Much Ado About Nothing

Name: Much Ado About Nothing
Author: William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

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Dramatis Personae

Don Pedro, Prince of Arragon
Don John, his bastard brother
Claudio, a young lord of Florence
Benedick, a young lord of Padua
Leonato, governor of Messina
Antonio, his brother
Balthasar, attendant to Don Pedro
Conrade, follower of Don John
Borachio, follower of Don John
Friar Francis
Dogberry, a constable
Verges, a headborough
A sexton
A boy
Hero, daughter to Leonato
Beatrice, niece to Leonato
Margaret, gentlewoman attending on Hero
Ursula, gentlewoman attending on Hero
Messengers, watch, attendants, etc.

Scene: Messina

Act I

Scene I

Before Leonato’s House.

	Enter Leonato, Hero, and Beatrice, with a Messenger.
Leonato	I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Arragon comes this night to Messina.
Messenger	He is very near by this: he was not three leagues off when I left him.
Leonato	How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?
Messenger	But few of any sort, and none of name.
Leonato	A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers. I find here that Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour on a young Florentine called Claudio.
Messenger	Much deserved on his part and equally remembered by Don Pedro: he hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion: he hath indeed better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how.
Leonato	He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much glad of it.
Messenger	I have already delivered him letters, and there appears much joy in him; even so much that joy could not show itself modest enough without a badge of bitterness.
Leonato	Did he break out into tears?
Messenger	In great measure.
Leonato	A kind overflow of kindness: there are no faces truer than those that are so washed. How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!
Beatrice	I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned from the wars or no?
Messenger	I know none of that name, lady: there was none such in the army of any sort.
Leonato	What is he that you ask for, niece?
Hero	My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua.
Messenger	O, he’s returned; and as pleasant as ever he was.
Beatrice	He set up his bills here in Messina and challenged Cupid at the flight; and my uncle’s fool, reading the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, and challenged him at the bird-bolt. I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath he killed? for indeed I promised to eat all of his killing.
Leonato	Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much; but he’ll be meet with you, I doubt it not.
Messenger	He hath done good service, lady, in these wars.
Beatrice	You had musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it: he is a very valiant trencherman; he hath an excellent stomach.
Messenger	And a good soldier too, lady.
Beatrice	And a good soldier to a lady: but what is he to a lord?
Messenger	A lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuffed with all honourable virtues.
Beatrice	It is so, indeed; he is no less than a stuffed man: but for the stuffing—well, we are all mortal.
Leonato	You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her: they never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.
Beatrice	Alas! he gets nothing by that. In our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one: so that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse; for it is all 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?
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.
Beatrice	No; an 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 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 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 heartly 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 threescore again? Go to, i’ 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.
	Reenter 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 will 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 tonight: 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 practice 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 my 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 blessings 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 your 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 to 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—
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 bear-ward, 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 for 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 metal 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	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 cinque pace: 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 cinque pace 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. All put on their masks.
	Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, Balthasar, Don John, Borachio, Margaret, Ursula, and others, masked.
Don Pedro	Lady, will you walk about 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. Drawing her 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?
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.
Ursula	I 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	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.
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.
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.
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. Then exeunt all except 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 bearing.
Don John	Are you not 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 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 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 wooes 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!
	Reenter 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, count. What fashion will you wear the garland of? about your neck, like a 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 drovier: 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.
	Reenter Don Pedro.
Don Pedro	Now, signior, 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.
Don Pedro	Look, here she comes.
	Enter Claudio, Beatrice, Hero, and Leonato.
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 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?
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.
Beatrice	Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for a 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. 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 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 of 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	Niece, will you look to those things I told you of?
Beatrice	I cry you mercy, uncle. By your grace’s pardon. Exit.
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 dreamed 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	Count 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 seven-night; 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 Signior Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection the one with the 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.

Scene II

The same.

	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 meantime 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.

Scene III

Leonato’s orchard.

	Enter Benedick.
Benedick	Boy!
	Enter Boy.
Boy	Signior?
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 a-foot 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. Withdraws.
	Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato.
Don Pedro	Come, shall we hear this music?
Claudio	Yea, my good lord. How still the evening is, As hush’d on purpose to grace harmony!
Don Pedro	See you where Benedick hath hid himself?
Claudio	O, very well, my lord: the music ended, We’ll fit the kid-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 wooes, Yet will he swear he loves.
Don Pedro	Now, 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. Air.
Benedick	Now, divine air! now is his soul ravished! Is it not strange that sheeps’ guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies? Well, a horn for my money, when all’s done.
	The Song.
Balthasar	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 moe, Of dumps so dull and heavy; The fraud of men was ever so, Since summer first was leavy: Then sigh not so, etc.
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	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.
Don Pedro	Do so: farewell. Exit Balthasar. Come hither, Leonato. What was it you told me of today, that your niece Beatrice was in love with Signior Benedick?
Claudio	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 Signior Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviours seemed ever to abhor.
Benedick	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	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	I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it: knavery cannot, sure, hide itself in such reverence.
Claudio	He hath ta’en the 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 sometimes 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 daffed 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 Christian-like 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	If he do not dote on her upon this, I will never trust my expectation.
Don Pedro	Let there be the same net spread for her; and that must your daughter and her gentlewoman 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. By this day! she’s a fair lady: I do spy some marks of love in her.
	Enter Beatrice.
Beatrice	Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.
Benedick	Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.
Beatrice	I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come.
Benedick	You take pleasure then in the message?
Beatrice	Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife’s point and choke a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior: fare you well. Exit.
Benedick	Ha! “Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner;” there’s a double meaning in that. “I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me;” that’s as much as to say, Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks. If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew. I will go get her picture. Exit.

fetching the rest…

Dramatis Personae

Don Pedro, Prince of Arragon

Don John, his bastard brother

Claudio, a young lord of Florence

Benedick, a young lord of Padua

Leonato, governor of Messina

Antonio, his brother

Balthasar, attendant to Don Pedro

Conrade, follower of Don John

Borachio, follower of Don John

Friar Francis

Dogberry, a constable

Verges, a headborough

A sexton

A boy

Hero, daughter to Leonato

Beatrice, niece to Leonato

Margaret, gentlewoman attending on Hero

Ursula, gentlewoman attending on Hero

Messengers, watch, attendants, etc.

Scene: Messina

Act I

Scene I

Before Leonato’s House.

	Enter Leonato, Hero, and Beatrice, with a Messenger.
Leonato	I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Arragon comes this night to Messina.
Messenger	He is very near by this: he was not three leagues off when I left him.
Leonato	How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?
Messenger	But few of any sort, and none of name.
Leonato	A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers. I find here that Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour on a young Florentine called Claudio.
Messenger	Much deserved on his part and equally remembered by Don Pedro: he hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion: he hath indeed better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how.
Leonato	He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much glad of it.
Messenger	I have already delivered him letters, and there appears much joy in him; even so much that joy could not show itself modest enough without a badge of bitterness.
Leonato	Did he break out into tears?
Messenger	In great measure.
Leonato	A kind overflow of kindness: there are no faces truer than those that are so washed. How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!
Beatrice	I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned from the wars or no?
Messenger	I know none of that name, lady: there was none such in the army of any sort.
Leonato	What is he that you ask for, niece?
Hero	My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua.
Messenger	O, he’s returned; and as pleasant as ever he was.
Beatrice	He set up his bills here in Messina and challenged Cupid at the flight; and my uncle’s fool, reading the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, and challenged him at the bird-bolt. I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath he killed? for indeed I promised to eat all of his killing.
Leonato	Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much; but he’ll be meet with you, I doubt it not.
Messenger	He hath done good service, lady, in these wars.
Beatrice	You had musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it: he is a very valiant trencherman; he hath an excellent stomach.
Messenger	And a good soldier too, lady.
Beatrice	And a good soldier to a lady: but what is he to a lord?
Messenger	A lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuffed with all honourable virtues.
Beatrice	It is so, indeed; he is no less than a stuffed man: but for the stuffing—well, we are all mortal.
Leonato	You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her: they never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.
Beatrice	Alas! he gets nothing by that. In our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one: so that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse; for it is all 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?
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.
Beatrice	No; an 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 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 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 heartly 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 threescore again? Go to, i’ 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.
	Reenter 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 will 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 tonight: 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 practice 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 my 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 blessings 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 your 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 to 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—
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 bear-ward, 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 for 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 metal 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	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 cinque pace: 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 cinque pace 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. All put on their masks.
	Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, Balthasar, Don John, Borachio, Margaret, Ursula, and others, masked.
Don Pedro	Lady, will you walk about 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. Drawing her 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?
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.
Ursula	I 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	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.
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.
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.
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. Then exeunt all except 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 bearing.
Don John	Are you not 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 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 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 wooes 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!
	Reenter 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, count. What fashion will you wear the garland of? about your neck, like a 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 drovier: 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.
	Reenter Don Pedro.
Don Pedro	Now, signior, 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.
Don Pedro	Look, here she comes.
	Enter Claudio, Beatrice, Hero, and Leonato.
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 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?
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.
Beatrice	Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for a 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. 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 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 of 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	Niece, will you look to those things I told you of?
Beatrice	I cry you mercy, uncle. By your grace’s pardon. Exit.
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 dreamed 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	Count 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 seven-night; 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 Signior Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection the one with the 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.

Scene II

The same.

	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 meantime 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.

Scene III

Leonato’s orchard.

	Enter Benedick.
Benedick	Boy!
	Enter Boy.
Boy	Signior?
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 a-foot 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. Withdraws.
	Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato.
Don Pedro	Come, shall we hear this music?
Claudio	Yea, my good lord. How still the evening is, As hush’d on purpose to grace harmony!
Don Pedro	See you where Benedick hath hid himself?
Claudio	O, very well, my lord: the music ended, We’ll fit the kid-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 wooes, Yet will he swear he loves.
Don Pedro	Now, 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. Air.
Benedick	Now, divine air! now is his soul ravished! Is it not strange that sheeps’ guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies? Well, a horn for my money, when all’s done.
	The Song.
Balthasar	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 moe, Of dumps so dull and heavy; The fraud of men was ever so, Since summer first was leavy: Then sigh not so, etc.
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	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.
Don Pedro	Do so: farewell. Exit Balthasar. Come hither, Leonato. What was it you told me of today, that your niece Beatrice was in love with Signior Benedick?
Claudio	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 Signior Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviours seemed ever to abhor.
Benedick	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	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	I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it: knavery cannot, sure, hide itself in such reverence.
Claudio	He hath ta’en the 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 sometimes 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 daffed 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 Christian-like 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	If he do not dote on her upon this, I will never trust my expectation.
Don Pedro	Let there be the same net spread for her; and that must your daughter and her gentlewoman 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. By this day! she’s a fair lady: I do spy some marks of love in her.
	Enter Beatrice.
Beatrice	Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.
Benedick	Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.
Beatrice	I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come.
Benedick	You take pleasure then in the message?
Beatrice	Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife’s point and choke a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior: fare you well. Exit.
Benedick	Ha! “Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner;” there’s a double meaning in that. “I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me;” that’s as much as to say, Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks. If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew. I will go get her picture. Exit.