Enter Leonato, his brother, Hero his daughter, and
Beatrice his niece, ⌜with Ursula and Margaret.⌝LEONATO Was not Count John here at supper?LEONATO’S BROTHER I saw him not.BEATRICE How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am heartburned an hour after.HERO 5He 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, evermore10 tattling.LEONATO Then half Signior Benedick’s tongue in Count John’s mouth, and half Count John’s melancholy in Signior Benedick’s face—BEATRICE With a good leg and a good foot, uncle, and15 money enough in his purse, such a man would win any woman in the world if he could get her goodwill.LEONATO By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue.LEONATO’S BROTHER 20In 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
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curst cow short horns,” but to a cow too curst, he sends none.LEONATO 25So, 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 a30 husband with a beard on his face. I had rather lie in the woolen!LEONATO You may light on a husband that hath no beard.BEATRICE What should I do with him? Dress him in my35 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 even40 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 his45 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; for the heavens, he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.LEONATO’S BROTHER, ⌜to Hero⌝ 50Well, 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, or55 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.
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BEATRICE Not till God make men of some other metal60 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⌝ 65Daughter, 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 too70 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; the75 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 80I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.LEONATO The revelers are entering, brother. Make good room.⌜Leonato and his brother step aside.⌝Enter, ⌜with a Drum,⌝ Prince Pedro, Claudio, and
Benedick, ⌜Signior Antonio,⌝ and Balthasar, ⌜all in
masks, with Borachio and Don⌝ John.PRINCE, ⌜to Hero⌝ Lady, will you walk a bout with your85 friend?⌜They begin to dance.⌝HERO So you walk softly, and look sweetly, and say nothing, I am yours for the walk, and especially when I walk away.PRINCE With me in your company?HERO 90I may say so when I please.
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PRINCE And when please you to say so?HERO When I like your favor, for God defend the lute should be like the case.PRINCE My visor is Philemon’s roof; within the house95 is Jove.HERO Why, then, your visor should be thatched.PRINCE Speak low if you speak love.⌜They move aside;
Benedick and Margaret move forward.⌝BENEDICK, ⌜to Margaret⌝ Well, I would you did like me.MARGARET So would not I for your own sake, for I have100 many ill qualities.BENEDICK Which is one?MARGARET I say my prayers aloud.BENEDICK I love you the better; the hearers may cry “Amen.”MARGARET 105God match me with a good dancer.⌜They separate; Benedick moves aside;
Balthasar moves forward.⌝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 and Antonio move forward.⌝URSULA 110I know you well enough. You are Signior 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 115You 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 you120 by your excellent wit? Can virtue hide itself? Go to,
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mum, you are he. Graces will appear, and there’s an end.⌜They move aside;
Benedick and Beatrice move forward.⌝BEATRICE Will you not tell me who told you so?BENEDICK No, you shall pardon me.BEATRICE 125Nor 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 Signior Benedick that said so.BENEDICK 130What’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 135Why, 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 they140 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 two145 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 for the dance.⌝ We must follow the leaders.BENEDICK 150In every good thing.BEATRICE Nay, if they lead to any ill, I will leave them at the next turning.Dance. ⌜Then⌝ exit ⌜all except
Don John, Borachio, and Claudio.⌝
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DON JOHN, ⌜to Borachio⌝ Sure my brother is amorous on Hero, and hath withdrawn her father to break155 with him about it. The ladies follow her, and but one visor remains.BORACHIO And that is Claudio. I know him by his bearing.DON JOHN, ⌜to Claudio⌝ Are not you Signior Benedick?CLAUDIO 160You know me well. I am he.DON JOHN Signior, you are very near my brother in his love. He is enamored 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 165How 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.They exit. Claudio remains.CLAUDIO, ⌜unmasking⌝ 170 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.175 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,180 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?
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BENEDICK 185Even 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 your190 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 195I 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.He exits.BENEDICK 200Alas, 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!205 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 the Prince, Hero, ⌜and⌝ Leonato.PRINCE Now, signior, where’s the Count? Did you see him?BENEDICK 210Troth, 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 goodwill of this young lady, and I offered him my company to a215 willow tree, either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped.PRINCE To be whipped? What’s his fault?
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BENEDICK The flat transgression of a schoolboy who,220 being overjoyed with finding a bird’s nest, shows it his companion, and he steals it.PRINCE Wilt thou make a trust a transgression? The transgression is in the stealer.BENEDICK Yet it had not been amiss the rod had been225 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.PRINCE I will but teach them to sing and restore them230 to the owner.BENEDICK If their singing answer your saying, by my faith, you say honestly.PRINCE The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you. The gentleman that danced with her told her she is235 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 I240 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 every245 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 have250 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
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255 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.PRINCE Look, here she comes.BENEDICK Will your Grace command me any service260 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 inch of Asia, bring you the length of Prester John’s foot, fetch you a hair off the great Cham’s265 beard, do you any embassage to the Pygmies, rather than hold three words’ conference with this harpy. You have no employment for me?PRINCE None but to desire your good company.BENEDICK O God, sir, here’s a dish I love not! I cannot270 endure my Lady Tongue.He exits.PRINCE, ⌜to Beatrice⌝ Come, lady, come, you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick.BEATRICE Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile, and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single275 one. Marry, once before he won it of me with false dice. Therefore your Grace may well say I have lost it.PRINCE You have put him down, lady, you have put him down.BEATRICE 280So 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.PRINCE Why, how now, count, wherefore are you sad?CLAUDIO Not sad, my lord.PRINCE 285How then, sick?CLAUDIO Neither, my lord.BEATRICE The Count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry,
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nor well, but civil count, civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion.PRINCE 290I’ 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 goodwill obtained. Name the day of marriage,295 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 300Silence 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 dote upon the exchange.BEATRICE Speak, cousin, or, if you cannot, stop his305 mouth with a kiss and let not him speak neither.PRINCE 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 310And 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!”PRINCE Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.BEATRICE 315I 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.PRINCE Will you have me, lady?BEATRICE 320No, 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.
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PRINCE Your silence most offends me, and to be merry325 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.—Cousins, God give you joy!LEONATO 330Niece, will you look to those things I told you of?BEATRICE I cry you mercy, uncle.—By your Grace’s pardon.Beatrice exits.PRINCE By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady.LEONATO 335There’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.PRINCE 340She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.LEONATO O, by no means. She mocks all her wooers out of suit.PRINCE She were an excellent wife for Benedick.LEONATO O Lord, my lord, if they were but a week345 married, they would talk themselves mad.PRINCE County Claudio, when mean you to go to church?CLAUDIO Tomorrow, my lord. Time goes on crutches till love have all his rites.LEONATO 350Not till Monday, my dear son, which is hence a just sevennight, and a time too brief, too, to have all things answer my mind.PRINCE, ⌜to Claudio⌝ Come, you shake the head at so long a breathing, but I warrant thee, Claudio, the355 time shall not go dully by us. I will in the interim undertake one of Hercules’ labors, which is to bring Signior 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
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360 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.PRINCE 365And you too, gentle Hero?HERO I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my cousin to a good husband.PRINCE And Benedick is not the unhopefullest husband that I know. Thus far can I praise him: he is of370 a noble strain, of approved valor, and confirmed honesty. I will teach you how to humor your cousin that she shall fall in love with Benedick.— And I, with your two helps, will so practice on Benedick that, in despite of his quick wit and his375 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.⌜They⌝ exit.
