The Same. A Room in the DUKE’S Palace. | |
| |
| Enter PROTEUS. | |
| Pro. To leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn; | |
| To love fair Silvia, shall I be forsworn; | 4 |
| To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn; | |
| And even that power which gave me first my oath | |
| Provokes me to this threefold perjury: | |
| Love bade me swear, and Love bids me forswear. | 8 |
| O sweet-suggesting Love! if thou hast sinn’d, | |
| Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it. | |
| At first I did adore a twinkling star, | |
| But now I worship a celestial sun. | 12 |
| Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken; | |
| And he wants wit that wants resolved will | |
| To learn his wit to exchange the bad for better. | |
| Fie, fie, unreverend tongue! to call her bad, | 16 |
| Whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferr’d | |
| With twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths. | |
| I cannot leave to love, and yet I do; | |
| But there I leave to love where I should love. | 20 |
| Julia I lose and Valentine I lose: | |
| If I keep them, I needs must lose myself; | |
| If I lose them, thus find I by their loss, | |
| For Valentine, myself; for Julia, Silvia. | 24 |
| I to myself am dearer than a friend, | |
| For love is still most precious in itself; | |
| And Silvia—witness heaven that made her fair!— | |
| Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope. | 28 |
| I will forget that Julia is alive, | |
| Remembering that my love to her is dead; | |
| And Valentine I’ll hold an enemy, | |
| Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend. | 32 |
| I cannot now prove constant to myself | |
| Without some treachery us’d to Valentine: | |
| This night he meaneth with a corded ladder | |
| To climb celestial Silvia’s chamber-window, | 36 |
| Myself in counsel, his competitor. | |
| Now presently, I’ll give her father notice | |
| Of their disguising and pretended flight; | |
| Who, all enrag’d, will banish Valentine; | 40 |
| For Thurio, he intends, shall wed his daughter; | |
| But, Valentine being gone, I’ll quickly cross, | |
| By some sly trick blunt Thurio’s dull proceeding. | |
| Love, lend me wings to make my purpose swift, | 44 |
| As thou hast lent me wit to plot this drift! [Exit. | |
