Cry shame upon her? Could she here deny

The story that is printed in her blood?

Do not live, Hero, do not ope thine eyes,

For did I think thou wouldst not quickly die,

Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames,

Myself would on the rearward of reproaches

Strike at thy life. Grieved I I had but one?

Chid I for that at frugal nature’s frame?

O one too much by thee! Why had I one?

Why ever wast thou lovely in my eyes?

Why had I not with charitable hand

Took up a beggar’s issue at my gates,

Who smirched thus and mired with infamy,

I might have said ‘No part of it is mine,

This shame derives itself from unknown loins.’

But mine, and mine I loved, and mine I praised,

And mine that I was proud on, mine so much

That I myself was to myself not mine,

Valuing of her—why she, O she is fallen

Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea

Hath drops too few to wash her clean again,

And salt too little which may season give

To her foul tainted flesh.

BENEDICK Sir, sir, be patient.

For my part, I am so attired in wonder

I know not what to say.

BEATRICE

O, on my soul, my cousin is belied.

BENEDICK

Lady, were you her bedfellow last night?

BEATRICE

No, truly not, although until last night

I have this twelvemonth been her bedfellow.

LEONATO

Confirmed, confirmed. O, that is stronger made

Which was before barred up with ribs of iron.

Would the two princes lie? And Claudio lie,

Who loved her so that, speaking of her foulness,

Washed it with tears? Hence from her, let her die.

FRIAR Hear me a little,

For I have only been silent so long

And given way unto this course of fortune

By noting of the lady. I have marked

A thousand blushing apparitions

To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames

In angel whiteness beat away those blushes,

And in her eye there hath appeared a fire

To burn the errors that these princes hold

Against her maiden truth. Call me a fool,

Trust not my reading nor my observations,

Which with experimental seal doth warrant

The tenor of my book. Trust not my age,

My reverence, calling, nor divinity,

If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here

Under some biting error.

LEONATO Friar, it cannot be.

Thou seest that all the grace that she hath left

Is that she will not add to her damnation

A sin of perjury. She not denies it.

Why seek’st thou then to cover with excuse

That which appears in proper nakedness?

FRIAR (to Hero)

Lady, what man is he you are accused of?

HERO

They know that do accuse me. I know none.

If I know more of any man alive

Than that which maiden modesty doth warrant,

Let all my sins lack mercy. O my father,

Prove you that any man with me conversed

At hours unmeet, or that I yesternight

Maintained the change of words with any creature,

Refuse me, hate me, torture me to death.

FRIAR

There is some strange misprision in the princes.

BENEDICK

Two of them have the very bent of honour,

And if their wisdoms be misled in this

The practice of it lives in John the bastard,

Whose spirits toil in frame of villainies.

LEONATO

I know not. If they speak but truth of her

These hands shall tear her. If they wrong her honour

The proudest of them shall well hear of it.

Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine,

Nor age so eat up my invention,

Nor fortune made such havoc of my means,

Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends,

But they shall find awaked in such a kind

Both strength of limb and policy of mind,

Ability in means, and choice of friends,

To quit me of them throughly.

FRIAR Pause awhile,

And let my counsel sway you in this case.

Your daughter here the princes left for dead,

Let her a while be secretly kept in,

And publish it that she is dead indeed.

Maintain a mourning ostentation,

And on your family’s old monument

Hang mournful epitaphs, and do all rites

That appertain unto a burial.

LEONATO

What shall become of this? What will this do?

FRIAR

Marry, this, well carried, shall on her behalf

Change slander to remorse. That is some good.

But not for that dream I on this strange course,

But on this travail look for greater birth.

She—dying, as it must be so maintained,

Upon the instant that she was accused—

Shall be lamented, pitied, and excused

Of every hearer. For it so falls out

That what we have, we prize not to the worth

Whiles we enjoy it, but, being lacked and lost,

Why then we rack the value, then we find