BENE. I would your grace would constrain me to tell.

D. PEDRO. I charge thee on thy allegiance.

BENE. 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.

CLAUD. If this were so, so were it uttered.

BENE. Like the old tale, my lord: "it is not so, nor 't was not so; but, indeed,
God forbid it should be so." "5

CLAUD. If my passion change not shortly, God forbid it should be otherwise.
D. PEDRO. Amen, if you love her; for the lady is very well worthy.

CLAUD. You speak this to fetch me in, my lord.

D. PEDRO. By my troth, I speak my thought.
CLAUD. And in faith, my lord, I spoke mine.

BENE. And by my two faiths and troths, my lord, I spoke mine.
CLAUD. That I love her, I feel.

D. PEDRO. That she is worthy, I know.

BENE. 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.

D. PEDRO. Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the despite of beauty.
CLAUD. And never could maintain his part but in the force of his will.
BENE. 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 a
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.

D. PEDRO. I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love.

BENE. 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.

D. PEDRO. Well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith thou wilt prove a notable argument.

BENE. 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 o.

D. PEDRO. Well, as time shall try :

"In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke.”

"d

BENE. The savage bull may; but if ever this 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

• Recheat-the huntsman's note to recall the hounds.

Baldrick-a belt.

This line is from Hieronymo.

The fine-the conclusion.

hire," let them signify under my sign,-" Here you may see Benedick the married man."

CLAUD. If this should ever happen thou wouldst be horn-mad.

D. PEDRO. Nay, if Cupid have not spent all his quiver in Venice, thou wilt quake for this shortly.

BENE. I look for an earthquake too then.

D. PEDRO. Well, you will temporize with the hours. In the mean time, 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. BENE. I have almost matter enough in me for such an embassage; and so I commit you

CLAUD. To the tuition of God: From my house, (if I had it)—

D. PEDRO. The sixth of July: Your loving friend, Benedick.

a

BENE. 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 7, examine your conscience; and so I leave you.

CLAUD. My liege, your highness now may do me good.
D. 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.

CLAUD. Hath Leonato any son, my lord?

D. PEDRO. No child but Hero, she's his only heir:
Dost thou affect her, Claudio ?
CLAUD.
O my lord,
When you went onward on this ended action,
I look'd upon her with a soldier's eye,
That lik'd, 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 througing soft and delicate desires,
All prompting me how fair young Hero is,
Saying, I lik'd her ere I went to wars.
D. 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 begann'st to twist so fine a story?
CLAUD. How sweetly do you minister to love,

c

That know love's grief by his complexion !

• Guarded-trimmed-as with guards on apparel.

b The words in brackets are not in the folio.

[Exit BENEDICK.

But lest my liking might too sudden seem,

I would have salv'd it with a longer treatise.

D. PEDRO. What need the bridge much broader than the flood?

The fairest grant is the necessity:

Look, what will serve is fit: 't is once a, thou lovest;

And I will fit thee with the remedy.

I know we shall have revelling to-night;
I will assume thy part in some disguise,
And tell fair Hero I am Claudio;
And in her bosom I'll unclasp my heart,
And take her hearing prisoner with the force
And strong encounter of my amorous tale:
Then, after, to her father will I break;
And, the conclusion is, she shall be thine:
In practice let us put it presently.

SCENE II.-A Room in Leonato's House.

Enter LEONATO and ANTONIO.

[Exeunt.

LEON. How now, brother? Where is my cousin, your son? this music?

Hath he provided

ANT. He is very busy about it. But, brother, I can tell you news

yet dreamt not of.

LEON. Are they good?

c

b that you

ANT. 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 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.

LEON. Hath the fellow any wit that told you this?

ANT. A good sharp fellow; I will send for him, and question him yourself. LEON. 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. [Several persons cross the stage.] 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.

• Once-once for all. So in Coriolanus:' "Once, if he do require our voices we ought not to deny him."

SCENE III.-Another Room in Leonato's House.

Enter DON JOHN and CONRADE.

CON. What the good year a, my lord! why are you thus out of measure sad?
D. JOHN. There is no measure in the occasion that breeds, therefore the sadness
is without limit.

CON. You should hear reason.

D. JOHN. And when I have heard it, what blessing bringeth it?

CON. If not a present remedy, yet b a patient sufferance.

D. JOHN. I wonder that thou, being (as thou say'st 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.

CON. 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 root, but by the fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest.

D. 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 that 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 mean time, let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me.

CON. Can you make no use of your discontent?

D. JOHN. I make all use of it, for I use it only. Who comes here? What news, Borachio ?

Enter BORACHIO.

BORA. 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.

D. JOHN. Will it serve for any model to build mischief on? What is he for a fool that betroths himself to unquietness?

d

BORA. Marry, it is your brother's right hand.

* Good year. See Note on 'King Lear,' Act V., Scene 3.

Yet. The quarto, at least.

• In the quarto, true root.

What is he for a fool. Mr. Dyce says this is "an equivalent for-What manner of fool is he, -What fool is he?" Gifford calls this mode of expression, "pure German, or, as the authorised phrase seems to be, pure Saxon."

D. JOHN. Who? the most exquisite Claudio?

BORA. Even he.

D. JOHN. A proper squire! And who, and who? which way looks he?
BORA. Marry, on Hero, the daughter and heir of Leonato.

D. JOHN. A very forward March-chick! How came you to this?
BORA. Being entertained for a perfumer, as I was smoking a musty room, comes
me the prince and Claudio, hand in hand, in sad a conference: I whipt b
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.
D. 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?
CON. To the death, my lord.

D. JOHN. Let us to the great supper: their cheer is the greater that I am subdued: 'Would the cook were of my mind!-Shall we go prove what's to be done?

[SCENE II. "Walking in a thick-pleached alley in my orchard."]