VALENTINE I mean that her beauty is exquisite but her favour infinite.

SPEED That’s because the one is painted and the other out of all count.

VALENTINE How painted? And how out of count?

SPEED Marry, sir, so painted to make her fair, that no man counts of her beauty.

VALENTINE How esteem’st thou me? I account of her beauty.

SPEED You never saw her since she was deformed.

VALENTINE How long hath she been deformed?

SPEED Ever since you loved her.    (2.1.46-54)

Speed continues to pursue his relentless banter, with Valentine the extremely straight man, to the point of monomania. I mean that her beauty is exquisite but her favour infinite, he explains carefully; she is as kind as she is fair, in effect. Speed’s not having any of that: that’s because the one is painted and the other out of all count. One of those qualities is artificial and the other may well be infinite, out of all count, but perhaps also enabling an obscene pun on count. Valentine’s baffled—he is relentlessly literal and also somewhat slow: how painted? and how out of count? what do you mean? Marry, sir, so painted to make her fair—her beauty is so much the result of the careful application of cosmetics (she’s a genius with her contouring)—that no man counts of her beauty, they can’t ever truly appreciate her beauty and how much effort’s gone into it. Well what does that make me then, how esteem’st thou me? asks Valentine, somewhat indignantly. I account of her beauty; I appreciate it. Are you saying that I’m not a man, that what I think doesn’t count? Ah, says Speed—this is the bit of the joke he’s perhaps been leading up to—well, you never saw her since she was deformed. She’s totally lost her looks. (It’s ridiculous, of course, and the point is to make Valentine look baffled and uncomprehending: how can this be? he’s been tracking Silvia night and day. But it might have landed differently in a time and place accustomed to the ravages of smallpox—surely not overnight, though!? Valentine tells himself.) Ah, well, you see she’s been deformed ever since you loved her. It’s your fault, you’ve ruined everything: you make her out to be such a paragon that it’s as if you’ve completely bent her out of shape, and transformed her into something that she’s not, and never can be.