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friendship, moves little feeling of any sort, as his faults appear to spring from the rank and undisciplined impulses of youth. His passion is evidently of the kind that thinks more of itself than of its object; and his much talking about it breeds in us a secret distrust of its quality from the first, as knowing,

"When the blood burns, how prodigally the soul

Lends the tongue vows:"

for which cause we do not wonder that it betrays him into something of baseness. But, though passion seduces him from truth and reason, the failure of his undertaking and Julia's heroic constancy recover him to them: love, overmastered in the absence of its object, resumes its sway in her presence; and experience brings him to the discovery of his own weakness, which is the beginning of wisdom, and the first stepping towards virtue.-In Valentine we have the rudiments, and something more, of a truly noble and beautiful character. His slowness to take the meaning of Silvia's artful and enigmatical invitations finely exemplifies the innate modesty of a true affection, that is kept from discerning the signs of a return by a sense of its own unworthiness.

And yet, for some cause or other, these persons do not greatly interest or move us; there being an appearance of art either in the characters themselves or in the delineation of them, that still beats back our sympathies, and keeps us from really feeling as in the presence of nature while with them. Nevertheless, the play, taken as a whole, illustrates with considerable skill the truant fickleness of human passion, and the weakness of human reason when opposed by passion, and at the same time depicts the beauty of maiden truth and constancy. Mr. Hallam sets it down as "probably the first English comedy in which characters are drawn from social life, at once ideal and true."

COMMENTS

By SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLARS

VALENTINE AND PROTEUS

Two friends, Valentine and Proteus, are separating in the first scene. The names have already a significance, which hints at their opposite characters. Valentine, a good honest nature, is a man of action; urged by honor to go out into the world and into military and courtly service, he is traveling to Milan; he belongs to the simple and plain kind of country gentlemen, with no finely-sifted speech; with him heart and lips are one; his generosity knows no doubt; himself good, he deems the bad good also; his nature is not soon affected by any emotion, his acts are not disturbed by reflections. A golden friend, ready for every great sacrifice, he has yet never known affection for the other sex; on the contrary, his derision is provoked by the absorbing passion of his more excitable friend. Proteus, on the other hand, is a man of reflection, full of attractive virtues and faults, and of great mental capability. It is said of him that "of many good he is the best ;" this goodness is exhibited throughout the piece (and this is a decided error) not in deeds, but only in the superiority of his talents. Entirely given up to love, completely filled with its desires and aspirations, he accuses himself of spending his days in "shapeless idleness;". thirsting for love as he is, he is in danger through selfishness and self-pleasing of renouncing his manly character; he appears as a youth of that young and tender wit, which, like "the most forward bud, is eaten by the canker ere it blow." The one-sidedness of each character is now to find its complement, as it were, as a corrective. Proteus

in the midst of his successful suit, is, to his despair, sent by his father to Valentine in Milan, in order like him to be "tutored in the world;" on the other hand, Valentine's original bent for "active deeds" meets with penance, as he himself calls it in Act ii. sc. 4, from the fact that in Milan, Silvia, the duke's daughter, falls in love with him. In the case of Valentine this new condition brings an increase of experience and refinement, which he appropriates after his own fashion; in that of Proteus the change causes a restraint, against which his self-loving nature struggles. The way in which both behave in this change of situation is developed in the finest manner from the original disposition of their characters. The honest, unsuspecting Valentine, occupied with manly dealings, must be sought after by love, if love is to touch him; the daughter of the duke, above all others, is able to fascinate him as an object which at the same time excites his aspiring ambition. But, as we should expect from him, he acts like a novice in the work of love; he betrays his increasing inclination by open "gazing," noticeable by all, and by imperious, offensive treatment of his rival Thurio. When she meets his modesty half way and woos him in her letter, he understands her not, and his servant Speed is obliged to explain her intention. His wont when he laughed to crow like a cock, when he walked to walk like one of the lions, is now passed away; his friend Proteus might now find matter for ridicule in the metamorphosis which love has effected. Since difference of position places obstacles to a union, with his peculiar want of consideration and readiness for action he enters on a plan for eloping with Silvia; instead of guarding himself from the snares of the duke, unsuspicious and confident he proceeds to entangle himself still further. When his plan of elopement has been punished with banishment, he surrenders himself passively and unhesitatingly to a band of outlaws; desperation urges him, the active life suits him, and the man who invites his company touches his heart by the similar fate which he too has suffered. Such is the extremity to which the treachery of his friend

has driven him. For Proteus, as soon as he had arrived at Milan, had at once forgotten his Julia. His love is, first and foremost, self-love. Completely absorbed in this one affection, arrived at Milan, and separated from Julia, his weak, love-seeking nature cannot endure for a moment the unusual void and desolation. Just as Romeo, rejected by his beloved, falls all the more violently in love with a new object, so does Proteus, when separated from Julia; he casts his eye on the beloved of his friend, and giving way to this one error, he falls from sin to sin, and runs the gauntlet of crime. Once befooled by the intoxication of the senses, he uses the finest sophistry to justify and to excuse his misdeeds. False and wavering, he forgets his oath to Julia, he ensnares the duke, he betrays his friend, he goes so far in baseness that he proposes slander as a means for making Silvia forget Valentine, and he himself undertakes the office of slanderer. His behavior towards his rival Thurio shows what a judge he is of love, with what power he practises the arts of love, and how secure and victorious he knows himself compared to such an adversary. He teaches him the secrets of love, well knowing that he understands them not; he, a poet himself, enjoins him to woo Silvia by "wailful sonnets," when he knows that he can only fashion miserable rhymes. In the amorous style of the three lovers, the poet has given us an excellent insight into their capacity for love. In the verses of Thurio we see a few paltry insipid rhymes, which German translators have too confidently received as a specimen of the genuine Shakespearean lyric. The poet possesses true poetry enough not to fear putting silly verses in the lips of the silly wooer, and thus, whilst he intentionally inserts a poem of no merit, he acquires the further merit of characterization. The poem which Valentine addresses to Silvia (Act iii. sc. 1) is of the same characteristic kind; composed in the usual conceit-style of love, it evidences tolerable awkwardness of rhyming talent, and is rather the work of the brain than the outpouring of excited feeling. Of Proteus' poem, we have only fragments and scat

tered words, which Julia imparts to us from his torn letter: "kind Julia-love-wounded Proteus-poor, forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus, to the sweet Julia"-words sufficient to tell us that among the three this is the man who understands the true rhetoric of love. With this letter he had taken by storm the free heart of the unguarded, unsuspecting Julia; but so well does he understand the strategy of love, that towards Silvia, whose heart was given to Valentine, he needed more studied tactics; and for this reason he seizes every opening, procures himself helpers and allies in the father and the rival, and endeavors to insinuate himself by the cunning of slander. He has reckoned every point but that of a woman's character, which has as much masculine power about it as his own has feminine weakness.—GERVINUS, Shakespeare Commentaries.

JULIA AND SILVIA

Sir Proteus and Sir Valentine, gentlemen twain and friends, of Verona, are enamoured respectively of Julia and Silvia parallel in their loves, for both find favor, and the lady of either is prepared to quit sire and home for their sakes without leave or leavetaking; they are as nearly parallel in their attendance,-Speed is the boy-page of Sir Valentine, and Launce waits after a genius and fashion of his own, upon Sir Proteus.

By usual fatality the fickle lover has gained a truly constant heart-for such is Julia's; and Julia is the most charming character in the play, and more than rudimentary of more than one of Shakespeare's most charming heroines. From her lips fall the lines of sweetest poetry in the play, expressive of the behavior of true affection in all circumstances; in difficulty, excited and lively; in prosperity and ease, availing itself only of such happiness to pursue its course―untarrying, undivergent, a beauty and a blessing; and varied in this manner by contingent fortunes, but ever in itself the same, is the affection of Julia and the history of its course.

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