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  • Title: Two Gentlemen of Verona (Modern)
  • Editor: Melissa Walter

  • Copyright Internet Shakespeare Editions. This text may be freely used for educational, non-profit purposes; for all other uses contact the Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Editor: Melissa Walter
    Not Peer Reviewed

    Two Gentlemen of Verona (Modern)

    4.1.
    Enter Valentine, Speed, and certain outlaws.
    15451 Outlaw
    Fellows, stand fast! I see a passenger.
    2 Outlaw
    If there be ten, shrink not, but down with 'em.
    3 Outlaw
    Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye.
    If not, we'll make you sit and rifle you.
    Speed
    Sir, we are undone; these are the villains
    1550That all the travelers do fear so much.
    Valentine
    My friends.
    1 Outlaw
    That's not so, sir. We are your enemies.
    2 Outlaw
    Peace, we'll hear him.
    3 Outlaw
    Ay, by my beard will we, for he is a proper man.
    Valentine
    1555Then know that I have little wealth to lose;
    A man I am, crossed 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.
    15602 Outlaw
    Whither travel you?
    Valentine
    To Verona.
    1 Outlaw
    Whence came you?
    Valentine
    From Milan.
    3 Outlaw
    Have you long sojourned there?
    1565Valentine
    Some sixteen months, and longer might have stayed
    If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.
    1 Outlaw
    What, were you banished thence?
    Valentine
    I was.
    2 Outlaw
    For what offence?
    1570Valentine
    For that which now torments me to rehearse;
    I killed a man, whose death I much repent;
    But yet I slew him manfully in fight,
    Without false vantage or base treachery.
    1 Outlaw
    Why ne'er repent it, if it were done so;
    1575But were you banished for so small a fault?
    Valentine
    I was, and held me glad of such a doom.
    2 Outlaw
    Have you the tongues?
    Valentine
    My youthful travel therein made me happy,
    Or else I often had been miserable.
    15803 Outlaw
    By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar,
    This fellow were a king for our wild faction.
    1 Outlaw
    We'll have him. Sirs, a word.
    [The outlaws talk among themselves.]
    Master, be one of them. It's an honorable kind of thievery.
    1585Valentine
    Peace, villain.
    2 Outlaw
    Tell us this: have you any thing to take to?
    Valentine
    Nothing but my fortune.
    3 Outlaw
    Know then that some of us are gentlemen,
    Such as the fury of ungoverned youth
    1590Thrust from the company of awful men.
    Myself was from Verona banished,
    For practising to steal away a lady,
    An heir, and near allied unto the Duke.
    2 Outlaw
    And I from Mantua for a gentleman
    1595Who, in my mood, I stabbed unto the heart.
    1 Outlaw
    And I, for such like petty crimes as these.
    But to the purpose, for we cite our faults
    That they may hold excused our lawless lives,
    And partly, seeing you are beautified
    1600With goodly shape, and by your own report
    A linguist, and a man of such perfection
    As we do in our quality much want -
    2 Outlaw
    Indeed because you are a banished man,
    Therefore, above the rest, we parley to you.
    1605Are you content to be our general?
    To make a virtue of necessity,
    And live as we do in this wilderness?
    3 Outlaw
    What sayst thou? Wilt thou be of our consort?
    Say "Ay," and be the captain of us all.
    1610We'll do thee homage and be ruled by thee,
    Love thee as our commander and our king.
    1 Outlaw
    But if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest.
    2 Outlaw
    Thou shalt not live to brag what we have offered.
    Valentine
    I take your offer, and will live with you,
    1615Provided that you do no outrages
    On silly women or poor passengers.
    3 Outlaw
    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
    1620Which, with our selves, all rest at thy dispose.
    Exeunt.