PROTEUS. Have patience, gentle Julia.
JULIA. I must, where is no remedy.
PROTEUS. When possibly I can, I will return.
JULIA. If you turn not, you will return the sooner.
Keep this remembrance for thy Julia's sake.
[Giving a ring]
PROTEUS. Why, then, we'll make exchange. Here, take you this.
JULIA. And seal the bargain with a holy kiss.
PROTEUS. Here is my hand for my true constancy;
And when that hour o'erslips me in the day
Wherein I sigh not, Julia, for thy sake,
The next ensuing hour some foul mischance
Torment me for my love's forgetfulness!
My father stays my coming; answer not;
The tide is now- nay, not thy tide of tears:
That tide will stay me longer than I should.
Julia, farewell! Exit JULIA
What, gone without a word?
Ay, so true love should do: it cannot speak;
For truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.
Enter PANTHINO
PANTHINO. Sir Proteus, you are stay'd for.
PROTEUS. Go; I come, I come.
Alas! this parting strikes poor lovers dumb. Exeunt
SCENE 3.
Verona. A street
Enter LAUNCE, leading a dog
LAUNCE. Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping; all
the
kind of the Launces have this very fault. I have receiv'd my
proportion, like the Prodigious Son, and am going with Sir
Proteus to the Imperial's court. I think Crab my dog be the
sourest-natured dog that lives: my mother weeping, my father
wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing
her
hands, and all our house in a great perplexity; yet did not
this
cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebble
stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would
have
wept to have seen our parting; why, my grandam having no
eyes,
look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I'll show
you
the manner of it. This shoe is my father; no, this left shoe
is
my father; no, no, left shoe is my mother; nay, that cannot
be so
neither; yes, it is so, it is so, it hath the worser sole.
This
shoe with the hole in it is my mother, and this my father. A
vengeance on 't! There 'tis. Now, sir, this staff is my
sister,
for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a
wand;
this hat is Nan our maid; I am the dog; no, the dog is
himself,
and I am the dog- O, the dog is me, and I am myself; ay, so,
so.
Now come I to my father: 'Father, your blessing.' Now should
not
the shoe speak a word for weeping; now should I kiss my
father;
well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother. O that she could
speak now like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her- why there
'tis;
here's my mother's breath up and down. Now come I to my
sister;
mark the moan she makes. Now the dog all this while sheds not
a
tear, nor speaks a word; but see how I lay the dust with my
tears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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