Act 1: Scene 1

CLAUDIO

Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signior Leonato?

CLAUDIO

Is she not a modest young lady?

CLAUDIO

No; I pray thee speak in sober judgment.

CLAUDIO

Thou thinkest I am in sport: I pray thee tell me
truly how thou likest her.

CLAUDIO

Can the world buy such a jewel?

CLAUDIO

In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I
looked on.

CLAUDIO

I would scarce trust myself, though I had sworn the
contrary, if Hero would be my wife.

CLAUDIO

If this were so, so were it uttered.

CLAUDIO

If my passion change not shortly, God forbid it
should be otherwise.

CLAUDIO

You speak this to fetch me in, my lord.

CLAUDIO

And, in faith, my lord, I spoke mine.

CLAUDIO

That I love her, I feel.

CLAUDIO

And never could maintain his part but in the force
of his will.

CLAUDIO

If this should ever happen, thou wouldst be horn-mad.

CLAUDIO

To the tuition of God: From my house, if I had it,–

CLAUDIO

My liege, your highness now may do me good.

CLAUDIO

Hath Leonato any son, my lord?

CLAUDIO

O, my lord,
When you went onward on this ended action,
I look’d upon her with a soldier’s eye,
That liked, but had a rougher task in hand
Than to drive liking to the name of love:
But now I am return’d and that war-thoughts
Have left their places vacant, in their rooms
Come thronging soft and delicate desires,
All prompting me how fair young Hero is,
Saying, I liked her ere I went to wars.

CLAUDIO

How sweetly you do minister to love,
That know love’s grief by his complexion!
But lest my liking might too sudden seem,
I would have salved it with a longer treatise.

Act 2: Scene 1

CLAUDIO

You know me well; I am he.

CLAUDIO

How know you he loves her?

CLAUDIO

Thus answer I in the name of Benedick,
But hear these ill news with the ears of Claudio.
‘Tis certain so; the prince wooes 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.
This is an accident of hourly proof,
Which I mistrusted not. Farewell, therefore, Hero!

CLAUDIO

Yea, the same.

CLAUDIO

Whither?

CLAUDIO

I wish him joy of her.

CLAUDIO

I pray you, leave me.

CLAUDIO

If it will not be, I’ll leave you.

CLAUDIO

Not sad, my lord.

CLAUDIO

Neither, my lord.

CLAUDIO

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were
but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as
you are mine, I am yours: I give away myself for
you and dote upon the exchange.

CLAUDIO

And so she doth, cousin.

CLAUDIO

To-morrow, my lord: time goes on crutches till love
have all his rites.

CLAUDIO

And I, my lord.

Act 2: Scene 3

CLAUDIO

Yea, my good lord. How still the evening is,
As hush’d on purpose to grace harmony!

CLAUDIO

O, very well, my lord: the music ended,
We’ll fit the kid-fox with a pennyworth.

CLAUDIO

O, ay: stalk on. stalk on; the fowl sits. I did
never think that lady would have loved any man.

CLAUDIO

Faith, like enough.

CLAUDIO

Bait the hook well; this fish will bite.

CLAUDIO

She did, indeed.

CLAUDIO

He hath ta’en the infection: hold it up.

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?’

CLAUDIO

Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a
pretty jest your daughter told us of.

CLAUDIO

That.

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!’

CLAUDIO

To what end? He would make but a sport of it and
torment the poor lady worse.

CLAUDIO

And she is exceeding wise.

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, and she will die, if he woo
her, rather than she will bate one breath of her
accustomed crossness.

CLAUDIO

He is a very proper man.

CLAUDIO

Before God! and, in my mind, very wise.

CLAUDIO

And I take him to be valiant.

CLAUDIO

Never tell him, my lord: let her wear it out with
good counsel.

CLAUDIO

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

Act 3: Scene 2

CLAUDIO

I’ll bring you thither, my lord, if you’ll
vouchsafe me.

CLAUDIO

I hope he be in love.

CLAUDIO

You must hang it first, and draw it afterwards.

CLAUDIO

Yet say I, he is in love.

CLAUDIO

If he be not in love with some woman, there is no
believing old signs: a’ brushes his hat o’
mornings; what should that bode?

CLAUDIO

No, but the barber’s man hath been seen with him,
and the old ornament of his cheek hath already
stuffed tennis-balls.

CLAUDIO

That’s as much as to say, the sweet youth’s in love.

CLAUDIO

And when was he wont to wash his face?

CLAUDIO

Nay, but his jesting spirit; which is now crept into
a lute-string and now governed by stops.

CLAUDIO

Nay, but I know who loves him.

CLAUDIO

Yes, and his ill conditions; and, in despite of
all, dies for him.

CLAUDIO

‘Tis even so. Hero and Margaret have by this
played their parts with Beatrice; and then the two
bears will not bite one another when they meet.

CLAUDIO

If there be any impediment, I pray you discover it.

CLAUDIO

Who, Hero?

CLAUDIO

Disloyal?

CLAUDIO

May this be so?

CLAUDIO

If I see any thing to-night why I should not marry
her to-morrow in the congregation, where I should
wed, there will I shame her.

CLAUDIO

O mischief strangely thwarting!

Act 4: Scene 1

CLAUDIO

No.

CLAUDIO

Know you any, Hero?

CLAUDIO

O, what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily
do, not knowing what they do!

CLAUDIO

Stand thee by, friar. Father, by your leave:
Will you with free and unconstrained soul
Give me this maid, your daughter?

CLAUDIO

And what have I to give you back, whose worth
May counterpoise this rich and precious gift?

CLAUDIO

Sweet prince, you learn me noble thankfulness.
There, Leonato, take her back again:
Give not this rotten orange to your friend;
She’s but the sign and semblance of her honour.
Behold how like a maid she blushes here!
O, what authority and show of truth
Can cunning sin cover itself withal!
Comes not that blood as modest evidence
To witness simple virtue? Would you not swear,
All you that see her, that she were a maid,
By these exterior shows? But she is none:
She knows the heat of a luxurious bed;
Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.

CLAUDIO

Not to be married,
Not to knit my soul to an approved wanton.

CLAUDIO

I know what you would say: if I have known her,
You will say she did embrace me as a husband,
And so extenuate the ‘forehand sin:
No, Leonato,
I never tempted her with word too large;
But, as a brother to his sister, show’d
Bashful sincerity and comely love.

CLAUDIO

Out on thee! Seeming! I will write against it:
You seem to me as Dian in her orb,
As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown;
But you are more intemperate in your blood
Than Venus, or those pamper’d animals
That rage in savage sensuality.

CLAUDIO

Leonato, stand I here?
Is this the prince? is this the prince’s brother?
Is this face Hero’s? are our eyes our own?

CLAUDIO

Let me but move one question to your daughter;
And, by that fatherly and kindly power
That you have in her, bid her answer truly.

CLAUDIO

To make you answer truly to your name.

CLAUDIO

Marry, that can Hero;
Hero itself can blot out Hero’s virtue.
What man was he talk’d with you yesternight
Out at your window betwixt twelve and one?
Now, if you are a maid, answer to this.

CLAUDIO

O Hero, what a Hero hadst thou been,
If half thy outward graces had been placed
About thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart!
But fare thee well, most foul, most fair! farewell,
Thou pure impiety and impious purity!
For thee I’ll lock up all the gates of love,
And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang,
To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm,
And never shall it more be gracious.

Act 5: Scene 1

CLAUDIO

Good day to both of you.

CLAUDIO

Who wrongs him?

CLAUDIO

Marry, beshrew my hand,
If it should give your age such cause of fear:
In faith, my hand meant nothing to my sword.

CLAUDIO

My villany?

CLAUDIO

Away! I will not have to do with you.

CLAUDIO

Now, signior, what news?

CLAUDIO

We had like to have had our two noses snapped off
with two old men without teeth.

CLAUDIO

We have been up and down to seek thee; for we are
high-proof melancholy and would fain have it beaten
away. Wilt thou use thy wit?

CLAUDIO

Never any did so, though very many have been beside
their wit. I will bid thee draw, as we do the
minstrels; draw, to pleasure us.

CLAUDIO

What, courage, man! What though care killed a cat,
thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.

CLAUDIO

Nay, then, give him another staff: this last was
broke cross.

CLAUDIO

If he be, he knows how to turn his girdle.

CLAUDIO

God bless me from a challenge!

CLAUDIO

Well, I will meet you, so I may have good cheer.

CLAUDIO

I’ faith, I thank him; he hath bid me to a calf’s
head and a capon; the which if I do not carve most
curiously, say my knife’s naught. Shall I not find
a woodcock too?

CLAUDIO

For the which she wept heartily and said she cared
not.

CLAUDIO

All, all; and, moreover, God saw him when he was
hid in the garden.

CLAUDIO

Yea, and text underneath, ‘Here dwells Benedick the
married man’?

CLAUDIO

In most profound earnest; and, I’ll warrant you, for
the love of Beatrice.

CLAUDIO

Most sincerely.

CLAUDIO

He is then a giant to an ape; but then is an ape a
doctor to such a man.

CLAUDIO

Hearken after their offence, my lord.

CLAUDIO

Rightly reasoned, and in his own division: and, by
my troth, there’s one meaning well suited.

CLAUDIO

I have drunk poison whiles he utter’d it.

CLAUDIO

Sweet Hero! now thy image doth appear
In the rare semblance that I loved it first.

CLAUDIO

I know not how to pray your patience;
Yet I must speak. Choose your revenge yourself;
Impose me to what penance your invention
Can lay upon my sin: yet sinn’d I not
But in mistaking.

CLAUDIO

O noble sir,
Your over-kindness doth wring tears from me!
I do embrace your offer; and dispose
For henceforth of poor Claudio.

CLAUDIO

To-night I’ll mourn with Hero.

Act 5: Scene 3

CLAUDIO

Is this the monument of Leonato?

CLAUDIO

[Reading out of a scroll]
Done to death by slanderous tongues
Was the Hero that here lies:
Death, in guerdon of her wrongs,
Gives her fame which never dies.
So the life that died with shame
Lives in death with glorious fame.
Hang thou there upon the tomb,
Praising her when I am dumb.
Now, music, sound, and sing your solemn hymn.
SONG.
Pardon, goddess of the night,
Those that slew thy virgin knight;
For the which, with songs of woe,
Round about her tomb they go.
Midnight, assist our moan;
Help us to sigh and groan,
Heavily, heavily:
Graves, yawn and yield your dead,
Till death be uttered,
Heavily, heavily.

CLAUDIO

Now, unto thy bones good night!
Yearly will I do this rite.

CLAUDIO

Good morrow, masters: each his several way.

CLAUDIO

And Hymen now with luckier issue speed’s
Than this for whom we render’d up this woe.

Act 5: Scene 4

CLAUDIO

I’ll hold my mind, were she an Ethiope.

CLAUDIO

I think he thinks upon the savage bull.
Tush, fear not, man; we’ll tip thy horns with gold
And all Europa shall rejoice at thee,
As once Europa did at lusty Jove,
When he would play the noble beast in love.

CLAUDIO

For this I owe you: here comes other reckonings.
[Re-enter ANTONIO, with the Ladies masked]
Which is the lady I must seize upon?

CLAUDIO

Why, then she’s mine. Sweet, let me see your face.

CLAUDIO

Give me your hand: before this holy friar,
I am your husband, if you like of me.

CLAUDIO

Another Hero!

CLAUDIO

And I’ll be sworn upon’t that he loves her;
For here’s a paper written in his hand,
A halting sonnet of his own pure brain,
Fashion’d to Beatrice.

CLAUDIO

I had well hoped thou wouldst have denied Beatrice,
that I might have cudgelled thee out of thy single
life, to make thee a double-dealer; which, out of
question, thou wilt be, if my cousin do not look
exceedingly narrowly to thee.

CLAUDIO

I had well hoped thou wouldst have denied Beatrice,
that I might have cudgelled thee out of thy single
life, to make thee a double-dealer; which, out of
question, thou wilt be, if my cousin do not look
exceedingly narrowly to thee.