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Bound With These Titles
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Summary
Summary
"They do not love that do not show their love."
--Two Gentlemen of Verona
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Eminent Shakespearean scholars Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen provide a fresh new edition of the classic comedy of courtship and delicious rivalry.
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THIS VOLUME ALSO INCLUDES MORE THAN A HUNDRED PAGES OF EXCLUSIVE FEATURES:
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* an original Introduction to Two Gentlemen of Verona
* incisive scene-by-scene synopsis and analysis with vital facts about the work
* commentary on past and current productions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, and designers
* photographs of key RSC productions
* an overview of Shakespeare's theatrical career and chronology of his plays
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Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers, these modern and accessible editions from the Royal Shakespeare Company set a new standard in Shakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.
Author Notes
William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616 Although there are many myths and mysteries surrounding William Shakespeare, a great deal is actually known about his life. He was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon, son of John Shakespeare, a prosperous merchant and local politician and Mary Arden, who had the wealth to send their oldest son to Stratford Grammar School.
At 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, the 27-year-old daughter of a local farmer, and they had their first daughter six months later. He probably developed an interest in theatre by watching plays performed by traveling players in Stratford while still in his youth. Some time before 1592, he left his family to take up residence in London, where he began acting and writing plays and poetry.
By 1594 Shakespeare had become a member and part owner of an acting company called The Lord Chamberlain's Men, where he soon became the company's principal playwright. His plays enjoyed great popularity and high critical acclaim in the newly built Globe Theatre. It was through his popularity that the troupe gained the attention of the new king, James I, who appointed them the King's Players in 1603. Before retiring to Stratford in 1613, after the Globe burned down, he wrote more than three dozen plays (that we are sure of) and more than 150 sonnets. He was celebrated by Ben Jonson, one of the leading playwrights of the day, as a writer who would be "not for an age, but for all time," a prediction that has proved to be true.
Today, Shakespeare towers over all other English writers and has few rivals in any language. His genius and creativity continue to astound scholars, and his plays continue to delight audiences. Many have served as the basis for operas, ballets, musical compositions, and films. While Jonson and other writers labored over their plays, Shakespeare seems to have had the ability to turn out work of exceptionally high caliber at an amazing speed. At the height of his career, he wrote an average of two plays a year as well as dozens of poems, songs, and possibly even verses for tombstones and heraldic shields, all while he continued to act in the plays performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Men. This staggering output is even more impressive when one considers its variety. Except for the English history plays, he never wrote the same kind of play twice. He seems to have had a good deal of fun in trying his hand at every kind of play.
Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, all published on 1609, most of which were dedicated to his patron Henry Wriothsley, The Earl of Southhampton. He also wrote 13 comedies, 13 histories, 6 tragedies, and 4 tragecomedies. He died at Stratford-upon-Avon April 23, 1616, and was buried two days later on the grounds of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. His cause of death was unknown, but it is surmised that he knew he was dying.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Guardian Review
The Two Gentlemen of Verona is very early Shakespeare. It may be his earliest comedy of all, or at least the earliest to survive (though The Comedy of Errors is another contender for this title). It has a feel of youthfulness - the two eponymous gentlemen and their tangled love affairs make me think of those "golden lads and girls" in the famous song from Cymbeline. The play is sometimes criticised for its "immaturity", to which the standard rejoinder is that it works much better on stage than on page - a proposition that will be put to the test tonight, when Simon Godwin's new production opens at Stratford. It is the first to appear on the main stage there since Robin Phillips's 1970 production with Helen Mirren as Julia and Ian Richardson as a raffish Proteus. The date of composition is a matter of guesswork, as the play is entirely undocumented: no records of performance, no early quarto edition. The earliest definite notice of it appears unhelpfully late, when it is mentioned in Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia, an invaluable repository of Elizabethan literary gossip published in 1598. Shakespeare is "most excellent in" writing comedies, Meres notes, "witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love labors lost, his Love labours wonne, his Midsummers night dreame & his Merchant of Venice". Possibly the list is chronological: much of it (leaving aside the enigmatic "Love labours wonne") accords with our idea of those plays' order of composition. A broad consensus would date the play to c1590-92, though some would push it further back into the hinterland of the late 1580s - the so-called "lost years" of Shakespeare biography. In this early stratum of his literary activity he was attracting attention as a writer of historical drama (the three Henry VI plays) and tragedy (the blood-soaked Titus Andronicus). The first actual record of a Shakespeare play on stage is a performance of "harey the vi" - almost certainly the play now known as Henry VI Part One - at the Rose theatre in Southwark on 3 March 1592. The same play is praised by Thomas Nashe in his pamphlet Pierce Penniless, published the following September. Robert Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, with its infamous attack on "Shake-scene", was published posthumously in the same month. It refers to him as "an upstart crow . . . that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you": the italicised words are a direct parody (with "player" substituted for "woman") of a line from Henry VI Part Three This surge of publicity around Shakespeare's history plays - partly admiring and partly hostile - has been thoroughly picked over by literary historians. But is there anything about his early comedies? I believe there is. It is to be found in the pages of another pamphlet: Kind-Heart's Dream by Henry Chettle, the portly printer and scribbler who had edited the Groatsworth. He praises Shakespeare's "facetious grace in writing". The word "facetious" (Latin facetus) did not have the overtone of waggish jocularity we now give it: it referred to witty, elegant, fluent humour - "polished and agreeable" in the OED's definition. In this context it would naturally refer to comedy, and The Two Gentlemen may well have been in Chettle's mind when he wrote this in the latter months of 1592. Those turbulent histories and tragedies show Shakespeare writing under the shadow of Marlowe and Peele, but the literary antecedents of The Two Gentlemen are very different. One influence is the dapper court comedies of John Lyly, such as Midas and Gallathea, performed by boy-actors in the late 1580s. Another is the fashion for sentimental prose romances, pastorales and novellas - Lyly's Euphues and Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia are the best known of these, but even more in vogue were continental imports such as Jorge de Montemayor's romance Diana, originally published in Spanish in the 1550s. There are strong traces of this work in The Two Gentlemen. Specific echoes suggest Shakespeare used the English translation by Bartholomew Yonge: if so, he seems to have read it in manuscript - Yonge's translation did not appear in book form until 1598, but as we learn from its preface, it had "lyen by [him] finished" for 16 years prior to publication. The play has its flaws, but in a sense they are part of its fascination. While the technical mastery of his mature comedies leaves one gasping, The Two Gentlemen has a kind of guileless transparency; it lets us in on its secrets. We see the young (or youngish) Shakespeare at work, the apprentice poet carefully blending the ingredients of love, confusion and drollery that will become familiar in subsequent comedies. Julia disguising herself as a boy in order to pursue her errant lover, Proteus, is the first of many cross-dressing Shakespeare heroines - Portia, Rosalind, Viola, Imogen - though I think she is the only one to discuss the pros and cons of wearing a codpiece as part of her costume. The play's transition from the shallow comforts of the court, where things start to unravel, to the hardships of the forest, where they are paradoxically resolved, foreshadows the restorative virtues of the forest in A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It. There are certain phrasings that sound familiar, though they are of course anticipations rather than echoes, and there are some jokes that will be thriftily recycled, such as Lance's garbling of melancholy as "allicholy", which is later repeated by Mistress Quickly in The Merry Wives of Windsor As befits this romantic comedy there are plenty of love letters, love songs ("Who is Silvia, what is she . . .?", later set by Schubert) and love poems flying around. They are somewhat pastiched for comic effect, but it's notable that one of the subject-matters which fires the young Shakespeare's poetry is poetry itself, as in this lovely Ovidian riff on the subject of Orpheus' lute: "Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones, / Make tigers tame and huge leviathans / Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands." And, in another register, we find the instinctive deployment of erotic double entendres is already marked. Lance's "cate-log" of his sweetheart's virtues - her skills at "milking", "fetching", "spinning" etc - is a virtuoso profusion of smutty puns. Proteus's clownish servant Lance is perhaps the best-known character in the play, though the chief reason for this is undoubtedly his mute comic stooge, Crab, whose name does not feature in the Dramatis Personae because he not a person but a dog. Lance's doting on this allegedly ungrateful hound provides a comic subtext on the main-plot themes of friendship and fidelity (this echoing of themes is itself another characteristic Shakespearean device here tried out for the first time). Crab has been the subject of Lance's devotion since he was a puppy: he was "one that I saved from drowning, when three or four of his blind brothers and sisters went to it . . . Nay, I'll be sworn, I have sat in the stocks for puddings he hath stolen, otherwise he had been executed; I have stood on the pillory for geese he hath killed, otherwise he had suffered for't." And now Crab has disgraced himself (off-stage) by urinating on the beautiful Silvia, and Lance is in trouble again. "Did not I bid thee still mark me and do as I do? When didst thou see me heave up my leg and make water against a gentlewoman's farthingale?" It is sometimes suggested that Lance was written for the famous comedian Will Kempe, though the dates do not quite fit (unless the part was a later addition). In John Madden's Shakespeare in Love, we see Queen Elizabeth cheerfully giggling at the Lance-Crab double act, and the theatre owner Henslowe trying to persuade Shakespeare to include a dog in his next play, currently titled "Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter". This has no claim to scholarly weight but may well communicate a genuine point that the play - pace the critics - was a popular one. I think the great 18th-century Shakespeare scholar Edmond Malone had it right (as he so often does) when he said that both the poetry and the comedy of The Two Gentlemen "are as perfectly Shakespearean (I do not say as finished or as beautiful) as any of his other pieces". Hazlitt recognised this as well - "there is throughout a careless grace and felicity which marks it for his". It has, in short, that certain something. If an analogy between 1590s comedy and 1960s pop music is permissible, one might say that The Two Gentlemen is Shakespeare's Please Please Me - full of freshness and sweetness, rather poignantly innocent, and already containing the promise of the great creative harvest to come. The Two Gentlemen of Verona is at the Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, from tonight until 4 September. rsc.org.uk. - Charles Nicholl Caption: Captions: Love and laughter . . . Jonny Glynn as the Duke of Milan in the RSC's rehearsal of The Two Gentlemen of Verona A broad consensus would date the play to c1590-92, though some would push it further back into the hinterland of the late 1580s - the so-called "lost years" of Shakespeare biography. In this early stratum of his literary activity he was attracting attention as a writer of historical drama (the three Henry VI plays) and tragedy (the blood-soaked Titus Andronicus). The first actual record of a Shakespeare play on stage is a performance of "harey the vi" - almost certainly the play now known as Henry VI Part One - at the Rose theatre in Southwark on 3 March 1592. The same play is praised by Thomas Nashe in his pamphlet Pierce Penniless, published the following September. Robert Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, with its infamous attack on "Shake-scene", was published posthumously in the same month. It refers to him as "an upstart crow . . . that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you": the italicised words are a direct parody (with "player" substituted for "woman") of a line from Henry VI Part Three As befits this romantic comedy there are plenty of love letters, love songs ("Who is Silvia, what is she . . .?", later set by Schubert) and love poems flying around. They are somewhat pastiched for comic effect, but it's notable that one of the subject-matters which fires the young Shakespeare's poetry is poetry itself, as in this lovely Ovidian riff on the subject of Orpheus' lute: "Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones, / Make tigers tame and huge leviathans / Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands." And, in another register, we find the instinctive deployment of erotic double entendres is already marked. Lance's "cate-log" of his sweetheart's virtues - her skills at "milking", "fetching", "spinning" etc - is a virtuoso profusion of smutty puns. - Charles Nicholl.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter 1 Act 1 Scene 1 running scene 1 Enter Valentine [and] Proteus VALENTINE Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus: Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits. Were't not affection chains thy tender days To the sweet glances of thy honoured love, I rather would entreat thy company To see the wonders of the world abroad, Than - living dully sluggardized at home - Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness. But since thou lov'st, love still, and thrive therein, Even as I would, when I to love begin. PROTEUS Wilt thou be gone? Sweet Valentine, adieu. Think on thy Proteus, when thou haply see'st Some rare noteworthy object in thy travel. Wish me partaker in thy happiness When thou dost meet good hap: and in thy danger - If ever danger do environ thee - Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers, For I will be thy beadsman, Valentine. VALENTINE And on a love-book pray for my success? PROTEUS Upon some book I love, I'll pray for thee. VALENTINE That's on some shallow story of deep love: How young Leander crossed the Hellespont. PROTEUS That's a deep story, of a deeper love, For he was more than over-shoes in love. VALENTINE 'Tis true: for you are over-boots in love, And yet you never swam the Hellespont. PROTEUS Over the boots? Nay, give me not the boots. VALENTINE No, I will not, for it boots thee not. PROTEUS What? VALENTINE To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans: Coy looks with heart-sore sighs, one fading moment's mirth, With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights; If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain, If lost, why then a grievous labour won; However, but a folly bought with wit, Or else a wit by folly vanquishèd. PROTEUS So, by your circumstance, you call me fool. VALENTINE So, by your circumstance, I fear you'll prove. PROTEUS 'Tis Love you cavil at: I am not Love. VALENTINE Love is your master, for he masters you: And he that is so yokèd by a fool, Methinks should not be chronicled for wise. PROTEUS Yet writers say: as in the sweetest bud The eating canker dwells, so eating love Inhabits in the finest wits of all. VALENTINE And writers say: as the most forward bud Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, Even so by love, the young and tender wit Is turned to folly, blasting in the bud, Losing his verdure, even in the prime, And all the fair effects of future hopes. But wherefore waste I time to counsel thee That art a votary to fond desire? Once more, adieu. My father at the road Expects my coming, there to see me shipped. PROTEUS And thither will I bring thee, Valentine. VALENTINE Sweet Proteus, no: now let us take our leave. To Milan let me hear from thee by letters Of thy success in love, and what news else Betideth here in absence of thy friend: And I likewise will visit thee with mine. PROTEUS All happiness bechance to thee in Milan. VALENTINE As much to you at home: and so, farewell. Exit PROTEUS He after honour hunts, I after love; He leaves his friends to dignify them more; I leave myself, my friends and all, for love. Thou, Julia, thou hast metamorphosed me: Made me neglect my studies, lose my time, War with good counsel, set the world at nought; Made wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought. [Enter Speed] SPEED Sir Proteus, 'save you. Saw you my master? PROTEUS But now he parted hence to embark for Milan. SPEED Twenty to one then, he is shipped already, And I have played the sheep in losing him. PROTEUS Indeed, a sheep doth very often stray, An if the shepherd be awhile away. SPEED You conclude that my master is a shepherd, then, and I a sheep? PROTEUS I do. SPEED Why then, my horns are his horns, whether I wake or sleep. PROTEUS A silly answer, and fitting well a sheep. SPEED This proves me still a sheep. PROTEUS True: and thy master a shepherd. SPEED Nay, that I can deny by a circumstance. PROTEUS It shall go hard but I'll prove it by another. SPEED The shepherd seeks the sheep, and not the sheep the shepherd; but I seek my master, and my master seeks not me. Therefore I am no sheep. PROTEUS The sheep for fodder follow the shepherd, the shepherd for food follows not the sheep: thou for wages followest thy master, thy master for wages follows not thee. Therefore thou art a sheep. SPEED Such another proof will make me cry 'baa'. PROTEUS But dost thou hear? Gav'st thou my letter to Julia? SPEED Ay, sir: I, a lost-mutton, gave your letter to her, a laced- mutton, and she, a laced-mutton, gave me, a lost-mutton, nothing for my labour. PROTEUS Here's too small a pasture for such store of muttons. SPEED If the ground be overcharged, you were best stick her. PROTEUS Nay, in that you are astray: 'twere best pound you. SPEED Nay, sir, less than a pound shall serve me for carrying your letter. PROTEUS You mistake: I mean the pound - a pinfold. SPEED From a pound to a pin? Fold it over and over, 'tis threefold too little for carrying a letter to your lover. Speed PROTEUS But what said she? Nods his head SPEED Ay. PROTEUS Nod - ay - why, that's 'noddy'. SPEED You mistook, sir: I say she did nod, and you ask me if she did nod, and I say 'ay'. PROTEUS And that set together is noddy. SPEED Now you have taken the pains to set it together, take it for your pains. PROTEUS No, no, you shall have it for bearing the letter. SPEED Well, I perceive I must be fain to bear with you. PROTEUS Why sir, how do you bear with me? SPEED Marry, sir, the letter, very orderly, having nothing but the word 'noddy' for my pains. PROTEUS Beshrew me, but you have a quick wit. SPEED And yet it cannot overtake your slow purse. PROTEUS Come come, open the matter in brief: what said she? SPEED Open your purse, that the money and the matter may be both at once delivered. PROTEUS Well, sir: here is for your pains. What said she? Gives a coin SPEED Truly, sir, I think you'll hardly win her. Examines coin, with contempt PROTEUS Why? Couldst thou perceive so much from her? SPEED Sir, I could perceive nothing at all from her; no, not so much as a ducat for delivering your letter. And being so hard to me that brought your mind, I fear she'll prove as hard to you in telling your mind. Give her no token but stones, for she's as hard as steel. PROTEUS What said she, nothing? SPEED No, not so much as 'Take this for thy pains.' To testify your bounty, I thank you, you have testerned me; in requital whereof, henceforth carry your letters yourself. And so, sir, I'll commend you to my master. PROTEUS Go, go, begone, to save your ship from wreck, [Exit Speed] Which cannot perish having thee aboard, Being destined to a drier death on shore. I must go send some better messenger: I fear my Julia would not deign my lines, Receiving them from such a worthless post. Exit Act 1 Scene 2 running scene 2 Enter Julia and Lucetta JULIA But say, Lucetta - now we are alone - Wouldst thou then counsel me to fall in love? LUCETTA Ay, madam, so you stumble not unheedfully. JULIA Of all the fair resort of gentlemen That every day with parle encounter me, In thy opinion, which is worthiest love? LUCETTA Please you repeat their names, I'll show my mind, According to my shallow simple skill. JULIA What think'st thou of the fair Sir Eglamour? LUCETTA As of a knight well-spoken, neat and fine; But, were I you, he never should be mine. JULIA What think'st thou of the rich Mercatio? LUCETTA Well of his wealth; but of himself, so so. JULIA What think'st thou of the gentle Proteus? LUCETTA Lord, Lord: to see what folly reigns in us! JULIA How now? What means this passion at his name? LUCETTA Pardon, dear madam: 'tis a passing shame That I - unworthy body as I am - Should censure thus on lovely gentlemen. JULIA Why not on Proteus, as of all the rest? LUCETTA Then thus: of many good, I think him best. JULIA Your reason? LUCETTA I have no other, but a woman's reason: I think him so because I think him so. JULIA And wouldst thou have me cast my love on him? LUCETTA Ay, if you thought your love not cast away. JULIA Why he, of all the rest, hath never moved me. LUCETTA Yet he, of all the rest, I think best loves ye. JULIA His little speaking shows his love but small. LUCETTA Fire that's closest kept burns most of all. JULIA They do not love that do not show their love. LUCETTA O, they love least that let men know their love. JULIA I would I knew his mind. LUCETTA Peruse this paper, madam. Gives a letter JULIA 'To Julia'. Say, from whom? LUCETTA That the contents will show. JULIA Say, say: who gave it thee? LUCETTA Sir Valentine's page: and sent, I think, from Proteus. He would have given it you, but I, being in the way, Did in your name receive it: pardon the fault, I pray. JULIA Now, by my modesty, a goodly broker! Dare you presume to harbour wanton lines? To whisper and conspire against my youth? Now trust me, 'tis an office of great worth, And you an officer fit for the place. There, take the paper: see it be returned, Or else return no more into my sight. LUCETTA To plead for love deserves more fee than hate. JULIA Will ye be gone? LUCETTA That you may ruminate. Exit JULIA And yet I would I had o'erlooked the letter; It were a shame to call her back again And pray her to a fault for which I chid her. What fool is she, that knows I am a maid, And would not force the letter to my view! Since maids, in modesty, say 'no' to that Which they would have the profferer construe 'ay'. Fie, fie: how wayward is this foolish love That - like a testy babe - will scratch the nurse And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod! How churlishly I chid Lucetta hence, When willingly I would have had her here! How angerly I taught my brow to frown, When inward joy enforced my heart to smile! My penance is to call Lucetta back And ask remission for my folly past. What ho! Lucetta! [Enter Lucetta] LUCETTA What would your ladyship? JULIA Is't near dinner-time? LUCETTA I would it were, That you might kill your stomach on your meat And not upon your maid. Drops a letter, JULIA What is't that you took up so gingerly? then picks it up LUCETTA Nothing. JULIA Why didst thou stoop then? LUCETTA To take a paper up that I let fall. JULIA And is that paper nothing? LUCETTA Nothing concerning me. JULIA Then let it lie for those that it concerns. LUCETTA Madam, it will not lie where it concerns, Unless it have a false interpreter. JULIA Some love of yours hath writ to you in rhyme. LUCETTA That I might sing it, madam, to a tune. Give me a note: your ladyship can set- JULIA As little by such toys as may be possible. Best sing it to the tune of 'Light o'love'. LUCETTA It is too heavy for so light a tune. JULIA Heavy? Belike it hath some burden then? LUCETTA Ay, and melodious were it, would you sing it. JULIA And why not you? LUCETTA I cannot reach so high. JULIA Let's see your song. Takes the letter How now, minion! LUCETTA Keep tune there still, so you will sing it out: And yet methinks I do not like this tune. JULIA You do not? LUCETTA No, madam, 'tis too sharp. JULIA You, minion, are too saucy. LUCETTA Nay, now you are too flat, And mar the concord with too harsh a descant: There wanteth but a mean to fill your song. JULIA The mean is drowned with your unruly bass. LUCETTA Indeed, I bid the base for Proteus. JULIA This babble shall not henceforth trouble me. Here is a coil with protestation! Tears the letter Go, get you gone, and let the papers lie: You would be fing'ring them to anger me. LUCETTA She makes it strange, but she would be best pleased To be so angered with another letter. [Exit] JULIA Nay, would I were so angered with the same: O hateful hands, to tear such loving words; Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey And kill the bees that yield it with your stings! I'll kiss each several paper for amends. Look, here is writ 'kind Julia'. Unkind Julia, ØExamining the piecesØ As in revenge of thy ingratitude, I throw thy name against the bruising stones, Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain. And here is writ 'love-wounded Proteus'. Poor wounded name: my bosom as a bed Shall lodge thee till thy wound be throughly healed; And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss. But twice or thrice was 'Proteus' written down. Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away Till I have found each letter, in the letter, Except mine own name: that, some whirlwind bear Unto a ragged, fearful, hanging rock, And throw it thence into the raging sea. Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ: 'Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus, To the sweet Julia': that I'll tear away: And yet I will not, sith so prettily He couples it to his complaining names. Thus will I fold them, one upon another; Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will. [Enter Lucetta] LUCETTA Madam, dinner is ready, and your father stays. JULIA Well, let us go. LUCETTA What, shall these papers lie like tell-tales here? JULIA If you respect them, best to take them up. LUCETTA Nay, I was taken up for laying them down. Yet here they shall not lie, for catching cold. Picks up the pieces JULIA I see you have a month's mind to them. LUCETTA Ay, madam, you may say what sights you see; I see things too, although you judge I wink. JULIA Come, come: will't please you go? Exeunt Act 1 Scene 3 running scene 3 Enter Antonio and Pantino ANTONIO Tell me, Pantino, what sad talk was that Wherewith my brother held you in the cloister? PANTINO 'Twas of his nephew Proteus, your son. ANTONIO Why? What of him? PANTINO He wondered that your lordship Would suffer him to spend his youth at home, While other men, of slender reputation, Put forth their sons to seek preferment out: Some to the wars to try their fortune there, Some to discover islands far away, Some to the studious universities; For any or for all these exercises, He said that Proteus your son was meet, And did request me to importune you To let him spend his time no more at home, Which would be great impeachment to his age, In having known no travel in his youth. Excerpted from The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Chapter 1 Act 1 Scene 1 running scene 1 Enter Valentine [and] Proteus VALENTINE Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus: Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits. |
| Were't not affection chains thy tender days To the sweet glances of thy honoured love, I rather would entreat thy company To see the wonders of the world abroad, Than - living dully sluggardized at home - Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness. |
| But since thou lov'st, love still, and thrive therein, Even as I would, when I to love begin. |
| PROTEUS Wilt thou be gone? Sweet Valentine, adieu. |
| Think on thy Proteus, when thou haply see'st Some rare noteworthy object in thy travel. |
| Wish me partaker in thy happiness When thou dost meet good hap: and in thy danger - If ever danger do environ thee - Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers, For I will be thy beadsman, Valentine. |
| VALENTINE And on a love-book pray for my success? PROTEUS Upon some book I love, I'll pray for thee. |
| VALENTINE That's on some shallow story of deep love: How young Leander crossed the Hellespont. |
| PROTEUS That's a deep story, of a deeper love, For he was more than over-shoes in love. |
| VALENTINE 'Tis true: for you are over-boots in love, And yet you never swam the Hellespont. |
| PROTEUS Over the boots? Nay, give me not the boots. |
| VALENTINE No, I will not, for it boots thee not. |
| PROTEUS What? VALENTINE To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans: Coy looks with heart-sore sighs, one fading moment's mirth, With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights; If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain, If lost, why then a grievous labour won; However, but a folly bought with wit, Or else a wit by folly vanquishèd. |
| PROTEUS So, by your circumstance, you call me fool. |
| VALENTINE So, by your circumstance, I fear you'll prove. |
| PROTEUS 'Tis Love you cavil at: I am not Love. |
| VALENTINE Love is your master, for he masters you: And he that is so yokèd by a fool, Methinks should not be chronicled for wise. |
| PROTEUS Yet writers say: as in the sweetest bud The eating canker dwells, so eating love Inhabits in the finest wits of all. |
| VALENTINE And writers say: as the most forward bud Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, Even so by love, the young and tender wit Is turned to folly, blasting in the bud, Losing his verdure, even in the prime, And all the fair effects of future hopes. |
| But wherefore waste I time to counsel thee That art a votary to fond desire? Once more, adieu. My father at the road Expects my coming, there to see me shipped. |
| PROTEUS And thither will I bring thee, Valentine. |
| VALENTINE Sweet Proteus, no: now let us take our leave. |
| To Milan let me hear from thee by letters Of thy success in love, and what news else Betideth here in absence of thy friend: And I likewise will visit thee with mine. |
| PROTEUS All happiness bechance to thee in Milan. |
| VALENTINE As much to you at home: and so, farewell. Exit PROTEUS He after honour hunts, I after love; He leaves his friends to dignify them more; I leave myself, my friends and all, for love. |
| Thou, Julia, thou hast metamorphosed me: Made me neglect my studies, lose my time, War with good counsel, set the world at nought; Made wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought. |
| [Enter Speed] SPEED Sir Proteus, 'save you. Saw you my master? PROTEUS But now he parted hence to embark for Milan. |
| SPEED Twenty to one then, he is shipped already, And I have played the sheep in losing him. |
| PROTEUS Indeed, a sheep doth very often stray, An if the shepherd be awhile away. |
| SPEED You conclude that my master is a shepherd, then, and I a sheep? PROTEUS I do. |
| SPEED Why then, my horns are his horns, whether I wake or sleep. |
| PROTEUS A silly answer, and fitting well a sheep. |
| SPEED This proves me still a sheep. |
| PROTEUS True: and thy master a shepherd. |
| SPEED Nay, that I can deny by a circumstance. |
| PROTEUS It shall go hard but I'll prove it by another. |
| SPEED The shepherd seeks the sheep, and not the sheep the shepherd; but I seek my master, and my master seeks not me. Therefore I am no sheep. |
| PROTEUS The sheep for fodder follow the shepherd, the shepherd for food follows not the sheep: thou for wages followest thy master, thy master for wages follows not thee. Therefore thou art a sheep. |
| SPEED Such another proof will make me cry 'baa'. |
| PROTEUS But dost thou hear? Gav'st thou my letter to Julia? SPEED Ay, sir: I, a lost-mutton, gave your letter to her, a laced- mutton, and she, a laced-mutton, gave me, a lost-mutton, nothing for my labour. |
| PROTEUS Here's too small a pasture for such store of muttons. |
| SPEED If the ground be overcharged, you were best stick her. |
| PROTEUS Nay, in that you are astray: 'twere best pound you. |
| SPEED Nay, sir, less than a pound shall serve me for carrying your letter. |
| PROTEUS You mistake: I mean the pound - a pinfold. |
| SPEED From a pound to a pin? Fold it over and over, 'tis threefold too little for carrying a letter to your lover. Speed PROTEUS But what said she? Nods his head SPEED Ay. |
| PROTEUS Nod - ay - why, that's 'noddy'. |
| SPEED You mistook, sir: I say she did nod, and you ask me if she did nod, and I say 'ay'. |
| PROTEUS And that set together is noddy. |
| SPEED Now you have taken the pains to set it together, take it for your pains. |
| PROTEUS No, no, you shall have it for bearing the letter. |
| SPEED Well, I perceive I must be fain to bear with you. |
| PROTEUS Why sir, how do you bear with me? SPEED Marry, sir, the letter, very orderly, having nothing but the word 'noddy' for my pains. |
| PROTEUS Beshrew me, but you have a quick wit. |
| SPEED And yet it cannot overtake your slow purse. |
| PROTEUS Come come, open the matter in brief: what said she? SPEED Open your purse, that the money and the matter may be both at once delivered. |
| PROTEUS Well, sir: here is for your pains. What said she? Gives a coin SPEED Truly, sir, I think you'll hardly win her. Examines coin, with contempt PROTEUS Why? Couldst thou perceive so much from her? SPEED Sir, I could perceive nothing at all from her; no, not so much as a ducat for delivering your letter. And being so hard to me that brought your mind, I fear she'll prove as hard to you in telling your mind. Give her no token but stones, for she's as hard as steel. |
| PROTEUS What said she, nothing? SPEED No, not so much as 'Take this for thy pains.' To testify your bounty, I thank you, you have testerned me; in requital whereof, henceforth carry your letters yourself. And so, sir, I'll commend you to my master. |
| PROTEUS Go, go, begone, to save your ship from wreck, [Exit Speed] Which cannot perish having thee aboard, Being destined to a drier death on shore. |
| I must go send some better messenger: I fear my Julia would not deign my lines, Receiving them from such a worthless post. Exit Act 1 Scene 2 running scene 2 Enter Julia and Lucetta JULIA But say, Lucetta - now we are alone - Wouldst thou then counsel me to fall in love? LUCETTA Ay, madam, so you stumble not unheedfully. |
| JULIA Of all the fair resort of gentlemen That every day with parle encounter me, In thy opinion, which is worthiest love? LUCETTA Please you repeat their names, I'll show my mind, According to my shallow simple skill. |
| JULIA What think'st thou of the fair Sir Eglamour? LUCETTA As of a knight well-spoken, neat and fine; But, were I you, he never should be mine. |
| JULIA What think'st thou of the rich Mercatio? LUCETTA Well of his wealth; but of himself, so so. |
| JULIA What think'st thou of the gentle Proteus? LUCETTA Lord, Lord: to see what folly reigns in us! JULIA How now? What means this passion at his name? LUCETTA Pardon, dear madam: 'tis a passing shame That I - unworthy body as I am - Should censure thus on lovely gentlemen. |
| JULIA Why not on Proteus, as of all the rest? LUCETTA Then thus: of many good, I think him best. |
| JULIA Your reason? LUCETTA I have no other, but a woman's reason: I think him so because I think him so. |
| JULIA And wouldst thou have me cast my love on him? LUCETTA Ay, if you thought your love not cast away. |
| JULIA Why he, of all the rest, hath never moved me. |
| LUCETTA Yet he, of all the rest, I think best loves ye. |
| JULIA His little speaking shows his love but small. |
| LUCETTA Fire that's closest kept burns most of all. |
| JULIA They do not love that do not show their love. |
| LUCETTA O, they love least that let men know their love. |
| JULIA I would I knew his mind. |
| LUCETTA Peruse this paper, madam. Gives a letter JULIA 'To Julia'. Say, from whom? LUCETTA That the contents will show. |
| JULIA Say, say: who gave it thee? LUCETTA Sir Valentine's page: and sent, I think, from Proteus. |
| He would have given it you, but I, being in the way, Did in your name receive it: pardon the fault, I pray. |
| JULIA Now, by my modesty, a goodly broker! Dare you presume to harbour wanton lines? To whisper and conspire against my youth? Now trust me, 'tis an office of great worth, And you an officer fit for the place. |
| There, take the paper: see it be returned, Or else return no more into my sight. |
| LUCETTA To plead for love deserves more fee than hate. |
| JULIA Will ye be gone? LUCETTA That you may ruminate. Exit JULIA And yet I would I had o'erlooked the letter; It were a shame to call her back again And pray her to a fault for which I chid her. |
| What fool is she, that knows I am a maid, And would not force the letter to my view! Since maids, in modesty, say 'no' to that Which they would have the profferer construe 'ay'. |
| Fie, fie: how wayward is this foolish love That - like a testy babe - will scratch the nurse And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod! How churlishly I chid Lucetta hence, When willingly I would have had her here! How angerly I taught my brow to frown, When inward joy enforced my heart to smile! My penance is to call Lucetta back And ask remission for my folly past. |
| What ho! Lucetta! [Enter Lucetta] LUCETTA What would your ladyship? JULIA Is't near dinner-time? LUCETTA I would it were, That you might kill your stomach on your meat And not upon your maid. Drops a letter, JULIA What is't that you took up so gingerly? then picks it up LUCETTA Nothing. |
| JULIA Why didst thou stoop then? LUCETTA To take a paper up that I let fall. |
| JULIA And is that paper nothing? LUCETTA Nothing concerning me. |
| JULIA Then let it lie for those that it concerns. |
| LUCETTA Madam, it will not lie where it concerns, Unless it have a false interpreter. |
| JULIA Some love of yours hath writ to you in rhyme. |
| LUCETTA That I might sing it, madam, to a tune. |
| Give me a note: your ladyship can set- JULIA As little by such toys as may be possible. |
| Best sing it to the tune of 'Light o'love'. |
| LUCETTA It is too heavy for so light a tune. |
| JULIA Heavy? Belike it hath some burden then? LUCETTA Ay, and melodious were it, would you sing it. |
| JULIA And why not you? LUCETTA I cannot reach so high. |
| JULIA Let's see your song. Takes the letter How now, minion! LUCETTA Keep tune there still, so you will sing it out: And yet methinks I do not like this tune. |
| JULIA You do not? LUCETTA No, madam, 'tis too sharp. |
| JULIA You, minion, are too saucy. |
| LUCETTA Nay, now you are too flat, And mar the concord with too harsh a descant: There wanteth but a mean to fill your song. |
| JULIA The mean is drowned with your unruly bass. |
| LUCETTA Indeed, I bid the base for Proteus. |
| JULIA This babble shall not henceforth trouble me. |
| Here is a coil with protestation! Tears the letter Go, get you gone, and let the papers lie: You would be fing'ring them to anger me. |
| LUCETTA She makes it strange, but she would be best pleased To be so angered with another letter. [Exit] JULIA Nay, would I were so angered with the same: O hateful hands, to tear such loving words; Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey And kill the bees that yield it with your stings! I'll kiss each several paper for amends. |
| Look, here is writ 'kind Julia'. Unkind Julia, ØExamining the piecesØ As in revenge of thy ingratitude, I throw thy name against the bruising stones, Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain. |
| And here is writ 'love-wounded Proteus'. |
| Poor wounded name: my bosom as a bed Shall lodge thee till thy wound be throughly healed; And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss. |
| But twice or thrice was 'Proteus' written down. |
| Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away Till I have found each letter, in the letter, Except mine own name: that, some whirlwind bear Unto a ragged, fearful, hanging rock, And throw it thence into the raging sea. |
| Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ: 'Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus, To the sweet Julia': that I'll tear away: And yet I will not, sith so prettily He couples it to his complaining names. |
| Thus will I fold them, one upon another; Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will. |
| [Enter Lucetta] LUCETTA Madam, dinner is ready, and your father stays. |
| JULIA Well, let us go. |
| LUCETTA What, shall these papers lie like tell-tales here? JULIA If you respect them, best to take them up. |
| LUCETTA Nay, I was taken up for laying them down. |
| Yet here they shall not lie, for catching cold. Picks up the pieces JULIA I see you have a month's mind to them. |
| LUCETTA Ay, madam, you may say what sights you see; I see things too, although you judge I wink. |
| JULIA Come, come: will't please you go? Exeunt Act 1 Scene 3 running scene 3 Enter Antonio and Pantino ANTONIO Tell me, Pantino, what sad talk was that Wherewith my brother held you in the cloister? PANTINO 'Twas of his nephew Proteus, your son. |
| ANTONIO Why? What of him? PANTINO He wondered that your lordship Would suffer him to spend his youth at home, While other men, of slender reputation, Put forth their sons to seek preferment out: Some to the wars to try their fortune there, Some to discover islands far away, Some to the studious universities; For any or for all these exercises, He said that Proteus your son was meet, And did request me to importune you To let him spend his time no more at home, Which would be great impeachment to his age, In having known no travel in his youth. |
