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 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 looked 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 returned, 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. Wast 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
Act 1 Scene 2
running scene 2
Enter Leonato and an old man [Antonio] brother to Leonato [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 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 regard 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.
Act 1 Scene 3
running scene 3
Enter Sir [Don] John the Bastard and Conrad his companion
CONRAD What the goodyear, 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.
CONRAD You should hear reason.
DON JOHN And when I have heard it, what blessing bringeth it?
CONRAD If not a present remedy, yet 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.
CONRAD 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.
CONRAD Can you make no use of your discontent?
DON JOHN I will 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 whipped 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?
CONRAD 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 prove what’s to be done?
BORACHIO We’ll wait upon your lordship.
Exeunt
Act 2 Scene 1
running scene 4
Enter Leonato, [Antonio] his brother, [Innogen] his wife, Hero his daughter [attended by Margaret and Ursula], and Beatrice his niece and a Kinsman
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.
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 he 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 upon 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
bearward 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 Well, niece, I trust you will be ruled
To Hero
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 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:
To Hero
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 sinks 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 Prince [Don] Pedro, Claudio, and Benedick, and Balthasar, [Don] John, [Borachio, Margaret, Ursula and other] Masquers with a drum
Couples pair up and begin dancing
DON PEDRO Lady, will you walk a bout 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.
They dance 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.
They dance aside
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,
yo
u 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.
They dance aside
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 pleaseth 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.
Aside?
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.
We must follow the leaders.
Music
BENEDICK In every good thing.
BEATRICE Nay, if they lead to any ill, I will leave them at the
next turning.
Music for the Dance. [Then] exeunt [dancing, all except Don John, Borachio and Claudio]
DON JOHN Sure my brother is amorous on Hero and
Aside to Borachio
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 not you Signior Benedick?
To Claudio
CLAUDIO You know me well, I am he.
Much Ado About Nothing Page 4