Leonato, hath invited you all. I tell him, we shall stay here at the 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.

Leon. If you swear, my lord, you shall not be forsworn. Let me bid you welcome, my lord, being reconciled to the prince your brother, I owe you all duty.

D. John. I thank but I thank you.

you: I am not of many words,

Leon. Please it your grace lead on?

D. Pedro. Your hand, Leonato; we will go together. ' [Exeunt all but BENEDICK and CLAUDIO. Claud. Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of signior Leonato?

Bene. I noted her not; but I looked on her.
Claud. Is she not a modest young lady?

Bene. 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?

Claud. No, I pray thee, speak in sober judgment. Bene. Why, i'faith, methinks she is too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair 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 other but as she is, I do not like her.

Claud. Thou thinkest, I am in sport; I pray thee, tell me truly how thou likest her.

Bene. Would you buy her, that you inquire after her.

Claud. Can the world buy such a jewel?

Bene. Yea, and a case to put it into. But speak you this with a sad brow? or do you play the flout

ing Jack; to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder, and Vulcan a rare carpenter 17? Come, in what key shall a man take you to go in the song

18?

Claud. In mine eye, she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on.

Bene. I can see yet without spectacles, and I see no such matter: there's her cousin, an she were not possessed with a fury, exceeds her us 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?

my wife. Hath not the cap with sus

Claud. I would scarce trust myself, though I had sworn the contrary, if Hero would be Bene. Is it come to this, i'faith? world one man, but he will wear his picion 19? Shall I never see a bachelor of threescore again? Go to, i'faith; an thou wilt needs thrust thy neck into a yoke, wear the print of it, and sigh away Sundays 20. Look, Don Pedro is returned to seek you.

Re-enter DON PEDRO.

D. Pedro. What secret hath held you here, that you followed not to Leonato's?

Bene. I would, your grace would constrain me to

tell.

D. Pedro. I charge thee on thy allegiance.

Bene. You hear, Count Claudio: I can be secret

17 Do you scoff and mock in telling us that Cupid, who is blind, is a good hare-finder; and that Vulcan, a blacksmith, is a good carpenter? Do you mean to amuse us with improbable stories?

18 i. e. to join in the song.

19 i. e. subject his head to the disquiet of jealousy.

20 i. e. become sad and serious. Alluding to the manner in which the Puritans usually spent the Sabbath, with sighs and gruntings, and other hypocritical marks of devotion.

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.

Claud. If this were so, so were it uttered.

Bene. Like the old tale, my lord: it is not so, nor 'twas not so; but, indeed, God forbid it should be so 21.

Claud. If my passion change not shortly, God forbid it should be otherwise.

D. Pedro. Amen, if you love her; for the lady is very well worthy.

Claud. You speak this to fetch me in, my lord. D. Pedro. By my troth, I speak my thought. Claud. And, in faith, my lord, I spoke mine. Bene. And, by my two faiths and troths, my lord, I spoke mine.

Claud. That I love her, I feel.

D. Pedro. That she is worthy, I know.

Bene. That I neither feel how she should be loved, nor know how she should be worthy, is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me; I will die in it at the stake.

D. Pedro. Thou wast ever an obstinate heretick in the despite of beauty.

Claud. And never could maintain his part, but in the force of his will 22.

Bene. That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me up, I likewise give her most

21 The old tale, of which this is the burthen, has been traditionally preserved and recovered by Mr. Blakeway, and is perhaps one of the most happy illustrations of Shakspeare that has ever appeared. It is to be found at the end of the play in the late edition of Shakspeare by Mr. Boswell. I regret that its length precludes me from printing it.

22 Alluding to the definition of a heretic in the schools.

humble thanks: but that I will have a recheat 23 winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle 24 in an invisible baldrick 25, all women shall pardon me: Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none; and the fine 26 is (for the which I may go the finer), I will live a bachelor.

D. Pedro. I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love.

Bene. With anger, with sickness, or with hunger, my lord; not with love: prove, that ever I lose more blood with love, than I will get again with drinking, pick out mine eyes with a ballad-maker's pen, and hang me up at the door of a brothel-house, for the sign of blind Cupid.

D. Pedro. Well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith, thou wilt prove a notable argument.

Bene. If I do, hang me in a bottle like a cat 28, and shoot at me; and he that hits me, let him be clapped on the shoulder, and called Adam 29.

23 That is, wear a horn on my forehead, which the huntsman may blow. A recheat is the sound by which the dogs are called back.

24 i. e. bugle-horn.

25 A belt. The meaning seems to be- or that I should be compelled to carry a horn on my forehead where there is nothing visible to support it.'

26 The fine is the conclusion. 27 A capital subject for satire. 28 It seems to have been one of the inhuman sports of the time, to enclose a cat in a wooden tub or bottle suspended aloft to be shot at. The practice was, not many years since, kept up at Kelso in Scotland, according to Ebenezer Lazarus, a silly methodist, who has described the whole ceremony in his account of Kelso. He, however, justly stigmatizes it, saying:

The cat in the barrel exhibits such a farce,

That he who can relish it is worse than an ass.'

29 i. e. Adam Bell, a passing good archer,' who, with Clym of the Cloughe and William of Cloudeslie, were outlaws as famous in the north of England, as Robin Hood and his fellows were in the midland counties.

D. Pedro. Well, as time shall try:

In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke 3o.

Bene. The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull's horns, and set them in my forehead: and let me be vilely painted; and in such great letters as they write, Here is good horse to hire, let them signify under my sign-Here you may see Benedick the married man. Claud. If this should ever happen, thou would'st be horn-mad.

31

D. Pedro. Nay, if Cupid have not spent all his quiver in Venice 31, thou wilt quake for this shortly. Bene. I look for an earthquake too then.

D. Pedro. Well, you will temporize with the hours. In the mean time, good signior Benedick, repair to Leonato's; commend me to him, and tell him, I will not fail him at supper; for, indeed, he hath made great preparation.

Bene. I have almost matter enough in me for such an embassage: and so I commit you

Claud. To the tuition of God: From my house, (if I had it)

D. Pedro. The sixth of July: Your loving friend, Benedick.

Bene. Nay, mock not, mock not: The body of your discourse is sometime guarded 32 with fragments, and the guards are but slightly basted on neither: ere you flout old ends any further, examine your conscience 33, and so I leave you.

[Exit BENEDICK.

30 This line is from The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo, &c.; and occurs, with a slight variation, in Watson's Sonnets, 1581. 31 Venice is represented in the same light as Cyprus among the ancients, and it is this character of the people that is here alluded to.

32 Trimmed, ornamented.

33 Examine if your sarcasms do not touch yourself.' Old ends probably means the conclusions of letters, which were frequently couched in the quaint forms used above.