PROTEUS       My lord, I cannot be so soon provided.

Please you deliberate a day or two.

ANTONIO       Look what thou want’st shall be sent after thee.

No more of stay. Tomorrow thou must go.

Come on, Pantino. You shall be employed

To hasten on his expedition.

[Exeunt Antonio and Pantino]           (1.3.72-77)

Proteus is holding it together, being carefully polite: my lord, I cannot be so soon provided. There’s no way I can be ready to travel tomorrow! I need time to make arrangements, get my things together! Travelling clothes, luggage, that sort of thing. Please you deliberate a day or two. Just—pause, for a couple of days, think things through, give it time to come together?

But Antonio’s made his mind up, is pleased with his decisiveness, and wants everything to go forward right now: Look what thou want’st shall be sent after thee: anything you can’t sort out immediately, anything that you discover that you need after all—it can be couriered to you once you’re there! No problem! No more of stay; no quibbling about a possible delay, don’t even think of prevaricating or procrastinating! Tomorrow thou must go; that’s final, deal done. You’re off to Milan in the morning. Come on, Pantino. You shall be employed to hasten on his expedition. You’ll help this lad get his affairs in order, so that he’s packed and ready, bright and early.

And off the two older men go, pleased with the promise of bustle and organisation, perhaps, a bit of pleasurable projection, even, at the prospect of such youthful travels, and reassured that they’re doing the right thing for Proteus, sending him out into the world, to share the social advantages apparently being enjoyed by his friend Valentine in Milan.

Antonio can be grumpy, stern, peremptory, an early version of Capulet telling Juliet that she’s going to marry Paris. Even more than the inflexible issuing of orders, this episode shares with the later play the father’s sense that he’s doing the right thing, and that he’s taking good advice from a friend; it’s more interesting, in both cases, than simply an overbearing father laying down the law.