Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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2.1 Enter Leonato, Antonio his brother, Hero his daughter, Beatrice his niece, ⌈Margaret, and Ursula⌉

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 heartburned 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 Signor Benedick’s tongue in Count John’s mouth, and half Count John’s melancholy in Signor Benedick’s face—

BEATRICE With a good leg and a good foot, uncle, and money enough in his purse—such a man would win any woman in the world, if a could get her good will.

LEONATO By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue.

ANTONIO In faith, she’s too curst.

BEATRICE Too curst is more than curst. I shall lessen God’s sending that way, for it is said God sends a curst cow short horns, but to a cow too curst he sends none.

LEONATO So, by being too curst, God will send you no horns.

BEATRICE just, if he send me no husband, for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening. Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face. I had rather lie in the woollen.

LEONATO You may light on a husband that hath no beard.

BEATRICE What should I do with him—dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him. Therefore I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bearherd and lead his apes into hell.

LEONATO Well then, go you into hell?

BEATRICE No, but to the gate, and there will the devil meet me like an old cuckold with horns on his head, and say, ‘Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven. Here’s no place for you maids.’ So deliver I up my apes and away to Saint Peter fore the heavens. He shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.

ANTONIO (to Hero) Well, niece, I trust you will be ruled by your father.

BEATRICE Yes, faith, it is my cousin’s duty to make curtsy and say, ‘Father, as it please you.’ But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say, ‘Father, as it please me.’

LEONATO Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.

BEATRICE Not till God make men of some other mettle than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a piece of valiant dust?—to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I’ll none. Adam’s sons are my brethren, and truly I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.

LEONATO (to Hero) Daughter, remember what I told you. If the Prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer.

BEATRICE The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you be not wooed in good time. If the Prince be too important, tell him there is measure in everything, and so dance out the answer. For hear me, Hero, wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace. The first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig—and full as fantastical; the wedding mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry. And then comes repentance, and with his bad legs falls into the cinquepace faster and faster till he sink into his grave.

LEONATO Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly.

BEATRICE I have a good eye, uncle. I can see a church by daylight.

LEONATO The revellers are entering, brother. Make good room.

Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, and Balthasar, all masked, Don John, and Borachio, ⌈with a drummer⌉

DON PEDRO (to Hero) Lady, will you walk a bout with your friend?

HERO So you walk softly, and look sweetly, and say nothing, I am yours for the walk; and especially when I walk away.

DON PEDRO With me in your company?

HERO I may say so when I please.

DON PEDRO And when please you to say so?

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 thatched.

DON PEDRO Speak low if you speak love. They move aside

⌈BALTHASAR⌉ (to Margaret) 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?

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.

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 move aside

URSULA (to Antonio) I know you well enough, you are Signor Antonio.

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. 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 end.

They move aside

BEATRICE (to Benedick) Will you not tell me who told you so? 115 BENEDICK No, you shall pardon me.

BEATRICE Nor will you not tell me who you are?

BENEDICK Not now.

BEATRICE That I was disdainful, and that I had my good wit out of the Hundred Merry Tales—well, this was Signor Benedick that said so. BENEDICK What’s he?

BEATRICE I am sure you know him well enough.

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 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.

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 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 at the next turning.

Dance. Exeunt all but Don John, Borachio, and Claudio

DON JOHN (aside to Borachio) 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 (aside to Don John) And that is Claudio. I know him by his bearing.

DON JOHN Are not you Signor Benedick?

CLAUDIO You know me well. I am he.

DON JOHN Signor, you are very near my brother in his love. He is enamoured on Hero. I pray you dissuade 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 her tonight.

DON JOHN Come, let us to the banquet. Exeunt all but Claudio

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.

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

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.

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? 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 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

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 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 Don Pedro the Prince

DON PEDRO Now, signor, where’s the Count? Did you see him?

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. Enter Claudio and Beatrice, ⌈and Leonato with Hero⌉

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 tooth-picker now from the furthest 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 pigmies, rather than hold three words’ conference with this harpy. You have no employment for me?

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 Signor Benedick.

BEATRICE Indeed, my lord, he lent it me a while, 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 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 sad?

CLAUDIO Not sad, my lord.

DON PEDRO How then? Sick?

CLAUDIO Neither, my lord.

BEATRICE The Count is neither sad, nor sick, nor 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 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 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. (To Hero) Lady, as you are mine, I am yours. I give away myself for you, and dote upon the exchange.

BEATRICE (to Hero) 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 windy side of care.—My cousin tells him in his ear that he is in her heart.

CLAUDIO And so she doth, cousin.

BEATRICE Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes everyone to the world but I, and I am sunburnt. I may sit in a corner and cry ‘Heigh-ho for a husband’.

DON PEDRO Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.

BEATRICE I would rather have one of your father’s getting. Hath your grace ne’er a brother like you? Your father got excellent husbands if a maid could come by them.

DON PEDRO Will you have me, lady?

BEATRICE No, my lord, unless I might have another for working days. Your grace is too costly to wear every day. But I beseech your grace, pardon me. I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.

DON PEDRO Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you; for out o’ question, you were born in a merry hour.

BEATRICE No, sure, my lord, my mother cried. But then there was a star danced, and under that was I born. (To Hero and Claudio) Cousins, God give you joy.

LEONATO Niece, will you look to those things I told you of?

BEATRICE I cry you mercy, uncle. (To Don Pedro) By your grace’s pardon. Exit Beatrice

DON PEDRO By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady.

LEONATO There’s little of the melancholy element in her, my lord. She is never sad but when she sleeps, and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say she hath often dreamt of unhappiness and waked herself with laughing.

DON PEDRO She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.

LEONATO O, by no means. She mocks all her wooers out of suit.

DON PEDRO She were an excellent wife for Benedick.

LEONATO O Lord, my lord, if they were but a week married they would talk themselves mad.

DON PEDRO County Claudio, when mean you to go to church?

CLAUDIO Tomorrow, my lord. Time goes on crutches till love have all his rites.

LEONATO Not till Monday, my dear son, which is hence a just sevennight, and a time too brief, too, to have all things answer my mind.

DON PEDRO Come, you shake the head at so long a breathing, but I warrant thee, Claudio, the time shall not go dully by us. I will in the interim undertake one of Hercules’ labours, which is to bring Signor Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection th‘one with th’other. I would fain have it a match, and I doubt not but to fashion it, if you three will but minister such assistance as I shall give you direction.

LEONATO My lord, I am for you, though it cost me ten nights’ watchings.

CLAUDIO And I, my lord.

DON PEDRO And you too, gentle Hero?

HERO I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my cousin to a good husband.

DON PEDRO And Benedick is not the unhopefullest husband that I know. Thus far can I praise him: he is of a noble strain, of approved valour and confirmed honesty. I will teach you how to humour your cousin that she shall fall in love with Benedick, and I, with your two helps, will so practise on Benedick that, in despite of his quick wit and his queasy stomach, he shall fall in love with Beatrice. If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an archer; his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods. Go in with me, and I will tell you my drift. Exeunt

2.2 Enter Don John and Borachio

DON JOHN It is so. The Count Claudio shall marry the daughter of Leonato.

BORACHIO Yea, my lord, but I can cross it.

DON JOHN Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be medicinable to me. I am sick in displeasure to him, and whatsoever comes athwart his affection ranges evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this marriage?

BORACHIO Not honestly, my lord, but so covertly that no dishonesty shall appear in me.

DON JOHN Show me briefly how.

BORACHIO I think I told your lordship a year since how much I am in the favour of Margaret, the waiting gentlewoman to Hero.

DON JOHN I remember.

BORACHIO I can at any unseasonable instant of the night appoint her to look out at her lady’s chamber window.

DON JOHN What life is in that to be the death of this marriage?

BORACHIO The poison of that lies in you to temper. Go you to the Prince your brother. Spare not to tell him that he hath wronged his honour in marrying the renowned Claudio—whose estimation do you mightily hold up—to a contaminated stale, such a one as Hero.

DON JOHN What proof shall I make of that?

BORACHIO Proof enough to misuse the Prince, to vex Claudio, to undo Hero, and kill Leonato. Look you for any other issue?

DON JOHN Only to despite them I will endeavour anything.

BORACHIO Go then. Find me a meet hour to draw Don Pedro and the Count Claudio alone. Tell them that you know that Hero loves me. Intend a kind of zeal both to the Prince and Claudio as in love of your brother’s honour who hath made this match, and his friend’s reputation who is thus like to be cozened with the semblance of a maid, that you have discovered thus. They will scarcely believe this without trial. Offer them instances, which shall bear no less likelihood than to see me at her chamber window, hear me call Margaret Hero, hear Margaret term me Claudio. And bring them to see this the very night before the intended wedding, for in the mean time I will so fashion the matter that Hero shall be absent, and there shall appear such seeming truth of Hero’s disloyalty that jealousy shall be called assurance, and all the preparation overthrown.

DON JOHN Grow this to what adverse issue it can, I will put it in practice. Be cunning in the working this, and thy fee is a thousand ducats.

BORACHIO Be you constant in the accusation, and my cunning shall not shame me.

DON JOHN I will presently go learn their day of marriage. Exeunt

2.3 Enter Benedick

BENEDICK Boy! ⌈Enter Boy⌉

BOY Signor?

BENEDICK In my chamber window lies a book. Bring it hither to me in the orchard.

BOY I am here already, sir.

BENEDICK I know that, but I would have thee hence and here again. ⌈Exit Boy⌉ I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviours to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love. And such a man is Claudio. I have known when there was no music with him but the drum and the fife, and now had he rather hear the tabor and the pipe. I have known when he would have walked ten mile afoot to see a good armour, and now will he lie ten nights awake carving the fashion of a new doublet. He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier, and now is he turned orthography. His words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes. May I be so converted, and see with these eyes? I cannot tell. I think not. I will not be sworn but love may transform me to an oyster, but I’ll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me he shall never make me such a fool. One woman is fair, yet I am well. Another is wise, yet I am well. Another virtuous, yet I am well. But till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace. Rich she shall be, that’s certain. Wise, or I’ll none. Virtuous, or I’ll never cheapen her. Fair, or I’ll never look on her. Mild, or come not near me. Noble, or not I for an angel. Of good discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what colour it please God. Ha! The Prince and Monsieur Love. I will hide me in the arbour.

He hides. Enter Don Pedro the Prince, Leonato, and Claudio

DON PEDRO Come, shall we hear this music?

CLAUDIO

Yea, my good lord. How still the evening is,

As hushed on purpose to grace harmony.

DON PEDRO (aside) See you where Benedick hath hid himself?

CLAUDIO (aside)

O, very well, my lord. The music ended,

We’ll fit the hid-fox with a pennyworth.

Enter Balthasar with music

DON PEDRO Come, Balthasar, we’ll hear that song again.

BALTHASAR

O good my lord, tax not so bad a voice

To slander music any more than once.

DON PEDRO

It is the witness still of excellency

To put a strange face on his own perfection.

I pray thee sing, and let me woo no more.

BALTHASAR

Because you talk of wooing I will sing,

Since many a wooer doth commence his suit

To her he thinks not worthy, yet he woos,

Yet will he swear he loves.

DON PEDRO Nay pray thee, come;

Or if thou wilt hold longer argument,

Do it in notes.

BALTHASAR Note this before my notes:

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

DON PEDRO

Why, these are very crotchets that he speaks—

Note notes, forsooth, and nothing!

The accompaniment begins

BENEDICK Now, divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies? Well, a horn for my money, when all’s done.

BALTHASAR (sings)

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.

Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

To one thing constant never.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no more

Of dumps so dull and heavy.

The fraud of men was ever so

Since summer first was leafy.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into hey nonny, nonny.

DON PEDRO By my troth, a good song.

BALTHASAR And an ill singer, my lord.

DON PEDRO Ha, no, no, faith. Thou singest well enough for a shift.

BENEDICK (aside) An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him; and I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief. I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it.

DON PEDRO Yea, marry, dost thou hear, Balthasar? I pray thee get us some excellent music, for tomorrow night we would have it at the Lady Hero’s chamber window.

BALTHASAR The best I can, my lord.

Exit

DON PEDRO Do so. Farewell. Come hither, Leonato. What was it you told me of today, that your niece Beatrice was in love with Signor Benedick?

CLAUDIO (aside) O, ay, stalk on, stalk on. The fowl sits.—I did never think that lady would have loved any man.

LEONATO No, nor I neither. But most wonderful that she should so dote on Signor Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviours seemed ever to abhor.

BENEDICK (aside) Is’t possible? Sits the wind in that corner?

LEONATO By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think of it. But that she loves him with an enraged affection, it is past the infinite of thought.

DON PEDRO Maybe she doth but counterfeit.

CLAUDIO Faith, like enough.

LEONATO O God! Counterfeit? There was never counterfeit of passion came so near the life of passion as she discovers it.

DON PEDRO Why, what effects of passion shows she?

CLAUDIO (aside) Bait the hook well. This fish will bite.

LEONATO What effects, my lord? She will sit you—you heard my daughter tell you how.

CLAUDIO She did indeed.

DON PEDRO How, how, I pray you? You amaze me. I would have thought her spirit had been invincible against all assaults of affection.

LEONATO I would have sworn it had, my lord, especially against Benedick.

BENEDICK (aside) I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it. Knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such reverence.

CLAUDIO (aside) He hath ta’en th’infection. Hold it up.

DON PEDRO Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?

LEONATO No, and swears she never will. That’s her torment.

CLAUDIO ‘Tis true, indeed, so your daughter says. ‘Shall I,’ says she, ‘that have so oft encountered him with scorn, write to him that I love him?’

LEONATO This says she now when she is beginning to write to him, for she’ll be up twenty times a night, and there will she sit in her smock till she have writ a sheet of paper. My daughter tells us all.

CLAUDIO Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jest your daughter told us of.

LEONATO O, when she had writ it and was reading it over, she found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet.

CLAUDIO That.

LEONATO O, she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence, railed at herself that she should be so immodest to write to one that she knew would flout her. ‘I measure him,’ says she, ‘by my own spirit, for I should flout him if he writ to me, yea, though I love him I should.’

CLAUDIO Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses, ‘O sweet Benedick, God give me patience.’

LEONATO She doth indeed, my daughter says so, and the ecstasy hath so much overborne her that my daughter is sometime afeard she will do a desperate outrage to herself. It is very true.

DON PEDRO It were good that Benedick knew of it by some other, if she will not discover it.

CLAUDIO To what end? He would make but a sport of it and torment the poor lady worse.

DON PEDRO An he should, it were an alms to hang him. She’s an excellent sweet lady, and, out of all suspicion, she is virtuous.

CLAUDIO And she is exceeding wise.

DON PEDRO In everything but in loving Benedick.

LEONATO O my lord, wisdom and blood combating in so tender a body, we have ten proofs to one that blood hath the victory. I am sorry for her, as I have just cause, being her uncle and her guardian.

DON PEDRO I would she had bestowed this dotage on me. I would have doffed all other respects and made her half myself. I pray you tell Benedick of it, and hear what a will say.

LEONATO Were it good, think you?

CLAUDIO Hero thinks surely she will die, for she says she will die if he love her not, and she will die ere she make her love known, and she will die if he woo her, rather than she will bate one breath of her accustomed crossness.

DON PEDRO She doth well. If she should make tender of her love ’tis very possible he’ll scorn it, for the man, as you know all, hath a contemptible spirit.

CLAUDIO He is a very proper man.

DON PEDRO He hath indeed a good outward happiness.

CLAUDIO Before God; and in my mind, very wise.

DON PEDRO He doth indeed show some sparks that are like wit.

CLAUDIO And I take him to be valiant.

DON PEDRO As Hector, I assure you; and in the managing of quarrels you may say he is wise, for either he avoids them with great discretion or undertakes them with a most Christianlike fear.

LEONATO If he do fear God, a must necessarily keep peace. If he break the peace, he ought to enter into a quarrel with fear and trembling.

DON PEDRO And so will he do, for the man doth fear God, howsoever it seems not in him by some large jests he will make. Well, I am sorry for your niece. Shall we go seek Benedick and tell him of her love?

CLAUDIO Never tell him, my lord. Let her wear it out with good counsel.

LEONATO Nay, that’s impossible. She may wear her heart out first.

DON PEDRO Well, we will hear further of it by your daughter. Let it cool the while. I love Benedick well, and I could wish he would modestly examine himself to see how much he is unworthy so good a lady.

LEONATO My lord, will you walk? Dinner is ready.

CLAUDIO (aside) If he do not dote on her upon this, I will never trust my expectation.

DON PEDRO (aside) Let there be the same net spread for her, and that must your daughter and her gentlewomen carry. The sport will be when they hold one an opinion of another’s dotage, and no such matter. That’s the scene that I would see, which will be merely a dumb show. Let us send her to call him in to dinner. Exeunt Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato

BENEDICK (coming forward) This can be no trick. The conference was sadly borne. They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady. It seems her affections have their full bent. Love me! Why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured. They say I will bear myself proudly if I perceive the love come from her. They say too that she will rather die than give any sign of affection. I did never think to marry. I must not seem proud. Happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending. They say the lady is fair. ’Tis a truth, I can bear them witness. And virtuous—’tis so, I cannot reprove it. And wise, but for loving me. By my troth, it is no addition to her wit—nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her. I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me because I have railed so long against marriage; but doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No. The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married. Here comes Beatrice.

Enter Beatrice

By this day, she’s a fair lady. I do spy some marks of love in her.

BEATRICE Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.