Much Ado About Nothing - William Shakespeare (ebook reader web .txt) 📗

must not seem proud: happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending. They say the lady is fair; ’tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous; ’tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me; by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her. I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against marriage: but doth not the appetite alter? a man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married. Here comes Beatrice. By this day! she’s a fair lady: I do spy some marks of love in her. Enter Beatrice. Beatrice Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner. Benedick Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains. Beatrice I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come. Benedick You take pleasure then in the message? Beatrice Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife’s point and choke a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior: fare you well. Exit. Benedick Ha! “Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner;” there’s a double meaning in that. “I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me;” that’s as much as to say, Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks. If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew. I will go get her picture. Exit. Act III Scene I

Leonato’s garden.

Enter Hero, Margaret, and Ursula. Hero

Good Margaret, run thee to the parlour;
There shalt thou find my cousin Beatrice
Proposing with the prince and Claudio:
Whisper her ear and tell her, I and Ursula
Walk in the orchard and our whole discourse
Is all of her; say that thou overheard’st us;
And bid her steal into the pleached bower,
Where honeysuckles, ripen’d by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter, like favourites,
Made proud by princes, that advance their pride
Against that power that bred it: there will she hide her,
To listen our propose. This is thy office;
Bear thee well in it, and leave us alone.

Margaret I’ll make her come, I warrant you, presently. Exit. Hero

Now, Ursula, when Beatrice doth come,
As we do trace this alley up and down,
Our talk must only be of Benedick.
When I do name him, let it be thy part
To praise him more than ever man did merit:
My talk to thee must be how Benedick
Is sick in love with Beatrice. Of this matter
Is little Cupid’s crafty arrow made,
That only wounds by hearsay.

Enter Beatrice, behind.

Now begin;
For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs
Close by the ground, to hear our conference.

Ursula

The pleasant’st angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait:
So angle we for Beatrice; who even now
Is couched in the woodbine coverture.
Fear you not my part of the dialogue.

Hero

Then go we near her, that her ear lose nothing
Of the false sweet bait that we lay for it. Approaching the bower.
No, truly, Ursula, she is too disdainful;
I know her spirits are as coy and wild
As haggards of the rock.

Ursula

But are you sure
That Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?

Hero So says the prince and my new-trothed lord. Ursula And did they bid you tell her of it, madam? Hero

They did entreat me to acquaint her of it;
But I persuaded them, if they loved Benedick,
To wish him wrestle with affection,
And never to let Beatrice know of it.

Ursula

Why did you so? Doth not the gentleman
Deserve as full as fortunate a bed
As ever Beatrice shall couch upon?

Hero

O god of love! I know he doth deserve
As much as may be yielded to a man:
But Nature never fram’d a woman’s heart
Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice;
Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,
Misprising what they look on, and her wit
Values itself so highly that to her
All matter else seems weak: she cannot love,
Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
She is so self-endeared.

Ursula

Sure I think so;
And therefore certainly it were not good
She knew his love, lest she make sport at it.

Hero

Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man,
How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured,
But she would spell him backward: if fair-faced,
She would swear the gentleman should be her sister;
If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antique,
Made a foul blot; if tall, a lance ill-headed;
If low, an agate very vilely cut;
If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds;
If silent, why, a block moved with none.
So turns she every man the wrong side out
And never gives to truth and virtue that
Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.

Ursula Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable. Hero

No, not to be so odd and from all fashions
As Beatrice is, cannot be commendable:
But who dare tell her so? If I should speak,
She would mock me into air; O, she would laugh me
Out of myself, press me to death with wit.
Therefore let Benedick, like cover’d fire,
Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly:
It were a better death than die with mocks,
Which is as bad as die with tickling.

Ursula Yet tell her of it: hear what she will say. Hero

No; rather I will go to Benedick
And counsel him to fight against his passion.
And, truly, I’ll devise some honest slanders
To stain my cousin with: one doth not know
How much