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.