The Two Gentlemen of Verona
ACT I 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 sluggardized at home, | ||
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness. | ||
But since thou lovest, love still and thrive therein, | ||
Even as I would when I to love begin. | 10 | |
PROTEUS | Wilt thou be gone? Sweet Valentine, adieu! | |
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. | 20 |
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 | ‘Tis 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? | |
VALENTINE | To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans; | |
Coy looks with heart-sore sighs; one fading moment’s mirth | 30 | |
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 | ‘Tis 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, | 40 | |
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 | |
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. | 50 | |
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. | ||
PROTEUS | And thither will I bring thee, Valentine. | |
VALENTINE | Sweet Proteus, no; now let us take our leave. | |
To Milan let me hear from thee by letters | ||
Of thy success in love, and what news else | ||
Betideth here in absence of thy friend; | ||
And likewise will visit thee with mine. | 60 | |
PROTEUS | All happiness bechance to thee in Milan! | |
VALENTINE | As much to you at home! and so, farewell. | |
[Exit] | ||
PROTEUS | 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; | ||
Made wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought. | ||
[Enter SPEED] | ||
SPEED | Sir Proteus, save you! Saw you my master? | 70 |
PROTEUS | But now he parted hence, to embark for Milan. | |
SPEED | Twenty to one then he is shipp’d already, | |
And I have play’d the sheep in losing him. | ||
PROTEUS | Indeed, a sheep doth very often stray, | |
An if the shepherd be a while away. | ||
SPEED | You conclude that my master is a shepherd, then, | |
and I a sheep? | ||
PROTEUS | I do. | |
SPEED | Why then, my horns are his horns, whether I wake or sleep. | 80 |
PROTEUS | A silly answer and fitting well a sheep. | |
SPEED | This proves me still a sheep. | |
PROTEUS | True; and thy master a shepherd. | |
SPEED | Nay, that I can deny by a circumstance. | |
PROTEUS | It shall go hard but I’ll prove it by another. | |
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. | ||
PROTEUS | The sheep for fodder follow the shepherd; the | |
shepherd for food follows not the sheep: thou for | 90 | |
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.’ | |
PROTEUS | 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, gave me, a | ||
lost mutton, nothing for my labour. | ||
PROTEUS | Here’s too small a pasture for such store of muttons. | |
SPEED | If the ground be overcharged, you were best stick her. | |
PROTEUS | Nay: in that you are astray, ’twere best pound you. | |
SPEED | Nay, sir, less than a pound shall serve me for | |
carrying your letter. | ||
PROTEUS | You mistake; I mean the pound,–a pinfold. | |
SPEED | From a pound to a pin? fold it over and over, | 110 |
‘Tis threefold too little for carrying a letter to | ||
your lover. | ||
PROTEUS | But what said she? | |
SPEED | [First nodding] Ay. | |
PROTEUS | Nod–Ay–why, that’s noddy. | |
SPEED | You mistook, sir; I say, she did nod: and you ask | |
me if she did nod; and I say, ‘Ay.’ | ||
PROTEUS | And that set together is noddy. | |
SPEED | Now you have taken the pains to set it together, | |
take it for your pains. | ||
PROTEUS | No, no; you shall have it for bearing the letter. | 120 |
SPEED | Well, I perceive I must be fain to bear with you. | |
PROTEUS | Why sir, how do you bear with me? | |
SPEED | Marry, sir, the letter, very orderly; having nothing | |
but the word ‘noddy’ for my pains. | ||
PROTEUS | Beshrew me, but you have a quick wit. | |
SPEED | And yet it cannot overtake your slow purse. | |
PROTEUS | Come come, open the matter in brief: what said she? | |
SPEED | Open your purse, that the money and the matter may | |
be both at once delivered. | 131 | |
PROTEUS | Well, sir, here is for your pains. What said she? | |
SPEED | Truly, sir, I think you’ll hardly win her. | |
PROTEUS | Why, couldst thou perceive so much from her? | |
SPEED | Sir, I could perceive nothing at all from her; no, | |
not so much as a ducat for delivering your letter: | ||
and being so hard to me that brought your mind, I | ||
fear she’ll prove as hard to you in telling your | ||
mind. Give her no token but stones; for she’s as | 140 | |
hard as steel. | ||
PROTEUS | What said she? nothing? | |
SPEED | No, not so much as ‘Take this for thy pains.’ To | |
testify your bounty, I thank you, you have testerned | ||
me; in requital whereof, henceforth carry your | ||
letters yourself: and so, sir, I’ll commend you to my master. | ||
PROTEUS | Go, go, be gone, to save your ship from wreck, | |
Which cannot perish having thee aboard, | ||
Being destined to a drier death on shore. | ||
[Exit SPEED] | ||
I must go send some better messenger: | 151 | |
I fear my Julia would not deign my lines, | ||
Receiving them from such a worthless post. | ||
[Exit] |
Next: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 1, Scene 2
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Explanatory notes for Act 1, Scene 1
From The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Ed. Israel Gollancz. New York: University Society.
Dramatis Persons, ‘The names of all the actors’ are given at the end of the play in the Folios; the form ‘Protheus’ is invariably used for ‘Proteus,’ ‘Anthonio’ for ‘Antonio’ and ‘ Panthion’ for ‘Panthino.’
2. Milton has a like play upon words in his Comus: –
“It is for homely features to keep home;
They had their name thence.”
8. Idleness is called shapeless, as preventing the shaping of the character and manners.
18. A beadsman, as the word is here used, is one who is pledged to pray on behalf of another. Thus we are told that Sir Henry Lee, upon retiring from the office of Champion to Queen Elizabeth, said “his hands, instead of wielding the lance, should now be held up in prayer for Her Majesty’s welfare; and he trusted she would allow him to be her beadsman, now that he had ceased to incur knightly perils in her service.”Bead is Anglo-Saxon for prayer, and for the small wooden balls used in numbering prayers, a string of which is called a rosary. Such the origin of the name, if not of the thing, “a string of beads.”
19. On a love-book pray for my success; an allusion to the Roman Catholic custom of placing the beads on the prayer-book, and of counting the beads with the prayers. ‘The love-book’ is in this case to take the place of the prayer-book; some have supposed that Shakespeare is here referring to Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, which, however, though entered on the Stationers’ Registers in 1593, was not printed till 1598, after which date many references occur to it in contemporary literature; Shakespeare directly quotes from it in As You Like It, IV. i. 100.
114. that’s noddy: – 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.
138-141. being so hard, etc.: – The meaning apparently is, “Since she has been so hard to me, the bearer of your mind, I fear she will be equally hard to you whose mind I bore, when you yourself address her.” Malone points out the antithesis between brought and telling.
145. testerned: – “You have given me a testern.” Testern, now called tester, was the name of a coin of sixpence value, so named from having a teste, that is, a head, stamped upon it. It was originally valued at eighteen pence.
150. Being destined, etc.: – “It is worthy of remark,” says Clarke, “that Speed’s flippancy exceeds the licensed pertness of a jester, and degenerates into impertinence when speaking with Proteus; thus subtly conveying the dramatist’s intention in the character itself. Had Proteus not been the mean, unworthy man he is, as gentleman and lover, Speed had not dared to twit him so broadly with his reluctant recompense, or to speak in such free terms of the lady Proteus addresses.”
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How to cite the explanatory notes:
Shakespeare, William. The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Ed. Israel Gollancz. New York: University Society, 1901.