Only one of them was really a gentleman, as you will discover later. Their names were Valentine and Proteus. They were friends, and lived at Verona, a town in northern Italy. Valentine was happy in his name because it was that of the patron saint of lovers; it is hard for a Valentine to be fickle or mean. Proteus was unhappy in his name, because it was that of a famous shape-changer, and therefore it encouraged him to be a lover at one time and a traitor at another.
One day, Valentine told his friend that he was going to Milan. “I'm not in love like you,” said he, “and therefore I don't want to stay at home.”
Proteus was in love with a beautiful yellow-haired girl called Julia, who was rich, and had no one to order her about. He was, however, sorry to part from Valentine, and he said, “If ever you are in danger tell me, and I will pray for you.” Valentine then went to Milan with a servant called Speed, and at Milan he fell in love with the Duke of Milan's daughter, Silvia.
When Proteus and Valentine parted Julia had not acknowledged that she loved Proteus. Indeed, she had actually torn up one of his letters in the presence of her maid, Lucetta. Lucetta, however, was no simpleton, for when she saw the pieces she said to herself, “All she wants is to be annoyed by another letter.” Indeed, no sooner had Lucetta left her alone than Julia repented of her tearing, and placed between her dress and her heart the torn piece of paper on which Proteus had signed his name. So by tearing a letter written by Proteus she discovered that she loved him. Then, like a brave, sweet girl, she wrote to Proteus, “Be patient, and you shall marry me.”
Delighted with these words Proteus walked about, flourishing Julia's letter and talking to himself.
“What have you got there?” asked his father, Antonio.
“A letter from Valentine,” fibbed Proteus.
“Let me read it,” said Antonio.
“There is no news,” said deceitful Proteus; “he only says that he is very happy, and the Duke of Milan is kind to him, and that he wishes I were with him.”
This fib had the effect of making Antonio think that his son should go to Milan and enjoy the favors in which Valentine basked. “You must go to-morrow,” he decreed. Proteus was dismayed. “Give me time to get my outfit ready.” He was met with the promise, “What you need shall be sent after you.”
It grieved Julia to part from her lover before their engagement was two days' old. She gave him a ring, and said, “Keep this for my sake,” and he gave her a ring, and they kissed like two who intend to be true till death. Then Proteus departed for Milan.
Meanwhile Valentine was amusing Silvia, whose grey eyes, laughing at him under auburn hair, had drowned him in love. One day she told him that she wanted to write a pretty letter to a gentleman whom she thought well of, but had no time: would he write it? Very much did Valentine dislike writing that letter, but he did write it, and gave it to her coldly. “Take it back,” she said; “you did it unwillingly.”
“Madam,” he said, “it was difficult to write such a letter for you.”
Please keep photo with html“Take it back,” she commanded; “you did not write tenderly enough.”
Valentine was left with the letter, and condemned to write another; but his servant Speed saw that, in effect, the Lady Silvia had allowed Valentine to write for her a love-letter to Valentine's own self. “The joke,” he said, “is as invisible as a weather-cock on a steeple.” He meant that it was very plain; and he went on to say exactly what it was: “If master will write her love-letters, he must answer them.”
On the arrival of Proteus, he was introduced by Valentine to Silvia and afterwards, when they were alone, Valentine asked Proteus how his love for Julia was prospering.
“Why,” said Proteus, “you used to get wearied when I spoke of her.”
“Aye,” confessed Valentine, “but it's different now. I can eat and drink all day with nothing but love on my plate and love in my cup.”
“You idolize Silvia,” said Proteus.
“She is divine,” said Valentine.
Please keep photo with html“Come, come!” remonstrated Proteus.
“Well, if she's not divine,” said Valentine, “she is the queen of all women on earth.”
“Except Julia,” said Proteus.
“Dear boy,” said Valentine, “Julia is not excepted; but I will grant that she alone is worthy to bear my lady's train.”
“Your bragging astounds me,” said Proteus.
But he had seen Silvia, and he felt suddenly that the yellow-haired Julia was black in comparison. He became in thought a villain without delay, and said to himself what he had never said before--“I to myself am dearer than my friend.”
It would have been convenient for Valentine if Proteus had changed, by the power of the god whose name he bore, the shape of his body at the evil moment when he despised Julia in admiring Silvia. But his body did not change; his smile was still affectionate, and Valentine confided to him the great secret that Silvia had now promised to run away with him. “In the pocket of this cloak,” said Valentine, “I have a silken rope ladder, with hooks which will clasp the window-bar of her room.”
Proteus knew the reason why Silvia and her lover were bent on flight. The Duke intended her to wed Sir Thurio, a gentlemanly noodle for whom she did not care a straw.
Proteus thought that if he could get rid of Valentine he might make Silvia fond of him, especially if the Duke insisted on her enduring Sir Thurio's tiresome chatter. He therefore went to the Duke, and said, “Duty before friendship! It grieves me to thwart my friend Valentine, but your Grace should know that he intends to-night to elope with your Grace's daughter.” He begged the Duke not to tell Valentine the giver of this information, and the Duke assured him that his name would not be divulged.
Early that evening the Duke summoned Valentine, who came to him wearing a large cloak with a bulging pocket.
“You know,” said the Duke, “my desire to marry my daughter to Sir Thurio?”
“I do,” replied Valentine. “He is virtuous and generous, as befits a man so honored in your Grace's thoughts.”
“Nevertheless she dislikes him,” said the Duke. “She is a peevish, proud, disobedient girl, and I should be sorry to leave her a penny. I intend, therefore, to marry again.”
Valentine bowed.
“I hardly know how the young people of to-day make love,” continued the Duke, “and I thought that you would be just the man to teach me how to win the lady of my choice.”
“Jewels have been known to plead rather well,” said Valentine.
“I have tried them,” said the Duke.
“The habit of liking the giver may grow if your Grace gives her some more.”
“The chief difficulty,” pursued the Duke, “is this. The lady is promised to a young gentleman, and it is hard to have a word with her. She is, in fact, locked up.”
“Then your Grace should propose an elopement,” said Valentine. “Try a rope ladder.”
Please keep photo with html“But how should I carry it?” asked the Duke.
“A rope ladder is light,” said Valentine; “You can carry it in a cloak.”
“Like yours?”
“Yes, your Grace.”
“Then yours will do. Kindly lend it to me.”
Valentine had talked himself into a trap. He could not refuse to lend his cloak, and when the Duke had donned it, his Grace drew from the pocket a sealed missive addressed to Silvia. He coolly opened it, and read these words: “Silvia, you shall be free to-night.”
“Indeed,” he said, “and here's the rope ladder. Prettily contrived, but not perfectly. I give you, sir, a day to leave my dominions. If you are in Milan by this time to-morrow, you die.”
Poor Valentine was saddened to the core. “Unless I look on Silvia in the day,” he said, “there is no day for me to look upon.”
Before he went he took farewell of Proteus, who proved a hypocrite of the first order. “Hope is a lover's staff,” said Valentine's betrayer; “walk hence with that.”
After leaving Milan, Valentine and his servant wandered into a forest near Mantua where the great poet Virgil lived. In the forest, however, the poets (if any) were brigands, who bade the travelers stand. They obeyed, and Valentine made so good an impression upon his captors that they offered him his life on condition that he became their captain.
“I accept,” said Valentine, “provided you release my servant, and are not violent to women or the poor.”
The reply was worthy of Virgil, and Valentine became a brigand chief.
We return now to Julia, who found Verona too dull to live in since Proteus had gone. She begged her maid Lucetta to devise a way by which she could see him. “Better wait for him to return,” said Lucetta, and she talked so sensibly that Julia saw it was idle to hope that Lucetta would bear the blame of any rash and interesting adventure. Julia therefore said that she intended to go to Milan and dressed like a page.
“You must cut off your hair then,” said Lucetta, who thought that at this announcement Julia would immediately abandon her scheme.
“I shall knot it up,” was the disappointing rejoinder.
Lucetta then tried to make the scheme seem foolish to Julia, but Julia had made up her mind and was not to be put off by ridicule; and when her toilet was completed, she looked as comely a page as one could wish to see.
Julia assumed the male name Sebastian, and arrived in Milan in time to hear music being performed outside the Duke's palace.
“They are serenading the Lady Silvia,” said a man to her.
Suddenly she heard a voice lifted in song, and she knew that voice. It was the voice of Proteus. But what was he singing?
“Who is Silvia? what is she,That all our swains commend her?Holy, fair, and wise is she;The heaven such grace did lend herThat she might admired be.”
“Who is Silvia? what is she,
That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she;
The heaven such grace did lend her
That she might admired be.”
Julia tried not to hear the rest, but these two lines somehow thundered into her mind--
“Then to Silvia let us sing;She excels each mortal thing.”
“Then to Silvia let us sing;
She excels each mortal thing.”
Then Proteus thought Silvia excelled Julia; and, since he sang so beautifully for all the world to hear, it seemed that he was not only false to Julia, but had forgotten her. Yet Julia still loved him. She even went to him, and asked to be his page, and Proteus engaged her.
One day, he handed to her the ring which she had given him, and said, “Sebastian, take that to the Lady Silvia, and say that I should like the picture of her she promised me.”
Please keep photo with htmlSilvia had promised the picture, but she disliked Proteus. She was obliged to talk to him because he was high in the favor of her father, who thought he pleaded with her on behalf of Sir Thurio. Silvia had learned from Valentine that Proteus was pledged to a sweetheart in Verona; and when he said tender things to her, she felt that he was disloyal in friendship as well as love.
Julia bore the ring to Silvia, but Silvia said, “I will not wrong the woman who gave it him by wearing it.”
“She thanks you,” said Julia.
“You know her, then?” said Silvia, and Julia spoke so tenderly of herself that Silvia wished that Sebastian would marry Julia.
Silvia gave Julia her portrait for Proteus, who would have received it the worse for extra touches on the nose and eyes if Julia had not made up her mind that she was as pretty as Silvia.
Soon there was an uproar in the palace. Silvia had fled.
The Duke was certain that her intention was to join the exiled Valentine, and he was not wrong.
Without delay he started in pursuit, with Sir Thurio, Proteus, and some servants.
The members of the pursuing party got separated, and Proteus and Julia (in her page's dress) were by themselves when they saw Silvia, who had been taken prisoner by outlaws and was now being led to their Captain. Proteus rescued her, and then said, “I have saved you from death; give me one kind look.”
“O misery, to be helped by you!” cried Silvia. “I would rather be a lion's breakfast.”
Julia was silent, but cheerful. Proteus was so much annoyed with Silvia that he threatened her, and seized her by the waist.
“O heaven!” cried Silvia.
At that instant there was a noise of crackling branches. Valentine came crashing through the Mantuan forest to the rescue of his beloved. Julia feared he would slay Proteus, and hurried to help her false lover. But he struck no blow, he only said, “Proteus, I am sorry I must never trust you more.”
Thereat Proteus felt his guilt, and fell on his knees, saying, “Forgive me! I grieve! I suffer!”
“Then you are my friend once more,” said the generous Valentine. “If Silvia, that is lost to me, will look on you with favor, I promise that I will stand aside and bless you both.”
These words were terrible to Julia, and she swooned. Valentine revived her, and said, “What was the matter, boy?”
“I remembered,” fibbed Julia, “that I was charged to give a ring to the Lady Silvia, and that I did not.”
“Well, give it to me,” said Proteus.
She handed him a ring, but it was the ring that Proteus gave to Julia before he left Verona.
Proteus looked at her hand, and crimsoned to the roots of his hair.
“I changed my shape when you changed your mind,” said she.
“But I love you again,” said he.
Just then outlaws entered, bringing two prizes--the Duke and Sir Thurio.
“Forbear!” cried Valentine, sternly. “The Duke is sacred.”
Sir Thurio exclaimed, “There's Silvia; she's mine!”
“Touch her, and you die!” said Valentine.
“I should be a fool to risk anything for her,” said Sir Thurio.
“Then you are base,” said the Duke. “Valentine, you are a brave man. Your banishment is over. I recall you. You may marry Silvia. You deserve her.”
“I thank your Grace,” said Valentine, deeply moved, “and yet must ask you one more boon.”
“I grant it,” said the Duke.
“Pardon these men, your Grace, and give them employment. They are better than their calling.”
“I pardon them and you,” said the Duke. “Their work henceforth shall be for wages.”
“What think you of this page, your Grace?” asked Valentine, indicating Julia.
The Duke glanced at her, and said, “I think the boy has grace in him.”
“More grace than boy, say I,” laughed Valentine, and the only punishment which Proteus had to bear for his treacheries against love and friendship was the recital in his presence of the adventures of Julia-Sebastian of Verona.
In the year thirteen hundred and something, the Countess of Rousillon was unhappy in her palace near the Pyrenees. She had lost her husband, and the King of France had summoned her son Bertram to Paris, hundreds of miles away.
Bertram was a pretty youth with curling hair, finely arched eyebrows, and eyes as keen as a hawk's. He was as proud as ignorance could make him, and would lie with a face like truth itself to gain a selfish end. But a pretty youth is a pretty youth, and Helena was in love with him.
Helena was the daughter of a great doctor who had died in the service of the Count of Rousillon. Her sole fortune consisted in a few of her father's prescriptions.
When Bertram had gone, Helena's forlorn look was noticed by the Countess, who told her that she was exactly the same to her as her own child. Tears then gathered in Helena's eyes, for she felt that the Countess made Bertram seem like a brother whom she could never marry. The Countess guessed her secret forthwith, and Helena confessed that Bertram was to her as the sun is to the day.
Please keep photo with htmlShe hoped, however, to win this sun by earning the gratitude of the King of France, who suffered from a lingering illness, which made him lame. The great doctors attached to the Court despaired of curing him, but Helena had confidence in a prescription which her father had used with success.
Taking an affectionate leave of the Countess, she went to Paris, and was allowed to see the King.
He was very polite, but it was plain he thought her a quack. “It would not become me,” he said, “to apply to a simple maiden for the relief which all the learned doctors cannot give me.”
“Heaven uses weak instruments sometimes,” said Helena, and she declared that she would forfeit her life if she failed to make him well.
“And if you succeed?” questioned the King.
“Then I will ask your Majesty to give me for a husband the man whom I choose!”
So earnest a young lady could not be resisted forever by a suffering king. Helena, therefore, became the King's doctor, and in two days the royal cripple could skip.
He summoned his courtiers, and they made a glittering throng in the throne room of his palace. Well might the country girl have been dazzled, and seen a dozen husbands worth dreaming of among the handsome young noblemen before her. But her eyes only wandered till they found Bertram. Then she went up to him, and said, “I dare not say I take you, but I am yours!” Raising her voice that the King might hear, she added, “This is the Man!”
“Bertram,” said the King, “take her; she's your wife!”
“My wife, my liege?” said Bertram. “I beg your Majesty to permit me to choose a wife.”
“Do you know, Bertram, what she has done for your King?” asked the monarch, who had treated Bertram like a son.
“Yes, your Majesty,” replied Bertram; “but why should I marry a girl who owes her breeding to my father's charity?”
“You disdain her for lacking a title, but I can give her a title,” said the King; and as he looked at the sulky youth a thought came to him, and he added, “Strange that you think so much of blood when you could not distinguish your own from a beggar's if you saw them mixed together in a bowl.”
“I cannot love her,” asserted Bertram; and Helena said gently, “Urge him not, your Majesty. I am glad to have cured my King for my country's sake.”
“My honor requires that scornful boy's obedience,” said the King. “Bertram, make up your mind to this. You marry this lady, of whom you are so unworthy, or you learn how a king can hate. Your answer?”
Bertram bowed low and said, “Your Majesty has ennobled the lady by your interest in her. I submit.”
“Take her by the hand,” said the King, “and tell her she is yours.”
Please keep photo with htmlBertram obeyed, and with little delay he was married to Helena.
Fear of the King, however, could not make him a lover. Ridicule helped to sour him. A base soldier named Parolles told him to his face that now he had a “kicky-wicky” his business was not to fight but to stay at home. “Kicky-wicky” was only a silly epithet for a wife, but it made Bertram feel he could not bear having a wife, and that he must go to the war in Italy, though the King had forbidden him.
Helena he ordered to take leave of the King and return to Rousillon, giving her letters for his mother and herself. He then rode off, bidding her a cold good-bye.
She opened the letter addressed to herself, and read, “When you can get the ring from my finger you can call me husband, but against that 'when' I write 'never.'”
Dry-eyed had Helena been when she entered the King's presence and said farewell, but he was uneasy on her account, and gave her a ring from his own finger, saying, “If you send this to me, I shall know you are in trouble, and help you.”
She did not show him Bertram's letter to his wife; it would have made him wish to kill the truant Count; but she went back to Rousillon and handed her mother-in-law the second letter. It was short and bitter. “I have run away,” it said. “If the world be broad enough, I will be always far away from her.”
“Cheer up,” said the noble widow to the deserted wife. “I wash his name out of my blood, and you alone are my child.”
The Dowager Countess, however, was still mother enough to Bertram to lay the blame of his conduct on Parolles, whom she called “a very tainted fellow.”
Helena did not stay long at Rousillon. She clad herself as a pilgrim, and, leaving a letter for her mother-in-law, secretly set out for Florence.
On entering that city she inquired of a woman the way to the Pilgrims' House of Rest, but the woman begged “the holy pilgrim” to lodge with her.
Helena found that her hostess was a widow, who had a beautiful daughter named Diana.
When Diana heard that Helena came from France, she said, “A countryman of yours, Count Rousillon, has done worthy service for Florence.” But after a time, Diana had something to tell which was not at all worthy of Helena's husband. Bertram was making love to Diana. He did not hide the fact that he was married, but Diana heard from Parolles that his wife was not worth caring for.
The widow was anxious for Diana's sake, and Helena decided to inform her that she was the Countess Rousillon.
“He keeps asking Diana for a lock of her hair,” said the widow.
Helena smiled mournfully, for her hair was as fine as Diana's and of the same color. Then an idea struck her, and she said, “Take this purse of gold for yourself. I will give Diana three thousand crowns if she will help me to carry out this plan. Let her promise to give a lock of her hair to my husband if he will give her the ring which he wears on his finger. It is an ancestral ring. Five Counts of Rousillon have worn it, yet he will yield it up for a lock of your daughter's hair. Let your daughter insist that he shall cut the lock of hair from her in a dark room, and agree in advance that she shall not speak a single word.”
The widow listened attentively, with the purse of gold in her lap. She said at last, “I consent, if Diana is willing.”
Diana was willing, and, strange to say, the prospect of cutting off a lock of hair from a silent girl in a dark room was so pleasing to Bertram that he handed Diana his ring, and was told when to follow her into the dark room. At the time appointed he came with a sharp knife, and felt a sweet face touch his as he cut off the lock of hair, and he left the room satisfied, like a man who is filled with renown, and on his finger was a ring which the girl in the dark room had given him.
The war was nearly over, but one of its concluding chapters taught Bertram that the soldier who had been impudent enough to call Helena his “kicky-wicky” was far less courageous than a wife. Parolles was such a boaster, and so fond of trimings to his clothes, that the French officers played him a trick to discover what he was made of. He had lost his drum, and had said that he would regain it unless he was killed in the attempt. His attempt was a very poor one, and he was inventing the story of a heroic failure, when he was surrounded and disarmed.
Please keep photo with html“Portotartarossa,” said a French lord.
“What horrible lingo is this?” thought Parolles, who had been blindfolded.
“He's calling for the tortures,” said a French man, affecting to act as interpreter. “What will you say without 'em?”
“As much,” replied Parolles, “as I could possibly say if you pinched me like a pasty.” He was as good as his word. He told them how many there were in each regiment of the Florentine army, and he refreshed them with spicy anecdotes of the officers commanding it.
Bertram was present, and heard a letter read, in which Parolles told Diana that he was a fool.
“This is your devoted friend,” said a French lord.
“He is a cat to me now,” said Bertram, who detested our hearthrug pets.
Parolles was finally let go, but henceforth he felt like a sneak, and was not addicted to boasting.
We now return to France with Helena, who had spread a report of her death, which was conveyed to the Dowager Countess at Rousillon by Lafeu, a lord who wished to marry his daughter Magdalen to Bertram.
The King mourned for Helena, but he approved of the marriage proposed for Bertram, and paid a visit to Rousillon in order to see it accomplished.
“His great offense is dead,” he said. “Let Bertram approach me.”
Then Bertram, scarred in the cheek, knelt before his Sovereign, and said that if he had not loved Lafeu's daughter before he married Helena, he would have prized his wife, whom he now loved when it was too late.
“Love that is late offends the Great Sender,” said the King. “Forget sweet Helena, and give a ring to Magdalen.”
Bertram immediately gave a ring to Lafeu, who said indignantly, “It's Helena's!”
“It's not!” said Bertram.
Hereupon the King asked to look at the ring, and said, “This is the ring I gave to Helena, and bade her send to me if ever she needed help. So you had the cunning to get from her what could help her most.”
Bertram denied again that the ring was Helena's, but even his mother said it was.
“You lie!” exclaimed the King. “Seize him, guards!” but even while they were seizing him, Bertram wondered how the ring, which he thought Diana had given him, came to be so like Helena's. A gentleman now entered, craving permission to deliver a petition to the King. It was a petition signed Diana Capilet, and it begged that the King would order Bertram to marry her whom he had deserted after winning her love.
Please keep photo with html“I'd sooner buy a son-in-law at a fair than take Bertram now,” said Lafeu.
“Admit the petitioner,” said the King.
Bertram found himself confronted by Diana and her mother. He denied that Diana had any claim on him, and spoke of her as though her life was spent in the gutter. But she asked him what sort of gentlewoman it was to whom he gave, as to her he gave, the ring of his ancestors now missing from his finger?
Bertram was ready to sink into the earth, but fate had one crowning generosity reserved for him. Helena entered.
“Do I see reality?” asked the King.
“O pardon! pardon!” cried Bertram.
She held up his ancestral ring. “Now that I have this,” said she, “will you love me, Bertram?”
“To the end of my life,” cried he.
“My eyes smell onions,” said Lafeu. Tears for Helena were twinkling in them.
The King praised Diana when he was fully informed by that not very shy young lady of the meaning of her conduct. For Helena's sake she had wished to expose Bertram's meanness, not only to the King, but to himself. His pride was now in shreds, and it is believed that he made a husband of some sort after all.
ACTION.
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant
More learned than their ears.
ADVERSITY.
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
That, Sir, which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack, when it begins to rain,
And leave thee in the storm.
Ah! when the means are gone, that buy this praise,
The breath is gone whereof this praise is made:
Feast won--fast lost; one cloud of winter showers,
These flies are couched.
ADVICE TO A SON LEAVING HOME.
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in,
Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment,
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy: rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France, of the best rank and station,
Are most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all.--To thine ownself be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
AGE.
My May of life Is
fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf:
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses not loud, but deep, mouth-honor, breath,
Which the poor heart would feign deny, but dare not.
AMBITION.
Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. And I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow's shadow.
I charge thee fling away ambition;
By that sin fell the angels, how can man then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by 't?
Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee;
Corruption wins not more than honesty.
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,
To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not!
Let all the ends, thou aim'st at, be thy country's,
Thy God's, and truth's.
ANGER.
Anger is like
A full-hot horse, who being allowed his way,
Self-mettle tires him.
ARROGANCE.
There are a sort of men, whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,
And do a willful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,
As who should say, “i am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!”
O! my Antonio, I do know of these
That therefore are reputed wise
For saying nothing, when, I am sure,
If they should speak, would almost dam those ears,
Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.
AUTHORITY.
Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar?
And the creature run from the cur?
There thou might'st behold the great image of authority
a dog's obeyed in office.
Could great men thunder
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,
For every pelting, petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder: nothing but thunder--
Merciful heaven!
Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,
Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,
Than the soft myrtle!--O, but man, proud man!
Drest in a little brief authority --
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence,--like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep.
BEAUTY.
The hand, that hath made you fair, hath made you good: the
goodness, that is cheap in beauty, makes beauty brief in goodness;
but grace, being the soul of your complexion, should keep the body
of it ever fair.
BLESSINGS UNDERVALUED.
It so falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth,
Whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost,
Why, then we rack the value; then we find
The virtue, that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours.
BRAGGARTS.
It will come to pass,
That every braggart shall be found an ass.
They that have the voice of lions, and the act of bares,
are they not monsters?
CALUMNY.
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,
thou shalt not escape calumny.
No might nor greatness in mortality
Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny
The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong,
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?
CEREMONY.
Ceremony
Was but devised at first, to set a gloss
On faint deeds, hollow welcomes.
Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown;
But where there is true friendship, there needs none.
COMFORT.
Men
Can counsel, and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air, and agony with words:
No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow;
But no man's virtue, nor sufficiency,
To be so moral, when he shall endure
The like himself.
Well, every one can master a grief, but he that has it.
COMPARISON.
When the moon shone, we did not see the candle.
So doth the greater glory dim the less;
A substitute shines brightly as a king,
Until a king be by; and then his state
Empties itself, as does an inland brook
Into the main of waters.
CONSCIENCE.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
CONTENT.
My crown is in my heart, not on my head;
Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,
Nor to be seen; my crown is called “content;”
A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy.
CONTENTION.
How, in one house,
Should many people, under two commands,
Hold amity?
When two authorities are set up,
Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter twixt the gap of both, and take
The one by the other.
CONTENTMENT.
'Tis better to be lowly born,
And range with humble livers in content,
Than to be perked up in a glistering grief,
And wear a golden sorrow.
COWARDS.
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
CUSTOM.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habit's devil, is angel yet in this:
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock, or livery,
That aptly is put on: Refrain to-night:
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy:
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either curb the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.
A custom
More honored in the breach, then the observance.
DEATH.
Kings, and mightiest potentates, must die;
For that's the end of human misery.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come, when it will come.
The dread of something after death,
Makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others we know not of.
The sense of death is most in apprehension.
By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death
Will seize the doctor too.
DECEPTION.
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul, producing holy witness,
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek;
A goodly apple rotten at the heart;
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
DEEDS.
Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's eyes.
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds,
Makes deeds ill done!
DELAY.
That we would do,
We should do when we would; for this would changes,
And hath abatements and delays as many,
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this should is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.
DELUSION.
For love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul;
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place;
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.
DISCRETION.
Let's teach ourselves that honorable stop,
Not to outsport discretion.
DOUBTS AND FEARS.
I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.
DRUNKENNESS.
Boundless intemperance.
In nature is a tyranny; it hath been
Th' untimely emptying of the happy throne,
And fall of many kings.
DUTY OWING TO OURSELVES AND OTHERS.
Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy
Rather in power, than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key; be checked for silence,
But never taxed for speech.
EQUIVOCATION.
But yet
I do not like but yet, it does allay
The good precedence; fye upon but yet:
But yet is as a gailer to bring forth
Some monstrous malefactor.
EXCESS.
A surfeit of the sweetest things
The deepest loathing to the stomach brings.
Every inordinate cup is unblessed,
and the ingredient is a devil.
FALSEHOOD.
Falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent,
Three things that women hold in hate.
FEAR.
Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds
Where it should guard.
Fear, and be slain; no worse can come, to fight:
And fight and die, is death destroying death;
Where fearing dying, pays death servile breath.
FEASTS.
Small cheer, and great welcome, makes a merry feast.
FILIAL INGRATITUDE.
Ingratitude! Thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous, when thou showest thee in a child,
Than the sea-monster.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child
FORETHOUGHT.
Determine on some course,
More than a wild exposure to each cause
That starts i' the way before thee.
FORTITUDE.
Yield not thy neck
To fortune's yoke, but let thy dauntless mind
Still ride in triumph over all mischance.
FORTUNE.
When fortune means to men most good,
She looks upon them with a threatening eye.
GREATNESS.
Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: To-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
The third day, comes a frost, a killing frost;
And,--when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is ripening,--nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness,
and some have greatness thrust upon them.
HAPPINESS.
O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness
through another man's eyes.
HONESTY.
An honest man is able to speak for himself,
when a knave is not.
To be honest, as this world goes, is to be
one man picked out of ten thousand.
HYPOCRISY.
Devils soonest tempt,
resembling spirits of light.
One may smile, and smile,
and be a villain.
INNOCENCE.
The trust I have is in mine innocence,
And therefore am I bold and resolute.
INSINUATIONS.
The shrug, the hum, or ha; these petty brands,
That calumny doth use;--
For calumny will sear
Virtue itself:--these shrugs, these bums, and ha's,
When you have said, she's goodly, come between,
Ere you can say she's honest.
JEALOUSY.
Trifles, light as air,
Are, to the jealous, confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ.
O beware of jealousy:
It is the green-eyed monster, which does mock
The meat it feeds on.
JESTS.
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
of him that hears it.
He jests at scars,
that never felt a wound.
JUDGMENT.
Heaven is above all; there sits a Judge,
That no king can corrupt.
LIFE.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
LOVE.
A murd'rous, guilt shows not itself more soon,
Than love that would seem bid: love's night is noon.
Sweet love, changing his property,
Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate.
When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforced ceremony.
The course of true-love
never did run smooth.
Love looks not with the eyes,
but with the mind.
She never told her love,--
But let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud,
Feed on her damask check: she pined in thought
And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.
MAN.
What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculties! in form, and moving,
how express and admirable! in action, how like
an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the