9-10 Flashcards
Enter
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 drover; 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.
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 1 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.
PRINCE 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 goodwill 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.
