MUSIC BEGINS
MESSENGER PANTS
I learn in this letter that Don Pedra of Arragon
comes this night to Messina.
- She is very near by this:
she was not three leagues off when I left her.
- How many soldiers have you lost in this action?
- But few of any sort, and none of name.
- A victory is twice itself
when the achiever brings home full numbers.
I find here that Don Pedra hath bestowed much honour
on a young soldier called Claudio.
- Much deserved on his part and equally remembered by Don Pedra:
he hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age,
doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion:
he hath indeed better bettered expectation
than you must expect of me to tell you how.
- He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much glad of it.
- I have already delivered him letters,
and there appears much joy in him.
- Did he break out into tears?
- In great measure.
- 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!
- I pray you,
is Signior Mountanto returned from the wars or no?
- I know none of that name, lady:
there was none such in the army of any sort.
- What is he that you ask for, niece?
- My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua.
- O! He's returned; and as pleasant as ever he was.
- I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars?
But how many hath he killed?
For indeed I promised to eat all his killing.
- Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much. - Oh...
- He hath done good service, lady, in these wars.
- You had rotten food, and he hath holp to eat it:
he is a very valiant trencherman; he hath an excellent stomach.
- And a good soldier too, lady.
- A good soldier to a lady!
Whoo!
- LAUGHS
- But what is he to a lord?
- A lord to a lord, a man to a man;
stuffed with all honourable virtues.
- He is no less than a stuffed man:
but for the stuffing, well, we are all mortal.
- You must not 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.
- Alas! he gets nothing by that.
In our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off,
so now is the whole man governed with one:
so that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm,
let him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse;
for it is all the wealth that he hath left,
to be known a reasonable creature.
Who is his companion now? He hath every month a new sworn...
..brother.
- Is't possible?
- Very easily possible:
he wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat;
it ever changes with the next block.
- I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.
- No; if he were, I would burn my study.
But, I pray you, who is his companion?
Is there no young squarer now that will make a voyage with him
to the devil?
- He is most in the company of the right noble Claudio.
- O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease:
he is sooner caught than the pestilence,
and the taker runs presently mad.
Oh, God help the noble Claudio!
If he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him
a thousand cowrie ere he be cured.
- I will hold friends with you, lady. - Do, good friend.
- Don Pedra is approached.
- SHOUTING
WHOOPING
- Oya!
- MUSIC BEGINS
THEY CHANT
WHOOPING
- Oya!
- THEY RESPOND
- Good Signior Leonato, you are come to meet your trouble:
the fashion of this world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.
- 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 its leave.
- You embrace your charge too willingly.
- CHEERING
- I think this is your daughter.
- Her mother hath many times told me so.
- Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her?
- Signior Benedick, no; for then were you a child.
- You have it full, Benedick:
we may guess by this what you are, being a man.
- Truly, the lady fathers herself.
Be happy, lady; for you are like an honourable father.
- If Signior Leonato be her father,
she would not have his head on her shoulders for all Messina,
as like him as she is.
- I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick.
Nobody marks you.
- What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?
- Is it possible disdain should die
while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?
Courtesy itself must convert to disdain,
if you come in her presence. - Then is courtesy a turncoat.
But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted:
and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart;
for, truly, I love none.
- A dear happiness to women:
they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor.
I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that:
I would rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.
- God keep your ladyship still in that mind!
so some gentleman or other shall
'scape a predestinate scratched face.
- Scratching could not make it worse, it were such a face as yours were.
- Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.
- A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.
- I would my horse had the speed of your tongue,
and so good a continuer. But keep your way,
i' God's name; I have done.
- You always end with a jade's trick.
- THEY LAUGH
- I know you of old.
- That is the sum of all, Leonato.
Signior Claudio and Signior Benedick,
my dear friend Leonato hath invited you all.
- THEY CHEER
- I tell him we shall stay here at least a month;
and he heartily prays some occasion may detain us longer.
I dare swear he is no hypocrite, but prays from his heart.
- If you swear, my lady, you shall not be forsworn.
Let me bid you welcome, my lord:
being reconciled to the princess your sister.
LAUGHS
- I thank you.
I am not of many words...
..but I thank you.
- Please it your grace lead on?
- Your hand, Leonato; we will go together.
- Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signior Leonato?
- I noted her not; but I looked on her.
- Is she not a modest young lady?
- Do you question me, as an honest man should do,
for my simple true judgment;
or would you have me speak after my custom,
as being a professed tyrant to their sex?
- No; I pray thee speak in sober judgment.
- Why, i' faith, methinks she's too low for a high praise,
too quiet for a loud praise and too little for a great praise:
only this commendation I can afford her,
that were she other than she is, she were unhandsome;
and being no but other than she is, I do not like her.
- Thou thinkest I am in sport:
I pray thee tell me truly how thou likest her.
- Would you buy her, that you inquire after her?
- Can the world buy such a jewel?
- Yea, and a case to put it into.
- In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on.
- I can see yet without spectacles and I see no such matter:
there's her cousin, an were she not possessed with a fury,
exceeds her as much in beauty
as the first of May doth the last of December.
But I hope you have no intent to turn husband, have you?
- I would scarce trust myself,
though I had sworn the contrary, if Hero would be my wife.
- Is't come to this?
In faith, hath not the world but one man wear his cap with suspicion?
Shall I never see a bachelor of three-score again?
- What secret hath held you here, that you followed not to Leonato's?
- I would your grace would constrain me to tell.
- I charge thee on thy allegiance.
- You hear, Count Claudio:
I can be secret as a dumb man; I would have you think so;
but, on my allegiance, mark you this, on my allegiance.
He is in love.
With who? now that is your grace's part.
Mark how short his answer is;
With Hero, Leonato's short daughter.
- If my passion change not shortly,
God forbid it should be otherwise.
- Amen, if you love her; for the lady is very well worthy.
- You speak this to fetch me in, my lady.
- By my troth, I speak my thought.
- And, in faith, my lady, I spoke mine.
- And, by my two faiths and troths, my lady, I spoke mine.
- That I love her, I feel.
- That she is worthy, I know.
- That I neither know how she should be loved
or feel how she should be worthy,
is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me:
I will die in it at the stake.
- Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the despite of beauty.
- That a woman conceived me, I thank her;
that she brought me up, I likewise give her most humble thanks:
but because I will not do myself the wrong to mistrust any,
I will do myself the right to trust no woman; and the fine is,
for the which I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor.
- I will see thee, ere I die, look pale with love.
- With... With anger, with
# ..hunger, my lady... #
not with love.
- Well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith,
thou wilt prove a notable argument.
- If I do, hang me in a bottle like a cat
and shoot at me.
- Well, as time shall try:
"In time the savage bull may be tamed."
- The savage bull may;
but if ever the sensible Benedick is,
pluck off the bull's horns and set them in my forehead:
and let me be vilely painted,
as in such great letters as they write
"Here is the good horse to hire,"
let them write, "Here you may see Benedick the married man."
- Well, you will temporize with the hours.
In the meantime, good Signior Benedick, repair to Leonato's:
tell him I will not fail him at supper;
for indeed he hath made great preparations.
- Oh, I almost have enough matter in me for such an embassage;
and so I leave you.
- My lady, your highness now may do me good.
- My love is thine to teach: teach it but how,
And thou shalt see how apt it is to learn
Any hard lesson that may do thee good.
- Hath Leonato any son, my lady?
- No child but Hero; she's his only heir.
Dost thou affect her, Claudio?
- O, my lady, 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.
- Thou wilt be like a lover presently
And tire the hearer with a book of words.
If thou dost love fair Hero, cherish it,
And I will break with her and with her father,
And thou shalt have her.
Was't not to this end that thou began'st to twist so fine a story?
- 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.
- What needs the bridge much broader than the flood?
The fairest grant is the necessity.
Look, what will serve is fit:
'tis once, thou lovest,
And I will fit thee with the remedy.
I know we shall have revelling to-night:
I will assume thy part in some disguise
And tell fair Hero I am Claudio,
And in her bosom I'll unclasp my heart
And take her hearing prisoner with the force
And strong encounter of my amorous tale:
Then after to her father will I break;
And the conclusion is,
she shall be thine.
In practise let us put it presently.
- MUSIC PLAYS LOUDLY
How now, brother!
Hath he provided this music?
- He is very busy about it.
But, brother, I can tell you strange news that you yet dreamt not of.
- Are they good? - They show well outward.
The princess and Count Claudio, were overheard by a man of mine:
the princess discovered to Claudio that she loved my niece,
your daughter, and meant to acknowledge it
this night in a dance: and if she found her accordant,
she meant to instantly break with you of it.
- Hath the fellow any wit that told you this?
- A good sharp fellow:
I will send for him; and question him yourself.
- 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.
Cousins, you know what you have to do.
O, I cry you mercy, friend; go you with me, and I will use your skill.
CRASH!
Good cousin, have a care this busy time.
THEY CHUCKLE
- What the good-year, my lord! why are you thus out of measure sad?
- There is no measure in the occasion that breeds;
therefore the sadness is without limit.
- You should hear reason.
- And when I have heard it, what blessing brings it?
- If not a present remedy, at least a patient sufferance.
- I wonder that thou goest about to apply a moral medicine
to mortifying mischief. Mmm?
I cannot hide what I am:
I must be sad when I have cause
and smile at no man's jests,
eat when I have stomach and wait on no man's leisure,
sleep when I am drowsy and tend on no man's business,
laugh when I am merry and claw no man in his humour.
- Yea, but you must not make the full show of this
till you may do it without controlment.
You have of late stood out against your sister,
and she hath ta'en you newly into her grace;
where it is impossible you should take true root
but by the fair weather that you make yourself:
it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest.
- I had rather be a canker in a hedge
than a rose in her grace.
And it better fits my blood to be disdained of all
than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any:
in this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man,
it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain.
I am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog;
therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage.
If I had my mouth, I would bite;
if I had my liberty, I would do my liking:
in the meantime let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.
- Can you make no use of your discontent?
- I make all use of it, for I use it only.
Who comes there?
Ah. What news, Borachio?
- I came yonder from a great supper:
the princess your sister is royally entertained by Leonato:
and I can give you intelligence of an intended marriage.
- Will it serve for any model to build mischief on?
What is he for a fool that betroths himself to unquietness?
- Marry, it is your sister's right hand. - Who?
the most exquisite Claudio?
- Even he. - Ooh, a proper squire!
And who, and who? which way looks he?
- Marry, on Hero, the daughter and heir of Leonato.
- Eh-eh? - Eh-heh.
- A very forward March-chick! How came you to this?
- Overhearing the princess and Claudio,
hand in hand in sad conference:
I whipt me out of sight;
and there heard it agreed upon that the princess should woo Hero
for herself, and having obtained her, give her to Count Claudio.
- Come, come, let us thither:
this may prove food to my displeasure.
That young start-up hath all the glory of my overthrow:
if I cross him any way, I bless myself every way.
You are both sure, and will assist me?
- To the death, my lord. - Then let us to the great supper:
their cheer is the greater that I am subdued.
Would the cook were of my mind!
- LAUGHS
- Shall we go and prove what is to be done?
- We'll wait upon your lordship.
- LAUGHTER
Was not Count John here at supper? - I saw him not.
- How tartly that gentleman looks!
I never can see him but I am heart-burned an hour after.
- Mmm. He is of a very melancholy disposition.
- He were an excellent man that were made
just midway between him and Benedick:
but the one is too like an image, says nothing,
the other too like a spoilt child, evermore tattling.
- Then half Signior Benedick's tongue in Count John's mouth,
and half Count John's melancholy in Signior Benedick's face.
- With a good leg and a good foot, uncle,
and money enough in his purse,
such a man would win any woman in the world,
if he could get her good-will.
- By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband,
if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue.
- In faith, she's too quick-tempered.
- Too quick-tempered?!
- CLEARS THROAT
- I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening.
Praying...
# Lord. #
Mm mm mm mm mm.
I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face:
Mm mm mm mm mm mm mm.
I had rather lie in the woollen.
- Mm mm mm mm mm mm.
You may light on a husband that hath no beard.
- And what should I do with him?
Dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting-gentlewoman?
He that hath a beard is more than a youth,
he that hath no beard is less than a man:
he that is more than a youth is not for me,
he that is less than a man, I am not for him:
- Well, then, betray you your heavenly duty and go you into hell?
- No, but to the gate;
and there will the devil meet me,
like an old cuckold, with horns on his head,
and say "Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven;
"here's no place for you...
"..virgins."
so deliver me up and away to Saint Peter for the heavens;
he shows me where the bachelors sit,
and there live we as merry as the day is long.
- Well, niece, I trust you will be ruled by your father.
- Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy
and say "Father, as it please you."
And yet for all that, cousin,
let it be a handsome fellow,
or else make another curtsy and say "Father, as it please me."
- Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.
- Not till God make men of some other metal than earth.
Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered by
a piece of valiant dust?
to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward mud?
No, uncle, I'll none.
- Daughter, remember what I told you:
if the princess do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer.
- The fault will be in the music, cousin,
if you be not wooed in good time:
if the princess be too important,
tell her there is measure in every thing,
and so dance out the answer.
- The revellers are entering, brother: make good room.
MUSIC STARTS
# Hide your love
# Iyeo, iyeo
# Like hand in glove
# Hide your love
# Iyeo, iyeo
# Like hand in glove
DRUMMING
# Iyeo, iyeo
# Like hand in glove
# Yeah, yeah, yeah
# Like hand in glove... #
- One, two, three, four!
- # Hide your love
# Iyeo, iyeo
# Like hand in glove
# Ooh-ooh
# Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh... #
VOCALISATIONS THROUGHOUT
# Hey
# Hide your love
# Iyeo, iyeo
# Like hand in glove
# Hey
# Oh
# Hide your love
# Iyeo, iyeo
# Like hand in glove
# Come join us, come join us
# Come join us
# Hey, come join us
# Come join us
# Hey, oh... #
- # Walk with me, walk with me
# W-w-walk with me, walk with me
# Walk with me, walk with me
# W-w-walk with me, walk with me
# Walk with me, walk with me
# W-w-walk with me, walk with me
# Walk with me, walk with me
# W-w-walk with me Walk with me... #
- Lady, will you walk about with your friend?
- So you walk softly and look sweetly and say nothing,
I am yours for the walk; and especially when I walk away.
- With me in your company?
- I may say so, when I please.
- And when please you to say so?
- When I like your favour;
for God forbid the lute should be like the case!
- Speak soft, if you speak love.
# Pray with me, pray with me
# Baby, pray with me, pray with me
# Pray with me, pray with me
# Baby, pray with me, pray with me... #
- Well, I would you did like me.
- So would not I, for your own sake;
for I have many ill-qualities.
- Which is one? - I say my prayers aloud.
- I love you the better that the hearer may cry, Amen.
- God match me with a good dancer!
- Amen.
- And God keep him out of my sight when the dance is done!
- No more words.
- # Oh, na-na, oh, na-na
# Oh, na-na, oh, na-na - who, me?
# Oh, na-na, oh, na-na
# Oh, na-na, oh, na-na - who, me? #
- I know you well enough; you are Signior Antonio.
- At a word, I am not.
- I know you by the waggling of your head.
- To tell you true, I counterfeit him.
- You could never do him so ill-well,
unless you were the very man. Here's his dry hand up and down:
you are he, you are he.
- At a word, I am not.
- Come, come, do you think I do not know you by your excellent wit?
can virtue hide itself?
Go to, you are he:
graces will appear, and there's an end.
- Thank you, Signior Leonato, for hosting us this evening!
You know when you see a fine girl, yeah,
and she's doing # Hmm-hmm hmm-hmm hmm-hmm hmm-hmm
- # Shakara - Hmm-hmm hmm-hmm hmm
# This girl
- # Shakara - Hmm-hmm hmm-hmm hmm
- # Shakara - Hmm-hmm hmm-hmm hmm... #
- LAUGHS
- Will you not tell me who told you so?
- No, you shall pardon me.
- Nor will you tell me who you are?
- Not now. - That I was disdainful,
and that I had my good wit out of the Hundred Merry Tales -
well, this was Signior Benedick that said so.
- What's he?
- I am sure you know him well enough.
- Not I, believe me.
- Did he never make you laugh?
- I pray you, what is he?
- Why, he is the princess's jester:
a very dull fool;
his only gift is in devising impossible slanders:
none but libertines delight in him;
and his commendation is not in his wit, but in his villany;
for it both pleases and offends freely,
and then hearers laugh at him and beat him.
- THEY LAUGH
- I am sure he is in the fleet: I would he had boarded me.
- When I know the gentleman, I shall tell him what you say.
- Oh, do,
do:
he'll but break a comparison or two on me;
which, peradventure being not marked or not laughed at,
strikes him into melancholy;
and then there's a partridge wing saved,
for the fool will eat no supper that night.
- GASPS
- We must follow the leaders.
- In every good thing.
- Nay, if they lead to any ill,
I will leave them at the next turning.
- Good evening, Messina!
I'm your host, Don P.
I hope you're having a good time tonight!
# On your left side, get down low
# Show us something, let it flow
# On your right side, get down low
# Come on
# All my ladies, get down low
# Give us something, let it flow
# Hey, Jack or Joe
# Grab your shot and let us go
# Hey! Ho, ho, hey!
# Ho, ho, hey. #
- Sure my sister is amorous on Hero
and hath withdrawn her father to break with him about it.
The ladies follow her and but one visor remains.
- And that is Claudio: I know him by his bearing.
- CHUCKLES
CLEARS THROAT
- Are not you Signior Benedick?
- You know me well; I am he.
- Signior, you are very near my sister in her love:
she is enamoured on Hero; I pray you, dissuade her from her:
she is no equal for her birth:
you may do the part of an honest man in it.
- How know you she loves her?
- I heard her swear her affection.
- So did I too; and she swore she would marry her to-night.
- Come, let us to the banquet.
- CHUCKLES
Thus answer I in the name of Benedick,
But hear these ill news with the ears of Claudio.
'Tis certain so; the princess wooes for herself.
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!
- Count Claudio? - Yea, the same.
- Come, will you go with me? - Whither?
- Even to the next willow, about your own business, count.
For the princess hath got your Hero.
- I wish her joy of her.
- Why, that's spoken like an honest cow drover:
that's how they sell bullocks.
But did you think the princess would have served you thus?
- I pray you, leave me. - Now you strike like the blind man:
'twas the boy who stole your meat, and you'll beat the post.
- If it will not be, I'll leave you.
- Alas, poor hurt fowl!
now will he creep into darkness.
But that my Lady Beatrice should know me, and not know me!
The princess's fool!
It may be I go under that title because I am merry.
Yea, but so I am apt to do myself wrong;
I am not so reputed:
it is the base, though bitter, disposition of Beatrice
that puts the world into her person and so gives me out.
Well, I'll be revenged as I may.
- Now, signior, where's the count? did you see him?
- Troth, your grace, I have played the part of Lady Fame.
I found him here as melancholy as a willow:
and I told him, and I think I told him true,
that your grace had got the good will of this young lady;
and I offered him my company to a tree,
either to make him up a garland, as for being forsaken,
or to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped.
- To be whipped! What's his fault?
- The flat transgression of a schoolboy, who, being overjoyed
finding a birds' nest, shows it his companion, and she steals it.
- Wilt thou make a trust a transgression?
The transgression is in the stealer.
- Yet it had not been amiss the rod had been made,
and the garland too; for the garland he might have worn himself,
and the rod he might have bestowed upon you, who, as I take it,
have stolen his birds' nest.
- I will but teach them how to sing, and restore them to the owner.
- If their singing answer your saying, by my...
..faith, you say honestly?
- The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel with you. - Mm.
- The gentleman that danced with her told her she is much wronged by you.
- O, she misused me past the endurance of a block of wood!
an oak but with one green leaf on it would have answered her.
She told me, not thinking I had been myself,
that I was your grace's jester, that I was duller than a great thaw;
huddling jest upon jest upon me with such impossible conveyance
that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me.
She speaks poniards, and every word stabs:
if her breath were as terrible as her terminations,
there were no living near her; she would infect to the north star.
I would not marry her, though she were endowed with all that
Adam had left him before he transgressed:
she would have made Hercules turn spit,
yea, and cleft his club to make firewood too.
Come, talk not of her: for while she is here,
a man may live as quietly in hell as in a sanctuary;
and people sin upon purpose, because they would go thither.
- Look, here she comes.
- Will your grace command me any service to the world's end?
I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes
that thou can devise to send me on;
I will fetch you a tooth-pick now from the furthest inch of Asia,
bring you the length of Prester John's foot,
fetch you a hair off the great Cham's beard,
do you any embassage to the Pigmies,
rather than hold three words' conference with this harpy.
You have no employment for me?
- None, but to desire your good company.
- O, here's a dish I love not:
I cannot endure my Lady Tongue.
- Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick.
- Indeed, my lady, he lent it me awhile;
and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one:
marry, once before he won it of me with false dice,
therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.
- You have put him down, lady, you have put him down.
- So I would not he should do me, my lady,
lest I should prove the mother of fools.
I have brought Count Claudio, whom you sent me to seek.
- How now, count! wherefore are you sad?
- Not sad, my lady. - How then? sick?
- Neither, my lady.
- The count is neither sad, nor sick,
nor merry, nor well;
but civil count,
civil as an orange...
..and something of that jealous complexion.
- In faith, lady, I think your blazon to be true;
though, I'll be sworn, if he be so, his conceit is false.
Oya!
- MUSIC BEGINS
- Here, Count Claudio, I have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won:
I have broke with her father, and his good will obtained:
name the day of marriage, and God give thee joy!
- WHOOPING AND CHEERING
- Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes:
her grace hath made the match, and all grace say Amen to it.
- CHEERING
- Speak, count, 'tis your cue.
- 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.
- Speak, cousin; or, if you cannot,
stop his mouth with a kiss, and let not him speak neither.
- In faith, lady, you have a merry heart.
- Yea, my lady; I thank it, poor fool,
keeps on the windy side of care.
- CHEERING
- Oh, my cousin tells him in his ear that he is in her heart.
- And so she doth, cousin.
- Good lord, for alliance!
Thus goes every one to the world but I,
and I am sunburnt;
I may sit in a corner and cry.
# Hey-hey-ho
# For a husband! #
- Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.
- I would rather have one of your father's getting.
Hath your grace ne'er a brother like you?
Your father got excellent husbands, if a maid could come by them.
- Will you have me, lady?
- No, my lady,
unless I might have another for working-days.
Oh! Er...
your grace is far too costly to wear every day.
But, I beseech your grace, pardon me:
I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.
- Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you;
for, out of question, you were born in a merry hour.
- No, sure, my lady, my mother cried;
but then a star danced,
and under that was I born.
Oh! Cousins, God give you joy!
- Niece, will you look to those things I told you of?
- I cry your mercy, uncle.
By your grace's pardon.
- SQUEALS
- By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady.
- There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lady:
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.
- She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.
- O, by no means: she mocks all her wooers out of suit.
- She were an excellent wife for Benedict.
- O Lord, my lady, if they were but a week married,
they would talk themselves mad.
- Count Claudio, when mean you to go to church?
- To-morrow, my lady: time goes on crutches
till love have all his rites.
- 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.
- Come, you shake your head at so long a breathing:
but, I warrant you, the time will not go dully by us.
In the interim I will undertake one of Hercules' labours;
which is, to bring Signior Benedick and Lady Beatrice
into a mountain of affection the one for the other.
I would fain have it a match, and I doubt not but to fashion it,
if you three would administer such assistance
as I shall give you direction.
- My lady, I am for you.
- And I, my lady.
- And you too, gentle Hero?
- I will do any modest office, my lady,
to help my cousin to a good husband.
- And Benedick is not the unhopefullest husband that I know.
Thus far can I praise him;
he is of noble strain, of approved valour and confirmed honesty.
I will teach you how to humour your cousin,
that she shall fall in love with Benedick;
and I, with your two helps,
will so practise on Benedick that, in despite of his quick wit
and his queasy stomach, he shall fall in love with Beatrice.
If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an archer:
his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods.
Go in with me, and I will tell you my drift.
- LAUGHTER AND SHOUTING
It is so; the Count Claudio shall marry the daughter of Leonato.
- Yea, my lord; but I can cross it.
- Any bar, any cross,
any impediment is medicinable to me:
I am sick in displeasure to him,
and whatsoever comes athwart his affection ranges evenly with mine.
How canst thou stop this marriage? - Not honestly, my lord.
- Show me briefly how.
- I think I told your lordship a year since, how much I am
in the favour of Margaret, the waiting gentlewoman to Hero.
- I remember. - I can, at any unseasonable instant of the night,
appoint her to look out her lady's chamber window.
- What life is in that, to be the death of this marriage?
- The poison of that lies in you to temper.
Go you to the princess your sister;
spare not to tell her that she hath wronged her honour
in marrying the renowned Claudio,
whose estimation do you mightily hold up, to a contaminated stale,
such a one as Hero.
- What proof shall I make of that?
- Proof enough to misuse the princess, to vex Claudio,
to undo Hero and kill Leonato.
Look you for any other issue?
- Only to despite them, I will endeavour any thing.
- Go, then; find me a meet hour to draw Don Pedra
and the Count Claudio alone:
tell them you know that Hero loves me;
intend a kind of zeal both to the princess and Claudio,
that you have discovered thus.
They will scarcely believe this without trial:
offer them instances; which shall bear no less likelihood
than to see me at her chamber-window,
hear me call Margaret Hero, hear Margaret term me Claudio;
and bring them to see this
the very night before the intended wedding,
for in the meantime I will so fashion the matter
that Hero shall be absent, and there shall appear
such seeming truth of Hero's disloyalty
that jealousy shall be called assurance
and all the preparations overthrown.
- Grow this to what adverse issue it can,
I will put it in practise.
Be cunning in the working this,
and thy fee is a thousand cowries.
- Be you constant in the accusation, and my cunning shall not shame me.
- I will presently go learn their day of marriage.
- Boy!
- Signior?
- In my chamber-window lies a book:
bring it here to me in the garden. - I am here already, sir.
- I know that; but I would have thee hence, and here again.
I do much wonder that one man,
seeing how much another man is a fool
when he dedicates his behaviours to love,
will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others,
become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love.
And such a man is Claudio.
I have known when there was no music with him
but the djembe and the fife;
and now had he rather hear the mbira and the pipe.
He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose,
like an honest man and a soldier;
and now has he turned orthography;
his words are a very fantastical banquet,
just so many strange dishes.
May I be so converted and see with these eyes?
I cannot tell.
One woman is fine, yet I am well;
another wise, yet I am well;
another virtuous, yet I am well;
but till all graces be in one woman,
one woman shall not come in my grace.
Rich she shall be, that's certain;
wise, or I'll none;
virtuous, or I'll never cheapen her;
mild, or come not near me;
noble, or not I for an angel;
of good discourse, an excellent musician,
and her hair shall be...
..whatever colour it please God.
The princess and Monsieur Love! I will hide.
- Come, shall we hear this music?
See you where Benedick hath hid himself?
- O, very well, my lady.
- Come, Balthasar, we'll hear that song again.
- O, good my lady, tax not so bad a singer
as to slander music any more than once.
- I pray thee, sing, and let me woo no more.
- Because you talk of wooing, I will sing;
Since many a wooer doth commence his suit
To her he thinks not worthy, yet he wooes,
Yet will he swear he loves.
- Do it in notes.
- Note this before my notes;
There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting.
- Why, these are very crotchets that he speaks;
Note, notes, forsooth, and nothing.
- Now, divine air!
now is his soul ravished!
Is it not strange that sheeps' guts
should hale souls out of men's bodies?
- MUSIC BEGINS
- # Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more
# Men were deceivers ever
# One foot in sea and one on shore
# To one thing constant never
# Then sigh not so, but let them go
# And be you blithe and bonny
# Converting all All your sounds of woe
# Into hey nonny, nonny
# Sing no more ditties Sing no more
# Of dumps so dull and heavy
# The fraud of men was ever so
# Since summertime was leafy
# Sing no more ditties Sing no more
# Of dumps so dull and heavy, mmm
# The fraud of men was ever so
# Since summertime was leafy
# Then sigh not so and see... #
- LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
By my troth, a good song.
- And an ill singer, my lady.
- Ha, no, no, faith; thou singest well enough for a shift.
- An he had been a dog that should have howled thus,
they would have hanged him.
- Balthasar, I pray thee, get us some excellent music;
for to-morrow night we would have it at the Lady Hero's chamber-window.
- The best I can, my lady.
- Do so.
Farewell.
LOUDLY: Come, Leonato. What was it you told me of to-day,
your niece Beatrice was in love with Signior Benedick?
- O, ay: stalk on. stalk on; the fowl sits.
I did never think that lady would have loved any man.
- Nor I neither; but most wonderful
she should so dote on Signior Benedick,
whom she hath in all outward behaviours seemed ever to abhor.
- Is't possible? Sits the wind in that corner?
- By my troth, my lady, I cannot tell what to think of it
but that she loves him with an enraged affection:
it is past the infinite of thought.
- Maybe she doth but counterfeit.
- Faith, like enough. - O God, counterfeit!
There was never counterfeit of passion
came so near the life of passion as she discovers it.
- Why, what effects of passion shows she?
- Bait the hook well; this fish will bite.
- What effects, my lady? Well, she will sit...
You, you heard my daughter tell you how.
- She did, indeed. - How, how, I pray you?
You amaze me.
WHISPERING
I would have thought her spirit had been invincible
against all assaults of affection.
- I would have sworn it had, my lady;
especially against Benedick.
- I should think this is a trick,
but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it:
knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such reverence.
- He hath ta'en the infection: hold it up.
- Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?
- No; and swears she never will: that's her torment.
- '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?"
- This says she now when she is beginning to write to him;
for she'll be up twenty times a night,
and there she will sit in her smock till she have writ a sheet of paper:
my daughter tells us all.
- Now you talk of a sheet of paper,
I remember a pretty jest your daughter told us of.
- O, when she had writ it and was reading it over,
she found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheets.
- That. - O, she tore the letter in a thousand pieces;
railed at herself, that she should be so immodest
to write to one 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."
- Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs,
beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses;
"O sweet Benedick!
"God give me patience!"
- 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:
'tis very true.
- It were good for Benedick to hear of this by some other,
if she will not discover it. - To what end?
He would but make a sport of it and torment the poor lady worse.
- And if he did, it would be charitable to hang him.
She's an excellent sweet lady;
and, out of all suspicion, she is virtuous.
- And she is exceeding wise.
- In every thing but loving Benedick.
- O, my lady, 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.
- I would she had bestowed this dotage on me:
I would have made her half myself.
I pray you, shall we go find Benedick, and hear what he will say?
- Were it good, think you? - 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.
- She doth well: if she should make tender of her love,
'tis very possible he'll scorn it;
for the man, as you know all, hath a contemptible spirit.
- He is a very proper man.
- He doth have a good outward happiness.
- Before God! and, in my mind, very wise.
- He doth indeed show some sparks that are like wit.
- And I take him to be valiant.
- And the man doth fear God,
howsoever it seems not in him by some large jests he will make.
Well, I am sorry for your niece.
Shall we go seek Benedick, and tell him of her love?
- Never tell him, my lady:
let her wear it out with good counsel.
- Nay, that's impossible: she may wear her heart out first.
- Well, we will hear further of it from your daughter:
let it cool the while.
I love Benedick well;
and I could wish he would modestly examine himself,
to see how unworthy he is of so good a lady.
- My lady, will you walk? dinner is ready.
- CHORTLING
- If he do not dote on her upon this,
I will never trust my expectation.
- Let the same net be spread for that your daughter
and her gentlewomen must carry.
Let's send Beatrice to send him in to dinner.
THEY LAUGH
- This can be no trick:
the conference was sadly borne.
They have the truth of this from Hero.
They seem to pity the lady: it seems her affections have their full bent.
Love me!
why, it must be requited.
I hear how I am censured:
they say I will bear myself proudly,
if I perceive the love come from her;
they say too that she would rather die than give any sign of affection.
I did never think to marry.
I must not seem proud:
happy are they that can hear their detractions
and can put them to mending.
They say the lady is beautiful; 'tis truth,
I can bear them witness;
and virtuous; 'tis so, I cannot reprove it;
and wise, but for loving me;
by my troth, it is no addition to her wit,
nor no great argument of her folly,
for I will be horribly in love with her.
I may have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me,
because I have railed so long against marriage:
but doth not the appetite alter?
The man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.
Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain
awe a man from the career of his humour?
No, the world must be peopled.
When I said I would die a bachelor,
I did not think I would live till I were married.
- FOOTSTEPS
COUGHING
- Here comes Beatrice.
I do spy some marks of love in her.
- Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.
- Gentle, Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.
- 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.
- You take pleasure then in the message?
- Yea,
just so much as you may take upon a knife's point.
You have no stomach, signior: fare you well.
- "Against my will I am sent bid you come in to dinner!"
There's a double meaning in that.
"I took no more pains for those thanks
"than you take pains to thank me."
that's as easy as to say,
That any pains that I take for you is as good as thanks.
If I do not pity her, I am a villain;
if I do not love her, I am a beast.
I will go get her picture.
- Good Margaret, run thee to the parlour;
There shalt thou find my cousin Beatrice
Proposing with the princess and Claudio:
Whisper her ear and tell her, I and Ursula
Walk in the garden and our whole discourse
Is all of her; say that thou overheard'st us;
And bid her to hide, To listen our purpose.
This is thy office; Bear thee well in it and leave us alone.
- I'll make her come, I warrant you, presently.
- Now, Ursula, when Beatrice doth come,
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 part 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.
Now begin;
For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs
Close by the ground, to hear our conference.
- 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.
Fear you not my part of the dialogue.
- Then go we near her, that her ear lose nothing
Of the false sweet bait that we lay for it.
No, truly, Ursula, she is too disdainful.
- But are you sure
That Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?
- So says the princess and my new-trothed lord.
- And did they bid you tell her of it, madam?
- 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.
- Why did you so?
Doth not the gentleman
Deserve as full as fortunate a bed As ever Beatrice shall couch upon?
- 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-endeared. - Sure, I think so;
And therefore certainly it were not good
She knew his love, lest she make sport at it.
- Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man,
How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured,
But she would spell him backwards: if handsome,
She would swear the gentleman should be her sister;
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 it deserves.
- Oh! Oh...
- Sure, sure, such carping is not 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 cover'd fire,
Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly:
It were a better death than die with mocks,
Which is as bad as die with tickling.
- Yet tell her of it...
..hear what she will say.
- 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 his liking.
- O, do not do your cousin such a wrong.
- Thank you!
- She cannot be so much without true judgment,
Having so swift and excellent a wit
As she is prized to have, as to refuse
So rare a gentleman as Signior Benedick.
- He is the only man of Italy.
Always excepted my dear Claudio.
- I pray you, be not angry with me, madam,
Speaking my fancy:
Signior Benedick,
For shape,
for bearing,
argument and valour,
Goes foremost in report through Italy.
- Indeed, he hath an excellent good name.
- His excellence did earn it, ere he had it.
- SUCKS IN AIR
- When are you married, madam?
- Why, every day, to-morrow.
Come, go in: I'll show thee some attires, and have thy counsel
Which is best to furnish me to-morrow.
- She's hooked, I warrant you: we have caught her, madam.
- If this proves so, loving goes by haps:
Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.
- What fire is in mine ears?
Can this be true?
Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much?
Contempt, farewell!
and maiden pride, adieu!
No glory lives behind the back of such.
And, Benedick,
love on.
I will requite thee,
Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand:
If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee
To bind our loves up in a holy band;
For others say thou dost deserve, and I
Believe it better than reportingly.
- I do but stay till your marriage be consummate,
then go I towards Arragon.
- I'll bring you thither, my lady.
- Nay, that's a greater soil in the new gloss of your marriage
as to show a child his new coat and forbid him to wear it.
I will only be bold with Benedick for his company.
- Gallants, I am not as I have been.
- So say I. Methinks you are sadder.
- I hope he be in love. - Hang him, truant!
there's no true drop of blood in him, if he be truly touched by love:
if he be sad, he wants money.
- I have the toothache. - Draw it.
- Hang it! - No, you must hang it first, and draw it afterwards.
- What! sigh for the toothache?
- Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.
- Yet say I, he is in love.
- There is no appearance of fancy in him,
unless it be a fancy that he hath to strange disguises.
- If he be not in love with some woman,
there is no believing old signs.
- Hath anyone seen him at the barber's?
- No, but the barber's man hath been seen with him.
- Indeed, he looks younger than he did, by the loss of a beard.
- Nay, he rubs himself with perfume: can you smell him out by that?
- Oh!
- That's as much as to say, the sweet youth's in love.
- The greatest note of it is his melancholy.
- And when was he wont to wash his face?
- Yea, and to paint himself?
- Nay, but his jesting spirit; which is now gone missing.
- Indeed, this tells a heavy tale: conclude he is in love.
- Nay, but I know who loves him.
- That would I know. I warrant you, one that knows him not.
- Yes, and his ill conditions; and, in despite of all,
dies for him.
- She shall be buried with her face upwards.
- Yet is this no charm for the toothache.
Old signior, walk aside with me:
I have eight or nine wise words to speak to you,
which these hobby-horses must not hear.
- For my life, to break with him about Beatrice.
- '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.
# Shakara
# Mm mm mm mm mm
# Shakara... #
- CLEARS THROAT
My lady and sister, God save you!
- Good day, brother.
- If your leisure served, I would speak with you.
- In private?
- If it please you: yet Count Claudio may hear;
for what I would speak of concerns him.
- What's the matter?
- Oya!
Means your lordship to be married to-morrow?
- You know he does.
- I know not that, when he knows what I know.
- If there be any impediment, I pray you discover it.
- You may think I love you not:
let that appear hereafter,
and aim better at me by that I now will manifest.
For my sister, I think she holds you well,
and in dearness of heart
hath help to effect your ensuing marriage -
surely suit ill spent and labour ill bestowed.
- Why, what's the matter?
- I came hither to tell you; and, circumstances shortened,
for she has too long been a talking of,
the lady is disloyal.
- Who, Hero?
- Even she; Leonato's Hero,
your Hero,
every man's Hero.
- Disloyal?
- A word too good to paint out her wickedness;
I would say she were worse:
think you a worse title, and I would fit her to it.
Wonder not till further warrant:
but go with me to-night,
and you shall see her chamber-window entered,
even the night before her wedding-day.
If you love her then, to-morrow wed her;
but it would better fit your honour to change your mind.
- May this be so? - I will not think it.
- If you dare not trust that you see, confess not that you know:
if you will follow me, I will show you enough;
and when you have seen more and heard more,
proceed accordingly.
- 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. - Mm-hm.
- And, as I wooed for thee to obtain her,
I will join with thee to disgrace her.
- I will disparage her no farther till you are my witnesses:
bear it coldly but till midnight,
and let the issue show itself.
- O day untowardly turned!
- O mischief strangely thwarting!
- O plague right well prevented!
so will you say when you have seen the sequel.
CHUCKLES
JAUNTY MUSIC PLAYS
FAINT SIRENS
CLEARS THROAT
CHUCKLES
Are you good men and true?
- Yea, or else it were a pity but they should suffer salvation,
body and soul.
- Nay, that would be a punishment too good for them,
should they have any allegiance in them,
being chosen for the princess's watch.
- Well, give them their charge, neighbour Dogberry.
- First, who think you the most desertless man to be constable?
- Seacole; for she can write and read.
- Oh!
Come hither, neighbour Seacole.
Huh!
God hath blessed you with a good name:
to be a handsome woman is the gift of fortune;
but to write and read comes by nature.
- Both of which, master constable...
- You have: Yes, I knew that would be your answer. Ha!
Well, for your looks, why, give God thanks,
and make no boast of it;
as for your writing and reading,
let that appear when there is no need of such vanity.
You are thought here to be the most senseless
and fit woman for constable of the watch;
therefore bear you the lantern.
ALL: - # Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah-ah. #
- This is your charge:
you shall comprehend all vagrant men;
you are to bid any man stand, in the princess's name.
- How if he will not stand?
- Why, then, take no note of him, but let him go;
and presently call the rest of the watch together
and thank God you are rid of a knave.
- If he will not stand when he is bidden,
he is none of the princess's subjects.
- True, and they are to meddle with none but the princess's subjects.
You shall also make no noise in the streets;
for the watch to babble and talk
is most tolerable and not to be endured.
- We will rather sleep than talk:
we know what belongs to a watch.
- Ah, you speak like an ancient and most quiet watchman; mm,
for I cannot see how sleeping should offend:
only, have a care that your arms be not stolen.
Well, you are to call at all the ale-houses,
and bid those that are drunk get them to bed.
- How if they will not?
- ALL LAUGH
Why, then, let them alone till they are sober:
if they make you not then the better answer,
you may say to them they are not the men you took them for.
- Well, constable.
- If you meet a thief, you may suspect him,
by virtue of your office, to be no true man;
and, for such kind of men, the less you meddle or make with them,
why the more is for your honesty.
MOUTHS
SIGHS
- Er...if we know him to be a thief, shall we not lay hands on him?
- Truly, by your office, you may;
but I think they that touch dirt will be defiled:
the most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief,
is to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.
- You have been always called a merciful woman, partner.
- Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will,
much more a man who hath any honesty in him.
IMITATES CHILD CRYING
- If you hear a child cry in the night,
you must call to the nurse and bid her still it.
- How if the nurse be asleep and will not hear us?
- Why, then, depart in peace,
and let the child wake her with crying;
for the ewe that will not hear her lamb when it...
BLEATS
..will never answer her calf when he... - Moos.
- ..bleats.
- 'Tis very true. - This is the end of the charge.
Good night. Come, neighbour.
- Well, we hear our charge:
let us go sit here upon the bench till two, then all to bed.
- One word more, honest neighbours.
I pray you watch about Signior Leonato's door;
for the wedding being there to-morrow,
there is a great preparation to-night. Adieu!
Be vigitant!
I beseech you.
YAWNS
- What Conrade!
- Peace! stir not. - Conrade, I say!
- Here, man; I am at thy elbow.
- Stand thee close, then, and I will, like a true drunkard,
utter all to thee.
I have earned of Don John a thousand cowrie.
- Is it possible any villany should be so dear?
- Thou shouldst rather ask if it were possible any villany
should be so rich; for when rich villains have need of poor ones,
poor ones may make what price they will.
- I wonder at it. - That shows thou art unconfirmed.
- I know that villain! He hath been a vile thief this seven year.
- Didst thou not hear somebody?
- No; 'twas the vane on the house.
- Know that I have to-night wooed Margaret,
the Lady Hero's gentlewoman, by the name of Hero:
she leans me out her mistress' chamber-window,
bids me a thousand - mwah! - times - mwah! good night...
I tell this tale vilely:
I should first tell thee how the princess, Claudio and my master,
planted and placed and possessed by my master Don John,
saw afar off in the grounds this amiable encounter.
- And thought they Margaret were Hero?
- Two of them did, the princess and Claudio;
but the devil my master knew she was Margaret;
and partly by his oaths, which first possessed them,
partly by the dark night, which did deceive them,
but chiefly by my villany,
which did confirm any slander that Don John had made,
away went Claudio enraged; swore he would meet her,
as he was appointed, next morning at the temple, and there,
before the whole congregation,
shame her with what he saw o'er night
and send her home again without a husband.
- We charge you, in the princess's name, stand!
- Call up the right master constable.
We have here recovered the most dangerous piece of lechery
that ever was known in the commonwealth.
- Masters, masters...
- Never speak: we charge you let us obey you to go with us.
- We are likely to be proven a goodly commodity,
being taken in by the watch.
- A commodity in question, I warrant you. Come, we'll obey you.
- Good Ursula, wake my cousin and desire her to rise.
- I will, my lady. - And bid her come hither. - Well.
- I think your other rabato were better.
- No, pray thee, good Meg, I'll wear this.
- By my troth, is not so good; and I warrant your cousin will say so.
- My cousin is a fool, and thou art another:
I'll wear none but this.
- I like the new tire within excellently,
if the hair were a thought browner;
and your gown's a most rare fashion, in faith.
I saw the Duchess of Milan's gown that they praise so.
- O, that exceeds, they say.
- By my troth, it is but a night-gown in respect of yours:
cloth of gold, and cuts,
laced with silver, set with pearls,
down sleeves, side sleeves, and skirts,
round underborne with a bluish tinsel:
but for a fine, quaint, graceful and excellent fashion,
yours is worth ten on it.
- God give me joy to wear it! for my heart is exceeding heavy.
- 'Twill be heavier soon by the weight of a man.
- Fie upon thee! art not ashamed?
- Of what, lady?
of speaking honourably?
Is not marriage honourable in a beggar?
Hmm?
Is not your lord honourable without marriage?
I think you would have me say,
"saving your reverence, a husband:"
and bad thinking do not wrest true speaking, I'll offend nobody.
Is there any harm in "the heavier for a husband"?
None, I think, and it be the right husband and the right wife;
otherwise 'tis light, and not heavy.
Ask my Lady Beatrice else; here she comes.
- Good morrow, coz. - Good morrow, sweet Hero.
- How now? do you speak in the sick tune?
- I am out of all other tune, methinks.
- Clap us into Light O' Love; you sing it, I'll dance it.
- # Ye light o' love, with your heels! #
- O illegitimate construction! I scorn that with my heels.
- 'Tis almost five o'clock, cousin; tis time you were ready.
By my troth, I am exceeding ill:
# Hey-hey-ho...
- # For a hawk, a horse, or a husband? #
- THEY GIGGLE
What means the fool?
- Nothing I; but God send every one their heart's desire!
- These gloves the count sent me are an excellent perfume.
- I am stuffed, cousin.
- A maid, and stuffed!
there's goodly catching of a cold.
- By my troth, I am sick.
- Get you some of this Carduus Benedictus,
and lay it to your heart:
it's the only thing for a qualm.
- Benedictus!
why...Benedictus?
THEY SNIGGER
You have some moral with this...Benedictus?
- Moral!
no, by my troth, I have no moral meaning;
I meant, plain holy-thistle.
- SIGHS
- You may think perchance that I think that you are in love:
nay, I am not such a fool to think what I list,
nor I list not to think what I can, nor indeed I cannot think,
if I would think my heart out of thinking, that you are in love
or that you will be in love or that you CAN be in love.
Yet Benedick was such another,
and now is he become a man:
he swore he would never marry, and yet now,
in despite of his heart, he eats his meat without grudging.
Huh! - Huh!
- And how you may be converted I know not,
but methinks you look with your eyes as other women do.
- What pace is this that thy tongue keeps?
- Not a false gallop.
- RUNNING FOOTSTEPS
- Madam, withdraw:
the princess, the count, Signior Benedick, Don John,
and all the gallants of the town, are come to fetch you to church.
- Help me dress, good Meg, good coz, good Ursula!
- What would you with me, honest neighbour?
- Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with you
that decerns you nearly.
- Brief, I pray you; for you see it is a busy time with me.
- Marry, this it is, sir. - Yes, in truth it is, sir.
- What is it, my good friends?
- I thank God I am as honest as any man living,
that there is no-one honester than I.
- Comparisons are odorous, neighbour Verges.
- Neighbours, you are tedious.
- Oh!
Oh, it pleases your worship to say so,
but we are the poor lady's officers; but truly, for mine own part,
if I were as tedious as a king, I could find it in my heart
to bestow it all of your worship.
- All thy tediousness on me, ah?
- Yea, an 'twere a thousand cowrie more than 'tis;
for I hear as good exclamation of your worship
as of any man in the city; and though I be but a poor woman,
I am glad to hear it.
- And so am I. - I would fain know what you have to say.
- Marry, sir, our watch to-night,
excepting your worship's presence,
ha' taken a couple of as arrant knaves as any in Messina.
- One word, sir:
our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two auspicious persons,
and we would have them this morning examined before your worship.
- Take their examination yourself and bring it me:
I am now in great haste, as it may appear unto you.
- It shall be suffigance.
- Drink some wine ere you go: fare you well.
- My lord, they stay for you to give your daughter to her husband.
- I am ready.
- Go, good neighbour, go, get you to the sexton;
bid him bring his pen and inkhorn to the gaol:
we are now to examination these men.
- And we must do it wisely.
- We will spare for no wit,
get the learned writer to set down our excommunication
and meet me at the gaol.
- ROMANTIC MUSIC PLAYS
- # Mm-mm, mm-mm
# O Messina, cast your eyes upon beauty
# For to celebrate love is our duty
# Lady Hero, so pure and chaste
# Comes to wed our Claudio
# Man of great taste
# Light your show globes
# Make ready your best robes
# Tonight a very merry dance awaits
# Moonlight bears witness to a love so great
# O Messina, cast your eyes upon beauty
# For to celebrate love is our duty
# Lady Hero, so pure and chaste
# Comes to wed our Claudio
# Man of great taste
# Light your show globes
# Make ready your best robes
# Tonight a very merry dance awaits
# Moonlight bears witness to a love so great... #
- WHOOPING
- Come, Friar Francis, be brief; only to the plain form of marriage,
and you shall recount their particular duties afterwards.
- LAUGHTER
- You come hither, my lord, to marry this lady.
- No. - To be married to her: friar, you come to marry her.
- LAUGHTER
- Lady, you come hither to be married to this count.
- I do.
- LAUGHTER
- If either of you know any inward impediment
why you should not be conjoined,
I charge you, on your souls, to utter it.
- Know you any, Hero? - None, my lord.
- Know you any, count?
- I dare make his answer, none.
- O, what men dare do! what men may do!
what men daily do, not knowing what they do!
- How now! interjections?
- Stand thee by, friar.
Father, by your leave:
APPLAUSE
Will you with free and unconstrained soul
Give me this maid, your daughter?
- As freely, son, as God did give her me.
- Mm-hm.
And what have I to give you back, whose worth
May counterpoise this rich and precious gift?
- Nothing, unless you render her again.
- Sweet princess, 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.
- What do you mean, my lord? - Not to be married,
Not to knit my soul to an approved wanton.
- Dear my lord, if you, in your own proof,
Have vanquish'd the resistance of her youth,
And made defeat of her virginity...
- I know what you would say: if I have known her,
You will say that 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.
- And seem'd I ever otherwise to you?
- Out on thee! Seeming!
I will write against it: You seem to me
As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown;
But you are more intemperate in your blood
Than those pamper'd animals That rage in savage sensuality.
- Is my lord well, that he doth speak so wide?
- Your grace, why speak not you?
- What should I speak?
I stand dishonour'd, that have gone about
To link my dear friend to a common stale.
- Are these things spoken, or do I but dream?
- Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true.
- This looks not like a nuptial. - True! O God!
- Leonato, stand I here?
Is this the princess? is this the princess's brother?
Is this face Hero's? are our eyes our own?
- All this is so: but what of this, my lord?
- 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.
- I charge thee do so, as thou art my child.
- O, God defend me! how am I beset!
What kind of catechising call you this?
- To make you answer truly to your name.
- Is it not Hero? Who can blot that name
With any just reproach?
- 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.
- I talk'd with no man at that hour, my lord.
- Why, then are you no maiden.
Leonato, I am sorry you must hear: upon mine honour,
Myself, my brother and this grieved count
Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night
Talk with a ruffian at her chamber-window
Who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain,
Confess'd the vile encounters they have had
A thousand times in secret. - Fie, fie!
they are not to be named, my lady, Not to be spoke of;
There is not chastity enough in language
Without offence to utter them.
Thus, pretty lady,
I am sorry for thy much misgovernment.
- 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.
- Hath no man's dagger here a point for me?
- Why, how now, cousin! - Come. Let us go.
These things come thus to light...
- Wherefore sink you down? - ..smother her spirits up.
- BENEDICK: How doth the lady?
- Dead, I think.
Help, uncle!
Hero! why, Hero!
Uncle!
Signior Benedick! Friar!
- O Fate! take not away thy heavy hand.
Death is the fairest cover for her shame
That may be wish'd for.
- How now, cousin Hero!
- Have comfort, lady.
- Dost thou look up? - Yea, wherefore should she not?
- 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?
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 I loved and mine I praised
Mine I was proud on
That I myself was to myself not mine,
Valuing of her!
why, she, O, she is fallen
Into a pit of ink, and 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!
- Sir, sir, be patient.
For my part in this, I am so attired in wonder, I know not what to say.
- O, on my soul,
my cousin is belied!
- Lady, were you her bedfellow last night?
- No.
Truly not;
although, until last night,
I have this twelvemonth been her bedfellow.
- Confirm'd, confirm'd!
That was stronger made
Which was before barr'd up with ribs of iron!
Would the princess and her brother lie, would Claudio lie,
Who loved her so, that, speaking of her foulness,
Wash'd it with tears? Hence from her!
Let her die.
- 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 mark'd A thousand blushing apparitions
To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames
And in her eye hath appear'd 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.
- 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:
- Lady, what man is he you are accused of?
- 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
Maintain'd the change of words with any creature,
Refuse me,
hate me, torture me to death!
- There is some strange misprision in her accusers.
- The two of them have the very bent of honour;
And if their wisdom be misled in this,
The practise of it lives in John the bastard,
Whose spirits toil in the frame of villanies.
- 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 so yet dried this blood of mine,
Nor age so ate up my invention,
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.
- Pause awhile,
And let my counsel sway you in this case.
Your daughter here the princes left for dead.
Let her awhile 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.
- What shall become of this? what will this do?
- Marry, this well carried shall on her behalf
Change slander to remorse; that is some good:
She dying, as it must so be maintain'd,
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 lack'd and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
While it was ours.
So will it fare with Claudio:
When he shall hear she died upon his words,
The idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination,
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit,
More moving-delicate and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of his soul,
Than when she lived indeed; then shall he mourn.
Let this be so, and doubt not but success
Will fashion the event in better shape
Than I can lay it down in likelihood.
But if all aim but this be levell'd false,
The supposition of the lady's death
Shall quench the wonder of her infamy:
And if it sort not well...
..you may conceal her...
..as best befits her wounded reputation,
In some reclusive and religious life,
Out of all eyes, tongues, minds and injuries.
- Signior Leonato, let the friar advise you:
And though you know my inwardness and love
Is unto the princess and Claudio,
Yet, by mine honour, I should deal in this
As secretly and justly as your soul
Should with your body.
- Being that I flow in grief,
The smallest twine may lead me.
- 'Tis well consented: presently away;
For to strange sores strangely they strain the cure.
Come, lady,
die to live:
this wedding-day
Perhaps is but prolong'd: have patience and endure.
- SOBS
Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?
- Yea, and I will weep a while longer.
- I will not desire that.
- You have no reason; I do it freely.
- Surely I do believe your fair cousin is wronged.
- Ah!
How much might the man deserve of me that would right her!
- Is there any way to show such friendship?
- A very even way,
but no such friend.
- May a man do it?
- It is a man's office.
But not yours.
- SOBS
I do love nothing in the world so well as you.
Is not that strange?
- As strange as the thing I know not.
It were as possible for me to say I loved nothing so well as you.
But believe me not; and yet I lie not;
I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing.
I am sorry...for my cousin.
- Beatrice, by my sword, thou lovest me!
- Do not swear, and eat it.
- I will make him swear by it that thou lovest me;
and I will make him eat it that says I love not you.
- Will you not eat your word?
- With no sauce that can be devised to it.
I protest I love thee.
- Why, then,
God forgive me!
- What offence, sweet Beatrice?
- You have stayed me in a happy hour:
I was about to protest I loved you.
- And do it with all thy heart.
- I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.
- Come, bid me do any thing for thee.
- Kill Claudio.
- Not for the wide world.
- You kill me to deny it.
Farewell. - Tarry, sweet Beatrice.
- I am gone, though I am here:
there is no love in you: I pray you, let me go.
- Beatrice! - In faith, I will go.
- We will be friends first.
- You dare easier be friends with me than fight with mine enemy.
- Is Claudio thine enemy?
- Is he not approved in the height a villain,
that hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman?
O that I were a man!
What, bear her in hand until they come to take hands;
and then, with public accusation,
uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour,
O God, that I were a man!
I would eat his heart in the market-place.
- Hear me, Beatrice... - Talk with a man out at a window!
A proper saying! - Nay, but, Beatrice... - Sweet Hero!
She is wronged, she is slandered, she is undone.
- Beatrice! - O that I were a man for his sake!
or that I had any friend would be a man for my sake!
But manhood is melted into courtesies,
valour into compliment,
and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too:
he is now as valiant as Hercules
that only tells a lie and swears by it.
I cannot be a man with wishing,
therefore I will die a woman with grieving.
- Tarry, sweet Beatrice. By this hand, I love thee.
- Use it for my love some other way than swearing by it.
- Think you in your soul the Count Claudio hath wronged Hero?
- Yea!
As sure as I have a thought or a soul.
- Enough.
I am engaged;
I will challenge him.
I will kiss your hand.
By this hand, the Count Claudio will render me a dear account.
As you hear of me, so think of me.
Go, comfort your cousin:
I must say she is dead.
Farewell.
- Is our whole dissembly appeared?
- O, a stool and a cushion for the sexton.
- Which be the malefactors?
- Marry, that am I and my partner.
- Nay, that is certain; we have the exhibition to examine.
- But which are the offenders that are to be examined?
let them come before madam constable.
- Marry, sir, let them come before me.
What is your name, friend? - Borachio.
- Pray, write down, Borachio.
And yours, sirrah?
- I am a gentleman, ma-am, and my name is Conrade.
- Write down, master gentleman Conrade.
Masters, do you serve God?
- BOTH: - Yea, ma-am, we hope.
- Write down, that they hope they serve God:
but write God first; for God defend
but God should go before such villains!
Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than
false knaves; and it will go near to be thought so shortly.
How answer you for yourselves?
- Marry, ma-am, we say we are none.
- Hiss, boo.
A marvellous witty fellow, I assure you:
but I will go about with him.
Come you hither, sirrah; a word in your ear.
Sir, I say to you... Oh.
Sir, I say to you...
It is thought you are false knaves.
- Ma-am, I say to you we are none.
- Boo! - Then, stand aside.
'Fore God, they are both in a tale.
Have you written down, that they are none?
- Master constable, you go not the way to examine.
SIGHS
You must call forth the watch that are their accusers.
- Yea, marry, sir that's the deftest way.
Let the watch come forth.
Masters, I charge you, in the princess's name,
accuse these men.
- This man said, ma-am, that Don John,
the princess's brother, was a villain.
- Write down Prince John a villain.
Why, it is flat perjury, to call the princess's... - Madam constable...
- Pray thee, fellow, peace:
I do not like thy look, I promise thee.
- What heard you him say else? - Marry!
That he had received a thousand cowrie of Don John
for accusing the Lady Hero wrongfully.
- Flat burglary as ever was committed.
- Yea, by mass, it is. What else, fellow?
- And that Count Claudio did mean,
upon his words, to disgrace Hero before the whole assembly
and not marry her.
- Why, villain! thou wilt be condemned
into everlasting redemption for this.
- What else? BOTH: - This is all.
- And this is more, masters, than you can deny.
Prince John is this morning secretly stolen away;
Hero was in this manner accused,
in this very manner refused,
and upon the grief of this
suddenly died.
Madam constable, let these men be bound, and brought to Leonato's:
I will go before and show him their examination.
- Come, let them be opinioned.
- Away!
You are an ass, you are an ass.
- Da-da-da-da-da-da-da!
Dost thou not suspect my place?
Hmm?
Dost thou not suspect my years?
Oh...
O that he were here to write me down an ass!
But, masters, remember that I am an ass;
though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.
No, thou villain, thou art full of piety,
as shall be proved upon thee by good witness.
I am a wise woman, and, which is more, an officer,
and, which is more, a householder,
and, which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh
as any is in Messina,
and one that knows the law, go to;
and a rich woman enough, go to;
and a woman that hath had losses,
and one that hath two gowns and every thing handsome about her.
Bring them away.
O that I had been written down an ass!
- If you go on thus, you will kill yourself:
And 'tis not wisdom thus to second grief against yourself.
- 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,
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.
- Therein do men from children nothing differ.
- I pray thee, peace.
I will be flesh and blood;
For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently.
- Yet bend not all the harm upon yourself;
Make those that do offend you suffer too.
- 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 princess
And all of them that thus dishonour her.
- Here come the princess and Claudio, hastily.
- Good day, good day.
- Good day to both of you. - Hear you, my lord...
- We have some haste, Leonato.
- Some haste, my lady! well, fare you well, my lady:
Are you so hasty now? well, all is one.
- Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man.
- If he could right himself with quarreling,
Some of us would lie low. - Who wrongs him?
- Marry, thou dost wrong me; thou dissembler, thou...
Nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword; I fear thee not.
- Marry, beshrew my hand,
If it should give your age such cause of fear:
In faith, my hand meant nothing to my sword.
- Tush, tush, man; never sneer and jest at me:
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!
- My villany? - Thine, Claudio; thine, I say.
- You say not right, old man. - My lady,
my lady, I'll prove it on his body, if he dare.
- Away! I will not have to do with you.
- Canst thou so doff me? Thou hast kill'd my child:
If thou kill'st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man.
- He shall kill two of us, and men indeed:
But that's no matter; let him kill one first;
Win me and wear me; let him answer me.
Come, follow me, boy;
come, sir boy, come, follow me.
- CHUCKLES
- Sir boy, I'll whip you from your foining fence;
Nay, as I am a gentleman, I will.
- Brother... - Content yourself. God knows I loved my niece;
And she is dead, slander'd to death by villains,
That dare as well answer a man indeed
As I dare take a serpent by the tongue:
Boys, apes,
braggarts, Jacks,
milksops!
- Brother Antony... - Hold you content. What, man! I know them, yea,
And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple,
Scrambling, out-facing, fashion-monging boys,
That lie and cog and flout, deprave and slander,
Go grotesquely, show outward hideousness,
And speak off half a dozen dangerous words,
How they might hurt their enemies, if they durst;
And this is all.
- But, brother Antony... - Come, 'tis no matter:
Do not you meddle; let me deal in this.
- Gentlemen both, we will not wake your patience.
My heart is sorry for your daughter's death:
But, on my honour, she was charged with nothing
But what was true and very full of proof.
- My lady, my lady... - I will not hear you.
- No?
Come, brother; away!
I will be heard.
- And shall, or some of us will smart for it.
- See, see; here comes the man we went to seek.
- Now, signior, what news? - Good day, my lady.
- Welcome, signior: you are almost come to part almost a fray.
- We had like to have had our two noses snapped off
with two old men without teeth.
- Leonato and his brother. What thinkest thou?
Had we fought them, I doubt we should have been too young for them.
- In a false quarrel there is no true valour.
I came to seek you both.
- 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?
- It is in my scabbard: shall I draw it?
- Dost thou wear thy wit by thy side?
- Never any did so, though very many have been beside their wit.
I will bid thee draw.
- As I am an honest woman, he looks pale.
Art thou sick, or angry?
- What, courage, man!
What though care killed the cat,
thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.
- I shall meet your wit in the career, if you charge it against me.
I pray you choose another subject.
- By this light, he changes more and more:
I think he be angry indeed.
- Shall I speak a word in your ear?
- God bless me from a challenge!
- You are a villain.
I jest not.
I will make it good how you dare, with what you dare,
and when you dare.
Do me right, or I will protest your cowardice.
You have killed a sweet lady, and her death shall fall heavy on you.
Let me hear from you.
- Well, I will meet you, so I may have good cheer.
- What, a feast, a feast?
- In faith, I thank him; he hath bid me to a meal of 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?
- Your wit ambles well; it goes easily.
- I'll tell thee how Beatrice praised thy wit the other day.
I said, thou hadst a fine wit:
"True," said she, "a fine little one."
"No," said I, "a great wit:"
"Right," said she, "a great gross one."
"Nay," said I, "a good wit:"
"Certain," said she, "it hurts no-one."
"Nay," said I, "the gentleman is wise:"
"That I believe," said she, "a wise gentleman."
"Nay," said I, "he hath the tongues:"
"That I believe," said she,
"for he forswore a thing to me on Monday night,
"which he forswore on Tuesday morning;
"there's a double tongue; there's two tongues."
Thus did she, an hour together, transshape thy particular virtues:
yet to conclude with a sigh, she said
thou wast the properest man in Italy.
- For the which she wept heartily and said she cared not.
- But when shall we set the savage bull's horns
on the sensible Benedick's head?
- Yea, and text underneath,
"Here dwells Benedick the married man"?
- Fare you well, boy: you know my mind.
I will leave you now to your gossip-like humour:
you break jests as braggarts do their blades,
which God be thanked, hurt not.
My lady, for your many courtesies I thank you:
I must discontinue your company:
your brother the bastard is fled from Messina:
you have among you killed a sweet and innocent lady.
For my Lord Lackbeard there, he and I shall meet:
till then, peace be with him.
- He is in earnest.
- In most profound earnest; and, I'll warrant you,
for the love of Beatrice.
- And hath challenged thee. - Most sincerely.
- What a pretty thing man is
when he goes in his doublet and hose and leaves off his wit!
But did he not say, my brother was fled?
- BOOING
- Come you, sirs: if justice cannot tame you,
she shall ne'er weigh more raisins in her balance.
- How now? two of my brother's men bound! Borachio one!
- Hearken after their offence, my lady.
- Officers, what offence have these men done?
- Marry, lady, they have committed false report;
moreover, they have spoken untruths;
secondarily, they are slanderers;
and sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady;
thirdly, they have verified unjust things;
and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.
- First, I ask thee what they have done;
thirdly, I ask thee what's their offence;
sixth and lastly, why they are committed;
and, to conclude, what you lay to their charge.
- Pardon you?
- Who have you offended, masters,
that you are thus bound to your answer?
this learned constable is too cunning to be understood:
who have you offended?
- Sweet princess, let me go no further to mine answer:
do you hear me, and let this count kill me.
I have deceived even your very eyes:
what your wisdoms could not discover,
these shallow fools have brought to light:
who in the night overheard me confessing to this man
how Don John your brother incensed me to slander the Lady Hero,
how you were brought into the garden
and saw me court Margaret in Hero's garments,
how you disgraced her, when you should marry her:
my villany they have upon record;
which I had rather seal with my death than repeat over to my shame.
The lady is dead upon mine and my master's false accusations;
and, briefly, I desire nothing but the reward of a villain.
- Runs not this speech like iron through your blood?
- I have drunk poison whiles he utter'd it.
- But did my brother set thee on to this?
- Yea, and paid me richly for the practise of it.
- He is composed and framed of treachery:
And fled he is upon this villany.
- Sweet Hero!
- Come, take away the plaintiffs:
by this time our sexton
hath reformed Signior Leonato of the matter:
and, your lady, do not forget to specify,
when time and place shall serve, that I...
..am an ass.
- Here, here comes master Signior Leonato, and the Sexton too.
- 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?
- If you would know your wronger, look on me.
- Art thou the dog that with thy breath hast kill'd
Mine innocent child? - Yea, even I alone.
- No, not so, villain; thou beliest thyself:
Here stand a pair of honourable soldiers;
A third is fled, that had a hand in it.
I thank you both for my daughter's death:
Record it with your high and worthy deeds:
'Twas bravely done, if you bethink you of it.
- 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.
- By my soul, nor I:
And yet, to satisfy this good old man,
I will bend under any heavy weight
He will enjoin me to.
- 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 a 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.
- O noble sir,
Your over-kindness doth wring tears from me!
I do embrace your offer; and dispose
For henceforth of poor Claudio.
- To-morrow then I will expect your coming;
To-night I take my leave. This wicked 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.
- No, by my soul, she was not,
Nor knew not what she did when she spoke to me,
But always hath been just and virtuous
In any thing that I do know by her.
- Moreover, sir, which indeed is not under white and black,
this plaintiff here, the offender, did call me...
Did call me...
..an ass:
I pray you, let it be remembered in his punishment.
- I thank thee for thy care and honest pains.
- Oh!
Oh, your worship speaks like a most thankful and reverend youth;
and I praise God for you.
- There's for thy pains.
- God save the foundation!
- Go, I discharge thee of thy prisoner.
And I thank thee.
- I leave an arrant knave with your worship;
which I beseech your worship to correct yourself,
for the example of others.
God keep your worship!
Oh! I wish your worship well;
may God restore you to health!
I humbly give you leave to depart;
and if a merry meeting may be wished,
God prohibit it! Come, neighbour.
- Until to-morrow morning, farewell.
- Farewell: we look for you to-morrow.
- We will not fail.
- To-night I'll mourn with Hero.
- Pray thee, sweet Mistress Margaret,
deserve well at my hands by helping me to the speech of Beatrice.
- Will you then write me a sonnet in praise of my beauty?
- In so high a style, Margaret,
that no man living shall come over it;
for, in most comely truth, thou deservest it.
- To have no man come over me!
why, shall I always keep below stairs?
- Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth; it catches.
- And yours is as blunt as the fencer's foils,
which hit, but hurt not.
- A most manly wit, Margaret; it would not hurt a woman.
And now I pray thee, call Beatrice: I give thee the bucklers.
- Give us the swords; we have bucklers of our own.
- If you use them, Margaret,
you must put in the pikes with a vice;
but they are dangerous weapons for maids.
- Well, I will call Beatrice to you,
who I think hath legs. - And therefore will come.
SIGHS
MUSIC STARTS
OFF-KEY # The god of love
# That sits above
# And knows me, and knows me
# How pitiful I deserve... #
No, no, no, no, no, no.
I mean in singing; but in loving.
Leander the good swimmer,
Troilus the first employer of panders,
and a whole bookful of these quondam carpet-mongers,
whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse,
why, they were never so truly turned over and over
as my poor self in love.
Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried:
I can find out no rhyme to "lady" but "baby", an innocent rhyme;
for "scorn", "horn", a hard rhyme;
for "school", "fool", a babbling rhyme;
very ominous endings.
No, I was not born under a rhyming planet,
nor I cannot woo in festival terms.
Sweet Beatrice, wouldst thou come when I called thee?
- Yea, signior, and depart when you bid me.
- O, stay but till then!
- "Then" is spoken; fare you well:
and yet, ere I go,
let me go with that I came for;
which is, with knowing what hath passed between you and Claudio.
- Only foul words; and thereupon I will kiss thee.
- Foul words is but foul wind,
and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome;
therefore I will depart unkissed.
- Thou hast frighted the word out of its right sense,
so forcible is thy wit.
But I tell thee plainly, Claudio undergoes my challenge.
And either I must shortly hear from him,
or subscribe him a coward.
And now tell me,
for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?
- For them all together.
- HE LAUGHS
- Which maintained so politic a state of evil
that they would not admit any good part to intermingle with them.
But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?
- Suffer love! a good epithet!
I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.
- In spite of your heart, I think; alas, poor heart!
If you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours;
for I could never love that which my friend hates.
- Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.
- It appears not in this confession:
there's not one wise man among twenty that will praise himself.
- An old, an old instance, Beatrice.
If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies,
he will live no longer in monument
than the bell rings or the widow weeps.
therefore is it most expedient for the wise
to be the trumpet of his own virtues, as I am myself?
And now tell me, how doth your cousin?
- Very ill.
- And how do you?
- Very ill too.
- Serve God,
love me
and mend.
FOOTSTEPS
And there will I leave you too, for here comes one in haste.
- Madam, you must come to your uncle.
It is proved my Lady Hero hath been falsely accused,
the princess and Claudio mightily abused;
and Don John is the author of all,
who is fled and gone. Will you come presently?
- Will you go hear this news, signior?
- I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap,
and be buried in thine eyes;
and moreover I will go with you to your uncle's.
SOMBRE MUSIC
# O that we might mourn
# And our eyes may glaze
# Our hearts beat sad
# With sorrowful air
# O that we might turn
# And see thee once again
# Till one and all
# Are finally there
- # O that we might fall
# And our eyes may glaze - Eyes may glaze
- # Our hearts beat sad
# With sorrowful air
# O that we might turn
# And see thee once again - Once again - See thee once again
- # Till one and all
# Are finally there. #
- Done to death by slanderous tongues
Was the Hero that here lies:
Death, a gift for others' wrongs,
Gives her fame which never dies.
So the life that died in shame
Lives in death with glorious fame.
Hang thou there upon the tomb,
Praising her when I am gone.
Now, music...
GENTLE MUSIC
..sound...
..and sing your solemn hymn.
# 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
# Graves, yawn and yield your dead
# Till death be uttered
# Heavily
# Heavily. #
Now, unto thy bones good night!
Yearly will I do this rite.
- Good morrow, masters; put your torches out:
The wolves have prey'd; and look, the gentle day,
Before the eyes of Orbis; round about
Dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey.
Thanks to you all, and leave us:
fare you well.
- Good morrow, masters: each his several way.
- Come, let us hence, and put on other garbs;
And to Leonato's we will go.
- CHORUS: - # Till one and all
# Are finally there
- # Till one and all
# Are finally there - There, yeah
- # Till one and all
# Are finally there
- # Finally, finally
- # Till one and all
# Are finally there
- # Till one and all
# Are finally there. #
- Did I not tell you she was innocent?
- So are the princess and Claudio, who accused her
Upon the...error 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, I am glad that all things sort so well.
- And so am I, being else by faith enforced
To call young Claudio to a reckoning for it.
- Well, daughter, and you gentle-women all,
Withdraw into a chamber by yourselves,
And when I send for you, come hither mask'd.
The princess 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.
- Which I will do with confirm'd countenance.
- Friar, I must entreat your pains, I think.
- To do what, signior?
- To bind me, or undo me; one of them.
Signior Leonato, truth it is, good signior,
Your niece regards me with an eye of favour.
- That eye my daughter lent her: 'tis most true.
- And I do with an eye of love requite her.
- The sight whereof I think you had from me,
From Claudio and the princess.
But what's your will? - Your answer, sir, is enigmatical:
But, for my will, my will is your good will
May stand with ours, this day to be conjoin'd
In the state of honourable marriage:
In which, good friar, I shall desire your help.
- My heart is with your liking. - And my help.
Here comes the princess and Claudio.
- Good morrow to this fair assembly.
- Good morrow, princess; good morrow, Claudio:
We here attend you. Are you yet determined
To-day to marry with my brother's daughter?
- I am.
- Call her forth, brother; here's the friar ready.
- Good morrow, Benedick.
Why, what's the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?
- I think he thinks upon the savage bull.
- Some such strange bull leap'd your father's cow,
And got a calf in that same noble feat
Much like to you, for you have just his bleat.
- For this I owe you: here comes other reckonings.
Which is the lady I must seize upon?
- This same is she, and I do give you her.
- Why, then she's mine.
Sweet, let me see your face.
- No, that you shall not, till you take her hand
Before this friar and swear to marry her.
- Give me your hand.
Before this holy friar, I am your husband, if you like of me.
- And when I lived, I was your other wife:
And when you loved, you were my other husband.
- Another Hero! - Nothing certainer:
One Hero died defiled, but I do live,
And surely as I live, I am a maid.
- The former Hero!
The Hero that is dead! - She died, my lady,
but whiles her slander lived.
- All this amazement can I qualify:
When after that the holy rites are ended,
I'll tell you largely of fair Hero's death:
Meantime let wonder seem familiar,
And to the chapel let us presently.
- Soft and fair, friar.
Which is Beatrice?
I answer...to that name.
What is your will?
- Do not you love me?
- Why, no.
- HE SCOFFS
- No more than reason.
- Why, then your uncle, the princess and Claudio
Have been deceived; they swore you did.
- Do not you love me?
- Troth, no; no more than reason.
- Why, then my cousin Margaret and Ursula
Are much deceived; for they did swear you did.
- They swore you were almost sick for me.
- They swore that you were well-nigh dead for me.
- 'Tis no such matter.
Then you do not love me? - No,
truly, but in friendly recompense.
- Come, cousin, I am sure you love the gentleman.
- 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.
- And here's another
Writ in my cousin's hand, stolen from her pocket,
Containing her affection unto Benedick.
THEY LAUGH
BOTH LAUGH
- A miracle! here's our own hands against our hearts.
Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I take thee for pity.
- I would not deny you;
but, by this good day,
I yield upon great persuasion;
and partly to save your life, for I was told...
- SINGSONG: - ..you were in a consumption.
- Peace! I will stop your mouth.
- Ey!
Uh-huh.
- WOMEN SQUEAL
- How dost thou, Benedick, the married man?
- I tell thee what, princess;
a college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humour.
Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram?
No: if a man will be beaten with brains,
he shall wear nothing handsome about him.
In brief, since I do purpose to marry,
I shall think nothing to any purpose
that the world can say against it;
and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it;
for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.
For thy part, Claudio, I was like to have beaten thee,
but in that thou art like to be my kinsman,
live unbruised, and love my cousin.
- I had well hoped thou wouldst have denied Beatrice,
that I might have cudgelled thee out of thy single life.
- Come, come, we are friends.
Let us have a dance ere we are married,
so that we may lighten our hearts and our wives' heels.
- We'll have dancing afterward.
- First, of my word; therefore play, music.
Princess, thou art sad;
get thee married!
- My lady, your brother John is ta'en in flight,
And brought with armed men back to Messina.
- Think not on him till to-morrow:
I'll devise thee brave punishments for him.
- Strike up the music!
- MUSIC STARTS
AUDIENCE APPLAUD AND CHEER THROUGHOUT
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING CONTINUES