PROTEUS       After your dire-lamenting elegies,

Visit by night your lady’s chamber-window

With some sweet consort. To their instruments

Tune a deploring dump. The night’s dead silence

Will well become such sweet complaining grievance.

This, or else nothing, will inherit her.

DUKE  This discipline shows thou hast been in love.        (3.2.81-87)

Proteus is really into his stride now—of course, he’s imagining himself wooing Silvia in this way, even as he’s advising Thurio. After your dire-lamenting elegies, all those heart-rending poems you’re going to write, visit by night your lady’s chamber-window with some sweet consort. Hire musicians! Go and stand outside her house in the middle of the night, because that’s not weird at all… And to their instruments tune a deploring dump: sing your mournful lyrics to their accompaniment. Girls LOVE that stuff—and the night’s dead silence will well become such sweet complaining grievance. Romantic or what, singing under her window so plaintively by dark? It won’t be disturbing her at all; it’ll sound all the better for everything else being quiet because the entire household—the entire street—is trying to sleep. This, or else nothing, will inherit her. You’ll totally win her over with this! (Proteus can’t bring himself to name Silvia. Does he remember doing the same thing for Julia, back in Verona?) But the Duke thinks this is GREAT: this discipline shows thou hast been in love, he says approvingly; what an example, what a teacher! You’ve clearly got experience in this, with your beloved girlfriend back home, am I right?