of Prester John's foot; " fetch you a hair of the great Cham's beard; do you any embassage to the Pigmies, rather than hold three words' conference with this harpy: You have no employment for me? D. Pedro. None, but to desire your good company.

Bene. O God! sir, here's a dish I love not: I cannot endure my lady Tongue. [Exit. D. Pedro. Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of signior Benedick.

Beat. Indeed, my lord, he lent it me a while; and I gave him use 18 for it, a double heart for his single one: marry, once before he won it of me with false dice; therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.

D. Pedro. You have put him down, lady; you have put him down.

Beat. 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. D. Pedro. Why, how now, count! wherefore are you sad?

Claud. Not sad, my lord.

D. Pedro. How then? Sick?
Claud. Neither, my lord.

19

Beat. The count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well; but civil, count; civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion.

D. Pedro. I'faith, lady, I think your blazon to be

17 How difficult this had been, may be guessed from Butler's account of that distinguished John :

"While like the mighty Prester John,

18 Interest.

Whose person none dares look upon,

But is preserv'd in close disguise

From being made cheap to vulgar eyes."

H.

19 A quibble; alluding to the Seville orange, a fruit then well known in London.

H.

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!

Leon. Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes: his grace hath made the match, and all grace say Amen to it!

Beat. Speak, count; 'tis your cue.

Claud. 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.

Beat. Speak, cousin; or, if you cannot, stop his mouth with a kiss, and let him not speak neither. D. Pedro. In faith, lady, you have a merry heart.

Beat. 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.

Thus goes

Claud. And so she doth, cousin. Beat. Good Lord, for alliance! every one to the world but I; 20 and I am sunburn'd: I may sit in a corner, and cry heigh-ho! for a husband.

20 To go to the world is used by Shakespeare for to get married. Thus, in All's Well that Ends Well, Act i. sc. 3, the Clown says, "If I may have your ladyship's good will to go to the world, Isabel, the woman, and I will do as we may." And in As You Like It, Act v. sc. 3, Audrey says, I hope it is no dishonest desire, to desire to be a woman of the world." — Good Lord, for alliance! seems to mean, Good Lord, how matrimony prospers! Mr. Collier, however, points the passage thus: "Good Lord! for alliance thus goes every one to the world but I;" which might do very well but for the tautology it makes, the sense in that case being, " for marriage thus every one gets married but I."- I am sun-burn'd means, I have lost my beauty, and so am not one of Hymen's prizes. Thus, in Troilus and Cressida, Act i. sc. 3: "The Grecian dames were sun-burn'd, and not worth the splinter of a lance."

H.

D. Pedro. Lady Beatrice, I will get you one. Beat. 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.

D. Pedro. Will you have me, lady?

?

Beat. 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.

D. Pedro. Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in a merry hour.

Beat. No, sure, my lord; my mother cried; but then there was a star danc'd, and under that was I born. Cousins, God give you joy!

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

Beat. I cry you mercy, uncle. pardon.

By your grace's [Exit BEATRICE. D. Pedro. By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady. Leon. 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 dream'd of unhappiness,11 and wak'd herself with laughing.

21

D. Pedro. She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.

Leon. O, by no means! she mocks all her wooers out of suit.

D. Pedro. She were an excellent wife for Benedick.

21 That is, mischief. Unhappy was often used for mischievous, as we now say an unlucky boy for a mischievous boy. So, in All's Well that Ends Well, Act iv. sc. 5: "A shrewd knave and an unhappy."

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

D. Pedro. Count Claudio, when mean you to go to Church?

Claud. To-morrow, my lord: crutches, till Love have all his rites.

Time goes on

Leon. 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.

D. 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.

Leon. My lord, I am for you, though it cost me ten nights' watchings.

Claud. And I, my lord.

D. Pedro. And you too, gentle Hero?

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

D. Pedro. And Benedick is not the unhopefullest husband that I know: Thus far can I praise him : He is of a noble strain,22 of approved valour, and

22 Strain, sometimes spelt strene, means stock, lineage, descent, from the Anglo-Saxon strind, and another word than strain, from the German strengen. Thus Spenser has, -"Sprung of the auncient stocke of princes straine." Again,-"For that same Beast was bred of hellish strene." And he speaks of "sacred Reverence yborne of heavenly strene." The word occurs several times in Shakespeare. Thus in Henry V., Act ii. sc. 4:

"And he is bred out of that bloody strain
That haunted us in our familiar paths."

H.

confirm'd 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. Another Room in LEONATO's House.

Enter JOHN and BORACHIO.

John. It is so the count Claudio shall marry the daughter of Leonato.

Bora. Yea, my lord; but I can cross it.

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?

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

John. Show me briefly how.

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

John. I remember.

Bora. I can, at any unseasonable instant of the night, appoint her to look out at her lady's chamber-window.

John. What life is in that to be the death of this marriage?

Bora. The poison of that lies in you to temper. Go you to the prince your brother: spare not to