3-4 Flashcards
Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signior Leonato?
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 lik’st her.
BENEDICK
Would you buy her that you enquire 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 threescore
What secret hath held you here that you followed
not to Leonato’s?
I would your Grace would constrain me to
tell.
PRINCE
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 And in faith, my lord, I spoke mine.
BENEDICK And by my two faiths and troths, my lord, I
spoke mine.
PRINCE 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.
