This is an accident of hourly proof, Which I mistrusted not. Farewell, therefore, Hero! Re-enter BENEDICK BENE. Count Claudio? CLAUD. Yea, the same. BENE. Come, will you go with me? BENE. 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. CLAUD. I wish him joy of her. BENE. Why, that's spoken like an honest drovier; so they sell bullocks. But did you think the prince would have served you thus? CLAUD. I pray you, leave me. BENE. HO! now you strike like the blind man; 't was the boy that stole your meat, and you'll beat the post. CLAUD. If it will not be, I'll leave you. [Exit. BENE. 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 loyalty (in friendship) is swallowed up by the heat of passion. This is an incident of hourly experience, though it did not cause me mistrust, though I did not suspect it. 167 garland] Cf. forsaken Barbara's song in Othello, IV, iii, 49: "Sing all a green willow must be my garland." See 1. 194, infra. 168 usurer's chain] the gold chain usually worn by wealthy citizens. 160 170 178 & 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 D. PEDRO. Now, signior, where 's the count? did you see him? BENE. 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. D. PEDRO. To be whipped! What's his fault? BENE. The flat transgression of a school-boy, who, being overjoyed with finding a birds' nest, shows it his companion, and he steals it. D. PEDRO. Wilt thou make a trust a transgression? The transgression is in the stealer. BENE. Yet it had not been amiss the rod had been 183-185 it is the base .. gives me out] it is the evil, nay, rather, the bitter-tongued disposition of Beatrice, that makes her claim to personate the world and to speak the opinion of the world, and then gives me this character. 190 a lodge in a warren] a keeper's hut, necessarily a lonely dwelling, in a game preserve. 188 201 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. D. PEDRO. I will but teach them to sing, and restore them to the owner. BENE. If their singing answer your saying, by my faith, you say honestly. D. PEDRO. The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you: the gentleman that danced with her told her she is much wronged by you. BENE. 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 had 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 218 impossible conveyance] incredible dexterity. 220 speaks poniards] Cf. Hamlet, III, ii, 386: “I will speak daggers to her, but use none. 221 terminations] Benedict's extravagant synonym for "terms," 212 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. D. PEDRO. Look, here she comes. Re-enter CLAUDIO, BEATRICE, HERO, and LEONATO BENE. 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 toothpicker 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' 227 Ate] The spirit of discord (inciting to war) of Homeric mythology. A full description of her appears in Spenser's Faery Queen, IV, i, 19-30. 228 some scholar would conjure her] The exorcism of evil spirits was commonly couched in the Latin tongue, and the exorcist was of necessity reckoned a scholar. Cf. Hamlet, I, i, 42: "Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio." 238-240 Prester John . . . great Cham... Pigmies] These personages of romance were deemed to live in the remotest parts of Asia. "Prester John" was a fabulous king of vast wealth; "the great Cham" was the supreme ruler of the Mongols, and the "Pigmies" were a tribe in the northern mountains of India. In the early French romance of Huon of Bordeaux, which Lord Berners translated into English in 1534, one of the feats imposed on the hero by his French suzerain is to bring a "handful of the hair of the beard" of the ruler of Babylon together with four of his greatest teeth. 232 conference with this harpy. You have no employment for me? D. PEDRO. None, but to desire your good company. BENE. O God, sir, here's a dish I love not: I cannot endure my Lady Tongue. [Exit. D. PEDRO. Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick. BEAT. 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. D. PEDRO. You have put him down, lady, you have put him down. BEAT. 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. D. PEDRO. Why, how now, count! wherefore are you sad? CLAUD. Not sad, my lord. D. PEDRO. How then? sick? CLAUD. Neither, my lord. BEAT. The count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well; but civil count, civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion. 249 use] interest. Cf. Sonnet vi, 5: "That use is not forbidden usury.' 263 civil] A quibble on "Civil" and "Seville." According to Cotgrave's Fr.-Engl. Dict., "a civile orange" was was "aigre-douce" "betweene sweet and sower." 242 251 260 |