William Shakespeare - The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

[Re-enter DON PEDRO.]

DON PEDRO.

What secret hath held you here, that you followed not to Leonato’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 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.

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 she should be worthy, is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me: I will die 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 recheat 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.

DON PEDRO.

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

BENEDICK. 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.

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

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 time shall 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

hard lesson that may do thee good.

CLAUDIO.

Hath Leonato any son, my lord?

DON PEDRO.

No child but Hero;s he’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 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 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 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 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 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.]

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 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 much 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 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.

[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.]

Scene III. —Another room in LEONATO’S house.]

[Enter DON JOHN and CONRADE.]

CONRADE.

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.

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,—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.