Moreover, and this is decisive, Valentine rails against
love in the first act as one who has experienced love's utmost rage:
"To be
In love: when scorn is bought with groans; coy looks,
With heart-sore sighs; one fading moment's mirth,
With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights."
The man who speaks like this is not the man who despises love and
prefers honour, but one who has already given himself to passion with an
absolute abandonment. Such inconsistencies and flaws in workmanship are
in themselves trivial, but, from my point of view, significant; for
whenever Shakespeare slips in drawing character, in nine cases out of
ten he slips through dragging in his own personality or his personal
experience, and not through carelessness, much less incompetence; his
mistakes, therefore, nearly always throw light on his nature or on his
life's story. From the beginning, too, Valentine like Shakespeare is a
born lover.
As soon, moreover, as he has gone to the capital and fallen in love he
becomes Shakespeare's avowed favourite.
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