The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare
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it with your high and worthy deeds.
‘Twas bravely done, if you bethink you of it.
CLAUDIO.
I know not how to pray your patience;
Yet I must speak. Choose your revenge yourself;
Impose me to what penance your invention
Can lay upon my sin: yet sinn’d I not
But in mistaking.
DON PEDRO.
By my soul, nor I:
And yet, to satisfy this good old man,
I would bend under any heavy weight
That he’ll enjoin me to.
LEONATO.
I cannot bid you bid my daughter live;
That were impossible; but, I pray you both,
Possess the people in Messina here
How innocent she died; and if your love
Can labour aught in sad invention,
Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb,
And sing it to her bones: sing it tonight.
Tomorrow morning come you to my house,
And since you could not be my son-in-law,
Be yet my nephew. My brother hath a daughter,
Almost the copy of my child that’s dead,
And she alone is heir to both of us:
Give her the right you should have given her cousin,
And so dies my revenge.
CLAUDIO.
O noble sir,
Your overkindness doth wring tears from me!
I do embrace your offer; and dispose
For henceforth of poor Claudio.
LEONATO.
Tomorrow then I will expect your coming;
Tonight I take my leave. This naughty man
Shall face to face be brought to Margaret,
Who, I believe, was pack’d in all this wrong,
Hir’d to it by your brother.
BORACHIO.
No, by my soul she was not;
Nor knew not what she did when she spoke to me;
But always hath been just and virtuous
In anything that I do know by her.
DOGBERRY. Moreover, sir,—which, indeed, is not under white and black,— this plaintiff here, the offender, did call me ass: I beseech you, let it be remembered in his punishment. And also, the watch heard them talk of one Deformed: they say he wears a key in his ear and a lock hanging by it, and borrows money in God’s name, the which he hath used so long and never paid, that now men grow hard-hearted, and will lend nothing for God’s sake. Pray you, examine him upon that point.
LEONATO.
I thank thee for thy care and honest pains.
DOGBERRY.
Your worship speaks like a most thankful and reverent youth, and
I praise God for you.
LEONATO.
There’s for thy pains.
DOGBERRY.
God save the foundation!
LEONATO.
Go, I discharge thee of thy prisoner, and I thank thee.
DOGBERRY. I leave an arrant knave with your worship; which I beseech your worship to correct yourself, for the example of others. God keep your worship! I wish your worship well; God restore you to health! I humbly give you leave to depart, and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it! Come, neighbour.
[Exeunt DOGBERRY and VERGES.]
LEONATO.
Until tomorrow morning, lords, farewell.
ANTONIO.
Farewell, my lords: we look for you tomorrow.
DON PEDRO.
We will not fail.
CLAUDIO.
Tonight I’ll mourn with Hero.
[Exeunt DON PEDRO and CLAUDIO.]
LEONATO.
[To the Watch.] Bring you these fellows on. We’ll talk with
Margaret, How her acquaintance grew with this lewd fellow.
[Exeunt.]
Scene 2. LEONATO’S Garden.
[Enter BENEDICK and MARGARET, meeting.]
BENEDICK. Pray thee, sweet Mistress Margaret, deserve well at my hands by helping me to the speech of Beatrice.
MARGARET.
Will you then write me a sonnet in praise of my beauty?
BENEDICK. In so high a style, Margaret, that no man living shall come over it; for, in most comely truth, thou deservest it.
MARGARET.
To have no man come over me! why, shall I always keep below stairs?
BENEDICK.
Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound’s mouth; it catches.
MARGARET.
And yours as blunt as the fencer’s foils, which hit, but hurt not.
BENEDICK. A most manly wit, Margaret; it will not hurt a woman: and so, I pray thee, call Beatrice. I give thee the bucklers.
MARGARET.
Give us the swords, we have bucklers of our own.
BENEDICK. If you use them, Margaret, you must put in the pikes with a vice; and they are dangerous weapons for maids.
MARGARET.
Well, I will call Beatrice to you, who I think hath legs.
BENEDICK.
And therefore will come.
[Exit MARGARET.]
The god of love,
That sits above,
And knows me, and knows me,
How pitiful I deserve,—
I mean, in singing: but in loving, Leander the good swimmer, Troilus the first employer of panders, and a whole book full of these quondam carpet-mongers, whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse, why, they were never so truly turned over and over as my poor self in love. Marry, I cannot show it in rime; I have tried: I can find out no rime to ‘lady’ but ‘baby’, an innocent rhyme; for ‘scorn,’ ‘horn’, a hard rime; for ‘school’, ‘fool’, a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings: no, I was not born under a riming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.
[Enter BEATRICE.]
Sweet Beatrice, wouldst thou come when I called thee?
BEATRICE.
Yea, signior; and depart when you bid me.
BENEDICK.
O, stay but till then!
BEATRICE. ‘Then’ is spoken; fare you well now: and yet, ere I go, let me go with that I came for; which is, with knowing what hath passed between you and Claudio.
BENEDICK.
Only foul words; and thereupon I will kiss thee.
BEATRICE. Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.
BENEDICK. Thou hast frighted the word out of his right sense, so forcible