring you

where you shall hear music, and see the gentleman that you ask'd for.

JUL. But shall I hear him speak?

HOST. Ay, that you shall.

ACT IV

Sc. II

JUL. That will be music.

[Music plays.

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 help'd, 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.

JUL. You mistake: the musician likes me not.
HOST. Why, my pretty youth?

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