Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare
looking first at Viola, and then at Sebastian.
“An apple cleft in two,” said one who knew Sebastian, “is not more twin
than these two creatures. Which is Sebastian?”
“I never had a brother,” said Sebastian. “I had a sister, whom the blind
waves and surges have devoured.” “Were you a woman,” he said to Viola,
“I should let my tears fall upon your cheek, and say, 'Thrice welcome,
drowned Viola!'”
Then Viola, rejoicing to see her dear brother alive, confessed that she
was indeed his sister, Viola. As she spoke, Orsino felt the pity that is
akin to love.
“Boy,” he said, “thou hast said to me a thousand times thou never
shouldst love woman like to me.”
“And all those sayings will I overswear,” Viola replied, “and all those
swearings keep true.”
“Give me thy hand,” Orsino cried in gladness. “Thou shalt be my wife,
and my fancy's queen.”
Thus was the gentle Viola made happy, while Olivia found in Sebastian
a constant lover, and a good husband, and he in her a true and loving
wife.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
In Sicily is a town called Messina, which is the scene of a curious
storm in a teacup that raged several hundred years ago.
It began with sunshine. Don Pedro, Prince of Arragon, in Spain, had
gained so complete a victory over his foes that the very land whence
they came is forgotten. Feeling happy and playful after the fatigues of
war, Don Pedro came for a holiday to Messina, and in his suite were his
stepbrother Don John and two young Italian lords, Benedick and Claudio.
Benedick was a merry chatterbox, who had determined to live a bachelor.
Claudio, on the other hand, no sooner arrived at Messina than he fell in
love with Hero, the daughter of Leonato, Governor of Messina.
One July day, a perfumer called Borachio was burning dried lavender in
a musty room in Leonato's house, when the sound of conversation floated
through the open window.
“Give me your candid opinion of Hero,” Claudio, asked, and Borachio
settled himself for comfortable listening.
“Too short and brown for praise,” was Benedick's reply; “but alter her
color or height, and you spoil her.”
“In my eyes she is the sweetest of women,” said Claudio.
“Not in mine,” retorted Benedick, “and I have no need for glasses. She
is like the last day of December compared with the first of May if you
set her beside her cousin. Unfortunately, the Lady Beatrice is a fury.”
Beatrice was Leonato's niece. She amused herself by saying witty and
severe things about Benedick, who called her Dear Lady Disdain. She
was wont to say that she was born under a dancing star, and could not
therefore be dull.
Claudio and Benedick were still talking when Don Pedro came up and said
good-humoredly, “Well, gentlemen, what's the secret?”
“I am longing,” answered Benedick, “for your Grace to command me to
tell.”
“I charge you, then, on your allegiance to tell me,” said Don Pedro,
falling in with his humor.
“I can be as dumb as a mute,” apologized Benedick to Claudio, “but his
Grace commands my speech.” To Don Pedro he said, “Claudio is in love
with Hero, Leonato's short daughter.”
Don Pedro was pleased, for he admired Hero and was fond of Claudio. When
Benedick had departed, he said to Claudio, “Be steadfast in your love
for Hero, and I will help you to win her. To-night her father gives a
masquerade, and I will pretend I am Claudio, and tell her how Claudio
loves her, and if she be pleased, I will go to her father and ask his
consent to your union.”
Most men like to do their own wooing, but if you fall in love with a
Governor's only daughter, you are fortunate if you can trust a prince to
plead for you.
Claudio then was fortunate, but he was unfortunate as well, for he
had an enemy who was outwardly a friend. This enemy was Don Pedro's
stepbrother Don John, who was jealous of Claudio because Don Pedro
preferred him to Don John.
It was to Don John that Borachio came with the interesting conversation
which he had overheard.
“I shall have some fun at that masquerade myself,” said Don John when
Borachio ceased speaking.
On the night of the masquerade, Don Pedro, masked and pretending he was
Claudio, asked Hero if he might walk with her.
They moved away together, and Don John went up to Claudio and said,
“Signor Benedick, I believe?” “The same,” fibbed Claudio.
“I should be much obliged then,” said Don John, “if you would use your
influence with my brother to cure him of his love for Hero. She is
beneath him in rank.”
“How do you know he loves her?” inquired Claudio.
“I heard him swear his affection,” was the reply, and Borachio chimed in
with, “So did I too.”
Claudio was then left to himself, and his thought was that his Prince
had betrayed him. “Farewell, Hero,” he muttered; “I was a fool to trust
to an agent.”
Meanwhile Beatrice and Benedick (who was masked) were having a brisk
exchange of opinions.
“Did Benedick ever make you laugh?” asked she.
“Who is Benedick?” he inquired.
“A Prince's jester,” replied Beatrice, and she spoke so sharply that “I
would not marry her,” he declared afterwards, “if her estate were the
Garden of Eden.”
But the principal speaker at the masquerade was neither Beatrice nor
Benedick. It was Don Pedro, who carried out his plan to the letter, and
brought the light back to Claudio's face in a twinkling, by appearing
before him with Leonato and Hero, and saying, “Claudio, when would you
like to go to church?”
“To-morrow,” was the prompt answer. “Time goes on crutches till I marry
Hero.”
“Give her a week, my dear son,” said Leonato, and Claudio's heart
thumped with joy.
“And now,” said the amiable Don Pedro, “we must find a wife for Signor
Benedick. It is a task for Hercules.”
“I will help you,” said Leonato, “if I have to sit up ten nights.”
Then Hero spoke. “I will do what I can, my lord, to find a good husband
for Beatrice.”
Thus, with happy laughter, ended the masquerade which had given Claudio
a lesson for nothing.
Borachio cheered up Don John by laying a plan before him with which he
was confident he could persuade both Claudio and Don Pedro that Hero was
a fickle girl who had two strings to her bow. Don John agreed to this
plan of hate.
Don Pedro, on the other hand, had devised a cunning plan of love.
“If,” he said to Leonato, “we pretend, when Beatrice is near enough to
overhear us, that Benedick is pining for her love, she will pity him,
see his good qualities, and love him. And if, when Benedick thinks we
don't know he is listening, we say how sad it is that the beautiful
Beatrice should be in love with a heartless scoffer like Benedick, he
will certainly be on his knees before her in a week or less.”
So one day, when Benedick was reading in a summer-house, Claudio sat
down outside it with Leonato, and said, “Your daughter told me something
about a letter she wrote.”
“Letter!” exclaimed Leonato. “She will get up twenty times in the night
and write goodness knows what. But once Hero peeped, and saw the words
'Benedick and Beatrice' on the sheet, and then Beatrice tore it up.”
“Hero told me,” said Claudio, “that she cried, 'O sweet Benedick!'”
Benedick was touched to the core by this improbable story, which he was
vain enough to believe. “She is fair and good,” he said to himself.
“I must not seem proud. I feel that I love her. People will laugh, of
course; but their paper bullets will do me no harm.”
At this moment Beatrice came to the summerhouse, and said, “Against my
will, I have come to tell you that dinner is ready.”
“Fair Beatrice, I thank you,” said Benedick.
“I took no more pains to come than you take pains to thank me,” was the
rejoinder, intended to freeze him.
But it did not freeze him. It warmed him. The meaning he squeezed out of
her rude speech was that she was delighted to come to him.
Hero, who had undertaken the task of melting the heart of Beatrice, took
no trouble to seek an occasion. She simply said to her maid Margaret one
day, “Run into the parlor and whisper to Beatrice that Ursula and I are
talking about her in the orchard.”
Having said this, she felt as sure that Beatrice would overhear what was
meant for her ears as if she had made an appointment with her cousin.
In the orchard was a bower, screened from the sun by honeysuckles, and
Beatrice entered it a few minutes after Margaret had gone on her errand.
“But are you sure,” asked Ursula, who was one of Hero's attendants,
“that Benedick loves Beatrice so devotedly?”
“So say the Prince and my betrothed,” replied Hero, “and they wished me
to tell her, but I said, 'No! Let Benedick get over it.'”
“Why did you say that?”
“Because Beatrice is unbearably proud. Her eyes sparkle with disdain and
scorn. She is too conceited to love. I should not like to see her making
game of poor Benedick's love. I would rather see Benedick waste away
like a covered fire.”
“I don't agree with you,” said Ursula. “I think your cousin is too
clear-sighted not to see the merits of Benedick.” “He is the one man in
Italy, except Claudio,” said Hero.
The talkers then left the orchard, and Beatrice, excited and tender,
stepped out of the summer-house, saying to herself, “Poor dear Benedick,
be true to me, and your love shall tame this wild heart of mine.”
We now return to the plan of hate.
The night before the day fixed for Claudio's wedding, Don John entered
a room in which Don Pedro and Claudio were conversing, and asked Claudio
if he intended to be married to-morrow.
“You know he does!” said Don Pedro.
“He may know differently,” said Don John, “when he has seen what I will
show him if he will follow me.”
They followed him into the garden; and they saw a lady leaning out of
Hero's window talking love to Borachio.
Claudio thought the lady was Hero, and said, “I will shame her for it
to-morrow!” Don Pedro thought she was Hero, too; but she was not Hero;
she was Margaret.
Don John chuckled noiselessly when Claudio and Don Pedro quitted the
garden; he gave Borachio a purse containing a thousand ducats.
The money made Borachio feel very gay, and when he was walking in the
street with his friend Conrade, he boasted of his wealth and the giver,
and told what he had done.
A watchman overheard them, and thought that a man who had been paid a
thousand ducats for villainy was worth taking in charge. He therefore
arrested Borachio and Conrade, who spent the rest of the night in
prison.
Before noon of the next day half the aristocrats in Messina were at
church. Hero thought it was her wedding day, and she was there in her
wedding dress, no cloud on her pretty face or in her frank and shining
eyes.
The priest was Friar Francis.
Turning to Claudio, he said, “You come hither, my lord, to marry this
lady?” “No!” contradicted Claudio.
Leonato thought he was quibbling over grammar. “You should have said,
Friar,” said he, “'You come to be married to her.'”
Friar Francis turned to Hero. “Lady,” he said, “you come hither to be
married to this Count?” “I do,” replied Hero.
“If either of you know any impediment to this marriage, I charge you to
utter it,” said the Friar.
“Do you know of any, Hero?” asked Claudio. “None,” said she.
“Know you of any, Count?” demanded the Friar. “I dare reply for him,
'None,'” said Leonato.
Claudio exclaimed bitterly, “O! what will not men dare say! Father,”
he continued, “will you give me your daughter?” “As freely,” replied
Leonato, “as God gave her to me.”
“And what can I give you,” asked Claudio, “which is worthy of this
gift?” “Nothing,” said Don Pedro, “unless you give the gift back to the
giver.”
“Sweet Prince, you teach me,” said Claudio. “There, Leonato, take her
back.”
These brutal words were followed by others which flew from Claudio, Don
Pedro and Don John.