AVATAR TESTING and INSTRUCTIONS

[+Sadgit1971]

urgh

[warlockmatized]

Ttttttttttesting

[Strattonator]

This is a test, this is only a test.

[+JR.on.tour]

test

[Baysidebob]

avatar test

[+BMWer]

Avatar creation instructions

 

Save the desired image to your PC, then:

 

1. Click on My Account tab on left side of home page.

2. Under Account Options on the right side click on Edit My Profile

3. On the Edit Account Details page look for the Virtual You section. Under Avatar click on change/edit

4. On the choose my avatar page, click on the Upload a New Image line

5. Use browse button to find the image you saved to your PC, give it a File Caption and hit Upload

6. Once it is uploaded click on My Details

7. On the Edit Account Details page look for the Virtual You section. Under Avatar click on change/edit

8. Click on desired avatar, then click on Select Photo

9. Click on the Edit Account Details line, key in your password, then page down and click on the Update Account button.

10. Go to the forums and log out and log back in. Your avatar should now appear next to your name.

 

 

To test please use this thread.

Please do not start another testing thread.

[+BMWer]

avatar test

test

[Baysidebob]

avatar test 2

[+brochill]

testing

[+allenjpl]

Just testing the penguin.

[mikeffi]

Toast

[+feet1st24]

test

[+The Eyeball]

test

[+T_BOLT]

test

[+AltGofur]

just testing

[BiIIyBobNosePicker]

test

[BiIIyBobNosePicker]

Much Ado About Nothing

Shakespeare homepage | Much Ado About Nothing | Entire play

 

ACT I

SCENE I. Before LEONATO'S house.

 

Enter LEONATO, HERO, and BEATRICE, with a Messenger

LEONATO

I learn in this letter that Don Peter of Arragon

comes this night to Messina.

 

Messenger

He is very near by this: he was not three leagues off

when I left him.

 

LEONATO

How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?

 

Messenger

But few of any sort, and none of name.

 

LEONATO

A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings

home full numbers. I find here that Don Peter hath

bestowed much honour on a young Florentine called Claudio.

 

Messenger

Much deserved on his part and equally remembered by

Don Pedro: he hath borne himself beyond the

promise of his age, doing, in the figure of a lamb,

the feats of a lion: he hath indeed better

bettered expectation than you must expect of me to

tell you how.

 

LEONATO

He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much

glad of it.

 

Messenger

I have already delivered him letters, and there

appears much joy in him; even so much that joy could

not show itself modest enough without a badge of

bitterness.

 

LEONATO

Did he break out into tears?

 

Messenger

In great measure.

 

LEONATO

A kind overflow of kindness: there are no faces

truer than those that are so washed. How much

better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!

 

BEATRICE

I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned from the

wars or no?

 

Messenger

I know none of that name, lady: there was none such

in the army of any sort.

 

LEONATO

What is he that you ask for, niece?

 

HERO

My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua.

 

Messenger

O, he's returned; and as pleasant as ever he was.

 

BEATRICE

He set up his bills here in Messina and challenged

Cupid at the flight; and my uncle's fool, reading

the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, and challenged

him at the bird-bolt. I pray you, how many hath he

killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath

he killed? for indeed I promised to eat all of his killing.

 

LEONATO

Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much;

but he'll be meet with you, I doubt it not.

 

Messenger

He hath done good service, lady, in these wars.

 

BEATRICE

You had musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it:

he is a very valiant trencherman; he hath an

excellent stomach.

 

Messenger

And a good soldier too, lady.

 

BEATRICE

And a good soldier to a lady: but what is he to a lord?

 

Messenger

A lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuffed with all

honourable virtues.

 

BEATRICE

It is so, indeed; he is no less than a stuffed man:

but for the stuffing,--well, we are all mortal.

 

LEONATO

You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is a

kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her:

they never meet but there's a skirmish of wit

between them.

 

BEATRICE

Alas! he gets nothing by that. In our last

conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and

now is the whole man governed with one: so that if

he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him

bear it for a difference between himself and his

horse; for it is all the wealth that he hath left,

to be known a reasonable creature. Who is his

companion now? He hath every month a new sworn brother.

 

Messenger

Is't possible?

 

BEATRICE

Very easily possible: he wears his faith but as

the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the

next block.

 

Messenger

I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.

 

BEATRICE

No; an he were, I would burn my study. But, I pray

you, who is his companion? Is there no young

squarer now that will make a voyage with him to the devil?

 

Messenger

He is most in the company of the right noble Claudio.

 

BEATRICE

O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease: he

is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker

runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! if

he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a

thousand pound ere a' be cured.

 

Messenger

I will hold friends with you, lady.

 

BEATRICE

Do, good friend.

 

LEONATO

You will never run mad, niece.

 

BEATRICE

No, not till a hot January.

 

Messenger

Don Pedro is approached.

 

Enter DON PEDRO, DON JOHN, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK, and BALTHASAR

 

DON PEDRO

Good Signior Leonato, you are come to meet your

trouble: the fashion of the world is to avoid

cost, and you encounter it.

 

LEONATO

Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of

your grace: for trouble being gone, comfort should

remain; but when you depart from me, sorrow abides

and happiness takes his leave.

 

DON PEDRO

You embrace your charge too willingly. I think this

is your daughter.

 

LEONATO

Her mother hath many times told me so.

 

BENEDICK

Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her?

 

LEONATO

Signior Benedick, no; for then were you a child.

 

DON PEDRO

You have it full, Benedick: we may guess by this

what you are, being a man. Truly, the lady fathers

herself. Be happy, lady; for you are like an

honourable father.

 

BENEDICK

If Signior Leonato be her father, she would not

have his head on her shoulders for all Messina, as

like him as she is.

 

BEATRICE

I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior

Benedick: nobody marks you.

 

BENEDICK

What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?

 

BEATRICE

Is it possible disdain should die while she hath

such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?

Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come

in her presence.

 

BENEDICK

Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I

am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I

would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard

heart; for, truly, I love none.

 

BEATRICE

A dear happiness to women: they would else have

been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God

and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I

had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man

swear he loves me.

 

BENEDICK

God keep your ladyship still in that mind! so some

gentleman or other shall 'scape a predestinate

scratched face.

 

BEATRICE

Scratching could not make it worse, an 'twere such

a face as yours were.

 

BENEDICK

Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.

 

BEATRICE

A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.

 

BENEDICK

I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and

so good a continuer. But keep your way, i' God's

name; I have done.

 

BEATRICE

You always end with a jade's trick: I know you of old.

 

DON PEDRO

That is the sum of all, Leonato. Signior Claudio

and Signior Benedick, my dear friend Leonato hath

invited you all. I tell him we shall stay here at

the least a month; and he heartily prays some

occasion may detain us longer. I dare swear he is no

hypocrite, but prays from his heart.

 

LEONATO

If you swear, my lord, you shall not be forsworn.

 

To DON JOHN

 

Let me bid you welcome, my lord: being reconciled to

the prince your brother, I owe you all duty.

 

DON JOHN

I thank you: I am not of many words, but I thank

you.

 

LEONATO

Please it your grace lead on?

 

DON PEDRO

Your hand, Leonato; we will go together.

 

Exeunt all except BENEDICK and CLAUDIO

 

CLAUDIO

Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signior Leonato?

 

BENEDICK

I noted her not; but I looked on her.

 

CLAUDIO

Is she not a modest young lady?

 

BENEDICK

Do you question me, as an honest man should do, for

my simple true judgment; or would you have me speak

after my custom, as being a professed tyrant to their sex?

 

CLAUDIO

No; I pray thee speak in sober judgment.

 

BENEDICK

Why, i' faith, methinks she's too low for a high

praise, too brown for a fair praise and too little

for a great praise: only this commendation I can

afford her, that were she other than she is, she

were unhandsome; and being no other but as she is, I

do not like her.

 

CLAUDIO

Thou thinkest I am in sport: I pray thee tell me

truly how thou likest her.

 

BENEDICK

Would you buy her, that you inquire after her?

 

CLAUDIO

Can the world buy such a jewel?

 

BENEDICK

Yea, and a case to put it into. But speak you this

with a sad brow? or do you play the flouting Jack,

to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder and Vulcan a

rare carpenter? Come, in what key shall a man take

you, to go in the song?

 

CLAUDIO

In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I

looked on.

 

BENEDICK

I can see yet without spectacles and I see no such

matter: there's her cousin, an she were not

possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty

as the first of May doth the last of December. But I

hope you have no intent to turn husband, have you?

 

CLAUDIO

I would scarce trust myself, though I had sworn the

contrary, if Hero would be my wife.

 

BENEDICK

Is't come to this? In faith, hath not the world

one man but he will wear his cap with suspicion?

Shall I never see a bachelor of three-score again?

Go to, i' faith; an thou wilt needs thrust thy neck

into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away

Sundays. Look Don Pedro is returned to seek you.

 

Re-enter DON PEDRO

 

DON PEDRO

What secret hath held you here, that you followed

not to Leonato's?

 

BENEDICK

I would your grace would constrain me to tell.

 

DON PEDRO

I charge thee on thy allegiance.

 

BENEDICK

You hear, Count Claudio: I can be secret as a dumb

man; I would have you think so; but, on my

allegiance, mark you this, on my allegiance. He is

in love. With who? now that is your grace's part.

Mark how short his answer is;--With Hero, Leonato's

short daughter.

 

CLAUDIO

If this were so, so were it uttered.

 

BENEDICK

Like the old tale, my lord: 'it is not so, nor

'twas not so, but, indeed, God 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 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 to-night:

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 practise 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 mine

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.

 

Enter Attendants

 

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. The same.

 

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 blessing brings it?

 

CONRADE

If not a present remedy, at least a patient

sufferance.

 

DON JOHN

I wonder that thou, being, as thou sayest 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 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

midway 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

overmastered with a pierce 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 every thing

and so dance out the answer. For, hear me, Hero:

wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig,

a measure, and a cinque pace: the first suit is hot

and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as

fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a

measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes

repentance and, with his bad legs, falls into the

cinque pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.

 

LEONATO

Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly.

 

BEATRICE

I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.

 

LEONATO

The revellers are entering, brother: make good room.

 

All put on their masks

 

Enter DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK, BALTHASAR, DON JOHN, BORACHIO, MARGARET, URSULA and others, masked

 

DON PEDRO

Lady, will you walk about with your friend?

 

HERO

So you walk softly and look sweetly and say nothing,

I am yours for the walk; and especially when I walk away.

 

DON PEDRO

With me in your company?

 

HERO

I may say so, when I please.

 

DON PEDRO

And when please you to say so?

 

HERO

When I like your favour; for God defend the lute

should be like the case!

 

DON PEDRO

My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove.

 

HERO

Why, then, your visor should be thatched.

 

DON PEDRO

Speak low, if you speak love.

 

Drawing her aside

 

BALTHASAR

Well, I would you did like me.

 

MARGARET

So would not I, for your own sake; for I have many

ill-qualities.

 

BALTHASAR

Which is one?

 

MARGARET

I say my prayers aloud.

 

BALTHASAR

I love you the better: the hearers may cry, Amen.

 

MARGARET

God match me with a good dancer!

 

BALTHASAR

Amen.

 

MARGARET

And God keep him out of my sight when the dance is

done! Answer, clerk.

 

BALTHASAR

No more words: the clerk is answered.

 

URSULA

I know you well enough; you are Signior Antonio.

 

ANTONIO

At a word, I am not.

 

URSULA

I know you by the waggling of your head.

 

ANTONIO

To tell you true, I counterfeit him.

 

URSULA

You could never do him so ill-well, unless you were

the very man. 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

 

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 except 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 not you 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 to-night.

 

DON JOHN

Come, let us to the banquet.

 

Exeunt DON JOHN and BORACHIO

 

CLAUDIO

Thus answer I in the 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:

Therefore, 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,

county. What fashion will you wear the garland of?

about your neck, like an 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

overjoyed with finding a birds' 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 birds' 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

myself, that I was the prince's jester, that I was

duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest

with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood

like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at

me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs:

if her breath were as terrible as her terminations,

there were no living near her; she would infect to

the north star. I would not marry her, though she

were endowed with all that Adam bad left him before

he transgressed: she would have made Hercules have

turned spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make

the fire too. Come, talk not of her: you shall find

her the infernal Ate in good apparel. I would to God

some scholar would conjure her; for certainly, while

she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as in a

sanctuary; and people sin upon purpose, because they

would go thither; so, indeed, all disquiet, horror

and perturbation follows her.

 

DON PEDRO

Look, here she comes.

 

Enter CLAUDIO, BEATRICE, HERO, and LEONATO

 

BENEDICK

Will your grace command me any service to the

world's end? I will go on the slightest errand now

to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on;

I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the

furthest inch of Asia, bring you the length of

Prester John's foot, fetch you a hair off the great

Cham's beard, do you any embassage to the Pigmies,

rather than hold three words' conference with this

harpy. You have no employment for me?

 

DON PEDRO

None, but to desire your good company.

 

BENEDICK

O God, sir, here's a dish I love not: I cannot

endure my Lady Tongue.

 

Exit

 

DON PEDRO

Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of

Signior Benedick.

 

BEATRICE

Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave

him use for it, a double heart for his single one:

marry, once before he won it of me with false dice,

therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.

 

DON PEDRO

You have put him down, lady, you have put him down.

 

BEATRICE

So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I

should prove the mother of fools. I have brought

Count Claudio, whom you sent me to seek.

 

DON PEDRO

Why, how now, count! wherefore are you sad?

 

CLAUDIO

Not sad, my lord.

 

DON PEDRO

How then? sick?

 

CLAUDIO

Neither, my lord.

 

BEATRICE

The count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor

well; but civil count, civil as an orange, and

something of that jealous complexion.

 

DON PEDRO

I' faith, lady, I think your blazon to be true;

though, I'll be sworn, if he be so, his conceit is

false. Here, Claudio, I have wooed in thy name, and

fair Hero is won: I have broke with her father,

and his good will obtained: name the day of

marriage, and God give thee joy!

 

LEONATO

Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my

fortunes: his grace hath made the match, and an

grace say Amen to it.

 

BEATRICE

Speak, count, 'tis your cue.

 

CLAUDIO

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were

but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as

you are mine, I am yours: I give away myself for

you and dote upon the exchange.

 

BEATRICE

Speak, cousin; or, if you cannot, stop his mouth

with a kiss, and let not him speak neither.

 

DON PEDRO

In faith, lady, you have a merry heart.

 

BEATRICE

Yea, my lord; I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on

the windy side of care. My cousin tells him in his

ear that he is in her heart.

 

CLAUDIO

And so she doth, cousin.

 

BEATRICE

Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes every one to the

world but I, and I am sunburnt; I may sit in a

corner and cry heigh-ho for a husband!

 

DON PEDRO

Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.

 

BEATRICE

I would rather have one of your father's getting.

Hath your grace ne'er a brother like you? Your

father got excellent husbands, if a maid could come by them.

 

DON PEDRO

Will you have me, lady?

 

BEATRICE

No, my lord, unless I might have another for

working-days: your grace is too costly to wear

every day. But, I beseech your grace, pardon me: I

was born to speak all mirth and no matter.

 

DON PEDRO

Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best

becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in

a merry hour.

 

BEATRICE

No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there

was a star danced, and under that was I born.

Cousins, God give you joy!

 

LEONATO

Niece, will you look to those things I told you of?

 

BEATRICE

I cry you mercy, uncle. By your grace's pardon.

 

Exit

 

DON PEDRO

By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady.

 

LEONATO

There's little of the melancholy element in her, my

lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps, and

not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say,

she hath often dreamed of unhappiness and waked

herself with laughing.

 

DON PEDRO

She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.

 

LEONATO

O, by no means: she mocks all her wooers out of suit.

 

DON PEDRO

She were an excellent wife for Benedict.

 

LEONATO

O Lord, my lord, if they were but a week married,

they would talk themselves mad.

 

DON PEDRO

County Claudio, when mean you to go to church?

 

CLAUDIO

To-morrow, my lord: time goes on crutches till love

have all his rites.

 

LEONATO

Not till Monday, my dear son, which is hence a just

seven-night; and a time too brief, too, to have all

things answer my mind.

 

DON PEDRO

Come, you shake the head at so long a breathing:

but, I warrant thee, Claudio, the time shall not go

dully by us. I will in the interim undertake one of

Hercules' labours; which is, to bring Signior

Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of

affection the one with the other. I would fain have

it a match, and I doubt not but to fashion it, if

you three will but minister such assistance as I

shall give you direction.

 

LEONATO

My lord, I am for you, though it cost me ten

nights' watchings.

 

CLAUDIO

And I, my lord.

 

DON PEDRO

And you too, gentle Hero?

 

HERO

I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my

cousin to a good husband.

 

DON PEDRO

And Benedick is not the unhopefullest husband that

I know. Thus far can I praise him; he is of a noble

strain, of approved valour and confirmed honesty. I

will teach you how to humour your cousin, that she

shall fall in love with Benedick; and I, with your

two helps, will so practise on Benedick that, in

despite of his quick wit and his queasy stomach, he

shall fall in love with Beatrice. If we can do this,

Cupid is no longer an archer: hi s glory shall be

ours, for we are the only love-gods. Go in with me,

and I will tell you my drift.

 

Exeunt

 

SCENE II. The same.

 

Enter DON JOHN and BORACHIO

DON JOHN

It is so; the Count Claudio shall marry the

daughter of Leonato.

 

BORACHIO

Yea, my lord; but I can cross it.

 

DON JOHN

Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be

medicinable to me: I am sick in displeasure to him,

and whatsoever comes athwart his affection ranges

evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this marriage?

 

BORACHIO

Not honestly, my lord; but so covertly that no

dishonesty shall appear in me.

 

DON JOHN

Show me briefly how.

 

BORACHIO

I think I told your lordship a year since, how much

I am in the favour of Margaret, the waiting

gentlewoman to Hero.

 

DON JOHN

I remember.

 

BORACHIO

I can, at any unseasonable instant of the night,

appoint her to look out at her lady's chamber window.

 

DON JOHN

What life is in that, to be the death of this marriage?

 

BORACHIO

The poison of that lies in you to temper. Go you to

the prince your brother; spare not to tell him that

he hath wronged his honour in marrying the renowned

Claudio--whose estimation do you mightily hold

up--to a contaminated stale, such a one as Hero.

 

DON JOHN

What proof shall I make of that?

 

BORACHIO

Proof enough to misuse the prince, to vex Claudio,

to undo Hero and kill Leonato. Look you for any

other issue?

 

DON JOHN

Only to despite them, I will endeavour any thing.

 

BORACHIO

Go, then; find me a meet hour to draw Don Pedro and

the Count Claudio alone: tell them that you know

that Hero loves me; intend a kind of zeal both to the

prince and Claudio, as,--in love of your brother's

honour, who hath made this match, and his friend's

reputation, who is thus like to be cozened with the

semblance of a maid,--that you have discovered

thus. They will scarcely believe this without trial:

offer them instances; which shall bear no less

likelihood than to see me at her chamber-window,

hear me call Margaret Hero, hear Margaret term me

Claudio; and bring them to see this the very night

before the intended wedding,--for in the meantime I

will so fashion the matter that Hero shall be

absent,--and there shall appear such seeming truth

of Hero's disloyalty that jealousy shall be called

assurance and all the preparation overthrown.

 

DON JOHN

Grow this to what adverse issue it can, I will put

it in practise. Be cunning in the working this, and

thy fee is a thousand ducats.

 

BORACHIO

Be you constant in the accusation, and my cunning

shall not shame me.

 

DON JOHN

I will presently go learn their day of marriage.

 

Exeunt

 

SCENE III. LEONATO'S orchard.

 

Enter BENEDICK

BENEDICK

Boy!

 

Enter Boy

 

Boy

Signior?

 

BENEDICK

In my chamber-window lies a book: bring it hither

to me in the orchard.

 

Boy

I am here already, sir.

 

BENEDICK

I know that; but I would have thee hence, and here again.

 

Exit Boy

 

I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much

another man is a fool when he dedicates his

behaviors to love, will, after he hath laughed at

such shallow follies in others, become the argument

of his own scorn by failing in love: and such a man

is Claudio. I have known when there was no music

with him but the drum and the fife; and now had he

rather hear the tabour and the pipe: I have known

when he would have walked ten mile a-foot to see a

good armour; and now will he lie ten nights awake,

carving the fashion of a new doublet. He was wont to

speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man

and a soldier; and now is he turned orthography; his

words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many

strange dishes. May I be so converted and see with

these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not: I will not

be sworn, but love may transform me to an oyster; but

I'll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster

of me, he shall never make me such a fool. One woman

is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am

well; another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all

graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in

my grace. Rich she shall be, that's certain; wise,

or I'll none; virtuous, or I'll never cheapen her;

fair, or I'll never look on her; mild, or come not

near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good

discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall

be of what colour it please God. Ha! the prince and

Monsieur Love! I will hide me in the arbour.

 

Withdraws

 

Enter DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, and LEONATO

 

DON PEDRO

Come, shall we hear this music?

 

CLAUDIO

Yea, my good lord. How still the evening is,

As hush'd on purpose to grace harmony!

 

DON PEDRO

See you where Benedick hath hid himself?

 

CLAUDIO

O, very well, my lord: the music ended,

We'll fit the kid-fox with a pennyworth.

 

Enter BALTHASAR with Music

 

DON PEDRO

Come, Balthasar, we'll hear that song again.

 

BALTHASAR

O, good my lord, tax not so bad a voice

To slander music any more than once.

 

DON PEDRO

It is the witness still of excellency

To put a strange face on his own perfection.

I pray thee, sing, and let me woo no more.

 

BALTHASAR

Because you talk of wooing, I will sing;

Since many a wooer doth commence his suit

To her he thinks not worthy, yet he wooes,

Yet will he swear he loves.

 

DON PEDRO

Now, pray thee, come;

Or, if thou wilt hold longer argument,

Do it in notes.

 

BALTHASAR

Note this before my notes;

There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting.

 

DON PEDRO

Why, these are very crotchets that he speaks;

Note, notes, forsooth, and nothing.

 

Air

 

BENEDICK

Now, divine air! now is his soul ravished! Is it

not strange that sheeps' guts should hale souls out

of men's bodies? Well, a horn for my money, when

all's done.

 

The Song

 

BALTHASAR

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea and one on shore,

To one thing constant never:

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,

Of dumps so dull and heavy;

The fraud of men was ever so,

Since summer first was leafy:

Then sigh not so, & c.

 

DON PEDRO

By my troth, a good song.

 

BALTHASAR

And an ill singer, my lord.

 

DON PEDRO

Ha, no, no, faith; thou singest well enough for a shift.

 

BENEDICK

An he had been a dog that should have howled thus,

they would have hanged him: and I pray God his bad

voice bode no mischief. I had as lief have heard the

night-raven, come what plague could have come after

it.

 

DON PEDRO

Yea, marry, dost thou hear, Balthasar? I pray thee,

get us some excellent music; for to-morrow night we

would have it at the Lady Hero's chamber-window.

 

BALTHASAR

The best I can, my lord.

 

DON PEDRO

Do so: farewell.

 

Exit BALTHASAR

 

Come hither, Leonato. What was it you told me of

to-day, that your niece Beatrice was in love with

Signior Benedick?

 

CLAUDIO

O, ay: stalk on. stalk on; the fowl sits. I did

never think that lady would have loved any man.

 

LEONATO

No, nor I neither; but most wonderful that she

should so dote on Signior Benedick, whom she hath in

all outward behaviors seemed ever to abhor.

 

BENEDICK

Is't possible? Sits the wind in that corner?

 

LEONATO

By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think

of it but that she loves him with an enraged

affection: it is past the infinite of thought.

 

DON PEDRO

May be she doth but counterfeit.

 

CLAUDIO

Faith, like enough.

 

LEONATO

O God, counterfeit! There was never counterfeit of

passion came so near the life of passion as she

discovers it.

 

DON PEDRO

Why, what effects of passion shows she?

 

CLAUDIO

Bait the hook well; this fish will bite.

 

LEONATO

What effects, my lord? She will sit you, you heard

my daughter tell you how.

 

CLAUDIO

She did, indeed.

 

DON PEDRO

How, how, pray you? You amaze me: I would have I

thought her spirit had been invincible against all

assaults of affection.

 

LEONATO

I would have sworn it had, my lord; especially

against Benedick.

 

BENEDICK

I should think this a gull, but that the

white-bearded fellow speaks it: knavery cannot,

sure, hide himself in such reverence.

 

CLAUDIO

He hath ta'en the infection: hold it up.

 

DON PEDRO

Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?

 

LEONATO

No; and swears she never will: that's her torment.

 

CLAUDIO

'Tis true, indeed; so your daughter says: 'Shall

I,' says she, 'that have so oft encountered him

with scorn, write to him that I love him?'

 

LEONATO

This says she now when she is beginning to write to

him; for she'll be up twenty times a night, and

there will she sit in her smock till she have writ a

sheet of paper: my daughter tells us all.

 

CLAUDIO

Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a

pretty jest your daughter told us of.

 

LEONATO

O, when she had writ it and was reading it over, she

found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet?

 

CLAUDIO

That.

 

LEONATO

O, she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence;

railed at herself, that she should be so immodest

to write to one that she knew would flout her; 'I

measure him,' says she, 'by my own spirit; for I

should flout him, if he writ to me; yea, though I

love him, I should.'

 

CLAUDIO

Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs,

beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses; 'O

sweet Benedick! God give me patience!'

 

LEONATO

She doth indeed; my daughter says so: and the

ecstasy hath so much overborne her that my daughter

is sometime afeared she will do a desperate outrage

to herself: it is very true.

 

DON PEDRO

It were good that Benedick knew of it by some

other, if she will not discover it.

 

CLAUDIO

To what end? He would make but a sport of it and

torment the poor lady worse.

 

DON PEDRO

An he should, it were an alms to hang him. She's an

excellent sweet lady; and, out of all suspicion,

she is virtuous.

 

CLAUDIO

And she is exceeding wise.

 

DON PEDRO

In every thing but in loving Benedick.

 

LEONATO

O, my lord, wisdom and blood combating in so tender

a body, we have ten proofs to one that blood hath

the victory. I am sorry for her, as I have just

cause, being her uncle and her guardian.

 

DON PEDRO

I would she had bestowed this dotage on me: I would

have daffed all other respects and made her half

myself. I pray you, tell Benedick of it, and hear

what a' will say.

 

LEONATO

Were it good, think you?

 

CLAUDIO

Hero thinks surely she will die; for she says she

will die, if he love her not, and she will die, ere

she make her love known, and she will die, if he woo

her, rather than she will bate one breath of her

accustomed crossness.

 

DON PEDRO

She doth well: if she should make tender of her

love, 'tis very possible he'll scorn it; for the

man, as you know all, hath a contemptible spirit.

 

CLAUDIO

He is a very proper man.

 

DON PEDRO

He hath indeed a good outward happiness.

 

CLAUDIO

Before God! and, in my mind, very wise.

 

DON PEDRO

He doth indeed show some sparks that are like wit.

 

CLAUDIO

And I take him to be valiant.

 

DON PEDRO

As Hector, I assure you: and in the managing of

quarrels you may say he is wise; for either he

avoids them with great discretion, or undertakes

them with a most Christian-like fear.

 

LEONATO

If he do fear God, a' must necessarily keep peace:

if he break the peace, he ought to enter into a

quarrel with fear and trembling.

 

DON PEDRO

And so will he do; for the man doth fear God,

howsoever it seems not in him by some large jests

he will make. Well I am sorry for your niece. Shall

we go seek Benedick, and tell him of her love?

 

CLAUDIO

Never tell him, my lord: let her wear it out with

good counsel.

 

LEONATO

Nay, that's impossible: she may wear her heart out first.

 

DON PEDRO

Well, we will hear further of it by your daughter:

let it cool the while. I love Benedick well; and I

could wish he would modestly examine himself, to see

how much he is unworthy so good a lady.

 

LEONATO

My lord, will you walk? dinner is ready.

 

CLAUDIO

If he do not dote on her upon this, I will never

trust my expectation.

 

DON PEDRO

Let there be the same net spread for her; and that

must your daughter and her gentlewomen carry. The

sport will be, when they hold one an opinion of

another's dotage, and no such matter: that's the

scene that I would see, which will be merely a

dumb-show. Let us send her to call him in to dinner.

 

Exeunt DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, and LEONATO

 

BENEDICK

[Coming forward] This can be no trick: the

conference was sadly borne. They have the truth of

this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady: it

seems her affections have their full bent. Love me!

why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured:

they say I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive

the love come from her; they say too that she will

rather die than give any sign of affection. I did

never think to marry: I 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 parlor;

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 purpose. 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 haggerds 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 framed 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 an ill word may empoison liking.

 

URSULA

O, do not do your cousin such a wrong.

She cannot be so much without true judgment--

Having so swift and excellent a wit

As she is prized to have--as to refuse

So rare a gentleman as Signior Benedick.

 

HERO

He is the only man of Italy.

Always excepted my dear Claudio.

 

URSULA

I pray you, be not angry with me, madam,

Speaking my fancy: Signior Benedick,

For shape, for bearing, argument and valour,

Goes foremost in report through Italy.

 

HERO

Indeed, he hath an excellent good name.

 

URSULA

His excellence did earn it, ere he had it.

When are you married, madam?

 

HERO

Why, every day, to-morrow. Come, go in:

I'll show thee some attires, and have thy counsel

Which is the best to furnish me to-morrow.

 

URSULA

She's limed, I warrant you: we have caught her, madam.

 

HERO

If it proves so, then loving goes by haps

[BiIIyBobNosePicker]

Much Ado About Nothing

Shakespeare homepage | Much Ado About Nothing | Entire play

 

ACT I

SCENE I. Before LEONATO'S house.

 

Enter LEONATO, HERO, and BEATRICE, with a Messenger

LEONATO

I learn in this letter that Don Peter of Arragon

comes this night to Messina.

 

Messenger

He is very near by this: he was not three leagues off

when I left him.

 

LEONATO

How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?

 

Messenger

But few of any sort, and none of name.

 

LEONATO

A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings

home full numbers. I find here that Don Peter hath

bestowed much honour on a young Florentine called Claudio.

 

Messenger

Much deserved on his part and equally remembered by

Don Pedro: he hath borne himself beyond the

promise of his age, doing, in the figure of a lamb,

the feats of a lion: he hath indeed better

bettered expectation than you must expect of me to

tell you how.

 

LEONATO

He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much

glad of it.

 

Messenger

I have already delivered him letters, and there

appears much joy in him; even so much that joy could

not show itself modest enough without a badge of

bitterness.

 

LEONATO

Did he break out into tears?

 

Messenger

In great measure.

 

LEONATO

A kind overflow of kindness: there are no faces

truer than those that are so washed. How much

better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!

 

BEATRICE

I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned from the

wars or no?

 

Messenger

I know none of that name, lady: there was none such

in the army of any sort.

 

LEONATO

What is he that you ask for, niece?

 

HERO

My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua.

 

Messenger

O, he's returned; and as pleasant as ever he was.

 

BEATRICE

He set up his bills here in Messina and challenged

Cupid at the flight; and my uncle's fool, reading

the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, and challenged

him at the bird-bolt. I pray you, how many hath he

killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath

he killed? for indeed I promised to eat all of his killing.

 

LEONATO

Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much;

but he'll be meet with you, I doubt it not.

 

Messenger

He hath done good service, lady, in these wars.

 

BEATRICE

You had musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it:

he is a very valiant trencherman; he hath an

excellent stomach.

 

Messenger

And a good soldier too, lady.

 

BEATRICE

And a good soldier to a lady: but what is he to a lord?

 

Messenger

A lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuffed with all

honourable virtues.

 

BEATRICE

It is so, indeed; he is no less than a stuffed man:

but for the stuffing,--well, we are all mortal.

 

LEONATO

You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is a

kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her:

they never meet but there's a skirmish of wit

between them.

 

BEATRICE

Alas! he gets nothing by that. In our last

conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and

now is the whole man governed with one: so that if

he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him

bear it for a difference between himself and his

horse; for it is all the wealth that he hath left,

to be known a reasonable creature. Who is his

companion now? He hath every month a new sworn brother.

 

Messenger

Is't possible?

 

BEATRICE

Very easily possible: he wears his faith but as

the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the

next block.

 

Messenger

I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.

 

BEATRICE

No; an he were, I would burn my study. But, I pray

you, who is his companion? Is there no young

squarer now that will make a voyage with him to the devil?

 

Messenger

He is most in the company of the right noble Claudio.

 

BEATRICE

O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease: he

is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker

runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! if

he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a

thousand pound ere a' be cured.

 

Messenger

I will hold friends with you, lady.

 

BEATRICE

Do, good friend.

 

LEONATO

You will never run mad, niece.

 

BEATRICE

No, not till a hot January.

 

Messenger

Don Pedro is approached.

 

Enter DON PEDRO, DON JOHN, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK, and BALTHASAR

 

DON PEDRO

Good Signior Leonato, you are come to meet your

trouble: the fashion of the world is to avoid

cost, and you encounter it.

 

LEONATO

Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of

your grace: for trouble being gone, comfort should

remain; but when you depart from me, sorrow abides

and happiness takes his leave.

 

DON PEDRO

You embrace your charge too willingly. I think this

is your daughter.

 

LEONATO

Her mother hath many times told me so.

 

BENEDICK

Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her?

 

LEONATO

Signior Benedick, no; for then were you a child.

 

DON PEDRO

You have it full, Benedick: we may guess by this

what you are, being a man. Truly, the lady fathers

herself. Be happy, lady; for you are like an

honourable father.

 

BENEDICK

If Signior Leonato be her father, she would not

have his head on her shoulders for all Messina, as

like him as she is.

 

BEATRICE

I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior

Benedick: nobody marks you.

 

BENEDICK

What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?

 

BEATRICE

Is it possible disdain should die while she hath

such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?

Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come

in her presence.

 

BENEDICK

Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I

am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I

would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard

heart; for, truly, I love none.

 

BEATRICE

A dear happiness to women: they would else have

been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God

and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I

had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man

swear he loves me.

 

BENEDICK

God keep your ladyship still in that mind! so some

gentleman or other shall 'scape a predestinate

scratched face.

 

BEATRICE

Scratching could not make it worse, an 'twere such

a face as yours were.

 

BENEDICK

Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.

 

BEATRICE

A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.

 

BENEDICK

I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and

so good a continuer. But keep your way, i' God's

name; I have done.

 

BEATRICE

You always end with a jade's trick: I know you of old.

 

DON PEDRO

That is the sum of all, Leonato. Signior Claudio

and Signior Benedick, my dear friend Leonato hath

invited you all. I tell him we shall stay here at

the least a month; and he heartily prays some

occasion may detain us longer. I dare swear he is no

hypocrite, but prays from his heart.

 

LEONATO

If you swear, my lord, you shall not be forsworn.

 

To DON JOHN

 

Let me bid you welcome, my lord: being reconciled to

the prince your brother, I owe you all duty.

 

DON JOHN

I thank you: I am not of many words, but I thank

you.

 

LEONATO

Please it your grace lead on?

 

DON PEDRO

Your hand, Leonato; we will go together.

 

Exeunt all except BENEDICK and CLAUDIO

 

CLAUDIO

Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signior Leonato?

 

BENEDICK

I noted her not; but I looked on her.

 

CLAUDIO

Is she not a modest young lady?

 

BENEDICK

Do you question me, as an honest man should do, for

my simple true judgment; or would you have me speak

after my custom, as being a professed tyrant to their sex?

 

CLAUDIO

No; I pray thee speak in sober judgment.

 

BENEDICK

Why, i' faith, methinks she's too low for a high

praise, too brown for a fair praise and too little

for a great praise: only this commendation I can

afford her, that were she other than she is, she

were unhandsome; and being no other but as she is, I

do not like her.

 

CLAUDIO

Thou thinkest I am in sport: I pray thee tell me

truly how thou likest her.

 

BENEDICK

Would you buy her, that you inquire after her?

 

CLAUDIO

Can the world buy such a jewel?

 

BENEDICK

Yea, and a case to put it into. But speak you this

with a sad brow? or do you play the flouting Jack,

to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder and Vulcan a

rare carpenter? Come, in what key shall a man take

you, to go in the song?

 

CLAUDIO

In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I

looked on.

 

BENEDICK

I can see yet without spectacles and I see no such

matter: there's her cousin, an she were not

possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty

as the first of May doth the last of December. But I

hope you have no intent to turn husband, have you?

 

CLAUDIO

I would scarce trust myself, though I had sworn the

contrary, if Hero would be my wife.

 

BENEDICK

Is't come to this? In faith, hath not the world

one man but he will wear his cap with suspicion?

Shall I never see a bachelor of three-score again?

Go to, i' faith; an thou wilt needs thrust thy neck

into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away

Sundays. Look Don Pedro is returned to seek you.

 

Re-enter DON PEDRO

 

DON PEDRO

What secret hath held you here, that you followed

not to Leonato's?

 

BENEDICK

I would your grace would constrain me to tell.

 

DON PEDRO

I charge thee on thy allegiance.

 

BENEDICK

You hear, Count Claudio: I can be secret as a dumb

man; I would have you think so; but, on my

allegiance, mark you this, on my allegiance. He is

in love. With who? now that is your grace's part.

Mark how short his answer is;--With Hero, Leonato's

short daughter.

 

CLAUDIO

If this were so, so were it uttered.

 

BENEDICK

Like the old tale, my lord: 'it is not so, nor

'twas not so, but, indeed, God 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 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 to-night:

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 practise 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 mine

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.

 

Enter Attendants

 

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. The same.

 

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 blessing brings it?

 

CONRADE

If not a present remedy, at least a patient

sufferance.

 

DON JOHN

I wonder that thou, being, as thou sayest 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 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

midway 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

overmastered with a pierce 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 every thing

and so dance out the answer. For, hear me, Hero:

wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig,

a measure, and a cinque pace: the first suit is hot

and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as

fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a

measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes

repentance and, with his bad legs, falls into the

cinque pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.

 

LEONATO

Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly.

 

BEATRICE

I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.

 

LEONATO

The revellers are entering, brother: make good room.

 

All put on their masks

 

Enter DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK, BALTHASAR, DON JOHN, BORACHIO, MARGARET, URSULA and others, masked

 

DON PEDRO

Lady, will you walk about with your friend?

 

HERO

So you walk softly and look sweetly and say nothing,

I am yours for the walk; and especially when I walk away.

 

DON PEDRO

With me in your company?

 

HERO

I may say so, when I please.

 

DON PEDRO

And when please you to say so?

 

HERO

When I like your favour; for God defend the lute

should be like the case!

 

DON PEDRO

My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove.

 

HERO

Why, then, your visor should be thatched.

 

DON PEDRO

Speak low, if you speak love.

 

Drawing her aside

 

BALTHASAR

Well, I would you did like me.

 

MARGARET

So would not I, for your own sake; for I have many

ill-qualities.

 

BALTHASAR

Which is one?

 

MARGARET

I say my prayers aloud.

 

BALTHASAR

I love you the better: the hearers may cry, Amen.

 

MARGARET

God match me with a good dancer!

 

BALTHASAR

Amen.

 

MARGARET

And God keep him out of my sight when the dance is

done! Answer, clerk.

 

BALTHASAR

No more words: the clerk is answered.

 

URSULA

I know you well enough; you are Signior Antonio.

 

ANTONIO

At a word, I am not.

 

URSULA

I know you by the waggling of your head.

 

ANTONIO

To tell you true, I counterfeit him.

 

URSULA

You could never do him so ill-well, unless you were

the very man. 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

 

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 except 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 not you 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 to-night.

 

DON JOHN

Come, let us to the banquet.

 

Exeunt DON JOHN and BORACHIO

 

CLAUDIO

Thus answer I in the 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:

Therefore, 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,

county. What fashion will you wear the garland of?

about your neck, like an 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

overjoyed with finding a birds' 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 birds' 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

myself, that I was the prince's jester, that I was

duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest

with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood

like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at

me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs:

if her breath were as terrible as her terminations,

there were no living near her; she would infect to

the north star. I would not marry her, though she

were endowed with all that Adam bad left him before

he transgressed: she would have made Hercules have

turned spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make

the fire too. Come, talk not of her: you shall find

her the infernal Ate in good apparel. I would to God

some scholar would conjure her; for certainly, while

she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as in a

sanctuary; and people sin upon purpose, because they

would go thither; so, indeed, all disquiet, horror

and perturbation follows her.

 

DON PEDRO

Look, here she comes.

 

Enter CLAUDIO, BEATRICE, HERO, and LEONATO

 

BENEDICK

Will your grace command me any service to the

world's end? I will go on the slightest errand now

to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on;

I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the

furthest inch of Asia, bring you the length of

Prester John's foot, fetch you a hair off the great

Cham's beard, do you any embassage to the Pigmies,

rather than hold three words' conference with this

harpy. You have no employment for me?

 

DON PEDRO

None, but to desire your good company.

 

BENEDICK

O God, sir, here's a dish I love not: I cannot

endure my Lady Tongue.

 

Exit

 

DON PEDRO

Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of

Signior Benedick.

 

BEATRICE

Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave

him use for it, a double heart for his single one:

marry, once before he won it of me with false dice,

therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.

 

DON PEDRO

You have put him down, lady, you have put him down.

 

BEATRICE

So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I

should prove the mother of fools. I have brought

Count Claudio, whom you sent me to seek.

 

DON PEDRO

Why, how now, count! wherefore are you sad?

 

CLAUDIO

Not sad, my lord.

 

DON PEDRO

How then? sick?

 

CLAUDIO

Neither, my lord.

 

BEATRICE

The count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor

well; but civil count, civil as an orange, and

something of that jealous complexion.

 

DON PEDRO

I' faith, lady, I think your blazon to be true;

though, I'll be sworn, if he be so, his conceit is

false. Here, Claudio, I have wooed in thy name, and

fair Hero is won: I have broke with her father,

and his good will obtained: name the day of

marriage, and God give thee joy!

 

LEONATO

Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my

fortunes: his grace hath made the match, and an

grace say Amen to it.

 

BEATRICE

Speak, count, 'tis your cue.

 

CLAUDIO

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were

but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as

you are mine, I am yours: I give away myself for

you and dote upon the exchange.

 

BEATRICE

Speak, cousin; or, if you cannot, stop his mouth

with a kiss, and let not him speak neither.

 

DON PEDRO

In faith, lady, you have a merry heart.

 

BEATRICE

Yea, my lord; I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on

the windy side of care. My cousin tells him in his

ear that he is in her heart.

 

CLAUDIO

And so she doth, cousin.

 

BEATRICE

Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes every one to the

world but I, and I am sunburnt; I may sit in a

corner and cry heigh-ho for a husband!

 

DON PEDRO

Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.

 

BEATRICE

I would rather have one of your father's getting.

Hath your grace ne'er a brother like you? Your

father got excellent husbands, if a maid could come by them.

 

DON PEDRO

Will you have me, lady?

 

BEATRICE

No, my lord, unless I might have another for

working-days: your grace is too costly to wear

every day. But, I beseech your grace, pardon me: I

was born to speak all mirth and no matter.

 

DON PEDRO

Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best

becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in

a merry hour.

 

BEATRICE

No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there

was a star danced, and under that was I born.

Cousins, God give you joy!

 

LEONATO

Niece, will you look to those things I told you of?

 

BEATRICE

I cry you mercy, uncle. By your grace's pardon.

 

Exit

 

DON PEDRO

By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady.

 

LEONATO

There's little of the melancholy element in her, my

lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps, and

not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say,

she hath often dreamed of unhappiness and waked

herself with laughing.

 

DON PEDRO

She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.

 

LEONATO

O, by no means: she mocks all her wooers out of suit.

 

DON PEDRO

She were an excellent wife for Benedict.

 

LEONATO

O Lord, my lord, if they were but a week married,

they would talk themselves mad.

 

DON PEDRO

County Claudio, when mean you to go to church?

 

CLAUDIO

To-morrow, my lord: time goes on crutches till love

have all his rites.

 

LEONATO

Not till Monday, my dear son, which is hence a just

seven-night; and a time too brief, too, to have all

things answer my mind.

 

DON PEDRO

Come, you shake the head at so long a breathing:

but, I warrant thee, Claudio, the time shall not go

dully by us. I will in the interim undertake one of

Hercules' labours; which is, to bring Signior

Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of

affection the one with the other. I would fain have

it a match, and I doubt not but to fashion it, if

you three will but minister such assistance as I

shall give you direction.

 

LEONATO

My lord, I am for you, though it cost me ten

nights' watchings.

 

CLAUDIO

And I, my lord.

 

DON PEDRO

And you too, gentle Hero?

 

HERO

I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my

cousin to a good husband.

 

DON PEDRO

And Benedick is not the unhopefullest husband that

I know. Thus far can I praise him; he is of a noble

strain, of approved valour and confirmed honesty. I

will teach you how to humour your cousin, that she

shall fall in love with Benedick; and I, with your

two helps, will so practise on Benedick that, in

despite of his quick wit and his queasy stomach, he

shall fall in love with Beatrice. If we can do this,

Cupid is no longer an archer: hi s glory shall be

ours, for we are the only love-gods. Go in with me,

and I will tell you my drift.

 

Exeunt

 

SCENE II. The same.

 

Enter DON JOHN and BORACHIO

DON JOHN

It is so; the Count Claudio shall marry the

daughter of Leonato.

 

BORACHIO

Yea, my lord; but I can cross it.

 

DON JOHN

Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be

medicinable to me: I am sick in displeasure to him,

and whatsoever comes athwart his affection ranges

evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this marriage?

 

BORACHIO

Not honestly, my lord; but so covertly that no

dishonesty shall appear in me.

 

DON JOHN

Show me briefly how.

 

BORACHIO

I think I told your lordship a year since, how much

I am in the favour of Margaret, the waiting

gentlewoman to Hero.

 

DON JOHN

I remember.

 

BORACHIO

I can, at any unseasonable instant of the night,

appoint her to look out at her lady's chamber window.

 

DON JOHN

What life is in that, to be the death of this marriage?

 

BORACHIO

The poison of that lies in you to temper. Go you to

the prince your brother; spare not to tell him that

he hath wronged his honour in marrying the renowned

Claudio--whose estimation do you mightily hold

up--to a contaminated stale, such a one as Hero.

 

DON JOHN

What proof shall I make of that?

 

BORACHIO

Proof enough to misuse the prince, to vex Claudio,

to undo Hero and kill Leonato. Look you for any

other issue?

 

DON JOHN

Only to despite them, I will endeavour any thing.

 

BORACHIO

Go, then; find me a meet hour to draw Don Pedro and

the Count Claudio alone: tell them that you know

that Hero loves me; intend a kind of zeal both to the

prince and Claudio, as,--in love of your brother's

honour, who hath made this match, and his friend's

reputation, who is thus like to be cozened with the

semblance of a maid,--that you have discovered

thus. They will scarcely believe this without trial:

offer them instances; which shall bear no less

likelihood than to see me at her chamber-window,

hear me call Margaret Hero, hear Margaret term me

Claudio; and bring them to see this the very night

before the intended wedding,--for in the meantime I

will so fashion the matter that Hero shall be

absent,--and there shall appear such seeming truth

of Hero's disloyalty that jealousy shall be called

assurance and all the preparation overthrown.

 

DON JOHN

Grow this to what adverse issue it can, I will put

it in practise. Be cunning in the working this, and

thy fee is a thousand ducats.

 

BORACHIO

Be you constant in the accusation, and my cunning

shall not shame me.

 

DON JOHN

I will presently go learn their day of marriage.

 

Exeunt

 

SCENE III. LEONATO'S orchard.

 

Enter BENEDICK

BENEDICK

Boy!

 

Enter Boy

 

Boy

Signior?

 

BENEDICK

In my chamber-window lies a book: bring it hither

to me in the orchard.

 

Boy

I am here already, sir.

 

BENEDICK

I know that; but I would have thee hence, and here again.

 

Exit Boy

 

I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much

another man is a fool when he dedicates his

behaviors to love, will, after he hath laughed at

such shallow follies in others, become the argument

of his own scorn by failing in love: and such a man

is Claudio. I have known when there was no music

with him but the drum and the fife; and now had he

rather hear the tabour and the pipe: I have known

when he would have walked ten mile a-foot to see a

good armour; and now will he lie ten nights awake,

carving the fashion of a new doublet. He was wont to

speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man

and a soldier; and now is he turned orthography; his

words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many

strange dishes. May I be so converted and see with

these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not: I will not

be sworn, but love may transform me to an oyster; but

I'll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster

of me, he shall never make me such a fool. One woman

is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am

well; another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all

graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in

my grace. Rich she shall be, that's certain; wise,

or I'll none; virtuous, or I'll never cheapen her;

fair, or I'll never look on her; mild, or come not

near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good

discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall

be of what colour it please God. Ha! the prince and

Monsieur Love! I will hide me in the arbour.

 

Withdraws

 

Enter DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, and LEONATO

 

DON PEDRO

Come, shall we hear this music?

 

CLAUDIO

Yea, my good lord. How still the evening is,

As hush'd on purpose to grace harmony!

 

DON PEDRO

See you where Benedick hath hid himself?

 

CLAUDIO

O, very well, my lord: the music ended,

We'll fit the kid-fox with a pennyworth.

 

Enter BALTHASAR with Music

 

DON PEDRO

Come, Balthasar, we'll hear that song again.

 

BALTHASAR

O, good my lord, tax not so bad a voice

To slander music any more than once.

 

DON PEDRO

It is the witness still of excellency

To put a strange face on his own perfection.

I pray thee, sing, and let me woo no more.

 

BALTHASAR

Because you talk of wooing, I will sing;

Since many a wooer doth commence his suit

To her he thinks not worthy, yet he wooes,

Yet will he swear he loves.

 

DON PEDRO

Now, pray thee, come;

Or, if thou wilt hold longer argument,

Do it in notes.

 

BALTHASAR

Note this before my notes;

There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting.

 

DON PEDRO

Why, these are very crotchets that he speaks;

Note, notes, forsooth, and nothing.

 

Air

 

BENEDICK

Now, divine air! now is his soul ravished! Is it

not strange that sheeps' guts should hale souls out

of men's bodies? Well, a horn for my money, when

all's done.

 

The Song

 

BALTHASAR

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea and one on shore,

To one thing constant never:

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,

Of dumps so dull and heavy;

The fraud of men was ever so,

Since summer first was leafy:

Then sigh not so, & c.

 

DON PEDRO

By my troth, a good song.

 

BALTHASAR

And an ill singer, my lord.

 

DON PEDRO

Ha, no, no, faith; thou singest well enough for a shift.

 

BENEDICK

An he had been a dog that should have howled thus,

they would have hanged him: and I pray God his bad

voice bode no mischief. I had as lief have heard the

night-raven, come what plague could have come after

it.

 

DON PEDRO

Yea, marry, dost thou hear, Balthasar? I pray thee,

get us some excellent music; for to-morrow night we

would have it at the Lady Hero's chamber-window.

 

BALTHASAR

The best I can, my lord.

 

DON PEDRO

Do so: farewell.

 

Exit BALTHASAR

 

Come hither, Leonato. What was it you told me of

to-day, that your niece Beatrice was in love with

Signior Benedick?

 

CLAUDIO

O, ay: stalk on. stalk on; the fowl sits. I did

never think that lady would have loved any man.

 

LEONATO

No, nor I neither; but most wonderful that she

should so dote on Signior Benedick, whom she hath in

all outward behaviors seemed ever to abhor.

 

BENEDICK

Is't possible? Sits the wind in that corner?

 

LEONATO

By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think

of it but that she loves him with an enraged

affection: it is past the infinite of thought.

 

DON PEDRO

May be she doth but counterfeit.

 

CLAUDIO

Faith, like enough.

 

LEONATO

O God, counterfeit! There was never counterfeit of

passion came so near the life of passion as she

discovers it.

 

DON PEDRO

Why, what effects of passion shows she?

 

CLAUDIO

Bait the hook well; this fish will bite.

 

LEONATO

What effects, my lord? She will sit you, you heard

my daughter tell you how.

 

CLAUDIO

She did, indeed.

 

DON PEDRO

How, how, pray you? You amaze me: I would have I

thought her spirit had been invincible against all

assaults of affection.

 

LEONATO

I would have sworn it had, my lord; especially

against Benedick.

 

BENEDICK

I should think this a gull, but that the

white-bearded fellow speaks it: knavery cannot,

sure, hide himself in such reverence.

 

CLAUDIO

He hath ta'en the infection: hold it up.

 

DON PEDRO

Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?

 

LEONATO

No; and swears she never will: that's her torment.

 

CLAUDIO

'Tis true, indeed; so your daughter says: 'Shall

I,' says she, 'that have so oft encountered him

with scorn, write to him that I love him?'

 

LEONATO

This says she now when she is beginning to write to

him; for she'll be up twenty times a night, and

there will she sit in her smock till she have writ a

sheet of paper: my daughter tells us all.

 

CLAUDIO

Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a

pretty jest your daughter told us of.

 

LEONATO

O, when she had writ it and was reading it over, she

found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet?

 

CLAUDIO

That.

 

LEONATO

O, she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence;

railed at herself, that she should be so immodest

to write to one that she knew would flout her; 'I

measure him,' says she, 'by my own spirit; for I

should flout him, if he writ to me; yea, though I

love him, I should.'

 

CLAUDIO

Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs,

beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses; 'O

sweet Benedick! God give me patience!'

 

LEONATO

She doth indeed; my daughter says so: and the

ecstasy hath so much overborne her that my daughter

is sometime afeared she will do a desperate outrage

to herself: it is very true.

 

DON PEDRO

It were good that Benedick knew of it by some

other, if she will not discover it.

 

CLAUDIO

To what end? He would make but a sport of it and

torment the poor lady worse.

 

DON PEDRO

An he should, it were an alms to hang him. She's an

excellent sweet lady; and, out of all suspicion,

she is virtuous.

 

CLAUDIO

And she is exceeding wise.

 

DON PEDRO

In every thing but in loving Benedick.

 

LEONATO

O, my lord, wisdom and blood combating in so tender

a body, we have ten proofs to one that blood hath

the victory. I am sorry for her, as I have just

cause, being her uncle and her guardian.

 

DON PEDRO

I would she had bestowed this dotage on me: I would

have daffed all other respects and made her half

myself. I pray you, tell Benedick of it, and hear

what a' will say.

 

LEONATO

Were it good, think you?

 

CLAUDIO

Hero thinks surely she will die; for she says she

will die, if he love her not, and she will die, ere

she make her love known, and she will die, if he woo

her, rather than she will bate one breath of her

accustomed crossness.

 

DON PEDRO

She doth well: if she should make tender of her

love, 'tis very possible he'll scorn it; for the

man, as you know all, hath a contemptible spirit.

 

CLAUDIO

He is a very proper man.

 

DON PEDRO

He hath indeed a good outward happiness.

 

CLAUDIO

Before God! and, in my mind, very wise.

 

DON PEDRO

He doth indeed show some sparks that are like wit.

 

CLAUDIO

And I take him to be valiant.

 

DON PEDRO

As Hector, I assure you: and in the managing of

quarrels you may say he is wise; for either he

avoids them with great discretion, or undertakes

them with a most Christian-like fear.

 

LEONATO

If he do fear God, a' must necessarily keep peace:

if he break the peace, he ought to enter into a

quarrel with fear and trembling.

 

DON PEDRO

And so will he do; for the man doth fear God,

howsoever it seems not in him by some large jests

he will make. Well I am sorry for your niece. Shall

we go seek Benedick, and tell him of her love?

 

CLAUDIO

Never tell him, my lord: let her wear it out with

good counsel.

 

LEONATO

Nay, that's impossible: she may wear her heart out first.

 

DON PEDRO

Well, we will hear further of it by your daughter:

let it cool the while. I love Benedick well; and I

could wish he would modestly examine himself, to see

how much he is unworthy so good a lady.

 

LEONATO

My lord, will you walk? dinner is ready.

 

CLAUDIO

If he do not dote on her upon this, I will never

trust my expectation.

 

DON PEDRO

Let there be the same net spread for her; and that

must your daughter and her gentlewomen carry. The

sport will be, when they hold one an opinion of

another's dotage, and no such matter: that's the

scene that I would see, which will be merely a

dumb-show. Let us send her to call him in to dinner.

 

Exeunt DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, and LEONATO

 

BENEDICK

[Coming forward] This can be no trick: the

conference was sadly borne. They have the truth of

this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady: it

seems her affections have their full bent. Love me!

why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured:

they say I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive

the love come from her; they say too that she will

rather die than give any sign of affection. I did

never think to marry: I 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 parlor;

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 purpose. 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 haggerds 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 framed 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 an ill word may empoison liking.

 

URSULA

O, do not do your cousin such a wrong.

She cannot be so much without true judgment--

Having so swift and excellent a wit

As she is prized to have--as to refuse

So rare a gentleman as Signior Benedick.

 

HERO

He is the only man of Italy.

Always excepted my dear Claudio.

 

URSULA

I pray you, be not angry with me, madam,

Speaking my fancy: Signior Benedick,

For shape, for bearing, argument and valour,

Goes foremost in report through Italy.

 

HERO

Indeed, he hath an excellent good name.

 

URSULA

His excellence did earn it, ere he had it.

When are you married, madam?

 

HERO

Why, every day, to-morrow. Come, go in:

I'll show thee some attires, and have thy counsel

Which is the best to furnish me to-morrow.

 

URSULA

She's limed, I warrant you: we have caught her, madam.

 

HERO

If it proves so, then loving goes by haps

[BiIIyBobNosePicker]

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Shakespeare homepage | Macbeth | Entire play

 

ACT I

SCENE I. A desert place.

 

Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches

First Witch

When shall we three meet again

In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

 

Second Witch

When the hurlyburly's done,

When the battle's lost and won.

 

Third Witch

That will be ere the set of sun.

 

First Witch

Where the place?

 

Second Witch

Upon the heath.

 

Third Witch

There to meet with Macbeth.

 

First Witch

I come, Graymalkin!

 

Second Witch

Paddock calls.

 

Third Witch

Anon.

 

ALL

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:

Hover through the fog and filthy air.

 

Exeunt

 

SCENE II. A camp near Forres.

 

Alarum within. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENNOX, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Sergeant

DUNCAN

What bloody man is that? He can report,

As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt

The newest state.

 

MALCOLM

This is the sergeant

Who like a good and hardy soldier fought

'Gainst my captivity. Hail, brave friend!

Say to the king the knowledge of the broil

As thou didst leave it.

 

Sergeant

Doubtful it stood;

As two spent swimmers, that do cling together

And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald--

Worthy to be a rebel, for to that

The multiplying villanies of nature

Do swarm upon him--from the western isles

Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;

And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,

Show'd like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak:

For brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name--

Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,

Which smoked with bloody execution,

Like valour's minion carved out his passage

Till he faced the slave;

Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,

Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,

And fix'd his head upon our battlements.

 

DUNCAN

O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!

 

Sergeant

As whence the sun 'gins his reflection

Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,

So from that spring whence comfort seem'd to come

Discomfort swells. Mark, king of Scotland, mark:

No sooner justice had with valour arm'd

Compell'd these skipping kerns to trust their heels,

But the Norweyan lord surveying vantage,

With furbish'd arms and new supplies of men

Began a fresh assault.

 

DUNCAN

Dismay'd not this

Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?

 

Sergeant

Yes;

As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion.

If I say sooth, I must report they were

As cannons overcharged with double cracks, so they

Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe:

Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,

Or memorise another Golgotha,

I cannot tell.

But I am faint, my gashes cry for help.

 

DUNCAN

So well thy words become thee as thy wounds;

They smack of honour both. Go get him surgeons.

 

Exit Sergeant, attended

 

Who comes here?

 

Enter ROSS

 

MALCOLM

The worthy thane of Ross.

 

LENNOX

What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look

That seems to speak things strange.

 

ROSS

God save the king!

 

DUNCAN

Whence camest thou, worthy thane?

 

ROSS

From Fife, great king;

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky

And fan our people cold. Norway himself,

With terrible numbers,

Assisted by that most disloyal traitor

The thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict;

Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof,

Confronted him with self-comparisons,

Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst arm.

Curbing his lavish spirit: and, to conclude,

The victory fell on us.

 

DUNCAN

Great happiness!

 

ROSS

That now

Sweno, the Norways' king, craves composition:

Nor would we deign him burial of his men

Till he disbursed at Saint Colme's inch

Ten thousand dollars to our general use.

 

DUNCAN

No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive

Our bosom interest: go pronounce his present death,

And with his former title greet Macbeth.

 

ROSS

I'll see it done.

 

DUNCAN

What he hath lost noble Macbeth hath won.

 

Exeunt

 

SCENE III. A heath near Forres.

 

Thunder. Enter the three Witches

First Witch

Where hast thou been, sister?

 

Second Witch

Killing swine.

 

Third Witch

Sister, where thou?

 

First Witch

A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap,

And munch'd, and munch'd, and munch'd:--

'Give me,' quoth I:

'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries.

Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger:

But in a sieve I'll thither sail,

And, like a rat without a tail,

I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.

 

Second Witch

I'll give thee a wind.

 

First Witch

Thou'rt kind.

 

Third Witch

And I another.

 

First Witch

I myself have all the other,

And the very ports they blow,

All the quarters that they know

I' the shipman's card.

I will drain him dry as hay:

Sleep shall neither night nor day

Hang upon his pent-house lid;

He shall live a man forbid:

Weary se'nnights nine times nine

Shall he dwindle, peak and pine:

Though his bark cannot be lost,

Yet it shall be tempest-tost.

Look what I have.

 

Second Witch

Show me, show me.

 

First Witch

Here I have a pilot's thumb,

Wreck'd as homeward he did come.

 

Drum within

 

Third Witch

A drum, a drum!

Macbeth doth come.

 

ALL

The weird sisters, hand in hand,

Posters of the sea and land,

Thus do go about, about:

Thrice to thine and thrice to mine

And thrice again, to make up nine.

Peace! the charm's wound up.

 

Enter MACBETH and BANQUO

 

MACBETH

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

 

BANQUO

How far is't call'd to Forres? What are these

So wither'd and so wild in their attire,

That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,

And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught

That man may question? You seem to understand me,

By each at once her chappy finger laying

Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,

And yet your beards forbid me to interpret

That you are so.

 

MACBETH

Speak, if you can: what are you?

 

First Witch

All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis!

 

Second Witch

All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!

 

Third Witch

All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!

 

BANQUO

Good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear

Things that do sound so fair? I' the name of truth,

Are ye fantastical, or that indeed

Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner

You greet with present grace and great prediction

Of noble having and of royal hope,

That he seems rapt withal: to me you speak not.

If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow and which will not,

Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear

Your favours nor your hate.

 

First Witch

Hail!

 

Second Witch

Hail!

 

Third Witch

Hail!

 

First Witch

Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.

 

Second Witch

Not so happy, yet much happier.

 

Third Witch

Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none:

So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!

 

First Witch

Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!

 

MACBETH

Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more:

By Sinel's death I know I am thane of Glamis;

But how of Cawdor? the thane of Cawdor lives,

A prosperous gentleman; and to be king

Stands not within the prospect of belief,

No more than to be Cawdor. Say from whence

You owe this strange intelligence? or why

Upon this blasted heath you stop our way

With such prophetic greeting? Speak, I charge you.

 

Witches vanish

 

BANQUO

The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,

And these are of them. Whither are they vanish'd?

 

MACBETH

Into the air; and what seem'd corporal melted

As breath into the wind. Would they had stay'd!

 

BANQUO

Were such things here as we do speak about?

Or have we eaten on the insane root

That takes the reason prisoner?

 

MACBETH

Your children shall be kings.

 

BANQUO

You shall be king.

 

MACBETH

And thane of Cawdor too: went it not so?

 

BANQUO

To the selfsame tune and words. Who's here?

 

Enter ROSS and ANGUS

 

ROSS

The king hath happily received, Macbeth,

The news of thy success; and when he reads

Thy personal venture in the rebels' fight,

His wonders and his praises do contend

Which should be thine or his: silenced with that,

In viewing o'er the rest o' the selfsame day,

He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks,

Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make,

Strange images of death. As thick as hail

Came post with post; and every one did bear

Thy praises in his kingdom's great defence,

And pour'd them down before him.

 

ANGUS

We are sent

To give thee from our royal master thanks;

Only to herald thee into his sight,

Not pay thee.

 

ROSS

And, for an earnest of a greater honour,

He bade me, from him, call thee thane of Cawdor:

In which addition, hail, most worthy thane!

For it is thine.

 

BANQUO

What, can the devil speak true?

 

MACBETH

The thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me

In borrow'd robes?

 

ANGUS

Who was the thane lives yet;

But under heavy judgment bears that life

Which he deserves to lose. Whether he was combined

With those of Norway, or did line the rebel

With hidden help and vantage, or that with both

He labour'd in his country's wreck, I know not;

But treasons capital, confess'd and proved,

Have overthrown him.

 

MACBETH

[Aside] Glamis, and thane of Cawdor!

The greatest is behind.

 

To ROSS and ANGUS

 

Thanks for your pains.

 

To BANQUO

 

Do you not hope your children shall be kings,

When those that gave the thane of Cawdor to me

Promised no less to them?

 

BANQUO

That trusted home

Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,

Besides the thane of Cawdor. But 'tis strange:

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

The instruments of darkness tell us truths,

Win us with honest trifles, to betray's

In deepest consequence.

Cousins, a word, I pray you.

 

MACBETH

[Aside] Two truths are told,

As happy prologues to the swelling act

Of the imperial theme.--I thank you, gentlemen.

 

Aside

 

Cannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill,

Why hath it given me earnest of success,

Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion

Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,

Against the use of nature? Present fears

Are less than horrible imaginings:

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,

Shakes so my single state of man that function

Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is

But what is not.

 

BANQUO

Look, how our partner's rapt.

 

MACBETH

[Aside] If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,

Without my stir.

 

BANQUO

New horrors come upon him,

Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould

But with the aid of use.

 

MACBETH

[Aside] Come what come may,

Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

 

BANQUO

Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure.

 

MACBETH

Give me your favour: my dull brain was wrought

With things forgotten. Kind gentlemen, your pains

Are register'd where every day I turn

The leaf to read them. Let us toward the king.

Think upon what hath chanced, and, at more time,

The interim having weigh'd it, let us speak

Our free hearts each to other.

 

BANQUO

Very gladly.

 

MACBETH

Till then, enough. Come, friends.

 

Exeunt

 

SCENE IV. Forres. The palace.

 

Flourish. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENNOX, and Attendants

DUNCAN

Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not

Those in commission yet return'd?

 

MALCOLM

My liege,

They are not yet come back. But I have spoke

With one that saw him die: who did report

That very frankly he confess'd his treasons,

Implored your highness' pardon and set forth

A deep repentance: nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it; he died

As one that had been studied in his death

To throw away the dearest thing he owed,

As 'twere a careless trifle.

 

DUNCAN

There's no art

To find the mind's construction in the face:

He was a gentleman on whom I built

An absolute trust.

 

Enter MACBETH, BANQUO, ROSS, and ANGUS

 

O worthiest cousin!

The sin of my ingratitude even now

Was heavy on me: thou art so far before

That swiftest wing of recompense is slow

To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserved,

That the proportion both of thanks and payment

Might have been mine! only I have left to say,

More is thy due than more than all can pay.

 

MACBETH

The service and the loyalty I owe,

In doing it, pays itself. Your highness' part

Is to receive our duties; and our duties

Are to your throne and state children and servants,

Which do but what they should, by doing every thing

Safe toward your love and honour.

 

DUNCAN

Welcome hither:

I have begun to plant thee, and will labour

To make thee full of growing. Noble Banquo,

That hast no less deserved, nor must be known

No less to have done so, let me enfold thee

And hold thee to my heart.

 

BANQUO

There if I grow,

The harvest is your own.

 

DUNCAN

My plenteous joys,

Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves

In drops of sorrow. Sons, kinsmen, thanes,

And you whose places are the nearest, know

We will establish our estate upon

Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter

The Prince of Cumberland; which honour must

Not unaccompanied invest him only,

But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine

On all deservers. From hence to Inverness,

And bind us further to you.

 

MACBETH

The rest is labour, which is not used for you:

I'll be myself the harbinger and make joyful

The hearing of my wife with your approach;

So humbly take my leave.

 

DUNCAN

My worthy Cawdor!

 

MACBETH

[Aside] The Prince of Cumberland! that is a step

On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,

For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;

Let not light see my black and deep desires:

The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,

Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

 

Exit

 

DUNCAN

True, worthy Banquo; he is full so valiant,

And in his commendations I am fed;

It is a banquet to me. Let's after him,

Whose care is gone before to bid us welcome:

It is a peerless kinsman.

 

Flourish. Exeunt

 

SCENE V. Inverness. Macbeth's castle.

 

Enter LADY MACBETH, reading a letter

LADY MACBETH

'They met me in the day of success: and I have

learned by the perfectest report, they have more in

them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire

to question them further, they made themselves air,

into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in

the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who

all-hailed me 'Thane of Cawdor;' by which title,

before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred

me to the coming on of time, with 'Hail, king that

shalt be!' This have I thought good to deliver

thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou

mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being

ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it

to thy heart, and farewell.'

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be

What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;

Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly,

That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,

And yet wouldst wrongly win: thou'ldst have, great Glamis,

That which cries 'Thus thou must do, if thou have it;

And that which rather thou dost fear to do

Than wishest should be undone.' Hie thee hither,

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;

And chastise with the valour of my tongue

All that impedes thee from the golden round,

Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem

To have thee crown'd withal.

 

Enter a Messenger

 

What is your tidings?

 

Messenger

The king comes here to-night.

 

LADY MACBETH

Thou'rt mad to say it:

Is not thy master with him? who, were't so,

Would have inform'd for preparation.

 

Messenger

So please you, it is true: our thane is coming:

One of my fellows had the speed of him,

Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more

Than would make up his message.

 

LADY MACBETH

Give him tending;

He brings great news.

 

Exit Messenger

 

The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements. Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry 'Hold, hold!'

 

Enter MACBETH

 

Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!

Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!

Thy letters have transported me beyond

This ignorant present, and I feel now

The future in the instant.

 

MACBETH

My dearest love,

Duncan comes here to-night.

 

LADY MACBETH

And when goes hence?

 

MACBETH

To-morrow, as he purposes.

 

LADY MACBETH

O, never

Shall sun that morrow see!

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men

May read strange matters. To beguile the time,

Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,

Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,

But be the serpent under't. He that's coming

Must be provided for: and you shall put

This night's great business into my dispatch;

Which shall to all our nights and days to come

Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

 

MACBETH

We will speak further.

 

LADY MACBETH

Only look up clear;

To alter favour ever is to fear:

Leave all the rest to me.

 

Exeunt

 

SCENE VI. Before Macbeth's castle.

 

Hautboys and torches. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, BANQUO, LENNOX, MACDUFF, ROSS, ANGUS, and Attendants

DUNCAN

This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air

Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself

Unto our gentle senses.

 

BANQUO

This guest of summer,

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,

By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath

Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,

Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird

Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:

Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,

The air is delicate.

 

Enter LADY MACBETH

 

DUNCAN

See, see, our honour'd hostess!

The love that follows us sometime is our trouble,

Which still we thank as love. Herein I teach you

How you shall bid God 'ild us for your pains,

And thank us for your trouble.

 

LADY MACBETH

All our service

In every point twice done and then done double

Were poor and single business to contend

Against those honours deep and broad wherewith

Your majesty loads our house: for those of old,

And the late dignities heap'd up to them,

We rest your hermits.

 

DUNCAN

Where's the thane of Cawdor?

We coursed him at the heels, and had a purpose

To be his purveyor: but he rides well;

And his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp him

To his home before us. Fair and noble hostess,

We are your guest to-night.

 

LADY MACBETH

Your servants ever

Have theirs, themselves and what is theirs, in compt,

To make their audit at your highness' pleasure,

Still to return your own.

 

DUNCAN

Give me your hand;

Conduct me to mine host: we love him highly,

And shall continue our graces towards him.

By your leave, hostess.

 

Exeunt

 

SCENE VII. Macbeth's castle.

 

Hautboys and torches. Enter a Sewer, and divers Servants with dishes and service, and pass over the stage. Then enter MACBETH

MACBETH

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well

It were done quickly: if the assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch

With his surcease success; that but this blow

Might be the be-all and the end-all here,

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

We'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases

We still have judgment here; that we but teach

Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return

To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice

Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice

To our own lips. He's here in double trust;

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,

Who should against his murderer shut the door,

Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

So clear in his great office, that his virtues

Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against

The deep damnation of his taking-off;

And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself

And falls on the other.

 

Enter LADY MACBETH

 

How now! what news?

 

LADY MACBETH

He has almost supp'd: why have you left the chamber?

 

MACBETH

Hath he ask'd for me?

 

LADY MACBETH

Know you not he has?

 

MACBETH

We will proceed no further in this business:

He hath honour'd me of late; and I have bought

Golden opinions from all sorts of people,

Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,

Not cast aside so soon.

 

LADY MACBETH

Was the hope drunk

Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since?

And wakes it now, to look so green and pale

At what it did so freely? From this time

Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard

To be the same in thine own act and valour

As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that

Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,

And live a coward in thine own esteem,

Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would,'

Like the poor cat i' the adage?

 

MACBETH

Prithee, peace:

I dare do all that may become a man;

Who dares do more is none.

 

LADY MACBETH

What beast was't, then,

That made you break this enterprise to me?

When you durst do it, then you were a man;

And, to be more than what you were, you would

Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place

Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:

They have made themselves, and that their fitness now

Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this.

 

MACBETH

If we should fail?

 

LADY MACBETH

We fail!

But screw your courage to the sticking-place,

And we'll not fail. When Duncan is asleep--

Whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey

Soundly invite him--his two chamberlains

Will I with wine and wassail so convince

That memory, the warder of the brain,

Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason

A limbeck only: when in swinish sleep

Their drenched natures lie as in a death,

What cannot you and I perform upon

The unguarded Duncan? what not put upon

His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt

Of our great quell?

 

MACBETH

Bring forth men-children only;

For thy undaunted mettle should compose

Nothing but males. Will it not be received,

When we have mark'd with blood those sleepy two

Of his own chamber and used their very daggers,

That they have done't?

 

LADY MACBETH

Who dares receive it other,

As we shall make our griefs and clamour roar

Upon his death?

 

MACBETH

I am settled, and bend up

Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.

Away, and mock the time with fairest show:

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

 

Exeunt

 

ACT II

SCENE I. Court of Macbeth's castle.

 

Enter BANQUO, and FLEANCE bearing a torch before him

BANQUO

How goes the night, boy?

 

FLEANCE

The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.

 

BANQUO

And she goes down at twelve.

 

FLEANCE

I take't, 'tis later, sir.

 

BANQUO

Hold, take my sword. There's husbandry in heaven;

Their candles are all out. Take thee that too.

A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,

And yet I would not sleep: merciful powers,

Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature

Gives way to in repose!

 

Enter MACBETH, and a Servant with a torch

 

Give me my sword.

Who's there?

 

MACBETH

A friend.

 

BANQUO

What, sir, not yet at rest? The king's a-bed:

He hath been in unusual pleasure, and

Sent forth great largess to your offices.

This diamond he greets your wife withal,

By the name of most kind hostess; and shut up

In measureless content.

 

MACBETH

Being unprepared,

Our will became the servant to defect;

Which else should free have wrought.

 

BANQUO

All's well.

I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:

To you they have show'd some truth.

 

MACBETH

I think not of them:

Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,

We would spend it in some words upon that business,

If you would grant the time.

 

BANQUO

At your kind'st leisure.

 

MACBETH

If you shall cleave to my consent, when 'tis,

It shall make honour for you.

 

BANQUO

So I lose none

In seeking to augment it, but still keep

My bosom franchised and allegiance clear,

I shall be counsell'd.

 

MACBETH

Good repose the while!

 

BANQUO

Thanks, sir: the like to you!

 

Exeunt BANQUO and FLEANCE

 

MACBETH

Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,

She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.

 

Exit Servant

 

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;

And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,

Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,

And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,

Which was not so before. There's no such thing:

It is the bloody business which informs

Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates

Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder,

Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.

With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design

Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,

And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

 

A bell rings

 

I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.

Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell

That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

 

Exit

 

SCENE II. The same.

 

Enter LADY MACBETH

LADY MACBETH

That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold;

What hath quench'd them hath given me fire.

Hark! Peace!

It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,

Which gives the stern'st good-night. He is about it:

The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms

Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg'd

their possets,

That death and nature do contend about them,

Whether they live or die.

 

MACBETH

[Within] Who's there? what, ho!

 

LADY MACBETH

Alack, I am afraid they have awaked,

And 'tis not done. The attempt and not the deed

Confounds us. Hark! I laid their daggers ready;

He could not miss 'em. Had he not resembled

My father as he slept, I had done't.

 

Enter MACBETH

 

My husband!

 

MACBETH

I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?

 

LADY MACBETH

I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.

Did not you speak?

 

MACBETH

When?

 

LADY MACBETH

Now.

 

MACBETH

As I descended?

 

LADY MACBETH

Ay.

 

MACBETH

Hark!

Who lies i' the second chamber?

 

LADY MACBETH

Donalbain.

 

MACBETH

This is a sorry sight.

 

Looking on his hands

 

LADY MACBETH

A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.

 

MACBETH

There's one did laugh in's sleep, and one cried

'Murder!'

That they did wake each other: I stood and heard them:

But they did say their prayers, and address'd them

Again to sleep.

 

LADY MACBETH

There are two lodged together.

 

MACBETH

One cried 'God bless us!' and 'Amen' the other;

As they had seen me with these hangman's hands.

Listening their fear, I could not say 'Amen,'

When they did say 'God bless us!'

 

LADY MACBETH

Consider it not so deeply.

 

MACBETH

But wherefore could not I pronounce 'Amen'?

I had most need of blessing, and 'Amen'

Stuck in my throat.

 

LADY MACBETH

These deeds must not be thought

After these ways; so, it will make us mad.

 

MACBETH

Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!

Macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep,

Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,

The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,

Chief nourisher in life's feast,--

 

LADY MACBETH

What do you mean?

 

MACBETH

Still it cried 'Sleep no more!' to all the house:

'Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor

Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.'

 

LADY MACBETH

Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane,

You do unbend your noble strength, to think

So brainsickly of things. Go get some water,

And wash this filthy witness from your hand.

Why did you bring these daggers from the place?

They must lie there: go carry them; and smear

The sleepy grooms with blood.

 

MACBETH

I'll go no more:

I am afraid to think what I have done;

Look on't again I dare not.

 

LADY MACBETH

Infirm of purpose!

Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead

Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood

That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,

I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal;

For it must seem their guilt.

 

Exit. Knocking within

 

MACBETH

Whence is that knocking?

How is't with me, when every noise appals me?

What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes.

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas in incarnadine,

Making the green one red.

 

Re-enter LADY MACBETH

 

LADY MACBETH

My hands are of your colour; but I shame

To wear a heart so white.

 

Knocking within

 

I hear a knocking

At the south entry: retire we to our chamber;

A little water clears us of this deed:

How easy is it, then! Your constancy

Hath left you unattended.

 

Knocking within

 

Hark! more knocking.

Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us,

And show us to be watchers. Be not lost

So poorly in your thoughts.

 

MACBETH

To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself.

 

Knocking within

 

Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!

 

Exeunt

 

SCENE III. The same.

 

Knocking within. Enter a Porter

Porter

Here's a knocking indeed! If a

man were porter of hell-gate, he should have

old turning the key.

 

Knocking within

 

Knock,

knock, knock! Who's there, i' the name of

Beelzebub? Here's a farmer, that hanged

himself on the expectation of plenty: come in

time; have napkins enow about you; here

you'll sweat for't.

 

Knocking within

 

Knock,

knock! Who's there, in the other devil's

name? Faith, here's an equivocator, that could

swear in both the scales against either scale;

who committed treason enough for God's sake,

yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come

in, equivocator.

 

Knocking within

 

Knock,

knock, knock! Who's there? Faith, here's an

English tailor come hither, for stealing out of

a French hose: come in, tailor; here you may

roast your goose.

 

Knocking within

 

Knock,

knock; never at quiet! What are you? But

this place is too cold for hell. I'll devil-porter

it no further: I had thought to have let in

some of all professions that go the primrose

way to the everlasting bonfire.

 

Knocking within

 

Anon, anon! I pray you, remember the porter.

 

Opens the gate

 

Enter MACDUFF and LENNOX

 

MACDUFF

Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed,

That you do lie so late?

 

Porter

'Faith sir, we were carousing till the

second cock: and drink, sir, is a great

provoker of three things.

 

MACDUFF

What three things does drink especially provoke?

 

Porter

Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and

urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;

it provokes the desire, but it takes

away the performance: therefore, much drink

may be said to be an equivocator with lechery:

it makes him, and it mars him; it sets

him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him,

and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and

not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him

in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.

 

MACDUFF

I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.

 

Porter

That it did, sir, i' the very throat on

me: but I requited him for his lie; and, I

think, being too strong for him, though he took

up my legs sometime, yet I made a shift to cast

him.

 

MACDUFF

Is thy master stirring?

 

Enter MACBETH

 

Our knocking has awaked him; here he comes.

 

LENNOX

Good morrow, noble sir.

 

MACBETH

Good morrow, both.

 

MACDUFF

Is the king stirring, worthy thane?

 

MACBETH

Not yet.

 

MACDUFF

He did command me to call timely on him:

I have almost slipp'd the hour.

 

MACBETH

I'll bring you to him.

 

MACDUFF

I know this is a joyful trouble to you;

But yet 'tis one.

 

MACBETH

The labour we delight in physics pain.

This is the door.

 

MACDUFF

I'll make so bold to call,

For 'tis my limited service.

 

Exit

 

LENNOX

Goes the king hence to-day?

 

MACBETH

He does: he did appoint so.

 

LENNOX

The night has been unruly: where we lay,

Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,

Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death,

And prophesying with accents terrible

Of dire combustion and confused events

New hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird

Clamour'd the livelong night: some say, the earth

Was feverous and did shake.

 

MACBETH

'Twas a rough night.

 

LENNOX

My young remembrance cannot parallel

A fellow to it.

 

Re-enter MACDUFF

 

MACDUFF

O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart

Cannot conceive nor name thee!

 

MACBETH LENNOX

What's the matter.

 

MACDUFF

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!

Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope

The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence

The life o' the building!

 

MACBETH

What is 't you say? the life?

 

LENNOX

Mean you his majesty?

 

MACDUFF

Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight

With a new Gorgon: do not bid me speak;

See, and then speak yourselves.

 

Exeunt MACBETH and LENNOX

 

Awake, awake!

Ring the alarum-bell. Murder and treason!

Banquo and Donalbain! Malcolm! awake!

Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit,

And look on death itself! up, up, and see

The great doom's image! Malcolm! Banquo!

As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites,

To countenance this horror! Ring the bell.

 

Bell rings

 

Enter LADY MACBETH

 

LADY MACBETH

What's the business,

That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley

The sleepers of the house? speak, speak!

 

MACDUFF

O gentle lady,

'Tis not for you to hear what I can speak:

The repetition, in a woman's ear,

Would murder as it fell.

 

Enter BANQUO

 

O Banquo, Banquo,

Our royal master 's murder'd!

 

LADY MACBETH

Woe, alas!

What, in our house?

 

BANQUO

Too cruel any where.

Dear Duff, I prithee, contradict thyself,

And say it is not so.

 

Re-enter MACBETH and LENNOX, with ROSS

 

MACBETH

Had I but died an hour before this chance,

I had lived a blessed time; for, from this instant,

There 's nothing serious in mortality:

All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;

The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees

Is left this vault to brag of.

 

Enter MALCOLM and DONALBAIN

 

DONALBAIN

What is amiss?

 

MACBETH

You are, and do not know't:

The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood

Is stopp'd; the very source of it is stopp'd.

 

MACDUFF

Your royal father 's murder'd.

 

MALCOLM

O, by whom?

 

LENNOX

Those of his chamber, as it seem'd, had done 't:

Their hands and faces were an badged with blood;

So were their daggers, which unwiped we found

Upon their pillows:

They stared, and were distracted; no man's life

Was to be trusted with them.

 

MACBETH

O, yet I do repent me of my fury,

That I did kill them.

 

MACDUFF

Wherefore did you so?

 

MACBETH

Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,

Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:

The expedition my violent love

Outrun the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan,

His silver skin laced with his golden blood;

And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature

For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,

Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers

Unmannerly breech'd with gore: who could refrain,

That had a heart to love, and in that heart

Courage to make 's love kno wn?

 

LADY MACBETH

Help me hence, ho!

 

MACDUFF

Look to the lady.

 

MALCOLM

[Aside to DONALBAIN] Why do we hold our tongues,

That most may claim this argument for ours?

 

DONALBAIN

[Aside to MALCOLM] What should be spoken here,

where our fate,

Hid in an auger-hole, may rush, and seize us?

Let 's away;

Our tears are not yet brew'd.

 

MALCOLM

[Aside to DONALBAIN] Nor our strong sorrow

Upon the foot of motion.

 

BANQUO

Look to the lady:

 

LADY MACBETH is carried out

 

And when we have our naked frailties hid,

That suffer in exposure, let us meet,

And question this most bloody piece of work,

To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us:

In the great hand of God I stand; and thence

Against the undivulged pretence I fight

Of treasonous malice.

 

MACDUFF

And so do I.

 

ALL

So all.

 

MACBETH

Let's briefly put on manly readiness,

And meet i' the hall together.

 

ALL

Well contented.

 

Exeunt all but Malcolm and Donalbain.

 

MALCOLM

What will you do? Let's not consort with them:

To show an unfelt sorrow is an office

Which the false man does easy. I'll to England.

 

DONALBAIN

To Ireland, I; our separated fortune

Shall keep us both the safer: where we are,

There's daggers in men's smiles: the near in blood,

The nearer bloody.

 

MALCOLM

This murderous shaft that's shot

Hath not yet lighted, and our safest way

Is to avoid the aim. Therefore, to horse;

And let us not be dainty of leave-taking,

But shift away: there's warrant in that theft

Which steals itself, when there's no mercy left.

 

Exeunt

 

SCENE IV. Outside Macbeth's castle.

 

Enter ROSS and an old Man

Old Man

Threescore and ten I can remember well:

Within the volume of which time I have seen

Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night

Hath trifled former knowings.

 

ROSS

Ah, good father,

Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man's act,

Threaten his bloody stage: by the clock, 'tis day,

And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp:

Is't night's predominance, or the day's shame,

That darkness does the face of earth entomb,

When living light should kiss it?

 

Old Man

'Tis unnatural,

Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last,

A falcon, towering in her pride of place,

Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.

 

ROSS

And Duncan's horses--a thing most strange and certain--

Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,

Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,

Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make

War with mankind.

 

Old Man

'Tis said they eat each other.

 

ROSS

They did so, to the amazement of mine eyes

That look'd upon't. Here comes the good Macduff.

 

Enter MACDUFF

 

How goes the world, sir, now?

 

MACDUFF

Why, see you not?

 

ROSS

Is't known who did this more than bloody deed?

 

MACDUFF

Those that Macbeth hath slain.

 

ROSS

Alas, the day!

What good could they pretend?

 

MACDUFF

They were suborn'd:

Malcolm and Donalbain, the king's two sons,

Are stol'n away and fled; which puts upon them

Suspicion of the deed.

 

ROSS

'Gainst nature still!

Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up

Thine own life's means! Then 'tis most like

The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.

 

MACDUFF

He is already named, and gone to Scone

To be invested.

 

ROSS

Where is Duncan's body?

 

MACDUFF

Carried to Colmekill,

The sacred storehouse of his predecessors,

And guardian of their bones.

 

ROSS

Will you to Scone?

 

MACDUFF

No, cousin, I'll to Fife.

 

ROSS

Well, I will thither.

 

MACDUFF

Well, may you see things well done there: adieu!

Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!

 

ROSS

Farewell, father.

 

Old Man

God's benison go with you; and with those

That would make good of bad, and friends of foes!

 

Exeunt

 

ACT III

SCENE I. Forres. The palace.

 

Enter BANQUO

BANQUO

Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,

As the weird women promised, and, I fear,

Thou play'dst most foully for't: yet it was said

It should not stand in thy posterity,

But that myself should be the root and father

Of many kings. If there come truth from them--

As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine--

Why, by the verities on thee made good,

May they not be my oracles as well,

And set me up in hope? But hush! no more.

 

Sennet sounded. Enter MACBETH, as king, LADY MACBETH, as queen, LENNOX, ROSS, Lords, Ladies, and Attendants

 

MACBETH

Here's our chief guest.

 

LADY MACBETH

If he had been forgotten,

It had been as a gap in our great feast,

And all-thing unbecoming.

 

MACBETH

To-night we hold a solemn supper sir,

And I'll request your presence.

 

BANQUO

Let your highness

Command upon me; to the which my duties

Are with a most indissoluble tie

For ever knit.

 

MACBETH

Ride you this afternoon?

 

BANQUO

Ay, my good lord.

 

MACBETH

We should have else desired your good advice,

Which still hath been both grave and prosperous,

In this day's council; but we'll take to-morrow.

Is't far you ride?

 

BANQUO

As far, my lord, as will fill up the time

'Twixt this and supper: go not my horse the better,

I must become a borrower of the night

For a dark hour or twain.

 

MACBETH

Fail not our feast.

 

BANQUO

My lord, I will not.

 

MACBETH

We hear, our bloody cousins are bestow'd

In England and in Ireland, not confessing

Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers

With strange invention: but of that to-morrow,

When therewithal we shall have cause of state

Craving us jointly. Hie you to horse: adieu,

Till you return at night. Goes Fleance with you?

 

BANQUO

Ay, my good lord: our time does call upon 's.

 

MACBETH

I wish your horses swift and sure of foot;

And so I do commend you to their backs. Farewell.

 

Exit BANQUO

 

Let every man be master of his time

Till seven at night: to make society

The sweeter welcome, we will keep ourself

Till supper-time alone: while then, God be with you!

 

Exeunt all but MACBETH, and an attendant

 

Sirrah, a word with you: attend those men

Our pleasure?

 

ATTENDANT

They are, my lord, without the palace gate.

 

MACBETH

Bring them before us.

 

Exit Attendant

 

To be thus is nothing;

But to be safely thus.--Our fears in Banquo

Stick deep; and in his royalty of nature

Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'tis much he dares;

And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,

He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour

To act in safety. There is none but he

Whose being I do fear: and, under him,

My Genius is rebuked; as, it is said,

Mark Antony's was by Caesar. He chid the sisters

When first they put the name of king upon me,

And bade them speak to him: then prophet-like

They hail'd him father to a line of kings:

Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,

And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,

Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,

No son of mine succeeding. If 't be so,

For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind;

For them the gracious Duncan have I murder'd;

Put rancours in the vessel of my peace

Only for them; and mine eternal jewel

Given to the common enemy of man,

To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings!

Rather than so, come fate into the list.

And champion me to the utterance! Who's there!

 

Re-enter Attendant, with two Murderers

 

Now go to the door, and stay there till we call.

 

Exit Attendant

 

Was it not yesterday we spoke together?

 

First Murderer

It was, so please your highness.

 

MACBETH

Well then, now

Have you consider'd of my speeches? Know

That it was he in the times past which held you

So under fortune, which you thought had been

Our innocent self: this I made good to you

In our last conference, pass'd in probation with you,

How you were borne in hand, how cross'd,

the instruments,

Who wrought with them, and all things else that might

To half a soul and to a notion crazed

Say 'Thus did Banquo.'

 

First Murderer

You made it known to us.

 

MACBETH

I did so, and went further, which is now

Our point of second meeting. Do you find

Your patience so predominant in your nature

That you can let this go? Are you so gospell'd

To pray for this good man and for his issue,

Whose heavy hand hath bow'd you to the grave

And beggar'd yours for ever?

 

First Murderer

We are men, my liege.

 

MACBETH

Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men;

As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,

Shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves, are clept

All by the name of dogs: the valued file

Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,

The housekeeper, the hunter, every one

According to the gift which bounteous nature

Hath in him closed; whereby he does receive

Particular addition. from the bill

That writes them all alike: and so of men.

Now, if you have a station in the file,

Not i' the worst rank of manhood, say 't;

And I will put that business in your bosoms,

Whose execution takes your enemy off,

Grapples you to the heart and love of us,

Who wear our health but sickly in his life,

Which in his death were perfect.

 

Second Murderer

I am one, my liege,

Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world

Have so incensed that I am reckless what

I do to spite the world.

 

First Murderer

And I another

So weary with disasters, tugg'd with fortune,

That I would set my lie on any chance,

To mend it, or be rid on't.

 

MACBETH

Both of you

Know Banquo was your enemy.

 

Both Murderers

True, my lord.

 

MACBETH

So is he mine; and in such bloody distance,

That every minute of his being thrusts

Against my near'st of life: and though I could

With barefaced power sweep him from my sight

And bid my will avouch it, yet I must not,

For certain friends that are both his and mine,

Whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall

Who I myself struck down; and thence it is,

That I to your assistance do make love,

Masking the business from the common eye

For sundry weighty reasons.

 

Second Murderer

We shall, my lord,

Perform what you command us.

 

First Murderer

Though our lives--

 

MACBETH

Your spirits shine through you. Within this hour at most

I will advise you where to plant yourselves;

Acquaint you with the perfect spy o' the time,

The moment on't; for't must be done to-night,

And something from the palace; always thought

That I require a clearness: and with him--

To leave no rubs nor botches in the work--

Fleance his son, that keeps him company,

Whose absence is no less material to me

Than is his father's, must embrace the fate

Of that dark hour. Resolve yourselves apart:

I'll come to you anon.

 

Both Murderers

We are resolved, my lord.

 

MACBETH

I'll call upon you straight: abide within.

 

Exeunt Murderers

 

It is concluded. Banquo, thy soul's flight,

If it find heaven, must find it out to-night.

 

Exit

 

SCENE II. The palace.

 

Enter LADY MACBETH and a Servant

LADY MACBETH

Is Banquo gone from court?

 

Servant

Ay, madam, but returns again to-night.

 

LADY MACBETH

Say to the king, I would attend his leisure

For a few words.

 

Servant

Madam, I will.

 

Exit

 

LADY MACBETH

Nought's had, all's spent,

Where our desire is got without content:

'Tis safer to be that which we destroy

Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

 

Enter MACBETH

 

How now, my lord! why do you keep alone,

Of sorriest fancies your companions making,

Using those thoughts which should indeed have died

With them they think on? Things without all remedy

Should be without regard: what's done is done.

 

MACBETH

We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it:

She'll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice

Remains in danger of her former tooth.

But let the frame of things disjoint, both the

worlds suffer,

Ere we will eat our meal in fear and sleep

In the affliction of these terrible dreams

That shake us nightly: better be with the dead,

Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,

Than on the torture of the mind to lie

In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well;

Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,

Can touch him further.

 

LADY MACBETH

Come on;

Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks;

Be bright and jovial among your guests to-night.

 

MACBETH

So shall I, love; and so, I pray, be you:

Let your remembrance apply to Banquo;

Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue:

Unsafe the while, that we

Must lave our honours in these flattering streams,

And make our faces vizards to our hearts,

Disguising what they are.

 

LADY MACBETH

You must leave this.

 

MACBETH

O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!

Thou know'st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.

 

LADY MACBETH

But in them nature's copy's not eterne.

 

MACBETH

There's comfort yet; they are assailable;

Then be thou jocund: ere the bat hath flown

His cloister'd flight, ere to black Hecate's summons

The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums

Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done

A deed of dreadful note.

 

LADY MACBETH

What's to be done?

 

MACBETH

Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,

Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night,

Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day;

And with thy bloody and invisible hand

Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond

Which keeps me pale! Light thickens; and the crow

Makes wing to the rooky wood:

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;

While night's black agents to their preys do rouse.

Thou marvell'st at my words: but hold thee still;

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

So, prithee, go with me.

 

Exeunt

 

SCENE III. A park near the palace.

 

Enter three Murderers

First Murderer

But who did bid thee join with us?

 

Third Murderer

Macbeth.

 

Second Murderer

He needs not our mistrust, since he delivers

Our offices and what we have to do

To the direction just.

 

First Murderer

Then stand with us.

The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day:

Now spurs the lated traveller apace

To gain the timely inn; and near approaches

The subject of our watch.

 

Third Murderer

Hark! I hear horses.

 

BANQUO

[Within] Give us a light there, ho!

 

Second Murderer

Then 'tis he: the rest

That are within the note of expectation

Already are i' the court.

 

First Murderer

His horses go about.

 

Third Murderer

Almost a mile: but he does usually,

So all men do, from hence to the palace gate

Make it their walk.

 

Second Murderer

A light, a light!

 

Enter BANQUO, and FLEANCE with a torch

 

Third Murderer

'Tis he.

 

First Murderer

Stand to't.

 

BANQUO

It will be rain to-night.

 

First Murderer

Let it come down.

 

They set upon BANQUO

 

BANQUO

O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!

Thou mayst revenge. O slave!

 

Dies. FLEANCE escapes

 

Third Murderer

Who did strike out the light?

 

First Murderer

Wast not the way?

 

Third Murderer

There's but one down; the son is fled.

 

Second Murderer

We have lost

Best half of our affair.

 

First Murderer

Well, let's away, and say how much is done.

 

Exeunt

 

SCENE IV. The same. Hall in the palace.

 

A banquet prepared. Enter MACBETH, LADY MACBETH, ROSS, LENNOX, Lords, and Attendants

MACBETH

You know your own degrees; sit down: at first

And last the hearty welcome.

 

Lords

Thanks to your majesty.

 

MACBETH

Ourself will mingle with society,

And play the humble host.

Our hostess keeps her state, but in best time

We will require her welcome.

 

LADY MACBETH

Pronounce it for me, sir, to all our friends;

For my heart speaks they are welcome.

 

First Murderer appears at the door

 

MACBETH

See, they encounter thee with their hearts' thanks.

Both sides are even: here I'll sit i' the midst:

Be large in mirth; anon we'll drink a measure

The table round.

 

Approaching the door

 

There's blood on thy face.

 

First Murderer

'Tis Banquo's then.

 

MACBETH

'Tis better thee without than he within.

Is he dispatch'd?

 

First Murderer

My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him.

 

MACBETH

Thou art the best o' the cut-throats: yet he's good

That did the like for Fleance: if thou didst it,

Thou art the nonpareil.

 

First Murderer

Most royal sir,

Fleance is 'scaped.

 

MACBETH

Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect,

Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,

As broad and general as the casing air:

But now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in

To saucy doubts and fears. But Banquo's safe?

 

First Murderer

Ay, my good lord: safe in a ditch he bides,

With twenty trenched gashes on his head;

The least a death to nature.

 

MACBETH

Thanks for that:

There the grown serpent lies; the worm that's fled

Hath nature that in time will venom breed,

No teeth for the present. Get thee gone: to-morrow

We'll hear, ourselves, again.

 

Exit Murderer

 

LADY MACBETH

My royal lord,

You do not give the cheer: the feast is sold

That is not often vouch'd, while 'tis a-making,

'Tis given with welcome: to feed were best at home;

From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony;

Meeting were bare without it.

 

MACBETH

Sweet remembrancer!

Now, good digestion wait on appetite,

And health on both!

 

LENNOX

May't please your highness sit.

 

The GHOST OF BANQUO enters, and sits in MACBETH's place

 

MACBETH

Here had we now our country's honour roof'd,

Were the graced person of our Banquo present;

Who may I rather challenge for unkindness

Than pity for mischance!

 

ROSS

His absence, sir,

Lays blame upon his promise. Please't your highness

To grace us with your royal company.

 

MACBETH

The table's full.

 

LENNOX

Here is a place reserved, sir.

 

MACBETH

Where?

 

LENNOX

Here, my good lord. What is't that moves your highness?

 

MACBETH

Which of you have done this?

 

Lords

What, my good lord?

 

MACBETH

Thou canst not say I did it: never shake

Thy gory locks at me.

 

ROSS

Gentlemen, rise: his highness is not well.

 

LADY MACBETH

[+coggins]

Would you guys mind keeping it quite in here, people are trying to get some rest.

[BiIIyBobNosePicker]

Would you guys mind keeping it quite in here, people are trying to get some rest.

 

[BiIIyBobNosePicker]

Loves Labours Lost

Shakespeare homepage | Love's Labour's Lost | Entire play

 

ACT I

SCENE I. The king of Navarre's park.

 

Enter FERDINAND king of Navarre, BIRON, LONGAVILLE and DUMAIN

FERDINAND

Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,

Live register'd upon our brazen tombs

And then grace us in the disgrace of death;

When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,

The endeavor of this present breath may buy

That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge

And make us heirs of all eternity.

Therefore, brave conquerors,--for so you are,

That war against your own affections

And the huge army of the world's desires,--

Our late edict shall strongly stand in force:

Navarre shall be the wonder of the world;

Our court shall be a little Academe,

Still and contemplative in living art.

You three, Biron, Dumain, and Longaville,

Have sworn for three years' term to live with me

My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes

That are recorded in this schedule here:

Your oaths are pass'd; and now subscribe your names,

That his own hand may strike his honour down

That violates the smallest branch herein:

If you are arm'd to do as sworn to do,

Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too.

 

LONGAVILLE

I am resolved; 'tis but a three years' fast:

The mind shall banquet, though the body pine:

Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits

Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.

 

DUMAIN

My loving lord, Dumain is mortified:

The grosser manner of these world's delights

He throws upon the gross world's baser slaves:

To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die;

With all these living in philosophy.

 

BIRON

I can but say their protestation over;

So much, dear liege, I have already sworn,

That is, to live and study here three years.

But there are other strict observances;

As, not to see a woman in that term,

Which I hope well is not enrolled there;

And one day in a week to touch no food

And but one meal on every day beside,

The which I hope is not enrolled there;

And then, to sleep but three hours in the night,

And not be seen to wink of all the day--

When I was wont to think no harm all night

And make a dark night too of half the day--

Which I hope well is not enrolled there:

O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep,

Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep!

 

FERDINAND

Your oath is pass'd to pass away from these.

 

BIRON

Let me say no, my liege, an if you please:

I only swore to study with your grace

And stay here in your court for three years' space.

 

LONGAVILLE

You swore to that, Biron, and to the rest.

 

BIRON

By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest.

What is the end of study? let me know.

 

FERDINAND

Why, that to know, which else we should not know.

 

BIRON

Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from common sense?

 

FERDINAND

Ay, that is study's godlike recompense.

 

BIRON

Come on, then; I will swear to study so,

To know the thing I am forbid to know:

As thus,--to study where I well may dine,

When I to feast expressly am forbid;

Or study where to meet some mistress fine,

When mistresses from common sense are hid;

Or, having sworn too hard a keeping oath,

Study to break it and not break my troth.

If study's gain be thus and this be so,

Study knows that which yet it doth not know:

Swear me to this, and I will ne'er say no.

 

FERDINAND

These be the stops that hinder study quite

And train our intellects to vain delight.

 

BIRON

Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain,

Which with pain purchased doth inherit pain:

As, painfully to pore upon a book

To seek the light of truth; while truth the while

Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look:

Light seeking light doth light of light beguile:

So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,

Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.

Study me how to please the eye indeed

By fixing it upon a fairer eye,

Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed

And give him light that it was blinded by.

Study is like the heaven's glorious sun

That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks:

Small have continual plodders ever won

Save base authority from others' books

These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights

That give a name to every fixed star

Have no more profit of their shining nights

Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

Too much to know is to know nought but fame;

And every godfather can give a name.

 

FERDINAND

How well he's read, to reason against reading!

 

DUMAIN

Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding!

 

LONGAVILLE

He weeds the corn and still lets grow the weeding.

 

BIRON

The spring is near when green geese are a-breeding.

 

DUMAIN

How follows that?

 

BIRON

Fit in his place and time.

 

DUMAIN

In reason nothing.

 

BIRON

Something then in rhyme.

 

FERDINAND

Biron is like an envious sneaping frost,

That bites the first-born infants of the spring.

 

BIRON

Well, say I am; why should proud summer boast

Before the birds have any cause to sing?

Why should I joy in any abortive birth?

At Christmas I no more desire a rose

Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;

But like of each thing that in season grows.

So you, to study now it is too late,

Climb o'er the house to unlock the little gate.

 

FERDINAND

Well, sit you out: go home, Biron: adieu.

 

BIRON

No, my good lord; I have sworn to stay with you:

And though I have for barbarism spoke more

Than for that angel knowledge you can say,

Yet confident I'll keep what I have swore

And bide the penance of each three years' day.

Give me the paper; let me read the same;

And to the strict'st decrees I'll write my name.

 

FERDINAND

How well this yielding rescues thee from shame!

 

BIRON

[Reads] 'Item, That no woman shall come within a

mile of my court:' Hath this been proclaimed?

 

LONGAVILLE

Four days ago.

 

BIRON

Let's see the penalty.

 

Reads

 

'On pain of losing her tongue.' Who devised this penalty?

 

LONGAVILLE

Marry, that did I.

 

BIRON

Sweet lord, and why?

 

LONGAVILLE

To fright them hence with that dread penalty.

 

BIRON

A dangerous law against gentility!

 

Reads

 

'Item, If any man be seen to talk with a woman

within the term of three years, he shall endure such

public shame as the rest of the court can possibly devise.'

This article, my liege, yourself must break;

For well you know here comes in embassy

The French king's daughter with yourself to speak--

A maid of grace and complete majesty--

About surrender up of Aquitaine

To her decrepit, sick and bedrid father:

Therefore this article is made in vain,

Or vainly comes the admired princess hither.

 

FERDINAND

What say you, lords? Why, this was quite forgot.

 

BIRON

So study evermore is overshot:

While it doth study to have what it would

It doth forget to do the thing it should,

And when it hath the thing it hunteth most,

'Tis won as towns with fire, so won, so lost.

 

FERDINAND

We must of force dispense with this decree;

She must lie here on mere necessity.

 

BIRON

Necessity will make us all forsworn

Three thousand times within this three years' space;

For every man with his affects is born,

Not by might master'd but by special grace:

If I break faith, this word shall speak for me;

I am forsworn on 'mere necessity.'

So to the laws at large I write my name:

 

Subscribes

 

And he that breaks them in the least degree

Stands in attainder of eternal shame:

Suggestions are to other as to me;

But I believe, although I seem so loath,

I am the last that will last keep his oath.

But is there no quick recreation granted?

 

FERDINAND

Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted

With a refined traveller of Spain;

A man in all the world's new fashion planted,

That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;

One whom the music of his own vain tongue

Doth ravish like enchanting harmony;

A man of complements, whom right and wrong

Have chose as umpire of their mutiny:

This child of fancy, that Armado hight,

For interim to our studies shall relate

In high-born words the worth of many a knight

From tawny Spain lost in the world's debate.

How you delight, my lords, I know not, I;

But, I protest, I love to hear him lie

And I will use him for my minstrelsy.

 

BIRON

Armado is a most illustrious wight,

A man of fire-new words, fashion's own knight.

 

LONGAVILLE

Costard the swain and he shall be our sport;

And so to study, three years is but short.

 

Enter DULL with a letter, and COSTARD

 

DULL

Which is the duke's own person?

 

BIRON

This, fellow: what wouldst?

 

DULL

I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his

grace's tharborough: but I would see his own person

in flesh and blood.

 

BIRON

This is he.

 

DULL

Signior Arme--Arme--commends you. There's villany

abroad: this letter will tell you more.

 

COSTARD

Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me.

 

FERDINAND

A letter from the magnificent Armado.

 

BIRON

How low soever the matter, I hope in God for high words.

 

LONGAVILLE

A high hope for a low heaven: God grant us patience!

 

BIRON

To hear? or forbear laughing?

 

LONGAVILLE

To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately; or to

forbear both.

 

BIRON

Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to

climb in the merriness.

 

COSTARD

The matter is to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta.

The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner.

 

BIRON

In what manner?

 

COSTARD

In manner and form following, sir; all those three:

I was seen with her in the manor-house, sitting with

her upon the form, and taken following her into the

park; which, put together, is in manner and form

following. Now, sir, for the manner,--it is the

manner of a man to speak to a woman: for the form,--

in some form.

 

BIRON

For the following, sir?

 

COSTARD

As it shall follow in my correction: and God defend

the right!

 

FERDINAND

Will you hear this letter with attention?

 

BIRON

As we would hear an oracle.

 

COSTARD

Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.

 

FERDINAND

[Reads] 'Great deputy, the welkin's vicegerent and

sole dominator of Navarre, my soul's earth's god,

and body's fostering patron.'

 

COSTARD

Not a word of Costard yet.

 

FERDINAND

[Reads] 'So it is,'--

 

COSTARD

It may be so: but if he say it is so, he is, in

telling true, but so.

 

FERDINAND

Peace!

 

COSTARD

Be to me and every man that dares not fight!

 

FERDINAND

No words!

 

COSTARD

Of other men's secrets, I beseech you.

 

FERDINAND

[Reads] 'So it is, besieged with sable-coloured

melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour

to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving

air; and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to

walk. The time when. About the sixth hour; when

beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down

to that nourishment which is called supper: so much

for the time when. Now for the ground which; which,

I mean, I walked upon: it is y-cleped thy park. Then

for the place where; where, I mean, I did encounter

that obscene and preposterous event, that draweth

from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which

here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest;

but to the place where; it standeth north-north-east

and by east from the west corner of thy curious-

knotted garden: there did I see that low-spirited

swain, that base minnow of thy mirth,'--

 

COSTARD

Me?

 

FERDINAND

[Reads] 'that unlettered small-knowing soul,'--

 

COSTARD

Me?

 

FERDINAND

[Reads] 'that shallow vassal,'--

 

COSTARD

Still me?

 

FERDINAND

[Reads] 'which, as I remember, hight Costard,'--

 

COSTARD

O, me!

 

FERDINAND

[Reads] 'sorted and consorted, contrary to thy

established proclaimed edict and continent canon,

which with,--O, with--but with this I passion to say

wherewith,--

 

COSTARD

With a wench.

 

FERDINAND

[Reads] 'with a child of our grandmother Eve, a

female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a

woman. Him I, as my ever-esteemed duty pricks me on,

have sent to thee, to receive the meed of

punishment, by thy sweet grace's officer, Anthony

Dull; a man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and

estimation.'

 

DULL

'Me, an't shall please you; I am Anthony Dull.

 

FERDINAND

[Reads] 'For Jaquenetta,--so is the weaker vessel

called which I apprehended with the aforesaid

swain,--I keep her as a vessel of the law's fury;

and shall, at the least of thy sweet notice, bring

her to trial. Thine, in all compliments of devoted

and heart-burning heat of duty.

DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO.'

 

BIRON

This is not so well as I looked for, but the best

that ever I heard.

 

FERDINAND

Ay, the best for the worst. But, sirrah, what say

you to this?

 

COSTARD

Sir, I confess the wench.

 

FERDINAND

Did you hear the proclamation?

 

COSTARD

I do confess much of the hearing it but little of

the marking of it.

 

FERDINAND

It was proclaimed a year's imprisonment, to be taken

with a wench.

 

COSTARD

I was taken with none, sir: I was taken with a damsel.

 

FERDINAND

Well, it was proclaimed 'damsel.'

 

COSTARD

This was no damsel, neither, sir; she was a virgin.

 

FERDINAND

It is so varied, too; for it was proclaimed 'virgin.'

 

COSTARD

If it were, I deny her virginity: I was taken with a maid.

 

FERDINAND

This maid will not serve your turn, sir.

 

COSTARD

This maid will serve my turn, sir.

 

FERDINAND

Sir, I will pronounce your sentence: you shall fast

a week with bran and water.

 

COSTARD

I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge.

 

FERDINAND

And Don Armado shall be your keeper.

My Lord Biron, see him deliver'd o'er:

And go we, lords, to put in practise that

Which each to other hath so strongly sworn.

 

Exeunt FERDINAND, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN

 

BIRON

I'll lay my head to any good man's hat,

These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn.

Sirrah, come on.

 

COSTARD

I suffer for the truth, sir; for true it is, I was

taken with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true

girl; and therefore welcome the sour cup of

prosperity! Affliction may one day smile again; and

till then, sit thee down, sorrow!

 

Exeunt

 

LOVE'S LABOURS LOST

 

SCENE II. The same.

 

Enter DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO and MOTH

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Boy, what sign is it when a man of great spirit

grows melancholy?

 

MOTH

A great sign, sir, that he will look sad.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Why, sadness is one and the self-same thing, dear imp.

 

MOTH

No, no; O Lord, sir, no.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

How canst thou part sadness and melancholy, my

tender juvenal?

 

MOTH

By a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough senior.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Why tough senior? why tough senior?

 

MOTH

Why tender juvenal? why tender juvenal?

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I spoke it, tender juvenal, as a congruent epitheton

appertaining to thy young days, which we may

nominate tender.

 

MOTH

And I, tough senior, as an appertinent title to your

old time, which we may name tough.

DON ADRIANO DE

 

ARMADO

Pretty and apt.

 

MOTH

How mean you, sir? I pretty, and my saying apt? or

I apt, and my saying pretty?

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Thou pretty, because little.

 

MOTH

Little pretty, because little. Wherefore apt?

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

And therefore apt, because quick.

 

MOTH

Speak you this in my praise, master?

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

In thy condign praise.

 

MOTH

I will praise an eel with the same praise.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

What, that an eel is ingenious?

 

MOTH

That an eel is quick.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I do say thou art quick in answers: thou heatest my blood.

 

MOTH

I am answered, sir.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I love not to be crossed.

 

MOTH

[Aside] He speaks the mere contrary; crosses love not him.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I have promised to study three years with the duke.

 

MOTH

You may do it in an hour, sir.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Impossible.

 

MOTH

How many is one thrice told?

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I am ill at reckoning; it fitteth the spirit of a tapster.

 

MOTH

You are a gentleman and a gamester, sir.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I confess both: they are both the varnish of a

complete man.

 

MOTH

Then, I am sure, you know how much the gross sum of

deuce-ace amounts to.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

It doth amount to one more than two.

 

MOTH

Which the base vulgar do call three.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

True.

 

MOTH

Why, sir, is this such a piece of study? Now here

is three studied, ere ye'll thrice wink: and how

easy it is to put 'years' to the word 'three,' and

study three years in two words, the dancing horse

will tell you.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

A most fine figure!

 

MOTH

To prove you a cipher.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I will hereupon confess I am in love: and as it is

base for a soldier to love, so am I in love with a

base wench. If drawing my sword against the humour

of affection would deliver me from the reprobate

thought of it, I would take Desire prisoner, and

ransom him to any French courtier for a new-devised

courtesy. I think scorn to sigh: methinks I should

outswear Cupid. Comfort, me, boy: what great men

have been in love?

 

MOTH

Hercules, master.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Most sweet Hercules! More authority, dear boy, name

more; and, sweet my child, let them be men of good

repute and carriage.

 

MOTH

Samson, master: he was a man of good carriage, great

carriage, for he carried the town-gates on his back

like a porter: and he was in love.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

O well-knit Samson! strong-jointed Samson! I do

excel thee in my rapier as much as thou didst me in

carrying gates. I am in love too. Who was Samson's

love, my dear Moth?

 

MOTH

A woman, master.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Of what complexion?

 

MOTH

Of all the four, or the three, or the two, or one of the four.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Tell me precisely of what complexion.

 

MOTH

Of the sea-water green, sir.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Is that one of the four complexions?

 

MOTH

As I have read, sir; and the best of them too.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Green indeed is the colour of lovers; but to have a

love of that colour, methinks Samson had small reason

for it. He surely affected her for her wit.

 

MOTH

It was so, sir; for she had a green wit.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

My love is most immaculate white and red.

 

MOTH

Most maculate thoughts, master, are masked under

such colours.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Define, define, well-educated infant.

 

MOTH

My father's wit and my mother's tongue, assist me!

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Sweet invocation of a child; most pretty and

pathetical!

 

MOTH

If she be made of white and red,

Her faults will ne'er be known,

For blushing cheeks by faults are bred

And fears by pale white shown:

Then if she fear, or be to blame,

By this you shall not know,

For still her cheeks possess the same

Which native she doth owe.

A dangerous rhyme, master, against the reason of

white and red.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?

 

MOTH

The world was very guilty of such a ballad some

three ages since: but I think now 'tis not to be

found; or, if it were, it would neither serve for

the writing nor the tune.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I will have that subject newly writ o'er, that I may

example my digression by some mighty precedent.

Boy, I do love that country girl that I took in the

park with the rational hind Costard: she deserves well.

 

MOTH

[Aside] To be whipped; and yet a better love than

my master.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Sing, boy; my spirit grows heavy in love.

 

MOTH

And that's great marvel, loving a light wench.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I say, sing.

 

MOTH

Forbear till this company be past.

 

Enter DULL, COSTARD, and JAQUENETTA

 

DULL

Sir, the duke's pleasure is, that you keep Costard

safe: and you must suffer him to take no delight

nor no penance; but a' must fast three days a week.

For this damsel, I must keep her at the park: she

is allowed for the day-woman. Fare you well.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I do betray myself with blushing. Maid!

 

JAQUENETTA

Man?

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I will visit thee at the lodge.

 

JAQUENETTA

That's hereby.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I know where it is situate.

 

JAQUENETTA

Lord, how wise you are!

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I will tell thee wonders.

 

JAQUENETTA

With that face?

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I love thee.

 

JAQUENETTA

So I heard you say.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

And so, farewell.

 

JAQUENETTA

Fair weather after you!

 

DULL

Come, Jaquenetta, away!

 

Exeunt DULL and JAQUENETTA

 

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Villain, thou shalt fast for thy offences ere thou

be pardoned.

 

COSTARD

Well, sir, I hope, when I do it, I shall do it on a

full stomach.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Thou shalt be heavily punished.

 

COSTARD

I am more bound to you than your fellows, for they

are but lightly rewarded.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Take away this villain; shut him up.

 

MOTH

Come, you transgressing slave; away!

 

COSTARD

Let me not be pent up, sir: I will fast, being loose.

 

MOTH

No, sir; that were fast and loose: thou shalt to prison.

 

COSTARD

Well, if ever I do see the merry days of desolation

that I have seen, some shall see.

 

MOTH

What shall some see?

 

COSTARD

Nay, nothing, Master Moth, but what they look upon.

It is not for prisoners to be too silent in their

words; and therefore I will say nothing: I thank

God I have as little patience as another man; and

therefore I can be quiet.

 

Exeunt MOTH and COSTARD

 

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I do affect the very ground, which is base, where

her shoe, which is baser, guided by her foot, which

is basest, doth tread. I shall be forsworn, which

is a great argument of falsehood, if I love. And

how can that be true love which is falsely

attempted? Love is a familiar; Love is a devil:

there is no evil angel but Love. Yet was Samson so

tempted, and he had an excellent strength; yet was

Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit.

Cupid's butt-shaft is too hard for Hercules' club;

and therefore too much odds for a Spaniard's rapier.

The first and second cause will not serve my turn;

the passado he respects not, the duello he regards

not: his disgrace is to be called boy; but his

glory is to subdue men. Adieu, valour! rust rapier!

be still, drum! for your manager is in love; yea,

he loveth. Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme,

for I am sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise, wit;

write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.

 

Exit

 

LOVE'S LABOURS LOST

 

ACT II

SCENE I. The same.

 

Enter the PRINCESS of France, ROSALINE, MARIA, KATHARINE, BOYET, Lords, and other Attendants

BOYET

Now, madam, summon up your dearest spirits:

Consider who the king your father sends,

To whom he sends, and what's his embassy:

Yourself, held precious in the world's esteem,

To parley with the sole inheritor

Of all perfections that a man may owe,

Matchless Navarre; the plea of no less weight

Than Aquitaine, a dowry for a queen.

Be now as prodigal of all dear grace

As Nature was in making graces dear

When she did starve the general world beside

And prodigally gave them all to you.

 

PRINCESS

Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:

Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,

Not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues:

I am less proud to hear you tell my worth

Than you much willing to be counted wise

In spending your wit in the praise of mine.

But now to task the tasker: good Boyet,

You are not ignorant, all-telling fame

Doth noise abroad, Navarre hath made a vow,

Till painful study shall outwear three years,

No woman may approach his silent court:

Therefore to's seemeth it a needful course,

Before we enter his forbidden gates,

To know his pleasure; and in that behalf,

Bold of your worthiness, we single you

As our best-moving fair solicitor.

Tell him, the daughter of the King of France,

On serious business, craving quick dispatch,

Importunes personal conference with his grace:

Haste, signify so much; while we attend,

Like humble-visaged suitors, his high will.

 

BOYET

Proud of employment, willingly I go.

 

PRINCESS

All pride is willing pride, and yours is so.

 

Exit BOYET

 

Who are the votaries, my loving lords,

That are vow-fellows with this virtuous duke?

 

First Lord

Lord Longaville is one.

 

PRINCESS

Know you the man?

 

MARIA

I know him, madam: at a marriage-feast,

Between Lord Perigort and the beauteous heir

Of Jaques Falconbridge, solemnized

In Normandy, saw I this Longaville:

A man of sovereign parts he is esteem'd;

Well fitted in arts, glorious in arms:

Nothing becomes him ill that he would well.

The only soil of his fair virtue's gloss,

If virtue's gloss will stain with any soil,

Is a sharp wit matched with too blunt a will;

Whose edge hath power to cut, whose will still wills

It should none spare that come within his power.

 

PRINCESS

Some merry mocking lord, belike; is't so?

 

MARIA

They say so most that most his humours know.

 

PRINCESS

Such short-lived wits do wither as they grow.

Who are the rest?

 

KATHARINE

The young Dumain, a well-accomplished youth,

Of all that virtue love for virtue loved:

Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill;

For he hath wit to make an ill shape good,

And shape to win grace though he had no wit.

I saw him at the Duke Alencon's once;

And much too little of that good I saw

Is my report to his great worthiness.

 

ROSALINE

Another of these students at that time

Was there with him, if I have heard a truth.

Biron they call him; but a merrier man,

Within the limit of becoming mirth,

I never spent an hour's talk withal:

His eye begets occasion for his wit;

For every object that the one doth catch

The other turns to a mirth-moving jest,

Which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor,

Delivers in such apt and gracious words

That aged ears play truant at his tales

And younger hearings are quite ravished;

So sweet and voluble is his discourse.

 

PRINCESS

God bless my ladies! are they all in love,

That every one her own hath garnished

With such bedecking ornaments of praise?

 

First Lord

Here comes Boyet.

 

Re-enter BOYET

 

PRINCESS

Now, what admittance, lord?

 

BOYET

Navarre had notice of your fair approach;

And he and his competitors in oath

Were all address'd to meet you, gentle lady,

Before I came. Marry, thus much I have learnt:

He rather means to lodge you in the field,

Like one that comes here to besiege his court,

Than seek a dispensation for his oath,

To let you enter his unpeopled house.

Here comes Navarre.

 

Enter FERDINAND, LONGAVILLE, DUMAIN, BIRON, and Attendants

 

FERDINAND

Fair princess, welcome to the court of Navarre.

 

PRINCESS

'Fair' I give you back again; and 'welcome' I have

not yet: the roof of this court is too high to be

yours; and welcome to the wide fields too base to be mine.

 

FERDINAND

You shall be welcome, madam, to my court.

 

PRINCESS

I will be welcome, then: conduct me thither.

 

FERDINAND

Hear me, dear lady; I have sworn an oath.

 

PRINCESS

Our Lady help my lord! he'll be forsworn.

 

FERDINAND

Not for the world, fair madam, by my will.

 

PRINCESS

Why, will shall break it; will and nothing else.

 

FERDINAND

Your ladyship is ignorant what it is.

 

PRINCESS

Were my lord so, his ignorance were wise,

Where now his knowledge must prove ignorance.

I hear your grace hath sworn out house-keeping:

Tis deadly sin to keep that oath, my lord,

And sin to break it.

But pardon me. I am too sudden-bold:

To teach a teacher ill beseemeth me.

Vouchsafe to read the purpose of my coming,

And suddenly resolve me in my suit.

 

FERDINAND

Madam, I will, if suddenly I may.

 

PRINCESS

You will the sooner, that I were away;

For you'll prove perjured if you make me stay.

 

BIRON

Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?

 

ROSALINE

Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?

 

BIRON

I know you did.

 

ROSALINE

How needless was it then to ask the question!

 

BIRON

You must not be so quick.

 

ROSALINE

'Tis 'long of you that spur me with such questions.

 

BIRON

Your wit's too hot, it speeds too fast, 'twill tire.

 

ROSALINE

Not till it leave the rider in the mire.

 

BIRON

What time o' day?

 

ROSALINE

The hour that fools should ask.

 

BIRON

Now fair befall your mask!

 

ROSALINE

Fair fall the face it covers!

 

BIRON

And send you many lovers!

 

ROSALINE

Amen, so you be none.

 

BIRON

Nay, then will I be gone.

 

FERDINAND

Madam, your father here doth intimate

The payment of a hundred thousand crowns;

Being but the one half of an entire sum

Disbursed by my father in his wars.

But say that he or we, as neither have,

Received that sum, yet there remains unpaid

A hundred thousand more; in surety of the which,

One part of Aquitaine is bound to us,

Although not valued to the money's worth.

If then the king your father will restore

But that one half which is unsatisfied,

We will give up our right in Aquitaine,

And hold fair friendship with his majesty.

But that, it seems, he little purposeth,

For here he doth demand to have repaid

A hundred thousand crowns; and not demands,

On payment of a hundred thousand crowns,

To have his title live in Aquitaine;

Which we much rather had depart withal

And have the money by our father lent

Than Aquitaine so gelded as it is.

Dear Princess, were not his requests so far

From reason's yielding, your fair self should make

A yielding 'gainst some reason in my breast

And go well satisfied to France again.

 

PRINCESS

You do the king my father too much wrong

And wrong the reputation of your name,

In so unseeming to confess receipt

Of that which hath so faithfully been paid.

 

FERDINAND

I do protest I never heard of it;

And if you prove it, I'll repay it back

Or yield up Aquitaine.

 

PRINCESS

We arrest your word.

Boyet, you can produce acquittances

For such a sum from special officers

Of Charles his father.

 

FERDINAND

Satisfy me so.

 

BOYET

So please your grace, the packet is not come

Where that and other specialties are bound:

To-morrow you shall have a sight of them.

 

FERDINAND

It shall suffice me: at which interview

All liberal reason I will yield unto.

Meantime receive such welcome at my hand

As honour without breach of honour may

Make tender of to thy true worthiness:

You may not come, fair princess, in my gates;

But here without you shall be so received

As you shall deem yourself lodged in my heart,

Though so denied fair harbour in my house.

Your own good thoughts excuse me, and farewell:

To-morrow shall we visit you again.

 

PRINCESS

Sweet health and fair desires consort your grace!

 

FERDINAND

Thy own wish wish I thee in every place!

 

Exit

 

BIRON

Lady, I will commend you to mine own heart.

 

ROSALINE

Pray you, do my commendations; I would be glad to see it.

 

BIRON

I would you heard it groan.

 

ROSALINE

Is the fool sick?

 

BIRON

Sick at the heart.

 

ROSALINE

Alack, let it blood.

 

BIRON

Would that do it good?

 

ROSALINE

My physic says 'ay.'

 

BIRON

Will you prick't with your eye?

 

ROSALINE

No point, with my knife.

 

BIRON

Now, God save thy life!

 

ROSALINE

And yours from long living!

 

BIRON

I cannot stay thanksgiving.

 

Retiring

 

DUMAIN

Sir, I pray you, a word: what lady is that same?

 

BOYET

The heir of Alencon, Katharine her name.

 

DUMAIN

A gallant lady. Monsieur, fare you well.

 

Exit

 

LONGAVILLE

I beseech you a word: what is she in the white?

 

BOYET

A woman sometimes, an you saw her in the light.

 

LONGAVILLE

Perchance light in the light. I desire her name.

 

BOYET

She hath but one for herself; to desire that were a shame.

 

LONGAVILLE

Pray you, sir, whose daughter?

 

BOYET

Her mother's, I have heard.

 

LONGAVILLE

God's blessing on your beard!

 

BOYET

Good sir, be not offended.

She is an heir of Falconbridge.

 

LONGAVILLE

Nay, my choler is ended.

She is a most sweet lady.

 

BOYET

Not unlike, sir, that may be.

 

Exit LONGAVILLE

 

BIRON

What's her name in the cap?

 

BOYET

Rosaline, by good hap.

 

BIRON

Is she wedded or no?

 

BOYET

To her will, sir, or so.

 

BIRON

You are welcome, sir: adieu.

 

BOYET

Farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you.

 

Exit BIRON

 

MARIA

That last is Biron, the merry madcap lord:

Not a word with him but a jest.

 

BOYET

And every jest but a word.

 

PRINCESS

It was well done of you to take him at his word.

 

BOYET

I was as willing to grapple as he was to board.

 

MARIA

Two hot sheeps, marry.

 

BOYET

And wherefore not ships?

No sheep, sweet lamb, unless we feed on your lips.

 

MARIA

You sheep, and I pasture: shall that finish the jest?

 

BOYET

So you grant pasture for me.

 

Offering to kiss her

 

MARIA

Not so, gentle beast:

My lips are no common, though several they be.

 

BOYET

Belonging to whom?

 

MARIA

To my fortunes and me.

 

PRINCESS

Good wits will be jangling; but, gentles, agree:

This civil war of wits were much better used

On Navarre and his book-men; for here 'tis abused.

 

BOYET

If my observation, which very seldom lies,

By the heart's still rhetoric disclosed with eyes,

Deceive me not now, Navarre is infected.

 

PRINCESS

With what?

 

BOYET

With that which we lovers entitle affected.

 

PRINCESS

Your reason?

 

BOYET

Why, all his behaviors did make their retire

To the court of his eye, peeping thorough desire:

His heart, like an agate, with your print impress'd,

Proud with his form, in his eye pride express'd:

His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see,

Did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be;

All senses to that sense did make their repair,

To feel only looking on fairest of fair:

Methought all his senses were lock'd in his eye,

As jewels in crystal for some prince to buy;

Who, tendering their own worth from where they were glass'd,

Did point you to buy them, along as you pass'd:

His face's own margent did quote such amazes

That all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes.

I'll give you Aquitaine and all that is his,

An you give him for my sake but one loving kiss.

 

PRINCESS

Come to our pavilion: Boyet is disposed.

 

BOYET

But to speak that in words which his eye hath

disclosed.

I only have made a mouth of his eye,

By adding a tongue which I know will not lie.

 

ROSALINE

Thou art an old love-monger and speakest skilfully.

 

MARIA

He is Cupid's grandfather and learns news of him.

 

ROSALINE

Then was Venus like her mother, for her father is but grim.

 

BOYET

Do you hear, my mad wenches?

 

MARIA

No.

 

BOYET

What then, do you see?

 

ROSALINE

Ay, our way to be gone.

 

BOYET

You are too hard for me.

 

Exeunt

 

LOVE'S LABOURS LOST

 

ACT III

SCENE I. The same.

 

Enter DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO and MOTH

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.

 

MOTH

Concolinel.

 

Singing

 

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years; take this key,

give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately

hither: I must employ him in a letter to my love.

 

MOTH

Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

How meanest thou? brawling in French?

 

MOTH

No, my complete master: but to jig off a tune at

the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet, humour

it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and

sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you

swallowed love with singing love, sometime through

the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling

love; with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of

your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin-belly

doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in

your pocket like a man after the old painting; and

keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away.

These are complements, these are humours; these

betray nice wenches, that would be betrayed without

these; and make them men of note--do you note

me?--that most are affected to these.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

How hast thou purchased this experience?

 

MOTH

By my penny of observation.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

But O,--but O,--

 

MOTH

'The hobby-horse is forgot.'

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Callest thou my love 'hobby-horse'?

 

MOTH

No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your

love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Almost I had.

 

MOTH

Negligent student! learn her by heart.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

By heart and in heart, boy.

 

MOTH

And out of heart, master: all those three I will prove.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

What wilt thou prove?

 

MOTH

A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, upon

the instant: by heart you love her, because your

heart cannot come by her; in heart you love her,

because your heart is in love with her; and out of

heart you love her, being out of heart that you

cannot enjoy her.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I am all these three.

 

MOTH

And three times as much more, and yet nothing at

all.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Fetch hither the swain: he must carry me a letter.

 

MOTH

A message well sympathized; a horse to be ambassador

for an a**.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Ha, ha! what sayest thou?

 

MOTH

Marry, sir, you must send the a** upon the horse,

for he is very slow-gaited. But I go.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

The way is but short: away!

 

MOTH

As swift as lead, sir.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

The meaning, pretty ingenious?

Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?

 

MOTH

Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I say lead is slow.

 

MOTH

You are too swift, sir, to say so:

Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun?

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Sweet smoke of rhetoric!

He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that's he:

I shoot thee at the swain.

 

MOTH

Thump then and I flee.

 

Exit

 

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

A most acute juvenal; voluble and free of grace!

By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face:

Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.

My herald is return'd.

 

Re-enter MOTH with COSTARD

 

MOTH

A wonder, master! here's a costard broken in a shin.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Some enigma, some riddle: come, thy l'envoy; begin.

 

COSTARD

No enigma, no riddle, no l'envoy; no salve in the

mail, sir: O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain! no

l'envoy, no l'envoy; no salve, sir, but a plantain!

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

By virtue, thou enforcest laughter; thy silly

thought my spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes

me to ridiculous smiling. O, pardon me, my stars!

Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l'envoy, and

the word l'envoy for a salve?

 

MOTH

Do the wise think them other? is not l'envoy a salve?

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

No, page: it is an epilogue or discourse, to make plain

Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.

I will example it:

The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,

Were still at odds, being but three.

There's the moral. Now the l'envoy.

 

MOTH

I will add the l'envoy. Say the moral again.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,

Were still at odds, being but three.

 

MOTH

Until the goose came out of door,

And stay'd the odds by adding four.

Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with

my l'envoy.

The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,

Were still at odds, being but three.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Until the goose came out of door,

Staying the odds by adding four.

 

MOTH

A good l'envoy, ending in the goose: would you

desire more?

 

COSTARD

The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that's flat.

Sir, your pennyworth is good, an your goose be fat.

To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose:

Let me see; a fat l'envoy; ay, that's a fat goose.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin?

 

MOTH

By saying that a costard was broken in a shin.

Then call'd you for the l'envoy.

 

COSTARD

True, and I for a plantain: thus came your

argument in;

Then the boy's fat l'envoy, the goose that you bought;

And he ended the market.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

But tell me; how was there a costard broken in a shin?

 

MOTH

I will tell you sensibly.

 

COSTARD

Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth: I will speak that l'envoy:

I Costard, running out, that was safely within,

Fell over the threshold and broke my shin.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

We will talk no more of this matter.

 

COSTARD

Till there be more matter in the shin.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.

 

COSTARD

O, marry me to one Frances: I smell some l'envoy,

some goose, in this.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty,

enfreedoming thy person; thou wert immured,

restrained, captivated, bound.

 

COSTARD

True, true; and now you will be my purgation and let me loose.

DON

 

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance; and,

in lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this:

bear this significant

 

Giving a letter

 

to the country maid Jaquenetta:

there is remuneration; for the best ward of mine

honour is rewarding my dependents. Moth, follow.

 

Exit

 

MOTH

Like the sequel, I. Signior Costard, adieu.

 

COSTARD

My sweet ounce of man's flesh! my incony Jew!

 

Exit MOTH

 

Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration!

O, that's the Latin word for three farthings: three

farthings--remuneration.--'What's the price of this

inkle?'--'One penny.'--'No, I'll give you a

remuneration:' why, it carries it. Remuneration!

why, it is a fairer name than French crown. I will

never buy and sell out of this word.

 

Enter BIRON

 

BIRON

O, my good knave Costard! exceedingly well met.

 

COSTARD

Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man

buy for a remuneration?

 

BIRON

What is a remuneration?

 

COSTARD

Marry, sir, halfpenny farthing.

 

BIRON

Why, then, three-farthing worth of silk.

 

COSTARD

I thank your worship: God be wi' you!

 

BIRON

Stay, slave; I must employ thee:

As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave,

Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.

 

COSTARD

When would you have it done, sir?

 

BIRON

This afternoon.

 

COSTARD

Well, I will do it, sir: fare you well.

 

BIRON

Thou knowest not what it is.

 

COSTARD

I shall know, sir, when I have done it.

 

BIRON

Why, villain, thou must know first.

 

COSTARD

I will come to your worship to-morrow morning.

 

BIRON

It must be done this afternoon.

Hark, slave, it is but this:

The princess comes to hunt here in the park,

And in her train there is a gentle lady;

When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name,

And Rosaline they call her: ask for her;

And to her white hand see thou do commend

This seal'd-up counsel. There's thy guerdon; go.

 

Giving him a shilling

 

COSTARD

Gardon, O sweet gardon! better than remuneration,

a'leven-pence farthing better: most sweet gardon! I

will do it sir, in print. Gardon! Remuneration!

 

Exit

 

BIRON

And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love's whip;

A very beadle to a humorous sigh;

A critic, nay, a night-watch constable;

A domineering pedant o'er the boy;

Than whom no mortal so magnificent!

This whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy;

This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;

Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,

The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,

Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,

Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,

Sole imperator and great general

Of trotting 'paritors:--O my little heart:--

And I to be a corporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!

What, I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!

A woman, that is like a German clock,

Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,

And never going aright, being a watch,

But being watch'd that it may still go right!

Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all;

And, among three, to love the worst of all;

A wightly wanton with a velvet brow,

With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes;

Ay, and by heaven, one that will do the deed

Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard:

And I to sigh for her! to watch for her!

To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague

That Cupid will impose for my neglect

Of his almighty dreadful little might.

Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue and groan:

Some men must love my lady and some Joan.

 

Exit

 

LOVE'S LABOURS LOST

 

ACT IV

SCENE I. The same.

 

Enter the PRINCESS, and her train, a Forester, BOYET, ROSALINE, MARIA, and KATHARINE

PRINCESS

Was that the king, that spurred his horse so hard

Against the steep uprising of the hill?

 

BOYET

I know not; but I think it was not he.

 

PRINCESS

Whoe'er a' was, a' show'd a mounting mind.

Well, lords, to-day we shall have our dispatch:

On Saturday we will return to France.

Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush

That we must stand and play the murderer in?

 

Forester

Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice;

A stand where you may make the fairest shoot.

 

PRINCESS

I thank my beauty, I am fair that shoot,

And thereupon thou speak'st the fairest shoot.

 

Forester

Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so.

 

PRINCESS

What, what? first praise me and again say no?

O short-lived pride! Not fair? alack for woe!

 

Forester

Yes, madam, fair.

 

PRINCESS

Nay, never paint me now:

Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow.

Here, good my glass, take this for telling true:

Fair payment for foul words is more than due.

 

Forester

Nothing but fair is that which you inherit.

 

PRINCESS

See see, my beauty will be saved by merit!

O heresy in fair, fit for these days!

A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise.

But come, the bow: now mercy goes to kill,

And shooting well is then accounted ill.

Thus will I save my credit in the shoot:

Not wounding, pity would not let me do't;

If wounding, then it was to show my skill,

That more for praise than purpose meant to kill.

And out of question so it is sometimes,

Glory grows guilty of detested crimes,

When, for fame's sake, for praise, an outward part,

We bend to that the working of the heart;

As I for praise alone now seek to spill

The poor deer's blood, that my heart means no ill.

 

BOYET

Do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty

Only for praise sake, when they strive to be

Lords o'er their lords?

 

PRINCESS

Only for praise: and praise we may afford

To any lady that subdues a lord.

 

BOYET

Here comes a member of the commonwealth.

 

Enter COSTARD

 

COSTARD

God dig-you-den all! Pray you, which is the head lady?

 

PRINCESS

Thou shalt know her, fellow, by the rest that have no heads.

 

COSTARD

Which is the greatest lady, the highest?

 

PRINCESS

The thickest and the tallest.

 

COSTARD

The thickest and the tallest! it is so; truth is truth.

An your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit,

One o' these maids' girdles for your waist should be fit.

Are not you the chief woman? you are the thickest here.

 

PRINCESS

What's your will, sir? what's your will?

 

COSTARD

I have a letter from Monsieur Biron to one Lady Rosaline.

 

PRINCESS

O, thy letter, thy letter! he's a good friend of mine:

Stand aside, good bearer. Boyet, you can carve;

Break up this capon.

 

BOYET

I am bound to serve.

This letter is mistook, it importeth none here;

It is writ to Jaquenetta.

 

PRINCESS

We will read it, I swear.

Break the neck of the wax, and every one give ear.

 

Reads

 

BOYET

'By heaven, that thou art fair, is most infallible;

true, that thou art beauteous; truth itself, that

thou art lovely. More fairer than fair, beautiful

than beauteous, truer than truth itself, have

commiseration on thy heroical vassal! The

magnanimous and most illustrate king Cophetua set

eye upon the pernicious and indubitate beggar

Zenelophon; and he it was that might rightly say,

Veni, vidi, vici; which to annothanize in the

vulgar,--O base and obscure vulgar!--videlicet, He

came, saw, and overcame: he came, one; saw two;

overcame, three. Who came? the king: why did he

come? to see: why did he see? to overcome: to

whom came he? to the beggar: what saw he? the

beggar: who overcame he? the beggar. The

conclusion is victory: on whose side? the king's.

The captive is enriched: on whose side? the

beggar's. The catastrophe is a nuptial: on whose

side? the king's: no, on both in one, or one in

both. I am the king; for so stands the comparison:

thou the beggar; for so witnesseth thy lowliness.

Shall I command thy love? I may: shall I enforce

thy love? I could: shall I entreat thy love? I

will. What shalt thou exchange for rags? robes;

for tittles? titles; for thyself? me. Thus,

expecting thy reply, I profane my lips on thy foot,

my eyes on thy picture. and my heart on thy every

part. Thine, in the dearest design of industry,

DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO.'

Thus dost thou hear the Nemean lion roar

'Gainst thee, thou lamb, that standest as his prey.

Submissive fall his princely feet before,

And he from forage will incline to play:

But if thou strive, poor soul, what art thou then?

Food for his rage, repasture for his den.

 

PRINCESS

What plume of feathers is he that indited this letter?

What vane? what weathercock? did you ever hear better?

 

BOYET

I am much deceived but I remember the style.

 

PRINCESS

Else your memory is bad, going o'er it erewhile.

 

BOYET

This Armado is a Spaniard, that keeps here in court;

A phantasime, a Monarcho, and one that makes sport

To the prince and his bookmates.

 

PRINCESS

Thou fellow, a word:

Who gave thee this letter?

 

COSTARD

I told you; my lord.

 

PRINCESS

To whom shouldst thou give it?

 

COSTARD

From my lord to my lady.

 

PRINCESS

From which lord to which lady?

 

COSTARD

From my lord Biron, a good master of mine,

To a lady of France that he call'd Rosaline.

 

PRINCESS

Thou hast mistaken his letter. Come, lords, away.

 

To ROSALINE

 

Here, sweet, put up this: 'twill be thine another day.

 

Exeunt PRINCESS and train

 

BOYET

Who is the suitor? who is the suitor?

 

ROSALINE

Shall I teach you to know?

 

BOYET

Ay, my continent of beauty.

 

ROSALINE

Why, she that bears the bow.

Finely put off!

 

BOYET

My lady goes to kill horns; but, if thou marry,

Hang me by the neck, if horns that year miscarry.

Finely put on!

 

ROSALINE

Well, then, I am the shooter.

 

BOYET

And who is your deer?

 

ROSALINE

If we choose by the horns, yourself come not near.

Finely put on, indeed!

 

MARIA

You still wrangle with her, Boyet, and she strikes

at the brow.

 

BOYET

But she herself is hit lower: have I hit her now?

 

ROSALINE

Shall I come upon thee with an old saying, that was

a man when King Pepin of France was a little boy, as

touching the hit it?

 

BOYET

So I may answer thee with one as old, that was a

woman when Queen Guinover of Britain was a little

wench, as touching the hit it.

 

ROSALINE

Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it,

Thou canst not hit it, my good man.

 

BOYET

An I cannot, cannot, cannot,

An I cannot, another can.

 

Exeunt ROSALINE and KATHARINE

 

COSTARD

By my troth, most pleasant: how both did fit it!

 

MARIA

A mark marvellous well shot, for they both did hit it.

 

BOYET

A mark! O, mark but that mark! A mark, says my lady!

Let the mark have a prick in't, to mete at, if it may be.

 

MARIA

Wide o' the bow hand! i' faith, your hand is out.

 

COSTARD

Indeed, a' must shoot nearer, or he'll ne'er hit the clout.

 

BOYET

An if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in.

 

COSTARD

Then will she get the upshoot by cleaving the pin.

 

MARIA

Come, come, you talk greasily; your lips grow foul.

 

COSTARD

She's too hard for you at pricks, sir: challenge her to bowl.

 

BOYET

I fear too much rubbing. Good night, my good owl.

 

Exeunt BOYET and MARIA

 

COSTARD

By my soul, a swain! a most simple clown!

Lord, Lord, how the ladies and I have put him down!

O' my troth, most sweet jests! most incony

vulgar wit!

When it comes so smoothly off, so obscenely, as it

were, so fit.

Armado o' th' one side,--O, a most dainty man!

To see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan!

To see him kiss his hand! and how most sweetly a'

will swear!

And his page o' t' other side, that handful of wit!

Ah, heavens, it is a most pathetical nit!

Sola, sola!

 

Shout within

 

Exit COSTARD, running

 

LOVE'S LABOURS LOST

 

SCENE II. The same.

 

Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL

SIR NATHANIEL

Very reverend sport, truly; and done in the testimony

of a good conscience.

 

HOLOFERNES

The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe

as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in

the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven;

and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra,

the soil, the land, the earth.

 

SIR NATHANIEL

Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly

varied, like a scholar at the least: but, sir, I

assure ye, it was a buck of the first head.

 

HOLOFERNES

Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.

 

DULL

'Twas not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket.

 

HOLOFERNES

Most barbarous intimation! yet a kind of

insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of

explication; facere, as it were, replication, or

rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his

inclination, after his undressed, unpolished,

uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather,

unlettered, or ratherest, unconfirmed fashion, to

insert again my haud credo for a deer.

 

DULL

I said the deer was not a haud credo; twas a pricket.

 

HOLOFERNES

Twice-sod simplicity, his coctus!

O thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!

 

SIR NATHANIEL

Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred

in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he

hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not

replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in

the duller parts:

And such barren plants are set before us, that we

thankful should be,

Which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts that

do fructify in us more than he.

For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool,

So were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school:

But omne bene, say I; being of an old father's mind,

Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.

 

DULL

You two are book-men: can you tell me by your wit

What was a month old at Cain's birth, that's not five

weeks old as yet?

 

HOLOFERNES

Dictynna, goodman Dull; Dictynna, goodman Dull.

 

DULL

What is Dictynna?

 

SIR NATHANIEL

A title to Phoebe, to Luna, to the moon.

 

HOLOFERNES

The moon was a month old when Adam was no more,

And raught not

[+Rat_NL]

testing....

[+Heresomewhere]

A test

[+Arkwright]

test

[+OBCLAN & LAHTAC]

Yeats

Passing a cold eye on life and death. Horsemen pass by.

[+I&J]

testing

[+Geo-Jerry]

test

[+PaRacers]

Christmas test

[+hukilaulau]

test

[+OBCLAN & LAHTAC]

Testing.

 

Cast a cold on on life and death, horsemen pass by. -WB Yeates

[daveindeal]

sig line test

[Mushtang]

asdf

[akmtngirl]

test

[Farka]

test

[+Kiwifamily]

Test

[+PeachyPA]

test

[+Serpentum]

test

[G.O. Ryder]

test to get user id

[+angelgrace]

testing

[toshi_station1973]

test

[+~DeShazo~]

Testing

[dlynch63]

Test

[+AntiBlueFox]

test

[daveindeal]

test

[SeanJC]

Testing some stuff

[+SquALeD]

6ieu5iueuuee

[jstuckeyjr]

Testing

Just testing. This could be fun if I ever figure it out. No time for travel right now. By the way, good luck in the Rose Bowl.

 

Roll Tide!

[+Baumi_B]

Avatar creation instructions

 

Save the desired image to your PC, then:

 

1. Click on My Account tab on left side of home page.

2. Under Account Options on the right side click on Edit My Profile

3. On the Edit Account Details page look for the Virtual You section. Under Avatar click on change/edit

4. On the choose my avatar page, click on the Upload a New Image line

5. Use browse button to find the image you saved to your PC, give it a File Caption and hit Upload

6. Once it is uploaded click on My Details

7. On the Edit Account Details page look for the Virtual You section. Under Avatar click on change/edit

8. Click on desired avatar, then click on Select Photo

9. Click on the Edit Account Details line, key in your password, then page down and click on the Update Account button.

10. Go to the forums and log out and log back in. Your avatar should now appear next to your name.

 

 

To test please use this thread.

Please do not start another testing thread.

Avatar Test

[+Sam-Al-n-theGirls]

testing for user id