JULIA  [giving a letter] Madam, please you peruse this letter. Pardon me, madam, I have unadvised Delivered you a paper that I should not. [Julia takes back the letter and gives Silvia another] This is the letter to your ladyship. SILVIA I pray thee, let me look on that again. JULIA It may not be, good […]

[Enter Silvia] JULIA  Gentlewoman, good day. I pray you be my mean To bring me where to speak with Madam Silvia. SILVIA What would you with her, if that I be she? JULIA If you be she, I do entreat your patience To hear me speak the message I am sent on. SILVIA From whom? […]

JULIA  This ring I gave him when he parted from me, To bind him to remember my good will. And now am I, unhappy messenger, To plead for that which I would not obtain; To carry that which I would have refused; To praise his faith, which I would have dispraised. I am my master’s […]

PROTEUS       Well, give her that ring, and therewithal This letter. [Pointing] That’s her chamber. Tell my lady I claim the promise for her heavenly picture. Your message done, hie home unto my chamber, Where thou shalt find me sad and solitary. [Exit] JULIA  How many women would do such a message? Alas, poor Proteus, thou hast entertained […]

JULIA  It seems you loved not her, to leave her token. She is dead belike? PROTEUS       Not so – I think she lives. JULIA Alas. PROTEUS Why dost thou cry ‘Alas’? JULIA I cannot choose but pity her. PROTEUS Wherefore shouldst thou pity her? JULIA Because methinks that she loved you as well As you […]

PROTEUS       Sebastian, I have entertained thee Partly that I have need of such a youth That can with some discretion do my business For ’tis no trusting to yond foolish lout, But chiefly for thy face and thy behaviour, Which, if my augury deceive me not, Witness good bringing up, fortune, and truth. Therefore, know […]

PROTEUS       But she received my dog? LANCE                        No, indeed, did she not. Here have I brought him back again. PROTEUS What, didst thou offer her this from me? LANCE Ay, sir. The other squirrel was stolen from me by the hangman’s boys in the marketplace, and then I offered her mine own, who is a dog […]

PROTEUS       Sebastian is thy name? I like thee well, And will employ thee in some service presently. JULIA  In what you please. I’ll do what I can. PROTEUS I hope thou wilt. [To Lance] How now, you whoreson peasant, Where have you been these two days loitering? LANCE            Marry, sir, I carried Mistress Silvia the dog you […]

LANCE I, having been acquainted with the smell before, knew it was Crab, and goes me to the fellow that whips the dogs. ‘Friend,’ quoth I. ‘You mean to whip the dog?’ ‘Ay, marry, do I,’ quoth he. ‘You do him the more wrong,’ quoth I. ‘’Twas I did the thing you wot of.’ He makes me no more […]

LANCE                        I would have, as one should say, one that takes upon him to be a dog indeed, to be, as it were, a dog at all things. If I had not had more wit than he, to take a fault upon me that he did, I think verily he had been hanged for’t! Sure as I live, […]