The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Act IV, Scene 1
The frontiers of Mantua. A forest between Milan and Verona.
- Enter Valentine, Speed, and certain Outlaws.
First Outlaw
1- Fellows, stand fast; I see a passenger.
Second Outlaw
2- If there be ten, shrink not, but down with ’em.
Third Outlaw
3 - 4- Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye.
- If not, we’ll make you sit, and rifle you.
Speed
5 - 6- Sir, we are undone; these are the villains
- That all the travelers do fear so much.
Valentine
7- My friends—
First Outlaw
8- That’s not so, sir; we are your enemies.
Second Outlaw
9- Peace! We’ll hear him.
Third Outlaw
10- Ay, by my beard, will we, for he is a proper man.
Valentine
11 - 15- Then know that I have little wealth to lose.
- A man I am cross’d with adversity;
- My riches are these poor habiliments,
- Of which if you should here disfurnish me,
- You take the sum and substance that I have.
Second Outlaw
16- Whither travel you?
Valentine
17- To Verona.
First Outlaw
18- Whence came you?
Valentine
19- From Milan.
Third Outlaw
20- Have you long sojourn’d there?
Valentine
21 - 22- Some sixteen months, and longer might have stay’d,
- If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.
First Outlaw
23- What, were you banish’d thence?
Valentine
24- I was.
Second Outlaw
25- For what offense?
From: Costume illustrations for the Daly production of wo gentlemen of Verona
Walford Graham Robertson, circa 1900
Valentine
26 - 29- For that which now torments me to rehearse:
- I kill’d a man, whose death I much repent,
- But yet I slew him manfully in fight,
- Without false vantage, or base treachery.
First Outlaw
30 - 31- Why, ne’er repent it, if it were done so.
- But were you banish’d for so small a fault?
Valentine
32- I was, and held me glad of such a doom.
Second Outlaw
33- Have you the tongues?
Valentine
34 - 35- My youthful travel therein made me happy,
- Or else I often had been miserable.
Third Outlaw
36 - 37- By the bare scalp of Robin Hood’s fat friar,
- This fellow were a king for our wild faction!
First Outlaw
38- We’ll have him. Sirs, a word.
Speed
39 - 40- Master, be one of them;
- It’s an honorable kind of thievery.
Valentine
41- Peace, villain.
Second Outlaw
42- Tell us this: have you any thing to take to?
Valentine
43- Nothing but my fortune.
Third Outlaw
44 - 49- Know then, that some of us are gentlemen,
- Such as the fury of ungovern’d youth
- Thrust from the company of awful men.
- Myself was from Verona banished
- For practicing to steal away a lady,
- An heir, and near allied unto the Duke.
Second Outlaw
50 - 51- And I from Mantua, for a gentleman,
- Who, in my mood, I stabb’d unto the heart.
Byam Shaw, 1901
First Outlaw
52 - 58- And I for such like petty crimes as these.
- But to the purpose—for we cite our faults
- That they may hold excus’d our lawless lives;
- And partly, seeing you are beautified
- With goodly shape, and by your own report
- A linguist, and a man of such perfection
- As we do in our quality much want—
Second Outlaw
59 - 63- Indeed because you are a banish’d man,
- Therefore, above the rest, we parley to you:
- Are you content to be our general?
- To make a virtue of necessity
- And live as we do in this wilderness?
Third Outlaw
64 - 67- What say’st thou? Wilt thou be of our consort?
- Say “ay” and be the captain of us all:
- We’ll do thee homage and be rul’d by thee,
- Love thee as our commander and our king.
First Outlaw
68- But if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest.
Second Outlaw
69- Thou shalt not live to brag what we have offer’d.
Valentine
70 - 72- I take your offer, and will live with you,
- Provided that you do no outrages
- On silly women or poor passengers.
Third Outlaw
73 - 76- No, we detest such vile base practices.
- Come, go with us, we’ll bring thee to our crews,
- And show thee all the treasure we have got;
- Which, with ourselves, all rest at thy dispose.
- Exeunt.
Master, be one of them
Robert Dudley, William MacKenzie, 19th century