The Two Gentlemen of Verona Lies and Deceit Quotes

Julia admits that when she learned how Proteus had written her a letter, she was jumping for joy on the inside. But, she disguised her true feelings by pretending to be angry at his forwardness. In the first scene especially, Julia tends to play a lot of mind games when it comes to romance.

Here, Speed makes a nasty little jab at the practice of wearing makeup, which he perceives as a deceptive practice. According to Speed, the only reason Silvia looks like a "beauty" is because she covers her face with a "painted" mask.

We see this same kind of attitude toward women and cosmetics in plays like Hamlet, where, for example, King Claudius compares his "painted word[s]" (every lie he tells) to the way a "harlot" "plasters" her face with makeup:

The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word: (3.1.4)

Julia isn't the only female character to play coy when it comes to romance. Here, Silvia becomes angry at Valentine for failing to realize that she wanted him to write her a love letter. The thing is, it's Silvia's own fault because, instead of just coming out and saying that she wanted a love note, she asked poor Valentine to write a letter to a "friend" of hers. We shouldn't be too hard on Silvia, though. After all, once she and Valentine are (secretly) engaged, she's incredibly loyal to him.

When Valentine and Silvia fall in love, they get engaged in secret and hatch a plan to elope. (Silvia's dad wants her to marry Thurio.) Pretty sneaky, right? But what's worse – the couples' plan to run off and marry in secret, or Proteus's plan to tattle on them to Silvia's father? Here, Proteus tells us that he's going to tell because he wants to steal Silvia away from both Thurio and his best friend, Valentine.

Huh. The Duke of Milan isn't as dumb as some characters seem to think. Here, he admits that he's suspected all along that Silvia and Valentine have been sneaking around behind his back.

That Proteus sure is tricky, isn't he? While he pretends to be heartbroken about his friend getting banished from Milan, he's actually planning to steal Silvia from Valentine. Here, he generously offers to escort Valentine to the city limits. How thoughtful.

We knew Proteus was bad before, but his deception just keeps getting worse. By this point, he's already arranged to get Valentine kicked out of Milan. Now, he's planning on talking trash about him to Silvia so she'll think he's a loser.

Poor Julia. When Proteus asks "Sebastian" (Julia in disguise) to deliver her ring to another woman, she actually feels bad that she's deceiving Proteus by being in disguise. Then she comes to her senses (sort of) when she recognizes that he really doesn't deserve her "pity." In the end, Julia completes the errand but acknowledges that, by playing the part of the obedient "servant" (she's been hired as Proteus's page boy), she's being a "traitor" to herself.

The only way Julia can talk about her heartache is by pretending to be someone else. Here, she's disguised as "Sebastian" and she tells Silvia that she once borrowed Julia's clothes to plat the role of "Ariadne" in a church play. She goes on to fib that her performance of this "woman's part" was so good that it moved Julia to tears. "Ariadne" is a figure from Greek mythology – she's famous for hanging herself after her boyfriend, Theseus, breaks up with her. Now, we know that Julia/Sebastian never played the role of Ariadne in a play. This made up story is Julia's only way of expressing her sadness over the loss of Proteus.

When Julia reveals her true identity to Proteus, she declares that his cheating and infidelity are the worst kind of betrayal – worse than her own deception when she let him believe she was a boy ("Sebastian").