Much ADO Flashcards
Messenger
Don Pedro is approached
Good Signor Leonato, are you come to meet your
trouble? The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and
you encounter it.
Good Sir Leonato, have you come to meet your burden—the burden of hosting me and all my followers? Most people avoid expense, but you welcome it.
Beatrice
You always end with a jade’s trick. I know you of old.
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.
Leonato
Signor Benedick, no, for then were you a child.
Truly, the lady fathers herself.—Be happy, lady, for you are like an honorable father.
But seriously, the lady proves who her father is by her resemblance to him.
Leonato
Please it your Grace lead on?
Your hand, Leonato. We will go together.
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.
You embrace your charge too willingly. I think this is
your daughter.
You welcome your troubles too cheerfully. [Turning to HERO] This must be your daughter.
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.
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.
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— [to DON PEDRO] 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.
Amen, if you love her, for the lady is very well
worthy.
CLAUDIO
You speak this to fetch me in, my lord.
By my troth, I speak my thought.
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.
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,
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.”
DON PEDRO
Nay, if Cupid have not spent all his quiver in Venice,
thou wilt quake for this shortly.
Well, if Cupid hasn’t used up all his arrows in lustful Venice, then he’ll soon have his revenge by making you shake with love.
BENEDICK
I look for an earthquake too, then.
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.
But in the meantime hurry to Leonato’s, good Sir Benedick. Give him my compliments and tell him that I’ll be there for dinner, since I know he’s done a lot of preparation for it.
CLAUDIO
To the tuition of God. From my house, if I had it—
DON PEDRO
The sixth of July. Your loving friend, Benedick.
CLAUDIO
O, my lord,
When you went onward on this ended action,
I looked 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 returned 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?
I know we shall have reveling tonight.
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.
CLAUDIO
Hath Leonato any son, my lord?
DON PEDRO
No child but Hero; she’s his only heir.
Dost thou affect her, Claudio?
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.
DON PEDRO
Now, Signior, where’s the Count? Did you see him?
Benedick
Troth, my lord, 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,
DON PEDRO
The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you. The
gentleman that danced with her told her she is much
wronged by you.
LEONATO
The revelers are entering, brother. Make good room.
DON PEDRO
Lady, will you walk a bout with your friend?
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 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 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 indeedall disquiet, horror and
perturbation follows her.
DON PEDRO
Look, here she comes.
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 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 Pygmies, rather than hold three words’
conference with this harpy. You have no employment for
me?
DON PEDRO
None but to desire your good company.
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.
BENEDICK
O God, sir, here’s a dish I love not. I cannot endure
my Lady Tongue!
DON PEDRO
[to BEATRICE] Come, lady, come, you have lost the heart
of Signior Benedick.
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?
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 goodwill
obtained. Name the day of marriage, and God give thee
joy.
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
Good Lord for alliance! Thus goes everyone 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 o’ 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!
DON PEDRO
By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady.
LEONATO
There’s little of the melancholy element in her, my
310
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
Oh, by no means. She mocks all her wooers out of suit.
DON PEDRO
She were an excellent wife for Benedick.
