Enter Beatrice

By this day, she’s a fair lady. I do spy some marks of love in her.

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

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 took pains to thank me.’ That’s as much as to say ‘Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks.’—If I do not take pity of her I am a villain. If I do not love her I am a Jew. I will go get her picture. Exit

3.1 Enter Hero and two gentlewomen, Margaret and Ursula

HERO

Good Margaret, run thee to the parlour.

There shalt thou find my cousin Beatrice

Proposing with the Prince and Claudio.

Whisper her ear, and tell her I and Ursula

Walk in the orchard, and our whole discourse

Is all of her. Say that thou overheard’st us,

And bid her steal into the pleachèd bower

Where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun,

Forbid the sun to enter—like favourites

Made proud by princes, that advance their pride

Against that power that bred it. There will she hide her

To listen our propose. This is thy office.

Bear thee well in it, and leave us alone.

MARGARET

I’ll make her come, I warrant you, presently.

Exit

HERO

Now, Ursula, when Beatrice doth come,

As we do trace this alley up and down

Our talk must only be of Benedick.

When I do name him, let it be thy part

To praise him more than ever man did merit.

My talk to thee must be how Benedick

Is sick in love with Beatrice. Of this matter

Is little Cupid’s crafty arrow made,

That only wounds by hearsay.

Enter Beatrice Now begin,

For look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs

Close by the ground to hear our conference.

URSULA

The pleasant’st angling is to see the fish

Cut with her golden oars the silver stream

And greedily devour the treacherous bait.

So angle we for Beatrice, who even now

Is couched in the woodbine coverture.

Fear you not my part of the dialogue.

HERO

Then go we near her, that her ear lose nothing

Of the false-sweet bait that we lay for it.—

They approach Beatrice’s hiding-place

No, truly, Ursula, she is too disdainful.

I know her spirits are as coy and wild

As haggards of the rock.

URSULA

But are you sure

That Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?

HERO

So says the Prince and my new trothèd lord.

URSULA

And did they bid you tell her of it, madam?

HERO

They did entreat me to acquaint her of it,

But I persuaded them, if they loved Benedick,

To wish him wrestle with affection

And never to let Beatrice know of it.

URSULA

Why did you so? Doth not the gentleman

Deserve as full as fortunate a bed

As ever Beatrice shall couch upon?

HERO

O god of love! I know he doth deserve

As much as may be yielded to a man.

But nature never framed a woman’s heart

Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice.

Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,

Misprising what they look on, and her wit

Values itself so highly that to her

All matter else seems weak. She cannot love,

Nor take no shape nor project of affection,

She is so self-endearèd.

URSULA Sure, I think so.

And therefore certainly it were not good

She knew his love, lest she’ll make sport at it.

HERO

Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man,

How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured,

But she would spell him backward. If fair-faced,

She would swear the gentleman should be her sister.

If black, why nature, drawing of an antic,

Made a foul blot. If tall, a lance ill headed;

If low, an agate very vilely cut;

If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds;

If silent, why, a block moved with none.

So turns she every man the wrong side out,

And never gives to truth and virtue that

Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.

URSULA

Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable.

HERO

No, not to be so odd and from all fashions

As Beatrice is cannot be commendable.

But who dare tell her so? If I should speak

She would mock me into air, O, she would laugh me

Out of myself, press me to death with wit.

Therefore let Benedick, like covered fire,

Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly.

It were a better death than die with mocks,

Which is as bad as die with tickling.

URSULA

Yet tell her of it, hear what she will say.

HERO

No. Rather I will go to Benedick And counsel him to fight against his passion. And truly, I’ll devise some honest slanders To stain my cousin with. One doth not know How much an ill word may empoison liking.

URSULA

O, do not do your cousin such a wrong.

She cannot be so much without true judgement,

Having so swift and excellent a wit

As she is prized to have, as to refuse

So rare a gentleman as Signor Benedick.

HERO

He is the only man of Italy,