Here’s his dry hand up and down: you are he, you are he.
ANTONIO.
At a word, I am not.
URSULA.
Come, come; do you think I do not know you by your excellent wit?
Can virtue hide itself? Go to, mum, you are he: graces will appear,
and there’s an end.
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 within.] 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 but 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 Sure my brother is amorous on Hero, and hath withdrawn her father to break with him about it.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 you not 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 tonight.
DON JOHN.
Come, let us to the banquet.
[Exeunt DON JOHN and BORACHIO.]
CLAUDIO.
Thus answer I in 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:
herefore 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, count. What fashion will you wear the garland of? About your neck, like a 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. Troth, my lord, I have played the part of Lady Fame. 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 overjoy’d with finding a bird’s 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 bird’s 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