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Enter Servant.

Ser. Madam, my lord your father2 would speak with

you.

Sil. I'll wait upon his pleasure.

[Exit Ser.

Come, Sir Thurio, Go with me:-Once more, new servant, welcome: I'll leave you to confer of home-affairs;

When you have done, we look to hear from you.
Pro. We'll both attend upon your ladyship.

[Exeunt SIL. THU. and SPEED. Val. Now, tell me, how do all from whence you came? Pro. Your friends are well, and have them much com

mended.

Val. And how do yours?

Pro.

I left them all in health.

Val. How does your lady? and how thrives your love? Pro. My tales of love were wont to weary you;

I know, you joy not in a love-discourse.

Val. Ay, Proteus; but that life is alter'd now :

I have done penance for contemning love;

Whose high imperious3 thoughts have punish'd me,
With bitter fasts, with penitential groans,

With nightly tears, and daily heart-sore sighs;

Is worthless a trisyllable, in the preceding speech of Silvia? Is there any instance of the licence recommended, respecting the adjective worthless, to be found in Shakspeare, or any other writer?

Steevens.

2 Ser. Madam, my lord your father] This speech, in all the editions, is assigned, improperly, to Thurio; but he has been all along upon the stage, and could not know, that the duke wanted his daughter. Besides, the first line and half of Silvia's answer, is evidently addressed to two persons. A servant, therefore, must come in, and deliver the message; and then, Silvia goes out with Thurio. Theobald.

3 Whose high imperious-] For whose I read those. I have contemned love and am punished. Those high thoughts, by which I exalted myself above the human passions or frailties, have brought upon me fasts and groans. Johnson./

I believe the old copy is right. Imperious is an epithet very frequently applied to love, by Shakspeare and his contemporaries. So, in The Famous Historie of George Lord Faukonbridge, 4to. 1616, p. 15: "Such an imperious god is love, and so commanding." A few lines lower, Valentine observes, that" love's a mighty lord." Malone.

For, in revenge of my contempt of love,

Love hath chac'd sleep from my enthralled eyes,
And made them watchers of mine own heart's sorrow.
O, gentle Proteus! love 's a mighty lord;

And hath so humbled me, as, I confess,

There is no woe to his correction,4

Nor, to his service, no such joy on earth!
Now, no discourse, except it be of love;

Now can I break my fast, dine, sup, and sleep,
Upon the very naked name of love.

Pro. Enough; I read your fortune in your eye:
Was this the idol that you worship so?

Val. Even she; and is she not a heavenly saint?
Pro. No; but she is an earthly paragon.

Val. Call her divine.

Pro.

I will not flatter her.

Val. O, flatter me; for love delights in praises. Pro. When I was sick, you gave me bitter pills; And I must minister the like to you.

Val. Then speak the truth by her; if not divine, Yet let her be a principality,5

Sovereign to all the creatures on the earth.

Pro. Except my mistress.

Val.

Sweet, except not any;

Except thou wilt except against my love.
Pro. Have I not reason to prefer mine own?

-no woe to his correction,] No misery that can be compared to the punishment inflicted by love. Herbert called for the prayers of the liturgy a little before his death, saying, None to them, none to them. Johnson.

The same idiom occurs in an old ballad quoted in Cupid's Whirligig, 1616:

5

"There is no comfort in the world
"To women that are kind."

Malone.

a principality,] The first or principal of women. So the old writers use state. "She is a lady, a great state." Latymer. "This look is called in states warlie, in others otherwise." Sir T. More. Johnson.

There is a similar sense of this word in St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, viii. 38:-" nor angels nor principalities."

Mr. M. Mason thus judiciously paraphrases the sentiment of Valentine. "If you will not acknowledge her as divine, let her at least be considered as an angel of the first order, superior to every thing on earth." Steevens.

Val. And I will help thee to prefer her too: She shall be dignified with this high honour,— To bear my lady's train; lest the base earth Should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss, And, of so great a favour growing proud, Disdain to root the summer-swelling flower, 6 And make rough winter everlastingly.

Pro. Why, Valentine, what braggardism is this? Val. Pardon me, Proteus: all I can, is nothing To her, whose worth makes other worthies nothing; She is alone."

[blocks in formation]

Val. Not for the world: why, man, she is mine own: And I as rich, in having such a jewel,

As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.
Forgive me, that I do not dream on thee,
Because thou seest me dote upon my love.
My foolish rival, that her father likes,
Only for his possessions are so huge,
Is gone with her along; and I must after;
For love, thou know'st, is full of jealousy.
Pro. But she loves you?

Val.

Ay, and we are betroth❜d; Nay, more, our marriage hour,

With all the cunning manner of our flight,
Determin'd of: how I must climb her window;
The ladder made of cords; and all the means
Plotted, and 'greed on, for my happiness.
Good Proteus, go with me to my chamber,

6

summer-swelling flower,] I once thought, that our poet had written summer-smelling; but the epithet, which stands in the text, I have since met with in the translation of Lucan, by Sir Arthur Gorges, 1614, B. VIII. p. 354:

66 -no Roman chieftaine should

"Come near to Nyle's Pelusian mould,
"But shun that summer-swelling shore.”

The original is, "-ripasque æstate tumentes," I. 829. May likewise renders it summer-swelled banks. The summer-swelling flower is the flower which swells in summer, till it expands itself into bloom. Steevens..

7 She is alone.] She stands by herself. There is none to be compared to her. Johnson.

In these affairs to aid me, with thy counsel.

Pro. Go on before; I shall enquire you forth;
I must unto the road, to disembark

Some necessaries that I needs must use;
And then I'll presently attend you.
Val. Will you make haste?

Pro. I will.

Even as one heat another heat expels,

[Exit VAL.

Or as one nail by strength drives out another,
So the remembrance of my former love
Is by a newer object quite forgotten."
Is it mine eye, or Valentinus' praise,1

Her true perfection, or my false transgression,

8 the road,] The haven, where ships ride at anchor.

Even as one heat another heat expels,

Or as one nail by strength drives out another,

So the remembrance of my former love

Malone.

Is by a newer object quite forgotten.] Our author seems here to have remembered The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet,

1562:

"And as out of a planke a nayle a nayle doth drive,

"So novel love out of the minde the auncient love doth rive.” So also, in Coriolanus:

"One fire drives out one fire; one nail one nail."

Malone.

1 Is it mine eye, or Valentinus' praise,] The old copy reads"Is it mine or Valentine's praise?" Steevens.

Here Proteus questions with himself, whether it is his own praise or Valentine's, that makes him fall in love with Valentine's mistress. But not to insist on the absurdity of falling in love through his own praises, he had not, indeed, praised her any farther, than giving his opinion of her in three words, when his friend asked it of him.

A word is wanting in the first folio. The line was originally thus:

It is mine EYE, or Valentino's praise?

Proteus had just seen Valentine's mistress, whom her lover had been lavishly praising. His encomiums, therefore, heightening Proteus's ideas of her at the interview, it was the less wonder he should be uncertain, which had made the strongest impression, Valentine's praises, or his own view of her. Warburton.

The first folio reads:

"It is mine, or Valentine's praise."

The second:

"Is it mine then or Valentinean's praise?" Ritson.

I read, as authorized, in a former instance, by the old copy,Valentinus. See Act I. sc. iii. p. 159. Steevens.

1

That makes me, reasonless, to reason thus?
She's fair; and so is Julia, that I love;-
That I did love, for now my love is thaw'd;
Which, like a waxen image 'gainst a fire,2
Bears no impression of the thing it was.
Methinks, my zeal to Valentine is cold;
And that I love him not, as I was wont:
O! but I love his lady, too, too much;
And that's the reason I love him so little.
How shall I dote on her with more advice,3
That thus, without advice, begin to love her?
'Tis but her picture4 I have yet beheld,

2 — a waxen image 'gainst a fire,] Alluding to the figures, made by witches, as representatives of those, whom they designed to torment or destroy. See my note on Macbeth, Act I. sc. iii. Steevens.

King James ascribes these images to the devil, in his treatise of Daemonologie: "to some others, at these times, he teacheth how to make pictures of waxe or claye, that, by the roasting thereof, the persons that they bear the name of may be continually melted, and dried away, by continual sicknesse." See Servius, on the 8th Eclogue of Virgil, Theocritus Idyl 2. 22. Hudibras, p. 2. 1. 2. v. 331. S. W.

3 with more advice,] With more advice, is, on further knowledge, on better consideration. So, in Titus Andronicus:

"The Greeks, upon advice, did bury Ajax."

The word, as Mr. Malone observes, is still current, among mercantile people, whose constant language is, "we are advised by letters from abroad," meaning informed. So, in bills of exchange, the conclusion always is-Without further advice."So, in this very play:

"This pride of hers, upon advice," &c. Again, in Measure for Measure:

"Yet did repent me, after more advice."

Steevens.

4'Tis but her picture —] This is evidently a slip of attention; for he had seen her in the last scene, and in high terms, offered her his service. Johnson.

I believe Proteus means, that, as yet, he had seen only her outward form, without having known her long enough to have any acquaintance with her mind.

So, in Cymbeline:

"All of her, that is out of door, most rich!

"If she be furnish'd with a mind so rare," &c.

Again, in The Winter's Tale, Act II. sc. i:

"Praise her but for this her without-door form."

Perhaps, Proteus is mentally comparing his fate with that of Pyrocles, the hero of Sidney's Arcadia, who fell in love with

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