Act 2

Much Ado About Nothing Play

(LEONATO, HERO and BEATRICE.)

LEONATO

Was not Count John here at supper?

HERO

I saw him not.

BEATRICE

How tartly that gentleman looks. I never can see him but I am heart-burned an hour after.

HERO

He is of a very melancholy disposition.

BEATRICE

He were an excellent man that were made just in the midway between him and Benedick. The one is too like an image and says nothing,

and the other too like my lady’s eldest son, evermore tattling.*

LEONATO

Then half Signior Benedick’s tongue in Count John’s mouth, and half Count John’s melancholy in Signior Benedick’s face–

BEATRICE

With a good leg, and money enough in his purse, such a man would win any woman in the world.

LEONATO

By my troth niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue.

BEATRICE:

For the which blessing I am upon my knees every morning and evening.

Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face. I had rather lie in the woollen.*

LEONATO

You may light on a husband that hath no beard.

BEATRICE

What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man;

and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.

LEONATO

Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.

lady’s eldest…tattling – a spoiled first-born boy who talks too much,

in the wollen – between blankets with no sheets

BEATRICE

Not till God make men of some other metal than earth.

Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a piece of valiant dust, to make account of her life to a clod of wayward marl?*

No, uncle, I’ll none.

LEONATO

Niece, you apprehend shrewdly.

BEATRICE

I have a good eye, uncle. I can see a church by daylight.

HERO

The revellers are entering.

(All put on their masks.)

(Enter DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK, DON JOHN, BORACHIO, MARGARET,

URSULA and others, masked. The dance begins.)

DON PEDRO

Lady, will you walk about with your friend?

HERO

So you walk softly and look sweetly and say nothing, I am yours for the walk.

DON PEDRO

With me in your company?

HERO

I may say so when I please.

DON PEDRO

And when please you to say so?

HERO

When I like your face, for God defend the lute* should be like the case.*

DON PEDRO

Speak low if you speak love. (Drawing her aside.)

BORACHIO

Well, I would you did like me.

MARGARET

So would not I for your own sake, for I have many ill qualities.

marl – clay; earth, lute – an old stringed instrument like a guitar,

lute…case – your face should be like your mask

BORACHIO

Which is one?

MARGARET

I say my prayers aloud.

BORACHIO

I love you the better. The hearers may cry amen.

MARGARET

God match me with a good dancer.

BORACHIO

Amen.

MARGARET

And God keep him out of my sight when the dance is done! Answer, clerk.*

BORACHIO

No more words. (They step aside.)

BEATRICE

Will you not tell me who told you so?

BENEDICK

No, you shall pardon me.

BEATRICE

Nor will you not tell me who you are?

BENEDICK

Not now.

BEATRICE

That I was disdainful? Well this was Signior Benedick that said so.

BENEDICK

What’s he?

BEATRICE

I am sure you know him well enough.

BENEDICK

Not I, believe me.

BEATRICE

Did he never make you laugh?

clerk – the parish clerk read the responses in church services

BENEDICK

I pray you, what is he?

BEATRICE

Why, he is the Prince’s jester, a very dull fool. His only gift is in devising impossible slanders. None but libertines* delight in him;

and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villainy;

for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and beat him. I am sure he is in the fleet. I would he had boarded me.

BENEDICK

When I know the gentleman, I’ll tell him what you say.

BEATRICE

Do, do. He’ll but break a comparison* or two on me;

which peradventure, not marked or not laughed at, strikes him into a melancholy; and then there’s a partridge wing saved, for the fool will eat no supper that night. We must follow the leaders.

BENEDICK

In every good thing.

BEATRICE

Nay, if they lead to any ill, I will leave them at the next turning.

(Dance concludes.)

(All exit except DON JOHN, BORACHIO and CLAUDIO.)

DON JOHN

Are not you Signior Benedick?

CLAUDIO (still masked.)

You know me well, I am he.

DON JOHN

Signior, you are very near my brother in love.

He is enamored of Hero. I pray you dissuade him from her as she is no equal to his birth.

CLAUDIO

How know you he loves her?

DON JOHN

I heard him swear his affection.

libertines – loose livers, break a comparison – attempt a joke

BORACHIO

So did I too, and swore he would marry her tonight.

DON JOHN

Come, let us to the banquet.

(Exeunt DON JOHN and BORACHIO.)

CLAUDIO

Thus answer I in the name of Benedick but hear these ill news with the ears of Claudio. ‘Tis certain so. The Prince woos for himself.

Friendship is constant in all other things save in the office and affairs of love.

Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues; let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent; for beauty is a witch against whose charms faith melteth into blood.

Farewell therefore Hero.

BENEDICK

Count Claudio?

CLAUDIO

Yea, the same.

BENEDICK

Come, will you go with me?

CLAUDIO

Whither?

BENEDICK

About your own business, for the Prince hath got your Hero.

CLAUDIO

I wish him joy of her.

BENEDICK

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.

CLAUDIO

If you’ll not leave me, I’ll leave you.

(Exit 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.

Nay, I am not so reputed. It is the bitter disposition of Beatrice that so gives me out. Well, I’ll be revenged as I may.

(Enter DON PEDRO.)

DON PEDRO

The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel with you.

The gentleman that danced with her told her she is much wronged by you.

BENEDICK

O, she misused me past the endurance of a block!

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, 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.

(Enter CLAUDIO, BEATRICE, HERO and LEONATO.)

DON PEDRO

Look, here she comes.

BENEDICK

Will your grace command me to any service to the world’s end? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes;*

I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the furthest inch of Asia; fetch you a hair off the Great Cham’s* beard;

do you any embassage to the Pigmies, rather than hold three words conference with this harpy.* You have no employment for me?

DON PEDRO

None but to desire your good company.

BENEDICK

O God, sir, here’s a dish I love not! I cannot endure my Lady Tongue.

(Exit BENEDICK.)

DON PEDRO

Come lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick. You have put him down lady, you have put him down.

sedges – reeds, great thaw – (during which, one must stay at home because the roads are impassable), at a mark – beside a target, poniards – daggers, terminations – name-calling, Antipodes – Australia, Great Cham – ruler of the Mongols, harpy – a predatory mythological creature with the head of a woman and body of a bird

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

How now Count, wherefore are you sad?

CLAUDIO

Not sad, my lord.

DON PEDRO

How then, sick?

CLAUDIO

Neither, my lord.

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

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 good will obtained.

Name the day of marriage and God give thee joy.

LEONATO

Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes. His grace hath made the match, and all grace say amen to it.

BEATRICE

Speak count, ’tis your cue.

CLAUDIO

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy. I were little happy if I could say how much.

Lady, as you are mine I am yours. I give away myself to you and dote upon the exchange.

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

Yea my lord; I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care. My cousin tells him in his ear that he is in her heart.

CLAUDIO

And so she doth, cousin.

BEATRICE

Good Lord, for alliance. Thus goes every one to the world but I. 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.

LEONATO

Niece, will you look to those things I told you of?

BEATRICE

I cry you mercy, uncle.

Cousins, God give you joy.

By your grace’s pardon.

(Exit BEATRICE.)

DON PEDRO

By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady.

LEONATO

There’s little of the melancholy element in her, my lord.

DON PEDRO

She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.

LEONATO

O by no means. She mocks all her wooers.

DON PEDRO

She were an excellent wife for Benedick.

got – fathered

LEONATO

O Lord! My lord, if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad.

DON PEDRO

Count Claudio, when mean you to go to church?

CLAUDIO

tomorrow, my lord. Time goes on crutches till love have all his rites.

LEONATO

Not till Monday my dear son, which is hence just seven-nights; and a time too brief too, to have all things answer my mind.

DON PEDRO

Come, you shake your head at so long a breathing,

but I warrant thee Claudio, the time shall not go dully by us. I will in the interim undertake one of Hercules’ labors, which is, to bring Signior Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection the one with the other.

I would fain* have it a match, and I doubt not but to fashion it

if you three will but minister such assistance as I shall give you direction.

LEONATO

My lord, I am for you, though it cost me ten nights’ watchings.

CLAUDIO

And I, my lord.

DON PEDRO

And you too, gentle Hero?

HERO

I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my cousin to a good husband.

DON PEDRO

And Benedick is of a noble strain, of approved valor and confirmed honesty.

I will teach you how to humor your cousin, that she shall fall in love with Benedick; and I, with your two helps, will so practice on Benedick,

that in despite of his quick wit and queasy stomach, he shall fall in love with Beatrice.

If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an archer; his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods. Go in with me, and I will tell you my drift.

(Exeunt.)

fain – gladly

Act 2, Scene 2 Leonato’s house

(DON JOHN and BORACHIO.)

DON JOHN

It is so. The Count Claudio shall marry the daughter of Leonato.

BORACHIO

Yea my lord; but I can cross* it.

DON JOHN

How canst thou cross this marriage?

BORACHIO

I think I told your lordship how much I am in the favor of Margaret, the waiting gentlewoman to Hero.

DON JOHN

I remember.

BORACHIO

I can, at any unseasonable instant of the night, appoint her to look out at her lady’s chamber window.

DON JOHN

What life is in that, to be the death of this marriage?

BORACHIO

Go, find Don Pedro and the Count Claudio alone.

Tell them that you know that Hero loves me. They will scarcely believe this without trial.

Offer them instances; which shall bear no less likelihood than to see me at her chamber-window, hear me call Margaret Hero, hear Margaret term me Claudio;

and bring them to see this the very night before the intended wedding.

DON JOHN

Be cunning in the working of this, and thy fee is a thousand ducats.

BORACHIO

Be you constant in the accusation, and my cunning shall not shame me.

DON JOHN

I will presently go learn their day of marriage.

(Exeunt.)

cross – ruin; prevent

Act 2, Scene 3 Leonato’s garden

(BENEDICK.)

BENEDICK

I do much wonder that one man,

seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviors to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others,

become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love; and such a man is Claudio.

I have known when he would have walked ten mile afoot to see a good armor; and now will he lie ten nights awake carving the fashion of a new doublet.

He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier;

and now is he turned orthography;* his words a very fantastical banquet–just so many strange dishes. May I be so converted and see with these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not.

One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well; another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.

Rich she shall be, that’s certain; wise, or I’ll none; virtuous, or I’ll never cheapen her; fair, or I’ll never look on her; mild, or come not near me;

of good discourse, an excellent musician and her hair–shall be of what color it please God. Ha! The Prince and Monsieur Love. I will hide me in the arbor.

(BENEDICK hides.)

(Enter DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, LEONATO and BALTHASAR.)

DON PEDRO

Come, shall we hear this music?

See you where Benedick hath hid himself?

CLAUDIO

Very well, my lord.

DON PEDRO

Come Balthasar, we’ll hear that song again.

BALTHASAR

(Sings.) Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never:

Then sigh not so, but let them go, And be you blithe and bonny, Coverting all your sounds of woe Into Hey nonny, nonny.

orthography – overly precise in his choice and pronunciation of words

Sing no more ditties, sing no more, Of dumps so dull and heavy;

The fraud of men was ever so, Since summer first was leafy:

Then sigh not so, but let them go, And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into Hey nonny, nonny.

DON PEDRO

By my troth, a good song.

BENEDICK

And he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him.

DON PEDRO

Balthazar, I pray thee get us some excellent music;

for tomorrow night we would have it at the lady Hero’s chamber window.

BALTHASAR

The best I can my lord.

DON PEDRO

Do so, farewell.

(Exit BALTHASAR.)

DON PEDRO

Come hither, Leonato.

What was it you told me of today, that your niece Beatrice was in love with Signior Benedick?

CLAUDIO

I did never think that lady would have loved any man.

LEONATO

No, nor I neither; but most wonderful that she should so dote on Signior Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviors seemed ever to abhor.

BENEDICK

Is it possible? Sits the wind in that corner?

DON PEDRO

Why, what effects of passion shows she?

LEONATO

What effects, my lord? She will sit you–(To CLAUDIO.) you heard my daughter tell you how.

CLAUDIO

She did, indeed.

DON PEDRO

How, how, I pray you?

Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?

LEONATO

No, and swears she never will. That’s her torment.

CLAUDIO

‘Tis true, indeed. So your daughter says.

‘Shall I,’ says she, ‘that have so oft encountered him with scorn, write to him that I love him?’

LEONATO

This says she now when she is beginning to write to him;

for she’ll be up twenty times a night, and there will she sit, in her smock, till she have writ a sheet of paper. My daughter tells us all.

Then, she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence,

railed at herself that she should be so immodest to write to one that she knew would flout* her.

CLAUDIO

Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses– ‘O sweet Benedick! God give me patience!’

LEONATO

She doth indeed; my daughter says so.

And the ecstasy hath so much overborne her that my daughter is sometime afeared she will do a desperate outrage to herself.

CLAUDIO

Hero thinks surely she will die; for she says she will die, if he love her not, and she will die, ere she make her love known.

DON PEDRO

Shall we go seek Benedick and tell him of her love?

CLAUDIO

Never tell him, my lord.

DON PEDRO

I love Benedick well, and could wish he would modestly examine himself to see how much he is unworthy so good a lady.

NELL

Dinner!

LEONATO

My lord, will you walk? Dinner is ready.

flout – scorn

CLAUDIO

If he do not dote on her after this, I will never trust my expectation.

DON PEDRO

Let there be the same net spread for her, and that must your daughter and her gentlewomen carry. Let us send her to call him in to dinner.

(Exeunt DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO and LEONATO. BENEDICK comes forward.)

BENEDICK

This can be no trick.

The conference was sadly borne. They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady. It seems her affections have their full bent.

Love me? Why, it must be requited!*

I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against marriage. But doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.

Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe* a man from the career of his humor?* No! The world must be peopled!

When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married. Here comes Beatrice. By this day she’s a fair lady. I do spy some marks of love in her.

(Enter BEATRICE.)

BEATRICE

Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.

BENEDICK

Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.

BEATRICE

I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me. If it had been painful, I would not have come.

BENEDICK

You take pleasure then in the message?

BEATRICE

Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife’s point, and choke a daw* withal. You have no stomach,* signor? Fare you well.

(Exit BEATRICE.)

BENEDICK

Ha! ‘Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.’ There’s a double meaning in that. ‘I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me.’

That’s as much to say, ‘any pains I take for you is as easy as thanks.’