In the meantime let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me.

Conrade. Can you make no use of your discontent?

Don John. I make all use of it, for I use it only. Who comes here?

Enter Borachio.

What news, Borachio?

Borachio. I came yonder from a great supper. The Prince your brother is royally entertained by Leonato, and I can give you intelligence° of an intended marriage.

12 mortifying mischief killing calamity

17 claw no man in his humor i.e., flatter no man (claw=pat or scratch on the back; humor = whim)

24 frame bring about

25 canker wild rose

27 fashion a carriage contrive a behavior

42 intelligence information

Don John. Will it serve for any model to build mischief on? What is he for a fool that betroths him- self to unquietness?

Borachio. Marry,° it is your brother’s right hand.

Don John. Who? The most exquisite Claudio?

Borachio. Even he.

Don John. A proper squire!° And who? And who? Which way looks he?

Borachio. Marry, one Hero, the daughter and heir of Leonato.

Don John. A very forward March-chick!° How came you to this?

Borachio. Being entertained for° a perfumer, as I was smoking° a musty room, comes me the Prince and Claudio, hand in hand in sad° conference. I whipped me behind the arras and there heard it agreed upon that the Prince should woo Hero for himself, and having obtained her, give her to Count Claudio.

Don John. 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 can cross him any way, I bless myself every way. You are both sure,° and will assist me?

Conrade. To the death, my lord.

Don John. Let us to the great supper. Their cheer is the greater that I am subdued. Would the cook were o’ my mind! Shall we go prove° what’s to be done?

Borachio. We’ll wait upon your lordship.

Exit [with others].

47 Marry (an expletive, from “by the Virgin Mary”)

50 proper squire fine young fellow

54 forward March-chick precocious fellow (i.e., born in early spring)

56 entertained for employed as

57 smoking fumigating (or possibly merely perfuming)

58 sad serious 66 sure reliable

70 prove try

[ACT 2

Scene 1. Leonato’s house.]

Enter Leonato, his brother [Antonio], Hero his
daughter, and Beatrice his niece, [also Margaret
and Ursula].

Leonato. Was not Count John here at supper?

Antonio. I saw him not.

Beatrice. How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am heartburned an hour after.

Hero. He is of a very melancholy° disposition.

Beatrice. He were an excellent man that were made just in the midway between him and Benedick. The one is too like an image and says nothing, and the other too like my lady’s eldest son,° evermore tattling.

Leonato. Then half Signior Benedick’s tongue in Count John’s mouth, and half Count John’s melancholy in Signior Benedick’s face—

Beatrice. 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 ‘a could get her good will.

2.1.5 melancholy ill-tempered

9 eldest son i.e., overly confident (as heir presumptive)

14 foot (perhaps with a pun on French foutre, to coputate—i.e., a good lover)

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

Antonio. In faith, she’s too curst.°

Beatrice. Too curst is more than curst. I shall lessen God’s sending that way, for it is said, “God sends a curst cow short horns”; but to a cow too curst he sends none.

Leonato. So, by being too curst, God will send you no homs.°

Beatrice. Just,° if he send me no husband; for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening. Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face. I had rather lie in the woolen!°

Leonato. You may light on a husband that hath no beard.

Beatrice. What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentle- woman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me; and he that is less than a man, I am not for him. Therefore I will even take sixpence in earnest° of the befford° and lead his apes into hell.°

Leonato. Well then, go you into hell?

Beatrice. 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 maids.” So deliver I up my apes, 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.

19 shrewd sharp

20 curst shrewish

25-26 no horns (i.e., horn used as phallic symbol, as Beatrice’s next remark makes plain).

27 just exactly

31 in the woolen between scratchy blankets

40 in earnest (1) advance payment (2) in all seriousness

40 berrord bearward, animal keeper

41 lead his apes into hell traditional punishment for dying unwed

Antonio. [To Hero] Well, niece, I trust you will be ruled by your father.

Beatrice. Yes, faith. It is my cousin’s duty to make cursy° and say, “Father, as it please you.” But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another cursy, and say, “Father, as it please me.”

Leonato. [To Beatrice] Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted° with a husband.

Beatrice. Not till God make men of some other metal° than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a piece of valiant dust? To make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl?° No, uncle, I’ll none. Adam’s sons are my brethren, and truly I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.

Leonato. Daughter, remember what I told you. If the Prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer.

Beatrice. The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you be not wooed in good time. If the Prince be too important,° tell him there is measure° in everything, and so dance out the answer. For, hear me, Hero: wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace.° The first suit is hot and hasty like a Scotch jig (and full as fantastical); the wedding, mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes Repentance and with his bad legs falls into the cinquepace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.

48 bachelors unwed persons (female as well as male)

53 cursy curtsy

58 fitted (continues playful sexual innuendo of the scene)

59 metal substance

62 marl earth

70 important importunate

70 measure (1) dis cemible time sequence (2) moderation (the entire speech is a light parody of Sir John Davies’ Orchestra. A Poem of Dancing [1596]; cf. stanza 23: “Time the measure of all moving is/And dancing is a moving all in measure”)

73 cinquepace lively dance

Leonato. Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly.

Beatrice. I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.

Leonato. The revelers are ent‘ring, brother. Make good room.

[All put on their masks.]

Enter Prince [Don] Pedro, Claudio, and Bene-
dick, and Balthasar [masked; and without masks
Borachio and] Don John.

Don Pedro. Lady, will you walk about with your friend?°

Hero. So you walk softly and look sweetly and say nothing, I am yours for the walk; and especially when I walk away.

Don Pedro. With me in your company?

Hero. I may say so when I please.

Don Pedro. And when please you to say so?

Hero. When I like your favor,° for God defend° the lute should be like the case!°

Don Pedro. My visor° is Philemon‘s° roof; within the house is Jove.

Hero. Why then, your visor should be thatched.

Don Pedro. Speak low if you speak love.

[Draws her aside.]

Benedick. ° Well, I would you did like me.

86 friend lover

93 favor face

93 defend forbid

93-94 the lute ... case i.e., your face be as ugly as your mask

95 visor mask

95 Philemon peasant who entertained Jove in his house

99 Benedick (many beditors emend the Quarto, and give this and Benedick’s two subsequent speeches to Balthasar; but in 5.2 Benedick and Margaret spar, and they may well do so here)

Margaret. So would not I for your own sake, for I have many ill qualities.

Benedick. Which is one?

Margaret. I say my prayers aloud.

Benedick. I love you the better. The hearers may cry amen.

Margaret. God match me with a good dancer!

Balthasar. [Interposing] Amen.

Margaret. And God keep him out of my sight when the dance is done! Answer, clerk.

Balthasar. No more words. The clerk is answered.

Ursula. I know you well enough. You are Signior Antonio.

Antonio. At a word, I am not.

Ursula. I know you by the waggling° of your head.

Antonio.