VALENTINE                Then I am paid,

And once again, I do receive thee honest.

Who by repentance is not satisfied

Is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleased.

By penitence th’Eternal’s wrath’s appeased.

And that my love may appear plain and free,

All that was mine in Silvia I give thee.

JULIA              O me unhappy!                     (5.4.78-85)

It’s weird enough already and it’s going to get weirder. Valentine’s cool! Then I am paid, he says to Proteus, and once again, I do receive thee honest. You clearly regret what you’ve done, you’ve said you’re sorry—moment of madness, really, wasn’t it? you’re a good guy fundamentally, everyone makes mistakes. We’re good, bro. A little more moralising, as the occasion demands, because we can all learn from this: who by repentance is not satisfied is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleased. To err is human, to forgive divine, in essence: if you can’t forgive your best mate when he’s clearly so, so sorry, then what kind of a monster are you? (What kind of a man are you? United front.) And again: by penitence th’Eternal’s wrath’s appeased: God forgives a penitent sinner; repentance is enough. Oh he’s having a lovely time on the moral high ground, is Valentine.

But then. But then. It’s as if Valentine’s high on his own moral certainties, his own sense of being the bigger person—and his delight in being reunited with his old friend (even more, apparently, than in seeing Silvia, WHO IS SILENT, and who has bravely run away to be with him)—so he wants to make a grand gesture. And that my love may appear plain and free—no strings attached, just so you’re absolutely in no doubt as to how totally I forgive you, how much I love you, friend—all that was mine in Silvia I give thee. (This editor groans: so many different readings, so many different ways to explain this, so many ways this has been explained (away) and staged. It’s a challenge…) The better of the two possibilities is that he’s saying, friend, I love you every bit as much as I love Silvia. The more obvious interpretation, however, and the one that is more horrifying to a modern ear, is that Valentine is saying, oh, ok then, you can have Silvia. She was mine, totally my possession, mine to give, obviously—and now you can have her! Aren’t I magnanimous? This is advanced homosociality:[1] Silvia is to be the gift, a trafficked woman cementing forever the bond between Valentine and his friend Proteus. She’s not a person, she’s a vector for male bonding.

Silvia doesn’t speak. She can certainly roll her eyes, appear shocked, panicked, repulsed, furious. Julia does: oh me unhappy! She can’t contain herself any longer; is Proteus going to accept this offer? And, is everything completely rubbish, are all men in fact utter bastards? And she is disguised as a boy in a forest far from home and everything she once depended on has vanished… She probably faints; some editors add a stage direction.

[1] paging Eve Sedgwick, paging Gail Rubin, paging Claude Lévi-Strauss!

From Gayle Rubin, ‘The traffic in women: notes on the political economy of sex’ (1975): ‘If it is women who are being transacted, then it is the men who give and take them who are linked, the women being the conduit of a relationship rather than a partner to it. The exchange of women does not necessarily imply that women are objectified, in the modern sense, since objects in the primitive world are imbued with highly personal qualities. But it does imply a distinction between gift and giver. If women are the gifts, then men are the exchange partners. And it is the partners, not the presents, upon whom reciprocal exchange confers its quasi-mystical power of social linkage … At the most general level, the social organization of sex rests upon gender, obligatory heterosexuality, and the constraint of female sexuality … It would be in the interests of the smooth and continuous operation of such a system if the woman in question did not have too many ideas of her own about whom she might want to sleep with’ (37, 40, 42)

From Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985, 1992): ‘in any erotic rivalry, the bond that links the two rivals is as intense and potent as the bond that links either of the rivals to the beloved: that the bonds of “rivalry” and “love”, differently as they are experienced, are equally powerful and in many senses equivalent … in the total scheme of things, men’s bonds with women are meant to be in a subordinate, complementary, and instrumental relation to bonds with other men’ (21, 51)