Much Ado about Nothing
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
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 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 good-year, 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.
CONRADE.
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.
CONRADE.
Can you make no use of your discontent?
DON JOHN.
I 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 whipt
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?
CONRADE.
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 to prove what’s
to be done?
BORACHIO.
We’ll wait upon your Lordship.
[Exeunt.]
ACT II
SCENE I. 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 mid-way
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 over-mastered with a piece 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
everything, and so dance out the answer. For, hear me, Hero: wooing,