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 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.
Messenger
Don Pedro is approached.
Enter Don Pedro, Don John, Claudio, Benedick, and Balthasar
Don Pedro
Good Signior Leonato, you are 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 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.
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 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.
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 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 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: 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.
Beatrice
Scratching could not make it worse, an ’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.
Benedick
I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer. But keep your way, i’ God’s name; I have done.
Beatrice
You always end with a jade’s trick: I know you of old.
Don Pedro
That is the sum of all, Leonato. 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 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.
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 except Benedick and Claudio
Claudio
Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of 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 judgment; or would you have me speak after my custom, as being a professed tyrant to their sex?
Claudio
No; I pray thee speak in sober judgment.
Benedick
Why, i’ faith, methinks she’s too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise and too little 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 me truly how thou likest 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, 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.
Benedick
I can see yet without spectacles and I see no such matter: there’s her cousin, an 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?
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 three-score again? Go to, i’ faith; an 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.
Re-enter Don Pedro
Don Pedro
What secret hath held you here, that you followed not to Leonato’s?
Benedick
I would your grace would constrain me to tell.
Don Pedro
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 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 ’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.
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.
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.
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; 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 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 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, 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 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 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 in
Venice, thou wilt quake for this shortly.
Benedick
I look for an earthquake too, then.
Don Pedro
Well, you temporize with the hours. In the meantime, good Signior Benedick, repair to Leonato’s: commend me to him and tell him I will 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 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 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
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,
When you went onward on this ended action,
I look’d upon her with a soldier’s eye,
That liked, but had a rougher task in hand
Than to drive liking to the name of love:
But now I am return’d and that war-thoughts
Have left their places vacant, in their rooms
Come thronging soft and delicate desires,
All prompting me how fair young Hero is,
Saying, I liked her ere I went to wars.
Don Pedro
Thou wilt be like a lover presently
And tire the hearer with a book of words.
If thou dost love fair Hero, cherish it,
And I will break with her and with her father,
And thou shalt have her. Was’t not to this end
That thou began’st to twist so fine a story?
Claudio
How sweetly you do minister to love,
That know love’s grief by his complexion!
But lest my liking might too sudden seem,
I would have salved it with a longer treatise.
Don Pedro
What need the bridge much broader than the flood?
The fairest grant is the necessity.
Look, what will serve is fit: ’tis once, thou lovest,
And I will fit thee with the remedy.
I know we shall have revelling to-night:
I will assume thy part in some disguise
And tell fair Hero I am Claudio,
And in her bosom I’ll unclasp my heart
And take her hearing prisoner with the force
And strong encounter of my amorous tale:
Then after to her father will I break;
And the conclusion is, she shall be thine.
In practise let us put it presently.
Exeunt
SCENE II. A ROOM IN LEONATO’S HOUSE.
Enter Leonato and Antonio, meeting
Leonato
How now, brother! Where is my cousin, your son? hath he provided this music?
Antonio
He is very busy about it. But, brother, I can tell you strange news that you yet dreamt not of.
Leonato
Are they good?
Antonio
As the event stamps them: but they have a good cover; they show well outward. The prince and Count Claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley in mine orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of mine: the prince discovered to Claudio that he loved my niece your daughter and meant to acknowledge it this night in a dance: and if he found her accordant, he meant to take the present time by the top and instantly break with you of it.
Leonato
Hath the fellow any wit that told you this?
Antonio
A good sharp fellow: I will send for him; and question him yourself.
Leonato
No, no; we will hold it as a dream till it appear itself: but I will acquaint my daughter withal, that she may be the better prepared for an answer, if peradventure this be true. Go you and tell her of it.
Enter Attendants
Cousins, you know what you have to do. O, I cry you mercy, friend; go you with me, and I will use your skill. Good cousin, have a care this busy time.
Exeunt
SCENE III. THE SAME.
Enter Don John and Conrade
Conrade
What the good-year, my lord! why are you thus out of measure sad?
Don John
There is no measure in the occasion that breeds; therefore the sadness is without limit.
Conrade
You should hear reason.
Don John
And when I have heard it, what blessing brings it?
Conrade
If not a present remedy, at least a patient sufferance.
Don John
I wonder that thou, being, as thou sayest thou art, born under Saturn, goest about to apply a moral medicine to a mortifying mischief. I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause and smile at no man’s jests, eat when I have stomach and wait for no man’s leisure, sleep when I am drowsy and tend on no man’s business, laugh when I am merry and claw no man in his humour.
Conrade
Yea, but you must not make the full show of this till you may do it without controlment. You have of late stood out against your brother, and he hath ta’en you newly into his grace; where it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest.
Don John
I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace, and it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.
Conrade
Can you make no use of you
r discontent?
Don John
I make all use of it, for I use it only.
Who comes here?
Enter Borachio
What news, Borachio?
Borachio
I came yonder from a great supper: the prince your brother is royally entertained by Leonato: and I can give you intelligence of an intended marriage.
Don John
Will it serve for any model to build mischief on? What is he for a fool that betroths himself to unquietness?
Borachio
Marry, it is your brother’s right hand.
Don John
Who? the most exquisite Claudio?
Borachio
Even he.
Don John
A proper squire! And who, and who? which way looks he?
Borachio
Marry, on Hero, the daughter and heir of Leonato.
Don John
A very forward March-chick! How came you to this?
Borachio
Being entertained for a perfumer, as I was smoking a musty room, comes me the prince and Claudio, hand in hand in sad conference: I whipt me behind the arras; and there heard it agreed upon that the prince should woo Hero for himself, and having obtained her, give her to Count Claudio.
Don John
Come, come, let us thither: this may prove food to my displeasure. That young start-up hath all the glory of my overthrow: if I can cross him any way, I bless myself every way. You are both sure, and will assist me?
Conrade
To the death, my lord.
Don John
Let us to the great supper: their cheer is the greater that I am subdued. Would the cook were of my mind! Shall we go prove what’s to be done?
Borachio
We’ll wait upon your lordship.
Exeunt
ACT II
SCENE I. A HALL IN LEONATO’S HOUSE.
Enter Leonato, Antonio, Hero, Beatrice, and others
Leonato
Was not Count John here at supper?
Antonio
I saw him not.
Beatrice
How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am heart-burned an hour after.
Hero
He is of a very melancholy disposition.
Beatrice
He were an excellent man that were made just in the midway between him and Benedick: the one is too like an image and says nothing, and the other too like my lady’s eldest son, evermore tattling.
Leonato
Then half Signior Benedick’s tongue in Count John’s mouth, and half Count John’s melancholy in Signior Benedick’s face,—
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