Act 1: Scene 1

I learn in this letter that Don Peter of Arragon
comes this night to Messina.

How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?

A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings
home full numbers. I find here that Don Peter hath
bestowed much honour on a young Florentine called Claudio.

He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much
glad of it.

Did he break out into tears?

A kind overflow of kindness: there are no faces
truer than those that are so washed. How much
better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!

What is he that you ask for, niece?

Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much;
but he’ll be meet with you, I doubt it not.

You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is a
kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her:
they never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit
between them.

You will never run mad, niece.

Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of
your grace: for trouble being gone, comfort should
remain; but when you depart from me, sorrow abides
and happiness takes his leave.

Her mother hath many times told me so.

Signior Benedick, no; for then were you a child.

If you swear, my lord, you shall not be forsworn.
[To DON JOHN]
Let me bid you welcome, my lord: being reconciled to
the prince your brother, I owe you all duty.

Please it your grace lead on?

Act 1: Scene 2

How now, brother! Where is my cousin, your son?
hath he provided this music?

Are they good?

Hath the fellow any wit that told you this?

No, no; we will hold it as a dream till it appear
itself: but I will acquaint my daughter withal,
that she may be the better prepared for an answer,
if peradventure this be true. Go you and tell her of it.
[Enter Attendants]
Cousins, you know what you have to do. O, I cry you
mercy, friend; go you with me, and I will use your
skill. Good cousin, have a care this busy time.

Act 2: Scene 1

Was not Count John here at supper?

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

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

So, by being too curst, God will send you no horns.

You may light on a husband that hath no beard.

Well, then, go you into hell?

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

Daughter, remember what I told you: if the prince
do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer.

Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly.

The revellers are entering, brother: make good room.
[All put on their masks]
[Enter DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, BENEDICK, BALTHASAR,]
DON JOHN, BORACHIO, MARGARET, URSULA and others, masked]

Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my
fortunes: his grace hath made the match, and an
grace say Amen to it.

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

There’s little of the melancholy element in her, my
lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps, and
not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say,
she hath often dreamed of unhappiness and waked
herself with laughing.

O, by no means: she mocks all her wooers out of suit.

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

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

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

Act 2: Scene 3

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.

By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think
of it but that she loves him with an enraged
affection: it is past the infinite of thought.

O God, counterfeit! There was never counterfeit of
passion came so near the life of passion as she
discovers it.

What effects, my lord? She will sit you, you heard
my daughter tell you how.

I would have sworn it had, my lord; especially
against Benedick.

No; and swears she never will: that’s her torment.

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.

O, when she had writ it and was reading it over, she
found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet?

O, 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; ‘I
measure him,’ says she, ‘by my own spirit; for I
should flout him, if he writ to me; yea, though I
love him, I should.’

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: it is very true.

O, my lord, wisdom and blood combating in so tender
a body, we have ten proofs to one that blood hath
the victory. I am sorry for her, as I have just
cause, being her uncle and her guardian.

Were it good, think you?

If he do fear God, a’ must necessarily keep peace:
if he break the peace, he ought to enter into a
quarrel with fear and trembling.

Nay, that’s impossible: she may wear her heart out first.

My lord, will you walk? dinner is ready.

Act 3: Scene 2

So say I. methinks you are sadder.

Where is but a humour or a worm.

Indeed, he looks younger than he did, by the loss of a beard.

Act 3: Scene 5

What would you with me, honest neighbour?

Brief, I pray you; for you see it is a busy time with me.

What is it, my good friends?

Neighbours, you are tedious.

All thy tediousness on me, ah?

I would fain know what you have to say.

Indeed, neighbour, he comes too short of you.

I must leave you.

Take their examination yourself and bring it me: I
am now in great haste, as it may appear unto you.

Drink some wine ere you go: fare you well.

I’ll wait upon them: I am ready.

Act 4: Scene 1

Come, Friar Francis, be brief; only to the plain
form of marriage, and you shall recount their
particular duties afterwards.

To be married to her: friar, you come to marry her.

I dare make his answer, none.

As freely, son, as God did give her me.

What do you mean, my lord?

Dear my lord, if you, in your own proof,
Have vanquish’d the resistance of her youth,
And made defeat of her virginity,–

Sweet prince, why speak not you?

Are these things spoken, or do I but dream?

All this is so: but what of this, my lord?

I charge thee do so, as thou art my child.

Hath no man’s dagger here a point for me?

O Fate! take not away thy heavy hand.
Death is the fairest cover for her shame
That may be wish’d for.

Dost thou look up?

Wherefore! Why, doth not every earthly thing
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 smirch’d 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!

Confirm’d, confirm’d! O, that is stronger made
Which was before barr’d up with ribs of iron!
Would the two princes lie, and Claudio lie,
Who loved her so, that, speaking of her foulness,
Wash’d it with tears? Hence from her! let her die.

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?

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.

What shall become of this? what will this do?

Being that I flow in grief,
The smallest twine may lead me.

Act 5: Scene 1

I pray thee, cease thy counsel,
Which falls into mine ears as profitless
As water in a sieve: give not me counsel;
Nor let no comforter delight mine ear
But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine.
Bring me a father that so loved his child,
Whose joy of her is overwhelm’d like mine,
And bid him speak of patience;
Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine
And let it answer every strain for strain,
As thus for thus and such a grief for such,
In every lineament, branch, shape, and form:
If such a one will smile and stroke his beard,
Bid sorrow wag, cry ‘hem!’ when he should groan,
Patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk
With candle-wasters; bring him yet to me,
And I of him will gather patience.
But there is no such man: for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air and agony with words:
No, no; ’tis all men’s office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man’s virtue nor sufficiency
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel:
My griefs cry louder than advertisement.

I pray thee, peace. I will be flesh and blood;
For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently,
However they have writ the style of gods
And made a push at chance and sufferance.

There thou speak’st reason: nay, I will do so.
My soul doth tell me Hero is belied;
And that shall Claudio know; so shall the prince
And all of them that thus dishonour her.

Hear you. my lords,–

Some haste, my lord! well, fare you well, my lord:
Are you so hasty now? well, all is one.

Marry, thou dost wrong me; thou dissembler, thou:–
Nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword;
I fear thee not.

Tush, tush, man; never fleer and jest at me:
I speak not like a dotard nor a fool,
As under privilege of age to brag
What I have done being young, or what would do
Were I not old. Know, Claudio, to thy head,
Thou hast so wrong’d mine innocent child and me
That I am forced to lay my reverence by
And, with grey hairs and bruise of many days,
Do challenge thee to trial of a man.
I say thou hast belied mine innocent child;
Thy slander hath gone through and through her heart,
And she lies buried with her ancestors;
O, in a tomb where never scandal slept,
Save this of hers, framed by thy villany!

Thine, Claudio; thine, I say.

My lord, my lord,
I’ll prove it on his body, if he dare,
Despite his nice fence and his active practise,
His May of youth and bloom of lustihood.

Canst thou so daff me? Thou hast kill’d my child:
If thou kill’st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man.

Brother,–

Brother Antony,–

But, brother Antony,–

My lord, my lord,–

No? Come, brother; away! I will be heard.

Which is the villain? let me see his eyes,
That, when I note another man like him,
I may avoid him: which of these is he?

Art thou the slave that with thy breath hast kill’d
Mine innocent child?

No, not so, villain; thou beliest thyself:
Here stand a pair of honourable men;
A third is fled, that had a hand in it.
I thank you, princes, for my daughter’s death:
Record it with your high and worthy deeds:
‘Twas bravely done, if you bethink you of it.

I cannot bid you bid my daughter live;
That were impossible: but, I pray you both,
Possess the people in Messina here
How innocent she died; and if your love
Can labour ought in sad invention,
Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb
And sing it to her bones, sing it to-night:
To-morrow morning come you to my house,
And since you could not be my son-in-law,
Be yet my nephew: my brother hath a daughter,
Almost the copy of my child that’s dead,
And she alone is heir to both of us:
Give her the right you should have given her cousin,
And so dies my revenge.

To-morrow then I will expect your coming;
To-night I take my leave. This naughty man
Shall face to face be brought to Margaret,
Who I believe was pack’d in all this wrong,
Hired to it by your brother.

I thank thee for thy care and honest pains.

There’s for thy pains.

Go, I discharge thee of thy prisoner, and I thank thee.

Until to-morrow morning, lords, farewell.

[To the Watch] Bring you these fellows on. We’ll
talk with Margaret,
How her acquaintance grew with this lewd fellow.

Act 5: Scene 4

So are the prince and Claudio, who accused her
Upon the error that you heard debated:
But Margaret was in some fault for this,
Although against her will, as it appears
In the true course of all the question.

Well, daughter, and you gentle-women all,
Withdraw into a chamber by yourselves,
And when I send for you, come hither mask’d.
[Exeunt Ladies]
The prince and Claudio promised by this hour
To visit me. You know your office, brother:
You must be father to your brother’s daughter
And give her to young Claudio.

That eye my daughter lent her: ’tis most true.

The sight whereof I think you had from me,
From Claudio and the prince: but what’s your will?

My heart is with your liking.

Good morrow, prince; good morrow, Claudio:
We here attend you. Are you yet determined
To-day to marry with my brother’s daughter?

Call her forth, brother; here’s the friar ready.

No, that you shall not, till you take her hand
Before this friar and swear to marry her.

She died, my lord, but whiles her slander lived.

Come, cousin, I am sure you love the gentleman.

We’ll have dancing afterward.