Ay, much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.
PROTEUS
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 line
That may discover such integrity;
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. To their instruments
Tune a deploring dump. 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.
THURIO
And thy advice this night I’ll put in practice.
Therefore, sweet Proteus, my direction-giver,
Let us into the city presently
To sort some gentlemen well skilled in music.
I have a sonnet that will serve the turn
To give the onset to thy good advice.
DUKE About it, gentlemen.
PROTEUS
We’ll wait upon your grace till after supper,
And afterward determine our proceedings.
DUKE
Even now about it. I will pardon you.
Exeunt Thurio and Proteus at one door, and the Duke at another
4.1 Enter the Outlaws
FIRST OUTLAW
Fellows, stand fast. I see a passenger.
SECOND OUTLAW
If there be ten, shrink not, but down with ‘em.
Enter Valentine and Speed
THIRD OUTLAW
Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye.
If not, we’ll make you sit, and rifle you.
SPEED (to Valentine)
Sir, we are undone. These are the villains
That all the travellers do fear so much.
VALENTINE (to the Outlaws) My friends.
FIRST OUTLAW
That’s not so, sir. We are your enemies.
SECOND OUTLAW Peace. We’ll hear him.
THIRD OUTLAW Ay, by my beard will we. For he is a proper man.
VALENTINE
Then know that I have little wealth to lose.
A man I am, crossed 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.
SECOND OUTLAW Whither travel you?
VALENTINE To Verona.
FIRST OUTLAW Whence came you?
VALENTINE From Milan. 20
THIRD OUTLAW Have you long sojourned there?
VALENTINE
Some sixteen months, and longer might have stayed
If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.
FIRST OUTLAW
What, were you banished thence?
VALENTINE I was.
SECOND OUTLAW For what offence?
VALENTINE
For that which now torments me to rehearse.
I killed a man, whose death I much repent,
But yet I slew him manfully, in fight,
Without false vantage or base treachery.
FIRST OUTLAW
Why, ne’er repent it, if it were done so.
But were you banished for so small a fault?
VALENTINE
I was, and held me glad of such a doom.
SECOND OUTLAW Have you the tongues?
VALENTINE
My youthful travel therein made me happy,
Or else I had been often miserable.
THIRD OUTLAW
By the bare scalp of Robin Hood’s fat friar,
This fellow were a king for our wild faction.
FIRST OUTLAW
We’ll have him. Sirs, a word.
The Outlaws confer
SPEED (to Valentine) Master, be one of them.
It’s an honourable kind of thievery.
VALENTINE Peace, villain.
SECOND OUTLAW
Tell us this: have you anything to take to?
VALENTINE Nothing but my fortune.
THIRD OUTLAW
Know, then, that some of us are gentlemen
Such as the fury of ungoverned youth
Thrust from the company of aweful men.
Myself was from Verona banished
For practising to steal away a lady,
An heir, and near allied unto the Duke.
SECOND OUTLAW
And I from Mantua, for a gentleman
Who, in my mood, I stabbed unto the heart.
FIRST OUTLAW
And I, for suchlike 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 much want—
SECOND OUTLAW
Indeed because you are a banished 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?
THIRD OUTLAW
What sayst thou? Wilt thou be of our consort?
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.
FIRST OUTLAW
But if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest.
SECOND OUTLAW
Thou shalt not live to brag what we have offered.
VALENTINE
I take your offer, and will live with you,
Provided that you do no outrages
On silly women or poor passengers.
THIRD OUTLAW
No, we detest such vile, base practices.
Come, go with us. We’ll bring thee to our crews
And show thee all the treasure we have got,
Which, with ourselves, all rest at thy dispose. Exeunt
4.2 Enter Proteus
PROTEUS
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