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.
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