you: but when you have our roses,
You barely leave our thorns to prick ourselves,
And mock us with our bareness.

_Bert._ How have I sworn?

_Dia._ 'Tis not the many oaths that make the truth;
But the plain single vow, that is vow'd true.
What is not holy, that we swear not by,
But take the Highest to witness: Then, pray you, tell me,
If I should swear by Jove's great attributes,
I love'd you dearly, would you believe my oaths,
When I did love you ill? this has no holding,
To swear by him _whom I protest to love_,
That I will work against him."

Read--"_when_ I protest to _Love_."

It is evident that Diana refers to Bertram's double vows, his marriage vow,
and the subsequent vow or _protest_ he had made not to keep it. "If I
should swear by Jove I loved you dearly, would you believe my oath when I
loved you ill? This has no consistency, to swear by _Jove_, when secretly I
protest to _Love_ that I will work against him (_i.e._ against the oath I
have taken to Jove)."

Bertram had _sworn by the Highest_ to love his wife; in his letter to his
mother he says:

"I have wedded her, not bedded her, and sworn to make the _not_
eternal:"

he secretly _protests to Love_ to work against his sacred oath; and in his
following speech he says:

"Be not so cruel-holy, Love is holy."

He had before said:

"----do not strive against my vows:
I was compell'd to her; but I love thee
By Love's own sweet constraint:"

clearly indicating that this must be the true sense of the passage. By
printing _when_ for _whom_, and _Love_ with a capital letter, to indicate
the personification, all is made clear. {178}

After further argument from Bertram, Diana answers:

"I see that men _make ropes in such a scarre_
That we'll forsake ourselves."

This Rowe altered to "make _hopes_ in such _affairs_," and Malone to "make
_hopes_ in such _a scene_." Others, and among them Mr. Knight and Mr.
Collier, retain the old reading, and vainly endeavour to give it a meaning,
understanding the word _scarre_ to signify a _rock_ or _cliff_, with which
it has nothing to do in this passage. There can be no doubt that "make
_ropes_" is a misprint for "make _hopes_," which is evidently required by
the context, "that we'll forsake ourselves." It then only remains to show
what is meant by _a scarre_, which signifies here _anything that causes
surprise or alarm_; what we should now wri