By aught that I can speak in his dispraise,
She shall not long continue love to him.
But, say this weed her love from Valentine,
It follows not that she will love sir Thurio.
THU. Therefore, as you unwind her love from him,
Lest it should ravel, and be good to none,
You must provide to bottom it on me 23;
Which must be done, by praising me as much
As you in worth dispraise sir Valentine.

DUKE. And, Proteus, we dare trust you in this kind;
Because we know, on Valentine's report,

You are already love's firm votary,

And cannot soon revolt and change your mind.
Upon this warrant shall you have access
Where you with Silvia may confer at large;
For she is lumpish, heavy, melancholy,
And, for your friend's sake, will be glad of you;
Where you may temper her, by your persuasion,
To hate young Valentine, and love my friend.
PRO. As much as I can do, I will effect:-

But you, sir Thurio, are not sharp enough;
You must lay lime, to tangle her desires,
By wailful sonnets, whose composed rhymes
Should be full fraught with serviceable vows.
DUKE. Ay, much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.
PRO. 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 poet's 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 consorta: to their instruments

Tune a deploring dumpb; the night's dead silence

Will well become such sweet complaining grievance.

This, or else nothing, will inherit her.

Consort. The musicians consorted-chosen to play together-were called the consort; and so was the selection of the music they performed-modernized into concert.

Dump-a mournful elegy. Dump, or dumps, for sorrow, was not originally a burlesque

DUKE. This discipline shows thou hast been in love.
THU. And thy advice this night I 'll put in practice.
Therefore, sweet Proteus, my direction-giver,
Let us into the city presently

To sorta some gentlemen well skill'd in music:
I have a sonnet that will serve the turn,
To give the onset to thy good advice.

DUKE. About it, gentlemen.

PRO. We'll wait upon your grace, till after supper;
And afterward determine our proceedings.

DUKE. Even now about it; I will pardon you.

• Sort-to choose.

[Exeunt.

1 OUT. Fellows, stand fast; I see a passenger.

2 OUT. If there be ten, shrink not, but down with 'em.

3 OUT. Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about you;
If not, we 'll make you sit, and rifle you.

SPEED. Sir, we are undone! these are the villains
That all the travellers do fear so much.

VAL. My friends,

1 OUT. That's not so, sir; we are your enemies.

2 OUT. Peace! we 'll hear him.

3 Our. Ay, by my beard, will we; for he is a proper man!

VAL. Then know, that I have little wealth to lose;

A man I am cross'd 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.

2 OUT. Whither travel you?

VAL. TO Verona.

1 OUT. Whence came you? VAL. From Milan.

3 OUT. Have you long sojourn'd there?

VAL. Some sixteen months; and longer might have stay'd,
If crook'd fortune had not thwarted me.

1 OUT. What, were you banish'd thence?

VAL. I was.

2 OUT. For what offence?

VAL. For that which now torments me to rehearse:
I kill'd a man, whose death I much repent;
But yet I slew him manfully in fight,
Without false vantage, or base treachery.

1 OUT. Why, ne'er repent it, if it were done so:
But were you banish'd for so small a fault?
VAL. I was, and held me glad of such a doom.
1 OUT. Have you the tongues?

VAL. My youthful travel therein made me happy;
Or else I often had been miserable.

3 OUT. By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar 24,
This fellow were a king for our wild faction!

1 OUT. We'll have him; sirs, a word.

SPEED. Master, be one of them;

It is an honourable kind of thievery.

VAL. Peace, villain!

2 OUT. Tell us this: Have you anything to take to? VAL. Nothing but my fortune.

3 OUT. Know then, that some of us are gentlemen,
Such as the fury of ungovern'd youth

Thrust from the company of awfula men:
Myself was from Verona banished,

For practising to steal away a lady,

An heir, and near allied unto the duke. 2 OUT. And I from Mantua, for a gentleman,

Whom, in my mood, I stabb'd unto the heart. 1 OUT. And I, for such like petty crimes as these. But to the purpose,-for we cite our faults,

That they may hold excus'd our lawless lives,

Awful. Steevens and others think we should here read lawful. But Shakspere, in other places, uses this word in the sense of lawful:

"We come within our awful banks again."

The original gives the line thus:

"And heire and Neece, alide unto the Duke."

Theobald gave us near, which is probably correct. It would be neere in the manuscript.

3 OUT. What say'st thou? wilt thou be of our consort?

Say, ay, and be the captain of us all :

We'll do thee homage, and be rul'd by thee,
Love thee as our commander, and our king.

1 OUT. But if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest.
2 OUT. Thou shalt not live to brag what we have offer'd.
VAL. I take your offer, and will live with you;

Provided that you do no outrages

On silly women, or poor passengers.

3 OUT. No, we detest such vile base practices.
Come, go with us, we 'll bring thee to our crews,
And shew thee all the treasure we have got;
Which, with ourselves, all rest at thy dispose.

SCENE II.-Milan. Court of the Palace.

Enter PROTEUS.

PRO. 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 lov'd:
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.

[Exeunt.