PROTEUS What dangerous action, stood it next to death,
Would I not undergo for one calm look!
O, ’tis the curse in love, and still approved,
When women cannot love where they’re beloved.
SILVIA When Proteus cannot love, where he’s beloved!
Read over Julia’s heart, thy first, best love,
For whose dear sake thou didst then rend thy faith
Into a thousand oaths, and all those oaths
Descended into perjury to love me.
Thou hast no faith left now, unless thou’dst two,
And that’s far worse than none. Better have none
Than plural faith, which is too much by one,
Thou counterfeit to thy true friend. (5.4.41-53)
But I’d do anything for you, protests Proteus: what dangerous action, stood it next to death, would I not undergo for one calm look! I’d undertake the most perilous, dangerous adventure for you, just to have you look on me kindly! O, ’tis the curse in love, and still approved, when women cannot love where they’re beloved. And there, in that mashed-together not-quite-rhyming couplet, is Proteus’s self-justifying, self-deluded, dangerous creed: it’s not fair! The woman I love (‘love’) should love me back, that’s the way it’s meant to work! That’s the deal!
Silvia, unsurprisingly, is having none of this: oh right, but I think you mean it’s not fair when Proteus cannot love, where he’s beloved! What’s sauce for the goose, you repellent boy: you haven’t been doing as you would be done by, have you? you haven’t returned the love of the woman who loves you? So, then, read over Julia’s heart, thy first, best love—cast your mind over that, then, the first girl you ever loved, loved so much you swore you’d die for her—for whose dear sake thou didst then rend thy faith into a thousand oaths—you swore blind you loved her, over and over again, you never shut up about it—until you didn’t, you ripped it all up, threw it all away—and bang, all those oaths descended into perjury to love me. You’re a traitor, a liar, a hypocrite. Thou hast no faith left now, unless thoud’st two, and that’s far worse than none. There’s no fidelity, no capacity for faithfulness left in you at all, unless you happen to have double, to be able to swear you love two women at once, and that you’ll be faithful to both—and that’s even worse. Better have none than plural faith, which is too much by one, thou counterfeit to thy true friend. (Friend here is Julia, Proteus’s sometime beloved, and also Valentine, whom he has betrayed too.) You moronic, two-faced, two-timing bastard.