VALENTINE What think you of this page, my lord?

DUKE I think the boy hath grace in him – he blushes.

VALENTINE I warrant you, my lord, more grace than boy.

DUKE What mean you by that saying?

VALENTINE Please you, I’ll tell you as we pass along,

That you will wonder what hath fortuned.

Come, Proteus. ’Tis your penance but to hear

The story of your loves discovered.

That done, our day of marriage shall be yours,

One feast, one house, one mutual happiness.

Exeunt             (5.4.162-171)

 

And it’s the last things—and it’s Valentine telling a story (or at least introducing it) that isn’t his to tell: what think you of this page, my lord? Anything strike you as odd about him? (Julia—and Proteus—and Silvia—could be doing ANYTHING at this stage. Petition to have Lance and Crab among the silent onlookers, so that Julia at least can cuddle Crab…) I think the boy hath grace in him—he blushes, replies the Duke. He seems a bit bashful? I warrant you, my lord, says Valentine—gleefully? ploughing on (perhaps as Julia—and Proteus?—look stricken) more grace than boy. That’s not the half of it! Just you wait! (Grace—modesty, as well as gracefulness—is more associated with women than with men, but it’s also true in this context that Julia and Silvia have, verbally at least, been more gracious in this episode and throughout than the men.) What mean you by that saying? Oho, says the Duke, what’s going on here then? (If, in another reading, Proteus and Julia are thoroughly intertwined by this stage, there’s an added homoerotic dimension, at which the Duke might be looking quizzically.) Please you, I’ll tell you as we pass along, that you will wonder what hath fortuned. You’ll be amazed at what I have to tell you! (This is basically clickbait. Also, Valentine has no more idea than the Duke what Julia has done, really, he just knows that this apparent boy is Julia.)

But Valentine’s final address of the play is to the silent, penitent? Proteus. Come, Proteus. ’Tis your penance but to hear the story of your loves discovered. All you’re going to have to suffer is hearing the totally hilarious story of the exposure of your creepy obsession with Silvia, how it led you to betray your best friend and also your faithful girlfriend, who dressed as a boy to follow you and had to witness not just your betrayal but your attempted rape of another woman. (To be fair, Valentine’s probably not going to say all that, and it doesn’t matter. Action is going to be flattened out into narrative, and present pain, discomfort and dissatisfaction reshaped as anecdote.)

That done—once the story is told—our day of marriage shall be yours, one feast, one house, one mutual happiness. We can have a double wedding, dude! Me and Silv, you and Jules! Mega! It doesn’t quite suggest that they’re all going to live together, happy ever after, although it might sound like it to a modern ear. What matters most is that it’s Valentine and Proteus together again, best friends 4 eva. It’s really, really hard for it not to ring hollow, for Proteus to be shattered, staring or shifty, and (especially) for Julia and Silvia to be disbelieving, resentful, horrified at Valentine’s steam-rollering self-delusion.

So to say that there’s scope for interpretation in the closing moments of this play is an understatement. It’s a bit of a mess, the conclusion to this early comedy, and in his later romantic comedies Shakespeare gets much better at introducing the note of bitterness (or at least salt) to the sweetness, at making a denouement more gratifyingly complex and nuanced, even in its loose ends and tensions, rather than, frankly, bodged.

This is, of course, the end of this daily #SlowShakespeare blog #2Dudes1Dog, which began on 1 January 2024—but I’m still near the beginning of my work on the new Arden Fourth Series edition of the play, which should appear in 2027 or 2028. Writing about the play every day has been utterly invaluable preparation for that work, as well as a great deal of fun (and I am really looking forward to writing more about CRAB, among many other things)—with regular pangs of recognition, especially as a teacher of young people, who feel things (perhaps friendship above all) with such great intensity and, because they are human, mess things up. Thanks for reading.