Much Ado About Nothing

forbid it should be so.” Claudio If my passion change not shortly, God forbid it should be otherwise. Don Pedro Amen, if you love her; for the lady is very well worthy. Claudio You speak this to fetch me in, my lord. Don Pedro By my troth, I speak my thought. Claudio And, in faith, my lord, I spoke mine. Benedick And, by my two faiths and troths, my lord, I spoke mine. Claudio That I love her, I feel. Don Pedro That she is worthy, I know. Benedick That I neither feel how she should be loved nor know how she should be worthy, is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me: I will die in it at the stake. Don Pedro Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the despite of beauty. Claudio And never could maintain his part but in the force of his will. Benedick That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me up, I likewise give her most humble thanks: but that I will have a recheat 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 look’d upon her with a soldier’s eye,
That liked, 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 liked 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 salved 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 lovest,
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