the wealth that he hath left, to be known a reasonable
creature. Who is his companion now? He hath every
month a new sworn brother.
MESSENGER Is’t possible?
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BEATRICE Very easily possible: he wears his faith but as
the fashion of his hat, it ever changes with the next
block.
MESSENGER I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your
books.
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BEATRICE No; and he were, I would burn my study. But
I pray you, who is his companion? Is there no young
squarer now that will make a voyage with him to the
devil?
MESSENGER He is most in the company of the right
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noble Claudio.
BEATRICE O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease;
he is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker
runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! If he
have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousand
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pound ere a be cured.
MESSENGER I will hold friends with you, lady.
BEATRICE Do, good friend.
LEONATO You will never run mad, niece.
BEATRICE No, not till a hot January.
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MESSENGER Don Pedro is approached.
Enter DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK, BALTHASAR and
DON JOHN the Bastard.
DON PEDRO Good Signior Leonato, are you come to
meet your trouble? The fashion of the world is to avoid
cost, and you encounter it.
LEONATO Never came trouble to my house in the
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likeness of your Grace, for trouble being gone,
comfort should remain; but when you depart from me,
sorrow abides, and happiness takes his leave.
DON PEDRO You embrace your charge too willingly. I
think this is your daughter.
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LEONATO Her mother hath many times told me so.
BENEDICK Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her?
LEONATO Signior Benedick, no, for then were you a child.
DON PEDRO You have it full, Benedick; we may guess by
this what you are, being a man. Truly the lady
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fathers herself. Be happy, lady, for you are like an
honourable father.
BENEDICK If Signior Leonato be her father, she would
not have his head on her shoulders for all Messina, as
like him as she is. [Don Pedro and Leonato talk aside.]
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BEATRICE I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior
Benedick: nobody marks you.
BENEDICK What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet
living?
BEATRICE Is it possible disdain should die, while she
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hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?
Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come in
her presence.
BENEDICK Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain
I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted; and I would
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I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart, for
truly I love none.
BEATRICE A dear happiness to women, they would else
have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank
God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that;
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I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man
swear he loves me.
BENEDICK God keep your ladyship still in that mind, so
some gentleman or other shall scape a predestinate
scratched face.
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BEATRICE Scratching could not make it worse, and
’twere such a face as yours were.
BENEDICK Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.
BEATRICE A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of
yours.
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BENEDICK I would my horse had the speed of your
tongue, and so good a continuer. But keep your way, a
God’s name, I have done.
BEATRICE You always end with a jade’s trick, I know you
of old.
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DON PEDRO That is the sum of all, Leonato. [turning to
the company] Signior Claudio and Signior Benedick,
my dear friend Leonato hath invited you all. I tell him
we shall stay here at the least a month, and he heartily
prays some occasion may detain us longer: I dare
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swear he is no hypocrite, but prays from his heart.
LEONATO If you swear, my lord, you shall not be
forsworn. [to Don John] Let me bid you welcome, my
lord, being reconciled to the Prince your brother: I
owe you all duty.
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DON JOHN I thank you: I am not of many words, but I thank you.
LEONATO Please it your Grace lead on?
DON PEDRO Your hand, Leonato, we will go together.
Exeunt all but Benedick and Claudio.
CLAUDIO Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of
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Signior Leonato?
BENEDICK I noted her not, but I looked on her.
CLAUDIO Is she not a modest young lady?
BENEDICK Do you question me as an honest man
should do, for my simple true judgement, or would
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you have me speak after my custom, as being a
professed tyrant to their sex?
CLAUDIO No, I pray thee speak in sober judgement.
BENEDICK Why, i’faith, methinks she’s too low for a
high praise, too brown for a fair praise, and too little
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for a great praise: only this commendation I can afford
her, that were she other than she is, she were
unhandsome, and being no other but as she is, I do
not like her.
CLAUDIO Thou thinkest I am in sport: I pray thee tell
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me truly how thou lik’st her.
BENEDICK Would you buy her, that you inquire after her?
CLAUDIO Can the world buy such a jewel?
BENEDICK Yea, and a case to put it into. But speak you
this with a sad brow, or do you play the flouting Jack,
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to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder, and Vulcan a
rare carpenter? Come, in what key shall a man take
you to go in the song?
CLAUDIO In mine eye, she is the sweetest lady that ever
I looked on.
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BENEDICK I can see yet without spectacles, and I see no
such matter: there’s her cousin, and she were not
possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty
as the first of May doth the last of December. But I
hope you have no intent to turn husband, have you?
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CLAUDIO I would scarce trust myself, though I had
sworn the contrary, if Hero would be my wife.
BENEDICK Is’t come to this? In faith, hath not the world
one man but he will wear his cap with suspicion? Shall
I never see a bachelor of threescore again? Go to, i’
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faith, and thou wilt needs thrust thy neck into a yoke,
wear the print of it and sigh away Sundays. Look, Don
Pedro is returned to seek you.
Enter DON PEDRO.
DON PEDRO What secret hath held you here, that you
followed not to Leonato’s?
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BENEDICK I would your Grace would constrain me to tell.
DON PED
RO I charge thee on thy allegiance.
BENEDICK You hear, Count Claudio: I can be secret as a
dumb man, I would have you think so; but on my
allegiance, mark you this, on my allegiance – he is in
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love. With who? Now that is your Grace’s part.
Mark how short his answer is: with Hero, Leonato’s
short daughter.
CLAUDIO If this were so, so were it uttered.
BENEDICK Like the old tale, my lord: ‘It is not so, nor
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’twas not so: but indeed, God forbid it should be so!’
CLAUDIO If my passion change not shortly, God forbid
it should be otherwise.
DON PEDRO Amen, if you love her, for the lady is very
well worthy.
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CLAUDIO You speak this to fetch me in, my lord.
DON PEDRO By my troth, I speak my thought.
CLAUDIO And in faith, my lord, I spoke mine.
BENEDICK And by my two faiths and troths, my lord, I
spoke mine.
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CLAUDIO That I love her, I feel.
DON PEDRO That she is worthy, I know.
BENEDICK That I neither feel how she should be loved,
nor know how she should be worthy, is the opinion that
fire cannot melt out of me; I will die in it at the stake.
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DON PEDRO Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the
despite of beauty.
CLAUDIO And never could maintain his part, but in the
force of his will.
BENEDICK That a woman conceived me, I thank her:
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that she brought me up, I likewise give her most
humble thanks: but that I will have a recheat winded
in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible
baldrick, all women shall pardon me. Because I will
not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do
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myself the right to trust none: and the fine is, for the
which I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor.
DON PEDRO I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love.
BENEDICK With anger, with sickness, or with hunger,
my lord, not with love: prove that ever I lose more
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blood with love than I will get again with drinking,
pick out mine eyes with a ballad-maker’s pen, and
hang me up at the door of a brothel-house for the
sign of blind Cupid.
DON PEDRO Well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith,
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thou wilt prove a notable argument.
BENEDICK If I do, hang me in a bottle like a cat and
shoot at me, and he that hits me, let him be clapped on
the shoulder and called Adam.
DON PEDRO Well, as time shall try. ‘In time the savage
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bull doth bear the yoke.’
BENEDICK The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible
Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull’s horns and set
them in my forehead, and let me be vilely painted, and
in such great letters as they write, ‘Here is good
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horse to hire,’ let them signify under my sign, ‘Here
you may see Benedick, the married man.’
CLAUDIO If this should ever happen, thou wouldst be
horn-mad.
DON PEDRO Nay, if Cupid have not spent all his quiver
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in Venice, thou wilt quake for this shortly.
BENEDICK I look for an earthquake too, then.
DON PEDRO Well, you will temporize with the hours. In
the meantime, good Signior Benedick, repair to
Leonato’s, commend me to him, and tell him I will
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not fail him at supper; for indeed he hath made great
preparation.
BENEDICK I have almost matter enough in me for such
an embassage; and so I commit you –
CLAUDIO To the tuition of God. From my house, if I
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had it –
DON PEDRO The sixth of July. Your loving friend, Benedick.
BENEDICK Nay, mock not, mock not; the body of your
discourse is sometime guarded with fragments, and
the guards are but slightly basted on neither. Ere you
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flout old ends any further, examine your conscience;
and so I leave you. Exit.
CLAUDIO My liege, your Highness now may do me good.
DON PEDRO My love is thine to teach: teach it but how,
And thou shalt see how apt it is to learn
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Any hard lesson that may do thee good.
CLAUDIO Hath Leonato any son, my lord?
DON PEDRO No child but Hero, she’s his only heir.
Dost thou affect her, Claudio?
CLAUDIO O my lord,
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 400
