JULIA  It is the lesser blot, modesty finds,

Women to change their shapes than men their minds.

PROTEUS       Than men their minds? ’Tis true. O heaven, were man

But constant, he were perfect. That one error

Fills him with faults, makes him run through all th’ sins;

Inconstancy falls off ere it begins.

What is in Silvia’s face but I may spy

More fresh in Julia’s, with a constant eye? (5.4.106-113)

There’s more than a touch of acid in Julia’s aphoristic little summary, if not desperation (a rhyming couplet can go either way): it is the lesser blot, modesty finds, women to change their shapes than men their minds. If we’re talking about modesty—decorum, polite conduct, as well as anything moral; being a gentleman, one might say—then it’s still better for a woman to dress as a man, unseemly though it might be, than for a man to be so inconstant. (It’s women who are proverbially inconstant—like weathercocks—and Proteus who is named for shape-shifting.) But of course Julia is hoping—it seems, despite everything—that Proteus will change his mind one more time, and transfer his affections from Silvia back to her. Than men their minds? Men change their minds? ’Tis true. MEN are inconstant! (‘Man is a giddy thing’, as Benedick will say at much the same point in Much Ado.) O heaven, were man but constant, he were perfect! And in that line, and its delivery, there’s scope for Proteus to recover: if he can catch Julia’s acid, her irony, then there’s some hope, that they do, after all understand each other—if the implication is, just ONE thing? it’s only inconstancy that makes men completely hopeless, is it!? He goes on to develop the point more seriously, though: that one error fills him with faults, makes him run through all th’ sins. All of men’s faults—all of my faults, my transgressions, my screw-ups—can be ultimately located in inconstancy. (There might be a shamefaced glance at Silvia here—WHO IS STILL SILENT—and a wry look at Valentine; you know me, I’ve always been a bit like this, haven’t I?) I am a fallen creature! We all are! Inconstancy falls off ere it begins. There’s no hope; that’s just the way it is. Inconstancy is, perhaps, a kind of constancy itself; at least it’s predictable? (Much Ado again: ‘Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more. | Men were deceivers ever, | One foot in sea, and one on shore, | To one thing constant never. | Then sigh not so, but let them go, | And be you blithe and bonny, | Converting all your sounds of woe | Into hey nonny, nonny’. It is slightly, ‘boys will be boys’, what are we LIKE?)

Then a rather ill-judged piece of misplaced gallantry: what is in Silvia’s face but I may spy, more fresh in Julia’s, with a constant eye? You’re every bit as pretty as her, babe—prettier, even, now I come to look at you again! (Please let Julia roll her eyes at Silvia here, or at least shoot her a glance of embarrassed and apologetic fellow feeling—sorry, he just doesn’t know when to shut up, to quit when he’s barely ahead.)