VALENTINE    Win her with gifts if she respect not words.

Dumb jewels often in their silent kind

More than quick words do move a woman’s mind.

DUKE  But she did scorn a present that I sent her.

VALENTINE A woman sometime scorns what best contents her.

Send her another. Never give her o’er,

For scorn at first makes after-love the more.         (3.1.89-95)

Valentine can’t resist giving advice, and not only is he beginning to condemn himself out of his own mouth, he’s revealing his own hidden shallows, especially as regards his attitude to women. Win her with gifts if she respect not words. If she’s not responding to your carefully-composed speeches, then try sending her presents! Dumb jewels often in their silent kind more than quick words do move a woman’s mind. As a rhyming couplet it’s got an aphoristic, proverbial quality, it can sound patronizing: women, they appreciate stuff more than wit, especially shiny things. Basic, predictable creatures. You need to think of it in terms of bribing her or buying her, not persuading her; she won’t be able to follow what you say to her anyway—but jewellery? That’s a language that women always understand. Scope for comedy: the Duke could be following avidly, even preparing to take notes, and then be disappointed: but she did scorn a present that I sent her. I tried that! It didn’t work, she didn’t like it, sent it back! A woman sometime scorns what best contents her. Yeah but they do that. Women. They say no thanks when they really mean yes please. It’s all part of the Playing Hard To Get. So send her another. Try again. Never give her o’er: don’t give up, persist, wear her down. For scorn at first makes after-love the more. It is, after all, partly the plot which Shakespeare perfects in Much Ado, and bequeaths thereafter to romantic comedy, via Pride and Prejudice et al: but here it’s in a creepier form. Oh, if she’s dead against you now, that just means that once you’ve ‘persuaded’ her, she’ll be even more into you. Shows she’s got strong feelings, passionate… (Straight out of the pick-up-artist playbook.)