PROTEUS
To leave my Julia shall I be forsworn;
To love fair Silvia shall I be forsworn;
To wrong my friend I shall be much forsworn.
And e‘en that power which gave me first my oath
Provokes me to this threefold perjury.
Love bade me swear, and love bids me forswear.
O sweet-suggesting love, if thou hast sinned
Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it.
At first I did adore a twinkling star,
But now I worship a celestial sun.
Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken,
And he wants wit that wants resolved will
To learn his wit t’exchange the bad for better.
Fie, fie, unreverent tongue, to call her bad
Whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferred
With twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths.
I cannot leave to love, and yet I do.
But there I leave to love where I should love.
Julia I lose, and Valentine I lose.
If I keep them I needs must lose myself.
If I lose them, thus find I by their loss
For Valentine, myself, for Julia, Silvia.
I to myself am dearer than a friend,
For love is still most precious in itself,
And Silvia—witness heaven that made her fair—
Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope.
I will forget that Julia is alive,
Rememb’ring that my love to her is dead,
And Valentine I’ll hold an enemy,
Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend.
I cannot now prove constant to myself
Without some treachery used to Valentine.
This night he meaneth with a corded ladder
To climb celestial Silvia’s chamber-window,
Myself in counsel his competitor.
Now presently I’ll give her father notice
Of their disguising and pretended flight,
Who, all enraged, will banish Valentine;
For Thurio he intends shall wed his daughter.
But Valentine being gone, I’ll quickly cross
By some sly trick blunt Thurio’s dull proceeding.
Love, lend me wings to make my purpose swift,
As thou hast lent me wit to plot this drift. Exit
2.7 Enter Julia and Lucetta
JULIA
Counsel, Lucetta. Gentle girl, assist me,
And e’en in kind love I do conjure thee,
Who art the table wherein all my thoughts
Are visibly charactered and engraved,
To lesson me, and tell me some good mean
How with my honour I may undertake
A journey to my loving Proteus.
LUCETTA
Alas, the way is wearisome and long.
JULIA
A true-devoted pilgrim is not weary
To measure kingdoms with his feeble steps.
Much less shall she that hath love’s wings to fly,
And when the flight is made to one so dear,
Of such divine perfection as Sir Proteus.
LUCETTA
Better forbear till Proteus make return.
JULIA
O, know’st thou not his looks are my soul’s food?
Pity the dearth that I have pined in
By longing for that food so long a time.
Didst thou but know the inly touch of love
Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow
As seek to quench the fire of love with words.
LUCETTA
I do not seek to quench your love’s hot fire,
But qualify the fire’s extreme rage,
Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason.
JULIA
The more thou damm‘st it up, the more it burns.
The current that with gentle murmur glides,
Thou know’st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage.
But when his fair course is not hindered
He makes sweet music with th’enamelled stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage.
And so by many winding nooks he strays
With willing sport to the wild ocean.
Then let me go, and hinder not my course.
I’ll be as patient as a gentle stream,
And make a pastime of each weary step
Till the last step have brought me to my love.
And there I’ll rest as after much turmoil
A blessed soul doth in Elysium.
LUCETTA
But in what habit will you go along?
JULIA
Not like a woman, for I would prevent
The loose encounters of lascivious men.
Gentle Lucetta, fit me with such weeds
As may beseem some well-reputed page.
LUCETTA
Why then, your ladyship must cut your hair.
JULIA
No, girl, I’ll knit it up in silken strings
With twenty odd-conceited true-love knots.
To be fantastic may become a youth
Of greater time than I shall show to be.
LUCETTA
What fashion, madam, shall I make your breeches?
JULIA
That fits as well as ‘Tell me, good my lord,
What compass will you wear your farthingale?’
Why, e’en what fashion thou best likes, Lucetta.
LUCETTA
You must needs have them with a codpiece, madam.
JULIA
Out, out, Lucetta. That will be ill-favoured.
LUCETTA
A round hose, madam, now’s not worth a pin
Unless you have a codpiece to stick pins on.
JULIA
Lucetta, as thou lov‘st me let me have
What thou think’st meet and is most mannerly.
But tell me, wench, how will the world repute me
For undertaking so unstaid a journey?
I fear me it will make me scandalized.
LUCETTA
If you think so, then stay at home, and go not.
JULIA Nay, that I will not.
LUCETTA
Then never dream on infamy, but go.
If Proteus like your journey when you come,
No matter who’s displeased when you are gone.