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, CLAUD. If my passion change not shortly, God forbid it should be otherwise. CLAUD. You speak this to fetch me in, my lord. D. PEDRO. By my troth, I speak my thought. BENE. And by my two faiths and troths, my lord, I spoke mine. D. PEDRO. That she is worthy, I know. BENE. That I neither feel how she should be loved, nor know how she should D. PEDRO. Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the despite of beauty. 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. CLAUD. Hath Leonato any son, my lord? D. PEDRO. No child but Hero, she's his only heir: And I will break with her; [and with her father, 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; 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? 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? D. JOHN. A very forward March-chick! How came you to this? 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."] |