When 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 5 to tangle her desires
By wailful sonnets, whose composèd 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 integrity: 6

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; 7 to their instruments
Tune a deploring dump: 8 the night's dead silence
Will well become such sweet-complaining grievance.
This, or else nothing, will inherit her."

Duke. This discipline shows thou hast been in love.

5 Lime, or bird-lime, was originally a sticky substance, spread where birds were apt to light, so as to hold them by the feet; but the word came to be used for any sort of snare.

6 Such sincerity as is shown by impassioned writing. Integrity in its original sense, -the sense of entireness or wholeheartedness.

7 Consort, according to Bullokar and Phillips, meant "a set or company of musicians."

8 Dump is an old term for a mournful elegy.

9 To inherit was sometimes used for to get possession of, without any idea of inheritance. So Milton, in his Comus, has “disinherit Chaos"; meaning simply to dispossess it.

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 10 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.11 [Exeunt.

I Out. Fellows, stand fast; I see a passenger. 2 Out. If there be ten, shrink not, but down with 'em.

Enter VALENTINE and SPEED.

3 Out. Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye : If not, we'll make you sit, and rifle you.

Speed. O, sir, we are undone ! these are the villains That all the travellers do fear so much.

2 Out. Peace! we'll hear him.

3 Out. Ay, by my beard, will we;

For he's a proper1 man.

10 To sort was much used for to choose or select.

11 Will excuse you; release you from attending me.

1 Proper was used for handsome, well-proportioned. Valentine is a man

of fine presence.

Val. Then know that I have little wealth to lose;

A man I am cross'd with adversity:

My riches are these poor habiliments,

Of which, if you should here disfurnish me,

You take the sum and substance that I have. 2 Out. Whither travel you?

Val. To Verona.

1 Out. Whence came you?

Val. From Milan.

3 Out. Have you long sojourn'd there?

Val. Some sixteen months; and longer might have stay'd,

If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.

I Out. What, were you banish'd thence?

Val. I was.

2 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.

I 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.

2 Out. Have you the tongues?

Val. My youthful travel therein made me happy,

Or else I often had been miserable.

3 Out. By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar,2

This fellow were a king for our wild faction!

1 Out. We'll have him : - Sir, a word.

Speed. Master, be one of them;

It is an honourable kind of thievery.

2 Friar Tuck, the chaplain of Robin Hood's merry crew; that ancient specimen of clerical boldness and plumpness and jollity; of whom Drayton

says,

Of Tuck, the merry friar, which many a sermon made
In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws, and his trade.

Val. Peace, villain !

2 Out. Tell us this: have you any thing to take to? Val. Nothing but my fortune.

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

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

For practising to steal away a lady,

An heir, and near-allied unto the Duke.

2 Out. And I from Mantua, for a gentleman, Who, in my mood,4 I stabb'd unto the heart.

I Out. And I for such-like petty crimes as these.
But to the purpose, - for we cite our faults,

That they may hold excused 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 5 much want,

2 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?

3 Out. What say'st thou? wilt thou be of our consórt? Say ay, and be the captain of us all :

We'll do thee homage and be ruled by thee,

Love thee as our commander and our king.

3 " Awful men are men full of awe for just authority; men who reverence the laws and usages of society. So Milton, in his Hymn of the Nativity:

And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by.

4 In a fit of anger or resentment. A moody man is still a man liable to storms of passion.

5 Quality here is profession or occupation. So in Hamlet, ii. 2: “Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing?"

I Out. But, if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest.

2 Out. Thou shalt not live to brag what we have offer'd. Val. I take your offer, and will live with you,

Provided that you do no outrages

6

On silly women or poor passengers.

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

[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,1
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 loved :
And notwithstanding all her sudden quips,2
The least whereof would quell a lover's hope,

6 Silly here is a word of tenderness, not of reproach; as denoting a character of innocence and simplicity. So, in Twelfth Night, ii. 4, we have silly sooth for simple truth. Such appears to be the primitive sense of the word.

1 Holy in the sense of upright and pure; a frequent usage of the word in Shakespeare. 2 A quip a biting taunt or retort. So in Much Ado, ii. 3: "Shall quips and sentences, and these paper-bullets of the brain, awe a man from the career of his humour?"