| [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] | |
| [Sings] | |
| 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 bookful of these quondam carpet-mangers, 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 rhyme; I have tried: I can find out no rhyme to 'lady' but 'baby,' an innocent rhyme; for 'scorn,' 'horn,' a hard rhyme; for, 'school,' 'fool,' a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings: no, I was not born under a rhyming 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; 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 is thy wit. But I must tell thee plainly, Claudio undergoes my challenge; and either I must shortly hear from him, or I will subscribe him a coward. And, I pray thee now, tell me for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me? |
| BEATRICE | For them all together; which maintained so politic a state of evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with them. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me? |
| BENEDICK | Suffer love! a good epithet! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will. |
| BEATRICE | In spite of your heart, I think; alas, poor heart! If you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours; for I will never love that which my friend hates. |
| BENEDICK | Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably. |
| BEATRICE | It appears not in this confession: there's not one wise man among twenty that will praise himself. |
| BENEDICK | An old, an old instance, Beatrice, that lived in the lime of good neighbours. If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings and the widow weeps. |
| BEATRICE | And how long is that, think you? |
| BENEDICK | Question: why, an hour in clamour and a quarter in rheum: therefore is it most expedient for the wise, if Don Worm, his conscience, find no impediment to the contrary, to be the trumpet of his own virtues, as I am to myself. So much for praising myself, who, I myself will bear witness, is praiseworthy: and now tell me, how doth your cousin? |
| BEATRICE | Very ill. |
| BENEDICK | And how do you? |
| BEATRICE | Very ill too. |
| BENEDICK | Serve God, love me and mend. There will I leave you too, for here comes one in haste. |
| [Enter URSULA] | |
| URSULA | Madam, you must come to your uncle. Yonder's old coil at home: it is proved my Lady Hero hath been falsely accused, the prince and Claudio mightily abused; and Don John is the author of all, who is fed and gone. Will you come presently? |
| BEATRICE | Will you go hear this news, signior? |
| BENEDICK | I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes; and moreover I will go with thee to thy uncle's. |
| [Exeunt] |