As You Like It Silvius and Phoebe Quotes

SILVIUS
O Corin, that thou knew'st how I do love her!
CORIN
I partly guess; for I have loved ere now.
SILVIUS
No, Corin, being old thou canst not guess, (2.4.22-24)

Young Silvius assumes that, because Corin is old, he can't possibly understand what it feels like to be in love. Of course, Silvius is being silly and overly dramatic here, but this concept surfaces throughout Shakespeare's work. In Romeo and Juliet, for example, Juliet declares that her Nurse's old age prevents her from understanding the youthful urgency of her passion for Romeo:

Had she affections and warm youthful blood,
She would be as swift in motion as a ball;
My words would bandy her to my sweet love,
And his to me.
(2.5.1)

Sweet Phoebe, do not scorn me. Do not, Phoebe.
Say that you love me not, but say not so
In bitterness. The common executioner,
Whose heart the accustomed sight of death makes
   hard,
Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck
But first begs pardon. Will you sterner be
Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops? (3.5.1-8)

Uh-oh.  It looks like we've got another pathetic Petrarchan lover on our hands when Silvius begs stuck-up Phoebe not to scorn him.