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. (1.1.91-100)

 

At this point one might be forgiven for running away screaming… Sheep jokes continue; Speed gets bawdier. It is more interesting than it might first appear, and also more sophisticated. Maybe.

 

To unpack: Proteus finally remembers something important. Dost thou hear? Gav’st thou my letter to Julia? Did you deliver my note to my (possible) girlfriend? Speed, it seems, is running errands for his master’s friend as well as for Valentine himself; it might be another indication of the friends’ intimacy or else Proteus doesn’t trust his own servant… (why that might be the case will in due course be seen…)

 

And Speed is trying to gain the upper hand again, in what initially seems like a change of subject. Ay, sir. Yes, I did deliver it. 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. The sheep has now been reduced to mutton; Speed is a lost mutton to allow him to suggest that Julia is a laced mutton, mutton being slang for a prostitute. (There is no reason to believe that Julia is a prostitute, it’s just for the sake of continuing to mine the rich seam of sheep-related humour.) Laced is here mostly to parallel lost; it could mean trimmed up in finery, flashily dressed—mutton dressed as lamb. (It could be setting up the fact that Julia’s waiting gentlewoman is called Lucetta, lost/laced/Luce, and suggesting that in fact Speed gave the letter to her.) Speed is mostly making the point, however, that he didn’t get paid for delivering the letter, both as a grievance and because he wants Proteus to pay him more.

 

But Proteus is still thinking about the sheep: here’s too small a pasture for such store of muttons. Too many sheep, already! And also the suggestion, if pasture is ground, that the ground of the argument has become over-extended. But Speed is On Fire: if the ground be overcharged, you were best stick her. If there are too many sheep for the field, if there’s not enough feed to go around—well, it’s time to send the lambs to the slaughter. (Stick her, of course, means have sex with, too…) Proteus is—rueful? embarrassed? incensed? Nay, in that you are astray. Not going to happen. Julia is Virtuous! (An anticipation of Romeo’s infatuation with Rosaline, who has sworn a vow of chastity?) ’Twere best pound you, beat you (as servants would expect to be beaten; picking up on the violence of stick) and also impound you, as stray animals would be.

 

Speed goes back to his main point, by pretending a wilful misunderstanding: Nay, sir, less than a pound shall serve me for carrying your letter. Even I wouldn’t ask for that much money for a simple errand! And Proteus more or less concedes defeat by having to explain his joke: You mistake. I mean the pound, a pinfold. Yes, Proteus, we know; a pound for stray animals, especially sheep and cattle, was a pinfold. And Speed picks it up and WINS: from a pound to a pin? That’s from the sublime—a disproportionately massive tip!—to the ridiculous, something which is a byword for the insignificant and trivial. Fold it over and over—even if you multiply it, it’s still threefold too little for carrying a letter to your lover. A letter is a folded thing, in a time before envelopes, a small folded packet—and of course sheep are kept in folds too, when they haven’t gone astray—and so in his final flourish, Speed brings this admittedly terrible series of puns together, gathering the sheep back into the fold and straying no further.