The music ended, We’ll fit the kid fox with a pennyworth.°

Enter Balthasar with music.

Don Pedro. Come, Balthasar, we’ll hear that song again.

Balthasar. O, good my lord, tax not so bad a voice To slander music any more than once.

Don Pedro. It is the witness still of excellency To put a strange face on his own perfection. I pray thee sing, and let me woo no more.

Balthasar. Because you talk of wooing, I will sing, Since many a wooer doth commence his suit To her he thinks not worthy, yet he woos, Yet will he swear he loves.

Don Pedro. Nay, pray thee come; Or if thou wilt hold longer argument, Do it in notes.

Balthasar. Note this before my notes: There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

Don Pedro. Why, these are very crotchets° that he speaks! Note notes, forsooth, and nothing!° [Music.]

Benedick. [Aside] Now divine air! Now is his soul ravished! Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies? Well, a horn for my money, when all’s done. [Balthasar sings.]

The Song
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,

42 We’ll ... pennyworth i.e., we’ll give Benedick a little something (perhaps kid fox means “young fox,” perhaps “known fox”)

56 crotchets (I) whims (2) musical notes

57 nothing (pronounced “noting,” hence a pun)

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 your sounds of woe
Into hey nonny, nonny.
Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,
Of dumps° so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy.
Then sigh not so, &c.

Don Pedro. By my troth, a good song.

Balthasar. And an ill singer, my lord.

Don Pedro. Ha, no, no, faith! Thou sing‘st well enough for a shift.°

Benedick. [Aside] And he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him; and I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief. I had as live° have heard the night raven, come what plague could have come after it.

Don Pedro. Yea, marry. Dost thou hear, Balthasar? I pray thee get us some excellent music; for tomorrow night we would have it at the Lady Hero’s chamber window.

Balthasar. The best I can, my lord.

Don Pedro. Do so. Farewell.

Exit Balthasar [with Musicians].

Come hither, Leonato. What was it you told me of today? That. your niece Beatrice was in love with Signior Benedick?

Claudio. O, ay! [In a low voice to Don Pedro] Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits. [In full voice] I did never think that lady would have loved any man.

72 dumps sad songs

79 shift makeshift

83 live lief

Leonato. No, nor I neither; but most wonderful that she should so dote on Signior Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviors seemed ever to abhor.

Benedick. [Aside] Is’t possible? Sits the wind in that comer?

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

Don Pedro. May be she doth but counterfeit.

Claudio. Faith, like enough.

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

Don Pedro. Why, what effects of passion shows she?

Claudio. [In a low voice] Bait the hook well! This fish will bite.

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

Claudio. She did indeed.

Don Pedro. How, how, I pray you? You amaze me! I would have thought her spirit had been invincible against all assaults of affection.

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

Benedick. [Aside] I should think this a gull° but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it. Knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such reverence.

Claudio. [In a low voice] He hath ta‘en th’ infection; hold° it up.

109 discovers reveals, betrays

121 gull trick

125 hold keep

Don Pedro. Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?

Leonato. No, and swears she never will. That’s her torment.

Claudio. ‘Tis true indeed. So your daughter says. “Shall I,” says she, “that have so oft encount’red him with scorn, write to him that I love him?”

Leonato. This says she now when she is beginning to write to him; for she’ll be up twenty times a night, and there will she sit in her smock till she have writ a sheet of paper. My daughter tells us all.

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

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

Claudio. That.

Leonato. O, she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence, ° railed at herself that she should be so im- modest to write to one that she knew would flout her. “I measure him,” says she, “by my own spirit; for I should flout him if he writ to me. Yea, though I love him, I should.”

Claudio. Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses—“O sweet Benedick! God give me patience!”

Leonato. She doth indeed; my daughter says so; and the ecstasy° hath so much overborne her that my daughter is sometime afeard she will do a des- perate outrage to herself. It is very true.

Don Pedro. It were good that Benedick knew of it by some other, if she will not discover it.

143—44 halfpence i.e., small pieces

153 ecstasy madness

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

Don Pedro. And he should, it were an alms° to hang him! She’s an excellent sweet lady, and, out of all suspicion, she is virtuous.

Claudio. And she is exceeding wise.

Don Pedro. In everything but in loving Benedick.

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

Don Pedro. I would she had bestowed this dotage on me; I would have daffed all other respects° and made her half myself. I pray you tell Benedick of it and hear what‘a will say.

Leonato. Were it good, think you?

Claudio. Hero thinks surely she will die; for she says she will die if he love her not, and she will die ere she make her love known, and she will die, if he woo her, rather than she will bate° one breath of her accustomed crossness.

Don Pedro. 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.

Claudio. He is a very proper° man.

Don Pedro. He hath indeed a good outward happiness.

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

Don Pedro. He doth indeed show some sparks that are like wit.°

Claudio. And I take him to be valiant.

160 an alms a charity

165 blood passion

170 daffed all other respects put aside all other considerations (i.e., of disparity in rank)

177 bate abate, give up

179 tender offer

181 contemptible disdainful

182 proper handsome

186 wit intelligence

Don Pedro. As Hector, I assure you. And in the managing of quarrels you may say he is wise, for either he avoids them with great discretion, or undertakes them with a most Christianlike fear.

Leonato. If he do fear God, ‘a must necessarily keep peace.