and so forth. I might compare this with what Romeo says of his banishment, and perhaps infer from this two-fold treatment of the theme that Shakespeare left behind in Stratford some dark beauty who may have given Anne Hathaway good cause for jealous rage. It must not be forgotten here that Dryasdust tells us he was betrothed to another girl when Anne Hathaway's relations forced him to marry their kinswoman.
A moment later and this lover Valentine uses the very words that we found so characteristic in the mouth of the lover Orsino in Twelfth Night”:
“O I have fed upon this woe already,
And now excess of it will make me surfeit.”
Valentine, indeed, shows us traits of nearly all Shakespeare's later lovers, and this seems to me interesting, because of course all the qualities were in the youth, which were later differenced into various characters. His advice to the Duke, who pretends to be in love, is far too ripe, too contemptuous-true, to suit the character of such a votary of fond desire as Valentine was; it is mellow with experience and man-of-the-world wisdom, and the last couplet of it distinctly fore-shadows Benedick:
“Flatter and praise, commend, extol their graces;
Though ne'er so black, say they have angels' faces.
That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man
If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.”
But this is only an involuntary aperçu of Valentine, as indeed Benedick is only an intellectual mood of Shakespeare. And here Valentine is contrasted with Proteus, who gives somewhat different advice to Thurio, and yet advice which is still more characteristic of Shakespeare than Valentine-Benedick's counsel. Proteus says:
“You must lay lime to tangle her desires
By wailful sonnets, whose composéd rhymes
Should be full fraught with serviceable vows.”
In this way the young poet sought to give expression to different views of life, and so realize the complexity of his own nature.
The other traits of Valentine's character that do not necessarily belong to him as a lover are all characteristic traits of Shakespeare. When he is playing the banished robber-chief far from his love, this is how Valentine consoles himself:
“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.”