Much Ado About Nothing

1 Enter Benedick and Margaret,
2 meeting.
3 BENEDICK.
4 Pray thee, sweet Mistress Margaret, deserve well at my hands by
5 helping me to the speech of Beatrice.
6 MARGARET.
7 Will you then write me a sonnet in praise of my beauty?
8 BENEDICK.
9 In so high a style, Margaret, that no man living shall come over
10 it; for, in most comely truth, thou deservest it.
11 MARGARET.
12 To have no man come over me! why, shall I always keep below stairs?
13 BENEDICK.
14 Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound’s mouth; it catches.
15 MARGARET.
16 And yours as blunt as the fencer’s foils, which hit, but hurt not.
17 BENEDICK.
18 A most manly wit, Margaret; it will not hurt a woman: and so, I
19 pray thee, call Beatrice. I give thee the bucklers.
20 MARGARET.
21 Give us the swords, we have bucklers of our own.
22 BENEDICK.
23 If you use them, Margaret, you must put in the pikes with a
24 vice; and they are dangerous weapons for maids.
25 MARGARET.
26 Well, I will call Beatrice to you, who I think hath legs.
27 BENEDICK.
28 And therefore will come.
29 [Exit Margaret.]
30 The god of love,
31 That sits above,
32 And knows me, and knows me,
33 How pitiful I deserve,—
34 I mean, in singing: but in loving, Leander the good swimmer, Troilus the
35 first employer of panders, and a whole book full of these quondam
36 carpet-mongers, whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank
37 verse, why, they were never so truly turned over and over as my poor self
38 in love. Marry, I cannot show it in rime; I have tried: I can find out no
39 rime to ‘lady’ but ‘baby’, an innocent rime; for
40 ‘scorn,’ ‘horn’, a hard rime; for ‘school’,
41 ‘fool’, a babbling rime; very ominous endings: no, I was not
42 born under a riming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.
43 Enter Beatrice.
44 Sweet Beatrice, wouldst thou come when I called thee?
45 BEATRICE.
46 Yea, signior; and depart when you bid me.
47 BENEDICK.
48 O, stay but till then!
49 BEATRICE.
50 ‘Then’ is spoken; fare you well now: and yet, ere I
51 go, let me go with that I came for; which is, with knowing what hath
52 passed between you and Claudio.
53 BENEDICK.
54 Only foul words; and thereupon I will kiss thee.
55 BEATRICE.
56 Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath,
57 and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.
58 BENEDICK.
59 Thou hast frighted the word out of his right sense, so forcible
60 is thy wit. But I must tell thee plainly, Claudio undergoes my challenge,
61 and either I must shortly hear from him, or I will subscribe him a coward.
62 And, I pray thee now, tell me, for which of my bad parts didst thou first
63 fall in love with me?
64 BEATRICE.
65 For them all together; which maintained so politic a state
66 of evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with
67 them. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?
68 BENEDICK.
69 ‘Suffer love,’ a good epithet! I do suffer love
70 indeed, for I love thee against my will.
71 BEATRICE.
72 In spite of your heart, I think. Alas, poor heart! If you spite
73 it for my sake, I will spite it for yours; for I will never love that
74 which my friend hates.
75 BENEDICK.
76 Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.
77 BEATRICE.
78 It appears not in this confession: there’s not one wise
79 man among twenty that will praise himself.
80 BENEDICK.
81 An old, an old instance, Beatrice, that lived in the time of
82 good neighbours. If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he
83 dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings and the
84 widow weeps.
85 BEATRICE.
86 And how long is that think you?
87 BENEDICK.
88 Question: why, an hour in clamour and a quarter in rheum:
89 therefore is it most expedient for the wise,—if Don Worm, his conscience,
90 find no impediment to the contrary,—to be the trumpet of his own virtues,
91 as I am to myself. So much for praising myself, who, I myself will bear
92 witness, is praiseworthy. And now tell me, how doth your cousin?
93 BEATRICE.
94 Very ill.
95 BENEDICK.
96 And how do you?
97 BEATRICE.
98 Very ill too.
99 BENEDICK.
100 Serve God, love me, and mend. There will I leave you too, for
101 here comes one in haste.
102 Enter Ursula.
103 URSULA.
104 Madam, you must come to your uncle. Yonder’s old coil at
105 home: it is proved, my Lady Hero hath been falsely accused, the Prince and
106 Claudio mightily abused; and Don John is the author of all, who is fled
107 and gone. Will you come presently?
108 BEATRICE.
109 Will you go hear this news, signior?
110 BENEDICK.
111 I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy
112 eyes; and moreover I will go with thee to thy uncle’s.
113 [Exeunt.]