Act 2, Scene 4

Milan. A room in the DUKE'S palace.

[Enter SILVIA, VALENTINE, THURIO, and SPEED.]
Silvia
614 Servant!
Valentine
615 Mistress?
Speed
616 Master, Sir Thurio frowns on you.
Valentine
617 Ay, boy, it's for love.
Speed
618 Not of you.
Valentine
619 Of my mistress, then.
Speed
620 'Twere good you knock'd him.
Silvia
621 Servant, you are sad.
Valentine
622 Indeed, madam, I seem so.
Thurio
623 Seem you that you are not?
Valentine
624 Haply I do.
Thurio
625 So do counterfeits.
Valentine
626 So do you.
Thurio
627 What seem I that I am not?
Valentine
628 Wise.
Thurio
629 What instance of the contrary?
Valentine
630 Your folly.
Thurio
631 And how quote you my folly?
Valentine
632 I quote it in your jerkin.
Thurio
633 My jerkin is a doublet.
Valentine
634 Well, then, I'll double your folly.
Thurio
635 How?
Silvia
636 What, angry, Sir Thurio! Do you change colour?
Valentine
637 Give him leave, madam; he is a kind of chameleon.
Thurio
638 That hath more mind to feed on your blood than live in your
639 air.
Valentine
640 You have said, sir.
Thurio
641 Ay, sir, and done too, for this time.
Valentine
642 I know it well, sir; you always end ere you begin.
Silvia
643 A fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly shot off.
Valentine
644 'Tis indeed, madam; we thank the giver.
Silvia
645 Who is that, servant?
Valentine
646 Yourself, sweet lady; for you gave the fire. Sir Thurio
647 borrows his wit from your ladyship's looks, and spends what he
648 borrows kindly in your company.
Thurio
649 Sir, if you spend word for word with me, I shall make your
650 wit bankrupt.
Valentine
651 I know it well, sir; you have an exchequer of words,
652 and, I think, no other treasure to give your followers; for it
653 appears by their bare liveries that they live by your bare words.
[Enter DUKE]
Silvia
654 No more, gentlemen, no more. Here comes my father.
[Enter DUKE.]
Duke of Milan
655 Now, daughter Silvia, you are hard beset.
656 Sir Valentine, your father is in good health.
657 What say you to a letter from your friends
658 Of much good news?
Valentine
659 My lord, I will be thankful
660 To any happy messenger from thence.
Duke of Milan
661 Know ye Don Antonio, your countryman?
Valentine
662 Ay, my good lord, I know the gentleman
663 To be of worth and worthy estimation,
664 And not without desert so well reputed.
Duke of Milan
665 Hath he not a son?
Valentine
666 Ay, my good lord; a son that well deserves
667 The honour and regard of such a father.
Duke of Milan
668 You know him well?
Valentine
669 I knew him as myself; for from our infancy
670 We have convers'd and spent our hours together;
671 And though myself have been an idle truant,
672 Omitting the sweet benefit of time
673 To clothe mine age with angel-like perfection,
674 Yet hath Sir Proteus,—for that's his name,—
675 Made use and fair advantage of his days:
676 His years but young, but his experience old;
677 His head unmellowed, but his judgment ripe;
678 And, in a word,—for far behind his worth
679 Comes all the praises that I now bestow,—
680 He is complete in feature and in mind,
681 With all good grace to grace a gentleman.
Duke of Milan
682 Beshrew me, sir, but if he make this good,
683 He is as worthy for an empress' love
684 As meet to be an emperor's counsellor.
685 Well, sir, this gentleman is come to me
686 With commendation from great potentates,
687 And here he means to spend his time awhile.
688 I think 'tis no unwelcome news to you.
Valentine
689 Should I have wish'd a thing, it had been he.
Duke of Milan
690 Welcome him, then, according to his worth.
691 Silvia, I speak to you, and you, Sir Thurio:—
692 For Valentine, I need not cite him to it.
693 I will send him hither to you presently.
[Exit.]
Valentine
694 This is the gentleman I told your ladyship
695 Had come along with me but that his mistresss
696 Did hold his eyes lock'd in her crystal looks.
Silvia
697 Belike that now she hath enfranchis'd them
698 Upon some other pawn for fealty.
Valentine
699 Nay, sure, I think she holds them prisoners still.
Silvia
700 Nay, then, he should be blind; and, being blind,
701 How could he see his way to seek out you?
Valentine
702 Why, lady, Love hath twenty pair of eyes.
Thurio
703 They say that Love hath not an eye at all.
Valentine
704 To see such lovers, Thurio, as yourself:
705 Upon a homely object Love can wink.
Silvia
706 Have done, have done; here comes the gentleman.
[Enter PROTEUS]
Valentine
707 Welcome, dear Proteus! Mistress, I beseech you
708 Confirm his welcome with some special favour.
Silvia
709 His worth is warrant for his welcome hither,
710 If this be he you oft have wish'd to hear from.
Valentine
711 Mistress, it is; sweet lady, entertain him
712 To be my fellow-servant to your ladyship.
Silvia
713 Too low a mistress for so high a servant.
Proteus
714 Not so, sweet lady; but too mean a servant
715 To have a look of such a worthy mistress.
Valentine
716 Leave off discourse of disability;
717 Sweet lady, entertain him for your servant.
Proteus
718 My duty will I boast of, nothing else.
Silvia
719 And duty never yet did want his meed.
720 Servant, you are welcome to a worthless mistress.
Proteus
721 I'll die on him that says so but yourself.
Silvia
722 That you are welcome?
Proteus
723 That you are worthless.
[Enter a servant.]
Servant
724 Madam, my lord your father would speak with you.
Silvia
725 I wait upon his pleasure.
[Exit Servant.]
Silvia
726 Come, Sir Thurio,
727 Go with me. Once more, new servant, welcome.
728 I'll leave you to confer of home affairs;
729 When you have done we look to hear from you.
Proteus
730 We'll both attend upon your ladyship.
[Exeunt SILVIA, THURIO, and SPEED.]
Valentine
731 Now, tell me, how do all from whence you came?
Proteus
732 Your friends are well, and have them much commended.
Valentine
733 And how do yours?
Proteus
734 I left them all in health.
Valentine
735 How does your lady, and how thrives your love?
Proteus
736 My tales of love were wont to weary you;
737 I know you joy not in a love-discourse.
Valentine
738 Ay, Proteus, but that life is alter'd now;
739 I have done penance for contemning Love;
740 Whose high imperious thoughts have punish'd me
741 With bitter fasts, with penitential groans,
742 With nightly tears, and daily heart-sore sighs;
743 For, in revenge of my contempt of love,
744 Love hath chas'd sleep from my enthralled eyes
745 And made them watchers of mine own heart's sorrow.
746 O, gentle Proteus! Love's a mighty lord,
747 And hath so humbled me as I confess,
748 There is no woe to his correction,
749 Nor to his service no such joy on earth.
750 Now no discourse, except it be of love;
751 Now can I break my fast, dine, sup, and sleep,
752 Upon the very naked name of love.
Proteus
753 Enough; I read your fortune in your eye.
754 Was this the idol that you worship so?
Valentine
755 Even she; and is she not a heavenly saint?
Proteus
756 No; but she is an earthly paragon.
Valentine
757 Call her divine.
Proteus
758 I will not flatter her.
Valentine
759 O! flatter me; for love delights in praises.
Proteus
760 When I was sick you gave me bitter pills,
761 And I must minister the like to you.
Valentine
762 Then speak the truth by her; if not divine,
763 Yet let her be a principality,
764 Sovereign to all the creatures on the earth.
Proteus
765 Except my mistress.
Valentine
766 Sweet, except not any,
767 Except thou wilt except against my love.
Proteus
768 Have I not reason to prefer mine own?
Valentine
769 And I will help thee to prefer her too:
770 She shall be dignified with this high honour,—
771 To bear my lady's train, lest the base earth
772 Should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss,
773 And, of so great a favour growing proud,
774 Disdain to root the summer-swelling flower
775 And make rough winter everlastingly.
Proteus
776 Why, Valentine, what braggardism is this?
Valentine
777 Pardon me, Proteus; all I can is nothing
778 To her, whose worth makes other worthies nothing;
779 She is alone.
Proteus
780 Then, let her alone.
Valentine
781 Not for the world: why, man, she is mine own;
782 And I as rich in having such a jewel
783 As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
784 The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.
785 Forgive me that I do not dream on thee,
786 Because thou see'st me dote upon my love.
787 My foolish rival, that her father likes
788 Only for his possessions are so huge,
789 Is gone with her along; and I must after,
790 For love, thou know'st, is full of jealousy.
Proteus
791 But she loves you?
Valentine
792 Ay, and we are betroth'd; nay more, our marriage-hour,
793 With all the cunning manner of our flight,
794 Determin'd of: how I must climb her window,
795 The ladder made of cords, and all the means
796 Plotted and 'greed on for my happiness.
797 Good Proteus, go with me to my chamber,
798 In these affairs to aid me with thy counsel.
Proteus
799 Go on before; I shall enquire you forth:
800 I must unto the road to disembark
801 Some necessaries that I needs must use;
802 And then I'll presently attend you.
Valentine
803 Will you make haste?
Proteus
804 I will.
[Exit VALENTINE.]
Proteus
805 Even as one heat another heat expels
806 Or as one nail by strength drives out another,
807 So the remembrance of my former love
808 Is by a newer object quite forgotten.
809 Is it my mind, or Valentinus' praise,
810 Her true perfection, or my false transgression,
811 That makes me reasonless to reason thus?
812 She is fair; and so is Julia that I love,—
813 That I did love, for now my love is thaw'd;
814 Which like a waxen image 'gainst a fire
815 Bears no impression of the thing it was.
816 Methinks my zeal to Valentine is cold,
817 And that I love him not as I was wont.
818 O! but I love his lady too-too much,
819 And that's the reason I love him so little.
820 How shall I dote on her with more advice
821 That thus without advice begin to love her?
822 'Tis but her picture I have yet beheld,
823 And that hath dazzled my reason's light;
824 But when I look on her perfections,
825 There is no reason but I shall be blind.
826 If I can check my erring love, I will;
827 If not, to compass her I'll use my skill.
[Exit.]

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Notes

TLN 631archaic vocab
“how quote you my folly”
'Quote' here means 'observe' or 'note down' -- as in making a marginal annotation. Thurio asks how Valentine reads, or marks, his folly; Valentine says he can see it inscribed in Thurio's jerkin (his jacket). The word has nothing to do with repeating someone else's words; it is the older sense of 'to observe carefully,' closely related to 'quoth' (said).
TLN 637cultural context
“he is a kind of chameleon”
The chameleon was proverbially believed to feed on air and to change colour at will. Valentine calls the thin-complected Thurio a chameleon because he has just 'changed colour' (gone pale or red with anger), while Thurio's sharp comeback -- he would sooner feed on Valentine's blood than breathe his air -- keeps the animal metaphor alive. The chameleon-as-flatterer, feeding on the empty air of favour, was a commonplace Elizabethan image for a courtier without substance.
TLN 643rhetorical device
“fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly shot off”
Silvia uses a tennis or artillery metaphor: the rapid trading of insults is a 'volley' (an exchange of shots, or of a tennis ball returned before it bounces). When Valentine says Silvia 'gave the fire' -- pulled the trigger -- he plays on the artillery sense. Thurio 'borrows his wit from your ladyship's looks' is then a compliment with a bite: Silvia's eyes sparked the volley, but Thurio's wit is borrowed ammunition he has already spent. The whole exchange is a miniature wit-combat, or stichomythia.
TLN 651wordplay
“exchequer of words, and, I think, no other treasure”
The Exchequer was England's royal treasury -- its finance ministry. Valentine accuses Thurio of having a word-hoard (an 'exchequer of words') but no real wealth, and of paying his followers with bare words rather than money. 'Bare liveries' means thin, threadbare servants' uniforms, signalling a lord too poor to clothe his household properly; 'bare words' doubles back to those empty wages. The joke: Thurio talks richly but is actually mean, both in wit and in cash.
TLN 670archaic vocab
“We have convers'd and spent our hours together”
'Convers'd' does not mean 'talked' in the modern sense; it means 'kept company with' or 'lived alongside.' The same applies to 'Omitting the sweet benefit of time' (TLN 672): Valentine confesses he wasted his youth idly rather than using it to improve himself. Both phrases belong to the language of moral self-assessment that was standard in Tudor discussions of the proper use of time in youth.
TLN 677archaic vocab
“His head unmellowed, but his judgment ripe”
'Unmellowed' (not yet ripened, not yet grey) means Proteus is still young, his hair still dark rather than the silver of age. 'Ripe' is the contrasting term from the same fruit-metaphor: his judgment has matured early, even though his head has not yet been 'mellowed' by years. The couplet ('His years but young, but his experience old; / His head unmellowed, but his judgment ripe') is a studied paradox, or antithesis -- a rhetorical figure praising precocious wisdom.
TLN 682archaic vocab
“Beshrew me, sir”
'Beshrew me' is a mild oath meaning something like 'Curse me if I am wrong' or 'Shame on me if it is not so.' By Shakespeare's time it had weakened to a mere expression of surprise or emphasis, roughly equivalent to 'God save me' or 'I declare.' It carries no real force of cursing; the Duke uses it simply to say he is impressed by Valentine's account of Proteus.
TLN 692archaic vocab
“I need not cite him to it”
'Cite' here means to summon or prompt, not to quote. The Duke says he does not need to urge Valentine to welcome Proteus, because Valentine's love for his friend makes the bidding unnecessary. 'I need not cite him to it' = 'I need not call on him to do it; he will do it naturally.'
TLN 695cultural context
“his mistresss Did hold his eyes lock'd in her crystal looks”
The image of a lover's eyes imprisoned in his lady's are a standard Petrarchan conceit: the mistress's gaze is crystalline (both transparent-beautiful and reflective), and the lover cannot look away. Silvia picks up the metaphor sharply -- if Julia's eyes imprison Proteus, 'he should be blind' by now. The exchange is a mini-debate about the paradoxes of love: Love is blind (Cupid is conventionally blindfolded), yet love also famously 'hath twenty pair of eyes' (TLN 702).
historical Petrarch and the Petrarchan lover
TLN 702classical allusion
“Love hath twenty pair of eyes”
Cupid, god of love, is conventionally portrayed as blind or blindfolded -- the lover cannot see the faults of the beloved. Valentine turns the cliche on Thurio: 'Love hath twenty pair of eyes' is a jest that Love can see perfectly well when it suits him (Proteus found his way here despite Julia's supposed hold), but is conveniently blind to homely objects like Thurio himself. The immediate follow-up 'Upon a homely object Love can wink' makes the insult explicit.
classical Cupid's golden and leaden arrows
TLN 712cultural context
“To be my fellow-servant to your ladyship”
Calling a lover a 'servant' and the beloved a 'mistress' is the standard vocabulary of Petrarchan courtship: a gentleman declares himself the devoted 'servant' of the 'mistress' he worships, and she may accept other 'servants' into her retinue. Valentine has already been Silvia's 'servant' (Silvia opens the scene calling him 'Servant'); here he asks her to take Proteus into the same relationship. The ritual-feudal language of service shades the scene's dynamic of courtship and rivalry.
historical Petrarch and the Petrarchan lover
TLN 739cultural context
“I have done penance for contemning Love”
Valentine describes his conversion from love-sceptic to lover in the language of religious penance: he 'contemned' (scorned and rejected) Love, Love took revenge with 'bitter fasts,' 'penitential groans,' and sleepless nights, and now there is 'no woe to his correction' (no punishment like Love's). The speech is a Petrarchan catalogue of the lover's sufferings, here cast as just punishment for former unbelief. Love is personified as a powerful 'lord' whose correction must be endured and then obeyed.
historical Petrarch and the Petrarchan lover
TLN 763cultural context
“let her be a principality, Sovereign to all the creatures on the earth”
In the medieval and Renaissance understanding of the celestial hierarchy, 'principalities' were one rank of angels -- powerful beings set above ordinary creatures and below archangels. Valentine, unable to convince Proteus that Silvia is 'divine,' asks at minimum that she be ranked as a 'principality,' sovereign over all earthly things. The praise escalates through the scene from 'earthly paragon' (Proteus) to 'heavenly saint' to 'angel-like perfection' (TLN 673); 'principality' is Valentine's compromise position, still superhuman even if not quite divine.
TLN 770rhetorical device
“She shall be dignified with this high honour”
Valentine's mockery of Proteus's mistress Julia turns into an elaborate hyperbole: Silvia is so far above all other women that Julia's greatest honour would be to carry Silvia's train (the trailing hem of a great lady's gown) so that even the ground might not 'steal a kiss' from Silvia's dress. The figure -- even the earth is too base to touch her garment -- then turns into a cosmological conceit: if earth grew proud from that kiss, it would refuse to nourish the summer flowers, and winter would last forever. Valentine has been infected by Petrarchan hyperbole.
historical Petrarch and the Petrarchan lover
TLN 776archaic vocab
“what braggardism is this”
'Braggardism' means boastful extravagance, vainglorious exaggeration. Proteus is calling Valentine's hyperbolic praise of Silvia a kind of swaggering brag -- more show than substance, like a soldier who boasts of feats he has not performed. The word is formed from 'braggart' (itself from Old French bragard, boastful), with the suffix '-ism' adding the quality or style of it.
TLN 783rhetorical device
“As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl, The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold”
Valentine compares his 'jewel' Silvia to a fabulous wealth: if twenty seas had sand of pearl, water of nectar (the drink of the gods), and rocks of solid gold, he would still be richer having her. The figure is a 'hyperbolic enumeration' -- a list of impossible valuables -- a standard device in Elizabethan love-poetry for saying the beloved outweighs all worldly treasure. 'Nectar' is the drink of the classical gods (it confers immortality); its appearance here lifts the hyperbole from mere earthly wealth to divine abundance.
TLN 792cultural context
“we are betroth'd; nay more, our marriage-hour, With all the cunning manner of our flight”
Valentine tells Proteus everything: the betrothal, the planned elopement, and the rope-ladder by which he means to climb to Silvia's window. This is dramatic irony at its starkest -- the audience already suspects Proteus means to pursue Silvia himself, and here Valentine hands his rival a complete blueprint for betrayal. The rope-ladder detail is also a signal of social transgression: in Elizabethan terms, eloping without the father's consent was both legally and morally dangerous, risking the father's retaliation.
TLN 805rhetorical device
“one heat another heat expels Or as one nail by strength drives out another”
Proteus uses two proverbial 'displacement' images to explain why his love for Julia has been immediately overwritten by desire for Silvia: extreme heat is quenched only by a greater heat; a nail driven into wood is pushed out only by a stronger nail driving in behind it. Both proverbs say that one violent force replaces another of the same kind -- the new passion does not restore reason but merely substitutes itself for the old one. The double proverb is an ironic self-analysis: Proteus knows he is being driven by passion, not reason.
TLN 813rhetorical device
“my love is thaw'd; Which like a waxen image 'gainst a fire Bears no impression”
Proteus compares his former love for Julia to a wax seal held near a flame: once melted by heat, wax loses the impression stamped into it and becomes blank again. His love was like a seal with Julia's imprint on it; proximity to Silvia's beauty has melted it, erasing her image. The simile is exact and cold -- Proteus is describing his own infidelity in terms that admit no sentiment, only the physics of erasure.