William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition (25 page)

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Authors: William Shakespeare

Tags: #Drama, #Literary Criticism, #Shakespeare

BOOK: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition
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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
To be corrupted with my worthless gifts.
When I protest true loyalty to her
She twits me with my falsehood to my friend.
When to her beauty I commend my vows
She bids me think how I have been forsworn
In breaking faith with Julia, whom I loved.
And notwithstanding all her sudden quips,
The least whereof would quell a lover’s hope,
Yet, spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love,
The more it grows and fawneth on her still.
But here comes Thurio. Now must we to her window,
And give some evening music to her ear.
Enter Thurio with Musicians
 
THURIO
How now, Sir Proteus, are you crept before us?
PROTEUS
Ay, gentle Thurio, for you know that love
Will creep in service where it cannot go.
THURIO
Ay, but I hope, sir, that you love not here.
PROTEUS
Sir, but I do, or else I would be hence.
THURIO
Who, Silvia?
PROTEUS
Ay, Silvia—for your sake.
THURIO
I thank you for your own. Now, gentlemen,
Let’s tune, and to it lustily awhile.
Enter the Host, and Julia, dressed as a page-boy.
They talk apart
 
HOST Now, my young guest, methinks you’re allycholly. I pray you, why is it?
JULIA Marry, mine host, because I cannot be merry.
HOST Come, we’ll have you merry. I’ll bring you where you shall hear music, and see the gentleman that you asked for.
JULIA But shall I hear him speak?
HOST Ay, that you shall.
JULIA That will be music.
HOST Hark, hark.
JULIA Is he among these?
HOST Ay. But peace, let’s hear ’em.
Song
 
Who is Silvia? What is she,
That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she.
The heaven such grace did lend her
That she might admired be.
Is she kind as she is fair?
For beauty lives with kindness.
Love doth to her eyes repair
To help him of his blindness,
And, being helped, inhabits there.
Then to Silvia let us sing
That Silvia is excelling.
She excels each mortal thing
Upon the dull earth dwelling.
To her let us garlands bring.
 
HOST How now, are you sadder than you were before? How do you, man? The music likes you not.
JULIA You mistake. The musician likes me not.
HOST Why, my pretty youth?
JULIA He plays false, father.
HOST How, out of tune on the strings?
JULIA Not so, but yet so false that he grieves my very heart-strings.
HOST You have a quick ear.
JULIA Ay, I would I were deaf. It makes me have a slow heart.
HOST I perceive you delight not in music.
JULIA Not a whit when it jars so.
HOST Hark what fine change is in the music.
JULIA Ay, that ‘change’ is the spite.
HOST You would have them always play but one thing?
JULIA I would always have one play but one thing. But host, doth this Sir Proteus that we talk on often resort unto this gentlewoman?
HOST I tell you what Lance his man told me, he loved her out of all nick.
JULIA Where is Lance?
HOST Gone to seek his dog, which tomorrow, by his master’s command, he must carry for a present to his lady.
JULIA Peace, stand aside. The company parts.
PROTEUS
Sir Thurio, fear not you. I will so plead
That you shall say my cunning drift excels.
THURIO
Where meet we?
PROTEUS At Saint Gregory’s well.
THURIO Farewell.
Exeunt Thurio and the Musicians
Enter Silvia, above
 
PROTEUS
Madam, good even to your ladyship.
SILVIA
I thank you for your music, gentlemen.
Who is that that spake?
PROTEUS
One, lady, if you knew his pure heart’s truth
You would quickly learn to know him by his voice.
SILVIA Sir Proteus, as I take it.
PROTEUS
Sir Proteus, gentle lady, and your servant.
SILVIA
What’s your will?
PROTEUS That I may compass yours.
SILVIA
You have your wish. My will is even this,
That presently you hie you home to bed.
Thou subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man,
Think’st thou I am so shallow, so conceitless
To be seduced by thy flattery,
That hast deceived so many with thy vows?
Return, return, and make thy love amends.
For me—by this pale queen of night I swear—
I am so far from granting thy request
That I despise thee for thy wrongful suit,
And by and by intend to chide myself
Even for this time I spend in talking to thee.
PROTEUS
I grant, sweet love, that I did love a lady,
But she is dead.
JULIA
(aside)
‘Twere false if I should speak it,
For I am sure she is not buried.
SILVIA
Say that she be, yet Valentine, thy friend,
Survives, to whom, thyself art witness,
I am betrothed. And art thou not ashamed
To wrong him with thy importunacy?
PROTEUS
I likewise hear that Valentine is dead.
SILVIA
And so suppose am I, for in his grave,
Assure thyself, my love is buried.
PROTEUS
Sweet lady, let me rake it from the earth.
SILVIA
Go to thy lady’s grave and call hers thence,
Or at the least, in hers sepulchre thine.
JULIA
(aside)
He heard not that.
PROTEUS
Madam, if your heart be so obdurate,
Vouchsafe me yet your picture for my love,
The picture that is hanging in your chamber.
To that I’ll speak, to that I’ll sigh and weep;
For since the substance of your perfect self
Is else devoted, I am but a shadow,
And to your shadow will I make true love.
JULIA
(aside)
If ’twere a substance, you would sure deceive it
And make it but a shadow, as I am.
SILVIA
I am very loath to be your idol, sir,
But since your falsehood shall become you well
To worship shadows and adore false shapes,
Send to me in the morning, and I’ll send it.
And so, good rest.
Exit
PROTEUS
As wretches have o’ernight,
That wait for execution in the morn.
Exit
JULIA Host, will you go?
HOST By my halidom, I was fast asleep.
JULIA Pray you, where lies Sir Proteus?
HOST Marry, at my house. Trust me, I think ’tis almost day.
JULIA
Not so; but it hath been the longest night
That e’er I watched, and the most heaviest.
Exeunt
 
4.3
Enter Sir Eglamour
 
EGLAMOUR
This is the hour that Madam Silvia
Entreated me to call, and know her mind.
There’s some great matter she’d employ me in.
Madam, madam!
Enter Silvia
[
above
]
 
SILVIA Who calls?
EGLAMOUR Your servant, and your friend. One that attends your ladyship’s command.
SILVIA
Sir Eglamour, a thousand times good morrow!
EGLAMOUR
As many, worthy lady, to yourself.
According to your ladyship’s impose
I am thus early come, to know what service
It is your pleasure to command me in.
SILVIA
O Eglamour, thou art a gentleman—
Think not I flatter, for I swear I do not—
Valiant, wise, remorseful, well accomplished.
Thou art not ignorant what dear good will
I bear unto the banished Valentine,
Nor how my father would enforce me marry
Vain Thurio, whom my very soul abhors.
Thyself hast loved, and I have heard thee say
No grief did ever come so near thy heart
As when thy lady and thy true love died,
Upon whose grave thou vowed’st pure chastity.
Sir Eglamour, I would to Valentine,
To Mantua, where I hear he makes abode;
And for the ways are dangerous to pass
I do desire thy worthy company,
Upon whose faith and honour I repose.
Urge not my father’s anger, Eglamour,
But think upon my grief, a lady’s grief,
And on the justice of my flying hence
To keep me from a most unholy match,
Which heaven and fortune still rewards with plagues.
I do desire thee, even from a heart
As full of sorrows as the sea of sands,
To bear me company and go with me.
If not, to hide what I have said to thee
That I may venture to depart alone.
EGLAMOUR
Madam, I pity much your grievances,
Which, since I know they virtuously are placed,
I give consent to go along with you,
Recking as little what betideth me
As much I wish all good befortune you.
When will you go?
SILVIA
This evening coming.
EGLAMOUR
Where shall I meet you?
SILVIA
At Friar Patrick’s cell,
Where I intend holy confession.
EGLAMOUR
I will not fail your ladyship.
Good morrow, gentle lady.
SILVIA
Good morrow, kind Sir Eglamour.
Exeunt
4.4
Enter Lance and his dog Crab
 
LANCE (
to the audience
) When a man’s servant shall play the cur with him, look you, it goes hard. One that I brought up of a puppy, one that I saved from drowning when three or four of his blind brothers and sisters went to it. I have taught him, even as one would say precisely ‘Thus I would teach a dog’. I was sent to deliver him as a present to Mistress Silvia from my master, and I came no sooner into the dining-chamber but he steps me to her trencher and steals her capon’s leg. O, ‘tis a foul thing when a cur cannot keep himself in all companies. I would have, as one should say, one that takes upon him to be a dog indeed, to be, as it were, a dog at all things. If I had not had more wit than he, to take a fault upon me that he did, I think verily he had been hanged for’t. Sure as I live, he had suffered for’t. You shall judge. He thrusts me himself into the company of three or four gentleman-like dogs under the Duke’s table. He had not been there—bless the mark—a pissing-while but all the chamber smelled him. ‘Out with the dog,’ says one. ‘What cur is that?’ says another. ‘Whip him out,’ says the third. ‘Hang him up,’ says the Duke. I, having been acquainted with the smell before, knew it was Crab, and goes me to the fellow that whips the dogs. ‘Friend,’ quoth I, ‘you mean to whip the dog.’ ‘Ay, marry do I,’ quoth he. ‘You do him the more wrong,’ quoth I, “twas I did the thing you wot of.’ He makes me no more ado, but whips me out of the chamber. How many masters would do this for his servant? 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. (
To Crab
) Thou think’st not of this now. Nay, I remember the trick you served me when I took my leave of Madam Silvia. 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? Didst thou ever see me do such a trick?

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