Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare
Act 2 - Scene 6
The same. The DUKE’S palace.
Proteus : To leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn;
[p]To love fair Silvia, shall
I be forsworn;
[p]To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn;
[p]And
even that power which gave me first my oath
[p]Provokes me to this
threefold perjury;
[p]Love bade me swear and Love bids me
forswear.
[p]O sweet-suggesting Love, if thou hast sinned,
[p]Teach
me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it!
[p]At first I did adore a
twinkling star,
[p]But now I worship a celestial sun.
[p]Unheedful
vows may heedfully be broken,
[p]And he wants wit that wants resolved
will
[p]To learn his wit to exchange the bad for better.
[p]Fie, fie,
unreverend tongue! to call her bad,
[p]Whose sovereignty so oft thou
hast preferr'd
[p]With twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths.
[p]I
cannot leave to love, and yet I do;
[p]But there I leave to love where
I should love.
[p]Julia I lose and Valentine I lose:
[p]If I keep
them, I needs must lose myself;
[p]If I lose them, thus find I by
their loss
[p]For Valentine myself, for Julia Silvia.
[p]I to myself
am dearer than a friend,
[p]For love is still most precious in
itself;
[p]And Silvia--witness Heaven, that made her fair!--
[p]Shows
Julia but a swarthy Ethiope.
[p]I will forget that Julia is
alive,
[p]Remembering that my love to her is dead;
[p]And Valentine
I'll hold an enemy,
[p]Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend.
[p]I
cannot now prove constant to myself,
[p]Without some treachery used to
Valentine.
[p]This night he meaneth with a corded ladder
[p]To climb
celestial Silvia's chamber-window,
[p]Myself in counsel, his
competitor.
[p]Now presently I'll give her father notice
[p]Of their
disguising and pretended flight;
[p]Who, all enraged, will banish
Valentine;
[p]For Thurio, he intends, shall wed his daughter;
[p]But,
Valentine being gone, I'll quickly cross
[p]By some sly trick blunt
Thurio's dull proceeding.
[p]Love, lend me wings to make my purpose
swift,
[p]As thou hast lent me wit to plot this drift!
Previous: Act 2 - Scene 5
Next: Act 2 - Scene 7
