Two Gentlemen of Verona

Val. Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus:

Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.

Were’t not affection chains thy tender days

To the sweet glances of thy honour’d love,

Than, living dully sluggardized at home,

Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.

But since thou lovest, love still, and thrive therein,

Pro. Wilt thou be gone? Sweet Valentine, adieu!

Think on thy Proteus, when thou haply seest

Some rare note-worthy object in thy travel:

15 When thou dost meet good hap; and in thy danger,

Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers,

Val. And on a love-book pray for my success?

20 Pro. Upon some book I love I’ll pray for thee.

Val. That’s on some shallow story of deep love:

How young Leander cross’d the Hellespont.

Pro. That’s a deep story of a deeper love;

For he was more than over shoes in love.

I. 1.25 Val. ’Tis true; for you are over boots in love,

Pro. Over the boots? nay, give me not the boots.

Val. No, I will not, for it boots thee not.

Val. To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans;

30 Coy looks with heart-sore sighs; one fading moment’s mirth

With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights:

If lost, why then a grievous labour won;

Pro. So, by your circumstance, you call me fool.

Val. So, by your circumstance, I fear you’ll prove.

Pro. ’Tis love you cavil at: I am not Love.

Val. Love is your master, for he masters you:

Methinks, should not be chronicled for wise.

Pro. Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud