Leonato is planning a masked dance that night as an amusement for the royal company he is hosting, and during the preparations, Beatrice is her usual merry self, as busily denying she will have a husband as Benedick had earlier been denying he would have a wife. She even looks forward, with some cheer, to the traditional punishment Elizabethans imagined for old maids. She will not marry and

—Act II, scene i, lines 39-41

The "berrord" is the "bearward" or animal keeper. She will accept a com from him as wages and do a job for him, which is to lead his apes into hell (see page I-454).

Don Pedro intends to take the occasion of the masked ball to smooth Claudio's path to Hero. He will dance with Hero, pretending to be Claudio. Drawing her to one side, and speaking more gallantly than Claudio himself might be able to, he will win her love for his friend.

When Don Pedro dances with Hero, she naturally tries to find out who is under the mask, and he says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 95-96

This refers to a tale told in Ovid's Metamorphoses (see page I-8).

Jupiter (Jove) and Mercury once traveled through Asia Minor in disguise to test the hospitality of its inhabitants. They were treated discourteously everywhere until they came to the lowly cottage of an old, poor couple, Philemon and Baucis. Their welcome there was so hospitable that they offered to grant the couple whatever their wish might be. Their only wish was that they might die together, without warning, at the same moment, so that neither should know one moment of the pain of living without the other. It was granted.

Don Pedro, in referring to himself as Jove, may be tempted at the moment to speak for himself rather than for Claudio. Indeed, Don John, for sheer mischief, will take the occasion soon to get the news to Claudio that Don Pedro had indeed spoken for himself (though, in the end, he did not).

Benedick dances with Beatrice at the ball and, under the cover of anonymity, tells her of certain anonymous slanders he has heard concerning her. She repeats the information and guesses the informer, saying:

—Act II, scene i, lines 128-30

The "Hundred Merry Tales" was a popular, and therefore well-worn, collection of funny stories, most of them coarse. It would be equivalent, in modern terms, to saying that she had gotten her witty sayings out of Joe Miller's joke book.

It was a deadly thing to say to Beatrice and in vengeance (she probably knew very well with whom she was dancing) she floods Benedick with cruel remarks which he cannot counter.

Benedick has so much the worse of it on this occasion that after the dance he boils over with frustration, and says to Don Pedro concerning Beatrice:

—Act II, scene i, lines 250-54

She is such a shrew, in other words, that even Hercules would bow before her in fear.

As a matter of fact, the image is not too far removed from one of the legends concerning Hercules. As a punishment for some crime, Hercules was condemned to serve Omphale, Queen of Libya, for three years. She chose to have him do the woman's work about the house, spinning, cleaning, making beds, while she wore his lion's skin and carried his club.

As for Ate, she is the Greek goddess of vengeance and mischief, who created so much trouble even among the gods that she was cast out of heaven and condemned to live on earth, where, Benedick implies, she has taken on the likeness of Beatrice.

And when Beatrice enters, Benedick bounds to his feet at once and demands to be sent away. He says to Don Pedro melodramatically:

—Act II, scene i, lines 261-69

The Antipodes ("with the feet pointed opposite") is a term invented by the Greeks. When their philosophers worked out the fact that the earth was spherical, there appeared at once the odd and paradoxical situation that people might live on the other side of the earth, with their feet pointed upward (from the standpoint of the Greeks).

Since the temperature rose as one went south, some Greek philosophers suggested there was a burning zone about the equator that men could not pass and that the world of the Antipodes (the Southern Hemisphere) could never be reached.

(By Shakespeare's time this was shown to be false, but the Antipodes remained as a symbol of the distant and unattainable.)

Prester John ("John the Priest") was a mythical monarch whose existence was widely accepted in the later Middle Ages. He was supposed to be a Christian king of immense power, with wide dominions in Asia, a king who had conquered the pagan regions and converted them to Christianity (hence his title).

There were indeed Christians in the Far East. These were the Nestorian Christians, a heretical sect that had been driven out of the East Roman Empire in the fifth century and had found haven in Persia and beyond. They penetrated to central Asia and China and, for a while in the twelfth century, were influential among the Mongol tribes who were gaining power.

In 1145 a Syrian bishop, Hugh of Gebal, brought the tale to the papal court. He spoke of a great Christian monarch in the East, thus combining a Mongol conqueror (who was not a Christian) with the Nestorians (who were not kings). In 1177 Pope Alexander III wrote a letter to this supposed Prester John, suggesting an alliance against the Moslems. The messenger carrying the letter never returned and nothing is known of his fate. Nevertheless, people continued to believe in the myth of a great Christian empire somewhere beyond the horizon.