That makes me reasonless to reason thus?

She is fair; and so is Julia that I love–

That I did love, for now my love is thawed;

Which, like a waxen image ’gainst a fire,

Bears no impression of the thing it was.

Methinks my zeal to Valentine is cold,

And that I love him not as I was wont.

O, but I love his lady too too much,

And that’s the reason I love him so little.

How shall I dote on her with more advice

That thus without advice begin to love her!

’Tis but her picture I have yet beheld,

And that hath dazzlèd my reason’s light;

But when I look on her perfections,

There is no reason but I shall be blind.

If I can check my erring love, I will;

If not, to compass her I’ll use my skill.

[II, vi, 1–38] His dilemma deepening with his passion, Proteus ties himself up into emotional knots, as he seeks to square the demands of love and loyalty:

To leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn;

To love fair Silvia, shall I be forsworn;

To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn.

And e’en that power which gave me first my oath

Provokes me to this threefold perjury:

Love bade me swear, and Love bids me forswear.

O sweet-suggesting Love, if thou hast sinn’d,

Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it!

At first I did adore a twinkling star,

But now I worship a celestial sun.

Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken;

And he wants wit that wants resolvèd will

To learn his wit t’exchange the bad for better.

Fie, fie, unreverend tongue, to call her bad

Whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferred

With twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths!

I cannot leave to love, and yet I do;

But there I leave to love where I should love.

Julia I lose, and Valentine I lose;

If I keep them, I needs must lose myself;

If I lose them, thus find I by their loss:

For Valentine, myself; for Julia, Silvia.

I to myself am dearer than a friend,

For love is still most precious in itself;

And Silvia – witness heaven, that made her fair!–

Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope.

I will forget that Julia is alive,

Remembering that my love to her is dead;

And Valentine I’ll hold an enemy,

Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend.

I cannot now prove constant to myself

Without some treachery used to Valentine.

[V, iv, 1–12] A loser, it seems, in love, Valentine finds solace in solitude:

How use doth breed a habit in a man!

This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,

I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.

Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,

And to the nightingale’s complaining notes

Tune my distresses, and record my woes.

O thou that dost inhabit in my breast,

Leave not the mansion so long tenantless,

Lest, growing ruinous, the building fall

And leave no memory of what it was!