PROTEUS       Come, come, open the matter in brief. What said she? SPEED            Open your purse, that the money and the matter may be both at once delivered. PROTEUS [giving money] Well, sir, here is for your pains. What said she? SPEED Truly, sir, I think you’ll hardly win her. PROTEUS Why? Couldst thou perceive so much from […]

PROTEUS       But what said she? SPEED            [nodding] Ay. PROTEUS Nod, ‘ay’? Why, that’s ‘noddy’. SPEED You mistook, sir. I say she did nod, and you ask me if she did nod, and I say, ‘Ay’. PROTEUS And that set together is ‘noddy’. SPEED Now you have taken the pains to set it together, take it for your pains. […]

PROTEUS But dost thou hear? Gav’st thou my letter to Julia? SPEED Ay, sir. I (a lost mutton) gave your letter to her (a laced mutton),and she (a laced mutton) gave me (a lost mutton) nothing for my labour. PROTEUS       Here’s too small a pasture for such store of muttons. SPEED If the ground be […]

10 January 2024   SPEED This proves me still a sheep. PROTEUS       True, and thy master a shepherd. SPEED Nay, that I can deny by a circumstance. PROTEUS It shall go hard but I’ll prove it by another. SPEED The shepherd seeks the sheep, and not the sheep the shepherd. But I seek my master, […]

[Enter Speed] SPEED Sir Proteus, ’save you. Saw you my master? PROTEUS       But now he parted hence to embark for Milan. SPEED Twenty to one, then, he is shipped already, And I have played the sheep in losing him. PROTEUS Indeed a sheep doth very often stray, An if the shepherd be a while away. […]

8 January 2024   PROTEUS       He after honour hunts, I after love. He leaves his friends to dignify them more, I leave myself, my friends, and all, for love. Thou, Julia, thou hast metamorphosed me, Made me neglect my studies, lose my time, War with good counsel, set the world at naught; Made wit with […]

VALENTINE   But wherefore waste I time to counsel thee That art a votary to fond desire? Once more adieu. My father at the road Expects my coming, there to see me shipped. PROTEUS       And thither will I bring thee, Valentine. VALENTINE   Sweet Proteus, no. Now let us take our leave. To Milan let me hear […]

PROTEUS       Yet writers say ‘As in the sweetest bud The eating canker dwells, so doting love Inhabits in the finest wits of all.’ VALENTINE    And writers say ‘As the most forward bud Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, Even so by love the young and tender wit Is turned to folly, blasting in […]

PROTEUS       So by your circumstance you call me fool. VALENTINE   So by your circumstance I fear you’ll prove. PROTEUS ’Tis love you cavil at. I am not love. VALENTINE Love is your master, for he masters you; And he that is so yokèd by a fool Methinks should not be chronicled for wise.          (1.1.36-41)   […]

VALENTINE   To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans, Coy looks with heart-sore sighs, one fading moment’s mirth With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights. If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain; If lost, why then a grievous labour won; However, but a folly bought with wit, Or else a wit by folly vanquishèd. […]