Proteus Richard III in the play "Henry VI, Part Three", in which the future usurper boasts: Shakespeare also names one of the main characters of his play "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" Proteus. Inconsistent with his affections, his deceptions have unraveled at the finale of the play as he is brought face-to-face with his friend Valentine and original love Julia: In 1807, William Wordsworth finished his sonnet on the theme of a modernity deadened to Nature, which opens "The world is too much with us", with a sense of nostalgia for the lost richness of a world numinous with deities: In
Proteus shape-changing, has much in common with the central but elusive figure of alchemy, Mercurius. The poet John Milton, aware of the association of Proteus with the Hermetic art of alchemy, wrote in "Paradise Lost" of alchemists who sought the philosopher's stone: In his 1658 discourse "The Garden of Cyrus", Sir Thomas Browne, pursuing the figure of the quincunx, queried: "Why Proteus in Homer the Symbole of the first matter, before he settled himself in the midst of his Sea-Monsters, doth place them out by fives?" Shakespeare uses the image of Proteus to establish the character of his great royal villain