Enter Valentine

VALENTINE    How use doth breed a habit in a man!

This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods

I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.

Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,

And to the nightingale’s complaining notes

Tune my distresses and record my woes.

O thou that dost inhabit in my breast,

Leave not the mansion so long tenantless

Lest, growing ruinous, the building fall

And leave no memory of what it was.         (5.4.1-10)

It’s Valentine! (Of course it’s Valentine.) And he’s having a little contemplate, a little muse: how use doth breed a habit in a man! Much to his surprise, he’s saying, he’s become accustomed to his life in the forest with the outlaws—and he’s actually quite enjoying it, or at least tolerating it better than he’d anticipated. This shadowy desert (desert because there aren’t many people, because it’s largely uninhabited: no sand or camels implied) and unfrequented woods I better brook than flourishing peopled towns. It suits me here, you know? Solitude, tranquillity; not all those awful people you have to deal with in the city. (Valentine is Doing Melancholy.) Here can I sit alone, unseen of any—no annoying interruptions or witnesses to My Melancholy Solitude—and to the nightingale’s complaining notes tune my distresses and record my woes. Forest life: it’s all just one long pathetic fallacy; I can mourn and lament along with the nightingale. A little duet of woe. (The nightingale, via Ovid’s Philomel, puts down a more sinister marker here, too, for all that it’s a pastoral commonplace.) O thou that dost inhabit in my breast—he addresses Silvia, who lives, metaphorically in his heart, who is his soul—leave not the mansion so long tenantless: come to me soon! Don’t leave the mansion, of my love, my heart, my very body, uninhabited for too much longer, lacking your real presence, lest, growing ruinous, the building fall and leave no memory of what it was. I’ll die without you! You’re my soul, and without you, my body will collapse, fade away, leaving no trace. Without you, I’ll soon cease to be. For all that the woods are, you know, sort-of OK.