the exclamation reminding us of how Romeo talks of Juliet's glove. Like other men, Shakespeare learned life gradually, and in youth poverty of experience forces him to repeat his effects.
Again, when Valentine praises his friend Proteus to the Duke, we find a characteristic touch of Shakespeare. Valentine says:
“His years but young; but his experience old;
His head unmellowed; but his judgement ripe.”
In “The Merchant of Venice” Bellario, the learned doctor of Padua, praises Portia in similar terms:
“I never knew so young a body with so old a head.”
But it is when Valentine confesses his love that Shakespeare speaks through him most clearly:
“Ay, Proteus, but that life is altered now,
I have done penance for contemning love;
- - - - - - - -
For in revenge of my contempt of love
Love hath chased sleep from my enthralled eyes
And made them watchers of my own heart's sorrow.
O gentle Proteus, Love's a mighty lord,”—
and so on.
Every word in this confession is characteristic of the poet and especially the fact that his insomnia is due to love. Valentine then gives himself to passionate praise of Silvia, and ends with the “She is alone” that recalls “She is all the beauty extant” of “The Two Noble Kinsmen.” Valentine the lover reminds us of Romeo as the sketch resembles the finished picture; when banished, he cries:
“And why not death, rather than living torment? To die is to be banished from myself; And Silvia is myself: banished from her, Is self from self; a deadly banishment. What light is light, if Silvia be not seen? What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by? Unless it be to think that she is by And feed upon the shadow of perfection. Except I be by Silvia in the night There is no music in the nightingale,”