Much Ado About Nothing | Act 2.1

A hall in LEONATO’S house.

[Enter LEONATO, ANTONIO,
HERO, BEATRICE, and others]

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, evermore tattling.

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 a’ 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 on 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 bear-ward, 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       [To HERO] Well, niece, I trust you will be ruled
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 pierce of valiant dust? to make
an 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:
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 every thing
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 sink 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 DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK,
BALTHASAR, DON JOHN, BORACHIO,
MARGARET, URSULA and others, masked]

DON PEDRO      Lady,
will you walk about 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.

[Drawing her 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.

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, you are he.

ANTONIO      At a word, I am not.

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 villany;
for he both pleases 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.

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.

[Music]

We must follow the leaders.

BENEDICK       In every good thing.

BEATRICE      Nay,
if they lead to any ill, I will leave them at the next turning.

[Dance. Then exeunt all except DON
JOHN, BORACHIO, and CLAUDIO]

DON JOHN      Sure my brother is amorous on Hero
and 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?

CLAUDIO      You know me well; I am he.

DON JOHN      Signior, you are very near my brother in his
love: he is enamoured on Hero; I pray you, dissuade him
from her: she is no equal for his birth: you may
do the part of an honest man in it.

CLAUDIO       How know you he loves her?

DON JOHN      I heard him swear his affection.

BORACHIO       So did I too;
and he swore he would marry her to-night.

DON JOHN       Come, let us to the banquet.

[Exeunt DON JOHN
and BORACHIO]

CLAUDIO      Thus answer I in the name of Benedick,
But hear these ill news with the ears of Claudio.
‘Tis certain so; the prince wooes for himself.
Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love:
Therefore, all hearts in love use their own tongues;
Let every eye negotiate for itself
And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch
Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.
This is an accident of hourly proof,
Which I mistrusted not. Farewell, therefore, Hero!

[Re-enter BENEDICK]

BENEDICK      Count Claudio?

CLAUDIO      Yea, the same.

BENEDICK      Come, will you go with me?

CLAUDIO      Whither?

BENEDICK       Even to the next willow,
about your own business, county. What fashion will you
wear the garland of? about your neck, like an usurer’s chain?
or under your arm, like a lieutenant’s scarf? You must wear
it one way, for the prince hath got your Hero.

CLAUDIO       I wish him joy of her.

BENEDICK       Why, that’s spoken like an honest drovier:
so they sell bullocks. But did you think the prince would
have served you thus?

CLAUDIO      I pray you, leave me.

BENEDICK       Ho! now you strike like the blind man:
’twas the boy that stole your meat, and you’ll beat the post.

CLAUDIO      If it will not be, I’ll leave you.

[Exit]

BENEDICK       Alas,
poor hurt fowl! now will he creep into sedges.
But that my Lady Beatrice should know me, and not
know me! The prince’s fool! Ha? It may be I go
under that title because I am merry. Yea, but so I
am apt to do myself wrong; I am not so reputed: it
is the base, though bitter, disposition of Beatrice
that puts the world into her person and so gives me
out. Well, I’ll be revenged as I may.

[Re-enter DON PEDRO]

DON PEDRO       Now,
signior, where’s the count? did you see him?

BENEDICK      I found him here as melancholy as a lodge
in a warren: I told him, and I think I told him true,
that your grace had got the good will of this young
lady; and I offered him my company to a willow-tree,
either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or
to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped.

DON PEDRO      To be whipped! What’s his fault?

BENEDICK       The flat transgression of a schoolboy,
who, being overjoyed with finding a birds’ nest, shows
it his companion, and he steals it.

DON PEDRO      Wilt thou make a trust a transgression?
The transgression is in the stealer.

BENEDICK      Yet it had not been amiss the rod had been
made, and the garland too; for the garland he might have
worn himself, and the rod he might have bestowed on
you, who, as I take it, have stolen his birds’ nest.

DON PEDRO      I will but teach them to sing, and restore
them to the owner.

BENEDICK       If their singing answer your saying,
by my faith, you say honestly.

DON PEDRO       The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you:
the gentleman that danced with her told her she is much
wronged by you.

BENEDICK      O, she misused me past the endurance of
a block! an oak but with one green leaf on it would have
answered her; my very visor began to assume life and
scold with her. She told me, not thinking I had been
myself, that I was the prince’s jester, that I was
duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest
with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood
like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at
me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs:
if her breath were as terrible as her terminations,
there were no living near her; she would infect to
the north star. I would not marry her, though she
were endowed with all that Adam bad left him before
he transgressed: Come, talk not of her: you shall find
her the infernal Ate in good apparel. I would to God
some scholar would conjure her; for certainly, while
she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as in a
sanctuary; and people sin upon purpose, because they
would go thither; so, indeed, all disquiet, horror
and perturbation follows her.

DON PEDRO       Look, here she comes.

[Enter CLAUDIO, BEATRICE,
HERO, and LEONATO]

BENEDICK       Will your grace command me any service
to the world’s end? I will go on the slightest errand now
to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on;
I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the furthest
inch of Asia, bring you the length of Prester John’s foot,
fetch you a hair off 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?

DON PEDRO      None, but to desire your good company.

BENEDICK      O God, sir, here’s a dish I love not: I cannot
endure my Lady Tongue.

[Exit]

DON PEDRO      Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart
of Signior Benedick.

BEATRICE       Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile;
and I gave him use 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.

DON PEDRO       You have put him down, lady,
you have put him down.

BEATRICE       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.

DON PEDRO       Why, how now,
count! wherefore are you sad?

CLAUDIO      Not sad, my lord.

DON PEDRO       How then? sick?

CLAUDIO       Neither, my lord.

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

DON PEDRO       I’ faith, lady, I think your blazon to be
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!

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

BEATRICE       Speak, count, ’tis your cue.

CLAUDIO       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.

BEATRICE       Speak, cousin; or, if you cannot, stop his
mouth with a kiss, and let not him speak neither.

DON PEDRO      In faith, lady, you have a merry heart.

BEATRICE       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.

CLAUDIO       And so she doth, cousin.

BEATRICE      Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes every
one to the world but I, and I am sunburnt; I may sit in a
corner and cry heigh-ho for a husband!

DON PEDRO       Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.

BEATRICE       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.

DON PEDRO       Will you have me, lady?

BEATRICE       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.

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

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

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

BEATRICE       I cry you mercy, uncle.
By your grace’s pardon.

[Exit]

DON PEDRO       By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady.

LEONATO       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 dreamed of unhappiness and waked
herself with laughing.

DON PEDRO       She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.

LEONATO      O,
by no means: she mocks all her wooers out of suit.

DON PEDRO       She were an excellent wife for Benedict.

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

DON PEDRO       County Claudio,
when mean you to go to church?

CLAUDIO       To-morrow, my lord:
time goes on crutches till love have all his rites.

LEONATO       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.

DON 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.

LEONATO       My lord, I am for you, though it cost me
ten nights’ watchings.

CLAUDIO       And I, my lord.

DON PEDRO       And you too, gentle Hero?

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

DON PEDRO        And Benedick is not the unhopefullest
husband that I know. Thus far can I praise him; he is
of a noble strain, of approved valour and confirmed
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] Act 1.3 | Act 2.2


Playlist Much Ado | Dramatis Personea | Plays & Info


Updated: April 27, 2021 — 5:02 pm