JULIA  Look, here is writ ‘Kind Julia’ – unkind Julia!

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. (1.2.110-117)

The comedy is all the more extreme if Julia is grovelling around on the floor, picking up the fragments and attempting to decipher them. Look, here is writ ‘Kind Julia’—that cuts her to the quick. I am not kind! I am unkind Julia! Oh what a mean and stupid cow I am! what an unnatural woman! And, as in revenge of thy ingratitude, by way of making amends and punishing myself for my meanness, my gracelessness (thy here is herself, in the form of her name on the scrap of paper) I throw thy name against the bruising stones—look, I’m casting my own name to the ground in disgust, making it suffer (there’s a touch of masochism here, but also histrionics, as if she’s throwing herself to the ground in abject horror and misery)—and then trampling contemptuously on thy—her own—disdain. And so she stamps. It has to look ridiculous, bathetic, especially if the paper scraps flutter away as she tries to crush her own name underfoot.

But there’s more. On another scrap, she spies, is writ ‘Love-wounded Proteus’. Another stab to the heart! Poor wounded name; he’s the one who’s ill done by, also in the form of his name—and that scrap of paper is going to be tucked down her bodice, kept safely in her breast pocket, stuffed into her bra—so that my bosom as a bed shall lodge thee till thy wound be throughly healed. The masochism becomes (auto-)erotic as she imagines tending Proteus—his torn and sullied name, held against her heart—as his nurse, clutched to her breast. The imagined wound becomes her own, in effect, a delicious, fetishistic pain, as she searches, probes the wound with a sovereign, healing kiss. Kiss it better! Lingeringly!