DON PEDRO With me in your company?
HERO I may say so, when I please.
DON PEDRO And when please you to say so?
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HERO When I like your favour, for God defend the lute
should be like the case!
DON PEDRO My visor is Philemon’s roof;
Within the house is Jove.
HERO Why then your visor should be thatch’d.
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DON PEDRO Speak low, if you speak love.
[They step aside.]
BALTHASAR Well, I would you did like me.
MARGARET So would not I for your own sake, for I have
many ill qualities.
BALTHASAR Which is one?
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MARGARET I say my prayers aloud.
BALTHASAR I love you the better; the hearers may cry Amen.
MARGARET God match me with a good dancer!
BALTHASAR Amen.
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MARGARET And God keep him out of my sight when
the dance is done! Answer, clerk.
BALTHASAR No more words; the clerk is answered.
[They step aside.]
URSULA I know you well enough, you are Signior
Antonio.
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ANTONIO At a word, I am not.
URSULA I know you by the waggling of your head.
ANTONIO To tell you true, I counterfeit him.
URSULA You could never do him so ill-well, unless you
were the very man. Here’s his dry hand up and down:
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you are he, you are he.
ANTONIO At a word, I am not.
URSULA Come, come, do you think I do not know you
by your excellent wit? Can virtue hide itself? Go to,
mum, you are he: graces will appear, and there’s an
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end. [They step aside.]
BEATRICE Will you not tell me who told you so?
BENEDICK No, you shall pardon me.
BEATRICE Nor will you not tell me who you are?
BENEDICK Not now.
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BEATRICE That I was disdainful, and that I had my good
wit out of the ‘Hundred Merry Tales’ – well, this was
Signior Benedick that said so.
BENEDICK What’s he?
BEATRICE I am sure you know him well enough.
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BENEDICK Not I, believe me.
BEATRICE Did he never make you laugh?
BENEDICK I pray you, what is he?
BEATRICE Why, he is the Prince’s jester, a very dull fool;
only his gift is in devising impossible slanders. None
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but libertines delight in him, and the commendation
is not in his wit, but in his villainy; for he both pleases
men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and
beat him. I am sure he is in the fleet; I would he had
boarded me.
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BENEDICK When I know the gentleman, I’ll tell him
what you say.
BEATRICE Do, do, he’ll but break a comparison or two
on me, which peradventure not marked, or not
laughed at, strikes him into melancholy, and then
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there’s a partridge wing saved, for the fool will eat no
supper that night. [Music.] We must follow the
leaders.
BENEDICK In every good thing.
BEATRICE Nay, if they lead to any ill, I will leave them
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at the next turning.
Dance. Exeunt all but Don John, Borachio and Claudio.
DON JOHN Sure my brother is amorous on Hero, and
hath withdrawn her father to break with him about it.
The ladies follow her, and but one visor remains.
BORACHIO And that is Claudio: I know him by his
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bearing.
DON JOHN Are not you Signior Benedick?
CLAUDIO You know me well, I am he.
DON JOHN Signior, you are very near my brother in his
love. He is enamoured on Hero; I pray you, dissuade
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him from her, she is no equal for his birth. You may do
the part of an honest man in it.
CLAUDIO How know you he loves her?
DON JOHN I heard him swear his affection.
BORACHIO So did I too, and he swore he would marry
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her tonight.
DON JOHN Come, let us to the banquet.
Exeunt Don John and Borachio.
CLAUDIO Thus answer I in name of Benedick,
But hear these ill news with the ears of Claudio.
’Tis certain so; the Prince woos for himself.
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Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love:
Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;
Let every eye negotiate for itself,
And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch
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Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.
This is an accident of hourly proof,
Which I mistrusted not. Farewell, therefore, Hero!
Enter BENEDICK.
BENEDICK Count Claudio?
CLAUDIO Yea, the same.
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BENEDICK Come, will you go with me?
CLAUDIO Whither?
BENEDICK Even to the next willow, about your own
business, County. What fashion will you wear the
garland of? About your neck, like an usurer’s chain?
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Or under your arm, like a lieutenant’s scarf? You must
wear it one way, for the Prince hath got your Hero.
CLAUDIO I wish him joy of her.
BENEDICK Why, that’s spoken like an honest drover: so
they sell bullocks. But did you think the Prince would
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have served you thus?
CLAUDIO I pray you, leave me.
BENEDICK Ho, now you strike like the blind man! ’Twas
the boy that stole your meat, and you’ll beat the post.
CLAUDIO If it will not be, I’ll leave you. Exit.
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BENEDICK Alas, poor hurt fowl, now will he creep into
sedges. But that my Lady Beatrice should know me,
and not know me! The Prince’s fool! Ha, it may be I
go under that title because I am merry. Yea, but so I
am apt to do myself wrong. I am not so reputed: it is
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the base, though bitter, disposition of Beatrice that
puts the world into her person, and so gives me out.
Well, I’ll be revenged as I may.
Enter the Prince, DON PEDRO, HERO, LEONATO.
DON PEDRO Now, signior, where’s the Count? Did you
see him?
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BENEDICK Troth, my lord, I have played the part of
Lady Fame. I found him here as melancholy as a lodge
in a warren. I told him, and I think I told him true,
that your Grace had got the good will of this young
lady, and I offered him my company to a willow-tree,
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either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to
bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped.
DON PEDRO To be whipped? What’s his fault?
BENEDICK The flat transgression of a schoolboy, who,
being overjoyed with finding a bird’s nest, shows it his
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companion, and he steals it.
DON PEDRO Wilt thou make a trust a transgression? The
transgression is in the stealer.
BENEDICK Yet it had not been amiss the rod had been
made, and the garland too; for the garland
he might
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have worn himself, and the rod he might have bestowed
on you, who, as I take it, have stolen his bird’s nest.
DON PEDRO I will but teach them to sing, and restore
them to the owner.
BENEDICK If their singing answer your saying, by my
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faith you say honestly.
DON PEDRO The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you:
the gentleman that danced with her told her she is
much wronged by you.
BENEDICK O, she misused me past the endurance of a
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block! An oak but with one green leaf on it would have
answered her: my very visor began to assume life and
scold with her. She told me, not thinking I had been
myself, that I was the Prince’s jester, that I was duller
than a great thaw, huddling jest upon jest with such
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impossible conveyance upon me that I stood like a
man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me. She
speaks poniards, and every word stabs: if her breath
were as terrible as her terminations, there were no
living near her, she would infect to the North Star. I
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would not marry her, though she were endowed with
all that Adam had left him before he transgressed. She
would have made Hercules have turned spit, yea, and
have cleft his club to make the fire too. Come, talk not
of her, you shall find her the infernal Ate in good
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apparel. I would to God some scholar would conjure
her, for certainly, while she is here, a man may live as
quiet in hell as in a sanctuary, and people sin upon
purpose, because they would go thither; so indeed all
disquiet, horror, and perturbation follows her.
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Enter CLAUDIO and BEATRICE.
DON PEDRO Look, here she comes.
BENEDICK Will your Grace command me any service to
the world’s end? I will go on the slightest errand now
to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on; I
will fetch you a toothpicker now from the furthest
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inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John’s
foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham’s beard; do
you any embassage to the Pygmies, rather than hold
three words’ conference with this harpy. You have no
employment for me?
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DON PEDRO None, but to desire your good company.
BENEDICK O God, sir, here’s a dish I love not! I cannot
endure my Lady Tongue. Exit.
DON PEDRO Come, lady, come, you have lost the heart of
Signior Benedick.
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BEATRICE Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile, and I
gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one.
Marry, once before he won it of me with false dice,
therefore your Grace may well say I have lost it.
DON PEDRO You have put him down, lady, you have put
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him down.
BEATRICE So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest
I should prove the mother of fools. I have brought
Count Claudio, whom you sent me to seek.
DON PEDRO Why, how now, Count? Wherefore are you
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sad?
CLAUDIO Not sad, my lord.
DON PEDRO How then? Sick?
CLAUDIO Neither, my lord.
BEATRICE The Count is neither sad, nor sick, nor
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merry, nor well; but civil Count, civil as an orange, and
something of that jealous complexion.
DON PEDRO I’faith, lady, I think your blazon to be true,
though I’ll be sworn, if he be so, his conceit is false.
Here, Claudio, I have wooed in thy name, and fair
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Hero is won. I have broke with her father, and his
good will obtained. Name the day of marriage, and
God give thee joy!
LEONATO Count, take of me my daughter, and with her
my fortunes; his Grace hath made the match, and all
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grace say Amen to it.
BEATRICE Speak, Count, ’tis your cue.
CLAUDIO Silence is the perfectest herald of joy; I were
but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as you
are mine, I am yours; I give away myself for you and
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dote upon the exchange.
BEATRICE Speak, cousin, or, if you cannot, stop his
mouth with a kiss, and let not him speak neither.
DON PEDRO In faith, lady, you have a merry heart.
BEATRICE Yea, my lord, I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 402
