SCENE I. Before Leonato’s House.
Enter Leonato, Hero, Beatrice and others,with a Messenger.
LEONATO.I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Arragon comes this nightto 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 fullnumbers. I find here that Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour on ayoung 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 figureof a lamb the feats of a lion: he hath indeed better bettered expectationthan 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 muchjoy in him; even so much that joy could not show itself modest enoughwithout 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 thosethat are so washed; how much better is it to weep at joy than to joy atweeping!
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 armyof any sort.
LEONATO.What is he that you ask for, niece?
HERO.My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua.
MESSENGER.O! he is returned, and as pleasant as ever he was.
BEATRICE.He set up his bills here in Messina and challenged Cupid at theflight; and my uncle’s fool, reading the challenge, subscribed forCupid, and challenged him at the bird-bolt. I pray you, how many hath hekilled 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’llbe 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 veryvaliant trencher-man; 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 honourablevirtues.
BEATRICE.It is so indeed; he is no less than a stuffed man; but for thestuffing,—well, we are all mortal.
LEONATO.You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is a kind of merry warbetwixt Signior Benedick and her; they never meet but there’s askirmish of wit between them.
BEATRICE.Alas! he gets nothing by that. In our last conflict four of hisfive wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one! sothat if he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for adifference between himself and his horse; for it is all the wealth that hehath left to be known a reasonable creature. Who is his companion now? Hehath every month a new sworn brother.
MESSENGER.Is’t possible?
BEATRICE.Very easily possible: he wears his faith but as the fashion ofhis hat; it ever changes with the next block.
MESSENGER.I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.
BEATRICE.No; and he were, I would burn my study. But I pray you, who ishis companion? Is there no young squarer now that will make a voyage withhim 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 soonercaught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. God help thenoble Claudio! If he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousandpound ere he 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,Balthasar and Others.
DON PEDRO.Good Signior Leonato, you are come to meet your trouble: thefashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.
LEONATO.Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your Grace, fortrouble 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 isyour 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 arelike an honourable father.
BENEDICK.If Signior Leonato be her father, she would not have his head onher 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 foodto feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain ifyou come in her presence.
BENEDICK.Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of allladies, only you excepted; and I would I could find in my heart that I hadnot a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.
BEATRICE.A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubledwith a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of yourhumour for that. I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swearhe loves me.
BENEDICK.God keep your Ladyship still in that mind; so some gentleman orother shall scape a predestinate scratched face.
BEATRICE.Scratching could not make it worse, and ’twere such a faceas 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 acontinuer. 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 SigniorBenedick, my dear friend Leonato hath invited you all. I tell him we shallstay here at the least a month, and he heartly prays some occasion maydetain us longer: I dare swear he is no hypocrite, but prays from hisheart.
LEONATO.If you swear, my lord, you shall not be forsworn. [ToDon John] Let me bid you welcome, my lord: being reconciled tothe 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 but 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 simpletrue judgment; or would you have me speak after my custom, as being aprofessed tyrant to their sex?
CLAUDIO.No; I pray thee speak in sober judgment.
BENEDICK.Why, i’ faith, methinks she’s too low for a highpraise, 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 thoulikest her.
BENEDICK.Would you buy her, that you enquire 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 sadbrow, or do you play the flouting Jack, to tell us Cupid is a goodhare-finder, and Vulcan a rare carpenter? Come, in what key shall a mantake 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’sher cousin and she were not possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much inbeauty as the first of May doth the last of December. But I hope you haveno intent to turn husband, have you?
CLAUDIO.I would scarce trust myself, though I had sworn to the contrary,if Hero would be my wife.
BENEDICK.Is’t come to this, in faith? Hath not the world oneman but he will wear his cap with suspicion? Shall I never see a bachelorof threescore again? Go to, i’ faith; and thou wilt needs thrust thyneck into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away Sundays.
Re-enter Don Pedro.
Look! Don Pedro is returned to seek you.
DON PEDRO.What secret hath held you here, that you followed not toLeonato’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 wouldhave 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 howshort 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 sheshould be worthy, is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me: I willdie 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 recheatwinded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, allwomen shall pardon me. Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrustany, I will do myself the right to trust none; and the fine is,—for thewhich 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 withlove: prove that ever I lose more blood with love than I will get againwith drinking, pick out mine eyes with a ballad-maker’s pen and hangme 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 anotable argument.
BENEDICK.If I do, hang me in a bottle like a cat and shoot at me; and hethat hits me, let him be clapped on the shoulder and called Adam.
DON PEDRO.Well, as time shall try: ‘In time the savage bulldoth 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 mebe vilely painted, and in such great letters as they write, ‘Here isgood horse to hire,’ let them signify under my sign ‘Here youmay 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, thouwilt 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 himand tell him I will not fail him at supper; for indeed he hath madegreat preparation.
BENEDICK.I have almost matter enough in me for such an embassage; and soI 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 sometimeguarded with fragments, and the guards are but slightly basted on neither:ere you flout old ends any further, examine your conscience: and so Ileave 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 learnAny 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 looked upon her with a soldier’s eye,That lik’d, but had a rougher task in handThan to drive liking to the name of love;But now I am return’d, and that war-thoughtsHave left their places vacant, in their roomsCome thronging soft and delicate desires,All prompting me how fair young Hero is,Saying, I lik’d 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 endThat 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 salv’d 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 lov’st,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 forceAnd 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 providedthis music?
ANTONIO.He is very busy about it. But, brother, I can tell you strangenews that you yet dreamt not of.
LEONATO.Are they good?
ANTONIO.As the event stamps them: but they have a good cover; they showwell outward. The Prince and Count Claudio, walking in a thick-pleachedalley in my orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of mine: the Princediscovered to Claudio that he loved my niece your daughter and meant toacknowledge it this night in a dance; and if he found her accordant, hemeant to take the present time by the top and instantly break with you ofit.
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 Iwill acquaint my daughter withal, that she may be the better prepared foran 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 youwith me, and I will use your skill. Good cousin, have a care this busytime.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE III. Another room in Leonato’s house.
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 thesadness 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 say’st thou art, bornunder Saturn) goest about to apply a moral medicine to a mortifyingmischief. I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause, andsmile at no man’s jests; eat when I have stomach, and wait for noman’s leisure; sleep when I am drowsy, and tend on no man’sbusiness; 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 doit without controlment. You have of late stood out against your brother,and he hath ta’en you newly into his grace; where it is impossibleyou 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 acarriage to rob love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to be aflattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealingvillain. 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, Iwould 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 isroyally entertained by Leonato; and I can give you intelligence of anintended marriage.
DON JOHN.Will it serve for any model to build mischief on? What is he fora 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 whiptme behind the arras, and there heard it agreed upon that the Prince shouldwoo Hero for himself, and having obtained her, give her to Count Claudio.
DON JOHN.Come, come; let us thither: this may prove food to mydispleasure. That young start-up hath all the glory of my overthrow: if Ican cross him any way, I bless myself every way. You are both sure, andwill assist me?
CONRADE. To the death, my lord.
DON JOHN.Let us to the great supper: their cheer is the greater that I amsubdued. Would the cook were of my mind! Shall we go to prove what’sto be done?
BORACHIO.We’ll wait upon your Lordship.
[Exeunt.]