And, for your friend's sake, will be glad of you,
Where you may temper her by your persuasion
To hate young Valentine and love my
friend.

Proteus. As much as I can do I will effect.
But you, Sir Thurio, are not sharp enough;
You must lay lime to tangle her desires
By wailful sonnets, whose composed rhymes
Should be full-fraught with serviceable vows.
Duke. Ay,

Much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.

Proteus. Say that upon the altar of her beauty
You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart.
Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears
Moist it again and frame some feeling line
That may discover such integrity;

For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans

Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.
After your dire-lamenting elegies,

Visit by night your lady's chamber-window
With some sweet consort; to their instruments
Tune a deploring dump; the night's dead silence
Will well become such sweet-complaining grievance.
This, or else nothing, will inherit her.

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80

Duke. This discipline shows thou hast been in love. Thurio. And thy advice this night I'll put in practice;

Therefore, sweet Proteus, my direction-giver,

90

Let us into the city presently

To sort some gentlemen well skill'd in music.

I have a sonnet that will serve the turn

To give the onset to thy good advice.
Duke. About it, gentlemen!

Proteus. We'll wait upon your grace till after supper And afterward determine our proceedings.

Duke. Even now about it! I will pardon you.

[Exeunt.

1 Outlaw. Fellows, stand fast; I see a passenger. 2 Outlaw. If there be ten, shrink not, but down with 'em.

Enter VALENTINE and SPEED

3 Outlaw. Stand, sir, and throw us that you have

about ye;

If not, we 'll make you sit and rifle you.

Speed. Sir, we are undone; these are the villains That all the travellers do fear so much.

Valentine. My friends,—

I Outlaw. That's not so, sir; we are your enemies. 2 Outlaw. Peace, we 'll hear him.

3 Outlaw. Ay, by my beard, will we, for he's a proper man.

Valentine. Then know that I have little wealth to

lose.

A man I am cross'd with adversity;

My riches are these poor habiliments,

Of which if you should here disfurnish me You take the sum and substance that I have. 2 Outlaw. Whither travel you?

Valentine. To Verona.

I Outlaw. Whence came you?
Valentine. From Milan.

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3 Outlaw. Have you long sojourned there? Valentine. Some sixteen months, and longer might

have stay'd,

If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.

I Outlaw. What, were you banish'd thence?

Valentine. I was.

2 Outlaw. For what offence?

Valentine. For that which now torments me to rehearse.

I kill'd a man, whose death I much repent;

But yet I slew him manfully in fight,

Without false vantage or base treachery.

1 Outlaw. Why, ne'er repent it, if it were done

So.

But were you banish'd for so small a fault?

30

Valentine. I was, and held me glad of such a doom. 2 Outlaw. Have you the tongues

?

Valentine. My youthful travel therein made me happy,

Or else I often had been miserable.

3 Outlaw. By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar,

This fellow were a king for our wild faction!

I Outlaw. We 'll have him. Sir, a word.

Speed. Master, be one of them; it's an honourable kind of thievery.

Valentine. Peace, villain!

2 Outlaw. Tell us this: have you any thing to take to?

Valentine. Nothing but my fortune.

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3 Outlaw. Know, then, that some of us are gentle

men,

Such as the fury of ungovern'd youth

Thrust from the company of awful men.
Myself was from Verona banished
For practising to steal away a lady,

An heir, and near allied unto the duke.

2 Outlaw. And I from Mantua, for a gentleman,

Who, in my mood, I stabb'd unto the heart.

50

I Outlaw. And I for such like petty crimes as these.

But to the purpose

- for we cite our faults,

That they may hold excus'd our lawless lives;

And partly, seeing you are beautified

With goodly shape, and by your own report

TWO GENTLEMEN -6