Act 2, Scene 1

Milan. A room in the DUKE'S palace.

[Enter VALENTINE and SPEED.]
Speed
385 Sir, your glove.
[Offering a glove.]
Valentine
386 Not mine; my gloves are on.
Speed
387 Why, then, this may be yours; for this is but one.
Valentine
388 Ha! let me see; ay, give it me, it's mine;
389 Sweet ornament that decks a thing divine!
390 Ah, Silvia! Silvia!
[Calling.]
Speed
391 Madam Silvia! Madam Silvia!
Valentine
392 How now, sirrah?
Speed
393 She is not within hearing, sir.
Valentine
394 Why, sir, who bade you call her?
Speed
395 Your worship, sir; or else I mistook.
Valentine
396 Well, you'll still be too forward.
Speed
397 And yet I was last chidden for being too slow.
Valentine
398 Go to, sir. tell me, do you know Madam Silvia?
Speed
399 She that your worship loves?
Valentine
400 Why, how know you that I am in love?
Speed
401 Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned, like
402 Sir Proteus, to wreath your arms like a malcontent; to relish a
403 love-song, like a robin redbreast; to walk alone, like one that
404 had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his
405 A B C; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam;
406 to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch, like one that fears
407 robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were
408 wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to
409 walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently
410 after dinner; when you looked sadly, it was for want of money.
411 And now you are metamorphosed with a mistress, that, when I look
412 on you, I can hardly think you my master.
Valentine
413 Are all these things perceived in me?
Speed
414 They are all perceived without ye.
Valentine
415 Without me? They cannot.
Speed
416 Without you? Nay, that's certain; for, without you were so
417 simple, none else would; but you are so without these follies
418 that these follies are within you, and shine through you like the
419 water in an urinal, that not an eye that sees you but is a
420 physician to comment on your malady.
Valentine
421 But tell me, dost thou know my lady Silvia?
Speed
422 She that you gaze on so as she sits at supper?
Valentine
423 Hast thou observed that? Even she, I mean.
Speed
424 Why, sir, I know her not.
Valentine
425 Dost thou know her by my gazing on her, and yet know'st
426 her not?
Speed
427 Is she not hard-favoured, sir?
Valentine
428 Not so fair, boy, as well-favoured.
Speed
429 Sir, I know that well enough.
Valentine
430 What dost thou know?
Speed
431 That she is not so fair as, of you, well-favoured.
Valentine
432 I mean that her beauty is exquisite, but her favour
433 infinite.
Speed
434 That's because the one is painted, and the other out of all
435 count.
Valentine
436 How painted? and how out of count?
Speed
437 Marry, sir, so painted to make her fair, that no man counts
438 of her beauty.
Valentine
439 How esteem'st thou me? I account of her beauty.
Speed
440 You never saw her since she was deformed.
Valentine
441 How long hath she been deformed?
Speed
442 Ever since you loved her.
Valentine
443 I have loved her ever since I saw her, and still
444 I see her beautiful.
Speed
445 If you love her, you cannot see her.
Valentine
446 Why?
Speed
447 Because Love is blind. O! that you had mine eyes; or your own
448 eyes had the lights they were wont to have when you chid at Sir
449 Proteus for going ungartered!
Valentine
450 What should I see then?
Speed
451 Your own present folly and her passing deformity; for he,
452 being in love, could not see to garter his hose; and you, being
453 in love, cannot see to put on your hose.
Valentine
454 Belike, boy, then you are in love; for last morning you
455 could not see to wipe my shoes.
Speed
456 True, sir; I was in love with my bed. I thank you, you
457 swinged me for my love, which makes me the bolder to chide you
458 for yours.
Valentine
459 In conclusion, I stand affected to her.
Speed
460 I would you were set, so your affection would cease.
Valentine
461 Last night she enjoined me to write some lines to one
462 she loves.
Speed
463 And have you?
Valentine
464 I have.
Speed
465 Are they not lamely writ?
Valentine
466 No, boy, but as well as I can do them.
467 Peace! here she comes.
[Enter SILVIA.]
[Aside]
Speed
468 O excellent motion! O exceeding puppet!
469 Now will he interpret to her.
Valentine
470 Madam and mistress, a thousand good morrows.
[Aside]
Speed
471 O, give ye good even: here's a million of manners.
Silvia
472 Sir Valentine and servant, to you two thousand.
[Aside]
Speed
473 He should give her interest, and she gives it him.
Valentine
474 As you enjoin'd me, I have writ your letter
475 Unto the secret nameless friend of yours;
476 Which I was much unwilling to proceed in,
477 But for my duty to your ladyship.
[Gives a letter.]
Silvia
478 I thank you, gentle servant. 'Tis very clerkly done.
Valentine
479 Now trust me, madam, it came hardly off;
480 For, being ignorant to whom it goes,
481 I writ at random, very doubtfully.
Silvia
482 Perchance you think too much of so much pains?
Valentine
483 No, madam; so it stead you, I will write,
484 Please you command, a thousand times as much;
485 And yet—
Silvia
486 A pretty period! Well, I guess the sequel;
487 And yet I will not name it; and yet I care not.
488 And yet take this again; and yet I thank you,
489 Meaning henceforth to trouble you no more.
[Aside]
Speed
490 And yet you will; and yet another yet.
Valentine
491 What means your ladyship? Do you not like it?
Silvia
492 Yes, yes; the lines are very quaintly writ;
493 But, since unwillingly, take them again:
494 Nay, take them.
[Gives hack the letter.]
Valentine
495 Madam, they are for you.
Silvia
496 Ay, ay, you writ them, sir, at my request;
497 But I will none of them; they are for you.
498 I would have had them writ more movingly.
Valentine
499 Please you, I'll write your ladyship another.
Silvia
500 And when it's writ, for my sake read it over;
501 And if it please you, so; if not, why, so.
Valentine
502 If it please me, madam, what then?
Silvia
503 Why, if it please you, take it for your labour.
504 And so good morrow, servant.
[Exit.]
Speed
505 O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible,
506 As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple!
507 My master sues to her; and she hath taught her suitor,
508 He being her pupil, to become her tutor.
509 O excellent device! Was there ever heard a better,
510 That my master, being scribe, to himself should write the letter?
Valentine
511 How now, sir! What are you reasoning with yourself?
Speed
512 Nay, I was rhyming: 'tis you that have the reason.
Valentine
513 To do what?
Speed
514 To be a spokesman from Madam Silvia.
Valentine
515 To whom?
Speed
516 To yourself; why, she woos you by a figure.
Valentine
517 What figure?
Speed
518 By a letter, I should say.
Valentine
519 Why, she hath not writ to me?
Speed
520 What need she, when she hath made you write to yourself?
521 Why, do you not perceive the jest?
Valentine
522 No, believe me.
Speed
523 No believing you indeed, sir. But did you perceive her
524 earnest?
Valentine
525 She gave me none except an angry word.
Speed
526 Why, she hath given you a letter.
Valentine
527 That's the letter I writ to her friend.
Speed
528 And that letter hath she delivered, and there an end.
Valentine
529 I would it were no worse.
Speed
530 I'll warrant you 'tis as well.
531 'For often have you writ to her; and she, in modesty,
532 Or else for want of idle time, could not again reply;
533 Or fearing else some messenger that might her mind discover,
534 Herself hath taught her love himself to write unto her lover.'
535 All this I speak in print, for in print I found it.
536 Why muse you, sir? 'Tis dinner time.
Valentine
537 I have dined.
Speed
538 Ay, but hearken, sir; though the chameleon Love can feed on
539 the air, I am one that am nourished by my victuals, and would
540 fain have meat. O! be not like your mistress! Be moved, be moved.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 389rhetorical device
“Sweet ornament that decks a thing divine”
Valentine picks up the dropped glove and immediately turns it into a love-blazon, addressing it as though Silvia's beauty (the 'thing divine' it has touched) has made it sacred. The abrupt shift from comedy about a lost glove to rapturous address signals Valentine's Petrarchan infatuation before he even admits it.
historical Petrarch and the Petrarchan lover
TLN 401cultural context
“first, you have learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreath your arms like a malcontent”
Speed rattles off a comic catalogue of the conventional signs of a man in love: folded arms (the posture of melancholy brooding), sighing, weeping, fasting, sleeplessness, and speaking 'puling' (whining). These were the stock stage-signals of a Petrarchan lover, instantly recognizable to an Elizabethan audience.
historical Petrarch and the Petrarchan lover
TLN 407historical topical
“speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas”
Hallowmas is All Saints' Day (1 November). In Shakespeare's England, poor people begged door-to-door on the eve and day of Hallowmas — the custom called 'souling' — and were expected to whine and pray for alms in a pathetic, wheedling tone. Speed compares Valentine's lovesick moping to exactly this.
TLN 411classical allusion
“you are metamorphosed with a mistress”
Speed says Valentine has been 'metamorphosed' — transformed into a different creature — by love. The word deliberately echoes Ovid's Metamorphoses, the great Latin poem of bodies changed by passion, whose transformations were the cultural shorthand for love's power to remake a person. The same Ovidian frame applies to 'Proteus,' whose very name (from the shape-changing sea-god) promises metamorphosis.
TLN 414wordplay
“They are all perceived without ye”
Speed sets up a rapid pun on 'without': Valentine means 'these things cannot be seen without me [in my absence]'; Speed first means 'without you — by others looking at you from outside'; then turns 'without' again to mean 'outside' your body — because all your foolish symptoms 'shine through you.' Three meanings of one preposition in four quick lines.
TLN 418cultural context
“shine through you like the water in an urinal”
A 'urinal' was a glass flask in which a doctor examined urine to diagnose illness — one of the chief methods of medical diagnosis in Shakespeare's day. Speed says Valentine's love-symptoms 'shine through' him like urine in a diagnostic flask: anyone who looks at him can read his condition as plainly as a physician reads the flask. The medical image turns lovelorn behavior into a disease that every bystander can diagnose.
TLN 427archaic vocab
“Is she not hard-favoured, sir”
'Hard-favoured' means ugly or severe-featured ('favour' was the face or its expression). Valentine replies that she is 'not so fair [in complexion], but well-favoured [pleasing in manner/face].' Speed then further splits 'favour' into cosmetic paint ('painted') versus countless other graces. The exchange turns on the distinction between a woman's complexion and her overall appearance or charm.
TLN 434wordplay
“the one is painted, and the other out of all count”
Speed delivers a double insult: Silvia's 'beauty' is 'painted' — meaning artificial, cosmetically applied — so 'no man counts [values] it.' And her 'favour' is 'out of all count' — beyond counting, i.e. infinite (Valentine's meaning) but also: nobody accounts it worth anything. Speed uses the same word 'count' to mean both 'innumerable' and 'of no account.'
TLN 447classical allusion
“Love is blind. O! that you had mine eyes”
'Love is blind' refers to the classical image of Cupid (Roman god of love) depicted as a blindfolded child who shoots his arrows at random, hitting any target regardless of merit. The blindfolded Cupid was one of the most common images in Renaissance art and poetry. Speed uses it as the literal explanation for why Valentine cannot see Silvia's 'deformity' — or his own folly.
classical Cupid's golden and leaden arrows
TLN 459archaic vocab
“I stand affected to her”
'Affected' here means 'disposed toward, in love with' — not the modern sense of artificial or false. Speed then puns: he would have Valentine 'set' (seated, settled) rather than 'standing,' so that his 'affection' might 'cease' — both the emotion and the standing up, in a physical-position joke.
TLN 468cultural context
“O excellent motion! O exceeding puppet! Now will he interpret to her”
Speed compares Silvia's entrance to a puppet show: a 'motion' was an Elizabethan puppet performance, and the 'interpreter' was the barker who stood beside the puppet booth and spoke the dialogue for the audience. Speed predicts Valentine will play the interpreter — speaking on Silvia's behalf while she 'performs' — which is exactly what happens when he writes the love-letter she pretends is for someone else.
TLN 472cultural context
“Sir Valentine and servant, to you two thousand”
Silvia addresses Valentine as 'Sir Valentine and servant' — meaning Valentine and his servant (Speed). But 'servant' also carries a precise courtly-love meaning: a 'servant' in the Petrarchan tradition was a gentleman who had formally submitted himself to a lady's service, pledging to perform her bidding. Silvia is using both senses at once, playing the game and teasing him with the word that defines their relationship.
TLN 478archaic vocab
“'Tis very clerkly done”
'Clerkly' means in a scholarly or polished literary style — 'as a clerk would do it.' A 'clerk' in this period meant not only a minor church official but any learned, literate man capable of writing fine prose or verse. Silvia praises the letter as well-composed — but the compliment is deliberately ambiguous: she is praising the writing, not yet revealing that the letter was intended for the writer himself.
TLN 486wordplay
“A pretty period! Well, I guess the sequel”
Valentine's sentence trails off ('And yet--'), so Silvia mocks the dangling, unfinished syntax: a 'period' is a full stop, a completed sentence, and his is not one. 'Pretty period' is ironic: it is no period at all, just a feeble 'and yet.' She says she can guess the unfinished declaration, but refuses to let him say it, deflecting his confession with rapid wit.
TLN 505rhetorical device
“O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man's face”
Speed spells out the letter-writing trick that Valentine has entirely failed to notice: Silvia had him write a love-letter to himself. Speed's speech is in couplet rhymes, and its central joke is the mock-paradox 'invisible as a nose on a man's face' — meaning the obvious thing that you cannot see precisely because it is right in front of you. The paradox neatly mocks the blind lover.
TLN 516archaic vocab
“she woos you by a figure”
Speed uses 'figure' in the rhetorical sense: a figure of speech, an indirect device, a trope. Silvia did not woo Valentine directly; she used an indirect figure — making him write the letter — so that his own words would carry the declaration. When Valentine asks which 'figure,' Speed deflates it: 'By a letter' — punning on 'letter' as a piece of correspondence and as a character of the alphabet, a unit of a figure of speech.
TLN 535wordplay
“All this I speak in print, for in print I found it”
Speed claims to speak 'in print' — meaning with perfect precision, exactly right — because he found this formula 'in print,' i.e. in a printed book. The joke is that a servant is citing a published pamphlet or love-manual as his authority for why a woman makes a man write his own love-letter. 'In print' has the secondary meaning of 'word for word, exactly,' a sense still surviving in 'to the letter.'
TLN 538cultural context
“the chameleon Love can feed on the air”
It was a widespread belief in Shakespeare's time that chameleons fed entirely on air — sustained by nothing material. Speed uses this to draw a contrast: Valentine, like a lover, can subsist on nothing but his passion (the 'air' of love), but Speed himself needs actual food and wants his dinner. The chameleon-feeds-on-air belief appears several times in Shakespeare.