LEONATO’S garden.
[Enter BENEDICK and
MARGARET, meeting]
BENEDICK
Pray thee, sweet Mistress Margaret,
deserve well at my hands by helping
me to the speech of Beatrice.
MARGARET
Will you then write me a sonnet
in praise of my beauty?
BENEDICK
In so high a style, Margaret, that no man
living shall come over it; for,
in most comely truth,
thou deservest it.
MARGARET To have no man come over me!
why, shall I always keep below stairs?
BENEDICK Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound’s
mouth; it catches.
MARGARET And yours as blunt as the fencer’s foils,
which hit, but hurt not.
BENEDICK A most manly wit, Margaret; it will not
hurt a woman: and so, I pray thee, call Beatrice: I give
thee the bucklers.
MARGARET Give us the swords;
we have bucklers of our own.
BENEDICK If you use them, Margaret, you must put
in the pikes with a vice; and they are dangerous weapons
for maids.
MARGARET Well,
I will call Beatrice to you, who I think hath legs.
BENEDICK And therefore will come.
[Exit MARGARET]
[Sings]
The god of love,
That sits above,
And knows me, and knows me,
How pitiful I deserve,–
I mean in singing; but in loving, Leander the good
swimmer, Troilus the first employer of panders, and
a whole bookful of these quondam carpet-mangers,
whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a
blank verse, why, they were never so truly turned
over and over as my poor self in love. Marry, I
cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried: I can find
out no rhyme to ‘lady’ but ‘baby,’ an innocent
rhyme; for ‘scorn,’ ‘horn,’ a hard rhyme; for,
‘school,’ ‘fool,’ a babbling rhyme; very ominous
endings: no, I was not born under a rhyming planet,
nor I cannot woo in festival terms.
[Enter BEATRICE]
Sweet Beatrice,
wouldst thou come when I called thee?
BEATRICE Yea,
signior, and depart when you bid me.
BENEDICK O, stay but till then!
BEATRICE Then’ is spoken; fare you well now:
and yet, ere I go, let me go with that I came; which is,
with knowing what hath passed between you and
Claudio.
BENEDICK Only foul words;
and thereupon I will kiss thee.
BEATRICE Foul words is but foul wind,
and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is
noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.
BENEDICK Thou hast frighted the word out of his
right sense, so forcible is thy wit. But I must tell thee
plainly, Claudio undergoes my challenge; and either
I must shortly hear from him, or I will subscribe
him a coward. And, I pray thee now, tell me for
which of my bad parts didst thou first
fall in love with me?
BEATRICE For them all together; which maintained so
politic a state of evil that they will not admit any good
part to intermingle with them. But for which of my
good parts did you first suffer love for me?
BENEDICK Suffer love! a good epithet! I do suffer love
indeed, for I love thee against my will.
BEATRICE In spite of your heart, I think; alas,
poor heart! If you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for
yours; for I will never love that which my friend hates.
BENEDICK Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.
BEATRICE It appears not in this confession: there’s not
one wise man among twenty that will praise himself.
BENEDICK An old, an old instance, Beatrice, that lived
in the lime of good neighbours. If a man do not erect
in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live
no longer in monument than the bell rings and the
widow weeps.
BEATRICE And how long is that, think you?
BENEDICK Question:
why, an hour in clamour and a quarter in rheum:
therefore is it most expedient for the wise,
if Don Worm, his conscience, find no impediment
to the contrary, to be the trumpet of his own virtues,
as I am to myself. So much for praising myself, who,
I myself will bear witness, is praiseworthy: and now
tell me, how doth your cousin?
BEATRICE Very ill.
BENEDICK And how do you?
BEATRICE Very ill too.
BENEDICK Serve God, love me and mend.
There will I leave you too, for here comes one in haste.
[Enter URSULA]
URSULA Madam, you must come to your uncle.
Yonder’s old coil at home: it is proved my Lady Hero
hath been falsely accused, the prince and Claudio
mightily abused; and Don John is the author of all,
who is fed and gone. Will you come presently?
BEATRICE Will you go hear this news, signior?
BENEDICK I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap,
and be buried in thy eyes; and moreover I will go
with thee to thy uncle’s.
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